.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 54673
   :PG.Title: Sir Harry
   :PG.Released: 2017-05-07
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Archibald Marshall
   :DC.Title: Sir Harry
              A Love Story
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1919
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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SIR HARRY
=========

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      SIR HARRY

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      *A Love Story*

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      BY

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      ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

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      NEW YORK
      DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
      1919

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      COPYRIGHT, 1919
      By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

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..

      The Quinn & Boden Company
      BOOK MANUFACTURERS
      RAHWAY NEW JERSEY

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   dedication info

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   *BY THE SAME AUTHOR*

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THE HOUSE OF MERRILEES
RICHARD BALDOCK
EXTON MANOR
THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
THE ELDEST SON
THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS
THE GREATEST OF THESE
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
WATERMEADS
UPSIDONIA
ABINGTON ABBEY
THE GRAFTONS
THE CLINTONS, AND OTHERS
SIR HARRY

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

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I.  `Royd Castle`_
II.  `Lady Brent`_
III.  `The Child`_
IV.  `Fairies`_
V.  `Mrs. Brent`_
VI.  `Revolt`_
VII.  `The Log Cabin`_
VIII.  `August`_
IX.  `On the Moor`_
X.  `Viola`_
XI.  `The Woodland Pool`_
XII.  `At the Threshold`_
XIII.  `The Temple`_
XIV.  `Bastian`_
XV.  `Wilbraham`_
XVI.  `Dilemma`_
XVII.  `The End`_
XVIII.  `Afterwards`_
XIX.  `Wilbraham in London`_
XX.  `Waiting`_
XXI.  `Sidney`_
XXII.  `The Return`_
XXIII.  `Confidences`_
XXIV.  `Holiday`_
XXV.  `Mrs. Brent Knows`_
XXVI.  `Lady Brent Speaks`_
XXVII.  `Lady Brent and Viola`_
XXVIII.  `In the Balance`_
XXIX.  `Love`_





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.. _`ROYD CASTLE`:

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   SIR HARRY

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   CHAPTER I

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   ROYD CASTLE

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The Reverend David Grant, Vicar-elect of Royd, was
a novelist as well as a priest.  So when he paid his
preliminary visit to Royd Castle, and sat himself down to
write to his wife about it he did so with the idea of
making his letter a piece of literature; or at least of
making her see.  For that was literature—making
people see.  He would take as much trouble over his
letter as he would over a chapter of a novel; and when
she had read it she would have a clear picture in her
mind of the place she was coming to and the people she
would meet there.  She had not been able to come herself
because she was close to her confinement.  Poor girl!
It was rather hard luck that she should have to miss all
this excitement.  They had been married thirteen years
and had always looked forward to settling into the ideal
country parsonage.  But either he would have to settle
in himself, or else wait a couple of months or so until
the baby was born and Ethel was well enough to take a
hand in the blissful arrangements.  Longing to get to
work at it as he was, with money saved from his royalties
to be spent in making their home what they wanted it
to be, he yet thought that he would prefer to wait until
she was strong again.  After thirteen years of married
life, in circumstances not of the easiest, this couple still
liked doings things together.

The time and the place invited to literary composition.
The time was shortly after ten o'clock of a warm
spring night, for the Castle retired early.  The place
was a room which David Grant had sometimes imagined
for himself as the background for a scene in a novel,
but never yet had the satisfaction of occupying.  It
was a great state Tudor bedroom, with carved and
panelled walls, a stone fireplace with a fire of logs
burning in it, Flemish tapestry above, a polished oak floor
with old carpets in front of the hearth, by the heavy
pillared canopied bed and in the deep embrasure of the
window.  There were heavy oak chairs and tables and
presses.  The washing arrangements, necessarily more
modern, since in Tudor days they washed very little,
were in a closet apart.  The writing-table alone showed
modernity, with everything on it in the way of apparatus
that could please a person who loved writing for
its own sake, and could appreciate its accessories.  It
stood in the windowed recess, which was as large as a
fair-sized room, and contained another table for books,
with a cushioned chair by its side, and still left space
for moving about from one window to the other.  Wax
candles in heavy silver candle-sticks stood invitingly on
the writing-table, and elsewhere about the room.  There
were six of these lit when David Grant came up, but it
was so large that the effect was still one of rich dimness,
warmed into life by the glowing fire on the hearth.

David Grant's soul was full of content as he came
into the room and shut the heavy door behind him.  If
he couldn't write a letter in this atmosphere that would
eventually read well in his biography, he wasn't worth
his salt.  He was not without occasional qualms as to
whether he actually was worth his salt as a novelist, but
none of them troubled him to-night.  He was wakeful
and alert; he had half a mind to sit down at that
inviting silver-laden table and write a chapter of "A Love
Apart."  But no.  Ethel, poor girl, must come first.  He
felt tender towards her; they were going to be so happy
together at Royd.  And, after all, this was a chapter in
the story of their own lives, and more interesting to both
of them than a chapter in the lives of fictitious
characters.

He took off his coat and put on the flannel jacket in
which he was accustomed to write.  Then he went to
the windows and drew back all the heavy curtains, and
opened one of the casements.  His facile emotions,
always ready to be stirred by beauty, and to turn it
immediately into words, were stirred for a moment into
something that he could not have put into words as he
stood there, though they came to him the moment
afterwards as he recognized how it all fitted in with the
impression encouraged in his mind by the old rich room
in the old castle—the moonlight outside, silvering the
fairy glades of the park into mysterious beauty, the
silence and the sweet scents of the slumbering earth.

The grass of the park grew right up to the stones of
the castle wall on this side.  Just above him were some
great beeches, which seemed to be climbing the hill that
rose behind.  Below there were more trees, and between
them stretched a glade which led the eye to further
undulations of moonlit grass, and the bare trunks and
branches of the trees that bordered them.  He had been
rather disappointed, in coming first into his room, to
find that it did not look out on to the gardens; but
under the moon this romantic glimpse of silvered trees
and fairy glades seemed to him more beautiful than any
tamed or ordered garden.

Anything might happen out there, on such a night.
Oberon and Titania suggested themselves to him; the
least that could be expected to happen was that a herd
of deer led by a many-antlered stag should wander
across a moonlit glade, and give just that touch of life
that was wanted to enhance the lovely scene.

What actually did happen was that his eye was
caught by a moving figure in the shadow of the trees,
and, before he had had time to wonder, or even to be
startled by it, came out into the bright stretch of grass
in front of his window, and stood looking up at him.

It was young Sir Harry, owner of Royd Castle and all
the magic beauty connected with it that was making
such an impression upon the clerico-novelist's susceptible
mind, but though in that fortunate position not
yet of an age to be out under the trees of his park at
this time of night.  At nine o'clock he had said
good-night to his grandmother's guest downstairs.  Grant
had thought it full early for a boy of his age to be sent
up to bed, as Lady Brent had actually sent him, though
without insistence, and with no protest on his part.  He
was no more than sixteen, but a well-grown boy, in the
evening garb of a man; and he had sat opposite to his
grandmother at the head of the table and taken a bright
part in the conversation, so that, with his title to give
him still further dignity, he had seemed altogether
beyond the stage of being sent early to bed.

However, it appeared that bed had not been the aim
of his departure, after all.  He stood looking up at the
window, not far above the ground, with a smile upon his
handsome young face, and asked his grandmother's
guest not to give him away.  "I come out sometimes like
this, when everybody is asleep," he said.  "There's no
harm in it, but Granny would try to stop me if she
knew—lock me in, perhaps."  He laughed freely.  "So
please don't tell her," he said, and melted away into the
shadows without waiting for a promise of secrecy.

Grant rather liked that in him.  He had been much
attracted by young Sir Harry, who had shown himself
charmingly friendly to him in a frank and boyish way
that had yet seemed to contain something of the dignity
of a *grand seigneur*.  There was something pleasing in
the thought of this handsome boy, master of the old rich
beautiful house, even if he was as yet only nominal
master.  It was not unpleasing either to think of him
roaming about his lovely demesne under the moonlight
which made it still more fair.  Certainly there was nothing
wrong in it.  If he was up to some mischief, it would
only be of a kind that the women who held him in check
might call such.  He was too young and too frank for
the sort of nocturnal mischief that a man might take
notice of.  At his age a sense of adventure would be
satisfied by being abroad in the night while he was
thought to be asleep.  David Grant smiled to himself as
he shut the window.  He would like to make friends with
this charming boy.  He was rather pleased to have this
little secret in common with him.

Now he walked about the great room, composing the
lines of his letter, as he was accustomed to walk about
composing the lines of a chapter in one of his novels.
Its main "idea" was to be the pleasure he and his wife
and the children were to have in Royd Vicarage.  But
that must be led up to.  He must begin at the beginning,
"make her see" the place, and the people among whom
they would lead their lives.  The people especially; there
was room here for the neat little touches of description
upon which he prided himself.  The Vicarage must
come last, and he would end on a tender note, which
would please the dear girl, and make her feel that she
was part of it all, as indeed she was.

And now he was ready to begin, and sat down at the
table, all on fire with his subject.  He wrote on and on
until late into the night.  Sometimes he rose to put
another log on to the fire, to enjoy the crackle it made,
and to sense the grateful atmosphere of the old room.
Once or twice he went to the window and looked out,
never failing to be charmed by the beauty of the scene.
At these times he thought of the boy, out there under
the moon or in the dim shadows of the trees, and
wondered what he was doing, and if he would come and call
up at his window again as he returned from his
wandering.  He rather hoped that he might, and left the
casement open the second time he went to the window.
But by the time he had finished his letter no sound had
broken the stillness, except now and then the soft hooting
of owls, and with a last look at the moonlit glades he
blew out the candles and climbed into the great bed,
very well satisfied with himself and with life in general.

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"Oh, the tiresome old dear, he's trying to be literary,"
said Mrs. Grant, as she embarked eagerly upon
the voluminous pages.  She turned them over until she
came to the description of the Vicarage towards the end:

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"Lady Brent said very kindly, 'I expect you would
like to go over the house by yourself, Mr. Grant.  Harry
shall go with you and show you the cottage where the
key is kept.  The church, I believe, is open.  We shall
expect you back to tea at half-past four, and if you have
not finished you can go back again afterwards.'

"This was just what I wanted—to moon about the
house which is to be our happy home, dearest, alone, and
to build castles in the air about it.  So we started off,
the boy and I.  We went down the avenue——"

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"H'm.  H'm."  Mrs. Grant skipped a page.

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"It was the Vicarage of our dreams, a low stone
house, facing south, embowered in massy trees, its walls
covered with creepers, the sun glinting on its
small-paned windows."

Mrs. Grant skipped a little more.  She wanted to
know the number of rooms, and if possible the size of the
principal ones, what the kitchen and the back premises
were like, whether the kitchen garden was large enough
to supply the house, and if it could all be managed by
one man, who would also look after the pony, and
perhaps clean the boots and knives.

She gained a hint or two as she turned over the pages
quickly, and then read them more carefully.  "Well,
he doesn't tell me much," she said, "but I expect it will
be all right and I'm sure I shall love it.  The drawing-room
opening into the garden and the best bedroom with
a view of the sea in the distance sound jolly, and I'm
glad the old darling will have a nice room to write his
nonsense in.  If he is pleased with his surroundings he
always does more work, and that means more money.
Oh, I do hope his sales will go up and we shall have
enough to live comfortably on there."  She went on to
the end of the letter, which gave her pleasure, as had
been intended.  "Dear old thing, he does lean on me,"
she said.  "And well he may.  Well, I shall bustle about
and make things happy and comfortable for him directly
I'm strong enough.  Oh, my little love, why didn't
you put off your arrival for a few months longer?  But
I shall adore you when you do come, and it will be lovely
to bring you up in that beautiful place.  Now let's see
what these Brent people are like, if he's clever enough
to give me any idea of them."

She turned back to the beginning of the letter, and
read it through in the same way as she read his novels.
She knew by intuition when it was worth while to read
every word, and—well, when it wasn't.

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"Young Sir Harry met me at the station.  He is
a handsome boy, very bright and friendly.  My heart
warmed to him, and especially when he showed a lively
interest in our Jane and Pobbles.  I told him that Jane
was only eleven and Pobbles nine, but he said that he
wasn't so very much older himself, and laughed as he
said it, like a young wood-god, with all the youth of
the world in him.  I remember once walking in an olive
wood in Italy, and suddenly meeting...

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"I was rather surprised at the carriage sent to meet
us.  It was a stately affair, but with the varnish dull
and cracked, and the horses fat and slow.  In spite of
the liveried coachman and footman on the box, the
equipage was not what one might have expected from
such a house as Royd Castle.  I was inclined at first to
think that it meant poverty, which is not always unallied
to state; but there are all the signs of very ample means
in this house, and I incline now to the opinion that in a
woman's house, as Royd Castle is at present, stable
arrangements are not much bothered about.  Lady Brent
goes about very little.  In fact there are no other houses
near for her to visit.  Poldaven Castle, I am told, one
of the seats of the Marquis of Avalon, lies about seven
miles off, but the family is hardly ever there.  We
ourselves, my dearest, shall be very much to ourselves in
this out-of-the-way corner of the world.  We shall have
the people at the Castle, and our own more humble
parishioners, and—ourselves.  But how happy we shall
be!  The beauty of our surroundings alone would give
us..."

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Mrs. Grant skimmed lightly over a description of the
seven-mile drive from the little town by the sea, through
rocky hilly country, bare of trees, but golden with gorse
under a soft April sky flecked with fleecy clouds, and
accepted without enthusiasm the statement that all
nature, including the young lambs and the rabbits,
seemed to be laughing with glee.  She was anxious to get
to Royd, which was to be her home, perhaps for the
rest of her life.

Trees had made their appearance in the landscape by
the time it was reached, and she gained an impression of
a kinder richer country than that of the coast.  As they
neared Royd there were picturesque stone-built farm-houses,
and then a steep village street lined with stone-roofed
cottages, their gardens bright with coloured
primroses, daffodils, ribes, berberi, aubretia and arabis,
and here and there a gay splash of cydonia japonica
against a white-washed wall.  Her husband was always
particular about the names of plants.  No mere "early
spring flowers" for him!  His descriptions were apt to
read rather like a nurseryman's catalogue, but as they
both of them knew their way about nurserymen's
catalogues, she gained her picture of spring-garden colour
and was pleased with it.  It would be lovely to have
a real big garden to play with, instead of the narrow
oblong behind their semi-detached villa.  But she did
want to get to Lady Brent, and the rest of the household
at the Castle.

The old church was at one end of the village, with a
squat stone spire on a squat tower.  Description of its
interior was reserved until later.  The Vicarage was
beyond it, round the corner.  The principal lodge gates
were opposite,—handsome iron gates between heavy
stone pillars surmounted by the Brent armorial leopards,
collared and chained.  A little Tudor lodge stood on
either side of the gate-pillars, and a high stone wall ran
off on either side.  Young Sir Harry had told him that
it ran right round the park, which was three miles in
circumference.

The description of the drive broke off here for an
account of some other things that young Sir Harry had
told him.  Expectation was to be maintained a little
longer.  She wanted to get to the Castle, but did not
skip this part because it was rather interesting.

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"The boy has never been to school.  In fact, he has
never slept a night away from the Castle in all his
sixteen years.  He has a tutor—a Mr. Wilbraham, who
seems to have grounded him well in his classics.  More of
him anon.  The boy reads poetry too, and of a good
kind.  Altogether rather a remarkable boy, and very
good to look upon, with his crisp fair hair, white teeth
and friendly open look—a worthy head of the old family
from which he is descended.  His father was killed in the
South African War, before Harry was born.  He was
born at the Castle and he and his mother have lived here
ever since.  So much I learnt as we drove together, and
formed some picture in my mind of the people I was
about to meet."

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Here followed the mental portraits of Lady Brent,
Mrs. Brent and Mr. Wilbraham, but as they bore small
likeness to the originals, as afterwards appeared, they
may be omitted.

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"We entered by the lodge gates, and drove through
the beautiful park, I should say for the best part of a
mile.  With the trees not yet in leaf, and the great
stretches of fern showing nothing but the russet of last
year's fronds, it was yet very beautiful.  Herds of fallow
deer were feeding quietly on the green lawns, and a noble
stag lifted his head to look at us as we drove past, but
made no attempt to escape, though he can have been
distant from us only a long mashie shot.  Wood-pigeons
flew from tree-top to tree-top across the glades.  I heard
the tap-tap of a woodpecker as we began to mount a
rise where the trees grew thicker, and the harsh screech
of a jay, of which I caught a glimpse of garish colour.
There was a sense of peace and seclusion about this
beautiful enclosed space, as if nothing ugly from the
world outside could penetrate behind those high stone
walls, and nature here rejoiced in freedom and beauty.

"The hill became steeper, and the horses walked up
it until we came to the open ground at the top.  There
at last, as we drew out from under the trees, I saw the
ancient mass of the Castle with the flag flying proudly
above it, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.  The ground
sloped down towards it.  There was a wide open space
of grass with the road winding through, and here and
there a noble beech, with which this part of the park is
chiefly planted.  The ground rose again behind the
massive pile, and was once more thick with trees, so that
it appeared backed by a mass of delicate purple, which
will soon take on that delicious delicate green of young
beech leaves, than which there is none more beautiful in
all nature, unless it be the emerald green of waves in a
blue sea."

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"I shall look out for that in the next novel," said
Mrs. Grant, at this point.  "I know that green, but he has
always called it translucent before."

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"The castle is low and spreading, nowhere more than
two stories in height, except for the row of dormers in
the roof, and in the middle of the mass, where there is
a great gateway leading into an inner court, exactly
like the gateway of a college.  In fact the building
resembles an ancient college in many particulars.  The
garden is enclosed within a stone wall, which continues
the front of the building.  It is on one side only, and is
very beautiful, though I have not yet explored it, and
can speak only of a lawn bounded by an arcading of
yew, to which access is gained from the long drawing-room
where I was received.  The stables are in an inner
courtyard behind the first.  On the side opposite to the
garden, in which the room where I am now writing is
situated, one looks out straight into the park.

"Young Sir Harry took me straight into the room
where the ladies of the house were sitting at their
needlework.  It was a long low room, beautifully furnished
with what I should judge to be French furniture chiefly,
but with deep chintz-covered easy chairs and sofas which
took away from any formal effect it might otherwise
have had.  Lady Brent and Mrs. Brent were sitting by
one of the windows, of which there are a line opening on
to a sort of stone built veranda facing the garden that
I have mentioned.  They rose at once to meet me.  Lady
Brent, whom I had pictured as rather a dominating old
lady, walking possibly with a stick, I was surprised to
find not old at all in appearance.  She must have
married young, and her son, Harry's father, must have
married young, as indeed I afterwards found to have been
the case.  Wilbraham says that she is still a few years
short of sixty, and she does not look much over fifty.
She is not tall, but holds herself erect and moves in a
stately manner.  She is not exactly handsome, but her
features are pleasant to the eye, and she has an
agreeable smile.  She made me welcome in a few words, and
I felt that I *was* welcome, and immediately at home with
her.

"Of Mrs. Brent, Sir Harry's mother, it is more difficult
to speak.  In the light of what I afterwards heard
about her, whatever surprised me on my first introduction
to her is explained; but I am trying to give you my
first impressions.  She is good-looking, but it struck
me at once in rather a common way.  She would be, I
suppose, about five and thirty.  She was quietly dressed
and quiet-spoken; but there was a *something*.  She did
not look of Lady Brent's class, and it was something of
a surprise to me to see in her the mother of Sir Harry,
though in her colouring and facial conformation she
undoubtedly resembled him."

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At this point Mrs. Grant was aroused by the sounds
of violent quarrelling in the little garden below the
window at which she was sitting, and looked out to see
her son and daughter locked in a close but hostile
embrace.  She threw up the window and called to them,
but they took no notice, and she had to go down to
separate them.  They were the most charming children,
and inseparable companions, but apt to express
themselves occasionally in these desperate struggles.
When peace had been restored, and they were left
amicably planting mustard and cress, she returned to her
letter, longing to know more about Mrs. Brent, and
especially the reason for her appearance of commonness.





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.. _`LADY BRENT`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   LADY BRENT

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The explanation came after a description of luncheon in
the great hall, which had greatly impressed the writer,
with its high timbered roof, oriel window, and carved
gallery.  Mr. Wilbraham, the tutor, had been added to
the company, and was presented as a middle-aged figure,
with a somewhat discontented expression of face, but a
gift of ready speech which made the meal lively and
interesting.  He and the two ladies seemed to be on
the most excellent terms, and the way in which Lady
Brent deferred to the tutor, not treating him in the least
as a dependent, but as a valued member of the family
circle, had struck the Vicar-elect of Royd most
agreeably.  "This is a woman," he wrote, "with brains above
the ordinary, who takes pleasure in exercising them.
Though living a retired life, far from the centres of
human intercourse, she takes a lively interest in what is
going on in the world.  Politics were discussed over the
luncheon-table, and I found her views coincided remarkably
with my own, and together we gave, I think, a very
good account of ourselves in argument with Wilbraham,
who professes to be something of a Radical, though I
noticed that he ate a very good lunch, and is evidently
not averse to sharing in the good things of the class he
affects to deride.  It was all, however, very
good-humoured, and when the talk veered round to books, I
found that these good people knew really more about
the latest publications than I did myself.  Wilbraham
is a great reader.  He acts as librarian, as well as tutor
to Harry, and seems to have *carte blanche* to order
anything down from London that he likes.  I imagine that he
recommends books to Lady Brent, and she reads a great
deal too—not only fiction, but biographies, books of
travel, and even stiff works on such subjects as Philosophy.

"Of course I kept very quiet about my own humble
productions, as I have never professed to be a scholar,
and aim rather at touching the universal human mind,
with stories that shall entertain but never degrade, and
should not expect to be considered very highly, or
perhaps even have been heard of by people of this calibre,
though there are many of equal intelligence among my
readers.  I must confess, however, that I was gratified
when Mrs. Brent, who had not taken much part in the
conversation, said: 'I have read all your books,
Mr. Grant, and think they are lovely.  So touching!'

"This is the sort of compliment that I value.  It is
to the *simple* mind that I make my appeal, and Mrs. Brent
is quite evidently of a lower class of intelligence
than those about her.  I think I detected some deprecation
in the glance that she threw at her mother-in-law
immediately after she had expressed herself with this
simple, and evidently *felt* enthusiasm.  Perhaps her
opinions on literary subjects are not considered very highly,
but Lady Brent would be far too well-bred and courteous
to snub her.  She said at once, very kindly: 'The
Bishop told us that you were a novelist, Mr. Grant.
Mr. Wilbraham was about to send for your books, but
we found that my daughter-in-law had them already.
I have not had time more than to dip into one of them,
but I promise myself much pleasure from them when I
have a little more time.'  Wilbraham saved me from
the necessity of finding an answer by breaking in at
once: 'I don't intend to read a single one of them, either
now or hereafter.  Let that be plainly understood.'  Everybody
laughed at this, and it was said in such a
way that I felt no offence.  This man is evidently
something of a character, and I should say had made himself
felt in this household of women.  The boy likes him too.
I could see that by the way they addressed one another.
They are more like friends than master and pupil.

"Well, I felt that I had sized up Lady Brent, Wilbraham
and young Harry pretty well by the end of the
meal, and the conversation that went with it.  I have a
knack of doing so with people I meet, and find that upon
closer acquaintance I have seldom been wrong in my
first impressions.  Mrs. Brent puzzled me a little more.
Was she entirely happy?  I thought not, though there
was nothing very definite to go upon.  If not, it could
not be the fault of any of the three other members of
the household.  She evidently adores her boy, for her
face lights up whenever she looks at him, and he treats
her with an affection and consideration that are very
pleasant to see.  Lady Brent treats her in much the
same way, and is evidently a woman of much kindness
of heart, for Mrs. Brent, as I have already said, is not
up to her level, and living in constant companionship
with her might be expected to grate a little on the
nerves of a lady of her sort.  Wilbraham would not be
likely to hide any contempt that he might feel for some
one of less intelligence than himself.  He might not show
it openly to the mother of his pupil, but I should
certainly have noticed it if it had been there.  But he
behaved beautifully to her, and smiled when he spoke to
her as if he really liked her, and found pleasure in
anything that she said.  And she seemed grateful, and
smiled at him in return.  They are in fact a very happy
little party, these curiously assorted people who live so
much to themselves.  And yet, as I said above, the one
member of it did not strike me as being entirely happy,
and I could not help wondering why.

"Wilbraham enlightened me, as we smoked together
after lunch, walking up and down a broad garden path
under the April sunshine.  'What do you think of
Mrs. Brent?' he asked me, with a side-long whimsical glance
that is very characteristic of the man.

"I was a little put out by the suddenness of the
question, but took advantage of it to be equally direct
and to ask my question.  'Is there anything to make her
unhappy?'

"He laughed at that.  'I see you have your eyes
open,' he said.  'I suppose it's the novelist's trick.  Any
questions to ask about the rest of us?'

"'You haven't answered my first one yet,' I replied,
and he laughed again, and said: 'Did you ever hear of
Lottie Lansdowne?'

"The name seemed vaguely familiar to me, but he
said, without waiting for my reply: 'I don't suppose
you ever did, but if I were you I should tell Mrs. Brent
on the first opportunity that when you were young and
going the round of the theatres that was the one name
in the bill you never could resist.'

"'I suppose you mean that Mrs. Brent was once on
the stage and that was her name,' I said.  'But I don't
remember her all the same.'

"'No, I don't suppose you would,' he said again.
'As a matter of fact the poor little thing never got
beyond the smallest parts, and I doubt if she ever would
have done.  But Brent fell in love with her, and married
her, and since then she has never had a chance of trying.
That's what's the matter with her, and I'm afraid it
can't be helped.  She's pretty, isn't she?'

"'Yes,' I said, as he seemed to expect it of me, but
she hadn't struck me as being particularly pretty,
though she might have been as a young girl.  'You
mean that she doesn't like the quiet life down here?'

"'Yes, that's what I mean,' he said.  'I'm sorry for
the poor little soul.  She's like a child.  Vain, I dare
say, but not an ounce of harm in her.  I'm telling you
this because you'd be bound to find it out for yourself
in any case.  She'll probably tell you about her early
triumphs herself when you know her better.  The thing
to do is to keep her pleased with herself as much as
possible.  There's not much to amuse her here.  We
never see anybody.  It suits me all right, and her
ladyship; and Harry is happy enough at present, with what
he finds to do outside, and what he has to do in.  But
she's different.  There's nothing much for her.  She
reads a lot of trashy novels——'  Here he broke off
suddenly and roared with laughter, twisting his body
about, and behaving in a curious uncontrolled manner
till he'd had his laugh out.  Then he said: 'I'm not
going to hide from you that I *have* tried to read one of
yours, and my opinion is that it's slush, but quite
harmless slush, which perhaps makes it worse.  However, *she*
likes them; so I dare say you'll find something in
common with her, and it will be all to the good your coming
here.  That's why I've told you about her.  You'll be
able to help.'

"I must confess to some slight annoyance at having
my work belittled in this way.  However, I suppose to a
man of this sort all clean healthy sentiment is 'slush,'
and the absence of unwholesome interest in my works
would not commend them to him, though I am thankful
to say that it is no drawback to the pleasure that the
people I aim at take in them.  If Mrs. Brent is one of
these, I shall hope indeed to be of use to her, and I
think it speaks well for her, when her early life is taken
into consideration, that she should find my simple tales
of quiet natural life 'lovely,' as she said that she did.
It has occurred to me that when I get to know her
better I may possibly gain from her some information
upon life behind the scenes, that I could make use of
in my work.  I should like to draw the picture of a
pure unsullied girl, going through the life of the theatre,
unspotted by it, and raising all those about her, while
she herself rises to the top of her profession, and
marries a good man, perhaps in the higher ranks of society,
thus showing that virtue is virtue everywhere and has its
reward, and doing some good in circles that I have not
yet touched.  However, all that is for the future.  Our
immediate duty—yours and mine, dearest,—is to make
friends with this rather pathetic little lady, and to
reconcile her to her lot, which in this beautiful place, with
all the love and kindness she receives from those about
her, is hardly really to be pitied.

"I told Wilbraham that I had been much struck with
Lady Brent's attitude towards her, and he became serious
at once and said: 'Lady Brent is a fine character.
There's no getting over that.  No, there's no getting
over that; she's a fine character.'

"I was a little surprised at the way he said it, but
he's a queer sort of fellow, though I think likable.  He
went on at once, as if he wanted to remove some doubt
in my mind as to Lady Brent; but, as a matter of fact,
I had none, and am as capable of judging her as he is,
though of course he has known her longer.  '*She* sees,'
he said, 'that poor little Lottie—I generally call her
that to myself—can't be quite happy shut up down here.
But she's right in keeping her here.  You see, Brent was
rather a wild sort of fellow.  He got into mischief once
or twice, and from what I've heard she and his father
weren't sorry when his regiment was ordered off to South
Africa.  Well, he went, and was killed the first time he
went into action, within a month.  By the time the news
came over his father himself was dying, and did die, as
a matter of fact, without knowing of it.  A pretty good
shock for the poor lady, eh?  Well, she had another
when poor little Lottie wrote to her and said that she
had been married to Brent the week before he sailed, and
there was a baby coming.  She went straight up to
London and brought her down here, and Harry was born
here.  Harry is rather an important person, you know.
He's the last of his line, which is an old one.  This place
belongs to him, and he'll have a great deal of money
from his grandmother.  He's Sir Harry Brent of Royd
Castle.  What he is on his mother's side must be made as
little of as possible.  She's a Brent by marriage and she
has to learn to be a Brent by manners and customs, if
you understand me!'

"I said that I thought I did, and that Lady Brent
was quite right in wishing to keep her in this
atmosphere.  But I said that I quite saw that the more
friends she had the better.  I should do my best to make
friends with her, and I was sure that my wife would,
who was extremely kind-hearted.

"'Ah, that's right,' he said, with a great air of
satisfaction, and just then Harry came out and we went
off together to the village and the vicarage."

.. vspace:: 2

Here followed the account of the Vicarage, and of the
church, but Mrs. Grant knew there was more to come
later about Mrs. Brent, and hurried on till she got to it.

Dinner in the great hall was described, with allusions
to the perfection of the service and the livery of the
servants.  The conversation was much the same as over
the luncheon table, and Mrs. Brent took more part in it.
There was something different about her air.  She was
beautifully dressed and her "commonness" seemed to
have dropped from her.  She was, indeed, rather stately,
in the manner of her mother-in-law, whom it struck
Grant that she was anxious to copy.  After dinner they
sat in the long drawing-room, and Wilbraham played
the piano, which he did rather well.  Soon after Harry
had gone to bed, Lady Brent went out of the room to
get some silks for her embroidery.  Mrs. Brent had
offered to get these for her, but she wouldn't let her.
Grant was sitting near to Mrs. Brent, and while
Wilbraham played softly at the other end of the room he
talked to her.

.. vspace:: 2

"I said with a smile: 'I think your name used to be
very well known in other scenes than this when I was
a young man, Mrs. Brent.'

"My dear, I was never more surprised than by the
way she took it.  She flushed and drew up her head and
looked at me straight, and said: 'Pray what do you
mean by that, Mr. Grant?'

"I felt like a fool.  Of course if Wilbraham hadn't
said what he had I should never have thought of
addressing her upon the subject.  Being what she is now
I should have expected that she would not have wanted
her origin alluded to.  But I have told you exactly what
he did say, and certainly I never meant anything but
kindness to her.  Still, I saw that she might think I
was simply taking a liberty, and made what recovery I
could.  'I know that you were a great ornament of the
stage before you were married,' I said.  'Please forgive
me if I ought not to have alluded to it, but you said
that you had read my books, and you will know that I
take all life for my province; and when one practises
one art with all earnestness and sincerity, it is
interesting to talk to some one who has made a great success
with another.'

"I think this was well said, wasn't it, dear?  I'm
afraid it was going rather beyond the truth, as, from
what Wilbraham had told me, I doubt if she was much
more than a chorus girl, and that only for a very short
time.  But my conscience doesn't prick me for having
drawn the long bow a little.  I had to disabuse her mind
of the idea that I was taking a liberty with her, and I
wanted to please her in the way that Wilbraham had
indicated.

"She ceased, I think, to take offence, but she said,
rather primly, with her eyes on her needlework, which
she had taken up again: 'I prefer to forget that I was
ever on the stage, Mr. Grant.  It was for a very short
time, and I simply went to and from my home to the
theatre, always attended by a maid—or nearly always,
and sometimes by my mother.  When I married I left
the stage altogether, and have never been in a theatre
since.  I don't know how you knew that I had ever
belonged to it.'

"She gave me a quick little glance, and I divined
somehow that it would give her pleasure to believe that
she was remembered.  I won't tell you what I said, but
while I steered clear of an actual untruth, I did manage
to convey the impression that I had recognized her, and
I hope I may be forgiven for it.  She said hurriedly:
'Well, we won't talk about it any more, for I have
nearly forgotten it all, and wish to forget it altogether.
And please don't tell Lady Brent that you know who I
was.  We don't want Harry to know it at all—ever.
She's quite right there.  Here she comes.  You do like
Harry, don't you, Mr. Grant?  He's such a dear boy.
and all the people about here love him.'

"'What, talking about Harry?' said Lady Brent,
as she joined us.  'We all talk a great deal about
Harry, Mr. Grant.  I don't think there is a boy in the
world on whom greater hopes are set.  We have made
him happy between us so far, but I am glad you are
coming here with your young people, to bring a little
more life into this quiet place.  Young people want
young life about them.  It is the only thing that has
been lacking for him.  And it is all too short a time
before he will have to go out into the world.'

"This all gave me a great deal to think about.  I
hope I have given you such an account of everything
that passed, and the important parts of what was said
to make you see it as I do.  Consider this kind good
lady, gifted more than most, rich, titled, intellectual,
calculated to shine in society, yet content to live a quiet
life out of the world for the sake of the bright boy
upon whom so many hopes depend.  She has gone
through much trouble, with her only son and her husband
reft from her within a few weeks of one another.  She
cannot have welcomed the wife whom her son had chosen,
but she lives in constant companionship with her, and
treats her with every consideration.  My heart warms
towards her.  We are indeed fortunate in having such a
chatelaine as Lady Brent in the place in which we are to
spend our lives and do our work.  Of her kindness and
thoughtfulness towards myself I have not time to write,
as it is getting very late, and I must to bed.  But
when you come here you will find her everything that you
can wish, and I shall be surprised if you do not make a
real friend of her, a friend who will last, and on whom
you can in all things depend."

.. vspace:: 2

When Mrs. Grant had at last finished this voluminous
letter, she summoned Miss Minster to her, and read her
many passages from it.  Miss Minster was the lady who
looked after the education of Jane and Pobbles, and had
somewhat of a hard task in doing so, though she
fulfilled it without showing outward signs of stress.  She
was of about the same age as Mrs. Grant—that is in
the early thirties, and they had been friends together at
school.  They were friends now, and Mrs. Grant trusted
Miss Minster's judgment in some things more even than
she trusted her husband's.

"Somehow, I don't see Lady Brent," said Mrs. Grant,
when she had read out all that had been written about
her.  "She seems to have made a great impression upon
David, but it looks to me as if it was the impression she
wanted to make."

"If any other man but David had written all that,"
said Miss Minster, "I should have said that there was
something behind it all.  I should have said that Lady
Brent had some dark reason for keeping herself and the
rest of them shut up there, and that this Mr. Wilbraham,
who doesn't seem to behave like a tutor at all,
was in the conspiracy.  As it is, I think his pen has run
away with him, and they are all very ordinary people,
and there's nothing behind it at all."

"Well, my idea is just the opposite," said Mrs. Grant.
"If David had sniffed a story he would have
put it in.  He doesn't think there is anything behind it.
I do.  Perhaps Mrs. Brent wasn't married, and this
young Sir Harry isn't the rightful heir.  That would be
a good reason for Lady Brent to lie low.  Perhaps
Mr. Wilbraham knows about it, which would be the reason
for his not behaving like an ordinary tutor; though, as
for that, I don't think there's much in it, and he behaves
like an ordinary tutor according to David's account
just as much as you behave like an ordinary governess."

"A good point as far as it goes," said Miss Minster,
"and a joyous life it would be for you if I did behave
like an ordinary governess.  But you're worse than
David in making up twopence coloured stories.  I don't
think we need worry ourselves about the Brents till we
get down there.  Then we shall be able to judge for
ourselves.  No man ever knows what a woman is really like
the first time he sees her.  Whatever Lady Brent and
Mrs. Brent are like, you may depend upon it that we
shan't find them in the least as David has described them.
Now read what he says about the Vicarage again, and
see if we can make anything of that, beyond that it is
embowered in massy trees."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CHILD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CHILD

.. vspace:: 2

When young Sir Harry had made that laughing appeal
to the figure framed in the square of orange light above
him, and turned away into the shadows, he had already
forgotten that there had been a witness to his escapade.

It was no escapade to him, but a serious quest, about
which played all the warm palpitations and eager emotions
of high romance.  To-night, if ever, with the earth
moving towards the soft riot of spring, with the air
still and brooding as if summer were already here,
though sharp and clean, scoured by the wind and washed
to gentleness again by the showers of April, with the
moonlight so strong that in the shadows of the trees
there was no darkness, but diffused and quivering light
hardly less bright than the light of day, and to the eyes
of the spirit infinitely more discerning—surely to-night
he might hope to see the fairies dancing in their rings,
and the little men stealing in and out among the
tree-branches!

He longed passionately to see the fairies.  The beauty
of the earth meant so much to him.  All through his
childhood his love for it had grown and grown till it had
become almost a pain to him.  For though it meant so
much he did not know what it meant.  It had always
seemed to be leading him up to something, some great
discovery, or some great joy—at least some great
emotion—which would give it just that meaning that would
tune his soul to it and entrench him safely behind some
knowledge, hidden from mortal eyes, where he could survey
life as it was, perfect and blissful, and withal secret.
The fairies, if he could only look upon them once, would
give him the secret.  Surely they would not withhold
themselves from him on such a night as this.

He pictured himself lying on the warm beech-mast in
the shadows of some great tree that stood sentinel over
a stretch of moonlit lawn, watching the delicate gossamer
figures at their revels, their iridescent wings softly
gleaming, their petalled skirts flying, their tiny limbs
twinkling; and perhaps he would hear the high tenuous
chime of their laughter as they gave themselves up to
their delicious merriment.  He would lie very still,
hardly breathing.  The mortal grossness which he felt
to be in him should not cast its shadow over their bright
evanescent spirit.  He would keep, oh, so still, and just
watch, and grow happier and happier, and at
last—know.  The grossness would be purged from him.
When the moon drooped and the fairy dancers melted
away, he would have seen behind the veil.  After that
he would never suffer again from the perplexing thought
that there was some great thing hidden from him, that
just when beauty gripped his soul and seemed to have
something to tell him, and he stood ready to receive the
message, there was only silence and a sense of loss, which
made him sad.  Nature would speak to him, as she had
always seemed to be speaking to him, but now he would
understand, and answer, and life would be more
beautiful than it had ever been before.

.. vspace:: 2

He had always hugged secrets to himself ever since
he could remember, secrets that it would have seemed to
him the deepest shame that any one should surprise.
Once on a summer's evening, when he had been lying in
his little cot by his mother's bed, whiling away the long
daylight hour by telling himself a most absorbing story,
which at that time he was going through from night to
night, he had become so worked up by it that he carried
on the dialogue in a clear audible voice.  A warning
knock came upon the bedroom door, and that particular
story was cut short never to be resumed.  It was the
time when his mother and grandmother were dining, and
his nurse and all the other servants were down below.
He had not thought that it was possible that he could
have been overheard.  He had been acting a garden
story.  The characters were the Garden, the flowers
and himself.  The Garden was a very kind and gracious
lady who led him, a little boy called Arnold, with black
straight hair—he preferred that sort to his own fair
curls—to one flower after another, and told him whether
they had been good or naughty.  The flowers were
mostly children, but a few, such as geraniums and
fuchsias, were grown up.  The geraniums never took any
notice of him, and he did not like them on that account,
but looked the other way when they were rebuked.
This fortunately happened but seldom, as they usually
behaved with propriety, though stiff and obstinate in
character.  The roses he often pleaded for, because they
were so beautiful.  Vanity was their besetting sin, and
the Garden often had to tell them—in language much
the same as that used by the Vicar in church—that they
were no more in her sight than the humblest and poorest
flowers.  But he could not bear to see their beautiful
petals scattered, which happened as a punishment if they
had flaunted themselves beyond hope of forgiveness.  It
was coming to be his idea, as the story progressed, that
some day he would make a strong appeal to the Garden
to abolish this punishment altogether.  Then no flowers
would ever die, but only go to sleep in the winter,
and he would be the great hero of the flowers, with hair
blacker and straighter than ever, and whenever he went
among them they would bow and curtsey to him, but
nobody would see them doing it except himself.

On this June evening it was a tall Madonna lily for
whom he was pleading in such an impassioned manner.
Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite children and
not quite grown-up.  He had a sentimental affection for
them.  He would see them incline towards one another
as he came near, and hear, or rather make them whisper
to one another: "Here is that dear little boy.  How
good he is!  And isn't his hair dark and smooth!  I
should like to kiss him."  (Had he said that aloud, just
before the knock came?  He would never be able to look
the world in the face again if that speech had been
heard.)  The Garden had accused the lily of leaving her
sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk
to a groom in the stables.  She might have been kicked
by a horse.  An example must be made.  No little treats,
no sugar on her bread and butter, no favourite stories
told her, for a week.  The lily had cried, and said she
had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again.  He had
adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it
made him hot all over to imagine overheard, and the
lily had said, in no apparent connection with the
question under discussion, but in a loud and clear voice:
"Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than
all other boys in the world."

It was just then that the knock came.  He was unhappy
about it for days, and looked in the faces of all
the servants to see if there was any sign of the derision
he must have brought upon himself, but could find none,
and presently comforted himself with the idea that it
was Santa Claus who had knocked at the door; but he
dropped the drama of the flowers, and afterwards only
whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.

It was not from any lack of love for those about him
that he kept his soul's adventures to himself.  Of
sympathy with them he might instinctively have felt a lack,
but he loved everybody with whom he had to do, and
everybody loved him.  His mother was nearest to him,
though his grandmother was felt to be the head of all
things and of all people.  His mother showed jealousy
towards her, but not in her presence.  The child divined
this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when
he was alone with her by little endearments which were
very sweet to her.  "You and me together, Mummy," he
would whisper, snuggling up to her, and stroke her face
and kiss her, in a way that he never did when his
grandmother was there.  He must have divined too that he
was the centre of existence for his grandmother, but she
never petted him or invited his caresses, though her face
showed pleasure when he leant against her knee and
prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and as if
it was natural that they two should have much to say
to one another.

During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily,
and there was great antagonism between her and the
old nurse, who had also nursed his father.  But when he
was five years old the nurse suddenly went away, and
his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes
frightened him, as she clutched him to her and
rocked to and fro over him, ceased, so that he presently
forgot them.  She did much for him herself that the
nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the
village, who became a close friend of his, though not
in a way to cause his mother jealousy.

Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell
half a dozen stories.  She told them in stilted fashion,
and never varied the manner, and hardly the words, of
her telling.  If she did so, he would correct her.  By and
by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy,
known so well that there was no call to attend to the
meeting.  He could see after all that himself, and wanted
no variations or emotion of hers to get between him and
the pictures that her monotonous drone projected on the
curtain of his brain.  He was the hero of all the stories
himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the
liturgy.  As Jack the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes
unknown to fairy lore.  As the Beast he drew such
interest from his mastery over other beasts that his
transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was
always being postponed, and was finally dropped out of
his own story altogether, together with Beauty, who had
become somewhat of a meddler with things that she
couldn't be expected to understand.  He was Cinderella
in the story of that time, because of riding in the
coach made out of a pumpkin, and the mice turned into
horses, but never felt at home in the character until
he turned the story round and gave the leading part to
the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male
habits and dignity.

With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for
hours together in the garden, and he could get away
from her if he was careful never to be right out of her
sight or hearing.  It was then that the drama of the
garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an
end he returned to the fairy stories.

His mother told him stories too at his earnest
pleading.  But they were never the same twice running and
had little point for him.  He much preferred Eliza's
rigid version of the classical stories, and the others were
all about beautiful girls who married very handsome,
noble, rich men, but the men never did anything except
love the girls to distraction and give them beautiful
presents.  There was no ground for his imagination
to work on, except in the matter of the presents, and
of these he demanded ever growing catalogues, suggesting
many additions of his own, so that if his mother
remembered these and kept to them, there was some
interest to be got out of her stories, but not enough to vie
with that of Eliza's repertoire.

His grandmother had no stories, but when he was a
little older she told him about his ancestors, who had
done a good deal of fighting at one time or another
throughout the centuries, which gave him plenty of
material.  He knew that she got her information from books
in the library, and he was encouraged to persevere with
his letters so that he would be able to read those
books for himself.  He gained from her the impression
that his family was above other families, and that in
some way which he didn't quite understand, seeing that
he was subject to her, and to his mother, and even to
Eliza, its superiority was also his in a special measure.
He must never do anything that would lessen it.  He
must not be too familiar with servants, and especially
with grooms in the stable.  He would hang his head at
this, for it was the weak point in his behaviour.  He
was apt to be beguiled by the society of grooms in the
stable, to the extent even of using expressions unallowable
in the society of his equals.  But though he was to
bear himself high, he was to deal kindly with those at the
same time beneath him and around him; and he was to
look upon Royd all his life as the place to which he
belonged.  He would go away from it sometimes when he
was older, but he must never be away for long, and never
get to like being away.  This was what young men did
sometimes, and it was not good for them.  It was not
right.

Such exordiums as these, varied in manner but never
in principle, continued throughout his childhood, and
had a strong effect upon him.  A child has a natural
preoccupation with the question of right and wrong and
it fitted in with all that Harry had learnt for himself
that it was right for him to be at Royd and would be
wrong for him to be away.  He could not imagine any
other place that would suit him better, or indeed nearly
so well.  His mother would sometimes talk to him, when
he grew older, of the lights and the movement and the
heartening crowds of London.  She would do it half
furtively, and he understood, without being told, that he
must keep the fact of her doing so at all from his
grandmother.  But he had no wish to talk about it.  The
picture did not please him.  He gained the impression of
London as a dirty noisy place, and Royd shone all the
more brightly in comparison with it.  His mother never
mentioned the theatre.

She talked to him sometimes about his father.  He
had been a soldier—a very brave soldier—like all the
rest of the Brents.  Harry would be a soldier himself
some day, but she prayed that he would not have to go
out and fight.  He would wear a beautiful red coat with
a sash and a sword, and a noble bearskin on his head.
There was a photograph of his father, not in this
uniform, but in service kit, taken just after his marriage.
It showed a good-looking young man, amiable but weak.
It was the only photograph of him that Mrs. Brent had
in her room.  Lady Brent had many photographs of
him, but this one was not among them.  As a child he had
been very like Harry.  Lady-Brent seldom mentioned
him, and to her daughter-in-law never.  Harry knew
after a time, as children come to know such things, that
she had loved him very dearly.  She had all those
reminders of his childhood and youth about her.  His
mother had only the one.  She had known him for a
few weeks.  All the rest of his life had belonged to his
own mother, and she was shut out of it.  Her references
to him, indeed, were hardly more than perfunctory.  The
poor bewildered little lady had loved him, and looked to
him, perhaps, to translate her to a more glamorous life.
The life of dignity was hers, but without him, and
sometimes it lay very heavy upon her.  But she had her child.
Nothing mattered much as long as she was allowed to
love him and to keep his love.

A French nursery governess came when Harry was
five years old, Eliza, who showed great jealousy of her,
not unmixed with contempt for her absurd speech and
foreign ways, being also retained.  She was a gentle
little thing, and, when she had got over her homesickness,
bright and gay.  She loved the child dearly, and
he was soon prattling to her in her own language, piping
little French songs, and repeating verses with his hands
behind his back and his head on one side, to the great
pride of his mother and grandmother.  Mrs. Brent made
a surreptitious friend of Mademoiselle, and even went
so far as to take lessons of her in French.  Lady Brent
spoke French with an accent "*tout a fait
distingué*."  Mademoiselle had observed that this was the mark of
"*la vraie grande dame Anglaise*" and perhaps
Mrs. Brent imagined that the accomplishment would bring
her more into line.  But it was irksome to sit down to
grammar and exercises, and somehow she "never could
get her tongue round the queer sounds."  It was easier
to help Mademoiselle on with her English, and soon they
had their heads together constantly, comparing notes
about the life of Blois and the life of London, which
was so gay and so different from this life of the château,
so magnificent but so dull and so always the same.  But
Harry was not to know that either of them felt like that
about it, and the little French girl had enough of the
spirit of romance in her to judge his surroundings of
castle and park, and wide tract of country over which
by and by he was to rule, as fitting to him.  It was,
after all, the bourgeois life that she and Mrs. Brent
pined for, the one in France, the other in England.  She
recognized that, but when she intimated as much to
Mrs. Brent that lady was up in arms at once, and the
intimacy between them nearly came to an end.  Let it
be understood that the life she had known in London
was very different from the life Mademoiselle had known
in a provincial French city.  Hers had been the life of
the great lady, in London as well as at Royd, and it was
that part of the great lady's life that she missed.
Perhaps Mademoiselle, in her ignorance of English customs,
believed it, perhaps she didn't; but she adopted the
required basis of conversation, and the friendship
continued.  Mrs. Brent took little trouble to assert her
gentility, when once it was accepted, and spoke often
of her family, who lived in Kentish Town, where she had
been so happy, in a way that must have given Mademoiselle
some curious ideas of the ways of the British
aristocracy, supposing her to have believed in the claim
set up.

But all this passed over the child's head.  Mademoiselle
had stories to tell him of the old nobility of Touraine,
which she was clever enough to connect in his mind
with the stories his grandmother told him of his own
knightly forbears.  It was from that life he had sprung.
The ancient glories of the French châteaux were allied
to those of his noble English castle.  The romance and
chivalry were the same.  Lady Brent approved very
highly of Mademoiselle, and when she went back to
France after two years, to fulfil the marriage contract
that her parents had made for her, gave her a present
which added substantially to her *dot*.

Then Mr. Wilbraham came, and Harry began his
education in earnest.

Lady Brent had gone up to London to find a successor
for Mademoiselle.  She was to be a highly educated
Englishwoman, who was to give place to a tutor in three
or four years' time.  Harry was not to go to school; he
was to spend the whole of his boyhood at Royd, but he
was to be taught all the things that boys of his class
learnt, except the things that Lady Brent didn't want
him to learn—including that precocious knowledge of
the world which had entangled his father, and in effect
brought Mrs. Brent into the family.

Lady Brent brought Mr. Wilbraham back with her,
and never explained why she had changed her plan.  In
some things she made a confidante of her daughter-in-law;
in others she acted as if she had no more to say in
her child's upbringing than Eliza.  And Mrs. Brent
never thought of asking her for an explanation of
anything if she volunteered none.

Mr. Wilbraham was then a dejected young man of
four or five and twenty.  He volunteered no explanation
of his substitution for the lady of high education either;
nor, indeed, of his past history.  It was a long time
before Mrs. Brent, who liked to find out things about
people, and especially anything that indicated their
social status, knew that his father had been a clergyman,
and that he expected some day to be a clergyman himself.
And that was all that she did know, until he had been
at Royd for years, and seemed likely to be there for
ever; for gradually he dropped talking about taking
orders.  She had an idea that there was some secret
between him and Lady Brent, but the idea died away as
time went on, and at last he told her, quite casually,
that he had gained his post at Royd through a Scholastic
Agency.  Lady Brent had gone there for a tutor,
and she had engaged him.  That was all.  It did not
explain why she had changed her mind; but by that time
her change of mind had been almost forgotten.
Mr. Wilbraham was an integral part of life at Royd Castle.

Harry liked him from the first.  He was a good
teacher, and there was never any trouble about lessons.
Outside lesson time he was not expected to be on duty,
and when the boy grew older their companionship was
entirely friendly and unofficial.  Mr. Wilbraham
introduced Harry to all the rich lore of Greek mythology.
Here was matter for romance, indeed!  Royd became
peopled with nymphs and dryads and satyrs, and
fabulous but undreaded monsters.  Harry knew that Diana
hunted the deer in the park when the moon shone; he
often heard Pan fluting in the woods, and centaurs
galloping over the turf.  When he was taken over to
Rington Cove, six miles away, he saw the rock upon which
the mermaids sat and combed their hair, and on the
yellow sands the print of the nereid's dancing feet.  It was
all very real to him, and Mr. Wilbraham never even
smiled at his fancies.  That was one of the reasons why
he liked him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FAIRIES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   FAIRIES

.. vspace:: 2

Harry lay quite still under a great tree, his chin
propped on his hands, his eyes fixed upon a spot in
the glade where he knew there was a fairy ring, upon
which he was sure that if he gazed long enough with his
eyes clear and his brain free, he would see the gossamer
fairies dancing.  His couch of beech-mast was dry under
him, and not a breath of air stirred the warmth that had
settled there during a sunny day, though cool fingers
seemed to be touching his cheeks now and then, as of the
spirit of the young spring.  He was happy and at peace
with himself, and his happiness grew as the long minutes
passed over him.  His world was whole and good all
around him.  His life contained no regrets and no
unfulfilled desires, except this one of learning the secret of
his happiness, which touched him as the fingers of the
still April night were touching him, to more alertness,
not to any trouble or disturbance of mind.  Besides, the
secret was coming to him at last.  He must believe that,
or it would not come.  And he did believe it.  He no
more doubted that he would see the fairies under
to-night's moon than he doubted of his body, lying there
motionless.  Indeed, his spirit was more alive than his
body, which was in a strange state of quiescence, so
that it was not difficult to keep perfectly still for as long
as it should be necessary, and no discomfort arose from
his immobility.

.. vspace:: 2

If Lady Brent was sometimes criticized, as she was,
for keeping the boy away from the intercourse that
prepared other boys of his age and rank for playing their
part in the world, and the criticism had reached her ears,
she need have done no more than point to him as he was
at the threshold of his manhood, for justification.  Shut
up in a great house, with two women and a lazy
tame-cat of a man; never seeing anybody outside from one
year's end to another; no young people about him; no
chance even of playing a game with other boys—those
were the accusations, brought by Mrs. Fearon, for
instance, wife of the Rector of Poldaven, seven miles away,
who had sons and daughters round about Harry's age,
would have liked them to be in constant companionship
with him, and was virulent against Lady Brent, because
she would have no such companionship in any degree
whatsoever.  The boy would grow up a regular milksop.
He couldn't always be kept shut up at Royd, and when
he did go out into the world the foolish woman would see
what a mistake she had made.  His own father had made
a pretty mess of it, and his early death was no doubt a
blessing in disguise.  Harry would have even less
experience to guide him.  It would be a wonder if he did
not kick over the traces entirely, and bring actual
disgrace upon his name.

Thus Mrs. Fearon, not too happy in the way her own
sons were turning out, though they had had all the
advantages that Harry lacked, and at her wits' end to cope
with the discontent of her elder daughters.

Poldaven Rectory was the only house of any size
within a seven-mile radius of Royd except Poldaven
Castle, which was hardly ever inhabited.  One summer,
when Harry was about eight years old, Lady Avalon
brought her young family there, and settled them with
nurses and governess, while she herself made occasional
appearances to see how they were getting on.  There
was going and coming during that summer between
Royd and Poldaven.  Harry would be taken there to
play with the little Pawles, and a carriage full of them
would appear every now and then to spend a long day
at Royd.  Of all the large family, there was only one
with whom he found himself in accord.  The little Lords
were noisy and grasping, the little Ladies dull and
mincing.  But one of the girls, Sidney, of exactly the
same age as himself, was different from the rest.  The
two children would go off together, and when out of
sight of nurses and governess Sidney became quite
natural and they would talk and play games entirely happy
in one another's company until they were discovered by
the rest, and the disputes would begin again, and the
eternal cleavage between male and female.  Lady
Avalon happened to be there, they were encouraged to
be together and she and Lady Brent would have their
heads close as they watched them.  A sweet little couple,
hand in hand—the boy so straight and handsome, the
girl so pretty and naturally gay.  There was match-making
going on, and the nurses were in it too, and left
them alone together, and often prevented the other
children from seeking them out.

When the Pawle children went away after their
secluded summer, Harry and Sidney kissed gravely, under
command of the head-nurse, who called them "little
sweet'earts."  But the kiss meant nothing to Harry,
since he had been told to proffer it.  He would rather
have kissed Lady Ursula, a large-eyed pink and flaxen
damsel of twelve, for whom he had an admiration, though
she never had much to say to him, and there was no
interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney's.
He missed Sidney when they went away, but not for long,
and by this time he had almost forgotten her.  For
Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that summer,
and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial
plans for her grandson she seemed to have forgotten
them, for she scarcely ever mentioned the names of her
one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney Pawle,
except once when the news of Lady Ursula's marriage
was in all the papers.  Then she said that Ursula was a
beautiful girl, but Sidney had always been her favourite.
Harry looked at the picture of bride and bridesmaids.
He remembered how he had admired Ursula's beauty,
and she was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized
her; grown-up, she seemed a generation older.  Sidney
was recognizable in the photograph; she was not yet
grown up.  But she looked different too, in her silken
finery.  Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her
children's clothes during that summer at Poldaven, for
the girls had never been dressed in anything more
elaborate than linen and rough straw.  Somehow this
bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate.  He
could not imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing
knight, as she had done once or twice when they had
got quite away by themselves; or indeed his letting her
into any of that kind of secret, now.  He put the paper
away and forgot her afresh.

Harry played no outdoor games in his boyhood,
except the games he made up for himself.  But he was a
horseman from his earliest years.  Lady Brent encouraged
it, when he was once old enough to go to the stables
without fear of danger.  He had first a tiny little
Shetland, then a forest-bred pony, and a horse when he was
big enough to ride one.  He roamed all over the country,
happy to be by himself and indulge his daydreams.  His
handsome young face and slim supple boy's figure were
known far and wide.  He had friends among farmers
and cottage people, but the few of his own class who
lived in that sparsely populated country he was
inclined to avoid.  They thought it was by his
grandmother's direction, but though it suited her that he
should do so, it was in truth from a kind of shyness that
he kept away from them.  His isolation was beginning
to bear fruit.  The boys of his own age whom he
occasionally came across seemed to have nothing in common
with him, nor he with them.  The girls eyed him
curiously, if admiringly, and he had nothing to talk to
them about.  He was happier by himself, or with his
horse and his dogs.  But he was never really by himself.
He could always conjure up brave knights and gentle
ladies to ride with him through the woods or by the sea,
if he wanted company.  There was a whole world of
varied characters about him, from the highest to the
lowest, and his imagination did not stop at mortal
companionship; he walked with gods and heroes as often
as with men and women.

No one about him suspected this inner life of his,
as real to him as his outer life, and still more important.
To his mother and grandmother he was a bright active
boy, with the outdoor tastes of a boy, who slept soundly,
ate enormously, and behaved himself just as a well
brought-up boy should.  To his tutor he was a pleasant
companion during the hours they spent together, and
one who did credit to his teaching.  Wilbraham had his
scholarly tastes and perceptions.  He would have hated
the drudgery of teaching an ordinary boy who made
heavy work of his lessons, but this boy took an interest
in them.  It is true that there were surprising gaps in
the course of study that they followed.  Greek and
Latin, and English and French literature took up very
nearly all their time and attention.  Wilbraham looked
forward with some apprehension to the time when he
should have to tell Lady Brent that in order to prepare
Harry for any examination extra cramming would be
necessary by somebody else in the subjects that he had
neglected.  But at sixteen the boy was a fair classical
scholar, and his range of reading was wider than that
of many University honours men.

Harry was fortunate in having the Vicar to help and
encourage him in his Natural History studies, for this
was a subject in which Wilbraham took no interest.
Mr. Thomson was an old bachelor, who had been Vicar of
Royd for over forty years.  His house was a museum,
and Harry revelled in it.  No doubt he would have
developed his tastes in that direction without any
guidance, but Mr. Thomson put him on the right lines, and
was overjoyed, at the end of his life, to have so apt
a pupil.  He took him out birds' nesting, geologizing,
botanizing, and encouraged him to form his own
collections though the boy showed no great keenness in this
form of acquisition.  He wanted to know about everything
around him but to collect specimens did not greatly
interest him.  However, he was proud enough when the
old man died and bequeathed to him all his treasures.
At this time he was arranging them in a couple of rooms
that had been given up to them in the Castle.  But the
excitement was already beginning to wear a little thin.
When he was not working with Wilbraham he always
wanted to be out of doors, even in bad weather.  And he
missed his old friend; it made him rather sad to be
poring over the cases and shelves and cabinets that had
been so much a part of him.

Part of the old Vicar's preoccupation had been with
the antiquities of the country in which he had lived.  He
had collected legends and folk-lore, perhaps in rather a
dry-as-dust way; but it was all material for the boy's
glowing imagination to work upon.  All the books were
there, now in Harry's possession, and many manuscript
notes, too.  And scattered over the country were the
remnants of old beliefs and old rites, which took one
right back to the dim ages of the past.  There was a
cromlech within the park walls of Royd itself, and from
it could be seen a shining stretch of sea under which lay,
according to ancient tradition, a deep-forested land
that had once been alive with romance.  All this was
very real to Harry, too.  The figures of Celtic heroes
mixed themselves up with those of the classical gods
and heroes.  The fairies and pixies of his own romantic
land were still more real to him than the fauns and
dryads of ancient Greece; as he grew older his
expectation of meeting with a stray woodland nymph during
his forest rambles died away, but he was more firmly
convinced than ever that the native fairies were all about
him, if he could only see them.

.. vspace:: 2

He lay for a very long time under the beech, quite
motionless, but with his senses acutely alert.  He heard
every tiny sound made by the creatures of the night,
and of nature which sleeps but lightly under the moon,
and took in all their meaning, but without thinking
about them.  The shadow cast by the tree under which
he was lying had shifted an appreciable space over the
brightly illumined grass since he had stirred a muscle.
And all the time his expectation grew.

He was in a strangely exalted state, but penetrated
through and through with a deep sense of calm, and of
being in absolute tune with the time and place.  If no
revelation of the hidden meaning of nature came to him
to-night, before the set of the moon, he would arise and
go home, not disappointed and vaguely unhappy, as
he had done before, but with his belief in that hidden
meaning destroyed.  Only he knew now that that could
not happen.  When he had stolen out into the night,
he had hoped that he might see something that he had
never seen before.  Now he knew that he would.  He had
only to wait until the revelation should come.  And he
was quite content to wait, in patience that grew if
anything as the shadows lengthened towards the east.

.. vspace:: 2

He made not the slightest movement, nor was conscious
of any quickening of emotion, when the sight he
had expected did break upon his eyes.  It came suddenly,
but with no sense of suddenness.  At one moment there
was the empty moon-white glade, at the next there were
tiny fairies dancing in a ring, so sweet, so light, so gay.
And in the middle of them, rhythmically waving her
wand, was the queen—Titania perhaps, but he did not
think about that until afterwards.  Their wings were
iridescent, from their gauzy garments was diffused faint
light, hardly brighter than the light of the moon, hardly
warmer, and yet different, with more glow in it, more
colour.

He heard the silvery chime of their laughter—just
once.  Then where they had been there was nothing.

.. vspace:: 2

He arose at once.  He had no expectation of seeing
them again.  He did not go down to the place where they
had been, but made his way home by a path under the
trees.  His mind was full of a deep content.  The fairies
were, and he had seen them.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MRS. BRENT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   MRS. BRENT

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. Grant was sitting in her drawing-room at Royd
Vicarage.  It was a lovely hot June morning, and she
was at her needlework by the French windows, which
were pleasantly open to the garden.  The rich sweet
peace of early summer brooded over shaven lawn and
bright flower beds, and was consummated by the drone
of the bees, which were as busy as if they were aware of
their reputation and were anxious to live up to it.
Under the shade of a lime at the corner of the lawn
slumbered the Vicarage baby in her perambulator, so
placidly that the very spirit of peace seemed to have
descended on her infant head.  It was eleven o'clock in
the morning, and there was nothing to disturb the calm
contentment with which Mrs. Grant plied her needle,
singing a little song to herself, and occasionally casting
an eye in the direction of the perambulator and its
precious contents.  Jane and Pobbles were at their lessons
with Miss Minster, or the scene would not have been so
peaceful.  The Vicar was in his study, happily at work
on a moving chapter of his latest work; for it was
Monday, when clerical duties were in abeyance.

He had been at Royd for over a year, and found the
place delightfully suited to his taste.  He felt his
inventive powers blossoming as never before.  The first
novel he had written at Royd had not long since been
published, and its modest popularity was now being
reflected in the literary and advertisement columns of the
newspapers.  It had already brought him an offer for
the serial rights of his next novel, from a magazine of
good standing, which did not pay high prices, but did
demand a high moral tone in the fiction it published, and
made quite a good thing out of it.  It was all grist to
the mill.  Royd Vicarage was a good-sized house and
cost more to live in comfortably than he or his wife had
anticipated, and his income as an incumbent, with all
the deductions that had to be made from it, was hardly
higher than his stipend as a curate had been.  But he
had a little money of his own, and his wife had a little
money, and with the income that came from the novels
there was enough; and it was beginning to look as if
there might be a good deal more, perhaps a great deal
more.  Novelists with less in them than he felt himself
to possess were making their two or three thousand a
year.  Anything in the way of large popularity might
happen within the next year.  In the meantime life was
exceedingly pleasant, and even exciting, with all those
possibilities to build upon.  He would leave his work
sometimes and come into the room where his wife was,
rubbing his hands, to tell her how exceedingly jolly it
all was.  She would look up at him with a smile, pleased
to see him so happy, and happy herself, with her nice
house, and no anxiety about being able to run it
properly.

She was rather expecting a visit from him this morning,
for he had told her that he was going to set to
work on a new chapter, and when he had settled what it
was going to be he would usually come and tell her about
it before he began to write.  She thought it was he when
the door opened; but it was Mrs. Brent, who sometimes
looked in and sat with her for a time in the morning.

Mrs. Brent was well dressed, in the summer attire of
a country-woman, but with her fluffy hair, and face that
had been pretty in her youth but was pretty no longer,
she looked somehow as if she had dressed for the part;
and the air of "commonness," not always apparent in
her, was there this morning.  The corners of her mouth
drooped, and there was an appearance of discontent,
and even sullenness about her.

She brightened up a little as she greeted Mrs. Grant,
and sat down opposite to her on a low chair by the
window.  "Oh, I do like coming here," she said.  "It's
so peaceful.  And it's such a quiet pretty room."

The room was rather barely furnished, but what there
was in it was good, and there were a great many
flowers.  To buy old things for this and other rooms of
the house was to be one of the first results of the
expected increase of income, but it was doubtful whether
the charm of this room would be much enhanced.  For
it was quiet, as Mrs. Brent said, and quietness is a
valuable quality in a room.

Mrs. Grant looked round her with satisfaction.  "It
*is* nice," she said.  "We are very happy here.  I don't
think I'd change Royd for any place in the world."

"I would," said Mrs. Brent.  "I'm fed up with it."

Mrs. Grant threw a glance at her.  She was looking
down, and the sullenness had returned to her face.

"Fed up to the teeth," she said.

She looked up in her turn.  Behind the discontent
was an appeal.  Mrs. Grant felt suddenly very sorry
for her.  If she was a little common, she was also rather
pathetic—a middle-aged child, out of place and out of
tune.

"I think it would do you good to have a change
sometimes," Mrs. Grant said.  "However beautiful a
place is, one wants a change occasionally."

"*She* doesn't," said Mrs. Brent vindictively.  "So
she thinks nobody else ought to either."

It was coming at last, then.  Mrs. Grant had formed
her own opinion of Lady Brent long since, and it did
not entirely coincide with the opinion that her husband
had formed, though she had not told him so.  Lady
Brent had been all that could have been expected
towards themselves—kind and hospitable, and within limits
friendly.  She had offered no real intimacy, and after
a year's intercourse it was plain that she had none to
offer; but it was also plain that the intercourse need
never be otherwise than smooth and even pleasant, if
the limitations were observed.  Mrs. Brent, on the other
hand, had shown that she wanted intimacy.  Mrs. Grant
could not give any deep measure of friendship to one
in whom there seemed to be no depths, but she could talk
to Mrs. Brent about many things, about Harry and
about her own children in particular, and find a response
that made for friendship.  She could talk, too, about
the events of her own life, but was chary of doing so,
because it would seem to be asking for confidences in
return, and she was not sure that she wanted them.
There was always in the background the feeling that
Mrs. Brent and her mother-in-law were antagonistic, in
spite of the apparent harmony between them; and of
late that feeling had increased.  Mrs. Brent was such
that the gates of her lips once unlocked she would
express her antagonism, and it would no longer be possible
to treat it as if it did not exist.  That time seemed
to have come now.

"I hate that woman," said Mrs. Brent, "and I
won't put up with it any longer."

There was the slightest little pause before Mrs. Grant
replied.  "Why do you hate her?  I can understand
your wanting to get away sometimes; but she always
seems to me to treat you nicely; and of course she is
extremely nice to us.  I should be sorry to quarrel with
her in any way."

"No doubt you would," said Mrs. Brent drily.
"You'd get the rough side of her tongue pretty quick,
and you wouldn't forget it in a hurry."

Mrs. Grant was a little shocked.  This new plain-spoken
Mrs. Brent was more of a personage than the
carefully behaved lady always anxious to be making a
good impression that she had hitherto appeared; but
she seemed out of the Royd picture—and all the more
so if Harry and not Lady Brent were regarded as its
central figure.  The suggestion of Lady Brent as a
virago was also rather startling.

"Oh, I don't mean to say that she'd use bad
language," said Mrs. Brent, in reply to some demur.
"That's not her little way.  I won't tell you what her
little way is, but she's always the *lady*.  I'm not, you
see.  That's what's the matter with me.  I'm Lottie
Lansdowne, who danced on the stage, and never allowed
to forget it, though you can tell of yourself, since you've
been here, that I've *tried* hard enough to play the
game—for Harry's sake, I have—and been at it for the last
seventeen years; and now I'm getting a bit sick of it."

She was in tears, and Mrs. Grant felt a strong
emotion of pity towards her.  She leant forward.  "My
dear," she said, "I think it's splendid the way you
sink yourself for Harry's sake.  You mustn't give up
doing it, you know.  It has paid—hasn't it?—to have
him brought up here, out of the world, in the way that
you and Lady Brent have done.  He's the dearest boy.
*I* consider that you have had more to do with the
success of it than she has.  He loves you more, for one
thing; and if he sees you living here as if you belonged
to it all——"

"Oh, I know," said Mrs. Brent, drying her eyes.  "I
made up my mind about that years ago, and I'm not
going back on it.  I suppose when he gets older and
begins to see things for himself, he'll see that I *don't*
really belong.  I've got that before me, you know.  *She*
knows it too, and of course doesn't care.  It'll suit her.
*She'll* come out all right, but I shan't.  The only thing
is that he does love me, and he can't really love her.  I
don't see how anybody could.  I'm glad you said that.
I love you for saying it.  I can talk to you, and I'm
sure it's a relief to talk to somebody.  There's
Wilbraham, but he's as much up against her now as I am;
we only make each other worse.  You do think it's all
right so far, don't you?  With Harry, I mean.  He
couldn't be nicer than he is, if his mother had been born
a lady.  Of course I wasn't, whatever I may pretend.  I
haven't got in the way, have I?  She can't bring that up
against me."

"Oh, no!  Oh, no!  You mustn't think that.  You're
part of it all to him.  I said that and I meant it."

She settled herself back more easily in her chair.
"Well, I believe I am," she said.  "I've tried to make
myself.  I love him dearly, and I'd do anything for his
sake.  It's been right to bring him up quietly here.
She's been right there.  I'll say that for her, though I
hate her."

"You don't really hate her," said Mrs. Grant; "and
I don't think you've any reason to.  What she has done
has been for Harry's sake too."

"It has been for the sake of the Brent family.  Her
son married beneath him—so she says—though I'd have
made him a good wife, and though I loved him I knew he
wasn't all he might have been.  She's going to see that
Harry doesn't run any risk of doing the same.  Well,
I'm with her there.  I don't want Harry to be mixed
up with what I come from.  But there's nothing nasty
about it.  It's only that we weren't up in the world.  Do
you know I haven't so much as set eyes on my own
people since Harry was born?  Why shouldn't I?  I'm
flesh and blood.  My father died since I came here, and
mother's getting on.  She was nearly fifty when I was
married."

"Do you mean that Lady Brent——?"

"Oh, it was me too.  I said that I'd give them up
when I came here.  The fact is that I wasn't best pleased
with them at that time.  I'd promised Harry—my
husband, I mean; they're all called Harry—not to say I
was married till he came home.  Poor boy, he never did
come home, but before that—well, they said things—at
least, mother did—that made me furious.  I kept my
promise to him till I heard he'd been killed, poor boy.
Then I let them have it.  Perhaps I hadn't learnt quite
so many manners then as I have since, though I was
always considered refined by the other girls in the
company.  Anyhow, it ended in my saying I never wanted
to see them again, and we never even wrote till poor
father died.  Still, I've forgiven them now, it's so long
ago, and I cried when father died, and wrote to mother.
I was very fond of father.  He used to take me on his
knee when I was little and read stories out of the Bible
to me.  He was a religious man, and didn't like my going
on the stage.  Sometimes I wish I'd never gone.  Emily,
my next oldest sister, went into millinery and did well.
She married long ago and has a boy nearly as old as
Harry, though of course he'd be very different.  Mother
said she had a nice house out Hendon way, when she
wrote, and three little girls, as well as a boy.  I dare
say I should have been much happier like that, though
I shouldn't have had Harry.  But it couldn't do Harry
any harm now if I just went up and saw them sometimes.
I needn't even say I was going to see them or
anything about them.  Why shouldn't I go to London
for a week, as other ladies do, to see their dressmaker
or something?  I think it's more London I want than
mother, if you ask me.  Oh, just to see the lights and
the pavements, and the people jostling one another!
I'm like famished for it."

She threw out her hands with a curious stagy gesture
that was yet a natural one, and her nostrils seemed to
dilate, as if she were actually sniffing the atmosphere
she so much desired.  "I'm going," she said.  "I don't
care what she says."

"I don't see why you shouldn't go," said Mrs. Grant.
"But why should Lady Brent object?  What can she say?"

Mrs. Brent leant forward.  "Couldn't you ask her
for me?" she said coaxingly.  "Tell her you think I
ought to have a change.  I'm young, you know.  At
least I'm not old yet.  It can't be right for me to be
buried down here year after year.  I shan't get into
mischief.  Just a week!"

Mrs. Grant felt intensely uncomfortable.  Get into
mischief!  What *did* it all mean?  Lady Brent must have
some reason for keeping the frivolous pathetic little
thing shut up like this?  And yet she had seemed to
disclose everything; she had dropped every trace of
pretence, and had made her appeal for sympathy on the
grounds of her very unsuitability to be where she was.
If she no longer cared, before this friend, to keep up
the fiction of having sprung from a superior station in
life, which from such as she was a great concession to
candour, how could she wish to keep anything back?

"You know I'm your friend," Mrs. Grant said.  "I'd
do anything I could to help you, but you see how it is
with us here.  We shall never be close friends with Lady
Brent; I don't think she wants it.  But she's kind and
well-disposed towards us.  I couldn't run the risk of
setting her against us, unless I were *quite* certain
that—I mean quite certain of my ground.  It wouldn't be fair
to my husband.  It would make all the difference to us
here if we were not on good terms with her.  Have you
told me everything?  *Why* should she think you might
get into mischief?"

She put this aside lightly.  "Oh, there's nothing in
that.  It's only what she'd say.  She'd say anything.
But I see I ought not to ask you.  No, it wouldn't be
fair to bring you into it.  She'd have it up against you;
you're quite right.  I tell you this, Mrs. Grant; when
Harry comes of age—or before that, when he goes to
Sandhurst—I'm off.  No more of this for me.  I shall
snap my fingers at her.  But of course you've got to
stay here.  No, I'll tackle her myself, and see if I can't
get my own way for once."

She sprang up.  "I'll go and do it now," she said.
"No time like the present."

She laughed, and kissed Mrs. Grant.  "Good-bye,
dear," she said.  "It does me good to talk to you;
you're so understanding.  And it does me good to have
you here—you and your nice kind clever husband and
your *sweet* children.  Ah, if I'd had a bit of real family
life with *my* poor boy!—it might have been here or
anywhere; I shouldn't have cared where it was—it would all
have been very different.  Now I'll go and tackle the
old dragon while I'm fresh for it.  Good-bye, dear; I'll
go out through the garden."

She went out by the window, and stopped to look at
the sleeping baby as she crossed the lawn, smiling and
making a little motion of the hand towards Mrs. Grant
as she did so.  Then she disappeared behind the
shrubbery.

Mrs. Grant laid down her work and went to refresh
herself with a look at the baby.  As she turned back,
her husband came out of his room, which was next to
the drawing-room and also opened on to the garden.

His face was serious.  "I didn't know you had
Mrs. Brent with you," he said.  "I've had Wilbraham.
They're all at loggerheads up at the Castle, Ethel.  I
don't quite know what to do about it.  I don't want to
get up against Lady Brent; but——"

She told him of Mrs. Brent's prospective revolt.
"She asked *me* to talk to her," she said.  "But I said
the same as you do.  We don't want to get up against
her.  What is the trouble with Mr. Wilbraham?"

"Much the same as with Mrs. Brent apparently.
He's fed up with it too.  He wants to get away."

"What, for always?"

"Oh, no.  He's too fond of Harry for that.  Besides,
he's very comfortable here—has everything he wants.  I
told him that, and he didn't deny it.  But he seems to
have developed a furious hatred of Lady Brent.  I
really can't tell you why.  He couldn't tell me, when I
pressed him.  He's morose and gloomy.  He says he
must get away from her for a time, or he'll go off his
head."

"But surely he can take a holiday sometimes if he
wants to!"

"It almost looks as if she wouldn't let him go off
by himself.  He asked me to go with him, for a month.
He offered to pay all expenses and go where I liked.
In the old days I might have been tempted—if you'd
thought it would be a good thing to do.  But I don't
want to go away from here just now—at this lovely
time of year, with the work and everything going so well.
Of course I could write, but——  Anyhow I don't know
who I should get to do my duty.  If I thought it would
really put things right!  What do you think?  Ought
I to do it?"

"I don't know, dear.  I don't understand what's
going on.  It looks to me as if there must be something
behind it all that we don't know of."

He laughed at her and pinched her chin.  "You take
the novelist's point of view," he said.  "I don't, which
is perhaps rather odd.  They're all on each other's
nerves.  Why don't he and Mrs. Brent go off together?"  He
laughed again.  "He didn't really press it," he said.
"He wanted me to go this week.  I couldn't do that,
anyhow, and when I said so he seemed to drop the idea.
He had wanted me to suggest it to Lady Brent just as
Mrs. Brent wanted you.  They're a queer couple."

"I suppose it's only to be expected that it should be
like that sometimes," she said thoughtfully.  "I think
I could talk to Lady Brent, if she'd only give me the
chance."

"I don't think she will, and it wouldn't do to begin it."

"Oh no, I shouldn't do that.  But there's Harry.  It
all comes back to him, you see.  If she's mistaken in
what she's doing, it's for his sake she's doing it.  She
might give me an opening there."

"I don't think so.  It all passes over Harry's head.
It's rather remarkable how normal he is.  One might not
have expected it under such circumstances.  Well, I
must get back, dear.  Wilbraham has taken a big slice
out of my morning.  I'm sorry for him and wish I could
help him.  But I don't see how I can, except by
continuing my friendship.  I was rather flattered that he
should have come and talked to me.  He professes to
think very little of my knowledge of human nature, you
know.  But most of that's a pose, and I like him.  He
went off to tackle Lady Brent himself.  Mrs. Brent too,
you say.  She'll have a happy day of it, I should think."

At this moment the peaceful seclusion of the scene
was destroyed by the incursion of Jane and Pobbles,
who, released from their studies, came tumultuously
round the corner of the house, Jane leading.  They woke
up the baby, or, as her time for waking up was past,
perhaps they only completed the process, and they
escaped rebuke for it.  Their cry was for Harry.  Where
was Harry?  He had promised to come not a moment
later than twelve o'clock, and it was already two
minutes past.

Jane was a straight, somewhat leggy child, with the
promise of beauty when the time should come for her
to accept her dower of femininity.  At present she was
more like a boy than a girl, except for her long thick
plait of fair hair, which she would have given almost
anything to be allowed to sacrifice in the interests of
freedom.  She was aboundingly full of life and the most
amazing physical energy.  She affected an extreme
virility of speech, and exercised a severe discipline over
Pobbles, who occasionally raged against it as an offence
to his manhood, but as a rule accepted the yoke and
prospered under it.  He was a handsome child, strong
and vigorous too, but without his sister's determined
initiative.  They were a pair to be proud of, and their
parents were proud of them, but found them a handful.
Miss Minster could manage them by the exercise of a
good-humoured authority which never allowed itself to
be rattled.  But it was only Harry whose lightest word
they obeyed without question.  He was their hero and
their most adored playmate.  Perhaps Jane showed
more femininity in submitting to his direction than was
apparent in her attitude towards him, in which there was
none to be seen.

Harry came into the garden as they were clamouring
their questions, with his retriever wagging its tail at
his heels.  He was seventeen now, grown almost to his
full height, but his face was still that of a boy.  There
was a radiant look of health and happiness in it.  He
was extraordinarily good to look at, not only because
of his beauty, of form and feature and colouring, which
was undeniable, but because of this sort of inward light,
which suffused it with a sense of perfection that went
right through him.  Mrs. Grant caught her breath as
she looked at him.  She saw him as some wonderful work
of God, without flaw, untroubled in his happiness.
Whatever disturbances there might be among the figures
of coarser clay by whom he was surrounded, there must
be some breath of finer spirit in each and all of them,
since he stood on the threshold of manhood as he
was, here before her eyes.

The matter in hand was the building of a log cabin
in a bit of forest that reached down from the wooded
hill behind the Vicarage garden.  Harry and the
children had been working at it for a month or more, and
it was to be a very perfect specimen of a log cabin.

"Why haven't you brought the saw?" said Jane,
turning upon Pobbles.  "Go and fetch it."

"It's your turn," said Pobbles.  "Can't always be
fetching things for you."

"Be quick," said Jane.  "We're wasting time.  Come
on, Harry, we'll start.  He can run after us."

"Don't know where to find the saw," said Pobbles,
untruthfully.

"Jane will go and help you," said Harry.  "Hurry
up, both of you."

Jane put her long legs in rapid motion without a
word, Pobbles pounding along after her on his shorter
ones.  Harry laughed.  "That's the way to talk to
them," he said.

Jane returned bearing the saw, Pobbles following.
They set off immediately for the wood, and the voices of
all three of them were heard for a long time in animated
conversation through the hot drowsy air.





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.. _`REVOLT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   REVOLT

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Brent sat in her business room, engaged in
affairs, or apparently so.  Business room it was called,
but it was little like one except for the large writing-table
in the window at which she sat, and as a matter
of fact she transacted most of the actual business of
house and estate which fell to her share in a room
downstairs called the Steward's room, which was far more
severely furnished.  This large upstairs room, with its
deep embrasured window looking on to the park, was her
fastness, and she did not often withdraw herself into its
seclusion.  It was next to her bedroom, and might have
been better called her boudoir, but that the ancient and
severe splendour of its furnishing would have seemed to
rebuke such a name.  It was richly carved and panelled,
the furniture was heavy and sombre, and lightened by
none of the modern touches which made the long
drawing-room downstairs, which was mostly used, bright and
even gay.  This room was as characteristic of the old
romantic Castle as any in it.  It spoke of a time long
gone by, and of a life more austere than modern life is
apt to be.  There were few comforts in it but a great
deal of rich massive dignity.  When Lady Brent
ensconced herself in it she was the chatelaine of the
Castle, seated in state, and as formidable as it was in
her power to make herself.

Mrs. Brent, coming in from the Vicarage, wrought up
to her purpose, looked for her in the long drawing-room,
and not finding her there had the intuition that she was
in her business room.  She hesitated a little before going
upstairs to verify it, making a further draught upon her
determination.  Of course!  She had known that it was
coming to a row.  She was as sharp as a cartload of
monkeys, and had seen that the row was likely to occur
just at this very time.  That was why she had taken to
her business room, when by all usual habits she would
have been sitting downstairs or in the garden, during the
hour before luncheon.

So thought Mrs. Brent, mounting the oak staircase,
and summoning all her resolution.  She wouldn't be awed
by the stately lady in the stately room.  After all, it was
only a piece of play-acting.  She knew something about
play-acting herself.  She would be cold and stately too,
announce her determination and then go away.  She'd
show that she wasn't to be put upon.  Perhaps it would
be easier like that.  There would be no leading up to the
subject and no discussion after it, as there must have
been if she had joined her mother-in-law downstairs, and
felt compelled to sit on with her.

But she knew, as she opened the door, that it would
not be easier.

"Oh, I wondered where you were.  I just wanted to
say something to you, if you're not too busy."

The tone did not seem right, somehow, even to
herself.  Lady Brent turned round from the table at which
she was sitting, and took off the tortoise-shell rimmed
glasses which she wore for reading and writing.  She
did not look in the least degree formidable—a well-preserved,
well-dressed, middle-aged lady, not really obliged
to wear glasses, even for reading and writing, and not
wanting them at all for anything else.  "Yes, certainly,
Charlotte," she said, "I have nearly finished what I
came here to do, and you are not interrupting me at all."

Mrs. Brent had an impulse to make up some trivial
message and go away, but conquered it.  Her voice
shook a little as she said, still standing: "I wish to go
up to London, for a few days—say a week—as soon as
possible."

Again she had not satisfied herself.  She had used the
prim reserved tone of a maid giving notice—"I wish to
leave at the end of my month."  It seemed to her that
she had only just prevented herself adding, "my lady."

Lady Brent received it much as she might have received
notice from a servant, whose temporary dissatisfaction
with her place must not be taken too seriously.
"Why do you want to do that?" she asked, in a level,
even a kindly voice.

It touched some chord in Mrs. Brent.  She had, perhaps,
prepared herself for a peremptory refusal, and if
it had come she would have been ready to combat it, and
obstinate to push her determination through.  But
supposing her request should, after all, be granted!  That
would put everything right and save a lot of trouble.

All the irritation she had been piling up against Lady
Brent would be dissolved.  She did not want to quarrel
with her, if it could be avoided.  She would have to go
on living with her, whether she had a short respite now
or not.  And it had not always been so very disagreeable
to live with her.

"Oh, I must, I really must," she said.  "I can't stand
it any longer.  Just a week!  I'll go and see my mother,
and be as quiet as possible.  Harry needn't know I'm
going to her, if you don't want him to, though I don't
see what difference it would make."

"I think I do," said Lady Brent quietly.  "But
perhaps you'd better sit down, and talk it over.  What
is it you can't stand any longer?  If there's anything
wrong here we ought to be able to put it right.  Only
I must first know what it is."

Mrs. Brent sat down.  She saw that her appeal had
been a mistake.  She could not now coldly state her
intention and support it against opposition, behaving
as one stately lady towards another, as she had pictured
it to herself, coming up the staircase.  And of course
Lady Brent did not mean to let her go, if she could
help it.

She sat down in a high-backed Carolean chair.  "I
don't want to go into all that," she said stiffly.  "I
shall be able to stand it all right when I come back.  A
little holiday is what I really want, and what I mean
to have.  It's not much to ask, after nearly eighteen
years.  Well, I say ask—but I'm not asking.  I'm just
telling you that I'm going away on Thursday, or
perhaps Friday, and I shall come back in a week—or ten
days."

It was not quite the address of one stately lady to
another, but it seemed to have served its turn.  Lady
Brent turned back to her writing-table and took up her
rimmed spectacles.

"Very well," she said.

Mrs. Brent sat in her high-backed chair, looking at
her.  She placed her spectacles upon her well-shaped
nose, and took up her pen.  Then she said, as calmly
as before: "If you tell me you are going there is no more
to be said.  I'll finish what I'm doing now, before
luncheon."

"Then you're ready for me to go; you don't mind,"
said Mrs. Brent.

"It doesn't much matter whether I mind or not, does
it?  You tell me you are going.  You refuse to discuss
it with me?"

"Well, I don't want to make trouble.  It's no good
talking over things.  There's nothing much wrong,
really.  If I go away now for a bit I shall be all right
when I come back.  I expect, really, I shall be rather
glad to get back."

Lady Brent put down her pen and took off her spectacles.
"Oh, but if you go away you won't come back,"
she said, turning towards her again.  "Surely you
understand that!"

Mrs. Brent felt that she had been entrapped into an
opening unfavourable to herself.  Now was the time, if
she had it in her, to exercise the restraint and reserve
shown by Lady Brent.  But it was not in her; she became
angry at once, and showed her anger.

"Of course I might have known that you were leading
me on," she said bitterly.  "I dare say it seems very
clever to you, and it's what you're always doing.  But
I'm not going to give in to it any more.  I'm going
away—only just for a little holiday—and I'm coming back.
You can't prevent me.  This is my home.  I've lived here
getting on for eighteen years—me and my child.  I dare
say you'd like to keep him and get rid of me.  But you
can't do it."

"If I wanted to do that I could do it," returned Lady
Brent; and, as the statement brought no immediate
response, she repeated it, in the same level tone but with
slightly increased emphasis.  "If I wanted to do that
I could do it."

"Perhaps you could do it, by law," said Mrs. Brent.
"I don't know anything about the law, except what
you've told me.  Perhaps you could and perhaps you
couldn't.  But there's one thing you can't do, and that's
take away my child's love for me, though I dare say
you'd like to do that too.  You don't suppose that if I
went away and came back here and you had me turned
away from the door, you wouldn't hear something about
it from him.  You don't suppose that, do you?  He's
pretty near a man now.  You're his guardian till he
comes of age; I know that you had yourself made so by
the law, and I didn't make any objection; you told me
it was best for him, and I believed you.  But you'd find
it wasn't all a question of law if you tried any game of
that sort.  I don't know what Harry would do, but I do
know that whatever he did it wouldn't suit your book."

Lady Brent had listened to this speech without showing
the smallest sign of discomposure, but her light blue
eyes were hard and cold as she said: "There is a good
deal of truth in what you say.  Your going away would
completely upset everything that has been done during
the last eighteen years for Harry's benefit.  Both you
and I have made sacrifices on his behalf.  We agreed
to do so when you came here before he was born.  I have
kept strictly to the bargain.  I should not, for my own
pleasure, live the retired life that I do here, all the year
round, with you as my constant companion.  For my
own sake I should be immensely relieved to say good-bye
to you for a time, if it were possible."

"Yes, that's the sort of nasty thing you say."

"Isn't it exactly what you say to me?  Why should
you suppose your society is any more gratification to
me than mine is to you?"

"I wish to goodness you would say good-bye to me,
then, for a time.  Why isn't it possible?  It is possible.
I tell you I'm going, and I'm coming back."

"Do you remember anything at all about the bargain
we struck when you first came here, or have you
forgotten it entirely, after nearly eighteen years, as you
say?"

"Of course I remember it.  You didn't mince your
words then any more than you do now.  You made me
feel that I was dirt beneath your feet, but you'd put up
with me for the sake of preventing my boy—if it was to
be a boy—doing what his father had done, and marrying
somebody he loved, if you didn't think she was good
enough for him."

"You can put it like that if it pleases you.  You
consented to everything.  You yourself wanted the child
brought up with nothing to remind him that on one
side his birth wasn't suited to his long ancestry on the
other.  I warned you what the sacrifice would be.  It
meant giving up your own people, for one thing, and you
gladly consented to do that.  It meant your doing your
utmost to fill the position that I freely offered you here."

"So I have done my utmost."

"And now, when what we agreed to do together has
turned out better than either of us could have hoped for,
when we are very nearly at the end of it, and can send
Harry out into the world what we have made of him
here, you want to break the bargain.  And why?  Not
for any good it can possibly do him, but just because
you want to go back to what you were before you came
here—for your own petty selfish pleasure."

"It isn't that," she said vehemently.  "I say it isn't
natural that anybody should cut themselves off from
their own flesh and blood.  I loved my father and he died
without me setting eyes on him.  You let me write to
mother then.  I didn't do it without asking you,
and——"

"Didn't we strike the bargain afresh then?  Didn't
I say I was sorry that it should have been required of
you to cut yourself off from your family, but that it had
already then proved to be the right course?  And didn't
you agree with me, though it was harder for you to bear
then than at any time?"

The tears came.  "Of course it was hard, then," she
said.  "But you were kind to me.  So you were when I
first came.  If I was giving up something, I was going
to get something too.  All that I'd been was to be
forgotten, though it isn't true that I'd been anything that I
ought not to have been.  Harry was to grow up knowing
me as belonging here.  You were to be his legal
guardian, but he was to be my child."

"Yes, and I might have struck a much harder bargain
with you than that.  You would have consented.  I
might have taken the child and paid you off.  That's
often done, you know, in cases like yours."

She was sobbing now.  "You're cruel," she said.
"Yes, you are cruel, even when you're pretending to be
nice.  You like hurting me.  Pay me off!  Anybody'd
think, to hear you talk, I'd been a loose woman."

"I've never said that, or implied it."

"No, you've never said it.  You wouldn't dare.  But
you've made me feel that's how you look at me.  Why
didn't you pay me off, then, and get rid of me?"

"Exactly.  Why didn't I?"

"Well?  I'm asking you."

"I was willing to give you your chance.  Whatever
I may have thought of you, I didn't want to deprive you
of your child, or him of his mother, so long as you were
ready to make yourself the kind of mother he ought to
have had.  You said you'd do it.  You were grateful to
me.  You consented to every stipulation I laid down.
The chief of them all was that you should break
absolutely with your past until he came of age.  Then you
could do what you liked; it would be between you and
him.  Now you want to break that stipulation.  I say
that if you break it on one side you break it on the
other; I also say that it would be a very wicked thing
to break it, now at this time."

"It wouldn't be if you'd just let me go away for a
bit and come back."

"That I won't do.  Why do you want to go away?
It isn't just to see your mother.  I know that well
enough.  You want the life of London, the life you led
there before Harry was born—theatres, and suppers
and gaiety, with the sort of people that you ought to be
ashamed of mixing yourself up with, when you think
about Harry, and what he is.  You've done without it
for nearly eighteen years.  For goodness' sake do without
it for a little time longer.  Don't knock down what
we've been building up for all these years, just for a
selfish whim.  Think of Harry, not of yourself."

"I do think of him.  I love him better than anything
in the world.  I'd go barefoot if it was to do something
for him."

"You're not asked to go barefoot.  All you're asked
to do is to go on living the quiet but very comfortable
life that you've lived here for years past, and make the
best of it.  It's what I'm doing myself."

She dried her eyes and rose from her chair.  "I see
I'm not going to get any kindness from you," she said.
"But I'll think about it.  Perhaps I shan't go.  I've
stood it so long that perhaps I can stand it a bit longer.
If I was *sure* it was for Harry's good I'd never move
out of the place till I was carried out.  I'll think about
it and let you know."

"You needn't let me know anything," said Lady
Brent.  "If you go you go, and if you stay you stay."

With that Mrs. Brent left her.  She did not immediately
return to whatever she had been doing, but sat
looking out through the open casement across the open
spaces of the park to the woods beyond.  Her face was
still hard and still watchful.  By and by she looked at
her watch, and almost immediately a knock came at the
door.  She answered as if she had been expecting it,
and Wilbraham came into the room.

There was a sullen discontented expression on his
face, which was unusual with him.  He had kind lazy
eyes and a whimsical twist on his mobile lips; but all
that was obliterated.

He took his seat without invitation in the chair
recently vacated by Mrs. Brent.  "I want to go away
for two or three weeks' holiday," he said, scowling
slightly, and handling his bunched fingers.  "Now
you're going to have that man over from Burport for
Harry's mathematics he can do without me—say for a
month.  He's well up in my subjects.  The more he
works at his mathematics the better it will be for
him."

"Why do you want to go away just now?" she asked,
as she had asked of Mrs. Brent.

"Why does anybody ever want to go away?" he
said.  "I want a holiday, and if I'm to go on here I
must have one."

"If you want a holiday from work, there ought to be
no difficulty about that.  You know what's best for
Harry.  If you think that Mr. Fletcher will be of more
use to him now, by all means arrange it like that and
leave yourself altogether free for a time."

"Thanks very much.  Of course I shouldn't want to
do anything that would keep Harry back.  You know
that."

"Oh yes, I know that.  He was to come first in everything.
That was agreed upon between us when you first
came here.  I saw very soon that I could leave questions
of education entirely to you, and I have always done so."

"Well, now I want to go away for a month or so.
I'm getting stale.  I'm not doing him justice."

"Perhaps not.  I've been feeling that for some little
time.  But I don't think it would help you to do him
justice if you went away so that you could drink, and
undo everything that——"

"Lady Brent!"  He was startled and outraged, and
glared at her terrifically.

She was not moved.  "That's what's the matter with
you," she said, in the same even voice, "though you may
not acknowledge it to yourself.  I'm very sorry that this
has happened.  I had thought that after all these years
the craving had left you.  I don't think it can be as
strong as it was.  I ran the risk when I asked you to
come here, and helped you over the difficult time.  It is
years since you told me last that the desire was strong
in you, but it was easier to overcome it.  What a pity
to give way now!"

His deep frown had not altered while she was speaking.
"Give way!" he echoed.  "I've no intention of
giving way.  You've no right to speak of that at all.  It
was all over long ago."

"I helped you to get over it, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did.  I'm not denying it.  You can be a
good friend to a man when it suits you; to a woman
too, I dare say.  But you're difficult to live with.  I want
to get away for a time.  There's nothing to fear, of that
old weakness.  Perhaps I ought not to resent your
bringing it up against me, but——"

"You wouldn't resent it if what I say wasn't true.
You may not know it yourself, but you're playing with
the idea of giving way.  If you did give way you'd be
very sorry for it afterwards, no doubt, but the mischief
would have been done.  You'd no longer be a fit
companion for Harry.  It's him I'm thinking about.  You
can do what you like, but if you go away you don't come
back.  It's what I've just said to Charlotte, who wants
the same as you do.  I'm not going to have everything
spoilt when our task is coming near its end.  If she's a
foolish woman, you're an intelligent man.  You can see
it all as well as I can if you clear your mind of its
vapours.  You know it wouldn't do.  You must stay
here until you have finished with Harry.  Then you can
do what you like—stay here or go away."

"It won't matter what becomes of me then, I suppose."

"I said that you could stay here if you liked.  This
has been your home for ten years.  It can go on being
your home as long as you value it; or at least as long
as I have anything to do with it."

He sat looking down, still frowning; but his frown
had more of thought, and less of anger in it now.

He threw a glance at her sitting there self-possessed
and at ease, and a wry smile came to his lips.  "Why
can't you always behave like that?" he asked.  "I
suppose the fact is you've worked off all your temper on
that poor little creature who's been telling you just
the same as I have.  I met her crying on the stairs just
now, and she wouldn't tell me what it was about.  But
I could guess."

She showed some surprise, but no resentment.  "My
temper!" she exclaimed.  "Well, I suppose I must pass
that over in the state to which you've reduced yourself."

His face became moody again.  "I won't ask you
what you mean by that," he said.  "But you're quite
wrong in what you said just now.  Would you consent
to my going away with Grant, if I could get him to come
with me?  He's rather a fool, but I'd rather have his
company than—than——"

"Than mine, I suppose.  No, I wouldn't consent to
that.  You came here on certain conditions, and you
must keep to them.  It won't be for very much longer
now.  I'm not altogether without sympathy with you.
I've felt the strain myself."

He broke into a loud laugh, and went on laughing,
while she waited patiently for him to finish, as if no
vagary on his part could surprise or upset her.

"Oh, that's too rich," he said, "in that tone!  Yes,
you've been feeling the strain, and you've made us feel
it.  That's all the trouble.  Well now, look here, Lady
Brent, I accept what you say about its being too late
to alter things now—or too early—whichever you
please.  We're all three of us in the bargain, I take it.
It was your idea to keep the boy shut up here, and it
has paid.  I don't believe it would have paid nine times
out of ten, and we've yet to see how it will turn out
when the test comes.  But Harry being what he is, it
has been a brilliant success—so far.  You've been
justified in keeping me and his mother shut up here too."

"And myself, you must remember.  I've shut myself
up too, so as to make it seem all the most natural thing
in the world to him."

"Quite so.  And you've suffered for it, just as we
have.  Suffered in your temper.  If we stick to it, as
we must, you ought to make it as easy for us as possible.
You haven't lately."

"So Charlotte seemed to imply.  But I should like to
know how."

"Oh, you know how, well enough.  You said I was
a man of intelligence just now.  Well, you're a woman
of intelligence.  Just think it over."

He nodded his head, knowingly.  He looked rather
ridiculous, and Lady Brent laughed.

"I wish you'd go away," she said.  "I want to finish
what I'm doing before luncheon.  You may tell Charlotte,
if you like, that I'm sorry if I spoke harshly to
her just now.  She annoyed me and I did not pick my
words.  When three people live together year in and
year out they are apt to get annoyed with one another
occasionally, for no particular reason."





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.. _`THE LOG CABIN`:

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   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LOG CABIN

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The log cabin had reached the interesting stage at
which its framework was complete, and the immediate
task was to nail thin bark-covered boards upon it.
After that it was to be thatched.  Then it was to be
lined with match-boarding.

Harry had built every bit of the framework himself,
with such help as Jane and Pobbles could give him in
lifting and holding the timbers in place, not without
some risk to limb if not to life.  He had drawn out his
constructional plan, from careful study of a book.  Then
he had had the timbers prepared at the sawmills four
miles away, and he and the children had fetched them in
a farm cart.  It had taken them weeks to get the
framework finished, but they had made a very good job
of it between them.  As they hurried up through the
wood to the clearing upon the edge of which the cabin
stood, Jane and Pobbles were full of excitement at the
thought of work to come which they could really do
themselves.  So far, it had been helping Harry, which
was pleasurable enough, but not to be compared with
the pleasure that was to come.

Harry let them chatter without much response, but
made the pace towards the clearing so fast that they had
to run to keep up with him.  He was excited too.  He
was doing something real, from the beginning.  He had
invented something and had already carried out the most
difficult part of it, meeting the difficulties as they came,
and surmounting them.  All the rest would be easy
enough until it came to the thatching.  He proposed
to do that himself too.  Watching a thatcher at work
on a barn had first put the idea of building a log cabin
into his head.  He thought he knew how it was done,
and he could always ask the old thatcher questions; but
he was not going to let him lay a finger on the roof of
the cabin, nor even stand by and direct.  Jane and
Pobbles might do whatever lay within their power; it
would have been he who had taught them and directed
them in everything.

They came to the clearing—a space of bright green
turf nibbled short by rabbits, surrounded mostly by oaks
interspersed with glistening hollies and here and there
a graceful deliciously green beech.  The cabin stood
back among the trees, its squared timbers showing white
and new against the background of green and russet.
Harry paused and put his head on one side to contemplate
it, and a grin of pure pleasure lit up his face.
"A very workmanlike job so far," he said.  "Come on,
we'll get the whole of the front covered in this morning."

They worked at a rate unknown to members of Trades
Unions, measuring and sawing up the boards, and nailing
them fast to the posts.  Harry did all the sawing,
Jane and Pobbles took it in turns to nail one end of a
board while he nailed the other.  They quarrelled a little
over this until Harry stopped them.  Jane was of the
opinion that Pobbles did not drive in a nail as well as
she did.  Pobbles was of the contrary opinion.  There
were only two hammers between the three of them, but
Harry was to provide a third for the afternoon.  They
were to have a picnic tea at the cabin, after lessons, and
hoped to see the walls roughly finished before dusk fell.

The brooding summer noon did not daunt these eager
labourers.  It was more like real work to sweat under
the hot sun.  Harry took off his coat at the start and
turned up his shirt sleeves.  Pobbles did the same in
imitation of him.  Jane, having nothing that she could
reasonably take off, contented herself with rolling up
her sleeves and warning Pobbles that he would catch
cold, which gave him an opening that he was not slow
to take advantage of.  "Men don't catch cold when
they're working," he said, and took off his waistcoat.
Jane had to admit inferiority, for once.

They worked till the last possible minute, and met
again at the first possible minute in the afternoon.  The
game which they made of their work was more entrancing
now than it had been in the morning.  The tasks of the
day were done, and the long summer evening stretched
infinitely before them.  Moreover, the cabin, with its
front all boarded in, was now beginning to look like a
cabin and not the skeleton of one; and a picnic is always
a picnic to happy youth, however inadequate the viands.
They were not inadequate on this occasion.  All three
labourers had brought baskets.  A fire was to be lit and
tea made—billy tea, of which Harry had learnt the
recipe from a book.  The meal was to be an adequate
substitute for what they would have eaten indoors.
Harry was to be excused dinner for it.  The children
had their freedom until half-past eight.

Jane had changed her clothes, and wore, instead of the
cotton frock of the morning, an outgrown coat and skirt,
already laid aside "to be given away."  The reason for
this apparent feminine vagary became manifest when,
arrived on the scene of action, she took off the coat,
which was uncomfortably tight, and rolled up the sleeves
of the shirt she wore beneath it.  She was now at least
as much like a pioneer as Pobbles.

In their imaginative adaptable brains they were
pioneers in very truth.  Harry was as serious about it as
the children, though he was too old for any childish
game of make-believe.  "Now we'll knock off for an
hour," he said, when one of the end walls had been
boarded in, and the desire for bodily sustenance became
urgent.  "We must get the roof on before the rains
begin, but we're well ahead, and it's better to keep at it
steadily than to work ourselves out."

He was in some imagined country of the new world,
where the first duty was to provide shelter before attacking
the primeval woods and bringing the soil into cultivation.
The soft English glade, upon which the shadows
of English oaks and beeches were beginning to lengthen
under the westering sun, was transformed in his imagination
to a clearing in some tropical forest, or in the
backwoods of Australia or Canada.  The Castle, the
Vicarage, the village, were wiped out.  They were very
far away from all such signs of ancient civilization, very
far too from all possibility of replenishing their stores,
if these should be wastefully used.  He asked Jane to
count the eggs carefully.  "If there's one over, Tom had
better have it," he said.

Tom was Pobbles, so called only on such occasions as
this.  Jane understood perfectly.  She was the woman
of the party, and it lay with her to adjust and husband
the stores, also to support the head of it in his designs.
On such terms she was willing to shoulder her burden of
womanhood, and rather regretted having approximated
her attire to that of the men.  "You'd better put your
jacket on now you've left off working," said Harry,
throwing a glance not altogether of approval at her
shirt, which she wore open at the neck, as he and the
virile Tom wore theirs.  She obeyed meekly, and went
into the cabin to put on her tie as well, also the hat
which she had discarded.  "We ought to nail up a bit
of looking-glass inside," she said, as she came out, and
before she joined in picking up sticks for the fire she
went into the wood where some late hyacinths were still
to be found, and fastened a bunch of them on her breast.

Thus far they might make believe, acting as if they
were a backwoods party, but not bringing the pretence
to the point of utterance.  They both laughed at
Pobbles when he said: "We'd better stick together when
we're picking up sticks, or one of us may get scalped in
the wood," and Jane said: "We're helping Harry; he's
not playing a silly game with us."  Pobbles thought it
would have been more amusing if they had boldly played
the game which seemed to be in their thoughts no less
than in his, but accepted the correction, and half
understood it.  Harry, who was so wonderful at making
things, would belittle himself by playing children's
games about them.

But there was no diminution in his dignity when he
showed that his mind was full of the reality of what they
were playing at.  They sat on the chips and sawdust
outside the cabin, when they had devoured everything
in their baskets, and talked.  Harry leant against the
new built wall of the cabin with his legs stretched out
in front of him, his dog at his feet, and Pobbles leant
against the wall beside him, in as near an imitation of
his attitude as he could contrive without making himself
too uncomfortable.  Jane reclined gracefully on her
elbow, and occasionally pulled her too-short skirt over
her knees.  The shadows of the trees had perceptibly
lengthened.  There were two hours of daylight yet, but
the heat had declined, and the evening freshness was
mingled with the evening peace.  The cuckoo was calling,
now here now there, and its grey form could be seen
sometimes flitting from tree to tree across the glade.
The rabbits were out at the far end of it, and the wood
pigeons were swinging home to the high woods behind
them.  But of human occupation, besides their own, the
world seemed empty.  They were secure in their retreat.

"It must be a grand thing, you know," Harry said,
"to find a new place in the world which you can make
what you like of.  Supposing this were really right away
from everywhere, in a new country, we should begin just
like this, with a cabin a bit bigger but much the same
in plan.  Then we should make our garden round about
it.  After that we should prepare our fields.  We should
cut down trees, for more building when we wanted it, and
for logs for burning in the winter.  We should have our
animals; we should have everything that we wanted
round us, and what we hadn't got we should have to
do without until we could go and bring it from the
nearest town, which might be hundreds of miles away.
There'd be a tremendous lot to do every day, but you'd
like doing it, and you'd see the whole thing grow and
grow till you had a splendid place which you had made
out of nothing, and hundreds of people working on it."

"Shall you do that, when you're quite grown up,
Harry?" asked Pobbles.  "I think I shall.  I know a
good deal about it already, and I can easily learn some
more."

Jane forbore to rebuke his assumption of knowledge,
having one to make on her own account.  "I used to
think I should hate having to sew and learn to cook,"
she said.  "But I shouldn't mind it if I was living in a
log cabin.  I can cook some things already.  I suppose
it would be more fun to be a man, but a woman would
have to ride and all that, if she lived in a new country;
and she could ride astride."

"It's only when things begin to get a little settled
that women go at all," said Harry, dashing these
dreams.  "The real pioneers go alone, and carry
everything they want with them on horseback.  It must be
glorious to ride for day after day in a country where no
white man has ever been before, and at last to come to
some lovely place where he can make a settlement."

"There's no reason why a woman shouldn't do that
too," said Jane.  "She could go alone herself, if the
man didn't want her.  She could dress like a man."

Pobbles exploded with mirth, at some cryptic joke of
his own.  "A pretty fool she'd look if the Redskins
caught her!" he said.

"Shut up," said Jane sharply, relinquishing her
dreams of a woman's empire, "or I'll punch your head."

"Shut up both of you," said Harry, "and don't spoil
things by quarrelling.  You'd never do for that sort of
life if you couldn't spend five minutes without flying at
one another.  You'd have to spend weeks and months
together without seeing another living soul."

"But you'd be there," said Pobbles.  "You'd keep
her in order."

"Shall you ever do it, Harry, do you think?" asked
Jane.  "I should like to come too, if you do.  I could
wait behind till you'd found the right place, and then
Tom and I could come on together."

"Perhaps I shall some day," said Harry, for whom
time and youth seemed to stretch ahead illimitably.
"But not until after I've been in the army for some
years.  And I couldn't be away long from Royd.  I
might just go pioneering, and leave somebody else to
work up the place I've found."

"Oh, you could leave Jane and me," said Pobbles.
"And you could come there and see us sometimes.  You
would find we had worked it up better each time you
came."

"I shouldn't care about it unless Harry was there all
the time," said Jane.  "Besides, I am going into the
army too.  I read about a girl in Russia who fought all
through the wars, and nobody found her out.  I shall
be in Harry's regiment, but he won't tell anybody.  You
can too, Pobbles, when you're old enough."

Harry looked at her, and laughed with great enjoyment.
He had just seen the woman coming out in her,
and been mildly entertained by it through his seriousness.
Now she was a sexless child again.  "You're one
in a thousand, Jane," he said.  "Of course you shall
join my regiment, and Pobbles too.  We'll have some
jolly times, and when it comes to fighting we three will
stick together."

Jane did not mind being laughed at by Harry, and
was pleased at the prospect held out to her.  She took
off her jacket, when they set to work again at the cabin,
and threw away the bluebells, wondering why she had
picked them.

Dusk was falling as Harry made his way up through
the wood and across the park homewards.  The air was
very still, and the sweet scents of the earth, dissolved in
dew, rose like incense.  Usually his impressionable
untroubled mind would have leapt to the message of his
senses, and he would have exulted in the beauty that lay
all around him, sublimated by the spell of oncoming
night.  But as his feet brushed the moisture from the
grass, and stirred the cool scents to greet his nostrils,
he looked down and not up as his way was.  A vague
discontent was upon his spirit, which was not quite
unhappiness though near akin to it.

The vision of a free life in a free untouched land had
come to him.  For the first time in his happy boyhood he
felt himself bound by his lot.  The great world, with
its endless varieties of adventure and invitation to be
doing and living, lay beyond his horizons and he had
never crossed them.

Melancholy touched him so seldom that it was a
discomfort to be resisted.  He wondered what made him
sad at the thought of being tied to Royd, which had
hitherto been a paradise of enjoyment to him.  He
stood still as he came out from among the trees and
looked across the park to the dark mass of the Castle,
in which lights were glimmering here and there, making
it more romantic and beautiful even than when seen in
the day-time.  And as he looked, the momentary sadness
fell from him, and he smiled with pleasure at the scene
so familiar yet always showing itself in some new
emanation of beauty.  He was coming to the age at which he
could no longer be satisfied with it as holding everything
in life.  The shadow of unrest had just fallen upon him,
but it would not be yet that he would walk in it.

As he neared the Castle a white figure, dimly seen in
the dusk, detached itself from the gloom that lay about
the massive walls and came towards him along the
trodden path by which he was hastening.  He recognized
it as that of his mother, who not infrequently came
out to meet him like this when he had begged off dinner
and came back after it.  It usually gave him pleasure to
find her waiting for him in this way.  There was not,
perhaps, very much in common between them, but he
knew how much he was to her, and his chivalry went
out towards her, in love and a sense of protection.

To-night he was conscious of the least little sense of
discomfort in meeting her.  His time was so fully taken
up, with his work indoors and his innumerable pursuits
out of doors, that neither his mother nor his grandmother
saw very much of him except at meal-times, and
less than ever in the summer-time.  It was part of the
wisdom of Lady Brent that he was left as free as he was.
But he was sensitive to the atmosphere around him, and
of late when the inmates of the Castle had been together
it had been uncomfortable.  Wilbraham, while they had
done their work together, had been much as usual, but
at table he had been morose and snappy.  The two
women had obviously put constraint upon themselves to
be easy and natural before him, but the coldness and
irritation between them had peeped through.  There had
been nothing to cause him to reflect upon something
wrong, and the cause of it; he had been full of his own
devices and forgotten all about the discomfort at home
the moment he was away from it.  But the discomfort
was there.  Perhaps it had had to do with the vague
discontent that had just come upon him and passed
away.  But the sight of his mother coming to meet him
brought it back ever so little.  Whatever his dreams for
the future, whether at home or abroad, the whims and
vagaries of his elders if indulged in must shut them off.
Going away from Royd meant going away from them;
Royd itself must lose some of its glamour if life there
was to be troubled by their jars.

But he remembered now, as he called to his mother and
hurried his steps to meet her, that the cloud had seemed
to have lifted itself somewhat at luncheon that day.
Wilbraham, at any rate, had recovered his equanimity
entirely, and had been good-humoured and talkative;
and Lady Brent had been suave, when for some days
she had seemed covered with prickles.  Only his mother
had been subdued, with traces of past tears about her
eyes.

He reproached himself that he had not taken much
notice of these signs of disturbance in her.  He had been
too busy with his schemes for the afternoon, about which
he had talked freely, as he was encouraged to talk
about everything that interested him.  He had felt
instinctively that any sort of chatter from him would be
welcomed.  But he had escaped as soon as possible after
luncheon and forgotten all about the tension until now.

"Well, little mother!" he said as he came up to her.
"Ought you to be out at this time of night without a
wrap or anything?"

He had a clear, rather high-pitched voice that was
music in her ears.  She loved him anew for the kindness
in it, and for the question which showed that he was
careful of her.  He put his arm round her shoulder and
kissed her, and his hand went down to her waist and
remained there as she turned to walk with him.  All this
thrilled her with pleasure, and her voice shook a little
as she answered him, though she tried to keep it level.

"Oh, I'm all right, dear," she said.  "It's very warm.
Shall we go into the garden for a little?  It's lovely
there now."

"Yes; let's," he said at once, though he had intended
to go in and forage for food, for he was hungry again.

They went into the garden through a tall iron gate in
the wall, and walked up and down the long bowling
green, which was hidden from the house by a high yew
hedge.  A fountain plashed in a pool at the far end of
it; there were no flowers to be seen just here, but the
air was full of their scent.  The light had not yet
faded out of the sky, but stars were beginning to twinkle
in it.  The grass was close cut, but wet with dew.  He
bent down to see whether she was fitly shod, and found
she had put on goloshes.  She laughed at him.  "Nobody
can see them," she said, "but you like taking care
of your old mother, don't you, darling?"

"You're not old," said Harry; "and of course you
must be taken care of.  Isn't it lovely out here?  I don't
think there can be any place so lovely as Royd in the
whole world, though I haven't seen much of the world,
so far."

"I think it's lovely too," she said.  "But I shouldn't
want to stay here always if you weren't here.  You've
never *wanted* to go away, have you, Harry?"

He laughed at his remembrances.  "Just for a little
this afternoon, I thought I should like to go
somewhere else," he said.  "The children and I have been
building our log cabin, and I rather wished it was a
real one, quite away from everything, in some far-off
country.  But I suppose I shouldn't like to be away
from Royd for very long."

"It won't be very long before you do go away now,"
she said.  "Oh, I do hope it won't change you, Harry
dear.  It's so different, out in the world.  Sometimes I
long for it, but I believe this is best, after all.  If you
told me I could go to-morrow I don't think I would now.
I wouldn't go as long as you were here, and I knew you
were happy being here."

"I haven't looked forward very much to going to
Sandhurst," he said, thoughtfully.  "I shan't be nearly
so free there as I am here, and I'm not sure I shall get
on very well with the others.  I've never had much to do
with other people of my own age."

"No, you're different," she said.  "But you're much
nicer.  I don't think you'd have been so nice if you had
been brought up like other boys; or so happy, either.
But you'll have to be careful when you go away.  There
are lots of temptations which other boys of your age
know about, and you don't."

He turned a smiling face on her.  "Then hadn't you
better tell me about them?" he said.  "Do you mean
drinking and gambling?  I was reading a book the other
day about all that.  It didn't seem to me much of a
temptation.  I suppose I shall have as much money as I
want without gambling for it, shan't I?  And why
should I want to drink if I'm not thirsty?"

She had not paid much attention to this.  She was
wondering whether she dared talk to him of the life,
as it appeared to her, from which he had been kept
secluded.  It had been tacitly accepted, all through his
boyhood, that no mystery was to be made of it, and any
questions he might ask should be answered, but that his
being kept at Royd was to be taken as a natural thing.
After her late revolt she had swung round to a complete
acceptance of the understanding by which those who
were responsible for Harry should share in the seclusion
which had been laid down as the best thing for him
during his boyhood.  Only so could it be accepted without
question by him.  Lady Brent had triumphed, and had
shown, this evening, that she bore no malice on account
of what had lately happened.  Mrs. Brent was at peace
with her, and once more a loyal supporter of her views.
But there was a little jealousy and a little egotism left.
She was Harry's mother.  If any enlightenment was to
be brought to him as to what lay before him, surely she
might be considered the right person to give it!  It was
only because she knew that Lady Brent would not think
so that she hesitated.

"Oh, drinking and gambling," she said, catching him
up.  "No, I don't think those would be temptations to
you, brought up as you have been, though one never
knows, with young men.  It's women *I* should be afraid
of.  They'll try to get hold of you.  You see you'll be
a great catch, Harry.  And of course you're very
handsome.  You'll have to be careful about designing
women."

No, decidedly, Lady Brent would not have approved
of this kind of warning.

It seemed to be distasteful to Harry too.  "All right,
mother, I'll take care," he said, shortly.

"It would never do for you to marry beneath you,"
she went on, rather surprisingly, and would have gone
on to amplify her statement, but that Harry suddenly
cut her short.

"I'm most frightfully hungry, mother," he said.
"Let's go in and see if we can get hold of anything.
Then I think it will be about time for me to go to bed."





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.. _`AUGUST`:

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   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   AUGUST

.. vspace:: 2

Harry stood at a window of his room in the tower,
looking out on to the trees, which tossed and struggled
against the gale.  Heavy clouds were racing across the
sky and at no long intervals gusts of rain rattled against
the westward window.

Harry had asked for this room as his own a year or
two before.  It filled the whole space of the tower on
its top story, except for the corner in which was the
spiral stone stairway, and had windows on all four
sides.  In front was the park, and from this height could
be caught a glimpse of the sea across the tops of the
trees beyond it, but this afternoon it was blotted out by
the grey mist which seemed to take the colour from
everything, though the month was August and the deep
rich tones of the woods would ordinarily have stood out
boldly.  Below the three other windows lay the long
irregular roofs of the ancient house, with the courtyards
enclosed, and the outbuildings, the gardens, the
orchard,—a fascinating bird's-eye view containing all
sorts of curious surprises.  Harry had never been tired
of it as a child, and found it interesting now, though
it had ceased to hold any new discovery.  The room had
not been used until he had taken to it, though it had
contained some old pieces of furniture.  He had added
to them whatever had taken his fancy from the many
unoccupied rooms of the house, and brought whatever
he wanted for his own pursuits here.  He was never
disturbed in this room, and never entered it except when
he wanted to be alone.  He did his work downstairs in
the room that was still called the schoolroom; he read in
the library, where Wilbraham usually kept him
company; he sat and talked with his mother and grandmother
in the rooms they occupied.  It was of the essence
of this room that he could be alone in it when he
wanted to be alone, which was not very often, for he was
no recluse.  If the elders had made themselves free of
entrance to it, its charms for him would have gone; but
Lady Brent had said that it was to be his only, without
his having asked more than that he should be allowed to
have what he wanted in it.  "It's right that he should
be able to get away from us sometimes, indoors as well
as out," she had said to Mrs. Brent.  "He's not to feel
himself chained to our society."

Harry stood at the window, looking out not upon the
courts and gardens, laid out beneath him, but across the
trees to where the sea was, if he could have seen it for
the mist.  It was holiday time with him.  He had come
up here after luncheon thinking to make out the treasure
island map that he had promised to Jane and Pobbles
before they had gone away to the seaside.  This was
part of a game they had invented, sitting in their log
cabin one wet afternoon.  Harry was by no means above
games that were no more than games, though he was
too old to turn reality into a game, and this was a
fascinating one that they had hit upon together—the
designing of the ideal island upon which the vicissitudes of
life might one day cause them all to be wrecked.  They
had contributed its features, one by one—sandy beaches,
and coral pools to bathe in; bread-fruit and grapes and
oranges; a great hollow tree halfway up a mountain that
they could make into a house, as was done by that
didactic but resourceful Swiss of the name of Robinson;
a hidden hoard of treasure which would include gold
cups and plates and dishes for domestic use; a spring
of miraculously clear water, discovered just when they
were dying of thirst, and slightly flavoured with
pineapple (this was Pobbles's idea); a hut in which a
marooned sailor had left behind him every sort of tool
that could come in handy, he himself having been taken
off the island, on Jane's suggestion, so as to avoid the
nuisance of a skeleton: these were a few of the amenities
that were to be found on this accommodating island, and
they were increased every time the subject came up for
discussion.  Harry had promised to draw a map for
them, including the already settled geographical
features, and adding any others that might occur to him
in the meantime.  He had drawn the outline of the island
on a handsome scale, and inked it in carefully.  Then
he had got tired of it.  The eager pleasure of the
children was wanted to give salt to this game.  He could
not employ himself for a whole afternoon over it.

He missed those little friends of his, especially Jane,
with her quick ways and eager loyalty, which made her
so companionable, though never tiresomely clinging, as
is the way with admiring children.  He had not known
how much they had come to mean to him during this
last year in which they had been his constant
companions, until they had gone away and he had been left
to the society of his elders.  Between him and
Wilbraham, especially, there was some community of taste.
He owed a good deal of his love of fine literature to
Wilbraham, and there was much that he could share with
him that was beyond the understanding of the children.
They were only children, and he had told them none of
his secret thoughts.  Jane was very quick of
understanding, and had developed considerably during the
year he had known her; perhaps he might have come to
confide some of them to her if they had ever been alone
together.  But Pobbles was her inseparable shadow, and
he had never wanted it otherwise.  With all their
immaturity, they appealed to the spirit of youth in him,
and their companionship gave him something that he
could not get from his elders.  That was why he missed
them so much on this wild wet afternoon, when he was
debarred from his usual pursuits out of doors, and there
seemed to be nothing worth doing indoors.  And yet it
was not them so much that he missed—though he did
not know it—as the companionship and inspiration of
answering youth.  Perhaps they had had something to
do with arousing the need of it in him, but they were too
young to satisfy it.  He had been supremely happy in
his childhood and youth—far more consistently happy
than most boys of his age, and happier than he
consciously knew.  But the time for that life was coming
to an end; unless some change came to him he would
gain less and less contentment from it as he grew older.

He had not yet grasped the magnitude of the change
that was even then all around him, and would soon draw
him, as an atom in the whole sensitive world, into its
vortex.

For the great war had begun.  As Harry stood at
the window, the German hordes were over-running
Belgium and France, England was hurrying feverishly into
the breach, throughout the length and breadth of the
country nothing else was talked of but the war; only
here and there in some remote place the menace of
the great conflagration was unheeded as yet; but very
soon there would be no place where its weight did not
fall.

It was talked of at the Castle.  Wilbraham already
had his maps up in the library, and his little flags to
stick into them.  He and Lady Brent disputed about
it over the table.  Wilbraham thought it would all be
over, and the Germans taught their sharp lesson, in a
few weeks.  Lady Brent, remembering similar prophecies
about an immeasurably less formidable enemy fifteen
years before, thought it would be longer.  It might take
a whole year to bring it to an end.  Longer it could not
take, because all Europe would be bankrupt if it did.
They argued quite impersonally.  They would not be
touched by it themselves.

Harry had not caught fire over it yet.  His life had
been quite divorced from anything that went on in the
world outside Royd, except in what he had learnt from
books.  Neither home nor foreign politics meant
anything to him, and he never looked at a newspaper, except
in idle moments.  His one regret was that the war would
be over before he should gain his commission, in two or
three years' time.  That seemed to be agreed upon.  At
present there were no individual deeds to excite his
imagination.  He took but a languid interest in it as
yet, though every day there seemed to be some increase
in its importance.  This afternoon it weighed a little
on him, with all the rest, but a break in the clouds would
have set his mind free of it, and for the moment of
every other vaguely felt dissatisfaction.

There was no sign of any break in the heavy clouds,
but some weather sense which he had acquired in his
open-air life gave him the feeling that the storm was
nearing its end.  At any rate, he must go out, whether
it cleared or not.  He was getting mopy, shut up in the
house.  He knew by experience that that rare feeling
never persisted when he was once out of doors.

A furious gust drove the rain against the windows
and blotted out all the landscape as he turned to leave
the room; but he felt better already for his decision.
He would go for a gallop towards the sea.  It would be
invigorating to have the rain and the wind in his face,
and perhaps the storm would be over by the time he
reached the shore.  It would be grand to see the sun
break over the waves, and watch them dashing
themselves against the rocks.

He put on his oldest breeches and gaiters and a
riding raincoat and went out to the stables.  He told no
one that he was going out, wanting to escape dissuasion
from his mother and grandmother in the drawing-room,
and Wilbraham in the library.  They let him take his
way in these matters, but it was not to be expected from
middle-aged human nature that he would be allowed to
go out in this weather without some remonstrance.

He had two horses of his own, Clive, a bay, and Circe,
a black blood mare, and his own groom, Fred Armour,
the head coachman's son, who was only a year older than
himself, and a friend of his lifetime.  Ben, his big black
retriever, who followed him everywhere, had already
expressed his delighted agreement with the sensible course
he had shown himself about to take.  He knew he was
admitted to the house on condition that he did not raise
his voice in it, and beyond a few subdued yaps of
appreciation he had followed Harry downstairs with no more
than ecstatic wrigglings and sweeps of his feathered tail.
But, once outside, his enthusiasm broke loose and
brought on the scene other members of his race at a loose
end for something to do.  There was a terrific canine
commotion as Harry called for Fred, and the first thing
to be done was to bring disappointment to all but Siren,
a deer hound, and Rollo, a Great Dane, by shutting
them up again.  The three bigger dogs could keep up
with Circe, galloping freely; the others must reserve
themselves for expeditions when the blood was less
insistent on rapid motion.

Fred Armour, a cheerful brown-faced red-headed
young man, neat and active in his stable kit, seemed also
to have been affected by the dismal weather, for he did
what was required of him without his usual grin or ready
flow of words.  It was not until he had saddled and
bridled Circe and brought her out that he said: "I'm
off to-morrow, Sir Harry.  Father's said yes, and her
ladyship has given her consent, though she don't like it."

Harry stared at him, holding the mare, who was dancing
with impatience.  He understood nothing until Fred
told him that he was joining up with the County
Yeomanry—the first man on the Royd estate to go, or, as
it seemed afterwards, to think of going.  The time had
not yet come when the call for recruits penetrated the
out-of-the-way corners of England.  Harry was
surprised, as his grandmother had apparently been, that
Fred should have thought of going.  But his impulse was
one of envy when he was told about it, not of dissuasion.
"I'm nearly as old as you," he said, "but it will take
me a couple of years to get my commission.  It will all
be over by then."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Fred.  "But there's a lot
to be trained, in case they want them.  I shall come
back when they've done with me.  Her ladyship says I
can, though she's upset like at my wanting to go."

Harry had something to think about as he rode out
into the park, and after a sharp canter over the
drenched grass, with the rain and the wind fretting the
mare so that it was all he could do to hold her, slowed
to a trot as he entered a ride through the woods.  It was
not so much of the war.  Fred would have a few months
of training as a trooper, and then he would probably
come back; he was not, after all, greatly to be envied
there, and Harry had no particular wish to hurry on
his own longer training, since the time was so far
distant when he could expect to get his commission.  But
Fred had told him of others who were likely to follow his
example now that the ice had once been broken—another
lad from the stables, two from the gardens, some from
the village.  A cousin of his, from some distance off,
who had already served in the Yeomanry, had joined a
regular cavalry regiment, and was already in France,
fighting.  It was from him that the impulsion had first
come.

It was a fine thing to respond like that to your
country's call, almost before it was sounded.  It was what
Harry's own forefathers would have done, and had done
in many an instance that he had read about in old books
in which he had pored to find out what he could about
the knightly stock from which he had sprung.  They
would have collected their servants and tenants around
them and ridden off at their head to offer themselves—a
small band, perhaps, but a sturdy one, well horsed and
equipped and well versed in the man's business of giving
and receiving blows.  It could not be quite like that in
this war, when boys of his age, even if capable of raising
their followers, would have to go through the mill of
learning and training before they could be of any use.
But the readiness with which Fred's cousin had been
accepted and sent out to fight disturbed him somewhat,
both on his own account and on that of the men and
youths who owed him allegiance.  There was nobody in
the village of Royd or on all the wide Castle lands, so far
as he knew, who had done any of the soldiering that is
open to young men in times of peace.  Supposing he
himself had been of full age to fight, he would still have
had to wait until he had learnt his business, and he could
have given a lead to nobody.  Why hadn't it been
suggested to him that he should join the County Yeomanry,
or why had he not thought of it himself?  The Sir Harry
of the time of the Napoleonic wars had been in command
of it; almost every man of his tenantry had belonged to
it.  Now it drew its recruits from other parts of the
county; no one from Royd had served in it for a generation
or more.  It had never occurred to him that it would
be a good thing for him in his position to do so.

Royd was ruled by a woman.  That was the explanation
of this lapse in its ancient duties and responsibilities,
now for the first time apparent.  And he was
ruled by a woman, though the yoke had hitherto been
but lightly felt.  Fred Armour could go off, though not
without having some opposition to encounter; others
could talk of doing so.  He must stay where he was until
the appointed time.

Well, the time was not far distant now.  In January
he would go up for his examination, and after that the
new life would begin for him—the man's life, in which,
though still under tutelage, he would be free at times to
go where he would.  He had rather dreaded exchanging
his life at Royd for it, for that had been a life full of
the satisfaction of all the desires he had felt, and it had
never seemed to him either narrow or confined.  But this
sense of a woman's domination was beginning to prick
him.  He thought that at least he would put it to his
grandmother that Royd ought to have been represented
in the Yeomanry.  It might have been a small matter, in
times of peace, but it was one that would not have
escaped a male head of Royd.  And he must see to it
himself that any man who wanted to join up with the
troops in training should have no difficulty put in his
way.  As for himself, there seemed to be nothing to be
done but to wait until his time came.  Fred might,
perhaps, see some fighting, if Lady Brent were right and
Wilbraham were wrong about the war lasting on into
the next year; that was the advantage of belonging to
the ranks.  For officers, the training must be much
longer, and his would not be finished if the war lasted
for two years, which it seemed to be agreed was an
impossibility.

He shook his thoughts from him as he came out of the
wood and galloped again on the crisp turf of the hilltop,
between the gorse and the heather and the outcropping
rocks.

He was on high ground here.  The rain had ceased,
though the wind was buffeting him so furiously that he
had to keep his head down as he rode, and even the mare
was soon submissive to being pulled down to a trot and
then to a walk.  The light was stronger now and the
clouds driven along by the wind seemed to be higher;
there was no sign of a break in them, but there was the
feeling that at any time they might be rent asunder and
let through a shaft of sunlight.  The mist had all gone,
and the sea lay, a grey, turbulent expanse, apparently
near at hand, though at its nearest point it was still
some two miles distant.

The sight of the sea always had a calming effect upon
Harry, whether it lay blue and calm or was lashed to
angry motion.  It was his outlook into the world beyond
the bounds of his home.  When he had least felt
himself circumscribed something had yet urged him now and
then to ride to the shore and to let his spirit go out
across the boundless waters.  And now, as he saw the
great spaces of sea and sky in front of him his thoughts
lightened.  As his physical world had this wide outlet
into the greater world beyond it, so his life, bound
hitherto within limits that he was outgrowing, would
soon open into something wider and freer.  And just as
he would return to the sheltered haunts of his home,
loving it all the more for his glimpse of the unsheltered
sea, so with the life which had been so happy there.  It
was coming to an end for him, but was all the more to
be treasured on that account as long as it lasted.

He came to a break in the rocky cliff which led down
to a little sandy bay, on the edge of which was what had
once been a fisherman's cottage.  The cliff had broken
away in front of it and it had been abandoned as
dangerous some years before.  Only its walls were standing,
but there was a place among the ruins in which he could
tie up his horse if he wanted to walk by the sea.  He
did so now, and went down to the sands, followed by the
dogs.  The sun came out as he did so, and great masses
of clouds were torn asunder and piled up to be rolled
away before the wind, instead of forming a thick curtain
between him and the sky.

He shouted for joy at the lifting of the grey oppression,
and became a boy again as by a sudden impulse
he stripped to bathe and ran over the sands to meet the
shock of the great waves that were rolling up them.





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.. _`ON THE MOOR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON THE MOOR

.. vspace:: 2

As he rode towards home an hour or two later, Harry
felt as if all the stains upon life had been washed away,
just as the wind and rain had scoured the heavens of
their dark load of cloud.  The sun, now declining
towards the west, shone in a sky of clean blue; the wind
was dropping every minute, but was still fresh as he
cantered across the moor.  He rode with his head up,
singing blithely, and drinking in through all his senses
the sparkling glory of a world set free from the tyranny
of storm and gloom.

He had thought out nothing to a definite conclusion,
and yet the perplexities which had surrounded him as
he started out on his ride seemed to have disappeared.
The war, which had affected him so little, now lay in the
background of his mind as a real and a very big thing,
and it seemed to him fixed and certain that somehow
and at some time it would profoundly affect his life;
but at present he had nothing to do but to await what
should be coming to him.  His place at Royd must also
undergo a change, and that, too, would come, in its time,
as it would come.  Whatever should happen, he was
ready for it, and his mind was free and happy, but also
strangely expectant.  He was in the current of some
power outside himself, but in complete harmony with it,
and at the same time in free possession of himself, just
as he had lately exulted in his youth and strength as his
body had been borne on the motion of the mighty waters.
Ever since that night of still and unearthly beauty,
when the vision had come to him of a living power in
nature for a sign of which he had yearned, he had
thought of himself as controlled by strong yet gentle
and beneficent forces, which, if he yielded himself to
them, would lead him along paths that he would best
fulfil himself in treading.  The feeling was stronger at
some times than others.  It had never been so obscured
as it had been a few hours earlier, but now, in the sun
and the wind, it was very strong.  He felt himself calmed
and uplifted in spirit, as if by a tangible communion
with the guiding influences.  They seemed to be telling
him, or to have told him, that his shadowed mood need
never have been; that they had something in store for
him, some experience, some happening, which would give
him renewed faith in their guidance.  There was a sense
almost of being indulged, by an assurance out of the
common run.

But his mood was as far as possible from being
analytical, as he rode on singing and calling to his dogs,
which sprang round him rejoicing as he did in the
exhilaration of quick motion and the strength and poise of
muscle and sinew.  His mind had cleared, and he was
free to give himself up to the joy of living, all the more
keenly for the whisper that had come to him of
something new and exciting in preparation for him.

The boy, the horse and the dogs—they had had the
fine, fresh world to themselves throughout the afternoon,
except for the strong birds of the sea and the little
birds of the gorsy common.  No buildings lay upon the
path that Harry had taken to the shore, nor very near
it, for he had ridden through the wood by a narrow ride,
little used, and across the open ground had kept out of
the way of trodden paths.  There were sheep on this
wide stretch of upland, and a shepherd might occasionally
have been seen there.  Otherwise it was little
frequented; a human figure on it would arouse curiosity.

A human figure came into view as Harry had traversed
the greater part of the open space, and the woods
of Royd were a mile or so in front of him.  It was the
figure of a woman, and was immediately between him
and the point towards which he was riding.  He knew
all the people who lived in the scattered cottages and
farms between Royd and the sea; there were not many
of them, and none just here.  He wondered who it could
be going in that direction, and what she was doing so
far away from human habitation.

As he rode on, he saw that it was a girl, and a
stranger, which was somewhat surprising, as the nearest
place to which strangers came was miles away.  He had
left off singing, but one of the dogs barked, and the girl
turned round, evidently startled and perhaps a little
alarmed.  He was near enough now to see her face.  She
was very young, hardly more than a child, for her hair
was not knotted up under her hat, but tied behind with
a big bow.  She was tall and slim.  The wind took her
skirts as she stood there, and revealed the supple grace
of her young figure, firmly but lightly poised against it.
She was dressed in a coat and skirt of brown tweed, with
a hat of soft straw firmly pinned on to her graceful
head.  So much Harry took in before he came near
enough to see her face.

Her features were fine and true, and she had a delicate
skin, its colour freshened by the wind.  Her eyes were
dark, with a starry radiance in them; her lips were
slightly parted as she looked at him approaching.  She
was beautiful, with the beauty half of a child, half of a
woman.

Harry reined in his horse as he came up to her, and
for an appreciable instant they looked into one another's
eyes without speaking.  Then the girl said: "I have
lost my way.  I don't know where I'm going to," and
laughed and blushed at the same time.

Harry laughed, too, and slipped down off his horse.
"Where do you want to go?" he asked.  "I'll show you
the way, if you tell me."

She was staying with her father, she said, at a cottage
on the edge of the woods; she had come out when the
rain had ceased to walk towards the sea, but it was
farther than she had thought, and when she had turned
back to see the unbroken line of the woods before her
there was nothing to tell her which point to make for.

The woman with whom she was lodging was the widow
of a man who had worked in the Royd woods; he had
died the year before and she had been given a pension
and allowed to remain on in her cottage.  It was in a
group of three or four, about a mile from the Castle
and a mile and a half from the village, which formed the
nearest approach to an outlying hamlet that was to be
found on the Royd lands.  It was rather surprising that
anybody should take lodgings there, though with the
deep woods behind it and the moor in front, and the sea
within view, many people might have chosen it to make
holiday in, if it had come within their knowledge.

"Oh, Mrs. Ivimey," said Harry, pointing.  "That's
a mile and more away over there.  I'm afraid you can't
have much sense of direction."

They both laughed at that.  It seemed the most
natural thing for them to talk and laugh together.  The
secluded life that Harry had lived had brought some
shyness into the way he addressed himself to strangers,
though his natural manner was free and open.  But this
girl, walking freely over the windy moor, seemed to be
in some way allied to those living influences of nature
with which his contact was so real.  And the spirit of
youth informed all her looks and her ways and met the
answering youth in him.  There was no room for shyness
in speaking to her, and as he neither felt nor showed it,
her response was frank, too.  "I'm a Londoner," she
said.  "You couldn't expect me to find my way about
here, where the paths wind about anyhow, and
everything is the same."

He was walking beside her now in the direction he
had pointed out.  He had made no offer to accompany
her and she made no comment upon his doing so.  It
seemed that they must have a great deal to say to one
another and that the best way was to walk together
until some of it at least should have been said.

"Everything the same!" exclaimed Harry.  "Why,
every inch of it is different!  I have never been to
London, but the streets of a town must be much more alike
than this is."

They laughed again at that, and the girl threw a
glance at him, walking by her side, while Circe, held by
his strong brown hand, curveted on the close turf and
the dogs ranged here and there, a little subdued from
their bounding energy, but still keenly interested in all
that lay about them.  The raindrops sparkled still upon
gorse and grass and bramble, larks sang in the clear
spaces of the sky, and the dying wind brought a salty
thymy fragrance with it.  The blood in the veins thrilled
to the sweet glad freshness of it all, and youth called to
youth as they trod the springy turf together.

There was such a lot to be explained.  Everything
that was said opened up endless more things to be said.
He told her that he had lived all his life at Royd; she
told him that she had seldom been away from London.
But, whereas he showed himself quite content with the
unusual limitations of his life, she spoke of hers with
regret.  "I've always wanted the country," she said;
"I've never been so happy as I have been here, for the
last two days.  Even the storm this morning, I didn't
mind.  It was something big and grand, and I knew the
sun would shine and it would all be lovely again."

They talked on and on.  They had made friends, as
children make friends, liking each other, and pouring
themselves out in endless little confidences.

"My name is Harry Brent.  I live at Royd Castle
with my mother and grandmother."

"Oh yes, of course; you're Sir Harry Brent.
Mrs. Ivimey has talked about you.

"My name is Viola Bastian.  My father called me
that out of a beautiful poem.  He is an artist, but
nobody buys his pictures, so he paints scenery at a theatre.
We are very poor."

It didn't seem odd to Harry that this beautiful girl,
whose speech was refined and whose clothes were such as
a sister or cousin of his own might have worn, should be
the daughter of a scene painter, who was also very poor.
Nor did he blench in the least at a further statement,
which explained, at least, the clothes.  "I have to work
and help father.  He didn't want me to go on the stage,
and I should have hated it, too.  I am with a dressmaker
in Dover Street—Nadine.  She makes things chiefly for
quite young girls.  I have to show them off.  It is hard
work in the season, but I get a good long holiday, and
if father can get away too, and we have enough money,
we go into the country for part of it.  That is why we
are here now."

It was all very interesting, as anything she might have
told him about herself would have been interesting.  He
knew nothing of states of life other than those which
were immediately around him; he accepted everything
she told him as quite natural to her, though he thought
it a pity that she should have to work so hard and could
not live in the country, as he did, since she loved it.
She was what he saw and heard her to be, and what she
did and where she lived was quite unimportant, except
as she might feel them to be important.

But how did she come to be what she was under such
conditions of parentage and environment?  If it did not
occur to Harry in his all-embracing ignorance to ask
himself that question, it might very well have been asked
by others with more experience of life than his.  She was
as frank in her address as he was, showed no sense of
the social difference between them in any *mauvaise honte*
or explanatory questions.  It must have made itself
plain to a listener that she was indeed a rare flower of
unsullied girlhood, as innocent in essence as Harry
himself, who had been kept from contact with the world
outside his castle of romance, since she had lived at its
crowded centre and remained unspotted by it.

They had not half finished their confidences by the
time they came within sight of the cottage at which she
was staying—or, rather, of the smoke from its chimney,
which rose from behind a corner of the wood jutting out
into the moor.  Perhaps it was some acquired sophistication
that caused her to stop there and to prepare to
say good-bye, out of sight of the cottage itself and
whoever might see them from it.  But, whatever it was,
Harry felt the same disinclination to being looked upon
by eyes that might have been questioning or curious.
She was for him alone—one of his cherished innocent
secrets—all the more to be kept to himself because it
was like no other secret that he had ever had before.  A
secret must be shared by some one, or it is no secret,
but only a deception.  Harry's secret had been between
him and nature, or between him and an imaginary Harry
who owed all initiative to the real Harry.  But this was
his and hers, and hers as much as his.  She could keep it
a warm nestling secret, or destroy it by a word.  Which
would she do?

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her slender girl's
hand, and looking him straight in the eyes, as she had
looked at him when first they had met.  He took her
hand, and the touch of it thrilled him.  It was soft and
firm and cool, like no hand that he had ever had in his,
though he had taken the hands of other girls not
noticeably different in shape or size from this one.

There was the hint of a question in her look.  Was it
to be good-bye?

Harry had no such thought.  "There is a lot I want
to talk to you about," he said.  "Tomorrow afternoon—no,
I don't want to wait till the afternoon—tomorrow
morning I will come; quite early."

Her eyes softened, and she smiled.  "Very well," she
said, and waited for him to tell her where and when he
would come.

They were to meet on the outskirts of the wood.  He
would show her a ferny pool in the very heart of it,
which he thought nobody but himself knew of.  "It will
be very hot to-morrow," he said, throwing a weatherwise
eye at the heavens.  "We shall be cool and quiet there."

Suddenly he felt shy of her, mounted his horse, and
cantered away, his dogs following him.  Then he felt
uneasy at the thought that she might have found him
rudely abrupt, and when he had gone a few hundred
yards he turned to look back.  She was still standing
where he had left her, and waved her hand to him.

He had the impulse to turn and ride back to her, but
cantered on, with a flame of joy shooting up in his heart.
When he looked back again, she had gone.





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.. _`VIOLA`:

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   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   VIOLA

.. vspace:: 2

That evening at dinner all the talk was about the war.
General Leman's heroic stand at Liège had ended in
surrender.  King Albert's government had retired to
Antwerp; the way was open for the enemy to Brussels, and
it was not yet certain whether Brussels would deliver
itself up or defend itself.

But the great news, now allowed to be known, was that
the British Expeditionary Force was all on French soil.

There was plenty to talk about.  Lady Brent was
pessimistic, and already saw the Germans over-running
Belgium.  Wilbraham thought that when the English
and French once moved in concert the Germans would
be rolled up and rolled back like a carpet, and the end
of the whole mad business would come very soon afterwards.
Mrs. Brent was inclined to agree with him.  She
alone of the three had her eye anxiously upon Harry as
she spoke, with the fear working in her that, after all, he
might be drawn into the vortex.  "It can't go on for
two years," she said.  "It couldn't go on for three
years, could it?"

They laughed at her.  "You may make yourself quite
easy on that score," said Lady Brent.

To Harry it all seemed extremely unimportant.  The
conviction that, whether it lasted one year or two years,
or three, or ended before Christmas, he would certainly
be involved in it somehow had been registered in his
mind and could be laid aside until it should fulfil
itself.  He did not want to think about it, still less to
talk about it.  His personal connection with what was
going on now, brought to his mind that afternoon by his
talk with Fred Armour, had faded from his mind; and
the tale of the war as it was being unfolded from day to
day and as it was being discussed by those about him,
had little more interest for him than the tale of a war
centuries old which he might have studied with Wilbraham.

Yet he joined in the talk from time to time, and if
he said nothing that had much effect upon the discussion
he said whatever he did say in such a way as to arouse
no suspicion in the minds of his elders that his thoughts
were almost completely divorced from his speech.

The old dim hall in which they sat had its windows
open to the night, which was now quite still, with a sky
of spangled velvet, broken into by the dark spires of
the cypresses in the garden.  Harry could see them
through the window opposite to which he sat, and in the
intervals of talk he could hear the plash of the
fountains.  The thought came to him that he would like to
walk with Viola in the starlit garden.  He would like
to show her this beautiful house of his; it would be a
tribute to her, and his own love of it would be enhanced
by her praise.  He looked round at the hall and saw
its carved and dusky splendour with new eyes.

They were dining at a table set in the oriel window
facing on the garden.  The table was lit by candles in
branched silver candlesticks.  On a heavy buffet by the
door from the kitchens and buttery, under the gallery and
on serving tables, were other candles.  There were
perhaps a dozen in all, and they gave what light was
necessary, but left the high-pitched, raftered roof just
a-glimmer, and parts of the hall in shadow.  The
portraits that hung above the dark wainscoting were dimly
seen, the gilded carving of the gallery and the screen
beneath it glowed softly where the candles shone upon
it, and faded into rich dimness beyond the circle of
light.

Viola!  She would love this old hall, and all the other
stately rooms of the ancient house.  He had never
thought of it, except very vaguely, as belonging to him,
but he thought of himself now as belonging to it.  He
would like her to admire anything that had to do with
him, and he would like her to share his admiration.

But such thoughts as these were a very small part of
what was rioting through his mind.  His chief feeling
about his immediate surroundings was one of strangeness
that he should be sitting there quietly dining and
talking upon unimportant matters which had nothing
to do with Viola.  It was to connect her with them that
he took notice of them at all, and he looked out more
often into the still starlit garden, because it was under
the sky that he had met her and talked to her, and her
alliance with the things of nature that he loved was
already fixed and established.  All beautiful aspects of
the world, and of the fair places in his own world,
connected themselves naturally with her.  She filled every
corner of his mind, and to whatever source of familiar
delight he turned she seemed to be there before him.

After dinner, on summer nights, Harry often walked
in the garden with his mother.  Lady Brent never went
out, but sat with her book in the drawing-room.
Wilbraham spent half an hour in the library, smoking and
reading, and then came into the drawing-room to play the
piano or to talk until they went to bed at ten o'clock.
When they heard the first notes of the piano, Harry
and his mother would go indoors.  If they lingered,
Lady Brent would send Wilbraham out for them, on the
plea of the night air being dangerous, or, if the night
was so warm that that seemed too absurd, of its being
time for Harry to go to bed.  She did not like these
garden confabulations between mother and son, but
never showed it except by confining them thus to the
half-hour after dinner.

To-night Harry half hoped that his mother would not
come out with him.  He wanted to be alone, but
reproached himself for the desire as she asked him to
fetch her shawl and smiled at him with the pleasure
manifest in her face.  He knew how much it meant to
her to have him for this quiet half-hour to herself.  It
was the only one in the long day that she could call her
own.  He was left free to his own duties and devices,
except for the times when all of them were together.
With his youthful sense of fairness he knew that both
his mother and grandmother left him free in this way
for his sake and not for theirs.  He must not grudge
them the short time that he was expected to be with
them.  And he had taken a pleasure himself in these
little garden wanderings with his mother that arose not
only from the satisfaction of giving her pleasure.  He
loved her—more than he loved anybody—and had a
man's sense of protection towards her.  He did not know
yet that he loved Viola.  The idea of love had not yet
occurred to him in connection with her.  As he ran
upstairs to get his mother's shawl, the thought crossed
his mind that he had never yet wanted to get away from
his mother for the time he was accustomed to devote
himself to her, and puzzled him a little.

He was more than usually kind to her as they walked
up and down the long bowling green together between
the close-clipped yew hedges.  He made an effort to
dispossess his mind of what was filling it, and to be to her
what he would have been but for the thrilling adventure
that had befallen him.  The only sign of all that was
hidden from her—and she had no clue to its meaning—was
when he said that the garden made him feel shut
in, and asked her to walk in the park with him.

She felt his tenderness and palpitated with happiness
over it.  If she had but known that the time had come
when she was less to him than she had ever been, and
that his kindness and gentleness were but vicarious
tributes meant, though all unconsciously, to take the
place of the love that must soon be withdrawn from
spending itself only on her, and given to another!  But
these wounds to a mother's love were spared her for
to-night.  She thought he was nearer than ever to her,
and all thoughts of losing him were far from her.

She ventured to talk of her fear of the war taking
him from her, and he soothed her, laughing at her fears.
He did not tell her of his conviction that it would do so,
nor feel any desire to tell her.  What he did feel a
half-shrinking desire to do was to tell her about Viola.  But
an instinct which he did not understand prevented him,
and the moment they had parted he was glad that he
had resisted the impulse.  The secret was not his alone.
It gave him joy to think that it was a secret, and that
it was not his alone.

Wilbraham called out for them.  They went in, and
Harry said good-night at once and went upstairs.  He
was no longer sent to bed before the rest, but no
objection was ever made if he went.

When he was alone in his room he breathed relief.
His mother, perhaps, would come in on her way to bed,
but otherwise he would be alone for the hours of the
night, and yet so much not alone.  He thought that
to-night his mother would certainly come, and he undressed
quickly so that when he should hear her he could get
into bed and pretend to be asleep.  This small piece of
deception did not trouble him, since it would not trouble
her.  He had never given her what he owed her.  Now he
wanted to think uninterruptedly of Viola.

He leaned out of the window with his chin on his
hands and gazed at the dark masses of trees in front of
him and at the starry roof of the sky above them, which
was above her, too.  His window was on the same side
of the house as that of the room in which Grant had
slept the year before, but the trees were nearer to it.
He gazed more at the sky than at the trees.  Yes, in
that direction, almost directly in front of him, lay the
cottage in which she was—now at this very minute.  It
was a moving thought.  Perhaps she was asleep, perhaps
she was looking at the same stars as he was.  Perhaps
she was thinking of him, as he was thinking of her.  That
was a very stirring thought, and led him to shift his
position.  He wanted to be in motion as he thought of her.
Later on, when the house was all asleep, he would dress
and go out.  For the present he could only walk about
his room, when the waves of emotion that came to him
stirred him from his place at the window.

But he could not think like that.  He did not know
what to think about.  His impatience grew for the time
to come when he should be alone and undisturbed.  Then
he would be able to think, out there under the stars.  The
trees oppressed him, as they had never done before.  He
got into bed.  He would lie and think there until his
mother had come and gone.  But the moment he got into
bed he fell asleep, and did not awake when she came in
softly, shielding the light of her candle from his eyes.

How beautiful he looked as he lay there, his head
slightly turned on the pillow and one arm and hand
along his side on the counterpane—and how innocent!
How she loved him for that beauty and innocence!  She
felt it as uplifting her from the lower plane of unrest
and petulance upon which she was apt to move.  She
blessed him for the calming, purifying thoughts which
he brought to her, and took comfort to herself in the
thoughts that there must be something good in herself
since it was partly owing to her influence that he was so
free from evil.  Yes, he was hers; her own dear child
whom she loved, and who loved her.  She had set herself
aside and allowed another to direct his life and hers.
Soon he would be free from that tutelage, but not from
the bonds that her love had woven around him.  She
would reap her reward.  Oh, it was a blessed thing to
bear children, and after long years to have them as a
prop and stay, as well as a solace.  Not for many years
would he leave her, in spirit, though in body they would
sometimes be parted.  She must be more to him now than
she had ever been, and when the time came to give him
up to another she would not complain, since she would
have had him so perfectly for a time.

It was nearly two o'clock when Harry awoke, suddenly,
and in complete possession of himself.  He might
have thought that he had not slept at all, but that the
moon shining in at his window told him the hour as
plainly as if it had been called in his ear.

He sprang out of bed and began to put on his clothes,
but paused for a moment, asking himself why he was in
such a hurry to do so.

As happens so often in sleep, the perplexities with
which he had lain down seemed to have resolved
themselves without conscious process.  He had wanted to ask
himself what had happened to him, but it seemed now
as if some romantic mist had cleared away from his brain
and nothing in particular had happened to him—nothing,
at least, that needed any careful process of
self-examination.  He had met a very charming and friendly
girl, and he was going to meet her again in the day
that was already moving towards dawn.  That would
be very agreeable, but what was there in it to have put
him into the state in which he had lived through the
evening?

But, as the thought of meeting her again with half
the hours of darkness already gone—presented itself to
him, he felt again the glow of pleasure and anticipation.
Yes, he wanted to think about her, and he could
think best about her out in the open.

He dressed quickly and dropped from his window onto
the grass, which was not more than ten feet or so below
him.  And now he seemed to be more master of himself,
as he passed across a strip of moonlit green and into the
dimness of the wood.  He was reminded of the night in
which the vision of the fairies dancing had come to him.
Now it was full summer and then spring had only been
on its way; his long-trained sense marked the difference
in a thousand little signs.  But that had been a night
of silver moonshine, as this was.  The contact with
nature was clear on such quiet, illumined nights as this.

Viola!

She grew slowly upon him as he trod the soft grass
or the dry crackling beech-mast.  Her face, somewhat to
his surprise, he could not call up before him, though he
tried to see it with his inward eye.  But he dwelt upon
the slight supple figure that had moved beside him so
freely and so gracefully.  It gave him pleasure to recall
her slender hand, which had lain in his, and he remembered
her feet and ankles in their neat brown shoes and
stockings, and the fall of her skirt over them, and the
little hat of soft white straw with its twisted ribbon.

Again he was a little puzzled at the effect these
memories had upon him.  He had an eye for beauty of
animate form.  He loved the grace of certain animals; he
and Wilbraham together had taken delight in pictures
of Greek statuary and vase painting, with special
reference to that beauty; he had admired the quick, clean
limbs of the two children with whom he had been so
much, and of other children of the village, older or
younger.  But it had been purely an æsthetic pleasure,
and had brought with it none of the emotion with which
the thought of Viola moved him.

He was a little frightened of this emotion and inclined
to resist it; but something out of the soft night
whispered to him that its current was one with all the
emotions upon which he had fed, and grown in feeding.  It
was part of the secret which he had only half divined
at the end of that vigil which seemed to have marked a
stage in his life.

His joy in the thought of her increased.  He recalled
the tones of her voice, and the ring of her happy
laughter, and dwelt upon things that she had said.  They
were nothing; they might have been said by anybody;
none of them at which he smiled to himself were so worth
remembering as the things that little Jane often said
and he had remembered afterwards, smiling at them too,
but not with that tenderness of feeling towards them.

He came to the park wall, where there was a door to
which he kept the key.  He seldom went outside the park
on his night roamings.  The woods continued here for
some distance before the open ground was reached,
though by the ride he had taken in the afternoon they
ended with the wall, in which there was another locked
gate.  If he wanted to go on to the moor at night, and
stand beneath the open sky, with nothing about him but
space, it was by that path that he reached it.  But he
seemed to have had a purpose, unknown to him, in
making for this door, and when he reached it he had no
thought but for passing beyond the bounds of the park.
It was by that path that the cottage in which Viola
was could be reached most directly.  He knew when he
came to the door, but not before, that he meant to go
to it.

He had left the key behind, but scaled the wall, not
without some difficulty, and went on through the wood.
By and by he came to a garden fence, and there beyond
it, across the fruit bushes and the untidy tangle of late
summer, was the cottage, low and thatched and
whitewashed, in which she was sleeping.

He stood still and drew his breath.

Viola!

There was a little dormer window in the thatch, open.
It might be that of the room in which she was sleeping.
A cottager would not sleep in a room with the window
open.  He tried to remember what the cottage was like
inside, and what rooms would be most likely to be
given up to visitors.  It seemed to him of the
utmost importance to have it settled which was Viola's
room.

He moved round to the front of the cottage, treading
softly on the turf lest a sound should reveal his presence.
Perhaps she was awake.  It was not part of their secret
that he should come out at night to gaze at her
window.  He must not reveal himself.

The wood extended a little way on to the moor by
the side of the cottage.  It was the point that had hidden
it from them in the afternoon.  But it faced open ground
across a narrow fenced-in strip of garden.  The whole
of its front could be seen obliquely from the wood.

He stood in the shadow of a giant holly—and saw her.

She was sitting at a window, her chin resting on her
hand, looking out across the moor to where the sea lay
gleaming in the radiance of the moon.  She was in
white; her dusky hair lay about her shoulders and
framed her young face, in which the dark eyes were set.

It was only a glimpse that he had of her, for he stole
silently away, abashed at having surprised a revelation
not meant for his eyes.

But it was like the glimpse that he had had of the
fairies dancing.  It thrilled and calmed him at the same
time.  He knew now that the fairies had not revealed all
the secret to him.  Viola was the secret, towards which
all his life and all that he had learned of nature had been
leading him.  Viola lay at the warm, sweet heart of it all.
Everything was changed by that vision he had had of
her, and soon he would see her and tell her so.





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.. _`THE WOODLAND POOL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WOODLAND POOL

.. vspace:: 2

They met in the woodland path which Harry had
taken in the night.  He was there before the time
appointed and threw himself down on the grass to await
her coming.  He could see some distance along the path
from where he had stationed himself.  It was narrow
just here and the thick overhanging branches of the
trees made a green shady tunnel flecked with quivering
points of light.

He waited in a state of patient expectation, not
greatly moved or stirred, but happy and contented.
The time did not seem very long, though he waited for
half an hour.

At last she came.  She was dressed all in white.  It
seemed that it must have been so as she appeared, in
the glooming green, which had been like an empty frame
waiting for just that picture of maiden whiteness.

He sprang up to meet her, and she waved her hand
when she saw him and hurried her steps a little.  That
frank greeting took them back to the point at which
they had parted the day before.  An ocean of feeling
and experience had washed over Harry in the intervening
hours, but it was lifted from him as they met and smiled
their greetings.  His was as frank and untroubled as hers.

They chattered gaily together like happy children
as they turned aside from the path and went up through
the wood.  Harry felt an immeasurable content at
being with her, laughed at nothing, and sometimes broke
into snatches of song, which interrupted the conversation
and made her laugh in turn.  He had a fresh, clear
voice, which Wilbraham had done something to train.
It was a happy little song about June that was running
in his head.  She knew it, too, and after a time she took
it up with him.  "That's the way of June."  Once when
they had come to a place a little more open, they stood
and sang it together in unison, and then laughed and
went on again.

Her father had gone out painting on the common, she
told him.  He had asked her to go with him, but she had
said it was too hot in the sun.  She would wander in the
woods.  "I didn't say I should wander in the woods
alone," she said.

"They never want to know where I'm going," said
Harry.  "I go out after breakfast and come back to
lunch, and sometimes I tell them where I've been and
sometimes I don't."

It seemed natural that their elders should go their
way, and they should go theirs, in which elders had no
concern.  It was their secret, to which no one had a right
but themselves.  But it gave Harry great pleasure to
hear from her in that way that it was to be their secret.
"That's the way of June," he caroled again, in no very
obvious connection.

They came to the still waters of the hidden pool.  It
would not have been surprising if no eye but Harry's
had seen it since the trees had grown up around it.
They had to make their way to it through thick bushes,
which even in winter time could have concealed it.  He
had been careful in his visits not to go in and out of
the thicket by the same way, and so leave a break.  It
was as if he had kept it secret for himself and her.

When they had pushed their way through they were
in a little grassy fern-fringed space open to the sky,
though it was flanked by big trees.  There were one or
two more of these tiny lawns sloping to the edge of the
water, but that on to which they came was the largest.
An age-old oak stood sentinel in the middle of it and it
was flanked on one side by a yew that must have been
older still, so vast was its dark circumference and so
thick its red ravelled trunk.

Viola exclaimed with delight.  The pool stretched in
front of them, its surface unruffled, mirroring the blue
sky and the green depths of the trees and the tall ferns
that grew round it.  There was no vegetation on it
anywhere.  Harry told her that it must be very deep, with
a spring somewhere, or it would have been covered with
weed.  "It's much nicer like this," she said, laughing at
him.  When he asked her why she laughed, she said:
"You're so proud of it."  It did not seem much of a
reason, but he liked her to laugh at him like that, looking
at him and showing her pleasure in everything that he
said that revealed a little of him.

For one moment as they stood by the edge of the water
he had a slight sense of anti-climax.  He had brought
her, not without difficulty, to the pool, as if in some way
it was to be the end of things, and in some way also the
beginning.  But without some lead on her part there was
nothing much to stay there for.  It must be either the
accepted scene, or nothing but a point of interest from
which they would presently move on, with nothing more
that he had yet thought of in front of them.

The feeling disappeared as she turned towards the
mossed roots of the oak, which made a seat for her.  He
threw himself among the fern at her feet with a sensation
of desire accomplished.  She had accepted it.  The
little lawn by the still water, hidden from all human
eyes but theirs, was now consecrated by the simple fact
of her taking her seat under the oak.  She was queen
of the pool and the deep summer woods.

So far in their intercourse little points had arisen in
which it had been for one or the other of them to take a
step further, if it were to continue.  She had stood
waiting as Harry rode up to her, he had stopped, and she
had spoken; he had walked with her; he had asked her to
meet him again; he had brought her to the pool, and she
had seated herself there to await what should come.  The
initiative had been more his than hers, and now it was his
again.  The fact of her taking her seat there, under the
tree, was an invitation, though she may not have meant
it as such.  They might talk there through the long
morning hours, but their talk could not be only of
externals.  It must be on a more intimate note, or they
might just as well roam the woods together lightly.  This
green nook by the water, hidden and secret, was a shrine
in which they would worship together, as yet they knew
not what, but it would be something sacred and beautiful
that was calling to both of them.

There was silence between them for a moment—the
silence of recollection which comes before an act of
devotion.  Then Harry looked up at her and said, with his
voice trembling a little: "I've never told any one of
this place before.  I think I kept it for you."

She smiled down at him, with the light soft in her
eyes.  "I'm glad you did that," she said.  "I shall
never forget it.  It is so quiet and green and beautiful,"
she added, a little hurriedly, as if the meaning of her
words might be mistaken.

"I might have shown it to the children," he said,
reflectively.  "I don't quite know why I didn't.  But
I'm glad I didn't, too."

She asked him who the children were, and he told her
about Jane and Pobbles, and the things that they had
done together.  She asked him a good many questions
and was a little particular in fixing the exact date of
Jane's birth, and of her arrival at Royd.

Harry answered all her questions and told her of the
map that he had begun to draw for them the afternoon
before.  "It seems such ages ago," he said.  "I was
missing them both, but I don't think I've given them a
thought since, until just now."

She allowed herself to soften towards Jane; for at
one point she had suggested that she seemed rather
precocious for so young a child.  "Poor little things!" she
said.  "I'm sure they must miss you, too.  You have
been so good to them.  And they are the only young
friends you have had, aren't they?"

Talking of the children had a little lowered the note
of intimacy.  Her last words restored it.  "Until I
knew you," he answered.

"And that's such a very short time."

"No; it's a very long time.  It's all the time that
matters."

She smiled at him, and he went on.  "Think of it,
that only yesterday—yesterday, much later than this—I
was feeling dull and unhappy.  Then I rode out to the
sea, and felt much better, but I didn't know anything
about you.  Fancy—only yesterday I had never seen you."

She listened with her eyes fixed upon him and her lips
a little apart.  "What did you think when you first saw
me?" she asked, softly.

He hesitated, and then laughed.  "I don't think I
thought anything in particular," he said.  "That's
what is so extraordinary.  What did you think when
you saw me?"

It was the children's pretty game.  "I like you.
When did you begin to like me?"  But she was not ready
to tell him that yet.  Or perhaps she might have told
him, if he had acknowledged to some emotion at the first
sight of her.  "I was very glad to see somebody who
could tell me where I was," she said.  "I had heard
of you, you know, from Mrs. Ivimey; but somehow
I didn't think of you as you till you told me your
name."

What had she heard of him?  She wouldn't tell him
that, either, or at least not all that she had heard about
him; but he was so unaware of the estimation in which
he was held by the people about him that he did not
divine that she was keeping something back.

What Mrs. Ivimey had said of "the folks at the
Castle," generally gave them something to talk about.
She wanted to hear all about his life and those among
whom he spent it; and he talked about himself as he had
never talked to anybody before.  His desire was to bring
her into it all.  He told her a great deal about his happy
childhood, and some of the secrets that he had cherished.
He told her about the stories he had made up for himself,
and, with a little hesitation, the one about the garden
and the flowers, and the end of it.  "I was terribly
ashamed," he said, "oh, for years afterwards.  I'm not
sure I haven't been ashamed of it right up till now.  Now
I've made a clean breast of it—to you—I don't mind so
much.  I must have been a horribly vain little boy.  It
used to distress me that my hair wasn't very black and
very smooth.  I used to pray that it might be made so."

Her eyes rested upon his fair close-cropped head.  He
was looking down and did not see the look in them.  "I'm
glad your prayer wasn't answered," she said.  "But I
think you must have been a very dear little boy.  I wish
I had known you then.  What were the violas like in
your story about the flowers?  Or didn't they come in?"

"Yes, they did," he said, looking up at her.  "They
were different from the pansies—gentler and rather shy.
They were never naughty."

"How old were they?  Grownup?"

"No; children—with dark eyes and a lot of dark hair
all about their faces."

"Were they like any little girls you had seen?"

"I don't think so.  I think they must have been rather
like you were then."

"My eyes were dark, and my hair was loose on my
shoulders.  Perhaps something put it into your head
that you would know a Viola some day."

   |  "Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes
   |  Wood-brown pools of Paradise."
   |

He said it gently, looking into her eyes.  She was
startled for a moment.  "You know it, then?" she
said.

"Yes, I thought of it when you told me you had been
named from a beautiful poem.  But I couldn't say it
then.  I didn't know you well enough."

"Have you said it since?  Do you know it all?"

"I read it when I got home yesterday.  I know it all
now."

"Say it to me."

He said it right through, slowly, and softly, dwelling
on the name Viola—Viola—with many gradations of his
flexible voice, and she thought she had never heard
anything more beautiful than the way he uttered it.
Sometimes her eyes rested on the waters of the pool, but more
often on him, but his were on her all the time:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

THE MAKING OF VIOLA

.. class:: center

\I

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Spin, daughter Mary, spin,
   |  Twirl your wheel with silver din;
   |  Spin, daughter Mary, spin,
   |    Spin a tress for Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Spin, Queen Mary, a
   |  Brown tress for Viola!

.. class:: center

\II

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Weave, hands angelical,
   |  Weave a woof of flesh to pall—
   |  Weave, hands angelical—
   |  Flesh to pall our Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Weave, singing brothers, a
   |  Velvet flesh for Viola!

III

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes,
   |  Wood-brown pools of Paradise—
   |  Young Jesus, for the eyes,
   |    For the eyes of Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Tint, Prince Jesus, a
   |  Dusked eye for Viola!

.. class:: center

\IV

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Cast a star therein to drown,
   |  Like a torch in cavern brown,
   |  Sink a burning star to drown
   |    Whelmed in eyes of Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Lave, Prince Jesus, a
   |  Star in eyes of Viola!

.. class:: center

\V

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Breathe, Lord Paraclete,
   |  To a bubbled crystal meet—
   |  Breathe, Lord Paraclete—
   |    Crystal soul for Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Breathe, Regal Spirit, a
   |  Flashing soul for Viola!

.. class:: center

\VI

.. class:: noindent

*The Father of Heaven*

   |  Child-angels, from your wings
   |  Fall the roseal hoverings,
   |  Child-angels, from your wings
   |    On the cheeks of Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Linger, rosy reflex, a
   |  Quenchless stain, on Viola!

.. class:: center

\VII

.. class:: noindent

*All things being accomplished, saith the Father of Heaven:*

   |  Bear her down, and bearing, sing,
   |  Bear her down on spyless wing,
   |  Bear her down, and bearing, sing,
   |    With a sound of Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Music as her name is, a
   |  Sweet sound of Viola!

.. class:: center

\VIII

   |  Wheeling angels, past espial,
   |  Danced her down with sound of viol;
   |  Wheeling angels, past espial,
   |    Descanting on "Viola."

.. class:: noindent

*Angels*

   |  Sing, in our footing, a
   |  Lovely lilt of "Viola."

.. class:: center

\IX

   |  Baby smiled, mother wailed,
   |  Eastward while the sweetling sailed;
   |  Mother smiled, baby wailed,
   |    When to earth came Viola.

.. class:: noindent

*And her elders shall say:*

   |  So soon have we taught you a
   |  Way to weep, poor Viola!

.. class:: center

\X

   |  Smile, sweet baby, smile,
   |  For you will have weeping-while;
   |  Native in your Heaven is smile,—
   |    But your weeping, Viola?

   |  Whence your smiles, we know, but ah!
   |  When your weeping, Viola?
   |  Our first gift to you is a
   |  Gift of tears, my Viola!
   |

When the musical flow of his voice had ended, they
had advanced many paces further on the path they were
treading together, but its end was not yet known to
either of them.  Viola's cheeks were rose-flushed and her
eyes were shining.  There was silence for a time as they
looked at one another, and love flew to and fro between
them unhampered in his flight but hidden from them.

Viola breathed a deep sigh, as she drew her eyes away
from his, half unwillingly.  "It's lovely," she said.  "I
didn't know how lovely it was till you said it.  I'm glad
I've got the most beautiful name in the world."

"And the most beautiful eyes in the world," he said.
"I never knew that there was anything half so beautiful
as you, though I have always loved the beautiful things
in the world.  I used to wonder what they meant, and a
year ago I thought I had found out.  But now I know
that I only knew half of it."

"Tell me," she said.  "What did you find out a year ago?"

He told her of his moonlight vigil, which he had never
thought to tell any one, and the vision that had come to
him at the end of it.

Again she listened to him, fascinated, with her eyes on
his and her lips apart.  But as he drew to the end of his
story her face grew a little troubled.

"I should never have seen that," she said when he
had finished.

"We might have seen it together if you had been
there," he said.  "There is no secret I could see that
you couldn't see."

"No," she said, rather sadly.  "You have always
lived in this beautiful place, and you have seen nothing
that isn't beautiful—all your life.  Of course you could
see that, because there was nothing to get in the way.
But it isn't at all beautiful where I live.  I have seen so
many ugly things all round me."

"It must always be beautiful where you live—Viola."

He spoke her name caressingly.  It was the first time
he had uttered it, except impersonally, and it made a
new sweet contact between them.

She smiled at him.  "Perhaps if you love beautiful
things, and think about them," she said, "it doesn't so
much matter if you can't always have them about you.
Do you think I could really see the fairies, if I were
with you?"

He thought for a moment, with a slight frown on his
face, which made the words that should come out of his
thought of great importance to her.  It was not in him
to say something just to please her.  The lightest thing
that he might say to her would come from the depths of
the unspoilt spirit that was in him.

His face cleared, and he looked up at her again.  "I
think that when you are very young you may see something
like that," he said, "—or, by chance, when you are
older.  It means something very important, or else it
doesn't mean much.  It meant something very important
to me to see them, but now it's not so important.  If I
had never seen it I should have seen you, and it would
have been just the same."

"Why would it have been just the same?"

She was fascinated anew.  Did ever a girl have such
incense as this burned before her?  And it was incense
lit from a flame in the heart, not from a spark on
the tongue.  Her nostrils were eager for the fume
of it.

Again the little considering frown.  "It would," he
said, "I know it would.  It all meant you, somehow,
though I have never seen you until now.  There was
something wanting in it all the time; and it was you.  I
should never look at anything now, and think how
beautiful it was, without thinking of you."

Lover's words, spoken by an unconscious lover.  They
pleased and pained her at the same time.

"I'm afraid you make too much of me," she said, with
a sigh.  "If I had lived here always, as I am living
now——!"

She did not complete her sentence.  The memory of
things she had seen and known and of which he had
known nothing, rose up between them.  But she put
them aside, and smiled at him again.  "After all," she
said, "I am here now, and I have never been so happy
anywhere else.  Perhaps I have been keeping myself for
it, without knowing that it was this I was meant for.
I think I was meant for it, because all the rest seems like
nothing at all.  When I go back, it will be less than ever
to me."

Her talk of going back stabbed him.  Life would be
an incredible thing when they were parted.  They stirred
each the other's fears and shrinkings as they talked of it,
but behind all the pain was the thought that they would
be with one another for a long time yet.  They were so
young that time in front of them was not measured by
the same rule as time that had passed.  More than two
whole weeks and most of a third Viola had still to spend
in Paradise.  They would meet every day.  Surely,
nothing could prevent their meeting every day!  Twice a
day they would meet, in this secret place, and be
undisturbed for long summer hours in their happiness.  No
need to spoil it by thinking of the end.

They parted for a time.  The last Harry saw of her
was the white figure framed in its arch of green.  Before
she passed out of it she turned and stood there for a
moment, motionless.  She was too far for him to see her
face clearly, but the message passed to and fro between
them again.  It was all there, though they had not yet
spoken it in words, and eyes were too far off to be read.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT THE THRESHOLD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT THE THRESHOLD

.. vspace:: 2

Harry went home to luncheon and hurried to the wood
again immediately afterwards.  He had much farther to
go to the trysting-place than she.  She might even be
waiting for him when he got there.

She was not there, and after half an hour she had not
come.

Oh cruel!  And yet he knew, as his longing grew and
his hopes fell, that she would have come if she could.
Her father had claimed her; something out of her power
to prevent or foresee had kept her away.  She would not
stay away from him for ever.

Yet he was increasingly unhappy as the time passed
and the green frame remained empty of its sweet picture.
The heat of a summer afternoon lay brooding on the
silent wood, and was like lead upon his heart.  He paced
up and down the path, to the corner from which the
garden of the cottage could be seen.  He thought of
going to it, and talking to Mrs. Ivimey, who would know
what had become of Viola, and would certainly talk to
him about her.  But no, he could not do that.  It would
be sweet to hear her name on other lips, but he would
have to pretend that he was hearing of her for the first
time, and he shrank from that, and from all that it
would imply.  He never went farther than the corner,
and by and by his hope of seeing her that afternoon died
away completely.

He had come out prepared to stay away until dinnertime,
but now he thought he would go home to tea, and
come back immediately afterwards.  His absence would
not then be questioned until he came back at night.
They did not like him to stay away from dinner too
often, but he had not done so for some time, and if he
said that he was going out into the woods they would
not seek to prevent him.

He was all at sea with himself as at last he dragged
himself away from the empty place, which might still be
brightened by her coming, with many backward looks
and much lingering.  He knew that something that could
easily be explained had kept her, and yet he was
desperately unhappy because she had failed him.  Did she
want him as much as he wanted her?  Would anything
in the world have kept him away if he had promised to
come to her?  Supposing she should not come at all that
day!  He shrank from the thought of the long night that
would divide him from her, if he had not seen her before
it fell.  But his spirit was tired with suspense.  The
world seemed full of trouble and disappointment as he
made his way homewards.

The one thing he never thought of was that, somehow,
their meeting of the morning might have been
discovered, and she had been forbidden to meet him again.
They had met, and promised to meet again, in all the
innocence of their youth.  If their elders had known of
it, it would have spoilt their happy secret, but that was
all.  It had not occurred to Harry that it would spoil
anything else.

They had tea on the terrace outside the drawing-room.
It was always the same at home.  Day after day, all
the year round, it was always the same.  In winter the
tea tables were placed near one of the two fires that
warmed the long room, at other times near one of the
windows, or in the summer on the terrace outside.  The
four of them would sit round and talk, Lady Brent
dispensing the tea, over which she was very particular.
Occasionally some one from the Vicarage would be there,
but scarcely ever anybody else.  The friendships that
had formerly been between the Castle and other big
houses within reach had fallen off, and it was the rarest
thing for visitors to appear there.

It might have been expected that, meeting like that,
day after day, at formal meals as well as at this informal
one, and with no intrusion from the outer world to break
the monotony of their lives, they would have had nothing
to say to one another.  But there was always a great
deal to say.  Wilbraham read voluminously, Lady Brent
read, and even Mrs. Brent read.  They talked of what
they had read in the papers and what they had read in
books; but Mrs. Brent did not take part in the
conversation over what they had read in books.

And there was the life immediately around them to
talk about.  If Royd Castle was cut off from the
ordinary social intercourse that gathers about a large
country house, it was by no means divided from the
interests that depend upon ownership.  There were a
few hundred people living around it in direct relationship,
and the personal contact with them was the closer
because it represented nearly all the human interest
there was in the life that was led there.  It supplied the
gossip which in some form or other is congenial to the
most exalted minds, and without which little Mrs. Brent
at least would have found the conversation unbearably
arid.

Lady Brent visited among the tenantry assiduously.
She was inclined to exercise authority, but could not
fairly be said to be dictatorial.  They were on their
best behaviour before her, but there were few among
them who had not some kindness to remember from her.
Mrs. Brent also visited them and avoided doing so in
the company of her mother-in-law if she possibly could.
Her intercourse with them was on a more intimate plane.
Her position as a great lady had to be implicitly
accepted, but if this was done she would sit and talk with
more than mere affability.  Harry was her chief subject
of conversation, and all the people of Royd loved Harry
and expected great things of him.  It might have
surprised Lady Brent if she had known how clearly it was
in the minds of those whom she treated as her dependents
that she was only exercising temporary authority, and
how much they looked forward to the time when her rule
would be over.  This was not because they found it
irksome, for she ruled justly and considerately.  But
she had ruled for a long time and change is pleasant to
most of us.  Besides, the Castle provided very little
variety of interest to those who lived within its shadow.
It had not always been so, and it was expected that it
would not be so when Harry came into his own.

Mrs. Brent could sometimes be induced to talk about
the time that was coming, if she was flattered into a
state of intimacy and skilfully drawn out.  She was
always careful not to create an impression that she and
Lady Brent were at all antagonistic, but it was understood
by everybody that this was so, the extent of the
antagonism was gauged to a nicety, and the causes for
it were frequently discussed and generally agreed upon.

The fact that Mrs. Brent derived from the stage was
not actually known, but it would have surprised nobody
to hear it; nor did her claims to belonging of right to
the class into which she had married carry the smallest
weight, however much they might be indulged.  It was
generally agreed that Lady Brent had done the right
thing in absorbing her into the atmosphere of the Castle,
and in keeping her closely under its influence.  Poor
little lady!  She'd have liked to get away from it
sometimes, and small blame to her!  But 'twouldn't ha' done.
She was all right where she was, and a nice little thing
too, if you took her the right way; but there! she wasn't
what you'd expect for Sir Harry's mother, and her
ladyship's was the only way to keep him from knowing it.

So these remote but clear-sighted and kindly people
judged of the situation at the Castle, and on the whole
approved of it.  As for Harry himself they one and all
adored him.  They were the only friends he had had
outside his home from his childhood, and they were real
friends.  There was not one of them, man, woman or
child, who had not some special feeling for him different
from that of the rest.  He knew them all, and was
interested in them all, with a purely human sympathy.  When
the time came for him to take the reins, he would be
dealing not with an impersonal aggregate, but with
those whose interests were also his; and he would be
regarded with a loyalty and affection which is enjoyed
by few landowners.

Wilbraham kept himself more to himself, as was said
of him, but had his friends too at Royd.  It was he who
brought Harry's heart to his mouth this afternoon by
the announcement, made in a casual voice: "There is an
artist come to stay at Mrs. Ivimey's.  He rejoices in
the name of Michael Angelo Bastian, which ought to
mean that he is a very fine artist; but I've never heard
of him.  Have you?"

"No," said Lady Brent, who had been addressed.
"But I did not know that Mrs. Ivimey let rooms.  I
think she should have asked me first.  Nobody at Royd
has done it hitherto."

"I wonder how she could get any one to take rooms
in such an out-of-the-way place as hers," said Mrs. Brent.

"I can tell you that," said Wilbraham.  "I had it
all from Prout."  Prout combined the occupations of
shoemaker and postman at Royd.  "Mrs. Ivimey has a
sister who lives in London and lets lodgings.  Michael
Angelo Bastian lodges with her.  The rest is plain to
the meanest intelligence."

Harry was faced with the immediate alternative of
acknowledging that he was aware of the fact stated or
of affecting ignorance of it.  If he kept silence now it
would be deliberate and purposeful silence, and he might
later on be called upon to explain it.  He had not faced
this; he had not faced anything in connection with
Viola that had to do with the future.

Perhaps he would have spoken, if his mind had not
been so full of his late disappointment, and of his
reviving hopes of still meeting Viola that evening.  He
could not bring himself immediately to the point of
making a decision, and when Lady Brent had next spoken,
and Wilbraham had answered her, the time had gone by
for him to speak.  His not having done so directly
Bastian's name had been mentioned would need explanation
now.  With a mental shrug of the shoulders he kept
silence, and felt a warm delicious glow as he took the
further step towards a fenced and guarded intimacy
with Viola which no one outside must penetrate.  The
pleasure of hugging his secret afresh swamped the
half-guilty feeling which had preceded it in his mind.  He
did not even ask himself why it should have come to him,
but his attitude towards his elders underwent a slight
change from that moment.  His youth was to be defended
from them; it had its rights, which could brook
no interference.

As he hurried off again to the trysting-place, he was
glad once more that he had refrained from betraying his
secret, as he had been glad that he had resisted the
impulse to confide in his mother the night before.  He
knew now that they would have disapproved.  Some
breath from the outside world, which divides people up
into categories in a way he had never had to take into
account, had come to him from the discussion he had
just listened to.  His grandmother had shown persistent
concern at Mrs. Ivimey's having let her rooms without
consultation with her.  Such a thing had never happened
before in Royd.  You didn't know what sort of people
you might get, if it became a practice.  An artist—there
was no great harm perhaps in an artist; but—  The
postman had evidently not known, or if he had he had
not told Wilbraham, that this particular artist had
invaded the sanctities of Royd accompanied by a daughter,
but Harry had felt instinctively that her presence
would have increased the objections expressed by Lady
Brent to Mrs. Ivimey's taking in anybody at all.  It had
come to him somehow that Viola's delicious charm would
have done nothing to recommend her, had she been
known, and that his mother would by no means have
taken the confidence that it had been in his mind to make
to her the night before in the spirit in which it would
have been offered.

The reasons for all this were not clear to him.  He had
of course no idea that he was to be preserved at all costs
from falling into unauthorized love; he had no more
than a purely academic knowledge of what falling in love
meant, and no idea as yet that he was already very deep
in it himself.  There were many things in which his
inclinations had clashed with the rules formulated by his
elders—as, for instance, in the matter of visits to the
stables, during his early childhood.  This was one of
them, but he was not to be bound now by the views of
his elders, and it was not necessary to examine their
origin.  There was a vague discomfort in the idea that
he was setting himself against them, but no admission in
his mind that he was in any way wrong in doing so.
And even the slight discomfort was more than balanced
by the feeling that his secret must certainly now be
guarded, which had the effect of somehow bringing him
and Viola more closely together.

It had been decided chat Wilbraham was to seek out
the artist, and if he found him to be the sort of person
who could be asked to Royd, he was to ask him there.
Harry smiled to himself, as he thought of the
possibilities ahead.  He must tell Viola, and he and she must
decide what was to be done about it.  It gave him a thrill
to think of their deciding anything together.  He
quickened his steps.  There were such oceans to talk to her
about.  He had no doubts now about her coming to meet
him; he had almost persuaded himself that she would be
there waiting for him.

But the green frame was still empty of its picture,
as he had left it an hour before.  The evening light was
slanting on it now, giving warning that the time they
would have to spend together was diminishing.  But
there were nearly two hours of daylight still.  Surely she
would come before the dusk fell!

He stretched himself under a tree, from where he could
watch the place where she would appear.  His mood was
not yet impatient.  She would surely come, and in the
meantime he could think about her.

.. vspace:: 2

He did not think of her as a lover thinks of the
mistress enthroned in his heart, to worship her there.
He had not consciously enthroned her as yet.  He
thought of her as a wonderful revelation of something
he must surely have been looking for all his life, since it
was impossible now to think of life without her.  She had
come into his life, in some way to translate its meaning
for him—for both of them.  She was a revelation from
the good influences all around him, as the vision of the
fairies had been.  He had got as far as that, and had
told her so.  It had been very sweet to tell her that; it
would be sweet to tell her everything that came into his
head.  There was nothing that he would not want to tell
her, at once and first of all.  In his innocence of the
world and the way of the world, he had reached that
point in love's pilgrimage where the loved one shines out
as the sweet vessel into which all confidences may be
poured, and the desire is strong for a common aim and
a common vision.  But he had not reached the point,
which usually precedes it, of an ardent desire for some
sort of surrender.  Perhaps it is not true to say that
he had not yet enthroned Viola in his heart, for she sat
there the centre of everything.  But she sat there apart,
as if she had mounted the steps of the throne without
his hand to raise her.  She must descend again and stand
with him on the level ground of mutual desire before her
seat should be secure and acknowledged.

But as he waited for her, and the desire for her sheer
presence became stronger and stronger, he was being led
towards that desire for surrender.  The sweetest thing
now would be, not to pour himself out in confidences to
her, which would still be very sweet, but to obtain from
her that look or that word which would move him to
the depths.

He went over in his mind the looks and words he had
received from her, and thirsted for more.  The very
first time their eyes had met, before a word had been
spoken between them, she had looked at him, with
something behind the look with which his memory blissfully
played.  Once or twice that morning, by the pool, and
again when she had turned towards him and stood
gazing, far off, there had been something that thrilled
him with happiness to remember.  And there had been
tones in her voice, little things she had said—he dwelt
upon them all, and longed to draw more of them from
her.  He would say this to her; greatly daring, he would
say that.  And she would reply; or if she spoke no
answer he would watch her face, and gain courage from
it for speeches still more daring.

.. vspace:: 2

But an hour passed, and she had not come to him.

The sun was sinking now.  Outside the wood, under
the open sky, its rays would be drawing the shadow of
the rocks and the gorse across the close turf; there
would be a soft golden radiance in all the air, and on
the bright distant pavement of the sea.  But here under
the trees it was already dusk, and a gloom descended on
his heart, as he thought of the sunset, from the sight of
which he was shut off.

It was like a parable to him.  He had never before
missed the glory of a sunset, if he was out of doors.
The woods had never kept him from that enlarging sight.
They were for other times; not less loved then, but now
seeming to hold him enchained in a menacing gloom.
And so, just out of his reach was the solace for which
he craved, but in place of it darkness was settling down
over his heart, and trouble clutching at it.

But he would not go out of the wood.  She might come
still.  The thought brought him no relief; his long watch
had emptied his mind of the springs of hope.  But still
he waited for her.  If she did come, she must find him
there.

.. vspace:: 2

The darkness had settled down now.  There was a
fading light in the sky that could be seen here and there
through the thick canopy of leaves, but beneath them
only eyes that had grown used to the darkness could
have descried anything.

The boy lay stretched at length on the grass, his face
to the ground, utterly weary and utterly miserable.  He
had no strength to tear himself from this unhappy spot
and go home; he only wanted to lie there in his pain,
which still had a little of sweetness in it as long as he
lingered in the place where he had last seen her.

He never moved.  His body was as still as on that
night in which he had kept his eager vigil, and at last
been rewarded.  But it was the stillness of exhaustion.
No hope was left to him now.

.. vspace:: 2

But his ears, trained since his childhood to catch the
lightest whispers of nature, and to interpret them, alert
in spite of himself, heard something that was not of the
life sinking to rest around him.  He raised himself
suddenly, almost violently, and peered into the darkness,
all his senses once more on edge.

And out of the darkness she came, no more than a
moth-glimmer flitting towards him.  A wild joy filled
him, down to the very depths of his being.  He sprang
up and ran towards her.

She gave a little cry that was half a sob, and flew to
his embrace.  His arms were around her, and his lips on
hers.  In all the long hours through which he had
yearned for her, and played with the thought of her
sweetness, no such blissful end to his waiting had entered
his mind as this.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TEMPLE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TEMPLE

.. vspace:: 2

Her face was wet with her tears, but he could just see
her smile glimmering through the darkness.  His eyes
were as hungry as his lips.  That sweet flower-like face,
with the tender eyes and the mouth a-quiver—would he
ever be able to gaze his fill of it?

She made no effort to draw herself from him, but
nestled to him, and poured out a broken sobbing
explanation of her absence to which he hardly listened.
What did it matter how she had been prevented from
coming to him, since she had longed for him as he had
longed for her, and was with him now?

He kissed away her tears; she had not returned his
kisses since her first unconsidered impelled surrender,
but was still sweetly receptive of them.  "Oh, I ought
not to," she said, smiling at him.  "But I do love
you, and I have wanted you so."

Yes, this was love, of which he had never consciously,
thought.  She had spoken the word first, but he knew
before she had spoken it that all his joy and all his pain
had sprung from that source, and exulted in his new
knowledge.

"I love you too—Viola," he said, lingering caressingly
on her name.  "Oh, how I love you!"

He drew a long breath, and they gazed silently into
one another's eyes, to find in them what no speech could
utter.  The melting sweetness of her gaze filled him with
trembling rapture.  The secret of life and all its beauty
which he thought he had divined, now seemed to have
depths beneath depths of meaning, beyond mental
capacity to grasp, in their almost intolerable rapture.
With a sigh they released each other, and speech flowed
to their relief, broken and melodious, bearing them again
to the surface of their bliss.

They withdrew a little from the path where they had
met, and told over the tale of their love.  By and by
they moved along it again, in a common impulse to
escape from the thick darkness of the wood, and gain
the freedom of the starry night.

They passed the cottage where Viola dwelt and never
gave it a thought.  At a later time they confessed to
one another that they had no recollection of passing it
at all.  They were so wrapped up in one another that
nothing and nobody else in the wide world mattered to
them at that moment.  But when they had emerged from
the wood they turned aside, instinctively perhaps, to
escape prying eyes, and passed slowly along the path
which they had taken the afternoon before.

After the darkness of the wood, the sky, moonless,
but lit by the innumerable lanterns of the stars, had the
effect of brightness.  Their young faces could be plainly
seen in this soft radiance, and they stood to worship
one another afresh.

"You're so beautiful, Viola!  How beautiful you
are!  I must have been blind not to see it before."

"I saw that you were from the very first."

Here were two statements of surpassing interest.
They had to be enlarged upon and explained, with new
and immeasurable content gained from the disclosures
that were made.  Nothing had ever happened like it
before.  They were pioneers in the uncharted country of
love, and the springs at which they refreshed themselves,
and the flowers brushed by their feet as they wandered
through it, had been waiting for them unseen and
unguessed at since the world began.  The wonder of it
increased.

They sat down on a low rock, jutting through the
fern, and gave themselves up to the miracle of their
discoveries.  Harry held her hands in his, and his eyes were
never off her face, except when he looked out into space
as if trying to fathom something that passed his
comprehension.  Sometimes they drew together by an
irresistible mutual impulse, but every kiss he gave her was
a consecration.  She was too beautiful and too sacred
a thing not to be treated with high reverence.  Instinctively
he held himself back, though without cessation he
thirsted for her sweetness, and her lips assuaged his
thirst only so long as his were upon them.

For more than an hour they sat there, and the time
seemed as nothing.  Then she sprang up suddenly and
said she must go in.  She had only meant just to run
out and tell him why she had not been able to come in
the afternoon.  As she said it, a voice was heard calling:
"Viola!  Viola!" out of the darkness.  She raised herself
hurriedly to kiss him, of her own accord, and tearing
her hands from his ran off without a word.

Harry stood for a long time where she had left him,
while the unhurrying stars marched on to their celestial
music and looked down upon him, a creature of the
moment, who had yet found his way into the courts of
eternity.  He looked up at them, and in the rapture of
the revelation that had come to him worshipped anew in
the temple whose gates he had besieged all his life.  It
was for this that he had been born; it was for this that
the heavens were lit, and the earth put forth its beauty.
At last he had been admitted into the innermost sanctuary
of the temple, and the secret of life was his.

.. vspace:: 2

He moved slowly towards the cottage which enshrined
his love, unable to leave its hallowed precincts.

There were lights in the lower windows, and presently
in that upper one which he knew to be Viola's.  Perhaps
she knew that he would linger out there under the stars,
for she came to the window and stood there for a long
time, and before she left it she kissed the tips of her
fingers and threw her message out into the darkness.

Presently her light went out.  Harry laid himself
down on the warm turf.  He would sleep there that
night, as he had sometimes slept out in the open on warm
summer nights before, but not with that sense of bliss
enfolding him.  He would keep guard over her, and
perhaps, when the stars had paced onwards in their western
march, and the moon had arisen, she would come to the
window again, as she had come the night before.  He
had told her that he had seen her there.  He thought she
would come.  And surely her presence would make itself
felt through his dreams, and he would awake to see her!
It was not possible that he should sleep while she was
awake near him.

He pillowed his head on the fern and slept, and for a
long time there was silence, on the moor and in the
cottage, while the stars watched over them and waited for
their waking.

.. vspace:: 2

It happened just as Harry had thought when he laid
himself down to sleep.  He awoke to find the moor
flooded by the bright radiance of the moon, which shone
also upon the front of the cottage and the window of
Viola's room.  And she was there, with her dusky hair
about her face and on her shoulders, and with some dark
wrap round her, so that her face alone, and her hands,
were softly illumined.

He arose and went towards her.  She saw him coming,
for she gave a little start, and then sat motionless again
until he stood just beyond the garden fence, where he
could see her face, though his was in shadow.

He stood there; neither of them spoke and neither of
them moved, but drank their fill of one another's
presence.  They made no motion of farewell when at last
Harry moved away and his form was lost in the shadows
of the wood.

He could go home now and sleep, with his great happiness
to bear him company.  On the morrow he would see
her again, and new happiness would be his lot.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BASTIAN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   BASTIAN

.. vspace:: 2

Wilbraham picked his way along the woodland path,
humming a tune.  His only preoccupation for the
moment was to preserve his shoes from getting wet, for
much rain had fallen, and there were spongy patches
to be avoided.

Wilbraham disliked exercise of almost every sort.
His bad times, in the winter, were when he felt impelled
to go for a walk, which was for at least an hour every
afternoon unless the weather absolutely forbade.  In the
summer he did not mind it so much, except when the
heat tried him; but he would always have preferred to
spend his leisure with a book in the library, or in the
garden.

He had long ceased to accompany Harry in any out
of door expedition.  They saw quite enough of one
another indoors, and their respective preferences in the
matter of pace were so in opposition that it was a
pleasure to neither of them to take the air together.
Mrs. Brent sometimes accompanied him in his constitutionals,
but he seldom invited her to do so.  They also
saw enough of one another indoors, or at least he saw
enough of her.  He liked her, but she did not interest
him in conversation, while she did expect him to interest
her.  He was quite capable of doing so, but the effort
spoilt the mild refreshment that came from leaving his
brain to wander where it would while his body was being
gently exercised.  He found abundant interest in the
thoughts of his well-stored mind, and sometimes stayed
out for longer than he had intended because he had
fallen into such an absorbing train of speculation.

Yet this man, who lived his monotonous life with books
as his chief recreation and his intercourse with his
fellows narrowed to the few with whom he lived, was
very fond of company.  His walk this afternoon, longer
than he usually imposed upon himself in the heat of
summer, was cheered by having an object other than
that of keeping his liver from troubling him.  He was
going to make a new acquaintance.  This artist, with
the rather absurd name, who was lodging with
Mrs. Ivimey, might possibly be a man of intelligence, with
views upon the art he practised; or he might be a mere
commercial dauber.  If he proved to be a man of intelligence,
it would be agreeable to exchange views with him,
for after books Wilbraham liked pictures, better even
than he liked music.  Or rather, his taste for music had
become a little atrophied, since he was cut off from
enjoyment of it, while art could always be read about, and
there were always pictures or reproductions of pictures
to be seen.

He reached the cottage on the outskirts of the wood,
and looked about him with pleasure before he entered it.
The great open space upon which it faced was a refreshment
after the wooded environment of the Castle, and
the few buildings that enlivened this point relieved it of
the impression of loneliness which was unpleasing to a
man of Wilbraham's fibre.  It was half a mile further
by the path he had taken than by the one he usually took
if his humour led him towards the common, but he
thought as he stood there with his hat off, so that the
breeze could cool his brow, that he would come there more
often, even if Mr. Bastian should not turn out to be the
sort of person that he might want to come for.

A well-satisfied gentleman he looked as he stood there
leaning on his stick, his brow rather bald, his presence
on the verge of portliness, though he was not otherwise
of the habit of body that runs to flesh.  The look of
discontent that Grant had remarked about him on a first
acquaintance was absent now.  In his suit of dark grey
flannel, with his black-ribboned straw hat, he had
something of a clerical air, and as he turned towards the
cottage his unusually sharp ears heard the sound of
hurried movement through the open window of a downstairs
room, and a voice uttering the words: "The parson come
to call!  Good Lord, I'm lost; I can't get out."

He stood chuckling to himself as he waited for an
answer to his knock.  The door stood open.  The artist
could not have escaped him if his fears had been
justified.  This pleased his humour, especially as he
anticipated the pleasure of bringing relief to him.

Mrs. Ivimey did not respond to his summons, and as
he was preparing to knock again, a door on the left of
the little passage opened and the artist came out to
him.

"I'm afraid Mrs. Ivimey is out at the back
somewhere," he said.  "Shall I go and call her for
you?"

"Thanks, it's you I've come to see, if you're
Mr. Bastian," said Mr. Wilbraham.  "I'm tutor to young
Sir Harry Brent at the Castle.  We heard you were
here, and as we don't get many visitors at Royd I came
to look you up."

Bastian's face changed.  "That's very kind of you,"
he said.  "Do come in."

He led the way into the little sitting-room, and
Wilbraham followed him with the feeling that his visit had
justified itself.

Bastian was a tall thin man with a shock of untidy
grey hair, but a curiously young face.  His eyes were
very light blue.  He had a half-whimsical, half-appealing
look, as if he was in a constant state of amusement at
himself and was begging not to be taken too seriously.
The upper part of his face was firmly and delicately
modelled, but his mouth was indeterminate and his chin
weak.  He was atrociously dressed, in an old discoloured
suit of light grey flannel, and a pair of stained canvas
shoes, and he wore no collar; but he did not apologize
for his appearance.  Wilbraham judged him to be about
forty-five, but discovered later that he was three or four
years younger.

Mrs. Ivimey's parlour was furnished with the customary
mixture of old good things and bad new ones.  A
few canvases stood with their faces against the wall, and
a half-finished picture of a flaming sunset over the moor
and the sea was propped on the mantelpiece.  Wilbraham
threw a glance at it as he entered, but could not
make up his mind whether it was going to be a good
picture or an exceptionally bad one.  There were some
books on the round table in the middle of the room, as
well as some of the untidy paraphernalia of an artist.
On a smaller table in the window was a bottle of whisky,
a glass and a jug of water, and by the side of the table
was a shabby but comfortable looking easy chair, upon
which was a book face downwards.  The room was full
of the odour of strong tobacco.

"I'm afraid it's rather like a bar-parlour," said
Bastian.  "I have a horrible habit of smoking shag,
which some people object to strongly.  Will you have
some whisky?"

He looked sideways at Wilbraham as he spoke, with
an engaging smile.  There was something attractive and
appealing about him; he was rather like a naughty
child, caught in the act—indoors on a summer afternoon
with his shag tobacco and his whisky and his advanced
dishabille.  Wilbraham was one of those who hated the
reek of shag, but he forgave him for it readily and took
out his own cigarette case.  He did not reply to the
offer of whisky.

"I'll go and get you a glass," said Bastian.  "I'm
afraid there's no soda-water, but it's good whisky and
better with water."

He went out of the room, and Wilbraham stood with
his eyes fixed upon the whisky bottle, and a queer look
in them, half of eagerness, half of repulsion.

Bastian was away longer than it would have taken
him to get a glass, and when he returned he had on a
collar and a flowing brightly coloured tie.  He now
looked like an artist, and not so much like a
broken-down gentleman-loafer.

"Say when!" he said, pouring out the whisky, and
Wilbraham said when, but not immediately.

"I get tired of painting," said Bastian.  "It's very
hot out there on the moor, and I didn't bring a sketching
umbrella with me.  I thought I'd have a lazy time with a
book.  'David Copperfield.'  One of the best books, I
consider."  He held his head aside as he looked at
Wilbraham.

Wilbraham had taken his first sip of whisky.  It was
only a sip, but his face seemed to expand under it.
His heart also expanded towards a Dickens enthusiast,
and for a time they talked about Dickens, and found
themselves always in encouraging agreement.

"It's a pleasure to have somebody to talk to," said
Bastian.  "I love being in the country and I hate being
in London.  I came down here to be as far away from
London as possible, but there's no doubt one does
want human intercourse.  I'm devoted to my little
girl, who's here with me; but one wants men to talk to."

"Oh, you've got a daughter with you," said Wilbraham.
He had been considering all the time, underneath
the conversation, whether or not Bastian could be
introduced to Royd.  He was a gentleman: that was
obvious.  But it was equally obvious that he had shed
some of the customs usually followed by gentlemen.
Would his innate breeding carry him through, with
women—with Lady Brent?  With a man, or at least
with one who prided himself on being able to see beneath
the surface, the shocking old clothes and the shag
tobacco would make no difference.  Then there was the
whisky.  Wilbraham had rather more than a suspicion
that Bastian's case was not so very different from his
own: that whisky meant a good deal to Bastian.  There
were signs of it on his smooth child-like face—a lack of
clearness in a skin that was meant to be unusually
clear, a slackness of muscle, a look in the eye and in
the droop of the mouth; and the second—or possibly
the third—allowance that Bastian had poured into his
glass had exceeded by a good half inch the not meagre
allowance that Wilbraham had accepted in his own.
Perhaps it might lead to complications to invite him to
Royd.  If Wilbraham should decide not to, the daughter
might be made an excuse.

"She's a dear child," said Bastian.  "Her mother's
dead.  She was one in a thousand."  He sighed.  "Viola
and I are everything to one another.  We're scarcely
ever parted, except when we're at work.  She has to earn
money, poor child, and neither of us manages to earn
very much.  Still, we're happy together, and happiest of
all when we leave the streets behind us and get out into
the country."

He was revealing himself as one of those people who
like to pour themselves out about their own affairs, not
so much out of egotism as from an impulse to show
confidence towards their hearers, to establish relations
which shall rest upon no misunderstanding, in which
nothing shall be kept back.

Wilbraham was without that impulse, but he was also
without any large share of egotism.  He was interested
in other people, and usually preferred that they should
talk about themselves, since few people are interesting
upon any other subject.  He had some curiosity about
Bastian's history, which seemed to have had contradictions
in it, when his refinement of speech and manner was
compared with his confessed and apparent indigence,
which was rather below that to which men of birth and
breeding sink, even if they are without the earning
capacity.

"How old is your daughter?" he asked, a little confused
between the mention of her as a child and that of
her work.

"Sixteen or seventeen," said Bastian.  "I can't quite
remember which, and I don't particularly want to.  I
don't suppose I shall keep her with me for many years.
She's a very beautiful girl.  So was her mother.  And
gentle and sweet and good too—both of them.  Ah,
whatever I've missed in life—whatever mistakes I've
made—I've had that.  There's nothing in this world
like a good and beautiful woman,—'A lovely apparition,
sent to be a moment's ornament'—how does it go on?
I can't keep these things in my head."

Wilbraham threw a look at Bastian's glass, of which
the contents were now reduced by half.  His speech
showed no sign of deterioration—he was evidently one
of those people who could "carry their liquor"—but
Wilbraham recognized his state as one in which the
ordinary dictates of reticence would be considerably
relaxed.

His own glass was nearly as full as before.  He could
quite easily have gone away and left it there.  He felt
that the small amount he had already drunk had done
him a vast amount of good, enlightened his brain and
stimulated his body.  He had an impulse of pity towards
Bastian, who was under the influence of the desire from
which he had emancipated himself, and of self-congratulation
at his own freedom.  Thank God that he could
drink what was good for him, and stop there.  He was
inclined to like Bastian exceedingly.  It might be
possible, if he got to know him better, to help him out of
the morass into which he had fallen.  It seemed probable
that the state of poverty to which he had come was
owing to habits of intemperance.  A man who had had
the same inclinations and might have been brought under
by them, but had overcome them instead, would be the
right man to help another, if he could gain his
confidence.  And Bastian seemed to be in the mood to give
confidence.

"I'm afraid I don't know your name as an artist,"
said Wilbraham with a glance at the picture on the
mantelpiece.  "But it's years since I went to an
exhibition.  I'm interested in art, though, and have read a
good deal about the modern movements."

"Art!" echoed Bastian.  "There's nothing like it, is
there?  The older I get the more I love it.  Poetry,
music, painting—everything.  To tell you the truth, art
has been my downfall."

Wilbraham felt some surprise.  He had thought that
if Bastian had been through any experience that might
be described as a downfall, it had been from other
causes.  "Well, if you've followed it when you might
have been doing something else that would have brought
you more money," he said, "I don't know that you're so
much to be pitied.  If I had the gift for painting, which
I haven't at all, I'd rather do what you're doing now,
than get rich."

Bastian laughed.  "I'm afraid I haven't much gift
either," he said.  "I'm a rotten artist, and I'm a rotten
musician, and I'm a rotten poet.  I've tried to make my
living out of all three; but perhaps you might say that
I haven't tried very hard.  I love 'em all too much.
It's rotten to have to make your living out of what you
love.  You want to enjoy it, not to practise it, unless
you've got a turn that way.  You don't have to be a
singer yourself to enjoy other people's singing; it
doesn't follow that you can paint good pictures because
you know a bad one when you see it.  There ought to be
scholarships at the Universities for people with a genius
for contemplation, and life fellowships to follow them up."

"The holders of life fellowships have sometimes been
known to practise contemplation to an excessive extent,"
said Wilbraham.

Bastian laughed heartily.  "That's rather good," he
said.  "But what a pleasant life, eh?  These jolly
places—and plenty of good company, and good wine!
Why should that happy lot be reserved for people who
happened to interest themselves in one or two subjects,
out of all that there are to interest one, in their extreme
youth?  I suppose you were at Oxford or Cambridge in
those happy days of long ago?"

"Cambridge," said Wilbraham.  "I was at Christ's."

"We must have been there about the same time.  I
was at Magdalene—a nice snug little college, and becoming
quite an intelligent one, from what I've heard.  But
I haven't been there since I came down.  They wouldn't
be very proud of me now, I'm afraid.  One or two touts
or stablemen might recognize me perhaps.  They had
plenty of money out of me when I had it.  I don't belong
to that life any more."

He had a sudden mournful droop, and drank what
was left in his glass.  Wilbraham had lost the
impression that he was much affected by what he had drunk,
but it returned now.  That drop into self-pitying
depression immediately after smiling excitement told its
tale.  His own sobriety was indicated by his glass, still
two-thirds full.  He had half a mind to remark upon
Bastian's helping himself to another stiff peg, which
he did with a perfectly steady hand.  But he did not
know him well enough yet; the time for that sort of
sympathy had not yet come.

But he was more than ever interested in him.  His fall
must have been from a higher social plane than he had
suspected.  Undergraduates whose money had been
spent in connection with horse-flesh usually had more
than the average to begin with, and Magdalene had
been a super-sporting college in his day and Bastian's
day.

"I was the son of a poor parson," he said.  "I got
my scholarship, and if I had worked I should probably
have got my fellowship too.  I did work at what interested
me, but the devil of it was that it didn't interest
the dons.  Those prizes are reserved for the people who
have the sense to stick at one thing till they've got them.
Then they can do what they like.  They're not necessarily
the people who are best at their subjects.  I've
got a real love for the classics, and I probably know a
good deal more about them than a lot of the people
who got Firsts when I only got a Second.  It's the
concentration of those few years that counts."

Bastian laughed again.  "Firsts and Seconds!" he
said.  "I didn't take a degree at all.  The smash had
come before then, and I was tied up for life."

Wilbraham was rather taken aback.  It looked as if
confidences were coming, and he had the gentleman's
dislike to receiving them unless they are given with full
intention.  "Don't tell me anything you'll be sorry for
afterwards," he said, with another look at Bastian's
glass.

"Oh, my dear fellow, I'm not drunk," said Bastian.
"I drink a lot, and no doubt it has had a good deal
to do with keeping me where I am; but I don't get drunk.
I don't often meet anybody like you, who belongs to the
world I used to inhabit.  It's a relief sometimes to
unburden oneself.  Besides, there's Viola.  Viola doesn't
often get the chance of talking to a gentleman.  I think
you'll open your eyes when you see Viola.  I haven't
been able to raise myself out of the muck, but it hasn't
touched her.  She's the flower that has grown out
of it."

Wilbraham still felt some discomfort.  If it were true
that Bastian never got drunk, he was none the less under
the influence of drink now, or he wouldn't have talked
about himself with quite that absence of control.  He
must have been referring to his wife when he had said
that he had been tied up for life, and men don't talk to
one another in that way about their wives on a first
acquaintance when they are in full possession of themselves.

"I shouldn't let anything you told me go any
further," Wilbraham said.

Bastian did not seem to have heard this.  He was
looking down with a frown of concentrated purpose.
To unburden himself was evidently imperative on him
for the moment, and he was collecting his faculties to
that end.

"I don't want to give you a false impression," he
said.  "My wife was a woman in a thousand.  Never
did I have one moment's regret that I had married her.
I think, if she'd lived, she might have made a man of
me still.  Perhaps it was a fluke—I don't want to make
myself out better than I was, and I was a rotten young
fool in those days—perhaps it was a fluke that she was
what she was, because it was only her beauty that I fell
in love with, and I hadn't the sense then to see what
there was behind it.  But what I do say is that my
people ought to have seen.  I'll never forgive them for
that, and I'll never let Viola have anything to do with
them.  She doesn't even know their name, and——"

"I don't quite understand," said Wilbraham, as he
seemed to be off on another gallop.  "Why did your
people object to your marrying?"

"Oh, well of course it was a fool's trick.  I wasn't
even of age, and she was a girl off the stage, but one
of the sweetest, kindest girls that ever stepped.  I only
had her for a few years, but I tell you I'm in love with
her memory still.  She's been dead seventeen years and
I miss her as much as ever.  Life's nothing to me,
though I'm not old yet; I buried it all in her grave."

It was curious, thought Wilbraham, that there should
be a story here not dissimilar from the one that he had
lived with for about the same length of time.  But the
girl whose father had made the same mistake as Harry's
had not been shielded from its consequences as he had.
She was hardly likely to have escaped the contamination
of the rougher, harder world to which her father had
descended.  Wilbraham attributed Bastian's praise of
his wife largely to the diffuse sentiment of the moment.
He had not otherwise created the impression of a man
living upon a life-long regret.  His daughter, if she was
the close companion of his poverty and the witness of
his habits, could hardly be the rare and delicate flower
that he painted her, though she was probably beautiful.
At any rate it would be just as well to preserve Harry
from contact with her.  It would be an ironic stroke of
fate if in this remote corner in which he had been
brought up the glamour of the stage should obtrude
itself once more.

"Is your daughter on the stage?" he asked outright,
at this point in his reflections.

Bastian roused himself, and seemed to shake off
completely his mood of hopeless regret.  "God forbid!" he
said.  "I wouldn't have risked that, though if I had I
believe she'd have come through it.  You must see Viola.
I don't know where she is now.  She's like a sweet young
creature of the woods—roams about in them all day.
That'll tell you what she is—a London girl, who can
throw London off her altogether when she gets away
from it.  She's less bound to it even than I am.  Come
up to-morrow, will you?  I'll tell her to be in to tea.
She sometimes takes it out with her.  Can you come
about half-past four?"

Wilbraham had been thinking rapidly.  If this girl
was in the habit of roaming the woods all day she might
come across Harry, who was also in the habit of roaming
the woods.  All the ideas with which Wilbraham had
lived for years past gathered themselves into the instinct
to watch and guard.  He must see this girl of Bastian's,
and he must be prepared for what should come, so that
he could deal with it without surprise and without hurry.
Fortunately, he had not announced his intention of calling
upon the artist that afternoon.  He would say nothing
about his visit at the Castle, but would announce one
for the next day.

"Yes, I should like to come," he said, as he rose from
his seat.  "I must be getting back now."

About a third of the whisky remained in his glass.
He stood looking at it, as Bastian expressed his pleasure
in having seen him, and then drained it off before he left
the room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WILBRAHAM`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   WILBRAHAM

.. vspace:: 2

Harry and Viola were in the log cabin.  They had
varied their meeting-places.  Best of them all they loved
the secret pool, but that was only for very hot still
weather.  Rain was falling intermittently this afternoon,
but every now and then the sun shone.  The weather
made little difference to their happiness, and the cabin,
Harry's handiwork, provided them with a shelter when
they needed it, which brought them also a grateful sense
of seclusion and joint possession.  The Rectory was
empty; Sunday duty was performed by a visiting clergyman;
nobody was in the least likely to disturb them
in their retreat.  Viola had got rid of her slight
suspicion of Jane, which she had already confessed to
Harry, with happy laughter.  "She may not know it,"
she had said, "but of course she's in love with you, poor
child!  She couldn't help being, if she was only nine
instead of thirteen.  I was a little jealous of her being
so much with you.  But I love her for loving you, and
of course I'm not jealous of anybody now."

The log cabin was roughly furnished.  Not much more
would have been required if it had really been the home
of a pioneer.  Harry and Viola had played with the idea
of living together in such a cabin, with a new beautiful
world to be tamed all around them, and this as the nest
of their love and companionship.  So he had played with
the children, but Viola's presence had given their cabin
a wonderful romantic charm which it had never had and
which it would never lose.  Her presence would illumine
every place in which she might rest.  Harry's old castle
was still in shadow because she had not yet visited it.

It was the morning of the day upon which Wilbraham
was to take tea with Bastian, and Viola was to be there
to be exhibited to him.  Harry had been concerned at
hearing that he had already been to the cottage.

"He has said nothing about it at home," he said.
"This morning at breakfast he did say that he had
thought of going to see your father this afternoon, but
that it looked like raining all day.  What does it
mean?"

"Nothing very dreadful," said Viola.  "He and
father seem to have got on very well together yesterday,
but perhaps he wasn't quite sure enough of him to ask
him to the Castle.  Perhaps he wants to see what I'm
like first."

Harry threw her a quick loving look.  They were
sitting together on a bench underneath the eaves of the
hut.  They might not have been taken for lovers by
anyone who had seen them; their caresses were rarer than
might have been expected, fathoms deep in love with one
another as they were; but looks and smiles flashed
between them like summer lightning, and scarcely the
lightest word was spoken without emotion.

"When he sees you," Harry began; but she interrupted
him.  "Father doesn't want to go if he does ask
us," she said.  "And I couldn't go, Harry dear.  I
love you so much that I couldn't keep it back.  I'm
afraid I shan't be able to keep it back this afternoon
from Mr. Wilbraham, if he says anything about you."

"I've asked myself sometimes," Harry said, thoughtfully,
"whether it's right to keep it back.  You're so
much above everybody else in the world, Viola,
that——"

Again she interrupted him.  "Harry darling," she
said, "I've thought about it too.  There are lots of
things that I know about in the world that you don't.  I
only want to forget them while I'm here with you; and
I can't if other people know how much I love you, and
that you love me.  They wouldn't let us forget them."

"What sort of things, Viola dear?  I'm not a child,
though perhaps they have tried to keep me one for too
long, at home.  I'm going to take care of you, for all
our lives.  I ought to know as much as you do."

"I hope you never will, darling," she said, a little
sadly.  "I know that the things I have learnt haven't
spoilt me, or else I shouldn't feel so happy as I do in
your loving me.  But other people might not believe
that.  We're very young, both of us.  We love as deeply
as people who are older love, and we know we shall go on
loving each other all our lives.  But others wouldn't
believe that.  They would try to part us.  They would
part us, as long as I stayed here; and there's such a
little time left.  Oh, let us be happy together while it
lasts, and keep our lovely secret."

"Why should they try to part us, Viola?  Who is
there?  My grandmother and my mother.  If they only
saw you!"

She smiled at him.  "It wouldn't be enough," she said,
"whatever I was.  And they wouldn't look at me with
your eyes.  Perhaps nobody else would.  What was it
made you love me so much, Harry?"

He had told her a hundred times, and now told her
again; and she told him that she had loved him the very
first moment she had set eyes on him, riding up on his
gallant horse with his dogs around him.  "You were like
a splendid young knight," she said.  "No girl could
have helped loving you.  But I love you a thousand
times more now than I did then, and I suppose I shall go
on loving you more and more all my life."

It was like the old stories of his childhood, which had
to be told over and over again, and were better every
time they were told.  But now it was not as it had been
then, when no variation must be admitted in the telling.
There was always something new—some little discovery
that deepened the sense of perfection and wonderment,
some answering thought that showed them to have been
close to one another, even in the hours in which they
were parted and were pasturing on their sweet memories
of one another.

It was with a kind of solemnity of sweetness that
Harry dwelt upon Viola's trust in him and his manhood.
By a thousand little signs it had been made plain that
she knew more of the world than he, but she put all that
knowledge aside and looked up to him and submitted to
him as if infinite wisdom and experience were his.  And
in truth he had grown greatly in mental stature since
her love had come into his life to change it so
completely.  They must have remarked upon it at home if
he had not taken such advantage of the freedom that
was granted him and been so little at home at this time.
His mother actually had told him that he was altered,
after he had expressed himself with more than usual
self-confidence when they had talked about the war over the
dinner-table.  She was always on the look-out for signs
of something that might take him from her, and she
feared the war and what might come of it with an
unreasoning fear, considering the information at her
command.  Harry was thinking a great deal about the
war now, which does not mean that there were any times
at which he was not thinking about Viola.  With the
coming of love his sense of the deeper values of life had
become strengthened.  If he had felt himself borne along
on a strong current that would carry him to whatever
of action or duty or mere state of being that was laid
down for him, then whatever happened to him was part
of the whole, and nothing in his life would be dissociated
from anything else.  It was this sense of unity that
lifted his fresh boy's adoration of a girl as young and as
pure as himself into something bigger and more rooted
than that, beautiful as it is.  His love gave the divine
note of joy to all his purpose, sweetened and solemnized
it at the same time.  It was not like a great happiness
in which he could forget himself, and which he must also
forget for a time if something more serious had to be
faced.

This morning, for the first time, influenced perhaps by
the breath from outside which had come through
Wilbraham's advent upon the scene, which, however, they
put aside from them, they talked about the time when
Viola should have gone away.

Their extreme youth moved them to sadness, which
was not wholly painful because the time was not near
yet, and present bliss was only heightened by the
thought of parting.  They were so far unlike most
young lovers that no mention was made of writing, or
even of meeting again.  It was as if the contact
between them was so close and so sure that however far
apart they might be in space, and for whatever time,
they would still be together.

Harry was serious about the future.  "I don't know
exactly what is going to happen," he said.  "I'm
supposed to be going to Sandhurst in January, but that's a
long time ahead.  I seem to see the war swallowing up
everything.  There's something to be done here about it,
and perhaps it will be for me to do it.  But there's
nothing to show yet.  I think there won't be till you go
away, my darling.  I think there's nothing that will come
in the way of my being with you, and thinking about
nothing but you."

"Do you think you will have to go and fight, Harry?
Oh, surely you're too young for that, darling!"

"I'm not too young to love you."

She thought over this.  It was one of the things he
sometimes said that meant more than it seemed to.  She
loved those speeches of his, springing from something
in him to which she could give all her faith and all her
devotion.  They helped her to plumb the depths in him,
and she had never found anything there that did not
make her glad and proud of loving him.

This time her pride brought the tears close to her
eyes.  There was more than the sweetness of young love
in this—to be loved as something in full alliance with
all the biggest things that a man might be called upon to
do in the world, and to which he must bring all that he
was and all that he had, even his life itself if it should
be required of him.

"I shouldn't want you not to, Harry," she said.

He did not tell her of his conviction that the war
would claim him.  She was his to be protected, and some
things she must be spared.  When the time came, she
would somehow be concerned in it, because she would be
concerned in everything that he did, and whatever he
should want of her then she would give him.  He had as
much confidence in her as she in him.

"The war is like a great shadow over everything," he
said.  "We're in the sunshine just now, you and I—the
most glorious sunshine.  I don't think that we need fear
the shadow for ourselves.  But for others—for some it's
very deep."

The shadow seemed to creep closer and touch her
heart as he spoke.  They were silent for a time, her hand
resting in his.  The contact strengthened them both,
and the shadow passed away from her.  For the rest of
their time together that morning they made love and
built their airy rainbow castles, almost as unsubstantial
as those of children.  In fact they played with the idea
of having Jane and Pobbles to live with them.  It hardly
seemed fair to be using the cabin in which they had a
proprietary share and leave them out of it.  They would
pass suddenly from grave to gay in this way, and there
were many times when the children could have taken a
full part in their conversation without being at all in
the way.

.. vspace:: 2

At about six o'clock that evening Wilbraham was
walking along the woodland path that led from the
cottage to the Castle.  He walked slowly with his eyes on
the ground all the time, and his face was very thoughtful.
He started violently as he looked up to see Harry
standing in the path in front of him.

For a moment they stood there looking at one another.

"Well?" said Harry.

Wilbraham's eyes dropped, and he walked on, Harry
with him.  "You've been meeting here," he said.

"Yes."

Another pause.  Then from Wilbraham: "You've
been making love."

"Making love?  I don't like the expression.  We love
each other—yes."

Wilbraham said nothing, and they walked on together.
Presently they came to a fallen tree by the side
of the path.  "Let's sit down here and have it out," said
Wilbraham.

Harry spoke first.  "I'm glad you know," he said.
"I'd like all the world to know; you can tell why, now
you've seen her.  But I suppose it wouldn't do for
mother and Granny to know—not just yet."

Wilbraham seemed to pull his determination together.
"My dear boy," he said, "you mustn't take it for
granted that they're not to know.  It has come as a
complete surprise to me; I don't know what to do about
it yet."

Harry laughed.  The situation seemed to contain no
awkwardness for him, whatever doubts it might have
brought to Wilbraham.  "Before you settle that," he
said, "tell me what you think of her."

"She's a very beautiful child," said Wilbraham,
thoughtfully.  He laid no stress on the word "child,"
to belittle Harry's confession of love.  It was as she
had struck him.

He had gone into the little parlour to find Bastian
there, dressed more in accordance with what he had
seemed to be than on the day before.  A faint smell of
his strong tobacco hung about the room, but it had been
tidied, and freshened up with flowers, and tea was laid
on the table, with signs of ceremony and care.  Then
Viola came in, and he had the impression of Bastian
triumphantly watching him as he introduced her.

He did indeed open his eyes at first sight of her, as
her father had foretold.  He would not have been so
surprised at the vision of her, fresh and delicate, very
simply dressed in her white frock, with all the air about
her of breeding and refinement, if it had not been for
the memory of Bastian the day before, with his deteriorated
tastes, and his talk of downfall.  A flower, he had
said of her, growing out of the mire; but who had tended
her growing?

Mrs. Ivimey came in with the tea, and was voluble
with Wilbraham about her ladyship and Sir Harry.
Wilbraham's eyes were on Viola the whole time, and he
saw the colour rise on her soft cheeks as Harry's
name was mentioned, but made nothing of it at the time.

Nothing more was said about the Castle when Mrs. Ivimey
had left the room.  Wilbraham had not given the
invitation that might have been expected of him.  He
recognized with a sense of gratitude that no hints
towards it need be feared.  Bastian showed up much
more as a gentleman than on the afternoon before; his
clothes were old enough but no longer disreputable, and
he was obviously entirely free from the influence of
drink.  The difference in his speech and bearing seemed
to exaggerate his state of the afternoon before into one
of actual drunkenness.

They talked chiefly about books, and more particularly
about poetry.  Viola talked very little, but her
father sometimes referred to her, as if to show with pride
what she was.  Her enthusiasms showed here and there.
Wilbraham's wonder grew at her.

Harry came to his mind again.  He brought his name
in deliberately.  "Harry, my pupil, used to shout that
out when he first read it.  He loves poetry, and it takes
him like that."

Viola made no reply, but the flush dyed the rose-petal
of her cheeks again.  "It's the youth in him," her father
said.  "Poetry brings you real joy when you're young,
doesn't it, Viola?"

She had to look up at last, and Wilbraham saw her
eyes.  She made a brave effort to speak evenly, but her
voice trembled a little as she said, "Yes, all the beautiful
things in the world make you glad."

Then Wilbraham knew, and a wave of sympathy and
tenderness flowed over him, but was brought up short
against the wall that all the aims of the past years had
built up around Harry, and dashed back on him to
overwhelm him.  He emerged gasping, but with the instinct
strong in him to keep his knowledge from being seen.  In
the rest of the time he stayed at the cottage nothing was
said to cause Viola to betray herself further, but he was
observing her all the time, and his bewilderment grew.

She seemed to have divined that the danger was over,
and came out of her shell and smiled and prattled
delightfully.  Her happiness was too strong in her to be
kept under, and she would not have been human, or
feminine, if she had not wished to make a pleasant
impression upon Wilbraham, who was so near to Harry.
It was the impression of delicious sparkling youth that
came to him most strongly.  It was as if the confession
was drawn out of him reluctantly when in his answer to
Harry's question he said slowly: "She's a very beautiful
child."

"Why didn't you teach me what a beautiful thing
love is?" asked Harry.  "We've read a lot about it
together, but I never had an idea of it until now.  I
don't think anybody in the world has ever been so happy
as I am."

Wilbraham was torn in two again.  His appreciations
were not all bookish, and he loved Harry.  He saw that
in a nature such as his love would come as a very
beautiful thing, and his searching observation of Viola had
revealed nothing in her that could make it less so.  And
yet—!

"How long have you known her?" he asked.

"What does it matter?" said Harry.  "I've known
her all my life.  If I look back to any time in it, she was
there, though I'd never seen her.  We've been meeting
every day, if that's what you mean."

It was what Wilbraham had meant, and he felt
discomfort at having asked the question.  It was the
discomfort that must come from probing into this
situation, with the fear before him of saying something that
would smirch the bright purity of Harry's mind.
Anything that brought his actions to the test must do that,
if he came to understand what tests were applicable to
his meetings with Viola.

"Why didn't you tell us?" seemed to be the safest
thing to say, and he said it with a half hope that the
answer would give him some handle, though without
mental acknowledgment of the hope.

"Well, I felt somehow that you'd try to stop me,"
said the boy.  "At least mother and Granny would.  I
did nearly tell mother, the first time I'd seen Viola, but
something warned me not to.  I've been glad since that
I didn't.  It has just been she and I—Viola and I.
Oh, how I love her!  I'm glad *you've* seen her.  But you
must keep it to yourself.  We haven't much longer
together.  I can't have our time spoilt."

He spoke almost with authority.  With every moment
Wilbraham felt some new little emotion of change and
development too quick for him to master.  Harry had
been the most docile of pupils.  Never once since his
first dealings with him as a young child had he had to
exercise authority against desires or inclinations of his.
True, he had held the reins lightly, and never given him
a rebuke or a direction that had mood instead of reason
behind it; but it had sometimes crossed his mind that
the boy was too docile, and that his sense of responsibility
and self-mastery might be sapped if he was
brought up to give unquestioning obedience to the
directions of his elders.  He had mentioned this fear to Lady
Brent, and her answer to it had been of the kind that
he had received once or twice before in his consultations
with her, from which his confidence in her ultimate
wisdom had been so firmly fixed.  The same doubt, it
seemed, had crossed her own mind.  It was to be met
by allowing Harry the fullest possible trust and freedom.
If at any time he overstepped the freedom it was not
to be treated as a fault.  He was to be told why it was
not advisable for him to do this or that, and the decision
left to him.  Once or twice this had happened, and once
he had stuck out for his own will.  It was when his
nocturnal rambles had been discovered by chance, shortly
after that night upon which Grant had seen him out in
the park.  Lady Brent, with calm and admirable
self-restraint, had said: "Very well, Harry.  After all, I
don't know that there's any harm in it.  If I had known
of it a year ago I might have stopped it; but now you're
old enough to do as you like in that sort of way."

No one observing the boy, Wilbraham had thought,
could say that he was molly-coddled into submission.
Few boys of his age had such freedom granted to them,
or carried a more gallant air before the world; and the
Grants, of whom he had taken counsel, as representing
the views of the world more closely than he in his
retirement could do, had supported him.

And yet, there had been the feeling that Harry was
extraordinarily easy to manage—too amiably submissive,
almost, to the guidance of his elders, and Wilbraham
himself particularly.

But now—!  Wilbraham mentally shook himself.
Was he receiving instructions from Harry—and almost
inclined to accept them submissively?

The little spurt to his pride took him a trifle farther
than he had wished to go.  "I don't think it's a matter
for me to decide on, apart from your grandmother," he
said.

Harry turned a surprised face on him.  "No, it's for
me to decide on," he said.  "By and by I shall tell
Granny—of course.  But I don't in the least know when
it will be.  There's nothing to show yet."

The phrase struck Wilbraham oddly.  Harry had
used it once or twice to him before.  "One has to decide
upon things with one's brain," he said, "and out of
one's experience—important things that may affect
one's life.  They can't be left to impulse."

"The two go together, I suppose," said Harry,
almost with indifference.

It was one of those little speeches upon which Viola
would hang as containing the quintessence of wisdom.
She might not have understood this speech, but
Wilbraham did, and it affected him profoundly.  Here
was that rarest of characters—one who had never played
with his impulses, to give them scope beyond the guidance
of his reason.  He could trust his impulses because
their springs were controlled.

"Shall we go on?" said Harry, rising.

Wilbraham rose too, slowly, after a pause of reflection,
and they walked on.  Viola's name was not
mentioned again between them.





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.. _`DILEMMA`:

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   CHAPTER XVI


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   DILEMMA

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Wilbraham walked up and down in a retired part of
the garden where no one was likely to disturb him.
Sometimes, because he had walked rather farther that
afternoon already than was his custom, he sat down on
a garden seat at the end of the alley where he was.  But
only his body was at rest; his mind was eagerly searching
for the right course.  If only it were as straight and
as easy to tread as this soft turfed walk between the
uncompromising green walls, with the evening sun flooding
the narrow space and warming even the sombre tones
of the yew to some leniency!

He did not know where Harry was.  He had left him
when they had reached the house.  For all he could tell,
he might have gone straight back to Viola; there was
an hour yet before dinner.  But he would hardly have
come right back to the Castle with him, to talk chiefly
about the war, if he had meant to do that, and he had
let drop something which showed that he had no
intention of staying out during the dinner hour.  Perhaps
he would go to her afterwards, as he must have done on
occasions before.  It did not much matter.  He had
claimed the right to go to her when he pleased, and
Wilbraham had not controverted it.  His authority
seemed to have come to a very sudden end, he thought
with a wry smile.

There remained Lady Brent's authority.  Should he
invoke it?  That was what he had to decide for himself
before he left this garden alley, the retired scene of his
cogitations.

Harry had extracted no promise from him.  That
pleased him, as it had pleased Grant when he had acted
in the same way over his secret midnight roaming.  They
had been justified in their treatment of him to that
extent.  He would be ashamed of nothing that he had
done, not even to the extent of asking that it should be
kept secret where he had shown that secrecy was what
he wanted—and expected.

That made it all the more difficult for Wilbraham.
He would seem to be breaking a promise if he told Lady
Brent, though he had given no promise.  He would at
least be setting himself against Harry in a matter which
Harry had claimed the right to decide for himself.  He
wanted to be very sure that the boy was wrong in his
decision before he did that.

He loved and admired Harry at that moment more
than he had ever done.  He had a clearer vision than
ever before of the boy's clean finely-tempered nature.
He felt himself rebuked by it, and what thoughts he
spared for himself, as apart from his duty towards
Harry and towards Lady Brent, worked rather sadly
upon the conviction of his own weakness.

He had kept silent about his previous visit to Bastian
only partly because of his wish to judge further for
himself before he gave or withheld the suggested invitation
to the Castle.  He remembered now the pleasure with
which he had set out that afternoon to go to the cottage,
and knew that its chief source was the anticipation of
drinking with Bastian—drinking just the amount and
no more to give him the slight exhilaration that he had
gained the day before.  Bastian had offered him nothing
to drink except tea.  Viola's presence in the little
parlour had made the scene of the previous afternoon
look ugly in the memory of it.  He was very glad now
that it had been so.  It would have been too painful to
have the burden of that secret upon him while deciding
what he should do with Harry's secret.  Lady Brent
would certainly have looked upon it as a fall, whatever
view he might encourage himself to take of it.

But surely, weak as he was, he had had something to
do with making Harry, who was of so much finer clay,
what he had grown into.  He had pointed him to noble
things, fed his mind upon fine utterance of fine thoughts,
opened the door for him to all the rich stores of wisdom
laid up from the past.  Yes, he had done that, though
he had had small profit of it for himself.  He was
consoled by the thought that Harry could not be what
he was if any breath of his own unworthiness had
touched him.

He threw off the discomfort.  He would act now for
Harry's good, as he had always acted.  There had been
nothing wrong in him there.

He threw off, also, not without some impatience, the
influence of Harry's assuredness.  If it was to be
accepted that the boy could do no wrong according to his
lights—which really seemed to be what it was coming
to—it was not the less necessary to judge the situation
by lights which did not shine upon him, the glimmer of
which, indeed, had been deliberately curtained from
him.

The love of a boy and a girl!  Oh, it was a touching
thing, when they were a boy and a girl like Harry and
Viola.  Wilbraham rejected then and there any
suggestion that might have come from his dinted experience
that Viola was not Harry's mate in innocence and
purity.  He had seen her for himself.  All that he knew
of her father, all that he did not know of her origin and
upbringing, could go by the board.  His heart spoke
for her, his sentiment went out to her.  He was a poor,
weak, self-indulgent creature, he told himself, but he
did recognize goodness and purity when he saw it.
Besides, what else could have attracted Harry?  He was
doubly armed there.

But Lady Brent wouldn't see it like that.  The
outside resemblances between what had happened to
Harry's father and what was now happening to Harry
would be too strong for her.  She would think that all
for which she had worked and sacrificed herself through
long years would be destroyed if Harry was caught in
the snares of love at this early age.  She would put her
spoke in.  She would use all the wisdom of which she
was capable—and she had shown great wisdom in the
past—in putting a stop to it; but at least she would try
to put a stop to it.

And then what would happen?  Wilbraham saw a
sharp contest between her and Harry, and, with the
deeper vision that had come to him of the boy's
character, he felt it to be extremely doubtful whether Lady
Brent would win.  There would be a state of open
conflict, and Harry would be more firmly fixed in his
courses than before.

Boy and girl attachments—they faded out.  It was
absurd to suppose that at seventeen Harry could have
any idea of marriage, however much he and Viola might
have played with the overwhelming bliss of some day
being always together.  He was not as his father had
been; he would marry, when the time came for him to
do so, with a full sense of his responsibility.  And Viola
was not like Harry's mother.  No, the danger of a hasty
secret marriage could be ruled out; it was an affront
to both of them to think of it.

Harry would go his way, and Viola would go hers.
Their ways lay naturally very far apart.  They might
write to each other for a time, and they might see one
another occasionally; but what would it matter?  At the
end of four years, when Harry would be twenty-one, it
was most probable that this almost childish love passage
would be forgotten, or exist only as a fragrant memory.

Wilbraham divined in himself at this point a faint
regret at the thought of this beautiful boy and girl
ceasing to love one another.  Viola had made a deep
impression upon him.

At any rate, there was no harm in it.  Probably there
was even good in it.  Harry would soon be leaving home,
to plunge straight into a world for which Wilbraham
had sometimes thought that his training had been a
dangerous preparation.  With this innocent early love of
his to accompany him, he would be armed against many
of the temptations to which sheltered youth does
succumb when the shelter has at last been withdrawn.

Wilbraham felt a sense of relief at having come to
these conclusions.  He was sure they were right.  Harry
had conquered.  He should be left free to sun himself
in the glamour of his boy's courtship.  How pretty it
was to think of them billing and cooing like two young
turtle-doves in their leafy fastnesses!  Wilbraham's
lettered thoughts flew to Theocritus, and he murmured soft
Greek words to himself, but decided that there would be
a delicacy about the wooing of these children that could
not be matched in Sicilian idylls.  He rose from his seat
and made his way towards the house.  He had decided.
He would leave them alone.

But as he dressed for dinner in a leisurely way,
lingering often at his window to enjoy the scents and
sounds of the garden dusk, the thought of Lady Brent
once more occurred to him and his face grew thoughtful
again.

Hadn't he rather left her out of account?  If the
decision had been so easy to come to, and seemed so
right now it was made, wouldn't she be quite as capable
of making it as he had been?

Well, perhaps!  And whether she arrived at the same
conclusion or not, one thing was quite certain—that she
would be vastly annoyed with Wilbraham if she knew
that he had taken it upon himself to decide without
consultation with her.

But his doubts were soon dissipated.  He had decided
for Harry, and was with him now.  It might be rather
painful at some future time to face her offended
surprise, but, after all, he was a man and she was a woman.
And Harry had proved himself a man already.  They
would only be in the same boat.  Wilbraham smiled to
himself, put on his coat and went down to dinner.

He had had some idea of giving Harry a word to indicate
that his secret was safe, but there was no opportunity
before they went in to dinner, and afterwards he
was glad that he had not done so.  For Harry did not
even give him a look of inquiry.  He chatted and laughed
and seemed to be in a mood of quite unburdened high
spirits.  So had Viola been, but Viola had not known
that Wilbraham had discovered their secret, and Harry
did.  Wilbraham was pleased to think that Harry's
evident absence of anxiety was the result of his trust in
him.  He had surprised his secret and he would respect
it.  What could he do otherwise?  Wilbraham was
confirmed in his decision to leave Lady Brent out of
knowledge of it, but could not forbear an exercise of
imagination as he glanced at her and wondered what she would
do if the truth were suddenly blurted out to her.

A remarkable woman, certainly!  She provided another
little surprise that evening when for the first time
she seemed to contemplate the continuance of the war for
such a time as would involve Harry in it.  It might be
that it would take a year or even more to bring it to a
conclusion.  Lord Kitchener was said to have prophesied
three years, which was impossible to believe; but the
South African War had lasted for two, when everybody
thought it would be over in a few weeks.  It might be
that officers would be wanted more quickly than they
could be turned out in normal times, and that Harry's
Sandhurst training would be speeded up.  They must
bear that in mind.

The prospect did not seem to cause her any dismay,
or if it did she concealed it.  But poor Mrs. Brent raised
a wail of protest.  Surely they couldn't take boys of
eighteen, as Harry would only be in a year's time.  It
would be wicked—unheard of.

"Not unheard of," said Lady Brent.  "And not
wicked either.  For our own sakes we should wish Harry
kept out of it; but if he were of an age when others went
we should wish him to go.  However, let us hope that
there will be no necessity."

"I don't think I hope that," said Harry.  "I don't
want the war to last, because I think war is a horrible
thing.  All the same, I wish I were fighting in this
one."

Wilbraham controverted the opinion that war was a
horrible thing.  Nations were apt to get lazy and selfish
over long periods of peace, and wanted rousing out of
themselves, just as sluggish human bodies did.  War was
a tonic and a cleanser.

"Perhaps it is, for those who can fight, with a great
idea behind them," said Harry.  "For all the rest I
think it's beastly.  At any rate, an Englishman could
fight in this war and know he was doing the right thing.
I wish I were a year older now."

Mrs. Brent breathed a deep sigh and looked at him
hungrily.  It was of no use her saying anything.  If
Harry's fighting or not fighting should come to be
decided on, she would have no voice in the decision.  She
looked anxiously at Lady Brent, who only said:
"Fortunately, the matter isn't in our hands."

"People of my age are enlisting," said Harry, shortly.

Lady Brent took this up at once.  Perhaps she had
already thought of it.  "It is a fine thing for a young
man to do," she said.  "But for those who have shown
their willingness to fight through generations there is an
even higher duty, which is to lead.  And you cannot
lead without the proper training."

Harry did not reply, and the subject was dropped.
But to Wilbraham, with his senses more acute from what
he had learned of him, came a glimpse into still other
chambers of his mind.  His silence was not that of one
who had received an answer which settled a doubtful
point.  In this, as in other matters, he would take his
own way, but the way was not yet clear to him, and he
would not talk about it beforehand.

It had come of late to be Harry's habit to stay with
Wilbraham after the women had left the table, while he
drank his coffee and smoked a cigarette.  He had done
it at first on occasions, but now seldom went away with
his mother and grandmother.  It was a habit that
marked his growing manhood, but he could still have left
him without remark if he had wished to do so.  If he
should leave him to-night, Wilbraham thought it would
be a sign that he did not wish to talk to him again on
the subject of which both their minds were full.

But he came back again after opening the door for
his mother and grandmother.

How young and fair and slender he was, thought
Wilbraham, and he moved lightly across the great hall and
took his seat, as of right, in his chair of dignity.
Nothing but a beautiful boy, after all, too young as yet by
years to take upon himself any large responsibilities,
and yet the much older man waited instinctively on him
for an indication of the new relationship that was to
exist between them.

The servants came in with the coffee, and until they
had left the room again nothing was said.  Harry looked
thoughtful, and graver than usual.

When they were once more alone he said: "I want
you to do something for me, and I don't want Granny
to know—nor, of course, mother.  It's for you to say
whether you'll do it or not, but I want you to promise
in any case not to let them know that I've asked you."

Wilbraham was slightly huffed.  "I don't know why
you should want to extract a promise of secrecy
beforehand," he said.  "You didn't this evening, but I've
thought it over and decided to keep to myself what I
found out."

Harry looked puzzled for a moment, and then smiled.
"I hoped you would," he said, "for now I shall be able
to talk to you about her."

"Thanks," said Wilbraham, drily.  "I'm glad I'm
going to get some reward."

Harry laughed.  "A young man in love is supposed
to be rather a bore, isn't he?" he said.  "I seem to
remember having read so, but people in love haven't
interested me much so far.  Well, but of course that was
for you to decide—whether you'd keep it to yourself or
not.  You might not have thought it right to do so; I
couldn't tell.  But this is something quite different—not
about Viola, you know.  I want you to find out
something for me, and I don't want Granny to know yet
that I'm thinking about it.  You may think she ought to
know."

"I suppose it's something about the war," said
Wilbraham, with the memory before him of Harry's silence
after that speech of Lady Brent's at dinner.

"I shan't tell you what it is unless it's only between
you and me," said Harry.  "I've a right to my own
thoughts."

"Very well, then, I promise."

"I want you to find out for me exactly what chances
there are of my being able to get a commission without
going through the regular Sandhurst training.  I don't
think I want to wait for that if there are other
ways."

Wilbraham considered this.  "You're only seventeen,"
he said.

"Nearly eighteen," said Harry, "and a fine-grown
boy for my age."

"Why shouldn't you want your grandmother to
know?  You heard what she said just now.  If things
are going to be altered so that training is cut short,
she's quite ready for you to take advantage of that."

"Ah, yes.  She couldn't help it, you see.  But I think
she'd do what she could to stop me doing anything that
could be helped.  I want to know if there is any other
way before I say anything to her at all.  I know so little
about it.  But supposing I could get my commission
quicker by enlisting, for instance."

"Oh, my dear boy, you wouldn't want to do that.
You heard what she said.  She was quite right there.  I
believe the men of your family have been soldiers for as
long as the men of any family."

"That's just why I want to be one, now there's some
sense in soldiering, and as quickly as possible."

"Yes, but as an officer.  We're not so hard pressed
yet that we want to cut grindstones with razors.  It
would be waste of material for you to enlist."

"Not if it led more quickly to being an officer.  That's
what I should do it for.  I know it has been done.
People did it in the South African War."

"Well, yes.  But that was in order to go and fight—at
once.  You're not ready for that yet.  You won't be
eighteen till December.  They wouldn't take you
anyhow, unless you concealed your age, which, of course,
you wouldn't do—couldn't do, either, because you're
known.  Besides, your grandmother, who is your legal
guardian, could stop you.  Why hurry things?  You'll
be at Sandhurst in a few months' time.  Then if there's
any way to hurry things up you can find it out for
yourself.  I don't want to act against your grandmother in
this, Harry.  I don't think it's fair to her."

"Well, perhaps it wouldn't be quite fair to you to
ask you to do it," said Harry, with his engaging smile;
"at least, not if nothing could come out of it.  I
suppose you're quite sure that they wouldn't take me till
I was eighteen."

"Oh, yes.  The proclamations say so.  You can see
it for yourself."

"Oh, well, then," said the boy, rising from his seat,
"I suppose there's nothing to be done just yet.  I only
wanted to be quite sure that I wasn't leaving anything
undone that I could do.  I don't think Granny takes
quite the same view, you know.  Anyhow, there's nothing
to bother her or mother for some months to come.  I
think mother will be waiting for me."

He passed Wilbraham, still sitting at the table, and
put his hand on his shoulder.  "I shall see her to-morrow,"
he said, in a low voice.  He laughed a boyish laugh
of sheer happiness and ran out of the hall.





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   CHAPTER XVII


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   THE END OF THE SUMMER

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It was a golden day in September, which is perhaps
the most beautiful of all English months, though touched
with a gentle melancholy that may be either soothing or
saddening, according to circumstances.  Regarded as
the time for taking up a new spell of work or duty after
the relaxation of summer holiday, it is a delightful
month, especially when the surroundings in which the
work is to be done are such as existed at Royd.  The
Grant family had returned from the seaside and the
Vicar-novelist was positively revelling in his enjoyment
of home, and declaring that the best day of a holiday
was its last.  He had acquired a splendid idea for a novel
which should excel all previous novels of his by many
degrees, and put into the shade a large number of novels
by other writers who had hitherto enjoyed a success in
advance of his own.  He had sat down to write the first
chapter on the morning after their arrival at the Vicarage,
and felt to the full the restful charm of his clean,
comfortable room, with all his books and conveniences
around him, and the garden outside in the full coloured
glow of its autumn profusion.

Jane and Pobbles had resumed their studies under the
guidance of Miss Minster, and if they were without the
experience of satisfaction on that account which their
father enjoyed, there was yet satisfaction to be gained
from returning to the society of Harry, to whom they
had an enormous amount of information to impart.

Harry had also begun work again.  The next three
months were to be strenuous ones for him, with many
hours to be spent with Wilbraham and many more with
an army coach who had been called in to supplement
Wilbraham's deficiencies.  This was Mr. Hamerton, an
obscure man of middle age, who hated coaching embryo
subalterns, hated the society of women, and enjoyed life
only when in the embrace of the purest of pure
mathematics.  He was probably the most serenely happy of
all the inhabitants of Royd Castle at this time.  His
hours with Harry were strictly defined, and his pupil,
though not an enthusiast in mathematics as he would
have liked him to be, showed intelligence and application.
The house was not always full of fresh people with whom
he had to begin all over again, and he was not expected
to spend valuable hours in desultory and desolating
conversation with the ladies of the house itself, whom he
met only at meal-times.  He had most of his time to
himself in the large quiet house, which he seldom quitted,
and Harry had given up to him his room in the tower,
from the top of which he could observe the stars through
a telescope of more respectable dimensions than it was
customary to find in a country house.  Mr. Hamerton,
retiring to the absolute seclusion of his room, and the
hours of undisturbed study or astronomical contemplation
so happily accorded him, would rub his hands with
furtive glee over his good fortune in having obtained
such employment as this; and the relief to all other
members of the household in having him out of the way was
unspeakable.

Harry was with the children in the log cabin.  They
had been home a fortnight, but this was the first time
that they had succeeded in drawing Harry there, though
they had raced up to it themselves at the first possible
moment after their return.

It was Saturday afternoon.  They had had a picnic
tea, with the "billy" boiled on a fire made of sticks
outside, and everything in orthodox backwoods fashion.
Jane and Pobbles had looked forward to it enormously,
but somehow it had not been quite the success that they
had anticipated, though Harry had made himself very
busy with the preparations, and on the outside everything
had seemed to be as it had been before they went
away.  Now he and Jane were sitting on the bench outside
the cabin, while Pobbles had reluctantly retired to
fulfil a half-hour's engagement with Miss Minster,
consequent upon some scholastic failure on his part earlier
in the week.

The two of them had been talking, as they had been
wont to talk, playing with the idea of such a life as this
as a real life and not a make-believe.  But the virtue
had gone out of such play for Harry.  Even now, as he
did his best to respond to Jane and not to let her see
that his heart was no longer in any game, he was thinking
of the last time he had sat where he was sitting now,
with Viola, and talked in something of the same way,
but with how different a meaning behind the talk!

The talk died down.  In Jane's sensitive little soul
was the knowledge that Harry's heart was not in it.  She
looked up at him and saw his eyes fixed on something
beyond the green and russet of the trees in front of
them, and caught the look of yearning in his face.

"Aren't you happy, Harry?" she asked.  "I'll go
away and not bother you, if you'd like me to."

He turned quickly to her, full of compunction that he
should have failed her after all.  He had been so
determined that the children should see no difference in him.
Why, indeed, should there be any towards them?  He
had looked forward to their return after Viola had gone
away.  His affection for them, because of their childhood,
was in some ways nearer to his love for Viola than
other affections of his life; they would console him for
the loss of her.  And they had done so; but his longing
for her was so great, and no consolation was of much
avail to ease it.

"Of course I don't want you to go away, dear," he
said.  "I'd rather have you with me than anybody.  No,
I'm not unhappy—perhaps a little sad sometimes.  Lots
of things have happened since you went away, you know.
I shall be going away myself before long, and as long as
the war lasts nothing will be quite like what it was
before."

"Is it only the war that makes you sad?" she asked.
"If there's anything else, I wish you'd tell me, now we're
alone together.  Of course, with Pobbles I suppose I'm
rather like a boy, and with you, too, when we're all three
together.  But I'm not always like that—inside, I mean.
I'm really more grown up than you'd think."

Harry put his arm around her thin shoulders and
gave her a fraternal hug.  "You're a dear," he said.
"I don't really think of you as like a boy.  There's
something comforting about your being a girl, though I
don't think about you as being grown up, either."

"Well then, tell me, Harry," she said, coaxingly.
"We're real friends, aren't we?  I'd tell you if there was
anything that was making me unhappy.  I suppose I
should tell mother first, but after her I'd tell
you—because we're friends."

The inclination came to him to pour out his burdened
heart to her, but he put it aside.  She was a dear loyal
little soul, and it would assuage his longing to talk to
her about Viola; but he could not burden her with a
secret, to relieve his own burden.  "I'm not really
unhappy," he said, "only rather sad.  There is
something—perhaps I'd tell you if you were older, because we're
friends.  Anyhow, being friends with you makes me less
sad.  I didn't mean you to know anything."

"Of course I should know," she said.  "But I won't
ask you any more if you don't want to tell me."

He smiled at her affectionately.  "You'll be the first
person I shall tell when I tell anybody," he said.  He
thought for a moment, with a frown of concentration.
"I don't think there's any harm in our having a little
secret together—one of our play secrets.  If I ever have
anything rather important to tell you—something that
I shouldn't want other people not to know, but I should
like to tell you first—I shall come here very early in the
morning and put a little note just under the window
sill, in the crack, do you see?"

"Oh, yes," said Jane, her face alight.  "That'll be
lovely.  I don't mind your not telling me now, Harry, if
you'll do it like that, so that I shall know before
anybody else.  Thanks ever so much."

The return of Pobbles at this moment, with his soul
as emancipated as his body, changed the current of their
conversation.  For the rest of their time together Harry
was all that he had been as a companion, and Jane
exercised a more rigid control over Pobbles than the women
of a family usually bring to bear upon the men.  But
every now and then she looked at Harry with a glance
that belied the extreme masculinity of her deportment.
How much did she guess, with her budding woman's mind
and her wholly woman's sympathies?  Nothing of the
truth, it may be supposed; but her instincts told her
that there was a change in him that would not pass
away through the solution of any difficulty that might
be troubling him, and that he would never be quite the
same as he had been before.

Others had noted it besides Jane.  The Grants and
Miss Minster talked it over that evening as they sat in
their pretty drawing-room after dinner, to the
adornment of which had been added an old walnut wood
bureau and a pair of Sheffield plate candlesticks, brought
home as spoil from the seaside town where they had been
staying.  Grant's eyes rested on them with satisfaction
many times during their conversation.  The war might
be entering upon a stage which promised a far longer
and harder struggle than any one had hitherto
anticipated, and royalties as well as other payments might
be affected by it; but Grant's royalties had come in
lately to an encouraging extent and there was still good
old furniture to be picked up at bargain prices if you
kept your eyes open, and plenty of room in the Vicarage
for more.

Not to appear to be criticizing our clerico-novelist
too severely for a detachment that was shared by
thousands who were afterwards personally drawn into the
turmoil, it may be said that nobody at this time, unless
it was those at the very heart of it, gauged the
immensity of the disaster that was settling down upon Europe
and would presently involve the whole civilized world.
In future years, with the knowledge of the more than
four years of war that were then still to come in retrospect,
it will be difficult for the student to understand
just how life was altered and how it remained unaffected,
and the slow stages that England passed through until
there was nobody anywhere whose life remained what it
had been before the war.

In those early days there was immense interest in the
incidents of warfare, more, indeed, than was taken at
a later date, when the lock of vast armies on a line that
remained very nearly the same until the end had reduced
the expectation of surprise; the papers were eagerly
read every morning for the hoped for news of decisive
success, but unless there was a personal interest in it, as
there was not at this time at Royd, the war did not
obscure other interests, or even affect them.

The advent of Mr. Hamerton had brought the
approaching change in Harry's life more into evidence.
"I think he's taking it all very seriously," Mrs. Grant
said.  "Thank goodness he is too young to go and
fight, but, of course, it will bring it nearer to him, going
to Sandhurst; and, anyhow, it will be a great change in
his life."

"I think he is worrying a bit that he's not old enough
to go and fight," said Grant.  "Most boys of his
age—nearly old enough, but not quite—would feel like that
about it."

"He has changed a good deal since we went away,"
said Mrs. Grant.  "He seems to me older altogether.
I think the children feel it too.  He's just as sweet to
them as ever, but Pobbles said this evening that he
wasn't nearly so much fun to play with."

"Pobbles brings everything to that test," said Miss
Minster.  "If he does not mend his ways, I anticipate
an evil future for him."

"You've always been hard on Pobbles," said Mrs. Grant.
"There's very little that's really wrong with Pobbles."

"Thanks chiefly to me," said Miss Minster.  "I'm
inclined to think that there's friction again at the Castle.
Poor Mrs. Brent was as lugubrious as possible when she
came yesterday, and Mr. Wilbraham has the same
disagreeable air as he used to go about with earlier in the
summer."

"That's true about Wilbraham," said Grant.  "He
has been seeing a great deal of a London artist who was
lodging at Mrs. Ivimey's on the common.  Perhaps it
has made him discontented with his lot here once more."

"Has he said anything to you about it?" asked Mrs. Grant.

"No.  Curiously enough, he didn't seem to want to
talk much about the artist.  He just said that he was
an interesting fellow to talk to, but they'd decided not
to ask him to the Castle.  He had his daughter with
him, and I suppose they'd have had to ask her too,
though Wilbraham didn't give that as a reason, and
only just mentioned her.  But he seems to have gone up
to talk to the father most afternoons."

"You know the village gossip about the artist, don't
you?" said Mrs. Grant.

"I don't encourage village gossip," said the Vicar.

"How very superior you are!" said Miss Minster.
"I love it."

"Perhaps you would rather I didn't tell you what
they say, dear," suggested Mrs. Grant.

"I think it's my duty to hear it," said the Vicar with
a grin.

"Well, they say he was a hard drinker, and the number
of empty bottles he left behind him was past belief."

"Perhaps Mr. Wilbraham went there to drink with
him," said Miss Minster, "and that accounts for his
moroseness."

"You oughtn't to say a thing like that," said Grant.
"Wilbraham is a teetotaler.  None of them drink
anything at the Castle."

"Perhaps that's why he liked going to see the artist,"
said Miss Minster, impenitently.

"And he doesn't even drink a glass of claret when he
lunches or dines here.  No, you ought not to say that,
even in fun.  I think what's the matter with him is that
his teaching of Harry is coming to an end.  Of course
he has been here for many years, and I suppose he'll
have to look about for something else to do.  I don't
suppose he really likes handing Harry over to Hamerton
for a lot of his work.  In fact, he said as much.  He's
devoted to the boy."

"Everybody is," said Mrs. Grant, "and at the Castle
everything centres round him.  Poor Lady Brent seems
more stiff and stand-offish than ever.  I suppose she
feels it too, that everything she has lived for, for years
past, is coming to an end, and now it will be tested
whether she has been right in bringing a boy up as she
has Harry, shut away from the world."

"I shouldn't call Lady Brent stiff and stand-offish,"
said Grant.

"I only meant in everything that has to do with
Harry.  One would like to talk to her about him,
but——"

"Surely she's always ready for that!" interrupted
Miss Minster.

"Only on the surface.  She wouldn't think of telling
one anything that she must be feeling about the future.
Oh, I do hope everything will turn out right.  It is
dangerous to keep a boy shut up as Harry has been, but I
think it will pay with him.  He's good right through,
and he's a splendid boy too—physically, I mean."

"A good man on a horse," said Grant, in a voice
indicative of quotation marks.  "Yes, he's not been
mollycoddled.  I'm afraid he'll have some rude shocks when
he gets among other young fellows of his age, but he'll
be just as good as they are in the things that young
men admire, and he has a fine character to carry him
through.  I hope she'll be justified in the course she has
taken.  I think she will."

September wore itself out, to the sadness of October,
but in days now and then the boon of summer seemed to
linger.  Early one sunny morning, when the grass was
drenched with dew and sparkling gossamer curtains hung
upon all the bushes, little Jane ran through the garden
and up to the wood where the log cabin was.

The day before Harry had come to tea with the children
in the school-room.  They had had an uproarious
game together afterwards, and Pobbles had said that it
was more fun to play with him now than it had been
before the holidays.  Jane, too, had felt that there was
a difference in him, and had been not the least uproarious
of the three.  There was a weight removed; perhaps
Harry would tell her what his secret was now.

Harry had kissed both her and Pobbles, who was just
not too old to take the attention as anything but a
compliment on saying good-bye.  He had said nothing to
Jane, but had given her a quick look which she
interpreted at once.

That was why she had got up as early as possible
that dewy, sparkling morning and was running to the
cabin as fast as her long thin legs would take her.

Between the board which formed the sill of the
window and the vertical half-logs beneath it was a space
which she had often examined before, but with no result.
Now she drew from it a piece of folded paper.  It was
Harry's promised message to her—first of anybody:

.. vspace:: 2

"Dear little Jane—I'm off to be a soldier.  Good-bye,
dear, and love from

.. vspace:: 1

HARRY."





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.. _`AFTERWARDS`:

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   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   AFTERWARDS

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Brent and Wilbraham sat by the fire in the hour
before dinner.  The summer had quite gone now.  The
rain, driven by a gale of wind, was lashing the window
panes.  There was an impression of luxury and shelter
in the handsome closely curtained room with the wood
fire on the hearth and the soft light of lamps and candles.
But there was little sense of comfort in the hearts
of its occupants.  Lady Brent knitted as she talked,
and to outside view there was no sign of the sadness and
emptiness which lay upon her and over the whole house.
Wilbraham was in frowning, sombre mood.  They talked
in low voices.  It was a week since Harry had left them,
but they had not yet begun to get used to his absence.
Their life went on, but it seemed now to be devoid of all
meaning.  It was almost as if death had come to the
house and its shadow still lay on it.

"I hope you won't go," Lady Brent was saying.
"After all, your tutorship of Harry was only part of
your life here.  You have been one of our little family
for over ten years.  I should feel Harry's going more if
you went, too; and so, of course, would Charlotte."

Wilbraham stirred uneasily.  "It is very kind of you
to put it like that," he said.  But her words had not
removed the frown from his face, and he did not say
that he would stay.

There was silence for a time.  Then Wilbraham said,
suddenly: "Do you remember that evening at dinner
when Harry asked about hurrying up his training, and
you told him that enlistment wouldn't be the course for
him to follow, whatever it might be for others?"

"Oh, yes, perfectly.  Why do you ask?"

"Because afterwards, when we were alone together,
he came back to it."

"Ah!" she said.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

He gave a short laugh.  "I thought you'd ask that,"
he said.  "I wish I had, sometimes, though I doubt if it
would have made any difference."

"What did he say?"

"He began by saying that he was going to ask me
to do something for him.  I could do it or not, as I
thought right, but I wasn't to tell you about it in either
case."

She was silent, and her needles clicked steadily.  But
there had been the slightest pause in the regular sound
of them.

"It was only to save you and his mother anxiety,"
Wilbraham hurried to say.  "I had to give the promise,
or he wouldn't have told me what was in his mind.  It
was to find out for him whether it was possible to get
his commission sooner by enlisting.  Well, I said at once
that I couldn't do that behind your back, and I told
him that it was impossible in any case for him to enlist
before he was eighteen.  He seemed to be satisfied.  In
fact, he said that he had only wanted to be quite sure
that he was leaving nothing undone that he could do.
I thought it was off his mind.  He never said anything
more to me about it."

"Well, I think you acted rightly," she said, after a
pause.  "I had thought it all out.  It had seemed to me
possible that he might come to think it was his duty
to enlist, as the war went on.  I had asked myself
whether it would be right to keep him back, if that
happened, and had come to the conclusion that there was
nothing to be gained by his enlisting—from his point of
view, I mean.  It seemed to me as I said then, on the
first opportunity for saying anything, that—well, you
heard what I said.  I thought he had accepted it."

"So did I.  I'm glad I've told you, but I'm not sure
that you could have done anything.  I believe he was
satisfied to leave it alone then.  It came to him
afterwards—not that he could hurry up his training as an
officer, but that it was his duty to go off and get into the
lines as quickly as possible.  He knew you wouldn't
sanction that, and I'd already told him that you'd have
the power to stop his enlisting.  So he thought it all
out for himself, and kept his own counsel."

"That is what happened," she said, calmly.  "I have
thought that out, too.  I think he was right, you
know—dear Harry."

He looked up in surprise at this.

"I couldn't have sanctioned it," she said.  "And yet
I should have sympathized with him—much more than
he had any idea of.  I'm proud of him.  But, oh, how I
wish he could have trusted me a little more."

She laid down her work on her lap and gazed into the
fire.  Wilbraham was stirred by her utterance, so unlike
her, with her calm self-control and entire command over
all her emotions, to which even now, after years of
knowing her, and the springs of her conduct, he had
small clue.

She took up her work again, and spoke with as much
calmness as before.  "I've sometimes asked myself," she
said, "whether I wasn't getting so much interested in
carrying out a great experiment as to forget what it all
tended to.  But I don't think I can fairly lay that to
my charge.  I have loved the boy too much to treat him
just as the object of an experiment.  If at any time I
had thought that I—that we—were not doing rightly
by him in keeping him here away from everything that
might have prepared him for the future, in the way that
other boys are prepared for it—I should have given up
the idea, and let the world in on us—and on him.  At the
beginning I don't think I had any thought of carrying
the seclusion as far as I have done.  That was only to
have been for his childhood.  But it has been so
fascinating to see him grow up here and only become stronger
and finer as he got older.  I don't think he has missed
anything that would have been for his good.  Anything
that he has missed has been made up to him in other
ways.  His intense love of nature—none of us have been
able to share that with him to increase his love for it,
but I have watched it with a glad heart.  It has seemed
as if my plan had been helped by it, in a way I couldn't
have expected—or at least not to that extent.  And the
way the people all love him here!  He had got right
down into their hearts as he couldn't have done unless he
had lived with them day after day, all the year round,
and for year after year, so that they have been his
friends outside his home, and not people away from here
or coming here from time to time with whom they could
have no concern.  Everything has encouraged me to go
on.  Even the extra freedom that he has taken to himself
of late has pleased me.  He hasn't felt himself fettered.
He has had the life he wanted, and surely it must
have been the best life one could have given him, if it
has made him so happy."

"Yes," said Wilbraham.  "He has made himself
happy, and he can be trusted."

The unhappy look on his face had not lightened during
her long speech, and he spoke now as if to reassure
himself that what she had said was true.  Ever since
Harry had gone off before dawn on that morning a week
ago, leaving messages of love and farewell for his mother
and grandmother, he had been asking himself the meaning
of it, and whether it was right for him any longer
to keep back from Lady Brent what he knew about
Harry and she didn't.

How much had Viola had to do with it?  Nothing, he
was sure, in persuasion of Harry.  But Wilbraham knew
that his love for her had changed the whole current of
his life.  Perhaps he wouldn't have gone off like that if
he had never seen her.

If Wilbraham could have made up his mind to tell
Lady Brent everything, he would have been able to gain
from her some consolation in return.  He needed it at this
time.  She was the only person who knew of his temptation,
and she had been good to him about it in the past.

The poor man was going through a bad time on his
own account.  Perhaps he was just emerging from it,
but its effects were still heavy on him.  After seeing
Viola and her father together, in an atmosphere so
different from that in which he had first seen Bastian alone,
he had had a vivid sense of shame, which had increased
after he had seen Harry.  The idealism of their fresh
youth had made his own lapse look very ugly to him, and
still more the knowledge which he had not admitted to
himself until later that he was still playing with the idea
of drinking with Bastian, though rejecting the possibility
of being caught once more in the toils.

But the toils had caught him, though that first glass
of whisky that he had drunk with Bastian had also been
the last.  Village gossip, if it connected his name with
that of Bastian as a big drinker, had done him an
injustice.  He had gone to see Bastian two or three times, and
had told him straight out the first time the truth about
himself.  Bastian had treated the confidence with ready
sympathy, and Wilbraham had never seen the whisky
bottle while he was with him.  He had said that he didn't
really care about it himself, which Wilbraham took as a
speech of politeness.  If there was foundation for village
gossip, he must have given cause for it at other times
of the day.

Bastian might be able to drink or refrain from drinking
at pleasure, but for poor Wilbraham the mischief
had been done with that one glass.  He had had periods
of longing of late years, always at rarer intervals, but
none of them had been so strong as this.  He was
tortured; sometimes he was on the point of asking Bastian
for God's sake to give him something.  He was drawn
there in a way he could not explain; his irritated brain
rejected reasoning, and he would not keep away.  It
was certainly the fact that he had drunk spirits at the
cottage that attracted him, and yet he was fighting the
desire all the time.  But once again he talked to Viola
there, and he had thoughts of Harry always before him.
When for the last time he saw Bastian and said good-bye
to him he knew that the danger of a fall was over.

But the craving had continued.  Bastian had been
gone nearly a month, and he still felt it, though now it
was at last getting weaker.  There was no danger of
falling at Royd.  There was no public house there, no
wine or spirits were drunk at the Castle, and he had
attained enough mastery of himself to have no
temptation to go further where he could get drink.

His own troubles had prevented his mind from being
filled with thoughts of Harry, and he was now blaming
himself for a possible carelessness towards signs which
might have shown him what the boy must have been
making up his mind to during the last month.  He had
seen him sad, after Viola's departure, and he had never
mentioned her name to Wilbraham, as he had done once
or twice before.  So far as Wilbraham knew, no letters
passed between them.  The post-bag came to the Castle
once a day and was unlocked by Lady Brent.  It would
have been unlike Harry to arrange for letters to be sent
to him through a secret source; Wilbraham was pretty
sure that he had not done so.

In his effort to distract his mind from the urgency
that was riding it, Wilbraham had gone about among
the tenantry more than usual.  He had kept his ears
open for signs that Harry's meetings with Viola had
become known, and could find none.  He had gone to
see Mrs. Ivimey once since Bastian's departure, and she
had been loud in her praises of "the young lady."  She
had even said that if things hadn't been as they were,
by which he imagined her to be alluding chiefly to
Bastian's drinking habits, she and Sir Harry would have
made "a pretty pair."  Wilbraham was sure, from her
way of saying it, that she had no idea, or suspicion, of
their having met.  The woods were of great extent, and,
apart from a few rarely frequented paths and rides,
almost as little known as when they had been primeval
forest.  A few woodmen were employed in them, but at
this time they were at work felling at the other end of
the manor.  It seemed almost certain that no one had
ever seen the two together.

Harry's sadness would pass.  He was still a boy, in
years hardly more than a child, and Viola was no older.
If they were thrown together over years, their young
love might ripen into the love of a life-time; as it was, it
would probably die down to a fragrant memory—a
love-idyll of summer woods, happy and innocent, but
no more than the budding of love in the tender hearts
of two pretty children.  Wilbraham even thought that
Harry might have put it aside from him, at least for a
time.  His poise of mind was so in advance of his years
that it would not be surprising if that were so.  He had
thrown himself ardently into the three months' work
asked of him, and if he was no longer merry and
light-hearted, as he had been, he seemed to be in full
possession of himself and concentrated in purpose.  By and
by, when Wilbraham had passed through his own
troubles, he might talk to him about Viola, and find out
how it lay with them.  At present there seemed to be
nothing to do but to follow Harry's example and
concentrate his mind upon the important business in hand,
which was Harry's preparation for his coming examination.

So Wilbraham had thought and so he had acted, with
a troubled longing for the time when he should once
more be free of his own burden.  But now he doubted.
One thing was fairly clear.  By going away Harry
would be in touch again with Viola as he could not be
at Royd.  Wilbraham did not suppose that to be the sole
or even the chief reason for his going away, but it had
probably counted in his decision.

Harry had ridden off on his horse, before dawn,
probably some hours before dawn, for nothing had been seen
of him in the country in which he was known.  He had
worn his oldest riding suit, and as far as could be said
had taken scarcely anything with him.  His short note
to his grandmother, and longer letter to his mother had
said that he was going to enlist, and it was supposed
that he intended to offer himself and his horse to a
cavalry regiment.  He begged that no attempt should
be made to follow or to stop him doing what he had
fully made up his mind to.  He would write in a few
days, when affairs had been settled for him, but after
that he would not write at all until he had won his
commission in the field.  He made no apology for taking the
decision into his own hands, and offered no explanation
of it.  But it was plain that he meant to run no risk of
being prevented from following out the course he had
laid down for himself.

Mrs. Brent had been full of lamentations.  Lady
Brent had taken it very calmly, though the shock it was
to her had been apparent in the seriousness and sadness
of her manner.  A few inquiries were made as to whether
Harry had been seen riding away, and then they had
waited for his promised letter.

It came on the fourth day, with a London postmark.
He had been accepted for enlistment.  He was in barracks,
well and happy.  His letter—to his mother—was
of the shortest, but contained expressions of affection
which did something to soothe her trouble.

On the outside his action was that of a spirited boy
who had made up his mind to go off and fight and was
not to be hampered by the fears and objections of his
elders.  But to Wilbraham there was more in it than
that.  He thought that Harry might have made up his
mind to the course he had taken if he had not met Viola,
but that he would not have carried it out in quite the
same way.  Then, his mother and grandmother would
have been the only people whom he had to consider.
Now they hardly counted.  He had acted, if not with
want of kindness, still with something of the insensibility
of youth towards the claims of its elders.  They would
not hear from him again for months, perhaps for
years—though a lapse of years seemed unlikely at that time.
But Viola would hear from him.  It was hard on the
older people who loved him.  Wilbraham knew that it
was bearing hardly upon Lady Brent.

"I might find out something about him if I went to
London," Wilbraham said, after neither of them had
spoken for a time.

She looked up at him quickly, and laid down her work.
"I should be so glad to know where he is," she said.  "I
should like him to know—if it were only possible to get
it to him—that I should make no effort now to go
against him.  I could, you know.  It would not be
difficult to find him; at least, it would not be impossible.
But I shall take no steps to override his will.  If he
knew that, surely he would not want to keep himself cut
off from us!  He could write, and before he was sent
abroad he could come here for a few days.  Oh, if only
you could find out where he is, and let him know that!"

"I'll go up and try, if you like," said Wilbraham.

It had surprised him a little that she had not asked
how or where he would try.  He would go straight to
Bastian, whose address he knew, and see Viola.  In
making the offer he had half intended, if she pressed him,
to unburden himself to her about Viola.  He did not
know whether he was relieved or disappointed that she
asked him no questions.  She seemed to be too excited to
think about it, though she did say, later on, that he
could go to Mr. Gulliver, the Brent solicitor, but that if
he did so Mr. Gulliver was to be told not to interfere
with Harry's actions.

"The sooner the better," said Wilbraham.  "I'd
better go up to-morrow."

She made no demur, and was silent for a time.  Then
she looked at him kindly, and said: "There's no danger
for you now, is there?"

He was overcome with a wave of self-pity, brought
out by the sympathy of her tone.  "I've been through
a bad time," he said.  "I think it's coming to an end.
I don't think there's any danger now."

"I've seen it, of course," she said, "and have been
very sorry for you."

He had not thought that she had noticed.  Some explanation
seemed due to her.  "I did drink some spirits,"
he said, with a gulp.  "Just once.  I thought I was safe,
but it brought on the craving.  I've had my lesson.  I
know that I'm different from other men now.  It's not
in my power to be temperate.  It has to be nothing at
all from now onwards."

"I think it's the only way," she said.  "And for
years together here you haven't missed it, have you?"

"No," he said.  "It was very wrong to do it at all.
I'm ashamed of myself—after you've done what you
have for me."

One thing she had done was to go without wine at
table, except on the rare occasions on which there had
been guests at the Castle.  That had been for his sake,
and he knew it well enough, though she had never
mentioned it.  She deserved his confidence.

"It was when I went to see Bastian—the artist," he
said.  "After the first time I told him how it was with
me, and he never drank anything himself while I was
with him."

"In the village they say he was a heavy drinker."

It surprised him to hear that she had heard about
Bastian.  When he had told her that there was no necessity
to ask him to the Castle, she had seemed to lose all
interest in him, and had never mentioned his name since.

"I should think he drinks a lot," he said.  "He did
when I was with him.  But he seems to be one of those men
who don't get caught by it.  To say he is a heavy drinker
would be rather unfair.  He has his young daughter to
look after, and I think he'd be careful what he did for
her sake.  He's a gentleman, though he seems to have
come down in the world, and a man of refinement."

He was feeling his way towards a confession.  She
had been so kind to him, and so wonderful in her
understanding of what had impelled Harry to the course he
had taken, though it had hit her hard, that his inclination
was to tell her, and trust her to take the view of it
that he had taken himself.  But there was a fence to
take before he could make a clean breast of it.  He had
given no promise to Harry, but Harry had trusted him
to keep his secret.  It might be right to tell Lady Brent
of what had happened, but Harry would not think so.
It wanted just the slight pressure, unconscious on her
part, of what it would bring forth, to overcome his
reluctance to give away Harry's secret.

So he gave her an opening to ask him about Bastian,
and about Viola.  But she did not take it.  She seemed
to be thinking of something else.  "It would be sad,"
she said, half indifferently, "if his drinking were to
affect a young daughter.  I think I should like you to
go to London to-morrow.  It would be a great comfort
to poor Charlotte to know where Harry is; and to me,
too.  And to be able to get messages to him."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WILBRAHAM IN LONDON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   WILBRAHAM IN LONDON

.. vspace:: 2

In the region that lies to the north of Regent's Park
there are quiet little streets, aside from the ugly crowded
main thoroughfares, which date back from the time, not
so very long since, when there were pleasant suburbs
here, and the open country lay within a walk of the
centre of London.  Wilbraham found himself unexpectedly
in one of them in his search for the address
that Bastian had given him, and, as he waited for
admission at the door upon which he had knocked, looked
about him with a sense of relief.  He had expected
something almost approaching squalor, and at least
noise and unrest.  But it was not painful to think of
the girl whom Harry loved living in one of these quiet
little houses.

They were all alike, built at a time when some of the
quality of eighteenth century architecture, which hung
about the simplest building, had disappeared, but had
not yet given way to the deadness and ugliness that
followed it.  Nothing could have been simpler than this
regular street of small houses, each with one window and
a door on the ground floor, two windows on the first,
two windows on the second, and a basement with a
narrow area; but their very monotony was restful, and they
indicated a respectability that was almost aggressive.
The paint was nowhere shabby, the brass door handles
shone, and here and there the dirty brick of one of the
houses had been cleaned and the mortar pointed.  They
were not beneath the occupation of people who took a
pride in the appearance of their dwellings, and might
even have money enough to have the faces of them
washed and their interiors modernized before they made
their homes in them.

As Wilbraham stood at the top of the few steps that
led to the entrance, a door to the area beneath him
opened and a woman looked up at him, and then immediately
disappeared.  Mrs. Ivimey's sister, evidently, by
the likeness.  Somehow the fact of this relationship had
been forgotten.  Here was a link with Royd.  If Harry
had been to the house, or should come there—!  He had
no time to formulate his thoughts before she opened the
door to him.

He introduced himself to her at once, before asking
for Bastian.  She was a clean neat woman and gave him
smiling respectful welcome when he told her who he was.
"It's many years since I was down in those parts, sir,"
she said.  "But I hear sometimes from my sister, and
Mr. Bastian, the gentleman who lodges with me, has been
there lately and told me a good deal about it."

"It's him I've come to see," said Wilbraham.  "Is he in?"

"Miss Viola is in, sir," she said.  "I dare say you
saw her when she was at Royd."

"Yes," said Wilbraham.  "I should like to see her
now, if you'll tell her who I am."

Here was a lucky chance.  It was Viola he wanted to
see, and apart from her father, if possible.  Mrs. Clark
led him at once upstairs, talking volubly as she did so.
But she did not mention Harry.  Wilbraham thought
she would have done so if he had been to the house.

She showed him into a room on the first floor, after
knocking at the door and receiving no answer.  "I
expect Miss Viola is upstairs," she said, opening the
door.  "I don't think she's gone out again.  If you'll
kindly step in, sir, I'll go and tell her you're here."

Wilbraham entered the room with some curiosity.  It
was larger than he had anticipated, extending to the
whole width of the house and lit by the two windows.
Its main furniture was good and solid, of about the date
of the house, when furniture had lost its simplicity of
line and ornament, but still showed some pride of
craftsmanship.  Except for an upright piano with a front of
faded fluted red silk, which might or might not have
belonged to the tenants, it was all probably the property
of the landlady, and the nondescript wall paper and
dark green curtains were also probably her taste and
not theirs.  But the books in shelves on either side of
the fireplace, the pictures on the walls and the clutter of
photographs and little objects for use or ornament on
the mantelpiece and elsewhere about the room struck a
different note.  No attempt had been made to make it
other than it was by nature, but it had the air of a
permanent home, occupied by people of some refinement.

Viola's work-basket was on a small table by the wall,
and there were other signs of feminine occupancy in the
room.  It looked cozy enough, with a bright fire burning,
the curtains drawn and the gas lit; for it was getting
dark outside.  Bastian evidently made use of the large
shabby easy chair by the fire, for there was a tobacco
jar and an array of pipes on the table by its side, and a
book or two.  With his daughter sitting opposite to
him, on a winter evening, it was possible to imagine him
taking pleasure in his home life.  It would be quieter
and less marked by poverty than Wilbraham had pictured
it.  A faint odour of the tobacco that Bastian
used hung about, but there were flowers in a vase on
Viola's table, and fruit in a plaited basket on the
sideboard.  The sideboard, apt to be so much in evidence in
furnished lodgings, had none of the paraphernalia of
meals on it in the way of cruets or bottles.  In fact,
there were no bottles to be seen anywhere.  Wilbraham
noticed that at once, for his own trouble had made him
acutely sensitive; he had no fears now of succumbing to
a temptation to drink, but the signs of drinking by
Bastian would have affected him unhappily.  He was
inclined to believe that he had to some extent misread
Bastian, on his first acquaintance with him.  It could
not be his habitual custom to drink as much as he had
done on that afternoon, or Viola would be more affected
by it than she was.  She had none of the air of a
girl whose life had been saddened by a father's gross
intemperance; and if Bastian had been kept down in the
world by this failing of his, as he had said he had, his
poverty was shown by this room to be more relative
than actual.

Wilbraham dismissed the unpleasant question of
intemperance, in relief at the signs of comfort and
refinement that he saw about him.  The table in the middle
of the room was laid for tea, as if that was the chief
evening meal here.  Wilbraham hoped that Bastian
would not come in for it until he had talked to Viola.

He made his way to the mantelpiece, upon which were
a good many photographs.  The photographs in a room
tell you more than anything about its occupants.

Something was told in this instance by the fact that
they were all a good many years old.  It meant, for one
thing, that Viola and her father must have lived here for
some time, and for another that they could have made
few friends of late years.

Wilbraham's eye was caught by one of Bastian as a
very young man in a group with three others, taken by
a Cambridge photographer.  His first thought as he
looked at it, was to wonder whether he himself had
changed so much in twenty years.  Bastian appeared as
a young man fashionably dressed and judging by his
smile pleased with the world in general and with his
own lot in it in particular.  He had been more than
usually good-looking in those days.  There was another
one of him on a horse, taken at about the same time, but
not at Cambridge.  Wilbraham wished afterwards that
he had noticed the name and habitation of the
photographer.  Bastian had never told him from what part of
the country he came, or anything about his early home
and upbringing.  But it was evident that he came from
what it is customary to call "good people."  It was
hardly fair to keep Viola in ignorance of her parentage,
which might possibly prove to be of some importance to
her.

There was a photograph of Viola herself at the age of
about ten—a pretty child, but without the exceptional
beauty into which she had grown.  In a large frame
was one of her mother, and there were others of her at
different stages.  Wilbraham examined them with some
attention.  She was certainly beautiful, with the same
sort of beauty as Viola's, though Wilbraham thought
that if he had not known the facts about her he would
yet have detected an absence of race, which seemed to
him to be apparent in Viola, and perhaps also in her
father.  He tried to find in her support for Bastian's
praise of her character and temperament, but all he
could have said was that there was nothing to show that
she had not deserved it.  She smiled sweetly in these
photographs, some of which were in theatrical costume;
she was young and beautiful and happy, and her
early death added pathos to these presentments of her.

There were other photographs of girls and young
women carelessly propped up on the mantelpiece, some
of them hidden.  They were probably mostly theatrical
friends of Mrs. Bastian's, and it seemed likely that she
had lived in these rooms, or they would not have been
left there.  Wilbraham's eyes roamed over them without
interest, but just as he was about to turn away were
caught by the signature of one of them.  "With love
from Lottie" in a sprawling hand.  It was of
Mrs. Brent, taken in that youth of which she was still proud
but which she had left behind her.

Wilbraham looked at it fascinated.  For some reason
or other Mrs. Brent had never shown him a photograph
of herself taken during her stage career.  For the
moment he was more interested in seeing her as she had
been than in the fact of finding her photograph
here—Harry's mother, in Viola's room.

The photograph made her almost as pretty as Mrs. Bastian.
She was a gay light-hearted girl too.  Harry's
father might be excused for having fallen in love with
her.  And there was a look of Harry in her young face,
which Wilbraham had never noticed in the flesh.  He
wondered whether Viola had noticed the likeness, which
seemed to him quite plain.  But probably she did not
look at these old photographs to notice anything about
them at all once in six months, though she saw them
every day.

Viola came in as he was standing looking at them.  He
thought she looked more beautiful than ever, as she
greeted him with a smile and a blush.  Her entrance into
the room seemed to bring light with it, and softness and
charm.  Its commonplace features sank into the
background; the flowers became of more importance than
anything, and the books and the music.

Wilbraham had seen Viola in a pretty simple frock
suitable for the country, but although her clothes now
had the same air of simplicity to his unsophisticated
eyes, they were even to him something exceptional.  One
would not have expected a girl who lived in that room
to enter it dressed as she was.  The calling in which she
earned her living stood her in good stead.  Wilbraham
had not been told what it was, and had the idea of her
doing something or other with a typewriter.  He
thought that the figure she presented was owing to her
taste, and did not know that it would also have meant
a good deal of money if there had been nothing more
than her taste to account for it.  What he did feel was
that she might have entered any rich room in London
as she was and been taken for granted as belonging to
it.  She was worthy of Harry even in this respect, which
would probably weigh more with the world even than it
weighed with him.

"Father will be in in about half an hour," she said.
"You will stay and have some tea with us, won't you?
I'm sure he will be glad to see you."

He had been looking at her searchingly.  She gave
him the impression of being older than when he had seen
her at Royd, a woman full grown and no longer half a
child, though the delicacy and freshness of youth still
marked her.  She had, in fact, ceased to arrange her
hair as still growing girls wear it, and there was some
to him indefinable difference in her clothes.

He said he would stay until her father came in,
and she motioned him to her father's chair, and sat
down in her own on the other side of the fire, facing
him.

She seemed to wait for him to speak first.  He could
tell nothing by her manner, which was smiling and
self-possessed, though her self-possession was not more than
is becoming to a young girl, secure in her youth and
charm.

"I suppose you know that Harry has left home to
enlist in the army," he said.

Her colour deepened a little upon the mention of her
lover's name, but she did not shrink from his gaze, and
the faint smile was still on her lips as she said: "I
thought that he might, although he didn't say he
would."  So of course she knew, and had been prepared for the
question.

"Probably he had not quite made up his mind by the
time you left Royd," he said.

She did not reply to this, and he thought he could see
that she had decided not to admit anything, probably
under Harry's directions.  Again there came to him the
sense of dislike at interfering with what Harry had
decided.  He could not fence with her to make her say
what Harry didn't want her to say, or force her to say
that she could not answer his questions.  She was frank
and innocent.  It would seem an impertinence to put her
into the position of defending a reticence.

"We have been very anxious about him at home," he
said.  "We are anxious still—not to get him to come
back, but that he should not cut himself off from us.
I've come up to London on purpose to get a message
to him if I can.  I didn't tell Lady Brent I should come
here, or say anything about you.  She thinks I have
only come to see Mr. Gulliver, the family solicitor, and
ask him to find out, if he can, where Harry is.  His
mother can hardly bear the thought of not hearing from
him for months, and not knowing where he is.  Lady
Brent was not altogether unprepared for his enlisting.
She couldn't have been a party to it, as he's not even of
an age to enlist yet, and I suppose he's had to represent
himself as older than he is in order to get taken.  But
she told me herself that she was proud of him for doing
it, and she certainly wouldn't do anything to interfere
with him, now he's taken the matter into his own hands.
If he knew that——"

He did not finish his sentence, which was on the note
of appeal to her.  Nor did he look at her.

There was a pause.  Then she said, "I haven't seen
Harry, you know, Mr. Wilbraham."

He looked at her then, and saw that there were tears
in her eyes.  So his appeal had not been without its
effect.

"I think his mother ought to know," she said, "and
that he ought to write to her."

In a flash of understanding, he saw that he had got
all that he had come for, and that he would get no more.
Or at least that he must not exercise pressure to get
more, or put her in the position of refusing to give it.
She would tell Harry what he had told her, and she
would tell him that she thought he ought to write to his
mother.  Of Lady Brent she had said nothing.  It was
probable that Lady Brent appeared in her eyes in a
different light from that in which Wilbraham saw her.

As for everything else—it was their secret, to be
treated by him with respect.  He would probe into it no
further; and indeed it was better that he should not know
more than he knew already of how it was between them.
There was quite enough on his mind that he had kept
from Lady Brent.

"Yes, I think he should write," he said.  "I shall
see Mr. Gulliver to-morrow."

The two statements had no apparent bearing upon
one another, but Viola seemed to accept them with relief,
and was beginning to talk to him pleasantly, but with no
reference to Harry, when Bastian came in.

He was nearly half an hour earlier than his usual
time, it appeared, and Wilbraham was inclined to be
disappointed at having his talk with Viola cut short.
Whenever he was with her he felt himself almost
violently in sympathy with Harry in his love for her.  He
was observing her all the time, and there was nothing
that she said or did that did not deepen his first
impression of her.  He wanted to feel like that about her,
for Harry's sake; championship of her as one who was
in all essentials fit to mate with him, might stand Harry
in good stead later on.

But she would show herself, perhaps with less need for
carefulness in what she said, with her father there as
without him.  Bastian gave him a cordial welcome.  He
was again, in appearance, a gentleman, merely indifferent
to the shabbiness of his attire, but the younger
healthier look he had had during the latter part of his
stay at Royd no longer marked him.  Wilbraham
thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk,
or anything near it, and it seemed probable that he
kept his habits in check in the home that he must have
valued.  He drank tea, rather copiously, at the meal
which soon followed his entrance, and there was no
preparation apparent for anything stronger to be drunk
later on.

It was not long before Wilbraham became as anxious
to be alone with Bastian as he had before wished to be
alone with Viola.  Bastian knew, and Viola was
distressed at the signs he showed of wishing to talk about
what he knew.

It became plain to Wilbraham now that the poor child
was not unaffected by her father's intemperance.  If the
worst of it was kept from her, and he had the
self-command not to soil the home in which she lived with
it, still there were times when she saw him not quite
himself.

This was one of them.  Wilbraham saw the suspicion
and then the certainty dawn upon her, with a droop, and
a shadow on her brightness, and a stiffening of manner
that was not quite displeasure, but yet something near
it.  She had enough influence over him, apparently, to
be able to prevent his saying what she did not want said,
but his hints and smiles made Wilbraham as uncomfortable
as they evidently made her.  Immediately the
meal was over she said good-bye to Wilbraham and went
out of the room.  Perhaps this was her usual way of
dealing with these lapses.  Her father expostulated, but
she took no notice, except by saying as she went out:
"I'll tell Mrs. Clark not to clear away just yet."

"She's a dear child, Viola—but she's difficult sometimes,"
said Bastian.  "I hope she hasn't taken a dislike
to you."

"I don't think so," said Wilbraham, shortly.  "What
she obviously does dislike is having her secrets talked
about before a comparative stranger.  I should have
thought you might have seen that."

Bastian threw a look at him as he went to the side
table to take up a pipe.  Wilbraham's tone seemed to
surprise him, but it did not subdue the agreeable humour
in which he found himself.  "We don't look on you as
a stranger," he said, "and if there's a secret, you're in
it.  I think you want mellowing, my dear Wilbraham.
I don't keep anything to drink here, but if you'd like
something I can send out for it."

"You seem to forget what I told you about myself,"
said Wilbraham.  "I can't drink without losing control
of myself.  You seem to be in much the same case.
I think it's a damned shame to show it before that
child."

This brought Bastian up short.  He frowned in
offence, but apparently he was one of those people whom
a rebuke moves more to sorrow than to anger, for he
said: "That's a hard thing to say to a man, Wilbraham.
I do drink more than's good for me sometimes, I know;
but if there's one thing I've always been careful about all
my life it is not to let it affect Viola."

"Well, it does affect her," said Wilbraham.  "You'd
have seen how it affected her just now, if you hadn't
been drinking.  It's not for me to preach, God knows.
But if you're able to control it at all, you've got
something to be very thankful for, and you ought to control
it absolutely as far as she's concerned."

"I've had very little to drink to-day, as a matter of
fact," said Bastian, rather sulkily, "and I don't want to
be lectured about it, Wilbraham.  Sit down and have a
talk.  You won't find my powers of expression affected
by the little I have had."

He ended on a smile.  He was an attractive creature,
Wilbraham thought, in spite of his culpable weakness.
Most men would have quarrelled with him for what he
had said, if they had been in Bastian's state.  But the
extent to which he was affected by drink was a puzzle.
As he talked Wilbraham could mark no signs of it,
though they had seemed so evident up to this time.
There was an absence of cautiousness in what he said,
but that was native to him.  It may have been slightly
enhanced now, but Wilbraham would not have put it
down to the loosening of tongue brought about by
liquor if they had started with this conversation.  His
own irritation subsided.  He had said his say.  He sat
down in Viola's chair, opposite to Bastian, and lit his
cigarette, taking rather a long time to do so, in order
to leave the opening with Bastian, who was not slow to
take it.

"It wouldn't do for my little failing to become known,
would it?" he said with a smile.  "If I can't do without
alcohol altogether—and I don't see why I should—I
shall have to keep in the background."

Wilbraham was conscious of a return of irritation.
He disliked this half-jocular allusion to a subject of
such serious importance.  "Oh, don't talk of it like
that," he said, impatiently.  "I suppose you know that
Harry Brent and Viola have met and have fallen in love
with one another.  Nobody else knows it but me, and
perhaps it's important that nobody else should.  At any
rate you can talk quite straight about it to me."

Bastian received this with a change of manner.  "All
right," he said, "I will talk straight.  Viola's a girl in
a thousand—in a million.  I'd trust her anywhere.  But
for a young man to be meeting her again and again, and
keeping it secret—!  Well, you see my point, I suppose."

It was quite a new point to Wilbraham, as far as he
did see it.  But his brain, edged by his long struggle
with himself, and now again working with its normal
quickness, seized upon its essential insincerity at once.
There was a barely perceptible pause before he said: "If
you mean that Harry has done anything that you can
take exception to why have you been smiling and hinting
about it up till now?"

Perhaps Bastian did not quite take this in.  "Oh, I
don't mean to say that there has been anything wrong,"
he said.  "As I say, I trust Viola—absolutely.  If
*she's* satisfied with herself, as she is, that's enough for
me."

"Very well," said Wilbraham, keeping command.
"Then that applies to Harry too.  You don't know him.
I do.  I found it out by chance, and he made no attempt
to persuade me to keep it secret.  He left it to me, and
I decided to do so.  If he wanted it kept secret, so did
she; and they both wanted it for the same reasons,
whatever they were.  If she was right, he was right,
and——"

"Yes, that's all very well——," said Bastian, but
Wilbraham over-rode his interruption.  "I suppose you
didn't know of it till after you'd come to London.  How
did you know of it?"

Bastian allowed himself to be diverted.  "I found it
out on the last night," he said.  "I went out to look
for her, and she came in crying, poor child!  Something
suddenly struck me.  She had been out such a lot
alone, and she hadn't done that before when we'd been
away together—at least not so much.  And she'd been
different somehow.  I hadn't thought about it before,
but it came to me suddenly all together.  And she
wouldn't have been crying like that just because we were
going home.  There was something—somebody.  I dare
say I should have got at it by thinking it over; but she
told me.  I love her, and she loves me, and knows that
she can tell me anything.  That's how it was,
Wilbraham.  You're not a father, but you can imagine,
perhaps, what a father feels about these things,
when his daughter is the chief thing in the world to him."

"I suppose I can," said Wilbraham.  "But all the
same you're not treating her in the way you boast of
if you're not prepared to look upon Harry in the same
light.  You'll agree that on the outside of things they're
not equal—those two."

"I don't agree to that," said Bastian, dogmatically.

"I said on the outside of things," Wilbraham
persisted.  "You've been where he belongs, and you know
what sort of position he's in.  You may have belonged to
the same sort of thing once.  I don't know.  You've
never told me who your people were.  But you say
yourself that you've come down in the world, and it's pretty
obvious that you're not in anything like the position the
Brents are now.  So you can see how it would have been
likely to strike me when I first found it out.  But Harry
is what he is.  I trusted him, just as you trusted Viola.
And afterwards I saw Viola.  If I can think of her as
I do, you ought to be able to think of Harry in the same
way, though you haven't seen him."

"Very well, then," said Bastian.  "Let's take it that,
leaving out things that don't matter, they're to be looked
at in the same way.  Of course I know, really, that he's
something quite out of the common.  I've heard the
people there talk about him.  If I hadn't thought there
was no harm in it—for Viola—I shouldn't have treated
it as I have.  But you see, Wilbraham, as a father I've
got to look a little farther ahead than you do.  I
suppose to you it's just a boy and girl falling in love with
one another in all their innocence, and if nothing comes
of it no harm will be done.  Well, it wouldn't to him.
But it's rather different with her, isn't it?"

Wilbraham was silent.  That was exactly as he had
looked at it, on Harry's behalf.  And it would be
different for Viola.

"If he's what you say he is," said Bastian, pursuing
his advantage, "he won't want to throw her off when he
gets older.  But his people will want him to, and when
they know they'll try to bring it about.  Harry and
Viola!  Yes.  But it's me and Lady Brent, you see, as
well—as she seems to be the one that counts most.  I
don't know anything about the boy's mother; they don't
talk about her much down there.  It's his grandmother
who seems to count for everything.  Who was his
mother, by the by?"

Wilbraham had forgotten until that moment the
photograph on the mantelpiece.  He awoke to its
realization with a mental start.  If Bastian had not shown
himself ignorant of Mrs. Brent's origin he might have
succumbed to the instinct for the dramatic and surprised
him by pointing her out in reply to his question.  But
when the question came he had just received the impression
of loyalty on the part of Mrs. Ivimey, or anybody
else to whom Bastian may have talked about "the
family."  They had not given Mrs. Brent away.  He
wouldn't either, at least at this stage.

"Nobody in particular," he said with a half truth.
"They were only married for a few weeks.  Lady Brent
is Harry's guardian, and of course she's had most to do
with bringing him up more or less in seclusion at Royd.
I suppose you know that he has gone off to enlist."

"Yes, and I suppose you've come here to find out
from Viola where he is, and haul him back again."

Wilbraham told him why he had come up.  "I shall
go and see Gulliver to-morrow," he said, "and get him
to make inquiries.  Then I hope in a few days Harry
will write.  She'll be satisfied with that, and whether
Gulliver finds him or not she won't make any attempt to
get him back."

"Well, you're a funny crew altogether," said Bastian,
after they had talked a little longer.  "As far as I'm
concerned, Wilbraham, I'm going to keep my eyes open.
You needn't look to me to back up your ideas, if it
doesn't suit me to do so.  Better have all your cards
on the table.  They're both much too young yet to think
about anything further, and I suppose he'll be too young
for another few years.  You can hug your secret for the
present."





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.. _`WAITING`:

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   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   WAITING

.. vspace:: 2

Autumn gave place to winter and winter to spring.
Another summer came, and people began to resign
themselves to the hitherto almost incredible idea of the war
lasting over another winter.  That winter passed away
and the interminable struggle went on.

But even after two years the texture of life had not
very greatly altered in England.  Conscription had not
yet come in; there was no food control; motor cars
could be used for purposes of pleasure or convenience;
the chief opportunities for the work of women in
connection with the war were in nursing, and for girls in
government clerkships.  It was not for another full year
that country life in England seemed quite a different
thing from what it had been before the war.  The change
had come by degrees and its last stages were passed
through much more quickly than the first.  In the
summer of 1916 it was still possible to live in a country
house without being much affected by the war.

Lady Brent lived on at Royd Castle to all outward
appearances in much the same way as she had lived
there since her widowhood.  There came to be fewer
servants, and her work in connection with the estate
increased, for her bailiff had joined up, and she had not
tried to replace him.  She did much of his work herself,
with the help of the estate staff, and perhaps welcomed
the increased responsibility, for her life during those two
first years was sad enough, with all that she had lived
for taken from her just at the time when the hopes of
years were to have been put to the test.

Harry had written to his mother within a few days
of Wilbraham's return from London, and again from
time to time to her and to his grandmother and to
Wilbraham; also to the children.  But his letters
contained very little news about himself.  They were posted
in London and gave no address to which answers could
be sent.  After some months there was a long silence,
and then he wrote from Egypt, where his regiment had
been sent.  After that he wrote mostly to his mother.
He told her more about his life, but never anything that
would identify him.

The letters sent from Egypt were subject to censorship,
but they arrived at Royd in envelopes bearing a
London postmark and with no label or stamp on them.
Yet they were addressed in Harry's writing.  He must
have left a supply of them behind him.

The clue to all this was no doubt a strong and
considered determination to carry out his plan without risk
of interference.  The message carried to him by Viola
had brought letters from him, but that was as far as
he would go; and perhaps he would have written in any
case.  After the first one had been received Lady Brent
wrote to Mr. Gulliver and told him not to pursue his
inquiries.  Harry must have his own way.  As he had
written, after it had seemed that he had made up his
mind not even to do that, so perhaps he would some day
relent and let them write to him.  But nearly two years
went by and he had not done so.

In the long sad conversations they had about him at
Royd during the early months, they arrived at some sort
of conclusions, helped by an occasional expression in his
letters.  He had gone out of his own world, and as long
as his time of probation lasted he would keep out of it.
He was not likely to think himself degraded by serving
in the ranks, but they came to understand that he was
keeping his actual condition hidden.  There was nothing
in his letters, which would be read by his superior
officers, to indicate it, and before he left England they
were more about Royd than about himself.  There was
never very much about himself.  Every time he wrote he
said he was well and happy; but it peeped through that
the change in his life was not without its effect upon
him.  How could it be otherwise, brought up as he had
been?  He was learning in a hard school; but he was
learning, and flashes of his old boyish brightness broke
through the reticence which he seemed to have imposed
upon himself.  They came to look upon it as a time of
probation for him, and to believe that so he looked upon
it himself.  Sometimes they thought they saw signs of
expectation.  He was working for and looking forward
to something.  Viola, said Wilbraham to himself.  His
commission to be won in the field, said Lady Brent.  He
wanted no help towards it, as might have been given
by finding him out, which should not have been difficult
after he had left England, and pulling strings.  When he
had gained his commission, by his own unaided effort,
and by no reliance upon his place in the world outside
the army, then he would come back to them.  It was
hard on Lady Brent to wait, and to lift no finger, and
harder still on his mother.  But he must be trusted.
They had directed him through his childhood, and youth,
and now he would brook no direction.  The only
consolation they had was that his upbringing had not taken
from him a man's initiative and determination.  The
experiment seemed to have been justified; but with a
greater knowledge of the world beforehand he might not
have thought it necessary so to cut his life in two.
They were paying a heavy price.

Wilbraham, who had more of a clue to Harry's
actions than the others, was not without irritation
against what at times he set down as mere hard
undutifulness.  He had great sympathy with Lady Brent, who
had so wonderfully sunk her own feelings in acquiescing
in the boy's unreasonable determination.  She could
almost certainly have traced him had she wished to do
so.  And Wilbraham, at least, knew that he must have
been told at the very beginning that he would not be
interfered with.  Why could he not then have softened
the hardship to those who loved him?  Granted that
the new love that had come into his life was so much
more to him than the old; but it was not like him to
throw over the old altogether, and indeed his letters
showed that he had not done so.

After a time his irritation died away.  It could not
be so distressing to Harry to be cut off from Royd as it
was to them to be cut off from him, but his letters showed
that he felt it, and especially the few letters that he
wrote to little Jane, in which he seemed to be reaching
out after the untroubled innocent happiness of his
youth, and the beauty and freedom that had lain all
about it.  It was the old Harry that appeared in those
letters, and here and there in others; the new Harry
became more and more evident otherwise—a man doing
a man's hard work in hard and uncongenial surroundings,
much older than his years, where in some ways he
had been so much younger.

He was hard on himself as well as hard upon them.
They had given him happiness in his sheltered youth,
but the plunge he had taken into a life different from
any that could have been anticipated for him can have
been none the easier on that account.  The ugliness and
crudity that other boys might in some measure have
been prepared for would bear very hardly upon him,
and he would have to fight through it alone.
Wilbraham came to see that he might shrink from mixing
it up with his home life.  Perhaps he was afraid that
he might weaken in it if he was subject to any pressure.
It would surely have been open to him to have had at
least a few days at home before he went abroad; but
he had not taken the opportunity.

Had he blamed them for bringing him up in that
seclusion?  There was nothing in his letters to show it.
But it must have been very soon revealed to him how
exceptional his life had been, and how much he had
missed of what other boys had had.  He would not
always be capable of gauging the value of what he had
missed, when face to face with some situation with which
his inexperience had unfitted him to cope lightly.  It
might take him a long time to acknowledge that what
he had gained had been more than what he had missed,
and partly arose from it.  He would know, too, before
long that the immovable seclusion in which his
grandmother and mother and Wilbraham himself lived was
anything but the normal state of affairs that it had been
implicitly represented to him.  He would ask himself
why they had never left Royd from one year's end to
another, and why so few people had ever come there;
and he would see that it had all been with reference to
him.  He would hardly be able to understand it.  If
he acknowledged the freedom he had enjoyed, the limits
of it would still strike him, with his new knowledge of
the world's ways.  If he had not, since his childhood,
been dominated by women, he had certainly been
managed, without knowing it.  Whether, in the strangeness
and disagreeableness and difficulty of much of his
new life he was inclined to resent this unduly, or whether
he saw behind it enough to admit that there had been
wisdom as well as apparent eccentricity, and certainly
love, in the steps his youth had been made to tread, it
would not be surprising if he made up his mind at an
early date that the managing should come to an end.
It was for him to direct his own life now.  He would run
no further risk of influence brought to bear upon it, the
clue to which was not in his hands.

In the first spring Wilbraham left Royd to take up
work in a Government office in London, for which Lady
Brent had asked for him.  A few months later
Mrs. Brent broke loose from the now insupportable
stagnation of Royd, and went to London with the avowed
object of nursing.  She had had no training and was
quite ignorant of the steps to be taken, but Lady Brent
arranged an income for her, and made no attempt to
direct her movements in any way.  She was left alone
in the Castle, and stayed there alone for another year.
To all outward appearance she was exactly what she
had always been, always occupied, always unemotional,
though sometimes more unapproachable than at others.
The months dragged on.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SIDNEY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   SIDNEY

.. vspace:: 2

One morning in May Lady Brent unlocked the letter
bag, which she never did without anticipations of some
news of Harry.  It was at least a month since there
had been a letter from him, but there at last it was,
searched for among all the rest and making them of no
value at all.

It was directed to Mrs. Brent, and the envelope bore
the stamps and marks of the field from which it had
been written.  All Harry's previous letters had been
redirected from London.

She sat looking at it and turning it over.  Once or
twice she seemed to be on the point of opening it, and
she must have been under the strongest temptation to do
so.  What could it mean but that he had reached his
goal, and the long time of half estrangement was over?
Perhaps it was to say that he was coming home.

She laid it down, and took up her other letters with
a sigh, but before she opened any of them, she went to
her writing-table and enclosed it in a note to Mrs. Brent.
Then she rang the bell and gave orders that some one
was to ride over to Burport with it, and arrange for its
immediate transmission to London by train.  By that
means she might get the telegram she had asked for from
her daughter-in-law that evening.  Then she went calmly
about her duties.

These included one that was quite unusual at Royd
Castle.  It was to see that preparations were made for
visitors.  Her old friend Lady Avalon had written to
ask if she might come for a few days.  After twelve or
thirteen years Poldaven Castle was to be occupied
again for the summer.  Lady Avalon wanted to see what
was necessary to be done there, but it had been empty
so long that she didn't want to trust herself in it for
a night if Lady Brent could do with her at Royd and
let her go over from there..

Later on that morning she went again to her writing-table
and wrote to Lady Avalon, who was expected in a
couple of days' time.  Would she care to bring her
daughter Sidney with her?  It was no doubt very dull
at Royd, but there was just a chance of Harry coming
home from Egypt.  She sat considering for a moment
when she had written this, but closed her letter without
adding any more.  Harry was extremely unlikely to be
at Royd in a few days' time, but if Sidney had already
been there when he did come home it would be easier to
ask her there again.

After this she went down to the village, taking Ben,
Harry's retriever, with her.

She called at the Vicarage.  The Grants were to be
asked to dine when Lady Avalon came.  The maid who
opened the door looked at her rather curiously, but she
did not notice it.  Mrs. Grant was in the drawing-room
and sprang up to meet her.  "Oh, I'm so glad!" she
said, and came forward, her hand held out and her face
all alight with pleasure.

Lady Brent was taken aback by the warmth of the
greeting.  She liked Mrs. Grant and supposed that Mrs. Grant
liked her, but she was not accustomed to this kind
of welcome.

"Thank you," she said, a shade drily.  "I came to
ask if you and your husband would dine with me on
Thursday.  Lady Avalon will be staying with me, and
possibly her daughter, Lady Sidney Pawle."

"Oh, thank you, yes, we shall be very pleased," said
Mrs. Grant.  "Will Harry be home by then?  He
might, mightn't he?  Oh, I am so glad he's coming at
last."

Lady Brent understood now, but it took her a little
time to recover herself.  "He has written to Jane, I
suppose," she said, speaking in as natural a tone as
possible.  "There was a letter from him this morning,
but it was to his mother, and I was not expecting to
get the news in it until this evening."

"Oh, I'll go and get the letter at once," said
Mrs. Grant, and ran out of the room, leaving Lady Brent
alone.  She sat quite still, and the colour that had left
her face returned to it again.  When Mrs. Grant came
back, accompanied by Jane, with the precious letter in
her hand, she had quite recovered herself.

Jane was rather a favourite of Lady Brent's.  She
was not in the least afraid of her, as her elders were
apt to be, and talked to her about Harry in a way that
nobody else did.  She was often invited to the Castle by
herself, and was always ready to go, though it might
have been thought that her inclinations towards bodily
activity would have made it a doubtful pleasure to have
to sit and talk to an elderly woman.  Probably she was
the only person in the world of whom Lady Brent would
not feel jealous because she had received this news first.

"I thought I'd like to bring you the letter myself,"
said Jane, and stood by her side as she read it.

Jane was fourteen now.  Probably no two years in
her life could bring as great a change as the last two
had brought to her.  She had grown tall for her age,
but was still slim and very upright.  There was a good
deal of the child in her still, and even a little of the boy,
for her figure was not so rounded as with most girls of
her age, and her taste for boyish activities was still
strong.  But there was more of the budding woman.
She was gentler in speech and manner than of old, and
her face, if not yet her figure, was wholly feminine.  Her
early promise of beauty was in course of being fulfilled.
She was very pretty, with her fair hair and wide grey
eyes, and it was no longer an effort to make her tidy
in her dress.  Her skirts were well below her knees, and
in her more active moments she took some pains to keep
them there.

.. vspace:: 2

"My dear Jane,

.. vspace:: 1

"I shall be home almost as soon as you get this.  I
suppose you know I've been serving as a trooper all this
time, but now I've got a commission.  I shall be in
London for a day or two to get my kit, and then I shall
come down to Royd with a month's leave in front of
me.  Hurrah!  You and I and Pobbles will have lots of
fun together.  I hope you've kept the cabin in good
repair.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

   "Love from
       "HARRY."

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Brent took a long time to read it, while Jane
stood and looked at her.  When she looked up at last,
Jane said: "I wish I'd known that his other letter hadn't
been written to you.  I would have brought this up at
once.

"Thank you, dear," said Lady Brent.  "Of course
he doesn't know that his mother is not at Royd.  He
would have thought that we should all get the news at
the same time.  Perhaps he will have told her more exact
dates, if he knows them.  At any rate it cannot be long
now before we see him again."

She was completely herself now, and no one who had
not known her would have guessed that the news she had
received meant very much to her.  She rose almost
immediately and took her leave.  She kissed Jane as she
said good-bye, which was an unusual attention, and
perhaps meant that she bore her no grudge for having
received the news first.

"I think it's rather horrid of Mrs. Brent to be away,"
said Jane, when she had gone.  "Of course he would
expect to find her waiting here for him."

Mrs. Grant was sometimes puzzled in her dealings
with this growing daughter of hers.  She was becoming
more of a companion to her, and now Pobbles had gone
to school could be treated less as a child.  But it was
not always easy to decide how far she should be let into
the confidences of her elders.  She seemed to have
acquired a prejudice against Mrs. Brent, which had
hitherto been treated as something not to be encouraged.

"It has made it difficult not to be able to tell Harry
anything of what has happened here," Mrs. Grant said.
"She went away to try to get some nursing, and——"

"A fat lot of nursing she's done!" interrupted Jane.
"I don't believe she's tried at all.  She's just enjoying
herself in London.  I don't suppose Lady Brent cares
for her much, but it's rather hard lines to leave her all
by herself."

Mrs. Grant was much of the same opinion, since
Mrs. Brent had taken no steps, as far as was known, to
embark upon the nursing career which she had
announced as her intention; but she was not quite ready
to agree with Jane's criticism of her.  "It isn't only
she that has left Lady Brent," she said.

"Mr. Wilbraham is doing some work," said Jane,
"and Harry had to go.  If he hadn't gone when he
did, he would have gone by this time."

"I don't want to criticize him," said her mother.
"It will be all over now, but I think it has been hard
lines, as you say, on Lady Brent that she hasn't been
able to write to him."

"She understands that," said Jane.  "We've talked
about it."

Mrs. Grant knew that Lady Brent had, surprisingly,
made something of a confidante of Jane.  She was
pleased that it was so, but did not like to ask questions
about her confidences.

Jane, however, seemed ready to give them.  "We
think," she said, "that until he was made an officer he
wouldn't want anybody to know that he was Sir Harry
Brent, or different from any other soldier.  It would
make it difficult if he had letters from home.  She's
proud of him for it.  So am I."

Mrs. Grant was touched by the "we."  Evidently
Jane was of some comfort to the lonely self-contained
lady, if they discussed matters in that way.  She kissed
her.  "I expect it's something like that, darling," she
said.  "Anyhow, it's all over now, and he'll be just
like any other young man.  You must go back to lessons
now."

"I don't think he's like other young men," said Jane,
as she reluctantly prepared to leave.  "I think it's much
finer to go through all the hardships.  It's like pioneering.
I expect what we used to talk about in the log
cabin had something to do with it."

"Did you tell Lady Brent about that, darling?"

"Oh, yes.  And she quite agreed with me.  Lady
Brent understands things.  I think Mrs. Brent is a
rotter.  Good-bye, mother dear."

Mrs. Brent's telegram came that evening, and she
herself the next day.  According to his letter, Harry
might be in England almost as soon as it reached her.
He would come down to Royd as soon as possible, but
he must be in London for a few days to get his kit.  He
would wire from there.  But he did not tell her where
she could communicate with him.

She was all on edge, and Lady Brent must have exercised
the strongest control over herself to act with her
accustomed calmness and suavity.  Suavity had not
always been the note of her intercourse with her
daughter-in-law, but it was clear that this was not the time
when friction between them could be allowed to appear.
If she did not exercise restraint it was quite certain that
Mrs. Brent wouldn't.  She seemed to be anxious to show
that she had thrown off anything like submission.  She
was noticeably less well-mannered than she had been,
though she bore herself as if she had acquired more
importance.  She brought with her a great many expensive
clothes, and talked about them a good deal.  She
dressed elaborately, and in a style to which no objection
could be made if elaborate clothes were accepted as
suitable for wear in the country and at this time; but
they did not improve her.  Lady Brent ventured upon a
hint that Harry might like better to see her as she had
been before, but she flared up in offence, and let it be
known that she had learnt a lot since she had been in
London.  Harry also would have learnt something; the
old days at Royd were over.

Underneath all her new independence, and almost
aggressive spirit, her longing for Harry was plain.  She
seemed to have resigned herself to his absence, and to
have gained some satisfaction out of her life in London,
of which she had remarkably little to tell.  But now that
he was coming home again her maternal instinct arose
to swamp everything else.  At the end of the twenty-four
hours Lady Brent spent alone with her she was far
nearer to being what she had been before she had left
Royd.  She had to have some sympathetic ear into which
to pour her doubts and complaints and disappointments.
If only Harry had told her where he was to be in
London, she could have met him there.  Oh, it was hard
to think that he might be there now and she could not
go to him.  When did Lady Brent think they might
expect him?  She asked her this again and again, and
made innumerable confused calculations, based upon this
or that idea that came into her head.  She was very
trying, but she had to be put up with.  She was Harry's
mother, whatever she might have made of herself.

On the day after her arrival Lady Avalon came,
with her daughter, but still there was no word from
Harry.

They came in time for tea, and the two older ladies
retired to talk together afterwards.  Mrs. Brent was
left to entertain the girl.  In the few minutes' conversation
Sidney had with her mother before dinner she told
her that unless she gained some relief from that
companionship she really couldn't stay at Royd.  "She's a
perfectly appalling woman, mother," she said.  "How
on earth she can have had a son like Harry, if he's
anything like he used to be as a child, I can't understand."

"I don't think she's so bad as all that, dear," said
Lady Avalon.  "From what Lady Brent tells me, she's
been running with the people she comes from, and of
course they can't be much.  That's admitted, though I
don't know anything about them.  She seemed a quiet
enough little thing when I was here last.  She'll settle
down again."

"I hope she will.  But it's a poor lookout for me
if I've got to make a bosom friend of her, while you and
Lady Brent are putting your heads together.  Really,
darling, I don't think I can stand it."

"Harry may be home any day, and until he does
come we can spend most of our time at Poldaven,
though of course we mustn't just make a convenience of
being here.  The Vicarage people are dining to-night, so
you won't have her on your hands entirely.  The Vicar
is David Grant, the novelist.  I haven't read any of his
novels, but I believe a lot of people do.  I expect he's a
clever man, and will cheer us up a bit."

"I should think we shall have quite an hilarious
evening—you and Lady Brent talking together, and me
and Mrs. Brent and the Vicarage people."

"I thought you rather liked Vicarage people.  Don't
make yourself superior to your company, there's a good
girl.  It's the worst sort of form—especially in the
country."

Whatever the allusion to Vicarage people may have
meant, it sent Sidney out of the room with a blush on
her cheeks, and Lady Avalon rang for her maid with a
look on her face as of one who had been rather clever.

Sidney had grown into a pretty girl, though she was
considered the ugly duckling of the handsome family to
which she belonged.  She was tall, and had not yet quite
grown out of the youthful awkwardness of her stature.
But there was more character in her well-shaped features
than her sisters could boast of, though their widely
known beauty had descended upon them in early childhood
and suffered no relapse through the years of their
growth.  They inherited their good looks from both
sides of the family, but Sidney was the only one of the
girls who derived more from her father.  Perhaps on
that account she was his favourite, and he was accustomed
to prophesy that she would beat them all in looks
when she really grew up.  She had kind eyes and a
smiling mouth, to which her decisively jutting chin gave
character.  Her skin was very fair and clear, and her
abundant brown hair had just a touch of auburn in
it.  There were some to whom the hint of gaucherie in
her carriage gave her an added charm.  It spoke of
health and youth and vigour, and went well with her
free unafraid speech and her frequent smile.

Grant, always on the lookout for new types of
female beauty, but a little inclined to make all his
heroines alike, studied her closely that evening at dinner
and was enchanted with her.  If he had known that she
had been looked upon as an ugly duckling in her family
it would almost have given him a novel ready made.
Mrs. Grant liked her too, and as they walked home
across the park, cheered by the unaccustomed pleasures
of society, they made a match between her and Harry
there and then, as the Pawle and Brent nurses had done
in their early childhood.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Grant, "if Lady
Brent had asked her here with that idea in her mind.
It's the first time in the three years we've been here that
any young person has stayed at the Castle.  I dare say
Lady Avalon is in it too.  They're old friends, and they
seem to have their heads together a good deal."

"Lady Brent didn't know Harry was coming home
when she told us they were coming," said Mrs. Grant.
"It's a coincidence, but perhaps a fortunate one.  They
played together as children—Harry and Lady Sidney.
It would be rather a pretty match—except that Harry
is so young—not twenty yet."

"You think he ought to wait a few years and marry
somebody much younger, eh?  Somebody about the age
of Jane."

Mrs. Grant sighed.  "I shouldn't be a mother if I
hadn't thought of that," she said.  "And Jane will be
quite as pretty as Lady Sidney when she grows up.  But
Harry is so sweet and natural with the children that it
would be a pity to spoil it by thinking of something that
would make it all quite different.  He wouldn't be what
he is if he were to think of Jane as anything but a
child, for some years yet."

"I think you're right," said her husband.  "Of
course I've built a few castles in the air.  I shouldn't
be a father if I hadn't.  But I expect he'll marry young;
he seems to me that sort of boy, somehow.  I don't think
he could do better than marry Lady Sidney.  She's very
interested in the idea of him.  She talked to me a lot
about the time they used to play together as children."

"She said she'd come down to-morrow morning.  I
think she wants to get away from Mrs. Brent, though I
shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Brent came with her.  I think
she wants to show me as many of her new clothes as
possible.  She hasn't improved up in London.  I don't
like her nearly as much as I did."

"I never cared for her much," said Grant.  "She's a
common little thing, however she may dress herself up
to disguise it.  I've sometimes wondered what Harry will
think about her when he does come home."

.. vspace:: 2

Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next
morning, and Mrs. Brent came with her, as Mrs. Grant
had anticipated.  But apparently they each wanted to
get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted
Mrs. Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone
with you.  I wonder if you'd spare Jane from her lessons
to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that Harry built
with the children.  I've been telling her about it and she
said she'd like to see it."

Sidney laughed.  "I don't want to be in the way,"
she said, "and I'd like to have a walk with Jane, if she
can be spared."

Jane was fetched.  She received Mrs. Brent's effusive
greeting with unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over
very critically when she was introduced to her.  The
inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she went off
with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may
have been because she was relieved at getting off the rest
of the morning's lessons.

The two girls set out across the garden, where the
Vicarage baby, now getting on for three, was asleep
under a tree, as before.  They stopped to look at it,
and Sidney behaved in such a way as to give Jane a good
opinion of her.  "She's a darling," she said, as they
went on.  "I do hope she'll be awake when we come
back.  I love to hear them talk at that age, don't you?"

Jane said she did, and recounted specimens of the
Vicarage baby's wit, over which they both laughed
freely.  They were good friends by the time they reached
the log cabin.

Jane unlocked the door and waited for admiration,
which was given.  "I've kept it very tidy and clean
ever since Harry went away," she said, looking solemnly
at Sidney.  "I hope he won't have got too old to like it.
He wrote to me, you know, to say he was coming back,
and he mentioned the log cabin.  I expect he'll be
pleased to see it again."

There was half an appeal in her voice.  Sidney looked
at her quickly.  "I'm quite sure he will," she said.
"He's not so very old, after all—just as old as I am, in
fact, and I'm not a bit too old to appreciate it."

"Ah, but the war may have made a great difference in him."

"It doesn't make as much as you'd think."  She hesitated
for a moment, and said: "I know a man who has
been through it all from the beginning.  He enlisted as
Harry did, and had a rough time of it at first.  He's
been wounded too—rather badly.  But he's much the
same as he was before."

Jane looked at her.  "You knew Harry when he was
little, didn't you?" she asked.  "We only knew him
first three years ago.  He seemed old then to me and my
brother, but he was only sixteen."

"Let's sit down somewhere and I'll tell you all about
it," said Sidney.  "I don't think I want to walk any
more, unless you do."

They sat down on the bench under the eaves, and
Sidney told her about that summer when she and Harry
had played together as children.  Jane kept her large
eyes fixed upon her all the time, and they seemed to be
searching her and adding her up.  By and by her
solemnity relaxed and she smiled when Sidney did, and
asked her questions here and there.  When the story
came to an end it was plain that she had made up her
mind about her, and that her opinion was favourable.

This was made more evident still when she said
calmly: "I expect Harry will fall in love with you, if
you're here when he comes home."

Sidney looked at her in surprise, and then laughed.
"What an extraordinary girl you are!" she said.
"You think of everything."

Jane laughed too.  She was feeling more and more
at home with Sidney, who did not treat her as a child.
"Would you like him to?" she asked.

Sidney was unexpectedly silent and serious, and when
she did speak, she did not answer Jane's question.
"Would you like to be friends?" she asked.  "Real
friends, I mean, so that we could tell each other
things."

"Of course I should," said Jane.  "But I expect
you've got lots of friends older than me, that you know
much better.  I've got hardly anybody, because there
aren't many people about here, and we don't go away
very often."

"I always know at once if I'm going to like a person,"
said Sidney, "and I knew I should like you when I first
saw you.  We might see a good deal of one another when
we come down to Poldaven; and I shall want a friend.  I
think it's going to be rather difficult."

Jane was enchanted at the offer of friendship.  She
admired Sidney tremendously, and to be on equal terms
with her gave her a most gratifying sense of having left
her childhood behind her.  "Why do you think it is
going to be difficult?" she asked, concealing her
gratification.

"Oh, because, because!  Well, because of what you
said just now.  If you haven't seen it already you will
very soon.  It's what I've been brought down here for.
They don't say so, of course, but it's plain enough to
see.  Of course I shall like Harry awfully, if he's
anything like he used to be.  But you see I'm in love with
somebody else.  That's the trouble."

This was a confession worth having as an introduction
to the proffered friendship.  Jane didn't know
whether to be glad or sorry to hear it.  She had accepted
Sidney as a suitable person for Harry to fall in love
with, but perhaps it would be of some advantage if she
didn't fall in love with him.  There remained, however,
the question of his falling in love with her.

"Perhaps Harry ought to know that," she said after
a pause.

Sidney looked at her and laughed again.  "You know
Harry better than I do now," she said.  "Do you think
he's likely to fall in love with me?"

Jane considered this carefully.  "I don't know; I
think I should if I was him," she said.

"It's very sweet of you to say that," said Sidney,
becoming serious again.  "Perhaps I will tell him; or
perhaps you shall.  Then we shall all be happy and
comfortable together.  I should like to have Harry as a
friend, and I don't in the least see why one shouldn't
have a man as a friend when you're in love with another
man.  Do you?"

Jane had not considered the subject, but was pleased
to have her opinion asked.  It drew her to Sidney more
than anything—this treatment of her as if her opinion
on a grown-up subject was worth having.  "Not if it's
quite understood," she said, decisively.  "I'm really
rather glad that you are in love with somebody else,
because Harry is already my friend, and if you are
going to be, then I shall be very well off—much better
than I should be if you and Harry wanted to be together
and to leave me out of it.  I don't mind telling
Harry, if you like.  It might be rather awkward for you
to do it, as it would look as if you were giving him a
warning.  Who shall I say you're in love with?"

Sidney laughed merrily and gave her a sudden embrace.
"I can't help it," she said, "you're such a
darling.  Well, he's a Captain in the Grenadier Guards,
and his name is Noel Chancellor."

"That's the regiment that Harry was to have gone
into," said Jane.  "His father and grandfather
belonged to it."

"Did they?" said Sidney.  "Some of Noel's people
were in it too.  It sounds all right, but as a matter of
fact Noel was a schoolmaster when the war broke out.
He's the son of our vicar at home.  When the war is
over he is going to be a schoolmaster again.  So you
see how it is."

In her general ignorance of the world outside the
immediate parish of Royd, Jane didn't quite see how
it was.  She asked kindly after Noel Chancellor and was
given a pleasing impression of a handsome athletic
young man, who had played cricket for Marlborough
and Oxford and Notts, and had been happily engaged at
a health resort on the East Coast of Kent, when the
war broke out, in teaching thirty or so delightful boys
under the age of fourteen to play cricket as it ought to
be played, and to wrestle with the elements of Greek and
Latin in their spare time.

"Considering that all the people who think themselves
somebody send their children to be educated in
schools like Noel was in," said Sidney.  "I should have
thought a person like me would have been just the touch
that was wanted to make it still more of a success.  But
of course mother doesn't see it in that light.  It's all
very trying."

Jane's affectionate heart went out to this tale of
crossed love, the first that had ever come within her
ken outside the pages of her father's novels, which she
read dutifully but without much interest.  She thought
it quite natural that Lady Avalon should want Sidney
to marry Harry, as both of them had titles, but did not
say this for fear of being laughed at.  She wanted to
be a real help and comfort to her new friend.

"I am sure it will come all right in the end," she
said.  "Perhaps when we tell Harry he will be able to
do something."





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.. _`THE RETURN`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


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   THE RETURN

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Harry came home a few days after Lady Avalon and
Sidney had come to Royd, and two days before they
had been going away.  But they were persuaded, without
much difficulty, to stay a little longer.  At least,
Lady Avalon accepted Lady Brent's invitation to prolong
their visit, and informed Sidney that she had done
so.  "You see how it is," said Sidney to Jane, with
whom she was now fast friends, much to the maturing
of Jane's behaviour, but not to the spoiling of her, as
her parents gratefully remarked.

"She's a thoroughly nice unaffected girl," said Grant,
"and she'll be a nice friend for Jane, especially if what
we think is going to happen does happen."

"I'm not sure she's not putting ideas into Jane's
head," said Miss Minster.  "I know they have secrets
together, and I've a sort of notion that they're on the
eternal subject of love."

"Well," said Grant, "girls will talk about love, I
suppose, and if they talk nicely I don't know that there's
much harm done."

"Jane ought to have learnt how to talk nicely about
love by this time," said Miss Minster, with obvious
reference.  "I think Lady Sidney is all right really, or I
should perhaps advise you both differently.  Whether
she's going to set her cap at Harry or not I don't know,
and I don't suppose Jane would tell me if I asked her.
But I'm pretty sure that they have discussed it."

Mrs. Grant listened to this without remark, but was
a little disturbed at the idea of Jane having secrets
which she would not impart to Miss Minster.  Would
she impart them to her?  It would mark a stage if
Jane were not ready to tell her everything.

She was considering the advisability of approaching
Jane on the matter when Jane approached her.  "I've
got a secret with Sidney, mother," she said, in her
abrupt but open way.  "It's something she's told me
about herself.  She says she'd rather I didn't tell you
just yet, if you don't mind, but she doesn't mind my
telling you that there is a secret.  You don't mind, do
you?"

"What a lot of 'minds'!" said Mrs. Grant.  "No,
darling, I don't mind at all, unless it's something that
you think you ought to tell me."

"Oh, no, it's nothing of that sort," said Jane.  "It's
something about herself which she doesn't want people
to know yet.  I'm going to tell it to Harry when he
comes home, so that we can all three enjoy ourselves
together."

Mrs. Grant, with the idea in her head that Sidney had
confided to Jane that she retained a tender memory of
Harry which might become more tender still, was a
little surprised at this way of putting it; but it did not
take her long to understand the truth when Jane had
left her.  She smiled and kept her own counsel, and liked
Sidney all the better; for she must have known that if
Jane told her that there was a secret she would guess
what the secret was, little as Jane might suspect it.

Harry sent a wire in the morning to say that he was
coming by a train that would arrive in the late
afternoon.  Only Mrs. Brent drove to the station to meet
him, but they were all waiting for him in front of the
Castle, the Grants inclusive, and there was scarcely a
villager who was not somewhere on the road, or in the
more public parts of the park to see him drive by.

His smiling excitement at this greeting from old
friends—the only friends he had had up till two years
before—made him seem at first exactly what he had
been.  But there was none of the little group at the
Castle, except Lady Avalon and Sidney, who had not
the impression, after the first greeting, of his having
become much older.  His fair boy's beauty had
developed into the sunburnt hardness of a man.  He was
extraordinarily handsome in his smart khaki kit, but he
looked years older than his age, which was not much
over nineteen; and his speech and manner had altered.
It would be another eighteen months before he would be
legally his own master and the master of his ancient
Castle, and all that went with it; but he seemed to have
come into the house as its master, and to give it a
meaning that it had never had while it had been ruled by
a woman.

It was not too late for tea, which provided an
opportunity for everybody of getting used to the new Harry,
as they sat on the terrace and made play with their
cups and conversation.  There were adjustments to be
made, and the necessity for them to be covered up.
Harry talked freely to everybody.  His manner was
perfect with his grandmother, to whom he showed
deference, while she, of course, behaved with her usual
calm and let nothing appear of all that she was thinking.
Mrs. Brent kept her eyes on him all the time, and had
an air almost of bewilderment.  She did not try to assert
herself, but accepted gratefully the notice he gave her
from time to time.  Lady Avalon was the only person
present who asked him questions about his experiences,
but it soon became evident that he had nothing to tell
that was personal to himself.  He answered the questions,
but with a slight change in the frank manner of
his speech when they touched upon his own experiences
apart from the operations in which he had taken part.
His mother told Mrs. Grant afterwards that he had said
to her during the drive that he wanted to forget
everything that had happened since he had left home—at
least he didn't want to talk about it.  They had yet to
learn how far his experiences had changed him, and to
gather whether or no they were such as to have left a
painful mark upon his life; but he would give them no
help in coming to their conclusions.  His life in the
ranks was to remain as it had been, a sealed book to
them.

With Sidney Harry was friendly, but no more.  They
talked a little of their childhood, and laughed over some
of their memories, but it was not, apparently, to be
the basis of any special degree of intimacy between them.
Sidney retired a little into her shell after a time, and
watched.

Harry was more like his old self with Jane than with
anybody.  Beyond a single remark about her growth he
had not shown himself aware of any change in her.  He
seemed to want to take up their friendship at exactly the
place where it had stopped.  He asked her many
questions about Pobbles, and said he would write to him.
His manner towards her was that of a grown man to a
child whom he loves.  Even Lady Avalon did not mistake
it for anything else, for she told Lady Brent afterwards
that it was rather extraordinary that he should not see
that Jane was already growing into a very pretty girl,
with the implication that the fact might dawn upon him
as time went on.

Jane herself showed a high but modest pride in the
value he put upon her.  "Now you see what he's like,"
she told Sidney.  "When we three can be together and
enjoy ourselves—well, we shall enjoy ourselves.  I
consider that Harry is about the nicest friend that anybody
can have.  He doesn't forget you when he's away."

"He hasn't forgotten *you*," said Sidney.  "I'm
beginning to wonder whether I shan't be a little in the
way."

Jane showed surprise at this, and Sidney laughed and
said: "Darling old thing you are!  You don't know
what you're worth; but you will in a year or two.
Anyhow, I'm not jealous of you, and I like Harry for
remembering his old friends and not wanting to drop
them for new ones.  Of course I knew him before you
did, but not as he is now.  He's older than I should
have thought, and I think he looks rather sad.  You've
got to cheer him up, and if I'm wanted to help I shall
be quite ready."

"Of course you'll be wanted to help," said Jane.
"You'll be seeing more of him, for one thing, as you
will be staying in the house.  I suppose you won't mind
my being his *chief* friend though, if you like somebody
else better."

"I should be a horrid sort of creature if I did," said
Sidney.  "You won't suffer from me when you're not
here."

Harry and Sidney strolled together in the garden
after dinner, with the full concurrence of their elders,
except possibly of Mrs. Brent, who had not yet recovered
from her air of slight bewilderment, and was
quieter than she had been for the last few days.

They talked about Jane, and for the first time Harry
seemed to regard Sidney with interest.  Hitherto he had
been merely friendly with her on the surface, as with
one who was there but didn't matter much.  "Oh, yes,
we're real friends," she said, with her free and pleasant
smile.  "I suppose you can only see that she's a child,
but I've never treated her like one.  I began like that
because girls of that age love being talked to as if they
were grown up, but I very soon found out what a lot
there was in her.  If she's a child in some ways still, as
of course she is, it makes her all the more fascinating.
She's one in a thousand.  She'll make all the difference
to me down here, if I can get hold of her sometimes."

"She's a real person," Harry said.  "If you and she
have made friends it will be jolly for all three of us.
We can all be friends together."

"That's what Jane wants," said Sidney.  "She's
devoted to you, and I believe she's also devoted to me,
though not so much so.  We can go and get hold of her
to-morrow morning, can't we?  She has a holiday on
Saturday."

"Oh yes.  I'm very glad you want to.  I was half
afraid you might think she was too young for you."

"I suppose you mean that you were half afraid you'd
have to dance attendance on me, when you'd rather have
been with Jane; but you see you need fear nothing of
that sort."

They looked at one another.  There was just light
enough to catch an expression of face.  Then they
both laughed, and became friends from that moment.

"We'd settled that Jane was to tell you," said Sidney,
"but I think I might as well do it myself.  I'm engaged
to somebody, but the engagement is not smiled upon.
In fact it isn't recognized at all, and can't be spoken
of.  But Jane and I thought that if you knew of it it
would make things more comfortable all round for us
three."

Harry asked her questions and showed a friendly sympathy
towards her love affair.  But the idea of it seemed
to make him rather sad too, and Sidney did not make
the mistake of thinking that his sadness was due to any
disappointment created by what she had told him.
Indeed her information had cleared the air, which held
more of friendliness and companionship in it than before,
as if he were relieved at having it quite understood
that he would not be expected to make love to her, but
short of that would give her all the friendship that she
wanted, and be glad to take in return all that she had
to give to him.

She had a good deal to give him.  That baby's
friendship which seemed to have meant nothing to him had
kept him alive in her heart.  He was not quite like other
men to her.  Something of his childhood lingered about
him, though he had advanced so far on the hard road
of manhood, and but for her memories of him would
have seemed to her much older than his years.  She felt
the desire to encourage in him those gleams of boyish
laughter and irresponsibility which had once or twice
shone out through the half-weary indifference of his
attitude.  She thought that he must have been through
a harsh disillusioning experience, and was too tired in
spirit to accept all at once the freedom of his release.
Her own lover, who was some years older than Harry,
had told her that it needed a good deal of resolution and
self-hardening to go through the ranks, and that
sometimes only the remembrance of her had kept him up to
it.  She thought she knew more than other girls were
likely to know what it must have meant to Harry, who
did not seem even to want to speak of it.  The maternal
instinct which is in all women drew her to sympathy with
him.  She and Jane between them would get rid of that
sadness and tiredness that lay over him.  If Jane was
too young, and she too occupied with somebody else to
give him the consolation that would quickly heal such
wounds as he was suffering from, he would still, surely,
respond to their affection, and forget his troubles.  She
must not talk too much about her own happiness.  That
seemed to depress him, kind as he was about it.  Of
course it was love he wanted, though he might not know
it.  It was a pity that Jane was not a few years older,
or that she herself was the only unmarried one of all
her sisters.  She did not suppose that there was
anybody else in these parts, from what she remembered of
them, who would be good enough for Harry.  But
perhaps it was just as well.  She and he and Jane would
enjoy themselves together, and show the world, if the
world happened to take notice and be interested, that a
man and two girls could be the best of friends with no
question of love affecting their intercourse.

Perhaps that evening they might have got further
into intimacy, but Harry had still something to do
before he could feel himself free to take his enjoyment
in the youthful companionship that had been so
fortunately provided for him.

"I'm very glad you're to be here for a bit," he said.
"There aren't many young people about and it would
have been a bit dull for me, though I should have tried
my best to keep it from my mother and grandmother.
I think I must go in and have a talk with Granny now,
if you don't mind.  I haven't seen her alone since I
came back."

But apparently Mrs. Brent had decided that there
was to be no talk between those two alone, as long as
she could prevent it.  Lady Avalon and Sidney said good
night soon after ten o'clock, and when they had gone
Mrs. Brent said: "Come out for a little with me, Harry
dear.  It's quite warm, and I don't even want a wrap.
If you're tired, as I expect you are, you can go straight
to bed when we've just had a little stroll."

Lady Brent sat like a sphinx.  Harry said: "All
right, mother.  But I'm not tired.  We'll go out for ten
minutes and then I'll have a little talk with Granny."

Directly they were in the garden, Mrs. Brent said in
a querulous tone: "Why should you want to have a talk
with her?  She took you away from me a lot when you
were a child, but now it's different.  She ought not to
have any more authority over you than I have."

Harry laughed at her.  "Authority!" he echoed.  "I
don't feel like anybody having much authority over me
now, little mother."  He spoke tenderly, but there was a
hint of impatience in his tone, which she detected.

"I'm sure I don't want to direct you in any way,"
she said.  "I only want to feel that you're mine now
that you've grown up, and not hers.  Nobody in the
world loves you as much as I do.  I suppose you'll marry
some day, and I shan't grumble at that when the time
comes.  But until then I want to feel that you and I
are all in all to one another."

He answered only her reference to his grandmother.
"You're my mother," he said.  "In one way you've
always been more to me than Granny.  But I owe her a
good deal, and I mustn't forget it.  I haven't done much
for her since I went away.  Now that I've got what I
wanted, and have come back again, I want to make up
for that—to both of you."

"It was very cruel of you to cut yourself off from us
as you did, Harry," she said.  "You needn't have done
it.  Even she wouldn't have prevented you doing what
you wanted to do, when once you'd done it."

"We needn't talk about that," he said, decisively.
"It's all over now.  It's what I want to tell her.  You
must let me have a little talk with her when we go in,
please, mother."

"You mean you want me to go to bed while you sit
and talk to her alone.  Why should you want that?
Why shouldn't I be there too?"

"Well, because you're not friendly to her, and I want
to be—poor old Granny!  I suppose you've never got on
well together.  I used to feel it, though I didn't think
about it much.  I think you both tried to keep it from
me.  I'd much rather you tried to get rid of that feeling,
mother dear.  It makes me unhappy, and you can't hide
it from me any longer.  After all, Royd is her home.
I'm rather sorry you left it.  I liked to think of it with
you and her here, just as it used to be."

"Oh, I couldn't stay here when you had gone.  It was
too much to ask of anybody.  I suppose she'll always be
here—at least till you come of age and are master
instead of her.  Couldn't we go away together—I don't
mean now, but after you've been here a little, to London
or somewhere—just you and I together?  I've had so
little of you, Harry, all to myself.  All the dull years
here, while she has been everything and I have been
nothing, I've looked forward to it—to having you to
myself for a little, when you were grown up."

She peered into his face, and saw a frown on it; but
when he spoke it had cleared, and he spoke very kindly.
"I may have to go to London before my leave is up,"
he said.  "But I should want to go alone.  And I don't
want to be away from Royd more than I can help.
You've always belonged to Royd, mother, ever since I
can remember.  When I'm with you I'd rather be here
than anywhere.  Please don't spoil it for me by making
things difficult with Granny.  I think I'll go in to her
now.  I mustn't keep her up late."

She expostulated, plaintively, as they went towards
the house together.  She felt that he was slipping from
her, and that nothing would be as she had pictured it,
but she had not the self-control to spare him her
complaints and appeals.  He was always kind, but he was
firm too, with a man's firmness towards a weak and
foolish woman.  He had grown immeasurably in mental
stature, and his determination impressed itself upon her
increasingly.  That mention of authority over him with
which she had begun now seemed foolish even to her.
As they went into the house she said: "Of course I don't
want to treat you like a boy any more.  I only want to
be sure that you don't love anybody better than me.
You do love me best, don't you, Harry?"

He bent down and kissed her.  "You know I love
you, mother," he said.  "Now I'll go and talk to
Granny.  Come and see me when I go to bed—say in
half an hour—as you used to."

That comforted her a little, and she went upstairs,
while he went into the drawing-room where Lady Brent
was still sitting where they had left her.

"Well, Granny dear," he said.  "I thought we'd
have a little talk.  I've got things to tell you."

She laid down her work, and looked at him fondly,
sitting in a low chair opposite to her, so young in
appearance, as he sat there with his long legs stretched
out, but, as she felt, so old in experience, and so
different from the boy he had been.

"Please don't think, dear Harry," she said, "that
you owe me any explanation of anything.  I've had a
long time to think it all out, you know.  I think I
understand most things.  Don't you want it treated as
if it was all over now, and begin again, much as it
was before?  If so, I want that too.  We've got you at
home now, and we want to be all happy together."

His face cleared as he spoke.  "It's very good of you
to put it like that," he said.  "Yes, of course I want
it to be as much as possible what it used to be as long
as I can be here with you.  There's a good deal I want
to forget."

"I'm afraid you've been through a very hard time,
Harry."

"Not harder than others, Granny.  It's not a bad
thing to learn what you have to learn in a hard school.
Perhaps you learn it all the quicker."

There was a pause before she said: "It has troubled
me a good deal—the thought of your going straight
from the life you lived here into the ranks.  It wasn't
that that we'd tried to prepare you for."

"Oh, the ranks!" he said.  "You needn't let that
worry you, Granny.  I'm glad I went into the ranks.
I'd rather do it that way than any."

She showed some surprise at this.  "I've thought it
over and over," she said.  "But I've never thought of
it in that way.  It was the roughness and coarseness I
hated for you.  Isn't that what you want to forget?"

He was silent for a time, looking down.  Then he
burst out: "It's learning what the beastliness of life is
that I want to forget.  That's what I'd never known.  I
never minded hard work—doing what others do.  And
I doubt whether I should have been let down so easily
with people like myself—on the outside, I mean.  No,
I was nearer to the men who had lived simpler lives.  I
understood them better than I should have done the
others.  And they were good to me too.  I don't think
I should have wanted to get a commission if I hadn't
felt I ought to.  I should have been content to go on
till the end of it.  But now it's all got to begin again.
Oh, don't let's talk of it.  I've got a month here, where
it's quiet and clean and beautiful.  Let's forget what's
past and what's coming.  I never meant to talk of it.  I
only wanted to tell you what I was going to do, and to
thank you for letting me go my own way."

Poor Lady Brent went to bed that night with something
new to think about.  She could not sleep, and
wrote a long letter to Wilbraham in London.  "We
might have thought of that," she wrote in the course of
it.  "It wouldn't have been the little hardships that
would trouble him.  He had prepared himself for all
that, with the life out of doors that he had led here.
And he would understand the men he was with, because
he was friends with everybody about here.  I'm sure they
must have loved him too, and all the more because he
wasn't like them.  The others would have expected him
to be like them.  I am full of trouble about him.  It
looks to me now as if we had prepared him for nothing,
so as to save him pain.  Life has come as a shock to
him, and he has not got over it yet.  But one thing I'm
sure of—he must work it out for himself.  I shall meddle
with him no more.  I am not sure that I have not made
a great mistake."





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   CHAPTER XXIII


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   CONFIDENCES

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Whatever it was that Lady Brent and Lady Avalon
had plotted between them, it needed no adjustment of
Lady Brent's statement to Wilbraham—that henceforth
she should meddle no more in Harry's life—to help
or hinder it.  They had only to stand aside and
perhaps to congratulate one another upon the way their
desires were being fulfilled.  Only Mrs. Brent went about
with a downcast face and air, and but for the kindness
Harry showed her might as well have been back in
London.  She also wrote to Wilbraham, and told him that
Harry and Sidney seemed to be falling more and more in
love with one another every day.

"Of course it's hard on me," she wrote.  "But it's
what mothers are made for, I suppose.  You do everything
for your children and sink yourself entirely, and
then some girl steps in and takes it all from you.
However, I'm not going to show her that I feel it.  She's
got the better of me once more.  The girl doesn't take
the slightest trouble about me—doesn't think I'm worth
it, I suppose—and for myself I don't care about her.
But she is the right sort of girl for Harry to marry,
or at any rate to fall in love with.  Whatever I am,
I'm fair, and I can see that.  I should hate anybody
who would take him away from me, so it might just as
well be her as anybody.  They're happy together, and
Harry is more like his old self.  I'm sure they've not
said anything to one another yet.  They take Jane
Grant with them whenever they can get hold of her, and
they wouldn't want to do that if it had gone very far
with them.  The moment they want to go off by themselves
I shall know what to expect, and I'll let you know,
but I hope you'll be down here before then.  We are
very glad you are coming.  Harry often talks about
you.  How I wish it was all like it used to be!  But it
never will be again."

Harry and Sidney rode together, and Harry found a
horse for Jane and taught her to ride.  Lady Avalon
had a car at Royd and sometimes they motored over to
Poldaven, where everything was now ready for the
reception of a family of distinction.  But Lady Avalon had
gone back to London, and Sidney stayed on at Royd.
There was no talk of her going away.

Jane could not be always with them.  She had been
let off afternoon lessons, by special request, but had to
occupy herself with them in the mornings.

One hot morning Harry and Sidney motored over to
Poldaven Castle.  It was an old stone house, not very
big, which stood on a boldly jutting cliff with the sea
on three sides of it.  There was generally some wind
hereabouts, and there was a strong fresh wind this
morning, though among the woods of Royd it was close
and still.

They went down to a little sheltered garden below
the house.  It had been partly hollowed out of the rock,
and was partly rock-strewn grass and gorse and fern
tamed into some semblance of ordered ground, but not
too much to take from the charm of its wildness.  Steps
cut in the rock led down to it from above, and steps
had been made from it to the sea, which lay fifty or
sixty feet below.  They sat on a stone bench overlooking
the heaving emerald mass of the sea, and the waves
breaking in a high tide against the cliffs and the huge
scattered rocks that littered the shore.

They were very good friends now, these two.  It was
Jane who had brought them together, for she greatly
admired both of them, and would not be content until
they admired one another.  So they laughed at her and
affected a wondering awe at each other's perfections
when they were in her presence; and when they were
alone together they sometimes kept up the game, to
prevent themselves falling into sadness over their private
troubles.

They were both a little sad now, as they sat on the
sun-warmed rock and looked out on the surge of the
waves.  Nature was so bright and fresh and happy, and
seemed to be inviting a mood to respond to her own.
She could put on this air of perpetual laughing
youthfulness, though age-old and subject to moods very
different.  It seemed ungracious not to laugh and be happy
with her.

"It's lovely here," Sidney said.  "If only things
would go right!  You're the most perfect person in the
world, Harry.  I ought to be quite happy being here
with you, but I want somebody else.  I'm wanting him
rather badly just at present."

"Well, you're everything you ought to be, but I want
somebody else too," he said.

He rose impulsively and leant against the wall of
the little terrace with one arm resting on it, and looked
down at her.  "I've thought I'd tell you for some time,"
he said.  "I want to tell somebody.  I can't tell Jane;
she's too young.  But you're in the same boat as I am;
you'll understand.  And we're friends too, aren't
we?—always have been."

She had appeared startled at his announcement, but
her face was soft as he finished.  "Oh, yes, we're
friends," she said.  "I'm so glad you've told me, Harry.
Do you know I've wondered sometimes whether there was
somebody.  You so often look—well, you look like I feel.
You're enjoying yourself, but there's somebody you're
thinking of all the time who isn't there.  Do tell me
about it."

He told her about his meeting with Viola on the moor,
and how they had seen one another constantly afterwards
and loved one another.  Sidney's eyes were kind
as she listened, but there was a little frown of
puzzlement on her face.  It was to be supposed that she
wanted to "place" this lovely girl who had come to
Harry as a revelation when he had been only a boy, and
whom he adored still.  He had told her nothing about
her so far, except that her father was an artist and they
had been holiday-making at Royd.  There were many
questions she wanted to ask.

"Have you got a photograph of her, Harry?" was
the first that she asked.  She wanted to satisfy herself
that he was not idealizing somebody not worthy of him.

Half unwillingly he took his case out of his pocket,
and Viola's photograph out of it.  "It isn't as beautiful
as she is," he said, "but it's like her in some ways."

Sidney took the card and looked at it for a long time.
It was of Viola as Harry had first known her, young
and sweet and untroubled.

"She's very lovely," she said, slowly.  Then she
looked up at him with a smile.  "I'm so glad, Harry.  I
shouldn't like to think of you in love with somebody
who wasn't like that.  But I think she'd have to be, for
you to fall in love with her.  Have you seen her since?"

Yes, he had seen her two or three times before he had
been sent abroad, and he had been with her since he had
come back, before he had come to Royd.  She was in
London, working in a government office.  He was going
to London for a few days before his leave was up, and
would see her again after that before he went to France.

He spoke as if he was troubled about it, and she knew
why.  But there was a lot to learn about it yet.  And
there was something about the beginnings of this love
affair that she could not quite reconcile with her
knowledge of Harry.

"Of course you're both frightfully young," she said.
"Noel and I are of an age to get married if they'd let
us, but I suppose you could hardly expect them to think
that you were.  But mightn't they accept your
engagement, and let her be here with you?"

He came and sat on the seat beside her again.  "Of
course we shall be married some day," he said.  "But
we never thought about that, or about what you call an
engagement—I mean we didn't think of it in the way
that older people would.  We were just happy loving
each other."

"Oh, I know," she said.  "It's a lovely time that—perhaps
the best of all.  But afterwards you come down
to the earth a little.  I suppose it has been like that with
you, hasn't it?  There are one's people to be considered,
and what they are likely to think about it.  I suppose
nobody knows—at Royd."

"Wilbraham does—my tutor, you know.  Nobody else does."

She showed surprise at this.  "Did he find out you
were seeing her?" she asked.

He stirred uneasily.  He did not answer her question
directly.  "I don't suppose you'd realize quite how
it was with me here, before I went away," he said.
"They'd kept me shut up.  I was happy enough, but I
knew absolutely nothing about the world.  From what
I've learnt since, I know it must look as if we had met
surreptitiously.  Perhaps we did, and yet it wasn't like
that either.  It was the most natural thing in the world
for us to be together as we were.  At first I even thought
of telling my mother about it.  I don't know now when
it first dawned upon me that they wouldn't have
approved—or why.  I shouldn't have cared much if they
had known.  But it was such a beautiful secret between
Viola and me; I didn't want it to be spoiled by
other—older people—coming in."

"Mr. Wilbraham knew," she said.

"He'd seen her.  He knew what she was like.  He's
a dear old thing—full of understanding and sympathy.
I don't know why he didn't tell Granny.  I didn't ask
him not to.  I wouldn't have done that; that would have
looked as if I had done something I was ashamed of.
I've had an idea since that he had some sort of feeling
that we were two men together, and it wasn't for us to
be directed in our affairs by a woman.  Something like
that.  Granny has always been very much at the head
of things here."

"Yes, I see," she said.  "But now you're older,
Harry; and it has lasted?  That sort of love, when
you're *very* young, doesn't *always* last, you know.
Wouldn't Lady Brent accept it now?  It would be so
lovely if she could come here, and you could be happy
with her as long as you're in England.  You wouldn't
have to go away to London to see her then."

There was silence for a time, except for the noise
of the waves on the rocks, and the plaintive cry of the
gulls wheeling above them.  Harry sat looking on the
rocky floor, Sidney out to sea.

"I've had to decide such a lot of things for myself
lately," he said.  "I'd decided not to do that."

She thought his tone sounded as if he were wavering
about his decision.  She did not look at him, but said:
"With Noel and me it's a very ordinary sort of difficulty.
He's not what they'd call a good match.  But I
suppose they won't hold out if we show that we mean
to have our own way.  If they do, well, I shall wait till
I'm twenty-one and marry him—just like that.  But,
of course, it would make a lot of difference if they smiled
on us now, instead of keeping us apart.  The real reason
why we've come down here is because if he comes home
on leave I should see him, and they don't want me to;
and partly, I suppose, because they think you and I
might get to like each other, now we're both grown up.
Why can't they let us be happy in our own way—the
older people?  They've done what they wanted, or if
they haven't they're probably rather sorry for it now.
I should be very glad if Noel were in the sort of position
that my sisters' husbands are.  But I shouldn't love him
any better for it.  It's love that counts."

"Yes, of course," said Harry.  "Well, both you and
I are going to get what we want by and by.  I suppose
we shall have to wait about the same time for it.  But
you never know what's going to happen to you in these
days.  If I were to get killed, I should have missed
something I ought to have had.  You'd say it wouldn't make
much difference to me, but I don't look at it like that;
and anyhow it would make a difference to Viola, all
her life."

Her eyes had filled with tears.  "It just doesn't do
to think about that," she said, "or to talk about it."

He looked at her quickly, and put his hand on hers
as it lay on the stone between them.  "I'm sorry," he
said.  "I didn't mean to be a brute.  We take it like
that, you know; it doesn't make any difference to us.
Nobody worries about it.  But, of course it's different
for you."

She dried her eyes.  "It won't happen to Noel or
you," she said.  "We shall all four of us be happy by
and by.  But why shouldn't you be happy now, Harry?
Is it necessary that you should keep it a secret still?"

The troubled look returned to his face.  "I'm different
from other men," he said.  "Everything was spared
me when I was young.  I've had to learn everything
since I grew up, and it isn't a pleasant world to learn
in now.  But whatever I have to do I must do now on
my own responsibility.  I should have to ask for Viola
to come here.  I couldn't do that.  When she comes here,
she'll come of her own right—the right that I shall
give her."

"But if you were to tell them about her, Harry——"

"Yes, that's what I've thought of doing.  But I can't
do that either.  They might accept her, but if they
didn't—it's like it is with you.  They want something
else."

She sighed.  "I'm glad you've told me, at any rate,"
she said.  "It puts *everything* right now.  You know
about me and I know about you.  I suppose Jane doesn't
know?"

"No.  And we mustn't tell her.  I wish I could, but
it wouldn't be fair on her.  She'll be the first person I
shall tell on that happy day when I can tell everybody."





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.. _`HOLIDAY`:

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   CHAPTER XXIV


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   HOLIDAY

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Wilbraham came down to Royd for a week-end visit.
It was all he could spare from his arduous duties.  He
was thinner than he had been, but seemed to have
flourished under the severe course of work to which he had
submitted himself.  He seemed harder and more
self-reliant.  Lady Brent saw at the first glance that his old
temptation had not troubled him, or if it had troubled
him that he had got the better of it.

Harry drove a dogcart to the station to meet him.
The greeting was warm between them.  Wilbraham
looked him up and down.  "I can't say they've smartened
you up," he said, "because you didn't want it.  But
they've turned you into a soldier.  I hope you haven't
forgotten all your classics."

Harry laughed, but made no reply.  When they had
driven out of the little town and were on the long lonely
country road, he said: "I wanted to see you first.  Of
course you'll be talking me over with Granny.  There
are some things I don't want said."

"If you mean about Viola," said Wilbraham after a
pause.  "I've kept my own counsel—and yours—for
nearly two years.  I've never been quite sure that I was
right to do it.  I believe it might have been better for
you if Lady Brent had known.  But at any rate, I have
kept silence, and it isn't my affair now.  It's yours.
I quite recognize that."

"Have you seen her?"

"Viola?  Since you came home, you mean.  You
know that I saw her occasionally before.  Yes, I've seen
her.  Of course she wants you.  You're going up next
week, aren't you?  Have you arranged that here?"

"Not yet.  I told mother that I should be going to
London, but I haven't said when yet."

"They won't like it, I suppose.  You won't give them
any reason for going.  They'll think you just want to
get away from here to amuse yourself as other young
men do who are home on leave."

"I'm afraid they must think what they like.  I hate
all this secrecy—and deception.  I won't deceive them
more than I can help.  They must let me go my own
way, and not ask questions.  But it's deception all the
same.  Why did you let me in for it?"

"Let you in for it?  *I* let you in for it!  What on
earth do you mean, Harry?"

"Not you chiefly.  But you were in it.  You kept
me knowing nothing.  Supposing it hadn't been Viola
I fell in love with!  Oh, I've learnt a lot since you and
I met last.  I know what men are, and I'm not different
from others at bottom, though there's miles between me
and them in some ways.  It's Viola I owe everything
to—not Granny or mother or you.  I don't know how I
should have lived through it if it hadn't been for her.
I should have lost everything that I was."  He spoke
more slowly.  "Viola is everything in the world to me,"
he said, "everything in this world or the next.  I want
you to understand that.  I loved her before, but I love
her a thousand times more, now that I know.  All
this—Royd, and Granny and mother—everything that it all
meant to me, is nothing to me now, apart from her.
Whatever there is that's real in it—I can't explain it,
but it's as if she'd have to give it back to me before I
can make it anything again.  If you can see that, then
you may be able to help a little.  Viola is to come first
in everything, but until it's all straightened out I want
Granny—and mother—to be as little troubled about me
as possible.  Make it look natural to them, my going to
London; don't let them think that I'm tired of them, or
of Royd.  I'm not, only it's all very little to me beside
Viola."

"I think you're unjust to us," said Wilbraham.  "Say
we hadn't prepared you for what you've been
through—what nobody could have foreseen."

"Oh, it would have been just the same if I'd gone
straight to Sandhurst—perhaps worse—if I hadn't
known Viola."

"Well, that's where you're unjust.  It was only Viola—or
somebody like her—that you could have fallen in
love with, as you did.  We'd done that for you."

Harry thought this over.  Wilbraham breathed more
freely the longer his silence lasted.  He recognized with
gratitude that old sense of fairness and reasonableness
which had never been absent in his dealings with Harry.
"It's what you have to think of when you feel inclined
to blame your grandmother," he said.

"I don't think I'm inclined to blame her," Harry
answered to this.  "I'm very sorry for her.  That's why
I want to let her down as easily as I can.  Afterwards
everything will be right for her, and she'll see—she's
quite wise enough—that it was right that I should take
my life into my own hands.  That's what I'm going to
do.  I had to do it once before."

"She accepted that, you know."

"Yes, in a wonderful way, I think.  And she'll accept
Viola.  But not now.  I should have to ask her for
Viola, and I'm not going to do that.  Besides, she's got
other ideas in her head for me."

"Lady Sidney, I suppose you mean.  From what your
mother has written, you seem to want her to think that
her wishes are being carried out."

"Sidney and I understand one another.  She knows
about Viola.  I'm very glad she's here.  I couldn't have
stayed here without her and little Jane.  I suppose the
beastly world would say that I'm just amusing myself
with a pretty girl, as I can't be with the girl I love.
They might even think there's some danger in it.  But
the world doesn't know love as I know it."  He turned
to Wilbraham with a smile.  "What you did, my
friend, you and Granny between you, was to unfit me
for the society of men.  After being with nobody but
men for all this time, I'm glad enough to have two girls
as my friends before I go back to it.  As for Granny,
she's arranged all that for me, as she's used to arrange
everything, and if she's disappointed with the outcome
of it, I'm afraid it can't be helped.  It's just that
arranging that I have to make my stand against, with as
little bother about it as possible."

"I've said already, and I'll say it again, that you're
hard on Lady Brent.  I fully believe that if you were
to tell her about Viola—now—she'd accept it.  Then
all the secrecy you say you hate would be over."

"I think it's quite possible that she might.  I don't
think my mother would.  In any case, there'd be
questions and difficulties.  Viola would be discussed and
reckoned up in a way I can't bear to think of.  When
the time comes I shall bring Viola here and say: 'This
is the girl I love, and she loves me, though I'm not
worth anything beside her.'  Then there'll be no questions
and no difficulties, and Viola will take her place
here, and we shall be happy for the rest of our
lives."

"You mean that she'll take Lady Brent's place here,
I suppose.  It's no good blinking matters."

Harry laughed at him.  "You always were a persistent
old thing," he said, "but I'm very glad to see
you again.  Tell me about Viola, and what she said
to you."

Wilbraham found himself, somewhat to his surprise
in spite of the preparation he had had, in an atmosphere
of serenity, and almost of gaiety.  There had been nothing
like it in all the years he had lived at Royd Castle.
He told himself that unless he had known how it was
with Harry he would certainly have thought that the
pleasure he obviously took in Sidney's society was
leading to something else.  The Grants were there when he
arrived.  It was a little intimate friendly happy party
of which no single member seemed to have a care upon
his or her shoulders.  Only Mrs. Brent seemed rather
out of the stream.  Wilbraham saw that he would be
invited on the first opportunity to listen to the tale of
Mrs. Brent's dissatisfaction.

It was Grant, however, to whom he first talked alone,
walking in the garden.  Grant could see nothing on the
horizon but a prospective marriage between Sir Harry
Brent and Lady Sidney Pawle, which appeared to him
eminently as one that should give satisfaction to all
parties concerned.

"Of course they won't want to be married yet
awhile," he said, "but we're expecting an engagement
any day.  I must say that it has all turned out in a
most extraordinarily satisfactory way.  Supposing the
boy had done what his father did!  He'd seen nobody
here; he might very well have got taken in by somebody
who wouldn't have been the right sort of person for him
to marry when he cut himself loose.  And there was just
the chance of this one girl being here when he came home.
One is inclined to think of Lady Brent managing everything,
but she didn't actually manage that.  It just
came about."

Wilbraham listened to all this, his own thoughts
running all the time.  Sidney and Jane and Harry were in
another part of the garden, out of sight, but not out
of hearing.  A burst of laughter punctuated the close
of the Vicar's speech.  "Wouldn't they want to get
away by themselves if it's as you think?" Wilbraham
asked.

"Ah, my boy, you don't recognize the march of the
great passion," said Grant.  "I've loved watching those
three together, because it is all going as I should have
expected."

"Copy in it," suggested Wilbraham.

"Well, that's your way of putting it.  But of course
one takes in everything that passes before one's eyes,
and if it doesn't come out exactly like it, it's——"

"Near enough to look like it.  Well, I suppose you've
made a study of it, and all the old women who read your
immortal works will shiver down their spines and say,
'It was just like that with me.'  But I'd rather take
Jane's opinion about it than yours."

"Would you?  Well, Jane's having the time of her
life.  They're awfully nice to her.  Of course they're
just in the state when it's gratifying to have somebody
like Jane with them, who thinks there never was
anybody like either of them.  They flatter each other
through her."

"Oh, that's how it's going to be worked out, is it?
The old women will love that.  It's a new touch, and
they'll wish they'd thought of it for themselves, in time.
Did Jane tell you it was like that, or was it your own
mighty brain?"

"You're jealous of my success, Wilbraham.  But I
don't mind your jibes.  I don't write for the highbrows
like you, and I do touch the hearts of thousands.  Jane
talks to her mother.  I shouldn't expect her to talk to
me about it."

"Well, what does Mrs. Grant say?  She's got some sense."

"She keeps rather quiet about it.  I think she's just
thankful that Harry has somebody to keep him bright
and cheerful while he's at home.  You made a mistake,
you know, before, in not letting him have young people
to play with."

"He had your two."

"As it happened, yes.  But they were only children.
Jane is older now, but not old enough, fortunately, to
have the danger of complications.  Apart altogether
from the question of a love affair with Lady Sidney, I
believe it's the best thing that could happen for him to
have those two with him while he's here.  It's an awful
welter of blood and horror out there, you know, Wilbraham.
None of the young fellows who come home talk
much about it, but it doesn't need much imagination to
see what a healing process it is for anybody like Harry
to spend a few weeks with people like those two girls
as his chief companions, in a quiet lovely place like
this."

"Now you're talking sense yourself for a change.
Here's Mrs. Brent coming.  Don't leave me alone with
her.  It's an awful welter of red tape and incompetence
where I've just come from, but I don't want her as a
healing process till I feel a little stronger."

But the Grants had to be going very shortly, and
Mrs. Brent was not to be denied.

Her first address to Wilbraham, however, was not on
the subject of her grievances.  "Oh, I forgot to tell
you when I wrote," she said.  "You know that
artist—Bastian—who came down here two summers ago?"

"Yes," said Wilbraham, with his heart in his mouth.

"Well, I've found out that he married a great friend
of mine—oh, years ago, but I hadn't forgotten her.  She
died, poor girl, but of course the daughter who was with
Mr. Bastian here was hers.  I wish I'd known.  I'd
have gone to see them."

"You wouldn't have wanted to bring that time up,
would you?" said Wilbraham, scarcely knowing what
to say.

She was all bristles at once.  "I think I was very
badly treated about all that," she said.  "I'd nothing
whatever to be ashamed of in what I came from, and all
the time it was made to look as if I had.  I half believed
it myself, but now I know better.  Every one of my
family is doing well.  They're not in the position I'm
in, of course, but there's no need to be ashamed of any
of them.  In fact, I've made up my mind to introduce
Harry to his relations on my side of the family.  I'm
going to ask him to take me up to London before he goes
back.  Then he'll see for himself."

"Do you think you're wise?" said Wilbraham, relieved
at having got away from the subject of the Bastians.

"What do you mean?" she asked.  "What's the
objection?"

"Well, you say they're not equal to you.  They may
be very good sort of people; I dare say they are; but
what's the sense of dragging them in at this time of the
day—after twenty years—to mark the difference?"

"What difference?"

"Well, the difference between them and Lady Brent."

"Lady Brent!  How can you talk like that?  It's
just that I'm so mad with Lady Brent that I——"

"I know it is.  All you can think of is to score off
her.  You're not thinking of Harry; you're not even
thinking of yourself.  What are you going to get, out
of going back on everything you've stood for for the
last twenty years?  Harry thinks of you as belonging
to Royd, in the same sort of way as Lady Brent does.
Why should he have ever thought of you as anything
different?  Now you're proposing to show him the
difference.  You say yourself they *are* different.  You're
going to show him the difference between Lady Brent
and them.  Which is likely to come out of it best?  I
don't know; I'm asking you."

"Oh, you're just trying to aggravate me," she said.
"You always were like that.  I don't know why I talk
to you at all."

"Well, if you've finished, I think I'll go in.  I want
a peaceful time as long as I'm here.  You're the only
person who doesn't seem to be comfortable and happy.
I'd rather be with those of them who are."

"I'm not at all happy.  I'm just miserable.  Harry
doesn't love me any more, and I don't know what to do
about it."

They had come to the bowling alley where Wilbraham
had thought out his difficulties two summers before.
She sank down on to the seat and cried.

Wilbraham felt very sorry for her, but determined to
prevent her from making mischief if he could.  "Look
here," he said, "I don't think it really much matters
whether you introduce Harry to your people or not.
He's grown up now, and all that idea of keeping things
from him is over.  Do what you like about it.  Lady
Brent won't try to stop you; I'm pretty certain of that.
She has given up trying to direct his life.  Why can't
you?"

Her sobs increased.  "I'm his mother," she said.
"I've had so little of him.  I can't give him up now."

"You had him during the whole of his childhood,
more than most mothers have their sons.  Lady Brent
may have been a bit jealous of you; I dare say she was;
she's got her weaknesses like all the rest of us.  But
she didn't try to get him away from you.  I was here
most of the time, and I could see that plainly enough.
You know it too.  You'll be much happier about things
if you try to be fair to her, as she's tried to be fair
to you."

"Oh, of course it's her you're thinking of all the time.
I don't come in at all."

"Yes, you do come in.  I'm trying to help you to
get things straight.  The fact is your nose has been put
out of joint by this girl who's here.  It isn't Lady Brent
at all, though you heap it all back on her.  You can't
expect a boy of Harry's age to go about tied to his
mother's apron strings, when there's somebody young
for him to play with.  You like the girl all right, don't
you?"

She had dried her eyes and sat leaning forward in an
attitude of picturesque misery.  "It doesn't seem to
matter whether I like her or not," she said.  "Harry
won't talk to me about her.  If he told me he was in
love with her I should do my best to sympathize with
him.  I want to be everything to my son."

"Of course you do; and of course you can't be.  If
he hasn't told you he's in love with her, it's because he
isn't.  For goodness' sake let him be happy while he's
here, and in his own way.  He'll be going back soon
enough, and you won't want him to think of his holiday
spoiled by your complaints.  You're selfish, you know.
It's yourself you're thinking of all the time, not him.
You used not to be like that."

"Oh, well," she said, rising, "I suppose I must put
up with it.  It's the common lot of mothers.  I shan't
talk about it any more, to you or anybody."

"That's right," said Wilbraham, as they strolled
towards the house.  "And don't make complaints to
Harry, either.  It's not the way to get what you want
from him.  Of course you know that really, as well as
I do.  Only it's difficult, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said.  With the end of her
emotion she seemed to have entered a mood almost of
indifference.  "If I've stood what I have all these years,
and kept myself under as I have, I suppose I can go on
doing it.  It's coming down here that has upset me.
I've been happy enough in London.  Of course I've
wanted to hear about Harry, but he's promised me now
that he'll write to me regularly.  I shall be better off,
in a way, than I've ever been.  I'm *somebody* there, you
see.  Here I'm nobody.  I shan't stay here a moment
longer than Harry does.  I hate the place now.  Why
have you never been to see me in London?"

"I don't know that you've ever asked me.  Where do
you live?"

She told him.  She was sharing a flat with an old
friend, a woman who had been on the stage with her,
had had an unhappy married life, but had got on in her
profession.

"Margaret Creedy?" said Wilbraham.  "I've seen
her act.  She's very good."

"Yes, you wouldn't have thought she began in the
chorus, would you?  She never had much voice, which
was perhaps just as well for her, or she'd have been in
musical comedy still.  She doesn't like it remembered,
and of course I don't want it known either; but we often
talk over old times.  It was from her, by the by, that
I heard about Mrs. Bastian.  She married a gentleman,
like I did; but he'd come down in the world.  Bastian
isn't his real name, you know.".

"What is his real name?"

"I don't know.  I meant to find out about him, and
go and see what the girl is like.  You never told me much
about her, but if she's like her mother she ought to be
very pretty."

"She is very pretty, but——"

"Oh, you mean I ought not to let them know who I
was, as they've been here.  Perhaps I shan't.  I don't
want to give *her* any handles against me."

"By *her* I suppose you mean Lady Brent.  Everything
comes back to her.  You'll think better of all that
some day.  I wish you'd think better of it now.  Royd
would be a less prickly house to live in."

"Oh, I shall behave myself, never you fear," she said
as she left him.

He thought it probable that she would.  He had made
an impression on her, though she was not of the sort
that would acknowledge it.  She was evidently making
her own life, and even if she had dropped all pretence of
war work, for which she had gone to London, it was
not a life that would let the name of Brent down, as he
had rather feared.  Margaret Creedy was an actress
of some distinction, and would be very careful not to
jeopardize the social position she had won for herself.
And Mrs. Brent, for all her independent talk, was
guided by a sense of her own importance in the world.
Probably the joint establishment was as rigidly
respectable as any in London.

As for possible complications with the Bastians,
Wilbraham could do nothing.  If the revelation came in
that way, it must come, and for himself he didn't care
when it came.  He was tired of all the secrecy, and
thought too that Harry was wrong in keeping his
secret; or, at any rate, right or wrong in being unwilling
to disclose it himself, that it would be better for him
if it were known.

He was inclined to dread the talk that he saw coming
with Lady Brent.  He badly wanted a recreative rest
himself, and hated the idea of exercising his brain in
steering clear of admissions to her, hated also the idea
of deceiving her by doing so, when all the time he was
in sympathy with her in her doubts and disappointments.
What was done was done.  Harry was what he
was, and if she had made any mistake in his upbringing,
which he did not admit, it would do no good now to dwell
on it with regret.  Harry was working it all out for
himself, and as far as Wilbraham could see, was not
making such a bad job of it.  He would tell her that,
when she began to discuss him, and cut the conversation
as short as he conveniently could.  Then he would be
free to enjoy himself, in the company of the people he
liked best in the world, and in the place which seemed
to him, coming back to it, a haven of peace and beauty.

But apparently that was all that Lady Brent wanted
of him.  She told him that Harry seemed much more
his old self now that he had been home a week or more,
and that she was glad that there was young companionship
for him, and beyond that she did not discuss him
at all.

So Wilbraham enjoyed his two days at Royd, and
went back to his work greatly refreshed, and with most
of his doubts about Harry set at rest.  He might be
longing for Viola all the time, as he had said he was,
but he managed to hide it effectually and seemed to be
enjoying his holiday as much as anybody.





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.. _`MRS. BRENT KNOWS`:

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   CHAPTER XXV


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   MRS. BRENT KNOWS

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Royd Castle was empty, except for the servants, for
the first time for twenty years.  Everybody had gone
away, including Lady Brent, who, however, was not very
far off, for she was only visiting Lady Avalon for a
few days at Poldaven.

To the Grants, left to themselves, after the unusual
amount of society they had lately enjoyed, there was a
sense of emptiness, though their own summer life was in
full swing, and the Vicar had a bright new idea for a
novel, which was keeping his thoughts happily employed.
There were to be a young man and two girls, and nobody
was to know which of the girls the young man was really
in love with until the last chapter.

"Of course I got the idea from those three," he told
his wife, "although it couldn't be exactly like them.
Harry and Sidney might be, but the second girl would
have to be older than Jane, but still rather young.  She
would be a sort of confidante of the other two, who
would be inclined to fall in love with one another.  Then
she would gradually find that she was in love with the
young man herself.  I should make it rather pathetic,
but not overdo it, of course.  She would keep her feelings
to herself, out of loyalty to her friend.  I haven't quite
worked it out yet, but the reality would come in a flash.
The young man would find that it was she he was in
love with.  I shouldn't be able to leave the other girl in
the air.  There might be somebody else for her.  It will
come all right, now my brain has begun to work on it.
I should have to make her very charming, so that it
would seem as if the man *must* be in love with her."

"You mustn't make it too like Harry and Sidney,"
said Mrs. Grant.

"Oh, I should be careful about that, though their
way with each other has been very attractive to watch.
They're so frank, and so completely friendly—a very
delightful pair of young people I call them.  It would
be much more effective to have young lovers behaving
like that to one another than the usual sort of love affair
that one meets with in fiction.  The odd thing about it,
though, is that they have parted now and nothing has
come of it all."

Mrs. Grant laughed.  "Perhaps it's because they
weren't lovers after all," she said, "and were so frank
and friendly with each other because they weren't.  You
must be careful about that, David."

But he would not admit that Harry and Sidney
weren't in love with one another.  It was clear for
everybody to see.  Of course Harry was rather an
exceptional young man.  That was plain from the way he
had come back to Royd as if he were master there
already.  There was tremendous strength of character
in him, and even Lady Brent recognized it, and did not
seek to direct him in any way.  It was very likely that
he had made up his mind that it would not be right to
engage himself to Sidney until the war was over.  But
it was also likely that they had an understanding
between themselves.  It could hardly be otherwise.

"He has certainly altered," said Mrs. Grant.  "He
goes his own way as one would hardly have expected of
him in some respects.  I don't know why he should have
wanted to be with Mr. Wilbraham for a week before he
went to France.  Poor Mrs. Brent was rather sad about
it, especially when he wrote to say that he was not
coming down again."

"And now she's gone posting up to London to get
hold of him.  I've no patience with Mrs. Brent.  She
has greatly deteriorated.  Well, I must be getting on
with my work.  I shall very soon be ready to make a
start on the first chapter."

Jane had been very subdued in demeanour since
Sidney and Harry had both departed, and frequently
sought her mother's company.  She came to her this
morning, when her lessons were done, and sat with her
in the garden as she worked.

"Did father say that there was going to be a great
attack on the Germans soon?" she asked, after a little
desultory conversation.

"It has been expected for some time.  I suppose it
can't be long before it comes now."

"I suppose that's why Harry's leave has been cut
short.  Will there be a great many of our people killed,
mother?"

"I'm afraid so, dear."

"Harry might be," said Jane.  "He's very brave."

"You mustn't let yourself dwell on that, darling.  He
has been spared so far."

"Did you know he had been wounded?"

Mrs. Grant looked at her in surprise.  "Not
seriously," she said.

"Sidney and I both think he was, though he wouldn't
tell us, and said we weren't to talk about it.  Have you
noticed he always keeps his sleeve buttoned when he's
playing tennis?"

Mrs. Grant hadn't noticed particularly, but said that
she remembered now that he did.

"Well, he's got an awful great scar in his arm.  We
saw it once by accident.  A Turk did it with a bayonet.
When we found out, he did tell us a little, and about the
time he was in hospital.  He told us about an orderly
who had been frightfully good to him, and said he saved
his life when he was very ill, by nursing him all the time.
He liked to talk about him; his name was Tom Weller.
Sidney thought he couldn't have been so ill just from
a wound in the arm, and then he said he'd had a little
shell wound in the body, but he wouldn't tell us any
more.  We think it must have been a serious one.  We
found out afterwards that he didn't go to hospital for
his bayonet wound at all."

Mrs. Grant was conscious of a feeling of surprise and
some discomfort.  She knew that Harry was not likely
to fail in any of a young man's courageous work, and
yet she had thought of him as having got off lightly,
except in the hardships of a trooper's life.  And that he
had never mentioned even the actions in which he had
been wounded seemed so to accentuate the division that
he had made between himself and those who loved him.
He might have died and they would have known nothing.
Apparently he had been very near to death.  She
wondered whether Jane had any theory to account for his
unusual reticence about himself.

"I'm very glad Lady Brent will hear about him now,"
she said.  "It's dreadful to think what might have
happened when they couldn't have got to him."

"Well, they couldn't, anyhow, when he was in Egypt.
He says it was much better that they shouldn't have
been anxious about him, and as it turned out there was
no need to have been anxious.  I must say I'm rather
glad we didn't know, though it's horrid to think of our
enjoying ourselves at home when Harry was nearly
dying.  Sidney and I both told him that we wanted to
know everything about him now, and he promised to."

"To write to you?"

"Yes; or to let us have a message.  You see we're real
friends, mother dear.  We've had a lovely time together
and enjoyed ourselves frightfully; but it hasn't been
quite all enjoying ourselves.  Sidney and I both know
that Harry dreads things.  I don't mean being wounded,
or anything like that.  But everything is so different
for him.  What we both got to know was that he wanted
it to be like it used to be here as much as ever it could
be.  That's why he won't talk about the war.  We could
make him forget it; so we were sometimes more lively
than we really felt.  I'm sure I don't feel at all lively
now."

Her mother stole a glance at her, as she sat with a
calm face looking out in front of her.

"Well, darling," she said, "you'll have Harry home
on leave again.  I'm sure both you and Sidney have done
a lot for him since he's been home this time.  There was
a sort of strain on him at first which wasn't there
afterwards."

"Did you notice that?  I'm very glad.  Of course
Sidney did more than I did.  She was with him more,
and she's older.  But they were both very sweet to me.
I think I did help.  I love them both.  I love Sidney.
I wish——"

She broke off abruptly.  "I think I can guess what
Sidney's secret is," said her mother, after a pause.  "I
think she meant me to, you know, when she told you you
could tell me that there was a secret."

Jane looked at her eagerly.  "I don't suppose she
really meant me not to tell you," she said.

"If I've found it out for myself, she wouldn't mind
you talking about it.  I shouldn't mention it to
anybody else.  I thought, when you told me, that perhaps
she was in love with somebody, and that was why you
and she and Harry could all be friends together so
happily."

Jane breathed a sigh of relief.  "Yes, that's it
exactly," she said.  "How clever you are, mother!  I'm
glad you knew.  His name is Noel Chancellor.  I've seen
his photograph.  He is very good-looking, but of course
not so good-looking as Harry.  I can't help thinking
that if she'd never seen him she would be in love with
Harry."

"Perhaps.  But it doesn't always come like that.
And he's not in love with her, you see, though there's
nobody else, for him."

"No, he isn't."  Jane spoke very decisively.  "She's
such a dear that I did think once that he might have
been a little, although he knew about Noel, without being
able to help it.  But he's not the least little bit.  I don't
know how I know that, but I do."

"I suppose you know that they think he is, at the Castle."

"Oh, yes.  And Lady Avalon will be annoyed when
she finds out.  But we can't help that."

Mrs. Grant smiled.  She loved that "we" that came
into Jane's speech.  "What about Lady Brent?" she
said.  "You were such friends with Lady Brent before
Harry came home."

"I am still.  Of course she wouldn't say anything to
me about that.  I'm not quite sure that she does expect
it.  At any rate, I know she was glad for me to be
with them.  She knew all right that we were helping
Harry.  Lady Brent sees a lot, though she doesn't talk
much."

Mrs. Grant found food for thought in this, and shared
it later with Miss Minster.  Neither of them had ever
been able to make up their minds finally about Lady
Brent.

"Supposing she doesn't really expect anything to
come of it!" she said.  "I'm inclined to trust Jane
when she thinks that she doesn't."

"I've liked her much better since she took Jane into
her confidence," said Miss Minster.  "I'm sorry for her
now.  I think she lays her plans deeply and then has to
sit and do nothing while she sees them fail.  But it needs
a lot of self-restraint to sit and do nothing.  Yes, I'm
sorry for her."

"You think Jane is right then?"

"I don't know.  Lady Brent would look farther than
most people.  She wouldn't need to look much farther
than I do in this.  What I think is that Harry isn't
ready for it yet, and won't be till the war is over.  When
that oppression is removed from him I think he's quite
likely to fall in love with Lady Sidney.  That's what I
think, and I shouldn't wonder if Lady Brent thought
the same.  Then it wouldn't make her quite so
superhuman as she appears.  She'd just be waiting."

This view could not be combated without disclosures.
As far as it affected Lady Brent it seemed to be the
best explanation of her attitude.  "Anyhow she's a
wonderful woman," said Mrs. Grant, "and I also like
her better than I did, although I never disliked her."

"The person I don't like so well," said Miss Minster,
"is Mrs. Brent.  I hope we've seen the last of her here
for the present."

But they had not, for almost immediately she had
spoken a telegram was brought in from Mrs. Brent,
announcing her arrival that afternoon, and asking
Mrs. Grant to take her in, as there was nobody at the Castle.
She also asked Mrs. Grant to meet her at Burport,
which seemed to indicate that she had something of
importance to disclose to her.

She looked scared and unhappy as she greeted her
friend on the platform.  "I hope you didn't mind my
asking you to put me up," she said.  "I believe she's
coming back to-morrow, and I wanted to have a long
talk with you first."

By "she" Mrs. Grant understood her to refer to
Lady Brent, whom she seldom referred to in any other
way.  "I'm very glad to have you," she said.  "I hope
nothing is wrong.  Have you seen Harry?"

"I'll tell you when we get into the carriage."

When they were settled and driving away, she said:
"Have I seen Harry?  I think you'll be surprised when
I tell you how and where I've seen him.  I've never had
such a shock in my life.  I don't know what to do about
it.  I had to come straight down to see her.  She must
deal with it.  I can't; it's beyond me.  I only hope it
won't be beyond her.  I must tell you all from the
beginning."

She entered into a long explanation of how she had
written to Harry at Wilbraham's flat where he was
staying.  He had come to see her, and had been kind but
had seemed annoyed with her for coming up to London
when he had not expected it.  He had told her that he
was very much engaged, and could not see much of her
before he went abroad.  He had not vouchsafed any
account of how he was engaged, but had come to see her
once again, in the morning, but had refused to stay to
lunch or to make any engagement for the evening.  She
spoke with some resentment, and not as she had ever
spoken about Harry before.  It was as if she felt more
annoyed at being neglected than sorry at not having
him with her.

Mrs. Grant sat silent, and she entered on another long
explanation about the Bastians, and her early friendship
with Bastian's wife.  Then Mrs. Grant began to be
extremely interested.

"What possessed me to find out all about them just
at this time, and go to see the girl, I can't think," she
said.  "I think it was Providence leading me.  I'd
forgotten all about Mrs. Clark, the woman they lodge with,
being Mrs. Ivimey's sister, and fortunately—or
unfortunately—she didn't open the door to me.  The maid said
she was in, but had a young gentleman with her.  She
looked rather knowing as she said it, and I thought it
would be amusing to see what the young gentleman was
like.  You can imagine what I felt when she showed me
into the room and I found Harry there."

She looked as if she expected an exclamation of
surprise at this climax; but Mrs. Grant had already been
prepared for it by her rigmarole.  "That explains a
great deal," she said.  "I suppose they had met here."

"Yes, two years ago, when Harry was a boy—hardly
more than a child.  Could you believe it of him, and
keeping it secret all that time, and ever since?"

"What happened?" asked Mrs. Grant, adjusting her
thoughts to many things.

"They were sitting side by side on the sofa.  I never
had such a shock in my life.  I could only stand there
and stare.  She jumped up, of course.  I hadn't given
my name, and she didn't even know who I was.  Harry
looked very black, and stood up too.  It was as if a
sword was piercing my heart to see my son look at me
like that."

She paused for a moment.  It occurred to Mrs. Grant
that she had rehearsed her tale beforehand, and that
phrase had come to her as an effective one.  It did not
seem to represent what she was actually feeling, though
it may have represented what she thought she ought to
feel.

"I could only gasp out, 'Harry!  You here!'  He
said, 'Yes, mother!'  Then he took hold of the girl's
hand, and said, 'This is Viola.  We have loved each
other for a long time.'  That was absolutely all he said,
and she said nothing, but just looked at me, as if she was
frightened, as I dare say she was."

"Oh, I hope you——"

She did not continue.  Mrs. Brent would tell her what
she had done.

She did not tell her at once, and Mrs. Grant's heart
sank as she expatiated further on what she had felt.
"The very thing," she said, "that we'd all sacrificed
ourselves to prevent, during the whole of Harry's
boyhood.  I was absolutely *stunned*.  There they stood
hand in hand in front of me, and waited for me to say
something.  And what *could* I say?  Harry—my boy!
And a girl like that!  Oh, I shall never get over it.
And I can't think what *she'll* say, though there's one
thing—she can't blame me for it."

Mrs. Grant had been thinking rapidly.  She had
heard about Viola from Mrs. Ivimey.  Her impression
of her had been of a very young and beautiful girl, of
whom nice things were said naturally.  It needed some
little effort of imagination to connect her with Harry,
and certainly it was rather surprising that Harry, of
all people, should have cherished that kind of secret.
But the picture of the pair of them standing there hand
in hand waiting for the speech which she dreaded to be
told had not come rose before her.  "Oh, he couldn't
have gone on loving her for two whole years unless she
was sweet and good," she said.

Mrs. Brent bridled in offence.  "That didn't come in
when *I* was married," she said.  "She's no better than
I was.  Her mother wasn't brought up as I had been,
though there was nothing against her.  It simply can't
be allowed.  *I* can't do anything.  Harry won't listen
to me.  This girl has taken him away from me.  Of
course it's all explained now—why he was so different
to me when he came home—oh, and why he didn't write,
and everything.  He wrote to her.  He *is* different.
She's made him so.  He isn't like my son any more.  I'm
only thankful that it didn't happen, or at least I didn't
know about it, while I was living down here."

It seemed probable that she was congratulating herself
that the whole of her interests in life were no longer
bound up in Harry.  This was no very comforting
thought to Mrs. Grant.  "I wish you'd tell me how it
ended," she said.

"It ended in Harry being very unkind to me," she
said, with the first signs of real emotion.  "He said
that if I had taken the girl as my daughter—as if I
could have done that!—all the difficulties would have
been ended.  As it was he would not see me again before
he went to France.  Young people are very cruel.  I'm
his mother who have been everything to him, and now
I'm nothing.  I came away and left him there.  It's all
over for me.  I've lost my son, and this girl who isn't
fit for him has got him.  But I don't think she'll be
allowed to keep him.  I shall see her to-morrow.  She
won't be pleased at the end of all her plotting and
scheming.  But I shall be surprised if she doesn't think
of *something* that will put an end to it."





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.. _`LADY BRENT SPEAKS`:

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   CHAPTER XXVI


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   LADY BRENT SPEAKS

.. vspace:: 2

"Yes," said Lady Brent, "I will certainly do something."

Mrs. Brent had told her story.  Lady Brent had come
home from Poldaven earlier than she had expected.  She
had gone up to the Castle and found her, somewhat to
her surprise, in her business room.  Surrounded by that
ancient magnificence she had seemed even more aloof and
forbidding than on the last time Mrs. Brent had
interviewed her there.  But this time she had felt herself
supported by a sense of conciliation in herself.  The
fact that after all her struggles and resentments against
her mother-in-law she was now, in the crisis of affairs,
putting herself in her hands, appealing to her for help,
and a decision where she could do nothing herself, would
surely soften her.  From this interview she at least had
nothing to fear for herself.

But the stiff face and the silence with which she
listened to the story brought a sense of discomfort.
Mrs. Brent ended on a note more appealing than she
had intended to use.  "He won't listen to me," she said,
"but I'm sure he would to you.  Can't you do something?"

lady Brent moved in her chair for the first time.
"Yes," she said, with a frown, and in a voice that did
nothing to remove the discomfort.  "I will certainly do
something.  I will go up to London this evening."

"By the night train," said Mrs. Brent.  "Shall I
come with you?"

"I think you had better stop here.  You have done
enough mischief already."

"Mischief!  I?  What do you mean?"  She was
surprised and greatly offended, but also a little
frightened.

Lady Brent leant towards her accusingly.  "He
won't do anything for you, you say.  Why should he,
when you treat him as you do?  A vain selfish fool,
thinking of yourself all the time and your own mean
little pleasures and dignities!  Serve you right if you've
lost his love for the rest of your life."

All Mrs. Brent's resentments flared up.  Lady Brent
had been conciliatory towards her of late, with an
evident desire to avoid conflict, and she had taken
advantage of it and lost some of her awe of her; she had
thought of herself almost as having the upper hand,
and had come to this interview prepared to treat with
her amicably and be generous in making some admissions.
But she wanted a row, did she?  Very well then,
she should have it.  All her Cockney fighting spirit was
aroused.  She had years of oppression to resent and to
revenge.  She was not under her thumb now, to be
browbeaten and kept in her place.  She leapt to the
opportunity of striking and wounding.

"That's what you'd like," she said, "for me to lose
his love.  You've tried to take him away from me all
his life up till now, and you haven't been able to do it.
Now you'll make use of this, somehow, to get your way.
But you won't do it.  If he won't listen to me, he won't
listen to you.  I'm a fool, you say.  Yes, I was a fool
to come to you and think you could do anything.
You've worked and worked to have your own way, and
now it's ended like this.  You'll suffer for it.  You'll
suffer for it more than I shall."

Lady Brent listened to this, leaning back in her chair
again.  When she spoke her voice was even, but her
face was white and her hands lying in her lap trembled
ever so little.  If Mrs. Brent's fury had not blinded her,
she might have noticed these signs and taken warning
from them, for they had never been shown before, even
in the sharpest encounters between them.

"Whatever suffering there is to be," said the low
decisive voice, "I shall no doubt feel more than you.
You're a very poor creature, and as long as you have
something in life to amuse you you won't suffer much
through others.  I've tried to make the best of you, for
Harry's sake.  You've had your chance with him—a
better chance than you could ever have had but for me.
Sometimes I've thought it had succeeded to have you
here, when I've wished with all my heart that you could
be away.  But the test has come now, and you've failed.
Yes, you've failed, much more than you know.  You're
upset in your foolish way now, but you think I have
only to step in and do something, and it will be put
right for you again.  It will never be put right."

Mrs. Brent had tried to break in once or twice in the
course of this speech, but the level voice had gone on
till the end, and the eyes fixed upon her had never
wavered.  She realized that nothing would be spared
her, that whatever dislike and hostility she might choose
to express in her anger would be met by a feeling at
least as strong, which would find expression now, after
being kept under for years, with a force in comparison
with which her own powers of attack were as nothing.
Already she was affected by it.  She glimpsed hatred of
her behind the steady utterance.  She had talked freely
of her own hatred, but it was a terrifying thing to feel
it returned.

"I don't know what you're thinking about," she said,
half sulkily.  "I'd nothing to do with his meeting this
girl.  I did know her mother, as it happened, but hadn't
any idea that it was her mother.  It isn't through me
any more than through you that he's got himself mixed
up with people like that."

"That's all that you can see in it, is it?  People
like that!  You think this girl is like you were, when
my poor Harry came across you.  I loved my son, far
more than you have it in you to love yours, but I know
he was weak and foolish; and he was fitly mated.  This
Harry isn't weak and foolish.  Do you think he'd be
likely to do what his father did?  Is that all you know
of him after all these years?"

She tried to control herself.  "You may say what
you like about me," she said, in a voice that trembled
a little.  "I know you hate me and always have, for
marrying your son, and still more for being Harry's
mother.  But say what you like, Harry is doing exactly
what his father did.  Why should you take it for
granted that this girl is any different to what I was?
It's just your spite against me.  You haven't seen
her."

"No, but you have."

That hit her like a blow in the face.  Always battering
at the gates of her mind, to which she had never
given it entrance, was the thought that Viola was
surprisingly different from herself, surprisingly unlike what
she would have expected her mother's daughter to be,
though in feature she resembled her.

Still it was true that Lady Brent had not seen her,
and could not know.  "Her mother was an actress, no
better than I was," she said, "—not so good in many
ways.  Her father is a scene-painter in a theatre, and
drinks too.  My father was a good man, though he may
not have been what you'd call a gentleman.  That's
what all your wonderful bringing up of Harry has led
to.  If he'd been brought up more naturally, and not
everything and everybody sacrificed to keep him shut up
down here, it's very unlikely that this would have
happened."

"You think that, do you, in your loving wisdom?
You had the boy always before you, and saw what he
was growing into.  So did I, and I trusted him.  You
couldn't."

"I don't mind your sneers.  At any rate, on the first
opportunity he does what any other boy might do.  He
meets a girl and falls in love with her, and keeps it from
us all the time he's meeting her, and afterwards."

"Keeps it from you, I suppose you mean."

"Keeps it from all of us, I said.  Did you know any
more than I did that he had met this girl down here?"

"Of course I knew."

She could only sit and stare, with her mouth a little
open.  Whatever she may have thought of, it had never
been this.

Lady Brent did not treat her disclosure as a triumph
to be dwelt upon.  "How could I help knowing?" she
went on.  "I loved Harry.  Nothing could have happened
in his life to alter it that I shouldn't have noticed.
When I saw that something had happened I waited until
it came to me what it was."

"You knew, and you let it go on!"  The revelation
had taken all the sting out of her.  She was more
interested than offended.

"Didn't I tell you that I trusted Harry?  I knew
what he was, if you didn't.  I should have known if he
had taken a wrong turning in life, and then I should
have tried to influence him.  When I did know what had
happened I knew well enough that he hadn't taken a
wrong turning, by the way he bore himself.  You
couldn't see that.  You can't even see it now."

Mrs. Brent's surprise was still strong enough to
swamp her resentment at wounding speeches.  "Why
didn't you do anything afterwards, when he went
away?" she asked.  "You did do something.  You got
Sidney Pawle down here.  You hoped that she and
Harry would fall in love with one another.  I know
that.  You thought they had.  I know that too.  I
think you're making yourself out cleverer than you are,
though I don't deny you were clever, if you found out
what nobody else did."

"It matters very little to me," said Lady Brent,
"what you deny or what you accept.  You've made
yourself nothing and you are nothing.  I believe that
this girl Harry loves is worthy of him, or he wouldn't
have gone on loving her.  But they were both very
young.  It might have died out of itself.  I didn't know
whether it had or not.  I might have found out, but I
wouldn't take any steps to do that.  And even if the
girl is worthy of him, there are objections otherwise.
You have named them yourself.  There are no such
objections to Sidney Pawle.  I should have been glad if
Harry's first attachment had worn itself out and he
could have married her.  Yes, I did hope that they
might have fallen in love with one another.  You are
right there.  You are quite wrong in saying that I
thought they had.  You may have thought so, who knew
so little of Harry.  I knew very soon that there was
something in the way."

Mrs. Brent was beaten.  Even resentment no longer
moved her.  She wanted to ward off further blows, and
to propitiate.  "When you go up to London, shall you
tell Harry that we are ready to recognize his engagement
to this Viola Bastian?" she asked.

Lady Brent seemed to take breath.  She had given her
explanation as to one with whom she might have been
talking on equal terms.  But there was still punishment
to be dealt out, the smouldering fire of years of dislike
and contempt, which had been banked up so as only
now and then to show a flicker, but now could be allowed
to burst into scorching flame.

"Why should I tell you what I mean to do?" she
said, with fierce scorn.  "Stay where you are till I've
put right what you hadn't the sense or the heart to do;
and don't meddle.  Then you can go where you like and
do what you like; only not here.  For years I've had to
live with you, and bear with your ignorance and vanity
and folly, and keep you from going back on what you'd
set your hand to of your own free will.  I've defended
you from your silly selfish self, so that your own son
shouldn't see what a thing of naught you were.  You've
had your chance up to the last moment.  Directly it
depends upon yourself you can only strike the son you
say you love in his tenderest place, and then come
snivelling to me to mend the damage you've done.  You
want me to put myself on your side, and treat him as
you did.  Be very sure that I shall treat him in no way
as you have done.  I've stood aside all these years, so
as not to take what was owing to you, as I might well
have done if I'd lifted a little finger.  Now I'll take
whatever I've earned.  Mend your own broken pieces if
you can.  I'll do nothing to help you.  Live your own
useless selfish life.  You shall have money for it.  But
live it away from here.  You told me once, in one of
your foolish discontented fits, that this house was like
a prison to you.  You're free of your prison.  Go; and
do what you like with your liberty."

She rose suddenly, and went out.  Mrs. Brent sat for
a time where she was, with a white frightened face.
Then she went out of the room too, and out of the house,
weeping silently.  She would not stay there another
minute.  She would not run the risk of meeting that
terrible woman again, who had treated her so wickedly.
She would never see her again, and as for taking money
from her—she would work her fingers to the bone before
she would touch a penny.  She went down to the
Vicarage, where she poured out her outraged feelings to
Mrs. Grant, and gained some consolation from her.  A strong
cup of tea also did much to comfort her, and after that
she went to bed with a headache.  Exhausted by the
emotions of the day she slept throughout the night,
which Lady Brent spent sitting upright in a railway
carriage, her endless thoughts running to the steady
beat of the train.

Wilbraham met her in London very early in the
morning and took her to her hotel.  "Harry went off
yesterday," he told her.  "I sent your telegram on to
him, but there has been no answer yet.  There may be
one to my rooms this morning.  But it doesn't very much
matter, does it, as long as he knows that you are going
to see Viola?"

"If he should be killed!" she said.  It was the
thought that the iron wheels had dinned into her brain
all through the night.  She could not help giving it
utterance; but she said immediately, "Oh, we mustn't
think of that.  You have arranged that I am to see the
girl this afternoon?"

"Yes, I will take you there.  You'll rest during the
day, won't you?  You must be very tired."

He stole a look at her.  She was looking as if the
long journey had tried her severely.  He had never
thought of her as getting old, but now he did.

"Yes, I will rest," she said.  "There is nothing else
to do.  Do you know I haven't been in London for
twenty years?"

She was looking out of the window of the taxi-cab, at
the London streets beginning to fill up with the day's
traffic.  She wanted a respite.  The innumerable
questions he had to ask of her must wait.

He breakfasted with her in her private sitting-room,
where they could talk afterwards, if she was so minded,
before he went off to his work.  She came to it
refreshed, and was ready for him when they were alone
together.

"Tell me about the girl," she said.  "I know she
must be good and sweet, and I know that she has helped
Harry through his difficult time."

"I can't tell you more than that," he said, "except
that she's beautiful, and exactly what you'd want her
to be, except perhaps in the matter of her birth.  I
don't say anything against her upbringing, as it has
left her what she is.  But you seem to know everything
about her already.  I've known you for a good many
years, but you're always full of surprises.  The greatest
you've ever given me is when you wired that you'd
always known.  You must have thought of me as a
pretty large size in fools during some of the
conversations we used to have.  How did you find out, and
when?"

She smiled at him.  "I think you might have guessed
that I knew," she said, "when I let you come to London
to find out about Harry, and to get a message to him.
I didn't particularly want you to know then, because,
to tell you the truth, I did rather hope that it wouldn't
continue.  I saw that it had done him no harm, but it
still might have been nothing more than a pretty boy
and girl love-making.  Then I shouldn't have wanted him
to know that I had surprised his secret."

"No," he said.  "You showed infinite wisdom, as you
always do.  But tell me how you knew."

"Something had happened to Harry.  I think I must
have guessed it the very first time he met her, or at least
when he found out he loved her, and I think that must
have been the first time he met her, or why shouldn't he
have told us?  I was always on the lookout for changes
in him, and you see I knew the signs of this change.
Harry is much more like my dear husband was, when
he was young, than he is like his father.  It was only
that kind of love that could have made him so happy
and so silent and so absorbed.  Oh, I knew very soon,
and of course I put two and two together, and knew
who it was.  Afterwards, little pieces of evidence came
to me, but I didn't try to seek them, and I didn't need
them.  Nobody guessed they had met.  Nobody knew at
Royd, except me—and you."

He laughed ruefully, and told her how and when he
had found out.  "Perhaps you guessed even before I
did," he said.  "Were you annoyed with me for keeping
it to myself?"

"I knew that you would have told me, if I had given
you any encouragement.  I didn't want you to tell me.
I knew too that you had seen her and must have thought
of her as I think now.  If you hadn't I think you would
have told me anyhow."

He breathed a sigh of relief.  "That's off my mind
then," he said.  "I didn't like keeping anything from
you.  And I've told Harry more than once that he had
nothing to fear from you."

"He couldn't believe that, I suppose.  He might have
thought that I would behave as Charlotte—that light
fool—has behaved."

"You had Harry's letter before you saw her?"

"Yes, but the post is very late at Poldaven.  I went
home at once, and saw her.  On my way to Royd I
thought how I could bring some of the truth home to
her.  I think I made an impression."

Her voice was as quiet as before, but something in its
tone caused him to look up.  "You didn't spare her, I
suppose," he said.

"No, I didn't spare her.  I think I was cruel.  I
know I meant to be.  But she's not worth troubling
oneself about.  Anger is a debasing passion, and I'm
not sure that mine was altogether righteous anger.  I
wanted to make an end of her.  I hope for the future
I shall need to see very little of her."

He looked grave.  "Can't you forgive her, if things
go right now?" he asked.

"Oh, forgive her!  If I know anything of her—and
I ought to by this time—she'll never forgive me.  She'll
hate me to her dying day, and I care no more than if
she loved me.  What is the love of a poor thing like that
worth?  She loved Harry, and what does that amount to?"

"She did love him, though.  She did give her life up
to him, in the only way she could have done.  It wasn't
in her to make herself happy living as she did—as we
all did—at Royd.  But she stuck to it for nearly twenty
years."

"Oh, yes.  I kept her to that.  I was fair to her; I
gave her her chance.  It would have been an immense
relief if she had gone away.  If I hadn't been fair to
her I could have got rid of her easily enough.  She
would have gone, and she would never have known that
she hadn't gone of her own accord."

He laughed at that.  "I think there were times when
you nearly allowed yourself to drive her away," he said.
"Of course I don't defend what she did.  She had a
great chance with Harry, and she lost it.  But it is
hard, I suppose, for mothers to lose their sons after
they have been so much to them.  There is some excuse
for her."

"I don't think there's any," she replied at once.
"And as for its being hard on mothers, it's only that
kind of mother—foolish and sentimental and selfish—who
puts herself into rivalry with the other kind of love,
when the time comes for it.  The love of a child is very
sweet, but it can't last like that much beyond childhood.
She'd had it all.  She's had it to the full.  Nobody tried
to deprive her of it, though of course she accuses me of
trying to do so.  I might have done.  I shouldn't have
wearied Harry with my love as she has wearied him.
I should have been less exigent, less selfish, controlled
myself more.  She doesn't know, even now, and I shan't
take the trouble to tell her, that she doesn't love him
nearly as much as she thinks she does.  If it weren't for
her jealousy she would be quite content to live her own
life chiefly apart from him, now he is grown up, and no
longer a child to be petted, and to return petting.  She
has lived her foolish shallow life apart for the last two
years, and she has let it be known that she thinks
herself raised in living it.  Oh, you needn't worry yourself
about Charlotte.  She hasn't got the depth to feel
anything for long."





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.. _`LADY BRENT AND VIOLA`:

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   CHAPTER XXVII


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   LADY BRENT AND VIOLA

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Lady Brent wondered, when Mrs. Clark opened the
door to her at Bastian's lodgings, how much was known
at Royd of what had already happened in this house.
If Mrs. Clark had not discovered who Harry was, which
seemed unlikely, and had not seen Mrs. Brent, she knew
well enough whom she was admitting now.  It was not
made plain that she expected the visit, but she expressed
no surprise at it, and evidently expected to be
recognized.  Lady Brent said a few words to her about her
sister at Royd, as she was being conducted up the
stairs.  Everything would come into the light now, and
it was much better so.

Viola was alone in the sitting-room.  It had been made
very tidy, and was filled with flowers.  The great red
roses might have been Harry's gift to her.  The little
row of vellum-bound books above the table in her corner
certainly were, for Wilbraham had procured them to
his order.

Viola stood by the middle table as they entered.  She
looked very young and very beautiful—all the more
beautiful because of the colour that was flooding her
delicate skin, and the half-alarmed look in her dark
eyes.

Lady Brent waited until the door was shut behind
her, searching her with her eyes, and then went forward
and kissed her.  Viola did not seem to have expected
this.  She was confused, and there was moisture in her
eyes as she greeted Wilbraham, though she smiled at
him.

Wilbraham spoke first.  "You've had Lady Brent's
telegram," he said.  "And now she's come herself.
Everything is all right, Viola."

Her tears fell.  "If Harry loves you, my dear, that's
enough for me," said Lady Brent, taking her hand.

"And you can hardly be blamed for loving him," said
Wilbraham.  "We all love him.  I don't know why, but
we do."

She laughed, as she was meant to do, and dried her
tears.  "I've had a telegram from him," she said.  "He
sent you his dear love."

Lady Brent showed her pleasure.  "I wish he'd told
me sooner," she said.  "You might have been with him
at Royd."

"We've all been making a mistake, Viola," said
Wilbraham.  "I suppose I'm most to blame, because
I've had this lady under observation for a good many
years, and might have known that nothing so important
as you could have escaped her."

He wanted to keep the interview on a light key, at
least until talk should flow between them.  They had
both been through a good deal during the last few days,
but the trouble was ended now, and the sooner it could
be forgotten the better.

Lady Brent and Viola were sitting side by side on the
sofa.  Lady Brent was not quite ready for the lighter
note.  "You know that Harry's bringing up was
different from that of other boys," she said.  "It was
owing to me that it was so, and though I tried to avoid
the appearance of dominating him, I could hardly escape
being looked upon as a person who might take a decisive
line either with him or against him.  But I can say very
truly that my guiding rule was love for him.  I love
Harry very much, and I have trusted him too.  I
wouldn't have stood out against him in anything that he
had a right to decide for himself."

"I'm afraid it was I at first who wanted to keep our
secret to ourselves," Viola said.  "Or at least perhaps
not quite at first, for then we didn't think about it; but
when we first found out that we loved one another.  I
think he would have told you then, but I knew more
about the world than he did, and I didn't think that you
would want us to go on loving one another.  Afterwards
I did what he wanted."

"We all do what Harry wants," said Wilbraham.
"He has that sort of way with him.  I've done it
myself, when I ought to have stood out."

"Harry is very happy now," said Viola.  "He sent
me a long telegram.  Would you like to see it?"

"No," said Lady Brent, marking the motion she
made with her hand, which showed the warm nest in
which Harry's telegram was reposing.  "Keep it for
yourself.  I want to ask you if you'd like to come down
to Royd now, or wait till Harry can bring you.  You
will have a warm welcome whichever you like to do.  He
might like to know you are there."

"I expect the claims of the government service will
have to come first, unreasonable as it may appear," said
Wilbraham, marking her slight hesitation.  "I know
they have to with me."

"I couldn't get away just now," she said.  "And in
August I was going away for a fortnight with
father—if Harry is all right."

That was what lay like a shadow over the brightness
brought by the recognition of her.  The war was to be
finished by that hoarded effort for which those who knew
were breathlessly waiting.  But the hoard was chiefly
of men, and much of it must be scattered if success was
to be gained by it.

Lady Brent made no pretence of taking it anything
but seriously.  "I have friends at the War Office," she
said.  "We should get news at Royd as soon as in
London, perhaps sooner."  She made no allusion to the
other reason that Viola had given.  How did Harry
regard Bastian?  She had talked that over with
Wilbraham.  They did not know even if he had met him.
He was not to be asked to Royd until Harry gave the
word.

Viola still seemed to be hesitating, and Lady Brent
took her hesitation to mean that she would rather not
come to Royd without Harry, and accepted it at once.
She talked to her about Harry, and presently Viola was
talking about him too, filling her hungry ears with news
of the times at which she had missed him.

Viola knew that he had been wounded, though he had
kept it from her at the time.  "He was very ill after
the second wound," she said.  "A man who was with him
wrote to me when he couldn't, and I got a telegram to
say he was better before I got the letter, so I wasn't
so unhappy as I might have been.  I don't think he
would have got through that if he hadn't been so
splendidly strong and young, and hadn't been so devotedly
nursed.  All the men he was with loved him, and this
one never left him."

Lady Brent would not let it be seen how much this
news of his past danger moved her.  Here was a thing
for which none of her searching thoughts had prepared
her.  "He has told us scarcely anything of what has
been happening to him," she said.  "It seemed to lie
upon him heavily."

"It doesn't now," said Viola.  "Being at Royd has
brought him back.  He has told me all about Jane and
Sidney.  Do you think I might write to Jane now, and
tell her about us?"

Lady Brent was struck by her entire absence of
jealousy.  She might have felt sad that the healing
process had not been all her own work.  It showed how
unselfishly she loved him, and how sure she was of him.

"Jane is a loyal little soul," she said.  "She will be
very pleased to hear from you, I know."  She smiled
at Viola.  "The one thing I never quite gauged at its
proper value was the companionship of young people.  I
think now that he ought to have had more of it.  But
he seemed so happy, with all his own pursuits."

"Oh, he was happy, I know," she said, eagerly.  "It
is wonderful to hear him talk of his life at Royd.
Perhaps I'm not altogether sorry I was nearly the first,
because I got it all.  Harry isn't like anybody else that
ever lived.  He's wonderful.  He couldn't have been
quite the same if he hadn't been brought up always in
that beautiful place, and left a great deal to himself
and the woods and the hills and the sea."

"I am glad you think of it like that," said Lady
Brent.  "But I have been troubled by something he said
to me when he first came home.  His upbringing has
made him what he is, but there are many things it didn't
prepare him for.  I think he was dreading going out
again, as an officer.  He doesn't know other young men
of his class.  He is so different from them, and they want
everybody to be alike.  With the men of simpler lives
that he has lived with and fought with he would have
made his way more easily."

"Yes," said Viola.  "I was very sad at first to think
of him thrown into that rough hard life, but I needn't
have been.  And I think now he is happier about the
other."

She looked at Wilbraham, who said: "We've had it
out, we three together.  It's not as serious as you have
been thinking.  You must remember that he hasn't been
with young men of his own sort at all; and in the ranks
of course he'd look at them from another angle
altogether; and perhaps he wouldn't like everything he saw
about them—his officers, I mean.  That's all it is,
really—a diffidence about how he's going to fit in with them.
But of course he'll make his way, with the other
subalterns and people, just as he did with the men.  There's
so much character in him, as well as everything that
young men do value in each other.  I think we persuaded
him that he'd be a good deal better off than he has been,
didn't we, Viola?"

"Oh, he didn't want very much persuasion.  He said
he had been worrying himself about things that didn't
really matter.  But he was so much happier about
everything when he came back from Royd.  I don't
think even I could have done that—not alone.  It would
just have been we two, keeping out of the world
together.  And poor Harry is in the world now."

"Yes," said Wilbraham, "and well fitted to cope with
it.  Of course it came as a shock to him at first.  It
would have done that anyhow, and he would have had to
square his accounts with it by himself, before he could
have felt himself at his ease.  We couldn't have helped
him.  If you're still troubling yourself about having
made mistakes, dear lady, I don't think you need.  You
made very few.  You forged the good steel in him, but
it had to be tempered."

This view of it comforted her.  "We shall all be very
happy now," she said.

When they had talked a little longer, Bastian
came in.

Lady Brent rose from the sofa, and they stood looking
at one another for an instant before Bastian shook
hands with her, with a laugh.  "I wasn't prepared for
this," he said.  "Have you known who I was?"

"No," she said.  "Your people thought you were on
the other side of the world."

"I meant them to," he said.  "I'd no use for my
people, after the way they behaved to me.  I took rather
an absurd name, which was the last they would recognize
me under if they ever came across it, which seemed
unlikely."

Viola and Wilbraham were in bewilderment.  "Lady
Brent and I used to know one another in the old days,"
Bastian said to Viola.  "It shows how I've cut myself
off from that world that I didn't even know she was
Lady Brent."  He turned to Lady Brent.  "It did
once occur to me, after we'd been to Royd, to go to a
Public Library and find out who you were, from a book.
But I forgot all about it.  I'm a thorough Bohemian
you see, and more comfortable so."

His light tone did not please her.  "If I had known
who you were," she said, "when you came to Royd,
we should have met, and I should have known Viola
before."

His face changed as he looked quickly from her to
Viola.  "I'm glad you've made friends now," he said.
"All the same, I doubt if you would have taken to her
two years ago.  I've got too far away from what I
was when you knew me."

"Well, it wouldn't have been you so much that we
should have thought about," said Wilbraham.

Bastian laughed.  "You needn't worry about me
now," he said to Lady Brent.  "I'll own that I have
had ideas of fighting you when the time came.  I should
rather have enjoyed it.  I think quite as highly of Viola
as you do of your grandson, and I was going to tell
you so.  But—well, I'm glad to know there's no
necessity.  I think you've behaved well; but I remember that
you always had the reputation of behaving well.  You'll
get some reward for it in this instance, for you know
without my having to take the trouble to prove it to
you that Viola's birth is as good as her manners, and as
for me I shall not intrude upon you with my debased
habits when I've once handed Viola over."

"I used to like you as a little boy," said Lady Brent,
calmly.  "You were mischievous and perverse, and
afterwards gave a great deal of trouble to your parents,
who had not deserved it; but I don't suppose your habits
are so debased as you pretend they are.  I shall be very
glad if you will bring Viola down to Royd when you
take your holiday, if she cares to come.  I think Harry
would like to know that she is there."

Then Viola accepted the invitation, and Bastian did
not refuse it, though he said that it was many years
since he had stayed in a country house, and he didn't
think he should remember the rules.

Lady Brent told Wilbraham about him afterwards,
what his family was and where they came from, which
was near her own girlhood's home.  "I must say that I
am relieved," she said.  "On her father's side her birth
to all intents and purposes is as good as Harry's, and
on her mother's it is no worse.  It counts for something.
I married before Michael—that is his real name, and I
suppose suggested the Angelo to his freakish
imagination—before he grew up, but I was always hearing
stories of his wildness and extravagance afterwards.
There was never much real harm in him, and there were
some very good qualities to balance what harm there
was.  His parents were over-strict with him, but they
were fond of him, and I think if he hadn't taken offence
at their attitude towards his marriage, in which of course
they were amply justified, they would have come round
in time."

"It may have been better for him that they didn't,"
said Wilbraham.  "He's had to make his own living,
which has probably been salutary for him, and his
responsibility to Viola has kept him fairly straight.  I
wish he didn't drink quite so much whisky or smoke such
vile tobacco, but drink hasn't taken hold of him so much
as I thought it had at one time.  If he had been
anything like what you'd call a drunkard it would have
affected Viola more.  What do you think of Viola?"

"I'm glad she came to Royd, and that Harry met
her," she said.





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.. _`IN THE BALANCE`:

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   CHAPTER XXVIII


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   IN THE BALANCE

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So far Harry had been brought in his life's story.

The gods had showered their gifts upon him.  They
had given him strength and beauty; a mind quick to
receive their messages and eager to interpret them; a
heart that went out to others and drew others to it;
largesse of temporal favours, which they scatter here
and there but are apt to withhold from those whom they
endow with their choicest gifts.  His manhood had been
tried in a hard school, had been established and wrought
to finer issues by it.  He had known great happiness,
and also suffering both of mind and body, without which
happiness itself is but a monochrome.  He had entered
the high courts of love, and worshipped in them devoutly.

For what had they prepared him, on whom they had
smiled, not so uniformly as to soften his fine fibre, but
as if they would have cherished so rare an example of
their handiwork, and led it towards still higher desert
of their bounties?  Would they not watch over him and
preserve him from the ultimate dangers which youth
was plunging to meet at this point in the world's long
history?  Or is the world's history itself a mere point
in time, as it unrolls itself before their unwearying eyes,
so that it matters not what destruction may be wrought
in it, since there is infinity in which to forge new
combinations of flesh and brain and fortune?

To the women on the edge of the vortex in which
manhood was fiercely involved, but striving by prayers
and tears to weigh down the balance of life and death
in favour of the men they loved, the gods may well have
appeared contemptuously indifferent.  The very
interests towards which they had seemed to be working, the
values they had impressed upon those to whom they had
given enlightenment to understand them, what were they
in the balance?  It was impossible for mothers to look
upon a life of no more than twenty years as rounded
and complete, however they might have laboured to
perfect it; or for young wives to balance the bliss of early
married love against a life-time of companionship and
the sweet joint care of children, and cry quits on the
bargain.  To them the happiness of youth is an earnest
of still still greater happiness to come; a youth cut short
is a youth wasted, however it may have fulfilled itself.

To Lady Brent, watching the news from the battlefields
of the Somme, day after day, week after weary
week, it seemed as if all young life hung by the balance
of a hair.  She felt the weight of it far more than
during the previous years, in which Harry had been far
removed, and the details of the fighting had not been
brought before her with this daily deadly insistence.
To her, more than to most whose hopes were dependent
upon the chances of battle, did youth appear as a period
of preparation rather than of fruition.  Her one steady
object during the last twenty years had been to work
with the high gods so as to fulfil their purpose; and
she seemed to herself to have been blest in her strivings
in such a way as to give her the right to believe that her
object had also been theirs.

She had had her grave doubts, but now the weight
of them had been removed from her.  Surely that had
been because she had not tarried to accept the foiling
of her own plans where they had not served the great
purpose!  The love that had come to Harry was, on the
face of it, just the kind of love from which she had
most desired to preserve him.  Now she saw it as the
crown of his happy youth, but still more as the gift that
was to bless his manhood to come.  The plunging of him
into crude and unfamiliar life, which had still lain on
his spirit at his first homecoming, and had brought her
such trouble of mind on his behalf—he had come through
that fire.  It was, as Wilbraham had said, the tempering
of the steel in him.  He would not have been of the fine
metal that he was if he had not felt its rigour; and,
having gone through it, he would not be what it had
made of him if his spirit were not now freed from it.
Every letter that he wrote showed him free and
untroubled in the life he was living and the work he was
doing.  He wrote happily and gaily, and as if there was
not a care on his mind.  They all seemed to take it like
that—the boys who were out there, snapping their
fingers in the face of Death, who was gibbering at them
from every corner and trying to frighten them into
respect for his menace.  Harry had never feared death,
and now he no longer feared life in any of its unfamiliar
aspects, but embraced it with all the ardour of his youth,
and with it the happiness it had in store for him when
the great confusion should be smoothed out.

Surely he must be spared, for whom life held so much!
It could not be squared with any theory of directing and
guiding providence that one who had been dowered with
the gifts of life so much above others, and was so much
in accord with the higher purposes of life as they had
been slowly and sometimes painfully revealed to her,
should be denied his full inheritance of life.

But so much high promise had been cut down and
gathered in to the dreadful harvest.  Day after day
those long lists came out.  Names, names, columns and
pages long, and each one of them to some, perhaps to
many, so much more than a name.  She could only wait
and tremble for the tilt of the scales.  He had been in
the thick of it and was untouched so far, though so
many of those who had been fighting around him had
fallen.  A charmed life?  By all the theories to which
she wrested her mind she ought to have believed so,
as the weeks went by and his letters came.  But the
dread only increased.

She showed little of it.  Jane was her frequent
companion, and though they never spoke of the dread, each
divined much of what the other was thinking.

Half child, half woman, Jane hovered strangely between
fear and fatalism.  She loved Harry, but if there
had been any budding of a woman's love in her it had
been nipped by the revelation of his love for Viola and
flowed again only in the channels of her childish
devotion.  There was something of the woman in the way
she regarded him in connection with Viola.  One man
for one woman to love and cherish.  He was hers when
he had fallen captive to her; others only had that share
in him which she might grant to them.  Jane had
accepted Sidney as a possible mate for Harry, and now she
accepted Viola, whom she also loved since she had come
to Royd.  There was no jealousy in her.  Harry loved
her as he had always loved her; and Viola loved her.
She felt almost as if she had brought them together.

But in Jane's childish view the recognition of this
kind of love was the closing of youth's manuscript.  She
was uplifted by the idea of having a pair of intimate
married friends; but it would be different.  She did
not ask herself in what way.  It might be even more
agreeable than having two separate friends, but it would
be different.  So her view of Harry was a backward
one.  She talked chiefly of him as he had been, and Lady
Brent, somewhat to her comfort, learnt to look upon
Harry's youth also as a chapter in some sense closed,
and as a very perfect chapter.  Whatever might happen,
he had had that.  And she had been instrumental in
fashioning his youth—a jewel to hang upon the neck of
memory, whole and flawless.

She would not disturb Jane with her fears, but the
child divined them and was often struck by foreboding,
which she resisted with all her might.  In this also she
gave comfort.  Her optimism, fitting to her youth and
inexperience, was insistent, and would not be denied.
Nothing could happen to Harry worse than what had
happened already.  Nothing—she seemed to frame her
creed—could happen to one who was so loved.

.. vspace:: 2

The gods held the scales—life whole or life disabled
on the one side, death on the other.  They dipped now
this way, now that.  What was it that they threw into
them?  Was there any weight in the strong urgings
of those who thought they had learnt from them that
they would incline their ears to such utterances?  Was
there anything that might incline them to spare one to
whom they had shown their favours until now?  Was
he not nearer to them in the tested quality of his
manhood than the generality of beings whom they sent to
represent their godhead on earth?  Had they not
fashioned him to shine in years to come as an example of the
kind of human stuff they could produce from their
workshops?  Had they no further use for him in a world
so largely populated with their failures?  Or were the
tokens they threw into the scales nothing at all but
just the chances of time and space, so that this man's
righteousness and that man's worthlessness were of no
account against the tick of a watch or the ruled
immutable path of a shard of iron?

Did they even hesitate?  Was it destined from the
beginning of time that just at that moment in a sodden
desolate winter's dawn, by just that naked riven tree,
the life they had given and so richly endowed should
be battered out of the young eager body in which they
had set it, with nothing in it left that could any more
upon earth give or receive love?

.. vspace:: 2

So it happened.  The day of blood dawned, and waxed
and waned and ended.  Many were killed in it, many
lived to remember it as no more terrible than other days.
But Harry died in it.  The last boon they gave him
was that he died very quickly.





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.. _`LOVE`:

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   CHAPTER XXIX


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   LOVE

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On a February morning Viola walked through the woods
of Royd, along the path by which Harry had hastened
to meet her in those bright summer days that were now
so far off.  Jane was with her.  They talked as they
walked, and sometimes even smiled.  No one would have
guessed at the sorrow that lay like a numbing weight
upon one of them, and had so saddened the other that
she seemed in these days to have left most of her
childhood behind her.

They talked of this and that, but at any moment they
might fall into talk of Harry.  They were never
together for long without mention of him.  Jane was the
only person to whom Viola spoke of him freely.  Lady
Brent, who hid the ruin of her life and of her hopes as
best she could, seemed to cling to her presence at Royd,
but they could not talk together yet about Harry,
though his name was not avoided between them.
Mrs. Brent had been to Royd and had gone away again.  Her
visit had been painful enough; her sorrow was great and
her laments had been ceaseless.  But jealousy had
prevented her trying to get a response from Viola.  With
Wilbraham, whom she had seen once since the fatal news
had come, she had spoken of him, but then it had been
as if she hardly understood what had happened.  Her
father had been very kind to her, but with no direct
effort to console her for what was beyond consolation.
She had come to Royd after a few days, and had been
there ever since.

They were talking of Sidney Pawle as they walked
together through the wood, to which the leafless trees
admitted gleams of winter sunshine, so different from the
splashes of vivid light that had quivered through the
leaves on to the deep rich greenness of summer.  Sidney
had gone away from Poldaven, but Jane had heard from
her a few days before, with the news of her engagement,
now permitted, though grudgingly.  She had told Jane
that she meant to be married whenever Noel could get
his leave, but had not yet broken the intention to her
parents.

"I am sure she is right," Viola said.  "Even if he
gets killed afterwards she will have had him all her very
own."

Jane hesitated a moment before she said, rather
brusquely: "She thinks of him as her very own now."

"Oh, yes," said Viola, almost indifferently.

Jane stuck to her point.  "You had Harry all your
very own," she said.  "There wasn't anybody else.  He
liked me and Sidney, but there wasn't really anybody
else but you."  It was by that unafraid directness, which
was part of her nature, that she had made her way with
Viola, where nobody else had gained any access to her
tortured bewildered mind.  She could say anything to
her, because there was only truth and love behind her
words.

"I know," said Viola.  "I'm very glad Sidney is
going to be happy—as long as it lasts—but I don't
believe they can possibly love each other as much as
Harry and I did.  That's what makes it so cruel that
he was killed.  There was never anybody like him.  Why
were we allowed to know each other and to love each
other if it was just to be like that?"

"That's what I mean," said Jane.  "You did love
each other, and even if you're awfully miserable now
you'd rather be that than never have known Harry."

"It doesn't seem to matter much whether I'm miserable
or not," Viola said.  "Everybody who has said
anything to me about it has seemed to think that's the
chief thing—that I shall get over it in time.  What does
it matter whether I get over it or not?  It's Harry's
being killed that matters."

"I know," said Jane.  "Older people don't seem to
understand, though they only mean to be kind.  It's all
so different to what I'd ever thought it would be, if
anything like that happened with somebody you loved
very much.  There's part of you goes on doing the same
things almost as if you'd forgotten, and even perhaps
enjoying yourself sometimes; and there's part of you
that never forgets.  Of course it isn't the same for me
as it is for you," she added on a note of humility, "but
I know enough to understand."

"Oh, my dear, I know how much you loved Harry.
It's what makes me love you.  I think I love you better
than anybody, just because of that.  It all comes back
to Harry, you see.  Poor Lady Brent loved him, and
I'm desperately sorry for her.  Sometimes it seems as
if I'm more sorry for her than I am for myself.  It isn't
like being sorry for oneself; I don't seem to count.  But
I'm sorry for her.  She's old, but she isn't hard, as
many old people are.  And there are so many other
things than just Harry that she has lost."

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, everything that he was, or was going to
be—everything she had thought about and looked forward to
all the time he was growing up.  I suppose they were all
part of Harry to her; but they weren't very much to
me.  I think I was even a little jealous of them.  Once
when we were at the log cabin, and talked about going
away to a new country—you know, just as you used to
talk, half in fun—I thought, oh, how I wish we could,
and he would work for me and I would work for him.
I wished he wasn't Sir Harry Brent at all, with all that
belonged to him, but just Harry, who only belonged to me."

"Of course that would have been best of all.  But
he was Harry just the same, and that's what matters
most to Lady Brent."

"Oh, yes, I know.  But all the rest does matter to
her, poor dear, and I don't wonder at it—for her.
Everything that meant so much to her has come to an
end.  He was the last Brent, and even Royd itself is
nothing to her now.  I should think that was a great
pity myself, if it were anybody else.  I think she would
have liked to talk about it to me, after the first.  But I
just couldn't.  I couldn't now—only to you.  You're
the only person who really knows how little it
matters—to me."

Jane was silent.  She had heard that talk, and tried
to adjust her mind to it.  Her father, deeply shocked
at Harry's death, and of some comfort to her in his
exposition of the Christian faith in immortality, had yet
let his mind run upon some aspects of the loss that had
seemed to her, in the first outbreak of her grief, almost
to belittle it.  He had talked about the loss to Viola,
not only of Harry, but of what she would have had as
Harry's wife—even as his widow.  He had taken it for
granted that some day she would get over her grief at
Harry's death.  It was not to be expected that she
would think of the material benefits that would have
come to her, now; but afterwards she would.

Was this so?  Jane had talked to her mother, who
had told her, striving hard to be honest with her, that
few people were altogether free from worldly desires
when they grew older, and that the most bitter grief
was assuaged by time.  Jane had listened, but held to
her opinion that Viola would never get over Harry's
loss, and that nothing she had lost besides would ever
matter to her.  But she had been a little shaken.  Now
she felt that she was justified in her faith in Viola.  Not
even the loss of all that saddened others who also loved
Harry, but not as she did, mattered to her; the loss of
those things to herself she did not think about, nor ever
would.

They had come a long way through the ride.  "I'm
going to take you to a place I haven't been to since
Harry died," Viola said, as she turned to a faintly
defined track through the wood.  "I've wanted to go,
but I couldn't by myself."

She spoke without more emotion than had marked
her speech hitherto, and as they threaded their way
through the trees, which grew closely here, she told Jane
how Harry had led her to the woodland pool on the
morning after they had first met, and how they had
spent long summer hours in that green retreat, happy
in their love.

Jane felt that she was going to a holy place.  Harry
had never mentioned this secret pool to her, though he
had shown her many secrets of the woods.

The hardly discernible path by which they had turned
aside was soon lost in the tangle of undergrowth.  Viola
told her that they had never gone to the pool by the
same way, so as not to leave a track; but she went on
unhesitatingly, "I think I could find my way to it
blindfold," she said.

Presently they came to the pool.  Viola caught her
breath and gave a little shiver as she stood on its brink.
The sun had gone behind the clouds, and the waters were
cold and steely, but there was no wind, and they reflected
as in a mirror the bare trees, which had once been
arrassed with their leafy tapestry, to close in this hidden
temple.  "It's not the same," she said.  "It isn't secret
any more.  I wish I hadn't come."

She turned, and there was the great tree, with the
jutting roots under its spreading canopy upon which
she had sat as a queen crowned by Harry's adoring love.
She seemed to recoil, and gave a cry which echoed
forlornly through the naked woods.  Then she sank on to
the ground beside the mossed roots crying, "Oh, Harry!
My darling!  Oh, my darling!"

The suddenness of it had brought Jane's heart to her
mouth.  Viola was sobbing as if her heart would break.
It was the first time Jane had seen her abandon herself
to her despairing grief.  Her own love and sorrow
welled up in her.  She knelt beside Viola, embracing her
as she lay there, and mingling her tears with hers, but
not speaking.

For a long time both of them wept together.  Viola's
sobs decreased in violence, but she cried piteously and
forlornly.  "Oh, Harry, I do want you so," she sobbed.
"Why have you gone away from me?"

Jane rose to her knees.  Viola, still lying against the
roots, with her head buried on her arm, caught her hand
and held it.  The pressure thrilled Jane through and
through.  She could console, in this unconsolable grief.
She felt as if it were a trust from Harry to do so.
Viola was not quite alone in the world, if she could still
cling to her in her bitter trouble.  She bent down again
and kissed her, and Viola's arms went round her neck.
"Don't cry any more," she said through her own
falling tears.  "Harry hasn't left you.  He's alive and
happy.  Perhaps he's looking at us now.  He loves you
as much as you love him."

Viola's sobs ceased for the moment.  "He did," she
said.  "Oh, if I knew he loved me still I could bear
never seeing him any more.  But he's dead.  They killed
Harry, Jane.  Can you believe it?  My darling Harry!
He kissed me here when he was alive and we talked and
talked such a little time ago.  I can hear him now this
very minute and feel him by me.  But he is dead.  I must
keep on saying it or I can't believe it.  Harry is dead."

Her sobs broke out afresh.  Jane rose to her feet,
"No," she said, with a solemn look on her child's face.
"Harry isn't dead.  He won't like to see you giving
way like that.  Just for a time you can't help it, I
know; but you've cried enough.  Get up now, Viola, and
let's talk about Harry."

Viola arose obediently, and dried her eyes.  "I've
always tried to be brave," she said, "because I knew
Harry would like it.  He wouldn't have gone away from
me if he could have helped it.  I'm sorry I said what I
did just now, but it was too much for me seeing this
place.  I shan't come here again.  Let's go away."

Jane hesitated.  "Wouldn't you rather stay, and
talk about him here?" she said.  "It brought him more
back to you to come here.  It was too much for you at
first; but now you've got over that——"

Viola stood and looked about her.  Her cheeks were
wet with her tears, and at intervals a tremor passed
through her body; but she was not weeping now, and
the quieter look was returning to her face.

"It is the same place, after all," she said, as if slowly
recognizing it.  "But it's bare—like my heart is.  I
used to think it welcomed us when we came here, it was
so quiet and beautiful.  It's beautiful now, though.
Harry would have loved it like this.  Yes, we'll stay
here a little, Jane dear.  Look, this is just where I used
to sit, and Harry would always lie on the grass.  In
other places he used to sit by me, but here he said I
was a queen, and he must be at my feet.  Come and sit
by me on my poor throne, Jane, and we'll talk about him."

They sat side by side.  Jane nestled to her with her
arm around her waist, and for a time they said nothing.
The sunlight fell upon them, filtering through the
interlaced branches, as they sat still in a contact which was
a solace to both of them.  Grief does not set abiding
marks upon the young.  But for the traces of her tears
Viola was as fresh and fair as when she had sat there for
Harry to worship her.  It was only in her tender reliant
heart that the wound was quivering and throbbing.  She
was widowed of her love, though she had never been wed.
There was no one who could comfort her, except the still
younger girl who shared her love and her grief, and was
nestling to her.

The silence of the woods lay all about them, but it was
not the iron silence of deep winter.  There was a sense
of reviving life in the February sunshine, and the hazy
purple of the already swelling leaf-buds.

Viola bent over Jane and kissed her.  "You do comfort
me, dear," she said.  "I thought nothing could ever
comfort me again, but you do.  You loved my darling
Harry."

Jane buried her face on Viola's breast and cried
softly, and Viola's tears came again, but not with the
abandonment she had lately shown.  They were healing
tears of love and sympathy.

Jane dried her eyes, still leaning against Viola, and
said: "I'm very glad you brought me here.  Now I
know.  Now I know for certain."

"What do you know, dear?" Viola asked her gently.
She felt the stirrings of love in her towards this child,
so loyal and so steel-true.  Her quiet tears, leaning on
her breast, had brought out the child in her.  She had
been dreadfully hurt too, and needed for herself the
consolation that she had only thought of giving, with
a strength and wisdom beyond her years.  Viola kissed
her again as she asked her question.

"I know that Harry is alive," said Jane, sitting
upright and looking out across the waters of the pool,
upon which there was not a tremor.  It was as if it
had hushed itself to listen.  "This place seems to be full
of him.  I know why.  It's because of the love that it
holds.  Love can't die; it's there for always.  Harry
loves you just as much as he did when you came here
together.  I believe he loves me too, just as he used
to when I was little.  Once he sent me a message, before
anybody, because we were friends.  Now I believe he's
sending me a message again.  He loves you.  Yes, he
does.  It isn't that he did love you, and then he died
and you've only got that to remember.  He loves you
now, and he'll never leave off loving you, till you see him
again, and are happy together as you used to be."

Viola's eyes had been fixed on her, as if fascinated.
Her utterance was almost prophetic in its rapt
intensity.  When she had spoken she nestled to Viola again,
and said in a softer tone: "It makes me almost happy
now, believing that.  Don't you feel that it's true?"

"Do you really *believe* we shall meet again some
day?" Viola asked.  "If you'd asked me—before—I
should have said I believed that.  But it hasn't given
me any comfort, up till now.  I suppose I didn't really
believe it, as I used to believe I should meet him again
the next day here.  If I could only know it!"

"But don't you *feel* that Harry's alive?" said Jane.
"I do.  If you can't feel it yet it's only because you've
been so sad and so puzzled that you haven't known.
But if I can feel it you will be able to more still, because
Harry loved you so much.  I think he wants you to feel
it now."

It was Viola's turn now to look out across the water.
"It would be like Harry," she said, slowly.  "Oh, Jane,
if it's only true!"

She put her hand to her breast, and a smile broke out
upon her face—such a smile as had not lightened it
these many days.

"Of course it's true," said Jane, in her decisive way.
"It's part of our religion.  We say every Sunday in
church: 'I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and
the life of the world to come.'"

"Ah, but that's not the same.  I want to think of
Harry as alive now.  It seemed to come to me just
now that he really is—like the sun breaking through the
clouds.  If *that's* true, Jane dear—if *that's* true, that
my darling Harry is alive now somewhere, just like he
used to be, and loving me all the time, and I only have
to wait for a little before I see him again——"

"You won't even have to wait," said Jane, "if you
know he's loving you, and you can go on loving him
because he's alive, and not only remember what he was
when he was here."

"No.  It will only be like what it was when he went
away before.  My heart was going out to him always,
and when he came back all the parting was forgotten,
and it was sweeter than if we hadn't parted.  Oh, Jane,
fancy seeing Harry just like he used to be, beautiful and
laughing and happy!  Do you think it's possible that it
can be really like that—that he's somewhere now—not
lying out there in France, but just as he was when we
loved each other so much?  Tell me you really believe
it, and are not saying it only to comfort me."

Jane clung to her again.  "I'm sure of it," she said.
"It's Harry's message.  You don't mind it coming
through me, do you?  It's a message to you; he wants
me to give it you.  It's not in words, as if he were
speaking.  It's all through me.  Harry wants your love
just as much now as ever he did, and he loves you just
as much too."

Viola sat silent, with a tender look in her eyes, and a
smile upon her lips.  Presently she said: "Harry once
saw something, not belonging to the world which
everybody can see, and when he told me I knew at once why
he had seen it, because there had never been anything in
the way with him.  There never has been.  You could
look deep, deep, deep into him, and never find anything
there that wasn't beautiful and true.  I wonder if there's
another place where people like that really belong—no,
not a place, but something they belong to all the time
they're in the world, and that goes on just the same for
them when they have left the world.  I think there must
be, Jane, and that's how it is with Harry.  That would
make him here, with us, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," said Jane, softly.  "That's what I feel about
it.  It's all love.  I can't explain exactly, but when he
was here with his body there was something else more
important still, and just as real.  It's love that is
real—like a person.  Can you understand?"

"Yes, I think I can, and it's what I meant, too, that
is so comforting.  What I loved most in him when he
was here is just what he is still, and I can go on loving
it, because it didn't die when he was killed.  I wonder if
he thought that too.  I couldn't bear to think of him
being killed, so he never talked about it."

"Wasn't that because he thought it didn't *really*
matter?"

"Oh, how it matters to me!  But perhaps God took
him so that he should never be spoilt, not the least little
bit.  Oh, but I would have tried so hard to be worthy of
him, if only he'd been left to me, just for a little little
time longer.  He said I helped him.  I believe I did,
when he was unhappy—because the world wasn't like it
had been to him here, and I knew more about the world
than he did, poor darling!"

"It's very hard indeed, and you can't quite understand
it all.  But when you say to yourself, it's all
it seems somehow to put it more right.  And the text
says, God is love, so that would come in too, though I
don't quite know how till I think about it more.  But
what I'm quite certain of is that Harry couldn't have
been *wasted*.  I think that's what poor Lady Brent can't
see.  All of him that we loved is alive somewhere.  I'm
more and more sure of that every moment.  I believe
it's what Harry is trying to say to us.  Let's just say
we believe it, Viola dear.  Perhaps it will even make him
more happy if we do.  I believe it.  I believe Harry
is alive and that he knows about us, and some day you
will see him again, and you will be happier together
than you have ever been.  Say it, Viola."

"The last letter Harry wrote to me," said Viola,
musingly, "he said he should love me always, always,
always.  Do you think he meant what we've been saying,
Jane, though he wouldn't write about being killed?"

"I expect he did.  I'm sure he must have believed it,
and I'm sure he wants you to believe it now.  Say it,
Viola.  Say you believe it."

Viola rose and stood before her.  A smile was on her
lips, and there was a light in her eyes.  "I do believe
it," she said, "and it will make everything different to
me all through my life.  Harry will be with me always."

She turned and stood, looking up to the clear space
of sky above the pool.  "Oh, Harry, my darling," she
said very softly, and tenderly, "can you hear me—your
own Viola, who loves you so?  I do love you, darling,
now and for ever."

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