In reality his motives for joining a party at war with every tradition of his house had been, primarily, as mixed as are all motives that bring about great voluntary changes in a man's life. It was quite true that he was inordinately ambitious, that he had a distinct preference for the sensational method, as productive of speedier results; for he had no intention of waiting until middle-age for the activities and honors he craved in his insatiable youth; and it was also true that he was even more of an aristocrat than many of his class, with whom a simpler attitude had become the fashion, even if it were not marrow-deep. But the ruling motive had been his passionate love of battle, a trait inherited perhaps from his pioneer ancestors, whose roots were in the soil. This desire to prove his mettle and fill his life with the only excitement worthy of his gifts, would alone have made him turn from the broad ancestral paths, but, like a lawyer fascinated by his brief, he had long since been heart and soul with the party he had chosen, and, with the exercise of his faculties, become possessed of a mounting desire not only to be of genuine use to his country, but to lift the family name from the comparative obscurity where it had rested during the half of a century.
The present head of the family had been an invalid in his early life, and Italy had withered whatever ambitions may have pricked him in his youth. When he finally found himself able to live the year round in England he saw no fault in a nation so superior to any of his exile, and he had settled down to the life of a country squire, devoted to sport, and supremely satisfied with himself. His eldest son, an estimable young man, who had worked at Christ Church as if he had been qualifying for a statesman or a don, died of typhoid-fever before the birth of his boy. The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly. The subjects upon which they did not quarrel bitterly every time they met were those relating to Elton Gwynne, whom both loved, in so far as they loved any one but themselves. Deeply as they disapproved of his politics, they respected his independence and were inordinately proud of him. Zeal's daughters, who bored him inexpressibly, were parcelled out among relatives, and he led a roving life in search of beneficent air for his weary lungs. All women had become hateful to him since he had been forced to sit in the ashes of repentance, but he had consented to enter upon a second marriage through the most disinterested sentiment of his life, his love of his cousin, whose haunting fear of being shelved in his youth had been poured into his ears many times. That he also enraged his grandfather, who wanted nothing so much as the assurance that his favorite should inherit the territorial honors of his house, may have given zest to his act of renunciation. Not that he had the least intention of giving his cousin a solid basis for despair for many years to come, for no mother ever nursed her babe more tenderly than he his weak but by no means exhausted chest. During his last interview with Elton in London he had assured his anxious relative that he was taking the best of care of himself, and that, in spite of blood-shot eyes and haggard cheeks, his disease was quiescent; although he had decided to start for Davos or some other popular climate before the advent of harsh weather. Davos is a word of hideous portent in English ears, but Gwynne had expelled it with all other cares from his mind, and on this night when he returned from Arcot feeling a far greater man than any of his house had ever dreamed of being, and with a song in his heart, the awful face of his cousin, whom in the shock of the moment he thought stricken with death, gave him the first stab of terror and doubt that he had experienced in his triumphant life.
XV
"Come up-stairs," said Zeal. "We are liable to interruption here."
"Have they put you up decently?" asked Gwynne, with his mind's surface. "The house is rather full."
"I shall leave by the seven-o'clock train, and it must be three now. I have no intention of going to bed."
"Is that wise? You look pretty seedy, old man. You haven't had a hemorrhage?" He almost choked as he brought the word out, and yet he was not in the least surprised when Zeal replied, tonelessly, "I had forgotten I ever had a chest;" for his mind was vibrating with a telepathic message which his wits attacked fiercely and without avail.
As they entered his room he pushed his cousin into an easy-chair and turned up the lamp on the writing-table. Then he planted his feet on the hearth-rug with a blind instinct to die standing.
"Fire away, for God's sake," he said. "Something has happened. You know you can count on me, whatever it is."