The journey north sent France to bed again for three days, and for a fortnight he was wheeled about the park; then he began to hobble feebly, first on the arm of his nurse or wife, then with the aid of a stick. Julia accepted him as one of the facts of existence, regarded him proprietorally, took an immense interest in his progress toward recovery, and forgot him when she could in the library or in long walks over the moors. The castle was romantically situated on a cliff overhanging the North Sea, and in appearance, as in surroundings, was all that Julia could ask. It was very brown, two-thirds of it was in ruins, and the other third included a feudal hall, two towers, and walls four feet thick. The windows, however, had been enlarged, hot-water pipes had been put in, and no modern house was more sanitary. The duke, despite a pardonable pride in his ancestry, and an unmitigated conservatism in politics, was strictly up to date where his health and comfort were concerned. Born an invalid, he had lived longer than many of his burly ancestors, owing to a thin temperament and an early and avid interest in hygiene.
He had a second reason for bringing Harold to Bosquith. The neighboring borough was much under his influence, and he proposed that his relative should stand for it at the next general election. At the last it had succumbed to the personal manipulation of Gladstone, who had taken a lively pleasure in routing the duke; but it was conservative by habit, and not a measure of either Gladstone’s government or that of his successor had met with its approval. It was in just the frame of mind to be nursed by a genial and tactful duke. France fell in with these plans, and, when able to meet the local leaders, laid aside his almost unbearable haughtiness of manner, and assumed a bluff sailorlike heartiness which impressed them deeply.
Julia quickly revived in the bracing air of sea and moor, and as France rose late and retired early, besides sleeping a good deal during the day, and as she had acquired a certain skill in dodging the duke,—who, moreover, took his local duties very seriously,—she felt happy and free once more. The library was well furnished, the moors were purple, her bedroom was in an ancient tower, and the sea boomed under her window. She wrote long letters to her grimly triumphant mother, and, now and again, to Bridgit and Ishbel. The former, accompanied by her husband and Nigel, rode over to see her, but she was obliged to receive them in the chilling presence of her husband and the duke, and when the brief visit came to an end, was put on her honor not to leave the estate.
“As soon as Harold is quite recovered,” said the duke, “we will both drive over with you, for I am far from counselling you to be rude to any one. Only, while your husband is ill, it would be highly indecorous for you to be associating with young people; and for the matter of that, the more mature minds with which you associate during the next few years, the better—for us all, my dear, for us all.”
But Julia, at this period, was quite independent of people. Her newly awakened intellect was clamoring for books and more books. Politics, the planets, the “brilliant future,” friends, were alike forgotten. Nothing mattered but the lore that scholars and worldlings had gathered, that ravening maw in her mind. Perhaps this early ingenuous stage of the mind’s development is its happiest; it is uncritical, having no standards of life and personal research for comparison, it swamps the real ego, while mightily tickling the false, it obliterates mere life, no matter how unsatisfactory, and above all it is saturated with the essence of novelty, the subtlest spring of all passion. Julia, barely educated, found in histories, biographies, memoirs, travels, even in works of science beyond her full comprehension, a wonderland of which she had never dreamed, much as she had longed for books on Nevis. That had been merely a case of inherited brain cells calling for furniture; embarked upon her adventure, these cells were crammed so rapidly that her ancestors slept in peace, and Julia felt herself an isolated and completely happy intellect.
Nevertheless, she was young.
One night, shortly after her husband, now able to grace the evening board, had gone to his room, and the duke was closeted with the conservative agent, she went to her own room, opened the window, and hung out over the sea. The moon, whose malicious alertness Captain Dundas had deplored, was at the full and flooded a scene as beautiful in its way as the tropics. The great expanse of water was almost still, and a broad path of silver seemed firm enough to walk on straight away to the continent of Europe and its untasted delights. Just round the corner was the rose garden, which covered the filled-in moat on the south side of the castle and several hundred yards beyond. The roses were not very good ones, being somewhat rusted by the salt-sea spray, but, like the pleasaunce on another side of the castle, were a part of the more modern traditions of Bosquith; and the duke, although entirely indifferent to Nature when she ceased to be useful and amused herself with being merely beautiful, was a stickler for tradition; the roses were never neglected without, although never brought within; pollen inflamed his mucous membranes.
The blossoms had gone with the summer, but Julia was fancying herself inhaling their perfumes when she became aware that the figure of a man had detached itself from the tangle. She watched him idly, supposing him to be one of the grooms, and wondering if his sweetheart would follow. But the man was alone, and in a moment he bent down, picked up a handful of loose stones, and leaned back as if to fling them upward from the narrow ledge. Simultaneously Julia and Nigel Herbert recognized each other.
“What—what—do you want?” gasped Julia, in a loud whisper.
“You,” said Nigel, grimly. “Come down here.”