THE GARDEN OF
MEMORIES

BY

HENRY ST. JOHN COOPER

AUTHOR OF "SUNNY DUCROW," "JAMES BEVANWOOD,
BARONET," ETC.

TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED

COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1921.

MUSSON
ALL CANADIAN PRODUCTION

CONTENTS

[PROLOGUE]

CHAPTER

I [In the Garden of Dreams]
II [A Marriage Has Been Arranged]
III [A Desirable Family Mansion]
IV [How Allan Came to the Garden]
V [In Which Allan Buys the Manor House]
VI ["I Hate Him—Hate Him I Du!"]
VII ["How Wonderful—the Way of Things"]
VIII ["Kathleen—Do You Remember?"]
IX [How Sir Josiah Opened His Purse]
X [Confidences]
XI [In Which Sir Josiah Proves Himself a Gentleman]
XII [The Hands of Abram Lestwick]
XIII [The Homecoming]
XIV ["His Son's Wife"]
XV ["Will You Take This Man?"]
XVI ["My Lady Merciful"]
XVII [Harold Scarsdale Returns]
XVIII [In the Dawn]
XIX [The Dream Maiden]
XX [The Road to Homewood]
XXI [After Ten Years]
XXII [Mr. Coombe Wears a White Tie]
XXIII ["I Belong to Thee"]
XXIV [In Which Lord Gowerhurst Rises Early]
XXV [Beside the Lake]
XXVI [On Other Shoulders]
XXVII [The Conqueror]
XXVIII [The Watcher]
XXIX [Why Abram Lestwick Stayed from Church]
XXX [The Religion of Sir Josiah]
XXXI ["A Very Worthy Man"]
XXXII [The Awakening]
XXXIII [By the Lake]
XXXIV [The Going of Betty]
XXXV ["I Shall Return"]

THE GARDEN OF
MEMORIES

PROLOGUE

From the house a broad white stone path runs to the very heart of the garden and there opens out into a wide circle in the middle of which is set a sundial, and here too are placed some great benches of the same white stone; where, when the heat of the sun is not too great, it is pleasant enough to sit and watch the glory of the flowers.

They are wealthy folk, the Elmacotts, and they love their garden and pride themselves on it and hold that in all Sussex no soil can produce finer flowers and sweeter fruit, and though in this year of grace seventeen hundred and three the house, which is the Manor House of the Parish of Homewood, has no great antiquity, being scarce more than sixty years old, it has about it that completeness, those niceties of detail, the neatness and the order and the well being that are found only in the home which is ruled by a house-proud mistress.

And Madame Elmacott is proud of her house, proud of her garden, proud of the flowers that grow in it and above all proud of her stalwart sons, Master Nat and Master Dick, who are at this time with his Grace of Marlborough in Flanders, fighting their country's battles.

To-day the sun shines on the garden and the flowers stir gently, swaying in the light breeze that also lifts the white dimity at the open windows of the house, whence comes the sweet tinkling of a spinet, the keys of which are touched by the skilled white fingers of Mistress Phyllis Elmacott.

The tall hollyhocks that cast wavering blue shadows on the white stone pathway nod to one another in the breeze, nod, it seems, knowingly, for from the pathway one may see into the pleasant room where the spinet and its fair player are and seeing these may also see the handsome figure of the Captain, who leans upon the spinet, the better to see into those bright eyes that have brought him home to England and Sussex from across the seas, though at this time in the service of his Grace the Captain General there is much to be done and much to be won.

He has but waited to see and share in the victory of Donauwort and then has come hastening home on the wings of love and with the merry peal of marriage bells a-ringing in his ears.

But it is not of these, not of the dashing Captain in his red coat and fair-haired Mistress Elmacott, who thinks him the most perfect and wonderful, as well as the bravest and handsomest of all created beings. It is of the garden and of a lad who sits on the grassy bank at the edge of the lake and watches with eyes, that yet seem scarcely to see, the slim white figure of a maiden wrought of stone. She stands up from the green waters, in the center of the lake and on her sun-kissed shoulder she holds a pitcher, from which the glittering water is flung aloft into, the air to fall with a pleasant tinkling, back into the green pool beneath.

And so silent, so motionless does he sit here, that the swallows that now and again skim the water, the dragon flies in all the glory of their green and crimson, and blue sheen that dart hither and thither take no heed of him, no more heed than if he too were of senseless stone.

In all the colour, in all the glory of the garden, he is the sombre, the one sombre note. His clothes are drab, his shoes are stout and thick and ungainly and clasped with great brass buckles. His hands are the hands of a man who toils for his living, rough and hardened by spade and hoe and rake and scythe, and stained by the good earth of the garden. His eyes that stare so unceasingly on that white stone figure are blue, his face is lean and tanned, his neck too is tanned deeply to the very shoulders where the coarse shirt falls open.

Straight and strong and courageous he is. Has he not listened with bated breath and with quick beating heart to the brave stories told in the bar parlour of the "Fighting Cocks" in Stretton. Cross? Has he not watched the Serjeant who has told these thrilling tales, of every one of which, who should be the hero but the Serjeant himself, in his fine red coat and his crossed belts and his tall hat, that makes him, fine man that he is, seem almost a giant?

He has done well here in Stretton and Homewood and at Bush Corner and in all those other quiet places, has the Serjeant. There are at least a score of fine young Sussex lads, even at this very moment on their way to Harwich, en route for Flanders and glory, who have been wheedled from field and wood and garden and alehouse and stable by the Serjeant's persuasive tongue, his jolly laugh and his generous hand.

And Allan Pringle, sitting here by the green pool, clasping his strong brown chin with his hands, knows that he too would have been of that score, but for one reason—one reason that now, alas, is no more!

It is the first grief he has ever known and it is a bitter one, for what more bitter sorrow can youth feel than for wasted hopes, for broken faith, for misplaced love?

Only Betty and his love for her, only the happiness that she had promised should one day be his, had deafened him to the persuasive eloquence of the Serjeant.

But it is not too late now, others will hearken to the Serjeant and set off for Harwich and he will be among the next. Yes, he will be among the next to go, and pray God that he may never return!

He does not hear a light step on the long stone pathway, for it is scarce heavier than a bird might make. From the house a little maid comes hurrying. Now she stands hesitatingly and looks about her, her finger on her lips, as one a little fearful, a little anxious. Again and yet again, she pauses, as she looks about her, then comes to where beyond the great hedge of clipped yew trees the green waters of the pool reflect the golden, sunshine.

And now she sees him and stands watching, a tender smile on her lips. A dainty slip of a maiden is she, with hair that gleams gold under her cap, the soft rounded arms are bare to the dimpled elbows, save for the thin black lace mittens, through which her white skin shines.

Though he, the silent, solitary figure sitting beside the pool is but ten paces from her, yet she hesitates, half a score of times, making a timorous step and then pausing before the next, her blue eyes filled, now with mischief and love and now clouded by some fear. And then suddenly she makes a brave little run to him and drops lightly on her knees behind him and lifts her hands and clasps them over his eyes.

"And you—you would leave your Betty? Oh, Allan, you would leave your Betty who loves you and go away to the cruel wars?" she sobs.

He has taken her hands, has taken them strongly in his hold and holding them yet, he turns to her. "Why did you come, why did you come to me, Betty?"

"Because," and the blue eyes are lifted to his filled with an innocence and candour that even he, jealous and despairing though he is, cannot but recognise, "because I do love thee so and cannot let thee go!"

"And why, loving me, Betty, do you suffer the kisses of such a man as Timothy Burnand, a rascally tinker and a thieving poacher, a man whose hand I would not have touch thee, Betty?"

Into her face there flames a great flush, a look of anger, then it dies out and the laughter comes rippling to her lips and into her eyes come back the mischief and the love and a little pride too, for she realises that he is jealous of her, this man she loves and though jealousy be a sin, yet it is not without its sweetness, too, for say what the wiseacres may, jealously is oftentimes a proof of love.

"And you saw—" she cries, "Allan, you—saw—ugh!" She makes a little gesture, a little grimace. "Did you think that I invited, that I welcomed him? Did you think that I bore his kiss with patience? Go and seek him now and look for the red mark upon his face! He came on me unawares and then all suddenly—" she pauses. "Allan," she says pleadingly, "Allan, you will not go, you will not go, my dear, you will not go and leave me?" And sobbing she is in his arms. And so for Allan Pringle the sun shines out again and the flowers are blooming brightly and the little slim maiden of stone from the centre of the pool seems to throw the glittering water higher and yet higher into the air as though in joy that all is well between these two, who hold one another so tightly, who are mingling their tears and their laughter and their kisses, now that the cloud has passed.

* * * * *

There are no flowers in the garden now, for the garden of Homewood Manor and all the world beside lies under a pall of white, for the winter is here, the winter of seventeen hundred and five, which is remembered by all men as a winter of bitter cold, of great frosts and heavy snows.

In a tiny cottage that stands a bare quarter of a mile on the Stretton Road from the Homewood gates, a man is on his knees beside a bed.

And that bed holds all his world, all that the world can give him, all that makes life sweet, and his heart is black and bitter with suffering and despair and cries out against God that he, who was rich only in her and in her love, must lose her now, must spend the rest of his days solitary, and heartbroken.

His eyes are on the sweet white face, on those lips once so red and now so pale, but which even yet have a smile for him, a smile of wonderful tenderness and undying love. He takes no heed of the fretful cry that comes from the cradle, for there is no other in all his world now, but her, she who is so soon to leave him.

"Betty, my Betty, I cannot let thee go! Oh, remember, Betty, once when I would have left thee, you called me back and I came. I am calling, calling to you now, my life, my sweet, I cannot let you go! Stay with me, stay with me, for you are all my life and the world is black without you; stay with me!"

She would lift her thin little hand to caress, to touch his face, but the strength is not hers to do it.

"Allan, take me, hold me in your arms, hold me tightly, my dear, hold me tightly," she says.

And he puts his strong arms about her. God pity him, how light she is, how small, how fragile a thing this, that death is taking from him!

His very soul is in rebellion against fate, he is mad with the suffering, mad with his impotence. He can do nothing save watch her die, watch her fade out of his life; and it must be soon "A matter of hours," the doctor from Stretton had said and that was long ago and now, now it is but a matter of minutes.

"Allan, I wanted, always, to die like this, with your arms about me, your dear eyes the last of earth that I shall see—ah! Allan, it is now——"

"Betty, Betty, I am calling, calling to you, come back, beloved, come back!"

And then he knows that it is useless, she is leaving him, slipping away, no matter how tightly he may hold her. It is good-bye, their last good-bye and the sad word comes perhaps unconsciously to his lips.

And then, is it fancy? Is it some trick of his tortured brain? For as he watches, the dear lips move and it seems to him that the message they whisper to him with her dying breath is this: "It is not good-bye!"

He is holding her against his breast, he is kissing those lips that for the first time give not back kiss for kiss. He is calling to her from his aching, breaking heart, but she has passed beyond the sound of his voice, though the smile on her dead lips is still for him.

And those last words, were they real? Did they pass her lips with her dying breath, were they meant for him in pity and compassion and love?

"It is not good-bye!"

CHAPTER I

IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

A girl, a slip of a maid with sunny hair and wonderful blue eyes, stood beside a crumbling old rose-red brick wall. She looked up the long country road and she looked down it, there was no one, not a soul in sight. So she thrust the too of one small and broken boot into a crevice of the wall, made a little spring and caught at the top, then dragged herself up till she sat, flushed and triumphant, on the coping.

She was a village girl and her dress was of print, well washed, well mended, skimpy, too, for her slight figure, slender though it was, for it had been hers for three years, and a dress that is originally made for a maiden of fourteen is apt to be small when worn by a maid of seventeen.

It was a demure and a very sweet face, the eyes big and strangely dreamy, the white skin of her face and neck powdered lightly with tiny golden freckles, her hair a deep red gold.

And wonderful hair it was, wonderfully untidy, too, so rebellious that it spurned all hairpins and fretted and struggled agains ribbons and tapes.

So now, she sat on top of the old rose red wall and looked down on the other side and saw a green tangle of brambles and grass and other things that grew rankly and luxuriously in that deserted place.

It was easier to descend the wall than to climb it, for here was a friendly tree that held out an inviting branch. Sho seized it, with small brown hands and lightly swung herself to the ground and then drew a sigh of relief and pleasure.

It was forbidden ground! Were there not many notices that announced the fact that "Trespassers Would Be Prosecuted"? But she cared nothing for these, the notice that she dreaded most of all was "This Desirable Historical Family Mansion, with Seven Hundred and Fifty Acres of Land, to be Sold."

How she dreaded lest one day someone should come and see and covet this place and buy it and so shut her out forever from its delights and its pleasures. But that someone had not come yet.

So she made her way through the tangle of the growth, and came presently to a great garden, a wonderful garden once, but now a weed-grown place of desolation.

Always this garden attracted her; to-day it brought a soft, tender light into her eyes as she stood with clasped hands and looked at it! She could see the old broken stone-paved pathway that led through the heart of the garden. She knew where that stone pathway opened out into a great circle in the midst of which was set a sundial, a sundial of stone chipped and green and the gnomon of the dial rusted away so that never again should its shadow fall upon the dial and mark the passing of the brighter hours. And about this circle, she knew, were old stone seats, green now like the pedestal of the dial and through the crevices of the paving grew and flourished and blossomed foxglove and dandelion, hollyhock and groundsell.

It had been a very, very beautiful garden long years ago, when ladies had tapped up and down the stone pathway in their little red-heeled shoes. Ladies who wore wide flounced skirts and powdered hair and cunning little patches on their fair cheeks. The garden with its roses, with its stately hollyhocks, its cloves and sweet-williams, its rosemary and lavender and all the sweet things that grow in English gardens, must have been a very lovely and perfect place then. But to this little maid with the dreamy eyes, it was a very wonderful place now. There was no other place like it in all the world; she had come here by sunshine and by moonlight, for sometimes in the night the garden had seemed to call to her and she had risen from her bed under the thatched roof of her old grandmother's cottage and had come stealing here to watch it, all bathed in the silver light of the moon. Perhaps she loved it best by moonlight, for then strange dreams seemed to come to her, dreams that never came when the sun was shining.

It seemed as if some kindly gentle hand touched lightly on the chords of memory, and then—the weeds and the tall rank grass, the decay of the present, the rioting growth, all were gone and she saw the old garden as it had once been, and she saw folk, strangely dressed folk, whom never in her life could she have met. These came and went, men with strange affected antics and gestures, gestures she might have smiled at, yet never did, and sweet, gracious ladies who moved with stately dignity through the old garden.

But always there was one, a young man whose clothes were plain and lacking all the finery that made the others seem so grand. She knew him for a servant, for one who worked in the garden, for often she would see him stooping over some trim bed, or with keen scythe sweeping the short grass.

They were dreams, only dreams that the old garden seemed to bring to her, when she came when the world was sleeping. Dreams, and yet she seemed to be so curiously awake.

But she never spoke of the old garden to the others, or told of the things that she saw here. Yet they knew she came, her grandmother rated her, "One day, my maid, caught ee'll be," she said, "and then summoned very likely for trespassing!"

But the Law had no terrors for her, so she came whenever the garden seemed to be calling to her and the high rank grass brushed her thin cotton skirt and wetted the coarse stocking that clad her slim ankle.

For an hour she wandered about the garden, she stood by the sundial and watched the line of the path-way, sadly encroached on now by the weeds and the self-seeded flowers. A tall yew hedge, once clipped into fantastic shapes, but now reclaimed by Nature, shut out what had once been the rose garden, all weed grown now and the roses gone. And beyond the rose garden, the lake in which the great carp swam lazily and over which the birds skimmed! From the lake's centre rose a figure in stone, sadly battered and marred, the figure of a slim girl, a girl that might have been, herself, changed into stone.

She often came to look at this figure rising from the centre of the lake. It held a vase poised on its shoulder, once a fountain had been flung high into the air from this vase, but the fountain had been dead long ago. To-day a rook sat perched on one stone shoulder, but flew away when the living girl came down to the brink.

She had a feeling for this stone maiden, all so lonely in the midst of the desolation. She never came into the garden without coming to the edge of the lake and nodding her little head to the figure who never nodded back.

And so, for an hour she wandered about the garden. She picked none of the flowers that grew so freely here, for she would not dare take them back, mute tale tellers that they would be. So, empty handed as she came, she presently made her way back to the old wall and seeing that no one was in sight, gained the road and went on to the cottage in the village.

Her grandmother was leaning over the gate, an old woman with the face of a russet apple that has been kept till it has wrinkled and mellowed.

"So there you be, Betty Hanson, and seeing the way you hev come it be useless and idle it be, for me to ask you where hev you been tu!"

The girl did not answer.

"You've been in that garden again, spite o' all I du say. Betty Hanson, it hev got to cease, my maid, and cease it will now!"

"Why?" the girl said and there was a frightened look in her eyes.

"Why? for I hev been talking to Mr. Dalabey and he du tell me that there be several parties after the old house, and one rich American he very likely to buy it and if he du, then there be an end to all your philanderings in that there disgraceful old garden, my maid!"

"Buy it! Buy it!" She looked at her grandmother and in the blue eyes there was a look of actual fear. "'Ee don't mean as—as anyone be going to buy—buy it?" She whispered, "'ee be only saying it!"

"A rich American!" The old woman nodded her head, "and going to buy it, he be, and a dratted good job, too!" she added. "Look at your frock now, what a sight it be!"

But she did not look at her frock, her face had gone very pitifully white. She lifted her little brown hands and laid them against her breast and went into the cottage with tragedy and misery in her blue eyes.

"And a dratted good job, too," the old woman said again.

CHAPTER II

A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED

"My dear child, if I were to say that we had arrived at our last shilling, such a statement would not be quite true, for we had reached that unpleasant position some months ago, and I fear that it is on other people's shillings that we are existing at the present moment. Not only is our financial position unsatisfactory, to say the least of it, but, and forgive me for speaking of it, Kathleen, the years are passing and five years ago—well, dear one, you were five years younger than you are to-day!"

"Father, if you think that you can goad me——"

"I never goad, it would be too fatiguing! Besides, Kathleen, as my daughter and a Stanwys, you are not a fool—the Stanwys——"

"Oh, please do not tell me about the Stanwys, father," she said bitterly.

"Would you rather that I spoke about the Homewoods? There is the father, Sir Josiah——"

"Common and vulgar!" the girl said with a note of contempt in her voice.

"But the son—he at least is presentable, have we not agreed that the son is not so bad, and the position——"

"I know of the position; do you think I can forget it for even a moment?"

She rose and went to the window and stared out into the dull London Square.

She was twenty-eight. It is not a great age, yet at twenty-eight the first sweet freshness of youth is on the wane—a woman of twenty-eight realises that she is no longer a girl, her girlhood is behind her. Sometimes she is terribly conscious of it. It is a little tragedy to be eight and twenty, unmarried and unsought. Kathleen Stanwys at twenty-eight was unmarried, nor was she engaged. Society was a little puzzled by the fact, for she was unusually and exceedingly handsome. She had been a very lovely girl and she was now a radiantly beautiful woman.

Seven years ago she had outshone all rival beauties in the great world of Fashion, but she had made no bid for popularity. She shrank from anything of the nature of publicity and cheap advertisement; rarely if ever had her photograph appeared in the press. She wrapped herself in a mantle of reserve. Ever conscious of the poverty which she was never permitted to forget she had earned the reputation of being cold and haughty and proud. Admirers she had never lacked, but suitors had been few and shy! Young men, well provided with money, had a wholesome fear of Lord Gowerhurst, her father, for he was a very finished specimen of his type.

Smooth tongued, with a charming and plausible manner, cynical, handsome as all the Stanwys are and have been, an accomplished gambler, too accomplished, perhaps his enemies, and he had many, whispered. He was utterly selfish, utterly pitiless. He had never been known to spare a man or a woman either. Woe to him or to her who fell into his toils. With what fine courtesy, with what charm of manner would he relieve some luckless victim, of his last shilling! How sweetly and sympathetically he would speak of his victims' ill fortune, would suggest some future "revenge," and then pocket his winnings with a grace that could have brought but little comfort to the poor wretch whose possessions had passed out of his own into the keeping of this courtly, delightful, aristocratic gentleman.

So, young men well endowed with money, having a wholesome fear of His Lordship, avoided his Lordship's beautiful daughter, and young men without money were of course not to be considered for a moment.

Therefore, at twenty-eight, Kathleen, unappropriated, and a very beautiful woman, stood staring out of the window this fine May morning, into the dull London Square.

My Lord, slender, dressed with exquisite care, was of a tallness and slimness that permitted his tailor to do justice and honour to his craft. Few men could wear their clothes with such perfect grace as his Lordship. His tailor, long suffering man, groaned at the length of the unpaid bill, but realised that as a walking advertisement Lord Gowerhurst was an asset to his business not to be despised. So the lengthy bill grew longer and more formidable, but youngsters, fresh to town, admiring his Lordship's appearance prodigiously, made it their business to discover who was his Lordship's tailor and Mr. Darbey, of Dover Street, saw to it that Lord Gowerhurst never went shabby and possibly, cunning man, made those who could and would pay, contribute unconsciously to the upkeep of Lord Gowerhurst's external appearance.

He came of a handsome family, the women of which had been toasts in many reigns and through many generations. His forehead was broad and high, crowned by silver hair that curled crisply, his nose was of the type of the eagle's beak, his hands white, well kept, reminiscent of the eagle's claws, a moustache of jetty blackness in admirable contrast to his silvered hair, shaded and beneficently concealed a thin-lipped, hard and somewhat cruel mouth.

My Lord rolled a cigar between his delicate fingers. It was an excellent cigar; years ago Julius Dix and Company had acquired the habit of supplying Lord Gowerhurst with cigars on credit and bad habits are difficult to eradicate. But then his Lordship sent wealthy customers to the quiet but extremely expensive little shop near the Haymarket.

"Our position, Kathleen, is irksome," he said softly, "deucedly irksome. Now and again I have little windfalls, but alas—they grow fewer and farther between as time goes on—at the moment I haven't a bob, you, dear, have not a bob—" he paused and laughed softly. "It recalls the French exercise of my youth. I have not a bob, thou hast not a bob, he has not a bob—" he waved the cigar. "Anyhow, that is the position, and then some kindly breeze of Heaven wafts that stout, prosperous, opulent craft the "Sir Josiah Homewood" on to the horizon of our "sea of troubles," as Shakespeare so aptly puts it!"

He paused, he looked at the slender, upright, girlish back of his daughter.

"So," he went on, "this large, stout, prosperous and richly freighted cargo boat, the Sir Josiah Homewood, rises on the horizon of our eventful lives and——"

"Oh, please," the girl said with a note of impatience in her voice, "leave out all that; I wish to understand exactly—exactly what you propose——"

"Not what I propose, but what Homewood proposes. Really, I rather admire the fellow's presumption. As you know, he has a son, a lad not altogether displeasing, who fortunately but little resembles his father, a fact you may have noticed, Kathleen. Indeed, I might almost say the young fellow is not without his good points; he is prepossessing, a little shy and silent, in which he does not resemble his father. He is well educated, he has Eton and Oxford behind him. By the way, what a time he must have had at Eton, if his parentage ever leaked out, poor devil—however, there it is, the lad is at least presentable—but the father is——"

"Terrible!" the girl said with a shudder.

"Too true, yet it is not proposed you should marry the father. We need money. You, child, need money, and what is more, a prospect, a future. You have nothing and the outlook is not cheering."

"The outlook is hopeless; I have nothing in the world, our family was always hopelessly impoverished, still the little we once had——" Kathleen paused.

"Recriminations, my love, are useless!" his Lordship said.

"There was very little and now that little hath taken unto itself wings and has flown away——" He stroked his long drooping moustache with his slender hand. "So it behoves us to make our arrangements for the future. Sir Josiah and I have discussed everything."

"You mean myself, you have arranged the deeds of sale, I suppose, how much am I worth?"

"Your value is inestimable. Sir Josiah, worthy Baronet, more daring than I, puts it down in actual figures—" he paused. "I made a note of them. He advances me—" He took some papers from his pocket, "the sum of twelve thousand pounds—advances, mind you, Kathleen, a kindly loan, which I shall, no doubt, find useful——"

"That is your part of the payment," she said bitterly, "go on!"

"He buys a fine house, an estate, he settles it on his son; by the way the lad's name is Allan."

"I know," she said, "go on."

"He settles a fine estate on this Allan, with an income of eight thousand a year, not so bad, eh?"

"And this is all conditional——"

"On your marrying the said Allan Homewood. I think," he said, as he rose from his breakfast table, "I have on the whole not done so badly for you!"

"And yourself," she said; "not so badly!" She smiled bitterly, then shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Very well, I suppose it is only left for me to say thank you very much indeed!"

"Quite so. The alternative, dear child, is this"—his lordship waved his hand—"an elderly unmarried lady residing in, say, a Brighton Boarding House, her face bearing some evidence of a past but long since faded beauty, her title, if she is foolish enough to make use of it, subjecting her to some little annoyance, mingled with a certain amount of servile respect. Not a pretty picture, my love, but a very true one."

"And the alternative is to marry Mr. Allan Homewood?"

"A pleasant alternative, and its acceptance never for a moment in doubt, eh?"

"Never for a moment in doubt," she repeated.

"Then it only remains for me to say Heaven bless you, my child, and to send a wire of acceptance to Sir Josiah. No, on second thought, I'll telephone him from the Club." He paused for a moment to arrange his necktie before the glass over the mantel, then went to the door. At the door. he stood and looked at her for a moment, then went out, a satisfied smile on his thin aristocratic face.

The girl stood there by the window for a long time. She was thinking. She had much to think about. She was twenty-eight and a beautiful woman of twenty-eight has no doubt many memories.

Presently she sighed and turned away from the window. A fine place and eight thousand a year and more when Josiah Homewood was laid with his fathers. Well! things might be worse, and the lad himself, she liked him. He was younger than she was by four years, but what did that matter?

She had seen him once or twice, had liked him vaguely, there was little to dislike about him. He was not handsome, she was glad of that, she hated handsome men, nor was he plain. Again she was glad; she disliked anything that was ugly. He was also, despite his parentage, a gentleman. She liked him for that most of all.

"If he had been vulgar like his father, three times the money would not have been enough," she said to herself.

Still, there were memories, memories that rose up out of the past, the memory of a face, of eager, ardent, worshipping eyes, of a lame, halting speech, words disjointed and broken, eager, pleading, yet hopeless words. "I love you, oh! I love you; don't turn from me. I know I am not worthy, Kathleen, but I love you so!"

She laughed suddenly, she felt ashamed and annoyed to realise that there were tears on her lashes and on her cheeks.

"Folly!" she said aloud. "Folly, and it's all dead and gone ten, years ago, ten years—" she laughed, "a lifetime! He's married to someone else; if he's sensible, he will have married someone with money, for he had none, poor fellow!"

Meanwhile at the Club, where the better part of his day and practically the whole of his night was spent, Lord Gowerhurst had looked up a telephone number and was putting a call through.

"Homewood—yes, Sir Josiah Homewood, is he in? Yes, I do, Gowerhurst—Lord Gowerhurst—You'll put him through—then hurry!"

He waited and then came a voice. It was evidently the voice of a stout man in a state of anxiety.

"Yes, it's me, it's Homewood, my Lord——"

Lord Gowerhurst detected the anxiety, purposely he delayed, he told himself the man was anxious—naturally—"Let him be anxious, let him remain on tenter hooks for a time!" It would do him no harm.

"Is that Sir Josiah Homewood?"

"Yes, yes, Homewood, I'm speaking to Lord Gowerhurst, aren't I?"

"Yes—ah, Homewood, is that you? Well, about that little matter we were discussing yesterday—" his lordship drawled, "the proposition that you placed before me with such engaging frankness, I should not be surprised if you remember——"

"Yea, my Lord, I've not forgotten! Not me!" The voice came chokingly, uncertain, but above all things eager.

"I have discussed it with the person—most concerned!"

"And what does her ladyship——"

"My dear Homewood, no names on the telephone, no names I beg!"

"No, no, of course not, my mistake, my Lord. I wouldn't think of mentioning any names, not for a moment, my Lord. Still what does she—the person—the party, I mean, my Lord, what does she—er—her——"

"I quite understand the—as you say—party—is inclined to give very favourable consideration to the matter. In fact, I may say, my dear Homewood, that the matter is practically settled on the basis you suggested."

Sir Josiah Homewood in his luxurious City office, closed his eyes as in ecstasy! He clung to the telephone receiver and an expression of rapt and perfect contentment stole over his features.

"Then—then it's all right. I may regard it as all right, my—my—Lord—she, the party, I mean——"

"Agrees—" said Lord Gowerhurst shortly. "Briefly, yes she agrees—the matter is settled and now it only remains to complete the contract, you understand, eh?"

"I understand, ha, ha, very good, just so, the Contract, always dealing with contracts I am, but not many like this! Ha, ha, splendid—and now your Lordship and the other party, I mean the other contracting party, will dine at my house in Grosvenor Square to-night."

Gowerhurst frowned. "Oh, very well!" he said ungraciously.

"Half past seven at Grosvenor Square, your Lordship remembers the number?"

"At half past seven, then!" His Lordship said and hung up the receiver.

"And that," my Lord said, "is that! When my time comes, and I am in no hurry for it to come, especially just now, I shall be able to close my eyes on this world, knowing that I have done my duty to my only child, a truly comforting reflection—And now for a brandy with the merest suggestion of soda, and if possible a little game of billiards." And he went up the Club's handsome staircase.

None of the multitudinous clerks in the large and palatial offices of Sir Josiah Homewood, Son and Company, Limited, had ever seen the Managing Director in such a delightful temper, for sometimes his temper was not delightful. This morning he beamed on all and sundry. Young Alfred Cope, who supported a widowed Mother on an insignificant salary, had long been trying to muster up courage to ask for a rise. It seemed to him that this morning, this bright May morning, the opportunity had come, and so opportunity sent him, a shivering, trembling wretch, tapping nervously on the highly polished mahogany door of Sir Josiah's private office.

"Well?" Sir Josiah said. "Well, and what do you want?"

Alfred stumbled lamely into his pitiful story.

Sir Josiah frowned. "How much are you getting paid now?" he demanded.

"Forty-two. Forty-two shillings a week! Bless my heart and soul, princely, princely! Why, when I was a lad such a wage would have been considered handsome, sir, and here you come asking me for more—Why; bless me, let me tell you this, Cope—the City is bristling with clerks, bristling with 'em, you can't move for clerks, sir, and most of 'em out of work! I've only got to hold up my finger, sir, like this—" He thrust a broad, stumpy finger into the air, "and say 'Clerk!' and a hundred would rush at me. I'd be suffocated! Do you understand me, Cope? Simply crushed to death by the rush! If I put an advertisement in the papers, I'd have to hire a policeman to keep the Quee—the Queek—what d'ye call the thing from obstructing the traffic—Forty-two shillings, you ought to go down on your knees, sir, on your knees and thank Heaven that you are earning such a salary! Princely! That's what it is, princely!"

And so on, for ten long, fear laden, wretched minutes, at the end of which the hapless wretch slunk away, thanking God that he had not been dismissed or that his wretched two and forty shillings had not been reduced to thirty or less.

"Forty-two shillings—and wants more," Sir Josiah said to himself, "bless me, what are things coming to?" Then he banished the frown, he beamed all over his round red face.

"Lady Kathleen Homewood," he said to himself, "Lady Kathleen Homewood, my daughter-in-law! Lady Kathleen—ah ha!" He rubbed his hands. "That'll make Cutler sit up! The fellow gives himself airs because his daughter married a fellow who is Governor of some place no one in their senses ever heard of—His Excellency the Governor—Bless my heart! I'm sick to death of His Excellency! Now Cutler will turn green, eh? There's nothing like the real thing, the real old true blue-blooded British aristocracy—can't get over that, eh? No, no fear!"

Usually it takes but two to make a bargain; in this case it required four. Three of the four were agreed, himself first of all, now His Lordship, the Earl of Gowerhurst, and Lady Kathleen Stanwys, his daughter. There was but one other, but that one other was a good boy, a dutiful son; he would do exactly what his father wished.

"Thank God I don't look for opposition from him!" Sir Josiah thought. "Never trod a better lad than mine, bless him! He knows my heart's set on this, knows it he does, and he'll do it to please me! He's not like other young fellows with their fancy tricks. Besides that, the girl's a beauty, apart from her blood and breeding! If she is a little older than he, well, what of that? It's the blood, the birth that is, what tells every time and by George—by George, when I have grandchildren I'll be able to look at 'em and say to myself—'These grandchildren of mine are also the grandchildren of an Earl!' And that's something these days, eh? That's something!" So he fell to muttering and chuckling to himself, this highly pleased old gentleman, and presently he picked up a pen and all unconsciously scribbled many times on the blotting paper:

"Lady Kathleen Homewood, Lady Kathleen Homewood, my daughter-in-law, Lady Kath——"

"Eh, what's that?"

"I thought I'd remind you that it is past one, Sir Josiah, and you were to lunch with Mr. Cutler and Mr.——"

"Oh, bless my soul, yes, I'd clean forgotten—many thanks—Jarvis—quite right, sensible of you!"

Mr. Jarvis, the head clerk, bowed and would have retired.

"Oh, Jarvis, one moment, here, help me into my coat, there's a good feller! That young feller, young what's his name—Cope—Crope—eh?"

"Cope, sir, yes, sir!"

"What sort of a chap is he, good worker and all that?"

"A very attentive worker and a respectable young man!"

"Supports a widowed mother, I understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Bless me, well, well. I've been having a chat with him—where's my umbrella?—having a chat with him—a man can't support a widowed mother cheaply these days, eh, Jarvis?"

"Very expensive days, sir!"

"Quite so, expensive hobby, too, supporting widowed mothers. Raise his salary to—say Three pound ten, Jarvis, and report to me how he goes on! My hat, do you see my hat? Oh, thanks, I'll be back at two-thirty, Jarvis——"

And Sir Josiah went out.

CHAPTER III

A DESIRABLE FAMILY MANSION

DEAR SIR,

"In reply to your advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, I am at the moment in a position to offer you a very fine old historical mansion situated in West Sussex on the Hampshire border. The house has been untenanted for a number of years and will require considerable attention. In the hands of a man of wealth and taste, it could be restored to its original condition and would form one of the most picturesque and desirable mansions in the Country. It is eminently a place that it is necessary to see and a description of it would take too much time now, for as I have previously mentioned, I am only, at the moment, in a position to offer it as it has already been seen and highly approved by a wealthy American gentleman and it is quite probable that he will close at the bargain price at which the house and estate of seven hundred and fifty acres, including part of a small and picturesque village, is being offered. I would urge on you, therefore, if you care to consider the place, to view it without one moment's delay, as obviously it will be sold to the first who makes a good offer. I may add that the Mansion in question, with its many historical associations, would make a country seat fit for any nobleman in the land. May I finally repeat my urgent advice to view the place at once, as the delay of even an hour may be prejudicial to your obtaining it. Believe me, sir,

Yours truly,

DALABEY AND SON."

Over this letter Sir Josiah pondered a little and frowned a little.

"It's rather like having a pistol at one's head! Hanged if it isn't!" he muttered. "But it reads all right, it reads—the goods! Historical Mansion, seven hundred and fifty acres, fit for a nobleman, with part of a village, sounds right—sounds right—" he muttered. He nodded his head. "But this hurry—why it's a confounded nuisance, that's what it is. How can I go? I've got—let me see—har hum—" He muttered to himself and frowned heavily.

He had much important business to see to, that day, a meeting of Directors at twelve, another at two, and there were things to be arranged and discussed that Sir Josiah knew would require his clear brain and intellect. How could, he go journeying down to some remote part of Sussex to view this ancient mansion with its historical associations, desirable as it might be?

Sir Josiah looked up from the letter and glanced across the breakfast table at his son.

Allan was reading. It would have been noteworthy had Allan not been reading. The lad was always reading. His book was propped up against a teacup and he seemed to have forgotten his breakfast.

A good looking, big and broad shouldered young fellow this, with clean cut features and massive jaw and a broad high forehead! Muscle and sinew were there, but there was intelligence and brain power in that noble forehead of his.

Fully six feet stood he in his socks, massive of build, with straight, honest blue eyes and waving hair that was neither dark nor fair. A face that might in its strength seem a little hard, a little fierce, even a little forbidding, but that the mouth atoned for all.

No man with a mouth like this could be other than very human, very tender and kindly, very generous, the mouth of a man who could give much, suffer much and love greatly.

But Sir Josiah saw nothing of all this, he only saw Allan, his son, reading another of those confounded books, for which Sir Josiah had no feeling, except of the deepest disgust.

"Allan!"

"Father?" The young man looked up. "I'm sorry!" he said. "Did you speak to me before?"

"No, I didn't, and breakfast ain't the time, Allan, to be stuffing your head with all that there nonsense!"

Allan smiled. "You had your letters, and as I had my book——"

"You always have your book! I never saw such a fellow for reading—but I'm not saying anything, my boy. No, no, you're a good lad. Few sons please their old fathers as you do me—we're not quarrelling, Allan lad!"

"We never have yet, father, and we never will, I think!"

"I know!" said Sir Josiah. "Ah, Allan, you're doing well, a fine woman, beautiful as a picture, tall and stately, and the daughter of an Earl. Why, boy, you ought to be in the Seventh Heaven of delight and instead you sit there with your nose in a book!"

"She is a fine and a beautiful and I believe a good woman," said Allan, "but her father—" he paused. "I could have wished her a better father!"

"An Earl, an Earl!" cried the old man. "A better father than an Earl! Bless me, Allan—what nonsense! However, you're marrying her not her father; it's all settled, all agreed—" He rubbed his hands, his round red face shone with benevolence and joy. "You're a sensible and dutiful fellow, Allan! You say to yourself, 'My old father wishes it—The girl is good and beautiful and well born, I don't know particularly that I love her—come to that perhaps I don't, but I might go farther and fare worse!' Eh, that's it, isn't it? And you're doing it, boy, because you know it will give pleasure to the old man!"

"I think you have got my reasoning very correctly, father!" Allan said.

"There's no one else?" Sir Josiah said.

"No one else, no—and I like Lady Kathleen. I admire her and I pity her——"

"Pity—pity—bless my soul, boy, pity. Why should you pity her? Isn't she well born, doesn't she move in the best, the very best society? Isn't she the only daughter, only child come to that, of an Earl? Pity her?"

"Just that, I pity her, I am deeply sorry for her. I think she suffers a good deal and can't you understand why?"

"I—I don't know, lad, how should I know what the feelings of a young Society lady are?"

"She is proud and she is poor, there's suffering in that—She is proud and she knows that her father's name is in bad odour. Do you think a sensitive, highly strung girl as she is doesn't feel a thing like that? Yes, I pity her, and if through me her life may be made a little happier, why not? Last night when you and her father were talking money—she and I had much to say to one another. She was very open and very frank to me and I to her. We made no pretence—we know that we do not love one another. She is desperately poor and she is marrying me chiefly—entirely for the money you are going to give us both. I know that you are lending Lord Gowerhurst money, that he has not the slightest intention of every repaying you—Oh, Kathleen and I have been perfectly open and frank with one another—I understand that she cares for no one else. She has the same assurances from me, so there—" Allan laughed sharply, "you have it, the usual thing, a marriage of convenience! How can I pretend that I like it, Father, when I do not? You—you know that I would sooner not—but it is arranged, it is agreed—I do not love her, but thank God I can and do respect her and I feel sorry for her—and so we shall go through with it, Father!" he concluded.

Josiah nodded. "Yes, boy, you will go through with it and one day you'll thank me that I brought it about. I know a good woman when I see one and I tell you she is that—good—good to the core—I'm not clever and not over well educated, Allan, like you are. I don't set up to be a gentleman, but there's one thing I can do, I can sum up my fellow men and women, too, come to that. You'll find Allan, I'm making no mistake when I say Lady Kathleen is as fine and as true a woman as ever stepped. You'll go through with this marriage, Allan, I count on you!"

"I've never failed you yet, Father."

"You never have, never, and never will!" A look of rare tenderness came into the commonplace, even vulgar face. He rose and went to his son and put a large trembling hand on his shoulder.

"No Allan, you've never failed me, not even when you were a little chap! Do you think I don't think of it? Do you think I don't thank God for it, do you think when I hear other men speaking of their sons and of—of the trouble some of 'em bring? Do you think I don't say to myself—'My boy's above that kind of thing, my boy's an honest man and a gentleman!'" He gripped the shoulder under his hand tightly.

"And now read that, read this letter——" he went on in a changed voice. "Read it, Allan!"

Allan took the letter and read it.

"Well, father?"

"It looks like being just the kind of place I'm after!"

"There are bound to be hundreds of others—hundreds!"

"That's just what there aren't. You know how I've advertised, you know how many places I've seen, twenty at least, and I wouldn't be found dead in any one of 'em. No! places like I want aren't to be found every day, and I've got an idea this might be the place. Besides that, these agents write, it's to be bought cheaply. I'm never above making a bargain, Allan. It's in pretty bad condition evidently and I daresay it'll cost some money to put right, but what's that matter if I get it off the purchase price? Now to-day I can't go and you see that this agent writes to say it's urgent. There's an American out for it and I don't like to be beat, Allan, and especially I don't like to be beat by an American. They are keen buyers and clever buyers and what I say is this—if this place is good enough for a rich American—why it might also be good enough for me!"

Allan nodded. "And you will go and see this place and——"

"That's just what I can't do, I've got two Company meetings and important ones they are, and I can't miss 'em. Time's short, it's a bit like having a pistol pointed at one's head; but there you are, you can't help it and so my boy you've just got to put that book of poems, or whatever it is, away and forget it for to-day—you've got to go down—to——" he paused and looked at the letter, "this place, this Little Stretton, Little Stretton——" he repeated. "I seem to know the name, been there before perhaps—motoring or something, however you'll have to go there to-day instead of—me! You're not a fool, Allan, you've got eyes in your head—After all, the place is to be for you when you are married to her Ladyship, and it's right you should be the one to see it, so go down there, boy, see the place, size it up and find out the price. Use your own judgment because you've got it to use. I'll leave it in your hands. I'll make out a cheque for five hundred and sign it and you can leave it as deposit if you decide to buy. Only make up your mind, don't beat about the bush, remember we're not the only ones—and if it's the right place I don't want to lose it!"

"But father—had you not better see it yourself, surely to-morrow——?"

"To-morrow won't do—it must be done to-day—I know, worse luck, you're not a good hand at making a bargain, but I've got to make the best of that! Do your best, if you like the place, if you think it's cheap, if there are possibilities in it—why, Allan, boy, snap it up—don't let anyone get ahead of you! Here's the cheque." Sir Josiah tore a cheque out and made it out for five hundred pounds and signed it "Josiah Homewood."

"And now you'd better look out a train to this place, this Little Stretton——" again he seemed to linger over the name. "Unless, of course," he added, "you'll go by the car?"

"I'll go by train——" Allan said. In the train he could read his beloved books. The car allowed no such relaxation. "I'll go by train!" he said.

CHAPTER IV

HOW ALLAN CAME TO THE GARDEN

For May it was a very hot day, almost an unnaturally hot day. It was a day that might well have belonged to August.

Allan stepped it from the station, a sign post told him that Little Stretton was yet a mile to go. He took off his hat and henceforth carried it in his hand. He had read his book all the way down in the train and his mind was still lingering on it, on the book rather than on realities. So when he came to where stood an old, a very, very ancient oak, the mere relic of a once noble tree, he looked at it vaguely, and then looked beyond for the little red tiled barn that some fancy told him would be there. And it was there, but it was a very old barn and the roof had fallen in, in places and lichen was growing on the broken tiles.

Allan stared at it, he felt faintly surprised.

"Strange!" he said aloud. "Strange—why——"

He had an idea that the barn was not so old, why it ought to have been almost a new barn, had he not seen——

"Good Heavens!" he said aloud. "I must be dreaming or something——" Then he walked on rapidly. He breasted a hill and descended on the far side, following the twisting, turning road between the hedgerows all sweet with May flowers, and so came at last to a little village of red houses roofed with slabs of old Sussex stone, all green and yellow with lichen, yellow mostly.

Allan stood still and looked at the village that lay almost at his feet.

"I suppose," he said slowly. "I suppose we must, have motored through here once!"

He seemed to know it all so well, the sleepy sloping street with the quaintly irregular houses, the little shops with curved bow windows thrusting out on to the pavement, and the low pitched doorways one gained by climbing perhaps three or more worn stone steps. The Inn, the sign of which swung from a beam that spanned the street. Yes surely he had seen it all before—on some motoring trip perhaps—and yet—and yet in a way it was strangely different, as the barn had differed from his expectations. For a time with a queer puzzled sensation, he stood, and then he came back to realities. He had journeyed here to see some house agent—what was his name?

Dalabey! yes Dalabey!

"Boy," he called to a dusty white haired urchin playing with a dog. "Boy, which is Mr. Dalabey's, the house agent?"

The boy pointed. "That be Dalabey's up they steps be Dalabey's shop."

So Allan went up the steps and found himself in the office of Dalabey and Son.

Mr. Dalabey, a stout, red haired man, wearing no coat, was talking with a visitor, he looked at Allan.

"My father had a letter about a house, an old house, he asked me——"

"Ah yes, to be sure, the house as Mr. Van Norden be after, well there be nothing settled as yet, sir," Mr. Dalabey said as he reached up for a huge key.

"I'll be ten minutes about," he said, "if you'll wait here while I get finished with this gentleman!"

"Couldn't I go on? If you direct me I might find it."

"Aye, and I'll follow. Well you can't make any mistake, 'tis just beyond the village, you'll see a high red wall, a very old wall it be, follow the wall for maybe a quarter of a mile, then you will come to the gates, well this key don't fit the gates, you'll hev to go a bit further till you come to a green door. This key is the key of the door, if you'll go on I'll get my bicycle and follow you and maybe I'll catch you up before you get there."

"Thanks!" Allan said, he took the key, a ponderous thing and smiled at it for its bigness and clumsiness.

Children in the roadway stared at the young man swinging the ponderous key in his hand, women standing in their doorways nodded to one another.

They knew the key. "Very like he be the rich American who be coming to buy the Manor," they said.

Allan walked on. Yes, certainly they must have motored through this village, he remembered it vaguely, and yet it seemed to him always a little changed. Now was there not, should there not be a Cross standing here where the road widened, in front of the Inn.

He paused and stared about him. There was no Cross, no suggestion of one.

An old man, typically Sussex, grey bearded and bent double by age, clad in a smock and an ancient tall hat, stared at him with rheumy eyes.

"Grandfather," said Allan, "wasn't there a cross here once?"

"Aye, a cross there were and a very fine cross it was tu," said the old man. "I du remember her, when I were a lad, seventy years ago; I du remember that Cross, seventy years ago knocked down her were in broad daylight, her were and I see it done, I did wi' my two eyes, see it done, I did!" He nodded his hoary head. "'Twere this a way, the doing of it. Village Street be wunnerful steep it be, they was bringing up two great el'ums on a lurry, three strappin' hosses they were a-pulling of the lurry up the hill, then down all on a sudden goes one o' the hosses, and down goes another. T'other hoss rares up her did and crack goes the chain, lurry wi' they two great el'ums goes running back'ard down the bill it did. I say it, as seen it done seventy years ago, seventy and one to be parfectly correct, and bash goes they el'um trunks into the Cross. Bash goes the Cross, down it falls in little pieces. I picked up a piece, I du remember, the bit I've got to this day, it stands on the chimbley shelf, it du. Seventy and one years ago, and me a lad of turned twelve a fine strapping lad tu."

Allan slipped a coin into the old man's willing palm.

Strange he should have thought that a Cross stood there. And yet, why strange? He had seen some other village street like this one, with a Cross set up in it. One often saw Crosses set up in old world villages.

So he went on, swinging the great key in his hand and presently he came to the end of the village, where was the beginning of the old brick wall, a very high brick wall it was, fully ten feet, and the bricks were of that rare rose tint, the like of which have never been made since Anne was Queen, but these seemed to go back far before the time of Anne and here and there the wall was somewhat broken. But nature had done her best to make good the gaps, filling them up with lichen and moss of brilliant green and vivid yellow, a feast of colour for eyes tired of London's sombre streets.

And he knew, because Mr. Dalabey had told him, that a quarter of a mile on, he would come to the gates, wide gates of iron hung on stone pillars and on each stone pillar was set the head of a deer, also carved in stone.

And presently he came to the gates, and the pillars stood all moss covered, surmounted, as he knew they would be, by the sculptured heads of deer; but one had lost its antlers, and the other had its muzzle broken short off.

Allan looked up at them and smiled, and then his smile vanished. Mr. Dalabey had not told him of the deers' heads, and yet—they were here. Curious! he thought.

It was as though he had come on a place that he had visited in a dream, he could not shake off the feeling of familiarity, the knowledge, the certainty that attended his every step. He knew that the green door would be arched at the top and that it would be studded with great nails and bound with iron in many places.

He knew that it would be and it was! He fitted the heavy key in the lock and it turned at last with much rasping and complaining.

The door gave on a paved yard and in the crevices of the great flat topped cobbles grew weeds of all kind that bloomed and flourished untouched.

And now the feeling of familiarity, the knowledge of the place had grown on him, so that he wondered at it no longer. He accepted it, because it was right, because—he refused to consider it at all. He knew!

To the left stood the kitchen part of the house, he glanced towards it, but turned to the right and picked his way across the weed grown yard and came to a small wicket gate, between two tumble down buildings. The wicket gate had fallen into rottenness and lay all in fragments on the ground, but through the opening that was left he passed and found himself in the wild tangle of the great garden.

Through the garden he walked, a man waking, yet in a strange dream. He followed the flagged pathway past the old sundial that had lost its gnomon, beyond the wild yew hedge and so to the lake, from which rose the slim figure of a stone girl and at her he stared long.

He suddenly realised that, he had come here to see her, he had come on purpose, just to see this stone figure of a girl. He would have been disappointed, almost shocked, if she had not been here—and she was here—but the pitcher on her shoulder was empty and the upflung water flashed no longer in the sunlight.

Slowly, very slowly, he turned away, he went back through the rose garden with bowed head, he came to the great circle of stone in the midst of which was set the old sundial, and on a stone seat, warmed by the sun, he sat down.

"Strange!" he said. He said it aloud. "Strange!" he repeated. "I seem to know——" He stretched his arm out and laid it on the back of the old stone seat, and sat there staring at the moss grown sundial pedestal—staring till it seemed to waver, to become all uncertain before his sight.

And then—then he lifted his head and looked about him.

He saw a garden all glowing with flowers, and trim green lawns, the weeds, the desolation and the ruin of centuries had passed as with a breath. The garden was all glowing and blowing as perhaps it had two hundred years ago, and then slowly he turned his head and looked towards the house and saw that doors and windows stood open and that curtains swung from the casements lazily in the breeze. And as he watched a door opened and into the sunshine stepped, somewhat timidly he thought, a little maid, a trim, slim bodied little maid. She wore a flowered cotton gown, short at the ankles and low in the neck, and how the sun seemed to kiss it! And the little face above, a rarely sweet little face, purely oval with ripe red lips and the bluest eyes in the world. So she came hurrying along the wide stone pathway to him, a smile on her red lips and the copper red of her hair all flaming in the sunlight under the dainty mob cap.

But ere she reached him, she stood still suddenly and looked at him with a pretty frown that was yet half a smile on her little face.

"Allan!" she said. "Allan, be you still angry wi' your Betty now, dear? Will 'ee take back the words 'ee did speak in your anger, Allan? For you should know I would not have let a gawky rogue like Tim Burnand buss me, Allan, if I could 'a helped it. Before I could tell what he was at, he did steal a kiss, and I have rubbed my poor face sore to rub it all away for—for I want no kisses but thine Allan, my—my dear!"

Her voice was very soft and sweet and the tears gathered in her wonderful blue eyes, tears that seemed to wring his heart.

"I—I was overharsh and rough wi' thee, my Betty," he said. "I know 'twas not your fault, but all the fault of Tim Burnand whose bones I'll break for him, may——"

"Nay—swear not!" she said. "Oh Allan, I love thee for thy jealousy, I love thee for it!" Her eyes were laughing and joyous now and her face was all smiles and dimples and so she came to him, daintily, and put her two small hands, little brown hands in queer black lace mittens, on his shoulders and rising on her toes, she kissed him on the eyes.

"And never, never more will 'ee be angry and jealous of your Betty?" she said.

"Never again!" he said. "But because I do love thee so, my maid I could not bear to think that other lips——"

"Have never touched mine, 'twas but my cheek he bussed, and I boxed his ears soundly for him—but hush—I hear my lady calling to me—Listen! Betty! Betty! yes—I did but steal away, seeing you here—just to tell thee——" She paused for breath for a moment "to tell thee, my Allan, how I do love thee! Hark, my lady is calling again!"

"Blow me; sir, if I didn't think you'd been and lost yourself or fell down the old well, which I did ought to have reminded you about, or something!" said a voice.

Allan started up, stared up into the round red and over-heated face of Mr. Dalabey. He looked about him with dazed eyes. Weeds were rioting over the old garden, the grass stood knee high on the lawns, dandelions thrust their golden heads between the paving stones at his feet. He stared at the house and saw it all, sombre and lifeless, a house of the dead. Its windows were broken, desolation and ruin were upon it, and then he looked back at the jolly red face of Mr. Dalabey.

"Fell asleep!" Mr. Dalabey said. "And been dreaming!" he added.

"Yes—dreaming——" Allan said quietly. "Dreaming!"

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH ALLAN BUYS THE MANOR HOUSE

In and out and up and down Mr. Dalabey led Allan over the old house. They pried into dark and dusty corners, they ascended narrow and rickety stairs. It was a wonderful, rambling old place, the years had set their mark on it. The old oaken floors, worn and roughened by a thousand feet, took on many a queer pitch; from the pine panelling the paint had come away in great flakes; scarce a window but had its broken pane and through the pane some impertinent creeper thrust into the room and nodded to them familiarly.

Allan followed the stout, red faced, good humoured man up and down the stairs and in and out the old rooms. A great talker was Mr. Dalabey, a born seller of houses.

"This here be the banquetting hall, a very noble room, sir, very noble, fit for the aristocracy, her be, and a good many of the aristocracy it hev seen, sir, and many a bottle hev been drunk here, sir, I'll wager! Look at the ceiling, sir, some of the finest old plaster work to be met with in the kingdom, wonderful fine plaster work it be, as many gents as be connoisseurs, hev remarked. Greatly took with the plaster work was Mr. Van Norden."

"Yes," Allan said, and "Yes!" For his thoughts were far away, he looked through the broken and dusty windows into the garden with its weeds and its broken pathways and overgrown flower beds, and a strange sense of loss came to him. He felt a little ache at his heart, for the girl who had come to him in that same strange dream and had kissed his eyes and called him "her dear."

How real she had been. He marvelled now at the feeling that had been his at the time, that she was a very part of his life. How sweet and musical her voice, how warm and soft the touch of her red lips and yet it had only been a dream!

"This be one o' the guest rooms and you'll notice the wig cupboard, sir," said Mr. Dalabey; "very remarkable this wig cupboard, you'll see 'em in most of the bedrooms where the quality of them days kep' their wigs. Much took Mr. Van Norden was with they wig cupboards!"

"Yes!" said Allan, and all the time his thoughts were with the maiden of the garden, she who had kissed his eyes and had vanished as she had come, leaving him with this strange sense of loneliness and longing and hunger, and above all that deep, deep sense of loss.

"And now I think we've pretty well done it, sir, there's the stables, rare fine stables they was once. Seldom less than twenty hosses did they keep in them stables in the Elmacott's days——"

"Whose days?"

"Elmacott, that were the name o' the folk, dead and gone they be now—Sir Nathaniel were the last, a rare wild devil of a man according to history, my old grandfather, a wonderful man he were, would tell me many a story of Sir Nat, as they called him, when I were a boy. Stories my old granddad had from his father before him—well sir," Mr. Dalabey paused, "well, sir, there it be, I've shewn you all there is to see, hiding nothing, a rare lot of money'll be wanted to be spent on it, sir, and there be no disguising the fact, nor have I attempted to disguise it, as you'll bear witness, sir, but there be this Mr. Van Norden keen set on the place and likely for to make up his mind any moment, considering of it he is at this very time, I daresay!"

"Who are the owners?" Allan asked.

"A gentleman of the name of Stimpson be the owner, a distant relative of the Elmacotts by marriage. I do understand, out in Canada he be, born and bred there and never clapped eyes on the place, nor ever likely to. I've got to get the best price I can for the place, seeing he be my client, and the price I've asked Mr. Van Norden——" Dalabey paused. He looked at Allan, he had no great opinion of Allan. "Queer and dreamy like," Mr. Dalabey thought, "not businesslike, one of they sort who goes through the world mooning——"

"And the price?" Allan asked.

"Er—thirty thousand pounds," said Dalabey.

"It's a great deal of money," Allan said, he said it more for the sake of saying something than for any other reason. Had Dalabey said fifty thousand pounds, he would probably have said the same thing.

"Open to an offer I be, but the offer's got to come quick and soon, or Mr. Van Norden——"

"I know, I know!" Allan stood and stared out over the garden. He wondered at its strange fascination for him. Of course it had only been a dream, yet a dream so strangely real, so clear cut, so logical and why—why should it have come to him here in this old garden—why?

Mr. Dalabey was staring at him.

"Gone to sleep he hev seemingly."

"Thirty thousand, sir, and that be no more than forty pounds an acre for good Sussex land by my reckoning, to say nothing of the old house and the buildings and a dozen cottages in the village wi' the alehouse, the Elmacott Arms."

"Yes, yes!" Allan said. "Yes! I am acting for my father. I have his permission to—to settle—the house will cost a great deal to repair, a great deal!"

"I haven't disguised nothing from you and no one can say——"

"I will offer you twenty-five thousand on my father's behalf!"

"Oh sir, oh consider! A fine house her be and wunnerful good land the best in all Sussex and twenty-five thousand b'ain't no more than about thirty pounds an acre, a terribul little money that, sir, for land so good and the historical association and all!"

"Twenty-seven!" Allan said briefly.

"There be Mr. Van Norden a considering of it at this very moment——"

Allan hated bargaining, hated money. His life had been spent in an atmosphere of money. He knew that above and before all he wanted to be rid of this man, he wanted to go back to the old garden and sit there on the sun warmed stone seat and see if his dream would not come back to him.

"Twenty-eight thousand, then, and no more, I have done, take it or leave it!"

"You'll like to see the cottages and the Inn, a wunnerful old Inn her be with historical interest and——"

"No!" said Allan. "No! do you take my offer, yes or no? Tell me now!"

Mr. Balabey stroked his chin. He did not like to do business in this way. True it was profitable business, for Mr. Van Norden was considering the offer at twenty-five thousand.

"Very well, sir, done and done!" said Mr. Dalabey. "Done with you, sir, and I congratulate you on a rare bargain, I do, sir!" He held out his large and moist hand.

Allan took it.

"Now," he said, "I will ask you to do me a favour! I have purchased the place at twenty-eight thousand pounds. I have a cheque for five hundred pounds as deposit in my pocket, if I had a pen——"

"I've got a fountain pen with me, sir," said Dalabey, "always carry one I du!"

"Very well then, we will sit down here—and if you will lend me your pen——?"

They sat down on the old stone seat and Allan filled in the cheque.

"Make it payable to me," Dalabey said. "Thomas J. Dalabey," which Allan did.

"And now," Allan said, "I'd like to look about the old place alone, take the cheque and I will call at your office on my way back, you can then give me the receipt."

"To be sure and so I will, and once more congratulate you I do, and if so be you'll honour me, sir, I'll have a cup of tea ready and waiting for you when you come back!"

"Thank you!" Allan said. "And now, one thing more, how is the old place called, Mr. Dalabey?"

"Why 'tis Homewood Manor, I thought as I mentioned the name in my letter——"

"No, you did not, though I remember someone else spoke of it to me—Homewood Manor, that is strange!"

"In the Parish of Homewood it be," said Dalabey, "just within, and the next Parish be Little Stretton, but as this——"

"I understand, I quite understand, but all the same it is curious!"

"I don't see how," said Mr. Dalabey, "curious it 'ud be if it were called anything else, sir!"

"Look at the cheque, at the signature!" Allan said.

Mr. Dalabey looked, he uttered an exclamation as he spelled out Josiah Homewood's crabbed handwriting.

"Very odd it be, I swear!" he said. "And very right and proper too, come to that, nothing could be better! Mr. Homewood of Homewood Manor, it sounds good, sir! And now I'll get back and a cup o' tea'll be ready for you in say an hour's time——"

"Say two——" Allan said, "and thank you!"

So Dalabey hurried off to spread the news through Little Stretton. Beaming with joy he was, as he cycled down the road.

"Ah, Mrs. Hanson, there you be, Ma'am!" he shouted, slowing down by the little cottage. "News I've got for 'ee and for that little gel o' thine!"

"News—hev the American——"

"No, ma'am, he hasn't! Why, my maid, what be the matter wi' 'ee?" Dalabey added, for he had caught sight of Betty's blooming face in the window.

And a pretty picture the girl made, her sweet face framed in the clinging greenery and the roses on the point of breaking into bloom, but the sweetest rose of all was there in the window.

"Fair joyous you do look," said Dalabey, "joyous be the word, all bubbling over wi' delight—and yet—you cannot have heard the news of the selling yet?"

"The—the selling—Mr. Dalabey, not—not the selling of—my—of—oh you said—the American hasn't bought——"

"Homewood Manor be sold, sold by I, this very day, Mrs. Hanson, sold by I within the hour!" He rubbed his big red hands, "and a fair price, yes I'll admit, a fair price as things go—but sold it be, sold and done for, but not to the American gentleman—Why, Mrs. Hanson, what be the matter wi' that gel o' thine?"

For Betty had gone white, white as death, and the joy had gone out of her face and her little red lips dragged down pitifully and into her blue eyes had come tears, tears which all unnoticed trickled down her pale cheeks.

"Fair daft that maid be about that old garden!" said Mrs. Hanson. "And glad I be, Mr. Dalabey, as the place be sold, and put to orders, I hope it'll be, so this maid of mine will go no more roamin' where her haven't no business to be!"

"Ah yes, to be sure, to be sure!" Mr. Dalabey said. "To be sure," he added, "well! sold it be and, strangest of all, to a young gentleman, leastways his father, which be all the same, of the name of Homewood. There, what do 'ee think of that now? Homewood Manor sold to a Homewood, curious, eh? Well, well, I must be getting along!"

"Sold it be and a dratted good job too!" Mrs. Hanson said.

Betty crept away to her attic room under the thatched roof. Sold! Her garden sold and for ever now barred against her! No more rambles in the enchanted garden by moonlight, no more dreams in which she peopled the old garden with all those strange folk, of whom she had seen visions. And He—she would never see Him more, bending over the flower beds at his work. He whose face she had hardly seen, and yet somehow she knew that He meant so much to her. So the little maid crept to her room with bursting heart.

"Sold it be, sold it be," she whispered to herself.

CHAPTER VI

"I HATE HIM—HATE HIM I DU!"

Allan sat on the old stone seat in the warm sunshine. He watched the rioting weeds, the broken sundial, the long pathway of flagged stone leading to the grim desolate house.

He closed his eyes and opened them again, hoping to see that vision he had seen, but it came to him no more. No! there were only the weeds and the decay and the green moss.

So he sat there for a full hour and tried to force that which would not come. He could see her, in fancy, tripping down the flagged path to him, with love and tenderness in her blue eyes, that dainty little figure with the head of flaming gold and the white neck. But it was a vision that could not be forced.

So presently, disheartened and hopeless, he rose and went to the lake and stared hard at the broken stone nymph and watched the great idle fish and the sense of loss grew stronger and yet stronger on him.

Who was she who had come out of the past to kiss his eyes and to tell him that she loved him? Why should such dreams come to him? He had never dreamed in all his life before, but she had been so real, even to the little black lace mittens, black lace mittens such he had never seen on a girl's hands before. Yet he had dreamed of her and the sweet voice of her and the sweet Sussex speech and strangely enough, had he not answered her in that same speech? He remembered it now with a sudden start of surprise.

Yes, he with Eton and Oxford behind him, had spoken as she had spoken, as the old man who had told him about the broken Cross in Little Stretton had spoken.

He turned away, he made his way back through the garden. He wondered at his seeming previous knowledge of it now, for that knowledge was gone, it took him some time to find the gap where the broken wicket gate had been, but he found it and went, blundering and uncertain, across the grass grown stable yard.

He locked the battered green door behind him and thrust the great key into his coat pocket and went along the road, and on the way to the village he passed a little thatched roofed cottage and under that thatched roof a maid was lying on her little bed, face downward, weeping her heart out for the thing that he had done, yet he could not know that. How could he? He saw an old dame standing by the little gate, an upright severe old dame, with white hair and a wrinkled face, and she bobbed him a country curtsey.

To her Allan lifted his hat politely.

"A beautiful day!" he said.

"And that it be, a wunnerful fine day and hot like for May her be, sir and might—might I make bold——" she hesitated.

Allan stopped and looked at her with kindly eyes.

"You were going to ask me something?"

"Cur-us I be, which be a besetting sin!" she admitted. "But Mr. Dalabey he hev passed by just now when my maid and I—my granddarter her be, were here and he told we as he hev sold the old Manor House and I were thinking, sir, seeing the key was sticking out, of your pocket——"

Allan laughed. "Yes," he said, "you are right, I have bought it, for my father, that is——"

"A wunnerful fine place it be!" she said.

"And we shall be near neighbours, eh?"

Again she dropped a curtsey.

"'Tisn't for the like of we to be a neighbour to the like of gentry," she added, "but if any little thing I can du——"

"Be sure I will come and ask you Mrs.——"

"Hanson be my name, sir, as anyone can tell 'ee. Old this cottage be, but there never yet lived in it one whose name was not Hanson. 'Twere Hansons lived here in the days when the Elmacotts lived at the Manor, Hansons hev been servants there, always served the Elmacotts, they did, and if, sir, there be any little thing that we can du——"

"You are very good!" Allan said.

"A dear talkative old soul," he thought; he held out a friendly hand to her and she blushed at the honour and bobbed him a dozen curtseys as he went his way.

"Betty, Betty, my maid, Betty, come 'ee here, Betty, where be 'ee? Come here!" cried Mrs. Hanson, when Allan had gone.

"Here I be, Grandmother!" Betty came, a pale sorrowful faced little maiden.

"And crying 'ee've been, shame on 'ee my maid for to cry because that dirty old place hev been sold and who do 'ee think I have been talkin' wi'? Why bless 'ee wi' the young gentleman as hev bought her and a proper young gentleman he be, not above shaking hands wi' an old body like me and lifting of his hat to I, for all the world like I were a fine lady! Bless 'ee my maid, a fine, upstanding, smart, young gentleman he be, one of the quality too, aye of the quality, my maid, for mark 'ee the real quality are never above shaking hands wi' a poor body and talking pleasant to the likes o' we! 'Tis they upstarts and nobodys as looks down on poor folks! When 'ee sees him Betty, 'ee'll——"

"I never want to see him, never!" the girl cried, "Never, never, I hope I never shall see him!"

"Bless me what nonsense are 'ee talking now?"

"I never want to see him, for—for if I du, I shall hate him, hate him, aye, I hate him now, I du—hate him terribul bad, I du——"

"For shame and to your room wi' 'ee till you du come to your senses—I be ashamed o' you, Betty Hanson, that I be! Hate him indeed, hate him, a fine upstanding——"

"I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!" Betty said, and then once again, with defiance and anger and sorrow too in her blue eyes, "I hate him, I du, Grandmother!"

Mrs. Hanson lifted a rigid arm, she pointed at the door.

"To your room wi' 'ee, Betty Hanson," she said, "I be ashamed of 'ee, I be, to your room, you perilous bad maid!"

CHAPTER VII

"HOW WONDERFUL—THE WAY OF THINGS"

"Bless my soul!" Sir Josiah said, "Bless my soul!" He said it several times, there was a look of astonishment on his red round face, "Bless my soul, sir!"

He walked up and down the large and imposing room, his hands behind his back.

"And how about the drains, did you make any enquiry about the drains?

"No!" said Allan.

"No, you wouldn't, nor about the water! Is water laid on, eh, answer me that?"

"I—I don't know, father, I am afraid I—I was a bad representative!"

"It's enough to worry a man's head off," cried his father. "Here do I go trusting you to go and—and—not a thing do you know! Hand over my cheque for five hundred pounds like it was a bagatelle as the saying is. You don't know anythin' about the title deeds, nothing about the drains, nothing about the water, while you admit the state of repair of the house is somethin' disgraceful!"

"Father, I wish you had gone yourself, I told you——"

"Yes, I know, you told me I know, you did—told me you weren't no good at bargaining, and I'm afraid you were right! Here you go and—and—and——" Sir Josiah paused, a little breathlessly.

"Well, what's the place like? Just try my lad and pull yourself together and describe it!"

"Homewood Manor is——"

"What Manor?"

"Homewood—it bears the same name as we do, father!"

Sir Josiah sat down, he sat down abruptly and stared wide eyed at his son.

"Homewood——" he gasped, "Little Stretton—Homewood Manor—well, well if this don't beat anything—anything I've ever heard—Homewood——"

"It is an odd coincidence," said Allan.

"Odd coincidence, it's more—it's more. It is the very hand of Fate, that's what it is, the hand of Fate, you don't understand of course you don't——" he paused. "Allan, did you ever hear the name Pringle?"

"Pringle?" asked Allan, puzzled, "of course I have heard it, but——"

"Heard it, just heard it—eh? That's all, just heard it, mentioned and nothing more, eh?"

"It's a name I have heard, father, that's all!"

"And don't signify anything to you, nothing particular, out of the way, eh?"

"Nothing, father!"

"Bless me, bless me, you never heard me speak of Allan Pringle of The Green Gate Inn in Aldgate?"

Allan shook his head.

"A wonderful man!" said Sir Josiah. "Allan, his name was, the same as yours and Allan was his father before him and his father before him, yes Allans all along the line, till they came to me, only me they called Josiah, Josiah after Josiah Rodwell, my mother's father, hoping to get a bit out of the old man, which they never did, bless me! and never heard of Allan Pringle, you haven't?

"Queer too," Josiah rambled on, "that he should be the kind of man he was, they said of him as he could squeeze gold out of a stone and I b'lieve he could. Coming from the country, a farm hand he was and his father a gardener and his father's father a gardener, grubbing about in the earth, Allan, and yet Allan Pringle came to London, a farmer's boy and makes a little fortune!"

"But who was he?"

"My grandfather, Allan Pringle was. He laid the foundation of our fortune! My father was keen and clever, not up to the old man though. Still he did not do so badly, he left me forty thousand when he died, that's what I've been building on, Allan, and now—now—maybe it's nearer twenty times forty thousand, my boy! That comes of having a head on you—a head which you haven't got and never will have!"

"Then your name is—is Pringle?"

"Was!" said Sir Josiah. "It was my father who took the name of Homewood when he began to get on a bit and wanted to sink the aleshop, called himself Homewood after the place where his father was born and where all the family came from——"

"And it is this very place that to-day——?"

Sir Josiah nodded. "The very place!" he said. "Queer, isn't it, Allan? Very queer! When I heard the name Little Stretton, it set me thinking, but even then I didn't quite catch on. But now, Homewood Manor, why bless me, boy—my grandfather, Allan Pringle's mother, was maid in that very house and my great grandfather, Allan Pringle he was, Allan, the same as you, he and she was sweethearting, her the lady's maid, he the under gardener, and got married, they did. A wonderful pretty young woman, so I've heard and a sad story if what one hears is true, hadn't been married a year when she died when the boy was born, him as afterwards kept the Green Gate Inn in Aldgate. And now, now after all these years, Allan, here am I, buying the very house, the very house, my boy, where my great-grandfather was under gardener and my great-grandmother was lady's maid. Wonderful, isn't it? Wonderful the way of things, Allan?"

"Wonderful!" Allan said dreamily. "Very wonderful—the way of things—Father——" He turned suddenly on Sir Josiah, "This—this marriage of mine——"

"Well, what about it?"

"It—it must go on—there's no way——"

Sir Josiah stared, his round face grew redder, it turned purple. "Way," he shouted, "to what? Are you going to kick against it now? Are you going to, to turn everything down now? But—but you can't do it—you can't do it! If you do I'll never forgive you, never to my dying day and after and then—think of her ladyship—Lady Kathleen, do you mean you want to back out of it, Allan, now?"

Allan did not answer, he stared out of the window, he did not see the gloomy London Square, he saw a garden, sweet with flowers and down the paved pathway a little maid with sunkissed hair and eyes as blue as the Heavens came tripping towards him.

"Allan, Allan," she said, "my dear, I love you so!"

"Allan you—you can't do it!" Sir Josiah's old voice trembled, he came and put a hand on Allan's shoulder. "It—it isn't as if it was only a promise to me, to me now, it's a promise to her, you can't shame and disgrace her—Lady Kathleen—you can't—by—by Heaven you can't! Allan, it isn't a thing that even I'd do, much less a gentleman like you!"

"I understand, father, I understand that, it—it must go on, I shall not back out of it as you say—it shall go on!"

"Ah!" Sir Josiah said, "ah, a lady, an Earl's daughter, Lady Kathleen Homewood of Homewood Manor, that sounds good, Allan boy, eh? Sounds good, don't it? I can hear myself saying it at the Club—my daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen Homewood! No, you can't back out of it now, Allan, I'd never forgive you if you did—Besides, why should you? Last night, you weren't against it, Allan——"

"Last night," Allan said, "last night——" he paused. How far away seemed last night! Sir Josiah was watching him anxiously and Allan smiled.

"Yes, I understand, it must go on now, but—last night—was last night!"

CHAPTER VIII

"KATHLEEN—DO YOU REMEMBER?"

My lady sat with her chin in her hand, her dressing gown had slipped over the polished loveliness of her white shoulders, on which the soft dark brown of her hair fell in heavy glistening curls.

She had sat here for many minutes, her thoughts away in the past. Now she stirred, she sighed a little, she roused herself and laughed wearily, then reached out a white hand and took a ring from the dressing table. A magnificent ring, one of immense value, a ring worthy of her and of the man who had put it on her finger, yet she doubted if Allan had bought it. It looked in its ostentatious magnificence more like his father, somehow, and she shivered suddenly and cast the ring aside. And then laughed again a queer, uncertain, trembling little laugh that might have sounded naturally enough from the lips of a maiden of eighteen, but which came a little oddly from the lips of a woman of twenty-eight.

But to-night her eyes were soft and misty. To-night memory was there, tapping at the door of her soul. "You can't shut me out," it seemed to say, "close the door, bolt it, bar it against me, but you can't shut out memory, you never, never can! Fight against me, but I am always here, always ready to come to you—a chance word, a chance gesture, the scent of a flower or a perfume, the music of an old song and though you think you have locked the door against me, see I am back again! Listen, even the ticking of the clock—the little clock on your mantel. Kathleen, do you remember how the clock ticked that night when you—you and he——"

She threw out her hands suddenly, she rose, a tall, queenly young figure.

"The past is past, is dead and will remain dead!" she said, then she crossed the room, and very resolutely she unlocked a drawer, from the drawer took a little steel japanned box, she unlocked it and from it took a packet of letters.

Should she read them before she destroyed them? Should she? No, and yet she hesitated—the strength and resolution of a moment ago were gone, she sat down and toyed with the ribbon that held the papers together.

"Just for the last time," she said, "and then I shall forget them utterly!" So she untied the ribbon and took the letters one by one and read them and the misty look in her eyes seemed to grow more soft and more gentle and there came a sweet womanly tenderness to her lips that the world until now had thought a little hard and contemptuous.

Is there not some little packet of old letters jealously hidden away in your possession? Haven't you treasured just one or two? Open the packet with reverent fingers, touch them gently, for here are holy things!

A child's unformed hand, the unsteady letters yet so neatly and so carefully made. Can't you see him as he makes them? that little chubby fist, that somehow cannot hold the pen in just the way the master says it must be held.

Can't you see the little curly head leaning a little to one side? Slowly he forms the great round "Os" and fashions the long tailed "Ys" and does his honest best to keep them fair and square upon the pencilled line that even now you can see ruled faintly on the old paper?

A child's letter, a little odd glove, a lock of yellow hair, his hair! Only these, but they bring back memories, don't they? Do you remember—? Ah, can you forget? When you held him so tightly in your arms that day—when he went away for ever. Such a great strong fellow, so brave, so confident of the future! How he looked into that future with clear shining eyes, eyes that were unafraid.

"Dear, it is all right, I shall come back to you, safe and sound!" So he said, and then the waiting, the agony of it, the long suspense, the silence, the hourly prayers to Almighty God that all might be well with him—and then—then the news—that came at last!

And all that you have now is the child's letter—the little glove and the curl of yellow hair.

And there are other letters, yours, Kathleen. I wonder did he think when he wrote them ten long years ago that you would be sitting here to-night reading them over yet once again? I wonder, did he think that those letters of his could bring the tears to your eyes, Kathleen? Did he dream when in his eagerness and his passion and his love for you, as he penned them, never weighing his words, only eager to pour out his soul to you, that you would keep them and cherish them all these years, Kathleen, only to destroy them at last?

The unsteady writing fades and is gone. Your eyes through a mist of tears see a young, ardent, boyish face, you see eyes that plead and are filled with a hope that fights valiantly against despair. Those hastily scrawled, passionate words are as voices that come to you out of the past, voices that remind you of how he loved you once—when you were but eighteen!

There came from the little clock on, the mantel a whirring sound, then it struck One—Two—She lifted her head for a moment, there was a step on the stairs outside, her father come home from the Club, he passed her door.

A mist was before her eyes, the letters were all blurred and indistinct, the writing—she could no longer see, yet, she knew every word written there. How many times had she read them over and over and yet over again!

And what need to read them when, she knew them so well? Would she ever forget them? So many pages, so closely written and yet all that had been said, could have been said in but three words, three short words, "I love you!"

So she sat there with the letters all in a heap in her lap, and her head bowed.

Memory—Memory was monarch of all to-night. Memory ruled and reigned supreme.

That night, do you remember, Kathleen? The night when the raindrops pattered on the glossy leaves of the magnolia that grew beneath your window? Do you remember how he stood there looking up at you, the light from your lamp on his face? Do you remember? And that day, the day you met him by the end of the lane and put your hand in his and went with him down the long road? Do you remember? And then again——

She moved suddenly, she flung her head back, her face was white and drawn and there was agony in her eyes. She rose suddenly and thrust the letters into the empty grate, she bent over them and struck a match and watched them burn.

And then, when the last was turned to grey and black ash, she went back to the table and took up the great expensive, glittering ring, the ring that represented more money than He had ever owned. And so she turned it over and over between her white fingers and laughed suddenly. But the laughter was not good to hear.

CHAPTER IX

HOW SIR JOSIAH OPENED HIS PURSE

Sir Josiah garaged his two thousand guinea car in the old coach house of "The Fighting Cocks" Inn. He ordered a sumptuous repast in that antique house of call, the best and the oldest wines must be brought up from the cellars for him.

A keen money getter, yet he was at heart a very generous man. The respect, the bobbing curtseys, the doffed hats and smiling faces here at Little Stretton delighted him. He felt just a thrill of regret that he had bought the old place for Allan rather than for himself. He had an idea that he would make a far better and more imposing Lord of the Manor than Allan.

In the City of London he was "somebody," but here in little quiet out of the world Little Stretton, he was "everybody."

Mr. Dalabey fawned on him, he fetched and carried, he was hat in hand. A cunning, artful fellow Mr. Dalabey, he sized Sir Josiah up, he called him "Squire," and Sir Josiah glowed with satisfaction.

"A good feller, that Dalabey, a sensible man!" Sir Josiah said to Allan, "a useful feller!" It puzzled the Baronet that his son refused to accompany him on his many trips to Little Stretton and Homewood. Allan went once, and on that once he was moody and silent. While his father stamped about the house and thrust the blade of his pen-knife into suspicious woodwork, Allen held aloof, he went out into the old garden by himself and stood staring at the battered nymph, whose slim stone figure was reflected in the dark pool. He sat down, on the old mossy stone seat in the great circle about the sundial and stared at the weeds and decay, and somehow the desolation of the place seemed to creep into his heart. He was glad to get away.

He loved his father, he knew what a fine old fellow he was at heart, what noble and generous impulses he was capable of. But to-day his father's loud self-confident voice, his intense self-satisfaction, his huge importance, Dalabey's servility all irked him. He was intensely glad to leave Homewood behind him and thereafter he always found some excuse that prevented him from accompanying Sir Josiah on his many visits to Homewood.

So the Baronet came and gave his orders to Dalabey and to the builders and decorators and the gardeners, and he spent money like water.

"When I do things, I don't half do things, eh Dalabey?" Sir Josiah enquired.

"No, that you don't, Squire, beg your pardon, Sir Josiah!" said Dalabey. "Never was such a free and open handed gentleman, sir!"

"Your Mr. Van Norden wouldn't have done the thing in such style, eh?" enquired Sir Josiah.

"No, sir, not to be thought of, not for a moment, Squire!"

It meant thousands, yet what did thousands matter to Sir Josiah with his hundreds of thousands? He spent and spent, he was extravagant. Before, as he said himself, one could say "Jack Robinson," he had an army of workpeople slaving at the place, and he walked about the house and garden and saw his men doing his work and drawing his pay, and for the first time in his life he felt himself a really great man.

And once—once his forebears had delved and dug this very soil that was now his own! Once for a few miserable shillings a week had they turned over the sweet brown earth over which he was lord and master.

In Little Stretton, in Homewood, at Bargate and Bushcorner, and all the little villages round about, there were smiling faces and curtseys for him and he was utterly unconscious that one pair of blue eyes grew hard and bitter and one red lipped mouth curled with contempt and dislike, that in one soft little breast a usually tender little heart was filled with hate for him. For this was the mab who had bought "her" garden, and who was spoiling it, spoiling it so that it would never, never again, be as it hud been. With one wave of his thick hand he had banished all those dear ghosts of the past who had been her friends, even more her friends than the honest, red faced rustics who were very much real flesh and blood, and who regarded her with commiserating eyes as a "queer" maid.

Oozing satisfaction and gold, Sir Josiah was beloved of everyone save of this unreasonable little maid, who hated his jolly round red face and loathed the sound of his loud and domineering voice.

"Get some of them old trees cut down and out of the way, Dalabey, get all this tangle rooted out of it and get that wall pointed, yes that's what it wants—pointing, make it look smart—and Dalabey——"

"Yes, Squire?"

"How about some broken class along the top of the walls? We don't want people climbing over and trespassing, Dalabey!"

"Certainly, Squire, broken glass!"

So on moonlight nights broken glass, securely set in cement, glittered and twinkled like a line of frost along the top of the walls and the little maid looked at it with bursting heart and a terrible sense of loss.

"Very sullen, not to say quiet, my granddarter du be getting," said Mrs. Hanson to Mrs. Colley, her neighbour.

"Maids du get that way," said Mrs. Colley. "'Tis a home of her own her be pining for—gone eighteen your maid be, Mrs. Hanson?"

"Gone eighteen Feb'ry last," said Mrs. Hanson.

"Then time it is her was married and in a home of her own, with, things to look after to keep her hands and her mind full! Marriage be the right and proper and nat'ral thing for young maids of her years——"

"And her not wanting for chances," said Mrs. Hanson; "why she hev but to hold up her finger and there be a dozen ready to run to she!"

Mrs. Colley wagged her head. "And who be they?" she asked jealously, for she had a granddaughter of her own who was as yet unappropriated. "There be Tom Spinner, who du be spending his evenings in the bar of the Three Ploughs, and Bob Domer, a nice ne'er-do-well he, and young Frank Peasgood as du make eyes at every maid he sees. Why I did order him the door myself when he would have come a-courting my 'Lizbeth."

"And there be Abram Lestwick," said Mrs. Hanson, "who be a fine and proper young man, reg'lar to Church, one as walks in fear of the Lord and no beer drinker, nor smoker neither, and a steady worker with a nice cottage of his own, and standing high with Farmer Patcham. Aye, there be Abram Lestwick as would kneel down and kiss the very floor my maid treads on!"

Mrs. Colley sniffed. She had had designs on Abram Lestwick herself for her 'Lizbeth, but Abram had always stolidly passed her inviting door by and never had be given a second glance to sallow faced, black haired, shrewish tempered 'Lizbeth Colley.

"Too mysterious he be and too quiet and sullen like, I count him, for a young man. I like young men as enjoys life, not such as walks about with a book in his pocket and scarce ever takes his eyes from the ground. Fair and square and open I du like young men to be, Mrs. Hanson, and as for your Abram Lestwick, I give him to you, I du!"

"Very gen'rous you be, givin' what bain't yours to give!" said Mrs. Hanson with spirit; "and thank you kindly, I be sure, Mrs. Colley!"

So they parted, not the best of friends, but into Mrs. Hanson's mind had come an image of Betty settling down with Abram Lestwick as her partner, and that same evening she opened fire on Betty with:

"A very proper young man be Abram Lestwick, a pity 'tis there bain't a few more like he!"

Betty made no answer.

"And very frequent he du pass this cottage, whiles round by Perry's medder be the nearest and nighest way for he."

"Well, what about Abram Lestwick, Grandmother?"

"I du believe, Betty, he hev serious intentions," said the old lady, "and a nice little cottage, well furnished and steady money coming in, not less than thirty-five shillings every week, as would make a maid happy and comfortable."

Betty sprang to her feet, her face flushed, her eyes seemed to dart points of light.

"What do 'ee mean, Grandmother? Be 'ee goading I to marry Abram Lestwick? Do 'ee want to get rid o' I, is that it?"

"Bless me, my maid, what tantrums 'ee do fly into!" cried the astonished old body. "Wherever did 'ee get thy temper from I don't know, a peaceful soul thy mother was and thy father being my own son, was as easy a man as ever trod and here be 'ee, my maid, with a hot temper, of which I be ashamed, and down on your knees and ask God to forgive 'ee and make a better maid of 'ee!"

"I shan't!" said Betty.

Mrs. Hanson rose: "'Tis the first time as ever 'ee said shan't to me, Betty Hanson, and after this I be determined and my mind be made up—marry Abram Lestwick 'ee shall!"

"No, no!"

"Or out through that door do 'ee go, never was there a maid so bad and so ungrateful as 'ee be. Go to your room and consider of things, Betty Hanson, till 'ee be come to a better frame of mind!"

CHAPTER X

CONFIDENCES

When Sir Josiah had enquired of Mr. Dalabey how long it would take to put Homewood into the order in which he desired to see it, Mr. Dalabey had scratched his head.

"Three months, maybe four, and I shouldn't he s'prised, seeing how powerful a lot there du be to du, no I shouldn't be s'prised, Squire, if it warn't five months, aye, all five months I should say it would be!"

"And now, listen to me, Dalabey," said Sir Josiah, "two months I say, and not a minute longer, two mouths I give you and if the last workman isn't out of the house and the last bit of timber and papering and what not in and done with, the garden straight and all the rest of it, then I'll get someone else to do my work for me, Dalabey!"

"Har!" said Dalabey.

"And it's not money I'm stinting you of, my man, get twenty more men at work on the place, I don't care, get as many as you can handle, but two months is the time I give you and then I clear you all out, lock, stock and barrel. So get busy, Dalabey my man, if you wish to remain in my good graces."

Dalabey got busy. He hired more painters and carpenters and joiners, more labourers and gardeners, stone masons and brick layers till Homewood was given over to a small industrial army, of which Dalabey was the indefatigable general.

There was no slacking at Homewood, Dalabey saw to that, he was here, there and everywhere. He himself was doing very well, he had no cause to complain, he charged his own time very handsomely and there were other pickings besides. But he worked, he was honest at least in that, and he made the others work. A week did wonders, a fortnight shewed an amazing change, at the end of the first month Sir Josiah nodded approval.

"Getting to be something like shipshape, Dalabey," he said. "And you got talking to me about five months, here we ain't been five weeks on the job and look you——"

"You be right, Squire, and I were wrong," said Dalabey humbly.

In one thing at least Dalabey was to be highly complimented. He was out to "restore" the old place, to make it look as nearly like it had been in the time of the Elmacotts as possible. He introduced no newfangled ideas and innovations, no modern improvements, except of course the power plant and the dynamo and the huge collection of storage cells which were to light the old house with electricity. Except for the electric lighting outfit, the old house was to look so like its old own and original self that had an eighteenth century Elmacott come to life and walked in through the hall door, he would not have been in the least surprised by anything he saw.

In the garden Dalabey had a very able lieutenant in old Markabee.

"Restore," said Dalabey, "find out all the lines of the old beds and borders and replace 'em, clean up the stone work, but not too much. You got to remember, Markabee, as time du meller things, an old garden this be and an old garden it hev got to remain, mark that, Markabee. It have got to look like, so be as if a gentleman in powdered wig and silk stockings and maybe a sword at his side were to come strolling down yon path, a-taking snuff out of his box and walking with a lady in hoops, Markabee, and patches and her hair all done high and whitened, as—as you wouldn't take, it to be the Fifth of November, Markabee, you get the hang of my meaning?"

"I du!" said Markabee, and he did his work well.

Inch by inch the old ground was reclaimed, the old yew hedge was clipped and trimmed, till it began to assume a faint suggestion of its once fanciful shape, the grass was scythed and weeded and patched and rolled and mowed. The weeds were torn up from the crevices in the old pathway of stone, but Markabee was artist enough to leave many a flower blooming where perhaps a flower should not have been.

The stonemasons and the rest would have pulled down and replaced the little stone nymph, but Dalabey ordered them off sternly.

"You leave yon maid alone, her be in keeping wi' the old place, her be! Too true some o' they weeds might be cleared off the pond, Markabee, but there be a line beyond which no one must go, so let the stone maid bide!"

So the little nymph was left in her old place, and the sunlight kissed her white stone shoulders, and dappled the slender little stone body with splashes of vivid brightness, and, little by little, the old garden came back to its own again. The weeds were all gone and the flowers bloomed, and the June sunshine and the June showers made the grass green and pleasant to the sight.

Meanwhile Allan stayed away; he was in London and his time was not unpleasantly employed.

He was too healthy and too young to brood over what after all had been merely a dream. It had been wonderfully real and wonderfully tender and beautiful while it had lasted. He had come back to reality with a sense of loss and a heartache for the little maid who had looked at him with such love in her blue eyes, who had put her arms about, his neck and called him her dear and kissed his eyes. Very, very real it had been and for many a day and many a night he could not put it out of his memory.

But this was to-day and there was all the world about him and he was to be married to a girl who was beautiful and good, and for whom he felt a liking and admiration that bordered on real affection.

Most of all he felt sorry for her, why he hardly knew, sometimes when she did not know that he was looking at her, there was a sadness about her eyes, a sad pensive little droop to her lips, which was gone all in a moment if he spoke to her.

There was a very comfortable understanding between them. They were going to be man and wife very soon, in the natural course of events they would have to live their lives together. They were beginning that life with mutual regard, liking and friendship. Love and passion were entirely absent.

"I am old, Allan," Kathleen said, "much, much older than you dear, in every way, not only in years, but——" she paused.

"In suffering and knowledge!" she might have said, but did not.

"You will never be old, I think," he said, he took her hand. "Kathleen, we understand one another. I—I'm a clumsy fellow, clumsy and slow of speech. I belong to a different world from yours!"

She shook her head.

"I am not going to apologise for my people, for in my heart I am proud of them. They were nothing and nobodies and they have made a place for themselves in the world—I love my father, honour and respect him, though I know, I know that you in your heart cannot like him."

"Your father is kind and generous, mine cynical and selfish, I think that you are richer in this matter than I am, Allan, but——"

It was the first night of a new play. London was still full, the season had not waned, the new play was dull and lifeless, the audience was yawning consumedly. These two had retired to the back of the box which Lord Gowerhurst had quitted just now and found more interest in discussing their own affairs than in following the fortunes of the characters on the boards.

Kathleen was looking wonderfully, regally beautifully to-night, and Allan was looking—what he was—an honest, clean living, stalwart young Englishman, whose dress clothes sat well on his shapely body. Son of the people he might be, but he was not a man to feel shame for.

"I do not disguise anything from myself, Allan, nor from you. I want to feel that you are my friend, that you are the friend I can come to and open my heart and speak to plainly as I might to one who is truly and indeed my friend!"

He pressed her hand by way of answer.

"I've wanted this opportunity to speak to you, it has come unexpectedly, but I shall speak now," she paused. "Our marriage was only a bargain, a very sordid bargain, and it—it hurt me at first, it hurt me a great deal. I—I hated myself, despised myself for agreeing to it, but since then, since I have come to know you better and understand you better, Allan, I think we can make something more of our lives than most others similarly placed might. I do not love you, my dear, and I know that you do not love me—No, don't speak yet, Allan, let me say what I have to say! Years ago there was someone—I was scarcely more than a child and I loved him very, very truly, very deeply. He was poor and so was I, marriage was impossible. He—went, away, I have never seen him since and I shall never see him again—the night we became engaged—you and I—I burned his letters. It hurt a little, Allan, but I did it, dear, because I want to come to you without a secret on my soul. I want to lay my heart bare to you. I want to look you in the face, to take your hand, knowing that I am keeping nothing back from you, knowing there is no secret that might lead to bitterness and anger and perhaps even to dislike. Though I feel very, very old sometimes, Allan, I know that I am young yet; we are both young, there are many years before us in the natural course of events. All those years we must spend together, so we will be truthful and frank and honest with each other and keeping our own self-respect, dear, we shall keep our respect for one another."

He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

"You are a good, sweet, woman, Kathleen!" he said.

She laughed a little, very softly, "And you, Allan, have you nothing to tell me?"

"Nothing!" he said, yet hesitated and smiled to himself.

"I think there is something——" she said, "was there never even for a little while, someone!"

"Yes," he said, "a girl who called me her dear, who looked at me with loving tender blue eyes, who put her arms about my neck and kissed me——"

"Oh Allan, and yet——"

"Wait!" he said, he smiled, he still held her hand. "To me she was the most wonderful, the most lovely thing I ever saw, I loved her with all my heart——"

Kathleen would have drawn her hand away, gently, yet have drawn it away, but he, smiling down at her, would not let the little hand go.

"But she was not real, she was only a dream maiden. I never thought to tell anyone, Kathleen, but will you listen to me?"

"Yes!"

And so, still holding her hand, he told her.

"That was a very wonderful dream, Allan," she said.

"It was a very wonderful dream, and when I looked about me and saw all the weeds and the desolation, then I felt as if I had lost something—as if——"

"I understand!" she said. She was pensive and thoughtful. "What can it mean? Why should such a dream be sent to you? There was some meaning behind it, something—I wish I knew!"

"It was only a dream, and I am trying to forget it, perhaps I have nearly forgotten it—the sense of loss is passing away—not quite——"

She looked at him. "It will never quite pass, I think," she said. "Allan," she hesitated, "Allan, if—if it ever became real, if someone else, someone who awakened your heart ever came into your life——"

"I should remember that you are——"

"No, no, listen, I want you to promise me something, to promise me on your honour, and I know that I can trust that—if such a thing comes to you, if the real love that may come that comes into nearly every man's life does come—Allan, will you tell me, frankly, as one friend to another, will you tell me, dear?"

"I promise," he said, "and you, Kathleen!"

"It—it came—it can never come again—I was only a child, but he was all my world. I have never seen him since and shall never see him again——"

"But if you did—then will you tell me, will you be less frank with me than I with you?"

"No!" she said. "I will tell you, I promise, if—but it never, never will, still, if—if it should—then I promise, always we will be frank with one another!"

"Always!" he said.

Lord Gowerhurst opened the door of the box and closed it very softly behind him.

"Ah!" he said, "quite so; you are wise, the play is not the thing—it is rubbish—I am sorry for the author, I am sorry for the management, but as usual I am sorry most of all for myself. You two young people have something more interesting to discuss. I don't blame you! No, hang me, I don't blame you! Now I'll confess, I met Lumeyer, an excellent fellow, one who knows of good things, he put me on to one 'The Stelling Reef Gold Mine,' shares bound to go up. I've a good mind to have a flutter. By the way, Allan, where's your father? Our worthy and excellent Baronet!"

Allan flushed. He always did when his Lordship spoke of his father. Unintentional it might be, but there was always a suggestion of a sneer in the cultivated voice of the man whose pockets were at this moment supplied with the Baronet's money.

"My father is at Little Stretton to-day and staying over night, he is very busy down there at Homewood, sir, our—my—our future home—he takes a great interest in it and is doing the place up thoroughly!"

"An excellent man, you're lucky to have such a father!"

"I never lose sight of that fact, my lord!" Allan said gravely.

"Quite right, quite right—would to Heaven——" his lordship said tragically, "would to Heaven Kathleen could say the same! She can't, she can't, sir, too deuced honest to tell lies! She is like her sainted Mother! Bless me this drivel doesn't seem to be shaping for a finish. Supposing we clear out, eh? What about a snack of supper at Poligninis?"

Kathleen rose, "I would prefer to go home," she said, "I am tired to-night!" She looked at Allan, her eyes were very bright, very kind and friendly.

"My dear child," said his lordship, "at Poligninis they have some eighty-seven Heidsick, which I regard practically as my own property. It is never offered to casual customers. Polignini is an excellent fellow who appreciates my taste and keeps it for me," he paused.

"I am tired and I shall go home!" Kathleen said briefly.

"I will see you home!" Allan said.

His lordship shrugged his shoulders. "So be it, I will go to my lonely caravanserie and a frugal meal. I'm an old fellow, an old fellow, I realise that youth must be served!" He waved a white hand. "Youth, youth!" he said. "How lightly we hold it when it is ours, how we even resent it, and how, when it is lost to us forever, do we worship and yearn and long for it. Oh the happy, goutless indigestionless days of our long since fled youth, how precious they were! And how ill spent! Give me my lost youth back again, as I think it was Faust, remarked, and what would I do with it? I am afraid, my dears, I would do with it exactly as I did with it before. We never learn wisdom! Adieu mes enfants, bon repos, my Kathleen! May angels guard thee and bring happy dreams! Allan, dear lad, good night, my respectful compliments to the Baronet, an old man, my dears, and a lonely; I realise that youth is impatient of garrulous though well intentioned age! Good night once again!" He waved his hand and the box door closed on him, he was gone.

Kathleen sighed a little, she looked at Allan with a queer smile on her lips.

"Yes, I think Allan," she said, "you are more fortunate than I, and now, dear, I am tired, I am going home—to bed!"

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH SIR JOSIAH PROVES HIMSELF A GENTLEMAN

St. George's, Hanover Square, had always been at the back of Sir Josiah's mind. His lordship had favoured St. Margaret's, Westminster. July was nearly out, London was emptying, if not emptied of people who really count, which was a great disappointment to Sir Josiah. But Homewood was nearly complete, the old gentleman walked through the transformed and glorious rooms, he looked through sound windows into a garden that was a delight to see with never a weed to mar its perfection. He took Montague Davenham, the celebrated art dealer, down with him to see the place.

"There you are, you ought to have seen it two months ago, you'd never believe, a ruin it was!" said Sir Josiah. "Fairly hopeless it looked, said I, keep to the old lines! It's an old house and you've got to make it look like an old house, but a well kept one, renew and restore! If you take away a piece of old moulding that's gone rotten, put back a new piece shaped the same, nothing new, that was my instructions, and they have carried 'em out, and now the rest's up to you, Mr. Davenham. I don't pretend to know what I don't know. But I do know this, that if you were to put say bamboo furniture and Japanese fans and umbrellas in this here old room with that ceiling and them panelled walls, why they'd be out of place, you wouldn't go and make a mistake like that! I've got money, I don't deny, and this house has been a bit of a hobby with me. I want to see it looking like it should look, so just take a look round, make up your mind and put the right stuff into it!"

"My dear sir, if every rich man were as wise as you, the world would certainly look a great deal more pleasant than it does. The house will form an admirable setting for furnishings of the right period. I compliment you on the manner in which the work has been done. I couldn't have done it better myself, the garden in particular is delightful, simply delightful!"

"Markabee here, done it, under Dalabey, a useful man. Dalabey, I don't know what I'd done without him, but it's ready for you now. Mr. Davenham, get ahead, get the place fixed up as it should be, the right furniture, the right decorations. Keep the price reasonable, I don't say stint, nor I don't say launch out too wildly. I leave it to you!"

"It is a commission that I accept with a great deal of pleasure. I think and hope that I shall please you and at a not too terrible expenditure!"

"Get ahead with it!" Sir Josiah said.

"Fine feller Davenham!" he said to Allan. "Knows his business; one thing you'll have a house that you needn't be ashamed to shew to anyone, a fit setting, my boy, a fit setting for a very sweet and lovely young lady, bless her heart, and a lucky fellow you are!"

"To have such a father!" Allan said, in all honest sincerity.

"Bless you, bless you, it's been a pleasure, I don't know when I've put myself heart and soul into a thing like I've done into this! I'm almost sorry I've put it in Davenham's hands now, but then he knows what's right and I don't. Now about the wedding, Allan! His lordship and me was talking last night. Something about St. Margaret's, Westminster, he said. 'I beg your pardon, my lord,' I said. 'St. Georges, Hanover Square, if you don't mind.' I've set my heart on it, Allan; I always had an idea I'd like you to be married at Hanover Square; there's something solid about the very name of it, right down respectable!" he paused. "Then, for the reception afterwards, I'm for taking the Whitehall Rooms at——"

"Father, I want to speak to you!" Allan said. "I—I hate to disappoint you, but in this matter I think the first person to be considered is Kathleen!"

"Bless me, and so it is! What she says goes!"

"She wishes the wedding to be very quiet, very quiet indeed; she wants only our own selves there, my father and hers and no one besides!"

"Why—why, bless me, bless my soul! You don't mean to say——" Sir Josiah's face was almost pitiful.

"She asked me last night, she begged me to side with her and uphold her wishes and I promised. I—I know, father, it's a disappointment to you, but we can't go against her, can we?"

"No, no, we can't go against her, that's right, right enough, no we can't go against her—never think of such a thing, I wouldn't, but I'd a thought that a young girl with all her friends would have liked——"

"It cannot be too quiet for her! And I promised to speak to you about it. Her father is very angry, unnecessarily angry, he spoke to her sharply, almost rudely in my presence last night, in a way——" Allan paused, "that my father would not have spoken to a woman!" he added proudly.

Sir Josiah gripped Allan's hand. "You—you're right, the little girl shall have her way, tell her; give her my love, Allan, and tell her what she says goes. As for his Lordship, his Lordship can—can go to the Dickens——"

Allan smiled. "I think his Lordship has been making for that quarter all his life!"

It was a bitter blow to the Baronet, but he took it like a man. He had counted on a gorgeous spectacle, for which he had been very willing to find the money. He had counted on portraits of the bride and bridegroom and bridegroom's father, to say nothing of the bride's father in the fashionable illustrated papers, as well as the daily illustrated press. He had cut out paragraphs from the Times and the Morning Post.

"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. Allan Homewood, only son of Sir Josiah Homewood, Bart., of Homewood, Sussex, and the Lady Kathleen Nora Stanwys, only daughter of the Earl of Gowerhurst."

He had cut out these news items and carried them about with him and shewn them to Jobson and Cuttlewell and Smith and Priestly (of Priestly, Nicholson and Coombe), and others of his City cronies. How proud he had been of them, how he had beamed and swelled with pride! He had hinted that he might ask—might possibly—ask Priestley and the rest to witness the ceremony. It had not been an actual promise, but next door to it, made by him in a moment of joyous enthusiasm following a good lunch and a bottle of excellent port.

And now the marriage was to be a small quiet affair, it was a blow, but he took it like a man! He sought out Kathleen, he took her hand and held it in his moist palm.

"My dear, Allan's told me, he says you're all for a quiet wedding; well I did reckon on something a bit slap up and stylish and like that, but if you're set on a quiet wedding, my dear——"

"I am, I want it very much, Allan understands," she said.

"Then, bless you, my dear, so it shall be, as quiet as you like! It's for you to say, what you say goes with me, Allan told you, that's right—why tears—my dear? Tears! Bless me, my lady, my dear, don't cry!"

"You are very good to me, now I understand why Allan is—is what he is, the fine man he is! He is like his father!"

"Like—like me—bless my soul, Allan like me, my love! My lady I mean—I'm a common old chap! Allan's a gentleman, I made up my mind I'd do my best for him and I done it—I'm what I am, my King, God bless him, saw fit to make a "Sir" of me, but that don't make a gentleman of me, my dear, and I know it!"

"I am going to be frank with you, truthful," Kathleen said. "I am going to—to hurt you perhaps, and then I am going to try and make amends for it—" She paused. "When my father first spoke of my marriage, my marriage with Allan, I shuddered at the thought of it—not because of Allan, but because of you!"

"I know, I know," he said sadly. "I ain't everyone's money, but——"

"No, listen, I looked down on you. I thought you were vulgar and purseproud and boastful, and, oh, I thought a thousand evil things of you and pretended to shudder when your name was mentioned!"

"My dear, I know, I know; don't, tell me more—I know!"

"But I am going to tell you more, I am going to tell you this!" She caught his hand and held it. "It isn't what you have given and what you are giving us, it isn't money—oh you know that, don't you? I was wrong, wrong all the time! I know you better now and I like and respect you and I envy Allan his father—yes, envy him his father and so I have told him and—please kiss me because I am going to be your daughter, aren't I? And because I want you to like me and be my friend!"

"God bless me!" he said. "God bless my—oh, my lady, my, my dear—Kiss you? I'd be proud and happy!"

She laughed a little, she held up her face, there were tears on her lashes. "Then kiss me, Allan's father!" she said.

My Lord had counted on an expensive and fashionable wedding, even more than Sir Josiah had. He had specially ordered a frock coat of a peculiar and delicate shade of grey, which would become him handsomely. That he would easily outshine everyone present he knew with certainty. He would give his daughter away, everyone would remark on his appearance, the exquisite sensibility that would mark his every action. They would not compare him with the Baronet, it was no question of comparison. People would see with their own eyes how immeasurably superior he was to Sir Josiah.

That the limelight would be mainly on himself, His Lordship had decided. He had even rehearsed the part he would play. He would be the tender, loving father, heart-broken and bereaved at losing his darling child, and yet he would bear up bravely, carry himself proudly, with a touch of tender gaiety. His speech at the reception he had written and re-written—and now he was in a furious passion, shaking with rage, he sought out Kathleen and swore viciously at her.

"What devil's tomfoolery is this?" he shouted. "What new pose have we here? What's this confounded rotten, absurd business about, a twopenny ha'penny housemaid's wedding, hey? Haven't I asked, unofficially of course, but asked all the same a hundred people? Haven't Bellendon and the Cathcarts and—and George Royhills and his wife practically delayed their departure from Town for this wedding, and now—now what rotten nonsense have you got in your head now, hey?"

She eyed him steadily. "Please don't swear at me, father?" she said. "There is no need. I asked Allan——"

"Asked Allan, hang and confound Allan! Ain't I anyone? Don't I count? I'm only your father! Haven't I planned this for you, haven't I cherished the idea of making you a rich woman, haven't I——?" He paused, floundering wildly in his fury.

"I asked Allan to humor me, I wanted a very quiet wedding, he was quite willing, as eager as I almost. He spoke to his father and his father has agreed——"

"His father! that confounded old City shark, that common, vulgar old brute, who—who——"

"Whom you are very pleased and glad to take money from, who has treated me with every kindness and respect and gave way at once to my wishes, though they were opposed to his own. Yes, a common old man, but generous and kind and good and—and I could wish, I could wish that my father was as fine a gentleman!" And with a stately curtsey, she left him.

"Well, I'll be damned!" His Lordship said in utter amazement.

CHAPTER XII

THE HANDS OF ABRAM LESTWICK

"You've got my wishes, Abram, you have!" said Mrs. Hanson.

He nodded. "I know," he said gloomily.

Abram Lestwick was of that curious, foreign type that one comes on unexpectedly in our English country villages. He was about thirty-two years of age, five feet nine in height and of a strong wiry build. His complexion was swarthy, the skin sallow and drawn with a strange suggestion of tightness, over the high and prominent cheek bones. The eyes were small, black and very bright and deeply set beneath heavy brows. No razor had ever touched the lower part of his face, which was covered with a thin and straggling growth of coarse black hair, that could scarcely be described as a "beard," for so thinly and far apart did the hairs grow that the contour of a weak chin was clearly visible.

The whole appearance of the man suggested nervous unquiet and restlessness, which particularly found expression in the constant agitation of his hands. He had a restless, nervous habit of fingering things within his reach.

At this moment he was sitting on the one "easy" chair at Mrs. Hanson's little parlour. He had dragged down the antimacassar that usually adorned the chair back and was plucking at the threads and rolling the edge of it into a tight curl. Mrs. Hanson watched his face; she did not look at his hands. There was something hateful about Abram Lestwick's hands, the fingers were long, flexible and thin, save at the ends, where they suddenly thickened out and flattened in a strange, unsightly manner. But it was their restlessness, their never ceasing movement that was so remarkable. Never for a moment were they still.

Mrs. Hanson, favouring the young man, yet knew she hated his hands!

"I feel, I du," she said to herself, "as I want to scream if I set and watch them, but I du know he be a good man and a hard worker, with no love for the alehouse and reg'lar to Church and like to make Betty a good husband, and after all, what du a man's hands matter? So be as he du work with them and earn his living honourable and upright in the state of life which it du please God to call him!"

"I've got your wishes, I hev," he said, "I know that, but what be the use of your wishes to me, Mrs. Hanson, so I haven't got Betty's liking?"

"You mustn't take too much notice of the maid; maids be strange and fickle things, aye and vain they be! The man as praises a maid to her face and tells her she be nice looking be the one as goes best with they!"

"What do 'ee want I to do?" he said sullenly. "I know there beain't a maid to compare wi' Betty, there beain't one as be fit to tie her shoes!" A dull red crept into his checks, his voice shook, his fingers worked more nervously and more rapidly at the destruction of the antimacassar.

"Slow of speech I be," he said thickly, "and difficult it du be for me to find words—there be a thousand things I would say to she—they be here all in my brain, but my tongue won't utter them! I—I try—" he paused, choking, "I try, I look at she dumblike and stupid and knowing it, aye, curse it, knowing it!" His voice rose, he wrenched at the antimacassar, he tore a piece away; his fingers were hideous to see at this moment and Mrs. Hanson looked resolutely at his face. Yet she was all the time conscious of the havoc his fingers were making.

"Do 'ee think I don't want to tell she? I du! I du, I try to, but my tongue won't do me sarvice. I love her!" He paused. "I love her!" He said it again. "Love her, I mean to tell her, yet like as not her'll laugh at me!" He stood up, he flung the antimacassar to the floor, his hands worked up and down his coat, tearing and fingering at the buttons and the buttonholes.

"There bain't a maid in all the world like she, not a man fit to kiss the grounds she treads on. If a man, a man in this village did look at she wi' harmful eyes, I'd kill him!" He nodded. "Kill him!" He said. "I'd get my hands on his throat and never let go! Sometimes when I think of her I feel that I be going mad like, I see red—red passion before my eyes. I tell 'ee, Mrs. Hanson, ma'am, I've got your wishes, I know, I know! But I must hev that maid; no one else shall, as God hears me, no one else shall!"

He went to the door, swinging his arms violently, his fingers clenched and unclenching.

"I've got your wishes, I hev, I'm glad of them, ma'am. I thank 'ee, I du—your good wishes, Ma'am, and I be obliged greatly, I be—and—please don't mind my tempers! 'Tis thinking of the maid makes me so; a peaceful man I be, and begging your pardon, Ma'am, that I did forget myself, but 'tis thinking of the maid that—that drives me like you see me, Ma'am! But I beg your pardon I du, most politely!"

He was gone and Mrs. Hanson sighed and stooped and picked up from the ground the work of her own busy fingers—and his! She sighed again, looking at the destruction of it.

"A terribul man he be—in his wrath, fit to kill anyone belike!" she said. "All tore it be, all tore and wrenched and broke apart—powerful fingers he must hev! Ill would it go wi' man or maid that angered he and did him hurt!"

Down the road in a tempest of passion went Abram Lestwick, swinging his arms and muttering to himself like a madman, and yet at Farmer Patchams, where he worked, they counted him as a man of an even and equable temper. A foreman, he never cursed and swore at those under him. Little things moved him not; his grim, glum, gloomy face never darkened with rage. A polite tongue he had, though a slow one, a steady man and quiet, and yet he himself knew of the tempest of unbridled passion, the mad tumult that his brain was capable of.

Rarely did his passions master him before others. They had to-night, before Mrs. Hanson, but he had her wishes, he was safe with her.

"If any man did look at she wi' wishful eyes," he repeated, "by God's Heaven I would kill him!" He clenched at the air with his nervously working hands. "Get my hands on his throat and kill him, grip and crash it till the life were gone out o' he, I would!"

He stopped suddenly, bathed in perspiration, but the fury gone. She stood before him in the gloaming of the evening.

"I be come from your house, Betty," he said, and his voice was mild as a voice may be. "A pleasant half hour I did have along wi' your grandmother, Betty!"

"I hope 'ee enjoyed yourself, Abram," she said with a little contemptuous laugh.

"Aye, I did in a way, for I were talking about 'ee, Betty!"

She frowned.

"Betty!" He felt as if he were suddenly choking, he lifted those working, restless hands of his to his own throat. They made as to tear open his shirt, so that he might breathe the more freely.

"Betty, do 'ee know what I and your grandmother were talking about?"

"I doan't and I bain't curus to hear!" she said. She made to pass him, but he held his ground.

"'Twere about 'ee!"

"Then 'twere nothing good," she said. "My left ear were burning cruel and now I know!"

"Betty," he said, "wait, 'ee shall, 'ee shall I say, wait, there's summut I must say to 'ee!"

"Let me—pass!"

"No, no." He caught her by the arm and held her.

"Betty, I du love 'ee so, I want 'ee to wife! If I don't have 'ee no one else shall, no one, I swear! Look at me, stubborn o' tongue I be—and difficult it be for me to speak the words I want to say, but 'tis all in this: 'I love 'ee better than life, better than death. I love 'ee mad; mad I be, I tell 'ee wi' love for 'ee! My maid, I'd die for 'ee and live for 'ee and kill they as come between us! Betty, Betty, give yourself to me—to—cherish—" He paused, the words of the marriage service came to him uncertainly, "to hold and to keep, to cherish until death us du part. Give yourself to me, for never and you go through the whole world will 'ee find a man as loves 'ee half so well!"

"I bain't a marrying maid!" she said. "And I'll not marry 'ee or anyone else and 'ee last and leastest of all, Abram Lcstwick. I'll never marry 'ee, never, never!"

"And I swear by Heaven 'ee shall!" he cried. His fingers were at work on her arm, she felt and hated the touch of them. Hateful fingers—long and sinuous, with their horrible, spatulated tips, they reminded her of writhing snakes, with their venomous, flattened heads, just that! She tried to break away from him.

"A great coward 'ee be, to so beset a maid. I hate 'ee, I du. Let me be, let me be!"

"I'll never let 'ee be, for I du love 'ee mad, mad," he cried, "and 'ee shall never belong to anyone else, never and——"

And then she broke from him, she lifted her strong young arm and smote him across the face with all her strength. Abram Lestwick fell back apace, his sallow skin went deathly white, he stood and stared at her.

"'Ee, 'ee made me du it!" she panted. "I—I had to du it, Abram, I didn't mean it, I be sorry in my heart, I did strike 'ee!"

But he said nothing, he only looked at her, then without a word turned and walked away down the road and she stood looking after him. Even now she could see the restless, nervous working of his hands.

"I hate—hate and I be afeared o' him tu!" she said. "I be terribul afeared o' him!" She broke down, sobbing and crying. "'Tisn't fair as a maid should be so bothered as I be! I don't want to marry anyone, leastest of all he, for I du hate him most mortally, I du!"

Her grandmother was waiting for her.

"Did 'ee see Abram Lestwick down the road?" she asked.

"Aye, I did see him!"

"Well?"

"Well?"

"Didn't he speak to 'ee, tell 'ee his mind?"

"Yes, he did and—and I hate him!"

"Hate?" said Mrs. Hanson. "Still filled wi' hate, 'ee be, which bain't seemly in a young maid! What wi' your hating first this one and then t'other, fair fed up I be wi' your hates, my maid, and 'tis time to put a stop to all such nonsense! Abram Lestwick hev been wi' me to-night and talking wi' me he hev been, and about you—moreover. And he be willing to marry 'ee and a good match it'll be, my maid, which Mrs. Colley have been angling for for that putty-faced 'Lizbeth o' hers, though Abram would never look twice at she. But 'tis you he be after, an upright, godly young man with thirty-five shillings a week and a cottage and all, and a rare chance for the likes of 'ee, Betty Hanson, wi'out a shillin' to your name!"

"I hate him and I'll never, never marry him; I hate him and am afeared of him as well! And sooner than marry he I'd go and drownd myself in the river, aye, that, I would, and that I will, for marry him I never will!"

"That's what 'ee say, but hark to me, marry him I say 'ee shall and I have told him, he has my wishes!"

A defiant white face, with big glittering eyes faced the wrinkled, angry old face.

"Drownd myself I will gladly and willingly afore I marry he!"

"Go 'ee in!" said Mrs. Hanson. "A perilous bad maid 'ee be and 'shamed of 'ee I be, and asking myself I be all the time—Be this my son Garge's child, or be she a changeling? For such temper no Hanson ever did hev yet—Go 'ee in, but mark this, marry him 'ee shall!"

"Mark this!" Betty cried. "Marry him I never will! I'll drownd myself first! Aye and blithely and gaily—for I du hate and fear him more than any mortal man and they fingers o' his that touched me—ugh! That touched me and—" And then suddenly she broke down in a passion of sobs and ran into the house.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HOMECOMING

Sir Josiah was performing his last friendly offices. Davenham had finished his part of the work and had done it, as the Baronet knew he would, with a complete and thorough knowledge and good taste.

Who, to look about one now, seeing those beautiful rooms with their exquisite furnishing, that garden, a thing of delight and perfect beauty, could reconcile it all with the desolate and derelict wilderness of a place it had been three short months before?

"I'd like that there Van Norden, or whatever his name is, to see it, I would!" Sir Josiah thought. "Hang me, I'd like him to take a stroll around now! Them Americans are smart and wonderful skilful, aye, and what's more a fine nat'ral taste they've got, appreciating fine things and old things more than we do! I say all that and admit all that, but this here Van Norden, he couldn't have beat what I've done in the time, he couldn't! He'd own it, too, for I've yet to meet the American who wasn't frank to admit the truth!"

Sir Josiah here was like a small king in great state. He was to interview potential servants, advertisements appeared in the London and the local papers, inviting cooks and housemaids, parlourmaids, footmen, grooms, scullery maids, still room maids and the like to present themselves at Homewood Manor on a certain day, when all their expenses would be paid by Sir Josiah Homewood, who would engage the most suitable persons. His own man Bletsoe was here to do honour to the occasion.

"How many are there, Bletsoe?"

"Nine young women, three old ones, two fellers and an old man as come about the gardener's place, only I understand as you're keeping that old feller, old Markabee, Sir Josiah!"

"That's right, keeping him on I am, a sensible man and clever at his work, that garden's a credit to him! Old very likely, but I've known men as weren't old, yet fools, Bletsoe!"

"Quite so, sir!" said Bletsoe. "And now about h'interviewing 'em?"

Sir Josiah frowned to hide his nervousness.

"How many old ones did you say, Bletsoe?"

"Three, sir, and one of 'em with a wonderful fine moustache as I ever see!"

"There's the money, take it and settle with them, mark where they come from and look up the fares in the A.B.C., Bletsoe, to see they don't cheat you, then give 'em five shillings over and above. But pay 'em their fares right and correct, not a penny more nor less, and Bletsoe, when I say—ahem! like that, you'll know as that one's no good, you see!"

It was hard work and none too pleasant, but the house had to be staffed. Allan and Lady Kathleen were married, they were spending a brief honeymoon on the East Coast; they would be back here soon to take possession and Allan's father was resolved that when they came they would find everything complete. Had not he himself pried in the store cupboards, which Messrs. Whiteley had obligingly stocked at his request? He had satisfied himself that everything necessary was there, everything, that is, of an unperishable nature.

Salt and tea, sugar and pepper. He had been greatly disturbed in his mind when he found that washing soda had been overlooked and he had ordered a hundredweight forthwith. And now he was engaging servants.

"I am Sir Josiah Homewood, this house belongs to my son, Mr. Allan Homewood, at present away on his honeymoon with his wife, the Lady Kathleen Homewood, daughter to the Earl of Gowerhurst. They are returning in a week and I desire to have everything in readiness for them. What might your age be and what are your references and who were you with last? And why did you leave your last place?"

"Begging your pardon, sir, my age, I respectfully beg to say, I don't see hasn't nothing to do with the matter. As for my references, here they are. I've lived in a Duke's family and there's but little I don't know how to cook, even to peacocks, I have cooked, sir, and——"

"Bless my soul, I didn't know people eat 'em!" said the Baronet.

"Only the best of the quality, sir!"

"Bless me, very well, hum, hah!" He looked through the references, he made notes on a piece of paper. "Please settle with this lady, Bletsoe, and give her, her out of pockets as according to arrangement—a—hem!"

And so the fate of the lady with the moustache was sealed, though she knew it not.

Betty had heard of this reception that Sir Josiah was holding to-day. Girls from Little Stretton, Bush Corner, and even from Gadsover and Lindney, had come to offer themselves for hiring. Betty hesitated, since that evening when she had defied her Grandmother life had not been very happy at Mrs. Hanson's little cottage. Should she go with the rest and offer herself for service in the house? But could she bear it, could she bear to see her own beloved garden again as it was now, not as she remembered it? All the dear trees cut down, or most of them, and hideous new walls put up, and her little stone friend gone from the lake and a great ugly stone fountain erected in her place, for so she had heard. Could she bear to see it all as it was now?

No, she could not, so she hesitated. The other girls went and were engaged or not, as Sir Josiah decided, but Betty did not offer herself.

For three days after that night when she had struck Abram Lestwick in the face, she did not see him, but on the evening of the fourth day he presented himself at the door of her grandmother's cottage.

He said nothing of that last interview. His manner was nervous and hesitating and without passion, his fingers worked incessantly, toying and tearing at everything within his reach. He sat upright on a horsehair-covered chair, and tore little hairs out of the cloth all the evening. At a quarter to ten he rose and took his hat.

"I'll be wishing you good night, Mrs. Hanson, ma'am!" he said.

"Good night, Abram, and always glad to see you," said Mrs. Hanson heartily.

"I thank you, Ma'am, good night, Betty!" he said.

"Go to the door, my maid, and see Abram off the step," said her grandmother.

Betty hesitated, then went, with her red-lipped mouth firmly compressed.

On the step in the summer darkness Abram found his tongue.

"Well?" he said. "When is it to be!"

"When be, what to be?"

"Our wedding?"

"Didn't I tell 'ee?"

"Aye, but 'ee didn't mean it, besides I hev made up my mind; when is it to be?"

"Never!" she said. "Never, never!"

He laughed softly to himself as she closed the door in his face, but to-night there was no passion, no tempest within him. He laughed again as he walked down the road in the velvety blackness.

There were lights in the Old Manor House, unfamiliar sight! He did not ever remember seeing lights there before and strange lights they were, very bright and brilliant, and so many of them. He stood still in the road and stared at the house.

Presently the little arched green door in the wall opened and a woman scuttled out, carrying a bundle suspiciously.

"Who be that? Law! How 'ee did frighten me!" she panted a little with nervousness; perhaps that bundle had no right to be in her arms. "Be it you, Abram Lestwick?" she asked, peering into the darkness.

"Aye!" he said briefly. "It be me all right, Mother Colley. What be 'ee doing here to-night?"

"'Tis the young new Squire, the old man's son, come home wi' his lady wife. I see her for a minute, Abram, and a prettier creature I never set eyes on, so kind and smiling her looks, too, and so mighty fond they du seem to be of one another, arm in arm they was walking. 'Father,' he were saying when I see him, 'Father have done wonders here, Kathleen! You did ought to have seen the place no more than four months ago. Father have worked wonderful, terribul hard for we!' he said."

"Ah!" said Abram.

"Yes," said Mrs. Colley, nodding her head, "and she wonderful sweet and dainty her looked, I tell 'ee, Abram—'Wonderful kind and good he be, Allan,' she says. And, Abram, why don't 'ee ever come in for a kindly cup o' tea to our cottage? My maid 'Lizbeth continooally du ask me! A clever maid her be wi' her fingers and a worker she, not like someone as I could name, some as bain't too right in their mind!"

"Who?"

"I mention no names, Abram, only I say there be a kindly welcome and a cup set for 'ee whenever 'ee do take the fancy and now I must be getting along. A wonderful place they hev made o' it, and oh! the money it hev cost! It fair sets me wondering how there ever du be so much money in the world!"

"And if," Abram thought, "all the money in the world were mine, I would lay it at Betty's feet!" So he went on his way, for the man who rises at four in the morning must to bed betimes.

* * * * *

Allan had been in no hurry for the honeymoon to end. Every day of their companionship added to his liking and respect for Kathleen. Now that she was away from her father, now that she had shaken herself free from the old environment, she seemed to be a different woman. Her laughter was more spontaneous; the sadness, for which in his heart he had pitied her, was going, if not gone from her eyes. She was a charming companion, her good temper and entire unselfishness were never failing. What more could a man ask?

He had rather dreaded the honeymoon, and now had come to realise that it formed the most pleasant period of his life. But now that it had come to its end, he felt a strange reluctance to go to Homewood.

He was young and healthy minded; for such a man to brood over a dream or a vision was impossible. The effect of that May day dream of his had well nigh worn away, the vision of the girl who had come to him in the old garden and kissed him had grown vague and shadowy. Like most visions, it was slowly passing and presently, unless something happened to revive it, it would pass into oblivion altogether.

But this return to Homewood would and must revive it and bring back that day and all that had happened on that day forcibly to mind once more.

And he asked himself, did he wish to be reminded? Was he not well enough content with life as it was? He was married to a girl for whom he felt a great liking, a growing affection, and a respect, a woman whom he realised was the sweetest and best woman he had ever known.

It was not her beauty alone that attracted him, yet he could scarcely repress a thrill of pride of possession that comes to many men when they realise the envy of others and see the looks of admiration which were no more than Kathleen's well deserved tribute.

So the honeymoon had been a very pleasant and happy time. They were frank with one another, the best of friends. They kissed one another with a quiet, undemonstrative affection that was not feigned. There had not been one breath to mar the perfect serenity of their lives. No foolish trumpery quarrel, but always that complete understanding and good faith that willingness to give and take unselfishly.

Are honeymoons always such a success? When the passionate lovers are united at last and drive away radiant and triumphant, amidst a shower of rice and good wishes, who can tell what pitfalls her pretty little feet may trip into, what obstacles he may go stumbling and floundering over? They believed that they knew and understood one another so well, all unconsciously perhaps they have kept up many pretences, have only permitted one another to see the brighter side.

But there is always the other and darker side, Romeo's temper the first thing in the morning may not be everything that is desirable. When Juliet finds that one of her dresses does not fit her quite so well as it might, she must vent her annoyance on someone—and there is only Romeo!

The good ship of matrimony has scarcely weighed anchor and set sail and the Captain and the Mate have yet to learn one another's characters, perhaps they have even to decide who the Captain and who the Mate. There are many little things to arrange, little difficulties to adjust. Happy they who can do it all, with kindness and good temper, willing to give freely and yet not asking for too much!

It was in the dusk of the late July evening that Allan and Kathleen came to Homewood.

It was the last day of Sir Josiah's reign, and never a sovereign gave up his sceptre with better grace. How he beamed, how he swelled with visible pride, how he dragged them from room to room to see this and to see that!

"There you are, my boy, what do you think of it? Wouldn't know the place, would you? You'd 'a fallen through this floor three months ago; look at it now!" And the old gentleman jumped up and down to prove the soundness of the joists and boards.

"Well, my dear, and what do you think of it? Pretty, ain't it? Davenham didn't let me down, there's nothing like going to the right man! Davenham ain't cheap, but—" He caught himself up, this was no time to talk of money and money matters. He had spent freely and willingly. Perhaps never before in his life had he spent quite so freely, quite so willingly. There was a heavy bill to meet, but what of that? He could meet it!

He had picked up a good deal from careful observations and from listening to Davenham's learned talk. The names Hepplewhite and Adam, Sheraton and Chippendale tripped glibly from his tongue. True, he confused Hepplewhite and Adam, but what did that matter? Allan and Kathleen did not mind, perhaps did not know, and the old fellow was happy and smiling, though there was just a little ache at his heart, for to-morrow his work would be done, to-morrow he would pack his traps, order the car, tip the servants and say good-bye. His reign would be ended! The villagers would give him their bobs and their smiles and perhaps a cheer, Dalabey would come from his shop and grovel for a moment as he passed and then—then life would of a sudden become strangely empty, strangely without aim and object.

"Can almost see 'em, can't you, Allan, my boy, those old Elmacotts; the place must have looked very like this in their time. Lord, it's a pity we've got into the way of dressing so plain and starchy like we do now! But bless my soul! What would I look like in a flowered waistcoat and powdered wig and silk stockings, eh? Ha, ha, ha! And how well she's looking, how pretty she is, prettier'n ever, Allan, and what a lucky fellow you are!"

"The luckiest in the world and the happiest I think, father!" Allan said very soberly.

The old man nodded, "That's right, that's right, that's what I hoped to hear. Now, take her and shew her round. It's a pity it's gone so dark, so you can't see the gardens to-night. I tell you, Allan, the gardens are even better than the house. You keep on that old Markabee, he knows his job and you won't get no better man for thirty-seven and six a week, cottage found!"

In the dawn of the summer morning Allan wakened, his sleep had been strangely disturbed. He had dreamed, yet now he was awake the dreams were all vague, half forgotten and meaningless. He rose and went to the open window and looked out into the garden.

He saw it as he had seen it that day in May, in his dream, all trim and fair, the weeds and the desolation gone, the flower beds all gay and bright with bloom, the lawns—and how old Markabee and his men had worked on these lawns! shaved and rolled and weeded.

And though remembering it as he had seen it, with the desolation of years over it all, it all looked unfamiliar to him now and yet wonderfully, strangely familiar.

Then suddenly there came to him with a sense of shock and anxiety a question. What of the little stone nymph who had stood there in the midst of the pool? Had they torn her from her pedestal and banished her from the place she had held for centuries? Why had he never spoken of her? Why had he never asked that she might be protected? Why—why above all did he care? What had become of a little stone image with a broken arm and a battered vase, and the slender little stone body all stained green?

But he did care, and he wanted to know what her fate was. He turned back into the room and saw his wife sleeping there. The sunlight slanted in through the uncurtained window and touched her face, and he stood looking at her.

Sleeping, she seemed, in spite of her eight and twenty years, to be such a child. There was a smile on her lips, her face was pillowed on one white bare arm, her hair fell about her on the pillow.

He stretched out his hand and lifted one heavy lock and held it lightly, letting it slip softly through his fingers till it fell to the pillow again.

And, watching her as she slept, he wondered why his heart did not throb, why a great passionate love for her did not come—yet it did not!

He dressed and went out into the garden. He was early, early even for old Markabee, from whose little cottage even now the smoke was curling, thin and blue, into the morning air.

In spite of the panic of anxiety of a while ago, he had forgotten the little stone maid. The enchantment of the garden was on him, his feet trod the stone pathway, his hands were behind his back, his head bent a little forward, yet he saw everything, the trim, carefully laid out beds, the green grass, the foxglove and the hollyhock thrusting their way to life and air and sun through the crevices in the old stone path. So he stepped aside to avoid tramping on their loveliness, yet wondered why they should be there.

Was it right? What would my Lady say? And he? Was not he dallying here when he should be at his work?

What thoughts! What strange jumble of thoughts was this?

Hoe and rake, he must get them from the shed; the shed there behind the old red wall. So he turned and came to the place and found no shed, then started and came back to life again and frowned at himself for his folly.

Was there some enchantment that brooded over the place, something that held him in its grip when his feet trod the soil of this old garden?

"Dreams!" he said aloud, and again, "Dreams!" And then laughed at himself and turned back to the broad stone pathway, then suddenly remembered the object of his quest, and hurried on to the lake.

She was there, untouched! and he was conscious of a relief, a sense of gladness—yet why? What did it matter? What would it have mattered had they pulled her down and carried her away and used her to mend some country road with and placed some fine marble fountain with basin all complete in her place? Yet it did matter and he knew that it did!

He turned, conscious of a relief and yet wondering at it and went back along the path to where was the great circle in the middle of which stood the sundial, and he noticed that some artificer had replaced the long lost gnomon, so that once again the shadow might fall and tell the passing of the hours.

And there was the seat on which he had sat that day. Then it had been half lost in a maze of tangle and growth. Now it had been cleaned and even mended a little, the moss and green growth removed.

Allan sat down, as he had sat down that day; he laid his arm along the back of the stone seat, just as then, and as then presently, the reality about him grew faint and uncertain, and he drifted into a light sleep. But in that sleep no dreams came, no vision of a little figure tripping down the stone pathway, no dainty little figure in her flowered gown, with mob cap on her shining head. Instead he opened his eyes and looked into the face of an ancient man, who pulled a scanty lock of hair at him and wished him "Good marning!" in purest Sussex.

"Good morning to you," said Allan and wondered for a moment who the old man might be, then it dawned on him.

"A wunnerful and powerful difference be here," said the old man, "which you will hev noticed, so be as you hev seen the place before!"

"I have seen it before, three months ago, and as you say a wonderful difference is here," said Allan, "and you are——"

"Markabee be my name," the old man said, "gardener I were at Lord Reldewood's place, near Smarden in Kent, though I be Sussex born and bred."

There was interrogation in his still, bright eyes.

"My name is Homewood, Allan Homewood!"

"Then you be the young master, the old master be a proper fine man and a thorough gentleman!"

Allan laughed. "I hope that you will be able to say the same of me, though I warn you, Markabee, I am not such a fine man nor so good a gentleman as my father!"

"That may be, that may be!" said Markabee. "One finds out, one does, for one's self. But I be one as speaks as I du find and I say the old gentleman be a proper fine man, free handed moreover and pleasant of speech!

"Very late in the season, it were," Markabee went on. "May, pretty nigh out, when I du come to this garden. Powerful difficult it were to make much of a show, as I did say to Mr. Dalabey. 'Never mind,' says he, 'du your bestest, Markabee, for you be working for a proper fine gentleman who don't mind a little bit of extry money here and there, so be he gets what he du want!'"

Allan nodded. Not for all the world would he hurt the old fellow's feelings, but he could wish old Markabee safely off to his work in the garden, leaving him here to his dreams in the sunshine.

But not so Markabee. For he was old and had seen many things and many gardens; old and garrulous was he and eager above all to make a good impression on the young master!

"Things I hev seen and changes," he said, "you wouldn't believe, and now—how old might you take me to be, eh, young sir? What aged man would you say I were?" He pulled himself up erect as a grenadier, and his bright old eyes twinkled, while the long whisps of white hair fell about his copper coloured face.

"Now, sir, make a guess, how old might 'ee take me to be, eh?"

"I should say—" said Allan cautiously, "that you might be sixty-five!"

"Ha, ha, ha, that be a good 'un, sixty-five—ha, ha!" He laughed till his voice cracked and he nearly choked. "Two and eighty years hev I seen, two and eighty wi' never a lie, and look at me, fit for a long day's work I be with the best and youngest on 'em! Ask anyone here, young sir, ask what sort of worker be old Markabee, ask 'em to satisfy yourself, sir! Yes, two and eighty summers and winters hev I seen—sixty-five—ha, ha, ha! Sixty-five!" And, chuckling with laughter, he saluted, drew his old body erect and went marching off down the garden with a jaunty air, and yet in his heart a little quavering wonder and anxious fear.

"I wonder, du he think I be too old?"

If spell there had been, old Markabee had broken it. So though he might sit here on the old stone seat, no drowsiness came to him now. He watched a bee, a great velvety bumble bee, with its lustrous black and tan body hurrying, full of business, from flower to flower. The sun was low yet, and cast slanting shadows all softly blue on the stone pathway. The dew glinted and glistened in the cups of the flowers and in the heart of the starry green leaves of the lupins. He looked along the broad straight pathway to the house and saw it, so strangely like he had seen it that day, the windows open, the dimity curtains moving lightly in the soft breeze. And now came a maid servant, but no mob cap and flowered gown wore she, and her hair was black and her eyes sleepy, nor did she trip daintily, but shuffled in sluggard fashion and let down the new sun blinds outside the windows with a rasping, creaking sound of iron on iron.

No dreams for him this day, nor did he want them? Why seek them, invite them? For dreams would but bring him again to dissatisfaction and would set him yearning and longing and even hoping for that which could never, never come true. Allan rose and seemed to shake himself, though he shook himself more mentally than physically, to lighten himself of these fancies, which were idle and foolish and which he must not encourage nor harbour.

He smiled to himself as he set off for a ramble about the garden, for he saw what he must do. He must prove to old Markabee and to all the rest that he was a man worthy of being his father's son.

"A proper fine man he be and a thorough gentleman," old Markabee had said, and so he was. God bless him for a fine gentleman!

And then suddenly and unexpectedly, for he had wandered far into a part of the garden where he had never been before and where even old Markabee and his merry men had not yet penetrated, he came on a little stream that flowed rapidly and clearly between high banks of thick green growth and at one place was a deep pool where the water swirled and eddied, obstructed for the moment in its course by an abrupt turn in the winding of the stream. About him were the trees and the greenery, an impenetrable leafy screen and the silence; but for the birds there was nothing to interrupt the solitude of the place. So off with his clothes and then a header into the cool green water for a brisk swim. Here, under the shade of the trees, the water ran cold and its coldness sent the blood leaping and throbbing through his veins.

A few minutes and he was out, glowing, dripping, a young giant in his health and strength. Now he had put his clothes on caring nothing that his skin was wet beneath them.

Back through the garden and the sunshine he strode—dreams, what idle things were dreams! Only a fool or a poet might sit there on that old old stone seat trying to conjure up visions of a long dead past. His body was in a glow, he was conscious of a great and voracious appetite. He saw the girl who had pulled the sun blinds down and called to her.

"What's your name?" he said. "Mary or Peggy, or Molly, eh?" he smiled at her.

"Ann is my name, sir!" she said. "Ann!"

"You're not Sussex?"

She tossed her head. "Not me, thank you, sir, I come from the Fulham Road!"

"Then, Ann, where you come from does not matter, but if you love me, get me a cup of tea and—and—well anything—a good big hunk of bread and butter will do, but see that it is big and that there is plenty of butter on it and I'll wait here till you come back, Ann!"

"What a very strange young gent," the girl thought. "If I love him indeed! There's a nice way of talking!" She tossed her head, yet went off to get the tea and the bread and butter.

"If I love him indeed, well of all the impudence!"

CHAPTER XIV

"HIS SON'S WIFE"

"Well, well, my boy, what do you think of it all? How do you think the garden looks?"

"Wonderful!"

"Wonderful, yes, that old Markabee's a treasure; you won't part with him, Allan?"

"Nothing would induce me to, father. I hope he'll stay here another twenty years at least!"

"That'll make him a hundred and two, the old man is very proud of his age, eighty something!"

"Eighty-two and seems a mere boy!" Allan went to his father and put his arms about the old man's shoulders.

"I—I'm not going to try and thank you!" he said.

"Don't, there's nothing to thank me for! I—I did it—I enjoyed doing it, never enjoyed anything so much in my life, put myself into it heart and soul. I'd like Cutler, you know Cutler, his daughter married the Governor of somewhere or other—I'd like him to see this place!"

"Then why not?"

"Bless me—so I may—one day—I might bring him down, but, Allan, I'm not going to interfere with you, not me! Two's company, three's none! I know that! And—good morning, my dear, and I don't need to ask how you slept! As fresh as a rose you look this morning, as fresh and as handsome too!"

And she did, her cheeks were glowing, her eyes were bright. Fresh from her cold bath, she was a picture of glowing health and beauty. She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him.

"And now I want to know what is the meaning of those horrible looking bags and portmanteaux and things I saw on the landing?"

"Why—why bless me—they are mine—I—I didn't mean to leave 'em about, my dear. I'd never have forgiven myself if you'd tripped and fallen over them, but——"

"I don't mean that; what I want to know is: Why are they packed?"

"Because—because there's my things in 'em and I'm off for London. Bletsoe's got his orders and after breakfast I'll start——"

"But supposing I don't mean to let you go?"

"Thank you, my dear, thank you and God bless you! I—I know what you mean, but thank you, my dear, all the same! I—I like to think that you're not in a hurry to push the old fellow out! I'll be glad to remember that!" His eyes shone. "Yes, my love, I'll be glad to remember that, but——"

"How are we going to manage without you?" she asked. "You have been so clever, it's all so wonderful what you have done here. Allan told me what a terrible, terrible state the place was in and how like a fairy, a good fairy, you have touched it with your wand and it—is like it is now! And we can't let our fairy go, can we?"

"But he'll come back, my love, he'll come back!" The old man cried happily. "But you and Allan have got to settle down and I—I know what it is, my dear, when Allan's mother and me were married, settling down is a bit difficult—I think you and Allan are best left to yourselves, and then when you want me, why I'll come, I'll come, you won't have to ask twice. You ought to have the telephone on—" he paused, took out his pocketbook and made a rapid note, "arrange telephone, Homewood," then you'll be able to ring me up and I'll be able to ring you up—now and again, not that I want to be a nuisance or a worry to you—but—but—what's that? What's that? Breakfast, eh?"

"Yes, sir, breakfast!" said the manservant.

Over breakfast they discussed an idea that had come to Kathleen.

"We must have a house warming," she said, "you know the old superstition, there'll be no luck about the house unless we have a warming!"

"To be sure!" said Sir Josiah, a little puzzled, "but I had the fires lighted and kep' going for weeks and——"

"I know!" she laughed. "But I mean a party, a house party, just a few of our nearest and dearest. You, of course, first and before all and my—" she hesitated, "my father, of course, and then you will have one or two of your own friends, Sir Josiah, won't you? Friends of yours you might like to bring down?"

His eyes shone. "Cutler!" he said. "I'd like to bring him, take the shine out of him, it will too. I'm fed up with Her Excellency, the Governor's wife, that's Cutler's daughter. Why, my love, it'll stifle him, that's what it will do! Why, of course, I'll come! And there'll be a few things, wines and spirits and like that. I'll see about them, see about 'em at once—and now——"

And now the time for parting had come, the time he had dreaded, but it must come; the car was at the door, the bags were put into the car. And the owner of the car dallied, he was in the morning room and Kathleen was with him. She put her hand on his arm and delayed him, she had smiled a signal to Allan to go out and leave them together for a moment or so, and Allan had gone.

"You have been very, very good to us, you have given us this beautiful home, you have given us more—I know—" she said and her eyes were very bright and very kind, as she stood, a queenly young figure, with her slim white hand resting on his arm—"And I want to tell you this—I want to—to earn it all. I want to earn all your kindness and affection. I want to prove myself worthy of it! You have given me all this and you have given me your son and he—he is the best of all! A little while ago I thought that I was an old, old woman; life seemed to hold very, very little for me, my whole life was one long struggle, a struggle between pride and poverty. I suffered—" she paused, "more than I can ever tell. I knew what people said of me and of—" she paused, "of—of me, and now all suddenly I seem to realise that I am not old, but that I am young, and that I am not afraid of the years that lie before me. Our marriage, Allan's and mine, was—was—at first sordid and mercenary, and I hated it, but Allan and I talked about it and we agreed, long ago, that we would make the best, the very, very best possible of our lives and I think we are doing it. I know how you love him and I know how deeply he loves you and so—so I wanted to tell you that Allan's wife will try, with God's help, to be worthy of him and of you, that she will be a good, true and faithful wife to him, helping him when she may help, comforting him if he should need comfort. Perhaps—" she said softly, "I am not a religious woman, I wish I were! But no religious woman could have prayed to her God more fervently, more from her heart than I have prayed from mine that I may never fail in my duty, that I shall be all that he would have me, that I shall be a good, true and faithful wife and friend to the man whose name I bear!"

He did not speak, his lips trembled a little, he put his arms about her and held her very tightly for a moment and then he went out, seeing nothing very clearly, for the mist that was before his eyes.

And as he drove through the little town and out into the white Sussex roads, past the green fields and under the shadow of the Downs, he remembered, not that his daughter was Lady Kathleen, daughter of the Earl of Gowerhurst, but that she was the sweetest and the best woman he had ever known.

CHAPTER XV.

"WILL YOU TAKE THIS MAN?"

The kindly cup of tea of which Mrs. Colley had spoken to Abram Lestwick must have grown cold or been replaced and renewed many times, but it was not partaken of by him for whom it was so hospitably intended.

Mrs. Colley, a short, little body, with a long, lean, bony face and black hair, dragged back painfully from a protruding and shiny forehead, watched for Abram as eagerly as ever a maid watched for the coming of her lover.

'Lizabeth, sallow faced, black haired like her grandmother, and with the bad teeth possessed by too many country girls, tossed her head.

"I don't go running after no man!" she said. "Abram Lestwick least of all! I say if he doan't want our tea, let him stop away!"

"You fool!" said her grandmother, "and there be that Mrs. Hanson forever dangling after he. Would you be beat, 'Lizabeth, by a pink and white dolly faced hussy like Mrs. Hanson's Betty? I'd have more pride, I would!"

"She be welcome to he!" said 'Lizabeth. "Too quiet and mum mouthed he be to my liking and——"

"There he be!" said Mrs. Colley.

She bounded out of her chair and was across the little sitting room kitchen and down the garden path to the gate all in a moment; a very energetic woman, Mrs. Colley!

"Oh, Abram!" she said a little breathlessly. "Funny me coming out this moment and meeting 'ee promiscus like, but I did see a great slug a-settling on my geraniums and just at this very moment 'Lizabeth be laying the tea and a fresh biscuit she hev baked, all hot from the oven, so du 'ee come in now, Abram, for there be a powerful lot of things I want to speak wi' 'ee about!"

"I be sorry," he said gloomily, "afraid I be I cannot stop!"

"And the tea fresh brewed and on the hob and the water on it not more'n three minutes, Abram, and the biscuit of 'Lizabeth's baking, a currant biscuit, Abram!"

He shook his head. "I wish 'ee good evening, Mrs. Colley," he said, "and must be getting along!" He lifted his hat to her, a polite man, Abram Lestwick, and went on. Mrs. Colley went back, beaten and angry.

"She hev laid a spell on him, 'tis a good thing for Mother Hanson her bain't living a hundred years ago, or burned for a witch her would be, certain sure! And his coat buttons, I never see such a sight, 'Lizabeth!"

"Drat his coat buttons! What be they to me?"

"Two gone out of the four and two others hanging by threads, and him working his fingers whiles he were talking wi' me, pulling they off, a rare busy time wi' her needle will Abram Lestwick's wife hev! Wonderful restless and nervis he be about the hands, 'Lizabeth!"

"Drat his hands!" said Elizabeth Colley. "He doan't catch me sewing on his buttons for him, no nor for the best man living neither, which Abram Lestwick b'aint!"

Down the road went Abram Lestwick, the weak chin under the straggling growth of black hair looked a shade more resolute this evening, for he had made up his mind.

Was he, Abram Lestwick, the man to stand nonsense from a mere maid who dared oppose his will with her own? No! Was he not Farmer Patcham's foreman and first hand, looked up to and respected? He was!

Had he not a cottage of four rooms of his own? He had! Was he not in receipt of a steady income of thirty-five shillings a week, of which he had no less than forty-three pounds ten saved and standing in the Post Office Savings Bank to his credit? He was!

Very well then!

Down the road strode Abram Lestwick.

"I'll put up wi' no more dilly dallying wi' she!" he said to himself, "I be a strong intentioned man, not a boy like some, to be put off wi' a grimace and a shake o' a head, and such like! And so I'll let her know and I hev her grandmother's good wishes!"

He did not falter, he flung open the little green painted gate of Mrs. Hanson's front garden and trod manfully up the broken stone pathway to the cottage door.

"Why if it bain't Abram!" said Mrs. Hanson, in a tone of surprise, though she had been watching the clock for him this past half hour. Betty, pouring boiling water from the kettle into the brown teapot, started, so that the hot water splashed on her hand, but she uttered no sound. Her face turned white, perhaps it was the pain from the boiling water, perhaps the sound of the man's voice!

"Good evening!" he said.

"Good evening to 'ee, Abram," said Mrs. Hanson. She looked across the room to the girl. "Betty, here be Abram!"

"Aye, I know!"

Abram had taken off his hat, he was twisting it between his restless fingers, plucking at the felt, bending the brim. Mrs. Hanson stared resolutely at his face.

"Wun't 'ee draw a chair and set down, Abram?" she said. "An' put your hat down!"

He nodded, he put his hat down and sat by the table. Betty's face was white and set hard, her small round chin was thrust out obstinately.

Abram looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.

"I du hear good accounts of the new people at the Manor," he said.

"Aye, a sweet and pleasant spoken lady and the daughter of a Lord!" said Mrs. Hanson. "And Mr. Allan Homewood, who I did speak with the very day he came here first, a very nicely spoken gentleman, I'm sure!" She looked at Betty.

Betty sat down, she stared straight before her, she knew that these were but preliminaries, that which they were saying now mattered nothing at all. Her grandmother poured out the tea. Abram took his cup, he twisted it round and round in the saucer.

"I see Mrs. Colley as I passed the door, picking slugs she were! She asked me in to tea, she said there was a fresh biscuit of 'Lizbeth's baking!"

It was meant for conversation, and not as a reflection on the present tea table, which was guiltless of a currant biscuit.

"A wunnerful hand at cooking, 'Lizbeth Colley be!" he said.

Mrs. Hanson shrugged her shoulders, "Hev you ever noticed her teeth, Abram, terribul teeth they be!"

"Terribul!" he agreed; he looked at the girl facing him. He could not see her teeth, for her small rosebud mouth was tightly compressed, but he had seen them and remembered them for the whitest pearls he had ever seen.

"A rare hand at fashioning and managing, 'Lizbeth Colley," he remarked. He paused to drink with his mouth full of bread and butter. It was not a pretty exhibition, but neither Mrs. Hanson nor Betty remarked it. Bread and butter and tea taken at one meal had to mingle, sooner or later; why not sooner than later?

The meal went on, Abram smacked his lips noisily. Mrs. Hanson tried to make conversation.

"A bit of luck for an old man like Markabee getting a permanent job at his time of life! I wonder how long du they think they'll keep he?" she asked.

"Ah!"

"Though I du admit very agile he be for his years!"

It was all idle, it was all eating up time, till the meal should be over. These, as Betty knew, were merely preliminaries, presently the real business would start. Her grandmother had warned her.

"Ahram be here to-night, he be, to hev a direct answer and for 'ee to make up thy mind and name the day!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"He'll get his direct answer, he will! And as for naming the day, there wun't he no day to name!" said Betty.

"We'll see, my gell!"

"Aye, we'll see!" said Betty.

"I can't think what have come to that maid!" Mrs. Hanson thought. "All contrairy and perilous defiant her be, and once——"

"Help me clear they things!" Mrs. Hanson said.

The meal was over at last. Abram brought out his pipe; he did not light it, he did not even put it between his long, yellowish teeth. He held it in his hand, he twisted it and turned it. He made of the bowl a thimble, which he set on his finger; he picked at the thin silver mount and all the time he watched Betty. And always that weak chin of his under the coarse, sparse black hairs, seemed to grow stronger and more protruberant, more pronounced.

Mrs. Hanson spun out the washing up, but it was over at last and she came back and took her usual seat by the fireplace.

"And now, Abram?" she said.

It was the signal, Betty stiffened up, she clenched her small hands; Abram dropped the pipe and stooped to recover it.

"Mrs. Hanson, Ma'am, and Betty, you both know full well why I be here to-night," he said. "Terribul slow of speech I be—" He dropped the pipe again and went in search of it; groping along the floor, again he recovered it.

"Why not put the pipe down, Abram?" Mrs. Hanson said. "Pipes be terribul easy things to drop!"

He nodded, he put the pipe down on the table and fell to plucking out the horsehairs from the chair seat.

"Terribul slow of speech I be!" he repeated. "But you, Ma'am, Mrs. Hanson, know, I think, why I be here to'night! 'Tis about the maid, Betty, your grand-darter, Ma'am!"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"What hev your visits to do wi' me?" Betty demanded, a spot of vivid colour in her white cheeks.

"I du love 'ee and want 'ee to marry me!" he said simply.

"That be well spoken, straight and to the point, that be!" said Mrs. Hanson. "No man could speak fairer!"

"Then I will speak straight and to the point tu," Betty said. "I du not love 'ee and will never marry 'ee! I would sooner be dead, and drownd myself I will before I marry 'ee, Abram Lestwick!"

"Ah!" he said, his eyes roved towards Mrs. Hanson. What had she to say to that?

"A perilous bad maid 'ee be!" said Mrs. Hanson.

"So 'ee've told me till I be sick to death o' hearing it. Perilous bad and wicked and ungrateful, I be—an all that's bad! Why do he come here a persecutering me? Why doan't he leave I alone?" the girl cried passionately. "I doan't ask him to—to foller me and worry me—why doan't he go and marry 'Lizbeth Colley, wi' her currant biscuits? A wonderful fashioner and manager she be! He said it, said it and I—I wun't marry him. I'll die—die willing and glad, yes die! Yes, I'll die!"

She leaped to her feet, her face was burning, her eyes brilliant with defiance and anger.

"No one hasn't the right to so persecute a maid like he du persecute I! I doan't want him here. I—I can't bear nor bide 'ee, Abram Lestwick, I can't!"

Her voice faltered. He sat there staring at her, never speaking a word and his silence disconcerted her.

"A perilous—" began Mrs. Hanson.

"Say—say it again, say it again!" Betty panted, "And I'll scream, I'll scream till I be dead. Say it, again!"

"And 'ee be my son Garge's child. Garge as were ever mild and quiet, and I be Garge's mother!" Up rose Mrs. Hanson. "I be Garge's mother and thy grandmother and I be the one to speak, Betty Hanson, and speak I will!" She lifted a strong arm and pointed a long, thick-jointed finger at the girl. "Marry him 'ee shall, and I say it! And wi' a good grace tu, and come to your senses, 'ee shall, my maid, if I break a stick over your back! And I'll hev no more o' these tantrums, no more of them, I say, a perilous bad and wicked maid 'ee be! Hev not Abram done we a great honour? Hev he not——"

"I'll kill myself before I marry him!" the girl said, but she said it without passion, only with an immense certainty in her voice.

Abram blinked, he stared at the ill smelling, newly lighted lamp.

"Listen to me, Betty Hanson. Here be Abram asking 'ee to marry 'ee and asking 'ee to name the day—answer!"

"I hev answered!"

"Answer as I order 'ee!"

"I shan't!"

Mrs. Hanson stalked across the room, she went to a corner by the fireplace, in that corner stood the stout old stick that had supported her husband's declining years. She had always kept that stick in the corner, it was more homely to see it there. She took it now, she came back to Betty.

"Will 'ee marry this good man?"

"No!"

One, two, three, down came the stick, heavily across the slender shoulders. The girl's eyes filled with tears, born of the smart of the blows, but she kept her white teeth clenched.

"I ask 'ee again, will 'ee name the day?"

"No, never!"

Thud, thud, thud!

Ahram Lestwick leaned forward, he stared at them both. He was tearing the threads out of the fringe of the cheap tablecloth now. He watched Betty's face without emotion. "Dogged abst'nate her be!" he muttered.

"Betty Hanson, my mind be made up! Will 'ee take this man to be your lawful wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for better an' for worser, till death du 'ee part?"

"I wun't, I hate him!"

Thud, thud, thud.

"And I hate 'ee tu!" said Betty suddenly.

"That be enough!" The stick fell. "'Ee've said it, Betty Hanson! Said it! Said it past recall! Hate me, 'ee said it! And to-morrow 'ee go out, go out, my maid, for I live in no house where hate du abide!"

"I'll go and glad, glad!" the girl said.

Abram rose slowly.

"I beg to thank 'ee for a good tea, which I did enjoy, Mrs. Hanson, 'tis time for me to be going!" he turned towards the door. "A very good tea!" he said. "I bain't partial to new baked currant biscuits!" He paused at the door and looked at Betty.

"I'll ask 'ee to name the day some other time, my maid! I be a patient man, a very patient man, I be in no hurry, no hurry at all! And I wish 'ee good night, Mrs. Hanson, and thank 'ee for your good tea once again!"

Betty stared at him, her eyes were wide, filled with terror. She lifted her hands to her face, she gripped her face between them, the sharp little nails dug into the soft, peach-like cheeks, but she felt no pain, was unconscious of what she was doing.

He looked at her and smiled, he backed out and closed the door, but she did not move. She heard his steps outside, her breast was rising and falling and when she spoke, she spoke in gasps, in short breathless sentences.

"Did 'ee see—grandmother, did 'ee see—his hands—his hateful hands? Grandmother, did 'ee see? One day—he'll kill someone wi' they hands, kill 'em—grandmother, maybe—maybe 'twill be—me!"

CHAPTER XVI

"MY LADY MERCIFUL"

"I am glad Mr. Dalabey spared her," said Kathleen.

She nodded towards the little figure of the nymph standing up from the middle of the lake.

"So am I!" Allan said. "But I've a great respect for Dalabey, he does not look it, but he is an artist. He has a right perception, a sense of fitness. Dalabey is a reader and a thinker, too. Kathleen, you would be surprised by the depth of Dalabey's knowledge, for all that, he says 'I be' and 'Du 'ee?' Which, after all, may be better English than that which you and I speak. You would hardly believe that Dalabey and Ruskin have more than a nodding acquaintance, but so it is! Yes, I'm glad he spared the little stone maid. Do you know the first morning we were here, dear, I worried about her. I rose early and came out to see if she were still here and there she was, a monument to Dalabey's good sense! I've congratulated him since!"

She was listening to him with a smile on her lips. Now she glanced at him, at the tall, big young man by her side—her husband!

"Allan," she said suddenly, "Allan, you seem to be very happy!"

"Happy!" he was startled. "Of course I am happy. Why—why did you say that? I am happy and content. I Have the dearest and best man in the world for father. I have a wife who is friend and comrade——" he pressed her hand. "I have a home, the like of which there is not to be found in all England! Happy—why not, Kathleen?"

She was silent for a moment. He had said the dearest father and his wife—after all his wife was only friend and comrade—only! Why did she feel vaguely dissatisfied, had she not set herself to be just that very thing, that he said she was—friend, comrade, and now he had said it, she felt a little regret.

"And you would not have things different from what they are, Allan?"

"No!" he said. "I'm very, very content, very proud and very happy, Kathleen."

"And the dream," she said, "the dream you told me of, Allan, the pretty girl who came——"

He laughed frankly, almost boyishly, a laugh so clear and so ringing that it, was infectious.

"Because I had a pleasant dream and dreamed a pretty girl was imprudent enough to come and kiss me, shall I moon about disconsolate and unhappy, my mind filled with stupid longing and foolish regrets, eh?"

"But the dream did affect you for a time, Allan?"

"For a time," he said, "it was so clear, so real, so strange, so—so undreamlike that it must affect me! Kathleen, I never think of it now, I've put it out of my mind, I've sat there a score of times on that very seat and no dreams have come, I've smiled at the foolish fancy of it, laughed it all to scorn—and forgotten it——"

"But if it were not—all a dream, if one day she came into your life—that girl——"

He shook his head. "She was a dream and she doesn't exist, she never will and never can—she came and she went—for good!"

"And yet," she persisted, with a woman's strange persistence, "Allan, if—if she came, if you saw her in life, if——"

"Then," he said quietly and looked her full in the eyes, "you have my promise, dear, just as I have yours, but it will never, never be—Kathleen, shall I be truthful, honest, candid with, you? I never want it to be, dear, I am well content! And now come——" he went on gaily, "and we'll talk to old Markabee, that young fellow who refuses to grow old! Come, dear and——"

But she shook her head. "I am going to the village, Allan," she said, "at least, not to the village, but to a little cottage between here and Little Stretton, Mrs. Hanson's cottage."

"Hanson, I remember a kindly talkative old dame who has always a smile and a country bob for us."

"I am afraid she is not as kindly as she looks!" Kathleen said.

"Why, what has the wicked old body been doing?"

"Ill-treating her granddaughter, so I have heard. It was Debly Cassons who told me. She said she was passing Mrs. Hanson's cottage as she came here last evening, and she heard the sound of beating and looking in through the window saw that wicked old woman thrashing the girl with a stick. And there——" Kathleen went on, "the girl was standing accepting the blows without a sound, but later as Debly was going back, she heard someone sobbing as thought her heart was breaking and she found the girl lying on the grass in the little garden crying bitterly. Debly is a kindly old soul and she tried to comfort her and find out what the trouble was, but the girl would not answer, so——"

"So my dear little Lady Bountiful, my Lady Merciful is going to carry comfort to the ill-used child, eh?"

He looked at Kathleen, then stretched out his hand and touched hers. "Kathleen, you are a good woman," he said sincerely and gently, "I wish I could think that I were worthy of you!"

Kathleen shook her head, she did not speak.

There was a trace of sadness in her eyes as she went back alone to the house. It seemed to her that there was the chance of happiness of a great and wonderful happiness, yet she could not stretch out her hand to grasp it, could not because of memories, years old memories, memories of another face and another voice, memories of a love that had filled her life once. She had loved then, she told herself, as a woman loves but once, as she could never love again.

"Allan's happiness and mine," she said to herself, "is built not on love, but on friendship and respect, perhaps it is the surest, the best foundation," yet while she consoled herself, she sighed a little and the sadness stayed in her eyes.

Very grim and very silent was Mrs. Hanson this morning. Last night that maid, the maid she had brought up from babyhood had told her that she hated her, had said "shan't" to her, had defied her.

Mrs. Hanson had had a strict upbringing herself, she had married Hanson because he was in regular work and was drawing good pay, twelve shillings a week, no less. Her parents had told her to marry Hanson and she had married him. The marriage market has its branches in the smallest of villages and marriages of convenience are not luxuries enjoyed only by the rich and the wellborn.

And she, in her turn, had found a very suitable husband for this wayward maid who, lacking in duty and obedience, definitely refused to accept that husband.

Very well then! Mrs. Hanson had every reason to be hurt and aggrieved.

Betty had risen early—as usual—had cleaned out the little cottage kitchen, had polished the stove till it shone, had made the fire and had prepared the breakfast just as usual, but all the time she was doing it, she knew that she was doing it for the last time.

Last night her grandmother had said to her, "You shall go!"

Her grandmother never changed her mind, never relented, never altered. Betty knew this of long, long experience, besides in any event she would go, she would not stay—no, not even if her grandmother begged her to on her bended knees, and that was not in the least likely. They had their breakfast together in stony silence. After breakfast Mrs. Hanson spoke.

"Wash they things and put them back on the dresser—for the last time!" she added.

Betty had washed the things, she had replaced them on the dresser, on to the snowy white board of the dresser top she had permitted one large hot tear to splash.

Her grandmother sat stiffly upright in her chair by the window with the huge family Bible open on the little rickety round table before her.

Mrs. Hanson always turned to the Bible for comfort and for advice in times of stress and doubt. She was reading stolidly through the story of Naboth's Vineyard and was deriving much spiritual comfort from it. Very stern and unrelenting she looked sitting primly bolt upright, her hands resting on the book and her spectacles adjusted on the end of her long and pointed nose.

Now and again out of the corner of her eye she glanced at the girl who was slowly putting the finishing touches to her work. In a little while the girl must be gone, Mrs. Hanson was a stern and unrelenting woman.

Where the girl would go to, Mrs. Hanson did not know, she never gave it a thought.

"She did say, she did hate me!" the old woman thought. "Hate—a perilous wicked thing for a young gell to say—and to abide in a house of hatred, I will not! There's the Bible for it—'Better a dinner of yarbs and contentment therewith than a stalled ox in the house——'" Mrs. Hanson looked up, a shadow had fallen across the window, there came a light tapping on the door.

"Bless me and bless my dear soul!" said Mrs. Hanson aloud, "if here b'ain't my Lady Homewood, Betty quick—quickly open the door to Her Ladyship, quick now! Do 'ee hear me speak?"

The door was opened by Betty. Coming from the hot bright sunlight of the outer world into the twilight of the little room, Kathleen could only see a slight, slender figure in an old cotton gown, which figure bobbed a deferential, yet it almost seemed a defiant little curtsey to her.

"This is Mrs. Hanson's cottage?" Kathleen asked.

"Yes, my lady!"

Mrs. Hanson had risen, she bobbed, it was no half hearted curtsey this of hers, she seemed to sink into the floor to her middle and then rose again, tall and lean and agitated.

"Mrs. Hanson I be, my Lady, and proud I be to see your Ladyship here—Betty, a chair for her Ladyship, my maid!"

Betty brought a chair, she flicked it with a duster and placed it that Kathleen might be seated.

And now Kathleen, whose sight had grown accustomed to the dimmer light of the room, could see the child plainly, and seeing her, wondered a little at the loveliness of the little piteous face, the drawn mouth, the big saddened eyes that had so evidently recently shed tears.

Poor pretty little maid! Kathleen remembered what Debly had told her of the child lying out in the grass, sobbing her heart out in the darkness of the night. She looked at the stern puritanical looking old woman and Kathleen, who was hot blooded and generous, felt instinctive dislike of her, which dislike was unjust and ill placed.

So, having come expressly about this girl with the golden hair and the sweet oval face, Kathleen, being a very diplomatic young woman, spoke of everything and anything else under the sun. She told Mrs. Hanson how often she had admired the neatness and prettiness of the little front garden.

"It is so nice to see gardens so well kept, I am sure yours is a great credit to you, and oh Mrs. Hanson, do please sit down, we can't talk comfortably, can we, if you stand?"

"Oh, my Lady, to sit in your presence!"

"Then you will force me to stand too!" said Kathleen.

So Mrs. Hanson sat down on the very edge of her hard chair and they talked of the garden, that neat little garden with its flower beds, surrounded by nice large flint stones which Betty whitened regularly every Saturday, to make all prim and clean and spotless for the Sunday.

"You have lived here many years?" Kathleen asked.

"A Hanson hev always lived in this cottage, my Lady, from time out o' mind. A Bifley were I born, my mother being a Pringle, and me married to Amos Hanson when I were just turned seventeen."

"Ah yes!" Kathleen said. "And this is your granddaughter?"

"My granddarter her be," said Mrs. Hanson sternly.

"And of course you need her here to help you in this little cottage?" Kathleen hazarded.

"I du not need she, my Lady, and her be going to leave me, her be, this very day!"

"To—to leave—you—you mean the child is going away? Where is she going to?"

Mrs. Hanson did not answer. The girl was still in the room, seemingly busy at the dresser, but Kathleen looking could see the slender shoulders shake and knew what a big fight the little maid was putting up to keep herself from bursting into tears.

What little village tragedy was here? she wondered.

"Is she going to London?" Kathleen asked.

"I du not know, my Lady!"

"But——" Kathleen said.