Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have been retained.

THE HISTORY

OF

SIR RICHARD CALMADY

A Romance

By

Lucas Malet

NEW YORK
Dodd, Mead & Company
1901

Copyright, 1901
By Dodd, Mead & Company

THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE CLOWN

BOOK II

THE BREAKING OF DREAMS

BOOK III

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

BOOK IV

A SLIP BETWIXT CUP AND LIP

BOOK V

RAKE'S PROGRESS

BOOK VI

THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH

The History of Sir Richard Calmady

BOOK I

THE CLOWN

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CHAPTER I

ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THE MAKER THEREOF

In that fortunate hour of English history, when the cruel sights and haunting insecurities of the Middle Ages had passed away, and while, as yet, the fanatic zeal of Puritanism had not cast its blighting shadow over all merry and pleasant things, it seemed good to one Denzil Calmady, esquire, to build himself a stately red-brick and freestone house upon the southern verge of the great plateau of moorland which ranges northward to the confines of Windsor Forest and eastward to the Surrey Hills. And this he did in no vainglorious spirit, with purpose of exalting himself above the county gentlemen, his neighbours, and showing how far better lined his pockets were than theirs. Rather did he do it from an honest love of all that is ingenious and comely, and as the natural outgrowth of an inquiring and philosophic mind. For Denzil Calmady, like so many another son of that happy age, was something more than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and brewer of ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speaks truly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, or wittily resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover—of that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of grace—a science which, even yet, in perfect good faith, busied itself with the mysteries of the Rosy Cross, mixed strange ingredients into a possible Elixir of Life, ran far afield in search for the Philosopher's Stone, gathered herbs for the confection of simples during auspicious phases of the moon, and beheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings of public calamity or of Divine Wrath.

From all of which it may be premised that when, like the wise king, of old, in Jerusalem, Denzil Calmady "builded him houses, made him gardens and orchards, and planted trees in them of all kind of fruits"; when he "made him pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees"; when he "gathered silver and gold and the treasure of provinces," and got him singers, and players of musical instruments, and "the delights of the sons of men,"—he did so that, having tried and sifted all these things, he might, by the exercise of a ripe and untrammeled judgment, decide what amongst them is illusory and but as a passing show, and what—be it never so small a remnant—has in it the promise of eternal subsistence, and therefore of vital worth; and that, having so decided and thus gained an even mind, he might prepare serenely to take leave of the life he had dared so largely to live.

Commencing his labours at Brockhurst during the closing years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Denzil Calmady completed them in 1611 with a royal house-warming. For the space of a week, during the autumn of that year,—the last autumn, as it unhappily proved, that graceful and scholarly prince was fated to see,—Henry, Prince of Wales, condescended to be his guest. He was entertained at Brockhurst—as contemporary records inform the curious—with "much feastinge and many joyous masques and gallant pastimes," including "a great slayinge of deer and divers beastes and fowl in the woods and coverts thereunto adjacent." It is added, with unconscious irony, that his host, being a "true lover of all wild creatures, had caused a fine bear-pit to be digged beyond the outer garden wall to the west." And that, on the Sunday afternoon of the Prince's visit, there "was held a most mighty baitinge," to witness which "many noble gentlemen of the neighbourhood did visit Brockhurst and lay there two nights."

Later it is reported of Denzil Calmady, who was an excellent churchman,—suspected even, notwithstanding his little turn for philosophy, of a greater leaning towards the old Mass-Book than towards the modern Book of Common Prayer,—that he notably assisted Laud, then Bishop of St. David's, in respect of certain delicate diplomacies. Laud proved not ungrateful to his friend; who, in due time, was honoured with one of King James's newly instituted baronetcies, not to mention some few score seedling Scotchfirs, which, taking kindly to the light moorland soil, increased and multiplied exceedingly and sowed themselves broadcast over the face of the surrounding country.

And, save for the vigorous upgrowth of those same fir trees, and for the fact that bears and bear-pit had long given place to race-horses and to a great square of stable buildings in the hollow lying back from the main road across the park, Brockhurst was substantially the same in the year of grace 1842, when this truthful history actually opens, as it had been when Sir Denzil's workmen set the last tier of bricks of the last twisted chimney-stack in its place. The grand, simple masses of the house—Gothic in its main lines, but with much of Renaissance work in its details—still lent themselves to the same broad effects of light and shadow, as it crowned the southern and western sloping hillside amid its red-walled gardens and pepper-pot summer-houses, its gleaming ponds and watercourses, its hawthorn dotted paddocks; its ancient avenues of elm, of lime, and oak. The same panelings and tapestries clothed the walls of its spacious rooms and passages; the same quaint treasures adorned its fine Italian cabinets; the same air of large and generous comfort pervaded it. As the child of true lovers is said to bear through life, in a certain glad beauty of person and of nature, witness to the glad hour of its conception, so Brockhurst, on through the accumulating years, still bore witness to the fortunate historic hour in which it was planned.

Yet, since in all things material and mortal there is always a little spot of darkness, a germ of canker, at least the echo of a cry of fear—lest life being too sweet, man should grow proud to the point of forgetting he is, after all, but a pawn upon the board, but the sport and plaything of destiny and the vast purposes of God—all was not quite well with Brockhurst. At a given moment of time, the diabolic element had of necessity obtruded itself. And, in the chronicles of this delightful dwelling-place, even as in those of Eden itself, the angels are proven not to have had things altogether their own gracious way.

The pierced stone parapet, which runs round three sides of the house, and constitutes, architecturally, one of its most noteworthy features, is broken in the centre of the north front by a tall, stepped and sharply pointed gable, flanked on either hand by slender, four-sided pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat, full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ankles and his square-toed shoes. The swallows yearly attempt to fix their gray, mud nests against the flutings of the scallop-shell canopy sheltering his bowed head; and are yearly ejected by cautious gardeners armed with imposing array of ladders and conscious of no little inward reluctance to face the dangers of so aerial a height.

And here, it may not be unfitting to make further mention of that same little spot of darkness, germ of canker, echo of the cry of fear, that had come to mar the fair records of Brockhurst For very certain it was that among the varying scenes, moving merry or majestic, upon which Sir Denzil had looked down during the two and a quarter centuries of his sojourn in the lofty niche of the northern gable, there was one his eyes had never yet rested upon—one matter, and that a very vital one, to which had he applied his carpenter's rule the measure of it must have proved persistently and grievously short.

Along the straight walks, across the smooth lawns, and beside the brilliant flower-borders of the formal gardens, he had seen generations of babies toddle and stagger, with gurglings of delight, as they clutched at glancing bird or butterfly far out of reach. He had seen healthy, clean-limbed, boisterous lads and dainty, little maidens laugh and play, quarrel, kiss, and be friends again. He had seen ardent lovers—in glowing June twilights, while the nightingales shouted from the laurels, or from the coppices in the park below—driven to the most desperate straits, to visions of cold poison, of horse-pistols, of immediate enlistment, or the consoling arms of Betty the housemaid, by the coquetries of some young lady captivating in powder and patches, or arrayed in the high-waisted, agreeably-revealing costume which our grandmothers judged it not improper to wear in their youth. He had seen husband and wife, too, wandering hand in hand at first, tenderly hopeful and elate. And then, sometimes, as the years lengthened,—they growing somewhat sated with the ease of their high estate,—he had seen them hand in hand no longer, waxing cold and indifferent, debating even, at moments, reproachfully whether they might not have invested the capital of their affections to better advantage elsewhere.

All this and much more Sir Denzil had seen, and doubtless measured, for all that he appears so immovably calm and apart. But that which he had never yet seen was a man of his name and race, full of years and honours, come slowly forth from the stately house to sun himself, morning or evening, in the comfortable shelter of the high, red-brick, rose-grown garden walls. Looking the while, with the pensive resignation of old age, at the goodly, wide-spreading prospect. Smiling again over old jokes, warming again over old stories of prowess with horse and hound, or rod and gun. Feeling the eyes moisten again at the memory of old loves, and of those far-away first embraces which seemed to open the gates of paradise and create the world anew; at remembrances of old hopes too, which proved still-born, and of old distresses, which often enough proved still-born likewise,—the whole of these simplified now, sanctified, the tumult of them stilled, along with the hot, young blood which went to make them, by the kindly torpor of increasing age and the approaching footsteps of greatly reconciling Death.

For Sir Denzil's male descendants, one and all,—so says tradition, so say too the written and printed family records, the fine monuments in the chancel of Sandyfield Church, and more than one tombstone in the yew-shaded church-yard,—have displayed a disquieting incapacity for living to the permitted "threescore years and ten," let alone fourscore, and dying decently, in ordinary, commonplace fashion, in their beds. Mention is made of casualties surprising in number and variety; and not always, it must be owned, to the moral credit of those who suffered them. It is told how Sir Thomas, grandson of Sir Denzil, died miserably of gangrene, caused by a tear in the arm from the antler of a wounded buck. How his nephew Zachary—who succeeded him—was stabbed during a drunken brawl in an eating-house in the Strand. How the brother of the said Zachary, a gallant young soldier, was killed at the battle of Ramillies in 1706. Dueling, lightning during a summer storm, even the blue-brown waters of the Brockhurst Lake in turn claim a victim. Later it is told how a second Sir Denzil, after hard fighting to save his purse, was shot by highwaymen on Bagshot Heath, when riding with a couple of servants—not notably distinguished, as it would appear, for personal valour—from Brockhurst up to town.

Lastly comes Courtney Calmady, who, living in excellent repute until close upon sixty, seemed destined by Providence to break the evil chain of the family fate. But he too goes the way of all flesh, suddenly enough, after a long run with the hounds, owing to the opening of a wound, received when he was little more than a lad, at the taking of Frenchtown under General Proctor, during the second American war. So he too died, and they buried him with much honest mourning, as befitted so kindly and honourable a gentleman; and his son Richard—of whom more hereafter—reigned in his stead.

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CHAPTER II

GIVING THE VERY EARLIEST INFORMATION OBTAINABLE OF THE HERO OF THIS BOOK

It happened in this way, towards the end of August, 1842.

In the gray of the summer evening, as the sunset faded and the twilight gathered, spreading itself tenderly over the pastures and corn-fields,—over the purple-green glooms of the fir forest—over the open moors, whose surface is scored for miles by the turf-slane of the cottager and squatter—over the clear brown streams that trickle out of the pink and emerald mosses of the peat-bogs, and gain volume and vigour as they sparkle away by woodside, and green-lane, and village street—and over those secret, bosky places, in the heart of the great common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies—those lithe, onyx-eyed children of the magic East—still pitch their dirty, little, fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,—as the sunset died and the twilight thus softly widened and deepened, Lady Calmady found herself, for the first time during all the long summer day, alone.

For though no royal personage had graced the occasion with his presence, nor had bears suffered martyrdom to promote questionably amiable mirth, Brockhurst, during the past week, had witnessed a series of festivities hardly inferior to those which marked Sir Denzil's historic house-warming. Young Sir Richard Calmady had brought home his bride, and it was but fitting the whole countryside should see her. So all and sundry received generous entertainment according to their degree.—Labourers, tenants, school-children. Weary old-age from Pennygreen poorhouse taking its pleasure of cakes and ale half suspiciously in the broad sunshine. The leading shopkeepers of Westchurch and their humbler brethren from Farley Row. All the country gentry too. Lord and Lady Fallowfeild and a goodly company from Whitney Park, Lord Denier and a large contingent from Grimshott Place, the Cathcarts of Newlands, and many more persons of undoubted consequence—specially perhaps in their own eyes.

Not to mention a small army of local clergy—who ever display a touching alacrity in attending festivals, even those of a secular character—with camp-followers, in the form of wives and families, galore.

And now, at last, all was over,—balls, sports, theatricals, dinners,—the last in the case of the labourers, with the unlovely adjunct of an ox roasted whole. Even the final garden-party, designed to include such persons as it was, socially speaking, a trifle difficult to place—Image, owner of the big Shotover brewery, for instance, who was shouldering his way so vigorously towards fortune and a seat on the bench of magistrates; the younger members of the firm of Goteway & Fox, Solicitors of Westchurch; Goodall, the Methodist miller from Parson's Holt, and certain sporting yeoman farmers with their comely womankind—even this final entertainment, with all its small triumphs and heart-burnings, flutterings of youthful inexperience, aspirations, condescensions, had gone, like the rest of the week's junketings, to swell the sum of things accomplished, of all that which is past and done with, and will never come again.

Fully an hour ago, Dr. Knott, "under plea of waiting cases, had hitched his ungainly, thick-set figure into his high gig.

"Plenty of fine folks, eh, Timothy?" he said to the ferret-faced groom beside him, as he gathered up the reins; and the brown mare, knowing the hand on her mouth, laid herself out to her work. "Handsome young couple as anybody need wish to see. Not much business doing there for me, I fancy, unless it lies in the nursery line."

"Say those Brockhurst folks mostly dies airly, though," remarked Timothy, with praiseworthy effort at professional encouragement.

"Eh! so you've heard that story too, have you?"—and John Knott drew the lash gently across the hollow of the mare's back.

"This 'ere Sir Richard's the third baronet I've a-seen, and I bean't so very old neither."

The doctor looked down at the spare little man with a certain snarling affection, as he said:—"Oh no! I'm not kept awake o' nights by the fear of losing you, Timothy. Your serviceable old carcass'll hang together for a good while yet."—Then his rough eyebrows drew into a line and he stared thoughtfully down the long space of the clean gravel road under the meeting branches of the lime trees.

The Whitney char à bancs had driven off but a few minutes later, to the admiration of all beholders; yet not, it must be admitted, without a measure of inward perturbation on the part of that noble charioteer, Lord Fallowfeild. Her Ladyship was constitutionally timid, and he was none too sure of the behaviour of his leaders in face of the string of very miscellaneous vehicles waiting to take up. However, the illustrious party happily got off without any occasion for Lady Fallowfeild's screaming. Then the ardour of departure became universal, and in broken procession the many carriages, phaetons, gigs, traps, pony-chaises streamed away from Brockhurst House, north, south, east and west.

Lady Calmady had bidden her guests farewell at the side-door opening on to the terrace, before they passed through the house to the main entrance in the south front. Last to go, as he had been first to come, was that worthy person, Thomas Caryll, the rector of Sandyfield. Mild, white-haired, deficient in chin, he had a natural leaning towards women in general, and towards those of the upper classes in particular. Katherine Calmady's radiant youth, her courtesy, her undeniable air of distinction, and a certain gracious gaiety which belonged to her, had, combined with unaccustomed indulgence in claret cup, gone far to turn the good man's head during the afternoon. Regardless of the slightly flustered remonstrances of his wife and daughters, he lingered, expending himself in innocently confused compliment, supplemented by prophecies regarding the blessings destined to descend upon Brockhurst and the mother parish of Sandyfield in virtue of Lady Calmady's advent.

But at length he also was gone. Katherine waited, her eyes full of laughter, until Mr. Caryll's footsteps died away on the stone quarries of the great hall within. Then she gently drew the heavy door to, and stepped out on to the centre of the terrace. The grass slopes of the park—dotted with thorn trees and beds of bracken,—the lime avenue running along the ridge of the hill, the ragged edge of the fir forest to the east, and the mass of the house, all these were softened to a vagueness—as the landscape in a dream—by the deepening twilight. An immense repose pervaded the whole scene. It affected Katherine to a certain seriousness. Her social excitements and responsibilities, the undoubted success that had attended her maiden essay as hostess during the past week, shrank to trivial proportions. Another order of emotion arose in her. She became sensible of a necessity to take counsel with herself.

She moved slowly along the terrace; paused in the arcaded garden-hall at the end of it—the carven stone benches and tables of which showed somewhat ghostly in the dimness—to put off her bonnet and push back the lace scarf from her shoulders. An increasing solemnity was upon her. There were things to think of, things deep and strange. She must needs place them, make an effort, anyhow, to do so. And, in face of this necessity, came an instinct to rid herself of all small impeding conventionalities, even in the matter of dress. For there was in Katherine that inherent desire of harmony with her surroundings, that natural sense of fitness, which—given certain technical aptitudes—goes to make a great dramatic artist. But, since in her case, such technical aptitudes were either non-existent, or wholly in abeyance, it followed that, save in nice questions of private honour, she was quite the least self-conscious and self-critical of human beings. Now, as she passed out under the archway on to the square lawn of the troco-ground, bare-headed, in her pale dress, a sweet seriousness filling all her mind, even as the sweet summer twilight filled all the valley and veiled the gleaming surface of the Long Water far below, she felt wholly in sympathy with the aspect and sentiment of the place. Indeed it appeared to her, just then, that the four months of her marriage, the five months of her engagement, even the twenty-two years which made up all the sum of her earthly living, were a prelude merely to the present hour and to that which lay immediately ahead.

Yet the prelude had, in truth, been a pretty enough piece of music. Katharine's experience had but few black patches in it as yet. Furnished with a fair and healthy body, with fine breeding, with a character in which the pride and grit of her North Country ancestry was tempered by the poetic instincts and quick wit which came to her with her mother's Irish blood, Katherine Ormiston started as well furnished as most to play the great game that all are bound to play, whether they will or no, with fate. Mrs. Ormiston, still young and beloved, had died in bringing this, her only daughter, into the world; and her husband had looked somewhat coldly upon the poor baby in consequence. There was an almost misanthropic vein in the autocratic land-owner and iron-master. He had three sons already, and therefore found but little use for this woman-child. So, while pluming himself on his clear judgment and unswerving reason, he resented, most unreasonably, her birth, since it took his wife from him. Such is the irony of things, forever touching man on the raw, proving his weakness in that he holds his strongest point! In point of fact, however, Katherine suffered but slightly from the poor welcome that greeted her advent in the gray, many-towered house upon the Yorkshire coast. For her great-aunt, Mrs. St. Quentin, speedily gathered the small creature into her still beautiful arms, and lavished upon it both tenderness and wealth, along—as it grew to a companionable age—with the wisdom of a mind ripened by wide acquaintance with men and with public affairs. Mrs. St. Quentin—famous in Dublin, London, Paris, as a beauty and a wit—had passed her early womanhood amid the tumult of great events. She had witnessed the horrors of the Terror, the splendid amazements of the First Empire; and could still count among her friends and correspondents, politicians and literary men of no mean standing. A legend obtains that Lord Byron sighed for her—and in vain. For, as Katherine came to know later, this woman had loved once, daringly, finally, yet without scandal—though the name of him whom she loved (and who loved her) was not, it must be owned, St. Quentin. And perhaps it was just this, this hidden and somewhat tragic romance, which kept her so young, so fresh; kept her unworldly, though moving so freely in the world; had given her that exquisite sense of relative values and that knowledge of the heart, which leads, as the divine Plato has testified, to the highest and most reconciling philosophy.

Thus, the delicately brilliant old lady and the radiant young lady lived together delightfully enough, spending their winters in Paris in a pretty apartment in the rue de Rennes—shared with one Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, whose friendship with Mrs. St. Quentin dated from their schooldays at the convent of the Sacré Cœur. Spring and autumn found Katherine and her great-aunt in London. While, in summer, there was always a long visit to Ormiston Castle, looking out from the cliff edge upon the restless North Sea. Lovers came in due course. For over and above its own shapeliness—which surely was reason enough—Katherine's hand was well worth winning from the worldly point of view. She would have money; and Mrs. St. Quentin's influence would count for much in the case of a great-nephew-by-marriage who aspired to a parliamentary or diplomatic career. But the lovers also went, for Katherine asked a great deal—not so much of them, perhaps, as of herself. She had taken an idea, somehow, that marriage, to be in the least satisfactory, must be based on love; and that love worth the name is an essentially two-sided business. Indirectly the girl had learnt much on this difficult subject from her great-aunt; and with characteristic directness had agreed with herself to wait till her heart was touched, if she waited a lifetime—though of exactly in what either her heart, or the touching of it, consisted she was deliciously innocent as yet.

And then, in the summer of 1841, Sir Richard Calmady came to Ormiston. He and her brother Roger had been at Eton together. Katherine remembered him, years ago, as a well-bred and courteously contemptuous schoolboy, upon whose superior mind, small female creatures—busy about dolls, and victims of the athletic restrictions imposed by petticoats—made but slight impression. Latterly Sir Richard's name had come to be one to conjure with in racing circles, thanks to the performances of certain horses bred and trained at the Brockhurst stables; though some critics, it is true, deplored his tendency to neglect the older and more legitimate sport of flat-racing in favour of steeple-chasing. It was said he aspired to rival the long list of victories achieved by Mr. Elmore's Gaylad and Lottery, and the successes of Peter Simple the famous gray. This much Katherine had heard of him from her brother. And having her haughty turns—as what charming woman has not?—set him down as probably a rough sort of person, notwithstanding his wealth and good connections, a kind of gentleman jockey, upon whom it would be easy to take a measure of pretty revenge for his boyish indifference to her existence. But the meeting, and the young man, alike, turned out quite other than she had anticipated. For she found a person as well furnished in all polite and social arts as herself, with no flavour of the stable about him. She had reckoned on one whose scholarship would carry him no further than a few stock quotations from Horace, and whose knowledge of art would begin and end with a portrait of himself presented by the members of a local hunt. And it was a little surprising—possibly a little mortifying to her—to hear him talking over obscure passages in Spencer's Færie Queene with Mrs. St. Quentin, before the end of the dinner, and nicely apprising the relative merits of the water-colour sketches by Turner, that hung on either side the drawing-room fireplace.

Nor did Katherine's surprises end here. An unaccountable something was taking place within her, that opened up a whole new range of emotion. She, the least moody of young women, had strange fluctuations of temper, finding herself buoyantly happy one hour, the next pensive, filled with timidity and self-distrust—not to mention the little fits of gusty anger, and purposeless jealousy which took her, hurting her pride shrewdly. She grew anxiously solicitous as to her personal appearance. This dress would not please her nor that. The image of her charming oval face and well-set head ceased to satisfy her. Surely a woman's hair should be either positively blond or black, not this indeterminate brown, with warm lights in it? She feared her mouth was not small enough, the lips too full and curved for prettiness. She wished her eyes less given to change, under their dark lashes, from clear gray-blue to a nameless colour like the gloom of the pools of a woodland stream, as her feelings changed from gladness to distress. She feared her complexion was too bright, and then not bright enough. And, all the while, a certain shame possessed her that she should care at all about such trivial matters; for life had grown suddenly larger and more august. Books she had read, faces she had watched a hundred times, the vast horizon looking eastward over the unquiet sea, all these gained a new value and meaning which at once enthralled and agitated her thought.

Sir Richard Calmady stayed a fortnight at Ormiston. And the two ladies crossed to Paris earlier, that autumn, than was their custom. Katherine was not in her usual good health, and Mrs. St. Quentin desired change of air and scene on her account. She took Mademoiselle de Mirancourt into her confidence, hinting at causes for her restlessness and wayward little humours unacknowledged by the girl herself. Then the two elder women wrapped Katherine about with an atmosphere of—if possible—deeper tenderness than before; mingling sentiment with their gaiety, and gaiety with their sentiment, and the delicate respect which refrains from question with both.

One keenly bright October afternoon Richard Calmady called in the rue de Rennes. It appeared he had come to Paris with the intention of remaining there for an indefinite period. He called again and yet again, making himself charming—a touch of deference tempering his natural suavity—alike to his hostesses and to such of their guests as he happened to meet. It was the fashion of fifty years ago to conduct affairs, even those of the heart, with a dignified absence of precipitation. The weeks passed, while Sir Richard became increasingly welcome in some of the very best houses in Paris.—And Katherine? It must be owned Katherine was not without some heartaches, which she proudly tried to deny to herself and conceal from others. But eventually—it was on the morning after the ball at the British Embassy—the man spoke and the maid answered, and the old order changed, giving place to new in the daily life of the pretty apartment of the rue de Rennes.

About five months later the marriage took place in London; and Sir Richard and Lady Calmady started forth on a wedding journey of the old-fashioned type. They traveled up the Rhine, and posted, all in the delicious, early summer weather, through Northern Italy, as far as Florence. They returned by Paris. And there, Mrs. St. Quentin watching—in almost painful anxiety—to see how it fared with her recovered darling, was wholly satisfied, and gave thanks. For she perceived that, in this case, at least, marriage was no legal, conventional connection leaving the heart emptier than it found it—the bartering of precious freedom for a joyless bondage, an obligation, weary in the present, and hopeless of alleviation in the future, save by the reaching of that far-distant, heavenly country, concerning which it is comfortably assured us "that there they neither marry nor are given in marriage." For the Katherine who came back to her was at once the same, and yet another, Katherine—one who carried her head more proudly and stepped as though she was mistress of the whole fair earth, but whose merry wit had lost its little edge of sarcasm, whose sympathy was quicker and more instinctive, whose voice had taken fuller and more caressing tones, and in whose sweet eyes sat a steady content good to see. And then, suddenly, Mrs. St. Quentin began to feel her age as she had never, consciously, felt it before; and to be very willing to fold her hands and recite her Nunc Dimittis. For, in looking on the faces of the bride and bridegroom, she had looked once again on the face of Love itself, and had stood within the court of the temple of that Uranian Venus whose unsullied glory is secure here and hereafter, since to her it is given to discover to her worshippers the innermost secret of existence, thereby fencing them forever against the plagues of change, delusion, and decay. Love began gently to loosen the cords of life, and to draw Lucia St. Quentin home—home to that dear dwelling-place which, as we fondly trust—since God Himself is Love—is reserved for all true lovers beyond the grave and Gates of Death. Thus one flower falls as another opens; and to-day, however sweet, is only won across the corpse of yesterday.

And it was some perception of just this—the ceaseless push of event following on event, the ceaseless push of the yet unborn struggling to force the doors of life—which moved Katherine to seriousness, as she stood alone on the smooth expanse of the troco-ground, in the soft, all-covering twilight, at the close of the day's hospitality.

On her right the house, and its delicate twisted chimneys, showed dark against the fading rose of the western sky. The air, rich with the fragrance of the red-walled gardens behind her,—with the scent of jasmine, heliotrope and clove carnations, ladies-lilies and mignonette,—was stirred, now and again, by wandering winds, cool from the spaces of the open moors. While, as the last roll of departing wheels died out along the avenues, the voices of the woodland began to reassert themselves. Wild-fowl called from the alder-fringed Long Water. Night-hawks churred as they beat on noiseless wings above the beds of bramble and bracken. A cock pheasant made a most admired stir and keckling in seeing his wife and brood to roost on the branches of one of King James's age-old Scotch firs.

And this sense of nature coming back to claim her own, to make known her eternal supremacy, now that the fret of man's little pleasuring had past, was very grateful to Katherine Calmady. Her soul cried out to be free, for a time, to contemplate, to fully apprehend and measure its own happiness. It needed to stand aside, so that the love given, and all given with that love—even these matters of house and gardens, of men-servants and maid-servants, of broad acres, all the poetry, in short, of great possessions—might be seen in perspective. For Katherine had that necessity—in part intellectual, in part practical, and common to all who possess a gift for rule—to resist the confusing importunity of detail, and to grasp intelligently the whole, which alone gives to detail coherence and purpose. Her mind was not one—perhaps unhappily—which is contented to merely play with bricks, but demands the plan of the building into which those bricks should grow. And she wanted, just now, to lay hold of the plan of the fair building of her own life. And to this end the solitude, the evening quiet, the restful unrest of the forest and its wild creatures should surely have ministered? She moved forward and sat on the broad stone balustrade which, topping the buttressed masonry that supports it above the long downward grass slope of the park, encloses the troco-ground on the south.

The landscape lay drowned in the mystery of the summer night. And Katherine, looking out into it, tried to think clearly, tried to range the many new experiences of the last months and to reckon with them. But her brain refused to work obediently to her will. She felt strangely hurried for all the surrounding quiet.

One train of thought, which she had been busy enough by day and honestly sleepy enough at night, to keep at arm's length during this time of home-coming and entertaining, now invaded and possessed her mind—filling it at once with a new and overwhelming movement of tenderness, yet for all her high courage with a certain fear. She cried out for a little space of waiting, a little space in which to take breath. She wanted to pause, here in the fulness of her content. But no pause was granted her. She was so happy, she asked nothing more. But something more was forced upon her. And so it happened that, in realising the ceaseless push of event on event, the ceaseless dying of dear to-day in the service of unborn to-morrow, her gentle seriousness touched on regret.

How long she remained lost in such pensive reflections Lady Calmady could not have said. Suddenly the terrace door slammed. A moment later a man's footsteps echoed across the flags of the garden-hall.

"Katherine," Richard Calmady called, somewhat imperatively, "Katherine, are you there?"

She turned and stood watching him as he came rapidly across the turf.

"Yes, I am here," she cried. "Do you want me?"

"Do I want you?" he answered curtly. "Don't I always want you?"

A little sob rose in her throat—she knew not why—for, hearing the tone of his voice, her sadness was strangely assuaged.

"I could not find you," he went on. "And I got into an absurd state of panic—sent Roger in one direction, and Julius in another, to look for you."

"Whereupon Roger, probably, posted down to the stables, and Julius up to the chapel to search. Where the heart dwells there the feet follow. Meanwhile, you came straight here and found me yourself."

"I might have known I should do that."

The importunate thought returned upon Katherine and with it a touch of her late melancholy.

"Ah! one knows nothing for certain when one is frightened," she said. She moved closer to him, holding out her hand. "Here," she continued, "you are a little too shadowy, too unsubstantial, in this light, Dick. I would rather make more sure of your presence."

Richard Calmady laughed very gently. Then the two stood silent, looking out over the dim valley, hand in hand. The scent of the gardens was about them. Moving lights showed through the many windows of the great house. The waterfowl called sleepily. The churring of the night-hawks was continuous, soothing as the hum of a spinning-wheel. Somewhere, away in the Warren, a fox barked. In the eastern sky, the young moon began to climb above the ragged edge of the firs. When they spoke again it was very simply, in broken sentences, as children speak. The poetry of their relation to one another and the scene about them were too full of meaning, too lovely, to call for polish of rhetoric, or pointing by epigram.

"Tell me," Katherine said, "were you satisfied? Did I entertain your people prettily?"

"Prettily? You entertained them as they had never been entertained before—like a queen—and they knew it. But why did you stay out here alone?"

"To think—and to look at Brockhurst."

"Yes, it's worth looking at now," he said. "It was like a body wanting a soul till you came."

"But you loved it?" Katherine reasoned.

"Oh yes! because I believed the soul would come some day. Brockhurst, and the horses, and the books, all helped to make the time pass while I was waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"Why for you, of course, you dear, silly sweet. Haven't I always been waiting for you—just precisely and wholly you, nothing more or less—all through my life, all through all conceivable and inconceivable lives, since before the world began?"

Katharine's breath came with a fluttering sigh. She let her head fall back against his shoulder. Her eyes closed involuntarily. She loved these fond exaggerations—as what woman does not who has had the good fortune to hear them? They pierced her with a delicious pain; and—perhaps therefore, perhaps not unwisely—she believed them true.

"Are you tired?" he asked presently.

Katherine looked up smiling, and shook her head.

"Not too tired to be up early to-morrow morning and come out with me to see the horses galloped? Sultan will give you no trouble. He is well-seasoned and merely looks on at things in general with intelligent interest, goes like a lamb and stands like a rock."

While her husband was speaking Katherine straightened herself up, and moved a little from him though still holding his hand. Her languor passed, and her eyes grew large and black.

"I think, perhaps, I had better not go to-morrow, Dick," she said slowly.

"Ah! you are tired, you poor dear. No wonder, after the week's work you have had. Another day will do just as well. Only I want you to come out sometimes in the first blush of the morning, before the day has had time to grow commonplace, while the gossamers are still hung with dew, and the mists are in hollows, and the horses are heady from the fresh air and the light. You will like it all, Kitty. It is rather inspiring. But it will keep. To-morrow I'll let you rest in peace."

"Oh no! it is not that," Katherine said quickly. The importunate thought was upon her again, clamouring, not only to be recognised, but fairly owned to and permitted to pass the doors of speech. And a certain modesty made her shrink from this. To know something in the secret of your own heart, or to tell it, thereby making it a hard concrete fact, outside yourself, over which, in a sense, you cease to have control, are two such very different matters! Katherine trembled on the edge of her confession, though that to be confessed was, after all, but the natural crown of her love.

"I think I ought not to ride now—for a time, Dick." All the blood rushed into her face and throat, and then ebbed, leaving her very white in the growing darkness.—"You have given me a child," she said.

[ ]

CHAPTER III

TOUCHING MATTERS CLERICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL

Brockhurst had rarely appeared more blessed by spacious sunshine and stately cheerfulness than during the remaining weeks of that summer. A spirit of unclouded serenity possessed the place, both indoors and out. If rain fell, it was only at night. And this, as so much else, Julius March noted duly in his diary.

For that was the period of elaborate private chronicles, when persons of intelligence and position still took themselves, their doings and their emotions with most admired seriousness. Natural science, the great leveler, had hardly stepped in as yet. Therefore it was, that already, Julius's diary ran into many stout manuscript volumes; each in turn soberly but richly bound, with silver clasp and lock complete, so soon as its final page was written. Begun when he first went up to Oxford, some thirteen years earlier, it formed an intimate history of the influences of the Tractarian Movement upon a scholarly mind and delicately spiritual nature. At the commencement of his Oxford career he had come into close relations with some of the leaders of the movement. And the conception of an historic church, endowed with mystic powers—conveyed through an unbroken line of priests from the age of the apostles—the orderly round of vigil, fast, and festival, the secret, introspective joys of penance and confession, the fascinations of the strictly religious life, as set before him in eloquent public discourse or persuasive private conversation,—had combined to kindle an imagination very insufficiently satisfied by the lean spiritual meats offered it during an Evangelical childhood and youth. Julius yielded himself up to his instructors with passionate self-abandon. He took orders, and remained on at Oxford—being a fellow of his college—working earnestly for the cause he had so at heart. Eventually he became a member of the select band of disciples that dwelt, uncomfortably, supported by visions of reactionary reform at once austere and beneficent, in the range of disused stable buildings at Littlemore.

Of the storm and stress of this religious war, its triumphs, its defeats, its many agitations, Julius's diaries told with a deep, if chastened, enthusiasm. His was a singularly pure nature, unmoved by the primitive desires which usually inflame young blood. Ideas heated him; while the lust of the eye and the pride of life left him almost scornfully cold. He strove earnestly, of course, to bring the flesh into subjection to the spirit; which was, calmly considered, a slight waste of time, since the said flesh showed the least possible inclination of revolt. The earlier diaries contain pathetic exaggerations of the slightest indiscretion. Innocent and virtuous persons have ever been prone to such little manias of self-accusation! Later, the flesh did assert itself, though in a hardly licentious manner. Oxford fogs and damp, along with plain living and high thinking, acting upon a constitution naturally far from robust, produced a commonplace but most disabling nemesis in the form of colds, coughs, and chronic asthma. Julius did not greatly care. He was in that exalted frame of mind in which martyrdom, even by phthisis or bronchial affections, is immeasurably preferable to no martyrdom at all. Perhaps fortunately his relations, and even his Oxford friends, took a quite other view of the matter, and insisted upon his using all legitimate means to prolong his life.

Julius left Oxford with intense regret. It was the Holy City of the Tractarian Movement; and at this moment the progress of that Movement was the one thing worth living for, if live indeed he must. He went forth bewailing his exile and enforced idleness, as a man bewails the loss of the love of his youth. For a time he traveled in Italy and in the south of France. On his return to England he went to stay with his friend and cousin, Sir Richard Calmady. Brockhurst House had always been extremely congenial to him. Its suites of handsome rooms, the inlaid marble chimneypieces of which reach up to the frieze of the heavily moulded ceilings, its wide passages and stairways, their carved balusters and newel-posts, the treasures of its library—now overflowing the capacity of the two rooms originally designed for them, and filling ranges of bookcases between the bay windows of the Long Gallery running the whole length of the first floor from east to west,—the chapel in the southern wing, its richly furnished altar and the glories of its famous, stained-glass windows, all these were very grateful to his taste. While the light, dry, upland air and near neighbourhood of the fir forest eased the physical discomforts from which, at times, he still suffered shrewdly.

He found the atmosphere of the place both soothing and steadying. And of precisely this he stood sorely in need just now. For it must be admitted that a change had come over the spirit of Julius March's great ecclesiastical dream. Absence from Oxford and foreign travel had tended at once to widen and modify his thought. He had seen the Tractarian Movement from a distance, in due perspective. He had also seen Catholicism at close quarters. He had realised that the logical consequence of the teaching of the former could be nothing less than unqualified submission to the latter. On his return to England he learned that more than one of his Oxford friends was arriving, reluctantly, at the same conclusion. Then there arose within him the fiercest struggle his gentle nature had ever yet known. He was torn by the desire to go forward, risking all, with those whom he reverenced; yet was restrained by a sense of honour. For there was in Julius a strain of obstinate, almost fanatic, loyalty. To the Anglican Church he had pledged himself. Through her ministry he had received illumination. To the work of her awakening he had given all his young enthusiasm. How then could he desert her? Her rites might be maimed. The scandal of schism might tarnish her fair fame. Accusations of sloth and lukewarmness might not unjustly be preferred against her. All this he admitted; and it was very characteristic of the man that, just because he did admit it, he remained within her fold.

Yet the decision was dislocating to all his thought, even as the struggle had been. It left him bruised. It cruelly shook his self-confidence. For he was not one of those persons upon whom the shipwreck of long-cherished hopes and purposes have a stimulating effect, filling them merely with a buoyant satisfaction at the opportunity afforded them of beginning all over again! Julius was oppressed by the sense of a great failure. The diaries of this period are but sorrowful reading. He believed he should go softly all his days; and, from a certain point of view, in this he was right.

And it was here that Sir Richard Calmady intervened. He had watched his cousin's struggle, had accepted its reality, sympathising, through friendship rather than through moral or intellectual agreement. For he was one of those fortunate mortals who, while possessing a strong sense of God, have but small necessity to define Him. Many of Julius's keenest agonies appeared to him subjective, a matter of words and phrases. Yet he respected them, out of the sincere regard he bore the man who suffered them. He did more. He tried a practical remedy. Modestly, as one asking rather than conferring a favour, he invited Julius to remain at Brockhurst, on a fair stipend, as domestic chaplain and librarian.

"In the fulness of your generosity towards me you are creating a costly sinecure," Julius had remonstrated.

"Not in the least. I am selfishly trying to secure myself a most welcome companion, by asking you to undertake a very modest cure of souls and to catalogue my books, when you might be filling some important post and qualifying for a bishopric."

Julius had shaken his head sadly enough. "The high places of the Church are not for me," he said. "Neither are her great adventures."

Thus did Julius March, somewhat broken both in health and spirit, become a carpet-priest. The trumpet blasts of controversy reached him as echoes merely, while his days passed in peaceful, if pensive monotony. He read prayers morning and evening to the assembled household in the chapel; reduced the confusion of the library shelves, doing a fair amount of study, both secular and theological, during the process; rode with his cousin on fine afternoons to distant farms, by high-banked lanes in the lowland, or across the open moors; visited the lodges, or the keepers' and gardeners' cottages within the limits of the park, on foot. Now and again he took a service, or preached a sermon, for good Mr. Caryll of Sandyfield, in whose amiable mind instinctive admiration of those, even distantly, related to persons of wealth and position jostled an equally instinctive terror of Mr. March's "well-known Romanising tendencies." And in that there was, surely, a touch of the irony of fate! Lastly, Julius did his utmost to exercise an influence for good over the twenty and odd boys at the racing stables—an unpromising generation at best, the majority of whom, he feared, accepted his efforts for their moral and spiritual welfare with the same somewhat brutish philosophy with which they accepted Tom Chifney, the trainer's, rough-and-ready system of discipline, and the thousand and one vagaries of the fine-limbed, queer-tempered horses which were at once the glory and torment of their young lives.

Things had gone on thus for rather more than a year, when Richard Calmady married. Julius was perhaps inclined, beforehand, to underrate the importance of that event. He was singularly innocent, so far, of the whole question of woman. He had no sisters. At Oxford he had lived exclusively among men, while the Tractarian Movement had offered a sufficient outlet to all his emotion. The severe and exquisite verses of the "Lyra Apostolica" fitly expressed the passions of his heart. To the Church, at once his mother and his mistress, he had wholly given his first love. He had gone so far, indeed, in a rapture of devotion one Easter day, during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, as to impose upon himself a vow of livelong chastity. This he did—let it be added—without either the sanction or knowledge of his spiritual advisers. The vow, therefore, remained unwitnessed and unratified, but he held it inviolable nevertheless. And it lay but lightly upon him, joyfully almost—rather as a ridding of himself of possible perturbations and obsessions, than as an act of most austere self-renunciation. In his ignorance he merely went forward with an increased freedom of spirit. All of which is set down, not without underlying pathos, in the diary of that date.

And that freedom of spirit remained by him, notwithstanding his altered circumstances. It even served—indirectly, since none knew the fact of his self-dedication save himself—as a basis of pleasant intercourse with the women of his own social standing whom he now met. It served him thus in respect of Lady Calmady, who accepted him as a member of her new household with charming kindliness, treating him with a gentle solicitude born of pity for his far from robust health and for the mental struggles which she understood him to have passed through.

Many persons, it must be owned, described Julius as remarkably ugly. But he did not strike Katherine thus. His heavy black hair, beardless face and sallow skin—rendered dull and colourless, his features thickened, though not actually scarred, by smallpox, which he had had as a child,—his sensitive mouth, and the questioning expression of his short-sighted brown eyes, reminded her of a fifteenth-century Florentine portrait that had always challenged her attention when she passed it in the vestibule of a certain obscure, yet aristocratic, Parisian hotel, on the left bank—well understood—of the Seine.

The man of the portrait was narrow-chested, clothed in black. So was Julius March. He had long-fingered, finely shaped hands. So had Julius. He gave her the impression of a person endowed with a capacity of prolonged and silent self-sacrifice. So did Julius. She wondered about his story. For Julius, at least—little as she or he then suspected it—the deepest places of the story still lay ahead.

[ ]

CHAPTER IV

RAISING PROBLEMS WHICH IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY TO RESOLVE

It was not without a movement of inward thanksgiving that, the festivities connected with Sir Richard and Lady Calmady's home-coming being over, Julius March returned to his labours in the Brockhurst library. Humanity at first hand, whatever its social standing or its pursuits, was, in truth, always slightly agitating to him. He felt more at home when dealing with conclusions than with the data that go to build up those conclusions, with the thoughts of men printed and bound, than with the urgent raw material from which those thoughts arise. Revelation, authority—these were still his watchwords; and in face of them even the harmless spectacle of a country neighbourhood at play, let alone the spectacle of the human comedy generally, is singularly confusing.

He sought the soothing companionship of books with even heightened relief one fair morning some three weeks later. For Mrs. St. Quentin and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had arrived at Brockhurst the day previously, and Julius had been sensible of certain perturbations of mind in meeting these two ladies, one of whom was a devout Catholic by inheritance and personal conviction; while the other, though nominally a member of his own communion, was known to temper her religion with a wide, if refined, philosophy. Conversation had drifted towards serious subjects in the course of the evening, and Mrs. St. Quentin had admitted, with a playful deprecation of her dear friend's rigid religious attitude, that no one creed, no one system, offered an adequate solution of the infinite mystery and complexity of life—as she knew it. The serene adherence of one charming and experienced woman to an authority which he had rejected, the almost equally serene indifference on the part of the other to the revelation he held as absolute and final, troubled Julius. Small wonder then, that early, after a solitary breakfast, he retired upon the society of the odd volumes cluttering the shelves of the Long Gallery, that he sorted, arranged, catalogued, grateful for that dulling of thought which mechanical labour brings with it.

But fate was malicious, and elected to make a sport of Julius this morning. Unexpectedly importunate human drama obtruded itself, the deep places of the story—such as, in the innocence of his ascetic refinement, he had never dreamed of—began to reveal themselves.

He had climbed the wide, carpeted steps of the library ladder and seated himself on the topmost one, at right angles to a topmost shelf the contents of which he proposed to investigate, duster and note-book in hand. The vast perspective of the gallery lengthened out before him, cool, faint-tinted, full of a diffused and silvery light. The self-coloured, unpainted paneling of the walls and bookcases—but one shade warmer in tone than that of the stone mullions and transomes of the lofty windows—gave an indescribable delicacy of effect to the atmosphere of the room. Through the many-paned, leaded lights of the eastern bay, the sunshine—misty, full of dancing notes—streamed in obliquely, bringing into quaint prominence of light and shadow a very miscellaneous collection of objects.—A marble Buddha, benign of aspect, his right hand raised in blessing, seated, cross-legged upon the many-petalled lotus. A pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged, leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb, but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints, softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull, from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, placed at regular intervals, were consol tables bearing tall oriental jars and huge bowls of fine porcelain, filled with potpourri; so that the scent of dried rose leaves, bay, verbena, and many spices impregnated the air. The place was, in short, a museum. Whatever of strange, grotesque, and curious, Calmadys of past generations had collected in their wanderings, by land and sea, found lodgment here. It was a home of half-forgotten histories, of valorous deeds grown dim through the lapse of years; a harbour of refuge for derelict gods, derelict weapons, derelict volumes, derelict instruments which had once discoursed sweet enough music, but the fashion of which had now passed away. The somewhat obsolete sentiment of the place harmonised with the thin, silvery light and the thin sweetness of spices and dead roses which pervaded it. It seemed to smile, as with the pitying tolerance of the benign image of Buddha, at the heat and flame, the untempered scarlet and purple of the fleeting procession of individual lives, that had ministered to its furnishing. For how much vigorous endeavour, now over and done with, never to be recalled, had indeed gone to supply the furnishing of that room!—And, after all, is not the most any human creature dare hope for the more or less dusty corner of some museum shelf at last? The passion of the heart testified to by some battered trinket, the sweat of the brain by some maggot-eaten manuscript, the agony of death, at best, by some round shot turned up by the ploughshare? And how shall any one dare complain of this, since have not empires before now only been saved from oblivion by a few buried potsherds, and whole races of mankind by childish picture-scratchings on a reindeer bone? Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse. The individual—his arts, his possessions, his religion, his civilisation—is always as an envelope, merely, to be torn asunder and cast away. Nothing subsists, nothing endures but life itself, endlessly self-renewed, endlessly one, through the endless divergencies of its manifestations. And, as Julius March was to find, hide from it, deny it, strive to elude it as we may, the recognition of just that is bound to grip us sooner or later and hold us with a fearful and dominating power from which there is no escape.

Meanwhile, his occupation was tranquil enough, comfortably remote, as it seemed, from all such profound and disquieting matters. For the top shelf proved not very prolific of interest; and one book after another, examined and rejected as worthless, was dropped—with a reproachful flutter of pages and final thud—into the capacious paper-basket standing on the floor below. Then, at the far end of the said shelf, he came unexpectedly upon a collection of those quaint chap-books which commanded so wide a circulation during the eighteenth century.

Julius, with the true bibliophile's interest in all originals, examined his find carefully. The tattered and dogs-eared, little volumes, coarsely printed and embellished by a number of rough, square woodcuts, had, he knew, a distinct value. He soon perceived that they formed a very representative selection. He glanced at The famous History of Guy of Warwick; at that of Sir Bevis of Southampton; at Joaks upon Joaks, a lively work regarding the manners and customs of the aristocracy at the period of the Restoration; at the record of the amazing adventures of that lusty serving-wench Long Meg of Westminster; and at that refreshing piece of comedy known as Merry Tales concerning the Sayings and Doings of the Wise Men of Gotham.

Finally, hidden behind the outstanding frame of the bookcase, he discovered four tiny volumes tied together with a rusty, black ribbon. A heavy coating of dust lay upon them. A large spider, moreover, darted from behind them. Dust clung unpleasantly to its hairy and ill-favoured person. It was a matter of principle with Julius never to take life; yet instinctively he drew back his hand from the book in disgust.

"Araignée du matin, chagrin," he said, involuntarily, while he watched the insect make good its escape over the top of the bookcase.

Then he flicked uneasily at the little parcel with his duster, causing a cloud of gray atoms to float up and out into the room. Julius was perhaps absurdly open to impressions. It took him some seconds to recover from his sense of repulsion and to untie the rusty ribbon around the little books. They proved all to be ragged and imperfect copies of the same work. The woodcuts in them were splotched with crude colour. The title-page was printed in assorted type—here a line of Roman capitals, there one in italics or old English letters. The inscription, consequently, was difficult to decipher, causing him to hold the tattered page very close to his short-sighted eyes. It ran thus—

"Setting forth a true and particular account of the dealings of Sir Thomas Calmady with the forester's daughter and the bloody death of her only child. To which is added her prophecy and curse."

Julius had been standing, so as to reach the length of the shelf. Now he sat down on the top step of the ladder again. A whole rush of memories came upon him. He remembered vaguely how, long ago, in his childhood, he had heard legends of this same curse. Staying here at Brockhurst, as a baby-child with his mother, maids had hinted at it, gossiping over the nursery fire at night; and his mind, irresistibly attracted, even then, by the supernatural, had been filled at once by desperate curiosity and by panic fear. He paused, thinking back, singularly moved, as one on the edge of the satisfaction of long-desired knowledge, yet slightly self-contemptuous, both of his own emotion and of the rather vulgar means by which that knowledge promised to be obtained.

The shafts of sunshine fell more obliquely across the eastern end of the gallery. Benign Buddha had passed into shadow; while a painting by Murillo, standing on an easel near by caught the light, starting into arresting reality. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf, holding a couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash—an unhappy creature who had made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and whose gorgeous garments were ingeniously designed to emphasise the physical degradation of his contorted body. This painting, appearing to Julius too painful for habitual contemplation, had, at his request, been removed from his study down-stairs to its present station. Just now he fancied it looked forth at him queerly insistent. At this distance he could distinguish little more than a flare of scarlet and cloth-of-gold, and the white of the hounds' flanks and bellies under the strong sunlight. But he knew the picture in all its details; and was oppressed by the remembrance of tragic eyes in a brutal face, eyes that protested dumbly against cruelty inflicted by nature and by mankind alike. He, Julius, was not, so he feared, quite guiltless in this matter. For had there not been a savour of cruelty in his ejection of the portrait of this unhappy being from his peaceful study?

And thinking of this his discomfort augmented. He was assailed by an unreasoning nervousness of something malign, something sinister, about to befall or to become known to him.

"Araignée du matin, chagrin," he repeated involuntarily.

He laid the four little chap-books back hastily behind the outstanding woodwork of the bookshelf, descended the steps, walked the length of the gallery, and leaning against one of the stone mullions of the great, eastern bay window looked out of the wide, open casement.

The prospect was, indeed, reassuring enough. The softly green square of the troco-ground, the brilliant beds and borders of the brick-walled gardens, the gray flags of the great terrace—its rows of little orange trees, heavy with flower and fruit, set in blue painted tubs—lay below him in a blaze of August sunshine. From the direction of the Long Water in the valley, Richard Calmady rode up, between the thorn trees and the beds of bracken, across the turf slopes of the park. It was a joy to see him ride. The rider and horse were one, in vigour and in the repose which comes of vigour—a something classic in the natural beauty and sympathy of rider and of horse. Half-way up the slope Richard swerved, turned towards the house, sat looking up, hat in hand, while Katherine stood at the edge of the terrace looking down, speaking with him. The warm breeze fluttered her full muslin skirts, rose and white, and the white lace of her parasol. The rich tones of her voice and the ring of her laughter came up to Julius, as he leant against the stone mullion, along with the droning of innumerable bees, and the cooing of the pink-footed pigeons—that bowed to one another, spreading their tails, drooping their wings amorously, upon the broad, gray string-course running along the house front just beneath. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, a small, neat, gray and black figure, was beside Katherine, and, now and again, he heard the pretty staccato of her foreign speech. Then Richard Calmady rode onward, turning half round in the saddle, looking up for a moment at the woman he loved. His horse broke into a canter, bearing him swiftly in and out of the shadow of the glistening, domed oaks and ancient, stag-headed, Spanish chestnuts which crowned the ascent, and on down the long, softly-shaded vista of the lime avenue. While Camp, the bulldog, who had lain panting in the bracken, streaked like a white flash up the hillside in pursuit of his well-beloved master.

And Julius March moved away from the open window with a sigh. Yet what, after all, of malign or sinister was perceptible, conceivable even, in respect of this glorious morning and these happy people—unless, as he reflected, something of pathos is of necessity ever resident in all beauty, all happiness, the world being sinful, and existence so prolific of pain and melancholy happenings? So he went back, climbed the library steps again, and taking the little bundle of chap-books from their dusty resting-place, set himself, in a somewhat penitential spirit, to master their contents. If the occupation was distasteful to him, the more wholesome to pursue it! So, supplying the deficiencies of torn or defaced pages by reference to another of the copies, he arrived by degrees at a clear understanding of the whole matter. The story was set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from the very homeliness of the language in which it was chronicled.

Thus Julius learned how, during the closing years of the Commonwealth, the young royalist gentleman, Sir Thomas Calmady, dwelling in enforced seclusion at Brockhurst, relieved the tedium of country life by indulgence in divers amours. He was large-hearted, apparently, and could not see a comely face without attempting intimate acquaintance with the possessor of it. Among other damsels distinguished by his attentions was his head forester's handsome daughter, whom, under reiterated promise of marriage, he seduced. In due time she bore him a child, ideally beautiful, according to the poet of the chap-book, blessed with "red-gold hair and eyes of blue," and many charms of infantile healthfulness. And yet, notwithstanding the noble looks of her little son, the forester's daughter still remained unwed. For just now came the Restoration, and along with it a notable change in the outlook of Sir Thomas Calmady and many another lusty young gallant, since the event in question not only restored Charles the Second to the arms of his devoted subjects, but restored such loyal gentlemen to the by no means too strait-laced society of town and court. Thence, some few years later, Sir Thomas—amiably willing in all things to oblige his royal master—brought home a bride, whose rank and wealth, according to the censorious chap-book, were extensively in excess of her youth and virtue.

Julius lingered a little in contemplation of the quaint wood-cut representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a bottle-green bodice—very generously décolletée, her head adorned by a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of persons—presumably footmen—clad in canary-coloured coats and armed with long staves. With these last, they treated a female figure in blue to, as it seemed, sadly rough usage. And the context informed Julius, in jingling verse, how that poor Hagar, the forester's daughter, inconveniently defiant of custom and of common sense, had stoutly refused to be cast forth into the social wilderness, along with her small Ishmael and a few pounds sterling as price of her honour and content, until she had stood face to face with Sarah, the safely church-wed, if none too reputable, wife. It informed him, further, how the said small Ishmael—whether alarmed by the violence of my lady's men-servants, or wanting merely, childlike, to welcome his returning father—ran to the coach door and clambered on the step; whence, thanks to a vicious thrust—so declares the chap-book—from "the painted Jezebel within," he fell, while the horses plunging forward caused the near hind wheel of the heavy, lumbering vehicle to pass over his legs, almost severing them from his body just above the knee.

Thereupon—and here the homely language of the gutter poet rose to a level of rude eloquence—the outraged mother, holding the mangled and dying child in her arms, cursed the man who had brought this ruin upon her. Cursed him and his descendants, to the sixth and seventh generations, good and bad alike. Declaring, moreover, that as judgment on his perfidy and lust, no owner of Brockhurst should reach the life limit set by the Psalmist, and die quiet and Christianly in his bed, until a somewhat portentous event should have taken place—namely, until, as the jingling rhyme set forth:—

"—a fatherless babe to the birth shall have come,

Of brother or sister shall he have none,

But red-gold hair and eyes of blue

And a foot that will never know stocking or shoe.

If he opens his purse to the lamenter's cry,

Then the woe shall lift and be laid for aye."

Julius March, his spare, black figure crouched together, sat on the top step of the library ladder musing. His first movement had been one of refined and contemptuous disgust. Sensuality and the tragedies engendered by it were so wholly foreign to his nature and mental outlook, that it was difficult to him to reckon with them seriously and admit the very actual and permanent part which they play and always have played in the great drama of human life. It distressed, it, in a sense, annoyed him that the legend of Brockhurst, which had caused him elaborate imaginative terrors during his childhood, should belong to this gross and vulgar order of history. Yet indubitably—as he reluctantly admitted—each owner of Brockhurst had very certainly found death in the midst of life, and that according to some rather brutal and bloody pattern. This might, of course, be judged the result of merest coincidence. Had he leisure and opportunity to search them out, he could find, no doubt, plausible explanation of the majority of cases. Only that fact of persistent violence, persistent accident, did remain. It stared him in the face, so to speak, defiant of denial. And the deduction, consequent upon it, stared him in the face likewise. He was constrained to confess that the first clause of the deeply wronged mother's prediction had found ample fulfilment.—Julius paused, shifted his position uneasily, somewhat fearful of the conclusions of his own reasoning.

For how about the second clause of that same prediction? How about the advent of that strange child of promise, who preordained in his own flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the base things of the world and those which are despised—yea, and the things which are not, to bring to nought the things which are.—His heart, hungry of all martyrdom, all saintly doings, went forth to welcome the idea. But then, he asked himself almost awed, in this sceptical, rationalistic age, are such semi-miraculous moral examples still possible? And answered, with strong exultation—as one finding practical justification of a long, though silently, cherished conviction—yes, that even now, nineteen centuries after the death of that divine Saving Victim to whose service he had devoted his life and the joys of his manhood, such nobly sad and strange happenings may still be.

And even while he thus answered, his eyes were drawn involuntarily to the portrait of the unsightly dwarf, painted by Velasquez. The broad shaft of sunlight had crept backward, away from it, leaving the canvas unobtrusive, no longer harshly evident either in violence of colour or grotesqueness of form. It had become part of the great whole, merely modulated to gracious harmony with the divers objects surrounding it, and like them softly overlaid by a diffused and silvery light.

[ ]

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH JULIUS MARCH BEHOLDS THE VISION OF THE NEW LIFE

He was aroused from these austere, yet, to him, inspiring reflections by the click of an opening door and the sound of women's voices. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt paused on the threshold, one hand raised in quick admiration, the other resting on Lady Calmady's arm.

"But this is superb," she cried gaily. "Your charming King Richard, Cœur d' Or, has given you a veritable palace to inhabit!"

"Ah yes! King Richard has indeed given me a palace to live in. But, better still, he has given me his dear heart of gold in which to hide the life of my heart forever and a day."

Katherine's words came triumphantly, more as song than as speech. She caught the elder woman's upraised hand gently and kissed it, looking her, meanwhile, full in the face.—"I am happy, very, very happy, best and dearest," she said. "And it is so delicious to be happy."

"Ah, my child, my beautiful child," Mademoiselle de Mirancourt cried.

There were tears in her pretty, patient eyes. For if youth finds age pathetic with the obvious pathos of spent body and of tired mind which has ceased to greatly hope, how far more deeply pathetic does age, from out its sad and settled wisdom, find poor gallant youth and all its still unbroken trust in the beneficence of destiny, its unbroken faith in the enchantments of earth!

Meanwhile, Julius March—product as he was of an arbitrary system of thought and training, and by so much divorced from the natural instincts of youth and age alike, the confident joy of the one, the mature acquiescence of the other—in overhearing this brief conversation suffered embarrassment amounting almost to shame. For not only Katherine's words, but the vital gladness of her voice, the sweet exuberance of her manner as she bent, in all her spotless bravery of white and rose, above the elder woman's hand and kissed it, came to him as a revelation before which he shrank with a certain fearful modesty. Julius had read of love in the poets, of course; but, in actual fact, he had never wooed a woman, nor heard from any woman's lips the language of intimate devotion. The cold embraces of the Church—a church, as he too often feared, rendered barren by schism and heresy—were the only embraces he had ever suffered. Things read of and things seen, moreover, are singularly different in power. And so he trembled now at the mystery of human love, actual and concrete, here close beside him. He was, indeed, moved to the point of losing his habitual suavity of demeanour. He rose hastily and descended the library steps, forgetful of the handful of chap-books, which fell in tattered and dusty confusion upon the floor.

Katherine looked round. Until now she had been unobservant of his presence, innocent of other audience than the old friend, to whom it was fitting enough to confide dear secrets. For an instant she hesitated, embarrassed too, her pride touched to annoyance, at having laid bare the treasures of her heart thus unwittingly. She was tempted to retreat through the still open door, into the library, and leave the review of the Long Gallery and its many relics to a more convenient season. But it was not Katherine's habit to run away, least of all from the consequences of her own actions. And her sense of justice compelled her to admit that, in this case, the indiscretion—if indiscretion indeed there was—lay with her, in not having seen poor Julius; rather than with him, in having overheard her little outburst. So she called to him in friendly greeting, and came swiftly towards him down the length of the great room.

And Julius stood waiting for her, leaning against the frame of the library ladder; a spare, black figure, notably at variance with the broad glory of sunshine and colour reigning out of doors.

His usually quick instinct of courtesy was in abeyance, shaken, as he still was, and confused by the revelation that had just come to him. He looked at Lady Calmady with a new and agitated understanding. She made so fair a picture that he could only gaze dumbly at it. Tall in fact, Katherine was rendered taller by the manner—careless of passing fashion—in which her hair was dressed. The warm, brown mass of it, rolled up and back from her forehead, showed all the perfect oval of her face. Tender, lovely, smiling, her blue-brown eyes soft and lustrous, with a certain wondering serenity in their depths, there was yet something majestic about Katherine Calmady. No poor or unworthy line marred the nobility of her face or figure. The dark, arched eyebrows, the well-chiselled and slightly aquiline nose, the firm chin and throat, the shapely hands, all denoted harmony and completeness of development, and promised a reserve of strength, ready to encounter and overcome if danger were to be met. Years afterwards, the remembrance of Katherine as he just then saw her would return upon Julius, as prophetic of much. Quailing in spirit, still reluctant, in his asceticism, to comprehend and reckon with her personality in the fulness of its present manifestation, he answered her at random, and with none of the pause and playful evasiveness usual to his speech.

"I am very glad we have found you," Katherine said frankly. "I was afraid, by the fact of your not coming to breakfast, that you were overtired. We talked late last night. Did we weary you too much?"

"Existence in itself is vexatiously wearisome at times—at least to feeble persons, like myself."

Katherine's smile faded. She looked at him with charming solicitude.

"Ah! you are not well," she declared. "Go out and enjoy the sunshine. Leave all those stupid books. Go," she repeated, "order one of the horses. Go and meet Richard. He has gone over to look at the new lodge. You could ride all the way through the east woods in the cool. See, I will put these tidy."

And, as she spoke, Katherine stooped to pick up the scattered chap-books from the ground. But, in the last few moments, while looking at her, yet further understanding had overtaken Julius March. Not only the mystery of human love, but the mystery of dawning motherhood had come close to him. And he put Lady Calmady aside with a determination of authority somewhat surprising.

"No, no, pardon me! They are dusty, they will soil your hands. You must not touch those books," he said.

Katherine straightened herself up. Her face was slightly flushed, her expression full of kindly amusement.

"Dear Julius, you are very imperative. Surely I may make my hands dirty, once in a way, in a good cause? They will wash, you know, just as well as your own, after all."

"A thousand times better. Still, I will ask you not to touch those books. I have valid reasons. For one, an evil beast in the form of a spider has dwelt among them. I disturbed it and it fled, looking as though it had grown old in trespasses and sins. It seemed to me a thing of ill omen."

He tried to steady himself, to treat the matter lightly. Yet his speech struck Katherine as hurried and anxious, out of all proportion to the matter in hand.

"Poor thing—and you killed it? Yet it couldn't help being ugly, I suppose," she answered, not without a touch of malice.

Julius was on his knees, his long, thin fingers gathering up the tattered pages, ranging them into a bundle, tying them together with the tag of rusty, black ribbon aforesaid. For an unreasoning, fierce desire was upon him—very alien to his usual gentle attitude of mind—to shield this beautiful woman from all acquaintance with the foul story set forth in those little books. To shield her, indeed, from more than merely that.—For a vague presentiment possessed him that she might, in some mysterious way, be intimately involved in the final developments of that same story which, though august, were so full of suffering, so profoundly sad. Meanwhile, in his excitement, he replied less to her gently mocking question than to the importunities of his own thought.

"No," he said, "I let it go. I begin to fear it is useless to attempt to take short-cuts to the extinction of what is evil. It does not cease, but merely changes its form. Unwillingly I have learned that. No violent death is possible to things evil."

Julius rose to his feet.

"They must go on," he continued, "till, in the merciful providence of God, their term is reached, till their power is exhausted, till they have worn themselves out."

Lady Calmady turned and moved thoughtfully towards the far end of the room, where the sunshine still slanted in through the open casements of the bay window, and where the delicate, little spinster lady stood awaiting her. Amorous pigeons cooed below on the string-course. Bees droned sleepily against the glass.

"But," she said, in gentle remonstrance, "that is a rather terrible doctrine, Julius. Surely it is not quite just; for it would seem to leave us almost hopelessly at the mercy of the wrong-doing of others."

"Yes, but are we not, just that—all of us at the mercy of the wrong-doing of others?—The courageous forever suffering for the cowardly, the wise for the ignorant and brutish, the just for the unjust? Is not this, perhaps, the very deepest lesson of our religion?"

"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried incredulously. "There is something at once deeper and more comforting than that. Remember, in the beginning, when God created all things and reviewed His handiwork, He pronounced it very good."

Julius was recovering his suavity. The little packet of chap-books rested safely in the pocket of his coat.

"But that was a long time ago," he said, smiling.

They reached the bay window. Katherine took her old friend's hand once again and laid it caressingly upon her arm.

"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, dearest," she said. "Julius is in fault. He will argue with me about the date of the creation, and that takes time. He declares it was so long ago that everything has had time to grow very old and go very wrong. But, indeed, he is mistaken. Agree with me, tell him he is mistaken! The world is deliciously young yet. It was only made a little over twenty-two years ago. I must know, for I came into it then. And I found it all as new as I was myself, and a thousand times prettier—quite adorably gay, adorably fresh."

Katherine's voice sank, grew fuller in tone. She gazed out over the brilliant garden to the woodland shimmering in the noontide heat. Then she looked at Julius March, her eyes and lips eloquent with joyous conviction.

"Indeed, I think, God makes His whole creation over again for each one of us, it is so beautiful. As in the beginning, so now," she said; "behold it is very good—ah yes! who can doubt that—it is very good!"

"Amen. To you may it ever so continue," Julius murmured, bowing his head.

That evening there was a dinner party at Brockhurst. Lord Denier brought his handsome second wife. She was a Hellard, and took the judge faute de mieux, so said the wicked world, rather late in life. The Cathcarts of Newlands and their daughter Mary came; and Roger Ormiston too, who, being off duty, had run down from London for a few days' partridge shooting, bringing with him his cousin Colonel St. Quentin—invalided home, to his own immense chagrin, in the midst of the Afghan war. On the terrace, after dinner, for the night was warm enough for the whole company to take coffee out of doors, Lady Calmady—incited thereunto by her brother—had persuaded Mary Cathcart to sing, accompanying herself on her guitar. The girl's musical gifts were of no extraordinary order; but her young contralto was true and sweet. The charm of the hour and the place, moreover, was calculated to heighten the effect of the Jacobite songs and old-world love ditties which she selected.

Roger Ormiston unquestionably found her performance sufficiently moving. But then the girl's frank manner, her warm, gipsy-like colouring, and the way in which she could sit a horse, moved him also; had done so, indeed, ever since he first saw her, as quite a child, some eight or nine years ago, on one of his earliest visits to Brockhurst, fighting a half-broken, Welsh pony that refused at a grip by the roadside. The little maiden, her face pale, for once, from concentration of purpose, had forced the pony over the grip. Then, slipping out of the saddle, she coaxed and kissed the rough, unruly, little beast, with tears of apology for the hard usage to which she had been obliged to subject it. So stout, yet so tender, a heart, struck Roger as an excellent thing in woman. And now, listening to the full, rounded notes and thrumming of the guitar strings, in the evening quiet under the stars, he wished, remorsefully, that he had never been guilty of any pleasant sins, that his record was cleaner, his tastes less expensive; that he was a better fellow all round, in short, than he was, because, then, perhaps——

And Julius March, too, found the singing somewhat agitating, though to him the personality of the singer was of small account. Another personality, and a train of feeling evoked by certain new aspects of it, had pursued him all the day long. Katherine, mindful of her somewhat outspoken divergence of opinion from his, in the morning, had been particularly thoughtful of his pleasure and entertainment. At dinner she directed the conversation upon subjects interesting to him, and had thereby made him talk more unreservedly than was his wont. Not even the most saintly of human beings is wholly indifferent to social success. Julius was conscious of a stirring of the blood, of a subdued excitement. These sensations were pleasurable. But his training had taught him to distrust pleasurable sensations as too often the offspring of very questionable parentage. And, while Mary Cathcart's voice still breathed upon the fragrant night air, he, standing on the outskirts of the listening company, slipped away unperceived.

His study, a long narrow room occupying, with his bedroom, the ground floor of the chapel wing of the house, struck chill as he entered it. Above the range of pigeon-holes and little drawers, forming the back of the writing-table, two candles burned on either side of a bronze pietà, which Julius had brought back with him from Rome. On the broad slab of the table below were the many quires of foolscap forming the library catalogue, neatly numbered and lettered; while his diary lay open upon the blotting-pad, ready for the chronicle of the past day. Beside it was the packet of chap-books, still tied together with their tag of rusty ribbon.

It was Julius March's habit to exchange his coat for a cassock in the privacy of his study. He did so now, and knotted a black cord about his waist. Let no one underrate the sustaining power of costume, whether it take the form of ballet-skirt or monk's frock. Human nature is but a weak thing at best, and needs outward and visible signs, not only to support its faith in its deity, but even its faith in its own poor self! Of persons of sensitive temperament and limited experience, such as Julius, this is particularly true. Putting off his secular garment, as a rule, he could put off secular thoughts as well. Beneath the severe and scanty folds of the cassock there was small space for remembrance of the pomp and glory of this perishing world. At least he hoped so. To-night, importuned as he had been by scenes and emotions quite other than ecclesiastical, Julius literally sought refuge in his cassock. It represented "port after stormy seas"—home, after travel in lands altogether foreign.

He took St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei from its place in the book shelves lining one side of the room. There should be peace in the soul, surely, emancipation from questioning of transitory things in reading of the City of God? But, alas, his attention strayed. That sense of subdued excitement was upon him yet. He thought of the conversation at dinner, of brilliant speeches he might have made, of the encouragement of Katherine's smiling eyes and sympathetic speech, of the scene in the gallery that morning, of Mary Cathcart's old-time love ditties. The City of God was far off. All these were things very near at hand. Notwithstanding the scanty folds of the cassock, they importuned him still.

Pained at his own lack of poise and seriousness, Julius returned the volume of St. Augustine to its place, and, sitting down at the writing-table prepared to chronicle the day's events. Perhaps by putting a statement of them on paper he could rid himself of their all too potent influence. But his thought was tumultuous, words refused to come in proper order and sequence; and Julius abhorred that erasures should mar the symmetry of his pages. Impatiently he pushed the diary from him. Clearly it, like the City of God, was destined to wait.

The guests had departed. He had heard the distant calling of voices in friendly farewell, the rumble of departing wheels. The night was very soft and mild. He would go out and walk the gray flags of the terrace, till this unworthy restlessness gave place to reason and calm.

Passing along the narrow passage, he opened the door on to the garden-hall. And there paused. The hall itself, and the inner side of the carven arches of the arcade were in dense shadow. Beyond stretched the terrace bathed in moonlight, which glittered on the polished leaves of the little orange trees, on the leaded panes of the many windows, and strangely transmuted the colours of the range of pot-flowers massed beneath them along the base of the house. It was a fairy world upon which Julius looked forth. Nor did it need suitable inhabitants. Pacing slowly down the centre of the terrace came Richard and Katherine Calmady, hand in hand. Tall, graceful, strong in the perfection of their youth and their great devotion, amid that ethereal brightness, they seemed as two heroic figures—immortal, fairy lovers moving through the lovely wonder of that fairy-land. As they drew near, Katherine stopped, leant—with a superb abandon—back against her husband, resting her hand on his shoulder, drew his arm around her waist for support, drew his face down to her upturned face until their lips met, while the moonlight played upon the jewels on her bare arms and neck and gleamed softly on the surface of her white, satin dress.

To true lovers the longest kiss is all too sadly short—a thing brief almost in proportion to its sweetness. But to Julius March, watching from the blackness of the doorway, it seemed a whole eternity before Richard Calmady raised his head. Then Julius turned and fled down the passage and back into the chill study, where the candles burned on either side the image of the Virgin Mother cradling the dead Christ upon her knee.

Gentle persons, breaking from the lines of self-restraint, run to a curious violence in emotion. All day long, shrink from it, ignore it, as he might, a moral storm had been brewing. Now it broke. Not from those two lovers did Julius turn thus in amazement and terror; but from just that from which it is impossible for any one to turn in actual fact—namely from himself. He was appalled by the narrowness of his own past outlook; appalled by the splendour of that heritage which, by his own act, he had forfeited. The cassock ceased, indeed, to be a refuge, the welcome livery of home and rest. It had become a prison-suit, a badge of slavery, against which his whole being rebelled. For the moment—happily violence is short-lived, only for a very little while do even the gentlest persons "see red"—asceticism appeared to him as a blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost?

Poor Julius, his thought had indeed run almost humorously mad! Yet it was characteristic of the man that the breaking of his self-imposed bonds never occurred to him. Made in ignorance, unwitnessed though his vow might be, it remained inviolable. He never, even in this most heated hour of his trial, doubted that.

Stretching out his arms, he clenched his hands in anguish of spirit. The sacerdotal pride, the subjective joys of self-consecration, the mental luxury of feeling himself different from others, singled out, set apart,—all the Pharisee, in short, in Julius March,—was sick to death. He had supposed he was living to God—and now it appeared to him he had lived only to himself. He had trusted God too little, had come near reckoning the great natural laws—which, after all, must be of God's ordering—common and unclean. Katherine was right. The eternal purpose is joy, not sorrow; youth and health, not age and decay; thankful acceptance, not fastidious rejection and fear. Katherine—yes, Katherine—and there the young man's wild tirade stopped——

He flung himself down in front of the writing-table, leaning his elbows on it, pressing his face upon his folded arms. For in good truth, what did it all amount to? Not outraged laws of nature, not sins against the Holy Ghost; but just simply this, that the common fate had overtaken him. He loved a woman, and in so loving had, at last, found himself.

The most vital experiences are beyond language. When Julius looked up, his eyes rested upon the bronze pietà, age-old witness to the sanctity of motherhood and of suffering alike. His face was wet with tears. He was faint and weak; yet a certain calm had come to him. He no longer quarreled—though his attitude towards them was greatly changed—either with his priestly calling or his rashly made vow. Not as sources of pride did he now regard them; but as searching discipline to be borne humbly and faithfully, to the honour—as he prayed—both of earthly and heavenly love. He loved Katherine, but he loved her husband and that with the fulness of a loyal and equal friendship. And so no taint was upon his love, of this he felt certain. Indeed, he asked nothing better than that things might continue as they were at Brockhurst; and that he might continue to warm his hands a little—only a little—in the dear sunshine of Richard and Katherine Calmady's perfect love.

As Julius rose his knees gave under him. He rested both hands heavily on the table, looked down, saw the unsightly packet of dirty chap-books. Again, and almost with a cry, he prayed that things might continue as they were at Brockhurst.

"Give peace in my time, oh Lord!" he said. Then he wrapped up the little bundle carefully, sealed and labelled it, and locked it away in one of the table-drawers.

Thus, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead Christ, did Julius March behold the Vision of the New Life. But the page of his diary, on which surely a matter of so great importance should have been duly chronicled, remains to this day a blank.

[ ]

CHAPTER VI

ACCIDENT OR DESTINY, ACCORDING TO YOUR HUMOUR

On the 18th of October that year, St. Luke's day, a man died, and this was the manner of his passing.

There was nothing more to be done. Dr. Knott had gone out of the red drawing-room on the ground floor into the tapestry-hung dining-room next door, which struck cold as the small hours drew on towards the dawn. And Julius March, after reciting the prayer in which the Anglican Church commends the souls of her departing children to the merciful keeping of the God who gave them, had followed him. The doctor was acutely distressed. He hated to lose a patient. He also hated to feel emotion. It made him angry. Moreover, he was intolerant of the presence of the clergy and of their ministrations in sick rooms. He greeted poor Julius rather snarlingly.

"So your work's through as well as mine," he said. "No disrespect to your cloth, Mr. March, but I'm not altogether sorry. I dare say I'm a bit of a heathen; but I can't help fancying the dying know more of death and the way to meet it, than any of us can teach them."

A group of men-servants stood about the open door, at the further end of the room, with Iles, the steward, and Mr. Tom Chifney, the trainer from the racing stables. The latter advanced a little and, clearing his throat, inquired huskily—

"No hope at all, doctor?"

"Hope?" he returned impatiently.—The lamp on the great bare dining-table burned low, and John Knott's wide mouth, conical skull and thick, ungainly person looked ogreish, almost brutal in the uncertain light.—"There never was a grain of hope from the first, except in Sir Richard's fine constitution. He is as sound as only a clean-living man of thirty can be.—I wish there were a few more like him, though your beastly diseases do put money into my pocket.—That offered us a bare chance, and we were bound to act on that chance"—his loose lips worked into a bitterly humorous smile—"and torture him. Well, I've seen a good many men under the knife before now, and I tell you I never saw one who bore himself better. Men and horses alike, it's breeding that tells when it comes to the push. You know that, eh, Chifney?"

In the red drawing-room, where the drama of this sad night centred, Roger Ormiston had dropped into a chair by the fireside, his head sunk on his chest and his hands thrust into his pockets. He was very tired, very miserable. A shocking thing had happened, and, in some degree, he held himself responsible for that happening. For was it not he who had been so besotted with the Clown, and keen about its training? Therefore the young man cursed himself, after the manner of his kind; and cursed his luck, in that, if this thing was to happen, it had not happened to him instead of to Richard Calmady.

Mrs. Denny, the housekeeper, had retired to a straight-backed chair stationed against the wall. She sat there, waiting till the next call should come for her skilful nursing, upright, her hands folded upon her silk apron, her attitude a model of discreet and self-respecting repose. Mrs. Denny knew her place, and had a considerable capacity for letting other persons know theirs. She ruled the large household with unruffled calm. But, to-night, even her powers of self-control were heavily taxed; and though she carried her head high, she could not help tears coursing slowly down her cheeks, and falling sadly to the detriment of the goffered frills of her white, lawn cross-over.

And Richard Calmady, meanwhile, lay still and very fairly peaceful upon the narrow camp-bed in the middle of the room. He had lain there, save during one hour,—the memory of which haunted Katherine with hideous and sickening persistence,—ever since Tom Chifney, the head-lad from the stables, and a couple of grooms had carried him in, on a hurdle, from the steeple-chase course four days ago.

The crimson-covered chairs and sofas, and other furniture of the large square room, had been pushed back against the walls in a sort of orderly confusion, leaving a broad passageway between the doors at either end, and a wide vacant space round the bed. At the head of this stood a high, double-shelved what-not, bearing medicine bottles, cups, basins, rolled bandages, dressings of rag and lint, a spirit-lamp over which simmered a vessel containing vinegar, and a couple of shaded candles in a tall, branched, silver candlestick. The light from these fell, in intersecting circles, upon the white bed, upon the man's brown, close curled hair, upon his handsome face—drawn and sharpened by suffering—and its rather ghastly three days' growth of beard.

It fell, too, upon Katherine, as she sat facing her husband, the side of her large easy-chair drawn up parallel to the side of the bed.

Silently, unlooked for, as a thief in the night, the end of Katherine's fair world had come. There had been no time for forethought or preparation. At one step she had been called upon to pass from the triumph to the terror of mortal life. But she was a valiant creature; and her natural courage was reinforced by the greatness of her love. She met the blow standing, her brain clear, her mind strong to help. Only once had she faltered—during the hideous hour when she waited, pacing the dining-room in the dusk, four evenings back. For, after consultation with Dr. Jewsbury and Mr. Thoms of Westchurch, John Knott had told her—with a gentleness and delicacy a little surprising in so hard-bitten a man—that, owing to the shattered condition of the bone, amputation of the right leg was imperative. He added that, only too probably, the left would have eventually to go too. They must operate, he said, and operate immediately. Katherine had pleaded to be present; but Dr. Knott was obdurate.

"My dear lady, you don't know what you ask," he said. "As you love him, let him be. If you are there it will just double the strain. He'd suffer for you as well as himself. Believe me he will be far best alone."

It must be remembered that in 1842 anæsthetics had not robbed the operating-room of half its horrors. The victim went to execution wide-awake, with no mercy of deadened senses and dulled brain. And so Katherine had paced the dining-room, hearing at intervals, through the closed doors, the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, fearing she heard more and worse sounds than those. They were hurting him, sorely, sorely, dismembering and disfiguring the dear, living body which she loved. A tempest of unutterable woe swept over her. Breaking fiercely away from her brother and Denny—who strove to comfort her—she beat her poor, lovely head against the wall. But that, so far, had been her one moment of weakness. Since then she had fought steadily, with a certain lofty cheerfulness, for the life she so desired to save. The horror of the second operation had been spared her; but only because it might but too probably hasten, rather than retard, the approaching footsteps of death. Mortification had set in, in the bruised and mangled limb forty-eight hours ago. And now the scent of death was in the air. The awful presence drew very near. Yet only when doctor and priest alike rose and went, when her brother moved away, and even the faithful housekeeper stepped back from the bedside, did Katherine's mind really grasp the truth. Her well-beloved lay dying; and human tenderness, human skill, be they never so great, ceased to avail.

She was worn by the long vigil. Her face was colourless. Yet perhaps Katherine's beauty had never been more rare and sweet than as she sat there, leaning a little forward in the eagerness of her watchfulness. The dark circles about her eyes made them look very large and sombre. The corners of her mouth turned down and her under-lip quivered now and then, giving her expression a childlike piteousness of appeal. There was no trace of disorder in her appearance. Her white dressing-gown and all its pretty ribbons and laces were spotlessly fresh. Her hair was carefully dressed as usual—high at the back, showing the nape of her neck, her little ears, and the noble poise of her head. Katherine was not one of those women who appear to imagine that slovenliness is the proper exponent of sorrow.

Still, for all her high courage, as the truth came home to her, her spirit began to falter for the second time. It is comparatively easy to endure while there is something to be done; but it is almost intolerable, specially to the young when life is strong in them, merely to sit by and wait. Katherine's overwrought nerves began to play cruel tricks upon her, carrying her back in imagination to that other hideous hour of waiting, in the dining-room, four evenings ago. Again she seemed to hear the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, and those worse things—the stifled groan of one in the extremity of physical anguish, and the grate of a saw. These maddened her with pity, almost with rage. She feared that now, as then, she might lose her self-mastery and do some wild and desperate thing. She tried to keep her attention fixed on the quick irregular rise and fall of the linen sheet expressing the broad, full curve of the young man's chest, as he lay flat on his back, his eyes closed, but whether in sleep or in unconsciousness she did not know. As long as the sheet rose and fell he was alive at all events, still with her. But she was too exhausted for any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the foot of the bed.

The air of the room seemed to grow more oppressive, the silence to deepen, and with it the terrible tension of her mind increased. Suddenly she started to her feet. The logs burning in the grate had fallen together with a crash, sending a rush of ruddy flame and an innumerable army of hurrying sparks up the wide chimney. All the mouldings of the ceiling—all the crossing bars and sinuous lines of the richly-worked pattern, all the depending bosses and roses of it, all the foliations of the deep cornice—sprang into bold relief, outlined, splashed, and stained with living scarlet. And this universal redness of carpet, curtains, furniture, and now of ceiling, even of white-draped bed, suggested to Katherine's distracted fancy another thing—unseen, yet known during her other hour of waiting—namely blood.

Roused by the crash of the falling logs and the rustle of Katherine's garments as she sprang up, Richard Calmady opened his eyes. For a few seconds his glance wavered in vague distress and perplexity. Then as fuller consciousness returned of how it all was with him, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows his glance steadied upon Katherine and he smiled.

"Ah! my poor Kitty," he whispered, "it takes a long time, doesn't it, this business of dying?"

Katherine's evil fancies vanished. As soon as the demand for action came she grew calm and sane. The ceiling and sheets were white again and her mind was clear.

"Are you easy, my dearest?" she asked; "in less pain?"

"No," he said, "no, I'm not in pain. But everything seems to sink away from me, and I float right out. It's all dream and mist—except—except just now your face."

Katherine's lips quivered too much for speech. She moved swiftly across to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and inadequate weapons are all—even the most gallant—reduced to fighting death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's heart. And, on the other hand, ranged against this pitiful display of absurdly limited resources,—as the hosts of the Philistines against the little army of Israel,—resistless laws of nature, incalculably far-reaching forces, physical and spiritual, the interminable progression of cause and effect.

Denny joined Lady Calmady at the table. The two women held brief consultation. Then the housekeeper went round to the farther side of the bed, and slipping her arm under the pillows gently raised Richard's head and shoulders, while Katherine kneeling beside him held the spout of the feeding-cup to his lips.

"Must I? I don't think I can manage it," he said, drawing away slightly and closing his eyes.

But Katherine persisted.

"Oh! try to drink it," she pleaded, "never mind how little—only try. Help me to keep you here just as long as I can."

The young man's glance steadied on to her once again, and his eyes and lips smiled the same faint, wholly gracious smile.

"All right, my beloved," he said. "A little higher, Denny, please."

Not without painful effort and a choking contraction of the throat, he swallowed a few drops. But the greater part of the draught spilt out sideways, and would have dribbled down on to the pillows had not Katherine held her handkerchief to his mouth.

Ormiston, who had been standing at the foot of the bed in the hope of rendering some assistance, ground his teeth together with a half-audible imprecation, and went slowly over to the fireplace again. He had supposed himself as miserable as he well could be before. But this incident of the feeding-cup was the climax, somehow. It struck him as an intolerable humiliation and outrage that Richard Calmady, splendid fellow as he was, gifted, high-bred gentleman, should, of all men, come to this sorry pass! He was filled with impotent fury. And was it this pass, indeed, he asked himself, to which every human creature must needs come one day? Would he, Roger Ormiston, one day, find himself thus weak and broken; his body—now so lively a source of various enjoyment—degraded into a pest-house, a mere dwelling-place of suffering and corruption? The young man gripped the high, narrow mantel-shelf with both hands and pressed his forehead down between them. He really had not the nerve to watch what was going forward over there any longer. It was too painful. It knocked all the manhood out of him. But for very shame, before those two calm, devoted women, he would have broken down and wept.

Presently Richard's voice reached him, feeble yet uncomplaining.

"I am so sorry, but you see it's no use, Kitty. The machinery won't work. Let me lie flat again, Denny, please. That's better, thanks."

Then after a few moments of laboured breathing, he added—

"You mustn't trouble any more, it only disappoints you. We have just got to submit to fact, my beloved, I've taken my last fence."

Ormiston's shoulders heaved convulsively as he leaned his forehead against the cold, marble edge of the chimneypiece. His brother-in-law's words brought the whole dreadful picture up before him. Oh! that cursed slip and fall, that struggling, plunging, frenzied horse! And how the horse had plunged and struggled, good God! It seemed as though Chifney, the grooms, all of them, would never get hold of it or draw Richard out from beneath the pounding hoofs. And then Ormiston went over his own share in the business again, lamenting, blaming himself. Yet what more natural, after all, than that he should have set his affections on the Clown? Chifney believed in the horse too—a five-year-old brother of Touchstone, resembling, in his black-brown skin and intelligent, white-reach face, that celebrated horse; and inheriting—less enviable distinction—the high shoulders and withers of his sire Camel. If the Clown did not make a name, Captain Ormiston had sworn, by all the gods of sport, he would never judge a horse again. And, heaven help us, was this the ghastly way the Clown's name was to be made then?

The room grew very quiet again, save for a strange gurgling, rattling sound Richard Calmady made, at times, in breathing. Mrs. Denny had retired beyond the circle of firelight. And Katherine, having drawn her chair a little further forward, so that the foot of the bed might be out of sight, sat holding her husband's hand, softly caressing his wrist and palm with her finger-tips. Soon the slow movement of her fingers ceased, while she felt, in quick fear, for the fluttering, intermittent pulse. Richard's breathing had become more difficult. He moved his head restlessly and plucked at the sheet with his right hand. It was a little more than flesh and blood could bear.

Katherine called to him softly under her breath,—"Richard, Dick, my darling."

"All right, I'm coming."

He opened his eyes wide, as in sudden terror.

"Oh! I say though, what's happened? Where am I?"

Katherine leant down, kissed his hand, caressed it.

"Here, my dearest," she said, "at home, at Brockhurst, with me."

"Ah yes!" he said, "of course, I remember, I'm dying." He waited a little space, and then, turning his head on the pillow so as to have a better view of her, spoke again:—"I was floating right out—the under-tow had got me—it was sucking me down into the deep sea of mist and dreams. I was so nearly gone—and you brought me back."

"But I wanted you so—I wanted you so," Katherine cried, smitten with sudden contrition. "I could not help it. Do you mind?"

"You silly sweet, could I ever mind coming back to you?" he asked wistfully. "Don't you suppose I would much rather stay here at Brockhurst, at home, with you—than sink away into the unknown?"

"Ah! my dear," she said, swaying herself to and fro in the misery of tearless grief.

"And yet I have no call to complain," he went on. "I have had thirty years of life and health. It is not a small thing to have seen the sun, and to have rejoiced in one's youth. And I have had you"—his face hardened and his breath came short—"you, most enchanting of women."

"My dear, my dear!" Katherine cried, again bowing her head.

"God has been so good to me here that—I hope it is not presumptuous—I can't be much afraid of what is to follow. The best argument for what will be, is what has been. Don't you think so?"

"But you go and I stay," she said. "If I could only go too, go with you."

Richard Calmady raised himself in the bed, looked hard at her, spoke as a man in the fulness of his strength.

"Do you mean that? Would you come with me if you could—come through the deep sea of mist and dreams, to whatever lies beyond?"

For all answer Katherine bent lower, her face suddenly radiant, notwithstanding its pallor. Sorrow was still so new a companion to her that she would dare the most desperate adventures to rid herself of its hateful presence. Her reason and moral sense were in abeyance, only her poor heart spoke. She laid hold of her husband's hands and clasped them about her throat.

"Let us go together, take me," she prayed. "I love you, I will not be left. Closer, Dick, closer."

"Thank God! I am strong enough even yet," he said fiercely, while his jaw set, and his grasp tightened somewhat dangerously upon her throat. Katherine looked into his eyes and laughed. The blood was tingling through her veins.

"Ah! dear love," she panted, "if you knew how delicious it is to be a little hurt!"

But her ecstasy was short-lived, as ecstasy usually is. Richard Calmady unclasped his hands and dropped back against the pillows, putting her away from him with a certain authority.

"My beloved one, do not tempt me," he said, "we must remember the child. The devil of jealousy is very great, even when one lies, as I do now, more than half dead." He turned his head away, and his voice shook. "Ten years hence, twenty years hence, you will be as beautiful—more so, very likely—than ever. Other men will see you, and I——"

"You will be just what you were and always have been to me," Katherine interrupted. "I love you, and shall love."

She answered bravely, taking his hand again and caressing it, while he looked round and smiled at her. But she grew curiously cold. She shivered, and had a difficulty in controling her speech. Her new companion, Sorrow, refused to be tricked and to leave her, and the breath of sorrow is as sharp as a wind blowing over ice.

"You have made me perfectly content," Richard Calmady said presently. "There is nothing I would have changed. No hour of day—or night—ah, my God! my God!—which I could ask to have otherwise." He paused, fighting a sob which rose in his throat. "Still you are quite young——"

"So much the worse for me," Katherine said.

"Oh! I don't know about that," he put in quietly. "Anyhow, remember that you are free, absolutely and unconditionally free. I hold a man a cur who, in dying, tries to bind the woman he loves."

Katherine shivered. Despair had possession of her.

"Why reason about it?" she asked. "Don't you see that to be bound is the only comfort I shall have left?"

"My poor darling," Richard Calmady almost groaned.

His own helplessness to help her cut him to the quick. Wealth, and an inherent graciousness of disposition, had always made it so simple to be of service and of comfort to those about him. It was so natural to rule, to decide, to alleviate, to give little trouble to others and take a good deal of trouble on their behalf, that his present and final incapacity in any measure to shield even Katherine, the woman he worshipped, amazed him. Not pain, not bodily disfigurement,—though he recoiled, as every sane being must, from these,—not death itself, tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant, kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the affairs of living men. The desolation of impotence was upon him.

For a little time he lay very still, looking up at the firelight playing upon the mouldings of the ceiling, trying to reconcile himself to this. His mind was clear, yet, except when actually speaking, he found it difficult to keep his attention fixed. Images, sensations began to chase each other across his mental field of vision; and his thought, though definite as to detail, grew increasingly broken and incoherent, small matters in unseemly fashion jostling great. He wondered concerning those first steps of the disembodied spirit, when it has crossed the threshold of death; and then, incontinently, he passed to certain time-honoured jokes and impertinent follies at Eton, over which he, and Roger and Major St. Quentin had laughed a hundred times. They amused him greatly even yet. But he could not linger with them. He was troubled about the attics of the new lodge, now in building at the entrance to the east woods. The windows were too small, and he disliked that blind north gable. There were letters to be answered too. Lord Fallowfeild wanted to know about something—he could not remember what—Fallowfeild's inquiries had a habit of being vague. And through all these things—serious or trivial—a terrible yearning over Katherine and her baby—the new, little, human life which was his own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves and muscles, flitting pains in the limb of which, though it was gone, he had not ceased to be aware.—He dozed off, and mortal weakness closed down on him, floating him out and out into vague spaces. And then suddenly, once more, he felt a horse under him and gripped it with his knees. He was riding, riding, whole and vigorous, with the summer wind in his face, across vast, flowering pastures towards a great light on the far horizon, which streamed forth, as he knew, from the throne of Almighty God.

Choking, with the harsh rattle in his throat, he awoke to the actual and immediate—to the familiar square room and its crimson furnishings, to Katherine's sweet, pale face and the touch of her caressing fingers, to some one standing beside her, whom he did not immediately recognise. It was Roger—Roger worn with watching, grown curiously older. But a certain exhilaration, born of that strange ride, remained by Richard Calmady. Both ache of body and distress of mind had abated. He felt a lightness of spirit; an eagerness, as of one setting forth on a promised journey, who—not unlovingly, yet with something of haste—makes his dispositions before he starts.

"Look here, darling," he said, "you'll let the stables go on just as usual. Chifney will take over the whole management of them. You can trust him implicitly. And—that is you, Roger, isn't it?—you'll keep an eye on things, won't you, so that Kitty shall have no bother? I should like to know nothing was changed at the stables. They've been a great hobby of mine, and if—if the baby is a boy, he may take after me and care for them. Make him ride straight, Roger. And teach him to care for sport for its own sake, dear old man, as a gentleman should, not for the money that may come out of it."

He waited, struggling for breath, then his hand closed on Katherine's.

"I must go," he said. "You'll call the boy after me, Kitty, won't you? I want there to be another Richard Calmady. My life has been very happy, so, please God, the name will bring luck."

A spasm took him, and he tried convulsively to push off the sheet. Katherine was down on her knees, her right arm under his head, while with her left hand she stripped the bedclothes away from his chest and bared his throat.

"Denny, Denny!" she cried, "come—tell me—is this death?"

And Ormiston, impelled by an impulse he could hardly have explained, crossed the room, dragged back the heavy curtains, and flung one of the casements wide open.

The soft light of autumn dawn flowed in through the great mullioned window, quenching the redness of fire and candles, spreading, dim and ghostly, over the white dress and bowed head of the woman, over the narrow bed and the form of the maimed and dying man. The freshness of the morning air, laden with the soothing murmur of the fir forest swaying in the breath of a mild westerly breeze, laden too with the moist fragrance of the moorland, of dewy grass, of withered bracken and fallen leaves, flowed in also, cleansing the tainted atmosphere of the room. While, from the springy turf of the green ride—which runs eastward, parallel to the lime avenue—came the thud and suck of hoofs and the voices of the stable boys, as they rode the long string of dancing, snorting race-horses out to the training ground for their morning exercise.

Richard Calmady opened his eyes wide.

"Ah, it's daylight!" he cried, in accents of joyfulness. "I am glad. Kiss me, my beloved, kiss me.—You dear—yes, once more. I have had such a queer night. I dreamt I had been fearfully knocked about somehow, and was crippled, and in pain. It is good to wake, and find you, and know I'm all right after all. God keep you, my dearest, you and the boy. I am longing to see him—but not just now—let Denny bring him later. And tell them to send Chifney word I shall not be out to see the gallops this morning. I really believe those dreams half frightened me. I feel so absurdly used up. And then—Kitty, where are you?—put your arms round me and I'll go to sleep again."

He smiled at her quite naturally and stroked her cheek.

"My sweet, your face is all wet and cold!" he said. "Make Richard a good boy. After all that is what matters most—Julius will help you—— Ah! look at the sunrise—why—why——"

An extraordinary change passed over him. To Katherine it seemed like the upward leap of a livid flame. Then his head fell back and his jaw dropped.

[ ]

CHAPTER VII

MRS. WILLIAM ORMISTON SACRIFICES A WINE-GLASS TO FATE

Mrs. St. Quentin's health became increasingly fragile that autumn; and the weight of the sorrow which had fallen upon Brockhurst bowed her to the earth. Her desire was to go to Lady Calmady, wrap her about with tenderness and strengthen her in patience. But, though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. Daily she assured Mademoiselle de Mirancourt that she was better, that she would be able to start for England in the course of the next week. Yet day after day, week after week passed by, and still the two ladies lingered in the pretty apartment of the rue de Rennes. Day by day, and week by week, moreover, the elder lady grew more feeble, left her bed later in the morning, sought it earlier at night, finally resigned the attempt to leave it at all. The keepers of Lucia St. Quentin's house of life trembled, desire—even of gentle ministries—began to fail, the sound of the grinding was low. Yet neither she, nor her lifelong friend, nor her doctor, nor the few intimate acquaintances who were still privileged to visit her, admitted that she would never go forth on that journey to England at all; but only on that quite other journey,—upon which Richard Calmady had already set forth in the fulness of his manhood,—and upon which, the manifold uncertainties of human existence notwithstanding, we are, each one of us, so perfectly certain to set forth at last. Silently they agreed with her to treat her increasing weakness with delicate stoicism, to speak of it—if at all—merely as a passing indisposition, so allowing no dreary, lamentable element to obtrude itself. Sad Mrs. St. Quentin might be, bitterly sad at heart, perplexed by the rather incomprehensible dealings of God with man. Yet, to the end, she would remain charming, gently gay even, both out of consideration for others and a fine self-respect, since she held it the mark of a cowardly and ignoble nature to let anything squalid appear in her attitude towards grief, old age, or death.

But Brockhurst she would never see again. The way was too great for her. And so it came about that when Lady Calmady's child was born, towards the end of the following March, no more staid and responsible woman creature of her family was at hand to support her than that lively, young lady, her brother, William Ormiston's wife.

Meanwhile, the parish of Sandyfield rejoiced. Thomas Caryll, the rector, had caused the church bells to be rung immediately on receipt of the good news; while he selected, as text for his Sunday morning sermon, those words, usually reserved to another and somewhat greater advent—"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Good Mr. Caryll was innocent of the remotest intention of profanity. But his outlook was circumscribed, his desire to please abnormally large, and his sense of relative values slight. While that Lady Calmady should give birth to a son and heir was, after all, a matter of no small moment—locally considered at all events.

Brockhurst House rejoiced also, yet it did so not without a measure of trembling. For there had been twenty-four hours of acute anxiety regarding Katherine Calmady. And even now, on the evening of the second day, although Dr. Knott declared himself satisfied both as to her condition and that of the baby, an air of mystery surrounded the large state-bedroom,—where she lay, white and languid, slowly feeling her way back to the ordinary conditions of existence,—and the nursery next door. Mrs. Denny, who had taken possession by right divine of long and devoted service, not only did not encourage, but positively repulsed visitors. Her ladyship must not be disturbed. She, the nurse, the baby, in turn, were sleeping. According to Denny the god of sleep reigned supreme in those stately, white-paneled chambers, looking away, across the valley and the long lines of the elm avenue, to the faint blue of the chalk downs rising against the southern sky.

John Knott had driven over, for the second time that day, in the windy March sunset. He fell in very readily with Mrs. Ormiston's suggestion that he should remain to dinner. That young lady's spirits were sensibly on the rise. It is true that she had wept copiously at intervals while her sister-in-law's life appeared to be in danger—keeping at the same time as far from the sick room as the ample limits of Brockhurst House allowed, and wishing herself a thousand and one times safe back in Paris, where her devoted and obedient husband occupied a subordinate post at the English Embassy. But Mrs. Ormiston's tears were as easily staunched as set flowing. And now, in her capacity of hostess, with three gentlemen—or rather "two and a half, for you can't," as she remarked, "count a brother-in-law for a whole one"—as audience, she felt remarkably cheerful. She had been over to Newlands during the afternoon, and insisted on Mary Cathcart returning with her—Mrs. Ormiston was a Desmolyns. The Cathcarts are distantly connected with that family. And, when the girl had protested that this was hardly a suitable moment for a visit to Brockhurst, Charlotte Ormiston had replied, with that hint of a brogue which gave her ready speech its almost rollicking character:—

"But, my dear child, propriety demands it. I depart myself to-morrow. And now that we're recovering our tone I daren't be left with such a houseful of men on my hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature, Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails. Scourge?—Yes, of course, but it's all the same in the application of the instrument, you know. And then in your secret soul, Mary dear," she added, not unkindly, "there's no denying it's far from obnoxious to you to spend a trifle of time in the society of Roger."

Mrs. Ormiston carried her point. It may be stated, in passing, that this sprightly, young matron was brilliantly pretty, though her facial angle might be deemed too acute, leaving somewhat to be desired in the matter of forehead and of chin. She was plump, graceful, and neat waisted. Her skin was exquisitely white and fine, and a charming colour flushed her cheeks under excitement. Her hair was always untidy, her hairpins displaying abnormal activity in respect of escape and independent action. Her eyes were round and very prominent, suggestive of highly-polished, brown agates. She was not the least shy or averse to attracting attention. She laughed much, and practised, as prelude to her laughter, an impudently, coquettish, little stare. And finally, as he sat on her right at dinner, her rattling talk and lightness of calibre generally struck John Knott as rather cynically inadequate to the demands made by her present position. Not that he underrated her good nature or was insensible to her personal attractions. But the doctor was in search of an able coadjutor just then, blessed with a steady brain and a tongue skilled in tender diplomacies. For there were trying things to be said and done, and he needed a woman of a fine spirit to do and say them aright.

"Head like an eft," he said to himself, as course followed course, and, while bandying compliments with her, he watched and listened. "As soon set a harlequin to lead a forlorn hope. Well it's to be trusted her husband's some use for her—that's more than I have anyhow, so the sooner we see her off the premises the better. Suppose I shall have to fall back on Ormiston. Bit of a rake, I expect, though in looks he is so curiously like that beautiful, innocent, young thing upstairs. Wonder how he'll take it? No mistake, it's a facer!"

Dr. Knott settled himself back squarely in his chair and pushed his cheese-plate away from him, while his shaggy eyebrows drew together as he fixed his eyes on the young man at the head of the table.

"A facer!" he repeated to himself. "Yes, the ancients knew what they were about in these awkward matters. The modern conscience is disastrously anæmic."

Although it looks on to the terrace, the dining-room at Brockhurst is among the least cheerful of the living rooms. The tapestry with which it is hung—representing French hunting scenes, each panel set in a broad border pattern of birds, fruits and leaves, interspersed with classic urns and medallions—is worked in neutral tints of brown, blue, and gray. The chimneypiece, reaching the whole height of the wall, is of liver-coloured marble. At the period in question, it was still the fashion to dine at the modestly early hour of six; and, the spring evenings being long, the curtains had been left undrawn, so that the dying daylight without and the lamplight within contended rather mournfully for mastery, while a wild, southeasterly wind, breaking in gusts against the house front, sobbed at the casements and made a loose pane, here and there, click and rattle.

And it was in the midst of a notably heavy gust, when dessert had been served and the servants had left the room, that Captain Ormiston leaned across the table and addressed his sister-in-law.

The young soldier had been somewhat gloomy and silent during dinner. He was vaguely anxious about Lady Calmady. The news of Mrs. St. Quentin was critical, and he cherished a very true affection for his great-aunt. Had she not been his confidant ever since his first term at Eton? Had she not, moreover, helped him on several occasions when creditors displayed an incomprehensibly foolish pertinacity regarding payment for goods supplied? He was burdened, too, by a prospective sense of his own uncommon righteousness. For, during the past five months, while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine to master the details of the very various business of the estate, Ormiston had revised his position and decided on heroic measures of reform. He would rid himself of debt, forswear expensive London habits, and those many pleasant iniquities which every great city offers liberally to such handsome, fine gentlemen as himself. He actually proposed, just so soon as Katherine could conveniently spare him, to decline from the splendid inactivity of the Guards, upon the hard work of some line regiment under orders for foreign service. Ormiston was quite affected by contemplation of his own good resolutions. He appeared to himself in a really pathetic light. He would like to have told Mary Cathcart all about it and have claimed her sympathy and admiration. But then, she was just precisely the person he could not tell, until the said resolutions had, in a degree at all events, passed into accomplished fact! For—as not infrequently happens—it was not so much a case of being off with the old love before being on with the new; as being off with the intermediate loves, before being on with the old one again. To announce his estimable future, was, by implication at all events, to confess a not wholly estimable past. And so Roger Ormiston, sitting that night at dinner beside the object of his best and most honest affections, proved but poor company; and roused himself, not without effort, to say to his sister-in-law:—

"It's about time to perform the ceremony of the evening, isn't it, Ella, and drink that small boy's health?"

"By all manner of means. I'm all for the observance of ancient forms and ceremonies. You can never be sure how much mayn't lie at the bottom of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers. You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"—She took a grape skin from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.—"So, for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a piebald; and bless my neighbour devoutly if he sneezes."

At the commencement of this harangue she met her brother-in-law's rather depreciative scrutiny with her bold little stare—in his present mood Ormiston found her vivacity tedious, though he was usually willing enough to laugh at her extravagancies—then she whipped Julius in with a side glance, and concluded with her round eyes set on Dr. Knott's rough-hewn and weather-beaten countenance.

"I'm afraid you are disgracefully superstitious, Mrs. Ormiston," the latter remarked.

She was a feather-headed chatterbox, he reflected; but her chatter served to occupy the time. And the doctor was by no means anxious the time should pass too rapidly. He felt slightly self-contemptuous; but in good truth he would be glad to put away some few glasses of sound port before administering the aforementioned facer to Captain Ormiston.

"Superstitious?" she returned. "Well I trust my superstition is not chronic, but nicely intermittent like all the rest of my many virtues. Charity begins at home, you know, and I would not like to keep any of the poor, dear creatures on guard too long for fear of tiring them out. But I give every one of them a turn, Dr. Knott, I assure you."

"And that's more than most of us do," he said, smiling rather savagely. "The majority of my acquaintance have a handsome power of self-restraint in the practice of virtue."

"And I'm the happy exception! Well, now that's an altogether pretty speech," Mrs. Ormiston cried, laughing. "But to return to the matter in hand, to this hero of a baby—— I dote on babies, Dr. Knott. I've one of my own of six months old, and she's a charming child I assure you."

"I don't doubt that for an instant, having the honour of knowing her mother. Couldn't be otherwise than charming if she tried," the doctor said, reaching out his hand again to the decanter.

Mrs. Ormiston treated him to her little stare, and then looked round the table, putting up one plump, bare arm as she pushed in a couple of hairpins.

"Ah! but she's a real jewel of a child," she said audaciously. "She's the comfort of my social existence. For she doesn't resemble me in the least, and therefore my reputation's everlastingly safe, thanks to her. Why, before the calumniating thought has had time to arise in your mind, one look in that child's face will dissipate it, she's so entirely the image of her father."

There was a momentary silence, but for the sobbing of the gale and rattling of the casements. Then Captain Ormiston broke into a rather loud laugh. Even if they sail near the wind, you must stand by the women of your family.

"Come, that will do, I think, Ella," he said. "You won't beat that triumphant bull in a hurry."

"But, my dear boy, so she is. Even at her present tender age, she's the living picture of your brother William."

"Oh! poor William," Roger said hastily.

He turned to Mary Cathcart. The girl had blushed up to the roots of her crisp, black hair. She did not clearly understand the other woman's speech, nor did she wish to do so. She was admirably pure-minded. But like all truly pure-minded persons, she carried a touchstone that made her recoil, directly and instinctively, from that which was of doubtful quality. The twinkle in Dr. Knott's gray eyes, as he sipped his port, still more the tone of Roger Ormiston's laugh, she did understand somehow. And this last jarred upon her cruelly. It opened the flood-gates of doubt which Mary—like so many another woman in respect of the man she loves—had striven very valiantly to keep shut. All manner of hints as to his indiscretions, all manner of half-told tales as to his debts, his extravagance, which rumour had conveyed to her unwilling ears, seemed suddenly to gather weight and probability, viewed in the moral light—so to speak—of that laugh. Great loves mature and deepen under the action of sorrow and the necessity to forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all, feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain labourer's family that had lately migrated from Newlands to Sandyfield. But Ormiston's voice broke in upon the inquiries with a determination to claim her attention.

"Miss Cathcart," he said, "forgive my interrupting you. I can tell you more about the Spratleys than March can. They're all right. Iles has taken the man on as carter at the home-farm, and given the eldest boy a job with the woodmen. I told him to do what he could for them as you said you were interested in them. And now, please, I want you to drink my small nephew's health."

The girl pushed forward her wine-glass without speaking; and as he filled it Ormiston added in a lower tone:—

"He, at all events, unlike some of his relations, is guiltless of foolish words or foolish actions. I don't pretend to share Ella's superstitions, but some people's good wishes are very well worth having."

Unwillingly Mary Cathcart raised her eyes. Her head was still carried a little high and her cheeks were still glowing. Her god might not be of pure gold throughout—such gods rarely are unfortunately—yet she was aware she still found him a very worshipful kind of deity.

"Very well worth having," he repeated. "And so I should like that poor little chap to have your good wishes, Miss Cathcart. Wish him all manner of nice things, for his mother's sake as well as his own. There's been a pretty bad run of luck here lately, and it's time it changed. Wish him better fortune than his forefathers. I'm not superstitious, as I say, but Richard Calmady's death scared one a little. Five minutes beforehand it seemed so utterly improbable. And then one began to wonder if there could be any truth in the old legend. And that was ugly, you know."

Dr. Knott glanced at the speaker sharply.—"Oh! that occurred to you, did it?" he said.

"Bless me! why, it occurred to everybody," Ormiston answered impatiently. "Some idiot raked the story up, and it was canvassed from one end of the county to the other last autumn till it made me fairly sick."

"Poor boy!" cried Mrs. Ormiston, "and what is this wonderful story that so nauseates him, Dr. Knott?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you," the doctor answered slowly. A nervous movement on the part of Julius March had attracted his attention. "I have never managed to get hold of the story as a whole, but I should like to do so uncommonly."

Julius pushed back his chair, and groped hurriedly for the dinner napkin which had slipped to the ground from his knees. The subject of the conversation agitated him. The untidy, little chap-books, tied together with the tag of rusty ribbon, had lain undisturbed in the drawer of his library table ever since the—to him—very memorable evening, when, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead Christ, he had found the man's heart under the priest's cassock and awakened to newness of life. Much had happened since then; and Julius had ranged himself, accepting, open-eyed, the sorrows and alleviations of the fate he had created for himself. But to-night he was tired. The mental and emotional strain of the last few days had been considerable. Moreover, John Knott's presence always affected him. The two men stood, indeed, at opposing poles of thought—the one spiritual and ideal, the other material and realistic. And, though he struggled against the influence, the doctor's rather brutal common sense and large knowledge of physical causes, gained a painful ascendency over his mind at close quarters. Knott, it must be owned, was slightly merciless to his clerical acquaintances. He loved to bait them, to impale them on the horns of some moral or theological dilemma. And it was partly with this purpose of harrying and worrying, that he continued now:—

"Yes, Mrs. Ormiston, I should like to hear the story just as much as you would. And—it strikes me, if he pleased, Mr. March could tell it to us. Suppose you ask him to!"

Promptly the young lady fell upon Julius, regardless of Ormiston's hardly concealed displeasure.

"Oh! you bad man, what are you doing," she cried, "trying to conceal thrilling family legends from the nearest relatives? Tell us all about it, if you know, as Dr. Knott declares you do. I dote on terrifying stories—don't you, Mary?—that send the cold shivers all down my back. And if they deal with the history of my nearest and dearest, why, there's an added charm to them. Now, Mr. March, we're all attention. Stand and deliver, and make it all just as bad as you can."

"I am afraid I am not an effective improvisatore" he replied; "and the subject, if you will pardon my saying so, seems to me too intimate for mirth. A curse is supposed to rest on this place. The owners of Brockhurst die young and by violent means."

"We know that already, and look to you to tell us something more, Mr. March," Dr. Knott said dryly.

Julius was slightly nettled at the elder man's tone and manner. He answered with an accentuation of his usual refinement of enunciation and suavity of manner.

"There is a term to the curse, a saviour who, according to the old prediction, has the power, should he also have the will, to remove it altogether."

"Oh, really, is that so! And when does this saviour put in an appearance?" the doctor asked again.

"That is not revealed."

Julius would very gladly have said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting them to more declared hostilities, while she bit her lips in her effort to avoid spoiling sport by untimely laughter or speech.

"But unhappily," Julius proceeded, yielding under protest to these opposing forces, "the saviour comes in so questionable a shape, that I fear, whenever the appointed time may be, his appearance will only be welcomed by the discerning few."

"That's a pity," Dr. Knott said. He paused a minute, passed his hand across his mouth. "Still, if we are to believe the Bible, and other so-called, sacred histories, it's been the way of saviours from the beginning to try the faith of ordinary mortals by presenting themselves under rather queer disguises." He paused again, drawing in his wide lips, moistening them with his tongue. "But since you evidently know all about it, Mr. March, may I make bold to inquire in what special form of fancy dress the saviour in question is reported as likely to present himself?"

"He comes as a child of the house," Julius answered, with dignity. "A child who in person—if I understand the wording of the prophecy aright—is half angel, half monster."

John Knott opened his mouth as though to give passage to some very forcible exclamation. Thought better of it and brought his jaws together with a kind of grind. His heavy figure seemed to hunch itself up as in the recoil from a blow.

"Curious," he said quietly. Yet Julius, looking at him, could have fancied that his weather-beaten face went a trifle pale.

But Mrs. Ormiston, in the interests of a possible fight, had contained herself just as long as was possible. Now she clapped her hands, and broke into a little scream of laughter.

"That's just the most magnificently romantic thing I ever heard," she cried. "Come now, this requires further investigation. What's our baby like, Dr. Knott? I've seen nothing but an indistinguishable mass of shawls and flannels. Have we, by chance, got an angelic monstrosity up-stairs without being aware of it?"

"Charlotte!" Roger Ormiston called out sternly. The young man looked positively dangerous. "This conversation has gone quite far enough. I agree with March, it may all be stuff and nonsense, not worth a second thought, still it isn't a thing to joke about."

"Very well, dear boy, be soothed then," she returned, making a little grimace and putting her head on one side coquettishly. "I'll be as solemn as nine owls. But you must excuse a momentary excitement. It's all news to me, you know. I'd no notion Katherine had married into such a remarkable family. I'm bound to learn a little more. Do you believe it's possible at all, Dr. Knott, now tell me?"

"The fulfilment of prophecy is rather a wide and burning question to embark on," he said. "With Captain Ormiston's leave, I think we'd better go back to the point we started from and drink the little gentleman's health. I have my patient to see again, and it is getting rather late."

The lady addressed, laughed, held up her glass, and stared round the table with a fine air of bravado, looking remarkably pretty.

"Fire away, Roger, dear fellow," she said. "We're loaded, and ready."

Thus admonished, Ormiston raised his glass too. But his temper was not of the sweetest, just then; he spoke forcedly.

"Here's to the boy," he said; "good luck, and good health, and," he added hastily, "please God he'll be a comfort to his mother."

"Amen," Julius said softly.

Dr. Knott contemplated the contents of his glass, for a moment, whether critically or absently it would have been difficult to decide. But all the harshness had gone out of his face, and his loose lips worked into a smile pathetic in quality.

"To the baby.—And I venture to add a clause to your invocation of that heartless jade, Dame Fortune. May he never lack good courage and good friends. He will need both."

Julius March set down his wine untasted. He had received a very disagreeable impression.

"Come, come, it appears to me, we are paying these honours in a most lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and traditions belonging to his paternal ancestry. Go on, Mr. March, you're shamefully neglecting your duty. No heel taps."

She threw back her head showing the whole of her white throat, drained her glass and then flung it over her shoulder. It fell on the black, polished boards, beyond the edge of the carpet, shivered into a hundred pieces, that lay glittering, like scattered diamonds in the lamplight. For the day had died altogether. Fleets of dark, straggling cloud chased each other across spaces of pallid sky, against the earthward edge of which dusky tree-tops strained and writhed in the force of the tearing gale.

Ella Ormiston rose laughing from her place at table.

"That's the correct form," she said, "it ensures the fulfilment of the wish. You ought all to have cast away your glasses regardless of expense. Come, Mary, we will remove ourselves. Mind and bid me good-bye before you go, Dr. Knott, and report on Lady Calmady. It's probably the last time you'll have the felicity of seeing me. I'm off at cockcrow to-morrow morning."

[ ]

CHAPTER VIII

ENTER A CHILD OF PROMISE

After closing the door behind the two ladies, Ormiston paused by the near window and gazed out into the night. The dinner had been, in his opinion, far from a success. He feared his relation to Mary Cathcart had retrograded rather than progressed. He wished his sister-in-law would be more correct in speech and behaviour. Then he held the conversation had been in bad taste. The doctor should have abstained from pressing Julius with questions. He assured himself, again, that the story was not worth a moment's serious consideration; yet he resented its discussion. Such discussion seemed to him to tread hard on the heels of impertinence to his sister, to her husband's memory, and to this boy, born to so excellent a position and so great wealth. And the worst of it was, that like a fool, he had started the subject himself!

"The wind's rising," he remarked at last. "You'll have a rough drive home, Knott."

"It won't be the first one. And my beauty's of the kind which takes a lot of spoiling."

The answer did not please the young man. He sauntered across the room and dropped into his chair, with a slightly insolent demeanour.

"All the same, don't let me detain you," he said, "if you prefer seeing Lady Calmady at once and getting off."

"You don't detain me," Dr. Knott answered. "I'm afraid that it's just the other way about, and that I must detain you, Captain Ormiston, and that on rather unpleasant business."

Julius March had risen to his feet. "You—you have no fresh cause for anxiety about Lady Calmady?" he said hurriedly.

The doctor glanced up at the tall, spare, black figure and dark, sensitive face with a half-sneering, half-pitying smile.

"Oh no, no!" he replied; "Lady Calmady's going on splendidly. And it is to guard, just as far as we can, against cause for anxiety later, that I want to speak to Captain Ormiston now. We've got to be prepared for certain contingencies. Don't you go, Mr. March. You may as well hear what I've to say. It will interest you particularly, I fancy, after one or two things you have told us to-night!"

"Sit down, Julius, please."—Ormiston would have liked to maintain that same insolence of demeanour, but it gave before an apprehension of serious issues. He looked hard at the doctor, cudgeling his brains as to what the latter's enigmatic speech might mean—divined, put the idea away as inadmissible, returned to it, then said angrily:—"There's nothing wrong with the child, of course?"

Dr. Knott turned his chair sideways to the table and shaded his face with his thick, square hand.

"Well, that depends on what you call wrong," he slowly replied.

"It's not ill?" Ormiston said.

"The baby's as well as you or I—better, in fact, than I am, for I am confoundedly touched up with gout. Bear that in mind, Captain Ormiston—that the child is well, I mean, not that I am gouty. I want you to definitely remember that, you and Mr. March."

"Well, then, what on earth is the matter?" Ormiston asked sharply. "You don't mean to imply it is injured in any way, deformed?"

Dr. Knott let his hand drop on the table. He nodded his head. Ormiston perceived, and it moved him strangely, that the doctor's eyes were wet.

"Not deformed," he answered. "Technically you can hardly call it that, but maimed."

"Badly?"

"Well, that's a matter of opinion. You or I should think it bad enough, I fancy, if we found ourselves in the same boat." He settled himself back in his chair.—"You had better understand it quite clearly," he continued, "at least as clearly as I can put it to you. There comes a point where I cannot explain the facts but only state them. You have heard of spontaneous amputation?"

Across Ormiston's mind came the remembrance of a litter of puppies he had seen in the sanctum of the veterinary surgeon of his regiment. A lump rose in his throat.

"Yes, go on," he said.

"It is a thing that does not happen once in most men's experience. I have only seen one case before in all my practice and that was nothing very serious. This is an extraordinary example. I need not remind you of Sir Richard Calmady's accident and the subsequent operation?"

"Of course not—go on," Ormiston repeated.

"In both cases the leg is gone from here," the doctor continued, laying the edge of his palm across the thigh immediately above the knee. "The foot is there—that is the amazing part of it—and, as far as I can see, is well formed and of the normal size; but so embedded in the stump that I cannot discover whether the ankle-joint and bones of the lower leg exist in a contracted form or not."

Ormiston poured himself out a glass of port. His hand shook so that the lip of the decanter chattered against the lip of the glass. He gulped down the wine and, getting up, walked the length of the room and back again.

"God in heaven," he murmured, "how horrible! Poor Kitty, how utterly horrible!—Poor Kitty."

For the baby, in his own fine completeness, he had as yet no feeling but one of repulsion.

"Can nothing be done, Knott?" he asked at last.

"Obviously nothing."

"And it will live?"

"Oh! bless you, yes! It'll live fast enough if I know a healthy infant when I see one. And I ought to know 'em by now. I've brought them into the world by dozens for my sins."

"Will it be able to walk?"

"Umph—well—shuffle," the doctor answered, smiling savagely to keep back the tears.

The young man leaned his elbows on the table, and rested his head on his hands. All this shocked him inexpressibly—shocked him almost to the point of physical illness. Strong as he was he could have fainted, just then, had he yielded by ever so little. And this was the boy whom they had so longed for then! The child on whom they had set such fond hopes, who was to be the pride of his young mother, and restore the so rudely shaken balance of her life! This was the boy who should go to Eton, and into some crack regiment, who should ride straight, who was heir to great possessions!

"The saviour has come, you see, Mr. March, in as thorough-paced a disguise as ever saviour did yet," John Knott said cynically.

"He had better never have come at all!" Ormiston put in fiercely, from behind his hands.

"Yes—very likely—I believe I agree," the doctor answered. "Only it remains that he has come, is feeding, growing, stretching, and bellowing too, like a young bull-calf, when anything doesn't suit him. He is here, very much here, I tell you. And so we have just got to consider how to make the best of him, both for his own sake and for Lady Calmady's. And you must understand he is a splendid, little animal, clean skinned and strong, as you would expect, being the child of two such fine young people. He is beautiful,—I am old-fashioned enough, perhaps scientific enough, to put a good deal of faith in that notion,—beautiful as a child only can be who is born of the passion of true lovers."

He paused, looking somewhat mockingly at Julius.

"Yes, love is an incalculably great, natural force," he continued. "It comes uncommonly near working miracles at times, unconscious and rather deplorable miracles. In this case it has worked strangely against itself—at once for irreparable injury and for perfection. For the child is perfect, is superb, but for the one thing."

"Does my sister know?" Ormiston asked hoarsely.

"Not yet; and, as long as we can keep the truth from her, she had better not know. We must get her a little stronger, if we can, first. That woman, Mrs. Denny, is worth her weight in gold, and her weight's not inconsiderable. She has her wits about her, and has contrived to meet all difficulties so far."

Ormiston sat in the same dejected attitude.

"But my sister is bound to know before long."

"Of course. When she is a bit better, she'll want to have the baby to play with, dress and undress it and see what the queer little being is made of. It's a way young mothers have, and a very pretty way too. If we keep the child from her she will grow suspicious, and take means to find out for herself, and that won't do. It must not be. I won't be responsible for the consequences. So as soon as she asks a definite question, she must have a definite answer."

The young man looked up quickly.

"And who is to give the answer?" he said.

"Well, it rests chiefly with you to decide that. Clearly she ought not to hear this thing from a servant. It is too serious. It needs to be well told—the whole kept at a high level, if you understand me. Give Lady Calmady a great part and she will play it nobly. Let this come upon her from a mean, wet-nurse, hospital-ward sort of level, and it may break her. What we have to do is to keep up her pluck. Remember we are only at the beginning of this business yet. In all probability there are many years ahead. Therefore this announcement must come to Lady Calmady from an educated person, from an equal, from somebody who can see all round it. Mrs. Ormiston tells me she leaves here to-morrow morning?"

"Mrs. Ormiston is out of the question anyhow," Roger exclaimed rather bitterly.

Here Julius March, who had so far been silent, spoke; and in speaking showed what manner of spirit he was of. The doctor agitated him, treated him, moreover, with scant courtesy. But Julius put this aside. He could afford to forget himself in his desire for any possible mitigation of the blow which must fall on Katherine Calmady. And, listening to his talk, he had, in the last quarter of an hour, gained conviction not only of this man's ability, but of his humanity, of his possession of the peculiar gentleness which so often, mercifully, goes along with unusual strength. As the coarse-looking hand could soothe, touching delicately, so the hard intellect and rough tongue could, he believed, modulate themselves to very consoling and inspiring tenderness of thought and speech.

"We have you, Dr. Knott," he said. "No one, I think, could better break this terrible sorrow to Lady Calmady, than yourself."

"Thank you—you are generous, Mr. March," the other answered cordially; adding to himself,—"Got to revise my opinion of the black coat. Didn't quite deserve that after the way you've badgered him, eh, John Knott?"

He shrugged his big shoulders a little shamefacedly.

"Of course, I'd do my best," he continued. "But you see ten to one I shan't be here at the moment. As it is I have neglected lingering sicknesses and sudden deaths, hysterical girls, croupy children, broken legs, and all the other pretty little amusements of a rather large practice, waiting for me. Suppose I happen to be twenty miles away on the far side of Westchurch, or seeing after some of Lady Fallowfeild's numerous progeny engaged in teething or measles? Lady Calmady might be kept waiting, and we cannot afford to have her kept waiting in this crisis."

"I wish to God my aunt, Mrs. St. Quentin, was here!" Ormiston exclaimed. "But she is not, and won't be, alas."

"Well, then, who remains?"

As the doctor spoke he pressed his fingers against the edge of the table, leaned forward, and looked keenly at Ormiston. He was extremely ugly just then, ugly as the weather-worn gargoyle on some mediæval church tower; but his eyes were curiously compelling.

"Good heavens! you don't mean that I've got to tell her!" Ormiston cried.

He rose hurriedly, thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked a little unsteadily across to the window, crunching the shining pieces of Mrs. Ormiston's sacrificial wine-glass under foot. Outside the night was very wild. In the colourless sky stars reeled among the fleets of racing cloud. The wind hissed up the grass slopes and shouted among the great trees crowning the ridge of the hill. The prospect was not calculated to encourage. Ormiston turned his back on it. But hardly more encouraging was the sombre, gray-blue-walled room. The vision of all that often returned to him afterwards in very different scenes—the tall lamps, the two men, so strangely dissimilar in appearance and temperament, sitting on either side the dinner-table with its fine linen and silver, wines and fruits, waiting silently for him to speak.

"I can't tell her," he said, "I can't. Damn it all, I tell you, Knott, I daren't. Think what it will be to her! Think of being told that about your own child!" Ormiston lost control of himself. He spoke violently. "I'm so awfully fond of her and proud of her," he went on. "She's behaved so splendidly ever since Richard's death, laid hold of all the business, never spared herself, been so able and so just. And now the baby coming, and being a boy, seemed to be a sort of let up, a reward to her for all her goodness. To tell her this horrible thing will be like doing her some hideous wrong. If her heart has to be broken, in common charity don't ask me to break it."

There was a pause. He came back to the table and stood behind Julius March's chair.

"It's asking me to be hangman to my own sister," he said.

"Yes, I know it is a confoundedly nasty piece of work. And it's rough on you, very rough. Only, you see, this hanging has to be put through—there's the nuisance. And it is just a question whether your hand won't be the lightest after all."

Again silence obtained, but for the rush and sob of the gale against the great house.

"What do you say, Julius?" Ormiston demanded at last.

"I suppose our only thought is for Katherine—for Lady Calmady?" he said. "And in that case I agree with Dr. Knott."

Roger took another turn to the window, stood there awhile struggling with his natural desire to escape from so painful an embassy.

"Very well, if you are not here, Knott, I undertake to tell her," he said at last. "Please God, she mayn't turn against me altogether for bringing her such news. I'll be on hand for the next few days, and—you must explain to Denny that I am to be sent for whenever I am wanted. That's all,—I suppose we may as well go now, mayn't we?"

Julius knelt at the faldstool, without the altar rails of the chapel, till the light showed faintly through the grisaille of the stained-glass windows and outlined the spires and carven canopies of the stalls. At first his prayers were definite, petitions for mercy and grace to be outpoured on the fair, young mother and her, seemingly, so cruelly afflicted child; on himself, too, that he might be permitted to stay here, and serve her through the difficult future. If she had been sacred before, Katherine was rendered doubly sacred to him now. He bowed himself, in reverential awe, before the thought of her martyrdom. How would her proud and naturally joyous spirit bear the bitter pains of it? Would it make, eventually, for evil or for good? And then—the ascetic within him asserting itself, notwithstanding the widening of outlook produced by the awakening of his heart—he was overtaken by a great horror of that which we call matter; by a revolt against the body, and those torments and shames, mental, moral, and physical, which the body brings along with it. Surely the dualists were right? It was unregenerate, a thing, if made by God, yet wholly fallen away from Him and given over to evil, this fleshly envelope wherein the human soul is seated, and which, even in the womb, may be infected by disease or rendered hideous by mutilation? Then, as the languor of his long vigil overcame him, he passed into an ecstatic contemplation of the state of that same soul after death, clothed with a garment of incorruptible and enduring beauty, dwelling in clear, luminous spaces, worshipping among the ranks of the redeemed, beholding its Lord God face to face.

John Knott, meanwhile, after driving home beneath the reeling stars, through the roar of the forest and shriek of the wind across the open moors, found an urgent summons awaiting him. He spent the remainder of that night, not in dreams of paradise and of spirits redeemed from the thraldom of the flesh, but in increasing the population of this astonishing planet, by assisting to deliver a scrofulous, half-witted shrieking servant-girl of twins—illegitimate—in the fusty atmosphere of a cottage garret, right up under the rat-eaten thatch.

[ ]

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH KATHERINE CALMADY LOOKS ON HER SON

More than a week elapsed before Ormiston was called upon to redeem his promise. For Lady Calmady's convalescence was slow. An apathy held her, which was tranquillising rather than tedious. She was glad to lie still and rest. She found it very soothing to be shut away from the many obligations of active life for a while; to watch the sunlight, on fair days, shift from east by south to west, across the warm fragrant room; to see the changing clouds in the delicate spring sky, and the slow-dying crimson and violet of the sunset; to hear the sudden hurry of falling rain, the subdued voices of the women in the adjoining nursery, and, sometimes, the lusty protestations of her baby when—as John Knott had put it—"things didn't suit him." She felt a little jealous of the comely, young wet-nurse, a little desirous to be more intimately acquainted with this small, new Richard Calmady, on whom all her hopes for the future were set. But immediately she was very submissive to the restrictions laid by Denny and the doctor upon her intercourse with the child. She only stood on the threshold of motherhood as yet. While the inevitable exhaustion, following on the excitement of her spring and summer of joy, her autumn of bitter sorrow, and her winter of hard work, asserted itself now that she had time and opportunity for rest.

The hangings and coverlet of the great, ebony, half-tester bed were lined with rose silk, and worked, with many coloured worsteds on a white ground, in the elaborate Persian pattern so popular among industrious ladies of leisure in the reign of good Queen Anne. It may be questioned whether the parable, wrought out with such patience of innumerable stitches, was closely comprehensible or sympathetic to the said ladies; since a particularly wide interval, both of philosophy and practice, would seem to divide the temper of the early eighteenth century from that of the mystic East. Still the parable was there, plain to whoso could read it; and not perhaps, rather pathetically, without its modern application.

The Powers of Evil, in the form of a Leopard, pursue the soul of man, symbolised by a Hart, through the Forest of This Life. In the midst of that same forest stands an airy, domed pavilion, in which—if so be it have strength and fleetness to reach it—the panting, hunted creature may, for a time, find security and repose. Above this resting-place the trees of the forest interlace their spreading branches, loaded with amazing leaves and fruit; while companies of rainbow-hued birds, standing very upright upon nothing in particular, entertain themselves by holding singularly indigestible looking cherries and mulberries in their yellow beaks.

And so, Katherine, resting in dreamy quiet within the shade of the embroidered curtains, was even as the Hart pasturing in temporary security before the quaint pavilion. The mark of her bereavement was upon her sensibly still—would be so until the end. Often in the night, when Denny had at last left her, she would wake suddenly and stretch her arms out across the vacant space of the wide bed, calling softly to the beloved one who could give no answer; and then recollecting, would sob herself again to sleep. Often too, as Ormiston's step sounded through the Chapel-Room when he came to pay her those short, frequent visits, bringing the clean freshness of the outer air along with him, Katherine would look up in a wondering gladness, cheating herself for an instant with unreasoning delight—look up, only to know her sorrow, and feel the knife turn in the wound. Nevertheless these days made, in the main, for peace and healing. On more than one occasion she petitioned that Julius March should come and read to her, choosing, as the book he should read from, Spencer's Faerie Queene. He obeyed, in manner calm, in spirit deeply moved. Katherine spoke little. But her charm was great, as she lay, her eyes changeful in colour as a moorland stream, listening to those intricate stanzas, in which the large hope, the pride of honourable deeds, the virtue, the patriotism, the masculine fearlessness, the ideality, the fantastic imagination, of the English Renaissance so nobly finds voice. They comforted her mind, set by instinct and training to welcome all splendid adventures of romance, of nature, and of faith. They carried her back, in dear remembrance, to the perplexing and enchanting discoveries which Richard Calmady's visit to Ormiston Castle—the many-towered, gray house looking eastward across the unquiet sea—had brought to her. And specially did they recall to her that first evening—even yet she grew hot as she thought of it—when the supposed gentleman-jockey, whom she had purposed treating with gay and reducing indifference, proved not only fine scholar and fine gentleman, but absolute and indisputable master of her heart.

Dr. Knott came to see her, too, almost daily—rough, tender-hearted, humorous, dependable, never losing sight, in his intercourse with her, of the matter in hand, of the thing which immediately is.

Thus did these three men, each according to his nature and capacity, strive to guard the poor Hart, pasturing before the quaint pavilion, set—for its passing refreshment—in the midst of the Forest of This Life, and to keep, just so long as was possible, the pursuing Leopard at bay. Nevertheless the Leopard gained, despite of their faithful guardianship—which was inevitable, the case standing as it did.

For one bright afternoon, about three o'clock, Mrs. Denny arrived in the gun-room, where Ormiston sat smoking, while talking over with Julius the turf-cutting claims of certain squatters on Spendle Flats—-arrived, not to summon the latter to further readings of the great Elizabethan poet, but to say to the former:—

"Will you please come at once, sir? Her ladyship is sitting up. She is a little difficult about the baby—only, you know, sir, if I can say it with all respect, in her pretty, teasing way. But I am afraid she must be told."

And Roger rose and went—sick at heart. He would rather have faced an enemy's battery, vomiting out shot and shell, than gone up the broad, stately staircase, and by the silent, sunny passageways, to that fragrant, white-paneled room.

On the stands and tables were bowls full of clear-coloured spring flowers—early primrose, jonquil, and narcissus. A wood-fire burned upon the blue-and-white tiled hearth. And on the sofa, drawn up at right angles to it, Katherine sat, wrapped in a gray, silk dressing-gown bordered with soft, white fur. She flushed slightly as her brother came in, and spoke to him with an air of playful apology.

"I really don't know why you should have been dragged up here, just now, dear old man," she said. "It is some fancy of Denny's. I'm afraid in the excess of her devotion she makes me rather a nuisance to you. And now, not contented with fussing about me, she has taken to being absurdly mysterious about the baby——"

She stopped abruptly. Something in the young man's expression and bearing impressed her, causing her to stretch out her hands to him in swift fear and entreaty.

"Oh, Roger!" she cried, "Roger—what is it?"

And he told her, repeating, with but a few omissions, the statement made to him by the doctor ten days ago. He dared not look at her while he spoke, lest seeing her should unnerve him altogether.

Katherine was very still. She made no outcry. Yet her very stillness seemed to him the more ominous, and the horror of the recital grew upon him. His voice sounded to him unnaturally loud and harsh in the surrounding quiet. Once her silken draperies gave a shuddering rustle—that was all.

At last it was over. At last he dared to look at her. The colour and youthful roundness had gone out of her face. It was gray as her dress, fixed and rigid as a marble mask. Ormiston was overcome with a consuming pity for her and with a violence of self-hatred. Hangman, and to his own sister—in truth, it seemed to him to have come to that! He knelt down in front of her, laying hold of both her knees.

"Kitty, can you ever forgive me for telling you this?" he asked hoarsely.

Even in this extremity Katherine's inherent sweetness asserted itself. She would have smiled, but her frozen lips refused. Her eyelids quivered a little and closed.

"I have nothing to forgive you, dear," she said. "Indeed, it is good of you to tell me, since—since so it is."

She put her hands upon his shoulders, gripping them fast, and bowed her head. The little flames crackled, dancing among the pine logs and the silk of her dress rustled as her bosom rose and fell.

"It won't make you ill again?" Roger asked anxiously.

Katherine shook her head.

"Oh, no!" she said, "I have no more time for illness. This is a thing to cure, as a cautery cures—to burn away all idleness and self-indulgent, sick room fancies. See, I am strong, I am well."

She stood up, her hands slipping down from Ormiston's shoulders and steadying themselves on his hands as he too rose. Her face was still ashen, but purpose and decision had come into her eyes.

"Do this for me," she said, almost imperiously. "Go to Denny, tell her to bring me the baby. She is to leave him with me. And tell her, as she loves both him and me,—as she values her place here at Brockhurst,—she is not to speak."

As he looked at her Ormiston turned cold. She was terrible just then.

"Katherine," he said quickly, "what on earth are you going to do?"

"No harm to my baby in any case—you need not be alarmed. I am quite to be trusted. Only I cannot be reasoned with or opposed, still less condoled with or comforted, yet. I want my baby, and I must have him, here, alone, the doors shut—locked if I please." Her lips gave, the corners of her mouth dropped. And watching her Ormiston swore a little under his breath. "We have something to say to each other, the baby and I," she went on, "which no one else may hear. So do what I ask you, Roger. And come back—I may want you—in about an hour, if I do not send for you before."

Alone with her child, Lady Calmady moved slowly across and bolted both the nursery and the chapel-room doors. Then she drew a low stool up in front of the fire and sat down, laying the infant upon her lap. It was a delicious, dimpled creature, with a quantity of silky golden-brown hair, that curled in a tiny crest along the top of its head. It was but half awake yet, the rounded cheeks pink with the comfort of food and slumber. And as the beautiful, young mother, bending that set, ashen face of hers above it, laid the child upon her knees, it stretched, clenching soft baby fists and rubbing them into its blue eyes.

Katherine unwrapped the shawls, and took off one small garment after another—delicate gossamer-like things of fine flannel, lawn and lace, such as women's fingers linger over in the making with tender joy. Once her resolution failed her. She wrapped the half-dressed child in its white shawls again, rose from her place and walked over to the sunny window, carrying it in the hollow of her arm—it staring up, meanwhile, with the strange wonder of baby eyes, and cooing, as though holding communication with gracious presences haunting the moulded ceiling above. Katherine gazed at it for a few seconds. But the little creature's serene content, its absolute unconsciousness of its own evil fortune, pained her too greatly. She went back, sat down on the stool again, and completed the task she had set herself.

Then, the baby lying stark naked on her lap, she studied the fair, little face, the penciled eyebrows and fringed eyelids,—dark like her own,—the firm, rounded arms, the rosy-palmed hands, their dainty fingers and finger-nails, the well-proportioned and well-nourished body, without smallest mark or blemish upon it, sound, wholesome, and complete. All these she studied long and carefully, while the dancing glow of the firelight played over the child's delicate flesh, and it extended its little arms in the pleasant warmth, holding them up, as in act of adoration, towards those gracious unseen presences, still, apparently, hovering above the flood of instreaming sunshine against the ceiling overhead. Lastly she turned her eyes, with almost dreadful courage, upon the mutilated, malformed limbs, upon the feet—set right up where the knee should have been, thus dwarfing the child by a fourth of his height. She observed them, handled, felt them. And as she did so, her mother-love, which, until now, had been but a part and consequence—since the child was his gift, the crown and outcome of their passion, his and hers—of the great love she bore her husband, became distinct from that, an emotion by itself, heretofore unimagined, pervasive of all her being. It had none of the sweet self-abandon, the dear enchantments, the harmonising sense of safety and repose which that earlier passion had. This was altogether different in character, and made quite other demands on mind and heart. For it was fierce, watchful, anxious, violent with primitive instinct; the roots of it planted far back in that unthinkable remoteness of time, when the fertile womb of the great earth mother began to bring forth the first blind, simple forms of those countless generations of living creatures which, slowly differentiating themselves, slowly developing, have peopled this planet from that immeasurable past to the present hour. Love between man and woman must be forever young, even as Eros, Cupid, Krishna, are forever youthful gods. But mother-love is of necessity mature, majestic, ancient from the stamp of primal experience which is upon it.

And so, at this juncture, realising that which her motherhood meant, her immaturity, her girlhood fell away from Katherine Calmady. Her life and the purpose of it moved forward on another plane.

She bent down and solemnly kissed the unlovely, shortened limbs, not once or twice, but many times, yielding herself up with an almost voluptuous intensity to her own emotion. She clasped her hands about her knees, so that the child might be enclosed, overshadowed, embraced on all sides by the living defenses of its mother's love. Alone there, with no witnesses, she brooded over it, crooned to it, caressed it with an insatiable hunger of tenderness.

"And yet, my poor pretty, if we had both died, you and I, ten days ago," she murmured, "how far better. For what will you say to me when you grow older—to me who have brought you, without any asking or will of yours, into a world in which you must always be at so cruel a disadvantage? How will you bear it all when you come to face it for yourself, and I can no longer shield you and hide you away as I can do now? Will you have fortitude to endure, or will you become sour, vindictive, misanthropic, envious? Will you curse the hour of your birth?"

Katherine bowed her proud head still lower.

"Ah! don't do that, my darling," she prayed in piteous entreaty, "don't do that. For I will share all your trouble, do share it even now, beforehand, foreseeing it, while you still lie smiling unknowing of your own distress. I shall live through it many times, by day and night, while you live through it only once. And so you must be forbearing towards me, my dear one, when you come——"

She broke off abruptly, her hands fell at her sides, and she sat rigidly upright, her lips parted, staring blankly at the dancing flames.

In repeating Dr. Knott's statement Ormiston had purposely abstained from all mention of Richard Calmady's accident and its tragic sequel. He could not bring himself to speak to Katherine of that. Until now, dominated by the rush of her emotion, she had only recognised the bare terrible fact of the baby's crippled condition, without attempting to account for it. But, now, suddenly the truth presented itself to her. She understood that she was herself, in a sense, accountable—that the greatness of her love for the father had maimed the child.

As she realised the profound irony of the position, a blackness of misery fell upon Katherine. And then, since she was of a strong, undaunted spirit, an immense anger possessed her, a revolt against nature which could work such wanton injury, and against God, who, being all-powerful, could sit by and permit it so to work. All the foundations of faith and reverence were, for the time being, shaken to the very base.

She gathered the naked baby up against her bosom, rocking herself to and fro in a paroxysm of rebellious grief.

"God is unjust!" she cried aloud. "He takes pleasure in fooling us. God is unjust!"

[ ]

CHAPTER X

THE BIRDS OF THE AIR TAKE THEIR BREAKFAST

Ormiston's first sensation on reentering his sister's room was one of very sensible relief. For Katherine leaned back against the pink brocade cushions in the corner of the sofa, with the baby sleeping peacefully in her arms. Her colour was more normal too, her features less mask-like and set. The cloud which had shadowed the young man's mind for nearly a fortnight lifted. She knew; therefore, he argued, the worst must be over. It was an immense gain that this thing was fairly said. Yet, as he came nearer and sat down on the sofa beside her, Ormiston, who was a keen observer, both of horses and women, became aware of a subtle change in Katherine. He was struck—he had never noticed it before—by her likeness to her—and his—father, whose stern, high-bred, clean-shaven face and rather inaccessible bearing and manner impressed his son, even to this day, as somewhat alarming. People were careful not to trifle with old Mr. Ormiston. His will was absolute in his own house, with his tenants, and in the great iron-works—almost a town in itself—which fed his fine fortune. While from his equals—even from his fellow-members of that not over-reverent or easily impressible body, the House of Commons—he required and received a degree of deference such as men yield only to an unusually powerful character. And there was now just such underlying energy in Katherine's expression. Her eyes were dark, as a clear midnight sky is dark, her beautiful lips compressed, but with concentration of purpose, not with weakness of sorrow. The force of her motherhood had awakened in Katherine a latent, titanic element. Like "Prometheus Bound," chained to the rock, torn, her spirit remained unquelled. For good or evil—as the event should prove—she defied the gods.

And something of all this—though he would have worded it very differently in the vernacular of passing fashion—Ormiston perceived. She was unbroken by that which had occurred, and for this he was thankful. But she was another woman to her who had greeted him in pretty apology an hour ago. Yet, even recognising this, her first words produced in him a shock of surprise.

"Is that horse, the Clown, still at the stables?" she asked.

Ormiston thrust his hands into his pockets; and sitting on the edge of the sofa with his knees apart, stared down at the carpet. The mention of the Clown always cut him, and raised in him a remorseful anger. Yes she was like his father, going straight to the point, he thought. And, in this case, the point was acutely painful to him personally. Ormiston's moral courage had been severely taxed, and he had a fair share of the selfishness common to man. It was all very well, but he wished to goodness she had chosen some other subject than this. Yet he must answer.

"Yes," he said; "Willy Taylor has been leading the gallops for the two-year-olds on him for the last month."—He paused. "What about the Clown?"

"Only that I should be glad if you would tell Chifney he must find some other horse to lead the gallops."

Ormiston turned his head.

"I see—you wish the horse sold," he said, over his shoulder.

Katherine looked down at the sleeping baby, its round head, crowned by that delicious crest of silky hair, cuddled in against her breast. Then she looked in her brother's eyes full and steadily.

"No," she answered. "I don't want it sold, I want it shot, by you, here, to-night."

"By Jove!" the young man exclaimed, rising hastily and standing in front of her.

Katherine gazed up at him, and held the child a little closer to her breast.

"I have been alone with my baby. Don't you suppose I see how it has come about?" she asked.

"Oh, damn it all!" Ormiston cried. "I prayed, at least, you might be spared thinking of that."

He flung himself down on the sofa again—while the baby clenching its tiny fist, stretched and murmured in its sleep—and bowed himself together, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"I'm at the bottom of it. It's all my fault," he said. "I am haunted by the thought of that day and night, for if ever one man loved another I loved Richard. And yet if I hadn't been so cursedly keen about the horse all this might never have happened. Oh! if you only knew how often I've wished myself dead since that ghastly morning. You must hate me, Kitty. You've cause enough. Yet how the deuce could I foresee what would come about?"

For the moment Katherine's expression softened. She laid her left hand very gently on his bowed head.

"I could never hate you, dear old man," she said. "You are innocent of Richard's death. But this last thing is different." Her voice became fuller and deeper in tone. "And whether I am equally innocent of his child's disfigurement, God only knows—if there is a God, which perhaps, just now, I had better doubt, lest I should blaspheme too loudly, hoping my bitter words might reach His hearing."

Yet further disturbed in the completeness of it's comfort, as it would seem, by the seriousness of her voice, the baby's mouth puckered. It began to fret. Katherine rose and stood rocking it, soothing it—a queenly young figure in her clinging gray and white draperies, which the instreaming sunshine touched, as she moved, to a delicate warmth of colour.

"Hush, my pretty lamb," she crooned—and then softly yet fiercely to Ormiston, "You understand, I wish it. The Clown is to be shot."

"Very well," he answered.

"Sleep—what troubles you, my precious," she went on. "I want it done, now, at once.—Hush, baby, hush.—The sun shall not go down upon my wrath, because my wrath shall be somewhat appeased before the sunset."

Katherine swayed with a rhythmic motion, holding the baby a little away from her in her outstretched arms.

"Tell Chifney to bring the horse up to the square lawn, here, right in front of the house.—Hush, my kitty sweet.—He is to bring the horse himself. None of the stable boys or helpers are to come. It is not to be an entertainment, but an execution. I wish it done quietly."

"Very well," Ormiston repeated. He hesitated, strong protest rising to his lips, which he could not quite bring himself to utter. Katherine, the courage and tragedy of her anger, dominated him as she moved to and fro in the sunshine soothing her child.

"You know it's a valuable horse," he remarked, at last, tentatively.

"So much the better. You do not suppose I should care to take that which costs me nothing? I am quite willing to pay.—Sleep, my pet, so—is that better?—I do not propose to defraud—hush, baby darling, hush—Richard's son of any part of his inheritance. Tell Chifney to name a price for the Clown, an outside price. He shall have a cheque to-morrow, which he is to enter with the rest of the stable accounts.—Now go, please. We understand each other clearly, and it is growing late.—Poor honey love, what vexes you?—You will shoot the Clown, here, before sunset. And, Roger, it must lie where it falls to-night. Let some of the men come early to-morrow, with a float. It is to go to the kennels."

Ormiston got up, shaking his shoulders as though to rid himself of some encumbering weight. He crossed to the fireplace and kicked the logs together.

"I don't half like it," he said. "I tell you I don't. It seems such a cold-blooded butchery. I can't tell if it's wrong or right. It seems merciless. And it is so unlike you, Kitty, to be merciless."

He turned to her as he spoke, and Katherine—her head erect, her eyes full of the sombre fire of her profound alienation and revolt—drew her hand slowly down over the fine lawn and lace of the baby's long white robe, and held it flat against the soles of the child's hidden feet.

"Look at this," she said. "Remember, too, that the delight of my life has gone from me, and that I am young yet. The years will be many—and Richard is dead. Has much mercy been shown to me, do you think?"

And the young man seeing her, knowing the absolute sincerity of her speech, felt a lump rise in his throat. After all, when you have acted hangman to your own sister, as he reasoned, it is but a small matter to act slaughterman to a horse.

"Very well," he answered, huskily enough. "It shall be as you wish, Kitty. Only go back to the sofa, and stay there, please. If I think you are watching, I can't be quite sure of myself. Something may go wrong, and we don't want a scene which will make talk. This is a business which should be got through as quickly and decently as possible."

The sun was but five minutes high, and no longer brightened the southern house front, though it spread a ruddy splendour over the western range of gables, and lingered about the stacks of slender twisted chimneys, and cast long slanting shadows across the lawns and carriage drives, before Lady Calmady's waiting drew to a close. From the near trees of the elm avenue, and from the wood overhanging the pond below the terraced kitchen gardens, came the singing of blackbirds and thrushes—whether raised as evening hymn in praise of their Creator, or as love-song each to his mate, who shall say? Possibly as both, since in simple minds—and that assuredly is matter for thankfulness—earthly and heavenly affections are bounded by no harsh dividing line. The chorus of song found its way in at the windows of Katherine's room—fresh as the spring flowers which filled it, innocent of hatred and wrong as the face of the now placid baby, his soft cheeks flushed with slumber, as he nestled in against his mother's bosom.

Indeed a long time had passed. Twice Denny had looked in and, seeing that quiet reigned, had noiselessly withdrawn. For Katherine, still physically weak, drained, moreover, by the greatness of her recent emotion, her senses lulled to rest by the warm contact and even breathing of the child, had sunk away into a dreamless sleep.

The questioning neigh of a stallion, a scuffle of horse hoofs, footsteps approaching round the corner of the house, passing across the broad graveled carriage sweep and on to the turf, aroused her. And these sounds were so natural, full of vigorous outdoor life and the wholesome gladness of it, that for a moment she came near repentance of her purpose. But then feeling, as he rested on her arm, her baby's shortened, malformed limbs, and thinking of her well-beloved dying, maimed and spent, in the fulness of his manhood, her face took on that ashen pallor again and all relenting left her. There was a satisfaction of wild justice in the act about to be consummated. And Katherine raised herself from the pink brocade cushions, and sat erect, her lips parted in stern excitement, her forehead contracted in the effort to hear, her eyes fixed on the wide, carven, ebony bed and its embroidered hangings. The poor Hart had, indeed, ceased to pasture in reposeful security before the quaint pavilion, set—for its passing refreshment—in the midst of the Forest of This Life. Now it fled, desperate, by crooked tangled ways, over rocks, through briars, while Care, the Leopard, followed hard behind.

First Roger Ormiston's voice reached her in brief direction, and the trainer's in equally brief reply. The horse neighed again—a sound strident and virile, the challenge of a creature of perfect muscle, hot desire, and proud, quick-coursing blood. Afterwards, an instant's pause, and Chifney's voice again,—"So-ho—my beauty—take it easy—steady there, steady, good lad," and the slap of his open hand on the horse's shoulder straightening it carefully into place. While behind and below all this, in sweet incongruous undertone of uncontrollable joy, arose the carolling of the blackbirds and thrushes praising, according to their humble powers, God, life, and love.

Finally, as climax of the drama, the sharp report of a pistol, ringing out in shattering disturbance of the peace of the fair spring evening, followed by a dead silence, the birds all scared and dumb—a silence so dead, that Katherine Calmady held her breath, almost awed by it, while the hissing and crackling of the little flames upon the hearth seemed to obtrude as an indecent clamour. This lasted a few seconds. Then the noise of a plunging struggle and the muffled thud of something falling heavily upon the turf.—

Dr. Knott had been up all night, but his patient, Lord Denier's second coachman, would pull through right enough; so he started on his homeward journey in a complacent frame of mind. He reckoned it would save him a couple of miles, let alone the long hill from Farley Row up to Spendle Flats, if on his way back from Grimshott he went by Brockhurst House. It is stretching a point, he admitted, to drive under even your neighbour's back windows at five o'clock in the morning. But the doctor being himself in an unusually amiable attitude, was inclined to accredit others with a like share of good temper. Moreover, the natural man in him cried increasingly loudly for food and bed.

John Knott was not given to sentimental rhapsodies over the beauties of nature. Like other beauties she had her dirty enough moods, he thought. Still, in his own half-snarling fashion, he dearly loved this forest country in which he had been born and bred, while he was too keen a sportsman to be unobservant of any aspect of wind and weather, any movement of bird or beast. With the collar of his long drab driving-coat turned up about his ears, and the stem of a well-coloured meerschaum pipe between his teeth, he sat huddled together in the high, swinging gig, with Timothy, the weazel-faced, old groom by his side, while the drama of the opening day unfolded itself before his somewhat critical gaze. He noted that it would be fine, though windy. In the valley, over the Long Water, spread beds of close, white mist. The blue of the upper sky was crossed by curved windows of flaky, opalescent cloud. In the east, above the dusky rim of the fir woods on the edge of the high-lying tableland, stretched a blinding blaze of rose-saffron, shading through amber into pale primrose colour above. The massive house front, and the walls fencing the three sides of the square enclosure before it, with the sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses at either corner, looked pale and unsubstantial in that diffused, unearthly light. At the head of the elm avenue, passing through the high, wrought-iron gates and along the carriage drive which skirts the said enclosure,—the great, square grass plot on the right hand, the red wall of the kitchen gardens on the left,—Dr. Knott had the reins nearly jerked out of his hand. The mare started and swerved, grazing the off wheel against the brickwork, and stopped, her head in the air, her ears pricked, her nostrils dilated showing the red.

"Hullo, old girl, what's up? Seen a ghost?" he said, drawing the whip quietly across the hollow of her back.

But the mare only braced herself more stiffly, refusing to move, while she trembled and broke into a sudden sweat. The doctor was interested and looked about him. He would first find the cause of her queer behaviour, and give her a good dressing down afterwards if she deserved it.

The smooth, slightly up-sloping lawn was powdered with innumerable dewdrops. In the centre of it, neck outstretched, the fine legs doubled awkwardly together, the hind quarters and barrel rising, as it lay on its side, in an unshapely lump, gray from the drenching dew, was a dead horse. Along the top of the further wall a smart and audacious party of jackdaws had stationed themselves, with much ruffling of gray, neck feathers impudent squeakings and chatter. While a pair of carrion crows hopped slowly and heavily about the carcass, flapping up with a stroke or two of their broad wings in sudden suspicion, then settling down again nearer than before.

"Go to her head, Timothy, and get her by as quietly as you can. I'll be after you in a minute, but I'm bound to see what the dickens they've been up to here."

As he spoke Dr. Knott hitched himself down from off the gig. He was cramped with sitting, and moved forward awkwardly, his footsteps leaving a track of dark irregular patches upon the damp grass. As he approached, the jackdaws flung themselves gleefully upward from the wall, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage as they circled and sailed away across the park. But the crow who had just begun work in earnest, stood his ground, notwithstanding the warning croak of his more timid mate. He grasped the horse's skull with his claws, and tore away greedily at the fine skin about the eye-socket with his strong, black beak.

"How's this, my fine gentleman, in too much of a hurry this morning to wait for the flavour to get into your meat?" John Knott said, as the bird rose sullenly at last. "Got a small hungry family at home, I suppose, crying 'give, give.' Well, that's taught better men than you, before now, not to be too nice, but to snatch at pretty well anything they can get."

He came close and stood looking meditatively down at the dead race-horse—recognised its long, white-reach face, the colour and make of it, while his loose lips worked with a contemptuous yet pitying smile.

"So that's the way my lady's taken it, has she?" he said presently. "On the whole I don't know that I'm sorry. In some cases much benefit unquestionably is derivable from letting blood. This shows she doesn't mean to go under if I know her; and that's a mercy, for that poor little beggar, the baby's sake."

He turned and contemplated the stately facade of the house. The ranges of windows, blind with closed shutters and drawn curtains, in the early sunshine gave off their many panes a broad dazzle of white light.

"Poor little beggar," he repeated, "with his forty thousand a year and all the rest of it. Such a race to run and yet so badly handicapped!"

He stooped down, examined the horse, found the mark of the bullet.

"Contradictory beings, though, these dear women," he went on. "So fanciful and delicate, so sensitive you're afraid to lay a finger on them. So unselfish, too, some of them, they seem too good for this old rough and tumble of a world. And yet touch 'em home, and they'll show an unscrupulous savagery of which we coarse brutes of men should be more than half ashamed. God Almighty made a little more than He bargained for when He made woman. She must have surprised Him pretty shrewdly, one would think, now and then since the days of the apple and the snake."

He moved away up the carriage drive, following Timothy, the sweating, straining mare, and swinging gig. The carrion crow flapped back, with a croak, and dropped on the horse's skull again. Hearing that bodeful sound the doctor paused a moment, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and looking round at the bird at its ugly work, set as foreground to that pure glory of the sunrise, and the vast noble landscape, misty valley, dewy grassland, far ranging hillside crowned with wood.

"The old story," he muttered, "always repeating itself. And it strikes one as rather a wasteful, clumsy contrivance, at times. Life forever feeding on death—death forever breeding life."

Thus ended the Clown, own brother to Touchstone, of merry name and mournful memory, paying the penalty of wholly involuntary transgressions. From which ending another era dated at Brockhurst, the most notable events of which it is the purpose of the ensuing pages duly to set forth.

BOOK II

THE BREAKING OF DREAMS

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CHAPTER I

RECORDING SOME ASPECTS OF A SMALL PILGRIM'S PROGRESS

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, says the comfortable proverb. Which would appear to be but another manner of declaring that the law of compensation works permanently in human affairs. All quantities, material and immaterial alike, are, of necessity, stable; therefore the loss or defect of one participant must—indirectly, no doubt, yet very surely—make for the gain of some other. As of old, so now, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Julius March would, how gladly, have been among the martyrs! But the lot fell otherwise. And—always admitting the harshness of the limitations he had imposed on himself—the martyrdom of those he held dearest, did, in fact, work to secure him a measure of content that had otherwise been unattainable. The twelve years following the birth of Lady Calmady's child were the most fruitful of his life. He filled a post no other person could have filled; one which, while satisfying his religious sense and priestly ideal of detachment, appeased the cravings of his heart and developed the practical man in him. The contemplative and introspective attitude was balanced by an active and objective one. For he continued to live under his dear lady's roof, seeing her daily and serving her in many matters. He watched her, admiring her clear yet charitable judgment and her prudence in business. He bowed in reverence before her perfect singleness of purpose. He was almost appalled, apprehending, now and then, the secret abysses of her womanhood, the immensity of her self-devotion, the swing of her nature from quick, sensitive shrinking to almost impious pride. Man is the outcome of the eternal common sense; woman that of some moment of divine folly. Meanwhile the ways of true love are many; and Julius March, thus watching his dear lady, discovered, as other elect souls have discovered before him, that the way of chastity and silence, notwithstanding its very constant heartache, is by no means among the least sweet. The entries in his diaries of this period are intermittent, concise, and brief—naturally enough, since the central figure of Julius's mental picture had ceased, happily for him, to be himself.

And not only Katherine's sorrows, but the unselfish action of another woman went to make Julius March's position at Brockhurst tenable. A few days after Ormiston's momentous interview with his sister, news came of Mrs. St. Quentin's death. She had passed hence peacefully in her sleep. Knowledge of the facts of poor, little Dickie Calmady's ill-fortune had been spared her. For it would be more satisfactory—so Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had remarked, not without a shade of irony—that if Lucia St. Quentin must learn the sad fact at all, she should do so where le bon Dieu Himself would be at hand to explain matters, and so, in a degree, set them right.

Early in April Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had gathered together her most precious possessions and closed the pretty apartment in the rue de Rennes. It had been a happy halting-place on the journey of life. It was haunted by well-beloved ghosts. It cost not a little to bid it, the neighbouring church of the St. Germain des Près, where she had so long worshipped, and her little coterie of intimate friends, farewell. Yet she set forth, taking with her Henriette, the hard-featured, old, Breton maid, and Monsieur Pouf, the gray, Persian cat,—he protesting plaintively from within a large Manilla basket,—and thus accompanied, made pilgrimage to Brockhurst. And when Katherine, all the lost joys of her girlhood assailing her at sight of her lifelong friend, had broken down for once, and, laying her beautiful head on the elder woman's shoulder, had sobbed out a question as to when this visit must end, Marie de Mirancourt had answered—

"That, most dear one, is precisely as you shall see fit to decide. It need not end till I myself end, if you so please."

And when Katherine, greatly comforted yet fearing to be over-greedy of comfort, had reasoned with her, reminding her of the difference of climate, the different habits of living in that gay, little Paris home and this great English country house; reminding her, further, of her so often and fondly expressed desire to retire from the world while yet in the complete possession of her powers and prepare for the inevitable close within the calm and sacred precincts of the convent—the other replied almost gaily—

"Ah, my child! I have still a naughty little spirit of experiment in me which defiles the barbarities of your climate. While as to the convent, it has beckoned so long—let it beckon still! It called first when my fiancé died,—God rest his soul,—worn out by the hardships he endured in the war of La Vendée and I put from me forever all thought of marriage. But then my mother, an emigrant here in London, claimed all my care. It called me again when she departed, dear saintly being. But then there were my brother's sons—orphaned by the guillotine—to place. And when I had established them honourably, our beloved Lucia turned to me, with her many enchantments and exquisite tragedy of the heart. And, now, in my old age I come to you—whom I receive from her as a welcome legacy—to remain just so long as I am not a burden to you. Second childhood and first should understand one another. We will play delightful games together, the dear baby and I. So let the convent beckon. For the convent is perhaps, after all, but an impatient grasping at the rest of paradise, before that rest is fairly earned. I have a good hope that, after all, we give ourselves most acceptably to God in thus giving ourselves to His human creatures."

Thus did Marie de Mirancourt, for love's sake, condemn herself to exile, thereby rendering possible—among other things—Julius's continued residence at Brockhurst. For Captain Ormiston had held true to his resolve of scorning the delights of idleness, the smiles of ladies more kind than wise, and all those other pleasant iniquities to which idleness inclines the young and full-blooded, of bidding farewell to London and Windsor, and proceeding to "live laborious days" in some far country. He had offered to remain indefinitely with Katherine if she needed him. But she refused. Let him be faithful to the noble profession of arms and make a name for himself therein.

"Brockhurst has ceased to be a place for a soldier," she said. "Leave it to women and priests!" And then, repenting of the bitterness of her speech, she added:—"Really there is not more work than I can manage, with Julius to help me at times. Iles is a good servant if a little tediously pompous, and Chifney must see to the stables."—Lady Calmady paused, and her face grew hard. But for her husband's dying request, she would have sold every horse in the stud, razed the great square of buildings to the ground and made the site of it a dunghill. "Work is a drug to deaden thought. So it is a kindness to let me have plenty of it, dear old man. And I fear, even when the labour of each day is done, and Dickie is safe asleep,—poor darling,—I shall still have more than enough of time for thought, for asking those questions to which there seems no answer, and for desires, vain as they are persistent, that things were somehow, anyhow, other than they are!"

Therefore it came about that a singular quiet settled down on Brockhurst—a quiet of waiting, of pause, rather than of accomplishment. But Julius March, for reasons aforesaid, and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, in virtue of her unclouded faith in the teachings of her Church,—which assures its members of the beneficent purpose working behind all the sad seeming of this world,—alike rejoiced in that. A change of occupations and of interests came naturally with the change of the seasons, with the time to sow and reap, to plant saplings, to fell timber, to fence, to cut copsing, to build or rebuild, to receive rents or remit them, to listen to many appeals, to readjust differences, to feed game or to shoot it, to bestow charity of meat and fuel, to haul ice in winter to the ice-house from the lake. But beyond all this there was little going or coming at Brockhurst. The magnates of the countryside called at decent intervals, and at decent intervals Lady Calmady returned their civilities. But having ceased to entertain, she refused to receive entertainment. She shut herself away in somewhat jealous seclusion, defiant of possibly curious glances and pitying tongues. Before long her neighbours, therefore, came to raise their eyebrows a little in speaking of her, and to utter discreet regrets that Lady Calmady, though handsome and charming when you saw her, was so very eccentric, adding—"Of course every one knows there is something very uncomfortable about the little boy!" Then would follow confidences as to the disastrous results of popish influences and Romanising tendencies; and an openly expressed conviction—more especially on the part of ladies blessed with daughters of marriageable age—that it would have been so very much better for many people if the late Sir Richard Calmady had looked nearer home for a bride.

But these comments did not affect Katherine. In point of fact they rarely reached her ears. Alone among her neighbours, Mary Cathcart, of the crisp, black hair and gipsy-like complexion, was still admitted to some intimacy of intercourse. And the girl was far too loyal either to bring in gossip or to carry it out. Brockhurst held the romance of her heart. And, notwithstanding the earnest wooing—as the years went on—of more than one very eligible gentleman, Brockhurst continued to hold it.

Meanwhile the somewhat quaint fixed star around which this whole system of planets, large and small, very really revolved, shone forth upon them all with a cheerful enough light. For Dickie by no means belied the promise of his babyhood. He was a beautiful and healthy little boy, with a charming brilliance of colouring, warm and solid in tone. He had his mother's changeful eyes, though the blue of them was brighter than hers had now come to be. He had her dark eyebrows and eyelashes too, and her finely curved lips. While he bore likeness to his father in the straight, square-tipped nose and the close-fitting cap of bright, brown hair with golden stains in it, growing low in short curling locks on the broad forehead and the nape of the neck—expressing the shape of the head very definitely, and giving it something of antique nobility and grace.

And the little lad's appearance afforded, in these pleasant early days at all events, fair index to his temperament. He was gay-natured, affectionate, intelligent, full of a lively yet courteous curiosity, easily moved to laughter, almost inconveniently fearless and experimental; while his occasional thunderbursts of passion cleared off quickly into sunshine and blue sky again. For as yet the burden of deformity rested upon him very lightly. He associated hardly at all with other children, and had but scant occasion to measure his poor powers of locomotion against their normal ones. Lady Fallowfeild it is true, in obedience to suggestions on the part of her kindly lord and master, offered tentatively to import a carriage load—little Ludovic Quayle was just the same age as Dickie—from the Whitney nurseries to spend the day.

"Good fellow, Calmady. I liked Calmady," Lord Fallowfeild had said to her. His conversation, it may be observed, was nothing if not interjectional. "Pretty woman, Lady Calmady—-terrible thing for her being left as she is. Always shall regret Calmady. Very sorry for her. Always have been sorry for a pretty woman in trouble. Ought to see something of her, my dear. The two estates join, and, as I always have said, it's a duty to support your own class. Can't expect the masses to respect you unless you show them you're prepared to stand by your own class. Just take some of the children over to see Lady Calmady. Pretty children, do her good to see them. Rode uncommonly straight did Calmady. Terribly upsetting thing his funeral. Never shall forget it. Always did like Calmady—good fellow, Calmady. Nasty thing his death."

But Katherine's pen was fertile in excuses to avoid the invasion from Whitney. Lady Fallowfeild's small brains and large domestic complacency were too trying to her. And that noble lady, it must be owned, was secretly not a little glad to have her advances thus firmly, though gently, repulsed. For she was alarmed at Lady Calmady's reported acquaintance with foreign lands and with books; added to which her simple mind harboured much grisly though vague terror concerning the Roman Church. Picture all her brood of little Quayles incontinently converted into little monks and nuns with shaven heads! How such sudden conversion could be accomplished Lady Fallowfeild did not presume to explain. It sufficed her that "everybody always said Papists were so dreadfully clever and unscrupulous you never could tell what they might not do next."

Once, when Dickie was about six years old, Colonel St. Quentin brought his young wife and two little girls to stay at Brockhurst. Katherine had a great regard for her cousin, yet the visit was never repeated. On the flat poor Dick could manage fairly well, his strangely shod feet traveling laboriously along in effort after rapidity; his hands hastily outstretched now and again to lay hold of door-jamb or table-edge, since his balance was none of the securest. But in that delightfully varied journey from the nursery, by way of his mother's bed-room, the Chapel-Room next door, the broad stair-head,—with its carven balusters, shiny oak flooring, and fine landscapes by Claude and Hobbema,—the state drawing-room and libraries, to that America of his childish dreams, that country of magnificent distances and large possibility of discovery, the Long Gallery, he was speedily distanced by the three-year-old Betty, let alone her six-year-old sister Honoria, a tall, slim, little maiden, daintily high-bred of face and fleet of foot as a hind. This was bad enough. But the stairways afforded yet more afflicting experiences—the descent of even the widest and shallowest flights presented matter of insuperable difficulty; while the ascent was only to be achieved by recourse to all-fours, against the ignominy of which mode of progression Dickie's soul revolted. And so the little boy concluded that he did not care much about little girls; and confided to his devoted play-fellow Clara—Mrs. Denny's niece and sometime second still-room maid, now promoted, on account of her many engaging qualities, to be Dickie's special attendant—that:—

"They went so quick, they always left him behind, and it was not nice to be left behind, and it was very rude of them to do it; didn't Clara think so?"

And Clara, as in duty and affection bound, not without additional testimony in a certain dimness of her pretty, honest, brown eyes, did indeed very much think so. It followed, therefore, that Dickie saw the St. Quentin family drive away, nurses and luggage complete, quite unmoved. And returned with satisfaction and renewed self-confidence to the exclusive society of all those dear grown-up people—gentle and simple—who were never guilty of leaving him behind; to that of Camp, the old, white bulldog, and young Camp, his son and heir, who, if they so far forgot themselves as to run away, invariably ran back again and apologised, fawning upon him and pushing their broad, ugly, kindly muzzles into his hands; and to that of Monsieur Pouf, the gray Persian cat, who, far from going too quickly, displayed such majestic deliberation of movement and admirable dignity of waving fluffed tail, that it required much patient coaxing on Dickie's part ever to make him leave his cushion by the fire and go at all.

But, with the above-mentioned exception, the little boy's self-content suffered but slight disturbance. He took himself very much for granted. He was very curious of outside things, very much amused. Moreover, he was king of a far from contemptible kingdom; and in the blessed ignorance of childhood—that finds pride and honour in things which a wider and sadder knowledge often proves far from glad or glorious—it appeared to him not unnatural that a king should differ, even to the point of some slightly impeding disabilities, from the rank and file of his obedient and devoted subjects. For Dickie, happily for him, was as yet given over to that wholly pleasant vanity, the aristocratic idea. The rough justice of democracy, and the harsh breaking of all purely personal and individualistic dreams that comes along with it, for him, was not just yet.

And Richard's continued and undismayed acquiescence in his physical misfortune was fostered, indirectly, by the captivating poetry of myth and legend with which his mind was fed. He had an insatiable appetite for stories, and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt was an untiring raconteuse. On Sunday afternoons upon the terrace, when the park lay bathed in drowsy sunshine and sapphire shadows haunted the under edge of the great woods, the pretty old lady—her eyes shining with gentle laughter, for Marie de Mirancourt's faith had reached the very perfect stage in which the soul dares play, even as lovers play, with that it holds most sacred—would tell Dickie—the fairy tales of her Church. Would tell him of blessed St. Francis and of Poverty, his sweet, sad bride; of his sermon to the birds dwelling in the oak groves along Tiber valley; of the mystic stigmata, marking as with nail prints his hands and feet, and of that indomitable love towards all creatures, which found alike in the sun in heaven and the heavy-laden ass, brothers and friends. Or she would tell him of that man of mighty strength and stature, St. Christopher, who, in the stormy darkness,—yielding to its reiterated entreaties,—set forth to bear the little child across the wind-swept ford. How he staggered in midstream, amazed and terrified under the awful weight of that, apparently so light, burden; to learn, on struggling ashore at last, that he had borne upon his shoulder no mortal infant, but the whole world and the eternal maker of it, Christ Himself.

These and many another wonder tale of Christian miracle did she tell to Dickie—he squatting on a rug beside her, resting his curly head against her knees, while the pink-footed pigeons hurried hither and thither, picking up the handfuls of barley he scattered on the flags, and the peacocks sunned themselves with a certain worldly and disdainful grace on the hand-rails of the gray balustrades, and young Camp, after some wild skirmish in search of sport, flung himself down panting, his tongue lolling out of his grinning jaws, by the boy's side.

And Katherine, putting aside her cares as regent of Dickie's kingdom and the sorrow that lay so chill against her heart, would tell him stories too, but of a different order of sentiment and of thought. For Katherine was young yet, and her stories were gallant—since her own spirit was very brave—or merry, because it delighted her to hear the boy laugh. And often, as he grew a little older, she would sit with her arm round him, in the keen, winter twilights before the lamps were lit, on the broad cushioned bench of the oriel window in the Chapel-Room. Outside, the stars grew in number and brightness as the dusk deepened. Within, the firelight played over the white-paneled walls, revealing fitfully the handsome faces of former Calmadys—short-lived, passing hence all unsated with the desperate joys of living—painted by Vandyke and Sir Peter Lely, or by Romney and Sir Joshua. Then she would tell him not only of Aladdin, of Cinderella, and time-honoured Puss-in-Boots, but of Merlin the great enchanter, and of King Arthur and his company of noble knights. And of the loves of Sigurd the Niblung and Brunhilda the wise and terrible queen, and of their lifelong sorrow, and of the fateful treasure of fairy gold which lies buried beneath the rushing waters of the Rhine. Or she would tell him of those cold, clear, far-off times in the northern sojourning places of our race—tell him of the cow Audhumla, alone in the vast plain at the very beginning of things, licking the stones crusted over with hoar frost and salt, till, on the third day, there sprung from them a warrior named Bur, the father of Bör, the father of Odin, who is the father of all the gods. She would tell him of wicked Loki too, the deceiver and cunning plotter against the peace of heaven. And of his three evil children—here Dickie would, for what reason he knew not, always feel his mother hold him more closely, while her voice took a deeper tone—Fenrir the wolf, who, when Thor sought to bind him, bit off the brave god's right hand; and Jörmungand the Midgard serpent, who, tail in mouth, circles the world; and Hela, the pale queen, who reigns in Niflheim over the dim kingdoms of the dead. And of Baldur the bright shining god, joy of Asgard, slain in error by Höder his blind twin-brother; for whom all things on earth—save one—weep, and will weep, till in the last days he comes again. And of All-Father Odin himself, plucking out his right eye and bartering it for a draught of wisdom-giving water from Mirmir's magic well. Again, she would tell him of the End—which it must be owned frightened Dickie a little, so that he would stroke her cheek, and say softly, "But, mummy, you really are sure, aren't you, it won't happen for a good while yet?"—Of Ragnarök, the Twilight of the Gods; of the Fimbul winter, and cheerless sun and hurrying, blood-red moon, and all the direful signs which must needs go before the last great battle between good and evil.

And through all of these stories, of Christian and heathen origin alike, Richard began dimly, almost unconsciously, to trace, recurrent as a strain of austere music, the idea—very common to ages less soft and fastidious than our own—of payment in self-restraint and labour, or in actual bodily pain, loss, or disablement, for all good gained and knowledge won.

He found the same idea again when, under the teaching of Julius March, he began reading history, and when his little skill in Greek and Latin carried him as far as the easier passages of the classic poets. Dick was a very apt, if somewhat erratic and inaccurate, scholar. His insatiable curiosity drove him forward. He scurried, in childish fashion by all shortcuts available, to get at the heart of the matter—a habit of mind detestable to pedants, since to them the letter is the main object, not the spirit. Happily Julius was ceasing to be a pedant, even in matters ecclesiastical. He loved the little boy, the mingled charm and pathos of whose personality held him as with a spell. With untiring patience he answered, to the best of his ability, Dickie's endless questions, of how and why. And, perhaps, he learned even more than he taught, under this fire of cross-examination. He had never come intimately in contact with a child's mind before; and Dickie's daring speculations and suggestions opened up very surprising vistas at times. The boy was a born adventurer; a gaily audacious sceptic moreover, notwithstanding his large swallow for romance, until his own morsel of reason and sense of dramatic fitness were satisfied.

And so, having once apprehended that idea of payment, he searched for justification of it instinctively in all he saw and read. He found it again in the immortal story of the siege of Troy, and in the long wanderings and manifold trials of that most experimental of philosophers, the great Ulysses. He found it too in more modern and more authentic history—in the lives of Galileo and Columbus, of Sir Walter Raleigh and many another hero and heroine, of whom, because of some unusual excellence of spirit or attainment, their fellow-men, and, as it would seem, the very gods themselves, have grown jealous, not enduring to witness a beauty rivalling or surpassing their own.

The idea was all confused as yet, coloured by childish fancies, instinctive merely, not realised. Yet it occupied a very actual place in the little boy's mind. He lingered over it silently, caressing it, returning to it again and again in half-frightened delight. It lent a fascination, somewhat morbid perhaps, to all ill-favoured and unsightly creatures—to blind worms and slow-moving toads; to trapped cats and dusty, disabled, winter flies; to a winged sea-gull, property of Bushnell, one of the under-gardeners, that paced, picking up loathsome living in the matter of slugs and snails, about the cabbage beds, all the tragedy of its lost power of flight and of the freedom of the sea in its wild, pale eyes.

It further provoked Dickie to expend all his not inconsiderable gift of draughtsmanship, in the production of long processions of half-human monsters of a grotesque and essentially uncomfortable character. He scribbled these upon all available pieces of paper, including the fly-leaves of Todhunter's Arithmetic, and of his Latin and Greek primers. In an evil hour, for the tidiness of his school-books, he came across the ballad of "Aiken-Drum," with its rather terrible mixture of humour, realism, and the supernatural. From thenceforth for some weeks—though he adroitly avoided giving any direct account of the origin of these grisly imaginative freaks—many margins were adorned, or rather defaced, by fancy portraits of that "foul and stalwart ghaist" the Brownie of Badnock.

So did Dickie dwell, through all his childhood and the early years of youth, in the dear land of dreams, petted, considered, sheltered with perhaps almost cruel kindness, from the keen winds of truth that blow forever across the world. Which winds, while causing all to suffer and bringing death to the weak and fearful, to the lovers of lies and the makers of them, go in the end to strengthen the strong who dare face them, and fortify these in the acceptance of the only knowledge really worth having—namely, the knowledge that romance is no exclusive property of the past, or eternal life of the future, but that both these are here immediately and actually for whoso has eyes to see and courage to possess.

The fairest dreams are true. Yet it is so ordered that to know that we must awake from them. And the awakening is an ugly process enough, too often. When Dickie was about thirteen, the awakening began for him. It came in time-honoured forms—those of horses and of a woman.

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CHAPTER II

IN WHICH OUR HERO IMPROVES HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH MANY THINGS—HIMSELF INCLUDED

It came about in this wise. Roger Ormiston was expected at Brockhurst, after an absence of some years. He had served with distinction in the Sikh war; and had seen fighting on a grand scale in the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah. Later, the restless genius of travel had taken hold on him, leading him far eastward into China, and northward across the Himalayan snows. He had dwelt among strange peoples and looked on strange gods. He had hunted strange beasts, moreover, and learnt their polity and their ways. He had seen the bewildering fecundity of nature in the tropic jungle, and her barren and terrible beauty in the out-stretch of the naked desert. And the thought of all this set Dickie's imagination on fire. The return of Roger Ormiston was, to him, as the return of the mighty Ulysses himself.

For a change was coming over the boy. He began to weary of fable and cry out for fact. He had just entered his fourteenth year. He was growing fast; and, but for that dwarfing deformity, would have been unusually tall, graceful and well-proportioned. But along with this increase of stature had come a listlessness and languor which troubled Lady Calmady. The boy was sweet-tempered enough, had his hours, indeed, of overflowing fun and high spirits. Still he was restless and tired easily of each occupation in turn. He developed a disquieting relish for solitude; and took to camping-out on one of the broad window-seats of the Long Gallery, in company with volumes of Captain Cook's and Hakluyt's voyages, old-time histories of sport and natural history; not to mention Robinson Crusoe and the merry but doubtfully decent pages of Geoffrey Gambado. And his mother noted, not without a sinking of the heart, that the window-seat, which in his solitary moods Dickie most frequented, was precisely that one of the eastern bay which commanded—beyond the smooth, green expanse and red walls of the troco-ground—a good view of the grass ride, running parallel with the lime avenue, along which the horses from the racing stables were taken out and back, morning and evening, to the galloping ground. Then fears began to assail Katherine that the boy's childhood, the content and repose of it, were nearly past. Small wonder that her heart should sink!

On the day of her brother's return, Katherine, after rather anxious search, so found Richard. He was standing on the book-strewn window-seat. He had pushed open the tall narrow casement and leaned out. The April afternoon was fitfully bright. A rainbow spanned the landscape, from the Long Water in the valley to the edge of the forest crowning the table-land. Here and there showers of rain fell, showing white against huge masses of purple cloud piled up along the horizon.

And as Katherine drew near, threading her way carefully between the Chinese cabinets, oriental jars, and many quaint treasures furnishing the end of the great room, she saw that, along the grass ride, some twenty race-horses, came streeling homeward in single file—a long line of brown, chestnut, black, and of the raw yellows and scarlets of horse-clothing against the delicate green of springing turf and opening leaves. Beside them, clad in pepper-and-salt mixture, breeches and gaiters complete, Mr. Chifney pricked forward soberly on his handsome gray cob. The boys called to one another now and then, admonished a fretful horse breaking away from the string. One of them whistled shrilly a few bars of that then popular but undistinguished tune, "Pop goes the weazel." And Richard craned far out, steadying himself against the stone mullion on either side with uplifted hands, heedless alike of his mother's presence and of the heavy drops of rain which splattered in at the open casement.

"Dickie, Dickie," Katherine called, in swift anxiety. "Be careful. You will fall."

She came close, putting her arm round him. "You reckless darling," she went on; "don't you see how dangerous the least slip would be?"

The boy straightened himself and looked round at her. His blue eyes were alight. All the fitful brightness, all the wistful charm of the April evening was in his face.

"But it's the only place where I can see them, and they're such beauties," he said. "And I want to see them so much. You know we always miss them somehow, mummy, when we go out."

Katherine was off her guard. Three separate strains of feeling influenced her just then. First, her growing recognition of the change in Richard, of that passing away of childhood which could not but make for difficulty and, in a sense, for pain. Secondly, the natural excitement of her brother's homecoming, disturbing the monotony of her daily life, bringing, along with very actual joy, memories of a past, well-beloved yet gone beyond recall. Lastly, the practical and immediate fear that Dickie had come uncommonly near tumbling incontinently out of the window. And so, being moved, she held the boy tightly and answered rather at random, thereby provoking fate.

"Yes, my dearest, I know we always miss them somehow when we go out. It is best so. But do pray be more careful with these high windows."

"Oh! I'm all right—I'm careful enough." His glance had gone back to where the last of the horses passed out of sight behind the red wall of the gardens. "But why is it best so? Ah! they're gone!" he exclaimed.

Katherine sat down on the window-seat, and Richard, clinging on to the window-ledge, while she still held him, lowered himself into a sitting position beside her.

"Thank you, mummy," he said. And the words cut her. They came so often in each day, and always with the same little touch of civil dignity. The courtesy of Richard's recognition of help given, failed to comfort her for the fact that help was so constantly required. Lady Calmady's sense of rebellion arose and waxed strong whenever she heard those thanks.

"Mother," he went on, "I want to ask you something. You won't mind?"

"Do I ever mind you questioning me?" Yet she felt a certain tightening about her heart.

"Ah, but this is different! I've wanted to for a long while, but I did not know if I ought—and yet I did not quite like to ask Auntie Marie or Julius. And, of course, one doesn't speak to the servants about anything of that sort."

Richard's curly head went up with a fine, little air of pride as he said the last few words. His mother smiled at him. There was no doubt as to her son's breeding.

"Well, what then?" she said.

"I want to know—you're sure you don't mind—why you dislike the horses, and never go to the stables or take me there? If the horses are wrong, why do we keep them? And if they're not wrong, why, mother, don't you see, we may enjoy them, mayn't we?"

He flushed, looking up at her, spoke coaxingly, merrily, a trifle embarrassed by his own temerity, yet keen to prove his point and acquire possession of this so coveted joy.

Katherine hesitated. She was tempted to put aside his question with some playful excuse. And yet, where was the use? The question must inevitably be answered one day; and Katherine, as had been said, was moved just now, dumbness of long habit somewhat melted. Perhaps this was the appointed time. She drew her arm from around the boy and took both his hands in hers.

"My dearest," she said, "our keeping the horses is not wrong. But—one of the horses killed your father."

Richard's lips parted. His eyes searched hers.

"But how?" he asked presently.

"He was trying it at a fence, and it came down with him—and trampled him."

There was a pause. At last the boy asked rather breathlessly: "Was he killed then, mother, at once?"

It had been Katharine's intention to state the facts simply, gravely, and without emotion. But to speak of these things, after so long silence, proved more trying than she had anticipated. The scene in the red drawing-room, the long agony of waiting and of farewell rose up before her after all these years with a vividness and poignancy that refused to be gain-said.

"No," she answered, "he lived four days. He spoke to me of many things he wished to do. And—I have done them all, I think. He spoke to me of you——" Katherine closed her eyes. "The boy might care for the stables. The boy must ride straight." For the moment she could not look at Richard, knowing that which she must see. The irony of those remembered words appeared too great.—"But he suffered," she went on brokenly, "he suffered—ah! my dear——"

"Mummy, darling mummy, don't look like that!" Dickie cried. He wrenched his hands from her grasp and threw his arms impulsively about her neck. "Don't—it hurts me. And—and, after all," he added, reasoningly, consolingly, "it wasn't one of these horses, you know. They've never done anybody any harm. It was an accident. There must always be accidents sometimes, mustn't there? And then, you see, it all happened long, long ago. It must have, for I don't remember anything about it. It must have happened when I was a baby."

"Alas, no," Katherine exclaimed, wrung by the pathos of his innocent egoism; "it happened even before then, my dearest, before you were born."

With the unconscious arrogance of childhood, Richard had, so far, taken his mother's devotion very much as a matter of course. He had never doubted that he was, and always had been, the inevitable centre of all her interests. So now, her words and her bearing, bringing—in as far as he grasped them—the revelation of aspects of her life quite independent of his all-important, little self, staggered him. For the first time poor Dickie realised that even one's own mother, be she never so devoted, is not her child's exclusive and wholly private property, but has a separate existence, joys and sorrows apart. Instinctively he took his arms from about her neck and backed away into the angle of the window-seat, regarding her with serious and somewhat startled attention. And, doing so, he for the first time realised consciously something more, namely, the greatness of her beauty.

For the years had dealt kindly with Katherine Calmady. Not the great sorrows of life, or its great sacrifices, but fretfulness, ignoble worries, sordid cares, are that which draw lines upon a woman's face and harshen her features. At six and thirty Lady Calmady's skin was smooth and delicate, her colour, still clear and softly bright. Her hair, though somewhat darker than of old, was abundant. Still she wore it rolled up and back from her forehead, showing the perfect oval of her face. Her eyes, too, were darker; and the expression of them had become profound—the eyes of one who has looked on things which may not be told and has chosen her part. Her bosom had become a little fuller; but the long, inward curve of her figure below it to the round and shapely waist, and the poise of her rather small hips, was lithe and free as ever. While there was that enchanting freshness about her which is more than the mere freshness of youth or of physical health—which would seem, indeed, to be the peculiar dowry of those women who, having once known love in all its completeness and its strength, of choice live ever afterwards in perfect chastity of act and thought.

And a perception not only of the grace of her person, as she sat sideways on the window-seat in her close-fitting, gray gown, with its frilled lace collar and ruffles at the wrists, came to Richard now. He perceived something of this more intimate and subtle charm which belonged to her. He was enthralled by the clear sweetness, as of dewy grass newly turned by the scythe, which always clung about her, and by the whispering of her silken garments when she moved. A sudden reverence for her came upon him, as though, behind her gracious and so familiar figure, he apprehended that which belonged to a region superior, almost divine. And then he was seized—it is too often the fate of worshippers—with jealousy of that past of hers of which he had been, until now, ignorant. And yet another emotion shook him, for, in thus realising and differentiating her personality, he had grown vividly, almost painfully, conscious of his own.

He turned away, laying his cheek against the stone window-ledge, while the drops of a passing scud of rain beat in on his hot face.

"Then—then my father never saw me," he exclaimed vehemently. And, after a moment's pause, added, "I am glad of that—very glad."

"Ah! But, my dearest," Lady Calmady cried, bewildered and aghast, "you don't know what you are saying—think."

Richard kept his face to the splashing rain.

"I don't want to say anything wrong; but," he repeated, "I am glad."

He turned to her, his lips quivering a little, and a desolate expression in his eyes, which told Katherine, with only too bitter assurance, that his childhood and the repose of it were indeed over and gone.

She held out her arms to him in silent invitation, and drew the dear curly head on to her bosom.

"You're not displeased with me, mummy?"

"Does this seem as if I was displeased?" she asked.

Then they sat silent once more, Katherine swaying a little as she held him, soothing him almost as in his baby days.

"I won't lean out of the window again," he said presently, with a sigh of comfort. "I promise that."

"There's a darling. But I am afraid we must go. Uncle Roger will be here soon."

The boy raised his head.

"Mother," he said quickly, "will you send Clara, please, to put away these books? And may I have Winter to fetch me? I—I'm tired. If you don't mind? I don't care to walk."

Yet, since happily at thirteen Richard's moods were still as many and changeful as the aspects of that same April day, he enjoyed some royally unclouded hours before he—most unwillingly—retired to bed that night. For on close acquaintance the great Ulysses proved a very satisfactory hero. Roger Ormiston's character had consolidated. It was to some purpose that he had put away the pleasant follies of his youth. He looked out now with a coolness and patience, born of wide experience, upon men and upon affairs. He had ceased to lose either his temper or his head. Acquiescing with undismayed and cheerful common sense in the fact that life, as we know it, is but a sorry business, and that rough things must of necessity be done and suffered every day, he had developed an active—though far from morbidly sentimental—compassion for the individual, man and beast alike. Not that Colonel Ormiston formulated all that, still less held forth upon it. He was content, as is so many another Englishman, to be a dumb and practical philosopher—for which those who have lived with philosophers of the eloquent sort will unquestionably give thanks, knowing, to their sorrow, how often handsome speech is but a cloak to hide incapacity of honest doing.

And so, after dinner, under plea of an imperative need of cigars, Ormiston had borne Dickie off to the Gun-Room; and there, in the intervals of questioning him a little about his tastes and occupations, had told him stories many and great. For he wanted to get hold of the boy and judge of what stuff he was made. Like all sound and healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant scene awaiting her.

The square room was gay with lamplight and firelight, which brought into strong relief the pictures of famous horses and trophies of old-time weapons—matchlocks, basket-handled swords, and neat silver-hilted rapiers, prettiest of toys with which to pink your man—that decorated its white-paneled walls.

Ormiston stood with his back to the fire, one heel on the fender, his broad shoulders resting against the high chimneypiece, his head bent forward as he looked down, in steady yet kindly scrutiny, at the boy. His face was tanned by the sun and wind of the long sea voyage—people still came home from India by the Cape—till his hair and moustache showed pale against his bronzed skin. And to Richard, listening and watching from the deep armchair drawn up at right angles to the hearth, he appeared as a veritable demigod, master of the secrets of life and death—beheld, moreover, through an atmosphere of fragrant tobacco smoke, curiously intoxicating to unaccustomed nostrils. Dickie had tucked himself into as small a space as possible, to make room for young Camp, who lay outstretched beside him. The bull-dog's great underhung jaw and pendulous, wrinkled cheeks rested on the arm of the chair, as he stared and blinked rather sullenly at the fire—moved and choked a little, slipping off unwillingly to sleep, to wake with a start, to stare and blink once more. The embroidered couvre-pieds, which Dickie had spread across him, gathering the top edge of it up under the front of his Eton jacket, offered luxurious bedding. But Camp was a typical conservative, slow-witted, stubborn against the ingress of a new idea. This tall, somewhat masterful stranger must prove himself a good man and true—according to bull-dog understanding of those terms—before he could hope to gain entrance to that faithful, though narrow heart.

Ormiston meanwhile, finely contemptuous of canine criticism, greeted his sister cheerily.

"You're bound to give us a little law to-night, Kitty," he said, holding out his hand to her. "We won't break rules and indulge in unbridled license as to late hours again, will we, Dick? But, you see, we've both been doing a good deal, one way and another, since we last met, and there were arrears of conversation to make up."—He smiled very charmingly at Lady Calmady, and his fingers closed firmly on her hand.—"We've been getting on famously, notwithstanding our long separation." He looked down at Richard again. "Fast friends, already, and mean to remain so, don't we, old chap?"

Thereupon Lady Calmady's soul received much comfort. Her pride was always on the alert, fiercely sensitive concerning Richard. And the joy of this meeting had, till now, an edge of jealous anxiety to it. If Roger did not take to the boy, then—deeply though she loved him—Roger must go. For the same elements were constant in Katherine Calmady. Not all the discipline of thirteen years had tamed the hot blood in her which made her order out the Clown for execution. But as Ormiston spoke, her face softened, her eyes grew luminous and smiled back at him with an exquisite gladness. The soft gloom of her black velvet dress emphasised the warm, golden whiteness of her bare shoulders and arms. Ormiston seeing her just then, understanding something of the drama of her thought, was moved from his habitual cool indifference of bearing.

"Katherine," he said, "do you know you take one rather by surprise. Upon my word you're more beautiful than ever."

And Richard's clear voice rang out eagerly from the depths of the big chair—

"Yes—yes—isn't she, Uncle Roger—isn't she—delicious?"

The man's smile broadened almost to laughter.

"You young monkey," he said very gently; "so you have discovered that fact already, have you? Well, so much the better. It's a safe basis to start from; don't you think so, Kitty?"

But Lady Calmady drew away her hand. The blood had rushed into her face and neck. Her beauty, now, for so long, had seemed a negligible quantity, a thing that had outlasted its need and use—since he who had so rejoiced in it was dead. What is the value of ever so royal a crown when the throne it represents has fallen to ruin? And yet, being very much a woman, those words of praise came altogether sweetly to Katherine from the lips of her brother and her son. She moved away, embarrassed, not quite mistress of herself, sat down on the arm of Richard's chair, leaned across him and patted the bull-dog—who raised his heavy head with a grunt, and slapped Dickie smartly in the stomach with his tail, by way of welcome.

"You dear foolish creatures," she said, "pray talk of something more profitable. I am growing old, and, in some ways, I am rather thankful for it. All the same, Dickie, darling, you positively must and shall go to bed."

But Colonel Ormiston interrupted her. He spoke with a trace of hesitation, turning to the fireplace and flicking the ash off the end of his cigar.

"By the bye, Katherine, how's Mary Cathcart? Have you seen her lately?"

"Yes, last week."

"Then she's not gone the way of all flesh and married?"

"No," Lady Calmady answered. She bent a little lower, tracing out the lines on the dog's wrinkled forehead with her finger. "Several men have asked her to marry. But there is only one man in the world, I fancy, whom Mary would ever care to marry—poor Camp, did I tickle you?—and he, I believe, has not asked her yet."

"Ah! there," Ormiston exclaimed quickly, "you are mistaken."

"Am I?" Katherine said. "I have great faith in Mary. I suppose she was too wise to accept even him, being not wholly convinced of his love."

Lady Calmady raised her eyes. Ormiston looked very keenly at her. And Richard, watching them, felt his breath come rather short with excitement, for he understood that his mother was speaking in riddles. He observed, moreover, that Colonel Ormiston's face had grown pale for all its sunburn.

"And so," Katherine went on, "I think the man in question had better be quite sure of his own heart before he offers it to Mary Cathcart again."

Ormiston flung his half-smoked cigar into the fire. He came and stood in front of Richard.

"Look here, old chap," he said, "what do you say to our driving over to Newlands to-morrow? You can set me right if I've forgotten any of the turns in the road, you know. And you and Miss Cathcart are great chums, aren't you?"

"Mother, may I go?" the boy asked.

Lady Calmady kissed his forehead.

"Yes, my dearest," she said. "I will trust you and Uncle Roger to take care of each other for once. You may go."

The immediate consequence of all which was, that Richard went to bed that night with a brain rather dangerously active and eyes rather dangerously bright. So that when sleep at last visited him, it came burdened with dreams, in which the many impressions and emotions of the day took altogether too lively a part, causing him to turn restlessly to and fro, and throw his arms out wide over the cool linen sheets and pillow.

For there was new element in Dickie's dreams to-night:—namely, a recurrent distress of helplessness and incapacity of movement, and therefore of escape, in the presence of some on-coming multitudinous terror. He was haunted, moreover, by a certain stanza of the ballad of Chevy Chase. It had given him a peculiar feeling, sickening yet fascinating, ever since he could remember first to have read it, a feeling which caused him to dread reading it beforehand, yet made him turn back to it again and again. And to-night, sometimes Richard was himself, sometimes his personality seemed merged in that of Witherington, the crippled fighting-man, of whose maiming and deadly courage that stanza tells. And the battle was long and fierce, as from out a background of steeple-shaped, honey-combed rocks and sparse trees with large golden leaves—like those on the panels of the great, lacquered cabinets in the Long Gallery—innumerable hordes of fanatic Chinamen poured down on him, a hideous bedizenment of vermilion war-devils painted on their blue tunics and banners and shields. And he, Richard,—or was it he, Witherington?—alone facing them all,—they countless in number, always changing yet always the same. From under their hard, upturned hats, a peacock feather erect in each, the cruel, oblique-eyed, impassive faces stared at him. They pressed him back and back against the base of a seven-storied pagoda, the wind bells of which jangled far above him from the angles of its tiers of fluted roofs. And the sky was black and polished. Yet it was broad, glaring daylight, every object fearfully distinct. And he was fixed there, unable to get away because—yes, of course, he was Witherington, so there was no need of further explanation of that inability of escape.

And still, at the same time, he could see Chifney on the handsome gray cob, trotting soberly along the green ride, beside the long string of race-horses coming home from exercise. The young leaves were fragile and green now, not sparse and metallic, and the April rain splashed in his face. He tried to call out to Tom Chifney, but the words died in his throat. If they would only put him on one of those horses! He knew he could ride, and so be safe and free. He called again. That time his voice came. They must hear. Were they not his own servants, after all, and his own horses—or would be soon, when he was grown up? But neither the trainer, nor the boys so much as turned their heads; and the living ribbon of brown and chestnut swept on and away out of sight. No one would heed him, no one would hearken to his cry.

Once his mother and some man, whom he knew yet did not know, passed by him hand in hand. She wore a white dress, and smiled with a look of ineffable content. Her companion was tall, gracious in bearing and movement, but unsubstantial, a luminous shadow merely. Richard could not see his face. Yet he knew the man was of near kin to him. And to them he tried to speak. But it was useless. For now he was not Richard any more. He was not even Witherington, the crippled fighting-man of the Chevy Chase ballad. He was—he was the winged sea-gull, with wild, pale eyes, hiding—abject yet fierce—among the vegetable beds in the Brockhurst kitchen-gardens, and picking up loathsome provender of snails and slugs. Roger Ormiston, calm, able, kindly, yet just a trifle insolent, cigar in mouth, sauntered up and looked at the bird, and it crawled away among the cabbages ignominiously, covered with the shame of its incompleteness and its fallen estate.

And then from out the honey-combed rocks, under the black, polished sky, the blue tunicked Chinamen swept down on Richard again with the maddening horror of infinite number. They crushed in upon him, nearer and nearer, pressing him back against the wall of that evil pagoda. The air was hot and musky with their breath and thick with the muffled roar of their countless footsteps. And they came right in on him, trampling him down, suffocating, choking him with the heat of them and the dead weight.

Shouting aloud—as it seemed to him—in angry terror, the boy woke. He sat up trembling, wet with perspiration, bewildered by the struggle and the wild phantasmagoria of his dream. He pulled open the neck of his nightshirt, leaned his head against the cool brass rail of the back of the bedstead, while he listened with growing relief to the rumble of the wind in the chimney, and the swish of the rain against the casements, and watched the narrow line of light under the door of his mother's room.

Yes, he was Richard Calmady, after all, here in his own sheltered world, among those who had loved and served him all his life. Nothing hurtful could reach him here, nothing of which he need be afraid. There was no real meaning in that ugly dream.

And then Dickie paused a moment, still sitting up in the warm darkness, pressing his hands down on the mattress on either side to keep himself from slipping. For involuntarily he recalled the feeling which had prompted his declaration that he was glad his father had never seen him; recalled his unwillingness to walk, lest he should meet Ormiston unexpectedly; recalled the instinct which, even during that glorious time in the Gun-Room, had impelled him to keep the embroidered couvre-pieds carefully over his legs and feet. And, recalling these things, poor Dickie arrived at conclusions regarding himself which he had happily avoided arriving at before. For they were harsh conclusions, causing him to cower down in the bed, and bury his face in the pillows to stifle the sound of the tearing sobs which would come.

Alas! was there not only too real a meaning in that same ugly dream and that shifting of personality? He understood, while his body quivered with the anguish of it, that he had more in common with, and was nearer, far nearer, to the maimed fighting-man of the old ballad, even to the poor seagull robbed of its power of flight, than to all those dear people whose business in life it seemed to pet and amuse him, and to minister to his every want—to the handsome soldier uncle, whose home-coming had so excited him, to Julius March, his indulgent tutor, to Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, his delightful companion, to Clara, his obedient playfellow, to brown-eyed Mary Cathcart, and even to his lovely mother herself!

Thus did the bitter winds of truth, which blow forever across the world, first touch Richard Calmady, cutting his poor boyish pride as with a whip. But he was very young. And the young, mercifully, know no such word as the inevitable; so that the wind of truth is ever tempered for them—the first smart of it over—by the sunshine of ignorant and unlimited hope.

[ ]

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING THAT WHICH, THANK GOD, HAPPENS ALMOST EVERY DAY

The merry spring sky was clear, save in the south where a vast perspective of dappled cloud lay against it, leaving winding rivers of blue here and there, as does ribbed sand for the incoming tide. As the white gate of the inner park—the gray unpainted palings ranging far away to right and left—swung to behind them, and Henry the groom, after a smart run, clambered up into his place again beside Camp on the back seat of the double dog-cart, Richard's spirits rose. Straight ahead stretched out the long vista of that peculiar glory of Brockhurst, its avenue of Scotch firs. The trunks of them, rough-barked and purple below, red, smooth and glistering above, shot up some thirty odd feet—straight as the pillars of an ancient temple—before the branches, sweeping outward and downward, met, making a whispering, living canopy overhead, through which the sunshine fell in tremulous shafts, upon the shining coats and gleaming harness of the horses, upon Ormiston's clear-cut, bronzed face and upright figure, and upon the even, straw-coloured gravel of the road. The said road is raised by about three feet above the level of the land on either side. On the left, the self-sown firs grow in close ranks. The ground below them is bare but for tussocks of coarse grass and ruddy beds of fallen fir needles. On the right, the fir wood is broken by coppices of silver-stemmed birches, and spaces of heather—that shows a purple-brown against the gray of the reindeer moss out of which it springs. Tits swung and frolicked among the tree-tops, and a jay flew off noisily with a flash of azure wing-coverts and volley of harsh discordant cries.

The rapid movement, the moist, pungent odour of the woodland, the rhythmical trot of the horses, the rattle of the splinter-bar chains as the traces slackened going downhill, above all the presence of the man beside him, were pleasantly stimulating to Richard Calmady. The boy was still a prey to much innocent enthusiasm. It appeared to him, watching Ormiston's handling of the reins and whip, there was nothing this man could not do, and do skilfully, yet all with the same easy unconcern. Indeed, the present position was so agreeable to him that Dickie's spirits would have risen to an unusual height, but for a certain chastening of the flesh in the shape of the occasional pressure of a broad strap against his middle, which brought him unwelcome remembrance of recent discoveries it was his earnest desire to ignore, still better to forget.

For just at starting there had been a rather bad moment. Winter, having settled him on the seat of the dog-cart, was preparing to tuck him in with many rugs, when Ormiston said—

"Look here, dear old chap, I've been thinking about this, and upon my word you don't seem to me very safe. You see this is a different matter to your donkey-chair, or the pony-carriage. There's no protection at the side, and if the horses shied or anything—well, you'd be in the road. And I can't afford to spill you the first time we go out together, or there'd be a speedy end of all our fun."

Richard tried to emulate his uncle's cool indifference, and take the broad strap as a matter of course. But he was glad the tongue of the buckle slipped so directly into place; and that Henry's attention was engaged with the near horse, which fretted at standing; and that Leonard, the footman, was busy making Camp jump up at the back; and that his mother, who had been watching him from the lowest of the wide steps, turned away and went up to the flight to join Julius March standing under the gray arcade. As the horses sprang forward, clattering the little pebbles of the drive against the body of the carriage, and swung away round the angle of the house, Katherine came swiftly down the steps again smiling, kissing her hand to him. Still, the strap hurt—not poor Dickie's somewhat ill-balanced body, to which in truth it lent an agreeable sense of security, but his, just then, all too sensitive mind. So that, notwithstanding a fine assumption of gaiety, as he kissed his hand in return, he found the dear vision of his mother somewhat blurred by foolish tears which he had resolutely to wink away.

But now that disquieting incident was left nearly ten minutes behind. The last park gate and its cluster of mellow-tinted thatched cottages was past. Not only out-of-doors and all the natural exhilaration of it, but the spectacle of the world beyond the precincts of the park—into which world he, in point of fact, so rarely penetrated—wooed him to interest and enjoyment. To Dickie, whose life through his mother's jealous tenderness and his own physical infirmity had been so singularly circumscribed, there was an element, slightly pathetic, of discovery and adventure in this ordinary afternoon drive.

He did not want to talk. He was too busy simply seeing, everything food for those young eyes and brain so greedy of incident and of beauty. He sat upright and stared at the passing show.—At the deep lane, its banks starred with primroses growing in the hollows of the gnarled roots of oaks and ash trees. At Sandyfield rectory, deep-roofed, bow-windowed, the red walls and tiles of it half smothered in ivy and coton-easter. At the low, squat-towered, Georgian church, standing in its acre of close-packed graveyard, which is shadowed by yew trees and by the clump of three enormous Scotch firs in the rectory garden adjoining. At the Church Farm, just beyond—a square white house, the slated roofs of it running up steeply to a central block of chimneys, it having, in consequence, somewhat the effect of a monster extinguisher. At the rows of pale, wheat stacks, raised on granite straddles; at the prosperous barns, yards, and stables, built of wood on brick foundations, that surround it, presenting a mass of rich, solid colour and of noisy, crowded, animal life. At the fields, plough and pasture, marked out by long lines of hedgerow trees, broken by coppices—these dashed with tenderest green—stretching up and back to the dark purple-blue range of the moorland. At scattered cottages, over the gates of whose gardens gay with daffodils and polyanthus, groups of little girls and babies, in flopping sunbonnets and scanty lilac pinafores, stared back at the passing carriage, and then bobbed the accustomed curtsy. In the said groups were no boys, save of infant years. The boys were away shepherding, or to plough, or bird-minding. For as yet education was free indeed—in the sense that you were free to take it, or leave it, as suited your pocket and your fancy.

Richard stared too at the pleasant, furze-dotted commons, spinning away to right and left as the horses trotted sharply onward—commons whereon meditative donkeys endured rather than enjoyed existence, after the manner of their kind; and prodigiously large families of yellow-gray goslings streeled after the flocks of white geese, across spaces of fresh sprung grass around shallow ponds, in which the blue and dapple of the sky was reflected. He stared at Sandyfield village too—a straight street of detached houses, very diverse in colour and in shape, standing back, for the most part, amid small orchards and gardens that slope gently up from the brook, which last, backed, here by a row of fine elms, there by one of Lombardy poplars, borders the road. Three or four shops, modest in size as they are ambitious in the variety of objects offered for sale in them, advance their windows boldly. So does the yellow-washed inn, the Calmady arms displayed upon its swinging sign-board. A miller's tented waggon, all powdery with flour, and its team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells, a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door, came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer.

And Richard had uninterrupted leisure to bestow on all this seeing, for his companion, Colonel Ormiston, was preoccupied and silent. Once or twice he looked down at the boy as though suddenly remembering his presence and inquired if he was "all right." But it was not until they had crossed the long, white-railed bridge, at the end of Sandyfield street—which spans not only the little brown river overhung by black-stemmed alders, but a bit of marsh, reminiscent of the ancient ford, lush with water grasses, beds of king-cups, and broad-leaved docks—not until then did Colonel Ormiston make sustained effort at conversation. Beyond the bridge the road forks.

"Left to Newlands, isn't it?" he asked sharply.

Then, as the carriage swept round the turn, he woke up from his long reverie; waking Richard up also, from his long dream of mere seeing, to human drama but dimly apprehended close there at his side.

"Oh, well, well!" the man exclaimed, throwing back his head in sharp impatience, as a horse will against the restraint of the bearing-rein. He raised his eyebrows, while his lips set in a smile the reverse of gay. Then he looked down at Richard again, an unwonted softness in his expression.

"Been happy?" he said. "Enjoyed your drive? That's right. You understand the art of being really good company, Dick."

"What's that?"

"Allowing other people to be just as bad company as they like."

"I—I don't see how you could be bad company," Dickie said, flushing at the audacity of his little compliment.

"Don't you, dear old chap? Well, that's very nice of you. All the same, I find, at times, I can be precious bad company to myself."

"Oh! but I don't see how," the boy argued, his enthusiasm protesting against all possibility of default in the object of it. Richard wanted to keep his hands down,—unconsciousness, if only assumed, told for personal dignity—but in the agitation of protest, spite of himself, he laid hold of the top edge of that same chastening strap. "It must be so awfully jolly to be like you—able to do everything and go everywhere. There must be such a lot to think about."

The softness was still upon Ormiston's face. "Such a lot?" he said. "A jolly lot too much, believe me, very often, Dick."

He looked away up the copse-bordered road, over the ears of the trotting horses.

"You've read the story of Blue Beard and that unpleasant locked-up room of his, where the poor little wives hung all of a row? Well, I'm sorry to say, Dick, most men when they come to my age have a room of that sort. It's an inhospitable place. One doesn't invite one's friends to dine and smoke there. At least no gentleman does. I've met one or two persons who set the door open and rather gloried in inviting inspection—but they were blackguards and cads. They don't count. Still each of us is obliged to go in there sometimes himself. I tell you it's anything but lively. I've been in there just now."

The dappled cloud creeping upward from the southern horizon veiled the sun, the light of which grew pale and thin. The scent of the larch wood, on the right, hung in the air. Richard's eyes were wide with inquiry. His mind suffered growing-pains, as young minds of any intellectual and poetic worth needs must. The possibility of moral experience, incalculable in extent as that golden-gray outspread of creeping, increasing vapour overhead, presented itself to him. The vastness of life touched him to fear. He struggled to find a limit, clothing his effort in childish realism of statement.

"But in that locked-up room, Uncle Roger, you can't have dead women—dead wives."

Ormiston laughed quietly.

"You hit out pretty straight from the shoulder, master Dick," he said. "Happily I can reassure you on one point. All manner of things are hung up in there—some ugly—almost all ugly, now, to my eyes, though some of them had charming ways with them once upon a time. But, I give you my word, neither ugly nor charming, dead nor alive, are there any wives."

The boy considered a moment, then said stoutly, "I wouldn't go in there again. I'd lock the door and throw away the key."

"Wait till your time comes! You'll find that is precisely what you can't do."

"Then I'd fetch them out, once and for all, and bury them."

The carriage had turned in at the lodge gate. Soon a long, low, white house and range of domed conservatories came into view.

"Heroic remedies!" Ormiston remarked, amused at the boy's vehemence. "But no doubt they do succeed now and then. To tell you the truth, Dick, I have been thinking of something of the kind myself. Only I'm afraid I shall need somebody to help me in carrying out so extensive a funeral."

"Anybody would be glad enough to help you," Richard declared, with a strong emphasis on the pronoun.

"Ah! but the bother is anybody can't help one. Only one person in all this great rough and tumble of a world can really help one. And often one finds out who that person is a little bit too late. However, here we are. Perhaps we shall know more about it all in the next half hour, if these good people are at home."

In point of fact the good people in question were not at home. Ormiston, holding reins and whip in one hand, felt for his card-case.

"So we've had our journey for nothing you see, Dick," he said.

And to Richard the words sounded regretful. Moreover, the drama of this expedition seemed to him shorn of its climax. He knew there should be something more, and pushed for it.

"You haven't asked for Mary," he said. "And I thought we came on purpose to see Mary. She won't like us to go away like this. Do ask."

Colonel Ormiston's expression altered, hardened. And Richard, in his present hypersensitive state, remembered the cool scrutiny bestowed on the winged sea-gull of his dream last night. This man had seemed so near him just now, while they talked. Suddenly he became remote again, all understanding of him shut away by that slight insolence of bearing. Still he did as Richard prayed him. Miss Cathcart was at home. She had just come in from riding.

"Tell her Sir Richard Calmady is here, and would like, if he may, to see her."

Without waiting for a reply, Ormiston unbuckled that same chastening strap silently, quickly. He got down and, coming round to the farther side of the carriage, lifted Richard out; while Camp, who had jumped off the back seat, stood yawning, whining a little, shaking his heavy head and wagging his tail in welcome on the door-step. With the bull-dog close at his heels, Ormiston carried the boy into the house.

The inner doors were open, and, up the long, narrow, pleasantly fresh-tinted drawing-room, Mary Cathcart came to meet them. The folds of her habit were gathered up in one hand. In the other she carried a bunch of long-stalked, yellow and scarlet tulips. Her strong, supple figure stood out against the young green of the lawns and shrubberies, seen through the French windows behind her. She walked carefully, with a certain deliberation, thanks to her narrow habit and top-boots. The young lady carried her thirty-one years bravely. Her irregular features and large mouth had always been open to criticism. But her teeth, when her lips parted, were white and even, and her brown eyes frankly honest as ever.

"Why, Dickie dear, it is simply glorious to have you and Camp paying visits on your own account."—Her speech broke into a little cry, while her fingers closed so tightly on the tulips that the brittle stalks snapped, and the gay-coloured bells of them hung limply, some falling on to the carpet about her feet. "Roger—Colonel Ormiston—I didn't know you were home—were here!" Her voice was uncontrollably glad.

Still carrying the boy, Ormiston stood before her, observing her keenly. But he was no longer remote. His insolence, which, after all, may have been chiefly self-protective, had vanished.

"I'm very sorry—I mean for those poor tulips. I came to pay my respects to Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart, and not finding them was preparing to drive humbly home again. But——" Certainly she carried her years well. She looked absurdly young. The brown and rose-red of her complexion was clear as that of the little maiden who had fought with, and overcome, and kissed the rough Welsh pony refusing the grip by the roadside long ago. The hint of a moustache emphasised the upturned corners of her mouth—but that was rather captivating. Her eyes danced, under eyelids which fluttered for the moment. She was not beautiful, not a woman to make men run mad. Yet the comeliness of her body, and the spirit to which that body served as index, was so unmistakably healthful, so sincere, that surely no sane man, once gathering her into his arms, need ask a better blessing.—"But," Ormiston went on, still watching her, "nothing would satisfy Dick but he must see you. With many injunctions regarding his safety, Katherine made him over to me for the afternoon. I'm on duty, you see. Where he goes, I'm bound to go also—even to the destruction of your poor tulips."

Miss Cathcart made no direct answer.

"Sit here, Dickie," she said, pointing to a sofa.

"But you don't really mind our coming in, do you?" he asked, rather anxiously.

The young lady placed herself beside him, drew his hand on to her knee, patted it gently.

"Mind? No; on the whole, I don't think I do mind very much. In fact, I think I should probably have minded very much more if you had gone away without asking for me."

"There, I told you so, Uncle Roger," the boy said triumphantly. Camp had jumped up on to the sofa too. He put his arm comfortably around the dog's neck. It was as well to acquire support on both sides, for the surface of the glazed chintz was slippery, inconveniently unsustaining to his equilibrium. "It's an awfully long time since I've seen Mary," he continued, "more than three weeks."

"Yes, an awfully long time," Ormiston echoed, "more than six years."

"Dear Dickie," she said; "how pretty of you! Do you always keep count of my visits?"

"Of course I do. They were about the best things that ever happened, till Uncle Roger came home."

Forgetting herself, Mary Cathcart raised her eyes to Ormiston's in appeal. The boy's little declaration stirred all the latent motherhood in her. His fortunes at once passed so very far beyond, and fell so far short of, the ordinary lot. She wondered whether, and could not but trust that, this old friend and newcomer was not too self-centred, too hardened by ability and success to appreciate the intimate pathos of the position. Ormiston read and answered her thought.

"Oh! we are going to do something to change all that," he said confidently. "We are going to enlarge our borders a bit; aren't we, Dick? Only, I think, we should manage matters much better if Miss Cathcart would help us, don't you?"

Richard remembering the locked-up room of evil contents and that proposal of inclusive funeral rites, gave this utterance a wholly individual application. His face grew bright with intelligence. But, greatly restraining himself, he refrained from speech. All that had been revealed to him in confidence, and so his honour was engaged to silence.

Ormiston pulled forward a chair and sat down by him, leaning forward, his hands clasped about one knee, while he gazed at the tulips scattered on the floor.

"So tell Miss Cathcart we all want her to come over to Brockhurst just as often as she can," he continued, "and help us to make the wheels go round a little faster. Tell her we've grown very old, and discreet, and respectable, and that we are absolutely incapable of doing or saying anything foolish or naughty, which she would object to—and——"

But Richard could restrain himself no longer. "Why don't you tell her yourself, Uncle Roger?"

"Because, my dear old chap, a burnt child fears the fire. I tried to tell Miss Cathcart something once, long ago. She mayn't remember——"

"She does remember," Mary said quietly, looking down at Richard's hand and patting it as it lay on her lap.

"But she stopped me dead," Ormiston went on. "It was quite right of her. She gave the most admirable reasons for stopping me. Would you care to hear them?"

"Oh! don't, pray don't," Mary murmured. "It is not generous."

"Pardon me, your reasons were absolutely just—true in substance and in fact. You said I was a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift, and so——"

"I was odious," she broke in. "I was a self-righteous little Pharisee—forgive me——"

"Why—there's nothing to forgive. You spoke the truth."

"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.

"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.

Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further forward.

"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of good, though—I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I run through the list of my titles again to make sure this transaction is fair and square and above-board."

A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile, vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his impatience touched on anger.

"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."

Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.

"I don't think—perhaps—Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered very gently.

"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got to go the whole hog or none."

She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing sigh.

"Oh, dear me! what a plague of a hurry you are in!" she said. "Well—then—then—I suppose I must—it is hardly a graceful expression, but it is of your choosing, not of mine—I suppose I must go the whole hog."

Roger Ormiston rose, treading the fallen tulips under foot. And Richard, watching him, beheld that which called to his remembrance, not the hopeless and impotent battle under the black polished sky of his last night's dream, but the gallant stories he had heard, earlier last night, of the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah, of the swift dangers of sport, and large daring of travel. Here he beheld—so it seemed to his boyish thought—the aspect of a born conqueror, of the man who can serve and wait long for the good he desires, and who winning it, lays hold of it with fearless might. And this, while causing Richard an exquisite delight of admiration, caused him also a longing to share those splendid powers so passionate that it amounted to actual pain.

Mary Cathcart's hand slid from under his hand. She too rose to her feet.

"Then you have actually cared for me all along, all these years," Ormiston declared in fierce joy.

"Of course—who else could I care for? And—and—you've loved me, Roger, all the while?"

And Ormiston answered "Yes,"—speaking the truth, though with a difference. There had been interludes that had contributed somewhat freely to the peopling of that same locked-up room. But it is possible for a man to love many times, yet always love one woman best.

All this, however, Dickie did not know. He only knew they dazzled him—the man triumphantly strong, the woman so bravely glad. He could not watch them any longer. He went hot all over, and his heart beat. He felt strangely desolate too. They were far away from him in thought, in fact, though so close by. Dickie shut his eyes, put his arms round the bull-dog, pressed his face hard against the faithful beast's shoulder; while Camp, stretching his short neck to the uttermost, nuzzled against him and essayed to lick his cheek.

Thus did Richard Calmady gain yet further knowledge of things as they are.

[ ]

CHAPTER IV

WHICH SMELLS VERY VILELY OF THE STABLE

April softened into May, and the hawthorns were in blossom before Richard passed any other very note-worthy milestone on the road of personal development. Then, greatly tempted, he committed a venial sin; received prompt and coarse chastisement; and, by means of the said chastisement, as is the merciful way of the Eternal Justice, found unhoped of emancipation.

It happened thus. As the spring days grew warm Mademoiselle de Mirancourt failed somewhat. The darkness and penetrating chill of the English winter tried her, and this year her recuperative powers seemed sadly deficient. A fuller tide of life had pulsed through Brockhurst since Colonel Ormiston's arrival. The old stillness was departing, the old order changing. With that change Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had no quarrel, since, to her serene faith, all that came must, of necessity, come through a divine ordering and in conformity to a divine plan. Yet this more of activity and of movement strained her. The weekly drive over to Westchurch, to hear mass at the humble Catholic chapel tucked away in a side street, sorely taxed her strength. She returned fortified, her soul ravished by that heavenly love, which, in pure and innocent natures, bears such gracious kinship to earthly love. Yet in body she was outworn and weary. On such occasions she would rally Julius March, not without a touch of malice, saying:—

"Ah! très cher ami, had you only followed the ever blessed footsteps of those dear Oxford friends of yours and entered the fold of the true Church, what fatigue might you not now spare me—let alone the incalculable advantages to your own poor, charming, fatally darkened soul!"

While Julius—who, though no less devout than of yore, was happily less fastidiously sensitive—would reply:—

"But, dearest lady, had I followed the footsteps of my Oxford friends, remember I should not be at Brockhurst at all."

"Clearly, then, everything is well ordered," she would say, folding her fragile hands upon her embroidery frame, "since it is altogether impossible we could do without you. Yet I regret for your soul. It is so capable of receiving illumination. You English—even the most finished among you—remain really deplorably stubborn, and nevertheless it is my fate perpetually to set my affections upon one or other of you."

It followed that Katherine devoted much of her time to Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, walked slowly beside her up and down the sunny, garden paths sheltered by the high, red walls whereon the clematis and jasmine began to show for flower; or took her for quiet, little drives within the precincts of the park. They spoke much of Lucia St. Quentin, of Katherine's girlhood, and of those pleasant days in Paris long ago. And this brought soothing and comfort, not only to the old lady, but to the young lady also—and of soothing and comfort the latter stood in need just now.

For it is harsh discipline even to a noble woman, whose life is still strong in her, to stand by and see another woman but a few years her junior entering on those joys which she has lost,—marriage, probably motherhood as well. Roger Ormiston's and Mary Cathcart's love-making was restrained and dignified. But the very calm of their attitude implied a security of happiness passing all need of advertisement. And Katherine was very far from grudging them this. She was not envious, still less jealous. She did not want to take anything of theirs; but she wanted, she sorely wanted, her own again. A word, a look, a certain quickness of quiet laughter, would pierce her with recollection. Once for her too, below the commonplaces of daily detail, flowed that same magic river of delight. But the springs of it had gone dry. Therefore it was a relief to be alone with Mademoiselle de Mirancourt—virgin and saint—and to speak with her of the days before she had sounded the lovely depths of that same magic flood—days when she had known of its existence only by the mirage, born of the dazzle of its waters, which plays over the innocent vacant spaces of a young girl's mind.

It was a relief even, though of sterner quality, to go into the red drawing-room on the ground floor and pace there, her hands clasped behind her, her proud head bowed, by the half hour together. If personal joy is dead past resurrection, there is bitter satisfaction in realising to the full personal pain. The room was duly swept, dusted, casements set open to welcome breeze and sunshine, fires lighted in the grate. But no one ever sat there. It knew no cheerfulness of social intercourse. The crimson curtains and covers had become faded. They were not renewed. The furniture, save for the absence of the narrow bed, stood in precisely the same order as on the night when Sir Richard Calmady died. It was pushed back against the walls. And in the wide empty way between the two doors, Katherine paced, saturating all her being with thoughts of that which was, and must remain, wholly and inalienably her own—namely, her immense distress.

And in this she took the more comfort, because something else, until now appearing wholly her own, was slipping a little away from her. Dickie's health had improved notably in the last few weeks. His listlessness had vanished, while his cheeks showed a wholesome warmth of colour. But his cry was ever. "Mother, Uncle Roger's going to such a place. He says he'll take me. I can go, can't I?" Or, "Mother, Mary's going to do such a thing. She says she'll show me how. She may, mayn't she?" And Katherine's answer was always "Yes." She grudged the boy none of his new-found pleasures, rejoiced indeed to see him interested and gay. Yet to watch the new broom, which sweeps so clean, is rarely exhilarating to those that have swept diligently with the old one. The nest had held her precious fledgling so safely till now; and this fluttering of wings, eager for flight, troubled her somewhat. Not only was Dickie's readiness to be away from her a trifle hard to bear; but she knew that disappointment, of a certainty, lay in wait for him, and that each effort towards wider action would but reveal to him how circumscribed his powers actually were.

Meanwhile, however, Richard enjoyed himself recklessly, almost feverishly, in the attempt to disprove the teaching of that ugly dream, and keep truth at bay. There had been further drives, and the excitement of witnessing a forest fire—only too frequent in the Brockhurst country when the sap is up, and the easterly wind and May sun have scorched all moisture from the surface of the moorland. He and Mary had bumped over fir roots and scuttled down bridle-paths in the pony-carriage, to avoid the rush of flame and smoke; had skirmished round at a hand gallop, in search of recruits to reinforce Ormiston, and Iles, and a small army of beaters, battling against the blazing line that threatened destruction to the fir avenue. Now and again, with a mighty roar, which sent Dickie's heart into his mouth, great tongues of flame, clear as topaz and ruby in the steady sunshine, would leap upwards, converting a whole tall fir into a tree of fire, while the beaters running back, grimed with smoke and sweat, took a moment's breathing-space in the open.

There had been more peaceful pastimes as well—several days' fishing, enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath the grove of silvery-leaved, ever-rustling, balsam poplars. And thence, while Ormiston and Mary sauntered slowly on ahead, the men—Winter in mufti, oblivious of plate-cleaning and cellarage, and the onerous duties of his high estate, Stamp, the water-bailiff, and Moorcock, one of the under-keepers—had carried him across the great green levels. Winter was an old and tried friend, and it was somewhat diverting to behold him in this novel aspect, affable and chatty with inferiors, displaying, moreover, unexpected knowledge in the mysteries of the angler's craft. The other two men—sharp-featured, their faces ruddy as summer apples, merry-eyed, clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the thigh—charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled, snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets above the load of silver-and-red spotted trout?

Mary had protested Dickie could throw a fly, if he had a light enough rod. And not only did he throw a fly, but at the fourth or fifth cast a fish rose, and he played it—with skirling reel and much advice and most complimentary excitement on the part of the whole good company—and brought it skilfully within range of Stamp's landing-net. Never surely was trout spawned that begot such bliss in the heart of an angler! As, with panting sides and open gills, this three-quarter-pound treasure of treasures flopped about on the sunny stream bank all the hereditary instinct of sport spoke up clearly in Dickie. The boy—such is youthful masculine human nature—believed he understood at last why the world was made! At dressing-time he had his sacred fish carried on a plate up to his room to show Clara; and, but for strong remonstrance on the part of that devoted handmaiden, would have kept it by his bedside all night, so as to assure himself at intervals, by sense of touch—let alone that of smell—of the adorable fact of its veritable existence.

But all this, inspiring though it was, served but as prelude to a more profoundly coveted acquaintance—that with the racing-stable. For it was after this last that Dickie still supremely longed—the more so, it is to be feared, because it was, if not explicitly, yet implicitly forbidden. A spirit of defiance had entered into him. Being granted the inch, he was disposed to take the ell. And this, not in conscious opposition to his mother's will; but in protest, not uncourageous, against the limitations imposed on him by physical misfortune. The boy's blood was up, and consequently, with greater pluck than discretion, he struggled against the intimate, inalienable enemy that so marred his fate. And it was this not ignoble effort which culminated in disobedience.

For driving back one afternoon, later than usual,—Ormiston had met them, and Mary and he had taken a by-path home through the woods,—the pony-carriage, turned along the high level road beside the lake, going eastward, just as the string of race-horses, coming home from exercise, passed along it coming west. Richard was driving, Chaplin, the second coachman, sitting in the dickey at the back of the low carriage. He checked the pony, and his eyes took in the whole scene—the blue-brown expanse of the lake dotted with water-fowl, on the one hand, the immense blue-brown landscape on the other, ranging away to the faint line of the chalk downs in the south; the downward slope of the park, to the great square of red stable buildings in the hollow; the horses coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in the beech grove near the house.

Richard stared at that oncoming procession. Half-way between him and the foremost of the horses the tan ride branched off, and wound down the hillside to the stables. The boy set his teeth. He arrived at a desperate decision,—touched up the pony, drove on.

Chaplin leaned forward, addressing him, over the back of the seat.

"Better wait here, hadn't we, Sir Richard? They'll turn off in a minute."

Richard did not look round. He tried to answer coldly, but his voice shook.

"I know. That's why I am going on."

There was a silence save for the cawing of the rooks, ring of the axe, and grinding of wheels on the gravel. Chaplin, responsible, correct, over five-and-thirty, and fully intending to succeed old Mr. Wenham, the head coachman, on the latter's impending retirement from active service, went very red in the face.

"Excuse me, but I have my orders, Sir Richard," he said.

Dickie still looked straight ahead.

"Very well," he answered, "then perhaps you'd better get out and walk on home."

"You know I'm bound not to leave you, sir," the man said.

Dickie laughed a little in uncontrollable excitement. He was close to them now. The leading horse was just moving off the main road, its shadow lying long across the turf. How was it possible to give way with the prize within reach?—"You can go or stay Chaplin, as you please. I mean to speak to Chifney. I—I mean to see the stables."

"It's as much as my place is worth, sir."

"Oh! bother your place!" the boy cried impetuously.—Dear heart alive, how fine they were as they filed by! That chestnut filly, clean made as a deer, her ears laid back as she reached at the bit; and the brown, just behind her—"I mean, I mean you needn't be afraid, Chaplin—I'll speak to her ladyship. I'll arrange all that. Go to the pony's head."

At the end of the long string of horses came the trainer—a square-built, short-necked man, sanguine complexioned and clean shaven. Of hair, indeed, Mr. Chifney could only boast a rim of carroty-gray stubble under the rim of the back of his hard hat. His right eye had suffered damage, and the pupil of it was white and viscous. His lips were straight and purplish in colour. He raised his hat and would have followed on down the slope, but Dickie called to him.

As he rode up an unwonted expression came over Mr. Chifney's shrewd, hard-favoured face. He took off his hat and sat there, bare-headed in the sunshine, looking down at the boy, his hand on his hip.

"Good-day, Sir Richard," he said. "Anything I can do for you?"

"Yes, yes," Dickie stammered, all his soul in his eyes, his cheeks aflame, "you can do just what I want most. Take me down, Chifney, and show me the horses."

Here Chaplin coughed discreetly behind his hand. But that proved of small avail, save possibly in the way of provocation. For socially between the racing and house stables was a great gulf fixed; and Mr. Chifney could hardly be expected to recognise the existence of a man in livery standing at a pony's head, still less to accept direction from such a person. Servants must be kept in their place—impudent, lazy enough lot anyhow, bless you! On his feet the trainer had been known to decline to moments of weakness. But in the saddle, a good horse under him, he possessed unlimited belief in his own judgment, fearing neither man, devil, nor even his own meek-faced wife with pink ribbons in her cap. Moreover, he felt such heart as he had go out strangely to the beautiful, eager boy gazing up at him.

"Nothing 'ud give me greater pleasure in life, Sir Richard," he said, "if you're free to come. We've waited a long time, a precious long time, sir, for you to come down and take a look at your horses."

"I'd have been to see them sooner. I'd have given anything to see them. I've never had the chance, somehow."

Chifney pursed up his lips, and surveyed the distant landscape with a very meaning glance. "I dare say not, Sir Richard. But better late than never, you know; and so, if you are free to come——"

Again Chaplin coughed.

"Free to come? Of course I am free to come," Dickie asserted, his pride touched to arrogance. And Mr. Chifney looked at him, an approving twinkle in his sound eye.

"I agree, Sir Richard. Quite right, sir, you're free, of course."

Stolen waters are sweet, says the proverb. And to Richard Calmady, his not wholly legitimate experience of the next hour was sweet indeed. For there remains rich harvest of poetry in all sport worth the name, let squeamish and sentimental persons declaim against it as they may. Strength and endurance, disregard of suffering have a permanent appeal and value, even in their coarsest manifestations. No doubt the noble gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who "lay at Brockhurst two nights" on the occasion of Sir Denzil's historic house-warming, to witness the mighty bear-baiting, were sensible of something more in that somewhat disgusting exhibition, than the mere gratification of brutal instincts, the mere savage relish for wounds and pain and blood. And to Sir Denzil's latest descendant the first sight of the training-stable—as the pony-carriage came to a standstill alongside the grass plot in the centre of the great, graveled square—offered very definite and stirring poetry of a kind.

On three sides the quadrangle was shut in by one-storied, brick buildings, the woodwork of doors and windows immaculate with white paint. Behind, over the wide archway,—closed fortress-like by heavy doors at night,—were the head-lad's and helpers' quarters. On either side, forge and weighing-room, saddler's and doctor's shop. To right and left a range of stable doors, with round swing-lights between each; and, above these, the windows of hay and straw lofts and of the boys' dormitories. In front were the dining-rooms and kitchens, and the trainer's house—a square clock tower, carrying an ornate gilt vane, rising from the cluster of red roofs. Twenty years had weathered the raw of brick walls, and painted the tiling with all manner of orange and rusty-coloured lichens; yet the whole place was admirably spick and span, free of litter. Many cats, as Dickie noted, meditated in sunny corners, or prowled in the open with truly official composure. Over all stretched a square of bluest sky, crossed by a skein of homeward-wending rooks. While above the roofs, on either side the archway, the high-lying lands of the park showed up, broken, here and there, by clumps of trees.

Mr. Chifney slipped out of the saddle.—"Here boy, take my horse," he shouted to a little fellow hurrying across the yard. "I'm heartily glad to see you, Sir Richard," he went on. "Now, if you care, as your father's son can't very well be off caring, for horses——"

"If I care!" echoed Dickie, his eyes following the graceful chestnut filly as she was led in over the threshold of her stable.

"I like that. That'll do. Chip of the old block after all," the trainer said, with evident relish. "Well then, since you do care for horses as you ought to, Sir Richard, we'll just make you free of this establishment. About the most first-class private establishment in England, sir, though I say it that have run the concern pretty well single-handed for the best part of the last fifteen years—make you free of it right away, sir. And, look you, when you've got hold, don't you leave hold."

"No, I won't," Dickie said stoutly.

Mr. Chifney was in a condition of singular emotion, as he wrapped Richard's rug about him and bore him away into the stables. He even went so far as to swear a little under his breath; and Chifney was a very fairly clean-mouthed man, unless members of his team of twenty and odd naughty boys got up to some devilry with their charges. He carried Richard as tenderly as could any woman, while he tramped from stall to stall, loose-box to loose-box, praising his racers, calling attention to their points, recounting past prowess, or prophesying future victories.

And the record was a fine one; for good luck had clung to the masterless stable, as Lady Calmady's bank-books and ledgers could testify.

"Vinedresser by Red Burgundy out of Valeria—won two races at the Newmarket Spring Meeting the year before last. Lamed himself somehow in the horse-box coming back—did nothing for eighteen months—hope to enter him for some of the autumn events."—Then later:—"Sahara, by North African out of Sally-in-our-Alley. Beautiful mare? I believe you, Sir Richard. Why she won the Oaks for you. Jack White was up. Pretty a race as ever I witnessed, and cleverly ridden. Like to go up to her in the stall? She's as quiet as a lamb. Catch hold of her head, boy."

And so Dick found himself seated on the edge of the manger, the trainer's arm round him, and the historic Sahara snuffing at his jacket pockets.

Then they crossed the quadrangle to inspect the colts and fillies, where glories still lay ahead.

"Verdigris by Copper King out of Valeria again. And if he doesn't make a name I'll never judge another horse, sir. Strain of the old Touchstone blood there. Rather ugly? Yes, they're often a bit ugly that lot, but devilish good uns to go. You ask Miss Cathcart about them. Never met a lady who'd as much knowledge as she has of a horse. The Baby, by Punch out of Lady Bountiful. Not much good, I'm afraid. No grip, you see, too contracted in the hoofs. Chloroform by Sawbones out of sister to Castinette."

And so forth, an endless repetition of genealogies, comments, anecdotes to which Dickie lent most attentive ear. He was keen to learn, his attention was on the stretch. He was in process of initiation, and every moment of the sacred rites came to him with power and value. Yet it must be owned that he found the lessening of the strain on his memory and attention not wholly unwelcome when Mr. Chifney, sitting beside him on the big, white-painted cornbin opposite Diplomacy's loose-box, began to tell him of the old times when he—a little fellow of eight to ten years of age—had been among the boys in his cousin, Sam Chifney's famous stable at Newmarket. Of the long, weary traveling before the days of railways, when the horses were walked by highroad and country lane, ankle deep in mud, from Newmarket to Epsom; and after victory or defeat, walked by slow stages all the way home again. Of how, later, he had migrated to Doncaster; but, not liking the "Yorkshire tykes," had got taken on in some well-known stables upon the Berkshire downs.

"And it was there, Sir Richard," he said, "I met your father, and we fancied each other from the first. And he asked me to come to him. These stables were just building then. And here I've been ever since."

Mr. Chifney stared down at the clean red quarries of the stable floor, and tapped his neat gaiters with the switch he held in his hand.

"Rum places, racing stables," he went on, meditatively; "and a lot of rum things go on in 'em, one way and another, as you'll come to know. And it ain't the easiest thing going, I tell you, to keep your hands clean. Ungrateful business a trainer's, Sir Richard—wearing business—shortens a man's temper and makes him old before his time. Out by four o'clock on summer mornings, minding your cattle and keeping your eye on those shirking blackguards of boys. No real rest, sir, day or night. Wearing business—studying all the meetings and entering your horses where you've reason to reckon they've most chance. And if your horse wins, the jockey gets all the praise and the petting. And if it fails the trainer gets all the blame. Yes, it's wearing work. But, confound it all, sir," he broke out hotly, "there's nothing like it on the face of God's earth. Horses—horses—horses—why the very smell of the bedding's sweeter than a bunch of roses. Love 'em? I believe you. And you'll love 'em too before you've done."

He turned and gripped Dickie hard by the shoulder.

"For we'll make a thorough-paced sportsman of you yet, Sir Richard," he said, "God bless you—danged if we don't."

Which assertion Mr. Chifney repeated at frequent intervals over his grog that evening, as he sat, not in the smart dining-room hung round with portraits of Vinedresser and Sahara and other equine notabilities, but in the snug, little, back parlour looking out on to the yard. Mrs. Chifney was a gentle, pious woman, with whom her husband's profession went somewhat against the grain. She would have preferred a nice grocery, or other respectable, uneventful business in a country town, and dissipation in the form of prayer rather than of race-meetings. But as a slender, slightly self-righteous, young maiden she had fallen very honestly and completely in love with Tom Chifney. So there was nothing for it but to marry him and regard the horses as her appointed cross. She nursed the boys when they were sick or injured, intervened fairly successfully between their poor, little backs and her husband's all-too-ready ash stick; and assisted Julius March in promoting their spiritual welfare, even while deploring that the latter put his faith in forms and ceremonies rather than in saving grace. Upon the trainer himself she exercised a gently repressive influence.

"We won't swear, Mr. Chifney," she remarked mildly now.

"Swear! It's enough to make the whole bench of bishops swear to see that lad."

"I did see him," Mrs. Chifney observed.

"Yes, out of window. But you didn't carry him round, and hear him talk—knowledgeable talk as you could ask from one of his age. And watch his face—as like as two peas to his father's."

"But her ladyship's eyes," put in Mrs. Chifney.

"I don't know whose eyes they are, but I know he can use 'em. It was as pretty as a picture to see how he took it all."

Chifney tossed off the remainder of his tumbler of brandy and water at a gulp.

"Swear," he repeated, "I could find it in my heart to swear like hell. But I can find it in my heart to do more than that. I can forgive her ladyship. By all that's——"

"Thomas, forgiveness and oaths don't go suitably together."

"Well, but I can though, and I tell you, I do," he said solemnly. "I forgive her.—Shoot the Clown! by G—! I beg your pardon, Maria;—but upon my soul, once or twice, when I had him in my arms to-day, I felt I could have understood it if she'd had every horse shot that stood in the stable."

He held the tumbler up against the lamp. But it was quite empty.

"Uncommon glad she didn't though, poor lady, all the same," he added, parenthetically, as he set it down on the table again. "What do you say, Maria—about time we toddled off to bed?"

[ ]

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH DICKIE IS INTRODUCED TO A LITTLE DANCER WITH BLUSH-ROSES IN HER HAT

"Her ladyship's inquired for you more than once, sir." This from Winter meeting the pony-carriage and the returning prodigal at the bottom of the steps.

The sun was low. Across the square lawn—whereon the Clown had found death some thirteen years before—peacocks led home their hens and chicks to roost within the two sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses that fill in the angles of the red-walled enclosure. The pea-fowl stepped mincingly, high-shouldered, their heads carried low, their long necks undulating with a self-conscious grace. Dickie's imagination was aglow like that rose-red sunset sky. The virile sentiment of all just heard and seen, and the exultation of admitted ownership were upon him. He felt older, stronger, more secure of himself than ever before. He proposed to go straight to his mother and confess. In his present mood he entertained no fear but that she would understand.

"Is Lady Calmady alone?" he asked.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart are with her, Sir Richard." Winter leant down, loosening the rug. His usual, undemonstrative speech took on a loftiness of tone. "Mrs. William Ormiston and her daughter have driven over with Mrs. Cathcart."—The butler was not without remembrance of that dinner on the day following Dickie's birth. Socially he had never considered Lady Calmady's sister-in-law quite up to the Brockhurst level.

Richard leaned back, watching the mincing peacocks. It was so fair here out of doors. The scent of the may hung in the air. The flame of the sunset bathed the façade of the stately house. No doubt it would be interesting to see new people, new relations; but he really cared to see no one just now, except his mother. From her he wanted to receive absolution, so that, his conscience relieved of the burden of his disobedience, he might revel to the full in the thought of the inheritance upon which—so it seemed to him—he had to-day entered. Still, in his present humour, Dickie's sense of noblesse oblige was strong.

"I suppose I've got to go in and help entertain everybody," he remarked.

"Her ladyship'll think something's wrong, Sir Richard, and be anxious if you stay away."

The boy held out his arms. "All right then, Winter," he said.

Here Chaplin again gave that admonitory cough. Richard, his face hardening to slight scorn, looked at him over the butler's shoulder.

"Oh! You need not be uneasy, Chaplin. When I say I'll do a thing, I don't forget."

Which brief speech caused the butler to reflect, as he bore the boy across the hall and up-stairs, that Sir Richard was coming to have an uncommonly high manner about him, at times, considering his age.

An unwonted loudness of conversation filled the Chapel-Room. It was filled also by the rose-red light of the sunset streaming in through the curve of the oriel-window. This confused and dazzled Richard slightly, entering upon it from the silence and sober clearness of the stair-head. A shrill note of laughter.—Mr. Cathcart's voice saying, "I felt it incumbent upon me to object, Lady Calmady. I spoke very plainly to Fallowfeild."—Julius March's delicately refined tones, "I am afraid spirituality is somewhat deficient in that case."—Then the high flute-like notes of a child, rising clearly above the general murmur, "Ah! enfin—le voilà, Maman. C'est bien lui, n'est-ce pas?" And with that, Richard was aware of a sudden hush falling upon the assembled company. He was sensible every one watched him as Winter carried him across the room and set him down in the long, low armchair near the fireplace. Poor Dickie's self-consciousness, which had been so agreeably in abeyance, returned upon him, and a red, not of the sunset, dyed his face. But he carried his head proudly. He thought of Chifney and the horses. He refused to be abashed.

And Ormiston, breaking the silence, called to him cheerily:—

"Hello, old chap, what have you been up to? You gave Mary and me the slip."

"I know I did," the boy answered bravely. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Cathcart?" as the latter nodded and smiled to him—a large, gentle, comfortable lady, uncertain in outline, thanks to voluminous draperies of black silk and black lace. "How d'ye do, sir?" this to Mr. Cathcart—a tall, neatly-made man, but for a slight roundness of the shoulders. Seeing him, there remained no doubt as to whence Mary inherited her large mouth; but matter for thankfulness that she had avoided further inheritance. For Mr. Cathcart was notably plain. Small eyes and snub nose, long lower jaw, and gray forward-curled whiskers rendered his appearance unfortunately simian. He suggested a caricature; but one, let it be added, of a person undeniably well-bred.

"My darling, you are very late," Katherine said. Her back was towards her guests as she stooped down arranging the embroidered rug across Dickie's feet and legs. Laying his hand on her wrist he squeezed it closely for a moment.

"I—I'll tell you all about that presently, mummy, when they're gone. I've been enjoying myself awfully—you won't mind?"

Katherine smiled. But, looking up at her, it appeared to Richard that her face was very white, her eyes very large and dark, and that she was very tall and, somehow, very splendid just then. And this fed his fearlessness, fed his young pride, even as, though in a more subtle and exquisite manner, his late experience of the racing-stable had fed them. His mother moved away and took up her interrupted conversation with Mr. Cathcart regarding the delinquencies of Lord Fallowfeild. Richard looked coolly round the room.

Every one was there—Julius, Mary, Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, while away in the oriel-window Roger Ormiston stood talking to a pretty, plump, very much dressed lady, who chattered, laughed, stared, with surprising vivacity. As Dickie looked at her she stared back at him through a pair of gold eye-glasses. Against her knee, that rosy light bathing her graceful, little figure, leant a girl about Dickie's own age. She wore a pale pink and blue frock, short and outstanding in the skirts. She also wore a broad-brimmed, white hat, with, a garland of blush-roses around the crown of it. The little girl did not stare. She contemplated Richard languidly, yet with sustained attention. Her attitude and bearing were attractive. Richard wanted to see her close, to talk to her. But to call and ask her to come to him was awkward. And to go to her—the boy grew a little hot again—was more awkward still.

Mrs. Ormiston dropped her gold eye-glasses into her lap.

"It really is ten thousand pities when these things happen in the wrong rank of life," she said. "Rightly placed they might be so profitable."

"For goodness sake, be careful, Ella," Ormiston put in quickly.

"Oh! My dear creature, don't be nervous. Everybody's attending to everybody else, and if they did hear they wouldn't understand. I'm one of the fortunate persons who are supposed never to talk sense and so I can say what I like." Mrs. Ormiston gave her shrill little laugh. "Oh! there are consolations, depend upon it, in a well-sustained reputation for folly!"

The laugh jarred on Richard. He decided that he did not quite like his aunt Charlotte Ormiston. All the same he wished the charming, little girl would come to him.

"But to return. It's a waste. To some poor family it might have been a perfect fortune. And I hate waste. Perhaps you have never discovered that?"

Ormiston let his glance rest on the somewhat showy figure.

"I doubt if William has discovered it either," he remarked.

"Oh! as to your poor brother William, heaven only knows what he has or has not discovered!—Now, Helen, this conversation becomes undesirable. You've asked innumerable questions about your cousin. Go and make acquaintance with him. I'm the best of mothers of course, but, at times, I really can do quite well without you."

Now surely this was a day of good fortune, for again Dickie had his desire. And a most surprisingly pretty, little desire it proved—seductive even, deliciously finished in person and in manner. The boy gazed at the girl's small hands and small, daintily shod feet, at the small, lovely, pink and white face set in a cloud of golden-brown hair, at the innocent, blue eyes, at the mouth with upturned corners to it. Richard was not of age to remark the eyes were rather light in colour, the lips rather thin. The exquisite refinement of the girl's whole person delighted him. She was delicate as a miniature, as a figure carved in ivory. She was like his Uncle Roger, when she was silent and still. She was like—oh, poor Dick!—some bright glancing, small, saucy bird when she spoke and her voice had those clear, flute tones in it.

"Since you did not come to me, I had to come to you," she said. "I have wanted so much to see you. I had heard about you at home, in Paris."

"Heard about me?" Dickie repeated, flattered and surprised. "But won't you sit down. Look—that little chair. I can reach it."

And leaning sideways he stretched out his hand. But his finger-tips barely touched the top rail. Richard flushed. "I'm awfully sorry," he said, "but I am afraid—it isn't heavy—I must let you get it yourself."

The girl, who had watched him intently, her hands clasped, gave a little sigh. Then the corners of her mouth turned up as she smiled. A delightful dimple showed in her right cheek.

"But, of course," she replied, "I will get it."

She settled herself beside him, folded her hands, crossed her feet, exposing a long length of fine, open-work, silk stocking.

"I desired enormously to see you," she continued. "But when you came in I grew shy. It is so with one sometimes."

"You should use your influence, Lady Calmady," Mr. Cathcart was saying. "Unquestionably the condition of the workhouse is far from satisfactory. And Fallowfeild is too lenient. That laisser-aller policy of his threatens to land us in serious difficulties. The place is insanitary, and the food is unnecessarily poor. I am not an advocate for extravagance, but I cannot bear to see discomfort which might be avoided. Fallowfeild is the most kind-hearted of men, but he has a fatal habit of believing what people tell him. And those workhouse officials have got round him. The whole matter ought to be subjected to the strictest investigation."

"It is very nice of you to have wanted so much to see me," Dickie said. His eyes were softly bright.

"Oh! but one always wants to see those who are talked about. It is a privilege to have them for one's relations."

"But—but—I'm not talked about?" the boy put in, somewhat startled.

"But certainly. You are so rich. You have this superb château. You are"—she put her head on one side with a pretty, saucy, birdlike movement—"enfin," she said, "I had the greatest curiosity to make your acquaintance. I shall tell all my young friends at the convent about this visit. I promised them that, as soon as mamma said we should probably come here. The good sisters also are interested. I shall recount a whole history of this beautiful castle, and of you, and your——"

She paused, clasped her hands, looking away at her mother, then sideways at Richard, bowing her little person backwards and forwards, laughing softly all the while. And her laughing face was extraordinarily pretty under the shade of her broad-brimmed hat.

"It is a great misfortune we stay so short a time," she continued. "I shall not see the half of all that I wish to see."

Then an heroic plan of action occurred to Richard. The daring engendered by his recent act of disobedience was still active in him. He was in the humour to attempt the impossible. He longed, moreover, to give this delectable little person pleasure. He was willing even to sacrifice a measure of personal dignity in her service.

"Oh! but if you care so much, I—I will show you the house," he said.

"Will you?" she cried. "You and I alone together. But that is precisely what I want. It would be ravishing."

Poor Dickie's heart misgave him slightly; but he summoned all his resolution. He threw off the concealing rug.

"I—I walk very slowly, I'm afraid," he said rather huskily, looking up at her, while in his expression appeal mingled pathetically with defiant pride.

"But, so much the better," she replied. "We shall be the longer together. I shall have the more to observe, to recount."

She was on her feet. She hovered round him, birdlike, intent on his every movement.

Meanwhile the sound of conversation rose continuous. Lady Calmady, calling to Julius, had moved away to the great writing-table in the farther window. Together they searched among a pile of papers for a letter of Dr. Knott's embodying his scheme of the new hospital at Westchurch. Mr. Cathcart stood by, expounding his views on the subject.

"Of course a considerable income can be derived from letters of recommendation," he was saying, "in-patient and out-patient tickets. The clergy come in there. They cannot be expected to give large donations. It would be unreasonable to expect that of them."

Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, Mrs. Cathcart, and Mary had drawn their chairs together. The two elder ladies spoke with a subdued enthusiasm, discussing pleasant details of the approaching wedding, which promised the younger lady so glad a future. Mrs. Ormiston chattered; while Ormiston, listening to her, gazed away down the green length of the elm avenue, beyond the square lawn and pepper-pot summer-houses, and pitied men who made such mistakes in the matter of matrimony as his brother William obviously had. The rose of the sunset faded in the west. Bats began to flit forth, hawking against the still warm house-walls for flies.

And so, unobserved, Dickie slipped out of the security of his armchair, and rose to that sadly deficient full height of his. He was nervous, and this rendered his balance more than ever uncertain. He shuffled forward, steadying himself by a piece of furniture here and there in passing, until he reached the wide open space before the door on to the stair-head. And it required some fortitude to cross this space, for here was nothing to lay hold of for support.

Little Helen Ormiston had kept close beside him so far. Now she drew back, leaving him alone. Leaning against a table, she watched his laborious progress. Then a fit of uncontrollable laughter took her. She flew half-way across to the oriel-window, her voice ringing out clear and gay, though broken by bursts of irrepressible merriment.

"Regardez, regardez donc, Maman! Ma bonne m'avait dit qu'il était un avorton, et que ce serait très amusant de le voir. Elle m'a conseiller de lui faire marcher."

She darted back, and clapping her hands upon the bosom of her charming frock, danced, literally danced and pirouetted around poor Dickie.

"Moi, je ne comprenais pas ce que c'était qu'un avorton," she continued rapidly. "Mais je comprends parfaitement maintenant. C'est un monstre, n'est-ce pas, Maman?"

She threw back her head, her white throat convulsed by laughter.

"Ah! mon Dieu, qu'il est drôle!" she cried.

Silence fell on the whole room, for sight and words alike were paralysing in their grotesque cruelty. Ormiston was the first to speak. He laid his hand somewhat roughly on his sister-in-law's shoulder.

"For God's sake, stop this, Ella," he said. "Take the girl away. Little brute," he added, under his breath, as he went hastily across to poor Dick.

But Lady Calmady had been beforehand with him. She swept across the room, flinging aside the dainty, dancing figure as she passed. All the primitive fierceness, the savage tenderness of her motherhood surged up within her. Katherine was in the humour to kill just then, had killing been possible. She was magnificently regardless of consequences, regardless of conventionalities, regardless of every obligation save that of sheltering her child. She cowered down over Richard, putting her arms about him, knew—without question or answer—that he had heard and understood. Then gathering him up against her, she stood upright, facing them all, brother, sister, old and tried friends, a terrible expression in her eyes, the boy's face pressed down upon her shoulder. For the moment she appeared alienated from, and at war with, even Julius, even Marie de Mirancourt. No love, however faithful, could reach her. She was alone, unapproachable, in her immense anger and immense sense of outrage.

"I will ask you to go," she said to her sister-in-law,—"to go and take your daughter with you, and to enter this house no more."

Mrs. Ormiston did not reply. Even her chatter was for the moment stilled. She pressed a handkerchief against the little dancer's forehead, and it was stained with blood.

"Ah! she is a wicked woman!" wailed the child. "She has hurt me. She threw me against the table. Maman quel malheur ça se verra. Il y aura certainement une çicatrice!"

"Nonsense," Ormiston said harshly. "It's nothing, Kitty, the merest scratch."

"Yes, my dear, we will have the carriage at once,"—this from Mr. Cathcart to his wife. The incident, from all points of view, shocked his sense of decency. Immediate retirement became his sole object.

Lady Calmady moved away, carrying the boy. She trembled a little. He was heavy. Moreover, she sickened at the sight of blood. But little Helen Ormiston caught at her dress, looked up at her.

"I hate you," she said, hissing the words out with concentrated passion between her pretty even teeth. "You have spoilt me. I will hate you always, when I grow up. I will never forget."

Alone in the great state-bedroom next door, a long time elapsed before either Richard or Katherine spoke. The boy leaned back against the sofa cushions, holding his mother's hand. The casements stood wide open, and little winds laden with the scent of the hawthorns in the park wandered in, gently stirring the curtains of the ebony bed, so that the trees of the Forest of This Life thereon embroidered appeared somewhat mournfully to wave their branches, while the Hart fled forward and the Leopard, relentless in perpetual pursuit, followed close behind. There was a crunching of wheels on the gravel, a sound of hurried farewells. Then in a minute or two more the evening quiet held its own again.

Suddenly Dickie flung himself down across Katherine's lap, his poor body shaken by a tempest of weeping.

"Mother, I can't bear it—I can't bear it," he sobbed. "Tell me, does everybody do that?"

"Do what, my own precious?" she said, calm from very excess of sorrow. Later she would weep too in the dark, lying lonely in the cold comfort of that stately bed.

"Laugh at me, mother, mock at me?" and his voice, for all that he tried to control it, tore at his throat and rose almost to a shriek.

[ ]

CHAPTER VI

DEALING WITH A PHYSICIAN OF THE BODY AND A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL

History repeats itself, and to Katherine just now came most unwelcome example of such repetition. She had foreseen that some such crisis must arise as had arisen. Yet when it arose, the crisis proved none the less agonising because of that foreknowledge. Two strains of feeling struggled within her. A blinding sorrow for her child, a fear of and shame at her own violence of anger. Katherine's mind was of an uncompromising honesty. She knew that her instinct had, for a space at least, been murderous. She knew that, given equal provocation, it would be murderous again.

And this was, after all, but the active, objective aspect of the matter. The passive and subjective aspect showed danger also. In her extremity Katherine's soul cried out for God—for the sure resting-place only to be found by conscious union of the individual with the eternal will. But such repose was denied her. For her anger against God, even while thus earnestly desiring Him, was even more profound than her anger against man. The passion of those terrible early days when her child's evil fortune first became known to her—held in abeyance all these years by constant employment and the many duties incident to her position—returned upon her in its first force. To believe God is not, leaves the poor human soul homeless, sadly desolate, barren in labour as is a slave. But the sorrow of such belief is as a trifle beside the hideous fear that God is careless and unjust, that virtue is but a fond imagination of all-too-noble human hearts, that the everlasting purpose is not good but evil continually. And, haunted by such fears, Katherine once again sat in outer darkness. All gracious things appeared to her as illusions; all gentle delights but as passing anodynes with which, in his misery, man weakly tries to deaden the pain of existence for a little space. She suffered a profound discouragement.

And so it seemed to her but as part of the cruel whole when history repeated itself yet further, and Dr. Knott, pausing at the door of Richard's bedroom, turned and said to her:—

"It will be better, you know, Lady Calmady, to let him face it alone. He'll feel it less without you. Winter can give me all the assistance I want." Then he added, a queer smile playing about his loose lips:—"Don't be afraid. I'll handle him very gently. Probably I shan't hurt him at all—certainly not much."

"Ah!" Katherine said, under her breath.

"You see it is done by his own wish," John Knott went on.

"I know," she answered.

She respected and trusted this man, entertained for him, notwithstanding his harsh speech and uncouth exterior, something akin to affection. Yet remembering the part he had played in the fate of the father, it was very dreadful to her that he should touch the child. And Dr. Knott read her thought. He did not resent it. It was all natural enough! From his heart he was sorry for her, and would have spared her had that been possible. But he discriminated very clearly between primary and secondary issues, never sacrificing, as do feeble and sentimental persons, the former to the latter. In this case the boy had a right to the stage, and so the mother must stand in the wings. John Knott possessed a keen sense of values in the human drama which the exigencies of his profession so perpetually presented to him. He waited quietly, his hand on the door-handle, looking at Katherine from under his rough eyebrows, silently opposing his will to hers.

Suddenly she turned away with an impatient gesture.

"I will not come with you," she said.

"You are right."

"But—but—do you think you can really do anything to help him, to make him happier?" Katherine asked, a desperation in the tones of her voice.

"Happier? Yes, in the long run, because certainty of whatever kind, even certainty of failure, makes eventually for peace of mind."

"That is a hard saying."

"This is a hard world." Dr. Knott looked down at the floor, shrugging his unwieldy shoulders. "The sooner we learn to accept that fact the better, Lady Calmady. I know it is sharp discipline, but it saves time and money, let alone disappointment.—Now as to all these elaborate contrivances I've brought down from London, they're the very best of their kind. But I am bound to own the most ingenious of such arrangements are but clumsy remedies for natural deficiency. Man hasn't discovered how to make over his own body yet, and never will. The Almighty will always have the whip-hand of us when it comes to dealing with flesh and blood. All the same we've got to try these legs and things——"

Katherine winced, pressing her lips together. It was brutal, surely, to speak so plainly? But John Knott went on quietly, commiserating her inwardly, yet unswerving in common sense.

"Try 'em every one, and so convince Sir Richard one way or the other. This is a turning-point. So far his general health has been remarkably good, and we've just got to set our minds to keeping it good. He must not fret if we can help it. If he frets, instead of developing into the sane, manly fellow he should, he may turn peevish, Lady Calmady, and grow up a morbid, neurotic lad, the victim of all manner of brain-sick fancies—become envious, spiteful, a misery to others and to himself."

"It is necessary to say all this?" Katherine asked loftily.

Dr. Knott's eyes looked very straight into hers, and there were tears in them.

"Indeed, I believe it is," he replied, "or, trust me, I wouldn't say it. I take no pleasure in giving pain at this time of day, whether mental or physical. All I want is to spare pain. But one must sacrifice the present to the future, at times, you know—use the knife to save the limb. Now I must go to my patient. It isn't fair to keep him waiting any longer. I'll be as quick as I can. I suppose I shall find you here when I've finished?"

As he opened the door Dr. Knott's heavy person showed in all its ungainliness against the brightness of sunlight flooding Dickie's room. And to Katherine he seemed hideous just then—inexorable in his great common sense, in the dead weight of his personality and of his will, as some power of nature. He was to her the incarnation of things as they are,—not things as they should be, not things as she so passionately desired they might be. He represented rationalism as against miracle, intellect as against imagination, the bitter philosophy of experience as against that for which all mortals so persistently cry out—namely, the all-consoling promise of extravagant hope. As with chains he bound her down to fact. Right home on her he pressed the utter futility of juggling with the actual. From the harsh truth that, neither in matters practical nor spiritual is any redemption without shedding of blood he permitted her no escape.

And all this Katherine's clear brain recognised and admitted, even while her poor heart only rebelled the more madly. To be convinced is not to be reconciled. And so she turned away from that closed door in a veritable tempest of feeling, and went out into the Chapel-Room. It was safer, her mind and heart thus working, to put a space between herself and that closed door.

Just then Julius March crossed the room, coming in from the stair-head. The austere lines of his cassock emphasised the height and emaciation of his figure. His appearance offered a marked contrast to that of the man with whom Katherine had just parted. His occupation offered a marked contrast also. He carried a gold chalice and paten, and his head was bowed reverentially above the sacred vessels. His eyes were downcast, and the dull pallor of his face and his long thin hands was very noticeable. He did not look round, but passed silently, still as a dream, into the chapel. Katherine paced the width of the great room, turned and paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power to sustain and give comfort at the present juncture.

This, it so happened, was one of those days when the mystic joy of his priestly office held Julius March forcibly. He had ministered to others, and his own soul was satisfied. His expression was exalted, his short-sighted eyes were alive with inward light. Tired and worn, there was still a remarkable suavity in his bearing. He had come forth from the holy of holies, and the vision beheld there dwelt with him yet.

Meanwhile, brooding storm sat on Katherine's brow, on her lips, dwelt in her every movement. And something of this Julius perceived, for his devotion to her was intact, as was his self-abnegation. Throughout all these years he had never sought to approach her more closely. His attitude had remained as delicately scrupulous, untouched by worldliness, or by the baser part of passion, as in the first hour of the discovery of his love. Her near presence gave him exquisite pleasure; but, save when she needed his assistance in some practical matter, he refused to indulge himself by passing much time in her society. Abstinence still remained his rule of life. But just now, strong with the mystic strength of his late ministrations, and perceiving her troubled state, he permitted himself to remain and pace beside her.

"You have been out all day?" Katherine said.

"Yes, I stayed on to the end with Rebecca Light. They sent for me early this morning. She passed away very peacefully in that little attic at the new lodge looking out into the green heart of the woods."

"Ah! It's simple enough to die," Katherine said, "being old. The difficult thing is to live, being still young."

"Has my absence been inconvenient? Have you wanted me?" Julius asked.—Those quiet hours spent in the humble death-chamber suddenly appeared to him as an act of possible selfishness.

"Oh no!" she answered bitterly. "Why should I want you? Have I not sent Roger and Mary away? Am I not secretly glad dear Marie de Mirancourt is just sufficiently poorly to remain in her room? When the real need comes—one learns that among all the other merciless lessons—one is best by oneself."

For a while, only the whisper of Lady Calmady's skirts, the soft, even tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:—

"Dr. Knott is with Richard."

"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.

But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.

"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in her saintly resignation, and you"—Katherine turned her head, smiled at him in lovely scorn—"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church—your God—how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer—you who have never loved."

Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so lately carried.

"I too have loved," he said at last.

Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.

"Really, Julius?" she said.

Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.

"Very really," he answered.

"But when?"

"Long ago—and always."

"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of her personal distress was lifted. Dickie and Dr. Knott together in that bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black cassock. Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.

"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times, but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us; supposed your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me this."

"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret, all these years, only too well.

Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her back.

"But, tell me—tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both. Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"

"No, thank God, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I believe she loved me truly as a friend—and that was sufficient."

"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is never sufficient."

"In one sense, yes—in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would have become other than she was."

"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be your danger, in such a case. Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, and you would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them——"

She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face darkened somewhat.

"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one to the very quick."—Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wishing all this otherwise," she said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have been very happy, dear Julius."

Their pacing had just brought them to the arched doorway of the chapel. Katherine stopped, and raising her arm leaned her hand against the stone jamb of it above her head.

"See," she went on, "I want to be truly unselfish. I know how generous you are. Perhaps you remain here out of all too great kindness towards my poor Dick and me. You mustn't do that, Julius. You say she is still living. Consider—is it too late?"

Was it indeed too late? All the frustrated manhood cried aloud in Julius March. He covered his face with his hands. His carefully restrained imagination ran riot, presenting enchantments.

And Katherine, watching him, found herself strangely moved. For it was very startling to see this so familiar figure under so unfamiliar an aspect—to see Julius March, her everyday companion and assistant, his reticence, his priestly aloofness, his mild and courtly calm, swept under by a tide of personal emotion. Lady Calmady was drawn to him by deepened sympathy. Yet regret arose in her that this man proved to be, after all, but as other men. She was vaguely disappointed, having derived more security than she had quite realised from his apparent detachment and impassibility. And, as an indirect consequence, her revolt against God suffered access of bitterness. For not only was He—to her seeing—callous regarding the fate of the many, but He failed to support those few most devoted to His cause. In the hour of their trial He was careless even of His own elect.

"Ah! I think it is indeed by no means too late!" she exclaimed.

Julius March let his hands drop at his sides. He gazed at her and her expression was of wistful mockery—compassionate rather than ironical. Then he looked away down the length of the chapel. In the warm afternoon light, the solid and rich brown of the arcaded stalls on either hand, emphasised the harmonious radiance of the great east window, a radiance as of clear jewels.—Ranks of kneeling saints, the gold of whose orioles rose in an upward curve to the majestic image of the Christ in the central light—a Christ risen and glorified, enthroned, His feet shining forever upon heaven's sapphire floor. Before the altar hung three silver-gilt lamps of Italian workmanship, in the crimson cup of each of which it had so long been Julius's pleasure to keep the tongue of flame constantly alive. The habits of a lifetime are not hastily set aside. Gazing on these things, his normal attitude returned to him. Not that which he essentially was but that which, by long and careful training of every thought, every faculty, he had become, authoritatively claimed him. His eyes fell from contemplation of the glories of the window to that of the long, straight folds of the cassock which clothed him. It was hardly the garb in which a man goes forth to woo! Then he looked at Lady Calmady—she altogether seductive in her innocence and in her wistful mockery as she leaned against the jamb of the door.

"You are mistaken, dear Katherine," he said. "It has always been too late."

"But why—why—if she is free to listen?"

"Because I am not free to speak."

Julius smiled at her. His suavity had returned, and along with it a dignity of bearing not observable before.

"Let us walk," he said. And then:—"After all I have given you a very mutilated account of this matter. Soon after I took orders, before I had ever seen the very noble, to me perfect, woman who unconsciously revealed to me the glory of human love, I had dedicated my life, and all my powers—poor enough, I fear—of mind and body to the service of the Church. I was ambitious in those days. Ambition is dead, killed by the knowledge of my own shortcomings. I have proved an unprofitable servant—for which may God in His great mercy forgive me. But, while my faith in myself has withered, my faith in Him has come to maturity. I have learned to think very differently on many subjects, and to perceive that our Heavenly Father's purposes regarding us are more generous, more far-reaching, more august, than in my youthful ignorance I had ever dreamed. All things are lawful in His sight. Nothing is common or unclean—if we have once rightly apprehended Him, and He dwells in us. And yet—yet, a vow once made is binding. We may not do evil to gain however great a good."

Katherine listened in silence. The words came with the power of immutable conviction. She could not believe, yet she was glad to have him believe.

"And that vow precludes marriage?" she said at last.

"It does," Julius answered.

For a time they paced again in silence. Then Lady Calmady spoke, a delicate intimacy and affection in her manner, while once more, for a moment, she let her hand rest on his arm.

"So Brockhurst keeps you—I keep you, dear Julius, to the last?"

"Yes, if you will, to the very last."

"I am thankful for that," she said. "You must forgive me if in the past I have been inconsiderate at times. I am afraid the constant struggle, which certain circumstances of necessity create, tends to make me harsh and imperious. I carry a trouble, which calls aloud for redress, forever in my arms. They ache with the burden of it. And there is no redress. And the trouble grows stronger alas. Its voice—so dear, yet so dreaded—grows louder, till it deafens me to all other sounds. The music of this once beautiful world becomes faint. Only angry discord remains. And I become selfish. I am the victim of a fixed idea. I become heedless of the suffering of those about me. And you, my poor Julius, must have suffered very much!"

"Now, less than ever before," he answered. But even as he spoke, Katherine was struck by his pallor, by the drawn look of his features and languor of his bearing.

"Ah, you have fasted all day!" she cried.

"What matter?" he said, smiling. "The body surely can sustain a trifle of hunger, if the soul and spirit are fed. I have feasted royally to-day in that respect. I am strangely at ease. As to baser sort of food, what wonder if I forgot?"

The door of Dickie's bedchamber opened, letting in long shafts of sunlight, and Dr. Knott came slowly forward. His aspect was savage. Even his philosophy had been not wholly proof against the pathos of his patient's case. It irritated him to fall from his usual relentlessness of common sense into a melting mood. He took refuge in sarcasm, desirous to detect weakness in others, since he was, unwillingly, so disagreeably conscious of it in himself.

"Well, we're through with our business, Lady Calmady," he said. "Eh! Mr. March, what's wrong with you? Putty-coloured skin and shortness of breath. A little less prayer and a little more physical exercise is what you want. Successful, Lady Calmady?—Umph—I'm afraid the less said about that the better. Sir Richard will talk it out with you himself. Upset? Yes, I don't deny he is a little upset—and, like a fool, I'm upset too. You can go to him now, Lady Calmady. Keep him cheerful, please, and give him his head as much as you can."

John Knott watched her as she moved away. He shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands into his breeches' pockets.

"She's going to hear what she won't much relish, poor thing," he said. "But I can't help that. One man's meat is another man's poison; and my affair is with the boy's meat, even if it should be of a kind to turn his mother's stomach. He shall have just all the chance I can get him, poor little chap. And now, Mr. March, I propose to prescribe for you, for you look uncommonly like taking a short-cut to heaven, and, if I know anything about this house, you've got your work cut out for you here below for a long time to come. Through with this business? Pooh! we've only taken a preliminary canter as yet. That boy's out of the common in more ways than one, and, cripple or no cripple, he's bound to lead you all a pretty lively dance before he's done."

[ ]

CHAPTER VII

AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT

The day had been hot, though the summer was but young. A wealth of steady sunlight bathed the western front of the house. All was notably still, save for a droning of bees, a sound of wood-chopping, voices now and again, and the squeak of a wheelbarrow away in the gardens.

Richard lay on his back upon the bed. He had drawn the blue embroidered coverlet up about his waist; but his silk shirt was thrown open, exposing his neck and chest. His arms were flung up and out across the pillow on either side his gold-brown, close-curled head. As his mother entered he turned his face towards the open window. There was vigour and distinction in the profile—in the straight nose, full chin, and strong line of the lower jaw, in the round, firm throat, and small ear set close against the head. The muscles of his neck and arms were well developed. Seen thus, lying in the quiet glow of the afternoon sunshine, all possibility of physical disgrace seemed far enough from Richard Calmady. He might indeed, not unfitly, have been compared to one of those nobly graceful lads, who, upon the frieze of some Greek temple, set forth forever the perfect pattern of temperance and high courage, of youth and health.

As Katherine sat down beside the bed, Richard thrust out his left hand. She took it in both hers, held and stroked the palm of it. But for a time she could not trust herself to speak. For she saw that, notwithstanding the resolute set of his lips, his breath caught in short quick sobs and that his eyelashes were glued in points by late shed tears. And seeing this, Katherine's motherhood arose and confronted her with something of reproach. It seemed to her she had been guilty of disloyalty in permitting her thought to be beguiled even for the brief space of her conversation with Julius March. She felt humbled, a little in Dickie's debt, since she had not realised to the uttermost each separate moment of his trial as each of those moments passed.

"My darling, I am afraid Dr. Knott has hurt you very much," she said at last.

"Oh! I don't know. I suppose he did hurt. He pulled me about awfully, but I didn't mind that. I told him to keep on till he made sure," Richard answered huskily, still turning his face from her. "But none of those beastly legs and things fitted. He could not fix them so that I could use them. It was horrid. They only made me more helpless than before. You see—my—my feet are in the way."

The last words came to Katherine as a shock. The boy had never spoken openly of his deformity, and in thus speaking he appeared to her to rend asunder the last of those veils with which she had earnestly striven to conceal the disgrace of it from him. She remained very still, bracing herself to bear—the while slowly stroking his hand. Suddenly the strong, young fingers closed hard on hers. Richard turned his head.