MITCHELHURST PLACE
VOL. II

MITCHELHURST PLACE

A Novel

BY

MARGARET VELEY

AUTHOR OF "FOR PERCIVAL"

"Que voulez-vous? Hélas! notre mère Nature,

Comme toute autre mère, a ses enfants gâtés,

Et pour les malvenus elle est avare et dure!"

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.

London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884

The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.

Bungay:

CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

MITCHELHURST PLACE

CHAPTER I.
NO LETTER.

The Mitchelhurst postman, coming up to the Place in his daily round, found a young man loitering to and fro within view of the gate. The morning was a pleasant one. The roadside grass was grey with dew, and glistening pearls and diamonds were strung on the threads of gossamer, tangled over bush and blade. The hollies in the hedgerows were brave and bright, and there were many-tinted leaves yet clinging to the bramble-sprays. Sun and wet together had turned the common road to a shining, splendid way, up which the old postman crept, a dull, little, toiling figure, with a bag over his shoulder, and something white in his hand. The young man timed his indolent stroll so that they met each other on the weedy slope, which led to the iron gate, with its solid pillars, and white stone balls. There, with the briefest possible nod by way of salutation, he demanded his letters.

The old fellow knew him as the gentleman who was staying with Mr. Hayes, and touched his cap obsequiously. He had carried his bag for more than thirty years, and remembered old Squire Rothwell, and Mr. John, and he fumbled with the letters in his hand, half expecting a curse at his slowness, and hardly knowing what name he was to look for. The other stood with his head high, showing a sharply-cut profile as he turned a little, looking intently in the direction of the Place. Through the black bars shone a pale bright picture of blue sky, and level turf, and the gnarled and fantastic branches of the sunlit avenue. There were yellow leaves on the straight roadway, and shadows softly interlaced, and at the end the white, silent house.

The postman finished his investigation, and announced in a hesitating tone, "No, sir, no letter, sir. No letter at all, name of Rothwell."

The young man turned upon him. "Harding, I said."

"Yes, sir. No, sir, no letter name of Harding."

"Are you sure? Give them to me."

He looked them over. There were letters and papers for Mr. Hayes, one or two for the servants, and one that had come from Devonshire for Barbara. He gave them back with a meditative frown, and turned on his heel without a word. The postman pushed the gate just sufficiently to permit of a crab-like entrance to the grounds, and plodded along the avenue, while the young fellow walked definitely away towards the village.

"The old boy doesn't write business letters on Sunday, I dare say," he said to himself. "No, I don't suppose he would. Well, I shall hear to-morrow. As well to-morrow as to-day, perhaps—better, perhaps. And yet—and yet—Oh God! to get to work! I have banished myself from her presence, I have shut that gate against me—that old fool goes crawling up there with his letters—any one in Mitchelhurst may knock at that door, and I may not! There's nothing left for me but to do the task she set me, and by Heaven, I will! I shall have the right to speak to her then, at any rate!"

Barbara had intended to see Reynold before he left that morning. She did not know what she wanted to say, she was uneasy at the thought of the interview, but she could not endure that he should be dismissed from the old house without a parting word. While Harding was moodily doubting whether he had not alienated her for ever, she was wondering what she could say or do to atone for the wrong done to him by her timidity. She did not fully understand the meaning of the wrathful anguish of his last speech, but she knew that she had pained him. She planned a score of dialogues, she wearied herself in vain endeavours to guess what he would say, and then, tired out, she solved the question by sleeping till the sunlight fell upon her face, and the banished man was already beyond the gate.

She knew the truth the moment she awoke. It was only to confirm her certainty that she dressed hurriedly and went out into the passage, to see the door standing wide, and the vacant room. It seemed but yesterday, and yet so long ago, since she made it ready for the coming guest, who had left it in anger. Barbara sighed, and turned away. At the head of the stairs she recalled the slim, dark figure that had stood there so few hours before, fixing his angry eyes upon her, and grasping the balustrade with long fingers as he spoke. The very ticking of the old clock reminded her of their talk together the morning after he came, and seemed to say "gone! gone! gone! gone!" as she went by.

Her uncle came down a few minutes later, greeted her shortly, and glanced at the table. It was laid for two. "I suppose there is nothing to wait for?" he said.

"Nothing," said Barbara, and she rang the bell.

He unfolded a newspaper and spoke from behind it. "You know that young fellow is gone?"

"Yes."

"Time he did go! I wish he had never come! Did you say good-bye to him?"

"No. He went before I was down."

Mr. Hayes uttered a little sound expressive of satisfaction, and the girl perceived that she had accidentally led him to suppose that she had had no talk with Harding since the quarrel. She did not speak. The maid came into the room with the urn, and Mr. Hayes turned to her. "What man was that I saw in the hall just now?"

"He came for the gentleman's portmanteau, sir. He was to take it to Mrs. Simmonds."

He started, but controlled himself. "Mrs. Simmonds?"

"Yes, sir, Mrs. Simmonds at the shop."

Mr. Hayes was silent only till the door was closed behind her. Then, "He has done that to spite me!" he said furiously. "Serves me right for trying to be civil to one of these confounded Rothwells! They have the devil's own temper, every one of them, and if they can do you a bad turn, they will!"

Barbara said nothing, but made tea rather drearily.

"Confound him!" Mr. Hayes began afresh. "Now I suppose the whole place will be cackling about this! He deserves to be kicked out of the parish, and I should like to do it! I wish to heaven, Barbara, you wouldn't pick young men out of the ditches in this fashion! You see what comes of it!"

Barbara, appealed to in this direct and reasonable manner, plucked up her spirit, and replied, rather loftily, that she would certainly remember in future. She further remarked that the fish was getting cold.

Mr. Hayes threw down the paper, and took his place. There was silence for a minute or two, and then he began again.

"There isn't a soul in Mitchelhurst that doesn't know he was staying here. What do you suppose they will say when they find him starting off at a moment's notice, and taking a lodging in the village, not a stone's throw from my gate?"

Barbara privately thought that, as Mr. Harding had betaken himself to the further end of Mitchelhurst, her uncle's talent for throwing stones must be remarkable. She did not suggest this, however, and when he repeated his question, "What do you suppose they will say?" she only replied that she did not know, she was sure.

"Don't you?" said he, with withering scorn. "Well, I do." It was true enough. He could guess pretty well what the gossips would say, and the sting of it was that their version would not differ very much from the actual fact.

Barbara looked down, and finished her breakfast without a word. She knew that silence was the safest course she could adopt, since it gave him no chance of turning his anger on her, but she also knew that it irritated him dreadfully. That, however, she did not mind. Barbara herself was rather cross that morning. She had meant to be up early, and she had slept later than usual; she was vexed and disappointed, and she had been worried by the jarring tempers of the last two days. She kept her head bent, and her lips closed, while Mr. Hayes drank his second cup of tea with a muttered accompaniment of abuse.

"Look here," he said suddenly, getting up, and going to the fire, "I don't know how long that fellow means to stay in Mitchelhurst, but, till he leaves, you don't go beyond the gate. I don't suppose you would wish to do so"—he paused, but she was apparently absorbed in the consideration of a little ring on her finger—"I should hope you have proper feeling enough not to wish to do so"—this appeal was also received in a strictly neutral manner—"but in any case you have my express command to the contrary."

"Very well," said Barbara, with a little affectation of being rather weary of the whole subject.

"I do not choose that you should be exposed to insult," Mr. Hayes continued.

"Very well," said Barbara again. "I can stay in if you like, though I don't think Mr. Harding would insult me."

"I beg your pardon, my dear, but you are not qualified to judge in this matter. If you had heard Mr. Harding's conversation last night you might not be quite so sure what he would or would not do. It is my duty to protect you from an unpleasant possibility, and you will oblige me by not going beyond—or rather by not going near the gate."

Barbara, tired of saying "Very well," said "All right."

"Wednesday is the night of Pryor's entertainment at the schools. I shall be sorry to disappoint him, but I certainly shall not go unless Mr. Harding has left the place. He has shown such a deplorable want of taste and proper feeling that he would probably take that opportunity of thrusting himself upon us."

Mr. Hayes paused once more, but the girl did not seem inclined either to defend or to denounce their late guest. She changed her position listlessly, and gazed out of the window.

"A gentleman would not, but that proves nothing with regard to Mr. Harding. You are very silent this morning, Barbara."

"I have a headache," she said, "I'm tired," and to her great relief, Mr. Hayes, after walking two or three times up and down the room, went off to his study.

The poor little man was not happy. He sincerely regretted the quarrel of the evening before, which had come upon him, as upon Reynold, unawares. He was accustomed to the society of a few neighbours, who understood him, and said behind his back, "Oh, you must not mind what Hayes says!" or "I met Hayes yesterday—a little bit more cracked than usual!" and took all his sallies good-humouredly, with argument, perhaps, or loud-voiced denial at the time, but nothing in the way of consequences. Thunder might roll, but no bolt fell, and the sky was as clear as usual at the next meeting. Mr. Hayes had unconsciously fallen into the habit of talking without any sense of responsibility. On this occasion a variety of circumstances had combined to irritate him, and his personal dislike of Reynold Harding had given a touch of acrid malice to his attack, but he meant no more than to have the pleasure of contradicting, and, if possible, silencing his companion. The game was played more roughly than usual, but Mr. Hayes never realised that his adversary was angrily in earnest till it was too late. Excitement had mastered him, there was an interchange of speeches, swift and fierce as blows, and then he saw Kate Rothwell's son, standing before him, trembling with fury, and hoarsely declaring that he would leave the house at once. He had only to close his eyes to see him again, the tall young figure leaning forward into the light, with his clenched hands resting on the polished table, amid the disarray of silver and glasses, his dark brows drawn down, and his angry eyes aglow. Conciliation was impossible on either side, though the shock of definite rupture so far sobered them that Harding's departure was deferred to the morning. But, "I will never break bread under your roof again!" the young man had said, with a glance round the room, and a curious significance of tone. Then he turned away to encounter Barbara upon the stairs.

To Harding, matters had seemed at their worst during the black hours of silence, and the morning brought something of comfort. If there is but a possibility that work may help us in our troubles, the dullest day is better than the night. But to Mr. Hayes the daylight came drearily, showing the folly of a business which nothing could mend. For more than a quarter of a century he had plumed himself on his gratitude to Kate Rothwell for her kindness to his dead love, and had imagined that he only lacked an opportunity to serve her. And this graceful sentiment, being put to the test, had not prevented him from quarrelling with her son, and turning the young fellow out of doors. Yes, he, Herbert Hayes, had actually driven Kate's boy from Mitchelhurst Place! and what made it worse, if anything could make it worse, was the revelation of the utter impotence of that cherished gratitude. He regretted what he had done, but he must abide by it. Apologise to Harding?—he would die first! Own to one of the Rothwells that he had been in the wrong?—the mere thought, crossing his mind, as he tied his cravat that morning, very nearly choked him. Never—never! Not if it were Kate herself! But he reddened to the roots of his white hair at the thought of the gossip and laughter which would follow the unseemly squabble.

He would be unfairly judged. He said so over and over again, and in a certain sense it was true, for he had never intended to quarrel with his guest. But he could not prove even the innocence he felt. He remembered two or three bitter fragments of their wrangling which would condemn him if repeated. Yet he knew he had not meant them as his judges would take them. "Well, but," some practical neighbour would say, "if you say such things, what do you expect?" That was just it—he had expected nothing, though nobody would believe it, and all at once this catastrophe had come upon him.

So he went down to breakfast, sincerely troubled and repentant, and consequently in a very unpleasant mood. Repentance seldom makes a man an agreeable companion, and when it seizes the head of the house the subordinate members naturally share his discomfort. The moment he set foot in the breakfast-room he was met by the news of Harding's stay in the village, and his anger blazed up again, though, through it all, he had an uncomfortable consciousness that the young man had a right to stay in Mitchelhurst if he pleased. If he could only have convinced himself that Reynold was utterly in the wrong, he would have forgiven him and been happy. But it is almost impossible to forgive a man who is somewhat in the wrong, yet less so than oneself.

Harding had been guided by Barbara in his search for a lodging. When they were standing together at the edge of the ditch, she had reminded her uncle that Mrs. Simmonds had let her rooms to a man who came surveying. The fact was so unprecedented that the good woman might be pardoned for imagining herself an authority on what gentlemen liked, and what gentlemen expected, on the strength of that one experience. Harding confirmed her in her innocent belief by agreeing to everything she proposed. Within half an hour of his arrival he was sitting down to what the surveyor always took for breakfast, and the surveyor's favourite dinner was cooking for him as he walked fast and far on the first road that presented itself. He almost reached Littlemere before he turned, and had to scramble over a hedge, to avoid what might have been an awkward meeting with Mr. Masters. The little squire went by unsuspectingly, though Reynold, finding himself face to face with a bull in the meadow, nearly jumped back upon him. Happily however the bull took time to consider, and before he had made up his mind whether he liked his visitor or not, the coast was clear, and the young man sprang down into the road, and set off on his way back to Mitchelhurst, where he arrived just as Mrs. Simmonds was beginning to look out for him. The surveyor had ordered rather an early dinner.

Harding had done his best to check any gossip about his affairs, but his landlady was burning with curiosity. She made a remark about Mr. Hayes as she set the dish on the table, and her lodger replied that it certainly was a queer fancy for a lonely man to live in that great house, and might he trouble Mrs. Simmonds for a fork? She supplied the omission with many apologies, and said that Mr. Hayes was not very popular in the neighbourhood, she believed.

"Isn't he?" said Reynold, slicing away. "Well, all I can say is that I found him a very hospitable old gentleman. He had never seen me before, and he invited me to stay there for three days. Wouldn't take any denial."

"Well, to be sure, sir, we can but speak as we find," said Mrs. Simmonds, handing the potatoes. "Only, you see, there are some of us who remember the old family—you'll excuse me, sir, but it's wonderful how you favour Mr. John—and it's not the same, sir, having a stranger there. It's not like old times."

"No," said Reynold with a jarring little laugh. "I should think it was a good deal better. Thank you, Mrs. Simmonds, I have all I want."

And with a nod, which was exactly Mr. John's, he dismissed the old lady.

She was disconcerted; she did not know what to make of this young man with the Rothwell features, who was not gratified by a respectful allusion to the family. "A good deal better!" Well, of course, the Rothwells held themselves very high, and thought other people were just the dirt under their feet. There was no pleasing them with anything you sent in, nothing was good enough, and they expected you to stand curtseying and curtseying for their custom, and to wait for your money till all the profit was gone. Mr. Hayes paid as soon as the bill was sent in, and Miss Strange was a pleasant-spoken young lady. "A good deal better"—well, no doubt it was.

And yet the good woman had not been insincere when she spoke of the old times with a regretful accent in her voice. She remembered John Rothwell's father as a middle-aged gentleman, alert and strong. Those old times were the times when she was a rosy-cheeked girl, whom Simmonds came courting at her father the wheel-wright's, and not Simmonds only, for she might have done better if she had chosen. It was in the good old times that they set up their little shop, and that their little girl was born who had been in the churchyard three-and-twenty years come Christmas. There were no times now like those before Mitchelhurst Place was sold, when she didn't know what rheumatism was, and there were none of your new-fangled Board Schools, to teach children to think little of their elders. It was not to be supposed that Mrs. Simmonds thought that her stiff old joints would become flexible again if the Rothwells came back to the manor-house, but she certainly felt that in their reign the world went its way with fewer obstructions and less weariness, and was more brightly visible without the aid of spectacles. She had an impression, too, that the weather was better.

She straightened herself laboriously after taking the apple-pie from the oven, and was horrified to find the crust a little caught on one side. Having to explain how this had occurred when she carried it in, she had no opportunity of continuing the previous conversation, and the moment dinner was over Reynold was out again. The fact was that Mrs. Simmonds's parlour, which was small and low, and had been carefully shut up for many months, was not very attractive to the young man, who was fresh from the faded stateliness of the old Place. Besides, he was anxious to keep down importunate thoughts by sheer weariness, if in no other way.

He went that afternoon to the Hall, the dreary old farmhouse which Barbara had pointed out as the Rothwells' earlier home, and walked in the sodden pastures where she picked her cowslips in the spring. He looked more kindly at the old house, in spite of the ignoble disorder of its surroundings, but he lingered longest at the gate where she had shown him Mitchelhurst, spread out before him like the Promised Land. He studied it all in the fading light, and then, with a farewell glance at the white far-off front of the Place, he went down into the village, tired enough to drop asleep over the fire after tea.

"To-morrow, the letter," was his last thought as he lay down.

CHAPTER II.
ONE MORE HOLIDAY.

The inevitable morning came, but the letter did not.

Harding was first incredulous, then when a light flashed upon him, he was at once amused and indignant.

"So! I kept you waiting till the latest day, and you are returning the compliment. I am given to understand that you can take your time as well as I? That's fair enough, no doubt, only it seems rather a small sort of revenge, and, as things have turned out, it's a nuisance. What is to be done now? Shall I wait another day for my instructions, or shall I go up to town at once? I told him to write here, but, after all, what is there to say, except, 'Be at the office on such a day?' Shall I go, or stay?"

He tossed up, not ill-pleased to decide his uncle's affairs so airily. The coin decreed that he should stay.

"It's just as well," he said to himself. "I don't want to seem impatient if he isn't."

But the additional day of idleness proved very burdensome. He fancied that the Mitchelhurst gossips watched his every movement; he felt himself in a false position; he shut himself up in his little sitting-room and asked for books. Mrs. Simmonds brought him all she had, but she looked upon reading as a penitential occupation for Sundays, and periods of affliction, and the volumes were well suited for the purpose. Harding thrust them aside. The local paper was nearly a week old, but he read every word of it.

"There'll be a new one to-morrow, sir," said his landlady, delighted to see that he enjoyed it so much.

"Thank you, Mrs. Simmonds, but I shall be far enough away by this time to-morrow," the young man replied.

He spent a considerable part of the afternoon lying on the horse-hair couch, and staring at the ceiling. A ceiling is not, as a rule, very interesting to study, and the only thing that could be said for this one was that it was conveniently near. Reynold could examine every smoke-stain at his ease, and every fly that chanced to stroll across his range of vision. The first he noticed made him think of Barbara and Joppa, but the later comers were simply wearisome. There is a distressing want of individuality about flies. Even when one buzzed about his head, with a fixed determination to wander awhile upon his forehead, he had not an idea which fly it was. It seemed to him, as he lay there, with his arm thrown up for a pillow, that flies in general were just one instrument of torture of, say, a billion-fly power. The afternoon sunshine and the smouldering fire had wakened more than he could reckon in the little parlour.

He would not have cared to confess how much he was troubled by his uncle's silence. He had expected to be met rather more than half-way, instead of which it seemed that he was to be taught to know his place. The idea was intolerable, and it haunted him.

When Mrs. Simmonds came in with a tray (the surveyor always took his tea between five and six), she made a remark or two about things in general, which Reynold, turning his lustreless eyes upon her, endeavoured to receive with a decent show of interest. When she brought the tea-pot, she told him that Mr. Hayes had sent to the Rothwell Arms for a carriage early that afternoon. "Indeed!" said Reynold, this time endeavouring to conceal the interest he felt.

"What were they going to do?" he wondered, as he propped his head on his hand and sipped his tea. Was the old man taking Barbara away? What did it mean?

It meant simply that Mr. Hayes had wearied of his self-imposed seclusion, and had announced to his niece that he should drive over to Littlemere and see Masters. He added that he might not return to dinner, and that she was not to wait for him. While Reynold lay on the sofa the carriage had gone by, with the little man sitting in it, his head rather more bowed than usual, planning how he would explain the quarrel to his friend. "Masters will understand—he knows how the fellow behaved the night before," said Mr. Hayes to himself a score of times. But every time he said it he felt a little less certain that Masters would understand exactly as he wished.

Mrs. Simmonds, returning after a considerable interval, told her lodger that the wind was getting up, and she thought there was going to be a change in the weather. She mostly knew, as she informed him, on account of her rheumatism. Reynold opened the door for her and her tray, and then went to the window.

The moon had risen, the low roofs and gaunt poplars of Mitchelhurst were black in its light, and wild wreaths of cloud were tossed across the sky. It was a sky that seemed to mean something, to have a mood and expression of its own. Reynold watched it for a few minutes, till its vastness made the little box of a room, where even the flies had fallen asleep again, insupportably small. He took his hat and went out.

He did not care which way he went, if only it were not in the direction of the Place. Mr. Hayes, when he charged Barbara not to go near the gate, had a sort of fancy that the young fellow might walk defiantly on the very edge of the forbidden ground, and peer through the bars with a white, spiteful face. The girl acquiesced indifferently. She might not altogether understand Reynold Harding, but she knew most certainly that he would never approach them.

It chanced that evening that he took a narrow lane which led out of the Littlemere road. It proved to be a rugged but very gradual ascent. Presently it led him through a gate, and, still gently rising, became a mere cart track across open fields, where the wind came in sudden, hurrying gusts over the grey slopes, and brought undefinable suggestions of hopelessness and solitude. Reaching the highest point the wayfarer passed through another gate, and pursued a level road, bordered by spaces of unenclosed grass, sometimes widening almost to a common, sometimes shrinking to a mere strip between the white way and the low hedgerows. Reynold pushed forward, gazing at the sky. The clouds, torn and driven by the wind, fled wildly overhead, like shattered squadrons, and yet rolled up in new unconquered masses, as if from a gloomy host encamped on the horizon. The moon, slowly climbing the heavens, fought her way as a swimmer fights the waves. Now she would show a pale face through the blanched ripples of a misty sea, then would be over-powered by a black deluge of cloud, which darkened earth and sky, and swept over her sunken and scarcely suspected presence. And then suddenly she would emerge, pearl-white and pure, from the midst of the fierce confusion, rising unopposed over a gulf of shadowy blue. Or yet again she would glance mockingly from behind a rent veil of gossamer at the lonely little traveller who toiled so far below, under the vast arch of the heavens, and who raised his pre-occupied eyes to her, from the world of dream and mystery which he carried with him under the little arch of his skull. To Harding just then that inner world seemed more real, stranger, and less trodden, than did the world without. The billows of cloud, vast and formless and dark, rolling on high, were no more than symbols of the undefined forebodings which gathered blackly in his soul and changed with every thought. The wild and restless melancholy of the evening harmonised so marvellously with his temper, that he could almost have forgotten its outward reality, had it not been for the wind which blew freshly in his face. It did not seem possible that, when hereafter he came back to Mitchelhurst, he could walk this way whenever he pleased.

Yet he noted landmarks now and then. Here was a thin row of firs, slim and black, then a bare stretch of road where he stepped quickly, his shadow at his side for company, and then a sturdy oak, with all its brown leaves astir in a gust, which whispered hurriedly as he went by. Somewhat further yet the way grew narrow, dipping down into a little hollow, where a runnel of clear water crossed it, glancing over the pebbly earth. There was a plank at one side, and Reynold, stepping on it, smelt the water-mint which clustered at its edge. It seemed, somehow, as if the night, which uttered his desolate thoughts in the wind and the flying clouds, breathed them in that perfume.

Reynold was one of those who take little interest, even as children, in stories of goblins and witches, yet who sympathise with the mood which gave such legends birth, something which in its unshapen darkness and mystery is more impressive than the strangest vision. Why this inexplicable mood, with its world-wide suggestiveness, should have come upon him that evening, transforming the bit of upland country through which he walked to a grey and ghostly region, he could not tell. He tried to reason with his shadowy presentiments. He was going to his work the next day; that very evening he was going back to the little parlour over the shop; Mrs. Simmonds would have his supper ready, old Simmonds would be smoking bad tobacco in the back room; his walk would lead to nothing else. Yet he could not convince himself. He could call up his uncle and Mrs. Simmonds before his eyes, but they were grotesque apparitions in his cloudland. What was it that he was awaiting? Why did he feel as if the crisis of his fate were come, as if it would be upon him before the night were over? "Are we to see it out together?" he said, looking up at the moon.

He hardly knew whether he had uttered the question aloud or not, and he stopped short. There was a pool close by, roughly fenced from the road, and fringed with ragged bushes on the further side. He sat down on the rail. "To-morrow," he said to himself, "nothing can happen before to-morrow." He took old Mr. Harding's letter from his pocket, and tried to read it in the moonlight, but a sudden gust caught it, and almost tore it out of his hand. He crushed the flapping paper together, put it back, and sat gazing at the black pool at his side, idly wondering whether it were deep enough to drown a man. It looked deep, he thought—as deep as the heavens, and a troubled gleam of moonlight rested on it every now and then. Harding knew well that he should never touch his life, yet he played that night with the fancy that in one of the darkened moments when the moon was hidden, it would not be difficult to drop below that shadowy surface, and effectually end the business, so that when the bright glance rested there again it should read nothing. He fancied the moon-beams travelling swiftly along the road, and not finding him, while he lay hidden under the water, with a clump of osiers bending and quivering above him in the windy night. "Why couldn't I do it?" he asked himself. "Why do I go on to meet my ill-luck? It is coming, I know, to play me some devil's trick—I feel it in the air, just as Mrs. Simmonds feels a change of the weather in her poor bones."

So, idly jesting, he stooped and tossed a pebble into the brimming blackness, and as he did so he pictured to himself the groping hands, and the ugly strangling fight with death which the moon might chance to see, if it tore its veil aside too quickly. And, besides, there was the grim uncertainty of it. What was under that dusky surface? "That's as you please to put it, I suppose," said Reynold, getting to his feet. "Eternity, or just a little black mud. And, by Jove, that railing's rather shaky!" He turned his face towards Mitchelhurst, laughing at his own folly. "Well, I'll take to-morrow and its chance of fortune—presentiments and all?"

The wind, which had fought against him as he came, seemed now so impatient to get him safely back to Mrs. Simmonds, that it fairly took him by the shoulders and hurried him along, as if it knew that it was between nine and ten, and that the good lady was addicted to early hours. And perhaps Reynold himself was slightly ashamed of his moonlit vagary, and not altogether unwilling to seek the shelter of that little roof. He ran and walked down the field path, and saw the glimmering lights of the village below, small sparks of friendly welcome in the great night. When, finally, he turned into the Littlemere road, and was somewhat sheltered from the wind, he met a couple of youths, fresh from the "Rothwell Arms," harmonious in their desire to sing together, but not in the result of their efforts. About a hundred yards further he encountered the Mitchelhurst policeman. The road was quite populous and homely.

He had outstripped his forebodings in his hurried race, and the question whether his landlady would think that he was very late for supper was uppermost in his mind. He opened the door, which was never fastened till Simmonds bolted it at night, and drew a breath which gave him a comprehensive idea of the variety of goods they kept in stock. With the chilly sweetness of the night air still upon him, the young man strode into his room, and confronted Barbara Strange, who rose from the sofa to meet him.

All his misgivings overtook him in a moment.

CHAPTER III.
MOONSHINE.

"Miss Strange!" he exclaimed, amazed.

"Oh!" cried Barbara, "I thought you would never come!"

"You wanted me! You have been waiting for me! If I had known——" And while he spoke the strangest thoughts and possibilities shaped themselves in his brain, and died away again. If her presence called them up it also killed them. He saw that she was frightened. Her lip quivered, and her eyes looked larger and a little vague. She was gazing at him through a bright film of unshed tears.

"If I had known," he repeated confusedly, as he stepped forward. "What is it?"

They had not shaken hands in his first astonishment, and now she still looked up at him, and his hand dropped unheeded.

"I don't know what you will say to me," she began. "I am so very, very sorry—I felt I must come myself and ask you to forgive me."

"I forgive you! Why," said Reynold, his eyes shining, "it is you who should forgive!"

Barbara started, and the hot tears dropped, and slid over her burning blushes. She turned away, but too late to hide them. "What do you mean?" she said. "You don't know. I haven't told you yet. What do you suppose I have come for like this? What do you mean?"

He drew back as if he were stung.

"Well, what is it then?"

She threw two letters on the table.

"Letters? You came with those? Upon my word Miss Strange, it's very kind——"

He stopped short, looking from the letters to her and back again. Barbara shrank away, drawing herself together, but she resolutely fixed her eyes upon his face.

"Why—why—" stammered Harding, turning as pale as death, and then he dropped into a chair and began to laugh.

The letter that lay nearest to him was directed "R. Harding, Esq." in his own handwriting.

"It is my fault!" cried Barbara. "Tell me what I have done! It is something that matters very much! I knew it—I felt it was, the moment I found them. I came with them directly—I was so afraid you might have gone away. Don't laugh! Oh I know it matters dreadfully!"

Harding had had time to master himself.

"On the contrary," he said, "it doesn't matter at all."

He threw himself back in his chair, tilting it carelessly, and looking at Barbara.

"Doesn't it?" said the girl incredulously. "Doesn't it really?"

"Not a bit; why should it? How did it happen?"

Since everything was lost, he might as well hear her talk.

"It was my fault," Barbara repeated, still doubtfully. "I told you to put them on the hall table—it was the day we had those people to dinner."

Reynold nodded.

"I had my apron on, I was busy. I went out to speak to the gardener, and I thought I would give them to the boy, so I put them in my apron pocket, yours and one of mine, and I never thought of them again."

He had balanced his chair very dexterously, and was still looking at her.

"And they have been in that little apron pocket of yours ever since! Dear me, Miss Strange, I hope yours wasn't an important letter. I'm sorry for your correspondent."

"No, mine didn't matter. Mr. Harding, tell me about yours—tell me the truth! All the time I have been waiting here—and I thought you never would come!—I have felt more and more sure that yours did matter. I can't tell why, but I am certain. Let me know the worst, please. Tell me what I have done!"

"I don't know why you are so determined that you must have done something dreadful. I assure you I'm not in the habit of writing such terribly important letters as you seem to suppose."

Reynold, as he spoke, had been thinking how strange it was that people should excite themselves about their plans for the future. What child's play and chance it all was! You dreamed, and schemed, and worked it all out, you made allowance for everything except what was really going to happen, and suddenly it was all over, and there was nothing more to be said or done. Here, for instance, was Mitchelhurst Place blown away like a bubble! Possibly, somewhere, there might be found something in the shape of a house, a certain quantity of stone and timber, set on the face of the earth and called by that name, but had Reynold been opposite the gate at that moment he would have looked at it with indifference. His Mitchelhurst Place, the one he had thought about so much, the one he meant to give the best years of his life to win, was, it now appeared, a house of cards. Barbara and he had been mightily interested in setting it up, and really it had been a very lofty and presentable edifice, till Barbara forgot to put a letter in the post, and so it all tumbled down in a minute. It was a pity, certainly.

"Tell me the truth," said the girl's voice again, with its soft accent of entreaty.

"But you won't believe me! I tell you again, Miss Strange, it doesn't matter a bit. And again, if you like! And again!"

She looked fixedly at him, and stretched out her hand towards the letters.

"Very well," she said. "Shall I post these for you as I go back?"

He brought down his tilted chair with sudden emphasis, and sprang up.

"No!"

He had lost all, but at least his pride was safe. His mother and old Mr. Harding need never learn how nearly they had had their way. He knew what deadly offence he had given by the silence which would be taken for a calculated insult, but he would a thousand times rather face their anger than appeal to their pity with a lame story of a letter delayed. Besides, it was too late. Old Harding was a man of his word, the place was filled up, the chance was gone.

"No!" cried Reynold.

"There!" the girl exclaimed. "I knew it! I saw your face when you looked at the letters first—and now again! You do not choose to tell me what I have done. Very well, why don't you say so at once? You treat me as if I were a baby!"

Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth quivered, she looked childishly ready to cry.

"You do not choose to tell me what I have done." No, why should he? The one thing he saw clearly was that the mischief was irreparable; the less said about it, therefore, the better. There was but one avenue to fortune and love for him, and it was closed before his eyes by this night's revelation. Some men would have set to work at once to make another, but not Reynold Harding. He simply accepted the decree of Fate, and felt that he had half expected it all the time. And after all, what had Barbara done? Most likely he would have failed, even if his letter had been duly sent. His ill-luck would have dogged him on his way to wealth. Perhaps it was more merciful, when, with one sharp stroke, it spared him the long struggle. What right had he to find fault with Barbara, the timid messenger of misfortune? Was he to answer her brutally—"You have ruined me!"—and throw the weight of his failure on the little throbbing heart which had never been so burdened before? The very idea was absurd. It was absurd to look back, absurd to murmur; the dream of Mitchelhurst was over and done with, it was not worth a withered leaf. Let it lie where it had fallen.

"Miss Strange," he said, "I assure you you are making too much of this accident. Regrets are wasted on it. Mine was a business letter, it is true, but the chances are that it would have come to nothing. I hesitated a long while before I wrote it, and I am not sure it was not a mistake. Think no more about it."

"Will you write again?" she persisted.

"Oh, we shall see. I'm going up to town to-morrow—I can settle everything then. I don't think there will be any occasion to write."

He realised his utter severance from all his hopes when he heard himself say that he was going back to town. The girl who stood questioning him had kindled a strange brightness in his life, a light which revealed her own ripe-lipped, radiant face, and then with capricious breath had blown it out again, and left him in darkness and alone. He had lost her, and yet, by a fantastic contradiction, she had never been half so near to him as at that moment. "You are deceiving me!" she said, sorrowfully. "Don't think I don't know it! Oh, if there were anything I could do to make amends!" And in her pain and pity, and her certainty that in some unspoken way she had wronged him more than she could understand, she unconsciously swayed towards Reynold with her eyes and lips uplifted. She wanted to quiet the aching of her regret. She wanted a channel through which her over-wrought feelings, might pour in atoning self-sacrifice.

He knew that she did not love him, though she herself was ignorant of her own heart, but he also knew that he might have her in his arms if he chose, acquiescent, remorseful, submissive, with her head upon his breast. That one moment was his. Through the fierce throbbing of his pulses he was oddly conscious of all his surroundings—the little room which smelt of paraffin and of unused furniture, the letters lying on the magenta table-cloth, the slippery little horse-hair sofa from which Barbara had risen to meet him; everything was mean, dreary, and hideous. But he had only to make one step across the patchwork rug of red and black, only to ask her to share that hopeless future of his, and he might take her to himself in her pliant grace, and his lips would meet hers!

He was her master, yet he stood still drawing his breath deeply, and eyeing the parti-coloured rug as if it were a yawning gulf between them. He would not cross it, he would say no word of love or of reproach to spoil her after-life, but his soul was bitter as gall. At that moment he felt himself strong enough to give up everything, but he could not be tender. Was she in later days to remember him vaguely as a poor sullen fellow whose schemes and talk came to nothing, who was too helpless to make his way in the world? Was she, perhaps, to try to do something for him—to recommend him, for instance, to some friend who wanted a tutor for a dull boy? Was she to give him her little dole of pity and friendship? No, by Heaven! he would not have that, when he might have taken herself. Why should he suffer in silence, and not inflict one answering touch of pain, if only that he might feel his power to wound? She was trying him too cruelly with that innocent offer of atonement, which meant so much more than she understood.

Because he would not speak the "Marry me, Barbara!" which was at his very lips, he controlled his voice and asked with an air of polite inquiry, "What is it that you so kindly wish to do for me?"

"What? Oh, I don't know!" she faltered in confusion. "What can I do? I don't know. Only if there were anything—if there ever could be——"

He looked at her, gravely at first, then with a smile that deepened slowly. She met his glance with her appealing eyes, but she could not meet his smile. Its derision reached her like a stinging lash, and she shrank away. "I wish I had never come!" she said in a low tone. All her sweet compassionate longing was driven back upon her heart by his mocking smile, and turned to something that choked her. "I wish I hadn't!" she repeated in a stifled voice, and went towards the door, eager to escape.

Reynold perceived that he had succeeded admirably. It seemed unlikely that Barbara would ever come to him again.

A sudden roar of wind in the chimney startled them both, and recalled him to some consciousness of the outer world. He took his hat from the table, and held the door for her to pass.

"Good-bye," she panted, still with her eyes averted.

"I'm coming with you."

"No, you are not!"

"Pardon me, but I think I am."

"No!" Barbara repeated. He smiled, but followed her. She turned on the stairs in angry helplessness and faced him. "But I would rather you didn't!" she exclaimed.

"Did you come alone?"

"Yes, and I can go back alone."

"But Mr. Hayes—what did he say?"

"He is out, he didn't know. Oh!" with a terrified glance, "if he should be back first!"

Harding unlatched the outer door, and she flew out into the rushing wind. He was at her side in a moment. "Take my arm," he said.

"I won't!" cried the girl, angrily. "Why don't you leave me when I ask you?"

"Because you can't go all through Mitchelhurst alone this stormy night—and so late," said Reynold, raising his voice to dominate an especially furious gust.

Barbara caught at Mrs. Simmonds's railings to steady herself. "Thank you!" she shouted, "it's very kind of you to remind me that I ought not to be here at this time of night!" She felt as if her words were torn out of her mouth and whirled away. She ended with something that sounded like a sob, but she herself hardly knew what it was, or what became of it.

"Nonsense!" said Reynold, as if he were hailing her from an almost hopeless distance. "You must let me see you safely to the gate." The gust subsided a little. "You must indeed," he added in a more natural tone.

"Will you leave me?" she persisted. "It's all I ask you!"

"Very well," he answered, angrily. "But I suppose Mitchelhurst Street is as free to me as to you, and I don't see that you can want more than half of it. Take whichever side you please, and I'll go the other."

"Good night," she said, ignoring this declaration. He waited only to ascertain her intention, and then strode across the way to the further path.

They walked through the village in this fashion, two dusky shapes, grotesquely blown and hustled by the strong wind. A capricious blast, catching Barbara's dress, would send her scudding helplessly for a few yards before she could regain her self-control. The tall figure on the other side of the road, clutching at his hat, would quicken his long steps to keep up with her involuntary increase of speed. When she contrived to pull herself up he slackened his pace, timing his movements with shadow-like accuracy and persistence.

The clouds were flying in such quick succession that for some time there was no decided break through which the moon might show her face. The heavens were a vast moving canopy, glimmering with diffused light, that grew to spectral whiteness now and again, when the veil was thin over the hidden orb. Harding blessed the obscurity which might save Miss Strange from the wondering comments of Mitchelhurst. They only met three or four men, fighting their homeward way against the wind, and, country fashion, keeping the centre of the road. One of these caught sight of Reynold, and, staring at him, shouted a jovial "Good night," to which the young man, glad to monopolise his attention, made a courteous reply, while the slim little figure, on the other side of the way, stole along in the shadow of the houses unobserved. Presently they passed beyond the village street and turned into the road which led up to the Place, where the high banks sheltered them a little, and they did not meet the wind so directly. Barbara kept to the hedgerow on the left, Reynold skirted that on the right, and though the narrower way enforced a rather closer companionship, they walked with an air of indifference as serene as the stormy night permitted.

When they reached the little slope at the gate, Harding halted. Barbara had to cross the road, and while she did so he stood perfectly still, not attempting to lessen the distance between them by one step. The wild noise of the blast in the tree tops made a kind of rushing accompaniment to the silence. All at once the ragged clouds parted, and the moon sailed suddenly into a blue rift. Everything became coldly and brilliantly distinct, even to the lock of the wrought-iron gate, towards which Barbara stretched an ungloved hand. As she touched it she hesitated.

"Mr. Harding," she said.

There was a lull between two gusts, and the fury which had preceded it made it seem like an absolute and charmed tranquillity. Reynold advanced at her summons with a slightly exaggerated obedience. The moon was at his back and his black shadow seemed to hurry before him, to throw itself at the girl's feet, and then to slip past her through the iron bars, as if it would creep into Mitchelhurst Place, and take possession by stealth.

"Why did you make me angry?" said Barbara in a tremulous voice. "Why did we come through the village in this idiotic way?"

"I was under the impression that you declined my escort," he replied, with conscious meekness.

"You make me behave rudely—why do you? I went to your lodgings to tell you how sorry I was, and to ask your pardon for my carelessness, and it seems as if I went for nothing but to quarrel. Any one would think so. Perhaps you think so?"

"No," said Reynold, smiling, "I don't. And it isn't a very serious quarrel, is it?"

"Don't sneer at me any more, or you will make me hateful!" cried Barbara. "I can't bear it! I will never ask you again if there is anything I can do—never! You needn't have shown me how you despised me: you might have been a little kinder when I went to you like that!"

She swallowed down a sob.

"Really I'm very sorry if anything I said—" he began.

"Oh never mind now what you said or did! I know it, and that's enough. I won't give you another chance, but I won't quarrel. It hurts me, it's horrid, it's worse than Uncle Hayes. Do let us part friends—or—or—something like friends—not in this miserable way!"

"With all my heart."

She took her hand from the gate and turned towards him.

"Say you forgive me then! For everything!"

"Ah! that I can't do," Reynold replied, finding a kind of distorted pleasure in playing with her earnestness. "I'm not sure, yet, that there is anything to forgive."

"Forgive me on the chance!"

"Oh no, I couldn't presume to do that! It would be a chance whether you forgave me afterwards for my impertinence."

A sudden blast nearly sent her tottering into his arms. She recovered herself, looked at him in speechless indignation as if he had ordered it, pushed open the gate, and the black tracery of bars swung back into its place, dividing them.

Reynold stood where she had left him, gazing after her. She went a little way up the drive, and then lingered, half turning as if she thought some one had called. The ground on which she stood was dry and white in the moonshine, and dappled with fantastic, moving shadows. The little old trees fought against the wind, swaying their bare, misshapen arms above her head. The stone balls on either side of the entrance gleamed like skulls in the pale light, guarding the avenue to the sepulchral house, with its glassy rows of windows. For a moment the picture was as clear as day, with Barbara standing in the middle of the road; then a great wave of stormy cloud rolled up and overtopped the moon, and in the dusky confusion she vanished.

CHAPTER IV.
REYNOLD'S REGRET.

With the passing of that gleam of moonlight it seemed to Reynold Harding that Mitchelhurst Place disappeared finally into the abyss that waits for all created things. Where the house, in its curious ghastly whiteness, had stood a moment earlier, was now nothing but baffling gloom, and the very gate vanished into the shadows, as if there were no need of any substantial barrier between him and the lost vision. The scene had closed with dramatic suddenness, and he felt that the play was played out, but how long he stood staring at the dusky curtain he did not know.

At last he turned, and made his way down the dim road. The bewildering obscurity seemed to press upon his sight, and he quickened his pace to gain the corner where his glance might rest on the scattered lamps of Mitchelhurst Street—little flames shuddering and struggling in the gale. He had gone about half the distance to his lodgings, when he saw two advancing eyes of fire at the end of the street. Nearer and nearer they came, but, owing to the clamour of the wind, the noise of wheels was inaudible till the carriage was close upon him where he paused on the sidewalk. Then for a moment there was a gleam of light upon the road, and in it appeared, as in a kind of magic-lantern picture, a sorry-looking grey horse, travelling reluctantly beyond his stable at the inn, a shabby driver, buttoned closely against the wind, with his hat pulled low on his brows, a flashing of revolving wheels, and the black silhouette of the Mitchelhurst fly. Harding looked after it till he saw the lamp shine for a moment, with sudden brightness, as the carriage turned, and then go out. After this fashion was Mr. Hayes, too, lost in the darkness which had swallowed everything else, and Reynold's gaze conveyed a not unkindly farewell.

The night gathered and deepened in the village, and the great starless dome bent its vaulted gloom over the half-dozen lights which glimmered on cottages and cabbage plots. Now and again a dog would bark, or the wind would pass with a wilder wail, and the sign of the Rothwell Arms would creak discordantly. The people to whom that little hollow was the world, lay close and safe in their houses, wakened, perhaps, by the gale to hope that no tiles would fall, and no damage be done in the gardens, listening drowsily for awhile, and then turning in their beds to sleep again.

It was not till the moon was low in the west that it broke once more through the clouds, and, peering in at a small uncurtained window, revealed the white face of a man who sat by it, with drooping head and listless hands. He was not asleep, but he did not move. With that same glance the moon espied St. Michael in the lancet window, sedulously trampling on his little dragon, while the old clock above his head recorded the passing of the hours with a labour of slow strokes. Those two, and those two only, did the moon see in all Mitchelhurst, and then vanished again and left them, till the wind went down, and the day came slowly over the grey fields, with a deluge of autumnal rain.

Mrs. Simmonds was sorry to lose her lodger, and sorry that the weather should be so bad, and that he should look so pale. She busied herself about his breakfast, and brought him the local paper with the air of a successful prophet.

"I told you there'd be another to-day, sir," she said as she laid it down, "and here it is!" Reynold briefly acknowledged the attention, but he never touched it. "So set as he was upon that other one!" said Mrs. Simmonds later to her husband.

Simmonds suggested that he might have found something that specially interested him in the other paper, somebody dead and leaving money, may be, or somebody mysteriously disappeared, or something—he looked as if he'd had a shock of some sort. But Mrs. Simmonds was inclined to think that he was most likely upset by the thought of his railway journey. She knew it was all she could do to swallow a bit, if she were going anywhere, with all her packing on her mind, and very likely the gentleman was of the same way of feeling. As to a shock, he hadn't got any shock out of the paper, she knew. He might have had some bad news in the letters Miss Strange brought him, for he told her with his own lips that they were very important, and that was why she came with them herself.

"You see, the old gentleman was out," said Mrs. Simmonds, "so I suppose she didn't know what to do."

"I shouldn't think the old gentleman would be best pleased," said Simmonds.

The good woman considered for a moment.

"Well, I sha'n't tell him," she announced finally.

Harding drove to the nearest station in a gig. The rain was not so heavy then, the downpour had become a persistent drizzle. Nevertheless the village looked drenched and dismal enough as he bade it good-bye, and swung round the corner of the churchyard wall, where the yellow weeds stood up in the crevices behind the slant grey veil, and the great black-plumaged yews let fall their heavy tears upon the graves. In another minute a clump of trees hid the square tower and the leaden roof, and Mitchelhurst was left behind. But the young man looked right and left at the wet hedgerows till they reached a spot where a ploughed field rose above the bank on one side, while on the other a deep bramble-grown ditch divided the road from the sodden meadows. He fixed his eyes on that. It was exactly a week that Wednesday since he first met Barbara Strange.

Late that afternoon he walked into a dull room in a dull suburb of London, and a woman who stood in the window, snipping the dead fronds from a homesick-looking fern, turned to meet him. There was no mistaking the relationship. Allowing for the differences of sex and age, they were as like as they could possibly be, except that in every glance and gesture the woman showed a fuller and richer life than did the man. There was something of imperious grace in her movements which made him seem awkward, hesitating, and constrained. She suffered him to touch her cheek with his lips, but showed no inclination to speak first.

"Back again, you see," he said, drawing a chair to the hearth-rug.

"Yes. I should think you must be wet."

"Damp, I suppose."

He glanced round the room. The flock paper, the red curtains, the grimy windows, the smoky fire, had the strange novelty which the most familiar things will sometimes put on. The atmosphere was loaded with acrid fog, and the blackness of the great city. He raised his foot and warmed a muddy boot, while his thoughts went back to the stateliness and airy purity of the old manor house, where the great logs cracked and glowed upon the hearths.

Mrs. Harding came and rested her elbow on the chimney-piece, looking down at her son.

"I left Mitchelhurst this morning," said he, after a pause.

"Yes? Well, I suppose you had seen enough of it."

"It was time to come home, anyhow," he said.

"You had business in town?"

The tone and words would have served as well for any chance visitor.

"Yes—naturally."

He put the other foot to the fire by way of a change.

"I did not know," said Mrs. Harding. "I have nothing to do with your business. It certainly isn't mine. You are always welcome to be here as much as you please, but of course you will attend to your own affairs."

Reynold made no answer.

"You are your own master," she continued, after a short silence. "I have recognised that for some years. I have not expected you to go my way."

"One must go one's own way, I suppose," said the young man.

"And if I expected you to show some slight consideration for me, in taking the way you have chosen—I was mistaken!"

He stirred the fire, and replaced the poker, but did not look at her or speak.

"You know what I mean?" she demanded.

"Perfectly."

"Reynold, you might have written! Your uncle's offer deserved a word. I do not say you might have accepted it, but you might have refused it courteously. Was that so much to ask? You have insulted him wantonly, and he will never pardon it. After all, he is your father's brother, and an old man. Reynold, you should have written!"

He did not raise his eyes from the burning coals.

"Well," he said, "I did propose to write before I went away."

She winced at the thrust.

"I was wrong!" she owned, with bitter passion in her voice. "It would have been better."

"As things have turned out," said Reynold, "I think it would."

Poor little Barbara! If that angry, dark-eyed woman had known how near the fulfilment of her hopes had been, and lost by how pitiful a chance? But the secret was safe.

Kate Harding drew a long breath.

"Well, I have no more to say about it. Perhaps it is best that we should understand each other. You knew how your silence would wound me; it was deliberate—it was calculated. Well, it has wounded me, I don't deny it. But it is all over now, and you will never wound me again. Do what you please, now and always—as you have done."

He signified his attention sullenly, with a slight movement of his head.

"It is all over," she continued. "The situation is filled up, and nothing would ever induce Robert Harding to suffer you to enter his office—not if you offered to sweep it! He will not trouble you any more, and, since the matter is ended, let it never be mentioned between us again."

It was easy to see that she was, as she had said, deeply wounded, and there was a tragical intensity in her speech. Her son made answer with the same mute gesture of assent.

Presently she moved away, and for a few minutes she busied herself about the room. She gathered up the leaves she had cut off, put away two or three things that were lying about, and then came back to him.

"Dinner will be ready at the usual time," she said, in a cold, everyday voice. "And then we can talk——of other things."

"Yes," Reynold answered, with a start, looking up from his reverie. He had been thinking of the evening before. When he went into the little sitting-room after his walk, and Barbara rose up from the sofa to meet him, he had been startled, she was confused and frightened, and they had forgotten the ordinary greetings. And then they had talked, he had sat looking at her, he had stood up and held himself aloof—how had he done it? Well, it had been for Barbara's sake. Afterwards they had gone through Mitchelhurst together. Together? No, absurdly apart, with the breadth of the street between them. And at last they had talked at the gate, and he had vexed her, and she had hurried away without a word of farewell. It seemed to him now that he had never meant that. It was impossible he could have meant it. Why, they had never shaken hands, he had never touched her, and he remembered that she had no glove on, he had seen her hand in the moonlight on the latch of the gate. She had said, "Let us part friends," he had only to consent.

It is well that we cannot recall our moments of temptation. Reynold had been able to pain her then with a jest, he had been strong enough in his bitterness of heart to let her go without a word, but now as he sat staring at the fire, idly clasping his knee, he regretted his strength. If he could have taken Barbara's hand he would, and the long fingers, loosely knit together, suddenly tightened at the thought. A woman's small hand would not have had much chance of escape from such a clasp as that.

But at that moment his mother aroused him from his musings.

CHAPTER V.
LOVE'S MESSENGER.

The first week of December had not gone by, and already the winter had set in. Mr. Pryor, as he walked from the vicarage up the lonely road to Mitchelhurst Place, said to himself that it was a most unpleasant afternoon. Of his own free will he would not have left his fireside, but Destiny had turned him out, and he went feebly and heavily along the iron road, feeling as if Nature were in a mood of freezing malice and took pleasure in his sufferings. The air was still, yet it came very keenly to his pallid face, his feet were cold, the hand that held his umbrella was remarkably cold, a red-edged manual of prayers and devotional readings, tucked under his left arm, showed a tendency to slip, and altogether Mr. Pryor had a half-numbed sense that it was not fair that any one should want him in such weather.

The sky was grey, a chilly fog narrowed the horizon, and all the hedges and boughs in the little frozen landscape were covered with hoarfrost. It was like a dream of a dead spring. Every little clump of trees was an orchard, white with sterile blossoming, spectral flowers which would vanish as suddenly as they had come. Every sound was deadened, till it was almost startling to come upon a man at work by the wayside, lopping hoary branches from the hedge, and flinging them down, with all their delicate tangle of white sprays, upon the frosted grass. It was a grim task to be the only sign of energy in that ghostlike world; such a task as in an old picture Death himself might have undertaken. Happily, however, for good Mr. Pryor's nerves, it was the face of an ordinary flesh and blood labourer, with the breath steaming from his gaping mouth, that was lifted as he went by.

The vicar crept, shivering, up the avenue to the house, which was more than ever like a great white tomb. He asked the servant who admitted him how Mr. Hayes was that afternoon.

"Much the same, thank you, sir," said the woman, showing him into the yellow drawing-room, and putting a piece of wood on the fire, "I'll tell Miss Strange you are here."

He stood miserably on the rug, looking down into the fender, and squeezing his red-edged book under his arm, till at the sound of the opening door he turned and saw Barbara. The girl came forward quickly, and touched the fumbling fingers which he held out, as she uttered a word of greeting.

"Mr. Hayes is much the same, they tell me," said the clergyman in a melancholy voice.

"Yes," said Barbara, "I suppose there isn't any difference. But I think anyhow he isn't any worse. Mamma is with him, and he was taking some beef-tea just now"—Mr. Pryor nodded grave approval of the beef-tea—"but he'll be very glad to see you in a few minutes. Won't you sit down?"

He sat down, nursing the book, which had a narrow ribbon hanging out of it.

"I hope Mrs. Strange is pretty well—as well as can be expected?" he said, after a pause. "Not over-fatigued, I trust?"

"Oh, no; I don't think so," the girl replied. "Mamma seems very well."

"Ah, quite so. She bears up, she bears up. Well, that is what we must all try to do—to bear up. It is the only thing."

"Yes," said Barbara. She was not quite sure that she ought to have said that her mother seemed very well. "Of course it is a trying time," she added, by way of softening the possibly indiscreet admission.

"Certainly, certainly—very trying for you both," Mr. Pryor agreed. Yet even to his dull eyes it was apparent that this very trying time had not dimmed the bright face opposite. There was a peculiar radiance and warmth of youth about Barbara that afternoon, a glow of life which forced itself on his perception. She did not smile, she was very quiet, and yet it seemed as if some new delight, some unspoken hope, had awakened within her, quickening and kindling her to the very finger-tips. She sat demurely in her low chair, with her face turned towards the window, but there was a soft flame of colour on her cheek, and a light in her eyes when she lifted her drooping lashes. In that great, cold house, through which the shadow of death was creeping, she was the incarnation of life and promise, a curious contrast to her surroundings. It would hardly have seemed stranger if suddenly, in the desolate world without, one had come on a burning bush of pomegranate flowers among the cold frost-blossoms of the Mitchelhurst hedges.

Mr. Pryor felt something of all this. He did not quite like it. Of course he did not want to see the girl haggard and weary, but he was so chilly, as he sat there by the fireside with his book on his knee, that it seemed to him as if the swift, light pulsations of youth were hardly proper. He would have been more at his ease with Barbara if she had had a slight toothache, or a cold in her head. He felt it his duty to depress her a little, quietly, as she sat there.

"The hour of Death's approach is a very solemn one, even for the bystanders," Mr. Pryor began, after a moment's consideration.

Barbara said, "Yes it was," with an almost disconcerting readiness.

"Yes, yes, and we should endeavour to profit by it. We should spend it, not only in regrets for those who are about to be taken from us, but in thoughts of the future."

Barbara's red lips parted in another "Yes." The future—she was thinking of it. It was easier to think of it than of the old man who was dying.

"Of the future," Mr. Pryor continued, caressing the smooth leather of his book with his ungloved hand, and softly pulling the pendent ribbon, "of the time when we shall be lying—yes, yes, each one of us—as our friend is now." He glanced up at the ceiling, to indicate that he meant Mr. Hayes, taking his beef-tea in the bed-room on the first floor.

The girl said nothing, but looked meditatively at the folds of her dress, as if she were in church. It would have been pleasanter if Mr. Pryor had brought a funeral sermon out of his table drawer, and could have gone on without these embarrassing pauses.

"When our hour is at hand," he said at last, "as—as it must be one of these days. How shall we feel then, Miss Strange?"

Barbara didn't know.

"No," said the vicar, "we don't know. But we must think—we must think. Try to picture yourself in your uncle's position—what would your life look to you if you were lying there now?"

She looked up with a sudden startled flash. "I haven't had my life—it would only look like a beginning," she said with a vision as of a rose-garlanded doorway to a vault. "If I were going to die directly I couldn't feel like Uncle Hayes."

The passionate speech awoke the clergyman's instinct of assent. "No, no," he said, "certainly not. Certainly not." At that moment a message came: "Would Mr. Pryor kindly step up-stairs?" and he went, not altogether sorry to bring his little discourse to a close.

Barbara, left to herself, sat gazing at the window, till at last the hinted smile, which had troubled her companion, betrayed itself in a tender, changeful curve. "Adrian!" she said softly, under her breath. "Oh, how could I? How could I? Adrian! and I thought you didn't care!"

She was restless with happiness. She sprang up, and walked to and fro, too glad at heart to complain of the walls that held her, and yet feeling that she needed air and freedom for her joy. She leaned against the window, and looked out at the wintry world, murmuring Adrian's name against the chilly pane. There was no voice to give her back her tender speech, yet she hardly missed it. No praise is so sweet to a woman as the reproaches she heaps upon herself for an unjust suspicion of her lover. To defend him to others is a mixture of joy and pain, but to feel that she has wronged him, and that to trust him is safer than to trust her doubts, is a passionate delight.

This joy had come to Barbara that very morning. She had been sitting in her uncle's room, reading a novel by the fireside, while the old man slept, as she thought. She softly turned page after page till a feeble voice broke the silence. "Where's your mamma?" said Mr. Hayes.

"Down-stairs, writing letters. Do you want her?" And Barbara stood ready to go.

"No, I don't want her. Writing her daily bulletins, eh? Well, well. What's the time? You haven't given me my medicine."

"It's very nearly time," said Barbara, with a glance at the clock. There was a little clinking of bottle and glass, and then she came to the bedside, and stood looking down at the wrinkled, fallen face among the pillows. "Can I help you?" she asked.

"Wait a bit, can't you?" said the old man.

She waited, looking aside, yet watching for the slightest movement on his part. Her soft young fingers closed round the half-filled glass, and his dim eyes rested on them. Presently he raised himself with an effort, and the girl put another pillow behind him. He stretched out a trembling, dingy-white hand, carried the glass to his lips a little uncertainly, and emptied it.

She set it down. "Shall I take away that pillow?" she asked.

"No—wait."

Barbara, after a minute, shifted her position, and stood by the carved post at the foot of the bed, while her thoughts went back to her novel. She was not heartless, she was only young. Her uncle had never been very much to her, and she found it as difficult to concentrate her mind on this melancholy business of sickness and dissolution as if it were a sermon. And yet she did sincerely desire to behave properly, and to feel properly, too, if it could be managed.

The little old man rested awhile, sitting up in his bed. He perceived that the girl's thoughts were far away. He could keep her standing there as long as he pleased, a motionless figure against the faded green curtains, but he could not narrow her world to his sick-room. Perhaps for that very reason he felt a desire to awaken her from her reverie.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Nineteen."

The answer was given with a lifting of her long lashes. She had not expected any question about herself.

"Nineteen?"

"Yes. At least I shall be nineteen next month."

A month more or less made little difference to Barbara.

"As much as that?" he said. "Barbara, perhaps I ought to say something before I go."

Her attention was effectually aroused, and her brilliant gaze rested on the dull, waxen mask before her. But after a moment his eyes fell away from hers.