Cover art

FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE

BY

MAY BATEMAN

AUTHOR OF
'THE ALTAR OF LIFE,' 'THE GLOW-WORM,' ETC.

WARWICK COLONIAL LIBRARY

Sole Agents for India and the British Colonies
HODDER & STOUGHTON
1908

Dramatic and all other rights reserved

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

TO

MRS. GEORGE ALEXANDER

IN MEMORY OF
NEVER-FAILING KINDNESS

CONTENTS

PART I

[THE GOAD]

PART II

[THE SPUR]

PART III

[THE BETRAYAL]

PART IV

[THE BESTOWAL]

PART V

[VICTORY]

PART I

THE GOAD

"I have not, as some do, bought penitence with pleasure!"—SHELLEY.

"When the soul arms for battle she goes forth alone."—LYTTON.

FARQUHARSON OF GLUNE

CHAPTER I

"The potter, also tempering soft earth, with labour fashioneth every vessel for our service, and of the same clay he maketh both vessels that are for clean uses, and likewise such as serve to the contrary; but what is the use of these, the potter is the judge."—Wisdom (Douay Version).

Two men, leisurely climbing a steep moor in the north of Perthshire, stopped near the summit to read a sign-post which pointed out the way to Glune.

No one was in sight. Poverty held Glune in bondage, and such attractions as she yet could offer were not of the type which appeal to casual trippers and excursionists, eager for gossip and refreshment after a stiff walk up-hill. For a solitary shop, from which emerged the pervading smells of leather, peppermint and onions, represented all that local enterprise could compass, even at Bruchill, the nearest village. Cottage upon cottage was empty, and those that were still inhabited, showed evidence of neglect. Women standing at their doors, stared dully at the unaccustomed travellers; children playing in the ill-kept gardens were heavy-eyed and pallid. No joy of life, no hospitality was offered. The most persevering Bohemian or antiquarian, drawn to the desolate spot by love of adventure or tradition, was eventually pulled up short at sight of the empty lodge, the impenetrable castle gates, high and with narrow grilles, which shut in the vast wilderness of tangled growth and ruin.

Grief and sorrow had concentrated about Glune, until, for Scotsmen, it had become a second Escorial. Inanimate things are as tragic in their way as human beings. A man or woman, however crushed and broken, has moments of quickened vitality in which hope springs, even if mockingly. Otherwise brains would snap. But a room which a strong personality has made vital with its presence, becomes temporarily as a place of the dead. The Escorial does not depend on shape or colouring for its impression of gloom; its air breathes tragedy on the tenderest April morning. Glune had something of that same relentless force of character which makes the Escorial one with the relentless character of its founder. But whereas jolting trains and the pitiless volubility of Cook's guides bring the palace in view a full hour before you reach it, there was but a single point from which Glune actually could be seen, so sheltered was it from inquisitive eyes by the reserve and mystery of wood and hill.

Had there been one to see, he might have wondered what freak of fate had led the present travellers to a spot so lonely and obscure, and again, what chances had combined in fellowship two men outwardly quite incompatible. Each of them had the hall-mark of the public school upon him, but there their likeness ended. For the elder was of the type which willingly pays a guinea to advertise its arrivals and departures in the Morning Post; while the younger was a mere boy, whose heart as yet stirred only to the love of sport. Explorers, shooters of big game, men who had dared and done, were Cummings' models. Where Brand, his companion, was hourly handicapped by ill-health, the young man's greatest trial as yet was his total inability to achieve what could be called a moustache by any but the most biassed relative.

Brand was indeed insignificant, one degree only removed from actual deformity. His mouth twisted uncontrollably when he smiled, and one shoulder was higher than the other, although a well-known tailor had done his best to remedy the defect. His eyes, set close together, were unusually light in tone, and apt to evade the glance direct. He had a trim Vandyke beard, and was dressed neatly and well. His complexion was pale, and he bore his single eye-glass as one who tolerates the defects it magnifies, because he is convinced that his Creator's designs are generally crude. Some women found him interesting; the more refined shrank back from him instinctively, and wondered why. On the other hand, his knowledge of great cities and their haunts at nightfall, and an unusual memory and gift of tongues lent him an air of distinction which was admired and imitated by younger men within his circle. Cummings, for instance, thought he leaned upon a stick rather from choice than necessity, and would have given a fortune to exchange his own stereotyped courtesies for Brand's easy assurance.

For the lad, tall and athletic, with a trick of blushing, had yet to find himself. The pages of his life, so far, were singularly blank. He had the sensitive nostrils and frank gaze of a man susceptible—almost too susceptible—to influence and impressions, yet good breeding had often made him elude opportunities which less artistic natures coveted.

That beauty of any kind would sway him you saw at a glance; beauty of soul and shape, Divine and human. Had he not in certain instances been kept back by the fitness of things, he would have invariably given himself joyously to its influence, as a swimmer to the sea, playing with it, while knowing that it had the power to drown. His eyes were a dreamer's eyes, able to see the Beatific Vision on Clapham Common—a faculty not often met with in a man so broad of chest and lean of flank. So far as personal courage went, Cummings' might have carried him through almost any form of mediæval torture, except the deprivation of his means of washing. At Eton and Sandhurst he had passed through many dubious escapades unscathed, delightfully blind to "scum and rot," as he mentally summed up certain vagaries of his companions.

But he was now of the age which believes worldly experience to be a necessary factor of life. In the last few days he had begun to be ashamed of his own ignorance of inessential things.

It diverted Brand to play with, some said corrupt, such natures. He had won the lad as tactfully as a woman might have done, luring him step by step until confidence was established. Once that was done, the rest was easy. Little by little the sanctuary of Cummings' thoughts was invaded; his circumstances, his surroundings, his hopes betrayed, until his soul lay naked in the day. Another man, with so definite an end in view as Brand had, might have hastened matters and spoilt all. He made no such mistake.

"Looks and means," he said now dreamily, in the quiet high-bred voice, which was one of his most valuable assets. "You ought to do well in life, with both in your grasp. Few women withstand either, and none both; and later on you'll realize that success in life nearly always augurs a swish of frills and furbelows in the background." He looked at Cummings critically. "Remember what wins women wins fame. She's wanton too. You have more than your share of good things, my dear fellow. The only point you really lack is confidence, the recognition that you can hold your own as well in a crowd as in a tête-à-tête. If a man doesn't believe in himself he'll never get even a woman to believe in him."

"Oh, come now, I always think I'm such an awful ass," Cummings protested. His conversation was still in the ejaculatory stage. But he was pleasantly excited. What boy of his age would be unsusceptible to the flattery of being sought after by an older man? A chance meal in an anglers' inn, where space and table-cloths were equally limited, had given Brand his looked-for opportunity; a glass or two of Burgundy, and the discovery of a remote connection, warmed the acquaintance into friendship. Across the border such kinship made a closer tie than south of the Tweed, Brand asserted. The two men joined forces on the strength of the statement. Long walks and rides were the result—the first links in a chain which was to rivet more than one future.

"Men of my age are not apt to make mistakes in character," the elder man continued, after a pause. Cummings, eagerly listening, failed to see the irony of his tone. "You say you haven't brains enough for diplomacy; I beg to differ. That's a career worthy of a man of influence, like you. With a good private income such as you have, and Calvert to back you—why, you could pull the strings of the world, if some one showed you how to set about it, and incidentally have a good time."

"We've always gone in for the Army or the Church in our family, you see," said Cummings, simply disposing of the question. "As to what I've got in the money line it isn't worth speaking of; two thousand a year doesn't go very far in the Cavalry. Besides, of course my uncle might marry, and he's not absolutely bound to leave me his money; in any case I never count on it, though I'm supposed to be his heir. Rather a low-down game waiting for a dead man's shoes, don't you think?" He stopped awkwardly, finding it rather difficult to frame the right words in the face of Brand's mocking smile.

By now they had left the main road, striking a sheep track across the narrow pass which separated Glune from distant Bruchill. Even the broad road had been singularly deserted; here, neither browsing cattle nor sheep broke the gloomy lines of the spurs, deepening from purple to indigo. Grey clouds hung low, heavy with tears. The silence was eerie; one of the two men felt its spell. To detach yourself from man is often to come near to God, but there was something sinister in this unsmiling landscape, which savoured more of the powers of darkness than of light.

So far the two had walked in close companionship, but now, quickened by the wider life of the hills, and lashed by the mountain air, Cummings unconsciously set a pace which kept time with his rapid thoughts. Brand's words fell meaninglessly in his ears, like pebbles thrown to lure a terrier but sucked in by the tide before the dog had time to reach them.

Brand tried to keep up with his companion, but failed. His forehead grew clammy with the effort. He broke down at last, catching his breath with a choking cry that pulled up Cummings abruptly in his hot pursuit of fugitive visions.

The boy turned, scarlet and confused. "I'm awfully sorry I dashed off like that. Here, take a pull from the flask. Do forgive me, old chap. It was beastly bad form of me forgetting——" He stopped in embarrassment, taken aback by the curious change that broke out in dull white patches on Brand's face at his words.

But Brand was of the world worldly, not likely to lose the object he had in view because of a temporary obstacle which tact could bridge. There was no trace of resentment in his answer.

"You must remember my grey hairs. I'm quite ready to rest if you are. There's lots of time, and you've had rather a strenuous week, I gather? Although I'm a distant relation, I've only actually met Martin Calvert once, and then I found him a tough customer. Isn't a visit there rather a test of endurance? A bit of a bore between ourselves, eh? No leniency to one's little failings to be met with in that quarter. People say blood is thicker than water; one's relations always think it means that one is thicker-skinned."

"My uncle has been most awfully good to me, you know," Cummings said, with some embarrassment.

Brand flicked his cigar ash lightly.

"A millionaire's virtues can be seen with the naked eye, my good fellow. Once you step into the dead man's shoes of which we were speaking just now, your friends and enemies alike will find you possessed of a thousand admirable qualities, to whose existence they were blind before. 'To him that hath shall be given' is about the only scriptural injunction that society ever lays to heart, you know."

"Oh, come now, that's a bit satirical," cried Cummings impatiently, flushing again. The pass had narrowed into a gloomy gorge, through which it was impossible for two to walk abreast. The younger man stopped short, glad of an excuse to change the conversation.

"What extraordinary country! Nothing but waste land. What's wrong with the soil? It was right enough by Bruchill. Whom on earth does this belong to?"

It was said of Henry Brand in Pall Mall clubs, that were he hurled headlong into the heart of Central Africa he would know the name and sum up the exact precedence of any tribe he came across.

He answered deliberately. "There are about thirty thousand acres of this desert all told. And it belongs to Farquharson of Glune.

"Farquharson of Glune," Cummings repeated. The name rang familiarly. "Didn't a Farquharson once marry one of the Kilmaurs? Stay—I seem to remember some story—wasn't there a rumour——" He broke off abruptly, knitting his brow.

"Stories! There have always been stories about Glune and its inmates, past and present," said Brand. "Tragedies mostly. The Farquharsons of Glune are all men of violence; leaders of forlorn hopes; knights-errant to distressed damsels, saints or outcasts; fierce heroes from whose doings tiresome bards make tiresome music—you know the sort of thing."

Cummings not only knew "the sort of thing," but held it very sacred, so he kept his peace.

"Well, what's the present Farquharson of Glune thinking about to let good land lie fallow like this?" he asked.

"Farquharson of Glune is about ten years old," said Brand. He gave his explanations complacently, with the air of a broker propitiating his client with some valuable tip. "He lives with his mother, and they're poor. There are two kinds of poverty as you know, the poverty of the man who sells one or two horses out of his racing stud, and stops playing bridge if the points are more than half-a-crown a hundred, and the poverty which slowly starves itself to death to keep inviolate the terraces and gardens and bedchambers which Royalty has—honoured with its presence."

He stopped to cut and light another cigar; he was a connoisseur in cigars, the bill for which was paid by other men.

"The last is the kind of poverty the Farquharsons could tell you all about—if they told anybody anything."

"Poor souls! And, meantime, this all runs to waste. The timber's excellent—why don't they sell it? Does Kilmaurs know anything about it all? I thought Scotch people prided themselves on hanging together. The clan's rich enough. Why can't somebody buy——"

The elder man interrupted with a laugh.

"Buy Glune! Mrs. Farquharson would starve first. Probably will. She's got the old Covenanter blood in her veins. It leaves taints. The elder son—did you ever hear how Douglas Farquharson died?" He paused significantly.

Cummings hesitated. "Something about it; not a pretty story."

Brand shrugged his shoulders. "Suicide is seldom artistic. Douglas was always a bungler; he tried several means before he was successful. Mrs. Farquharson turned off the whole staff of servants and labourers on the estate (with the exception of her own old nurse, who had lived with her since childhood) on the day of the funeral. Everything that could be sold with decency was sold; everything, that is to say, that could be taken from the house by night. To the best of my belief neither friend nor relation has been inside Glune since, nor is Richard allowed outside the gates, except to go to the kirk on Sunday. You know how entertaining that is—black gown, tuning fork, and paraphrases—damnation measured out by the square yard. A cheerful outlook for a lad, isn't it?"

"Cheerful!" Cummings echoed the word with a deep breath. It struck him for the first time that he took too many things in this world for granted, that there were indeed a hundred and one good times in such a life as his which he failed to appreciate fully. He had imagination; he could enter into the lonely boy's revolt at the betrayal of his childhood, his indignation at the grey life Glune demanded, alike tributes to its power. Memories of his own pleasant childhood came back to him in vivid contrast, recalling its sunshine and glow: competition and excitement, friendly rivalries in work and play; small sacrifices for sport that brought their own reward; his father's pride in him, his mother's love, their rooted—if delightfully absurd—conviction that he was bound to excel in anything he undertook, his personal ardour and ambition, the thrill of success....

He turned impulsively. "There must be something to do? Surely one could do something?"

Brand laughed again.

"It's hardly your business, is it?" he asked in a calm philosophical tone that shamed the young man's enthusiasm into silence. "Besides, it would be interference in what parsons tell us is the great scheme."

The boy winced. His father had come into the family living as a matter of course; a genial atmosphere of piety had sweetened the limited disappointments of Cummings' youth.

"That bugbear of religion," Brand went on, "what atrocities are committed in its name! 'God made all men equal.' What a lie! Some men are born to go under. In the fight for mere existence no allowance is made for frailty. Unless a man can keep up with his fellows, he must drop out of life's race. Some of us are doomed at the outset, fashioned and shaped and moulded in God's image, only to be ground down to powder by the great Juggernaut of circumstance, like that beetle under your heel."

He pointed contemptuously to the road.

"The days of miracles are passed, if they ever existed. Unless Richard Farquharson gets away from his surroundings, he will never have a chance in life. Stunted in mind and doubtless in growth, half starved, friendless, and unloved, pent up all day with a mad mother and an old woman of seventy—what can he do? It wasn't only in the much abused Herod's time that innocents were massacred. Take the police records of to-day.... No! don't, they're ugly reading." He stopped again. "Richard Farquharson's next-of-kin is now at Oxford. He has a father who moves with the times. He'll get on. The patriots of old bought titles with their blood, but gold is cheaper. This man wiped off one of a prince's debts, and got a knighthood for the privilege."

"Look," said Cummings suddenly. The two men stopped near the summit of a heather-covered spur, overlooking the castle. Cummings took a few steps forward, mounting to the crest, and then with that instinctive reverence, which one must be very young or very pure instantly to respond to, raised his cap.

Bleak, barren, desolate, perched like an eyrie upon the peak of a lonely moor, Glune held herself against the winds of heaven. Storms might come, storms did come, thunder would break, lightning and gales destroy, this or that avenue of trees. The spaces in the forest, the gaps and rents in the more cultivated landscape of the drive only served to give a clearer view of the severe outline of the grey building, about which such green things as strove to grow were ruthlessly cut down.

Some houses are almost human in their characters and impressions. In an English hospital Cummings had once seen the death of a veteran pensioner, a corporal who had served at Balaclava under his grandfather. Something in the look of the rugged stone, defaced but defiant in its pride and poverty, recalled the light in the old man's dying eyes as he said, "I've served my time, sir, eighty years of it all told, and I've got my faculties to the end, which is more than many a man can boast." Glune seemed as if it would keep its faculties to the end too.

The young man looked across to the further hills and down at the castle soberly. The grey of the afternoon had broken; the long, narrow windows opposite had captured the reflected light, a blood-red light which flamed out dazzlingly. The shadows of the pines and firs cut the rank grass of a neglected lawn immediately in front of the house; the glow of the sky was repeated in the running water of a little burn at the base of the hill. So far as eye could see, a chain of purple hills stretched loftily. Hills full of warmth and colour, and the mystery which compels a man's attention. So infinite, so eternal they seemed, that facing them the petty jars of daily life took their true value; and young as he was, Cummings realized in a flash that only what children call "big things" are of account in Heaven's reckoning—love, penitence, and sacrifice.

"I'm not with you," he cried, stammering and stumbling over the hasty words. "What you say can't be true. A boy who lives here has got his chance. I bet you anything you like he'll make something of it. Stunted! narrow! He needn't be! Why, if the boy is only strong enough to climb these hills and look about him, he'll educate himself instinctively. Not in book lore, of course, but book lore isn't all, nor even much. Learning from Nature is like learning at your mother's knee, you can't forget it." He caught his breath uncomfortably, and then ran headlong on, as though he were ashamed of being ashamed to speak. "Both make one feel—why, more, they make one know—that there's a God in the machine somewhere."

His companion had moved away. His limp showed very perceptibly at that moment. The western windows of Glune were dull red now, flushing and scintillating like rubies in a curious setting.

Cummings stood still for a moment, obviously discomforted, his face brick-red from the rare effort of wrestling with unaccustomed thoughts. Then he ran on lightly for a yard or two, and joined his companion.

"Rotten luck, the whole thing," he said good-naturedly. "Let's stop at the inn at Bruchill, and drink the poor little chap's health as we pass, eh? I'm sick to death of all this arguing."

Brand raised his eyebrows. His face was livid, except where an angry smear of red had broken out below the cheek-bone.

"Oh—were you arguing?" he asked.

CHAPTER II

"Suffering of body and soul is civil war."—MAUD STEPNEY RAWSON.

Thrown upon his own resources practically from four years old, Richard Farquharson at ten was older than many boys of his age. His memories grouped themselves into scenes, one was his nightmare.

That dreadful day! Did he really remember it, I wonder, or was it merely a mental landmark in that valley of vision to which his old nurse had taught him the way of escape from the harshness and austerities of his life at Glune?

He thought of it sometimes with that strange sort of pride which very sensitive children, and children of a larger growth who have gone forward in spite of inward shrinking, feel when recalling at a safe distance an experience which at the time had strained their courage to breaking-point. A raw, cold day, the first of days which were all raw and cold; a line of dark shadows clustered together in the gloomy hall, forming an impenetrable circle about one central shadow deeper than the rest, across which heavy drapery, a pall, was thrown. Upon this unknown object the look of all was fixed; child as he was Richard shrank back from it. He longed and feared to know what was beneath. And presently strangers appeared, six figures, which formed into a rigid line led by one familiar shape, which for the first time struck terror into his heart—his mother.

The circle broke, pierced by strangers; there was a dreadful grating sound as the men bent beneath the weight of a heavy burden. Then all filed out, and Richard, a tiny child, was left forgotten, in a silence that frightened him so that he could not cry out nor move, a paralyzing silence that clutched him with ghostly fingers and strengthened its grip as the massive door clanged against him with an echo that mocked the four-year-old child, left alone in a place where dishonoured Death had just held revel.

His nurse remembered him, and ran back to fetch him five minutes later. But that five minutes of mental agony had done a work which was never to be effaced. The powers of evil had come paralyzingly close, and nothing can compare with the terrors of helpless childhood. Like dying saints, children have eyes to see what is invisible to others. Children's dreams are not necessarily pleasant. There are some whose souls are laid bare to the onslaughts of devils as well as angels. Even the deaths of good men and women are not always, nor even often, peaceful.

To Richard, cowed and trembling—picture him; a small boy in a white sailor suit, with tiny fingers battering vainly at the great oak door whose latch was beyond his reach!—the five minutes of desertion spelled eternity. The Bible had already taught him that a day might be as a thousand years. His momentary vision as to the real meaning of the verse was kept alive in him thereafter by the weekly sermons of the Forbeggie minister, who loved to dilate—under some fifteen or sixteen headings—upon the torture of impenitents by cheerful means of "worms of the damned that dieth not and fire that is never to be quenched."

So much for the dark side of the picture, but Richard had many compensations.

Fide et Fortitudine was the motto of his race; he learnt its lessons early. Let him but keep his inheritance, and he would not grudge one of those many supperless occasions which helped to retain the mere necessities of a clan deriving from Macduff, Thane of Fife. He loved his land, and throve quite joyously upon austerities that would have broken the spirit of a less hardy lad.

His natural reserve was fostered by enforced solitude. The days went swiftly. To be more or less alone in the world, except for a collie dog, is certainly not to be unhappy when every other bird comes to your call, when stoats and ferrets even are familiar friends. Richard's mind, dependent upon nature for its amusements, was seldom called upon to translate the word disappointment. The peace which wrapped him round became his dear possession, and was peopled with invisible playmates. There was a hut in the park near the river, some three miles away, where Dan, the collie, and he played the parts of settlers in a land full of enemies. He knew the range of every object within view. He altered the defences day after day, laying down wire entanglements, building rough stockades, or primitive trenches, with loopholes and head cover, in all of which Dan took a profound interest.

Richard was his own stern critic, and yesterday's work was pulled down on the morrow, until a day came when, after subjecting it to the severest tests he knew, he found it good.

Continually burrowing in dirt, growing in experience, could the heart of boy ask more?

Nature is a jealous mistress, but she gives openly of her best to the lover who lives with her as whole-heartedly as did Richard. He never felt the want of toys or ordinary amusements. The elation that came to him at times was very sweet and bore him far.

His eye and ear presently became so well trained that from a great distance he could detect a moving object, and with the wind blowing gently towards him, and his ear to the ground, could distinguish a single footfall on a path nearly a mile away, like any scout. Blindfold, or in the dark, he made his way across Glune without a slip. Books of travels in far countries, stories of Burnham and other members of the brotherhood of the intrepid, taught him to destroy the tracks of his incoming and outgoing, so that every step of the way to special places of concealment had in it the thrill, the enchantment of an adventure.

To one who has never been to a theatre, a country life becomes a beautiful play of birth and death; things move and have their being, that he may see them pass to their appointed end. The green earth is the stage, Nature the playwright, and God Himself the Great Scene Painter.

Richard's tutor, a half-blind village schoolmaster who came for three hours daily when Mrs. Farquharson could afford to pay his meagre fees, was the only "outside" person whom he ever saw. Between the boy and his mother, there was neither freedom nor confidence. He shrank away if he heard the rustle of her dress. Her presence in the house acted upon him like the presence of death. It was as if she stood with uplifted hand always ready to strike some covert blow at one of his innocent pleasures. He told her nothing; what was there to tell? She looked upon the things he loved with terror.

Morning and evening found him bidden to stand, mute and resentful, beside her erect form in its accustomed place, a high-backed chair in the study where his father's papers and diaries were collected. Her frozen lips—lips tightened into a line so hard that he always thought it must hurt her to move them, would touch his forehead stiffly in greeting, as one touches a thing with loathing and abhorrence. Of bosom throbbing at his approach, and the light of motherhood in her eyes, which she stifled as she heard him coming, he knew nothing. He would leave her rejoicing at a hard duty again accomplished. That she longed for him hungrily all day long, that she stealthily followed him to his play, that her spare tense figure was often shaken by passionate longing to clasp the slender limbs that had once lain warm and quiet beneath her heart, he never knew.

Only the exceptional man or woman bears the strain of a great shame and sorrow with no outside help. Mrs. Farquharson's pride in her son went side by side with ceaseless fear. Richard's fatal likeness to her dead firstborn, dearer far than Richard because he was the child of early wifehood, stabbed her heart. She had loved that child too well; forgetfulness of God by the mother had been visited by God upon the son, she told herself. And to watch another pay the price of your own sin is sin's most bitter penalty.

In Douglas Farquharson's case, there had been that sudden extraordinary return to a vicious type which occurs occasionally in a family that has for centuries bred fine men and fair women. When, page by page, after his death the record that proved his guilt was spelled out by his mother, the only plea she could urge in his defence was that the selfishness of her own love, given to man instead of God, had marred and distorted the human image by its very fervour.

She had "counted it a glory to make vain things." Her care had been, like the potter, "to strive with the goldsmiths and silversmiths." The voices of husband and child had made such triumphant music in her ears, that God's sublime call was drowned; she had bartered Heaven for a brief hour of human rapture, to find that God was a God of vengeance as well as love and love a two-edged sword which can wound or kill.

That very night, on her bedroom wall, she thought she saw a warning written in letters of flame. "His heart is ashes and his hope vain earth, his life more base than clay." ... "Being himself mortal, he fashioneth a dead thing with his hands."

Day after day, as Richard grew stronger and more handsome, she asked herself if he were born only to inherit his brother's legacy of dishonour. He looked frank and open enough, but eyes that shone as purely as his had been the casket of lies, and lips which had met hers more easily had given themselves to what was incredibly base.

The dead are often nearer to us than the living. Mrs. Farquharson's dead were scourges. When Douglas killed himself the shock broke his father's heart. By day and night his mother made silent pilgrimage to two lonely graves.

One morning, drawn early to the cool solitude of the river after a sleepless night, she saw her boy bathing, a slim white figure without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with every muscle developed, and skin like satin, shining purely against the deep banks and undergrowth; a picture framed by pines, through which the light of the autumn dawn came slowly. Hidden from him, she watched with look wide and tender, with eyes as moist as the supple limbs from which he shook the water of the burn, standing strong and vigorous, breathing quickly after his swim, unconsciously rejoicing in his power. Bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, she thrilled again with proud remembrance that she had borne pain for him and given him life.... Then his characteristic gesture the impatient pushing of the wet hair from his forehead, reminded her suddenly of his brother. She shrank back as if a spirit of evil pursued her.

Between herself and God there was a wall too high for mercy or prayers to pierce. Her religion forbade her to pray for her dead—prayers for the dead were heresy. In the blindness of her despair she invented a species of soul crucifixion striking with almost frenzied agony at the root of her love for Richard.

He at least should never know how she loved him; discipline and duty should be the twin lights to guide his way, never the false light of a selfish love.

After this she instituted a new and more terrible rule of discipline, both for herself and her son. Richard came to her daily as before, but now even the conventional kiss was denied him, and three hours' study of complicated points of doctrine took its place. The fate of sinners was the prevailing theme, the punishment of sins of whose very existence he was unaware. In the narrow hot room he would stand rebellious, either answering at random or not answering at all. Outside, bees hummed and birds sang, and insect life was joyous. The world he loved stretched very far in infinite fairness, God's exquisite world that had hitherto raised his thoughts to its Maker. "His brother the wind, his sister the earth," had seemed to point the way to a God worth loving. But how could he but hate the dreadful God of the ancient law into whose power it was so terrible to fall, the God who raised His hands only to strike, who broke the heart of His children as men break stones by the wayside, and had so little pity for the innocent child of shame?

Yet this was the God with whom he was brought in hourly contact, this Being who saw evil where Richard was convinced no evil was. Why was it wrong, for instance, to love inanimate things so passionately, to weep at a bird's death and rejoice at its birth? Why should not his face light up at sight of the small furred and feathered things, which were his only friends? He would escape for hours to be in their company, and pay the penalty for such adventures later, when, sought for with terror, he was met with punishment and humiliation.

Only when he was alone would passionate tears come, choking sobs that shook the boy's body and were succeeded by stoniness. Sorrow may melt the heart like dew; rebellion breaks it.

Night after night, prostrate upon the floor of her room, Mrs. Farquharson would pray for her son with tears of blood, as one who would wrest grace from the Almighty. And night after night, in his attic, Richard would lie awake, lonely and impenitent, thinking himself loveless and neglected while love was burning at his very door.

CHAPTER III

"Not

So much as even the lifting of a latch,

Merely a step into the outer air."—LONGFELLOW.

The picture-gallery ranked high in Richard's list of compensations.

Although it was the sanctuary of fine records, he always associated it with the last definite memory of his elder brother. Two or three days before Douglas chose that easy way of shifting responsibilities which it takes a brave man or woman to evade, Richard had been carried pick-a-back by his elder brother down the long gallery; had been shown, with a certain solemnity, pathetic in view of what was so soon to occur, portrait upon portrait of their ancestors, notably men who were famous for good rather than great deeds.

There were two especial portraits before which they lingered, Richard remembered afterwards—that of their great-great-grandfather, upon whose tomb, by the wish of his country and his tenantry, the motto, "Noble by birth, noble in all things else," had been engraved; and one of his wife, known in her day as "The Ivory Mayde," because of the dazzling fairness of her skin. A contemporary poet wrote of her—

"Snow her fayre body—snowier white her soul."

"Something worth while, old chap, to have that said of one," Douglas had commented, and Richard, bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom and seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still figures in unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting at him with his head until his brother cried out for mercy and moved on.

The portraits—the knights in armour who guarded the entrance to the rooms so jealously, awed him still, but not as of old. They were his friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love and pride thrilled him each time he entered the gallery. The deeds they had done, the records they had left, few even in Scotland could match. The blood they shed made a sea of glory which reflected the light of God; merely to cross the threshold was an act of faith.

Richard could have prayed to some of these more easily than to an unknown God. He knew their histories, man for man, woman for woman. Before some he habitually paused longer than before others. Had the veil invisible between that world and his been rent, and the familiar shades taken fleshly form before his eyes, and called to him, he would not have known fear. He was theirs and they were his; he faced them buoyantly, with head erect.

His mother and nurse shunned the gallery, believing it to be haunted—so much the better!

Time after time, generally at dead of night, but sometimes even in the day, Richard himself had fancied he heard the stir and rustle of a silken skirt close beside him, and saw the flash of some dead soldier's dirk. Whereupon, the moment being critical, a cold draught from some open door would generally blow in upon him, keen and sharp like the wind in mountain heather, to announce some ill-timed interruption of his nurse. Afterwards—a shrill scolding and imprisonment in a room from whose window he would immediately get out. Richard had no compunction as to flight when it was thus forced upon him, but by the time he returned the dream unfortunately, like many a later dream, would have had time to break.

"Do you think that is what dreams are made for, Dan—only to break?" he asked his collie sometimes. Whereupon Dan would look up with the profoundly wistful negation of one who, although dumb, is wiser than his master.

Eight—nine—ten—eleven.

The old clock on the stairs in the west wing clanged asthmatically, hesitating between the strokes as one who doubted its ability to make the final effort. It was out of repair and past use, like most of the furniture of Glune. But Richard loved it. In Prince Charlie's days the worn clock-case had sheltered one of his forbears, a Farquharson who, while carrying despatches to the Prince, was tracked and discovered by the enemy. Richard loved to poke his fingers into breathing holes which had been hastily bored at the back of the case, while armed men were clamouring for admittance at the very gates of Glune.

From the first, it was to the call of valour and endurance that the boy's heart leapt. Hunting about in an old lumber-room he had once come upon a box of marvels—forgotten papers and documents which he looked at, and went back to, and wept salt tears over, time after time. Every relic in the house was dear to him. The torn plaid upon which Charlie Stuart's bonny head had lain, in the days before that brave heart had turned to water, and innocence was drowned in a flood of despair and shame—the tattered fragment of silk, once a flag, which a Farquharson had died upholding, a century before; a sporran stained quite lately with the blood of his grandfather—and a host of like treasures, witnesses of what a man should do, and of what alone was worth attempting.

Richard slept in a little attic near the tower, far from his mother's and the nurse's rooms. Bare as a monk's cell, it was "all his own." He swept it out and tidied it for himself daily; no woman's foot, so far as he knew, had ever trod the staircase which led to it since he was first moved there four years before.

Eight—nine—ten—eleven—midnight at last.

The boy, with a start, shook himself free from his dreams and woke, as was his habit, to full and immediate consciousness of his surroundings. This eve of his twelfth birthday was a crisis in his life, high time for one who had made up his mind to be a leader of men to turn his back on childish things. And Richard, true to that unconsciously dramatic instinct of imaginative childhood which inspires children in the little plays they make from common incidents of every-day life, set about his task dramatically enough.

For years he had kept nightly tryst with a certain portrait in the gallery; an image which kept alive in him the only spark of tenderness that remained after long months of frozen silence and reserve. It was an unnatural tryst for a boy of twelve, but Richard's life was all unnatural. And love, which craves so passionately for outlet, has sometimes to content itself with the inanimate, instead of what is living and responsive.

We have our favourites, even among ancestors. It was a certain Margaret Cunningham, daughter of that Earl of Glencairn who, being of the Privy Council of James V, was taken prisoner by the English in the year 1542, at the battle of Solway, who had won Richard's heart. Marrying a Farquharson, she died six months later, "whereat," tradition said, "she waxed exceedingly joyful, since her whole heart's love had been given since childhood to her cousin of Kilmaurs, but her parents, being worldly, would not permit the marriage, since Farquharson of Glune had more land and a finer heritage."

True to his sex, Richard had been vanquished by the most tender, the most lovable little face in the whole gallery. It was to this picture that he confided his dreams, his ambitions; it was to this one of all others that he found it so infinitely hard to say farewell. But say farewell he would, notwithstanding, for the hardening process had already begun in him. He had to make his way in life; and such a way could not be carried out at home. Beyond the park gates and the empty lodge lay a world from which he meant to wrest power to restore Glune to her former beauty. Tragic and broken, she was to him as a living woman, who needed his help and claimed it as her due. And the one way he could really help her was to go.

He had packed a chosen few of his belongings; of money he had none. But he was strong on the bread of hardship. Dan would, of course, be his companion; no one else. Richard had guessed the secret of this life's success. Unhampered by ties of kinship or love, alone, a man may hope to find the key of that secret cupboard in which the world conceals her few prizes.

Richard pushed the door of the picture-gallery wide, and stood on the threshold for a moment, a look of resolve on his stern young face. These—his best loved—would understand what it cost him to leave them. The older faces seemed to turn to him, expectant. Through the stained glass windows with their emblazoned coat-of-arms, a steady stream of moonlight flowed triumphantly, taking the colour of the glass it came through—now rose and now pallid green. Not less steadfast the light in the painted eyes of some of the men he looked upon, martyrs in their way—men who had fought and died for a Cause—whose purposes, like his, nor tears, nor smiles, nor force could turn.

With his hands clenched very firmly and an uncomfortable tightening of the throat, Richard looked straight and long at the portrait of his ancestress to-night, and thought again, as he had often thought before, how strange it was that God did not make mothers in a mould like this. And in that moment he committed every line of the portrait to memory, never to be erased—the oval face, and soft hair, a dark curtain, banded over the low white forehead; the grave eyes that pursued you to the door, eyes painted with a hint of tears, a favourite trick in a certain school of art; the turn of the proud head, the white neck visible beneath a veil of drapery. The moonlight fell upon all lovingly. One little beam of light travelled upwards and tried to linger in the shadows of the misty eyes.

"GRAVE EYES THAT PURSUED YOU TO THE DOOR"

Richard turned, his heart throbbing convulsively. Was that a footfall? He crept for shelter to the picture of a malignant-looking gentleman of the tenth century, whose full-length portrait moved on pulleys, and which was now drawn out to an acute angle, half across the gallery, as Dan started forward. Both waited in silence for some time, but the sound—if sound it were—was light at best, and did not return.

Richard came back to Margaret Cunningham. Sentimentality was childish, the sort of thing a future empire-builder must infallibly renounce.

"Good-bye," Richard said gravely; "Dan and I shan't be here again for ever so long. We're going away—both of us—but we mean some day to come back. I'm growing up, you see; I'm going to make my name, and a big future, and keep Glune."

In spite of the brave words he walked away from the picture drearily enough, fancying that Margaret's eyes were extraordinarily misty, because his own were drowned in tears.... He shivered. How cold it had become! He must have been there far longer than he intended; his bare feet on the parquet floor were cold as death. He whistled to Dan, who had, contrary to his usual custom, scampered away to snuffle anxiously at the door.

Outside, through one light pane of glass, Richard could see the snow thick on the white stone balustrade. How silently and swiftly it must have fallen! When he came in there were only a few flakes. Eager to be off, he ran down the gallery. But Dan, evading his master's hand with a whine, leapt forward again, scenting eagerly, and then scratched at the door with a low whine of terror.

Something had fallen in the corridor beyond the gallery, something heavy and dark. Something that pressed against the door that Richard strove to open, at first gently, then with a sudden sickening dread that taxed his self-control. As the door gave way at last, it pressed the unknown obstacle back with it slowly—the unknown obstacle at the sight of which the boy fell on his knees with a cry. For it was a woman's figure—his mother's—which lay prone in the moonlight, with thin arms stretched towards him, giving way too late to the longing they had crushed for years.

Face to face with death for the second time, Richard found himself more wondering than pitiful, more perplexed than sad. How swiftly God's arrows struck—how unerringly! The terrified, staring eyes were fixed in their last challenge of the Almighty Power. Even in death there was no peace.

The hand—cold as of old—fell from his grasp.

He tried to close the dreadful eyes, but failed; tried once again, and failed, and then rose, panting. His cry had awakened his old nurse. She came to him feebly, candle in hand, with Dan sniffing at her ankles. At sight of his master the dog ran forward, and then, as if aware of mourning, crouched quietly on the floor beside the dead. And Richard, looking down upon his mother, and hearing Nurse Ailsa's lamentation shrill out of the silence, realized that this was indeed the end of the old hampering life, that he had put away "childish things" once and for all.

PART II

THE SPUR

"He had stamped with steady hand God's arrow-mark

Of dedication to the human need;

He thought it should be so, too, with his love.

He, passionately loving, would bring down

His love, his life, his best (because the best),

His bride of dreams, who walked so still and high

Through flowery poems as through meadow-grass,

The dust of golden lilies on her feet,

That she should walk beside him on the rocks,

In all that clang, and hewing out of men,

And help the work of help which was his life,

And prove he kept back nothing—not his soul."

E. B. BROWNING.

CHAPTER I

"You and I are the only mortals that I know of who ever found a way to each other's inner being by the touch of the hands."—GEORGE DU MAURIER.

Making as it does for desultory conversation and tempered criticism of your neighbour's failings, the half-hour after tea in a country house is one of the most pleasant of the day. Confidences spring from it, and intimacies ripen. Lovers drift happily away from their chaperones, knowing their absence will be unnoticed. The elder folk, who find interest and joy in each other's company, move together with no conscious effort into friendly nooks and corners where they are unobserved. Silences fall quite naturally on such occasions. Nobody minds them. They are, indeed, keys of that deeper confidence which is one of life's most beautiful gifts.

The five or six members of Lord Creagh's house-party who collected in his study day after day at the same hour, ostensibly to admire the tropical plants for whose cultivation he was famed, had come to look upon this reunion as the most vital of the day.

"Wit and brilliance depend almost as much on the furniture of a room as on the furniture of a mind," thought Evelyn Brand, one of the two women in the group, giving herself up, as Celts do, to the characteristic atmosphere. "Even Lady Mary Wortley-Montague herself could never have made her brilliant epigrams on a black horse-hair sofa backed by magenta curtains and stuffed birds in glass cases. The Nonconformist conscience, if it did but know it, owes quite half of its solidity to the mahogany four-poster in which it came to life. 'Victorian suites' make you formal and stilted, just as chintz and lavender and lattice windows compel discretion and a modest blush. How I love lavender! Why, age itself would fall quite tenderly upon the occupant of such a house as I would furnish if I could—a tender place of peace and perfume. Grey hair and gentle influences go together; old age should win one as a lover instead of capturing one as an enemy."

Under the spell of her idea, Evelyn fell into one of those quiet abstractions which her husband had found so convenient before marriage and so melancholy after.

And yet discriminating eyes looking at her for the first time would have seen mystery rather than melancholy in her gaze, thought the man who was sitting beside her watching the progress of her dream with a gentle smile. Creagh, many years before, had lost the woman whom he loved so well that for her sake all other women could count upon his friendship. But he had his favourites. He was, for instance, one of Evelyn's staunchest admirers. Belonging to the type of man who achieves nothing very vital himself, he was always the cause of achievement in others. Many years ago Evelyn's husband, who had a dangerous habit of epigram, nicknamed Lord Creagh "The Holy Freak," and the name stuck.

Creagh's head and body looked like two balls, one large, one little. They grew together with no perceptible join. He had so short a neck as to make a turn-down collar appear positively high, whilst his legs were as out of proportion to his body as most men's incomes are to their desires. His plain face was withal so genial that a woman must have been prejudiced indeed to look upon it without pleasure; his words took weight from their sincerity.

Each member of the little group which had gathered in the study was, in his way, a celebrity. Creagh's invitations attracted interesting persons. As the head of one of the oldest families in Great Britain, his rank secured him from small aims, even in friendship. Unlike most men, he chose his acquaintances with more care than his dinner. Himself an ardent Roman Catholic, he took the widest pleasure in the companionship of those whose openly professed beliefs ran absolutely counter to his own. Your next-door neighbour at his table was as likely to be a Parsee as a Protestant, and his widowed sister, who kept house for him at Creagh, had once been present at a luncheon where one of the guests was a small Brixton tradesman (captured in the very act of trespassing on the estate), and the other the new British Minister at Rome.

Beadon, Colonial Secretary in the late Ministry, sitting on the left of Mrs. Brand, was probably the best known man present. Comic papers made him familiar to the public; he had a clever face, which lent itself to caricature. Clean shaven and wiry, he looked rather like a dapper priest. His eyes were alert and keen; his friends said that upon one occasion only had his judgment been proved to be false. His enemies were naturally as the sands of the sea; they bit and snapped at him in the House of Commons like so many angry curs, but generally withdrew the worse for the fray. His heel of Achilles was his only child, Dora, a lady who had received more proposals than the average American heiress—partly because of her mother's fortune, and partly because of her father's position—and complacently believed them all to be the tribute of her personal charms.

Short and squat, sallow, and of bad figure, with colourless hair, which the products of the hairdresser and the attention of a maid alone made passable, Miss Beadon was one of those extremely plain women whom men call "a good sort" for lack of a more distinctive term; a type which too often after marriage proves the exact antithesis of early promise. A woman is not necessarily amiable because she has no personal attractions. Miss Beadon was chattering just now with much animation to Lord Meavy, a new-comer, home on leave for the first time since his appointment as Governor of South Africa. Long experience had shown her the advantage of being first in the field with a possible "lion."

Meavy was more like a poet than a statesman. Slender and romantic, with pointed beard, he had the tired eyes of a man who has persistently cut short his sleep until Nature, in revenge, denies him rest in the few remaining hours he might otherwise snatch. He liked Miss Beadon; she was negative, so did not tax his brain, and he was susceptible, like most men, to her obvious appreciation of his society.

Washington Hare, who had the fourth seat in the circle, leading literary critic of the Times, was a complete contrast in type to Meavy. Seventy-three years old, gaunt and rugged, his intellect was as mature, his judgment as virile, as that of a man in the prime of life. He called his art a trade, with a grim smile, and loved it passionately. Bad craftsmen fled his presence as if it conjured before them a grim array of the infinitives they had split and the phrases they had worn too well.

His voice, breaking in raucously upon a discussion in which he had hitherto taken no part, attracted Mrs. Brand's attention.

"Carlyle summed up the question," he said, "when he called universal history the history of great men who had worked in the world. The nation needs great men just now. Mediocrity and indifference are the curses of the empire. Mediocrity produces cheap content with small successes, and indifference is deadly poison—a kind of gangrene of the soul. Indifference is infectious. Unluckily, the men who catch its breath do not die swiftly. Themselves immeasurably corrupt, they live to corrupt others."

"Come now, I can recall the names of three great men, all living," suggested Creagh good-humouredly.

"Oh—well—you are indulgent," said Beadon dryly. "Two of them are bitter enemies, and the third celebrated his seventieth birthday lately."

"I suppose there are some younger men somewhere," Dora Beadon put in gaily. "Father won't let them come to our parties because he's so afraid they will all want to marry me! But surely they exist."

"Take our young politicians," Hare continued, ignoring Miss Beadon's interruption, and warming to his subject as the babble of talk died down. "Not an ounce of stamina in the lot. One particularly young gentleman in the Ministry happens to have pushed himself to the fore, but he won't stay there. The party, as a whole, is hypnotized by those of its members who have a few sparks of magnetic force. On our own side it's as bad. We've got men of average intelligence, and average intelligence is a most stultifying quality. Two-thirds of sublime folly and a fraction of wisdom produce a better leader than any amount of average intelligence can compass. And as for the sacred fount, immortal fire, food of the gods, call it what you will, that undefined quality that leads men on to dare forlorn hopes and brave martyrdom—the House of Commons would not recognize it if it were there. And yet without it, men are impotent. They themselves move and have their being, but cannot produce life in others."

"Isn't your vital element patriotism?" asked Evelyn. "I always think a man should love his country like his wife, with knowledge and tenderness and passion and forbearance. In nine cases out of ten, nations fail just as women do, for trivial causes. Both may slur common duties, but the big crisis finds them ready. If her husband's love is waning a woman will strain every nerve to keep it, just as a nation will appeal to her sons when the enemy has issued his ultimatum."

"Very soon the nation's appeal will be vain," said Meavy. "We forget as no other nation does."

"Is that because, as every Englishman is an embryo hero, we count upon him in our hour of need?"

Meavy laughed.

"Tactfully turned, Mrs. Brand. It sounds very nice, but I'm afraid it's not really the case. As for patriotism, it's a lost art. Love is not love at all without an element of passion, and passion is a fire which must have fuel to be kept alive. Most modern men and women are incapable of loving anything with ardour, except themselves. If they swear by a special county it's merely because they happen to be landowners, not from tradition nor history. Men back the merits of a manufacturing town, because it gives them daily bread. There is a man on the St. Pancras Board of Guardians now who boasts, 'I made my money 'ere, and 'ere I'll spend it.' The fact of being British does not stir a man; one doubts if he remembers it unless he is on the Continent."

"There are those who say England is doomed," said Beadon. "Since we left Gordon to his fate the old fighting spirit waxes more and more frail. For heaven's sake don't quote the South African War as a proof to the contrary. Quite half of that wild enthusiasm was a phase of social hysteria. We are all mad on excitement now; we prostitute our very ardour. If we can't get recreation by one means we get it by another. Drink, drugs, lovers—all come under the same category. At times these fail to allay us. We see red then, like other nations, but we have no national outlet like Southerners, with their bull-fights and the like. So war—in countries to which we can be transported with all the latest comforts of civilization—breaks the monotony."

"Aren't you too pessimistic?" said Creagh thoughtfully. "Personally I believe in the hour and the man. We are at a critical point just now, I admit, both individually and as a nation, but I believe that a man will come with the need, as he has always come since the world began."

"Oh, England's merely superficially corrupt," said Hare. "If the right surgeon were to operate she would be cured."

"And which of us is skilful enough to perform the operation? No one in the present Ministry. We've only got two sound men—men whom we trust. Both have had their day."

"England may be corrupt," said Evelyn, "but she's not ignoble. Like a woman, again, she finds herself and loses herself, and then has to find herself once more. Do you remember Borrow's prayer? I found it in some old book as a child, and learnt it by heart; it's wonderful. It seems to apply now. 'If thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one.... May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate in thy downfall. Of all fates, may it please God to preserve thee from a slow decay, becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and mockery for those self-same foes, who, though they envy and abhor thee, still fear and honour thee even against their will.'"

There was a pause.

"In England's extremity oughtn't we to pray that prayer each day?"

"'May more than one nation participate in thy downfall,'" repeated Beadon gravely. "Amen to that."

"Now, do say it all over again, slowly," said Dora Beadon, who had a knack of reducing any serious conversation to a commonplace level. "Have you got a pencil, Lord Meavy? Oh, thanks so much; how good of you!—and some paper? Now again, Evelyn; don't hurry so, there's a dear; I really like it, and I'm so short of quotations for my extract book just now."

But Evelyn was leaning forward. Throughout the little interlude her look, slightly narrowed and anxious, had been fixed on Creagh. She touched his arm suddenly, in triumph.

"You spoke of the hour and the man—and you are keeping both from us. You've planned the one already, my dear Dick, and you've arranged that the other should appear. It's no use denying it. I've been cudgelling my brains ever since you spoke last, wondering who on earth you could possibly have in view."

Hare frowned at her beneath his heavy eyebrows.

"There you are again, Mrs. Brand, with your visions and dreams. And you're so horribly right too, as a rule! I don't like your uncanny ways. Not so many years ago you would have been burned as a witch, and you'd have richly deserved it."

"It's her Celtic blood," Creagh explained, patting her hand affectionately. "I might have talked to you sordid English until doomsday and you would never have guessed what she has just stated as a fact. You're quite right, Evelyn; I've heard of a man who might do. A man of very high intelligence and power. He's young, and has made his way already, out of England. Some of you may even have heard of him; he specializes in the rather uncommon line of empire building."

"Well, that's a useful characteristic," said Meavy enviously, thinking of South Africa's many needs.

"Not a soldier, I hope," Hare grumbled, true to civilian prejudice.

"His name is Farquharson," said Creagh. "He was once Farquharson of Glune; his brother's story must be familiar to you all. I fancy things have always gone dramatically with him. He ran away from home at twelve years old; just how he kept body and soul together for the next few years no one knows. Then—through some accident—he came across and was of service to Martin Calvert, the millionaire who had just disinherited his heir, Jack Cummings, for becoming a Catholic."

Beadon whistled.

"The man who did so well in the last Indian famine business? A secular priest, isn't he? Self-exiled to the most fever-stricken district in the country?"

"Yes." Creagh hesitated. "It was a case of what is so often called 'The foolishness of the Cross.' Well, from a human point of view it certainly resulted in one man's loss and another man's gain. Calvert, like David, was cursing God in his heart when he met Farquharson. As for the lad—well, you know some of you how he was brought up in that stern Scotch school which begets defiance of God and enmity of man under some circumstances. I think the fact that Farquharson had thrown off every scrap of faith in things Divine and human appealed to Calvert doubly at that moment, and strengthened his desire to keep him. The Cummings episode was a bad blow."

"So he put Mr. Farquharson in his nephew's place?" said Evelyn.

Creagh nodded.

"He carried him off, then and there, put him through his paces with some elementary work to see what he was capable of, then gave him the lowest place in the office, kept him at the mill, ground from him his last grain of work, like the hardest taskmaster, led him on by successive rises to his own private secretaryship, and then shipped him to Taorna and gave him a magnificent chance of making name and fortune."

Hare rose, grumbling.

"Don't pin your faith on such a broken reed. You'll make a mistake. The man's had things too easily. What age is he? Thirty? I thought so. Why, a man worth calling a man ought to contest every inch of the way until he's forty; the law of the survival of the fittest obtains in politics as elsewhere. There ought to be an injunction to prevent people coming into money easily—money, in any case, mars ten men for the one it makes. While Calvert's alive to keep him in order, your young man may possibly play the game for a bit, and even achieve a certain success. Mark my words, after Calvert's death his protégé will marry some designing woman, who will use him as the means to a title, and gratify her ambition at the cost of his career."

"Or one who makes him happy," said Beadon grimly. "That's quite as bad, although more rare."

Creagh shrugged his shoulders.

"What a cynical lot you are! So far as Farquharson's methods go, I have had to take them on trust. I only know the results of his work; I should advise you to read them for yourselves in a blue-book which will be out very shortly. But Calvert we all know is as shrewd as any Scotsman, and just as little liable to err. Ask him what he thinks of the man; make him tell you what means Farquharson employed to annex that little island whose pearl fisheries quadrupled Calvert's income." His eyes twinkled. "It's an Arabian Night's tale in its way."

"Pearl fisheries! that sounds attractive," said Dora Beadon, her eyes gleaming so far as such pale eyes could gleam.

"May we really ask Mr. Calvert about it? You expect him to-day, don't you?" asked Evelyn quietly.

Creagh looked at his watch.

"They should be here now. By the way, my dear, Farquharson hates your sex as well as all religion. Both men were on their way up north, so of course I asked them to stay; but their rooted antipathy to Papists won't allow them to spend a night under my roof." He smiled good-humouredly. "They'll dine here instead, and put up at the inn." He looked around at the group. "Seriously, I believe Farquharson to be a great man in his way. I want you all to help him if you can."

"I think they have arrived. Hark! they are coming along now," said Evelyn.

Creagh, with a startled exclamation, hurried forward to meet the new-comers. The study door opened upon a long corridor, down which footsteps were heard approaching. A little wave of expectation stirred those who stayed behind, but no one spoke.

Each member of the group was intent on his own thoughts and conjectures. Meavy watched eagerly; the man might be useful to him, he wanted new blood for South Africa. Beadon's smile was non-committal; he had his doubts of Farquharson's capacity. He knew Lord Creagh's weakness for hero worship, and his new brooms occasionally left more dust behind them than they cleared away. Dora Beadon was interested in the stranger because of his youth and sex and chance of making money. It was perhaps the last factor which weighed heaviest in the scale of her regard. Hare, an acute observer, was the most interested of all; men of character appealed to him; he looked to them to uphold the traditions of the race. Evelyn, with perceptions quickened by the dramatic setting of the scene, followed the young man every step of the way, wondering how its beauty would affect him.

The entrance to this house would be for Farquharson the threshold of his career; surely he could not pass along the lovely lanes which led to it hedges festooned with wild blossom, unmoved. Rising, always rising, the way was one of pleasant scents and sounds, its foliage brilliant with the stir of butterflies, and spring's caress. Past deep gorges, and ever winding circuitously up the hill, it opened out at length upon the moor. Evelyn wondered if Farquharson, too, would feel its power, to her as magnetic as that of the Karroo of South Africa, which most people call barren and desolate. Evelyn had given herself up to the Karroo; its immensity, its pathos, had flooded her soul and left traces which would never be washed away. Its wide spaces and streaks of crude colour, the lines of hills in the distance, now curved and rounded as delicately as a woman's breast, now straight and slim, like an index finger pointing to the sky, the peace and awe broken at intervals by a flight of ostriches from a tiny farm, or by the figure of a solitary rider abruptly outlined against the strong yellows and browns and purples and greens which blossomed for such eyes as could distinguish them—all touched her infinitely. She felt as if God's Voice must penetrate the silence, and that to hear the Voice was to obey.

But where the Karroo had calmed, Dartmoor always frightened her. She loved Creagh itself, but the moor which one must cross to come to it was surely, as a whole, more cruel than peaceful. It wantonly played with men and women whom it bred, who looked to it for protection. Its bogs had buried little harmless children; it cheated and deceived prisoners trying to escape in the fog, walking round and round in ever-widening circles, only to fall at last, starved and exhausted, to find a cordon of warders drawn about them, and the prison walls in view.

She wondered if Farquharson would leave it as gladly as she had done for the valley, to which they must presently descend again.

Creagh itself lay low; one came upon it through one of the finest fir plantations in England. There was a natural opening in the hills beyond, and within sight of the study window the little ribbon of water widened to the sea, and was itself lost in the greater power, an augury of life.

"Up to the hills, down to the valley, and then Eternity," thought Evelyn.

Creagh, Farquharson and Calvert stood talking together at the open door for a moment or two more before entering. Calvert's brow was riddled with lines; one would have called him a stern man until his face lit up and became transfigured at some casual remark of Farquharson's. This was a man who had worked hard for his money, you could see; if life had brought him much, it exacted full payment for its every gift.

Calvert had begun to help Farquharson because he foresaw that the latter was one who would get on, Evelyn decided quickly; but he helped him now from love, not charity. The world which only knew him in his aspect as a shrewd business man would never divine the later motive. But Evelyn's heart went out to him impulsively, as it always went out to those who gave, whatever the bestowal.

Farquharson himself, the prominent factor in the group of figures, alone was in the shadow. Between him and Evelyn, Hare, Beadon and Dora stood; it was not until he was actually within a few feet of her that she saw him clearly. And then it was rather of his mental than of his physical aspect that she received the real impression. Tall and well made, dark and pale, he had presence and distinction, and remarkable composure. Supremely conscious of himself, the knowledge did not disturb him for a moment. Most men depend upon the external view for an effective entry; Farquharson's was attractive. But it was actually the singleness of the man's aim, his sincerity and sense of grip that carried conviction to the critical little group which concentrated its interest in his approach. It saw that he was born to succeed. For he not only had his goal in view, but would attain it.

"Wait, though," thought Hare. "No strong man yet but can be turned by a slight obstacle."

Steady and resourceful, knowing that he was being weighed in the balance, Farquharson busied himself with weighing others. No single detail of his surroundings was lost upon him. Evelyn watched him rapidly gauge and sum up one after another, the character of each person present.

In Beadon he recognized a man who might help, for whose favour he must in any case bid openly. He was a necessary factor in his—Farquharson's—career; without him nothing could be done. Between the young man and Hare, the rugged critic, an odd kind of attraction would exist; loyalty even in antagonism. Meavy, the idealist, Farquharson passed over with a cursory glance; a weak man, this, whatever the world might say. Creagh's cordiality he could appreciate, but native caution made him fear to trust it. People did not usually give without some adequate return, and for the moment he did not see how he could serve Creagh. Miss Beadon, as a woman, he ignored; his glance simply disposed of her. Her presence or non-presence meant nothing to him. As for Evelyn, he knew her name, and she had influence. He distrusted women with influence, but they were worth conciliating.

Their eyes met. He started slightly.

Before him stood a woman whose face changed indescribably, but who always possessed fascination. Slender and pale, Evelyn's one real beauty lay in the shape of her features, the modelling of her face; in the extraordinary light and shadows that made her eyes profound, her look a spur to flick a man's blood into action, or a caress in which he might find peace. And as Farquharson looked another picture rose suddenly before him, a vision of his childhood. The oval face, the dusky hair that waved back from the forehead, the turn of the rounded throat, the shape of the small head, all were familiar. He recognized them. They were his own—he had loved them long ago. He had stood before them night after night in the picture-gallery at Glune.

"A woman to dream of and to work beside." As Kilmaurs had written about Margaret Cunningham, in a lyric the ink of which had faded many years before, so Richard Farquharson felt now for the woman of his dreams. Here, in the flesh she stood before him, perfect companion, perfect lover and wife. He looked half smiling at her hands—the hands he had loved in the picture—and for the first time wondered what it would be to a man to feel such hands about his throat, drawing him down in mute surrender.

"Non so dirvi la sensasione che mi danno." A scene in D'Annuncio's play came back to him; the sight of the slender figure recalled Bianca Maria's passionate appeal to Anna, when the blind woman's hands were passing, feature by feature, across the girl's face, feeling for the beauties which she could not see, but for which others hungered.... "Sembra che le vostre dita vedano.... E come uno sguardo che insista, che prema, sembra die tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita delle vostre dita."

"Sembra che tutta l' anima discenda all' estremita delle vostre dita."

He could not have spoken the words aloud, for no one heard them. But there are thoughts which have wings, like birds, which fly home to nestle in their natural sanctuary. Evelyn drew back, disturbed and tremulous, like a child who stands hesitating at the door of a room which it has always wanted to enter, but which has been barred until now.

In the music-room beyond, a professional pianist was playing the opening chords of one of Brahms' preludes. The notes echoed like the accompaniment of powerful thought. Evelyn, moving back unconsciously, swayed with sudden vertigo.

Farquharson turned to answer some question of Beadon's. Hare crossed to Evelyn; it seemed to her afterwards that he must have interposed his massive figure between her and Farquharson. He spoke, and the sense of his words came to her vaguely, like a dream.

"A strong personality—that. The man sees clearly and acts promptly, and will usually get what he wants."

CHAPTER II

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He lives most

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

And he whose heart beats quickest ...

Lives in one hour more than in years do some

Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins."

PHILIP JAMES BAILY.

"Is that all I can do for you, ma'am?"

"You might put another little pearl pin at the back of my bodice, please, Emily; I can't quite reach it. Thank you; that's very nice."

The third housemaid—Mrs. Brand had never had a maid of her own in her life—withdrew with a last gratified glance at her handiwork. She thought her "lady" in an inexpensive gown had a better appearance than any other member of the house party. All servants liked Evelyn; she treated them as human beings, not automatons.

Mrs. Brand looked at her watch. Yes, there was still a quarter of an hour's grace before dinner. She switched off the electric light, and, drawing a chair beside the open window, leant out to the night and drank in its wonderful perfume. There was never a place so full of sweet scents and sounds as Creagh.

Some one else had dressed quickly too. The echo of men's voices rose presently from the verandah below. She recognized them with a start as Creagh's unmistakable chuckle of delight broke out at something Farquharson said. Then the younger man pulled his chair forward—she heard the sound grate on the stone—and took up the thread of talk again with an alert and interested air. Evelyn, curiously tired, listened for a moment to the murmur of voices without taking in the full significance of words which occasionally reached her. Creagh seemed to be unfolding some plan of campaign, to which Farquharson said but little in reply. His tone was deliberate and extraordinarily final; one or two words reached Evelyn clearly. She drew back further into the shadow, fearful of playing the part of eavesdropper.

The frayed edge of her gown, mended and adapted almost beyond recognition, caught her eye. She went to her work-basket and mended it mechanically. It was draped with the lace of her mother's and her own wedding veil, and sweet with the scent of lavender bags where it had been laid. The skirt was made from the fifteen-year-old Court train of her bridal gown; a pearl spray clasping the flowers at her breast was one of Creagh's numerous wedding gifts, her fan and handkerchief another. Every appointment of her dress to-night recalled her marriage. The maid had put out another gown upon the bed, which Mrs. Brand had discarded, choosing by preference that which she had worn the night before. Evelyn had to practise every pitiful little shift of poverty "to keep up an appearance."

Only Henry Brand knew the precise amount of their income. Its fluctuations and diminutions were a constant terror to his wife. There were times when money, obtained how she did not know, seemed fairly plentiful; again, at other times, her desk was laden with unpaid bills, and she worked far into the night to make the money wherewith to meet them. She photographed and painted, and could turn her hand to journalism as easily as to upholstery. Accustomed to do without from childhood, she had limited her personal wants to absolute necessities; she was, moreover, a practical woman who could cook and sew or do housework better than most of the people she employed.

A world which generally expels its social paupers was singularly lenient to the Brands. Some of the great ladies of the land drove down at night to the tiny flat in West Kensington, where Evelyn dispensed hock-cup and home-made cakes, without a murmur; it was said that two young duchesses, rival beauties, had come incognita on one occasion behind thick veils inside a motor 'bus. The latest explorer, the coming man, gravitated naturally to a place where every guest was made to feel individually welcome. Evelyn's reunions recalled something of the famous salons of the past. Her tact and sympathy drew opposing bodies together; the little circle had grown from a mere gathering of intimate friends to be the coveted goal of those who wished to meet important persons on an easy and natural footing. Converging opinions met and mixed here like rivers in the sea.

Mighty political battles had been fought out in Evelyn's presence. A famous K.C., with more truth than gallantry, boasted openly that she was the one woman in England who was just and temperate in argument, and the present Prime Minister had said he would drive willingly four miles farther out of London to be welcomed by such a hostess at the end. Unlike most women, technicalities did not alarm her. Men who came to discuss their business investments found in her as ready a listener as men of action. Nor did she shun, although she never actually invited, the confidences of her own sex. The pain of others hurt her physically; to give real sympathy is, after all, to let "virtue go out of one." Most men and women shun sorrow as if it were leprosy. But in the bank of feeling Evelyn's account was always overdrawn.

It was certainly a point in Henry Brand's favour that he had so early foreseen his wife's possibilities.

His one brief hour of popularity had long since passed. There were unpleasant stories about him. He was, for instance, sole trustee under his father's will, and the money was equally divided between himself and the two unmarried daughters, at whose deaths it would revert to him, failing their marriages, in which case the husbands would have life-interests in the estate, and, if there were issue, the children would eventually succeed. The younger of the two Miss Brands was fragile and delicate; a course of the systematic bullying and petty tyrannies by which a man can make his sisters' lives unbearable, made her run away one night and take refuge in a convent, whose stern régime presently brought about her death. The elder sister, stronger in will and brain, was more difficult to deal with; but there are many forms of cruelty practised by those amongst whom we live unrecognized by the law, and which the law has so far never punished. Brand made this woman's life a martyrdom; her every action was thwarted, and every pleasure arrested midway towards its fulfilment. In time her spirit broke. She lived with him because she could never break away; unluckily for her, she had none of that special knowledge which enables a better educated woman to make her own way in the world, and defy those enemies of the household who can be the most bitter and unyielding. Marian Brand was found in bed one morning dead, with a broken bottle of chloral at her side. Brand was the first to break into the room. Accustomed to come down late he had missed his sister's usual preparations for his comfort. The frightened servants at his heels never saw him pick up a letter addressed to himself which lay upon the bed, and which he presently destroyed.

But trustees who benefit by certain deaths under a will must needs go warily, and facts like these leak out in time, however carefully concealed. Brand, pleasantly aware of the world's forgetfulness found it advisable to travel abroad for a while.

It was not, indeed, until after his marriage that he was again universally received. Even now he was only allowed access to the houses where Evelyn was a popular guest because from the first she had refused all invitations which did not include him. The position galled him, although he made the best of it; he had aged of late years, his limp becoming daily more prominent, and the stoop from the shoulders stiffening with time.

Evelyn herself seldom looked back or forward, but to-night, for some unknown reason, as she sat in the dusk by the open window, a tide of memory swept her along to the shore of her youth. Past days of dreams and personal ambitions—how far she had drifted from them lately! The red and black days which marked special epochs, beginning with her childhood in the convent and ending with her marriage, came before her in a series of pictures. She looked at her dead youth, and felt anew the shocks that killed it.

The prim convent parlour, the chairs set staidly with their backs to the wall, the discreet solemnity of the drab curtains, the precision with which each book, each print was arranged, how well she knew them all! Entry into those solemn precincts was a matter of reflection. Evelyn remembered rushing in once, as a child—the subsequent correction.... Fortunately perhaps for her, her personal visitors were few and far between at that time. When she was two years old her mother died. She scarcely knew her father. Her uniform, the air of repression with which she had been taught to receive guests, raised a high wall of separation between the handsome, easy-going Indian officer, whose interest in life was bounded by polo and "shikar," and the decorous child, whose passionate revolt against her surroundings he was not wise enough to guess. It was not his fault. He knew nothing of children, and Evelyn's weekly mail letters, written under the personal supervision of the Reverend Mother, were scarcely valuable as evidences of character.

Colonel Harcourt usually wrote to announce his return to England, but, on Evelyn's fourteenth birthday, he arrived unexpectedly. She found him the parlour, nervously dog's-earing the pages of one of Lady Georgina Fullerton's novels. He looked unusually big and ill-at-ease, even for him. Evelyn saw with horror that the Catholic Times and Universe, the Reverend Mother's personal property, which were invariably folded in their original folds when read, to be posted to a poorer French community, had been crushed almost out of shape by his nervous fingers, and lay in an untidy heap upon the floor.

In one hand Colonel Harcourt convulsively clutched a large brown-paper parcel. Evelyn tried to turn her eyes from it in vain. She knew it was for her—her birthday present, and her heart leapt. What a day of days it would be! Perhaps—her eyes glowed at the thought—her father might even take her to some place of amusement.

Colonel Harcourt started as she ran towards him. Something about her reminded him of her mother. Her look was so gay, her cheeks so flushed, and, in her hurried obedience to the lay sister's call, a long tress of dark hair had escaped from its restraining ribbon.

He stared her up and down, disconcerted, suddenly conscious of difficulty in his self-appointed task.

"Time passes very quickly," he complained; "how you've grown! I've brought you a present for your birthday, and, now I see you again, I'm not quite sure you'll like it. And I chose it so carefully too!"

"Whatever it is, I shall love it," Evelyn cried ecstatically. To unwrap her own parcel was in itself a joy to one to whom parcels were practically unknown. In her heart of hearts she thought the presents given her by her companions in the convent were dreadfully pious and dull. She had had a mother-of-pearl rosary from her godmother—the fourth given her in six months—a rosary-bag from a school-fellow, a coloured lithograph of "Nostra Signora del Perpetuo Succorso," from the Reverend Mother, framed in perforated card by a nun who was quite wrongfully supposed to be an artist of merit, and four printed "Mottoes" from the sisters, the "Virtues" of which were heavily underlined, to point no doubt a needed moral.... Evelyn felt guilty as to the personal significance of many, such as, "Venial sin, persistently indulged in, becomes mortal," and "Never forget your vile body will at last be food for worms." Evelyn was constantly being corrected by the nuns for disorderly habits and impatient words.

Under the outer covering of brown paper, sheets of tissue were closely folded. The girl unwrapped each more tenderly than the last. The shape was odd, unwieldy, and cumbersome—what could it be? A vase? Too light, surely; but then Indian pottery was not really heavy. Something in filagree, perhaps? None of the other girls had a father who lived in India; this present would be unlike any of the others. She tore back the last covering—to disclose a wax doll, dressed in purple velvet and tinsel and imitation Valenciennes lace.

"The eyes open and shut," her father said complacently. "And if you press it here"—he groped with some diffidence in the lower region of the blue satin sash—"it says 'good-morning,' and 'how are you?' quite like a gramophone."

"It must have been dreadfully expensive," Evelyn answered. Her voice was low. The disappointment was acute. Then she pulled herself together, and faced him bravely. "Thank you so much, dear father. How kind of you to choose it all yourself."

"I'm afraid you've got a cold, my dear," said Colonel Harcourt, withdrawing apprehensively. His glance wandered to the wall in search of distraction from the sight of his sick child, successfully evading the picture of St. Lawrence on the grid-iron, only to light upon the martyrdom of St. Agnes, from the details of which he visibly shrank. "Good God, what awful pictures! How you can——" He stopped abruptly and seized his hat. "Well I've some news for you. I'm sorry I can't take you out to-day." It struck him that the delicate oval face might have found a more suitable frame than the stiff black sailor hat which the nuns had chosen for it. "You won't mind, I know; I've got an engagement I can't break. I'm going to give you a new mother, my dear; I'll bring her to see you some day, and then we'll take you to the Zoo?" He halted again, inwardly convinced the future Mrs. Harcourt, to whom he had described Evelyn as "only a baby," would resent the inconvenient size of his offspring. "Now good-bye, my dear; you'll be wanting to play with your doll. God bless you."

The last unintelligible ejaculation was intended to convey his strict observance of that piety which is demanded of all who pass through convent gates.

He was gone. Evelyn heard his footsteps die away, and caught his relieved farewell to the sour-faced portress before the front-door clanged. She could almost hear the breath of relief he would draw as the tension of the last few uneasy moments snapped.... What did he know of her? What did he care to know? A new mother!—A new mother!

She ran down the corridor, sweeping aside the restraining hand of a nun who tried to stop her. She wanted Sister Veronica; Sister Veronica would understand; Sister Veronica was still young. Sister Veronica was daily corrected for evil-doing; Sister Veronica's heart had not yet turned to stone.

"That's well over," Colonel Harcourt congratulated himself complacently, hailing a hansom. "What a prison it is—harder to escape from each time. They'll make a nun of the child eventually, I suppose. Perhaps it would be the best thing, after all."

But Evelyn was not of the material which makes nuns. The convent appealed to her neither as an escape from sin, nor a barrier to temptation. She loved part of the life, and turned from much in loathing. When she was seventeen it frightened her no longer. Her childish rebellion at petty penances, at the narrow outlook of women whose breasts had never thrilled at the touch of a child's lips, yet who pathetically demanded the title of "Mother" as a cherished claim, had changed to pity. Each grim line that repression had seared on brow or cheek seemed now to Evelyn as a wound received in mortal combat against the glowing, ardent youth that leaped so fearlessly in her own veins at sight and sound of growing things, green shoots of trees, showing timidly, early violets lifting shy heads, the twittering of the mother bird teaching her young to spread her wings. She knew and understood no more of her own nature than this—that it was good to live in spring and summer and early autumn, while even some winter days had their own stinging joy—that the blood which was daily wet on Mother Veronica's discipline, the hair-sheet by which that young and tender flesh was lacerated, were alike protests against intoxicating dreams.... Yet dreams were sweet, and why should they be broken?

Another picture. The convent chapel this time; the hour of Benediction which she loved. Warm glow from the altar, warm glow about her heart. A suffused radiance from the lamps that burned day and night before the Body of the Lord; a wave of light, from the candles upon the altar, that seemed to roll upward as the incense soared, a vivid golden cloud that changed its shape momentarily, and was always beautiful, carrying your eye higher and higher until its glance rested at last in perfect peace upon the jewelled monstrance and pyx that held the Sacred Host. The nun's song stilled—that swan-song of dead womanhood—the hush of concentrated prayer—silence—the tinkling of a bell—the blessing that bathed one in a sea of light....

Music again; the organ only. The sense of human breath, temporarily suspended, returning simultaneously to a vast crowd that had for a short while been swayed by an eternal mystery. The shuffling of feet, the changed poise of many bodies, the jingle of rosaries, hastily kissed and put away, the rhythmic filing out of obedient convent boarders, outer air flowing in. But for some time afterwards Evelyn would move in a dream-world, a little detached from, a little unaware of, the gay chatter and talk of her companions in their recreation hour. One day, when in this mood, she was called to the parlour. Her father and stepmother awaited her with a strange man. It had been suggested that Evelyn was to sail with her parents for India, three months later, but Mrs. Harcourt, who, though no longer in her first youth, possessed some charm still for the other sex, had dreaded the rivalry of the younger woman, and was in consequence untiring in her efforts to alter the arrangement. Henry Brand, an acquaintance of her husband's, had been struck by Evelyn's beauty when visiting the convent in a friend's company one day to hear the music. He offered himself now as a solution to the problem.

"Would you like to be married, Evelyn?" her stepmother demanded abruptly. Something in the rapt look of the girl's face showed her that direct methods would be best. "Your father and I are anxious about you; we feel sure that you are much too delicate for India. Mr. Brand says that he wants to marry you, and we should like to leave you in his care."

"Why—should I mind? Yes, of course I'll marry him if you wish me to," said Evelyn dazedly. She had never cared to dwell on the thought of India in her stepmother's company; marriage with any one—the veriest stranger—would be better. She looked at Henry Brand gravely and sedately as he came to her and took her hand. The expression of her father's face, half-ashamed, and half-relieved, perplexed her; as her stepmother sprang forward, she shrank back from the hilarious embrace. The woman glanced at her husband and nodded. All three conspirators had counted upon Evelyn's obedience. Convent training does its work, and the moment had been especially propitious.

"Quite a leading of Providence, in fact," said Mrs. Harcourt, summing up the situation to everybody's satisfaction.

The last picture—the last, at least, upon which Evelyn chose to linger. Her wedding, hastened to fit in with her parents' autumn visits, and to prevent the possibility of a change.

The Oratory this time, large and massive; it felt very grey and cold after the convent chapel. A short Mass and no music—Henry Brand was avowedly a Protestant, but had no fixed belief. There were strangers in the congregation. Some one sobbing—why should Sister Veronica cry? Distractions pouring in; Evelyn pondered as to the meaning of certain directions given her by her confessor; she wondered if she would be allowed to visit the different altars of the church after the ceremony; she noticed a brilliant feather in a lady's hat; for the first time she felt a little shy and lonely. She wished that every one would not look at her; there were some pretty people to look at! She hoped she would be happy; she thought how nice it would be to be married, to have a man—even if his back were not quite straight—to go about with, instead of a mere nun. In future she would be able to wear nice clothes, to move freely in the world, to read what she liked, and be taken to public places where she might even meet some of the people she had crowned with laurels—Chamberlain, Curzon, Kitchener.

How wicked she was! She shut her eyes and knelt up very straight, practising every art she knew against the onslaught of distraction. Above the altar was a picture of the Blessed Virgin and the Eternal Father, painted by a French father of the community, after a design by Sebastian Concha of Turin. She looked from it to the cartouche above, the gilt heart surrounded by rays; then on again to the central picture. Little, forgotten stories of St. Philip Neri came back to her; little, forgotten maxims. She remembered how, on one occasion, a rich noble had come to St. Philip, full of his worldly plans and ambitions. The saint had listened patiently to the confidences, as was his habit. But at the end—"And then?" ... he asked.

Her dreams of happiness, her hopes of success, both seemed to sweep her towards the mysterious shore of marriage—that Sacrament which Catholics approach with prayer and fasting. So far so good. But—then? ...

The church faded; she was lost in the whirl and confusion of amused spectators, who pelted her with rose leaves and confetti, praising her beauty till she blushed. She drove off with her husband, still half-intoxicated with excitement. Then came a picture to which she shut her eyes, the first of a long series, blackening with time.

CHAPTER III

"They should take who have the power."

Martin Calvert was a business man, pure and simple. But he had withal a certain clairvoyance which enabled him to detect in others such qualities as would produce the most marketable and satisfactory results.

Starting life with a fairly large income, he had slowly but surely added to it, by effective, if unsensational, means. He had travelled in many countries, discarding the methods of the Yellow Press and its like, comparatively early in his career. It seemed to him that a man only reached permanent fame by being sincere himself and dealing sincerely with human problems. His sense of honour was so acute that it entered even into his business transactions. He had, of course, to make use of the weakness of others to a certain extent, to bend opportunity to his will on occasions; but he set about his work with a straightness not always, nor even often, found in Wall Street. Yet he had learned something from America, although it was said of him in that country that he missed more chances of making fortunes in a day than most men did in a lifetime.

But his round million of money satisfied him after all. He had no near kith or kin to work for, and, patriotic as a man may be at heart, impersonal ties seldom stir his blood so deeply as do those of family. Evelyn was right, he had learned by now to look upon Farquharson almost as his son. He had recognized him from the first as being a man of power, and the incident of their meeting was dramatic. A big ecclesiastical procession was marching one Easter down the Rambla at Barcelona; Calvert, standing at a street corner, was watching it with immense disapprobation. The crowd surged onward, sweeping all before it like a mighty flood; a child, running suddenly across the path of the procession, slipped, and was trampled out of sight almost without a cry, lost in the religious exaltation that is so often blind to human claims. From the opposite side of the road a man dashed forward; so sudden was his movement that it arrested even the half-dazed crowd. The child was saved. He had borne it away before more than the first ranks of the spectators knew what had happened.

The promptness, the surety of the action, appealed to a man to whom swift decisions came naturally. The rescuer was neat, but shabby. Calvert invited him to his hotel.

Farquharson made no claim on Calvert's pity or patronage. But, after a few judicious questions, the older man discovered that the stranger was of some social significance, and had been out of employment for about three weeks. The secretary for whom he had last worked in an office had absconded with the contents of the till. Calvert had important business letters to send to England that evening. He hired Farquharson's services then and there for the night, and presently gave him a place in his office.

And now, fifteen years later, he looked back upon this act of impulse as being the wisest of his life. From a commercial point of view, Farquharson had paid his way. More than that, he had healed an old sore in Calvert's heart; he had renewed the man's lost faith and hope. And Calvert was old enough to realize that in life the things we can touch and lay hold of are not always or even often the most valuable.

The dinner hour, usually a propitious moment in which to discuss claims and urge the need of benefactions, was almost always a cause of annoyance to Calvert. He hated ostentation; the very men who were anxious to gain his favour frequently lost it by offering him out-of-season delicacies on gold plate. Once, at a small dinner party in New York, where over a thousand dollars had been spent on table decorations alone, Calvert rose at the fourth course and struck the table with a blow which shook the gay, luxurious crowd from its apathy.

"You have got starving men outside," he said. "Every dish you have set before me, to my mind, is wholesale murder. You and your ways remind me of Babylon; beware lest her fate overtakes you."

But the startled guests broke in here with hilarious shrieks of laughter. The episode was supposed to have been got up by the host as a new form of entertainment to pique their jaded palates.

Conforming to custom in his own house, Calvert always offered his guests champagne at dinner, but he himself invariably drank ale. Democrat as he was, he could complain of nothing in the meal that had just been served at Creagh. It was characteristic of his host; good and simple without display. And the talk through the dinner was genial and unaffected; something in the atmosphere of a room which has grown warm with human kindness calls for a like response from those of its occupants who are sensitive to influences.

Calvert felt his own mind expand. He had talked openly, as he seldom talked, and Farquharson was at his best. The elder man took a pride in watching this child of his deliberate choice, who never failed him. Farquharson was a man who had from the first seen two moves ahead in the game of life, and Calvert, himself a skilled player, gladly acknowledged himself beaten by a pupil to whom he had taught the rudiments of hazard.

The drawing-room at Creagh was essentially a pleasant room. Innumerable flowers, books and reviews, Lady Ennly's spinning-wheel and lace pillow, kept in constant use, gave it a homely, old-fashioned appearance. Calvert, aware of comfort, although unable to analyze its cause, crossed the room to Mrs. Brand, who withdrew to a distant corner as the men entered the room.

She swept her skirt aside, and pointed to the seat beside her.

"How nice of you to come and speak to me! I thought you meant to," she said.

Calvert smiled.

"Lord Creagh told me you were just like that. 'Confide in Mrs. Brand, tell her everything you want; the more direct you are the more she'll like you,' he said. Now, I'm a plain man, Mrs. Brand, and have never been used to women and their ways. I deal with facts, not illusions." He seated himself more comfortably in his chair, obviously preparing for an intimate talk. "I'm commercial through and through, you know; if I want a thing I like to pay its proper price. Now, I want something from you, and you're not the sort of woman to take any price at all. That annoys me, because I haven't the faintest shadow of a claim upon your interest."

Evelyn was silent for a moment.

"Women aren't very active powers in the world as a rule," she said; "I'm a dabbler. I paint little pictures, I write little stories and do fancy work, for money—that's all. I think I could have been a good mother, but I've never had a child. There's nothing in this world of my very own I can shape and mould as I should love to shape it. I suppose I like to play with lives as other women do with stocks and shares. It's just another form of speculation. So when men who can do things—there aren't many of them!—are good enough to trust me, to confide in me even the tiniest inkling of their plans and hopes, I'm very proud." She waited. "I've always had one big ambition. I've wanted to do something to help on, even in the smallest way, some one who'll do big things; to show that I believed in him before the world had the least knowledge of what he was capable. I think you re going to give me my opportunity—I know what you want, of course; any one would, who saw you with Mr. Farquharson. You want every scrap of help for him that you can get. Now, mind, I don't really see where I come in, for he's a man who won't need even you for long. He stands alone; he'd always like to, wouldn't he?"

"You're right; he'd always like to," Calvert admitted slowly. There was some sadness in his tone.

Evelyn put out her hand.

"It's a good trait, isn't it? It hurts other people, of course. I think no one gets on in the world without hurting some one else in the process. But there are times when one thanks God that one was just the person who was called upon to make that special sacrifice which was counted on and taken, so very simply. Not that I see there should be any sacrifice in Mr. Farquharson's case. He is your protégé. Everything he does will tell for you. He came to you with a handful of irons, and you gave him fuel and lit the fire, and you'll be even prouder of the fact some day than you are now. Well, if you can let me put in even one tiny piece of wood to keep that fire alight, you may guess how delighted I shall be."

Calvert gave a sigh of relief.