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Dividing Waters

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Title: Dividing Waters

Creator: I. A. R. Wylie


        
Release date: July 16, 2015 [eBook #49460]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49460

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIVIDING WATERS ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                           *DIVIDING WATERS*


                                   BY

                            *I. A. R. WYLIE*

                               AUTHOR OF
                 "THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE," "MY GERMAN YEAR"



                             SECOND EDITION



                         MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
                            49 RUPERT STREET
                               LONDON, W.




                            _Published_ 1911

  _Copyright_ 1911 _in the United States of America by I. A. R. Wylie_




                               *CONTENTS*

                                 BOOK I

CHAP.

      I. The Mistakes of Providence
     II. "Wanderlust"
    III. An Experiment
     IV. Outward Bound
      V. Among the Heathen
     VI. A Letter Home
    VII. A Duet
   VIII. The Awakening
     IX. Renunciation
      X. Youth and the Barrier
     XI. Wolff makes his Debut in Delford
    XII. Nora Forsakes Her Country


                                BOOK II

      I. The New Home
     II. --And the New Life
    III. A Meeting
     IV. A Visitor Arrives in Karlsburg
      V. The Cub as Lion
     VI. In Which the Rev. John Receives a Shock
    VII. Wolff Sells a Horse and Nora Loses a Friend
   VIII. Rising Shadows
     IX. Arnold Receives His Explanation
      X. Nemesis
     XI. The Fetish
    XII. War-Clouds
   XIII. Ultimatum
    XIV. The Code of Honour
     XV. The Sea Between


                                BOOK III

                               THE BRIDGE

      I. Home
     II. Exiled
    III. Revelation
     IV. The Bridge Across




                           *DIVIDING WATERS*



                                *BOOK I*


                              *CHAPTER I*

                      *THE MISTAKES OF PROVIDENCE*


The family Ingestre sat in conclave.  That they sat together at all at
any time other than a meal-time was in itself sufficient proof that the
subject of their debate was unusually serious: their faces and attitudes
added conclusive evidence.

The Reverend John Ingestre occupied his chair of state at the head of
the long table.  He was a middle-sized man, with narrow, sloping
shoulders, which were at that particular moment drawn up into an
uncomfortable hunch.  When he spoke he pulled at his thin beard and
glanced at his wife surreptitiously over his spectacles, as though
seeking her advice or support--actions which gave his whole person an
air of harassed nervousness.

Mrs. Ingestre did not return her husband's signals. She lay quietly on
the sofa by the window, her hand half shading her face, and seemed
absorbed in her own thoughts.  Only once during the Rev. John's long and
detailed statement did she give any sign of having heard.  Then she
shifted her position so that her grave scrutiny rested on the two
younger members of the family.  Perhaps she hoped to learn from their
expressions what they were innerly experiencing, and therein no doubt
she must have been successful, for their positions alone were expressive
of much.

The boy--or young man, for he was at that uncertain age when boyhood and
manhood meet--had his hands plunged in his pockets; his long legs were
stretched out in front of him, his chin rested on his chest.  Supreme
and energiless despondency seemed to be imprinted in the very creases of
his Norfolk coat.

The girl had her place at the table.  Though she sat perfectly still,
never turning her eyes from her father's face, there was something in
her rigid attitude which suggested irritation and impatience.  Her hands
lay in her lap; only a close observer would have seen that they were not
folded, but clenched, so that the knuckles stood out white.

"So you see, my dear children," the Rev. John said at last, coming to
his peroration, "I felt it my duty to lay the case before you exactly as
it stands. For a long time I hoped that it would not be necessary for me
to do so--that a merciful Providence would spare me the pain of
inflicting upon you so sharp a wound.  Well, it has been ruled
otherwise, and I only pray that you share with me my one
consolation--the knowledge that it is the will of a Higher Power, and
therefore all for the best."

He stopped and waited.  In spite of the catastrophe which he had just
announced, there was a trace of meek satisfaction in his manner, of
which he seemed gradually to become conscious, for he turned to his wife
with a note of apology in his thin voice:

"My dear, I have explained the matter correctly, I hope?"

"Quite correctly, I should think."

Mrs. Ingestre's hand sank from her face.  It was a finely shaped hand,
and whiter, if possible, than the dress she wore.  Everything about her
was beautiful and fragile--painfully fragile.  The very atmosphere
around her seemed laden with the perfume of a refined and nobly borne
suffering.

"It seems to me there is no possible mistake," said the young man,
getting up roughly.  "We are ruined--that is the long and the short of
the matter."

For a moment no one made any attempt to deny his angry statement.  Then
the Rev. John shook his head.

"You speak too strongly, my dear Miles," he corrected.  "We are not what
one would call ruined. I have still my stipend.  There is no idea
of--eh--starving, or anything of that sort; but the superfluous luxuries
must be done away with, and--eh--one or two sacrifices must be brought."

He coughed, and looked at his daughter.  Mrs. Ingestre looked at her
also, and the pale, pain-worn face became illumined with tenderness and
pity.

"Sacrifices," the Rev. John repeated regretfully. "Such, I fear, must be
the payment for our misfortunes."

Nora Ingestre relaxed from her stiff attitude of self-restraint.  The
expression of her face said clearly enough: "The sermon is at an end,
and the plate being handed round.  How much am I expected to put in?"

"It was of your career I was thinking, my dear Miles," the Rev. John
answered.  "I am quite aware that your whole future depends on your
remaining in the Army, therefore we have decided that--that sacrifices
must be brought for you."

He hesitated again, and threw another glance at his wife's pale face.

"Nora, I am sure you see the necessity of what I say?"

His daughter started, as though he had awakened her from a reverie.

"Yes, I do," she said, with an abrupt energy.  "We must all help each
other as much as we can.  I shall just work like a nigger."

"Eh--yes," said her father doubtfully.  "I am sure you will.  Of course,
we shall have to dismiss some of the servants, and your mother will
need--eh--more assistance than hitherto--and I know, dear Nora----"  He
coughed, and left the sentence unfinished.

Whether it was his manner or her mother's face which aroused her to
closer attention, Nora Ingestre herself could not have said.  She became
suddenly aware that all three were looking at her, and that she was
expected to say something.

"I don't quite understand," she said.  "It is only natural that I should
help all I can, only----"

It was her turn to stop short.  She too had risen to her feet, and quite
unconsciously she drew herself upright like a person preparing for
attack from some as yet unknown quarter.  Like her father, she was not
above the middle height, but she had her mother's graceful,
well-proportioned build, which made her seem taller than she really was,
and added to that a peculiar resolute dignity that was all her own.  It
was, perhaps, to this latter attribute that she owed the unacknowledged
respect in which she was held both by her father and brother.  For it is
a set rule that we must admire most what is in direct contrast to
ourselves; and it had never been in the Rev. John's power either to
carry himself erect, or to give himself anything but the appearance of a
meek and rather nervous man.  It was owing to this inherent respect that
he hesitated at the present moment.  Perhaps he realised at the bottom
of his heart that it was not an altogether fair proceeding to load his
mistaken monetary speculations on the shoulders of a disinterested
Providence, and that his family might have other, if secret, views as to
the real responsibility. At any rate, he was not sufficiently convinced
of his own absolute innocence to meet his daughter's grave, questioning
eyes with either firmness or equanimity.

"My dear," he said, "we want you at home."  And therewith he considered
he had put the case both concisely and gently.  But Nora continued to
look at him, and he grew irritated because she did not seem able to
understand.

"Surely you can see that--that there are certain things for which we
have neither the time nor the money?" he said, drumming on the table
with his thin fingers.

A deep wave of colour mounted Nora Ingestre's cheeks.  She did not
speak, however, until it had died away again, leaving her unusually
pale.

"You mean--I must give up--everything?" she asked in a low voice.

"If by 'everything' you mean your musical studies--yes," her father
returned impatiently.  The next minute he relented, and, leaning
forward, took her passive hand in his.  "But surely it is not
'everything,'" he said.  "Surely your home and your people are more to
you than even this favourite pursuit?  I know it is hard for you--it is
indeed hard for us all; but if we kept our promise and sent you to
London other things would have to pay for it--the dear old house, the
garden, Miles's career.  You see how it is? You know there is nothing
for your real good that I would withhold from you if I could help it,
dear child."

He waited, expecting her to throw herself into his arms in generous
self-reproach at her own hesitation; but she said nothing, and there was
a long, uncomfortable silence.

"And then time will not hang heavy on your hands," he went on, with
forced cheerfulness.  "Your mother will need you and I shall need
you--good little amanuensis that you are!  Is it not something to you
that we all need you so much?"

"Yes," she said.

The monosyllable encouraged him, though it would have encouraged no one
else.

"And, of course, in between whiles you will be able to keep up your
music," he added, patting her hand.

This time there was not even a monosyllable to reassure him.  Nora
Ingestre stood motionless at her father's side, her eyes fixed straight
ahead, her fine, resolute features set, and almost expressionless.

Miles swung impatiently on his heel.

"I can't think what you are making all this fuss about," he said.  "You
ought to be jolly glad that we can keep on the old place, and that you
have such a decent home.  I know lots of girls who would give their eyes
to be in your shoes."

"Have I been making a fuss?"

She spoke perfectly quietly, without changing her position, but her
question seemed to cause Miles fresh annoyance.

"I call it a fuss to stand there and say nothing," he said, with sound
masculine logic.  "And anyhow--what does it matter whether you can
tinkle a few tunes on the old tin-kettle or not?"

"That is something you do not understand," she blazed out.  It was as
though he had unwittingly set fire to some hidden powder-mine in her
character. She was breathing quickly and brokenly, and every line in her
face betrayed a painfully repressed feeling which threatened to break
out into passionate expression.

Mrs. Ingestre rose from her couch.  When she stood upright she seemed to
dominate them all, to command silence and respect, by the very dignity
of her bearing.

"I think this has all lasted long enough," she said. "What is done
cannot be undone.  We must face matters as best we can.  As your father
says, it is the will of Providence, and as such we must accept it.
Only"--she turned to Miles, and from the faintest possible inflection of
irony her tone deepened to reproof--"there are some things you do not
understand, dear boy, and which you had better leave to wiser heads.
Perhaps I understand better.  At any rate, I should like to speak to
Nora alone."

Thus she virtually dismissed the masculine members of the family.  Miles
shrugged his shoulders, and went out into the garden whistling.  The
Rev. John rose, and gathered up the business papers which he had brought
in with him.

"I am sure that your mother will show it is all for the best," he said
weakly.

At the door he turned and looked back over his spectacles.

"Remember always what we have both tried to impress upon you--it is the
will of Providence," he said.  "We must not kick against the pricks."

He then went out, leaving the two women alone.




                              *CHAPTER II*

                             *"WANDERLUST"*


For some minutes mother and daughter did not speak. Nora had turned her
back, and was gazing out on to the pleasant country garden with eyes
that saw neither the flowers nor the evening shadows which lengthened
out over the lawn.  She was still too profoundly occupied in the effort
to appear indifferent, to cover over that one slip of feeling, to notice
what was going on about her.  She hated herself for having shown what
she felt, she hated herself for feeling as she did; but no amount of
hatred or self-condemnation would retrieve the one or change the other,
and when she at last turned, aroused by the prolonged silence, the
signals of anger and resentment still burned in her cheeks and eyes.

"Oh, I am a wretch," she cried impetuously. "Dearest, don't look so
grave and distressed.  It isn't your fault that you have such a
disagreeable daughter.  There, I ought to be a help and comfort, and
instead----"

"An old woman does not need so much help and comfort as a young one,"
Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently.  "Just at present I am not suffering
one-tenth of what you are suffering.  And, dear Nora, don't treat me
like some frail old wreck that must be shielded at all costs from the
rough winds.  Don't stand there and swallow up everything you are
feeling because you are afraid of hurting me.  It will only rankle all
the worse.  I would rather have your full confidence, however painful it
may be.  Come here and sit down beside me.  Tell me everything you are
thinking and feeling, honest Injun!"

The "honest Injun" brought a smile to Nora's eyes.  Like everything else
that she said or did, Mrs. Ingestre stamped the schoolboy phrase with an
exotic, indefinable charm that was all her own.  Yet beneath the
half-gay appeal there lay a note of command, and Nora drew nearer
awkwardly and hesitatingly, bereft for the moment of her youthful
assurance and thrust back to the school days which at the age of
nineteen are not so far away.  She took the white outstretched hand and
stood with bent head, frowning at the carpet.  Suddenly she knelt down
and buried her face in her mother's lap.

"I feel like a trapped rabbit," she murmured indistinctly.

A very faint smile touched Mrs. Ingestre's lips.

"A trapped rabbit, Nora?  And who has trapped you, pray?"

"You have, and you know it.  You always do!"

"Really, dear, it would have to be a very old and shortsighted rabbit to
allow me to trap it, and you are neither.  You must explain."

Nora lifted her face.  She was laughing, but she was also very near
crying.

"I mean--that is how you make me feel," she said.  "I can defy other
people when they want to do any soul-exploring on my territory.  I just
shut my mouth and my heart, and leave them out in the cold.  But you are
different.  You mesmerise me till I not only have to tell you what I am
feeling, but I positively _want_ to--even though it is the most
disgraceful, most disreputable feeling possible."

"And just now----?"

"It was a thought."

"What sort of a thought?"

"A dreadful one."

"Couldn't you tell me?"

"Of course I can--I must--but----"

"Well?"

"Do you want to know exactly?"

"Word for word."

"I was thinking what a duffer father is--was, I mean."

A complete silence.  Mrs. Ingestre stroked her daughter's hand and
stared sightlessly into the deepening shadows.  The smile had died from
her lips.

"Go on," she said at last.

"I don't think there is anything else.  I always think that when father
talks about Providence and--and that sort of thing.  I feel sometimes
that if Providence took human shape and was in the room at the time I
should wink--I am not sure I don't wink inside me, anyhow."

She waited, and then, as Mrs. Ingestre said nothing, she went on
disconsolately:

"I know I am awful, darling.  I wonder if other people have shocking
ideas too, or whether I am the wicked exception?"

"I don't think so," Mrs. Ingestre said.  "One can't help one's thoughts,
you know."

"No, one can't; can one?  The more one sits on them, the more uproarious
they get.  Are you cross?"

"No."

"Do you--ever have thoughts like that?"

"Nora, I am not feeling in the least like a trapped rabbit, if that's
what you mean."

Nora laughed outright.  Her youth and buoyant spirits won the upper hand
for the moment, but for no longer.  The actual subject of their
conversation interposed itself between her humour and herself.

"Why did father try and make money in Mexico?" she demanded suddenly and
sharply.  "We were rich enough before, and now we are so poor that we
have to give up everything that makes life worth living, in order to
live."

"My dear child, do you really think that?"

"No, I don't _think_ that.  If I thought, I daresay I should see that,
as the world goes, I am a very lucky girl.  But I _feel_--awful!  And
the feelings always count most with me."

Mrs. Ingestre nodded to herself.

"They count most with all normal people," she said; "and those who
govern their lives by their heads are not, as a rule, either the
happiest or the cleverest. Still, Nora, is it such a sacrifice?"

"Yes."

"Is the music so dear to you that it is the only thing which makes life
worth living?"

Nora did not answer, and with a firm, gentle hand Mrs. Ingestre tilted
her daughter's head backwards, so that she could look straight into the
overcast grey eyes.  A very faint smile played about the corners of her
own mouth.

"Nora, you know, a few months ago, when we promised to send you up to
London to begin your studies, we were comparatively rich people.  Rich
people can afford luxuries, and our pet luxury was to imagine that our
little girl was a genius who was going to show the world great things.
We meant to give you every chance--we would have seen that our ship
lacked nothing to make its first passage in public waters a success.
Well, we are poor now, and the first luxury which we must part with is
that fond hope.  You and I must face the fact--you are a sweet musician,
not a genius."

"Mother, you knew that all the time--as well as I did."

A pale rose sprang to Mrs. Ingestre's cheeks.  Quite unconsciously she
avoided her daughter's challenging eyes.

"Mother, why did you pretend to think otherwise?" Nora went on.  "Did
you believe me so silly as to imagine myself anything more than an
amateur?  Why, of course I knew.  I had only to compare myself with
others."

"And yet you let us think and talk about you as a genius!" Mrs. Ingestre
interposed.

Nora nodded defiantly.

"I was a humbug," she declared.  "I wanted to go to London.  It seemed
the only way."

"Wasn't that a rather disreputable way?"

"Not more disreputable than yours.  I remember, when father complained
about the useless expense you told him it was a sin against Providence
not to encourage Genius.  It was then I first made the discovery that
when you are most serious you are really laughing--at father and me and
every one."

"Nora!  Nora!"  The tone of mild reproof died away Mother and daughter
looked each other in the eyes and laughed.  When she had done laughing,
Mrs. Ingestre bent down and kissed the girl lightly on the forehead.

"You pry too deep to be an altogether very respectful person," she said;
"but since you have pryed, I must make the best of it and confess.  I
knew your father would not understand my ideas, so I too humbugged a
little--just a very little.  I wanted you to go to London, and
afterwards into the world.  It was the only way."

"And now this is the end of it all!"

Nora Ingestre rose and stood by her mother's side. Her voice rang with
all the protest and despair of which youth is so capable--very real
protest and very real despair, whole-hearted and intense, as is the way
with youth.

"It wasn't the music," she went on.  "I loved it, of course, but I
wanted to see the world and people more than anything else.  I wanted
the world so badly, mother.  I felt like a caged animal that sees the
forests and the plains through its prison bars.  I wanted to get out and
be free.  Oh, you can't understand--you can't!"

Mrs. Ingestre stirred suddenly, as though a wound had been touched with
rough fingers.

"I do understand," she said.  But Nora was too young, above all, too
absorbed in her own griefs, to hear all that was hidden in her mother's
words.

"At any rate, no one else would understand," she went on.  "Father
wouldn't, Miles wouldn't, and the whole village wouldn't.  They would
all say I was a New Woman, or unwomanly, or something--why, I don't
know.  I don't care whether I have a vote or not.  I can cook and I can
sew; I love children. All that sort of thing is womanly, isn't it?
Isn't it womanly to want to live, and to know what life means? Nobody
thinks it strange that Miles, though he has no talent for anything
except loafing, should travel, should live away from home and get to
know other people.  It is all for his development!  But I am not to
develop, it seems.  Perhaps development isn't womanly.  Perhaps the only
right thing for me to do is to look after the flowers and worry the cook
and bore myself through my days with tea-parties and tennis-parties and
occasional match-making dances, until somebody asks me to be his wife,
and I marry him to save myself from turning into a vegetable!"

She stopped, breathless with her fierce torrent of sarcasm and
bitterness.  Her cheeks were flushed, her hands clenched; there were
tears in her bright eyes. Mrs. Ingestre rose and followed her daughter
to the window, whither she had wandered in her restless energy.

"How long have you been thinking all this, Nora?" she asked.

"Ever since I left school and Miles went to Sandhurst. Until then it all
seemed fair enough.  He had been to school and I had been to school.
But after that, just when I was beginning to learn because I loved it,
just when I was beginning to see things and understand them--then I was
brought home--here--and there was an end to it."

Mrs. Ingestre put her arm about her daughter's shoulders.

"And then you remembered that you were musical?" she said.

"And you discovered that I was a genius!" came the retort.

Mrs. Ingestre laughed quietly.

"I see that we must not throw stones at each other, or our glass houses
will suffer," she said.  "And, after all, it does not matter why either
of us wanted it, or how we managed.  You were to go to London and see a
little of the world----"

"Don't talk about it, mother!"

"Only a little, perhaps, but more than your whole future promises you
now, poor child.  Now you will have to stop here and vegetate."

Nora turned and clasped her mother in a tumultuous embrace.

"What a brute I must seem!" she exclaimed. "And yet I _do_ love you,
dearest.  I believe I love you more than most daughters do their
mothers, and I don't believe that I am really more selfish--only, I
can't hide what I feel, and I feel such a lot.  Are you hurt?"

Mrs. Ingestre shook her head.

"It is an old woman's privilege to pretend that she has a reason to feel
bitter," she said, "but I am not in the least bitter, because, you see,
I understand. I understood even before you said anything, and so I made
up my mind that you should be given an alternative----"

"An alternative, mother?"

"----To staying here; and Captain Arnold."

A sudden silence fell on both.  Mrs. Ingestre, under cover of the
twilight, observed her daughter sharply. She saw that though Nora's face
had grown grave it showed no sign of any profound feeling, and she took
the quiet, undisturbed colour as an answer to a question which even she
had never ventured to ask.

"And so," she went on after a moment, "I wrote to my old friend,
Fraeulein Mueller, about you, and she answered two or three days ago,
and said she knew of an excellent position as companion to a lady in
Karlsburg.  She thought it would suit you admirably. You would be
treated as one of the family, and have plenty of time to go on with your
own studies.  Would you like it?"

The proposal came so suddenly, and yet in such a matter-of-fact tone,
that Nora caught her breath and looked up at her mother in blank
surprise.

"You mean," she began slowly, "that I should go and live in a German
family?"

"Yes."

"With a lot of fat, greasy, gobbling Germans?"

"Do you know any Germans?"

"No--at least there was our German music-master at school, and _he_ was
fat and greasy, and I am sure he must have gobbled.  He must have done.
They all do."

"You used to say he played like an angel," Mrs. Ingestre interposed.

"So he did.  But I hated him all the same.  I hate all Germans."

Her tone rang with a sort of school-girl obstinacy. Her attitude, with
lifted chin and straight shoulders, was eloquent with national arrogance
and scorn.

Mrs. Ingestre turned away.

"I shall write to Fraeulein Mueller and tell her to make all
arrangements," she said.  "I think, if everything proves suitable, that
you had better go to Karlsburg."

"Mother!  You haven't even given me the choice!"

"I do not think it wise to do so," Mrs. Ingestre answered gravely.  "You
are right, Nora; you must see the world.  You must go away from here,
not just for the sake of the music, the change, and excitement, but in
order that your heart may grow wider, in order to learn to love the good
that lies outside your own little sphere.  There are great things, great
people outside Delford, Nora--yes, and outside England.  You must learn
to know them."

The girl's face flushed crimson.

"At the bottom we all despise foreigners and foreign ways," she said in
self-defence.  "Father does, Miles does, the Squire does.  And they have
all travelled; they have seen for themselves."

"They have travelled with their eyes open and their hearts closed," Mrs.
Ingestre answered.

"How do you know, mother?  You have never been out of England."

Mrs. Ingestre shook her head.  A rather melancholy smile passed over her
wan features.

"No," she said; "I have never been out of England, but I have been
often, very often, ill, and during the long hours I have travelled great
distances, and I have begun to think that God cannot surely have
reserved all the virtues for us English.  I fancy even the poor
benighted Germans must have their share of heaven."

Nora laughed outright.

"I expect they have, now I come to think of it," she admitted gaily.
"Mother, you are a much better Christian than father, though you won't
call every one 'dearly beloved,' and you are yards better than I am.  I
can't help it--I despise all foreigners, especially----"

She stopped abruptly, and Mrs. Ingestre smiled.

"Still, you will try Karlsburg.  It will be an experience for you, and
you will hear good music. The family is a very old one, and perhaps the
members, being of noble birth, may gobble less than the others."

"All Germans are of noble birth," Nora observed scornfully.

"So much the better for them," Mrs. Ingestre returned.  "Are you willing
to try?  You know the alternative."

"May I think it over, mother?"

"Yes, you may think over it, if you like.  It is, after all, only a
question of your willingness."

"That means you have made up your mind?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Ingestre saw the strong young face set into lines of defiance.  She
went back to the sofa and lay down with a sigh.

"Little Nora," she said, almost under her breath, "you know it is not my
custom to preach.  You won't think, therefore, that I am just 'talking'
when I tell you: years ago I would have given anything--anything--to
have had this chance."

For the first time in their long interview the girl stopped listening to
the self-pitying confusion of her thoughts.  The elder woman's voice had
penetrated her youthful egoism, and she turned with that curious tugging
at the heart which we experience when we have unexpectedly heard a
smothered cry of pain break from lips usually composed in lines of peace
and apparent content.

"Mother!" Nora exclaimed.  The room was now in almost complete shadow.
She came closer and bent over the quiet face.  The atmosphere was heavy
with the scent of roses, and it flashed through Nora's mind as she stood
there that her mother was like a rose--pale and faded, but still
beautiful, still breathing a wonderful perfume of purity and sweetness.

"Mother!" she repeated, strangely awe-struck.

Mrs. Ingestre opened her eyes and smiled.

"I am very tired," she said.  "I think I could sleep a little.  Go and
think it over.  I want you to be willing."

Nora bent and kissed her.

"If you wish it, I am willing," she said with impulsive, whole-hearted
surrender.  She crept out on tiptoe, and for a few minutes all was quiet
in the great shadowy room.  Then the door opened again, and the Rev.
John entered and peered round short-sightedly.  He saw that his wife's
eyes were closed, and, since it is not kind to waken a weary invalid, he
merely knocked some books off the table and coughed. Truth to tell, it
annoyed him that his wife should have chosen that identical moment to
rest.  He wanted to talk to her, but since in spite of all his indirect
efforts she remained quiet, he went out again, a disconsolate victim of
his own gentle consideration.

But Mrs. Ingestre had not been asleep.  Her eyes were shut, but the eyes
of her mental vision were open.  They were watching sunlit panoramas of
long rivers with mountain banks and frowning ruins, glorious,
heaven-inspiring cathedral spires and great cities.  The ears of her
imagination had not heard the Rev. John's clumsy movements.  They were
listening to the song of the ocean, the confusion of a strange tongue,
the rich _crescendo_ of a wonderful music.

Mrs. Ingestre had left the room and the vicarage and the village far
behind, and was travelling swiftly through a world which she had never
seen and--since for her life was near its close--would never see.  And
as she travelled, the same thought repeated itself to her with stern
persistency:

"Whatever it costs you, she must go.  You must not, dare not keep her."




                             *CHAPTER III*

                            *AN EXPERIMENT*


Breakfast with the Ingestres was a movable and unsociable feast.  The
various members of the family came down when it suited them, the only
punishment being the inevitable one of cold eggs and bitter tea, and
conversation was restricted to the barest necessities.  The Rev. John
was usually engrossed in parochial letters, Mrs. Ingestre was never
present at all, and Miles only at such a time when it pleased him. Thus
Nora, choosing on the morning following the momentous interview to be an
early riser, found little difficulty in making her escape.  The Rev.
John was more absorbed than usual in his post, since it contained not
only letters dealing with his cure of souls, but also some disagreeable
business facts which he swallowed with his tea in melancholy gulps.

Nora kissed him lightly on the high forehead as she ran toward the open
French window.  Rather to her surprise, the customary caress seemed to
arouse her father from his reflections.  He looked up and blinked, like
a man who is trying to remember some important matter.

"My dear," he said, before Nora had reached the lawn, "is it really true
that you want to go abroad?  Your mother was talking to me about it last
night."

"We were thinking about it," Nora admitted, fidgeting nervously with the
blind-cord.  "Mother said she thought it would be good for me."

"But, my dear child, what shall we do without you?" her father
complained.

Nora made an almost imperceptible movement of impatience.  She knew of
what her father was thinking, and it did not move her to any great
degree of sympathy.

"You will manage all right," she said.  "Mr. Clerk will help you with
your letters."  And then, to cut the conversation short, she went out
into the garden and along the gravel pathway towards the road.

The sun shone gloriously.  All the charm of an English summer morning
lay in the air, and Nora drew in great breaths with a joyous,
unconscious triumph in her own fresh youth and health.  The garden was
the one place in the village which she really loved.  The ugly, modern
red-brick church, the straggling "square," with its peppermint
bull's-eye monument to some past "glorious victory," in which the
inhabitants of Delford were dimly supposed to have had their honourable
share, the stuffy cottages, interspersed here and there by an
ivy-overgrown residence of some big-wig of the neighbourhood--these
features were unaccountably connected in Nora's mind with her father's
sermons, the drone of the organ, and the dull piety of Sundays.  But the
garden was all her mother's.  Nora believed that within its peaceful
limits the forgotten and despised fairies of ancient lore took refuge
from the matter-of-fact bigots who formed Delford's most respectable
community.  She had even christened a certain rose-corner the "Fairy
Castle," and it amused her riotous young fancy to imagine an indignant
and horrified Queen Mab scampering across the lawn in disorganised
flight, before the approach of the enemy in the form of Mrs. Clerk, the
curate's wife, or Mrs. Chester of the Manor.  The garden was, as it
were, Mrs. Ingestre's self-created Eden in the drab-coloured land of the
Philistines, and even the Rev. John was an intruder and disturber of its
poetic peace.  Nora felt all this, and in a dim, unformed way understood
why her mother's roses were different to the roses in other and richer
gardens, why the very atmosphere had its own peculiar perfume, the
silence its own peculiar mystery.  She felt that her mother had
translated herself into the flowers, and that the depths of her quiet,
unfathomable heart were revealed in their beauty and sweetness.  She
felt that if she could have read their language, the very daisies on the
lawn would have lifted the veil which hung between her and the woman who
seemed to her the most perfect on earth. For, in spite of their close
and tender relationship, Mrs. Ingestre's inner life was for her daughter
a sort of Holy of Holies, into which no human being had ever ventured.

Thus, once beyond the reach of her father's voice, Nora lingered
willingly between the rose beds, making mental comments on the progress
of the various favourites and for the moment forgetting the matter which
was weighing heavily on her mind.  At the gate opening out on to the
road, however, she pulled herself sharply together, with a sudden
gravity on her young face.  Either the church steeple visible above the
trees, or the sight of an inquisitive face peering through the blinds of
the house opposite, reminded her that the frontier of Eden was reached,
and that the dull atmosphere of respectability was about to encompass
her.  She went quickly through the village. Most of the villagers
touched their caps as she passed, and Mrs. Clerk, early bird of charity
that she was, attempted to waylay her, to discuss the desirability of
procuring parish relief for bedridden old Jones, and, incidentally, of
course, to discover how far the pleasantly lugubrious reports respecting
the Ingestres' disabled fortunes were founded on fact.  Nora, however,
avoided her enemy with the assistance of an absent-minded smile and
increased speed, and managed to reach her destination without further
interruption.

Her destination was a stile which led out on to a narrow pathway over
the fields.  She was fond of the spot, partly because if you turned your
back to the east it was quite possible to forget that such things as
Delford or the church or the peppermint bull's-eye monument existed,
partly because westwards the limitless stretch of undulating fields
seemed to suggest freedom and the great world beyond, of which Nora
thought so much.  On this particular morning it was not the view which
attracted her, as her rather unusual conduct testified.  She arranged
her ruffled brown hair, stooped, and tightened a shoelace, undid the
second shoelace and retied it with methodical precision.  Then some one
said "Good morning, Nora," and she sprang upright with her cheeks red
with surprise or exertion, or anything else the beholder chose to
suppose.

"Good morning, Robert," she said.

The new-comer took the friendly, outstretched hand.

"I was coming to pay a disgracefully early morning call," he said.  "I
am awfully glad we have met."

"I knew you would come over the fields this way," she said.  "I came
because I wanted to see you."

He flushed crimson with pleasure.

"That was decent of you, Nora.  You are not always so kind."

"This is an exceptional occasion," she answered gravely.

She perched herself on the stile and sat there gazing thoughtfully in
front of her.  In that moment she made a sweet and pleasing picture of
English girlhood. The sunlight played through the trees on to her hair,
picking out the shining red-gold threads, and touching with warmer glow
the softly tinted skin.  The clean-cut, patrician features, dark-arched
eyebrows, and proud, rather full lips seemed to contrast strangely with
the extreme simplicity of her flowered muslin frock.  And indeed she
came of another race of women than that of which Delford and its
inhabitants were accustomed--something finer, more delicate, more keenly
tempered.  It was almost impossible to think of her as the Rev. John's
daughter--quite impossible as Miles Ingestre's sister.  One could only
understand the small, aristocratic features when one remembered that
Mrs. Ingestre was her mother. Captain Arnold remembered the fact keenly
that moment.

"I declare you are Mrs. Ingestre's miniature!" he exclaimed.  "This
morning, one would positively think she had been made twenty years
younger, and perched up there as a surprise-packet."

Nora turned on him with a pleased smile.

"This is a nice compliment," she said; "but I have no time for such
things just now.  Any moment Mrs. Clerk might scurry round the corner,
and then my reputation would be gone for ever.  She would probably tell
every one that I had come out to meet you on purpose."

"Which is true, by the way, isn't it?" he inquired, smiling.

"Yes, quite true; only my reason is respectable--not the sort of reason
that Mrs. Clerk would put down to my credit."

He came closer and, leaning his elbows on the cross-bars of the stile,
looked up into her face.

"I hope it is a nice reason," he said.

"No," she answered, "it is a serious reason, and not in the least nice.
I expect you have already heard something about it, haven't you?"

He hesitated.

"Of course--I have heard rumours," he said.  "As a rule I ignore such
things, but I could not altogether ignore this; it concerned you and
yours too closely."

"Besides, it is true," she added.

"True, Nora?"

"Yes, quite true.  We are ruined."

"My dear girl!"

"At least, comparatively ruined," she corrected.

For a moment he was silent, apparently intent on the study of his own
strong square hands linked together in front of him.

"How did it happen?" he asked at last.

"I don't know," she answered impatiently. "Father bought some shares
that aren't any good. I suppose he wanted to make money."  Her tone was
unconsciously scornful.

"We all want to do that," Arnold observed in defence.

The strongly arched eyebrows went up a degree.

"At any rate," she said, "it is frightfully rough on mother.  Her life
was hard enough before--what with ill-health and that sort of thing.
Now it will be ten times worse."  She clenched her hands in a sudden
passionate protest.  "I can't help it," she went on, "it seems to me all
wrong.  She is the best, the cleverest woman I have ever met.  She ought
to be the wife of a genius or a great, good man--not father's wife.
Father ought to have married Mrs. Clerk.  Why did she marry him?  It is
wicked, but it is the thought which comes into my mind every time I see
them together.  And now, when I think that she will have to scrape and
save as well I----"  She stopped short and looked at her companion
defiantly.  "I suppose you are very shocked," she said.  "That comes of
always feeling as though you were one of the family.  I have to say just
what is passing in my mind."

"I am glad you have so much confidence in me," Arnold answered
seriously.  "All the same, I do not think that you are just to your
father.  He is a thoroughly good man.  Many people would think Mrs.
Ingestre very lucky."

"Perhaps they _do_ think so," Nora said, with indifference.  "That is
because no one about here is capable of understanding her.  In any case,
it's no good talking about it.  This latest trouble is quite enough."

"I suppose Miles will be able to stay in the Army?" Arnold asked.

"Oh, yes, that's settled."

"What about your studies?  They will have to be given up, of course?"

"Why 'of course'?" she flashed out.

"Because there won't be enough money for them," he explained in a
matter-of-fact tone.  "For my part," he went on, "I shall be glad.  I
dreaded the thought of coming home on leave and finding you gone.  It
would have been sickening."

"It will be still more 'sickening' now," she said, rather revengefully.
"I am going away for a long time, and to a place a long way off."

"Nora!  In Heaven's name where and why?"

She laughed at his astonished, troubled face.

"To Karlsburg, in Germany--as a companion."

"To Germany!  Why do you want to go there?"

"Because I do not want to vegetate here."

"Nora, you will hate it.  You will be ill with home-sickness.  You don't
know what it will be like. It is not as though you will be among your
own country-people.  You will hate their manners, their customs, their
ways, and they will treat you like a servant. Little Nora, I can't bear
the thought of it."

He spoke earnestly, almost incoherently.

Nora shook her head.

"There is no other alternative," she said.

"There is one other alternative, Nora.  Will you be my wife?"

He had taken her hand, and she did not attempt to draw it back.  Nor had
she changed colour.  Her clear eyes studied his thin, rather gaunt face,
and passed on with frank criticism to his tall figure, loosely built and
rather stooping, in the grey Norfolk suit.

"Nora," he said sternly, "I have asked you a question.  You do not need
to look at me like that. I am not different to what I usually am."

"But I am looking at you in a different light," she said.

He seemed to think that she was laughing at him, or that she had not
taken him seriously.  A deep flush mounted his sun-burnt cheeks.

"Nora, I am very much in earnest," he said, his grasp on her hand
tightening.  "Though you are a child you must have felt long ago that I
cared for you as something more than my little comrade.  I love you, and
I have loved you a long time.  Will you be my wife?"

She shook her head gravely and regretfully.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not love you."

"Are you sure?  How can you tell?  You know nothing of love."

"No," she agreed.  "That is the very reason I will not marry you."

He let her hand go and stood looking at her with his lips tightly
compressed, as though on a storm of protest.

"Would you mind if I was quite honest?" she went on.  "I would rather
tell you everything, even if it makes you think me bad and heartless."

"I shall never think that of you," he said painfully.

"Well, then, I did know you cared for me," she continued.  "I was always
ashamed of myself for knowing.  It seemed conceited of me to imagine
that a grown-up man should want such a child as I am--still, I couldn't
help it.  I felt it.  It seems one does feel that sort of thing.  It is
like electricity in the air.  Anyhow, it did not worry me very much. I
made up my mind that one of these days I would marry you.  It seemed so
probable and natural that I should.  We had known each other since I was
a baby and you a school-boy; our families were connected; we lived in
the same neighbourhood; we saw each other at regular intervals; we never
quarrelled--or hardly ever; we knew each other's faults better than most
people do who marry.  Everything seemed to point in the same direction.
But I was such a school-girl.  I felt that there was heaps of time for
me to grow to love you--or perhaps find out that I loved you already.
You see, I wasn't sure.  I liked to be with you; but then, I like to be
with any one who is jolly and amusing, so that wasn't a sure test.
Yesterday I knew that there was no time left me.  I guessed that I
should have to decide between you and Karlsburg.  It sounds horrid, but
it is the truth. And I could not decide--I simply could not.  Then I
thought--perhaps if you _asked_ me, perhaps if you told me about _your_
love, it would awaken some sort of an answer in me--I should feel some
sort of signal such as I should imagine a woman would feel if the being
with whom she is destined to spend her life, and perhaps more, stood at
her side and held her hand.  So I came out here, so that you would ask
me to be your wife.  Are you angry?"

He shook his head, frowning straight before him.

"No."

"It may sound heartless," she went on; "I did not mean it to be.  I
thought it would be better if everything was spoken out clearly between
us.  I knew you loved me, and I cared for you--I cared for you enough to
be glad if I found I loved you.  For my own sake I should have been
glad.  I know my life would be safe in your hands--that you are all an
English gentleman need be, but----"

"Now comes the 'but,' he said, with bitterness.

"It is no good," she said.  "I can't pretend, can I?  When you took my
hand, when you spoke, I felt nothing--absolutely nothing, or, perhaps,
only a little more critical than usual.  I noticed, for instance, that
you stoop.  It had never struck me before.  I tell you that because it
shows you just how I feel."

"Thank you," he said.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

"Don't be angry," she pleaded.  "I _do_ care for you."

"Then, if you care for me, couldn't you give me a chance--won't you
trust yourself to me, Nora? Love will come little by little."

He had taken her hand again, and she felt that he trembled with
restrained feeling.

"I have an idea that love never comes little by little," she said.

They were a long time silent.  Arnold had buried his face on his arms on
the cross-bars.  Presently he looked up, and met her sorrowful gaze with
pale composure.

"So it is to be Karlsburg?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"Nora, I shan't give up hope."

"It wouldn't be fair of me to say 'don't.'"

"Still, when you come back?" ...

"I can't promise anything," she said, but her eyes were full of pity and
kindness.  "I am so sorry, Robert."

"That's all right, dear.  You can't help it."  He pressed her hand a
last time.  "I won't come on now. You understand--I would rather be
alone.  Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

She watched him till he was out of sight.  A tear rolled down her cheek.
She rubbed it quickly and impatiently away.  Then she sprang down and
went home.  She felt shaken and vaguely regretful, and was filled with
the one desire to be with her mother.

Mrs. Ingestre was in the garden when Nora reached the vicarage.  She was
looking paler than usual, but she greeted her daughter with the
customary grave, affectionate smile.

"You are out early to-day," she said.

Nora came and slipped her arm through her mother's.

"I have something serious to tell you," she said. "Robert has asked me
to be his wife."

She spoke quickly, breathlessly, as though disburdening her heart of an
uncomfortable load. Mrs. Ingestre said nothing, but waited quietly for
what was to come.  She held a bunch of roses, and if Nora had been less
self-absorbed, she would have seen that the white hand trembled.

"I wanted him to propose to me," Nora went on with her confession.  "I
wanted to find out if I cared--I wanted to care, but--I don't--not
enough. So I said 'No.'  I am glad it is over."

Mrs. Ingestre pressed the arm resting on her own.

"And I am glad that you have said 'no,'" she said.  "I should always
have been afraid if it had been 'yes' that Karlsburg and vegetation had
given the casting vote.  It is dangerous to treat marriage as an escape
loop-hole.  Sometimes it means the tragedy of a lifetime."

They talked of other things, as people do who have touched on a subject
too near the heart's innermost and untrodden places, but Mrs. Ingestre
had unconsciously lifted a corner of the veil.  The words "a tragedy of
a lifetime" remained ineffaceable, and, though they had been untouched
with self-pity or bitterness, Nora believed she understood.

From that moment she saw in her mother's face, words, and acts a new
meaning--the revelation of a harsh punishment nobly and patiently
accepted.




                              *CHAPTER IV*

                            *OUTWARD BOUND*


After the final decision, events moved swiftly in Nora Ingestre's life.
It was almost as though Mrs. Ingestre was afraid delay might develop
imperceptibly into a gradual surrender to the protests of her husband
and the scoffing criticisms of her son.  The former treated Nora's
journey as a sort of soul-contaminating emigration into the land of the
Moabites--a matter full of spiritual danger for her, and, incidentally,
of annoyance for him.  During the six weeks that passed in
correspondence between Delford and Karlsburg and in busy preparations,
he varied the table conversation with anxious appeals to a watchful, if
occasionally inexplicable Providence on behalf of his dearest child and
a fretful review of his own crippled condition without her assistance.

"God forbid that I should criticise my fellow-creatures," was his usual
introductory sentence, "but foreigners are not as we.  They have ways
and customs which I cannot believe are well-pleasing in His sight. Do
not, my child, be led astray by the creeping influence of example; do
not surrender the proud and glorious tenets of your country because you
see many, less fortunate, following other paths than those you have been
taught to tread.  They may seem fair, but remember the end is not here.
Be careful that a light and frivolous conception of a terrible God does
not taint your blood.  I shall think of you always, dear child, but most
of all on Sundays, in our beloved church, when I shall pray that you too
are joining in the universal praise in some suitable place of worship."

After which he was wont to remark that his sermon was not yet copied
out, and on Nora having offered to perform the task, only too thankful
that her soul's condition should cease to be made the subject for an
after-dinner's conversation, he would draw her to him and kiss her.

"What shall I do without my right hand?" he usually added, with a grave
and melancholy shake of the head.

It was then Miles's turn to take up the ball and keep it rolling after
his own methods and ideas. References to fat Germans and to people who
chose to associate with that sort of foreign bounder rather than stay at
home with decent English people were plentiful, and became tiresome even
in their variations.  But alike to her brother's pungent sarcasm and her
father's periods Nora bore the same determined front.  She was on her
mother's side, blindly and devotedly, and in spite of the fact that at
the bottom of her heart she shared the prejudices of the masculine
element in her family.  She had the firm conviction that her mother was
right, and felt, moreover, that anything--even Karlsburg--was better
than the dreary Puritan monotony of her present life.

As for Mrs. Ingestre, she said little, but went on quietly with the
necessary arrangements and ignored the constant, if indirect, attacks of
her husband and son.  Neither ventured to criticise her plans to her
face.  Miles lived in a wholesome shamefaced awe of his mother's dignity
and keener insight into his own weaknesses; the Rev. John had his
private reasons for caution.  He had, in fact, waged one battle royal
with his wife, and had been momentarily forced to realise that for
twenty-five years he had been living with a master who had acted
willingly as his slave. Not that the awakening was more than momentary.
When he first recovered from the shock of finding himself confronted by
an iron wall of opposition, he had dozed back into the old delusion that
he was sent with a divine mission to be the guide and support to a frail
and helpless woman.  But there were a few words uttered in the course of
a short and painful interview which the Rev. John could not forget. They
rankled in his mind as the proof of the injustice, ingratitude, and
perversity of the best of women.

"We look at things from a different standpoint," Mrs. Ingestre had said
wearily.  "You regard the world and all that it has to offer in beauty
and happiness as something to be hated and avoided.  You do hate the
world.  You boast of the fact.  I am different. I believe that I was put
into the world to enjoy it to the uttermost power of my capability, that
every day in which I had not seen or done something new or experienced
some fresh wonder was a day wasted. I believed all this in spite of my
home and upbringing. I simply waited for the time when I should be
allowed to live as I understood living.  I married you--and then too
late I saw that your ideas and mine clashed. It was a mistake, John, but
in all justice you must admit it was a mistake which you have never had
to feel.  I have done my best to smother my wishes and instincts because
I realised that it was not your fault that I had seen more in you than
was really there.  I have stood by you loyally--I felt it was my duty to
do so even at the cost of my own individuality. _I_ had made a mistake.
But it was a mistake none the less, John, and it is one for which Nora
shall not suffer.  My responsibility to her is greater than it is to
you.  She is my daughter.  She shall live as her character requires--as
my character required.  She shall not be stunted and dwarfed in her
growth.  This is the first time I have ever opposed you.  I do so
because I must."

And, strangely enough, the Rev. John had found nothing to say.  He
prayed very earnestly for his wife against the hydra-headed monster of
worldliness and vanity which he firmly believed had taken hold upon her
soul, but from that moment his protest confined itself to an increased
gravity in her presence and the indirect reproach of his after-dinner
orations.

Thus time slipped past, and almost before she knew it the day of
departure dawned for Nora.  In the fresh autumnal air and bright
sunshine she forgot the pangs of the previous night, when she had wept a
few tears of regret and vague remorse.  In the darkness she had
reproached herself to the point of believing that to desert her father
and the copying of his sermons was a piece of unfilial selfishness.
Even Robert Arnold appeared to her in a new light--that light which our
"good-night" thoughts, first cousins to "last" thoughts, cast about
those dear to us.  He seemed very dear to her at midnight.  A dozen
episodes, grave and gay, in their common life recurred to her, also
illuminated by the same tender regret. A year's parting from him caused
her almost intolerable heartache, the more so because she had repulsed
him and the love after which she began to hunger.  "If he will only
wait, I am sure I shall grow to love him," she confided to her damp
pillow, more than half convinced that the love had come already,
startled to life by the fear of loss and separation.

But the morning sunshine is a spritely, cold-hearted magician.  As the
shaky old four-wheeled cab, glorified in the village by the name of "the
brougham," rolled over the uneven cobbles, she found herself nodding a
cheerful, almost triumphant, farewell to the church and the monument.
They were in her eyes the symbols of a life she was leaving behind her,
like the gates of a not intolerable prison.  She was quite sorry that
Mrs. Clerk failed to be on her usual watchful guard at the window.
Certainly, if the village was a sort of prison, Mrs. Clerk was its
spiritual gaoler, and Nora would have dearly loved to flourish her
dawning freedom in the disapproving face of her natural enemy.  But Mrs.
Clerk was nowhere to be seen, and Nora's flashing glance encountered
only her mother's grave, thoughtful eyes.

Against all advice, Mrs. Ingestre had determined to accompany her
daughter up to London.  Perhaps she feared her husband's last
exhortations, perhaps she was urged by a secret heart-hunger.  Yet her
whole face brightened with warm sympathy as she read in Nora's smile and
heightened colour the proud, bold joy of youth plunging for the first
time into the full tide of life.

"You are glad to go?" she asked in a low voice that was without the
faintest tone of reproach.

Nora nodded.

"I am excited," she said.  "I feel like a pioneer setting out on the
discovery of new worlds.  And so I am.  What does it matter that
millions of people have been where I am going?  _I_ have never been
before.  It is all new to me."

Her father sighed in pained disapproval.

"Let us hope that your adventures in foreign lands will not cost you too
dear, Nora," he said.  "May they bring you back to your home contented
and grateful for its blessed peace."

Mrs. Ingestre leant forward and laid her hand on Nora's.  The movement
might have been made in confirmation of her husband's words--it might
also have had another meaning.  It might have meant, taken in
conjunction with the almost youthful flash in the dark eyes: "Be of good
cheer!  The world and life are before you.  Grasp both in spite of every
one.  They are worth fighting for!"

And Nora's clasp responded.  Her spirits were at their highest pitch.
She was afraid of nothing; the long journey, the foreign country, and
its despised inhabitants had no terrors for her.  Youth and morning
sunshine swept her forward on a wave of impetuous joy.  She even found
it in her heart to be thankful for the "blows of Providence," though for
other reasons than those of her piously resigned parent.  "After all,
now I shall be able to fight my own battles," was her proud thought.

The day in London cast the first shadow over her courage.  They arrived
in the metropolis at midday, and as the boat-train left at eight o'clock
in the evening there was a whole afternoon to be spent wandering about
the busy streets--a pleasant occupation if you understand how to go
about it.  But this was one thing that the Rev. John did not understand.
He belonged to the class of people for whom London is a great black,
smutty monster, replete with all the vices and crimes of Babylon, and
his passage through its heart was a veritable penance.  His sincerely
Puritan temperament--for, to do him justice, he was but half a hypocrite
and only that much unconsciously, like the rest of us--found "sermons in
stones," and in everything else from the wicked luxury of the lady
lounging in her victoria to the ragged profligacy of the beggar.
Sermons he delivered, therefore, and Nora, trudging wearily at his side,
with all her eyes on the ignored shop windows, listened in sullen
defiance.  She loved London with the almost passionate love which is
given to no other city in the world. She loved the fogs, its dirt, its
stern, relentless bustle; she felt a sort of vague kinship with its
vagabonds, its grandees, its very policemen, and her father's criticisms
goaded her to distraction.  Yet once, as they dragged themselves into an
A.B.C. for tea, she saw her mother's face, and her anger died down,
yielding to the first cold touch of home-sickness. There was something
written on the pale, worn face which she could not read but which filled
her with vague pain.  Visited by what unshed years of regret, longing,
and unavailing remorse had those quiet eyes watched the tide of life
flow past them? Nora did not know.  In an instinctive, almost childish,
sympathy she slipped her hand into Mrs. Ingestre's.

"Dear, dear mother!" she said, "I wish I could make you happy--really
happy."

The Rev. John had gone to order the buns and tea which were to form the
_pieces de resistance_ of their evening meal.  Mrs. Ingestre looked down
into the young, earnest face.  Her own face relaxed an instant from its
own usual serenity.  It was as though a sudden gust of wind had passed
over a lake, ruffling its smooth, peaceful surface.

"Be happy," she said almost imperatively. "Whatever else happens,
remember that you have the right to happiness.  And to be happy you must
open your heart wide--you must welcome all that is good, even if it is
not the good you have been taught to know.  Don't let Delford or--or
even us make your standard.  Keep the past and those that love you, but
don't let them hem you--don't let them stand between you and the future.
Show your new world a big, generous, open heart, and it will open a
heart as big and generous to you.  Be arrogant and petty, and everything
about you will reflect yourself.  Oh, Nora, I am not preaching; a narrow
heart is a curse to others and to itself."

There was a peculiar emphasis in her words, a note in her voice so like
despair that it rang long afterwards in Nora's memory.  It cast a deeper
shadow over her sinking spirits, and as she walked by her mother's side
towards the station which was to mark their first long parting, the hot,
burning tears welled up in her eyes and only by a strong effort were
kept back from overflow.  Since that morning, with its brilliant
sunshine, its youth and hope, all had changed within her and without.
The sunshine had yielded to cold, dark shadows, youth and hope lagged
wearily, overcome by the growing tide of home-love.  "Dear old England!"
Nora whispered to herself.  "Dear old England!"  And the very shop
windows, casting bright golden patches on the thickening fog, seemed to
have a special light of their own.  The faces of the passers-by were
dear to her because they were English faces and because she was going to
a strange country, where she would see them no more.  Even the red-brick
church and "the monument" became hallowed in her memory.  In that moment
of youthful grief she would have given worlds to know that she was going
home, that there were to be no partings, that she was to live her life
in the dull peace to which she had waved a joyous farewell that very
morning.

They entered the great station.  The bustle and confusion brought her no
relief--rather, it increased the sense of helplessness which was growing
stronger and stronger.  For a moment she lost sight of her father and
mother, and it was then she felt for the first time all the poignancy of
the loneliness which was, in less than a quarter of an hour, to become
an irreparable reality.  She turned, dazedly seeking a familiar face,
and in the same instant a firm, warm hand clasped hers.

"Nora--little girl!"

It was Arnold who stood beside her.  She recognised his strong, gaunt
face with a sudden, joyous start which brought the colour to her cheeks.
Had she unconsciously been longing for him?  Had the heartache been a
little because she had not seen him, because ever since that decisive
morning he had kept away from her, taking her dismissal as final?  Was
it final? These were things he at least might have asked as he felt the
quick response of her touch and saw the light flash back into her
tear-filled eyes.  But Nora thought of nothing--asked no questions.  She
clung to his arm like a tired, lost child.

"Oh, I am so glad," she said, almost incoherent with relief, "so glad!"

"I couldn't keep away," he said, himself shaken by her sudden
self-abandonment.  "I did my best, but in the end I had to come.  I
could not let you go so far from me without a God-speed.  And something
seemed to tell me that you would be glad to see me."

"I am!" she cried.  "Of course I am!"

They reached Mrs. Ingestre and her husband, who were busy with the
luggage registration.  A shadow seemed to pass over the latter's face as
she saw the two together, but she greeted Arnold with her usual serene
courtesy.

"Miles has come too," she said.

Miles was, indeed, very much _en evidence_.  He had made himself what he
called "smart" for the occasion, and an extraordinary high collar and a
flagrantly red tie certainly put him beyond all danger of being
overlooked.  His face was a trifle flushed--perhaps with the hurry of
his arrival--and his manner jocose.

"You look as though you might flood the station any minute," he told
Nora.  "I bet anything you'd give your bottom dollar to be out of it."

"Don't, Miles!" she answered gently.  "Of course I am sorry to leave you
all.  It is only natural."

Her eyes met Arnold's, and perhaps they said more than she knew.  He
came back to her side.

"Let us go and find a comfortable corner for you," he suggested.

She followed him passively, and they walked along the platform to the
end of the train, where the crowd of passengers was less dense.

"Dear little Nora!" he said, looking down at her with infinite pity and
tenderness.  The tears rushed again to her eyes.  She fought them down
courageously, but her voice shook as she answered:

"It is so hard to go," she said, "much harder than I thought this
morning.  I have only just realised how dear everything--everybody is to
me."

"Nora, that is what I hoped.  You are so young--you do not know your own
heart.  Now perhaps you can tell better--if there is any chance for me."

She saw the pleading in his face, and she made no answer.  Her throat
hurt her and she was no longer so sure.  She did care for him, and if
she had felt no thrill of passion at his touch, his presence seemed to
envelop her in a warm, comforting glow of protecting tenderness
infinitely precious.

"Nora," he went on, "even now it is not too late. My dearest, what are
you waiting for?  What are you expecting to find?  I believe I could
make you happy--my love is so great."

She threw up her head with the determined gesture he knew so well.

"I must go," she said.  "It would be weak and cowardly to turn back at
the last minute.  Only----"

"You will come back soon?"

She nodded, her lips trembling.

"I feel I must," she said.

"And you will write to me?"

The Rev. John bustled up to them.  He was flustered and nervous, as
people are to whom a journey of any sort is an event full of dangerous
possibilities.

"You must get in at once," he said fussily.  "The train is just off.
There, God bless you, my dear child! Remember all I have said.  And if
you are not happy, or the people not nice, let us know at once."

Mrs. Ingestre clasped her daughter in a short, almost passionate
embrace.

"Be happy!" she said again; and the words were a blessing.

The carriage door slammed to; somewhere from the rear they heard the
guard's shrill whistle, and gradually the train began to glide forward,
leaving behind the little group of dearly loved faces.

Arnold walked at the carriage side.

"You will write to me often?" he pleaded.

"Yes, yes, I will write."

"Tell me everything--everything you think and feel.  Oh, Nora, it is so
hard to let you go!  But I have taken fresh hope.  I believe you will
come back soon--I believe it will all come right for us both."

The train was gathering speed.  He had to run to keep pace with her
carriage.

"Nora, after all--you do care a little, don't you?"

She nodded.  She was so tired, so heart-sick, that had it been possible
she would have sprung out and put her hand in his in weary, thankful
surrender. But it was too late.  She could only look at him, and again
her eyes told more than she perhaps would have said.  He stood still,
hat in hand, and waved to her, and the last she saw of him was a face
full of hope and gratitude.

"When you send for me, I shall come," he said.

The train glided into the suffocating darkness of a tunnel, and when
they once more emerged the station was far behind, and they were
travelling faster and faster into the night.  The lights of London, of
home, of England swept past in blurred lines of fire.

Nora Ingestre watched them, fighting bravely; but when they had
disappeared she covered her eyes with her hand and wept the silent,
bitter tears of a first exile.




                              *CHAPTER V*

                          *AMONG THE HEATHEN*


"Karlsburg!  _Alles aussteigen_--Karlsburg!"

Nora sprang up, roughly aroused from a half-doze by the stentorian tones
and a general move in her compartment.  The fat German who had occupied
the corner seat opposite her, and who had spent the journey in doing his
best to justify her scorn and contempt for all foreigners, was heaving
great masses of untidy luggage out of the window and shouting furiously
for a _Gepaecktraeger_.  In this performance he trod more than once on
Nora's toes, thus arousing her so effectually that she made haste to
convey herself and her belongings out into the narrow corridor congested
with passengers and baggage.  After a brief energetic scramble down the
appalling staircase which separates the continental traveller from the
platform, she landed safely and drew a sigh of relief. "Here I am at
last!" she thought, comforted by the knowledge that the worst was over.
The "worst" in connection with separations is the first twenty-four
hours, the first night-fall, and the first awaking to changed
surroundings and circumstances.  After that, the human capacity for
adjustment mercifully begins to display itself, and the first poignancy
of grief is over--at any rate for those who have courage and youth to
help them.  And Nora had both.  As she stood that morning on the deck of
the Flushing boat, watching the pale, low outline of land, she had
already felt the first glow of returning vigour.  The keen sea-air had
blown colour into her cheeks; the tears which had threatened to assert
themselves so often the night before had dried at their source, and she
had flung herself into the confusion of exchange from the boat to the
waiting train with a pleased realisation of her own independence.  Then
had come the long and glorious panorama along the Rhine, the frowning
castles, the majestic spires of the great Dom, the new types of men and
women hurrying backwards and forwards about the busy platforms.

During the long hours Nora's watchful, eager eyes never closed.  This,
then, was the new world to which she was to open her heart; these, then,
the people whose qualities of goodness she was to learn to honour.  The
first task was easy enough--it was, indeed, a beautiful world.  But the
people?  They were of another type than that to which she was
accustomed, and Nora, imbued with the pleasant insular conviction that
all English people are tall and handsome, found them so far little to
her taste. In truth, a firmly rooted prejudice is not to be overcome in
a moment, or even by the wisest precept, and not all Mrs. Ingestre's
eloquence could crush back the half-conscious superiority which her
daughter experienced in that stuffy second-class coupe.  Her
fellow-passengers, be it confessed, were stout and inelegant, and they
obviously preferred the window closed--points which were alone quite
sufficient to stamp them as belonging to an inferior class.  But the
chief point was Nora's own nationality.  The mere fact that she was
English would have kept her in countenance even when confronted with the
whole Imperial family, and, indeed, throughout the journey, with its
difficulties, its various encounters with idiotic foreign porters who
refuse to understand the English language, no matter how loud it is
shouted, she was sustained by a calm and inborn knowledge of her racial
superiority. Thus she felt no sense of loneliness or helplessness until
the voice shouting "Karlsburg" had hurried her out on to the crowded,
bustling platform.  There for the first time she felt her own
insignificance, her own strangeness.  She was really in a foreign
country at last, and with all her superiority she stood there a forlorn
handful of pretty, despairing girlhood, waiting for the first jabbering,
gesticulating savage to rescue her from her perplexity.

"_Ach, liebes Kind, da bist du!  Willkommen!_"

The eager, kindly voice and the cordial embrace were equally sudden and
somewhat overwhelming. Steadying her hat from the effects of the shock,
Nora turned to find herself held by a short, stout little woman, very
out of breath, very excited, who was smiling and nodding at her as
though at an old and very dear acquaintance.

"Ach! you do not know me?" she interrogated, adding in the same gasp,
"But how should you?  I am ze old Fraeulein Mueller--you haf heard of
her? Long ago she did teach ze muzzer, and now here is ze daughter--her
muzzer every bit of her.  _Ach, du lieber Gott im Himmel_!  But I must
not so much talk. Give ze man your _Gepaeckschein, liebes Kind_."

Half overcome by the torrent of words, Nora produced the document which
she supposed answered to the name of Gepaeckschein.  In the interval,
whilst Fraeulein Mueller was apparently pouring volumes of mingled
explanation and abuse over the head of an equally flustered porter, Nora
had opportunity to study her rescuer.  Fraeulein Mueller, she imagined,
was well over the fifties and, on account of her stoutness, looked her
age, but her face was as lively as it was plain, and the rotund figure
in its dowdy brown dress cut after the manner of a long-forgotten
fashion seemed to be bubbling over with seething sprightliness. Nora had
a quick eye, and her critical faculties, at home usually dormant, were
on the alert.  "How badly the Germans dress!" she thought.  "What
dreadful boots--and that dress!  I suppose it is her best, and it was
probably quite expensive.  Whatever could have made any one choose a
colour like that?"

Her observations were cut short by her unconscious victim grasping her
by the arm and hurrying her up and down dark flights of steps, the whole
way continuing her explanations, peppered with gasps and exclamatory
German outbreaks.

"Ze portermans are ze stupidest race on ze earth," she panted, "but I
haf told him--I haf his number--it is zirty-one--please try and
remember, _liebes Kind_--zat he must your _Koffers_ bring at once.  Ze
Frau Baronin's carriage is not big enoff to take more zan us two and
your rugs.  _Ach, je_!  Ze many steps are not for one so short in ze
breaths as I!"

They were out of the station at last--Nora had delivered up her ticket
with the feeling that the last link between her and home was gone--and
were greeted by a simply dressed footman, who conducted them to a
brougham promptly summed up by Nora as shabby.

Fraeulein Mueller dropped back into the cushions with a sigh of
satisfaction.

"Now all is well," she said.  "I shall drive wiz you to the Frau
Baronin's house and see you safe in. She ask me to fetch you, as I knew
I could easy find you.  _Ach, sie ist die Liebenswuerdigkeit selber,
die, Frau Baronin!_"

"You are her great friend?" Nora suggested, seeking something to say.

Fraeulein Mueller threw up her plump hands in the straining brown kid
gloves and laughed.

"Nee, nee, _liebes Kind_, how should zat be?  I am Fraeulein
Mueller--old Fraeulein Mueller--and she is the Baronin von Arnim."

Perhaps Nora's look showed that the all-apparent distinction was not
clear, for her companion went on with a soft chuckle:

"Zat is somezing you vill understand wiz ze time, my dear.  Ze Baronin
is von great person and I am von nobody.  Zat is all.  I am proud zat I
haf brought a so nice English girl--and glad to haf been able to give ze
daughter of my dear pupil so nice a place.  I am sure you will be very
happy."

Nora's arched brows contracted for a minute. Something in Fraeulein
Mueller's tone or words ruffled her--she was not quite sure why.  The
little woman was so obviously and naively impressed with the glories of
Nora's new position and with the greatness and splendour of the
"Baronin," of whom she spoke with almost bated breath, that Nora's
self-importance was somewhat wounded.  Besides which, she regarded both
matters as decidedly "unproven."  The "Baronin," she felt sure, was a
snobbish person, probably very stout and ponderous, and as for her
splendour and greatness, it remained yet to be seen.  Armorial bearings
with a seven-pearled crown--after all, Nora knew very well that
everybody was a count or a baron in Germany--and a bone-shaking brougham
with a shabby footman proved nothing at all.  Thus Nora expressed
neither gratitude nor gratification, and her manner was perhaps more
chilly than she intended, for her companion subsided into an abrupt
silence, which lasted until the carriage drew up and the door was opened
by the despised attendant.

"Now you are here!" she cried, springing out with surprising agility.
"I vill come no further--my leetle _etage_ is just round the corner.  In
a day or two I vill venture to pay respects on the Baronin and see how
all goes wiz you.  Until then--_lebewohl_!"

Much to Nora's relief, she was not embraced a second time.  A warm
squeeze of the hand, which seemed, somehow, to express a slight
"hurtness," and the stumpy little figure disappeared into the darkness,
leaving Nora to face her destiny alone.

It was now dusk, and she had only time to take in the dim outline of a
small, square house before the footman led her up the steps to the
already opened door.  A flood of light greeted her as she entered the
hall, and seemed to intensify its unfurnished coldness. Little as she
had expected, the barren white walls and carpetless stone floor cast a
chill over her courage which not even the beaming smile of a
pleasant-faced but far from stylish parlourmaid could wholly dispel.

"_Die gnaedige Frau wartet im Salon_," she said, and proceeded to
conduct the way farther down the passage, switching off the electric
light carefully as she went.

In spite of everything, Nora's heart beat faster with anticipation and
an inevitable nervousness. The great moment had arrived which was to
decide the future.  "As long as she is fat and comfortable like
Fraeulein Mueller, I daresay it won't be so bad," she told herself, but
prepared for the worst.  A minute later and she was ushered into a room
so utterly at variance with what had gone before and her own
expectations that she stood still on the threshold with a little inward
gasp of surprise.

The softly shaded light revealed to her quick young eyes an elegance, if
not luxury, whose details she had no time to gather.  She received only
an impression of warm, delicate colours, soft stuffs, rich,
sound-deadening carpets and the touch of an indefinable personality,
whose charm seemed to linger on every drapery.  From the ugly stone wall
to this had been no more than a step, but that step divided one world
from another, and Nora stood hesitating seeking in the shadows the
personality whose influence she felt already like a living force.  She
had no more than an instant to wait.  Then a tall, slight figure rose
out of one of the chairs drawn out of the circle of light and came to
meet her.

"You are very welcome, Miss Ingestre," a voice said, and her hand was
taken and she was led farther into the room.  "I would have met you
myself, but I had no method of recognising you, and the _gute_ Fraeulein
Mueller seemed so sure that she would be able to find her old pupil's
daughter."

The voice was low, the English almost perfect, though a little slow, as
though from want of practice, the touch of the hand firm and cool.
Somehow, in that moment poor Nora felt painfully aware that she was
dirty and untidy from the journey and, above all, that she was terribly
young and awkward.  Yet her natural frankness stood her in good stead.
She looked up, smiling.

"Fraeulein Mueller picked me out at once," she said. "I must be very
like my mother, otherwise I cannot think how she found me."

"In any case, the great thing is that you are found," Frau von Arnim
said.  "Come and sit down here. You see, we have a real English tea
waiting for you."

Nora obeyed willingly, and whilst the white, delicate hands were busy
with the cups standing on the low tray, she had opportunity to study the
woman upon whom the weal or woe of perhaps a whole long year depended.
"She is not as beautiful as my mother," Nora thought, but the criticism
was no disparagement. If Frau von Arnim was not actually beautiful, she
at least bore on every feature marked refinement, and the expression of
the whole face, pale and slightly haughty though it was, had a certain
indefinable fascination which held Nora's attention riveted.  She was
dressed elegantly, moreover, in some dark colour which suited the brown
hair and the slow hazel eyes which, Nora felt positive, had in one quiet
glance taken in every detail of her appearance.

"We are so very glad that you have come," Frau von Arnim went on.  "My
daughter and I love everything that is English, but, alas, nice English
people are _rarae aves_ in Karlsburg.  We have only the scum of all
nations, and I cannot tell you how pleased we were when your mother
decided to entrust you to our care."

The tone of the words was delicate and kind, suggesting a conferred
favour on Nora's side which somehow had the reverse effect.  In her
youthful and insular arrogance Nora had felt that the "German family"
which boasted of her services was to be congratulated, and that the real
and only question of importance was whether she liked _them_.  Now she
found herself wondering what this serene and graceful woman was thinking
of _her_.

"I'm afraid I'm not a bit a glory to my nation," she said, with sincere
schoolgirlish humility.  "I wish I was."

Frau von Arnim laughed.

"We like you very much already," she said.  "Besides, you could not help
being nice with such a charming mother."

Nora started with pleased surprise, and whatever had been unconsciously
antagonistic in her melted into an impulsive gratitude which spoke out
of the heightened colour and bright, frank eyes.

"Do you know my mother, then?" she asked.

"No, only by her letters.  But letters betray far more than the writers
think.  I often feel when I meet some reserved, unfathomable person who
interests me, that if he would only write me the shortest note I should
know more of him than after hours of conversation.  And Mrs. Ingestre
and I have exchanged many long letters.  We feel almost as though she
were an old friend; don't we, Hildegarde?"

This sudden appeal to a third person revealed to Nora the fact that they
were not alone.  Frau von Arnim rose, smiling at her bewilderment, and
took her by the hand.

"You must think us very rude, strange people," she said, "but my
daughter has been listening and watching all this time.  You see, it is
for her sake that we wanted you to come and live with us, and she had a
whim that she would like to see you without being seen.  Invalids may
have whims and be pardoned, may they not?"

Whilst she had been speaking she had led Nora to the far end of the
room.  There, lying on a sofa drawn well into the shadow, Nora now
perceived a girl of about her own age, whose thin, white face was turned
to greet her with a mingling of apology and that pathetic humility which
goes with physical weakness.

"Do not be angry," she said, holding out a feeble hand.  "I am so afraid
of strangers.  I felt I should like to see you first--before you saw me.
I do not know why--it was just a whim, and, as mother says, when one is
ill one may perhaps be forgiven."

"Of course," Nora said gently.  To herself she was thinking how
beautiful suffering can be.  The face lifted to hers--the alabaster
complexion, the great dark eyes and fine aristocratic features framed in
a bright halo of disordered hair--seemed to her almost unearthly in its
spiritualised loveliness.  And then there was the expression, so void of
all vanity, so eloquent with the appeal: "You are so strong, so
beautiful in your youth and strength.  Be pitiful to me!"

Governed by some secret impulse, Nora looked up and found that Frau von
Arnim was watching her intently.  A veil had been lifted from the proud
patrician eyes, revealing depths of pain and grief which spoke to Nora
much as the younger eyes had spoken, save with the greater poignancy of
experience: "You are strong, and life offers you what it will always
withhold from my child.  Be pitiful!"

And then prejudice, reserve, her own griefs, were swept out of Nora's
hot young heart on a wave of sympathy.  She still held the thin hand
clasped in her own.  She clasped it tighter, and her answer to the
unspoken appeal came swift and unpremeditated.

"I hope you will like me," she said.  "I am so glad I have come."

Hildegarde Arnim's pale face flushed with pleasure.

"I _do_ like you," she said.  "I do hope you will be happy with us."

And then, to their mutual surprise, the two girls kissed each other.




                              *CHAPTER VI*

                            *A LETTER HOME*


"I never realised before now how true it is that all men are brothers,"
Nora Ingestre wrote home to her mother at the end of her first week in
Karlsburg. "I used to believe that we English were really the only
people who counted, the really only nice people, and the rest were sort
of outsiders on quite another level.  And now all my ideas are turned
topsy-turvy. I keep on saying to myself, 'Why, she is just like an
Englishwoman,' or 'How English he looks!' and then I have to admit that
the simple reason why I think they look English is because they look
nice, and it seems there are nice people all the world over.  Of course
there are differences--one notices them especially among the poorer
classes--and so far, I can only judge the men from a distance; but if I
met the _Gnaedige Frau_, as she is called, in any drawing-room, I should
think, 'Well, with one exception, she is the most charming woman I have
ever met,' and never have so much as guessed that she could belong to
any country but my own.  Hildegarde is a dear, too. Although she has
known me such a short time, she treats me almost as though I were her
sister--in fact, I am a sort of _enfant gate_ in the house, everybody,
from Freda, the sturdy little housemaid, upwards, doing their best to
show their goodwill to the '_kleine englische Dame_.'  (You see, I am
picking up German fast!) Both the _Gnaedige Frau_ and Hildegarde know
English well and seem to enjoy talking, though one half of the day is
dedicated to my first German efforts, which, I am sure, have the most
comical results.  But no one ever laughs at you.  Even Johann, the
coachman, keeps quite a straight face when I call him '_du_'--a
disgraceful piece of endearment which seems to haunt me every time I
open my mouth.  That reminds me to tell you that yesterday we went for a
lovely drive in the Wild Park, the private property of the Grand Duke.
Driving is the only outdoor enjoyment which is left for poor Hildegarde,
and it is terribly hard on her, because she loves riding and driving and
tennis, and all that sort of thing.  It seems she had a bad accident
whilst out riding two years ago with her cousin, who is a captain in the
Artillery here, and since then she has always been ill.  She never
complains, and is always so sweet and patient that it makes one despise
oneself for not being an angel outright, but I know that she has her
struggles. Yesterday, for instance, Johann was giving the horse a
breathing space in a lovely _allee_--oh, you would have enjoyed it,
darling!  It was just like a glorious bit of England, with great oak
trees on either side and lots of deer and--there, now!  I have lost
myself! Where was I?--Oh, yes, in the _allee_, when an officer galloped
past and saluted.  I hardly saw his face, but he certainly looked very
smart in his dark-blue uniform, and he sat his horse as though he were
part of it.  He turned out to be Herr von Arnim, the cousin in question,
and I would not have thought any more about him had it not been for a
glimpse I caught of Hildegarde's face.  She is always pale, but just at
that moment she looked almost ghastly, and her lips were tight-pressed
together, as though she were in pain.  Somehow, I knew it was not
physical, so I did not dare say anything, but I have wondered since
whether it was the memory of all the splendid gallops she used to have
and will never have again, or whether--but there!  I must not let my
fancy run away with me.  Anyhow, I am quite anxious to see the 'Herr
Baron' again.  Perhaps I shall to-morrow at the _Gnaedige Frau's_ 'At
Home'--at least, I suppose it is an 'At Home' or a German equivalent--a
function which fills me with the profoundest awe and alarm. Imagine me,
dearest, with my knowledge of the German language, in a crowd of
natives!  What will happen to me, I wonder?  If I am lucky, the earth
will open and swallow me up before I say something dreadful by mistake.


"_September_ 15.--You see, I am writing my letter in diary form, so that
you get all the details--which is what you want; is it not, dearest?
And, indeed, there are so many details that I do not know where to
begin.  At any rate, the 'At Home' is over, which is a comfort, for it
was even more exciting than I had expected.  The crowd was awful--there
were so many people that one could hardly breathe, and I was so
frightened of some one speaking to me that I had to keep on repeating to
myself, 'Remember you are English!  Remember you are English!' in order
to prevent a disorderly and undignified flight. Fortunately there was
too much confusion for anybody to notice my insignificant person, and at
last I managed to hide myself in an obscure alcove, where I could see
and not be seen.  On the whole it was the most mixed 'At Home' I have
ever seen, and I am sure it would have shocked Mrs. Chester beyond
words, You know how much she thinks of clothes and all that sort of
thing.  Well, here, apparently, no one thinks anything of them at all.
Some of the biggest 'aristocrats'--they were nearly all 'aristocrats,'
as I found out afterwards--were dressed in fashions which must have been
in vogue when I was born, and nobody seemed to think it in the least
funny.  Of course, there were well-dressed people and a few young
officers in uniform, who brightened matters up with a little colour, but
I had no time to take in more than a general impression, for just as I
was settling down to enjoy myself, some one spoke to me.  Fortunately it
was in English, or I have no doubt I should have fainted; as it was, I
looked up and found a man in a pale-blue uniform standing beside me with
his heels clapped together, evidently waiting for me to say something.
I supposed he had introduced himself, for I had heard him say 'Bauer' in
a rather grating voice, but I felt very far from friendly.  You know how
I am, mother.  I take violent likes and dislikes, and I cannot hide
either the one or the other.  And almost in the same instant that I saw
this man's face I disliked him.  I cannot tell you why.  He was
good-looking enough and his manners were polished, but there was
something in his face, in the way he looked at me, which made me
angry--and afraid.  It sounds absurd to talk of being afraid at a
harmless German 'At Home,' but if I believed in omens I should say that
the man is destined to bring me misfortune and that the instant I saw
him I knew it.  Please don't laugh--I am only trying to explain to you
how intense the feeling was, and to make my subsequent behaviour seem
less foolish.  I fancy I was not friendly in my answers or in my looks,
but he sat down beside me and went on talking.  It does not matter what
he said.  He spoke English well, and seemed to 'listen to himself' with
a good deal of satisfaction, all the time never taking his eyes off my
face.  Somehow, though everything he said was polite enough, I felt that
he looked upon me as a kind of 'dependent' with whom he could amuse
himself as he pleased; and that made my blood boil.  I prayed for some
one to come and fetch me away, and just then Frau von Arnim passed close
to where I was sitting.  I heard her ask after me and say something
about music (I had promised to play), and suddenly I felt ashamed. I
wondered what she would think of me if she found me sitting in a
secluded corner with a man whom I had never seen before and to whom I
had never been properly introduced.  After all, she does not know me
well enough to understand--well, that I am not that sort, and the idea
that she might think badly of me with an appearance of reason was more
than could bear.  There is a small door in the alcove leading out into
the hall, and just when my uninvited companion was in the middle of a
sentence I got up and went out without a word of explanation.  I am
afraid it was neither a very dignified nor sensible proceeding, and it
certainly landed me into worse difficulties, since the next thing I knew
after my stormy exit was that I had collided violently with a man
standing in the hall.  Of course, my fragment of German forsook me, and
I gasped, 'I beg your pardon!' in English, to which my victim answered,
'I beg _your_ pardon!' also in English, but with the faintest possible
accent.  After that I recovered enough from the shock to draw back and
assume as much dignity as I could under the circumstances. My victim was
a tall, broad-shouldered man--of course in uniform-and though it was
already twilight in the hall I could see that he had a pleasant,
sun-burnt face and bright eyes, which at that moment looked very much
amused.  I suppose my attempt at dignity _was_ rather a failure.  'I
hope I did not hurt you?' he asked, and when I had reassured him on that
point he suggested that he should introduce himself, as there was no one
there to do it for him. Whereupon he clicked his spurs together and
said, 'Von Arnim.  Miss Ingestre, I think?'  I asked him how he knew my
name, and he said, as a Prussian officer it was his duty to know
everything, and that he had heard so much about Miss Ingestre that it
was impossible not to recognise her.  And then we stood looking at each
other, I feeling horribly awkward, he evidently still very much amused.
Then he proposed to take me back into the drawing-room, but that was the
last thing I wanted, and I said so in my usual rude way, which seemed to
amuse him still more.

"'But why not?' he asked.  (I give you the conversation in full.)

"'Because they wanted me to play.'  (It was the first excuse I could
think of.)

"'Is that kind?  You are depriving my aunt's guests of a great treat.'

"'How do you know?'

"'Military instinct.'

I could not help laughing at him.

"'Your military instinct is all wrong,' I said.  'At any rate, I don't
want to go back.'

"I don't know why, but I fancy he suspected there was something more in
the matter than I had explained. At any rate, he grew suddenly quite
grave.

"'You see, I have taken you prisoner of war,' he said, 'and it is my
duty to keep you in sight.  At the same time, I wish to make your
captivity as agreeable as possible.  Suppose I persuade my aunt not to
worry you to play, and suppose I see that no one else worries you--will
you come back?'

"I said 'Yes' in a lamb-like fashion altogether new to me, and after he
had hung up his sword he opened the door and bowed me in.  I saw my
first partner staring at us, but I felt curiously at my ease, not any
more strange and helpless.  And Herr von Arnim was so nice.  After he
had paid his respects all round he came back and brought me some tea and
talked to me about the opera, to which we are going to-morrow evening.
I forgot to tell you about it, didn't I?  It is the Walkuere, and I am
bubbling over with excitement, as Frau von Arnim has given me her seat
at the opera so that I can always go with Hildegarde. She is good to me.
Sometimes I think she must be very rich, and then there are things which
make me doubtful--the old pill-box brougham, for instance. But perhaps
that is just German style--or lack of it.  I must stop now, or I shan't
have stamps enough to post this letter.  Indeed, I do not know why I
have given you all these details.  They are very unimportant--but
somehow they seemed important when I was writing.  Good-night, dearest!

"_September_ 16.--It is nearly twelve o'clock, and the _Gnaedige Frau_
told me I should hurry straight to bed and make up for the lost
beauty-sleep, but I simply can't!  I feel I must sit down and tell you
all about it whilst I am still bubbling over with it all and the
_Feuerzauber_ and the _Liebesmotif_ and all the other glories are making
symphonies of my poor brains.  Oh, mother darling! how you would have
enjoyed it!  That is always my first thought when I hear or see
something beautiful, and to-night--to-night I feel as though I had been
let into a new world.  Do you remember that glorious evening when you
took me to hear _Traviata_ in Covent Garden? Of course I loved it--but
this was so absolutely different.  It was like drinking some noble wine
after sugared buns and milk.  The music didn't try to please you--it
just swept you away with it on great wings of sound till you stood above
all Creation and looked into the deepest secrets of life.  Your own
heart opened and grew, everything mean and petty was left far, far
beneath.  I felt suddenly that I understood things I had never even
thought of before--myself and the whole world.  Of course, that is over
now.  I am just like a wingless angel stumbling over the old earthly
obstacles, but I shall never forget the hours when I was allowed to fly
above them all. Oh dear, does this sound very silly?  It is so hard to
explain.  I feel as though this evening had wrought some great change in
me, as though I had grown wiser, or at any rate older.  Perhaps it is
only a feeling which will pass, and I shall awake to-morrow to find
myself the old Nora.  Surely one evening cannot bring a lasting change!

"I must not forget to tell you that I met Herr von Arnim again.  He came
up to speak to Hildegarde after the first act, and I was glad to find
that my first impression of him was correct.  If I had gone by my old
prejudices and by Lieutenant Bauer I should have always believed that
German officers were frightful boors, but Herr von Arnim seems just like
an English gentleman, a little stiff and ceremonious at first, perhaps,
but not in the least conceited or self-conscious.  Of course he talks
English excellently--he told me he was working it up for some
examination or other, so perhaps he thought I was a good subject to
practise on.  At any rate, he was very attentive, and stayed with us
until long after the bell had rung, so that he had to hurry to get back
to his place in time.  There were quite a number of officers present,
and some of the uniforms are very smart, but I like the Artillery
best--dark blue with a black velvet collar.  It looks elegant and
business-like at the same time.  Certainly it suits Herr von Arnim.  He
is not exactly a handsome man, but well-built, with a strong, sunburnt
face, a small fair moustache and very straight-looking eyes with those
little lines at the corners which you always say indicate a
well-developed sense of humour.  Altogether, good looks and nice manners
seem to run in the Arnim family.  He brought us some chocolates in the
second pause, and was very amusing.  Hildegarde seems fond of him and he
of her in a cousinly sort of way. He is so kind and attentive to
her--almost as though it were his fault that she is a cripple.  I
wonder--oh dear!  I have just heard the clock outside strike one, and I
am so sleepy I do not know how I shall ever get into bed.  I meant only
to tell you about the music, and instead I have been wandering on about
Wolff von Arnim!  Good-night, my darling. Though I am so happy I am
always thinking of you and wishing you were here to make me enjoy it all
double.  Sometimes I am very 'mother-sick,' but I fight against it
because I know you want me to be happy, and it seems ungrateful to
lament.  Love to father and Miles and ever so much to you, dearest.

"Your devoted daughter,
       "NORA.

"P.S.--I have written a little note to Robert telling him about my
arrival.  He asked me to, and I couldn't refuse, could I?  He seems so
genuinely fond of me, and I--oh dear!  I only wish I knew!

"P.SS.--They are giving the second evening of the _Ring_ next Sunday.
Herr von Arnim says that a great many people think it even grander than
the Walkuere and the _Goetterdaemmerung_ (Sunday fortnight) grandest of
all.  Hildegarde is going to both, if she is strong enough, and he says
I _must_ come too.  I told him that I knew father would strongly
disapprove, and he said quite solemnly, and with a funny little German
accent, that he thought an 'English Sunday the invention of the deevil,'
which made me laugh.  I wonder if it would be wrong to go?  I know what
father would say, but somehow, when I come to think over it, I _can't_
feel horrified at the idea.  I can't believe that it is wrong to listen
to such grand, beautiful music--even on Sunday; as Herr von Arnim said,
'I am sure _der liebe Gott_ would rather see you good and happy enjoying
the wonders He has made than bored and bad-tempered, wishing that Sunday
was well over.'  What do you think, mother?  Let me know soon.  I will
not do anything you do not like.

"P.SSS.--I think we had better keep to our first arrangement that my
letters should be quite private. You see, I tell you everything, and
father might not always understand.

"P.SSSS.--What a lot of postscripts!  I am sure I must be very feminine,
after all.  I quite forgot to tell you that Fraeulein Mueller called the
other day. She was very nervous and flustered, and treats the 'Frau
Baronin' as though she were a sort of deity to be propitiated at all
costs.  She also asked me to tea.  I went, but I won't go again if I can
help it. I was never so near suffocating in my life.  All the windows
were double and had not been opened, I should imagine, since August, so
that the August air was unpleasantly intermingled with the fumes of a
furiously energetic stove, against which I had the honour of sitting for
four mortal hours.  But she was so friendly and kind that it seems
horrid to complain, only--Heaven preserve me from being poor and living
in a German flat!"


Mrs. Ingestre read the letter carefully.  She then tore it up and
answered the same day:

"As regards your question--do what your conscience tells you, Nora.  You
are old enough to judge, and I have perfect confidence in you.  Be true
and good, and I too think that God will not blame you if you rule your
life according to the opinions He has given you rather than the
arbitrary laws which we have made.  Do what seems honestly right to you
and you cannot do wrong--at least, not in His sight."

This letter was shown to the Rev. John, her husband, but of the scene
that followed, where righteous indignation and quiet resolve fought out
a bitter struggle, Nora heard nothing.  She only knew that the letter
had been safely posted, and that once again her mother had forced open
the doors of liberty.




                             *CHAPTER VII*

                                *A DUET*


"Meine Herrn, to the Moltke of the future, the pride of the regiment,
_er lebe--hoch--hoch--hoch_!"

The little group of officers gathered round the mess-table responded to
the toast with an enthusiasm that was half bantering, half sincere.
There followed a general clinking of glasses, the pleasant popping of
champagne corks, and a chorus of more or less intelligible
congratulations, against which the recipient stood his ground with
laughing good-nature, his hands spread out before his face as though to
hide natural blushes of embarrassment.

"Spare me, children!" he explained as the tumult gradually subsided.
"Do you not know that great men are always modest?  Your adulation
throws me into the deepest possible confusion, from which I can only
sufficiently extricate myself to promise you----"

"Another bottle!" a forward young ensign suggested.

"Not at all," with a wave of the hand, "nothing so basely material--but
my fatherly patronage when I am head of the Staff, as of course I shall
be within a few years.  Work hard, my sons, and who knows? One of you
may actually become my adjutant!"

Amidst derisive laughter he drained his glass, and then turned quickly,
his attention having been arrested by a slight touch upon the shoulder.
Unobserved in the general confusion, a tall, slightly built man, wearing
the uniform of an officer in the Red Dragoons, had entered the mess-room
and, leaning on his sword-hilt in an attitude of weary impatience, had
taken up his place behind the last speaker.  He now held out his hand.

"Congratulate you, Arnim," he said.  "I heard the racket outside as I
was passing, and came in for enlightenment as to the cause.  Seleneck
has just told me.  Permit me to drink your health."  He had taken the
glass which a neighbour had proffered him and raised it slightly.  "May
you continue as you have begun!" he added.

"Many thanks," was the brief answer.

There was a moment's silence.  The new-comer sipped at his share of the
German champagne and then put down the glass with a faint contracting of
the features which suggested a smothered grimace.

"You must let me order up a bottle of Cliquot," he said.  "A great
occasion should be worthily celebrated."

Arnim shook his head.

"Again--many thanks.  I have had enough, and it is of no use cultivating
expensive tastes.  But you perhaps...?"

"If you have no objection."  The dragoon beckoned an orderly, and,
having given his instructions, seated himself at the table and drew out
a cigarette-case.

"This means Berlin for you," he said.  "When do your orders date from?"

"From next summer.  I shall still have some months with the regiment."

"So?  That's tiresome.  The sooner one gets away from this God-forsaken
hole the better.  By the way, there will be quite a little party of us
with you. Seleneck tells me he is expecting a _Kommando_ at the
Turnschule, and I am moving heaven and earth to get ditto.  You, lucky
dog, are freed for ever from this treadmill existence."

The young Artillery captain glanced sharply at the speaker's
good-looking face, and a close observer would have noticed that his
brows had contracted.

"The way out is open to every one," he observed curtly.

The other laughed and chose to misunderstand him.

"Only to the workers, my dear fellow.  And I confess that work has no
fascination for me.  I am not ambitious enough, and on the whole I
suppose one form of drudgery is as bad as another.  You like that sort
of thing, and I envy you, but I fear I have no powers of emulation."

There was something grim in Arnim's subsequent silence which might have
drawn the dragoon's attention had it been allowed to last.  At that
moment, however, an elderly-looking officer detached himself from the
group by the window and came to where the two men were seated.

"I'm off home," he said.  "Are you coming my way, Arnim?"

Arnim rose with an alacrity which suggested relief.

"Yes, as far as the Kaiser Strasse.  You will excuse me, Bauer?  I must
tell the good news at home, or I shall never be forgiven."

The dragoon bowed.

"Of course.  By the way," he added, as Arnim slipped into the overcoat
which the orderly had brought him, "that is a pretty little English girl
your aunt has picked up.  I met her the last time I was at the house.
What's her name?"

"You are probably referring to Miss Ingestre."

"Ingestre?  Well, she's a pretty little piece of goods, anyhow--though
not particularly friendly."  He threw back his head and laughed, as
though at some amusing reminiscence.  "Imagine: I had just settled
myself down to a comfortable _tete-a-tete_, when she got up and
bolted--straight out of the room like a young fury.  I was rather taken
aback until I consoled myself with the reflection that all English
people are mad--even the pretty ones."

During his recital a sudden light of comprehension flashed over Arnim's
face.  He half smiled, but the smile was indefinably sarcastic.

"No doubt Miss Ingestre had her good reasons for interrupting your
comfortable _tete-a-tete_," he observed.  "Though English people may
suffer from madness, there is usually method in it."

"No doubt she had her good reasons for her return five minutes later,"
was the retort.  "There was method in that madness, at any rate."

The two men looked each other straight in the eyes.  Arnim's hand rested
on his sword-hilt, and the smile had died away from his lips.

"Perhaps I ought to remind you that Miss Ingestre is my aunt's guest,
and therefore under my protection," he said slowly.

"The reminder is quite unnecessary," the dragoon returned with perfect
sang-froid.  "I meant no offence either to you or Miss Ingestre; and
poaching is, anyhow, not one of my vices."

Arnim hesitated an instant, then, with a curt bow, he slipped his arm
through that of the officer standing beside him.

"Come, Seleneck," he said, "I have wasted time enough."

The two men made their way out of the Casino into the street.  A sharp
east wind greeted them, and Wolff von Arnim drew a deep breath of
relief.

"I need fresh air," he said.  "A man like Bauer stifles me, sickens me.
I cannot imagine why he always seeks my society.  He must know that I
have no liking for him.  Does he wish to pick a quarrel?"

The elder man shook his head.

"You are a harsh judge, Wolff," he said.  "As far as I know, Bauer is a
harmless fellow enough.  It is true that he swaggers a good deal with
his money and is rather pushing in circles where he is not wanted, but
for the rest--I have heard nothing to his discredit."

"That may be," was the quick answer.  "There are dishonourable men who
act honourably out of caution, and honourable men who act dishonourably
out of rashness.  I do not want to be unjust, but I cannot help putting
Bauer in the former category. My instinct warns me against him--and not
only my instinct.  A man who talks about duty as a drudgery and is
content to get through life without success and with as little effort as
possible is a useless drone.  In our calling he is worse than that--a
parasite."

Seleneck sighed.

"Oh, you ambitious, successful fellows!" he said with a lugubrious tug
at his moustache.  "You talk as scornfully of 'getting through life
without success' as though it were a crime.  Look at me--grey hairs
already, a family man, and still nothing more than a blundering old
captain, who will be thankful it he is allowed at the end to retire with
a major's pension. _I_ am one of your drones--a parasite, if you like,
and certainly a failure, but Heaven knows it is not my wish."

"You are no more a failure than the best of us," Wolff von Arnim
answered vigorously.  "I know you, _alter Kerl_, and I know you have
given your best strength, your best thought to your calling; I know
'duty' is the Alpha and Omega of your life--no one could ask more of
you."

"I have done my best," was the simple answer. "It hasn't come to much,
but still, it was my best. You, Wolff, will go much farther."

They were passing under the light of a street lamp as he spoke, and
Arnim glanced at his companion's face.  There was perhaps something
written on the plain yet honest and soldierly features which touched
him, for his own relaxed, and the softened expression made him seem
almost boyish.

"If I do my duty as well as you have done, I shall be very proud," he
said earnestly.

They walked on in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts, and then
Seleneck came to a standstill.

"Our ways end here," he said.  "I suppose you are going to Frau von
Arnim's?"

"Yes; I must let her know my good luck.  She will be very glad."

"And the little cousin--will she be 'very glad'?"

Arnim met the quizzical not unkindly glance with an almost imperceptible
change of countenance.

"I suppose so.  Why shouldn't she?"

"She will miss you."

Arnim did not answer, nor did he show any sign of continuing on his way.
He seemed suddenly caught in a painful train of thought, from which his
companion made no effort to arouse him.

"Poor little soul!" he said at last, half to himself. "It is terribly
hard luck on her.  No one loved life as she did, and now"--his brows
contracted--"sometimes I feel as though I were to blame," he added
abruptly.

"What nonsense!" Seleneck retorted.  "Are you responsible because a
horse shies and a girl has the misfortune to be thrown?"

"Perhaps not; but the feeling of responsibility is not so easily shaken
off.  I never see her--or her mother--without cursing the impulse that
made me take her out that day."

"It might just as well have happened any other day and with any one
else," Seleneck retorted cold-bloodedly.

"Of course.  Only one cannot reason like that with one's conscience.  At
any rate, there is nothing I would not do to make her happy--to atone to
her. Besides," he added hastily, as though he had said something he
regretted, "I am very fond of her."

The elder man tapped him on the shoulder.

"_Alter Junge_," he said pointedly, "I can trust your career to your
brains, but I am not so sure that I can trust your life to your heart.
Take care that you do not end up as Field-Marshal with Disappointment as
your adjutant.  _Lebewohl_."

With an abrupt salute he turned and strode off into the gathering
twilight, leaving Arnim to put what interpretation he chose to the
warning.  That the warning had not been without effect was clear. Arnim
went up the steps of the square-built house with a slowness that
suggested reluctance, and the features beneath the dark-blue cap,
hitherto alight with energy and enthusiasm, had suddenly become graver
and older.

He found Frau von Arnim in her private sitting-room, writing letters.
She turned with a pleased smile as he entered, and held out a hand which
he kissed affectionately.  The bond between them was indeed an unusually
close one, and dated from Wolff's first boyhood, when as a pathetically
small cadet he had wept long-controlled and bitter tears on her kind
shoulder and confided to her all the wrongs with which his elder
comrades darkened his life.  From that time he had been a constant
Sunday guest at her table, had been Hildegarde's playfellow throughout
the long Sunday afternoons, and had returned to the grim Cadettenhaus at
nightfall laden with contraband of the sort dearest to a boy's heart.
Afterwards, as ensign and young lieutenant, he had still looked up to
her with the old confidence, and to this very hour there had been no
passage in his life, wise or foolish, of which she was not cognisant.
She had been mother, father, and comrade to him, and it was more by
instinct than from any sense of duty that he had come to her first with
his good news.

"I have been appointed to the Staff in Berlin," he said.  "The order
arrived this afternoon.  It's all a step in the right direction, isn't
it?  At any rate, I shall be out of the routine and able to do head-work
to my heart's--I mean head's content."

Frau von Arnim laughed and pressed the strong hand which still held
hers.

"It is splendid, Wolff," she said.  "I knew that the day would come when
we should be proud of _unsren Junge_.  Who knows?  Perhaps as an old,
old woman I shall be able to hobble along on a stately General's
arm--that is, of course, if he will be seen with such an old wreck.
But"--her face overshadowed somewhat--"when shall we have to part with
you?"

"Not for some months," he said, seating himself beside her, "and then I
think you had better pack up your goods and chattels and come too.  I
shall never be able to exist without you to keep me in order and
Hildegarde to cheer me up."

"I have never noticed that you wanted much keeping in order," Frau von
Arnim said with a grave smile.  "And as for the other matter, it is to
you that Hildegarde owes much of her cheeriness.  She will miss you
terribly."

A silence fell between them which neither noticed, though it lasted some
minutes.  Overhead some one began to play the "Liebeslied" from the
_Walkuere_.

Wolff looked up and found that his aunt's eyes were fixed on him.

"Hildegarde?" he asked, and for the first time he felt conscious of a
lack of candour.

Frau von Arnim shook her head.

"Poor Hildegarde never plays," she reminded him gently.  "It is
Nora--Miss Ingestre.  You remember her?"

"Yes," he said slowly.  "She is not easily forgotten."  After a moment's
hesitation he added, "I never knew English people could be so charming.
Those I have met on my travels have either been badly mannered boors or
arrogant pokers.  Miss Ingestre is either an exception or a revelation."

The room was in part darkness, as Frau von Arnim loved it best.  A small
lamp burned on her table, and by its light she could study his face
unobserved.

"She has won all hearts--even to the coachman, who has a prejudice
against foreigners," she said in a lighter tone, "and Hildegarde has
become another person since her arrival.  I do not know what we should
do without her.  When she first came she was, of course, baked in her
insular prejudices, but she is so open-minded and broad-hearted that
they have fallen away almost miraculously.  We have not had to
suffer--as is so often the case--from volleys of Anglo-Saxon
criticisms."

"She seems musical, too," Wolff said, who was still listening with close
attention to the unseen player.

"She is musical; so much so that I am having her properly trained at the
Conservatorium," his aunt answered with enthusiasm.  "When she has got
out of certain English mannerisms she will do well.  It is already a
delight to listen to her."

A tide of warm colour darkened Wolff's face as he glanced quickly at
Frau von Arnim's profile.

"I wonder what little pleasure--or perhaps necessity--you have denied
yourself to perform that act of kindness?" he said.

"Neither the one nor the other, _lieber Junge_.  If I deny myself one
pleasure to give myself another, it can hardly be counted as a denial,
can it?  Besides, I believe her people are very badly off, and it is a
shame that her talent should suffer for it.  There! I am sure you want
to go upstairs.  Run along, and let me write my letters."

Wolff laughed at the old command, which dated back to the time when he
had worried her with his boy's escapades.

"I'll just glance in and tell Hildegarde my good luck," he said, a
little awkwardly.  "I promised her I would let her know as soon as the
news came."

"Do, dear Wolff."

She turned back to her letters, and Arnim, taking advantage of her
permission, hurried out of the room and upstairs.

Hildegarde's little boudoir was an inner room, divided off from the
neighbouring apartment by a heavy Liberty curtain.  Governed by he knew
not what instinct or desire, he stepped softly across and, drawing the
hangings a little on one side, remained a quiet, unobserved spectator of
the peaceful scene.

Nora had left the _Walkuere_ and had plunged into the first act of
_Tristan und Isolde_.  She played it with inexperience and after her own
ideas, which were perhaps not the most correct, but the face alone, with
its youth, its eagerness, its enthusiasm, must have disarmed the most
captious critic.  And Wolff von Arnim was by no means captious at that
moment. Though he was listening, he hardly realised what she was
playing, too absorbed in the pure pleasure which the whole picture gave
him to think of details.  He knew, for instance, that her dress was
simple and pretty, but he could not tell afterwards whether it was blue
or green or pink, or of no colour at all; he knew that he had never
before found so much charm in a woman's face, but he would have been
hard put to to describe exactly wherein that charm lay, or whether her
features were regular or otherwise.  He simply received an
impression--one that he found difficult to forget.

A lamp had been placed on the top of the piano, and by its light the
bright, wide-open eyes and eager fingers were finding their way through
the difficult score.  The rest of the room had been left in shadow.
Arnim knew where his cousin was lying, but he did not look in her
direction--perhaps he did not even think of her, so far did she lie
outside the picture on which his whole interest was centred; and when
the music died into silence, her voice startled him by its very
unexpectedness.

"Wolff, won't you come in now?" she said.

Was there pain or annoyance in her tone?  Arnim could not be certain.
The knowledge that she had seen him standing there was sufficiently
disconcerting. When we are unobserved, we unconsciously drop the masks
which the instinct of self-preservation forces us to assume in the
presence even of our dearest, and our faces betray emotions or thoughts
which we have, perhaps, not even acknowledged to ourselves. As he
advanced into the room, Arnim wondered uncomfortably how much the
invalid's quick eyes had seen and if there was, indeed, anything in his
looks or action which could have wounded her.

"You must think my manners very bad," he said in English as he greeted
Nora, "but I knew if I came in you would stop playing, and that would
have disappointed me and annoyed Hildegarde.  You see, I know my
cousin's little foibles, and one is that she does not like being
interrupted in anything.  Is that not so, Hildegarde?"

"You are a privileged person," she answered with a gentle smile on her
pale face.  "Still, I am glad you let Nora--Miss Ingestre--finish.  She
plays well, don't you think?"

"Splendidly--considering," was the answer.

Nora looked up.

"Considering?  That sounds a doubtful compliment."

"I mean, English people as a rule have not much understanding for
dramatic music."

"Yes, they have!" Nora blazed out impulsively.

"Have they?"

Still seething with injured patriotism, she met the laughter in his eyes
with defiance.  Then her sense of humour got the better of her.

"No, they haven't," she admitted frankly.

"There, now you are honest!  Have you tried _Tristan_ for the first
time?"

Nora nodded.  She had gone back to the piano and was turning over the
leaves of the score with nervous fingers.  For some reason which she
never attempted to fathom, Wolff von Arnim's entries into her life,
seldom and fleeting as they had been hitherto, had always brought with
them a subtle, indescribable change in herself and in her surroundings.
There were times when she was almost afraid of him and welcomed his
departure.  Then, again, when he was gone she was sorry that she had
been so foolish, and looked forward to their next meeting.

"I have tried to read the first act before," she said, "but it is so
hard.  I can make so little out of it.  I am sure it all sounds poor and
confused compared to the real thing."

"Your piano score is inadequate," he said, coming to her side.  "The
duet arrangement is much better. Hildegarde and I used to play it
together for hours."

Nora looked at him with wide-open eyes of wonder.

"Can you play?" she asked, very much as though he had boasted of his
flying abilities, so that he laughed with boyish amusement.

"I play like a great many of us do," he said, "sufficiently well to
amuse myself.  I have a piano in my quarters which I ill-treat at
regular intervals.  Do you remember how angry you used to get because I
thumped so?"

He had turned to the girl lying on the sofa, but she avoided his frank
gaze.

"Yes," she said.  "It is not so long ago, Wolff."  And then, almost as
though she were afraid of having betrayed some deeper feeling, she added
quickly, "Couldn't you two try over the old duets together? I should so
like to hear them, and I am too tired to talk."

"Would you like to, Miss Ingestre?"

"Very much--only you will find me dreadfully slow and stupid."

He hunted amongst an old bundle of music, and having found the required
piece, he arranged it on the piano and prepared himself for the task
with great gravity.

"You must let me have the bass," he said; "then I can thump without
being so much noticed.  I have a decided military touch.  Hildegarde
says I treat the notes as though they were recruits."

Nora played her part without nervousness, at first because she was
convinced of her own superiority and afterwards because he inspired her.
His guidance was sure and firm, and when he corrected, it was not as a
master but as a comrade seeking to give advice as to a common task.  Her
shyness and uneasiness with him passed away.  Every bar seemed to make
him less of a stranger, and once in a long rest she found herself
watching the powerful, carefully kept hands on the keyboard with a
curious pleasure, as though they typified the man himself--strong,
clean, and honest.

Thus they played through the whole of the first act, and when the last
chord had been struck there was a long silence.  It was as though both
were listening to the echo of all that had gone before, and it was with
an effort that Nora roused herself to speak.

"How well you play!" she said under her breath. "And how grand--how
wonderful it is!"

He turned and looked at her.

"Did you understand it?"

"Not all.  I feel that there are many more wonders to fathom which are
yet too deep for me.  But I understand enough to know that they are
there--and to be glad."

"It is the noblest--most perfect expression of love and of the human
heart that was ever written or composed," he said.

She looked up at him, and their eyes met gravely and steadily for a
moment, in which the world was forgotten.

"Thank you very much," a quiet voice said from the background.

Arnim turned quickly, so quickly that it was almost a start.

"Now for your criticism, Hildegarde!" he cried gaily.  "I assure you, we
are both trembling."

Hildegarde shook her head.

"I cannot criticise," she said.  "You played so well together, much
better than when I was able to take my part."  She hesitated.  "One
could hardly believe that you had never practised together before," she
added slowly.

Nora rose and closed the piano.  Without knowing why, the words pained
her and the brief silence that followed seemed oppressive.

Arnim followed her example.

"I have been here a disgraceful time!" he exclaimed, looking at his
watch.  "And there!  I have never even told you what I really came
about. I have been passed into the General Staff.  What do you think of
that?  Are you not proud to have such a cousin?"

His tone was gay, half teasing, but there was no response from the quiet
figure on the sofa.  Nora's eyes, rendered suddenly sharp, saw that the
pale lips were compressed as though in pain.

"Of course, Wolff, I am so glad.  It is splendid for you.  How long will
you be there--in Berlin, I mean?"

"A long time, I expect, unless there is a war."

Then, as though by some intuition he knew what was passing in her mind,
he came to her side and took her hand affectionately between his own.

"You and the mother will have to come too," he said.  "I have just been
telling her that I cannot get on without you.  Imagine my lonely state!
It's bad enough here, now that I have no one to ride out with me.  Old
Bruno is eating off his head in anticipation of the day when you will
gallop him through the woods again."

Hildegarde shook her head, but his words, spoken hastily and almost at
random, had brought the soft colour to her cheeks.

"I shall never ride again," she said.

She looked at her cousin and then to Nora, and her own wistful face
became suddenly overshadowed.

"But then," she went on with a quick, almost inaudible sigh, "that is no
reason why Bruno should eat his head off, as you say.  It is true I
cannot ride him any more, but Miss Ingestre can, and it would do her
good.  Wouldn't it, Nora?"

Was there an appeal in her voice which both heard and understood?  Arnim
said nothing.  He did not take his eyes from his cousin's face.

"It is really very good of you," Nora said quickly, "but I think I had
better not.  You see, I love it so, and it is best not to encourage
impossible tastes. Besides, I have no habit."

Warned, perhaps, by her own involuntary start of pleasure, by Arnim's
silence and Hildegarde's voice, she had sought wildly for any reasonable
excuse, and unwittingly chosen the one most likely to arouse the
generous impulses in both her companions.

"Whilst you are here you must enjoy everything you can get," Arnim said,
smiling at her.  "And who knows what Fate has in store for you?"

"And the habit is no difficulty," Hildegarde chimed in.  "You can have
mine.  We are about the same size, and it could easily be made to fit
you.  Do, dear!"

She was now all enthusiasm for her own plan, and Nora, glancing at
Arnim's face, saw that it had become eager with pleasure.

"Do!" he begged.  "I should so like to show you all the woods about
here.  Or--can you not trust yourself to me?"

A second time their eyes met.

"Of course I should trust you," Nora said quickly, "and there is nothing
I should love more."

"Then that is settled.  You must let me know the first day which suits
you.  Good-bye, _gnaediges Fraeulein_. Good-bye, Hildegarde.  I am
sending my orderly round with some books I have found.  I think you will
like them."

"Thank you, Wolff."

Then he was gone.  They heard the door bang downstairs, and the cheery
clatter of his sword upon the stone steps.

Nora came to the sofa and knelt down.

"How good you are to me!" she said.  "You are always thinking of my
pleasure, of things which you know I like, and, after all, it ought to
be just the other way round."

"I am very fond of you," Hildegarde answered in a low voice.  "Though I
know you so short a time, you are the only friend I really care for.  It
made me bitter to see other girls enjoy their life--but you are
different.  I don't think I should grudge you--anything."

Her voice broke suddenly.  She turned her face to the wall, and there
was a long silence.  Nora still knelt by the sofa.  Her eyes were fixed
thoughtfully in front of her, and there was an expression on her young
face of wonder, almost of fear.  Something new had come into her life.
There was a change in herself of which she was vaguely conscious.  What
was it?  What had brought it?  Was it possible that in a mere glance
something had passed out of her, something been received?  She sprang
restlessly to her feet, and as she did so a smothered, shaken sob broke
upon the stillness.  In an instant she had forgotten herself and her own
troubled thoughts.  She bent over the quivering figure and tried to draw
away the hands that hid the tear-stained face.

"Hildegarde--you are crying?  What is it?  What have I done?"

"Nothing--nothing.  It is only--I am so silly and weak--and the
music----"  She broke off and looked up into Nora's face with a
pathetic, twisted smile.  And then, seeming to yield to a passionate
impulse, she flung her thin arms about her companion's neck. "Oh, Nora,
you are so pretty and good!  Every one _must_ love you--and I love you
so!"

The words were an appeal, a confession, a cry breaking from an
over-burdened heart.  Nora drew the fair head against her shoulder,
pitying and comforting a grief which she as yet but partly understood.




                             *CHAPTER VIII*

                            *THE AWAKENING*


Frau von Arnim sat at the round breakfast-table before a pile of open
letters, which she took in turn, considered, and laid aside.  Her
expression was grave, and in the full morning light which poured in
through the window opposite she looked older, wearier than even those
who knew her best would have thought possible.  The world of Karlsburg
was accustomed to regard the Oberhofmarshall's widow as a woman of whom
it would be safe to prophesy, "Age shall not wither her," for, as far as
her envious contemporaries could see, the years had drifted past and
brought no change to the serene, proud face.  Perhaps they would have
admitted, on reflection, that their memories could not reach back to the
time when Frau von Arnim had been a girl--that, as far as they knew, she
had always been the same, always serene and proud, never youthful in the
true sense of the word.  And therein lay the paradoxical explanation for
what was called her "eternal youth."  Magda von Arnim had never been
really young.  The storms had broken too early on her life and had
frozen the overflowing spirits of her girlhood into strength of reserve,
patience, and dignity.  But she had not allowed them to embitter the
sources of her humanity, and thus she retained in her later years what
is best in youth--generosity, sympathy, a warm and understanding heart.

Frau von Arnim put aside her last letter, and with her fine white hand
shading her eyes remained in an attitude of deep thought, until the door
of the breakfast-room opened.

"Hildegarde!" she exclaimed, and then, quickly, painfully, "Why, how
stupid of me!  It is Nora, of course.  Good morning, dear child.  I must
have been indulging in what you call a day-dream, for when you came in I
thought it was really poor little Hildegarde grown well and strong
again."  She held Nora at arm's length.  "I do not think the resemblance
will ever cease to startle me.  The riding-habit makes you look so
alike--though really you are quite, quite different."

She tried to laugh, but the hurried tone, the sudden colour that had
rushed to the usually pale cheeks betrayed to Nora the painful
impression she had caused.  They hurried her to a decision that had
already presented itself to her before as something inevitable,
something she must do if she were to be just and loyal.  Time after time
she had shrunk back as before some hard sacrifice, and now she felt she
could shrink back no longer.

"_Gnaedige Frau_, I wanted to tell you--if you don't mind, I will give
up the riding.  After to-day I don't think I will go again.  I think it
better not."

"But--why?"

It was now Nora's turn to crimson with embarrassment. She was herself
hardly clear as to her reasons. The night before she had played the
second act of _Tristan und Isolde_ with Wolff von Arnim, and when it was
at an end they had found Hildegarde lying in a sleep from which they
could not at first awaken her, so close was it allied to another and
graver state. And Wolff von Arnim had had a strange misery in his eyes.
Such was the only explanation she knew of.  She knew, too, that she
could not give it. Nevertheless, she held her ground desperately.

"Because I believe it hurts you, and if not you, at least Hildegarde,"
she said at last.  "She cries sometimes when she thinks I shall not find
out, and though she never owns to it, I know it is because I enjoy
things she used to have and cannot have.  And, besides, it isn't fair,
it isn't right.  You have both been so good to me.  You have treated me
just as though I were a daughter of the house, and I have done nothing
to deserve it.  I have only caused Hildegarde pain, and that is what I
do not want to do."

Frau von Arnim took her by the hand and drew her closer.  A faint,
rather whimsical smile played about the fine mouth.

"Dear Nora, the fact that you are the daughter of the house proves that
you deserve the best we can give you.  Neither Hildegarde nor I are
given to adopting relations promiscuously.  And as for the other matter,
anybody suffering as Hildegarde does is bound to have her moments of
bitterness and regret--perhaps envy.  Thank God they are not many.  In
the first months I have known the sight of a child playing in the street
bring the tears to her eyes, and it is only natural that you, with your
health and strength, should remind her of what she has lost. And there
is another thing"--her manner became grave, almost emphatic--"a useless
sacrifice is no sacrifice at all; it is simply flying in the face of a
Providence who has given to one happiness, another sorrow.  It will not
make Hildegarde happy if you stay at home--on the contrary, she will
blame herself--and you will deprive my nephew of a pleasure. There!
After that little lecture you must have your breakfast and read your
letters.  You have only half an hour before you start, and my nephew
suffers from military punctuality in its most aggravated form."

Nora obediently made a pretence of partaking of the frugal rolls and
coffee.  As a matter of fact, the prospect before her, but above all the
two letters lying on her plate, had successfully driven away her
appetite.  The one envelope was addressed in her father's spider-like
hand, the other writing set her heart beating with uneasiness.  At the
first opportunity she opened her father's bulky envelope and hurried
over its contents.  Sandwiched in between rhetorical outbursts of solemn
advice, she extracted the facts that her mother was unusually out of
health, that he was consequently distracted with worry and over-burdened
with work, that Miles had obtained sick-leave and was enjoying a long
rest in the bosom of the family, that the neighbours, Mrs. Clerk in
particular, were both surprised and shocked at her, Nora's, continued
absence.  "Home is not home without you," the Rev. John had written
pathetically.  Then at the end of the letter had come the sting.  There
was a certain paragraph which Nora read twice over with heightened
colour and a pained line between the brows.

"Dear child, you tell me that you are going out riding with a certain
Herr von Arnim, your protectress's nephew.  Apart from the fact that an
indulgence in pleasure which your family can no longer afford seems to
me in itself unfitting, I feel that there is more besides in the matter
to cause me grave anxiety on your behalf.  Herr von Arnim's name occurs
constantly in your letters; he appears to use his musical talent as an
excuse to pay you constant attention; you meet him at the theatre--which
place, I must say in passing, you attend with what I fear must be a
wholly demoralising frequency; he lends you books, he instructs you in
the German language.  Now, my dear child, I myself have never met a
German officer, but from various accounts I understand that they are men
of a disorderly mode of life who would not hesitate to compromise a
young, inexperienced girl.  Knowing, of course, that your affections do
not come into question as regards a foreigner, I warn you not to allow
yourself to become this man's plaything.  As his aunt's dependent, he
may no doubt think that you are fit game for his amusement.  Remember
that you are an English girl, and show him that as such you are too
proud to play a degrading role, and that you will have none of his
attentions.  Ah, Nora, I would that I were with you to watch over you!
Oh that you were in a certain good man's keeping!"

Nora dropped the letter.  Her cheeks burned with indignation.  It was in
this light, then, that her father judged Wolff von Arnim's grave, almost
formal, courtesy, their innocent, straightforward friendship together!
And yet, beneath the indignation, new fears and doubts stirred to life.
She did not attempt to analyse them.  Impatiently, as though seeking to
escape from all self-interrogation, she picked up the second letter and
tore it open.  It was from Arnold. Like the man, the handwriting was
bold and clear, the sentences abrupt, sincere, and unpolished.  In a few
lines he thanked her for her last letter, outlined the small events of
his own life.  He then plunged into the immediate future.

"Unexpectedly, I have been granted a year's leave to travel in Central
Africa," he had written.  "You can understand that I shall be only too
glad to get out of England and to have some active work outside the
usual military grind.  I leave Southampton in two days' time, so that
you will not have time to answer this.  In any case, I do not want you
to hurry.  I reach Aden on the 10th.  That will give you time to
consider what I am going to say.  Hitherto I have been silent as to the
matter that lies nearest my heart, but now I am going so far from you I
must speak, Nora.  I believe that one day you will become my wife.  I
believe that it is so destined, and I believe you know it as well as I
do.  Our parting at Victoria convinced me, or at least it gave me the
greatest possible hope.  I believe that if I had jumped into the
carriage beside you and taken you in my arms, you would have yielded.  I
was a fool to have hesitated, but perhaps it is best that you should
decide in cold blood.  You know what I have to offer you--an honest,
clean devotion, not the growth of a moment's passion, but of years.  I
know you and I love and understand you--even to your faults.  You know
me, and whether you love me or not, you at least know that I am a man
who never changes, who will be twenty years hence what he is to-day.  Is
this to be despised?  Is not reciprocal trust and understanding worth
more than a shortlived passion? Nora, do not count it against me if I
cannot write to you eloquently, if I am poor in all the outward
elegancies of speech and manner.  I have no metaphors to describe my
love to you; no doubt I shall always fail in those graceful nothings
which you seem to appreciate so much.  I can only speak and act as a
straightforward Englishman who offers a woman his honest love.  For the
second--but not the last time, if needs must be--will you be my wife?
Consider well, dearest, and if you can, let me go into my exile with the
blessed knowledge that in a short time--for I shall not wait a year--I
may come and fetch you home.  Nora..."

Hoofs clattered impatiently in the street outside. The Arnims' little
maid opened the door and grinned with mysterious friendliness.

"_Der Herr Hauptmann ist unten und wartet_," she said.  "_Gnaediges
Fraeulein mochten sofort kommen!_"

She spoke in a tone of command which her intense respect for "_den Herrn
Hauptmann_" more than justified.  Was not her "Schatz" in the Herr
Hauptmann's battery, and did not he say every Sunday, when they walked
out together, that the whole Army did not contain a finer officer or a
more "_famoser Kerl_"?

"_Ich komme gleich_," Nora answered.  She thrust the half-read letter
into the pocket of her loose-fitting coat and ran downstairs.  All the
way she was thinking of Robert Arnold with a strange mingling of
affection and pity.  She thought how good and honest he was, and of the
life of a woman who entrusted herself to his care--and then abruptly he
passed out of her mind like a shadow dispersed by a broad, full ray of
sunshine.  Wolff von Arnim stood in the hall.  His face was lifted to
greet her, his hand outstretched. She took it.  She tried to say
something banal, something that would have broken the spell that had
fallen upon her.  Her lips refused to frame the words, and he too did
not speak.  Side by side they went out into the cold morning air.  The
orderly stood waiting with the two horses.  Arnim motioned him on one
side, and with sure strength and gentleness lifted Nora into the saddle.

"Are you comfortable?" he asked; and then, with a sudden change of tone,
"Why, what is the matter?  Did I hurt you?  You are so pale."

Nora shook her head.

"It is nothing--nothing.  I am quite all right.  I lost my breath--that
is all.  You lifted me as though I were a mere feather."

She tried to laugh, but instead bit her lip and looked down into his
face with a curious bewilderment. He had not hurt her, and yet some
sensation that was near akin to pain had passed like an electric current
right to the centre of her being.

"I am quite all right," she said again, and nodded as though to reassure
him.  "Please do not be so alarmed."

To herself she thought, "What is the matter with me?  What has
happened?"

These were the questions she asked herself incessantly as they walked
their horses through the empty streets.  She found no answer.
Everything in her that had hitherto been was no more.  All the old
landmarks in her character, her confidence, her courage, her
inexhaustible fund of life were gone, leaving behind them a revolution
of unknown emotions whose sudden upheaval she could neither explain nor
control. Her world had changed, but as yet it was a chaos where she
could find no firm land, no sure place of refuge.

They left the town behind them and walked their horses through the long
_allees_ of stately trees.  Almost without their knowledge their
conversation, broken and curiously strained as it was, dropped into
silence. The deadened thud of their horses' hoofs upon the soft turf was
the only sound that broke the morning stillness, and the mists hanging
low upon the earth, as yet undisturbed by the rising winter sun,
intensified the almost ghostly forest loneliness.  It was a loneliness
that pierced like a cold wind through Nora's troubled soul.  Though they
had ridden the same way before, at the same hour, surrounded by the same
grey shadows, she had never felt as she felt now--that they, alone of
the whole world, were alive and that they were together.  The clang of
the park gates behind them had been like a voice whose warning, jarring
tones echoed after them in the stillness, "Now you are alone--now you
are alone!"  What was there in this loneliness and silence?  Why did it
suffocate, oppress her so that she would have been thankful if a sudden
breeze had stirred the fallen leaves to sound and apparent life?  Why
had she herself no power to break the silence with her own voice?  She
glanced quickly at the man beside her. Did he also feel something of
what she was experiencing that he had become so silent?  Usually a
fresh, vigorous gaiety had laughed out of his eyes to meet her.  To-day
he did not seem to know that she had looked at him, or even that she was
there.  His gaze was set resolutely ahead, his lips beneath the short
fair moustache were compressed in stern, thoughtful lines which changed
the whole character of his face, making him older, graver.  Believing
herself unobserved, even forgotten, Nora did not look away.  She saw
Arnim in a new light, as the worker, the soldier, the man of action and
iron purpose.  Every line of the broad-shouldered figure in the grey
_Litewka_ suggested power and energy, and the features, thrown into
shadow by his officer's cap, were stamped with the same virile
characteristics translated into intellect and will.

"What a man you are!" was the thought that flashed through Nora's mind,
and even in that moment he turned towards her.

"It seems we are not the only ones out this morning," he said quietly.
"There is a rider coming towards us--Bauer, if I am not mistaken.  Let
us draw a little on one side."

She followed his guidance, at the same time looking in the direction
which he had indicated.  The mists were thinning, and she caught the
flash of a pale-blue uniform, and a moment later recognised the man
himself.

"Yes, it is Lieutenant Bauer," she said.

The new-comer drew in his horse to a walk and passed them at the salute.
Nora caught a glimpse of his face and saw there was an expression of
cynical amusement which aroused in her all the old instinctive aversion.
She stiffened in her saddle and the angry blood rushed to her cheeks.

"I am glad he is not in your regiment," she said impulsively.

"Why, Miss Ingestre?"

"Because I dislike him," she answered.

He did not smile at her blunt reasoning--rather, the unusual gravity in
his eyes deepened.

"I have no right to criticise a comrade," he said; "only I want you to
remember that in a great army such as ours there must always be
exceptions, men who have forced their way for the sake of
position--idlers, cads, and nonentities.  There are not many, thank God,
and they are soon weeded out, but I want you to believe that they are
the exceptions."

"I do believe it," she said gently.

"Thank you."  He waited a moment and then added, "It is a great deal to
me that you should think well of us."

"I could not well do otherwise," she answered.

"I am a foreigner."  The simple pronoun betrayed him, but Nora did not
notice the change.  She was gazing ahead, her brows knitted.

"That does not seem to make much difference," she said.  "I used to
think it would--only a few weeks ago.  I must have been very young then.
I am very young now, but not so young.  One can learn more in an hour
than in a lifetime."

"It all depends on the hour," he said, smiling.

"No--I think each hour has the same possibilities. It all depends on
oneself.  If one has opened one's heart----"  She left the sentence
unfinished, her thoughts reverting suddenly to her mother, and for a
moment the man beside her was forgotten.  But not for more than a
moment.  Then, with a shock, the consciousness of his presence aroused
her, and she looked up at him.  It was only his profile which she saw,
but some subtle change in the bold outline and a still subtler change in
herself quickened the beating of her heart.  As once before that
morning, she suffered an inexplicable thrill of pain and wondered at
herself and at the silence again closing in about them.  It was a
silence which had its source more in themselves than in their
surrounding world, for when the thud of galloping hoofs broke through
the deadening wall of mist they did not hear it, or heard it
unconsciously and without recognition.  Only when it grew to a
threatening thunder did it arouse Arnim from his lethargy.  He turned in
his saddle, and the next instant caught Nora's horse sharply to one
side.

"It is Bauer again!" he said.  "Take care!"  He had acted not an instant
too soon.  The shadow which he had seen growing out against the grey
wall behind them became sharply outlined, and like a whirlwind swept
past them, escaping the haunch of Nora's horse by a hair's-breadth.  The
frightened animal shied, wrenching the reins from Arnim's grasp, and
swerved across the narrow roadway. Whether she lost her nerve or whether
in that moment she did not care Nora could not have said.  The horse
broke into a gallop, and she made no effort to check its dangerous
speed.  The rapid, exhilarating motion lifted her out of herself, the
fresh, keen air stung colour to her cheeks and awoke in her a flash of
her old fearless life.

"_Ruhe!  Ruhe!_" she heard a voice say in her ear.  "_Ruhe!_"

But she paid no heed to the warning.  Quiet! That was what she most
feared.  It was from that ominous silence she was flying, and from the
moment when it would reveal the mystery of her own heart. Rather than
that silence, that revelation, better to gallop on and on until
exhaustion numbed sensibility, hushed every stirring, unfathomed desire
into a torpor of indifference!  She felt at first no fear.  The power to
check her wild course had long since passed out of her hands, but she
neither knew nor cared. She saw the forest rush by in a blurred,
bewildering mist, and far behind heard the muffled thunder of horse's
hoofs in hot pursuit.  But she saw and heard as in some fantastic dream
whose end lay in the weaving hands of an implacable Destiny.  In that
same dream a shadow crept up to her side, drew nearer till they were
abreast; a grip of iron fell upon her bridle hand.  Then for the first
time she awoke and understood.  And with understanding came fear. Her
own grip upon the straining reins relaxed.  She reeled weakly in the
saddle, thinking, "This is indeed the end."  But the shock for which she
dimly waited did not come.  Instead, miraculously supported, she saw the
mists clear and trees and earth and sky slip back to their places before
her eyes.  The world, which for one moment had seemed to be rushing to
its destruction, stood motionless, and Nora found herself in the saddle,
held there by the strength she would have recognised, so it seemed to
her, even if it had caught her up out of the midst of death.  Arnim's
face was bent close to hers, and its expression filled her with pity and
a joy wonderful and inexplicable.

"_Wie haben Sie mir das anthun koennen?_" he stammered, and then, in
broken, passionate English, "How could you?  If anything had
happened--do you not know what it would have meant to me?"  With a hard
effort he regained his self-possession and let her go.  "You frightened
me terribly," he said. "I--I am sorry."

"You have saved my life," she answered.  "It is I who have to be
sorry--that I frightened you."

She was smiling with a calm strangely in contrast to his painful but
half-mastered agitation.  The suspense of the last minutes was still
visible in his white face, and the hand which he raised mechanically to
his cap shook.

"It was Bauer's fault," he said.  "He rode like a madman.  I shall call
him to account.  We seem fated to cross each other."

"Then why call him to account--since it is Fate? After all, nothing has
happened."

Had, indeed, nothing happened?  She avoided his eyes, and the colour
died from her cheeks.

"Let us go home," he said abruptly.

They walked their panting horses back the way they had come.  As before,
neither spoke.  To all appearances nothing had changed between them, and
yet the change was there.  The sunlight had broken through the mists,
the oppressive silence was gone, and life stirred in the long grasses,
peered with wondering, timid eyes from amidst the shadows, where deer
and squirrel and all the peaceful forest world watched and waited until
the intruders had passed on and left them to their quiet.  And in Nora's
heart also the sun had risen.  The chaos had resolved itself into calm;
and though so long as the man with the pale, troubled face rode at her
side she could give no account even to herself of the mysterious
happiness which had come so suddenly and so strangely, she was yet
content to wait and enjoy her present peace without question.

Thus they passed out of the gates and through the busy streets, Arnim
riding close to her side, as though to shield her from every possible
danger.  But the silence between them remained unbroken.  It was the
strangest thing of all that, though throughout they had scarcely spoken,
more had passed between them than in all the hours of the gay and
serious comradeship they had spent together.

At the door of the Arnims' house Wolff dismounted and helped Nora to the
ground.  And as they stood for a moment hand in hand, he looked at her
for the first time full in the eyes.

"I cannot thank God enough that you are safe," he said.

She heard in his low voice the last vibrations of the storm, and the
thought that it was _her_ danger which had shaken this man from his
strong self-control overwhelmed her so that she could bring no answer
over her lips.  She turned and ran into the house, into her own room,
where she stood with her hands clasped before her burning face,
triumphant, intoxicated, swept away on a whirlwind of unmeasured
happiness.

It is the privilege--the greatest privilege perhaps--of youth to be
swept away on whirlwinds beyond the reach of doubt and fear, and Nora
was very young. Over the new world which had risen like an island
paradise out of the chaos of the old, she saw a light spread out in
ever-widening circles till it enveloped her whole life.  For Nora the
child was dead, the woman in her had awakened because she loved for the
first time and knew that she was loved.

It was a moment of supreme happiness, and, as such moments needs must be
if our poor mortal hearts are to be kept working, shortlived.  Even as
her eager, listening ears caught the last echo of horses' hoofs outside,
some one knocked at the door.

"Fraeulein Nora, please come at once," a servant's voice called.  "The
Fraeulein Hildegarde has been taken very ill, and she is asking for
you."

"I am coming," Nora answered mechanically.

Her hands had fallen to her side.  The whirlwind had dropped her, as is
the way with whirlwinds, and she stood there pale and for the moment
paralysed by the shock and an undefined foreboding.




                              *CHAPTER IX*

                             *RENUNCIATION*


Frau von Arnim was waiting at the door of Hildegarde's bedroom.  In the
half-light Nora saw only the dim outline of the usually grave and
composed face, but the hand that took hers betrayed more than the
brightest searchlight could have done.  It was icy cold, steady, but
with something desperate in its clasp.

"Nora, are you accustomed to people who are very ill?"

"My mother is often ill," Nora answered, and the fear at her heart
seemed to pass into her very blood. "But surely Hildegarde--it is not
serious?"

Frau von Arnim shook her head.

"I do not know," she said.  "She fainted suddenly, and since then she
has been in a feverish state which I do not understand.  Poor little
Hildegarde!"

She spoke half to herself, quietly, almost coldly. Only Nora, strung to
that pitch of sensitiveness where the very atmosphere seems to vibrate
in sympathy, knew all the stifled pain, the infinite mother-tenderness
which the elder woman cloaked behind a stern reserve. And because the
best of human hearts is a complicated thing answering at once to a dozen
cross-influences, Nora's pity was intensified by the swift realisation
that even her wonderful new happiness might be struck down in an hour, a
minute, as this woman's had been.

"Let me look after her," she pleaded.  "I can be such a good nurse.  I
understand illness--and I love Hildegarde."

Something like a smile relaxed Frau von Arnim's set features.  The words
had been so girlish in their enthusiasm and self-confidence.

"I know," she said, "and Hildegarde loves you. She has been asking after
you ever since she recovered consciousness.  Let us go in."

She opened the door softly and led the way into the silent room.  The
blinds had been drawn down, and the great four-posted bed loomed up grim
and immense at the far end, seeming to swallow up the frail, motionless
figure in its shadow.

Nora tiptoed across the heavy carpet.

"Hildegarde," she whispered, "are you better?"

The closed eyes opened full and looked at her.

"Yes, I am better.  It is nothing.  I fainted--only a little time after
you had gone--and since then I have not been well."  She stopped, her
gaze, curiously intense and steadfast, still fixed on Nora's face. Her
sentences had come in jerks in a rough, dry voice. She now stretched out
her hand and caught Nora's arm.

"You enjoyed your ride?" she whispered.  "Nothing happened?"

Troubled by the steady eyes and the feverish clasp, which seemed to burn
through to her very bone, Nora answered hastily and with a forced
carelessness.

"Nothing very much.  Bruno bolted with me in the woods, and I do not
know what might have happened if Herr von Arnim had not come to my
rescue.  It was all my fault."

Hildegarde turned her flushed face a little on one side.

"I knew something had happened," she said almost to herself.  "It all
came over me when I fainted.  I knew everything."

Nora made no answer.  She was thankful for the half-light, thankful that
the large, dark eyes had closed as though in utter weariness.  They had
frightened her just as the conclusive "I know everything" had done by
their infallible mysterious knowledge.  "And even if you do know
everything," she thought, "why should I mind?--why should I be afraid?"
Nevertheless, fear was hammering at her heart as she turned away.  Frau
von Arnim took her by the hand.

"She seems asleep," she whispered.  "Let us leave her until the doctor
comes.  Then we shall know better what to do."

It was as though she had become suddenly anxious to get Nora away from
the sick girl's bedside, and Nora yielded without protest.  She felt
that Hildegarde's need of her had passed; that she had indeed only
waited to ask that one question, "Did anything happen?" before sinking
into a feverish stupor. Silent, and strangely sick at heart, Nora
followed Frau von Arnim from the room into the passage. There the elder
woman took the troubled young face between her hands and kissed it.

"Hildegarde loves you," she said gravely.  "I perhaps know best how
much; but she has lost a great deal that makes life worth living, Nora,
and sometimes bitterness rises above every other feeling. When that
happens you must have pity and understanding. You must try and imagine
what it would be like if you lost health and strength----"  She stopped
short, but Nora, struggling with the hard, painful lump in her throat,
did not notice the break. She saw only in the sad eyes the same appeal
that had met her on the first evening, "Be pitiful!" and, obeying an
irresistible impulse, she put her arms about Frau von Arnim's neck in an
outburst of conflicting feeling.

"I do understand!" she cried brokenly.  "And I am so dreadfully sorry.
I would do anything to help her--to make her happy!"

"I know you would, dear Nora; but that is not in your power or mine.
She must learn happiness out of herself, as soon or late we all must do.
We can only wait and be patient."

They said no more, but they kept together, as people do who find an
instinctive consolation in each other's presence.  An hour later the
doctor arrived. He pronounced high fever, apparently without any direct
cause, and ordered quiet and close watching.

"So far, it seems nothing serious," he said, with a thoughtful shake of
the head, "but she is delicate and over-sensitive.  Every mental
excitement will work inevitably upon her health.  She must be spared all
trouble and irritation."

According to his suggestion, Frau von Arnim and Nora shared the task of
watching in the sick-room. There was nothing for them to do, for
Hildegarde lay inert and silent, apparently unconscious of their
presence, and the hours slipped heavily past.  At ten o'clock Nora took
up her post.  She had slept a little, and the dark rings beneath Frau
von Arnim's eyes caused her to say gently:

"You must rest as long as you can.  I am not tired.  I could watch all
night."

Frau von Arnim shook her head.

"I will come again at twelve," she said, with a faint smile.  "Youth
must have its sleep, and I shall be too anxious to be away long."

The door closed softly, and Nora was left to her lonely vigil.  She
stood for a moment in the centre of the room, overcome by a sudden
uneasiness and fear.  She had watched before, but never before had the
silence seemed so intense, the room so full of moving shadows.  Except
for the reflection from the log fire and the thin ray of a shaded
night-light, the apartment was in darkness, but to Nora's excited
imagination the darkness was alive and only the outstretched figure
beneath the canopy dead.  The illusion was so strong that she crept
closer, listening with beating heart.  There was no sound.  For one
sickening moment it seemed as though her fear had become a reality--then
a stifled sigh broke upon the stillness.  Hildegarde stirred restlessly,
and again there was silence, but no longer the same, no longer so
oppressive.  Death was as yet far off, and, relieved and comforted, Nora
drew an arm-chair into the circle of firelight.  From where she sat she
could observe every movement of her charge without herself changing
position, and for some time she watched anxiously, self-forgetful in the
fulfilment of her duty. But then the fascination of the glowing logs
drew her eyes away, and almost without her knowledge her thoughts
slipped their leash and escaped from the gloomy room with its atmosphere
of pain, out into the forest, back to the moment when life had broken
out into full sunshine and happiness such as she had never known, and
love incomparable, irresistible, swept down upon her and bore her with
them into a new paradise.  Who shall blame her if she saw in the bright
flames not Hildegarde's pale, suffering face, but the features of the
man who had wrought in her the great miracle which occurs once, surely,
in every woman's life?  Who shall blame her if a half-read letter and
its writer were forgotten, or, if remembered, only with a tender pity
such as all good women must feel for honest failure?  And in that pity
there was mingled a certain wonder at herself that she could ever have
supposed her feeling for Robert Arnold to be love.  What was the
childish regret at parting, the casual affection for an old comrade,
blown to a warmer glow by the first harsh winds of exile, compared to
this--this wonderful Thing which in an instant had revealed to her the
possibility of a union where the loneliness, conscious or unconscious,
surrounding each individual life is bridged and the barriers between
mind and mind, heart and heart, are burnt down by the flames of a pure
and noble passion?  Poor Arnold! It was well for him that he could not
know what was passing in Nora's mind nor see her face as she gazed into
the fire.  He might then have wished that his letter, with its bold
self-confidence, had never been written.  For the glow upon the young
features was not all fire-shine, the starlight in the dreamy eyes not
all reflected gleams from the burning logs upon the hearth.  Both had
their birth within, where the greatest of all human happiness had been
kindled--but not by Arnold's hand.

Thus half an hour, and then an hour, slipped past. Lulled by her
thoughts and the absolute quiet about her, Nora sank into a doze.  The
firelight faded into the distance, and half-dreaming, half-waking, she
drifted into a chaotic world of fancies and realities. She dreamed at
last that some one called her by name.  She did not answer, and the call
grew louder, more persistent.  It seemed to drag her against her will
back to full sensibility, and with a violent start Nora's eyes opened,
and she knew that the voice had not been part of her dreams, but that
Hildegarde was calling her with monotonous reiteration.

"Nora!  Nora!"

"Yes, I am here.  What is it?"

Nora drew softly to the bedside and took the outstretched hand in hers.
It burnt, as though the feverish sparkle in the wide-opened eyes was but
a signal of an inner devouring fire, and there was something, too, in
the feeble smile which hurt Nora by reason of its very piteousness.

"I ought not to have disturbed you," Hildegarde said in a dry whisper.
"It was selfish of me, but you looked so happy that I thought you could
spare me a moment.  I have been so frightened."

"Frightened, dear?  Of what?"

"I do not know--of myself, I think."

She turned her fair head restlessly on the pillow, as though seeking to
retrace some thought, and then once more she lifted her eyes to Nora.
They seemed unnaturally large in the half-darkness, and their expression
strangely penetrating.  Nevertheless, when she spoke again Nora felt
that they sought rather to convey a message than to question.

"Nora, you will laugh at me--I want to know, have I been talking--in my
sleep, I mean?"

"No."

"I am glad."  Again the same half-pleading, half-frightened smile played
about the colourless lips. "I have been having such mad dreams--not bad
dreams--only so--so untrue, so unreal.  I should not have liked you to
know them.  You might have thought----"  She stopped, and her clasp
tightened.

"You know how I love you, don't you, Nora?"

"Yes, I think so--more than I deserve."

"Not as much, but still, very dearly.  That was what I wanted to tell
you.  It seems foolish--in the middle of the night like this; but I was
so afraid you would not understand.  You do, though, don't you?"

"Of course."  Nora spoke soothingly, but with a dim knowledge that she
had not wholly understood. There was, indeed, a message in those broken
sentences, but one to which she had no key.

"You have been good to me," Hildegarde went on rapidly.  "Though you
possess all that makes life worth living, you have not jarred on me with
your wealth.  You have not tried to comfort me with the truism that
there are others more suffering than I--such a poor sort of comfort,
isn't it?  As though it made me happy to think that more suffering was
possible--inevitable!  When I am ill, I like to think that I am the
exception--that the great law of life is happiness.  And you are life
and happiness personified, Nora, and so I love you.  I love you so that
I grudge you nothing--shall never grudge you anything.  That is--what--I
want--you to understand!"  The last words came like a sigh, and there
was a long silence. The earnest eyes had closed, and she seemed to
sleep. Nora knelt down by the bedside, still holding the thin white hand
between her own, and so remained until, overcome by weariness, her head
sank on to the coverlet.  Half an hour passed, and then suddenly a rough
movement startled her from her dreams.  Again she heard her name called,
this time desperately, wildly, as though the caller stood at the brink
of some hideous chasm.

"Nora!  Nora!"

Nora made no answer.  She stumbled to her feet and stood half-paralysed,
looking at the features which in an instant had undergone so terrible a
change. Hildegarde sat bolt upright.  Her hair was disordered, her eyes,
gleaming out of the ashy face, were fixed on the darkness behind Nora
with a terrible entreaty in their depths.

"Nora!  Nora! what have you done?"

Nora recovered herself with an effort.  Usually strong of nerve, there
was something in the voice, in the words, which terrified her.

"Hildegarde, what do you mean?  What is the matter?"

"Oh, Nora, Nora, what have you done?"

The voice had sunk to a moan so piteous, so wretched, that Nora forgot
the cold fear which for a moment held her paralysed.  She tried to press
the frail figure gently back among the pillows.

"Dear, I don't know what you mean.  But you must lie quiet.  To-morrow
you can tell me everything----"

Hildegarde pushed her back and put her hand wildly to her head.

"Of course, you can't help it.  You don't even know.  How should you?  A
cripple--you would never even think of it.  Nobody would--they would
laugh at me or pity me.  Wolff pities me now--but not then.  Oh, Wolff!
Wolff!"

The name burst from the dry lips in a low cry of pain.  Hitherto she had
spoken in English; she went on in German, but so clearly and with such
vivid meaning in tone and gesture that Nora, cowering at the foot of the
bed, felt that she would have understood had it been in some dead,
unknown language.

"Wolff, how good you are to me!  Shall we gallop over there to the
bridge?  How splendid it is to be alive, isn't it?  Yes, of course I
shall keep the supper waltz for you, if you really want it.  We always
have such fun together.  Look!  There is the Kaiser on the brown horse!
And Wolff is leading the battery with Seleneck!  How splendid he looks!
Oh, Wolff! Wolff!"

Again the old cry, vibrating with all the unspoken love and pride and
happiness which the short, disjointed sentences had but indicated!  They
had painted for the dazed, heart-stricken listener vivid pictures from
the past--the long, joyous gallops over the open country, the brilliant
ballroom, the parade, all the laughter, the music, the lights, and
chivalresque clash of arms--but in that one name a life had been
revealed, the inner life of a girl ripening to a pure and loving woman.

The tears burned Nora's eyes.  Every word that fell from the delirious
lips struck a deeper, more fatal blow at her own happiness, yet she
could not have fled, could not have stopped her ears against their
message.

"You must work hard, Wolff," the voice went on, sunk to a sudden
gentleness.  "Perhaps one day you will do something wonderful--something
that will help to make us the greatest country in the world.  How proud
we shall be of you!  I am proud already! Steady, Bruno!  How wild you
are this morning! One last gallop!  Oh, Wolff, don't look like that! It
is nothing--nothing at all!  Only my back hurts. Am I not too heavy?
You are so strong."  And then, with a smothered exclamation of anguish:
"Wolff, the doctor says I shall never ride again!"

A long, unbroken silence.  The young, suffering face had grown grey and
pinched.  There were lines about the mouth which made it look like that
of an old woman.  A log fell with a crash into the fireplace. The voice
went on, toneless, expressionless:

"How the light shines on her face!  She is so pretty, and she can walk
and ride.  She is not half dead, like I am.  No wonder he stands and
watches her!  Wolff, why do you stand there?  Why do you look like that?
Won't you come and sit by me? No, no, why should you?  It is better so.
You play well together.  _Tristan und Isolde_--I wonder if it is Fate.
They have gone out riding.  I am glad.  I wished it.  When one is a
cripple one must conquer oneself.  I can see them riding through the
park gates.  They look splendid together--so handsome and young and
strong.  Now they are galloping. Oh, my God, my God!  Nora, what are you
doing? Something has happened!  Oh, Wolff, Wolff!  I know--I know you
love her!"

The voice, which had risen from note to note as though urged by some
frightful inner tumult of fear, now sank to silence.  Hildegarde fell
back among the pillows.  With that final tragic recognition her mind
seemed once more to be shrouded in oblivion.  The look of agony passed
from her features.  She was young again, young and beautiful and at
peace.

Nora stumbled.  She would have fallen at the bedside had not a hand,
seeming to stretch out of the darkness, caught her and held her.  It was
Frau von Arnim.  How long she had been there Nora could not tell.  She
felt herself being drawn gently but firmly away.

"Go to your room, Nora.  Lie down and sleep.  I should never have left
you.  Poor child!"

In the midst of her grief the tones of deep, generous pity awoke in
Nora's heart a strange awe and wonder. She did not dare meet Frau von
Arnim's eyes.  It was as though she knew she would see there a tragedy
greater than her own, a pain too sacred for words of comfort.  She crept
from the room, leaving mother and daughter alone.

"Nora, Nora, what have you done?"

The words followed her; they rang in her ears as she flung herself down
by her table, burying her face in her arms in a passion of despair.

"What have I done?" she asked again and again. And all that was generous
and chivalrous in her answered:

"She loved you, and you have stolen her one happiness from her.  You are
a thief.  You have done the cruellest, meanest thing of your life."

Justice protested:

"How could you have known?  You did not even know that _you_ loved, or
were loved--not till this morning."

Then the memory of that morning, that short-lived happiness already
crumbled and in ruins, swept over her and bore down the last barriers of
her self-control. Poor Nora!  She sobbed as only youth can sob face to
face with its first great grief, desperately, unrestrainedly, believing
that for her at least life and hope were at an end.  Another less
passionate, less governed by emotion would have reasoned, "It is not
your fault.  You need not suffer!"  Nora only saw that, wittingly or
unwittingly, she had helped to heap sorrow upon sorrow for a being who
had shown her only kindness and love.  She had brought fresh misfortune
where she should have brought consolation; she had dared to love where
she had no right to love; she had kindled a love in return which could
only mean pain--perhaps worse--to those who had given her their whole
trust and affection.  She had done wrong, and for her there was only one
punishment--atonement by renunciation.

The grey winter dawn crept into the little bedroom, and Nora still sat
at her table.  She was no longer crying.  Her eyes were wide open and
tearless.  Only an occasional shudder, a rough, uneven sigh, told of the
storm that had passed over her.  As the light grew stronger she took up
a crumpled letter and read it through, very slowly, as though each word
cost her an effort.  When she had finished she copied an address on to
an envelope and began to write to Robert Arnold.  Her hand shook so that
she had to tear up the first sheet and begin afresh, and even then the
words were scarcely legible.  Once her courage almost failed her, but
she pulled herself back to her task with a pathetic tightening of the
lips.

"I know now that I do not love you," she wrote. "I know, because I have
been taught what love really is; but if you will take me with the little
I have to give, I will be your wife."

And with that she believed that she had raised an insurmountable barrier
between herself and the love which fate had made sinful.




                              *CHAPTER X*

                        *YOUTH AND THE BARRIER*


It was Hildegarde's birthday.  The November sunshine had come out to do
her honour, and in every corner of her room rich masses of winter
flowers rejoiced in the cold brightness which flooded in through the
open window.  Hildegarde herself lay on the sofa, where the light fell
strongest.  The two long weeks in which she had hung between life and
death had wrought curiously little change in her, and what change there
was lay rather in her expression than in her features.  Her cheeks were
colourless, but she had always been pale, and the ethereal delicacy
which had become a very part of herself, and which seemed to surround
her with an atmosphere of peaceful sanctity, was more spiritual than
physical.  Nora, who stood beside her, watching the sunlight as it made
a halo of the fair hair, could not think of her as a suffering human
being.  It was surely a spirit that lay there, with the bunch of violets
clasped in the white hands--a spirit far removed from all earthly
conflict, upheld by some inner strength and softened by a grave, serene
wisdom.  And yet, Nora knew, it was only an heroic "seeming."  She knew
what pictures passed before the quiet eyes, what emotions lay hidden in
the steady-beating heart, what pain the gentle lips held back from
utterance.  Admiration, pity, and love struggled in Nora's soul with the
realisation of her own loss and the total ruin of her own happiness.
"But I have done right," she repeated to herself, with a kind of
desperate defiance, "and one day, if you are happy, it will be because I
also brought my sacrifice in silence."  It was her one consolation--a
childish one enough, perhaps--the conviction that she had done right.
It was the one thing which upheld her when she thought of the letter
speeding to its destination and of the fate she had chosen for herself.
But it had not prevented the change with which grief and struggle mark
the faces of the youngest and the bravest.

Down below in the street the two quiet listeners heard the tramp of
marching feet which stopped beneath their window, and presently a knock
at the door heralded a strange apparition.  A burly under-officer in
full dress stood saluting on the threshold.

"The regiment brings _Gnaediges Fraeulein_ its best wishes for her
birthday," he thundered, as though a dozen luckless recruits stood
before him.  "The regiment wishes _Gnaediges Fraeulein_ health and
happiness, and hopes that she will approve of the selection which has
been made."  He advanced with jingling spurs and held out a sheet of
paper, which Hildegarde accepted with a gentle smile of thanks.

"It is a nice programme, isn't it?" she said, as she handed the list to
Nora.  "All my favourites."

"It was the Herr Hauptmann who told us what _Gnaediges Fraeulein_
liked," the gruff soldier said, still in an attitude of rigid military
correctness.  "The Herr Hauptmann will be here himself before long. He
commanded me to tell _Gnaediges Fraeulein_."

"Thank you, Huber--and thank the regiment for its good wishes.
Afterwards--when the concert is over--well, you know what is waiting for
you and your men in the kitchen."

He bowed stiffly over her extended hand.

"_Danke, Gnaediges Fraeulein_."  He strode back to the door, and then
turned and hesitated, his weather-beaten face a shade redder.

"The regiment will lose the Herr Hauptmann soon," he said abruptly.

"Yes, Huber.  And then what will you do?"

"Go too, _Gnaediges Fraeulein_.  I have served my country many years,
and when the Herr Hauptmann leaves the regiment I have had enough.  One
gets old and stiff, and the time comes when one must take off the
helmet."

"That is true, Huber."

Still he hesitated.

"And _Gnaediges Fraeulein_----?"

"I, Huber?"

"_Gnaediges Fraeulein_ will go with the Herr Hauptmann?"

A deep wave of colour mounted the pale cheeks.

"It is possible we may go to Berlin for a few months."

"_Ja_, _ja_, for a few months!" He laughed, and his laugh was like the
rumble of distant thunder. "It is well, _Gnaediges Fraeulein_; it is
well."  Then suddenly he stiffened, growled an "_Empfehle mich
gehorsamst_," and was gone.

Hildegarde bowed her head over the violets and there was a long silence.
Then she too laughed so naturally and gaily that Nora forgot herself and
looked at her in wondering surprise.

"He is such a strange old fellow," Hildegarde explained.  "Wolff calls
him his nurse.  Once in the manoeuvres he saved Wolff's life, and ever
since then he has attached himself to the family, and looks upon us all
more or less as his children.  He is never disrespectful, and so we
allow him his little idiosyncrasies.  One of his pet ideas is that Wolff
should marry me."

Nora repressed a start.  What strange thing was this that Hildegarde
should speak so lightly, so carelessly, of the tragic loss overshadowing
both their lives?

"I think it would quite break his heart if we disappointed him,"
Hildegarde added quietly.  "Is it not amusing?"

"Amusing?"  Nora's hand gripped the back of the sofa.  "I do not see why
it should be amusing--it is natural.  Of course"--she struggled to
overcome the roughness in her voice--"every one sees how much your--your
cousin cares for you."

Again the same easy laugh answered her.

"Why, Nora, you are as bad as our military matchmaker!  Of course, Wolff
is fond of me just as I am of him.  We are like brother and sister; but
marriage--that is quite another matter.  I am afraid I could never bring
myself to marry a man whose heart-affairs I have known ever since he was
an absurd little cadet."

Nora pushed the hair from her forehead.  She felt as though the ground
had suddenly been torn from under her feet.  Every resolution, every
principle, the very spirit of sacrifice to which she had clung, had been
shaken by those few simple words.  Had she dreamed, then, that night
when delirium had broken open the innermost sanctuary of Hildegarde's
heart?  Had it all been a wild fancy, and was this the truth?  Or----
She looked full into the face raised to hers.  There was a quiet
merriment in the steady eyes--a merriment which yielded gradually to
concern, but there was no sign of pain, no trace of struggle.  It was
impossible to believe that those eyes held their secret, or that the
smiling lips had once uttered a cry of the greatest human agony. Yes, it
was impossible, and if impossible, why, then----  Nora could think no
further.  She turned and walked mechanically to the window.  The
military band had begun the wedding-march out of _Lohengrin_, but for
her it was no more than a confused sound beating against her brains.
She heard the house-gate click, and saw a well-known figure slowly mount
the steps, but she could not rouse herself to speak or think. She stood
stunned and helpless, knowing nothing of the pitying eyes that watched
her.  In those moments a faint change had come over Hildegarde von
Arnim's features.  The smile had died, and in its place had come a grave
peace--a peace such as is given sometimes with renunciation.  Then her
eyes closed and she seemed to sleep, but her hands held fast to the
purple violets, and the sunlight falling upon the quiet face revealed a
line that is also renunciation's heritage.

Meanwhile Wolff von Arnim had entered the state drawing-room, whither
the little housemaid, overwhelmed by the plumes and glittering
epaulettes, had considered fit to conduct him.  It was the one spot in
the whole house which Frau von Arnim had not been able to stamp with her
own grace and elegance. The very chairs seemed to have entered into a
conspiracy to appear stiff, and stood in comfortless symmetrical order,
and the fire smouldering upon the hearth could do nothing against the
chill atmosphere of an unloved and seldom inhabited dwelling-room.

Arnim went straight to the window.  It was as though his surroundings
pressed upon him with an intolerable burden, and he remained staring
sightlessly out into the grey morning until the quiet opening of a door
told him that he was no longer alone.  Even then he did not at once
turn.  Only the slight convulsive tightening of the hand upon the
sword-hilt betrayed that he had heard, and Frau von Arnim had almost
reached his side before he swung round to greet her.

"Aunt Magda!" he exclaimed.

She gave him her hand, and he bent over it--remained so long with his
head bowed that it seemed a conscious prolongation of the time before
their eyes must meet.

"I hardly expected you this afternoon," she said gently, "certainly not
in such _grande tenue_.  Are you on special duty?"

He did not answer at once.  He stood looking at her with a curiously
absent expression.

"I came to ask after Hildegarde," he said.  "Is she better?"

"Yes, much better--still very weak, of course.  A fever like that is not
quickly forgotten."

She had slipped her arm through his and led him to the sofa before the
fire.

"The violets you sent are most beautiful," she went on.  "They gave
Hildegarde so much pleasure. She asked me to thank you for them."

He sat down beside her and for a moment was silent, gazing into the
fire.

"Aunt Magda," he then began abruptly, "you have never told me what it
was that caused Hildegarde's illness--nor even what was the matter with
her.  I--I want to know."

A faint, rather weary smile passed over Frau von Arnim's lips.

"Illness with Hildegarde is never far off, _lieber Junge_," she said.
"She is like an ungarrisoned castle exposed to the attack of every
enemy.  The least thing--something which leaves you and me
unharmed--throws her off her balance no one knows how or why."

"And she was once so strong!" he said, half to himself.  "Nothing could
tire her, and she was never ill--never."

"Wolff, there is no good in remembering what was and can never be
again."

"Never?" he queried.

"Not so far as we can see."

His strongly marked brows knitted themselves in pain.

"Would to God it had all happened to me!" he broke out impulsively.
"Then it would not have been so bad."

"It would have been much worse," Frau von Arnim answered.  "Women suffer
better than men, Wolff.  It is one of their talents.  After a time,
Hildegarde will find consolation where you would only have found
bitterness."

"After a time!" he repeated.  "Then she is not happy?  Poor Hildegarde!"

"Even women cannot learn patience and resignation in a day."

He sprang up as though inactivity had become unbearable.

"Aunt Magda--if she is strong enough--I want to see Hildegarde."

"Why?"

Involuntarily their eyes met in a quick flash of understanding.

"Because I think that it is time for our relationship to each other to
be clearly settled," he said.  "Ever since our childhood it has been an
unwritten understanding that if Hildegarde would have me we should
marry; and so I have come to ask her--if she will be my wife."

He spoke bluntly, coldly, not as he had meant to speak, but the steady
gaze on his face shook his composure.

"Have you the right to ask her that?"

"Aunt Magda!"

"Or, after all, have you been playing with the affections of a girl who
has the right to my protection?"

"Aunt Magda--that is not true--that----"

He stopped short, pale with agitation, his lips close compressed on the
hot words of self-vindication.

For a minute Frau von Arnim waited as though giving him time to speak,
and then she went on quietly:

"Wolff, we Arnims are not fond of charity.  We prefer to eat out our
hearts in silence rather than be objects of the world's pity.  And
Hildegarde is like the rest of us.  She will not ask for your sympathy
nor your care nor your devotion.  She will ask you for your whole heart.
Can you give her that?"

He made a gesture as though about to give a hasty answer, but her eyes
stopped him.

"I--love Hildegarde," he stammered.  "We have been friends all our
lives."

"Friends, Wolff!  I said 'your whole heart.'"

And then he saw that she knew; and suddenly the tall, broad-shouldered
man dropped down, sword-clattering, at her side and buried his face in
his hands. The smile in Frau von Arnim's eyes deepened.  So he had done
in the earlier days when youthful scrapes and disappointments had sent
the usually proud, reserved boy to the one unfailing source of
understanding and consolation.  Very gently she rested her hand upon his
shoulder.

"Shall you never grow up, Wolff?" she said with tender mockery.  "Shall
you always be a big schoolboy, with the one difference that you have
grown conceited and believe that you can hide behind a full-dress
uniform and a gruff military voice--even from my eyes?"

He lifted his flushed, troubled face to hers.

"You know--everything?" he asked.

"Everything, _lieber Junge_.  Hildegarde knows, Johann knows, the cook
knows.  I should not be surprised if the very sparrows make it a subject
of their chattering.  And you can go about with that stern face and
mysterious, close-shut mouth and think you have deceived us all!  Oh,
Wolff, Wolff!"

"You are laughing at me," he said.  "God knows I am in deadly earnest."

She took his hand between her own.

"If I laugh at you it is because I must," she said; "because it is the
only thing to do.  There are some forms of quixotic madness which it is
dangerous to take seriously, and this is one of them.  Wolff, you have
tortured yourself with an uncalled-for remorse until you are ready to
throw your own life and the lives of others into a huge catastrophe.  In
all this, have you thought what it might mean to Nora?"

He started, and the colour ebbed out of his face, leaving it curiously
pale and haggard.

"I think of her day and night," he said hoarsely. "I pray God that she
does not know--that I shall pass out of her life and leave no trace
behind me."

"You believe that that is possible?  You deceive yourself so well?  You
pretend you do not love Nora, and you do not know that she loves you?"

"That I love her?  Yes, I know that," he confessed desperately.  "But
that she loves me--how should I know?"

"Any one would know--you must know."  She put both her hands on his
shoulders and looked him firmly in the face.  "Wolff, if you were honest
you would admit it.  You would see that you have acted cruelly--without
intention, but still cruelly."

"Then if I have been cruel, I have been most cruel against myself," he
answered.  "But I meant to do what was right--I meant to act honestly.
It is true when I say I love Hildegarde.  I do love her--not perhaps as
a man should love his wife, but enough, and I had sworn that I would
make her happy, that I would compensate her for all that she has lost. I
swore that to myself months ago--before Nora came.  When Nora came, Aunt
Magda"--his voice grew rough--"there are some things over which one has
no power, no control.  It was all done in a minute.  If I had been
honest, I should have gone away, but it would have been too late.  And
as it was I deceived myself with a dozen lies.  I stayed on and saw her
daily, and the thing grew until that morning when Bruno bolted.  I lost
my head then.  When it was all over I could not lie and humbug any more.
I had to face the truth.  It was then Hildegarde fell ill.  I felt it as
a sort of judgment."

He spoke in short, jerky sentences, his face set and grey with the
memory of a past struggle.  He sprang to his feet and stood erect at
Frau von Arnim's side.

"Whatever else I am, I am not consciously a cad," he said.  "What I had
done wrong I was determined to put right at all costs.  I loved
Hildegarde, and I had dedicated my life to her happiness.  Nothing and
no one must turn me from my purpose.  That is why I am here this
morning."  He made an impatient gesture.  "I have been a fool.  You have
seen through me--you have made me tell you what torture would not have
dragged out of me.  But that can alter nothing."

For a moment Frau von Arnim watched his stern, half-averted face in
silence.  Then she too rose.

"I have a message for you from Hildegarde," she said quietly.

He started.

"For me?"

"Yes.  Those who suffer have quick eyes, quicker intuitions.  She saw
this coming, and she asked me to tell you--should it come--that she
loved you too much to accept a useless sacrifice.  For it would have
been useless, Wolff.  You deceive yourself doubly if you believe you
could have made Hildegarde happy.  Yes, if you had brought your whole
heart--then, perhaps; but it is almost an insult to have supposed that
she would have been satisfied with less.  Since her illness she has told
me everything, and we have talked it over, and this is our answer to
you: Take the woman you love; be happy, and be to us what you always
were.  In any other form we will have nothing to do with you!"

She was smiling again, but Arnim turned away from the outstretched
hands.

"It is awful!" he said roughly.  "I cannot do it--I cannot!"

"You must, Wolff.  Let time pass over it if you will, but in the end you
must yield.  You dare not trample on your own happiness, on Nora's, on
Hildegarde's--yes, Hildegarde's," she repeated emphatically. "In the end
she will find happiness in her own renunciation.  She loves you both,
and the first bitterness is already past.  And why wait?  There may be
struggles enough before you both, though I shall do my best to help you.
Go to Nora and make her happy.  Believe me, _lieber Junge_, the
heart-ache has not been all on your side."

He had taken her hands now and was kissing them with a passionate,
shame-faced gratitude.

"You make me feel the lowest, meanest thing on earth," he said.  "And
Hildegarde is an angel--far too good for me."

"Yes; that is the best way to put it," she said. "Hildegarde is too good
for you.  And now perhaps it would be wise for you to go in search of
the woman who is your equal."

"Not now," he said.  "I could not.  I must be alone a little.  It has
all happened so suddenly.  My whole life and future has changed in a
minute."

"Do as you think best, dear Wolff.  But do not wait long."

He pressed her hand again in farewell.

"You love Nora?" he asked.

"Yes; otherwise I would not have let things drift. There are many
barriers between you--race and language are not the least--and we had
thought of a match--since Hildegarde's illness--more, perhaps, in
accordance with our family traditions.  But Nora is a dear, sweet child,
and, I believe, will make you a good wife.  At any rate, I shall do all
I can to smooth your path, and Hildegarde and I will be happy to welcome
her as one of us."

He smiled, half in gratitude, half in doubt.

"You seem very sure that she will have me," he said.  "Everybody does
not think me such a fine fellow as you do."

"_Lieber Junge_, I am a woman, and when I see a girl grow thin and pale
without apparent cause--well, I look for the cause.  Nora has been very
unhappy in the last days.  I suspect strongly she has been suffering
from your conflict, and no doubt looks upon her life and happiness as
ruined.  That is why I tell you not to wait too long."

There was so much affection in her tone that the faint mockery in her
words left no sting.

"I will not wait long, I promise you," Wolff said.

At the door he turned and looked back at her.  It was almost as though
he had meant to surprise her into a betrayal of some hidden feeling; but
Frau von Arnim had not moved, nor was there any change in the grave
face.

"Tell Hildegarde that I shall never forget," he said earnestly, "that I
owe her my happiness, and that I thank her."

"I shall give her your message," Frau von Arnim answered.

The fate that arranges the insignificant, all-important chances of our
lives ordained that at the same moment when Wolff von Arnim passed out
of the drawing-room Nora Ingestre came down the stairs. She held an open
telegram in her hand, and the light from the hall window fell on a face
white with grief and fear.

Arnim strode to meet her.

"What is it?" he demanded.  "What has happened?"

"My mother is very ill," she answered faintly. "They have sent for me."

She had descended the last step.  The next instant Wolff von Arnim was
at her side, and had taken her in his arms.

"_Mein Liebling!_" he whispered.  "_Mein armes Liebling!_"

She yielded, overwhelmed by the swiftness of his action, by her own wild
heart-throb of uncontrollable joy.  Then she tried to free herself.

"You must not!" she cried.  "It is not right!"

"My wife!" he retorted triumphantly.  "My wife!"

She looked up into his face.  At no time had he been dearer to her,
seemed more worthy of her whole love, than he did then, with his own joy
subdued by an infinite tenderness and pity.  But the name "wife" had
rung like a trumpet-call, reminding and threatening even as it tempted.

"Oh, Wolff!" she said, "you must let me go. It is not possible--you do
not understand.  I----"

She was going to tell him of the barrier she had raised with her own
hands, of the letter that was on its way.  She was going to say to him,
"I am not free.  My word is given to another.  Seek your happiness where
it awaits you."  In some such words she meant to shatter her own life
and lay the first stones of the atonement to the girl whose happiness
she had stolen.  Or, after all, had it been no theft? Was it not
possible that she had been deceived?  And even if it were true, had it
not been said, "A useless sacrifice is no sacrifice at all"?  Had she
not a right to her happiness?  And Wolff was speaking, and it seemed to
her that his joy and triumph answered her.

"Nothing can come between us and our love!" he said.  "Nothing and no
one!  Oh, Nora, _ich habe dich so endlos lieb_!"

The barrier, the letter, Hildegarde, every heroic resolution was
forgotten, swept away by the man's passion and her own exulting love.
Nora leant her head against the dark-blue coat in reckless, thankful
surrender.

"_Ich habe dich so endlos lieb!_" he repeated. "_Kannst du mich auch
lieb haben?_"

And she answered fearlessly:

"I love you!" and kissed him.

Such was Nora Ingestre's brief courtship and betrothal.




                              *CHAPTER XI*

                   *WOLFF MAKES HIS DEBUT IN DELFORD*


The family Ingestre was once more united.  As far as could be judged
from appearances, the union was a complete one.  Domestic peace and
prosperity seemed to hover like benignant spirits over the tableau which
concluded the day's round.  Mrs. Ingestre lay as usual on her couch
beneath the light of the tall red-shaded lamp, her husband was seated at
the table, poring over a volume of the latest dogma, whilst his son,
still suffering from the results of a nervous breakdown (attributed to
overwork), reclined in the most comfortable arm-chair by the fireside,
and imbibed military wisdom from a London daily. If there was any note
of discord in this harmony, it came fr

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