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The Trespasser, Complete

by Gilbert Parker · English · Gutenberg #6222 · 355,224 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Trespasser, Complete

Author: Gilbert Parker


        
Release date: November 17, 2004 [eBook #6222]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6222

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





THE TRESPASSER

By Gilbert Parker




CONTENTS:

     Volume 1
     I.     ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM
     II.    IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN
     III.   HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE
     IV.    AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER’S PAST
     V.     WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY

     Volume 2.
     VI.    WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
     VII.   WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
     VIII.  HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
     IX.    HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
     X.     HE COMES TO “THE WAKING OF THE FIRE”
      XI.    HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST

     Volume 3.
     XII.   HE STANDS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
     XIII.  HE JOURNEYS AFAR
     XIV.   IN WHICH THE PAST IS REPEATED
     XV.    WHEREIN IS SEEN THE OLD ADAM AND THE GARDEN
     XVI.   WHEREIN LOVE SNOWS NO LAW SAVE THE MAN’S
     XVII.  THE MAN AND THE WOMAN FACE THE INTOLERABLE
     XVIII. “RETURN, O SHULAMITE!”




INTRODUCTION

While I was studying the life of French Canada in the winter of 1892,
in the city of Quebec or in secluded parishes, there was forwarded to me
from my London home a letter from Mr. Arrowsmith, the publisher, asking
me to write a novel of fifty thousand or sixty thousand words for what
was called his Annual. In this Annual had appeared Hugh Conway’s ‘Called
Back’ and Anthony Hope’s ‘Prisoner of Zenda’, among other celebrated
works of fiction. I cabled my acceptance of the excellent offer made
me, and the summer of 1893 found me at Audierne, in Brittany, with some
artist friends--more than one of whom has since come to eminence--living
what was really an out-door literary life; for the greater part of ‘The
Trespasser’ was written in a high-walled garden on a gentle hill, and
the remainder in a little tower-like structure of the villa where I
lodged, which was all windows. The latter I only used when it rained,
and the garden was my workshop. There were peaches and figs on the
walls, pleasant shrubs surrounded me, and the place was ideally quiet
and serene. Coffee or tea and toast was served me at 6.30 o’clock A.M.,
my pad was on my knee at 8, and then there was practically uninterrupted
work till 12, when ‘dejeuner a la fourchette’, with its fresh sardines,
its omelettes, and its roast chicken, was welcome. The afternoon was
spent on the sea-shore, which is very beautiful at Audierne, and there
I watched my friends painting sea-scapes. In the late afternoon came
letter-writing and reading, and after a little and simple dinner at 6.30
came bed at 9.45 or thereabouts. In such conditions for many weeks I
worked on The Trespasser; and I think the book has an outdoor spirit
which such a life would inspire.

It was perhaps natural that, having lived in Canada and Australia, and
having travelled greatly in all the outer portions of the Empire, I
should be interested in and impelled to write regarding the impingement
of the outer life of our far dominions, through individual character,
upon the complicated, traditional, orderly life of England. That feeling
found expression in The Translation of a Savage, and I think that
in neither case the issue of the plot or the plot--if such it may be
called--nor the main incident, was exaggerated. Whether the treatment
was free from exaggeration, it is not my province to say. I only know
what I attempted to do. The sense produced by the contact of the outer
life with a refined, and perhaps overrefined, and sensitive, not to say
meticulous, civilisation, is always more sensational than the touch
of the representative of “the thousand years” with the wide, loosely
organised free life of what is still somewhat hesitatingly called the
Colonies, though the same remark could be applied to all new lands,
such as the United States. The representative of the older life makes
no signs, or makes little collision at any rate, when he touches the new
social organisms of the outer circle. He is not emphatic; he is typical,
but not individual; he seeks seclusion in the mass. It is not so with
the more dynamic personality of the over-sea citizen. For a time
at least he remains in the old civilisation an entity, an isolated,
unabsorbed fact which has capacities for explosion. All this was in my
mind when The Trespasser was written, and its converse was ‘The Pomp of
the Lavilettes’, which showed the invasion of the life of the outer land
by the representative of the old civilisation.

I do not know whether I had the thought that the treatment of such
themes was interesting or not. The idea of The Trespasser was there in
my mind, and I had to use it. At the beginning of one’s career, if one
were to calculate too carefully, impulse, momentum, daring, original
conception would be lost. To be too audacious, even to exaggerate, is
no crime in youth nor in the young artist. As a farmer once said to me
regarding a frisky mount, it is better to smash through the top bar than
to have spring-halt.

The Trespasser took its place, and, as I think, its natural place, in
the development of my literary life. I did not stop to think whether
it was a happy theme or not, or whether it had popular elements. These
things did not concern me. When it was written I should not have known
what was a popular theme. It was written under circumstances conducive
to its artistic welfare; if it has not as many friends as ‘The Right
of Way’ or ‘The Seats of the Mighty’ or ‘The Weavers’ or ‘The Judgment
House’, that is not the fault of the public or of the critics.




TO DOUGLAS ROBINSON, Esq.,

AND

FRANK A. HILTON, Esq.

My dear Douglas and Frank:

I feel sure that this dedication will give you as much pleasure as it
does me. It will at least be evidence that I do not forget good days
in your company here and there in the world. I take pleasure in linking
your names; for you, who have never met, meet thus in the porch of a
little house that I have built.

You, my dear Douglas, will find herein scenes, times, and things
familiar to you; and you, my dear Frank, reflections of hours when we
camped by an idle shore, or drew about the fire of winter nights, and
told tales worth more than this, for they were of the future, and it is
of the past.

          Always sincerely yours,
               GILBERT PARKER.




THE TRESPASSER




CHAPTER I. ONE IN SEARCH OF A KINGDOM

Why Gaston Belward left the wholesome North to journey afar, Jacques
Brillon asked often in the brawling streets of New York, and oftener in
the fog of London as they made ready to ride to Ridley Court. There was
a railway station two miles from the Court, but Belward had had enough
of railways. He had brought his own horse Saracen, and Jacques’s broncho
also, at foolish expense, across the sea, and at a hotel near Euston
Station master and man mounted and set forth, having seen their worldly
goods bestowed by staring porters, to go on by rail.

In murky London they attracted little notice; but when their hired guide
left them at the outskirts, and they got away upon the highway towards
the Court, cottagers stood gaping. For, outside the town there was no
fog, and the fresh autumn air drew the people abroad.

“What is it makes ‘em stare, Jacques?” asked Belward, with a humorous
sidelong glance.

Jacques looked seriously at the bright pommel of his master’s saddle and
the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his
broncho, and replied:

“Too much silver all at once.”

He tossed his curling black hair, showing up the gold rings in his ears,
and flicked the red-and-gold tassels of his boots.

“You think that’s it, eh?” rejoined Belward, as he tossed a shilling to
a beggar.

“Maybe, too, your great Saracen to this tot of a broncho, and the grand
homme to little Jacques Brillon.” Jacques was tired and testy.

The other laid his whip softly on the half-breed’s shoulder.

“See, my peacock: none of that. You’re a spanking good servant, but
you’re in a country where it’s knuckle down man to master; and what they
do here you’ve got to do, or quit--go back to your pea-soup and caribou.
That’s as true as God’s in heaven, little Brillon. We’re not on the
buffalo trail now. You understand?”

Jacques nodded.

“Hadn’t you better say it?”

The warning voice drew up the half-breed’s face swiftly, and he replied:

“I am to do what you please.”

“Exactly. You’ve been with me six years--ever since I turned Bear Eye’s
moccasins to the sun; and for that you swore you’d never leave me. Did
it on a string of holy beads, didn’t you, Frenchman?”

“I do it again.”

He drew out a rosary, and disregarding Belward’s outstretched hand,
said:

“By the Mother of God, I will never leave you!” There was a kind of
wondering triumph in Belward’s eyes, though he had at first shrunk from
Jacques’s action, and a puzzling smile came.

“Wherever I go, or whatever I do?”

“Whatever you do, or wherever you go.”

He put the rosary to his lips, and made the sign of the cross.

His master looked at him curiously, intently. Here was a vain,
naturally indolent half-breed, whose life had made for selfishness and
independence, giving his neck willingly to a man’s heel, serving with
blind reverence, under a voluntary vow.

“Well, it’s like this, Jacques,” Belward said presently; “I want you,
and I’m not going to say that you’ll have a better time than you did
in the North, or on the Slope; but if you’d rather be with me than not,
you’ll find that I’ll interest you. There’s a bond between us, anyway.
You’re half French, and I’m one-fourth French, and more. You’re half
Indian, and I’m one-fourth Indian--no more. That’s enough. So far, I
haven’t much advantage. But I’m one-half English--King’s English, for
there’s been an offshoot of royalty in our family somewhere, and there’s
the royal difference. That’s where I get my brains--and manners.”

“Where did you get the other?” asked Jacques, shyly, almost furtively.

“Money?”

“Not money--the other.”

Belward spurred, and his horse sprang away viciously. A laugh came back
on Jacques, who followed as hard as he could, and it gave him a feeling
of awe. They were apart for a long time, then came together again, and
rode for miles without a word. At last Belward, glancing at a sign-post
before an inn door, exclaimed at the legend--“The Whisk o’ Barley,”--and
drew rein. He regarded the place curiously for a minute. The landlord
came out. Belward had some beer brought.

A half-dozen rustics stood gaping, not far away. He touched his horse
with a heel. Saracen sprang towards them, and they fell back alarmed.
Belward now drank his beer quietly, and asked question after question of
the landlord, sometimes waiting for an answer, sometimes not--a kind of
cross-examination. Presently he dismounted.

As he stood questioning, chiefly about Ridley Court and its people, a
coach showed on the hill, and came dashing down and past. He lifted his
eyes idly, though never before had he seen such a coach as swings away
from Northumberland Avenue of a morning. He was not idle, however; but
he had not come to England to show surprise at anything. As the coach
passed his face lifted above the arm on the neck of the horse, keen,
dark, strange. A man on the box-seat, attracted at first by the uncommon
horses and their trappings, caught Belward’s eyes. Not he alone, but
Belward started then. Some vague intelligence moved the minds of both,
and their attention was fixed till the coach rounded a corner and was
gone.

The landlord was at Belward’s elbow.

“The gentleman on the box-seat be from Ridley Court. That’s Maister Ian
Belward, sir.”

Gaston Belward’s eyes half closed, and a sombre look came, giving his
face a handsome malice. He wound his fingers in his horse’s mane, and
put a foot in the stirrup.

“Who is ‘Maister Ian’?”

“Maister Ian be Sir William’s eldest, sir. On’y one that’s left, sir.
On’y three to start wi’: and one be killed i’ battle, and one had
trouble wi’ his faither and Maister Ian; and he went away and never was
heard on again, sir. That’s the end on him.”

“Oh, that’s the end on him, eh, landlord? And how long ago was that?”

“Becky, lass,” called the landlord within the door, “wheniver was it
Maister Robert turned his back on the Court--iver so while ago? Eh, a
fine lad that Maister Robert as iver I see!”

Fat laborious Becky hobbled out, holding an apple and a knife. She
blinked at her husband, and then at the strangers.

“What be askin’ o’ the Court?” she said. Her husband repeated the
question.

She gathered her apron to her eyes with an unctuous sob:

“Doan’t a’ know when Maister Robert went! He comes, i’ the house ‘ere
and says, ‘Becky, gie us a taste o’ the red-top-and where’s Jock?’ He
was always thinkin’ a deal o’ my son Jock. ‘Jock be gone,’ I says, ‘and
I knows nowt o’ his comin’ back’--meanin’, I was, that day. ‘Good for
Jock!’ says he, ‘and I’m goin’ too, Becky, and I knows nowt o’ my comin’
back.’ ‘Where be goin’, Maister Robert?’ I says. ‘To hell, Becky,’ says
he, and he laughs. ‘From hell to hell. I’m sick to my teeth o’ one, I’ll
try t’other’--a way like that speaks he.”

Belward was impatient, and to hurry the story he made as if to start on.
Becky, seeing, hastened. “Dear a’ dear! The red-top were afore him, and
I tryin’ to make what become to him. He throws arm ‘round me, smacks me
on the cheek, and says he: ‘Tell Jock to keep the mare, Becky.’ Then he
flings away, and never more comes back to the Court. And that day one
year my Jock smacks me on the cheek, and gets on the mare; and when I
ask: ‘Where be goin’?’ he says: ‘For a hunt i’ hell wi’ Maister Robert,
mother.’ And from that day come back he never did, nor any word. There
was trouble wi’ the lad-wi’ him and Maister Robert at the Court; but I
never knowed nowt o’ the truth. And it’s seven-and-twenty years since
Maister Robert went.”

Gaston leaned over his horse’s neck, and thrust a piece of silver into
the woman’s hands.

“Take that, Becky Lawson, and mop your eyes no more.”

She gaped.

“How dost know my name is Becky Lawson? I havena been ca’d so these
three-and-twenty years--not since a’ married good man here, and put
Jock’s faither in ‘s grave yander.”

“The devil told me,” he answered, with a strange laugh, and, spurring,
they were quickly out of sight. They rode for a couple of miles without
speaking. Jacques knew his master, and did not break the silence.
Presently they came over a hill, and down upon a little bridge. Belward
drew rein, and looked up the valley. About two miles beyond the roofs
and turrets of the Court showed above the trees. A whimsical smile came
to his lips.

“Brillon,” he said, “I’m in sight of home.”

The half-breed cocked his head. It was the first time that Belward had
called him “Brillon”--he had ever been “Jacques.” This was to be a part
of the new life. They were not now hunting elk, riding to “wipe out” a
camp of Indians or navvies, dining the owner of a rancho or a deputation
from a prairie constituency in search of a member, nor yet with
a senator at Washington, who served tea with canvas-back duck and
tooth-picks with dessert. Once before had Jacques seen this new
manner--when Belward visited Parliament House at Ottawa, and was
presented to some notable English people, visitors to Canada. It had
come to these notable folk that Mr. Gaston Belward had relations at
Ridley Court, and that of itself was enough to command courtesy. But
presently, they who would be gracious for the family’s sake, were
gracious for the man’s. He had that which compelled interest--a
suggestive, personal, distinguished air. Jacques knew his master better
than any one else knew him; and yet he knew little, for Belward was of
those who seem to give much confidence, and yet give little--never more
than he wished.

“Yes, monsieur, in sight of home,” Jacques replied, with a dry cadence.

“Say ‘sir,’ not ‘monsieur,’ Brillon; and from the time we enter the
Court yonder, look every day and every hour as you did when the judge
asked you who killed Tom Daly.”

Jacques winced, but nodded his head. Belward continued:

“What you hear me tell is what you can speak of; otherwise you are
blind and dumb. You understand?” Jacques’s face was sombre, but he said
quickly: “Yes--sir.”

He straightened himself on his horse, as if to put himself into
discipline at once--as lead to the back of a racer.

Belward read the look. He drew his horse close up. Then he ran an arm
over the other’s shoulder.

“See here, Jacques. This is a game that’s got to be played up to the
hilt. A cat has nine lives, and most men have two. We have. Now listen.
You never knew me mess things, did you? Well, I play for keeps in this;
no monkeying. I’ve had the life of Ur of the Chaldees; now for Babylon.
I’ve lodged with the barbarian; here are the roofs of ivory. I’ve had
my day with my mother’s people; voila! for my father’s. You heard what
Becky Lawson said. My father was sick of it at twenty-five, and got out.
We’ll see what my father’s son will do.... I’m going to say my say to
you, and have done with it. As like as not there isn’t another man that
I’d have brought with me. You’re all right. But I’m not going to rub
noses. I stick when I do stick, but I know what’s got to be done here;
and I’ve told you. You’ll not have the fun out of it that I will, but
you won’t have the worry. Now, we start fresh. I’m to be obeyed; I’m
Napoleon. I’ve got a devil, yet it needn’t hurt you, and it won’t. But
if I make enemies here--and I’m sure to--let them look out. Give me your
hand, Jacques; and don’t you forget that there are two Gaston Belwards,
and the one you have hunted and lived with is the one you want to
remember when you get raw with the new one. For you’ll hear no more
slang like this from me, and you’ll have to get used to lots of things.”

Without waiting reply, Belward urged on his horse, and at last paused
on the top of a hill, and waited for Jacques. It was now dusk, and the
landscape showed soft, sleepy, and warm.

“It’s all of a piece,” Belward said to himself, glancing from the trim
hedges, the small, perfectly-tilled fields and the smooth roads, to
Ridley Court itself, where many lights were burning and gates opening
and shutting. There was some affair on at the Court, and he smiled to
think of his own appearance among the guests.

“It’s a pity I haven’t clothes with me, Brillon; they have a show going
there.”

He had dropped again into the new form of master and man. His voice was
cadenced, gentlemanly. Jacques pointed to his own saddle-bag.

“No, no, they are not the things needed. I want the evening-dress which
cost that cool hundred dollars in New York.”

Still Jacques was silent. He did not know whether, in his new position,
he was expected to suggest. Belward understood, and it pleased him.

“If we had lost the track of a buck moose, or were nosing a cache of
furs, you’d find a way, Brillon.”

“Voila,” said Jacques; “then, why not wear the buckskin vest, the
red-silk sash, and the boots like these?”--tapping his own leathers.
“You look a grand seigneur so.”

“But I am here to look an English gentleman, not a grand seigneur, nor
a company’s trader on a break. Never mind, the thing will wait till we
stand in my ancestral halls,” he added, with a dry laugh.

They neared the Court. The village church was close by the Court-wall.
It drew Belward’s attention. One by one lights were springing up in it.
It was a Friday evening, and the choir were come to practise. They saw
buxom village girls stroll in, followed by the organist, one or two
young men and a handful of boys. Presently the horsemen were seen, and a
staring group gathered at the church door. An idea came to Belward.

“Kings used to make pilgrimages before they took their crowns, why
shouldn’t I?” he said half-jestingly. Most men placed similarly would
have been so engaged with the main event that they had never thought
of this other. But Belward was not excited. He was moving deliberately,
prepared for every situation. He had a great game in hand, and he had no
fear of his ability to play it. He suddenly stopped his horse, and threw
the bridle to Jacques, saying:

“I’ll be back directly, Brillon.”

He entered the churchyard, and passed to the door. As he came the group
under the crumbling arch fell back, and at the call of the organist went
to the chancel. Belward came slowly up the aisle, and paused about the
middle. Something in the scene gave him a new sensation. The church was
old, dilapidated; but the timbered roof, the Norman and Early English
arches incongruously side by side, with patches of ancient distemper
and paintings, and, more than all, the marble figures on the tombs, with
hands folded so foolishly,--yet impressively too, brought him up with
a quick throb of the heart. It was his first real contact with England;
for he had not seen London, save at Euston Station and in the north-west
district. But here he was in touch with his heritage. He rested his hand
upon a tomb beside him, and looked around slowly.

The choir began the psalm for the following Sunday. At first he did not
listen; but presently the organist was heard alone, and then the choir
afterwards sang:

  “Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell with Mesech:
   And to have my habitation among the tents of Kedar.”

Simple, dusty, ancient church, thick with effigies and tombs; with
inscriptions upon pillars to virgins departed this life; and tablets
telling of gentlemen gone from great parochial virtues: it wakened in
Belward’s brain a fresh conception of the life he was about to live--he
did not doubt that he would live it. He would not think of himself as
inacceptable to old Sir William Belward. He glanced to the tomb under
his hand. There was enough daylight yet to see the inscription on the
marble. Besides, a single candle was burning just over his head. He
stooped and read:

             SACRED TO THE MEMORY
                  OF
          SIR GASTON ROBERT BELWARD, BART.,
      OF RIDLEY COURT, IN THIS PARISH OF GASTONBURY,
                 WHO,
         AT THE AGE OF ONE AND FIFTY YEARS,
     AFTER A LIFE OF DISTINGUISHED SERVICE FOR HIS KING
               AND COUNTRY,
     AND GRAVE AND CONSTANT CARE OF THOSE EXALTED WORKS
         WHICH BECAME A GENTLEMAN OF ENGLAND;
      MOST NOTABLE FOR HIS LOVE OF ARTS AND LETTERS;
       SENSIBLE IN ALL GRACES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS;
       GIFTED WITH SINGULAR VIRTUES AND INTELLECTS;
                 AND
        DELIGHTING AS MUCH IN THE JOYS OF PEACE
          AS IN THE HEAVY DUTIES OF WAR:
       WAS SLAIN BY THE SIDE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,
       THE BELOVED AND ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE RUPERT,
            AT THE BATTLE OF NASEBY,
          IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD MDCXLV.

         “A Sojourner as all my Fathers were.”

“‘Gaston Robert Belward’!”

He read the name over and over, his fingers tracing the letters.

His first glance at the recumbent figure had been hasty. Now, however,
he leaned over and examined it. It lay, hands folded, in the dress of
Prince Rupert’s cavaliers, a sword at side, and great spurs laid beside
the heels.

“‘Gaston Robert Belward’!”

As this other Gaston Robert Belward looked at the image of his dead
ancestor, a wild thought came: Had he himself not fought with Prince
Rupert? Was he not looking at himself in stone? Was he not here to show
England how a knight of Charles’s time would look upon the life of the
Victorian age? Would not this still cold Gaston be as strange at
Ridley Court as himself fresh from tightening a cinch on the belly of a
broncho? Would he not ride from where he had been sojourning as much a
stranger in his England as himself?

For a moment the idea possessed him. He was Sir Gaston Robert Belward,
Baronet. He remembered now how, at Prince Rupert’s side, he had sped on
after Ireton’s horse, cutting down Roundheads as he passed, on and on,
mad with conquest, yet wondering that Rupert kept so long in pursuit
while Charles was in danger with Cromwell: how, as the word came to
wheel back, a shot tore away the pommel of his saddle; then another, and
another, and with a sharp twinge in his neck he fell from his horse. He
remembered how he raised himself on his arm and shouted “God save the
King!” How he loosed his scarf and stanched the blood at his neck, then
fell back into a whirring silence, from which he was roused by feeling
himself in strong arms, and hearing a voice say: “Courage, Gaston.” Then
came the distant, very distant, thud of hoofs, and he fell asleep; and
memory was done.

He stood for a moment oblivious to everything: the evening bird
fluttering among the rafters, the song of the nightingale without, the
sighing wind in the tower entry, the rustics in the doorway, the group
in the choir. Presently he became conscious of the words sung:

          “A thousand ages in Thy sight
          Are like an evening gone;
          Short as the watch that ends the night
          Before the rising sun.

          “Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
          Bears all its sons away;
          They fly, forgotten, as a dream
          Dies at the opening day.”

He was himself again in an instant. He had been in a kind of dream. It
seemed a long time since he had entered the church--in reality but a few
moments. He caught his moustache in his fingers, and turned on his heel
with a musing smile. His spurs clinked as he went down the aisle; and,
involuntarily, he tapped a boot-leg with his riding-whip. The singing
ceased. His spurs made the only sound. The rustics at the door fell back
before him. He had to go up three steps to reach the threshold. As he
stood on the top one he paused and turned round.

So, this was home: this church more so even than the Court hard by. Here
his ancestors--for how long he did not know, probably since the time of
Edward III--idled time away in the dust; here Gaston Belward had been
sleeping in effigy since Naseby Field. A romantic light came into his
face. Again, why not? Even in the Hudson’s Bay country and in the Rocky
Mountains, he had been called, “Tivi, The Man of the Other.” He had been
counted the greatest of Medicine Men--one of the Race: the people of the
Pole, who lived in a pleasant land, gifted as none others of the race of
men. Not an hour before Jacques had asked him where he got “the other.”
 No man can live in the North for any time without getting the strain of
its mystery and romance in him. Gaston waved his hand to the tomb, and
said half-believingly:

“Gaston Robert Belward, come again to your kingdom.”

He turned to go out, and faced the rector of the parish,--a bent,
benign-looking man,--who gazed at him astonished. He had heard the
strange speech. His grave eyes rested on the stalwart stranger with
courteous inquiry. Gaston knew who it was. Over his left brow there was
a scar. He had heard of that scar before. When the venerable Archdeacon
Varcoe was tutor to Ian and Robert Belward, Ian, in a fit of anger, had
thrown a stick at his brother. It had struck the clergyman, leaving a
scar.

Gaston now raised his hat. As he passed, the rector looked after him,
puzzled; the words he had heard addressed to the effigy returning. His
eyes followed the young man to the gate, and presently, with a quick
lifting of the shoulders, he said:

“Robert Belward!” Then added: “Impossible! But he is a Belward.”

He saw Gaston mount, then entered and went slowly up the aisle. He
paused beside the tomb of that other Belward. His wrinkled hand rested
on it.

“That is it,” he said at last. “He is like the picture of this Sir
Gaston. Strange.”

He sighed, and unconsciously touched the scar on his brow. His dealings
with the Belwards had not been all joy. Begun with youthful pride and
affectionate interest, they had gone on into vexation, sorrow, failure,
and shame. While Gaston was riding into his kingdom, Lionel Henry Varcoe
was thinking how poor his life had been where he had meant it to be
useful. As he stood musing and listening to the music of the choir, a
girl came softly up the aisle, and touched him on the arm.

“Grandfather, dear,” she said, “aren’t you going to the Court? You have
a standing invitation for this night in the week. You have not been
there for so long.”

He fondled the hand on his arm.

“My dearest, they have not asked me for a long time.”

“But why not to-night? I have laid out everything nicely for you--your
new gaiters, and your D. C. L. coat with the pretty buttons and cord.”

“How can I leave you, my dear? And they do not ask you!”

The voice tried for playfulness, but the eyes had a disturbed look.

“Me? Oh! they never ask me to dinner-you know that. Tea and formal
visits are enough for Lady Belward, and almost too much for me. There
is yet time to dress. Do say you will go. I want you to be friendly with
them.”

The old man shook his head.

“I do not care to leave you, my dearest.”

“Foolish old fatherkins! Who would carry me off?--‘Nobody, no, not I,
nobody cares for me.’” Suddenly a new look shot up in her face.

“Did you see that singular handsome man who came from the church--like
some one out of an old painting? Not that his dress was so strange; but
there was something in his face--something that you would expect to find
in--in a Garibaldi. Silly, am I not? Did you see him?”

He looked at her gravely.

“My dear,” he said at last, “I think I will go after all, though I shall
be a little late.”

“A sensible grandfather. Come quickly, dear.” He paused again.

“But I fear I sent a note to say I could not dine.”

“No, you did not. It has been lying on your table for two days.”

“Dear me--dear me! I am getting very old.”

They passed out of the church. Presently, as they hurried to the rectory
near by, the girl said:

“But you haven’t answered. Did you see the stranger? Do you know who he
is?”

The rector turned, and pointed to the gate of Ridley Court. Gaston and
Brillon were just entering. “Alice,” he said, in a vague, half-troubled
way, “the man is a Belward, I think.”

“Why, of course!” the girl replied with a flash of excitement. “But he’s
so dark, and foreign-looking! What Belward is he?”

“I do not know yet, my dear.”

“I shall be up when you come back. But mind, don’t leave just after
dinner. Stay and talk; you must tell me everything that’s said and
done--and about the stranger.”




CHAPTER II. IN WHICH HE CLAIMS HIS OWN

Meanwhile, without a word, Gaston had mounted, ridden to the castle, and
passed through the open gates into the court-yard. Inside he paused.
In the main building many lights were burning. There came a rattle of
wheels behind him, and he shifted to let a carriage pass. Through the
window of the brougham he could see the shimmer of satin, lace, and soft
white fur, and he had an instant’s glance of a pretty face.

The carriage drew up to the steps, and presently three ladies and
a brusque gentleman passed into the hall-way, admitted by powdered
footmen. The incident had a manner, an air, which struck Gaston, he knew
not why. Perhaps it was the easy finesse of ceremonial. He looked at
Brillon. He had seen him sit arms folded like that, looking from the top
of a bluff down on an Indian village or a herd of buffaloes. There was
wonder, but no shyness or agitation, on his face; rather the naive,
naked look of a child. Belward laughed.

“Come, Brillon; we are at home.”

He rode up to the steps, Jacques following. A foot man appeared and
stared. Gaston looked down on him neutrally, and dismounted. Jacques did
the same. The footman still stared. Another appeared behind. Gaston eyed
the puzzled servant calmly.

“Why don’t you call a groom?” he presently said. There was a cold gleam
in his eye.

The footman shrank.

“Yessir, yessir,” he said confusedly, and signalled. The other footman
came down, and made as if to take the bridle. Gaston waved him back.
None too soon, for the horse lunged at him.

“A rub down, a pint of beer, and water and feed in an hour, and
I’ll come to see him myself late to-night.” Jacques had loosened the
saddle-bags and taken them off. Gaston spoke to the horse, patted his
neck, and gave him to the groom. Then he went up the steps, followed by
Jacques. He turned at the door to see the groom leading both horses off,
and eyeing Saracen suspiciously. He laughed noiselessly.

“Saracen ‘ll teach him things,” he said. “I might warn him, but it’s
best for the horses to make their own impressions.”

“What name, sir?” asked a footman.

“You are--?”

“Falby, Sir.”

“Falby, look after my man Brillon here, and take me to Sir William.”

“What name, sir?”

Gaston, as if with sudden thought, stepped into the light of the
candles, and said in a low voice: “Falby, don’t you know me?”

The footman turned a little pale, as his eyes, in spite of themselves,
clung to Gaston’s. A kind of fright came, and then they steadied.

“Oh yes, sir,” he said mechanically.

“Where have you seen me?”

“In the picture on the wall, sir.”

“Whose picture, Falby?”

“Sir Gaston Belward, Sir.”

A smile lurked at the corners of Gaston’s mouth.

“Gaston Belward. Very well, then you know what to say to Sir William.
Show me into the library.”

“Or the justices’ room, sir?”

“The justices’ room will do.”

Gaston wondered what the justices’ room was. A moment after he stood in
it, and the dazed Falby had gone, trying vainly to reconcile the picture
on the wall, which, now that he could think, he knew was very old, with
this strange man who had sent a curious cold shiver through him. But,
anyhow, he was a Belward, that was certain: voice, face, manner showed
it. But with something like no Belward he had ever seen. Left to
himself, Gaston looked round on a large, severe room. Its use dawned on
him. This was part of the life: Sir William was a Justice of the Peace.
But why had he been brought here? Why not to the library as himself had
suggested? There would be some awkward hours for Falby in the future.
Gaston had as winning a smile, as sweet a manner, as any one in the
world, so long as a straight game was on; but to cross his will with
the other--he had been too long a power in that wild country where his
father had also been a power! He did not quite know how long he waited,
for he was busy with plans as to his career at Ridley Court. He was
roused at last by Falby’s entrance. A keen, cold look shot from under
his straight brows.

“Well?” he asked.

“Will you step into the library, sir? Sir William will see you there.”

Falby tried to avoid his look, but his eyes were compelled, and Gaston
said:

“Falby, you will always hate to enter this room.” Falby was agitated.

“I hope not, sir.”

“But you will, Falby, unless--”

“Yessir?”

“Unless you are both the serpent and the dove, Falby.”

“Yessir.”

As they entered the hall, Brillon with the saddle-bags was being taken
in charge, and Gaston saw what a strange figure he looked beside the
other servants and in these fine surroundings. He could not think that
himself was so bizarre. Nor was he. But he looked unusual; as one of
high civilisation might, through long absence in primitive countries,
return in uncommon clothing, and with a manner of distinguished
strangeness: the barbaric to protect the refined, as one has seen a
bush of firs set to shelter a wheat-field from a seawind, or a wind-mill
water cunningly-begotten flowers.

As he went through the hall other visitors were entering. They passed
him, making for the staircase. Ladies with the grand air looked at
him curiously, and two girls glanced shyly from the jingling spurs and
tasselled boots to his rare face.

One of the ladies suddenly gave a little gasping cry, and catching the
arm of her companion, said:

“Reine, how like Robert Belward! Who--who is he?”

The other coolly put up her pince-nez. She caught Gaston’s profile and
the turn of his shoulder.

“Yes, like, Sophie; but Robert never had such a back, nor anything like
the face.”

She spoke with no attempt to modulate her voice, and it carried
distinctly to Gaston. He turned and glanced at them.

“He’s a Belward, certainly, but like what one I don’t know; and he’s
terribly eccentric, my dear! Did you see the boots and the sash? Why,
bless me, if you are not shaking! Don’t be silly--shivering at the
thought of Robert Belward after all these years.”

So saying, Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne tapped Lady Dargan on the arm, and then
turned sharply to see if her daughters had been listening. She saw that
they had; and though herself and not her sister was to blame, she said:

“Sophie, you are very indiscreet! If you had daughters of your own, you
would probably be more careful--though Heaven only knows, for you were
always difficult!”

With this they vanished up the staircase, Mrs. Gasgoyne’s daughters,
Delia and Agatha, smiling at each other and whispering about Gaston.

Meanwhile the seeker after a kingdom was shown into Sir William
Belward’s study. No one was there. He walked to the mantelpiece, and,
leaning his arm on it, looked round. Directly in front of him on the
wall was the picture of a lady in middle-life, sitting in an arbour. A
crutch lay against one arm of her chair, and her left hand leaned on an
ebony silver-topped cane. There was something painful, haunting, in the
face--a weirdness in the whole picture. The face was looking into the
sunlight, but the effect was rather of moonlight--distant, mournful. He
was fascinated; why, he could not tell. Art to him was an unknown book,
but he had the instinct, and he was quick to feel. This picture struck
him as being out of harmony with everything else in the room. Yet it
had, a strange compelling charm.

Presently he started forward with an exclamation. Now he understood the
vague, eerie influence. Looking out from behind the foliage was a face,
so dim that one moment it seemed not to be there, and then suddenly to
flash in--as a picture from beyond sails, lightning-like, across the
filmy eyes of the dying. It was the face of a youth, elf-like, unreal,
yet he saw his father’s features in it.

He rubbed his eyes and looked again. It seemed very dim. Indeed,
so delicately, vaguely, had the work been done that only eyes like
Gaston’s, trained to observe, with the sight of a hawk and a sense of
the mysterious, could have seen so quickly or so distinctly. He drew
slowly back to the mantel again, and mused. What did it mean? He was
sure that the woman was his grandmother.

At that moment the door opened, and an alert, white-haired man stepped
in quickly, and stopped in the centre of the room, looking at his
visitor. His deep, keen eyes gazed out with an intensity that might
almost be fierceness, and the fingers of his fine hands opened and shut
nervously. Though of no great stature, he had singular dignity. He was
in evening-dress, and as he raised a hand to his chin quickly, as if in
surprise or perplexity, Gaston noticed that he wore a large seal-ring.
It is singular that while he was engaged with his great event, he was
also thinking what an air of authority the ring gave.

For a moment the two men stood at gaze without speaking, though Gaston
stepped forward respectfully. A bewildered, almost shrinking look came
into Sir William’s eyes, as the other stood full in the light of the
candles.

Presently the old man spoke. In spite of conventional smoothness, his
voice had the ring of distance, which comes from having lived through
and above painful things.

“My servant announced you as Sir Gaston Belward. There is some mistake?”

“There is a mistake,” was the slow reply. “I did not give my name as Sir
Gaston Belward. That was Falby’s conclusion, sir. But I am Gaston Robert
Belward, just the same.”

Sir William was dazed, puzzled. He presently made a quick gesture, as if
driving away some foolish thought, and, motioning to a chair, said:

“Will you be seated?”

They both sat, Sir William by his writing-table. His look was now steady
and penetrating, but he met one just as firm.

“You are--Gaston Robert Belward? May I ask for further information?”

There was furtive humour playing at Gaston’s mouth. The old man’s manner
had been so unlike anything he had ever met, save, to an extent, in his
father, that it interested him. He replied, with keen distinctness: “You
mean, why I have come--home?”

Sir William’s fingers trembled on a paper-knife. “Are you-at home?”

“I have come home to ask for my heritage--with interest compounded,
sir.”

Sir William was now very pale. He got to his feet, came to the young
man, peered into his face, then drew back to the table and steadied
himself against it. Gaston rose also: his instinct of courtesy was
acute--absurdly civilised--that is, primitive. He waited. “You are
Robert’s son?”

“Robert Belward was my father.”

“Your father is dead?”

“Twelve years ago.”

Sir William sank back in his chair. His thin fingers ran back and forth
along his lips. Presently he took out his handkerchief and coughed into
it nervously. His lips trembled. With a preoccupied air he arranged a
handful of papers on the table.

“Why did you not come before?” he asked at last, in a low, mechanical
voice.

“It was better for a man than a boy to come.”

“May I ask why?”

“A boy doesn’t always see a situation--gives up too soon--throws away
his rights. My father was a boy.”

“He was twenty-five when he went away.”

“I am fifty!”

Sir William looked up sharply, perplexed. “Fifty?”

“He only knew this life: I know the world.”

“What world?”

“The great North, the South, the seas at four corners of the earth.”

Sir William glanced at the top-boots, the peeping sash, the strong,
bronzed face.

“Who was your mother?” he asked abruptly.

“A woman of France.”

The baronet made a gesture of impatience, and looked searchingly at the
young man.

All at once Gaston shot his bolt, to have it over. “She had Indian blood
also.”

He stretched himself to his full height, easily, broadly, with a
touch of defiance, and leaned an arm against the mantel, awaiting Sir
William’s reply.

The old man shrank, then said coldly: “Have you the
marriage-certificate?”

Gaston drew some papers from his pockets.

“Here, sir, with a letter from my father, and one from the Hudson’s Bay
Company.”

His grandfather took them. With an effort he steadied himself, then
opened and read them one by one, his son’s brief letter last--it was
merely a calm farewell, with a request that justice should be done his
son.

At that moment Falby entered and said:

“Her ladyship’s compliments, and all the guests have arrived, sir.”

“My compliments to her ladyship, and ask her to give me five minutes
yet, Falby.”

Turning to his grandson, there seemed to be a moment’s hesitation, then
he reached out his hand.

“You have brought your luggage? Will you care to dine with us?”

Gaston took the cold outstretched fingers.

“Only my saddle-bag, and I have no evening-dress with me, else I should
be glad.”

There was another glance up and down the athletic figure, a
half-apprehensive smile as the baronet thought of his wife, and then he
said:

“We must see if anything can be done.”

He pulled a bell-cord. A servant appeared.

“Ask the housekeeper to come for a moment, please.” Neither spoke till
the housekeeper appeared. “Hovey,” he said to the grim woman, “give Mr.
Gaston the room in the north tower. Then, from the press in the same
room lay out the evening-dress which you will find there.... They were
your father’s,” he added, turning to the young man. “It was my wife’s
wish to keep them. Have they been aired lately, Hovey?”

“Some days ago, sir.”

“That will do.” The housekeeper left, agitated. “You will probably be in
time for the fish,” he added, as he bowed to Robert.

“If the clothes do not fit, sir?”

“Your father was about your height and nearly as large, and fashions
have not changed much.”

A few moments afterwards Gaston was in the room which his father had
occupied twenty-seven years before. The taciturn housekeeper, eyeing him
excitedly the while, put out the clothes. He did not say anything till
she was about to go. Then:

“Hovey, were you here in my father’s time?”

“I was under-parlourmaid, sir,” she said.

“And you are housekeeper now--good!”

The face of the woman crimsoned, hiding her dour wrinkles. She turned
away her head.

“I’d have given my right hand if he hadn’t gone, sir.”

Gaston whistled softly, then:

“So would he, I fancy, before he died. But I shall not go, so you will
not need to risk a finger for me. I am going to stay, Hovey. Good-night.
Look after Brillon, please.”

He held out his hand. Her fingers twitched in his, then grasped them
nervously.

“Yes, sir. Good-night, Sir. It’s--it’s like him comin’ back, sir.”

Then she suddenly turned and hurried from the room, a blunt figure to
whom emotion was not graceful. “H’m!” said Gaston, as he shut the door.
“Parlourmaid then, eh? History at every turn! ‘Voici le sabre de mon
pere!’”




CHAPTER III. HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE

Gaston Belward was not sentimental: that belongs to the middle-class
Englishman’s ideal of civilisation. But he had a civilisation akin to
the highest; incongruous, therefore, to the general as the sympathy
between the United States and Russia. The highest civilisation can be
independent. The English aristocrat is at home in the lodge of a Sioux
chief or the bamboo-hut of a Fijian, and makes brothers of “savages,”
 when those other formal folk, who spend their lives in keeping their
dignity, would be lofty and superior.

When Gaston looked at his father’s clothes and turned them over, he
had a twinge of honest emotion; but his mind was on the dinner and
his heritage, and he only said, as he frowned at the tightness of the
waistband:

“Never mind, we’ll make ‘em pay, shot and wadding, for what you lost,
Robert Belward; and wherever you are, I hope you’ll see it.”

In twelve minutes from the time he entered the bedroom he was ready.
He pulled the bell-cord, and then passed out. A servant met him on
the stairs, and in another minute he was inside the dining-room. Sir
William’s eyes flashed up. There was smouldering excitement in his face,
but one could not have guessed at anything unusual. A seat had been
placed for Gaston beside him. The situation was singular and trying. It
would have been easier if he had merely come into the drawing-room after
dinner. This was in Sir William’s mind when he asked him to dine; but it
was as it was. Gaston’s alert glance found the empty seat. He was about
to make towards it, but he caught Sir William’s eye and saw it signal
him to the end of the table near him. His brain was working with
celerity and clearness. He now saw the woman whose portrait had so
fascinated him in the library. As his eyes fastened on her here, he
almost fancied he could see the boy’s--his father’s-face looking over
her shoulder.

He instantly went to her, and said: “I am sorry to be late.”

His first impulse had been to offer his hand, as, naturally, he
would have done in “barbaric” lands, but the instinct of this other
civilisation was at work in him. He might have been a polite casual
guest, and not a grandson, bringing the remembrance, the culmination of
twenty-seven years’ tragedy into a home; she might have been a hostess
with whom he wished to be on terms: that was all.

If the situation was trying for him, it was painful for her. She had had
only a whispered announcement before Sir William led the way to dinner.
Yet she was now all her husband had been, and more. Repression had been
her practice for unnumbered years, and the only heralds of her feelings
were the restless wells of her dark eyes: the physical and mental misery
she had endured lay hid under the pale composure of her face. She was
now brought suddenly before the composite image of her past. Yet she
merely lifted a slender hand with long, fine fingers, which, as
they clasped his, all at once trembled, and then pressed them hotly,
nervously. To his surprise, it sent a twinge of colour to his cheek. “It
was good of you to come down after such a journey,” she said. Nothing
more.

Then he passed on, and sat down to Sir William’s courteous gesture. The
situation had its difficulties for the guests--perfect guests as they
were. Every one was aware of a dramatic incident, for which there
had been no preparation save Sir William’s remark that a grandson had
arrived from the North Pole or thereabouts; and to continue conversation
and appear casual put their resources to some test. But they stood
it well, though their eyes were busy, and the talk was cheerfully
mechanical. So occupied were they with Gaston’s entrance, that they did
not know how near Lady Dargan came to fainting.

At the button-hole of the coat worn by Gaston hung a tiny piece of red
ribbon which she had drawn from her sleeve on the terrace twenty-seven
years ago, and tied there with the words:

“Do you think you will wear it till we meet again?” And the man had
replied:

“You’ll not see me without it, pretty girl--pretty girl.”

A woman is not so unaccountable after all. She has more imagination than
a man; she has not many resources to console her for disappointments,
and she prizes to her last hour the swift moments when wonderful things
seemed possible. That man is foolish who shows himself jealous of a
woman’s memories or tokens--those guarantees of her womanliness.

When Lady Dargan saw the ribbon, which Gaston in his hurry had not
disturbed, tied exactly as she had tied it, a weird feeling came to
her, and she felt choking. But her sister’s eyes were on her, and Mrs.
Gasgoyne’s voice came across the table clearly:

“Sophie, what were Fred Bideford’s colours at Sandown? You always
remember that kind of thing.” The warning was sufficient. Lady Dargan
could make no effort of memory, but she replied without hesitation--or
conscience:

“Yellow and brown.”

“There,” said Mrs. Gasgoyne, “we are both wrong, Captain Maudsley.
Sophie never makes a mistake.” Maudsley assented politely, but, stealing
a look at Lady Dargan, wondered what the little by-play meant. Gaston
was between Sir William and Mrs. Gasgoyne. He declined soup and fish,
which had just been served, because he wished for time to get his
bearings. He glanced at the menu as if idly interested, conscious that
he was under observation. He felt that he had, some how, the situation
in his hands. Everything had gone well, and he knew that his part had
been played with some aplomb--natural, instinctive. Unlike most large
men, he had a mind always alert, not requiring the inspiration of
unusual moments. What struck him most forcibly now was the tasteful
courtesy which had made his entrance easy. He instinctively compared it
to the courtesy in the lodge of an Indian chief, or of a Hudson’s Bay
factor who has not seen the outer world for half a century. It was so
different, and yet it was much the same. He had seen a missionary, a
layreader, come intoxicated into a council of chiefs. The chiefs did not
show that they knew his condition till he forced them to do so. Then two
of the young men rose, suddenly pinned him in their arms, carried him
out, and tied him in a lodge. The next morning they sent him out of
their country. Gaston was no philosopher, but he could place a thing
when he saw it: which is a kind of genius.

Presently Sir William said quietly:

“Mrs. Gasgoyne, you knew Robert well; his son ought to know you.”

Gaston turned to Mrs. Gasgoyne, and said in his father’s manner as much
as possible, for now his mind ran back to how his father talked and
acted, forming a standard for him:

“My father once told me a tale of the Keithley Hunt--something ‘away
up,’ as they say in the West--and a Mrs. Warren Gasgoyne was in it.”

He made an instant friend of Mrs. Gasgoyne--made her so purposely. This
was one of the few things from his father’s talks upon his past life. He
remembered the story because it was interesting, the name because it had
a sound.

She flushed with pleasure. That story of the Hunt was one of her
sweetest recollections. For her bravery then she had been voted by the
field “a good fellow,” and an admiral present declared that she had a
head “as long as the maintop bow-line.” She loved admiration, though she
had no foolish sentiment; she called men silly creatures, and yet would
go on her knees across country to do a deserving man-friend a
service. She was fifty and over, yet she had the springing heart of a
girl--mostly hid behind a brusque manner and a blunt, kindly tongue.

“Your father could always tell a good story,” she said.

“He told me one of you: what about telling me one of him?”

Adaptable, he had at once fallen in with her direct speech; the more
so because it was his natural way; any other ways were “games,” as he
himself said.

She flashed a glance at her sister, and smiled half-ironically.

“I could tell you plenty,” she said softly. “He was a startling fellow,
and went far sometimes; but you look as if you could go farther.”

Gaston helped himself to an entree, wondering whether a knife was used
with sweetbreads.

“How far could he go?” he asked.

“In the hunting-field with anybody, with women endlessly, with meanness
like a snail, and when his blood was up, to the most nonsensical place
you can think of.”

Forks only for sweetbreads! Gaston picked one up. “He went there.”

“Who told you?”

“I came from there.”

“Where is it?”

“A few hundred miles from the Arctic circle.”

“Oh, I didn’t think it was that climate!”

“It never is till you arrive. You are always out in the cold there.”

“That sounds American.”

“Every man is a sinner one way or another.”

“You are very clever--cleverer than your father ever was.

“I hope so.”

“Why?”

“He went--there. I’ve come--from there.”

“And you think you will stay--never go back?”

“He was out of it for twenty years, and died. If I am in it for that
long, I shall have had enough.”

Their eyes met. The woman looked at him steadily. “You won’t be,” she
replied, this time seriously, and in a very low voice.

“No? Why?”

“Because you will tire of it all--though you’ve started very well.”

She then answered a question of Captain Maudsley’s and turned again to
Gaston.

“What will make me tire of it?” he inquired. She sipped her champagne
musingly.

“Why, what is in you deeper than all this; with the help of some woman
probably.”

She looked at him searchingly, then added:

“You seem strangely like and yet unlike your father to-night.”

“I am wearing his clothes,” he said.

She had plenty of nerve, but this startled her. She shrank a little: it
seemed uncanny. Now she remembered that ribbon in the button-hole.

“Poor Sophie!” she thought. “And this one will make greater mischief
here.” Then, aloud to him: “Your father was a good fellow, but he did
wild things.”

“I do not see the connection,” he answered. “I am not a good man, and I
shall do wilder things--is that it?”

“You will do mad things,” she replied hardly above a whisper, and talked
once more with Captain Maudsley. Gaston now turned to his grandfather,
who had heard a sentence here and there, and felt that the young man
carried off the situation well enough. He then began to talk in a
general way about Gaston’s voyage, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and
expeditions to the Arctic, drawing Lady Dargan into the conversation.

Whatever might be said of Sir William Belward he was an excellent host.
He had a cool, unmalicious wit, but that man was unwise who offered
himself to its severity. To-night he surpassed himself in suggestive
talk, until, all at once, seeing Lady Dargan’s eyes fixed on Gaston,
he went silent, sitting back in his chair abstracted. Soon, however, a
warning glance from his wife brought him back and saved Lady Dargan from
collapse; for it seemed impossible to talk alone to this ghost of her
past.

At this moment Gaston heard a voice near:

“As like as if he’d stepped out of the picture, if it weren’t for the
clothes. A Gaston too!”

The speaker was Lord Dargan. He was talking to Archdeacon Varcoe.

Gaston followed Lord Dargan’s glance to the portrait of that Sir Gaston
Belward whose effigy he had seen. He found himself in form, feature,
expression; the bold vigilance of eye, the primitive activity of
shoulder, the small firm foot, the nervous power of the hand. The eyes
seemed looking at him. He answered to the look. There was in him the
romantic strain, and something more! In the remote parts of his being
there was the capacity for the phenomenal, the strange. Once again, as
in the church, he saw the field of Naseby, King Charles, Ireton’s men,
Cromwell and his Ironsides, Prince Rupert and the swarming rush of
cavalry, and the end of it all! Had it been a tale of his father’s at
camp-fire? Had he read it somewhere? He felt his blood thump in his
veins. Another half-hour, wherein he was learning every minute, nothing
escaping him, everything interesting him; his grandfather and Mrs.
Gasgoyne especially, then the ladies retired slowly with their crippled
hostess, who gave Gaston, as she rose, a look almost painfully intense.
It haunted him.

Now Gaston had his chance. He had no fear of what he could do with
men: he had measured himself a few times with English gentlemen as
he travelled, and he knew where his power lay--not in making himself
agreeable, but in imposing his personality.

The guests were not soon to forget the talk of that hour. It played into
Gaston’s hands. He pretended to nothing; he confessed ignorance here and
there with great simplicity; but he had the gift of reducing things,
as it were, to their original elements. He cut away to the core of a
matter, and having simple, fixed ideas, he was able to focus the talk,
which had begun with hunting stories, and ended with the morality of
duelling. Gaston’s hunting stories had made them breathless, his views
upon duelling did not free their lungs.

There were sentimentalists present; others who, because it had become
etiquette not to cross swords, thought it indecent. Archdeacon Varcoe
would not be drawn into discussion, but sipped his wine, listened, and
watched Gaston.

The young man measured his grandfather’s mind, and he drove home his
points mercilessly.

Captain Maudsley said something about “romantic murder.”

“That’s the trouble,” Gaston said. “I don’t know who killed duelling
in England, but behind it must have been a woman or a shopkeeper:
sentimentalism, timidity, dead romance. What is patriotism but romance?
Ideals is what they call it somewhere. I’ve lived in a land full of hard
work and dangers, but also full of romance. What is the result? Why, a
people off there whom you pity, and who don’t need pity. Romance? See:
you only get square justice out of a wise autocrat, not out of your
‘twelve true men’; and duelling is the last decent relic of autocracy.
Suppose the wronged man does get killed; that is all right: it wasn’t
merely blood he was after, but the right to hit a man in the eye for
a wrong done. What is all this hullaballoo--about saving human life?
There’s as much interest--and duty--in dying as living, if you go the
way your conscience tells you.”

A couple of hours later, Gaston, after having seen to his horse, stood
alone in the drawing-room with his grandfather and grandmother. As
yet Lady Belward had spoken not half a dozen words to him. Sir William
presently said to him:

“Are you too tired to join us in the library?”

“I’m as fresh as paint, sir,” was the reply.

Lady Belward turned without a word, and slowly passed from the room.
Gaston’s eyes followed the crippled figure, which yet had a rare
dignity. He had a sudden impulse. He stepped to her and said with an
almost boyish simplicity:

“You are very tired; let me carry you--grandmother.”

He could hear Sir William gasp a little as he laid a quick warm hand
on hers that held the cane. She looked at him gravely, sadly, and then
said:

“I will take your arm, if you please.”

He took the cane, and she put a hand towards him. He ran his strong arm
around her waist with a little humouring laugh, her hand rested on his
shoulder, and he timed his step to hers. Sir William was in an eddy
of wonder--a strong head was “mazed.” He had looked for a different
reception of this uncommon kinsman. How quickly had the new-comer
conquered himself! And yet he had a slight strangeness of accent--not
American, but something which seemed unusual. He did not reckon with a
voice which, under cover of easy deliberation, had a convincing quality;
with a manner of old-fashioned courtesy and stateliness. As Mrs.
Gasgoyne had said to the rector, whose eyes had followed Gaston
everywhere in the drawing-room:

“My dear archdeacon, where did he get it? Why, he has lived most of his
life with savages!”

“Vandyke might have painted the man,” Lord Dargan had added.

“Vandyke did paint him,” had put in Delia Gasgoyne from behind her
mother.

“How do you mean, Delia?” Mrs. Gasgoyne had added, looking curiously at
her.

“His picture hangs in the dining-room.”

Then the picture had been discussed, and the girl’s eyes had followed
Gaston--followed him until he had caught their glance. Without an
introduction, he had come and dropped into conversation with her, till
her mother cleverly interrupted.

Inside the library Lady Belward was comfortably placed, and looking up
at Gaston, said:

“You have your father’s ways: I hope that you will be wiser.”

“If you will teach me!” he answered gently.

There came two little bright spots on her cheeks, and her hands clasped
in her lap. They all sat down. Sir William spoke:

“It is much to ask that you should tell us of your life now, but it is
better that we should start with some knowledge of each other.”

At that moment Gaston’s eyes caught the strange picture on the wall.

“I understand,” he answered. “But I would be starting in the middle of a
story.”

“You mean that you wish to hear your father’s history? Did he not tell
you?”

“Trifles--that is all.”

“Did he ever speak of me?” asked Lady Belward with low anxiety.

“Yes, when he was dying.”

“What did he say?”

“He said: ‘Tell my mother that Truth waits long, but whips hard. Tell
her that I always loved her.’” She shrank in her chair as if from a
blow, and then was white and motionless.

“Let us hear your story,” Sir William said with a sort of hauteur. “You
know your own, much of your father’s lies buried with him.”

“Very well, sir.”

Sir William drew a chair up beside his wife. Gaston sat back, and for a
moment did not speak. He was looking into distance. Presently the blue
of his eyes went all black, and with strange unwavering concentration he
gazed straight before him. A light spread over his face, his hands felt
for the chair-arms and held them firmly. He began:

“I first remember swinging in a blanket from a pine-tree at a
buffalo-hunt while my mother cooked the dinner. There were scores of
tents, horses, and many Indians and half-breeds, and a few white men. My
father was in command. I can see my mother’s face as she stood over the
fire. It was not darker than mine; she always seemed more French than
Indian, and she was thought comely.”

Lady Belward shuddered a little, but Gaston did not notice.

“I can remember the great buffalo-hunt. You heard a heavy rumbling
sound; you saw a cloud on the prairie. It heaved, a steam came from it,
and sometimes you caught the flash of ten thousand eyes as the beasts
tossed their heads and then bent them again to the ground and rolled on,
five hundred men after them, our women shouting and laughing, and arrows
and bullets flying.... I can remember a time also when a great Indian
battle happened just outside the fort, and, with my mother crying after
him, my father went out with a priest to stop it. My father was wounded,
and then the priest frightened them, and they gathered their dead
together and buried them. We lived in a fort for a long time, and my
mother died there. She was a good woman, and she loved my father. I have
seen her on her knees for hours praying when he was away.--I have her
rosary now. They called her Ste. Heloise. Afterwards I was always with
my father. He was a good man, but he was never happy; and only at
the last would he listen to the priest, though they were always great
friends. He was not a Catholic of course, but he said that didn’t
matter.”

Sir William interrupted huskily. “Why did he never come back?”

“I do not know quite, but he said to me once, ‘Gaston, you’ll tell them
of me some day, and it will be a soft pillow for their heads! You can
mend a broken life, but the ring of it is gone.’ I think he meant
to come back when I was about fourteen; but things happened, and he
stayed.”

There was a pause. Gaston seemed brooding, and Lady Belward said:

“Go on, please.”

“There isn’t so very much to tell. The life was the only one I had
known, and it was all right. But my father had told me of this life. He
taught me himself--he and Father Decluse and a Moravian missionary for
awhile. I knew some Latin and history, a bit of mathematics, a good
deal of astronomy, some French poets, and Shakespere. Shakespere is
wonderful. ... My father wanted me to come here at once after he died,
but I knew better--I wanted to get sense first. So I took a place in the
Company. It wasn’t all fun.

“I had to keep my wits sharp. I was only a youngster, and I had to do
with men as crafty and as silly as old Polonius. I was sent to Labrador.
That was not a life for a Christian. Once a year a ship comes to the
port, bringing the year’s mail and news from the world. When you watch
that ship go out again, and you turn round and see the filthy Esquimaux
and Indians, and know that you’ve got to live for another year with
them, sit in their dirty tepees, eat their raw frozen meat, with an
occasional glut of pemmican, and the thermometer 70 degrees below zero,
you get a lump in your throat.

“Then came one winter. I had one white man, two half-breeds, and an
Indian with me. There was darkness day after day, and because the
Esquimaux and Indians hadn’t come up to the fort that winter, it was
lonely as a tomb. One by one the men got melancholy and then went mad,
and I had to tie them up, and care for them and feed them. The Indian
was all right, but he got afraid, and wanted to start to a mission
station three hundred miles on. It was a bad look-out for me, but I told
him to go. I was left alone. I was only twenty-one, but I was steel to
my toes--good for wear and tear. Well, I had one solid month all alone
with my madmen. Their jabbering made me sea-sick some times. At last one
day I felt I’d go staring mad myself if I didn’t do something exciting
to lift me, as it were. I got a revolver, sat at the opposite end of the
room from the three lunatics, and practised shooting at them. I had got
it into my head that they ought to die, but it was only fair, I thought,
to give them a chance. I would try hard to shoot all round them--make a
halo of bullets for the head of every one, draw them in silhouettes of
solid lead on the wall.

“I talked to them first, and told them what I was going to do. They
seemed to understand, and didn’t object. I began with the silhouettes,
of course. I had a box of bullets beside me. They never squealed. I sent
the bullets round them as pretty as the pattern of a milliner. Then I
began with their heads. I did two all right. They sat and never stirred.
But when I came to the last something happened. It was Jock Lawson.”

Sir William interposed:

“Jock Lawson--Jock Lawson from here?”

“Yes. His mother keeps ‘The Whisk o’ Barley.’”

“So, that is where Jock Lawson went? He followed your father?”

“Yes. Jock was mad enough when I began--clean gone. But, somehow, the
game I was playing cured him. ‘Steady, Jock!’ I said. ‘Steady!’ for I
saw him move. I levelled for the second bead of the halo. My finger was
on the trigger. ‘My God, don’t shoot!’ he called. It startled me, my
hand shook, the thing went off, and Jock had a bullet through his brain.

“... Then I waked up. Perhaps I had been mad myself--I don’t know. But
my brain never seemed clearer than when I was playing that game. It was
like a magnifying glass: and my eyes were so clear and strong that I
could see the pores on their skin, and the drops of sweat breaking out
on Jock’s forehead when he yelled.”

A low moan came from Lady Belward. Her face was drawn and pale, but her
eyes were on Gaston with a deep fascination. Sir William whispered to
her.

“No,” she said, “I will stay.”

Gaston saw the impression he had made.

“Well, I had to bury poor Jock all alone. I don’t think I should have
minded it so much, if it hadn’t been for the faces of those other two
crazy men. One of them sat still as death, his eyes following me with
one long stare, and the other kept praying all the time--he’d been a
lay preacher once before he backslided, and it came back on him now
naturally. Now it would be from Revelation, now out of the Psalms, and
again a swingeing exhortation for the Spirit to come down and convict me
of sin. There was a lot of sanity in it too, for he kept saying at
last: ‘O shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the
bloodthirsty.’ I couldn’t stand it, with Jock dead there before me, so
I gave him a heavy dose of paregoric out of the Company’s stores. Before
he took it he raised his finger and said to me, with a beastly stare:
‘Thou art the man!’ But the paregoric put him to sleep....

“Then I gave the other something to eat, and dragged Jock out to bury
him. I remembered then that he couldn’t be buried, for the ground was
too hard and the ice too thick; so I got ropes, and, when he stiffened,
slung him up into a big cedar tree, and then went up myself and arranged
the branches about him comfortably. It seemed to me that Jock was a baby
and I was his father. You couldn’t see any blood, and I fixed his hair
so that it covered the hole in the forehead. I remember I kissed him on
the cheek, and then said a prayer--one that I’d got out of my father’s
prayer-book: ‘That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by
land or by water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and
young children; and to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.’
Somehow I had got it into my head that Jock was going on a long journey,
and that I was a prisoner and a captive.”

Gaston broke off, and added presently:

“Perhaps this is all too awful to hear, but it gives you an idea of what
kind of things went to make me.” Lady Belward answered for both:

“Tell us all--everything.”

“It is late,” said Sir William, nervously.

“What does it matter? It is once in a lifetime,” she answered sadly.

Gaston took up the thread:

“Now I come to what will shock you even more, perhaps. So, be prepared.
I don’t know how many days went, but at last I had three visitors--in
time I should think: a Moravian missionary, and an Esquimaux and his
daughter. I didn’t tell the missionary about Jock--there was no use, it
could do no good. They stayed four weeks, and during that time one of
the crazy men died. The other got better, but had to be watched. I could
do anything with him, if I got my eye on him. Somehow, I must tell you,
I’ve got a lot of power that way. I don’t know where it comes from.
Well, the missionary had to go. The old Esquimaux thought that he and
his daughter would stay on if I’d let them. I was only too glad. But it
wasn’t wise for the missionary to take the journey alone--it was a bad
business in any case. I urged the man that had been crazy to go, for I
thought activity would do him good. He agreed, and the two left and got
to the Mission Station all right, after wicked trouble. I was alone
with the Esquimaux and his daughter. You never know why certain things
happen, and I can’t tell why that winter was so weird; why the old
Esquimaux should take sick one morning, and in the evening should
call me and his daughter Lucy--she’d been given a Christian name, of
course--and say that he was going to die, and he wanted me to marry
her” (Lady Belward exclaimed, Sir William’s hands fingered the chair-arm
nervously) “there and then, so that he’d know she would be cared for.
He was a heathen, but he had been primed by the missionaries about
his daughter. She was a fine, clever girl, and well educated--the best
product of their mission. So he called for a Bible. There wasn’t one in
the place, but I had my mother’s Book of the Mass. I went to get it, but
when I set my eyes on it, I couldn’t--no, I couldn’t do it, for I hadn’t
the least idea but what I should bid my lady good-bye when it suited,
and I didn’t want any swearing at all--not a bit. I didn’t do any. But
what happened had to be with or without any ring or book and ‘Forasmuch
as.’ There had been so much funeral and sudden death that a marriage
would be a godsend anyhow. So the old Esquimaux got our two hands in
his, babbled away in half-English, half-Esquimaux, with the girl’s eyes
shining like a she-moose over a dying buck, and about the time we kissed
each other, his head dropped back--and that is all there was about
that.”

Gaston now kept his eyes on his listeners. He was aware that his story
must sound to them as brutal as might be, but it was a phase of his
life, and, so far as he could, he wanted to start with a clean sheet;
not out of love of confidence, for he was self-contained, but he would
have enough to do to shepherd his future without shepherding his past.
He saw that Lady Belward had a sickly fear in her face, while Sir
William had gone stern and hard.

He went on:

“It saved the situation, did that marriage; though it was no marriage
you will say. Neither was it one way, and I didn’t intend at the start
to stand by it an hour longer than I wished. But she was more than I
looked for, and it seems to me that she saved my life that winter, or
my reason anyhow. There had been so much tragedy that I used to wonder
every day what would happen before night; and that’s not a good thing
for the brain of a chap of twenty-one or two. The funny part of it is
that she wasn’t a pagan--not a bit. She could read and speak English
in a sweet old-fashioned way, and she used to sing to me--such a funny,
sorry little voice she had--hymns the Moravians had taught her, and
one or two English songs. I taught her one or two besides, ‘Where the
Hawthorn Tree is Blooming,’ and ‘Allan Water’--the first my father had
taught me, the other an old Scotch trader. It’s different with a woman
and a man in a place like that. Two men will go mad together, but
there’s a saving something in the contact of a man’s brain with a
woman’s. I got fond of her, any man would have, for she had something
that I never saw in any heathen, certainly in no Indian; you’ll see it
in women from Iceland. I determined to marry her in regular style when
spring and a missionary came. You can’t understand, maybe, how one can
settle to a life where you’ve got companionship, and let the world go
by. About that time, I thought that I’d let Ridley Court and the rest
of it go as a boy’s dreams go. I didn’t seem to know that I was only
satisfied in one set of my instincts. Spring came, so did a missionary,
and for better or worse it was.”

Sir William came to his feet. “Great Heaven!” he broke out.

His wife tried to rise, but could not.

“This makes everything impossible,” added the baronet shortly.

“No, no, it makes nothing impossible--if you will listen.”

Gaston was cool. He had begun playing for the stakes from one
stand-point, and he would not turn back.

He continued:

“I lived with her happily: I never expect to have happiness like that
again,--never,--and after two years at another post in Labrador, came
word from the Company that I might go to Quebec, there to be given
my choice of posts. I went. By this time I had again vague ideas that
sometime I should come here, but how or why I couldn’t tell; I was
drifting, and for her sake willing to drift. I was glad to take her to
Quebec, for I guessed she would get ideas, and it didn’t strike me that
she would be out of place. So we went. But she was out of place in
many ways. It did not suit at all. We were asked to good houses, for I
believe I have always had enough of the Belward in me to keep my end up
anywhere. The thing went on pretty well, but at last she used to beg me
to go without her to excursions and parties. There were always one
or two quiet women whom she liked to sit with, and because she seemed
happier for me to go, I did. I was popular, and got along with women
well; but I tell you honestly I loved my wife all the time; so that when
a Christian busy-body poured into her ears some self-made scandal,
it was a brutal, awful lie--brutal and awful, for she had never known
jealousy; it did not belong to her old social creed. But it was in the
core of her somewhere, and an aboriginal passion at work naked is a
thing to be remembered. I had to face it one night....

“I was quiet, and did what I could. After that I insisted on her going
with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite
of herself, the thing grew. One day we went on an excursion down the St.
Lawrence. We were merry, and I was telling yarns. We were just nearing a
landing-stage, when a pretty girl, with more gush than sense, caught me
by the arm and begged some ridiculous thing of me--an autograph, or what
not. A minute afterwards I saw my wife spring from the bulwarks down on
the landing-stage, and rush up the shore into the woods.... We were two
days finding her. That settled it. I was sick enough at heart, and I
determined to go back to Labrador. We did so. Every thing had gone on
the rocks. My wife was not, never would be, the same again. She taunted
me and worried me, and because I would not quarrel, seemed to have a
greater grievance--jealousy is a kind of madness. One night she was
most galling, and I sat still and said nothing. My life seemed gone of
a heap: I was sick--sick to the teeth; hopeless, looking forward to
nothing. I imagine my hard quietness roused her. She said something
hateful--something about having married her, and not a woman from
Quebec. I smiled--I couldn’t help it; then I laughed, a bit wild, I
suppose. I saw the flash of steel. ... I believe I laughed in her
face as I fell. When I came to she was lying with her head on my
breast--dead--stone dead.”

Lady Belward sat with closed eyes, her fingers clasping and unclasping
on the top of her cane; but Sir William wore a look half-satisfied,
half-excited.

He now hurried his story.

“I got well, and after that stayed in the North for a year. Then I
passed down the continent to Mexico and South America. There I got a
commission to go to New Zealand and Australia to sell a lot of horses.
I did so, and spent some time in the South Sea Islands. Again I drifted
back to the Rockies and over into the plains; found Jacques Brillon, my
servant, had a couple of years’ work and play, gathered together some
money, as good a horse and outfit as the North could give, and started
with Brillon and his broncho--having got both sense and experience, I
hope--for Ridley Court. And here I am. There’s a lot of my life that
I haven’t told you of, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s adventure
mostly, and it can be told at any time; but these are essential facts,
and it is better that you should hear them. And that is all, grandfather
and grandmother.”

After a minute Lady Belward rose, leaned on her crutch, and looked at
him wistfully. Sir William said: “Are you sure that you will suit this
life, or it you?”

“It is the only idea I have at present; and, anyhow, it is my rightful
home, sir.”

“I was not thinking of your rights, but of the happiness of us all.”

Lady Belward limped to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You have had one great tragedy, so have we: neither could bear another.
Try to be worthy--of your home.”

Then she solemnly kissed him on the cheek. Soon afterwards they went to
their rooms.




CHAPTER IV. AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER’S PAST

In his bedroom Gaston made a discovery. He chanced to place his hand in
the tail-pocket of the coat he had worn. He drew forth a letter. The ink
was faded, and the lines were scrawled. It ran:

   It’s no good. Mr. Ian’s been! It’s face the musik now. If you
   want me, say so. I’m for kicks or ha’pence--no diffrense.
                            Yours, J.

He knew the writing very well--Jock Lawson’s. There had been some
trouble, and Mr. Ian had “been,” bringing peril. What was it? His father
and Jock had kept the secret from him.

He put his hand in the pocket again. There was another note--this time
in a woman’s handwriting:

   Oh, come to me, if you would save us both! Do not fail. God help
   us! Oh, Robert!

It was signed “Agnes.”

Well, here was something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself
about that. He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into
the past, to set his father’s wrongs right; but to serve himself, to
reap for all those years wherein his father had not reaped. He enjoyed
life, and he would search this one to the full of his desires. Before he
retired he studied the room, handling things that lay where his father
placed them so many years before. He was not without emotions in this,
but he held himself firm.

As he stood ready to get into bed, his eyes chanced upon a portrait of
his uncle Ian.

“There’s where the tug comes!” he said, nodding at it. “Shake hands, and
ten paces, Uncle Ian?”

Then he blew out the candle, and in five minutes was sound asleep.

He was out at six o’clock. He made for the stables, and found Jacques
pacing the yard. He smiled at Jacques’s dazed look.

“What about the horse, Brillon?” he said, nodding as he came up.

“Saracen’s had a slice of the stable-boy’s shoulder--sir.”

Amusement loitered in Gaston’s eyes. The “sir” had stuck in Jacques’s
throat.

“Saracen has established himself, then? Good! And the broncho?”

“Bien, a trifle only. They laugh much in the kitchen--”

“The hall, Brillon.”

“--in the hall last night. That hired man over there--”

“That groom, Brillon.”

“--that groom, he was a fool, and fat. He was the worst. This morning
he laugh at my broncho. He say a horse like that is nothing: no pace,
no travel. I say the broncho was not so ver’ bad, and I tell him try the
paces. I whisper soft, and the broncho stand like a lamb. He mount,
and sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start. For a minute it was
pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was
the broncho bucking--doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead.
Once that--groom--come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like
a ball, all muck and blood.”

The half-breed paused, looking innocently before him. Gaston’s mouth
quirked.

“A solid success, Brillon. Teach them all the tricks you can. At ten
o’clock come to my room. The campaign begins then.”

Jacques ran a hand through his long black hair, and fingered his sash.
Gaston understood.

“The hair and ear-rings may remain, Brillon; but the beard and clothes
must go--except for occasions. Come along.”

For the next two hours Gaston explored the stables and the grounds.
Nothing escaped him. He gathered every incident of the surroundings,
and talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a
superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at
the kennels--for the Whipshire hounds were here. Gaston had never ridden
to hounds. It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge. He was
strong enough to admit ignorance. He stood leaning against the door of
the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter,
before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of
distance and soft tones. His blood beat hard, for suddenly he felt as if
he had been behind just such a pack one day, one clear desirable day of
spring. He saw people gathering at the kennels; saw men drink beer
and eat sandwiches at the door of the huntsman’s house,--a long, low
dwelling, with crumbling arched doorways like those of a monastery,
watched them get away from the top of the moor, he among them; heard the
horn, the whips; and saw the fox break cover.

Then came a rare run for five sweet miles--down a long valley--over
quick-set hedges, with stiffish streams--another hill--a great combe--a
lovely valley stretching out--a swerve to the right--over a gate--and
the brush got at a farmhouse door.

Surely, he had seen it all; but what kink of the brain was it that the
men wore flowing wigs and immense boot-legs, and sported lace in the
hunting-field? And why did he see within that picture another of two
ladies and a gentleman hawking?

He was roused from his dream by hearing the huntsman say in a quizzical
voice:

“How do you like the dogs, sir?”

To his last day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold
surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot. The
words that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home the naked
reproof:

“What is your name, my man?”

“Lugley, sir.”

“Lugley! Lugley! H’m! Well, Lugley, I like the hounds better than I like
you. Who is Master of the Hounds, Lugley?”

“Captain Maudsley, sir.”

“Just so. You are satisfied with your place, Lugley?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man in a humble voice, now cowed.

The news of the arrival of the strangers had come to him late at night,
and, with Whipshire stupidity, he had thought that any one coming from
the wilds of British America must be but a savage after all.

“Very well; I wouldn’t throw myself out of a place, if I were you.”

“Oh, no, sir! Beg pardon, sir, I--”

“Attend to your hounds there, Lugley.”

So saying, Gaston nodded Jacques away with him, leaving the huntsman
sick with apprehension.

“You see how it is to be done, Brillon?” said Gaston. Jacques’s brown
eyes twinkled.

“You have the grand trick, sir.”

“I enjoy the game; and so shall you, if you will. You’ve begun well. I
don’t know much of this life yet; but it seems to me that they are
all part of a machine, not the idea behind the machine. They have no
invention. Their machine is easy to learn. Do not pretend; but for every
bit you learn show something better, something to make them dizzy now
and then.”

He paused on a knoll and looked down. The castle, the stables, the
cottages of labourers and villagers lay before them. In a certain
highly-cultivated field, men were working. It was cut off in squares and
patches. It had an air which struck Gaston as unusual; why, he could
not tell. But he had a strange divining instinct, or whatever it may be
called. He made for the field and questioned the workmen.

The field was cut up into allotment gardens. Here, at a nominal rent,
the cottager could grow his vegetables; a little spot of the great
acre of England, which gave the labourer a tiny sense of ownership, of
manhood. Gaston was interested. More, he was determined to carry that
experiment further, if he ever got the chance. There was no socialism
in him. The true barbarian is like the true aristocrat: more a giver
of gifts than a lover of co-operation; conserving ownership by right
of power and superior independence, hereditary or otherwise. Gaston was
both barbarian and aristocrat.

“Brillon,” he said, as they walked on, “do you think they would be
happier on the prairies with a hundred acres of land, horses, cows, and
a pen of pigs?”

“Can I be happy here all at once, sir?”

“That’s just it. It’s too late for them. They couldn’t grasp it unless
they went when they were youngsters. They’d long for ‘Home and Old
England’ and this grub-and-grind life. Gracious heaven, look at
them--crumpled-up creatures! And I’ll stake my life, they were as pretty
children as you’d care to see. They are out of place in the landscape,
Brillon; for it is all luxury and lush, and they are crumples--crumples!
But yet there isn’t any use being sorry for them, for they don’t grasp
anything outside the life they are living. Can’t you guess how they
live? Look at the doors of the houses shut, and the windows sealed; yet
they’ve been up these three hours! And they’ll suck in bad air, and
bad food; and they’ll get cancer, and all that; and they’ll die and
be trotted away to the graveyard for ‘passun’ to hurry them into their
little dark cots, in the blessed hope of everlasting life! I’m going
to know this thing, Brillon, from tooth to ham-string; and, however
it goes, we’ll have lived up and down the whole scale; and that’s
something.”

He suddenly stopped, and then added:

“I’m likely to go pretty far in this. I can’t tell how or why, but it’s
so. Now, once more, as yesterday afternoon, for good or for bad, for
long or for short, for the gods or for the devil, are you with me?
There’s time to turn back even yet, and I’ll say no word to your going.”

“But no, no! a vow is a vow. When I cannot run I will walk, when I
cannot walk I will crawl after you--comme ca!”

Lady Belward did not appear at breakfast. Sir William and Gaston
breakfasted alone at half past nine o’clock. The talk was of the stables
and the estate generally.

The breakfast-room looked out on a soft lawn, stretching away into a
broad park, through which a stream ran; and beyond was a green hillside.
The quiet, the perfect order and discipline, gave a pleasant tingle
to Gaston’s veins. It was all so easy, and yet so admirable--elegance
without weight. He felt at home. He was not certain of some trifles
of etiquette; but he and Sir William were alone, and he followed his
instincts. Once he frankly asked his grandfather of a matter of form,
of which he was uncertain the evening before. The thing was done so
naturally that the conventional mind of the baronet was not disturbed.
The Belwards were notable for their brains, and Sir William saw that
the young man had an unusual share. He also felt that this startling
individuality might make a hazardous future; but he liked the fellow,
and he had a debt to pay to the son of his own dead son. Of course, if
their wills came into conflict, there could be but one thing--the young
man must yield; or, if he played the fool, there must be an end. Still,
he hoped the best. When breakfast was finished, he proposed going to the
library.

There Sir William talked of the future, asked what Gaston’s ideas were,
and questioned him as to his present affairs. Gaston frankly said that
he wanted to live as his father would have done, and that he had no
property, and no money beyond a hundred pounds, which would last him a
couple of years on the prairies, but would be fleeting here.

Sir William at once said that he would give him a liberal allowance,
with, of course, the run of his own stables and their house in town: and
when he married acceptably, his allowance would be doubled.

“And I wish to say, Gaston,” he added, “that your uncle Ian, though
heir to the title, does not necessarily get the property, which is not
entailed. Upon that point I need hardly say more. He has disappointed
us.

“Through him Robert left us. Of his character I need not speak. Of his
ability the world speaks variably: he is an artist. Of his morals I need
only say that they are scarcely those of an English gentleman, though
whether that is because he is an artist, I cannot say--I really cannot
say. I remember meeting a painter at Lord Dunfolly’s,--Dunfolly is
a singular fellow--and he struck me chiefly as harmless, distinctly
harmless. I could not understand why he was at Dunfolly’s, he seemed of
so little use, though Lady Malfire, who writes or something, mooned
with him a good deal. I believe there was some scandal or something
afterwards. I really do not know. But you are not a painter, and I
believe you have character--I fancy so.”

“If you mean that I don’t play fast and loose, sir, you are right. What
I do, I do as straight as a needle.” The old man sighed carefully.

“You are very like Robert, and yet there is something else. I don’t
know, I really don’t know what!”

“I ought to have more in me than the rest of the family, sir.”

This was somewhat startling. Sir William’s fingers stroked his beardless
cheek uncertainly. “Possibly--possibly.”

“I’ve lived a broader life, I’ve got wider standards, and there are
three races at work in me.”

“Quite so, quite so;” and Sir William fumbled among his papers
nervously.

“Sir,” said Gaston suddenly, “I told you last night the honest story of
my life. I want to start fair and square. I want the honest story of my
father’s life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean.”

He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and
handed them. Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned
them over and over. Gaston told where he had found them.

Sir William spoke at last.

“The main story is simple enough. Robert was extravagant, and Ian was
vicious and extravagant also. Both got into trouble. I was younger then,
and severe. Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could. One day things came
to a climax. In his wild way, Robert--with Jock Lawson--determined to
rescue a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of
the country. There were reasons. He was the son of a gentleman; and,
as we discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the
wife--his one sin of the kind, I believe. Ian came to know, and
prevented the rescue. Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the
attempt. There was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I
said hard things to Robert.”

Gaston’s eyes were on Lady Belward’s portrait. “What did my grandmother
say?”

There was a pause, then:

“That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of
his life would be hateful to her always. I tell you this because I
see you look at that portrait. What I said, I think, was no less. So,
Robert, after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the
house. His mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on
the stone steps at the door, and became a cripple for life. At first
she remained bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that
portrait. It is clever, as you may see, and weird. But there came a time
when she kept it as a reproach to herself, not Robert. She is a good
woman--a very good woman. I know none better, really no one.”

“What became of the arrested man?” Gaston asked quietly, with the
oblique suggestiveness of a counsel.

“He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue,
and the matter was hushed up.”

“What became of the wife?”

“She died also within a year.”

“Were there any children?”

“One--a girl.”

“Whose was the child?”

“You mean--?”

“The husband’s or the lover’s?” There was a pause.

“I cannot tell you.”

“Where is the girl?”

“My son, do not ask that. It can do no good--really no good.”

“Is it not my due?”

“Do not impose your due. Believe me, I know best. If ever there is
need to tell you, you shall be told. Trust me. Has not the girl her due
also?”

Gaston’s eyes held Sir William’s a moment. “You are right, sir,” he
said, “quite right. I shall not try to know. But if--” He paused.

Sir William spoke:

“There is but one person in the world who knows the child’s father; and
I could not ask him, though I have known him long and well--indeed, no.”

“I do not ask to understand more,” Gaston replied. “I almost wish I had
known nothing. And yet I will ask one thing: is the girl in comfort and
good surroundings?”

“The best--ah, yes, the very best.”

There was a pause, in which both sat thinking; then Sir William wrote
out a cheque and offered it, with a hint of emotion. He was recalling
how he had done the same with this boy’s father.

Gaston understood. He got up, and said: “Honestly, sir, I don’t know how
I shall turn out here; for, if I didn’t like it, it couldn’t hold me,
or, if it did, I should probably make things uncomfortable. But I
think I shall like it, and I will do my best to make things go well.
Good-morning, sir.”

With courteous attention Sir William let his grandson out of the room.

And thus did a young man begin his career as Gaston Belward, gentleman.




CHAPTER V. WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY

How that career was continued there are many histories: Jock Lawson’s
mother tells of it in her way, Mrs. Gasgoyne in hers, Hovey in hers,
Captain Maudsley in his; and so on. Each looks at it from an individual
stand-point. But all agree on two matters: that he did things hitherto
unknown in the countryside; and that he was free and affable, but could
pull one up smartly if necessary.

He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with
Rosher, the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a
sailorman, home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and
with Pogan, the groom, who had at last won Saracen’s heart. But one day
when the meagre village chemist saw him cracking jokes with Beard, the
carpenter, and sidled in with a silly air of equality, which was merely
insolence, Gaston softly dismissed him, with his ears tingling. The
carpenter proved his right to be a friend of Gaston’s by not changing
countenance and by never speaking of the thing afterwards.

His career was interesting during the eighteen months wherein society
papers chatted of him amiably and romantically. He had entered into the
joys of hunting with enthusiasm and success, and had made a fast and
admiring friend of Captain Maudsley; while Saracen held his own grandly.
He had dined with country people, and had dined them; had entered upon
the fag-end of the London season with keen, amused enjoyment; and had
engrafted every little use of the convention. The art was learned, but
the man was always apart from it; using it as a toy, yet not despising
it; for, as he said, it had its points, it was necessary. There was
yachting in the summer; but he was keener to know the life of England
and his heritage than to roam afar, and most of the year was spent on
the estate and thereabouts: with the steward, with the justices of the
peace, in the fields, in the kennels, among the accounts.

To-day he was in London, haunting Tattersall’s, the East End, the
docks, his club, the London Library--he had a taste for English history,
especially for that of the seventeenth century; he saturated himself
with it: to-morrow he would present to his grandfather a scheme for
improving the estate and benefiting the cottagers. Or he would suddenly
enter the village school, and daze and charm the children by asking them
strange yet simple questions, which sent a shiver of interest to their
faces.

One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball
at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people;
for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous
season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years. But all had
gone so well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some
strangeness,--that Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and
they had ceased to look for anything sensational.

This ball was to be the seal of their approval. It had been mentioned in
‘Truth’ with that freshness and point all its own. What character
than Gaston’s could more appeal to his naive imagination? It said in a
piquant note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero.

Everything was ready. Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had
done their parts. At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands.
Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway.

He would visit the village school. He found the junior curate troubling
the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for
them, and begging them to do their duty “in that state of life,” etc.
He listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the
children to sing. With inimitable melancholy they sang: “Oh, the Roast
Beef of Old England!”

Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the
children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song. With his
thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to
talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice. He asked them little
out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds,
and then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place
was, giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other
matters of information, without the nature of a lesson. Then he taught
them the chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song,
which told how those who behaved themselves well in this world should
ultimately:

“Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!”

It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward
driving past. He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist
had been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a
newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world,
nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the
purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.

They recognised each other. Ian looked his nephew up and down with a
cool kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation.
Gaston went straight to the castle. He asked for his uncle, and was told
that he had gone to Lady Belward. He wandered to the library: it was
empty. He lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold’s poems,
opening at “Sohrab and Rustum,” read it with a quick-beating heart, and
then came to “Tristram and Iseult.” He knew little of “that Arthur” and
his knights of the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure
of romance to him. In Tennyson, he had got no further than “Locksley
Hall,” which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and “Maud,”
 which “was big in pathos.” The story and the metre of “Tristram and
Iseult” beat in his veins. He got to his feet, and, standing before the
window, repeated a verse aloud:

       “Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
        O hunter! and without a fear
        Thy golden-tassell’d bugle blow,
        And through the glades thy pasture take
        For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here!
        For these thou seest are unmoved;
        Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
        A thousand years ago.”

He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open. He again
repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician. He
knew that they were right. They were hot with life--a life that was no
more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be. He
felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea,
down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in
with bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago. Bearding the
Spaniards--what did he mean by that? He shut his eyes and saw a picture:
A Moorish castle, men firing from the battlements under a blazing sun, a
multitude of troops before a tall splendid-looking man, in armour chased
with gold and silver, and fine ribbons flying. A woman was lifted upon
the battlements. He saw the gold of her necklace shake on her flesh like
sunlight on little waves. He heard a cry:

At that moment some one said behind him: “You have your father’s
romantic manner.”

He quietly put down the book, and met the other’s eyes with a steady
directness.

“Your memory is good, sir.”

“Less than thirty years--h’m, not so very long!”

“Looking back--no. You are my father’s brother, Ian Belward?”

“Your uncle Ian.”

There was a kind of quizzical loftiness in Ian Belward’s manner.

“Well, Uncle Ian, my father asked me to say that he hoped you would get
as much out of life as he had, and that you would leave it as honest.”

“Thank you. That is very like Robert. He loved making little speeches.
It is a pity we did not pull together; but I was hasty, and he was rash.
He had a foolish career, and you are the result. My mother has told me
the story--his and yours.”

He sat down, ran his fingers through his grey-brown hair, and looking
into a mirror, adjusted the bow of his tie, and flipped the flying ends.
The kind of man was new to Gaston: self-indulgent, intelligent, heavily
nourished, nonchalant, with a coarse kind of handsomeness. He felt that
here was a man of the world, equipped mentally cap-a-pie, as keen as
cruel. Reading that in the light of the past, he was ready.

“And yet his rashness will hurt you longer than your haste hurt him.”

The artist took the hint bravely.

“That you will have the estate, and I the title, eh? Well, that looks
likely just now; but I doubt it all the same. You’ll mess the thing one
way or another.”

He turned from the contemplation of himself, and eyed Gaston lazily.
Suddenly he started.

“Begad,” he said, “where did you get it?” He rose.

Gaston understood that he saw the resemblance to Sir Gaston Belward.

“Before you were, I am. I am nearer the real stuff.”

The other measured his words insolently:

“But the Pocahontas soils the stream--that’s plain.”

A moment after Gaston was beside the prostrate body of his uncle,
feeling his heart.

“Good God,” he said, “I didn’t think I hit so hard!” He felt the pulse,
looked at the livid face, then caught open the waistcoat and put his
ear to the chest. He did it all coolly, though swiftly--he was’ born for
action and incident. And during that moment of suspense he thought of
a hundred things, chiefly that, for the sake of the family--the
family!--he must not go to trial. There were easier ways.

But presently he found that the heart beat.

“Good! good!” he said, undid the collar, got some water, and rang a
bell. Falby came. Gaston ordered some brandy, and asked for Sir William.
After the brandy had been given, consciousness returned. Gaston lifted
him up.

He presently swallowed more brandy, and while yet his head was at
Gaston’s shoulder, said:

“You are a hard hitter. But you’ve certainly lost the game now.”

Here he made an effort, and with Gaston’s assistance got to his feet. At
that moment Falby entered to say that Sir William was not in the house.
With a wave of the hand Gaston dismissed him. Deathly pale, his uncle
lifted his eyebrows at the graceful gesture.

“You do it fairly, nephew,” he said ironically yet faintly,--“fairly
in such little things; but a gentleman, your uncle, your elder, with
fists--that smacks of low company!”

Gaston made a frank reply as he smothered his pride

“I am sorry for the blow, sir; but was the fault all mine?”

“The fault? Is that the question? Faults and manners are not the same.
At bottom you lack in manners; and that will ruin you at last.”

“You slighted my mother!”

“Oh, no! and if I had, you should not have seen it.”

“I am not used to swallow insults. It is your way, sir. I know your
dealings with my father.”

“A little more brandy, please. But your father had manners, after all.
You are as rash as he; and in essential matters clownish--which he was
not.”

Gaston was well in hand now, cooler even than his uncle.

“Perhaps you will sum up your criticism now, sir, to save future
explanation; and then accept my apology.”

“To apologise for what no gentleman pardons or does, or acknowledges
openly when done--H’m! Were it not well to pause in time, and go back
to your wild North? Why so difficult a saddle--Tartarin after Napoleon?
Think--Tartarin’s end!”

Gaston deprecated with a gesture: “Can I do anything for you, sir?”

His uncle now stood up, but swayed a little, and winced from sudden
pain. A wave of malice crossed his face.

“It’s a pity we are relatives, with France so near,” he said, “for I see
you love fighting.” After an instant he added, with a carelessness as
much assumed as natural: “You may ring the bell, and tell Falby to come
to my room. And because I am to appear at the flare-up to-night--all in
honour of the prodigal’s son--this matter is between us, and we meet as
loving relatives. You understand my motives, Gaston Robert Belward?”

“Thoroughly.”

Gaston rang the bell, and went to open the door for his uncle to pass
out. Ian Belward buttoned his close-fitting coat, cast a glance in the
mirror, and then eyed Gaston’s fine figure and well-cut clothes. In the
presence of his nephew, there grew the envy of a man who knew that youth
was passing while every hot instinct and passion remained. For his age
he was impossibly young. Well past fifty he looked thirty-five, no
more. His luxurious soul loathed the approach of age. Unlike many men
of indulgent natures, he loved youth for the sake of his art, and he
had sacrificed upon that altar more than most men-sacrificed others. His
cruelty was not as that of the roughs of Seven Dials or Belleville, but
it was pitiless. He admitted to those who asked him why and wherefore
when his selfishness became brutality, that everything had to give way
for his work. His painting of Ariadne represented the misery of two
women’s lives. And of such was his kingdom of Art.

As he now looked at Gaston he was again struck with the resemblance to
the portrait in the dining-room, with his foreign out-of-the-way air:
something that should be seen beneath the flowing wigs of the Stuart
period. He had long wanted to do a statue of the ill-fated Monmouth, and
another greater than that. Here was the very man: with a proud, daring,
homeless look, a splendid body, and a kind of cavalier conceit. It was
significant of him, of his attitude towards himself where his work was
concerned, that he suddenly turned and shut the door again, telling
Falby, who appeared, to go to his room; and then said:

“You are my debtor, Cadet--I shall call you that: you shall have a
chance of paying.”

“How?”

In a few concise words he explained, scanning the other’s face eagerly.

Gaston showed nothing. He had passed the apogee of irritation.

“A model?” he questioned drily.

“Well, if you put it that way. ‘Portrait’ sounds better. It shall be
Gaston Belward, gentleman; but we will call it in public, ‘Monmouth the
Trespasser.’”

Gaston did not wince. He had taken all the revenge he needed. The idea
rather pleased him than other wise. He had instincts about art, and he
liked pictures; statuary, poetry, romance; but he had no standards. He
was keen also to see the life of the artist, to touch that aristocracy
more distinguished by mind than manners.

“If that gives ‘clearance,’ yes. And your debt to me?”

“I owe you nothing. You find your own meaning in my words. I was
railing, you were serious. Do not be serious. Assume it sometimes, if
you will; be amusing mostly. So, you will let me paint you--on your own
horse, eh?”

“That is asking much. Where?”

“Well, a sketch here this afternoon, while the thing is hot--if this
damned headache stops! Then at my studio in London in the spring,
or”--here he laughed--“in Paris. I am modest, you see.”

“As you will.”

Gaston had had a desire for Paris, and this seemed to give a cue for
going. He had tested London nearly all round. He had yet to be presented
at St. James’s, and elected a member of the Trafalgar Club. Certainly he
had not visited the Tower, Windsor Castle, and the Zoo; but that would
only disqualify him in the eyes of a colonial.

His uncle’s face flushed slightly. He had not expected such good
fortune. He felt that he could do anything with this romantic figure. He
would do two pictures: Monmouth, and an ancient subject--that legend of
the ancient city of Ys, on the coast of Brittany. He had had it in his
mind for years. He came back and sat down, keen, eager.

“I’ve a big subject brewing,” he said; “better than the Monmouth, though
it is good enough as I shall handle it. It shall be royal, melancholy,
devilish: a splendid bastard with creation against him; the best, most
fascinating subject in English history. The son dead on against the
father--and the uncle!”

He ceased for a minute, fashioning the picture in his mind; his face
pale, but alive with interest, which his enthusiasm made into dignity.
Then he went on:

“But the other: when the king takes up the woman--his mistress--and
rides into the sea with her on his horse, to save the town! By Heaven,
with you to sit, it’s my chance! You’ve got it all there in you--the
immense manner. You, a nineteenth century gentleman, to do this game
of Ridley Court, and paddle round the Row? Not you! You’re clever, and
you’re crafty, and you’ve a way with you. But you’ll come a cropper at
this as sure as I shall paint two big pictures--if you’ll stand to your
word.”

“We need not discuss my position here. I am in my proper place--in my
father’s home. But for the paintings and Paris, as you please.”

“That is sensible--Paris is sensible; for you ought to see it right, and
I’ll show you what half the world never see, and wouldn’t appreciate if
they did. You’ve got that old, barbaric taste, romance, and you’ll find
your metier in Paris.”

Gaston now knew the most interesting side of his uncle’s
character--which few people ever saw, and they mostly women who came to
wish they had never felt the force of that occasional enthusiasm. He had
been in the National Gallery several times, and over and over again
he had visited the picture places in Bond Street as he passed; but he
wanted to get behind art life, to dig out the heart of it.




CHAPTER VI. WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

A few hours afterwards Gaston sat on his horse, in a quiet corner of the
grounds, while his uncle sketched him. After a time he said that Saracen
would remain quiet no longer. His uncle held up the sketch. Gaston could
scarcely believe that so strong and life-like a thing were possible in
the time. It had force and imagination. He left his uncle with a nod,
rode quietly through the park, into the village, and on to the moor.
At the top he turned and looked down. The perfectness of the landscape
struck him; it was as if the picture had all grown there--not a suburban
villa, not a modern cottage, not one tall chimney of a manufactory, but
just the sweet common life. The noises of the village were soothing,
the soft smell of the woodland came over. He watched a cart go by idly,
heavily clacking.

As he looked, it came to him: was his uncle right after all? Was he out
of place here? He was not a part of this, though he had adapted himself
and had learned many fine social ways. He knew that he lived not exactly
as though born here and grown up with it all. But it was also true that
he had a native sense of courtesy which people called distinguished.
There was ever a kind of mannered deliberation in his bearing--a part of
his dramatic temper, and because his father had taught him dignity where
there were no social functions for its use. His manner had, therefore, a
carefulness which in him was elegant artifice.

It could not be complained that he did not act after the fashion of
gentle people when with them. But it was equally true that he did many
things which the friends of his family could not and would not have
done. For instance, none would have pitched a tent in the grounds, slept
in it, read in it, and lived in it--when it did not rain. Probably no
one of them would have, at individual expense, sent the wife of the
village policeman to a hospital in London, to be cured--or to die--of
cancer. None would have troubled to insist that a certain stagnant pool
in the village be filled up. Nor would one have suddenly risen in court
and have acted as counsel for a gipsy! At the same time, all were too
well-bred to think that Gaston did this because the gipsy had a daughter
with him, a girl of strong, wild beauty, with a look of superiority over
her position.

He thought of all the circumstances now.

It was very many months ago. The man had been accused of stealing and
assault, but the evidence was unconvincing to Gaston. The feeling in
court was against the gipsy. Fearing a verdict against him, Gaston rose
and cross-examined the witnesses, and so adroitly bewildered both them
and the justices who sat with his grandfather on the case, that, at
last, he secured the man’s freedom. The girl was French, and knew
English imperfectly. Gaston had her sworn, and made the most of her
evidence. Then, learning that an assault had been made on the gipsy’s
van by some lads who worked at mills in a neighbouring town, he pushed
for their arrest, and himself made up the loss to the gipsy.

It is possible that there was in the mind of the girl what some common
people thought: that the thing was done for her favour; for she viewed
it half-gratefully, half-frowningly, till, on the village green, Gaston
asked her father what he wished to do--push on or remain to act against
the lads.

The gipsy, angry as he was, wished to move on. Gaston lifted his hat to
the girl and bade her good-bye. Then she saw that his motives had been
wholly unselfish--even quixotic, as it appeared to her--silly, she would
have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him. She
had never met a man like him before. She ran her fingers through her
golden-brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her
waist, and said in French:

“He is honest altogether, sir. He did not steal, and he was not there
when it happened.”

“I know that, my girl. That is why I did it.”

She looked at him keenly. Her eyes ran up and down his figure, then met
his curiously. Their looks swam for a moment. Something thrilled in them
both. The girl took a step nearer.

“You are as much a Romany here as I am,” she said, touching her bosom
with a quick gesture. “You do not belong; you are too good for it.
How do I know? I do not know; I feel. I will tell your fortune,” she
suddenly added, reaching for his hand. “I have only known three that
I could do it with honestly and truly, and you are one. It is no lie.
There is something in it. My mother had it; but it’s all sham mostly.”
 Then, under a tree on the green, he indifferent to village gossip, she
took his hand and told him--not of his fortune alone. In half-coherent
fashion she told him of the past--of his life in the North. She then
spoke of his future. She told him of a woman, of another, and another
still; of an accident at sea, and of a quarrel; then, with a low, wild
laugh, she stopped, let go his hand, and would say no more. But her face
was all flushed, and her eyes like burning beads. Her father stood near,
listening. Now he took her by the arm.

“Here, Andree, that’s enough,” he said, with rough kindness; “it’s no
good for you or him.”

He turned to Gaston, and said in English:

“She’s sing’lar, like her mother afore her. But she’s straight.”

Gaston lit a cigar.

“Of course.” He looked kindly at the girl. “You are a weird sort,
Andree, and perhaps you are right that I’m a Romany too; but I don’t
know where it begins and where it ends. You are not English gipsies?” he
added, to the father.

“I lived in England when I was young. Her mother was a Breton--not
a Romany. We’re on the way to France now. She wants to see where her
mother was born. She’s got the Breton lingo, and she knows some English;
but she speaks French mostly.”

“Well, well,” rejoined Gaston, “take care of yourself, and good luck to
you. Good-bye--good-bye, Andree.” He put his hand in his pocket to give
her some money, but changed his mind. Her eye stopped him. He shook
hands with the man, then turned to her again. Her eyes were on him--hot,
shining. He felt his blood throb, but he returned the look with
good-natured nonchalance, shook her hand, raised his hat, and walked
away, thinking what a fine, handsome creature she was. Presently he
said: “Poor girl, she’ll look at some fellow like that one day, with
tragedy the end thereof!”

He then fell to wondering about her almost uncanny divination. He
knew that all his life he himself had had strange memories, as well
as certain peculiar powers which had put the honest phenomena and the
trickery of the Medicine Men in the shade. He had influenced people
by the sheer force of presence. As he walked on, he came to a group of
trees in the middle of the common. He paused for a moment, and looked
back. The gipsy’s van was moving away, and in the doorway stood the
girl, her hand over her eyes, looking towards him. He could see the raw
colour of her scarf. “She’ll make wild trouble,” he said to himself.

As Gaston thought of this event, he moved his horse slowly towards a
combe, and looked out over a noble expanse--valley, field, stream,
and church-spire. As he gazed, he saw seated at some distance a girl
reading. Not far from her were two boys climbing up and down the combe.
He watched them. Presently he saw one boy creep along a shelf of rock
where the combe broke into a quarry, let himself drop upon another shelf
below, and then perch upon an overhanging ledge. He presently saw that
the lad was now afraid to return. He heard the other lad cry out, saw
the girl start up, and run forward, look over the edge of the combe, and
then make as if to go down. He set his horse to the gallop, and called
out. The girl saw him, and paused. In two minutes he was off his horse
and beside her.

It was Alice Wingfield. She had brought out three boys, who had come
with her from London, where she had spent most of the year nursing their
sick mother, her relative.

“I’ll have him up in a minute,” he said, as he led Saracen to a sapling
near. “Don’t go near the horse.”

He swung himself down from ledge to ledge, and soon was beside the boy.
In another moment he had the youngster on his back, came slowly up, and
the adventurer was safe.

“Silly Walter,” the girl said, “to frighten yourself and give Mr.
Belward trouble.”

“I didn’t think I’d be afraid,” protested the lad; “but when I looked
over the ledge my head went round, and I felt sick--like with the
channel.”

Gaston had seen Alice Wingfield several times at church and in
the village, and once when, with Lady Belward, he had returned the
archdeacon’s call; but she had been away most of the time since his
arrival. She had impressed him as a gentle, wise, elderly little
creature, who appeared to live for others, and chiefly for her
grandfather. She was not unusually pretty, nor yet young,--quite as
old as himself,--and yet he wondered what it was that made her so
interesting. He decided that it was the honesty of her nature, her
beautiful thoroughness; and then he thought little more about her. But
now he dropped into quiet, natural talk with her, as if they had known
each other for years. But most women found that they dropped quickly
into easy talk with him. That was because he had not learned the
small gossip which varies little with a thousand people in the same
circumstances. But he had a naive fresh sense, everything interested
him, and he said what he thought with taste and tact, sometimes with
wit, and always in that cheerful contemplative mood which influences
women. Some of his sayings were so startling and heretical that they had
gone the rounds, and certain crisp words out of the argot of the North
were used by women who wished to be chic and amusing.

Not quite certain why he stayed, but talking on reflectively, Gaston at
last said:

“You will be coming to us to-night, of course? We are having a barbecue
of some kind.”

“Yes, I hope so; though my grandfather does not much care to have me
go.”

“I suppose it is dull for him.”

“I am not sure it is that.”

“No? What then?”

She shook her head.

“The affair is in your honour, Mr. Belward, isn’t it?

“Does that answer my question?” he asked genially.

She blushed.

“No, no, no! That is not what I meant.”

“I was unfair. Yes, I believe the matter does take that colour; though
why, I don’t know.”

She looked at him with simple earnestness.

“You ought to be proud of it; and you ought to be glad of such a high
position where you can do so much good, if you will.”

He smiled, and ran his hand down his horse’s leg musingly before he
replied:

“I’ve not thought much of doing good, I tell you frankly. I wasn’t
brought up to think about it; I don’t know that I ever did any good in
my life. I supposed it was only missionaries and women who did that sort
of thing.”

“But you wrong yourself. You have done good in this village. Why, we all
have talked of it; and though it wasn’t done in the usual way--rather
irregularly--still it was doing good.”

He looked down at her astonished.

“Well, here’s a pretty libel! Doing good ‘irregularly’? Why, where have
I done good at all?”

She ran over the names of several sick people in the village whose bills
he had paid, the personal help and interest he had given to many, and,
last of all, she mentioned the case of the village postmaster.

Since Gaston had come, postmasters had been changed. The little
pale-faced man who had first held the position disappeared one night,
and in another twenty-four hours a new one was in his place. Many
stories had gone about. It was rumoured that the little man was short
in his accounts, and had been got out of the way by Gaston Belward.
Archdeacon Varcoe knew the truth, and had said that Gaston’s sin was not
unpardonable, in spite of a few squires and their dames who declared it
was shocking that a man should have such loose ideas, that no good could
come to the county from it, and that he would put nonsense into the
heads of the common people. Alice Wingfield was now to hear Gaston’s
view of the matter.

“So that’s it, eh? Live and let live is doing good? In that case it
is easy to be a saint. What else could a man do? You say that I am
generous--How? What have I spent out of my income on these little
things? My income--how did I get it? I didn’t earn it; neither did my
father. Not a stroke have I done for it. I sit high and dry there in the
Court, they sit low there in the village; and you know how they live.
Well, I give away a little money which these people and their fathers
earned for my father and me; and for that you say I am doing good, and
some other people say I am doing harm--‘dangerous charity,’ and all
that! I say that the little I have done is what is always done where man
is most primitive, by people who never heard ‘doing good’ preached.”

“We must have names for things, you know,” she said.

“I suppose so, where morality and humanity have to be taught as
Christian duty, and not as common manhood.”

“Tell me,” she presently said, “about Sproule, the postmaster.”

“Oh, that? Well, I will. The first time I entered the post-office I saw
there was something on the man’s mind. A youth of twenty-three oughtn’t
to look as he did--married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife
and child. I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to
him: ‘You look seedy; what’s the matter?’ He flushed, and got nervous.
I made up my mind it was money. If I had been here longer, I should have
taken him aside and talked to him like a father. As it was, things slid
along. I was up in town, and here and there. One evening as I came back
from town I saw a nasty-looking Jew arrive. The little postmaster met
him, and they went away together. He was in the scoundrel’s hands;
had been betting, and had borrowed first from the Jew, then from the
Government. The next evening I was just starting down to have a talk
with him, when an official came to my grandfather to swear out a
warrant. I lost no time; got my horse and trap, went down to the office,
gave the boy three minutes to tell me the truth, and then I sent him
away. I fixed it up with the authorities, and the wife and child follow
the youth to America next week. That’s all.”

“He deserved to get free, then?”

“He deserved to be punished, but not as he would have been. There wasn’t
really a vicious spot in the man. And the wife and child--what was a
little justice to the possible happiness of those three? Discretion is a
part of justice, and I used it, as it is used every day in business and
judicial life, only we don’t see it. When it gets public, why, some
one gets blamed. In this case I was the target; but I don’t mind in the
least--not in the least.... Do you think me very startling or lawless?”

“Never lawless; but one could not be quite sure what you would do in any
particular case.” She looked up at him admiringly.

They had not noticed the approach of Archdeacon Varcoe till he was very
near them. His face was troubled. He had seen how earnest was their
conversation, and for some reason it made him uneasy. The girl saw him
first, and ran to meet him. He saw her bright delighted look, and he
sighed involuntarily. “Something has worried you,” she said caressingly.
Then she told him of the accident, and they all turned and went back
towards the Court, Gaston walking his horse. Near the church they met
Sir William and Lady Belward. There were salutations, and presently
Gaston slowly followed his grandfather and grandmother into the
courtyard.

Sir William, looking back, said to his wife: “Do you think that Gaston
should be told?”

“No, no, there is no danger. Gaston, my dear, shall marry Delia
Gasgoyne.”

“Shall marry? wherefore ‘shall’? Really, I do not see.”

“She likes him, she is quite what we would have her, and he is
interested in her. My dear, I have seen--I have watched for a year.”

He put his hand on hers.

“My wife, you are a goodly prophet.”

When Archdeacon Varcoe entered his study on returning, he sat down in
a chair, and brooded long. “She must be told,” he said at last, aloud.
“Yes, yes, at once. God help us both!”




CHAPTER VII. WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET

“Sophie, when you talk with the man, remember that you are near fifty,
and faded. Don’t be sentimental.” So said Mrs. Gasgoyne to Lady Dargan,
as they saw Gaston coming down the ballroom with Captain Maudsley.

“Reine, you try one’s patience. People would say you were not quite
disinterested.”

“You mean Delia! Now, listen. I haven’t any wish but that Gaston Belward
shall see Delia very seldom indeed. He will inherit the property no
doubt, and Sir William told me that he had settled a decent fortune on
him; but for Delia--no--no--no. Strange, isn’t it, when Lady Harriet
over there aches for him, Indian blood and all? And why? Because this is
a good property, and the fellow is distinguished and romantic-looking:
but he is impossible--perfectly impossible. Every line of his face says
shipwreck.”

“You are not usually so prophetic.”

“Of course. But I am prophetic now, for Delia is more than interested,
silly chuck! Did you ever read the story of the other Gaston--Sir
Gaston--whom this one resembles? No? Well, you will find it thinly
disguised in The Knight of Five Joys. He was killed at Naseby, my dear;
killed, not by the enemy, but by a page in Rupert’s cavalry. The page
was a woman! It’s in this one too. Indian and French blood is a sad
tincture. He is not wicked at heart, not at all; but he will do mad
things yet, my dear. For he’ll tire of all this, and then--half-mourning
for some one!”

Gaston enjoyed talking with Mrs. Gasgoyne as to no one else. Other
women often flattered him, she never did. Frankly, crisply, she told him
strange truths, and, without mercy, crumbled his wrong opinions. He had
a sense of humour, and he enjoyed her keen chastening raillery. Besides,
her talk was always an education in the fine lights and shadows of this
social life. He came to her now with a smile, greeted her heartily, and
then turned to Lady Dargan. Captain Maudsley carried off Mrs. Gasgoyne,
and the two were left together--the second time since the evening of
Gaston’s arrival, so many months before. Lady Dargan had been abroad,
and was just returned.

They talked a little on unimportant things, and presently Lady Dargan
said:

“Pardon my asking, but will you tell me why you wore a red ribbon in
your button-hole the first night you came?”

He smiled, and then looked at her a little curiously. “My luggage had
not come, and I wore an old suit of my father’s.”

Lady Dargan sighed deeply.

“The last night he was in England he wore that coat at dinner,” she
murmured.

“Pardon me, Lady Dargan--you put that ribbon there?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes were on him with a candid interest and regard.

“I suppose,” he went on, “that his going was abrupt to you?”

“Very--very!” she answered.

She longed to ask if his father ever mentioned her name, but she dared
not. Besides, as she said to herself, to what good now? But she asked
him to tell her something about his father. He did so quietly, picking
out main incidents, and setting them forth, as he had the ability, with
quiet dramatic strength. He had just finished when Delia Gasgoyne came
up with Lord Dargan.

Presently Lord Dargan asked Gaston if he would bring Lady Dargan to the
other end of the room, where Miss Gasgoyne was to join her mother. As
they went, Lady Dargan said a little breathlessly:

“Will you do something for me?”

“I would do much for you,” was his reply, for he understood!

“If ever you need a friend, if ever you are in trouble, will you let me
know? I wish to take an interest in you. Promise me.”

“I cannot promise, Lady Dargan,” he answered, “for such trouble as I
have had before I have had to bear alone, and the habit is fixed, I
fear. Still, I am grateful to you just the same, and I shall never
forget it. But will you tell me why people regard me from so tragical a
stand-point?”

“Do they?”

“Well, there’s yourself, and there’s Mrs. Gasgoyne, and there’s my uncle
Ian.”

“Perhaps we think you may have trouble because of your uncle Ian.”

Gaston shook his head enigmatically, and then said ironically:

“As they would put it in the North, Lady Dargan, he’ll cut no figure in
that matter. I remember for two.”

“That is right--that is right. Always think that Ian Belward is bad--bad
at heart. He is as fascinating as--”

“As the Snake?”

“--as the Snake, and as cruel! It is the cruelty of wicked selfishness.
Somehow, I forget that I am talking to his nephew. But we all know Ian
Belward--at least, all women do.”

“And at least one man does,” he answered gravely. The next minute Gaston
walked down the room with Delia Gasgoyne on his arm. The girl delicately
showed her preference, and he was aware of it. It pleased him--pleased
his unconscious egoism. The early part of his life had been spent among
Indian women, half-breeds, and a few dull French or English folk, whose
chief charm was their interest in that wild, free life, now so distant.
He had met Delia many times since his coming; and there was that in
her manner--a fine high-bred quality, a sweet speaking reserve--which
interested him. He saw her as the best product of this convention.

She was no mere sentimental girl, for she had known at least six
seasons, and had refused at least six lovers. She had a proud mind, not
wide, suited to her position. Most men had flattered her, had yielded to
her; this man, either with art or instinctively, mastered her, secured
her interest by his personality. Every woman worth the having, down in
her heart, loves to be mastered: it gives her a sense of security, and
she likes to lean; for, strong as she may be at times, she is often
singularly weak. She knew that her mother deprecated “that Belward
enigma,” but this only sent her on the dangerous way.

To-night she questioned him about his life, and how he should spend the
summer. Idling in France, he said. And she? She was not sure; but she
thought that she also would be idling about France in her father’s
yacht. So they might happen to meet. Meanwhile? Well, meanwhile, there
were people coming to stay at Peppingham, their home. August would see
that over. Then freedom.

Was it freedom, to get away from all this--from England and rule and
measure? No, she did not mean quite that. She loved the life with all
its rules; she could not live without it. She had been brought up to
expect and to do certain things. She liked her comforts, her luxuries,
many pretty things about her, and days without friction. To travel? Yes,
with all modern comforts, no long stages, a really good maid, and some
fresh interesting books.

What kind of books? Well, Walter Pater’s essays; “The Light of Asia”;
a novel of that wicked man Thomas Hardy; and something light--“The
Innocents Abroad”--with, possibly, a struggle through De Musset, to keep
up her French.

It did not seem exciting to Gaston, but it did sound honest, and it was
in the picture. He much preferred Meredith, and Swinburne, and Dumas,
and Hugo; but with her he did also like the whimsical Mark Twain.

He thought of suggestions that Lady Belward had often thrown out; of
those many talks with Sir William, excellent friends as they were, in
which the baronet hinted at the security he would feel if there was
a second family of Belwards. What if he--? He smiled strangely, and
shrank.

Marriage? There was the touchstone.

After the dance, when he was taking her to her mother, he saw a pale
intense face looking out to him from a row of others. He smiled, and
the smile that came in return was unlike any he had ever seen Alice
Wingfield wear. He was puzzled. It flashed to him strange pathos,
affection, and entreaty. He took Delia Gasgoyne to her mother, talked to
Lady Belward a little, and then went quietly back to where he had seen
Alice. She was gone. Just then some people from town came to speak to
him, and he was detained. When he was free he searched, but she was
nowhere to be found. He went to Lady Belward. Yes, Miss Wingfield had
gone. Lady Belward looked at Gaston anxiously, and asked him why he was
curious. “Because she’s a lonely-looking little maid,” he said, “and I
wanted to be kind to her. She didn’t seem happy a while ago.”

Lady Belward was reassured.

“Yes, she is a sweet creature, Gaston,” she said, and added: “You are a
good boy to-night, a very good host indeed. It is worth the doing,” she
went on, looking out on the guests proudly. “I did not think I should
ever come to it again with any heart, but I do it for you gladly. Now,
away to your duty,” she added, tapping his breast affectionately with
her fan, “and when everything is done, come and take me to my room.”

Ian Belward passed Gaston as he went. He had seen the affectionate
passages.

“‘For a good boy!’ ‘God bless our Home!”’ he said, ironically.

Gaston saw the mark of his hand on his uncle’s chin, and he forbore
ironical reply.

“The home is worth the blessing,” he rejoined quietly, and passed on.

Three hours later the guests had all gone, and Lady Belward, leaning on
her grandson’s arm, went to her boudoir, while Ian and his father sought
the library. Ian was going next morning. The conference was not likely
to be cheerful.

Inside her boudoir, Lady Belward sank into a large chair, and let her
head fall back and her eyes close. She motioned Gaston to a seat. Taking
one near, he waited. After a time she opened her eyes and drew herself
up.

“My dear,” she said, “I wish to talk with you.”

“I shall be very glad; but isn’t it late? and aren’t you tired,
grandmother?”

“I shall sleep better after,” she responded, gently. She then began
to review the past; her own long unhappiness, Robert’s silence, her
uncertainty as to his fate, and the after hopelessness, made greater
by Ian’s conduct. In low, kind words she spoke of his coming and the
renewal of her hopes, coupled with fear also that he might not fit in
with his new life, and--she could say it now--do something unbearable.
Well, he had done nothing unworthy of their name; had acted, on the
whole, sensibly; and she had not been greatly surprised at certain
little oddnesses, such as the tent in the grounds, an impossible
deer-hunt, and some unusual village charities and innovations on the
estate. Nor did she object to Brillon, though he had sometimes thrown
servants’-hall into disorder, and had caused the stablemen and the
footmen to fight. His ear-rings and hair were startling, but they were
not important. Gaston had been admired by the hunting-field--of which
they were glad, for it was a test of popularity. She saw that most
people liked him. Lord Dunfolly and Admiral Highburn were enthusiastic.
For her own part, she was proud and grateful. She could enjoy every
grain of comfort he gave them; and she was thankful to make up to
Robert’s son what Robert himself had lost--poor boy--poor boy!

Her feelings were deep, strong, and sincere. Her grandson had come,
strong, individual, considerate, and had moved the tender courses of
her nature. At this moment Gaston had his first deep feeling of
responsibility.

“My dear,” she said at last, “people in our position have important
duties. Here is a large estate. Am I not clear? You will never be quite
part of this life till you bring a wife here. That will give you a sense
of responsibility. You will wake up to many things then. Will you not
marry? There is Delia Gasgoyne. Your grandfather and I would be so glad.
She is worthy in every way, and she likes you. She is a good girl. She
has never frittered her heart away; and she would make you proud of
her.”

She reached out an anxious hand, and touched his shoulder. His eyes were
playing with the pattern of the carpet; but he slowly raised them to
hers, and looked for a moment without speaking. Suddenly, in spite of
himself, he laughed--laughed outright, but not loudly.

Marriage? Yes, here was the touchstone. Marry a girl whose family had
been notable for hundreds of years? For the moment he did not remember
his own family. This was one of the times when he was only conscious
that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French,
and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil.
This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to
him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it
all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell;
but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due
picturesqueness. With his grandmother’s proposal there shot up in him
the thought that for him this was absurd. He to pace the world beside
this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions
of the Belwards! Was it, was it possible?

“Pardon me,” he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and
then look curiously at him, “something struck me, and I couldn’t help
it.”

“Was what I said at all ludicrous?”

“Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought
what was natural for me to think, at first blush.”

“There is something wrong,” she urged fearfully. “Is there any reason
why you cannot marry? Gaston,”--she trembled towards him,--“you have not
deceived us--you are not married?”

“My wife is dead, as I told you,” he answered gravely, musingly.

“Tell me: there is no woman who has a claim on you?”

“None that I know of--not one. My follies have not run that way.”

“Thank God! Then there is no reason why you should not marry. Oh, when
I look at you I am proud, I am glad that I live! You bring my youth, my
son back; and I long for a time when I may clasp your child in my arms,
and know that Robert’s heritage will go on and on, and that there will
be made up to him, somehow, all that he lost. Listen: I am an old,
crippled, suffering woman; I shall soon have done with all this coming
and going, and I speak to you out of the wisdom of sorrow. Had Robert
married, all would have gone well. He did not: he got into trouble, then
came Ian’s hand in it all; and you know the end. I fear for you, I do
indeed. You will have sore temptations. Marry--marry soon, and make us
happy.”

He was quiet enough now. He had seen the grotesque image, now he was
facing the thing behind it. “Would it please you so very much?” he said,
resting a hand gently on hers.

“I wish to see a child of yours in my arms, dear.”

“And the woman you have chosen is Delia Gasgoyne?”

“The choice is for you; but you seem to like each other, and we care for
her.”

He sat thinking for a time, then he got up, and said slowly:

“It shall be so, if Miss Gasgoyne will have me. And I hope it may turn
out as you wish.”

Then he stooped and kissed her on the cheek. The proud woman, who had
unbent little in her lifetime, whose eyes had looked out so coldly on
the world, who felt for her son Ian an almost impossible aversion, drew
down his head and kissed it.

“Indian and all?” he asked, with a quaint bitterness.

“Everything, my dear,” she answered. “God bless you! Good-night.”

A few moments after, Gaston went to the library. He heard the voices of
Sir William and his uncle. He knocked and entered. Ian, with exaggerated
courtesy, rose. Gaston, with easy coolness, begged him to sit, lit a
cigar, and himself sat.

“My father has been feeding me with raw truths, Cadet,” said his uncle;
“and I’ve been eating them unseasoned. We have not been, nor are likely
to be, a happy family, unless in your saturnian reign we learn to say,
pax vobiscum--do you know Latin? For I’m told the money-bags and the
stately pile are for you. You are to beget children before the Lord, and
sit in the seat of Justice: ‘tis for me to confer honour on you all by
my genius!”

Gaston sat very still, and, when the speech was ended, said tentatively:

“Why rob yourself?”

“In honouring you all?”

“No, sir; in not yourself having ‘a saturnian reign’.”

“You are generous.”

“No: I came here to ask for a home, for what was mine through my father.
I ask, and want, nothing more--not even to beget children before the
Lord!”

“How mellow the tongue! Well, Cadet, I am not going to quarrel. Here
we are with my father. See, I am willing to be friends. But you mustn’t
expect that I will not chasten your proud spirit now and then. That you
need it, this morning bears witness.”

Sir William glanced from one to the other curiously. He was cold and
calm, and looked worn. He had had a trying half-hour with his son, and
it had told on him.

Gaston at once said to his grandfather: “Of this morning, sir, I will
tell you. I--”

Ian interrupted him.

“No, no; that is between us. Let us not worry my father.”

Sir William smiled ironically.

“Your solicitude is refreshing, Ian.”

“Late fruit is the sweetest, sir.”

Presently Sir William asked Gaston the result of the talk with Lady
Belward. Gaston frankly said that he was ready to do as they wished. Sir
William then said they had chosen this time because Ian was there, and
it was better to have all open and understood.

Ian laughed.

“Taming the barbarian! How seriously you all take it. I am the jester
for the King. In the days of the flood I’ll bring the olive leaf. You
are all in the wash of sentiment: you’ll come to the wicked uncle one
day for common-sense. But, never mind, Cadet; we are to be friends. Yes,
really. I do not fear for my heritage, and you’ll need a helping hand
one of these days. Besides, you are an interesting fellow. So, if you
will put up with my acid tongue, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t hit
it off.”

To Sir William’s great astonishment, Ian held out his hand with a genial
smile, which was tolerably honest, for his indulgent nature was as
capable of great geniality as incapable of high moral conceptions. Then,
he had before his eye, “Monmouth” and “The King of Ys.”

Gaston took his hand, and said: “I have no wish to be an enemy.”

Sir William rose, looking at them both. He could not understand Ian’s
attitude, and he distrusted. Yet peace was better than war. Ian’s truce
was also based on a belief that Gaston would make skittles of things. A
little while afterwards Gaston sat in his room, turning over events
in his mind. Time and again his thoughts returned to the one
thing--marriage. That marriage with his Esquimaux wife had been in one
sense none at all, for the end was sure from the beginning. It was
in keeping with his youth, the circumstances, the life, it had no
responsibilities. But this? To become an integral part of the life--the
English country gentleman; to be reduced, diluted, to the needs of the
convention, and no more? Let him think of the details:--a justice of
the peace: to sit on a board of directors; to be, perhaps, Master of the
Hounds; to unite with the Bishop in restoring the cathedral; to make
an address at the annual flower show. His wife to open bazaars, give
tennis-parties, and be patron to the clergy; himself at last, no doubt,
to go into Parliament; to feel the petty, or serious, responsibilities
of a husband and a landlord. Monotony, extreme decorum, civility to
the world; endless politeness to his wife; with boys at Eton and girls
somewhere else; and the kind of man he must be to do his duty in all and
to all!

It seemed impossible. He rose and paced the floor. Never till this
moment had the full picture of his new life come close. He felt
stifled. He put on a cap, and, descending the stairs, went out into
the court-yard and walked about, the cool air refreshing him. Gradually
there settled upon him a stoic acceptance of the conditions. But would
it last?

He stood still and looked at the pile of buildings before him; then he
turned towards the little church close by, whose spire and roof could be
seen above the wall. He waved his hand, as when within it on the day of
his coming, and said with irony:

“Now for the marriage-linen, Sir Gaston!”

He heard a low knocking at the gate. He listened. Yes, there was no
mistake. He went to it, and asked quietly:

“Who is there?”

There was no reply. Still the knocking went on. He quietly opened the
gate, and threw it back. A figure in white stepped through and slowly
passed him. It was Alice Wingfield. He spoke to her. She did not answer.
He went close to her and saw that she was asleep!

She was making for the entrance door. He took her hand gently, and led
her into a side door, and on into the ballroom. She moved towards a
window through which the moonlight streamed, and sat on a cushioned
bench beneath it. It was the spot where he had seen her at the dance.
She leaned forward, looking into space, as she did at him then. He moved
and got in her line of vision.

The picture was weird. She wore a soft white chamber-gown, her hair
hung loose on her shoulders, her pale face cowled it in. The look
was inexpressibly sad. Over her fell dim, coloured lights from the
stained-glass windows; and shadowy ancestors looked silently down from
the armour-hung walls.

To Gaston, collected as he was, it gave an ominous feeling. Why did she
come here even in her sleep? What did that look mean? He gazed intently
into her eyes.

All at once her voice came low and broken, and a sob followed the words:

“Gaston, my brother, my brother!”

He stood for a moment stunned, gazing helplessly at her passive figure.

“Gaston, my brother!” he repeated to himself. Then the painful matter
dawned upon him. This girl, the granddaughter of the rector of the
parish, was his father’s daughter--his own sister. He had a sudden
spring of new affection--unfelt for those other relations, his by the
rights of the law and the gospel. The pathos of the thing caught him in
the throat--for her how pitiful, how unhappy! He was sure that, somehow,
she had only come to know of it since the afternoon. Then there had been
so different a look in her face!

One thing was clear: he had no right to this secret, and it must be
for now as if it had never been. He came to her, and took her hand. She
rose. He led her from the room, out into the court-yard, and from there
through the gate into the road.

All was still. They passed over to the rectory. Just inside the gate,
Gaston saw a figure issue from the house, and come quickly towards them.
It was the rector, excited, anxious.

Gaston motioned silence, and pointed to her. Then he briefly whispered
how she had come. The clergyman said that he had felt uneasy about her,
had gone to her room, and was just issuing in search of her. Gaston
resigned her, softly advised not waking her, and bade the clergyman
good-night.

But presently he turned, touched the arm of the old man, and said
meaningly:

“I know.”

The rector’s voice shook as he replied: “You have not spoken to her?”

“No.”

“You will not speak of it?”

“No.”

“Unless I should die, and she should wish it?”

“Always as she wishes.”

They parted, and Gaston returned to the Court.




CHAPTER VIII. HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION

The next morning Brillon brought a note from Ian Belward, which said
that he was starting, and asked Gaston to be sure and come to Paris.
The note was carelessly friendly. After reading it, he lay thinking.
Presently he chanced to see Jacques look intently at him.

“Well, Brillon, what is it?” he asked genially. Jacques had come on
better than Gaston had hoped for, but the light play of his nature was
gone--he was grave, almost melancholy; and, in his way, as notable as
his master. Their life in London had changed him much. A valet in St.
James’s Street was not a hunting comrade on the Coppermine River. Often
when Jacques was left alone he stood at the window looking out on the
gay traffic, scarcely stirring; his eyes slow, brooding. Occasionally,
standing so, he would make the sacred gesture. One who heard him
swear now and then, in a calm, deliberate way,--at the cook and the
porter,--would have thought the matters in strange contrast. But his
religion was a central habit, followed as mechanically as his appetite
or the folding of his master’s clothes. Besides, like most woodsmen, he
was superstitious. Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm
hand till his manner had become informed by the new duties. Jacques’s
greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables. Here were
Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful. But he touched the
highest point of his London experience when they rode in the Park.

In this Gaston remained singular. He rode always with Jacques. Perhaps
he wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he
liked this touch of drama; or both. It created notice, criticism, but
he was superior to that. Time and again people asked him to ride, but
he always pleaded another engagement. He would then be seen with Jacques
plus Jacques’s earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the
Row. Jacques’s eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at
these times.

No figures in the Park were so striking. There was nothing bizarre,
but Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at
their waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a
grave distance. Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the
hours when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie,
savannah, ice-plain, alkali desert. When, dismounting, the horses were
taken and they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip
across Jacques’s shoulders without speaking. This was their only ritual
of camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed.
Never had man such a servant. No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he
found Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on
this morning, after a strange night.

“What is it, Jacques?” he repeated.

The old name! Jacques shivered a little with pleasure. Presently he
broke out with:

“Monsieur, when do we go back?”

“Go back where?”

“To the North, monsieur.”

“What’s in your noddle now, Brillon?”

The impatient return to “Brillon” cut Jacques like a whip.

“Monsieur,” he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening
nervously, “we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the
great music here: is it enough? Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and
you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock. When we lie on the Plains of
Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then. You remember when we
sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied
together? Well, we were as babes in blankets. In the Prairie of the Ten
Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch
them shake with the coffee-cup. Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough?
You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?”

Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers
through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with
sharp impatience, said:

“Go to hell!”

The little man’s face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with
a gasp. Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the
shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the
bed; but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively
drew a sleeve across his eyes.

Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him. He dropped his eyes,
slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down.

Jacques made ready. He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the
shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say:

“You damned little fool, I’m not worth it!” Jacques’s face shone.

“Every great man has his fool--alors!” was the happy reply.

“Jacques,” Gaston presently said, “what’s on your mind?”

“I saw--last night, monsieur,” he said.

“You saw what?”

“I saw you in the court-yard with the lady.” Gaston was now very grave.

“Did you recognise her?”

“No: she moved all as a spirit.”

“Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I’m going to tell you,
though, two things; and--where’s your string of beads?”

Jacques drew out his rosary.

“That’s all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister. And
that is all, till there’s need for you to know more.”

In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess,
but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston
was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan’s, and dined at Lord
Dunfolly’s. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced
to preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local
brewer, who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the
party, a knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it
“kindred aims,” he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston’s button-hole.
Jacques, who was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his
master’s face, and he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they
two were in trouble with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this
same thing rudely: how Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish
softness: “Take it away.” And immediately after the man did so.

Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say
down at him, with a curious obliqueness:

“If you please!”

The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers
dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting
began. Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced
Mr. Babbs as “a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county,
who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his
private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its
purpose.”

When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: “That’s a trifle vague,
Belward.”

“How can one treat him with importance?”

“He’s the sort that makes a noise one way or another.”

“Yes. Obituary: ‘At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S.
G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council. Sir S. G. Babbs,
it will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation
of Vice, and--’”

“That’s droll!”

“Why not Vice? ‘Twould be just the same in his mind. He doesn’t give
from a sense of moral duty. Not he; he’s a bungowawen!”

“What is that?”

“That’s Indian. You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with
beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these
fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty
Men of the Kimash Hills. And they’ll do that while the rum lasts.
Meanwhile you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the
gods!... And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn’t we?”

The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support
Sir William Belward. They were interested to see how Gaston would carry
it off.

Mr. Babbs’s speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man.
More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to
close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers,
artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at
political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in
getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those
who promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in
berating their opponents, he said:

“There’s a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o’-war and
sailing-ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any
officers ever tell me--the fo’castle for the men and the quarter-deck
for the officers, and what’s English to one is Greek to the other. Well,
this was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking,
sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, ‘Allow me to
speak, me noble lord,’ and follow this by hitting some one of the party
wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.]
Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble
lordship. Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what
it was all about. That is much the way with politics, when it is played
fair. But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born
the same, nor can we live the same. One man is born a brute, and another
a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the
other hasn’t. Now, I’ve lived where, as they say, one man is as good
as another. But he isn’t, there or here. A weak man can’t run with a
strong. We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against
something. It is over. Are you sure you have got what was meant clear in
your mind? [Laughter, and ‘Blowed if we’ave!’] Very well; do not worry
about that. We have been playing a game of ‘Allow me to speak, me noble
lord!’ And who is going to help you to get the most out of your country
and your life isn’t easy to know. But we can get hold of a few clear
ideas, and measure things against them. I know and have talked with a
good many of you here [‘That’s so! That’s so!’], and you know my ideas
pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen the
countries where freedom is ‘on the job,’ as they say. Now, don’t put
your faith in men and in a party that cry, ‘We will make all things
new,’ to the tune of, ‘We are a band of brothers.’ Trust in one that
says, ‘You cannot undo the centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall,
let in the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.’ And
that is the real difference between the other party and mine; and these
political games of ours come to that chiefly.”

Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for
Mr. Babbs.

Suddenly a man’s strong, arid voice came from the crowd:

“‘Allow me to speak, me noble lord!’ [Great laughter. Then a pause.]
Where’s my old chum, Jock Lawson?”

The audience stilled. Gaston’s face went grave. He replied, in a firm,
clear voice.

“In Heaven, my man. You’ll never see him more.” There was silence for a
moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause. Presently John Cawley,
the landlord of “The Whisk o’ Barley,” made towards Gaston. Gaston
greeted him, and inquired after his wife. He was told that she was very
ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come. Gaston had dreaded
this hour, though he knew it would come one day. A woman on a death-bed
has a right to ask for and get the truth. He had forborne telling her of
her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with
asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a
dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily,
say more. But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared,
wished the truth, whatever it might be.

Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who
it was had called out at him. A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told,
who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn
without stopping to say: “Where’s my old chum, Jock Lawson?” In the past
he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together. He had learned
from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada.

When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present.

“An original speech, upon my word, Belward,” said Captain Maudsley.

Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came.

“You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you
remember? Devil of a speech that! But, if you will ‘allow me to speak,
me noble lord,’ you are the rankest Conservative of us all.”

“Don’t you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic
to an autocracy, and vice versa?”

“I don’t know it, and I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Make them think as you do.”

He waved his hand to the departing crowd.

“I don’t. I try to think as they do. I am always in touch with the
primitive mind.”

“You ought to do great things here, Belward,” said the other seriously.
“You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster.”

“Don’t be mistaken; I am only adaptable. There’s frank confession.”

At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large,
self-conscious way. Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted,
and the fluffy gentleman retired. When he got out of earshot in
the shadows, he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying:
“Half-breed upstart!” Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his
coachman.

Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to “The Whisk o’ Barley.” Gaston
was now intent to tell the whole truth. He wished that he had done it
before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself. Yet
he shrank. Presently he thought:

“What is the matter with me? Before I came here, if I had an idea I
stuck to it, and didn’t have any nonsense when I knew I was right. I am
getting sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of
feeling or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn’t better than
the bad tooth in. When I really get sentimental I’ll fold my Arab
tent--so help me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!”

A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley’s bed, the landlord handing
him a glass of hot grog, Jock’s mother eyeing him feverishly from the
quilt. Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then
told Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him. He put it gently on the
woman’s head. The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously. He sat
down again, and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of
Jock’s life as he knew it.

Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman’s face was cowled
in the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston’s voice went on in a low
monotone, to the ticking of the great clock in the next room. Gaston
watched her face, and there came to him like an inspiration little
things Jock did, which would mean more to his mother than large
adventures. Her lips moved now and again, even a smile flickered. At
last Gaston came to his father’s own death and the years that followed;
then the events in Labrador.

He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into
the mother’s eyes, and tell the story. He did not know how dramatically
he told it--how he etched it without a waste word. When he came to that
scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he
softened the details greatly. He did not tell it as he told it at the
Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear. There
was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door
open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near.

How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there,
was all told; and then he paused. He turned a little sick as he saw the
white face before him. She drew herself up, her fingers caught away
the night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and
then, with a wild, moaning voice, cried out:

“You killed my boy! You killed my boy! You killed my boy!”

Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush
behind him. He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his
hand... and fell backwards against the bed.

The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it.

“My Jock, my poor boy!” she cried in delirium now. Cawley had thrown his
arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock’s poaching friend.

The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to
Gaston:

“You have killed my boy!” She kissed Gaston’s bloody face.

A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper
room Jacques was caring for his master.




CHAPTER IX. HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS

Gaston lay for many days at “The Whisk o’ Barley.” During that time the
inn was not open to customers. The woman also for two days hung at
the point of death, and then rallied. She remembered the events of the
painful night, and often asked after Gaston. Somehow, her horror of her
son’s death at his hands was met by the injury done him now. She vaguely
felt that there had been justice and punishment. She knew that in the
room at Labrador Gaston Belward had been scarcely less mad than her son.

Gaston, as soon as he became conscious, said that his assailant must be
got out of the way of the police, and to that end bade Jacques send for
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne. Mr. Gasgoyne and Sir William arrived at the same
time, but Gaston was unconscious again. Jacques, however, told them
what his master’s wishes were, and they were carried out; Jock’s friend
secretly left England forever. Sir William and Mr. Gasgoyne got the
whole tale from the landlord, whom they asked to say nothing publicly.

Lady Belward drove down each day, and sat beside him for a couple of
hours-silent, solicitous, smoothing his pillow or his wasting hand. The
brain had been injured, and recovery could not be immediate. Hovey the
housekeeper had so begged to be installed as nurse, that her wish was
granted, and she was with him night and day. Now she shook her head at
him sadly, now talked in broken sentences to herself, now bustled about
silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court.
Every day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village
Gaston’s humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him
when some one said it was “more nor gabble, that theer saying o’ the
poacher at the meetin.’”

But the landlord and his wife kept silence, the officers of the law took
no action, and the town and country newspapers could do no more than
speak of “A vicious assault upon the heir of Ridley Court.” It had
become the custom now to leave Ian out of that question. But the wonder
died as all wonders do, and Gaston made his fight for health.

The day before he was removed to the Court, Mrs. Cawley was helped
up-stairs to see him. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed. Lady Belward and
Mrs. Gasgoyne were present. The woman made her respects, and then stood
at Gaston’s bedside. He looked up with a painful smile.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked. “I’ve almost paid!”

He touched his bandaged head.

“It ain’t for mothers to forgi’e the thing,” she replied, in a steady
voice, “but I can forgi’e the man. ‘Twere done i’ madness--there beant
the will workin’ i’ such. ‘Twere a comfort that he’d a prayin’ over un.”

Gaston took the gnarled fingers in his. It had never struck him
how dreadful a thing it was--so used had he been to death in many
forms--till he had told the story to this mother.

“Mrs. Cawley,” he said, “I can’t make up to you what Jock would have
been; but I can do for you in one way as much as Jock. This house is
yours from to-day.”

He drew a deed from the coverlet, and handed it to her. He had got it
from Sir William that morning. The poor and the crude in mind can only
understand an objective emotion, and the counters for these are this
world’s goods. Here was a balm in Gilead. The love of her child was
real, but the consolation was so practical to Mrs. Cawley that the lips
which might have cursed, said:

“Ah, sir, the wind do be fittin’ the shore lamb! I’ the last Judgen,
I’ll no speak agen ‘ee. I be sore fretted harm come to ‘ee.”

At this Mrs. Gasgoyne rose, and in her bustling way dismissed the
grateful peasant, who fondled the deed and called eagerly down the
stairs to her husband as she went.

Mrs. Gasgoyne then came back, sat down, and said: “Now you needn’t fret
about that any longer--barbarian!” she added, shaking a finger. “Didn’t
I say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country
talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories, and
raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed. You
were to have lunched with us the next day--I had asked Lady Harriet to
meet you, too!--and you didn’t; and you have wretched patches where
your hair ought to be. How can you promise that you’ll not make a madder
sensation some day?”

Gaston smiled up at her. Her fresh honesty, under the guise of banter,
was always grateful to him. He shook his head, smiled, and said nothing.

She went on.

“I want a promise that you will do what your godfather and godmother
will swear for you.”

She acted on him like wine.

“Of course, anything. Who are my godfather and godmother?”

She looked him steadily, warmly in the eyes: “Warren and myself.”

Now he understood: his promise to his grandmother and grandfather. So,
they had spoken! He was sure that Mrs. Gasgoyne had objected. He
knew that behind her playful treatment of the subject there was real
scepticism of himself. It put him on his mettle, and yet he knew she
read him deeper than any one else, and flattered him least.

He put out his hand, and took hers.

“You take large responsibilities,” he said, “but I will try and justify
you--honestly, yes.”

In her hearty way, she kissed him on the cheek. “There,” she responded,
“if you and Delia do make up your minds, see that you treat her
well. And you are to come, just as soon as you are able, to stay at
Peppingham. Delia, silly child, is anxious, and can’t see why she
mustn’t call with me now.”

In his room at the Court that night, Gaston inquired of Jacques about
Alice Wingfield, and was told that on the day of the accident she had
left with her grandfather for the Continent. He was not sorry. For his
own sake he could have wished an understanding between them. But now he
was on the way to marriage, and it was as well that there should be no
new situations. The girl could not wish the thing known. There would
be left him, in this case, to befriend her should it ever be needed. He
remembered the spring of pleasure he felt when he first saw other faces
like his father’s--his grandfather’s, his grandmother’s. But this
girl’s was so different to him; having the tragedy of the lawless, that
unconscious suffering stamped by the mother upon the child. There was,
however, nothing to be done. He must wait.

Two days later Lady Dargan called to inquire after him. He was lying in
his study with a book, and Lady Belward sent to ask him if he would care
to see her and Lord Dargan’s nephew, Cluny Vosse. Lady Belward did not
come; Sir William brought them. Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled
more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to
hear of his illness. Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse,
who at once was his admirer. Gaston liked the youth. He was fresh,
high-minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular
vanity save for his personal appearance. His face was ever radiant
with health, shining with satisfaction. People liked him, and did not
discount it by saying that he had nothing in him. Gaston liked him most
because he was so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest.

Now Cluny sat down, tapped the crown of his hat, looked at him cheerily,
and said:

“Got in a cracker, didn’t he?”

Gaston nodded, amused.

“The fellows at Brooke’s had a talkee-talkee, and they’d twenty
different stories. Of course it was rot. We were all cut up though
and hoped you’d pull through. Of course there couldn’t be any doubt of
that--you’ve been through too many, eh?”

Cluny always assumed that Gaston had had numberless tragical adventures
which, if told, must make Dumas turn in his grave with envy.

Gaston smiled, and laid a hand upon the other’s knee. “I’m not
shell-proof, Vosse, and it was rather a narrow squeak, I’m told. But I’m
kept, you see, for a worse fate and a sadder.”

“I say, Belward, you don’t mean that! Your eyes go so queer sometimes,
that a chap doesn’t know what to think. You ought to live to a hundred.
You’ll have to. You’ve got it all--”

“Oh no, my boy, I haven’t got anything.” He waved his hand pleasantly
towards his grandfather. “I’m on the knees of the gods merely.”

Cluny turned on Sir William.

“It isn’t any secret, is it, sir? He gets the lot, doesn’t he?”

Sir William’s occasional smile came.

“I fancy there’s some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the
title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile.”

He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy,
vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted.

“No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can’t he?”

Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston’s illness,
and showing a tactful concern. But the nephew persisted:

“I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it. She
wouldn’t go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly’s, and, of course,
I didn’t go. And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and
she’s ripping.”

Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and
Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere. Presently she said that
they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if
he chanced to be abroad would he come? He said that he intended to visit
his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them
for a short time.

She looked astonished. “With your uncle Ian!”

“Yes. He is to show me art-life, and all that.”

She looked troubled. He saw that she wished to say something.

“Yes, Lady Dargan?” he asked.

She spoke with fluttering seriousness.

“I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not
wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle.”

“Why?”

He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was
sentimental.

“Because there will be trouble. I can see it. You may trust a woman’s
instinct; and I know that man!” He did not reply at once, but presently
said:

“I fancy I must keep my promise.”

“What is the book you are reading?” she said, changing the subject, for
Sir William was listening.

He opened it, and smiled musingly.

“It is called Affairs of Some Consequence in the Reign of Charles I.
In reading it I seemed to feel that it was incorrect, and my mind
kept wandering away into patches of things--incidents, scenes, bits
of talk--as I fancied they really were, not apocryphal or ‘edited’ as
here.”

“I say,” said Cluny, “that’s rum, isn’t it?”

“For instance,” Gaston continued, “this tale of King Charles and
Buckingham.” He read it. “Now here is the scene as I picture it.” In
quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from a different stand-point.

Sir William stared curiously at Gaston, then felt for some keys in his
pocket. He got up and rang the bell. Gaston was still talking. He gave
the keys to Falby with a whispered word. In a few moments Falby placed a
small leather box beside Sir William, and retired at a nod. Sir William
presently said: “Where did you read those things?”

“I do not know that I ever read them.”

“Did your father tell you them?”

“I do not remember so, though he may have.”

“Did you ever see this box?”

“Never before.”

“You do not know what is in it?”

“Not in the least.”

“And you have never seen this key?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“It is very strange.” He opened the box. “Now, here are private papers
of Sir Gaston Belward, more than two hundred years old, found almost
fifty years ago by myself in the office of our family solicitor.
Listen.”

He then began to read from the faded manuscript. A mysterious feeling
pervaded the room. Once or twice Cluny gave a dry nervous kind of laugh.
Much of what Gaston had said was here in stately old-fashioned language.
At a certain point the MS. ran:

“I drew back and said, ‘As your grace will have it, then--“’

Here Gaston came to a sitting posture, and interrupted.

“Wait, wait!”

He rose, caught one of two swords that were crossed on the wall, and
stood out.

“This is how it was. ‘As your grace will have it, then, to no waste
of time!’ We fell to. First he came carefully and made strange feints,
learned at King Louis’s Court, to try my temper. But I had had these
tricks of my cousin Secord, and I returned his sport upon him. Then he
came swiftly, and forced me back upon the garden wall. I gave to him
foot by foot, for he was uncommon swift and dexterous. He pinched me
sorely once under the knee, and I returned him one upon the wrist, which
sent a devilish fire into his eyes. At that his play became so delicate
and confusing that I felt I should go dizzy if it stayed; so I tried the
one great trick cousin Secord taught me, making to run him through, as
a last effort. The thing went wrong, but checking off my blunder he
blundered too,--out of sheer wonder, perhaps, at my bungling,--and I
disarmed him. So droll was it that I laughed outright, and he, as quick
in humour as in temper, stood hand on hip, and presently came to a
smile. With that my cousin Secord cried: ‘The king! the king!’ I got me
up quickly--”

Here Gaston, who had in a kind of dream acted the whole scene, swayed
with faintness, and Cluny caught him, saving him from a fall. Cluny’s
colour was all gone. Lady Dargan had sat dazed, and Sir William’s face
was anxious, puzzled.

A few hours later Sir William was alone with Gaston, who was recovered
and cool.

“Gaston,” he said, “I really do not understand this faculty of memory,
or whatever it is. Have you any idea how you come by it?”

“Have we any idea how life comes and goes, sir?”

“I confess not. I confess not, really.”

“Well, I’m in the dark about it too; but I sometimes fancy that I’m
mixed up with that other Gaston.”

“It sounds fantastic.”

“It is fantastic. Now, here is this manuscript, and here is a letter I
wrote this morning. Put them together.”

Sir William did so.

“The handwriting is singularly like.”

“Well,” continued Gaston, smiling whimsically, “suppose that I am Sir
Gaston Belward, Baronet, who is thought to lie in the church yonder, the
title is mine, isn’t it?”

Sir William smiled also.

“The evidence is scarce enough to establish succession.”

“But there would be no succession. A previous holder of the title isn’t
dead: ergo, the present holder, has no right.”

Gaston had shaded his eyes with his hand, and he was watching Sir
William’s face closely, out of curiosity chiefly. Sir William regarded
the thing with hesitating humour.

“Well, well, suppose so. The property was in the hands of a younger
branch of the family then. There was no entail, as now.”

“Wasn’t there?” said Gaston enigmatically.

He was thinking of some phrases in a manuscript which he had found in
this box.

“Perhaps where these papers came from there are others,” he added.

Sir William lifted his eyebrows ironically. “I hardly think so.”

Gaston laughed, not wishing him to take the thing at all seriously. He
continued airily:

“It would be amusing if the property went with the title after all,
wouldn’t it, sir?”

Sir William got to his feet and said testily: “That should never be
while I lived!”

“Of course not, sir.”

Sir William saw the bull, and laughed, heartily for him.

They bade each other good-night.

“I’ll have a look in the solicitor’s office all the same,” said Gaston
to himself.




CHAPTER X. HE COMES TO “THE WAKING OF THE FIRE”

A few days afterwards Gaston joined a small party at Peppingham. Without
any accent life was made easy for him. He was alone much, and yet, to
himself, he seemed to have enough of company.

The situation did not impose itself conspicuously. Delia gave him no
especial reason to be vain. She had not an exceeding wit, but she had
charm, and her talk was interesting to Gaston, who had come, for the
first time, into somewhat intimate relations with an English girl. He
was struck with her conventional delicacy and honour on one side, and
the limitation of her ideas on the other. But with it all she had some
slight touch of temperament which lifted her from the usual level. And
just now her sprightliness was more marked than it had ever been.

Her great hour seemed come to her. She knew that there had been talk
among the elders, and what was meant by Gaston’s visit. Still, they were
not much alone together. Gaston saw her mostly with others. Even a woman
with a tender strain for a man knows what will serve for her ascendancy:
the graciousness of her disposition, the occasional flash of her
mother’s temper, and her sense of being superior to a situation--the
gift of every well-bred English girl.

Cluny Vosse was also at the house, and his devotion was divided between
Delia and Gaston. Cluny was a great favourite, and Agatha Gasgoyne, who
had a wild sense of humour, egged him on with her sister, which gave
Delia enough to do. At last Cluny, in a burst of confidence, declared
that he meant to propose to Delia. Agatha then became serious, and said
that Delia was at least four years older than himself, that he was just
her--Agatha’s--age, and that the other match would be very unsuitable.
This put Cluny on Delia’s defence, and he praised her youth, and hinted
at his own elderliness. He had lived, he had seen It (Cluny called the
world and all therein “It”), he was aged; he was in the large eye of
experience; he had outlived the vices and the virtues of his time,
which, told in his own naive staccato phrases, made Agatha hug herself.
She advised him to go and ask Mr. Belward’s advice; begged him not to
act until he had done so. And Cluny, who was blind as a bat when a woman
mocked him, went to Gaston and said:

“See, old chap,--I know you don’t mind my calling you that--I’ve come
for advice. Agatha said I’d better. A fellow comes to a time when he
says, ‘Here, I want a shop of my own,’ doesn’t he? He’s seen It, he’s
had It all colours, he’s ready for family duties, and the rest. That’s
so, isn’t it?”

Gaston choked back a laugh, and, purposely putting himself on the wrong
scent, said:

“And does Agatha agree?”

“Agatha? Come, Belward, that youngster! Agatha’s only in on a
sisterly-brotherly basis. Now, see I’ve got a little load of L s. d.,
and I’m to get more, especially if Uncle Dick keeps on thinking I am
artless. Well, why shouldn’t I marry?”

“No reason against it, if husband and father in you yearn for bibs and
petticoats.”

“I say, Belward, don’t laugh!”

“I never was more serious. Who is the girl?”

“She looks up to you as I do-of course that’s natural; and if it comes
off, no one’ll have a jollier corner chez nous. It’s Delia.”

“Delia? Delia who?”

“Why, Delia Gasgoyne. I haven’t done the thing quite regular, I know. I
ought to have gone to her people first; but they know all about me,
and so does Delia, and I’m on the spot, and it wouldn’t look well to be
taking advantage of that with her father and mother-they’d feel bound to
be hospitable. So I’ve just gone on my own tack, and I’ve come to Agatha
and you. Agatha said to ask you if I’d better speak to Delia now.”

“My dear Cluny, are you very much in love?”

“That sounds religious, doesn’t it--a kind of Nonconformist business? I
think she’s the very finest. A fellow’d hold himself up, ‘d be a deuce
of a swell--and, hang it all, I hate breakfasting alone!”

“Yes, yes, Cluny; but what about a pew in church, with regular
attendance, and a justice of the peace, and little Cluny Vosses on the
carpet?”

Cluny’s face went crimson.

“I say, Belward, I’ve seen It all, of course; I know It backwards, and
I’m not squeamish, but that sounds--flippant-that, with her.”

Gaston reached out and caught the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t do it, Cluny.
Spare yourself. It couldn’t come off. Agatha knows that, I fancy. She is
a little sportsman. I might let you go and speak; but I think my chances
are better than yours, Cluny. Hadn’t you better let me try first? Then,
if I fail, your chances are still the same, eh?”

Cluny gasped. His warm face went pale, then shot to purple, and finally
settled into a grey ruddiness. “Belward,” he said at last, “I didn’t
know; upon my soul, I didn’t know, or I’d have cut off my head first.”

“My dear Cluny, you shall have your chance; but let me go first, I’m
older.”

“Belward, don’t take me for a fool. Why, my trying what you go to do is
like--is like--”

Cluny’s similes failed to come.

“Like a fox and a deer on the same trail?”

“I don’t understand that. Like a yeomanry steeplechase to Sandown--is
that it? Belward, I’m sorry. Playing it so low on a chap you like!”

“Don’t say a word, Cluny; and, believe me, you haven’t yet seen all of
It. There’s plenty of time. When you really have had It, you will learn
to say of a woman, not that she’s the very finest, and that you hate
breakfasting alone, but something that’ll turn your hair white, or keep
you looking forty when you’re sixty.”

That evening Gaston dressed with unusual care. When he entered the
drawing-room, he looked as handsome as a man need in this world.
His illness had refined his features and form, and touched off his
cheerfulness with a fine melancholy. Delia glowed as she saw the
admiring glances sent his way, but burned with anger when she also saw
that he was to take in Lady Gravesend to dinner; for Lady Gravesend
had spoken slightingly of Gaston--had, indeed, referred to his “nigger
blood!” And now her mother had sent her in to dinner on his arm, she
affable, too affable by a great deal. Had she heard the dry and subtle
suggestion of Gaston’s talk, she would, however, have justified her
mother.

About half past nine Delia was in the doorway, talking to one of the
guests, who, at the call of some one else, suddenly left her. She heard
a voice behind her. “Will you not sing?”

She thrilled, and turned to say: “What shall I sing, Mr. Belward?”

“The song I taught you the other day--‘The Waking of the Fire.’”

“But I’ve never sung it before anybody.”

“Do I not count?--But, there, that’s unfair! Believe me, you sing it
very well.”

She lifted her eyes to his:

“You do not pay compliments, and I believe you. Your ‘very well’ means
much. If you say so, I will do my best.”

“I say so. You are amenable. Is that your mood to-night?” He smiled
brightly.

Her eyes flashed with a sweet malice.

“I am not at all sure. It depends on how your command to sing is
justified.”

“You cannot help but sing well.”

“Why?”

“Because I will help you--make you.”

This startled her ever so little. Was there some fibre of cruelty in
him, some evil in this influence he had over her? She shrank, and yet
again she said that she would rather have his cruelty than another man’s
tenderness, so long as she knew that she had his--She paused, and did
not say the word. She met his eyes steadily--their concentration dazed
her--then she said almost coldly, her voice sounding far away:

“How, make me?”

“How fine, how proud!” he said to himself, then added:

“I meant ‘make’ in the helpful sense. I know the song: I’ve heard it
sung, I’ve sung it; I’ve taught you; my mind will act on yours, and you
will sing it well.”

“Won’t you sing it yourself? Do, please.”

“No; to-night I wish to hear you.”

“Why?”

“I will tell you later. Can you play the accompaniment? If not, I--”

“Oh, will you? I could sing it then, I think. You played it so
beautifully the other day--with all those strange chords.”

He smiled.

“It is one of the few things that I can play. I always had a taste
for music; and up in one of the forts there was an old melodeon, so I
hammered away for years. I had to learn difficult things at the start,
or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that’s how I can play
one or two of Beethoven’s symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a
few others, and go a cropper with a waltz. Will you come?”

They moved to the piano. No one at first noticed them. When he sat down,
he said:

“You remember the words?”

“Yes, I learned them by heart.”

“Good!”

He gently struck the chords. His gentleness had, however, a firmness,
a deep persuasiveness, which drew every face like a call. A few chords
waving, as it were, over the piano, and then he whispered:

“Now.”

“Please go on for a minute longer,” she begged.

“My throat feels dry all at once.”

“Face away from the rest, towards me,” he said gently.

She did so. His voice took a note softly, and held it. Presently her
voice as softly joined it, his stopped, and hers went on:

          “In the lodge of the Mother of Men,
          In the land of Desire,
          Are the embers of fire,
          Are the ashes of those who return,
          Who return to the world:
          Who flame at the breath
          Of the Mockers of Death.
          O Sweet, we will voyage again
          To the camp of Love’s fire,
             Nevermore to return!”

“How am I doing?” she said at the end of this verse. She really did
not know--her voice seemed an endless distance away. But she felt the
stillness in the drawing-room.

“Well,” he said. “Now for the other. Don’t be afraid; let your voice,
let yourself, go.”

“I can’t let myself go.”

“Yes, you can: just swim with the music.”

She did swim with it. Never before had Peppingham drawing-room heard a
song like this; never before, never after, did any of Delia Gasgoyne’s
friends hear her sing as she did that night. And Lady Gravesend
whispered for a week afterwards that Delia Gasgoyne sang a wild love
song in the most abandoned way with that colonial Belward. Really a song
of the most violent sentiment!

There had been witchery in it all. For Gaston lifted the girl on the
waves of his music, and did what he pleased with her, as she sang:

       “O love, by the light of thine eye
        We will fare oversea,
        We will be
        As the silver-winged herons that rest
        By the shallows,
        The shallows of sapphire stone;
        No more shall we wander alone.
        As the foam to the shore
        Is my spirit to thine;
        And God’s serfs as they fly,--
        The Mockers of Death
        They will breathe on the embers of fire:
        We shall live by that breath,--
        Sweet, thy heart to my heart,
        As we journey afar,
        No more, nevermore, to return!”

When the song was ended there was silence, then an eager murmur, and
requests for more; but Gaston, still lengthening the close of the
accompaniment, said quietly:

“No more. I wanted to hear you sing that song only.”

He rose.

“I am so very hot,” she said.

“Come into the hall.”

They passed into the long corridor, and walked up and down, for a time
in silence.

“You felt that music?” he asked at last.

“As I never felt music before,” she replied.

“Do you know why I asked you to sing it?”

“How should I know?”

“To see how far you could go with it.”

“How far did I go?”

“As far as I expected.”

“It was satisfactory?”

“Perfectly.”

“But why--experiment--on me?”

“That I might see if you were not, after all, as much a barbarian as I.”

“Am I?”

“No. That was myself singing as well as you. You did not enjoy it
altogether, did you?”

“In a way, yes. But--shall I be honest? I felt, too, as if, somehow, it
wasn’t quite right; so much--what shall I call it?”

“So much of old Adam and the Garden? Sit down here for a moment, will
you?”

She trembled a little, and sat.

“I want to speak plainly and honestly to you,” he said, looking
earnestly at her. “You know my history--about my wife who died in
Labrador, and all the rest?”

“Yes, they have told me.”

“Well, I have nothing to hide, I think; nothing more that you ought to
know: though I’ve been a scamp one way and another.”

“‘That I ought to know’?” she repeated.

“Yes: for when a man asks a woman to be his wife, he should be prepared
to open the cupboard of skeletons.” She was silent; her heart was
beating so hard that it hurt her.

“I am going to ask you to be my wife, Delia.”

She was silent, and sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap.

He went on

“I don’t know that you will be wise to accept me, but if you will take
the risk--”

“Oh, Gaston, Gaston!” she said, and her hands fluttered towards his.

An hour later, he said to her, as they parted for the night:

“I hope, with all my heart, that you will never repent of it, Delia.”

“You can make me not repent of it. It rests with you, Gaston; indeed,
indeed, all with you.”

“Poor girl!” he said, unconsciously, as he entered his room. He could
not have told why he said it. “Why will you always sit up for me,
Brillon?” he asked a moment afterwards.

Jacques saw that something had occurred. “I have nothing else to do,
sir,” he replied. “Brillon,” Gaston added presently, “we’re in a devil
of a scrape now.”

“What shall we do, monsieur?”

“Did we ever turn tail?”

“Yes, from a prairie fire.”

“Not always. I’ve ridden through.”

“Alors, it’s one chance in ten thousand!”

“There’s a woman to be thought of--Jacques.”

“There was that other time.”

“Well, then?”

Presently Jacques said: “Who is she, monsieur?”

Gaston did not answer. He was thinking hard. Jacques said no more.
The next morning early the guests knew who the woman was, and by noon
Jacques also.




CHAPTER XI. HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST

Gaston let himself drift. The game of love and marriage is exciting, the
girl was affectionate and admiring, the world was genial, and all things
came his way. Towards the end of the hunting season Captain Maudsley
had an accident. It would prevent him riding to hounds again, and at
his suggestion, backed by Lord Dunfolly and Lord Dargan, Gaston became
Master of the Hounds. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been
Master of the Hounds before him. Hunting was a keen enjoyment--one
outlet for wild life in him--and at the last meet of the year he rode
in Captain Maudsley’s place. They had a good run, and the taste of it
remained with Gaston for many a day; he thought of it sometimes as he
rode in the Park now every morning--with Delia and her mother.

Jacques and his broncho came no more, or if they did it was at
unseasonable hours, and then to be often reprimanded (and twice
arrested) for furious riding. Gaston had a bad moment when he told
Jacques that he need not come with him again. He did it casually, but,
cool as he was, a cold sweat came on his cheek. He had to take a little
brandy to steady himself--yet he had looked into menacing rifle-barrels
more than once without a tremor. It was clear, on the face of it, that
Delia and her mother should be his companions in the Park, and not
this grave little half-breed; but, somehow, it got on his nerves. He
hesitated for days before he could cast the die against Jacques. It had
been the one open bond of the old life; yet the man was but a servant,
and to be treated as such, and was, indeed, except on rarest occasions.
If Delia had known that Gaston balanced the matter between her and
Jacques, her indignation might perhaps have sent matters to a crisis.
But Gaston did the only possible thing; and the weeks drifted on.

Happy? It was inexplicable even to himself that at times, when he left
Delia, he said unconsciously: “Well, it’s a pity!”

But she was happy in 

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