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The Slave of the Lamp

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Title: The Slave of the Lamp

Author: Henry Seton Merriman


        
Release date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #9195]
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Language: English

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Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Véronique Durand, and the
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THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP

By Henry Seton Merriman




PREFACE


Henry Seton Merriman published his first novel, “Young Mistley,” in
1888, when he was twenty-six years old. Messrs. Bentley's reader, in his
critique on the book, spoke of its “powerful situations” and
unconventionality of treatment: and, while dwelling at much greater
length on its failings, declared, in effect, its faults to be the right
faults, and added that, if “Young Mistley” was not in itself a good
novel, its author was one who might hereafter certainly write good
novels.

“Young Mistley” was followed in quick succession by “The Phantom
Future,” “Suspense,” and “Prisoners and Captives.” Some years later,
considering them crude and immature works, the author, at some
difficulty and with no little pecuniary loss, withdrew all these four
first books from circulation in England. Their republication in America
he was powerless to prevent. He therefore revised and abbreviated them,
“conscious,” as he said himself in a preface, “of a hundred defects
which the most careful revision cannot eliminate.” He was perhaps then,
as he was ever, too severe a critic of his own works. But though these
four early books have, added to youthful failings, the youthful merits
of freshness, vigour and imagination, their author was undoubtedly right
to suppress them. By writing them he learnt, it is true, the technique
of his art: but no author wishes--or no author should wish--to give his
copy-books to the world. It is as well then--it is certainly as he
himself desired--that these four books do not form part of the present
edition. It may, however, be noted that both “Young Mistley” and
“Prisoners and Captives” dealt, as did “The Sowers” hereafter, with
Russian subjects: “Suspense” is the story of a war-correspondent in the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877: and “The Phantom Future” is the only novel of
Merriman's in which the scene is laid entirely in his own country.

In 1892 he produced “The Slave of the Lamp,” which had run serially
through the _Cornhill Magazine_, then under the editorship of Mr.
James Payn.

To Mr. Payn, Merriman always felt that he owed a debt of gratitude for
much shrewd and kindly advice and encouragement. But one item of that
advice he neglected with, as Mr. Payn always generously owned, great
advantage. Mr. Payn believed that the insular nature of the ordinary
Briton made it, as a general rule, highly undesirable that the scene of
any novel should be laid outside the British Isles.

After 1892 all Merriman's books, with the single exception of “Flotsam,”
 which appeared serially in _Longman's Magazine_, and was, at first,
produced in book form by Messrs. Longman, were published by the firm of
Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co.

His long and serene connection with the great and honourable house which
had produced the works of such masters of literature as Thackeray,
Charlotte Bronte, and Robert Browning, was always a source of sincere
pleasure to him. He often expressed the opinion that, from the moment
when, as an inexperienced and perfectly unknown author, he sent “Young
Mistley” to Messrs. Bentley, until the time when, as a very successful
one, he was publishing his later novels with Messrs. Smith, Elder, he
had invariably received from his publishers an entirely just and upright
treatment.

Also in 1892 he produced “From One Generation to Another”: and, two
years later, the first of his really successful novels, “With Edged
Tools.” It is the only one of his books of which he never visited the
_mise-en-scène_--West Africa: but he had so completely imbued
himself with the scenery and the spirit of the country that few, if any,
of his critics detected that he did not write of it from personal
experience. Many of his readers were firmly convinced of the reality of
the precious plant, Simiacine, on whose discovery the action of the plot
turns. More than one correspondent wrote to express a wish to take
shares in the Simiacine Company!

“With Edged Tools” was closely followed by “The Grey Lady.” Some
practical experience of a seafaring life, a strong love of it, and a
great fellow-feeling for all those whose business is in great waters,
helped the reality of the characters of the sailor brothers and of the
sea-scenes generally. The author was for some years, and at the time
“The Grey Lady” was written, an underwriter at Lloyd's, so that on the
subject of ship insurance--a subject on which it will be remembered
part of the plot hinges--he was _en pays de connaissance_. For the
purpose of this story, he travelled in the Balearic Islands, having,
earlier, made the first of many visits to Spain.

One of the strongest characteristics in his nature, as it is certainly
one of the strongest characteristics in his books, was his sympathy
with, and, in consequence, his understanding of, the mind of the
foreigner. For him, indeed, there were no alien countries. He learnt the
character of the stranger as quickly as he learnt his language. His
greatest delight was to merge himself completely in the life and
interests of the country he was visiting--to stay at the mean
_venta_, or the _auberge_ where the tourist was never seen--to
sit in the local cafés of an evening and listen to local politics and
gossip; to read for the time nothing but the native newspapers, and no
literature but the literature, past and present, of the land where he
was sojourning; to follow the native customs, and to see Spain, Poland
or Russia with the eyes and from the point of view of the Spaniard, the
Pole or the Russian.

The difficulties--sometimes there were even serious difficulties--of
visiting places where there was neither provision nor protection made
for the stranger, always acted upon him not as deterrent but incentive:
he liked something to overcome, and found the safe, comfortable,
convenient resting-places as uncongenial to his nature as they were
unproductive for the purposes of his work.

In 1896 “The Sowers” was published. Merriman's travels in Russia had
taken place some years before--before, in fact, the publication of
“Young Mistley”--but time had not at all weakened the strong and sombre
impression which that great country and its unhappy people had left upon
him. The most popular of all his books with his English public, Merriman
himself did not consider it his best. It early received the compliment
of being banned by the Russian censor: very recently, a Russian woman
told the present writers that “The Sowers” is still the first book the
travelling Russian buys in the Tauchnitz edition, as soon as he is out
of his own country--“we like to hear the truth about ourselves.”

In the same year as “The Sowers,” Merriman produced “Flotsam.” It is
not, strictly speaking, a romance: some of its main incidents were taken
from the life of a young officer of the 44th Regiment in Early Victorian
days. The character of Harry Wylam is, as a whole, faithful to its
prototype; and the last scene in the book, recording Harry's death in
the Orange Free State, as he was being taken in a waggon to the
missionary station by the Bishop of the State, is literally accurate.
Merriman had visited India as a boy; so here, too, the scenery is from
the brush of an eye-witness.

His next novel, “In Kedar's Tents,” was his first Spanish novel--pure
and simple: the action of “The Grey Lady” taking place chiefly in
Majorca.

All the country mentioned in “In Kedar's Tents” Merriman visited
personally--riding, as did Frederick Conyngham and Concepcion Vara, from
Algeciras to Ronda, then a difficult ride through a wild, beautiful and
not too safe district, the accommodation at Algeciras and Ronda being at
that time of an entirely primitive description. Spain had for Merriman
ever a peculiar attraction: the character of the Spanish
gentleman--proud, courteous, dignified--particularly appealed to him.

The next country in which he sought inspiration was Holland. “Roden's
Corner,” published in 1898, broke new ground: its plot, it will be
remembered, turns on a commercial enterprise. The title and the main
idea of the story were taken from Merriman's earliest literary venture,
the beginning of a novel--there were only a few chapters of it--which
he had written before “Young Mistley,” and which he had discarded,
dissatisfied.

The novel “Dross” was produced in America in 1899, having appeared
serially in this country in a well-known newspaper. Written during a
period of ill-health, Merriman thought it beneath his best work, and,
true to that principle which ruled his life as an author, to give to the
public so far as he could of that best, and of that best only, he
declined (of course to his own monetary disadvantage) to permit its
publication in England in book form.

Its _mise-en-scène_ is France and Suffolk; its period the Second
Empire--the period of “The Last Hope.” Napoleon III., a character by
whom Merriman was always peculiarly attracted, shadows it: in it appears
John Turner, the English banker of Paris, of “The Last Hope”; an
admirable and amusing sketch of a young Frenchman; and an excellent
description of the magnificent scenery about Saint Martin Lantosque, in
the Maritime Alps.

For the benefit of “The Isle of Unrest,” his next book, Merriman had
travelled through Corsica--not the Corsica of fashionable hotels and
health-resorts, but the wild and unknown parts of that lawless and
magnificent island. For “The Velvet Glove” he visited Pampeluna,
Saragossa, and Lerida. The country of “The Vultures”--Warsaw and its
neighbourhood--he saw in company with his friend, Mr. Stanley Weyman.
The pleasure of another trip, the one he took in western
France--Angoulême, Cognac, and the country of the Charente--for the
scenery of “The Last Hope,” was also doubled by Mr. Weyman's presence.
In Dantzig--the Dantzig of “Barlasch of the Guard”--Merriman made a stay
in a bitter mid-winter, visiting also Vilna and Königsberg; part of the
route of the Great Retreat from Moscow he traced himself. He was
inclined to consider--and if an author is not quite the worst judge of
his own work he is generally quite the best--that in “Barlasch” he
reached his high-water mark. The short stories, comprised in the volume
entitled “Tomaso's Fortune,” were published after his death. In every
case, the _locale_ they describe was known to Merriman personally.
At the Monastery of Montserrat--whence the monk in “A Small World” saw
the accident to the diligencia--the author had made a stay of some days.
The Farlingford of “The Last Hope” is Orford in Suffolk: the French
scenes, as has been said, Merriman had visited with Mr. Weyman, whose
“Abbess of Vlaye” they also suggested. The curious may still find the
original of the Hôtel Gemosac in Paris--not far from the Palais d'Orsay
Hôtel--“between the Rue de Lille and the Boulevard St. Germain.”

“The Last Hope” was not, in a sense, Merriman's last novel. He left at
his death about a dozen completed chapters, and the whole plot carefully
mapped out, of yet another Spanish book, which dealt with the Spain of
the Peninsular War of 1808-14. These chapters, which were destroyed by
the author's desire, were of excellent promise, and written with great
vigour and spirit. His last trip was taken, in connection with this
book, to the country of Sir Arthur Wellesley's exploits. The plot of the
story was concerned with a case of mistaken identity; the sketch of a
Guerilla leader, Pedro--bearing some affinity to the Concepcion Vara of
“In Kedar's Tents”--was especially happy.

It has been seen that Merriman was not the class of author who “sits in
Fleet Street and writes news from the front.” He strongly believed in
the value of personal impressions, and scarcely less in the value of
first impressions. In his own case, the correctness of his first
impressions--what he himself called laughingly his _“coup
d'oeil”_--is in a measure proved by a note-book, now lying before the
writers, in which he recorded his views of Bastia and the Corsicans
after a very brief acquaintance--that view requiring scarcely any
modification when first impressions had been exchanged for real
knowledge and experience.

As to his methods of writing, in the case of all his novels, except the
four early suppressed ones, he invariably followed the plan of drawing
out the whole plot and a complete synopsis of every chapter before he
began to write the book at all.

Partly as a result of this plan perhaps, but more as a result of great
natural facility in writing, his manuscripts were often without a single
erasure for many pages; and a typewriter was really a superfluity.

It is certainly true to say that no author ever had more pleasure in his
art than Merriman. The fever and the worry which accompany many literary
productions he never knew.

Among the professional critics he had neither personal friends nor
personal foes; and accepted their criticisms--hostile or
favourable--with perfect serenity and open-mindedness. He was, perhaps,
if anything, only too ready to alter his work in accordance with their
advice: he always said that he owed them much; and admired their
perspicuity in detecting a promise in his earliest books, which he
denied finding there himself. His invincible modesty made him ready to
accept not only professional criticism but--a harder thing--the advice
of critics on the hearth. It was out of compliance with such a domestic
criticism that the _dénouement_ in “The Sowers” was re-written as
it now stands, the scene of the attack on the Castle being at first
wholly different.

The jealousy and bitterness which are supposed to be inseparable from
the literary life certainly never affected Merriman's. He had no trace
of such feelings in his nature. Of one who is known to the public
exclusively through his writings, it may seem strange--but it is not the
less true--to say that his natural bent was not to the life of a
literary man, but to a life of action, and that it was fate, rather than
inclination, which made him express himself in words instead of deeds. A
writer's books are generally his best biography: the “strong, quiet
man,” whose forte was to do much and say nothing; who, like Marcos
Sarrion, loved the free and plain life of the field and the open, was a
natural hero for Merriman, “as finding there unconsciously some image of
himself.”

To any other biography he was strongly opposed. His dislike of the
advertisement and the self-advertisement of the interview and the
personal paragraph deepened with time. He held strongly and
consistently, as he held all his opinions, that a writer should be known
to the public by his books, and by his books only. One of his last
expressed wishes was that there should be no record of his private life.

It is respect for that wish which here stays the present writers' pen.

E.F.S.

S.G.T.

_July_ 1909.





CONTENTS



CHAPTERS

     I. IN THE RUE ST. GINGOLPHE
    II. TOOLS
   III. WITHOUT REST
    IV. BURDENED
     V. A REUNION
    VI. BROKEN THREADS
   VII. PUPPETS
  VIII. FALSE METAL
    IX. A CLUE
     X. ON THE SCENT
    XI. BURY BLUFF
   XII. A WARNING WORD
  XIII. A NIGHT WATCH
   XIV. FOILED
    XV. ROOKS
   XVI. FOES
  XVII. A RETREAT
 XVIII. AN EMPTY NEST
   XIX. FOUL PLAY
    XX. WINGED
   XXI. TRUE TO HIS CLOTH
  XXII. GREEK AND GREEK
 XXIII. STRICKEN DOWN
  XXIV. BACK TO LIFE
   XXV. BACK TO WORK
  XXVI. SIGNOR BRUNO
 XXVII. IN THE RUE ST GINGOLPHE AGAIN
XXVIII. THE MAKING OF CHRISTIAN VELLACOTT






CHAPTER I


IN THE RUE ST. GINGOLPHE


It was, not so many years ago, called the Rue de l'Empire, but
republics are proverbially sensitive. Once they are established they
become morbidly desirous of obliterating a past wherein no republic
flourished. The street is therefore dedicated to St. Gingolphe to-day.
To-morrow? Who can tell?

It is presumably safe to take it for granted that you are located in the
neighbourhood of the Louvre, on the north side of the river which is so
unimportant a factor to Paris. For all good Englishmen have been, or
hope in the near future to be, located near this spot. All good
Americans, we are told, relegate the sojourn to a more distant future.

The bridge to cross is that of the Holy Fathers. So called to-day. Once
upon a time--but no matter. Bridges are peculiarly liable to change in
troubled times. The Rue St. Gingolphe is situated between the Boulevard
St. Germain and Quai Voltaire. One hears with equal facility the
low-toned boom of the steamers' whistle upon the river, and the crack of
whips in the boulevard. Once across the bridge, turn to the right, and
go along the Quay, between the lime-trees and the bookstalls. You will
probably go slowly because of the bookstalls. No one worth talking to
could help doing so. Then turn to the left, and after a few paces you
will find upon your right hand the Rue St. Gingolphe. It is noted in the
Directory “Botot” that this street is one hundred and forty-five mètres
long; and who would care to contradict “Botot,” or even to throw the
faintest shadow of a doubt upon his statement? He has probably measured.

If your fair and economical spouse should think of repairing to the
Bon-Marché to secure some of those wonderful linen pillow-cases (at one
franc forty) with your august initial embroidered on the centre with a
view of impressing the sleeper's cheek, she will pass the end of the Rue
St. Gingolphe on her way--provided the cabman be honest. There! You
cannot help finding it now.

The street itself is a typical Parisian street of one hundred and
forty-five mètres. There is room for a baker's, a café, a bootmaker's,
and a tobacconist who sells very few stamps. The Parisians do not write
many letters. They say they have not time. But the tobacconist makes up
for the meanness of his contribution to the inland revenue of one
department by a generous aid to the other. He sells a vast number of
cigarettes and cigars of the very worst quality. And it is upon the
worst quality that the Government makes the largest profit. It is in
every sense of the word a weed which grows as lustily as any of its
compeers in and around Oran, Algiers, and Bonah.

The Rue St. Gingolphe is within a stone's-throw of the École des
Beaux-Arts, and in the very centre of a remarkably cheap and yet
respectable quarter. Thus there are many young men occupying apartments
in close proximity--and young men do not mind much what they smoke,
especially provincial young men living in Paris. They feel it incumbent
upon them to be constantly smoking something--just to show that they are
Parisians, true sons of the pavement, knowing how to live. And their
brightest hopes are in all truth realised, because theirs is certainly a
reckless life, flavoured as it is with “number one” tobacco, and those
“little corporal” cigarettes which are enveloped in the blue paper.

The tobacconist's shop is singularly convenient. It has, namely, an
entrance at the back, as well as that giving on to the street of St.
Gingolphe. This entrance is through a little courtyard, in which is the
stable and coach-house combined, where Madame Perinère, a lady who
paints the magic word “Modes” beneath her name on the door-post of
number seventeen, keeps the dapper little cart and pony which carry her
bonnets to the farthest corner of Paris.

The tobacconist is a large man, much given to perspiration. In fact, one
may safely make the statement that he perspires annually from the middle
of April to the second or even third week in October. In consequence of
this habit he wears no collar, and a man without a collar does not start
fairly on the social race. It is always best to make inquiries before
condemning a man who wears no collar. There is probably a very good
reason, as in the case of Mr. Jacquetot, but it is to be feared that few
pause to seek it. One need not seek the reason with much assiduity in
this instance, because the tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe is
always prepared to explain it at length. French people are thus. They
talk of things, and take pleasure in so doing, which we, on this side of
the Channel, treat with a larger discretion.

Mr. Jacquetot does not even wear a collar on Sunday, for the simple
reason that Sunday is to him as other days. He attends no place of
worship, because he acknowledges but one god--the god of most
Frenchmen--his inner man. His pleasures are gastronomical, his sorrows
stomachic. The little shop is open early and late, Sundays, week-days,
and holidays. Moreover, the tobacconist--Mr. Jacquetot himself--is
always at his post, on the high chair behind the counter, near the
window, where he can see into the street. This constant attention to
business is almost phenomenal, because Frenchmen who worship the god of
Mr. Jacquetot love to pay tribute on fête-days at one of the little
restaurants on the Place at Versailles, at Duval's, or even in the
Palais Royal. Mr. Jacquetot would have loved nothing better than a
pilgrimage to any one of these shrines, but he was tied to the little
tobacco store. Not by the chains of commerce. Oh, no! When rallied by
his neighbours for such an unenterprising love of his own hearth, he
merely shrugged his heavy shoulders.

“What will you?” he would say; “one has one's affairs.”

Now the affairs of Mr. Jacquetot were, in the days with which we have to
do, like many things on this earth, inasmuch as they were not what they
seemed.

It would be inexpedient, for reasons closely connected with the
tobacconist of the Rue St. Gingolphe, as well as with other gentlemen
still happily with us in the flesh, to be too exact as to dates. Suffice
it, therefore, to say that it was only a few years ago that Mr.
Jacquetot sat one evening as usual in his little shop. It happened to be
a Tuesday evening, which is fortunate, because it was on Tuesdays and
Saturdays that the little barber from round the corner called and shaved
the vast cheeks of the tobacconist. Mr. Jacquetot was therefore quite
presentable--doubly so, indeed, because it was yet March, and he had not
yet entered upon his summer season.

The little street was very quiet. There was no through traffic, and
folks living in this quarter of Paris usually carry their own parcels.
It was thus quite easy to note the approach of any passenger, when such
had once turned the corner. Some one was approaching now, and Mr.
Jacquetot threw away the stump of a cheap cigar. One would almost have
said that he recognised the step at a considerable distance. Young
people are in the habit of considering that when one gets old and stout
one loses in intelligence; but this is not always the case. One is apt
to expect little from a fat man; but that is often a mistake. Mr.
Jacquetot weighed seventeen stone, but he was eminently intelligent. He
had recognised the footstep while it was yet seventy mètres away.

In a few moments a gentleman of middle height paused in front of the
shop, noted that it was a tobacconist's, and entered, carrying an
unstamped letter with some ostentation. It must, by the way, be
remembered that in France postage-stamps are to be bought at all
tobacconists'.

The new-comer's actions were characterised by a certain carelessness, as
if he were going through a formula--perfunctorily--without admitting its
necessity.

He nodded to Mr. Jacquetot, and rather a pleasant smile flickered for a
moment across his face. He was a singularly well-made man, of medium
height, with straight, square shoulders and small limbs. He wore
spectacles, and as he looked at one straight in the face there was a
singular contraction of the eyes which hardly amounted to a
cast--moreover, it was momentary. It was precisely the look of a hawk
when its hood is suddenly removed in full daylight. This resemblance was
furthered by the fact that the man's profile was birdlike. He was
clean-shaven, and there was in his sleek head and determined little face
that smooth, compact self-complacency which is to be noted in the head
of a hawk.

The face was small, like that of a Greek bust, but in expression it
suggested a yet older people. There was that mystic depth of expression
which comes from ancient Egypt. No one feature was obtrusive--all were
chiselled with equal delicacy; and yet there was only one point of real
beauty in the entire countenance. The mouth was perfect. But the man
with a perfect mouth is usually one whom it will be found expedient to
avoid. Without a certain allowance of sensuality no man is
genial--without a little weakness there is no kind heart. This
Frenchman's mouth was not, however, obtrusively faultless. It was
perfect in its design, but, somehow, many people failed to take note of
the fact. It is so with the “many,” one finds. The human world is so
blind that at times it would be almost excusable to harbour the
suspicion that animals see more. There may be something in that instinct
by which dogs, horses, and cats distinguish between friends and foes,
detect sympathy, discover antipathy. It is possible that they see things
in the human face to which our eyes are blinded--intentionally and
mercifully blinded. If some of us were a little more observant, a few of
the human combinations which we bring about might perhaps be less
egregiously mistaken.

It was probably the form of the lips that lent pleasantness to the smile
with which Mr. Jacquetot was greeted, rather than the expression of the
velvety eyes, which had in reality no power of smiling at all. They were
sad eyes, like those of the women one sees on the banks of the Upper
Nile, which never alter in expression--eyes that do not seem to be busy
with this life at all, but fully occupied with something else: something
beyond to-morrow or behind yesterday.

“Not yet arrived?” inquired the new-comer in a voice of some
distinction. It was a full, rich voice, and the French it spoke was not
the French of Mr. Jacquetot, nor, indeed, of the Rue St. Gingolphe. It
was the language one sometimes hears in an old _château_ lost in
the depths of the country--the vast unexplored rural districts of
France--where the bearers of dangerously historical names live out their
lives with a singular suppression and patience. They are either biding
their time or else they are content with the past and the part played by
their ancestors therein. For there is an old French and a new. In Paris
the new is spoken--the very newest. Were it anything but French it would
be intolerably vulgar; as it is, it is merely neat and intensely
expressive.

“Not yet arrived, sir,” said the tobacconist, and then he seemed to
recollect himself, for he repeated:

“Not yet arrived,” without the respectful addition which had slipped out
by accident.

The new arrival took out his watch--a small one of beautiful
workmanship, the watch of a lady--and consulted it. His movements were
compact and rapid. He would have made a splendid light-weight boxer.

“That,” he said shortly, “is the way they fail. They do not understand
the necessity of exactitude. The people--see you, Mr. Jacquetot, they
fail because they have no exactitude.”

“But I am of the people,” moving ponderously on his chair.

“Essentially so. I know it, my friend. But I have taught you something.”

The tobacconist laughed.

“I suppose so. But is it safe to stand there in the full day? Will you
not pass in? The room is ready; the lamp is lighted. There is an agent
of the police always at the end of the street now.”

“Ah, bah!” and he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. “I am not
afraid of them. There is only one thing to be feared, Citizen
Jacquetot--the press. The press and the people, _bien entendu_.”

“If you despise the people why do you use them?” asked Jacquetot
abruptly.

“In default of better, my friend. If one has not steam one uses the
river to turn the mill-wheel. The river is slow; sometimes it is too
weak, sometimes too strong. One never has full control over it, but it
turns the wheel--it turns the wheel, brother Jacquetot.”

“And eventually sweeps away the miller,” suggested the tobacconist
lightly. It must be remembered that though stout he was intelligent. Had
he not been so it is probable that this conversation would never have
taken place. The dark-eyed man did not look like one who would have the
patience to deal with stupid people.

Again the pleasant smile flickered like the light of a fire in a dark
place.

“That,” was the reply, “is the affair of the miller.”

“But,” conceded Jacquetot, meditatively selecting a new cigar from a box
which he had reached without moving from his chair, “but the
people--they are fools, hein!”

“Ah!” with a protesting shrug, as if deprecating the enunciation of such
a platitude.

Then he passed through into a little room behind the shop--a little room
where no daylight penetrated, because there was no window to it. It
depended for daylight upon the shop, with which it communicated by a
door of which the upper half was glass. But this glass was thickly
curtained with the material called Turkey-red, threefold.

And the tobacconist was left alone in his shop, smoking gravely. There
are some people like oysters, inasmuch as they leave an after-taste
behind them. The man who had just gone into the little room at the rear
of the tobacconist's shop of the Rue St. Gingolphe in Paris was one of
these. And the taste he left behind him was rather disquieting. One was
apt to feel that there was a mistake somewhere in the ordering of human
affairs, and that this man was one of its victims.

In a few minutes two men passed hastily through the shop into the little
room, with scarcely so much as a nod for Mr. Jacquetot.




CHAPTER II


TOOLS


The first man to enter the room was clad in a blouse of coarse grey
cloth which reached down to his knees. On his head he wore a black silk
cap, very much pressed down and exceedingly greasy on the right side.
This was to be accounted for by the fact that he used his right shoulder
more than the left in that state of life in which he had been placed. It
was not what we, who do not kill, would consider a pleasant state. He
was, in fact, a slayer of beasts--a foreman at the slaughter-house.

It is, perhaps, fortunate that Antoine Lerac is of no great prominence
in this record, and of none in his official capacity at the
slaughter-house. But the man is worthy of some small attention, because
he was so essentially of the nineteenth century--so distinctly a product
of the latter end of what is, for us at least, the most important cycle
of years the world has passed through. He was a man wearing the blouse
with ostentation, and glorying in the greasy cap: professing his
unwillingness to exchange the one for an ermine robe or the other for a
crown. As a matter of fact, he invariably purchased the largest and
roughest blouse to be found, and his cap was unnecessarily soaked with
suet. He was a knight of industry of the very worst description--a
braggart, a talker, a windbag. He preached, or rather he shrieked, the
doctrine of equality, but the equality he sought was that which would
place him on a par with his superiors, while in no way benefiting those
beneath him.

At one time, when he had first come into contact with the dark-eyed man
who now sat at the table watching him curiously, there had been a
struggle for mastery.

“I am,” he had said with considerable heat, “as good as you. That is all
I wish to demonstrate.”

“No,” replied the other with that calm and assured air of superiority
which the people once tried in vain to stamp out with the guillotine.
“No, it is not. You want to demonstrate that you are superior, and you
cannot do it. You say that you have as much right to walk on the
pavement as I. I admit it. In your heart you want to prove that you have
_more_, and you cannot do it. I could wear your blouse with
comfort, but you could not put on my hat or my gloves without making
yourself ridiculous. But--that is not the question. Let us get to
business.”

And in time the butcher succumbed, as he was bound to do, to the man
whom he shrewdly suspected of being an aristocrat.

He who entered the room immediately afterwards was of a very different
type. His mode of entry was of another description. Whereas the man of
blood swaggered in with an air of nervous truculence, as if he were
afraid that some one was desirous of disputing his equality, the next
comer crept in softly, and closed the door with accuracy. He was the
incarnation of benevolence--in the best sense of the word, a sweet old
man--looking out upon the world through large tinted spectacles with a
beam which could not be otherwise than blind to all motes. In earlier
years his face might, perhaps, have been a trifle hard in its contour;
but Time, the lubricator, had eased some of the corners, and it was now
the seat of kindness and love. He bowed ceremoniously to the first
comer, and his manner seemed rather to breathe of fraternity than
equality. As he bowed he mentioned the gentleman's name in such loving
tones that no greeting could have been heartier.

“Citizen Morot,” he said.

The butcher, with more haste than dignity, assumed the chair which stood
at the opposite end of the table to that occupied by the Citizen Morot.
He had evidently hurried in first in order to secure that seat. From his
pocket he produced a somewhat soiled paper, which he threw with
exaggerated carelessness across the table. His manner was not entirely
free from a suggestion of patronage.

“What have we here?” inquired the first comer, who had not hitherto
opened his lips, with a deep interest which might possibly have been
ironical. He was just the sort of man to indulge in irony for his own
satisfaction. He unfolded the paper, raised his eyebrows, and read.

“Ah!” he said, “a receipt for five hundred rifles with bayonets and
shoulder-straps complete. 'Received of the Citizen Morot five hundred
rifles with bayonets and shoulder-straps complete.--Antoine Lerac.'”

He folded the paper again and carefully tore it into very small pieces.

“Thank you,” he said gravely.

Then he turned in his chair and threw the papers into the ash-tray of
the little iron stove behind him.

“I judged it best to be strictly business-like,” said the butcher, with
moderately well-simulated carelessness.

“But yes, Monsieur Lerac,” with a shrug. “We of the Republic distrust
each other so completely.”

The old gentleman looked from one to the other with a soothing smile.

“The brave Lerac,” he said, “is a man of business.”

Citizen Morot ignored this observation.

“And,” he said, turning to Lerac, “you have them stored in a safe place?
There is absolutely no doubt of that?”

“Absolutely none.”

“Good.”

“They are under my own eye.”

“Very good. It is not for a short time only, but for some months. One
cannot hurry the people. Besides, we are not ready. The rifles we
bought, the ammunition we must steal.”

“They are good rifles--they are English,” said the butcher.

“Yes; the English Government is full of chivalry. They are always ready
to place it within the power of their enemies to be as well armed as
themselves.”

The old gentleman laughed--a pleasant, cooing laugh. He invariably
encouraged humour, this genial philanthropist.

“At last Friday's meeting,” Lerac said shortly, “we enrolled forty new
members. We now number four hundred and two in our _arrondissement_
alone.”

“Good,” muttered the Citizen Morot, without enthusiasm.

“And four hundred hardy companions they are.”

“So I should imagine” (very gravely).

“Four hundred strong men,” broke in the old gentleman rather hastily.
“Ah, but that is already a power.”

“It is,” opined Lerac sententiously, “the strong man who is the power.
Riches are nothing; birth is nothing. This is the day of force. Force is
everything.”

“Everything,” acquiesced Morot fervently. He was consulting a small
note-book, wherein he jotted down some figures.

“Four hundred and two,” he muttered as he wrote, “up to Friday night, in
the _arrondissement_ of the citizen--the good citizen--Antoine
Lerac.”

The butcher looked up with a doubtful expression upon his coarse face.
His great brutal lips twitched, and he was on the point of speaking when
the Citizen Morot's velvety eyes met his gaze with a quiet smile in
which arrogance and innocence were mingled.

“And now,” said the last-mentioned, turning affably to the old
gentleman, “let us have the report of the reverend Father.”

“Ah,” laughed Lerac, without attempting to conceal the contempt that was
in his soul, “the Church.”

The old gentleman spread out his hands in mild deprecation.

“Yes,” he admitted, “we are under a shadow. I do not even dare to wear
my cassock.”

“You are in a valley of shadow, my reverend friend,” said the butcher,
with visible exultation, “to which the sun will never penetrate now.”

The Citizen Morot laughed at this pleasantry, while the old man against
whom it was directed bowed his head patiently.

“And yet,” said the laugher, with a certain air of patronage, “the
Church is of some use still. She paid for those rifles, and she will pay
for the ammunition--is it not so, my father?”

“Without doubt--without doubt.”

“Not to mention,” continued the other, “many contributions towards our
general fund. The force that is supplied by the strong right arm of the
people is, one finds, a force constantly in need of substantial
replenishment.”

“But,” exclaimed the butcher, emphatically banging his fist down upon
the table, “why does she do it? That is what I want to know!”

The old priest glanced furtively towards Morot, and then his face
assumed an air of childish bewilderment.

“Ah!” he said guilelessly, “who can tell?”

“Who, indeed!” chimed in Morot.

The butcher was pleased with himself. He sat upright, and, banging the
table a second time, he looked round defiantly.

“But,” said Morot, in an indifferent way which was frequently
characteristic, “I do not see that it matters much. The money is good.
It buys rifles, and it places them in the hands of the Citizen Lerac and
his hardy companions. And when all is said and done, when the cartridges
are burnt and a New Commune is raised, what does it matter whose money
bought the rifles, and with what object the money was supplied?”

The old gentleman looked relieved. He was evidently of a timid and
conciliatory nature, and would, with slight encouragement, have turned
upon that Church of which he was the humble representative, merely for
the sake of peace.

The butcher cleared his throat after the manner of the streets--causing
Morot to wince visibly--and acquiesced.

“But,” he added cunningly, “the Church, see you--Ach! it is deep--it is
treacherous. Never trust the Church!”

The Citizen Morot, to whom these remarks were addressed, smiled in a
singular way and made no reply. Then he turned gravely to the old man
and said--

“Have you nothing to report to us--my father?”

“Nothing of great importance,” replied he humbly. “All is going on well.
We are in treaty for two hundred rifles with the Montenegrin Government,
and shall no doubt carry the contract through. I go to England next week
in order to carry out the--the--what shall I say?--the loan of the
ammunition.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the butcher.

Morot smiled also, as he made an entry in the little note-book.

“Next week?” he said interrogatively.

“Yes--on Tuesday.”

“Thank you.”

The butcher here rose and ostentatiously dragged out a watch from the
depths of his blouse.

“I must go,” he said. “I have committee at seven o'clock. And I shall
dine first.”

“Yes,” said Morot gravely. “Dine first. Take good care of yourself,
citizen.”

“Trust me.”

“I do,” was the reply, delivered with a little nod in answer to Lerac's
curt farewell bow.

The butcher walked noisily through the shop--heavy with
responsibility--weighted with the sense of his own importance to the
world in general and to France in particular. Had he walked less noisily
he might have overheard the soft laugh of the old priest.

Citizen Morot did not laugh. He was not a laughing man. But a fine,
disdainful smile passed over his face, scarce lighting it up at all.

“What an utter fool the man is!” he said impatiently.

“Yes--sir,” replied the old man, “but if he were less so it would be
difficult to manage him.”

“I am not sure. I always prefer to deal with knaves than with fools.”

“That is because your Highness knows how to outwit them.”

“No titles--my father,” said the Citizen Morot quietly. “No titles here,
if you please. Tell me, are you quite sure of this scum--this Lerac?”

“As sure as one can be of anything that comes from the streets. He is an
excitable, bumptious, quarrelsome man; but he has a certain influence
with those beneath him, although it seems hard to realise that there are
such.”

“Ha! you are right! But a republic is a social manure-heap--that which
is on the top is not pleasant, and the stuff below--ugh!”

The manner of the two men had quite changed. He who was called Morot
leant back in his seat and stretched his arms out wearily. There is no
disguise like animation; when that is laid aside we see the real man or
the real woman. In repose this Frenchman was not cheerful to look upon.
He was not sanguine, and a French pessimist is the worst thing of the
kind that is to be found.

When the door had closed behind the departing Lerac, the old priest
seemed to throw off suddenly quite a number of years. His voice, when
next he spoke, was less senile, his movements were brisker. He was, in a
word, less harmless.

Mr. Jacquetot had finished his dinner, brought in from a neighbouring
restaurant all hot, and was slumberously enjoying a very strong-smelling
cigar, when the door of the little room opened at length, and the two
men went out together into the dimly-lighted street.




CHAPTER III


WITHOUT REST


Half-way down Fleet Street, on the left-hand side, stands the church of
St. Dunstan-in-the-West. Around its grimy foundations there seethes a
struggling, toiling race of men--not only from morning till night, but
throughout the twenty-four hours. Within sound of this church bell a
hundred printing-presses throb out their odorous broadsheets to be
despatched to every part of the world. Day and night, week in week out,
the human writing-machines, and those other machines which are almost
human (and better than human in some points) hurry through their
allotted tasks, and ignore the saintly shadow cast upon them by the
spire of St. Dunstan. This is indeed the centre of the world: the hub
from whence spring the spokes of the vast wheel of life. For to this
point all things over the world converge by a vast web of wire,
railroad, coach road, and steamer track. Upon wings that boast of
greater speed than the wind can compass come to this point the voices of
our kin in farthest lands. News--news--news. News from the East of
events occurring in the afternoon--scan it over and flash it westward,
where it will be read on the morning of the same day! News in every
tongue to be translated and brought into shape--while the solemn church
clock tells his tale in deep voice, audible above the din and scurry.

From hurried scribbler to pale compositor, and behold, the news is
bawled all over London! Such work as this goes on for ever around the
church of St. Dunstan. Scribblers come and scribblers go; compositors
come to their work young and hopeful, they leave it bent and poisoned,
yet the work goes on. Each day the pace grows quicker, each day some new
means of rapid propagation is discovered, and each day life becomes
harder to live. One morning, perhaps, a scribbler is absent from his
post--“Brain-fever, complete rest; a wreck.” For years his writings have
been read by thousands daily. A new man takes the vacant chair--he has
been waiting more or less impatiently for this--and the thousands are
none the wiser. One night the head compositor presses his black hand to
his sunken chest, and staggers home. “And time too--he's had his turn,”
 mutters the second compositor as he thinks of the extra five shillings a
week. No doubt he is right. Every dog his day.

Nearly opposite to the church stands a tall narrow house of dirty red
brick, and it is with this house that we have to do.

At seven o'clock, one evening some years ago--when heads now grey were
brown, when eyes now dim were bright--the Strand was in its usual state
of turmoil. Carriage followed carriage. Seedy clerks hustled past portly
merchants--not their own masters, _bien entendu_, but those of
other seedy clerks. Carriages and foot-passengers were alike going
westward. All were leaving behind them the day and the busy city--some
after a few hours devoted to the perusal of _Times_ and
_Gazette_; others fagged and weary from a long day of dusty books.

Ah! those were prosperous days in the City. Days when men of but a few
years' standing rolled out to Clapham or Highgate behind a pair of
horses. Days when books were often represented by a bank-book and a
roughly-kept day-book. What need to keep mighty ledgers when profits are
great and returns quick in their returning?

As the pedestrians made their way along the narrow pavement some of them
glanced at the door of the tall red-brick house and read the inscription
on a brass plate screwed thereon. This consisted of two mystic words:
_The Beacon_. There was, however, in reality, no mystery about it.
The _Beacon_ was a newspaper, published weekly, and the clock of
St. Dunstan's striking seven told the end of another week. The
publishing day was past; another week with its work and pleasure was to
be faced.

From early morning until six o'clock in the evening this narrow doorway
and passage had been crowded by a heaving, swearing, laughing mass of
more or less dilapidated humanity interested in the retail sale of
newspapers. At six o'clock Ephraim Bander, a retired constable, now on
the staff of the _Beacon_, had taken his station at the door, in
order to greet would-be purchasers with the laconic and discouraging
words: “Sold hout!”

During the last two years ex-constable Bander had announced the selling
“hout” of the _Beacon_ every Tuesday evening.

At seven o'clock Mrs. Bander emerged from her den on the fourth floor,
like a portly good-natured spider, and with a broom proceeded to attack
the dust shaken from the boots of the journalistic fraternity, with
noisy energy. After that she polished the door-plate; and peace reigned
within the narrow house.

On the second floor there was a small room with windows looking out into
a narrow lane behind the house. It was a singularly quiet room; the door
opened and shut without sound or vibration; double windows insured
immunity from the harrowing cries of such enterprising merchants as
exercised their lungs and callings in the narrow lane beneath. A certain
sense of ease and comfort imperceptibly crept over the senses of persons
entering this tiny apartment. It must have been in the atmosphere; for
some rooms more luxuriously furnished are without it. It certainly does
not lie in the furniture--this imperceptible sense of companionship; it
does not lurk in the curtains. Some mansions know it, and many cottages.
It is even to be met with in the tiny cabin of a coasting vessel.

This diminutive room, despite its lack of sunlight, was such as one
might wish to sit in. A broad low table stood in the middle of the
floor, and on it lay the mellow light of a shaded lamp. At this table
two men were seated opposite to each other. One was writing, slowly and
easily, the other was idling with the calm restfulness of a man who has
never worked very hard. He was rolling his pencil up to the top of his
blotting-pad, and allowing it to come down again in accordance with the
rules of gravity.

This was Mr. Bodery's habit when thoughtful; and after all, there was no
great harm in it. Mr. Bodery was editor and proprietor of the
_Beacon_. The amusing and somewhat satirical article which appeared
weekly under the heading of “Light” was penned by the chubby hand at
that moment engaged with the pencil.

Mr. Morgan, sub-editor, was even stouter than his chief. Laughter was
his most prominent characteristic. He laughed over “Light” when in its
embryo state, he laughed when the _Beacon_ sold out at six o'clock
on Tuesday evenings. He laughed when the printing-machine went wrong on
Monday afternoon, and--most wonderful of all--he laughed at his own
jokes, in which exercise he was usually alone. His jokes were not of the
first force. Mr. Morgan was the author of the slightly laboured and
weighty Parliamentary articles on the first page. He never joked on
paper, which is a gift apart.

These two gentlemen were in no way of brilliant intellect. They had
their share of sound, practical common-sense, which is in itself a
splendid substitute. Fortune had come to them (as it comes to most men
when it comes at all) without any apparent reason. Mr. Bodery had
supplied the capital, and Mr. Morgan's share of the undertaking was
added in the form of a bustling, hollow energy. The _Beacon_ was
lighted, so to speak. It burnt in a dull and somewhat flickering manner
for some years; then a new hand fed the flame, and its light spread
afar.

It was from pure good nature that Mr. Bodery held out a helping hand to
the son of his old friend, Walter Vellacott, when that youth appeared
one day at the office of the _Beacon_, and in an off-hand manner
announced that he was seeking employment. Like many actions performed
from a similar motive, Mr. Bodery's kindness of heart met with its
reward. Young Christian Vellacott developed a remarkable talent for
journalistic literature--in fact, he was fortunate enough to have found,
at the age of twenty-two, his avocation in life.

Gradually, as the years wore on, the influence of the young fellow's
superior intellect made itself felt. Prom the position of a mere
supernumerary, he worked his way upwards, taking on to his shoulders one
duty after another--bearing the weight, quietly and confidently, of one
responsibility after another. This exactly suited Mr. Bodery and his
sub-editor. There was very little of the slave in the composition of
either. They delighted in an easy, luxurious life, with just enough work
to impart a pleasant feeling of self-satisfaction. It suited Christian
Vellacott also. In a few weeks he found his level--in a few months he
began rising to higher levels.

He was an only son; the only child of a brilliant father whose name was
known in every court in Europe as that of a harum-scarum diplomatist,
who could have done great things in his short life if he had wished to.
It is from only sons that Fortune selects her favourites. Men who have
no brothers to share their amusements turn to serious matters early in
life. Christian Vellacott soon discovered that a head was required at
the office of the _Beacon_ to develop the elements of success
undoubtedly lying within the journal, and that the owner of such a head
could in time dictate his own terms to the easy-going proprietor.

Unsparingly he devoted the whole of his exceptional energies to the work
before him. He lived in and for it. Each night he went home fagged and
weary; but each morning saw him return to it with undaunted spirit.

Human nature, however, is exhaustible. The influence of a strong mind
over a strong body is great, but it is nevertheless limited. The
_Beacon_ had reached a large circulation, but its slave was worn
out. Two years without a holiday--two years of hurried, hard brain-work
had left their mark. It is often so when a man finds his avocation too
early. He is too hurried, works too hard, and collapses; or he becomes
self-satisfied, over-confident, and unbearable. Fortunately for
Christian Vellacott he was devoid of conceit, which is like the
scaffolding round a church-spire, reaching higher and falling first.

There was also a “home” influence at work. When Christian passed out of
the narrow doorway, and turned his face westward, his day's work was by
no means over, as will be shown hereafter.

As Mr. Bodery rolled his pencil up and down his blotting-pad, he was
slowly realising the fact that something must be done. Presently he
looked up, and his pleasant eyes rested on the bent head of his
sub-editor.

“Morgan,” he said, “I have been thinking--Seems to me Vellacott wants a
rest! He's played out!”

Mr. Morgan wiped his pen vigorously upon his coat, just beneath the
shoulder, and sat back in his chair.

“Yes,” he replied; “he has not been up to the mark for some time. But
you will find difficulty in making him take a holiday. He is a devil for
working--ha, ha!”

This “ha, ha!” did not mean very much. There was no mirth in it. It was
a species of punctuation, and implied that Mr. Morgan had finished his
remark.

“I will ring for him now and see what he says about it.”

Mr. Bodery extended his chubby white hand and touched a small gong.
Almost instantaneously the silent door opened and a voice from without
said, “Yess'r.” A small boy with a mobile, wicked mouth stood at
attention in the doorway.

“Has Mr. Vellacott gone?”

“No--sir!” In a tone which seemed to ask: “Now _is_ it likely?”

“Where is he?”

“In the shop, sir.”

“Ask him to come here, please.”

“Yess'r.”

The small boy closed the door. Once outside he placed his hand upon his
heart and made a low bow to the handle, retreating backwards to the head
of the stairs. Then he proceeded to slide down the banister, to the
trifling detriment of his waistcoat. As he reached the end of his
perilous journey a door opened at the foot of the stairs, and a man's
form became discernible in the dim light.

“Is that the way you generally come downstairs, Wilson?” asked a voice.

“It is the quickest way, sir!”

“Not quite; there is one quicker, which you will discover some day if
you overbalance at the top!”

“Mr. Bodery wishes to see you, please sir!” The small boy's manner was
very different from what it had been outside the door upstairs.

“All right,” replied Vellacott, putting on the coat he had been carrying
over his arm. A peculiar smooth rapidity characterised all his
movements. At school he had been considered a very “clean” fielder. The
cleanness was there still.

The preternaturally sharp boy--sharp as only London boys are--watched
the lithe form vanish up the stairs; then he wagged his head very wisely
and said to himself in a patronising way:

“He's the right sort, he is--no chalk there!”

Subsequently he balanced his diminutive person full length upon the
balustrade, and proceeded to haul himself laboriously, hand over hand,
to the top.

In the meantime Christian Vellacott had passed into the editor's room.
The light of the lamp was driven downwards upon the table, but the
reflection of it rose and illuminated his face. It was a fairly handsome
face, with eyes just large enough to be keen and quick without being
dreamy. The slight fair moustache was not enough to hide the mouth,
which was refined, and singularly immobile. He glanced at Mr. Bodery, as
he entered, quickly and comprehensively, and then turned his eyes
towards Mr. Morgan. His face was very still and unemotional, but it was
pale, and his eyes were deeply sunken. A keen observer would have
noticed, in comparing the three men, that there was something about the
youngest which was lacking in his elders. It lay in the direct gaze of
his eyes, in the carriage of his head, in the small, motionless mouth.
It was what is vaguely called “power.”

“Sit down, Vellacott,” said Mr. Brodery. “We want to have a
consultation.” After a short pause he continued: “You know, of course,
that it is a dull season just now. People do not seem to read the papers
in August. Now, we want you to take a holiday. Morgan has been away; I
shall go when you come back. Say three weeks or a month. You've been
over-working yourself a bit--burning the candle at both ends, eh?”

“Hardly at both ends,” corrected Vellacott, with a ready smile which
entirely transformed his face. “Hardly at both ends--at one end in a
draught, perhaps.”

“Ha, ha! Very good,” chimed in Mr. Morgan the irrepressible. “At one end
in a draught--that is like me, only the draught has got inside my cheeks
and blown them out instead of in like yours, eh? Ha, ha!” And he patted
his cheeks affectionately.

“I don't think I care for a holiday just now, thanks,” he said slowly,
without remembering to call up a smile for Mr. Morgan's benefit.
Unconsciously he put his hand to his forehead, which was damp with the
heat of the printing-office which he had just left.

“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Bodery gravely, emphasising his remarks with
the pencil, “you have one thing in life to learn yet--no doubt you have
many, but this one in particular you must learn. Work is not the only
thing we are created for--not the only thing worth living for. It is a
necessary evil, that is all. When you have reached my age you will come
to look upon it as such. A little enjoyment is good for every one. There
are many things to form a brighter side to life.
Nature--travelling--riding--rowing----”

“And love,” suggested the sub-editor, placing his hand dramatically on
the right side of his broad waistcoat instead of the left. He could
afford to joke on the subject now that the grass grew high in the little
country churchyard where he had laid his young wife fifteen years
before. In those days he was a grave, self-contained man, but that
sorrow had entirely changed his nature. The true William Morgan only
came out on paper now.

Mr. Bodery was right. Christian had yet to learn a great lesson, and
unconsciously he was even now beginning to grasp its meaning. His whole
mind was full of his work, and out of those earnest grey eyes his soul
was looking at the man who was perhaps saving his life.

“We can easily manage it,” said the editor, continuing his advantage. “I
will take over the foreign policy article. The reviewing you can do
yourself, as we can always send you the books, and there is no pressing
hurry about them. The general work we will manage somehow--won't we,
Morgan?”

“Of course we will; as well as and perhaps better than he could do it
himself, eh? Ha, ha!”

“But seriously, Vellacott,” continued Mr. Bodery, “things will go on
just as well for a time. When I was young I used to make that mistake
too. I thought that no one could manage things like myself, but in time
I realised (as you will do some day) that things went on as smoothly
when I was away. Depend upon it, my boy, when a man is put on the shelf,
worn out and useless, another soon fills his place. You are too young to
go on the shelf yet. To please me, Vellacott, go away for three weeks.”

“You are very kind, sir--” began the young fellow, but Mr. Bodery
interrupted him.

“Well, then, that is settled. Shall we say this day week? That will give
you time to make your plans.”

With a few words of thanks Christian left the room. Vaguely and
mechanically he wandered upstairs to his own particular den. It was a
disappointing little chamber. The chaos one expects to find on the desk
of a literary man was lacking here. No papers lay on the table in
artistic disorder. The presiding genius of the room was
method--clear-headed, practical method. The walls were hidden by shelves
of books, from the last half-hysterical production of some vain woman to
the single-volume work of a man's lifetime. Many of the former were
uncut, the latter bore signs of having been read and studied. The
companionship of these silent friends brought peace and contentment to
the young man's spirit. He sat wearily down, and, leaning his chin upon
his folded arms, he thought. Gradually there came into his mind pictures
of the fair open country, of rolling hills and quiet valleys, of quiet
lanes and running waters. A sudden yearning to breathe God's pure air
took possession of his faculties. Mr. Bodery had gained the day. In the
room below Mr. Morgan wrote on in his easy, comfortable manner. The
editor was still thoughtfully playing with his pencil. The sharp little
boy was standing on his head in the passage. At last Mr. Bodery rose
from his chair and began his preparations for leaving. As he brushed his
hat he looked towards his companion and said:

“That young fellow is worth you and me rolled into one.”

“I recognised that fact some years ago,” replied the sub-editor, wiping
his pen on his coat. “It is humiliating, but true. Ha, ha!”




CHAPTER IV


BURDENED


Christian Vellacott soon descended the dingy stairs and joined the
westward-wending throng in the Strand. In the midst of the crowd he was
alone, as townsmen soon learn to be. The passing faces, the roar of
traffic, and the thousand human possibilities of interest around him in
no way disturbed his thoughts. In his busy brain the traffic of thought,
passing and repassing, crossing and recrossing, went on unaffected by
outward things. A modern poet has confessed that his muse loves the
pavement--a bold confession, but most certainly true. Why does talent
gravitate to cities? Because there it works its best--because friction
necessarily produces brilliancy. Nature is a great deceiver; she draws
us on to admire her insinuating charms, and in the contemplation of them
we lose our energy.

Christian had been born and bred in cities. The din and roar of life was
to him what the voice of the sea is to the sailor. In the midst of
crowded humanity he was in his element, and as he walked rapidly along
he made his way dexterously through the narrow places without thinking
of it. While meditating deeply he was by no means absorbed. In his
active life there had been no time for thoughts beyond the present, no
leisure for dreaming. He could not afford to be absent-minded. Numbers
of men are so situated. Their minds are required at all moments, in full
working order, clear and rapid--ready, shoes on feet and staff in hand,
to go whithersoever they may be called.

Although he was going to the saddest home that ever hung like a
mill-stone round a young neck, Christian wasted no time. The glory of
the western sky lay ruddily over the river as he emerged from the small
streets behind Chelsea and faced the broad placid stream. Presently he
stopped opposite the door of a small red-brick house, which formed the
corner of a little terrace facing the river and a quiet street running
inland from it.

With a latch-key he admitted himself noiselessly--almost
surreptitiously. Once inside he closed the door without unnecessary
sound and stood for some moments in the dark little entrance-hall,
apparently listening.

Presently a voice broke the silence of the house. A querulous,
high-pitched voice, quavering with the palsy of extreme age. The sound
of it was no new thing for Christian Vellacott. To-night his lips gave a
little twist of pain as he heard it. The door of the room on the ground
floor was open, and he could hear the words distinctly enough.

“You know, Mrs. Strawd, we have a nephew, but he is always gadding
about, I am sure; he has been a terrible affliction to us. A frothy,
good-for-nothing boy--that is what he is. We have not set eyes on him
for a month or more. Why, I almost forget his name!”

“Christian, that is his name--a most inappropriate one, I am sure,”
 chimed in another voice, almost identical in tone. “Why Walter should
have given him such a name I cannot tell. Ah! sister Judith, things are
different from what they used to be when we were younger!”

The frothy one outside the door seemed in no great degree impressed by
these impartial views upon himself, though the pained look was still
upon his lips as he turned to hang up his hat.

“He's coming home to-night, though, Miss Judith,” said another voice, in
a coaxing, wheedling tone, such as one uses towards petulant children.
“He's coming home to-night, sure enough!” It was a pleasant voice, with
a strong, capable ring about it. One instinctively felt that the
possessor of it was a woman to be relied upon at a crisis.

“Is he now--is he now?” said the first speaker reflectively. “Well, I am
sure it is time he did. We will just give him a lesson, eh, sister
Hester?--we will give him a lesson, shall we not?”

At this moment the door opened, and a little woman, quiet though
somewhat anxious looking, came out. She evinced no surprise at the sight
of the good-for-nothing nephew in the dimly-lighted passage, greeting
him in a low voice.

“How have they been to-day, nurse?” he asked.

“Oh, they have been well enough, Master Christian,” was the reply, in a
cheerful undertone.

“Aunt Judith has 'most got rid of her cold. But they've been very
trying, sir--just like children, as wilful as could be--the same
question over and over again till I was fit to cry. They are quieter
now, but--but it's you they're abusing now, Master Chris!”

The young fellow looked down into the little woman's face. His eyes were
sympathetic enough, but he said nothing. With a little nod and a
suppressed sigh he turned away from her. He laid his hand upon the door
and then stopped.

“As soon as you have brought up tea,” he said, looking back, “I will
take them for the evening, and you can have your rest as usual.”

From the room came, at intervals, the ring of silver, as if some one
were moving the spoons and forks from the table. Christian waited until
these sounds had ceased before he entered.

“Good evening, Aunt Judith. Good evening, Aunt Hester,” he said
cheerily.

They were exactly alike, these two old ladies; the same marvellously
wrinkled features and silver hair; voluminous caps and white woollen
shawls identical. With exaggerated marks of respect he kissed each by
turn on her withered cheek.

“May I sit down, Aunt Judith?” he asked, and without waiting for an
answer drew a chair towards the fireplace, where a small fire burnt
though it was the month of August.

“Yes, Nephew Vellacott, you may take a seat,” replied Aunt Judith with
chill severity, “and you may also tell us where you have been during the
last four weeks.”

Poor old human wreck! Only ten hours earlier her nephew had bid her
farewell for the day. Christian began an explanation in a weary,
mechanical way, like an actor tired of the part assigned to him, but the
old ladies would not listen. Aunt Hester interrupted him promptly.

“Your shallow excuses are wasted on us, Nephew Vellacott. You have
doubtless been away, enjoying yourself and leaving us--us who support
you and deprive ourselves in order to keep a decent coat upon your
back--leaving us to the mercy of all the thieves in London. And tell us,
pray--what are we to do for spoons and forks to-night?”

“What?” exclaimed Christian with perfunctory interest, “have the spoons
gone--?” he almost said “again,” but checked himself in time. He turned
to look at the table, which had been carefully denuded of every piece of
silver.

“There, you see!” quavered Aunt Judith triumphantly; and the two old
ladies rubbed their hands, nodded their palsied old heads at each other,
and chuckled in utter delight at their nephew's discomfiture, until Aunt
Judith was attacked by a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to be
tearing her to pieces. Christian watched her with the ready keenness of
a sick-nurse.

“How did it occur?” he asked, when the old lady had recovered.

“There, you see,” remarked Aunt Hester, with the precise intonation of
her accomplice.

“I _am_ sure!” panted Aunt Judith triumphantly.

“I _am_ sure!” echoed Aunt Hester.

They allowed their nephew's remorse full scope, and then proceeded
laboriously to extract the missing articles from the side of Aunt
Judith's arm-chair. This farce was rehearsed every night, nearly word
for word. A pleasant recreation for an intellectual man, assuredly. The
only relief to the monotony was the occasional loss of a spoon in the
crevice between the arm and the seat of Aunt Judith's chair. Then
followed such a fumbling and a “dear me-ing” until the worthless nephew
was perforce called to the rescue, to fish and probe with a paper-knife
till the lost treasure was recovered.

“We only wished, Nephew Vellacott, to show you what might have happened
during your unconscionable absence. Servants are only too ready to talk
to the first comer of their mistresses' wealth and position. They have
no discrimination.” said Aunt Judith in a reproving tone. The old ladies
were very fond of boasting of their wealth and position, whereas, in
reality, their nephew was the only barrier between them and the
workhouse.

“Well, Aunt Judith,” replied Christian patiently, “I will try and stay
at home more in future. But you know it is time I was doing something to
earn my own livelihood now. I cannot exist on your kindness all my
life!”

He had learnt to humour these two silly old women. During the two years
which had just passed he had gradually recognised the utter futility of
endeavouring to make them realise the true state of their affairs. They
spoke grandiloquently of the family solicitor: a man who had been in his
grave for nearly a quarter of a century. It was simply impossible to
instil into their minds any fact whatever, and such facts as had
established themselves there were permanent. They belonged to another
generation, and their mode of thought was a remnant of a forgotten and
unsatisfactory period. To them Napoleon the First was a living man,
Queen Victoria unheard of. The decay of their minds had been slow, and
it had been Christian Vellacott's painful task to watch its steady
progress. Day by day he had followed the gradual failing of each sense
and power.

There is something pathetic about the decay of a mind which has been
driven to death by constant work, but there is a compensating thought to
alleviate the sadness. It may rattle and grow loose, like some worn-out
engine, where the friction presses; but it will work till it collapses
totally, and some of the work achieved is good and permanent. It is
bound to be so. Infinitely sadder is the sight of a mind which is
falling to pieces by reason of the rust that has eaten into its very
core. For rust must needs mean idleness--and no human intellect
_need_ be idle. So it had been with these two old ladies. Born in a
wofully unintellectual age, they had never left a certain groove in
life. When their brother married Christian Vellacott's grandmother, they
had left his house in Honiton to go and live in Bodmin upon a limited
but sufficient income. These “sufficient incomes” are a curse; they do
not allow of charity and make no call for labour.

When Christian Vellacott arrived in England, an orphan with no great
wealth, he made it his first duty to visit the only living relations he
possessed. He was just in time to save them, literally, from starvation.
It was obvious that he could not make a literary livelihood in Bodmin,
so he made a home for the two old wrecks of humanity in London. Their
means, like their minds, were simply exhausted. Aunt Judith was
ninety-three; Aunt Hester ninety-one. During that vast blank (for blank
it was, so far as their lives were concerned) stretching away back into
a perspective of time which few around them could gauge--they had never
been separated for one day. Like two apples they had grown side by side,
until their very contact had engendered disease--a slow, deadly,
creeping rot, finding its source at the point of contact, reaching its
goal at the heart of each. They had _existed_ thus with terrible
longevity--lived a mere animal life of sleeping and eating, such as
hundreds of women are living around us now.

“Of course, you must learn to make your daily bread, Nephew Vellacott!”
 answered Aunt Hester. “The desire does you credit; but you should be
careful into what society you go without us. Girls are very designing,
and many a one would like to marry a nephew of mine--eh, Judith?”

“Yes, that they would,” replied the old lady. “The minxes know that they
might do worse than catch the nephew of Judith and Hester Vellacott!”

“Look at us,” continued Aunt Hester, drawing up her shrunken old form
with a touch of pride. “Look at us? We have always avoided marriage, and
we are very nice and happy, I am sure!”

She waited for a confirmation of this bold statement, but Christian was
not listening. He was leaning forward with his hands clasped between his
knees, gazing into the fire. He was recalling the conversation which had
passed in the little room in the Strand. Could he leave these two
helpless old creatures. Could he get away from it all for a little
time--away from the maddening prattle of unguided tongues, from the
dread monotony of hopeless watching? He knew that he was wasting his
manhood, neglecting his intellectual opportunities, and endangering his
career; but his course of duty was marked out with terrible
distinctness. He never saw the pathos of it, as a woman would have seen
it, gathering perhaps some slight alleviation from the sight. It never
entered his thoughts to complain, and he never conceived the idea of
drawing comparisons between his position and that of other young men
who, instead of being slaves to their relatives, made very good use of
them. He merely went on doing his obvious duty and striving not to look
forward too eagerly to a release at some future period.

Fortunately, Mrs. Strawd was not long in bringing in the simple evening
meal; and the attention of the old ladies was at once turned to the
mystery hidden beneath the dish-cover. What was it, and would there be
enough for Nephew Vellacott?

Deftly, Christian poured out the tea. Two cups very weak and one
stronger. Then two thin slices of crustless bread had to be buttered.
This operation required great judgment and impartiality.

“Excuse me, Nephew Vellacott!” said Aunt Judith, with dangerous
severity. “Is that first slice intended for Aunt Hester? It appears to
me that the butter is very thick--much thicker than on the second, which
is doubtless intended for me!”

“Do you think so, Aunt Judith?” asked Christian in a voice purposely
loud in order to drown Aunt Hester's remonstrance. “Then I will take a
little off!” He passed the knife harmlessly over the faulty slice, and
laid the two side by side upon a plate. Then the old ladies promptly
held a survey on them--that declared to be more heavily buttered being
awarded to Aunt Judith in recognition of her seniority.

With similar fruitful topics of conversation the meal was pleasantly
despatched. The turn of Dick and Mick followed thereon. Dick, the
property of Aunt Judith, was a canary of thoughtful temperament. The
part he played in the domestic economy of the small household was a
contemplative rather than an active one. Mick, Aunt Hester's bird, was
of a more lively nature. He had, as a rule, something to say upon all
subjects--and said it.

Now Aunt Hester, in her inmost heart, loved a silent bird, and secretly
coveted Dick, but as Mick was her property, and Dick the silent was
owned by Aunt Judith, she never lost an opportunity of enlarging upon
the stupidity and uselessness of silent birds. Aunt Judith, on the other
hand, admired a lively and talkative canary; consequently she was
weighed down with the conviction that her sister's bird was the superior
article. Altogether, birds as a topic of conversation were best avoided.
Dick and Mick were housed in cages of similar build--indeed, most things
were strictly in duplicate in the whole household. Every evening
Christian brought the cages, and Aunt Judith and Aunt Hester carefully
placed within the wires a small piece of bread-and-butter, which Nurse
Strawd as carefully removed, untouched, the next morning.

When the birds' wants had been attended to, it was Christian's duty to
settle the old ladies comfortably in their respective arm-chairs. This
he did tenderly and cleverly as a woman, but it was not a pleasant sight
to look upon. The man, with his lean, strong face, long jaw, and
prominent chin, was so obviously out of place. These peaceful duties
were never meant for such as he. His somewhat closely-set eyes were not
such as wax tender over drowning flies, for even in repose they were
somewhat direct and stern in their gaze. In fact, Christian Vellacott
was so visibly created for strife and the forefront of life's battle,
that it was almost painful to see him fulfilling a more peaceful
avocation.

As a rule he devoted himself to the amusement of his aged relatives for
an hour or so; but this evening he sat down to the piano at once, with
the deliberate intention of playing them off to sleep. Ten o'clock was
their hour for retiring, and before that they would not move, although
they dozed in their chairs.

He was no mean musician, this big West-countryman, with a true ear and a
touch peculiarly light and tender for a man. He played gently and
drowsily for some time, half forgetting that he was not alone in the
room. Presently he turned round, letting his fingers rest on the keys.
Aunt Judith was asleep, and Aunt Hester made a sign for him to go on
playing. Five minutes more, gradually toned down till the very sounds
seemed to fall asleep, and Aunt Hester was peacefully slumbering.
Silently the player rose, and crossing the room, he resumed his seat at
the table from which the white cloth had not yet been removed. Pen, ink,
and paper were within reach, and in a few minutes he had written the
following note:--

“DEAR SIDNEY,--May I retract the letter I wrote yesterday and accept
your invitation? I have been requested to take a holiday, and, rather
than offend the powers that be, have given in. I can think of no happier
way of spending it than in seeing you all again and recalling the jolly
old Prague days. With kind regards, yours ever,

“CHRISTIAN VELLACOTT.”

He folded the note and slipped it into an envelope, which he addressed
to “Sidney Carew, Esq., St. Mary Western, Dorset.” Then he slipped
noiselessly out of the room and upstairs to where Mrs. Strawd had a
small sitting-room of her own. The little woman heard his footstep on
the old creaking stairs, and opened the door of her room before he
reached it.

“If I went away for three weeks,” he said, “could you do without me?”

“Of course I could,” replied the little woman readily. “Just you go away
and take a holiday, Master Christian. You need it sorely, that I know.
You do indeed. We shall get on splendidly without you. I'll just have my
sister to come and stay, same as I did when you had to go to the Paris
House of Parliament.”

“I have not had much of a holiday, you see, for two years now!”

“Of course you haven't, and you want it. It's only human nature--and you
a young man that ought to be in the open air all day. For an old woman
like me it's different. We're made differently by the good God on
purpose, I think.”

“Well, then, if your sister comes it must be understood, nurse, that I
make the same arrangement with her as exists with you. She must simply
be a duplicate of you--you understand?”

The little woman laughed, lightly enough.

“Oh, yes, Master Christian, that is all right. But you need not have
troubled about that. She never would have thought of such a thing as
wages, I'm sure!”

“No,” replied he gravely, “I know she would not, but it will be better,
I think, to have it understood beforehand. Gratitude is a very nice
thing to work for, but some work is worth more than gratitude. If you
are going out for your walk, perhaps you will post this letter.”

Before Christian went to bed that night he held a candle close to the
mirror and looked long and hard at his own reflection. There were dark
streaks under his eyes, his small mouth was drawn and dry, his lips
colourless. At each temple the bone stood out rather prominently, and
the skin was brilliant in its whiteness and reflected the light of the
candle. He felt his own pulse. It was beating, at one moment fast and
irregular, at the next it was hardly perceptible.

“Yes!” he muttered, with a professional nod--in his training as a
journalist he had learnt a little of many sciences--“yes, old Bodery was
right.”




CHAPTER V


A REUNION


The gentle August night had cooled and soothed the dusty atmosphere. All
things looked fair, even in London. The placid Thames glided stealthily
down to the sea, as if wishing to speed on unseen, to cast at last his
reeking waters into the cool ocean. The bright brown sails, low hulls,
and gaily painted spars of the barges dropping down with the stream
added to the beauty of the scene.

Such was the morning that greeted Christian Vellacott, as he opened the
door of his little Chelsea home and stepped forth a free man. When once
he had made up his mind to go, every obstacle was thrown aside, and his
determination was now as great as had been his previous reluctance. He
had no presentiment that he was taking an important step in life--one of
those steps which we hardly notice at the time, but upon which we look
back in after years and note how clear and definite it was, losing
ourselves in vague conjecture as to what might have been had we held
back.

Christian being practical in all things, knew how to travel comfortably,
dispensing with rugs and bags and such small packages as are understood
to be dear to the elderly single female heart.

The smoky suburbs were soon left behind, and the smiling land gave forth
such gentle, pastoral odours as only long confinement in cities can
teach us to detect. Christian lowered the window, and the warm air
played round him as it had not done for two long years. The whizz of the
wind past his face brought back the memory of the long, idle, happy days
spent with his father in the Mediterranean, when they had been half
sailors and wholly Bohemians, gliding from port to port, village to
city, in their yacht, as free and careless as the wind. The warm breeze
almost seemed to be coming to him from some parched Italian plain
instead of pastoral Buckinghamshire.

Then his thoughts travelled still further back to his school-days in
Prague, when his father and Mr. Carew were colleagues in a brilliant but
unfortunate embassy. Five years had passed since then. The two fathers
were now dead, and the children had dropped apart as men and women do
when their own personal interests begin to engross them. Now again, in
this late summer time, they were to meet. All, that is, who were left.
The _débris_, as it were. Three voices there were whose tones would
never more be heard in the round of merry jest. Mr. Carew, Walter
Vellacott (Uncle Walter, the young ones called him), and little Charlie
Carew, the bright-eyed sailor of the family, had all three travelled on.
The two former, whose age and work achieved had softened their
departure, were often spoken of with gently lowered voice, but little
Charlie's name was never mentioned. It was a fatal mistake--this
silence--if you will; but it was one of those mistakes which are often
made in wisdom. In splendid, solitary grandeur he lay awaiting the end
of all things--the call of his Creator--in the grey ice-fields of the
North. The darling of his ship, he had died with a smile in his blue
eyes and a sad little jest upon his lips to cheer the rough fur-clad
giants kneeling at his side. Time, the merciful, had healed, as best he
could (which is by no means perfectly), the wound in the younger hearts.
It is only the old that are quite beyond his powers; he cannot touch
them. Mrs. Carew, a woman with a patient face and a ready smile, was the
only representative of the vanishing generation. Her daughters--ay! and
perhaps her sons as well (though boys are not credited with so much
tender divination)--knew the meaning of the little droop at the side of
their mother's smiling lips. They detected the insincerity of her kindly
laugh.

Shortly after leaving Exeter, Christian's station was reached. This was
an old-fashioned seaport town, whose good fortune it was to lie too far
west for a London watering-place, and too far east for Plymouth or
Bristol. Sidney Carew was on the platform--a sturdy, typical Englishman,
with a certain sure slowness of movement handed down to him by seafaring
ancestors. The two friends had not met for many years, but with men
absence has little effect upon affection. During the space of many years
they may never meet and seldom write, but at the end that gulf of time
is bridged over by a simple “Halloa, old fellow!” and a warm grip.
Slowly, piece by piece, the history of the past years comes out. Both
are probably changed in thought and nature, but the old individuality
remains, the old bond of friendship survives.

“Well, Sidney?”

“How are you?”

Simultaneously--and that was all. The changes were there in both, and
noted by both, but not commented upon.

“Molly is outside with the dog-cart,” said Sidney; “is your luggage
forward?”

“Yes, that is it being pitched out now.”

It was with womanly foresight that Miss Molly Carew had elected to wait
outside with the dog-cart while her brother met Christian on the
platform. She feared a little natural embarrassment at meeting the old
playfellow of the family, and concluded that the first moments would be
more easily tided over here than at the train. Her fears were, as it
turned out, unnecessary, but she did not know what Christian might be
like after the lapse of years. Of herself she was sure enough, being one
of those happy people who have no self-consciousness whatever.

On seeing her, Christian came forward at once, raising his hat and
shaking hands as if they had parted the day before.

She saw at once that it was all right. This was Christian Vellacott as
she had remembered him. She looked down at him as he stood with one hand
resting on the splashboard, and he, looking up to her, smiled in return.

“Christian,” she said, “do you know I should scarcely have recognised
you. You are so big, and--and you look positively ghastly!” She finished
her remark with a little laugh which took away from the spoken meaning
of it.

“Ghastly?” he replied. “Thanks: I do not feel like it--only hungry.
Hungry, and desperately glad to see a face that does not look
overworked.”

“Meaning me.”

“Meaning you.”

She gave a little sarcastic nod, and pursed up a pair of very red lips.

“Nevertheless I am the only person in the house who does any work at
all. Hilda, for instance--”

At this moment Sidney came up and interrupted them.

“Jump up in front, Chris,” he said; “Molly will drive, while I sit
behind. Your luggage will follow in the cart.”

The drive of six miles passed away very pleasantly. Molly's strong
little hands were quite accustomed to the reins, and the men were free
to talk, which, however, she found time to do as well. The two young
people on the front seat stole occasional sidelong glances at each
other. The clever, mischievous little girl of Christian's recollection
was transformed by the kindly hand of time into a fascinating and
capable young lady. The uncertain profile had grown clear and regular.
The truant hair was somewhat more under control, which, however, was all
that could be said upon that subject. Only her eyes were unchanged, the
laughing, fearless eyes of old. Fearless they had been in the times of
childish mischief and adventure; fearless they remained in the face of
life's graver mischances now.

Christian had been a shy and commonplace-enough boy as she recollected
him. Now she found a self-possessed man of the world. Tall and strong of
body she saw he was, and she felt that he possessed another strength--a
strength of mind and will which, reaching out, can grasp and hold
anything or everything.

With practised skill, Molly turned into the narrow gateway at a swinging
trot, and then only was the house visible--a low, rambling building of
brick and stone uncouthly mixed. Its chief outward characteristic was a
promise of inward comfort. The sturdy manner in which its windows faced
the scantily-wooded tableland that stretched away unbroken by wall or
hedgerow to the sea, implied a certain thickness of wall and woodwork.
The doorway which looked inland was singularly broad, and bore signs
about its stonework of having once been even broader. The house had
originally been a hollow square, with a roofless courtyard in the
centre, into which the sheep and cattle were in olden times driven for
safety at night against French marauders. This had later on been roofed
in, and transformed into a roomy and comfortable hall, such as might be
used as a sitting-room. All around the house, except, indeed, upon the
sea-ward side, stood gnarled and twisted trees; Scotch firs in
abundance, here and there a Weymouth pine, and occasionally a knotted
dwarf oak with a tendency to run inland. The garden was, however, rich
enough in shrubs and undergrowth, and to the landward side was a gleam
of still water, being all that remained of a broad, deep moat.

Mrs. Carew welcomed Christian at the open door. She said very little,
but her manner was sufficiently warm and friendly to dispense with
words.

“Where is Hilda?” asked Molly, as she leapt lightly to the ground.

“I do not know, dear. She is out, somewhere; in the garden, I expect.
You are before your time a little. The train must have been punctual,
for a wonder. Had Hilda known, she would have been here to welcome you,
I know, Christian.”

“I expect she is at the moat,” said Molly. “Come along, Christian; we
will go and look for her. This way.”

In the meantime Sidney had driven the dog-cart round to the stables,
kneeling awkwardly upon the back seat.

As Christian followed his fair guide down the little path leading to the
moat, he began to feel that it was not so difficult after all to throw
off the dull weight of anxiety that lay upon his mind. The thoughts
about the _Beacon_ were after all not so very absorbing. The
anxiety regarding the welfare of the two old ladies was already
alleviated by distance. The strong sea air, the change to pleasant and
kindly society, were already beginning their work.

Suddenly Molly stopped, and Christian saw that she was standing at the
edge of a long, still sheet of water bounded by solid stonework, which,
however, was crumbling away in parts, while everywhere the green moss
grew in velvety profusion.

“Oh, Christian,” said Molly lightly, “I suppose Sidney told you a little
of our news. Men's letters are not discursive as a rule I know, but no
doubt he told you--something.”

He was standing beside her at the edge of the moat, looking down into
the deep, clear water.

“Yes,” he replied slowly, “yes, Molly; he told me a little in a scrappy,
unsatisfactory way.”

A pained expression came into her eyes for a moment, and then she spoke,
rather more quickly than was habitual with her, but without raising her
voice.

“He told you--nothing about Hilda?” she said interrogatively.

He turned and looked down at her.

“No--nothing.”

Then he followed the direction of her eyes, and saw approaching them a
young man and a maiden whose footsteps had been inaudible upon the
moss-grown path. The man was of medium height, with an honest brown
face. He was dressed for riding, and walked with a slight swagger, which
arose less from conceit than from excessive riding on horseback. The
maiden was tall and stately, and in her walk there was an old-fashioned
grace of movement which harmonised perfectly with the old-world
surroundings. She was looking down, and Christian could not see her
face; but as she wore no hat, he saw and recognised her hair. This was
of gold--not red, not auburn, not flaxen, but pure and living gold. The
sun glinting through the trees shone upon it and gleamed, but in reality
the hair gleamed without the aid of sunlight.




CHAPTER VI


BROKEN THREADS


They came forward, and suddenly the girl raised her face. She made a
little hesitating movement of non-recognition, and then suddenly her
face was transformed by a very pleasant smile. There was something
peculiar in Hilda Carew's smile, which came from the fact that her
eyelashes were golden, while her eyes were dark blue. The effect
suggested a fascinating kitten. In repose her face was almost severe in
its refined beauty, and the set of her lips indicated a certain
self-reliance which with years might become more prominent if trouble
should arrive.

“Christian!” she exclaimed, “I am sorry I did not know you.” They shook
hands, and Molly hastened to introduce her sister's companion.

“Mr. Farrar,” she said; “Mr. Vellacott.”

The two men shook hands, and Christian was disappointed. The grip of
Farrar's fingers was limp and almost nerveless, in striking
contradiction to the promise of his honest face and well-set person.

“Tea is ready,” said Molly somewhat hastily; “let us go in.”

Hilda and her companion passed on in front while Molly and Christian
followed them. The latter purposely lagged behind, and his companion
found herself compelled to wait for him.

“Look at the effect of the sunlight through the trees upon that water,”
 said he in a conversational way; “it is quite green, and almost
transparent.”

“Yes,” replied Molly, moving away tentatively, “we see most peculiar
effects over the moat. The water is so very still and deep.”

He raised his quiet eyes to her face, upon which the ready smile still
lingered. As she met his gaze she raised her hand and pushed back a few
truant wisps of hair which, curling forward like tendrils, tickled her
cheek. It was a movement he soon learned to know.

“Yes,” he said absently. He was wondering in an analytical way whether
the action was habitual with her, or significant of embarrassment. At
length he turned to follow her, but Molly had failed in her object; the
others had passed out of earshot.

“Tell me,” said Christian in a lowered voice, “who is he?”

“He is the squire of St. Mary Eastern, six miles from here,” she
replied; “very well off; very good to his mother, and in every way
nice.”

Christian tore off a small branch which would have touched his forehead
had he walked on without stooping. He broke it into small pieces, and
continued throwing up at intervals into the air a tiny stick, hitting it
with his hand as they walked on.

“And,” he said suggestively, “and--”

“Yes, Christian,” she replied decisively, “they are engaged. Come, let
us hurry; I always pour out the tea. I told you before, if you remember,
that I was the only person in the house who did any work.”

When Christian opened his eyes the following morning, the soft hum of
insects fell on his ear instead of the roar of London traffic. Through
the open window the southern air blew upon his face. Above the sound of
busy wings the distant sea sang its low dirge. It was a living
perspective of sound. The least rustle near at hand overpowered it, and
yet it was always there--an unceasing throb to be felt as much as heard.
Some acoustic formation of the land carried the noise, for the sea was
eight miles away. It was very peaceful; for utter stillness is not
peace. A room wherein an old clock ticks is infinitely more soothing
than a noiseless chamber.

Nevertheless the feeling that forced itself into Christian Vellacott's
waking thoughts was not peaceful. It was a sense of discomfort.
Town-people expect too much from the country--that is the truth of it.
They quite overlook the fact that where human beings are there can be no
peace.

This sudden sense of restlessness annoyed him. He knew it so well. It
had hovered over his waking head almost daily during the last two years,
and here, in the depths of the country, he had expected to be without
it. Moreover, he was conscious that he had not brought the cause with
him. He had found it, waiting.

There were many things--indeed there was almost everything--to make his
life happy and pleasant at St. Mary Western. But in his mind, as he woke
up on this first morning, none of these things found place. He came to
his senses thinking of the one little item which could be described as
untoward--thinking of Hilda, and Hilda engaged to be married to Fred
Farrar. It was not that he was in love with Hilda Carew himself. He had
scarcely remembered her existence during the last two years. But this
engagement jarred, and Farrar jarred. It was something more than the
very natural shock which comes with the news that a companion of our
youth is about to be married--shock which seems to shake the memory of
that youth; to confuse the background of our life. It is by means of
such shocks as these that Fate endeavours vainly to make us realise that
the past is irrevocable--that we are passing on, and that that which has
been can never be again. And at the same time we learn something else:
namely, that the past is not by any means unchangeable. So potential is
To-day that it not only holds To-morrow in the hollow of its hand, but
it can alter Yesterday.

Christian Vellacott lay upon his bed in unwonted idleness, gazing
vaguely at the flying clouds. The window was open, and the song of the
distant sea rose and fell with a rhythm full of peace. But in this man's
mind there was no peace. In all probability there never would be
complete peace there, because Ambition had set its hold upon him. He
wanted to do more than there was time for. Like many of us, he began by
thinking that Life is longer than it is. Its whole length is in those
“long, long thoughts” of Youth. When those are left behind, we settle
down to work, and the rest of the story is nothing but labour. Vellacott
resented this engagement because he felt that Hilda Carew had stepped
out of that picture which formed what was probably destined to be the
happiest time of his life--his Youth. For the unhappiness of Youth is
preferable to the resignation of Age. He felt that she had willingly
resigned something which he would on no account have given up. Above
all, he felt that it was a mistake. This was, of course, at the bottom
of it. He probably felt that it was a pity. We usually feel so on
hearing that a pretty and charming girl is engaged to be married. We
think that she might have done so much better for herself, and we grow
pensive or possibly sentimental over her lost opportunity when
contemplating him in the mirror as he shaves. Like all so-called happy
events, an engagement is not usually a matter of universal rejoicing.
Some one is, in all probability, left to think twice about it. But
Christian Vellacott was not prepared to admit that he was in that
position.

He was naturally of an observant habit--his father had been
one of the keenest-sighted men of his day--and he had graduated at the
subtlest school in the world. He unwittingly fell to studying his
fellow-men whenever the opportunity presented itself, and the result of
this habit was a certain classification of detail. He picked up little
scraps of evidence here and there, and these were methodically
pigeon-holed away, as a lawyer stores up the correspondence of his
clients.

With regard to Frederick Farrar, Vellacott had only made one note. The
squire of St. Mary Eastern was apparently very similar to his fellows.
He was an ordinary young British squire with a knowledge of horses and a
highly-developed fancy for smart riding-breeches and long boots. He had
probably received a fair education, but this had ceased when he closed
his last school-book. The seeds of knowledge had been sown, but they
lacked moisture and had failed to grow. He was good-natured, plucky in a
hard-headed British way, and gentlemanly. In all this there was nothing
exceptional--nothing to take note of--and Vellacott only remembered the
limpness of Frederick Farrar's grasp. He thought of this too
persistently and magnified it. And this being the only mental note made,
was rather hard on the young squire of St. Mary Eastern.

Vellacott thought of these things while he dressed, he thought of them
intermittently during the unsettled, noisy, country breakfast, and when
he found himself walking beside the moat with Hilda later on he was
still thinking of them.

They had not yet gathered into their hands the threads which had been
broken years before. At times they hit upon a topic of some slight
common interest, but something hovered in the air between them. Hilda
was gay, as she had always been, in a gentle, almost purring way; but a
certain constrained silence made itself felt at times, and they were
both intensely conscious of it.

Vellacott was fully aware that there was something to be got over, and
so instead of skipping round it, as a woman might have done, he went
blundering on to the top of it.

“Hilda,” he said suddenly, “I have never congratulated you.”

She bent her head in a grave little bow which was not quite English; but
she said nothing.

“I can only wish you all happiness,” he continued rather vaguely.

Again she made that mystic little motion of the head, but did not look
towards him, and never offered the assistance of smile or word.

“A long life, a happy one, and your own will,” he added more lightly,
looking down into the green water of the moat.

“Thank you,” she said, standing quite still beside him.

And then there followed an awkward pause. It was Vellacott who finally
broke the silence in the only way left to him.

“I like Farrar,” he said. “I am sure he will make you happy. He--is a
lucky fellow.”

At the end of the walk that ran the whole length of that part of the
moat which had been allowed to remain intact, she made a little movement
as if to turn aside beneath the hazel trees and towards the house. But
he would not let her go. He turned deliberately upon his heel and waited
for her. There was nothing else to do but acquiesce. They retraced their
steps with that slow reflectiveness which comes when one walks backwards
and forwards over the same ground.

There is something eminently conversational in the practice of walking
to and fro. For that purpose it is better than an arm-chair and a pipe,
or a piece of knitting.

Occasionally Vellacott dropped a pace behind, apparently with a purpose;
for when he did so he raised his eyes instantly. He seemed to be slowly
detailing the maiden, and he frowned a little. She was exactly what she
had promised to be. The singularly golden hair which he had last seen
flowing freely over her slight young shoulders had acquired a
decorousness of curve, although the hue was unchanged. The shoulders
were exactly the same in contour, on a slightly larger scale; and the
manner of carrying her head--a manner peculiarly her own, and suggestive
of a certain gentle wilfulness--was unaltered.

And yet there was a change: that subtle change which seems to come to
girls suddenly, in the space of a week--of one night. And this man was
watching her with his analytical eyes, wondering what the change might
be.

He was more or less a bookworm, and he possibly thought that this
subject--this pleasant young subject walking beside him in a blue cotton
dress--was one which might easily be grasped and understood if only one
gave one's mind to it. Hence the little frown. It denoted the gift of
his mind. It was the frown that settled over his eyes when he cut the
pages of a deep book and glanced at the point of his pencil.

He had read many books, and he knew a number of things. But there is one
subject of which very little can be learnt in books--precisely the
subject that walked in a blue cotton dress by Christian Vellacott's side
at the edge of the moat. If any one thinks that book-learning can aid
this study, let him read the ignorance of Gibbon, comparing it with the
learning of that cheery old ignoramus Montaigne. And Vellacott was
nearer to Gibbon in his learning than to Montaigne in his careless
ignorance of those things that are written in books.

He glanced at her; he frowned and brought his whole attention to bear
upon her, and he could not even find out whether she was pleased to
listen to his congratulations, or angry, or merely indifferent. It was
rather a humiliating position for a clever man--for a critic who knew
himself to be capable of understanding most things, of catching the
drift of most thoughts, however imperfectly expressed. He was vaguely
conscious of defeat. He felt that he was nonplussed by a pair of soft
round eyes like the eyes of a kitten, and the dignified repose of a pair
of demure red lips. Both eyes and lips, as well as shoulders and golden
hair, were strangely familiar and strangely strange by turns.

With one finger he twisted the left side of his moustache into his
mouth, and, dragging at it with his teeth, distorted his face in an
unbecoming if reflective manner, which was habitually indicative of the
deepest attention.

While reflecting, he forgot to be conversational, and Hilda seemed to be
content with silence. So they walked the length of the moat twice
without speaking, and might have accomplished it a third time, had
little Stanley Carew not appeared upon the scene with the impulsive
energy of his thirteen years, begging Christian to bowl him some really
swift overhands.




CHAPTER VII


PUPPETS


“Ah! It goes. It goes already!”

The speaker--the Citizen Morot--slowly rubbed his white hands one over
the other.

He was standing at the window of a small house in an insignificant
street on the southern side of the Seine. He was remarkably calm--quite
the calmest man within the radius of a mile; for the insignificant
little street was in an uproar. There was a barricade at each end of it.
Such a barricade as Parisians love. It was composed of a few overturned
omnibuses; for the true Parisian is a cynic. He likes overturned things,
and he loves to see objects of peace converted to purposes of war. He is
not content that ploughshares be beaten into swords. He prefers
altar-rails. And so this little street was blocked at either end by a
barricade of overturned omnibuses, of old hampers and empty boxes, of a
few loads of second-hand bricks and paving-stones brought from the scene
of some drainage operations round the corner.

In the street between the barricades, surged, hooted, and yelled that
wildest and most dangerous of incomprehensibles--a Paris mob.
Half-a-dozen orators were speaking at once, and no one was listening to
them. Here and there amidst the rabble a voice was raised at times with
suspicious persistence.

“_Vive le Roi!_” it cried. “Long live the King!”

A few took up the refrain, but the general tone was negative. It was not
so much a question of upholding anything as of throwing down that which
was already up.

“Down with the Republic!” was the favourite cry. “Down with the
President! Down with everything!”

And each man cried down his favourite enemy.

The Citizen Morot listened, and his contemptuous mouth was twisted with
a delicate, subtle smile.

“Ah!” he muttered. “The voice of the people. The howling of the wolves.
Go on, go on, my braves. Cry 'Long live the King,' and soon you will
begin to believe that you mean it. They are barking now. Let them bark.
Soon we shall teach them to bite, and then--then, who knows?”

His voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he stood there amidst the din
and hubbub--dreaming. At last he raised his hand to his forehead--a
prominent, rounded forehead, flat as the palm of one's hand from eyebrow
to eyebrow, and curving at either side, sharply, back to deep-sunken
temples.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, with a little laugh; and he drew from an inner
pocket a delicately scented pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped his
brow. “If I get excited now, what will it be when they begin--to bite?”

All this while the orators were shouting their loudest, and the voices
dispersed throughout the crowd raised at intervals their short, sharp
cry of--

“Long live the King!”

And the police? There were only two agents attached to the immediate
neighbourhood, and they were smoking cigars and drinking absinthe in two
separate cellars, with the door locked on the outside. They were
prisoners of war of the most resigned type. The room in which stood the
Citizen Morot was dark, and wisely so. For the Parisian street
politician can make very pretty practice of a lighted petroleum-lamp
with an empty bottle or half a brick. The window was wide open, and the
wooden shutters were hooked back.

The attitude of the man was interested and slightly self-satisfied. It
suggested that of the manager of a theatre looking down from an
upper-tier box upon a full house and a faultless stage. At the same time
he was keeping what sailors call a very “bright look-out” towards either
end of the street. From his elevated position he was able to see over
the barricades, and he watched with intense interest the movements of
two women (or perhaps men disguised as such) who stood in the centre of
the street just beyond each obstruction.

There was something dramatic in the motionless attitude of these two
women, standing guard alone in the deserted street, on the wrong side of
the barricades.

At times Morot leant well out of the window and listened. Then he stood
back again and contemplated the crowd.

Each orator was illuminated by a naphtha “flare,” which, being held in
unsteady hands, flickered and wavered, casting strange gleams of light
over the evil faces upturned towards it. At times one speaker would
succeed in raising a laugh or extracting a groan, and when he did so
those listening to his rivals turned and surged towards him. There was
plenty of movement. It was what the newspapers call an animated
scene--or a disgraceful scene--according to their political bias.

The Citizen Morot could not hear the jokes nor distinguish the cause of
the groaning. But he did not seem to mind much. The speeches were not of
the description to be given in full in the morning papers. There were,
fortunately, no reporters present. It was the frank eloquence of the
slaughter-house--the unclad humour of the market.

Suddenly one of the women--she who was posted at the southern end of the
street--raised both her arms, and the Citizen leant far out of the
window. He was very eager, and his hawk-like eyes blinked perpetually.
His hand was raised to his mouth, and the lights of the orators gleamed
on something that he held in his fingers--something that looked like
silver.

The woman held her two arms straight up into the air for some moments,
then she suddenly crossed them twice, turning at the same moment and
scrambling over the barricade. A long shrill whistle rang out over the
heads of the mob, and its effect was almost instantaneous. The “flares”
 disappeared like magic. Dark figures swarmed up the lamp-posts and
extinguished the feeble lights. The voice of the orator was still.
Silence and darkness reigned over that insignificant little street on
the southern side of the Seine. Then came the clatter of cavalry--the
rattle of horses' feet, and the ominous clank of empty scabbards against
spur and buckle. A word of command, and a scrambling halt. Then silence
again, broken only by the shuffling of feet (not too well clad) in the
darkness between the barricades.

The Citizen Morot leant recklessly out of the window, peering into
the gloom. He forgot to make use of the delicately scented
pocket-handkerchief now, and the drops of perspiration trickled slowly
down his face.

The soldiers shuffled in their saddles. Some of the spirited little
Arabs pawed the pavement. One of them squealed angrily, and there was a
slight commotion somewhere in the rear ranks--an equine difference of
opinion. The officers had come forward to the barricade and were
consulting together. The question was--what was there behind that
barricade? It might be nothing--it might be everything. In Paris one can
never tell. At last one of them determined to see for himself. He
scrambled up, putting his foot through the window of an omnibus in
passing. Against the dim light of the street-lamp beyond, his slight,
straight figure stood out in bold relief. It was a splendid mark for a
man with chalked sights to his rifle.

“Ah!” muttered the Citizen, “you are all right this time--master, the
young officer. They are only barking. Next time perhaps it will be quite
another history.”

The officer turned and disappeared. After the lapse of a few moments a
dozen words of command were shouted, and upon them followed the sharp
click of hilt on scabbard as the sabres fell home.

After a pause it became evident that the barricade was being destroyed.
And then lights flashed here and there. In a compact column the cavalry
advanced at a trot. The street was empty.

Citizen Morot turned away and sat down on a chair that happened to be
placed near the window. His finely-drawn eyebrows were raised with a
questioning weariness.

“Pretty work!” he ejaculated. “Pretty work for--my father's son! So
grand, so open, so noble!”

He waited there, in the darkness, until the cavalry had been withdrawn
and the local firemen were at work upon the barricade. Then, when order
was fully restored, he left the house, walking quietly down the length
of the insignificant little street.

Ten minutes later he entered the tobacco-shop in the Rue St. Gingolphe.
Mr. Jacquetot was at his post, behind the counter near the window, with
the little tin box containing postage-stamps in front of him upon his
desk. He was always there--like the poor. He laid aside the _Petit
Journal_ and wished the new-comer a courteous, though breathless,
good evening.

The salutation was returned gravely and pleasantly. The Citizen Morot
lingered a moment and remarked that it was a warm evening. He never
seemed to be in a hurry. Then he passed on into the little room behind
the shop.

There he found Lerac, the foreman of the slaughter-house. The butcher
was pale with excitement. His rough clothing was dishevelled; his
stringy black hair stood up uncouthly in the centre of his head, while
over his temples it was plastered down with perspiration and suet
pleasingly mingled.

“Well?” he exclaimed, with triumphant interrogation.

“Good,” said Morot. “Very good. It marches, my friend. It marches
already.”

“Ah! But you are right. The People see you--it is a power!”

“It is,” acquiesced Morot fervently.

How he hated this man!

“And you stayed to the last?” inquired Lerac. He was rather white about
the lips for a brave man.

“Till the last,” echoed Morot, taking up some letters addressed to him
which lay on the table.

“And the street was quite clear before they broke through the barrier?”

“Quite--the People did not wait.” He seemed to resign himself to
conversation, for he put the letters into his pocket and sat down. “Had
you,” he inquired, “any difficulty in getting them away?”

“Oh no,” somewhat loftily and quite unsuspicious of irony. “The passages
were narrow, of course; but we had allowed for that in our organisation.
Organisation and the People, see you--”

“Yes,” replied Morot. “Organisation and the People.” Like Lerac, he
stopped short, apparently lost in the contemplation of the vast
possibilities presented to his mental vision by the mere thought of such
a combination.

“Well!” exclaimed the butcher energetically, “I must move on. I have
meetings. I merely wished to hear from you that all was right--that no
one was caught.”

He was bubbling over with excitement and the sense of his own huge
importance.

The Citizen Morot raised his secretive eyes.

“Good-night,” he said, with an insolence far too fine for the butcher's
comprehension.

“Well--good-night. We may congratulate ourselves, I think, Citizen!”

“I congratulate you,” said Morot. “Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

It is probable that, had Lerac looked back, there would have been murder
done in the small room behind the tobacco-shop. But the contemptuous
smile soon vanished from the face of the Citizen Morot. No smile
lingered there long. It was not built upon smiling lines at all.

Then he took up his letters. There were only two of them: one bearing
the postmark of a small town in Morbihan, the other hailing from
England.

He replaced the first in his pocket unread; the second he opened. It was
written in French.

“There are difficulties,” it said. “Can you come to me? Cross from
Cherbourg to Southampton--train from thence to this place, and ask for
Signor Bruno, an Italian refugee, living at the house of Mrs. Potter, a
_ci-devant_ laundress.”

The Citizen Morot rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his
hand, making a sharp, grating sound.

“That old man,” he said, “is getting past his work. He is losing nerve;
and nerve is a thing that we cannot afford to lose.”

Then he turned to the letter again.

“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly; “St. Mary Western. He is there--how very
strange. What a singular coincidence!”

He fell into a reverie with the letter before him.

“Carew is dead--but still I can manage it. Perhaps it is just as well
that he is dead. I was always afraid of Carew.”

Then he wrote a letter, which he addressed to “Signor Bruno, care of
Mrs. Potter, St. Mary Western, Dorset.”

“I shall come,” he wrote, “but not in the way you suggest. I have a
better plan. You must not know me when we meet.”

He purchased a twenty-five centime stamp from Mr. Jacquetot, and posted
the letter with his own hand in the little wall-box at the corner of the
Rue St. Gingolphe.




CHAPTER VIII


FALSE METAL


There was, however, no cricket for Stanley Carew that morning. When
they came within sight of the house Mrs. Carew emerged from an open
window carrying several letters in her hand. She was not hurrying, but
walking leisurely, reading a letter as she walked.

“Just think, Hilda dear,” she said, with as much surprise as she ever
allowed herself. “I have had a letter from the Vicomte d'Audierne. You
remember him?”

“Yes,” said the girl; “I remember him, of course. He is not the sort of
man one forgets.”

“I always liked the Viscount,” said Mrs. Carew, pensively looking at the
letter she held in her hand. “He was a good friend to us at one time. I
never understood him, and I like men whom one does not understand.”

Hilda laughed.

“Yes,” she answered vaguely.

“Your father admired him tremendously,” Mrs. Carew went on to say. “He
said that he was one of the cleverest men in France, but that he had
fallen in a wrong season, and would not adapt himself. Had France been a
monarchy, the Vicomte d'Audierne would have been in a very different
position.”

Vellacott did not open his own letters. He seemed to be interested in
the conversation of these ladies. He was not a reserved man, but a
secretive, which is quite a different thing. Reserve is natural--it
comes unbidden, and often unwelcome. Secretiveness is born of
circumstances. Some men find it imperative to cultivate it, although
their soul revolts within them. In professional or social matters it is
often merely an expediency--in some cases it almost feels like a crime.
There are some secrets which cannot be divulged; there are some
deceptions which a certain book-keeper will record upon the credit side
of our account.

Like most young men who have got on in their calling, Christian
Vellacott held his career in great respect. He felt that any sacrifice
made for it carried its own reward. He thought that it levelled scruples
and justified deceptions.

He knew this Vicomte d'Audierne by reputation; he wished to hear more of
him; and so he feigned ignorance--listening.

“What has he written about?” inquired Hilda.

“To ask if he may come and see us. I suppose he means to come and stay.”

Vellacott looked what the French call “contraried.”

“When?” asked the girl.

“On Monday week.”

And then Mrs. Carew turned to her other letters. Vellacott took the
budget addressed to him, and walked away to where an iron table and some
chairs stood in the shade of a deodar.

In a few minutes he looked still more put out. He had learnt of the
disturbances in Paris, and was reading a rather panic-stricken letter
from Mr. Bodery. The truth was that there was no one in the office of
the _Beacon_ who knew anything whatever about French home politics
but Christian Vellacott.

A continuance of these disturbances would necessarily assume political
importance, and might even lead to a crisis. This meant an instant
recall for Vellacott. In a crisis his presence in London or Paris was
absolutely necessary to the _Beacon_.

His holiday had barely lasted twenty-four hours, and there was already a
question of recall. It happened also that within that short space a
considerable change had come over Vellacott. The subtle influence of a
country life, and possibly the low, peaceful song of the distant sea,
were already beginning to make themselves felt. He actually detected a
desire to sit still and do nothing--a feeling of which he had not
hitherto been conscious. He was distinctly averse to leaving St. Mary
Western just yet. But there is one task-master who knows no mercy and
makes no allowances. Some of us who serve him know it to our cost, and
yet we would be content to serve no other. That task-master is the
Public.

Vellacott was a public servant, and he knew his position.

Somewhat later in the morning Molly and Hilda found him still seated at
the table, writing with that concentrated rapidity which only comes with
practice.

“I am sorry,” he said, looking up, “but I must send off a telegram. I
shall walk in to the station.”

“I was just coming,” said Hilda, “to ask if you would drive me in. I
want to get some things.”

“And,” added Molly, “there are some domestic commissions--butcher,
baker, &c.”

Vellacott expressed his entire satisfaction with the arrangement, and by
the time he had finished his letter the dog-cart was waiting at the
door.

Several of the family were standing round the vehicle talking in a
desultory manner, and Vellacott learnt then for the first time that
Frederick Farrar had left home that same morning to attend a midland
race-meeting.

It was one of those brilliant summer days when it is quite impossible to
be pessimistic and exceedingly difficult to compass preoccupation. The
light breeze bowling over the upland from the sea had just sufficient
strength to blow away all mental cobwebs. Also, Christian Vellacott had
suddenly given way to one of those feelings which sometimes come to us
without apparent reason. The present was joyous enough without the aid
of the ever-to-be-bright future, and Vellacott felt that, after all,
French politics and Frederick Farrar did not quite monopolise the world.

Hilda was on this occasion more talkative than usual. There was in her
manner a new sense of ease, almost of familiarity, which Vellacott could
not understand. He noticed that she spoke invariably in generalities,
avoiding all personal matters. Of herself she said no word, though she
appeared willing enough to answer any question he might ask. She led him
on to talk of himself and his work, listening gravely to his account of
the little household at Chelsea. He made the best of this topic, and
even treated it in a merry vein; but her smile, though sincere enough,
was of short duration and not in itself encouraging. She appeared to see
the pathos of it instead of the humour. Suddenly, in the middle of a
particularly funny story about Aunt Judith, she interrupted him and
changed the conversation entirely. She did not again refer to his home
life.

As they were returning in the full glare of the midday sun, they
descried in front of them the figure of an old man; he was walking
painfully and making poor progress. Carefully dressed in black
broadcloth, he wore a soft felt hat of a shape seldom seen in England.

“I believe,” said Hilda, as they approached him, “that is Signor Bruno.
Yes, it is. Please pull up, Christian. We must give him a lift!”

Christian obeyed her. He thought he detected a shade of annoyance in
Hilda's voice, with which he fully sympathised.

On hearing the sound of the wheels, the old man looked up in surprise,
as a deaf person might have been expected to do. This movement showed a
most charming old face, surrounded by a halo of white hair and beard.
The features were almost perfect, and might in former days have been a
trifle cold, by reason of their perfection. Now, however, they were
softened by the touch of years, and Signor Bruno was the living
semblance of guilelessness and benevolence.

“How do you do, Signor Bruno?” said Hilda, speaking rather loudly and
very distinctly. “You are back from London sooner than you expected, are
you not?”

“Ah! my dear young lady,” he replied, courteously removing his hat and
standing bareheaded.

“Ah! now indeed the sun shines upon me. Yes, I am back from London--a
most terrible place--terrible--terrible--terrible! As I walked along
just now I said to myself: 'The sun is warm, the skies are blue; yonder
is the laughing sea, and yet, Bruno, you sigh for Italy.' This is Italy,
Miss Hilda--Italy with a northern fairy walking in it!”

Hilda smiled her quick, surprising smile, and hastened to speak before
the old gentleman recovered his breath.

“Allow me to introduce to you Sidney's friend, Mr. Vellacott, Signor
Bruno!”

Sidney's friend, Mr. Vellacott, was by this time behind her. He had
alighted, and was employed in arranging the back seat of the dog-cart.
When Signor Bruno looked towards him, he found Christian's eyes fixed
upon his face with a quiet persistence which might have been
embarrassing to a younger man. He raised his hat and murmured something
unintelligible in reply to the Italian's extensive salutation.

“Sidney Carew's friends are, I trust, mine also!” said Signor Bruno, as
he replaced his picturesque hat.

Christian smiled spasmodically and continued arranging the seat. He then
came round to the front of the cart and made a sign to Hilda that she
should move into the right-hand seat and drive. Signor Bruno saw the
sign, and said urbanely:

“You will, if you please, resume your seat. I will place myself behind!”

“Oh, no! You must allow me to sit behind!” said Christian.

“But why, my dear sir? That would not be correct. You are Mr. Carew's
guest, and I--I am only a poor old Italian runaway, who is accustomed to
back seats; all my life I have occupied back seats, I think, Mr.
Vell'cott. There is no reason why I should aspire to better things now!”

The old fellow's voice was strangely balanced between pathos and a
peculiar self-abnegating humour.

“If we were both to take our hats off again, I think it would be easy to
see why you should sit in front!” said Christian with a laugh, which
although quite genial, somehow closed the discussion.

“Ah!” replied the old gentleman with outspread hands. “There you have
worsted me. After that I am silent, and--I obey!”

He climbed into the cart with a little senile joke about the stiffness
of his aged limbs. He chattered on in his innocent, childish way until
the village was reached. Here he was deposited on the dusty road at the
gate of a small yellow cottage where he had two rooms. The seat was
re-arranged, and amidst a volley of thanks and salutations, Hilda and
Christian drove away. Presently Hilda looked up and said:

“Is he not a dear old thing? I believe, Christian, in all the various
local information I have given you, I have never told you about Signor
Bruno. I shall reserve him for the next awkward pause that occurs.”

“Yes,” replied Christian quietly. “He seems very nice.”

Something in his tone seemed to catch her attention. She half turned as
if to hear more, but he said nothing. Then she raised her eyes to his
face, which was not expressive of anything in particular.

“Christian,” she said gravely, “you do not like him?”

Looked upon as a mere divination of thought, this was very quick; but he
seemed in no way perturbed. He turned and looked down with a smile at
her grave face.

“No,” he replied. “Not very much.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. There is something wrong about him, I think!”

She laughed and shook her head.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “How can there be anything wrong with
him--anything that would affect us, at all events?”

He shrugged his shoulders, still smiling.

“He says he is an Italian?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I say he is a Frenchman,” said Christian, suddenly turning towards her.
“Italians do not talk English as he talks it.”

She looked puzzled.

“Do you know him?” she asked.

“No; not yet. I know his face. I have seen it or a photograph of it
somewhere, and at some time. I cannot tell when or where yet, but it
will come to me.”

“When it does come,” said Hilda, with a smile, “you will find that it is
some one else. I can assure you Signor Bruno is an Italian, and beyond
that he is the nicest old gentleman imaginable.”

“Well,” replied Christian. “In the meantime I vote that we do not
trouble ourselves about him.”

The subject was dropped, and not again referred to until after they had
reached home, when Hilda informed her mother that Signor Bruno had
returned.

“Oh, indeed,” was the reply. “I am very glad. You must ask
him to dinner to-morrow evening. Is he not a nice old man, Christian?”

“Very,” replied Christian, almost before the words were out of her lips.
“Yes, very nice.” He looked across the table towards Hilda with an
absolutely expressionless composure.

During the following day, which he passed with Sidney and Stanley at sea
in a little cutter belonging to the Carews, Christian learnt, without
asking many questions, all that Signor Bruno had vouchsafed in the way
of information respecting himself. It was a short story and an old one,
such as many a white-haired Italian could tell to-day. A life, income,
and energy devoted to a cause which never had much promise of reward.
Failure, exile, and a life closing in a land where the blue skies of
Italy are known only by name, where Maraschino is at a premium, and long
black cigars almost unobtainable.

Hilda was engaged on this day to lunch and spend the afternoon with Mrs.
Farrar, at Farrar Court. Molly and Christian were to drive over for her
in the evening. This programme was carried out, but the young people
lingered rather longer at Farrar Court listening to the quaint,
old-world recollections of its white-haired hostess than was allowed
for. Consequently they were late, and heard the first dinner-bell
ringing as they drove up the lane that led in a casual way to their
home. (This lane was characteristic of the house. It turned off
unobtrusively from the high road at right angles with the evident
intention of leading nowhere.) A race upstairs ensued and a hurried
toilet. Molly and Christian met on the stairs a few minutes later.
Christian had won the race, for he was ready, while Molly struggled with
a silver necklace that fitted closely round her throat. Of course he had
to help her. While waiting patiently for him to master the intricacies
of the old silver clasp, Molly said:

“Oh, Christian, there is one place you have not seen yet. Quite close at
hand too.”

“Ye--es,” he replied absently, as he at length fixed the clasp. “There,
it is done!”

As he held open the drawing-room door, he said: “What is the place I
have to see?”

Signor Bruno, who was seated at the far end of the room with Mrs. Carew,
rose as he heard the door opened, and advanced to meet Molly.

“Porton Abbey,” she said over her shoulder as she advanced into the
room. “You must see Porton Abbey.”

The Italian shook hands with the new-comers and made a clever, laughing
reference to Christian's politeness of the previous day. At this moment
Hilda entered, and as soon as she had returned Signor Bruno's courteous
salutation Molly turned towards her.

“Hilda,” she said, “we have never shown Christian Porton Abbey.”

“No,” was the reply. “I have been reserving it for some afternoon when
we do not feel very energetic. Unfortunately, we cannot get inside the
Abbey now, though.”

“Why?” asked Christian, without looking towards Hilda. He had discovered
that Signor Bruno was attempting to keep up a conversation with his
hostess, while he took in that which was passing at the other end of the
room. The old man was seated, and his face was within the radius of
light cast by a shaded lamp. Christian, who stood, was in the shade.

“Because it is a French monastery,” replied Molly. “Here,” she added,
“is a flower for your coat, as you say the button-hole is warped by
constant pinning in of stalks.”

“Thanks,” he replied, stooping a little in order that she could reach
the button-hole of his coat. She was in front of him, directly between
him and Signor Bruno; but he could see over her head. “What sort of
monastery is it?” he continued conversationally. “I did not know that
there were any establishments of that sort in England.”

Hilda looked up rather sharply from an illustrated newspaper she
happened to be studying. She knew that he was not adhering strictly to
the truth. From her point of vantage behind the newspaper she continued
to watch Christian, and she realised during the minutes that followed,
that this was indeed the brilliant young journalist of whose fame Farrar
had spoken as already known in London.

Signor Bruno's conversation with Mrs. Carew became at this moment
somewhat muddled.

“There, you see,” said Molly vivaciously, “we endeavour to interest him
by retailing the simple annals of our neighbourhood, and his highness
simply disbelieves us!”

“Not at all,” Christian hastened to add, with a laugh. “It simply
happened that I was surprised. It shall not occur again. But tell me,
what sort of monastery is it? Dominican? Franciscan? Carmelite?--”

“Oh, goodness! I do not know.”

“Perhaps,” said Christian, advancing towards the Italian--“perhaps
Signor Bruno can tell us.”

“What is that, Mr. Vell'cott?” asked the old gentleman, making a
movement as if about to raise his curved hand to his ear, but
restraining himself upon second thoughts.

Hilda noticed that, instead of raising his voice, Christian spoke in the
same tone, or even lower, as he said:

“We want some details of the establishment at Porton Abbey, Signor
Bruno.”

The old gentleman made a little grimace expressive of disgust, at the
same time spreading out his hands as if to ward off something hurtful.

“Ach!” he said, “do not ask me. I know nothing of such people, and wish
to learn no more. It is to them that my poor country owes her downfall.
No, no; leave them alone. I always take care of myself
against--against--what you say--_ces gens-là_!”

Christian awaited the answer in polite silence, and, when Signor Bruno
had again turned to Mrs. Carew, he looked across the room towards Hilda
with the same expression of vacant composure that she had noticed on a
previous occasion. The accent with which Signor Bruno had spoken the few
words of French was of the purest Parisian, entirely free from the
harshness which an Italian rarely conquers.

After dinner Hilda went out of the open window into the garden alone.
Christian, who had seated himself at a small table in the drawing-room,
did not move. Sidney and his mother were talking with the Italian.

The young journalist was stooping over a book, a vase of flowers stood
in front of him, but by the movement of his arm it appeared as if he
were drawing instead of reading. Presently a faint, low whistle came
from the garden. Though soft, the sound was very clear, and each note
distinctly given. It was like the beginning of a refrain which broke off
suddenly and was repeated. Signor Bruno gave a little start and a quick
upward glance.

“What is that?” he asked, with a little laugh, as if at the delicacy of
his own nerves.

“Oh,” replied Mrs. Carew, “the whistle, you mean. That is our family
signal. The children were in the habit of calling each other by that
means in bygone years. I expect they are in the garden now, and wish us
to join them.”

Mrs. Carew knew that Molly was not in the garden, but in making this
intentional mistake she showed the wisdom of her kind.

“It seems to me,” said Signor Bruno, “that the air--the refrain, one
might call it--is familiar.”

Christian Vellacott smiled suddenly behind his screen of flowers, but
did not move or look up.

“I expect,” explained Sidney, “that you have heard the air played upon
the bugle. It is the French 'retraite,' played by the patrol in garrison
towns at night.”

In the meantime Christian had cut the fly-leaf from the book before him,
and, after carefully folding it, he placed the paper in his
breast-pocket. Then he rose and passed out of the open window into the
garden.

Immediately Signor Bruno asked his hostess a few polite questions
regarding her guest--what was his occupation, how long he was going to
stay, and whether she did not agree with him in considering that their
young friend had a remarkably interesting face. In the course of his
remarks the old gentleman rose and crossed to the table where Christian
had been sitting. There was a flower there which he had not seen in
England before. Absently he took up the book which Christian had just
been studying, and very naturally turned to the title-page. The fly-leaf
was gone! When he laid the volume down again he replaced it in the
identical position in which he had found it.




CHAPTER IX


A CLUE


When Christian left the drawing-room he walked quickly down the
moss-grown path to the moat. Hilda was standing at the edge of the dark
water, and as he joined her she turned and walked slowly by his side.

“You are a most unsatisfactory person,” she said gravely after a few
moments.

He looked down at her without replying. His eyes softened for a moment
into a smile, but his lips remained grave.

“You deliberately set yourself,” she continued, “to shatter one illusion
after another. You have made me feel quite old and worldly to-night, and
the worst of it is that you are invariably right. It is most annoying.”

Her voice was only half-playful. There was a shade of sadness in it.
Christian must have divined her thoughts, for he said:

“Do not let us quarrel over Signor Bruno. I dare say I am wrong
altogether.”

She looked slowly round. Her eyes rested on the dark surface of the
water, where the shadows lay deep and still; then she raised them to the
trees, clearly outlined against the sky.

“I suppose that such practical, matter-of-fact people as you are proof
against mere outward influences.”

“So I used to imagine, but I am beginning to find that outward things
are very important after all. In London it seemed only natural that
every one should live in a hurry, with no time for thought, pushing
forward and trying to outstrip their neighbours; but in the country it
seems that things are different. Intellectual people live quiet,
thoughtful, and even dreamy lives. They get through somehow without
seeing the necessity for doing something--trying to be something that
their neighbours cannot be--and no doubt they are happier for it. I am
beginning to see how they are content to go on with their uneventful
lives from year to year until the end even comes without a shock.”

“But you yourself would never reach that stage, Christian.”

“No, no, Hilda. I can understand it in others, but for me it is
different. I have tasted too deeply of the other life. I should get
restless----”

“You are getting restless already,” she interrupted gravely, “and you
have not been here two days!”

They were interrupted by Sidney's clear whistle, and a moment later
Molly came tripping down the path.

“Come along in,” she said; “the old gentleman is going. I was just
stealing away to join you when Sidney whistled.”

When Signor Bruno reached his home that evening, he threw his hat upon
the table with some considerable force. His aged landlady, having left
the lamp burning, had retired to bed. He sank into an armchair, and
contemplated the square toes of his own boots for some moments. Then he
scratched his head thoughtfully.

“Sacré nom d'un chien!” he muttered; “where have I seen that face
before?”

Signor Bruno spoke French when soliloquising, which was perhaps somewhat
peculiar for an Italian. However proficient a man may be in the mastery
of foreign tongues, he usually dreams and talks to himself in the
language he learnt at his mother's knee. He may count fluently in a
strange tongue, but he invariably works out all mental arithmetic in his
own. Likewise he prays--if he pray at all--in one tongue only. On the
other hand, it appears very easy to swear in an acquired language.
Probably our forefathers borrowed each other's expletives when things
went so lamentably wrong over the Tower of Babel. Still muttering to
himself, Signor Bruno presently retired to rest with the remembrance of
a young face, peculiarly and unpleasantly strong, haunting his dreams.

Shortly after Signor Bruno's departure, Christian happened to be left
alone in the drawing room with Hilda. He promptly produced from his
pocket the leaf he had cut from a book earlier in the evening. Unfolding
the paper, he handed it to her, and said:--

“Do you recognise that?”

She looked at it, and answered without hesitation--

“Signor Bruno!”

The drawing was slight, but the likeness was perfect. The face was in
profile, and the reproduction of the intelligent features could scarcely
have been more lifelike in a careful portrait. Christian replaced the
paper in his pocket.

“You remember Carl Trevetz, at Paris,” continued he, “his father
belonged to the Austrian Embassy!”

“Yes, I remember him!”

“To-morrow I will send this to him, simply asking who it is.”

“Yes--and then?”

“When the answer comes, Hilda, I will write on the outside of the
envelope the name that you will find inside--written by Trevetz.”

For a moment she looked across the table at him with a vague expression
of wonder upon her face.

“Even if you are right,” she said, “will it affect us? Will it make us
cease to look upon him as a friend?”

“I think so.”

“Then,” she said slowly, “it has come. You remember now?”

“Yes; I remember now--but it may be a mistake yet. I would rather have
my memory confirmed by Trevetz before telling you what I know--or think
I know--about Bruno!”

Hilda was about to question him further when Molly entered the room, and
the subject was perforce dropped.

The next morning there came a letter for Christian from Mr. Bodery. It
was short, and not very pleasant.

“DEAR VELLACOTT,--Sorry to trouble you with business so early in your
holiday, but there has been another great row in Paris, as you will see
from the papers I send you. It is hinted that the mob are mere tools in
the hands of influential wire-pullers, and the worst of it is that they
were armed with English rifles and bayonets of a pattern just superseded
by the War Office. How these got into their hands is not yet explained,
but you will readily see the gravity of the circumstance in the present
somewhat strained state of affairs. Several of the 'dailies' refer to
us, as you will see, and express a hope that our 'exceptional knowledge
of French affairs' will enable us to throw some light upon the subject.
Trevetz is giving us all the information he can gather; but, of course,
he is only able to devote a portion of his time to us. He hints that
there is plenty of money in the background somewhere, and that a strong
party has got up the whole affair--perhaps the Church. We must have
something to say (something of importance) next week, and with this in
view I must ask you to hold yourself in readiness to go to Paris on
receipt of a telegram or letter from me.--Yours,

“C. C. BODERY.”

Christian folded the letter, and replaced it in the envelope. Suddenly
his attention was attracted to the latter. Upon the back there was a rim
round the adhesive portion, and within this the glaze was gone from the
paper. The envelope had been tampered with by a skilful manipulator. If
Mr. Bodery had been in the habit of using inferior stationery, no trace
would have been left upon the envelope.

Christian slipped the letter into his pocket, and, glancing round, saw
that his movements had passed unobserved.

“Anything new?” asked Sidney, from the head of the table.

“Well, yes,” was the reply. “There has been a disturbance in Paris. I
may have to go over there on receipt of a telegram from the office;” he
stopped, and looked slowly round the table. Hilda's attention was taken
up by her plate, upon which, however, there was nothing. He leant
forward, and handed her the toast-rack. She took a piece, but forgot to
thank him. “I am sorry,” he continued simply, “very sorry that the
disturbances should have taken place just at this time.”

His voice expressed natural and sincere regret, but no surprise. This
seemed to arouse Molly's curiosity, for she looked up sharply.

“You do not seem to be at all surprised,” she said.

“No,” he replied; “I am accustomed to this sort of thing, you see. I
knew all along that there was the chance of being summoned at any time.
This letter only adds to the chance--that is all!”

“It is a great shame,” said Molly, with a pout. “I am sure there are
plenty of people who could do it instead of you.”

Christian laughed readily.

“I am sure there are,” he replied, “and that is the very reason why I
must take the opportunities that fortune offers.”

Hilda looked across the table at him, and noted the smile upon his lips,
the light of energy in his eyes. The love of action had driven all other
thoughts from his mind.

“I suppose,” she said conversationally, “that it will in reality be a
good thing for you if the summons does come.”

“Yes,” he replied, without meeting her glance; “it will be a good thing
for me.”

“Is that consolatory view of the matter the outcome of philosophy, or of
virtue?” inquired Molly mischievously.

“Of virtue,” replied Christian gravely, and then he changed the subject.

After breakfast he devoted a short time to the study of some newspaper
cuttings inclosed in Mr. Bodery's letter. Then he suddenly expressed his
determination of walking down to the village post office.

“I wish,” he said, “to send a telegram, and to get some newspapers,
which have no doubt come by the second post. After that you will be
troubled no more about my affairs.”

“Until a telegram comes,” said Hilda quietly, without looking up from a
letter she held in her hand. She received one daily from Farrar.

Christian glanced at her with his quick smile.

“Oh,” he said, “I do not expect a telegram. It is not so serious as all
that. In fact, it is not worth thinking about.”

“You have a most enviable way of putting aside disagreeable subjects,”
 persisted Hilda, “for discussion at a vague future period.”

Christian was steadily cheerful that morning, imperturbably practical.

“That,” he said, “is the outcome--not of virtue--but of philosophy. Will
you come to the post office with Stanley and me? I am sure there is no
possible household duty to prevent you.”

Together they walked through the peaceful fields. Stanley never lingered
long beside them; something was for ever attracting him aside or ahead,
and he ran restlessly away. Christian could not help noticing the
difference in Hilda's manner when they were alone together. The
semi-sarcastic _badinage_ to which he had been treated lately was
completely dropped, and her earnest nature was allowed to show itself
undisguised. Still she was a mystery to him. He was by habit a close
observer, but her changing moods and humours were to him unaccountable.
At times she would make a remark the direct contradiction of which was
shining in her eyes, and at other times she remained silent when mere
politeness would seem to demand speech. Who knows? Perhaps at all times
and in all things they understood each other. When their lips were
exchanging mere nothings--the very lightest and emptiest of
conversational chaff--despite averted eyes, despite indifferent manner,
their souls may have been drawn together by that silent bond of sympathy
which holds through fair and foul, through laughter and tears, through
life and beyond death.

Christian was not in the habit of allowing himself to become absorbed by
any passing thoughts, however deep they might be. His mind had adapted
itself to the work required of it, as the human mind is ever ready to
do. No deep meditating was required of it, but a quick grasp and a
somewhat superficial treatment. Journalism is superficial, it cannot be
otherwise; it must be universal and immediate, and therefore its touch
is necessarily light. There is nothing permanent about it except the
ceaseless throb of the printing machine and the warm smell of ink. That
which a man writes one day may be rendered useless and worthless the
next, through no carelessness of his, but by the simple course of
events. He must perforce take up his pen again and write against
himself. He may be inditing history, and his words may be forgotten in
twelve hours. There is no time for deep thought, even if such were
required. He who writes for cursory reading is wise if he writes
cursorily.

Mr. Bodery's communication in no manner disturbed Christian. He was
ready enough to talk and laugh, or talk and be grave, as Hilda might
dictate, while they walked side by side that morning, but she was
strangely silent. It thus happened that little passed between them until
they reached the post office. There, he was formally introduced to the
spry little postmistress, who looked at him sharply over her spectacles.

“I wish, Mrs. Chalder,” he said cheerily, as he scribbled off his
message to Mr. Bodery, while Hilda made friendly overtures to the
official cat, “I wish that you would forget to send me the disagreeable
letters, and only forward the pleasant ones. There was one this morning,
for instance, which you might very easily have mislaid. Instead of which
you carefully sent it rather earlier than usual and spoilt my
breakfast.”

His voice unconsciously followed the swing of his pencil. It seemed
certain that he was making conversation with the sole purpose of
entertaining the old woman. With a pleased laugh and a shake of her grey
curls she replied:

“Ah, I wish I could, sir. I wish I could burn the bad letters and send
on only the good ones--but they're all alike on the outside. It's as
hard to say what's inside a letter as it is to tell what's inside a man
by lookin' on his face.”

“Yes,” replied Christian, reading over what he had just written. “Yes,
Mrs. Chalder, you are right.”

“But the reason of your letter gettin' earlier this morning was that
Seen'yer Bruno said he was goin' past the Hall, sir, and would just
leave the letters at the Lodge. It is a bit out of the carrier's way,
and that man _do_ have a long tramp every day, sir.”

“Ah, that accounts for it,” murmured the journalist, without looking up.
He was occupied in crossing his t's and dotting his i's. He felt that
Hilda was looking at him, and some instinct told him that she saw the
motive of his conversation, but still he played his part and wore his
mask of carelessness, as men have done before women, knowing the
futility of it, since the world began. She never referred to the
incident, and made no remark whatever with a view to his doing so, but
he knew that it would be remembered, and in after days he learnt to
build up a very castle of hope upon that frail foundation.

Hilda had not been paying much attention to what he was saying until
Signor Bruno's name was mentioned. The old man had hitherto occupied a
very secondary place in her thoughts. He was no one in her circle of
possibly interesting people, beyond the fact of his having passed
through a troubled political phase--a fighter on the losing side. Now he
had, as it were, assumed a more important _rôle_. The mention of his
name possessed a new suggestion: and all this, forsooth, because
Christian Vellacott opined that the benevolent old face was known to
him.

She began to entertain exaggerated ideas concerning the young
journalist's thoughts and motives. Twice had she obtained a glimpse into
the inner chamber of his mind, and on each occasion the result had been
a vague suggestion of some mental conflict, some dark game of
cross-purposes between him and Signor Bruno. Remembering this, she, in
her intelligent simplicity, began to ascribe to Christian's every word
and action an ulterior motive which in reality did not perhaps exist.
She noted Christian's calm and direct way of reaching the end he
desired, and unconsciously she yielded a little to the influence of his
strength--an influence dangerously fascinating for a strong woman. Her
strength is so different from that of a man that there is no real
conflict--it seeks to yield, and glories over its own downfall.

After paying for the telegram, Christian took possession of the bulky
packet of newspapers addressed to him, and they left the post office.




CHAPTER X


ON THE SCENT


It appeared to Stanley, on the way home that morning, that the
conversation flagged somewhat. He therefore set to himself the task of
reviving it.

“Christian,” he began conversationally, “is there any smuggling done
now? Real smuggling, I mean.”


“No, I think not,” replied Christian. He evidently did not look upon
smuggling as a fruitful topic at that moment.

“Why do you ask?” interposed Hilda goodnaturedly.

“Well, I was just wondering,” replied the boy. “It struck me yesterday
that our boat had been moved.”

“But,” suggested Christian, “it should be very easy to see whether it
has been dragged over the sand or not.”

“Three strong men could carry it bodily into the water and make no marks
whatever on the sand,” argued little Stanley, determined not to be
cheated out of his smugglers.

“Perhaps some one has been out for a row for his own pleasure and
enjoyment,” suggested Christian, without thinking much of what he was
saying.

“Then how did he get the padlock open?”

“Smugglers, I suppose,” said Hilda, smiling down at her small brother,
“would be provided with skeleton keys.”

“Of course,” replied Stanley in an awestruck tone.

“I will tell you what we will do, Stanley,” said Christian. “To-morrow
morning we will go and have a bathe; at the same time I will look at the
boat and tell you whether it has been moved.”

“Unless,” added Hilda, “a telegram comes today.”

Christian laughed.

“Unless,” he said gravely, “the world comes to an end this evening.”

It happened during the precise moments occupied by this conversation,
that Mr. Bodery, seated at his table in the little editor's room, opened
the flimsy brown envelope of a telegram. He spread out the pink paper,
and Mr. Morgan, seated opposite, raised his head from the
closely-written sheets upon which his hand was resting.

“It is from Vellacott,” said the editor, and after a moment's thought he
read aloud as follows:--

“Letter and papers received; believe I have dropped into the clue of the
whole affair. Will write particulars.”

Mr. Morgan caressed his heavy moustache with the end of his penholder.

“That young man,” he said, “goes about the world with his eyes
remarkably wide open, ha-ha!”

Mr. Bodery rolled the telegram out flat with his pencil silently.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stanley Carew was so anxious that the inspection of the boat should not
be delayed, that an expedition to the Cove was arranged for the same
afternoon. Accordingly the five young people walked across the bleak
tableland together. Huge white clouds were rolling up from the
south-west, obscuring every now and then the burning sun. A gentle
breeze blew gaily across the bleak upland--a very different breath from
that which twisted and gnarled the strong Scotch firs in winter-time.

“You would not care about climbing _down_ there, I should think,”
 observed Sidney, when they had reached the Cove. “It is a very different
matter getting up.”

He was standing, gazing lazily up at the brown cliffs with his straw hat
tilted backwards, his hands in his pockets, and his whole person
presenting as fair a picture as one could desire of lazy, quiescent
strength--a striking contrast to the nervous, wiry townsman at his side.

“Hardly,” replied Christian, gazing upwards at the dizzy height. “It is
rather nasty stuff--slippery in parts and soft.”

He turned and strolled off by Hilda's side. With a climber's love of a
rocky height he looked upwards as they walked, and she noted the
direction of his gaze.

Presently they sat on the edge of the boat over which Stanley's sense of
proprietorship had been so grievously outraged.

“What do you know, Christian, or what do you suspect about Signor
Bruno?” asked Hilda suddenly.

Stanley was running across the sands towards them, and Christian, seeing
his approach, avoided the question by a generality.

“Wait a little longer,” he said. “Let me have Trevetz's answer to
confirm my suspicions, and then I will tell you. Suspicions are
dangerous things to meddle with. In imparting them to other people it is
so difficult to remember that they _are_ suspicions and nothing more.”

At this moment Stanley arrived and threw himself down breathlessly on
the warm sand.

“Chris!” he exclaimed, “come down here and look at these seams in the
boat--the damp is there still.”

The boat was clinker-built, and where the planks overlapped a slight
appearance of dampness was certainly discernible. Christian lay lazily
leaning upon his elbow, sometimes glancing at the boat in obedience to
Stanley's accusatory finger, sometimes looking towards Hilda, whose eyes
were turned seawards.

Suddenly he caught sight of some words pencilled on the stern-post of
the boat, and by the merest chance refrained from calling Stanley's
attention to them. Drawing nearer, he could read them easily enough.

     Minuit vingt-six.

“It certainly looks,” he said rising, “as if the boat had been in the
water, but it may be that the dampness is merely owing to heavy dew. The
boat wants painting, I think.”

He knew well enough that little Stanley's suspicions were correct. There
was no doubt that the boat had been afloat quite recently; but Christian
knew his duty towards the _Beacon_ and sacrificed his strict sense of
truth to it.

On the way home he was somewhat pre-occupied--as much, that is to say,
as he was in the habit of allowing. The pencil scrawl supplied food
enough for conjectural thought. The writing was undoubtedly fresh, and
this was the 26th of the month. Some appointment was made for midnight
by the words pencilled on the boat, and the journalist determined that
he would be there to see. The question was, should he go alone? He
watched Sidney Carew walking somewhat heavily along in front of him, and
decided that he would not seek aid from that quarter. There was no time
to communicate with Mr. Bodery, so the only course open to him was to go
by himself.

In a vague manner he had connected the Jesuit party with the
disturbances in Paris and the importation of the English rifles
wherewith the crowd had been armed. The gay capital was at that time in
the hands of the most “Provisional” and uncertain Government imaginable,
and the home politics of France were completely disorganised. It was
just the moment for the Church party to attempt a retrieval of their
lost power. The fire-arms had been recognised by the English authorities
as some of a pattern lately discarded. They had been stored at Plymouth,
awaiting shipment to the colonies, where they were to be served out to
the auxiliary forces, when they had been cleverly removed. The robbery
was not discovered until the rifles were found in the hands of a Paris
mob, still fresh and brutal from the horrors of a long course of
military law. Some of the more fiery of the French journals boldly
hinted that the English Government had secretly sold the firearms with a
view to their ultimate gain by the disorganisation of France.

Christian knew as much about affairs in Paris as most men. He was fully
aware that in the politics of a disturbed country a deed is either a
crime or a heroism according to circumstances, and he was wise enough to
await the course of events before thrusting his opinion down the public
throat. But now he felt that the crisis had supervened, and unwillingly
he recognised that it was not for him to be idle amidst those rapid
events.

These thoughts occupied his mind as he walked inland from the Cove, and
rendered his answers to Stanley's ceaseless flow of questions upon all
conceivable subjects somewhat vague and unreliable. Hilda was walking
with them, and divided with Christian the task of supplying her small
brother with varied information.

As they were approaching the Hall, Christian discerned two figures upon
the smooth lawn, evidently coming towards them. At the same moment
Stanley perceived them.

“I see Fred Farrar and Mr. Signor Bruno,” he exclaimed.

Christian could not resist glancing over the little fellow's head
towards Hilda, though he knew that it was hardly a fair action. Hilda
felt the glance but betrayed no sign. She was looking straight in front
of her with no change of colour, no glad smile of welcome for her
stalwart lover.

“I wonder why she never told me,” thought Christian.

Presently he said, in an airy, conversational way: “I did not know
Farrar was coming back so--so soon.”

He knew that by this early return Farrar was missing an important day of
the race-meeting he had been attending, but did not think it necessary
to remark upon the fact.

“Yes,” replied Hilda. “He does not like to leave his mother for many
days together.” The acutest ears could have detected no lowering of the
voice, no tenderness of thought. She was simply stating a fact; but she
might have been speaking of Signor Bruno, so cool and unembarrassed was
her tone.

“I am glad he is back,” said Christian thoughtlessly. It was a mere
stop-gap. The silence was awkward, but he possessed tact enough to have
broken it by some better means. Instantly he recognised his mistake, and
for a moment he felt as if he were stumbling blindfold through an
unknown country. He experienced a sudden sense of vacuity as if his mind
were a blank and all words futile. It was now Stanley's turn to break
the silence, and unconsciously he did it very well.

“I wonder,” he said speculatively, “whether he has brought any chocolate
creams?”

Hilda laughed, and the smile was still hovering in her eyes when she
greeted the two men. Stanley ran on into the house to open a parcel
which Farrar told him was awaiting inspection. It was only natural that
Hilda should walk on with the young squire, leaving Bruno and Christian
together. The old man lingered obviously, and his companion took the
hint readily enough, anticipating some enjoyment.

“To you, Mr. Vellacott,” said the Italian, with senile geniality, “to
you whose life is spent in London this must be very charming, very
peaceful, and--very disorganising, I may perhaps add.”

Christian looked at his companion with grave attention.

“It is very enjoyable,” he replied simply.

Signor Bruno mentally trimmed his sails, and started off on another
tack.

“Our young friends,” he said, indicating with a wave of his expressive
hand Hilda and Farrar, “are admirably suited to each other. Both young,
both handsome, and both essentially English.”

“Yes,” answered Christian, with a polite display of interest: “and,
nevertheless, the Carews were all brought up and educated in France.”

“Ah!” observed the old man, stopping to raise the head of a “Souvenir de
Malmaison,” of which he inhaled the odour with evident pleasure. The
little ejaculation, and its accompanying action, were admirably
calculated to leave the hearer in doubt as to whether mere surprise was
expressed or polite acquiescence in the statement of a known fact.

“Yes,” added Christian, deliberately. He also stooped and raised a white
rose to his face, thus meeting Signor Bruno upon his own ground. The
Italian looked up, and the two men smiled at each other across the rose
bush; then they turned and walked on.

“You also know France?” hazarded Signor Bruno.

“Yes; if I were not an Englishman I should choose to be a Frenchman.”

“Ah!”

“Yes.”

“Now with me,” said Signor Bruno frankly, “it is different. If I were
not an Italian (which God forbid!) I think--I think, yes, I am sure, I
would by choice have been born an Englishman.”

“Ah!” observed Christian gravely, and Signor Bruno turned sharply to
glance at his face. The young Englishman was gazing straight in front of
him earnestly, with no suspicion upon his lips of the incredulous smile
which seemed somehow to have lurked there when he last spoke. The
Italian turned away dissatisfied, and they walked on a few paces in
silence, until he spoke again, reflectively:--

“Yes,” he said, “there is a quality in the English character which to me
is very praiseworthy. It is a certain directness of purpose. You know
what you wish to do, and you proceed calmly to do it, without stopping
to consider what your neighbours may think of it. Now with the Gallic
races--for I take this virtue of straightforwardness as Teutonic--and in
my own country especially, men seek to gain their ends by less open
means.”

They were now walking up a gentle incline to the house, which was built
upon the buried ruins of its ancient predecessor, and Signor Bruno was
compelled to pause in order to gain breath.

“But,” interposed Christian softly, “you are now talking not so much of
the people as of the Church.”

Again the Italian looked sharply up, and this time he met his
companion's eyes fixed quietly on his face. He shrugged his shoulders
deprecatingly and spread out his delicate hands.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said, with engaging frankness. “I am afraid
you are. But you must excuse a little ill-feeling in a man such as I,
with a past such as mine has been, and loving his country as I do.”

“I am afraid,” continued Christian, “that foreigners find our bluntness
very disagreeable and difficult to meet; but I know that they frequently
misjudge us on the same account. It is to our benefit, so we cannot
complain.”

“In what way do we misjudge you?” asked Signor Bruno genially. They were
almost on the threshold of the drawing-room window, which stood
invitingly open, and from which came the sounds of cups and saucers
being mated.

“You give us credit for less intelligence than we in reality possess,”
 said Christian with a smile, as he stood aside to let his companion pass
in first.

Whatever influences may have been at work among those congregated at the
Hall during the half-hour or so occupied by afternoon tea, no sign
appeared upon the surface. Molly as usual led the chorus of laughter.
Hilda smiled her sweet “kittenish” smile. Signor Bruno surpassed himself
in the relation of innocent little tales, told with a true southern
“verve” and spirit, while Fred Farrar's genial laugh filled in the
interstices reliably. Grave and unobtrusive, Christian moved about among
them. He saw when Molly wanted the hot water, and was invariably the
first to detect an empty cup. He laughed softly at Signor Bruno's
stories, and occasionally capped them with a better, related in a
conciser and equally humorous manner. It was to him that Farrar turned
for an encouraging acquiescence when one of his latest Newmarket
anecdotes threatened to fall flat, and with it all he found time for an
occasional spar with Signor Bruno, just by way of keeping that inquiring
gentleman upon his guard.




CHAPTER XI


BURY BLUFF


As Christian walked rapidly across the uneven turf towards the sea at
midnight, his thoughts were divided between a schoolboy delight in the
adventurous nature of his expedition and an uncomfortable sensation of
surreptitiousness. He was not accustomed to this sort of work, and felt
remarkably like a thief. If by some mischance his absence was discovered
at the Hall, it would be difficult to account for it unless he played
the part of a temporary lunatic. Fortunately his window communicated
easily enough with the garden by means of a few stone steps, but
visitors are not usually in the habit of leaving their bedrooms in order
to take the air at midnight. Thinking over these things in his rapid and
rather superficial way, he unconsciously quickened his pace.

The night was clear and starlit; the air soft and very pleasant, with a
faint breath of freshness from the south-west. The moon, being well upon
the wane, would not rise for an hour or more, but the heavens were
glowing with the gentler light of stars, and on earth the darkness was
of that transparent description which sailors prefer to the brightest
moonlight.

Christian Vellacott had worked out most problems in life for himself.
Taken as a whole, his solutions had been fairly successful--as
successful as those of most men. If his views upon things in general
were rather photographic--that is to say, hard, with clearly defined
shadows--it was owing to his father's somewhat cynical training and to
the absence of a mother's influence. Elderly maiden ladies, with
sufficient time upon their hands to manage other people's affairs in
addition to their own, complained of his want of sympathy, which may be
read in the sense of stating that he neither sought theirs nor asked
advice upon questions connected with himself. This self-reliance was the
inevitable outcome of his life at home and at the office of the
_Beacon_. Admirable as it may be, independence can undoubtedly be
carried to an unpleasant excess--unpleasant that is for home life. Women
love to see their men-folk a trifle dependent upon them.

Christian was in the midst of a problem as he walked across the
tableland that stretched from St. Mary Western to the sea. That problem
absorbed more of his attention than the home politics of France; it
required a more careful study than any article he had ever penned for
the _Beacon_. It gave him greater anxiety than Aunt Judy and Aunt Hester
combined. Yet it was comprised in a single word. A single arm could
encompass the whole of it. The single word--Hilda.

Leaving the narrow road, he presently struck the little pathway leading
to the Cove. Suddenly he stopped, and stood motionless. There--not
twenty yards from him--was the still figure of a man. Behind Christian
the land rose gradually to some considerable height, so that he stood in
darkness, while against the glowing sky the figure of this watcher was
clearly defined in hard outline. Instinctively crouching down and
seeking the covert of a few low bushes, Christian decreased the
intervening distance by a few yards. The faint hope that it might prove
to be a coastguard was soon dispelled. The heavy clothing and loose
thigh-boots were those of a fisherman. The huge “cache-nez” which lay in
coils upon his shoulders and completely protected the neck and throat,
was such as is worn by the natives of the Côtes-du-Nord.

The sea boomed forth its melancholy song, far down in the black depths
beyond. The tide was high, and the breeze freshening every moment.
Christian could have crept up to the man's very feet without being
detected. Lying still upon the short, dry grass, he watched for some
moments.

From the man's clumsy attitude it was almost possible to divine his
slow, mindless nature--for there is expression in the very turn of a
man's leg as he stands--and it was easy to see that he was guarding the
little path down the cliff to the Cove.

He had been posted there, and evidently meant to stay till called away.

There was only one way, now, to the Cove, and that was down the face of
the cliff: the way that Christian had that very afternoon pronounced so
hazardous. By day it was dangerous enough; by night it was almost an
impossibility.

He crept noiselessly along to the eastward, so that the watcher stood
upon the windward side of him, and reaching the brink he peered over
into the darkness. Of course he could discern nothing. The sea rose and
fell with a monotonous roar; overhead the stars twinkled as merrily as
they have twinkled over the strifes of men from century to century.

Quietly he knelt upright and buttoned his coat with some care. Then
without a moment's hesitation he crept to the edge and cautiously
disappeared into the grim abyss of darkness. Slowly and laboriously he
worked his way down, feeling for each foothold in advance. Occasionally
he muttered impatiently to himself at the slowness of his progress. He
knew that the strata of soft sandstone trended downwards at an easy
angle, and with consummate skill took full advantage of his knowledge.
Occasionally he was forced to progress sideways with his face to the
rock and hands outstretched till his fingers were cramped, and the
feeling known as “pins and needles” assailed his arms. Then he would
rest for some moments, peering into the darkness below him all the
while. Once or twice he dropped a small stone cautiously, holding it at
arm's length. When the tiny messenger touched earth soon after leaving
his hand, he continued his downward progress. Once, no sound followed
for some seconds, and then it was only a distant concussion far down
beside the sea. With an involuntary shudder, the climber turned and made
his way upwards and sideways again, before venturing to descend once
more.

For half an hour he continued his perilous struggle, till his strong
arms were stiff and his fingers almost powerless. With marvellous
tenacity he held to his purpose. Never since leaving the summit had he
been able to rest both hands at once. With a dogged, mechanical
endurance which is essentially characteristic of climbers and
mountaineers, he lowered himself, inch by inch, foot by foot. Louder and
louder sang the sea, as if in derision at his petty efforts, but through
his head there rushed another sound infinitely more terrible: a
painful, continuous buzz, which seemed to press upon his temples. A dull
pain was slowly creeping up the muscles of his neck towards his head.
All these symptoms the climber knew. The buzzing in his ears would never
cease until he could lie down and breathe freely with every muscle
relaxed, every sinew slack. The dull ache would creep up until it
reached his brain, and then nothing could save him--no strength of will
could prevent his fingers from relaxing their hold.

“Sish--sish, sish--sish!” laughed the waves below. Placidly the stars
held on their stately course--each perhaps peopled by millions of its
own--young and old, tame and fiery--all pursuing shadows as we do here.

“This is getting serious,” muttered Christian, with a pitiful laugh. The
perspiration was running down his face, burning his eyes, and dripping
from his chin. With straining eyes he peered into the night. Close
beneath him there was a ledge of some breadth. It was not flat, but
inclined upwards from the face of the cliff, thus forming a shelf of
solid stone. For some seconds he stared continuously at this, so as to
reduce to a minimum the chance of being mistaken. Then with great
caution he slid down the steep incline of smooth stone and landed
safely. The glissade lasted but a moment, nevertheless it recalled to
his mind a picture which was indelibly stamped in his memory. Years
before he had seen a man slide like this, unintentionally, after a false
step. Again that picture came to him--unimpressionable as his life had
rendered him. Again he saw the glittering expanse of snow, and on it the
broad, strong figure of the Vaudois guide sliding down and down, with
madly increasing speed--feet foremost, skilful to the last. Again he
felt the thrill which men cannot but experience at the sight of a man,
or even of a dumb beast, fighting bravely for life. Again he saw the
dull gleam of the uplifted ice-axe as the man dealt scientific blow
after blow on the frozen snow, attempting to arrest his terrible career.
And again in his mind's eye the pure expanse of spotless white lay
before him, scarred by one straight streak, marking where the taciturn
mountaineer had vanished over the edge of the precipice to his certain
doom.

Christian lay like a half-drowned man upon the shelving ledge, slowly
realising his position. He calculated that he could not yet be half-way
down, and his strength was almost exhausted. Yet, as he lay there, no
thought of waiting for daylight, no question of retreat entered his
stubborn West-country brain. The exploit still possessed for him the
elements of a good joke, to be related thereafter in such a manner as
would enforce laughter.

Suddenly--within the softer sound of the sea below--a harsh, grating
noise struck his ears. It was to him like the sound made by a nailed
boot upon rock. It was as if another were following him down the face of
the cliff. In a second he was upon his feet, his weariness a thing
forgotten. Overhead, against the starlit sky, he could define the line
of rock with its sharp, broken angles and uncouth turns. Not thirty feet
above him something was moving. His first feeling was one of intense
fear. Every climber knows that it is easier to pass a difficult corner
than to stand idle, watching another do it. Slowly the dark form came
downwards, and suddenly, with a quick sense of unutterable relief,
Christian saw the black line of a tightened rope. When it was barely ten
feet above him he saw that the object was no man, but a square case. In
a flash of thought he divined what the box contained, and unhesitatingly
ran along the ledge towards it. As it descended he seized it with both
hands and swung it in towards himself. With pendulum-like motion it
descended, and at last touched the rock at his feet. As this took place
he grasped the rope with both hands and threw his entire weight upon it,
hauling slowly in, hand over hand. So quickly and deftly was this
carried out that those lowering overhead were deceived, and continued to
pay out the rope slowly. Steadily Christian hauled in, the slack falling
in snake-like coils at his feet. Only being able to guess at his
position on the cliff, it was no easy matter to calculate how much rope
it was necessary to take in in order to carry out the deception.

At length he ceased abruptly, and proceeded to untie the knots round the
bale. Then, after the manner of a sailor who is working out of sight
with a life-line, he jerked the rope, which immediately began to ascend
rapidly and with irregularity. Coil after coil ran easily away, and at
last the frayed end passed into the darkness above Christian's head. He
stood there watching it, and when it had disappeared he burst into a low
hoarse laugh which suddenly broke off into a sickening gurgle, and he
fell sideways and backwards on to the box, clutching at it with his
nerveless fingers.

When he recovered his faculties his first sensation was one of great
cold. The breeze had freshened with the approach of dawn, and blowing
full upon him as he lay bathed in perspiration, the effect was like that
of a refrigerator. He moved uneasily, and found that he was lying on the
stone ledge _outside_ the box, from which he had fallen. After a moment,
he rose rapidly to his feet as if desirous of dismissing the memory of
his own collapse, and turned his attention to the bundle. Beneath the
rough covering of canvas, which was not sewn but merely lashed round, it
was easy enough to detect the shape of the case.

“What luck--what wonderful luck,” he muttered, as he groped round the
surface of the bundle.

Indeed it seemed as if everything had arranged itself for his special
benefit and advantage.

The three men whose duty it had been to lower the case coiled up their
rope and started off on foot inland, after telling the sentinel
stationed at the head of the little path to rejoin his boat. This the
man was only too willing to do at once. He was a semi-superstitious
Breton of no great intelligence, who vastly preferred being afloat in
his unsavoury yawl to climbing about unknown rocks in the dark. On the
beach, he found his two comrades, to whom he gruffly imparted the
information that they were to go on board.

“Had the 'monsieur' said nothing else?”

“No, the 'monsieur' said nothing else.”

The Breton intellect is not, as a rule, acute. Like sheep the three men
proceeded to carry up from the water's edge Stanley's boat, which was
required to carry the heavy case, their own dinghy being too small. This
done, they rowed off silently to the yawl, which was rolling lazily in
the trough of the sea, a quarter of a mile from the shore. Once on board
they were regaled with some choice French profanity from the lips of a
large man in a sealskin cap and a dirty woollen muffler. This gentleman
they addressed as the “patron,” and, with clumsy awe, informed him that
they had waited at the same spot as before, but nothing had come, until
at length Hoel Grall arrived with instructions from the “monsieur” to go
on board. Whereupon further French profanity, followed by unintelligible
orders, freely interlarded with embellishments of a forcible tenor.

As the yawl swung slowly round and stood out to sea, Christian turned to
climb up Bury Bluff. He found that he had in reality made very little
progress in descending. Before leaving the case, he edged it by degrees
nearer to the base of the ledge, which would render it invisible from
the beach. The ascent was soon accomplished, and after a cautious search
he concluded that no one was about, so set off home at a rapid pace.

Before he reached the Hall the light of coming day was already creeping
up into the eastern sky. All nature was stirring, refreshed with the
balmy dew and coolness of the night. Far up in the higher branches of
the Weymouth pines, the wrens were awake, calling to each other with
tentative twitter, and pluming themselves the while for another day of
sunshine and song.

Like a thief Christian hurried on, and creeping into his bedroom window,
was soon sleeping the dreamless, forgetful sleep of youth.

By seven o'clock he was awake with all the quick realisation of a
Londoner. In the country men wake up slowly, and slowly gather together
their senses after an all-sufficing sleep of ten hours. In cities, five,
four, or even three are sufficient for the unfatigued body and the
restless mind. Men wake up quickly, and are at once in full possession
of their faculties. It is, after all, a mere matter of habit.

Christian had slept sufficiently. He rose quite fresh and strong, and
presently sat down, coatless to write.

Page after page he wrote, turning each leaf over upon its face as it was
completed--never referring back, never hesitating, and only occasionally
raising his pen from the paper. Line after line of neat, small writing,
quite different from what his friends knew in letters or on envelopes,
flowed from his pen. It was his “press” handwriting, plain, rapid, and
as legible as print. The punctuation was attended to with singular care:
the commas broad and heavy, the colons like the kisses in a child's
letter, round and black. Once or twice he smiled as he wrote, and
occasionally jerked his head to one side critically as he re-read a
sentence.

In less than two hours it was finished. He rose from his seat, and
walked slowly to the window. Standing there he gazed thoughtfully across
the bare, unlovely tableland towards the sea. He had written many
hundreds of pages, all more or less masterly; he had read criticisms
upon his own work saying that it was good; and yet he knew that the
best--the best he had ever written--lay upon the table behind him. Then
he turned and shook the loose leaves together symmetrically. Pensively
he counted them. He was young and strong; the world and life lay before
him, with their infinite possibilities--their countless opportunities to
be seized or left. He looked curiously at the written pages. The writing
was his own; the form of every letter was familiar; the heavy
punctuation and clean, closely written lines such as the compositor
loved to deal with; and while he turned the leaves over he wondered if
ever he would do better, for he knew that it was good.




CHAPTER XII


A WARNING WORD


As the breakfast-bell echoed through the house Christian ran downstairs.
He met Hilda entering the open door with the letters in her hand.

“Down already?” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” she replied incautiously, “I wished to get the letters early.”

“And, after all, there is nothing for you?”

“No,” she replied. “No, but--”

She stopped suddenly and handed him two letters, which he took slowly,
and apparently forgot to thank her, saying nothing at all. There was a
peculiar expression of dawning surprise upon his face, and he studied
the envelopes in his hand without reading a word of the address.
Presently he raised his eyes and glanced at Hilda. She was holding a
letter daintily between her two forefingers, cornerwise, and with little
puffs of her pouted lips was spinning it round, evidently enjoying the
infantile amusement immensely.

He dropped his letters into the pocket of his jacket, and stood aside
for her to pass into the house; but she, abruptly ceasing her windmill
operations, looked at him with raised eyebrows and stood still.

“Well?” she said interrogatively.

“What?”

“And Mr. Trevetz's answer--I suppose it is one of those letters?”

“Oh yes!” he replied. “I had forgotten my promise.”

He took the letters from his pocket, and looked at the addresses again.

“One is from Trevetz,” he said slowly, “and the other from Mrs. Strawd.”

“Nothing from Mr. Bodery?” asked she indifferently.

He had taken a pencil from his pocket, and, turning, he held Trevetz's
letter against the wall while he wrote across it. Without ceasing his
occupation, and in a casual way, he replied:--

“No, nothing from Mr. Bodery; so I am free as yet.”

“I am very glad,” she murmured conventionally.

“And I,” he said, turning with a polite smile to hand her the letter.

She took the envelope, and holding it up in both hands examined it
critically.

“M-a-x,” she read; “how badly it is written! Max--Max Talma--is that
it?”

“Yes,” he answered gravely, “that is it.”

With a little laugh and a shrug of her shoulders she proceeded to open
the envelope. It contained nothing but the sketch made upon the fly-leaf
of a novel. Christian was watching her face. She continued to smile as
she unfolded the paper. Then she suddenly became grave, and handed the
open sketch to him. At the foot was written:--

“Max Talma--look out! Avoid him as you would the devil!

“In haste, C.T.”

Christian read it, laughed carelessly, and thrust the paper into his
pocket. “Trevetz writes in a good forcible style,” he said, turning to
greet Molly, who came, singing, downstairs at this moment. For an
instant her merry eyes assumed a scrutinising, almost anxious look as
she caught sight of her sister and Christian standing together.

“Are you just down?” she asked carelessly.

“Yes,” answered Christian, still holding her hand.

“I have just come down.”

As usual the day's pleasure was all prearranged. A groom rode to the
station at Christian's request with a large envelope on which was
printed Mr. Bodery's name and address. This was to be given to the
guard, who would in his turn hand it to a special messenger at
Paddington, and the editor of the _Beacon_ would receive it by four
o'clock in the afternoon.

The day was fine, with a fresh breeze, and the programme of pleasure was
satisfactorily carried out. But with sunset the wind freshened into a
brisk gale, and heavy clouds rolled upwards from the western horizon.
This was the first suggestion of autumn, the first sigh of dying summer.
The lamps were lighted a few minutes earlier that night, and the family
assembled in the drawing-room soon after dark, although the windows were
left open for those who wished to pass in and out.

Mrs. Carew's grey head was, as usual, bent over some simple needlework,
while Molly sat near at hand. According to her wont she also was busy,
while around her the work lay strewed in picturesque disorder. Sidney
was reading in his own room--reading for a vague law examination which
always appeared to have been lately postponed till next October.

Christian was seated at the piano, playing by snatches and turning over
the brown leaves of some very old music, unearthed from a lumber-room by
Mrs. Carew for his benefit. He waited for no thanks or comment;
sometimes he read a few bars only, sometimes a page. He appeared to have
forgotten that he had an audience. Presently he rose, leaving the music
in disorder. Hilda had been called away some time before by an old
village woman requiring medicaments for unheard-of symptoms. Christian
looked slowly round the room, then raising his hand he dexterously
caught a huge moth which had flown past his face.

As he crossed the room towards the open window, with a view of
liberating the moth, a low whistle reached his ear. The refrain was that
of the familiar “retraite.” Hilda had evidently gone out to the moat by
another door. Bowing his head, he passed between the muslin curtains and
disappeared in the darkness. The sound of his footsteps died away almost
immediately amidst the rustle of branch and leaf already crisp with
approaching change.

It was Stanley's bed-time. Mechanically, Molly kissed her brother,
continuing to work thoughtfully.

In a few minutes the door opened and Hilda entered the room. She came up
to the table, and standing there with her hands resting upon some pieces
of Molly's work, she gave a graphic description of the old woman's
complaints and maladies. She stood quite close to Molly, and told her
story to Mrs. Carew merrily, failing to notice that her sister had
ceased sewing, and was listening with a surprised look in her eyes. When
the symptoms had been detailed and laughed over, Hilda turned quietly
and passed out into the garden. With fearless familiarity she ran
lightly down the narrow pathway towards the moat, but no signal-whistle
greeted her. The leaves rustled and whispered overhead; the water lapped
and gurgled at her feet, but there was no sign or sound of life.

Silent and motionless she stood, a tall fair form clad in white, amidst
the universal, darkness. So silent and so still that it might have been
the shade of some fair maid of bygone years mourning the loss of her
true knight, who in all the circumstances of war had crossed that same
moat never to return.

Presently a sudden feeling of loneliness, a new sense of fear, came over
Hilda. All around was so forbidding. The water at her feet was so black
and mysterious. She gave a soft low whistle identical with that which
had called Christian out twenty minutes before, but it remained
unanswered, and through the rustling leaves she sped towards the house.
From the open window a glow of rosy light shone forth upon the flowers,
imparting to all alike a pallid pink, and dimly defining the grey
tree-trunks across the lawn. As Hilda stepped between the curtains, the
servants entered the drawing-room in solemn Indian file for evening
prayers.

Mrs. Carew looked up from the Bible which lay open before her, and said
to Hilda:--

“Where is Christian?”

“I don't know, mother; he is not in the garden,” answered the girl,
crossing the room to her own particular chair.

Sidney rose from his seat, and going to the window, sent his loud clear
whistle away into the night. His broad figure remained motionless for
some minutes, almost filling up the window; then he silently resumed his
seat.

Mrs. Carew smoothed down the silken book-marker, and began reading in a
low voice. It is to be feared that the Psalmist's words of joy were not
heard with understanding ears that night. A short prayer followed;
softly and melodiously Mrs. Carew asked for blessings upon the bowed
heads around her, and the servants left the room.

“Have you not seen Christian since you went to see Mrs. Sender, Hilda?”
 asked Molly, at once.

“No,” replied Hilda, arranging the music into something like order upon
the piano.

“He went out about half an hour ago, in answer to your whistle.”

Hilda turned her head as if about to reply hastily, but checked herself,
and resumed her task of setting the music in order.

“How could I whistle,” she asked gently, “when I was in the kitchen
doling out medicated cotton-wool to Mrs. Sender?”

Molly looked puzzled.

“Did _you_ whistle, Sidney?” she asked.

“I--no; I was half-asleep over a law-book in my own room.”

“I expect he has gone for a stroll, and forgotten the time,” suggested
Mrs. Carew reassuringly, as she sat down to work again.

“But what about the whistle; are you sure you heard it, Molly?” asked
Hilda, speaking rather more quickly than was habitual with her. She
walked towards the window and drew aside the curtain, keeping her back
turned towards the room.

“Yes,” answered Molly uneasily. “Yes--I heard it, and so did he, for he
went out at once.”

Sidney stood awkwardly with his shoulder against the mantelpiece,
listening in a half-hearted way to his sisters' conversation. With a
heavy jerk he threw himself upright and slowly crossed the room. He
stood for some moments immediately behind Hilda without touching her.
Then he raised his hand and with gentle, almost caressing pressure round
her waist, he made her step aside so that he could pass out. He was a
singularly undemonstrative man, rarely giving way to what he considered
the weakness of a caress. Fortunately, however, for their own happiness,
his womenfolk understood him, and especially between himself and Hilda
there existed a peculiar unspoken sympathy.

In the ordinary way he would have mumbled--

“Le'mme out!”

On this occasion he touched her waist gently, and the caress almost
startled her. It seemed like a confession that he shared the vague
anxiety which she concealed so well.

With the charity of maternal love, which is by no means so blind as is
generally supposed, Mrs. Carew often said of Sidney that he invariably
rose to the occasion; and Mrs. Carew's statements were as a rule
correct. His slowness was partly assumed; his indifference was a mere
habit. The assumption of the former saved him infinite worry and
responsibility; the habit of indifference did away with the necessity of
coming to a decision upon general questions. This state of mind may, to
townsmen, be incomprehensible. Certain it is that such as are in that
condition are not found among the foremost dwellers in cities. But in
the country it is a different matter. Such cases are only too common,
and (without breath of disparagement) they are usually to be found in
households where one man finds himself among several women--be the
latter mother and sisters, or wife and sisters-in-law.

The man may be a thorough sportsman, he may be an excellent landlord and
a popular squire, but within his own doors he is overwhelmed. Chivalry
bids him give way to the wishes and desires of some woman or other, and
if he be a sportsman he is necessarily chivalrous. When one is tired
after a long day in the saddle or with a gun, it is so much easier to
acquiesce and philosophically persuade oneself that the matter is not
worth airing an adverse opinion over. This is the beginning, and if any
beginning can look forward to great endings it is that of a habit.

It would appear that Sidney Carew's occasion had come at last, for once
outside the window he changed to a different being. The lazy slouch
vanished from his movements, his eyes lost their droop, and he held his
head erect.

He made his way rapidly to the stable, and there, without the knowledge
of the grooms, he obtained a large hurricane-lamp, lighted it, and
returned towards the house. From the window Hilda saw him pass down a
little path towards the moat, with the lamp swinging at his side, while
the shadows waved backwards and forwards across the lawn.

The mind is a strange storehouse. However long a memory may have been
warehoused there, deep down beneath piles of other remembrances and
conceits, it is generally to be found at the top when the demand comes,
ready for use--for good or evil. A dim recollection was resuscitated in
Sidney's mind. An unauthenticated nursery tale of a departing guest
leaving with a word of joy upon his lips and warm comfort in his heart,
turning from the glowing doorway and walking down the little pathway
straight into the moat.

Christian, however, was an excellent swimmer; he knew every inch of the
pathway, every stone round the moat. That he should have been drowned in
ten feet of clear water, with an easy landing within ten yards, seemed
the wildest impossibility. Of course such things have happened, but
Christian Vellacott was essentially wide awake, and unlikely to come to
mishap through his own carelessness. Of all these things Sidney thought
as he walked rapidly towards the moat, and in particular he pondered
over Molly's statement that she had heard Hilda whistle. This had met
with flat denial from Hilda, and Sidney, with brotherly candour, could
only arrive at the conclusion that Molly had been mistaken. He would not
give way to the least suggestion of anxiety even in his own mind. After
all Christian would probably come in with some simple explanation and a
laugh for their fears. It often happens thus, as we must all know. The
moments so long and dreary for the watcher, whose imagination gains more
and more power as the time passes, slip away unheeded by the awaited,
who treats the matter with a laugh or, at the most, a few conventional
words of sympathy.

Sidney stood at the edge of the water and threw the beams of light
across the rippling surface. Mechanically he followed the ray as it
swept from end to end of the moat, and presently, without heeding, he
turned his attention to the stones at his feet. A gleam of reflected
light caught his passing gaze, and he stooped to examine the cause more
closely.

The smooth stonework was wet; in fact the water was standing in little
pools upon it. Round these there were circles of dampness, showing that
evaporation was taking place. The water had not lain there long. A man
falling into the moat would have thrown up splashes such as these; in no
other way could they be plausibly accounted for. Sidney stood erect.
Again he held the lamp over the gleaming water, half fearing to see
something. His lips had quite suddenly become dry and parched, and there
was an uncomfortable throb in his throat. Suddenly he heard a rustle
behind him, and before he could draw back Hilda was at his side. She
slipped her hand through his arm, and by the slightest pressure drew him
away from the moat.

“You know--Sid--he could swim perfectly,” she said persuasively.

He made no answer, but walked slowly by her side, swinging the lamp
backwards and forwards as a schoolboy swings his satchel. Thus he gained
time to moisten his lips and render speech possible.

Together they went round the grounds, but no sign or vestige of
Christian did they discover. A pang of remorse came to Hilda as she
touched her brother's strong arm. Ever since Christian's arrival she
remembered that Sidney had been somewhat neglected, or only remembered
when his services were required. Christian had indeed been attentive to
him, but Hilda felt that their friendship was not what it used to be.
The young journalist in his upward progress had left the slow-thinking
country squire behind him. All they had in common belonged to the past;
and, for Christian, the past was of small importance compared to the
present. She recollected that during the last fortnight everything had
been arranged with a view to giving pleasure to herself, Molly, and
Christian, without heed to Sidney's inclinations. By word or sign he had
never shown his

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