Title: The time spirit: A romantic tale
Author: Snaith, J. C. (John Collis)
Language: English
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THE TIME SPIRIT



[Illustration: Three pairs of eyes met in challenge]
                                           [PAGE 84]



  THE
  TIME SPIRIT

  _A Romantic Tale_

  BY

  J. C. SNAITH
  AUTHOR OF “THE COMING,” “THE SAILOR,” ETC.


  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  NEW YORK      1918



  COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


  Printed in the United States of America



CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                              PAGE

     I. THE ARRIVAL                       1
    II. AUNT ANNIE AND AUNTY HARRIET     32
   III. FLOWING WATER                    68
    IV. BRIDPORT HOUSE                   87
     V. ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS          120
    VI. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT            149
   VII. A TRAGIC COIL                   170
  VIII. A BUSY MORNING                  186
    IX. AN INTERLUDE                    210
     X. TIME’S REVENGE                  232
    XI. A BOMB                          253
   XII. ARDORS AND ENDURANCES           273
  XIII. EVERYTHING FOR THE BEST         293



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                      FACING
                                                        PAGE

  Three pairs of eyes met in challenge        _Frontispiece_
  “How did you come by it, Joe?”                          24
  “You give up your young man--simply because of that?”  198
  “We mustn’t build castles,” she sighed, and the light
  fringed her eyelids                                    296



THE TIME SPIRIT



CHAPTER I

THE ARRIVAL


I

THE fog of November in its descent upon Laxton, one of London’s
busiest suburbs, had effaced the whole of Beaconsfield Villas,
including the Number Five on the fanlight over the door of the last
house but two in the row. To a tall girl in black on her way from the
station this was a serious matter. She was familiar with the lie of
the land in the light of day and in darkness less than Cimmerian, but
this evening she had to ask a policeman, a grocer’s boy, and a person
of no defined status, before a kid-gloved hand met the knocker of her
destination.

It was the year 1890. Those days are very distant now. Victoria
the Good was on the throne of Britain. W.G. went in first for
Gloucestershire; Lohmann and Lockwood bowled for Surrey. The hansom was
still the gondola of London. The Tube was not, and eke the motor-bus.
The _Daily Mail_ had not yet invented Lord Northcliffe. Orville Wright
had not made good. William Hohenzollern used to come over to see his
grandmother.

Indeed, on this almost incredibly distant evening in the world’s
history, his grandmother in three colors and a widow’s cap, with a blue
ribbon across her bosom, surmounted the sitting-room chimney-piece of
Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas. And at the other end of the room,
over the dresser, was an old gentleman with a beard, by common consent
the wisest man in the realm, who talked about “splendid isolation,” and
gave Heligoland to deep, strong, patient Germany in exchange for a tiny
strip of Africa.

Yes, there were giants in those days. And no doubt there are giants in
these. But it is not until little Miss Clio trips in with her scroll
that we shall know for certain, shall we?

       *       *       *       *       *

At the first crisp tap the door of Number Five was flung open.

“Harriet, so here you are!”

There was welcome in the eyes as well as in the voice of the eager,
personable creature who greeted the visitor. There was welcome also in
the gush of mingled gas and firelight from a cosy within.

“How are you, Eliza?”

The tall girl asked the question, shut the door, and kissed her
sister, all in one breath, so that only a minute quantity of a London
“partickler” was able to follow her into the room.

The hostess pressed Harriet into a chair, as near the bright fire as
she could be persuaded to sit.

“What a night! I was half afraid you wouldn’t face it.”

“I always try to keep a promise.” The quiet, firm voice had a gravity
and a depth which made it sound years older than that of the elder
sister.

“I know you do--and that’s a lot to say of anyone. How’s your health,
my dear? It’s very good to see you after all these months.”

Chattering all the time with the artlessness of a nature wholly
different from that of her visitor, Eliza Kelly took the kettle from
the hob and made the tea.

Beyond a superficial general likeness there was nothing to suggest the
near relationship of these two. The air and manner which invested the
well-made coat and skirt, the lady-like muff and stole, with a dignity
rather austere, were not to be found in the unpretentious front parlor
opening on to the street, or in its brisk, voluble, easy-going mistress.

“Harriet, you are really all right again?” Eliza impulsively poured
out the tea before it had time to brew, thereby putting herself to the
trouble of returning it to the pot.

“Oh, yes.” Harriet removed her gloves elegantly. She was quite a
striking-looking creature of nine-and-twenty. In spite of a recent
illness, she had an air of strength and virility. The face and brow had
been cast in a mold of serious beauty, the eyes, a clear deep gray,
were strongholds of good sense. Even without the aid of a considered,
rather formidable manner, this young woman would have exacted respect
anywhere.

“Take a muffin while it’s warm.”

Harriet did so.

“I had no idea your illness was going to be so bad.”

The younger woman would not own that her illness had been anything of
the kind; she was even inclined to make light of it.

“Why, you’ve been away weeks and weeks. And Aunt Annie says you’ve had
to have an operation.”

“Only a slight one.” The tone was casual. “Nothing to speak of.”

“Nothing to speak of! Aunt Annie says you have been at Brighton I don’t
know how long.”

“Well, you know,” said Harriet in a discreet, rather charming voice,
“they thought I was run down and that I ought to have a good rest. You
see, the long illness of her Grace was very trying for those who had to
look after her.”

“I suppose so. Although her Grace has been dead nearly two years.
Anyhow, I hope the Family paid your expenses.” The elder sister and
prudent housewife looked at Harriet keenly.

“Everything, even my railway fare.” A fine note came into the voice of
Harriet Sanderson.

“Lucky you to be in such service,” said Eliza in a tone of envy.

Slowly the color deepened in Harriet’s cheek.

“By the way, what are you doing at Buntisford? Does it mean you’ve left
Bridport House for good?”

“It does, I suppose.”

“But I thought Buntisford had been closed for years?”

“His Grace had it opened again, so that he can go down there when he
wants to be quiet. He was always fond of it. There’s a bit of rough
shooting and a river, and it’s within thirty miles of London; he finds
it very convenient. Of course, it’s quite small and easy to manage.”

“What is your position there?”

“I’m housekeeper,” said Harriet. “That is to say, I manage everything.”

The elder sister looked at her with incredulity, in which a little awe
was mingled. “Housekeeper--to the Duke of Bridport--and you not yet
thirty, Hattie. Gracious, goodness, what next!”

The visitor smiled at this simplicity. “It’s hardly so grand as it
sounds. The house doesn’t need much in the way of servants; the Family
never go there. His Grace comes down now and again for a week-end when
he wants to be alone. Just himself--there’s never anyone else.”

“But housekeeper!” Eliza was still incredulous. “At twenty-nine! I call
it wonderful.”

“Is it so remarkable?” Harriet’s calmness seemed a little uncanny.

“The dad would have thought so, had he lived to see it. He always
thought the world of the Family.”

The younger sister smiled at this artlessness.

“Every reason to do so, no doubt,” she said with a brightening eye and
a rush of warmth to her voice. “I am sure there couldn’t be better
people in this world than the Dinnefords.”

“That was the father’s opinion, anyway. He always said they knew how to
treat those who served them.”

“Not a doubt of that,” said Harriet. “They have been more than good to
me.” The color flowed over her face. “And his Grace often speaks of
the father. He says he was his right hand at Ardnaleuchan, and that he
saved him many a pound in a twelvemonth.”

“I expect he did,” said Eliza, her own eyes kindling. “He simply
worshiped the Family. Mother used to declare that he would have sold
his soul for the Dinnefords.”

“He was a very good man,” said Harriet simply.

“It would have been a proud day for him, Hattie, had he lived to see
you where you are now. And not yet thirty--with all your life before
you.”

But the words of the elder sister brought a look of constraint to the
face of Harriet. Mistaking the cause, Eliza was puzzled. “And it won’t
be my opinion only,” she said. “Aunt Annie I’m sure will think as I do.
She’ll say you’ve had a wonderful piece of luck.”

“But the position _does_ mean great responsibility”--there was a sudden
change in Harriet’s tone.

Eliza kept her eyes on the face of the younger woman, that fine Scots
face, so full of resolution and character. “Whatever it may be, Hattie,
I’m thinking you’ll just about be able to manage it.”

“I mean to try.” Harriet spoke very slowly and softly. “I mean to show
myself worthy of his Grace’s confidence.”

The elder sister smiled an involuntary admiration; there was such a
calm force about the girl. “And, of course, it means that you are made
for life.”

But in the eyes of Harriet was a fleck of anxiety. “Ah! you don’t know.
It’s a big position--an awfully big position.”

Eliza agreed.

“There are times when it almost frightens me.” Harriet spoke half to
herself.

“Everything has to run like clockwork, of course,” said the
sympathetic Eliza. “And it’s bound to make the upper servants at
Bridport House very jealous.”

“It may.” The deep tone had almost an edge of disdain. “Anyhow it
doesn’t matter. I don’t go to Bridport House now.”

“But you can’t tell me, my dear, that they like to hear of her Grace’s
second maid holding the keys in the housekeeper’s room.”

The calm Harriet smiled. “But it’s only Buntisford, after all. You
speak as if it was Bridport House or Ardnaleuchan.”

Eliza shook a knowledgeable head. “They won’t like it all the same,
Hattie. The dad wouldn’t have, for one. He was all his life on the
estate, but he was turned fifty before he rose to be factor at
Ardnaleuchan.”

“Well, Eliza”--there was a force, a decision in the words which made an
end of criticism--“it’s just a matter for the Duke. The place is not of
my seeking. I was asked to take it--what else could I do?”

“Don’t think I blame you. If it’s the wish of his Grace there is no
more to be said. Still, there’s no denying you’ve a big responsibility.”

At these words a shadow came into the resolute eyes.

Said the elder sister reassuringly, “You’ll be equal to the position,
never fear. That head of yours is a good one, Hattie. Even Aunt Annie
admits that. By the way, have you seen her lately?”

“Seen--Aunt Annie?” said Harriet defensively. The sudden mention of
that name produced an immediate change of tone in her distinguished
niece.

“She’s been asking about you. She wants very much to see you.”

The shadow deepened in Harriet’s eyes. But an instant later she had
skillfully covered an air of growing constraint by a conventional
question.

“How’s Joe, Eliza?”

“Pretty much as usual. He’ll be off duty soon.”

Joe Kelly was Eliza’s husband, and a member of the Metropolitan police
force. In the eyes of her family, Eliza Sanderson had married beneath
her. But Joe, if a rough diamond, was a good fellow, and Eliza could
afford not to be over-sensitive on the score of public opinion. Joe had
no superficial graces, it was as much as he could do to write a line
in his notebook, high rank in his calling was not prophesied by his
best friends, but his wife knew she was well off. They had been married
eight years, and if only Providence had blessed a harmonious union in
a becoming manner, Eliza Kelly would not have found it in her heart to
envy the greatest lady in the land. But Providence had not done so, the
more was the pity.

“By the way,”--Eliza suddenly broke a silence--“there’s a piece of news
for you, Hattie. A friend is coming to see you at five.”

“A friend--to see me!”

“To see you, my dear. In fact, I might say an admirer. Can’t you guess
who?”

“I certainly can’t.”

“Then I think you ought.” Mischief had yielded to laughter of a rather
quizzical kind.

“I didn’t know that I had any admirers--in Laxton.”

The touch of manner delicately suggested ducal circles.

“You can have a husband for the asking, our Harriet.” The eternal
feminine was now in command of the situation.

Harriet frowned.

“I can’t think who it can be.”

“No?” laughed the tormentress. “You are not going to tell me you have
forgotten the young man you met the last time you were here?”

It seemed that the distinguished visitor had.

“I do call that hard lines,” mocked Eliza. “You have really forgotten
him?”

“I really have!”

“He has talked of you ever since. When was Miss Sanderson coming again?
Could he be invited to meet her? He wanted to see her aboot something
verra impoortant.”

A light dawned upon Harriet’s perplexity.

“Surely you don’t mean--you don’t mean that red-headed young
policeman----?”

“Dugald Maclean. Of course, I do. He has invited himself to meet you at
five o’clock.” Eliza sat back in her chair and laughed at the face of
Harriet, but the face of Harriet showed it was hardly a laughing matter.

“Well!” she cried. Her eyes were smiling, yet they could not veil their
look of deep annoyance.

“Now, Hattie,” admonished the voice of maternal wisdom, “there’s no
need to take offense. Don’t forget you are twenty-nine, Dugald Maclean
is a smart young man, and Joe says he’ll make his way in the world. Of
course, you hold a very high position now, but if you don’t want to
find yourself on the shelf it’s time you began to think very seriously
about a husband.”

“We will change the subject, if you don’t mind.” The tone revealed a
wide gulf between the outlook of Eliza Kelly and that of a confidential
retainer in the household of the Duke of Bridport.

“Very well, my dear. But don’t bite. Have the last piece of muffin. And
then I’ll toast another for Constable Maclean.”


II

The clock on the chimney-piece struck five. Before its last echo had
died there came a loud knock on the front door.

Constable Maclean was a ruddy young Scotsman. He was tall, lean,
large-boned, with prominent teeth and ears. Although freckled like a
turkey’s egg, he was not a bad-looking fellow. His boots, however,
took up a lot of space in a small room, and the manner of his entrance
suggested that the difficult operation known as “falling over oneself”
was in the act of consummation. But there was an intense earnestness in
his manner, and a personal force in his look, which gave a redeeming
grace of character to a shy awkwardness, verging on the grotesque.

“Good afternune,” said Constable Maclean, removing his helmet with a
polite grimace.

One of the ladies shook hands, the other welcomed the young man with
a cordial good-evening and bade him sit down. Constable Maclean,
encumbered with a regulation overcoat, sat down rather like a
performing bear.

At first conversation languished. Yet no welcome could have been more
cordial than Eliza’s. She felt like a mother to this young man. It was
her nature to feel like a mother to every young man. Moreover, Dugald
Maclean, as he sat perspiring with nervousness on the edge of a chair
much too small for him, seemed to need some large-hearted woman to feel
like a mother towards him.

Miss Harriet Sanderson was to blame, no doubt, for the young
policeman’s aphasia. Her coolness and ease, with a half quizzical, half
ironical look surmounting it, seemed to increase the bashfulness of
Dugald Maclean whenever he ventured to look at her out of the tail of
his eye.

It was clear that the young man was suffering acutely. Nature had
intended him to be expansive--not in the Sassenach sense perhaps,--but
given the time and the place and a right conjunction of the planets,
Dugald Maclean had social gifts, at least they were so assessed at
Carrickmachree in his native Caledonia. Moreover, he was rather proud
of them. He was an ambitious and gifted young police officer. For many
moons he had been looking forward to this romantic hour. Since a first
chance meeting with the semi-divine Miss Sanderson he had been living
in the hope of a second, yet now by the courtesy of Providence it was
granted to him he might never have seen a woman before.

The lips of Constable Maclean were dry, his tongue clove to the roof of
an amazingly capacious mouth. As for Miss Sanderson, mere silence began
to achieve wonders in the way of gentle, smiling irony. But the hostess
was more humane. For one thing she was married, and although Fate had
been cruel, she had a sacred instinct which made her regard every young
man as a boy of her own.

Every moment the situation became more delicate, but Eliza’s handling
of it was superb. She brewed a fresh cup of tea for Constable Maclean,
and then plied the toasting-fork to such purpose that the young man
became so busy devouring muffins that for a time he forgot his shame.
Eliza could toast and butter a muffin with anyone, Constable Maclean
could eat a muffin with anyone--thus things began to go better. And
when, without turning a hair, the young man entered upon his third
muffin, Miss Sanderson dramatically unbent.

“Allow me to give you another cup of tea.” The voice was melody.

A succession of guttural noises, which might be interpreted as “Thank
ye kindly, miss,” having come apparently from the boots of Constable
Maclean, Miss Harriet Sanderson handed him a second cup of tea.

Still, the conversation did not prosper. But the perfect hostess,
kneeling before the fire in order to toast muffin the fifth, had still
her best card to play. It was the ace of trumps, in fact, and when she
rose to spread butter over a sizzling, delicious, corrugated surface,
she decided that the time had come to make use of it.

Perhaps the factor in the situation which moved her to this step was
that only one muffin now remained for her husband when he came off duty
half-an-hour hence, and that his young colleague of the X Division
seemed ready to go on devouring them until the crack of doom.

“That reminds me,” Eliza suddenly remarked as she cut the fifth muffin
in half, “I promised Mrs. Norris I would go across after tea to have a
look at her latest.”

“You are not going out, Eliza, such a night as this?” said Harriet in a
voice of consternation.

“A promise is a promise, my dear, you know that. Mrs. Norris has just
had her sixth--the sweetest little boy. Some people have all the luck.”

“But the fog--you can’t see a yard in front of you!”

“It’s only just across the street, my dear.”


III

As soon as Eliza, hatted and cloaked, had gone to see Mrs. Norris’s
latest, a change came over Constable Maclean. He was a young man of
big ideas. But all that they had done for him so far was to turn life
into a tragedy. By nature fiercely sensitive, the shyness which made
his life a burden had a trick of crystallizing at the most inconvenient
moments into a kind of dumb madness. A crisis of this kind was upon him
now. Yet he had a will of iron. And in order to keep faith with the
highest law of his being that will was always forcing him to do things,
and say things, which people who did not happen to be Dugald Maclean
could only regard as perfectly amazing.

His acquaintance with Miss Sanderson was very slight. They came from
neighboring villages in their native Scotland; many times he had gazed
from afar on his beautiful compatriot, but only once before could he
really be said to have met her. That was months ago, in that very room,
when he had been but a few days in London. Since then a very ambitious
young man had thought about her a great deal. The force and charm of
her personality had cast a spell upon him; this was a demonic woman if
ever there was one; he had hardly guessed that such creatures existed.
It would be wrong to say that he was in love with her; his passion was
centered upon ideas and not upon people; yet Harriet Sanderson was
already marked in the catalogue as the property of Dugald Maclean.

“Do you like vairse?” inquired the young man, with an abruptness which
startled her.

The unexpected question was far from the present plane of her thoughts,
but it was answered to the best of her ability.

“Yes, I like it very much,” she said, tactfully.

“I’m gled.” Constable Maclean unbuttoned his great coat.

Somewhere in the mind of Harriet lurked the romantic hope that this
remarkable young man was about to produce a hare or a rabbit after the
manner of a wonder-worker at the Egyptian Hall. But in this she was
disappointed. He simply took forth from an inner pocket of his tunic
several sheets of neatly-folded white foolscap, and handed them to Miss
Sanderson without a word. He then folded his arms Napoleonically and
watched the force of their impact upon her.

“You wish me to read _this_?” she asked, after a brief but sharp
mingling of confusion and surprise.

The young man nodded.

With fingers that trembled a little, she unrolled the sheets of a fair,
well-written copy of “Urban Love, a trilogy.”

She read the poem line by line, ninety-six in all, with the face of a
sphinx.

“What do ye think o’ it, Miss Sanderrson?” There was a slight tremor in
the voice of the author. The silence which had followed the reading of
“Urban Love, a trilogy” had proved a little too much, even for that
will of iron.

“It is very nice, if I may say so, very nice indeed,” said Miss
Sanderson cautiously.

“I’ll be doin’ better than that, I’m thinkin’.” A certain rigidity came
into the voice of the author of the poem. The word “nice,” was almost
an affront; it had come upon his ear like a false quantity upon that of
a classical scholar.

“Did you really do it all by yourself?” The inquiry was due less to
the performance, which Harriet was quite unable to judge, than to the
author’s almost terrible concentration of manner, which clearly implied
that it would not do to take such an achievement for granted.

“Every worrd, Miss Sanderrson. Except----”

“Except what, Mr. Maclean?”

“Mr. Lonie, the Presbyterian Minister, helped me a bit wi’ the
scansion.”

“If I may say so, I think it is remarkably clever.”

It appeared, however, that these pages were only the opening stanzas of
a poem which was meant to have many. They were still in the limbo of
time, behind the high forehead of the author, but upon a day they would
burst inevitably upon an astonished world. Would Miss Sanderson accept
the dedication?

Miss Sanderson, blushing a little from acute surprise, said that
nothing would give her greater pleasure. She was amazed, she wanted to
laugh, but the intense, almost truculent earnestness of the young man
had put an enchantment upon her.

But all this was simply a prelude to the great drama of the emotions
which Constable Maclean had now to unfold. He had broken the ice
with the charmer. The butterfly was pinned down with “Urban Love, a
trilogy,” through its breast. Miss Sanderson had never had time for
reading, therefore she was in nowise literary. Thus, perhaps, it was
less the merit of the work itself, which must be left to the judgment
of scholars, than the force, the audacity, the driving-power of its
author which seemed almost to deliver her captive into his hands.

She, it seemed, was its _onlie_ true begetter. The poem was in her
honor. Heroica, calm and fair, was the protagonist of “Urban Love, a
trilogy,” and she was Heroica. The position was none of her seeking,
but it carried with it grave responsibilities.

In the first place it exposed her to an offer of marriage. “Urban Love,
a trilogy,” had broken so much of the ice that Dugald Maclean plunged
horse, foot and artillery through the hole it had made. At the moment
he could not lead Heroica to the altar; it would hardly be prudent for
a young constable of eight months’ standing to offer to do so, but he
sincerely hoped that she would promise to wait for him.

Galled by the spur of ambition, Dugald Maclean took the whole plunge
where smaller men would have been content merely to try the depth of
the water.

Miss Sanderson was frozen with astonishment. It was true that “Urban
Love, a trilogy,” had half prepared her for a declaration in form,
but she had not foreseen the swiftness of the onset. This was her
first experience of the kind, but she was a woman of the world and she
gathered her dignity about her like a garment.

“Ye’re no offendit, Miss Sanderrson?” There was something titanic in
the slow mustering of his forces to break an arid pause.

“I am not offended, Mr. Maclean.” The tone of Miss Sanderson said she
was offended a little. “But I do think----”

“What do ye think, Miss Sanderrson?” The naïveté of the young man
provoked a sharp intake of breath.

“I think, Mr. Maclean”--the candor of Miss Sanderson was deliberate but
not unkind--“if I were you, before I offered to marry anybody, I should
try seriously to better myself.”

The words, pregnant and uncompromising, were masked by a tone so deep
and calm that a first-rate intellect was able to treat them on their
merits. In spite of a flirtation with the Muses, this young man was a
remarkable combination of wild audacity and extreme shrewdness. He had
a power of mind which enabled him to distinguish the false from the
true. Thus he saw at once, without resentment or pique, that the advice
of Heroica was that of a friend.

She had a strong desire to box the ears of this rawboned young
policeman for his impertinence; but at heart this was a real woman,
and the dynamic forces of her sex were strong in her. It was hard to
keep from laughing in the face of this young man in a hurry, who rushed
his fences in a way that was simply grotesque; yet she could not help
admiring the power within him, and she wished him well.

“It’s gude advice, Miss Sanderrson.” His tone of detachment drew a
ripple from lips that laughed very seldom. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll tak’ it.
But ye’ll bear the matter in mind?”

“I make no rash promises, Mr. Maclean.”

“Well, if ye won’t, ye won’t. But I’m thinkin’ I’d work the better at
the Latin if I could count on ye.”

“Studying Latin, are you, Mr. Maclean?” The surprise of Miss Sanderson
was rather respectful.

“Mr. Lonie is learnin’ me,” said the young man, with a slight touch of
vainglory. “And I’m thinkin’ he’ll verra soon be learnin’ me the Greek.”

“Are you going to college?”

“Maybe ay. Maybe no. You never can tell where a pairson may get to.
Anyhow I’m learnin’ to speak the language. Ae day I’ll be as gude at
the Saxon as you and your sister have become, Miss Sanderrson.”

It was hard not to smile, yet she knew her countrymen too well to treat
such a matter lightly.

“And I’ve a’ready set aboot writin’ for the papers.”

“Begun already to write for the papers, have you, Mr. Maclean?” This
was not a young man to smile at. “Well, wherever you may get to,” Miss
Sanderson’s tone was softer than any she had yet used, “I am sure I
wish you well.”

“Thank ye,” said the young man dryly. “But why not gie a pairson a
helping hand?”

“I am not sure that I like you well enough.” Such candor was extorted
by the seriousness with which she was now having to treat him. “You
see, Mr. Maclean, it is all so sudden. We have only met once before.”

“May I hope, Miss Sanderrson?”

Suddenly he moved his chair towards her and took her hand.

“Mr. Maclean, you may not.” The hand was withdrawn firmly.

“Well, think it owre, Miss Sanderson.”

The young man moved back his chair to its first position in order to
restore the _status quo_.

Harriet shook her head. And then all at once, to the deep consternation
of Constable Maclean, she broke into an anguish of laughter, which good
manners, try as they might, were not able to control.


IV

In the midst of this unseemly behavior on the part of Miss Sanderson,
the door next the street was flung open with violence. A figure Homeric
of aspect emerged from the night.

It was that of Constable Joseph Kelly, of the Metropolitan Police; an
ornament of the X Division, a splendid man to look at, nearly six feet
high. Broad of girth, proportioned finely, his helmet crowned him like
a hero of old. His face, richly tinted by daily and nightly exposure
to the remarkable climate of London, was the color of a ripe apple,
and there presided in it the almost god-like good-humor of the race to
which he belonged.

This emblem of superb manhood was laden heavily. There was his long
overcoat, a tremendous, swelling affair; there was his furled oilskin
cape; at one side of his girdle was his truncheon-case, his lamp at
the other side of it; in his left hand was a modest basket which had
contained his dinner, and in his right was a larger wicker arrangement
which might have contained anything.

“Is that our Harriet?” said Constable Kelly, in the act of closing the
door deftly with his heel. “Good evening, gal. Pleased to see you.”

He set down the large basket on the floor in a rather gingerly manner,
placed the small one on the table, came to Harriet, kissed her audibly,
and then turned to the room’s second occupant with an air of surprise.

“Hello, Scotchie! What are _you_ doing here?”

Before Dugald Maclean could answer the question he was in the throes of
a second attack of dumb madness. This malady made his life a burden.
When only one person was by he seldom had difficulty in expressing
himself, but any addition to the company was apt to plunge him into
hopeless defeat.

“Up to no good, I expect.” Joseph Kelly, disapproval in his eyes,
answered his own question, since other answer there was none. “I never
see such a feller. Been mashing you, Harriet, by the look of him.”

It was a bow drawn at a venture by a shrewd colleague of the X
Division. An immediate effusion of rose pink to the young man’s
freckled countenance was full of information for a close observer.

“Durn me if he hasn’t!” Gargantuan laughter rose to the ceiling.

Harriet blushed. But the look in her face was not discomfiture merely.
There was plain annoyance and a look of rather startled anxiety for
which the circumstances could hardly account.

“Scotchie, you’re a nonesuch.” But Joe suddenly lowered his voice in
answer to the alarm in the face of his sister-in-law. “You are the
limit, my lad. Do you know what he did last week, Harriet? I’ll tell
you.”

“Let me make you a cup of tea, Joe.” And his sister-in-law, who seemed
oddly agitated by his arrival, rose in the humane hope of diverting the
attack.

But the story was too good to remain untold.

“It’ll take the X Division twenty years to live it down.” Kelly
throbbed and gurgled like a donkey-engine as he fixed his youthful
colleague with a somber eye. “This young feller, what do you think he
did last week?”

“The kettle will soon boil, Joe.”

“Harriet!”--the rich rolling voice thrilled dramatically--“about
midnight, last Monday week as ever was, this smart young officer saw
an old party in an eyeglass and a topper and a bit o’ fur round his
overcoat, standin’ on the curb at Piccadilly Circus. He strolls up,
taps him on the shoulder, charges him with loitering with intent and
runs him in.”

“Here’s your tea, Joe.” The voice was sweetly polite.

“And who do you think the old party was, my gal? Only a Director of the
Bank of England--that’s all. The rest of the Force is guying us proper.
They want to know when we are going to lock up the Governor.”

“Joe, your tea!”

“We’ll never get over it, gal, not in my time. Scotchie, you are too
ambitious. There isn’t scope for your abilities in the Metropolitan
Force. Turn your attention to some other branch of the law. You ought
to take chambers in the Temple, you ought, my lad.”

But in answer to the look in the eyes of Harriet, her brother-in-law
checked the laugh that rose again to his lips. There was a strange
anxiety upon her face, an anxiety that was now in some way communicated
to him. It was clear from the glances they exchanged and the silence
that ensued, that both were much embarrassed by the presence of Maclean.

However, after the young man had entered upon a struggle for words
with which to meet this persiflage and they had refused to come forth,
he suddenly noticed that the hands of the clock showed a quarter to six
and he rose determinedly.

“Yes, it’s time you went on duty,” said the sardonic Kelly with an air
of relief.

Constable Maclean, feeling much was at stake, made a great effort
to achieve a dignified exit. He was an odd combination of the
thick-skinned and the hypersensitive. At this moment the shattering wit
of his peer of the X Division made him wish he had never been born, but
he was too dour a fighter to take it lying down.

“Gude-nicht, Miss Sanderrson.” With one more grimace he offered a hand
not indelicately.

“Good-night, Mr. Maclean.” The tone of studied kindness was a salve for
his wounds. The effrontery of this young man did not call for pity. And
yet it was his to receive it from the sterling heart of a true woman.

The smile, the arch glance, the ready handshake did so much to restore
Dugald Maclean in his own esteem, that he was able to retire with even
a touch of swagger, which somehow, in spite of an awkwardness almost
comically ursine, sat uncommonly well on such a dashing young policeman.

Indeed, the exit of Constable Maclean came very near the point of
bravado. For as he passed the large wicker basket which Kelly had
placed on the floor, the young man turned audaciously upon his
tormentor. Said he with a grin of sheer defiance:

“What hae ye gotten i’ the basket, Joe?”

“Never you mind. ’Op it.”

Less out of natural curiosity, which however was very great, than a
desire to show all whom it might concern that he was again his own man,
Dugald Maclean laid his hand on the lid of the basket.

“What hae ye gotten, Joe? Rabbuts?”

“If you must know, it’s a young spannil.” The answer came with rather
truculent hesitation.

“A young spannil, eh? I’m thinkin’ I’ll hae a look.”

“Be off about your duty, my lad.” Joe began to look threatening.

“Juist a speir.”

“’Op it, I tell you.”

But in open defiance, Dugald Maclean had already begun to untie the
string which held the lid of the basket in place. The majestic Kelly
rose from his tea. Without further words he seized the young man firmly
from behind by the collar of his coat. And then he hustled him as far
as the door in a very efficient professional manner, straight into the
arms of Eliza, who at that moment was in the act of entering it.


V

At the open door there was a brief scurry of laughter and protest which
ended in a riot of confusion. And then happened an odd thing. But of
the three persons struggling upon the threshold of Number Five only
one was aware of it, and he had the wit to raise a great voice to its
highest pitch in order to conceal a fact so remarkable.

“For heaven’s sake hold your noise, Joe, else you’ll frighten the
neighbors,” said Eliza, getting in it at last and indulging in
suppressed shrieks at the manner of Dugald Maclean’s putting out.

An instant later, the young policeman was in the street and the door of
Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, had closed upon him. But his singular
exit was merely the prelude to an incident far more amazing.

In the uproar of Joe had been fell design. As soon as it ceased the
reason for it grew apparent. An incredible sound was filling the room.

“Whatever’s that!” Eliza almost shrieked in sheer wonderment.

Harriet’s behavior was different. For a moment she was spellbound. The
look in her eyes verged upon horror.

It seemed that a child was crying lustily.

“Wherever can it be!” cried the frantic Eliza.

A wild glance round the room told Eliza that there was only one place
in which it could be. Her eyes fell at once on the large wicker basket,
which had been set on the floor near the fire.

“Well, in all my born days!”

She rushed to the basket and began furiously to untie the lid. But
the maxim “the more haste the less speed” was as true in 1890 as it
is today. Eliza’s fingers merely served to double and treble knot the
string.

Uncannily calm, Harriet rose from the table, the bread knife in
her hand. In silence she knelt by the hearth and cut the knot. The
deliberation of her movements was in odd contrast to Eliza’s frenzy.

[Illustration: “How did you come by it, Joe?”]

The lid was off the basket in a trice. And the sight within further
emphasized the diverse bearing of the two women. Harriet rose a statue;
Eliza knelt in an ecstasy. One seemed to gloat over the sight that
met her eyes; the other, with the gaze of Jocasta, stood turned to
stone.

It was the sweetest little baby. In every detail immaculate, bright as
a new pin, its long clothes were of a fine quality, and it was wrapped
in a number of shawls. A hot-water bottle was under its tiny toes, and
a bottle of milk by its side.

Eliza’s first act was to take the creature out of its receptacle. And
then began the business of soothing it. Near the fire was a large
rocking-chair, made for motherhood, and here sat Eliza, the foundling
upon her knee. Evidently it had a charming disposition. For in two
shakes of a duck’s tail it was taking its milk as if nothing had
happened. Yet the calm, tense Harriet had a little to do with that.
The milk was her happy thought. Moreover, she tested its quality and
temperature with quite an air of experience. And the effect of the milk
was magical.

As soon as sheer astonishment and the cares of motherhood would permit,
a number of searching questions were put to Constable Kelly.

“How did you come by it, Joe?” was question the first.

Before committing himself in any way, Joe scratched a fair Saxon poll
like a very wise policeman, indeed. It was as if he had said, “Joseph
Kelly, my friend, anything you say now will be used in evidence against
you.”

At last, cocking at Harriet a cautious eye, he replied impressively,
“I’ll tell you.” But it was not until Eliza had imperiously repeated
the question that he came to the point of so doing.

So accustomed was Joseph Kelly to the giving of evidence that
unconsciously he assumed the air of one upon his oath.

“I was _perceding_” said he, “about twenty-past four through Grosvenor
Square, on my way to Victoria, when I see through the fog this bloomin’
contraption on a doorstep.”

“What was the number?” Eliza asked.

“I was so flabbergasted, I forgot to look.”

“Well, really, Joe!”

“When I saw what was in the basket, I was so took, as you might say,
that it was not until I was at the end of the street that I thought of
looking for the number. And then it was too late to swear to the house.”

“In Grosvenor Square?” said Harriet.

“I’m not _per_cisely sure. The fog was so thick in Mayfair you could
hardly see your hand before you. It may have been one of them cross
streets going into Park Lane.”

“A nice one you are, Joe.” And Eliza began to croon softly to the babe
in her arms.

Kelly stroked his head perplexedly.

“I am,” he said, solemnly. “A proper guy I’ll look when I take it to
the Yard tomorrow and they ask me how I come by it.”

“Take it to the where?” asked Eliza sharply.

“To Scotland Yard the first thing in the morning, to the Lost Property
Department.”

“There’s going to be no Scotland Yard for this sweet lamb.”

“If I had done my duty it’d ha’ gone there tonight.”

Said Eliza: “You haven’t done it, Joe, so it’s no use talking. And if I
have a say in the matter, you are not going to do it now.”

Here were the makings of a very pretty quarrel. But Eliza had one
signal advantage. She knew her own mind, whereas Joe evidently did not
know his. By his own admission he had already been guilty of a grave
lapse of duty. And in Eliza’s view that was a strong argument why the
creature should stay where it was. It would be foolish for Joe to give
himself away by taking it to Scotland Yard.

The argument was sound as far as it went, but when it came to the
business of the Metropolitan Force, Joe was a man with a conscience. As
he said, with a dour look at Harriet, two wrongs didn’t make a right,
and to suppress the truth by keeping the kid would not clear him.

But Eliza was adamant. Joe had made a fool of himself already. He had
nothing to gain by landing himself deeper in the mire, whereas the
heart of a mother had yearned a long eight years for the highest gift
of Providence. The truth was that from the outset Joseph Kelly had
precious little chance of doing his duty in the matter.

Perhaps he knew that. At any rate he did not argue his case as strongly
as he might have done. And Eliza, rocking the babe on her knee, in the
seventh heaven of bliss, rent Joe in pieces, laughed him to scorn.
Harriet, standing by, a curious look on her face, well knew how to
second her; yet the younger woman did not say a word.

In a very few minutes Joe had hauled down his flag. Really he had not
a chance. It was a very serious lapse from the path of duty, but what
could he do, the simpleton!

“‘Finding is keeping’ with this bairn,” said the triumphant Eliza.

It was then that the silent, anxious, hovering Harriet claimed a share
of the spoils of victory.

“Eliza,” she said, “if you are to be the sweet thing’s mother, I must
be its godmother.”

“You shall be, my dear.”

Harriet sealed the compact by a swift, stealthy kiss upon the cheek
of the foundling, who now slept like a cherub on the knee of its new
parent.

“The lamb!” whispered Eliza.

Tears of happiness came into the eyes of the mother-elect. Harriet
turned suddenly away as if unable to bear the sight of them.

Said Joe to himself: “This is what I call a rum ’un.” But even in the
moment of his overthrow, he did not forget the philosophical outlook of
that august body of men, whose trust he had betrayed. He turned to his
long neglected cup of tea, now cold alas! and swallowed it at a gulp.
He then went on with the solemn business of toasting bread and eating
it.

To add to Joe’s sense of defeat, the two women paid him no more
attention now than if he had not been in the room at all.

“The sweetest thing!” whispered the one ecstatically.

“What shall we call it?” whispered the other.

“A boy or a girl?”

“Oh, a girl.”

“How do you know?”

“By its mouth. A boy could never have a mouth like that.”

“I don’t know that, my dear. I’ve seen boys with mouths----”

“But look at the dimples, my dear.”

“I have seen boys with dimples----”

“----Joe Kelly, you are the durnedest fool alive.” This emotioned
statement was the grace to a very substantial slice of buttered toast.
Joe ate steadily, but his countenance now bore a family likeness to
that of a bear.

“Suppose we say Mary? It’s the best name there is, I always think.”

“But it may turn out a George, my dear. I hope it will.”

“I feel sure it’s a Mary,” affirmed the godmother of the sleeping babe.
“I wonder who are the parents?”

“Whoever’s child it may be,” said the mother-elect, “one thing is sure.
They are people well up. I don’t think I ever saw a child so cared for.
And, my dear, look at the shape of that chin and the set of that ear.
And that lovely hand--a perfect picture with its filbert nails. Look at
the fall of those eyelids. No wonder it comes out of Grosvenor Square.”

“Grosvenor Square I’ll not swear to,” came a further interpellation
from the table.

“Get on with your tea, Joe,” said the mother-elect. “What we are
talking of is no concern of yours.”

The miserable Joe took off his boots and put on a pair of carpet
slippers.

“You’ve made a bad slip-up, my boy,” he remarked, as he did so.

The two women continued to croon over the wonder-child. Joe took
a pipe, filled it with shag and lit it dubiously. This was a bad
business. He was a great philosopher, as all policemen are, but
whenever a grim eye strayed across the hearth, it was followed by a
frown and a grunt of perplexity.

Joe smoked solemnly. The women prattled on. But quite suddenly, like
a bolt from a clear sky, there came a very unwelcome intrusion. The
street door was flung open and a young constable entered breathlessly.

Dugald Maclean was received with surprise, anger, and dismay. “Now
then, my lad, what about it?” demanded Joe, with a snarl of suppressed
fury.

“I’m seekin’ ‘Urban Love, a trilogy,’” proclaimed Dugald Maclean; and
he spoke as if the fate of the empires hung upon his finding it.

“Seekin’ what, you durned Scotchman?” said the alarmed and disgusted
Joe.

With deadly composure, Harriet rose from the side of the sleeping babe.

“Mr. Maclean, it is there,” she said, icily. And she pointed to the
table where the precious manuscript reclined.

“Thank ye,” said Dugald, coolly. And he proceeded to button into his
tunic “Urban Love, a trilogy.”

But the mischief was done. The alert eye of an ambitious police
constable had traveled from the open basket at one side of the fire to
the object at the other, sleeping gently now upon Eliza’s knee. A slow
grin crept over a freckled but vulpine countenance.

“Blame my cats,” he muttered, “so there’s the young spannil.”

Joe rose majestically. He said not a word, but again taking the
intruder very firmly by the collar of his regulation overcoat, hustled
him with quiet truculence through the open door into the street.
Closing the door and turning the key, he then went back to his
meditations, looking more than ever like a disgruntled bear.



CHAPTER II

AUNT ANNIE AND AUNTY HARRIET


I

AUNT ANNIE was the first to be told the great news. In the view of
both nieces it was in the natural order of things that this august
lady should take precedence of the rest of the world. She was so
incontestably the family “personage,” the eminence she occupied was
such a dizzy one, that it would have been just as unthinkable not to
grant her priority in a matter of such vital importance, as it would
have been to deny it to Queen Victoria in an affair of State.

In point of fact, Aunt Annie, within her own orbit, was the counterpart
and reflection of her Sovereign. In an outlook they were alike, they
were alike in the range of their ideas, and well-informed people had
said that they had tricks of speech and manner in common. This may have
been a little in excess of the truth, one of those genial pleasantries
it is the part of wisdom to accept in the spirit in which they are
offered, but it would be wrong to deny that in the suburb of Laxton
Aunt Annie took rank as a very great lady.

It is true that she lived in a small and modest house in an
unpretentious street, but all the world knew that the flower of her
years had been passed in abodes very different. And not only that, it
was also known that every year on her birthday, the twenty-sixth of
March, those whom it is hardly right to mention in these humble pages
came to call on her. On the twenty-sixth of every March, sometime
in the afternoon, a remarkable equipage would appear before the
chaste precincts of “Bowley,” Croxton Park Road. At that hour every
self-respecting pair of eyes in the immediate neighborhood would be
ambushed discreetly behind curtains in order to watch the descent of a
real live princess with a neat parcel.

The contents of the parcel were said to vary from year to year. Now it
would be a piece of choice needlework, fashioned by the accomplished
hands of Royalty itself, which would take the shape of a cushion or
a footstool, now a framed photograph of Prince Adolphus or Princess
Geraldine in significant stages of their adolescence, now a chart of
the august features of even more important members of the family. Many
were the historical objects disposed about Aunt Annie’s sitting-room,
which the elect of the neighborhood had the privilege of seeing and
handling when they came to call upon her. But when all was said, the
undoubted gem of the collection was a superb edition, bound in full
calf, of the Poems of A. L. O. E., with a certain signature upon the
fly-leaf. This was always kept under glass.

It chanced that Aunt Annie had invited herself to tea at Number Five,
Beaconsfield Villas, the day after the arrival of the babe. This was
strictly in accord with rule and precedent. She was far too much a
personage to be invited by her niece Eliza, but if she intimated by
a letter, which was the last word in precision, that she proposed to
call on a certain day, Eliza humbly and gratefully overhauled the best
tea service and polished the lacquer tray which was only used on State
occasions.

Not merely the mother-elect, but also godmother Harriet, saw the hand
of a very special Providence in the impending visit of Aunt Annie to
Beaconsfield Villas. It was only right and fit that the news should be
first told to her. The matter must have her sanction. By comparison the
rest of the world was of small account. The entire clan Sanderson lived
in awe of her, and particularly her imprudent and démodé niece Eliza.
The prestige of Aunt Annie was immense, and it did not make things
easier for those who lived within the sphere of her influence that the
old lady was fully alive to the fact.

Eliza confided to Harriet that she would breathe more freely when the
morrow’s visit had taken place. Harriet boldly said it didn’t really
matter what view Aunt Annie took of the affair. But Eliza knew better.
In spite of the joys of vicarious motherhood, there could be no peace
of mind for Eliza until the fateful day was over.

Half-past four in the afternoon was the hour mentioned in the official
note. And it was then, punctual to the minute, that a vehicle of
antique design even for that remote period of the world’s history,
in charge of a Jehu to match it, drew up on the cobblestones exactly
opposite Number Five. The fog had cleared considerably since the
previous evening, therefore three urchins, spellbound by the appearance
of such a turnout in their own private thoroughfare, beheld the slow
and stately emergence of a superbly Victorian bonnet of the most
authentic design and a black mantle of impressive simplicity.

Jehu, like the equipage itself, jobbed for the occasion, was the mirror
of true courtliness. He had an uncle in the Royal stables, therefore
he knew the deference due to the august Miss Sanderson. In promoting
her descent from the chariot he did not actually take off his hat, but
he stood with it off in spirit; a fact sufficiently clear to the three
youthful onlookers, one of whom remarked in a voice of awe, “It’s the
mayoress.”

Eliza, quaking over her best tea service on its elegant tray, knew
without so much as a glance through the window that Aunt Annie had
come. But she waited for the knock. And then apronless, in her best
dress, with never a hair out of place, she opened the door with a
certain slow stateliness. Before her _mésalliance_ she had had great
prospects as lady’s maid.

“Good morning, dear Eliza.”

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, but the distinguished visitor
undoubtedly said, “Good morning, dear Eliza.” Moreover, she offered a
large and rigid cheek and Eliza pecked at it rather nervously.

The door of Number Five closed upon Jehu, upon his wonderful and
fearful machine, and also upon the general public.

“And how is Joseph?”

“Nicely, thank you, Aunt Annie. I hope _you_ are quite well.”

“As well as my rheumatism will permit.”

“Won’t you take off your things?”

“Thank you, no, my dear.”

Aunt Annie would rather have died than take off her things in that
house. In her heart she had never been able to forgive Eliza her
marriage. Joseph Kelly was a worthy fellow no doubt, a good husband,
and a conscientious police officer, but by no exercise of the
imagination could he ever occupy the plane of a Sanderson. It may have
been mere pride of family but then pride of family is a queer thing.

Poor Eliza had fallen sadly from grace. She had come down in the world,
whereas a true Sanderson always made a point of going up in it. Even if
Eliza’s relations as a whole were inclined to take a sympathetic view
of her marriage, the one among them who really counted, was never quite
able to overlook the fact in her dealings with her. Eliza had cause to
feel nervous for Aunt Annie was never so impressive as when she entered
the modest front parlor of Number Five.

It was easy for Aunt Annie to do that, because nature was on her side.
With the honorable exception of her friend, Alderman Bradbury, the
present mayor of the borough, she had more personality than anyone in
Laxton. For forty years she had moved in the highest circles in the
land. Moreover, she had moved in them modestly, discreetly, with the
most punctilious good sense. She had known her place exactly, had kept
it, therefore, with ever increasing honor and renown; but the spirit of
imperious self-discipline which had entered into her in the process,
sternly required that ordinary people in their dealings with her should
know their place, too, and also be careful to keep it. In the domestic
circle Aunt Annie was a pitiless autocrat, and in public life even
the Mayor of Laxton and its leading Aldermen did not withhold their
deference when she condescended to converse with them upon matters
relating to the infant life of the borough.

No wonder Laxton’s leading inhabitants kow-towed to Aunt Annie. No
wonder niece Eliza cowered in spirit when she superbly entered that
modest dwelling and sat in its most capacious chair. Tea was offered
her, without sugar and with only a very little milk according to her
stoical custom.

“Thankee, my dear.”

The great lady removed a black kid glove, and coquetted with a delicate
slice of bread and butter. If you have lived in palaces most of your
days you know that simplicity in all things is the true art of life.
Right at the back, as Eliza well knew, Aunt Annie was by no means so
simple as she made a point of seeming. Her tastes and manners were
modeled upon a sublime Original, but as the memoirs of the time have
shown in the one case that things may not be always what they seem, the
same held true in the other.

Eliza had never felt so nervous in her life. Even the historic hour
in which she had first announced her engagement to Joe could hardly
compare with this. But it was not until Aunt Annie had passed to her
second piece of bread and butter that the thunderbolt fell.

“A cradle, my dear!”

It was quite true that a cradle was in the chimney corner, within three
yards of Laxton’s leading authority on the subject. Moreover, it was a
cradle of the latest design, a cradle of the most elegant contour, it
was a cradle provided with springs and lace curtains.

Eliza blushed hotly and murmured something about Harriet having had it
sent that morning. And then all at once she became so confused that she
began to pour out her own tea into the slop-basin instead of the cup
provided for the purpose.

“Harriet who, my dear?”

There was only one Harriet, and Eliza knew that Aunt Annie knew that.
It was a mere ruse to gain time--if such a word can be used without
impropriety in such connection. Eliza sought to cover her confusion by
a sedulous holding of the tongue, and by an attempt to pour out her tea
as if she really knew what she was about.

“What is there in it?”

The demand was point-blank. It was almost passionate.

Without waiting to be told what there was in it, Aunt Annie rose, tea
cup and all, and with the glower of a sibyl drew aside the curtains.


II

Mary was sleeping. Empirical science had proved her beyond a doubt to
be a Mary. And she was sleeping as the best Marys do at the age of one
month and a bittock, with her thumb in her mouth--if they are allowed
to do so.

To say that Aunt Annie was taken aback would be like saying that Zeus
was a little offended with certain events when he blew the planet Earth
out of the firmament in the year 19--. However!--it was as much as Aunt
Annie could do to believe the evidence of her eyes. She fronted her
niece augustly.

“And you never told _me_, my dear.”

“It didn’t come till last evening,” stammered Eliza.

But a leading authority, even upon a subject so recondite, is not
deceived in that way.

“The child is five weeks old if it’s an hour,” scornfully affirmed
the expert. “Besides,”--the eye of the expert transfixed her niece
piercingly--“do you suppose--a woman of my experience--needs to be
told--but why pursue the subject!”

For the moment Eliza felt so guilty that she was quite unable to pursue
the subject. Yet there was no reason why she should allow herself to
be overwhelmed, except that Aunt Annie had an almost sublime power
of putting people in the wrong. The situation in sheer grandeur and
magnitude was altogether too much for her. And the mind of Aunt Annie,
capable of volcanic energy when dealing with the subject it had made
its own, had already traveled an alarming distance before Eliza could
impose any check upon it.

“A very fine child--a very fine child indeed--but----!”

The portentous gravity of the words should have brought a chill to
the soul of Eliza. But for some odd reason it caused her to laugh
hysterically.

“It is not a laughing matter,” said the face of Aunt Annie; her stern
lips made no comment on the preposterous behavior of her niece.

“She’s mine,” gasped Eliza, when laughter had brought her to the verge
of tears.

“Tell that to the Marines,” said the face of Aunt Annie. In fact the
face of Aunt Annie said more than that. It said, “Eliza, I should like
to give you the soundest shaking you have ever had in your life.”

“Joe and I have adopted it,” gurgled Eliza at last.

Aunt Annie drew herself up to her full, formidable, dragoon-like height
of five feet ten inches, and gazed sublimely down from that Olympian
elevation.

“Then why not say so, my dear, in so many words, without making
yourself so profoundly ridiculous?”


III

With tingling ears, Eliza humbly admitted her fault. But as soon as
she had done so, there arose a serious problem, for a simple creature
in whose sight the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth
was very precious. Aunt Annie began to ask questions--questions which
forbade a person of ordinary discretion to answer with candor.

Whose was the child? What was its origin? What did the parents----? Why
did the parents----? When did the parents----? Did Eliza fully realize
the grave nature of the responsibility she was taking upon herself?

It was the last question of the series that Eliza answered first. And
this she did for a sufficient reason: to answer the others was wholly
beyond her power.

“We may be doing a very unwise thing,” said Eliza. “Joe and I know
that.”

“I am sure I hope you do, my dear. But tell me, where did you get it?”

The voice of truth enjoined on a doorstep in Grosvenor Square, but the
voice of prudence said otherwise. And the voice of prudence sounded a
very clear and masterful note in Eliza’s ear, for Joe, Harriet, and
she were fully agreed that the true story must not be given to the
world. Diplomacy was called for. Such a forthright creature was quite
unversed in that dubious art, but she must prepare to use it now.

“I promised I wouldn’t tell.” Alas! that crude formula was all in the
way of guile that poor flustered Eliza could muster at the moment.

Less by instinctive cleverness than by divine accident there was a
world of meaning, however, in that faltering tone. And a word to the
wise is sufficient. There was not a wiser woman in England than Aunt
Annie, except--of course, that is to say!--speaking merely for the
lieges of the realm--.

“Very well, I don’t press the question.” It was the tone she had once
accidentally overheard a very great Personage use to Lord Gr-nv-lle.

Eliza sighed relief.

“But, let me say this,” Aunt Annie looked steadily at her niece. “I ask
no questions in regard to the parents, but whoever they may be, you
must know that you run a risk. The offspring of a regular union are
often unsatisfactory, the offspring of an irregular union, although I
praise heaven I have had no personal experience of them, always bring
sorrow to those with whom they have to do.”

Eliza could only reply that the creature was such a dear lamb that she
was quite prepared to take the risk. Aunt Annie shook a solemn head at
her niece, and then surveyed the infant in true professional style.
The babe still slept. Before the great critic and connoisseur made any
comment she removed the thumb from the delightful mouth. And the act
was done with such delicacy as not to bring a cloud to the dreams of
this wonderful Mary.

This was a rosebud of a creature, and she lay in her grand cradle as
if she simply defied even the highest criticism to dispute the fact.
Certainly one who knew what babies were did not try to do so. Only one
remark was offered at that moment, but to the initiated it was worth
many volumes.

“Whoever’s child it may be,” said Aunt Annie, “and mind I don’t go into
that, it is not a child of common parents.”


IV

For some odd reason, Eliza was so intensely flattered by Aunt Annie’s
words, that she felt a desire to hug her. None knew so well as Eliza
that it was not a child of common parents, but it was not the way of
this expert to say so. The wonderful creature was “wrapt in mystery,”
but the hallmark of quality must have been stamped very deep for such a
one as Aunt Annie to commit herself to any such statement. Her standard
was princes and princesses. Every babe in Christendom was judged
thereby, and there was perhaps one in a million that could hope to
survive the test.

A miracle had happened, but it was really too much to expect that the
cradle would have a share in it. Aunt Annie shook her head over the
cradle. It had too many fal-lals. She approved neither its curtains nor
its air of grandeur. She was a believer in plainness and simplicity. If
before incurring an unwarrantable expense, her niece had only mentioned
the matter, the great lady would have gone to Armitt’s personally and
have arranged for a replica of the hygienic but unpretentious design
supplied by that famous firm to the Nursery over which she had presided.

Eliza, however, could accept no responsibility for the cradle. Harriet
had sent it that morning quite unexpectedly. Aunt Annie was a little
surprised that the taste of Bridport House in cradles was not a little
surer. Yet upon thinking the matter over she found she was less
surprised than she thought she was. The Dinnefords were a good family,
the Duke was esteemed, his late Duchess, for a brief period, had been
Mistress of the Posset, but after all Bridport House was not Bowley.
After all a Gulf was fixed.

It was vain for Eliza to show how disappointed Harriet would be; the
cradle had so clearly cost a great deal of money. It had cost too much
money, that was the head and front of the cradle’s offending. There was
an air of the parvenu about it. Such a cradle would never have been
tolerated at Bowley, nay, it was open to doubt whether it would have
been tolerated at Bridport House.

Aunt Annie was still discoursing upon cradles out of a full mind, when
Harriet herself came on the scene. She was spending a few days at
Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas before going down to Buntisford, and
she had now returned from a day’s shopping in London. She knew that
Aunt Annie was coming to tea, yet in spite of being forewarned, the
sight of the dominant old lady seated at the table seemed to dash her
at once.

For one thing, perhaps they were not the greatest of friends. It may
have been that Bowley set too high a value upon itself in the eyes
of Bridport House, it may have been that Bridport House held itself
too independent in the eyes of Bowley. The clan Sanderson, one and
all, revered Aunt Annie; there was no gainsaying that her career had
been immensely distinguished; but at this moment Harriet’s greeting
certainly seemed just a little perfunctory; it might even be said to
have a covert antagonism.

Harriet’s health was tenderly inquired after, she was solemnly
congratulated on her recent appointment, which did her much credit and
conferred honor upon her family; but it was soon apparent that there
was only one subject, to which, at that moment, Harriet could give her
mind. Had she been the mother of the babe, instead of the godmother
merely, her impatience to draw aside the curtains of the cradle could
hardly have been greater, or her delight in looking upon a ravishing
spectacle when she had done so.

Even the stern criticism of those curtains she did not heed, until
she had gazed her fill. It was a babe in a million. And when at last
she was up against the curtains, so to speak, instead of meeting the
curtains fairly and squarely, she began to paint extravagant pictures
of the future.

Her name was Mary. That was settled. She was to be brought up most
carefully; indeed, it was decided already that she was to have a
first-rate education.

“A first-rate education!” There was a slight curl of a critical lip.

“Why not?” inquired godmother Harriet.

“The expense, my dear!”

“I think I shall be able to afford it.”

“_You_, my dear,” said Aunt Annie, rather pointedly.

“I am the godmother,” said Harriet, with the light of battle in her
eyes.

“So I hear. But don’t forget she is to be the child of a police
constable.”

“She is not the child of a police constable,” said Harriet, with a
mounting color.

“I don’t know whose child she is. That is a question I prefer to avoid.
But in my humble opinion it will be a grave mistake to educate her
above the class to which it has pleased Providence to call her. No good
can come of it.”

“That’s nonsense!” The fine voice had a slight tremble in it.

Aunt Annie looked down her large nose. “At any rate, that has always
been my view. And it has always been the view of, I will not say who.
It is very perilous to tamper with the order of Divine Providence.
And I am surprised that one who has been called to a position of high
responsibility should think otherwise.”

The quick flush upon Harriet’s cheek showed that the old lady had got
home. She was always formidable at close quarters; even Harriet had to
be wary in trying a fall with her.

“The child must have a good, sensible upbringing. Let her be taught
cooking, sewing, plain needlework, and so on. And _I_ shall be very
glad to give a little advice from time to time. But I repeat it will be
most unwise to set her up, no matter who her parents may be, above the
station in life to which it has pleased Providence to call her.”

Again the light of battle darkened the eyes of Harriet.

“It is early days at present to talk about it,” she said. And she
laughed suddenly in a high-pitched key.


V

Water flowed under London Bridge. The flight of time demanded that Mary
should fulfill her promise of being the most wonderful child ever seen.
She did not fail, but grew in grace and beauty like a flower. At the
date of her arrival her age was deemed to be one month. By the time it
had been multiplied by twelve a personality had begun to emerge, twelve
months later it was possible to gauge it.

There never was such a child. Eliza held that opinion from the first,
and godmother Harriet shared it. Aunt Annie was more discreet, but her
actions expressed an interest of the highest kind. From the moment she
had committed herself to the memorable statement that “Whoever’s child
she may be, she is not a child of common parents,” there was really no
more to be said. But as the months passed and Mary became Mary yet more
definitely, the old lady, to the astonishment of both her nieces, began
to identify herself intimately with the fortunes of the creature.

The critical age of two was safely passed. And the age of three found
Mary more than ever the cynosure of Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas.
The infant had such health, her eyes were so blue, her laugh was so
gay, her rose-bloom tints were so dazzling, that the childless hearth
of the Kellys’ was somehow touched with the hues of Paradise. In
moments of gloom Joe had his doubts, and now and again expressed them.
He had certainly done very wrong, the whole matter was most irregular,
but the look in Eliza’s face was a living contradiction to official
pessimism.

In the meantime Aunt Annie sat many an hour, spectacles on nose, making
“undies” for her new niece. The old lady was much courted by the rest
of her family. Even amid the remoter outposts of the clan, her word was
law. Apart from the romance of her career, she enjoyed a substantial
pension, she owned house property, and the stocking in which she kept
her savings was known to be a long one. But beyond all things was the
woman herself. It was sheer weight of character that gave her such a
special place among her peers.

The clan Sanderson was extensive, and inclined to exclude. There were
Sandersons holding positions of trust in various parts of London and
the country. There was Mr. George Sanderson, who was in a bank at
Surbiton, who, if he did not actually share the apex with his cousin
Annie, was immensely looked up to; there was Francis, who, from very
small beginnings, had blossomed into a chartered accountant; there was
young Lawrence, of the new generation, who had given up being a page
boy in very good service, for the lures of journalism. He was far from
being approved by his Aunt Annie, and he had not the sanction of his
Uncle George, but he was understood to be doing very well, and if he
only kept on long enough and made sufficiently good in this eccentric
way of life, the mandarins of the family might regard him a little more
hopefully. Finally, there was Harriet. Hers was a truly remarkable
case.

At the age of twenty-nine, without special training or any particular
influence, she had been made housekeeper to the Duke of Bridport at
Buntisford Hall, Essex. The more modern minds among the clan might
affect to despise a success of that kind, but for generations there had
been a sort of feudal connection between the great house of Dinneford
and the honest race of yeomen who had served it. Chartered Accountant
Francis might smile in a superior way, young Lawrence of Fleet Street,
a perfect anarchist of a fellow, might scoff, but every true-blue
Sanderson of the older generation was amazed at Harriet’s achievement,
and felt a personal pride in it.

Aunt Annie, who had a temperamental dislike of Harriet, was the
first to admit that the rise of her niece had been very remarkable.
The august Miss Sanderson was an unequaled judge of what Mr. George
Sanderson called “general conditions.” Her own historical career
had given her peculiar facilities for gauging the lie of a country,
socially speaking, her sense of values was absolutely correct, and she
was constrained to admit, much as it hurt her to do so, that Harriet’s
success had no parallel in her experience.

Eliza Kelly occupied a very different place in the hierarchy. She was
perilously near the base of the statue. Her brothers, her sisters, her
uncles, her cousins, and her aunts, had always made a practice of going
up in the world, but she had unmistakably come down in it. It was not
that they had anything against Joe personally. He was sober, honest, a
good husband, and he well knew the place allotted to him by an all-wise
Providence. But when the best had been said for him he was not, and
could never hope to be, a Sanderson.

It was, therefore, the more surprising that Aunt Annie should take so
great an interest in the waif that the Kellys had adopted. None knew
the name of its parents, none so much as ventured to hint at the source
of its origin, yet the mandarin-in-chief accepted it as soon as she
set eyes upon it, and month by month, year by year, to the increasing
surprise of the clan as a whole, her regard for the creature waxed in
ever growing proportions.

Mrs. Francis--A Miss Best, of Sheffield--had given an account of her
afternoon call at Bowley, which she had timed as usual for the day
after Royalty had paid its annual visit. Mrs. F.--in the family, she
was always Mrs. F.--had then seen Mary for the first time. And although
she had five of her own, the child had made a great impression. She was
like a fairy, with vivid eyes and wonderful hair, which Aunt Annie used
to brush over a stick every time she came to Croxton Park Road; her
clothes were simple and in perfect taste, but of a style and quality
far beyond the reach of Mrs. F.’s own progeny. She was then a little
more than three, and not only Mrs. F., but _others_, according to Aunt
Annie’s account of the matter, had been greatly struck by her. She
certainly made a picture with her dainty limbs, her laughing eyes, her
flaxen curls. All the same, it was very absurd that the child should be
turned out in that way. Eliza and Joe could not possibly afford it, and
if the old lady was responsible, as was feared was the case, she ought
to have had more sense than to set her up in that way.

As the result of inquiries, Mrs. F. felt bound to make in the matter,
and there were very few matters in which Mrs. F. did not feel bound
to make inquiries of one kind or another, it appeared that Aunt Annie
was not responsible for her clothes. The clothes lay at the door of
godmother Harriet. She had insisted on choosing them, and had further
insisted on sharing the considerable expense they involved. Mrs.
F. gathered that in the opinion of Aunt Annie and also in that of
Eliza, godmother Harriet was inclined to abuse her position. She was
always insisting. No detail of the creature’s upbringing escaped her
interference. She must have her say in everything; indeed, she came
over from Buntisford regularly once a week for the purpose of having
it. At Beaconsfield Villas, and also at Bowley, she took a very high
tone, which Eliza and Aunt Annie strongly resented. But it seemed there
was no remedy. Harriet was the godmother, she had her rights, her will
was as imperious as Aunt Annie’s own--and her purse seemed fathomless.

As soon as Mary was four, it was settled that she should go every
morning to Bowley to be taught her letters. And she must be taken
there by a girl “who spoke nicely.” It seemed that a girl, who spoke
nicely, was a rather rare bird in Laxton. At any rate Eliza having
been compelled in the first place to yield to a nursemaid, had many to
review before one was found whose style of delivery could satisfy the
fastidious ear of Aunty Harriet.

Eliza might be piqued by such “officiousness,” but she could not deny
that Harriet had reason on her side. Perhaps it was overdoing things
a bit for people in their position, but Eliza, if fallen from high
estate, was still at heart a Sanderson. Therefore she knew what was
what. And the secret was hers that the child’s real home was a long way
from Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, Laxton. Eliza could never quite
forget the source of origin of her adopted daughter.

Every month that went by seemed to make it increasingly difficult to
forget that. Princess Geraldine herself, that figure of legend who used
to call at Bowley every twenty-sixth of March, could never have been
in more devout or judicious hands than little Mistress Mary in that
of the Council of Three, not to mention those of Miss Sarah Allcock,
specially coöpted. No child so tended and cared for, whose welfare was
so carefully studied by experts, could have failed to grow in beauty
and grace. She was so perfectly charming and superb when in the charge
of the discreet Miss Allcock, she took the air with her wonderful hair,
her patrician features and her white socks, that the nearest neighbors
began to resent it. It was considered rather swank on the part of the
Kellys to set up such a child at all. They were surprised that Joe, a
popular man, should not have a truer sense of the fitness of things.
They were less surprised at Mrs. Joe, who was not quite so popular. But
Joe was a sensible fellow, and he should have seen to it that the child
did not become the talk of the neighborhood.

Yet, after all, it may not have been so much the fault of Joe or of
Eliza, his wife, that the child became the talk of the neighborhood.
In the purview of local society, whose salon was Mrs. Connor’s, the
greengrocer’s lady, at the end of the street, the blame lay at the door
of Miss Sarah Allcock. The truth was the incursion of Miss Allcock was
keenly resented by the local ladies. She was altogether too fine--yet
the odd thing was that she was not fine at all. But she was in every
way uncommonly superior. No greater tribute could have been paid to
the social supremacy of the presiding genius of Croxton Park Road,
or to the strength of character of Aunty Harriet, than that such a
one as Miss Allcock should condescend to Beaconsfield Villas. Truth
to tell, Miss Allcock was a remote connection of the clan Sanderson,
although never admitted as such by the mandarins. But she knew there
were strings to pull, and a good place had been guaranteed her when she
really started out in service.

All the same, as far as the neighbors were concerned, Miss Sarah
Allcock was an error of judgment. She was amazingly neat and trim, she
had the true Sanderson refinement of manner and address, she was fond
of airing her voice to her charge with all sorts of subtle Mayfair
inflections, and she looked _away_ from the neighbors as if they were
dirt. As if they were dirt--that was the gravamen of their complaint in
the sympathetic ear of Mrs. Bridgit Connor.

Mrs. Bridgit Connor, the greengrocer’s wife, was a widespread lady
of Irish descent, of great but fluctuating charm, and unfailing
volubility. Her vocabulary was immense, but scorn often taxed it. Her
scorn of Miss Allcock taxed it to the breaking point. Born on a bog and
descended in the remote past from the kings of the earth, Mrs. Connor
had facilities of speech and gesture denied to the common run of her
kind. She avenged the slights put by Miss Allcock upon herself and
friends by alluding to that lady’s charge in a loud voice whenever
opportunity offered as “a by-blow,” or “a no-man’s child.”

When Mary was five there arose the grand question of her education
proper. At first a great clash of wills was threatened. Aunt Annie
had her views. Aunty Harriet had hers. Eliza, being merely “the
mother,” was not allowed to have any. Aunty Harriet thought perhaps the
kindergarten. Aunt Annie did not believe in such new-fangled nonsense.
Besides no kindergarten would take her.

“Why not?” asked Aunty Harriet. But as she spoke there came a slight
flush to the proud face.

“Because they won’t,” said Aunt Annie with stern finality. “All schools
of the better sort are very particular.”

Aunty Harriet bit her lip sharply. She retorted, perhaps unwisely, that
if they were not very particular they would cease to be schools of the
better sort.

“Quite so,” said Aunt Annie.

For the moment it looked as if daggers were going to be drawn. These
two were always at the verge of conflict. Both were impatient of any
kind of opposition, and in the matter of young Mistress Mary they
seldom saw eye to eye. Aunt Annie did not disguise her opinion that
Aunty Harriet was inclined to take too much upon herself, and Aunty
Harriet had no difficulty in returning the compliment.

But Harriet had great common sense, and she was a woman of action. She
was not the one tamely to accept the decree about schools of the better
sort, but began to make researches of her own into the subject. She
was very hard to please, both in regard to the style of the school
and the condition of the scholars, and when at last one had been
found which met the case, there arose the difficulties Aunt Annie had
predicted. A child of parentage unknown, adopted by the family of a
police constable, did not commend herself to the Misses Lippincott of
Broadwood House Academy. To Aunty Harriet this seemed a great pity; the
school presided over by those ladies was exactly suitable. Its tone
was high but not pretentious; the small daughters and the smaller sons
of Laxton’s leading tradesmen mingled with those of its professional
classes, and its reputation was so good that Aunty Harriet, after a
discreet interview with the elder Miss Lippincott, a bishop’s daughter
and a university graduate, set her mind upon it.

Howbeit, the austere Miss Lippincott showed no inclination to receive
the adopted child of a police constable as a pupil at Broadwood
House Academy. This was not conveyed to Miss Harriet Sanderson in so
many words, but in the course of the next day she received a letter,
delicately-worded, to that effect. However, she did not give in, as
smaller and weaker people might have done, but she put her pride in
her pocket and, looking the facts in the face, went to take counsel at
Bowley.

“What did I tell you, my dear!” said Aunt Annie. To refrain from that
observation would have been superhuman. But the observation duly made,
the old lady also revealed the divine gift of common sense. From all
that she had heard the establishment of the Misses Lippincott was
immensely desirable. Moreover, she clearly remembered the Bishop, their
late father, coming to spend the week-end at the real Bowley, and
hearing him preach a singularly moving sermon in the little parish
church. Small wonder, then, that the tone of Broadwood House Academy
was “exactly right” in every human particular; besides, Aunt Annie had
met and approved Miss Priscilla Lippincott on two occasions. Therefore,
the old lady promised Aunty Harriet that she herself would see what
could be done in the matter.

The first thing Aunt Annie did was to induce the Mayoress, Mrs.
Alderman Bradbury, to say a word on the child’s behalf. She promptly
followed up this piece of strategy by ordering her state chariot to
drive Mistress Mary and herself to Broadwood House Academy.

The child was looking her best. Her carefully-brushed tresses shone
like woven sunbeams, her slight, trim form was clothed with taste and
elegance, her laughing eyes were frankly unabashed by the demure Miss
Priscilla, nay, even by the august Miss Lippincott herself. The effect
she made was entirely favorable. Besides, the Mayoress had taken the
trouble to call the previous afternoon in order to speak for her, and
Miss Sanderson, as the Misses Lippincott knew, was looked up to in
Laxton; therefore, out of regard for all the circumstances, a point
was waived and little Miss Kelly was reluctantly admitted to Broadwood
House Academy.


VI

The Misses Lippincott never had cause to rue their temerity. Little
Miss Kelly remained in their care until she was big Miss Kelly, a
brilliant and dashing creature with a quite extraordinary length
of black stocking. Neither Miss Lippincott nor Miss Priscilla ever
regretted her democratic action. In fact, it was a source of jealous
remark, even among the most distinguished scholars of Broadwood House
Academy, that not one of them could wear the black beaver hat with the
purple ribbon and its gold monogram B. H. A., or the blue ulster with
gilt buttons, in quite the way that these modish emblems were worn by
Mary Kelly.

It greatly annoyed Ethel Cliffe, who lived in The Park, and was a
daughter of Sir Joseph, three times Mayor of Laxton, that in looks
and popularity she had to yield to the offspring of very much humbler
parents, who lived in quite an obscure part of the borough. But it had
to be. Year by year the cuckoo that had entered the nest grew in beauty
and favor, while the legitimate denizens of Broadwood House could only
bite their lips and marvel. In the opinion of Ethel Cliffe and her
peers, old Dame Nature must be a perfect idiot not to know her business
a bit better.

It was not that Mary Kelly made enemies. Her disposition was open,
free, and fearless; her heart was gold. Then, too, in most things, she
was amazingly quick. She never made any bones about reading, writing,
arithmetic, geography, and so on, she was good at freehand drawing, and
the use of the globes, in Swedish drill and ball games, particularly at
hockey, she was wonderful, and in music and dancing there was none in
the school to compare with her. The only things in which she did not
really excel were plain needlework and religious knowledge. These bored
her to tears--except that she proudly reserved her tears for matters
which seemed of more consequence.

As Mary Kelly’s stockings got longer and longer the supremacy of Ethel
Cliffe grew even less secure. Even at Broadwood House Academy it was
impossible to subsist entirely on your social eminence. Ethel had
openly sneered at the outsider upon her first intrusion in the fold;
the only daughter of a very recent knight found it hard to breathe
the same air as the offspring of a humble police constable. But Dame
Nature, in her ignorant way, bungled the whole thing so miserably, that
while Ethel was always very near the bottom of the class, Mary was
generally at the top of it; Ethel was heavy and humorless, and inclined
to take refuge in her dignity, Mary was _bon enfant_, with very little
in the way of dignity in which to take refuge. And in proof of that, a
story was told of her, soon after she passed the age of ten, which ran
like wildfire throughout Broadwood House Academy.

It seemed that in the vicinity of Mary’s undistinguished home were
certain rude boys. Foremost among them was Mrs. Connor’s Michael, the
youngest and not the least vocal of her numerous progeny. And it often
happened that Michael was _en route_ from his own seat of learning,
where manners did not appear to be in the curriculum, when Mistress
Mary was on the way home from Broadwood House Academy, where manners
undoubtedly were. In the opinion of Michael’s mother the Connors were
quite as good as the Kellys--very much better if it came to that!--and
this tradition had been freely imbibed by her youngest hope. The
Connors were quite as good as the Kellys, Michael was always careful to
inform his peers, but the haughty beauty of Beaconsfield Villas, in her
beaver hat and blue ulster with gilt buttons did not share that view.
She had simply not so much as a look for Michael and his friends. This
aloofness galled them bitterly.

Had she only known such aristocratic indifference was rather cruel.
For Michael’s one distinction among his mates, apart from his skill
as a marble-player, which was very considerable, was that he lived in
the same street as Miss Kelly. She was out and away the most wonderful
creature ever seen in that part of Laxton. It was hard to forgive
her for carrying her head in the way she did, yet it somehow added
still greater piquancy to a personality that simply haunted the manly
bosoms of the neighborhood. But her aloofness was felt to be such a
reflection upon Michael himself, that at last that warrior was moved to
a desperate course.

He took the extreme measure of offering Miss Kelly his best blood
alley. But it was in vain; Miss Kelly would have none of his best blood
alley, or of its owner. Michael then decided upon war.

In discussing the Kellys on the domestic hearth, he had heard his
mother cast grave doubts upon the ancestry of their so-called daughter.
Therefore, the spirit of revenge, rankling in Michael’s tormented
breast, urged him to adopt a certain rhyme, current at the time, for
the chastening of this haughty charmer. Together with a few chosen
braves he lay in ambush for her as she wended her proud way home from
Broadwood House Academy. As soon as Mary Kelly hove in sight round the
corner of Grove Street, S.E., these heroes burst into song:--

  “I am Mary Plantagenet.
  What would imagine it?
  Eyes full of liquid fire,
    Hair bright as jet.
  No one knows my history
  I am wrapt in mystery
  I am the she-ro
    Of a penny novelette.”

On the occasion of the first performance, Miss Kelly did not deign to
take the slightest notice. But after it had been repeated a number of
times with increasing _réclame_, it grew more than she could brook.
One never-to-be-forgotten Friday evening, in the fall of the year, she
suddenly handed her satchel of books to her friend, Rose Pierce, and
with decks cleared for action and the flame of battle in her eyes, bore
down upon the foe. Michael Conner afterwards took his book oath to the
effect that he was not a coward. But the beaver hat, the purple ribbon,
the blue ulster and the gilt buttons put the fear of God into him very
surely. He ran. Alas, he was a stocky youth, not exactly an Ormonde,
even in his best paces, whereas Mary Plantagenet, black stockings and
all, moved like a thoroughbred. She chased him remorselessly the whole
length of Longmore Street, through the Quadrant, finally cornered him
in a blind alley in which he had the bad judgment to seek refuge, and
soundly boxed his ears.

As far as Mary Kelly was concerned the incident was closed from that
moment. Michael Connor very wisely decided to close it also. He
returned to his marble-playing a chastened boy. But Rose Pierce, the
daughter of Laxton’s leading physician, told the story breathlessly at
Broadwood House Academy on the following morning. All agreed that the
prestige of the school had been seriously impaired, but Miss Kelly was
Mary Plantagenet from that time on.


VII

By the time Mary was fourteen, Broadwood House Academy had taught
her most of what it knew. Then arose the question of her future. The
Kellys were people in humble circumstances, and it was felt that the
child must be put in the way of getting a living. Eliza suggested a
shop, Aunt Annie shorthand and typewriting, as she was so quick at her
books, but Aunty Harriet vetoed them promptly. And as year by year that
autocrat--promoted since the Duke’s breakdown in health to the very
important post of housekeeper at Bridport House, Mayfair--had supported
the operations of a strong will with an active power of the purse, she
carried the day as usual. Mary must be a hospital nurse.

To this scheme, however, there was one serious drawback. No hospital
would admit her for training until she was twenty-one. The problem now
was, what she should do in the meantime. In order to meet it the Misses
Lippincott allowed her to stay on as a special pupil at Broadwood
House. Paying no fees, she gave a hand with the younger children, and
was able to continue the study of music, for which she showed a special
aptitude.

For a time this plan answered very well. The Misses Lippincott had a
great regard for Mary. In every way she was a credit to the school. Her
natural gifts were of so high an order that these ladies felt that a
career was open to her. There was nothing she might not achieve if she
set her mind upon it, always excepting plain needlework and religious
knowledge, and perhaps freehand drawing, in which she was a little
disappointing also. Brimming with vitality and the joy of life and yet
with her gay enthusiasm was now coming to be mingled a certain ambition.

As month by month she grew into a creature of charm and magnetism, she
seemed to learn the power within herself. But that discovery brought
the knowledge that she was a bird in a cage. The daily round began to
pall. A rare spirit had perceived bars. Broadwood House Academy was
dear to her, but she now craved a larger, a diviner air.

It chanced that she was to be put in the way of her desire. Once a
week there came to the school a Miss Waddington, to give lessons in
dancing. A pupil of the famous Madame Lemaire, of Park Street, Chelsea,
this lady was an accomplished, as well as a very knowledgeable person.
From the first she had been greatly attracted by Mary Kelly. An
instructed eye saw at once that the girl had personality. Not only was
it expressed in form and feature, it was in her outlook, her ideas.
There was a rhythm in all that she did, a poetry in the smallest of her
actions.

This girl was like no other. And Miss Waddington grew so much impressed
that at last came the proud day, when by permission of the Misses
Lippincott, Mary was taken to Park Street to the academy, in order that
her gifts might be assessed by “Madame.”

The opinion of that famous lady, promulgated in due course, caused a
nine days’ wonder at Broadwood House. Madame Lemaire, it seemed, had
been so much smitten by the lithe charm of young Miss Kelly, that she
offered to take her in at Park Street and train her free of charge for
three years.

At once the girl grew wild to take her chance. It meant escape from a
life that had already begun to cast long shadows. But her home people
saw the thing in a very different light. In their opinion there was
a wide gulf between the respectability of Broadwood House and the
licentious freedom of Chelsea. Joe and Eliza were at one with Aunt
Annie and Aunty Harriet in saying “No” to the proposal.

Mistress Mary, however, was now rising sixteen with a rapidly
developing character of her own. Therefore she did not let the strength
of opposition daunt her. She set her mind firmly upon Park Street and
Madame Lemaire; and very soon, to the intense surprise and chagrin of
“her relations,” she had contrived to get the Misses Lippincott on her
side.

Very luckily for Mary, those ladies were open-minded and worldly wise.
They saw that the career of a highly-trained dancer had prospects
far beyond those of a half-educated schoolmistress. Mary was rapidly
becoming an asset of Broadwood House, but the ladies, although perhaps
a little dubious, allowed themselves to be overpersuaded by Miss
Waddington and the girl herself.

There followed a pretty to-do. Aunt Annie was horrified. Such a
career, with all deference to the Misses Lippincott, hardly sounded
respectable. As for Aunty Harriet, with her usual energy, she made
first-hand inquiries in regard to Madame Lemaire. She found that the
name of that lady stood high in her profession. But alas! one thing
leads to another. Aunty Harriet, who had a shrewd knack of taking long
views, had already espied the cloven hoof of the theater. It seemed
inevitable that such a girl as Mary should drift towards it. And of
that sinister institution Aunty Harriet had a pious horror.

Therefore she opposed Park Street sternly. But the girl fully knew her
own mind and meant from the first to have her way. And she played her
cards so well that she got it somehow. No doubt it was judicious aid
from an influential quarter that finally carried the day. Be that as
it may, in spite of all sorts of gloomy prophecies, Mary was able to
accept an offer which was to change completely the current of her life.


VIII

The move to Chelsea closed an epoch. At once Mary found herself in a
new and fascinating world. Part of the arrangement with Madame Lemaire
was that she should “live in” at Park Street, and have freedom to
take a fourpenny ’bus on Sundays to Beaconsfield Villas. This was
greatly to Mary’s liking. Chelsea, as she soon discovered, had an air
more rarefied than Laxton; somehow it had a magic which opened up
new vistas. She had been by no means unhappy at Broadwood House, her
foster-parents had treated her with every kindness, but she could not
help feeling that by comparison with the new life, the old one was
rather deadly.

Of course, it would have been black ingratitude to admit anything of
the kind. Still, the fact was there. Park Street had a freedom, a
gayety, a careless bonhomie far removed from the austerity of Broadwood
House. Her life had been enlarged. The hours were long, the work was
hard, but her heart was in it, and the novel charm of her surroundings
was a perpetual delight.

A month of Park Street brought more knowledge of the world than a
lustrum of Broadwood House. Madame Lemaire’s establishment was a famous
one, in fact the resort of fashion; to the perceptive Mary the people
with whom she had now to rub shoulders had real educational value.

The girl was one of a number of articled pupils, who were taught
dancing in order to teach it again. With all of these she got on well.
Immensely likeable herself, she had an instinct for liking others. And
she was now among a rather picked lot, a little Bohemian perhaps in the
general range of their ideas, but friendly, amusing, and at heart “good
sorts.” Madame knew her business thoroughly. She seldom erred as to the
character and capacity of those whom she chose to help her in return
for a valuable training.

Some of the girls who passed through her hands found their way on to
the stage. Distinguished names were among them. Indeed, the atmosphere
of Park Street was semi-theatrical. Dancing, elocution, singing,
physical culture, and fencing were the subjects taught at Madame
Lemaire’s academy.

Mary remained nearly three years at Park Street. In that time she came
on amazingly. Awake from the first to a knowledge of her gifts, she
was secretly determined to use them in the carving out of a career.
Broadwood House had sown the seed of ambition; under the able tutelage
of Madame Lemaire it was to bear fruit. Stimulated by the outlook of
her new friends, soon she began to feel the lure of a larger life. She
craved for self-expression through the emotions, and all her energies
were bent upon the satisfaction of a vital need.

In the early stages she owed much to Madame Lemaire, who approved her
ambition to the full. Here was a talent, and that lady did all in her
power to fit a brilliant pupil for the field best suited to it. Unknown
to Aunty Harriet, who still cherished the idea of a hospital at the age
of twenty-one, unknown to Aunt Annie, who would have been horrified,
unknown to Beaconsfield Villas, Mary with the future always before her,
set to work under the ægis of Madame to make her dreams come true.

After many diligent months, in the course of which a singularly dainty
pair of feet were reënforced by a very serviceable soprano, there came
the day when she was given her chance. A theatrical manager, who made
a point of attending the annual display of Madame’s pupils at the
Terpsichorean Hall, was so struck by her abilities that he offered her
an engagement. It was true that it was merely to understudy in the
provinces a small part in a musical comedy. But it was a beginning, if
an humble one, and its acceptance was strongly advised. It meant the
opening of the magic door at which so many are doomed to knock in vain.
This girl should go far; but if the new life proved too hard, Madame
would be more than willing for her to return to Park Street as a member
of her staff.

Alarums and excursions followed. Before a decision could be made the
girl felt in honor bound to consult godmother Harriet. So intensely had
that lady the welfare of Mary at heart, that she never failed to visit
Park Street once a week when in London. There was a very real bond of
sympathy between them, which time had deepened. Yet hitherto Mary had
not ventured to disclose the scope and nature of her plans. Alas! she
had now to launch a bolt from the blue.

The blow fell one Wednesday afternoon when Aunty Harriet came as usual
to drink a weekly cup of tea at Park Street with her adopted niece.
Aunty Harriet, although she prided herself upon being a woman of the
world, was unable to entertain such an idea for a moment. Years ago it
had been decided that Mary was to be a hospital nurse. But Mary, now a
strong-willed creature of eighteen had made her own decision. For many
a month she had been working hard, unknown to her friends, in order to
seize the chance when it came. Moreover, she felt within herself that
she had found her true vocation.

Aunty Harriet took a high tone. Three years before she had met defeat
at the hands of this headstrong young woman in alliance with the Misses
Lippincott. In secret, and for a reason only known to herself, she had
never ceased to deplore that fact. She made up her mind that she would
not be overcome a second time. But she was quite unable to shake the
girl’s determination. And there was Madame Lemaire to reckon with.
Indeed, that worldly-wise person seconded her clever pupil in the way
the Broadwood House ladies had. Nor was it luck altogether that for
a second time brought the girl such powerful backing when she needed
it most. Behind the engaging air of simple frankness was a will that
nothing could shake.

The end of the matter was that two powerful natures came perilously
near the point of estrangement. Both had fully made up their minds.
That memorable Wednesday afternoon saw a veritable passage of arms, in
the course of which Mary, her back to the wall, at last threw down the
gage of battle.

Her blunt refusal to submit to dictation came as a shock to Harriet,
whose distress seemed out of all proportion to its cause. But to her
the project was so demoralizing that she fought against it tooth and
nail. She enlisted Aunt Annie, now very infirm and less active as a
power, and the girl’s home people at Beaconsfield Villas. But all
opposition was vain. The young Amazon had cast the die for better or
for worse. To Harriet’s consternation she took the manager’s offer.
Disaster was predicted. There were heavy hearts in Laxton, but the
heaviest of all was at Bridport House, Mayfair.



CHAPTER III

FLOWING WATER


I

ON a spring afternoon, Mary at ease, novel in lap, let her mind flow
over the years in their passing. Four had gone by since she had defied
her family, in order to embrace a career, which in their view was full
of peril. But in spite of that, so far she had escaped disaster. And
fortune had been amazingly kind in the meantime.

On the table near Mary’s elbow were five cups on a tray, and opposite,
also at ease, with her hands behind her shrewd head, was Milly Wren.
Mary had just begun to share a very comfortable flat with Milly and
Milly’s mother.

Milly herself, in Mary’s opinion, was more than worthy of her
surroundings. Loyal, sympathetic, full of courage, she had served a far
longer apprenticeship to success than Mary had. She had “made good” in
the face of heavy odds.

Milly had not a great talent. Force of character and singleness of aim
had brought her to the top, and only these, as she well knew, would
keep her there. But with Mary it was a different story. All sorts of
fairies had attended her birth. She had every gift for the career she
had chosen, moreover, she had them in abundance. Milly, who had gone up
the ladder a step at a time, would have been more than human had she
not envied her friend the qualities she wore with the indifference of a
regular royal queen.

The clock on the chimney-piece struck four.

“I’m feeling quite excited,” Milly suddenly remarked.

From the depths of the opposite chair came the note which for six
months now had cast a spell upon London.

“He mustn’t know that,” laughed Mary. “Dignity, my child, touched with
hauteur, is the prescription for a marquis. At least that’s according
to the book of the words.” And she gayly waved the novel she had
neglected for nearly an hour.

“Oh, Sonny,” said Milly Wren, “I wasn’t thinking of _him_. I was
thinking of the friend he is bringing, who is simply dying to know you.”

Mary knew this was quite true, for that was Milly’s way.

“Oh, is he!” If the tone was disdain, its sting was masked by gentle
irony and humor. These airs and graces didn’t make enemies, they so
frankly belonged to the wonderful Mary Lawrence--her name in the
theater. That which might have been mere petulance in a nature thinner
of texture, became with her a half-royal impatience for the more
trivial aspects of the human comedy.

“But I want to see him,” persisted Milly. “Sonny thinks no end of him.”

“Then I’m sure he’s nice.”

“Why do you think so?” Milly was a little intrigued by the warmth of
the words.

“Because Lord Wrexham is charming.”

Milly laughed. The naïve admiration was unexpected, the slightly too
respectful air was puzzling. Milly herself was so _blasé_ in regard to
the peerage that such an attitude of mind seemed almost provincial. Yet
she would have been the first to own that it was the only thing about
her enigmatic friend which suggested anything of the kind.

“Sonny says he raves about you.”

“It’s _his funeral_.” The laugh was honestly gay. “He’ll be very
disappointed, poor lad.”

“Don’t fish.”

“I never fish in shallow waters, Miss Wren.”

“You are the most shameless angler I know. But you do it so beautifully
that people don’t realize what you are at.”

“Unconsciously--say unconsciously,” came a flash from the opposite
chair.

“So I used to think. Before I really knew you I thought everything you
said and did just happened so. But now I am not quite sure that you
have not thought everything out beforehand.”

“Don’t make me out a horror.”

“Anyway you are much the cleverest creature I have ever met. You are
so deep that there is no fathoming you. Somehow you are not the least
ordinary in anything.”

Mary abruptly brought the conversation back to Sonny and his friend.
The latter, it seemed, had first gazed on the famous Miss Lawrence in
New York, at the Pumpernickel Theater, the previous year.

“An American?”

“No,” said Milly. “But he’s seen a lot of life out West.”

Before other questions could rise to Mary’s lips, Mrs. Wren came in.
Milly’s mother was an elderly lady who had been on the stage. In the
first flight of her profession, life had given her many a shrewd
knock, but in the process she had picked up a considerable knowledge
of the world and its ways. She lived for Milly, in whom her every
thought was centered, for in the daughter the mother lived again.
Intensely ambitious for her, Mrs. Wren was a little inclined to resent
the intrusion within the nest of a bird of such dazzling plumage as
Mary Lawrence. At the same time that honest woman well knew that her
daughter had more to gain than she had to lose by sharing a roof with
such a supremely attractive stable companion.

Mrs. Wren found it very difficult to place Mary Lawrence. In ideas and
outlook, in the face she showed to the world, she was far from being a
typical member of her calling as the good lady knew it. As Mrs. Wren
reckoned success, this girl had won it on two continents almost too
abundantly, but she seemed to hold it very cheap. Perhaps it had been
gained too easily. Milly’s mother, rather jealous, rather ambitious as
she was, could hardly find it in her heart to say it was undeserved,
but Mary Lawrence took the high gifts of fortune so much for granted,
almost as if they were a birthright, that the mother of her friend,
remembering the long years of her own thornily-crowned servitude, and
Milly’s hard struggle “to arrive,” could not help a feeling of secret
envy.

“His lordship coming to tea?” said Mrs. Wren, with a demure glance at
the five cups on the tray.

None knew so well as she that his lordship was coming to tea. She had
made elaborate preparations in toilette and confectionery in order to
receive him. But the phrase rose so histrionically to her lips that she
simply couldn’t resist it. Somehow it made such a perfect entrance, for
Milly’s mother carried a sense of the theater into private life.

It would have been heartless of Milly, who belonged to another
generation, to have uttered the words on her tongue. And those words
were, “You know perfectly well that Sonny is coming.”

“He said he was,” Milly’s reply was given with a patient smile that
concealed an infinity of boredom. Her mother, fussy, trite, rather
exasperating, had never quite learned amid all her jousts with the
world, to acquire the golden mean. There were times when she sorely
tried her clever and ambitious daughter, whose patience was little
short of angelic.

“What’s the name of the friend he is bringing?”

“Mr. Dinneford.”

“Not another lord?” The tone of Mrs. Wren had a tiny note of
disappointment.

“A rich commoner,” said Milly with a laugh. “At least Sonny says he
will be one of the richest men in England when his uncle dies. His
uncle, I believe, is a great swell.”

“I don’t doubt it, dear,” said Mrs. Wren.


II

An electric bell was heard to buzz.

“They are here,” said Mrs. Wren in a tone with a thrill in it.

A neat parlor maid announced “Lord Wrexham, Mr. Dinneford,” and two
stalwart young men entered cheerily. They were hearty upstanding
fellows, curiously alike in manner, appearance, dress, yet in the
thousand and one subtleties of character immutably different. But
this was not a moment for the fine shades. They came into the room
unaffectedly, without shyness, and warmly took the hands of welcome
that were offered them.

Wrexham, a subaltern of the Pinks of three years’ standing, was an
attractive but rather irresolute young man. He knew that he was
perilously near forbidden ground. If not exactly in the toils of an
infatuation, the charms of Milly were growing day by day upon an
impressionable mind. Fully content as yet to live in the moment,
a wiser young man might have begun to pay the future some little
attention.

As for the lively, headstrong, unconventional Jack Dinneford, at
present at a loose end in London, to whom Wrexham himself had been
appointed as a sort of unofficial bear-leader by the express desire
of Bridport House, that warrior was on a voyage of discovery. In
common with half the males of his age in the metropolis he was already
in the thrall of the wonderful Princess Bedalia. In the opinion of
connoisseurs she was the only one of her kind; for the past two hundred
nights she had played “to capacity” at the Frivolity Theater, and even
Jack Dinneford, who in one way or another had seen a goodish bit of the
Old World and the New, could not repress an exquisite little thrill as
her highness rose with rare politeness to receive him.

“She’s even more stunning than I guessed,” was the thought in Jack’s
mind at the moment of presentation. He could almost feel the magnetism
in her finger tips. She was so alive in every nerve that it would have
called for no great power of imagination to detect vibration all round
her.

“I feel greatly honored in meeting you,” said the young man with
transparent honesty. He was no subscriber evidently to the maxim,
“Language was given us to conceal our thoughts.” Somehow she couldn’t
help liking him for it.

“The honor is mine.” The response was so ready, the humor behind it so
genuine, that they both laughed whole-heartedly and became friends on
the spot. There was no nonsense about Princess Bedalia, and the same
applied to the brown-faced clear-eyed owner of the fanciful scarf pin.

The neat parlor maid brought tea. Wrexham, after a little amiable
chaffing of Mrs. Wren, whom he had met on at least six occasions,
provided Milly with tea and a macaroon, took the like for himself, and
sat beside her without a care in the wide world. She was forbidden
fruit; thus to frail humanity in its present phase she conveyed an idea
of Paradise. Such a view was quite absurd, allowing even for the fact
that Milly was an engaging creature, with a good heart, a ready tongue,
a rather special kind of prettiness, and a particularly shrewd head.

Jack Dinneford on the opposite sofa had stronger warrant for his
emotions. This girl whom he had first seen in New York before the news
of a great inheritance had come to him, whom he had since viewed ten
times from the stalls of the Frivolity Theater, was a personality.
There was no doubt about that. And as he discovered at once their minds
marched together. They saw men and events at the same angle. A phrase
of either would draw forth an instant counterpart; in five minutes they
had turned the whole universe into mockery, but without letting go of
the fact that they were complete strangers colloguing for the first
time.

Mrs. Wren withdrew presently on the pretext that she had letters to
write. A very pleasant hour quickly sped. Each of these four people
was in the mood to enjoy. Life in spite of its hazards, was no bad
thing at the moment. Wrexham, a thorough gentleman, was an immensely
likeable young man. And while he basked in present happiness a certain
resolution began to take shape in his mind.

As for Jack Dinneford at the other side of the room, his thoughts
followed a humbler course. But he was an elemental, a very dangerous
fellow if once he began to play with ideas. At present he suffered from
the drawback of being no more than the nephew of his uncle; therefore
his sensations were not exactly those of Wrexham, who was a natural
caster of the handkerchief. But in this fatal hour Jack was heavily
smitten.

He had met few girls in his twenty-four years of existence. In his
naïf way he confessed as much to Miss Lawrence. She was amused by
the confession and led him to make others. This was easy because he
liked talking about himself, that is to say, with such a girl as Mary
Lawrence inciting him humorously to reveal the piquant details of a
life not without its adventures, he would have had to be much less
primitive than he was to have resisted the lure of the charmer.

She was unaffectedly interested. She differed from Mr. Dinneford
inasmuch as she had met many young men. Therefore, her heart was not
worn on her sleeve for daws to peck at. But he was a new type, and she
confessed gayly to Milly as soon as he had gone, she found him very
amusing.


III

So much happened in the crowded month that followed, that at London
Bridge the Thames might be said to be in spate. The two young men were
often at the theater, and now and again Mary and Milly, chaperoned by
Mrs. Wren, would accept an invitation to supper at a restaurant. Then
there were the happy hours these four people were able to snatch from
their various duties, which they spent under the trees in the Park.
These were golden days indeed, but--the shadow of the policeman could
already be seen creeping up. The senior subaltern had been constrained
one fine morning to take Wrexham so far into his confidence as to
inform him with brutal precision, that if a man in the Household
Cavalry marries an actress, he leaves the regiment.

The young man was intensely annoyed. Wisdom was not his long suit, and
although an excellent fellow according to his lights, right at the
back was the arrogance of old marquisate. His answer to the senior
subaltern was to arrange a most agreeable up-river excursion for the
following Sunday. On returning late in the evening to the flat, Milly
was in rather a flutter.

Mary, who had been one of the merry party, was troubled. She had
certain instincts which went very deep, and these warned her of
breakers ahead. She had a great regard for Milly, and the more she knew
of Wrexham the better she liked him. But she saw quite clearly that
difficulties must arise if the thing went on, and that very powerful
opposition would have to be faced in several quarters.

Moreover, she had now her own problem to meet; Jack had begun to force
the pace. And Mary, who had a sort of sixth sense in these matters, had
already felt this to be an inconvenience. From the first she had found
him delightful. Day by day this feeling had grown. An original, with
a strong will and a keen sense of humor, he differed from his friend
Wrexham inasmuch that he knew his own mind. He returned from the river
fully determined to marry Mary Lawrence.

Perhaps this heroic resolve may have been forced upon him by the
knowledge of other Richmonds in the field. Mary was famous and admired.
It savored of presumption for such a one as himself, in receipt of a
modest two thousand a year from his kinsman, the Duke, to butt in where
men far richer were content to walk delicately. But he was “next in” at
Bridport House, he was heir to a great name, therefore, at the lowest
estimate, he was a quite considerable _parti_. This fact must stand his
excuse, although he was far too astute to make it one in the difficult
game he was about to play.

Jack was not afflicted with subtlety in any form, he was not even a
close observer, but he understood well enough that it was going to
be a man’s work to persuade Mary Lawrence to marry him. She had an
immense independence, to which, of course, she was fully entitled, a
wide field of choice, and under the delightfully amusing give-and-take
which endeared her to Bohemia was a fastidious reserve which somehow
hinted at other standards. Even allowing for a lover’s partiality this
girl was to cut to a pattern far more imposing than Milly Wren. Her
qualities were positive, whereas Milly had prettiness merely, a warm
heart, a factitious charm. However, as soon as this sportsman had made
up his mind to tackle the stiffest fence that a Nimrod has to face, he
decided at once that the hour had come to harden his heart and go at
the post and rails in style.

The next evening, as he strolled with Mary under the trees, he may have
been thinking in metaphor, when he let his eyes dwell on the riders in
the Row.

“How jolly they look!” he said. And then at the instance of a concrete
thought--“By Jove, an idea! Tomorrow morning, if I job a couple of
gees, will you come for a ride?”

The response was a ready one. “I should love to, if you are not afraid
to be seen with an absolute duffer.”

“That’s a bargain. But they may be screws, as there doesn’t seem enough
decent ones to go round at this time of the year.”

“I know nothing about horses,” was the laughing reply, “except just
enough not to look a hired horse in the knees. And the worse my mount
the better for me, at least it reduces my chance of biting the tan.”

“I expect you are a good deal better than you admit.”

She was woman enough to ask why he should think so.

“You have the look of a goer,” he said, as his eye sought involuntarily
the long slender line of a frame all suppleness, delicacy, and power.

“Wait till tomorrow. In the meantime I warn you that you’re almost
certain to be disgraced in the sight of the town.”

“Let’s risk it anyway,” said the young man delightedly.

In a very few minutes, however, Mary seriously regretted a rash
promise. They had only gone a few yards farther, Jack still inclined to
exult at the pact into which he had lured her, when both were brought
up short by a sudden clear “Hello!” from the other side of the rails.

Jack had been hailed by a couple of long, lean young women with
mouse-colored hair, on a couple of long, lean mouse-colored horses.
They were followed at a respectful distance by a very smart groom on a
good-looking chestnut. The set of the close-fitting black habits and
the absolute ease of the wearers denoted the expert horse-woman.

“Hello, Madge--hello, Blanche!” The casual greeting was punctuated by a
wave, equally casual, of the young man’s hand.

As the two riders went slowly by they let their eyes rest upon Mary.
The look she received did not amount to a stare, but it had a cool
impertinence which somehow roused her fighting instinct. Unconsciously
she gave it back. On both sides was a frank curiosity discreetly
veiled, but the honors, if honors there were in the matter, were with
the occupants of the saddle. Somehow that seemed so clearly to have
been the place for generations of these lean young women with their
rigidity of line, their large noses, their cool appraising air of which
they were wholly unconscious.

Who are _they_? was their reaction upon Mary Lawrence.

Who is _she_? was her reaction upon these horsewomen.

“A couple of my cousins.” The young man carelessly answered a question
that Mary was too proud to ask.


IV

Mary’s riding had been confined to a few lessons shared with Milly at
the Brompton School of Equitation, and Milly was urged to make a third
on the morrow. Mrs. Wren felt it to be the due of the proprieties that
she should do so, but Milly herself, apart from the fact that she
was shy of appearing in the Row, was quite convinced that it would
not be the act of “a sport” to overlook the ancient maxim, “Two are
company, three a crowd.” Therefore the invitation was declined. And
this discreet action on the part of Milly gave Fate the opportunity for
which it had seemed to be looking for some little time past.

It was about twenty minutes to eleven in the forenoon of a perfect
first of June that Jack Dinneford rode up gayly to the flat in Broad
Place, leading a horse very likely-looking, but warranted quiet.
It was a fair presumption that the guarantee covered the fact of
its disposition, since it had made the perilous journey from the
jobmaster’s, three doors out of Park Lane, and across the No Man’s
Land yclept Hyde Park Corner, that terrible and trappy maze, without a
suspicion of mental stress.

Jack’s best hunting voice ascended to an open window of the second
story. The complete horsewoman, in every detail immaculate, came on to
the little balcony of Number 16, Victoria Mansions.

“What a gorgeous day!”

“A ripper!”

If excitement there was on the side of either, self-mastery concealed
it. Yet an inconvenient pressure of emotion was shared by both just
then. In spite of a liberal share of self-confidence and a will under
strong control Mary could hardly refrain from the hope that she was
not going to make a perfect fool of herself. As soon as she beheld the
upstanding chestnut below with its slender legs and thin tail, she
winged an involuntary prayer to Allah that there were no tricks in its
repertory unbecoming a horse and a gentleman. As for Jack, the presence
of all the horses in the world would not have excited him. It was not
in him to be excited by things of that kind, that is to say, it was
part of his religion not to be excited by them; all the same there was
a genuine, nay, almost terrible thrill in his heart this morning.

In the course of a rather wakeful night he had made up his mind “to
come to the ’osses” in sober verity. To the best of his present
information the gods, in the absence of the unforeseen, would discuss
the matter privately about twelve o’clock.

“Blanche and Marjorie will have something to look at,” was the proud
thought in the mind of the young man as the complete Diana, fit to
greet Aurora and her courses, emerged from the Otis elevator and took
the front of Broad Place with beauty.

“I wish these clothes were a little less smart, and not quite so
new,” was the first thought in the mind of Diana. “I am sure they
are both of them ‘Cats,’” was the thought which followed close upon
its heels. Until that hour it had never been her lot to harbor
such vain companions. This gay spirit to whom the fairies had been
kind had always seemed to breathe a larger, a diviner air. Such
self-consciousness shamed her; but after all _those two_ with their old
habits and their odd perfection were more to blame than she.

Truth to tell, in the last seventeen hours a subtle, rather horrid
change had taken place in her. Up till six o’clock the previous evening
she had always been nobly sure of herself, regally self-secure. Always
when she had measured herself against others of her age and sex she
had had a feeling of having been born to the purple. Somewhere, deep
down, she had seemed to have illimitable reserves to draw upon when the
creatures of her own orbit had forced her to a reluctant comparison. In
all her dealings with her peers, she had felt that she had a great deal
in hand. But Marjorie and Blanche, whoever Marjorie and Blanche might
be, had seemed to alter all that with a glance of their ironical eyes.

Jack fixed her in the saddle of the tall horse and lengthened her
stirrup with quite a professional air, while Milly and her mother
watched the proceedings in a rather thrilled silence from the balcony
of Number Sixteen. Their minds were dominated by a single thought,
which, however, bore one aspect in the mind of Mrs. Wren, another in
the mind of the faithful Milly.

“She is _set_ on marrying him?”--Mrs. Wren.

“He is so nice, I hope he won’t disappoint her?”--Milly the faithful.

The cavalcade started. As if no such people as Marjorie and Blanche
existed in the world, Mary waved the yellow-gloved hand of an excited
schoolgirl to the balcony of Victoria Mansions. Jack accompanied it
with an upward glance and a gravely-lifted hat.

In the maelstrom of promiscuous vehicles which makes Knightsbridge a
thoroughfare inimical to man, Jack took charge of the good-looking
hireling. With solemn care he piloted the upstanding one and his rather
anxious rider into the calm of Albert Gate.

“I hope you are comfortable,” he found time to say; moreover, he found
time to say it so nicely and sincerely, almost as if his only hope
of happiness, here and hereafter, depended upon the answer, that the
answer came promptly in the form of a gay “Yes,” although had she been
quite honest she would have said she had never felt less comfortable
in her life. Her horse was such a mountain of a fellow, that she might
have been perched on the top of a very old-fashioned velocipede. Then
the saddle was very different from the one at the riding school. It had
much less room and fewer _points d’appui_ to offer. As soon as her knee
tried to grip the pommel she knew that she must not hope to get friends
with it. She had embarked on a very rash adventure. And if she didn’t
make a sorry exhibition of herself in the eyes of All London, including
_those two_, she would have cause to thank her private stars, who, to
give them their due, had certainly looked after her very well so far.

“It’s very sporting of her,” said Expert Knowledge to Jack Dinneford.

“I hope the gee won’t play the fool,” said Jack Dinneford to Expert
Knowledge.


V

Hardly had they entered the Row, when Providence, of _malice prepense_,
as it seemed, threw them right across the path of the enemy. Cousin
Marjorie and Cousin Blanche, walking their horses slowly along by
the rails, were within a very few yards. Moreover, they were coming
towards them. Mary, aided by the sixth sense given to woman, was aware
of a subtle intensity of gaze upon her, even before she could trace
the source of its origin. She could feel it upon her--upon her and
everything that was hers, from the crown of her rather too modish hat
to the tip of her tall friend’s fetlock.

“Good morning, Jack,” said a clear, strong voice.

“Hello,” the tone of Jack was amazingly casual--“here you are again.”

There was a moment’s maneuvering, in the course of which three pairs
of feminine eyes met in challenge, and then Cousin Blanche and Cousin
Marjorie, smart groom and all, passed on without offering a chance
of coming to closer quarters. Their tactics had been calculated so
nicely that it was impossible to say whether discourtesy was or
was not intended. But there was a subtle air about these ironically
self-confident young women which prevented Mary from giving them the
benefit of the doubt.

For a moment she felt inclined to rage within. And then she bit her lip
and laughed. A moment later a sudden peck of the tall horse told her
that it would be wise for the present to give him an undivided mind.
Soon, however, Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche were forgotten in the
delights and the perils of the discreet canter into which she found
herself launched. It was a perfect morning for the Row. The play of the
sun on the bright leaves, the power of its rays softened by a breeze
from the east, the sense of rapid motion, the kaleidoscope of swiftly
changing figures through which they passed, filled her with a zest of
life, a feeling of high romance which left no room for smaller and
meaner affairs. And the stride of the tall horse, as soon as she got
used to it, was such a thing of delight in itself, that she even forgot
the strange saddle and her general fears.

They rode for an enchanted hour. And somehow, in the course of it, the
life forces became more insurgent. Somehow they deepened, expanded,
grew more imperious. Jack was a real out-of-doors man, who believed
that hunting, shooting, field sports, and fresh air were the highest
good. His look of lordly health, mingled with a charmingly delicate
protectiveness, appealed to her in a very special way. For some weeks
she had known that she was beginning to like him perilously much. But
it was not until she had returned rather tired and rather hot to
Victoria Mansions, had had a delicious bath, and a very good luncheon
indeed that she began at last to realize that she was fairly up against
the acute problem of Jack Dinneford.



CHAPTER IV.

BRIDPORT HOUSE


I

IN the meantime Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche enjoyed their ride
very much. It was the one thing they really did enjoy in London.

They were two ordinary young women, yet even so late in the Old World’s
history as the year 1913, their own private cosmos could not quite
make up its mind to regard them in that light. Cousin Marjorie and
Cousin Blanche had surprisingly little to say for themselves. They were
modest, unassuming girls, without views or ideas, very proper, very
dull, absurdly conventional; in the eyes of some people as plain as the
proverbial pikestaff, passably good-looking in the sight of others;
in fact, a more commonplace pair of young women would have been hard
to find anywhere, yet deep in the hearts of the Ladies Dinneford was
the sure faith that the world at large did not subscribe to any such
opinion.

It was not merely that they rode rather well. They passed other
members of their sex in the Row that morning who rode quite as well
as themselves. No, proficiency in the saddle, the one accomplishment
they could boast, of which they were unaffectedly modest, was far from
explaining the particular angle at which the world chose to view
them. Not that in any way they were fêted or acclaimed. As far as the
vast majority of their fellow-creatures were concerned they were not
people to look at twice. But here and there a glance of recognition or
curiosity would greet them, winged by a smile, now of mere interest,
now of an irony faintly perceptible.

Life had been very kind to Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche, yet they
did not look conspicuously happy. With both hands it had lavished upon
them its material best, but the gifts of fortune were taken as a matter
of mere personal right. Providence owed it to the order of things
they stood for. Far from being grateful, they were a little bored by
its attentions. Moreover, these young women had not learned to regard
people to whom the fairies had been less kind with either insight or
sympathy. Their judgments were objective, therefore they were a little
hard, a little lacking in tolerance.


II

“The stage!” said Marjorie with a straight-lipped smile, a rather
famous part of her importance.

“You think so?” said Blanche sleepily. But she was not at all sleepy,
else she would not have been able to handle the Tiger, a recent
purchase, in the way she was doing at the moment.

“No mistaking it, my dear.”

“Good-looking, though,” lisped the somnolent Blanche, giving the Tiger
a very shrewd kick with a roweled heel. “Reminds me of some one.”

The Tiger, worried by a bit that he didn’t like, and greatly affronted
by the heel of his new mistress, which he liked still less, then began
to behave in a way which for some little time quite forbade any further
discussion of the subject.

For the rest of the morning, however, it was never far from the minds
of these ladies. Two or three times they caught sight in the distance
of Jack and his charge. A striking-looking girl, but she didn’t in the
least know how to ride. And somehow from that fact Blanche and Marjorie
seemed to draw spiritual consolation.

At twelve o’clock they left the Park. The policeman at the gate pulled
himself together and regarded them respectfully. An elderly lady in
a high-hung barouche of prehistoric design, drawn by a superb pair
of horses and surmounted by a romantic-looking coachman and footman,
called out to them in a remarkably strident voice as they passed her,
“I am coming to luncheon.”

“Bother!” said Marjorie to Blanche.

“Bother!” said Blanche to Marjorie.

They went along Park Lane, as far as Mount Street, turned up that
bleak thoroughfare, took the second turning to the right, and finally
entered the courtyard of the imposing residence known as Bridport
House. Before its solemn portals they dismounted with the help of the
smart groom. In the act of doing so they encountered a tall, rather
distinguished-looking man, who was coming down the steps. He was about
forty-two, clean-shaven, with sandy hair; and his clothes had an air of
such extreme correctness as to suggest that they had been donned for a
special occasion.

The departing visitor bowed elaborately to the two ladies, but each
returned the greeting with an abbreviated nod, backed by an intent
smile peculiarly her own. There might be courtesy carried to the verge
of homage on the one side, but on the other was an aloofness cold and
quizzical.

As soon as Blanche and Marjorie had gained the ample precincts of
Bridport House each looked demurely at the other, and then yielded a
laugh, which seemed to mean a great deal more than it expressed.

“Been to see papa, I suppose,” said Blanche, as she waddled duck
fashion towards a white marble staircase of grandiose design, whose
cinquecento air could not save it from a slight suspicion of the rococo.

“My dear!” came Marjorie’s crescendo.

Again they looked at each other, again their laughter snarled and
crackled not unpleasantly.

At one o’clock luncheon was announced. Ten minutes later a well-bathed
and carefully re-clothed Marjorie and a Blanche to match entered an
enormous dining-room, which, in spite of its profusion of servants in
livery, had the air of a crypt.

“Good morning, father. Very pleasant to see you down.”

Each word of Blanche was charmingly punctuated by a little pause, which
might have been taken for filial regard by those who heard it. But the
rather acid-looking gentleman, who sat at the head of the table, with a
face like a cameo a little out of drawing, and a bowl of arrowroot in
front of him, paid such slight attention to Blanche that she might not
have spoken at all.

“Good morning, Aunt Charlotte,” said Marjorie coolly, taking up her
own cue. She surveyed the other occupants of the table with a quietly
ironical eye. And then as she seated herself at her leisure, as far
as she could get from the object of her remarks, she proceeded in the
peculiar but remarkably agreeable voice which she had in common with
her father and sisters: “Odd we should run into you coming out of the
Park.”

“Why odd?” said Aunt Charlotte, an elderly, large-featured blonde,
whose theory of life was as far as possible not to cherish illusions on
any subject. “I always go in at twelve, you always come out at twelve.
Nothing odd about it. Thank you!”

“Thank you,” meant, “Yes, I will take claret.” It also meant, “Get
on with your luncheon, Marjorie, and don’t be absurd. Life is too
complicated nowadays for such small talk as yours to interest an
intelligent person.”

Aunt Charlotte, if not consciously rude, was by nature exceedingly
dominant. For twenty-five years, in one way or another, Bridport House
had known her yoke. She was the Duke’s only surviving sister, and she
lived in Hill Street, among the dowagers. Her status was _nil_, but
her love of power was so great that she had gained an uncomfortable
ascendancy in the family councils. While free to admire Aunt
Charlotte’s wisdom, which was supposed to be boundless, the Dinneford
ladies dislike her in the marrow of their bones. But Fate had played
against them. Their father had been left a widower with a young family,
and from the hour of his loss his sister had taken upon herself to
mother it. She had done so to her own satisfaction, but the objects of
her regard bore her no gratitude. From Sarah, who was thirty-nine, to
Marjorie, who was twenty-eight, they were ever ready to try a fall with
Aunt Charlotte.

As for their father, he had an active dislike of her. He had cause, no
doubt. More than once he had tried to break the spell of her dominion,
but somehow it had always proved too strong for him. It was not that
he was a weak man altogether, but there is a type born to female
tyranny, an affair of the stars, of human destiny. Charlotte despised
her brother. In her view he was a lath painted to look like iron, but
insight into character was not her strength. She owed her position in
the family to dynamic power, to force of will; but in her own mind it
was always ascribed to the fact that she acted invariably from the
highest motives.

“Muriel not here,” said the conversational Marjorie, looking across the
table to Sarah.

“Gone to the East End, I believe, to one of her committees.”

It would have been nearer the truth for the eldest flower, who was
dealing with a recalcitrant fragment of lobster in a masterful manner,
to have said that Muriel had gone to luncheon at Hayes with the
Penarths. But Sarah, who did not approve of Muriel, and still less
of the Penarths, was content with a general statement whose flagrant
inaccuracy somehow crystallized her attitude towards them both. Muriel
had become frankly impossible. The higher expediency could no longer
take her seriously.

But there are degrees of wisdom, even among the elect. Sarah’s place
was assured at Minerva’s Court, but Marjorie and Blanche were wiser
perhaps in matters equine than in other things. Where angels feared to
tread Blanche, at any rate, for reasons of her own, had sometimes been
known to butt in. A classical instance was about to be furnished.

“Do tell me.” Blanche suddenly looked Sarah straight in the eyes. “Has
Sir Dugald been to see father?”

There was a long moment’s pause in which Sarah maintained a
stranglehold upon the lobster, while Lady Wargrave and the Duke, who
knew they were being “ragged” by a past mistress in the art, glared
daggers down the table.

“I believe so,” said Sarah in an exceedingly dry voice, followed by a
hardly perceptible glance at the servants.


III

Over the coffee cups, in the solemn privacy of the blue drawing-room,
the Dinneford ladies grew a little less laconic. They were in a perfect
hurricane of great events. Even they, who seldom use two words if one
would suffice, had to make some concession to the pressure of history.

“His mother, I understand,” said Aunt Charlotte, seating herself
massively in the center of her floridly Victorian picture, “kept the
village shop at Ardnaleuchan.”

“Then I’ve bought bull’s-eye peppermints of her,” said Sarah, with a
touch of acid humor which somehow became her quite well.

“But it’s so serious”--Lady Wargrave stirred her coffee. “Still he’s
been given the Home Office--so she thinks she moves with the times, no
doubt.”

“_Has_ been given the Home Office?” said Blanche, suddenly achieving an
air of intelligence.

“The papers say so,” said Sarah dryly. “But I don’t think that excuses
him.”

“Or Muriel,” interpolated Aunt Charlotte with venom. “What did your
father say to the man?”

“He was deplorably rude, I believe--even for father. He said the man
had the hide of a rhinoceros, so obviously he had tested it.”

“All very amazing. It is charity to assume that Muriel is out of her
mind.”

“One can’t be sure,” said Sarah weightily. “She says he has such a good
head that one day he _must_ be Prime Minister. After all, she will be a
Prime Minister’s wife!”

“But a Radical Prime Minister’s wife!”

“He may rat,” said Sarah, with judicious optimism.

“He may,” said Lady Wargrave, looking down her long nose. “But there
never was a matter in which I felt less hopeful. What does your father
think?”

“The man’s a red rag. Don’t you remember the shameful way he attacked
poor father on the Land Question two years ago? What was it he called
him in the House of Commons?”

“‘The Great Panjandrum, with little round button on top,’” quoted the
solemn Marjorie, whose chief social asset was an amazing memory.

“And after that he dares to come here!” Aunt Charlotte quivered
majestically. “Didn’t your father kick him downstairs?”

“I think he would have done--but for his infirmity,” said Sarah
judicially.

“I had forgotten his gout, poor man. At least, I hope he ordered the
servants to throw the creature into the street.”

“One hardly does that, does one?--with his Majesty’s Secretaries of
State,” said Blanche, whose sleepy voice had an odd precision which
made each word bite like an acid.

Aunt Charlotte hooded her eyes like a cobra to look at Blanche. But she
didn’t say anything. Only experts could handle Blanche, and even these
must abide the whim of the goddess opportunity.

“After all, why fuss?” continued Blanche with a muted laugh which had
the power of annoying all the other ladies extremely. “If one has to
marry one might as well marry a Prime Minister.”

This was such a sublime expression of the obvious, that even Lady
Wargrave, who contested everything on principle, was dumb before it.
Blanche was therefore able to retire in perfect order to the comatose,
her natural state. But in the next moment she reëmerged, so that a
little private thunderbolt she had been diligently nursing through
the whole luncheon might shake the rather strained peace of the blue
drawing-room. She was quite sure that it would be a pleasure to launch
it when the moment came. A sudden pause in the great topic of Muriel’s
_affaire_ told her it had now arrived.

“We saw Jack riding with that girl.” So sleepy was the voice of Blanche
as it made this announcement that it seemed a wonder she could keep
awake.

“What girl?” Aunt Charlotte walked straight into Blanche’s little trap.

“Oh, you _didn’t_ know.” Blanche suppressed a yawn. “It’s a rather long
story.”

Still it had to be told. And Blanche, just able to keep awake, told
it circumstantially. The Tenderfoot--the heir’s own name for himself,
which Blanche made a point of using in conversation with Aunt Charlotte
because that lady considered it vulgar--had been seen at the Savoy with
a girl, he had been seen in the Park with a girl, he had been seen
motoring with a girl; in fact, he had been going about with a girl for
several weeks.

“And you never told _me_,” said Lady Wargrave with the air of a tragedy
queen. She looked from Blanche to Sarah, from Sarah to Marjorie. A
light of sour sarcasm in the eye of the eldest flower was all the
comfort she took from the survey.

“Who is the girl? Tell me.”

Blanche inclined to think an actress. But she was not sure.

“Inquiries will have to be made at once.” Already Aunt Charlotte was a
caldron of energy. “Steps will have to be taken. It is the first I have
heard of it. But I feel I ought to have been told sooner.”

Blanche fearlessly asked why.

“Why!” Aunt Charlotte gave a little snort. At such a moment mere words
were futile. Then she said, “I shall go at once to your father.”

“But what can _he_ do?”

“Do?” Aunt Charlotte gave a second little snort. Mere words again
revealed their limitations.

“Yes?” Blanche placidly pursued the Socratic method, to the increasing
fury of Aunt Charlotte.

“He can tell him what he thinks of him and threaten to cut off
supplies.”

“Much he’ll care for that!” The cynicism of Blanche revolted Aunt
Charlotte.

That lady, whose forte, after all, was plain common sense, knew that
Blanche was right. But in spite of that knowledge, the resolute energy
which made her so much disliked impelled her to go at once to lay the
matter before the head of the house.

Lady Wargrave found her brother in the smaller library, long dedicated
by custom to his sole use. It was one of the less pretentious and
therefore least uncomfortable rooms in a house altogether too large to
be decently habitable.

For many years the Duke had been at the mercy of a painful malady which
had taken all the pleasure out of his life. He was nearly seventy now,
a man strikingly handsome in spite of a sufferer’s mouth and eyes
weary with pain and cynicism. When his sister entered the room she
found him deployed on an invalid chair, the _Quarterly Review_ on a
book-rest in front of him, and a wineglass containing medicine at his
elbow. And to Lady Wargrave’s clear annoyance, a tall, gray-haired,
rather austere-looking, but decidedly handsome woman, stood by the Adam
chimney-piece, a bottle in one hand, a teaspoon in the other.

“Perhaps you will be kind enough to leave us, Mrs. Sanderson,” said
Lady Wargrave, in a tone which sounded needlessly elaborate.

Harriet Sanderson, without so much as a temporary relaxation of muscle
of her strong face, withdrew at once very silently from the room. The
bottle and the teaspoon went with her.

As soon as the door had closed Lady Wargrave said, “Johnnie, once more
I feel bound to protest against the presence of the housekeeper in the
library. If the state of your health really calls for such attention I
will engage a trained nurse.”

The Duke took up the _Quarterly Review_ with an air of stolid
indifference.

“I’ll get one at once,” she persisted. “There’s a capable person who
nursed Mary Devizes.”

The Duke seemed unwilling to discuss the question, but at last,
yielding to pressure, he said in a tone of dry exasperation:

“Mrs. Sanderson is quite capable of looking after me. She understands
my ways, I understand hers.”

“No one doubts her competence.” The rejoinder was tart and hostile.
“But that is hardly the point. The library is not the place for the
housekeeper.”

“I choose to have her here. In any case it is entirely my affair.”

“People talk.”

“Let ’em.”

“It’s an old quarrel, my friend.” Growing asperity was in the voice of
Charlotte. “You know my views on the subject of Mrs. Sanderson. We none
of us like the woman. Considering the position she holds she has always
taken far too much upon herself.”

The Duke shook his head. “I must be the judge of that,” he said.

“But surely it is a matter for the women of your family.”

“With all submission, it’s a matter for me. I find the present
arrangement entirely satisfactory, and I don’t recognize the right of
anyone to interfere.”

The Duke’s tone grated like a file upon his sister’s ear. This was an
ancient quarrel that in one form or another had been going on for very
many years. The housekeeper at Buntisford and more recently at Bridport
House had been a thorn in the flesh of Charlotte almost from the day
her sister-in-law died, but the Duke had always been Mrs. Sanderson’s
champion. Time and again her overthrow had been decided upon by the
ladies of the Family, but up till now the perverse determination of his
Grace had proved too much for them and all their careful schemes.

They had reached the usual impasse. Therefore, for the time being,
Charlotte had once more to swallow her feelings. Besides, other matters
were in the air, matters of an interest more vital if of a nature less
permanent.

As a preliminary it was necessary to glance at Muriel and her vagaries,
before coming to grips with the even more momentous affair which had
just been brought to Lady Wargrave’s notice. In answer to his sister’s,
“What have you said to Maclean?” the Duke, who had swallowed most of
the formulas and had digested them pretty thoroughly, expressed himself
characteristically.

“I told him that before I could even begin to consider the question he
would have to rat.”

“Was that wise?” said Charlotte, frowning. “Why commit oneself to the
possibility of having to take the man seriously?”

Her brother laughed. “He’s a very sharp fellow. A long Scotch head,
abominably full of brains. If we could get him on our side perhaps he
might pull us together.”

“You know, of course, that his mother kept the village shop at
Ardnaleuchan?”

“So he tells me.”

“Do you like the prospect of such a son-in-law?”

“Frankly, Charlotte, I don’t. A tiresome business at the best of it.
But there it is.”

“Ought one to treat it so coolly?”

His Grace laid the _Quarterly Review_ on the book-rest and plucked a
little peevishly at the tuft of hair on his chin.

“The times are changing, you see. We are on the eve of strange things.
Still, I took the liberty of telling him that as long as he remained a
Radical and went up and down the country blackguarding me and mine, I
should refuse to know him.”

“And what said our fine gentleman?”

“He was amused. Whether he takes the hint remains to be seen. In any
event it commits us to nothing.”

Charlotte shook a dubious head. “You’re shaping for a compromise, my
friend. And in my view this is not a case for one.”

“If she is set on marrying the brute what’s going to stop her?”

The question was meant for a poser and a poser it proved. Somehow
it left no ground for argument. Therefore, without further preface
or apology, Lady Wargrave turned to a matter of even more vital
consequence.


IV

By an odd chain of events, Jack Dinneford was heir apparent to the
dukedom of Bridport. In the course of a brief twelve months two
intervening lives had petered out. One had been Lyme, the Duke’s only
surviving son, who at the age of thirty-five had been killed in a
shooting accident--a younger son, never a good life, had died some
years earlier--the other had been the Duke’s younger brother, who six
months ago had died without male issue. The succession in consequence
would now have to pass to an obscure and rather neglected branch of the
family, represented by a young man of twenty-four, the son of a Norfolk
parson.

Jack’s father, at the time of his death, had held a family living. A
retiring, scholarly man, he had never courted the favors of the great,
and the great, little suspecting that their vicarious splendors might
one day be his, had paid him little attention. Blessed with progeny of
the usual clerical abundance and without means apart from his stipend,
the incumbent of Wickley-on-the-Wold had been hard set to educate his
children in a manner becoming their august lineage. Even Jack, the
eldest of five, had to be content with four years at one of the smaller
public schools. It was true that afterwards he had the option of Oxford
or Sandhurst, but by the time the young man had reached the age of
nineteen he had somehow acquired an independence of character which did
not take kindly to either.

One fine day, with a spare suit of clothes and a hundred pounds or so
in his pocket, he set out in the most casual way to see the world, and
to make his fortune. He went to Liverpool, shipped before the mast as
an ordinary seaman for the sake of the experience, and made the voyage
round the Horn to San Francisco. For the next two years he prospected
up and down the Americas earning a living, picking up ideas, and
enlarging his outlook by association with all sorts and conditions of
men, and finally invested all the capital he could scrape together in a
business in Vancouver.

After eighteen months of the new life came the news of his father’s
death. The brothers and sisters it seemed were rather better provided
for than there had been reason to expect. At any rate, Mabel and Iris
would have a roof over their heads, Bill had passed into Sandhurst, and
Frank was at Cambridge. Therefore Jack, little guessing what Fate had
in store, decided to stay as he was, in the hope that in a few years
he would have made his pile. He had a taste for hard work, and the new
land offered opportunities denied by the old.

Some months later he received an urgent summons to return home. He had
suddenly and unexpectedly become next of kin to the Duke of Bridport.
The news was little to the young man’s taste. He was very loth to
give up a growing business for a life of parasitic idleness under the
ægis of the titular great. But the circumstances seemed to make it
imperative. The powers that were had not the slightest doubt that it
was his bounden duty to go into training at once. He must fit himself
for the dizzy eminence to which it had pleased Providence to call him.

Sadly enough the tiro sold out, returned to England, and in due course
reported himself at Bridport House. It was the first time he had been
there. He was such a distant kinsman that he had never taken the ducal
connection seriously.

The family’s reception of the Tenderfoot--his own humorous name for
himself--amused him considerably, yet at the same time it filled him
with a subtle annoyance. Five fruitful years out West had made him an
iconoclast. He saw with awakened eyes the arid and sterile pomposities
which were doing their best to put the old land out of the race.
Bridport House was going to spell boredom and worse for Jack Dinneford.

Still the Duke, as became a man of the world, soon got to the root of
the trouble, and having the welfare of a time-honored institution at
heart, was at pains to deal with the novice tactfully. All the same, he
was far from being pleased by the tricks of Providence. But he made the
young man an allowance of two thousand a year, and exhorted him not to
get into mischief; and the Dinneford ladies, who were prepared to be
kind to the Tenderfoot and to be more amused by his “originality” than
they confessed to each other, chose some rooms for him in Arlington
Street, looked after his general welfare, and began to make plans for
the future of Bridport House. Aunt Charlotte took him at once under
an ungracious wing, and found him a bear-leader in the person of her
nephew Wrexham, a subaltern of the Pinks, a picturesque young man,
reputed a paragon of all the Christian virtues, and a martyr to a sense
of duty.

From this model of discretion the tiro soon received a hint. Cousin
Sarah owned to thirty-eight in the glare of Debrett, Cousin Muriel had
other views apparently, but there remained Cousin Blanche and Cousin
Marjorie--the heir could take his choice, but the ukase had gone forth
that one of them it must be.

The Tenderfoot did not feel in a marrying mood just then, but he had
chivalry enough not to say so to his mentor, who as the messenger of
Eros began to disclose quite a pretty turn of humor. It was not seemly
to offer advice in such a delicate matter, but Blanche was a nailer to
hounds, although she never kept awake after dinner, while Marjorie’s
sphere was church decoration in times of festival, in the course of
which she generally had an _affaire_ with a curate.

Face to face with a problem which in one way or another was kept ever
before his eyes, the poor Tenderfoot seemed to feel that if wive he
must in the charmèd circle, and the relentless Wrexham assured him that
it was a solemn duty, perhaps there was most to be said for Cousin
Marjorie. She was not supremely attractive it was true. The Dinneford
girls, one and all, were famous up and down the island for a resolute
absence of charm. And the Dinneford frontispiece, imposing enough in
the male, when rendered in terms of the female somehow seemed to lack
poetry. Still Cousin Marjorie was not yet thirty and her general health
was excellent.

The heir had now been settled in Arlington Street six months. And with
nothing in the world to do but learn to live a life which threatened
to bore him exceedingly, time began to hang upon his hands. Moreover,
the prospect of having presently to lead Cousin Marjorie to the altar
merely increased a sense of malaise. Here was an arbitrary deepening of
the tones of a picture which heaven knew was dark enough already. For
a modern and virile young man, life at Bridport House would only be
tolerable under very happy conditions. To be yoked, willy-nilly, to one
of its native denizens for the rest of one’s days, seemed a hardship
almost too great to be borne.

While the Tenderfoot was in this frame of mind, which inclined him to
temporize, he decided to put off the dark hour as long as he could. And
then suddenly, while still besieged by doubt, the hypnotic Princess
Bedalia swam into his ken.


V

“It was bound to happen,” said Lady Wargrave. “That young man has far
too much time on his hands. A thousand pities he didn’t go into the
army.”

“Too old, too old.” Her brother frowned portentously. “This promises to
be a very tiresome business. Charlotte, I must really ask you to lose
no time in seeing that the fellow marries.”

It was now Charlotte’s turn to frown. And this she did as a prelude to
a frankness which verged upon the brutal.

“All very well, my friend, but perhaps you’ll tell me how it’s to be
done. Neither Marjorie nor Blanche has the least power of attraction.
They’re hopeless. And please remember this young man has been five
years in America.”

“I would to God he had stayed there!”

The futile outburst of his Grace set Charlotte glowering like a sibyl.
She was constrained to own that it was all intensely annoying. He was a
common young man. He had none of the Dinneford feeling about things.

“Quite so, Charlotte.” The ducal irritation was growing steadily. “But
don’t rub it in. That won’t help us. Let us think constructively. You
see the trouble is that this fellow has a rather democratic outlook.”

“Then I’m afraid there’s no remedy,” said Charlotte, “unless the girls
have the brains to help us, which, of course, they haven’t.”

His Grace became more thunderous. “Let us hope he’ll have the good
feeling to try to look at things as we do,” he said after a rather arid
pause.

“I’m not sure that we’ve a right to expect it,” was the frank rejoinder.

“Why not?”

“His branch of the family has no particular cause to be grateful to us.”

“Our father gave his father a living, didn’t he?” said the Duke sharply.

“Yes, but nothing else--unless it was a day’s shooting now and again,
which he didn’t accept.”

“I don’t see what else he could have given him.”

“An eye ought to have been kept on this young man.”

“You can depend upon it, Charlotte, many things would have been ordered
differently had there been reason to suppose that this confounded
fellow would be next in here. As it is we have to make the best of a
sorry business.”

“Sorry enough,” Charlotte admitted. “There I am with you. But I’ll have
inquiries made about this chorus girl. And in the meantime, Johnnie,
perhaps you will speak to him firmly and quietly without losing your
temper.”

“And my last word to you, Charlotte,” countered his Grace, “is to see
that he loses no time in marrying.”

“Easy, my friend, to issue a ukase.” And the redoubtable Charlotte
smiled grimly.


VI

Soon after four the same afternoon Jack returned to Broad Place in
the garb of civilization. He was in great heart. Milly had some
good-natured chaff to offer as to Mary’s need of sticking plaster. But
the young man turned this persiflage aside with such a serious air that
the quick-witted Milly knew it for an omen. Having learned the set of
the wind she soon found a pretext for leaving them together.

Milly’s sense of a coming event, which her sudden flight from the room
had seemed to make the more inevitable, was shared by Mary. Somehow she
felt that the moment of moments had come. This thing had to be. But as
a hand brown and virile quietly took hers in a strong grip, she began
almost bitterly to deplore the whole business. And yet, when all was
said, she was absolutely thrilled. He was so truly a man that a girl,
no matter what her talent and quality, could hardly refrain from pride
in his homage.

There was no beating about the bush.

“Will you marry me?” he said.

She grew crimson. How she had dreaded that long foreseen question!
Days ago common sense and worldly prudence had coldly informed her
that there could only be one possible answer. The case of Milly
herself had furnished a sinister parallel. And the sensitive, perhaps
over-sensitive pride of one who had begun at the bottom of the ladder,
revolted from all the ensuing complications. Such a situation seemed
now to involve her in mysteries far down within, at the very core of
being--mysteries she had hardly been aware of until that moment.

Again the question. She looked away, quite unable just then to meet his
eyes. Her will was strong, her determination clear, but in spite of
herself a deadly feeling crept upon her that she was a bird in a snare.
Certain imponderables were in the room. The life forces were calling to
each other; there was a curious magnetism in the very air they breathed.

She had meant and intended “No,” but every instant made that little
word more difficult to utter. A dominant nature had stolen the keys of
her heart before she knew it. And as she fought against the inevitable,
a subtle trick of the ape on the chain in the human breast, weighed
the scales unfairly. Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie were flung
oddly, irrelevantly, fantastically, upon the curtain of her mind. The
challenge of their ironical eyes was like a knife in the flesh. And
then that private, particular devil, of whose existence, until that
moment, she had been unaware, suddenly forced her to take up the gage
those eyes had flung.


VII

“Do tell me!” cried Milly the breathless.

The sight of a lone, troubled Mary in the little sitting-room, the look
on her face as she twisted a handkerchief into knots and coils had been
too much for Milly. She was a downright person and the silence of Mary
was so trying to a forthcoming nature that the query at the tip of
Milly’s tongue seemed likely to burn a hole in it.

“Has he--have you--did he----?” The demand was indelicate, but it
sprang from the depths as Milly measured them. Suddenly she saw tears.

“I am so glad, I am so _very_ glad!”

Mary smiled, but the look in her eyes had the power to startle the
affectionate Milly.

“He is the luckiest man I know, but he is such a dear that he deserves
to be.” It was a peculiarity of Mary’s that she didn’t like kissing,
but Milly in a burst of loyal affection was guilty of a sudden swoop
upon her friend.

“Oh, don’t,” said Mary, in a voice from which all the accustomed gayety
was gone.

Milly gazed in consternation.

“You--you have not refused him?”

“No.” And then there came a sudden flame. “I’m a selfish, egotistical
wretch.”

“As long as you have not refused him,” said Milly, breathing again.
“All the same, I call you a very odd girl.”

But Mary was troubled, Milly perplexed.

“You ought to be the happiest creature alive. What’s the matter?”

“I’m thinking of his friends.”

“If they choose to be stupid, it’s their own lookout.”

“It mayn’t be stupidity,” said Mary, giving her handkerchief a bite. “I
know nothing about him, except----”

“Except?”

“That he’s above me socially.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,” said Milly robustly. “If
they like to be snobs it’s their own funeral.”

But Mary, having burned her boats, was afflicted now by Cousin Blanche
and Cousin Marjorie. They were looking down upon her from their tall
horses. It was not that she feared them in the least, but she knew that
lurking somewhere in an oddly constituted mind was a certain awe of the
things for which they stood.

“I can’t explain my feelings,” said Mary. “I only know they are
horribly real. I feel there’s a gulf between Jack and me--and a word
won’t bridge it.” And her voice trailed off miserably.

“That’s weak,” said Milly severely. “I know what you mean, but you
exaggerate the difference absurdly. Sonny is miles above me socially,
but I’ll make him as good a wife as any of his own push, see if I
don’t--if he gives me the chance! And in some ways I can make him a
better.”

“How?”

“Because I began right down there.” Milly pointed to the carpet. “I
know the value of things, I shall be able to see that no one takes
advantage of him, whereas a girl who has been spoon-fed all her life
couldn’t do that.”

The honest Mary had to allow that there was something to be said for
the point of view, yet she would not admit that it covered all the
facts of the case.

“Please don’t suppose my ideas have anything to do with you and Lord
Wrexham.” Her gravity made Milly feel quite annoyed. “I am merely
thinking of myself. And there’s something in me, for which I can’t
account, which says that it may be wrong, it may be wickedly wrong, for
me to marry Jack.”

“It certainly will be if that’s how you look at it,” said Milly
scornfully. “Why not make the most of your luck? I’m sure it’s right.
After all Providence knows better than anybody. And Jack knows he’s got
to be a duke.”

“Got to be what?” Mary jumped out of her chair.

“You didn’t know?”

“Of course, I didn’t.” She was simply aghast. In a state of excitement
which quite baffled Milly, she paced the room.

“You _odd_ creature!” The mantle of the arch dissembler had now
descended upon Milly.

Truth to tell, she and her mother had had a shrewd suspicion of Mary’s
ignorance. They had learned from Wrexham that Jack Dinneford, owing to
a series of deaths in a great family, had quite unexpectedly become
the next-of-kin to the Duke of Bridport. Such a prospect was so little
to the young man’s taste that as far as he could he always made a
point of keeping the skeleton out of sight. Rightly or wrongly he had
not said a word to Mary on the subject, and she with a pride a little
overstrained, no doubt, had allowed herself no curiosity in regard
to his worldly status. For whatever it might be it was obviously far
removed from that of a girl of no family who had to get her own living
as well as she could.

The news was stunning. As Mary walked about the room the look on her
face was almost tragic.

“I think you ought to have told me,” she said at last.

“We thought you knew,” was Milly’s reply. This was a deliberate story.
Mrs. Wren and herself in discussing the romantic news had concluded the
exact opposite. But out of a true regard for Mary’s welfare, as they
conceived it, they had decided to let her find out for herself. She was
such an odd girl in certain ways that mother and daughter felt that the
real truth about Jack Dinneford might easily prove his overthrow. Thus
with a chaste conscience Milly now lied royally.

Mary, alas! was so resentful of the _coup_ of fortune and her friends,
that for a moment she was tempted to fix a quarrel on Milly. But
Milly’s cunning was too much for her. She stuck to the simple statement
that she thought she knew. There was no gainsaying it. And if blame
there was in the matter it surely lay at the door of her own proud self.

Mary was still in the throes of an unwelcome discovery when Mrs.
Wren came into the room. The appearance of that lady seemed to add
fuel to the flame. Her felicitations, a little overwhelming in their
exuberance, were in nowise damped by the girl’s dejection. To Mrs.
Wren such an attitude of mind was not merely unreasonable, it was
unchristian. To call in question the highest gifts of Providence
betrayed a kink in a charming character.

“Fancy, my dear--a duchess. You’ll be next in rank to royalty.”

It was so hard for the victim to smother the tempest within that for
the moment she dare not trust herself to speak.

“You’re very naughty,” said Mrs. Wren. “Why, you ought to offer up a
prayer. You’ve had success too easily, the road has been too smooth.
If you’d had a smaller talent and you’d had an awful struggle to get
there, you’d know better than to crab your luck.”

A strong will now came to Mary’s aid. And the calm force of her
answer, when at last she was able to make it, astonished Milly and her
mother. “That’s one side of the case, Mrs. Wren,” she said in a new
tone. “But there’s another, you know.”

“There is only one side for you, my dear,” said the older woman
stoutly. “Take your chances while you may--that’s my advice. Your luck
may turn. You’ll not always be what you are now. Suppose you have a bad
illness?”

“I’m thinking of his side of the case.” The tone verged upon sternness.

“You have quite enough to do to think of your own. Don’t throw chances
away. I have had forty years’ experience of a very hard profession,
and even you top sawyers are on very thin ice. And remember, the cards
never forgive. Girls who have a lone hand to play, mustn’t hold their
heads too high. If they do they’ll live to regret it. And you mustn’t
think these swells can’t box their own corner. They’ve nothing to learn
in looking after Number One. A girl of your sort is quite equal to any
of these drawing-room noodles and Mr. Dinneford knows that better than
I do.”

“But that’s impossible. I can never be as they are.”

“You needn’t let that worry you. A lot of stuck-up dunces that all the
world kow-tows to!”

“It isn’t that I think they are nicer or cleverer or wiser than other
people. But they are born to certain things, they have been bred to
them for generations, and it surely stands to reason that they are
better at their own game than a mere outsider can hope to be.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!” said Mrs. Wren. “I hope you are not such a goose as
to take swelldom at its own valuation. It’s all a bluff, my dear.
Your humble servant, Jane Wren, could have been as good a duchess as
the best of ’em if she had been given the chance. I don’t want to be
fulsome, my dear, but I’ll back a girl of your brains against Lady
Agatha Fitzboodle or any other titled snob.”

“But I don’t want to be pitted against anybody!”

“That’s nonsense.” Mrs. Wren shook a worldly-wise head. “As for being
an outsider, a girl can’t be more than a lady just as a man can’t be
more than a gentleman. And if you are a lady and have always gone
straight you needn’t fear comparison with the highest in the land.”

Mary shook a head of sadness and perplexity.

“Somehow it doesn’t seem right to mix things in that way,” she said.

“It’s the only way that keeps ’em going,” said Mrs. Wren scornfully.
“And well they know it. At least nature knows it. Look at Wrexham! Do
you mean to say that his inbred strain wouldn’t be improved by Milly?
And it’s the same with you and Mr. Dinneford. It’s Nature at the back
of it all. It’s the call of the blood. If these old families keep on
intermarrying long enough dry rot sets in.”

Mary stood a picture of woe.

“You odd creature!” said Mrs. Wren. “I’ve never met a girl with such
ideas as yours. I really believe you are quite as narrow and as
prejudiced as Lady Agatha Fitzboodle. To hear you talk one would think
you believed rank to be a really important matter.”

Incredulous eyes were opened upon the voluble dame.

“Of course it is.” But the girl’s solemnity was a little too much.

“My dear!” A gust of ribald laughter overwhelmed her. “Hasn’t it ever
struck you that the so-called aristocracy racket is all a bluff?”

“Surely, it can’t be.” The tone was genuine dismay.

“Every word of it, my dear. There’s only one thing behind it and that’s
money. If Wrexham ever sticks a coronet on the head of my Milly and
robes her in ermine she’ll be the equal of any in the land, just as old
Bill Brown who was in the last birthday honors is as good a peer as the
best of ’em now that his soap business has brought him into Park Lane.
I knew Bill when he hadn’t a bob. It’s just a matter of L.S.D. As for
the frills, they are all my eye and Elizabeth Martin. When my Milly
gets among them, it won’t take her a week to learn all their tricks.
They are just so many performing dogs.”

“You don’t understand, you don’t understand!” The tone was tragic.


VIII

A night’s reflection convinced the girl that there was only one thing
to be done. The engagement must end. But as she soon found, it was
easier to make the resolve than to carry it out. To begin with, it
was terribly irksome, in present circumstances, to give effect to her
decision and to back it with reasons.

Her début in the Row had been so successful that a ride had been
arranged for the next morning. But it was spoiled completely by
the specter now haunting her. In what terms could she tell him
that she had changed her mind? How could she defend a proceeding so
unwarrantable?

It was not until later in the day, when they took a stroll under the
trees in the Park, that she forced herself to grasp the nettle boldly.

Jack, as she had foreseen, was immeasurably astonished. He called, at
once, for her reasons. And they were terribly difficult to put into
words. At last she was driven back upon the cardinal fact that he had
concealed his true position.

He repudiated the charge indignantly. In the first place, he had taken
it for granted that she knew his position, in the second, he always
made a point of leaving it as much as possible outside his calculations.

“But isn’t that just what one oughtn’t to do?” she said, as they took
possession of a couple of vacant chairs.

“To me the whole thing’s absurd,” was the rejoinder. “It’s only by the
merest fluke that I have to succeed to the title, and I find it quite
impossible to feel about things as Bridport House does. The whole
business is a great bore, and if a way out could be found I’d much
rather stay as I am.”

“But isn’t that just a wee bit selfish, my dear--if you don’t think me
a prig?”

“If you are quite out of sympathy with an antediluvian system, if you
disbelieve in it, if you hate it in the marrow of your bones, where’s
the virtue in sacrificing yourself in order to maintain it?”

“Noblesse oblige!”

“Yes, but does it? A dukedom, in my view, is just an outworn
convention, a survival of a darker age.”

“It stands for something.”

“What does it stand for?--that’s the point. There’s no damned merit
about it, you know. Any fool can be a duke, and they mostly are.”

Mary, if a little amused, was more than a little shocked.

“I’m sure it’s not right to think that,” she declared stoutly. “I would
say myself, although one oughtn’t to have a say on the subject, that
it’s the duty of your sort of people to keep things going.”

“They are not my sort of people. I was pitchforked among them. And if
you don’t believe in them and the things it is their duty to keep going
what becomes of your theory, Miss Scrupulous?”

“But that’s Socialism,” said Mary with solemn eyes.

“No, it’s the common sense of the matter. All this centralization of
power in the hands of a few hard-shells like my Uncle Albert--he’s
not my uncle really--is very bad for the State. He owns one-fifth of
Scotland, and the only things he ever really takes seriously are his
meals and his health.”

“He stands for something all the same.”

The young man laughed outright.

“I know I’m a prig.” The blushing candor disarmed him. “But if one has
a great bump of reverence I suppose one can’t help exaggerating one’s
feelings a little.”

“I suppose not,” laughed the young man. And then there was a pause. “By
jove,” he said at the end of it, “you’d be the last word in duchesses.”

“You won’t get Bridport House to think so.”

“So much the worse for Bridport House. Of course, I admit it has
other views for me. But the trouble is, as always in these close
corporations, they haven’t the art of seeing things as they are.”

Mary shook a troubled head, but the argument seemed to find its way
home.

“The truth of the matter is,” he suddenly declared, “you are afraid of
Bridport House.”

Without shame she confessed that Bridport House was bound to be very
hostile, and was there not every reason for such an attitude? Jack,
however, would not yield an inch upon that count, or on any other if it
came to that. He was a primitive creature in whom the call of the blood
was paramount. Moreover, he was a very tenacious fellow. And these
arguments of hers, strongly urged and boldly stated, did not affect his
point of view. The ban of Fortune was purely artificial, it could not
be defended. She was fain, therefore, to carry the war to the enemy’s
country. But if she gently hinted a change of egotism he countered it
astutely with the subtler one of sentimentalism. Each confessed the
other partially right, but so far from clearing the air it seemed to
make the whole matter more complex. The upshot was that he called upon
her to find a valid reason, otherwise he refused point-blank to give
her up.

“Just think,” he said, tracing her name on the gravel with a
walking-stick, “how hollow the whole business is. How many of Uncle
Albert’s ‘push’ have married American wives without a question? And why
do they, when they wouldn’t think of giving English girls of the same
class an equal chance? In the first place, for the sake of the dollars,
in the second, because it is so easy for them to shed their relations
and forget their origin.”

But so wide was the gulf between their points of view that mere
argument could not hope to bridge it. If she was in grim earnest, so
was he; moreover she had entered into a compact he was determined she
should fulfill. Before consenting to release her she would have to show
very good cause at any rate.

Suddenly, in the give-and-take of conflict, Laxton came into her mind.
The memory of Beaconsfield Villas, the whimsical creatures of another
orbit, and the childhood which now seemed ages away, fired her with a
new idea. She would take him to see the humble people among whom she
had been brought up.



CHAPTER V

ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS


I

THE flight of time had affected Beaconsfield Villas surprisingly
little. Laxton itself had deferred to Anno Domini in many subtle
ways; it had its electric trams and motor-buses, and the suburb had
doubled in size, but no epoch-making changes were visible in the front
sitting-room of Number Five. In that homely interior the cosmic march
and profluence was simply revealed by a gramophone, the gift of Mary,
on the top of the sewing machine in the corner, and by the accession to
the walls of lithograph portraits of the son and grandson of the august
lady who still held pride of place over the chimney-piece.

The afternoon was stifling even for South London in the middle of
June. And Joseph Kelly, who had attained the rank of sergeant in the
Metropolitan Police Force, not having to go on duty until six o’clock
that evening, was seated coatless and solemn, spectacles on nose,
smoking a well-colored clay and reading the _Daily Mail_. At the level
of his eyes, in portentous type was, “Laxton Bye-Election. A Sharp
Contest. New Home Secretary’s Chances.” Joe was a shade stouter than
of yore, his face was even redder, a thinning thatch had turned gray,
but in all essentials the man himself was still the genial cockney of
one-and-twenty years ago.

The outer door of the sitting-room, which was next the street, was wide
open to invite the air. But ever and again there rose such a fierce
medley of noises from a mysterious cause a little distance off, that
at last Joe got up from his chair, and waddling across the room in a
pair of worn list slippers, banged the door against the sounds from the
street which had the power to annoy him considerably.

Hardly had Joe shuffled back to his chair and his newspaper when the
door was flung open again and an excited urchin thrust a tousled head
into the room.

“‘Vote for Maclean an’ a free breakfast-table’!”

The law in the person of Sergeant Kelly rose from its chair
majestically.

“If you ain’t off--my word!”

Headlong flight of the urchin. Joe closed the door with violence and
sat down again. But the incident had unsettled him. He seemed unable
to fix his mind on the newspaper. And the noises in the street waxed
ever louder. Now they took the form of cheers and counter cheers, now
of hoots, cat-calls and shouts of derision. At last the tumult rose to
such a pitch that it drew Eliza from an inner room.

The years had changed her rather more than her husband. But she was
still the active, capable, bustling housewife, with a keen eye for the
world and all that was passing in it.

“They are making noise enough to wake the dead.” Eliza looked eagerly
through the window.

“I wish that durned Scotchman hadn’t set his committee-room plumb
oppersite Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas,” was Joe’s sour comment.

At that moment the all-embracing eye of a relentless housewife swooped
down upon a card lying innocently on the linoleum. It had been flung
there by the recent visitor. Eliza picked it up and read:
   ___________________________
  |                           |
  | Vote for Maclean, thus:   |
  |                           |
  |                MACLEAN X  |
  |                WHITLEY.   |
  |___________________________|

On the back of the card was a portrait of Sir Dugald Maclean, M.P.

Eliza gazed at it in astonishment mingled with awe.

“I am bound to say he is a better-favored jockey than when he came
a-courting our Harriet. Look, Joe!”

With scornful vehemence, Joe declined the invitation.

Eliza was sternly advised to tear up the card, but instead she chose to
set it on the chimney-piece. The rash act was too much for her lord.
Once more he rose from his chair, tore the card into little pieces and
flung them into a grate artistically decorated with colored paper.

“You are jealous!” said Eliza, laughing.

“Of the likes of him! Holy smoke! But if you think we are going to have
such trash in the same room as the Marquis, you make an error.”

The words had hardly been uttered when shouts yet more piercing came
from the street. Eliza made a hasty return to the window.

“Come and look, Joe!” she cried breathlessly. “Here he is with his top
hat and eyeglass. He’s that dossy you wouldn’t know him. He’s dressed
up like a tailor’s dummy.”

But Joe declined to budge.

“It fairly makes me sick to think of the feller,” he said.

A little later, when the tumult in the street had died down a bit, Joe
settled himself in his chair for an afternoon nap. Eliza, duly noting
the symptoms, retired on tiptoe to another room, closing the door after
her gently. But today, alas, the skyey influences were adverse. Joe had
barely entered oblivion when a smart tap at the street door shattered
this precarious peace. With a grudge against society he rose once more,
shambled across the room and flung open the door, half expecting to
find that the urchin had returned to torment him. A dramatic surprise
was in store. On the threshold was a creature so stylishly trim that
even the blasé eye of the Metropolitan Force was sensibly thrilled in
beholding her. “A bit of class” without a doubt, although adorned by
the colors of the People’s Candidate, and surprisingly cool in sheer
defiance of the thermometer.

“Good afternoon!” The tone of half-confidential intimacy was quite
irresistible. “May I have a little talk with you?”

“Certainly, miss.” The unconscious gallantry of an impressionable
policeman was more than equal to the occasion. “Step inside and make
yourself at home.”

When Joe came to review the incident afterwards, it seemed very
surprising that he should have yielded so easily to the impact of
this elegant miss. For instinctively he knew her business. Moreover,
the last thing he desired at that moment was to be troubled by her
or by it. But he had been taken by surprise, and in all circumstances
he would have needed ample notice to deny a lady. He had a great but
impersonal regard for a lady, as some people have for a Rembrandt or
a Corot or a Jan van Steen. And although the fact was not important,
perhaps his sense of humor was a little touched by such a young woman
taking the trouble to come and talk to such a man as himself.

“I am here,” said the voice of the dove, as soon as its owner had
subsided gracefully upon a chair covered with horsehair, “to ask your
vote and interest for Sir Dugald Maclean, the People’s Candidate.”

The prophetic soul of Joe had told him that already. But again the
sense of humor, the fatal gift, may have intervened. Had the elegant
miss had any _nous_, she would have known that a sergeant of the X
Division has not a vote to bestow. In justice to the fair democrat, Joe
might have reflected that in the absence of his tunic there was nothing
to show his status. However, he didn’t trouble to do that. It was
enough for him that she was on a fool’s errand. But Joe was a man of
the world as well as a connoisseur of the human female. A picturesque
personality intrigued him. Moreover, it was working for a cause that
Joe despised from the depths of his soul. So much was she “the real
thing” that she had even turned on a melodious lisp for his benefit;
yet he had no particular wish, even under these flattering auspices, to
discuss the people and their champion. He had quite made up his mind
about both. But, the Machiavellian thought occurred to him, here was a
dangerous implement in the hands of the foe, therefore it would be the
part of wisdom to waste a little of her time.

“‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people,’” lisped the
siren, “that, of course, as you may know, is what Sir Dugald stands
for.”

“Does he!” reflected Joe. With a roguish smile he looked the speaker
over from her expensive top to her equally expensive toe.

“You _do_ believe in the people?” said the siren with a rather dubious
air.

“Since you ask the question, miss,” said Joe, “I am bound to say I
don’t, and never have done.”

“Not believe in the _people!_” It didn’t seem possible.

“If you’d seen as much of the people as I have, miss,” said Joe grimly,
“I’m thinking you’d not be quite so set up with ’em.”

The tone of conviction disconcerted the fair canvasser. Somehow she
had not expected it. In the course of her present ministrations it was
the first time she had met that point of view. Laxton’s working-class,
which for several days had been honored by her delicate flatteries,
had shown such a robust faith in itself and had purred so responsively
to her blandishments that she now took for granted that in all
circumstances it would fully share her own enthusiasm for it. But this
rubicund, coatless Briton, with eyes of half truculent humor, was a
little beyond her. Gloves were needed to handle him; otherwise fingers
of such flowerlike delicacy stood a chance of being bruised.

“May one ask what you have against them?” lisped the people’s champion,
opening large round eyes.

“Nothing particular, miss,” said Joe urbanely. “But you ask me whether
I believe in ’em and I say I don’t. Mind you, the people are all right
in their place. I’ve not a word to say against ’em personally. Of a
Monday morning at Vine Street, when the Court has been swep’ an’ dusted
and his Worship has returned from his Sunday in the country, we always
try to make ’em welcome. ‘Let ’em all come,’ that’s the motto of the
Metropolitan Force. But as for _believing_ in ’em, that’s another
story.”

This was rather baffling for the people’s champion. She was at a loss.
But her faith was sublime. This odd, crass, heavy-witted plebeian who
denied his kind was a sore problem even for the bringer of the light.
Still, she stuck to her guns gallantly.

“‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people.’” Lisping
the battle cry of Demos she returned stoutly to the charge. Sacred
formulas flowed from her lips in a stream of charming pellucidity.

“Ah, you don’t know ’em, miss,” ejaculated Joe, at intervals.

It was a pretty joust; vicarious enthusiasm on the one side, first-hand
experience on the other. But Joe was a rock. The fair canvasser took
forth every weapon of an elegantly-furnished armory, yet without avail.

“I don’t hold with the people, miss, not in no shape nor form.”

The tone was so final that at last a sense of defeat came upon this
Amazon. She was still seated, however, without having quite made up her
mind to the inevitable, on her grand chair in the front sitting-room
of Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, when Fate intervened in quite a
remarkable way.

All of a sudden, there appeared on the threshold of the open door a
figure tall, fine and unheralded. It was that of Harriet Sanderson.

“Anybody at home?” she inquired gayly.

The unexpected visitor was looking very handsome and distinguished in a
well-cut black coat and skirt, and a large hat too plain for fashion,
but very far from _démodé_. She came into the room with that almost
proprietary air she was never without in her intercourse with her own
people. But it was about to suffer an eclipse.

Harriet just had time to greet her brother-in-law with a happy mingling
of the _bon camarade_ and the woman of the world, her fixed attitude
towards such an Original, whom somehow she could not help liking and
respecting, when her eyes met suddenly those of the fair canvasser.

For a moment an intense surprise forbade either to speak. But the
people’s champion was the first to overcome the shock.

“Mrs. Sanderson!” she exclaimed.

The change in Harriet was immediate and dramatic.

“Lady Muriel!” A slight flush of a fine face accompanied the tone of
awe.

The visitor rose. And in the act of so doing an accession of
great ladyhood, almost entirely absent a few minutes ago, seemed
automatically to enter her manner.

“What a small world it is!” she laughed. “Fancy meeting you here!”

By now the iron will of the secretly annoyed and oddly discomposed
Harriet was able to reassert itself.

“It is a small world, my lady.” The tone was a very delicate mingling
of aloofness and respect.

Brief explanations followed. These quickly culminated in the
presentation of Joe, who then became the most embarrassed of the three.
Unawares and in his shirt sleeves, he had been entertaining an angel.
And to one of Conservative views, with a profound reverence for law,
order and all established things, this seemed to verge upon indecency.
A mere “one of Scotchie’s lady canvassers” had been magically
transformed, in the twinkling of an eye, into Lady Muriel Dinneford,
the third daughter of one whom Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas, always
alluded to as “his Grace.”


II

It was the work of a few tactful minutes for Lady Muriel to effect a
discreet retirement from the scene. Yet so deeply had she been engaged
by Joe’s contumacy, and at the back of a mind which was making the most
heroic efforts to be “broad” was such a sense of amusement, that she
declared her intention of returning anon with the People’s Candidate,
if he could possibly spare a few minutes from his multifarious duties,
in order that the _coup de grâce_ might be given to Mr. Kelly’s
dangerous heresies.

The withdrawal of the distinguished visitor across the street to the
Candidate’s committee room left a void which for a few tense moments
only wonder could fill.

It was Joe who broke the silence which, like a pall, had suddenly
descended upon the front parlor of Number Five.

“If that don’t beat Banagher,” he said. “Fancy one of the Fam’ly taking
the trouble to come a canvassin’ for Scotchie!”

Keen humor and acute annoyance contended now in the eloquent face of
Harriet.

“Pray, why shouldn’t she canvass for Sir Dugald Maclean”--the level
voice was pitched in a very quiet key--“if she really believes in his
principles?”

“How can she believe in ’em, gal?”

“Why not?”

“How can a blue blood believe in that sort of a feller?”

“Sir Dugald is a remarkably clever man. One of the cleverest men in
England, some people think.”

“That’s nothing to do with the matter. It’s character that counts.”

“There’s nothing against his character, I believe. At any rate, Lady
Muriel is going to marry him.”

The state of Joe’s feelings forbade an immediate reply. And when reply
he did, it was in a tone of scorn. Said he: “‘Government of the people,
by the people, for the people!’ Harriet, for a dead beat fool give me a
blue blood aristocrat.”

“Joe,” came the answer, with a gleam of humor and malice, “I really
think you should learn to speak of our governing class a little more
respectfully.”

This was rather hard. She ought to have realized that it was because
Joe respected them so much that he now desired to chasten them.

“Scotchie of all people!” he muttered.

“There’s no accounting for taste, you know.” There was a sudden flash
of a very handsome pair of eyes.

“O’ course there ain’t,” said Joe, sorrowfully malicious. “You may have
forgot there was a time when Scotchie came a-courtin’ you.”

“Do you suppose I am ever likely to forget it!” said Harriet, with a
cool cynicism which took the simple Joseph completely out of his depth.

“Well, it’s a queer world, I must say.”

“It is,” his sister-in-law agreed.

At that moment, Eliza came into the room. The visit of Harriet was
so unexpected as to take her by surprise. But the cause of it was
soon disclosed. Harriet was troubled about Mary. Ever since the girl,
against the wishes and advice of her friends, had taken what they
felt to be a fatal step, there had been a gradual drifting apart.
Harriet had kept in touch with her as well as she could, but she had
not been able to stifle her own private fears. The peril of such a
career, even when crowned by success, was in her opinion, difficult to
exaggerate. She disapproved of the friendship with the Wrens, and had
strongly opposed Mary’s living with them. But as the girl rose in her
profession, Harriet’s hold upon her grew still less. And now at second
and third hand had come news which had greatly upset her.

With the tact for which she was famous, Harriet did not speak of
this in the presence of Joe. She accompanied Eliza to the privacy of
the best bedroom, ostensibly to “take off her things,” but really to
discuss a matter which for the past week had filled her with misgiving.

In the meantime, Joe in the parlor set himself doggedly to compass the
nap that so far had been denied him. In spite of the noises in the
street and romantic appearance of a real live member of the Family in
his humble abode, he had just begun to doze when the ban of Fate fell
once more upon him.

From the strange welter in the amazing world outside there now emerged
a large open motor. And royally it drew up before the magic door of
Number Five. Two persons were seated in the car. One was no less than
Princess Bedalia. The other was the humblest and yet the boldest of her
adorers.


III

The idea itself had been Mary’s that they should use a fine afternoon
in motoring into Laxton, in order to see her parents. Behind this
simple plan was fell design. A week had passed since that conversation
under the trees in the Park in which she had sought in vain for her
release. But so shallow had her reasoning appeared that Jack declined
to take it seriously. He had her promise, and he felt he had every
right to hold her to it. Unless she could show a real cause for
revoking it, he was fully determined not to give her up.

In desperation, therefore, she had hit on the expedient, a poor and
vain one, no doubt, of taking him to see those humble people whom she
called father and mother. In the course of her twenty odd years up and
down the world she had had intimations from various side winds and
divers little birds that she was an adopted child. Her real parentage
and the circumstances of her birth were an impenetrable mystery and
must always be so, no doubt, but her feeling for the Kellys was one of
true affection and perfect loyalty. Not by word or deed had she hinted
at the possession of knowledge which had come to her from other sources.

In the circumstances of the case she now allowed herself to imagine
that a visit to her home people in their native habit as they dwelt
might help to cure Jack of his infatuation. An insight into things and
men told her that Beaconsfield Villas must be whole worlds away from
any sphere in which he had moved hitherto. Nor would he be likely to
suspect, as she was shrewdly aware, that a creature so sophisticated
as herself had risen from such humble beginnings. She had a ferocious
pride of her own, but it was not of the kind that meanly denies its
origin.

“Father,” was her gay greeting to the astonished and still coatless
Joe, “I’ve brought somebody to see you.”

Jack, wearing a dustcoat and other appurtenances of the chauffeur’s
craft, had followed upon the heels of Princess Bedalia into the front
parlor of Number Five. In response to the young man’s bow, Kelly
offered a rather dubious hand. As became a symbol of law and order
and a member of the straitest sect of the Pharisees, he didn’t feel
inclined to encourage Mary in gallivanting up and down the land. Nor
did he feel inclined to give countenance to any promiscuous young man
she might bring to the house.

“Mr. Dinneford--my father, Police-Sergeant Kelly.” It was a
delightfully formal introduction, but rather wickedly contrived.

Jack was so taken aback that he felt as if a feather might have downed
him. But even to the lynx eyes of Mary, which were covertly upon him,
not a trace of his feelings was visible. He merely bowed a second time,
perhaps a little more gravely than the first.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Sergeant Kelly, in a voice which
showed pretty clearly that he was overstating the truth.

Mary could not repress the rogue’s laugh that sprang to her lips.

“Where’s my old mumsie?” she gayly demanded, partly in the hope of
concealing her wicked merriment.

“Upstairs with your Aunty Harriet.”

“Aunt Harriet here!” The tone was full of surprise. And then the
charming voice took a turn affectionately non-committal. “What luck! It
seems an age since I saw her.”

In spite of himself, Joe could not help being a little in awe of the
girl. She was so remarkably striking that every time he saw her it
became harder to keep up the pretense of blood relationship. She had
developed into the finest young woman he had ever met. Her official
father was very proud of her, the affection she inspired in him was
true and real, but at the moment he was more than a little embarrassed
by the impact of an immensely distinguished personality.

However, in spite of such beauty and charm, he was determined to do his
duty by her; as became a father and a man he felt bound to admonish her.

“Since you took up with those people, none of us have been seeing much
of you,” he forced himself to say, in his most magisterial manner.

“Old story!”

“It’s true and you know it.” Joe declined on principle to be softened
by her blandishments.

“Wicked old story!” She took him by the shoulders and shook him; and
then she sighed as a mother might have done, and gazed into his solemn
face. “Father,” she said, “you are an old and great dear.”

“Get along with you!” said Joe sternly, but in spite of himself he
couldn’t help laughing.

“I’ll leave you and Mr. Dinneford to have a little crack while I take
this to my mumsie.” Brandishing an important-looking milliner’s box,
she left the room in a laughing search of Eliza.

As soon as Jack found himself alone with Mary’s father a period of
constraint ensued. It would have been wrong to deny that his reception
had been the reverse of cordial. The sensitiveness of a lover, in duty
bound to walk delicately, made no secret of that. Moreover, he was
still so astonished at Mary’s paternity that he felt quite at a loss.
Nature had played an amazing trick. Somehow this serio-comic London
copper in half-mufti, was going to make it very difficult to exercise
the deference due to a prospective father-in-law.

An acute silence was terminated by Joe’s “Won’t you sit down, sir?”

Jack sat down; and then Mary’s father, torn between stern disapproval
and the humane feelings of a host, invited the young man solemnly to a
glass of beer.

“Thank you very much,” said Jack, with admirable gravity.

Murmuring “excuse me a minute,” Joe went to draw the beer. Left alone
the young man tried to arrange his thoughts; also he took further
stock of his surroundings. He had yet to overcome a powerful feeling
of surprise. It was hard to believe that Princess Bedalia, in the view
of her _fiancé_, the very last word in modern young women, should have
sprung from such a _milieu_ as Number Five, Beaconsfield Villas. It was
a facer. Yet somehow the chasm between Mary and her male parent seemed
almost to enhance her value. She was so superb an original that she
defied the laws of nature.

The young man was engulfed in an odd train of speculation when Mary’s
father returned with the beer. He poured out two glasses, gave one to
the visitor, took one himself, and after a solemn “Good health, sir!”
solemnly drank it.

Jack returned the “Good health!” and followed the rest of the ritual.
And then feeling rather more his own man, he made an effort to come to
business. But it was only possible to do that by means of a directness
verging upon the indelicate.

“Sergeant Kelly,” he said, “have you any objection to my marrying Mary?”

No doubt the form of the question was a little unwise. At least it
exposed the young man to the prompt rejoinder:

“I know nothing whatever about you, sir.”

“My name is Dinneford”--he could not refrain from laughing a little at
the portentous gravity of a prospective father-in-law. “And I think I
can claim that I have always passed as respectable.”

“Glad to hear it, sir,” said Joe, the light of a respectful humor
breaking upon him. And then measuring the young man with the eye of
professional experience. “May I ask your occupation?”

“No occupation.”

“I don’t like the sound o’ that.” Sergeant Kelly sagely shook his head.

“Perhaps it isn’t quite so bad as it sounds,” said the young man. “At
present, you see, I am a kind of understudy to a sort of uncle I have.
I am in training as you might say, so that one day I may follow in his
footsteps.”

“An actor,” said the dubious Joe. He didn’t mind actors personally, but
impersonally he didn’t quite hold with the stage.

“Not exactly,” said the young man coolly, but with a smile. “And yet he
is in his way. In fact, you might call him a prince of comedians.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Sergeant Kelly measured each word carefully. “But I’m
afraid that’s only a very little in his favor.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Jack. “My uncle is a duke, and the deuce of it
is, I have to succeed him.”

“A duke!” Sergeant Kelly’s tone of rather pained surprise made it
clear that such a romantic circumstance greatly altered the aspect of
the case. It also implied that he was far from approving an ill-timed
jest on a sacred subject. His brow knitted to a heavy frown. “Well,
sir, I can only say that if such is the case you have no right to come
a-courting our Mary.”

“For why not, Sergeant Kelly?”

“You know why not, sir, as well as I do. She’s a fine gal, although
I say it who ought not, but that will not put her right with your
friends. They will expect you to take a wife of your own sort.”

“But that’s rather my look-out, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” said Joe, with the air of a warrior, “but as you
have asked me, there’s my opinion. The aristocracy’s the aristocracy,
the middle-class is the middle-class, and the lower orders are the
lower orders--there they are and you can’t alter ’em. At least, that’s
my view of the matter.”

Jack forced a wry smile. Mary was a chip of the old block. Such an
uncompromising statement seemed at any rate to explain the force of her
conviction upon this vexed subject.

“Excuse the freedom, sir,” said the solemn Joe, “but you young nobs
who keep on marrying out of your class are undermining the British
Constitution. What’s to become of law and order if you go on mixing
things up in the way you are doing?”

The young man proceeded to do battle with the Philistine. But the
weapons in his armory were none of the brightest with which to meet the
crushing onset of the foe.

“It’s no use, sir. As I say, the aristocracy’s the aristocracy, the
middle-class is the middle-class, and the lower orders are the lower
orders--there they are and you can’t alter ’em. You don’t suppose I’ve
reggerlated the traffic at Hyde Park Corner all these years not to know
_that_.”

In the presence of such a conviction, the best of Jack’s arguments
seemed vain, futile and shallow. Fate had charged Joseph Kelly with the
solemn duty of maintaining the fabric of society, and in his purview,
no argument however cunning, could set that fact aside.


IV

While these two were still at grips, each meeting the arguments of the
other with a sense of growing impatience, the cause of the trouble
intervened. Mary came into the room, leading her mother by the hand.
With the face of a sphinx followed Harriet.

The blushing Eliza was adorned with a fine coat which had come in the
milliner’s box. Mary had laughingly insisted on her mother appearing in
it, in spite of Eliza’s firm conviction that “it was much too grand.”

“My word, mother!” roared Joe, at the sight of her splendor. “I’m
thinking I’ll have to keep an eye on _you_.”

The visitor was promptly introduced, first to the wearer of the coat,
who offered a shy and embarrassed hand, and then to Aunt Harriet, who
stood mute and pale in the background.

“Why--why, Mrs. Sanderson,” said the young man, “fancy meeting you
here!”

“You have met before?” said Mary, innocently.

“We meet very often.”

“Really?”

“Why, yes. Mrs. Sanderson is Uncle Albert’s right hand at Bridport
House.”

A pin might have been heard to fall in the silence that followed. The
blood fled from Mary’s cheeks; they grew as pale as those of her aunt.
Even the knowledge that had recently come to her had not connected Jack
with Bridport House. No attempt had been made to realize exactly who
and what he was. It had been enough that he belonged to a world beyond
her own. And now as this new and astonishing fact presented itself she
saw the strongest possible justification for the attitude she had taken
up.

As for Harriet, stern and unbending in the background, she was like an
Antigone who abides the decree. Her fears were realized. The worst had
happened. Fate had played such a subtle and unworthy trick that the
instinct uppermost was to resent it bitterly.

The feelings of the girl were very similar. But her strength of
character and the independence of her position enabled her to
take charge of a situation delicate and embarrassing. In a rather
high-pitched voice, she began to talk generalities in order to
bridge if possible the arid pauses which were always threatening to
submerge the conversation. But at the back of her mind was a growing
sense that secret forces are always at work in this strange world we
inhabit--forces which have a peculiar malice of their own.

And yet, hopeless as the position had suddenly become for these five
people, the fates had one more barb in their quiver. And it was of so
odd a kind that it was as if the stars in their courses were bent upon
seeing what mischief they could contrive in this particular matter. A
sudden sharp rap from the knocker of the front door fell into the midst
of the growing embarrassment. Joe, welcoming this diversion as relief
to a tension that was almost intolerable, went at once to attend the
cause of it.

“As I’m a living man,” came a lusty voice from the threshold, “if it
isn’t old Joe Kelly.”

The People’s Candidate, rosetted, dauntless and triumphant, accompanied
by the lady of his choice, stepped heroically into the small room.
Twenty-three years had wrought a very remarkable change in a very
remarkable man. In that time Dugald Maclean had bent all the powers of
his genius to a task that Miss Harriet Sanderson had discreetly imposed
upon the author of “Urban Love, a Trilogy.” And now he came in, every
inch a victor, he had not looked to find his monitress. But there she
was, pale, grim, yet somehow oddly distinguished in the background of a
room curiously familiar. It was to her that his eyes leapt.

“Why, Miss Sanderson!” he said, with a conqueror’s laugh, in which
there was no trace of the tongue-tied youth of three and twenty years
ago. Offering a conqueror’s hand, he went forward to greet her.

Harriet yielded hers with a vivid blush. And as she did so, she was
suddenly aware of two swordlike orbs piercing her right through.

“I didn’t know Mrs. Sanderson was a friend of yours,” said the honeyed
voice of Lady Muriel.

“A very old friend,” said Sir Dugald gayly.

At that moment, however, it was necessary for Lady Muriel to curb her
curiosity. Since her exit from that room half-an-hour ago other people
had gathered in it. She had hardly spoken when her astonished eyes
fell upon Cousin Jack. Their recognition of each other was mutually
incredulous. Yet there was really no reason why it should have been. It
was known to the young man that Muriel had been refused permission to
marry a politician already on the high road to place and power, and it
was known to her that Jack had been going about with an actress.

“A family party,” said Jack, as their eyes met. “Let me introduce Miss
Lawrence--Lady Muriel Dinneford.”

An exchange of aloof bows followed. And then, although very careful to
seem to do nothing of the kind, each measured the other with an eye
as hard and bright as a diamond. To neither was the result of this
scrutiny exactly pleasant. It came upon Cousin Muriel with a little
shock of surprise that “the Chorus Girl” should look just as she did,
and that she knew how to bear herself in a way that did not yield an
inch to the enemy, yet at the same time scrupulously refrained from
offering battle. Here was beauty of a very compelling kind, and in
the hostile view of its present beholder something more valuable. The
distinguished air, the look of breeding, went some way to excuse a
deplorable infatuation. But as far as “the Chorus Girl” herself was
concerned, a little over-sensitive as circumstances may have made her
on the score of her own dignity, it was far from pleasant to detect
in this authentic member of the family that power of conveying subtle
insult, without speech or look, which belonged to the two others,
presumably her sisters, whom she had met in the Park.

Somehow the girl felt a keen rage within. It may have been the world
of unconscious arrogance behind that aloof nod, it may have been the
implicit challenge in the lidded glance down the long straight nose.
But whatever the cause, Mary suddenly felt a surge of resentment in her
very bones.

In the meantime, the People’s Candidate was playing his part to
perfection. The flight of time had wrought wonders in this champion of
Demos. He was no longer tongue-tied and awkward; even the roll of his
“r’s” was so diminished that Ardnaleuchan would hardly have known its
child. Everything was in perfect harmony. After a few brief passages
with Harriet, audaciously humorous, in which homage was paid to old
times, he turned with a sportsman’s eye to exchange a ready quip with
Joe and Eliza.

Joe, in his heart, was scandalized. A Tory to the bone, in his view
the social hierarchy was part of the cosmic order. It was unchanging,
immutable. “Scotchie” was a charlatan, tongue in cheek; a mountebank
of a fellow whom it was amazing that honest men, let alone high-born
women, could not see through. Joe was determined to have no truck
with him, but the People’s Candidate with a bonhomie which the former
colleague of the X Division was inclined to regard as mere brazenness,
seemed quite determined not to take rebuffs from an old friend.

“You haven’t a vote, Joe, I know,” said Maclean, “but you are a man of
influence here and I want you to speak for me with your pals.”

Joe shook a solemn head.

“I don’t believe in your principles,” said he.

The voice, a growl of indignation, struck the ear of Lady Muriel a
veritable blow. In spite of “the breadth” she was trying so hard to
cultivate, the laws of her being demanded that these humble people
should grovel. They were of another caste, another clay; somehow Joe’s
blunt skepticism gave her a sense of personal affront.

“You have not a vote, Mr. Kelly,” she interposed, in a sharp tone.
“Pray, why didn’t you tell me? A canvasser’s time is valuable.”

“Your ladyship never asked the question.”

“But you knew, surely, my object in coming?”

“I did,” said Joe coolly, with a slightly humorous air. “And I thought
your ladyship so dangerous that the best thing I could do was to get
you barking up the wrong tree.”

The answer delighted Maclean. He threw up his head and laughed like
a school boy. But in the midst of a mirth that his fiancée was quite
incapable of sharing with him, Jack and Mary rose to go. They had been
waiting to seize the first chance which offered in order to escape from
a decidedly irksome family party.


V

As Mary and Jack took leave, the penetrating eye of the new Home
Secretary regarded them. The two men had not met before, but they
were known to each other by hearsay. Jack had heard little good of
Maclean--Sir Dugald had heard even less good of Jack. A light of
amused malice sprang to their eyes in the moment of recognition. But
from those of the Scotsman it quickly passed. For almost at once his
attention was caught by the affectionate intimacy of the good-bys
bestowed upon Joe, Eliza, and Harriet by a girl of quite remarkable
interest.

Was it possible? The live thought flashed through Sir Dugald’s mind.
In an instant it had leapt to the November evening of the year 1890.
Immense quantities of water had flowed under the bridge since that far
distant hour. And if this vivid, unforgettable girl was the creature he
now suspected that she must be, here was one example the more of the
romance of time, nature and circumstance.

As soon as Mary and Jack were away on what they called a joy-ride to
Richmond, all Sir Dugald’s doubts in the matter were laid at rest.
At once there followed a few brief, but pitiless and bitter passages
between Harriet Sanderson and Lady Muriel.

“Tell me, Mrs. Sanderson,” said the younger woman in a tone of ice, “is
Miss Lawrence a connection of yours?”

“My niece, my lady,” said Harriet, an odd tremor in her voice.

“A daughter, I presume, of your sister and her husband?”

“That is so, my lady.” Harriet’s tone was slowly deepening to that of
her questioner.

“Of course, the matter will have to be mentioned at once to my father.
And I’m afraid the consequences cannot fail to be serious. You must
feel that it is very wrong to have connived at such a state of things.”

Harriet’s reply, brief but considered, made with a sudden flush of
color and a lighted eye, was a cold denial. It was a short but painful
scene, and its three witnesses would gladly have been spared it. Lady
Muriel had lost a little of her poise. In spite of her “breadth” she
was simply horrified by her discovery. She could not believe that
Harriet spoke the truth. And the cunning, the duplicity, the chicane of
a retainer who had held a privileged position for so many years filled
her with an inward fury that was almost beyond control.

“One could not have believed it to be possible,” she said, in a voice
that trembled ominously. And having discharged that Parthian bolt, she
withdrew with the People’s Candidate in order to canvass the next house
in the street.


VI

Such a departure left consternation in its train. After a moment of
complete silence, Eliza burst into a sudden flood of tears, Joe put on
his tunic with the air of a tragedian, but Harriet remained immovable
as a statue.

“This comes of the stage,” wailed poor Eliza.

Joe felt the times themselves were to blame, at any rate they were
sadly out of joint.

“I don’t know what things are coming to,” he said, flinging his
slippers into a corner and putting on his boots. “Things are all upside
down these days and no mistake.”

Harriet blamed no one. She merely stood white and shaken, a picture of
tragic unhappiness.

“Gal,” said Joe, turning to her a Job’s comforter, “one thing is sure.
You are going to lose your place.”

Harriet bit her lip, coldly disdaining a reply.

“As sure as eggs that’ll be the upshot,” proceeded Joe. “I’m sorry I
let that jockey go without giving him a bit of my mind.”

“He is not to blame,” said Harriet tensely.

“Who is, then?”

“You and me, Joe,” sobbed Eliza, “for letting her go on the stage.”

“There was no stopping her--you know that well enough. As soon as she
took up her dancing we lost all control of her. But we’ve got to be
pretty sensible now. A nice tangle things are in, and they’ll take a
bit of straightening out.”

Harriet shook a mournful head.

“What can people like ourselves possibly do?” she asked.

“I’ve a great mind,” said Joe, “to step as far as Bridport House and
have a few words with his Grace.”

“That’s merely preposterous,” said Harriet decisively.

“The matter must be brought to his notice at once, any way,” said Joe
doggedly.

“You can count upon that,” said Harriet grimly.

“But it’ll be one side only. And there’s the other, my gal.”

“What other?” Harriet asked with a drawn smile.

“Her side. She is not going to be made a fool of by anyone if I can
help it.”

Said Harriet very gravely: “Joe, I sincerely hope you will not meddle
in this. I am quite sure that any interference of ours will be most
unwise.”

But Joe shook the head of a warrior.

“There you’re wrong. This is our affair and we’ve got to see it
through.”

“Far better let the matter alone.”

“When we adopted that girl,” said Joe, “we took a great responsibility
on ourselves, and we’ve got to live up to it. In my opinion that young
man means no good.”

“You have no right to say that,” said Harriet quickly.

“I’ve a right to say what I think. And you know as well as I do that
the likes o’ him don’t condescend to the likes o’ her with any good
intention.”

Harriet flushed darkly.

“I am quite sure that Mr. Dinneford would always behave like a
gentleman,” she said sternly.

“That is more than you know.”

“You seem to forget that he is one of the Family.”

Joe laughed rather sardonically. “I don’t blame you for being so set up
with your precious Family,” he said. “It is only right that you should
be--but I know what I know. Human nature’s human nature.”

Harriet shook her head. Not for a moment could she accept this point of
view. Moreover, she strongly urged that there must not be interference
of any kind with Bridport House.

“That’s as may be,” said Joe stoutly. “But you can take your oath that
I mean to see justice done in the matter.”

“You talk as if she was your own daughter,” said Harriet, who was
growing deeply annoyed.

“Ever since I gave her my name and my roof, I have looked on her as a
gal of my own.”

“Yes, that we have,” chimed Eliza tearfully. “And I am sure that Joe is
right to take the matter up.”

Again Harriet dissented. In her view, and she did not hesitate to
express it forcibly, it would be sheer folly for people like themselves
to meddle in such a delicate affair.

“It seems to me,” said Eliza bitterly, “that rather than go against
Bridport House, you would ruin the girl.”

The words struck home. Eliza had long looked up to her younger sister.
The position she held was one of honor, but Harriet’s exaggerated
concern for an imposing machine of which she was no more than a very
humble cog, somehow aroused Eliza’s deepest feelings.

“It is a very wicked thing to say.” And in the eyes of Harriet was an
odd look.

“You set these grandees above everything in the world,” Eliza taunted.
“Like the Dad, you simply worship them.”

A deadly pallor overspread Harriet’s face. Her eyes grew grim with pain
and anger. But a powerful nature, schooled to self-discipline, fought
for control and was able to gain it.

“It’s a futile discussion,” she said suddenly, in a changed tone. And
then she added with an earnestness strangely touching. “Joe, I implore
you not to take any step in the matter without first consulting me.”

The solemn words seemed to gain finality from the fact that Harriet
Sanderson then walked abruptly out of the house.



CHAPTER VI

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT


I

THE Duke, in his morning-room, was reading a letter which had just come
to him by post. As he folded it neatly and returned it to an envelope
which bore the stamp of the south-eastern postal district, the light of
humor played over an expressive face. And when, after much reflection,
he took the letter again from its envelope and solemnly re-read it, the
look deepened to the verge of the saturnine.

Still pondering what he plainly considered to be a priceless document,
a succession of odd grimaces caused him to purse his lips and to frown
perplexedly. At last he dropped his glasses and broke into a guffaw.

Lying back in his invalid’s chair, still in the throes of an infrequent
laughter, he was presently brought back to the plane of gravity by the
unexpected arrival of Lady Wargrave upon the scene.

She entered the room with a gladiatorial air.

The face of his Grace underwent a sudden change at the sight of this
unwelcome visitor.

Charlotte seated herself ponderously. And then having allowed a
moment’s pause for dramatic effect, she said, marking her brother with
an intent eye, “The plot thickens.”

“Plot?” he said, warily.

“Do you wish me to believe that you have not heard the latest
development?”

“Why speak in riddles, Charlotte?” He was trying to suppress a growing
irritability.

Charlotte smiled frostily. “One should make allowances, no doubt, for
natural simplicity. But even to the aloofness of philosophers there’s a
limit, my friend. You must know that there is only one subject in all
our minds just now.”

The Duke, a concentrated gaze upon Charlotte, did not allow himself
to admit anything of the kind. For one thing they were lifelong
adversaries. Charlotte was a meddlesome woman, an intriguer and a
busybody in the sacred name of Family. They had tried many a fall with
each other in the past, and although Providence in making Albert John
the head of the house had given him an unfair advantage, he was often
hard set by Charlotte’s malice and persistency.

“Have you spoken to that young wretch?” Charlotte lost no time in
coming boldly to the horses.

“I have not,” was the sour reply.

“Is it quite wise, do you think, to let the grass grow under your
feet?--particularly having regard to the fact that the person happens
to be a niece of Mrs. Sanderson’s.” This was a very shrewd blow, whose
manner of delivery had been most carefully considered beforehand.
Indeed, so neatly was it planted now that his Grace got the shock of
his life. The surprise was so painfully sharp that he found it hard to
meet the foe without flinching. He had to make a great effort to hold
himself in hand. And Charlotte, a cold eye upon him, followed up in an
extremely businesslike manner. She had a very strong hand to play and a
true warrior, if ever there was one, she was set on wringing out of it
the last ounce of advantage. There had come to her at last, after many
a year of watching and waiting, an opportunity beyond her hopes and her
prayers.

“Last evening poor Sarah came to me in great distress,” proceeded
Charlotte. “Muriel, it appears, had been electioneering in the
constituency of a certain person, and in the course of her wanderings
up and down the suburbs, she found herself quite by chance at the house
of Mrs. Sanderson’s brother-in-law.”

By this time his Grace had sufficiently recovered from the blow that
had been dealt him to ask how Muriel had contrived to make that
particular discovery.

It seemed that she had found Mrs. Sanderson there.

“The long arm of coincidence,” opined his Grace with a wry smile. He
opined further that the whole thing began to sound uncommonly like a
novel.

“Sober reality, I assure you, Johnnie. And sober reality can beat
any novel in the power of the human mind to invent, that’s why it’s
so stupid to write them. Muriel entered the house by chance, Mrs.
Sanderson came there, and presently, if you please, Master Jack arrived
by motor with the young person. By the way, Muriel says she is very
good looking.”

“Quite a family party.” His Grace achieved a light tone with
difficulty. “But I incline to think, Charlotte, you a little overstate
the facts.”

“It is the story Muriel told Sarah.”

“Well, I am very unwilling to believe that Mrs. Sanderson knew what was
going on.”

“Pray, why not?” He was raked by a goshawk’s eye.

“She would have told me.”

Somehow those lame, impotent words revealed a man badly hit. Charlotte
saw that at once, and forthwith proceeded to turn the fact to pitiless
advantage. A gust of coarse laughter swept the room.

“Johnnie, it’s the first time I’ve read you a fool. Simple Simon! Do
you think a woman who has learned to play her cards like that is the
one to give away her hand?”

This was a second blow planted neatly on the vizor of his Grace. In
spite of his armor of cynicism he could be seen to wince a little. And
the silence which followed enabled the implacable foe to perceive that
he was shaken worse than it seemed reasonable to expect him to be.

“Perhaps you’ll now permit her to be sent away. A sordid intriguer. She
must go at once.”

In the trying moment which followed, the Duke, badly hipped, fought
valiantly to pull himself together. But somehow he only just managed to
do so.

“You make a mistake, Charlotte,” he said, with an effort that clearly
hurt him. “She is not that kind of person. You always have made that
mistake. She is a superior woman in every way. At least, I have always
found her so. I can’t imagine such a woman intriguing for anybody.”

“Shows how little you know ’em, Johnnie.” Another Gargantuan gust swept
the room. “Every woman intrigues unless she’s a born fool, and this
housekeeper nurse of yours is very far from being that--believe me.”

For a brief, but uncomfortable moment the Duke thought the matter over
with an air of curious perplexity. Then he said abruptly and with
defiance:

“I must have further information.”

“Sarah has the details. It would be well, no doubt, to have her views
on the matter.”

Whereupon Charlotte rose massively, crossed to the bell and rang it in
order that a much tormented male should enjoy this further privilege.


II

The eldest daughter of the house, when she came on the scene, found the
atmosphere decidedly electric. Her father was glaring with very ominous
eyes; while it was clear from the look on the face of Aunt Charlotte
that she was under the impression that she had downed him at last. No
doubt she had, but if those eyes meant anything there was still a lot
of fight in the stricken warrior.

Sarah herself was a long, thin, flat-chested person. Totally devoid of
imagination, her horizon was so limited that outside the Family nothing
or nobody mattered. And yet she was not in the least domesticated. In
fact, she was not in the least anything. She was nobly and consistently
null, without opinions or ideas, without humor, charm or amenity. Her
mental outlook had somehow thrown back to the 1840’s, yet with all
her limitations, apart from which very little remained of her, she
was a thoroughly sound, exceedingly honest Christian gentlewoman of
thirty-eight.

Sarah, it seemed, having heard Muriel’s story, had taken counsel of the
dowager. And at once realizing the extreme gravity of the whole affair,
both ladies determined to make the most of a long-sought opportunity to
give the housekeeper her quietus. Sarah herself, who was inclined to be
embittered and vindictive on this particular point, fell in only too
readily with Aunt Charlotte’s desire to take full advantage of such a
golden chance. Called upon now to divulge all that she knew, the eldest
daughter re-told Muriel’s remarkable story of her meeting with Mrs.
Sanderson, Jack and the girl, in the course of political endeavors at
Laxton. The story, amazing as it was, was undoubtedly authentic.

“Of course, father,” was Sarah’s conclusion, very pointedly expressed,
“she will simply _have_ to go. And the sooner the better, as no doubt
you agree.”

To Sarah’s deep annoyance, however, her sire seemed very far from
agreeing.

“There is no direct evidence of collusion,” he said. “And knowing
Mrs. Sanderson to be an old and tried servant, who has always had our
welfare at heart, I am very unwilling to place such a construction upon
what may be no more than a rather odd coincidence.”

Sarah was too deeply angry to reply. But she looked on grimly while the
ruthless Charlotte showly marshaled her forces. The quarrel was a very
pretty one. Yet the Duke, now his back was to the wall, was able to
take excellent care of himself. Moreover, he flatly declined to hear a
worthy woman traduced until she had had a chance of meeting charges so
recklessly, and as it seemed, malevolently brought against her.

“From the way in which you speak of her,” said the incensed Charlotte,
“you appear to regard her as a person of importance.”

“Charlotte, I regard her as thoroughly honest, trustworthy,
competent--in fact a good woman in every way.”

“You willfully blind yourself, Johnnie. This creature has thrown dust
in your eyes. But it will be no more than you deserve if one day her
niece is installed as mistress here. You will not live to see it, yet
it would be no more than bare justice if you did.”

“Pernicious nonsense,” rejoined his Grace. “Perhaps in the
circumstances it would be well to hear what Mrs. Sanderson has to say
for herself.”

“She is bound to lie.”

Somehow the precision of the language stung his Grace.

“You are not entitled to say that,” he flashed.

“It is the common sense of the situation and one has a perfect right to
express it.”

“Not here, Charlotte--not in this room before me. If I trust people
implicitly--there are not many that I do--I trust them implicitly, and
I can’t allow even _privileged_ people to speak of them in that way--at
any rate, in my presence.”

This explosion was so unlooked for that it took the ladies aback. In
all the years they had fought him they had never seen him moved so
deeply. A new Albert John had suddenly emerged. Never before had the
head of the house allowed these enemies to catch a glimpse of such
quixotic, such fantastic chivalry. Charlotte was sourly amused, Sarah,
amazed; but both ladies were deeply angry.

However, they had fully made up their minds that the housekeeper
must go. Indeed, that had been already arranged at the after-dinner
conference at Hill Street the previous evening. They were convinced
that a woman whom they intensely disliked, whose peculiar position
they greatly resented, was at last driven into a corner. The Duke’s
indecently bold defense of her had taken them by surprise, but it
only made them the more determined to push their present advantage
ruthlessly home.


III

Suddenly Sarah rose and pressed the bell. She demanded of the servant
who answered it that Mrs. Sanderson should appear.

Harriet, already apprised of Lady Wargrave’s arrival, came at once. She
was quite prepared for a painful scene. Only too well had she reason to
know the state of feeling in regard to herself. She had always been so
able and discreet that she had enforced the outward respect of those
whom she served so loyally. But she well knew that she was not liked
by the ladies of the house, and that the special position she had
come to hold owing to the decline of the Duke’s health, was a _casus
belli_ between him and the members of his family. She had long been
aware that in the opinion of the Dinneford ladies it was no part of
a housekeeper’s functions to act as a trained nurse to their invalid
father.

Harriet had a natural awe of Lady Wargrave, which she shared with all
under that roof; for Lady Sarah she had the deep respect which she
extended to every member of the august clan it had been her privilege
to serve for so many years. In the devout eyes of Harriet Sanderson
each unit of that clan was not as other men and women. In the matter of
Bridport House and all that it stood for, she was more royalist than
the king.

From the dark hour, a week ago now, in which the news had come by
a side wind, that the fates by a stroke of perverse cruelty, as it
seemed, had thrown Mary across the path of Mr. Dinneford, she had
hardly known how to lay her head on her pillow. To her mind the whole
thing was simply calamitous. It had thrown her into a state of profound
unhappiness. She now came into the room looking worn and ill, yet fully
prepared for short shift to be meted out to her by those whom she found
assembled there.

The ladies looked for defiance, no doubt. And they may have looked for
an undercurrent of malicious triumph. Yet if they expected either of
these things their mistake was at once very clear. It was hard to find
a trace of the successful intriguer in the haggard cheeks and somber
eyes of the woman before them. But to minds such as theirs portents of
this kind could not be expected to weigh in the scale against their
preconceived ideas.

It was left to Lady Wargrave to fix the charge. And this she did with a
blunt precision which was itself a form of insult. The icy tones were
scrupulously polite, nothing was said which one in her position was not
entitled to say in such circumstances, yet the whole effect was so
deadly in its venom as to be absolutely pitiless.

At first Harriet was overwhelmed. The force of the attack was beyond
anything she had looked for. Moreover, it seemed to fill the Duke, an
unwilling auditor, with anger and pain. He moved uneasily in his chair,
yet he was not able to check the cold torrent of quasi-insult by word
of mouth, for none knew better than Lady Wargrave how to administer
castigation without going outside the rules of the game.

Even when the shock of the first blows was past, Harriet could find
no means of defending herself. She was a very proud woman. Her
blamelessness in what she could only regard as a very odious matter was
so clear to her own mind that it did not seem to call for re-statement.
She, too, said nothing. But a hot flush came upon the thin cheek.

Lady Wargrave grew more and more incensed by a silence, the cause of
which she completely mistook.

“You have been nearly thirty years here, Mrs. Sanderson, and you have
been guilty of a wicked abuse of trust.”

The painful pause which followed this final blow was broken at last by
the Duke.

“You must forgive me, Charlotte, if I say that the facts of the case as
they have been presented, hardly justify such a statement.”

The tone was honey. And it was in such ironical contrast to Charlotte’s
own that nothing could have shown more clearly the wide gulf between
their points of view or the envenomed strife of many years now coming
to a head.

“They prove the charge to the hilt.” The hawk’s eyes of Charlotte
contracted ominously.

“What charge?--if you don’t mind stating it explicitly.”

“Mrs. Sanderson has used her position here to make her niece known to
the future head of this house, she has connived at their intimacy, she
appears to have fostered it in every way.”

“I don’t think you are entitled to say that, Charlotte.” The Duke spoke
slowly and pointedly, and then he turned to Harriet with an air of such
delicate politeness that it added fuel to the flame which was withering
her traducers. “If it is not asking too much, Mrs. Sanderson,” he said,
with a smile of grave kindness, “I should personally be very grateful
if you would be wicked enough to defend yourself. Let me say at once
that I am far from accepting the construction Lady Wargrave has placed
on the matter. But her zeal for a time-honored institution is so great
that if her judgment is outrun, it seems only kind to forgive her.”

Such oblique but resounding blows in the sconce of Charlotte filled her
with a fury hard to hold in check.

“What defense is possible?” Her voice was like a crane. “The facts are
there to look at. Mrs. Sanderson’s niece has extracted a promise of
marriage.”

The Duke turned to Harriet rather anxiously.

“I sincerely hope Lady Wargrave has been misinformed,” he said.

Harriet flushed.

“I only know”--speech for her had become almost intolerably
difficult--“that Mr. Dinneford has asked my brother-in-law’s consent to
his marrying her.”

The Duke may have been deeply annoyed, but not a line of his face
betrayed him.

“Who is your brother-in-law, Mrs. Sanderson?”

Harriet told him.

“A very honest man”--the Duke checked a laugh--“I have been honored by
a letter from him this morning.”

Even the lacerated Harriet could not forbear to smile.

“I am sure,” said she, “he will not let Mary marry Mr. Dinneford if he
can help it.”

“Why not?” sharply interposed Lady Wargrave.

“Why not, Charlotte?” Her brother took upon himself to answer the
question. “Because Sergeant Kelly is a very sensible and enlightened
man who evidently tries to see things in their right relation.”

“Fiddle-de-dee!” said Charlotte, with the bluntness for which she was
famous. “Depend upon it, he knows as well as anybody on which side his
bread is buttered.”

Her brother shook his head. “I think,” he said, “if you had had the
privilege of reading Sergeant Kelly’s letter you would be agreeably
surprised. At any rate, he seems quite to share your view of the
sacredness of the social fabric.”

“Let us look at the facts,” said Charlotte. “This marriage has to be
prevented at all costs. And I hope it is not too much to ask Mrs.
Sanderson that she will give us any assistance which may lie in her
power.”

The look upon Lady Wargrave’s face, as she made the request, clearly
implied that help from such a quarter must, in the nature of things, be
negligible. But in spite of the covert insult in the tone and manner
of the dowager, Harriet replied very simply that there was nothing she
would leave undone to prevent such a catastrophe.

“I am quite sure, Mrs. Sanderson, we can count upon that,” said the
Duke, in a tone which softened considerably the humiliating silence
with which the promise had been received.

“To begin with,” said the Duke, turning to Harriet, “I shall ask
your brother-in-law to come and see me. Evidently he is one of these
sensible, straightforward men who can be trusted to take a large view
of things.”

The face of Lady Wargrave expressed less optimism.

“There is one question I would like to put to Mrs. Sanderson,” she
suddenly interposed. It seemed that she had reserved for a final attack
the weapon on which she counted most. “Be good enough to tell me this.”
The ruthless eye was fixed on Harriet. “How long, Mrs. Sanderson, have
you known of Mr. Dinneford’s intimacy with your niece?”

There was a slight but painful pause, and it was broken by a rather
faltering reply.

“It is just a week since I first heard of it, my lady.”

“Just a week! And in the whole of that time you have not thought well
to mention the matter?”

The tone cut like a knife. And the stab it dealt was so deep that
Harriet was unable to answer the question which propelled it.

“_Why didn’t_ you mention it, Mrs. Sanderson?”

The blood fled suddenly from Harriet’s cheek. She grew nervous and
confused.

“Please answer the question.” There was now a ring of triumph in the
pitiless tone.

“I wished to spare his Grace unpleasantness,” stammered Harriet.

“Very thoughtful of you, Mrs. Sanderson,” said Lady Wargrave,
bitingly. “No doubt his Grace appreciates your regard for his feelings.
But even if that was the motive, surely it was your duty to report the
matter to Lady Sarah as soon as it came to your knowledge.”

The hesitation of Harriet grew exceedingly painful to witness.

“Yes,” she said at last. Tears suddenly sprang to her eyes. “I begin to
see now that it _was_ my duty. I wish very much that I _had_ mentioned
the matter to Lady Sarah.”

Both ladies were so fully set on the overthrow of this serpent that the
air of touching, exquisite simpleness went for nothing. But in any case
they would have been too obtuse to notice it.

“We all wish that.” Lady Wargrave pursued her advantage pitilessly.
“And I am sure I speak for his Grace as well as for the rest of us.”
She trained a look of malicious triumph upon the perplexed and frowning
face of her brother.

As became a consummate tactician who now had the affair well in hand,
Charlotte gave the Duke a moment to intervene if he felt inclined to
do so. But she well knew, a kind of instinct told her, that the attack
had succeeded completely. The housekeeper made such a feeble attempt
to parry it, that for the time being her champion was dumb. Nor was
this surprising. In the opinion of both ladies the sinister charge of
collusion had now been proved to the hilt.

Lady Wargrave having given her brother due opportunity for a further
defense of Mrs. Sanderson, which he had quite failed to grasp,
proceeded coldly and at leisure to administer the _coup de grâce_.

“I am afraid, Mrs. Sanderson,” she said, “that in these circumstances
only one course is open to you now.”

She was too adroit, however, to state exactly what that course was. She
was content merely to suggest it. But Harriet did not need to be told
what the particular alternative was that her ladyship had in mind.

“You wish me to resign my position,” she said, in a low calm voice. She
turned with tears in her eyes to the eldest daughter of the house. “I
beg leave to give a month’s notice from today, my lady. If you would
like me to go sooner, I will do so at any time you wish.”

The words and manner showed a consideration wholly lacking in the
measure meted out to herself. There was so little of pride or of
wounded dignity that the tears were running in a stream down the pale
cheeks. Uppermost in Harriet Sanderson was still a feeling of profound
veneration for those to whom she had dedicated the best years of her
life.


IV

The ladies of the Family had won the day. Mrs. Sanderson was going.
It was an occasion for rejoicing. She had intrigued disgracefully;
moreover, it had long felt that this clever, unscrupulous, plausible
woman had gained a dangerous ascendancy over the head of the house. But
Aunt Charlotte, it seemed, with the tactical skill for which she was
famous, had driven her into a corner and had forced her to surrender.

In the opinion of Sarah, Mrs. Sanderson had behaved very well. It was,
of course, impossible to trust that sort of person; but to give the
woman her due, she had appeared to feel her position acutely; she had
promised, moreover, to undo as far as in her lay the mischief she had
caused. The ladies saw no inconsistency in that. They had formed a low
opinion of Mrs. Sanderson--for what reason they didn’t quite know--but
now that she had received her _congée_ and they were to have their own
way at last there would be no harm in taking up a magnanimous attitude
towards her.

As far as it went this was well enough, but a serious and solemn task
had been imposed upon various people by the circumstances of the case.
It now seemed of vital importance to those concerned that Jack should
become engaged to Marjorie without further delay. With that end in
view the ladies of the Family were now working like beavers. But all
they had done so far had not been enough. In vain had the lure been
laid in sight of the bird. In vain had they used the arts and the
subtleties of their sex. For several weeks now Jack and Marjorie had
been thrown together on every conceivable pretext, yet the only result
had been that the future head of Bridport House had re-affirmed a fixed
intention of taking a wife from the stage.

Three days after Lady Wargrave had gained her signal triumph over Mrs.
Sanderson, the Duke was at home to an odd visitor. In obedience to
the written request of his Grace’s private secretary, Sergeant Kelly
presented himself about noon at Bridport House.

Fortunately, Joe had been able to arrange for a day off for the
purpose. Thus the dignity of man, also the dignity of the Metropolitan
Force, were upheld by impressive mufti. He had discarded uniform for
his best Sunday cutaway, old and rather shining it was true, but black
and braided, with every crease removed by Eliza’s iron; a pair of light
gray trousers, superbly checked; a white choker tie and a horse-shoe
pin; while to crown all, a massive gold albert, a recent gift from
Mary, was slung across a noble expanse of broadcloth waistcoat.

“Good morning, Sergeant Kelly,” said a musical voice, as soon as the
visitor was announced. The Duke in the depths of his invalid chair
looked at him from under the brows of a satyr. “Excuse my rising. I’m a
bit below the weather, as you see.”

Joe, secretly prepared for anything in the matter of his reception,
was impressed most favorably by such a greeting. Somehow the note of
cordiality was so exactly that of one man of the world to another,
that Joe was conscious of a subtle feeling of flattery. He was invited
to sit, and he sat on the extreme verge of a Sheraton masterpiece,
pensively twisting between his hands a brand-new bowler hat purchased
that morning en route to Bridport House.

“Sergeant Kelly,” said the Duke, speaking with a directness that Joe
admired, “I liked your letter. It was that of a sensible man.”

“Good of your Grace to say so,” said Joe, a nice mingling of dignity
and deference.

“I agree with you that the matter is extremely vexatious.”

Joe took a long breath. “It’s haggeravating, sir,” said he.

“Quite so,” said his Grace, with a whimsical smile. “But as a matter of
curiosity, may I ask what had led you to that conclusion?”

“Just this, sir.” Joe laid the new bowler hat on the carpet, squared
his shoulders and fixed the Duke with his eye. “The aristocracy’s
the aristocracy, the middle-class is the middle-class, and the lower
h’orders are the lower h’orders--there they are and you can’t alter
’em. Leastways that was the opinion of the Marquis.”

“I’m not sure that I know your friend,” said the Duke with charming
urbanity, “but I’m convinced his views are sound. If I read your letter
aright, you are as much opposed to the suggested alliance between your
daughter and my kinsman as I am myself.”

“That is so, your Grace. It simply won’t do.”

“I quite agree,” said the Duke, “but from your point of view--why won’t
it? I ask merely for information.”

“Why won’t it, sir?” said Joe, surprisedly. “Don’t I say the
aristocracy’s the aristocracy?”

“In other words you disapprove of them on principle?”

“No, sir, it’s because I respect ’em so highly,” said Joe, with a
simple largeness that bore no trace of the sycophant. “I’ve not
reggerlated the traffic at Hyde Park Corner all these years without
learning that it won’t do to keep on mixing things up in the way we’re
doing at present. Things are in a state of flux, as you might say.”

“Profoundly true,” said the Duke, with a fine appearance of gravity.
“And I have asked you to come here, Sergeant Kelly, to advise me in
a very delicate matter. In the first place, I assume that you have
withheld your consent to this ridiculous marriage.”

“That is so, your Grace. But the young parties are that headstrong
they may not respect their elders. I told the young gentleman what my
feeling was, and I told the girl, but I’m sorry to say they laughed at
me. Yes, sir, society is in a state of flux and no mistake.”

“Well, Sergeant Kelly, what’s to be done?”

“I should like your Grace to speak a word to the parties. Seemingly
they take no notice of me. But perhaps they might of you, sir.”

The Duke smiled and shook his head.

“Well, sir, they only laugh at me,” said Joe. “But with you it would be
different.” And then with admirable directness: “Why not see the girl
and give her your views in the matter? She’s very sensible and she’s
been well brought up.”

The Duke looked at his visitor steadily. If his Grace was in search of
_arrière pensée_, he failed to find a sign of it in that transparently
honest countenance.

“A bold suggestion,” he said, with a smile. “But I don’t know that I
have any particular aptitude for handling headstrong young women.”

Joe promptly rebutted the ducal modesty. “Your words would carry
weight, sir. She’s a girl who knows what’s what, I give you my word.”

The Duke could hardly keep from laughing outright at the sublime
seriousness of this old bobby. But at the same time curiosity stirred
him. What sort of a girl was this who owned such a genial grotesque
of a father? It would impinge on the domain of comic opera to instal
such a being as the future châtelaine of Bridport House. Still, as his
visitor shrewdly said, society was in a state of flux.

“My own belief is,” said Joe, “that she’s the best girl in England, and
if your Grace would set your point of view before her as you have set
it before me, I’m thinking she’d do her best to help us.”

The Duke was impressed by such candor, such openness, such simplicity.
After all, there was just a chance that things might take a more
hopeful turn.

“She’s not one to go where she’s not wanted, sir,” said Joe. “And my
belief is that if you have a little talk with her and let her know how
you feel about it, you may be spared a deal o’ trouble.”

“You really think that?” said the Duke with a sigh of relief.

“I do, sir. Leastways, if you ain’t, Joseph Kelly will be disappointed.”

Such disinterestedness was not exactly flattering, yet the Duke was
touched by it. Indeed, Sergeant Kelly’s sturdy common sense was so
reassuring that he was invited to have a cigar. At the request of his
host, he pressed the bell, one long and one short, and in the process
of time a servant appeared with a box of Coronas. Joe chose one, smelt
it, placed it to his ear and then put it sedately in his pocket.

“I’ll not smoke it now, sir,” he said urbanely. “I’ll keep it until I
can really enjoy it.”

He was graciously invited to take several. With an air of polite
deprecation he helped himself to three more. Then he realized that the
time had come to withdraw.

The parting was one of mutual esteem. If the girl would consent to pay
a visit to Bridport House, the Duke would see her gladly. But again his
Grace affirmed that he was not an optimist. Society _was_ in a state
of flux, he quite agreed, democracy was knocking at the gate and none
knew the next turn in the game. Still the Duke was not unmindful of
Sergeant Kelly’s remarkable disinterestedness, and took a cordial leave
of him, fully prepared to follow his advice in this affair of thorns.

As soon as the door had closed upon the dignified form of Sergeant
Kelly, the Duke lay back in his chair fighting a storm of laughter.
Cursed with a sense of humor, at all times a great handicap for such a
one as himself, its expression had seldom been less opportune or more
uncomfortable. For there was really nothing to laugh at in a matter of
this kind. The thing was too grimly serious.

Still, for the moment, this amateur of the human comedy was the victim
of a divided mind. He wanted to laugh until he ached over this solemn
policeman upholding the fabric of society.

“By gad, he’s right,” Albert John ruminated, as he dipped gout-ridden
fingers in his ravished cigar box. “Things _are_ in a state of flux.”
He cut off the end of a cigar. “My own view is that this monstrous
bluff which these poor fools have allowed some of us to put up since
the Conquest, more or less, will mighty soon be about our ears.
However,”--Albert John placed the cigar between his lips--“it hardly
does to say so.”

For a time this was the sum of his reflections. Then he pressed the
bell at his elbow and the servant reappeared.

“Ask Mr. Twalmley to be good enough to telephone to Mr. Dinneford. I
wish to see him at once.”



CHAPTER VII

A TRAGIC COIL


I

MARY, breakfasting late and at leisure, before her ride at eleven, had
propped the _Morning Post_ against the coffee-pot. Milly was arranging
roses in a blue bowl.

“I’m miserable!” Mary suddenly proclaimed. She had let her eyes stray
to the column devoted to marriage and the giving in marriage, and at
last she had flung the paper away from her.

“Get on with your breakfast,” said the practical Milly. “I’ve really no
patience with you.”

Mary rose from the table with big trouble in her face.

“You’re a gaby,” said Milly, scornfully. “If everybody was like you
there’d be no carrying on the world at all. You’re absurd. Mother is
quite annoyed with you, and so am I.”

“I’m simply wretched.” The tone was very far from that of the fine
resolute creature whom Milly adored.

The truth was Mary had been following a policy of drift and it was
beginning to tell upon her. Nearly a week had gone since the visit to
Laxton had disclosed a state of things which had trebly confounded
confusion. Besides, that ill-timed pilgrimage had given duty a sharper
point, a keener edge, but as yet she had not gathered the force of will
to meet the hard logic of the matter squarely.

In spite of a growing resolve to make an end of a situation that all
at once had become intolerable, she had weakly consented to ride
that morning with Jack as usual. So far he had proved the stronger,
no doubt because two factors of supreme importance were on his side.
One was the promise into which very incautiously she had let herself
be lured, to which he had ruthlessly held her, the other the simple
fact that she was deeply in love with him. It had been very perilous
to temporize, yet having been weak enough to do so, each passing day
tightened her bonds. The little scheme had failed. Laxton had caused
not the slightest change in his attitude; he was not the kind of man
to be influenced by things of that kind; only a simpleton like herself
would expect him to be! No, the plain truth was he was set more than
ever on not giving her up, and it was going to be a desperate business
to compel him. To make matters worse his attraction for her was great.
There was a force, a quality about him which she didn’t know how to
resist. When they were apart she made resolves which when they were
together she found herself unable to keep. The truth was, the cry of
nature was too strong.

Milly looked up from her roses to study a picture of distraction.

“You odd creature.” A toss of a sagacious head.

The charge was admitted frankly, freely, and fully.

“I don’t understand you in the least.” A wrinkling of a pert nose.

“I don’t understand myself.”

Milly looked at her wonderingly. “I really don’t. You are quite beyond
me. If you were actually afraid of these people, which I don’t for a
moment think you are, one might begin to see what’s at the back of your
absurd mind.”

“Why don’t you think I’m afraid of them?” Mary in spite of herself was
a little amused by the downrightness.

The question brought her right up against an eye of very honest
admiration.

“Because, Miss Lawrence, it simply isn’t in you to be afraid of
anybody.”

Princess Bedalia shook a rueful head. “You say that because you don’t
know all. I’m in a mortal funk of Bridport House.”

“That I won’t believe,” said the robust Milly. “And if a fit of
high-falutin’ sentiment, for which you’ll get not an ounce of credit,
causes you to throw away your happiness, and turn your life into a
sob-story, neither my mother nor I will ever forgive you, so there!”

“You seem to forget that I am the housekeeper’s niece.”

“As though it mattered.” The pert nose twitched furiously. “As though
it matters a row of little apples. You are yourself--your big and
splendid self. Any man is lucky to get you.”

But the large, long-lashed eyes were full of pain. “We look at things
so differently. I can’t explain what I mean or what I feel, but I want
to see the whole thing, if I can, as others see it.”

“We are the others--mother and I,” said Milly, stoutly. “But as we
are not titled snobs with Bridport House stamped on our notepaper, I
suppose we don’t count.”

“That’s not fair.” A curious look came into Mary’s face, which Milly
had noticed before and, for a reason she couldn’t explain, somehow
resented. “They have their point of view and it’s right that they
should have. Without it they wouldn’t be what they are, would they?”

“You speak as if they were better than other people.”

“Why, of course.”

“I shall begin to think you are as bad as they are,” Milly burst out
impatiently. “You are the oddest creature. I can understand your not
going where you are not wanted, but that’s no reason why you should
fight for the other side.”

“I want them to have fair play.”

“It’s more than they mean you to have, any way.”

“One oughtn’t to say that.” The tone had a quaint sternness, charming
to the ear, yet with a great power of affront for the soul of Milly.

“Miss Lawrence,” said that democrat, “you annoy me. If you go on like
this before mother she’ll shake you. The trouble with you”--a rather
fierce recourse to a cigarette--“is that you are a bit of a prig. You
must admit that you are a bit of a prig, aren’t you now?”

“More than a bit of one,” sighed Mary. And then the light of humor
broke over her perplexity. In the eyes of Milly this was her great
saving clause; and in spite of an ever-deepening annoyance with
her friend for the hay she was making of such amazingly brilliant
prospects, she could not help laughing at the comic look of her now.

“You are much too clever to take things so seriously,” said Milly. “You
are not the least bit of a prig in anything else, and that’s why you
made me so angry. Be sensible and follow your luck. Jack should know
far better than you. Besides, if you didn’t mean to keep your word, why
did you give it?”

This was a facer, as the candid Milly intended it to be.

“Because I was a fool.” At the moment that seemed the only possible
answer.


II

The argument had not gone farther when a rather strident “coo-ee”
ascending from the pavement below found its way through the open window.

“Diana, you are wanted.” The impulsive Milly ran on to the little
balcony to wave a hand of welcome to a young man in the street.

It was the intention, however, of the young man in the street, as soon
as he could find someone to look after his horses, to come up and have
a talk with Mary. To the quick-witted person to whom he made known
that resolve, he seemed much graver than usual. It hardly required any
special clairvoyance on the part of Milly to realize that something was
in the wind.

Three minutes later, Jack had found his way up and Milly had effaced
herself discreetly. This morning that warrior was not quite the
serenely humorous self whom his friends found so engaging. Recent
events had annoyed him, disquieted him, upset him generally, and the
previous afternoon they had culminated in a long and unsatisfactory
interview at Bridport House.

Those skilled in the signs might have told, from the young man’s
manner, that he had cast himself for a big thinking part. This morning
he was “all out” for diplomacy. He would like Mary to know that
his back was to the wall, and that he must be able to count on her
implicitly in the stern fight ahead; but the crux of the problem was,
and for that reason he felt such a great need of cunning, if he let
her know the full force and depth of the opposition the effect upon
her might be the reverse of what he intended. Even apart from the stab
to her pride, she was quite likely to make it a pretext for further
quixotism. Therefore, Mr. John Dinneford had decided to walk very
delicately indeed this morning.

His Grace, it appeared, had asked to see the lady in the case. Jack,
however, scenting peril in the request, had by no means consented
lightly to that. Diplomacy, assuming a very large D, had promptly
assured him that his kinsman and fiancée were far too much birds of a
feather; their method of looking at large issues was ominously alike.
Mary had developed what Jack called “the Aunt Sanderson viewpoint” to
an alarming degree. Aunt Sanderson, no doubt, had acquired it in the
first place from the fountain head; its authenticity therefore made it
the more perilous.

“Uncle Albert sends his compliments and hopes you’ll be kind enough
to go and see him.” The statement was made so casually that it was
felt to be a masterpiece of the non-committal. He would defy anyone to
tell from his tone how he had fought the old wretch, how he had tried
to outwit him, how he had done his damnedest to short-circuit a most
mischievous resolve.

“Now.” The diplomatist took her boldly by a very fine pair of
shoulders, and so made a violent end of the pause which had followed
the important announcement. “Whatever you do, be careful not to give
away the whole position. There’s a cunning old fox to deal with, and if
he finds the weak spot, we’re done.”

“You mean he thinks as I do?”

“I don’t say he does exactly, but, of course, he may. When you come to
Bridport House, you are up against all sorts of crassness.”

“Or common sense, whichever you choose to call it,” said the troubled
Mary.

“Don’t you go playing for them.” He shook the fine shoulders in a
masterful colonial manner. “If you do, I’ll never forgive you. Bridport
House can be trusted to take very good care of itself. We’ve got to
keep our own end going. If we have really made up our minds to get
married, no one has a right to prevent us, and it’s up to you to let
his Grace know that.”

Again came the look of trouble. “But suppose I don’t happen to think
so?”

“I think so for you. In fact, I think it so strongly that I intend to
answer for both.”

She could not help secretly admiring this cool audacity. At any rate,
it was the speech of a man who knew his own mind, and in spite of
herself it pleased her.

“Now, remember.” Once more the over-bold wooer resorted to physical
violence: “You simply can’t afford to enjoy the luxury of your fine
feelings in this scene of the comedy. As I say, he’s a cunning old fox
and he’ll play on them for all he’s worth.”

“But why should he?”

“Because he knows you are Mrs. Sanderson’s niece.”

“In his opinion that would make one the less likely to have them,
wouldn’t it?” She tried very hard to keep so much as a suspicion of
bitterness out of her tone, yet somehow it seemed almost impossible to
do that.

“He’s not exactly a fool. Nobody knows better than he that your Aunt
Sanderson is more royalist than the king. And my view is that he and
she have laid their heads together in order to work upon your scruples.”

“Pray, why shouldn’t they? Isn’t it right that they should?”

“There you go!” he said sternly. “Now, look here.” In the intensity of
the moment his face was almost touching hers. “I’m next in at Bridport
House, so this is my own private funeral. But I just want to say this.
A man can’t go knocking about the world in the way I have done without
getting through to certain things. And as soon as that happens one no
longer sees Bridport House at the angle at which it sees itself. White
marble and precedence were all very well in the days of Queen Victoria,
but they won’t build airships, you know.”

“I never heard of a duchess building airships.”

“It’s the duke who is going to do the building. The particular hobo
I’m figuring on has got to take a hand in all sorts of stunts at this
moment of the world’s progress which will make his distinguished
forbears turn in their graves, no doubt. It seems to me he’s got to do
a single on the big time, as they say in vaudeville, and the finest
girl in the western hemisphere must keep him up to his job.”

“‘Some’ talk,” said Mary, with a smile rather drawn and constrained.

“You see”--the force of his candor amused her considerably--“I’ve
drawn a big prize in the lottery, and if I let myself be robbed of it
by other people’s tomfool tricks, I’m a guy, a dead-beat, an out and
out dud.”

“But don’t you see,” she urged, laughing a little, although suffering
bitterly, “how cruel it would be for them, poor souls? We _must_ think
of them a little.”

“Why should they come in at all?”

“I really think they ought, poor dears. After all, they stand for
something.” She recalled their former talk on this vexed subject.

“What do they stand for?--that’s the point. They are an inbred lot, a
mass of conceit and silly prejudice. I’m sorry to give them away like
this, but, after all, they are only very distant relations to whom I
owe nothing, and they have a trick of annoying me unspeakably.”

“I won’t have you say such things.” The stern line of a truly adorable
mouth was a delight, a challenge. “You are one of them, whether you
want to be or whether you don’t, and it’s your duty to stand by them.
_Noblesse oblige_, you know.”

“And that means a scrupulous respect for the feelings of other people,
if it means anything. No, let us see things as they are and come down
to bedrock.” And as the Tenderfoot spoke after this manner, he took a
hand of hers in each of his in a fashion at once whimsical, delicate,
and loverlike. Somehow he had the power to put an enchantment upon her.
“You’ve got to marry me whatever happens.”

“Oh, don’t ask me to do that.” Black trouble was now in her eyes.
“Don’t ask me to go where I’m not wanted.”

“Certainly you shan’t. We can do without Bridport House, and if they
can do without us, by all means let ’em.”

“But they are in a cleft stick, aren’t they? If you insist, they will
simply have to climb down, and that’s why it would be cruel to make
them. Don’t be too hard upon them--_please_!” A sudden change of voice,
rich and surprising, held him like magic. “Somehow they don’t quite
seem to deserve it. They have their points. And they are really rather
big and fine if you see them as I do.”

“They are crass, conceited, narrow, ossified. They think the world was
made for ’em, instead of thinking they were made for the world. It’s
time they had a lesson. And you and I have got to teach ’em.” He took
her wrists and drew her to him. “We’ve got to larn ’em to be toads--you
and me.”

“On these grounds you command me!” The flash of glorious eyes was a
direct challenge.

“No, on these--you darling.” And he took her in his arms and held her
in a grip of iron.


III

“Please, please!”

Reluctantly he let her go--provisionally and on sufferance.

But there was something in her face that looked like fear. The
observant lover saw it at once, and the invincible lover tried to
dispel it.

“Why take it tragically?” he said. “It’s a thing to laugh at, really.”

She shook a solemn head. “We _must_ think of them--you must at any
rate. You are all they have, and you are bound to play for them as
well as you know how--aren’t you, my dear?” The soft fall of her voice
laid a siren’s spell upon him. His eyes glowed as he looked at her.

“No, I don’t see it in that way,” he said. “Somehow I can’t. It’s my
colonial outlook, I daresay--anyhow there it is--simply us two. The
bedrock of the matter is you and me? And when you get down to that,
other people don’t come in, do they?”

Again she shook a head rather woeful in its defiance. “Poor Aunt
Harriet came to me yesterday. I wish you could have seen her. This
means the end of the world for her. She almost went down on her knees
to implore me not to marry you.”

The Tenderfoot snorted with impatience. “That’s where this old
one-horse island gets me all the time. Things are all wrong here.
They’re positively medieval.”

“You forget”--the tone of the voice was stern dissent--“she’s been
thirty years a servant in the Family.”

“That should make her all the prouder to see her niece married to the
head of it.” He was determined to stand his ground.

“Yes, but she understands what it means to them. She has thought
herself into their skins; she lives and moves and has her being in
Bridport House. Dear soul, it makes me weep to think of her! She almost
forced me to give you up.”

“You can’t do that, not on grounds of that kind.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because I won’t let you.” She was bound to admire this masculine
decision. “Your Aunt Sanderson is a woman of fine character and Uncle
Albert has a great regard for her, but why let ourselves be sidetracked
by prejudice? You see this is the call of the blood, and--under
Providence!--it means the grafting of a very valuable new strain upon
a pretty effete one. I mean no disrespect to Bridport House, but look
what the system of intermarriage has done for it. From all one hears
poor Lyme was better out of the world than in it. And that parcel of
stupid women! And, of course, I should never have been here at all if
another couple of consumptive cousins hadn’t suddenly decided to hand
in their checks. So much for the feudal system, so much for inbreeding
and marrying to order. No, it won’t do!”

In spite of her own deep conviction, she could not hope to shake such
force and such sincerity. She was bound to admit the strength of his
case. But the power of his argument left her in a miserable dilemma,
from which there seemed but one means of escape. There must be no
half-measures.

“Let us be wise and make an end now,” she said very softly.

“It’s not playing fair if you do,” was the ruthless answer. “Besides,
as I say, Uncle Albert wants to see you.”

“I am quite sure it would be far better to end it all now.”

“You must go and see Uncle Albert before we decide upon anything,” he
said determinedly.

“I don’t mind doing that, if really he wishes it.” There was a queer
little note of reverence in her tone, which the Tenderfoot, having
intelligently anticipated, was inclined to resent as soon as he heard
it. “I don’t know why he should trouble himself with me, but I’ll go
as he asks me to. But whatever happens we can’t possibly get married,
unless----”

“Unless what?” he demanded sternly.

“Unless the head of the house gives a full and free consent, and of
course he’ll never do that.”

“It remains to be seen, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, no, it’s all so clear. Poor Aunt Harriet has made me realize that.
I never saw anyone so upset as she was yesterday; she nearly broke
down, poor dear. She has made me see that there is so much at stake for
them all, that it simply becomes one’s duty not to go on.”

“Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish!” The Tenderfoot suddenly became
tempestuous. “Mere parochialism, I assure you. I’ve been back six
months, and every day it strikes me more and more what a lot we’ve
got to learn. Our so-called social fabric is mainly bunkum. Half the
prejudice in these islands is a mere cloak for damnable incompetence.
Forgive my saying just what is in my mind, but this flunkeyism of
ours--try to keep the daggers out of your eyes, my charmer!--fairly
gets one all the time. In one form or another one’s always up against
it.”

“It isn’t flunkeyism at all.” The air of outrage was nothing less than
adorable.

“Let me finish----”

“Under protest!” Her face was aglow with the light of battle.

“It’s perfectly absurd to take a mere pompous stunt like Bridport House
at its own valuation.”

“I won’t have you vulgar--I won’t allow you to be vulgar!”

“Be it so, Miss Prim--but I don’t apologize. One’s uncles, cousins,
aunts, they are all alike, whether they are yours or mine. They
simply grovel before material greatness--the greatness that comes of
money--that begins and ends with money.”

“Don’t be rude, sir!” The stamp of a particularly smart riding boot,
and a flash of angry eyes were as barbs to this fiat.

“They are all so set on things that don’t matter a bit, that they lose
sight altogether of the one thing that is really important.”

“Pray, what is that?” The eyes held now a lurking, troubled smile; for
him at that moment, their fascination verged upon the tragic.

Suddenly both the slender wrists were seized by this forcible thinker.
“Why the time spirit, you charmer. And that just asks one simple
question. Do you love me--or do you not?”


IV

She tried to keep her eyes from his.

“You can’t hide the truth,” he cried triumphantly. “And if you think
I’m going to lose you for the sake of some stupid piece of prejudice
you don’t know what it means to live five years in God’s own country.”

She seemed to shrink into herself. “Don’t you see the impossibility of
the whole thing?” she gasped.

“Frankly, I don’t, or I wouldn’t be such a cad as to badger you. If
you marry me an effete strain is going to be your debtor. Just look
at them--poor devils! Look at the two who died untimely. That’s the
feudal system of marriage working to a logical conclusion. And if
I put it squarely to my kinsman, Albert John, who is by no means a
fool, he’d be the first to admit it. No, it doesn’t matter what your
arguments are, if you override the call of the blood sooner or later
there’s bound to be big trouble.”

The conviction of the tone, the urgency of the manner were indeed
hard to meet. From the only point of view that really mattered it was
impossible to gainsay him, and she was far too intelligent to try.
Suddenly she broke away from him and in a wretched state of indecision
and unhappiness flung herself into a chair.

“The whole thing’s as clear as daylight.” Pitilessly he followed up the
advantage he had won. “There’s really no need to state it. And once
more, to come down to bedrock, far better to make an end of Bridport
House and all that it stands for--just what it does stand for I have
not been able to make out--than that it should perpetuate a race of
inbred incompetents who are merely a fixed charge on the community.”

“Oh, you don’t see--you don’t see!” The words were rather feeble, and
rather wild, but just then they were all she could offer. Yet in spite
of herself, and in spite of the half-promise the intensely unhappy Aunt
Harriet had wrung from her on the previous afternoon, the clear-cut
determination of this young man, his force and his breadth, his
absolute conviction were beginning to tell heavily.

“You are going to Bridport House to have a word with my kinsman. And if
you’re true blue--and I know you are that--you will make him see honest
daylight. And it ought to be easy, because he has only to look at
you--the finest thing up to now that has found its way on to this old
planet, in order to realize that he’s right up against it.”

He knew his own mind and she didn’t know hers. Such a man was terribly
hard to resist.

“He says any morning at twelve. I suggest tomorrow.”

“You insist?” She was struggling helplessly in meshes of her own
weaving.

“I insist. And my last word is that if you let the old beast down us,
as of course he’ll try to do, I go back to B. C. and remain a single
man to the end of my days. And I’m not out for that, as long as there
is half a chance of something better. So that’s that.” In the style
of the great lover he laid a hand on each shoulder, looked into the
troubled eyes and kissed her. “And now, if you please, we will witch
the world with noble horsemanship.”



CHAPTER VIII

A BUSY MORNING


I

THE next morning was a busy one for his Grace, and it also marked a
tide in the affairs of Bridport House. Soon after ten the ball opened
with the inauspicious arrival of Lady Wargrave. The head of the Family
had just unfolded his newspaper and put on his spectacles when her
ladyship was announced.

As the redoubtable Charlotte entered the room, the hard glitter of her
eyes and the forward thrust of a dominant chin were ominous indeed.
Bitter experience made her brother only too keenly alive to these
portents.

Without any beating about the bush she came at once to the point.

“What’s this I hear, Johnnie? Sarah tells me you have revoked that
woman’s notice.”

“Woman!” temporized his Grace. “What woman?” The tone was velvet.

She glowered at him.

“There’s only one woman in this household, my friend.”

The Duke laid down his _Times_ with an air of extremely well assumed
indifference. Were the parish pump and the minor domesticities all she
could find to interest her, while all sorts of Radical infamies played
Old Harry with the British Constitution?

Lady Wargrave, however, was well inured to this familiar gambit.

“Come, Johnnie,” she said tartly, “don’t waste time. The matter’s too
serious. Sarah says you have asked Mrs. Sanderson to stay on.”

“Yes, I have asked her to be good enough to reconsider her decision,”
said his Grace in the slightly forensic manner of the gilded chamber.

“On what grounds, may one ask?”

“I merely put it to her”--he now began to choose each word with a
precision that made his sister writhe--“that she was indispensable to
the general comfort and well-being of a man as old and gout-ridden as
myself.”

“Did you, indeed!”

It was a facer. And yet it might have been foreseen. Perhaps the
ladies had been a little too elated by their _coup de main_; or, had
they assumed too confidently that at last they had made an end of a
shameless intriguer?

Yes, a facer. Charlotte could have slain her brother. He had given away
the whole position. It was the act of a traitor. In a voice shaken with
anger she proceeded in no measured terms to tell him what she thought
of him.

His Grace bore the tirade calmly and with fortitude. He had an instinct
for justice--long a source of inconvenience to its possessor!--which
now insisted that there was something to be said for the enemy point of
view. Still he might not have borne its presentment so patiently had
Charlotte not shown her usual cunning. “She did not speak for herself,”
she was careful to assure him, “but for the sake of the Family as a
whole.” The presence of this woman at Bridport House could no longer be
tolerated.

To this the Duke said little, but he committed himself to the statement
that Mrs. Sanderson was much maligned and that they all owed a great
deal to her devotion.

This was too much for Charlotte. She bubbled over. “You must be mad!”
Her voice was like the croak of a raven.

“Personally,” rejoined his mellifluous Grace, “I am particularly
grateful that she has consented to stay on.”

“You’re mad, my friend.”

“So are we all.” His Grace folded the _Times_ imperturbably.

Lady Wargrave was defeated. She abruptly decided to drop the subject.
However, she did not quit the room until one last bolt had been winged
at her adversary, yet in order to propel it she had to impose an iron
restraint on her feelings.

“Before I go”--she turned as she got to the door--“there’s something
else I should like to say. Jack’s mother is in town and is staying with
me. Like all the Parington’s she has plenty of sense. She will welcome
the Marjorie arrangement--thinks it quite providential--has told her
son so--and she looks to you as the head of the Family to see that it
doesn’t miscarry.”

Her brother’s ugly mouth and explosive eyes were not lost upon
Charlotte, but before he could reply she had made a strategic
retirement. Did these futile women expect him to play the matrimonial
agent? The mere suggestion was infuriating, yet well he knew the
extreme urgency of the matter. The whole situation called for great
delicacy. A combination of subtle finesse and iron will was needed if
the institution to which he pinned his faith was not to be shaken to
its foundations.


II

Lady Wargrave had gone but a few minutes when Jack arrived at Bridport
House. He had to inform his kinsman that Mary Lawrence would appear at
twelve o’clock.

The Duke was in a vile temper. Charlotte had fretted it already;
moreover, the disease from which he suffered had undermined it long
ago; and at the best of times the mere sight of this young Colonial,
with his wild ideas, was about as much as he could bear. However, he
was too astute a man and far too well found in the ways of his world
not to be able to mask his feelings on an occasion of this magnitude.
The fellow was a perpetual source of worry and annoyance, yet so much
was at stake that the Duke, in order to deal with him, summoned all the
bonhomie of a prospective father-in-law. If anything could have bridged
the gulf such tones of honey must surely have done so.

Jack, however, was in no mood to accept soft speeches, no matter how
flattering to the self-esteem of a raw Colonial! He was determined to
put all to the touch. These people must learn the limit of their power.
And as it was the Tenderfoot’s habit to leave nothing to chance he
began with the bold but simple declaration that nothing would induce
him to give up the finest girl in the country. And he hoped when Mary
appeared at twelve o’clock his kinsman would bear in mind that very
important fact.

Months ago his Grace had begun to despair of the rôle of the modern
Chesterfield. Even since the young ass had first reported himself at
Bridport House, very sound advice, based on intimate knowledge and
first-hand experience, had been lavished upon him. The best had been
done to correct the republican ideas he had gathered in the western
hemisphere. He lacked nothing in the way of counsel and precept. But
the seed had fallen on unreceptive soil, nay, on ground singularly
barren. From the first the novice had shown precious little inclination
to heed the fount of wisdom.

The Duke asked the young man to look at the matter in a common sense
way. He would have an extraordinarily difficult place to fill;
therefore, it was his clear duty to trust those who knew the ropes. The
lady of his choice was a case for experts. Special qualities, inherited
aptitudes were needed in the wife he married! Surely he must realize
that?

The Tenderfoot said bluntly that he did and that Mary Lawrence had them.

His Grace managed to hold a growing impatience in check. But the answer
of the novice had revealed such a confusion of ideas that it was hard
to treat it seriously.

“Unless a woman has been born to the thing and bred up in it, how can
she hope to be equal to the task?”

“Plenty of ’em are,” said the Tenderfoot. “Anyhow they seem to make a
pretty good bluff at it.”

His Grace shook a somber head.

“You can’t deny that the Upper Crust is always being recruited from the
people underneath.”

“Immensely to the detriment of the Constitution,” said his Grace
forensically.

“It won’t be so in this case,” said the Tenderfoot. “Any family is
devilish lucky that persuades Mary Lawrence to enter it. She’s a very
exceptional girl. And when you see her, sir, I’m sure you’ll say so.”

“A young woman of ability, no doubt.” The Duke was growing irritated
beyond measure, yet he was determined to give no hint of his frame of
mind. “These--these bohemians always are. But if you’ll allow me to say
so, the mere fact that she is ready to undertake responsibilities of
which she can know nothing proves the nature of her limitations.”

The hit was so palpable that Jack felt bound to counter it as well as
he could. But his eagerness to do so led him into a tragic blunder.
“That’s where you do her an injustice,” he said, not giving himself
time to weigh his words. “She didn’t know that she might have to be a
duchess when she promised to marry me.”

The folly of such a speech was apparent to the young man almost before
it was uttered. A sudden heightening of a concentrated gaze made him
curse his own damnable impetuosity. He saw at once that the admission
would be used against him; moreover, an intense desire that Mary should
have fair play led him into further pitfalls. “The odd thing is,” he
said in his blunderer’s way, “that she happens to see things here at
the angle at which you see them, sir. At least, I always tell her so.”

His kinsman smiled. “That gives us hope at any rate.” And he even
showed a glint of cheerfulness.

The Tenderfoot had a desire to bite off his tongue. He felt himself
floundering deeper and deeper into a morass. A sickening sensation
crept upon him that he had put himself at the mercy of this crafty old
Jesuit.

“Now, sir, don’t go taking an unfair advantage of anything I may
have told you.” The sheer impotence of such a speech served only to
emphasize his tragic folly.

By now there was a sinister light in the eyes of his Grace. The unlucky
Tenderfoot could hardly stifle a groan of vexation. Only a born idiot
would have taken pains to put such a weapon in the hands of the enemy!

Overcome by a sudden hopeless anger the young man rose from his chair
and fled the room. His course was not stayed until he had passed
headlong down the white marble staircase and out of doors into a golden
morning of July. For the next two hours he ranged the Park grass. It
was the only means he had of working off an irritation and self-disgust
that were almost unbearable.


III

Youth and inexperience might have put a weapon into the hand of his
Grace, yet when the clock on the chimneypiece struck twelve he was in
a very evil mood. The task before him was not at all to his taste; and
the more he considered it the less he liked the part he had now to play.

From various sources he had heard enough of the girl to stimulate his
curiosity. Apart from a lover’s hyperbole, of which he took no account
whatever, impartial observers, viewing her from afar, had commented
upon her; moreover, there was the extremely piquant nature of her
antecedents. She was a niece of the faithful Sanderson, she was also
the daughter of a police constable.

The Duke was apt to plume himself that his instinct for diplomacy
amounted to second nature. But, he ruefully reflected, his powers in
this direction were likely to be tested to the full. His task seemed
to bristle with difficulties. Bridport House was no place for a young
woman of this kind, but it was not going to be an easy matter to tell
her that in just so many words. The best he had to hope for was that
she would prove a person of common sense.

When at five minutes past the hour Miss Lawrence was announced, for one
reason or another, the Duke was in a state of inconvenient curiosity.
And as if the mere circumstances of the case did not themselves
suffice, a chain of odd and queer reflections chose to assail his mind
at the very moment of her appearance.

It was terribly inconvenient for his Grace to rise from his chair,
mainly for the reason that one swollen, snowbooted foot reclined
at ease on another. But with an effort that wrung him with pain he
contrived to stand up.

“Please don’t move,” said a voice deep, clear, and musical, while he
was still in the act of rising. “Oh, don’t--please!”

But without making any immediate reply the Duke poised himself as well
as he could on one foot, more or less in the manner of an emu, and
bowed rather grimly. The dignity of the whole proceeding was perhaps
slightly over-emphasized, it was almost as if he intended to overawe
his visitor with the note of the grand seigneur.

Whether this was the case or not the bow was returned; and slight as it
was, it had a dignity that matched his own. Also it was touched ever
so gently with humor. A pair of gravely-searching eyes met the hooded,
serious, half-ironical orbs of his Grace.

“Nice of you to come and see an invalid,” he said slowly, very slowly,
with a good deal of manner.

“A great pleasure,” she smiled from the topmost inch of her remarkable
height.

While these brief, and on his part decidedly painful maneuvers had
been going on, the man of the world had been busily seeking something
of which so far he had not been able to find a trace. In manner and
bearing there was not a flaw.

Already the expert’s eye had been struck by a look of distinction
that was extraordinary. She was undoubtedly handsome, nay, more than
handsome; she had the subtle look of race which gives to beauty a
_cachet_, a quality of permanence. Her height was beyond the common,
but every line of the long, slim frame was a thing of elegance, of
molded delicacy. She was perhaps a shade too thin, but it gave her an
indefinable style which charmed, in spite of himself, this shrewd,
instructed observer. Then her dress and her hat, her neat gloves and
boots, although they were models of reticence, were all touched by a
subtle air of fashion which seemed somehow to reflect their wearer.

The “Chorus Girl” was in the nature of a surprise. The Duke indicated
a chair, on the edge of which she perched, straight as a willow, her
chin held steadily, her amused eyes veiled with a becoming gravity.
As the Duke painfully reseated himself he felt a cool scrutiny upon
him. And that very quality of coolness was a little provocative. In
the circumstances of the case it had hardly a right to be there.
To himself it was most proper, but in this young woman, a police
constable’s daughter, who earned her living in the theater, a little
embarrassment of some kind would have been an added grace. If anything
however she had more composure than he; and in spite of the charm and
the power of a personality that was vivid yet clear-cut, he could not
help resenting the fact just a little.

When at last he had slowly resettled himself on his two chairs he
turned eyes of ironical power full upon her. Yes, she was amazingly
handsome, and she reminded him strangely of a face he had seen. “I
wonder if you know why I have asked you to be so kind as to come here,”
were the first words he spoke. And he seemed to weigh each one very
carefully before he uttered it.

“I think I do, at least I think I may guess.” The note of absolute
frankness was so much more than he had a right to look for that it
pleased him more than it need have done.

“Well?” he said, with a gentleness in his voice of which he was not
aware.

“I’m afraid I’ve been causing a lot of trouble.” The tone of regret
was so perfectly sincere that it threw him off his guard. He had not
expected this, nay, he had looked for something totally different. The
girl was a lady, no matter what her private circumstances might be, and
with a sudden deep annoyance he felt that it was going to be supremely
difficult to say in just so many words what he had to say.

To his relief, however, she seemed with the _flair_ of her sex at once
to divine his difficulty. This splendid-looking old man, every inch
of whom was grand seigneur, poor old snowboot included! was already
asking mutely for her help in a situation that she knew he must
dislike intensely. In his odd silence, in the defensive arrogance of
his manner there was appeal to her own fineness. She could not help
feeling an instinctive sympathy with this old grandee, who at the very
outset was finding himself unequal to the task imposed upon him by the
circumstances of the case.

They entered on a long pause, and it was left to her to break it.

“I didn’t know when I promised to marry Jack that he would be the next
Duke of Bridport,” she said very slowly at last.

The simple speech was intended to help him, a fact of which he was well
aware. And with a sense of acute annoyance he felt a latent chivalry
begin to stir him; it was a chord that she, of all people, had no right
to touch.

“Didn’t you?” he said; and in the grip of this new emotion it would
have been not unpleasant to add “My dear.”

“Of course I’m much to blame,” she went on, encouraged by his tone. “I
realize that one ought to have made inquiries.”

He was clearly puzzled. From under heavily knitted brows his keen eyes
peered at her. “But why?” An instinct for fair play framed the question
on her behalf.

A note of pain entered the charming voice. “Oh, one ought,” she said.
“It was one’s duty to know who and what he was and all about him.”

“Forgive me if I don’t altogether agree.” In spite of himself he was
being conquered by this largeness and magnanimity. So fully was he
prepared for something else that he was now rather at a loss. “In any
case,” he said, “the fault hardly seems to be yours.”

“It is kind of you to say that.” A pair of wide eyes, long-lashed and
luminous, which seemed oddly familiar, raked him with a wonderful
candor. “But I seem to be giving enormous trouble to others--trouble it
would have been easy to spare them.”

Again his Grace dissented. Surprise was growing, along with that other,
that even more inconvenient emotion which was now driving him hard.

“Don’t overlook your own side of the case,” he was constrained to say.

“Oh, yes, there’s that--but one doesn’t like to insist on it.”

“Why not?”

“The other is so much more important.”

She felt his deep eyes searching hers, but except a little veiled
amusement, they had nothing to conceal.

“I am by no means sure that it is.” To his own clear annoyance, the
fatal instinct for justice began to take a hand in his overthrow. “As
the matter has been represented to me there is no doubt, if you took it
to a court of law, that you would get substantial damages.”

“As if one could!” She suddenly crimsoned.

“If I have hurt you in any way, I beg your pardon,” he said at once
with a simple humility for which she honored him. “After all, if you
decide not to marry my relation you give up a position which most
people allow to be exceptional.”

“Yes--but if one has never aspired to it!”

He grew more puzzled.

“Can you afford to be so fastidious?--if you don’t think the question
impertinent?”

“I have my living to earn,” she said very simply, “but of course I
don’t want that to enter into the case.”

“Naturally. Of course. Let me put another question--if it is not
impertinent?” The eyes of the Duke had now a grave amusement, but they
had also something else. “I suppose you care a good deal for this young
man?”

She simply stared at him in a kind of bewilderment.

Such an answer, unexpectedly swift, nobly complete, seemed to
disconcert him a little.

“And--and without a word you give him up for the sake of other people?”

“Yes--if they insist upon it.”

“If they insist upon it!” He shook his head at her in rather uneasy
surprise.

“I have told Jack that I cannot marry him unless he has your full
consent.”

Again the wide gray eyes looked out fearlessly upon the rather
bewildered gentleman. They could hardly refrain from a smile at his
growing perplexity. But there was something other than perplexity
in his tone when at last he said, “You know of course that I cannot
possibly give it.”

“Of course not.”

[Illustration: “You give up your young man--simply because of that?”]

The unhesitating reply seemed to increase his surprise. This girl was
taking him into deeper places than he had ever been in before. He
shook his head at her in a whimsical fashion which she thought quite
charming. “It hardly does, you know, to be too bright and good for
human nature’s daily food,” he said with a softness in his deep voice,
which was enchanting.

“Oh, I’m very far from being that.” She smiled and shook her head. “I
won’t own that I’m as bad as all that--at least I hope I’m not.”

“But if you insist on being so uncommonly self-sacrificing, you’re in
danger, aren’t you?”

“One can’t call it self-sacrifice altogether.”

“Afraid of being bored, eh?”

“I could never be bored with Jack,” she said gravely. “But I don’t see
why one should pat oneself on the back for trying to live up to one’s
principles.”

“Principles! May I ask what principles are involved in a case of this
kind?”

“‘Do unto others as you would be done by.’ It’s rather priggish, I
admit, but it’s a splendid motto, if only one is equal to it. As a rule
it is much too much for me, but in this case I want to do my best to
live up to it.”

“There you go again.” The old man shook an amused finger at her. “Why
it’s altruism, there’s no other word for it.”

“It’s common sense--if one is able to think through to it.”

“And that is why,” he said, with almost the air of a father, “you give
up your young man--simply because of that?”

She nodded. But her smile was rather drawn.

“Tell me, Miss Lawrence”--the curiosity of his Grace was mounting to a
pitch that enabled him to match her frankness with his own--“why are
you so sure that you will be unacceptable here?”

“It stands to reason, I’m afraid. If I lived at Bridport House and the
future head of the Family married the housekeeper’s niece, I should be
bound to look on it as a perfectly hopeless arrangement.”

He honored this candor. Choosing his words with great delicacy, he
could but pay homage to such clear-sighted honesty. “I only hope you
will not blame us too much,” he said finally, with an odd change of
voice.

“I don’t blame you at all. You are as you are. If I lived here I am
sure those would be my feelings.”

The old man was touched by this generosity. Lest he should overrate it,
however, she added quickly with a flash of pride, “Besides, I should
simply hate to go where I was not wanted.”

Patrician to the bone, he admired that, too. Every inch of her rang
true. Somehow it had become terribly difficult to treat her in the
only way the circumstances permitted. But no matter what his private
feelings, he must hold them in check.

“Well, I think, Miss Lawrence,” he said, with a return to the dryness
of the man of the world, “you ought to congratulate yourself that you
don’t live here.” But suddenly his voice trailed off. “You would not
be half so fine as you are”--after all, he couldn’t conceal that a
deeply-stirred old man was speaking--“had you been born and bred in a
hot-house.”

She flushed at the unexpected words. Quite suddenly her eyes brimmed
with tears.

“If I have said anything that wounds I humbly apologize,” he said, with
a gentleness that to her was adorable.

“Oh, no! It is only that I had not expected to have such a compliment
paid me.”

“Well, it’s a sincere one.” As he looked at her strange thoughts came
into his mind; his voice began to shake in a queer way. “And it is
paid you by an old man who is not very wise and not very happy.” As
he continued to look at her his voice underwent further surprising
changes. “I wish we could have had you with us. There is not one of us
here fit to tie your shoe-lace, my dear.”

Such a speech gave pain rather than pleasure. She saw him a feudal
chieftain, the head of a sacred order. Was it quite fit and proper that
he should speak in that way to the humblest of his vassals? She would
never be able to forget his words, but in that room, with the spirit of
place enfolding her like some exquisite garment, she could almost have
wished that they had not been uttered.

Suddenly she rose to go. As he regarded her in all the salient
perfection of mind and mansion, it seemed too bitterly ironical that
he should bar the door against her. Why were they not on their knees
thanking heaven for such a creature!

“You must forgive us, even if Fate is not likely to,” he said, thinking
aloud.

“Please don’t let us look at it in that way,” was the quick rejoinder.
“We all have our places in the world. And, after all, one ought to
remember that it is very much easier to be Mary Lawrence than to be
Duchess of Bridport.”

The old man shook his head dolefully, and then, in spite of her earnest
prayer that he should stay as he was, he rose with a great effort to
say good-by. The deeply-lined face was a complex of many emotions as
he did so.

In the very act of taking leave, her eyes, magnetized by the room
itself, strayed round it almost wistfully. Somehow it meant so much
that they hardly knew how to tear themselves away. Involuntarily the
Duke’s eyes followed hers to a masterpiece among masterpieces on
the farther wall. He could trace all that was in her mind, and the
knowledge seemed to increase his pain and his perplexity.

“There’s something wonderful in this room,” she said, half to herself.
“Something one can’t put into words. It’s like nothing else. I suppose
it’s a kind of harmony.”

The Duke didn’t speak, but slowly brought back his eyes to look at her.
His favorite room held treasures of many kinds, yet as he well knew
he was wantonly casting away a gem rarer than any in his collection.
His eyes were upon a noble profile instinct with the dignity of an old
race. Here was artistry surer, even more exquisite than Corot’s. He
could not repress a sigh of vexation.

Unwilling to part with her, he still detained her even when she had
turned to go. “One moment, Miss Lawrence,” he said. “Do these things
speak to you?” Near his elbow was a wonderful cabinet of Chinese
lacquer which housed a collection of old French snuffboxes. He opened
it for her inspection, and with a little air of connoisseurship she
gazed at the rarities within.

“They _are_ lovely,” she said eagerly.

“Honor me by choosing one as a token of my gratitude.”

She hesitated to take him at his word, but he was so much in earnest
that it would have seemed unkind to refuse.

“May I choose any one of them?”

“Please. And I hope you will do me the honor of choosing the best.”

Put on her mettle she brought instinct rather than knowledge to bear on
a fine collection, and chose a charming Louis Quinze.

“You have a _flair_,” said the Duke, laughing. “That is the one. I am
so glad you found it. I should not like you to have less than the best.
Good-by!” Again he took her hand and his voice had a father’s affection
in it. Then he pressed the bell, opened the door, and ushered her into
the care of a servant with an air of solicitude which she felt to be
quite extraordinary. As he did so he apologized with a humility that
seemed almost excessive for his inability to accompany her downstairs.


IV

As soon as the girl had gone, the Duke returned painfully to his
chair. He was now the prey of very odd sensations, and they began to
crystallize at once into emotion as deep as any he had ever felt.
Something had happened at this interview which left him now with a
feeling of numb surprise. The entrance of this girl into that room had
brought something into his life, her going away had taken something
out of it. Almost in the act of meeting a subtle bond had seemed to
arise between them. It was as if each had a sixth sense in regard to
the other. Their minds had marched so perfectly together that it was
hard to realize that this was the first time they had met. This rare
creature had touched cords which had long been forgotten, even had
they been known to exist, in the slightly dehumanized thing he called
himself.

Shaken as he had never been in his life, his mind was held by the
thought of her long after she had gone. Mystified, disconcerted,
rather forlorn, a harrowing idea was beginning to torment him. At
last he could bear it no longer. Rising from his chair with a stifled
impatience, he made his way out of the room leaning heavily upon his
stick. He went along the corridor as far as the head of the central
staircase. Here he stood a long while in contemplation of a large,
rather florid picture by Lawrence. The subject was a young woman of
distinguished beauty, a portrait of his famous grandmother, the wife
of Bridport’s second duke. Apart from her appearance, which had been
greatly celebrated, she had had a reputation for wit and charm; her
memoirs of the ’Thirties had long taken rank as a classic; and no
annals of the time were complete without the mention of her name.

The prey of some very unhappy thoughts, the Duke stood long immersed in
the picture before him. The resemblance he sought to trace had grown so
plain that it provoked a shiver. The line of the cheek, the shape of
the eyes, the curve of the chin, the poise of the head on the long and
slender throat were identical with the living replica he had just seen.

At last he returned to his room and rang the bell. To the servant who
answered it, he said: “Ask Mrs. Sanderson to come to me.”

The summons was promptly obeyed. But as Harriet came into the room she
bore a small tray containing a wine-glass, a teaspoon, and a bottle of
medicine. At the sight of these the Duke made a grimace like a petulant
child.

“I am sure the new medicine does you a great deal of good.” The tone
was quite maternal in its tenderness.

“You think so?” The words were dubious; all the same her voice and look
seemed to have an odd power of reassurance.

“Oh, yes, I think there can be no doubt of it.” She measured the dose
gravely.

“Well, I take your word, I take your word.” And he drank the bitter
draught.

She put back the glass on the tray, but as she was about to leave the
room she was abruptly detained. “Don’t go,” he said. “Sit and let us
talk a little.”

She sat down.

“Did you know,” he said, and the unexpectedness of the words threw her
off her guard, “that I have just had a visit from--from your niece?”

“Mary!” She clutched her dress. “Mary--here!” A sudden tide of crimson
flowed in the startled face. But the next instant it had grown white.
“No, I didn’t know,” she said. And then, her soul in her eyes, she
waited for his next words.

There was one stifling moment of silence, then he said: “Of course you
know what is in my mind?”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

While he searched his memory silence came again, and now it had the
power to hurt them both. “Haven’t you always led me to believe,” he
said in a voice of curious intensity, “that she was a nurse in a
hospital?”

Harriet did not reply at once. But at last she said, “Yes, I have
always wanted you to think so.”

He looked at her white face, and suddenly checked the words that rose
to his tongue. Whatever those may have been, there was an immense
solicitude in his manner when he spoke again. “It is not for me,” he
said, “to question anything you may have said, or anything you may have
done.”

“I did everything I could to carry out your wishes.” Her voice trembled
painfully. “And I--I----”

“And you didn’t like to tell me,” he said gently.

“Yes. I couldn’t bear to tell you that she had insisted on choosing the
life of all others you would have the least desired for her.”

“Don’t think that I complain,” he said. “I know you must have had a
good reason. You have always been very considerate. But it looks as if
the stars in their courses have managed to play a scurvy trick.”

“That they have!” Once more the swift color flowed over a fine face.

Suddenly she pressed her fingers to her eyelids to repress the quick
tears.

“Never mind,” he said. “The gods have been a little too much for us,
but things might have been worse.”

Tearfully she agreed.

“The other day when I talked with that excellent fellow, your
brother-in-law, it didn’t occur to me who this girl really was. I don’t
think I was ever told that she had been adopted by your family.”

“No,” said Harriet, very simply.

“Do your friends know the truth of the matter?”

“I don’t think they have a suspicion--not of the real truth,” she said
slowly.

“Has anyone?”

“Not a soul that I know of.”

“The girl herself, is she also in ignorance?”

“She knows, I believe, that she is only the adopted child of my sister
and her husband, but I don’t think she has gone at all deeply into the
matter.”

“Tell me this”--the mere effort of speech seemed to cost him infinite
pain--“do you think there is a means open to anyone of learning the
truth at this time of day?”

“My brother-in-law knew from the first that the child was mine, but I
feel sure the real truth can never come out now.”

Impassive as he was, a shade of evident relief came into his face.
But the look of strain in his eyes deepened to actual pain as he
said, “No doubt we ought to be glad that it is so. At the same time,
I think you’ll agree, that we have a duty to face which may prove
extraordinarily difficult.”

Harriet did not speak, but suddenly she bent her head in a quivering
assent.

“You see,” he said slowly, “we can no longer burke the fact that
something is due to the girl herself.”

Harriet’s eyes suddenly filled with an intensity of suffering he could
not bear to look at.

“You know the position, of course?” he said gently, after a pause.

“I know she has promised to marry Mr. Dinneford.”

“But only if I give my consent.”

“I am sure that is right.” A note of relief came into her tone. “She
has done exactly as one could have wished.”

“If one could only see the thing as clearly as you do!” he said with a
reluctant shake of the head. “At any rate let us try to be as just as
the circumstances will allow us to be.”

“Can we hope to do justice and not hurt other people?”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, as things are. But for a moment let us
try to consider the whole matter from her point of view. Perhaps you’ll
allow me to say at once that the course you insisted on taking seems
to have justified itself completely. She is a girl to be proud of; and
she appears to be living a happy and useful life. One sees now how wise
it was not to take half-measures. She has been allowed to fight her
own battle with the gifts of the good God, and the result does your
foresight the highest credit.”

The judicial words, very simply uttered, brought a flood of color to
the pale cheeks. But listening with bent head, she did not look up, nor
did she say a word in reply.

“The heroic method has proved to be the right one, but I think now
we have to be careful not to take any unfair advantage of that fact.
It’s a terribly difficult case, but as far as we can we ought not to
overlook what is due to the girl herself.”

“But the others!” said Harriet with fear in her eyes.

“Yes, a terribly difficult situation.” The Duke sighed. “But for the
moment let us try to see the matter simply as it affects her. She has
been made to suffer a grievous injustice so that others might benefit.
The question is, must she still be made to sacrifice herself?”

Harriet had no answer to give. The long silence which followed was
almost unendurable in its intensity.

“Well?” he said at last, as he looked at her white face.

She shook her head mutely, unable to speak, unable to meet his eyes.
Tears crept again along her eyelids.

“You wish me to decide?”

“Yes,” she said at last.

He looked at her now with the light of pity in his face. Not at
once did he speak, and when he did it was with a clear, a too-clear
perception of the impotence of his words.

“The truth is,” he said, “the problem is beyond me.”



CHAPTER IX

AN INTERLUDE


I

As Mary made her way from Bridport House across the Park, in the
direction of Broad Place and luncheon, it came suddenly upon her
that she was in a state of the most abject misery she had ever been
in. It was a gorgeous midday of July, but the world had ceased to be
habitable. She had come up against a blank wall. At that moment there
was nothing in life to make it worth while.

In the ordeal she had just passed through a fierce pride had forbade
her to show one glimpse of her real feelings. She had carried off the
whole scene with almost an air of comedy, for she was determined that
“those people” should not realize what wounds it was in their power to
deal. But Dame Nature, now that she had the high-mettled creature to
herself, was having something to say to her on the matter. A price was
being exacted for these heroics and for this stoicism.

The Duke had left an impression of fine chivalry on a perceptive mind,
but in spite of that, now they were no longer face to face, her deepest
feeling was an angry resentment. Life was not playing fair. In the
course of a strenuous three and twenty years she had rubbed shoulders
with all sorts of men and women, but in spite of an honest catholicity
of outlook, she had come to the conclusion already that there was only
one kind for which she had any real use. It was not a question of
loaves and fishes, or a puerile snobbishness; it was simply that one
of the deepest instincts she had, the sense of the artist, demanded a
setting.

Walking along, blind to everything but the misery of this reaction,
she was suddenly brought up short, thrown as it were against the
world in its concrete reality, by the knowledge that a pair of eyes
was devouring her. Cutting across her path at an acute angle as he
converged upon her from the direction of Kensington Gardens was a man
wholly absorbed in the occupation of looking at her. With a start she
awoke to the force of his gaze; her subconscious perception of it was
so strong that it even aroused a tacit hostility.

Who was this large, lean, top-hatted creature striding towards her in a
pair of aggressively checked trousers? Where had she seen that freckled
face, those bold eyes, those prognathous jaws? As he came on he caught
her gaze and fixed it; but she dropped her eyes at once, adroitly
giving him only the line of her cheek to look at. Whoever he was, he
was not a gentleman!

In the next moment, however, she had begun to realize that he was
outside and beyond any trite symbol of that kind. He was less a man
than a natural force; moreover, as soon as he had passed her, he
stopped abruptly and turned round to follow her with his eyes. She did
not need to turn round herself to verify her sense of the act, even had
personal dignity not intervened to prevent her.

She felt annoyed. Again she asked herself who he could be. When and
where had she seen him? And then a light broke. It may have been the
checked trousers, it may have been the prognathous jaws, but her mind
was suddenly flung back upon that recent visit to Beaconsfield Villas,
and a certain unforgettable scene. This slightly fantastic figure was
no less a person than Lady Muriel’s fiancé, the new Home Secretary.


II

Crossing to Broad Place she could not check a laugh. Wounded, angry,
humiliated by the pressure of a recent event, there still lurked in her
a true appreciation of the human comedy. What a pill for Bridport House
to have to swallow! It was poetic justice that the pride which strained
at a gnat so harmless as herself should have to gulp a real live camel
in the person of the Right Honorable Gentleman.

But the laugh, after all, was hollow. Tears of vexation leaped to her
eyes. And they owed more to the perception of her own inadequacy in
this smarting hour than to the act of Fate. “Wretch that I am!” She was
ready to chasten herself with scorpions as she crossed the familiar
path into Albert Gate.

Within a very few yards were the loyal, warm-hearted friends of her
own orbit. And there, alas! was the rub. Her own orbit could not
satisfy her now. She craved something that all their kindness, their
cheerfulness, their frank affection could not give. “Just common or
garden snobbishness, my dear, that’s the nature of your complaint,”
whispered a monitor within. “You are no better than anyone else when
you are invited to call on a duke in Mount Street.”

That might be true, or it might not, but sore and rebellious as she
was, she was strongly inclined to dispute the verdict. After all, her
feeling went infinitely deeper. It was futile, however, to analyze it
now. This was not the place nor was there present opportunity. She
glanced at the watch on her wrist. It was one o’clock.

The watch on her wrist was as hostile as everything else in her
little world just now. Even one o’clock had a sharp sting of its own.
“Don’t be late for lunch,” had been Milly’s parting words. “Charley
Cheesewright is coming. And he’s dying to meet you.”

She managed to navigate the vortex of Knightsbridge without knowing
that she did so; and then, all at once, she realized that she was
within twenty yards of Victoria Mansions, and that a rather overdressed
young man was a few yards ahead.

With a feeling akin to nausea she pulled up in time to watch this
short, squat figure disappear within the precincts of Number Five. For
a reason she couldn’t explain she was quite sure that this was none
other than Mr. Charles Cheesewright. She didn’t know him; if a back
view meant anything she had no wish to know him; certainly she had no
desire to make his acquaintance going up in the lift.

She hung back a discreet three minutes on the pavement of Broad Place
before daring to enter the vestibule of Number Five, Victoria Mansions.
By then the coast was clear; Mr. Charles Cheesewright, apparently, had
gone up in the Otis elevator. And she stood on the mat, drawn and
tense, a figure of tragedy, waiting for the Otis elevator to come down
again.


III

At last the Otis elevator came down and she went up in it. And then
confronted by the door of the flat, she peered through the glass panel
to make sure that Mr. Charles Cheesewright was not standing the other
side of it; then she opened it with a furtive key, slipped in, and
stole past the half-open door of the tiny drawing-room through which
came the penetrating accents of Mrs. Wren attuned to the reception of
“company.”

Once in her own room her first act was to look in the glass with a
lurking sense of horror; the second was to decide, which she instantly
did, that it would be quite impossible to meet Mr. Cheesewright, and
that she didn’t need any luncheon.

By the time she had taken off her hat and made herself a little more
presentable, both these decisions had grown immutable. She could not
meet Mr. Cheesewright, she did _not_ want any luncheon. All she needed
was complete solitude, and perhaps a cigarette. But all too soon was
she ravished of even these modest requirements. Milly burst suddenly
into the room.

“Twenty past one!” she cried reproachfully. “I didn’t hear you come in.
We are waiting for you.”

Mary saw that her plan must be given up. If she really meant to forgo a
meal and the honor of Mr. Cheesewright’s acquaintance there would have
to be a satisfactory explanation. But what explanation could she make?
Certainly none that would conceal the truth. And at that moment she
wished almost savagely for it to be concealed. Confronted by a choice
of evils she made a dash at the less.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll be with you in one minute.”

Sheer pride forced her tone to a superhuman lightness, verging on
gayety. But there was a formidable member of her sex to deal with. In
spite of that heroic note, Milly was not to be taken in; she looked
at the dissembler with eyes that saw a great deal too much. “I expect
you’ve taken a pretty bad toss, my fine lady,” they seemed to say.

“I’ll be with you in one minute,” repeated Mary, with burning cheeks
and a beating heart. But Milly continued to stare. Suddenly she laid
impulsive hands on her shoulders and gave her a kiss.

Mary didn’t like kissing. Her friend’s proneness to the habit always
irritated her secretly; this present indulgence in it brought Mary as
near to active dislike as it would have been possible for her to get.

Milly went back to the drawing-room seething with an excited curiosity.
Before she could make up her mind to follow Mary stood a long moment in
black despair; and then “biting on the bullet,” as the soldiers say,
she went to join the others.

“Naughty girl!” was the arch reception of Mrs. Wren. “I’m very cross.
Didn’t you promise not to be late? But if you must call before lunch
on dukes in Park Lane I suppose people like us will have to take the
consequences.”

Mary would gladly have given a year’s salary for the head of Mrs. Wren
on a charger, but Milly intervened neatly with the presentation of Mr.
Cheesewright, in itself a little masterpiece of quiet humor.

Princess Bedalia’s reception of Mr. Charles Cheesewright was perhaps
the severest test to which her sterling goodness had been exposed.
Every nerve was on edge. She wanted to slay Mr. Cheesewright, braided
coat, turquoise tie-pin, diamond sleeve links, immaculate coiffure and
all. But for the sake of Milly she dragooned her feelings to the pitch
of bowing quite charmingly.

Luncheon, after all, was not so bad. Mrs. Wren was frankly at her worst
and most tactless; her one idea was to impress the guest, to let him
see that money was not everything, and that judged by her standards
he was a most ordinary young man. For such a democrat her table talk
was surprisingly full of Debrett. It was all very lacerating, but Mary
continued to play up as well as she knew how. And by the time the meal
was half over the reward of pure unselfishness came to her in the shape
of a quite unexpected liking for Mr. Charles Cheesewright.

By all the rules of the game, that is, if mere outward appearance went
for anything, Mr. Cheesewright should have been insufferable. But at
close quarters, with curried prawns and chablis before him, and a very
fine girl opposite, he was nothing of the kind. Mrs. Wren had confided
to Mary a week ago, “that she was afraid from what she had heard, that
he was not out of the top drawer.” The statement had been provoked by
an odious comparison with Wrexham, “who,” declared Milly in her most
aboriginal manner, “had, as far as mother was concerned, simply queered
the pitch for everybody.”

Perhaps in the eyes of Mary it was Mr. Cheesewright’s supreme merit
that, in spite of his clothes, he was modestly content to be his
humble self. In every way he was a very middling young man. But he
knew that he was and, in Mary’s opinion, that somehow saved him from
being something worse. Mrs. Wren was far from agreeing. His face and
form were plebeian, but there was no reason why he should take them
lying down. He was Eton and Cambridge certainly--or was it Harrow and
Oxford?--anyhow an adequate expression of a sound convention; and it
was for that reason no doubt that all through a particularly trying
meal he kept up his end bravely. In fact, he did so well that he earned
the gratitude of the young woman opposite, although he was far from
suspecting that he had done anything of the kind.

She had begun by counting the minutes and in looking ahead to the
time when she could retire with her wounds. But there was a peculiar
virtue in the meal; at any rate it agreed so well with the natural
constitution of Mr. Charles Cheesewright that he was able to relieve
the tension of the little dining-room without knowing it. He wasn’t
brilliant, certainly, but he talked plainly, sanely, modestly about the
things that mattered; the Brodotsky Venus at the Portman Gallery, the
miserable performance of Harrow, the new play at the Imperial, the sure
defeat of America’s Big Four, Mr. Jarvey’s new novel, the prospect of
the Kaiser lifting the pot at Cowes, and other matters of international
importance, so that by the time coffee and crême-de-menthe had rounded
up the meal, Mary was inclined to feel sorry that it was at an end.

When a few minutes before three Mr. Cheesewright went his way--to have
a net at Lord’s Cricket Ground--the famous Princess Bedalia felt a pang
of regret. He had played a pretty good innings already, even if he
didn’t seem to know it. And the honest shake of her hand did its best
to tell him so.


IV

As soon as Mr. Cheesewright had gone, Mary prepared to go too. But
before she could retire Milly and her mother were at her. Both had
a pretty shrewd suspicion that she had been making a sorry mess of
things at Bridport House. These ladies, however, were so cunning, that
they did not show their hands at once. To begin with, they exchanged
a glance full of meaning, and then as Mary got up and made for the
door, Mrs. Wren commanded her to sit down again and tell them what she
thought of Charley. That was guile. She didn’t in the least want to
know what anyone thought of Charley; besides, it would have been quite
possible for Mary to deliver her verdict even as she stood with the
knob of the door in her hand.

“I like him--_immensely_!” she said, returning to the sofa in deference
to Mrs. Wren.

Mother and daughter looked at her searchingly, with eyes that
questioned.

“I like him--immensely!” she repeated.

“He’s not the kind of man,” said Mrs. Wren with an air of vexation, “I
should have written home about when I was a girl.”

“What’s wrong with him?” said Milly, bridling. “Why do you always crab
him, mother?”

“I--crab him!” Mrs. Wren’s air was the perfection of injured innocence.
“Nothing of the kind. It isn’t his fault he’s not a blue blood--and
if my lord of Wrexham’s form is anything to go by, he may be none the
worse for that.”

“Yes, of course, as far as you are concerned Wrexham’s the fly in the
ointment,” said Milly with a sudden flutter of anger.

Mary would have given much to escape, but to have fled with thunder and
forked lightning in the air would have been an act of cowardice, not to
say treachery.

The truth was Mrs. Wren still had other views for Milly, but up till
now Wrexham had disappointed her. Moreover, both these clear-headed and
extremely practical ladies were inclined to think he would continue to
do so. For one thing he was under the thumb of his family, who were as
hostile as they could be; again Wrexham was a bit of a weakling who
didn’t quite know his own mind. Certainly he had a regard for Milly,
but whether it would enable him to wear a martyr’s crown was very
doubtful. Milly, at any rate, had allowed a second Richmond to enter
the field of her affections, in the shape of Mr. Charles Cheesewright,
the sole inheritor of Cheesewright’s Mixture, a young man of obscure
antecedents but of considerable wealth. So far Mr. Cheesewright had
received small encouragement from Mrs. Wren, and Milly herself had been
very guarded in her attitude; yet it was as plain as could be that
one of the more expensive of the public schools and one of the older
universities had made a little gentleman of Mr. Cheesewright. “But,”
as Milly said, “the truth was Wrexham had simply queered the pitch for
everybody.”

Mary, as the friend of all parties, including Mr. Cheesewright, who had
unexpectedly found favor in her sight, felt it to be her duty to stay
in the room, so that, if possible, oil might be poured on the troubled
waters. She had sense of acute discomfort, it was true; and it was
not made less by the sure knowledge that the heavy weapons mother and
daughter were using for the benefit of each other would soon be turned
against herself.

There was not long to wait for this prophecy to be fulfilled. As soon
as the ladies had cut off her retreat, they dropped the academic
subject of Mr. Cheesewright and bluntly demanded to know what was the
matter. It was vain for Mary to try to parry this expected attack.
Her friends, when their feelings were deeply stirred, indulged in a
sledge-hammer style of warfare, against which any ordinary kind of
defense was powerless.

“Don’t tell me,” said Mrs. Wren, “that you have let them bully you into
giving him up!”

This was what Milly was wont to call her mother’s “old Sadler’s Wells
touch” with a vengeance. The victim bit her lip sharply, but she
could not prevent the color from rushing to her cheeks and giving her
completely away.

“Why, of course she has!” cried Milly, looking at her pitilessly. “I
knew she would. I told you, my dear, she was set on doing something
fantastic. And here have I been telling Charley that one day she would
be a duchess.”

“I call it soppy,” said Mrs. Wren.

“Downright mental flabbiness,” cried Milly. “It’s the sort of thing a
girl would do in the _Family Herald_.”

Mary quailed before these taunts. Even if her friends had an
unconventional way of expressing themselves, it did not blind her
to the poignant nature of their emotions. In the tone of mother and
daughter was a note which showed how deeply they were wounded by her
moral weakness--they could consider it nothing else. And the bitterness
of the attack was the measure of their devotion. Mrs. Wren could hardly
restrain her tongue, Milly was at the verge of tears. Such a girl as
Mary Lawrence had no right to wreck two lives for a mere whim.

“You are nothing but a fool,” said Mrs. Wren. “You’ll never get such a
chance again. I’d like to shake you.”

Mary had no fight left in her. She sat on the sofa a picture of dismay.
For the first time she saw mother and daughter as they really were, in
all their native crudeness; yet when the worst was said of them they
had a generosity of soul which made them suffer on her account; and
that fact alone seemed to leave her at their mercy.

“You’ve no right to let them ruin your life and his,” said Milly
pitilessly.

“One simply can’t go where one isn’t wanted,” said Mary at last with a
face of ashes.

Mrs. Wren took up the phrase, the first the girl had been able to
utter in her own defense, and flung it back. “Not wanted forsooth!
Who are they that they should pick and choose! A dead charge on the
community--neither more nor less.”

“No one can’t,” said Mary, tormentedly. “How could one!”

“Rubbish!” said Mrs. Wren. “You can’t afford to be so proud. From the
way you talk you might be the Queen of England.”

The girl shook her head. “And it isn’t quite fair that they should have
to put up with me.”

Those unfortunate words were made to recoil upon her heavily. Both her
assailants were frankly amazed that she should want to look at the
matter from the enemy point of view. To such a mind as Mrs. Wren’s
it could only mean that Bridport House had hypnotized her with the
semblance of place and power.

“I could shake you,” re-affirmed the good lady. “A girl as first-rate
as you are has no right to be a snob.”

Somehow that barb was horrible. Nothing wounds like the truth.

Strong in the conviction that “she had got her” Mrs. Wren proceeded.
“You set as high a value on these people as they set on themselves.
It’s noodles like you who keep them up. What use are they anyway,
except to play the fool with honest folk?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Milly with flashing eyes, as she took up the
parable. “Wrexham’s one of the same push. His lot simply won’t look at
me, yet I consider myself the equal of anyone. And I should make a very
good countess.”

Mary could only gasp. She was rather overcome by this naïveté.

“So you would, my dear,” said Mrs. Wren. “And one of these days you
will be a countess--if you don’t throw yourself away on Tom, Dick, and
Harry in the meantime.”

Mary was hard set not to break out in a hysterical laugh. She was in
the depths if ever soul was, yet the sense of humor is immortal and
survives every torment.

Fate, however, had not yet given the last turn to the screw.


V

At this moment the neat parlormaid came into the room.

“Mr. Dinneford!” she announced.

Jack stood a moment on the threshold to gaze at the three occupants. He
was rather like a sailor who fears foul weather and has not the courage
to read the sky.

“I’m glad you’ve come, young man,” said Mrs. Wren, getting up to
receive him. And she added almost at once, for it was never her way to
beat about the bush, “We are giving her the finest talking to she has
ever had in her life.”

Jack nearly groaned. The look of the three of them had told him already
that she must have made a fearful hash of things.

By now the Tenderfoot had risen very high in Mrs. Wren’s favor.
To begin with he would one day be the indubitable sixth Duke of
Bridport--a handicap, no doubt, in the sight of some types of democrat,
but apparently not, in the eyes of Mrs. Wren, an insuperable barrier.
Again, she was a pretty shrewd judge of a man, and this one had passed
all his examinations so far with flying colors. He was absolutely
straightforward, absolutely honorable; moreover, he knew his own
mind--whereby he had a signal advantage over his stable companion, who,
in spite of great merits, was lacking in character.

“Yes, we are setting her to rights,” said Milly, wrinkling a nose
of charming pugnacity. The face of the culprit was tense and rather
piteous, but Jack’s glance at it was perfectly remorseless.

“I knew she would,” he groaned.

“Knew she would what?” demanded Mrs. Wren.

“Let Uncle Albert down her,” was the prompt rejoinder.

“That didn’t want much guessing,” said Milly bitterly.

“Bridport-House-itis! That’s her trouble,” said Mrs. Wren. “And she
seems to have quite a bad form of the disease. I can’t understand
such a girl, I can’t really. To me she’s unnatural. If I found people
‘coming the heavy’ over me, I should just set my back to the wall and
say, ‘Very well, my fine friends, I’m now going to let you see that
Jane Wren is every bit as good as you are.’”

“So would any other reasonable being.” And that unpremeditated speech
of the Tenderfoot’s would have made Mrs. Wren his friend for life, had
she not become so already.

“That’s what I call sensible,” said she. “And there’s only one thing
for you to do now, young man, and that is to take her straight away and
marry her.”

At this point Mary got up from her sofa. But Mrs. Wren held one great
advantage; she had her back to the door. “You don’t leave this room, my
fine lady”--again “the old Sadler’s Wells touch,” and Jack and Milly
could not deny that it was rather superb--“until you realize that we
all think alike in this matter.”

“Quite so,” said the Tenderfoot, immensely stimulated by this powerful
backing. “Let us try to see the thing as it is. This isn’t a case for
high falutin’ sentiment. Bridport House is steeped in crass idiocy;
all the more reason, I say, that we give it no encouragement.”

“Quite so,” chimed Mrs. Wren.

“Quite so,” chimed Milly, who was irresistibly reminded of a recent
command performance of “Money.”

Mrs. Wren shook a histrionic finger at the luckless Mary, whose eyes
were seeking rather wildly a means of escape. “Don’t speak! Don’t
venture to say a word!” The victim had not shown the least disposition
to do so. “You simply haven’t a leg to stand on, you know.”

It was a shameful piece of bullying but the victim bore it stoically.
And it did not go on for long. Neither Mrs. Wren nor Milly was exactly
a fool. As soon as they saw that main force was not likely to help
them, and that more harm than good might be done by it, they decided to
leave the whole matter to Jack. They had expressed their own point of
view very fully, they knew that he could be trusted to make the most of
his case; besides, when all was said, he was the person best able to
deal with an entirely vexatious affair.

Of a sudden, the astute Milly flung a swift glance at her mother and
got up from her chair. And without another word on the subject, this
pair of conspirators dramatically withdrew.


VI

Such an exit from the scene was far more eloquent than words. And its
immediate effect was to plunge Jack and Mary with a haste that was
hardly decent, into what both felt was perilously like a final crisis.
Its very nature was of a sort that a finer diplomacy would have been
careful to avoid. But Jack, baffled and angry, was not in a mood to
temporize; besides, that was never his way.

The fine shades of emotion were not for him, but he had the perception
to feel that if he remained five minutes longer in that little room
the game might be lost irretrievably. In fact, it seemed to be lost
already. The specter of defeat was hovering round him; nay, it was
embodied in the very atmosphere he breathed.

Knowing the moment to be full of peril, he determined to force himself
to the greatest delicacy of which he was capable, for this might prove
the final throw. The look in her eyes seemed to tell him that all was
lost, but he would set the thought aside and act as if he were not
aware of it.

A long and very trying pause lent weight to this decision, and then
at last he said in a tone altogether different from the one he had
recently used, “Tell me, why are you so determined to keep a hardshell
like Uncle Albert on his pedestal?”

The form of the question provoked a wry little smile. “We poor females
are by nature conservative.”

“You are that,” he said. “Take you and me. We’ve both seen the world.
And the world has changed me altogether, but I should say it hasn’t
changed you at all.”

“No; I don’t think it has,” she admitted ruefully, “in the things that
are really important.”

“Six years ago, before I went West, I saw Bridport House at pretty
much the same angle you see it now. But I suppose if you get lumbering
timber, or living by your wits, or looking for gold in the Yukon, it
mighty soon comes home to you that it is only realities that count.
And the cold truth is that Bridport House simply isn’t a reality at
all.”

“There I can’t agree with you,” she said with a simple valor he was
bound to admire. “I haven’t seen the Yukon, but I’ve seen Bridport
House and it’s intensely real to me. Somehow the place is quite
wonderful. It works upon one like a charm.”

“I was a fool to let you go there.”

“But it only confirms my guesses.”

“Why, you are as bad as your Aunt Sanderson,” he burst out. “And you
haven’t her excuse. One can understand her point of view, although it’s
very extreme, and absurdly overdone, but yours, if you’ll let me say
so, is merely fanciful. Why you should be absolutely the last person in
the world to be hypnotized by mere rank and pride of place.”

“It isn’t that at all.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s something I can’t explain, a kind of instinct, I suppose. Please
don’t think I’m overawed by vain shows. But there is such a thing as
tradition, at least there is to me, and every stick and stone of that
house simply glows with it.”

“Mere sentiment!”

“Oh, yes--I know--but sentiment’s the thing that rules the world.”

“Plain, practical common sense rules the world.”

“I mean the only world worth living in.”

He could do nothing with her, and the fact was now hurting him
horribly. A man used to his own way, of clear vision, and strong
will, he could not bear the thought of being sidetracked or thwarted.
Besides, her reasoning was demonstrably false. He was growing bitterly
annoyed but, after all, such a solicitude for others only added to her
value. Moreover, here was a nature almost fantastically fine, and for
decency’s sake he must constrain his egotism to respect her scruples.

But the sense of defeat was hard to bear. Since that morning’s fatal
visit to the Mecca of tradition her will had crystallized. There seemed
little hope of shaking it now.

“Let me ask one question,” he said tensely. “Do you still care for me?”

Before she could answer the question her breath came quickly, her color
mounted. And then she said in a low voice, “I do--I always shall.”

It was no use telling her she was a fool. She was grotesquely in the
wrong, even if she was sublimely in the right. He would like to have
shaken her--and yet how dare he sully her with a point of view which
was purely personal?

“I expect that old barbarian is laughing finely in his sleeve,” he said
with a sudden descent to another plane.

“You don’t read him right.” A warm throb of feeling was in her voice.
“He’s quite deep and true--and kind, so kind you would hardly believe.
When I went there this morning I felt I was going to hate him, and yet
I find I can’t.”

“You are an idealist,” he said. “And you’ve tuned up that old cracked
file to the pitch of your own sackbut and psaltery. He’s not fine in
any way if you see him as I do--but I’m an earthworm, of course. He’s
just a hardshell and an unbeliever, who runs tradition for all it’s
worth, because that means loaves and fishes for him and his.”

She countered this speech staunchly; it was not worthy of him. And
yet the tone of reproof was so gentle that it gave him new courage.
Besides, he was a born fighter and the mere thought of losing such a
prize was more than he could bear.

“You can’t go back on your word,” he burst out with sudden defiance.
“You made a promise that you’re bound to keep.”

The look in her eyes asked for pity. “Oh! I could never go there,” she
shivered, “among all those hostile women.”

“We will keep a thousand miles away from them.”

“They have told me I’m not good enough.”

“Like their damned impertinence!” He flushed with anger.

“But I promised this morning that I wouldn’t.”

“You first promised me that you would.”

Again he had her cornered. It was almost the act of a cad to drive her
so hard, but he was an elemental who had simply to obey the laws of his
being. It seemed madness and damnation to let her go. And yet there
were tears in her eyes which he dare not look at. If he saw them he was
done.

With a kind of savage joy he felt her weaken a little at the impact of
his will. It was a piece of cruelty for which there was no help, a form
of bullying he could not avoid.

“The best thing we can do,” he said suddenly, “is to get married
at once and then clear off to Canada. Then we shall be beyond the
jurisdiction of Bridport House.”

“That old man would never forgive me,” was the simple reply. “It would
make the whole thing quite hopeless for everybody.”

He checked the words at the tip of his tongue. She had no right to play
for the other side, but there was something in her bearing which shamed
him to silence. For the first time he was torn; this immolation of self
might be a deeper wisdom; at least he felt thin and shallow in its
presence.

“Won’t you help me?” She laid a hand on his. Tears were now running
down her cheeks.

He caught his breath sharply at the unexpected appeal; it was like the
fixing of a knife. There was no alternative; he saw at once with fatal
clearness that these four little words cut the ground from under his
feet.

“Of course I will,” he said miserably, “if that is how you really feel
about it.”

She bowed her head in the moment’s intensity. “Thank you,” she said
softly.

He could only gasp. Here was the end.

“We must forget each other,” she said stoically.

“Or ask the sun and moon to stand still,” he said. “I shall never marry
anyone else.”

She gave him the honest hand of the good comrade and he took it to his
lips.

“I shall go back to Canada.”

“Won’t you stay and help them?”

“No,” he said, “these stupid people have got on my nerves. Besides,
this city is not big enough to hold us both just now.”

“I intend to go to Paris and study for the opera.”

“No,” he said decisively. “This time next week I shall be on my way
back to Vancouver, unless----”

“Unless----?”

“Unless Bridport House can be made to forget the Parish Pump in the
meantime. And there’s hardly a chance of that.”



CHAPTER X

TIME’S REVENGE


I

HIS Grace had had such a very bad night that he was only just able
to reach his morning-room by the discreet hour of eleven. He was so
exceedingly irritable that even the presence of the _Times_ on the
little table at his elbow was almost too much for him. And barely had
he settled himself in his chair and put on his spectacles when an
acute annoyance with the nature of things was further increased by the
ill-timed appearance of his private secretary, Mr. Gilbert Twalmley.

Mr. Twalmley so well understood the art of being agreeable, that, of
itself, his appearance was seldom if ever unwelcome; had the fact been
otherwise it is reasonably certain that long ago he would have had to
seek some other sphere of usefulness. And even on this sinister morning
Mr. Twalmley was not the head and front of his own offending; the germ
of unpopularity was in the message that he bore.

“Sir Dugald Maclean has rung up, sir. He would like to know if you can
see him on a matter of urgent importance.”

“When?” said the Duke sourly.

“He will come round at once.”

The fact was clear that his Grace was not in a mood to receive anyone
just then, least of all Sir Dugald Maclean, who at any time was far
from being _persona gratissima_ at Bridport House. But after a mental
struggle, which if quite short was rather grim, he allowed public
policy to override his private feelings.

“I suppose I’d better,” he said with something ominously like a groan
of disgust.


II

Even when the decision was taken and Mr. Twalmley had gone to make it
known, the Duke was not quite clear in his mind as to why he should
submit to such an ordeal. Was it really necessary to see this man?
Would any purpose be served by his so doing?

This morning the Duke was in a mood of vacillation, itself the sequel
to a night of physical and mental torment. Men and events and Nature’s
own self were conspiring against him; the future and the past were
alike in their menace; he could see nothing ahead but a vista of
anxiety.

Waiting for this man whom he disliked so intensely, he tried at first
to fix his mind on the morning’s news, and failed lamentably. For one
thing the paper itself was a sinister portent of the times. But there
were others, and in the interval of waiting for an unwelcome visitor
his Grace reviewed them gloomily.

Albert John had lived to see dark days. At heart a time-server and a
cynic, his strongest wish had been to go to the grave in the faith of
his fathers. In the beginning none had realized more clearly than he
that dukes were not as other men. Born to that convenient dogma, or
at least having imbibed it with the milk of infancy, it was in the
very marrow of his bones. But now, it would seem, the Time Spirit had
overtaken the order to which he belonged.

Twin portents of that fact had hovered all night round his pillow.
First came the business of Jack and the lady of his choice, who
at close quarters had proved to be so much more than his Grace
had bargained for; then there was the minor yet entirely vexing
complication of Muriel and her Berserker of a Radical.

Compared with the first gigantic issue, the second was a mere sideshow,
which in a happier hour his Grace would have treated with sardonic
contempt. After all, did it greatly matter if Muriel had the ill taste
to prefer an obvious political thruster and _arriviste_ to a state of
single blessedness? The heavens were not likely to fall in either case.
The man was a cad and there was no more to be said, yet even Albert
John was not quite able to maintain the standpoint of High Olympus.
Such a mountebank of a fellow ought not to count, yet when the best had
been said there was something about the brute which rankled horribly.

Some years before, in a historic speech in the Gilded Chamber, the Duke
had drawn a lurid picture of democracy knocking at the gate. His words
were so nakedly obvious that in a single morning they awoke to fame
throughout a flattered and delighted island. Everybody had known for a
generation that democracy was knocking at the gate, but the true art of
prophecy as a going concern is to predict the event the day after it
happens.

His Grace of Bridport, in the course of an admired speech, left no
doubt as to his own feeling in the matter. He conceived it to be his
duty to hold the gate as long as possible against the mob. But his
memorable remarks, a little touched, no doubt, with the crudity of one
who spoke seldom, gave opportunity for a thruster in the person of a
rising Scots publicist to convulse the Lower House with his fanciful
portrait of the Great Panjandrum of Bridport House with little round
button on top.

That had happened some years ago. But the alchemies of time had now
prepared a charming comedy for the initiated. The temerarious Scotsman,
moving from triumph to triumph, had determined to consolidate his
fortunes by marrying the third daughter of the house of Dinneford.

When Sir Dugald’s decision became known to the Duke, his amazement took
a very caustic turn. He had never forgiven the fellow for so savagely
flaunting him as a trophy at the end of a pole. “_Rien qui blesse comme
la vérité._” It was therefore hard for his Grace to knuckle down to
this adventurer. Besides, had Sir Dugald’s opinions been other than
they were, one of his kidney must not look for a welcome at Bridport
House.

Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Muriel’s affair
had shaken the Family to its base. For some little time past it was
known that she was cultivating breadth. Her coquettings with that
dangerous tendency had affected her diet, her clothes, her reading, as
well as her social and mental outlook. She had formed quite a habit
of emerging from the Times Book Club with all kinds of highbrows in a
strap. She had made odd friendships, she had joined queer movements,
and from time to time she regaled very remarkable people with tea and
cake at Bridport House.

To all this there could only be one end. First she consulted her
oculist and changed her glasses, and then she fell in love. She was
the first of the Bridport ladies to enter that state; thus she was
less a portent than a phenomenon. Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie gave
her the cold shoulder, and Aunt Charlotte frowned, but there was no
getting over the sinister fact that Breadth had at last undone her. Sir
Dugald had recently been seen for the first time in one of the smaller
and less uncomfortable drawing-rooms of Bridport House. The Dinneford
ladies seldom read the newspapers, at least the political part of
them, being beyond all things “healthy-minded” women; therefore they
knew little of the facts of his career. Moreover, they were in happy
ignorance of the attack he had launched three years ago upon their
sire. But it cannot be said of Muriel that she was equally innocent.
Evil communications corrupt good manners; Breadth had made a recourse
to politics inevitable. And the slight importance she attached to a
certain incident was, to say the least, unfilial.

In the cool, appraising eyes of Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie, the bold
Sir Dugald was set down already as a freak of nature. They were not
used to that sort of person at Bridport House. Unfortunately such an
attitude forbade any just perception of the man himself. His career
was still in the making, and in the view of keen but unsympathetic
observers who had followed it from the start, the hapless Muriel had
been marked down in order that she might advance him in it. Moreover,
up till now, his ambition had never known defeat, particularly when
inflamed by a worthy object.

According to biographies of the People’s Champion, portrait on cover,
price one shilling net, which flooded the bookstalls of his adopted
country, his life had been a fine expression of the deep spiritual
truth, “God helps those who help themselves.” His career had been truly
remarkable, yet in the opinion of qualified judges it was only just
beginning. In the person of Sir Dugald Maclean, Democracy was knocking
at the gate with a vengeance. Its keepers must be up and doing lest
Demos ravish the citadel within and get clear away with the pictures,
the heirlooms and the gold plate.

“She must be out of her mind,” declared the Duke at the first
announcement of the grisly tidings. Lady Wargrave went further. “She is
out of her mind,” trumpeted the sage of Hill Street.

There were alarums and excursions, there was a pretty todo. But Muriel
had grown so Broad that she treated the matter very lightly. The
ruthless Sir Dugald had tied her to the wheel of his car; he was now
determined to lead her to the altar with or without the sanction of his
Grace.


III

All too soon for the Duke’s liking in this hour of fate, Sir Dugald
arrived for his interview. At any time he was a bitter pill for his
Grace to swallow; just now, in the light of present circumstances, it
called for the virtue of a stoic to receive him at all.

Now these adversaries met again certain ugly memories were in their
minds. But the advantage was with the younger man who could afford to
be secretly amused by the business in hand. A semblance of respect, to
be sure, was in his bearing, but that was no more than homage paid by
worldly wisdom to the spirit of place. Right at the back lay the mind
of the cool calculator, which in certain aspects had an insight almost
devilish into the heart of material man. Well he knew the hostility of
this peevish, brooding invalid. He was in a position to flout it; yet,
after all, the man who now received him would have been rather more
than human had he not hated him like poison.

Sir Dugald could afford to smile at this figure of impotence; yet the
Duke, in his way, was no mean adversary. Up to a point his mind was
extremely vigorous. The will to prevail against encroachment on the
privileges of his class was still strong. Besides physical suffering
had not yet bereft him of a maliciously nice appreciation of the human
comedy. It may even have been that which now enabled him to receive
“the thruster.”

As Sir Dugald entered the room he was keenly aware that the eyes of
a satyr were fixed upon him. And the picture of a rather fantastic
helplessness, propped in its chair, was not without its pathos. The old
lion, stricken sore, would have given much to rend the intruder, but he
was in the grip of Fate.

The success of Sir Dugald had been magical, but luck had played no part
in it, beyond the period of the world’s history and the particular
corner of the globe in which he happened to be born. He had got as far
as he had in a time comparatively short for the simple reason that he
was a man of quite unusual powers.

No man could have had a truer perception of the conditions among which
he had been cast than Dugald Maclean, no man could have had a stronger
grasp of certain forces, or of the alchemy transmuting them into things
undreamt of; no man could have had a bolder outlook upon the whole
amazing phantasmagoria evolved by the cosmic dust out of the wonders
within itself. The Duke had the cynicism of the materialist; the man
who faced him now had the vision of him who sees too much.

The Duke, with a great air and a courtesy which was second nature,
begged his visitor to forgive his being as he was.

Sir Dugald, with a mechanical formula and a mechanical smile, responded
with a ready sympathy. But while their conventional phrases flowed,
each marked the other narrowly, like a pair of strange brigands
colloguing for the first time on the side of a mountain. It was as if
each knew the other for a devil of a fellow, yet not quite such a devil
of a fellow as he judges himself to be.

Efficiency was the watchword of Maclean. There was no beating about the
bush. He knew what he wanted and had come to see that he got it. In a
cool, aloof, rather detached way he lost no time in putting forward the
demand he had made at a former meeting.

“But one has been led to infer from your speeches,” said the Duke,
bluntly, “and the facts of your career, that you stand for an order of
things very different from those obtaining here.”

“Up to a point, yes,” was the ready answer. “But only up to a point.
In order to govern efficiently it is wise to aim at a centralization
of power. The happiest communities are those in which power is in the
hands of the few. Now there is much in the social hierarchy, even as
at present constituted, which deserves to survive the shock of battle
that will soon be upon us. It ought to survive, for it has proved its
worth. And in identifying myself with it I shall be glad when the time
comes to help your people here if only you will help me now.”

“In a word, you are ready to throw over your friends,” said the Duke
with a narrowing eye.

“By no means! I have not the least intention of doing that.”

His Grace was hard to convince; besides the man’s nonchalance incensed
him. “Well, as I have told you already, the only terms on which we
can begin to think of having you here are that you quit your present
stable.”

“Don’t you think you take a parochial view?” The considered coolness
had the power to infuriate. “Whichever stable one happens to occupy at
the moment is not very material. It is simply a means to an end.”

“To what end?”

“The better government of the country--of the Empire, if you prefer it.”

“You aim at the top?”

“Undoubtedly. And I think I shall get there.”

The note of self-confidence was a little too much for his Grace. He
shot out an ugly lower lip and plucked savagely at the small tuft of
hair upon it. “That remains to be seen, my friend.” And he added in a
tone of ice, “When you have got there you can come and ask me again.”

“But it is going to take time,” Sir Dugald spoke lightly and readily,
not deigning to accept the challenge. “Meanwhile Lady Muriel and I
would like to get married.”

It seemed, however, that the Duke had made up his mind in the matter
quite definitely. There must be a coat of political whitewash for a
dirty dog before he could hope to receive any kind of official sanction
as a son-in-law. Such in effect was the last word of his Grace; and it
was delivered with a point that was meant to lacerate.

It did not fail of its effect. Somehow the ducal brand of cynicism was
edged like a razor, and the underlying contempt poisoned the wounds it
dealt. The man who had sprung from the people, who in accordance with
the brutal innuendo of the man of privilege would be only too ready
to throw them over as soon as they had served his turn, was powerless
before it. At this moment, as he was ruefully discovering, place and
power did not hesitate to use loaded dice.

Sir Dugald was savagely angry. In spite of an iron self-control, the
cold insolence of one who made no secret of the fact that he regarded
the man before him as other clay was hard to bear. A career of success,
consistent and amazing, had given Sir Dugald a pretty arrogance of his
own. And he was a very determined man playing for victory.


IV

It was clear from the Duke’s manner that as far as he was concerned
the interview was at an end. But Sir Dugald had made up his mind to
carry the matter a step farther. He was a bold man, his position was
stronger than his Grace had reason to guess, moreover, a powerful will
had been reënforced by a growing animosity.

“Before I go,” said Sir Dugald, “there is one last word, and to me it
seems of great importance.”

The Duke sat silent, a stony eye fixed upon his visitor.

“First, let me say as one man of the world to another, that your
objection to my marrying Lady Muriel is injudicious.”

“No doubt--from your point of view. But we won’t go into that.”

“On the contrary, I think we had better. As I say, it is injudicious.
We have fully made up our minds to marry. You can’t hinder us, you
know--so why make things uncomfortable?”

“Because I dislike it, sir--I dislike it intensely!” His Grace was
suddenly overwhelmed by his feelings.

“Do you mind stating the grounds of your objection?”

“It would be tedious to enumerate them.”

“Well, I’d like you to realize the advantages of letting things go on
as they are.”

“There are none so far as one can see at the moment.”

“We are coming to them now,” said Sir Dugald blandly. “In the first
place, has it occurred to you that I may know the history of Mr.
Dinneford’s fiancée?”

The Duke stared fixedly at the man before him. “What do you mean?” he
said.

“Suppose one happens to know her secret?”

“Her secret!”

“Her origin and early history.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there really any need to ask the question?”

The Duke shook his head perplexedly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“Well,” said Sir Dugald coolly, “it happens that you are the one man in
the world who is in a position to answer the question I have ventured
to ask.”

They looked at each other. A rather deadly silence followed.

“The question you have ventured to ask.” The Duke repeated the words
slowly, but with a reluctance and a venom he could not conceal.

“You know perfectly well what I mean.” The tone, direct and cool, was
exasperating.

“Are you trying to blackmail me?” There was an ugly light in the Duke’s
eyes.

Sir Dugald laughed. “Why put the matter so crudely?” he said. “I am
merely anxious that justice should be done. You ought to be grateful to
Providence for giving you this opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

“To right the wrong that has been committed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I refer to Miss Lawrence’s parentage.”

“One fails to see that her parentage is any business of yours or mine.”

“It is certainly business of yours,” was the sardonic answer; “and
it is going to be mine because I am determined that matters shall
take their present course. Lady Muriel and I intend to marry, and Mr.
Dinneford and Miss Lawrence ought to marry.”

The Duke gazed at him with an air of blank stupefaction.

“I invite you to give the matter very careful consideration.” Sir
Dugald had constrained a harsh accent to the point of mellowness. “Let
me say at once that if you don’t withdraw your opposition it is in my
power to make myself rather unpleasant.”

“Nature has relieved you of any obligation in that matter. You are the
most unpleasant man I have ever had to do with.”

“Let me outline the position.” The mellifluous note spurred his Grace
to fury. “Mr. Dinneford and Miss Lawrence, Lady Muriel and I are
determined to marry and we must have your consent.”

“And if I don’t give it?” The tone matched the truculent eyes.

“I may be tempted to use my knowledge in a way which will be much more
disagreeable than the things you wish to prevent.”

“Do I understand this to be a threat?”

Sir Dugald smiled darkly.

“Very well!” Defiance and resentment rode the Duke very hard. “Use your
knowledge as you like. You are a scoundrel.”

“A hard name.” Again the Duke was met by a saturnine Scottish smile.
“But my motives are sound.”

“So are mine.” The Duke’s voice shook with fury. “If you are not
careful I will have you put out of the house.”

“We are not living in the Middle Ages, you know.”

“More’s the pity. I’d have found a short way with you then, my friend.
Your wanting to marry Muriel is bad enough, your interference with
Dinneford is an outrage.”

“In the circumstances I feel it to be my duty to do what I can in an
exceedingly delicate matter.”

“Self-interest, sir, that’s all your duty amounts to.” But the Duke was
now thoroughly alarmed, and he saw that recrimination was not going to
help him. “Tell me,” he said in a tone more conciliatory than he had
yet used, “exactly on what ground you are standing?”

“In the first place, there is a very remarkable family likeness.”

“And you base your allegation upon a mere conjecture of that kind!”
said the Duke scornfully.

“Upon far more than that, believe me. I have very strong and direct
evidence which at the present moment I prefer not to disclose.”

The Duke paused at this bold statement. He turned a basilisk’s eye
upon his adversary, but Sir Dugald offered a mask, behind which, as
his Grace well knew, lurked unlimited depth and cunning. One thing was
clear: a man of this kidney was not likely to venture such a _coup_
without having carefully weighed his resources. In any case there
cannot be smoke unless there is fire. A certain amount of knowledge
must be in the possession of Maclean; the question was how much, and
what use was he prepared to make of it?

“Do I understand,” said the Duke after a moment of deep thought, “that
you have spoken of this matter to Mr. Dinneford?”

“I have not yet done so.”

“Or to Miss Lawrence?”

“No--nor to Mrs. Sanderson.”

The Duke’s look of concentration at the mention of that name was not
lost upon Sir Dugald. It had the effect of hardening the ironical
smile which for some little time now had hung round his lips.

“May I ask you,” said the Duke with the air of a man pretty badly
hipped, “not to speak of this matter to anyone until there has been an
opportunity for further discussion?”

The abrupt change in the tone confessed a moral weakness which Sir
Dugald was quick to notice. But he fell in with the suggestion, with
a show of ready magnanimity for which the Duke could have slain him.
There was no wish to cause avoidable unpleasantness. Sir Dugald was
good enough to say that it was in the interests of all parties that
the skeleton should be kept in the cupboard. The matter was bound to
give pain to a number of innocent people, and if the Duke, even at the
eleventh hour, would be reasonable he might depend upon it that Sir
Dugald Maclean would be only too happy to follow his example.


V

Upon the retirement of the unwelcome visitor, the Duke gave himself up
to a state of irritation verging on fury. Unprepared for this new turn
of the game, taken at a complete disadvantage by a man of few scruples
and diabolical cleverness, he was now horribly smitten by a sense of
having said things he ought not to have said. On one point he was
clear. In the shock of the unforeseen he had yielded far too much to
the impact of a scoundrel.

The position seen as a whole was one of very grave difficulty, and the
instinct now dominating his mind was to seek a port against a storm
which threatened at any moment to burst upon him. It was of vital
importance that certain facts should be kept from certain people;
otherwise there could be little doubt that the private cosmos of Albert
John, fifth Duke of Bridport, would fall about his ears.

Alone with his fluttered thoughts, the Duke spent a bad half-hour
trying to marshal them in battle array. Face to face with a situation
dangerous, disagreeable, unforeseen, it would call for much tactical
skill to fend off disaster. Never in his life had he found it so hard
to choose a line of action. At last, the prey of doubt, he rang for
Harriet Sanderson.

She came to him at once and he told her promptly of Sir Dugald’s visit.
And then, his eyes on her face, he went on to tell her there was reason
to fear that a secret had been penetrated which he had always been led
to believe was known only to her and to himself.

Watching her narrowly while he spoke he saw his words go home. She
stood a picture of dismay.

“I wonder if the man really can know all?” he said finally.

At first she made no attempt to answer the question; but after a while,
in a low, rather frightened voice, she said, “I don’t think he can know
possibly.”

He searched her troubled eyes, almost as if he doubted. “Perhaps you
will tell me this.” He spoke in a tone of growing anxiety. “Would you
say there is anything like a marked family resemblance?”

“A very strong one, I’m afraid.”

“It is confined, I hope, to the picture at the top of the stairs?”

“Oh, no--at least to my mind----”

“Yes?”

“She has her father’s eyes.”

“Very interesting to know that.” The Duke laughed, but it was a curious
note in which there was not a grain of mirth. “Yet, even assuming that
to be the case, it would take a bold man to jump to such a conclusion.
Surely he would need better ground to go upon.”

“I am sorry to say he has much more than a mere likeness to help him.”
As Harriet spoke the bright color ran from neck to brow. “He happened
to be at my brother-in-law’s on the evening the child was first brought
to the house.”

That simple fact was far more than the Duke had bargained for. A look
of dismay came upon him, he shook an ominous head. “It throws a new
light on the matter,” he said, after a pause, painful in its intensity.
“Now tell me this--did he see the child?”

“Oh, yes!”

“That helps him to put two and two together at any rate.” A look of
tragic concern came into his face. “What an amazing world!”

She agreed that the world was amazing. And in spite of the strange
unhappiness in her eyes she could not help smiling a little as a surge
of memories came upon her. She sighed softly, even tenderly as she made
the confession. “To my mind, Sir Dugald Maclean is one of the most
amazing men in it.”

“Have you any particular reason for saying that?”--The gaze was
disconcerting in its keenness--“apart, I mean, from the mere obvious
facts of his career?”

“It is simply that I have watched him rise,” said Harriet, between a
smile and a sigh. “When I knew him first he was a London policeman.”

“How in the world did he persuade Scotland Yard to part with him?”
scoffed his Grace. “One would have thought such a fellow would have
been worth his weight in gold.”

She could not repress a laugh which to herself seemed to verge on
irreverence. “My brother-in-law says he soon convinced them he was far
too ambitious for the Metropolitan Police Force.”

“I should say so!”

“And then he studied the law and got into parliament.”

“And made his fortune by backing a downtrodden people against a vile
aristocracy.” The Duke’s smile was so sour that it became a grimace.
“In other words a self-made man.”

“Oh, yes--entirely!” The sudden generous warmth of admiration in
Harriet’s tone surprised the Duke. “When one considers the enormous
odds against him and what he has been able to do at the age of
forty-two, it seems only right to think of him as wonderful.”

“Personally,” said his Grace, “I prefer to regard him as an
unscrupulous scoundrel.”

Harriet dissented with a smile. “A great man,” she said softly.

“Let us leave it at a very dangerous man. He is a real menace, not only
to us, but to the country. Anyhow, we have now to see that he doesn’t
bring down the house about our ears.”

There was something in the tone that swept the color from Harriet’s
face. “That I realize.” Her voice trembled painfully. “Oh, I do hope he
has not mentioned the matter to Mary.” And she plucked at her dress in
sudden alarm.

“Not yet, I think,” said the Duke venomously. “He is too sure a hand to
spring his mine before the time is ripe. Meanwhile we are forearmed;
let us take every precaution against him.”

“Oh, yes, we must!” Her eyes were tragic.

“A devilish mischance,” said the Duke slowly, “a devilish mischance
that he, of all men, has been able to hit the trail.”


VI

When Harriet had gone from the room, the Duke surrendered again to
his thoughts. By now they were almost intolerable. Pulled this way
and that by a conflict of emotion that was cruel, he was brought more
than once to the verge of a decision he had not the courage to make.
The situation was forcing it upon him, yet so much was involved, so
much was at stake that a weak man at bottom, he was ready to grasp at
anything which held a slender hope of putting off the evil day. Two
interests were vitally opposed; he sought to do justice to both, yet as
far as he could see at the moment, any reconciliation between them was
impossible.

He was in a state of bitter, ever-growing embarrassment, when Jack was
unexpectedly announced.

His Grace was not able to detach himself sufficiently from the
maelstrom within to observe the hue of resolution in the bearing of a
rather unwelcome visitor.

“Good morning, sir,” said the young man coolly, with an aloofness that
came near to sarcasm. And then in a tone of very simple matter of
fact, he said, “I have merely called to ask if you will give a formal
consent to my marrying Mary Lawrence.”

From the particular way in which the question was put it was easy to
deduce an ultimatum. But it came at an unlucky moment. So delicately
was the Duke poised between two contending forces, that a point-blank
demand was quite enough to turn the scale. His Grace replied at once
that he was not in a position to give consent.

Jack was prepared for a refusal. The nature of the case had made it
seem inevitable. But there and then he issued a ukase. His kinsman
should have a week in which to think over the matter. And if in that
time the Duke did not change his mind he would return to Canada.

The threat was taken very coolly, but his Grace was far more concerned
by it than he allowed Jack to see. In fact, he was very much annoyed.
Here was an end to the plan which had been formed for the general
welfare of Bridport House. Such conduct was inconsiderate, tiresome,
irrational. But it was not merely the inconvenience it was bound to
cause which was so troublesome. There was still the other aspect of the
case. He could not rid himself of the feeling that a cruel injustice
was being done to an innocent and defenseless person, and that the
whole blame of it must lie at his own door.

He had been given a week in which to think the matter over, in which
to examine it in all its bearings. Just now he was not in a mood to
urge the least objection to Jack’s departure; all the same one frankly
an autocrat resented it deeply. Let the fellow go and be damned to
him! But in spite of the philosophic air with which he sent the young
fool about his business, his Grace realized as soon as he was alone
that it was quite impossible to shut his eyes to certain facts. Vital
issues were involved and it was no use shirking them. Even if he had
now made up his mind to steel his heart against gross and rather brutal
injustice, so that the common weal might prosper, nothing could alter
the human aspect of a matter that galled him bitterly.



CHAPTER XI

A BOMB


I

IT is a bad business, no doubt, when a statesman stoops to sentiment.
Unluckily for the Duke, now that a brain cool and clear was needed in
a critical hour, it had become miserably overclouded by a sense of
chivalry. It was very inconvenient. Never in his life had he found a
decision so hard to reach, and even when it had been arrived at he
could not dismiss the girl from his mind. She had impressed him in such
a remarkable way that it was impossible to forget her.

Beyond all things a man of the world, one fact stood out with exemplary
clearness. If this girl could have been taken upon her merits she would
have been an almost ideal mate for the heir to Bridport House. She had
shown such a delicate regard for his welfare, so right had been her
feeling in the whole affair, that, even apart from mere justice, it
seemed wrong to exclude her from a circle she could not fail to grace.
In the matter of Bridport House her instinct was so divinely right that
no girl in the land was more naturally fitted to help a tiro through
his novitiate.

A sad coil truly! And Jack had gone but a very few minutes, when
the matter took another and wholly unexpected turn. The prelude to a
historic incident was the appearance of Sarah on the scene.

The eldest flower, the light of battle in her gray eyes, was plainly
bent on mischief. So much was clear as soon as she came into the
room. She had not been able to forgive her father for revoking Mrs.
Sanderson’s notice. It had been a wanton dashing of the cup from lips
but little used to victory; and the act had served to embitter a
situation which by now was almost unbearable.

Sarah had come of fell purpose, but before playing her great _coup_,
she opened lightly in the manner of a skirmisher. Muriel, it seemed,
was the topic that had brought her there; at any rate, it was the topic
on which she began, masking with some astuteness the one so much more
sinister that lay behind.

“Father, I suppose you know that Muriel has quite made up her mind to
get married?”

“So I gather.” Detachment could hardly have been carried farther.

“Such a pity,” Sarah lightly pursued, “but I’m afraid there’s nothing
to be done. She was always obstinate.”

“Always a fool,” muttered his Grace.

“I’ve been discussing the matter with Aunt Charlotte.”

The Duke nodded, but his portentous eyes asked Sarah not to claim one
moment more of his time than the circumstances rendered absolutely
necessary.

“Aunt Charlotte feels very strongly that it will be wise for you to
give your consent.”

“Why?” The Duke yawned, but the look in his face was not of the kind
that goes with mere boredom. “Any specific ground for the suggestion?”
He scanned Sarah narrowly, with heavily-lidded eyes.

“On general grounds only, I believe.”

The Duke was more than a little relieved, but he was content to express
the fact by transferring his gaze to the book-rest in front of him.

“She thinks it will be in the interests of everyone to make the best of
a most tiresome and humiliating business. And, after all, he is certain
to be Prime Minister within the next ten years.”

“Who tells you that?”

“Last night at dinner I met Harry Truscott, and that’s his prediction.
He says Sir Dugald Maclean is the big serpent that swallows all the
little serpents.”

“Uncommonly true!” His Grace made a wry mouth. “Still, that’s hardly a
reason why we should receive the reptile here.”

“No, of course. I quite agree. But Aunt Charlotte thinks there is
nothing to gain by standing out. Muriel has quite made up her foolish
mind. So the dignified thing seems to be to make the best of a
miserable business.”

“It may be,” said his Grace. “But personally I should be grateful if
Charlotte would mind her own affairs.”

The tone implied quite definitely that he had no wish to pursue the
topic; nay, it even invited Sarah to make an end of their talk and to
go away as soon as possible. Clearly he was far from understanding that
it was little more than a red herring across the trail of a sinister
intention. But the fact was revealed to him by her next remarks.

“Oh, by the way, father,” she said casually, or at least with a
lightness of tone that was misleading, “there’s one other matter. I’ve
been thinking the situation out.”

“Situation!” groped his Grace.

“That has been created.” Sarah’s tone was almost infantile--“by your
insisting that Mrs. Sanderson should stay on.”

“Well, what of it, what of it?”

“It simply makes the whole thing impossible.” Sarah had achieved the
voice of the dove. “So long as this woman remains in the house one
feels that one cannot stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Because”--Sarah fixed a deliberate eye on the face of her
sire--“neither Aunt Charlotte nor I think that the present arrangement
is quite seemly.”


II

The attack had been neatly launched, and she saw by the look on her
father’s face that it had gone right home. She was a slow-witted,
rather crass person, with a kind of heavy conceit of her own, but like
all the other Dinneford ladies, at close quarters she was formidable.
The button was off her foil. It was her intention to wound. And at the
instant she struck, his Grace was unpleasantly aware of that fact.

“What d’ye mean?” It was his recoil from the stroke.

“I have talked over the matter with Aunt Charlotte. She agrees with me
that the present arrangement is quite hopeless. And she thinks that as
you are unwilling for Mrs. Sanderson to be sent away, the only course
for Blanche, Marjorie, and myself is to leave the house.”

The face of her father grew a shade paler, but for the moment that
was the only expression of the inward fury. He saw at once that the
dull fool who dared to beard him was no more than a cat’s-paw of
the arch-schemer. The mine was Charlotte’s, even if fired by a hand
infinitely less cunning.

“Is this a threat?” The surge of his rage was hard to control.

“You leave us no alternative,” said Sarah doughtily. “Aunt Charlotte
thinks in the circumstances we shall be fully justified in going to
live with her. I think so, too; and I don’t doubt that Blanche and
Marjorie will see the matter in the same light.”

“What do you think you will gain?” His voice shook with far more than
vexation. “The proposal simply amounts to the washing of dirty linen in
public.”

“There is such a thing as personal dignity, father,” said Sarah in her
driest tone.

“No doubt; but how you are going to serve it by dancing to the piping
of Charlotte I can’t for the life of me see.”

Sarah, however, could see something else. The blow had met already
with some success. And she was fully determined to follow up a first
advantage.

“Well, father”--her words were of warriorlike conciseness--“if you
still insist on Mrs. Sanderson’s presence here, that is the course we
intend to take.”

“Oh!” A futile monosyllable, yet at that moment full of meaning.


III

The ultimatum delivered, Sarah promptly retired. She took away from the
interview a pleasing consciousness that the honors were with her. And
this sense of nascent victory had not grown less by half-past one when
she reached Hill Street in time to lunch with Aunt Charlotte.

It was a rather cheerless and ascetic meal, but both ladies were in
such excellent fighting trim that the meagerness of the fare didn’t
matter. Sarah was sure that she had scored heavily. A well-planted bomb
had wrought visible confusion in the ranks of the foe. “He sees that it
places him in a most awkward position,” was her summary for the grim
ears of the arch-plotter.

“One knew it would.” There were times when Aunt Charlotte had a
striking personal resemblance to Moltke; and just now, beyond a doubt,
she bore an uncanny likeness to that successful Prussian.

“He hates the idea of what he calls washing dirty linen in public.”

“Lacks moral courage as usual.” The remark was made in an undertone to
the coal-scuttle.

“I hope----.” But Sarah suddenly bit off the end of her sentence. After
all, there are things one cannot discuss.

“You hope what?” The eye of Aunt Charlotte fixed her like a kite.

“No need to say what one hopes,” said Sarah dourly.

“I agree.” Aunt Charlotte took a sip of hot water and munched a
peptonized biscuit with a kind of savage glee. “But we have to remember
that the ice is very thin. One has always felt that--well, you know
what one means. One has felt sometimes that your father....”

Sarah agreed. For more years than she cared to remember she....

“Quite so,” Aunt Charlotte took another biscuit. “And everybody must
know.... However, the time has now come to make an end.”

“I am sure it has,” said Sarah.

“Still we are playing it up very high,” said the great tactician. “And
we shall do well to remember....”

“I agree,” said Sarah cryptically.

Misgiving they might have, but just now the uppermost feeling was
pride in their work and a secret satisfaction. There could be no doubt
that the blow had gone home. At last they had taken the measure of his
Grace, they had found his limit, the point had been reached beyond
which he would not go.

“_Au fond_ a coward,” Aunt Charlotte affirmed once more, for the
benefit of the coal-scuttle. And then for the benefit of Sarah, with a
ring of triumph, “Always sets too high a value on public opinion, my
dear.”

Such being the case the conspirators had every right to congratulate
themselves. And as if to confirm their victory, there came presently by
telephone a most urgent message from Mount Street. Charlotte was to go
round at once.

“There, what did I tell you!” said that lady. And she sublimely ordered
her chariot.


IV

Enroute to Bridport House, the redoubtable Charlotte did not allow
herself to question that the foe was at the point of hauling down the
flag. His hurry to do so was a little absurd, but it was so like him
to throw up the sponge at the mere threat of publicity. This indecent
haste to come to terms deepened a contempt which had lent a grim
enjoyment to a long hostility.

However, the reception in store for her ladyship in the smaller library
did much to modify her views. She was received by her brother with an
air of menace which almost verged upon truculence.

“Charlotte”--there was a boldness of attack for which she was by no
means prepared--“the time has now come to make an end of this comedy.”

She fully agreed, yet the sixth sense given to woman found occasion to
warn her that she didn’t know in the least to what she was agreeing.

“You would have it so, you know.”

He was asked succinctly to explain.

“Well, it’s a long story.” Already there was a note in the mordant
voice which his sister heard for the first time. “A long, a strange,
and if you will, a romantic story. And let me say that it is by no wish
of my own that I tell it. However, Fate is stronger than we are in
these little matters, and no doubt wiser.”

“No doubt,” said Charlotte drily. But somehow that note in his voice
made her uneasy, and the look in his face seemed to hold her every
nerve in a vise. “You are speaking in riddles, my friend,” she added
with a little flutter of impatience.

“It may be so, but before I go on I want you clearly to understand that
it is you, not I, who insist on bringing the roof down upon us.”

Charlotte’s only reply was to sit very upright, with her sarcastic
mouth drawn in a rigid line. She could not understand in the least what
her brother was driving at, but in his manner was a new, a strange
intensity which somehow gave her a feeling of profound discomfort.

“You don’t realize what you are doing,” he said. “Still you are not to
blame for that. But the time has come to pull aside the curtain, and to
let you know what we all owe a woman who has been cruelly maligned.”

Charlotte stiffened perceptibly at these words. After all, the case
was no more and no less than for more than twenty years she had known
it to be. Still open confession was good for the soul! It was a sordid
intrigue, an intrigue of a nature which simply made her loathe the man
opposite. How dare he--and with a servant in his own house! If looks
could have slain, his Grace would have been spared the necessity to
continue a very irksome narrative.

“Make provision for her and send her away.” The sharp voice was like
the crack of a gun.

The Duke raised himself slowly and painfully on his elbows. “Hold your
tongue,” he said. And his eyes struck at her. “Be good enough to forgo
all comment until you have heard the whole story.”

It was trying Charlotte highly, but she set herself determinedly to
listen.

“Do you remember when she first came here, as second maid to poor
Rachel, a fine, upstanding, gray-eyed Scots girl, one of the most
beautiful creatures you ever saw? Do you remember her devotion? No, I
see you have forgotten.” He closed his eyes for an instant, while the
woman opposite kept hers fixed steadily upon him. “Well, I don’t excuse
myself. But Rachel and I were never happy; the plain truth is we ought
not to have married. It was a family arrangement and it recoiled upon
us. The Paringtons are an effete lot and the same can be said of us
Dinnefords. Nature asked for something else.”

Now that he had unlocked the doors of memory a growing emotion became
too much for the Duke, and for a moment he could not go on. His sister,
in the meantime, continued to hold him with pitiless eyes.

“One might say,” he went on, “that it was the call of the blood. I
remember her first as the factor’s daughter, a long-legged creature
in a red tam-o’-shanter, running about the woods of Ardnaleuchan. You
haven’t forgotten Donald Sanderson, the father?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten him,” said Charlotte.

“That was a fine fellow. ‘Man Donald’ as our father used to call him,
helped me to stalk my first stag. We ranged the woods together days on
end. I sometimes think I owe more to that man than to any other human
being.”

Again he was silent, but the eyes of his sister never left his face.

“Yes, it was the call of the blood.” He sighed as he passed his
handkerchief over his face which was now gray and glistening. “As I
say, Rachel and I ought not to have married; we didn’t suit each other.
Our marriage was a family arrangement. It had almost ceased to be
tolerable long before the end, but we kept our compact as well as we
could, for we were determined that other people should not suffer. And
then came Rachel’s long illness, and the girl’s wonderful devotion--do
you remember how Rachel would rather have her with her than any of the
nurses? And then she died, and of course that altered everything.”

Lady Wargrave sat as if carved out of stone, her eyes still upon the
bleak face of the invalid. “Is that all?” she said.

“No, it is not. There’s more to tell.”

“Tell it then so that we may have done with it.” Charlotte’s voice
quivered.

“Very well, since you insist.” The softness of the tone was surprising,
yet to Charlotte it said nothing. “Rachel died and everything, as I
say, was altered. ‘Man Donald’s’ daughter became the only woman who
ever really meant anything to me. Somehow I felt I couldn’t do without
her. And to make an end of a long and tedious story, finally I married
her.”

“You _married_ her!” Lady Wargrave sat as if she had swallowed a poker.

“Yes, but before doing so I made a condition. Things were to go on as
they were, provided....”

“... provided!” Excitement fought curiosity in Charlotte’s angry voice.

“... she didn’t bring a boy into the world.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Charlotte’s voice cracked in the
middle.

“It was quite a simple arrangement, and in the circumstances it seemed
the best. So long as there was no man child to complicate the thing
unduly, the world was to be kept out of our secret. At the time it
seemed wise and right to do that. Otherwise it would have meant a
fearful upset for everybody.”

“Is one to understand,” gasped Charlotte, “that when Rachel died you
actually married this--this woman?”

The Duke nodded. “But I made the condition that our secret should be
rigidly guarded--always assuming that Fate did not prove too much for
us. She went to the little house on the river at Buntisford, where I
used to go for the fishing and shooting. And she gave me ten years of
happiness--the only happiness I have known. And then came my breakdown,
since when she has nursed me with more than a wife’s devotion.” His
voice failed suddenly and he lay back in his chair with closed eyes.

It was left to Charlotte to break the irksome silence that followed.

“How could you be so mad!” She spoke under her breath not intending her
words to be heard, but a quick ear caught them.

“Nay,” he said in the tone that was so new to her, “it was the only
thing to do. It was the call of the blood. And this was a devoted
woman, a woman one could trust implicitly.”

“Madness, my friend, madness!”

He shook his head somberly. “All life is a madness, if you will a
divine madness. It is a madness that damns the consequences. By taking
too much thought for the morrow we entomb ourselves. When Rachel died
life meant for me the woman of my choice. And, Charlotte, let me
say this”--he raised himself in his chair and looked at his sister
fixedly--“she is the best woman I have ever known.”

For a moment she sat a picture of bewilderment, and then in a voice
torn with emotion she said, “Out of regard for the others things had
better go on as they are. But perhaps you will tell me, are there any
children of this marriage?”

“There is one child.”

Charlotte caught her breath sharply.

“A girl. And in accordance with our compact she has been brought
up in complete ignorance of her paternity. It seemed wise that she
should know nothing. Her mother had her reared among her own people,
because it was her mother’s express wish that the children of the first
marriage should suffer no prejudice; and at the present time neither
the girl herself nor the world at large is any the wiser.”

Charlotte began to breathe a little more freely. “At all events,” she
said, “that fact seems to confirm one’s opinion that things had better
go on as they are.”

But her brother continued to gaze at her with somber eyes. “Charlotte,”
he said very slowly, “you have forced me to tell a story I had
hoped would never be told in my lifetime. I have had to suffer your
suspicions, but now that you are in the secret, you must share its
responsibilities.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Lady Wargrave bluntly.

“I will explain. A horrible injustice has been done this girl, the
child of the second marriage. So much is clear to you, no doubt?”

Lady Wargrave’s only reply was to tighten her lips.

“You wish me to be still more explicit?”

She invited him to be so.

“Well, as far as I can I will be.” His air was simple matter of fact.
“But I warn you that we are now at the point where we have to realize
that Fate is so much stronger than ourselves.”

A momentary hesitation drew a harsh, “Go on, let me hear the worst.”

“Can’t you guess who this girl is?” he said abruptly.

“Pray, why should one?”

“She is the girl Jack wants to marry.”

A long silence followed this announcement. It would have been kind
perhaps had he helped his sister to break it, but a clear perception
of the first thought in her mind had raised a barrier. With a patience
that was half-malicious he waited for a speech that he knew was bound
to come.

“It was to have been expected,” she said at last with something
perilously like a snarl of subdued anger.

“Why expected?” They were the words for which he had waited, and he
seized them promptly.

“She has been too much for you, my friend.”

“Whom do you mean?”

“The mother, of course. She has planned this marriage so that she might
be revenged upon us here.”

He was quite ready to do Charlotte the justice of allowing that it was
the only view she was likely to hold. The pressure of mere facts was
too heavy. Words of his would be powerless against them; and yet he was
determined to use every means at his command to clear that suspicion
from her mind.

“I hope you will believe me when I tell you she is entirely innocent,”
he said in a voice of sudden emotion.

Charlotte slowly shook her head, but it was a gesture of defeat. She
was beyond malice now.

“Charlotte, I give you my word that she had no part in it.”

His sister looked at him pityingly. “It is impossible to believe that,”
she said without bitterness.

“So I see. But it is my duty to convince you.”

For a moment he fought a growing emotion, and then his mind suddenly
made up, he pressed the button of the electric bell that was near his
elbow.


V

The familiar summons was answered by Harriet herself. As she came into
the room her rather scared eyes were caught at once by the profile of
the dowager. But the reception in store for her was far from being of
the kind she had reason to expect, for which she had had too little
time to prepare.

To begin with Lady Wargrave rose to receive her. And that stately and
considered act was supplemented by the simple words of the Duke.

“She knows everything,” he said from the depths of his invalid chair,
without a suspicion of theatricality.

Harriet, all the color struck from her face, shrank back, a picture of
horror and timidity.

“Sit down, my dear, and let us hold a little family council.” That note
of intimacy and affection was so strange in Charlotte’s ear, that it
hit her almost as hard as the previous words had hit the wife of his
bosom. However, the two ladies sat, and the Duke with a nonchalance
that hardly seemed credible, went on in a quietly domestic voice, as
he turned to Harriet again. “We shall value your help and advice, if
you feel inclined to give it, in this matter of Mary and the young man
Dinneford.”

At this amazing speech Lady Wargrave stirred uneasily on her cushion
of thorns. She breathed hard, her mordant mouth grew set, in her grim
eyes were unutterable things.

“One moment, Johnnie,” she interposed. “Does Mrs.--er Sanderson quite
understand what it means to us?”

“Perfectly,” he said, “no one better.” The depth of the tone expressed
far more than those dry words. “It may help matters,” he added, turning
to Harriet again, “if I say at once that we are going to ask you to
make two decisions in the name of the people you have served so long
and so faithfully. And the first is this: Since, as you will see I
have been forced, much against my will, to let a third person into our
secret, you have now the opportunity of taking your true position in
the sight of the world.”

Lady Wargrave shivered. Somehow this was a turn of the game she had not
been able to foresee.

“That is to say,” the Duke went on, “you have now, as far as I am
concerned, full liberty to assume your true style and dignity as
mistress here. For more than twenty years you have sacrificed yourself
for others, but the time has now come when you need do so no longer.
What do you say?”

Harriet did not speak. Lady Wargrave was silent also, but a kind of
stony horror was freezing her. The whole situation had become so
fantastic that she felt the inadequacy of her emotions.

“You shall have a perfectly free hand,” the Duke went on. “Assume
your position now, and good care shall be taken that you are amply
maintained in it. What do you say, my dear?” he added gently.

Tears were melting her now, and she was unable to speak.

“Well, think it over,” said his Grace. “And be assured that whichever
course you take, it will be the right one. We owe you more than we can
repay. However, that is only one issue, and there is another, which is
hardly less important.”

Lady Wargrave stirred again on her cushion. For a moment there was not
a sound to be heard in the room.

“You see,” the Duke went on, “I’ve been giving anxious thought to--to
this girl of ours. And I really don’t see, having regard to all the
circumstances, why justice should any longer be denied her. No matter
who the man is, he is lucky to get her. And, as I understand, they are
a very devoted couple.”

“Oh, yes, they are!” The words were Harriet’s and they were uttered in
a tone broken by emotion.

“Well, you shall make the decision,” he said. “You know, of course, how
the matter stands.” Harriet bowed her head in assent, and his Grace
turned an eye bright with malice upon the Dowager. “You see, Charlotte,
this girl of ours, brought up in a very humble way, and left to fight
her own battle, under the providence of the good God, absolutely
declines to come among us unless she has the full and free consent of
the head of the clan. So far that consent has not been given, and if
in the course of the next week it is not forthcoming, the young man
Dinneford threatens to return to Canada.”

“I see.” The walls of Charlotte’s world had fallen in, her deepest
feelings had been outraged, but she was still perfect mistress of
herself. She turned her hard eyes upon Harriet, but in them now was
a look very different from the one that had been wont to regard the
housekeeper.

Much had happened in a very little time, but to the last a fine
tactician, Charlotte had contrived to keep her head. She was in the
presence of calamity, she had met a blow that would have broken a
weaker person in pieces, but already a line of action was formed in her
mind. One thing alone could save them, and that the continued goodwill
of the woman they had so long misjudged and traduced.

“Mrs. Sanderson”--she used the old name unconsciously--“we owe you a
great deal.” It was not easy to make the admission, even if common
justice rather than policy called for it. “I hope now you will let us
add to the debt.”

The Duke was forced to admire the dignity and the directness of the
appeal. He knew how hard she had been hit. But that was not all.
Marking his sister’s tone, intently watching her grim face, he saw how
completely her attitude had changed. The other woman had conquered,
but in spite of all he had suffered at the hands of Charlotte, it was
difficult not to feel a certain respect as well as a certain pity for
her in the hour of her defeat.

By this, Harriet, too, had become mistress of herself. She, also, had
suffered much, but she had never played for victory, and she was very
far from the thought of it now. “I have but one wish,” she said.

“And that is?” His tone was strangely gentle for her voice had failed
suddenly.

“To do what is right.”

The simplicity of the words held them silent. Brother and sister looked
at her with a kind of awe in their eyes. It was as if another world had
opened to their rather bewildered gaze.

“I want to do right to those who have been so good to me, and to my
father and my grandfather before me.”

Somehow that speech, gentleness itself, yet sharp as a sword, brought
the blood to Lady Wargrave’s face. In a flash she saw and felt the
justification of her brother’s amazing deed. This devoted woman in
her selflessness held the master key to life and Fate; in a flash of
insight she saw that groundlings and grovelers like themselves were
powerless before it. Somehow those words, that bearing, solved the
mystery. She could no longer blame her brother; he had been caught in
the toils of an irresistible force.

“Mrs. Sanderson”--there was reverence now in the harsh voice--“you are
the best judge of what is right. We are content to leave the matter to
your discretion.” Even if the accomplished tactician was uppermost in
Charlotte’s words, in the act of uttering them was a large rather noble
simplicity.

The Duke nodded acquiescence.

“I should like the present arrangement to go on,” said Harriet.
“Perhaps the truth will have to be known some time, but let it come out
after we are dead, when it can hurt nobody.”

Lady Wargrave drew a long breath of relief and gratitude.

“You are very wise,” she said.

But the Duke took her up at once with a saturnine smile. “You seem to
forget, Charlotte, that the existing arrangement can no longer go on.”

“Pray, why not?”

“You have just been kind enough to tell us,” he said bitingly, “that
Sarah and the girls are going to live with you at Hill Street--except,
of course, on one condition!”

Their eyes met. Suddenly they smiled frostily at each other.

“If you care to leave the matter to me,” said Charlotte, “I will see to
that.”

“But that woman, Sarah,” he persisted. “She’s so obstinate that we may
have to tell her.”

Charlotte shook her head doughtily. “I think I shall be able to manage
her.”

“So be it.” He smiled grimly. “Anyhow we shall be very glad to leave
that matter in your hands.”

“With perfect safety, I think you may do that.” And Charlotte, sore and
embittered as she was, rounded off this comfortable assurance with a
long sigh of relief.



CHAPTER XII

ARDORS AND ENDURANCES


I

“THERE,” cried Mary upon a note of triumph.

An excited wave of that delightful journal, the _Morning Post_,
accompanied the pæan. And then it was hurled across the breakfast-table
with deft precision into the lap of Milly.

“A marriage has been arranged,” said the courier of Hymen, “and will
shortly take place between Charles, only son of the late Simeon
Cheesewright and Mrs. Cheesewright, of Streatham Hill, and Mildred
Ulrica, younger daughter of the late H. Blandish Wren and Mrs. Wren, 5,
Victoria Mansions, Broad Place, Knightsbridge, W.”

Again arose the triumphant cry.

But Mrs. Wren, excavating the interior of a boiled egg, felt it to be
her duty to check this unbridled enthusiasm. For some days past, with
rather mournful iteration, she had let it be known that the impending
announcement could not hope to receive her unqualified approval.

In the first place, as she frankly admitted, the Marquis had spoiled
her. She had to confess that he had proved sadly lacking in backbone
when brought to the test, but his sternest critics could not deny that
“before everything he was a gentleman.”

Mrs. Wren ascribed her own pure taste in manhood to the fact that she
had begun her career in the legitimate drama under the ægis of Mr.
Painswick at the Theater Royal, Edinburgh. He, too, had been before
everything a gentleman. Mr. Painswick had shaped Lydia Mifflin, as she
was then, in his own inimitable mold. Upon a day she was to play Grace
to his Digby Grant in “The Two Roses.” Then it was, as she had always
felt, that she had touched her high-water mark; and the signal occasion
was ever afterwards a beacon in her life. From that bright hour the Mr.
Painswick standard had regulated the fair Lydia’s survey of the human
male. Even the late lamented Mr. H. Blandish Wren, who was without a
peer in “straight” comedy, whose Steggles in “London Assurance” had
never been surpassed, even that paladin----. Still it isn’t quite fair
to give away State secrets!

Mrs. Wren had once said of Charles Cheesewright “that he was not out
of the top drawer.” However, if he was not of the caste of Vere de
Vere she had to own that “he had points.” He was one of those young
men who mean more than they say, who do better than they promise, who
clothe their thoughts with actions rather than words. Also, he had two
motors--a Daimler and a Rolls-Royce, he had rooms in the Albany, and
though perhaps just a little inclined to overdress, he had such a sure
taste in jewelry that he took his fiancée once a week to Cartier’s. And
beyond everything else, he had the supreme advantage over my lord that
he knew his own mind pretty clearly.

In the opinion of Princess Bedalia, Milly was an extremely lucky girl.
Her young man was a simple, good fellow, honest as the day, he was
incapable of any kind of meanness, he was very rich, and, what was
hardly less important, he was very much in love. Milly, however, who
had her mother’s knack of seeing men and events objectively, did not
yield a final graceful assent until she extorted a promise from Mr.
Charles that he would suffer the rape of his mustache, at the best a
mere scrub of an affair, and that he would solemnly eschew yellow plush
hats which made him look like a piano-tuner.

Still, on this heroic morning, in the middle of July, Mrs. Wren seemed
less pleased with the world than she had reason to be. She did some
sort of justice to her egg, but she wouldn’t look at the marmalade.
If the truth must be told, a rather histrionic mind was still haunted
by the shade of the noble Marquis. As Milly, in one of her moments
of engaging candor, had told Mary already, as far as her mother was
concerned Wrexham had simply queered the pitch for everybody.

Certainly that lady felt it to be her duty to rebuke Mary’s enthusiasm.
There was nothing to make a song about. Milly was simply throwing
herself away. If everyone had had their rights, she would have been
Lady W., with a coronet on her notepaper. As it was, there was
really nothing so very wonderful in being the wife of an overdressed
tobacconist.

Mary cried “Shame,” and for her pains was sternly admonished. One who
has made such hay of her own dazzling matrimonial chances must not
venture to say a word. She who might have queened it among the highest
in the land merely by substituting the big word “Yes” for the small
word “No” must forever hold her peace on this vexed subject. But Mary
was in such wild spirits at the announcement in the _Morning Post_ that
she refused to be browbeaten. She continued to sing the praises of
“Charley” in spite of the clear annoyance of Mrs. Wren. The good lady
was unable to realize that the girl was trying with might and main to
stifle an ache that was almost intolerable.

“What ho!” Milly suddenly exclaimed, withdrawing a slightly _retroussé_
but decidedly charming nose from Page 5 of the _Morning Post_, “so
they’ve actually made Uncle Jacob a Bart.”

“My dear, you mean a baronet. Who?--made who a baronet?” Mrs. Wren laid
down an imperious egg-spoon.

“Jacob Cheesewright, Esquire, M.P. for Bradbury, a rich manufacturer
and prominent philanthropist. He’s in the honor list just issued by the
King’s government.”

“Hooray!” Mary indulged in an enthusiastic wave of the tea-pot which
happily was rather less than half full. “Which means, my dear Miss
Wren, that one of these days there’s just a chance of your being my
lady.”

“As though that could possibly matter!” cried Milly upon a note of the
finest scorn imaginable.

“As though that could possibly matter!” Mary’s reproduction of the note
in question was so humorously exact that it sent her victim into a fit
of laughter.

But Mrs. Wren had her word to say on the subject. In her opinion,
which was that of all sensible people, it mattered immensely.

“As though it could!” persisted Milly.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Wren, “that is shallow and ignorant. A baronetcy
is a baronetcy. All people of breeding think so, anyway.”

The prospect of Uncle Jacob’s elevation had already been canvassed
in Broad Place by Charles, his nephew. There was evidently something
in the wind Whitehall way. Uncle Jacob had professed such a heroic
indifference to Aunt Priscilla’s intelligent anticipations, that even
Charles, his nephew, the simplest of simple souls, and a singularly
unworldly young man, had been constrained to take an interest in the
matter. As for Aunt Priscilla, she had been in such a state of flutter
for the past two months, that the upper servants at Thole Park,
Maidstone, even had visions of an earldom. Still, as Mr. Bryant, the
butler, who in his distinguished youth had graduated at Bridport House,
Mayfair, remarked to Mrs. Jennings the housekeeper in his statesmanlike
way, “The Limit for baby’s underclothing is a baronetcy.”


II

Breakfast was just at an end when the trim parlormaid came into the
room with a portentous-looking milliner’s box. It had that moment
arrived, and on examination was found to contain a long coat of
sable. This enchanting garment was with Mary’s best wishes for future
happiness.

The donor was scolded roundly for her lavishness, but Milly was
delighted by the gift, and Mrs. Wren, who had professed a stern
determination to be no longer friends with Mary was rather touched. She
well knew that she was a person “to bank on.” Besides, Mrs. Wren had an
honest admiration for a fine talent and the unassumingness with which
it was worn. She was incapable of making an enemy, for her one idea
was to bring pleasure to other people. If ever human creature had been
designed for happiness it must have been this girl, yet none could have
been more fully bent on casting it willfully away.

As a fact, both Milly and her mother had been much troubled by the
course of recent events. The previous afternoon Jack had taken a sad
farewell of his friends in Broad Place. His passage was already booked
in the _Arcadia_, which that very Saturday was to sail from Liverpool
to New York. All his hopes had proved futile, all his arguments vain.
Mary could not be induced to change her mind, which even at the
eleventh hour he had ventured to think was just possible. In those
last desperate moments, strength of will had enabled her to stick to
her resolve. And in the absence of any intimation from Bridport House
the Tenderfoot had been driven to carry out his threat. Yet up till
the very last he had tried his utmost to persuade the girl he loved to
merge her own life in his and accompany him to that new world where a
career awaited him.

Perhaps these efforts had not been wholly reasonable. She had a real
vocation for the theater if ever girl had, even if he had a real
vocation for jobbing land. But allowance has to be made for a strong
man in love. He was in sorry case, poor fellow, but her sense of duty
to others was so strong, that even if it meant tragic unhappiness for
both, as it surely must, she still sought the courage not to yield.

Such a decision was going to cost a very great deal. The previous
afternoon, at the moment of parting, she had been fully aware of that,
and hour by hour since she had realized it with a growing intensity.
A stern effort of the will had been needed for Princess Bedalia to
achieve her five hundred-and-sixty-second appearance that evening; she
had spent a miserable night and now, in spite of the whole-heartedness
with which she threw herself into Milly’s affairs, her laugh was
pitched a little too high.

Since the visit to Bridport House she had come to know her own mind
quite definitely. She was deeply in love with Jack, but unless the
powers that were gave consent, she was now resolved never to marry him.
In vain her friends continued to assure her that such an attitude was
wrong. In vain the Tenderfoot declared it to be simply preposterous.
Cost what it might, it had become a point of honor not to yield. To one
of such clear vision, with, as it seemed, a rather uncanny insight into
the workings of worlds beyond her own, it was of vital importance to
study the interests of Bridport House.

Milly, even if very angry with her friend, could not help admiring this
devotion to a quixotic sense of right, and the force of character which
faced the issue so unflinchingly. She could not begin to understand
the point of view, but she well knew what it was going to cost. And
this morning, in spite of the pleasant and piquant drama of her own
affairs, she could not rid herself of a feeling of distress on Mary’s
account. Now it had come “to footing the bill,” a heavy price would
have to be paid. And to Milly’s shrewd, engagingly material mind, the
whole situation was exasperating.

So much for the thoughts uppermost in a loyal heart, while the
misguided cause of them danced a _pas seul_ in honor of the morning’s
news. Milly, indeed, as she gazed in the glass over the chimney-piece
to see what sort of a figure she made in the coat of sable, was much
nearer tears than was either seemly or desirable. Still, in spite of
that, she was able to muster a healthy curiosity upon the subject of
her appearance. Fur has a trick of making common people look more
common, and uncommon people look more uncommon, a trite fact of which
Milly, the astute, was well aware. It was pleasant to find at any
rate that a moment’s fleeting survey set all her doubts at rest upon
that important point. The coat, a dream of beauty, became her quite
miraculously. What a virtue there was in that deep, rich gloss! It gave
new values to the eyes, the hair, the rounded chin, even the piquant
nose of the wearer.

“You’re a dear!” Milly burst out, as she turned aside from the glass.
But the person to whom the tribute was offered was quite absorbed
in looking through the open window. Indeed, at that very moment a
succession of royal toots from a motor horn ascended from the precincts
of Broad Place, and Mary ran out on to the veranda with a view halloa.
Then, her face full of humor and eloquence, she turned to look back
into the room with the thrilling announcement: “Charley’s here!”


III

In two minutes, or rather less as time is measured in Elysium, Mr.
Charles Cheesewright had entered that pleasant room with all the gay
assurance of an accepted suitor.

“How awfully well it reads, doesn’t it?” he said, taking up the
_Morning Post_ with the fingers of a lover.

“Uncle Jacob’s baronetcy?” said Mary, with an eye of bold mischief.

“Oh, no! That’s a bit of a bore,” said Mr. Charles with a polite
grimace.

“Why a bore?”

“Uncle Jacob has no heir and he’s trying to arrange for me to be the
second bart.”

Princess Bedalia looked with a royal air at her favorite. “The truth
is, dear Charles, you are shamelessly pleased about the whole matter.”

“Well, ye-es, I am.” Charles was hopelessly cornered, but like any
other self-respecting Briton he was quite determined to put as good
a face as possible upon a most damaging admission. “I am so awfully
pleased for Milly. And, of course, for Uncle Jacob.”

“Not to mention Aunt Priscilla,” interposed Milly. It was her proud
boast that she had already tried a fall with Aunt Priscilla, had tried
it, moreover, pretty successfully. That lady, within her own orbit, was
a great light, but Miss Wren had proved very well able for her so far.
The Aunt Priscillas of the world were not going to harry Miss Wren, and
it was by no means clear that this simple fact did not count as much
to her honor in the sight of Uncle Jacob as it undoubtedly did in the
sight of Charles, his nephew.

At any rate, Mr. Charles had come that morning to Broad Place on a
diplomatic mission. It seemed that Uncle Jacob had made the sporting
suggestion that the happy pair should motor down to Thole Park,
Maidstone, for luncheon, that Charles, whose only merit in the sight of
heaven was that he was “plus one” at North Berwick, should afterwards
give careful consideration to the new nine-hole course which had been
laid out in front of the house by the renowned Alec Thomson of Cupar,
while Milly had a little heart-to-heart talk with Aunt Priscilla.

In a word, it began to look like being quite a good world for Charles
and Milly. And even Mrs. Wren was constrained to admit it. Sheer human
merit was becoming a little too much for the higher criticism. And
daily these twain were discovering new beauties in each other. For one
thing, Charles’s upper lip was now as smooth as a baby’s, and a mouth
so firm and manly was thereby disclosed that it really seemed a pity
to hide it. Moreover, for a fortnight past, in subtle, unsuspected
ways he had been bursting forth into fine qualities. This morning, for
instance, he seemed to have added a cubit to his stature. He was in the
habit of saying in regard to himself that “he was not a flyer,” but
really if you saw him at the angle Milly did, and you came to think
about him in her rational manner, it began to seem after all he might
turn out a bit of one. If only he could be persuaded to give up his
piano-tuner’s hat there would be hope for him anyway.


IV

Milly had scarcely left the room to put on her things before she was
back in it. And she returned in such a state of excitement that she
could hardly speak. The cause of it, moreover, following hard upon her
heels, was a wholly unexpected visitor.

“He was just coming in at the front door,” Milly explained, as soon as
the state of her emotions would allow her to do so. “I was never so
taken aback in my life. Why, a feather would have downed me.”

In that moment of drama it was not too much to say that a feather
would have had an equal effect upon Mary. If human resolve stood for
anything, and it stood for a good deal in the case of Jack Dinneford,
he should have been on his way to Liverpool. At six o’clock the
previous evening they had parted heroically, not expecting to see each
other again. For seventeen hours or so, they had been steeling their
wills miserably. About 2 a.m., the hour when ghosts walk and pixies
dance the foxtrot, both had felt that, after all, they would not be
strong enough to bear the self-inflicted blow. But daylight had found
them true to the faith that was in them. She had just enough fortitude
not to telephone a change of mind, he was just man enough to decide not
to miss the 10.5 from Euston.

Still, when the best has been said for it, the human will is but a
trivial affair. Man is not much when the Fates begin to weave their
magic web. A taxi was actually at the door of Jack’s chambers, nay,
his luggage had even been strapped into the front of the vehicle, when
there came an urgent message by telephone from Bridport House to say
that his Grace most particularly desired that Mr. Dinneford and Miss
Lawrence would come to luncheon at half-past one.

What was a man to do? To obey the command was, of course, to forgo all
hope of sailing by the _Arcadia_. To ignore it was to forgo all hope of
entering Elysium. In justice to Mr. Dinneford it took him rather less
than one minute to decide. His servant was promptly ordered to unship
his gear and dismiss the taxi.

It was the nearest possible shave. His Grace had run matters so
fine, that had he delayed his communication another two minutes, the
Tenderfoot would have been on his way to New York. Some miraculous
change of plan had occurred at the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh
hour. Exactly what it was must now be the business of a distracted
lover to find out.

Jack’s totally unexpected return to Broad Place was in itself an epic.
And his unheralded appearance had such an effect upon Mary, upon Milly,
upon Mrs. Wren, that he regretted not having had the forethought
to telephone his change of plans. He came as a bolt from the blue,
bringing with him an immensely difficult moment; and the presence
of Mr. Charles Cheesewright, of whom Jack only knew by hearsay,
undoubtedly added to its embarrassments.

Before anything could be done, even before the excited Milly could
interpose a “Tell me, is it all right?” it was necessary for these
paladins to be made known to each other. There was wariness on the part
of both in the process. Neither was quite able to accept the other on
trust. But a brief taking of the moral temperature by two members of
the sex which inclines to reserve convinced the one that Wrexham’s
successor had the air and the look of a good chap, and what was quite
as important, convinced the other that the heir to the dukedom was not
the least of a swankpot. All of which was so far excellent.

A desire to ask a thousand questions was simply burning holes in Milly.
But she had to endure the torments of martyrdom. Questions could not
be asked in the presence of Charles. It called for a great effort to
behave as if the bottom had not fallen out of the universe. In the most
heroic way she kept the conversation at a diplomatic level, remarking
among other things that it was an ideal day for motoring, which finally
reminded her that she must really go and put on her hat.

“And don’t forget a thick veil,” Mary called after her, in a voice of
superhuman detachment.

The business of not letting the innocent Charles into the secret was a
superb piece of comedy. There is really no need to write novels or to
go to the play. They are the stuff our daily lives are made of. The way
in which these four people set themselves to hoodwink a Simple Simon
of a fifth was quite a rich bit of humor. Little recked Mr. Charles
Cheesewright that the heavens had just opened in Broad Place.

At last Milly returned _cap-à-pie_, and then by the mercy of Divine
Providence Mr. Charles suddenly remembered that it was a long way to
Maidstone and that it was now a quarter past eleven.

“I’m quite ready when you are,” said Milly to her cavalier, with all
the guile of a young female serpent. Mr. Charles shook hands gravely
and Britishly all round, and Mary wished them a pleasant journey, and
Mrs. Wren “hoped they would wrap up well,” and then Milly stepped
deftly back three paces from the door, saying, “You know the way down,
Charley,” as clear an intimation as any young man could desire that it
was up to him to lead it.

Charles led the way accordingly, and then came Milly’s chance.

“What _has_ happened?”

“Uncle Albert has sent for us.”

“For both?”

“For both!”

Just for a moment Mary’s feelings nearly proved too much for her.
Having come to despair of Bridport House, there had been no reason to
hope for this sudden change of front. She simply couldn’t fathom it.
That was also true of Milly. And as the significance of the whole thing
rushed upon that imperious creature, she turned to Mary in the manner
of Helen, the Spartan Queen. “A last word to you, Miss Lawrence!” Her
voice trembled with excitement. “If you do anything idiotic, I’ll never
speak to you again. And that’s official!”


V

As the crow flies, it is just nine minutes from Broad Place to Bridport
House. Therefore they had time to burn. And as it was such a perfect
day for motoring, it was a day equally well adapted for sitting under
the trees in the Park.

_Force majeure_ was applied so vigorously by Mrs. Wren, with timely aid
from the Tenderfoot, that Mary was not given half a chance to jib at
this new and amazing turn of fortune’s shuttle. She must wear her new
hat with the roses--Mrs. Wren. She must wear Raquin’s biscuit-colored
masterpiece--Mr. Dinneford. Her diamond earrings thought Mrs. Wren. Mr.
Dinneford thought her old-fashioned seed pearl. There was never really
any question of her going to luncheon at Bridport House at 1.30. Her
friends and counselors did not even allow it to arise. The only thing
that need trouble her was how she looked when she got there.

En route she made a picture of immense distinction beyond a doubt.
Whether it was the hat with the roses, or the sunshine of July, or the
dress of simple muslin, which on second thoughts seemed more in keeping
with the occasion than the Raquin masterpiece, and in the opinion of
Mrs. Wren had the further merit “that it gave her eyes a chance,” or
her favorite earrings which Aunt Harriet had given her as a little
girl; or the fact that Jack walked beside her, and that Happiness
is still the greatest of Court painters, who shall say?--but in the
course of a pilgrimage from Albert Gate to the Marble Arch and half way
back again, she certainly attracted more than her share of the public
notice. In fact, with her fine height and her lithe grace she actually
provoked a hook-nosed, hard-featured dame in a sort of high-hung
barouche to turn in the most deliberate manner and look at her. Or it
may have been because the Tenderfoot in passing had raised a reluctant,
semi-ironical hat.

“Aunt Charlotte,” said he.

“I hope Aunt Charlotte is not as disagreeable as she looks,” was Mary’s
thought, but doubtless remembering in the nick of time Talleyrand’s
famous maxim, she merely said, “What a _clever_ face!”

“Is it?” said Jack, unconcernedly. But his mind was on other things,
perhaps.

As a matter of fact, it _was_ on other things.

“Let’s sit here five minutes,” he said, as they came to a couple of
vacant chairs. “Then I’ll tell you a bit of news.”

They sat accordingly. And the bit of news was the following:

“Muriel’s hooked it.”

Respect for her mother tongue caused Mary to demand a repetition of
this cryptic statement.

“Hooked it with her Radical,” Jack amplified. “They were married
yesterday morning, quite quietly, ‘owing to the indisposition of
his Grace,’ the papers say. And they are now in Scotland on their
honeymoon.”

“Let us hope they’ll be happy,” said Mary. “She has a very brilliant
husband, at any rate.”

“Not a doubt of that. If brains breed happiness, they’ll be all right.”

But do brains breed happiness? that was the question in their minds at
the moment. Aunt Charlotte had brains undoubtedly, but as she passed
them three minutes since no one could have said that she looked happy.
The Duke had brains, but few would have said that he was happy. Mary
herself had brains, and they had brought her within an ace of wrecking
her one chance of real happiness.

They were in the midst of this philosophical inquiry, when Chance, that
prince of magicians, gave the kaleidoscope a little loving shake, and
hey! presto! the other side of the picture was laughingly presented to
them.

A rather lop-sided young man in a brown bowler hat was marching head
in air along the gravel in front of them. One shoulder was a little
higher than its neighbor, his clothes looked shabby in the sun of July,
his gait was slightly grotesque, yet upon his face was a smile of rare
complacency. In one hand he held a small girl of five, and in the other
a small boy to match her; and that may have been why at this precise
moment he looked as if he had just acquired a controlling interest in
the planet. And yet there must have been some deeper, subtler reason
for this young man’s air of power mingled with beatitude.

Rather mean of mansion as he was, it was impossible for two shrewd
spectators of the human comedy on the Park chairs to ignore him as he
swung gayly by. In spite of his impossible hat and his weird trousers,
the mere look on his face was almost cosmic in its significance, he
was so clearly on terms with heaven. But in any case he would have
forcibly entered their scheme of existence. Just as he came level with
them he chanced to lower his gaze abruptly and by doing so caught the
fascinated eyes of Mary fixed upon his face.

“Good morning, Miss Lawrence. What a nice day!”

He was not in a position to take off his hat, but he enforced a hearty
greeting with a superb bow, and passed jauntily on.

The Tenderfoot could not help being amused. “Who’s your friend?” He
turned a quizzical eye upon a countenance glowing with mischief.

“That’s Alf.”

“In the name of all that’s wonderful, who is Alf?” The tone was
expostulation all compact, but as mirth was frankly uppermost, even
the most sensitive democrat could hardly have resented it.

“He’s a man on a newspaper.”

“I see,” said the Tenderfoot. But somehow it didn’t explain him.

“An old friend, my dear, and he’s now the Press, with a capital letter.
The other day he interviewed me for his paper.”

“How could you let him?” gasped the Tenderfoot.

“For the sake of old times.” Suddenly she loosed her famous note. “That
little man is in my stars. He dates back to my earliest flapperdom,
when my great ambition was to kill him. He was the greengrocer’s boy in
the next street, and he used to call after me:

  “‘I am Mary Plantagenet;
  Who would imagine it?
  Eyes full of liquid fire,
    Hair bright as jet;
  No one knows my hist’ry,
  I am wrapt in myst’ry,
  I am the She-ro
    Of a penny novelette.’”

“Well, I hope,” said the Tenderfoot, “you jolly well lammed into him
for such a piece of infernal cheek.”

“Yes, I did,” she confessed. “One day I turned on him and boxed his
ears, and I’m bound to say he’s been very respectful ever since. It
was very amusing to be reminded of his existence when he turned up the
other day. He paid me all sorts of extravagant compliments; he seems to
hold himself responsible for any success I may have had.”

“Nice of him.”

“He says he has written me up for the past two years; and that when
he edits a paper of his own, and he’s quite made up his mind that it
won’t be long before he does, I can have my portrait in it as often as
I want.”

“_My_ Lord!”

“All very honestly meant,” laughed Mary Plantagenet. “It is very
charming of Alf--a _nom de guerre_, by the way. His real name is
Michael Conner, but now he’s Alf of the _Millennium_. And the other day
at our interview, when he came to talk of old times, somehow I couldn’t
help loving him.”

“What, love--_that_!”

“There’s something to love in everybody, my dear. It’s really very
easy to like people if you hunt for the positive--if that’s not a high
brow way of putting it! The other day when Alf began to talk of his
ambitions, and of the wife he had married, and of the little Alfs and
the little Alfesses, I thought the more there are of you the merrier,
because after all you are rather fine, you are good for the community,
and you make this old world go round. Anyhow we began as enemies, and
now we are friends ‘for keeps,’ and both Alf and I are so much the
better for knowing it.”

“I wonder!”

“Of course we are. And when Alf is a great editor, as he means to be,
and he is able to carry out his great scheme of founding a Universal
Love and Admiration Society, for the purpose of bringing out the best
in everybody, including foreign nations--his very own idea, and to my
mind a noble one--he has promised to make me an original member.”

“A very original member!” The Tenderfoot scoffed.

But sitting there in the eye of the morning, with the gentle leaves
whispering over his head, and the finest girl in the land by his side
drawing a fanciful picture of “Alf” on the gravel with the point of her
sunshade, he was not in the mood for mockery. The world was so full of
a number of things, that it seemed but right and decent to have these
large and generous notions. Let every atom and molecule that made up
the pageant of human experience overflow in love and admiration of its
neighbor. He was a dud himself, his dwelling-place was _en parterre_,
yet as heaven was above him and She was at his elbow, there was no
denying that the little man who had just passed out of sight had laid
hold somehow of a divine idea.

Yes, the ticket for the future was Universal Love and Admiration, at
any rate for the heirs of the good God. Not a doubt that! He didn’t
pretend to be a philosopher, or a poet, but even he could see that
yonder little scug in the brown pot hat was a big proposition.

“I wonder,” he mused aloud, “how the little bounder came to think of
_that_?”

“He says it came to him in his sleep.” And the artist at his elbow
gave one final masterful curl to the amazing trousers of the latest
benefactor of the human species.



CHAPTER XIII

EVERYTHING FOR THE BEST


I

JACK glanced at the watch on his wrist. By the mercy of Allah there
were fifty minutes yet. A whole fifty minutes yet to stay in heaven.
And then....

Suddenly hard set by thoughts which had no right to be there he looked
up and away in the direction of Bridport House.

“There they go!” He gave the pavement artist a little prod.

“Who--goes--where?”

“Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie.”

True enough! Sublimely unconscious of two pairs of amused eyes upon
them, Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie were passing slowly by. As
usual at that hour they were riding their tall horses. And they became
their tall horses so remarkably well that they might have belonged to
the train of Artemis. In the saddle, at any rate, Cousin Blanche and
Cousin Marjorie looked hard to beat.

“Now for your precious theory,” said the Tenderfoot with malice.
“Here’s your chance to hunt for the positive.”

She fixed her eyes on the slowly-receding enemy. “Well, in the first
place, my dear, those old-fashioned habits become them marvelously.”

“No use for that sort of kit myself,” growled the hostile critic.

“Then they are so much a part of their horses they might be female
centaurs.”

“And about as amusing as female centaurs.”

“But we are hunting for the positive, aren’t we? We are trying ‘to
affirm something,’ as Alf would say. Now those two and their horses are
far grander works of art than anything that ever came out of Greece or
Italy. It has taken millions of years to produce them and they are so
perfect in their way that one wonders how they ever came to be produced
at all.”

“You might say that of anything or anybody--if you come to think of it.”

“Of course. I agree. And so would Alf. And that’s why universal love
and admiration are so proper and natural.”

“Wait till you are really up against ’em and then you’ll see.”

“The more I’m up against them--if I am to be up against them--the more
I shall love and admire them, not for what they are perhaps, but for
what they might be if only they’d take a little trouble over their
parts in this wonderful Play, which I’m quite sure the Author meant to
be so very much finer than we silly amateurs ever give it a chance of
becoming.”

The sunshade began to scratch the gravel again, while Jack Dinneford
sighed over its owner’s crude philosophy.

Presently he began to realize again that they were in a fool’s
paradise. Surely they were taking a climb down too much for granted.
Why should these hardshells give in so inexplicably? It was in the
nature of things for a flaw to lurk under all this fair-seeming. Only
fools would ever build on such a sublime pretense as Bridport House.
Was it rational to expect its denizens to behave like ordinary sensible
human people?

In order to sidetrack his fears he turned again to watch the labors of
the pavement artist. The tip of a gifted sunshade was doing wonderful
things with the gravel. It had just evolved a _chef d’œuvre_, which
however was only apparent to the eye of faith.

“Who do you imagine that is?”

Imagination was certainly needed. It would not have been possible
otherwise to see a resemblance to anything human.

“That is his lamp,” hovered the sunshade above this masterpiece. “That
is his truncheon. Those are his boots. That is his overcoat. And there
we have his helmet. And there,” the tip of the sunshade traced slowly,
“the noble profile of the greatest dear in existence.”

At that he was bound to own that had the Park gravel been more
sensitive, here would have been a living portrait of Sergeant Kelly of
the X Division. And even if it was only visible to the eye of faith it
was pretext enough for honest laughter.

  “No one knows her hist’ry,
  She is wrapt in myst’ry,”

he quoted softly.

It was quite true. Various zephyrs and divers little birds had
whispered the romantic fact in their ears long ago. But what did it
matter? It was but one plume more in the cap of the Magician, a mere
detail in that pageant of which Mystery itself is the last expression.

There may have been wisdom in their laughter. At any rate it seemed to
give them a kind of Dutch courage for the ordeal that was now so near.
But a rather forced gayety did not long continue; it was soon merged in
a further piece of news which Jack suddenly remembered.

“By the way,” he announced, “there’s more trouble at Bridport House. My
cousins, I hear, are going to live with Aunt Charlotte.”

She was obliged to ask why, but he had to own that it was beyond his
power to answer her question. All that he knew was that his cousins
were “at serious outs” with their father, and that according to recent
information they were on the point of leaving the paternal roof.

The Tenderfoot, however, in professing a diplomatic ignorance of a
matter to which he had indiscreetly referred, had only pulled up in
the nick of time. He knew rather more than he said. “There’s a violent
quarrel about Mrs. Sanderson,” was at the tip of his tongue, but
happily he saw in time that such words in such circumstances would
be pure folly. Nay, it was folly to have drifted into these perilous
waters at all; and in the face of a suddenly awakened curiosity, he
proceeded at once to steer the talk into a safer channel.

[Illustration: “We mustn’t build castles,” she sighed, and the light
fringed her eyelids]

After all, that was not very difficult. As they sat under the
whispering leaves, gazing a little wistfully at the pomp of a summer’s
day, heaven was so near that it hardly seemed rational to be giving
a thought to those who dwelt in spheres less halcyon. The previous
evening at six o’clock they had parted for ever in this very spot. But
a swift turn of Fate’s shuttle had changed everything.

As now they tried to understand what had occurred, it was hard to keep
from building castles. An absurd old planet might prove, after all,
such a wonderful place. When you are four-and-twenty and in love, and
the crooked path suddenly turns to the straight, and the future is seen
through magic vistas just ahead, surprising things are apt to arise,
take shape, acquire a hue, a meaning. The light that never was on sea
or land is quite likely to be found south of the Marble Arch and north
of Hyde Park Corner. They were on the threshold of a very wonderful
world. What gifts were theirs! Health, youth, a high-hearted joy in
existence, here were the keys of heaven. Life was what they chose to
make it.

Poetry herself clothed them as with a garment. But not for a moment
must they forget, even amid the dangerous joys of a rather wild
reaction, that all might be illusion. Voices whispered from the leaves
that as yet they were not out of the wood. Jack, it is true, was fain
to believe that the latest act of Bridport House implied a very real
change of heart. For all that, as the hour of Fate drew on, he could
not stifle a miserable feeling of nervousness. And Mary, too, in spite
of a proud surface gayety, felt faint within. The dream was far too
good to be true.

“Of _course_ it’s a climb down,” said Jack, whistling to keep up his
courage. “Do you suppose Uncle Albert would have sent for us like this
unless he meant to chuck up the sponge?”

“We mustn’t build castles,” she sighed, and the light fringed her
eyelids.

“We’ll build ’em as high as the moon!”

She shook a whimsical head. And then the goad of youth drove her to a
smile of perilous happiness. All sorts of subtle fears were lurking in
that good, shrewd brain of hers. They were on the verge of chaos and
Old Night--yet she had not the heart to rebuke him.

The dread hour of one-thirty was now so very near, that it was idle
to disguise the fact that one at least of the two people on the Park
chairs had grown extremely unhappy. Mary was quite sure that a horrible
ordeal was going to prove too much for her. It was hardly less than
madness to have yielded in the way she had. But qualms were useless,
fears were vain. There was only one thing to do. She must set her teeth
and go and face the music.


II

Punctual to the minute they were at the solemn portals of Bridport
House. And then as a servant in a grotesque livery piloted them across
an expanse of rather pretentious hall into a somber room, full of
grandiose decoration and Victorian furniture, a grand fighting spirit
suddenly rose in one whose need of it was sore. Mary was quaking in
her shoes, yet the joy of battle came upon her in the queerest, most
unexpected way. It was as if a magician had waved his wand and all
the paltry emotions of the past hour were dispelled. Perhaps it was
that deep down in her slept an Amazon. Or a clear conscience may have
inspired her; at any rate she had no need to reproach herself just
then. She could look the whole world in the face. Her attitude had been
sensitively correct; if other people did not appreciate that simple
fact, so much the worse for other people!

A long five minutes they waited in that large and dismal room, a
slight flush of anxiety upon their faces, their hearts beating a
little wildly, no doubt. In all that time not a word passed between
them; the tension was almost more than they could bear. If Fate had
kept till the last one final scurvy trick it would be too horrible!
And then suddenly, in the midst of this grim thought, an old man came
hobbling painfully in. Both were struck at once by the look of him.
There was something in the bearing, in the manner, in the play of the
rather exquisite face which spoke to them intimately. For a reason
deeply obscure, which Jack and Mary were very far from comprehending,
the welcome he gave her was quite touching. It was full of a simple
kindness, spontaneous, unstudied, oddly caressing.

Jack, amazed not a little by the heart-on-the-sleeve attitude of this
old barbarian, could only ascribe it to the desire of a finished man of
the world to put the best possible face on an impossible matter. Yet,
somehow, that cynical view did not seem to cover the facts of the case.

In a way that hardly belonged to a tyrant and an autocrat, the old man
took one of the girl’s hands into the keeping of his poor enfeebled
ones, and was still holding it when his sister and his eldest daughter
came into the room. Both ladies were firm in the belief that this was
the most disagreeable moment of their lives. Still it was their nature
to meet things heroically, and they now proceeded to do so.

The picture their minds had already formed of this girl was not
a pleasing one. But as far as Lady Wargrave was concerned it was
shattered almost instantly. The likeness between father and daughter
was amazing. She had, in quite a remarkable degree, the look of
noblesse the world had always admired in him, with which, however, he
had signally failed to endow the daughters of the first marriage. But
there was far more than a superficial likeness to shatter preconceived
ideas. Another, more virile strain was hers. The mettle of the pasture,
the breath of the moorland, had given her a look of purpose and fire,
even if the grace of the salon had yielded much of its own peculiar
amenity. Whatever else she might be, the youngest daughter of the House
of Dinneford was a personality of a rare but vivid kind.

As soon as the Duke realized that the ladies had entered the room,
he gravely presented the girl, but with a touch of chivalry that she
simply adored in him. The little note of homage melted in the oddest
way the half-fierce constraint with which she turned instinctively to
meet these enemies. Sarah bowed rather coldly, but Aunt Charlotte came
forward at once with a proffered hand.

“My sister,” murmured his Grace. In his eyes was a certain humor and
perhaps a spice of malice.

For a moment speech was impossible. The girl looked slowly from one
to the other, and then suddenly it came upon her that these people
were old and hard hit. She felt a curious revulsion of feeling. Their
surrender was unconditional, and woman’s sixth sense told her what
their thoughts must be. They must be suffering horribly. All at once
the fight went out of her.

In a fashion rather odd, with almost the naïveté of a child, she turned
aside in a deadly fight with tears, that she managed to screw back into
her eyes.

It was left to Lady Wargrave to break a silence which threatened to
become bitterly embarrassing: “Come over here and talk to me,” she said
with a directness the girl was quick to obey.

Lady Wargrave led the way to a couple of empty chairs near a window,
Mary following with a kind sick timidity she had never felt before, and
a heart that beat convulsively. What could the old dragon have to say
to her? Even now she half expected a talon.

The Dowager pointed to a chair, sat down grimly, and then said
abruptly, “I hope you will be happy.”

There was something in the words that threw the girl into momentary
confusion. The fact was a miracle had occurred and her bewilderment
was seeking a reason for it. Only one explanation came to her, and it
was that these great powers, rather than suffer Jack to depart, were
ready to make the best of his fiancée. There was not much comfort in
the theory, but no other was feasible. Place and power, it seemed, were
caught in meshes of their own weaving. And yet bruised in pride as she
was by a situation for which she was not to blame, the rather splendid
bearing of these old hard-bitten warriors touched a chivalry far down.
Deep called unto deep. At the unexpected words of the griffin, she had
again to screw the tears back into her eyes. And then she said in a
voice that seemed to be stifling her, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t
know.... I didn’t want this.... If you will.... If you will help me I
will do my best ... not ... to....”

The eyes of the Dowager searched her right through.

“No, you are not to blame,” she said judicially. “We are all going to
help you,” and then in a voice which cracked in the middle she added,
to her own surprise, “my dear.”


III

At luncheon the girl had the place of honor at the right hand of his
Grace. It was a rather chastened assembly. The arrival of the cuckoo
in the nest was a fitting climax to Muriel. Both episodes were felt
to be buffets of a wholly undeserved severity; they might even be
said to have shaken a sublime edifice to its base. Not for a moment
had the collective wisdom of the Dinneford ladies connived at Muriel’s
Breadth, nor had it in any way countenanced the absurd fellow Jack in
his infatuation for a chorus girl.

Simple justice, however, compelled these stern critics to own that
Bridport’s future duchess had come as a rather agreeable surprise. She
differed so much from the person they had expected. They couldn’t deny
that she was a personality. Moreover, there was a force, a distinction
that might hope to mold and even harmonize with her place in the table
of precedence. So good were her manners that the subtle air of the
great world might one day be hers.

It amazed them to see the effect she had already had on their
fastidious and difficult parent. He was talking to her of men and
events and times past in a way he had not talked for years. He
discoursed of the great ones of his youth, the singers and dancers of
the ’Sixties when he was at the Embassy at Paris and ginger was hot in
the mouth. Then by a process of gradation he went on to tell his old
stories of Gladstone and Dizzy, to discuss books and politics and the
pictures in the Uffizi, and to cap with tales of his own travels an
occasional brief anecdote, wittily told, of her own tours in America
and South Africa.

Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie could not help feeling hostile, yet it
was clear that this remarkable girl had put an enchantment on their
father. While he talked to her the table, the room, the people in it
seemed to pass beyond his ken. Candor bred the thought that it was
not to be wondered at, her way of listening was so delightful. The
beautiful head--it hurt them to admit the fact yet there it was--bent
towards him in a kind of loving reverence, changing each phrase of his
into something rare and memorable by a receptivity whose only wish
was to give pleasure to a poor old man struggling with a basin of
arrowroot--that sight and the sense of a presence alive in every nerve,
a voice of pure music, and a face incapable of evil: was it surprising
that a spell was cast upon their sire? Take her as one would she was a
real natural force--an original upon whom the fairies had lavished many
gifts.

The family chieftain was renewing his youth, but only Charlotte
understood why. In common with the rest of the world, Sarah, Blanche,
and Marjorie were to be kept in ignorance of the truth--for the present
at any rate. But already the Dinneford ladies had taken further
counsel of the sage of Hill Street, and upon her advice all thought
of secession from Bridport House had been given up. Reflection had
convinced Lady Wargrave, now in possession of the light, that the true
interests of the Family would be served by silence and submission.
After all, Mrs. Sanderson was an old and valued retainer; her integrity
was beyond question; her devotion and single-minded regard for their
father’s welfare ought not to be forgotten!

Taking all the circumstances into account, it was in Aunt Charlotte’s
opinion, a case for humble pie. And to do the ladies no injustice they
were ready to consume it gracefully. Jack, after all, was quite a
distant connection; and what was even more important in their sight,
the girl herself was presentable. Their father, at any rate, made no
secret of the fact that he found her sympathetic. Nay, he was even a
little carried away by her. As the meal went on, his manner towards her
almost verged upon affection; and at the end, in open defiance of his
doctors, he went to the length of wishing her happiness in a glass of
famous Madeira.


IV

At five minutes past three Mary and Jack awoke with a start from a
dream fantasy, to find themselves breathing the ampler air of Park
Lane. Even then they could not quite grasp the meaning of all that had
happened. Unconditional surrender indeed, yet so sudden, so causeless,
so mysterious. Why had this strange thing come to be?

But just now they were not in a mood to question the inscrutable wisdom
of the good God. Behind the curtain of appearances the sun shone more
bravely than ever, the dust of July lay a shade lighter on the trees
across the road. No, there was really no need for Providence to give an
account of itself at that moment; the nature of things called for no
analysis.

“I’ve fallen in love with that old man.”

Even if Jack heard the words he was not in a position to offer comment
upon them, for he was in the act of summoning a taxi from the lee of
the Park railings.

“Where shall we go?”

“To the moon and back again?”

And why not! It is not very far to the moon if you get hold of the
right kind of vehicle. But MX 54,906 proved on inspection hardly to
be adapted for the purpose; at any rate Jack came to the conclusion
after a mere glance at the tires that Hampton Court, via Richmond and
Elysium, would meet the case equally well.


V

Meanwhile his Grace in his favorite chair in his favorite room, was
doing his best to envisage “The Outlook for Democracy,” with the aid
of the _Quarterly Review_. Of a sudden the clock on the chimneypiece
chimed a quarter past three, and he laid down an article perfect
alike in form, taste and scholarship, with the air of one who expects
something to happen.

Something did happen. In almost the same moment, the housekeeper, Mrs.
Sanderson, came into the room. She carried a tray containing a glass, a
spoon, and a bottle.

His Grace shook his head. “I’ve had a glass of Madeira.”

“How could you be so unwise!” It was the gentle, half-smiling tone of
a mother who reproves a very dear but willful child.

She measured the draught inflexibly and he drank it like a man. As
he returned the glass to the tray he sighed a little, and then with
a whimsical glance upwards he said slowly and softly, “She has her
mother’s brains.”

As she looked down upon him, he saw the color darkening a strong and
beautiful face. “And her father’s eyes.” The warmth of her voice almost
stifled the words.

For nearly a minute there was so deep a silence that even the clock on
the chimneypiece was lost in it. And then very slowly and gently, as
one who thinks aloud, he said, “I am trying to remember those words of
Milton.” He closed his eyes with a smile of perplexity. “Ah, yes, yes.
I have them now:

“‘He for God only, she for God in him.’”



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

On pages 43 and 51, Number Five Beaconsfield has been changed to Number
Five, Beaconsfield.

On page 53, universed has been changed to unversed.

On page 58, spirt has been changed to spirit.

On page 59, réclamce has been changed to réclame.

On pages 72 and 218, a period has been added to Mrs.

On page 88, Majorie has been changed to Marjorie.

On page 90, Majorie’s has been changed to Marjorie’s.

On pages 97, 107 and 117, commonsense has been changed to common sense.

On page 102, the single quote has been removed from America’s.

On page 130, the single quote has been removed from Wren’s.

On page 143, decidely has been changed to decidedly.

On page 163, cause has been changed to course.

On page 188, the single quote has been removed from Parington’s.

On page 235, Panjandram has been changerd to Panjandrum.

On page 239, efficiency has been changed to efficiently.

On page 259, redoutable has been changed to redoubtable.

On page 266, a closing double quote has been added to “Whom do you mean?.

On page 267, familar has been changed to familiar.

On page 274, financée has been changed to fiancée.

On page 290, green-grocer’s has been changed to greengrocer’s.

On page 302, undeservedly has been changed to undeserved.

On page 305, a closing double quote has been added to the last sentence.

All other hyphenation and variant/archaic spellings have been retained.

Illustrations in the midst of a paragraph have been moved to avoid
interrupting the paragraph flow.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The time spirit: A romantic tale" ***

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