Sir Harry: A Love Story

SIR HARRY

A Love Story

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919

The Quinn & Boden Company BOOK MANUFACTURERS RAHWAY NEW JERSEY

dedication info

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE HOUSE OF MERRILEES
RICHARD BALDOCK
EXTON MANOR
THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
THE ELDEST SON
THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS
THE GREATEST OF THESE
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
WATERMEADS
UPSIDONIA
ABINGTON ABBEY
THE GRAFTONS
THE CLINTONS, AND OTHERS
SIR HARRY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

[Royd Castle]
[Lady Brent]
[The Child]
[Fairies]
[Mrs. Brent]
[Revolt]
[The Log Cabin]
[August]
[On the Moor]
[Viola]
[The Woodland Pool]
[At the Threshold]
[The Temple]
[Bastian]
[Wilbraham]
[Dilemma]
[The End]
[Afterwards]
[Wilbraham in London]
[Waiting]
[Sidney]
[The Return]
[Confidences]
[Holiday]
[Mrs. Brent Knows]
[Lady Brent Speaks]
[Lady Brent and Viola]
[In the Balance]
[Love]

SIR HARRY

CHAPTER I

ROYD CASTLE

The Reverend David Grant, Vicar-elect of Royd, was a novelist as well as a priest. So when he paid his preliminary visit to Royd Castle, and sat himself down to write to his wife about it he did so with the idea of making his letter a piece of literature; or at least of making her see. For that was literature—making people see. He would take as much trouble over his letter as he would over a chapter of a novel; and when she had read it she would have a clear picture in her mind of the place she was coming to and the people she would meet there. She had not been able to come herself because she was close to her confinement. Poor girl! It was rather hard luck that she should have to miss all this excitement. They had been married thirteen years and had always looked forward to settling into the ideal country parsonage. But either he would have to settle in himself, or else wait a couple of months or so until the baby was born and Ethel was well enough to take a hand in the blissful arrangements. Longing to get to work at it as he was, with money saved from his royalties to be spent in making their home what they wanted it to be, he yet thought that he would prefer to wait until she was strong again. After thirteen years of married life, in circumstances not of the easiest, this couple still liked doings things together.

The time and the place invited to literary composition. The time was shortly after ten o'clock of a warm spring night, for the Castle retired early. The place was a room which David Grant had sometimes imagined for himself as the background for a scene in a novel, but never yet had the satisfaction of occupying. It was a great state Tudor bedroom, with carved and panelled walls, a stone fireplace with a fire of logs burning in it, Flemish tapestry above, a polished oak floor with old carpets in front of the hearth, by the heavy pillared canopied bed and in the deep embrasure of the window. There were heavy oak chairs and tables and presses. The washing arrangements, necessarily more modern, since in Tudor days they washed very little, were in a closet apart. The writing-table alone showed modernity, with everything on it in the way of apparatus that could please a person who loved writing for its own sake, and could appreciate its accessories. It stood in the windowed recess, which was as large as a fair-sized room, and contained another table for books, with a cushioned chair by its side, and still left space for moving about from one window to the other. Wax candles in heavy silver candle-sticks stood invitingly on the writing-table, and elsewhere about the room. There were six of these lit when David Grant came up, but it was so large that the effect was still one of rich dimness, warmed into life by the glowing fire on the hearth.

David Grant's soul was full of content as he came into the room and shut the heavy door behind him. If he couldn't write a letter in this atmosphere that would eventually read well in his biography, he wasn't worth his salt. He was not without occasional qualms as to whether he actually was worth his salt as a novelist, but none of them troubled him to-night. He was wakeful and alert; he had half a mind to sit down at that inviting silver-laden table and write a chapter of "A Love Apart." But no. Ethel, poor girl, must come first. He felt tender towards her; they were going to be so happy together at Royd. And, after all, this was a chapter in the story of their own lives, and more interesting to both of them than a chapter in the lives of fictitious characters.

He took off his coat and put on the flannel jacket in which he was accustomed to write. Then he went to the windows and drew back all the heavy curtains, and opened one of the casements. His facile emotions, always ready to be stirred by beauty, and to turn it immediately into words, were stirred for a moment into something that he could not have put into words as he stood there, though they came to him the moment afterwards as he recognized how it all fitted in with the impression encouraged in his mind by the old rich room in the old castle—the moonlight outside, silvering the fairy glades of the park into mysterious beauty, the silence and the sweet scents of the slumbering earth.

The grass of the park grew right up to the stones of the castle wall on this side. Just above him were some great beeches, which seemed to be climbing the hill that rose behind. Below there were more trees, and between them stretched a glade which led the eye to further undulations of moonlit grass, and the bare trunks and branches of the trees that bordered them. He had been rather disappointed, in coming first into his room, to find that it did not look out on to the gardens; but under the moon this romantic glimpse of silvered trees and fairy glades seemed to him more beautiful than any tamed or ordered garden.

Anything might happen out there, on such a night. Oberon and Titania suggested themselves to him; the least that could be expected to happen was that a herd of deer led by a many-antlered stag should wander across a moonlit glade, and give just that touch of life that was wanted to enhance the lovely scene.

What actually did happen was that his eye was caught by a moving figure in the shadow of the trees, and, before he had had time to wonder, or even to be startled by it, came out into the bright stretch of grass in front of his window, and stood looking up at him.

It was young Sir Harry, owner of Royd Castle and all the magic beauty connected with it that was making such an impression upon the clerico-novelist's susceptible mind, but though in that fortunate position not yet of an age to be out under the trees of his park at this time of night. At nine o'clock he had said good-night to his grandmother's guest downstairs. Grant had thought it full early for a boy of his age to be sent up to bed, as Lady Brent had actually sent him, though without insistence, and with no protest on his part. He was no more than sixteen, but a well-grown boy, in the evening garb of a man; and he had sat opposite to his grandmother at the head of the table and taken a bright part in the conversation, so that, with his title to give him still further dignity, he had seemed altogether beyond the stage of being sent early to bed.

However, it appeared that bed had not been the aim of his departure, after all. He stood looking up at the window, not far above the ground, with a smile upon his handsome young face, and asked his grandmother's guest not to give him away. "I come out sometimes like this, when everybody is asleep," he said. "There's no harm in it, but Granny would try to stop me if she knew—lock me in, perhaps." He laughed freely. "So please don't tell her," he said, and melted away into the shadows without waiting for a promise of secrecy.

Grant rather liked that in him. He had been much attracted by young Sir Harry, who had shown himself charmingly friendly to him in a frank and boyish way that had yet seemed to contain something of the dignity of a grand seigneur. There was something pleasing in the thought of this handsome boy, master of the old rich beautiful house, even if he was as yet only nominal master. It was not unpleasing either to think of him roaming about his lovely demesne under the moonlight which made it still more fair. Certainly there was nothing wrong in it. If he was up to some mischief, it would only be of a kind that the women who held him in check might call such. He was too young and too frank for the sort of nocturnal mischief that a man might take notice of. At his age a sense of adventure would be satisfied by being abroad in the night while he was thought to be asleep. David Grant smiled to himself as he shut the window. He would like to make friends with this charming boy. He was rather pleased to have this little secret in common with him.

Now he walked about the great room, composing the lines of his letter, as he was accustomed to walk about composing the lines of a chapter in one of his novels. Its main "idea" was to be the pleasure he and his wife and the children were to have in Royd Vicarage. But that must be led up to. He must begin at the beginning, "make her see" the place, and the people among whom they would lead their lives. The people especially; there was room here for the neat little touches of description upon which he prided himself. The Vicarage must come last, and he would end on a tender note, which would please the dear girl, and make her feel that she was part of it all, as indeed she was.

And now he was ready to begin, and sat down at the table, all on fire with his subject. He wrote on and on until late into the night. Sometimes he rose to put another log on to the fire, to enjoy the crackle it made, and to sense the grateful atmosphere of the old room. Once or twice he went to the window and looked out, never failing to be charmed by the beauty of the scene. At these times he thought of the boy, out there under the moon or in the dim shadows of the trees, and wondered what he was doing, and if he would come and call up at his window again as he returned from his wandering. He rather hoped that he might, and left the casement open the second time he went to the window. But by the time he had finished his letter no sound had broken the stillness, except now and then the soft hooting of owls, and with a last look at the moonlit glades he blew out the candles and climbed into the great bed, very well satisfied with himself and with life in general.

"Oh, the tiresome old dear, he's trying to be literary," said Mrs. Grant, as she embarked eagerly upon the voluminous pages. She turned them over until she came to the description of the Vicarage towards the end:

"Lady Brent said very kindly, 'I expect you would like to go over the house by yourself, Mr. Grant. Harry shall go with you and show you the cottage where the key is kept. The church, I believe, is open. We shall expect you back to tea at half-past four, and if you have not finished you can go back again afterwards.'

"This was just what I wanted—to moon about the house which is to be our happy home, dearest, alone, and to build castles in the air about it. So we started off, the boy and I. We went down the avenue——"

"H'm. H'm." Mrs. Grant skipped a page.

"It was the Vicarage of our dreams, a low stone house, facing south, embowered in massy trees, its walls covered with creepers, the sun glinting on its small-paned windows."

Mrs. Grant skipped a little more. She wanted to know the number of rooms, and if possible the size of the principal ones, what the kitchen and the back premises were like, whether the kitchen garden was large enough to supply the house, and if it could all be managed by one man, who would also look after the pony, and perhaps clean the boots and knives.

She gained a hint or two as she turned over the pages quickly, and then read them more carefully. "Well, he doesn't tell me much," she said, "but I expect it will be all right and I'm sure I shall love it. The drawing-room opening into the garden and the best bedroom with a view of the sea in the distance sound jolly, and I'm glad the old darling will have a nice room to write his nonsense in. If he is pleased with his surroundings he always does more work, and that means more money. Oh, I do hope his sales will go up and we shall have enough to live comfortably on there." She went on to the end of the letter, which gave her pleasure, as had been intended. "Dear old thing, he does lean on me," she said. "And well he may. Well, I shall bustle about and make things happy and comfortable for him directly I'm strong enough. Oh, my little love, why didn't you put off your arrival for a few months longer? But I shall adore you when you do come, and it will be lovely to bring you up in that beautiful place. Now let's see what these Brent people are like, if he's clever enough to give me any idea of them."

She turned back to the beginning of the letter, and read it through in the same way as she read his novels. She knew by intuition when it was worth while to read every word, and—well, when it wasn't.

"Young Sir Harry met me at the station. He is a handsome boy, very bright and friendly. My heart warmed to him, and especially when he showed a lively interest in our Jane and Pobbles. I told him that Jane was only eleven and Pobbles nine, but he said that he wasn't so very much older himself, and laughed as he said it, like a young wood-god, with all the youth of the world in him. I remember once walking in an olive wood in Italy, and suddenly meeting...

"I was rather surprised at the carriage sent to meet us. It was a stately affair, but with the varnish dull and cracked, and the horses fat and slow. In spite of the liveried coachman and footman on the box, the equipage was not what one might have expected from such a house as Royd Castle. I was inclined at first to think that it meant poverty, which is not always unallied to state; but there are all the signs of very ample means in this house, and I incline now to the opinion that in a woman's house, as Royd Castle is at present, stable arrangements are not much bothered about. Lady Brent goes about very little. In fact there are no other houses near for her to visit. Poldaven Castle, I am told, one of the seats of the Marquis of Avalon, lies about seven miles off, but the family is hardly ever there. We ourselves, my dearest, shall be very much to ourselves in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. We shall have the people at the Castle, and our own more humble parishioners, and—ourselves. But how happy we shall be! The beauty of our surroundings alone would give us..."

Mrs. Grant skimmed lightly over a description of the seven-mile drive from the little town by the sea, through rocky hilly country, bare of trees, but golden with gorse under a soft April sky flecked with fleecy clouds, and accepted without enthusiasm the statement that all nature, including the young lambs and the rabbits, seemed to be laughing with glee. She was anxious to get to Royd, which was to be her home, perhaps for the rest of her life.

Trees had made their appearance in the landscape by the time it was reached, and she gained an impression of a kinder richer country than that of the coast. As they neared Royd there were picturesque stone-built farm-houses, and then a steep village street lined with stone-roofed cottages, their gardens bright with coloured primroses, daffodils, ribes, berberi, aubretia and arabis, and here and there a gay splash of cydonia japonica against a white-washed wall. Her husband was always particular about the names of plants. No mere "early spring flowers" for him! His descriptions were apt to read rather like a nurseryman's catalogue, but as they both of them knew their way about nurserymen's catalogues, she gained her picture of spring-garden colour and was pleased with it. It would be lovely to have a real big garden to play with, instead of the narrow oblong behind their semi-detached villa. But she did want to get to Lady Brent, and the rest of the household at the Castle.

The old church was at one end of the village, with a squat stone spire on a squat tower. Description of its interior was reserved until later. The Vicarage was beyond it, round the corner. The principal lodge gates were opposite,—handsome iron gates between heavy stone pillars surmounted by the Brent armorial leopards, collared and chained. A little Tudor lodge stood on either side of the gate-pillars, and a high stone wall ran off on either side. Young Sir Harry had told him that it ran right round the park, which was three miles in circumference.

The description of the drive broke off here for an account of some other things that young Sir Harry had told him. Expectation was to be maintained a little longer. She wanted to get to the Castle, but did not skip this part because it was rather interesting.

"The boy has never been to school. In fact, he has never slept a night away from the Castle in all his sixteen years. He has a tutor—a Mr. Wilbraham, who seems to have grounded him well in his classics. More of him anon. The boy reads poetry too, and of a good kind. Altogether rather a remarkable boy, and very good to look upon, with his crisp fair hair, white teeth and friendly open look—a worthy head of the old family from which he is descended. His father was killed in the South African War, before Harry was born. He was born at the Castle and he and his mother have lived here ever since. So much I learnt as we drove together, and formed some picture in my mind of the people I was about to meet."

Here followed the mental portraits of Lady Brent, Mrs. Brent and Mr. Wilbraham, but as they bore small likeness to the originals, as afterwards appeared, they may be omitted.

"We entered by the lodge gates, and drove through the beautiful park, I should say for the best part of a mile. With the trees not yet in leaf, and the great stretches of fern showing nothing but the russet of last year's fronds, it was yet very beautiful. Herds of fallow deer were feeding quietly on the green lawns, and a noble stag lifted his head to look at us as we drove past, but made no attempt to escape, though he can have been distant from us only a long mashie shot. Wood-pigeons flew from tree-top to tree-top across the glades. I heard the tap-tap of a woodpecker as we began to mount a rise where the trees grew thicker, and the harsh screech of a jay, of which I caught a glimpse of garish colour. There was a sense of peace and seclusion about this beautiful enclosed space, as if nothing ugly from the world outside could penetrate behind those high stone walls, and nature here rejoiced in freedom and beauty.

"The hill became steeper, and the horses walked up it until we came to the open ground at the top. There at last, as we drew out from under the trees, I saw the ancient mass of the Castle with the flag flying proudly above it, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The ground sloped down towards it. There was a wide open space of grass with the road winding through, and here and there a noble beech, with which this part of the park is chiefly planted. The ground rose again behind the massive pile, and was once more thick with trees, so that it appeared backed by a mass of delicate purple, which will soon take on that delicious delicate green of young beech leaves, than which there is none more beautiful in all nature, unless it be the emerald green of waves in a blue sea."

"I shall look out for that in the next novel," said Mrs. Grant, at this point. "I know that green, but he has always called it translucent before."

"The castle is low and spreading, nowhere more than two stories in height, except for the row of dormers in the roof, and in the middle of the mass, where there is a great gateway leading into an inner court, exactly like the gateway of a college. In fact the building resembles an ancient college in many particulars. The garden is enclosed within a stone wall, which continues the front of the building. It is on one side only, and is very beautiful, though I have not yet explored it, and can speak only of a lawn bounded by an arcading of yew, to which access is gained from the long drawing-room where I was received. The stables are in an inner courtyard behind the first. On the side opposite to the garden, in which the room where I am now writing is situated, one looks out straight into the park.

"Young Sir Harry took me straight into the room where the ladies of the house were sitting at their needlework. It was a long low room, beautifully furnished with what I should judge to be French furniture chiefly, but with deep chintz-covered easy chairs and sofas which took away from any formal effect it might otherwise have had. Lady Brent and Mrs. Brent were sitting by one of the windows, of which there are a line opening on to a sort of stone built veranda facing the garden that I have mentioned. They rose at once to meet me. Lady Brent, whom I had pictured as rather a dominating old lady, walking possibly with a stick, I was surprised to find not old at all in appearance. She must have married young, and her son, Harry's father, must have married young, as indeed I afterwards found to have been the case. Wilbraham says that she is still a few years short of sixty, and she does not look much over fifty. She is not tall, but holds herself erect and moves in a stately manner. She is not exactly handsome, but her features are pleasant to the eye, and she has an agreeable smile. She made me welcome in a few words, and I felt that I was welcome, and immediately at home with her.

"Of Mrs. Brent, Sir Harry's mother, it is more difficult to speak. In the light of what I afterwards heard about her, whatever surprised me on my first introduction to her is explained; but I am trying to give you my first impressions. She is good-looking, but it struck me at once in rather a common way. She would be, I suppose, about five and thirty. She was quietly dressed and quiet-spoken; but there was a something. She did not look of Lady Brent's class, and it was something of a surprise to me to see in her the mother of Sir Harry, though in her colouring and facial conformation she undoubtedly resembled him."

At this point Mrs. Grant was aroused by the sounds of violent quarrelling in the little garden below the window at which she was sitting, and looked out to see her son and daughter locked in a close but hostile embrace. She threw up the window and called to them, but they took no notice, and she had to go down to separate them. They were the most charming children, and inseparable companions, but apt to express themselves occasionally in these desperate struggles. When peace had been restored, and they were left amicably planting mustard and cress, she returned to her letter, longing to know more about Mrs. Brent, and especially the reason for her appearance of commonness.

CHAPTER II

LADY BRENT

The explanation came after a description of luncheon in the great hall, which had greatly impressed the writer, with its high timbered roof, oriel window, and carved gallery. Mr. Wilbraham, the tutor, had been added to the company, and was presented as a middle-aged figure, with a somewhat discontented expression of face, but a gift of ready speech which made the meal lively and interesting. He and the two ladies seemed to be on the most excellent terms, and the way in which Lady Brent deferred to the tutor, not treating him in the least as a dependent, but as a valued member of the family circle, had struck the Vicar-elect of Royd most agreeably. "This is a woman," he wrote, "with brains above the ordinary, who takes pleasure in exercising them. Though living a retired life, far from the centres of human intercourse, she takes a lively interest in what is going on in the world. Politics were discussed over the luncheon-table, and I found her views coincided remarkably with my own, and together we gave, I think, a very good account of ourselves in argument with Wilbraham, who professes to be something of a Radical, though I noticed that he ate a very good lunch, and is evidently not averse to sharing in the good things of the class he affects to deride. It was all, however, very good-humoured, and when the talk veered round to books, I found that these good people knew really more about the latest publications than I did myself. Wilbraham is a great reader. He acts as librarian, as well as tutor to Harry, and seems to have carte blanche to order anything down from London that he likes. I imagine that he recommends books to Lady Brent, and she reads a great deal too—not only fiction, but biographies, books of travel, and even stiff works on such subjects as Philosophy.

"Of course I kept very quiet about my own humble productions, as I have never professed to be a scholar, and aim rather at touching the universal human mind, with stories that shall entertain but never degrade, and should not expect to be considered very highly, or perhaps even have been heard of by people of this calibre, though there are many of equal intelligence among my readers. I must confess, however, that I was gratified when Mrs. Brent, who had not taken much part in the conversation, said: 'I have read all your books, Mr. Grant, and think they are lovely. So touching!'

"This is the sort of compliment that I value. It is to the simple mind that I make my appeal, and Mrs. Brent is quite evidently of a lower class of intelligence than those about her. I think I detected some deprecation in the glance that she threw at her mother-in-law immediately after she had expressed herself with this simple, and evidently felt enthusiasm. Perhaps her opinions on literary subjects are not considered very highly, but Lady Brent would be far too well-bred and courteous to snub her. She said at once, very kindly: 'The Bishop told us that you were a novelist, Mr. Grant. Mr. Wilbraham was about to send for your books, but we found that my daughter-in-law had them already. I have not had time more than to dip into one of them, but I promise myself much pleasure from them when I have a little more time.' Wilbraham saved me from the necessity of finding an answer by breaking in at once: 'I don't intend to read a single one of them, either now or hereafter. Let that be plainly understood.' Everybody laughed at this, and it was said in such a way that I felt no offence. This man is evidently something of a character, and I should say had made himself felt in this household of women. The boy likes him too. I could see that by the way they addressed one another. They are more like friends than master and pupil.

"Well, I felt that I had sized up Lady Brent, Wilbraham and young Harry pretty well by the end of the meal, and the conversation that went with it. I have a knack of doing so with people I meet, and find that upon closer acquaintance I have seldom been wrong in my first impressions. Mrs. Brent puzzled me a little more. Was she entirely happy? I thought not, though there was nothing very definite to go upon. If not, it could not be the fault of any of the three other members of the household. She evidently adores her boy, for her face lights up whenever she looks at him, and he treats her with an affection and consideration that are very pleasant to see. Lady Brent treats her in much the same way, and is evidently a woman of much kindness of heart, for Mrs. Brent, as I have already said, is not up to her level, and living in constant companionship with her might be expected to grate a little on the nerves of a lady of her sort. Wilbraham would not be likely to hide any contempt that he might feel for some one of less intelligence than himself. He might not show it openly to the mother of his pupil, but I should certainly have noticed it if it had been there. But he behaved beautifully to her, and smiled when he spoke to her as if he really liked her, and found pleasure in anything that she said. And she seemed grateful, and smiled at him in return. They are in fact a very happy little party, these curiously assorted people who live so much to themselves. And yet, as I said above, the one member of it did not strike me as being entirely happy, and I could not help wondering why.

"Wilbraham enlightened me, as we smoked together after lunch, walking up and down a broad garden path under the April sunshine. 'What do you think of Mrs. Brent?' he asked me, with a side-long whimsical glance that is very characteristic of the man.

"I was a little put out by the suddenness of the question, but took advantage of it to be equally direct and to ask my question. 'Is there anything to make her unhappy?'

"He laughed at that. 'I see you have your eyes open,' he said. 'I suppose it's the novelist's trick. Any questions to ask about the rest of us?'

"'You haven't answered my first one yet,' I replied, and he laughed again, and said: 'Did you ever hear of Lottie Lansdowne?'

"The name seemed vaguely familiar to me, but he said, without waiting for my reply: 'I don't suppose you ever did, but if I were you I should tell Mrs. Brent on the first opportunity that when you were young and going the round of the theatres that was the one name in the bill you never could resist.'

"'I suppose you mean that Mrs. Brent was once on the stage and that was her name,' I said. 'But I don't remember her all the same.'

"'No, I don't suppose you would,' he said again. 'As a matter of fact the poor little thing never got beyond the smallest parts, and I doubt if she ever would have done. But Brent fell in love with her, and married her, and since then she has never had a chance of trying. That's what's the matter with her, and I'm afraid it can't be helped. She's pretty, isn't she?'

"'Yes,' I said, as he seemed to expect it of me, but she hadn't struck me as being particularly pretty, though she might have been as a young girl. 'You mean that she doesn't like the quiet life down here?'

"'Yes, that's what I mean,' he said. 'I'm sorry for the poor little soul. She's like a child. Vain, I dare say, but not an ounce of harm in her. I'm telling you this because you'd be bound to find it out for yourself in any case. She'll probably tell you about her early triumphs herself when you know her better. The thing to do is to keep her pleased with herself as much as possible. There's not much to amuse her here. We never see anybody. It suits me all right, and her ladyship; and Harry is happy enough at present, with what he finds to do outside, and what he has to do in. But she's different. There's nothing much for her. She reads a lot of trashy novels——' Here he broke off suddenly and roared with laughter, twisting his body about, and behaving in a curious uncontrolled manner till he'd had his laugh out. Then he said: 'I'm not going to hide from you that I have tried to read one of yours, and my opinion is that it's slush, but quite harmless slush, which perhaps makes it worse. However, she likes them; so I dare say you'll find something in common with her, and it will be all to the good your coming here. That's why I've told you about her. You'll be able to help.'

"I must confess to some slight annoyance at having my work belittled in this way. However, I suppose to a man of this sort all clean healthy sentiment is 'slush,' and the absence of unwholesome interest in my works would not commend them to him, though I am thankful to say that it is no drawback to the pleasure that the people I aim at take in them. If Mrs. Brent is one of these, I shall hope indeed to be of use to her, and I think it speaks well for her, when her early life is taken into consideration, that she should find my simple tales of quiet natural life 'lovely,' as she said that she did. It has occurred to me that when I get to know her better I may possibly gain from her some information upon life behind the scenes, that I could make use of in my work. I should like to draw the picture of a pure unsullied girl, going through the life of the theatre, unspotted by it, and raising all those about her, while she herself rises to the top of her profession, and marries a good man, perhaps in the higher ranks of society, thus showing that virtue is virtue everywhere and has its reward, and doing some good in circles that I have not yet touched. However, all that is for the future. Our immediate duty—yours and mine, dearest,—is to make friends with this rather pathetic little lady, and to reconcile her to her lot, which in this beautiful place, with all the love and kindness she receives from those about her, is hardly really to be pitied.

"I told Wilbraham that I had been much struck with Lady Brent's attitude towards her, and he became serious at once and said: 'Lady Brent is a fine character. There's no getting over that. No, there's no getting over that; she's a fine character.'

"I was a little surprised at the way he said it, but he's a queer sort of fellow, though I think likable. He went on at once, as if he wanted to remove some doubt in my mind as to Lady Brent; but, as a matter of fact, I had none, and am as capable of judging her as he is, though of course he has known her longer. 'She sees,' he said, 'that poor little Lottie—I generally call her that to myself—can't be quite happy shut up down here. But she's right in keeping her here. You see, Brent was rather a wild sort of fellow. He got into mischief once or twice, and from what I've heard she and his father weren't sorry when his regiment was ordered off to South Africa. Well, he went, and was killed the first time he went into action, within a month. By the time the news came over his father himself was dying, and did die, as a matter of fact, without knowing of it. A pretty good shock for the poor lady, eh? Well, she had another when poor little Lottie wrote to her and said that she had been married to Brent the week before he sailed, and there was a baby coming. She went straight up to London and brought her down here, and Harry was born here. Harry is rather an important person, you know. He's the last of his line, which is an old one. This place belongs to him, and he'll have a great deal of money from his grandmother. He's Sir Harry Brent of Royd Castle. What he is on his mother's side must be made as little of as possible. She's a Brent by marriage and she has to learn to be a Brent by manners and customs, if you understand me!'

"I said that I thought I did, and that Lady Brent was quite right in wishing to keep her in this atmosphere. But I said that I quite saw that the more friends she had the better. I should do my best to make friends with her, and I was sure that my wife would, who was extremely kind-hearted.

"'Ah, that's right,' he said, with a great air of satisfaction, and just then Harry came out and we went off together to the village and the vicarage."

Here followed the account of the Vicarage, and of the church, but Mrs. Grant knew there was more to come later about Mrs. Brent, and hurried on till she got to it.

Dinner in the great hall was described, with allusions to the perfection of the service and the livery of the servants. The conversation was much the same as over the luncheon table, and Mrs. Brent took more part in it. There was something different about her air. She was beautifully dressed and her "commonness" seemed to have dropped from her. She was, indeed, rather stately, in the manner of her mother-in-law, whom it struck Grant that she was anxious to copy. After dinner they sat in the long drawing-room, and Wilbraham played the piano, which he did rather well. Soon after Harry had gone to bed, Lady Brent went out of the room to get some silks for her embroidery. Mrs. Brent had offered to get these for her, but she wouldn't let her. Grant was sitting near to Mrs. Brent, and while Wilbraham played softly at the other end of the room he talked to her.

"I said with a smile: 'I think your name used to be very well known in other scenes than this when I was a young man, Mrs. Brent.'

"My dear, I was never more surprised than by the way she took it. She flushed and drew up her head and looked at me straight, and said: 'Pray what do you mean by that, Mr. Grant?'

"I felt like a fool. Of course if Wilbraham hadn't said what he had I should never have thought of addressing her upon the subject. Being what she is now I should have expected that she would not have wanted her origin alluded to. But I have told you exactly what he did say, and certainly I never meant anything but kindness to her. Still, I saw that she might think I was simply taking a liberty, and made what recovery I could. 'I know that you were a great ornament of the stage before you were married,' I said. 'Please forgive me if I ought not to have alluded to it, but you said that you had read my books, and you will know that I take all life for my province; and when one practises one art with all earnestness and sincerity, it is interesting to talk to some one who has made a great success with another.'

"I think this was well said, wasn't it, dear? I'm afraid it was going rather beyond the truth, as, from what Wilbraham had told me, I doubt if she was much more than a chorus girl, and that only for a very short time. But my conscience doesn't prick me for having drawn the long bow a little. I had to disabuse her mind of the idea that I was taking a liberty with her, and I wanted to please her in the way that Wilbraham had indicated.

"She ceased, I think, to take offence, but she said, rather primly, with her eyes on her needlework, which she had taken up again: 'I prefer to forget that I was ever on the stage, Mr. Grant. It was for a very short time, and I simply went to and from my home to the theatre, always attended by a maid—or nearly always, and sometimes by my mother. When I married I left the stage altogether, and have never been in a theatre since. I don't know how you knew that I had ever belonged to it.'

"She gave me a quick little glance, and I divined somehow that it would give her pleasure to believe that she was remembered. I won't tell you what I said, but while I steered clear of an actual untruth, I did manage to convey the impression that I had recognized her, and I hope I may be forgiven for it. She said hurriedly: 'Well, we won't talk about it any more, for I have nearly forgotten it all, and wish to forget it altogether. And please don't tell Lady Brent that you know who I was. We don't want Harry to know it at all—ever. She's quite right there. Here she comes. You do like Harry, don't you, Mr. Grant? He's such a dear boy. and all the people about here love him.'

"'What, talking about Harry?' said Lady Brent, as she joined us. 'We all talk a great deal about Harry, Mr. Grant. I don't think there is a boy in the world on whom greater hopes are set. We have made him happy between us so far, but I am glad you are coming here with your young people, to bring a little more life into this quiet place. Young people want young life about them. It is the only thing that has been lacking for him. And it is all too short a time before he will have to go out into the world.'

"This all gave me a great deal to think about. I hope I have given you such an account of everything that passed, and the important parts of what was said to make you see it as I do. Consider this kind good lady, gifted more than most, rich, titled, intellectual, calculated to shine in society, yet content to live a quiet life out of the world for the sake of the bright boy upon whom so many hopes depend. She has gone through much trouble, with her only son and her husband reft from her within a few weeks of one another. She cannot have welcomed the wife whom her son had chosen, but she lives in constant companionship with her, and treats her with every consideration. My heart warms towards her. We are indeed fortunate in having such a chatelaine as Lady Brent in the place in which we are to spend our lives and do our work. Of her kindness and thoughtfulness towards myself I have not time to write, as it is getting very late, and I must to bed. But when you come here you will find her everything that you can wish, and I shall be surprised if you do not make a real friend of her, a friend who will last, and on whom you can in all things depend."

When Mrs. Grant had at last finished this voluminous letter, she summoned Miss Minster to her, and read her many passages from it. Miss Minster was the lady who looked after the education of Jane and Pobbles, and had somewhat of a hard task in doing so, though she fulfilled it without showing outward signs of stress. She was of about the same age as Mrs. Grant—that is in the early thirties, and they had been friends together at school. They were friends now, and Mrs. Grant trusted Miss Minster's judgment in some things more even than she trusted her husband's.

"Somehow, I don't see Lady Brent," said Mrs. Grant, when she had read out all that had been written about her. "She seems to have made a great impression upon David, but it looks to me as if it was the impression she wanted to make."

"If any other man but David had written all that," said Miss Minster, "I should have said that there was something behind it all. I should have said that Lady Brent had some dark reason for keeping herself and the rest of them shut up there, and that this Mr. Wilbraham, who doesn't seem to behave like a tutor at all, was in the conspiracy. As it is, I think his pen has run away with him, and they are all very ordinary people, and there's nothing behind it at all."

"Well, my idea is just the opposite," said Mrs. Grant. "If David had sniffed a story he would have put it in. He doesn't think there is anything behind it. I do. Perhaps Mrs. Brent wasn't married, and this young Sir Harry isn't the rightful heir. That would be a good reason for Lady Brent to lie low. Perhaps Mr. Wilbraham knows about it, which would be the reason for his not behaving like an ordinary tutor; though, as for that, I don't think there's much in it, and he behaves like an ordinary tutor according to David's account just as much as you behave like an ordinary governess."

"A good point as far as it goes," said Miss Minster, "and a joyous life it would be for you if I did behave like an ordinary governess. But you're worse than David in making up twopence coloured stories. I don't think we need worry ourselves about the Brents till we get down there. Then we shall be able to judge for ourselves. No man ever knows what a woman is really like the first time he sees her. Whatever Lady Brent and Mrs. Brent are like, you may depend upon it that we shan't find them in the least as David has described them. Now read what he says about the Vicarage again, and see if we can make anything of that, beyond that it is embowered in massy trees."

CHAPTER III

THE CHILD

When young Sir Harry had made that laughing appeal to the figure framed in the square of orange light above him, and turned away into the shadows, he had already forgotten that there had been a witness to his escapade.

It was no escapade to him, but a serious quest, about which played all the warm palpitations and eager emotions of high romance. To-night, if ever, with the earth moving towards the soft riot of spring, with the air still and brooding as if summer were already here, though sharp and clean, scoured by the wind and washed to gentleness again by the showers of April, with the moonlight so strong that in the shadows of the trees there was no darkness, but diffused and quivering light hardly less bright than the light of day, and to the eyes of the spirit infinitely more discerning—surely to-night he might hope to see the fairies dancing in their rings, and the little men stealing in and out among the tree-branches!

He longed passionately to see the fairies. The beauty of the earth meant so much to him. All through his childhood his love for it had grown and grown till it had become almost a pain to him. For though it meant so much he did not know what it meant. It had always seemed to be leading him up to something, some great discovery, or some great joy—at least some great emotion—which would give it just that meaning that would tune his soul to it and entrench him safely behind some knowledge, hidden from mortal eyes, where he could survey life as it was, perfect and blissful, and withal secret. The fairies, if he could only look upon them once, would give him the secret. Surely they would not withhold themselves from him on such a night as this.

He pictured himself lying on the warm beech-mast in the shadows of some great tree that stood sentinel over a stretch of moonlit lawn, watching the delicate gossamer figures at their revels, their iridescent wings softly gleaming, their petalled skirts flying, their tiny limbs twinkling; and perhaps he would hear the high tenuous chime of their laughter as they gave themselves up to their delicious merriment. He would lie very still, hardly breathing. The mortal grossness which he felt to be in him should not cast its shadow over their bright evanescent spirit. He would keep, oh, so still, and just watch, and grow happier and happier, and at last—know. The grossness would be purged from him. When the moon drooped and the fairy dancers melted away, he would have seen behind the veil. After that he would never suffer again from the perplexing thought that there was some great thing hidden from him, that just when beauty gripped his soul and seemed to have something to tell him, and he stood ready to receive the message, there was only silence and a sense of loss, which made him sad. Nature would speak to him, as she had always seemed to be speaking to him, but now he would understand, and answer, and life would be more beautiful than it had ever been before.

He had always hugged secrets to himself ever since he could remember, secrets that it would have seemed to him the deepest shame that any one should surprise. Once on a summer's evening, when he had been lying in his little cot by his mother's bed, whiling away the long daylight hour by telling himself a most absorbing story, which at that time he was going through from night to night, he had become so worked up by it that he carried on the dialogue in a clear audible voice. A warning knock came upon the bedroom door, and that particular story was cut short never to be resumed. It was the time when his mother and grandmother were dining, and his nurse and all the other servants were down below. He had not thought that it was possible that he could have been overheard. He had been acting a garden story. The characters were the Garden, the flowers and himself. The Garden was a very kind and gracious lady who led him, a little boy called Arnold, with black straight hair—he preferred that sort to his own fair curls—to one flower after another, and told him whether they had been good or naughty. The flowers were mostly children, but a few, such as geraniums and fuchsias, were grown up. The geraniums never took any notice of him, and he did not like them on that account, but looked the other way when they were rebuked. This fortunately happened but seldom, as they usually behaved with propriety, though stiff and obstinate in character. The roses he often pleaded for, because they were so beautiful. Vanity was their besetting sin, and the Garden often had to tell them—in language much the same as that used by the Vicar in church—that they were no more in her sight than the humblest and poorest flowers. But he could not bear to see their beautiful petals scattered, which happened as a punishment if they had flaunted themselves beyond hope of forgiveness. It was coming to be his idea, as the story progressed, that some day he would make a strong appeal to the Garden to abolish this punishment altogether. Then no flowers would ever die, but only go to sleep in the winter, and he would be the great hero of the flowers, with hair blacker and straighter than ever, and whenever he went among them they would bow and curtsey to him, but nobody would see them doing it except himself.

On this June evening it was a tall Madonna lily for whom he was pleading in such an impassioned manner. Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite children and not quite grown-up. He had a sentimental affection for them. He would see them incline towards one another as he came near, and hear, or rather make them whisper to one another: "Here is that dear little boy. How good he is! And isn't his hair dark and smooth! I should like to kiss him." (Had he said that aloud, just before the knock came? He would never be able to look the world in the face again if that speech had been heard.) The Garden had accused the lily of leaving her sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk to a groom in the stables. She might have been kicked by a horse. An example must be made. No little treats, no sugar on her bread and butter, no favourite stories told her, for a week. The lily had cried, and said she had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again. He had adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it made him hot all over to imagine overheard, and the lily had said, in no apparent connection with the question under discussion, but in a loud and clear voice: "Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than all other boys in the world."

It was just then that the knock came. He was unhappy about it for days, and looked in the faces of all the servants to see if there was any sign of the derision he must have brought upon himself, but could find none, and presently comforted himself with the idea that it was Santa Claus who had knocked at the door; but he dropped the drama of the flowers, and afterwards only whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.

It was not from any lack of love for those about him that he kept his soul's adventures to himself. Of sympathy with them he might instinctively have felt a lack, but he loved everybody with whom he had to do, and everybody loved him. His mother was nearest to him, though his grandmother was felt to be the head of all things and of all people. His mother showed jealousy towards her, but not in her presence. The child divined this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when he was alone with her by little endearments which were very sweet to her. "You and me together, Mummy," he would whisper, snuggling up to her, and stroke her face and kiss her, in a way that he never did when his grandmother was there. He must have divined too that he was the centre of existence for his grandmother, but she never petted him or invited his caresses, though her face showed pleasure when he leant against her knee and prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and as if it was natural that they two should have much to say to one another.

During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily, and there was great antagonism between her and the old nurse, who had also nursed his father. But when he was five years old the nurse suddenly went away, and his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes frightened him, as she clutched him to her and rocked to and fro over him, ceased, so that he presently forgot them. She did much for him herself that the nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the village, who became a close friend of his, though not in a way to cause his mother jealousy.

Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell half a dozen stories. She told them in stilted fashion, and never varied the manner, and hardly the words, of her telling. If she did so, he would correct her. By and by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy, known so well that there was no call to attend to the meeting. He could see after all that himself, and wanted no variations or emotion of hers to get between him and the pictures that her monotonous drone projected on the curtain of his brain. He was the hero of all the stories himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the liturgy. As Jack the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes unknown to fairy lore. As the Beast he drew such interest from his mastery over other beasts that his transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was always being postponed, and was finally dropped out of his own story altogether, together with Beauty, who had become somewhat of a meddler with things that she couldn't be expected to understand. He was Cinderella in the story of that time, because of riding in the coach made out of a pumpkin, and the mice turned into horses, but never felt at home in the character until he turned the story round and gave the leading part to the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male habits and dignity.

With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for hours together in the garden, and he could get away from her if he was careful never to be right out of her sight or hearing. It was then that the drama of the garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an end he returned to the fairy stories.

His mother told him stories too at his earnest pleading. But they were never the same twice running and had little point for him. He much preferred Eliza's rigid version of the classical stories, and the others were all about beautiful girls who married very handsome, noble, rich men, but the men never did anything except love the girls to distraction and give them beautiful presents. There was no ground for his imagination to work on, except in the matter of the presents, and of these he demanded ever growing catalogues, suggesting many additions of his own, so that if his mother remembered these and kept to them, there was some interest to be got out of her stories, but not enough to vie with that of Eliza's repertoire.

His grandmother had no stories, but when he was a little older she told him about his ancestors, who had done a good deal of fighting at one time or another throughout the centuries, which gave him plenty of material. He knew that she got her information from books in the library, and he was encouraged to persevere with his letters so that he would be able to read those books for himself. He gained from her the impression that his family was above other families, and that in some way which he didn't quite understand, seeing that he was subject to her, and to his mother, and even to Eliza, its superiority was also his in a special measure. He must never do anything that would lessen it. He must not be too familiar with servants, and especially with grooms in the stable. He would hang his head at this, for it was the weak point in his behaviour. He was apt to be beguiled by the society of grooms in the stable, to the extent even of using expressions unallowable in the society of his equals. But though he was to bear himself high, he was to deal kindly with those at the same time beneath him and around him; and he was to look upon Royd all his life as the place to which he belonged. He would go away from it sometimes when he was older, but he must never be away for long, and never get to like being away. This was what young men did sometimes, and it was not good for them. It was not right.

Such exordiums as these, varied in manner but never in principle, continued throughout his childhood, and had a strong effect upon him. A child has a natural preoccupation with the question of right and wrong and it fitted in with all that Harry had learnt for himself that it was right for him to be at Royd and would be wrong for him to be away. He could not imagine any other place that would suit him better, or indeed nearly so well. His mother would sometimes talk to him, when he grew older, of the lights and the movement and the heartening crowds of London. She would do it half furtively, and he understood, without being told, that he must keep the fact of her doing so at all from his grandmother. But he had no wish to talk about it. The picture did not please him. He gained the impression of London as a dirty noisy place, and Royd shone all the more brightly in comparison with it. His mother never mentioned the theatre.

She talked to him sometimes about his father. He had been a soldier—a very brave soldier—like all the rest of the Brents. Harry would be a soldier himself some day, but she prayed that he would not have to go out and fight. He would wear a beautiful red coat with a sash and a sword, and a noble bearskin on his head. There was a photograph of his father, not in this uniform, but in service kit, taken just after his marriage. It showed a good-looking young man, amiable but weak. It was the only photograph of him that Mrs. Brent had in her room. Lady Brent had many photographs of him, but this one was not among them. As a child he had been very like Harry. Lady-Brent seldom mentioned him, and to her daughter-in-law never. Harry knew after a time, as children come to know such things, that she had loved him very dearly. She had all those reminders of his childhood and youth about her. His mother had only the one. She had known him for a few weeks. All the rest of his life had belonged to his own mother, and she was shut out of it. Her references to him, indeed, were hardly more than perfunctory. The poor bewildered little lady had loved him, and looked to him, perhaps, to translate her to a more glamorous life. The life of dignity was hers, but without him, and sometimes it lay very heavy upon her. But she had her child. Nothing mattered much as long as she was allowed to love him and to keep his love.

A French nursery governess came when Harry was five years old, Eliza, who showed great jealousy of her, not unmixed with contempt for her absurd speech and foreign ways, being also retained. She was a gentle little thing, and, when she had got over her homesickness, bright and gay. She loved the child dearly, and he was soon prattling to her in her own language, piping little French songs, and repeating verses with his hands behind his back and his head on one side, to the great pride of his mother and grandmother. Mrs. Brent made a surreptitious friend of Mademoiselle, and even went so far as to take lessons of her in French. Lady Brent spoke French with an accent "tout a fait distingué." Mademoiselle had observed that this was the mark of "la vraie grande dame Anglaise" and perhaps Mrs. Brent imagined that the accomplishment would bring her more into line. But it was irksome to sit down to grammar and exercises, and somehow she "never could get her tongue round the queer sounds." It was easier to help Mademoiselle on with her English, and soon they had their heads together constantly, comparing notes about the life of Blois and the life of London, which was so gay and so different from this life of the château, so magnificent but so dull and so always the same. But Harry was not to know that either of them felt like that about it, and the little French girl had enough of the spirit of romance in her to judge his surroundings of castle and park, and wide tract of country over which by and by he was to rule, as fitting to him. It was, after all, the bourgeois life that she and Mrs. Brent pined for, the one in France, the other in England. She recognized that, but when she intimated as much to Mrs. Brent that lady was up in arms at once, and the intimacy between them nearly came to an end. Let it be understood that the life she had known in London was very different from the life Mademoiselle had known in a provincial French city. Hers had been the life of the great lady, in London as well as at Royd, and it was that part of the great lady's life that she missed. Perhaps Mademoiselle, in her ignorance of English customs, believed it, perhaps she didn't; but she adopted the required basis of conversation, and the friendship continued. Mrs. Brent took little trouble to assert her gentility, when once it was accepted, and spoke often of her family, who lived in Kentish Town, where she had been so happy, in a way that must have given Mademoiselle some curious ideas of the ways of the British aristocracy, supposing her to have believed in the claim set up.

But all this passed over the child's head. Mademoiselle had stories to tell him of the old nobility of Touraine, which she was clever enough to connect in his mind with the stories his grandmother told him of his own knightly forbears. It was from that life he had sprung. The ancient glories of the French châteaux were allied to those of his noble English castle. The romance and chivalry were the same. Lady Brent approved very highly of Mademoiselle, and when she went back to France after two years, to fulfil the marriage contract that her parents had made for her, gave her a present which added substantially to her dot.

Then Mr. Wilbraham came, and Harry began his education in earnest.

Lady Brent had gone up to London to find a successor for Mademoiselle. She was to be a highly educated Englishwoman, who was to give place to a tutor in three or four years' time. Harry was not to go to school; he was to spend the whole of his boyhood at Royd, but he was to be taught all the things that boys of his class learnt, except the things that Lady Brent didn't want him to learn—including that precocious knowledge of the world which had entangled his father, and in effect brought Mrs. Brent into the family.

Lady Brent brought Mr. Wilbraham back with her, and never explained why she had changed her plan. In some things she made a confidante of her daughter-in-law; in others she acted as if she had no more to say in her child's upbringing than Eliza. And Mrs. Brent never thought of asking her for an explanation of anything if she volunteered none.

Mr. Wilbraham was then a dejected young man of four or five and twenty. He volunteered no explanation of his substitution for the lady of high education either; nor, indeed, of his past history. It was a long time before Mrs. Brent, who liked to find out things about people, and especially anything that indicated their social status, knew that his father had been a clergyman, and that he expected some day to be a clergyman himself. And that was all that she did know, until he had been at Royd for years, and seemed likely to be there for ever; for gradually he dropped talking about taking orders. She had an idea that there was some secret between him and Lady Brent, but the idea died away as time went on, and at last he told her, quite casually, that he had gained his post at Royd through a Scholastic Agency. Lady Brent had gone there for a tutor, and she had engaged him. That was all. It did not explain why she had changed her mind; but by that time her change of mind had been almost forgotten. Mr. Wilbraham was an integral part of life at Royd Castle.

Harry liked him from the first. He was a good teacher, and there was never any trouble about lessons. Outside lesson time he was not expected to be on duty, and when the boy grew older their companionship was entirely friendly and unofficial. Mr. Wilbraham introduced Harry to all the rich lore of Greek mythology. Here was matter for romance, indeed! Royd became peopled with nymphs and dryads and satyrs, and fabulous but undreaded monsters. Harry knew that Diana hunted the deer in the park when the moon shone; he often heard Pan fluting in the woods, and centaurs galloping over the turf. When he was taken over to Rington Cove, six miles away, he saw the rock upon which the mermaids sat and combed their hair, and on the yellow sands the print of the nereid's dancing feet. It was all very real to him, and Mr. Wilbraham never even smiled at his fancies. That was one of the reasons why he liked him.

CHAPTER IV

FAIRIES

Harry lay quite still under a great tree, his chin propped on his hands, his eyes fixed upon a spot in the glade where he knew there was a fairy ring, upon which he was sure that if he gazed long enough with his eyes clear and his brain free, he would see the gossamer fairies dancing. His couch of beech-mast was dry under him, and not a breath of air stirred the warmth that had settled there during a sunny day, though cool fingers seemed to be touching his cheeks now and then, as of the spirit of the young spring. He was happy and at peace with himself, and his happiness grew as the long minutes passed over him. His world was whole and good all around him. His life contained no regrets and no unfulfilled desires, except this one of learning the secret of his happiness, which touched him as the fingers of the still April night were touching him, to more alertness, not to any trouble or disturbance of mind. Besides, the secret was coming to him at last. He must believe that, or it would not come. And he did believe it. He no more doubted that he would see the fairies under to-night's moon than he doubted of his body, lying there motionless. Indeed, his spirit was more alive than his body, which was in a strange state of quiescence, so that it was not difficult to keep perfectly still for as long as it should be necessary, and no discomfort arose from his immobility.

If Lady Brent was sometimes criticized, as she was, for keeping the boy away from the intercourse that prepared other boys of his age and rank for playing their part in the world, and the criticism had reached her ears, she need have done no more than point to him as he was at the threshold of his manhood, for justification. Shut up in a great house, with two women and a lazy tame-cat of a man; never seeing anybody outside from one year's end to another; no young people about him; no chance even of playing a game with other boys—those were the accusations, brought by Mrs. Fearon, for instance, wife of the Rector of Poldaven, seven miles away, who had sons and daughters round about Harry's age, would have liked them to be in constant companionship with him, and was virulent against Lady Brent, because she would have no such companionship in any degree whatsoever. The boy would grow up a regular milksop. He couldn't always be kept shut up at Royd, and when he did go out into the world the foolish woman would see what a mistake she had made. His own father had made a pretty mess of it, and his early death was no doubt a blessing in disguise. Harry would have even less experience to guide him. It would be a wonder if he did not kick over the traces entirely, and bring actual disgrace upon his name.

Thus Mrs. Fearon, not too happy in the way her own sons were turning out, though they had had all the advantages that Harry lacked, and at her wits' end to cope with the discontent of her elder daughters.

Poldaven Rectory was the only house of any size within a seven-mile radius of Royd except Poldaven Castle, which was hardly ever inhabited. One summer, when Harry was about eight years old, Lady Avalon brought her young family there, and settled them with nurses and governess, while she herself made occasional appearances to see how they were getting on. There was going and coming during that summer between Royd and Poldaven. Harry would be taken there to play with the little Pawles, and a carriage full of them would appear every now and then to spend a long day at Royd. Of all the large family, there was only one with whom he found himself in accord. The little Lords were noisy and grasping, the little Ladies dull and mincing. But one of the girls, Sidney, of exactly the same age as himself, was different from the rest. The two children would go off together, and when out of sight of nurses and governess Sidney became quite natural and they would talk and play games entirely happy in one another's company until they were discovered by the rest, and the disputes would begin again, and the eternal cleavage between male and female. Lady Avalon happened to be there, they were encouraged to be together and she and Lady Brent would have their heads close as they watched them. A sweet little couple, hand in hand—the boy so straight and handsome, the girl so pretty and naturally gay. There was match-making going on, and the nurses were in it too, and left them alone together, and often prevented the other children from seeking them out.

When the Pawle children went away after their secluded summer, Harry and Sidney kissed gravely, under command of the head-nurse, who called them "little sweet'earts." But the kiss meant nothing to Harry, since he had been told to proffer it. He would rather have kissed Lady Ursula, a large-eyed pink and flaxen damsel of twelve, for whom he had an admiration, though she never had much to say to him, and there was no interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney's. He missed Sidney when they went away, but not for long, and by this time he had almost forgotten her. For Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that summer, and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial plans for her grandson she seemed to have forgotten them, for she scarcely ever mentioned the names of her one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney Pawle, except once when the news of Lady Ursula's marriage was in all the papers. Then she said that Ursula was a beautiful girl, but Sidney had always been her favourite. Harry looked at the picture of bride and bridesmaids. He remembered how he had admired Ursula's beauty, and she was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized her; grown-up, she seemed a generation older. Sidney was recognizable in the photograph; she was not yet grown up. But she looked different too, in her silken finery. Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her children's clothes during that summer at Poldaven, for the girls had never been dressed in anything more elaborate than linen and rough straw. Somehow this bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate. He could not imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing knight, as she had done once or twice when they had got quite away by themselves; or indeed his letting her into any of that kind of secret, now. He put the paper away and forgot her afresh.

Harry played no outdoor games in his boyhood, except the games he made up for himself. But he was a horseman from his earliest years. Lady Brent encouraged it, when he was once old enough to go to the stables without fear of danger. He had first a tiny little Shetland, then a forest-bred pony, and a horse when he was big enough to ride one. He roamed all over the country, happy to be by himself and indulge his daydreams. His handsome young face and slim supple boy's figure were known far and wide. He had friends among farmers and cottage people, but the few of his own class who lived in that sparsely populated country he was inclined to avoid. They thought it was by his grandmother's direction, but though it suited her that he should do so, it was in truth from a kind of shyness that he kept away from them. His isolation was beginning to bear fruit. The boys of his own age whom he occasionally came across seemed to have nothing in common with him, nor he with them. The girls eyed him curiously, if admiringly, and he had nothing to talk to them about. He was happier by himself, or with his horse and his dogs. But he was never really by himself. He could always conjure up brave knights and gentle ladies to ride with him through the woods or by the sea, if he wanted company. There was a whole world of varied characters about him, from the highest to the lowest, and his imagination did not stop at mortal companionship; he walked with gods and heroes as often as with men and women.

No one about him suspected this inner life of his, as real to him as his outer life, and still more important. To his mother and grandmother he was a bright active boy, with the outdoor tastes of a boy, who slept soundly, ate enormously, and behaved himself just as a well brought-up boy should. To his tutor he was a pleasant companion during the hours they spent together, and one who did credit to his teaching. Wilbraham had his scholarly tastes and perceptions. He would have hated the drudgery of teaching an ordinary boy who made heavy work of his lessons, but this boy took an interest in them. It is true that there were surprising gaps in the course of study that they followed. Greek and Latin, and English and French literature took up very nearly all their time and attention. Wilbraham looked forward with some apprehension to the time when he should have to tell Lady Brent that in order to prepare Harry for any examination extra cramming would be necessary by somebody else in the subjects that he had neglected. But at sixteen the boy was a fair classical scholar, and his range of reading was wider than that of many University honours men.

Harry was fortunate in having the Vicar to help and encourage him in his Natural History studies, for this was a subject in which Wilbraham took no interest. Mr. Thomson was an old bachelor, who had been Vicar of Royd for over forty years. His house was a museum, and Harry revelled in it. No doubt he would have developed his tastes in that direction without any guidance, but Mr. Thomson put him on the right lines, and was overjoyed, at the end of his life, to have so apt a pupil. He took him out birds' nesting, geologizing, botanizing, and encouraged him to form his own collections though the boy showed no great keenness in this form of acquisition. He wanted to know about everything around him but to collect specimens did not greatly interest him. However, he was proud enough when the old man died and bequeathed to him all his treasures. At this time he was arranging them in a couple of rooms that had been given up to them in the Castle. But the excitement was already beginning to wear a little thin. When he was not working with Wilbraham he always wanted to be out of doors, even in bad weather. And he missed his old friend; it made him rather sad to be poring over the cases and shelves and cabinets that had been so much a part of him.

Part of the old Vicar's preoccupation had been with the antiquities of the country in which he had lived. He had collected legends and folk-lore, perhaps in rather a dry-as-dust way; but it was all material for the boy's glowing imagination to work upon. All the books were there, now in Harry's possession, and many manuscript notes, too. And scattered over the country were the remnants of old beliefs and old rites, which took one right back to the dim ages of the past. There was a cromlech within the park walls of Royd itself, and from it could be seen a shining stretch of sea under which lay, according to ancient tradition, a deep-forested land that had once been alive with romance. All this was very real to Harry, too. The figures of Celtic heroes mixed themselves up with those of the classical gods and heroes. The fairies and pixies of his own romantic land were still more real to him than the fauns and dryads of ancient Greece; as he grew older his expectation of meeting with a stray woodland nymph during his forest rambles died away, but he was more firmly convinced than ever that the native fairies were all about him, if he could only see them.

He lay for a very long time under the beech, quite motionless, but with his senses acutely alert. He heard every tiny sound made by the creatures of the night, and of nature which sleeps but lightly under the moon, and took in all their meaning, but without thinking about them. The shadow cast by the tree under which he was lying had shifted an appreciable space over the brightly illumined grass since he had stirred a muscle. And all the time his expectation grew.

He was in a strangely exalted state, but penetrated through and through with a deep sense of calm, and of being in absolute tune with the time and place. If no revelation of the hidden meaning of nature came to him to-night, before the set of the moon, he would arise and go home, not disappointed and vaguely unhappy, as he had done before, but with his belief in that hidden meaning destroyed. Only he knew now that that could not happen. When he had stolen out into the night, he had hoped that he might see something that he had never seen before. Now he knew that he would. He had only to wait until the revelation should come. And he was quite content to wait, in patience that grew if anything as the shadows lengthened towards the east.

He made not the slightest movement, nor was conscious of any quickening of emotion, when the sight he had expected did break upon his eyes. It came suddenly, but with no sense of suddenness. At one moment there was the empty moon-white glade, at the next there were tiny fairies dancing in a ring, so sweet, so light, so gay. And in the middle of them, rhythmically waving her wand, was the queen—Titania perhaps, but he did not think about that until afterwards. Their wings were iridescent, from their gauzy garments was diffused faint light, hardly brighter than the light of the moon, hardly warmer, and yet different, with more glow in it, more colour.

He heard the silvery chime of their laughter—just once. Then where they had been there was nothing.

He arose at once. He had no expectation of seeing them again. He did not go down to the place where they had been, but made his way home by a path under the trees. His mind was full of a deep content. The fairies were, and he had seen them.

CHAPTER V

MRS. BRENT

Mrs. Grant was sitting in her drawing-room at Royd Vicarage. It was a lovely hot June morning, and she was at her needlework by the French windows, which were pleasantly open to the garden. The rich sweet peace of early summer brooded over shaven lawn and bright flower beds, and was consummated by the drone of the bees, which were as busy as if they were aware of their reputation and were anxious to live up to it. Under the shade of a lime at the corner of the lawn slumbered the Vicarage baby in her perambulator, so placidly that the very spirit of peace seemed to have descended on her infant head. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and there was nothing to disturb the calm contentment with which Mrs. Grant plied her needle, singing a little song to herself, and occasionally casting an eye in the direction of the perambulator and its precious contents. Jane and Pobbles were at their lessons with Miss Minster, or the scene would not have been so peaceful. The Vicar was in his study, happily at work on a moving chapter of his latest work; for it was Monday, when clerical duties were in abeyance.

He had been at Royd for over a year, and found the place delightfully suited to his taste. He felt his inventive powers blossoming as never before. The first novel he had written at Royd had not long since been published, and its modest popularity was now being reflected in the literary and advertisement columns of the newspapers. It had already brought him an offer for the serial rights of his next novel, from a magazine of good standing, which did not pay high prices, but did demand a high moral tone in the fiction it published, and made quite a good thing out of it. It was all grist to the mill. Royd Vicarage was a good-sized house and cost more to live in comfortably than he or his wife had anticipated, and his income as an incumbent, with all the deductions that had to be made from it, was hardly higher than his stipend as a curate had been. But he had a little money of his own, and his wife had a little money, and with the income that came from the novels there was enough; and it was beginning to look as if there might be a good deal more, perhaps a great deal more. Novelists with less in them than he felt himself to possess were making their two or three thousand a year. Anything in the way of large popularity might happen within the next year. In the meantime life was exceedingly pleasant, and even exciting, with all those possibilities to build upon. He would leave his work sometimes and come into the room where his wife was, rubbing his hands, to tell her how exceedingly jolly it all was. She would look up at him with a smile, pleased to see him so happy, and happy herself, with her nice house, and no anxiety about being able to run it properly.

She was rather expecting a visit from him this morning, for he had told her that he was going to set to work on a new chapter, and when he had settled what it was going to be he would usually come and tell her about it before he began to write. She thought it was he when the door opened; but it was Mrs. Brent, who sometimes looked in and sat with her for a time in the morning.

Mrs. Brent was well dressed, in the summer attire of a country-woman, but with her fluffy hair, and face that had been pretty in her youth but was pretty no longer, she looked somehow as if she had dressed for the part; and the air of "commonness," not always apparent in her, was there this morning. The corners of her mouth drooped, and there was an appearance of discontent, and even sullenness about her.

She brightened up a little as she greeted Mrs. Grant, and sat down opposite to her on a low chair by the window. "Oh, I do like coming here," she said. "It's so peaceful. And it's such a quiet pretty room."

The room was rather barely furnished, but what there was in it was good, and there were a great many flowers. To buy old things for this and other rooms of the house was to be one of the first results of the expected increase of income, but it was doubtful whether the charm of this room would be much enhanced. For it was quiet, as Mrs. Brent said, and quietness is a valuable quality in a room.

Mrs. Grant looked round her with satisfaction. "It is nice," she said. "We are very happy here. I don't think I'd change Royd for any place in the world."

"I would," said Mrs. Brent. "I'm fed up with it."

Mrs. Grant threw a glance at her. She was looking down, and the sullenness had returned to her face.

"Fed up to the teeth," she said.

She looked up in her turn. Behind the discontent was an appeal. Mrs. Grant felt suddenly very sorry for her. If she was a little common, she was also rather pathetic—a middle-aged child, out of place and out of tune.

"I think it would do you good to have a change sometimes," Mrs. Grant said. "However beautiful a place is, one wants a change occasionally."

"She doesn't," said Mrs. Brent vindictively. "So she thinks nobody else ought to either."

It was coming at last, then. Mrs. Grant had formed her own opinion of Lady Brent long since, and it did not entirely coincide with the opinion that her husband had formed, though she had not told him so. Lady Brent had been all that could have been expected towards themselves—kind and hospitable, and within limits friendly. She had offered no real intimacy, and after a year's intercourse it was plain that she had none to offer; but it was also plain that the intercourse need never be otherwise than smooth and even pleasant, if the limitations were observed. Mrs. Brent, on the other hand, had shown that she wanted intimacy. Mrs. Grant could not give any deep measure of friendship to one in whom there seemed to be no depths, but she could talk to Mrs. Brent about many things, about Harry and about her own children in particular, and find a response that made for friendship. She could talk, too, about the events of her own life, but was chary of doing so, because it would seem to be asking for confidences in return, and she was not sure that she wanted them. There was always in the background the feeling that Mrs. Brent and her mother-in-law were antagonistic, in spite of the apparent harmony between them; and of late that feeling had increased. Mrs. Brent was such that the gates of her lips once unlocked she would express her antagonism, and it would no longer be possible to treat it as if it did not exist. That time seemed to have come now.

"I hate that woman," said Mrs. Brent, "and I won't put up with it any longer."

There was the slightest little pause before Mrs. Grant replied. "Why do you hate her? I can understand your wanting to get away sometimes; but she always seems to me to treat you nicely; and of course she is extremely nice to us. I should be sorry to quarrel with her in any way."

"No doubt you would," said Mrs. Brent drily. "You'd get the rough side of her tongue pretty quick, and you wouldn't forget it in a hurry."

Mrs. Grant was a little shocked. This new plain-spoken Mrs. Brent was more of a personage than the carefully behaved lady always anxious to be making a good impression that she had hitherto appeared; but she seemed out of the Royd picture—and all the more so if Harry and not Lady Brent were regarded as its central figure. The suggestion of Lady Brent as a virago was also rather startling.

"Oh, I don't mean to say that she'd use bad language," said Mrs. Brent, in reply to some demur. "That's not her little way. I won't tell you what her little way is, but she's always the lady. I'm not, you see. That's what's the matter with me. I'm Lottie Lansdowne, who danced on the stage, and never allowed to forget it, though you can tell of yourself, since you've been here, that I've tried hard enough to play the game—for Harry's sake, I have—and been at it for the last seventeen years; and now I'm getting a bit sick of it."

She was in tears, and Mrs. Grant felt a strong emotion of pity towards her. She leant forward. "My dear," she said, "I think it's splendid the way you sink yourself for Harry's sake. You mustn't give up doing it, you know. It has paid—hasn't it?—to have him brought up here, out of the world, in the way that you and Lady Brent have done. He's the dearest boy. I consider that you have had more to do with the success of it than she has. He loves you more, for one thing; and if he sees you living here as if you belonged to it all——"

"Oh, I know," said Mrs. Brent, drying her eyes. "I made up my mind about that years ago, and I'm not going back on it. I suppose when he gets older and begins to see things for himself, he'll see that I don't really belong. I've got that before me, you know. She knows it too, and of course doesn't care. It'll suit her. She'll come out all right, but I shan't. The only thing is that he does love me, and he can't really love her. I don't see how anybody could. I'm glad you said that. I love you for saying it. I can talk to you, and I'm sure it's a relief to talk to somebody. There's Wilbraham, but he's as much up against her now as I am; we only make each other worse. You do think it's all right so far, don't you? With Harry, I mean. He couldn't be nicer than he is, if his mother had been born a lady. Of course I wasn't, whatever I may pretend. I haven't got in the way, have I? She can't bring that up against me."

"Oh, no! Oh, no! You mustn't think that. You're part of it all to him. I said that and I meant it."

She settled herself back more easily in her chair. "Well, I believe I am," she said. "I've tried to make myself. I love him dearly, and I'd do anything for his sake. It's been right to bring him up quietly here. She's been right there. I'll say that for her, though I hate her."

"You don't really hate her," said Mrs. Grant; "and I don't think you've any reason to. What she has done has been for Harry's sake too."

"It has been for the sake of the Brent family. Her son married beneath him—so she says—though I'd have made him a good wife, and though I loved him I knew he wasn't all he might have been. She's going to see that Harry doesn't run any risk of doing the same. Well, I'm with her there. I don't want Harry to be mixed up with what I come from. But there's nothing nasty about it. It's only that we weren't up in the world. Do you know I haven't so much as set eyes on my own people since Harry was born? Why shouldn't I? I'm flesh and blood. My father died since I came here, and mother's getting on. She was nearly fifty when I was married."

"Do you mean that Lady Brent——?"

"Oh, it was me too. I said that I'd give them up when I came here. The fact is that I wasn't best pleased with them at that time. I'd promised Harry—my husband, I mean; they're all called Harry—not to say I was married till he came home. Poor boy, he never did come home, but before that—well, they said things—at least, mother did—that made me furious. I kept my promise to him till I heard he'd been killed, poor boy. Then I let them have it. Perhaps I hadn't learnt quite so many manners then as I have since, though I was always considered refined by the other girls in the company. Anyhow, it ended in my saying I never wanted to see them again, and we never even wrote till poor father died. Still, I've forgiven them now, it's so long ago, and I cried when father died, and wrote to mother. I was very fond of father. He used to take me on his knee when I was little and read stories out of the Bible to me. He was a religious man, and didn't like my going on the stage. Sometimes I wish I'd never gone. Emily, my next oldest sister, went into millinery and did well. She married long ago and has a boy nearly as old as Harry, though of course he'd be very different. Mother said she had a nice house out Hendon way, when she wrote, and three little girls, as well as a boy. I dare say I should have been much happier like that, though I shouldn't have had Harry. But it couldn't do Harry any harm now if I just went up and saw them sometimes. I needn't even say I was going to see them or anything about them. Why shouldn't I go to London for a week, as other ladies do, to see their dressmaker or something? I think it's more London I want than mother, if you ask me. Oh, just to see the lights and the pavements, and the people jostling one another! I'm like famished for it."

She threw out her hands with a curious stagy gesture that was yet a natural one, and her nostrils seemed to dilate, as if she were actually sniffing the atmosphere she so much desired. "I'm going," she said. "I don't care what she says."

"I don't see why you shouldn't go," said Mrs. Grant. "But why should Lady Brent object? What can she say?"

Mrs. Brent leant forward. "Couldn't you ask her for me?" she said coaxingly. "Tell her you think I ought to have a change. I'm young, you know. At least I'm not old yet. It can't be right for me to be buried down here year after year. I shan't get into mischief. Just a week!"

Mrs. Grant felt intensely uncomfortable. Get into mischief! What did it all mean? Lady Brent must have some reason for keeping the frivolous pathetic little thing shut up like this? And yet she had seemed to disclose everything; she had dropped every trace of pretence, and had made her appeal for sympathy on the grounds of her very unsuitability to be where she was. If she no longer cared, before this friend, to keep up the fiction of having sprung from a superior station in life, which from such as she was a great concession to candour, how could she wish to keep anything back?

"You know I'm your friend," Mrs. Grant said. "I'd do anything I could to help you, but you see how it is with us here. We shall never be close friends with Lady Brent; I don't think she wants it. But she's kind and well-disposed towards us. I couldn't run the risk of setting her against us, unless I were quite certain that—I mean quite certain of my ground. It wouldn't be fair to my husband. It would make all the difference to us here if we were not on good terms with her. Have you told me everything? Why should she think you might get into mischief?"

She put this aside lightly. "Oh, there's nothing in that. It's only what she'd say. She'd say anything. But I see I ought not to ask you. No, it wouldn't be fair to bring you into it. She'd have it up against you; you're quite right. I tell you this, Mrs. Grant; when Harry comes of age—or before that, when he goes to Sandhurst—I'm off. No more of this for me. I shall snap my fingers at her. But of course you've got to stay here. No, I'll tackle her myself, and see if I can't get my own way for once."

She sprang up. "I'll go and do it now," she said. "No time like the present."

She laughed, and kissed Mrs. Grant. "Good-bye, dear," she said. "It does me good to talk to you; you're so understanding. And it does me good to have you here—you and your nice kind clever husband and your sweet children. Ah, if I'd had a bit of real family life with my poor boy!—it might have been here or anywhere; I shouldn't have cared where it was—it would all have been very different. Now I'll go and tackle the old dragon while I'm fresh for it. Good-bye, dear; I'll go out through the garden."

She went out by the window, and stopped to look at the sleeping baby as she crossed the lawn, smiling and making a little motion of the hand towards Mrs. Grant as she did so. Then she disappeared behind the shrubbery.

Mrs. Grant laid down her work and went to refresh herself with a look at the baby. As she turned back, her husband came out of his room, which was next to the drawing-room and also opened on to the garden.

His face was serious. "I didn't know you had Mrs. Brent with you," he said. "I've had Wilbraham. They're all at loggerheads up at the Castle, Ethel. I don't quite know what to do about it. I don't want to get up against Lady Brent; but——"

She told him of Mrs. Brent's prospective revolt. "She asked me to talk to her," she said. "But I said the same as you do. We don't want to get up against her. What is the trouble with Mr. Wilbraham?"

"Much the same as with Mrs. Brent apparently. He's fed up with it too. He wants to get away."

"What, for always?"

"Oh, no. He's too fond of Harry for that. Besides, he's very comfortable here—has everything he wants. I told him that, and he didn't deny it. But he seems to have developed a furious hatred of Lady Brent. I really can't tell you why. He couldn't tell me, when I pressed him. He's morose and gloomy. He says he must get away from her for a time, or he'll go off his head."

"But surely he can take a holiday sometimes if he wants to!"

"It almost looks as if she wouldn't let him go off by himself. He asked me to go with him, for a month. He offered to pay all expenses and go where I liked. In the old days I might have been tempted—if you'd thought it would be a good thing to do. But I don't want to go away from here just now—at this lovely time of year, with the work and everything going so well. Of course I could write, but—— Anyhow I don't know who I should get to do my duty. If I thought it would really put things right! What do you think? Ought I to do it?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't understand what's going on. It looks to me as if there must be something behind it all that we don't know of."

He laughed at her and pinched her chin. "You take the novelist's point of view," he said. "I don't, which is perhaps rather odd. They're all on each other's nerves. Why don't he and Mrs. Brent go off together?" He laughed again. "He didn't really press it," he said. "He wanted me to go this week. I couldn't do that, anyhow, and when I said so he seemed to drop the idea. He had wanted me to suggest it to Lady Brent just as Mrs. Brent wanted you. They're a queer couple."

"I suppose it's only to be expected that it should be like that sometimes," she said thoughtfully. "I think I could talk to Lady Brent, if she'd only give me the chance."

"I don't think she will, and it wouldn't do to begin it."

"Oh no, I shouldn't do that. But there's Harry. It all comes back to him, you see. If she's mistaken in what she's doing, it's for his sake she's doing it. She might give me an opening there."

"I don't think so. It all passes over Harry's head. It's rather remarkable how normal he is. One might not have expected it under such circumstances. Well, I must get back, dear. Wilbraham has taken a big slice out of my morning. I'm sorry for him and wish I could help him. But I don't see how I can, except by continuing my friendship. I was rather flattered that he should have come and talked to me. He professes to think very little of my knowledge of human nature, you know. But most of that's a pose, and I like him. He went off to tackle Lady Brent himself. Mrs. Brent too, you say. She'll have a happy day of it, I should think."

At this moment the peaceful seclusion of the scene was destroyed by the incursion of Jane and Pobbles, who, released from their studies, came tumultuously round the corner of the house, Jane leading. They woke up the baby, or, as her time for waking up was past, perhaps they only completed the process, and they escaped rebuke for it. Their cry was for Harry. Where was Harry? He had promised to come not a moment later than twelve o'clock, and it was already two minutes past.

Jane was a straight, somewhat leggy child, with the promise of beauty when the time should come for her to accept her dower of femininity. At present she was more like a boy than a girl, except for her long thick plait of fair hair, which she would have given almost anything to be allowed to sacrifice in the interests of freedom. She was aboundingly full of life and the most amazing physical energy. She affected an extreme virility of speech, and exercised a severe discipline over Pobbles, who occasionally raged against it as an offence to his manhood, but as a rule accepted the yoke and prospered under it. He was a handsome child, strong and vigorous too, but without his sister's determined initiative. They were a pair to be proud of, and their parents were proud of them, but found them a handful. Miss Minster could manage them by the exercise of a good-humoured authority which never allowed itself to be rattled. But it was only Harry whose lightest word they obeyed without question. He was their hero and their most adored playmate. Perhaps Jane showed more femininity in submitting to his direction than was apparent in her attitude towards him, in which there was none to be seen.

Harry came into the garden as they were clamouring their questions, with his retriever wagging its tail at his heels. He was seventeen now, grown almost to his full height, but his face was still that of a boy. There was a radiant look of health and happiness in it. He was extraordinarily good to look at, not only because of his beauty, of form and feature and colouring, which was undeniable, but because of this sort of inward light, which suffused it with a sense of perfection that went right through him. Mrs. Grant caught her breath as she looked at him. She saw him as some wonderful work of God, without flaw, untroubled in his happiness. Whatever disturbances there might be among the figures of coarser clay by whom he was surrounded, there must be some breath of finer spirit in each and all of them, since he stood on the threshold of manhood as he was, here before her eyes.

The matter in hand was the building of a log cabin in a bit of forest that reached down from the wooded hill behind the Vicarage garden. Harry and the children had been working at it for a month or more, and it was to be a very perfect specimen of a log cabin.

"Why haven't you brought the saw?" said Jane, turning upon Pobbles. "Go and fetch it."

"It's your turn," said Pobbles. "Can't always be fetching things for you."

"Be quick," said Jane. "We're wasting time. Come on, Harry, we'll start. He can run after us."

"Don't know where to find the saw," said Pobbles, untruthfully.

"Jane will go and help you," said Harry. "Hurry up, both of you."

Jane put her long legs in rapid motion without a word, Pobbles pounding along after her on his shorter ones. Harry laughed. "That's the way to talk to them," he said.

Jane returned bearing the saw, Pobbles following. They set off immediately for the wood, and the voices of all three of them were heard for a long time in animated conversation through the hot drowsy air.

CHAPTER VI

REVOLT

Lady Brent sat in her business room, engaged in affairs, or apparently so. Business room it was called, but it was little like one except for the large writing-table in the window at which she sat, and as a matter of fact she transacted most of the actual business of house and estate which fell to her share in a room downstairs called the Steward's room, which was far more severely furnished. This large upstairs room, with its deep embrasured window looking on to the park, was her fastness, and she did not often withdraw herself into its seclusion. It was next to her bedroom, and might have been better called her boudoir, but that the ancient and severe splendour of its furnishing would have seemed to rebuke such a name. It was richly carved and panelled, the furniture was heavy and sombre, and lightened by none of the modern touches which made the long drawing-room downstairs, which was mostly used, bright and even gay. This room was as characteristic of the old romantic Castle as any in it. It spoke of a time long gone by, and of a life more austere than modern life is apt to be. There were few comforts in it but a great deal of rich massive dignity. When Lady Brent ensconced herself in it she was the chatelaine of the Castle, seated in state, and as formidable as it was in her power to make herself.

Mrs. Brent, coming in from the Vicarage, wrought up to her purpose, looked for her in the long drawing-room, and not finding her there had the intuition that she was in her business room. She hesitated a little before going upstairs to verify it, making a further draught upon her determination. Of course! She had known that it was coming to a row. She was as sharp as a cartload of monkeys, and had seen that the row was likely to occur just at this very time. That was why she had taken to her business room, when by all usual habits she would have been sitting downstairs or in the garden, during the hour before luncheon.

So thought Mrs. Brent, mounting the oak staircase, and summoning all her resolution. She wouldn't be awed by the stately lady in the stately room. After all, it was only a piece of play-acting. She knew something about play-acting herself. She would be cold and stately too, announce her determination and then go away. She'd show that she wasn't to be put upon. Perhaps it would be easier like that. There would be no leading up to the subject and no discussion after it, as there must have been if she had joined her mother-in-law downstairs, and felt compelled to sit on with her.

But she knew, as she opened the door, that it would not be easier.

"Oh, I wondered where you were. I just wanted to say something to you, if you're not too busy."

The tone did not seem right, somehow, even to herself. Lady Brent turned round from the table at which she was sitting, and took off the tortoise-shell rimmed glasses which she wore for reading and writing. She did not look in the least degree formidable—a well-preserved, well-dressed, middle-aged lady, not really obliged to wear glasses, even for reading and writing, and not wanting them at all for anything else. "Yes, certainly, Charlotte," she said, "I have nearly finished what I came here to do, and you are not interrupting me at all."

Mrs. Brent had an impulse to make up some trivial message and go away, but conquered it. Her voice shook a little as she said, still standing: "I wish to go up to London, for a few days—say a week—as soon as possible."

Again she had not satisfied herself. She had used the prim reserved tone of a maid giving notice—"I wish to leave at the end of my month." It seemed to her that she had only just prevented herself adding, "my lady."

Lady Brent received it much as she might have received notice from a servant, whose temporary dissatisfaction with her place must not be taken too seriously. "Why do you want to do that?" she asked, in a level, even a kindly voice.

It touched some chord in Mrs. Brent. She had, perhaps, prepared herself for a peremptory refusal, and if it had come she would have been ready to combat it, and obstinate to push her determination through. But supposing her request should, after all, be granted! That would put everything right and save a lot of trouble.

All the irritation she had been piling up against Lady Brent would be dissolved. She did not want to quarrel with her, if it could be avoided. She would have to go on living with her, whether she had a short respite now or not. And it had not always been so very disagreeable to live with her.

"Oh, I must, I really must," she said. "I can't stand it any longer. Just a week! I'll go and see my mother, and be as quiet as possible. Harry needn't know I'm going to her, if you don't want him to, though I don't see what difference it would make."

"I think I do," said Lady Brent quietly. "But perhaps you'd better sit down, and talk it over. What is it you can't stand any longer? If there's anything wrong here we ought to be able to put it right. Only I must first know what it is."

Mrs. Brent sat down. She saw that her appeal had been a mistake. She could not now coldly state her intention and support it against opposition, behaving as one stately lady towards another, as she had pictured it to herself, coming up the staircase. And of course Lady Brent did not mean to let her go, if she could help it.

She sat down in a high-backed Carolean chair. "I don't want to go into all that," she said stiffly. "I shall be able to stand it all right when I come back. A little holiday is what I really want, and what I mean to have. It's not much to ask, after nearly eighteen years. Well, I say ask—but I'm not asking. I'm just telling you that I'm going away on Thursday, or perhaps Friday, and I shall come back in a week—or ten days."

It was not quite the address of one stately lady to another, but it seemed to have served its turn. Lady Brent turned back to her writing-table and took up her rimmed spectacles.

"Very well," she said.

Mrs. Brent sat in her high-backed chair, looking at her. She placed her spectacles upon her well-shaped nose, and took up her pen. Then she said, as calmly as before: "If you tell me you are going there is no more to be said. I'll finish what I'm doing now, before luncheon."

"Then you're ready for me to go; you don't mind," said Mrs. Brent.

"It doesn't much matter whether I mind or not, does it? You tell me you are going. You refuse to discuss it with me?"

"Well, I don't want to make trouble. It's no good talking over things. There's nothing much wrong, really. If I go away now for a bit I shall be all right when I come back. I expect, really, I shall be rather glad to get back."

Lady Brent put down her pen and took off her spectacles. "Oh, but if you go away you won't come back," she said, turning towards her again. "Surely you understand that!"

Mrs. Brent felt that she had been entrapped into an opening unfavourable to herself. Now was the time, if she had it in her, to exercise the restraint and reserve shown by Lady Brent. But it was not in her; she became angry at once, and showed her anger.

"Of course I might have known that you were leading me on," she said bitterly. "I dare say it seems very clever to you, and it's what you're always doing. But I'm not going to give in to it any more. I'm going away—only just for a little holiday—and I'm coming back. You can't prevent me. This is my home. I've lived here getting on for eighteen years—me and my child. I dare say you'd like to keep him and get rid of me. But you can't do it."

"If I wanted to do that I could do it," returned Lady Brent; and, as the statement brought no immediate response, she repeated it, in the same level tone but with slightly increased emphasis. "If I wanted to do that I could do it."

"Perhaps you could do it, by law," said Mrs. Brent. "I don't know anything about the law, except what you've told me. Perhaps you could and perhaps you couldn't. But there's one thing you can't do, and that's take away my child's love for me, though I dare say you'd like to do that too. You don't suppose that if I went away and came back here and you had me turned away from the door, you wouldn't hear something about it from him. You don't suppose that, do you? He's pretty near a man now. You're his guardian till he comes of age; I know that you had yourself made so by the law, and I didn't make any objection; you told me it was best for him, and I believed you. But you'd find it wasn't all a question of law if you tried any game of that sort. I don't know what Harry would do, but I do know that whatever he did it wouldn't suit your book."

Lady Brent had listened to this speech without showing the smallest sign of discomposure, but her light blue eyes were hard and cold as she said: "There is a good deal of truth in what you say. Your going away would completely upset everything that has been done during the last eighteen years for Harry's benefit. Both you and I have made sacrifices on his behalf. We agreed to do so when you came here before he was born. I have kept strictly to the bargain. I should not, for my own pleasure, live the retired life that I do here, all the year round, with you as my constant companion. For my own sake I should be immensely relieved to say good-bye to you for a time, if it were possible."

"Yes, that's the sort of nasty thing you say."

"Isn't it exactly what you say to me? Why should you suppose your society is any more gratification to me than mine is to you?"

"I wish to goodness you would say good-bye to me, then, for a time. Why isn't it possible? It is possible. I tell you I'm going, and I'm coming back."

"Do you remember anything at all about the bargain we struck when you first came here, or have you forgotten it entirely, after nearly eighteen years, as you say?"

"Of course I remember it. You didn't mince your words then any more than you do now. You made me feel that I was dirt beneath your feet, but you'd put up with me for the sake of preventing my boy—if it was to be a boy—doing what his father had done, and marrying somebody he loved, if you didn't think she was good enough for him."

"You can put it like that if it pleases you. You consented to everything. You yourself wanted the child brought up with nothing to remind him that on one side his birth wasn't suited to his long ancestry on the other. I warned you what the sacrifice would be. It meant giving up your own people, for one thing, and you gladly consented to do that. It meant your doing your utmost to fill the position that I freely offered you here."

"So I have done my utmost."

"And now, when what we agreed to do together has turned out better than either of us could have hoped for, when we are very nearly at the end of it, and can send Harry out into the world what we have made of him here, you want to break the bargain. And why? Not for any good it can possibly do him, but just because you want to go back to what you were before you came here—for your own petty selfish pleasure."

"It isn't that," she said vehemently. "I say it isn't natural that anybody should cut themselves off from their own flesh and blood. I loved my father and he died without me setting eyes on him. You let me write to mother then. I didn't do it without asking you, and——"

"Didn't we strike the bargain afresh then? Didn't I say I was sorry that it should have been required of you to cut yourself off from your family, but that it had already then proved to be the right course? And didn't you agree with me, though it was harder for you to bear then than at any time?"

The tears came. "Of course it was hard, then," she said. "But you were kind to me. So you were when I first came. If I was giving up something, I was going to get something too. All that I'd been was to be forgotten, though it isn't true that I'd been anything that I ought not to have been. Harry was to grow up knowing me as belonging here. You were to be his legal guardian, but he was to be my child."

"Yes, and I might have struck a much harder bargain with you than that. You would have consented. I might have taken the child and paid you off. That's often done, you know, in cases like yours."

She was sobbing now. "You're cruel," she said. "Yes, you are cruel, even when you're pretending to be nice. You like hurting me. Pay me off! Anybody'd think, to hear you talk, I'd been a loose woman."

"I've never said that, or implied it."

"No, you've never said it. You wouldn't dare. But you've made me feel that's how you look at me. Why didn't you pay me off, then, and get rid of me?"

"Exactly. Why didn't I?"

"Well? I'm asking you."

"I was willing to give you your chance. Whatever I may have thought of you, I didn't want to deprive you of your child, or him of his mother, so long as you were ready to make yourself the kind of mother he ought to have had. You said you'd do it. You were grateful to me. You consented to every stipulation I laid down. The chief of them all was that you should break absolutely with your past until he came of age. Then you could do what you liked; it would be between you and him. Now you want to break that stipulation. I say that if you break it on one side you break it on the other; I also say that it would be a very wicked thing to break it, now at this time."

"It wouldn't be if you'd just let me go away for a bit and come back."

"That I won't do. Why do you want to go away? It isn't just to see your mother. I know that well enough. You want the life of London, the life you led there before Harry was born—theatres, and suppers and gaiety, with the sort of people that you ought to be ashamed of mixing yourself up with, when you think about Harry, and what he is. You've done without it for nearly eighteen years. For goodness' sake do without it for a little time longer. Don't knock down what we've been building up for all these years, just for a selfish whim. Think of Harry, not of yourself."

"I do think of him. I love him better than anything in the world. I'd go barefoot if it was to do something for him."

"You're not asked to go barefoot. All you're asked to do is to go on living the quiet but very comfortable life that you've lived here for years past, and make the best of it. It's what I'm doing myself."

She dried her eyes and rose from her chair. "I see I'm not going to get any kindness from you," she said. "But I'll think about it. Perhaps I shan't go. I've stood it so long that perhaps I can stand it a bit longer. If I was sure it was for Harry's good I'd never move out of the place till I was carried out. I'll think about it and let you know."

"You needn't let me know anything," said Lady Brent. "If you go you go, and if you stay you stay."

With that Mrs. Brent left her. She did not immediately return to whatever she had been doing, but sat looking out through the open casement across the open spaces of the park to the woods beyond. Her face was still hard and still watchful. By and by she looked at her watch, and almost immediately a knock came at the door. She answered as if she had been expecting it, and Wilbraham came into the room.

There was a sullen discontented expression on his face, which was unusual with him. He had kind lazy eyes and a whimsical twist on his mobile lips; but all that was obliterated.

He took his seat without invitation in the chair recently vacated by Mrs. Brent. "I want to go away for two or three weeks' holiday," he said, scowling slightly, and handling his bunched fingers. "Now you're going to have that man over from Burport for Harry's mathematics he can do without me—say for a month. He's well up in my subjects. The more he works at his mathematics the better it will be for him."

"Why do you want to go away just now?" she asked, as she had asked of Mrs. Brent.

"Why does anybody ever want to go away?" he said. "I want a holiday, and if I'm to go on here I must have one."

"If you want a holiday from work, there ought to be no difficulty about that. You know what's best for Harry. If you think that Mr. Fletcher will be of more use to him now, by all means arrange it like that and leave yourself altogether free for a time."

"Thanks very much. Of course I shouldn't want to do anything that would keep Harry back. You know that."

"Oh yes, I know that. He was to come first in everything. That was agreed upon between us when you first came here. I saw very soon that I could leave questions of education entirely to you, and I have always done so."

"Well, now I want to go away for a month or so. I'm getting stale. I'm not doing him justice."

"Perhaps not. I've been feeling that for some little time. But I don't think it would help you to do him justice if you went away so that you could drink, and undo everything that——"

"Lady Brent!" He was startled and outraged, and glared at her terrifically.

She was not moved. "That's what's the matter with you," she said, in the same even voice, "though you may not acknowledge it to yourself. I'm very sorry that this has happened. I had thought that after all these years the craving had left you. I don't think it can be as strong as it was. I ran the risk when I asked you to come here, and helped you over the difficult time. It is years since you told me last that the desire was strong in you, but it was easier to overcome it. What a pity to give way now!"

His deep frown had not altered while she was speaking. "Give way!" he echoed. "I've no intention of giving way. You've no right to speak of that at all. It was all over long ago."

"I helped you to get over it, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did. I'm not denying it. You can be a good friend to a man when it suits you; to a woman too, I dare say. But you're difficult to live with. I want to get away for a time. There's nothing to fear, of that old weakness. Perhaps I ought not to resent your bringing it up against me, but——"

"You wouldn't resent it if what I say wasn't true. You may not know it yourself, but you're playing with the idea of giving way. If you did give way you'd be very sorry for it afterwards, no doubt, but the mischief would have been done. You'd no longer be a fit companion for Harry. It's him I'm thinking about. You can do what you like, but if you go away you don't come back. It's what I've just said to Charlotte, who wants the same as you do. I'm not going to have everything spoilt when our task is coming near its end. If she's a foolish woman, you're an intelligent man. You can see it all as well as I can if you clear your mind of its vapours. You know it wouldn't do. You must stay here until you have finished with Harry. Then you can do what you like—stay here or go away."

"It won't matter what becomes of me then, I suppose."

"I said that you could stay here if you liked. This has been your home for ten years. It can go on being your home as long as you value it; or at least as long as I have anything to do with it."

He sat looking down, still frowning; but his frown had more of thought, and less of anger in it now.

He threw a glance at her sitting there self-possessed and at ease, and a wry smile came to his lips. "Why can't you always behave like that?" he asked. "I suppose the fact is you've worked off all your temper on that poor little creature who's been telling you just the same as I have. I met her crying on the stairs just now, and she wouldn't tell me what it was about. But I could guess."

She showed some surprise, but no resentment. "My temper!" she exclaimed. "Well, I suppose I must pass that over in the state to which you've reduced yourself."

His face became moody again. "I won't ask you what you mean by that," he said. "But you're quite wrong in what you said just now. Would you consent to my going away with Grant, if I could get him to come with me? He's rather a fool, but I'd rather have his company than—than——"

"Than mine, I suppose. No, I wouldn't consent to that. You came here on certain conditions, and you must keep to them. It won't be for very much longer now. I'm not altogether without sympathy with you. I've felt the strain myself."

He broke into a loud laugh, and went on laughing, while she waited patiently for him to finish, as if no vagary on his part could surprise or upset her.

"Oh, that's too rich," he said, "in that tone! Yes, you've been feeling the strain, and you've made us feel it. That's all the trouble. Well now, look here, Lady Brent, I accept what you say about its being too late to alter things now—or too early—whichever you please. We're all three of us in the bargain, I take it. It was your idea to keep the boy shut up here, and it has paid. I don't believe it would have paid nine times out of ten, and we've yet to see how it will turn out when the test comes. But Harry being what he is, it has been a brilliant success—so far. You've been justified in keeping me and his mother shut up here too."

"And myself, you must remember. I've shut myself up too, so as to make it seem all the most natural thing in the world to him."

"Quite so. And you've suffered for it, just as we have. Suffered in your temper. If we stick to it, as we must, you ought to make it as easy for us as possible. You haven't lately."

"So Charlotte seemed to imply. But I should like to know how."

"Oh, you know how, well enough. You said I was a man of intelligence just now. Well, you're a woman of intelligence. Just think it over."

He nodded his head, knowingly. He looked rather ridiculous, and Lady Brent laughed.

"I wish you'd go away," she said. "I want to finish what I'm doing before luncheon. You may tell Charlotte, if you like, that I'm sorry if I spoke harshly to her just now. She annoyed me and I did not pick my words. When three people live together year in and year out they are apt to get annoyed with one another occasionally, for no particular reason."

CHAPTER VII

THE LOG CABIN

The log cabin had reached the interesting stage at which its framework was complete, and the immediate task was to nail thin bark-covered boards upon it. After that it was to be thatched. Then it was to be lined with match-boarding.

Harry had built every bit of the framework himself, with such help as Jane and Pobbles could give him in lifting and holding the timbers in place, not without some risk to limb if not to life. He had drawn out his constructional plan, from careful study of a book. Then he had had the timbers prepared at the sawmills four miles away, and he and the children had fetched them in a farm cart. It had taken them weeks to get the framework finished, but they had made a very good job of it between them. As they hurried up through the wood to the clearing upon the edge of which the cabin stood, Jane and Pobbles were full of excitement at the thought of work to come which they could really do themselves. So far, it had been helping Harry, which was pleasurable enough, but not to be compared with the pleasure that was to come.

Harry let them chatter without much response, but made the pace towards the clearing so fast that they had to run to keep up with him. He was excited too. He was doing something real, from the beginning. He had invented something and had already carried out the most difficult part of it, meeting the difficulties as they came, and surmounting them. All the rest would be easy enough until it came to the thatching. He proposed to do that himself too. Watching a thatcher at work on a barn had first put the idea of building a log cabin into his head. He thought he knew how it was done, and he could always ask the old thatcher questions; but he was not going to let him lay a finger on the roof of the cabin, nor even stand by and direct. Jane and Pobbles might do whatever lay within their power; it would have been he who had taught them and directed them in everything.

They came to the clearing—a space of bright green turf nibbled short by rabbits, surrounded mostly by oaks interspersed with glistening hollies and here and there a graceful deliciously green beech. The cabin stood back among the trees, its squared timbers showing white and new against the background of green and russet. Harry paused and put his head on one side to contemplate it, and a grin of pure pleasure lit up his face. "A very workmanlike job so far," he said. "Come on, we'll get the whole of the front covered in this morning."

They worked at a rate unknown to members of Trades Unions, measuring and sawing up the boards, and nailing them fast to the posts. Harry did all the sawing, Jane and Pobbles took it in turns to nail one end of a board while he nailed the other. They quarrelled a little over this until Harry stopped them. Jane was of the opinion that Pobbles did not drive in a nail as well as she did. Pobbles was of the contrary opinion. There were only two hammers between the three of them, but Harry was to provide a third for the afternoon. They were to have a picnic tea at the cabin, after lessons, and hoped to see the walls roughly finished before dusk fell.

The brooding summer noon did not daunt these eager labourers. It was more like real work to sweat under the hot sun. Harry took off his coat at the start and turned up his shirt sleeves. Pobbles did the same in imitation of him. Jane, having nothing that she could reasonably take off, contented herself with rolling up her sleeves and warning Pobbles that he would catch cold, which gave him an opening that he was not slow to take advantage of. "Men don't catch cold when they're working," he said, and took off his waistcoat. Jane had to admit inferiority, for once.

They worked till the last possible minute, and met again at the first possible minute in the afternoon. The game which they made of their work was more entrancing now than it had been in the morning. The tasks of the day were done, and the long summer evening stretched infinitely before them. Moreover, the cabin, with its front all boarded in, was now beginning to look like a cabin and not the skeleton of one; and a picnic is always a picnic to happy youth, however inadequate the viands. They were not inadequate on this occasion. All three labourers had brought baskets. A fire was to be lit and tea made—billy tea, of which Harry had learnt the recipe from a book. The meal was to be an adequate substitute for what they would have eaten indoors. Harry was to be excused dinner for it. The children had their freedom until half-past eight.

Jane had changed her clothes, and wore, instead of the cotton frock of the morning, an outgrown coat and skirt, already laid aside "to be given away." The reason for this apparent feminine vagary became manifest when, arrived on the scene of action, she took off the coat, which was uncomfortably tight, and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt she wore beneath it. She was now at least as much like a pioneer as Pobbles.

In their imaginative adaptable brains they were pioneers in very truth. Harry was as serious about it as the children, though he was too old for any childish game of make-believe. "Now we'll knock off for an hour," he said, when one of the end walls had been boarded in, and the desire for bodily sustenance became urgent. "We must get the roof on before the rains begin, but we're well ahead, and it's better to keep at it steadily than to work ourselves out."

He was in some imagined country of the new world, where the first duty was to provide shelter before attacking the primeval woods and bringing the soil into cultivation. The soft English glade, upon which the shadows of English oaks and beeches were beginning to lengthen under the westering sun, was transformed in his imagination to a clearing in some tropical forest, or in the backwoods of Australia or Canada. The Castle, the Vicarage, the village, were wiped out. They were very far away from all such signs of ancient civilization, very far too from all possibility of replenishing their stores, if these should be wastefully used. He asked Jane to count the eggs carefully. "If there's one over, Tom had better have it," he said.

Tom was Pobbles, so called only on such occasions as this. Jane understood perfectly. She was the woman of the party, and it lay with her to adjust and husband the stores, also to support the head of it in his designs. On such terms she was willing to shoulder her burden of womanhood, and rather regretted having approximated her attire to that of the men. "You'd better put your jacket on now you've left off working," said Harry, throwing a glance not altogether of approval at her shirt, which she wore open at the neck, as he and the virile Tom wore theirs. She obeyed meekly, and went into the cabin to put on her tie as well, also the hat which she had discarded. "We ought to nail up a bit of looking-glass inside," she said, as she came out, and before she joined in picking up sticks for the fire she went into the wood where some late hyacinths were still to be found, and fastened a bunch of them on her breast.

Thus far they might make believe, acting as if they were a backwoods party, but not bringing the pretence to the point of utterance. They both laughed at Pobbles when he said: "We'd better stick together when we're picking up sticks, or one of us may get scalped in the wood," and Jane said: "We're helping Harry; he's not playing a silly game with us." Pobbles thought it would have been more amusing if they had boldly played the game which seemed to be in their thoughts no less than in his, but accepted the correction, and half understood it. Harry, who was so wonderful at making things, would belittle himself by playing children's games about them.

But there was no diminution in his dignity when he showed that his mind was full of the reality of what they were playing at. They sat on the chips and sawdust outside the cabin, when they had devoured everything in their baskets, and talked. Harry leant against the new built wall of the cabin with his legs stretched out in front of him, his dog at his feet, and Pobbles leant against the wall beside him, in as near an imitation of his attitude as he could contrive without making himself too uncomfortable. Jane reclined gracefully on her elbow, and occasionally pulled her too-short skirt over her knees. The shadows of the trees had perceptibly lengthened. There were two hours of daylight yet, but the heat had declined, and the evening freshness was mingled with the evening peace. The cuckoo was calling, now here now there, and its grey form could be seen sometimes flitting from tree to tree across the glade. The rabbits were out at the far end of it, and the wood pigeons were swinging home to the high woods behind them. But of human occupation, besides their own, the world seemed empty. They were secure in their retreat.

"It must be a grand thing, you know," Harry said, "to find a new place in the world which you can make what you like of. Supposing this were really right away from everywhere, in a new country, we should begin just like this, with a cabin a bit bigger but much the same in plan. Then we should make our garden round about it. After that we should prepare our fields. We should cut down trees, for more building when we wanted it, and for logs for burning in the winter. We should have our animals; we should have everything that we wanted round us, and what we hadn't got we should have to do without until we could go and bring it from the nearest town, which might be hundreds of miles away. There'd be a tremendous lot to do every day, but you'd like doing it, and you'd see the whole thing grow and grow till you had a splendid place which you had made out of nothing, and hundreds of people working on it."

"Shall you do that, when you're quite grown up, Harry?" asked Pobbles. "I think I shall. I know a good deal about it already, and I can easily learn some more."

Jane forbore to rebuke his assumption of knowledge, having one to make on her own account. "I used to think I should hate having to sew and learn to cook," she said. "But I shouldn't mind it if I was living in a log cabin. I can cook some things already. I suppose it would be more fun to be a man, but a woman would have to ride and all that, if she lived in a new country; and she could ride astride."

"It's only when things begin to get a little settled that women go at all," said Harry, dashing these dreams. "The real pioneers go alone, and carry everything they want with them on horseback. It must be glorious to ride for day after day in a country where no white man has ever been before, and at last to come to some lovely place where he can make a settlement."

"There's no reason why a woman shouldn't do that too," said Jane. "She could go alone herself, if the man didn't want her. She could dress like a man."

Pobbles exploded with mirth, at some cryptic joke of his own. "A pretty fool she'd look if the Redskins caught her!" he said.

"Shut up," said Jane sharply, relinquishing her dreams of a woman's empire, "or I'll punch your head."

"Shut up both of you," said Harry, "and don't spoil things by quarrelling. You'd never do for that sort of life if you couldn't spend five minutes without flying at one another. You'd have to spend weeks and months together without seeing another living soul."

"But you'd be there," said Pobbles. "You'd keep her in order."

"Shall you ever do it, Harry, do you think?" asked Jane. "I should like to come too, if you do. I could wait behind till you'd found the right place, and then Tom and I could come on together."

"Perhaps I shall some day," said Harry, for whom time and youth seemed to stretch ahead illimitably. "But not until after I've been in the army for some years. And I couldn't be away long from Royd. I might just go pioneering, and leave somebody else to work up the place I've found."