THE RAJAH'S HEIR

A NOVEL

[by Charlotte Despard]

IN THREE VOLUMES

LONDON

SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1890

[CONTENTS]

[THE RAJAH'S HEIR]

PROLOGUE

'A dream and a forgetting. Is our life that? The sages who have searched into the past and future say that it is even so. A dream—another dream; a beginning—an ending; a beginning again—an ending again; in all the world no halt for the trembling spirit until the dizzy height be reached. And that—when will it be? I accept not the priceless boon alone. Ye Holy Ones, who have been my companions from my boyhood, whose wills have wrought upon my will, whose bodiless voices have counselled me, ye know what is in my heart. If I had separated myself from my kind, from the children who depend upon me for their daily bread, I might now have attained to the goal of my spiritual desire; instead of going forth upon this weary flight I might have been basking in the light of knowledge, as the Divine—nay, the very Divine myself. But it cannot be. For their sakes I must begin again.'

Slowly and brokenly the words fell upon the silence. He who spoke them—a man but a few hours ago in the full pride and glory of life—was dying. Early that morning he had gone out as was his wont from his palace, he had ridden over fields which he had redeemed from the wilderness, he had visited the fair markets that his munificence had opened; he had gone on foot, as he had often done before, through the crowded streets of the city he governed, when the hand of an assassin struck him down. The blow was dealt before the eyes of the loyal throngs that pressed round their rajah; yet the miscreant who did the foul deed made no effort to escape.

'He is a Feringhee,' he muttered as (the wounded prince having forbidden violence) the people led the assassin to prison. 'He is a Feringhee. He will take away from us our religion and customs, and give us foreigners to rule over us.'

Weeping and moaning, the attendants of the rajah had dressed his wound with such cool unguents as they could procure on the instant, and, while some carried him to his palace, others went in hot haste for the European doctor at the Residency. He let them do what they would, knowing that the doing would ease their pain; but, for himself, he was well aware that the end of his life, as master of these good people and lord of loyal Gumilcund, had come.

When everything that skill and care could devise had been done he begged his attendants to leave him. He wished to be alone.

He had been brought back to his palace at mid-day, and now the evening was drawing on. The golden light of the westering sun stole in through perforated marble lattices, and lay in patches on the white pavement, and made the water that flowed tinkling through, a trough in the centre of the apartment shine like rubies and sapphires. The Arabian carpet on which, propped up with cushions, the rajah lay, had been drawn by his request close to this trough, and his long brown fingers played aimlessly with the water. As he lay, his lower limbs covered with shawls of the richest Oriental workmanship, and the upper part of his body wrapped in a padded cloak of silk embroideries, exhausted as he was with suffering, the peculiar dignity and beauty of his appearance must have struck anyone who saw him for the first time. It was a grand face, finely wrought, noble in form and expression. Those who looked upon it loved it.

The jewelled turban, which he was never more to wear, lay beside the rajah on his pillow, and close at hand was a lacquered tray, containing a gold cup, an alabaster casket, and a silver bell.

The words given above, only a few out of many, were spoken aloud. The effort of thinking was too great for the strength so swiftly ebbing away. Smiling sadly, the rajah put out his hand for the gold cup. He reached it, but he could not raise it to his lips, whereupon he touched the silver bell. While the sound was still vibrating through the air, one of the many dusky forms that were thronging the doorway stood before him.

'Hoosanee,' he said, 'call Chunder Singh.'

Swift and silent as the shadow that sweeps across a ripe corn-field were the feet of the servant. But he had not far to go. In less than a minute a man, slender, but of commanding stature, dressed in snowy white, and wearing a red turban, stood, with head humbly bowed and eyes so dim with tears that he could scarcely see, before the rajah.

'My master wants me at last,' he said, an accent of reproach in his voice.

'I am tired. Give me to drink,' said the rajah.

Chunder Singh raised his head and put the golden cup to his lips. He drank, and the death-like languor left his eyes. 'That is enough. I am stronger,' he said.

'I would it were the elixir of life,' murmured Chunder Singh, who was weeping bitterly.

'Your words bring back the past,' said the rajah, his lips parting in a sad smile. 'The Elixir of Life! Long ago, when we were boys together, how diligently we sought for it, Chunder, poring over the ancient Arabic manuscripts! We were to drink of it and live, age after age, age after age. We were to bring our grey experience to the use and service of the nations. We were to mould a new world, where righteousness would be the law and happiness—happiness, instead of misery—the common lot.'

He paused. 'Dreams!' said Chunder Singh. 'Yet I wish now that they might return.'

'Dreams!' echoed the rajah. 'We know—you and I—that we are deathless. What need of elixirs for us? Though I seem to die—though to-morrow you will take out this body and burn it—the chain of existence has not run out to its limit. I remain.'

'But not with us—not with us!' cried Chunder Singh, flinging himself down with his face to the marble pavement.

He was aroused from his paroxysm of grief by the voice of the rajah. 'You are mistaken. Rise and sit beside me, and I will tell you what will make your heart leap with joy.'

Then Chunder Singh rose and dried his eyes, and the rajah spoke. 'There was a moment when I thought that this death would be my last; that when I left the prison of this mortal body I should go forth into the liberty of unconditioned existence; for I have lived as a sage. By day and by night, at the ordered hours, I have meditated upon the sacred books. I have conquered appetite and passion, and have worked for the sake of others, looking not for reward. Is this true, Chunder Singh?'

'It is true, my lord.'

'I know that it is true, and I know that the door into the highest heaven stands open. But,' in a low and broken voice, 'I may not enter in.'

'Why will my lord say so?'

'I say what I know, what the Invisible Ones have revealed to me. It is two years now since they spoke to me of this. "Brother," they said, "the door stands open. Enter in." I bowed down with my face to the ground. "And my people," I said, "they will enter in with me?" "Nay," said the Holy Ones; "have they lived as you have done?" And I said, "They will." And the Holy Ones answered, "Who will teach them when you have gone? There is no communion between gods and men." Then I trembled, and my knees smote together. "There will rise up others," I said, "like-minded with us; and these will teach them." And they said, "So it may be; yet who knoweth aught of that which is to come?" "Promise me," I said, "that they shall be led into the path that I have trodden." But to my prayer no answer was vouchsafed. After that, Brother Chunder, many days went by. Morning, noon, and night I thought of my people, humbly beseeching the Invisible Ones to grant me the assurance of their final emancipation; but the heavens were as brass over my head, and my words as empty air. But one night, when I was musing, I heard a voice that I had never heard before. "Sacrifice," it said, "is the salt of devotion." As I pondered what this might mean there fell upon me suddenly great awe, and a horror of darkness enveloped me. More days and nights passed over me, and then I spoke again. "It is enough," I said, "I will return again to the dark forest of conditioned existence, and my people shall live." Then at last the Invisible Ones spoke clearly. "So be it," they said. "For your brothers' sakes you shall go through another incarnation, and a body is ready."'

Here Chunder Singh trembled.

'Be still,' said the rajah, laying a long brown hand upon his arm. 'Hear me to the end; for I have still stranger things to tell. Across the sea, in the land from which my father's father came, there lives a youth, to whom I desire to send you. He thinks himself wholly of the West; but our blood runs in his veins. Into him it is decreed that I shall enter, that, through him, I may return to my people and city. Listen, Brother Chunder, and consider carefully what I shall say to you. When these eyes are closed, and you have carried out this body to the burning, you must go to the land where my father's father lived; you must find that youth of our race; you must be faithful to him as you have been faithful to me.'

'But how shall I know him when I see him?' said Chunder Singh.

'You will know him by this, that he is my heir. My last will and testament is in England, in the hands of our agent, with whom you have often communicated by letter. He, if you present the credentials that I leave with you, will give you all the information you require. Understand, Chunder, while the youth is in England, amongst the friends of his boyhood, I do not desire that you shall press yourself upon him. When he has—as I know he will—made up his mind to become one of us, then you will wait upon and help him. Will you?'

'My lord, thou knowest,' cried the poor fellow, weeping. 'Of what value is Chunder's life to him now, save as he can carry out the wishes of his master?'

The rajah smiled. 'That is well,' he said, 'I am satisfied. This,' laying his hand on the alabaster casket, 'I give to you. It contains gold and English notes, and my secret instructions. Strike the bell three times!'

Chunder Singh obeyed. On the instant the marble pavement round the rajah's couch was thronged with the figures of men in white and coloured garments, whose weeping and lamentation filled the air of the apartment.

But when the rajah lifted his hand there was silence. Then every one of them fell down with their faces to the ground. In a voice that faltered with weakness he bade them rise and listen to his last words. They obeyed him trembling. 'Listen, my children!' he said. 'It is the will of the Supreme, who doeth as He listeth in the heavens above and in the earth beneath, that I should leave you for a season; but when the times are fulfilled I will return. Until I come the elders of the city, Chunder Singh and Lutfullah and the others'—he looked smilingly from one to another—'will rule you under the English Resident, whom I have seen to-day, and to whom you will refer in case of difficulty. I call you all to witness that to my faithful minister, Chunder Singh, I give this casket with everything it contains. Hoosanee, my bearer, will take the gold cup out of which I drink, and the diamond star in my turban. To him and all of you there are legacies of which you will hear in the proper time and place. It is my desire that the palace be kept as it is till your lord's return. The treasury is in the hands of the Resident, and he will give you your pay. My faithful servants, farewell! Thank you for your service. I can say no more. As you love me, I beseech you to withdraw quietly.'

Stifled sobs followed the rajah's words, but not a single word was spoken. One by one, with lingering looks of love, they left the apartment. At last there were none left but Chunder Singh, his foster-brother, and Hoosanee, his bearer. He looked with yearning affection from one to the other, said feebly, 'Chunder will tell my Hoosanee,' and fell back dead.

[CHAPTER I]

THE HEIR

In a little green box by the banks of the silver Thames, far from the busy haunts of men and commerce, yet near enough to a busy little county town not to be altogether cut off from the society of their fellows, there lived at the time of the death of the Rajah of Gumilcund, known amongst his Indian contemporaries as Byrajee Pirtha Raj, a widow and her son. They were English. The widow was of middle age. She had been handsome, and she was still comely and pleasant to look upon. The son had just turned his twenty-first year.

The two were somewhat of an enigma to their neighbours, one of whom—the well-known Lady Winter—used to say that the good folks of Surbiton and Kingston ought to be thankful to the Gregorys, without whose eccentricities they would not have had anything to talk about.

Now, it was very well that Mrs. Gregory did not hear this kind speech, for, however she may have affected her neighbours, it is very certain that she had not the least desire to be eccentric. And indeed the peculiarity which set all these busy tongues wagging had more to do with her son than with herself. His appearance, to begin with—how did he come to be so curiously, so abnormally, different from his mother? No one seeing them together could have imagined that they were closely related. She was one of those large, fair women—placid in temper and gentle in manner—who develop naturally out of the lily-white blonde of poetry and romance when she is foolish enough to step across the boundary that divides youth from middle age. He had the lithe figure, the olive skin, and the dark melting eyes that are supposed to belong to the great southern races.

The observant said there was something more. They said that the boy's expression of face divided him more completely from his mother than its colour and form. I am speaking now of his childish years. They say—I did not myself know him in these days—that there was a wonderful stillness, a curious, unchildlike spirituality about him; that he looked now and then as if his little soul were in the presence of visions which made the things of earth strange to him. This was noticed once to his mother by a garrulous neighbour, and the anger with which she received the remark was remembered long after in the neighbourhood. As a fact, the poor woman, placid as she seemed, had her own strongly-marked ideals. When her infant was born, and she called him Tom—a name which the neighbours said did not suit him in the least—she had visions of him in the future as a fair-haired, white-skinned Anglo-Saxon athlete, a cricketing and footballing hero, winning the plaudits of the crowd and provoking the envy of meaner mortals by his magnificent feats. Nature, however, had other views for the lad. But of this we shall see more hereafter. In the meantime it must be mentioned that the curious difference between the mother and son was not their only peculiarity. It was whispered that there was something strange—and we all know how much may lurk behind those two little words—in their past history. That Mrs. Gregory had spent several of her early years in India, where her grandfather, Sir Anthony Bracebridge, had been one of those fine old Anglo-Indian officers who by their military dash and political genius laid the foundation of the vast English empire that was then slowly growing up in the East; that her father had in his turn entered the service of the East India Company and won distinction; and that her husband, Captain Gregory, had belonged to the same order, and had been killed in one of the little wars about which no one in England knew anything;—so much everyone had heard, and this, it might have been thought, was sufficient for the most exacting of neighbourhoods. And no one, doubtless, would have asked for any more but for Mrs. Gregory's curious reticence with regard to the past.

She was naturally an expansive and garrulous woman. Everyone knew that. She was not in the least like Lady Winter, for instance, who measured her words carefully. She loved talking and kissing, and the genial company of intimate friends. Dearest Tom, and his little smart sayings, the house, the servants, the tradespeople, her own and other people's ailments; she was ready at any time to discuss these with effusion. But let one of her acquaintances touch upon India or her early years, and her lips were sealed immediately. So marked was this, that, curious as some of her neighbours were—and those were the days when India was, to the generality of people, a land of romance and mystery—it was tacitly agreed that it should not be mentioned before her, and so by degrees the gossip died down. Mrs. Gregory was an excellent neighbour and a genial companion. She had a pretty cottage, a good-looking, dutiful son, and she gave charming tea-parties. The neighbourhood accepted her and let her past alone. The coming of General Sir Wilfrid Elton and his family to Surbiton set tongues wagging again. Some one found out that the Eltons and Bracebridges were friends of old standing. Some one else suspected that Mrs. Gregory had not been particularly pleased when she heard they meant to settle near her, and two or three of the sensationally disposed looked forward to what they were pleased to call 'revelations.' None, however, came. The General was far too busy a person to gossip. Lady Elton, a pretty, timid, domestic woman, took to no one in the neighbourhood but Mrs. Gregory; and the girls either knew nothing, or had no inclination to tell what they knew. Our story dates from the summer of the Eltons' visit to Surbiton.

Tom Gregory, who was then just of age, had, in one respect, fulfilled the promise of his childhood. He was a handsome man for all that his beauty was not of that Anglo-Saxon type which was so dear to his mother's heart. An artist who met him one autumn day wandering by the riverside just as dusk had fallen, described himself as startled by his beauty. He attended one of Lady Winter's receptions later, and asked her in the presence of Miss Vivien Leigh, her pretty and eccentric niece, who the young Greek god of the river was. Her ladyship lifted up her eyebrows and wondered what upon earth he could mean. But Vivien smiled. 'He's met Tom Gregory in his boating flannels, aunt,' she said, in her light airy voice, which seemed always to have a ring of mockery in it. 'And do you know I think I shall keep the illustration; it's a remarkably good one. Which god, Mr. Walters—Apollo or Mars?'

'Scarcely Mars—not fierce enough; but the warlike element might develop. Educate him, Miss Vivien.'

'Mr. Walters,' said Lady Winter, holding up her finger reprovingly, 'my niece is quite naughty enough. She doesn't want any stimulating.'

I give this little scrap of gossip to show the effect which Tom produced in those days on some of the most stylish of his contemporaries. But although, not altogether, it must be confessed, to his mother's approbation, Tom had kept his remarkable appearance, he had changed in many ways from the beautiful boy who had woven golden visions in the garden by the river. He had been educated, and educated well. Acting on the advice of her friends, and chiefly of old Mr. Cherry, legal adviser of the Bracebridges for three generations, Mrs. Gregory had sent him first to a good preparatory school, then to Eton, and lastly to the University of Oxford, where he had just finished his term with credit. It was the general opinion that this elaborate and costly training, which was supposed to have eaten largely into Mrs. Gregory's slender resources, had been thrown away upon Tom, who declined to belong either to the church, the bar, or the army—the only professions which were in those days considered admissible for a gentleman. But Mrs. Gregory was satisfied. 'It has made an Englishman of him,' she said.

This was a little puzzling to the friend to whom the remark had been made. 'Why Englishman?' she said; 'he was English before.'

'I ought to have said "gentleman,"' she answered; 'but, to my mind, the one includes the other.' She was certainly no fool, this fair, placid-faced widow.

Unfortunately, to be an Englishman, or even an English gentleman, is not remunerative as a profession, and it having been constantly impressed upon Tom that, if he were ever to live in that atmosphere of refinement which is supposed to belong to a gentleman's condition, he must make money, it became necessary for him to cast about for some means of doing so.

He pondered for several weeks, visiting London two or three times in the interval. All this time he said nothing to his mother, and she, knowing his temperament, would not urge him to speak.

Then one evening he asked formally if he might have a little conversation with her, and she knew, by the light in his face, that he had come to a decision.

'Well,' she said, smiling, 'what is it to be? Will you take Mr. Cherry's advice and be a lawyer? He will help you, I know, for the sake of "Auld Lang Syne."'

'So he was kind enough to say,' answered Tom. 'But I thanked him and said "No." I should make a poor lawyer. I want something practical to do. If I were a rich man I should enter the diplomatic service. As I am poor, I wish to make myself an architect.'

'An architect!' cried his mother, wondering within herself what possible connection there could be between the two professions. 'A builder of houses, do you mean?'

'Houses, churches, cathedrals, playhouses, anything I may be put to,' said Tom, smiling at his mother's look of dismay. 'You see there is something permanently useful about building—always supposing that you build well—and it leaves the other half of the mind free.'

'The other half! What in the world do you mean, Tom?'

'I don't know that I am very clear about it myself, mother. But I think it will be good for me to have my fingers and the constructive side of my intelligence occupied.'

Of course Mrs. Gregory argued the point. She had never heard of a Bracebridge being an architect. Even the Gregorys, so far as she could learn, had always belonged either to the army or to one of the clerical professions. Were architects gentlemen? Did they take a place in society? Could they make money?

Her son quoted one or two great names out of ancient and modern history; but these did not satisfy her in the least. When he continued to urge his views she begged for time to consult their friends; but Tom would not hear of it.

'No, mother,' he said, 'this is a question for you and me, no one else. Can you put down the money'—he mentioned a comparatively small sum—'which will be necessary to bind me as an apprentice, and will you undertake to keep me for the next two years?'

'As to keeping you,' said the poor woman, tears filling her eyes, 'I should do that under any circumstances. What have I to live for but you? But——'

'Then, dearest mother, let us settle it so. In any case I shall not be losing my time. Every art acquired is an additional power and resource. If I find I am mistaken, if I wish to take up what you think a loftier walk of life, I can always do it; and, in the meantime, we are together.'

Yes, they were together, that was the great sweetener of everything; and she was not one to do battle for ideal excellence, or to stand firm against well-sustained importunity. 'After all it is you, not I, who are choosing a profession,' she said feebly. 'And—and—you are not quite like others. If things come to the worst——' And here she broke off and set her lips together, as if she had a secret to guard.

'If things come to the worst,' said Tom, who was accustomed to these little breaks, and did not mind them, 'we should manage to battle it out somehow, little mother. I am not in the least afraid.'

They arrived at this decision early in the spring. It was then that General Sir Wilfrid Elton, who was at home on a year's furlough from India, paid a visit to his old friend Mrs. Gregory, and fell in love with the cottage adjoining hers that had been empty since the previous summer. She was very frank in pointing out its deficiencies: the tumbledown condition of the fences and outhouses, the close neighbourhood of the river, the likelihood of damp. 'It would be pleasant to have neighbours,' she said wistfully, 'but I should be sorry for such old friends as Lady Elton and you to do anything so important with your eyes shut.'

'We shall certainly not do that,' said the General, with his hearty laugh.

'But consider the girls!' said Mrs. Gregory, a pink flush mounting to her face—the General was such a curiously quizzical man. 'This is a dull place for young people.'

'Dull!' echoed the General, clapping his hand to his knee. 'You have spoken the word. The good people in London have tired us out with festivities. Since we came home it has been one rush. Lady Elton is beginning to be sick of it, so am I. As for the girls, they must make the best of it. Two or three months of eclipse in holland frocks and brown straw hats will do the little monkeys all the good in the world.'

Of course there was nothing more to be said. Mrs. Gregory smiled sweetly, and with a tremor at her heart, and an unuttered hope that if Lady Elton and the General knew more about her former life than her neighbours—a circumstance concerning which she could not be perfectly sure—they would be discreet, entered, with the enthusiasm of a friend, and the practical ability of an experienced housekeeper, into the arrangements necessary to make the new ménage comfortable. As a fact the Eltons proved most delightful neighbours. Lady Elton and Mrs. Gregory struck up a friendship which, while it had the charm of novelty, drew much of its sweetness from the past. The girls, who were not little schoolmisses, as might have been imagined from their father's reference to holland frocks and straw hats, but young women ranging from twenty-two to seventeen, flashed in and out of the widow's rooms, dragged her off with them for picnics on the river, and filled up her somewhat barren days with the overflowings of their exuberant life. As for the General, who had become a great gardener in his retirement, he looked in upon his neighbour, as a general rule, once a day, to inquire after her health, and discuss the condition of their respective crops of roses and strawberries. Tom meanwhile came and went, going to town early in the morning and returning home in the evening. To the surprise of everybody he seemed to like the life. He showed a curious enthusiasm about his work, which he would call neither a business nor a profession, but an art. The evenings and the whole of Saturday and Sunday were his own property; and then he would doff his city clothes and put on the flannels that became him so well, and either spin himself up and down the river in his outrigger, to the admiration of the Elton girls, or dream on his mothers lawn, or take tea, a little primly, but withal satisfactorily, in their neighbour's charming rose-garden, whither his mother and Lady Winter, and Sir Reginald her son, and that pretty enigma, Vivien Leigh, would come; and sometimes after these tea-parties he would find himself strolling along the river with one of the girls—occasionally Grace Elton, oftener Vivien Leigh—while the ringing voices of the rest of their little party sounded behind them; until the sunlight faded, and the little stars twinkled out in the pale zenith.

And so we come to that memorable day in June, from which, as Tom was accustomed to say later, everything dated.

It was that loveliest moment of all the English year, when summer, which has been coquetting for weeks with the enamoured earth, breaking out one day into sunny smiles, and on the next hiding her sweet face in mists and clouds, has issued forth at last in her full beauty. In the irresistible magic of her presence the meadows had become gemmed with flowers; the beeches and elms, and even the tardy old oaks, which are of too ancient a lineage to be beguiled by mere promises, lifted up golden-green canopies to the heavens; the birds—nightingales and larks, and linnets and thrushes—made the copses and hedgerows resonant with joyful music. For three whole days the sky and the river had been penetrated with sunlight.

In weather such as this Tom Gregory spent as little time as possible in town. On the particular day which I am trying to recall he found, to his contentment, that there was not much doing, and he gained permission easily from the head clerk of his department to leave earlier than usual.

His mother was out when he reached the cottage—at Lady Elton's, the servant said. Proposing to himself to join her there a little later, he ran up to his room, threw off his city dress, put on his flannels and went out into the garden.

There was a certain tree at its further end, a weeping-ash with long pendent branches, under whose shadow it was often his pleasure to hide and dream. He would take out a volume of poetry—Shelley and Coleridge were his favourites—and lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his elbows, would read a few stanzas, just, as he would express it, to set himself going. After that, if he had nothing particular to think out, he would give a free rein to his fancy, which would range over heaven and earth with the unbridled, glorious luxuriance of youth. Meantime he would watch the waters as they flowed past his retreat, taking absent note of the procession of boats and the laughing music of young voices, which blended sweetly with the sighing of the wind and the chanting of the birds.

This evening, as he remembered later, he had taken out Coleridge. The volume opened of its own accord at that magnificent fragment, 'Kubla Khan.' He read it over twice, with that curious rapture of satisfaction which nothing but the greatest poetry can call out; and then the mystic imagery in its stately setting of miraculously beautiful words set his mind wandering on a wild vision quest of its own.

What the vision was, or whether he was bold enough to imagine that he could build

That dome in air—
That sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice—

I must not venture to say, lest I should suddenly find myself, 'like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,' floundering in depths whither few will care to follow me.

The dream lasted for an hour, and the boy came to himself with a start, for an image, which he did not in the least wish to detain, was haunting him. He sprang up, gave himself a shake like a dog after a swim, and went slowly towards the boat-house, murmuring, as he walked, the words which had called up the unwelcome image—

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!

'I wonder why that always makes me think of Vivien Leigh,' he said to himself with a perplexed smile. 'I couldn't imagine her wailing for any one, least of all a lover, demon or human. Perhaps it's because she's a little inhuman herself. I'm sure she would have been put down as a witch in the middle ages.' He began to whistle a lively air to put Vivien out of his head. Then her image was expelled by another.

Her face resigned to bliss or bale—
Her face, oh call it fair not pale,
And both blue eyes more bright than clear,
Each about to have a tear.

'What a contrast!' he said to himself, as he stooped over his boat to loosen the painter. 'She is human—exquisitely, beautifully human.'

At this moment he heard his mother calling him, and, tying up his boat again, he went out of the boat-house and on to the lawn.

'Tom, Tom! where are you?' She looked flushed and excited and out of breath.

'Here I am, mother!' he said. 'I thought you were at the Eltons. I was just going to take my boat round and see if any one was in. You look tired, dear. Come and sit down by the river.'

'Oh, dear! I have had such a hunt for you,' she said. 'I went in to the Eltons after lunch to get them to show me a new stitch, and the girls and their father were out; he has gone to town, for a wonder. So Lady Elton and I sat chatting about old days, forgetting altogether how the time went, and then I came in to see about your supper, and Sarah told me you had been in an hour.'

'An hour or thereabouts, and I was just going out for a stretch. Can it be time for supper already?'

'No, not quite; but——'

And here she pulled up, for she perceived to her annoyance that Tom was not listening to her.

'Do you hear me, Tom?' she said. 'The post has just come in, and there is a letter——'

The boy held up his hand beseechingly. 'One moment, mother!' he pleaded. 'The letter will keep and that will not.'

Now Mrs. Gregory did not agree with him in the least; as a fact, she had come out to find him, being moved with an irresistible feeling of curiosity concerning the contents of his letter, which was of an unusual character, and addressed in an unusual hand. Tom had very few correspondents, and his mother generally knew from whom his letters came by merely glancing at them. But she knew from experience that Tom was not to be forced. Pliant as he seemed, there was a certain backbone of stubbornness about him. So, keeping herself in check as well as she could, she looked out at the sight 'which would not keep.' It was certainly a pretty picture. Anybody would have been bound to confess that. A pleasure-boat full of young girls, gliding softly along a broad tranquil stream; their light garments and brown and golden hair steeped in the rosy evening light. Of course it was pretty. Mrs. Gregory, who liked and admired the 'dear girls,' from beautiful Grace, the eldest, down to mischievous, tiresome, delightful Trixy, the privileged baby of the two establishments, thought it not only pretty but interesting. There was nothing new, however, nothing to provoke that irritatingly intense look on her son's face and delay the gratification of her curiosity.

But Tom! Ah! 'alchemy of youth and passion; how it transforms everything it touches!' To him not Cleopatra in her barge of state, floating proudly down her river to the strains of spirit quelling music, was so beautiful.

There were no less than five girls in the boat. Two of them had been rowing, and, as the impetus given by their last vigorous strokes carried it along, they leaned forward on their oars, gazing dreamily into the shadows; the third, a little golden-haired creature, lay in the bows with her face towards the water, and two sat in the stern—one, a royal-looking girl, whose tense expression, direct gaze, and upright attitude showed that she liked the post of directress steering; the other, a much softer, and, at the same time, a lovelier woman, sitting back with hands folded, and singing in a rich low voice a beautiful old English ballad.

As long as the voice could be heard and the boat seen the boy on the river bank looked out and listened. Presently the air carried the sounds away, and the outlines of the boat were lost in the shadows of the willows that fringed the opposite bank. Then he turned to his mother.

'Only the Eltons,' she said. 'I thought, from the way you called out, I was going to see something wonderful. My dear boy, for pity's sake, don't look so intense!'

'I am afraid I can't help my looks,' said Tom a little stiffly. 'Shall we go back to the house? It is getting damp here. You will be having your rheumatism again.'

'Yes, discretion is the better part of valour,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'Give me your arm, Tom. I am not so young as I was once. You know, dear'—apologetically—'you mustn't mind what I say about your looks. To me it is just the same, though, of course, I don't like to see you dreamy and romantic, for I know to what these things tend. I was so once myself.'

'And it hasn't brought you to any great harm, little mother.'

'I don't know that, Tom. However, I am a woman, and I had friends to look after me—not that they always—but that is neither here nor there. You, my poor dear, know what is before you. A man in your position, with his way to make in the world, must keep all his wits about him, or he will soon find himself nowhere.'

'A country about which I have always been rather curious,' said Tom, to whom these admonitions were not new. 'How if I tried a little wool-gathering, just to have a look in?'

'Oh, well, you may laugh; but you will remember my words some day, and I only hope it may not be too late for your own comfort. And now, perhaps, you will take your letter.'

'A letter for me!' said Tom. 'Why'—scrutinising it—'this looks important—blue paper, black seal!'

'I thought it rather funny myself,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'But don't stare at it, child! Open and read it!'

'Come inside first,' said Tom.

They went through a pretty little verandah, well furnished with plants, into Mrs. Gregory's drawing-room, which, though very far indeed from the daintily-æsthetic apartment that ladies haunt now, was pleasant and comfortable—well supplied with books in handsome bindings and fine engravings, and furnished with a low couch, an ottoman, and several lounging-chairs. Into one of these Tom plunged, and, having thrown down his boating-cap on the table, broke the seal of his letter. His mother, who was watching him curiously, saw his face flush red. Then she knew that there was something in his letter which surprised him. It seemed to her at that moment as if all the blood in her body were rushing to her heart, which bounded as if it would burst. The next thing she knew Tom was looking at her, with the strangest expression in his face.

'Did you know of this, mother?' he said.

'Know of what?' she cried. 'Oh, Tom! Tom! what is it? Something has happened!'

'Yes,' he said; and she fancied now that there was a curious, unusual glitter in his eyes. 'Something has happened.'

She caught at his arm. 'It is something dreadful. I am sure of it from your face.'

'Dreadful!' echoed the boy, breaking into a laugh which rang unnaturally in his mother's ears. 'I think few people would call it so.'

'But what is it? Oh, Tom!' besought the poor woman, as her son turned his soft meditative eyes upon her. 'Speak at once, and don't look at me in that way. Child! child! It is like a dream come to life again. I can't bear it. Tom, I say! Speak to me. God help me! He hasn't looked so since he was a baby.'

It was Tom's turn to look surprised. 'My dear mother,' he said soothingly, 'what is the matter? I am afraid I have been frightening you. It is very stupid of me; but the news in this letter is so extraordinary—so unexpected. I have read over the principal part of it twice, and I feel still as if I must be dreaming. But Mr. Cherry is a man of business; he would not be likely to make a mistake.'

'Mr. Cherry! Is the letter from him?'

'Yes; he tells me he is the agent and solicitor——Mother, what is it?'

'Nothing, dear, nothing—only you are telling the story rather slowly. Mr. Cherry, you say——'

'Perhaps you had better read the letter yourself, mother. I can't say I understand it quite.'

'Yes, give it to me! Quick! I hear the General coming up the garden. My dear boy, don't look like that before him—don't, for pity's sake!'

As she spoke she seized the letter, glanced over its contents, put her hands before her eyes as if the lamplight dazzled her, read it again, and then, with a cry of mingled joy and sorrow, flung herself into her son's arms.

[CHAPTER II]

GENERAL SIR WILFRID ELTON

The General was an intimate friend, who never waited to be announced. He would come up through the garden, examining its condition critically, with a view to a report for Mrs. Gregory's benefit, and, frequently, her gardener's confusion. Then he would poke about the verandah, where, on these fine evenings, his neighbour was often to be found, and, failing that, he would look into the drawing-room. If Mrs. Gregory was not there, he would make up his mind that she was either dressing, eating, or visiting; and, keeping a careful mental note of the particulars he had intended to report, would return to his family.

The General was a man of whose friendship anyone might have been proud. Simple as he was in his speech and manner, it was well known, even in Surbiton, that, in his own line, he was a brilliant and distinguished person. Though no longer young, he was a fine man—a soldier every inch of him—not tall, but spare and muscular. His hair was plentifully sprinkled with grey; his face was bronzed by years of exposure to weather; his light blue eyes looked at you keenly and steadily from beneath finely pencilled brows that gave an air of refinement to the face; and his mouth, for all that it was half hidden by a grey moustache, had, in its lines, an expression of firmness and self-dependence which would have won him respect anywhere. The most superficial observer saw at once that the General, debonair as he might be in his manners, was not a person to be trifled with. This evening he came up the garden, as he was accustomed to do, but rather more rapidly than usual, and neglecting to take notes.

He was actually in the verandah when Mrs. Gregory threw herself into her son's arms; and, had not Tom seen him and begged him to come in, he would certainly have retreated.

'I fear I am intruding,' he said, as Mrs. Gregory, who looked curiously shaken, turned to greet him. 'Just like me. Lady Elton said to me, "Much better wait;" but we are such intimate friends; besides—why, Mrs. Gregory, my good old friend, you have borne so much bad fortune with resolution, you are surely not going to break down when good fortune comes knocking at your door? She's a jade we don't generally find it difficult to welcome. Tom, my boy, I congratulate you. No more building now—eh! You'll be giving orders instead of taking them—a very different sort of business. You look surprised—only just know yourselves? Well, curiously enough, it got wind at the club—how, heaven only knows. I believe that rumours have wings. I was interested, of course, having known all the family so well, and I called in at Mr. Cherry's on my way home to ask him if there was any foundation for the rumour.'

'And he told you it was true?' said Mrs. Gregory.

'Yes, he was civil enough to answer my questions. The rajah's will, he says, will be public property to-morrow, so it is no breach of confidence.'

As he spoke he had settled himself in an armchair and put his cane and wide-brimmed straw hat on the floor beside him. 'Now, really,' he said, looking from mother to son, 'you are the very funniest people I ever met. I expected to find my young friend Tom dancing a war-dance. Why, young man, do you know what it means to be rich?'

'I think I do, General.'

'Oh! do you? Then all I can say is, wait till you see. It means a good many things, my boy, that you can't so much as guess at. But come, Mrs. Gregory, you can't feel it so much! How many years is it since you met your cousin, the rajah?'

'I am really afraid to think,' said Mrs. Gregory, rousing herself with an effort. 'Still, a death is a death, and it was so unexpected.'

'You were in correspondence with the rajah?'

'Oh no! And that's what makes it so strange. I might have thought—expected——'

'Just so. You might have expected to be remembered.'

'I don't know why,' said the poor woman, with a wan smile. 'But, of course, there was the relationship. Very distant, as you know. My poor father and the late rajah of Gumilcund's father were only half-brothers. If it hadn't been for the infatuation of my grandfather, Sir Anthony—but I am giving you ancient history——'

'On the contrary, you are interesting me very much. Sir Anthony was always staunch to his Indian connections.'

'Yes; I wondered myself that he married a second time.'

'Oh! he was bound to have an English heir, said the General, smiling, 'a determination to which you may be said to owe your existence. But about this fortune, are there any particulars? Your cousin, the rajah, you know, is said to have been phenomenally rich. I heard something of it when I was in India last, and, if I hadn't been so busy, I should have got the resident Montgomery to have me invited. A discovery was made in the state the other day—a ruby mine—think of that! I suppose it is Tom's now. They say the city is a perfect little model. The rajah was reviving lost arts and setting a new civilisation going. Will Tom be expected to take the supervision of it all?'

'Oh, no, no! There are absolutely no conditions. Mr. Cherry says so expressly,' cried Mrs. Gregory.

'So much the better,' said the General. 'But most probably the state will lapse to the Company. What is the matter, Tom? Are you waking up at last?'

'I don't know,' said the boy. 'It is, of course, a little bewildering, especially as I know nothing whatever of the family history of which you and my mother have been talking. But this I do know. If I take up this responsibility I will carry it through to the best of my ability.'

'But there is no responsibility,' said Mrs. Gregory, wringing her hands. 'General, my old friend, tell the boy so. He needn't surely become an Indian rajah because a rajah has left him a fortune.'

'Of course he needn't,' said the General lightly; 'though, really, do you know'—looking at him—'I think he would play the part pretty well. Tom, take your mother's advice. She has ten times more common sense than you have. But'—rising with reluctance—'I must be going. Supper? No, thank you. Uncommonly good smell, though. We have cold meat. It's always cold meat here. Those young monkeys of mine have such confoundedly good appetites. Did you see them on the river, by-the-bye? Look well, don't they, in their boating get-up?'

'Very well indeed, General. Grace looks as well again since she came down here,' said Mrs. Gregory. 'And Trixy ought to be strong. The liveliness of that child——'

'Keeps you awake, does she?' said the General, stroking his iron-grey moustache and looking out before him with a flash of satisfaction in his keen blue eyes. 'Tell you what, ma'am, that child has the courage and wit of the family. She is a splendid little creature. You see how she'll come out if ever she's tried! And that reminds me—the little witch has persuaded me to let her go back with us this winter.'

'Oh, General!'

'It is very weak I know, but, positively, I can't help it. You see, I am taking out the other four, and it seems hard to leave her behind, poor monkey.'

'Yes; but five girls in India!'

'You may well exclaim. I consider that the responsibilities of a rajah's wealth are nothing to mine. Fortunately they are as good as gold, and then, you know, I am not like a griff: I know the ropes, and can make them pretty comfortable. That new bungalow of mine at Meerut will be in first-rate order by this, and I mean to send them up to Nainee Tal in the heats. Well, I must really be trotting. I am carver, you know, and I shall be scolded as it is. Come and see my wife and the girls when you are a little resigned and can talk it over calmly.'

He was talking when he crossed the verandah, and when he left off talking he whistled a lively air and then sang lustily an old barrack-song of his juvenile days, which brought him to his own garden gate. He had no sooner opened it than he was fallen upon by a troop of girls with light garments and flowing hair. He flourished his cane and made a feint of trying to escape, but they took the cane from him, wound their arms about him and held him fast. Then, as they moved forward in a troop towards the house, drawing him on with them, they all began to chatter together.

'You're not at all a good strategist, dad,' said one. 'We heard you a mile off.'

'And we have been waiting about an hour,' from another.

'Supper's on the table; and I'm as hungry—as hungry—as a bear,' from a third.

'Oh! never mind Trixy,' cried a fourth silvery voice, 'she's always hungry. Tell us about them.'

'Weren't they frightfully surprised?'

'They must have thought you an angel for going in to see them at once.'

'But how did they look? What did they say?'

'Has Tom put on any airs yet?' This last was from Miss Trixy.

'Girls! girls!' from the highest of the golden heads, 'how is it possible for dad to answer you if you all speak at once? Come in, father——'

'No, dear, don't! Stay with us; we're quite as fond of you as Grace.'

'And as fond of gossip, you cupboard-love young women! Come, clear off, Grace and all. There's not a pin to choose between you.'

He spoke in what was known as his voice of thunder—a voice which had often made a thousand dusky warriors quake; but these mischievous girls only chattered the more rapidly, and clustered round him the more persistently.

'Where is your mother?' said the General.

'In the dining-room,' said Trixy, 'sitting like patience on a monument, waiting for you.'

'Hear, dear! Am I so very late? I suppose I did forget the time a little. Well, never mind. Here we are! Mother, my dear,' stooping to kiss the forehead of a pretty elderly lady who was sitting in an armchair by a little wood fire, stitching at white work and smiling placidly, 'you must excuse me. I am afraid I am late.'

'Are you late, dear?' she said, rising and folding up her work, 'I didn't know. The time slips away so quickly when one is busy. Oh, the girls!' looking round affectionately. 'But they are always hungry. River air and strong exercise, I suppose. Trixy, dearest, father would like to get rid of his coat and see his letters. Call Yaseen Khan.'

Trixy, who was afraid to leave the room lest interesting news should be given in her absence, went to the door and called out, and in the next instant an Indian servant, old, but handsome still, and dressed in gay garments of white and red and gold, a voluminous snow-white turban crowning his dark eyes and dusky face, appeared upon the threshold. The General asked him one or two questions in rapid Hindustani; he answered submissively, and then, going about his business as steadily as if the issues of life and death hung on its due performance, removed the General's upper coat, his hat and gloves, and laid before him the letters which had arrived by the latest post.

The girls and their mother were in the meantime taking their places round the table, which was plainly furnished with cold meat, bread, and salad. A dish of exquisite pink and yellow roses occupied the centre, and there was a handsome tea equipage opposite Lady Elton, and a large silver bowl, heaped high with snowy rice, at the General's end of the table. There was certainly nothing luxurious here; but in the arrangement of the meal, no less than in the appearance of those who were partaking of it, there was an unmistakable air of distinction and refinement.

The girls were hungry after their day on the river, and for a few moments there was little heard but the clatter of knives and forks. Then there was a little pause. The General, who had glanced over his letters and laid them aside, was looking across at his wife. 'I saw Mrs. Gregory and her son,' he said tentatively.

Immediately five pairs of inquisitive eyes were turned upon Lady Elton.

'Well!' she said, smiling. 'They had heard the news, of course?'

'Cherry's letter had just arrived.'

'Only just! I am afraid you were a little in the way, Wilfrid.'

'So I was, at first; but I think now it was as well. They were curiously upset.'

'Poor dear Mrs. Gregory!' said Lady Elton gently. 'I can well understand it.'

'I don't think I should be upset if I heard that I had come into a large fortune,' said a mutinous little voice at the General's end of the table. 'But Tom—how did he take it?'

'Do be quiet, Trixy; let father speak,' whispered the girl at her elbow.

'Yes,' said Lady Elton, whose kind face had grown curiously soft. 'Tell us about Tom. The dear fellow is such a favourite of mine! Do you know it is quite delightful to me to think that he is well off—not, of course, that riches mean happiness. I hope I am not so foolish as to imagine that. There are other things'—looking round her with a glow of happiness in her sweet old eyes—that come far, far before riches. Still it is pleasant to have a competence. A number of little anxieties are knocked off at once, and then you can do kind things without counting the cost.'

'But, my dear wife,' said the General, 'permit me to say that I don't think you have quite grasped the position. The boy is the rajah of Gumilcund's heir—his heir, mind you. Why, he will be ridiculously—phenomenally rich!'

Lady Elton's colour rose, and she gave a little troubled glance round the table, whence a prolonged 'Oh!' had risen. 'Then I can understand his mother's uneasiness,' she said in a low voice. 'It is always troublesome and dangerous to be exceptional.'

'But think of the pleasure and triumph if you can be it well,' said Maud, the second girl. It was she who had held the rudder-strings in the boat that evening.

Then came the mutinous little voice in the corner again.

'We are wandering from our point,' it cried discontentedly. 'The point is Tom. Tom the fortunate man, Tom the handsome man, Tom the heir of this romantic person in India—what did he say? How did he look? Did his eyes shine? He has such expressive eyes, you know! Never shake your head at me, Grace. You said so yourself—I heard you—to mother, "capable of expressing every shade of feeling"—those were your very words.'

Upon this Grace blushed, a circumstance which seemed to give the keenest satisfaction to the mutinous little person in the corner; the other girls laughed, and Lady Elton called them to order. In a momentary lull the General was heard to say:

'You young ladies observe pretty minutely, I must confess.'

'Yes, yes!' cried Trixy. 'Girls, do let father speak.'

'I was going to say, Trixy, that my eyes, I am afraid, are not so clever as yours. As far as I can remember, Tom took it very quietly, didn't dance, didn't laugh, didn't put on height. His eyes may have shone; but, as I am not a competent observer, I refuse to pledge myself. My impression is that when you see him next you will know him.'

'Father, do you know that you are not at all interesting?' cried the irrepressible Trixy.

'Oh! if you want romance you shall have it. Give me five minutes——'

'You know we don't want romance. We want facts.'

'Which I have given you, Miss Monkey.'

'A very meagre supply, dad.'

'Limited intelligences——'

'Excuse me, dad; people with powers of observation and inference——'

'Take this girl away!' cried the General, laughing. 'Inference, indeed, you monkey! Why, there will be no living with you soon. You have finished supper. Go, all of you! Come, I dismiss you with my blessing! And, Trixy——'

'Yes, dearest,' bleated the little creature. 'May I stay? I'll be as quiet as a mouse.'

'And drink in every word I say. No, thank you. Tell Yaseen Khan to bring my hookah, and then make yourself as scarce as you can. I want to have a talk with mother.'

'I wish I were mother,' said Trixy, looking back discontentedly. But she obeyed her father.

[CHAPTER III]

'IN VISIONS OF THE NIGHT'

Leaving the girls to think over what they had heard, we return to the heir and his mother. Unlike as they were in appearance and temperament, a strong affection united them. Mrs. Gregory had her weaknesses—her tremors, her hesitations, her curious infelicities of speech and action; but all of these her son tolerated, even, in a sense, loved. What to him rose grandly above them was the self-forgetting affection which throughout his life had shone out before him.

She, naturally, adored him. He may not have been altogether what she would have liked him to be, but he was hers. She had watched him through his infancy; in his childhood she had made herself a child again that she might love the things he loved; she had nursed him in his little sicknesses; she had taught him his catechism, and creed, and collects, and the beautiful old stories of the Old and New Testaments; with a full heart and passionate prayers she had sent him out to the perilous little worlds of school and college; and now it was her chief interest and delight to provide him with the physical comforts which, she always maintained, kept the mind serene and the body vigorous.

Sometimes she was dimly conscious, poor soul, that he was moving away from her spiritually. Having caught scraps of his conversation here and there, she had begun to feel afraid that his ideas strayed beyond the limits of the faith she had so patiently taught him. During the daytime, when he was away, she would take up the book he had been reading last—a volume of transcendental poetry or a dry philosophical treatise, and try—oh! so pitifully—to understand what it was in it that interested him. Her efforts were all in vain. After an hour of patient effort she would put down the book with a heavy sigh. Her failure was a measure of the distance that separated them—a proof, if any were needed, that they moved in different worlds. 'What was the use of giving him to me,' she would say to herself sometimes with a curious bitterness, 'if he was only to belong to me in his childhood? He is very little mine now. He will soon not be mine altogether.'

But these were only moments in her life; moments, indeed, of which Tom knew nothing; and to say that to any appreciable degree they coloured the every-day existence of the mother and son would be extravagant. As a fact they lived together harmoniously and pleasantly, having entire confidence one in the other.

And so, on this strange evening, when the General had gone and supper was over, Tom, who was naturally burning to understand his new position, expected that his mother would sit down in her usual pleasant, gossipy way and talk it over with him. No such thing. She annoyed him by bustling about. There was a letter she had forgotten to answer. Wouldn't it do to-morrow? Certainly not (severely); to-morrow had its own duties. Then an account to be dotted up. Wouldn't Tom help her? she said feebly. She had a poor head for figures. While he was looking over it she slipped away, and half an hour later, when he went in search of her, he found her in the kitchen overlooking Sarah's performances. She was so worn out that he simply carried her away with him by sheer force of will, and laid her down on the conch in the drawing-room, where she remained with her eyes closed for some minutes.

Unfortunately for herself she was too active and restless to keep up any longer the feint of repose. She got up for her work, and her son, seizing his advantage, pursued her with questions. Not one of those questions would Mrs. Gregory answer directly. When he urged her, saying he would rather she should answer them than anyone else, she pleaded that she was as bewildered as he was. He could understand that, he said, but she must know more. For instance, she had met the rajah—he had heard her say so to General Elton. What was he like?

'Did I say so?' said Mrs. Gregory.

'Mother dear,' cried the boy, 'do you object to being questioned?'

'Oh no. Why should I?' she said, the colour mounting to her face. 'But it is so many, many years ago.'

'That you met the rajah?'

'Yes.'

'Still, you remember him.'

'As he was then?'

'Of course, as he was then. Couldn't you give me your impression of him? That will be some little guide.'

'Why are you so anxious, Tom?'

'Well, mother; but isn't it natural? He has come into my life as a new power—new to me, although, of course, he must have known of me, and been thinking of me for a long time.' Then breaking off: 'How pale you are, dearest; have I said anything to hurt you?'

'No, no, it is nothing. It is only that I see you moving away from me—so far—so far—and——'

'Mother!'

She came to herself with an effort. 'Forgive me, my son,' she said. 'I am not very strong, I suppose, and you know'—with a little smile—'a great change like this always gives one a certain shock.'

'I am tiring you with my silly questions.'

'Not at all; and I don't think they are silly. It is natural you should wish to know something of the man who has enriched you. But I had rather, on the whole, you went to Mr. Cherry. The business has been in his hands for a number of years.'

'It isn't the business, mother——'

'I understand, dear. I understand perfectly. Well!' drawing her lace shawl about her, 'another day. How curiously chilly it is becoming! Will you shut the window?'

'Certainly, mother.' He had been sitting close beside her. He now took a chair at a little distance and took up a book.

Mrs. Gregory watched him with a wistful pain at her heart. She was conscious to the finger-tips of his disappointment, and she hated herself for inflicting it; but there was nothing to be done. She could not speak. She would not if she could. Yet the distance he was putting between them wounded her intolerably. After she had borne it as long as she could she called him. He was at her side at once. 'I am afraid I have disappointed you, dear,' she said. 'Sit down near me again, and we will talk.'

He obeyed silently. He thought he would give her the initiative this time, determining, whatever she might say, not to show his feelings again. By that delicate perception, which was one of heaven's best gifts to him, he had long since learned to understand and shield his mother's sensitiveness.

She, poor woman, scarcely knowing what she said, drifted into mysterious warnings and entreaties. He must be wise; he must do nothing rashly; he must be guided by Mr. Cherry, who was a good man and a Christian. Tom gave her the assurances she asked; but they did not satisfy her; and, I think, it was a relief to them both when, on the stroke of ten, the little maid of the establishment came in with her Bible to take part in the pathetic ceremony with which their day always closed.

When his mother left him Tom sat down and looked round for a few moments, blankly. He was tired; but he could not rest until he had thought out this strange thing that had come to him, and here it was impossible to think. The atmosphere of the room oppressed him. He had a curious, irritating impression that, though his mother's bodily presence had gone, her spirit was haunting the place, preventing him from thinking freely. At last he opened the French window softly, let himself out into the garden, and, allowing his feet to carry him along mechanically, found himself presently on the lower lawn, close by the boat-house and willows. There he stopped and let his eyes wander at their will. Ah! what a world it was—this soft, mysterious midnight world of June! Think! How could he think? But, happily, there was no need yet. The hours of the sweet summer night were before him. With a deep inspiration, in which he seemed to be throwing off a heavy burden, he flung himself down on the grass, his face towards the sky, his feet towards the river, while he gave himself up to the rapturous sense-impressions of the moment. He saw the upper sky, veiled here and there with thin, vaporous cloud-wreaths; and it was so near it seemed to be stooping to embrace him. There was a streak of silver between the cloud-wreaths. It shone out, disappeared, shone out again, and the fleece about it was tinged with pale gold. It was a horn of the young moon—the moon on which Endymion's heavenly love descended, when on that starry night long ago she kissed his eyes open to behold her. Through 'the solemn midnight's tingling silentness' he could hear the swish of the water as it swept over the long grasses and reeds at his feet. Lovely water! and the fish that swam in it, were they awake too? Did they go on swimming all the night through? Lovely water! And lovely, lovely little earth! Ah! how sweet it was to live—only to live and breathe in her arms on such a night as this!

It might have been a moment, it might have been an hour, that the boy lay upon the river bank. He could never tell. Of the prick—the tiny throb of self-consciousness, that called him out suddenly from his Eden he would often speak later with a smile. He sat up, frowned, drew his relaxed muscles together. This was not what he had meant when he came out into the solitude, he said to himself severely. He was a man, not a thing; it was a weakness, a folly, to allow himself to drift into mere sensuousness.

Ha! what was that? He turned round suddenly. It was a sound like a silver bell ringing close beside him. If he had been a child he might have thought that a fairy in a lily cup was laughing at him; the sound was so definite, so curiously round and clear.

Giving no attention to it he set himself sternly to his task, and two or three ideas about the relative values of riches and poverty—ideas far too fine and exalted to be put down here—followed one another through his mind. It was a young mind, as we know. Young minds are superior. If we have ever tried to walk on a tightrope, get up early in the morning, or take a precipitous hillside at a rush, and succeeded, we shall know how they feel. It is their newness which we experienced people should not grudge them. In a little time—we know how very little—they will find out that there is nothing new under the sun.

Now the young heir, who was exceedingly new, felt a certain throb of exultation in the circumstance that he was able to feel as a serious man should when a great change comes into his life. The train of thought being pleasant he followed it out. I believe he made one or two correct resolutions. He would not be led away into foolish and selfish extravagance; he would avoid flatterers; he would do as much good as he could with his money. Not original. Oh dear no! commonplace, I am afraid. But goodness is just the one thing that does not require genius to conceive it. I wonder if that is the reason why it is so often thought dull? The kind of thinking on which Tom was engaged tends to restlessness, and hence the downfall which I am about to record.

He got up from the grass, and walking on aimlessly left his mother's garden, and went on for a few paces down the road. Presently he pulled up with a smile and a start. He was at the side gate of the Eltons' garden. An irresistible desire seized him to go in. Trying the latch, and finding the gate unlocked, he stole in noiselessly. He was in a narrow path that led through a thick shrubbery. In its midst he paused. All his wise thoughts, all his correct resolutions, had flown, and his heart was beating fast and furiously. What was this—what was this—which was rushing through him, tingling in his veins like wine of Paradise? 'And a spirit in my feet'—he murmured the words half aloud—

'A spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber-window, sweet.'

Slowly he went on along the dark little path. It came out on the rose-garden, Grace's special pride and care, which was now in its full glory. By the faint light of the summer dawning, for the night was already on the turn, he could see the clustered blossoms, crimson and pink and yellow, hanging from trellises and pillars, and weighing down the branches of the young standards. But it was not this that made him pause and catch at a pillar of the verandah for support. Once already that night the beauty of the earth had touched him. Now it was something more. As he stood the branch of a tall standard was swept towards him by the breeze. There were roses on it, opened and half opened. He caught at it passionately. Ah! how well he knew the touch of the soft pale petals, the odour they exhaled! It was a La Trance, Grace's favourite rose. The last time he saw her she had worn one in her girdle. Scarcely knowing what he did he kissed the sweet flower that had touched him. But in the next instant the colour had flooded his face, and he was passing on rapidly to the lawn by the river, for it was as if he had stolen what he had not won, as if his lips and her lips had met on the petals of the flower that was her darling.

At the end of the lawn there was a bank crowned with willows, at whose roots purple loosestrife and rosy willow-herb were growing. He could see these things dimly as he looked out before him. Under one of the willows was a rustic seat, where the girls often clustered in the evening. Tom sat down upon it and gave himself up to the dreams that were crowding upon him. Dreams! Dreams! In a misty radiance of lovely shapes they swept by him. What a fool he had been! It was the beauty of nature; it was love that binds young lives together; it was passion, whose feet were on earth, and whose soul was in heaven which was the reality. These other things—reason, philosophy, maxims of prudence—they were an illusion—webs that the dull of heart weave to hide their own dullness from themselves. And, after all, why should a man think; why should a man be serious when happiness such as this—this! was opening out before him?

He got up and walked on for a few steps. His feet were unsteady, and, with a smile of self-ridicule, he sat down again. He spread out his arms with a low cry. 'Grace!' he murmured. 'Grace! do you know that I love you?'

He paused. The faint, sweet kiss of the pale-petaled rose was lingering about his lips. He was remembering how, two days ago, only two, when he and she were together here—here at this very spot, he had longed to speak but dared not. That rose was in her girdle. His lips had been open to ask for it. Something had sealed them. He was too young—too insignificant—his fortunes were too uncertain. For her sweet sake he had held himself in check.

Now—ah! everything had changed. He was no longer insignificant—he was the heir of a man of wealth and distinction—his fortunes were certain—he could make a future for the woman he loved. If, as he had imagined, dreamed——

But he could go no further. He flung himself on the grass. His lips were towards the earth, and it was as if he was speaking to it—telling it the secret ecstasy that he had not breathed to any living soul. 'I could not speak then, but I can now. This wealth has freed my hand. They will listen to me—they must! And she! Oh, Grace! oh, my darling! Come to me and I will make the earth a Paradise to you! Others do not know what love means. They promise and they forget. I never will. My love! my beautiful love! Come to me, and let me care for you. I will, I will. Care for you as never woman was cared for before. Your lightest wish shall be my law. Your very imaginations and dreams shall come to pass. You and I, Grace, you and I—our two lives shall flow on together, loving and beloved, until——'

What was this? He pulled up short. It was a pang, sudden and swift, like a cold hand on his heart. He rose slowly, and found that his limbs were stiff, and that his clothes were wet with the night dews. Like one in a maze he went on, for a few steps, blindly. The roots of a willow stopped him, and he saw that he was on the edge of the sloping bank that ran down to the river. He stood where he was, gazing out before him, with eyes that saw nothing. In that little instant all his ecstasy had gone, to be replaced by a dull misery such as he had never felt before. Between night and morning there is a moment when life is said to run sluggishly in the veins of earth's children. It is then that the long-tortured drop into blissful, if brief unconsciousness; that watchers nod drowsily; and that the dying fall on the sleep that knows no waking. That moment had come.

Tom lifted his heavy lids and looked round him. A chill stole through his frame, penetrating to the very marrow of his bones. He buttoned his coat up to the chin and turned to leave the garden. But in the next instant he was transfixed. It was as if a hand of iron was laid upon his wrist, compelling him to stand where he was.

He passed his hand before his eyes dreamily.

When, after a brief interval, he looked up, it seemed to him that the colour of the water had changed from the pale crystal of the morning to deep blood-red. The trees were changing too, taking strange and undistinguishable shapes, while there came towards him on the breeze a confused murmur as of a multitude of steps and voices.

Again he closed his eyes; again he strove to shake off the leaden weights that held his feet in prison; but it was useless. He looked up to find all the familiar features of the landscape gone. What had been the river was a zone of burning sand over which hung a sky lurid and awful; the confused murmur was still in his ears; but it had drawn nearer, and the crimson cloud that had hung between earth and heaven seemed to be descending and distributing itself in multitudinous forms. Then, in a moment or less, the zone of sand is filled with figures—figures dark of face and threatening of aspect, that brandish steel-bright swords in their hands.

He looks, but he cannot stir. It seems to him in those awful moments that there is more to come—that he is waiting for it. Suddenly it rises—or has it been there all the time and has he not seen it?—the vision of a woman, in white garments, with golden hair and sad, wild eyes. Her face—not as he has ever seen it; but hers. A groan breaks from his lips. 'It is a dream,' he says to himself. 'It is a dream.'

But a sound rises above the fierce cries of the warriors, a sound piercing and shrill; it is the voice of his love, wild with terror, calling out upon his name. Passionately he tries to reach her but he cannot, and all the time, like the wild insulting chorus of fiends, his own words, 'Come to me, and I will make the world a Paradise to you,' are running through his brain.

His limbs are trembling now, and the cold drops of anguish stand upon his brow. 'Oh, God!' he cries, 'I have sinned. Be merciful! I can bear no more!'

Scarcely are the words out of his lips before the blood-red pavement, the fierce faces, and the lurid sky have gone. But she—his love—is still before him, a pale, sweet phantom, with wonder and a wistful tenderness in its eyes.

In that same instant the chain that had bound his limbs is loosened. Crying out 'Grace! Grace!' he dashes forward blindly.

In the next instant our dreamer found himself sprawling on his back upon the grass, two hands of iron holding him down, and a pair of glittering grey eyes above him.

'No, you don't,' said an irate voice, as he tried to release himself. 'No, you don't, sir. If you must commit suicide I can't help it, of course, but it shall not be in my compound. Keep, still, I tell you, madman! I'm not so young as I was, but I'm strong enough to fight you, and, by Jove, if you attempt to stir, down you go again.'

By the time this harangue was over Tom had recognised the features of his captor, realised the absurd nature of his position, and was laughing heartily.

'Is it you, General?' he said.

'You know me, I hope,' said the old soldier sternly.

'Oh yes, perfectly. Would you be kind enough? Thank you,' as the General, who was reflecting that intending suicides did not generally preface their last exit with so natural a laugh as this of Tom's, relaxed his hold. 'Do you know, General, your hands are like iron?' Tom sprang to his feet as he spoke.

'Like iron are they?' he said. 'Well, they have had to do hard work in their time. But come, boy—seriously—I should like to know what you mean by it.'

'By what, General?'

'By being here at this extraordinary hour to begin with. I don't believe, myself, that you have been in bed all night.'

Tom looked sheepish. It would not quite have done to quote Shelley's couplet to the General, and there was absolutely no other reason to give for his presence in the garden save that 'the spirit in his feet had led him thither.'

'I am really very sorry——,' he began.

'Understand me,' interrupted the General, mollified by his penitence, but feeling bound to express his displeasure: 'I have no objection to see you either in the garden or in the house. I have begged you again and again to come and go as you please. Lady Elton has done the same. She has a strong regard for you, and so have I. But, sir, when you go in for extraordinary athletic performances, I must beg you to find another field than mine for the display of your talent. Also'—and here his very hair seemed to bristle with indignation—'to find another name than my daughter's to hang rhapsodies to. A very pretty little story would have got about if anyone but myself had been here. And,' he added as he turned away, 'there's too much talking as it is.'

The reddest of Grace's roses was scarcely as red as Tom's face when the General turned away from him.

'Did I?' he stammered. 'I beg your pardon—hers, I mean. I must have been dreaming. I couldn't sleep last night, General, and——'

Now, a confession was the very last thing the General desired. He broke in hastily:

'All right, my dear fellow, all right. I mustn't be too down upon you. It was a tremendous piece of news that you received last night, quite enough to set a young man's wits wool-gathering. But take it quietly, if you can. In six months, if I know human nature, you will be so much accustomed to it that you will feel as if you had been rich all your life.'

'But it isn't the riches,' began poor Tom, tremulously. 'It is——'

'Yes, yes. I understand. The change—prodigious, as you say. Now don't talk any more. Go home like a sensible fellow and have a good sleep.'

'If I might have a little conversation with you first, sir——'

'Impossible, my dear boy. Quite out of the question. Look at these'—pointing to the pot-plants—roses and geraniums and fuchsias and lilacs, which Yaseen Khan and the gardener were bringing down in batches and placing beside the river—'all to be seen to before the sun rises.'

'I shall not be long. I only want to ask you a single question.'

'But how long will it take to answer? No, no; I am not going to be betrayed into an argument. It takes all one's wit, I can tell you, to deal with one's plants.'

As the General talked he worked. He had thrown off his coat and tucked up his shirt-sleeves, and lighted a small briarwood pipe, and he was moving about briskly among the plants, watering them, syringing them, washing blight off their foliage, loosening the earth about their roots, and drenching them with tobacco-smoke.

Tom meanwhile held his ground, watching him. Whenever there was a pause he would jump up, as the old man said to himself discontentedly, 'like a Jack-in-the-box.' But he never found an opening for the little conversation that he so earnestly desired, and finally the flight of time and the General's perseverance carried the day. In a few moments, if he remained where he was, a bevy of laughing girls would be down upon him, pouring out questions which he might find it difficult to answer.

So he rose regretfully. 'I will come again, when you are not so busy,' he said.

'Yes, yes; certainly,' said the General, cordially. 'Come again, by all means. You are always welcome. But if I don't look to the plants early they suffer. Good rest to you, my boy, and a pleasant awakening.'

When Tom had gone he breathed a deep sigh of relief. But his work flagged, and in a few moments he left the gardener to finish it, and went up slowly to the house, to see if 'mother' was awake.

'That's the worst of having girls,' he said to himself discontentedly. 'There is always something brewing. Now, if four of them were boys——'

Ah! but which four? That was the difficulty. It seems unreasonable, but it is the simple truth: for 'a wilderness of boys,' each of them as handsome as Tom Gregory, the General would not have given the least of his little girls.

[CHAPTER IV]

A MYSTERIOUS LEGACY

Mr. Cherry, head partner of the firm of Cherry & Lawrence, sat in his private room, expecting the young heir. A japanned box, bearing the Bracebridge name on its lid, was at his feet; a bulky packet, sealed with many seals and addressed 'Thomas Gregory,' was on the table beside him; and the parchment wrapper, out of which, apparently, the packet had been taken, lay spread out on his desk. The wrapper bore the following inscription:—