Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE PROFESSOR’S EXPERIMENT

MRS. HUNGERFORD’S NOVELS

‘Mrs. Hungerford has well deserved the title of being one of the most fascinating novelists of the day. The stories written by her are the airiest, lightest, and brightest imaginable, full of wit, spirit, and gaiety; but they contain, nevertheless, touches of the most exquisite pathos. There is something good in all of them.’—Academy.

A MAIDEN ALL FORLORN, and other Stories. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘There is no guile in the novels of the authoress of “Molly Bawn,” nor any consistency or analysis of character; but they exhibit a faculty truly remarkable for reproducing the rapid small-talk, the shallow but harmless “chaff” of certain strata of modern fashionable society.’—Spectator.

IN DURANCE VILE, and other Stories. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford’s Irish girls have always been pleasant to meet upon the dusty pathways of fiction. They are flippant, no doubt, and often sentimental, and they certainly flirt, and their stories are told often in rather ornamental phrase and with a profusion of the first person singular. But they are charming all the same.’—Academy.

A MENTAL STRUGGLE. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘She can invent an interesting story, she can tell it well, and she trusts to honest, natural, human emotions and interests of life for her materials.’—Spectator.

A MODERN CIRCE. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford is a distinctly amusing author.... In all her books there is a “healthy absenteeism” of ethical purpose, and we have derived more genuine pleasure from them than probably the most earnest student has ever obtained from a chapter of “Robert Elsmere.”’—Saturday Review.

MARVEL. Post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth, 2s. 6d.

‘The author has long since created an imaginary world, peopled with more or less natural figures; but her many admirers acknowledge the easy grace and inexhaustible verve that characterize her scenes of Hibernian life, and never tire of the type of national heroine she has made her own.’—Morning Post.

LADY VERNER’S FLIGHT. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d.; post 8vo., illustrated boards, 2s.; cloth limp, 2s. 6d.

‘There are in “Lady Verner’s Flight” several of the bright young people who are wont to make Mrs. Hungerford’s books such very pleasant reading.... In all the novels by the author of “Molly Bawn” there is a breezy freshness of treatment which makes them most agreeable.’—Spectator.

THE RED-HOUSE MYSTERY. Crown 8vo., cloth extra, 3s. 6d.

‘Mrs. Hungerford is never seen to the best advantage when not dealing with the brighter sides of life, or seeming to enjoy as much as her readers the ready sallies and laughing jests of her youthful personages. In her present novel, however, the heroine, if not all smiles and mirth, is quite as taking as her many predecessors, while the spirit of uncontrolled mischief is typified in the American heiress.’—Morning Post.

THE THREE GRACES. 2 vols., crown 8vo., 10s. net.

‘It is impossible to deny that Mrs. Hungerford is capable of writing a charming love-story, and that she proves her capacity to do so in “The Three Graces.”’—Academy.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly.

THE
PROFESSOR’S EXPERIMENT
A Novel

BY

MRS. HUNGERFORD

AUTHOR OF

‘MOLLY BAWN,’ ‘THE RED-HOUSE MYSTERY,’ ‘THE THREE GRACES,’ ‘LADY VERNER’S FLIGHT,’ ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

London

CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1895

THE

Professor’s Experiment

CHAPTER XXI.

‘Confidence imparts a wondrous inspiration to its possessor. It bears him on in security, either to meet no danger or to find matter of glorious trial.’

The girl seems powerfully affected by the determination she has come to, so much so as to be almost on the point of fainting. Wyndham, catching her by the arm, presses her back into the garden-chair.

‘Not a word,’ says he. ‘Why should you tell me?’

‘I must, I will!’ She sits up, and with marvellous strength of will recovers herself. ‘There is very little to tell,’ says she faintly. ‘I have lived all my life in one house. As a little child I came to it. Before that I remember nothing. If’—she looks at him—‘I tell you names and places, you will keep them sacred? You will not betray me?’ Her glance is now at once wistful and frightened.

‘I shall certainly not do that,’ says he gravely. ‘But why speak if you need not?’

‘I don’t know.’ She pauses, clasping her hands tightly together, and then at last, ‘I want to tell you.’

‘Well, tell me,’ says Wyndham gently.

‘The name of the people I lived with was Moore,’ says she, speaking at once and rapidly, as if eager to get rid of what she has volunteered to tell. ‘They called me Moore, too—Ella Moore—though I know, I am sure, I did not belong to them.’

‘Ella?’

‘Yes, Ella; I think’—hesitatingly—‘that is my real Christian name, because far, far back someone’—pressing her hand to her head, as though trying to remember—‘used to call me Elly, someone who was not Mrs. Moore. It was not her voice. And Moore—that is not my name, I know.’ Her tone has grown quite firm. ‘Mrs. Moore always called herself my aunt; but I don’t think she was anything to me. She was kind sometimes, however, and I was sorry when she died. She had a husband, and I lived with them ever since I can remember anything.’

‘Perhaps you were Mr. Moore’s niece.’

‘Oh, not that!’ She grows very pale, and makes a quick gesture of repulsion with her hands. ‘Not that. No, thank God!’ She pauses, and he can see that she has begun to tremble as if at some dreadful thought. ‘She, Mrs. Moore, died two months ago, and after that he—she was hardly in her grave—and he—Oh, it is horrible!’—burying her face in her hands. ‘But he—he told me he wanted to marry me.’ She struggles with herself for a moment, and then bursts into wild tears. One can see that the tears are composed of past cruel memories, of outraged pride as well as grief.

‘Oh, monstrous!’ says Wyndham hurriedly. He begins to pace rapidly up and down the walk, coming back to her when he finds her more composed.

‘It is true, though,’ cries she miserably. ‘Oh, how I hate to think of it!’—emphatically. ‘When I said no, that I’d rather die than marry him—and I would—he was furious. A fortnight afterwards he spoke to me again, saying he had ordered the banns to be called; and when I again said I would never consent, he locked me in a room, and said he would starve me to death unless I gave in. I’—clenching her small white teeth—‘told him I would gladly starve in preference to that. And for three nights and two days I did starve. He brought me nothing; but I did not see him, and that kept me alive. On the third day he came again, and again I defied him, and then—then—’ She cowers away from Wyndham, and the hot flush of shame dyes her cheek. ‘Then—he beat me.’

‘The — scoundrel!’ says Wyndham between his teeth.

‘He beat me,’ says the girl, dry sobs breaking from her lips, ‘until my back and arms were blue and swollen; and then he asked me again if I would give in and marry him, and I—’

Here she pauses, and stands back as if confronting someone. She is looking past Wyndham and far into space. It is plain that that past horrible, degrading scene has come back to her afresh. The gross indignity, the abominable affront, is again a present thing. Again the blows rain upon her slender arms and shoulders; again the brute is demanding her submission; and again, in spite of hunger, and pain, and fear, she is defying him. Her head is well upheld, her hands clenched, her large eyes ablaze. It is thus she must have looked as she defied the cowardly scoundrel, and the effect is magnificent.

‘I said “No” again.’ The fire born of that last conflict dies away, and she falls back weakly into the seat behind her. ‘That night I ran away. I suppose in his rage he forgot to lock the door after him, and so I found the matter easy. It was a wet night and very cold. I was tired, half dead with hunger and with bitter pain. That was the night—’

She comes to a dead stop here, and turns her face away from him. A shame keener than any she has known before, even in this recital made to him, is filling her now. But still she determines to go on.

‘That was the night your servant found me!’

‘Poor child!’ says Wyndham. His sympathy—so unexpected—coming on her terrible agitation, breaks her down. She bursts into a storm of sobs.

‘I would to God,’ says she, ‘that I had died before he found me! Yes—yes, I would, though I know it was His will, and His alone, that kept me alive, half dead from cold and hunger as I was. I can’t bear to think of that night, and what you must have thought of me! It was dreadful—dreadful! You shrank from me because I courted death so openly. Yes—yes, you did’—combating a gesture on his part—‘but you did not know how near I was to it at that moment. I was famished, bruised, homeless—I was almost senseless. I knew only that I could not return to that man’s house, and that there was no other house to go to. That was all I knew, through the unconsciousness that was fast overtaking me. To die seemed the best thing—and to die in that warm room. I was frozen. Oh, blame me, despise me, if you like, but anyone would have been glad to die, if they felt as homeless and as starving as I did that night!’

‘Who is blaming you?’ says Wyndham roughly. ‘Good heavens! is there a man on earth who could blame you, after hearing so sad a story? Because you have met one brute in your life, must you consider all other men brutes?’

His manner is so vehement that Ella, thinking he is annoyed with her, shrinks from him.

‘Don’t be angry with me,’ says she imploringly.

‘Angry with you!’ says he impatiently. ‘There is only one to be angry with, and that is that devil. Where does he live?’

She gives him the road, and the number of the house where she had lived with the Moores—a road of small houses, chiefly occupied by artisans and clerks; a road not very far from the Zoological Gardens.

‘But what are you going to do?’ asks she nervously. ‘You will not tell him I am here?’

‘Of course not. But it is quite necessary that a fellow like that should feel there is a law in the land.’

‘But if you say anything about me,’ says she in a tone now thoroughly frightened, ‘he will search me out, no matter in what corner of the earth I may be.’

‘I don’t think so, once I have spoken to him,’ says the barrister grimly.

‘You mean’—she looks at him timidly—‘you think that if—’ She breaks off again. ‘He told me that his wife, who he said was my aunt, had made him guardian over me, and that he would be my master for ever.’

‘Even supposing all that were true, and Mrs. Moore were your aunt—which I doubt—and had left her husband guardian over you, still, there are limits to the powers of guardians.’

‘Then if you see him, you think’—with trembling anxiety—‘you can tell him that he has no hold over me?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘And I shall be free?’

‘Quite free.’

Ella leans forward. Her hands are upon her knees and are tightly clenched. She is thinking. Suddenly a soft glow overspreads her face. She lifts her eyes to his, and he can see that a wonderful brilliance—the light of hope—has come into them.

‘It is too good to be true,’ says she slowly.

‘Oh no, I hope not. But I wish I had a few more particulars, Miss Moore. I am afraid’—seeing a shade upon her face—‘I shall be obliged to call you that until I have discovered your real name. And to do that you must help me. Have you no memory that goes farther back than the Moores? You spoke of someone who used to call you Elly—’

‘It was a woman,’ says she quickly. ‘Often—often in my dreams I see her again. She used to kiss me—I remember that.’

It is such a sad little saying—once, long ago, so long ago that she can scarcely remember it, some woman used to kiss her! But, evidently, since that tender kisses had not fallen to the poor child’s lot.

‘But she died. I saw her lying dead. I thought she was asleep. She was very beautiful—I remember that, too. I don’t want to see anyone dead again. Death,’ says she with a shudder, ‘is horrible!’

This, coming from one who had braved its terrors voluntarily so very lately, causes Wyndham to look at her in some surprise.

‘Yes!’ says he. ‘And yet that night when the Professor gave you something that might have led to death, were you frightened then?’

‘I think I have explained that,’ says she, with a slight touch of dignity.

‘True.’ He continues the slow pacing to and fro upon the garden-path that he has taken up occasionally during this interview. ‘There is nothing more, then, that you can tell me? The lady of whom you speak, who used to kiss you, was perhaps your mother?’

‘I think so—I believe it,’ says the girl. She turns to him a face flushed and gratified. ‘Mr. Wyndham, it was kind of you to call her that—a lady! To me, too, she seems a lady, and, besides that, an angel.’

A lady! Wyndham’s kindly instincts go out to this poor waif and stray with an extreme sense of pity. A lady! Very likely, but perhaps no wife. The mother, if a lady, has certainly left the gentle manners of good birth to this poor child, but nothing else. A vindictive anger against the vices of this life in which he lives, and a still greater anger against the bétises of society that would not admit this girl into their ranks, however faultless she may be, because of a blot upon her birth, stirs his soul. That she is one of the great unknown seems very clear to him, but does not prevent his determination to hunt out that scoundrel Moore and break his hold over the girl. In the meantime, it would be well for her to mix with her kind.

‘About a companion,’ says he. ‘You told me you were anxious to continue your studies. I think I know a lady—elderly, refined, and gentle—who would be able to help you. You could go out with her.’

‘I shall not go out of this house,’ says the girl. She has begun to tremble again. ‘Mr. Wyndham, do not ask me to do that. Even’—slowly, but steadily—‘if you did ask me, I should refuse. I will not go where I can be found. This lady you speak of, if she will come and live with me, and teach me—I should like that; but—’

‘You will require very little teaching, I think,’ says Wyndham, who has been struck by the excellence of both her manners and her speech, considering her account of her former life.

‘I know nothing,’ says she calmly; ‘but, as I told you, I had read a good deal, and for the past three years I used to go as nursery governess to a Mrs. Blaquiere, who lived in Westmoreland Road. I used to lunch with her and the children, and she was very kind to me; and she taught me a good deal in other ways—society ways.’

‘You were an apt pupil,’ says he gravely, a little doubtfully, perhaps.

‘I liked the way she talked, and it seemed to come very easy to me after awhile,’ says the girl indifferently, not noticing his keen glance at her. ‘But this governess—this companion?’ asks she. ‘Will she want to go out—to be amused? If so, I could not have her. I shall never go out of this place until—’

‘Until?’ asks he.

‘You tell me that man has no longer any power over me. I’—she looks at him, and again terror whitens her face—‘I am sure you are wrong, and that he has the power to drag me away from this, if he finds me.’

‘I should advise you not to dwell on that until I have found him,’ says Wyndham, a little stiffly. The successful barrister is a little thrown back upon himself by being told that he will undoubtedly find himself in the wrong. ‘But this Mrs. Blaquiere, who was so kind to you—why do you not apply to her for protection?’

‘She and her husband and the children all went to Australia in the early part of last spring, and so I lost sight of them.’

‘Lost your situation, too?’—regarding her carefully.

‘Yes; and I had no time to look for another. Mrs. Moore grew ill then, and I had to attend her day and night until she died. The rest I have told you.’

‘I see,’ says Wyndham. ‘Tell me again this man Moore’s address.’ He writes it now in his pocket-book, though it was written well into his brain before; but he wished to see if she would falter about it the second time.

He bids her good-bye presently, refusing her timid offer of tea.

At the gate he finds Mrs. Denis, presumably tying up a creeper, but most undoubtedly on the look-out for him.

‘Good-evening, yer honour.’

‘Good-evening’—shortly. Wyndham is deep in thought, and by no means in a good temper. He would have brushed by her; but, armed with a garden rake, a spade, and a huge clipper, Mrs. Denis is not lightly to be dealt with.

‘Askin’ yer pardon, sir, ’tis just a word I want wid ye. Miss Ella, the crathure—ye’re going to let her stay here, aren’t ye?’

‘Yes,’ says Wyndham gruffly.

‘The saints be praised!’ says Mrs. Denis piously. ‘Fegs! ’tis a good heart ye have, sir, in spite of it all.’ What the ‘all’ is she leaves beautifully indefinite. ‘An’, sure, ’twas meself tould Denis—that ould raprobate of a fool o’ mine—that ye’d niver turn her out. “For where would she go,” says I, “if he did—a born lady like her?” An’ there’s plenty o’ room for her here, sir.’

‘I dare say,’ says Wyndham, feeling furious. ‘But for all that, I can’t have all the young women in Ireland staying in my house just because there is room for them.’

‘God forbid, yer honour! All thim young women would play the very divil wid the Cottage, an’’—thoughtfully—‘aitch other too. Wan at a time, sir, is a good plan, an’ I’m glad it’s Miss Ella has had the first of it.’

This remarkable speech is met by Wyndham with a stony glare that goes lightly over the head of Mrs. Denis. That worthy woman is too much elated with the news she has dragged out of him to care for glares of any sort. Childless, though always longing for a child—and especially for a daughter—Mrs. Denis’s heart had gone out at once to the pretty waif that had been cast into her life in so strange a fashion. And now she hastens back to the house to get ‘her Miss Ella a cup o’ tay, the crathure!’ and wheedle out of her all the news about the ‘masther.’

CHAPTER XXII.

‘Tell me how to bear so blandly the assuming ways of wild young people!

‘Truly they would be unbearable if I had not also been unbearable myself as well.’—Goethe.

When Mr. Crosby had told the Barrys that he would come down next day for a game of tennis, they had not altogether believed in his coming, so that when they see him from afar off, through the many holes in the hedge, walking towards them down the village street, surprise is their greatest sentiment.

‘Susan,’ says Dominick solemnly, pausing racket in hand, ‘it must be you. I always told you your face was your fortune, and a very small one at that. You’ll have to marry him, and then we’ll all go and live with you for ever. That’ll be a treat for you, and will doubtless make up for the fact that he is emulating the Great Methuselah. If I can say a good word for you, I—Oh, how d’ye do, Mr. Crosby? Brought your racket, too, I see. Carew, now we’ll make up a set: Mr. Crosby and—’

‘Miss Susan, if I may,’ says Crosby, looking into Susan’s charming face whilst holding her hand in greeting. There are any amount of greetings to be got through when you go to see the Barrys. They are all always en évidence, and all full of life and friendliness. Even little Bonnie hurries up on his stick, and gives him a loving greeting. The child’s face is so sweet and so happily friendly that Crosby stoops and kisses him.

‘Certainly you may,’ says Susan genially; ‘but I’m not so good a player as Betty. She can play like anything. But to-day she has got a bad cold in her head. Well’—laughing—‘come on; we can try, and, after all, we can only be beaten.’

They are, as it happens, and very badly, too, Mr. Crosby, though no doubt good at big game, being rather a tyro at tennis.

‘I apologize,’ says he, when the game is at an end, and they have all seated themselves upon the ground to rest and gather breath; ‘I’m afraid Su—Miss Susan—you will hardly care to play with me again.’

‘I told you you could call me Susan,’ says she calmly. ‘Somehow, I dislike the Miss before it. Betty told you Miss Barry sounded like Aunt Jemima, but I think Miss Susan sounds like Jane.’

‘Poor old Jane! And she’s got such an awful nose!’ says Betty. ‘I think I’d rather be like Aunt Jemima than her.’

‘Susan hasn’t got an awful nose,’ says Bonnie, stroking Susan’s dainty little Grecian appendage fondly. ‘It’s a nice one.’

‘Susan is a beauty,’ says Betty; ‘we all know that. Even James went down before her. Poor James! I wonder what he is doing now.’

‘Stewing in the Soudan,’ says Carew.

‘He was always in one sort of stew or another,’ says Dominick, ‘so it will come kindly to him. And after Susan’s heartless behaviour—’

‘Dom!’ says Susan, in an awful tone. But Mr. Fitzgerald is beyond the reach of tones.

‘Oh, it’s all very well your taking it like that now,’ says he; ‘but when poor old James was here it was a different thing.’

‘It was not,’ says Susan indignantly.

‘Are you going to deny that he was your abject slave—that he sat in your pocket from morning till night—well, very nearly night? That he followed you from place to place like a baa-lamb? That you did not encourage him in the basest fashion?’

‘I never encouraged him. Encourage him! That boy!’

‘Don’t call him names, Susan, behind his back,’ says Betty, whose mischievous nature is now all afire, and who is as keen about the baiting of Susan as either Carew or Dom. ‘Besides, what a boy he is! He must be twenty-two, at all events.’ This seems quite old to Betty.

‘What did you do with the keepsake he gave you when he was going away?’ asks Carew. He is lying flat upon the warm grass, his chin upon his palms, and looks up at Susan with judicial eyes. ‘What was it? I forget now. A lock of his lovely hair?’

‘No,’ says Betty; ‘a little silver brooch—an anchor.’

‘That means hope,’ says Dominick solemnly. ‘Susan, he is coming back next year. What are you going to say to him?’

‘Just exactly what everybody else is going to say to him,’ says Susan, who is now crimson. ‘And I didn’t want that horrid brooch at all.’

‘Still, you took it,’ says Betty. ‘I call that rather mean, to take it, and then say you didn’t want it.’

‘Well, what was I to do?’

‘Refuse it, mildly but firmly,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald. ‘The acceptance of it was, in my opinion, as good as the acceptance of James. When he does come back, Susan, I don’t see how you are to get out of being Mrs. James. That brooch is a regular binder. How does it seem to you, Mr. Crosby?’

‘You see, I haven’t heard all the evidence yet,’ says Crosby, who is looking at Susan’s flushed, half-angry, wholly-delightful face. James, whoever he is, seems to have been a good deal in her society at one time.

‘There’s no evidence,’ says she wrathfully, ‘and I wish you boys wouldn’t be so stupid! As for the brooch, I hate it; I never wear it.’

‘Well, if ever anyone gives me a present I shall wear it every day and all day long,’ says Betty. ‘What’s the good of having a lover if people don’t know about it?’

‘Is that so?’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, regarding her with all the air of one to whom now the road seems clear. ‘Then the moment I become a millionaire—and there seems quite an immediate prospect of it just now—I shall buy you the Koh-i-Noor, and you shall wear it on your beauteous brow, and proclaim me as your unworthy lover to all the world.’

‘I will when I get it,’ says Betty, with tremendous sarcasm.

‘The reason you won’t wear it,’ says Carew, alluding to Susan’s despised brooch, ‘is plain to even the poor innocents around you. Girls, in spite of all Betty has said, seldom wear their keepsakes. They get cotton wool and wrap them up in it, and peep at them rapturously on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday, or on the beloved one’s birthday, or some other sacred occasion. What’s James’s birthday, Susan?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Susan; ‘and I don’t know, either, why you tease me so much about him. He is quite as little to me as I am to him.’ Her voice is trembling now. They have gone a little too far perhaps, or is the memory of James ‘stewing in the Soudan’ too much for her? Whichever it is, Mr. Crosby is growing anxious for her; but all the youngsters are now in full cry, and the proverbial cruelty of brothers and sisters is well known to many a long-suffering girl and boy.

‘Oh, Susan,’ says Betty, ‘where does one go to when one tells naughty-naughties? Dom; do you remember the evening just before James went abroad, when he went into floods of tears because she wouldn’t give him a rosebud she had in her dress? It took Dom, and me, and Carew, and a pint of water to restore him.’

At this they all laugh, even Susan, though very faintly and very shamefacedly. Her pretty eyes are shy and angry.

‘He wanted a specimen to take out with him to astonish the natives,’ says Carew. ‘You were the real specimen he wanted to take out with him, Susan, but as that was impracticable just then (it will probably be arranged next time), he decided on taking the rosebud instead.’

‘He wanted nothing,’ says Susan, whose face is now bent over Bonnie’s as if to hide it. ‘He didn’t care a bit about me.’

‘Indeed he did, Susan.’

A fresh element has fallen into the situation. Everyone looks round. The voice is the voice of Jacky—Jacky, who, up to this, has been as usual buried in a book. This time the burial has been deeper than ever, as the day before yesterday someone had lent him Mr. Stevenson’s enthralling ‘Treasure Island,’ from which no one can ever extract themselves until the very last page is turned. Jacky, since he first began it, has been practically useless, but just now a few fragments of the conversation going on around him have filtered to his brain.

Now, in his own peculiarly disagreeable way he adores Susan, and something has led him to believe that those around her are now depreciating her powers of attraction, and that she is giving in to them for want of support. Well, he will support her. Poor old Jacky! he comes nobly forward to her rescue, and as usual puts his foot in it.

‘He liked you better than anyone,’ says he, in his slow, ponderous fashion, glaring angrily at Betty, with whom he carries on an undying feud. ‘Why, don’t you remember how he used to hunt you all over the garden to kiss you!’

Tableau!

Betty leads the way after about a moment’s awful pause, and then they all go off into shrieks of laughter. Jacky, alone, sullen, silent, not understanding, stands as if petrified. Susan has pushed Bonnie from her, and has risen to her feet. Her face is crimson now; her eyes are full of tears. Involuntarily Crosby rises too.

‘He used not,’ says poor Susan. Alas! this assertion is not quite true. ‘And even if he did, you’—to the horrified Jacky—‘should not have told it. You, Jacky’—trembling with shame—‘I wouldn’t have believed it of you! It was hateful of you! You’—with a withering glance around—‘are all hateful, and—and—’

She chokes, breaks down, and runs with swift-flying feet into the small shrubbery beyond, where lies a little summer-house in which she can hide herself.

CHAPTER XXIII.

‘Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow.’

An embarrassed silence falls upon the group she leaves behind her. It had not occurred to them that she would care so much. They had often chaffed her before. It must—it must have been Mr. Crosby’s being there that had put her out like that. To tell the truth, they are all penitent—Betty perhaps more than the others. But even her remorse sinks into insignificance before Jacky’s. His takes the nature of a wrathful attack upon the others, and ends in a storm of tears.

‘You’ve been teasing her, you know you have—and she’s mad with me now. And I didn’t mean anything. And she’s crying, I know she is. And you’re all beasts—beasts!’

It is at this point that his own tears break forth, and, like Susan, he flees from them—but, unlike Susan, howling.

‘I didn’t know; I didn’t think she’d care,’ says Betty, in a frightened tone. ‘We often teased her before;’ and she might have said more, but an attack of sneezing lays her low.

‘But before a stranger!’ says Carew anxiously. ‘I am afraid, Mr. Crosby, it is because you were here.’

‘It isn’t a bit like Susan to care like that,’ says Dom. ‘I say’—contritely—‘I’m awfully sorry. I wonder where she is, Betty.’

‘In the summer-house. She always goes there when she’s vexed or worried.’

‘Why don’t you go to her, then?’

‘I can’t. I’ve a cold. I’ll wait awhile,’ says Betty, holding back.

‘I think, as it has been my fault,’ says Crosby quietly, ‘that I had better be the one to apologize. Where is this summer-house of which you speak?’

‘Right round there,’ says Betty eagerly, pointing to the corner of the house.

‘Just behind the rose-trees,’ says Dom, giving him a friendly push forward.

‘You can’t miss her,’ says Carew, who is dying to give him an encouraging clap on the shoulder. They are all evidently very anxious to get the task of ‘making it up’ with Susan on to any other shoulders than their own.

‘Well, I think I’ll take a little hostage with me, or shall we say a peace-offering?’ says Crosby, catching up Bonnie, and starting with him for Susan’s hiding-place. ‘Any way, I’ve got a pioneer,’ says he. ‘He’ll show me the way.’

The way is short and very sweet. Along a gravelled pathway, between trees of glowing roses, to where in the distance is a tiny house, made evidently by young, untutored hands, out of young and very unseasoned timber.

A slender figure is inside it—a figure flung miserably into one of the corners, and crying perhaps, after all, more angrily than painfully.

‘Now, what on earth are you doing that for?’ says Crosby. He seats himself on the rustic bench beside her, and places Bonnie on her knee. It seems to him that that will be the best way to bring down her hands from her eyes. And he is not altogether wrong. It is impossible to let her little beloved one fall off her knees, so quickly, if reluctantly, she brings down her right hand so as to clasp him securely.

‘What are you crying about?’ goes on Crosby, very proud of the success of his first manœuvre. ‘Because somebody wanted to kiss you? You will have a good deal of crying at that rate, Susan, before you come to the end of your life.’

He is laughing a little now, and as Bonnie has climbed up on her knees, and is pulling away the other hand from her face, Susan feels she may as well make the best of a bad situation.

‘It wasn’t so much that,’ says she. ‘Though’—anxiously—‘Jacky exaggerated most dreadfully. As to my objecting to their teasing me about James McIlveagh—you have not seen him, or you would understand me better. It is not only that he is uninteresting, but that he is awful! His nose is like an elephant’s trunk, and his eyes are as small as the head of a pin. And his clothes—his trousers—I don’t know where he got his trousers, but Dom used to say his mother made them in her spare moments. Not that one would care about a person’s trousers, of course,’ says Susan, with intense earnestness, ‘if he was nice himself; but James wasn’t nice, and I was never more glad in my life than when he went away.’

‘He’s coming back, however.’

‘Yes, I know, and I’m sorry for it, if they are going to tease me all day long about him, as they are doing now. I think’—with a hasty glance at him, born of the fact that she knows her eyes are disfigured by crying—‘you might have tried to stop them.’

‘Well, you see, I hardly knew what to do at first,’ says Crosby, quite entering into the argument. ‘And when I did, it was a little too late. Of course it seemed to me a very possible thing that you might have given your heart to this young man with the nose and the unfortunate trousers who is stewing in the Soudan.’

‘You might have known by my manner that I hated them to tease me about him,’ says Susan, very little appeased by his apology.

‘I’ll know better next time,’ says Crosby humbly. ‘But when I heard he had been following you about like a baa-lamb, and that you had taken that anchor from him, and that he used to—’

He is checked by a flash from Susan’s eyes. There is a pause. Then suddenly she presses her face into Bonnie’s flaxen hair, and bursts into smothered laughter.

‘Well, I don’t care! He did once, all round the gooseberry bushes; and I threw a spade at him, and it hit him on the head, and I thought I had killed him. I’—with another glance at Crosby, now from between Bonnie’s curls—‘was dreadfully frightened then. But now I almost wish I had. Any way, he never tried to—he never, I mean’—confusedly—‘hunted me again.’

‘I begin to feel sincerely sorry for James,’ says Crosby. ‘He seems to me to have led but a sorry life before he started for the Soudan. When he comes home next year, what will you do? He may be quite’—he looks at her and smiles—‘a mighty hunter by that time.’

Susan laughs.

‘Like you,’ says she.

Crosby looks at her. It is a ready answer, and with another might convey a certain meaning, but with Susan never.

‘Ah, I’m afraid of gooseberry bushes,’ says he. ‘They have thorns in them. James, you see, surpasses me in valour. Talking of valour reminds me of those you have left behind you, and who have sent me here as their plenipotentiary, to extract from you a promise of peace. They are all very sorry they annoyed you so much about the redoubtable James; and they desired me to say so. I was afraid to come by myself, so I brought Bonnie with me. Bonnie, tell her to come back with me now, and say: “Peace is restored with honour.” Say it for her, Bonnie.’

‘“Peace is restored with honour,”’ repeats Bonnie sweetly.

‘There, that settles it,’ says Crosby. ‘He knows his lesson. So do you; come back and forgive us all.’

‘Oh, I can’t,’ says Susan. ‘They would know I had been crying. Look at my eyes; they are quite red.’

‘They are not, indeed,’ says Mr. Crosby, after an exhaustive examination. ‘They are quite blue.’

‘Oh yes, that, of course’—impatiently. ‘But, well—really, how are they?’ She leans towards him, and gazes at him out of the blue eyes with an extraordinary calm. ‘Would they know I had been crying?’

‘They would not,’ says Crosby. ‘It is I alone who am in that secret. And, by the way, Susan’—stopping her as they both rise—‘that is the second secret we have between us; we are becoming quite fashionable—we are growing into a society, you and I.’

‘I wish you would forget that first secret,’ says Susan, blushing a little. ‘And, anyhow, I hope you won’t tell the others that you found me—you know—crying.’

‘Ah, that makes me remember our first secret,’ says Crosby. ‘You know that on that never-to-be-forgotten memorable occasion you said you trusted me.’

‘Did I?’ Susan is blushing furiously now. ‘How can I recollect all the silly things I said then? I have forgotten them all—and I’m sure you have, too.’

‘Not one of them,’ says Crosby. ‘They are now classed with my most priceless memories. “Go and steal no more,” you said—and I haven’t up to this.’

Susan laughs in spite of herself.

‘Well, at all events I can trust you, then, not to betray me to them.’ She points to the late temple of her tears.

‘You can trust me for that or anything else in the wide world,’ says Crosby.

He takes up Bonnie again, and they go slowly back to the others.

CHAPTER XXIV.

‘So bright a tear in Beauty’s eye,

Love half regrets to kiss it dry.’

As Susan appears, the guilty ones upon the tennis-ground move simultaneously towards her, Betty with a shy little rush, and holding out to her her racket.

‘Come and have another game, Susan, and you, too, Mr. Crosby.’

‘Yes, do,’ says Carew. ‘Tea will be here in a moment.’ He evidently holds this out as an inducement to Crosby to remain. Mr. Fitzgerald nobly backs him up.

‘Also Aunt Jemima!’ he says enthusiastically.

This joke, if it is meant for one, is a dead failure. No one even smiles. Susan, who is feeling a little shy, and is horribly conscious that, in spite of Crosby’s assurances, her eyes are of a very tell-tale colour, is fighting with her brain for some light, airy, amusing remark that may prove to all present that she had only run away from them in mere search of physical exercise, when suddenly the rather forced smile dies upon her lips, and her eyes become fixed on some object over there on her right.

‘What is it, Susan—a ghost?’ asks Dom, who is equal to most occasions.

‘No,’ says Susan, in a low voice. ‘But—this is the third time. And look over there, at that sycamore-tree in the Cottage garden. Do you see anything?’

‘See what? “Is there visions about?” asks Dom. ‘Really, Susan, you ought to consider our nerves. Is it the “Bogie Man,” or—’

‘It is a girl,’ says Susan. ‘There, there again! Her face is between those two big branches. Mr. Crosby’—eagerly—‘don’t you see her?’

‘I do,’ cries Carew suddenly. ‘Oh, what a lovely face!’

It may be remembered that the Rectory and the Cottage are only divided by a narrow road and two high walls. At the farthest end of the Cottage grounds some tall trees are standing—a beech, two elms, and a sycamore. All these uprear themselves well above the walls, and cast their shadows in summer, and their leaves in winter, down on the road beneath. They can be distinctly seen from the Rectory tennis-court, and, indeed, add a good deal of charm to it, the road being so narrow, and the walls so much of a height, that strangers often think the trees on the Cottage lawn are actually belonging to the Rectory.

‘Yes, I see too,’ says Crosby, leaning forward.

‘Yes, yes!’ cries Betty. ‘But is it a girl?’

And now a little silence falls upon them.

Over there, peeping out between the leaves of the soft sycamore-tree, is a face. There is nothing to tell if it be a boy’s or a girl’s face, as nothing can be seen but the shapely head; and its soft abundant tresses of chestnut hair are so closely drawn back into a knot behind that they are hidden by the crowding branches. The eyes are gleaming, the lips slightly parted. So might a Hamadryad look, peering through swaying leaves.

‘It’s the prisoner,’ says Jacky, in an awestruck tone.

‘The apparition, you mean,’ corrects Mr. Fitzgerald severely. ‘Prisoners, as a rule, have bodies, spooks have none. Jacky, you lucky creature, you have seen a ghost.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ asks Betty in an anxious tone.

‘A most pertinent question?’ says Fitzgerald, who is taking the situation with anything but the seriousness that is so evidently demanded of it. ‘But, as I have before remarked, there is no body to go by, and naturally no clothes. It is therefore unanswerable.’

Crosby has said nothing. He is, indeed, deeply occupied with the face. So this is Wyndham’s tenant. A very lovely one.

Again a slight doubt arises in his mind about his friend. And yet Wyndham had seemed thoroughly honest in his explanation.

‘I know it’s a girl,’ says Susan, with decision. ‘Jacky has seen her; and what a pretty one! Oh, there, she’s gone!’ And, indeed, the Hamadryad, as if becoming suddenly conscious of the fact that they are looking at her, draws back her head and disappears. ‘I’m afraid she saw us,’ says Susan contritely. ‘She must have thought us very rude. I’ll ask father to let me call on her, I think. She must be very lonely there. And even if she is only Mrs. Moriarty’s niece, still, she must have been educated to make her look like that.’

‘Perhaps,’ says Crosby, speaking with apparent carelessness, and looking direct at Susan, ‘she might not like to be called upon. I have been given to understand that she is not a niece of Mrs. Moriarty’s, and—’

‘No, but what, then?’ asks Carew.

‘A tenant of Mr. Wyndham’s. He is a friend of mine, you know; and he told me lately he had grown very tired of the Cottage, and was willing to take a tenant for it. This lady is, I presume, the tenant.’

‘The more reason why we should call upon her,’ says Susan.

‘But isn’t she very young,’ says Betty, ‘to be a tenant all by herself?’

This startling suggestion creates a slight pause.

‘To be young is not to be beyond misfortune,’ says Crosby at last, in a grave and very general tone. ‘No doubt this young lady has lost her father and mother, and is obliged to—er—do without them.’

This is distinctly lame.

‘Poor thing!’ says Susan sympathetically.

‘We might ask her over here sometimes,’ says Carew.

‘But if she has lost her parents lately,’ puts in Crosby hastily, ‘she might, perhaps—one should not even with the best intentions force one’s self upon people in such deep grief as hers.’

‘She wasn’t in mourning, any way,’ says Betty, who can always tell you to a pin what anyone is wearing; ‘she had a little blue bow near her neck.’

Crosby recovers from this blow with difficulty.

‘At all events,’ says he, ‘I have heard through Wyndham that she desires privacy at present. No doubt when she feels equal to receiving visitors she will let us all know.’

‘No doubt,’ says Dominick, who has been studying Mr. Crosby closely, and with covert amusement.

‘I’ll ask Mr. Wyndham about her,’ says Susan. ‘I think she would be happier if she could tell about her sorrow. One should be roused from one’s griefs, father says. And even if out of mourning—I didn’t see any blue bow, Betty—still, I am sure she must be sad at heart.’

‘Well, consult your father about it,’ says Crosby, as a last resource. In spite of his affection for Wyndham, he has doubts about his tenant.

At this point Jane appears, bringing a tray, on which are cups and saucers, teapot and cream ewer, some bread-and-butter and sponge-cake. Susan had spent the morning making the sponge-cake on the chance of Mr. Crosby’s coming. They had decided in conclave that it would be better to have tea out here on the pleasant grass (though there is no table on which to put the tray) rather than in the small and rather stuffy drawing-room. They had had a distinct fight over it with Miss Barry; but Dominick, who can succeed in anything but his exams, overcame her, and carried the day.

‘Put the tray down here,’ says Betty, with quite an air, seeing that Susan has given way a little beneath the want of the table—‘down here on the grass near me. I’ll pour out the tea’—this with a withering glance at Susan, who is slightly flushed, and apparently ashamed of herself. ‘We haven’t any rustic table yet, Mr. Crosby,’ says Betty, with immense aplomb, ‘but were going to have one shortly’—this with all the admirable assurance of a fashionable dame who has just been ordering a garden tea-table from one of the best London houses. She nods and smiles at him. ‘Dom is going to make it. Susan’—with a freezing glance at that damsel—‘do you think you could manage to cut the sponge-cake?’

‘Cut it!’ says Jacky, who is sharp to see that the idolized Susan is being sat upon, and who still feels that he owes her reparation of some sort. ‘Why couldn’t she cut it? She made it.’

Susan bursts out laughing. It is too much, and they all follow suit.

‘What! you made it?’ cries Crosby, taking up a knife and beginning a vigorous attack upon it. ‘Why didn’t you make it bigger when you were about it? The fact that it is your handiwork has, judging by myself, made us all frightfully hungry. Thank Heaven, there is still bread-and-butter, or I don’t know what would become of us.’

They are all laughing still—indeed, their merriment has quite reached a height—when Susan, looking over her shoulder, nearly drops her cup and saucer, and sits up as if listening.

‘Someone is coming,’ says she.

‘Aunt Jemima,’ indignantly declares Betty, who is sitting up too.

Tramp, tramp, tramp comes a foot along the gravel path that skirts the side of the house away from them. Tramp, tramp; evidently two of the heaviest feet in Christendom are approaching.

‘You’re right,’ whispers Dom; ‘’tis “the fa’ o’ her fairy feet.” Aunt Jemima, to a moral.’

And Aunt Jemima it is, sweeping round the house with her head well up, and the desire to impress, that they all know so fatally well, full upon her.

‘Don’t stir, Mr. Crosby; I really beg you won’t. This is a rather al-fresco entertainment, but I know you will excuse these wild children.’ Here the wild children gave way silently, convulsively.

‘It is the most charming entertainment I have been at for years,’ says Crosby pleasantly. ‘Where will you sit? Here?’ He is quite assiduous in his attentions, especially about the rug on which she is to sit—not his rug, at all events; Susan has half of that.

‘Thank you,’ says Miss Barry, ‘but I need not trouble you; I do not intend to stay. I merely came out to see if these remarkably ill-mannered young people were taking care of you.’

She speaks with a stiff and laboured smile upon her lips, but an evident determination to be amiable at all risks.

‘Won’t you have a cup of tea, Aunt Jemima?’ asks Susan timidly.

‘No, thank you, my love. Pray don’t trouble about me. I’—with a crushing glance at poor Susan—‘have no desire whatever to interfere with your amusement. I hope’—turning to Crosby—‘later on I may be able to see more of you, but to-day I am specially busy. I have many worries, Mr. Crosby, that are not exactly on the surface.’

‘Like us all,’ says Crosby, nodding his head gravely. ‘Life is full of thorns.’

‘Ah!’ says Miss Barry. She feels that she has now ‘impressed’ him indeed, and is satisfied.

‘We travel a thorny road,’ says she.

Crosby sadly acquiesces.

‘True,’ says he.

‘Adieu,’ says she. She makes him an old-fashioned obeisance, and once again rounds the corner and disappears.

‘I don’t think it was very nice of you to make fun of her,’ says Susan reproachfully to Crosby.

‘Fun of her! What do you take me for?’ says he. ‘Make fun of your aunt because I said life was full of thorns? Well’—with argument looming in his eye—‘isn’t it?’

‘Thorns?’ She pauses, as if wondering. ‘Oh no,’ says she. It seems a pity to disturb so sweet a faith; and Crosby, with a renunciatory wave of his hand, gives up the impending argument.

‘Awful lucky she went away so soon!’ says Carew, as the last bit of Aunt Jemima’s tail disappears round the corner. ‘She’d have led us a life had she stayed. She’s been on the prance all day on account of those Brians.’

‘Yes, isn’t it awful?’ says Betty.

‘Who are the Brians?’ asks Crosby.

‘Farmers up on the hill over there’—pointing far away to the south. ‘Very well-to-do people, you know, with their sons going into the Church, and their daughters at a first-class school in Birmingham. Aunt Jemima, thinking to help them on their road to civilization, sent them a bath—one of the round flat ones, you know—as a present last month, hearing that they were expecting the girls home for their holidays, and—’

Here Betty breaks off, and goes into what she calls ‘kinks’ of laughter.

‘Well?’ says Crosby, naturally desirous of knowing where the laugh comes in.

‘Ah, that’s it!’ says Dom. ‘Really, Betty, I think you might hold on long enough to finish your own story. It appears Aunt Jemima went up to the farm yesterday, and found that they had taken the bath as an ornament, and had nailed it up against the sitting-room wall with four long tenpenny nails, and—’ Here, in spite of his lecture to Betty, Mr. Fitzgerald himself gives way, and, falling back upon the grass, shouts with laughter.

‘They took it,’ gasps Carew, ‘as some curio from some barbarous country—a sort of shield, you know; a savage weapon! They had never seen a bath before. Oh my!’ He, too, has gone into an ecstasy of mirth. ‘I expect they thought it was straight from South Africa.’

‘Poor Aunt Jemima!’ says Betty, when she can speak. ‘It must have been a blow to her.’

‘Talking of blows,’ says Carew, turning to her sharply, and somewhat indignantly, ‘I never knew anyone blow their nose like you, Betty; you’ve been at it now since early dawn.’

‘Well, I can’t help it,’ says Betty, very rightly aggrieved, ‘if I have got a cold in my head.’

‘I’ve a cold, too,’ says Jacky dismally—Jacky is always dismal—‘but it isn’t as bad as Betty’s. My head is aching, but Betty’s nose is only running.’

A frightful silence follows upon this terrific speech. Mr. Fitzgerald, who can always be depended upon at a crisis, breaks it.

‘Not far, I trust,’ says he, with exaggerated anxiety. ‘We could hardly spare it. Betty’s nose is the one presentable member of that sort in the family.’

Betty, between the pauses of this speech, can be heard threatening Jacky. ‘No, no; never! I won’t give it now. You’re a little wretch! Even if I promised to give it I don’t care. I’ll take it back. You shan’t have it now.’

But all this is so distinctly not meant to be heard that no one takes any notice of it, and any serious consequences are prevented by the fact that Dominick, rising, throws himself between the puzzled Jacky and the irate Betty. In the meantime, Crosby draws himself along the rug until he is even closer to Susan, who now again is looking serious.

‘What is troubling you, righteous soul?’ asks he lightly.

‘How do you know I am troubled? I am not, really.’

‘Yet you are thinking, and very gravely, too.’

‘Ah, that is another thing. I was thinking,’ says Susan gently, ‘of the girl in there’—nodding towards the Cottage. ‘It must be a very sad thing to have no one belonging to you.’

‘Sad indeed! But you must not let your sympathy for her run too far afield. If not a father or mother, she must have—other ties.’

‘Brothers, you mean, or sisters?’

‘Yes, just so—brothers or sisters. They’ll turn up presently, no doubt.’

He looks at her as if waiting for an inspiration, and then it comes to him.

‘What a sympathetic mind you have!’ says he. ‘And yet you don’t give me a share of it. You have known me quite a long time now, and I have no father or mother, yet you have not wept with me.’

‘I didn’t know,’ says Susan. ‘And, besides, there was no long time, surely. Father told us you had no father or mother, but—have you’—with hesitation—‘no people belonging to you, Mr. Crosby?’

‘One sister,’ says he.

‘One sister! And why doesn’t she live with you?’

‘Ah, you must ask her that. Perhaps she wouldn’t care about it.’