Transcriber’s Note:

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s [note] at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup.

Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text.

BORDERLAND

BORDERLAND

A COUNTRY-TOWN CHRONICLE

BY

JESSIE FOTHERGILL

AUTHOR OF ‘THE FIRST VIOLIN,’ ‘KITH AND KIN,’ ‘PROBATION,’

‘THE WELLFIELDS,’ AND ‘HEALEY’

LONDON

RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET

Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen

1890

(All rights reserved)

CONTENTS

BORDERLAND

IN CHILDHOOD

One summer, which in point of date now lies many years behind us, four boys used to play together, and to quarrel and make it up again with one another—to live together through the long, golden days, that vivid, eager life peculiar to children, in a curious, old-fashioned garden on the bank of the river Tees, and on the Durham side of that stream. The garden belonged to a great house, not very old, though it was the abode of an old family, solemn, not to say gloomy, in its dulness and stateliness of appearance, and standing out in rather sombre contrast to the woods which were behind it, and the terraces which sloped down from its front to the river-side. The name of the house was Thorsgarth; many a spot hereabouts bore some name reminiscent of long-past Danish occupation and Scandinavian paganism. It was a characteristic giving a peculiar flavour to the language and nomenclature of the whole country-side, and one, too, which has been sweetly sung by at least one of our English poets. With this fact, these four particular boys were probably unacquainted, and it is more than probable that if they had known all about it they would have cared less than nothing for the circumstance. What could it matter to them that, a little farther down the stream, that sweet spot where they loved to wade in the shallows, and not far from which noisy Greta came tumbling and laughing into the arms of sedater Tees—where the numerous wasps’ nests were to be found under the bank, to destroy which nests they had gone through such delicious toils and perils, and where on sunny days the trout would lurk in the pools amongst the big boulders,—what could it matter to them that this scene had been immortalised by both poet and painter? To them it was all their own paradise; the presence of an artist would have vexed and incommoded them. There they kicked, jumped, splashed, and generally misconducted themselves in the sweet solitude and the generous sunshine of that far-back summer, without a thought of its being hallowed ground. Three of them were not of an age at which the ordinary boy is given to appreciate poetry. As for the eldest of them, if he ever did read it, he kept the fact to himself.

These four boys were all the sons of gentlemen, in the conventional sense of the term—albeit their fathers were men of widely different calibre, as regarded not only worldly, but also mental and moral characteristics.

The eldest and the third in age were brothers, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth. Their father’s was one of the oldest families in the neighbourhood, and had been one of the richest, although many people had begun to say that not much was now practically left to him except the old house itself, the Red Gables, which stood in genial vicinity to many other houses, both great and small, in the great cobble-stoned, slanting square, which formed the west end of Bradstane town.

Michael Langstroth at this period was twelve years old, a noble boy to look at, tall and broad, with a dark face, and a sweet, rather rare smile. There was a good deal of unconscious pride in his manner and bearing. Perhaps his piercing gray eyes, going with this dark complexion, might really betoken that Norse descent in which his family gloried. All his actions were, so far as one could judge, in harmony with his outer appearance; without fuss or ostentation, but all partaking of the intrinsically splendid, generous, and lavish. Even at this early time of their lives, the other boys knew that Michael hated lies with an intensity which showed itself more in sudden, violent action than in words. They knew that he resented any untruth amongst them as if it had been a personal insult. There was, indeed, no doubt that Michael was a son in whose proud looks a father might glory; while with all his strength and power there were in him other and quieter charms, such as a mother might delight in. And Mrs. Langstroth did very greatly delight in what seemed to her her son’s high and noble qualities, during the short time that she was allowed to do so.

‘I fear it will never last,’ she would say to herself, watching him with prayer and trembling, as mothers do watch those sons who have a way of turning into something so different from what the maternal yearnings would shape them into if, along with the yearnings, the power existed of fulfilling them. ‘I fear it will never last. Contact with the world will harden him. Flattery will make him vain. Universal homage will spoil him.’ Mrs. Langstroth was a sweet and saintly lady, and her son Michael a brave and noble boy; but what insignificant hen-mother exists who does not think that the attention to herself and her matchless offspring must of necessity be universal?

With pathetic, devoted blindness she would have prepared him to meet this irresistible tide of flattery and greatness by keeping him fast at her own side, and never loosing his leading strings. The mention of a public school drew tears from her eyes, and set her gentle heart beating wildly. It was written that her son Michael’s education—every branch of it—was to be taken out of her hands, and placed in others, firmer, harder, sterner, and to them who can survive their roughness, kinder hands than even those of a mother.

Gilbert, Michael’s brother, was a well-grown boy, too, of ten, with a smaller, rounder head, a narrower forehead, and blue-gray eyes, which had a trick of languishing sometimes. He had an exquisitely soft and melancholy voice, was slow of speech, and possessed a graceful, though by no means effeminate figure. He was always, and apparently by nature, courteous and gentle in manner and speech, seldom indulging in the downright unflattering candour which Michael, for all he was so gentlemanly, frequently used towards his companions. Gilbert never said rude things to any one, but he was not so popular with his comrades as Michael.

The second boy, in order of years, was swarthy Roger Camm, the son of the curate of Bradstane. Eleven were the years he counted in actual point of time—thirty, perhaps, and those rough ones, in his knowledge of care and trouble, in his painful, enforced acquaintance with grief, with contrivances and economies, and weary struggles to make both ends meet. For his father was not passing rich on forty pounds a year—he was more than passing poor on something less than a hundred, out of which he had dolefully to ‘keep up the appearance of a gentleman,’ clothe and feed his son and himself, and educate the former. His wife, poor soul, exhausted with the endless and complicated calculations necessitated by this ever-present problem, had some years ago thankfully closed her eyes, and said good-bye to labour and grief. The curate and his lad struggled on without her as best they could. All that Roger learnt, whether of solid instruction or flimsy accomplishment—little enough was there of the latter to gloss his manners or appearance—he was taught by his father, and that with fasting and prayer. Along with his Latin and Greek declensions, he imbibed also the more bitter lesson of declining fortunes; for his father had married late, and was not promoted as he grew older and more careworn. Side by side with the first problem of Euclid, as with the last, there was for ever present another, which it would have required more than a mere mathematical head to answer, and which yet imperiously demanded some sort of a solution; it was the problem which Mrs. Camm had carried with her to her grave, and it ran: ‘Given, not sufficient income to buy a proper supply of butcher’s meat, cakes, and ale, how to make water-porridge twice a day, with skim-milk to wash it down, answer the same purpose as the more liberal diet, save on certain rare and solemn feast-days, not specified in the calendar.’ And along with the invaluable rule, that prepositions govern the objective case (for the Rev. Silas Camm held fast by the Lindley Murray of his boyhood), Roger grasped and held fast the axiom, so that he could and did mould his conduct upon it, that to bear your hardships in silence is necessary—that to utter one word of complaint, to look greedily at occasional dainties, or to gorge in unseemly fashion on the abundance at other men’s tables, no matter what the size of the internal void to be filled; to betray by word, look, or deed that you ever feel the pinch of hunger at home—to do this is disgrace of the deepest dye, second only to lying and stealing. By the time he was eleven years old, Roger had digested these lessons thoroughly, and had, as it were, assimilated them, so that they were in his system. Sometimes, at the abundant ‘spreads’ on the Thorsgarth or Red Gables boards, his sallow young face would take a faint glow, his deep-set black eyes would grow wistfully misty, but never a word betrayed the bareness of the board at home, nor the fact that his father might even then be asking a blessing upon a bowl of oatmeal-porridge, sole reward of a hard day’s work. For the living of Bradstane, although ancient, was not rich, and the parish priest’s own stipend was not a fat one. Judge, therefore, how exceeding short the curate must have come!

Roger was on good terms with all his companions, and if they sometimes wondered why he never used to ask them to go and play with him, or have tea with him, they were quite satisfied with his explanation, that there was no garden to his father’s house, and they agreed with him, that without a garden to play in there could be no fun. He and Michael Langstroth, very dissimilar in almost everything, were fast friends, while Gilbert Langstroth and the fourth and last of this party of boys hung together in a lukewarm manner, the older and calmer of them often quietly instigating the mischief that the younger one performed.

This fourth and youngest was Otho Askam, the only son of the master of Thorsgarth, and heir to the sombre-looking house, and the grand old garden in which they all disported themselves. Otho, like his friends, was tall for his age, and well set-up. One can but guess at the man to come, in the little father of eight years old. But Otho gave strong signs of individuality even at this early age. The other boys, if they had spoken their minds, would have said that he was fitful and moody in temper; that no one could tell what would please, what offend him; that, when he was pleased, it was in a saturnine, mirthless style, strange in so young a child; that when offended, his wrath was more deep than loud, but that his brown eyes glowed, on such occasions, with a dull fire, and his childish face in its anger took an expression of savage fierceness. They could also have related, these other boys, that when angry, Otho never rested till he had revenged himself, either by damaging or mutilating some of their cherished ‘things,’ or by doing them bodily harm, as grievous as his childish brain and small hands could devise and compass. By the end of the summer they had got used to it. They laughed at him, and talked about his ‘little rages.’ They were bigger and stronger than he was. The youngest of them was two years his senior. They used to tease him sometimes, on purpose to have the fun of seeing what shape his vengeance would take, and would shout with laughter at its feebleness when wreaked.

There was on record one great occasion on which Michael Langstroth had failed to see the amusing side of an escapade of Otho’s, and had taken upon himself to give him a sound hiding (with due regard, that is, to the difference in their ages and strengths). It was sound enough, however, for Master Otho to make the welkin ring again with his yells; but the thrashing had been administered in payment, with interest, if possible, of Otho’s wanton cruelty to a wretched, half-starved cat, which he had pursued with the vindictive determination not so much to compass its death, as to secure to it as long a term of torture as possible, before that death should take place.

‘You cowardly little viper, you!’ Michael had shouted, towering over him after the first half of the pummelling had been administered. ‘Don’t you know that it’s nothing but a coward, and a dirty one, that hurts things that can’t fight back? You miserable little beggar, you!’

‘Michael, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you! I hate you! I wish the devil would get hold of you. I’ll kill you some day for this. What do you hit me for? I can’t hit you back, you great coward!’

At which there was a great laugh from the other boys, none the less hilarious when the big lad, looking scornfully down upon the little one, said—

‘I do it for your good, and you ought to be thankful for it.’

Otho snuffled then, but took an early opportunity of laying a crooked root in an unexpected and obscure spot, over which Michael tripped ignominiously, and nearly barked his shins, when the snuffle became a joyful chuckle.

Later in the same afternoon, Michael Langstroth found himself apart from the other boys, in a lonely part of the garden, where a broad terrace ended, and rough, uncut grass, dotted with wild plants, began—the top of the river-bank, in fact. The lad seated himself on this bank, under a tree, just out of the broiling sun, and a silence and quietness fell upon him, while he gazed before him into the gurgling, flowing river. It was a pastime he loved. Shadowy, half-formed thoughts passed through his brain at such times, thoughts as vague as the murmur of the river; intuitions, impulses stirred him, whose nature he did not now understand, but which, for all that, might be not the less blessed and fruitful in years to come, when he should have forgotten these, their first upspringings; for thus it is, as well as in other ways, that ‘the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

The river was the thing which Michael remembered longer than anything else. When a babe in his nurse’s arms he had leaped at its sudden shimmer through the trees, and since then its presence had been ever with him, more or less. It had been his companion and confidant without his knowing it. He went unconsciously to its side to think out his young thoughts, and it carried all his vague meditations gliding down its stream as it flowed between the two fair counties of York and Durham. Of course, he was not conscious how potent was its presence in his life; he would find that out only when he should come to move in other scenes—when he should get men for his companions instead of the stream.

Little more remains to be said of them at this time, save that the mothers of the Langstroths and of Otho Askam were both living then, young and beautiful women, one of them, at least, wrapped up in her husband and her children. Otho was the only one of the lads who had a sister, the little Eleanor, three years of age, and so much younger than they that she never shared their sports; and they knew nothing of her, save when they saw her sometimes walking on the upper terrace, led by her nurse or her mother, when she would sometimes stop and look at them with a pair of great candid eyes, and burst into a laugh at some of their antics. A sturdy-looking, not very pretty child, with little resemblance to Otho in either expression or complexion.

CHAPTER I
OTHO’S RETURN

It was a dull morning in October, with a gray sky, low-hanging clouds, and muddy lanes. The Tees Valley Hunt breakfasted that morning at Sir Thomas Winthrop’s, and the brothers, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth, rode slowly in company towards the house. Michael was now twenty-five, and Gilbert just turned twenty-three. They had ridden and hunted ever since they had been able to stick on the back of a pony, and, despite their changed fortunes—for the house of Langstroth was no more a flourishing house—they rode and hunted still. They felt a deeper degree of interest than usual in this particular breakfast, for it was known to them, as to all the rest of the neighbourhood, that the long-closed doors of Thorsgarth had at last been thrown open; Otho Askam’s minority was over, and he had come, or was on his way, to take possession of the house of his fathers, and the abundant revenues and possessions which had been accumulating for him. It was now several months since he had come of age, but he had not immediately repaired to his home. Now, Otho Askam, Michael and Gilbert Langstroth, and their friend Roger Camm, had all played together as children in the Thorsgarth garden, had shouted through its avenues, chased each other amongst its discoloured marble fauns and nymphs, and almost succeeded, more than once, in drowning themselves in the waters of swiftly-rushing Tees, who flowed beneath the lowest terrace of the garden. That had been more than ten years ago, and many changes had taken place since then. The Askam fortunes had accumulated; the deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Askam had left their children—Otho, and a girl, Eleanor, several years younger than him—under the care of guardians, while their property increased. The Langstroths, on the contrary, had gone downhill to a certain extent. Poor then, they had become poorer since, till now, Mr. Langstroth, their father, was a hopeless, helpless invalid; Michael, the elder, was by way of earning his living as a country doctor, this chance having been given to him by the kindness of the old family friend and adviser, the little Quaker Doctor Rowntree, whose assistant Michael was supposed to be. Gilbert stayed at home, tended his father, and devoted his distinguished arithmetical powers to an endeavour to extricate the family fortunes in some degree from the confusion into which they had fallen. As for Roger Camm, whose father had been the curate of Bradstane-on-Tees, he had vanished for years past from the scenes of his childhood; but he and Michael, who had been friends in those former days, were friends still, keeping up a close correspondence. And if Roger by any chance imagined that Gilbert had forgotten him, he was mistaken. Gilbert Langstroth had a long memory.

It was not only these brothers who looked forward with interest to the possibility of young Askam’s presence at the meet that morning. All the country-side was more or less agog on the subject. Thorsgarth was a very considerable house; the Askams were very considerable people in the neighbourhood. Every one was excited; many fair creatures had gone so far as to say that they were ‘dying to see him,’ dying to know what he was like, and if he were going to be an acquisition, or not, to their society. People began to recall things, and to say to one another, ‘Ay, I remember how his mother used to ride to hounds; what a woman she was! How handsome, and what a temper!’ And then the voices would sink a little, while for the benefit of some stranger it would be related how the late Mrs. Askam had come to her untimely end; how she would go out one day, despite her husband’s expostulations; how she put her horse at a certain fence, which he refused; how she flogged him on till he unwillingly took the leap, and caught his legs in the top rail, pitching his rider head foremost off him; and how Mrs. Askam was carried home with a broken neck.

Half-forgotten things like these were talked about. Amongst all the wondering and speculation there was little kindness, little personal feeling. There was no matron who said, ‘Ah, his mother and I used to be great friends; I know I shall like him for her sake.’ For, as a matter of fact, this reckless young woman, who had so untimely died, had not made many friends during the years of her married life in Bradstane. Therefore, every one wondered; no one really cared what sort of young man Otho Askam might be.

Michael and Gilbert rode slowly on through the deep lanes with their tangled hedges (for some of the folk thereabouts were not as particular about their clipping as they might have been) in the damp morning air, and, emerging from the lanes, struck the stony road, with its rough walls, over which they had to travel to arrive at Brigsdale Hall, Sir Thomas’s place. They were to look at, as goodly a pair of brethren as any in whose company they were likely that day to find themselves.

‘Is Magdalen coming to the meet?’ asked Gilbert suddenly.

‘Yes. She’s driving Mrs. Stamer to it. She’s staying with Miss Strangforth, and Magdalen doesn’t know what on earth to do with her.’

‘Ah!’ said Gilbert, with his slight, careless smile. ‘A meet must be a godsend under such circumstances.’ And by and by he made some further observation, to the effect that it was a picture of a day, and that the scent would be grand, to which Michael assented cheerfully; and having got that question settled, they rode up to the hospitable door, delivered their horses over to a groom, and were shown into the dining-room.

Sir Thomas and his son Byrom were there, and the room was full of men, old, young, and middle-aged, standing about, waiting till their host should give the signal to be seated.

It was immediately on going into the room that they saw Otho Askam—for he it must be, and no one else—leaning his elbow on the shelf of an oak sideboard, and listening to some remarks of a neighbouring squire. He was at one end of the room as they entered, and they at the other; but it so happened that there was a little lane or vista from him to them, so that they saw him very plainly.

They looked upon a tall young man, as big, as strong, and as broad as themselves; and there all resemblance ended. It would have been difficult to say whether that face were young or old for its years. Young Askam had a round, bullet-shaped head, a dark complexion, and one which was also red—a deep, but not yet a coarse red. His forehead, though narrow, was not devoid of power. His smooth dark hair was clipped close. He wore a slight moustache, a mere line on his upper lip, save for which his face was hairless, so that the full play of his lips was seen; and there was something fierce in the expression of those lips; indeed, the whole face was a strange and fierce one. The dark eyes were sullen; the brows had a trick of drawing down and together, quickly and savagely, and then the whole face flushed, and the mouth tightened, and the fingers closed with a suggestive grip upon whatever might happen to be in them at the moment. It was truly an angry-looking face, devoid of beauty; and yet, if one came to analyse the features, it would be found impossible to pronounce it a plain face. The voice, the manners, were such as might be expected from the general outward appearance; that is to say, the voice was abrupt, the sentences curt, and the words often chopped off short in utterance; the manners were brusque, and had a touch of defiance in them.

At the moment when the Langstroths entered the room, Otho had his eyes fixed upon his whip, which he was drawing slowly through the fingers of his left hand. He smiled, and the smile showed a set of very white and very strong teeth; it was not a gracious or a genial expression. Michael Langstroth, looking at him keenly and attentively, said to himself—

‘Humph! he is a magnificent animal, at any rate. I wonder if he is anything else. I should not like to pronounce at a venture whether he were a gentleman or a blackguard; perhaps a bit of both.’

At this juncture, Askam, the curious, sinister smile still on his face, raised his eyes, and encountered those of Michael Langstroth fixed upon him. The smile vanished, the frown descended, above a defiant and inquiring stare. Evidently he said within himself, ‘Who is that man? I ought to know him.’

‘Halloa, Michael,’ cried the master of the house, at this point, ‘good morning to you. I’m glad to see you. How is your father to-day?’

As he listened to this, young Askam’s frown disappeared, and his look cleared, as if the thing that puzzled him had been made plain. By the time that Michael had done talking to Sir Thomas, Otho was at his side.

‘I say—I ought to remember you. You are Michael Langstroth, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I am. I was just coming to speak to you. This is my brother Gilbert; you ought to remember him, too, if you remember me.’

Otho shook hands with them. His countenance was not the best suited for expressing pleasure and geniality, but in a certain saturnine manner he seemed glad to see them both, though he did not say he was, but showed it by asking them many questions, with an air of interest—questions as to what they had been doing ‘all these years.’ And he stood talking with them, and occasionally with Byrom Winthrop, who joined them, until the voice of Sir Thomas summoned them to the table, when, by some means, Otho and Gilbert found themselves seated side by side, and Michael was not very far away from them.

Otho Askam betrayed none of the awkwardness which would have been natural to, and excusable in, a very young man, who suddenly finds himself a person of condition and importance amongst others, much older and much better known than himself. At the same time his manner was utterly destitute of anything like suavity or grace, or of aught that could give a clue as to his real habits or tastes in the matter of society; none could discover from it whether he most haunted and best loved drawing-rooms, studies, clubs, or stables.

He appeared to be at his ease, and yet there was nothing easy about him. He did not laugh at all. Michael, who watched him attentively, could not detect anything more mirthful than that peculiar smile which had been on his face when he first saw him; and it was a smile which might have been called sinister.

Gilbert and he seemed to keep up an animated conversation, but Michael, though near, could not hear, for the hum of talk around him, what they said. He could only feel silently surprised that they had found any subject in common, for Gilbert, when not engaged in calculations, was something of a bookworm, and loved the flavour of a play or an essay, and was well read in some of our older and less known dramatists. Michael, though still uncertain whether Otho were most like a gentleman or a blackguard, had an inner conviction that he was neither literary in his tastes nor yet devoted to accounts.

Suddenly, in a momentary lull in the talk around him, he heard Otho say—

‘But Dusky Beauty was bred in these parts. I’d take my oath of it.’

‘Of course she was,’ replied Gilbert, with animation. ‘She was bred in old Trueman’s stables, over in Friarsdale, out of Blue Blood, by——’

Here the words were lost in the hum of renewed talk, and Michael was no less lost in astonishment. He felt quite feeble and bewildered with surprise. In all the years that he had known his brother, he had never heard him utter a word which could have led any one to suppose that racing or horses, beyond his own solitary hunter and riding-horse, had the faintest or most elementary interest for him. And yet, that was he giving information to Otho Askam (not receiving it from him, Michael reflected with astonishment) as to the immediate pedigree of the winner at one of the Spring meetings. More than once since he had finished his studies and been settled in Bradstane, it had been made manifest to him that Gilbert’s character contained complexities which he had not fathomed, and here was another instance—to him the most remarkable of all. With a sense of bewilderment, he finished his breakfast, and when it was over rode forth with the others.

At the end of the day, towards five in the afternoon, it came to pass that the three former playmates and new acquaintances rode through Bradstane town together.

‘I say,’ said Otho—it seemed to be his favourite phrase for opening a sentence—‘I wish you two fellows would look in upon me now and then. I dine at eight, and I am perfectly alone just now. It would be a charity if you would come. I can give you a glass of sherry that isn’t so bad, and show you one or two trifles that might interest you, at any rate,’ and he turned pointedly to Gilbert.

They thanked him for the invitation. Gilbert promised, unconditionally, to go, and that soon. Michael said he would try; he would go as soon as he had time.

‘You see,’ observed Gilbert, turning to Otho, with a worthy, benevolent air, ‘his time is not all his own. There’s a lady in the case.’

‘Oh, indeed! You are engaged?’ asked Otho.

‘Yes,’ said Michael.

‘To some one here?’

‘Yes. To Miss Wynter—Magdalen Wynter. She was at the meet this morning with an elderly lady. I was standing by their carriage for a good while.’

‘That exceedingly handsome girl, who drove those white ponies so cleverly? She had black hair, and a very knowing sort of fur cap,’ Otho said, looking at Michael with interest.

Michael smiled slightly. What a curious way in which to describe his beautiful and somewhat unapproachable Magdalen, was the thought in his mind.

‘The same,’ he answered, ‘though it would never have occurred to me to describe the cap as “knowing.”’

‘Oh, wasn’t it, though!’ said Otho emphatically. ‘Well, I congratulate you. She is exceedingly handsome. There wasn’t another woman there who came anywhere near her. It won’t do to be exacting in your case,’ he went on, with his dubious smile; ‘but, all the same, you will be very welcome if you come.’

‘Are you going to live alone?’ Michael asked him. ‘Doesn’t your sister stay with you?’

‘My sister—Eleanor—she is at school. I see her sometimes,’ said Otho carelessly. ‘She told me, the last time I called upon her, that she was going to college, and meant to carry off honours, if I didn’t.’ He smiled again, and added, ‘We part here, I think. Good day. I am glad to have renewed our acquaintance.’

They separated, going their several ways, and the Langstroths rode on in silence for a little time.

‘Well,’ said Michael presently, ‘it cannot be said that he has turned out an interesting character.’

‘Opinions differ,’ was Gilbert’s reply, in a tone which, for him, might be called curt. ‘I think he is interesting.’

‘Do you? I should have said you were the last—— By the way, Gilbert, you might have knocked me over with your little finger at breakfast this morning when I heard you talking about Dusky Beauty and her pedigree. I didn’t know you knew one race-horse from another.’

‘Well, I am quite certain you don’t,’ said Gilbert, with less than his usual suavity; ‘and it is my principle not to try and entertain people by conversation about things in which they don’t take the slightest interest. Otho Askam, there, does know one race-horse from another.’

‘What, is he horsey, then? Is that his little failing?’

‘He is horsey—I don’t know how much, yet,’ said Gilbert, with his gentle gravity. ‘That’s what I have got to find out, and it is what I mean to find out. I shall give him the pleasure of my company on an early day. You can please yourself when you go. Here we are.’

After Otho Askam’s arrival, which was, as it were, made public by this appearance amongst the gentlemen of his county, he and his sayings and doings furnished endless topics for the gossips of the neighbourhood. It was, of course, only by degrees that public opinion about him took a definite shape, but the process of collecting data on which to form one’s opinion of a person’s character is to many persons an even more delightful employment, and more enjoyable, than the frequent utterance of that opinion when found; though this, of course, must possess the higher quality of benefiting and instructing those who hear it.

The Bradstane neighbours—people in districts like that are neighbours if they do not live more than ten miles apart—abandoned themselves at first with joy and satisfaction, and a keenly pleasurable sense of having found a new interest, to this first branch of the business—the collecting of data. Women asked their men—and declined to be put off with mere vague, general statements in reply—what they thought of Otho Askam; and men said things to each other about him, and laughed, or nodded, or shrugged, as the case might be.

The first interest gradually but surely turned into disappointment. People in general discovered, or felt that they had discovered, that Otho Askam was a decidedly[decidedly] horsey, slangy young fellow. It was soon made manifest that he had a powerful distaste for general society, as found in the country, with its dinners, dances, and lunches. Then again it was said—by whom no one could exactly tell—that he was full of whims and humours and oddities without end—not pleasant oddities; was very lavish of his money on one day, and very stingy with it on the next; had a most moody and uncertain temper, which sometimes would run into fierce, white-hot passions, with little or no cause for them, or, again, into sullen silence, more difficult than the fury to understand or combat.

There was one group of facts eagerly seized upon by the scandalmongers, and even by those who were not scandalmongers, of the vicinity. The matrons and the maids around were alike grieved that a young man so richly endowed with every external advantage should prove so very ungentle, unpromising a character; that he should set at nought their customs, despise their burnt-offerings, and openly neglect their galas and festivities. That alone would have pained the matrons and the maids; but that was not all. There was a thorn more galling still, which he contrived to plant in their sides, so as to wound them shrewdly. After he had been at home a few months, it became universally known that there was one house in the neighbourhood at which he visited often, indeed, constantly, and that one the last which would have been expected to attract him—at Balder Hall, namely, where old Miss Strangforth lived with her niece, who had for more than two years been engaged to Michael Langstroth. Magdalen Wynter had never been a favourite among the women of the country-side; she was exceedingly beautiful, and did nothing to conciliate them; she was penniless, and treated them as if they were beneath her. That winter she became less popular than ever, and the secret thought in many a virgin bosom was, ‘Greedy wretch! Could she not have been satisfied with one?’

This attachment to Balder Hall, and the innumerable times that his horse and he were reported to have been seen travelling over the road thither, was the canker which vexed the hearts of the womankind. A good many of the young men began presently to say that Otho was so cross in his temper that the only way to get on with him was to let him alone as much as possible; and, by and by, prudent fathers, however much they might have approved of him as a husband for one of their spotless daughters, began to think it was as well that their sons should not have too much to do with him. Nothing tangible had been alleged against him during those months; nothing actively bad; but, on the other hand, there was nothing good. In any of the staider pursuits of a country gentleman of his standing, politics, county business, public affairs of any kind, he took not the faintest or most elementary interest; nay, he had been known, when occasion offered, to express a rough kind of contempt for them, and for those who troubled themselves with them. Altogether, Otho Askam, who had been a good deal looked forward to as the coming man, created much disappointment now that he had come.

The last fact which formed food for gossip and wonderment was, that that gentlemanly, well-bred youth, Gilbert Langstroth, against whom scandal had never raised so much as a whisper, who was known to be good—look at the way in which he devoted himself to his failing father—and was said, by those who knew him, to be as clever as he was good—this paragon amongst sons and young men became the chosen friend and associate of Otho Askam, almost from the day of his arrival in Bradstane. Gossip exhausted itself in trying to find reasons for this alliance; in discovering points of resemblance between two such diverse characters, points which might account for the intimacy which had sprung up between them. Gossip spent her breath in vain. Undisturbed, and unheeding what was said about them, the young men remained and continued to be friends, and friends who were almost inseparable. The neighbourhood presently discovered that to stand perpetually with a gape on one’s mouth is undignified, so it ceased to gape, shrugged its shoulders, and said, ‘Well, if I were Mr. Langstroth, I should not like my son to form such an intimacy.’

The neighbourhood could not possibly have been more surprised than was Gilbert’s brother, Michael, though he kept his surprise to himself, and naturally did not hear very much of that felt by other persons. He had often chaffed Gilbert about his having no friends; acquaintances in plenty, but no chum, as the absent Roger Camm was Michael’s own chum. Gilbert had always replied—

‘Wait a bit. Every one does not suit me for a friend. When I do find one, I’ll stick to him.’

And then Otho Askam came. Gilbert appeared to have found the combination of qualities he wished for in a friend, and his words were fulfilled. He ‘stuck to him.’

The intimacy went on for more than a year, during which time the tranquil, gentle countenance of Gilbert Langstroth, with its slight, tolerant smile, was to be seen oftener than not side by side with the strange, fierce face of Otho Askam, with its breathless expression. ‘He looks,’ said a girl to Michael once, ‘as if he were always hunting something, and meant to kill it when he caught it.’

It was undoubtedly a bizarre alliance, but at the end of a year people had, in a measure, got to accept it, and it was an understood thing that its effect upon Gilbert was one which he was quite able to sustain with impunity; in other words, that, whatever might be the case with Otho Askam, Gilbert Langstroth continued to be a respectable member of society, and was not even thinking of going to the bad.

CHAPTER II
MAGDALEN—AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

Otho’s arrival had been in the early part of October. The intimacy between him and Gilbert gradually increased, and the visits of the friends were not by any means confined to one party of the alliance. Otho was found as often seated in an old arm-chair in some one of the now faded and shabby rooms of the Red Gables, as Gilbert was in the statelier and better preserved apartments of Thorsgarth. Gilbert and his father lived alone together. They had so lived ever since Michael, having finished his medical studies, had come back and been made Dr. Rowntree’s assistant. Mr. Langstroth was one of those men who undoubtedly exist, who, by some means not to be accounted for by any personal charm or fascination, always have either a devoted wife or a friend who seems willing, nay, eager to give of his strength in order to make up for their weaknesses. So long as his wife had been living, Mr. Langstroth had had a prop. After her death, her place, as prop, had been taken by Dr. Rowntree, an old ‘friend of the family,’ whose yellow-washed house, with its green door and brass knocker, stood almost opposite the Red Gables, on the other side of the broad old square which formed the west end of Bradstane town. Dr. Rowntree had indeed been one of those friends who stick closer than a brother, who get little and give much, and who seem quite satisfied so long as they may go on giving, and get an occasional word significative of trust or appreciation. Sometimes it seems as if they could exist without even so much aliment for their regard. It was at his instigation and by his advice that Michael had adopted the medical profession as his calling in life. Something had to be done; their fortunes no longer permitted idleness on the part even of the eldest son of the house. Michael was utterly disinclined for the church, and his father for the expense of preparing him to enter it. For ‘doctoring,’ as they roughly and ignorantly called the healing art, he had always shown a liking; and, as most of his spare time had always been spent at the little Quaker doctor’s house, it was considered that he had had ample opportunities of judging whether this calling would suit him or not. He had elected to follow it, greatly to the jubilation of his old friend, and, having finished his student life, it had been decided that it would be to the comfort and advantage of all if he were to take up his quarters with Dr. Rowntree, instead of remaining at home.

‘You won’t really be separated from them, you know,’[know,’] said the doctor; ‘and, being on the premises, you’ll get so much better broken in to it.’

Mr. Langstroth agreed. In his heart he despised the doctor’s calling, and was angry and ashamed that a son of his should have to live by it; but, like many another before him, he took the benefits that he hated, and was satisfied so long as they were not put before him too prominently. He would have been best pleased if Michael could have followed his ‘trade,’ as the elder man contemptuously called it, away from Bradstane and his nobility; but the advantages of the present arrangement were too great and too obvious to be thrown away; there were no premiums to pay, no struggle to make. So Michael lived with Dr. Rowntree, and began to make himself acquainted with the far from easy life of a country doctor. His temper was sweet, and his spirit beyond all idea of shame in his position, or complaint at having to work. He said little, but went to work with a will.

Gilbert had all along, and as it were by a sort of tacit consent of all parties, remained at home with his father, who was now a querulous invalid with a heart-complaint. Incidentally, too, as has been said, he devoted a good deal of his time and mind to the contemplation and manipulation of their affairs, family and financial. While Michael had been studying in London, letters had now and then come to him from Gilbert, suggesting that it was advisable to sell this or that farm, this or that lot of timber in the woods which still belonged to them. To do so would lessen their debts by so much, would ease their father’s mind, and increase their income by diminishing the amount they annually had to pay away in interest. To all and each of which propositions, Michael had been in the habit of yielding unqualified assent, saying that he thought it very good of Gilbert to sit boring his eyes out over accounts, in the days of his youth. He might as well have congratulated an old spider on weaving webs so skilfully, or complimented a shark on his kindness in following that which he best loved—prey, namely, or, in short, have thanked any person warmly for being so disinterested as to find pleasure in following his natural bent. Michael was very young, and hated all such tasks as those in which Gilbert passed his time. He might have had Gilbert’s office, and Gilbert his, had he so chosen; the option had been given him; but he did not so choose, and it always seemed to him that his best thanks were due to his brother for industriously doing that which he would have so hated to do himself. Interested in his studies, and seeing a good deal of society, in which he was popular, by reason of his good looks, good birth, and entire absence of selfishness or self-consciousness, Michael often thought what a good old man Gilbert was, and what thanks he, Michael, would owe him, for thus sacrificing the days of his youth to an invalid father and a complicated account-book, in a quiet little country town at the world’s end.

It certainly was a very quiet little town, as it is now, and probably always has been.

‘Castle Bradstane,’ says an old chronicler, ‘standeth stately upon Tese.’ At the time of which he wrote, he probably literally meant the castle, the grim brown pile which stood on the Durham side of the stream, cunningly planted just at an outward sweep of one of its many curves. Gradually it had fallen into decay; other houses and a small town had gathered about its feet. Ivy and other creepers and climbers now clung about its fierce old towers. Wallflowers, ragwort, and the ivy-leaved snapdragon peeped and nodded in at the narrow little slits of windows; kindly Nature did all in her power to beautify what had been so cruel and so hideous, till now the grim old fastness sat harmless aloft, and the river rushed and murmured far below, as of yore.

Any one who chooses, may learn how Walter Scott, with the seer’s eye of genius, pictured Bradstane Castle, and the prospects which from its ‘watch-tower high gleamed gradual on the warder’s eye;’ and to this day, the prospect upon which it looks is little changed. Though the stream sweeps by beneath it, laden with the tale of several centuries more, their woe and bloodshed, grief and tragic story, yet the outlines of the land itself, the woods, the hills, must be similar to what they were when old Leland, looking upon it, recorded, ‘Castle Bradstane standeth stately upon Tese.’ The inhabitants, who gradually built houses, and clustered about the old pile and beyond it, to the east, had been, taken all in all, a wild race of people, a border race. To this day they are bold, sturdy, and independent. Strange tales are sometimes told of the old families of the vicinity, gentle and simple—tales in which both gentleness and simpleness are conspicuous by their absence. Great cities have their great sins, their great faults, wrongs, and iniquities; and we are very much in the habit of speaking in condemnatory terms of them, and of lauding the beauties of the country, and the simpleness and gentleness, and, above all, the naturalness and absence of pretension in the life there. And, certainly, city life, carried to excess, has in it a morbid feverishness and unrest which is no true life. But in country life, when it is lived in out-of-the-way spots—moorland farms, secluded dales, places far from railways and traffic—there is often a certain morbidness, as well as in the life of a town. The very solitude and loneliness tend to foster and bring out any peculiarities, any morbid characteristics, and to confirm and strengthen eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. One of the good things that much-abused progress will do in time, will be to sweep away some of these ugly old country habits of indolence and cloddishness, and selfish, soulless sensuality, which still exist, and that sometimes amidst the sweetest and most exquisite natural surroundings.

At this later time of which I write, Bradstane was more the abode of confirmed Philistinism than of anything else. There were a few wealthy and well-born families, who possessed seats in the neighbourhood—Halls, Parks, Courts, Houses—and who shut themselves up in them, and led their own lives, on no evil terms with the shopkeepers and dissenters of the village itself, but quite apart and distinct from them. The only one of these houses which stood within the precincts of the town was the Red Gables, Mr. Langstroth’s dwelling-place. It was a large old house, rising straight out of the street. The land that belonged to it consisted chiefly of farms in the vicinity, and some woods, more distant still.

Farther out, at a fine old place higher up the river, situated like Thorsgarth, on one of its many ‘reaches,’ and called Balder Hall, lived an old maiden lady, Miss Martha Strangforth, at whose death, which, said wise report, could not be very far off, seeing that she was older than the century, and a martyr to rheumatic gout, her estate and fortune would pass to a nephew of the same name. Four years ago had come to live with her an orphan grand-niece, one Magdalen Wynter by name; a cold, handsome, self-contained girl of eighteen, who made no friends, and was seldom seen walking outside her aunt’s grounds, but who sometimes passed through Bradstane town, driving in one of the Balder Hall carriages, dressed with a perfection of simple elegance which the Philistine inhabitants called ‘plainness,’ and looking as if, for aught they could say to the contrary, all the world belonged to her. Sometimes she stopped at one of the shops, and then she was treated with respect, as the niece of rich old Miss Strangforth. On these occasions, she was wont to give very clear, concise orders, in a very clear, decided voice, low and gentle, but too monotonous to be called musical. Her beautiful young face was seldom, if ever, seen to smile; and yet, one could hardly have said that she looked unhappy, though she might have been accused of appearing indifferent.

Once, some few weeks after her arrival, stopping at the stationer’s and bookseller’s shop kept by Mr. Dixon, in the main street of the town, the footman opened the door, and she got out and went into the shop. Mrs. Dixon came forward to attend to her wants, and was followed by a pretty little girl of some ten years old, a child with a delicate skin, small, oval face, straight little nose, brown hair and eyes—all very neat and clear, and clean and pretty. She hid rather shyly behind her mother.

‘Is that your child?’ asked Miss Wynter, pointing with her parasol at the girl.

‘Yes, miss, this is Ada, our only one.’

‘Oh, indeed! How old is she?’

‘Ten, was a month last Sunday.’

‘Ah, she is a pretty little creature. Does she go to school?’

‘Yes, miss; but it’s her holiday-time now.’

‘I wish you’d let her come home with me, and I’ll show her some pretty things. I am very lonely.’

The last words were spoken in the quiet, uninterested tone in which one says, ‘What a dull day it is!’ as if they hardly referred to herself, but to something outside her.

‘Oh yes, miss, she may go. I’m sure it’s very good of you. But I fear she’ll be a trouble to you.’

‘Not at all, or I should not have asked her. Would you like to come with me, little Ada?’ asked Miss Wynter, turning to the child neither coldly nor unkindly, but with no change of expression at all—no lighting up of her soft, dark, quiet eyes; not the ghost of a smile upon her tranquil sculptured lips.

At first, Ada hung back; and her mother began to expostulate with her, saying how good it was of the lady to invite her to go with her.

The lady, in the same soft and gentle tone, remarked presently—

‘Oh, she won’t understand that, of course. If you will come with me, Ada, I will give you a pretty necklace, and a ribbon.’

At this prospect, all hesitation fled. Ada submitted at once to be made ready, Mrs. Dixon remarking admiringly—

‘Eh, but you have found the right road to her heart, miss, and that cleverly.’

‘I will sit here, and wait till she is ready. Don’t put on her best frock, or anything of that kind, you know. She will do just as she is.’

Miss Wynter furthermore promised to restore Ada to her home and friends later in the evening, but Mrs. Dixon said she had to send her servant to the Balder Hall farm for butter, and she should call for the little girl and bring her back. Ada was perched in the carriage beside Miss Wynter, in which position she was seen of sundry comrades as she drove away.

They called to her; asked her where she was going, and cried—

‘Eh, but, Ada, what a grand lady you are, to be sure!’

Ada took no manner of notice of them, but looked straight before her.

‘Why do you not kiss your hand to your friends, and say good-bye to them?’ asked Magdalen, turning indifferently, as she lay back, also indifferently, and looked with languid curiosity at the little flushed face and small figure, bristling with importance, beside her.

‘’Cause I’m a young lady, and they are little common village girls,’ was the reply, so unexpected, that even Miss Wynter’s eyes were opened wide, and her eyebrows were raised, as she heard it.

‘Indeed?’ she said. ‘And do you think you are really a young lady?’

‘Not like you, yet,’ was the reply, ‘because I’m not old enough; but I shall be some time. Mamma says I’m so pretty I shall be sure to marry a gentleman; and I’m going to learn French and music.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ drawled Magdalen. ‘You are going to marry a gentleman. What is a gentleman? Did your mother tell you that, too?’

‘She didn’t tell me, but I know,’ replied Ada.

‘Well, suppose you tell me. Then I shall know, too.’

‘A gentleman is rich, and has a large house, and——’

‘Does a gentleman keep a shop?’

‘No.’

‘Then what is your father?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Magdalen proceeded, in a languid, indifferent way, to draw her out. In a very short time she had gauged the depths, or rather the shallows, of Ada Dixon’s mind. It contained nothing but shallows then; it was destined never to contain anything else, henceforth and for evermore.

From that day she was more or less Miss Wynter’s protegée and plaything. Sometimes the connection flagged; sometimes when the winter weather was bitter, or the summer heats overpowering, when Miss Wynter was indolent, and when Ada was promoted to a boarding-school, there were gaps in the intercourse; but the acquaintance was never broken off, and it was not without its influence in both lives, and on more destinies than theirs alone.

The Dixons were well-to-do, prosperous, conventional tradespeople, more retail than wholesale in every sense of the words. He had grown fat by charging sixpence where other people charged fivepence, by a consistent practice of telling many lies during the week, and diligently repenting him of his transgressions and bewailing his sins twice every Sunday in the parish church. That is, he bewailed his sins with his mouth, and whenever bewailing happened to be printed in the Prayer-book; but he knew much better than the Prayer-book what was the way in which to get on in the world, and perhaps, if he had spoken out his whole mind, cleanly and honestly, would have said that since the Lord, by putting so much competition into the world, had made it such a hard business for folk to hold their heads above water, He must even excuse them from doing it in the best way they could.

Mrs. Dixon, like a faithful and loyal wife, had aided and abetted him in his praiseworthy efforts to get on in the world. They had succeeded in their aim, and were respected and looked up to by all who knew them. He was vicar’s warden, an overseer of the poor, one of the best-known men in public and parochial affairs in all the district. He could afford to send his daughter to school, to keep her out of the shop; to dress her ‘stylishly,’ as they called it; to give her a piano, and buy pieces of music for her to play upon it; and all these things he did with a good grace, and looked to Ada to form an alliance which should be to the credit of the family and her own glory.

There were other well-to-do tradesmen in Bradstane, and many who were but ill-to-do. There was the lawyer, Mr. Coningsby, who lived not far away from the Langstroths; there was Dr. Rowntree; there was the vicar, Mr. Johnson, with Mrs. Johnson, his wife, and their numerous progeny. They lived in an old brown house, in a kind of close, near the church, with a walled garden containing apricot and plum trees. Other religious bodies were represented by two dissenting ministers and their flocks, and by a Friends’ Meeting, the head and front of which was Dr. Rowntree.

These denominations, of course, had churches and chapels in which they worshipped. There were some curious old houses in the main street, and there was a long and unlovely thoroughfare called Bridge Street, more like a slum than anything else, where the women were pale, and the children stunted, and the inhabitants of which, taken all in all, did not enjoy the best of reputations. One side of this street was built to the river-bank overhanging the stream; and in the spring and autumn, or when thunderstorms prevailed, the lower rooms of those houses would be flooded. Going along Bridge Street, one did not guess how near the river one was, till one came upon an opening here and there—a gully, or a tunnel, or a narrow, dark passage—and looking down it, one could see the rushing brown waters flowing ceaselessly on, without haste and without rest, from the fastnesses whence they had sprung—

‘Where Tees in tumult leaves his source,

Thundering o’er Cauldron and High Force.’

Such was, superficially, the outward aspect of Bradstane town, when Otho Askam and the two Langstroths met after their many years’ separation; such it had been for years back. It is not what is called ‘a growing town,’ and whatever drama might be played within its precincts, its exterior, objective side, was not likely to change very much.

CHAPTER III
LANGSTROTH’S FOLLY

One November evening, or rather, late in the afternoon, Otho had dropped in at the Red Gables, where he had found Gilbert and his father. Mr. Langstroth received the young man with urbanity; he had all along seemed satisfied with Gilbert’s new friend. Gilbert himself looked up from his desk, and greeted the visitor tranquilly.

‘Sit down, and make yourself at home,’ said he, pushing a tobacco-jar towards Askam.

But Otho did not at once sit down. ‘Will you come home and dine with me?’ he asked, in his curt way.

‘I’m sorry I can’t,’ Gilbert said, polite as usual. ‘You see these papers? I have more than an hour’s work upon them yet.’

Otho never scoffed at Gilbert’s ‘business,’ though he was ready to sneer at that of any one else. All he uttered now was a disappointed ‘Humph!’

‘Stay and have dinner with us,’ said Gilbert. ‘How did you come?’

‘I rode.’

‘From home? On your way anywhere?’

‘No. I’m on my way from Balder Hall,’ replied Otho, with something like a scowl.

Gilbert looked at him, carelessly, it seemed. Then he said—

‘Well, send your horse round, and stay, as I said—I want Askam to have dinner with us,’ he added, turning to his father.

‘I wish he would. We shall be delighted, if he will take us as we are,’ responded Mr. Langstroth.

Otho still seemed to hesitate a little, till Gilbert, with a rather steady look at him, which was not seen by his father, continued—

‘Look here. I’ll propose something else. I’ve been tied down to this work all day, and I haven’t had a turn out of doors. Dine with us, as I said, and afterwards I’ll walk back with you to your house. I have an errand in the town. It’ll do you no harm to travel on your own legs for once in a way, and you can send one of your fellows for your horse. How will that do?’

Otho’s brow cleared. ‘That will do very well,’ said he, taking a chair. ‘It suits me down to the ground. Get on with that work, and I’ll talk to your father.’

Gilbert, having rung and given his orders as to the accommodation of Otho’s horse, turned his back upon them, and did not address another word to them until the man announced dinner, when he put his papers in a drawer which he locked, and gave his arm to his father to support him to the dining-room. Otho followed them. Despite the poverty of the house of Langstroth, the meals there were always rather choice, well cooked, and well served. Mr. Langstroth, it was understood, depended a good deal for his health of mind as well as of body upon the due observance of such things. Soon after they had begun, Gilbert observed carelessly that they hadn’t seen Michael all day; he had expected him to dinner.

‘He’s dining at Balder Hall,’ said Otho, even more curtly than usual.

‘Ah! Had he arrived when you left?’

‘No.’

‘And how was my future sister-in-law?’

‘She said she was all right,’ was the gruff reply, as Otho fixed his eyes for a moment upon Gilbert, a little defiantly, one might almost have said. Nothing more was said about any of these topics—Balder Hall, or Michael, or Magdalen. When dinner was over, and they had gone back to the library, Gilbert settled his father with the greatest care, arranging with his own hands his easy-chair, small table, reading-lamp, and all his other requisites.

‘You won’t mind my leaving you for an hour or two?’ he asked.

‘Not at all, Gilbert. You want some air and exercise. Go and get it.’

‘Would you like me to ask the doctor to call in?’

‘No, no,’ was the somewhat testy reply. ‘I see him often enough, without you asking him to come.’

‘Michael is sure to look in on his way home, but I shall most likely be back by then.—Now, Otho, if you’re ready.’

As they stepped out of the house, they became aware that a change had fallen over the weather, which had been cold. The sky was full of rack, driven rapidly across it by a strong yet soft south-west wind. The moon gleamed fitfully through the clouds, and a gush of rain was blown against their faces.

‘Halloa! Raining!’ exclaimed Gilbert. ‘Do you mind a drop of rain?’ he added, ‘or will you ride home?’

‘Oh, I’m not afraid of a little weather,’ replied Otho. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Where you have never been yet,’ said his companion. ‘Down to the Townend, as they call it. Come along. It isn’t much out of our way to Thorsgarth.’

Otho followed in a docile manner. Now that he had got what he seemed to have been aiming at, his tête-à-tête with Gilbert, all traces of sullenness and impatience had vanished. Bulldogs, surly to all the world beside, are tame and obedient to their masters; and there was a good deal of the bulldog in the way in which Otho followed Gilbert about.

When they had got through the busiest and most inhabited part of the town, they found themselves almost alone in a steep street, descending rapidly towards the river. As they got farther down it, the houses gradually became more bare and rough-looking; and, some of them, more and more ancient in appearance. Looking down the hill, it appeared as if the street ended in a cul de sac, as if there were no egress that way from Bradstane town. And the wall which appeared to shut the place in, and block up the road at that side, consisted of the frontage of two high factories. There was in reality a narrow passage between them, through which access was obtained to the river, and by means of which one arrived at an iron footbridge, ugly, but useful. This could not be perceived at the distance they now were from the mills.

‘What on earth do you want down here?’ growled Otho, between two puffs at his pipe.

‘We possess a bit of property down there,’ Gilbert answered him. ‘It is perfectly meaningless and perfectly useless to us. It cumbers the ground, and has swallowed up a pot of money which we ought to be enjoying the benefit of now. I sometimes walk down to it, to look at it, and think what a folly it was. “Langstroth’s Folly,” it ought to be called. Townend Mills is the name it actually bears. There it is!’ as the moon shone out brightly for a few minutes, and showed the dark mass of the factories rising almost directly in front of them.

‘You’re a queer one!’ said Otho, not without a kind of admiration in his tones. ‘Where’s the sense of fretting yourself by coming and looking at it? It’s like trying to heal a raw by scraping.’

‘Your simile would be just, if I did irritate myself,’ replied Gilbert, gently. ‘My dear Otho’—he spoke impressively, and laid his hand for a moment on the other’s arm—‘I never let anything irritate me. I make it a rule——’

‘Never—I never say never,’ said Otho. ‘No saying what will turn up. Leave it to chance. That’s the best way. Besides, Mag—some one was saying to me, only the other day, that it’s only very young people who never do what they oughtn’t.’

It was on the tip of Gilbert’s tongue to say, ‘I know I am young, but, then, I have taken care to be very wise, too,’ because we are apt to blurt out the thoughts nearest our hearts. But he said quietly—

‘Yes, I know I am young, but I have had a good deal to do that generally falls to older people. With Michael choosing to leave us and take his own way, I have had a good deal to think about, and a good deal of help to give to my poor governor in his business affairs; and I soon found that, if you want to get on at all in business, you must keep your temper, especially when you are a poor man, with fallen fortunes, against the world——’

‘Be hanged if I could ever keep my temper about business, or anything else that went wrong with me!’

‘Ah, you can afford to lose your temper,’ said Gilbert, in a cold voice, which caused Otho hastily to say that he had meant no offence; and Gilbert proceeded—

‘So, as I say, I don’t let the Townend Mills irritate me, though one might get irritated enough about them if one would; but I come and smoke my pipe, and walk round them now and again, and think quietly. I feel as if I might, some time or other, have a good idea on the subject, you know—an idea that might be worked into something. Don’t you trouble yourself about them. I won’t detain you long. Here we are!’

They had entered the long, narrow passage between the mills. It was now late, getting near ten o’clock, for they had not left the Red Gables till after nine. The clouded sky made the night darker—a darkness which was deepened, if anything, by the occasional gleams of moonlight when the rack parted. At the end of the passage there was visible a kind of gray shimmer, and in the intervals between the gusts of wind they could hear the rush of the river.

‘Wherever one goes, one comes upon that river,’ exclaimed Otho, not as if he were much delighted with the fact.

‘Yes. Tees keeps us pretty well aware of his presence. It’s as twisted and crooked a stream as any in England, I should imagine. There are the mills, Askam. Now, I’ll tell you my object in life, if you like.’

‘What is it?’ asked Otho, with deep and unfeigned interest.

‘I wish—at least, I intend to overcome the obstacle raised in my way by the idiot who built these mills. I like overcoming obstacles. I intend, some day, either to have them sold, and the price of them in my pocket, or else to see them filled with machinery, and working again at a profit.’

‘But you don’t understand how to manage mills,’ said Otho diffidently.

‘No, but I understand how to manage men. And I know a fellow who understands how to manage mills—Roger Camm. Do you remember Roger Camm? He used to be a playfellow of ours—the curate’s son.’

‘A swarthy fellow, very big and strong, who always looked rather hungry, and yet always said he wasn’t when we used to go in to tea?’[tea?’]

‘The same. I see you have an accurate memory. I guess he was hungry too, poor beggar. He was over here, a year or two ago, stopping with Michael; they are great chums. And he told me all about himself. He cut the Church. He said his governor never got anything out of it but water-porridge and civil contempt from people who weren’t as good as himself. He was rather bitter about it. Anyhow, he cut it, as I say, and took to the intelligent working-man line. He is foreman in a Manchester factory now, and he knows something about it all, I can tell you. I made him promise that when I sent for him he’d come and take the management of this concern—“run it” for me, as they say in America.’

‘Ah, and when will that be?’

‘When I find my purchaser or tenant,’ said Gilbert, as suavely as ever. ‘He told me all the reasons why these would never succeed as cotton factories—they are the only mills in the place; the station is a mile and a half away, and there is a steep hill, nearly half a mile long, from here to the top of the town. Oh, I’ve mastered the subject. Jute—that is what I shall do with them—spin jute, and get women and girls out of Bridge Street for hands.’

‘Yes?’ said Otho, tentatively, really interested, and ardently wishing that he understood a little more about it. ‘And your father and—brother?’ Michael’s name seemed rather to stick in his throat.

‘My father says he only wishes I could. Michael is dead against it. Michael would like to pull the whole place down.’

‘What for?’ asked Otho, sharply.

‘Because he’s a fool,’ was Gilbert’s reply. The intimacy between him and Otho had, it would seem, progressed quickly.

‘Because he’s a fool,’ repeated young Askam, leaning his elbows on the balustrade of the bridge, to which they had now advanced, and staring down into the rushing brown river. The expression on the face, which the darkness concealed, was not a pleasant one. ‘Curse him!’ he muttered to himself, so low that even Gilbert did not hear him; but the river carried the sound, along with all the other messages with which it was laden, towards the sea.

‘Come along!’ said Gilbert, after a brief, silent pause. ‘There’s no use staying here any longer.’

Otho raised himself from the bridge, and they retraced their way through the silent passage, up the steep street, and to where a road to the right led in the direction of Thorsgarth. They had not spoken a word since leaving the mills.

‘I think it’s rather late for me to be going with you,’ said Gilbert, hesitating at the corner.

‘Not a bit! What’s ten o’clock? You’ve got a key, I suppose? You said you would come,’ said Otho, rapidly, and almost savagely. ‘And I want to speak to you.’

‘Oh, I am willing, and—well, Michael will see my father again before he goes to bed—sure to. He will be leaving Balder Hall by now, I daresay. They keep early hours there.’

‘Where there’s an old woman like that precious Aunt Martha, they must,’ said Otho. ‘Look here, Gilbert, how did your brother Michael get Magdalen Wynter to accept him?’

‘By being the only man in the world who proposed to her, or was likely to do so,’ said Gilbert, cynically.

‘I don’t see that. She is the handsomest woman I ever saw.’

‘She hasn’t a penny, and won’t have. She isn’t popular—but the reverse, and no man, except Michael, ever penetrates within those walls—oh, and you,’ he added, with a laugh, as he turned to Otho.

‘You haven’t accounted for it yet,’ said the latter, sullenly.

‘Well, say she was in love with him.’

‘In love with my eye!’

Gilbert laughed again. ‘I give it up,’ said he. ‘It’s a conundrum I have often set myself, to no purpose. Michael is ten thousand times too good for her; but that’s nothing to the point. I don’t know why she took him.’

‘She ordered me off this afternoon, because he was coming to dinner,’ Otho said, in a voice of choking anger. ‘She told me my whole body wasn’t worth his little finger. She——’

‘You might be in love with her yourself,’ suggested Gilbert; and, indeed, a less astute observer might have been struck with the same idea.

‘I’ll be hanged if I am—insolent minx!’ retorted Otho, savagely. ‘No girl shall behave to me as she has done, with impunity. She shall pay for it. But, tell me, how long were they in making it up?’

‘Oh, not long; about six weeks. He was home for his holidays one summer, and we were talking together in front of the house. Miss Strangforth’s carriage, with her and Magdalen in it, drove by. The old lady saw us bowing, and stopped. I introduced Michael; he fell in love on the spot, then and there, over head and ears. Martha asked him to drive with them, and he drove. Drove deeper and deeper into love, I suppose; and—yes, it was just six weeks later, they were together at a picnic to Cauldron, and they returned engaged. My father has never got over it.’

‘How?’ asked Otho, in the same strangled voice.

‘He thought it so idiotic and imprudent. And so it was, and is. But Michael had become a man over the doing of it. They stuck to it, and they have stuck to it ever since. Some day, I suppose they will be married; but I don’t know when.’

Otho made absolutely no reply to this prophecy. They turned in at the Thorsgarth gates, and the subject was dropped. But Gilbert knew now why Otho had given them his company at dinner, and why he himself had been so earnestly pressed to go back to Thorsgarth after their walk.

CHAPTER IV
THE FACULTY OF CLOSE OBSERVATION

One night, during the winter which followed the conversation between Otho and Gilbert, a large ball was given at a well-known house in the neighbourhood of Bradstane, and present at it were both the Langstroth brothers, Magdalen Wynter, and even Otho Askam, little as he loved such entertainments. Perhaps Gilbert had persuaded him to go.

Magdalen was chaperoned by a good-natured matron, who had married off all her own girls with credit and renown, and could therefore afford to witness with complacent amusement the gaspings and stugglings of those who were still, as Otho might elegantly have put it, ‘in the running.’ She had not that dislike to Magdalen which animated more interested persons; she admired her beauty, and considered her ‘good form.’ Magdalen herself had never looked better than she did that night, or more haughtily and superbly independent of all outside support. She was richly attired, for Miss Strangforth liked her niece to dress splendidly. She danced very seldom; it had never been her habit to do so often; and as not even her rivals, while in possession of their senses, would have dreamed of saying that this was because she could not get partners, and as her sitting out usually involved also the sitting out of some man who would otherwise have been free to dance with another girl, and as the said men always looked perfectly happy and satisfied in their inactivity at such times,—her habit did not in any way make her more popular.

To-night it was observed that she danced twice with her betrothed, twice with Otho Askam, and once with Gilbert. Perhaps that might have been endured without much adverse criticism, but it was noticed also, and bitterly noticed, that Otho danced with no one else, though both Michael and Gilbert did.

On the following afternoon, Gilbert, returning from a solitary, meditative ride, far into the country—such a ride as he loved to take, and did take, almost every day—found himself outside the palings at one side of the Balder Hall Park. Looking over them, he saw within the figure of Magdalen Wynter. She was pacing quickly up and down a sort of woodland path, which in summer must have been almost concealed, but which was now plainly visible between the trunks of the naked trees—visible, at any rate, to Gilbert as he sat on horseback. There was a broad belt of rough grass, in which grew ferns, and from which also rose the leafless trees just spoken of. Then came the path on which Miss Wynter was walking, and beyond that a glade, sloping steeply down to where Tees flowed by in one of his many curves.

Gilbert saw a dark, close cap of velvet, and a pale face which drooped somewhat beneath it, a long, fur-bordered mantle tightly clipped around the wearer’s form, the bottom of a crimson kilting peeped beneath it, and a pair of small, well-shod feet. Her back was turned to him, and he stopped and looked over the palings till she turned, lifted her head, and saw him. She gave a little start.

‘Oh, Gilbert, how quietly you must have come!’

‘Not so very. The ground is hard and frosty, and my horse’s hoofs rang. It is your deep thoughts, Magdalen, which render you deaf to outside things.’

She had walked across the grass, which was dry and hard, and crunched frostily under her feet, up to the paling, and held up her hand to him. Gilbert rarely met his future sister-in-law, and it has been seen that in speaking of her to his friend, Otho Askam, he did not employ terms exactly of enthusiasm; but if ever they did encounter each other, whether by chance or design, he was always scrupulously amiable and polite to her. Whether this meeting had come about by chance—whether he had intended that it should come about—this is a thing known only to himself. As he looked down now, into the marble paleness and wonderful beauty of the girl’s face, he gave no sign, and she said to him—

‘Are you riding alone?’

‘Yes, just as you see me. I have been a long way—nearly to Middleton-in-Teesdale.’

‘I have been walking for an hour, up and down this path. I am beginning to find it rather monotonous, and am going in for some tea. Will you come and have some, too?’

‘With pleasure, if you can put up with such a feeble substitute for my brother. I think the North Lodge is just round here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I will meet you there. Then we can walk to the house together.’

They did so, Gilbert dismounting at the lodge, and leading his horse. The short winter day was closing in, gray and cold, as they went up the avenue.

‘How did you enjoy the dance?’ he asked.

‘Not much. I never do. Did you?’

‘I always enjoy watching other people’s little games.’

She gave a short laugh. ‘Do you mean mine?’

‘Yours—nay. How can you have any?’

‘Just what I was going to say. I mean, if you were looking for what you call “games” with me, your trouble must have been wasted, that’s all.’

‘Of course. No; I meant all the other girls, and their mothers, and the men, too, for that matter.’

She laughed again, shortly and contemptuously.

‘And Otho Askam,’ he pursued tranquilly.

Magdalen looked up. ‘What? Has he got plans, or “games,” as you call them?’

‘I was amused to see his devotion to you last night, and what a rage those women were in about it. His game is to avoid all the girls whom he might possibly be supposed to be desirous of marrying. He told me so. He is mortally afraid of being trapped. And of course, he is even more afraid of the mothers than of the girls. You are quite harmless, you see. You are promised to Michael. He feels so safe and happy with you.’

‘Poor, innocent lamb!’

‘Isn’t he? It shows how blindly he trusts in your probity, and in your devotion to Michael. He comes to Balder Hall sometimes, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘He never asks me to go with him.’

‘No?’

‘It is so amusing, I think. What does Michael say to it?’

‘Michael—oh, he laughs, and says it is very good of me to let him come, and that it is a good sign for Mr. Askam’s future career that he frequents any decent society at all,’ she said, with a short, dry laugh, of which Gilbert’s answering one seemed an echo, so much were they alike in tone.

‘How beautiful of him! When you are married to him, Magdalen,’ he added, speaking very slowly, and openly watching her face—‘when you are married to Michael, and fairly established as Mrs. Langstroth, for which consummation you have waited so faithfully and so patiently,’—he dwelt upon all his words—‘I should say that then Michael would find it rather a bore to have Otho Askam coming in, and you would, too. Don’t you think so?’

‘How can I tell? I should say that Otho Askam would find it a bore himself, when I am married to Michael, if ever I should be. As you say, I have waited a long time, and I may have a longer one yet to wait, before I am Michael’s wife.’

She spoke with a dead monotony of tone, and a no less monotonous expression in her face. They stood now in front of the house. Magdalen beckoned to a gardener’s boy, and told him to send a groom for Gilbert’s horse, after which they went into the house, into Magdalen’s sitting-room, and she cast off her fur cloak, and began to make tea, with the firelight shining on her crimson gown. Gilbert sat in a low chair and watched her, but said nothing. Only when she handed him his cup of tea, he said softly—

‘Magdalen, I do wish you and Michael could be married to-morrow.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Then your life would be brighter.’

‘Who told you it was dull?’

‘All your actions and words tell me so.’

‘You and I are what they call quiet people,’ she remarked. ‘Not impressionable, and all that kind of thing.’

‘I believe that is the general opinion of our characters.’

‘Well, and people also seem to think that such creatures—pachydermatous, don’t they call animals with thick skins——’

‘Has Michael been lending you some science primers to while away the time in the winter evenings? What a happy thought of his!’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘They do—pachydermatous is the word.’

‘They seem to think that, because we are not all on fire, and jerking about, for nothing, we can do without any excitement at all.’

‘I have observed the existence of the delusion you speak of. Yes, thank you, I will have some more cake.’

‘I don’t know what you think, but I feel to want more excitement than most people, and I get less. Last night, if I could have been sure that Michael would not have misunderstood me, I would have danced every dance with Otho Askam, if the result had been that not a woman would have spoken to me at the end of the evening. That’s the kind of feeling I have.’

‘I can quite understand it. I wish you would have tried the experiment—say with me.’

‘That would not have been at all the same thing. You are a very good young man, and Otho Askam is considered rather a bad one.’

‘Michael is the best of us all.’

‘It is not that I like bad people, but I like to sing in a different key from that used by all the rest. I should like to see them all looking as if the world were coming to an end.... By the way, Gilbert, are you such a very good young man? They say you are too great a friend of that timid creature we have been talking about, who only dances with engaged girls, to be very good.’

Gilbert started—within himself, not outwardly, stirred his tea, and said carelessly—

‘Perhaps I cultivate him for reasons like your own—because I am dull, and it makes people vexed.’

‘Perhaps. He is very rich, of course. Gilbert, you have wished me such good wishes about Michael, it is only fair that I should wish you well in return. I wish Otho Askam would relieve you of those factories that I have heard you speak of. Then there would be more money in your coffers, and perhaps more chance of that marriage coming off, of which you have been speaking so kindly.’

‘You are very good,’ said Gilbert, laying down his empty cup; ‘but gentlemen are not in the habit of twisting their friends’ pockets inside out, for their own advantage.’

‘Oh no! But if the friend had a leaning towards commercial enterprise—a speculative spirit. It would be an amusement for him.’

‘If he had. But you know as well as I do that his tastes are not of that kind, but of the turf, turfy.’

Magdalen smiled, and said, ‘I know that his tastes are for anything exciting, anything highly flavoured. What will you wager that he is tired of the turf in a year from now?’

‘Nothing at all. If I did wager on that subject, I would wager to the contrary.’

‘Well, I think his superfluous cash would be more respectably employed in setting your factories going.’

Here a loud ring sounded through the house.

‘I should not wonder if that were Michael calling,’ said Magdalen, and she spoke in hurried tones. ‘Remember, Gilbert, not a word of this. I feel better for speaking to you; and Michael is good, oh, so much better than any of us! And he has cares of his own. And you will be my brother, some day. Do you understand?’

‘My dear Magdalen, of course! Do not distress yourself, pray. There is no need,’ he assured her, as Michael entered.

‘Why, Gilbert, that is well,’ said he, with a look of great pleasure. ‘I have often wished that you could spare time to ride out and have a chat with Magdalen now and then. Where did you meet?’

Michael sat half an hour, and then the brothers rode home in company. Magdalen, when the two young men had left her, sat for a long time over the fire, gazing into its glow, her elbows propped on her knees.

‘Gilbert is very observant—remarkably observant,’[observant,’] she thought to herself. ‘Who would have thought that he would see so quickly, and Michael be so blind? And yet again, Gilbert sees, but sees only to dissect—without any feeling, unless it be a feeling of pleasure in showing one his power. Michael does not see, but if he did he would sympathise. He is grand—at least, he would be if he were awake. With all his love for me, I have not been able to awaken him. His time is yet to come. Sympathise—yes; but what is sympathy? He can’t give me what I want. Here am I, beautiful, yes, very beautiful, and very strong, and with some brains in my head, though they all think I have none. And I have to live, to vegetate, that is, as if I were some worn-out old woman, as if I were my own great-aunt. It is horrible, horrible, and I do not know how long I shall be able to bear it.’