By Leslie Moore

The Peacock Feather
The Jester
The Wiser Folly

“FOR ALL HIS OUTWARD CALM, FOR ALL HIS LEVEL, EASY, CARELESS
VOICE, HIS HEART WAS IN A TUMULT.”
Drawn by D. C. Hutchison (See page [179].)

THE WISER FOLLY

BY

LESLIE MOORE

AUTHOR OF “THE PEACOCK FEATHER,” ETC.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1916

Copyright, 1916

BY
LESLIE MOORE

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

The Wiser Folly

PROLOGUE

When the Delancey affair had been brought to a conclusion, it was not uninteresting to note the various opinions set forth regarding its happy termination.

Biddy, at once autocrat and indulger of at least three generations of juvenile Delanceys, maintained, and stoutly, it was entirely due to her own prayers to her patron saint. She took, so to speak, a monopoly of the business as far as any human agency was concerned. But, as one cannot, with any degree of modesty, parade one’s private devotions to the world at large, it was hardly probable that this view of the matter would be universal.

The village in general, with the exception of Mrs. Trimwell, laid the whole credit at the feet of Lady Mary Delancey. Doubtless this was on account of the wave of relief which had surged over it, and which exalted her ladyship, for the time being at least, to a pinnacle of almost giddy height.

Mrs. Trimwell had her own private views on the matter. What they were, will, no doubt, be realized later.

Corin Elmore believed the whole thing due to karma, though it is true that this particular arrangement of karma puzzled him not a little.

John Mortimer, while maintaining on the whole a strictly neutral attitude, allowed his opinion of the credit due to sway slightly, if it swayed at all, in the direction of his sister Elizabeth. And in so doing, he swayed nearer the mark, if you will believe me, than the majority of folk with opinions on the subject.

Father Maloney was heard to announce that “surely to goodness the fella himself might be allowed a taste of the credit.” The “fella” was David Delancey. But more of him anon. Father Maloney made the announcement with a twinkle in his eye, and a slight exchange of glances with Lady Mary. That exchange of glances puzzled more than one of those who had happened to surprise it. Its meaning, however, was never fathomed. There was no question but that Lady Mary and the priest were past masters in keeping their own counsel when they chose. He would be a bold man who put any question savouring of impertinence to Lady Mary. For my part, I had sooner face a whole battery of artillery than have Lady Mary’s tortoiseshell-rimmed lorgnettes turned slowly upon me, her grey eyes glinting through them with steely courtesy. The courtesy was never absent, you may be sure, but then neither—on occasions—was the steeliness. Nor would it be well, if you wished to retain the smallest atom of self-respect, to question Father Maloney unduly. That soft tongue and speech of his could shrivel your complacency to the likeness of a withered leaf when you deserved it. And you may be very sure that, when they did shrivel it, you were left in no manner of doubt as to your deserts in the matter.

Lady Mary herself never ventured the smallest hint of an opinion as to whom the credit was due. In fact from first to last she kept a dignified silence on the whole affair, save when sheer necessity demanded speech from her. Her silence and dignity alone prevented it from sinking to melodrama, and truth obliges me to confess that it had more than once a distinctly suspicious flavour of that obnoxious quality.

But this is beginning at the wrong end of the skein, a proceeding which will indubitably result in a most fearsome tangle. Therefore, with your permission, I will break off and start anew.

CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE VILLAGE OF MALFORD

“Your idea,” said John meditatively, “as far as I can elucidate it from your somewhat wordy discourse, is that I should accompany you to this exceedingly out-of-the-way, this on your own showing entirely remote, secluded, and sequestered spot, for the sole purpose of affording you amusement in your so to speak out of work hours.”

“That,” returned Corin admiringly, “is the idea in toto. It is marvellous with what ease and skill you have grasped and summed up the entire situation.”

John sighed.

“And might one be allowed to question what are the advantages to be gained from such a sojourn? What manner of recreation can the place afford? In a word, where do I come in?”

“Advantages!” Corin raised his eyes to the cobwebby rafters. “Heavens above! Isn’t my companionship an advantage? And for recreation what more can you desire than the contemplation of country lanes and wide moorland this glorious summer weather? Think of it, man! The earth ablaze with purple heather, the sea blue and golden,—breathing, living, colour. Anon there will be blackberries, great luscious clusters of blue-black fruit hanging ready for the plucking in every hedgerow. Again, I ask, what more can you desire?”

John smiled grimly.

“I am not, I would have you observe, either an artist or a boy. Your inducements fail to move me.”

“My companionship,” urged Corin.

“The blatant conceit of the man,” sighed John.

Corin changed his tone, descended to wheedling. “Consider my loneliness,” he remarked pathetically. “From six o’clock—I can’t put in more than an eight-hour day—till midnight alone and unoccupied. Six hours!”

“Go to bed at nine and reduce the six hours by a simple process of subtraction to three, or play patience,” returned John unsympathetically.

“Inhuman brute,” mourned Corin.

John merely laughed.

He was a tall young man, thirty or thereabouts, clean-shaven, bronzed, grey-eyed, and with a thin hooked nose. His mouth, below it, was slightly grim in repose. But, when he smiled, you forgot the grimness, and smiled involuntarily in response. Also, you found yourself watching for the smile to come into play a second time. It had a curious manner of leaping first to his eyes in a sudden and illuminating flash. Deserting them, it passed equally suddenly to his mouth, leaving the eyes sad. It was a disconcerting trick, a baffling magician’s trick, and left you wondering. In the matter of dress he was fastidious to a degree. At the moment his attire was the most immaculate suit of London clothes, grey trousers, frock coat, and all the rest of the paraphernalia. His silk hat, exceeding glossy, reposed on a worm-eaten oak chair near him. He had removed a pile of sketch books and a bunch of dilapidated lilies to make place for the hat. They lay now on the floor.

With Corin, by contrast, clothes were a matter of necessity as mere covering, and no more. His tweed trousers and Norfolk jacket had an out-all-night-in-the-wet-and-then-sat-upon air. In two words they looked loosely crumpled. Paint spots adorned the left sleeve, in the crook of the elbow where his palette was wont to rest. His soft collar, attached to his shirt, was unbuttoned, and merely held together by a smoke-grey tie. Briefly, in the matter of clothes, he was the prototype of the modern novelist’s art-student,—the type that emerges paint-stained, careless-clad, cheerfully Bohemian, from the chapters of such novels as deal with the art world in Chelsea.

But here it behoves me to walk warily lest I should hear a whisper of “glass houses,” for does not this very Corin himself dwell in that most fascinating region of London? Is not his studio within a bare five minutes of the dirty, muddy, grey, but wholly adorable Thames, where it drifts past Carlyle’s statue, smoke-grimed and weather-worn, and on past the old herbalist’s garden set back across the street?

In face, this same Corin was plump, smooth-skinned, rosy-cheeked, fair-haired, with short-sighted blue eyes that gazed at you kindly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. His own appearance caused him moments of acute anguish.

“Look at me!” he would cry on occasions, having met his reflection in some unexpected mirror in a friend’s house or studio, “Look at me! The soul of an artist, and the appearance of a benign and grown-up baby! If I didn’t know my own nature and character, I vow I’d be taken in. I am taken in when I come upon myself in this disgusting and unexpected fashion. Who’s that odd, kindly, little pink-faced man? I ask myself. And then I realize it’s me, me, ME! And, even while I’m swearing at the sight of myself, I look no more than a cross baby yelling for its feeding bottle. Talk of purgatory! I get ten years of it every time I come opposite a looking-glass. The things ought to be abolished. They ought to be ground to powder, scattered like dust to the four winds of heaven. They merely pander to woman’s vanity. No man wants to look into one. If he looks like a man he doesn’t bother about it. If he looks like me—” At this juncture his anguish would become too acute for further speech.

There was a pause in the conversation, quite an appreciable pause, seeing that it lasted at least two and three-quarter minutes. Then:

“So the matter is definitely settled,” announced Corin with an air of finality, “and on Tuesday next you and I, a couple of boon companions, wend our way to the charming, the altogether adorable and old-world village of Malford, situated, so the guide-books tell us, precisely seven miles from Whortley station, as the crow flies. Why as the crow flies,” he continued ruminatively, “I have never been able to fathom. The information is of remarkably small use to the feathered species, and I have not yet been able to grasp what precise and particular use it is to mankind at large.”

John, whose attention had been wandering, roused himself.

“For sheer pertinacity,” he remarked suavely, “commend me to one, Corin Elmore, painter, poet, musician, theosophist, and fortune-teller; in short, dabbler in the arts and the occult sciences.”

“At all events you can hear Mass at Malford,” retorted Corin succinctly. It would appear that “dabbler in the occult sciences” had pricked.

“Truly?” John’s tone was politely interrogative. “At what distance from Malford, as the crow flies?”

“You can hear Mass in Malford, in the Chapel, in Delancey Castle.” The statement was triumphant.

“Delancey Castle!” ejaculated John. For the first time interest, genuine interest, stirred in his voice. He began, in a manner of speaking, to sit up and take notice.

“Delancey Castle,” reiterated Corin. And then suspiciously, “But why this sudden interest?”

“Merely that I have heard of the place,” said John nonchalantly.

“Who hasn’t?” Corin’s voice was faintly edged with scorn. “One of the oldest baronial castles in England; situated in a park famed for its oaks and copper beeches; Norman in origin, enlarged during the Tudor period; minstrel’s gallery, secret chambers, terraced gardens. From all accounts it breathes the very essence of romance and bygone forgotten days. Heavens above! were there indeed tongues in trees, and sermons in stones, I’ll swear there’s many a tale those old walls and the trees around them might disclose.”

“It is a matter for devout thanks,” returned John piously, “that the tongue of Nature wags, in a manner of speaking, rather in accordance with our mood of the moment than by any actual physical volition of its own. We have quite enough to do to stop our ears to the human tongues around us. But, seriously, I had no idea that Delancey Castle was situated in this sequestered spot of yours.”

“Sequestered spot of mine!” ejaculated Corin. “I lay no claim to the spot. It exists not for my benefit, save in so far, I would have you note, as certain pecuniary advantages will accrue to me for work done in its lonely regions. Nevertheless Delancey Castle is situated there, unless some good or evil genius has seen fit to remove it piecemeal since last Thursday week. I saw it on that date with my own eyes, ‘set on an eminence’—again the guide-books—‘above the small village of Malford. Glimpses of its rugged grey towers may be observed among the lordly oaks and magnificent copper beeches for which the park is justly famed.’ I refer you to page one hundred and twenty-two of Sanderson’s Guide to Country Houses for the accuracy of my quotation.” He broke off to light a fresh cigarette, then looked at John, challenging him through his gold-rimmed spectacles.

“Oh, I’ll not question the accuracy of your quotation,” retorted John. “But how about your former statement regarding the situation of the Castle? You stated it was in the village. Now I learn it is on an eminence above it.”

“Hark to the quibbler!” cried Corin.

“Not at all,” returned John. “A Castle on an eminence is a very different pair of shoes from a Castle in a village, especially when it is incumbent upon one to seek that said Castle in order to fulfil one’s devotional obligations.”

“If,” said Corin reflectively, “I were a Catholic—don’t get excited, there’s no smallest prospect of your ever claiming me as a convert—but if I were a Catholic, I should not be so disgustingly slack about my religion as to object to walking up a small hill in order to attend my religious services.”

“I never said I objected to walking up a small hill,” remarked John. “I was merely pointing out the inaccuracy of your former statement.”

Corin sighed patiently. “You make me tired with your quibbling. And that last remark distinctly wanders from the truth.”

John smiled, not deigning further reply. It began as a small pitying smile for Corin’s weakness of retort, it continued with a hint of pleasure, a tiny secret excitement as at the possibility of the fulfilment of some concealed desire. His heart had beaten at least three degrees quicker at the mention of Delancey Castle, and it had not yet resumed its normal gentle throbbing.

He waited silent. There was now but one thought uppermost in his mind. Yet he could not voice it. The renewed suggestion—it surely would be renewed—must come from Corin. For John to give spontaneous hint of yielding in the matter of recent discussion would be to run the risk—though possibly merely a faint risk—of giving himself away. Faint or blatant, the risk was to be avoided at all cost. He smoked on, therefore, imperturbable, his eyes for the most part on a desk in a corner of the studio, an extremely untidy desk, covered with papers that looked for all the world as if they had been tossed thereon by a whirlwind, and then stirred by an exceedingly vigorous arm wielding a pitchfork. Yet, for all that his eyes were upon the desk, his thoughts were upon Corin.

“Speak, man, speak,” he was urging him by that mental process which is termed “willing.” “Renew your persuasions; beg me again to accompany you on your lonely sojourn.”

But either Corin was no medium, or John was no medium,—I have never been fully able to fathom whether the willer, or the willed, or both must be possessed of the mediumistic faculties for satisfactory results to accrue,—certain it is that Corin sat placidly silent, apparently entirely oblivious of John’s mental efforts in his direction.

Willing can be an exhausting process, at all events to one who is not an adept in the art. In John’s case, as the vigour of his efforts increased, his muscles grew tighter and tighter, till his very toes curled with spasmodic tension inside his shiny, polished, patent-leather boots, while a portentous frown drew his eyebrows firmly together till they practically met above his thin hooked nose.

Corin, glancing suddenly in his direction, surprised an almost anguished expression of countenance.

“Are you ill?” he ejaculated dismayed, and with a swift half-movement towards the cupboard where the brandy decanter was situated.

John’s face relaxed on the instant.

“Not in the least, thank you.”

“Then what on earth were you making such faces about?” demanded Corin.

“I was not aware that I was making faces,” said John with some dignity. “I was merely thinking.”

“Thinking!” Corin’s light arched eyebrows rose nearly to his fair hair. “Then, man, for Heaven’s sake don’t do it again. It’s—it’s really dangerous.”

John heaved himself out of his chair, bitterly conscious of the futility of his efforts.

“Going?” said Corin. And then solicitously, “Sure you’re really all right?”

“Quite, thanks,” returned John with faint asperity.

Corin strolled with him to the door. John was half-way down the stairs when he heard a voice call after him:

“I’ll let you know about the train on Tuesday.”

John halted, turned.

“Well, really!” he ejaculated.

CHAPTER II
A RUMOUR

That evening John wrote a letter to his sister, Mrs. Darcy, who lived in Ireland. The letter contained the following paragraphs:

“I am going down to Malford on Tuesday, an out-of-the-way spot near Whortley. Corin Elmore—the painter fellow, you know who I mean—has bothered me into it. He has got a job there, uncovering and restoring the mural paintings in a pre-reformation church. All seems grist that comes to his mill. Apparently the only attractions the place has to offer are gorgeous scenery, and later a superabundance of blackberries, if I choose to await their ripening. I don’t know for how long I shall find such attractions all-satisfying.

“Address after Tuesday next till further notice, The White Cottage, Malford, near Whortley.

“I hope Maurice and the kiddies are flourishing.

“Your loving brother, John.”

The morning before he left town John received a reply to his letter.

“A sojourn, even for a short space, in such a remote region sounds extraordinarily unlike you. Perhaps it will have its compensations. You will deserve them, as I am sure you are doing this entirely on Mr. Elmore’s account. I wonder if you will chance to meet the Delanceys. From all I have heard Lady Mary must be a charming woman, and I once met her granddaughter, Rosamund Delancey. She is an exceedingly pretty girl. Maurice raved about her in a way that might have made a younger, and less experienced, woman than myself jealous.

“I heard an extraordinary rumour some weeks ago regarding the Delancey estate,—that an American claimant had turned up. Personally I gave little credence to the report. It savours too much of melodrama for this prosaic twentieth century. My informant had her facts pat enough, though. But it is too long a story to deal with in a letter, certainly too long when it is, as I believe, pure fiction. Anyhow there’s a missing document, a murder, and a wolf-hound connected with it. True Adelphi melodrama!

“I hope you may chance to meet the Delanceys....”

John glanced up at a small statue of Our Lady, which stood on his mantelpiece.

“Blessed Lady,” he said aloud in a tone at once respectful, fervent, and charmingly friendly, “join your prayers to her hopes.”

CHAPTER III
A MEETING

It was midday in the month of August, the sun ablaze upon wood and field. Only under the trees and hedges the shadows lay blue and still,—intensely, deeply blue, the warm restful blue of summer shadows. Overhead stretched another blue, a vault of brilliant azure, a vast cup-shaped dome, spreading downwards from the illimitable space above, to the hazy distant hills, to the far-off peacock-blue sea, sun-kissed and radiant. The warm earth breathed forth the languorous yet wide-eyed repose of perfect summer. Here was Nature at the maturest moment of her beauty,—the fields golden with full-eared corn, waiting in the richness of their dower for the first stroke of the sickle; the moors purple with heather, and rich with a hidden wealth of whortleberries; the hedges hung with clusters of scarlet brambleberries, even now tinged with the deeper hue of ripeness.

On a gate, set, after the general manner of gates in the west of England, between two hedges, one to the right and another to the left, sat our friend John. From the gate, a view stretched before him, which many an artist might have been excused for attempting to seize and transfer to canvas.

In the foreground stood a birch tree, a slender, dainty, silver-barked thing, rising straight out of a purple mass of heather. Its fairy lightness was backgrounded by a wood of firs, while past it, to the right, you got a stretch of undulating moorland across a valley, a strip of blue sea, and a hazy coast line of white cliffs.

“It really might be called a fine view,” said John aloud. And then he broke off, for a voice had sounded behind him,—a very young voice, a clear treble.

“There’s a man sitting on the gate.” The statement was made with the frank obviousness of childhood.

John swung himself off the said gate, and turned. This latter proceeding was distinctly simpler to accomplish from the safety of solid earth than from the topmost of five bars. Doubtless his guardian angel prompted the action, for, on the moment of turning, his heart jumped, leaped, and pounded in a manner peculiarly perilous. Picture his danger with a heart in this condition had he retained his former attitude.

On the other side of the gate, coming across the grass, and not more than twenty paces from him, was a lady accompanied by two small boys.

She was a young lady, tall and slender, in a white linen frock, and a big shady straw hat. Her hair beneath it was red gold, like burnished copper, a vivid note of colour. The two boys, one on either side of her, were clad in emerald green knickerbockers, and soft white shirts. Floppy straw hats were on their heads. Beneath the hats you caught a glimpse of copper-coloured hair. A vivid, vital enough picture they presented. The smaller boy, four years old or thereabouts, gazed solemn-eyed towards the gate; the other, some two years or so his senior, pointed towards our John, his face eager, alive. A stranger was a bit of a rarity in those parts, it would appear.

John saw the woman turn towards the child, caught a hint of murmured words. The boy dropped the pointing hand. Doubtless she had made the suggestion—delicately put of course—that it is not altogether the best of manners to point at strangers, however unexpected their appearance, as if they were some curious beast newly escaped from the Zoo.

The lapse of time, from the first acclamation of John’s position on the gate, to the dropping of that accusing finger, had been of the briefest, nevertheless it had allowed for a few further steps to be taken across the grass, and the distance between John and the three had, at the outset, been none so great. It was clearly obvious that the intention of the three was to pass through the gate. Seeing this, John bent to the fastening. By good luck it was not padlocked. Had it been, it would have spoiled the dainty march of the procession, actually as well as figuratively. He swung the gate open, raising his hat at the same moment. She bent her head, a slight though entirely courteous gesture, gave “thank-you” in a low round voice.

“Now Heaven be praised,” murmured John, “that she did not say ‘thanks.’” By which token it will be seen that John was a trifle fastidious as to modes of expression.

The two boys, having defeated the difficulties of elastic beneath the chin, had likewise removed their hats. They accomplished the restoration of them to their heads with extraordinary dignity. John, beholding the feat, marvelled. Then the little cavalcade of three passed on across the heather.

John gazed after them.

CHAPTER IV
A BLACK AND WHITE GOAT

John gazed after them with longing in his eyes and resentment in his heart. The longing was for the unattainable; the resentment that it should be unattainable.

What a crassly idiotic, what an altogether blindly stupid, doltish, and utterly mulish thing was convention! Here were three young, gay, and delightful creatures enjoying the summer day in company, together revelling in the glowing sun, the caress of the air soft as thistledown upon one’s face, the scent of the flowers and the warm earth, while he—John—was condemned to loneliness, because, forsooth, of the lack of four words. “May I introduce you.”

There was the password, the magic utterance which would have smoothed away all difficulties. It could be spoken carelessly as you please. It could be spoken by his worst enemy with as great effect as by his dearest friend. Without it a barrier, high as the highest peaks of the Andes, loomed between him and them, a barrier to him insurmountable, indestructible, and named, labelled, and placarded in letters at least a foot long, Convention. Small wonder that John fumed inwardly, the while his eyes gazed after the vanishing three, distilled essence of concentrated longing in their depths.

Chance alone could destroy the barrier,—Chance, the freakish, puckish sprite, who sits with watchful eyes, smiling softly, impishly, till the chosen moment arrives. Then, heigh presto! Chance springs light-footed to your aid, is caught by you laughing, or in deadly earnest, according to your needs. And if the latter, and your grasp is sure, you will find it is no longer an impish, freakish sprite you hold, but a very little demon, battling for you, trampling upon well-nigh incredible difficulties, leading you triumphant to victory.

We cannot see Chance coming in deadly earnest to John at the moment. The imp came mischievous, laughing, and perched, if you will believe me, between the horns of a goat,—a large, a black and white, an over-playful goat. It came prancing over the purple crest of the hill, and bounded, curved, and gavotted in the direction of the momentarily unconscious three.

The younger boy was the first to see it. He turned, startled atom, to clutch at the lady’s white dress, thereby causing her to become aware of the presence of the intruder on the scene. The elder boy, likewise made aware of its presence, seized a small stick from among the heather, a fragile enough weapon, but with it he stood his ground, a veritable small champion, facing the enemy boldly.

But think you that Chance, perched between those horns, was to be daunted by a small boy in green knickerbockers, and holding a flimsy stick? Not a bit of it! For no such paltry pretext would he desert our John. I am very sure he but urged the goat forward, its advance in the face of this defence lending greater colour to the danger.

“Oh!” breathed the white-robed lady, her hands going out protectingly to the little figure clutching at her skirts. And then, “Take care, Tony,” on a note of intense anxiety.

Here was the moment supplied by the mischievous imp. John recognized the sprite’s wiles with fine intuition, cried him a fervent word of thanks, and sprang to the rescue.

That Chance had never intended the slightest peril to the three, you may be certain; since, once seized laughing from his perch by John, he joined with him in ordering the goat to retire. Slightly bewildered at this change of front, the goat gazed for a moment with reproachful eyes.

“I was but playing the game you told me to play,” you could fancy him murmuring. Nevertheless, perceiving that the game was indubitably at an end, he indulged in something very akin to a shake of his head, and retired disconsolate whence he had come.

“Oh, thank you,” breathed the lady in white fervently. “Boys, thank—” she paused. “This gentleman” savours too largely of the shop-walker; the word has long since lost its rightful meaning. “Our preserver” smacks of the pedant.

“My name is John Mortimer,” announced John, with one of his inimitable smiles.

“Mr. Mortimer,” she concluded, the word supplied. “I am Rosamund Delancey, and this—” she indicated the whilom champion, “is Antony, and this is Michael. It was very good of you to come to our rescue.”

John murmured the usual polite formula. For the life of him he could find no original observation to make.

“Possibly,” continued Rosamund, half-meditative, a trifle rueful, “the goat intended mere play. But as Biddy, our old nurse, often used to say—and still does, for that matter—‘There’s play and play, and if one of the parties ceases to be liking it, it will be no play at all.’” The little laugh in her eyes found reflection in John’s.

“A very sound maxim,” quoth he. And inwardly he found himself ejaculating, “What an adorable voice, what an altogether flexible, musical and charming voice.”

Rosamund was looking down the heather-covered slope. At the further side, a quarter of a mile or so away, was a hedge, and in the hedge a gate. Beyond the gate was a lane, which, after a series of turns, would lead one eventually to the village and Delancey Castle. This latter, it is perhaps somewhat obvious to remark, was her goal, and the way across the heather towards the gate by far the nearest route to it. Yet how attempt that route with the black and white goat still at large adown the hill, eating sprays of heather—or what appeared to be sprays of heather—in a deceitfully placid and amicable manner?

“I wonder if that goat—” she began, her eyes vaguely troubled, her brow slightly puckered.

“Which way do you want to go?” demanded John promptly, the promptitude mingled with a nice degree of deferential courtesy,—the courtesy quite apparent, the deference a tiny subtle flavour.

“To that gate.” She indicated it.

“Then,” said John, “please allow me to accompany you. I think Antony and I between us will prove a match for goats. I dare to boast on our behalf, since we have already proved our prowess in the matter.”

He threw Antony a glance, a little friendly, understanding glance. By such glances are bonds established that will last a lifetime.

“Me too,” quoth Michael, breaking silence for the first time.

“In very sooth, you too,” said John. “Antony as advance guard,—not more than a couple of paces advance, mind you,—Michael and I on either side. Are we ready? Then, quick march.”

This last was mere pandering to accepted custom. You cannot well say, “Slow march,” though it is what your whole soul intends. Here is a fine illustration of the fact that speech is but a poor mode of expressing a man’s thoughts. And then an inspiration came to him.

“Not too quickly,” said he to the advance guard. “If he thinks we are attempting to elude him, he may pursue us. A nonchalant, a mere careless strolling, will be our wisest course.”

“Oh, do you think he might follow?” cried Rosamund. The suggestion had evidently given cause for renewed anxiety.

“It is possible,” returned John gravely, “though, I fancy, not probable. However, we will take no risks.”

Slowly, therefore, in mere dilatory fashion, they set forth. The goat raised his read to look at them; but, having his orders, he dropped it again towards the heather.

Some hundred yards or so they walked in silence, two, at least, of the party casting occasional furtive glances to the right. John was the first to speak.

“This,” he said, with the air of a man who has just made a discovery, “is really beautiful country.”

“It is your first visit to this neighbourhood?” queried Rosamund.

“My first,” returned John, “but I dare swear it will not be my last. My friend, Corin Elmore, dragged me down here, somewhat against my will at the outset, I’ll allow. He’s uncovering the mural paintings in the church down yonder.”

“Ah!” Rosamund turned towards him, a light of interest in her eyes. “Has he found much?”

“He only started on the job this morning,” returned John. “We arrived last night. But he’s full of confidence. There must be a curious fascination in the work,—delving into the past, bringing traces of bygone, forgotten ages into the light of day.”

“And a certain sadness,” she suggested.

“And a certain sadness,” echoed John, “though I doubt me if Corin experiences it greatly. He’s an anomaly. For all that he’s a poet and a bit of a dreamer, there’s a strain of the scientific dissector running through him. It finds its outlet in theosophic tendencies.” John pulled a wry face.

He had forgotten that he was talking to an absolute stranger. Yet was she a stranger in the true sense of the word? One afternoon—six months ago as we crudely count and label time, though to John it was centuries ago—he had had sight of her, a mere passing glimpse, truly, since it was of length only sufficient to allow of her mounting the steps of the Brompton Oratory, at a moment when John was about to descend them. He had put a question to a friend who was with him. And thenceforth John’s dreams had been coloured—I might almost say suffused—by one subject, a face with dark eyes, framed in copper-coloured hair, and shadowed by a largish black hat. Being, therefore, no stranger to his dreams in spirit, it was small wonder that he regarded her as no stranger to his perceptions in the flesh.

Rosamund looked at him, half amused, half questioning.

“But why theosophic tendencies?” she demanded. “I am,” she added, “peculiarly ignorant of that trend of thought.”

John laughed.

“Nor am I vastly learned, for that matter. If I were to attempt to define I think I should say that, where your scientist pure and simple may deny the existence of God at all, your man, like Corin, with the curious intermixture of a dreamer, acknowledges the existence of this Supreme Power, even endows that Power with a certain mysticism, but at the same time reduces—or attempts to reduce—all the actions and manifestations of the Power to terms comprehensible by the finite understanding.”

“Yes?” she queried. It was evident she desired to hear more.

“Oh,” smiled John, “it’s too complicated an affair to compress into a sentence or two. But take, for instance, pain—the apparently undeserved and ghastly suffering with which one is sometimes brought in contact. Instead of saying, as we do, that there are endless mysteries of pain and suffering which our finite minds cannot possibly understand, they wish to find some quite definite and tangible solution, therefore they adopt the Buddhistic theory of reincarnation and karma. We work out, they say, our karma in each succeeding incarnation for the sins of the last. There is, in their eyes, no such thing as an innocent victim—with one exception. All suffering, even that of the veriest babe, is the suffering it has deserved for former sins.”

“Oh!” A moment she was silent. “How about the exception?”

“The exception, in their eyes, is any great teacher, who, having fulfilled all his own karma, voluntarily returns to teach and aid those in a lower state of evolution. You understand that, according to their theory, a man is bound to return to this earth, whether he will or no, till his debt of karma has been paid. It is only when that debt is paid, that the return becomes voluntary; and, when sought, is purely for the good of mankind.”

She looked across the heather.

“It would seem,” said she reflective, “that even that theory makes something of a call upon faith.”

“It does,” returned John. “And yet you must see that it reduces the mystery of pain to terms capable of being grasped by the human intelligence. It’s the same with every other mystery. There’s the makeshift in the whole business. On the one hand they allow the existence of a God presumably infinite; but, on the other hand, they wish to reduce Him, and His dealings with creation, to terms capable of understanding by their finite intelligence. But I forgot, strictly speaking they would not, I suppose, consider their intelligence finite, since, according to them, there is in every man the potential divinity.”

“What do they mean?” she asked. “Are they talking about the soul?”

“In a sense, yes,” returned John. “But the soul, apparently, has no exact individuality of its own; at least, not a lasting individuality. It is a spark, an atom, of the Great Whole, which when it has developed to its utmost, and finished all its work, including possible return in the body to the earth as a teacher, will eventually receive its reward by becoming merged and absorbed in the Divine Whole from whence it proceeded. Apparently, also, if a soul refuses to develop, it can eventually be extinguished, or what is equivalent to being extinguished.”

“It doesn’t seem exactly a pleasant creed,” said she meditative. “Absorption or extinction, as the two final alternatives, are not what one might term precisely satisfactory to contemplate. It is certainly nicer to believe that one retains one’s individuality.”

“That,” John assured her, “is merely our unconquerable egotism.”

“Then,” she retorted smiling, “let us hope that it is an egotism your friend will shortly acquire.”

There was a little silence. Monsieur le Chèvre had been, for the moment, forgotten. Certainly his own quiet self-effacement was conducive to their forgetfulness of him. They were almost at the gate before she spoke again.

“I suppose,” she remarked tentatively, “your friend is not perverting you to his theories.”

“I trust not,” said John solemnly. And then he added, “I am a Catholic.”

“Oh!” The ejaculation held the tiniest note of pleasure. Then, after a second’s pause. “You know that we have a chapel at the Castle.”

They had gained the lane by now. Antony, who had felt the full responsibility of defence to rest on his shoulders from the moment John’s attention had been occupied by a wholly unintelligible—and probably, in Antony’s eyes, unintelligent—conversation, heaved a deep sigh.

“Goats,” said he, “are horrid things.”

“Do you know,” quoth John, “I really have a slight partiality towards goats myself.”

Which speech would have savoured more strongly of truth had the partiality remained unqualified.

CHAPTER V
MURAL PAINTINGS

John walked up the flagged path of the churchyard. Sounds of work came to him through the little Norman doorway—the beating of hammers, the rasping of saws, the jangle of buckets.

Arrived at the doorway he paused for a moment to look at the scene before him. It would seem almost incredible that order should ever be abstracted from the present chaos, at all events in the space of time proposed. Doorless, windowless,—in the matter of glass,—it was a mere shell of a church, filled with scaffolding, planks, barrows, buckets; echoing with the ceaseless sound of hammering, sawing, chiselling, planing; while, within the shell, the creators of the various noises moved and worked like a handful of restless ants.

John looked towards the scaffolding surrounding the east window. Perched high on a narrow planked platform was Corin, absorbed in his work, entirely lost to the sounds around him.

John picked his way among the scattered débris made for the chancel. Here there was a ladder roped against a lower platform, from whence, by means of a second ladder placed thereon, Corin’s eyrie might be gained. John had his foot on a rung of the first ladder in a trice, swarmed up it, and a second or so later was giving Corin warning of his approach by:

“Behold the little cherub perched aloft.”

Corin turned.

“Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, just come and look.” There was suppressed exultation in his voice.

John scrambled on to the platform, came alongside Corin,—Corin who pointed with a triumphant chisel.

Some half-dozen or so square yards of wall had been cleared of many coats of plaster, and there, on the original groundwork, stood out thin red lines vertical and horizontal, flowers in bold outline.

“Masonry, they call it,” announced Corin, “and the flower is the herb Robert. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Now to the purely uninitiated, to the mere casual observer, the adverb might have appeared unduly extravagant. What, such a one might have demanded, was there in a few crude brush lines to justify this mode of speech? Yet John, artist though he was not, understood, and not only understood, but endorsed to the full Corin’s rapture. Here was the work of age-old centuries, the frank expression of some long-ago-forgotten painter, brought once more to the light of day. Fresh as when first limned the simple lines glowed crimson from the cream-coloured surface of the wall.

“It’s—it’s fine,” said John simply.

Corin, radiant, beaming, waved his chisel in a comprehensive sweep around the walls.

“And think,” cried he exultant, “what more there may be, there assuredly is, to find. Think what further glories this plaster hides. Man, it’s hard to restrain one’s impatience and not hack, which would be a truly disastrous proceeding.”

John laughed.

Then, “Try another spot,” he urged. “Here, close by the east window. I’ll not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest whisper.”

Pretending to a half-reluctance, though at heart, truly, he was nothing loath to consent, Corin let himself be persuaded. He shifted his position. By the outer edge of the window splay he raised his chisel and set himself to work.

The outer coats of plaster fell in thick flakes before that same remorseless chisel; they crumbled on to the platform upon which Corin stood. Below the plaster was a thin substance lying on the wall like a film. Here the chisel came lightly into play; that film must be removed carefully, with touch as delicate as the touch of a butterfly’s wing. It entailed a suspension of breath, an excited prevention of the merest involuntary quivering of a muscle. The film broke and powdered at the lightest stroke, covering Corin’s hand and wrist with a soft grey dust. Breathless he pursued his work; then, suddenly, he stopped, his eyes gleaming with pleasure.

John bent forward. Here assuredly was novelty,—no longer the crimson masonry, but black chevrons set within two narrow black lines showed on the cream-coloured wall, and extending, it was evident, around the whole window.

“Ah!” breathed John.

Corin nodded, his chisel again raised.

In places the plaster adhered like glue to the walls; it had to be chipped away inch by inch, and through sheer force. Here it was that the work required the greatest skill and dexterity. The pressure of the chisel by an extra hair’s breadth would have meant the cutting through of the film below the plaster, and destroying the painting that lay beneath. It required a fine strength of wrist, the calculation to a nicety of the depth to which to cut, above all, an infinity of patience. Yet, again, there were patches where not only the plaster, but the film with it, flaked away at the lightest stroke, and here the painting was at its freshest.

For full twenty minutes John gave close eye to the proceedings. At the end of that time he sighed, a mere tiny sigh. If Corin heard, he heeded not. Stepping back a pace he regarded his work, head on one side, soul absorbed.

John took him firmly by the arm.

“I vowed I’d not divert the stroke of the chisel by the faintest whisper,” he announced. “At the moment shouting would be harmless. Therefore let me tell you in merely normal tones that I’m hungry.”

“Hungry!” Corin blinked at him. “What’s the time?”

“Long past the luncheon hour,” John assured him. “Come!”

Corin reluctantly laid down his chisel, turned for a final look at masonry, herb Robert, and chevrons.

“And to think,” he ejaculated, “that the plaster hides all this! There must be ten coats of plaster or thereabouts. After the first Goth, the first horrible Philistine, plastered, no one can have known what was hidden, and they just went on plastering at intervals. I’ve made out six plasters for certain,—grey, green, white adorned with awful scroll-work, purple, green again with more scroll-work, and then this dingy brown,” he waved his hand towards the walls. “There are other plasters so stuck together no one can distinguish them, and underneath it all, this.” He touched a flower in a kind of subdued and dreamy ecstasy.

John took him once more kindly but firmly by the arm.

“It’s extremely beautiful,” he said in a tone conciliatory. “Presently you shall rhapsodize again to your heart’s content and I’ll help you. At the moment,” he propelled him gently towards the ladder, “we leave ecstasy for the mundane, the mere sordid occupation of eating.”

CHAPTER VI
MRS. TRIMWELL

Mrs. Trimwell, brisk, black eyed, white-aproned, entered with a covered dish.

Corin, deep in an armchair, was smoking a cigarette.

“I wonder,” said he meditative, between the inhalations of smoke, “what the old painter of the church down yonder thinks of our proceedings. It would be interesting to hear his own reflections on the subject. Presumably he does reflect. If his spirit haunts the church, possibly some fine evening I shall see him. Then I shall put a question or two.”

John merely laughed, and approached the table. Mrs. Trimwell, raising a dish-cover, disclosed two golden-brown soles, perfect samples of her culinary art.

“I have never,” continued Corin, still reflective, “seen a spirit, but I firmly believe that one might be seen under favourable conditions.”

“Come and eat,” laughed John.

Mrs. Trimwell eyed Corin for a moment in hesitating fashion. Then she spoke with the air of one embarking on a weighty question, though addressing herself to John.

“There’s never no knowing, sir, what it mightn’t be given you nor any one to see. I seed an angel myself once.”

Corin paused in the act of handing John a plate on which reposed one of the soles.

“An angel!” he ejaculated.

John took the plate.

“An angel!” he echoed dubious.

“I seed it,” reiterated Mrs. Trimwell, “as plain as I see you. I was doing my bit of ironing, the baby—that’s the youngest, sir—asleep in the cradle under the table, so as I could give the rocker a jog with my foot now and again, and the angel comed in.”

She paused, watching the effect of her words.

“But how?” queried John busy with the sole. “Through the window, the ceiling, or the floor? Angels, you know, are spirits, not corporeal weighty humans like ourselves. They’d never,” concluded John gravely, “make an ordinary, an expected entrance.”

Corin glanced at him sternly.

“I should have imagined you would have held the matter too sacred for joking about,” he remarked.

John smiled gently.

“This one,” said Mrs. Trimwell firmly, “came through the door. I heard the outer door click, and said I to myself, ‘That’s Robert for sure.’ I thought he’d come home a bit earlier. Then the kitchen door clicked. It opened just a little ways, and the beautifullest angel you ever seed comed in all floaty-like. I was that scared I dropped my iron—there’s the heat mark on the baby’s robe to this day—and I made a clean bolt for the back door. I never thought of the baby nor nothing. And as I bolted I squinnied over my shoulder, and I seed that angel by the table all white and shiny.”

Again she stopped, and regarded John, who was eating steadily. To Corin, who was all agog for a continuance of the story, she perversely paid no heed.

“But—” began John dubious.

“You may doubt me as much as you like, sir. I wasn’t going back to that kitchen without a neighbour. I told Vicar myself, sir, and he didn’t believe me neither, though I’m a truthful woman. For as I says to my children: ‘You tell the truth at all costs. If you’re in a hole don’t tell a lie to try and get out of it. Truth will always give you the surest hand up even though her clutch is a bit severe.’ I’d not deceive you, sir, and ’tis the truth I’ve spoken as I spoke it to Vicar. I seed that angel.”

Finality in her tone she stood there, slightly challenging, yet respectful withal.

“Hmm!” mused John. “Your integrity, Mrs. Trimwell, is, I am convinced, above suspicion. Yet why, do you imagine, should the angel come? What, do you take it, was the motive for his visit?”

Mrs. Trimwell approached a step nearer. She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper.

“’Twas that day to the minute, sir, as my uncle died.”

“Ah!” John’s eyes, non-committal in expression, sought the window. Corin cast a look of scorn at him; then turned, eager, to Mrs. Trimwell.

“Did you tell the Vicar that?” he demanded.

“I did, sir,” replied Mrs. Trimwell, including him for the first time within her range of vision. “But, Lor’, where’s the use of telling things to he! He don’t understand no more than a Bishop.”

“Why a Bishop?” thought John in parenthesis.

“When my Tilda was down with pneumony,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell reminiscent, “and the doctor said there wasn’t no chance for her, ‘I’ll see about chances,’ says I. Vicar, he talked about the Will of the Lord and submitting. ‘It’s not the minute to be talking about submitting yet,’ says I to him. ‘The Lord may do the willing, and I’m not one to deny it, but ’tis we do the doing, and it kind of fits in. And if you think I’m going to leave off fighting for my Tilda till the time comes as she’s ready to lay out, you’re much mistook.’ He was mistook, sir, for she’s in the kitchen now a-minding of the baby.” She ended on a note gloriously triumphant.

The triumph found quick response in John’s eyes. I fancy he saw here reflected the attitude of that old-time king, who strove in prayer for his child, till striving and prayer were no longer of avail.

“The fighting chance,” murmured Corin, swallowing his last mouthful of sole.

Mrs. Trimwell removed the plates and placed cold chicken and salad on the table.

“In a manner of speaking it was,” said she, eyeing him with approval. She moved towards the door, then turned.

“You will take coffee after lunch?” she asked.

John looked his assent, yet left it to Corin, as in a manner host, to give verbal reply to the query.

“By all means,” replied Corin. “I need,” he assured her, “every atom of support at your avail.”

Mrs. Trimwell looked at him commiseratingly.

“I’ll be bound it’s hard work down there,” said she sympathetically. “How do you find it, sir?”

“Interesting,” returned Corin, “distinctly interesting. I feel like an explorer of bygone centuries penetrating through modern hideousity, early Victorian crudeness, Puritan dreariness, and various other glooms, to the sweet, kindly simplicity, the grace, the freshness, the love of beauty, appertaining to the olden days. I am,” concluded Corin, helping himself to salad, “crumbling to pieces that which has hidden beauty, and exposing beauty to the light of day. In other words, I’m scraping the plaster off the walls of the church, and enjoying myself.”

Mrs. Trimwell nodded, frank approbation plainly visible on her face.

“And time it was scraped, too. A mucky looking place it was with them walls all stained and chipped and mildewed. Not that it hurt me much, seeing as I never go inside it, except it’s for a christening or a burial.”

“Oh!” remarked Corin, and somewhat feebly, be it stated.

John cast a whimsical look in his direction.

“I don’t hold with church-going,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell calmly. “Say your prayers at home if you want to say them, says I. And as for sermons,—if you’ve heard Vicar talk out of the pulpit whether you will or no, you don’t run off smiling to hear him talk in it. Leastways I don’t. There’s some as does, I know.”

“Oh!” said Corin again, and this time more feebly. (John, I fear me, was laughing inwardly.) To disagree with Mrs. Trimwell would, Corin felt, be tantamount to calling her a black kettle, setting up himself the while as a shiny brass pot, to which title he knew he possessed no manner of right. Yet to agree!—Well, Corin’s conscience, some hidden fragment of convention—call it what you will—felt a slight hint of repugnance at her sentiments.

There is your man, your male individual, all over. Dogmatic religion—however vague the dogma—church-going is often outside his own category, yet for his women folk—any women folk—to speak against it holds for him a hint of distaste. It just serves to destroy that soft light of idealism with which he loves to surround women. Every man has one woman, at least, in this idealistic shrine, or, if he has not, he is of all men most miserable. And here it is that your adherents to the old Faith—the oldest Faith in Christendom—have a pull over your so-called enlightened individual. There is always One Woman to whom those of that old Faith can turn, one for whom no shrine is too fair, too lofty,—can be bedecked with no too costly wealth of love and homage. Here, in this shrine, at her feet, may every idealistic thought of man towards woman be placed, preserved, and cherished.

Corin, as already stated, said “Oh!” an ejaculation at once feeble, utterly lacking in significance of any kind, a mere signal that his ears had received the speech.

“Miss Rosamund don’t hold with my views,” went on Mrs. Trimwell, while John’s heart gave a sudden throb. “Not that I pays over-much heed to her, being a Papist what’s bound to go to Church and obey their priests if they don’t want any little unpleasantness in the next world, which I takes it may be a considerable more unpleasantness than you nor I would suppose. Still I will say she has a wonderful way of talking a thing clear, and if I didn’t know that popery was no better than a worshipping of graven images, I might go for to believe her.”

Corin glanced anxiously in the direction of John,—John who was eating chicken with an expressionless face, though I’ll not vouch that his shoulders didn’t shake a little now and then.

“Not that Miss Rosamund talks goody talk,” pursued Mrs. Trimwell, “which is a thing I never could abide in grown-up or child, and burnt them little tracty books they give my Tilda up to Sunday-school, setting of her off to talk texes to me and her father, which we didn’t smack her for though she deserved it. But there, she’d have been thinking she was an infant prodigal and a Christian martyr if we had. No; I just said how if she was so fond of texes she could learn a few more instead of going along blackberrying with the other children, and I sets her down to get a chapter of the Gospels by heart. We didn’t hear no more of texes after that, didn’t me and her father,” concluded Mrs. Trimwell dryly.

Indubitably the corners of John’s mouth were twitching now. Then Mrs. Trimwell’s eye caught his. Laughter came, whole-heartedly to John, to Mrs. Trimwell first with a note of half apology, over which the entire humour of the reminiscence presently got the upper hand. Corin joined in somewhat relieved. He had feared lest John’s feelings might be hurt.

“When I thinks of Tilda setting there not knowing whether to sulk or pretend she liked it!” ejaculated Mrs. Trimwell after a moment. She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes with her apron. “But there, it was coffee I was going after, and not memories of my Tilda.”

Mrs. Trimwell vanished.

CHAPTER VII
FLIGHTS OF FANCY

Corin looked dubiously at John.

“She talks a good deal,” quoth he tentatively.

“I have,” returned John, “conceived a great affection for Mrs. Trimwell. Her ideas are original. She has, also, a distinct prejudice in favour of speaking her mind with a candour and verve which I find undeniably refreshing. Yes; certainly I have conceived an affection for her.”

Corin snorted.

“Every man to his own taste,” said he. “For my part I find her over-fluent of speech.”

“That,” replied John, “arises merely from a tendency I have frequently noted in you to monopolize the whole conversation; to mop it, so to speak, into your own sponge, thereby leaving the sponges of others bone dry.”

“I have never,” retorted Corin, “observed that your sponge lacked moisture, if you will use terms of parable instead of straightforward words. But to leave Mrs. Trimwell for the moment. How did you enjoy the morning? Did I expand one whit too freely on the glories of the surrounding country? Is there not colour,—radiant, vital colour at every turn?”

“I’ll allow there’s sufficient beauty hereabouts,” conceded John.

“And you had a pleasant time? Own to the truth. It was worth while sacrificing sun-baked streets for wide stretches of glorious moorland?”

“Oh, I’ll own to the worth whileness of it,” laughed John, hugging a delicious secret to his heart.

Corin shrugged his shoulders.

“You might be a trifle more expansive,” he grumbled. “You might give me an epitome of your morning’s experiences. There was I, perched like a hen on a henroost, slaving my life out for four hours, while you were enjoying glorious freedom. I said to myself, he’ll return enthusiastic. I’ll have, at least, a second-hand experience of purple moorland, sun-kissed sea, and cool green woods. And all the man has done is to smile oracularly, and admit to beauty when the admission was fairly dragged from his lips. No; don’t begin to rhapsodize now. It’s too late. I wanted spontaneity, a first fine careless rapture. And by dragging, pulling, and tugging, I get a bare admission of beauty grudgingly made.”

John laughed again. It must be confessed that he was in a peculiarly lighthearted mood.

“I’ll attempt no rhapsody, no poetic flights of fancy, since the psychological moment for so doing has, according to you, passed. I’ll give you the mere salient facts of the morning, the chiefest being that I played St. George to the dragon.”

Corin eyed him suspiciously.

“I have an idea I heard you remark ‘no poetic flights of fancy,’ a moment agone,” he suggested.

“I did,” retorted John, “and I adhere to that remark. Here is fact pure and simple. But, for your better convincing, I will state that the dragon had for the moment disguised itself as a goat,—a large, a playful, black and white goat. The disguise was good, I’ll allow, but,” concluded John dramatically, “I penetrated it.”

Corin sighed.

“If you could divest your speech of symbolism,” said he pathetically, “and give me facts in plain English.”

“No symbolism I assure you,” protested John. “It was a goat,—a black and white goat. It curved, it gavotted, it gambolled, thereby causing much distress to a fair lady and her two attendant knights, who were, believe me, hardly of an age to deal convincingly with either goats or dragons. Then, behold, enter St. George.” He struck himself upon the chest.

“Oh!” Corin began to find a thread of reasonableness among the nonsense. “Who was the lady, I wonder?”

“She told me,” said John, “that her name was Miss Rosamund Delancey.” He experienced a strange sensation of pleasure in pronouncing the words.

“Oh!” said Corin a second time. “From the Castle.”

“From the Castle,” echoed John.

Corin reflected, mused. Finally, seeing that John had come to an end of the repast, he pushed back his chair, rose from the table, and lighted a cigarette.

“I have heard a rumour,” said he, the cigarette lighted, “that they are shortly leaving the Castle on account of some claimant who has turned up. I can’t remember the whole story. I know it struck me as sufficiently melodramatic at the moment,—murders, missing documents, and little Adelphi touches of that kind were mixed up in it. But I daresay it’s nothing but a rumour.”

“Let us trust so,” said John devoutly.

CHAPTER VIII
AN OLD PRIEST

Father Maloney was in a mood, which, it must be confessed, was distinctly unfavourable to his peace of mind. And not only his peace of mind, but his appetite had suffered considerably thereby. Cold corned beef and plum tart had been so much sawdust between his lips, flavourless and exceeding dry. Even his after-luncheon pipe failed to rouse him to a cheerier outlook on life in general. Now, when the joys of tobacco had ceased to woo him, matters had, indeed, come to a pretty pass. Anastasia, his housekeeper, clearing away the débris of the meal, eyed him solicitously.

“You’re not ill, Father?” she asked, her black eyes snapping anxiety in his direction.

For a moment he roused himself.

“Not at all, not at all,” he responded with a show of briskness, only to relapse once more into gloom.

Anastasia shook her head.

“It’ll be that moidering business up to the Castle, I’m thinking,” quoth she to herself, her lips tightening in a manner that would have augured ill for the author of the business had he been anywhere within sighting distance.

Returning to the kitchen she addressed a fervent, and, it must be confessed, slightly authoritative decade of the rosary to Our Blessed Lady, before beginning to wash up plates and dishes. To her mind something had to be done. Herein her mind and that of old Biddy the nurse up at the Castle were distinctly in accord.

For one hour—two hours, perhaps—Father Maloney sat in his old armchair. During that time he endeavoured, with some degree of success, to say his office with attention. Then he once more lapsed into gloomy retrospection and anticipation.

Since midday the world—the pleasant, material, sunny world—had been turned upside down for him. It is true that this inversion had been looked for, feared, for the last six months, but that fact did not prevent the present phenomenon from being any the less unpleasant when it actually occurred. It requires a peculiarly level head, not to say a certain degree of something almost akin to callousness, to regard matters from so totally different a point of view. It is a position to which you cannot readily adjust yourself. At all events Father Maloney found it one to which he could not readily adjust himself. It required a supreme effort on his part merely to hang on, so to speak.

“Sure, and I ought to have been more prepared for it,” he muttered to himself.