SONS OF FIRE

A Novel

By Mary Elizabeth Braddon

THE AUTHOR OF

"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
"ISHMAEL," ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LIMITED
STATIONERS' HALL COURT

[All rights reserved]

LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

SONS OF FIRE.

CHAPTER I.

A STRIKING LIKENESS.

The meet was at the Pig and Whistle, at Melbury, nine miles off. Rather a near meet—compared with the usual appointments of the South Sarum hounds—the ostler remarked, as Allan Carew mounted a hired hunter in the yard of the Duke's Head, chief, and indeed only possible inn for a gentleman to put up at, in the little village of Matcham, a small but prosperous hamlet, lying in a hollow of the hills between Salisbury and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon, and he was sallying forth in the crisp March morning, on an unknown horse in an unfamiliar country, to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had heard for the first time that day.

"Can he jump?" asked Allan, as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding bay; not a bad kind of horse by any means, but with that shabby, under-groomed and over-worked appearance common to hirelings.

"Can't he, sir? There ain't a better lepper in Wiltshire. And as clever as a cat! We had a lady staying here in the winter, Mrs. Colonel Parkyn, brought two 'acks of her own, besides the colonel's two 'unters, and liked this here horse better than any of 'em. She was right down mashed on him, as the young gents say."

"I wonder she didn't buy him," said Allan.

"She couldn't, sir. Money wouldn't buy such a hunter as this off my master. He's a fortune to us."

"I hope I may be of Mrs. Parkyn's opinion when I come home," said Allan. "Now then, ostler, just tell me which way I am to ride to get to the Pig and Whistle by eleven o'clock."

The ostler gave elaborate instructions. A public-house here, an accommodation lane there—a common to cross—a copse to skirt—three villages—one church—a post-office—and several cross-roads.

"You're safe to fall in with company before you get there," concluded the ostler, whisking a bit of straw out of the bay's off hind hoof, and eyeing him critically, previous to departure.

"If I don't, I doubt if I ever shall get there," said Allan, as he rode out of the yard.

He was a stranger in Matcham, a "foreigner," as the villagers called such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before, knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs, ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves, subserviencies, gods, or devils. And yet henceforward he was to be closely allied with Matcham, for a certain bachelor uncle had lately died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village—a relative with whom Allan Carew had held slightest commune, lunching or dining with him perhaps once in a summer, at an old family hotel in Albemarle Street, never honoured by so much as a hint at an invitation to his rural retreat, and not cherishing any expectation of a legacy, much less the bequest of all the gentleman's worldly possessions, comprising a snug, well-built house, in pretty and spacious grounds, with good and ample stabling, and with farms and homesteads covering something like fifteen hundred acres, and producing an income of a little over two thousand a year.

It need hardly be stated that Allan Carew was not a poor man when this unexpected property fell into his lap.

The children of this world are rarely false to the gospel precept—to every one which hath shall be given. Allan's father had changed his name, ten years before, from Beresford to Carew, upon his succession to a respectable estate in Suffolk, an inheritance from his maternal grandfather, old Squire Carew, of Fendyke Hall, Millfield.

Allan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his maternal uncle, Admiral the Honourable Allan Darnleigh, took it into his head to leave him his Wiltshire property; but this bequest raised him at once to independence, and altogether dispensed with any further care about that gentleman-like profession, the Bar, which had so far repaid Mr. Carew's collegiate studies, labours, outlays, and solicitude by fees amounting in all to seven pounds seven shillings, which sum represented the gross earnings of three years.

So, riding along the rustic high-road, in the clear morning air, under a sapphire sky, just gently flecked with fleecy cloudlets, Allan Carew told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers, and reading law, and waiting for briefs; and that it was a good thing to be a country gentleman; to have his own house and his own stable; not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other man were his very father; not to be told after every stiffish day across country that he had done for the grey, or that the chestnut's legs had filled as never horse's legs filled before, nor to hear any other reproachful utterances of an old and privileged stud-groom, who knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his stable would be his own kingdom, and he would reign there absolute and unquestioned. He could choose his own horses, and they should be good ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons, and looked upon all animals of his father's buying as "screws" and "duffers." His own stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old stables at home, where horses were kept and cherished because they were familiar friends, rather than with a view to locomotion. His stud and his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms had been bred upon another planet.

He loved field-sports. He felt that it was in him to make a model squire, albeit two thousand a year was not a large revenue in these days of elegant living and Continental holidays, and eclectic tastes. He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnleigh had made a wise selection in choosing his god-son, Allan Carew, to inherit his Wiltshire estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst. He had gone over house and stables, and had found all things so well planned, and in such perfect order, that he was assailed by none of those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve, which often inaugurate ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious stable-yard. There were two packs within easy reach of Matcham, to say nothing of packs accessible by rail, and he would naturally want more hunters than had sufficed for the old sailor, who had jogged out on his clever cob two or three times a week, and had gone home early, after artful riding and waiting about the lanes, or to leeward of the great bare hills, and in snug corners, where a profound knowledge of the country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Allan's hunting-stable would be on a very different footing; and although Beechhurst provided ample accommodation for a stud of eight, Allan told himself that one of his first duties would be to build loose boxes.

"I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend," he thought.

The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage, and meaning honestly to do it. Allan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst. Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty white house, low and long, with a verandah running all along the southern front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation, against the swelling shoulder of a broad down, facing south-west, and looking over garden and shrubbery, and across a stretch of common, that lay between Beechhurst and the high-road, and gave a dignified aloofness to the situation; seclusion without dulness, a house and grounds remote, but not buried or hidden.

"Nothing manorial about it," mused Allan; "but it certainly looks a gentleman's place."

He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He would have liked Tudor chimneys, panelled walls, and a family ghost. He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the soil, had been lords of the manor centuries and centuries ago, when Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods, and when the jester's bells mixed with the merry music of hawk and hound. Admiral Darnleigh, so far as Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in China, speculating in tea-gardens, and other property, while pursuing his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from active service soon after the Chinese war, a C.B. and a rich man, had bought Beechhurst a bargain—during a period of depression—and had settled down in yonder pretty white house, with a small but admirable establishment, each member thereof a pearl of price among servants, and had there spent the tranquil even-tide of an honourable and consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he had always felt himself rich; as a married man he might often have felt himself poor. He had heard Allan at five and twenty declare that he had done with the romance of life, and that he, too, meant to be a bachelor; and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the Admiral's choice of an heir.

Allan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind.

"You are in a better position than your father was at your age," said Lady Emily Carew, on her son's accession to fortune. "I hope you will marry well—and soon."

There was no thought of woman's love, or of married bliss, in Allan Carew's mind, as he rode through the lanes and over a common, and across a broad stretch of open down to the Pig and Whistle. He was full, not of his inner self, but of the outer world around and about him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast, wondering what his new neighbours were like, and how they would receive him.

"I wonder whether the South Sarum is a hospitable hunt, or whether the members are a surly lot, and look upon every stranger as a sponge and an interloper," he mused.

He had ridden alone for about half the way, when a man in grey fustian and leather gaiters, who looked like a small tenant farmer, trotted past him, turned and stared at him with obvious astonishment, touched his hat and rode on, after a few words of greeting, which were lost in the clatter of hoofs.

He had ridden right so far by the aid of memory; he now followed the man in grey, and, taking care to keep this pioneer in view, duly arrived at a small rustic inn, standing upon high ground, and overlooking an undulating sweep of woodland and common, marsh and plain, one of those picturesque oases which diversify the breadth of wind-swept downs. The inn was an isolated building, the few labourers' cottages within reach being hidden by a turn of the road.

Hounds and hunt-servants were clustered on a level green on the other side of the road, but there was no one else upon the ground.

Allan looked at his watch, and found that it was ten minutes to eleven.

The man in grey had dismounted from his serviceable cob, and was standing on the greensward, talking to the huntsman. Huntsman and whips had taken off their caps to Allan as he rode up, and it seemed to him that there was at once more respect and more friendliness in the salutation than a stranger usually receives—above all a stranger in heather cloth and butcher boots, and not in the orthodox pink and tops. The man in grey, and the hunt-servants, were evidently talking of him as he sat solitary in front of the inn. Their furtive glances in his direction fully indicated that he was the subject of their discourse.

"They take a curious interest in strangers in these parts," thought Allan.

Two minutes afterwards, a stout man, with a weather-beaten red face showing above a weather-beaten red coat, rode up with two other men. Evidently the master and his satellites.

"Hulloa!" cried the jovial man, "what the deuce brings you back so much sooner than Mrs. Wornock expected you? She told me there was no chance of our seeing you for the next year. When did you arrive? I never heard a word about it."

The master's broad doeskin palm was extended to Allan in the most cordial way, and the master's broad red face irradiated kindliest feelings.

"You are under a misapprehension, sir," said Allan, smiling at the frank, friendly face, amused at the eager rapidity of speech which had made it impossible for him to interrupt the speaker. "I have never yet enjoyed the privilege of a day with the South Sarum, and this is my first appearance in your neighbourhood."

"And you ain't Geoffrey Wornock," exclaimed the master, utterly discomfited.

"My name is Carew."

"Ah, your voice is different. I should have known you were not Geoff if I had heard you speak. And now, of course, when one looks deliberately, there is a difference—a difference which would be more marked, I dare say, if Wornock were here. Are you a relation of Wornock's?"

"I never heard the name of Wornock in my life until I heard it from you."

"Well, I'm—dashed," cried the master, suppressing a stronger word as premature so early in the day. "Did you see the likeness, Champion?" asked the master, appealing to one of his satellites.

"Of course I did," replied Captain Champion. "I was just as much under a delusion as you were—and yet—Mr. Carew's features are not the same as Wornock's—and his eyes are a different colour. It's the outlook, the expression, the character in the face that is so like our friend's—and I think that kind of likeness impresses one more than mere form and outline."

"Hang me if I know anything about it, except that I took one man for the other," said the master, bluntly. "Well, Mr. Carew, I hope you will excuse my blunder, and that we may be able to show you some sport on your first day in our country. We'll draw Wellout's Wood, Hamper, and if we don't find there we'll go on to Holiday Hill."

Hounds and servants went off merrily across the down, and dipped into a winding lane. A good many horsemen had ridden up by this time, with half a dozen ladies among them. Some skirmished across the fields, others crowded the lane, and in this latter contingent rode the master, with his hounds in front of him, and Carew at his side.

"Are you staying in the neighbourhood?" he asked; "or did you come by rail this morning? A long ride from Matcham Road station, if you did."

"I am staying at the Duke's Head, at Matcham; but I only arrived yesterday. I am going to settle in your neighbourhood."

"Indeed! Have you bought a place?"

"No."

"Ah, going to rent one. Wiser, perhaps, till you see how you like this part of the country."

"I have had a place left me by my uncle, Admiral Darnleigh."

"What! are you Darnleigh's heir? Yes, by-the-by, I heard that Beechhurst was left to a Mr. Carew; but I've a bad memory for names. So you have got Beechhurst, have you? I congratulate you. A charming place, compact, snug, warm, and in perfect order. Stables a trifle small, perhaps, for a hunting man."

"I am going to extend them," said Allan, with suppressed pride.

"Then you are going to do the right thing, sir. The only part in which Beechhurst falls short of perfection is in the stables. Capital stables, as far as they go, but it isn't far enough for a man who wants to hunt five days a week, and accommodate his hunting friends. Besides, the owner of Beechhurst ought to be in a position to take the hounds at a push."

"I hope it may be long before that push comes," said Allan.

"Ah, you're very kind; but I'm not so young as I was once, nor so rich as I was once—and—the Preacher says there's a time for all things. My time is very nearly past, and your time is coming, Mr. Carew. When do you establish yourself at Beechhurst?"

"I am going back to London to-morrow to settle a few matters, and perhaps have a look round at Tattersall's, and I hope to be at Beechhurst in less than a fortnight."

"I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon you. Any wife?"

"I am still in the enviable position my uncle enjoyed till his death."

"A bachelor? Ah! that won't last long. It's all very well for a sun-dried old sailor to keep the fair sex at arm's length; but you won't be able to do it, Mr. Carew. I give you till our next hunt-ball for a free man. You've no notion what complexions our Wiltshire women have—Devon can't beat 'em—or what a lot of pretty girls there are within a fifteen-mile drive of Matcham."

"I look forward with a thrill of mingled rapture and apprehension to your next hunt-ball."

"It'll be here before you know where you are. We have postponed it till the first of May. We shall kill our May fox on the thirtieth of April, and dance on his grave on the first."

"I shall be there, my lord," said Allan, as Lord Hambury galloped off after his huntsman, who had just put the hounds into the covert.

A whimper proclaimed that there was something on foot, five minutes afterwards, and the business of the day began—a goodish day, and a long one—two foxes run to earth, and one killed in the twilight. It was seven o'clock when Allan Carew arrived at the Duke's Head, hungry and thirsty, and not a little bored by having been obliged to explain to various people that he was no relation to Geoffrey Wornock.

He had been too much bored at this enforced reiteration to make any inquiries about this double of his in the course of the day, or during the long homeward ride; but when he had taken the edge off his appetite in his cosy sitting-room at the Duke's Head, he began to question the waiter, as he trifled with the customary hotel tart, a hollow cavern of short crust roofing in half a bottle of overgrown gooseberries.

"Do you know Mr. Wornock?"

"Yes, sir; know him uncommonly well. Wonderful likeness between him and you, sir; thought you was him till I heard you speak."

"Our voices are different, I am told."

"Yes, sir, there's a difference. It ain't much—but it's just enough to make one doubtful like. Your voice, begging your pardon, sir, ain't as musical as his. Mr. Wornock's is a voice that would charm a bird off a tree, as the saying is. And then, after the first glance, one can see it ain't the same face," pursued the waiter, thoughtfully. "You've got such a look of him, you see, sir. That's what it is. One don't stop to think of the shape of a nose or a chin. It's the look that catches the eye. I suppose that's what people means by a speaking countenance, sir," added the waiter, garrulous, but not disrespectful.

"Has Mr. Wornock any land in the county?" asked Allan.

"Land, sir? Yes, sir," replied the waiter, with a touch of wonder at being asked such a question. "Mr. Wornock is Lord of the Manor of Discombe, sir—a very large estate—and a fine old house, added to by Mr. Wornock's grandfather. The old part was built in the time of King Charles, sir, and the new part is very fine and picturesque—and the gardens are celebrated in these parts, sir—quite a show place—but Mrs. Wornock never allows it to be shown. She lives very secluded, don't give no entertainments herself, nor visit scarce anywheres. They do say that she was not right in her mind for some years after Mr. Wornock's birth, but that's six and twenty years ago, and there may not be any truth in the report. Gongozorla, sir, or cheddar?"

"Neither, thanks. Are the Wornocks an old family?"

"Very old family, sir. Old Saxon name. Came over with Edward the Confessor."

"And who was Mrs. Wornock?"

"Ah, there's a little 'itch there, sir. Nobody knows who Mrs. Wornock was, or where she came from—and they do say she wasn't county, which is a pity, seeing that the Wornocks had always married county prior to that marriage," added the waiter, proud of his concluding phrase.

"Mr. Wornock is abroad, I understand. Where?"

"Inja, sir. Cavalry regiment, the Eighteenth South Sarum Lancers."

"Strange for a man owning so fine a property to go into the army."

"Well, sir, don't you see, the life at the Manor must have been a very dull one for a young gentleman. No entertainments. No staying company. Mrs. Wornock, she don't care for nothink but music—and, after all, sir, music ain't everythink to a young man. He 'unted, and he 'unted, and he 'unted, from the time he 'ad legs to cross a pony. Wherever there was 'ounds to be follered, he follered 'em. But hunting ain't everythink in life, and it don't last long," added the waiter, philosophically.

"Mrs. Wornock, as dowager, should have withdrawn to her Dower-house, and left the young man free to be as jovial as he liked at the Manor."

"Ah, that may come to pass when he marries, sir, but not before. Mr. Wornock is a devoted son. He'd be the last to turn his mother out-of-doors. And he's almost as keen on music as his mother, I've heard say; plays the fiddle just like a professional—and the organ."

"Well," sighed Carew, having heard all he wanted to hear, "I bear no grudge against Mr. Geoffrey Wornock because he happens to resemble me; but I wish with all my heart that he could have made it convenient to live in any other neighbourhood than that in which my lot is cast. That will do, waiter; I don't want any more wine. You may clear the table, and bring me some tea at nine o'clock."

The waiter cleared the table, in a leisurely way, made up the fire, also in a leisurely way, and contrived to spend a quarter of an hour upon work that might have been done in five minutes; but Allan questioned him no further. He flung himself back in an easy-chair, rested his slippered feet upon the fender, and meditated with closed eyes.

Yes, it was a bore, a decided bore, to have a double in the neighbourhood. A double richer, more important, and altogether better placed than himself; a double in a Lancer regiment—there is at once chic and attractiveness in a cavalry soldier—a double who owned just the fine old manorial estate, and fine old manorial mansion which he, Allan, would have liked to possess.

Beechhurst might be a snug little property; the house might be perfection, as Lord Hambury had averred; but when a house of that calibre is said to be perfect, the adjective rarely means anything more than a good kitchen, and a convenient butler's pantry, roomy cellars, and a well-planned staircase; whereas, to praise a fine old manor house implies that it contains a panelled hall, and a spacious ballroom, a library with a groined roof, and a music gallery in the dining-room. After hearing of Wornock's old house, Allan felt that Beechhurst was distinctly middle-class, and that his sailor uncle must have been a poor creature to have found pride and pleasure in such a cockney paradise.

He jumped up out of his easy-chair, shook himself, and laughed aloud at his own pettiness.

"What an envious brute I am!" he said to himself. "I dare say, when Wornock comes home, I shall find him a decent fellow, and we shall get to be good friends. If we do, I'll tell him how I was gnawed with envy of his better fortune before ever I saw his face."

CHAPTER II.

ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE.

Allan Carew spent the best part of the following day at Beechhurst, better pleased with his inheritance than he would confess even to himself. The Admiral's Chinese experiences had not been without tangible result. The hall was decorated with curios whose value their present possessor could only guess, and if the greater part of the house was prim and commonplace, there was one room which was both handsome and original—this was the smoking-room and library, a spacious apartment which the Admiral had added to the original structure, and which was built on the model of a Mandarin's reception-room. Yes, on the whole, Allan was inclined to think his lot had fallen on a pleasant heritage. He went up to town in good spirits; spent ten days in looking at hunting studs at Tattersall's, and made his modest selection with care and prudence, content to start his stable with four good hunters, a dog-cart horse, a pony to fetch and carry, two grooms and a stable-help.

The all-important business of the stable concluded, he went back to Suffolk to spend Easter in the bosom of his family, and to tell his father what he had done. There was perfect harmony of feeling, and frankest confidence between father and son, and the son's regard for the father was all the stronger because, under that quiet and somewhat languid bearing of the Squire of Fendyke, Allan suspected hidden depths. Of the history of his father's youth, or the history of his father's heart, the son knew nothing; yet, fondly as he loved his mother, the excellent and popular Lady Emily, he had a shrewd suspicion that she was not the kind of woman to have won his father's heart in the days when love means romance rather than reason. That she possessed her husband's warm affection now, he, the son, was fully assured; but he was equally assured that the alliance had been passionless, a union of two honourable minds, rather than of two loving hearts.

There was that in his father's manner of life which to Allan's mind told of a youth overshadowed by some unhappy experience; and a word dropped now and then, in the father's talk of his son's prospects and hopes, a hint, a sigh, had suggested an unfortunate love-affair.

His mother was more communicative, and had told her son frankly that she was not his father's first love.

"You remember your grandmother, Allan?" she said.

Yes, Allan remembered her distinctly—an elderly woman dressed in some rich silken fabric, always black, with a silver chatelaine at her side, on which there hung a curious old enamelled watch that he loved to look at. A tall slender figure, a thin aquiline countenance, with silvery hair arrayed in feathery curls under a honiton cap. She had been always kind to him; but no kindness could dispel the awe which she inspired.

"I used to dream of her," he said. "Had she a frightening voice, do you think? She was mixed up in most of my childish nightmares."

"Poor Allan!" laughed his mother. "She was an excellent woman, but she loved to command; and one can't command affection, not even the affection of a child. It was she who made your father marry me. He liked me, and I liked him, and we had been playfellows; but we should never have thought of marrying if your grandmother had not, in a manner, insisted upon it. She told George that I was deeply in love with him; and she told me that George was devoted to me; and so we could not help ourselves. And, after all," she went on, with a comfortable sigh, "it has answered very well. I don't think we could possibly be fonder of our home, or of each other, than we are. And your father has his books, and his shooting and fishing, and I have my farm and my schools—and," with a sudden gush of tenderness, "we both have you. You ought to be fond of us, Allan. You are the link that makes us one in heart and mind."

Allan was fond of them. Both parents had been undeviating in their indulgence, and he had given them love without stint. But it may be that he loved the somewhat silent and reserved father with a profounder affection than he gave to the open-hearted and loquacious mother. That vague consciousness of a secret in his father's life, of sorrows unforgotten, but never told, had evoked the son's warmest sympathy. All that Allan had ever felt of sentiment or romantic feeling hitherto, he had felt for his father. It is not to be supposed that he had reached five and twenty without some commerce with Cupid, but his loves had been only passing fancies, sunbeams glancing on the surface of life's current, not those deep forces which change the course of the river.

The characters of father and mother were distinctly marked in their acceptance of Allan's good fortune. Lady Emily saw only the sunny side of the inheritance. She was delighted that her son should have ample means and perfect independence in the morning of life. She was full of matrimonial schemes on his behalf. Decidedly he ought to marry, well and quickly. An only son, with an estate in possession, and another—his patrimonial estate—in prospective. It was his duty to found a family. She marshalled all the young women she knew in a mental review. There must be good family—a pure race, untarnished by the taint of commerce, unshadowed by hushed-up disgrace—divorces, bankruptcies, turf scandals. There should be money, because even the two estates would not make Allan a rich man, as the world reckons wealth nowadays; but they would give him a respectable platform from which to demand the hand of an heiress. He could woo the wealthiest without fear of being considered a fortune-hunter.

"It is sad to think you will like your own place better than this," said Lady Emily in her cheerfullest voice, "and that we shall hardly see you except at Christmas and Easter; but it is so nice to know that you are in a position to marry as early as you like without being under any obligation to your father; for, indeed, dear, what with his library and my farm, there would have been very little margin for a proper establishment for you."

"My dearest mother, why harp upon matrimony? I have made up my mind to follow my uncle's excellent example."

"My poor brother!" sighed Lady Emily. "He was in love with the belle of the season—a foolish pink and white thing, with one long curl streaming over her left shoulder, and a frock that you would laugh at, if you could see her to-day. Of course Allan's chances were hopeless—a younger son, with a commander's pay, eked out by a pittance from his father. She used to ride in the Row with a plume in her hat—half a Spanish fowl—quite the right thing, I assure you, at that time. Your uncle was twelve years older than I, you know, Allan; and I was still in short petticoats when he went off to China broken-hearted. Of course she wouldn't have him, though she said he was the best waltzer in London. Her people wouldn't let her look at him even, from a matrimonial point of view."

Allan went to church with his mother on Easter morning—attended two services in the fine old church, which seemed much too grand and too big for the tiny town—her loving heart swelling with pride at having such an admirable son. Her friends had always been fond of him; but now it seemed to her there was a touch of deference in their kindness. They had liked him as her son, and the inheritor of Fendyke Hall; but perhaps they liked him even a little better now that he was his own master, a man of independent means.

He accompanied Lady Emily in her weekly visit to the schools; he assisted in dealing out Easter gifts to the school-children, and distributed half a dozen pounds of the very strongest obtainable tobacco among his male acquaintance in the village of Fendyke—a village consisting of a rectory, three picturesque farmhouses, a still more picturesque water-mill and miller's house, a roomy old barn-like inn, said to have once given shelter to good Queen Bess, and a good many decent cottages grouped in threes and fours along the broad, level road, or scattered in side lanes.

The morning of Easter Monday was given to an inspection of Lady Emily's white farm—that farm which, next to her son, was the greatest pride and delight of her innocent and strictly rural life. Here, all buildings and all creatures were of an almost dazzling purity. White horses at the plough, a white fox-terrier running beside it, white birds in the poultry-yard, white cows in the meadow—cows from Lord Cawdor's old white Pembroke breed, cows from Blickling Park and Woodbastwick—white cottages for bailiff and farm-labourers, white palings, white pigs, and white donkeys, a white peacock sunning himself on the top of the clipped yew-hedge in the bailiff's garden, white tulips, white hyacinths in the flower-beds. To procure all this whiteness had cost trouble and money; but there are few home-farms which give as much delight to their possessors as this white farm gave to Lady Emily Carew. She had as much pride in its perfection as the connoisseur who collects only Wedgwood, or only Florentine Majolica, has in his collection. It is not so much the actual value of the thing as the fact that the thing is unique, and has cost the possessor years of patience and labour. Lady Emily would take a long journey to look at a white cow, or to secure the whitest thing in Brahmas or Cochin Chinas.

It was a harmless, simple, womanly hobby, and although Lady Emily's farm was a somewhat costly toy, it served to give her status in the neighbourhood, and it provided labour for a good many people, who were well housed and well looked after, and whose children astonished the school-inspectors by the thoroughness of their education. No incompetent master or mistress could have held on in the schools where Lady Emily was a power. She cultivated a friendly familiarity with the man and woman who taught her cottage children; she asked them to quiet, confidential luncheons three or four times in a quarter; she sounded their opinions, plucked out the heart of their mystery, lent them books, stuffed them with her own ideas, and, in a manner, made them her mouthpiece. Intensely conservative as to her opinions and prejudices, and with an absolute loathing for all radical and revolutionary principles; she was yet, by the beneficence of her nature, more liberal than many a professing demagogue, and would fain have admitted all her fellow-creatures to an equal share in the good things of this life. Her warm heart was full of compassion for the hard lives she saw around her—hard even where the condition of the agricultural labourer was at its best—and it was her delight to introduce into these hard lives occasional glimpses of a happier world—a world of pleasure and gaiety, laughter and frolic. Lady Emily's Christmas and Whitsun balls for the villagers and servants; Lady Emily's May-day feast for the children; Lady Emily's midsummer picnic and harvest-home; and Lady Emily's fairy fir-tree, which reached to the ceiling of the boy's schoolroom, every branch laden with benefits—these were events which broke the slow monotony of each laborious year, joys to dream of and to remember in many a dull week of toil. Second only to these festive gatherings in helpfulness were Lady Emily's coal and blanket society, savings bank, and mothers' meeting—the last a friendly, familiar gathering held in a spacious old building which had been a brewery in the days when every country gentleman's household brewed its own beer. Once a week, through the winter season, Lady Emily sat in the old brewery, with a circle of cottagers' wives sewing industriously, while she talked and read to them. Tea and bread-and-butter, a roaring wood fire, and a bright lamp, were the only material comforts provided; but these and Lady Emily's friendly welcome and pleasant talk, with the short story chosen out of a magazine, and the familiar chapter of the New Testament, read far better than vicar or curate read it in church, sufficed to make the mothers' meeting a cheerful break in the cottage matron's busy week. She went back to her homely hearth cheered and encouraged. Lady Emily had told her the latest news of the great busy world outside Fendyke, had given her a recipe for a new savoury pie of ox-cheek and twopenny rice, or a new way of making barley broth; or had given her a "cutting" for her tiny flower-garden, or had cut out her new Garibawldi. Lady Emily had been to her as a friend and counsellor.

The village remembered with a shudder that long dreary winter when the great house was empty, while Mr. Carew and his wife were in Egypt—ordered there by the doctors, after a serious illness of the squire's.

Much had been done for the sick and the poor even in that desolate winter, for the housekeeper had been given a free hand; but no one could replace Lady Emily, and the gaiety of Fendyke had been extinguished.

CHAPTER III.

"A HOME OF ANCIENT PEACE."

The hunting was nearly over by the time Allan Carew had established himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud. The selection of half a dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or twice a week; and he had revelled in the convenience of express trains between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty train service between Fendyke and Cambridge, which made a journey from his native village a trial of youthful patience.

London was full of pleasant people at this after-Easter season, so Allan took his time at Tattersall's, saw his friends, dined them, or dined with them, at those clubs which young men most affect, went to his favourite theatres, rode in the Park, and saw a race or two at Sandown, all in the process of buying his horses; but at last the stud was complete, and his stud-groom, a man he had brought from Suffolk, the man who taught him to ride, had shaken a wise head, and told his young master to stop buying.

"You've got just as many as you can use, Mr. Allan," he said, "and if you buy another one, it 'ud mean another b'y, and we shall have b'ys enough for me to keep in order as it is."

So Allan held his hand. "And now I am a country gentleman," he said, "and I must go and live on my acres."

Everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him. He was under none of the disadvantages of the new man about whom people have to ask each other, "Who is he?" He came to Matcham with the best possible credentials. His father was a man of old family, against whose name no evil thing had ever been written. His mother was an earl's daughter; and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory was respected in the neighbourhood—a man of easy temper and open hand, a kind master, and a staunch friend.

Allan found his hall-table covered with cards when he returned from his London holiday, and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning the calls that had been made for the most part in his absence. To a shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land would have been terrible—invading unfamiliar drawing-rooms, and seeing strange faces, wondering which of two matrons was his hostess and which the friend or sister-in-law—an ordeal as awful as any mediæval torture; but Allan was not shy, and he accepted the situation with a winning ease which pleased everybody. When he blundered—and his blunders were rare—he laughed at his mistake, and turned it into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes of small-talk. He had a quick eye, and in a room full of people saw at a glance the welcoming smile and extended hand which marked his hostess. "Quite an acquisition to the neighbourhood," said everybody; and the mothers of marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennett was to cultivate the irreproachable Bingley.

In the course of that round of visits Allan contrived to find out a good deal about the neighbourhood which was henceforward to be his home.

He discovered that it was, above all, a hunting neighbourhood; but that it was also a shooting neighbourhood; and that there was bad blood between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted to hunt foxes. From the point of view of the rights of property, the shooters would appear to be in their right, since they only wanted to feed and foster birds on their own land; while the hunting-man—were he but the season-ticket-holding solicitor from Bloomsbury—wanted to hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man, and to spoil that other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him, the season-ticket holder, at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he affected. But, on the other hand, hunting is a strictly national sport, and shooting is a selfish, hole-and-corner kind of pleasure; so the hunting men claimed immemorial rights and privileges as against the owners of woods and copses, and the hatchers of pheasants.

Allan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at Matcham. The neighbourhood had taken lately to golf, and that game had found favour with old and young of both sexes. Everybody could not hunt, but everybody could play golf, or fancy that he or she was playing golf, or, at least, look on from a respectful distance while golf was being played. The golf-links on Matcham Common had therefore become the most popular institution in the neighbourhood, and the scarlet coat of the golfer was oftener seen than the fox-hunter in pink, and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Matcham contest for the bangles and photograph-frames which the golf club offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye.

Allan, who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical exercise, was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club, and speedily became a familiar figure on the links. Here, as elsewhere, he met people who told him he was like Geoffrey Wornock, and who praised Wornock's skill at golf just as other people had praised his riding or his shooting.

"He seems to be something of a Crichton, this Wornock of yours," Allan said sometimes, with a suspicion of annoyance.

He was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never seen—weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence; weary of being told that the resemblance was in expression rather than in actual feature; that there was an indefinable something in his face which recalled Wornock in an absolutely startling manner; while the details of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Wornock's face.

"Yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness," said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove, a personage in the neighbourhood, and the cleverest woman among Allan's new acquaintances. "It is the individuality, the life and movement of the face, that are the same. The likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and colour."

There was a curious feeling in Allan's mind by the time this kind of thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly everybody he knew in Matcham—a feeling which was partly irritation, partly interest in the man whose outward likeness to himself might be allied with some identity of mind and inclinations.

"I wonder whether I shall like him very much, or hate him very much," he said to Mrs. Mornington. "I feel sure I must do one or the other."

"You are sure to like him. He is not the kind of man for anybody to hate," answered the lady quickly; and then, growing suddenly thoughtful, she added, "You may find a something wanting in his character, perhaps; but you cannot dislike him. He is thoroughly likeable."

"What is the something wanting which you have found?"

"I did not say I had found——"

"Oh, but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak spot if you had not found it yourself!"

"You are as searching as a cross-examining counsel," said Mrs. Mornington, laughing at him. "Well, I will be perfectly frank with you. To my mind, Geoffrey's character suffers from the fault which doctors—speaking of a patient's physical condition—call want of tone. There is a want of mental tone in Geoffrey. I have known him from a boy. I like him; I admire his talents. He and my sons were at Eton together. I have seen more of him perhaps than any one else in this neighbourhood. I like him—I am sorry for him."

"Why sorry? Has he not all the good things of this world?"

"Not all. He lost his father before he was five years old; and his mother is, I fear, a poor creature."

"Eccentric, I understand."

"Lamentably so—a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose society would do her good, and who opens her door to any spirit-rapping charlatan whose tricks become public talk. Poor thing! One ought not to be angry with her, but it is provoking to see such a place as Discombe in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position to which she has been elevated."

"Who was Mrs. Wornock before she became Mrs. Wornock? I have heard hints——"

"Yes, and you are never likely to hear more than hints," retorted Mrs. Mornington, impatiently. "Nobody in this neighbourhood knows who Mrs. Wornock was. No creature of her kith or kin has ever been seen at Discombe. I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her antecedents than you or I. Old Squire Wornock left Discombe about seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring in Bohemia—a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of. He was past sixty when he set out on that journey, a confirmed bachelor. One would as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife, but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance, he returned with a pretty-looking delicate young creature he had married in Germany—at Dresden, I believe—and who looked much more like dying within the next five years than he did."

"Did he introduce her to his neighbours? Was she well received?"

"Oh, she was received well enough. Mr. Wornock was not the kind of man to marry a disreputable person. People took her on trust. She seemed painfully shy, and her only merit in society was that she sang very prettily. Everybody called upon her, but she did not respond warmly to our advances; and about six months after her marriage there were rumours of an alarming kind about her health—her mental health. Our own good little doctor, dear old Mr. Podmore, who had attended three generations of Wornocks, shook his head when he was questioned about her. 'Was it serious?' people asked—for I suppose you know that in a neighbourhood as rustic as ours, if the doctor's carriage is seen at a particular house very often, people will ask questions of that doctor. Yes, it was very serious. We never got beyond that. Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient, fondly as he loves a gossip. By-and-by we heard that Mr. Wornock had taken his young wife off to Switzerland. He who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil was off again to the Continent, and Discombe was shut up once more. I'm afraid we all hated Mrs. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like ours, one detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life. Dinners and hunting-breakfasts at Discombe were an element in our daily lives, and we resented their cessation. When I say we, I mean, of course, our men-folk."

"Were your men-folk long deprived of Mr. Wornock's hospitalities?"

"For ever," answered Mrs. Mornington, solemnly. "The Wornocks had only been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and heir, born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter. A nice place for the future owner of Discombe to be born in—Grindelwald—at the sign of the Bear! We were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing. This comes of an old man marrying a nobody, we said. Well, Mr. Carew, it was ages before we saw anything more of the Wornocks. Geoffrey must have been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to the house in which he ought to have been born—a poor little fragile Frenchified object, hanging on to a French bonne, and speaking nothing but French. Not one sentence of his native tongue did the little wretch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us!"

Allan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mornington's indignant recital of this ancient history. Her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she were describing the events of yesterday.

"Was he a nice child?" he asked, when they had both had their laugh.

"Nice? Well, yes, he was nice, just as a French poodle is nice. He was very active and intelligent—hyper-active, hyper-intelligent. He frightened me. But the Wornocks and the Morningtons had been close friends from generation to generation, so I could not help taking an interest in the brat, and I would have been a cordial friend of the brat's mother, for poor old Wornock's sake, if she would have let me. But she wouldn't, or she couldn't, respond to a sensible, matter-of-fact woman's friendly advances. The poor thing was in the clouds then, and she is in the clouds now. She has never come down to earth. Music, spirit-rapping, thought-reading, slate-writing—what can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as those?—a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar to garret, and who has no will of her own in her garden and hot-houses? I have known Mrs. Wornock seven and twenty years, and I know no more of her now than I knew when she came a stranger to Discombe. I call upon her three or four times a year, and she returns my calls, and sits in my drawing-room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing to go. What can one do with such a woman?"

"Is it sheer stupidity, do you think?"

"Stupidity! No, I think not. She has anything but a stupid expression of countenance. She has an air of spirituality, as of a nature above the common world, which cannot come down to common things. I am told that in music she is really a genius; that her powers of criticism and appreciation are of the highest order. She plays exquisitely, both organ and piano. She has, or had, a heavenly soprano voice; but I have not heard her sing since Geoffrey's birth."

"She must be interesting," said Allan, with conviction.

"She is interesting—only she won't let one be interested in her."

"Can one get a look at her? Does she go to Matcham Church?"

"Never. That is another of her eccentricities. She either goes to that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the fields—Filbury parish church—nearly six miles from Discombe, or she drives thirteen miles to Salisbury Cathedral. I believe she sometimes plays the organ at Filbury. That organ was her gift, by the way. They had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discombe."

"I shall go to Filbury Church next Sunday," said Allan.

"Shall you? I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time. This interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint, remember. She must be five and forty years of age. Not even Cleopatra would have been interesting at forty-five."

"I am under no hallucination as to the lady's age. I want to see the mother of Geoffrey Wornock. It is Geoffrey Wornock in whom I am interested."

"Egotistical person! Only because Geoffrey is like you."

"Is there any man living who would not be interested in his double?"

"Ah, but he is not your double! The village mind is given to exaggeration. He has not your firm chin, nor your thoughtful brow. His face is a reminiscence of yours. It is weaker in every characteristic, in every line. You are the substance, he the reflection."

"Now, you are laughing at my egotism, and developing my vanity."

"No, believe me, no!" protested Mrs. Mornington, gaily. "I see you both with all your defects and qualities. You have the stronger character, but you have not Geoffrey's fascinating personality. His very faults are attractive. He is by no means effeminate; yet there is a something womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him. He has inherited his mother's sensitive, dreamy temperament. I feel sure he would see a ghost if there were one in his neighbourhood. The ghost would go to him instinctively, as dogs go unbidden to certain people—sometimes to people who don't care about them; while the genuine dog-lover may be doing his best to attract bow-wow's attention, and failing ignominiously."

"Every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Wornock. In a neighbourhood like this, where everybody is sensible and commonplace and conventional, excepting always your brilliant self"—Mrs. Mornington nodded, and put her feet on the fender—"it is so delightful to meet some one who does not move just on the common lines, and is not worked by the common machinery."

"You will find nothing common about Geoffrey," said the lady. "I have known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit, and he was just as enigmatical to me the day he left for Bombay as he was on his seventh birthday. I know that he has winning manners, and that I am very fond of him; and that is all I know about him."

Allan drove to Filbury on the following Sunday, and was in his place in the little old parish church ten minutes before the service began. The high oak pews were not favourable to his getting a good view of the congregation, since, when seated, the top of his head was only on a level with the top of his pew; but by leaving the door of the pew ajar he contrived to see Mrs. Wornock as she went up the narrow aisle—nave there was none, the pews forming a solid square in the centre of the church. Yes, he was assured that slim, graceful figure in a plain grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Wornock and no other. Indeed, the inference was easily arrived at, for the rest of the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant-farmer and agricultural-labourer class—the women-folk homely and ruddy-cheeked, the men ponderous, and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes.

The lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading-desk—the old three-decker arrangement, for clerk, parson, and preacher. Mr. Wornock was patron of the living of Filbury and Discombe, and this large, square pew had belonged to the Wornocks ever since the rebuilding of the church in Charles the Second's reign, a year or two after the manor-house was built, when the estate, which had hitherto been an outlying possession of the Wornocks, became their place of residence, and most important property.

Allan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body of the church—a delicate profile, worn as if with long years of thoughtfulness; a sweet, sad face that had lost all freshness of colouring, but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought and solitude, where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the mind. A pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face, Allan thought, when the lady turned towards the organ during the Te Deum, listening to the village voices, which sang truer than village voices generally do.

Allan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about nothing particular, on a text in Nehemiah, which suggested not the faintest bearing on the Christian life—a sermon preached by an elderly gentleman in a black silk gown, whose eloquence would have been more impressive had his false teeth been a better fit. After the sermon there was a hymn, and the old-fashioned plate was carried round by a blacksmith, whom Allan recognized as a man who had fastened his hunter's shoe one day at a forge on the outskirts of Filbury, in the midst of a run; and then the little congregation quietly dispersed, after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the lych-gate.

Allan's gig was waiting for him near the gate, and a victoria, on which he recognized the Wornock crest—a dolphin crowned—stood in the shade of a row of limes, which marked the boundary of the Vicarage garden. Allan waited a little, expecting to see Mrs. Wornock come out; and then, as she did not appear, he re-entered the churchyard, and strayed among moss-mantled tomb-stones, reading the village names, the village histories of birth and death, musing, as he read, upon the long eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives.

The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were more bloom than bush—all these made life to-day a sensuous delight which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as to the bliss of living. If it were always thus—a crust of bread and cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle undulations between Filbury and Discombe.

What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near the pulpit.

Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the still air—a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs. Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still youthful form to pass.

In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow. Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line—

"Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."

That expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as she looked at him; changed to astonishment, interrogation, which gradually softened to a grave curiosity, an anxious scrutiny. Then, as if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners, the heavy eyelids sank, a faint blush coloured the thin cheeks, and she hurried onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her.

Her footman, in a sober brown livery, was holding the gate open for her. Her horses were shaking their bridles. She stepped lightly into the victoria, nodded an adieu to the schoolboy who had blown the organ bellows, and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane.

"So that is my double's mother. An interesting face, a graceful figure, and a lady to the tips of her fingers. Whether she is county, or not county, Geoffrey Wornock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother. Nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman."

He brooded on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs. Wornock's face as she looked at him. Clearly she, too, had seen the likeness which he bore to her son.

"I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far away," speculated Allan, "or whether she feels kindly towards me for the sake of that absent son?"

This question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own hand. Among the letters on Allan's breakfast-table on Wednesday morning there was one in a strange penmanship, which took his breath away, for on the envelope, in bold brown letters, appeared the address, Discombe Manor.

He thrust all his other letters aside—those uninteresting letters which besiege the man who is supposed to have money to spend, from tradesmen who want to work for him, charities who want to do good for him, stock-jobbers who want to speculate for him—the whole race of spiders that harassed the well-feathered fly. He tore open the letter from Discombe Manor, and his eye ran eagerly over the following lines:—

"DEAR SIR,

"People tell me that you are kind and amiable, and I am emboldened by this assurance to ask you a favour. Etiquette forbids me to call upon you, and as I rarely visit anybody, it might be long before we should meet casually in the houses of other people; but you can, if you like, gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your acquaintance in her own house; and perhaps when my son comes home on leave, the acquaintance, so begun, may ripen into friendship. I dare say people have told you that you are like him, and you will hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me of my nearest and dearest.

"I am generally at home in the afternoon.

"Very truly yours,
"E. WORNOCK."

"E. Wornock!" he repeated, studying the signature. "Why no Christian name? And what is the name which that initial represents? Eliza, perhaps—and she sinks it, thinking it common and housemaidish—forgetting how Ben Jonson, by that housemaidish name, does designate the most glorious of queens. Possibly Ellen—a milk-and-waterish name, with less of dignity than Eliza; or Emily, my mother's name—graceful but colourless. I have never thought it good enough for so fine a character as my mother. She should have been Katherine or Margaret, Gertrude or Barbara, names that have a fulness of sound which implies fulness of meaning. I will call at Discombe Manor this afternoon. Delay would be churlish—and I want to see what Geoffrey Wornock's home is like."

The afternoon was warm and sunny, and Allan made a leisurely circuit of the chase and park of Discombe on his way to Mrs. Wornock's house.

The beauty of the Manor consisted as much in the perfection of detail as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park. The mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly picturesque. It was a sober red brick house, with a high, tiled roof, and level rows of windows—those of the upper story were the original lattices of 1664, the date of the house; but on the lower floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows, of a uniform unpicturesque flatness, opening on a broad gravel walk, beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a moat, for Mrs. Wornock's house was one of those moated manor-houses of which there are so few left in the south of England. The gardens surrounding that grave-looking Carolian house had attained the ideal of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden-lovers, the ideal of old-fashioned beauty, be it understood; the beauty of clipped hedges and sunk lawns, walls of ilex and of yew, solemn avenues of obelisk-shaped conifers, labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of roses, tennis-lawns and bowling-greens, broad borders of old-fashioned perennials, clumps and masses of vivid colour, placed with art that seemed accidental wherever vivid colour was wanted to relieve the verdant monotony.

If the gardens were perfect, the house, farm, and cottages were even more attractive in their arcadian grace, the grace of a day that is dead. Quaint roofs and massive chimney-stacks, lattices, porches, sun-dials, gardens brimming over with flowers, trim pathways, shining panes, everywhere a spotless cleanliness, a wealth of foliage, an air of prosperous fatness, bee-hives, poultry, cattle, all the signs and tokens of dependents for whom much is done, and whose dwellings flourish at somebody else's expense.

Allan noted the cottages which bore the Wornock "W" above the date of the building—he noted them, but lost count of their number—keepers' lodges in the woodland which skirted the park—gardeners' or dairy-men's cottages at every park gate; farmhouse and bailiff's house; cottages for coachmen and helpers. At every available angle where gable, roof, and quaint old chimney-stack could make a picturesque feature in the landscape, a cottage had been placed, and the number of these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage, a thing that is talked about but not seen. Discombe Chase, the Discombe lodges, and the village and school-houses of Discombe were obvious facts which impressed the stranger.

That sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Wornock's had slain the viper envy in Allan's breast. When first he rode through those woods and over those undulating pastures and by those gables embowered in roses and wisteria, or starred with the pale blue clematis, he had felt a certain sour discontent with his own good fortune, about which people, from his mother down to the acquaintance of yesterday, prattled and prosed so officiously. He was sick of hearing himself called a lucky fellow. Luck, forsooth! what was his luck compared with Geoffrey Wornock's? That a bachelor uncle of his, having scraped together a modest little fortune, and not being able to carry it with him to the nether-world, should have passed it on to him, Allan, was not such a strange event as to warrant the running commentary of congratulation that had assailed his ear ever since he came to Matcham. No one congratulated Geoffrey Wornock. Nobody talked of his good luck. He had been born in the purple, and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right to the best things that this earth can give—to a Carolian mansion, and chase and park, and wide-spreading farms. There seemed to Allan Carew's self-consciousness an implied disparagement of himself in the tone which Matcham people took about Geoffrey Wornock. They in a manner congratulated him on his likeness to the Lord of Discombe Manor, and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this resemblance to the local magnate.

To-day, however, Allan forgot all those infinitesimal vexations which in the beginning of his residence at Matcham had made the name of Wornock odious to him. His thoughts were full of that pale sad face, the wasted cheeks, the heavy eyelids, the somewhat sickly transparency of complexion, the large violet eyes, which lit up the whole face as with a light that is not of this world. It was the most spiritual countenance he had ever seen—the first face which had ever suggested to him the epithet ethereal.

He remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Wornock; her encouragement of spirit-rapping people and thought-reading people, and every phase of modern super-naturalism; her passion for music—a passion so absorbing as almost to pass the border-line of sanity; at least in the opinion of the commonplace sane. He wondered no longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting, and shooting, and dinner-giving, and tea-drinking population scattered within a radius of eight or ten miles of Discombe; the people with whom, had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural lady, she should have been on intimate terms. She was among them, but not of them, Allan told himself.

"Surely I am not in love with a woman old enough to be my mother!" he thought, between jest and earnest, as he drove up to the house. "I have not thought so persistently of any woman since I was sick for love of the dean's pretty daughter, fairest and last of my calf-loves."

He was not wholly in jest, for during the last three days the lady's image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on "possession." It was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him, and as if he must needs wait until the enchantress who held him in her mystic bands should unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty.

The hall door stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun. A large black poodle, with an air of ineffable wisdom, was stretched near the threshold; a liver-and-white St. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk upon the grass in front of the steps; and on the broad terrace to the right of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendour of his tail, and strutted in stately slowness towards the sun.

"House and garden belong to fairyland," thought Allan. "The enchantress has but to wave her wand and fix the picture for a century. We may have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence, and Mrs. Wornock's age may count as girlhood, when some gay young prince of fifty-five shall ride through the tangled woodland to awaken the sleeper. Who can tell? 'We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.'"

CHAPTER IV.

"IN THE ALL-GOLDEN AFTERNOON."

The hall door stood wide open to the sunlight, sufficiently guarded by that splendid brute, the St. Bernard.

A middle-aged footman in the sober Wornock livery came at the sound of the bell, the St. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly eyes, and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability.

Mrs. Wornock was at home. A slow and solemn butler now appeared upon the scene, and led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall; and at the end of this corridor, like Vandyke's famous portrait of Charles the First at Warwick Castle, the full-length portrait of a young man in a hunting-coat looked Allan Carew in the face.

In spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of Discombe, the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the bright white light fairly startled him. For the moment it seemed to him as if he had seen his own reflection in a cheval-glass; but as he drew nearer the canvas the likeness lessened, the difference in the features came out, and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a reminiscence. Distance was needed to make the illusion, and he could understand now why his new friends of the hunting-field should have taken him for Wornock on that first morning when he rode up to them as a stranger.

The portrait was by Millais, painted with as much brio and vigour as the better-known picture of the young Marchioness of Huntley. Mr. Wornock was standing in an old stone doorway, leaning in an easy attitude against the deep arch of the door, hunting-crop, cigar-case, and hat on a table in the background, standing where he had stood on many a winter morning, waiting for his horse.

There was a skylight over this end of the corridor, and the portrait of the master of the house shone out brilliantly under the clear top-light.

The butler stopped within a few paces of the portrait, opened a low, old-fashioned door, and ushered Mr. Carew into a spacious room, at the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window, beyond which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden, a cypress avenue, where statues were gleaming here and there in the sunshine. There was a grand piano on one side of the room, an organ on the other; books filled every recess. This spacious apartment was evidently music-room and library rather than drawing-room, and here, amidst books and music, lived the lonely lady of the house.

She came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the room, holding out her hand.

"It was very good of you to come so soon," she said, in her low, musical voice. "I wanted so much to see you—to know you. Yes, you are very like him. One of those accidental likenesses which are so common, and yet seem so strange. My husband had a friend who was murdered because he was like Sir Robert Peel; but my son is not a public man, and he has no enemies. You will run no risks on account of your likeness to him.

"I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honour of knowing Mrs. Wornock," said Allan, taking the seat to which she motioned him, as she resumed her low chair by the window.

"Indeed, you have no reason. I am a very stupid person. I go nowhere, I see very few people; and the people I do see are people whom you would think unworthy of your interest."

"Not if you are interested in them. They cannot be unworthy."

"Oh, I am easily interested! I like strange people. I like to believe strange things. Your friend, Mrs. Mornington, will tell you that I am a foolish person."

"You have seen Mrs. Mornington lately?" questioned Allan.

"Yes; she was here yesterday afternoon. She is always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She is always bright and amusing, and I always feel particularly stupid in her society. She talked of you, but I did not tell her I wanted to make your acquaintance. She would have offered to make a luncheon-party for me to meet you—or something dreadful of that kind."

"You have a great dislike to society, Mrs. Wornock?" he asked, keenly interested.

Her manner was so fresh and simple, almost childlike in its confiding candour, and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner. It is the fashion of our day for women of five and forty to look young, even to girlishness; but most women of five and forty are considerably indebted to modern art for that advantage. Here there was no art. The pale, clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the perfumer's palette. No poudre des fées blanched the delicate brow; no rose d'amour flushed the cheek; no eau de Medée brightened the large violet eyes. The lines which thought and sorrow had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised, and in the soft, pale gold of the hair there were threads of silver. The youthfulness of the face was in its colouring and expression—the complexion so delicately fair, the countenance so trustful and pleading. It was the countenance of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were unknown.

"You saw my son's portrait in the corridor?" said Mrs. Wornock.

"Yes. It struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture—almost as powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury, which I remember in the Millais collection at the Grosvenor."

"But as for the likeness to yourself, now—did that strike you as forcibly as it has struck other people?"

"I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim, 'That is I or my brother!' But as I came nearer the picture I saw there was considerable diversity. To begin with, your son is much handsomer than I."

"The drawing of his features may be more correct, but you are quite handsome enough," she answered, with her pretty friendly air, as if she had been his aunt. "And your face is more strongly marked than his, just as your voice is stronger," she added, with a sigh.

"Your son is not an invalid, I hope?"

"An invalid! No. But he is not very strong. He could not play football. He hated even cricket. He is passionately fond of horses, and an ardent sportsman; but he can be sadly idle. He likes to lie about in the sunshine, reading or dreaming. I fear he is a dreamer, like his mother."

"He is not like you, in person."

"No."

"He is like his father, no doubt."

"You will see his father's picture, and you can judge for yourself. Well, we are to be friends, are we not, Mr. Carew? And you will come to see me sometimes; and if you ever have any little troubles which can be lightened by a woman's sympathy, you will come and confide them to me, I hope."

"It will be very sweet to be allowed to confide in so kind a friend," said Allan.

"My son will be home for his long leave before the end of the year, and I want you to make him your friend. He is very amiable," again with a suppressed sigh. "Come, now it is your turn to tell me something about yourself. This room tells you all there is to be told about me."

"It tells me you are very fond of music."

"I live for it. Music has been my companion and consoler all my life."

"And I hope you will let me hear you play again some day."

"Again? Ah, I forgot! You were in the churchyard last Sunday while I was playing. Did you listen?"

"As long as you played. I was under the open window most of the time."

"You are fond of organ music?"

"As fond as an ignorant man may be. I know nothing of the subtleties of music. I have never been educated up to Wagner or Dvorak. I love the familiar voices—Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod, Auber even, and I adore our English master of melody, Sullivan. Does that shock you?"

"Not at all. I will play his cantata for you some day. If you have nothing better to do with your time this afternoon, I should like to show you my garden."

"I shall be enchanted. I am enchanted already with that long straight walk, those walls of cypress and yew, that peacock sunning his emerald and sapphire plumage by the dial. In such a garden did Beatrice hide when Hero and her ladies talked of Benedick's passion; in such a garden did Jessica and Lorenzo loiter under the moonlight."

"I see you love your Shakespeare."

"As interpreted by Irving and Ellen Terry. The Lyceum was the school in which I learnt to love the bard. An Eton examination in Richard the Second only prejudiced me against him."

"Mr. Wornock was a great Shakespearian."

They were in the garden by this time—sauntering with slow footsteps along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk. At the end of the cypress avenue there was a semicircular recess, shut in by a raised bank, and a wall of clipped yew, in which, at regular intervals, there were statues in dark green niches.

"Mr. Wornock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man. The gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago," explained Mrs. Wornock.

Allan noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as "Mr. Wornock."

"That amphitheatre reminds me a little of the Boboli gardens," said Allan; "but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no public garden can have."

Three peacocks were trailing their plumage on the long lawns between the house and the amphitheatre, and one less gorgeous but more ethereal, a bird of dazzling whiteness, was perched, with outspread tail, on an angle of the cypress wall.

The lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn, and crossed the amphitheatre to a stone temple, open on the side fronting the south-western sun, and spacious enough to accommodate a dozen people.

"If you had a garden-play, how delightfully this temple would serve for a central point in your stage," said Allan, admiringly.

"People have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play—'Twelfth Night,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing;' but I have always said no. I should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden."

"Yet there are people who would think such a place as this created on purpose for garden-parties, and who would desire nothing better than a crowd of smart people."

Mrs. Wornock shuddered at the mention of smart people.

"A party of that kind would be misery for me," she said. "And now tell me about yourself, and your relations. Mrs. Mornington told me that your father and mother are both living, and that you inherited Beechhurst from your uncle. I remember seeing Admiral Darnleigh years and years ago, when everything at Discombe and at Matcham was new to me. It must be sad for your mother to lose you from her own home."

"My mother is not given to sadness," Allan answered, smiling. "She is the best and kindest of mothers, and I know she loves me as dearly as any son need desire; but she is quite resigned to my having my own home and my own interests. She would argue, perhaps, that were I to marry I must have a house of my own, and that my establishment at Beechhurst is only a little premature."

"You are very much attached to your mother?"

"Very much—and to my father."

"Your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the dearer of the two."

"You have a quick ear for shades of meaning, Mrs. Wornock."

"Pray do not think me impertinent. I am not questioning you out of idle curiosity. If we are to be friends in the future, I must know and understand something of your life and your mind. But perhaps I bore you—perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent."

"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I am deeply touched that you should offer to be my friend. Be assured I have no reserve, and am willing—possibly too willing—to talk of myself and my own people. I have no dark corners in my life. My history is all open country—an uninteresting landscape enough. But there is no difficult going—there are no bogs or risky bits over which the inquiring spirit need skim lightly. Your ear did not deceive you, just now. Fondly as I love my mother, I will freely confess that the bond that draws me to my father is the stronger bond. In the parrot jargon of the day, his is the more interesting 'personality.' He is a man of powerful intellect, whose mind has done nothing for the good of the world—who will die unhonoured and unremembered except by his familiar friends. There is one question I have asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think—a question which I first asked myself when I began to read classics with him in my school vacations, and which I had not finished asking myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first-class in the Honour School. To me it has always been a mystery that a man of wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly destitute of ambition. My father was a young man when he married; he is still in the prime of life; and for six and twenty years he has been content to vegetate in Suffolk, and has regarded his annual visit to London as more of an affliction than a relief. It is as if the hands of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth. I have told myself again and again that my father's life must have been shadowed by some great sorrow before his marriage, young as he was when he married."

Mrs. Wornock listened intently, her head slightly bent, her clasped hands resting on her knee, her sensitive lips slightly parted.

"You say that your father married young," she said, after a brief silence, in which she seemed to be thinking over his words. "What do you call young in such a case?"

"My father was not three and twenty when he married—two years younger than I am at this present hour—and yet the idea of matrimony has never shaped itself in my mind. But you must not infer from anything I have said that my father's has been an unhappy marriage. On the contrary, he is devoted to my mother, and she to him. I cannot imagine a better assorted couple. Each supplies the qualities wanting in the other. She is all movement, impulse, and spontaneousness. He is calm and meditative, with depths of thought and feeling which no one has sounded. They are perfectly happy as husband and wife. But there is a shade of melancholy that steals over my father in quiet, unoccupied hours, which indicates a sorrow or a disappointment in the past. I have taken it to mean an unhappy love-affair. I may be utterly wrong, and the shadow may be cast by a disappointed ambition. It is not unlikely that a man of powerful intellect and lymphatic temperament should feel that he had wasted opportunities, and failed in life. It is quite easy to imagine ambition without the energy to achieve."

She made no comment upon this, but Allan could see in her eager countenance that she was intensely interested.

"Is your mother beautiful?" she asked timidly.

It seemed a foolish and futile question; and it jarred upon that serious thought of his parents which had been inspired by her previous questioning. But, after all, it was a natural question for a woman to ask, and he smiled as he answered—

"No, my mother is not beautiful. I am not guilty of treason as a son if I confess that she is plain, since she herself would be the first to take offence at any sophistication of the truth. She has never set up for being other than she is. She has a fine countenance and a fine figure, straight as a dart, with a waist which a girl might acknowledge without a blush. She dresses with admirable taste, and always looks well, after her own fashion, exclusive of beautiful features or brilliant colouring. She is what women call stylish, and men distinguished. I am as proud as I am fond of her."

"Will she come to see you in your new home?"

"Most assuredly my mother will pay me a visit before the summer is over, and I shall be charmed to bring you and her together."

"And your father? Will not he come?"

"I don't know. He is very difficult to move. He is like the lichen on the old stone walls at home. He takes no particular interest in chairs and tables; he would care not a fig for my new surroundings. Besides, he saw Beechhurst years ago, when the Admiral was building and improving. He has no curiosity to bring him here; and as for his son, he knows he has only to want me for me to be at his side."

After this there came a silence. Certainly Mrs. Wornock was not gifted as a conversationalist. She sat looking straight before her at the long perspective of lawn and cypress, broad gravel walk, and narrow grass plots, all verging to a point at which the old house rose square and grey, crowned with cupola and bell. The peacocks strutted slowly along the narrow lawn. The waters of a fountain flashed in the warm sunlight. It was a garden that recalled Tivoli, or that old grave garden of the Vatican, with its long level walks and prim flower-beds, in which the Holy Father takes his restricted airing. In the Vatican pleasure grounds there are peacocks and clipped hedges, and smooth greensward, and formal cypress avenues, and quaint arbours; but the hum of Rome, the echoes of the Papal Barrack, the rush of the Tiber are near; and not even in that antique garden can there be this summer silence, profound as in the enchanted isle where it seemeth always afternoon.

"Tell me more about yourself, your childhood, your youth," Mrs. Wornock asked suddenly, with an air of agitated impatience which took Allan by surprise.

Mrs. Mornington had prepared him for a certain eccentricity in the lonely lady of Discombe; but the strangeness of her manner was even more than he had expected.

"There is very little to tell about my own life," he said. "I have lived at home for the most part, except when I was at Eton and Cambridge. My father helped me in all my studies. I never had any other tutor except at the University. My home life was of the quietest. Fendyke is twenty miles from Cambridge, but it seems at the end of the world. The single line of rail that leads to it comes to a full stop. The terminus stands in the midst of a Dutch landscape—level fields divided by shallow dykes, a river so straight that it might as well be a canal, water-mills, pollarded willows, broad clean roads, and fine old Norman churches large enough for a city, no Sunday trains, and not many on lawful days. A neat little town, with decent shops, and comfortable inns, and a market which only awakens from a Pompeian slumber for an hour or two on Fridays. A land of rest and plenty, picturesque cottages and trim cottage gardens, an air of prosperity which I believe is real. So much for our town and surroundings. For the family mansion picture to yourself a long low house, built partly of brick and partly of wood, with chimney-stacks that contain brick enough for the building of respectable houses, and which have defied the gales sweeping down from the Ural mountains—there is nothing, mark you, between Fendyke and the Urals—ever since Queen Elizabeth was young enough to pace a pavan."

"You must be fond of an old house like that."

"Yes, I am very fond of Fendyke. I even love the surrounding country, though I can but wish Nature had not ironed the landscape with her mammoth iron. She might have left us a few creases, a wrinkled meadow here and there."

"I have heard that people born in Norfolk and Suffolk have an innate antipathy to hills."

"That may be. Indeed, I have noticed in the East Anglians a kind of stubborn pride in the flatness of their soil. But I have not that perverted pride in ugliness, since I was not born in Suffolk."

"Indeed!"

"No. My father lived in Sussex—at Hayward's Heath—at the time of his marriage, and for half a dozen years after my birth. Fendyke came to him from his maternal grandfather, who left the estate to his daughter and heiress, and to her son after her, who was to assume the name and arms of Carew when he succeeded to the property. My father's name was Beresford."

There was no reply—no further questioning on Mrs. Wornock's part—and for some minutes Allan abandoned himself to the dreamy silence of the scene, content to watch the peacocks on the lawn, and to listen to the splash of the fountains.

Then suddenly the silence surprised him, and he turned to look at his companion. Her head had fallen back against the wall of the summer-house, her eyes were closed, and her face was white as death. She was in a dead faint; and they were at least a quarter of a mile from the house.

The situation was awkward for Allan, though there was nothing in so simple a matter as a fainting-fit to surprise him. He knew that there are women who faint at the smallest provocation, in a crowded room, in the sunshine, at church, anywhere. Here the sunshine was perhaps to blame; that delicious pure sunlight in which he had been basking.

He gave a long Australian cooe, long enough and loud enough to have brought help in the wilderness, and assuredly calculated to attract some gardener at work within call. Then he bethought himself of the fountain, and ran to get some water in his hat.

At the first dash of water, Mrs. Wornock opened her eyes, with a little sobbing sigh, and looked at him as if wondering who and what he was.

"I knew he would have answered my prayer," she murmured brokenly, "spirit to spirit, ghost to ghost."

It seemed a worse kind of faint than Allan had supposed, for now her mind was wandering.

"I fear the sun was too warm for you," he said, standing before her in painful embarrassment, half expecting some indication of absolute lunacy.

"Yes, yes, it was the sun," she answered nervously. "The glare is so strong this afternoon; and this summer-house is shadeless. I must go back to the house. It was very foolish of me to faint. I am so sorry. I hope you won't consider me a very silly person."

"My dear Mrs. Wornock, I have never heard that a fainting-fit on a warm summer afternoon is a sign of silliness."