HE THAT WILL NOT
WHEN HE MAY

HE THAT WILL NOT
WHEN HE MAY

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOLUME I.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1880
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved

LONDON:
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor,
BREAD STREET HILL.

CONTENTS.

HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY.

CHAPTER I.

The Easter holidays were drawing near an end, and the family at Markham Chase had fallen into a state of existence somewhat different from its usual dignified completeness of life. When I say that the head of the house was Sir William Markham, once Under-Secretary for the Colonies, once President of the Board of Trade, and still, though in opposition, a distinguished member of his party and an important public personage, it is scarcely necessary to add that his house was one of the chief houses in the county, and that “the best people” were to be found there, especially at those times when fashionable gatherings take place in the country. At Easter the party was of the best kind, sprinkled with great personages, a party such as we should all have liked to be asked to meet. But these fine people had melted away; they had gone on to other great houses, they had got on the wing for town, where, indeed, the Markhams themselves were going early, like most Parliamentary people. Sir William too was away. He was visiting the head of his party in one of the midland counties, helping to settle the programme of enlightened and patriotic opposition for the rest of the session, some untoward events having deranged the system previously decided upon. To say that Sir William’s absence was a relief would be untrue; for though he was somewhat punctilious and overwhelming in his orderliness he was greatly admired by his family, and loved—as much as was respectful and proper. But when he went away, and when all the fine people went away, the house without any demonstration slid smoothly, as it were down an easy slope of transition, into a kind of nursery life, delightful to those who were left behind. The family consisted, to begin at the wrong end, of two schoolboys, and two little girls who were in the hands of a governess. But mademoiselle was away too. There was nobody left at home but mamma and Alice—imagine the rapture of the children thus permitted to be paramount! There was a general dinner for everybody at two o’clock; and in the afternoon, as often as not, Lady Markham herself would be persuaded to go out to their picnic teas in the woods, and all kinds of juvenile dissipations. The nursery meals were superseded altogether. Old Nurse might groan, but she dared not say a word, for was not mamma the ringleader in everything? There was no authority but hers in the house, and all the servants looked on benignant. In the evening when it was impossible to stay out any longer, they would dance, Alice “pretending” to be the dancing mistress, which was far better fun than real dancing. There was no need to run away, or to keep quiet for fear of disturbing papa. In short, a mild Carnival was going on in the house, only dashed by the terrible thought that in a week the holidays would be over. In a week the boys would go back to school, the girls to their governess. The budding woods would become to the one and the other only a recollection, or a sight coldly seen during the course of an orderly walk. Then the boys would have the best of it. They would go away among all their friends, with the delights of boating and cricket, whereas the little girls would relapse into blue sashes and a correct appearance at dessert, followed, alas, in no small time, by complete loneliness when mamma went to London, and everybody was away.

“Don’t let us think about it,” said little Bell; “it will be bad enough when it comes. Oh, mamma, come and play the Tempête. Alice is going to teach us. Harry, you be my partner, you dance a great deal the best.”

This produced a cry of indignant protestation from Mary, whom they all called Marie with a very decided emphasis on the last syllable. “I pulled Roland about all last night,” she said, “when he was thinking of something else all the time; it is my turn to have Harry now.”

“Don’t you see,” said Alice, “that Roland is much more your size? It doesn’t do to have a little one and a big one in the Tempête. He mustn’t think of anything else. Don’t you know Rol, if you don’t take a little trouble you will never learn to dance, and then no one will ask you out when you grow up. I should not like, for my part, when all the others went out to be always left moping at home.”

“Much I’d mind,” said Roland with a precocious scorn of society. But just then the music struck up, and the lesson began. Roland was generally thinking of something else, but Harry threw himself into the dance with all the simple devotion of a predestined guardsman. That was to be a great part of his duty in life, and he gave himself up to it dutifully. The drawing-room was very large, partially divided by two pillars, which supported a roof painted with clouds and goddesses in the taste of the seventeenth century. The outer half was but partially lighted, while in the inner part all was bright. In the right-hand corner, behind Lady Markham, was a third room at right angles to this, like the transept crossing a long nave, divided from the drawing-room by curtains half-drawn, and faintly lighted too by a silver lamp. Thus the brilliant interior where the children were dancing was thrown up by two dimnesses; the girls in their light frocks, the bright faces and curls, the abundant light which showed the pictures on the walls, and all the details of the furniture, were thus doubly gay and bright in consequence. The children moving back and forward, Alice now here, now there, with one side and another as necessity demanded, flitting among them in all her softer grace of young womanhood; and the beautiful mother, the most beautiful of all, smiling on them from the piano, turning round to criticise and encourage, while her hands flashed over the keys, made the prettiest picture. There was an abandon of innocent gaiety in the scene, an absence of every harsh tone and suggestion which made it perfect. Was there really no evil and trouble in the place lighted up by the soft pleasure of the women, the mirth of the children? You would have said so—but that just then, though she did not stop smiling, Lady Markham sighed. Her children were in pairs, Harry and Bell, Roland and Marie—but where was Alice’s brother? “Ah, my Paul!” she said within herself, but played on. Thus there was one note out of harmony—one, if no more.

Almost exactly coincident with this sigh the door of the drawing-room opened far down in the dim outer part, and two men came in. The house was so entirely given up to this innocent sway of youth, that there was no reason why they should particularly note the opening of the door. It could not be papa coming in, who was liable to be disturbed by such a trifle as a dance, or any serious visitor, or even the elder brother, who would, when he was at home, occasionally frown down the revels. Accordingly, their ears being quickened by no alarm, no one heard the opening of the door, and the two strangers came in unobserved. One was quite young, not much more than a youth, slim, and, though not very tall, looking taller than he was; the other was of a short, thick-set figure, neither graceful nor handsome, who followed his companion with a mixture of reluctance and defiance, strange enough in such a scene. As they came towards the light this became still more noticeable. The second stranger did not seem to have any affinity with the place in which he found himself, and he had the air of being angry to find himself here. They had the full advantage of the pretty scene as they approached, for their steps were inaudible on the thick carpet, and the merry little company was absorbed in its own proceedings. All at once, however, the music ceased with a kind of shriek on a high note, the dancers, alarmed, stopped short, and Lady Markham left the piano and flew forward, holding out her hands. “Paul!” she cried, “Paul!”

“Paul!” cried Alice, following her mother, and “Paul!” in various tones echoed the little girls and boys. The strange man who had come in with Paul had time to remark them while the other was receiving the greeting of his mother and sister.

“I thought some one would be sure to come and spoil the fun,” Roland said, taking the opportunity to get far from the little ring of performers.

“Now we shall get no more good of mamma,” said his little partner with a disconsolate face; but what was this to the joy of the mother and elder sister, whose faces where lighted up with a sudden happiness, infinitely warmer than the innocent pleasure which the new-comers had disturbed!

“We thought you were not coming,” said Lady Markham. “Oh, Paul, you have been hard upon us not to write! but no, my dear, I am not going to scold you. I am too happy to have you at last. Have you had any dinner? Alice, ring the bell, and order something for your brother.”

“You do not see that I am not alone, mother,” said Paul, with a tone so solemn that both the ladies were startled, not knowing what it could mean. “I have brought with me a very particular friend, who I hope will stay for a little.” It was then for the first time that Lady Markham perceived her son’s companion.

“You know,” she said, “how glad I always am to see your friends; but you must tell me his name,” she added with a smile, holding out her hand, “this is a very imperfect introduction.” The sweetness of her look as she turned to the stranger dazzled him. There was a moment’s confusion on the part of both the men, as this beautiful, smiling lady put her delicate fingers into a rough hand brought forth with a certain reluctance and shamefacedness. She too changed colour a little, and a look of surprise came into her face on a closer view of her son’s friend.

“I thank you for your kind reception of me, my lady,” said the man; “but Markham, you had better explain to your mother who I am. I go nowhere under false pretences.”

Now that the light was full upon him the difference showed all the more. His rough looks, his dress, not shabby, still less dirty, but uncared for, his coarse boots, the general aspect of his figure, which was neither disorderly nor disreputable, but unquestionably not that of a gentleman, seemed to communicate a sort of electric shock to the little company. The boys pressed forward with a simultaneous idea that Paul was in custody for something or other, and heroic intentions of pouncing upon the intruder and rescuing their brother. Alice gazed at him appalled, with some fancy of the same kind passing through her mind. Only Lady Markham, though she had grown pale, preserved her composure.

“I cannot be anything but glad to see a friend of my boy’s,” she said, faltering slightly; but there passed through her mind a silent thanksgiving: Thank Heaven, his father was away!

“This is Spears,” said Paul, curtly. “You needn’t be so fastidious; my mother is not that sort. Mamma, this is a man to whom I owe more than all the dons put together. You ought to be proud to see him in your house. No, we haven’t dined, and we’ve had a long journey. Let them get us something as soon as possible. Hallo, Brown, put this gentleman’s things into the greenroom—I suppose we may have the greenroom?—and tell Mrs. Fry, as soon as she can manage it, to send us something to eat.”

“I took the liberty to order something directly, as soon as I saw Mr. Markham, my lady,” said Brown. There was a look of mingled benevolence and anxiety in this functionary’s face. He was glad to see his young master come back, but he did not conceal his concern at the company in which he was. “The greenroom, my lady?”

“The greenroom is quite a small room,” said Lady Markham, faltering. She looked at the stranger with a doubtful air. He was not a boy to be put into such a small place; but then, on the other hand——

“A small room is no matter to me,” said Spears. “I’m not used to anything different. In such a career as mine we’re glad to get shelter anywhere.” He laughed as he spoke of his career. What was his career? He looked as if he expected her to know. Lady Markham concealed her perplexity by a little bow, and turned to Brown, who was waiting her orders with a half-ludicrous sentimental air of sympathy with his mistress.

“Put Mr. Spears into the chintz-room in the east wing; it is a better room,” she said. Then she led the way into the brightness, on the verge of which they had been standing. “It is almost too warm for fires,” she said, “but you may like to come nearer to it after your journey. Where have you come from, Paul? Children, now that you have seen Paul, you had better go up stairs to bed.”

“I knew how it would be,” said Marie; “no one cares for us now Paul has come.”

“No one will so much as see mamma as long as he is here,” said Bell; while the boys, withdrawing reluctantly, stopping to whisper, and throw black looks back upon the stranger as they strolled away, wondered almost audibly what sort of fellow Paul had got with him. “A bailiff, I think,” said Roland; “just the sort of fellow that comes after the men in Harry Lorrequer.” “Or he’s done something, and it’s a turnkey,” said Harry. Elder brothers were in the way of getting into trouble in the works with which these young heroes were familiar. Thus at Paul’s appearance the pretty picture broke up and faded away like a phantasmagoria. Childhood and innocence disappeared, and care came back. The aspect of the very room changed where now there was the young man, peremptory and authoritative, and the two ladies tremulous with the happiness of his return, yet watching him with breathless anxiety, reading, or trying to read, every change in his face.

“Your last letter was from Yorkshire, Paul; what have you been doing? We tried to make out, but we could not. You are so unsatisfactory, you boys; you never will give details of anything. Did you go to see the Normantons? or were you——”

“I was nowhere—that you know of, at least,” said Paul. “I was with Spears, holding meetings. We went from one end of the county to another. I can’t tell you where we went; it would be harder to say where we didn’t go.”

Lady Markham looked at her son’s companion with a bewildered smile. “Mr. Spears, then, Paul—I suppose—knows a great many people in Yorkshire?” She had not a notion what was meant by holding meetings. He did not indeed look much like a man who would know many “people” in Yorkshire. “People” meant not the country folks, you may be sure, but the great county people, the Yorkshire gentry, the only class which to Lady Markham told in a county. This was no fault of hers, but only because the others were beyond her range of vision. No, he did not look like a man who would know many people in Yorkshire; but, short of that, what could Paul mean? Lady Markham did not know what significance there really was in what Paul said.

“We saw a great many Yorkshire people; but I go where I am called,” said the stranger, “not only where there are people I know.”

Seen in the full light, there was nothing repulsive or disagreeable about the man. He looked like one of the men who came now and then to the Chase to put something in order; some clock that had gone wrong, or something about the decorations. He sat a little uneasily upon the sofa where he had placed himself. His speech was unembarrassed, but nothing else about him. He was out of place. To see him there in the midst of this family it was as if he had dropped from another planet; he did not seem to belong to the same species. But his speech was easy enough, though nothing else; he had a fine melodious voice, and he seemed to like to use it.

“I hope we did good work there,” he said; “not perhaps of a kind that you would admire, my lady: but from my point of view, excellent work; and Markham, though he is a young aristocrat, was of great use. An enthusiast is always a valuable auxiliary. I do not know when I have made a more successful round. It has taken us just a week.”

Lady Markham bowed in bewildered assent, not knowing what to say. She smiled out of sheer politeness, attending to every word, though she could not form an idea of what he meant. She did not care, indeed, to know what Mr. Spears had been doing. It was her son she wanted to know about; but the laws of politeness were imperative. Meanwhile Paul walked about uneasily, placing himself for one moment in front of the expiring fire, then moving from spot to spot, looking intently at some picture or knick-knack he had seen a thousand times before. “You have been getting some new china,” he burst forth, after various suppressed signs of impatience. Now that he had brought his friend here, he did not seem desirous that his mother should attend so closely to all he said.

“New china! my dear boy, you have known it all your life,” said Lady Markham. “We have only shifted it from one cabinet to another. It is the same old Sèvres. Perhaps Mr. Spears takes an interest in china. Show it to him, Paul. It is a valuable cup; it is supposed to have been made for Madame du Barry.”

“No,” said the strange visitor, “I know nothing about it. What makes it valuable, I wonder? I don’t understand putting such a price on things that if you were to let them drop would be smashed into a thousand pieces.”

“But you must not let it drop,” said Lady Markham, with a little alarm. “I daresay it is quite a fictitious kind of value. Still, I like my Sèvres. It is a very pretty ornament.”

“Just so,” said Spears, with a certain patronage in his tone. “In a luxurious house like this decoration is necessary—and I don’t say that it has not a very good effect. But in the places I am used to, a common teacup would be far more useful. Still, I do not deny the grace of ornament,” he added, with a smile. “Life can go on very well without it, but it would be stupid to go against it here.”

Lady Markham once more made him a little bow. He spoke as if he intended a compliment; but what did the man mean? And Paul set down the cup roughly as if he would have liked to bring the whole étagère to the ground. Altogether it was a confusion, almost a pain, to have him here and yet not to have him. There were so many things she wanted to ask and to know. She gave her son a wistful look. But just then Brown came in to say that the hasty meal which had been prepared was ready. Lady Markham rose. She put out her hand to take her son’s arm.

“Were you coming, mother? Don’t take so much trouble; it would only be a bore to you,” said Paul. “Spears and I will get on very well by ourselves without bothering you.”

The tears started into Lady Markham’s eyes. She turned a wondering look upon Alice as Paul and his companion went away down the dim length of the room, disappearing from them. Alice had been hovering about her brother, trying to say a word to him now and then, but Paul was too much intent upon what was going on between his friend and his mother to pay any attention. The look of dismay and wonder and blank disappointment that passed between them could not be described. Had Paul been alone they would both have gone with him to the dining-room: they would have sent away Brown and waited on him—his mother carving for him, Alice flitting about to get anything he wanted. They would have asked a hundred questions, and given him a hundred details of home events, and made the whole atmosphere bright with tender happiness and soft laughter and love. Now they stood and looked at each other listening to the footsteps as they crossed the hall.

“It is all this man whom he has brought with him,” Lady Markham said.

CHAPTER II.

The children were all open-eyed and open-mouthed next morning to see Paul’s friend. As for the boys, they did not feel at all sure what might have been going on during the night, or whether Paul’s friend would be visible in the morning. “It is money those sort of fellows want,” Roland said; and then the question arose whether papa being away mamma would have money enough to satisfy such a claimant. The little girls besieged Alice with questions. Who was that strange man? He looked exactly like the man that came to wind the clocks.

“He is a friend of Paul’s; hush—hush!” said Alice; “you must all be very polite and not stare at him.”

“But how can he be a friend?” demanded Bell.

“He is a bailiff,” said Roland. “In Harry Lorrequer there is somebody exactly like that.”

“Oh, hush, children, for mamma’s sake! he will come in directly. He is Paul’s friend. Grown-up people do not go by appearances like children. Paul says he has done him more good than all the dons. Most likely he is a very learned man—or an author or something,” Alice said.

“Oh, an author! they’re a queer lot,” said Harry, with relief. At all events, an author was less objectionable than a bailiff.

Lady Markham came in before these questions were over. She was not all so bright as usual. Though she smiled upon them as they all came round her, it was not her own natural smile; and she had a cap on, a thing which she only wore when she was out of sorts, a kind of signal of distress. The family were divided as to this cap. Some of them were in favour of it, some against it. The little girls thought it made their mother look old, whereas Alice was of opinion that it imparted dignity to her appearance.

“I don’t want to have a mother just as young and a great deal prettier than I am,” she said. But Bell and Marie called out, “Oh, that odious cap!”

“Why should mamma, only because she is mamma, cover up all her pretty hair? It is such pretty hair! mine is just the same colour,” said Bell, who was inclined to vanity.

Lady Markham smiled upon this charming nonsense, but it was not her own smile. “Has any one seen Paul this morning?” she said, with a sigh.

What a change there was in everything! Paul had not come into his mother’s dressing-room last night to talk over all he had been doing and meant to do, as had always been his habit when he came home. And when Lady Markham went to her boy’s room on her way down stairs, thinking of nothing but the little laughing lecture she was wont to administer on finding him not yet out of bed—which was the usual state of affairs—what was her surprise to find Paul out of his room, already dressed, and “gone for a walk.” Brown meeting her in the hall told her this with a subdued voice and mingled wonder and sympathy in his face.

“Mr. Markham is turning over a new leaf, my lady,” he said, with the license of an old servant, who had seen Paul born, so to speak.

“I am very glad to hear it—it is so much better for him,” Lady Markham said. So it was, no doubt; but this change, even of the bad habit which was familiar to her, gave her a little shock. Therefore it was with a failure of her usual bright cheerfulness that she took her place at the breakfast-table.

“Has any one seen Paul?” she said.

“Oh, fancy seeing Paul already!” cried the little girls. “He will come in when we have all done breakfast, and Brown will bring him everything quite hot, after we have waited and waited. Brown makes dreadful favourites, don’t you think so? He does not mind what he does for Paul.”

“Paul has gone out for a walk,” said Lady Markham, not without solemnity.

There was a cry of astonishment all round the table. Roland gave Harry a little nod of intelligence. (“He will have found it was no use, and he will have taken him away.”) Alice had looked up into her mother’s face with consternation; but as she was Paul’s unhesitating partisan through everything, she recovered herself at once.

“He must be showing Mr. Spears the Park,” she said. “What a good thing if he will take to getting up early.”

And nobody could say anything against that. Getting up early was a virtue in which Paul had been sadly deficient, as everybody was aware.

However, this was long enough to have been occupied about Paul, and the children, tired of the subject, had already plunged into their own affairs, when their elder brother suddenly appeared, ushering in Mr. Spears—who in the morning light looked more out of place than ever—through the great bow window which opened on the lawn. The stranger had his hat in his hand, and made an awkward sort of bow.

“I am afraid it is a liberty, my lady,” he said, stepping in with shoes all wet from the dewy grass. He did not know what to do with his hat, and ended by putting it under his chair when he got to the table. But by that time his embarrassment had disappeared, and his face grew benignant as he looked round, before sitting down, upon the girls and boys. “The sight of children is a benediction,” he said with that softening which mothers know by instinct. He was very like the man who wound up the clocks, who was a most respectable country tradesman; but this look reconciled Lady Markham to him more than anything else which had happened yet.

“You are fond of children?” she said.

“I ought to be. I have had six of my own; but they had hard times after my wife died, and there are but three left.”

“Ah!” Lady Markham cried out of the depths of her heart. She looked round upon her own children, and the tears came to her eyes. “I am very, very sorry. There can be nothing in the world so dreadful.”

“It is a pull,” said her visitor. “Yes, it is a pull. A man does not know what it is till he has gone through it. Often you think, poor things, it is better for them; you would never have been able to rear them as you ought; but when it comes it is a pull; though you may have no bread to give them, it is hard to part with them.”

He had begun to eat his breakfast very composedly, notwithstanding this. The way he held his fork was a wonder to Marie who had but recently acquired full mastery of her own, and Harry had watched with great gravity and interest the passage of the stranger’s knife to his mouth. But Lady Markham no longer noticed these things. She forgot that he was like the man that wound up the clocks.

“I always feel,” she said, “when I hear of losses like yours as if I ought to go down on my knees and beg your pardon for being so much better off—thank God!”

Spears looked up at her suddenly, putting down his knife and fork. Here was a strange thing; while all the rest were so conscious of the difference between them, the two chief persons had forgotten it. But he did not make any immediate reply. He looked at her wondering, grateful, understanding; and that piece of silent conversation was more effective than anything that could be said.

“There are not many people that feel like you,” he said at length; “those that are better off than their neighbours are apt to look as if it sprang from some virtue of theirs. They are more likely to crow over us than to beg our pardon. And just as well too, Markham,” he said with a laugh. “If they were all like your mother, they’d cut the ground from under our feet.”

“I do not see that,” said Paul. “The principle is unaltered, however well-intentioned those may be who are in the position of unjust superiority; that makes no difference so far as I can see.”

All the Markham family were roused to attention when Paul spoke. The children looked at him, stopping their private chatter, and Lady Markham cast a wondering, reproachful look at her boy. Was she in a position of unjust superiority because all her children were living, and another parent had lost the half of his? She felt wounded by this strange speech.

“Ah,” said Spears, with a twinkle in his eyes, “there is nothing like a recruit from the other side for going the whole——. You have a beautiful family, and you have a beautiful park, my lady. You have got a great deal more than the most of your fellow-creatures have. I can do nothing but stand and wonder at it for my part. Everything you see, everything you touch, is beautiful. You ought to be very sorry for all the others, so many of them, who are not so well off as you.”

“Indeed I am, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, simply; but then she added, after a pause, “for those who have not the things that give happiness; but there are a great many things that are of no importance to happiness. Everybody, of course, cannot have a beautiful park, as you say, and a nice house; but——”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” She looked up surprised. “Ah, I see! You are all for equality, like Paul.”

“Like Paul! I taught him everything he knows. He had not an idea on the subject before I opened his eyes to the horrible injustice of the present state of affairs. He is my disciple, and I am his master. Now you know who I am. I cannot be in any house under false pretences,” said Spears, pushing his chair a little away from the table.

The children all looked at him aghast; and he had himself the air of having made a great and dangerous revelation, probably to be followed by his dismissal from the house as a dangerous person. “Now you know who I am.” The climax was melodramatic in its form; but there was nothing theatrical in it so far as the revolutionary was concerned. He was perfectly sincere. He felt the importance of his own position; and feeling it, could entertain no doubt as to the knowledge of him as their fellest enemy, and the horror of him which must be felt in every house like this throughout the country. He had not wished to come; he had been disappointed to find that Sir William was not there, who (he felt sure) would have refused him admittance. And he would not take advantage of my lady, who was certainly a woman to whom any man might submit himself. Had she rung the bell instantly for her menials to turn him out; had she expressed her horror at the contamination which her family had sustained by sitting down at the same table with him—he would not have been surprised. He pushed his chair gently from the table, and waited to see what she would order; though he was a revolutionary, he had unbounded respect for the mistress of this house.

Lady Markham looked at her strange visitor with bewildered eyes. She made a rapid telegraphic appeal to her son for explanation. “Now you know who I am,” but she did not in the least know who he was. He was famous enough in his way, and he thought himself more famous than he was; but Lady Markham had never heard of him. When she saw that no assistance could be afforded her by her children in this dilemma, she collected her thoughts with a desperate effort. She was one of the women who would rather die than be rude to any one. To speak to a man at her own table, under her own roof, with less than the most perfect courtesy was impossible to her. Besides, she did not really understand what he meant. She was annoyed and affronted that he should speak of her boy as Paul, but in the confusion of the moment that was all her mind took up, and as for openly resenting that, how was it possible? One time or another no doubt she would give the stranger a little return blow, a reminder of his over-familiarity, when it could be done with perfect politeness, but not now. She was startled by his solemnity; and it was very clear that he was not a man of what she called “our own class,” but Lady Markham’s high breeding was above all pettiness.

“Was it really you,” she said, “who taught my son (she would not call him Paul again) all the nonsense he has been talking to us? Yes, indeed it is great nonsense, Mr. Spears—you must let me say so. We are doing no one injustice. My husband says all young men are Radicals one time or other; but I should have expected you, a man with children of your own, to know better. Oh no, I don’t want to argue. I am not clever enough for that. Let me give you another cup of tea.”

The demagogue stared at the beautiful lady as if he could not believe his ears. Partly he was humiliated, seeing that she was not in the least afraid of him, and even did not realise at all what was the terrible disclosure he had made. This gave him that sense of having made himself ridiculous which is so intolerable to those who are unaccustomed to the world. He cast a jealous look round the table to see if he could detect any laughter.

Paul caught him by the arm at this critical moment.

“Eat your breakfast,” he said, in a wrathful undertone. “Do you hear, Spears? Do you think she knows? Have some of this fish, for Heaven’s sake, and shut up. What on earth do they care if you taught me or not? Do you think she goes into all that?”

Nobody heard this but Harry, who was listening both with ears and eyes. And Mr. Spears returned to his breakfast as commanded. He was abashed, and he was astonished, but still he made a very hearty meal when all was said. And by and by his spirit rose again; in the eyes of this lady, who had so completely got the better of him, far more than if she had turned him out, there was no way of redeeming himself, but by “bringing her over.” That would be a triumph. He immediately addressed himself to it with every art at his command. He had an extremely prepossessing and melodious voice, and he spoke with what the ladies thought a kind of old-fashioned grace. The somewhat stiff, stilted phraseology of the self-educated has always more or less a whiff of the formality of an older age. And he made observations which interested them, in spite of themselves. Lady Markham was very polite to her son’s friend.

When the children reminded her of her promise to go with them on a long-planned expedition into the woods, she put them off. “You know I cannot leave when I have visitors,” she said.

“Perhaps Mr. Spears would come too?” said Alice. And before he knew what was going to happen, he found himself pushed into the front seat of the carriage, which was like a Noah’s ark, with hampers and children. Never had this man of the people, this popular orator, occupied so strange a position. He had never known before what it was to roll luxuriously along the roads, to share in the ease and dignity of wealth. He took notes of it, like a man in a foreign country, and observed keenly all that took place—the manners of the people for whom the world was made: that was how they seemed to take it. The world was made for them. It was not a subject of arrogant satisfaction on their part, or pride in their universal dominion; they took it quite easily, gently, as a matter of course. My lady gave her orders with a gentle confidence in the obedience of everybody she addressed. It was all wonderful to the man who knew only the other side of the question. He asked about everything—the game (with an eye to the poachers); the great extent of the park (as bearing upon one of his favourite points—the abstraction from the public of so many acres which might have cultivation); and was answered with a perfect absence of all sense of guilt, which was very strange to him. They did not know they were doing wrong, these rich people. They told him all about it, simply, smilingly, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. All this went against his preconceived notions, just as the manners of a foreign country so often go against the idea you have formed of them. He had all his senses keenly about him, and yet everything was so novel and surprising that he felt scarcely able to trust to his own impressions. It was the strangest position surely in which a popular agitator, a preacher of democracy and revolution, a special pleader against the rich, ever was.

“We have not many neighbours,” Lady Markham said. “That is Lord Westland’s property beyond the church. You can see Westland Towers from the turn of the road. And there are the Trevors on the other side of the parish.”

“A whole parish,” said Spears, “divided amongst three families.”

“The Trevors have very little,” said Lady Markham. “Sir William is the chief proprietor. But they are a very good family. Admiral Trevor—you must have heard of him—was once a popular hero. He did a great many daring things I have heard, but fame gets forgotten like other things. He lives very quietly now, an old man——”

“The oldest man that ever was,” said Alice. “Fancy, it was in Napoleon’s time he was so famous—the great Napoleon—before even old people were born.”

“Before I was born,” said Lady Markham, with her soft laugh; “that is something like saying before the Flood. Then there is the vicar, of course, and a few people of less importance. It is easy to go over a country neighbourhood.”

“And what do you call the people in all these cottages, my lady? The world was not made for them as it is for you. These would be the neighbours I should think of. When I hear of your three families in the parish, I wonder what all these roofs mean. Are they not flesh and blood too? Don’t they live and have things happen to them as well as you fine folks? If they were cleared away out of the place, what would become of your parish, my lady? Could you get on all the same without them that you make no account of them? These are the houses where I should feel at home, among the poor cottagers whom you don’t even know about——”

“Mamma—not know about them!” cried Alice. “Why, it is our own village! Do you think because it is a mile away that makes any difference? Why, it is our own village, Mr. Spears.”

“I dare say,” said the revolutionary—“your own village. Perhaps they pay you rent for suffering them to live there, and allowing them to do all the work of the world and keep everything going——”

“Hush, Alice,” said Lady Markham. “Perhaps Mr. Spears does not understand a little country village. They are often not at all fond of doing the work, and they do not much like to pay their rent; but we know them very well for that matter. I could tell you all about them, every house. To be sure we have not the same kind of intercourse with them as with our equals.”

“Ah, that is the whole question, Lady Markham. Pardon me; I am not your equal, and yet you let me sit in your fine carriage and talk to you. No, I am not a bit humble; I feel myself the equal of any man. There is nobody in the world whom I will acknowledge my superior—in my dignity as a man.”

Lady Markham made him a little bow; it was her way when she did not know what to say. “One does not need to be told,” she said, “that you are a very superior man, Mr. Spears; quite equal to talk with anybody, were it the greatest philosopher.” Here she stopped short in a little embarrassment. “But we are all very simple, ignorant country people,” she added with a smile, “about here.”

“Ah, you are very clever, my lady. You beg the question.”

“Do I?” said Lady Markham. “I wonder what that means. But now we are just arriving at the place for the pic-nic. When my boy comes up, I will make him take you to the most beautiful point of view. There is a waterfall which we are very proud of, and now when everything is in the first green of spring—— Paul!” she cried, “come and get your directions. I want Mr. Spears to see the view.”

“Your mother is something I don’t understand Markham,” said the demagogue. “I never came across that kind of woman before.”

“Didn’t you?” said Paul. He was ready to be taught on other points, but not on this. “You see the bondage we live in,” said the young man. “Luxury, people call it; to me it seems slavery. Oh, to be free of all this folly and finery—to feel one’s self a man among men, earning one’s bread, shaping one’s own life——”

“Ah!——” said Spears, drawing a long breath. He could not be unaffected by what was an echo of his own eloquence. “But there’s a deal to say, too, for the other side.”

CHAPTER III.

The Markhams of the Chase were one of the most important families in the county, as has been already intimated. They owned three parts at least of the parish (for my Lord Westland was a new man, who had bought, not inherited, that property, and all that the Trevors had was their house and park and a few fields that did not count), and a great deal more besides. It was generally said that they had risen into importance as a family only at the time of the Commonwealth, but their pedigree extended far beyond that. In the former generation the family had not been fortunate. Sir William Markham himself had been born the third son, and in his youth he had been absent from England, and had “knocked about the world,” as people say, in a way which had no doubt enlarged his experiences and made him perhaps more fit for the responsibilities of public life in which he had been so fortunate. He had succeeded, on the death of his second brother, when he was over thirty, and it was not till ten years later that he married.

It had occasioned some surprise in the neighbourhood when Isabel Fleetwood, who was a great beauty, and had made quite a sensation, it was said, in her first season, accepted the middle-aged and extremely sedate and serious little baronet. He was not handsome;—he had no sympathy with the gay life into which she had been plunged by her brother and aunt, who were her only guardians; and the world, always pleased to believe that interested motives are involved, and fond of prophesying badly of a marriage, concluded almost with one voice that it was the ambitious aunt and the extravagant brother who had made it up, and that the poor girl was sacrificed. But this was as great a mistake as the world ever made. Perhaps it would be wrong to assert that the marriage was a romantic one, and that the beautiful girl under twenty was passionately in love with her little statesman. Perhaps her modest, tranquil disposition, her dislike to the monotonous whirl of fashion, and her sense of the precarious tenure by which she held her position in her brother’s house, her only home (he married immediately after she did, as everybody knows, and did not conceal the fact that it was necessary to get rid of his sister before venturing upon a wife), had something to do with her decision. But she had never shown any signs of regretting it through all these years. Sir William was neither young nor handsome, but he was a man whose opinion was listened to wherever it was given, whose voice commanded the attention of the country, whose name was known over Europe. And this in some cases affects a young imagination as much as the finest moustache in the world, or the most distinguished stature. She was not clever, but she was a woman of that gracious nature, courteous, tolerant, and sympathetic, which is more perfect without the sharpness of intellect. Nothing that was unkind was possible to her. She had no particular imagination in the common sense of the word, but she had a higher gift, the moral imagination (so to speak) which gave her an exquisite understanding of other people’s feelings, and made her incapable of any injury to them. This made Lady Markham the very ideal of a great lady. As for Sir William, he held his place more firmly than ever with such a partner by his side. They were the happiest couple in the county, as well as the most important. Not only did you meet the best of company at their house, but the sight of a husband and wife so devoted to each other was good for you, everybody said. They were proud of each other, as they had good reason to be: she listened to him as to an oracle, and his tender consideration for her was an example to all. Everything had gone well with the Markhams. They were rich, and naturally inheritances and legacies and successions of all kinds fell to them, which made them richer. Their children were the healthiest and most thriving children that had ever been seen. Alice promised to be almost as pretty as her mother, and Paul was not short like Sir William. Thus fortune had favoured them on every side.

About a year before the date of this history, a cloud—like that famous cloud no bigger than a man’s hand—had floated up upon the clear sky, almost too clear in unshadowed well-being, over this prosperous house. It was nothing—a thing which most people would have laughed at, a mere reminder that even the Markhams were not to have everything their own way. It was that Paul, a model boy at school, had suddenly become—wild? Oh no! not wild, that was not the word: indeed it was difficult to know what word to use. He had begun as soon as he went to Oxford by having opinions. He had not been six months there before he was known at the Union and had plunged into all the politico-philosophical questions afloat in that atmosphere of the absolute. This was nothing but what ought to have been in the son of a statesman; but unfortunately to everything his father believed and trusted, Paul took the opposite side. He took up the highest republican principles, the most absolute views as to the equality of the human race. That, though it somewhat horrified his mother and sister, produced at first very little effect upon Sir William, who laughed and informed his family that Johnny Shotover had held precisely the same views when he was an undergraduate, though now he was Lord Rightabout’s secretary and as sound a politician as it was possible to desire. “It is the same as the measles,” Sir William said. Paul, however, had a theoretical mind and an obstinate temper: he was too logical for life. As soon as he had come to the conviction that all men are equal, he took the further step which costs a great deal more, and decided that there ought to be equality of property as well as of right. This made Sir William half angry, though it amused him. He bade his son not to be a fool.

“What would become of you,” he cried, “you young idiot!” using language not at all parliamentary, “if there was a re-distribution of property? How much do you think would fall to your share?”

“As much as I have any right to, sir,” the young revolutionary said.

And then Lady Markham interposed, and assured Paul that he was talking nonsense.

“Why should you take such foolish notions into your head? No one of your family ever did so before. And can you really imagine,” she asked with gentle severity, “that you are a better judge of such matters than your papa?” but neither did this powerful argument convince the unreasonable boy.

There was one member of the family, however, who was affected by Paul’s arguments, and this was his sister. Alice was dazzled at once by the magnanimity of his sentiments and by his eloquence. Altogether independent of this, she was, as a matter of course, his natural partisan and defender, always standing up for Paul, with a noble disregard for the right or the wrong in question, which is a characteristic of girls and sisters. (For, Alice justly argued, if he was wrong, he had all the more need for some one to stand up for him.) But in this case her mind was, if not convinced, at least dazzled and imposed upon by the grandeur of this new way of thinking. She would not admit it to Paul, and indeed maintained with him a pretence of serious opposition, arguing very feebly for the most part, though sometimes dealing now and then, all unaware of its weight, a sudden blow under which the adversary staggered, and in the success of which Alice rejoiced without seeing very clearly how it was that one argument should tell so much more than another. But at heart she was profoundly touched by the generosity and nobleness of her brother’s views. Such a sweeping revolution would not be pleasant. To be brought down from her own delightful place, to be no longer Miss Markham of the Chase, but only a little girl on the same level with her maid, was a thing she could not endure to think of, and which brought the indignant blood to her cheek. “That you could never do,” she cried; “you might take away our money, but you could never make gentlefolk into common people.” This was one of the hits which found out a joint in Paul’s armour, but unaware of that Alice went on still more confidently. “You know good blood makes all the difference—you cannot take that from us. People who have ancestors as we have can never be made into nobodies.” At which her brother scoffed and laughed, and bade her remember that old Brown had quite as many grandfathers as they, and was descended from Adam as certainly as the Queen was. “And Harry Fleetwood,” said this defiler of his own nest, “do you call him an example of the excellence of blood?” Poor Alice was inclined to cry when her disreputable cousin was thus thrown in her teeth. She clung to her flag and fought for her caste like a little heroine. But when Paul was gone, she owned to her mother that there was a great deal in what he said. It was very noble as Paul stated it. When he asked with lofty indignation, “What have I done to deserve all I have got? I have taken the trouble to be born,”—Alice felt in her heart that there was no answer to this plea.

“My dear,” Lady Markham said, “think how foolish it all is; does he know better than your papa and all the men that have considered the subject before him?”

“It may be silly,” said Alice, changing her argument, “but it is very different from other young men. They all seem to think the world was made for them; and if Paul is wrong, it is finer than being right like that.”

This was a fanciful plea which moved Lady Markham, and to which she could make no reply. She shook her head and repeated her remark about Paul’s presumption in thinking himself wiser than papa; but she too was affected by the generosity and magnanimity which seemed the leading influences of the creed so warmly adopted by her boy.

This was the state of semi-warfare, not serious enough to have caused real pain, but yet a little disquieting in respect to Paul’s future, when the event occurred which has been recorded in the two last chapters. The ladies saw more of the strange companion whom Paul had brought with him than they generally saw of ordinary visitors. He had no letters to write, nor calls to make, nor private occupations of any kind; neither had he sufficient understanding of the rules of society to know that guests are expected to amuse themselves, and not to oppress with their perpetual presence the ladies of the house. What he wanted, being as it were a traveller in an undiscovered country, was to study the ways of the house, and the women of it, and the manner of their life. And as he was so original as not to know anybody they knew, Lady Markham in her politeness was led to invent all kinds of subjects of conversation, upon which, without exception, Mr. Spears found something to say. He assailed them on all points with the utmost frankness. He sat (on the edge of his chair) and watched Lady Markham at her worsted work, and found fault even with that.

“You spend a great deal of time over it,” he said; “and what do you mean to do with it?”

This was the second evening, and they had become quite accustomed to Spears.

“I am not quite sure, to tell the truth. It is for a cushion—probably I shall put it on that sofa, or it will do for a window-seat somewhere, or——”

“There are three cushions on the sofa already, and all the window-seats are as soft as down-beds. You are doing something that will not be of any use when it is done, and that, excuse me, is not very pretty, and takes up a great deal of your time.”

“Show Mr. Spears your work, Alice; he will like that better. Everybody is severe now upon these poor abandoned Berlin wools. Now, Mr. Spears, that pattern came from the School of Art Needlework. It was drawn by somebody very distinguished indeed. It is intended to elevate the mind as well as to occupy the fingers. You cannot but be pleased with that.”

“What is it for?” said the critic.

“I—scarcely know; for a screen I think—part of a screen you know, Mr. Spears, to keep off the fire——”

“Ah!—no, I don’t know. Among the people I belong to, Miss Alice, there is no need of expedients to keep off the fire. Sometimes there is no fire to have even a look at. I’ve known poor creatures wandering into the streets when the gas was lighted, because it was warm there. The gas in the shop-windows was all the fire they had a chance of. Did you ever see a little wretched room all black of a winter’s night? Black—there’s no blackness like that; it is blacker than the crape you all put on when your people die.”

“No; she has never seen it,” cried Lady Markham. “I did once in our village at home before I was married. Oh, Mr. Spears, I know! it made me cold for years after. No, thank God, Alice has never seen it. We take care there is nothing like that here——. But,” she added after a pause—“I don’t like to say anything unkind; but, Mr. Spears, after all, it was their own fault.”

“Ah, my lady! you that make screens to keep off the fire, do you never do what is wrong? you that are cushioned at every angle, and never know what a hard seat is, or a hard-bed, or a harsh look, or a nip of frost, or a pinch of hunger—do you always do what is right? You ought to. You are like angels, with everything beautiful round you; and you look like angels, and you ought to be what they are said to be; but, if instead of all this pretty nonsense you had misery and toil around you, and ugliness, and discord, and quarrelling, would it be wonderful if you went astray sometimes, and gave the other people, the warm, wealthy, well-clothed people, reason to say it was your own fault? Great God!” cried the orator, jumping up. “Why should we be sitting here in this luxury, with everything that caprice can want, and waste our lives working impossible flowers upon linen rags, while they are starving, and perishing, and sinning for want, trying for the hardest work, and not getting it? Why should there be such differences in life?”

“This is not a place to ask such a question, Spears,” said Paul. “You forget that we are the very people who are taking the bread out of the mouths of our brothers. We, and such as we——”

“Hold your tongue, Markham,” said the orator. “Do you think it is as easy as that? Don’t take any notice of him, my lady. He’s young, and he knows no better. He thinks that if he were able to give up all your estates to the people, justice would be done. That is all he knows. Stuff! we could do it all by a rising if it were as easy as that. You young ass,” the man continued, filling the ladies with resentment more warm than when he had denounced them all, “don’t you see it’s a deal better in the hands of your father and mother, that take some thought of the people, than with a beast of a shoddy millionaire, who cares for nothing on this earth but money? I beg your pardon,” he added, with a smile, “for introducing such a subject at all; but sometimes it gets too much for me. I remember the things I’ve seen. I would not treat lilies in that way, Miss Alice, if I were putting them on wood.”

“Oh!” cried Alice with tears in her eyes; “how can you care about a pattern after what you have been saying?” His eloquence had moved her so much that she felt disposed to fling her pattern away. “What can one do? How can one help it?” she said, below her breath, appealing to him with her heart in her eyes.

“I don’t like the pattern,” said Spears. “If I were going to put it on wood, I’d treat it so—and so.” To illustrate his meaning, he made lines with his thumb nail upon her satin. “I’d turn the leaves this way, and the bud so. They should not be so stiff—or else they should be stiffer.”

“They are conventionally treated, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, “and you don’t treat anything conventionally, neither our patterns nor your friends.”

She had not forgotten that he had called her son Paul, and “you young ass” was still tingling in her ears. Paul took it, however, with the greatest composure as a matter of course.

Spears burst into a great good-humoured laugh.

“I beg your pardon, my lady. We don’t mind how we talk to young fellows. I’d have it as conventional, or more, Miss Alice. This falls between two stools. The lily’s a glorious thing when you enter into it. Look at the ribs of it, as strong as steel, though they are all sheathed in something smoother than satin. And every curl of the petal is full of vigour and life. I used to think till you drew it or carved it, you never could understand what that means—‘Consider the lilies of the field.’ There they stand, nobody taking any trouble about them, and come out of the earth built like a tower, or a ship, anything that’s strong and full of grand curves and sweeping lines. Now the fault I find with that is, that you never would come to understand it a bit better if you worked a hundred of them. If I had a knife and a bit of wood——”

“Do you carve wood, Mr. Spears?”

“Do I carve wood?” he laughed as Lord Lytton might have laughed had he been asked whether he wrote novels. Did not all the world know it? The ignorance of this pretty little lady was not insulting but amusing, showing how far she was out of the world, and how little in this silent country house they knew what was going on. “Yes—a little,” he said, with again a laugh. It tickled him. Her mother had not known who Spears was—Spears the orator—the reformer—the enemy of her order—and now here was this girl who asked with that inimitable innocence, “Do you carve wood?” He was amused beyond measure. “But I could not bring a lily like that out of the softest deal,” he said; “it would break its back and lie flat—it has no anatomy. If I had a pencil——”

Alice, who was full of curiosity and interest, here put the desired pencil into his hand, and he sat down at the nearest table, and with many contortions of his limbs and contractions of his lips, as if all his body was drawing, produced in bold black lines a tall lily with a twist of bindweed hanging about its lovely powerful stalk, like strength and weakness combined. “That is as near nature as you can do it without seeing it,” he said, pleased with the admiration his drawing called forth. “But if I were to treat it conventionally, I’d split the lily, and lay it flat, without light and shadow at all. I should not make a thing which is neither one nor the other, like your pattern there.”

This was the way in which the man talked, assailing them on every side, interesting them, making them angry, keeping them in commotion and amusement. Lady Markham said that it had never cost her so much to be civil to any one; but she was very civil to him, polite, and sometimes even gracious. He stayed three days, and though she uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when the dog-cart in which Paul drove him to the railway disappeared down the avenue, “Thank heaven he is gone, and your papa only comes back to-morrow!” Lady Markham herself did not deny their strange visitor justice. “But,” she said, “now he is gone, let as little as possible be said about him. I do not want to conceal anything from your papa, but I am sure he will not be pleased when he hears of it. For Paul’s sake, let as little as possible be said. I will mention it, of course, but I will not dwell upon it. It is much better that little should be said.”

CHAPTER IV.

Sir William did not come home for two days, but when he did return there was a line between his eyebrows which everybody knew did not come there for nothing. The first glimpse of him made the whole family certain that he knew: and that he was angry; but he did not say anything until dinner was over and the children gone to bed. By that time the ladies began to hope with trembling, either that they had been mistaken, or that nothing was going to be said. “I will tell him this evening, but I will choose my time,” Lady Markham whispered to Alice as Sir William stood up in front of the fireplace and took his coffee after dinner. He was not a man who sat long after dinner, and he liked to have his coffee in the drawing-room, when all the boys and girls had said good-night. He was a little man of very neat and precise appearance, always carefully dressed, always dignified and stately. Perhaps this had been put on at first as a necessary balance to his insignificant stature; but it was part of himself now. His family could not but look up to a man who so thoroughly respected himself. He had a fine head, with abundant hair, though it was growing white, and very penetrating, keen blue eyes; but to see him standing thus against the carved marble of the mantelpiece with the faint glimmer of an unnecessary fire throwing up now and then a feeble flash behind him, it was not difficult to understand that his family were afraid of his displeasure. The conversation they maintained was of the most feeble, disjointed description, while he stood there not saying a word. Paul stood about too, helplessly, as men do in a drawing-room, unoccupied, and prepared to resent anything that might be said to him. If only he could be got away Lady Markham felt that she would have courage to dare everything, and tell her husband, as was her wont, all that had occurred since he went away.

“The Westlands called on Tuesday. They were not more amusing than usual. He wanted to tell you of some great discovery he has made about the state of the law. Paul, will you go and fetch me that law-book I told you of, out of the library? I want to show something in it to papa.”

“I don’t know what you mean by a law-book,” said Paul. He saw that it was intended as a pretext to send him away, and he would not budge.

“And I had a long talk with the vicar about the new cottages. He thinks only those should be allowed to get them who have been very well behaved in the old ones. Paul, by the way, that reminds me I promised to send down the Mudie books to the vicarage. Will you go and see after them, and tell Brown to send them away?”

“Presently,” said Paul. He drank his coffee with the most elaborate tediousness. The more his mother tried to get rid of him, the more determined he was not to go.

“Except the vicar and the Westlands we have seen—scarcely anybody. But I want those books to go to-night, Paul.”

“You are very anxious to get Paul out of the way,” said Sir William. “What does ‘scarcely anybody’ mean? Is it true that a man called Spears, a trades-unionist, a paid agitator——?”

“He is nothing of the sort,” said Paul, with a sudden burst of passion. “If he is an agitator, it is for the right against the wrong, not for payment; anybody who knows him will tell you so.”

“I have heard it from people who know him,” said Sir William. “Is it possible that you took advantage of my absence, Paul, to bring such a man here—to lodge such a person in my house?”

“Such a person!” Paul, who had felt it coming ever since his father’s arrival, stood to his arms at once. “He is the best man I know,” he said, indignantly. “There is no house in the country that might not be proud to receive him; and as for taking advantage of your absence, sir——”

“Indeed,” said Lady Markham, holding up her head, though she had grown pale, “you must not say so, William; he did not know you were away; and as for Mr. Spears, I was just about to tell you. He is not a man to be afraid of. It is true he is not—in society, perhaps—he has not quite the air of a person in society—has he, Alice?” This was said with scarcely a tremble. “But his manners were perfectly good, and his appearance, though it was quite simple—I think you must be making some mistake. I saw no harm in him.”

Will it be believed that Paul, instead of showing gratitude, was indignant at this mild approval? “Saw no harm in him,” he cried; “his manners, his appearance. Are you mad, mother? He is a man who is worthy to be a king, if merit made kings; or if any man worth the name would accept an office which has been soiled by such ignoble use!”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Sir William. “It is you who are mad. A stump-orator, a fellow who does much mischief in England! My house is not to be made a shelter for such canaille. Your mother should have turned him to the door; and so she would have done, I don’t doubt—her instincts are too fine not to have seen the kind of creature he was—but for her foolish devotion to you.”

“Paul, Paul! Oh, don’t speak—don’t say anything,” cried Alice in an agony, in her brother’s ear.

“Let him say what he pleases,” said Sir William. “This must be put a stop to. When the house is his, he can dishonour it if he likes, but in the meantime the house is mine.”

“Certainly the house is yours, sir,” cried his son; “I make no claim on it. I feel no right to it. Let me alone, Alice! Do I want the house, or the land, or the money which we steal from the poor to make ourselves splendid, while our fellow-creatures are starving? I am ready to give it up at a moment’s notice. It wounds my conscience, it restrains my action. I want nothing with your house, sir. If I may not bring one honest man into it, you may hand it over to any one you please; it is no home for me.”

“Paul, Paul!” cried his mother in tones of alarm. Sir William only laughed that laugh of anger which frightens a household.

“Let him rave—let him rave,” he cried, throwing himself into a chair. “A boy who speaks so of his home does not deserve one. He does not deserve the position Providence has given him—a good name, a good fortune, honourable ancestors, all thrown away.”

“I acknowledge no honour in the ancestors that robbed the poor to make me rich,” cried the hot-headed youth. And the end of all was that his mother and sister had much ado to keep him from leaving the house at once, late as it was, in the heat of passion. Never before had such a storm—or indeed any storm at all—arisen in the peaceful house. It marked the ending of that idyllic age in which the rulers of a family are supreme, and where no new-developed will confronts them within their sacred walls. Raised voices and faces aglow with anger are terrible things in such an inclosure. It seemed to Lady Markham that she would die with shame when she met the look of subdued wonder, curiosity, and sympathy in old Brown’s eyes; when, after the storm was over, after a decent interval, he came in, taking great precautions to make himself audible as he approached. It was the first time since she entered the house that her servants had occasion to be sorry for Lady Markham, and this consciousness went to her heart. By the time Brown came in, however, all was very quiet. Sir William had gone away to his library, and Paul, breathing indignation at every pore, was walking about the room with his hands in his pockets, now and then launching an arrow at his mother or sister. A truce had been patched up. He had consented, as a great matter, not to plunge out of the house into the darkness, but to wait till to-morrow. This was a concession for which they were as grateful as if it had been the noblest gift; it was for their sake he did it; nothing else, he declared, would have made him remain an hour under the same roof.

“Oh hush, Paul—hush! I forbid you to say another word,” cried his mother; and then all was silent, as they heard Brown cough before he opened the door.

“Tell Lewis to have the dog-cart ready for Mr. Markham for the first train,” she said, not raising her eyes. But all the same she saw the pity in the face of old Brown. He asked no question; he did not express his sorrow to hear of Mr. Markham’s sudden departure, as on previous occasions he would have done, exercising the right of his old service; he said, “Certainly, my lady,” in a tone which went to Lady Markham’s heart. Even Brown perceived that there was no more to be said.

That was in other ways a notable year for the Markhams. For one thing Alice “came out.” She was eighteen: she had not been prematurely introduced as an eldest daughter very often is. And in consequence Lady Markham stayed in London longer and went more into society. This moment, so exciting to the débutante, was clouded over to Alice and to her mother by the fact that Paul was in disgrace. They were still in London when the Oxford term ended, and it had been their hope that he would join them there. It is true that this prospect was not altogether an unmingled delight, for a certain alarm was involved in their joy. How would his father and he “get on” after this first quarrel? Would Paul be as submissive, would Sir William be as forgiving, as they ought? All the little triumphs of Alice, her succès, the admiration she had excited were made of no account by this doubt and fear about her brother. But when, just before the long vacation began, a letter arrived from Paul, announcing that he did not mean to join them at all, but was going to “stay up and read,” with a party of other “men” who entertained that virtuous intention, the revulsion of feeling in the minds of the mother and sister was very painful. They forgot that they had ever entertained any fear about his coming, and cried over his letter with the bitterest pangs of disappointment.

“It is all papa’s fault,” Alice cried in mournful wrath; and though Lady Markham checked her daughter, saying, “Hush! surely your papa knows better than you do,” yet there was a little rebellion in her heart too against the head of the house. Had he been less hard, Paul would have been more docile.

Sir William, however, as it happened, was rather mollified than offended by this intimation. The authorities of Paul’s college had been finding fault. High hopes had been entertained of the young man at first. It had been believed that he would bring distinction to his college, which, who can doubt? is the first thing to be considered. But that hope had proved delusive; he had not “gone in for” half so much as he ought, and of all those things he had “gone in for” he had not been successful in one. This made him to be looked upon coldly by eyes which at first winked with benevolence at the blunders and idleness of a statesman’s son. Now that they were aware that he was not likely to bring them any honour, the dons grew querulous with Paul. He was not a duke or a duke’s son that he should ride roughshod over the habitudes of the university and its inviolable order. They had not of late shown that delight in him which parents love to see. He had not excited parental feelings in their academical bosoms. He was visionary, he was Radical; and it was whispered that he received visitors in his rooms who were not of a character to be received there. Fortunately this last accusation had not reached Lady Markham’s ears. Had she known, how could she ever have borne that “staying up to read,” which at present seemed a proof of Paul’s innate virtue? But Sir William was of tougher fibre. He was not displeased to be free of personal contact with his son at this crisis. It is not expedient that there should be quarrels in a family. All that nonsense would blow over. Paul’s intellectual measles might be severe, but they were only measles after all, a malady of youth which a young man of marked character took more seriously than a frivolous boy, but which would pass away. “It will be all the better for his degree,” his father said with that simplicity of confidence in the noble purpose of “staying up to read” which it is so touching to see. And what could the women say? If it was good for him, was it their part to complain? They were cruelly disappointed, and yet perhaps they were relieved as well. They wrote letters full of the former feeling, but they did not say anything about the latter—not even to each other. How could they allow even to themselves that it was better for Paul to stay away?

However this disappointment seriously interfered with the glories of her first season to Alice. She did not wish to stay longer in town than Lady Markham’s usual time. She longed for the country, when the summer reached its very crown of brightness, and the park looked baked and the streets scorching. They went home as they were in the habit of doing, in the end of June, leaving Sir William to toil through the end of the session by himself; and though it was still more melancholy to be without Paul in the quietness of home, yet there were compensations. They had their usual work to occupy them, and that routine of ordinary living which is the best prop and support of the anxious mind; and Alice was young enough, and her mother scarcely too old to forget, by times altogether, that there were troubles in the world. Nothing very dreadful had happened after all. If Paul did not write very often, were not all boys the same? Thus they kept their anxieties subdued, and were not unhappy—except perhaps for half an hour now and then.

Thus the summer went on. The holidays came once more. The boys came home, the girls were delivered from their governess, and the reign of innocence recommenced. Not to last long this time, for everybody knew that in the second week in August papa was coming home. The children, however, took the good of the fortnight they had all to themselves. The sunshine, the harvest, the woods, how delightful they are in August, with no lessons, no governess, and mamma all to themselves! From morning till night the house was full of laughter and commotion, except when it lay all open and silent with the whole family out of it, gone pic-nicking, gone upon excursions, making simple holiday.

“My lady is the biggest baby of them all,” Mrs. Fry said with indulgent disapproval, shaking her head, “if she wasn’t thinking all the time of Mr. Paul.”

“Bless you there ain’t a minute as that boy is out of her head,” said Brown. Brown was too respectful to say anything but Mr. Markham in public, but he said Mr. Paul, or even Paul tout court, when he was in the housekeeper’s room. While these pranks were going on, the house lay like an enchanted palace, all its doors and windows open to the sweet summer air, the rooms full of flowers and sweetness, but nobody there. There were too many servants about for any fear of robbers, but it is doubtful whether Sir William would have thought it decorous had he seen the openness and vacancy of this summer palace, waiting all garnished and bright for the return of the revellers, for the rush of light feet, the smiles, the voices, the chattering and laughter, the gaiety and glee that in a moment would flood it through and through. But to the spectator whose dignity was not involved, these changes were pretty and pleasant to see, and it was not to be wondered at perhaps if Brown and the army under his charge took holiday too.

One day very shortly before that on which Sir William was expected, a stranger walked slowly up the avenue and came to the great open door. Everything was open as usual. He saw into the great hall as he came gradually up, and saw that it was empty and still. It was a warm day, and he was weighted with a little valise, which he carried, shifting it from one hand to the other with some appearance of fatigue. He was a tall man, very thin and very brown, with the unmistakable look of an old soldier in his well-squared shoulders, even though his figure drooped a little with fatigue and heat, and slightly with age. When he reached the door, he looked round him, and seeing nobody there went in and placed himself in a great chair which was near the open door. “He’s come into my house without knocking many’s the day,” he said to himself. It was hot, and he was tired, and the coolness and shade inside completed what the glare without had done. He put his valise down by his side and leaned back, and felt himself very comfortable; then quite tranquilly and pleasantly closed his eyes and rested; had there been anything to drink all would have been perfect. But even without this it was very comfortable. The house was perfectly still, but outside a little breeze was getting up, making a murmuring cadence among the trees. There was a sound of bees in the air close at hand, and of birds further off among the branches—everything was sweet and summery and reposeful. The new-comer lay back in his chair in the mood which makes fatigue an accessory of enjoyment. Something of the vagabond was in his appearance which yet scarcely marred his air of gentleman. Poor he was without doubt, growing old, very tired, dusty, and travel-worn. He was not fastidious about his accommodation, and could have slept as well on a grassy bank, had it been needful, but the chair was very comfortable and pleasant. He fell asleep, or rather went to sleep, quite voluntarily. It was afternoon, near the time when the party might be expected to return, but up to this moment nobody had made any preparation for them, and the new-comer took possession without challenge of all the comfort of the vacant place.

Roland had been allowed that day to drive the dog-cart, the carriage being full, and he and Marie had so urged the stout cob Primrose, which was the steed specially given up to the uses of the schoolroom, that he flew like the wind and got home before the carriage. The little pair burst into the stable-yard like a flash of lightning, and tossed the reins to the first astonished groom they encountered.

“Let’s rush in the back way and pretend we have been here for an hour,” cried Marie.

They flew rather than walked round by the flower-garden, and through the open window of the drawing-room. There was the carriage turning in at the gate, a quarter of a mile off; there was plenty of time. But the fact that there was plenty of time did not make them move quietly. They proceeded into the hall, making themselves audible by the chatter of their childish voices and laughter.

“Won’t mamma be surprised!” cried Marie.

But, on the contrary, it was herself that was surprised. She gave a lengthened “Oh!” of wonder, alarm, and consternation, as they came in sight of the stranger in the hall. She turned round and clutched at Roland, and like a little coward put him first. He was twelve, not an age to be frightened, and Marie was but eleven. Roland said “Oh!” too, but with a different tone, and, dropping back a little upon her, confronted and gazed at the sleeper in the easy chair. His looks were not of the kind that children fly. The heavy moustache drooping over his mouth seemed to add to the appearance of complete, yet pleasant weariness, in which the shabby figure was wrapped. Here was a thing to encounter when one got home: a man, a gentleman, whom one had never seen before, fast asleep in the great chair in the hall!

“Will he not wake?” whispered Marie. “Oh, Roland! are you frightened? Shall I run and tell Brown?”

“Frightened!—likely,” said Roland; but he kept hold of her frock, not that she could have been of any real assistance to him, but “for company.”

The two children stood transfixed before this strange apparition, watching if he would move. At the first stir, Marie most likely would have run away with a shriek; but after all what was there to fear? Mamma had certainly turned into the avenue, and might arrive any moment, and Brown with his army of men and maids was somewhere in the background within call, so there was no real reason to fear. Nevertheless, when the arms that rested on the arms of the chair began to stretch themselves, and the intent gaze of the children drew the tired eyes open, Marie’s best efforts to command herself could not restrain a tremulous cry, which quite completed the stranger’s awakening.

“Bless me, I’ve been asleep!” he said, opening his eyes. Then when he saw the two little figures before him, his eyelids opened wider, and a smile came out from underneath them. “Little folks, who are you?”

“It’s you to tell us,” cried Roland with spirit. “This is our house, but it isn’t yours.”

“That’s true, my little man. I’ve been asleep, more shame to me. It was hot, and I’ve had a long walk.”

“If you are very tired, poor gentleman,” said Marie, coming in now that there seemed nothing to be afraid of, “I—don’t think mamma will mind. Oh, Rol, here she is! come and tell her,” the little girl cried. They forgot their triumph of being first, in the excitement of this strange piece of news, and flew bursting with it to the door of the carriage which swept up at the moment, filling the stillness with echoes, and waking up the whole silent house. Brown and the footman on duty appeared as by magic, and the whole enchanted palace came to life. The stranger sat still and watched it all with a smile on his face. He saw pretty Alice and her beautiful mother descend from the carriage, and a curious light broke over his countenance.

“Lucky little beggar,” he said.

He repeated this phrase two or three times to himself before he was altogether roused from the half-dream, half-languor, he was still in, by the sight of Lady Markham’s eyes fixed upon him, and the alarmed, guilty, nervous inspection of old Brown.

“You must get out of here, sir—you must get out of here, sir—heaven knows how you got into it; this must have been your fault, Charles. I can’t let you stay here, though I don’t want to be uncivil. My lady’s coming this way.”

“It’s your lady I want, my friend,” said the intruder, rising languidly. He made Lady Markham a fine bow as she approached, with surprise in her face. “I must be my own godfather, and present myself to my old friend’s family,” he said. “I am Colonel Lenny, of the 50th West India Regiment. St. John Lenny at your service, my dear madam, once Will Markham’s closest friend.”

Lady Markham made him a curtsey in return for his bow.

“Sir William is not at home,” she said. If she had not already suffered for her hospitality, his reception would have been less cold; but she had never heard of Colonel Lenny, and what could she say?

“He must have talked to you about me and mine. I married a Gaveston—Katey. You must have heard him speak of her. No? That is very strange. Then perhaps you will think me an intruder, my Lady Markham. I beg your pardon. I thought I was sure of a welcome; and I was so done with the heat, though I used not to mind the heat, that I fell asleep in your nice, pleasant hall, in this big chair.”

Lady Markham inclined her head in assent. What was she to do? who was Colonel Lenny? She cast a glance at Alice, seeking counsel; but how could Alice advise?

“Will you come in now and take a cup of tea with us?” she said.

CHAPTER V.

Colonel Lenny left his valise in the hall, where, when he rose, it was very visible, a dusty object upon the soft carpet. Lady Markham looked at it with alarm. Did it mean that he intended to stay? Was she to be punished for having received one unsuitable visitor by being forced to be rude to another? She led the way into the drawing-room in great perplexity and trouble. As for Brown and Charles, they both went and looked at the valise with curiosity as a natural phenomenon.

“Is all the beggars coming on visits?” said the footman; “I ain’t agoing to wait on another, not if my wages was doubled.”

“Hold your tongue,” said Brown; “you’ll do what I tell you if you want to go from here with a character. So mind your business, and keep your silly remarks to yourself.”

But when Charles disappeared muttering, Brown turned over the dusty, humble portmanteau with his foot, with serious disgust. “My lady hasn’t the heart to say no to nobody,” he said to himself. He felt perfectly convinced that this miserable representation of a gentleman’s luggage would sooner or later have to be carried up stairs.

The stranger followed Lady Markham into the drawing-room, at which he gazed with wonder and admiration. “This is something like a house,” he said. “Little we thought when I used to know Will Markham that he would ever come to this honour and glory. It was in the year—bless me, not any year you can recollect—forty years ago if it is a day. His brothers were living, and he was nearly as poor as the rest of us. I married Katey. He must have spoken of the Gavestons, though he might not mention his old friend Lenny. Ah, well, maybe no—to be sure I am not taking everything into consideration. Did your father ever tell you, my boys, of the West Indies, and the insurrection, and all the stirring times we had there?”

Harry and Roland looked at each other with eyes brightening, yet confused. Papa was not a man who told stories of anything,—and Lady Markham interposed. “I think you must be making a mistake,” she said. “I am sure Sir William has never been in the West Indies. You must be thinking of some one else of the same name.”

The old soldier looked at her with bewildered surprise. “A mistake!” he said. “I make a mistake about Will Markham? I have known all about him, and the name of his place, his family, and all his belongings for the last forty years! Why, I—I am his——” Then he paused and looked at Lady Markham, and added slowly, “One of his very oldest friends, be the other who he may.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, concealing her embarrassment over the tea-table.

Colonel Lenny was not particularly fond of tea: he would have liked, he thought, something else instead of it, something that foamed and sparkled; yet the tea was better than nothing. He gave her his pardon very easily, not dwelling upon the offence.

“Ah,” he said, “I can tell you stories that will make your hair stand on end. When those niggers broke out, it was not preaching that would do much. That was in the old time, you know, when land meant something in the islands, before emancipation. Did you ever hear about the emancipation? I’ll tell you a story about the times before that. We had to get the women and children stowed away—the devils would have thought no more of cutting them to pieces—we were after them in the woods night and day sometimes. Once your father was with us—he was not in the service, as we were, but he was very plucky though he was always small—he joined as a volunteer.”

“Where was that? and when was that?” cried the boys; and the girls too drew near, much attracted by the promise of a story. Colonel Lenny waved his long brown hand to them, and went on—

“I’ll tell you all about that presently; but I must ask you to let me know, my dear lady, when Markham is expected home. I’ve got business to talk over—business that is more his than mine. He’ll know all about it as soon as he hears my name. It is a long time since we met—and perhaps the notion would never have struck me to seek him out but for—things that have happened. It is more his business than mine.”

“I am not sure whether he will return to-morrow or next day—next day at the latest,” said Lady Markham, faltering.

She could not make up her mind what to do. On the occasion of her former mistake, Paul in person had been present to answer for his friend, but there was no one to guarantee this second stranger—this new claimant on her hospitality. If he should be an impostor! but he did not look like an impostor; or, if it should be a mistake after all, and his Will Markham quite a different man? Will Markham! it seemed incredible to Lady Markham that any one should ever have addressed her husband with so much familiarity. These, and a hundred other thoughts, ran through her mind as she poured out the tea.

Meantime, Colonel Lenny made great friends with the children. He began to tell them the most exciting stories. He was not ill at ease as Spears had been, but sat luxuriously thrown back into a luxurious chair, his long limbs stretched out, his long brown hands giving animation to his narrative. Lady Markham managed to escape while this was going on, and got Burke down from the bookshelves in the hall, and anxiously looked up its various lists. There was no Sir William Markham except her husband, no William Markham at all among the county gentry. When Brown, become suspicious by his past experiences, came into the hall at the sound of her foot, she put back the book again guiltily.

The old butler came forward with an expression of concern and trouble on his countenance. “What does your ladyship intend,” he asked, solemnly, “that I should do with this?” touching with his foot as he spoke the dusty valise—the old soldier’s luggage, which lay very humbly as if ashamed of itself half under the big chair.

Lady Markham could have laughed and she could have cried. “I don’t know what to do, Brown,” she said.

Brown was very much tempted to give his mistress the benefit of his advice. He forbore, however, exercising a wise discretion, for Lady Markham, though very gracious, was proud; but he was not self-denying enough to divest himself of a general air of anxiety—the air of one who could say a great deal if he would—shaking his head slightly, and looking at the offending article which seemed to try to withdraw itself out of notice under the shadow of the chair. He could have said a great deal if he had dared. He would have bidden his mistress beware who she took into her house, Sir William wasn’t best pleased before, and if it happens again—— Perhaps Lady Markham read something of this in Brown’s eyes; and she did not like the butler’s advice, which was more or less disapproval, as all effective advice is. The result was however that before dinner the poor little valise was carried up, to the great scorn of the domestics, to a bedroom, and that Colonel Lenny, after keeping the children suspended on his lips all the evening, withdrew early, leaving the mother and daughter to an anxious consultation over him. Alice, too, had consulted a book, but it was an Army List that was the subject of her studies. She came to her mother triumphantly with this volume open in her hand.

“Here he is, mamma. John St. John Lenny, 50th West India Regiment. I am so glad I have found it. He is delightful. There never could be any doubt about such a thorough old soldier.”

“You thought Mr. Spears interesting, Alice,” said Lady Markham, feebly.

“Mamma! and so did you. He was very interesting. I have his lily that he drew for me, and it is beautiful. But he was not a gentleman. He did not know how to sit on his chair, nor how to stand, nor what to say to you or even me. He called me Miss Alice, and you my lady. But Colonel Lenny is entirely different. He is just the same as everybody else, only more amusing than most people. Did you hear the story he was telling about——?”

“Oh, my dear, I was a great deal too anxious to be able to attend to any story. What if he should turn out some agitator too? what if he were a spy to see what kind of life we lead, or an impostor, or some one who has made a mistake, and takes your papa for some other Markham? If I have taken in some one else whom I ought not to have taken in, I think I shall die of shame.”

“How can he be an impostor, when he is here in the Army List?”

“Let me see it,” Lady Markham said. She read out the name word by word, and her mind was a little relieved. “I suppose there cannot be any mistake since he is here,” she said, with a sigh of relief. But, as a matter of fact, Lady Markham sat up in her dressing-gown half the night, afraid of she knew not what, and listening anxiously to all the vague mystical noises that arise in a sleeping house in the middle of the night. She did not know what it was of which she was afraid. How could he be an impostor when his name was in the Army List, and when he had that kind brown face? But then, on the other hand, a man from the West Indies, who called her husband Will Markham, was an incredible person. She sat up till the blue summer daylight came silently in at all the windows, putting her suspicious candles to shame, when she, too, became ashamed of herself for her suspicions, and crept very quietly to bed.

Sir William did not come next day, but Colonel Lenny stayed on, and as it is always the premier pas que coûte, Lady Markham’s doubts were lulled to rest, and she neither frowned nor watched the second night. And on the third Sir William came. It was Alice who went to meet him at the station, in a pretty little pony carriage which he had given her. Everything was done instinctively by the ladies to disarm any displeasure papa might feel, and to prepare him to receive this second visitor with a friendly countenance. If there was anything that moved Sir William’s heart with a momentary impulse of unreasoning pride and foolish fondness, it was supposed by his wife to be the sight of his pretty daughter, with her pretty ponies. These ponies had been named To-to and Ta-ta before Alice had them—after, it was understood, two naughty personages in a play—and as the ponies were very naughty the names were retained. There were no such mischievous and troublesome individuals about the house, and Alice was very proud of the fact that it was she with her light hand who managed them best. Sir William was not fond of wild animals, and yet all the household knew that he liked to be brought home by his daughter in her little carriage, with the ponies skimming over the roads as if they were flying. It was the one piece of dash and daring in which he delighted.

Lady Markham, who was not fond of risking her daughter, came out to the door to entreat her to take care.

“And you will explain everything?” she said; “how it happened, and how very uneasy we have been; but my darling, above all, take care of yourself. Do not let those wicked little things run away with you. Give George the reins if you feel them too strong for your wrist. And make him understand, Alice, how nice, how really nice, and kind, and agreeable he is. George, you must never take your eye off the ponies, and see that Miss Markham takes care.”

“I hope they know my hand better than George’s,” said Alice, scornfully, “better than any one else’s. Nobody can interfere between them and me.”

“Pretty creatures! I don’t know which is the prettiest,” said Colonel Lenny, coming up. He had all the children in a cluster round him. “They are three beauties; that is all there is to be said. If you were not so little I could tell you now about a great number of pretty girls in a family, that were called the pride of Barbadoes. I married one of them, and my friend Markham—why, my friend Markham knew them very well, my dear madam,” the Colonel said. It did not seem to be the conclusion which he intended to give to his description. However, he added, with a smile, “But as you’re so little I won’t tell you about young ladies. I’ll tell you about the Oboe men, and the harm they do among the poor niggers.”

“Oh,” cried Bell and Marie, in one breath, “we should like to hear about the young ladies best.”

“Bosh!” cried the boys; “what is the good of stories about a pack of girls? I hate stories that are full of love and all that stupid stuff.”

“Then here goes for the Oboe men,” said the old soldier. He seated himself under the great portico, in a large Indian bamboo chair that stood there in summer, and the children perched about him like a flight of birds.

Lady Markham looked at this group for a moment, with a softening of all the anxious lines that had got into her face. She was not afraid of her husband, who had always been so good to her, but she was afraid of disapproval, and the Spears’ affair was fresh in her mind. But then, in all the circumstances, that was so different!

She left the pretty group round the door, and went slowly down the avenue, that she might be the first to meet her husband. Now that the critical moment arrived, she began for the first time to think what the business could be which Colonel Lenny was waiting to discuss. “More his business than mine.” What was it? This question rose in her mind, giving a little, a very little additional anxiety to her former disquietude. And then, being anxious anyhow, what wonder that her mind should glide on to the subject of Paul and what he was doing. That was a subject that was never long out of her thoughts. Would he come home when the shooting began? He could not stay up to read for ever. Would his father and he meet as father and son ought to meet? Would it be possible to reason or laugh the boy out of his foolish notions, and bring him back to right views, to the disposition which ought to belong to his father’s son? This was a wide sea of troubles to be launched upon, all starting from the tiny rivulet of alarm lest Sir William should dislike the new visitor. She went slowly down the avenue, under the nickers of sunshine and shade, under the murmuring of the leaves, catching now and then the sound of the colonel’s voice in the distance, and the exclamations of the children. Ah, at their age how simple it all was—no complication of opposed wills, no unknown friends or influences to contend with! She sighed, poor lady, with happiness, and with pain. It is easy even for a mother to dismiss from her thoughts those who are happy; but how can she forget the one who perhaps is not happy, who is absent, who is among unknown elements, not good or innocent? Thus Lady Markham’s thoughts, however occupied with other subjects, came back like the doves to their windows, always to Paul.

CHAPTER VI.

“Has anything happened, papa? You are so late—nearly an hour. To-to has been almost mad with waiting—has there been an accident? We were all beginning to get frightened here.”

“No accident that I know of,” said Sir William. He cast a look of pleasure at the pretty equipage and the pretty charioteer—a look of proud proprietorship and paternal pride. Alice was his favourite, they all said. But notwithstanding, he would not join her till he had seen that all his portmanteaus had been got out and carefully packed on the dog-cart which had come for them. Sir William’s own gentleman, Mr. Roberts, a most careful and responsible person, whose special charge these portmanteaus were, superintended the operation; but this did not satisfy his master. He stood by the pony-carriage, talking to his daughter, but he kept his eyes upon his luggage. There were despatch-boxes, no doubt freighted with the interests of the kingdom, and too important to be left to the care of a valet, however conscientious, and a railway porter. It was only when they were all collected and safe that he took his place by the side of Alice.

“You may be sure, my dear,” he said, “that unless you take similar precautions you will always be losing something.” The ponies had gone off with such a start of delight the moment they were set free, that Sir William’s remark was jerked out of his mouth.

“It would be quite a novelty if that happened to you—it would be rather nice, showing that you were human, like the rest of us. Did you really never, never, lose anything, papa?”

“Never,” he said; and you had only to look at him to see that this was no exaggeration. Such a perfectly precise and orderly person was never seen; from the top of his hat to the tip of his well-brushed boots there was nothing out of order about him, notwithstanding his journey. His clothes fitted him perfectly; they were just of the cut and the colour that suited his age, his importance and position. That he would ever have neglected any duty, or forgotten any necessary precaution, seemed impossible. “However,” he added, “I must not say too much; when I was young I have no doubt accidents happened. What I object to is that the present generation seems to think it a privilege to be forgetful. I was taught to be ashamed of it in my day.”

“Oh yes, papa, we are very silly,” said Alice; “though mamma says I am a little old maid and never forget. I take after you, that is what they all say.”

Sir William looked at her with a benevolent smile. There is no more subtle flattery that a child can address to a parent than this of “taking after” him, though why it should please us so it would be hard to say. He leaned back in his seat with a sense of well-deserved repose, while the impatient ponies flew along, tossing their pretty heads, their bells jingling, their hasty little hoofs beating time over the dry summer road. “This is very pleasant,” he said. It was a perfect summer evening, cool after a hot day, and the road lay through a tranquil, wealthy country, so fresh after the burnt-up parks, yet full of harvest wealth; the sheaves standing in the fields, some golden breadths of corn still uncut, and the heavy richness of the full foliage throwing deep shadows eastward. The ponies flew like the wind, and Alice, holding them with firm little vigorous hands, turned her soft face to him, all lit up with pleasure at his return. A conscientious statesman, a man who has been broiling in the service of his country, sitting on committees, listening to endless wearisome discussions and all the bothers of the end of the session, it may be supposed what a pleasant relief it was to step into this little fairy carriage and be carried swiftly and softly through the happy autumn fields to his home. “All well?” he said. But a man who has a daily bulletin from his wife asks such a question tranquilly, without any anxiety for the reply.

“I wonder who that lady was in the pink bonnet,” said Alice. “Strangers so seldom come out at our station. I wonder who she is going to. Perhaps it is somebody for the vicarage. Oh, yes, they are all quite well. The boys came home on Friday week, and they have never been out of mischief ever since. They are in the woods all day; and the girls have begun their holidays too. Mademoiselle has gone. We wanted only you, papa, you—and Paul. But who could that lady with the pink bonnet be?”

This second expression of curiosity was added artificially to cover the allusion to Paul. Sir William did not take any notice of either one or the other. “So Mademoiselle has gone?” he said. “I hope you keep order, and that mamma does not let them be too irregular. They will be far happier for a little wholesome restraint.”

“I suppose so,” said Alice, dubiously. “Anyhow,” she added, “they have had nearly a fortnight all to themselves. We have all been idle; but we will settle down into right laws and proper habits now we have got you, papa.”

“That will be quite necessary,” he said; then, with a slightly impatient tone, “You spoke of Paul—what is your last news of Paul?”

To-to had a very sensitive mouth. At this moment he so resented some imperceptible pull of the reins, that he got into the air altogether, capering with all his four feet, and called for Alice’s complete attention. In the midst of this little excitement she said, “Paul is still at Oxford, papa. He does not write very often. Oh, you bad To-to, what do you mean by this?”

“He has got very fond of Oxford all at once.”

“He has all his friends there—at least some of his friends. Papa,” cried Alice, with an impulse of alarm, “I wonder who that lady can be. She is coming after us in the village fly. I saw her bonnet just now through the window, when To-to made that bolt.”

“My dear, it is quite unimportant who she is—unless you think she is one of your brother’s friends. Considering who his associates are, one could never be astonished at any arrival. It may be a lady lecturer, perhaps, on Female Suffrage and Universal Equality.”

“Oh, papa! because he knows one man like that! But I have something to tell you—something that makes mamma and me a little uneasy. A gentleman came on Monday—oh, not a common person at all, a gentleman, and very nice. We could not tell what to do, but at last, after many consultations, we made up our minds to invite him to stay.”

“My dear Alice!” cried Sir William, “what do you and your mother mean? Is my house to be made into an hotel? What is the meaning of it? Am I to understand that you have taken in another nameless person, another disreputable acquaintance of Paul’s? Good heavens! is your mother mad? But I will not put up with it. My house shall not be made a refuge for adventurers, a den of——”

“For that matter,” said Alice growing pale, “I suppose it is mamma’s house too.”

There are opinions that get into the air and spread in sentiment when most opposed to principle. Nobody could have been more horrified than Lady Markham at any claim for her of woman’s rights; but when her little daughter, generously bred, found herself suddenly confronted by this undoubted claim of proprietorship, a chord was struck within her which had perhaps only learned to vibrate of recent days. She looked her father in the face with sudden defiance. She had not intended it—on the contrary, the object of her mission, the chief thing in her thoughts, had been to conciliate him in respect to this visitor, and soften his probable displeasure. But a girl’s mind is a delicate machine, and there is nothing that so easily changes its balance by a sudden touch. A whole claim of rights, a whole code of natural justice, blazed up in her blue eyes. She forgot To-to in her sudden indignation, looking with all the severity of logical youth in her father’s face.

Sir William was altogether taken aback. He returned her look with a kind of consternation.

“You little——” But then he stopped. A man sometimes remembers (though not always) that when he is speaking to his children of their mother it is necessary to do so with respect. Unquestionably it was expedient that a girl should have full faith in her mother. Besides (it gleamed upon Sir William) Alice was not a child. She was a reasonable little creature, able, after all, more or less, to form an opinion for herself. Perhaps he was more disposed to grant this privilege to the girl who was not likely to make any extravagant use of it, than to the boy; or perhaps his ill success in respect to the boy had taught him a lesson. Anyhow he paused. “Of course,” he said, “it is also, as you say, your mamma’s house. A friend of hers, I need not tell you, would be as welcome to me as a friend of my own. Do I ever attempt to settle without her who is to be asked? but with your sense, Alice, you must be aware there is a difference. I must interfere to prevent your excellent mother, who is only too good and kind, from being imposed upon by those disreputable acquaintances of Paul.”

“I beg your pardon, papa,” said Alice, who had been waiting breathless for the end of his address to make her eager apologies. “But,” she added, not unwilling to bring him down summarily from his elevation, “the gentleman I have been speaking of declares that he is your friend, and not Paul’s.”

“My friend! Then I daresay it is quite simple,” said Sir William, relapsing into his previous state of perfect repose and calm. “My friends are your mother’s friends too.”

“Ah, but this is different. (Papa, I am certain that woman is following us.) This is quite different. It is an old friend, whom none of us ever heard of. If we had known even his name we should not have been afraid. But do not be frightened, he is very nice. We all like him. He says he knew you in the West Indies, and the thing that alarmed us was that none of us, not even mamma, ever knew you had been there at all.”

“The West Indies!” Was it possible that Sir William started so much as to shake the pony carriage in which he sat? A cloud came suddenly over his serene countenance. He did not say, as Alice fancied he would, “I know nothing about the West Indies.” On the contrary, he paused, cleared his throat, and asked in a curiously restrained, yet agitated voice, “What does he—call himself?—what is his name?”

Alice was half alarmed by the effect she had produced. She did not understand it. She wanted to soften and do away with any disagreeable impression.

“Oh, he is very nice,” she said. “It is not any one you will mind, papa. And he is all right; he is in the Army List; we looked him up at once; we took every precaution; and there he was, just as he said, J. St. John Lenny, 50th West India Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel. After that, of course, and when he said he had known you so well, we could not hesitate any more.”

“Lenny!” Sir William said. It was with a tone of relief. He drew a long breath “as if he had expected something much worse,” Alice said afterwards. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. To be sure it was a warm evening. But there was something very strange to the girl in her father’s agitation. She did not understand it—he who was always so calm, who never allowed anything to put him out.

“Then were you really in the West Indies, papa?”

“I was in a great many places in my youth,” he said. “I was not taken care of as my boys have been. I was the youngest, and I did pretty much as I liked—a bad thing,” he added, after a pause; “a very bad thing, though you children never understand it. It led me into places and among people whose very names I seem to have forgotten now.”

There was a pause. Alice was very curious, but she did not venture to say more. She did not like even to look at her father who was so unusually disturbed. What could make him so unlike himself? The idea that there might be a mystery in Sir William’s life was more than impossible, it was ludicrous. She tried to fix her attention upon the ponies, who were going so beautifully. Then her ear was caught by the steady roll of wheels coming after them. Certainly it was the fly from the village; and certainly it was following on to the gates of the Chase which were now in sight. This was not the way to the vicarage or to any other house to which a stranger who had stopped at the station of Markham Royal could be going. She had not really believed it possible that the lady in the pink bonnet could be coming to the Chase; but now it seemed almost certain. What could be the meaning of it? Her heart jumped up into sudden excitement. She nourished her whip and touched the ponies till they flew. She could not bear the heavy rolling of that fly, a long way behind, yet always following with the steadiness of fate. This distracted her thoughts at once from her father, and a thousand conjectures rushed into the girl’s head. Could it be somebody from Paul? The fly came pounding heavily along, nothing stopping it. What could she do to stop it or conjure its passenger away? If it was bad news that was coming in it, what doubt that it would arrive quite safely? Paul! what could a woman in a pink bonnet have to do with Paul? Could he be ill? Could he be going to marry somebody, to do something foolish? Alice became herself so excited that she could not think of her father. And her father for his part took little notice of Alice. His mind was full of thoughts that would have been very incomprehensible, very startling to her. The stranger’s name had fallen upon him in his tranquillity as a stone falls into still waters. The calm surface of his mind was all broken, filled with widening and ever-widening circles of recollection. He felt dizzy like a man in a dream. The past was so long past, that, thus suddenly recalled to him, after such an interval of years, Sir William had a moment of giddy uncertainty as to whether it had actually existed at all, whether it was not a mere fable, something he had read in a book. Forty years ago—is a man responsible for things he did forty years ago? Can he be blamed if he forgets them? Can he be expected to remember? He who was so systematic, so careful, who never lost anything, who had for years been in a position to set every one else right: was it possible that he had once been foolish as other men? He himself did not understand it. He could not believe it. Lenny? Yes, he remembered there had been a man—the West Indies—ah, yes! things had passed there which he would not care now to talk about, which had been forgotten, which were to him as if they had never been. Had they ever been? he could scarcely tell. The ponies skimmed along the road, the bells jingled, the gates of the house were in sight, another minute and they would have reached the avenue. And then—instead of his gentle wife, and his innocent children, and universal respect, service, comfort, and worship of every kind, would it be the past in bodily presence that would have to be encountered, painful explanations, revelations, which might make a sudden rending asunder of the beauty and the happiness of life? Sir William wiped his forehead again as they turned in at the gate to the shelter of the familiar trees.

And still there was the dull rumbling of the fly behind. He did not so much as hear it, having been swept away on this torrent of thought. But Alice cast a troubled glance behind as she turned round to go in at the open gate, and made sure that it was coming after her. The girl’s head was buzzing and her heart throbbing with mingled fear and excitement. “Would you mind driving up the avenue yourself, papa? I have something to say to Mrs. Lowry at the gate,” she said, faltering. Her father scarcely seemed to hear her; he said, “Go on, go on,” with an impatient wave of his hand. She knew nothing about his alarms, nor he about hers. Perhaps, after all, the anxious desire of Alice to intercept what her hasty imagination had concluded to be a messenger of evil had something in it of that eager youthful curiosity which burns to forestall every new event. But if so disappointment was her fate. The little carriage flashed on under the trees and through the slanting lines of sunshine in a breathless silence, both its occupants being far too much absorbed to speak. Half way up the avenue two figures were visible advancing towards them. Lady Markham had been joined by Colonel Lenny a few minutes before. They stood aside, one on each side of the road as the pony-carriage came up. And here on every other occasion Sir William had got down and walked back with his wife to the house. It was part of the formula of his return, which was never omitted. This time, however, when Alice drew up her impatient ponies, he greeted his wife without moving from the carriage.

“We have had a very tedious, dusty journey,” he said. “I will go home at once, my love, pardon me, and shake my dust off.”

Lady Markham, in the midst of her anxiety, grew pale with surprise at this unusual proceeding. She pressed close to the side of the little carriage—“William,” she said, “do you know who it is that is with me?”

The baronet turned round to the long brown figure on the other side. “Alice has told me,” he said. “Lenny, is it possible? I did not think I could have recognised you after all these years.”

“Nor I you, my fine fellow,” said the Colonel. “I’d have passed you if I had met you in Bond Street, Markham; but meeting you here, and knowing it’s you, makes a great deal of difference. We’ve both of us altered in forty years.”

“Is it as long as that?” Sir William said. There was no pleasure in his face such as, these innocent ladies thought, should always attend a meeting with an old friend. But on the other hand he cast no doubt upon Colonel Lenny (as indeed how could he, seeing the Colonel’s name was in the Army List?), but addressed him unhesitatingly, and acknowledged him, which set the worst of Lady Markham’s fears at rest. “Go on,” he said, in an undertone to his daughter, then waved his hand to the pedestrians. “In ten minutes I shall be with, you,” he cried.

The rumbling of the fly had stopped; had it gone further contrary to all Alice’s anticipations? This idea gave her a little relief, but she was in so nervous a mood that the sudden jerk with which she urged the ponies forward once more upset To-to’s temper, who was his mistress’s favourite. He darted on through the lines of trees like a mad thing, wild with the jar to his delicate mouth and the vicinity of his stables.

“Do you want to break your own neck and mine?” Sir William said; “that pony will not bear the whip.”

“Why shouldn’t he bear it as well as Ta-ta?” said Alice; “is he to be humoured because he is the naughty one? It should be the other way.”

“It seldom is the other way,” said Sir William, moralising with a self-reference, though Alice did not understand it. “You spoke a greater truth than you are aware of. It is not the best people who are humoured in life. It is the naughty ones who get their way. If you make the worst of everything circumstances will yield to you: but act anxiously for the best and all the burden falls on your shoulders.”

“Papa! that is like Thackeray; it is cynical. I never heard you speak so before.”

“Nevertheless it is true,” said Sir William. His straight and placid brow was ruffled with care. “One does everything one can to be secure from evil, and evil comes.”

Could he be thinking about Paul? She turned her ponies (to their great disappointment) as soon as Sir William had stept out of the carriage. Charles indeed had to come to To-to’s head and lead him round, so unwilling was that little Turk to turn away from his comfortable stable again. “I will go back and bring mamma home, she was looking tired,” the girl said. She was impatient to make sure about the fly that had followed from the station, and the lady in the pink bonnet, and to be in the midst of it, at least, if anything were going to happen. Her mother was still a long way down the avenue. But Alice had scarcely turned when she perceived that there were three figures instead of two in the group she had so lately left. Three figures—and a brilliant speck of colour making itself apparent like a flag at the head of the little procession. Alice felt her heart rush to the scene of action more quickly than the ponies, which still resisted, tossing their little wicked heads. The lady with the pink bonnet had fallen into the advancing rank. She was tall, and that oriflamme towered over Lady Markham’s hat with its soft gray feathers. But their pace was quite moderate, unexcited, showing no sign of trouble. Lady Markham moved along with no appearance of agitation. Perhaps, after all, this new-comer, whoever she might be, had nothing to do with the absent brother, and was no messenger of evil tidings after all.

CHAPTER VII.

“My dear, this is Mrs. Lenny,” said Lady Markham. “She has kindly taken us on her way to the north.”

“How do you do, my dear young lady? The Colonel wrote me word about you all, praising you up, one more than another, and I thought I’d like to come and see. But, Lenny, you never told me how like she was to her father at her age. I think I see him before me, as handsome a boy——”

“Mrs. Lenny!” cried Alice, in consternation, yet relief. She turned to her mother a pair of questioning, wondering eyes. But Lady Markham could make no answer. She slightly shrugged, so to speak, not her shoulders, but her eyebrows. She was very polite and very hospitable, but this second arrival was almost too much for her. “I thought you looked tired, mamma,” Alice continued. “I came back to drive you home.”

Lady Markham shook her head. She was almost cross—as near that unpleasant state as it was possible for her to be. “Perhaps Mrs. Lenny would like to drive, Alice? She has had a long journey. I am not at all tired. I will wait and meet your papa.”

“How cool it is under these delicious trees,” said the lady of the pink bonnet. “Yes, indeed, if the young lady will have me, it will be a treat to be behind those beautiful ponies. Pretty creatures! like their mistress. I have not seen anything so pretty, Lenny, since we left the regiment. Ah, that was a foolish step. But one never knows when one is well off. ‘Lay mew,’ as the French say, is the enemy of ‘lay bieng.’ Thank you, my dear. Now this is delightful! I wish, instead of being within sight, we were three or four miles from the house.”

“Take Mrs. Lenny round by the fishpond,” said Lady Markham. She sighed with relief at getting rid of this new claimant upon her attention, though she was so polite. Mrs. Lenny was tall like her husband, and like him, brown and soldierly. She made the light little carriage bend on one side as she got in. Her brown face within the pink shade of the bonnet was wreathed with smiles. She was delighted like a child with the pretty equipage, and the promised drive—much more delighted than Alice was, who, though relieved of her terrors about Paul, drove off in no very happy state of mind. Yet she could not help taking a little pleasure in her own discrimination.

“I knew you were coming here the first moment I saw you,” she said. “I kept asking papa who you were. But he had not seen you—he did not know you; he never knows any one—not even, if he were to see us at a distance, mamma or me.”

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I should no more have known him! for you may be sure I took a good stare at the station, seeing it was somebody of consequence. He is so changed—oh, not for the worse, my dear; but when you see a nice little old gentleman instead of a pretty young one, it’s a shock, that can’t be denied. You have to count up and think back how many years it is. Somehow one never feels old one’s self. You think the world has stood still with you, though it goes so fast with all the rest.”

“I don’t feel at all like that,” said Alice. “Sometimes I feel so old—older a great deal, I am sure, than mamma.”

This statement was received by her companion with laughter, which disconcerted Alice. She drew herself up. She was not so polite as her mother.

“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” she said. “Age does not go only by years—when you have a great deal to think of——”

“You darling!” cried Mrs. Lenny. “Did the old woman laugh? But I’d laugh just the same if your dear mamma herself was to talk of feeling old. There’s what I call a lovely woman! Lenny never told me half what a dear she was. Old! but don’t you gloom at me, my pretty pet; I was once seventeen myself, though you wouldn’t think it. The birds now on the trees, I daresay they feel old between one Valentine’s day and another. It is not years that does it, as you say. When we come to my time of life the days go on one after another as fast as they can pelt: they’re all flyin’, flyin’, like the echoes in the song. But at your age they’re longer—they pass more slow—and when there’s much to think about did you say? Ah, but that’s true! When I was your age I had a great deal to think about. We were a large family, six girls of us, and not a penny among the lot. We were just ruined with the emancipation in the West Indies, and all that our parents said to us was, ‘Get married! There’s the officers,’ they said, ‘a set of simpletons! What’s the good of them but to marry the poor girls that know how to play their cards.’ Ah! I thought when I was after Lenny that to be married meant to be well off, and have everything that heart could desire. And so we all thought. We weren’t bad girls, don’t you think it; but that was how were brought up. Get married! and you’ll be well off directly. You never had anything like that said to you to make you old with thinking—”

“Oh, no, no,” said Alice, horrified. She scarcely knew whether to be offended by the familiarity of the stranger or interested in her talk. It was an experience altogether different from anything Alice knew of life.

“No, I should think not,” said the lady of the pink bonnet, nodding that article vigorously. “Just figure to yourself, my dear, what you would feel if you had to leave this beautiful place, and live down in a house in the town, and have that said to you. You would be shocked, wouldn’t you? But it did not shock us. That was how we were brought up. We had to marry by hook or by crook; and we all did marry. Well, there’s Lenny, he has made me a very good husband; but marrying him wasn’t like coming into a fortune, was it now?—though we’ve always been the best of friends. It was lucky in one way that we never had any children; it left us free to look after ourselves. Nowadays we live a great deal among our friends. We don’t interfere with each other, but we’re always glad to come together again. When I’m comfortable anywhere I send him word, and when he’s comfortable he sends me word. You mustn’t think my coming means more than that, and you must tell your dear mamma so. We’ve not come to do her any harm or her pretty family. Your papa is startled to see us, but he won’t mind in the end. I daresay you have often heard him talk of Barbadoes and the Gavestons? We were six handsome girls, though I say it that shouldn’t. You must have heard of us by name.”

Alice, whom this speech had filled with wonder, shook her head. “I never heard the name in my life,” she said.

“Well, that is odd,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I couldn’t believe it even though Lenny said so. That’s thorough,” she added, with a little laugh. A flush came over her brown cheek. “Never mind, my dear, it is not your fault,” she said.

Alice was more and more mystified. She could not imagine what this strange woman could mean. If she had been at first disposed to resent her familiarity, that offence had altogether evaporated. Mrs. Lenny looked and spoke as if she had something to do with the family; her eyes and her tone were full of kindness even when she evidently resented the fact that Alice had never heard of her. She spoke of herself without any kind of effort, as if it were natural that the girl should be interested; and Alice could not but wish to hear more. It was like a new story, original and out of the common. The momentary pause that ensued alarmed her lest it should be coming to an end.

“Did you all marry officers?” she asked at last.

“Did we all marry officers? We did that, every one—except the one that one that married—— Ah! I mean Gussy, that was the youngest. She married—a civilian—and died, poor girl. The rest of us all took the shilling. Ah! some of the girls are dead, and the rest are scattered—one in Australia, two out in India, me, wandering about the world as you see me, Lenny and I; most likely I’ll never see one of them again. We had but one brother; all the little the family had, he got it. It was he that took Gussy’s boy—did I tell you she left a boy? Poor Gussy! she died at twenty. It is like as if she never had married or been more than a child. When I think of the past it’s always she that comes uppermost—the little one, you know, the pet—and she never lived to get parted from us like the rest.”