Читать книгу Sir Harry - Archibald Marshall - Страница 4

"I said with a smile: 'I think your name used to be very well known in other scenes than this when I was a young man, Mrs. Brent.'

"My dear, I was never more surprised than by the way she took it. She flushed and drew up her head and looked at me straight, and said: 'Pray what do you mean by that, Mr. Grant?'

"I felt like a fool. Of course if Wilbraham hadn't said what he had I should never have thought of addressing her upon the subject. Being what she is now I should have expected that she would not have wanted her origin alluded to. But I have told you exactly what he did say, and certainly I never meant anything but kindness to her. Still, I saw that she might think I was simply taking a liberty, and made what recovery I could. 'I know that you were a great ornament of the stage before you were married,' I said. 'Please forgive me if I ought not to have alluded to it, but you said that you had read my books, and you will know that I take all life for my province; and when one practises one art with all earnestness and sincerity, it is interesting to talk to some one who has made a great success with another.'

"I think this was well said, wasn't it, dear? I'm afraid it was going rather beyond the truth, as, from what Wilbraham had told me, I doubt if she was much more than a chorus girl, and that only for a very short time. But my conscience doesn't prick me for having drawn the long bow a little. I had to disabuse her mind of the idea that I was taking a liberty with her, and I wanted to please her in the way that Wilbraham had indicated.

"She ceased, I think, to take offence, but she said, rather primly, with her eyes on her needlework, which she had taken up again: 'I prefer to forget that I was ever on the stage, Mr. Grant. It was for a very short time, and I simply went to and from my home to the theatre, always attended by a maid—or nearly always, and sometimes by my mother. When I married I left the stage altogether, and have never been in a theatre since. I don't know how you knew that I had ever belonged to it.'

"She gave me a quick little glance, and I divined somehow that it would give her pleasure to believe that she was remembered. I won't tell you what I said, but while I steered clear of an actual untruth, I did manage to convey the impression that I had recognized her, and I hope I may be forgiven for it. She said hurriedly: 'Well, we won't talk about it any more, for I have nearly forgotten it all, and wish to forget it altogether. And please don't tell Lady Brent that you know who I was. We don't want Harry to know it at all—ever. She's quite right there. Here she comes. You do like Harry, don't you, Mr. Grant? He's such a dear boy. and all the people about here love him.'

"'What, talking about Harry?' said Lady Brent, as she joined us. 'We all talk a great deal about Harry, Mr. Grant. I don't think there is a boy in the world on whom greater hopes are set. We have made him happy between us so far, but I am glad you are coming here with your young people, to bring a little more life into this quiet place. Young people want young life about them. It is the only thing that has been lacking for him. And it is all too short a time before he will have to go out into the world.'

"This all gave me a great deal to think about. I hope I have given you such an account of everything that passed, and the important parts of what was said to make you see it as I do. Consider this kind good lady, gifted more than most, rich, titled, intellectual, calculated to shine in society, yet content to live a quiet life out of the world for the sake of the bright boy upon whom so many hopes depend. She has gone through much trouble, with her only son and her husband reft from her within a few weeks of one another. She cannot have welcomed the wife whom her son had chosen, but she lives in constant companionship with her, and treats her with every consideration. My heart warms towards her. We are indeed fortunate in having such a chatelaine as Lady Brent in the place in which we are to spend our lives and do our work. Of her kindness and thoughtfulness towards myself I have not time to write, as it is getting very late, and I must to bed. But when you come here you will find her everything that you can wish, and I shall be surprised if you do not make a real friend of her, a friend who will last, and on whom you can in all things depend."

When Mrs. Grant had at last finished this voluminous letter, she summoned Miss Minster to her, and read her many passages from it. Miss Minster was the lady who looked after the education of Jane and Pobbles, and had somewhat of a hard task in doing so, though she fulfilled it without showing outward signs of stress. She was of about the same age as Mrs. Grant—that is in the early thirties, and they had been friends together at school. They were friends now, and Mrs. Grant trusted Miss Minster's judgment in some things more even than she trusted her husband's.

"Somehow, I don't see Lady Brent," said Mrs. Grant, when she had read out all that had been written about her. "She seems to have made a great impression upon David, but it looks to me as if it was the impression she wanted to make."

"If any other man but David had written all that," said Miss Minster, "I should have said that there was something behind it all. I should have said that Lady Brent had some dark reason for keeping herself and the rest of them shut up there, and that this Mr. Wilbraham, who doesn't seem to behave like a tutor at all, was in the conspiracy. As it is, I think his pen has run away with him, and they are all very ordinary people, and there's nothing behind it at all."

"Well, my idea is just the opposite," said Mrs. Grant. "If David had sniffed a story he would have put it in. He doesn't think there is anything behind it. I do. Perhaps Mrs. Brent wasn't married, and this young Sir Harry isn't the rightful heir. That would be a good reason for Lady Brent to lie low. Perhaps Mr. Wilbraham knows about it, which would be the reason for his not behaving like an ordinary tutor; though, as for that, I don't think there's much in it, and he behaves like an ordinary tutor according to David's account just as much as you behave like an ordinary governess."

"A good point as far as it goes," said Miss Minster, "and a joyous life it would be for you if I did behave like an ordinary governess. But you're worse than David in making up twopence coloured stories. I don't think we need worry ourselves about the Brents till we get down there. Then we shall be able to judge for ourselves. No man ever knows what a woman is really like the first time he sees her. Whatever Lady Brent and Mrs. Brent are like, you may depend upon it that we shan't find them in the least as David has described them. Now read what he says about the Vicarage again, and see if we can make anything of that, beyond that it is embowered in massy trees."

CHAPTER III

THE CHILD

When young Sir Harry had made that laughing appeal to the figure framed in the square of orange light above him, and turned away into the shadows, he had already forgotten that there had been a witness to his escapade.

It was no escapade to him, but a serious quest, about which played all the warm palpitations and eager emotions of high romance. To-night, if ever, with the earth moving towards the soft riot of spring, with the air still and brooding as if summer were already here, though sharp and clean, scoured by the wind and washed to gentleness again by the showers of April, with the moonlight so strong that in the shadows of the trees there was no darkness, but diffused and quivering light hardly less bright than the light of day, and to the eyes of the spirit infinitely more discerning—surely to-night he might hope to see the fairies dancing in their rings, and the little men stealing in and out among the tree-branches!

He longed passionately to see the fairies. The beauty of the earth meant so much to him. All through his childhood his love for it had grown and grown till it had become almost a pain to him. For though it meant so much he did not know what it meant. It had always seemed to be leading him up to something, some great discovery, or some great joy—at least some great emotion—which would give it just that meaning that would tune his soul to it and entrench him safely behind some knowledge, hidden from mortal eyes, where he could survey life as it was, perfect and blissful, and withal secret. The fairies, if he could only look upon them once, would give him the secret. Surely they would not withhold themselves from him on such a night as this.

He pictured himself lying on the warm beech-mast in the shadows of some great tree that stood sentinel over a stretch of moonlit lawn, watching the delicate gossamer figures at their revels, their iridescent wings softly gleaming, their petalled skirts flying, their tiny limbs twinkling; and perhaps he would hear the high tenuous chime of their laughter as they gave themselves up to their delicious merriment. He would lie very still, hardly breathing. The mortal grossness which he felt to be in him should not cast its shadow over their bright evanescent spirit. He would keep, oh, so still, and just watch, and grow happier and happier, and at last—know. The grossness would be purged from him. When the moon drooped and the fairy dancers melted away, he would have seen behind the veil. After that he would never suffer again from the perplexing thought that there was some great thing hidden from him, that just when beauty gripped his soul and seemed to have something to tell him, and he stood ready to receive the message, there was only silence and a sense of loss, which made him sad. Nature would speak to him, as she had always seemed to be speaking to him, but now he would understand, and answer, and life would be more beautiful than it had ever been before.

He had always hugged secrets to himself ever since he could remember, secrets that it would have seemed to him the deepest shame that any one should surprise. Once on a summer's evening, when he had been lying in his little cot by his mother's bed, whiling away the long daylight hour by telling himself a most absorbing story, which at that time he was going through from night to night, he had become so worked up by it that he carried on the dialogue in a clear audible voice. A warning knock came upon the bedroom door, and that particular story was cut short never to be resumed. It was the time when his mother and grandmother were dining, and his nurse and all the other servants were down below. He had not thought that it was possible that he could have been overheard. He had been acting a garden story. The characters were the Garden, the flowers and himself. The Garden was a very kind and gracious lady who led him, a little boy called Arnold, with black straight hair—he preferred that sort to his own fair curls—to one flower after another, and told him whether they had been good or naughty. The flowers were mostly children, but a few, such as geraniums and fuchsias, were grown up. The geraniums never took any notice of him, and he did not like them on that account, but looked the other way when they were rebuked. This fortunately happened but seldom, as they usually behaved with propriety, though stiff and obstinate in character. The roses he often pleaded for, because they were so beautiful. Vanity was their besetting sin, and the Garden often had to tell them—in language much the same as that used by the Vicar in church—that they were no more in her sight than the humblest and poorest flowers. But he could not bear to see their beautiful petals scattered, which happened as a punishment if they had flaunted themselves beyond hope of forgiveness. It was coming to be his idea, as the story progressed, that some day he would make a strong appeal to the Garden to abolish this punishment altogether. Then no flowers would ever die, but only go to sleep in the winter, and he would be the great hero of the flowers, with hair blacker and straighter than ever, and whenever he went among them they would bow and curtsey to him, but nobody would see them doing it except himself.

On this June evening it was a tall Madonna lily for whom he was pleading in such an impassioned manner. Lilies were very lovely girls, not quite children and not quite grown-up. He had a sentimental affection for them. He would see them incline towards one another as he came near, and hear, or rather make them whisper to one another: "Here is that dear little boy. How good he is! And isn't his hair dark and smooth! I should like to kiss him." (Had he said that aloud, just before the knock came? He would never be able to look the world in the face again if that speech had been heard.) The Garden had accused the lily of leaving her sisters and the place where she belonged to go and talk to a groom in the stables. She might have been kicked by a horse. An example must be made. No little treats, no sugar on her bread and butter, no favourite stories told her, for a week. The lily had cried, and said she had meant no harm, and wouldn't do it again. He had adjured her not to cry, in very moving terms, which it made him hot all over to imagine overheard, and the lily had said, in no apparent connection with the question under discussion, but in a loud and clear voice: "Arnold is brave and strong; he can run faster than all other boys in the world."

It was just then that the knock came. He was unhappy about it for days, and looked in the faces of all the servants to see if there was any sign of the derision he must have brought upon himself, but could find none, and presently comforted himself with the idea that it was Santa Claus who had knocked at the door; but he dropped the drama of the flowers, and afterwards only whispered the speaking parts of other dramas.

It was not from any lack of love for those about him that he kept his soul's adventures to himself. Of sympathy with them he might instinctively have felt a lack, but he loved everybody with whom he had to do, and everybody loved him. His mother was nearest to him, though his grandmother was felt to be the head of all things and of all people. His mother showed jealousy towards her, but not in her presence. The child divined this, and responded to her craving for his caresses when he was alone with her by little endearments which were very sweet to her. "You and me together, Mummy," he would whisper, snuggling up to her, and stroke her face and kiss her, in a way that he never did when his grandmother was there. He must have divined too that he was the centre of existence for his grandmother, but she never petted him or invited his caresses, though her face showed pleasure when he leant against her knee and prattled to her, which he did without any fear, and as if it was natural that they two should have much to say to one another.

During his earliest days his mother often wept stormily, and there was great antagonism between her and the old nurse, who had also nursed his father. But when he was five years old the nurse suddenly went away, and his mother's weepings, which had saddened and sometimes frightened him, as she clutched him to her and rocked to and fro over him, ceased, so that he presently forgot them. She did much for him herself that the nurse had done before, with the help of a girl from the village, who became a close friend of his, though not in a way to cause his mother jealousy.

Eliza was slow and rather stupid, but she could tell half a dozen stories. She told them in stilted fashion, and never varied the manner, and hardly the words, of her telling. If she did so, he would correct her. By and by she became rather like a dull priest intoning a liturgy, known so well that there was no call to attend to the meeting. He could see after all that himself, and wanted no variations or emotion of hers to get between him and the pictures that her monotonous drone projected on the curtain of his brain. He was the hero of all the stories himself, and carried them far beyond the bounds of the liturgy. As Jack the Giant-killer, he engaged with foes unknown to fairy lore. As the Beast he drew such interest from his mastery over other beasts that his transformation into a Prince with straight black hair was always being postponed, and was finally dropped out of his own story altogether, together with Beauty, who had become somewhat of a meddler with things that she couldn't be expected to understand. He was Cinderella in the story of that time, because of riding in the coach made out of a pumpkin, and the mice turned into horses, but never felt at home in the character until he turned the story round and gave the leading part to the Prince, with Cinderella's adventures adapted to male habits and dignity.

With Eliza in attendance he sometimes played for hours together in the garden, and he could get away from her if he was careful never to be right out of her sight or hearing. It was then that the drama of the garden and the flowers began, but when it came to an end he returned to the fairy stories.

His mother told him stories too at his earnest pleading. But they were never the same twice running and had little point for him. He much preferred Eliza's rigid version of the classical stories, and the others were all about beautiful girls who married very handsome, noble, rich men, but the men never did anything except love the girls to distraction and give them beautiful presents. There was no ground for his imagination to work on, except in the matter of the presents, and of these he demanded ever growing catalogues, suggesting many additions of his own, so that if his mother remembered these and kept to them, there was some interest to be got out of her stories, but not enough to vie with that of Eliza's repertoire.

His grandmother had no stories, but when he was a little older she told him about his ancestors, who had done a good deal of fighting at one time or another throughout the centuries, which gave him plenty of material. He knew that she got her information from books in the library, and he was encouraged to persevere with his letters so that he would be able to read those books for himself. He gained from her the impression that his family was above other families, and that in some way which he didn't quite understand, seeing that he was subject to her, and to his mother, and even to Eliza, its superiority was also his in a special measure. He must never do anything that would lessen it. He must not be too familiar with servants, and especially with grooms in the stable. He would hang his head at this, for it was the weak point in his behaviour. He was apt to be beguiled by the society of grooms in the stable, to the extent even of using expressions unallowable in the society of his equals. But though he was to bear himself high, he was to deal kindly with those at the same time beneath him and around him; and he was to look upon Royd all his life as the place to which he belonged. He would go away from it sometimes when he was older, but he must never be away for long, and never get to like being away. This was what young men did sometimes, and it was not good for them. It was not right.

Such exordiums as these, varied in manner but never in principle, continued throughout his childhood, and had a strong effect upon him. A child has a natural preoccupation with the question of right and wrong and it fitted in with all that Harry had learnt for himself that it was right for him to be at Royd and would be wrong for him to be away. He could not imagine any other place that would suit him better, or indeed nearly so well. His mother would sometimes talk to him, when he grew older, of the lights and the movement and the heartening crowds of London. She would do it half furtively, and he understood, without being told, that he must keep the fact of her doing so at all from his grandmother. But he had no wish to talk about it. The picture did not please him. He gained the impression of London as a dirty noisy place, and Royd shone all the more brightly in comparison with it. His mother never mentioned the theatre.

She talked to him sometimes about his father. He had been a soldier—a very brave soldier—like all the rest of the Brents. Harry would be a soldier himself some day, but she prayed that he would not have to go out and fight. He would wear a beautiful red coat with a sash and a sword, and a noble bearskin on his head. There was a photograph of his father, not in this uniform, but in service kit, taken just after his marriage. It showed a good-looking young man, amiable but weak. It was the only photograph of him that Mrs. Brent had in her room. Lady Brent had many photographs of him, but this one was not among them. As a child he had been very like Harry. Lady-Brent seldom mentioned him, and to her daughter-in-law never. Harry knew after a time, as children come to know such things, that she had loved him very dearly. She had all those reminders of his childhood and youth about her. His mother had only the one. She had known him for a few weeks. All the rest of his life had belonged to his own mother, and she was shut out of it. Her references to him, indeed, were hardly more than perfunctory. The poor bewildered little lady had loved him, and looked to him, perhaps, to translate her to a more glamorous life. The life of dignity was hers, but without him, and sometimes it lay very heavy upon her. But she had her child. Nothing mattered much as long as she was allowed to love him and to keep his love.

A French nursery governess came when Harry was five years old, Eliza, who showed great jealousy of her, not unmixed with contempt for her absurd speech and foreign ways, being also retained. She was a gentle little thing, and, when she had got over her homesickness, bright and gay. She loved the child dearly, and he was soon prattling to her in her own language, piping little French songs, and repeating verses with his hands behind his back and his head on one side, to the great pride of his mother and grandmother. Mrs. Brent made a surreptitious friend of Mademoiselle, and even went so far as to take lessons of her in French. Lady Brent spoke French with an accent "tout a fait distingué." Mademoiselle had observed that this was the mark of "la vraie grande dame Anglaise" and perhaps Mrs. Brent imagined that the accomplishment would bring her more into line. But it was irksome to sit down to grammar and exercises, and somehow she "never could get her tongue round the queer sounds." It was easier to help Mademoiselle on with her English, and soon they had their heads together constantly, comparing notes about the life of Blois and the life of London, which was so gay and so different from this life of the château, so magnificent but so dull and so always the same. But Harry was not to know that either of them felt like that about it, and the little French girl had enough of the spirit of romance in her to judge his surroundings of castle and park, and wide tract of country over which by and by he was to rule, as fitting to him. It was, after all, the bourgeois life that she and Mrs. Brent pined for, the one in France, the other in England. She recognized that, but when she intimated as much to Mrs. Brent that lady was up in arms at once, and the intimacy between them nearly came to an end. Let it be understood that the life she had known in London was very different from the life Mademoiselle had known in a provincial French city. Hers had been the life of the great lady, in London as well as at Royd, and it was that part of the great lady's life that she missed. Perhaps Mademoiselle, in her ignorance of English customs, believed it, perhaps she didn't; but she adopted the required basis of conversation, and the friendship continued. Mrs. Brent took little trouble to assert her gentility, when once it was accepted, and spoke often of her family, who lived in Kentish Town, where she had been so happy, in a way that must have given Mademoiselle some curious ideas of the ways of the British aristocracy, supposing her to have believed in the claim set up.

But all this passed over the child's head. Mademoiselle had stories to tell him of the old nobility of Touraine, which she was clever enough to connect in his mind with the stories his grandmother told him of his own knightly forbears. It was from that life he had sprung. The ancient glories of the French châteaux were allied to those of his noble English castle. The romance and chivalry were the same. Lady Brent approved very highly of Mademoiselle, and when she went back to France after two years, to fulfil the marriage contract that her parents had made for her, gave her a present which added substantially to her dot.

Then Mr. Wilbraham came, and Harry began his education in earnest.

Lady Brent had gone up to London to find a successor for Mademoiselle. She was to be a highly educated Englishwoman, who was to give place to a tutor in three or four years' time. Harry was not to go to school; he was to spend the whole of his boyhood at Royd, but he was to be taught all the things that boys of his class learnt, except the things that Lady Brent didn't want him to learn—including that precocious knowledge of the world which had entangled his father, and in effect brought Mrs. Brent into the family.

Lady Brent brought Mr. Wilbraham back with her, and never explained why she had changed her plan. In some things she made a confidante of her daughter-in-law; in others she acted as if she had no more to say in her child's upbringing than Eliza. And Mrs. Brent never thought of asking her for an explanation of anything if she volunteered none.

Mr. Wilbraham was then a dejected young man of four or five and twenty. He volunteered no explanation of his substitution for the lady of high education either; nor, indeed, of his past history. It was a long time before Mrs. Brent, who liked to find out things about people, and especially anything that indicated their social status, knew that his father had been a clergyman, and that he expected some day to be a clergyman himself. And that was all that she did know, until he had been at Royd for years, and seemed likely to be there for ever; for gradually he dropped talking about taking orders. She had an idea that there was some secret between him and Lady Brent, but the idea died away as time went on, and at last he told her, quite casually, that he had gained his post at Royd through a Scholastic Agency. Lady Brent had gone there for a tutor, and she had engaged him. That was all. It did not explain why she had changed her mind; but by that time her change of mind had been almost forgotten. Mr. Wilbraham was an integral part of life at Royd Castle.

Harry liked him from the first. He was a good teacher, and there was never any trouble about lessons. Outside lesson time he was not expected to be on duty, and when the boy grew older their companionship was entirely friendly and unofficial. Mr. Wilbraham introduced Harry to all the rich lore of Greek mythology. Here was matter for romance, indeed! Royd became peopled with nymphs and dryads and satyrs, and fabulous but undreaded monsters. Harry knew that Diana hunted the deer in the park when the moon shone; he often heard Pan fluting in the woods, and centaurs galloping over the turf. When he was taken over to Rington Cove, six miles away, he saw the rock upon which the mermaids sat and combed their hair, and on the yellow sands the print of the nereid's dancing feet. It was all very real to him, and Mr. Wilbraham never even smiled at his fancies. That was one of the reasons why he liked him.

CHAPTER IV

FAIRIES

Harry lay quite still under a great tree, his chin propped on his hands, his eyes fixed upon a spot in the glade where he knew there was a fairy ring, upon which he was sure that if he gazed long enough with his eyes clear and his brain free, he would see the gossamer fairies dancing. His couch of beech-mast was dry under him, and not a breath of air stirred the warmth that had settled there during a sunny day, though cool fingers seemed to be touching his cheeks now and then, as of the spirit of the young spring. He was happy and at peace with himself, and his happiness grew as the long minutes passed over him. His world was whole and good all around him. His life contained no regrets and no unfulfilled desires, except this one of learning the secret of his happiness, which touched him as the fingers of the still April night were touching him, to more alertness, not to any trouble or disturbance of mind. Besides, the secret was coming to him at last. He must believe that, or it would not come. And he did believe it. He no more doubted that he would see the fairies under to-night's moon than he doubted of his body, lying there motionless. Indeed, his spirit was more alive than his body, which was in a strange state of quiescence, so that it was not difficult to keep perfectly still for as long as it should be necessary, and no discomfort arose from his immobility.

If Lady Brent was sometimes criticized, as she was, for keeping the boy away from the intercourse that prepared other boys of his age and rank for playing their part in the world, and the criticism had reached her ears, she need have done no more than point to him as he was at the threshold of his manhood, for justification. Shut up in a great house, with two women and a lazy tame-cat of a man; never seeing anybody outside from one year's end to another; no young people about him; no chance even of playing a game with other boys—those were the accusations, brought by Mrs. Fearon, for instance, wife of the Rector of Poldaven, seven miles away, who had sons and daughters round about Harry's age, would have liked them to be in constant companionship with him, and was virulent against Lady Brent, because she would have no such companionship in any degree whatsoever. The boy would grow up a regular milksop. He couldn't always be kept shut up at Royd, and when he did go out into the world the foolish woman would see what a mistake she had made. His own father had made a pretty mess of it, and his early death was no doubt a blessing in disguise. Harry would have even less experience to guide him. It would be a wonder if he did not kick over the traces entirely, and bring actual disgrace upon his name.

Thus Mrs. Fearon, not too happy in the way her own sons were turning out, though they had had all the advantages that Harry lacked, and at her wits' end to cope with the discontent of her elder daughters.

Poldaven Rectory was the only house of any size within a seven-mile radius of Royd except Poldaven Castle, which was hardly ever inhabited. One summer, when Harry was about eight years old, Lady Avalon brought her young family there, and settled them with nurses and governess, while she herself made occasional appearances to see how they were getting on. There was going and coming during that summer between Royd and Poldaven. Harry would be taken there to play with the little Pawles, and a carriage full of them would appear every now and then to spend a long day at Royd. Of all the large family, there was only one with whom he found himself in accord. The little Lords were noisy and grasping, the little Ladies dull and mincing. But one of the girls, Sidney, of exactly the same age as himself, was different from the rest. The two children would go off together, and when out of sight of nurses and governess Sidney became quite natural and they would talk and play games entirely happy in one another's company until they were discovered by the rest, and the disputes would begin again, and the eternal cleavage between male and female. Lady Avalon happened to be there, they were encouraged to be together and she and Lady Brent would have their heads close as they watched them. A sweet little couple, hand in hand—the boy so straight and handsome, the girl so pretty and naturally gay. There was match-making going on, and the nurses were in it too, and left them alone together, and often prevented the other children from seeking them out.

When the Pawle children went away after their secluded summer, Harry and Sidney kissed gravely, under command of the head-nurse, who called them "little sweet'earts." But the kiss meant nothing to Harry, since he had been told to proffer it. He would rather have kissed Lady Ursula, a large-eyed pink and flaxen damsel of twelve, for whom he had an admiration, though she never had much to say to him, and there was no interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney's. He missed Sidney when they went away, but not for long, and by this time he had almost forgotten her. For Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that summer, and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial plans for her grandson she seemed to have forgotten them, for she scarcely ever mentioned the names of her one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney Pawle, except once when the news of Lady Ursula's marriage was in all the papers. Then she said that Ursula was a beautiful girl, but Sidney had always been her favourite. Harry looked at the picture of bride and bridesmaids. He remembered how he had admired Ursula's beauty, and she was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized her; grown-up, she seemed a generation older. Sidney was recognizable in the photograph; she was not yet grown up. But she looked different too, in her silken finery. Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her children's clothes during that summer at Poldaven, for the girls had never been dressed in anything more elaborate than linen and rough straw. Somehow this bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate. He could not imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing knight, as she had done once or twice when they had got quite away by themselves; or indeed his letting her into any of that kind of secret, now. He put the paper away and forgot her afresh.

Harry played no outdoor games in his boyhood, except the games he made up for himself. But he was a horseman from his earliest years. Lady Brent encouraged it, when he was once old enough to go to the stables without fear of danger. He had first a tiny little Shetland, then a forest-bred pony, and a horse when he was big enough to ride one. He roamed all over the country, happy to be by himself and indulge his daydreams. His handsome young face and slim supple boy's figure were known far and wide. He had friends among farmers and cottage people, but the few of his own class who lived in that sparsely populated country he was inclined to avoid. They thought it was by his grandmother's direction, but though it suited her that he should do so, it was in truth from a kind of shyness that he kept away from them. His isolation was beginning to bear fruit. The boys of his own age whom he occasionally came across seemed to have nothing in common with him, nor he with them. The girls eyed him curiously, if admiringly, and he had nothing to talk to them about. He was happier by himself, or with his horse and his dogs. But he was never really by himself. He could always conjure up brave knights and gentle ladies to ride with him through the woods or by the sea, if he wanted company. There was a whole world of varied characters about him, from the highest to the lowest, and his imagination did not stop at mortal companionship; he walked with gods and heroes as often as with men and women.

No one about him suspected this inner life of his, as real to him as his outer life, and still more important. To his mother and grandmother he was a bright active boy, with the outdoor tastes of a boy, who slept soundly, ate enormously, and behaved himself just as a well brought-up boy should. To his tutor he was a pleasant companion during the hours they spent together, and one who did credit to his teaching. Wilbraham had his scholarly tastes and perceptions. He would have hated the drudgery of teaching an ordinary boy who made heavy work of his lessons, but this boy took an interest in them. It is true that there were surprising gaps in the course of study that they followed. Greek and Latin, and English and French literature took up very nearly all their time and attention. Wilbraham looked forward with some apprehension to the time when he should have to tell Lady Brent that in order to prepare Harry for any examination extra cramming would be necessary by somebody else in the subjects that he had neglected. But at sixteen the boy was a fair classical scholar, and his range of reading was wider than that of many University honours men.

Harry was fortunate in having the Vicar to help and encourage him in his Natural History studies, for this was a subject in which Wilbraham took no interest. Mr. Thomson was an old bachelor, who had been Vicar of Royd for over forty years. His house was a museum, and Harry revelled in it. No doubt he would have developed his tastes in that direction without any guidance, but Mr. Thomson put him on the right lines, and was overjoyed, at the end of his life, to have so apt a pupil. He took him out birds' nesting, geologizing, botanizing, and encouraged him to form his own collections though the boy showed no great keenness in this form of acquisition. He wanted to know about everything around him but to collect specimens did not greatly interest him. However, he was proud enough when the old man died and bequeathed to him all his treasures. At this time he was arranging them in a couple of rooms that had been given up to them in the Castle. But the excitement was already beginning to wear a little thin. When he was not working with Wilbraham he always wanted to be out of doors, even in bad weather. And he missed his old friend; it made him rather sad to be poring over the cases and shelves and cabinets that had been so much a part of him.

Part of the old Vicar's preoccupation had been with the antiquities of the country in which he had lived. He had collected legends and folk-lore, perhaps in rather a dry-as-dust way; but it was all material for the boy's glowing imagination to work upon. All the books were there, now in Harry's possession, and many manuscript notes, too. And scattered over the country were the remnants of old beliefs and old rites, which took one right back to the dim ages of the past. There was a cromlech within the park walls of Royd itself, and from it could be seen a shining stretch of sea under which lay, according to ancient tradition, a deep-forested land that had once been alive with romance. All this was very real to Harry, too. The figures of Celtic heroes mixed themselves up with those of the classical gods and heroes. The fairies and pixies of his own romantic land were still more real to him than the fauns and dryads of ancient Greece; as he grew older his expectation of meeting with a stray woodland nymph during his forest rambles died away, but he was more firmly convinced than ever that the native fairies were all about him, if he could only see them.

He lay for a very long time under the beech, quite motionless, but with his senses acutely alert. He heard every tiny sound made by the creatures of the night, and of nature which sleeps but lightly under the moon, and took in all their meaning, but without thinking about them. The shadow cast by the tree under which he was lying had shifted an appreciable space over the brightly illumined grass since he had stirred a muscle. And all the time his expectation grew.

He was in a strangely exalted state, but penetrated through and through with a deep sense of calm, and of being in absolute tune with the time and place. If no revelation of the hidden meaning of nature came to him to-night, before the set of the moon, he would arise and go home, not disappointed and vaguely unhappy, as he had done before, but with his belief in that hidden meaning destroyed. Only he knew now that that could not happen. When he had stolen out into the night, he had hoped that he might see something that he had never seen before. Now he knew that he would. He had only to wait until the revelation should come. And he was quite content to wait, in patience that grew if anything as the shadows lengthened towards the east.

He made not the slightest movement, nor was conscious of any quickening of emotion, when the sight he had expected did break upon his eyes. It came suddenly, but with no sense of suddenness. At one moment there was the empty moon-white glade, at the next there were tiny fairies dancing in a ring, so sweet, so light, so gay. And in the middle of them, rhythmically waving her wand, was the queen—Titania perhaps, but he did not think about that until afterwards. Their wings were iridescent, from their gauzy garments was diffused faint light, hardly brighter than the light of the moon, hardly warmer, and yet different, with more glow in it, more colour.

He heard the silvery chime of their laughter—just once. Then where they had been there was nothing.

He arose at once. He had no expectation of seeing them again. He did not go down to the place where they had been, but made his way home by a path under the trees. His mind was full of a deep content. The fairies were, and he had seen them.

CHAPTER V

MRS. BRENT

Mrs. Grant was sitting in her drawing-room at Royd Vicarage. It was a lovely hot June morning, and she was at her needlework by the French windows, which were pleasantly open to the garden. The rich sweet peace of early summer brooded over shaven lawn and bright flower beds, and was consummated by the drone of the bees, which were as busy as if they were aware of their reputation and were anxious to live up to it. Under the shade of a lime at the corner of the lawn slumbered the Vicarage baby in her perambulator, so placidly that the very spirit of peace seemed to have descended on her infant head. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and there was nothing to disturb the calm contentment with which Mrs. Grant plied her needle, singing a little song to herself, and occasionally casting an eye in the direction of the perambulator and its precious contents. Jane and Pobbles were at their lessons with Miss Minster, or the scene would not have been so peaceful. The Vicar was in his study, happily at work on a moving chapter of his latest work; for it was Monday, when clerical duties were in abeyance.

He had been at Royd for over a year, and found the place delightfully suited to his taste. He felt his inventive powers blossoming as never before. The first novel he had written at Royd had not long since been published, and its modest popularity was now being reflected in the literary and advertisement columns of the newspapers. It had already brought him an offer for the serial rights of his next novel, from a magazine of good standing, which did not pay high prices, but did demand a high moral tone in the fiction it published, and made quite a good thing out of it. It was all grist to the mill. Royd Vicarage was a good-sized house and cost more to live in comfortably than he or his wife had anticipated, and his income as an incumbent, with all the deductions that had to be made from it, was hardly higher than his stipend as a curate had been. But he had a little money of his own, and his wife had a little money, and with the income that came from the novels there was enough; and it was beginning to look as if there might be a good deal more, perhaps a great deal more. Novelists with less in them than he felt himself to possess were making their two or three thousand a year. Anything in the way of large popularity might happen within the next year. In the meantime life was exceedingly pleasant, and even exciting, with all those possibilities to build upon. He would leave his work sometimes and come into the room where his wife was, rubbing his hands, to tell her how exceedingly jolly it all was. She would look up at him with a smile, pleased to see him so happy, and happy herself, with her nice house, and no anxiety about being able to run it properly.

She was rather expecting a visit from him this morning, for he had told her that he was going to set to work on a new chapter, and when he had settled what it was going to be he would usually come and tell her about it before he began to write. She thought it was he when the door opened; but it was Mrs. Brent, who sometimes looked in and sat with her for a time in the morning.

Mrs. Brent was well dressed, in the summer attire of a country-woman, but with her fluffy hair, and face that had been pretty in her youth but was pretty no longer, she looked somehow as if she had dressed for the part; and the air of "commonness," not always apparent in her, was there this morning. The corners of her mouth drooped, and there was an appearance of discontent, and even sullenness about her.

She brightened up a little as she greeted Mrs. Grant, and sat down opposite to her on a low chair by the window. "Oh, I do like coming here," she said. "It's so peaceful. And it's such a quiet pretty room."

The room was rather barely furnished, but what there was in it was good, and there were a great many flowers. To buy old things for this and other rooms of the house was to be one of the first results of the expected increase of income, but it was doubtful whether the charm of this room would be much enhanced. For it was quiet, as Mrs. Brent said, and quietness is a valuable quality in a room.

Mrs. Grant looked round her with satisfaction. "It is nice," she said. "We are very happy here. I don't think I'd change Royd for any place in the world."

"I would," said Mrs. Brent. "I'm fed up with it."

Mrs. Grant threw a glance at her. She was looking down, and the sullenness had returned to her face.

"Fed up to the teeth," she said.

She looked up in her turn. Behind the discontent was an appeal. Mrs. Grant felt suddenly very sorry for her. If she was a little common, she was also rather pathetic—a middle-aged child, out of place and out of tune.

"I think it would do you good to have a change sometimes," Mrs. Grant said. "However beautiful a place is, one wants a change occasionally."

"She doesn't," said Mrs. Brent vindictively. "So she thinks nobody else ought to either."

It was coming at last, then. Mrs. Grant had formed her own opinion of Lady Brent long since, and it did not entirely coincide with the opinion that her husband had formed, though she had not told him so. Lady Brent had been all that could have been expected towards themselves—kind and hospitable, and within limits friendly. She had offered no real intimacy, and after a year's intercourse it was plain that she had none to offer; but it was also plain that the intercourse need never be otherwise than smooth and even pleasant, if the limitations were observed. Mrs. Brent, on the other hand, had shown that she wanted intimacy. Mrs. Grant could not give any deep measure of friendship to one in whom there seemed to be no depths, but she could talk to Mrs. Brent about many things, about Harry and about her own children in particular, and find a response that made for friendship. She could talk, too, about the events of her own life, but was chary of doing so, because it would seem to be asking for confidences in return, and she was not sure that she wanted them. There was always in the background the feeling that Mrs. Brent and her mother-in-law were antagonistic, in spite of the apparent harmony between them; and of late that feeling had increased. Mrs. Brent was such that the gates of her lips once unlocked she would express her antagonism, and it would no longer be possible to treat it as if it did not exist. That time seemed to have come now.

"I hate that woman," said Mrs. Brent, "and I won't put up with it any longer."

There was the slightest little pause before Mrs. Grant replied. "Why do you hate her? I can understand your wanting to get away sometimes; but she always seems to me to treat you nicely; and of course she is extremely nice to us. I should be sorry to quarrel with her in any way."

"No doubt you would," said Mrs. Brent drily. "You'd get the rough side of her tongue pretty quick, and you wouldn't forget it in a hurry."

Mrs. Grant was a little shocked. This new plain-spoken Mrs. Brent was more of a personage than the carefully behaved lady always anxious to be making a good impression that she had hitherto appeared; but she seemed out of the Royd picture—and all the more so if Harry and not Lady Brent were regarded as its central figure. The suggestion of Lady Brent as a virago was also rather startling.

"Oh, I don't mean to say that she'd use bad language," said Mrs. Brent, in reply to some demur. "That's not her little way. I won't tell you what her little way is, but she's always the lady. I'm not, you see. That's what's the matter with me. I'm Lottie Lansdowne, who danced on the stage, and never allowed to forget it, though you can tell of yourself, since you've been here, that I've tried hard enough to play the game—for Harry's sake, I have—and been at it for the last seventeen years; and now I'm getting a bit sick of it."

She was in tears, and Mrs. Grant felt a strong emotion of pity towards her. She leant forward. "My dear," she said, "I think it's splendid the way you sink yourself for Harry's sake. You mustn't give up doing it, you know. It has paid—hasn't it?—to have him brought up here, out of the world, in the way that you and Lady Brent have done. He's the dearest boy. I consider that you have had more to do with the success of it than she has. He loves you more, for one thing; and if he sees you living here as if you belonged to it all——"

"Oh, I know," said Mrs. Brent, drying her eyes. "I made up my mind about that years ago, and I'm not going back on it. I suppose when he gets older and begins to see things for himself, he'll see that I don't really belong. I've got that before me, you know. She knows it too, and of course doesn't care. It'll suit her. She'll come out all right, but I shan't. The only thing is that he does love me, and he can't really love her. I don't see how anybody could. I'm glad you said that. I love you for saying it. I can talk to you, and I'm sure it's a relief to talk to somebody. There's Wilbraham, but he's as much up against her now as I am; we only make each other worse. You do think it's all right so far, don't you? With Harry, I mean. He couldn't be nicer than he is, if his mother had been born a lady. Of course I wasn't, whatever I may pretend. I haven't got in the way, have I? She can't bring that up against me."

"Oh, no! Oh, no! You mustn't think that. You're part of it all to him. I said that and I meant it."

She settled herself back more easily in her chair. "Well, I believe I am," she said. "I've tried to make myself. I love him dearly, and I'd do anything for his sake. It's been right to bring him up quietly here. She's been right there. I'll say that for her, though I hate her."

"You don't really hate her," said Mrs. Grant; "and I don't think you've any reason to. What she has done has been for Harry's sake too."

"It has been for the sake of the Brent family. Her son married beneath him—so she says—though I'd have made him a good wife, and though I loved him I knew he wasn't all he might have been. She's going to see that Harry doesn't run any risk of doing the same. Well, I'm with her there. I don't want Harry to be mixed up with what I come from. But there's nothing nasty about it. It's only that we weren't up in the world. Do you know I haven't so much as set eyes on my own people since Harry was born? Why shouldn't I? I'm flesh and blood. My father died since I came here, and mother's getting on. She was nearly fifty when I was married."

"Do you mean that Lady Brent——?"

"Oh, it was me too. I said that I'd give them up when I came here. The fact is that I wasn't best pleased with them at that time. I'd promised Harry—my husband, I mean; they're all called Harry—not to say I was married till he came home. Poor boy, he never did come home, but before that—well, they said things—at least, mother did—that made me furious. I kept my promise to him till I heard he'd been killed, poor boy. Then I let them have it. Perhaps I hadn't learnt quite so many manners then as I have since, though I was always considered refined by the other girls in the company. Anyhow, it ended in my saying I never wanted to see them again, and we never even wrote till poor father died. Still, I've forgiven them now, it's so long ago, and I cried when father died, and wrote to mother. I was very fond of father. He used to take me on his knee when I was little and read stories out of the Bible to me. He was a religious man, and didn't like my going on the stage. Sometimes I wish I'd never gone. Emily, my next oldest sister, went into millinery and did well. She married long ago and has a boy nearly as old as Harry, though of course he'd be very different. Mother said she had a nice house out Hendon way, when she wrote, and three little girls, as well as a boy. I dare say I should have been much happier like that, though I shouldn't have had Harry. But it couldn't do Harry any harm now if I just went up and saw them sometimes. I needn't even say I was going to see them or anything about them. Why shouldn't I go to London for a week, as other ladies do, to see their dressmaker or something? I think it's more London I want than mother, if you ask me. Oh, just to see the lights and the pavements, and the people jostling one another! I'm like famished for it."

She threw out her hands with a curious stagy gesture that was yet a natural one, and her nostrils seemed to dilate, as if she were actually sniffing the atmosphere she so much desired. "I'm going," she said. "I don't care what she says."

"I don't see why you shouldn't go," said Mrs. Grant. "But why should Lady Brent object? What can she say?"

Mrs. Brent leant forward. "Couldn't you ask her for me?" she said coaxingly. "Tell her you think I ought to have a change. I'm young, you know. At least I'm not old yet. It can't be right for me to be buried down here year after year. I shan't get into mischief. Just a week!"

Mrs. Grant felt intensely uncomfortable. Get into mischief! What did it all mean? Lady Brent must have some reason for keeping the frivolous pathetic little thing shut up like this? And yet she had seemed to disclose everything; she had dropped every trace of pretence, and had made her appeal for sympathy on the grounds of her very unsuitability to be where she was. If she no longer cared, before this friend, to keep up the fiction of having sprung from a superior station in life, which from such as she was a great concession to candour, how could she wish to keep anything back?

"You know I'm your friend," Mrs. Grant said. "I'd do anything I could to help you, but you see how it is with us here. We shall never be close friends with Lady Brent; I don't think she wants it. But she's kind and well-disposed towards us. I couldn't run the risk of setting her against us, unless I were quite certain that—I mean quite certain of my ground. It wouldn't be fair to my husband. It would make all the difference to us here if we were not on good terms with her. Have you told me everything? Why should she think you might get into mischief?"

She put this aside lightly. "Oh, there's nothing in that. It's only what she'd say. She'd say anything. But I see I ought not to ask you. No, it wouldn't be fair to bring you into it. She'd have it up against you; you're quite right. I tell you this, Mrs. Grant; when Harry comes of age—or before that, when he goes to Sandhurst—I'm off. No more of this for me. I shall snap my fingers at her. But of course you've got to stay here. No, I'll tackle her myself, and see if I can't get my own way for once."

She sprang up. "I'll go and do it now," she said. "No time like the present."

She laughed, and kissed Mrs. Grant. "Good-bye, dear," she said. "It does me good to talk to you; you're so understanding. And it does me good to have you here—you and your nice kind clever husband and your sweet children. Ah, if I'd had a bit of real family life with my poor boy!—it might have been here or anywhere; I shouldn't have cared where it was—it would all have been very different. Now I'll go and tackle the old dragon while I'm fresh for it. Good-bye, dear; I'll go out through the garden."

She went out by the window, and stopped to look at the sleeping baby as she crossed the lawn, smiling and making a little motion of the hand towards Mrs. Grant as she did so. Then she disappeared behind the shrubbery.

Mrs. Grant laid down her work and went to refresh herself with a look at the baby. As she turned back, her husband came out of his room, which was next to the drawing-room and also opened on to the garden.

His face was serious. "I didn't know you had Mrs. Brent with you," he said. "I've had Wilbraham. They're all at loggerheads up at the Castle, Ethel. I don't quite know what to do about it. I don't want to get up against Lady Brent; but——"

She told him of Mrs. Brent's prospective revolt. "She asked me to talk to her," she said. "But I said the same as you do. We don't want to get up against her. What is the trouble with Mr. Wilbraham?"

"Much the same as with Mrs. Brent apparently. He's fed up with it too. He wants to get away."

"What, for always?"

"Oh, no. He's too fond of Harry for that. Besides, he's very comfortable here—has everything he wants. I told him that, and he didn't deny it. But he seems to have developed a furious hatred of Lady Brent. I really can't tell you why. He couldn't tell me, when I pressed him. He's morose and gloomy. He says he must get away from her for a time, or he'll go off his head."

"But surely he can take a holiday sometimes if he wants to!"

"It almost looks as if she wouldn't let him go off by himself. He asked me to go with him, for a month. He offered to pay all expenses and go where I liked. In the old days I might have been tempted—if you'd thought it would be a good thing to do. But I don't want to go away from here just now—at this lovely time of year, with the work and everything going so well. Of course I could write, but—— Anyhow I don't know who I should get to do my duty. If I thought it would really put things right! What do you think? Ought I to do it?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't understand what's going on. It looks to me as if there must be something behind it all that we don't know of."

He laughed at her and pinched her chin. "You take the novelist's point of view," he said. "I don't, which is perhaps rather odd. They're all on each other's nerves. Why don't he and Mrs. Brent go off together?" He laughed again. "He didn't really press it," he said. "He wanted me to go this week. I couldn't do that, anyhow, and when I said so he seemed to drop the idea. He had wanted me to suggest it to Lady Brent just as Mrs. Brent wanted you. They're a queer couple."

"I suppose it's only to be expected that it should be like that sometimes," she said thoughtfully. "I think I could talk to Lady Brent, if she'd only give me the chance."

"I don't think she will, and it wouldn't do to begin it."

"Oh no, I shouldn't do that. But there's Harry. It all comes back to him, you see. If she's mistaken in what she's doing, it's for his sake she's doing it. She might give me an opening there."

"I don't think so. It all passes over Harry's head. It's rather remarkable how normal he is. One might not have expected it under such circumstances. Well, I must get back, dear. Wilbraham has taken a big slice out of my morning. I'm sorry for him and wish I could help him. But I don't see how I can, except by continuing my friendship. I was rather flattered that he should have come and talked to me. He professes to think very little of my knowledge of human nature, you know. But most of that's a pose, and I like him. He went off to tackle Lady Brent himself. Mrs. Brent too, you say. She'll have a happy day of it, I should think."

At this moment the peaceful seclusion of the scene was destroyed by the incursion of Jane and Pobbles, who, released from their studies, came tumultuously round the corner of the house, Jane leading. They woke up the baby, or, as her time for waking up was past, perhaps they only completed the process, and they escaped rebuke for it. Their cry was for Harry. Where was Harry? He had promised to come not a moment later than twelve o'clock, and it was already two minutes past.

Jane was a straight, somewhat leggy child, with the promise of beauty when the time should come for her to accept her dower of femininity. At present she was more like a boy than a girl, except for her long thick plait of fair hair, which she would have given almost anything to be allowed to sacrifice in the interests of freedom. She was aboundingly full of life and the most amazing physical energy. She affected an extreme virility of speech, and exercised a severe discipline over Pobbles, who occasionally raged against it as an offence to his manhood, but as a rule accepted the yoke and prospered under it. He was a handsome child, strong and vigorous too, but without his sister's determined initiative. They were a pair to be proud of, and their parents were proud of them, but found them a handful. Miss Minster could manage them by the exercise of a good-humoured authority which never allowed itself to be rattled. But it was only Harry whose lightest word they obeyed without question. He was their hero and their most adored playmate. Perhaps Jane showed more femininity in submitting to his direction than was apparent in her attitude towards him, in which there was none to be seen.

Harry came into the garden as they were clamouring their questions, with his retriever wagging its tail at his heels. He was seventeen now, grown almost to his full height, but his face was still that of a boy. There was a radiant look of health and happiness in it. He was extraordinarily good to look at, not only because of his beauty, of form and feature and colouring, which was undeniable, but because of this sort of inward light, which suffused it with a sense of perfection that went right through him. Mrs. Grant caught her breath as she looked at him. She saw him as some wonderful work of God, without flaw, untroubled in his happiness. Whatever disturbances there might be among the figures of coarser clay by whom he was surrounded, there must be some breath of finer spirit in each and all of them, since he stood on the threshold of manhood as he was, here before her eyes.

The matter in hand was the building of a log cabin in a bit of forest that reached down from the wooded hill behind the Vicarage garden. Harry and the children had been working at it for a month or more, and it was to be a very perfect specimen of a log cabin.

"Why haven't you brought the saw?" said Jane, turning upon Pobbles. "Go and fetch it."

"It's your turn," said Pobbles. "Can't always be fetching things for you."

"Be quick," said Jane. "We're wasting time. Come on, Harry, we'll start. He can run after us."

"Don't know where to find the saw," said Pobbles, untruthfully.

"Jane will go and help you," said Harry. "Hurry up, both of you."

Jane put her long legs in rapid motion without a word, Pobbles pounding along after her on his shorter ones. Harry laughed. "That's the way to talk to them," he said.

Jane returned bearing the saw, Pobbles following. They set off immediately for the wood, and the voices of all three of them were heard for a long time in animated conversation through the hot drowsy air.