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By the middle of the nineteenth century the fading of the actual deed signed by Colin Stanier had scarcely kept pace with the fading of the faith in it: this had become the mildest of effete superstitions. About that epoch, also, the continuity of Stanier tradition was broken, for there was born in the direct line not only two sons but a daughter, Hester, who, a couple of centuries ago, would probably have been regarded as a changeling, and met an early fate as such. She was as lovely as the dawn, and had to the full, with every feminine grace added, a double portion of the Stanier charm, but in her disposition no faintest trace of traditional inheritance could be found; instead of their inhuman arrogance, their icy self-sufficiency, she was endowed with a gaiety and a rollicking gutter-snipe enjoyment of existence, which laughed to scorn the dignity of birth.

Being of the inferior sex, her father decreed that she should be brought up in the image of the tradition which ground so small the women who had married into the family; she must become, like her own mother, aloof and calm and infinitely conscious of her position. But neither precept nor example had the smallest effect on her: for dignity, she had boisterousness; for calm, buoyant, irrepressible spirits; and for self-control, a marked tendency to allure and kindle the susceptibilities of the other sex, were he peer or ploughboy.

Alone, too, of her race, she had no spark of that passionate affection for her home that was one of the most salient characteristics of the others.

She gave an instance of this defect when, at the age of fifteen, she ran away from Stanier half-way through August, while the family were in residence after the season in London, being unable to stand the thought of that deadly and awful stateliness which would last without break till January, when the assembling of the Houses of Parliament would take them all back to the metropolis which she loved with extraordinary fervour. Part of the way she went in a train, part of the way she rode, and eventually arrived back at the huge house in St. James’s Square, now empty and sheeted, and persuaded the caretaker, who had been her nurse and adored her with unique devotion, to take her in and send no news to Stanier of her arrival.

“Darling Cooper,” she said, with her arms round the old woman’s neck and her delicious face bestowing kisses on her, “unless you promise to say nothing about my coming here, I shall leave the house and get really lost. They say a healthy girl can always get a living.”

“Eh, my dear,” said Cooper, much shocked, “what are you saying?”

Hester’s look of seraphic ignorance that she had said anything unusual reassured Cooper.

“What am I saying?” asked Hester. “I’m just saying what I shall do. I shall buy a monkey and a barrel-organ and dress like a gipsy and tell fortunes. But I won’t go back to that awful Stanier.”

“But it’s your papa’s house,” said Cooper. “Young ladies have to live with their families till they are married.”

“This one won’t,” said Hester. “And I believe it’s true, Cooper, that we own it through the power of the devil. It’s a dreadful place: there’s a blight on it. Grandmamma was turned to stone there, and mamma has been turned to stone, and they’re trying to turn me to stone.”

Poor Cooper was in a fair quandary; she knew that Hester was perfectly capable of rushing out of the house unless she gave her the desired promise, and then with what face would she encounter Lord Yardley, how stammer forth the miserable confession that Hester had been here? Not less impossible to contemplate was the housing of this entrancing imp, and keeping to herself the secret of Hester’s whereabouts. Even more impossible was the third count of giving Hester the promise, and then breaking it by sending a clandestine communication to her mother, for that would imply the loss of Hester’s trust in her, and she could not face the idea of those eyes turned reproachfully on her as on some treacherous foe.

She hesitated, and the artful Hester noted her advantage.

“Darling Cooper, you wouldn’t like me to be turned to stone,” she said. “I know I should make a lovely statue, but it’s better to be alive.”

“Eh, my dear, be a good girl and go back to Stanier,” pleaded Cooper. “Think of your mamma and the anxiety she’s in about you.”

Hester made “a face.” “It’s silly to say that,” she said. “Mamma anxious, indeed! Mamma couldn’t be anxious: she’s dead inside.”

Cooper felt she could not argue the point with any conviction, for she was entirely of Hester’s opinion.

“And I’ve had no tea, Cooper,” said the girl, “and I am so hungry.”

“Bless the child, but I’ll get you your tea,” said Cooper. “And then you’ll be a good girl and let me send off a telegram....”

What Hester’s future plans really were she had not yet determined to herself; she was still acting under the original impulse which had made her run away. Come what might, she had found the idea of Stanier utterly impossible that morning; the only thing that mattered was to get away.

But as Cooper bustled about with the preparations of the tea, she began to consider what she really expected. She was quite undismayed at what she had done, and was on that score willing to confront any stone faces that might be-Gorgon her, but her imagination could not picture what she was going to do. Would she live here perdue for the next six months till the family of stone brought their Pharaoh-presence into London again? She could not imagine that. Was it to come, then, to the threatened barrel-organ and the monkey and the telling of fortunes? Glib and ready as had been her speech on that subject, it lacked reality when seriously contemplated in the mirror of the future.

But if she was not proposing to live here with Cooper, or to run away definitely—a prospect for which, at the age of fifteen, she felt herself, now that it grimly stared her in the face, wholly unripe—there was nothing to be done, but to-day or to-morrow, or on one of the conceivable to-morrows, to go back again. And yet her whole nature revolted against that.

She was sitting in the window-seat of the big hall as this dismal debate went on in her head, but all the parties to that conference were agreed on one thing—namely, that Cooper should not telegraph to her mother, and that, come what might, Cooper should not be imagined to be an accomplice. Just then she heard a step on the threshold outside, and simultaneously the welcome jingle of a tea-tray from the opposite direction. Hester tiptoed towards the latter of these sounds, and found Cooper laden with good things on a tray advancing up the corridor.

“Go back to your room, Cooper,” she whispered; “there is some one at the door. I will see who it is.”

“Eh, now, let me open the door,” said Cooper, visibly apprehensive.

“No! Go away!” whispered Hester, and remained there during imperative peals of the bell till Cooper had vanished.

She tried, by peeping sideways out of the hall window, to arrive at the identity of this impatient visitor, but could see nothing of him. Then, with cold courage, she went to the front-door and opened it. She expected something bad—her mother, perhaps, or her brothers’ tutor, or the groom of the chambers—but she had conjectured nothing so bad as this, for on the doorstep stood her father.

That formidable figure was not often encountered by her. In London she practically never saw him at all; in the country she saw him but once a day, when, with the rest of the family, she waited in the drawing-room before dinner for his entrance with her mother. Then they all stood up, and paired off to go in to dinner. In some remote manner Hester felt that she had no existence for him, but that he, at close quarters, had a terrible existence for her. Generally, he took no notice whatever of her, but to-day she realised that she existed for him in so lively a manner that he had come up from Stanier to get into touch with her. Such courage as she had completely oozed out of her: she had become just a stone out of the family quarry.

“So you’re here,” he said, shutting the door behind him.

“Yes,” said Hester.

“And do you realise what you’ve done?” he asked.

“I’ve run away,” said she.

“I don’t mean that,” said he; “that’s soon remedied. But you’ve made me spend half the day travelling in order to find you. Now you’re going to suffer for it. Stand up here in front of me.”

As he spoke he drew off his fine white gloves and put the big sapphire ring that he wore into his pocket. At that Hester guessed his purpose.

“I shan’t,” she said.

He gave her so ill-omened and ugly a glance that her heart quailed. “You will do as I tell you,” he said.

Hester felt her pulses beating small and quick. Fear perhaps accounted for that, but more dominant than fear in her mind was the sense of her hatred of her father. He was like a devil, one of those contorted waterspouts on the church at home. She found herself obeying him.

“Now I am going to punish you,” he said, “for being such a nuisance to me. By ill-luck you are my daughter, and as you don’t know how a daughter of mine ought to behave, I am going to show you what happens when she behaves as you have done. Your mother has often told me that you are a wilful and vulgar child, disobedient to your governesses, and, in a word, common. But now you have forced your commonness upon my notice, and I’m going to make you sorry for having done so. Hold your head up.”

He drew back his arm, and with his open hand smacked her across her cheek; with his left hand he planted a similar and stinging blow. Four times those white thin fingers of his blazoned themselves on her face, and then he paused.

“Well, why don’t you cry?” he said.

“Because I don’t choose to,” said Hester.

“Put your head up again,” said he.

She stood there firm as a rock for half a dozen more of those bitter blows, and then into his black heart there came a conviction, bitterer than any punishment he had inflicted on her, that he was beaten. In sheer rage at this he took her by her shoulders and shook her violently. And then came the end, for she simply collapsed on the floor, still untamed. Her bodily force might fail, but she flew no flag of surrender.

She came to herself again with the sense of Cooper near her. She turned weary eyes this way and that, but saw nothing of her father.

“Oh, Cooper, has that devil gone?” she asked.

“Eh, my lady,” said Cooper, “who are you talking of? There’s no one here but his lordship.”

Hester raised herself on her elbow and saw that awful figure standing by the great chimneypiece. The first thought that came into her mind was for Cooper.

“I wish to tell you that ever since I entered the house Cooper has been saying that she must telegraph to you that I was here,” she said.

He nodded. “That’s all right then, Cooper,” he said.

Hester watched her father take the sapphire ring from his waistcoat pocket. He put this on, and then his gloves.

“Her ladyship will stay here to-night, Cooper,” he said. “And you will take her to the station to-morrow morning and bring her down to Stanier.”

He did not so much as glance at Hester, and next moment the front door had closed behind him.

Hester arrived back at Stanier next day after this abortive expedition, and it was clear at once that orders had been issued that no word was to be said to her on the subject of what she had done. She had mid-day dinner with her governess, rode afterwards with her brothers, and as usual stood up when her father entered the drawing-room in the evening. The awful life had closed like a trap upon her again, rather more tightly than before, for she was subject to a closer supervision.

But though the apparent victory was with her father, she knew (and was somehow aware that he knew it, too) that her spirit had not yielded one inch to him, and that he, for all his grim autocracy, was conscious, as regards her, of imperfect mastery. If he had broken her will, so she acutely argued, she would not now have been watched; her doings would not, as they certainly were, have been reported to him by the governess. That was meat and drink to her. But from being a mere grim presence in the background he had leaped into reality, and with the whole force of her nature, she hated him.

The substance of the Stanier legend, faint though the faith in it had become, was, of course, well known to her, and every morning, looking like some young sexless angel newly come to earth, she added to her very tepid prayers the fervent and heartfelt petition that the devil would not long delay in exacting his part of the bargain.

Two years passed, and Hester became aware that there were schemes on foot for marrying her off with the utmost possible speed. The idea of marriage in the abstract was wholly to her mind, since then she would be quit of the terrible life at Stanier, but in the concrete she was not so content with her selected deliverer. This was the mild and highborn Marquis of Blakeney, a man precisely twice her age, of plain, serious mind and irreproachable morals. He adored her in a rapt and tongue-tied manner, and no doubt Hester had encouraged him with those little smiles and glances which she found it impossible not to bestow on any male denizen of this earth, without any distinct ulterior views. But when it became evident, by his own express declaration made with the permission of her father, that he entertained such views, Hester wondered whether it would be really possible to kiss that seal-like whiskered face with any semblance of wifely enthusiasm.

Had there been any indication that her pious petition with regard to the speedy ratification of the Stanier legend as regards her father would be granted, she would probably have recommended the mild Marquis to take his vows to other shrines, but her father seemed to be suffering no inconvenience from her prayers, and she accepted the rapt and tongue-tied devotion. Instantly all the bonds of discipline and suppression were relaxed; even in her father’s eyes her engagement made her something of a personage, and Hester hated him more than ever.

And then the vengeance of winged, vindictive love, more imperious than her father, overtook and punished her, breaking her spirit, which he had never done. At a dance given at Blakeney Castle to celebrate the engagement, she saw young Ralph Brayton, penniless and debonair, with no seal-face and no marquisate, and the glance of each pierced through the heart of the other. He was the son of the family solicitor of Lord Blakeney, and even while his father was drawing out the schedule of munificent settlements for the bride-to-be, the bride gave him something more munificent yet, and settled it, her heart, upon him for all perpetuity.

She did her best to disown, if not to stifle, what had come upon her, and had her marriage but been fixed for a month earlier than the day appointed, she would probably have married her affianced bridegroom, and let love hang itself in its own silken noose and chance its being quite strangled. As it was, even while her room at Stanier was silky and shimmering with the appurtenances of a bride, she slipped out one night as the moon set, and joined her lover at the park gates. By dawn they had come to London, and before evening she was safe in the holding of her husband’s arms.

On the news reaching Lord Yardley he had a stroke from which he did not recover for many years, though he soon regained sufficient power of babbling speech to make it abundantly clear that he would never see Hester again. As she was equally determined never to see him, their wills were in complete harmony. That brutal punishment she had received from those thin white hands two years before, followed by the bondage of her life at home, had rendered her perfectly callous as regards him. Had he been sorry for it, she might have shrugged her pretty shoulders and forgotten it; for that cold pale slab of womanhood, her mother, she felt nothing whatever.

This outrageous marriage of Hester’s, followed by her father’s stroke, were contrary to all tradition as regards the legend, for these calamities, indeed, looked as if one of the high contracting parties was not fulfilling his share of the bargain, and the behaviour of Philip, Lord Stanier, the stricken man’s eldest son, added weight to the presumption that the luck of the Staniers (to put it at that) was on the wane—fading, fading like the ink of the original bond. Instead of marrying at the age of twenty or twenty-one, as his father and forefathers had done, he remained obstinately celibate and ludicrously decorous. In appearance he was dark, heavy of feature, jowled even in his youth by a fleshiness of neck, and built on massive lines in place of the slenderness of his race, though somehow, in spite of these aberrations from the type, he yet presented an example, or, rather, a parody, of the type. But when you came to mind, and that which lies behind body and mind alike, that impenetrable essence of individuality, then the professors in heredity would indeed have held up bewildered hands of surrender. He was studious and hesitating, his mental processes went with a tread as deliberate as his foot, and in place of that swift eagerness of the Stanier mind, which, so to speak, threw a lasso over the mental quarry with one swing of a lithe arm, and entangled it, poor Philip crept on hands and knees towards it and advanced ever so imperceptibly nearer. In the matter of mode of life the difference between him and the type was most marked of all. Hitherto the eldest son had married early and wisely for the sole object of the perpetuation of the breed, and having arrived at that, pursued the ways of youth in copious indiscretions which his wife, already tamed and paralysed, had no will to resent. Philip, on the other hand, living in the gloom of the house beneath the stroke and the shadow that had fallen on his father, seemed to have missed his youth altogether. Life held for him no bubbling draught that frothed on his lips and was forgotten; he abstained from all the fruits of vigour and exuberance. One family characteristic alone was his—the passionate love of his home, so that he preferred even in these conditions to live here than find freedom elsewhere. There he dreamed and studied, and neither love nor passion nor intrigue came near him. He cared little for his mother; his father he hated and feared. And yet some germ of romance, perhaps, lay dormant but potential in his soul, for more and more he read of Italy, and of the swift flowering of love in the South....

It seemed as if the hellish bargain made three hundred years ago had indeed become obsolete, for the weeks and months added themselves together into a swiftly mounting total of years, while a nightmare of eclipsed existence brooded over the great house at Stanier. Since the stroke that had fallen on him after Hester’s runaway match, Lord Yardley would have no guests in the house, and with the constancy of the original Colin, would never leave the place himself. Grinning and snarling in his bath-chair, he would be drawn up and down its long galleries by the hour together, with his battered and petrified spouse walking by his side, at first unable to speak with any coherence, but as the years went on attaining to a grim ejaculatory utterance that left no doubt as to his meaning.

Sometimes it was his whim to enter the library, and if Philip was there he would give vent to dreadful and stuttering observations as he clenched and unclenched the nerveless hands that seemed starving to throttle his son’s throat. Then, tired with this outpouring of emotion, he would doze in his chair, and wake from his doze into a paroxysm of tremulous speechlessness. At dinner-time he would have the riband of the Garter pinned across his knitted coat and be wheeled, with his wife walking whitely by his side, into the gallery, where the unmarried Philip, and his newly-married brother and his wife, stood up at his entrance, and without recognition he would pass, jibbering, at the head of that small and dismal procession, into the dining-room.

He grew ever thinner and more wasted in body, but such was some consuming fire within him that he needed the sustenance of some growing and gigantic youth. He was unable to feed himself, and his attendant standing by him put into that open chasm of a mouth, still lined with milk-white teeth, his monstrous portions. A couple of bites was sufficient to prepare for the gulp, and again his mouth was ready to receive.

Then, when the solid entertainment was over, and the women gone, there remained the business of wine, and, sound trencherman though he was, his capacity over this was even more remarkable. He took his port by the tumblerful, the first of which he would drink like one thirsty for water, and this in some awful manner momentarily restored his powers of speech. Like the first drops before a storm, single words began dripping from his lips, as this restoration of speech took place, his eye, brightening with malevolence, fixed itself on Philip, and night after night he would gather force for the same lunatic tirade.

“You sitting there,” he would say, “you, Philip, you aren’t a Stanier! Why don’t you get a bitch to your kennel, and rear a mongrel or two? You heavy-faced lout, you can’t breed, you can’t drink, you can do nought but grow blear-eyed over a pack of printed rubbish. There was Hester: she married some sort of sweeper, and barren she is at that. I take blame to myself there: if only I had smacked her face a dozen times instead of once, I’d have tamed her: she would have come to heel. And the third of you, Ronald there, with your soapy-faced slut of a wife, you’d be more in your place behind a draper’s counter than here at Stanier. And they tell me that there’s no news yet that you’re going to give an heir to the place. Heir, good God....”

Ronald had less patience than his brother. He would have drunk pretty stiffly by now, and he would bang the table and make the glasses jingle.

“Now you keep a civil tongue in your head, father,” he said, “and I’ll do the same for you. A pretty figure you cut with your Garter and your costermonger talk. It’s your own nest you’re fouling, and you’ve fouled it well. There was never yet a Stanier till you who took to a bath-chair and a bib and a man to feed him when he couldn’t find the way to his own mouth.”

“Here, steady, Ronald!” Philip would say.

“I’m steadier than that palsy-stricken jelly there,” said Ronald. “If he leaves me alone I leave him alone: it isn’t I who begin. But if you or he think I’m going to sit here and listen to his gutter-talk, you’re in error.”

He left his seat with a final reversal of the decanter and banged out of the room.

Then, as likely as not, the old man would begin to whimper. Though, apparently, he did all he could to make residence at Stanier impossible for his sons, he seemed above all to fear that he would succeed in doing so.

“Your brother gets so easily angered with me,” he would say. “I’m sure I said nothing to him that a loving father shouldn’t. Go after him, Phil, and ask him to come back and drink a friendly glass with his poor father.”

“I think you had better let him be, sir,” said Philip. “He didn’t relish what you said of his wife and his childlessness.”