Читать книгу The Garden of Memories - Henry St. John Cooper - Страница 3

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PROLOGUE

From the house a broad white stone path runs to the very heart of the garden and there opens out into a wide circle in the middle of which is set a sundial, and here too are placed some great benches of the same white stone; where, when the heat of the sun is not too great, it is pleasant enough to sit and watch the glory of the flowers.

They are wealthy folk, the Elmacotts, and they love their garden and pride themselves on it and hold that in all Sussex no soil can produce finer flowers and sweeter fruit, and though in this year of grace seventeen hundred and three the house, which is the Manor House of the Parish of Homewood, has no great antiquity, being scarce more than sixty years old, it has about it that completeness, those niceties of detail, the neatness and the order and the well being that are found only in the home which is ruled by a house-proud mistress.

And Madame Elmacott is proud of her house, proud of her garden, proud of the flowers that grow in it and above all proud of her stalwart sons, Master Nat and Master Dick, who are at this time with his Grace of Marlborough in Flanders, fighting their country's battles.

To-day the sun shines on the garden and the flowers stir gently, swaying in the light breeze that also lifts the white dimity at the open windows of the house, whence comes the sweet tinkling of a spinet, the keys of which are touched by the skilled white fingers of Mistress Phyllis Elmacott.

The tall hollyhocks that cast wavering blue shadows on the white stone pathway nod to one another in the breeze, nod, it seems, knowingly, for from the pathway one may see into the pleasant room where the spinet and its fair player are and seeing these may also see the handsome figure of the Captain, who leans upon the spinet, the better to see into those bright eyes that have brought him home to England and Sussex from across the seas, though at this time in the service of his Grace the Captain General there is much to be done and much to be won.

He has but waited to see and share in the victory of Donauwort and then has come hastening home on the wings of love and with the merry peal of marriage bells a-ringing in his ears.

But it is not of these, not of the dashing Captain in his red coat and fair-haired Mistress Elmacott, who thinks him the most perfect and wonderful, as well as the bravest and handsomest of all created beings. It is of the garden and of a lad who sits on the grassy bank at the edge of the lake and watches with eyes, that yet seem scarcely to see, the slim white figure of a maiden wrought of stone. She stands up from the green waters, in the center of the lake and on her sun-kissed shoulder she holds a pitcher, from which the glittering water is flung aloft into, the air to fall with a pleasant tinkling, back into the green pool beneath.

And so silent, so motionless does he sit here, that the swallows that now and again skim the water, the dragon flies in all the glory of their green and crimson, and blue sheen that dart hither and thither take no heed of him, no more heed than if he too were of senseless stone.

In all the colour, in all the glory of the garden, he is the sombre, the one sombre note. His clothes are drab, his shoes are stout and thick and ungainly and clasped with great brass buckles. His hands are the hands of a man who toils for his living, rough and hardened by spade and hoe and rake and scythe, and stained by the good earth of the garden. His eyes that stare so unceasingly on that white stone figure are blue, his face is lean and tanned, his neck too is tanned deeply to the very shoulders where the coarse shirt falls open.

Straight and strong and courageous he is. Has he not listened with bated breath and with quick beating heart to the brave stories told in the bar parlour of the "Fighting Cocks" in Stretton. Cross? Has he not watched the Serjeant who has told these thrilling tales, of every one of which, who should be the hero but the Serjeant himself, in his fine red coat and his crossed belts and his tall hat, that makes him, fine man that he is, seem almost a giant?

He has done well here in Stretton and Homewood and at Bush Corner and in all those other quiet places, has the Serjeant. There are at least a score of fine young Sussex lads, even at this very moment on their way to Harwich, en route for Flanders and glory, who have been wheedled from field and wood and garden and alehouse and stable by the Serjeant's persuasive tongue, his jolly laugh and his generous hand.

And Allan Pringle, sitting here by the green pool, clasping his strong brown chin with his hands, knows that he too would have been of that score, but for one reason—one reason that now, alas, is no more!

It is the first grief he has ever known and it is a bitter one, for what more bitter sorrow can youth feel than for wasted hopes, for broken faith, for misplaced love?

Only Betty and his love for her, only the happiness that she had promised should one day be his, had deafened him to the persuasive eloquence of the Serjeant.

But it is not too late now, others will hearken to the Serjeant and set off for Harwich and he will be among the next. Yes, he will be among the next to go, and pray God that he may never return!

He does not hear a light step on the long stone pathway, for it is scarce heavier than a bird might make. From the house a little maid comes hurrying. Now she stands hesitatingly and looks about her, her finger on her lips, as one a little fearful, a little anxious. Again and yet again, she pauses, as she looks about her, then comes to where beyond the great hedge of clipped yew trees the green waters of the pool reflect the golden, sunshine.

And now she sees him and stands watching, a tender smile on her lips. A dainty slip of a maiden is she, with hair that gleams gold under her cap, the soft rounded arms are bare to the dimpled elbows, save for the thin black lace mittens, through which her white skin shines.

Though he, the silent, solitary figure sitting beside the pool is but ten paces from her, yet she hesitates, half a score of times, making a timorous step and then pausing before the next, her blue eyes filled, now with mischief and love and now clouded by some fear. And then suddenly she makes a brave little run to him and drops lightly on her knees behind him and lifts her hands and clasps them over his eyes.

"And you—you would leave your Betty? Oh, Allan, you would leave your Betty who loves you and go away to the cruel wars?" she sobs.

He has taken her hands, has taken them strongly in his hold and holding them yet, he turns to her. "Why did you come, why did you come to me, Betty?"

"Because," and the blue eyes are lifted to his filled with an innocence and candour that even he, jealous and despairing though he is, cannot but recognise, "because I do love thee so and cannot let thee go!"

"And why, loving me, Betty, do you suffer the kisses of such a man as Timothy Burnand, a rascally tinker and a thieving poacher, a man whose hand I would not have touch thee, Betty?"

Into her face there flames a great flush, a look of anger, then it dies out and the laughter comes rippling to her lips and into her eyes come back the mischief and the love and a little pride too, for she realises that he is jealous of her, this man she loves and though jealousy be a sin, yet it is not without its sweetness, too, for say what the wiseacres may, jealously is oftentimes a proof of love.

"And you saw—" she cries, "Allan, you—saw—ugh!" She makes a little gesture, a little grimace. "Did you think that I invited, that I welcomed him? Did you think that I bore his kiss with patience? Go and seek him now and look for the red mark upon his face! He came on me unawares and then all suddenly—" she pauses. "Allan," she says pleadingly, "Allan, you will not go, you will not go, my dear, you will not go and leave me?" And sobbing she is in his arms. And so for Allan Pringle the sun shines out again and the flowers are blooming brightly and the little slim maiden of stone from the centre of the pool seems to throw the glittering water higher and yet higher into the air as though in joy that all is well between these two, who hold one another so tightly, who are mingling their tears and their laughter and their kisses, now that the cloud has passed.

* * * * *

There are no flowers in the garden now, for the garden of Homewood Manor and all the world beside lies under a pall of white, for the winter is here, the winter of seventeen hundred and five, which is remembered by all men as a winter of bitter cold, of great frosts and heavy snows.

In a tiny cottage that stands a bare quarter of a mile on the Stretton Road from the Homewood gates, a man is on his knees beside a bed.

And that bed holds all his world, all that the world can give him, all that makes life sweet, and his heart is black and bitter with suffering and despair and cries out against God that he, who was rich only in her and in her love, must lose her now, must spend the rest of his days solitary, and heartbroken.

His eyes are on the sweet white face, on those lips once so red and now so pale, but which even yet have a smile for him, a smile of wonderful tenderness and undying love. He takes no heed of the fretful cry that comes from the cradle, for there is no other in all his world now, but her, she who is so soon to leave him.

"Betty, my Betty, I cannot let thee go! Oh, remember, Betty, once when I would have left thee, you called me back and I came. I am calling, calling to you now, my life, my sweet, I cannot let you go! Stay with me, stay with me, for you are all my life and the world is black without you; stay with me!"

She would lift her thin little hand to caress, to touch his face, but the strength is not hers to do it.

"Allan, take me, hold me in your arms, hold me tightly, my dear, hold me tightly," she says.

And he puts his strong arms about her. God pity him, how light she is, how small, how fragile a thing this, that death is taking from him!

His very soul is in rebellion against fate, he is mad with the suffering, mad with his impotence. He can do nothing save watch her die, watch her fade out of his life; and it must be soon "A matter of hours," the doctor from Stretton had said and that was long ago and now, now it is but a matter of minutes.

"Allan, I wanted, always, to die like this, with your arms about me, your dear eyes the last of earth that I shall see—ah! Allan, it is now——"

"Betty, Betty, I am calling, calling to you, come back, beloved, come back!"

And then he knows that it is useless, she is leaving him, slipping away, no matter how tightly he may hold her. It is good-bye, their last good-bye and the sad word comes perhaps unconsciously to his lips.

And then, is it fancy? Is it some trick of his tortured brain? For as he watches, the dear lips move and it seems to him that the message they whisper to him with her dying breath is this: "It is not good-bye!"

He is holding her against his breast, he is kissing those lips that for the first time give not back kiss for kiss. He is calling to her from his aching, breaking heart, but she has passed beyond the sound of his voice, though the smile on her dead lips is still for him.

And those last words, were they real? Did they pass her lips with her dying breath, were they meant for him in pity and compassion and love?

"It is not good-bye!"

CHAPTER I

IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

A girl, a slip of a maid with sunny hair and wonderful blue eyes, stood beside a crumbling old rose-red brick wall. She looked up the long country road and she looked down it, there was no one, not a soul in sight. So she thrust the too of one small and broken boot into a crevice of the wall, made a little spring and caught at the top, then dragged herself up till she sat, flushed and triumphant, on the coping.

She was a village girl and her dress was of print, well washed, well mended, skimpy, too, for her slight figure, slender though it was, for it had been hers for three years, and a dress that is originally made for a maiden of fourteen is apt to be small when worn by a maid of seventeen.

It was a demure and a very sweet face, the eyes big and strangely dreamy, the white skin of her face and neck powdered lightly with tiny golden freckles, her hair a deep red gold.

And wonderful hair it was, wonderfully untidy, too, so rebellious that it spurned all hairpins and fretted and struggled agains ribbons and tapes.

So now, she sat on top of the old rose red wall and looked down on the other side and saw a green tangle of brambles and grass and other things that grew rankly and luxuriously in that deserted place.

It was easier to descend the wall than to climb it, for here was a friendly tree that held out an inviting branch. Sho seized it, with small brown hands and lightly swung herself to the ground and then drew a sigh of relief and pleasure.

It was forbidden ground! Were there not many notices that announced the fact that "Trespassers Would Be Prosecuted"? But she cared nothing for these, the notice that she dreaded most of all was "This Desirable Historical Family Mansion, with Seven Hundred and Fifty Acres of Land, to be Sold."

How she dreaded lest one day someone should come and see and covet this place and buy it and so shut her out forever from its delights and its pleasures. But that someone had not come yet.

So she made her way through the tangle of the growth, and came presently to a great garden, a wonderful garden once, but now a weed-grown place of desolation.

Always this garden attracted her; to-day it brought a soft, tender light into her eyes as she stood with clasped hands and looked at it! She could see the old broken stone-paved pathway that led through the heart of the garden. She knew where that stone pathway opened out into a great circle in the midst of which was set a sundial, a sundial of stone chipped and green and the gnomon of the dial rusted away so that never again should its shadow fall upon the dial and mark the passing of the brighter hours. And about this circle, she knew, were old stone seats, green now like the pedestal of the dial and through the crevices of the paving grew and flourished and blossomed foxglove and dandelion, hollyhock and groundsell.

It had been a very, very beautiful garden long years ago, when ladies had tapped up and down the stone pathway in their little red-heeled shoes. Ladies who wore wide flounced skirts and powdered hair and cunning little patches on their fair cheeks. The garden with its roses, with its stately hollyhocks, its cloves and sweet-williams, its rosemary and lavender and all the sweet things that grow in English gardens, must have been a very lovely and perfect place then. But to this little maid with the dreamy eyes, it was a very wonderful place now. There was no other place like it in all the world; she had come here by sunshine and by moonlight, for sometimes in the night the garden had seemed to call to her and she had risen from her bed under the thatched roof of her old grandmother's cottage and had come stealing here to watch it, all bathed in the silver light of the moon. Perhaps she loved it best by moonlight, for then strange dreams seemed to come to her, dreams that never came when the sun was shining.

It seemed as if some kindly gentle hand touched lightly on the chords of memory, and then—the weeds and the tall rank grass, the decay of the present, the rioting growth, all were gone and she saw the old garden as it had once been, and she saw folk, strangely dressed folk, whom never in her life could she have met. These came and went, men with strange affected antics and gestures, gestures she might have smiled at, yet never did, and sweet, gracious ladies who moved with stately dignity through the old garden.

But always there was one, a young man whose clothes were plain and lacking all the finery that made the others seem so grand. She knew him for a servant, for one who worked in the garden, for often she would see him stooping over some trim bed, or with keen scythe sweeping the short grass.

They were dreams, only dreams that the old garden seemed to bring to her, when she came when the world was sleeping. Dreams, and yet she seemed to be so curiously awake.

But she never spoke of the old garden to the others, or told of the things that she saw here. Yet they knew she came, her grandmother rated her, "One day, my maid, caught ee'll be," she said, "and then summoned very likely for trespassing!"

But the Law had no terrors for her, so she came whenever the garden seemed to be calling to her and the high rank grass brushed her thin cotton skirt and wetted the coarse stocking that clad her slim ankle.

For an hour she wandered about the garden, she stood by the sundial and watched the line of the path-way, sadly encroached on now by the weeds and the self-seeded flowers. A tall yew hedge, once clipped into fantastic shapes, but now reclaimed by Nature, shut out what had once been the rose garden, all weed grown now and the roses gone. And beyond the rose garden, the lake in which the great carp swam lazily and over which the birds skimmed! From the lake's centre rose a figure in stone, sadly battered and marred, the figure of a slim girl, a girl that might have been, herself, changed into stone.

She often came to look at this figure rising from the centre of the lake. It held a vase poised on its shoulder, once a fountain had been flung high into the air from this vase, but the fountain had been dead long ago. To-day a rook sat perched on one stone shoulder, but flew away when the living girl came down to the brink.

She had a feeling for this stone maiden, all so lonely in the midst of the desolation. She never came into the garden without coming to the edge of the lake and nodding her little head to the figure who never nodded back.

And so, for an hour she wandered about the garden. She picked none of the flowers that grew so freely here, for she would not dare take them back, mute tale tellers that they would be. So, empty handed as she came, she presently made her way back to the old wall and seeing that no one was in sight, gained the road and went on to the cottage in the village.

Her grandmother was leaning over the gate, an old woman with the face of a russet apple that has been kept till it has wrinkled and mellowed.

"So there you be, Betty Hanson, and seeing the way you hev come it be useless and idle it be, for me to ask you where hev you been tu!"

The girl did not answer.

"You've been in that garden again, spite o' all I du say. Betty Hanson, it hev got to cease, my maid, and cease it will now!"

"Why?" the girl said and there was a frightened look in her eyes.

"Why? for I hev been talking to Mr. Dalabey and he du tell me that there be several parties after the old house, and one rich American he very likely to buy it and if he du, then there be an end to all your philanderings in that there disgraceful old garden, my maid!"

"Buy it! Buy it!" She looked at her grandmother and in the blue eyes there was a look of actual fear. "'Ee don't mean as—as anyone be going to buy—buy it?" She whispered, "'ee be only saying it!"

"A rich American!" The old woman nodded her head, "and going to buy it, he be, and a dratted good job, too!" she added. "Look at your frock now, what a sight it be!"

But she did not look at her frock, her face had gone very pitifully white. She lifted her little brown hands and laid them against her breast and went into the cottage with tragedy and misery in her blue eyes.

"And a dratted good job, too," the old woman said again.

CHAPTER II

A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED

"My dear child, if I were to say that we had arrived at our last shilling, such a statement would not be quite true, for we had reached that unpleasant position some months ago, and I fear that it is on other people's shillings that we are existing at the present moment. Not only is our financial position unsatisfactory, to say the least of it, but, and forgive me for speaking of it, Kathleen, the years are passing and five years ago—well, dear one, you were five years younger than you are to-day!"

"Father, if you think that you can goad me——"

"I never goad, it would be too fatiguing! Besides, Kathleen, as my daughter and a Stanwys, you are not a fool—the Stanwys——"

"Oh, please do not tell me about the Stanwys, father," she said bitterly.

"Would you rather that I spoke about the Homewoods? There is the father, Sir Josiah——"

"Common and vulgar!" the girl said with a note of contempt in her voice.

"But the son—he at least is presentable, have we not agreed that the son is not so bad, and the position——"

"I know of the position; do you think I can forget it for even a moment?"

She rose and went to the window and stared out into the dull London Square.

She was twenty-eight. It is not a great age, yet at twenty-eight the first sweet freshness of youth is on the wane—a woman of twenty-eight realises that she is no longer a girl, her girlhood is behind her. Sometimes she is terribly conscious of it. It is a little tragedy to be eight and twenty, unmarried and unsought. Kathleen Stanwys at twenty-eight was unmarried, nor was she engaged. Society was a little puzzled by the fact, for she was unusually and exceedingly handsome. She had been a very lovely girl and she was now a radiantly beautiful woman.

Seven years ago she had outshone all rival beauties in the great world of Fashion, but she had made no bid for popularity. She shrank from anything of the nature of publicity and cheap advertisement; rarely if ever had her photograph appeared in the press. She wrapped herself in a mantle of reserve. Ever conscious of the poverty which she was never permitted to forget she had earned the reputation of being cold and haughty and proud. Admirers she had never lacked, but suitors had been few and shy! Young men, well provided with money, had a wholesome fear of Lord Gowerhurst, her father, for he was a very finished specimen of his type.

Smooth tongued, with a charming and plausible manner, cynical, handsome as all the Stanwys are and have been, an accomplished gambler, too accomplished, perhaps his enemies, and he had many, whispered. He was utterly selfish, utterly pitiless. He had never been known to spare a man or a woman either. Woe to him or to her who fell into his toils. With what fine courtesy, with what charm of manner would he relieve some luckless victim, of his last shilling! How sweetly and sympathetically he would speak of his victims' ill fortune, would suggest some future "revenge," and then pocket his winnings with a grace that could have brought but little comfort to the poor wretch whose possessions had passed out of his own into the keeping of this courtly, delightful, aristocratic gentleman.

So, young men well endowed with money, having a wholesome fear of His Lordship, avoided his Lordship's beautiful daughter, and young men without money were of course not to be considered for a moment.

Therefore, at twenty-eight, Kathleen, unappropriated, and a very beautiful woman, stood staring out of the window this fine May morning, into the dull London Square.

My Lord, slender, dressed with exquisite care, was of a tallness and slimness that permitted his tailor to do justice and honour to his craft. Few men could wear their clothes with such perfect grace as his Lordship. His tailor, long suffering man, groaned at the length of the unpaid bill, but realised that as a walking advertisement Lord Gowerhurst was an asset to his business not to be despised. So the lengthy bill grew longer and more formidable, but youngsters, fresh to town, admiring his Lordship's appearance prodigiously, made it their business to discover who was his Lordship's tailor and Mr. Darbey, of Dover Street, saw to it that Lord Gowerhurst never went shabby and possibly, cunning man, made those who could and would pay, contribute unconsciously to the upkeep of Lord Gowerhurst's external appearance.

He came of a handsome family, the women of which had been toasts in many reigns and through many generations. His forehead was broad and high, crowned by silver hair that curled crisply, his nose was of the type of the eagle's beak, his hands white, well kept, reminiscent of the eagle's claws, a moustache of jetty blackness in admirable contrast to his silvered hair, shaded and beneficently concealed a thin-lipped, hard and somewhat cruel mouth.

My Lord rolled a cigar between his delicate fingers. It was an excellent cigar; years ago Julius Dix and Company had acquired the habit of supplying Lord Gowerhurst with cigars on credit and bad habits are difficult to eradicate. But then his Lordship sent wealthy customers to the quiet but extremely expensive little shop near the Haymarket.

"Our position, Kathleen, is irksome," he said softly, "deucedly irksome. Now and again I have little windfalls, but alas—they grow fewer and farther between as time goes on—at the moment I haven't a bob, you, dear, have not a bob—" he paused and laughed softly. "It recalls the French exercise of my youth. I have not a bob, thou hast not a bob, he has not a bob—" he waved the cigar. "Anyhow, that is the position, and then some kindly breeze of Heaven wafts that stout, prosperous, opulent craft the "Sir Josiah Homewood" on to the horizon of our "sea of troubles," as Shakespeare so aptly puts it!"

He paused, he looked at the slender, upright, girlish back of his daughter.

"So," he went on, "this large, stout, prosperous and richly freighted cargo boat, the Sir Josiah Homewood, rises on the horizon of our eventful lives and——"

"Oh, please," the girl said with a note of impatience in her voice, "leave out all that; I wish to understand exactly—exactly what you propose——"

"Not what I propose, but what Homewood proposes. Really, I rather admire the fellow's presumption. As you know, he has a son, a lad not altogether displeasing, who fortunately but little resembles his father, a fact you may have noticed, Kathleen. Indeed, I might almost say the young fellow is not without his good points; he is prepossessing, a little shy and silent, in which he does not resemble his father. He is well educated, he has Eton and Oxford behind him. By the way, what a time he must have had at Eton, if his parentage ever leaked out, poor devil—however, there it is, the lad is at least presentable—but the father is——"

"Terrible!" the girl said with a shudder.

"Too true, yet it is not proposed you should marry the father. We need money. You, child, need money, and what is more, a prospect, a future. You have nothing and the outlook is not cheering."

"The outlook is hopeless; I have nothing in the world, our family was always hopelessly impoverished, still the little we once had——" Kathleen paused.

"Recriminations, my love, are useless!" his Lordship said.

"There was very little and now that little hath taken unto itself wings and has flown away——" He stroked his long drooping moustache with his slender hand. "So it behoves us to make our arrangements for the future. Sir Josiah and I have discussed everything."

"You mean myself, you have arranged the deeds of sale, I suppose, how much am I worth?"

"Your value is inestimable. Sir Josiah, worthy Baronet, more daring than I, puts it down in actual figures—" he paused. "I made a note of them. He advances me—" He took some papers from his pocket, "the sum of twelve thousand pounds—advances, mind you, Kathleen, a kindly loan, which I shall, no doubt, find useful——"

"That is your part of the payment," she said bitterly, "go on!"

"He buys a fine house, an estate, he settles it on his son; by the way the lad's name is Allan."

"I know," she said, "go on."

"He settles a fine estate on this Allan, with an income of eight thousand a year, not so bad, eh?"

"And this is all conditional——"

"On your marrying the said Allan Homewood. I think," he said, as he rose from his breakfast table, "I have on the whole not done so badly for you!"

"And yourself," she said; "not so badly!" She smiled bitterly, then shrugged her shapely shoulders. "Very well, I suppose it is only left for me to say thank you very much indeed!"

"Quite so. The alternative, dear child, is this"—his lordship waved his hand—"an elderly unmarried lady residing in, say, a Brighton Boarding House, her face bearing some evidence of a past but long since faded beauty, her title, if she is foolish enough to make use of it, subjecting her to some little annoyance, mingled with a certain amount of servile respect. Not a pretty picture, my love, but a very true one."

"And the alternative is to marry Mr. Allan Homewood?"

"A pleasant alternative, and its acceptance never for a moment in doubt, eh?"

"Never for a moment in doubt," she repeated.

"Then it only remains for me to say Heaven bless you, my child, and to send a wire of acceptance to Sir Josiah. No, on second thought, I'll telephone him from the Club." He paused for a moment to arrange his necktie before the glass over the mantel, then went to the door. At the door. he stood and looked at her for a moment, then went out, a satisfied smile on his thin aristocratic face.

The girl stood there by the window for a long time. She was thinking. She had much to think about. She was twenty-eight and a beautiful woman of twenty-eight has no doubt many memories.

Presently she sighed and turned away from the window. A fine place and eight thousand a year and more when Josiah Homewood was laid with his fathers. Well! things might be worse, and the lad himself, she liked him. He was younger than she was by four years, but what did that matter?

She had seen him once or twice, had liked him vaguely, there was little to dislike about him. He was not handsome, she was glad of that, she hated handsome men, nor was he plain. Again she was glad; she disliked anything that was ugly. He was also, despite his parentage, a gentleman. She liked him for that most of all.

"If he had been vulgar like his father, three times the money would not have been enough," she said to herself.

Still, there were memories, memories that rose up out of the past, the memory of a face, of eager, ardent, worshipping eyes, of a lame, halting speech, words disjointed and broken, eager, pleading, yet hopeless words. "I love you, oh! I love you; don't turn from me. I know I am not worthy, Kathleen, but I love you so!"

She laughed suddenly, she felt ashamed and annoyed to realise that there were tears on her lashes and on her cheeks.

"Folly!" she said aloud. "Folly, and it's all dead and gone ten, years ago, ten years—" she laughed, "a lifetime! He's married to someone else; if he's sensible, he will have married someone with money, for he had none, poor fellow!"

Meanwhile at the Club, where the better part of his day and practically the whole of his night was spent, Lord Gowerhurst had looked up a telephone number and was putting a call through.

"Homewood—yes, Sir Josiah Homewood, is he in? Yes, I do, Gowerhurst—Lord Gowerhurst—You'll put him through—then hurry!"

He waited and then came a voice. It was evidently the voice of a stout man in a state of anxiety.

"Yes, it's me, it's Homewood, my Lord——"

Lord Gowerhurst detected the anxiety, purposely he delayed, he told himself the man was anxious—naturally—"Let him be anxious, let him remain on tenter hooks for a time!" It would do him no harm.

"Is that Sir Josiah Homewood?"

"Yes, yes, Homewood, I'm speaking to Lord Gowerhurst, aren't I?"

"Yes—ah, Homewood, is that you? Well, about that little matter we were discussing yesterday—" his lordship drawled, "the proposition that you placed before me with such engaging frankness, I should not be surprised if you remember——"

"Yea, my Lord, I've not forgotten! Not me!" The voice came chokingly, uncertain, but above all things eager.

"I have discussed it with the person—most concerned!"

"And what does her ladyship——"

"My dear Homewood, no names on the telephone, no names I beg!"

"No, no, of course not, my mistake, my Lord. I wouldn't think of mentioning any names, not for a moment, my Lord. Still what does she—the person—the party, I mean, my Lord, what does she—er—her——"

"I quite understand the—as you say—party—is inclined to give very favourable consideration to the matter. In fact, I may say, my dear Homewood, that the matter is practically settled on the basis you suggested."

Sir Josiah Homewood in his luxurious City office, closed his eyes as in ecstasy! He clung to the telephone receiver and an expression of rapt and perfect contentment stole over his features.

"Then—then it's all right. I may regard it as all right, my—my—Lord—she, the party, I mean——"

"Agrees—" said Lord Gowerhurst shortly. "Briefly, yes she agrees—the matter is settled and now it only remains to complete the contract, you understand, eh?"

"I understand, ha, ha, very good, just so, the Contract, always dealing with contracts I am, but not many like this! Ha, ha, splendid—and now your Lordship and the other party, I mean the other contracting party, will dine at my house in Grosvenor Square to-night."

Gowerhurst frowned. "Oh, very well!" he said ungraciously.

"Half past seven at Grosvenor Square, your Lordship remembers the number?"

"At half past seven, then!" His Lordship said and hung up the receiver.

"And that," my Lord said, "is that! When my time comes, and I am in no hurry for it to come, especially just now, I shall be able to close my eyes on this world, knowing that I have done my duty to my only child, a truly comforting reflection—And now for a brandy with the merest suggestion of soda, and if possible a little game of billiards." And he went up the Club's handsome staircase.

None of the multitudinous clerks in the large and palatial offices of Sir Josiah Homewood, Son and Company, Limited, had ever seen the Managing Director in such a delightful temper, for sometimes his temper was not delightful. This morning he beamed on all and sundry. Young Alfred Cope, who supported a widowed Mother on an insignificant salary, had long been trying to muster up courage to ask for a rise. It seemed to him that this morning, this bright May morning, the opportunity had come, and so opportunity sent him, a shivering, trembling wretch, tapping nervously on the highly polished mahogany door of Sir Josiah's private office.

"Well?" Sir Josiah said. "Well, and what do you want?"

Alfred stumbled lamely into his pitiful story.

Sir Josiah frowned. "How much are you getting paid now?" he demanded.

"Forty-two. Forty-two shillings a week! Bless my heart and soul, princely, princely! Why, when I was a lad such a wage would have been considered handsome, sir, and here you come asking me for more—Why; bless me, let me tell you this, Cope—the City is bristling with clerks, bristling with 'em, you can't move for clerks, sir, and most of 'em out of work! I've only got to hold up my finger, sir, like this—" He thrust a broad, stumpy finger into the air, "and say 'Clerk!' and a hundred would rush at me. I'd be suffocated! Do you understand me, Cope? Simply crushed to death by the rush! If I put an advertisement in the papers, I'd have to hire a policeman to keep the Quee—the Queek—what d'ye call the thing from obstructing the traffic—Forty-two shillings, you ought to go down on your knees, sir, on your knees and thank Heaven that you are earning such a salary! Princely! That's what it is, princely!"

And so on, for ten long, fear laden, wretched minutes, at the end of which the hapless wretch slunk away, thanking God that he had not been dismissed or that his wretched two and forty shillings had not been reduced to thirty or less.

"Forty-two shillings—and wants more," Sir Josiah said to himself, "bless me, what are things coming to?" Then he banished the frown, he beamed all over his round red face.

"Lady Kathleen Homewood," he said to himself, "Lady Kathleen Homewood, my daughter-in-law! Lady Kathleen—ah ha!" He rubbed his hands. "That'll make Cutler sit up! The fellow gives himself airs because his daughter married a fellow who is Governor of some place no one in their senses ever heard of—His Excellency the Governor—Bless my heart! I'm sick to death of His Excellency! Now Cutler will turn green, eh? There's nothing like the real thing, the real old true blue-blooded British aristocracy—can't get over that, eh? No, no fear!"

Usually it takes but two to make a bargain; in this case it required four. Three of the four were agreed, himself first of all, now His Lordship, the Earl of Gowerhurst, and Lady Kathleen Stanwys, his daughter. There was but one other, but that one other was a good boy, a dutiful son; he would do exactly what his father wished.

"Thank God I don't look for opposition from him!" Sir Josiah thought. "Never trod a better lad than mine, bless him! He knows my heart's set on this, knows it he does, and he'll do it to please me! He's not like other young fellows with their fancy tricks. Besides that, the girl's a beauty, apart from her blood and breeding! If she is a little older than he, well, what of that? It's the blood, the birth that is, what tells every time and by George—by George, when I have grandchildren I'll be able to look at 'em and say to myself—'These grandchildren of mine are also the grandchildren of an Earl!' And that's something these days, eh? That's something!" So he fell to muttering and chuckling to himself, this highly pleased old gentleman, and presently he picked up a pen and all unconsciously scribbled many times on the blotting paper:

"Lady Kathleen Homewood, Lady Kathleen Homewood, my daughter-in-law, Lady Kath——"

"Eh, what's that?"

"I thought I'd remind you that it is past one, Sir Josiah, and you were to lunch with Mr. Cutler and Mr.——"

"Oh, bless my soul, yes, I'd clean forgotten—many thanks—Jarvis—quite right, sensible of you!"

Mr. Jarvis, the head clerk, bowed and would have retired.

"Oh, Jarvis, one moment, here, help me into my coat, there's a good feller! That young feller, young what's his name—Cope—Crope—eh?"

"Cope, sir, yes, sir!"

"What sort of a chap is he, good worker and all that?"

"A very attentive worker and a respectable young man!"

"Supports a widowed mother, I understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Bless me, well, well. I've been having a chat with him—where's my umbrella?—having a chat with him—a man can't support a widowed mother cheaply these days, eh, Jarvis?"

"Very expensive days, sir!"

"Quite so, expensive hobby, too, supporting widowed mothers. Raise his salary to—say Three pound ten, Jarvis, and report to me how he goes on! My hat, do you see my hat? Oh, thanks, I'll be back at two-thirty, Jarvis——"

And Sir Josiah went out.