There was an anguish in the stifled voice which made sympathy impertinent. Alcott asked some practical questions, and Buntingford repeated his wife's report of the boy's condition, and her account of an injury at birth, caused by the unskilful hands of an ignorant doctor.

"But I shall see him to-morrow. Ramsay and I go together. Perhaps, after all, something can be done. I shall also make the first arrangements for the divorce."

Alcott was silent a moment—hesitating in the dark.

"You will make those arrangements immediately?"

"Of course."

"If she dies? She may die."

"I would do nothing brutal—but—She came to make a bargain with me."

"Yes—but if she dies—might you not have been glad to say, 'I forgive'?"

The shy, clumsy man was shaken as he spoke, with the passion of his own faith. The darkness concealed it, as it concealed its effect on Buntingford. Buntingford made no direct reply, and presently they parted, Alcott engaging to send a messenger over to Beechmark early, with a report of the patient's condition, before Buntingford and Dr. Ramsay started for London. Buntingford walked on. And presently in the dim moonlight ahead he perceived Geoffrey French.

The young man approached him timidly, almost expecting to be denounced as an intruder. Instead, Buntingford put an arm through his, and leaned upon him, at first in a pathetic silence that Geoffrey did not dare to break. Then gradually the story was told again, as much of it as was necessary, as much as Philip could bear. Geoffrey made very little comment, till through the trees they began to see the lights of Beechmark.

Then Geoffrey said in an unsteady voice:

"Philip!—there is one person you must tell—perhaps first of all. You must tell Helena—yourself."

Buntingford stopped as though under a blow.

"Of course, I shall tell Helena—but why?—"

His voice spoke bewilderment and pain.

"Tell her yourself—that's all," said Geoffrey, resolutely—"and, if you can, before she hears it from anybody else."



CHAPTER XII

Buntingford and French reached home between ten and eleven o'clock. When they entered the house, they heard sounds of music from the drawing-room. Peter Dale was playing fragments from the latest musical comedy, with a whistled accompaniment on the drawing-room piano. There seemed to be nothing else audible in the house, in spite of the large party it contained. Amid the general hush, unbroken by a voice or a laugh, the "funny bits" that Peter was defiantly thumping or whistling made a kind of goblin chorus round a crushed and weary man, as he pushed past the door of the drawing-room to the library. Geoffrey followed him.

"No one knows it yet," said the young man, closing the door behind them. "I had no authority from you to say anything. But of course they all understood that something strange had happened. Can I be any help with the others, while—"

"While I tell Helena?" said Buntingford, heavily. "Yes. Better get it over. Say, please—I should be grateful for no more talk than is inevitable."

Geoffrey stood by awkwardly, not knowing how to express the painful sympathy he felt. His very pity made him abrupt.

"I am to say—that you always believed—she was dead?"

Under what name to speak of the woman lying at the Rectory puzzled him. The mere admission of the thought that however completely in the realm of morals she might have forfeited his name, she was still Buntingford's wife in the realm of law, seemed an outrage.

At the question, Buntingford sprang up suddenly from the seat on which he had fallen; and Geoffrey, who was standing near him involuntarily retreated a few steps, in amazement at the passionate animation which for the moment had transformed the whole aspect of the elder man.

"Yes, you may say so—you must say so! There is no other account you can give of it!—no other account I can authorize you to give it. It is four-fifths true—and no one in this house—not even you—has any right to press me further. At the same time, I am not going to put even the fraction of a lie between myself and you, Geoffrey, for you have been—a dear fellow—to me!" He put his hand a moment on Geoffrey's shoulder, withdrawing it instantly. "The point is—what would have come about—if this had not happened? That is the test. And I can't give a perfectly clear answer." He began to pace the room—thinking aloud. "I have been very anxious—lately—to marry. I have been so many years alone; and I—well, there it is!—I have suffered from it, physically and morally; more perhaps than other men might have suffered. And lately—you must try and understand me, Geoffrey!—although I had doubts—yes, deep down, I still had doubts—whether I was really free—I have been much more ready to believe than I used to be, that I might now disregard the doubts—silence them!—for good and all. It has been my obsession—you may say now my temptation. Oh! the divorce court would probably have freed me—have allowed me to presume my wife's death after these fifteen years. But the difficulty lay in my own conscience. Was I certain? No! I was not certain! Anna's ways and standards were well known to me. I could imagine various motives which might have induced her to deceive me. At the same time"—he stopped and pointed to his writing-table—"these drawers are stuffed full of reports and correspondence, from agents all over Europe, whom I employed in the years before the war to find out anything they could. I cannot accuse myself of any deliberate or wilful ignorance. I made effort after effort—in vain. I was entitled—at last—it often seemed to me to give up the effort, to take my freedom. But then"—his voice dropped—"I thought of the woman I might love—and wish to marry. I should indeed have told her everything, and the law might have been ready to protect us. But if Anna still lived, and were suddenly to reappear in my life—what a situation!—for a sensitive, scrupulous woman!"

"It would have broken—spoiled—everything!" said Geoffrey, under his breath, but with emphasis. He was leaning against the mantelpiece, and his face was hidden from his companion. Buntingford threw him a strange, deprecating look.

"You are right—you are quite right. Yet I believe, Geoffrey, I might have committed that wrong—but for this—what shall I call it?—this 'act of God' that has happened to me. Don't misunderstand me!" He came to stand beside his nephew, and spoke with intensity. "It was only a possibility—and there is no guilt on my conscience. I have no real person in my mind. But any day I might have failed my own sense of justice—my own sense of honour—sufficiently—to let a woman risk it!"

Geoffrey thought of one woman—if not two women—who would have risked it. His heart was full of Helena. It was as though he could only appreciate the situation as it affected her. How deep would the blow strike, when she knew? He turned to look at Buntingford, who had resumed his restless walk up and down the room, realizing with mingled affection and reluctance the charm of his physical presence, the dark head, the kind deep eyes, the melancholy selfishness that seemed to enwrap him. Yet all the time he had not been selfless! There had been no individual woman in the case. But none the less, he had been consumed with the same personal longing—the same love of loving; the amor amandi—as other men. That was a discovery. It brought him nearer to the young man's tenderness; but it made the chance of a misunderstanding on Helena's part greater.

"Shall I tell Helena you would like to speak to her?" he said, breaking the silence.

Buntingford assented.

Philip, left alone, tried to collect his thoughts. He did not conceal from himself what had been implied rather than said by Geoffrey. The hint had startled and disquieted him. But he could not believe it had any real substance; and certainly he felt himself blameless. A creature so radiant, with the world at her feet!—and he, prematurely aged, who had seemed to her, only a few weeks ago, a mere old fogy in her path! That she should have reconsidered her attitude towards him, was surely natural, considering all the pains he had taken to please her. But as to anything else—absurd!

Latterly, indeed, since she had come to that tacit truce with Jim, he was well aware how much her presence in his house had added to the pleasant moments of daily life. In winning her good will, in thinking for her, in trying to teach her, in watching the movements of her quick untrained intelligence and the various phases of her enchanting beauty, he had found not only a new occupation, but a new joy. Rachel's prophecy for him had begun to realize itself. And, all the time, his hopes as to Geoffrey's success with her had been steadily rising. He and Geoffrey had indeed been at cross-purposes, if Geoffrey really believed what he seemed to believe! But it was nothing—it could be nothing—but the fantasy of a lover, starting at a shadow.

And suddenly his mind, as he stood waiting, plunged into matters which were not shadows—but palpitating realities. His son!—whom he was to see on the morrow. He believed the word of the woman who had been his wife. Looking back on her character with all its faults, he did not think she would have been capable of a malicious lie, at such a moment. Forty miles away then, there was a human being waiting and suffering, to whom his life had given life. Excitement—yearning—beat through his pulses. He already felt the boy in his arms; was already conscious of the ardour with which every device of science should be called in, to help restore to him, not only his son's body, but his mind.

There was a low tap at the door. He recalled his thoughts and went to open it.

"Helena!—my dear!"

He took her hand and led her in. She had changed her white dress of the afternoon for a little black frock, one of her mourning dresses for her mother, with a bunch of flame-coloured roses at her waist. The semi-transparent folds of the black brought out the brilliance of the white neck and shoulders, the pale carnations of the face, the beautiful hair, following closely the contours of the white brow. Even through all his pain and preoccupation, Buntingford admired; was instantly conscious of the sheer pleasure of her beauty. But it was the pleasure of an artist, an elder brother—a father even. Her mother was in his mind, and the strong affection he had begun to feel for his ward was shot through and through by the older tenderness.

"Sit there, dear," he said, pushing forward a chair. "Has Geoffrey told you anything?"

"No. He said you wanted to tell me something yourself, and he would speak to the others."

She was very pale, and the hand he touched was cold. But she was perfectly self-possessed.

He sat down in front of her collecting his thoughts.

"Something has happened, Helena, to-day—this very evening—which must—I fear—alter all your plans and mine. The poor woman whom Geoffrey saw in the wood, whose bag you found, was just able to make her escape, when you and Geoffrey landed. She wandered about the rest of the night, and in the early morning she asked for shelter—being evidently ill—at the Rectory, but it was not till this evening that she made a statement which induced them to send for me. Helena!—what did your mother ever tell you about my marriage?"

"She told me very little—only that you had married someone abroad—when you were studying in Paris—and that she was dead."

Buntingford covered his eyes with his hand.

"I told your mother, Helena, all I knew. I concealed nothing from her—both what I knew—and what I didn't know."

He paused, to take from his pocket a small leather case and to extract from it a newspaper cutting. He handed it to her. It was from the first column of the Times, was dated 1907, and contained the words:—"On July 19th at Lyons, France, Anna, wife of Philip Bliss, aged 28."

Helena read it, and looked up. Buntingford anticipated the words that were on her lips.

"Wait a moment!—let me go on. I read that announcement in the Times, Helena, three years after my wife had deserted me. I had spent those three years, first in recovering from a bad accident, and then in wandering about trying to trace her. Naturally, I went off to Lyons at once, and could discover—nothing! The police there did all they could to help me—our own Embassy in Paris got at the Ministry of the Interior—useless! I recovered the original notice and envelope from the Times. Both were typewritten, and the Lyons postmark told us no more than the notice had already told. I could only carry on my search, and for some years afterwards, even after I had returned to London, I spent the greater part of all I earned and possessed upon it. About that time my friendship with your mother began. She was already ill, and spent most of her life—as you remember—except for those two or three invalid winters in Italy—in that little drawing-room, I knew so well. I could always be sure of finding her at home; and gradually—as you recollect—she became my best friend. She was the only person in England who knew the true story of my marriage. She always suspected, from the time she first heard of it, that the notice in the Times—"

Helena made a quick movement forward. Her lips parted.

"—was not true?"

Buntingford took her hand again, and they looked at each other, she trembling involuntarily.

"And the woman last night?" she said, breathlessly—"was she someone who knew—who could tell you the truth?"

"She was my wife—herself!"

Helena withdrew her hand.

"How strange!—how strange!" She covered her eyes. There was a silence. After it, Buntingford resumed:

"Has Geoffrey told you the first warning of it—you left this room?"

"No."

He described the incident of the sketch.

"It was a drawing I had made of her only a few weeks before she left me. I had no idea it was in that portfolio. We had scarcely time to put it away before Mr. Alcott's note arrived—sending for me at once."

Helena's hands had dropped, while she hung upon his story. And a wonderful unconscious sweetness had stolen into her expression. Her young heart was in her eyes.

"Oh, I am so glad—so glad—you had that warning!"

Buntingford was deeply touched.

"You dear child!" he said in a rather choked voice, and, rising, he walked away from her to the further end of the room. When he returned, he found a pale and thoughtful Helena.

"Of course, Cousin Philip, this will make a great change—in your life—and in mine."

He stood silently before her—preferring that she should make her own suggestions.

"I think—I ought to go away at once. Thanks to you—I have Mrs. Friend—who is such a dear."

"There is the London house, Helena. You can make any use of it you like."

"No, I think not," she said resolutely. Then with an odd laugh which recalled an earlier Helena—"I don't expect Lucy Friend would want to have the charge of me in town; and you too—perhaps—would still be responsible—and bothered about me—if I were in your house."

Buntingford could not help a smile.

"My responsibility scarcely depends—does it—upon where you are?" Then his voice deepened. "I desire, wherever you are, to cherish and care for you—in your mother's place. I can't say what a joy it has been to me to have you here."

"No!—that's nonsense!—ridiculous!—" she said, suddenly breaking down, and dashing the tears from her eyes.

"It's very true," he said gently. "You've been the dearest pupil, and forgiven me all my pedantic ways. But if not London—I will arrange anything you wish."

She turned away, evidently making a great effort not to weep. He too was much agitated, and for a little while he busied himself with some letters on his table.

When, at her call, he returned to her, she said, quite in her usual voice:

"I should like to go somewhere—to some beautiful place—and draw. That would take a month—perhaps. Then we can settle." After a pause, she added without hesitation—"And you?—what is going to happen?"

"It depends—upon whether it's life at the Rectory—or death."

She was evidently startled, but said nothing, only gave him her beautiful eyes again, and her unspoken sympathy.

Then an impulse which seemed invincible came upon him to be really frank with her—to tell her more.

"It depends, also,—upon something else. But this I asked Geoffrey not to tell the others in the drawing-room—just yet—and I ask you the same. Of course you may tell Mrs. Friend." She saw his face work with emotion. "Helena, this woman that was my wife declares to me—that I have a son living."

He saw the light of amazement that rushed into her face, and hurried on:—"But in the same breath that she tells me that, she tells me the tragedy that goes with it." And hardly able to command his voice, he repeated what had been told him.

"Of course everything must be enquired into—verified. I go to town to-morrow—with Ramsay. Possibly I shall bring him back—perhaps to Ramsay's care, for the moment. Possibly, I shall leave him with someone in town."

"Couldn't I help," she said, after a moment, "if I stayed?"

"No, no!" he said with repugnance, which was almost passion. "I couldn't lay such a burden upon you, or any young creature. You must go and be happy, dear Helena—it is your duty to be happy! And this home for a time will be a tragic one. Well, but now, where would you like to go? Will you and Geoffrey and Mrs. Friend consult? I will leave any money you want in Geoffrey's hands."

"You mean"—she said abruptly—"that I really ought to go at once—to-morrow."

"Wouldn't it be best? It troubles me to think of you here—under the shadow—of this thing."

"I see!—I see! All right. You are going to London to-morrow morning?" She had risen, and was moving towards the door.

"Yes, I shall go to the Rectory first for news. And then on to the station."

She paused a moment.

"And if—if she—I don't know what to call her—if she lives?"

"Well, then—I must be free," he said, gravely; adding immediately—"She passed for fifteen years after she left me as the wife of an Italian I used to know. It would be very quickly arranged. I should provide for her—and keep my boy. But all that is uncertain."

"Yes, I understand." She held out her hand. "Cousin Philip—I am awfully sorry for you. I—I realized—somehow—only after I'd come down here—that you must have had—things in your life—to make you unhappy. And you've been so nice—so awfully nice to me! I just want to thank you—with all my heart."

And before he could prevent her, she had seized his hands and kissed them. Then she rushed to the door, turning to show him a face between tears and laughter.

"There!—I've paid you back!"

And with that she vanished.

Helena was going blindly through the hall, towards her own room, when Peter Dale emerged from the shadows. He caught her as she passed.

"Let me have just a word, Helena! You know, everything will be broken up here. I only want to say my mother would just adore to have you for the season. We'd all make it nice for you—we'd be your slaves—just let me wire to Mater to-morrow morning."

"No, thank you, Peter. Please—please! don't stop me! I want to see Mrs. Friend."

"Helena, do think of it!" he implored.

"No, I can't. It's impossible!" she said, almost fiercely. "Let me go, Peter! Good-night!"

He stood, a picture of misery, at the foot of the stairs watching her run up. Then at the top she turned, ran down a few steps again, kissed her hand to him, and vanished, the bright buckles on her shoes flashing along the gallery overhead.

But in the further corner of the gallery she nearly ran into the arms of Geoffrey French, who was waiting for her outside her room.

"Is it too late, Helena—for me to have just a few words in your sitting-room?"

He caught hold of her. The light just behind him showed him a tense and frowning Helena.

"Yes—it is much too late! I can't talk now."

"Only a few words?"

"No"—she panted—"no!—Geoffrey, I shall hate you if you don't let me go!"

It seemed to her that everybody was in league to stand between her and the one thing she craved for—to be alone and in the dark.

She snatched her dress out of his grasp, and he fell back.

She slipped into her own room, and locked the door. He shook his head, and went slowly downstairs. He found Peter pacing the hall, and they went out into the June dark together, a discomfited pair.

Meanwhile Mrs. Friend waited for Helena. She heard voices in the passage and the locking of Helena's door. She was still weak from her illness, so it seemed wisest to get into bed. But she had no hope or intention of sleep. She sat up in bed, with a shawl round her, certain that Helena would come. She was in a ferment of pity and fear,—she scarcely knew why—fear for the young creature she had come to love with all her heart; and she strained her ears to catch the sound of an opening door.

But Helena did not come. Through her open window Lucy could hear steps along the terrace coming and going—to and fro. Then they ceased; all sounds in the house ceased. The church clock in the distance struck midnight, and a little owl close to the house shrieked and wailed like a human thing, to the torment of Lucy's nerves. A little later she was aware of Buntingford coming upstairs, and going to his room on the further side of the gallery.

Then, nothing. Deep silence—that seemed to flow through the house and all its rooms and passages like a submerging flood.

Except!—What was that sound, in the room next to hers—in Helena's room?

Lucy Friend got up trembling, put on a dressing-gown, and laid an ear to the wall between her and Helena. It was a thin wall, mostly indeed a panelled partition, belonging to an old bit of the house, in which the building was curiously uneven in quality—sometimes inexplicably strong, and sometimes mere lath and plaster, as though the persons, building or re-building, had come to an end of their money and were scamping their work.

Lucy, from the other side of the panels, had often heard Helena singing while she dressed, or chattering to the housemaid. She listened now in an anguish, her mind haunted alternately by the recollection of the scene in the drawing-room, and the story told by Geoffrey French, and by her rising dread and misgiving as to Helena's personal stake in it. She had observed much during the preceding weeks. But her natural timidity and hesitancy had forbidden her so far to draw hasty deductions. And now—perforce!—she drew them.

The sounds in the next room seemed to communicate their rhythm of pain to Lucy's own heart. She could not bear it after a while. She noiselessly opened her own door, and went to Helena's. To her scarcely audible knock there was no answer. After an interval she knocked again—a pause. Then there were movements inside, and Helena's muffled voice through the door.

"Please, Lucy, go to sleep! I am all right."

"I can't sleep. Won't you let me in?"

Helena seemed to consider. But after an interval which seemed interminable to Lucy Friend, the key was slowly turned and the door yielded.

Helena was standing inside, but there was so little light in the room that Lucy could only see her dimly. The moon was full outside, but the curtains had been drawn across the open window, and only a few faint rays came through. As Mrs. Friend entered Helena turned from her, and groping her way back to the bed, threw herself upon it, face downwards. It was evidently the attitude from which she had risen.

Lucy Friend followed her, trembling, and sat down beside her. Helena was still fully dressed, except for her hair, which had escaped from combs and hairpins. As her eyes grew used to the darkness, Lucy could see it lying, a dim mass on the white pillow, also a limp hand upturned. She seized the hand and cherished it in hers.

"You are so cold, dear! Mayn't I cover you up and help you into bed?"

No answer. She found a light eiderdown that had been thrown aside, and covered the prone figure, gently chafing the cold hands and feet. After what seemed a long time, Helena, who had been quite still, said in a voice she had to stoop to hear:

"I suppose you heard me crying. Please, Lucy, go back to bed. I won't cry any more."

"Dear—mayn't I stay?"

"Well, then—you must come and lie beside me. I am a brute to keep you awake."

"Won't you undress?"

"Please let me be! I'll try and go to sleep."

Lucy slipped her own slight form under the wide eiderdown. There was a long silence, at the end of which Helena said:

"I'm only—sorry—it's all come to an end—here."

But with the words the girl's self-control again failed her. A deep sob shook her from head to foot. Lucy with the tears on her own cheeks, hung over her, soothing and murmuring to her as a mother might have done. But the sob had no successor, and presently Helena said faintly—"Good-night, Lucy. I'm warm now. I'm going to sleep."

Lucy listened for the first long breaths of sleep, and seemed to hear them, just as the dawn was showing itself, and the dawn-wind was pushing at the curtains. But she herself did not sleep. This young creature lying beside her, with her full passionate life, seemed to have absolutely absorbed her own. She felt and saw with Helena. Through the night, visions came and went—of "Cousin Philip,"—the handsome, melancholy, courteous man, and of all his winning ways with the girl under his care, when once she had dropped her first foolish quarrel with him, and made it possible for him to show without reserve the natural sweetness and chivalry of his character. Buntingford and Helena riding, their well-matched figures disappearing under the trees, the sun glancing from the glossy coats of their horses; Helena, drawing in some nook of the park, her face flushed with the effort to satisfy her teacher, and Buntingford bending over her; or again, Helena dancing, in pale green and apple-blossom, while Buntingford leaned against the wall, watching her with folded arms, and eyes that smiled over her conquests.

It all grew clear to Lucy—Helena's gradual capture, and the innocence, the unconsciousness, of her captor. Her own shrewdness, nevertheless, put the same question as Buntingford's conscience. Could he ever have been quite sure of his freedom? Yet he had taken the risks of a free man. But she could not, she did not blame him. She could only ask herself the breathless question that French had already asked:

"How far has it gone with her? How deep is the wound?"



CHAPTER XIII

Cynthia and Georgina Welwyn were dining at Beechmark on the eventful evening. They took their departure immediately after the scene in the drawing-room when Geoffrey French, at his cousin's wish, gathered Buntingford's guests together, and revealed the identity of the woman in the wood. In the hurried conversation that followed, Cynthia scarcely joined, and she was more than ready when Georgina proposed to go. Julian Horne found them their wraps, and saw them off. It was a beautiful night, and they were to walk home through the park.

"Shall I bring you any news there is to-morrow?" said Horne from the doorstep—"Geoffrey has asked me to stay till the evening. Everybody else of course is going early. It will be some time, won't it,"—he lowered his voice—"before we shall see the bearing of all this?"

Cynthia assented, rather coldly; and when she and her sister were walking through the moonlit path leading to the cottage, her silence was still marked, whereas Georgina in her grim way was excited and eager to talk.

The truth was that Cynthia was not only agitated by the news of the evening. She was hurt—bitterly hurt. Could not Buntingford have spared her a word in private? She was his kinswoman, his old and particular friend, neglectful as he had shown himself during the war. Had he not only a few weeks before come to ask her help with the trouble-some girl whose charge he had assumed? She had been no good, she knew. Helena had not been ready to make friends; and Cynthia's correctness had always been repelled by the reckless note in Helena. Yet she had done her best on that and other occasions and she had been rewarded by being treated in this most critical, most agitated moment like any other of Buntingford's week-end guests. Not a special message even—just the news that everybody might now know, and—Julian Horne to see them off! Yet Helena had been sent for at once. Helena had been closeted with Philip for half an hour. No doubt he had a special responsibility towards her. But what use could she possibly be? Whereas Cynthia felt herself the practical, experienced woman, able to give an old friend any help he might want in a grave emergency.

"Of course we must all hope she will die—and die quickly!" said Lady Georgina, with energy, after some remarks to which Cynthia paid small attention. "It would be the only sensible course for Providence—after making such a terrible mistake."

"Is there any idea of her dying?" Cynthia looked down upon her sister with astonishment. "Geoffrey didn't say so."

"He said she was 'very ill,' and from her conduct she must be crazy. So there's hope."

"You mean, for Philip?"

"For the world in general," said Georgina, cautiously, with an unnoticed glance at her companion. "But of course Philip has only himself to blame. Why did he marry such a woman?"

"She may have been very beautiful—or charming—you don't know."

Lady Georgina shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, of course there must have been something to bait the hook! But when a man marries out of his own class, unless the woman dies, the man goes to pieces."

"Philip has not gone to pieces!" cried Cynthia indignantly.

"Because she removed herself. For practical purposes that was as good as dying. He has much to be grateful for. Suppose she had come home with him! She would have ruined him socially and morally."

"And if she doesn't die," said Cynthia slowly, "what will Philip do then?"

"Ship her off to America, as she asks him, and prove a few little facts in the divorce court—simple enough! It oughtn't to take him much more than six months to get free—which he never has been yet!" added Georgina, with particular emphasis.

"It's a mercy, my dear, that you didn't just happen to be Lady Buntingford!"

"As if I had ever expected to be!" said Cynthia, much nettled.

"Well, you would, and you wouldn't have been!" said Georgina obstinately. "It's very complicated. You would have had to be married again—after the divorce."

"I don't know why you are so unkind, Georgie!" There was a little quaver in Cynthia's voice. "Philip's a very old friend of mine, and I'm very sorry and troubled about him. Why do you smirch it all with these horrid remarks?"

"I won't make any more, if you don't like them," said Georgina, unabashed—"except just to say this, Cynthia—for the first time I begin to believe in your chance. There was always something not cleared up about Philip, and it might have turned out to be something past mending. Now it is cleared up; and it's bad—but it might have been worse. However—we'll change the subject. What about that handsome young woman, Helena?"

"Now, if you'd chanced to say it was a mercy she didn't happen to be Lady Buntingford, there'd have been some sense in it!" Cynthia's tone betrayed the soreness within.

Lady Georgina laughed, or rather chuckled.

"I know Philip a great deal better than you do, my dear, though he is your friend. He has made himself, I suspect, as usual, much too nice to that child; and he may think himself lucky if he hasn't broken her heart. He isn't a flirt—I agree. But he produces the same effect—without meaning it. Without meaning anything indeed—except to be good and kind to a young thing. The men with Philip's manners and Philip's charm—thank goodness, there aren't many of them!—have an abominable responsibility. The poor moth flops into the candle before she knows where she is. But as to marrying her—it has never entered his head for a moment, and never would."

"And why shouldn't it, please?"

"Because she is much too young for him—and Philip is a tired man. Haven't you seen that, Cynthy? Before you knew him, Philip had exhausted his emotions—that's my reading of him. I don't for a moment believe his wife was the only one, if what Geoffrey said of her, and what one guesses, is true. She would never have contented him. And now it's done. If he ever marries now, it will be for peace—not passion. As I said before, Cynthy—and I mean no offence—your chances are better than they were."

Cynthia winced and protested again, but all the same she was secretly soothed by her odd sister's point of view. They began to discuss the situation at the Rectory,—how Alice Alcott, their old friend, with her small domestic resources, could possibly cope with it, if a long illness developed.

"Either the woman will die, or she will be divorced," said Georgina trenchantly. "And as soon as they know she isn't going to die, what on earth will they do with her?"

As she spoke they were passing along the foot of the Rectory garden. The Rectory stood really on the edge of the park, where it bordered on the highroad; and their own cottage was only a hundred yards beyond. There were two figures walking up and down in the garden. The Welwyns identified them at once as the Rector and his sister.

Cynthia stopped.

"I shall go and ask Alice if we can do anything for her."

She made for the garden gate that opened on the park and called softly. The two dim figures turned and came towards her. It was soon conveyed to the Alcotts that the Welwyns shared their knowledge, and a conversation followed, almost in whispers under a group of lilacs that flung round them the scents of the unspoilt summer. Alice Alcott, to get a breath of air, had left her patient in the charge of their old housemaid, for a quarter of an hour, but must go back at once and would sit up all night. A nurse was coming on the morrow.

Then, while Georgina employed her rasping tongue on Mr. Alcott, Cynthia and the Rector's sister conferred in low tones about various urgent matters—furniture for the nurse's room, sheets, pillows, and the rest. The Alcotts were very poor, and the Rectory had no reserves.

"Of course, we could send for everything to Beechmark," murmured Miss Alcott.

"Why should you? It is so much further. We will send in everything you want. What are we to call this—this person?" said Cynthia.

"Madame Melegrani. It is the name she has passed by for years."

"You say she is holding her own?"

"Just—with strychnine and brandy. But the heart is very weak. She told Dr. Ramsay she had an attack of flu last week—temperature up to 104. But she wouldn't give in to it—never even went to bed. Then came the excitement of travelling down here and the night in the park. This is the result. It makes me nervous to think that we shan't have Dr. Ramsay to-morrow. His partner is not quite the same thing. But he is going to London with Lord Buntingford."

"Buntingford—going to London?" said Cynthia in amazement.

Miss Alcott started. She remembered suddenly that her brother had told her that no mention was to be made, for the present, of the visit to London. In her fatigue and suppressed excitement she had forgotten. She could only retrieve her indiscretion—since white lies were not practised at the Rectory—by a hurried change of subject and by reminding her brother it was time for them to go back to the house. They accordingly disappeared.

"What is Buntingford going to London for?" said Georgina as they neared their own door.

Cynthia could not imagine—especially when the state of the Rectory patient was considered. "If she is as bad as the Alcotts say, they will probably want to-morrow to get a deposition from her of some kind," remarked Georgina, facing the facts as usual. Cynthia acquiesced. But she was not thinking of the unhappy stranger who lay, probably dying, under the Alcotts' roof. She was suffering from a fresh personal stab. For, clearly, Geoffrey French had not told all there was to be known; there was some further mystery. And even the Alcotts knew more than she. Affection and pride were both wounded anew.

But with the morning came consolation. Her maid, when she called her, brought in the letters as usual. Among them, one in a large familiar hand. She opened it eagerly, and it ran:—

"Saturday night, 11 p.m.

"MY DEAR CYNTHIA:—I was so sorry to find when I went to the drawing-room just now that you had gone home. I wanted if possible to walk part of the way with you, and to tell you a few things myself. For you are one of my oldest friends, and I greatly value your sympathy and counsel. But the confusion and bewilderment of the last few hours have been such—you will understand!

"To-morrow we shall hardly meet—for I am going to London on a strange errand! Anna—the woman that was my wife—tells me that six months after she left me, a son was born to me, whose existence she has till now concealed from me. I have no reason to doubt her word, but of course for everybody's sake I must verify her statement as far as I can. My son—a lad of fifteen—is now in London, and so is the French bonne—Zelie Ronchicourt—who originally lived with us in Paris, and was with Anna at the time of her confinement. You will feel for me when you know that he is apparently deaf and dumb. At any rate he has never spoken, and the brain makes no response. Anna speaks of an injury at birth. There might possibly be an operation. But of all this I shall know more presently. The boy, of course, is mine henceforth—whatever happens.

"With what mingled feelings I set out to-morrow, you can imagine. I feel no bitterness towards the unhappy soul who has come back so suddenly into my life. Except so far as the boy is concerned—(that I feel cruelly!)—I have not much right—For I was not blameless towards her in the old days. She had reasons—though not of the ordinary kind—for the frantic jealousy which carried her away from me. I shall do all I can for her; but if she gets through this illness, there will be a divorce in proper form.

"For me, in any case, it is the end of years of miserable uncertainty—of a semi-deception I could not escape—and of a moral loneliness I cannot describe. I must have often puzzled you and many others of my friends. Well, you have the key now. I can and will speak freely when we meet again.

"According to present plans, I bring the boy back to-morrow. Ramsay is to find me a specially trained nurse and will keep him under his own observation for a time. We may also have a specialist down at once.

"I shall of course hurry back as soon as I can—Anna's state is critical—

"Yours ever effectionately,

"BUNTINGFORD."

"P.S.—I don't know much about the domestic conditions in the Ramsays' house. Ramsay I have every confidence in. He has always seemed to me a very clever and a very nice fellow. And I imagine Mrs. Ramsay is a competent woman."

"She isn't!" said Cynthia, suddenly springing up in bed. "She is an incompetent goose! As for looking after that poor child and his nurse—properly—she couldn't!"

Quite another plan shaped itself in her mind. But she did not as yet communicate it to Georgina.

After breakfast she loaded her little pony carriage with all the invalid necessaries she had promised Miss Alcott, and drove them over to the Rectory. Alcott saw her arrival from his study, and came out, his finger on his lip, to meet her.

"Many, many thanks," he said, looking at what she had brought. "It is awfully good of you. I will take them in—but I ask myself—will she ever live through the day? Lord Buntingford and Ramsay hurried off by the first train this morning. She has enquired for the boy, and they will bring him back as soon as they can. She gives herself no chance! She is so weak—but her will is terribly strong! We can't get her to obey the doctor's orders. Of course, it is partly the restlessness of the condition."

Cynthia's eyes travelled to the upper window above the study. Buntingford's wife lay there! It seemed to her that the little room held all the secrets of Buntingford's past. The dying woman knew them, and she alone. A new jealousy entered into Cynthia—a despairing sense of the irrevocable. Helena was forgotten.

At noon Julian Horne arrived, bringing a book that Cynthia had lent him. He stayed to gossip about the break-up of the party.

"Everybody has cleared out except myself and Geoffrey. Miss Helena and her chaperon went this morning before lunch. Buntingford of course had gone before they came down. French tells me they have gone to a little inn in Wales he recommended. Miss Helena said she wanted something to draw, and a quiet place. I must say she looked pretty knocked up!—I suppose by the dance?"

His sharp greenish eyes perused Cynthia's countenance. She made no reply. His remark did not interest a preoccupied woman. Yet she did not fail to remember, with a curious pleasure, that there was no mention of Helena in Buntingford's letter.

Between five and six that afternoon a party of four descended at a station some fifteen miles from Beechmark, where Buntingford was not very likely to be recognized. It consisted of Buntingford, the doctor, a wrinkled French bonne, in a black stuff dress, and black bonnet, and a frail little boy whom a spectator would have guessed to be eleven or twelve years old. Buntingford carried him, and the whole party passed rapidly to a motor standing outside. Then through a rainy evening they sped on at a great pace towards the Beechmark park and village. The boy sat next to Buntingford who had his arm round him. But he was never still. He had a perpetual restless motion of the head and the emaciated right hand, as though something oppressed the head, and he were trying to brush it away. His eyes wandered round the faces in the car,—from his father to the doctor, from the doctor to the Frenchwoman. But there was no comprehension in them. He saw and did not see. Buntingford hung over him, alive to his every movement, absorbed indeed in his son. The boy's paternity was stamped upon him. He had Buntingford's hair and brow; every line and trait in those noticeable eyes of his father seemed to be reproduced in him; and there were small characteristics in the hands which made them a copy in miniature of his father's. No one seeing him could have doubted his mother's story; and Buntingford had been able to verify it in all essential particulars by the evidence of the old bonne, who had lived with Anna in Paris before her flight, and had been present at the child's birth. The old woman was very taciturn, and apparently hostile to Buntingford, whom she perfectly remembered; but she had told enough.

The June evening was in full beauty when the car drew up at the Rectory. Alcott and Dr. Ramsay's partner received them. The patient they reported had insisted on being lifted to a chair, and was feverishly expecting them.

Buntingford carried the boy upstairs, the bonne following. The doctors remained on the landing, within call. At sight of her mistress, Zelie's rugged face expressed her dismay. She hurried up to her, dropped on her knees beside her, and spoke to her in agitated French. Anna Melegrani turned her white face and clouded eyes upon her for a moment; but made no response. She looked past her indeed to where Buntingford stood with the boy, and made a faint gesture that seemed to summon him.

He put him down on his feet beside her. The pathetic little creature was wearing a shabby velveteen suit, with knickerbockers, which bagged about his thin frame. The legs like white sticks appearing below the knickerbockers, the blue-veined hollows of the temples, and the tiny hands—together with the quiet wandering look—made so pitiable an impression that Miss Alcott standing behind the sick woman could not keep back the tears. The boy himself was a centre of calm in the agitated room, except for the constant movement of the head. He seemed to perceive something familiar in his mother's face, but when she put out a feeble hand to him, and tried to kiss him, he began to whimper. Her expression changed at once; with what strength she had she pushed him away. "Il est afreux!" she said sombrely, closing her eyes.

Buntingford lifted him up, and carried him to Zelie, who was in a neighbouring room. She had brought with her some of the coloured bricks, and "nests" of Japanese boxes which generally amused him. He was soon sitting on the floor, aimlessly shuffling the bricks, and apparently happy. As his father was returning to the sickroom a note was put into his hand by the Rector. It contained these few words—"Don't make final arrangements with the Ramsays till you have seen me. Think I could propose something you would like better. Shall be here all the evening. Yours affectionately—Cynthia."

He had just thrust it into his pocket, when the Rector drew him aside at the head of the stairs, while the two doctors were with the patient.

"I don't want to interfere with any of your arrangements," whispered the Rector, "but I think perhaps I ought to tell you that Mrs. Ramsay is no great housewife. She is a queer little flighty thing. She spends her time in trying to write plays and bothering managers. There's no harm in her, and he's very fond of her. But it is an untidy, dirty little house! And nothing ever happens at the right time. My sister said I must warn you. She's had it on her mind—as she's had a good deal of experience of Mrs. Ramsay. And I believe Lady Cynthia has another plan."

Buntingford thanked him, remembering opportunely that when he had proposed to Ramsay to take the boy into his house, the doctor had accepted with a certain hesitation, which had puzzled him. "I will go over and see my cousin when I can be spared."

But a sudden call from the sickroom startled them both. Buntingford hurried forward.

When Buntingford entered he found the patient lying in a deep old-fashioned chair propped up by pillows. She had been supplied with the simplest of night-gear by Miss Alcott, and was wearing besides a blue cotton overall or wrapper in which the Rector's sister was often accustomed to do her morning's work. There was a marked incongruity between the commonness of the dress, and a certain cosmopolitan stamp, a touch of the grand air, which was evident in its wearer. The face, even in its mortal pallor and distress, was remarkable both for its intellect and its force. Buntingford stood a few paces from her, his sad eyes meeting hers. She motioned to him.

"Send them all away."

The doctors went, with certain instructions to Buntingford, one of them remaining in the room below. Buntingford came to sit close by her.

"They say I shall kill myself if I talk," she said in her gasping whisper. "It doesn't matter. I must talk! So—you don't doubt the boy?" Her large black eyes fixed him intently.

"No. I have no doubts—that he is my son. But his condition is very piteous. I have asked a specialist to come down."

There was a gleam of scorn in her expression.

"That'll do no good. I suppose—you think—we neglected the boy. Niente. We did the best we could. He was under a splendid man—in Naples—as good as any one here. He told me nothing could be done—and nothing can be done."

Buntingford had the terrible impression that there was a certain triumph in the faint tone. He said nothing, and presently the whisper began again.

"I keep seeing those people dancing—and hearing the band. I dropped a little bag—did anybody find it?"

"Yes, I have it here." He drew it out of his pocket, and put it in her hand, which feebly grasped it.

"Rocca gave it to me at Florence once, I am very fond of it. I suppose you wonder that—I loved him?"

There was a strange and tragic contrast between the woman's weakness, and her bitter provocative spirit; just as there was between the picturesque strength of Buntingford—a man in his prime—and the humble, deprecating gentleness of his present voice and manner.

"No," he answered. "I am glad—if it made you happy."

"Happy!" She opened her eyes again. "Who's ever happy? We were never happy!"

"Yes—at the beginning," he said, with a certain firmness. "Why take that away?"

She made a protesting movement.

"No—never! I was always—afraid. Afraid you'd get tired of me. I was only happy—working—and when they hung my picture—in the Salon—you remember?"

"I remember it well."

"But I was always jealous—of you. You drew better—than I did. That made me miserable."

After a long pause, during which he gave her some of the prepared stimulant Ramsay had left ready, she spoke again, with rather more vigour.

"Do you remember—that Artists' Fete—in the Bois—when I went as Primavera—Botticelli's Primavera?"

"Perfectly."

"I was as handsome then—as that girl you were rowing. And now—But I don't want to die!"—she said with sudden anguish—"Why should I die? I was quite well a fortnight ago. Why does that doctor frighten me so?" She tried to sit more erect, panting for breath. He did his best to soothe her, to induce her to go back to bed. But she resisted with all her remaining strength; instead, she drew him down to her.

"Tell me!—confess to me!"—she said hoarsely—"Madame de Chaville was your mistress!"

"Never! Calm yourself, poor Anna! I swear to you. Won't you believe me?"

She trembled violently. "If I left you—for nothing—"

She closed her eyes, and tears ran down her cheeks.

He bent over her—"Won't you rest now—and let them take you back to bed? You mustn't talk like this any more. You will kill yourself."

He left her in Ramsay's charge, and went first to find Alcott, begging him to pray with her. Then he wandered out blindly, into the summer evening. It was clear to him that she had only a few more hours—or at most—days to live. In his overpowering emotion—a breaking up of the great deeps of thought and feeling—he found his way into the shelter of one of the beechwoods that girdled the park, and sat there in a kind of moral stupor, till he had somehow mastered himself. The "old unhappy far-off things" were terribly with him; the failures and faults of his own distant life, far more than those of the dying woman. The only thought—the only interest—which finally gave him fresh strength—was the recollection of his boy.

Cynthia!—her letter—what was it she wanted to say to him? He got up, and resolutely turned his steps towards the cottage.

Cynthia was waiting for him. She brought him into the little drawing-room where a lamp had been lighted, and a tray of food was waiting of which she persuaded him to eat some mouthfuls. But when he questioned her as to the meaning of her letter, she evaded answering for a little while, till he had eaten something and drunk a glass of wine. Then she stretched out a hand to him, with a quiet smile.

"Come and see what I have been doing upstairs. It will be dreadful if you don't approve!"

He followed her in surprise, and she led him upstairs through the spotless passages of the cottage, bright with books and engravings, where never a thing was out of place, to a room with a flowery paper and bright curtains, looking on the park.

"I had it all got ready in a couple of hours. We have so much room—and it is such a pleasure—" she said, in half apology. "Nobody ever gets any meals at the Ramsays'—and they can't keep any servants. Of course you'll change it, if you don't like it. But Dr. Ramsay himself thought it the best plan. You see we are only a stone's throw from him. He can run in constantly. He really seemed relieved!"

And there in a white bed, with the newly arrived special nurse—kind-faced and competent—beside him, lay his recovered son, deeply and pathetically asleep. For in his sleep the piteous head movement had ceased, and he might have passed for a very delicate child of twelve, who would soon wake like other children to a new summer day.

Into Buntingford's strained consciousness there fell a drop of balm as he sat beside him, listening to the quiet breathing, and comforted by the mere peace of the slight form.

He looked up at Cynthia and thanked her; and Cynthia's heart sang for joy.



CHAPTER XIV

The Alcotts' unexpected guest lingered another forty-eight hours under their roof,—making a hopeless fight for life. But the influenza poison, recklessly defied from the beginning, had laid too deadly a grip on an already weakened heart. And the excitement of the means she had taken to inform herself as to the conditions of Buntingford's life and surroundings, before breaking in upon them, together with the exhaustion of her night wandering, had finally destroyed her chance of recovery. Buntingford saw her whenever the doctors allowed. She claimed his presence indeed, and would not be denied. But she talked little more; and in her latest hours it seemed to those beside her both that the desire to live had passed, and that Buntingford's attitude towards her had, in the end, both melted and upheld her. On the second night after her arrival, towards dawn she sent for him. She then could not speak. But her right hand made a last motion towards his. He held it, till Ramsay who had his fingers on the pulse of the left, looked up with that quiet gesture which told that all was over. Then he himself closed her eyes, and stooping, he kissed her brow—

"Pardonnons—nous! Adieu!" he said, under his breath, in the language familiar to their student youth together. Then he went straight out of the room, and through the dewy park, and misty woods already vocal with the awakening birds; he walked back to Beechmark, and for some hours shut himself into his library, where no one disturbed him.

When he emerged it was with the air of a man turning to a new chapter in life. Geoffrey French was still with him. Otherwise the big house was empty and seemed specially to miss the sounds of Helena's voice, and tripping feet. Buntingford enquired about her at once, and Geoffrey was able to produce a letter from Mrs. Friend describing the little Welsh Inn, near the pass of Aberglasslyn, where they had settled themselves; the delicious river, shrunken however by the long drought, which ran past their windows, and the many virtues—qualified by too many children—of the primitive Welsh pair who ran the inn.

"I am to say that Miss Pitstone likes it all very much, and has found some glorious things to draw. Also an elderly gentleman who is sketching on the river has already promised her a lesson."

"You'll be going down there sometime?" said Buntingford, turning an enquiring look on his nephew.

"The week-end after next," said Geoffrey—"unless Helena forbids it. I must inspect the inn, which I recommended—and take stock of the elderly gentleman!"

The vision of Helena, in "fresh woods and pastures new" radiantly transfixing the affections of the "elderly gentleman," put them both for the moment in spirits. Buntingford smiled, and understanding that Geoffrey was writing to his ward, he left some special messages for her.

But in the days that followed he seldom thought of Helena. He buried his wife in the village church-yard, and the wondering villagers might presently read on the headstone he placed over her grave, the short inscription—"Anna Buntingford, wife of Philip, Lord Buntingford," with the dates of her birth and death. The Alcotts, authorized by Philip, made public as much of the story as was necessary, and the presence of the poor son and heir in the Welwyns' house, together with his tragic likeness to his father, both completed and verified it. A wave of unspoken but warm sympathy spread through the countryside. Buntingford's own silence was unbroken. After the burial, he never spoke of what had happened, except on one or two rare occasions to John Alcott, who had become his intimate friend. But unconsciously the attitude of his neighbours towards him had the effect of quickening his liking for Beechmark, and increasing the probability of his ultimate settlement there, at least for the greater part of the year.

Always supposing that it suited the boy—Arthur Philip—the names under which, according to Zelie, he had been christened in the church of the hill village near Lucca where he was born. For the care of this innocent, suffering creature became, from the moment of his mother's death, the dominating thought of Buntingford's life. The specialist, who came down before her death, gave the father however little hope of any favourable result from operation. But he gave a confident opinion that much could be done by that wonderful system of training which modern science and psychology combined have developed for the mentally deficient or idiot child. For the impression left by the boy on the spectator was never that of genuine idiocy. It was rather that of an imprisoned soul. The normal soul seemed somehow to be there; but the barrier between it and the world around it could not be broken through. By the specialist's advice, Buntingford's next step was to appeal to a woman, one of those remarkable women, who, unknown perhaps to more than local or professional fame, are every year bringing the results of an ardent moral and mental research to bear upon the practical tasks of parent and teacher. This woman, whom we will call Mrs. Delane, combined the brain of a man of science with the passion of motherhood. She had spent her life in the educational service of a great municipality, varied by constant travel and investigation; and she was now pensioned and retired. But all over England those who needed her still appealed to her; and she failed no one. She came down to see his son at Buntingford's request, and spent some days in watching the child, with Cynthia as an eager learner beside her.

The problem was a rare one. The boy was a deaf-mute, but not blind. His very beautiful eyes—; his father's eyes—seemed to be perpetually interrogating the world about him, and perpetually baffled. He cried—a monotonous wailing sound—but he never smiled. He was capable of throwing all his small possessions into a large basket, and of taking them out again; an operation which he performed endlessly hour after hour; but of purpose, or any action that showed it, he seemed incapable. He could not place one brick upon another, or slip one Japanese box inside its fellow. His temper seemed to be always gentle; and in simple matters of daily conduct and habit Zelie had her own ways of getting from him an automatic obedience. But he heard nothing; and in his pathetic look, however clearly his eyes might seem to be meeting those of a companion, there was no answering intelligence.

Mrs. Delane set patiently to work, trying this, and testing that; and at the end of the first week, she and Cynthia were sitting on the floor beside the boy, who had a heap of bricks before him. For more than an hour Mrs. Delane had been guiding his thin fingers in making a tower of bricks one upon another, and then knocking them down. Then, at one moment, it began to seem to her that each time his hand enclosed in hers knocked the bricks down, there was a certain faint flash in the blue eyes, as though the sudden movement of the bricks gave the child a thrill of pleasure. But to fall they must be built up. And his absorbed teacher laboured vainly, through sitting after sitting, to communicate to the child some sense of the connection between the two sets of movements.

Time after time the small waxen hand lay inert in hers as she put a brick between its listless fingers, and guided it towards the brick waiting for it. Gradually the column of bricks mounted—built by her action, her fingers enclosing his passive ones—and, finally, came the expected crash, followed by the strange slight thrill in the child's features. But for long there was no sign of spontaneous action of any kind on his part. The ingenuity of his teacher attempted all the modes of approach to the obstructed brain that were known to her, through the two senses left him—sight and touch. But for many days in vain.

At last, one evening towards the end of June, when his mother had been dead little more than a fortnight, Cynthia, Mrs. Delane's indefatigable pupil, was all at once conscious of a certain spring in the child's hand, as though it became—faintly—self-moved, a living thing. She cried out. Buntingford was there looking on; and all three hung over the child. Cynthia again placed the brick in his hand, and withdrew her own. Slowly the child moved it forward—dropped it—then, with help, raised it again—and, finally, with only the very slight guidance from Cynthia, put it on top of the other. Another followed, and another, his hand growing steadier with each attempt. Then breathing deeply,—flushed, and with a puckered forehead—the boy looked up at his father. Tears of indescribable joy had rushed to Buntingford's eyes. Cynthia's were hidden in her handkerchief.

The child's nurse peremptorily intervened and carried him off to bed. Mrs. Delane first arranged with Buntingford for the engagement of a special teacher, taught originally by herself, and then asked for something to take her to the station. She had set things in train, and had no time to lose. There were too many who wanted her.

Buntingford and Cynthia walked across the park to Beechmark. From the extreme despondency they were lifted to an extreme of hope. Buntingford had felt, as it were, the spirit of his son strain towards his own; the hidden soul had looked out. And in his deep emotion, he was very naturally conscious of a new rush of affection and gratitude towards his old playfellow and friend. The thought of her would be for ever connected in his mind with the efforts and discoveries of the agitating days through which—with such intensity—they had both been living. When he remembered that wonder-look in his son's, eyes, he would always see Cynthia bending over the child, no longer the mere agreeable and well-dressed woman of the world, but, to him, the embodiment of a heavenly pity, "making all things new."

Cynthia's spirits danced as she walked beside him. There was in her a joyous, if still wavering certainty that through the child, her hold upon Philip, whether he spoke sooner or later, was now secure. But she was still jealous of Helena. It had needed the moral and practical upheaval caused by the reappearance and death of Anna, to drive Helena from Philip and Beechmark; and if Helena—enchanting and incalculable as ever, even in her tamer mood—were presently to resume her life in Philip's house, no one could expect the Fates to intervene again so kindly. Georgina might be certain that in Buntingford's case the woman of forty had nothing to fear from the girl of nineteen. Cynthia was by no means so certain; and she shivered at the risks to come.

For it was soon evident that the question of his ward's immediate future was now much on Philip's mind. He complained that Helena wrote so little, and that he had not yet heard from Geoffrey since the week-end he was to spend in Wales. Mrs. Friend reported indeed in good spirits. But obviously, whatever the quarters might be, Helena could not stay there indefinitely.

"Of course I suggested the London house to her at once—with Mrs. Friend for chaperon. But she didn't take to it. This week I must go back to my Admiralty work. But we can't take the boy to London, and I intended to come back here every night. We mustn't put upon you much longer, my dear Cynthia!"

The colour rushed to Cynthia's face.

"You are going to take him away?" she said, with a look of consternation.

"Mustn't I bring him home, some time?" was his half-embarrassed reply.

"But not yet! And how would it suit—with week-ends and dances for Helena?"

"It wouldn't suit at all," he said, perplexed—"though Helena seems to have thrown over dancing for the present."

"That won't last long!"

He laughed. "I am afraid you never took to her!" he said lightly.

"She never took to me!"

"I wonder if that was my fault? She suspected that I had called you in to help me to keep her in order!"

"What was it brought her to reason—so suddenly?" said Cynthia, seeking light at last on a problem that had long puzzled her.

"Two things, I imagine. First that she was the better man of us all, that day of the Dansworth riot. She could drive my big car, and none of the rest of us could! That seemed to put her right with us all. And secondly—the reports of that abominable trial. She told me so. I only hope she didn't read much of it!"

They had just passed the corner of the house, and come out on the sloping lawn of Beechmark, with the lake, and the wood beyond it. All that had happened behind that dark screen of yew, on the distant edge of the water, came rushing back on Philip's imagination, so that he fell silent. Cynthia on her side was thinking of the moment when she came down to the edge of the lake to carry off Geoffrey French, and saw Buntingford and Helena push off into the puckish rays of the searchlight. She tasted again the jealous bitterness of it—and the sense of defeat by something beyond her fighting—the arrogance of Helena's young beauty. Philip was not in love with Helena; that she now knew. So far she, Cynthia, had marvellously escaped the many chances that might have undone her. But if Helena came back?

Meanwhile there were some uneasy thoughts at the back of Philip's mind; and some touching and tender recollections which he kept sacred to himself. Helena's confession and penitence—there, on that still water—how pretty they were, how gracious! Nor could he ever forget her sweetness, her pity on that first tragic evening. Geoffrey's alarms were absurd. Yet when he thought of merely reproducing the situation as it had existed before the night of the ball, something made him hesitate. And besides, how could he reproduce it? All his real mind was now absorbed in this overwhelming problem of his son; of the helpless, appealing creature to whose aid the whole energies of his nature had been summoned.

He walked back some way with Cynthia, talking of the boy, with an intensity of hope that frightened her.

"Don't, or don't be too certain—yet!" she pleaded. "We have only just seen the first sign—the first flicker. If it were all to vanish again!"

"Could I bear it?" he said, under his breath—"Could I?"

"Anyway, you'll let me keep him—a little longer?"

She spoke very softly and sweetly.

"If your kindness really wishes it," he said, rather reluctantly. "But what does Georgina say?"

"Georgina is just as keen as I am," said Cynthia boldly. "Don't you see how fond she is of him already?"

Buntingford could not truthfully say that he had seen any signs on Georgina's part, so far, of more than a decent neutrality in the matter. Georgina was a precisian; devoted to order, and in love with rules. The presence of the invalid boy, his nurse, and his teacher, must upset every rule and custom of the little house. Could she really put up with it? In general, she made the impression upon Philip of a very wary cat, often apparently asleep, but with her claws ready. He felt uncomfortable; but Cynthia had her way.

A specially trained teacher, sent down by Mrs. Delane, arrived a few days later, and a process began of absorbing and fascinating interest to all the spectators, except Georgina, who more than kept her head.

Every morning Buntingford would motor up to town, spend some strenuous hours in demobilization work at the Admiralty, returning in the evening to receive Cynthia's report of the day. Miss Denison, the boy's teacher, who had been trained in one of the London Special Schools, was a little round-faced lady with spectacles, apparently without any emotions, but really filled with that educator's passion which in so many women of our day fills the place of motherhood. From the beginning she formed the conclusion that the pitiable little fellow entrusted to her was to a great extent educable; but that he would not live to maturity. This latter conclusion was carefully hidden from Buntingford, though it was known to Cynthia; and Philip knew, for a time, all the happiness, the excitement even of each day's slight advance, combined with a boundless hope for the future. He spent his evenings absorbed in the voluminous literature dealing with the deaf-mute, which has grown up since the days of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. But Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller—as he eagerly reminded himself—were both of them blind; only one sense—that of touch—was left to them. Arthur's blue eyes, the copy of his own, already missed his father when he left home in the morning, and greeted him when he came home at night. They contained for Philip a mystery and a promise that he was never tired of studying. Every evening he would ride over from Dansworth station to the cottage, put up his horse, and spend the long summer twilights in carrying his son about the garden or the park, or watching Miss Denison at her work. The boy was physically very frail, and soon tired. But his look was now placid; the furrows in the white brow were smoothed away; his general nutrition was much better; his delicate cheeks had filled out a little; and his ghostly beauty fascinated Philip's artistic sense, while his helplessness appealed to the tenderest instinct of a strong man. Buntingford had discovered a new and potent reason for living; and for living happily.

And meanwhile with all this slowly growing joy, Cynthia was more and more closely connected. She and Buntingford had a common topic, which was endlessly interesting and delightful to them both. Philip was no longer conscious of her conventionalities and limitations, as he had been conscious of them on his first renewed acquaintance with her after the preoccupations of the war. He saw her now as Arthur's fairy godmother, and as his own daily companion and helper in an exquisite task.

But Georgina was growing impatient. One evening she came home tired and out of temper. She had been collecting the rents of some cottages belonging to her, and the periodical operation was always trying to everybody concerned. Georgina's secret conviction that "the poor in a loomp is bad" was stoutly met by her tenants' firm belief that all landlords are extortionate thieves. She came home, irritated by a number of petty annoyances, to find the immaculate little drawing-room, where every book and paper-knife knew its own place and kept it, given up to Arthur and Miss Denison, with coloured blocks, pictures and models used in that lady's teaching, strewn all over the floor, while the furniture had been pushed unceremoniously aside.

"I won't have this house made a bear-garden!" she said, angrily, to the dismayed teacher; and she went off straightway to find her sister.

Cynthia was in her own little den on the first floor happily engaged in trimming a new hat. Georgina swept in upon her, shut the door, and stood with her back to it.

"Cynthia—is this house yours or mine?"

As a matter of fact the house was Buntingford's. But Georgina was formally the tenant of it, while the furniture was partly hers and partly Cynthia's. In fact, however, Georgina had been always tacitly held to be the mistress.

Cynthia looked up in astonishment, and at once saw that Georgina was seriously roused. She put down her work and faced her sister.

"I thought it belonged to both of us," she said mildly. "What is the matter, Georgie?"

"I beg you to remember that I am the tenant. And I never consented to make it an institution for the training of imbeciles!"

"Georgie!—Arthur is not an imbecile!"

"Of course I know he is an interesting one," said Georgina, curtly. "But all the same, from my point of view—However, I won't repeat the word, if it annoys you. But what I want to know is, when are we to have the house to ourselves again? Because, if this is to go on indefinitely, I depart!"

Cynthia came nearer to her sister. Her colour fluttered a little.

"Don't interfere just at present, Georgie," she said imploringly, in a low voice.

The two sisters looked at each other—Georgina covered with the dust and cobwebs of her own cottages, her battered hat a little on one side, and her coat and skirt betraying at every seam its venerable antiquity; and Cynthia, in pale grey, her rose-pink complexion answering to the gold of her hair, with every detail of her summer dress as fresh and dainty as the toil of her maid could make it.

"Well, I suppose—I understand," said Georgina, at last, in her gruffest voice. "All the same, I warn you, I can't stand it much longer. I shall be saying something rude to Buntingford."

"No, no—don't do that!"

"I haven't your motive—you see."

Cynthia coloured indignantly.

"If you think I'm only pretending to care for the child, Georgie, you're very much mistaken!"

"I don't think so. You needn't put words into my mouth, or thoughts into my head. All the same, Cynthia,—cut it short!"

And with that she released the door and departed, leaving an anxious and meditative Cynthia behind her.

A little later, Buntingford's voice was heard below. Cynthia, descending, found him with Arthur in his arms. The day had been hot and rainy—an oppressive scirocco day—and the boy was languid and out of sorts. The nurse advised his being carried up early to bed, and Buntingford had arrived just in time.

When he came downstairs again, he found Cynthia in a garden hat, and they strolled out to look at the water-garden which was the common hobby of both the sisters. There, sitting among the rushes by the side of the little dammed-up stream, he produced a letter from Mrs. Friend, with the latest news of his ward.

"Evidently we shan't get Helena back just yet. I shall run up next week to see her, I think, Cynthia, if you will let me. I really will take Arthur to Beechmark this week. Mrs. Mawson has arranged everything. His rooms are all ready for him. Will you come and look at them to-morrow?"

Cynthia did not reply at once, and he watched her a little anxiously. He was well aware what giving up the boy would mean to her. Her devotion had been amazing. But the wrench must come some time.

"Yes, of course—you must take him," said Cynthia, at last. "If only—I hadn't come to love him so!"

She didn't cry. She was perfectly self-possessed. But there was something in her pensive, sorrowful look that affected Philip more than any vehement emotion could have done. The thought of all her devotion—their long friendship—her womanly ways—came upon him overwhelmingly.

But another thought checked it—Helena!—and his promise to her dead mother. If he now made Cynthia the mistress of Beechmark, Helena would never return to it. For they were incompatible. He saw it plainly. And to Helena he was bound; while she needed the shelter of his roof.

So that the words that were actually on Philip's lips remained unspoken. They walked back rather silently to the cottage.

At supper Cynthia told her sister that the boy, with Zelie and his teacher, would soon trouble her no more. Georgina expressed an ungracious satisfaction, adding abruptly—"You'll be able to see him there, Cynthy, just as well as here."

Cynthia made no reply.



CHAPTER XVI

Mrs. Friend was sitting in the bow-window of the "Fisherman's Rest," a small Welsh inn in the heart of Snowdonia. The window was open, and a smell of damp earth and grass beat upon Lucy in gusts from outside, carried by a rainy west wind. Beyond the road, a full stream, white and foaming after rain, was dashing over a rocky bed towards some rapids which closed the view. The stream was crossed by a little bridge, and beyond it rose a hill covered with oak-wood. Above the oak-wood and along the road to the right—mountain forms, deep blue and purple, were emerging from the mists which had shrouded them all day. The sun was breaking through. A fierce northwest wind which had been tearing the young leaf of the oak-woods all day, and strewing it abroad, had just died away. Peace was returning, and light. The figure of Helena had just disappeared through the oak-wood; Lucy would follow her later.

Behind Mrs. Friend, the walls of the inn parlour were covered deep in sketches of the surrounding scenery—both oil and water-colour, bad and good, framed and unframed, left there by the artists who haunted the inn. The room was also adorned by a glass case full of stuffed birds, badly moth-eaten, a book-case containing some battered books mostly about fishing, and a large Visitors' Book lying on a centre-table, between a Bradshaw and an old guide-book. Shut up, in winter, the little room would smell intolerably close and musty. But with the windows open, and a rainy sun streaming in, it spoke pleasantly of holidays for plain hard-working folk, and of that "passion for the beauty flown," which distils, from the summer hours of rest, strength for the winter to come.

Lucy had let Helena go out alone, of set purpose. For she knew, or guessed, what Nature and Earth had done for Helena during the month they had passed together in this mountain-land, since that night at Beechmark. Helena had made no moan—revealed nothing. Only a certain paleness in her bright cheek, a certain dreamy habit that Lucy had not before noticed in her; a restlessness at night which the thin partitions of the old inn sometimes made audible, betrayed that the youth in her was fighting its first suffering, and fighting to win. Lucy had never dared to speak—still less to pity. But her love was always at hand, and Helena had repaid it, and the silence it dictated, with an answering love. Lucy believed—though with trembling—that the worst was now over, and that new horizons were opening on the stout soul that had earned them. But now, as before, she held her peace.

Her diary lay on her lap, and she was thoughtfully turning it over. It contained nothing but the barest entries of facts. But they meant a good deal to her, as she looked through them. Every letter, for instance, from Beechmark had been noted. Lord Buntingford had written three times to Helena, and twice to herself. She had seen Helena's letters; and Helena had read hers. It seemed to her that Helena had deliberately shown her own; that the act was part of the conflict which Lucy guessed at, but must not comment on, by word or look. All the letters were the true expression of the man. The first, in which he described in words, few; but singularly poignant, the death of his wife, his recognition of his son, and the faint beginnings of hope for the boy's maimed life, had forced tears from Lucy. Helena had read it dry-eyed. But for several hours afterwards, on an evening of tempest, she had vanished out of ken, on the mountainside; coming back as night fell, her hair and clothes, dripping with rain, her cheeks glowing from her battle with the storm, her eyes strangely bright.

Her answers to her guardian's letters had been, to Lucy's way of thinking, rather cruelly brief; at least after the first letter written in her own room, and posted by herself. Thenceforward, only a few post-cards, laid with Lucy's letters, for her or any one else to read, if they chose. And meanwhile Lucy was tolerably sure that she was slowly but resolutely making her own plans for the months ahead.

The little diary contained also the entry of Geoffrey French's visit—a long week-end, during which as far as Lucy could remember, Helena and he had never ceased "chaffing" from morning till night, and Helena had certainly never given him any opportunity for love-making. She, Lucy, had had a few short moments alone with him, moments in which his gaiety had dropped from him, like a ragged cloak, and a despondent word or two had given her a glimpse of the lover he was not permitted to be, beneath the role of friend he was tired of playing. He was coming again soon. Helena had neither invited nor repelled him. Whereas she had peremptorily bidden Peter Dale for this particular Sunday, and he had thrown over half a dozen engagements to obey her.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Friend. Is Miss Pitstone at home?"

The speaker was a shaggy old fellow in an Inverness cape and an ancient wide-awake, carrying a portfolio and a camp-stool. He had stopped in his walk outside the open window, and his disappointed look searched the inn parlour for a person who was not there.

"Oh, Mr. McCready, I'm so sorry!—but Miss Pitstone is out, and I don't know when she will be back."

The artist undid his portfolio, and laid a half-finished sketch—a sketch of Helena's—on the window-sill.

"Will you kindly give her this? I have corrected it—made some notes on the side. Do you think Miss Helena will be likely to be sketching to-morrow?"

"I'm afraid I can't promise for her. She seems to like walking better than anything else just now."

"Yes, she's a splendid walker," said the old man, with a sigh. "I envy her strength. Well, if she wants me, she knows where to find me—just beyond that bend there." He pointed to the river.

"I'll tell her—and I'll give her the sketch. Good-bye."

She watched him heavily cross the foot-bridge to the other side of the river. Her quick pity went with him, for she herself knew well what it meant to be solitary and neglected. He seldom sold a picture, and nobody knew what he lived on. The few lessons he had given Helena had been as a golden gleam in a very grey day. But alack, Helena had soon tired of her lessons, as she had tired of the mile of coveted trout-fishing that Mr. Evans of the farm beyond the oak-wood had pressed upon her—or of the books the young Welsh-speaking curate of the little mountain church near by was so eager to lend her. Through and behind a much gentler manner, the girl's familiar self was to be felt—by Lucy at least—as clearly as before. She was neither to be held nor bound. Attempt to lay any fetter upon her—of hours, or habit—and she was gone; into the heart of the mountains where no one could follow her. Lucy would often compare with it the eager docility of those last weeks at Beechmark.

* * * * *

Helena's walk had taken her through the dripping oak-wood and over the crest of the hill to a ravine beyond, where the river, swollen now by the abundant rains which had made an end of weeks of drought, ran, noisily full, between two steep banks of mossy crag. From the crag, oaks hung over the water, at fantastic angles, holding on, as it seemed, by one foot and springing from the rock itself; while delicate rock plants, and fern fringed every ledge down to the water. A seat on the twisted roots of an overhanging oak, from which, to either side, a little green path, as though marked for pacing, ran along the stream, was one of her favourite haunts. From up-stream a mountain peak now kerchiefed in wisps of sunlit cloud peered in upon her. Above it, a lake of purest blue from which the wind, which had brought them, was now chasing the clouds; and everywhere the glory of the returning sun, striking the oaks to gold, and flinging a chequer of light on the green floor of the wood.

Helena sat down to wait for Peter, who would be sure to find her wherever she hid herself. This spot was dear to her, as those places where life has consciously grown to a nobler stature are dear to men and women. It was here that within twenty-four hours of her last words with Philip Buntingford, she had sat wrestling with something which threatened vital forces in her that her will consciously, desperately, set itself to maintain. Through her whole ripened being, the passion of that inner debate was still echoing; though she knew that the fight was really won. It had run something like this:

"Why am I suffering like this?

"Because I am relaxed—unstrung. Why should I have everything I want—when others go bare? Philip went bare for years. He endured—and suffered. Why not I?

"But it is worse for me—who am young! I have a right to give way to what I feel—to feel it to the utmost.

"That was the doctrine for women before the war—the old-fashioned women. The modern woman is stronger. She is not merely nerves and feeling. She must never let feeling—pain—destroy her will! Everything depends upon her will. If I choose I can put this feeling down. I have no right to it. Philip has done me no wrong. If I yield to it, if it darkens my life, it will be another grief added to those he has already suffered. It shan't darken my life. I will—and can master it. There is so much still to learn, to do, to feel. I must wrench myself free—and go forward. How I chattered to Philip about the modern woman!—and how much older I feel, than I was then! If one can't master oneself, one is a slave—all the same. I didn't know—how could I know?—that the test was so near. If women are to play a greater and grander part in the world, they must be much, much greater in soul, firmer in will.