"Isn't she pretty!—Connie Bledlow?" said Lady Alice enthusiastically. "She's having a great success. Of course other people are much handsomer, but there's something—"

Yes, there was something!—and something which, like an exquisite fluttering bird, had just escaped from Douglas Falloden, and would now, he supposed, forever escape him.

When the quadrille was over he watched her delicate whiteness disappear amid the uniforms, the jewels, and the festoons or roses hanging across the ballroom. The barbaric, overdecorated scene, with all its suggestions of a luxurious and self-confident world, where every one was rich and privileged, or hunting riches and privilege—a world without the smallest foreboding of change, the smallest doubt of its own right to exist—forced upon him by contrast the recollection of the hour he had just spent with Mr. Gregory in his father's dusty dismantled library. He and his were, it seemed, "ruined"—as many people here already guessed. He looked at the full-length Van Dycks on the wall of the Tamworths' ballroom, and thought, not without a grim leap of humour, that he would be acting showman and auctioneer, within a few days perhaps, to his father's possessions of the same kind.

But it was not the loss of money or power that was separating him from Constance Bledlow. He knew her well enough by now to guess that in spite of her youth and her luxurious bringing up, there was that in her which was rapidly shaping a character capable of fighting circumstance, as her heart might bid. If she loved a man she would stand by him. No, it was something known only to her and himself in all those crowded rooms. As soon as he set eyes on her, the vision of Radowitz's bleeding hand and prostrate form had emerged in consciousness—a haunting presence, blurring the many-coloured movements of the ballroom.

And yet it was not that maimed hand, either, which stood between himself and Constance. It was rather the spiritual fact behind the visible—that instinct of fierce, tyrannical cruelty which he had felt as he laid his hands on Radowitz in the Oxford dawn a month ago. He shrank from it now as he thought of it. It blackened and degraded his own image of himself. He remembered something like it years before, when he had joined in the bullying of a small boy at school—a boy who yet afterwards had become his good friend. If there is such a thing as "possession," devilish possession, he had pleaded it on both occasions. Would it, however, have seemed of any great importance to him now, but for Constance Bledlow's horror-struck recoil? All men of strong and vehement temperament—so his own defence might have run—are liable to such gusts of violent, even murderous feeling; and women accept it. But Constance Bledlow, influenced, no doubt, by a pale-blooded sentimentalist like Sorell, had refused to accept it.

"I should be always afraid of you—of your pride and your violence—and love mustn't be afraid. Good-bye!"

He tried to scoff, but the words had burnt into his heart.



CHAPTER XII

It was in the early morning, a few days after her arrival at Scarfedale Manor, the house of her two maiden aunts, that Connie, while all the Scarfedale household was still asleep, took pen and paper and began a letter to Nora Hooper.

On the evening before Connie left Oxford there had been a long and intimate scene between these two. Constance, motherless and sisterless, and with no woman friend to turn to more understanding than Annette, had been surprised in passionate weeping by Nora, the night after the Marmion catastrophe. The tact and devotion of the younger girl had been equal to the situation. She humbly admired Connie, and yet was directly conscious of a strength in herself, in which Connie was perhaps lacking, and which might be useful to her brilliant cousin. At any rate on this occasion she showed so much sweetness, such power, beyond her years, of comforting and understanding, that Connie told her everything, and thenceforward possessed a sister and a confidante. The letter ran as follows:—

* * * * *

"DEAREST NORA,—I have only been at Scarfedale Manor a week, and already I seem to have been living here for months. It is a dear old house, very like the houses one used to draw when one was four years old—a doorway in the middle, with a nice semicircular top, and three windows on either side; two stories above with seven windows each, and a pretty dormered roof, with twisted brick chimneys, and a rookery behind it; also a walled garden, and a green oval grass-plot between it and the road. It seems to me that everywhere you go in England you find these houses, and, I dare say, people like my aunts living in them.

"They are very nice to me, and as different as possible from each other. Aunt Marcia must have been quite good-looking, and since she gave up wearing a rational dress which she patented twenty-five years ago, she has always worn either black silk or black satin, a large black satin hat, rather like the old 'pokes,' with black feathers in winter and white feathers in summer, and a variety of lace scarves—real lace—which she seems to have collected all over the world. Aunt Winifred says that the Unipantaloonicoat'—the name of the patented thing—lost Aunt Marcia all her lovers. They were scared by so much strength of character, and could not make up their minds to tackle her. She gave it up in order to capture the last of them—a dear old general who had adored her—but he shook his head, went off to Malta to think it out, and there died of Malta fever. She considers herself his widow and his portrait adorns her sitting-room. She has a poor opinion of the lower orders, especially of domestic servants. But her own servants don't seem to mind her much. The butler has been here twenty years, and does just what he pleases. The amusing thing is that she considers herself extremely intellectual, because she learnt Latin in her youth—she doesn't remember a word of it now!—because she always read the reviews of papa's books—and because she reads poetry every morning before breakfast. Just now she is wrestling with George Meredith; and she asks me to explain 'Modern Love' to her. I can't make head or tail of it. Nor can she. But when people come to tea she begins to talk about Meredith, and asks them if they don't think him very obscure. And as most people here who come to tea have never heard of him, it keeps up her dignity. All the same, she is a dear old thing—and she put a large case of chocolate in my room before I arrived!

"Aunt Winifred is quite different. Aunt Marcia calls her a 'reactionary,' because she is very high church and great friends with all the clergy. She is a very quiet little thing, short and fair, with a long thin nose and eyes that look you through. Her two great passions are—curates, especially consumptive curates—and animals. There is generally a consumptive curate living the open-air life in the garden. Mercifully the last patient has just left. As for animals, the house is full of stray dogs and tame rabbits and squirrels that run up you and look for nuts in your pocket. There is also a mongoose, who pulled the cloth off the tea-table yesterday and ran away with all the cakes. Aunt Marcia bears it philosophically, but the week before I came there was a crisis. Aunt Winifred met some sheep on the road between here and our little town. She asked where they were going to. And the man with them said he was taking them to the slaughter-house. She was horrified, and she bought them all—there and then! And half an hour later, she appeared here with the sheep, and Aunt Marcia was supposed to put them up in the garden. Well, that was too much, and the aunts had words. What happened to the sheep I don't know. Probably Aunt Winifred has eaten them since without knowing it.

"Dear Nora—I wonder why I write you all these silly things when there is so much else to say—and I know you want to hear it. But it's horribly difficult to begin.—Well, first of all, Mr. Sorell and Otto Radowitz are about three miles from here, in a little vicarage that has a wide lookout upon the moors and a heavenly air. The aunts have found me a horse, and I go there often. Otto is in some ways very much better. He lives an ordinary life, walks a fair amount, and is reading some classics and history with Mr. Sorell, besides endless books of musical theory and biography. You know he passed his first musical exam last May. For the second, which will come off next year, he has to write a composition in five-part harmony for at least five stringed instruments, and he is beginning work for it now. He writes and writes, and his little study at the vicarage is strewn deep in scribbled music-paper. With his left hand and his piano he does wonders, but the poor right hand is in a sling and quite useless, up to now. He reads scores endlessly, and he said to me yesterday that he thought his intellectual understanding of music—his power of grasping it through the eye—of hearing it with the mind—'ditties of no tone!'—had grown since his hand was injured. But the pathetic thing is that the sheer pleasure—the joy and excitement—of his life is gone; those long hours of dreaming and composing with the piano, when he could not only make himself blissfully happy, but give such exquisite pleasure to others.

"He is very quiet and patient now—generally—and quite determined to make a name for himself as a composer. But he seems to me extraordinarily frail. Do you remember that lovely French poem of Sully Prudhomme's I read you one night—'Le Vase Brise'? The vase has had a blow. No one knew of it. But the little crack widens and grows. The water ebbs away—the flowers die. 'Il est brise—n'y touchez pas!' I can see it is just that Mr. Sorell feels about Otto.

"What makes one anxious sometimes, is that he has hours of a kind of fierce absent-mindedness, when his real self seems to be far away—as though in some feverish or ugly dream. He goes away and wanders about by himself. Mr. Sorell does not attempt to follow him, though he is always horribly anxious. And after some hours he comes back, limp and worn out, but quite himself again—as though he had gone through some terrible wrestle and escaped.

"Mr. Sorell gave him, a little while ago, a wonderful new automatic thing—a piano-player, I think they call it. It works with a roll like a musical box and has pedals. But Otto can't do much with it. To get any expression out of it you must use your hands—both hands; and I am afraid it has been more disappointment than joy. But there are rumours of some development—something electric—that plays itself. They say there is an inventor at work in Paris, who is doing something wonderful. I have written to a girl I know at the Embassy to ask her to find out. It might just help him through some weary hours—that's all one can say.

"The relation between him and Mr. Sorell is wonderful. Oh, what an angel Mr. Sorell is! How can any human being, and with no trouble at all apparently, be so unselfish, so self-controlled? What will any woman do who falls in love with him? It won't make any difference that he'll think her so much better than himself—because she'll know the truth. I see no chance for her. My dear Nora, the best men are better than the best women—there! But—take note!—I am not in love with him, though I adore him, and when he disapproves of me, I feel a worm.

"I hear a good deal of the Fallodens, but nobody sees them. Every one shrinks from pestering them with society—not from any bad feeling—but because every one knows by now that they are in hideous difficulties, and doesn't want to intrude. Lady Laura, they say, is very much changed, and Sir Arthur looks terribly ill and broken. Aunt Marcia hears that Douglas Falloden is doing all the business, and impressing the lawyers very much. Oh, I do hope he is helping his father!

"I can't write about him, Nora darling. You would wonder how I can feel the interest in him I do. I know that. But I can't believe, as Otto does, that he is deliberately cruel—a selfish, hard-hearted monster. He has been a spoilt child all his life. But if some great call were made upon him, mightn't it stir up something splendid in him, finer things than those are capable of 'who need no repentance'?

"There—something has splashed on my paper. I have written enough. Now you must tell me of yourselves. How is your father? Does Aunt Ellen like Ryde? I am so delighted to hear that Mr. Pryce is actually coming. Tell him that, of course, I will write to Uncle Langmoor, and Lord Glaramara, whenever he wishes, about that appointment. I am sure something can be done. Give Alice my love. I thought her new photographs charming. And you, darling, are you looking after everybody as usual? I wish I could give you a good hug. Good-bye."

* * * * *

To which Nora replied, a couple of days later—

* * * * *

"Your account of Aunt Marcia and Aunt Winifred amused father tremendously. He thinks, however, that he would like Aunt Marcia better than Aunt Winifred, as he—and I—get more anticlerical every year. But we keep it to ourselves. Mamma and Alice wouldn't understand. Ryde is very full, and mamma and Alice want nothing more than the pier and the sands and the people. Papa and I take long walks along the coast, or across the island. We find a cliff to bask on, or a wood that comes down to the water, and then papa gets out a Greek book and translates to me. Sometimes I listen to the sea, instead of to him, and go to sleep. But he doesn't mind. He is looking better, but work is loading up for him again as soon as we get back to Oxford about a week from now. If only he could get rid of drudgery, and write his best about the things he loves. Nobody knows what a mind he has. He is not only a scholar—he is a poet. He could write things as beautiful as Mr. Pater's, but his life is ground out of him.

"I won't go on writing this—it's no good.

"Herbert Pryce came down yesterday, and has taken mother and Alice out boating to-day. If he doesn't mean to propose to Alice, it is very odd he should take the trouble to come here. But he doesn't say anything definite; he doesn't propose; and her face often makes me furious. His manner to mamma—and to me—is often brusque and disagreeable. It is as though he felt that in marrying Alice—if he is going to marry her—he is rather unfairly burdened with the rest of us. And it is no good shirking the fact that you count for a good deal in the matter. He was delighted with your message, and if you can help him he will propose to Alice. Goodness, fancy marrying such a man!

"As to Mr. Falloden, I don't believe he will ever be anything but hard and tyrannical. I don't believe in conversion and change of heart, and that kind of thing. I don't—I don't! You are not to be taken in, Connie! You are not to fall in love with him again out of pity. If he does lose all his money, and have to work like anybody else, what does it matter? He was as proud as Lucifer—let him fall like Lucifer. You may be sure he won't fall so very far. That kind never does. No, I want him put down. I want him punished. He won't repent—he can't repent—and there was never any one less like a lost sheep in the world.

"After which I think I will say good-night!"

* * * * *

A few days later, Connie, returning from a ramble with one of Lady Winifred's stray dogs along the banks of the Scarfe, found her two aunts at tea in the garden.

"Sit down, my dear Connie," said Lady Marcia, with a preoccupied look. "We have just heard distressing news. The clergy are such gossips!"

The elevation of Aunt Winifred's sharp nose showed her annoyance.

"And you, Marcia, are always so dreadfully unfair to them. You were simply dying for Mr. Latimer to tell you all he knew, and then you abuse him."

"Perfectly true," said Lady Marcia provokingly, "but if he had snubbed me, I should have respected him more."

Whereupon it was explained to Connie that a Mr. Latimer, rector of the Fallodens' family living of Flood Magna, had just been paying a long visit to the two ladies. He was a distant cousin and old crony of theirs, and it was not long before they had persuaded him to pour out all he knew about the Falloden affairs. "They must sell everything!" said Lady Marcia, raising her hands and eyes in protest—"the estates, the house, the pictures—my dear, think of the pictures! The nation of course ought to buy them, but the nation never has a penny. And however much they sell, it will only just clear them. There'll be nothing left but Lady Laura's settlement—and that's only two thousand a year."

"Well, they won't starve," said Aunt Winifred, with a sniff, applying for another piece of tea-cake. "It's no good, Marcia, your trying to stir us up. The Fallodens are not beloved. Nobody will break their hearts—except of course we shall all be sorry for Lady Laura and the children. And it will be horrid to have new people at Flood."

"My dear Connie, it is a pity we haven't been able to take you to Flood," said Lady Marcia to her niece, handing a cup of tea. "You know Douglas, so of course you would have been shown everything. Such pictures! Such lovely old rooms! And then the grounds—the cedars—the old gardens! It really is a glorious place. I can't think why Winifred is so hard-hearted about it!"

Lady Winifred pressed her thin lips together.

"Marcia, excuse me—but you really do talk like a snob. Before I cry over people who have lost their property, I ask myself how they have lost it, and also how they have used it." The little lady drew herself up fiercely.

"We have all got beams in our own eyes," cried Aunt Marcia. "And of course we all know, Winifred, that Sir Arthur never would give you anything for your curates."

"That has nothing to do with it," said Lady Winifred angrily. "I gave Sir Arthur a sacred opportunity—which he refused. That's his affair. But when a man gambles away his estates, neglects his duties and his poor people, wastes his money in riotous living, and teaches his children to think themselves too good for this common world, and then comes to grief—I am not going to whine and whimper about it. Let him take it like a man!"

"So he does," said her sister warmly. "You know Mr. Latimer said so, and also that Douglas was behaving very well."

"What else can he do? I never said he wasn't fond of his father. Well, now let him look after his father."

The two maiden ladies, rather flushed and agitated, faced each other nervously. They had forgotten the presence of their niece. Constance sat in the shade, her beautiful eyes passing intently from one sister to the other, her lips parted. Aunt Marcia, by way of proving to her sister Winifred that she was a callous and unkind creature, began to rake up inconsequently a number of incidents throwing light on the relations of father and son; which Lady Winifred scornfully capped by another series of recollections intended to illustrate the family arrogance, and Douglas Falloden's full share in it. For instance:

Marcia—"I shall never forget that charming scene when Douglas made a hundred, not out, the first day of the Flood cricket week, when he was sixteen. Sir Arthur's face! And don't you remember how he went about half the evening with his arm round the boy's shoulders?"

Winifred—"Yes, and how Douglas hated it! I can see him wriggling now. Do you remember that just a week after that, Douglas broke his hunting-whip beating a labourer's boy, whom he found trespassing in one of the coverts, and how Sir Arthur paid fifty pounds to get him out of the scrape?"

Marcia, indignantly—"Of course that was just a lad's high spirits! I have no doubt the labourer's boy richly deserved it."

Winifred—"Really, Marcia, your tone towards the lower orders! You don't allow a labourer's boy any high spirits!—not you! And I suppose you've quite forgotten that horrid quarrel between the hunt and the farmers which was entirely brought about by Douglas's airs. 'Pay them!—pay them!' he used to say—'what else do the beggars want?' As if money could settle everything! And I remember a farmer's wife telling me how she had complained to Douglas about the damage done by the Flood pheasants in their fields. And he just mocked at her. 'Why don't you send in a bigger bill?' 'But it's not only money, my lady,' she said to me. 'The fields are like your children, and you hate to see them wasted by them great birds—money or no money. But what's the good of talking? Fallodens always best it!'"

Marcia—with the air of one defending the institutions of her country—"Shooting and hunting have to be kept up, Winifred, for the sake of the physique of our class; and it's the physique of our class that maintains the Empire. What do a few fields of corn matter compared with that! And what young man could have done a more touching—a more heroic thing—than—"

Winifred, contemptuously—"What?—Sir Arthur's accident? You always did lose your head about that, Marcia. Nothing much, I consider, in the story. However, we shan't agree, so I'd better go to my choir practice."

When she was out of sight, and Marcia, who was always much agitated by an encounter with her sister, was still angrily fanning herself, Connie laid a hand on her aunt's knee. "What was the story, Aunt Marcia?"

Lady Marcia composed herself. Connie, in a thin black frock, with a shady hat and a tea-rose at her waist, was looking up at the elder lady with a quiet eagerness. Marcia patted the girl's hand.

"Winifred never asked your opinion, my dear!—and I expect you know him a great deal better than either of us."

"I never knew him before this year. That's a very little while. I—I'm sure he's difficult to know. Perhaps he's one of the people—who"—she laughed—"who want keeping."

"That's it!" cried Lady Marcia, delighted. "Of course that's it. It's like a rough fruit that mellows. Anyway I'm not going to damn him for good at twenty-three, like Winifred. Well, Sir Arthur was very badly thrown, coming home from hunting, six years ago now and more, when Douglas was seventeen. It was in the Christmas holidays. They had had a run over Leman Moor and Sir Arthur and Douglas got separated from the rest, and were coming home in the dark through some very lonely roads—or tracks—on the edge of the moor. They came to a place where the track went suddenly into a wood, and a pheasant was startled by the horses, and flew right across Sir Arthur, almost in his face. The horse—it was always said no one but Sir Arthur Falloden could ride it—took fright, bolted, dashed in among the trees, threw Sir Arthur, and made off. When Douglas came up he found his father on the ground, covered with blood, and insensible. There was no one anywhere near. The boy shouted—no one came. It was getting dark and pouring with rain—an awful January night—I remember it well! Douglas tried to lift his father on his own horse, but the horse got restive, and it couldn't be done. If he had ridden back to a farm about a mile away he could have got help. But he thought his father was dying, and he couldn't make up his mind, you see, to leave him. Then—imagine!—he somehow was able—of course he was even then a splendid young fellow, immensely tall and strong for his age—to get Sir Arthur on his back, and to carry him through two fields to a place where he thought there was a cottage. But when he got there, the cottage was empty—no lights—and the door padlocked. He laid his father down under the shelter of the cottage, and called and shouted. Not a sign of help! It was awfully cold—a bitter north wind—blowing great gusts of rain. Nobody knows quite how long they were there, but at last they were found by the vicar of the village near, who was coming home on his bicycle from visiting a sick woman at the farm. He told me that Douglas had taken off his own coat and a knitted waistcoat he wore, and had wrapped his father in them. He was sitting on the ground with his back to the cottage wall, holding Sir Arthur in his arms. The boy himself was weak with cold and misery. The vicar said he should never forget his white face, when he found them with his lamp, and the light shone on them. Douglas was bending over his father, imploring him to speak to him—in the tenderest, sweetest way. Then, of course, when the vicar, Mr. Burton, had got a cart and taken them to the farm, and a carriage had come from Flood with two doctors, and Sir Arthur had begun to recover his senses, Douglas—looking like a ghost—was very soon ordering everybody about in his usual lordly manner. 'He slanged the farmer,' said Mr. Burton, 'for being slow with the cart; he sent me off on errands as though I'd been his groom; and when the doctors came, you'd have thought he was more in charge of the case than they were. They thought him intolerable; so he was. But I made allowances, because I couldn't forget how I had seen them first—the boy's face, and his chattering teeth, and how he spoke to his father. He's spoilt, that lad! He's as proud as Satan. If his father and mother don't look out, he'll give them sore hearts some day. But he can feel!—and—if he could have given his life for his father's that night, he would have done it with joy.'—Well, there it is, Connie!—it's a true story anyway, and why shouldn't we remember the nice things about a young man, as well as the horrid ones?"

"Why not, indeed?" said Connie, her chin on her hands, her eyes bent on the ground.

Lady Marcia was silent a moment, then she said with a tremulous accent that belied her height, her stateliness and her black satin gown:

"You see, Connie, I know more about men than Winifred does. We have had different experiences."

"She's thinking about the General," thought Connie. "Poor old dear!" And she gently touched her aunt's long thin hand.

Lady Marcia sighed.

"One must make allowances for men," she said slowly.

Connie offered no reply, and they sat together a few more minutes in silence. Then Connie rose.

"I told the coachman, Aunt Marcia, I should ride for an hour or so after tea. If I take the Lawley road, does that go anywhere near Flood?"

"It takes you to the top of the moor, and you have a glorious view of the castle and all its woods. Yes, do go that way. You'll see what the poor things have lost. You did like Douglas, didn't you?"

"'Like' is not exactly the word, is it?" said Constance with a little laugh, vexed to feel that she could not keep the colour out of her cheeks. "And he doesn't care whether you like him or not!"

She went away, and her elderly aunt watched her cross the lawn. Lady Marcia looked puzzled. After a few moments' meditation a half light broke on her wrinkled face. "Is it possible? Oh, no!"

It was a rich August evening. In the fields near the broad river the harvest had begun, and the stubbles with their ranged stocks alternated with golden stretches still untouched. The air was full of voices—the primal sounds of earth, and man's food-gathering; calling reapers, clattering carts, playing children. And on the moors that closed the valley there were splashes and streaks of rose colour, where the heather spread under the flecked evening sky.

Constance rode in a passion of thought. "On the other side of that moor—five miles away—there he is! What is he doing now—at this moment? What is he thinking of?"

Presently the road bent upward, and she followed it, soothed by the quiet movement of her horse and by the evening air. She climbed and climbed, till the upland farms fell behind, and the road came out upon the open moor. The distance beyond began to show—purple woods in the evening shadow, dim valleys among them, and wide grassy stretches. A little more, and she was on the crest. The road ran before her—westward—a broad bare whiteness through the sun-steeped heather. And, to the north, a wide valley, where wood and farm and pasture had been all fashioned by the labour of generations into one proud setting for the building in its midst. Flood Castle rose on the green bottom of the valley, a mass of mellowed wall and roof and tower, surrounded by its stately lawns and terraces, and girdled by its wide "chase," of alternating wood and glade—as though wrought into the landscape by the care of generations, and breathing history. A stream, fired with the sunset, ran in loops and windings through the park, and all around the hills rose and fell, clothed with dark hanging woods.



Constance held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon the castle and its woods. Her mind, as she looked, was one riot of excuse for Douglas Falloden. She knew very well—her own father had been an instance of it—that a man can be rich and well-born, and still remain modest and kind. But—but—"How hardly shall they that have riches—!"

She moved slowly on, thinking and gazing, till she had gone much further than she intended, and the light had begun to fail. She would certainly be late for dinner. Looking round her for her bearings, she saw on the Scarfedale side of the hill, about three miles away, what she took to be her aunts' house. Surely there must be a short cut to it. Yes! there was a narrow road to be seen, winding down the hill, and across the valley, which must certainly shorten the distance. And almost immediately she found herself at the entrance to it, where it abutted on the moor; and a signpost showed the name of Hilkley, her aunts' village. She took the road at once, and trotted briskly along, as the twilight deepened.

A gate ahead! Well, never mind. The horse was quiet; she could easily manage any ordinary latch.

But the gate was difficult, and she fumbled at, it. Again and again, she brought up her horse, only to fail. And the cob began to get nervous and jump about—to rear a little. Whenever she stooped towards the gate, it would swerve violently, and each unsuccessful attempt made it more restive. She began to get nervous herself.

"How abominable! Must I go back? Suppose I get off? But if I do, can I get on again?" She looked round her for a log or a stone.

Who was that approaching? For suddenly she saw a horse and rider coming from the Hilkley direction towards the gate. A moment—then through the dusk she recognised the rider; and agitation—suffocating, overwhelming—laid hold upon her.

A sharp movement on the part of the horseman checked his horse. Falloden pulled up in amazement on the further side of the gate.

"You?—Lady Constance!"

She controlled herself, with a great effort.

"How do you do? My horse shies at the gate. He's so tiresome—I was just thinking of getting off. It will be most kind if you will let me through."

She drew aside, quieting and patting the cob, while he opened the gate. Then she passed through and paused, looking back.

"Thank you very much. Are there any more gates?"

"Two more I am afraid," he said formally, as he turned and joined her. "Will you allow me to open them for you?"

"It would be very good of you," she faltered, not knowing how to refuse, or what to say.

They walked their horses side by side, through the gathering darkness. An embarrassed and thrilling silence reigned between them, till at last he said: "You are staying at Scarfedale—with your aunts?"

"Yes."

"I heard you were there. They are only five miles from us."

She said nothing. But she seemed to realise, through every nerve, the suppressed excitement of the man beside her.

Another couple of minutes passed. Then he said abruptly:

"I should like to know that you read my last letter to you—only that! I of course don't ask for—for any comments upon it."

"Yes, I received it. I read it."

He waited a little, but she said no more. He sharply realised his disappointment, and its inconsequence. The horses slowly descended the long hill. Falloden opened another gate, with the hurried remark that there was yet one more. Meanwhile he saw Connie's slender body, her beautiful loosened hair and black riding-hat outlined against the still glowing sky behind. Her face, turned towards the advancing dusk, he could hardly see. But the small hand in its riding-glove, so close to him, haunted his senses. One movement, and he could have crushed it in his.

Far away the last gate came into sight. His bitterness and pain broke out.

"I can't imagine why you should feel any interest in my affairs," he said, in his stiffest manner, "but you kindly allowed me to talk to you sometimes about my people. You know, I presume, what everybody knows, that we shall soon be leaving Flood, and selling the estates."

"I know." The girl's voice was low and soft. "I am awfully, awfully sorry!"

"Thank you. It doesn't of course matter for me. I can make my own life. But for my father—it is hard. I should like you to know"—he spoke with growing agitation—"that when we met—at Cannes—and at Oxford—I had no knowledge—no idea—of what was happening."

She raised her head suddenly, impetuously.

"I don't know why you say that!"

He saw instantly that his wounded pride had betrayed him into a blunder—that without meaning it, he had seemed to suggest that she would have treated him differently, if she had known he was not a rich man.

"It was a stupid thing to say. Please consider it unsaid."

The silence deepened, till she broke it again—

"I see Mr. Radowitz sometimes. Won't you like to know that he is composing a symphony for his degree? He is always working at it. It makes him happy—at least—contented."

"Yes, I am glad. But nothing can ever make up to him. I know that."

"No—nothing," she admitted sadly.

"Or to me!"

Constance started. They had reached the last gate.

Falloden threw himself off his horse to open it and as she rode through, she looked down into his face. Its proud regularity of feature, its rich colour, its brilliance, seemed to her all blurred and clouded. A flashing insight showed her the valley of distress and humiliation through which this man had been passing. His bitter look, at once of challenge and renunciation, set her trembling; she felt herself all weakness; and suddenly the woman in her—dumbly, unguessed—held out its arms.

But he knew nothing of it. Rather her attitude seemed to him one of embarrassment—even of hauteur. It was suddenly intolerable to him to seem to be asking for her pity. He raised his hat, coldly gave her a few directions as to her road home, and closed the gate behind her. She bowed and in another minute he was cantering away from her, towards the sunset.

Connie went on blindly, the reins on her horse's neck, the passionate tears dropping on her hands.



CHAPTER XIII

Douglas Falloden rode home rapidly after parting from Connie. Passion, impatience, bitter regret consumed him. He suffered, and could not endure to suffer. That life, which had grown up with him as a flattering and obsequious friend, obeying all his whims, yielding to all his desires, should now have turned upon him in this traitorous way, inflicting such monstrous reprisals and rebuffs, roused in him the astonishment and resentment natural to such a temperament.

He, too, drew rein for a moment at the spot where Connie had looked out over Flood Castle and its valley. The beautiful familiar sight produced in him now only a mingling of pain and irritation. The horrid thing was settled, decided. There was no avoiding ruin, or saving his inheritance. Then why these long delays, these endless discomforts and humiliations? The lawyers prolonged things because it paid them to do so; and his poor father wavered and hesitated from day to day, because physically and morally he was breaking up. If only his father and mother would have cleared out of Flood at once—they were spending money they could not possibly afford in keeping it up—and had left him, Douglas, to do the odious things, pay the creditors, sell the place, and sweep up the whole vast mess, with the help of the lawyers, it would have been infinitely best. His own will felt itself strong and determined enough for any such task. But Sir Arthur, in his strange, broken state, could not be brought to make decisions, and would often, after days of gloom and depression, pass into a fool's mood, when he seemed for the moment to forget and ignore the whole tragedy. Since he and Douglas had agreed with the trustees to sell the pictures, that sheer bankruptcy might just be escaped, Sir Arthur had been extravagantly cheerful. Why not have their usual shooting-party after all?—one last fling before the end! He supposed he should end his days in a suburban villa, but till they left Flood the flag should be kept flying.

During all this time of tension indeed, he was a great trial to his son. Douglas's quick and proud intelligence was amazed to find his father so weak and so incompetent under misfortune. All his boyish life he had looked up to the slender, handsome man, whom he himself so much resembled, on a solider, more substantial scale, as the most indulgent of fathers, the princeliest of hosts, the best of shots and riders, chief indeed of the Falloden clan and all its glories, who, like other monarchs, could do no wrong.

But now the glamour which must always attend the central figure of such a scene withered at the touch of poverty and misfortune. And, in its absence, Douglas found himself dealing with an enthusiastic, vain, self-confident being, who had ruined himself and his son by speculations, often so childishly foolish that Douglas could not think of them without rage. Intellectually, he could only despise and condemn his father.

Yet the old bond held. Till he met Constance Bledlow, he had cared only for his own people, and among them, preeminently, for his father. In this feeling, family pride and natural affection met together. The family pride had been sorely shaken, the affection, steeped in a painful, astonished pity, remained. For the first time in his life Douglas had been sleeping badly. Interminable dreams pursued him, in which the scene in Marmion quad, his last walk with Constance along the Cherwell, and the family crash, were all intermingled, with the fatuity natural to dreams. And his wakings from them were almost equally haunted by the figures of Constance and Radowitz, and by a miserable yearning over his father, which no one who saw his hard, indifferent bearing during the day could possible have guessed. "Poor—poor old fellow!"—he had once or twice raised himself from his bed in the early morning, as though answering this cry in his ears, only to find that he himself had uttered it.

He had told his people nothing of Constance Bledlow beyond the bare fact of his acquaintance with her, first at Cannes, and then at Oxford. And they knew nothing of the Radowitz incident. Very few people indeed were aware of the true history of that night which had marred an artist's life. The college authorities had been painfully stirred by the reports which had reached them; but Radowitz himself had written to the Head maintaining that the whole thing was an accident and a frolic, and insisting that no public or official notice should be taken of it, a fact which had not prevented the Head from writing severely to Falloden, Meyrick, and Robertson, or the fellows of the college from holding a college meeting, even in the long vacation, to discuss what measures should be taken in the October term to put down and stamp out ragging.

Falloden had replied to the Head's letter expressing his "profound regret" for the accident to Otto Radowitz, and declaring that nobody in the row had the smallest intention of doing him any bodily harm.

What indeed had anybody but himself to do with his own malignant and murderous impulse towards Radowitz? It had had no casual connection whatever with the accident itself. And who but he—and Constance Bledlow—was entitled to know that, while the others were actuated by nothing but the usual motives of a college rag, quickened by too much supping, he himself had been impelled by a mad jealousy of Radowitz, and a longing to humiliate one who had humiliated him? All the same he hated himself now for what he had said to Constance on their last walk. It had been a mean and monstrous attempt to shift the blame from his own shoulders to hers; and his sense of honour turned from the recollection of it in disgust.

How pale she had looked, beside that gate, in the evening light—how heavy-eyed! No doubt she was seeing Radowitz constantly, and grieving over him; blaming herself, indeed, as he, Falloden, had actually invited her to do. With fresh poignancy, he felt himself an outcast from her company. No doubt they sometimes talked of him—his bitter pride guessed how!—she, and Sorell, and Radowitz together. Was Sorell winning her? He had every chance. Falloden, in his sober senses, knew perfectly well that she was not in love with Radowitz; though no one could say what pity might do with a girl so sensitive and sympathetic.

Well, it was all over!—no good thinking about it. He confessed to himself that his whole relation to Constance Bledlow had been one blunder from beginning to end. His own arrogance and self-confidence with regard to her, appeared to him, as he looked back upon them, not so much a fault as an absurdity. In all his dealings with her he had been a conceited fool, and he had lost her. "But I had to be ruined to find it out!" he thought, capable at last of some ironic reflection on himself.

He set his horse to a gallop along the moorland turf. Let him get home, and do his dreary tasks in that great house which was already becoming strange to him; which, in a sense, he was now eager to see the last of. On the morrow, the possible buyer of the pictures—who, by the way, was not an American at all, but a German shipping millionaire from Bremen—was coming down, with an "expert." Hang the expert! Falloden, who was to deal with the business, promised himself not to be intimidated by him, or his like; and amid his general distress and depression, his natural pugnacity took pleasure in the thought of wrestling with the pair.

When he rode up to the Flood gateway everything appeared as usual. The great lawns in front of the house were as immaculately kept as ever, and along the shrubberies which bordered the park there were gardeners still at work pegging down a broad edge of crimson rambler roses, which seemed to hold the sunset. Falloden observed them. "Who's paying for them?" he thought. At the front door two footmen received him; the stately head butler stood with a detached air in the background.

"Sir Arthur's put off dinner half an hour, sir. He's in the library."

Douglas went in search of his father. He found him smoking and reading a novel, apparently half asleep.

"You're very late, Duggy. Never mind. We've put off dinner."

"I found Sprague had a great deal to say."

Sprague was the subagent living on the further edge of the estate. Douglas had spent the day with him, going into the recent valuation of an important group of farms.

"I dare say," said Sir Arthur, lying back in his armchair. "I'm afraid I don't want to hear it."

Douglas sat down opposite his father. He was dusty and tired, and there were deep pits tinder his eyes.

"It will make a difference of a good many thousands to us, father, if that valuation is correct," he said shortly.

"Will it? I can't help it. I can't go into it. I can't keep the facts and figures in my head, Duggy. I've done too much of them this last ten years. My brain gives up. But you've got a splendid head, Duggy—wonderful for your age. I leave it to you, my son. Do the best you can."

Douglas looked at his father a moment in silence. Sir Arthur was sitting near the window, and had just turned on an electric light beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father's attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared. This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent. Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great wealth by adventures all over the world, and latterly in his frantic efforts to escape the consequences of these adventures, had rapidly made an old man of him. The waste and pity—and at the same time the irreparableness of it all—sent a shock, intolerably chill and dreary, through the son's consciousness. He was too young to bear it patiently. He hastily shook it off.

"Those picture chaps are coming to-morrow," he said, as he got up, meaning to go and dress.

Sir Arthur put his hands behind his head, and didn't reply immediately. He was looking at a picture on the panelled wall opposite, on which the lingering western glow still shone through the mullioned window on his right. It was an enchanting Romney—a young woman in a black dress holding a spaniel in her arms. The picture breathed a distinction, a dignity beyond the reach of Romney's ordinary mood. It represented Sir Arthur's great-grandmother, on his father's side, a famous Irish beauty of the day.

"Wonder what they'll give me for that," he Said quietly, pointing to it. "My father always said it was the pick. You remember the story that she—my great-grandmother—once came across Lady Hamilton in Romney's studio, and Emma Hamilton told Romney afterwards that at last he'd found a sitter handsomer than herself. It's a winner. You inherit her eyes, Douglas, and her colour. What's it worth?"

"Twenty thousand perhaps." Douglas's voice had the cock-sureness that goes with new knowledge. "I've been looking into some of the recent prices."

"Twenty thousand!" said Sir Arthur, musing. "And Romney got seventy-five for it, I believe—I have the receipt somewhere. I shall miss that picture. What shall I get for it? A few shabby receipts—for nothing. My creditors will get something out of her—mercifully. But as for me—I might as well have cut her into strips. She looks annoyed—as though she knew I'd thrown her away. I believe she was a vixen."

"I must go and change, father," said Douglas.

"Yes, yes, dear boy, go and change. Douglas, you think there'll be a few thousands over, don't you, besides your mother's settlement, when it's all done?"

"Precious few," said Douglas, pausing on his way to the door. "Don't count upon anything, father. If we do well to-morrow, there may be something."

"Four or five thousand?—ten, even? You know, Duggy, many men have built up fortunes again on no more. A few weeks ago I had all sorts of ideas."

"That's no good," said Douglas, with emphasis. "For God's sake, father, don't begin again."

Sir Arthur nodded silently, and Douglas left the room.

His father remained sitting where his son had left him, his fingers drumming absently on the arms of his chair, his half-shut eyes wandering over the splendid garden outside, with its statues and fountains, and its masses of roses, all fused in the late evening glow.

The door opened softly. His wife came in.

Lady Laura had lost her old careless good humour. Her fair complexion had changed for the worse; there were lines in her white forehead, and all her movements had grown nervous and irritable. But her expression as she stood by her husband was one of anxious though rather childish affection.

"How are you, Arthur? Did you get a nap?"

"A beauty!" said her husband, smiling at her, and taking her hand. "I dreamt about Raby, and the first time I saw you there in the old Duke's day. What a pretty thing you were, Laura!—like a monthly rose, all pink."

He patted her hand; Lady Laura shrugged her shoulders rather pettishly.

"It's no good thinking about that now.... You're not really going to have a shooting-party, Arthur? I do wish you wouldn't!"

"But of course I am!" said her husband, raising himself with alacrity. "The grouse must be shot, and the estate is not sold yet! I've asked young Meyrick, and Lord Charles, and Robert Vere. You can ask the Charlevilles, dear, and if my lady doesn't come I shan't break my heart. Then there are five or six of the neighbours of course. And no whining and whimpering! The last shoot at Flood shall be a good one! The keeper tells me the birds are splendid!"

Lady Laura's lips trembled.

"You forget what Duggy and I shall be feeling all the time, Arthur. It's very hard on us."

"No—nonsense!" The voice was good-humouredly impatient. "Take it calmly, dear. What do places matter? Come to the Andes with me. Duggy must work for his fellowship; Nelly can stay with some of our relations; and we can send the children to school. Or what do you say to a winter in California? Let's have a second honeymoon—see something of the world before we die. This English country gentleman business ties one terribly. Life in one's own house is so jolly one doesn't want anything else. But now, if we're going to be uprooted, let's enjoy it!"

"Enjoy it!" repeated his wife bitterly. "How can you say such things, Arthur?"

She walked to the window, and stood looking out at the garden with its grandiose backing of hill and climbing wood, and the strong broken masses of the cedar trees—the oldest it was said in England—which flanked it on either side. Lady Laura was, in truth, only just beginning to realise their misfortunes. It had seemed to her impossible that such wealth as theirs should positively give out; that there should be nothing left but her miserable two thousand a year; that something should not turn up to save them from this preposterous necessity of leaving Flood. When Douglas came home, she had thrown herself on her clever son, confident that he would find a way out, and his sombre verdict on the hopelessness of the situation had filled her with terror. How could they live with nothing but the London house to call their own? How could they? Why couldn't they sell off the land, and keep the house and the park? Then they would still be the Fallodens of Flood. It was stupid—simply stupid—to be giving up everything like this.

So day by day she wearied her husband and son by her lamentations, which were like those of some petted animal in distress. And every now and then she had moments of shrinking terror—of foreboding—fearing she knew not what. Her husband seemed to her changed. Why wouldn't he take her advice? Why wouldn't Douglas listen to her? If only her father had been alive, or her only brother, they could have helped her. But she had nobody—nobody—and Arthur and Douglas would do this horrible thing.

Her husband watched her, half smiling—his shrunken face flushed, his eyes full of a curious excitement. She had grown stout in the last five years, poor Laura!—she had lost her youth before the crash came. But she was still very pleasant to look upon, with her plentiful fair hair, and her pretty mouth—her instinct for beautiful dress—and her soft appealing manner. He suddenly envisaged her in black—with a plain white collar and cuffs, and something white on her hair. Then vehemently shaking off his thought he rose and went to her.

"Dear—didn't Duggy want you to ask somebody for the shoot? I thought I heard him mention somebody?'

"That was ages ago. He doesn't want anybody asked now," said Lady Laura resentfully. "He can't understand why you want a party."

"I thought he said something about Lady Constance Bledlow?"

"That was in June!" cried Lady Laura. "He certainly wouldn't let me ask her, as things are."

"Have you any idea whether he may have wanted to marry her?"

"He was very much taken with her. But how can he think about marrying, Arthur? You do say the strangest things. And after Dagnall's behaviour too."

"Raison de plus! That girl has money, my dear, and will have more, when the old aunts depart this life. If you want Duggy still to go into Parliament, and to be able to do anything for the younger ones, you'll keep an eye on her."

Lady Laura, however, was too depressed to welcome the subject. The gong rang for dinner, and as they were leaving the room, Sir Arthur said—

"There are two men coming down to-morrow to see the pictures, Laura. If I were you, I should keep out of the way."

She gave him a startled look. But they were already on the threshold of the dining-room, where a butler and two footmen waited. The husband and wife took their places opposite each other in the stately panelled room, which contained six famous pictures. Over the mantelpiece was a half-length Gainsborough, one of the loveliest portraits in the world, a miracle of shining colour and languid grace, the almond eyes with their intensely black pupils and black eyebrows looking down, as it seemed, contemptuously upon this after generation, so incurably lacking in its own supreme refinement. Opposite Lady Laura was a full-length Van Dyck of the Genoese period, a mother in stiff brocade and ruff, with an adorable child at her knee; and behind her chair was the great Titian of the house, a man in armour, subtle and ruthless as the age which bred him, his hawk's eye brooding on battles past, and battles to come, while behind him stretched the Venetian lagoon, covered dimly with the fleet of the great republic which had employed him. Facing the Gainsborough hung one of Cuyp's few masterpieces—a mass of shipping on the Scheldt, with Dordrecht in the background. For play and interplay of everything that delights the eye—light and distance, transparent water, and hovering clouds, the lustrous brown of fishing boats, the beauty of patched sails and fluttering flags—for both literary and historic suggestion, Dutch art had never done better. Impressionists and post-impressionists came down occasionally to stay at Flood—for Sir Arthur liked to play Maecenas—and were allowed to deal quite frankly with the pictures, as they wandered round the room at dessert, cigarette in hand, pointing out the absurdities of the Cuyp and the Titian. Their host, who knew that he possessed in that room what the collectors of two continents desired, who felt them buzzing outside like wasps against a closed window, took a special pleasure in the scoffs of the advanced crew. They supplied an agreeable acid amid a general adulation that bored him.

To-night the presence of the pictures merely increased the excitement which was the background of his mind. He talked about them a good deal at dinner, wondering secretly all the time, what it would be like to do without them—without Flood—without his old butler there—without everything.

Douglas came down late, and was very silent and irresponsive. He too was morbidly conscious of the pictures, though he wished his father wouldn't talk about them. He was conscious of everything that meant money—of his mother's pearls for instance, which she wore every evening without thinking about them. If he did well with the pictures on the morrow she might, perhaps, justly keep them, as a dowry for Nelly. But if not—He found himself secretly watching his mother, wondering how she would take it all when she really understood—what sort of person she would turn out to be in the new life to which they were all helplessly tending.

After dinner, he followed his father into the smoking room.

"Where is the catalogue of the pictures, father?"

"In the library, Duggy, to the right hand of the fire-place. I paid a fellow a very handsome sum for making it—a fellow who knew a lot—a real expert. But, of course, when we published it, all the other experts tore it to pieces."

"If I bring it, will you go through it with me?"

Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't think I will, Duggy. The catalogue—there are a great many marginal notes on it which the published copies haven't got—will tell you all I know about them, and a great deal more. And you'll find a loose paper at the beginning, on which I've noted down the prices people have offered me for them from time to time. Like their impudence, I used to think! I leave it to you, old boy. I know it's a great responsibility for a young fellow like you. But the fact is—I'm pumped. Besides, when they make their offer, we can talk it over. I think I'll go and play a game of backgammon with your mother."

He threw away his cigar, and Douglas, angry at what seemed to him his father's shirking, stood stiffly aside to let him pass. Sir Arthur opened the door. He seemed to walk uncertainly, and he stooped a great deal. From the hall outside, he looked back at his son.

"I think I shall see M'Clintock next time I'm in town, Duggy. I've had some queer pains across my chest lately."

"Indigestion?" said Douglas. His tone was casual.

"Perhaps. Oh, they're nothing. But it's best to take things in time."

He walked away, leaving his son in a state of seething irritation. Extraordinary that a man could think of trumpery ailments at such a time! It was unlike his father too, whose personal fitness and soundness, whether on the moors, in the hunting field, or in any other sort of test, had always been triumphantly assumed by his family, as part of the general brilliance of Sir Arthur's role in life.

Douglas sombrely set himself to study the picture catalogue, and sat smoking and making notes till nearly midnight. Having by that time accumulated a number of queries to which answers were required, he went in search of his father. He found him in the drawing-room, still playing backgammon with Lady Laura.

"Oh Duggy, I'm so tired!" cried his mother plaintively, as soon as he appeared. "And your father will go on. Do come and take my place."

Sir Arthur rose.

"No, no, dear—we've had enough. Many thanks. If you only understood its points, backgammon is really an excellent game. Well, Duggy, ready to go to bed?"

"When I've asked you a few questions, father."

Lady Laura escaped, having first kissed her son with tearful eyes. Sir Arthur checked a yawn, and tried to answer Douglas's enquiries. But very soon he declared that he had no more to say, and couldn't keep awake.

Douglas watched him mounting the famous staircase of the house, with its marvellous rampe, bought under the Bourbon Restoration from one of the historic chateaux of France; and, suddenly, the young man felt his heart gripped. Was that shrunken, stooping figure really his father? Of course they must have M'Clintock at once—and get him away—to Scotland or abroad.

* * * * *

"The two gentlemen are in the red drawing-room, sir!" Douglas and his father were sitting together in the library, after lunch, on the following afternoon, when the butler entered.

"Damn them!" said Sir Arthur under his breath. Then he got up, smiling, as the servant disappeared. "Well, Duggy, now's your chance. I'm a brute not to come and help you, my boy. But I've made such a mess of driving the family coach, you'd really better take a turn. I shall go out for an hour. Then you can come and report to me."

Douglas went into the red drawing-room, one of the suite of rooms dating from the early seventeenth century which occupied the western front of the house. As he entered, he saw two men at the farther end closely examining a large Constable, of the latest "palette-knife" period, which hung to the left of the fire-place. One of the men was short, very stout, with a fringe of grey hair round his bald head, a pair of very shrewd and sparkling black eyes, a thick nose, full lips, and a double chin. He wore spectacles, and was using in addition, a magnifying glass with which he was examining the picture. Beside him stood a thin, slightly-bearded man, cadaverous in colour, who, with his hands in his pockets, was holding forth in a nonchalant, rather patronising voice.

Both of them turned at Douglas's entrance, surveying the son of the house with an evident and eager curiosity.

"You are, I suppose, Mr. Douglas Falloden?" said the short man, speaking perfect English, though with a slight German accent. "Your father is not able to see us?"

"My father will be pleased to see you, when you have been the round of the pictures," said Douglas stiffly. "He deputes me to show you what we have."

The short man laughed.

"I expect we know what you have almost as well as you. Let me introduce Mr. Miklos."

Douglas bowed, so did the younger man. He was, as Douglas already knew, a Hungarian by birth, formerly an official in one of the museums of Budapest, then at Munich, and now an "expert" at large, greatly in demand as the adviser of wealthy men entering the field of art collecting, and prepared to pay almost anything for success in one of the most difficult and fascinating chasses that exist.

"I see you have given this room almost entirely to English pictures," said Mr. Miklos politely. "A fine Constable!"—he pointed to the picture they had just been considering—"but not, I think, entirely by the master?"



"My great-grandfather bought it from Constable himself," said Douglas. "It has never been disputed by any one."

Mr. Miklos did not reply, but he shook his head with a slight smile, and walked away towards a Turner, a fine landscape of the middle period, hanging close to the Constable. He peered into it short-sightedly, with his strong glasses.

"A pity that it has been so badly relined," he said presently, to Douglas, pointing to it.

"You think so? Its condition is generally thought to be excellent. My father was offered eight thousand for it last year by the Berlin Museum."

Douglas was now apparently quite at his ease. With his thumbs in the armholes of his white waistcoat, he strolled along beside the two buyers, holding his own with both of them, thanks to his careful study of the materials for the history of the collection possessed by his father. The elder man, a Bremen ship-owner,—one Wilhelm Schwarz—who had lately made a rapid and enormous fortune out of the Argentine trade, and whose chief personal ambition it now was to beat the New York and Paris collectors, in the great picture game, whatever it might cost, was presently forced to take some notice of the handsome curly-headed youth in the perfectly fitting blue serge suit, whose appearance as the vendor, or the vendor's agent, had seemed to him, at first, merely one more instance of English aristocratic stupidity.

As a matter of fact, Herr Schwarz was simply dazzled by the contents of Flood Castle. He had never dreamt that such virgin treasures still existed in this old England, till Miklos, instructed by the Falloden lawyer, had brought the list of the pictures to his hotel, a few days before this visit. And now he found it extremely difficult to conceal his excitement and delight, or to preserve, in the presence of this very sharp-eyed young heir, the proper "don't care" attitude of the buyer. He presently left the "running down" business almost entirely to Miklos, being occupied in silent and feverish speculations as to how much he could afford to spend, and a passion of covetous fear lest somehow A——, or Z——, or K——, the leading collectors of the moment, should even yet forestall him, early and "exclusive" as Miklos assured him their information had been.

They passed along through the drawing-rooms, and the whole wonderful series of family portraits, Reynolds', Lawrences, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Hoppners, looked down, unconscious of their doom, upon the invaders, and on the son of the house, so apparently unconcerned. But Douglas was very far from unconcerned. He had no artistic gift, and he had never felt or pretended any special interest in the pictures. They were part of Flood, and Flood was the inseparable adjunct of the Falloden race. When his father had first mooted the sale of them, Douglas had assented without much difficulty. If other things went, why not they?

But now that he was in the thick of the business, he found, all in a moment, that he had to set his teeth to see it through. A smarting sense of loss—loss hateful and irreparable, cutting away both the past and the future—burnt deep into his mind, as he followed in the track of the sallow and depreciatory Miklos or watched the podgy figure of Herr Schwarz, running from side to side as picture after picture caught his eye. The wincing salesman saw himself as another Charles Surface; but now that the predicament was his own it was no longer amusing. These fair faces, these mothers and babies of his own blood, these stalwart men, fighters by sea and land, these grave thinkers and churchmen, they thronged about him transformed, become suddenly alien and hostile, a crowd of threatening ghosts, the outraged witnesses of their own humiliation. "For what are you selling us?"—they seemed to say. "Because some one, who was already overfed, must needs grab at a larger mess of pottage—and we must pay! Unkind! degenerate!"

Presently, after the English drawing-rooms, and the library, with its one Romney, came the French room, with its precious Watteaus, its Latours, its two brilliant Nattiers. And here Herr Schwarz's coolness fairly deserted him. He gave little shrieks of pleasure, which brought a frown to the face of his companion, who was anxious to point out that a great deal of the Watteau was certainly pupil-work, that the Latours were not altogether "convincing" and the Nattiers though extremely pretty, "superficial." But Herr Schwarz brushed him aside.

"Nein, nein, lieber freund! Dat Nattier is as fine as anything at Potsdam. Dat I must have!" And he gazed in ecstasy at the opulent shoulders, the rounded forms, and gorgeous jewelled dress of an unrivalled Madame de Pompadour, which had belonged to her brother, the Marquis de Marigny.

"You will have all or nothing, my good sir!" thought Falloden, and bided his time.

Meanwhile Miklos, perceiving that his patron was irretrievably landed and considering that his own "expert" dignity had been sufficiently saved, relaxed into enthusiasm and small talk. Only in the later Italian rooms did his critical claws again allow themselves to scratch. A small Leonardo, the treasure of the house, which had been examined and written about by every European student of Milanese art for half a century, was suavely pronounced—

"A Da Predis, of course, but a very nice one!" A Bellini became a Rondinelli; and the names of a dozen obscure, and lately discovered painters, freely applied to the Tintorets, Mantegnas and Cimas on the walls, produced such an effect on Herr Schwarz that he sat down open-mouthed on the central ottoman, staring first at the pictures and then at the speaker; not knowing whether to believe or to doubt. Falloden stood a little apart, listening, a smile on his handsome mouth.

"We should know nothing about Rondinelli," said Miklos at last, sweetly—"but for the great Bode—"

"Ach, Bode!" said Herr Schwarz, nodding his head in complacent recognition at the name of the already famous assistant-director of the Berlin Museum.

Falloden laughed.

"Dr. Bode was here last year. He told my father he thought the Bellini was one of the finest in existence."

Miklos changed countenance slightly.

"Bode perhaps is a trifle credulous," he said in an offended tone.

But he went back again to the Bellini and examined it closely. Falloden, without waiting for his second thoughts, took Herr Schwarz into the dining-room.

At the sight of the six masterpieces hanging on its walls, the Bremen ship-owner again lost his head. What miraculous good-fortune had brought him, ahead of all his rivals, into this still unravaged hive? He ran from side to side,—he grew red, perspiring, inarticulate. At last he sank down on a chair in front of the Titian, and when Miklos approached, delicately suggesting that the picture, though certainly fine, showed traces of one of the later pupils, possibly Molari, in certain parts, Herr Schwarz waved him aside.

"Nein, nein!—Hold your tongue, my dear sir! Here must I judge for myself."

Then looking up to Falloden who stood beside him, smiling, almost reconciled to the vulgar, greedy little man by his collapse, he said abruptly—

"How much, Mr. Falloden, for your father's collection?"

"You desire to buy the whole of it?" said Falloden coolly.

"I desire to buy everything that I have seen," said Herr Schwarz, breathing quickly. "Your solicitors gave me a list of sixty-five pictures. No, no, Miklos, go away!"—he waved his expert aside impatiently.

"Those were the pictures on the ground floor," said Falloden. "You have seen them all. You had better make your offer in writing, and I will take it to my father."

He fetched pen and paper from a side-table and put them before the excited German. Herr Schwarz wrinkled his face in profound meditation. His eyes almost disappeared behind his spectacles, then emerged sparkling.

He wrote some figures on a piece of paper, and handed it to Douglas.

Douglas laughed drily, and returned it.

"You will hardly expect me to give my father the trouble of considering that."

Herr Schwarz puffed and blowed. He got up, and walked about excitedly. He lit a cigarette, Falloden politely helping him. Miklos advanced again.

"I have, myself, made a very careful estimate—" he began, insinuatingly.

"No, no, Miklos,—go away!—go away!" repeated Schwarz impatiently, almost walking over him. Miklos retreated sulkily.

Schwarz took up the paper of figures, made an alteration, and handed it to Falloden.

"It is madness," he said—"sheer madness. But I have in me something of the poet—the Crusader."

Falloden's look of slightly sarcastic amusement, as the little man breathlessly examined his countenance, threw the buyer into despair. Douglas put down the paper.

"We gave you the first chance, Herr Schwarz. As you know, nobody is yet aware of our intentions to sell. But I shall advise my father to-night to let one or two of the dealers know."

"Ach, lieber Gott!" said Herr Schwarz, and walking away to the window, he stood looking into the rose-garden outside, making a curious whistling sound with his prominent lips, expressive, evidently, of extreme agitation.

Falloden lit another cigarette, and offered one to Miklos.

At the end of two or three minutes, Schwarz again amended the figures on the scrap of paper, and handed it sombrely to Falloden.

"Dat is my last word."

Falloden glanced at it, and carelessly said—

"On that I will consult my father."

He left the room.

Schwarz and Miklos looked at each other.

"What airs these English aristocrats give themselves," said the Hungarian angrily—"even when they are beggars, like this young man!"

Schwarz stood frowning, his hands in his pockets, legs apart. His agitation was calming down, and his more prudent mind already half regretted his impetuosity.

"Some day—we shall teach them a lesson!" he said, under his breath, his eyes wandering over the rose-garden and the deer-park beyond. The rapidly growing docks of Bremen and Hamburg, their crowded shipping, the mounting tide of their business, came flashing into his mind—ran through it in a series of images. This England, with her stored wealth, and her command of the seas—must she always stand between Germany and her desires? He found himself at once admiring and detesting the English scene on which he looked. That so much good German money should have to go into English pockets for these ill-gotten English treasures! What a country to conquer—and to loot!

"And they are mere children compared to us—silly, thick-headed children! Yet they have all the plums—everywhere."

* * * * *

Falloden came back. The two men turned eagerly.

"My father thanks you for your offer, gentlemen. He is very sorry he is not able to see you as he hoped. He is not very well this afternoon. But I am to say that he will let you have an answer in twenty-four hours. Then if he agrees to your terms, the matter will have to go before the court. That, of course, our lawyers explained to you—"

"That will not suit me at all!" cried Herr Schwarz. "As far as your father is concerned, my offer must be accepted—or rejected—now."

He struck his open hand on the polished mahogany of the table beside him.

"Then I am very sorry you have had the trouble of coming down," said Falloden politely. "Shall I order your carriage?"

The great ship-owner stared at him. He was on the point of losing his temper, perhaps of withdrawing from his bargain, when over Falloden's head he caught sight of the Titian and the play of light on its shining armour; of the Van Dyck opposite. He gave way helplessly; gripped at the same moment by his parvenu's ambition, and by the genuine passion for beautiful things lodged oddly in some chink of his common and Philistine personality.

"I have the refusal then—for twenty-four hours?" he said curtly.

Falloden nodded, wrote him a statement to that effect, ordered whisky and soda, and saw them safely to their carriage.

* * * * *

Then pacing slowly through the rooms, he went back towards the library. His mind was divided between a kind of huckster's triumph and a sense of intolerable humiliation. All around him were the "tribal signs" of race, continuity, history—which he had taken for granted all his life. But now that a gulf had opened between him and them, his heart clung to them consciously for the first time. No good! He felt himself cast out—stripped—exposed. The easy shelter fashioned for him and his by the lives of generations of his kindred had fallen in fragments about him.

"Well—I never earned it!"—he said to himself bitterly, turning in disgust on his own self-pity.

When he reached the library he found his father walking up and down deep in thought. He looked up as his son entered.

"Well, that saves the bankruptcy, Duggy, and—as far as I can see—leaves a few thousands over—portions for the younger children, and what will enable you to turn round."

Douglas assented silently. After a long look at his son, Sir Arthur opened a side door which led from the library into the suite of drawing-rooms. Slowly he passed through them, examining the pictures steadily, one by one. At the end of the series, he turned and came back again to his own room, with a bent head and meditative step. Falloden followed him.

In the library, Sir Arthur suddenly straightened himself.

"Duggy, do you hate me—for the mess I've made—of your inheritance?"

The question stirred a quick irritation in Falloden. It seemed to him futile and histrionic; akin to all those weaknesses in his father which had brought them disaster.

"I don't think you need ask me that," he said, rather sharply, as he opened a drawer in his father's writing-table, and locked up the paper containing Herr Schwarz's offer.

Sir Arthur looked at him wistfully.

"You've been a brick, Duggy—since I told you. I don't know that I had any right to count upon it."

"What else could I do?" said Douglas, trying to laugh, but conscious—resenting it—of a swelling in the throat.

"You could have given a good many more twists to the screw—if you'd been a different sort," said his father slowly. "And you're a tough customer, Duggy, to some people. But to me"—He paused, beginning again in another tone—

"Duggy, don't be offended with me—but did you ever want to marry Lady Constance Bledlow? You wrote to me about her at Christmas."

Douglas gave a rather excited laugh.

"It's rather late in the day to ask me that question."

His father eyed him.

"You mean she refused you?"

His son nodded.

"Before this collapse?"

"Before she knew anything about it"

"Poor old Duggy!" said his father, in a low voice. "But perhaps—after all—she'll think better of it. By all accounts she has the charm of her mother, whom Risborough married to please himself and not his family."

Falloden said nothing. He wished to goodness his father would drop the subject. Sir Arthur understood he was touching things too sore to handle, and sighed.

"Well, shake hands, Duggy, old boy. You carried this thing through splendidly to-day. But it seems to have taken it out of me—which isn't fair. I shall go for a little walk. Tell your mother I shall be back in an hour or so."

The son took his father's hand. The strong young grasp brought a momentary sense of comfort to the older man. They eyed each other, both pale, both conscious of feelings to which it was easier to give no voice. Then their hands dropped. Sir Arthur looked for his hat and stick, which were lying near, and went out of the open glass door into the garden. He passed through the garden into the park beyond walking slowly and heavily, his son's eyes following him.



CHAPTER XIV

Out of sight of the house, at the entrance of the walk leading to the moor, Sir Arthur was conscious again of transitory, but rather sharp pains across the chest.

He sat down to rest, and they soon passed away. After a few minutes he pursued his walk, climbing towards the open stretches of heathery moor, which lay beyond the park, and a certain ghyll or hollow with a wild stream in it that cleft the moor high up—one of his favourite haunts.

He climbed through ferny paths, and amid stretches of heather just coming to its purple prime, up towards the higher regions of the moor where the millstone grit cropped out in sharp edges, showing gaunt and dark against the afternoon sky. Here the beautiful stream that made a waterfall within the park came sliding down shelf after shelf of yellowish rock, with pools of deep brown water at intervals, overhung with mountain ash and birch.

After the warm day, all the evening scents were abroad, carried by a gentle wind. Sir Arthur drank them in, with the sensuous pleasure which had been one of his gifts in life. The honey smell of the heather, the woody smell of the bracken, the faint fragrance of wood-smoke wafted from a bonfire in the valley below—they all carried with them an inexpressible magic for the man wandering on the moor. So did the movements of birds—the rise of a couple of startled grouse, the hovering of two kestrels, a flight of wild duck in the distance. Each and all reminded him of the halcyon times of life—adventures of his boyhood, the sporting pleasures of his manhood. By George!—how he had enjoyed them all!

Presently, to his left, on the edge of the heathery slope he caught sight of one of the butts used in the great grouse-shoots of the moor. What a jolly party they had had last year in that week of wonderful October weather! Two hundred brace on the home moor the first day, and almost as many on the Fairdale moor the following day. Some of the men had never shot better. One of the party was now Viceroy of India; another had been killed in one of the endless little frontier fights that are the price, month by month, which the British Empire pays for its existence. Douglas had come off particularly well. His shooting from that butt to the left had been magnificent. Sir Arthur remembered well how the old hands had praised it, warming the cockles of his own heart.

"I will have one more shoot," he said to himself with passion—"I will!"

Then, feeling suddenly tired, he sat down beside the slipping stream. It was fairly full, after some recent rain, and the music of it rang in his ears. Stretching out a hand he filled it full of silky grass and thyme, sniffing at it in delight. "How strange," he thought, "that I can still enjoy these things. But I shall—till I die."

Below him, as he sat, lay the greater part of his estate stretching east and west; bounded on the west by some of the high moors leading up to the Pennine range, lost on the east in a blue and wooded distance. He could see the towers of three village churches, and the blurred greys and browns of the houses clustering round them—some near, some far. Stone farm-buildings, their white-washed gables glowing under the level sun, caught his eye, one after the other—now hidden in wood, now standing out upon the fields or the moorland, with one sycamore or a group of yews to shelter them. And here and there were larger houses; houses of the middle gentry, with their gardens and enclosures. Farms, villages, woods and moors, they were all his—nominally his, for a few weeks or months longer. And there was scarcely one of them in the whole wide scene, with which he had not some sporting association; whether of the hunting field, or the big autumn shoots, or the jolly partridge drives over the stubbles.

But it suddenly and sharply struck him how very few other associations he possessed with these places spread below him in the declining August sunshine. He had not owned Flood more than fifteen years—enough however to lose it in! And he had succeeded a father who had been the beloved head of the county, a just and liberal landlord, a man of scrupulous kindness and honour, for whom everybody had a friendly word. His ruined son on the moorside thought with wonder and envy of his father's popular arts, which yet were no arts. For himself he confessed,—aware as he was, this afternoon, of the presence in his mind of a new and strange insight with regard to his own life and past, as though he were writing his own obituary—that the people living in these farms and villages had meant little more to him than the troublesome conditions on which he enjoyed the pleasures of the Flood estates, the great income he drew from them, and the sport for which they were famous. He had his friends among the farmers of course, though they were few. There were men who had cringed to him, and whom he had rewarded. And Laura had given away plentifully in the villages. But his chief agent he knew had been a hard man and a careless one; and he had always loathed the trouble of looking after him. Again and again he had been appealed to, as against his agent; and he had not even answered the letters. He had occasionally done some public duties; he had allowed himself to be placed on the County Council, but had hardly ever attended meetings; he had taken the chair and made a speech occasionally, when it would have cost him more effort to refuse than to accept; and those portions of the estate which adjoined the castle were in fairly good repair. But on the remoter farms, and especially since his financial resources had begun to fail, he knew very well that there were cottages and farm-houses in a scandalous state, on which not a farthing had been spent for years.

No, it could not be said he had played a successful part as a landowner. He had meant no harm to anybody. He had been simply idle and preoccupied; and that in a business where, under modern conditions, idleness is immoral. He was quite conscious that there were good men, frugal men, kind and God-fearing men, landlords like himself, though on a much smaller scale, in that tract of country under his feet, who felt bitterly towards him, who judged him severely, who would be thankful to see the last of him, and to know that the land had passed into other and better hands. Fifty-two years of life lived in that northern Vale of Eden; and what was there to show for them?—in honest work done, in peace of conscience, in friends? Now that the pictures were sold, there would be just enough to pay everybody, with a very little over. There was some comfort in that. He would have ruined nobody but himself and Duggy. Poor Laura would be quite comfortable on her own money, and would give him house-room no doubt—till the end.

The end? But he might live another twenty years. The thought was intolerable. The apathy in which he had been lately living gave way. He realised, with quickened breath, what this parting from his inheritance and all the associations of his life would mean. He saw himself as a tree, dragged violently out of its native earth—rootless and rotten.

Poor Duggy! Duggy was as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that gambler's spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in acts he had been good.

And through the man's remorseful soul there throbbed the one deep, disinterested affection of his life—his love for his son. He had been very fond of Laura, but when it came to moments like this she meant little to him.

He gave himself up to this feeling of love. How strange that it should both rend and soothe!—that it and it alone brought some comfort, some spermaceti for the inward bruise, amid all the bitterness connected with it. Duggy, in his arms, as a little toddling fellow, Duggy at school—playing for Harrow at Lord's—Duggy at college—

But of that part of his son's life, as he realised with shame, he knew very little. He had been too entirely absorbed, when it arrived, in the frantic struggle, first for money, and then for solvency. Duggy had become in some ways during the last two years a stranger to him—his own fault! What had he done to help him through his college life—to "influence him for good," as people said? Nothing. He had been enormously proud of his son's university distinctions; he had supplied him lavishly with money; he had concealed from him his own financial situation till it was hopeless; he had given him the jolliest possible vacation, and that was all that could be said.

The father groaned within himself. And yet again—how strangely!—did some fraction of healing virtue flow from his very distress?—from his remembrance, above all, of how Duggy had tried to help him?—during these few weeks since he knew?

Ah!—Tidswell Church coming out of the shadows! He remembered how one winter he had been coming home late on horseback through dark lanes, when he met the parson of that church, old and threadbare and narrow-chested, trudging on, head bent, against a spitting rain. The owner of Flood had been smitten with a sudden compunction, and dismounting he had walked his horse beside the old man. The living of Tidswell was in his own gift. It amounted, he remembered, to some L140 a year. The old man, whose name was Trevenen, had an old wife, to whom Sir Arthur thought Lady Laura had sometimes sent some cast-off clothes.

Mr. Trevenen had been baptising a prematurely born child in a high moorland farm. The walk there and back had been steep and long, and his thin lantern-jawed face shone very white through the wintry dusk.

"You must be very tired," Sir Arthur had said, remembering uncomfortably the dinner to which he was himself bent—the chef, the wines, the large house-party.

And Mr. Trevenen had looked up and smiled.

"Not very. I have been unusually cheered as I walked by thoughts of the Divine Love!"

The words had been so simply said; and a minute afterwards the old pale-faced parson had disappeared into the dark.

What did the words mean? Had they really any meaning?

"The Divine Love." Arthur Falloden did not know then, and did not know now. But he had often thought of the incident.

He leaned over, musing, to gather a bunch of hare-bells growing on the edge of the stream. As he did so, he was conscious again of a sharp pain in the chest. In a few more seconds, he was stretched on the moorland grass, wrestling with a torturing anguish that was crushing his life out. It seemed to last an eternity. Then it relaxed, and he was able to breathe and think again.

"What is it?"

Confused recollections of the death of his old grandfather, when he himself was a child, rose in his mind. "He was out hunting—horrible pain—two hours. Is this the same? If it is—I shall die—here—alone."

He tried to move after a little, but found himself helpless. A brief intermission, and the pain rushed on him again, like a violent and ruthless hand, grinding the very centres of life. When he recovered consciousness, it was with the double sense of blissful relief from agony and of ebbing strength. What had happened to him? How long had he been there?