Now that the moment had come for which all his life had been a preparation, Harry Tristram had little reason to be afraid.



X

BEHOLD THE HEIR!

Addie Tristram died with all her old uncommonness. Death was to her an end more fully than it is to most; had she been herself responsible for it, she could hardly have thought less of any possible consequences. And it was to her such a beginning as it can seldom seem. She had been living in anticipation of dying, but in a sense utterly remote from that contemplation of their latter end which is enjoined on the pious. So that, together with an acquiescence so complete as almost to justify her son in calling it joyful, there was an expectation, nearly an excitement—save that the tired body failed to second the mind. She might have shown remorse, both for her own acts and for the position in which she was leaving Harry; she fell in with the view he had always maintained with her, that all these things had come about somehow, had produced a certain state of affairs, and must be made to seem as if they had done nothing of the sort. During the last day or two she was delirious at intervals; as a precaution Harry was with her then, instead of the nurse. The measure was superfluous; there was nothing on Lady Tristram's mind, and when she spoke unconsciously, she spoke of trifles. The few final hours found her conscious and intelligent, although very weak. Just at the end a curious idea got hold of her. She was a little distressed that the Gainsboroughs were not there; she whispered her feeling to Harry apologetically, well remembering his objection to that branch of the family, and his disinclination to have them or any of them at Blent. "Cecily ought to be here," she murmured. Harry started a little; he was not accustomed in his own mind to concede Cecily any rights. His mother's fear of offending him by the suggestion was very obvious. "She'd come after you, you see, if——" she said once or twice. There did not pass between them a word of acknowledgment that Cecily ought to come before him. Yet he was left wondering whether that idea, so scorned before, had not won its way to her with some sudden strength—as though an instinct for the true heir made itself felt in spite of all her resolution and all her prejudices, and forced her to do something toward recognizing the claims which they were both determined to thwart.

The barest hint of this kind would have raised Harry's suspicion and anger a few weeks before; the new mood which Mina Zabriska had marked in him made him take it quietly now, and even affectionately. For this Addie Tristram was grateful; she had always the rare grace of seeming surprised at her own power over men. It was no less in keeping with her character and her life that the feeling she suffered under, and manifested, was very easily appeased. Harry promised to ask the Gainsboroughs to her funeral. Addie Tristram's conscientious scruples were entirely laid to rest; with a sigh of peace she settled herself to die. It was the feudal feeling, Harry decided, which insisted that the family must not be ignored; it did not deny their humble position, or the gulf that separated them from the succession. Yet he was vaguely vexed, even while he agreed to what she wanted.

So she passed away in the full tide of the darkness of night. The doctor had left her some hours before, the nurse had been sent to bed, for there was nothing that could be done. Harry was alone with her; he kissed her when she was dead, and stood many minutes by her, looking from her to the picture of her that hung on the wall. A strange loneliness was on him, a loneliness which there seemed nobody to solace. He had said that Blent would not be much without his mother. That was not quite right; it was much, but different. She had carried away with her the atmosphere of the place, the essence of the life that he had lived there with her. Who would make that the same to him again? Suddenly he recollected that in four days he was to ask Janie Iver for her answer. Say a week now, for the funeral would enforce or excuse so much postponement. Janie Iver would not give him back the life or the atmosphere. A description of how he felt, had it been related to him a year ago, would have appeared an absurdity. Yet these crowding unexpected thoughts made not a hair's breadth of difference in what he purposed. It was only that he became aware of an irreparable change of scene; there was to be no change in his action. He was Tristram of Blent now—that he must and would remain. But it was not the same Blent, and did not seem as though it could be again. So much of the poetry had gone out of it with Addie Tristram.

After he had left her room, he walked through the house, carrying a shaded candle in his hand along the dark corridors of shining oak. He bent his steps toward the long gallery which filled all the upper floor of the left wing. Here were the Valhalla and the treasure-house of the Tristrams, the pictures of ancestors, the cases of precious things which the ancestors had amassed. At the end of this gallery Addie Tristram had used to sit when she was well, in a large high-backed arm-chair by the big window that commanded the gardens and the river. He flung the window open and stood looking out. The wind swished in the trees and the Blent washed along leisurely. A beautiful stillness was about him. It was as though she were by his side, her fair head resting against the old brocade cover of the arm-chair, her eyes wandering in delighted employment round the room she had loved so well. Who should sit there next? As he looked now at the room, now out into the night, his eyes filled suddenly with tears; the love of the place came back to him, his pride in it lived again, he would keep it not only because it was his but because it had been hers before him. His blood spoke strong in him. Suddenly he smiled. It was at the thought that all this belonged in law to Miss Cecily Gainsborough—the house, the gallery, the pictures, the treasures, the very chair where Addie Tristram had used to sit. Every stick and stone about the place was Cecily Gainsborough's, aye, and the bed of the Blent from shore to shore. He had nothing at all—according to law.

Well, the law must have some honor, some recognition, at all events. The Gainsboroughs should, as he had promised, be asked to the funeral. They should be invited with all honor and most formally, in the name of Tristram of Blent—which, by the by was, according to law, also Miss Cecily Gainsborough's. Harry had no name according to law; no more than he had houses or pictures or treasures, any stick or stone, or the smallest heritage in the bed of the Blent. He had been son to the mistress of it all; she was gone and he was nobody—according to law. It was, after all, a reasonable concession that his mother had urged on him; the Gainsboroughs ought to be asked to the funeral. The last of his vexation on this score died away into a sense of grim amusement at Addie Tristram's wish and his own appreciation of it. He had no sense of danger; Tristram had succeeded to Tristram; all was well.

Little inclined to sleep, he went down into the garden presently, lit his cigar, and strolled on to the bridge. The night had grown clearer and some stars showed in the sky; it was nearly one o'clock. He had stood where he was only a few moments when to his surprise he heard the sound of a horse's hoofs on the road from Blentmouth. Thinking the doctor, who often did his rounds in the saddle, might have returned, he crossed the bridge, opened the gate, and stood on the high road. The rider came up in a few minutes and drew rein at the sight of his figure, but, as Harry did not move, made as though he would ride on again with no more than the customary country salute of "Good-night."

"Who is it?" asked Harry, peering through the darkness.

"Me—Bob Broadley," was the answer.

"You're late."

"I've been at the Club at Blentmouth. The Cricket Club's Annual Dinner, you know."

"Ah, I forgot."

Bob, come to a standstill, was taking the opportunity of lighting his pipe. This done, he looked up at the house and back to Harry rather timidly.

"Lady Tristram——?" he began.

"My mother has been dead something above an hour," said Harry.

After a moment Bob dismounted and threw his reins over the gatepost.

"I'm sorry, Tristram," he said, holding out his hand. "Lady Tristram was always very kind to me. Indeed she was that to everybody." He paused a moment and then went on slowly. "It must seem strange to you. Why, I remember when my father died I felt—besides the sorrow, you know—sort of lost at coming into my bit of land at Mingham. But you——" Harry could see his head turn as he looked over the demesne of Blent and struggled to give some expression to the thoughts which his companion's position suggested. The circumstances of this meeting made for sincerity and openness; they were always Bob's characteristics. Harry too was in such a mood that he liked Bob to stay and talk a little.

They fell into talk with more ease and naturalness than they had recently achieved together, getting back to the friendliness of boyhood, although Bob still spoke as to one greater than himself and infused a little deference into his manner. But they came to nothing intimate till Bob had declared that he must be on his way and was about to mount his horse.

"As soon as I begin to have people here, I hope you'll come often," said Harry, cordially. "Naturally we shall be a little more lively than we've been able to be of late, and I shall hope to see all my friends."

He did not instantly understand the hesitation in Bob's manner as he answered, "You're very kind. I—I shall like to come."

"Blent must do its duty," Harry pursued.

Bob turned back to him, leaving his horse again. "Yes, I'll come. I hope I know how to take a licking, Tristram." He held out his hand.

"A licking?" Both the word and the gesture seemed to surprise Harry Tristram.

"Oh, you know what I mean. You're engaged to her, aren't you? Or as good as anyhow? I don't want to ask questions——"

"Not even as good as, yet," answered Harry slowly.

"Of course you know what I feel. Everybody knows that, though I've never talked about it—even to her."

"Why not to her? Isn't that rather usual in such cases?" Harry was smiling now.

"It would only worry her. What chance should I have?"

"Well, I don't agree with being too humble."

"Oh, I don't know that I'm humble. Perhaps I think myself as good a man as you. But"—he laughed a little—"I'm Broadley of Mingham, not Tristram of Blent."

"I see. That's it? And our friend the Major?"

"I shouldn't so much mind having a turn-up with the Major."

"But Tristram of Blent is—is too much?"

"It's not your fault, you can't help it," smiled Bob. "You're born to it and——" He ended with a shrug.

"You're very fond of her?" Harry asked, frowning a little.

"I've been in love with her all my life—ever since they came to Seaview. Fairholme wasn't dreamed of then."

He spoke of Fairholme with a touch of bitterness which he hastened to correct by adding—"Of course I'm glad of their good luck."

"You mean, if it were Seaview still and not Fairholme——?"

"No, I don't. I've no business to think anything of the sort, and I don't think it," Bob interposed quickly. "You asked me a question and I answered it. I'm not in a position to know anything about you, and I'm not going to say anything."

"A good many reasons enter into a marriage sometimes," remarked Harry.

"Yes, with people like you. I know that."

His renewed reference to Harry's position brought another frown to Harry's face, but it was the frown of thoughtfulness, not of anger.

"I can't quarrel with the way of the world, and I'm sure if it does come off you'll be good to her."

"You think I don't care about her—about her herself?"

"I don't know, I tell you. I don't want to know. I suppose you like her."

"Yes, I like her." He took the word from Bob and made no attempt to alter or to amplify it.

Bob was mounting now; the hour was late for him to be abroad and work waited him in the morning.

"Good-night, Tristram," he said, as he settled in his saddle.

"Good-night. And, Bob, if by any chance it doesn't come off with me, you have that turn-up with the Major!"

"Well, I don't like the idea of a foreign chap coming down and—— But, mind you, Duplay's a very superior fellow. He knows the deuce of a lot."

"Thinks he does, anyhow," said Harry, smiling again. "Good-night, old fellow," he called after Bob in a very friendly voice as horse and rider disappeared up the road.

"I must go to bed, I suppose," he muttered as he returned to the bridge and stood leaning on the parapet. He yawned, not in weariness but in a reaction from the excitement of the last few days. His emotional mood had passed for the time at all events; it was succeeded by an apathy that was dull without being restful. And in its general effect his interview with Bob was vaguely vexatious in spite of its cordial character. It left with him a notion which he rejected but could not quite get rid of—the notion that he was taking, or (if all were known) would be thought to be taking, an unfair advantage. Bob had said he was born to it and that he could not help it. If that had indeed been so in the fullest possible sense, would he have had the notion that irritated him now? Yes, he told himself; but the answer did not quite convince. Still the annoyance was no more than a restless suggestion of something not quite satisfactory in his position, and worth mentioning only as the first such feeling he had ever had. It did not trouble him seriously. He smoked another cigar on the bridge and then went into the house and to bed. As he undressed it occurred to him (and the idea gave him both pleasure and amusement) that he had made a sort of alliance with Bob against Duplay, although it could come into operation only under circumstances which were very unlikely to happen.

The blinds drawn at Blent next morning told Mina what had happened, and the hour of eleven found her at a Committee Meeting at Miss Swinkerton's, which she certainly would not have attended otherwise. As it was, she wanted to talk and to hear, and the gathering afforded a chance. Mrs Iver was there, and Mrs Trumbler the vicar's wife, a meek woman, rather ousted from her proper position by the energy of Miss Swinkerton; she was to manage the Bible-reading department, which was not nearly so responsible a task as conducting the savings-bank, and did not involve anything like the same amount of supervision of other people's affairs. Mrs Trumbler felt, however, that on matters of morals she had a claim to speak jure mariti.

"It is so sad!" she murmured. "And Mr Trumbler found he could do so little! He came home quite distressed."

"I'm told she wasn't the least sensible of her position," observed Miss S., with what looked rather like satisfaction.

"Didn't she know she was dying?" asked Mina, who had established her footing by a hypocritical show of interest in the cottage-gardens.

"Oh, yes, she knew she was dying, my dear," said Miss S. What poor Lady Tristram might have known, but apparently had not, was left to an obvious inference.

"She was very kind," remarked Mrs Iver. "Not exactly actively, you know, but if you happened to come across her." She rose as she spoke and bade Miss S. farewell. That lady did not try to detain her, and the moment the door had closed behind her remarked:

"Of course Mrs Iver feels in a delicate position and can't say anything about Lady Tristram; but from what I hear she never realized the peculiarity of her position. No (this to Mrs Trumbler), I mean in the neighborhood, Mrs Trumbler. And the young man is just the same. But I should have liked to hear that Mr Trumbler thought it came home to her at the last."

Mr Trumbler's wife shook her head gently.

"Well, now we shall see, I suppose," Miss S. pursued. "The engagement is to be made public directly after the funeral."

Mina almost started at this authoritative announcement.

"And I suppose they'll be married as soon as they decently can. I'm glad for Janie Iver's sake—not that I like him, the little I've seen of him."

"We never see him," said Mrs Trumbler.

"Not at church, anyhow," added Miss S. incisively. "Perhaps he'll remember what's due to his position now."

"Are you sure they're engaged?" asked Mina.

Miss S. looked at her with a smile. "Certain, my dear."

"How?" asked Mina. Mrs Trumbler stared at her in surprised rebuke.

"When I make a mistake, it will be time to ask questions," observed Miss S. with dignity. "For the present you may take what I say. I can wait to be proved right, Madame Zabriska."

"I've no doubt you're right; only I thought Janie would have told me," said Mina; she had no wish to quarrel with Miss S.

"Janie Iver's very secretive, my dear. She always was. I used to talk to Mrs Iver about it when she was a little girl. And in your case——" Miss S.'s smile could only refer to the circumstance that Mina was Major Duplay's niece; the Major's manoeuvres had not escaped Miss S.'s eye. "Of course the funeral will be very quiet," Miss S. continued. "That avoids so many difficulties. The people who would come and the people who wouldn't—and all that, you know."

"There are always so many questions about funerals," sighed Mrs Trumbler.

"I hate funerals," said Mina. "I'm going to be cremated."

"That may be very well abroad, my dear," said Miss S. tolerantly, "but you couldn't here. The question is, will Janie Iver go—and if she does, where will she walk?"

"Oh, I should hardly think she'd go, if it's not announced, you know," said Mrs Trumbler.

"It's sometimes done, and I'm told she would walk just behind the family."

Mina left the two ladies debating this point of etiquette, Miss S. showing some deference to Mrs Trumbler's experience in this particular department, but professing to be fortified in her own view by the opinion of an undertaker with a wide connection. She reflected, as she got into her pony carriage, that it is impossible even to die without affording a good deal of pleasure to other people—surely a fortunate feature of the world!

On her way home she stopped to leave cards at Blent, and was not surprised when Harry Tristram came out of his study, having seen her through the window, and greeted her.

"Send your trap home and walk up the hill with me," he suggested, and she fell in with his wish very readily. They crossed the foot-bridge together.

"I've just been writing to ask my relations to the funeral," he said. "At my mother's wish, not mine. Only two of them—and I never saw them in my life."

"I shouldn't think you'd cultivate your relations much."

"No. But Cecily Gainsborough ought to come, I suppose. She's my heir."

Mina turned to him with a gesture of interest or surprise.

"Your heir?" she said. "You mean——?"

"I mean that if I died without having any children, she'd succeed me. She'd be Lady Tristram in her own right, as my mother was." He faced round and looked at Blent. "She's never been to the place or seen it yet," he added.

"How intensely interested she'll be!"

"I don't see why she should," said Harry rather crossly. "It's a great bore having her here at all, and if I'm barely civil to her that's all I shall manage. They won't stay more than a few days, I suppose." After a second he went on: "Her mother wouldn't know my mother, though after her death the father wanted to be reconciled."

"Is that why you dislike them so?"

"How do you know I dislike them?" he asked, seeming surprised.

"It's pretty evident, isn't it? And it would be a good reason for disliking the mother anyhow."

"But not the daughter?"

"No, and you seem to dislike the daughter too—which isn't fair."

"Oh, I take the family in the lump. And I don't know that what we've been talking of has anything to do with it."

He did not seem inclined to talk more about the Gainsboroughs, though his frown told her that something distasteful was still in his thoughts. What he had said was enough to rouse in her a great interest and curiosity about this girl who was his heir. Questions and rights attracted her mind very little till they came to mean people; then she was keen on the track of the human side of the matter. The girl whom he chose to call his heir was really the owner of Blent!

"Are you going to ask us to the funeral?" she said.

"I'm not going to ask anybody. The churchyard is free; they can come if they like."

"I shall come. Shall you dislike my coming?"

"Oh, no." He was undisguisedly indifferent and almost bored.

"And then I shall see Cecily Gainsborough."

"Have a good look at her. You'll not have another chance—at Blent anyhow. She'll never come here again."

She looked at him in wonder, in a sort of fear.

"How hard you are sometimes," she said. "The poor girl's done nothing to you."

He shook his head impatiently and came to a stand on the road.

"You're going back? Good-by, Lord Tristram."

"I'm not called that till after the funeral," he told her, looking as suspicious as he had in the earliest days of their acquaintance.

"And will you let me go on living at Merrion—or coming every summer anyhow?"

"Do you think of coming again?"

"I want to," she answered with some nervousness in her manner.

"And Major Duplay?" He smiled slightly.

"I don't know whether he would want. Should you object?"

"Oh, no," said Harry, again with the weary indifference that seemed to have fastened on him now.

"I've been gossiping," she said, "with Mrs Trumbler and Miss Swinkerton."

"Good Lord!"

"Miss Swinkerton says your engagement to Janie will be announced directly after the funeral."

"And Major Duplay says that directly it's announced——!"

"You don't mean to tell me anything about it?"

"Really, I don't see why I should. Well, if you like—I want to marry her."

Mina had really known this well for a long while, yet she did not like to hear it. She had been spinning fancies about the man; what he had in his mind for himself was very prosaic. At least it seemed so to her—though she would have appreciated the dramatic side of it, had he told her of his idea of living with the big check by him.

"I can't help thinking that somehow you'll do something more exciting than that."

"She won't marry me?" He was not looking at her, and he spoke rather absently.

"I don't suppose she'll refuse you, but—no, I've just a feeling. I can't explain."

"A feeling? What feeling?" He was irritable, but his attention was caught again.

"That something more's waiting for you."

"That it's my business to go on affording you amusement perhaps?"

Mina glanced at him; he was smiling; he had become good-tempered.

"Oh, I don't expect you to do it for that reason, but if you do it——"

"Do what?" he asked, laughing outright.

"I don't know. But if you do, I shall be there to see—looking so hard at you, Mr Tristram." She paused, and then added, "I should like Cecily Gainsborough to come into it too."

"Confound Cecily Gainsborough! Good-by," said Harry.

He left with her two main impressions; the first was that he had not the least love for the girl whom he meant to marry; the second that he hardly cared to deny to her that he hated Cecily Gainsborough because she was the owner of Blent.

"All the same," she thought, "I suppose he'll marry Janie, and I'm certain he'll keep Blent." Yet he seemed to take no pleasure in his prospects and just at this moment not much in his possessions. Mina was puzzled, but did not go so far wrong as to conceive him conscience-stricken. She concluded that she must wait for light.



XI

A PHANTOM BY THE POOL

In a quite little street running between the Fulham and the King's Road, in a row of small houses not yet improved out of existence, there was one house smallest of all, with the smallest front, the smallest back, and the smallest garden. The whole thing was almost impossibly small, a peculiarity properly reflected in the rent which Mr Gainsborough paid to the firm of Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney for the fag-end of a long lease. He did some professional work for Sloyds from time to time, and that member of the firm who had let Merrion Lodge to Mina Zabriska was on friendly terms with him; so that perhaps the rent was a little lower still than it would have been otherwise; even trifling reductions counted as important things in the Gainsborough Budget. Being thus small, the house was naturally full; the three people who lived there were themselves enough to account for that. But it was also unnaturally full by reason of Mr Gainsborough's habit of acquiring old furniture of no value, and new bric-a-brac whose worth could be expressed only by minus signs. These things flooded floors and walls, and overflowed on to the strip of gravel behind. From time to time many of them disappeared; there were periodical revolts on Cecily's part, resulting in clearances; the gaps were soon made good by a fresh influx of the absolutely undesirable. When Sloyd came he looked round with a professional despair that there was not a thing in the place which would fetch a sovereign! Such is the end of seeking beauty on an empty purse; some find a pathos in it, but it is more generally regarded as a folly in the seeker, a wrong to his dependents, and a nuisance to his friends.

In no other way could Gainsborough—Melton John Gainsborough, Architect—be called a nuisance, unless by Harry Tristram's capricious pleasure. For he was very unobtrusive, small like his house, lean like his purse, shabby as his furniture, humbler than his bric-a-brac. He asked very little of the world; it gave him half, and he did not complain. He was never proud of anything, but he was gratified by his honorable descent and by his alliance with the Tristrams. The family instinct was very strong in him. Among the rubbish he bought somebody else's pedigree was often to be found. His wife's hung framed on the wall (ending with "Adelaide Louisa Aimee" in large letters for one branch, and "Cecily" in small for the other); his own was the constant subject of unprofitable searchings in county histories—one aspect of his remarkable genius for the unremunerative in all its respectable forms. He worked very hard and gave the impression of doing nothing—and the impression perhaps possessed the higher truth. Anyhow, while he and his had (thanks to a very small property which came with the late Mrs Gainsborough) always just enough to eat, they had always just not enough of anything else; short commons were the rule.

And now they were going to Blent. Sloyd, calling on a matter of business and pleasantly excusing his intrusion by the payment of some fees, had heard about it from Gainsborough. "This'll just take us to Blent!" the little gentleman had observed with satisfaction as he waved the slip of paper. Sloyd knew Blent and could take an interest; he described it, raising his voice so that it travelled beyond the room and reached the hammock in the garden where Cecily lay. She liked a hammock, and her father could not stand china figures and vases on it, so that it secured her where to lay her head. Gainsborough was very fussy over the news; a deeper but quieter excitement glowed in Cecily's eyes as, listening to Sloyd, she feigned to pay no heed. She had designs on the check. Beauty unadorned may mean several things; but moralists cannot be right in twisting the commendation of it into a eulogium on thread-bare frocks. She must have a funeral frock.

Sloyd came to the door which opened on the garden, and greeted her. He was as smart as usual, his tie a new creation, his hat mirroring the sun. Cecily was shabby from necessity and somewhat touzled from lolling in the hammock. She looked up at him, smiling in a lazy amusement.

"Do you ever wear the same hat twice?" she asked.

"Must have a good hat in my profession, Miss Gainsborough. You never know where you'll be sent for. The Duchess of This, or Lady That, loses her money at cards—or the Earl drops a bit at Newmarket—must let the house for the season—sends off for me—mustn't catch me in an old hat!"

"Yes, I see!"

"Besides, you may say what you like, but a gentleman ought to wear a good hat. It stamps him, Miss Gainsborough."

"Yours positively illuminates you. I could find the way by you on the darkest night."

"With just a leetle touch of oil——" he admitted cautiously, not quite sure how far she was serious in the admiration her eyes seemed to express. "What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, breaking off after his sufficient confession.

"I've been drawing up advertisements of my own accomplishments." She sat up suddenly. "Oh, why didn't I ask you to help me? You'd have made me sound eligible and desirable, and handsome and spacious, and all the rest of it. And I found nothing at all to say!"

"What are you advertising for?"

"Somebody who knows less French than I do. But I shall wait till we come back now." She yawned a little. "I don't in the least want to earn my living, you know," she added candidly, "and there's no way I could honestly. I don't really know any French at all."

Sloyd regarded her with mingled pleasure and pain. His taste was for more robust beauty and more striking raiment, and she—no, she was not neat. Yet he decided that she would, as he put it, pay for dressing; she wanted some process analogous to the thorough repair which he loved to see applied to old houses. Then she would be attractive—not his sort, of course, but still attractive.

"I wonder if you'll meet Madame Zabriska, the lady I let Merrion Lodge to, and the gentleman with her, her uncle."

"I expect not. My cousin invites us for the funeral. It's on Saturday. I suppose we shall stay the Sunday, that's all. And I don't suppose we shall see anybody, to speak to, anyhow." Her air was very careless; the whole thing was represented as rather a bore.

"You should make a longer visit—I'm sure his lordship will be delighted to have you, and it's a charming neighborhood, a very desirable neighborhood indeed."

"I dare say. But desirable things don't generally come our way, Mr Sloyd, or at any rate not much of them."

"It's pretty odd to think it'd all be yours if—if anything happened to Lord Tristram." His tone showed a mixture of amusement and awe. She was what he saw—she might become My Lady! The incongruity reached his sense of humor, while her proximity to a noble status nearly made him take off his hat.

"It may be pretty odd," she said indolently, "but it doesn't do me much good, does it?"

This last remark summed up the attitude which Cecily had always adopted about Blent, and she chose to maintain it now that she was at last to see Blent. Probably her father's family instinct had driven her into an insincere opposition; or she did not consider it dignified to show interest in relatives who had shown none in her. She had never been asked to Blent. If she was asked now it was as a duty; as a duty she would go. Harry did not monopolize the Tristram blood or the Tristram pride. But this attitude was not very comprehensible to her present companion. As a personal taste, Mr Sloyd would have liked to be connected, however remotely, with the aristocracy, and, if he had been, would have let his social circle hear a good deal about it; even a business connection was something, and suffered no loss of importance in his practised hands.

Yet in her heart she was on fire with an excitement which Sloyd would have wondered at, and which made her father's fussy nervousness seem absurd. At last she was to see with her eyes the things she had always heard of. She was to see Blent. Addie Tristram indeed she could no longer see; that had always been denied to her, and the loss was irreparable. But even the dead Lady Tristram she would soon be able to realize far better than she had yet done; she would put her into her surroundings. And Harry would be there, the cousin who had never been cousinly, the young man whom she did not know and who was a factor of such importance in her life. She had dreams in abundance about the expedition; and it was in vain that reason said "It'll be all over in three days. Then back to the little house and the need for that advertisement!" Luckily, this sort of suggestion, made by reason, never sounds probable, however well reason proves to us that it must come to pass. Cecily was sure that at last—ah, at last!—a change in life had come. Life had been always so very much the same; changes generally need money, and money had not been hers. Knowledge usually needs money too, and of the kinds of life outside her own narrow sphere she was very ignorant. Beautiful things also need money; of them she had seen and enjoyed very little; only the parodies came to the small house in the small road. All these things joined to make her feel that a great moment was at hand; she might and did deride herself, but the feeling was there, and at last she admitted it to her father when she said with a little laugh:

"I don't suppose anybody ever was so excited over a funeral before!"

But perhaps there was ignorance in that remark too. It has been seen, for instance, that Miss Swinkerton and her friends could be very excited, although they had not the excuse of youth, of dreams, or of any kinship with the Tristrams.

"It's begun!" Cecily said to herself when, three days afterward, they got out of their third-class carriage and got into the landau that waited for them. The footman, touching his hat, asked if Miss Gainsborough had brought a maid. ("The maid," not "A maid," was the form of reference familiar to Miss Gainsborough.) Her father was in new black, she was in new black, the two trunks had been well polished; and the seats of the landau were very soft.

"They don't use the Fitzhubert crest, I observe," remarked Gainsborough. "Only the Tristram fox. Did you notice it on the harness?"

"I was gazing with all my eyes at the coronet on the panel," she answered, laughing.

A tall and angular lady came up and spoke to the footman, as he was about to mount the box.

"At two on Saturday, miss," they heard him reply. Miss Swinkerton nodded, and walked slowly past the carriage, giving the occupants a leisurely stare. Of course Miss S. had known the time of the funeral quite well; now her intimates would be made equally well acquainted with the appearance of the visitors.

Blent was in full beauty that summer evening, and the girl sat in entranced silence as they drove by the river and came where the old house stood. The blinds were down, the escutcheon, with the Tristram fox again, above the door in the central tower. They were ushered into the library. Gainsborough's eyes ran over the books with a longing envious glance; his daughter turned to the window, to look at the Blent and up to Merrion. A funny remembrance of Sloyd crossed her mind, and she smiled. Had she already so caught the air of the place that Sloyd seemed to her both remote and very plebeian? Turning her head, she saw the left wing with the row of windows that lighted the Long Gallery; she had never seen such a room in a private house, and thought there must be several rooms in that wing. A man-servant brought in tea, and told them that Mr Tristram was engaged in pressing business and begged to be excused; dinner would be at 8.15. Disappointed at her host's invisibility, she gave her father tea with a languid air. The little man was nervous and excited; he walked the carpet carefully; but soon he pounced on a book—a county history—and sat down with it. After a few minutes' idleness Cecily rose, strolled into the hall, and thence out into the garden. The hush of the house had become oppressive to her.

Yes, everything was very beautiful; she felt that again, and drank it in, indulging her thirst so long unsatisfied. She had seen larger places, such palaces as all the folk of London are allowed to see. The present scene was new. And in the room above lay Addie Tristram in her coffin—the lovely strange woman of whom her mother had told her. She would not see Lady Tristram, but she seemed now to see all her life and to be able to picture her, to understand why she did the things they talked of, and what manner of woman she had been. She wandered to the little bridge. The stream below was the Blent! Geographies might treat the rivulet with scanty notice and with poor respect; to her it was Jordan—the sacred river. Might not its god have been ancestor to all the Tristrams? In such a place as this one could have many such fancies; they would come to feed the mind and make it grow, to transform it into something that could appreciate poetry. A big rose-tree climbed the wall of the right wing. Who had picked its blossoms and through how many years? Its flowers must often have adorned Addie Tristram's unsurpassed loveliness. After the years of short commons there came this bountiful feast to her soul. She felt herself a Tristram. A turn of chance might have made all this her own. Her breath seemed to stop as she thought of this. The idea now was far different from what it had sounded when Sloyd gave it utterance in the tiny strip of garden behind the tiny house, and she had greeted it with scorn and a mocking smile. She did not want all this for her own; but she did want—how she wanted!—to be allowed to stop and look at it, to stay long enough to make it part of her and have it to carry back with her to her home between the King's Road and the Fulham Road in London.

She crossed the bridge and walked up the valley. Twenty minutes brought her to the Pool. It opened on her with a new surprise. The sun had just left it and its darkness was touched by mystery. The steep wooded bank opposite cast a dull heavy shadow across half the surface; the low lapping of the water sounded like somebody whispering old secrets that she seemed half to hear, garrulous histories of the dead—the dead whose blood was in her veins—old glories, old scandals, old trifles, all mixed together, all of great importance in the valley of the Blent. Who cares about such things in London, about anybody's family, or anybody himself? There is no time for such things in London. It is very different in the valley of the Blent when the sun is low and the cry of a bird makes a sound too shrill to be welcome.

Turning by chance to look up the road toward Mingham, she saw a man coming down the hill. He was sauntering idly along, beating the grass by the road-side with his stick. Suddenly he stopped short, put his hand above his eyes, and gave her a long look; he seemed to start. Then he began to walk toward her with a rapid eager stride. She turned away and strolled along by the Pool on her way back to Blent Hall. But he would not be denied; his tread came nearer; he overtook her and halted almost by her side, raising his hat and gazing with uncompromising straightness in her face. She knew him at once; he must be Harry Tristram. Was lounging about the roads his pressing business?

"I beg your pardon," he said with a curious appearance of agitation. "I am Harry Tristram, and you must be——?"

"Cecily Gainsborough," said she with a distant manner, inclined to be offended that their meeting should be by accident. Why had he not received his guests if he had nothing to do but lounge about the roads?

"Yes, I was sure. The moment I thought, I was sure." He took no heed of her manner, engrossed in some preoccupation of his own. "At first I was startled." He smiled now, as he offered her his hand. Then he recollected. "You must forgive me for being out. I have been hard at work all day, and the craving for the evening was on me. I went out without thinking."

"They said you were engaged on pressing business."

"They lied for me. I forgot to leave any message. I'm not generally discourteous."

His apology disarmed her and made her resentment seem petty.

"How could you think of us at such a time? It's good of you to have us at all."

"My mother wanted you to come." He added no welcome of his own. "You never saw her, did you?" he asked a moment later.

Cecily shook her head. She was rather confused by the steady gaze of his eyes. Did Cousin Harry always stare at people as hard as that? Yet it was not exactly a stare; it was too thoughtful, too ruminative, too unconscious for that.

"Let's walk back together. You've had a look at the place already perhaps?"

"It's very beautiful."

"Yes," he assented absently, as they began to walk.

If she did not stare, still she used her eyes, curiously studying his face with its suggestion of strength and that somehow rather inconsistent hint of sensitiveness. He was gloomy; that was just now only proper. She saw something that puzzled her; Mina Zabriska could have told her what it was, but she herself did not succeed in identifying Harry's watching look. She was merely puzzled at a certain shade of expression in the eyes. She had not seen it at the first moment, but it was there now as he turned to her from time to time while they sauntered along.

"That's Merrion, our dower-house. But it's let now to a funny little woman, Madame Zabriska. She's rather a friend of mine, but her uncle, who lives with her, doesn't like me." He smiled as he spoke of the Major. "She's very much interested in you."

"In me? Has she heard of me?"

"She hears of most things. She's as sharp as a needle. I like her though."

He said no more till they were back in the garden; then he proposed that they should sit down on the seat by the river.

"My mother used to sit here often," he said. "She always loved to see the sun go down from the garden. She didn't read or do anything; she just sat watching."

"Thinking?" Cecily suggested.

"Well, hardly. Letting thoughts happen if they wanted to, perhaps. She was always rather—rather passive about things, you know. They took hold of her if—well, as I say, if they wanted to." He turned to her quickly as he asked, "Are you at all like that?"

"I believe I'm only just beginning to find out that I'm anything or like anything. And, anyhow, I'm quite different from what I was yesterday."

"From yesterday?"

"Yes. Just by coming here, I think."

"That's what I mean! Things do take hold of you then?"

"This place does apparently," she answered laughing, as she leaned back on the seat, throwing her arm behind her and resting her head on it. She caught him looking at her again with marked and almost startled intensity. He was rather strange with his alternations of apparent forgetfulness and this embarrassing scrutiny.

"Tell me about yourself," he asked, or rather commanded, so brusque and direct was the request.

She told him about the small house and the small life she had led in it, even about the furniture and the bric-a-brac, confessing to her occasional clearances and the deception she had to practise on her father about them. He was very silent, but he was a good listener. Soon he began to smoke, but did not ask leave. This might be rudeness, but seemed a rather cousinly sort of rudeness, and was readily forgiven.

"And suddenly I come to all this!" she murmured. Then with a start she added, "But I'm forgetting your mother's death and what you must feel, and chattering about myself!"

"I asked you to talk about yourself. Is it such a great change to come here?"

"Immense! To come here even for a day! Immense!" She waved her hand a moment and found him following it with his eyes as it moved.

"You don't look," he said slowly, "as if it was any change at all."

"What do you mean?" she asked, interested in what he seemed to suggest.

"You fit in," he murmured, looking up at the house—at the window of Addie Tristram's room. "And you're very poor?" he asked.

"Yes. And you——!"

"Oh, I'm not rich as such things go. The estate has fallen in value very much, you know. But——" He broke off, frowning a little. "Still we're comfortable enough," he resumed.

"I should think so. You'd always have it to look at anyhow. What did you think I should be like?"

"Anything in the world but what you are."

The tone was at once too sincere and too absent for a compliment. Cecily knew herself not to be plain; but he was referring to something else than that.

"In fact I hardly thought of you as an individual at all. You were the Gainsboroughs."

"And you didn't like the Gainsboroughs?" she cried in a flash of intuition.

"No, I didn't," he admitted.

"Why not?"

"A prejudice," answered Harry Tristram after a pause.

She crossed her legs, sticking one foot out in front of her and looking at it thoughtfully. He followed the movement and slowly broke into a smile; it was followed by an impatient shrug. With the feminine instinct she pushed her gown lower down, half over the foot. Harry laughed. She looked up, blushing and inclined to be angry.

"Oh, it wasn't that," he said, laughing again rather contemptuously. "But——" He rose, took some paces along the lawn, and then, coming back, stood beside her, staring at the Blent and frowning rather formidably.

"Did you see me when I first saw you by the Pool?" he asked in a moment.

"Yes. How you hurried after me!"

Another pause followed, Harry's frown giving way to a smile, but a perplexed and reluctant one. Cecily watched him with puzzled interest—still sitting with her foot stuck out in front of her and her head resting on the bend of her arm; her eyes looked upward, and her lips were just parted.

"Have I been staring at you?" he inquired abruptly.

"Well, yes, you have," she answered, laughing. "But a strange cousin expects to be examined rather carefully. Do I pass muster among the Tristrams? Or am I all the hated Gainsborough?"

He looked at her again and earnestly. She met the look without lowering her eyes or altering her position in any particular.

"It's too absurd!" he declared, half fretful, half amused. "You're features aren't so very much alike—except the eyes, they are—and your hair's darker. But you move and carry yourself and turn your head as she did. And that position you're in now—why I've seen her in it a thousand times! Your arm there and your foot stuck out——"

His voice grew louder as he went on, his petulant amusement giving way to an agitation imperfectly suppressed.

"What do you mean?" she asked, catching excitement from him.

"Why, my mother. That's her attitude, and your walk's her walk, and your voice her voice. You're her—all over! Why, when I saw you by the Pool just now, a hundred yards off, strolling on the bank——"

"Yes?" she half-whispered. "You started, didn't you?"

"Yes, I started. I thought for a moment I saw my mother's ghost. I thought my mother had come back to Blent. And it is—you!"

He threw out his hands in a gesture of what seemed despair.



XII

FIGHTERS AND DOUBTERS

"Miss S. wasn't so far wrong after all!" exclaimed Mina Zabriska, flinging down a letter on the table by her.

It was three days after Addie Tristram's funeral. Mina had attended that ceremony, or rather watched it from a little way off. She had seen Gainsborough's spare humble figure, she had seen too, with an acute interest, the tall slim girl all in black, heavily veiled, who walked beside him, just behind the new Lord Tristram. She had also, of course, seen all the neighbors who were looking on like herself, but who gave their best attention to Janie Iver and disappointed Miss S. by asking hardly any questions about the Gainsboroughs. Little indeed would have been said concerning them except for the fact that Gainsborough (true to his knack of the unlucky) caught a chill on the occasion and was confined to his bed down at Blent. A most vexatious occurrence for Lord Tristram, said Miss S. But one that he ought to bear patiently, added Mrs Trumbler. And after all, both ladies agreed, it would have been hardly decent to turn the Gainsboroughs out on Monday, as it was well known the new lord had proposed.

But the Gainsboroughs were not in Mina's thoughts just now.

"Nothing is to be made public yet—please remember this. But I want you to know that I have just written to Harry Tristram to say I will marry him. I have had a great deal of trouble, dear Mina, but I think I have done right, looking at it all round. Except my own people I am telling only one friend besides you ('Bob Broadley!' said Mina with a nod, as she read the letter the second time). But I want you to know; and please tell your uncle too. I hope you will both give me your good wishes. I do think I'm acting wisely; and I thought I had no right to keep him waiting and worrying about this when he has so much to think of besides. You must stay at Merrion after I come to Blent.—JANIE."

Barring the matter of the immediate announcement then, Miss S. was justified. Janie had done the obviously right thing—and was obviously not quite sure that it was right. That mattered very little; it was done. It was for Mina Zabriska—and others concerned—to adapt themselves and conform their actions to the accomplished fact. But would Major Duplay take that view? To Mina was intrusted the delicate task of breaking the news to her uncle. It is the virtue of a soldier not to know when he is beaten; of a general not to let others know. To what standard of martial conduct would the Major adhere? This matter of the Major was in every way a nuisance to his niece. In the first place she wanted to think about herself and her own feelings—the one luxury of the unhappy. Secondly she was afraid again. For Harry suddenly seemed to be no protection now, and the horrors threatened by Duplay—the interrogation, the lawyer's office, and the like—recovered their dreadfulness. It had been easy—perhaps pleasant—to suffer for the confidential friend who had opened his heart to her on the hillside. It became less easy and certainly more unpleasant to be sacrificed for Janie Iver's fiance. But Mina, though no longer exultant and no more fearless, would be loyal and constant all the same. Should she, after saving others, be herself a castaway? She experienced a longing for the sympathy and support of Mr Jenkinson Neeld. Surely he would stand firm too? He was still at Fairholme. Was he included in Janie's "own people"? Had he been told the news?

The delicate task! The Imp's temper was far too bad for delicacy; she found a positive pleasure in outraging it. She took her letter, marched into the smoking-room, and threw it to (not to say at) her uncle.

"Read that!" she said and strode off to the window to have a look at Blent. The letter had succeeded, it seemed, in taking away from her life all she wanted, and introducing into it all she did not.

"This is very serious," declared the Major solemnly, "very serious indeed, Mina."

"Don't see how," snapped the Imp, presenting an unwavering back-view to her uncle. "If they like to get married, why is it serious?"

"Pray be reasonable," he urged. "You must perceive that the situation I have always contemplated——"

"Well, you can go on contemplating it, can't you, uncle? It won't do much good, but still——"

"The situation, I say, has arisen." She heard him get up, walk to the hearth-rug, and strike a match. Of course he was going to have a cigarette! He would smoke it all through with exasperating slowness and then arrive at an odious conclusion. Mina had not been married for nothing; she knew men's ways. He justified her forecast; it was minutes before he spoke again.

"The terms of this letter," he resumed at last, "fortify me in my purpose. It is evident that Miss Iver is influenced—largely influenced—by—er—the supposed position of—er—Mr Tristram."

"Of who?"

"Of the present possessor of Blent."

"If you want people to know who you mean, you'd better say Lord Tristram."

"For the present, if you wish it. I say, she is——" Duplay's pompous formality suddenly broke down. "She's taking him for his title, that's all."

"Oh, if you choose to say things like that about your friends!"

"You know it's true. What becomes my duty then?"

"I don't know and I don't care. Only I hate people to talk about duty when they're going to——" Well, one must stop somewhere in describing one's relatives' conduct. The Imp stopped there. But the sentence really lost nothing; Duplay could guess pretty accurately what she had been going to say.

Fortunately, although he was very dependent on her help, he cared little about her opinion. She neither would nor could judge his position fairly; she would not perceive how he felt, how righteous was his anger, how his friends were being cheated and he was being jockeyed out of his chances by one and the same unscrupulous bit of imposture. He had brought himself round to a more settled state of mind and had got his conscience into better order. If he were acting unselfishly, he deserved commendation. But even if self-interest guided him he was free of blame. No man is bound to let himself be swindled. He doubted seriously of nothing now except his power to upset Harry Tristram's plans. He was resolved to try; Mina must speak—and if money were needed, it must come from somewhere. The mere assertion of what he meant to allege must at least delay this hateful marriage. It must be added—though the Major was careful not to add—that it would also give Harry Tristram a very unpleasant shock; the wrestling bout by the Pool and the loss of that shilling were not forgotten. It may further be observed—though the Major could not be expected to observe—that he had such an estimate of his own attractions as led him to seize very eagerly on any evidences of liking for Harry's position, rather than of preference for Harry himself, which Janie's letter might be considered to afford. The Major, in fact, had a case; good argument made it seem a good case. It is something to have a case that can be argued at all; morality has a sad habit of leaving us without a leg to stand on. In the afternoon of that day Duplay went down to Fairholme. Miss Swinkerton passed him on the road and smiled sagaciously. Oh, if Miss S. had known the truth about his errand! A gossip in ignorance has pathos as a spectacle.

Mr Neeld was still at Fairholme; he had been pressed to stay and needed little pressing; in fact, in default of the pressure he would probably have taken lodgings in the town. He could not go away; he had seen Addie Tristram buried, and her son walking behind the coffin, clad in his new dignity. His mind was full of the situation. Yet he had shrunk from discussing it further with Mina Zabriska. The family anxiety about Janie's love affair had been all round him. Now he suspected strongly that some issue was being decided upon. He ought to speak, to break his word to Mina and speak—or he ought to go. From day to day he meant to go and cease to accept the hospitality which his silence seemed to abuse. But he did not go. These internal struggles were new in his placid and estimable life; this affair of Harry Tristram's had a way of putting people in strange and difficult positions.

"Mind you say nothing—nothing—nothing." That sentence had reached him on the reverse side of an invitation to take tea at Merrion—a vague some-day-when-you're-passing sort of invitation, in Neeld's eyes plainly and merely a pretext for writing and an opportunity of conveying the urgent little scrawl on the other side. It arrived at mid-day; in the afternoon Duplay had come and was now alone with Iver.

The outward calm of the gray-haired old gentleman who sat on the lawn at Fairholme, holding a weekly review upside down, was no index to the alarming and disturbing questions which were agitating him within. At the end of a blameless life it is hard to discover that you must do one of two things and that, whichever you do, you will feel like a villain. The news that Josiah Cholderton's Journal was going off very fairly well with the trade had been unable to give its editor any consolation; he did not care about the Journal now.

Iver came out and sat down beside him without speaking. Neeld hastily restored his paper to a position more befitting its dignity and became apparently absorbed in an article on Shyness in Elephants; the subject was treated with a wealth of illustration and in a vein of introspective philosophy exceedingly instructive. But it was all wasted on Mr Neeld. He was waiting for Iver; no man could be so silent unless he had something important to say or to leave unsaid. And Iver was not even smoking the cigar which he always smoked after tea. Neeld could bear it no longer; he got up and was about to move away.

"Stop, Neeld. Do you mind sitting down again for a moment?"

Neeld could do nothing but comply. The review fell on the ground by him and he ceased to struggle with the elephants.

"I want to ask your opinion——"

"My dear Iver, my opinion! Oh, I'm not a business man, and——"

"It's not business. You know Major Duplay? What do you think of him?"

"I—I've always found him very agreeable."

"Yes, so have I. And I've always thought him honest, haven't you?"

Neeld admitted that he had no reason to impugn the Major's character.

"And I suppose he's sane," Iver pursued. "But he's just been telling me the most extraordinary thing." He paused a moment. "I dare say you've noticed something between Janie and young Tristram? I may as well tell you that she has just consented to marry him. But I don't want to talk about that except so far as it comes into the other matter—which it does very considerably." He laid his hand on Neeld's knee. "Neeld, Duplay came and told me that Harry Tristram has no title to the peerage or to Blent. I'm not going to trouble you with the details now. It comes to this—Harry was born before, not after, the marriage of his parents. Duplay says Mina knows all about it, and will give us information that will make the proof easy. That's a tolerably startling story, eh? One's prepared for something where Lady Tristram was involved, but this——!"

It was fortunate that he did not glance at Neeld; Neeld had tried to appear startled, but had succeeded only in looking supremely miserable. But Iver's eyes were gazing straight in front of him under brows that frowned heavily.

"Now, what I want you to do," he resumed, "and I'm sure you won't refuse me, is this. I'm inclined to dismiss the whole thing as a blunder. I believe Duplay's honest, but I think certain facts in his own position have led him to be too ready to believe a mere yarn. But I've consented to see Mina and hear what she has to say. And I said I should bring you as a witness. I go to Merrion Lodge to-morrow for this purpose, and I shall rely on you to accompany me." With that the cigar made its appearance; Iver lit it and lay back in his chair, frowning still in perplexity and vexation. He had not asked his friend's opinion but his services. It was characteristic of him not to notice this fact. And the fact did nothing to relieve Neeld's piteous embarrassment.

"I knew it all along;" he might say that. "I know nothing about it;" he might act that. Or he might temporize for a little while. This was what he did.

"It would make a great difference if this were true?" His voice shook, but Iver was absorbed.

"An enormous difference," said Iver (Lady Tristram herself had once said the same). "I marry my daughter to Lord Tristram of Blent or to—to whom? You'll call that snobbishness, or some people would. I say it's not snobbish in us new men to consider that. It's the right thing for us to do, Neeld. Other things equal—if the man's a decent fellow and the girl likes him—I say it's the right thing for us to do. That's the way it always has happened, and the right way too."

Mr Neeld nodded. He had sympathy with these opinions.

"But if it's true, why, who's Harry Tristram? Oh, I know it's all a fluke, a damned fluke, if you like, Neeld, and uncommonly hard on the boy. But the law's the law, and for my own part I'm not in favor of altering it. Now do you suppose I want my daughter to marry him, if it's true?"

"I suppose you wouldn't," murmured Neeld.

"And there's another thing. Duplay says Harry knows it—Duplay swears he knows it. Well then, what's he doing? In my opinion he's practising a fraud. He knows he isn't what he pretends to be. He deceives me, he deceives Janie. If the thing ever comes out, where is she? He's treated us very badly if it's true."

The man, ordinarily so calm and quiet in his reserved strength, broke out into vehemence as he talked of what Harry Tristram had done if the Major's tale were true. Neeld asked himself what his host would say of a friend who knew the story to be true and yet said nothing of it. He perceived too that although Iver would not have forced his daughter's inclination, yet the marriage was very good in his eyes, the proper end and the finest crown to his own career. This had never come home to Neeld with any special force before. Iver was English of the English in his repression, in his habit of meeting both good and bad luck with—well, with something like a grunt. But he was stirred now; the suddenness of the thing had done it. And in face of his feelings how stood Mr Neeld? He saw nothing admirable in how and where he stood.

"Well, we'll see Mina and hear if she's got anything to say. Fancy that little monkey being drawn into a thing like this! Meanwhile we'll say nothing. I don't believe it, and I shall want a lot of convincing. Until I am convinced everything stands as it did. I rely on you for that, Neeld—and I rely on you to come to Merrion to-morrow. Not a word to my wife—above all not a word to Janie!" He got up, took possession of Neeld's review, and walked off into the house with his business-like quick stride.

Neeld sat there, slowly rubbing his hands against one another between his knees. He was realizing what he had done, or rather what had happened to him. When his life, his years, and what he conceived to be his character were considered, it was a very surprising thing, this silence of his—the conspiracy he had entered into with Mina Zabriska, the view of duty which the Imp, or Harry, or the thought of beautiful Addie Tristram, or all of them together, had made him take. So strange a view for him! To run counter to law, to outrage good sense, to slight the claims of friendship, to suppress the truth, to aid what Iver so relentlessly called a fraud—all these were strange doings for him to be engaged in. And why had he done it? The explanation was as strange as the things that he invoked it to explain. Still rubbing his hands, palm against palm, to and fro, he said very slowly, with wonder and reluctance:

"I was carried away. I was carried away by—by romance."

The word made him feel a fool. Yet what other word was there for the overwhelming unreasoning feeling that at the cost of everything the Tristrams, mother and son, must keep Blent, the son living and the mother dead, that the son must dwell there and the spirit of the mother be about him she loved in the spot that she had graced? It was very rank romance indeed—no other word for it! And—wildest paradox—it all came out of editing Josiah Cholderton's Journal.

Before he had made any progress in unravelling his skein of perplexities he saw Janie coming across the lawn. She took the chair her father had left and seemed to take her father's mood with it; the same oppressive silence settled on her. Neeld broke it this time.

"You don't look very merry, Miss Janie," he said, smiling at her and achieving a plausible jocularity.

"Why should I, Mr Neeld?" She glanced at him. "Oh, has father told you anything?"

"Yes, that you're engaged. You know how truly I desire your happiness, my dear." With a pretty courtesy the old man took her hand and kissed it, baring his gray hair the while.

"You're very, very kind. Yes, I've promised to marry Harry Tristram. Not yet, you know. And it isn't to be announced. But I've promised."

He stole a glance at her, and then another. She did not look merry indeed. Neeld knew his ignorance of feminine things, and made guesses with proper diffidence; but he certainly fancied she had been crying—or very near it—not so long ago. Yet the daughter of William Iver was sensible and not given to silly tears.

"I think I've done right," she said—as she had said when she wrote to Mina. "Everybody will be pleased. Father's very pleased." Suddenly she put out her hand and took hold of his, giving it a tight grip. "Oh, but, Mr Neeld, I've made somebody so unhappy."

"I dare say, my dear, I dare say. I was a young fellow once. I dare say."

"And he says nothing about it. He wished me joy—and he does wish me joy too. I've no right to talk to you, to tell you, or anything. I don't believe people think girls ever mind making men unhappy; but they do."

"If they like the men?" This suggestion at least was not too difficult for him.

"Yes, when they like them, when they're old friends, you know. I only spoke to him for a moment, I only just met him on the road. I don't suppose I shall ever talk to him about it, or about anything in particular, again." She squeezed Neeld's hand a second time, and then withdrew her own.

This was unknown country again for Mr Neeld; his sense of being lost grew more acute. These were not the sort of problems which had occupied his life; but they seemed now to him no less real, hardly less important. It was only a girl wondering if she had done right. Yet he felt the importance of it.

"You can't help the unhappiness," he said. "You must go to the man you love, my dear."

With a little start she turned and looked at him for an instant. Then she murmured in a perfunctory fashion:

"Yes, I must make the best choice I can, of course." She added after a pause, "But I wish——"

Words or the inclination to speak failed her again, and she relapsed into silence.

As he sat there beside her, silent too, his mind travelled back to what her father had said; and slowly he began to understand. No doubt she liked Harry, even as her father did. No doubt she thought he would be a good husband, as Iver had thought him a good fellow. But it became plain to the searcher after truth that not to her any more than to her father was it nothing that Harry was Tristram of Blent. Her phrases about doing right and making the right choice included a reference to that, even if that were not their whole meaning. She had mentioned her father's pleasure—everybody's pleasure. That pleasure would be found largely in seeing her Lady Tristram. What then would she have to say on the question that so perplexed Mr Neeld? Would she not echo Iver's accusation of fraud against Harry Tristram and (as a consequence) against those who aided and abetted him? Would she understand or accept as an excuse the plea that Neeld had been led away by romance or entrapped into a conspiracy by Mina Zabriska? No. She too would call out "Fraud, fraud!" and he did not blame her. He called himself a fool for having been led away by romance, by unreasoning feeling. Should he blame her because she was not led away? His disposition was to praise her for a choice so wise, and to think that she had done very right in accepting Lord Tristram of Blent. Aye, Lord Tristram of Blent! Precisely! Deep despair settled on Mr Neeld's baffled mind.

Meanwhile, Duplay walked home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. And on the whole he had done the Major justice. He had smiled for a moment when he hinted that Duplay and Harry were not very cordial; the Major met him by a straightforward recognition that this was true, and by an indirect admission of the reason. As to this latter Iver had dropped no word; but he would give Duplay a hearing. Now it remained only to bring Mina to reason. If she spoke, the case would be so strong as to demand inquiry. The relief in Duplay's mind was so great that he could not explain it, until he realized that his niece's way of treating him had so stuck in his memory that he had been prepared to be turned from Iver's doors with contumely. Such an idea seemed absurd now, and the Major laughed.

Mina was strange, Duplay never ceased to think that. They had parted on impossible terms; but now, as soon as he appeared, she ran at him with apparent pleasure and with the utmost eagerness. She asked nothing about his expedition either, though she could easily have guessed where he had been and for what purpose. She almost danced as she cried:

"I've seen her! I've been talking to her! I met her in the meadow near Matson's cottage, and she asked me the way back to Blent. Uncle, she's wonderful!"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Why, Cecily Gainsborough, of course. I just remember how Lady Tristram spoke. She speaks the same way exactly! I can't describe it, but it's the sort of voice that makes you want to do anything in the world it asks. Don't you know? She told me a lot about herself; then she talked about Blent. She's full of it; she admires it most tremendously——"

"That's all right," interrupted Duplay with a malicious smile. "Because, so far as I can understand, she happens to own it."

"What?" The Imp stood frozen into stillness.

"You've been talking to Lady Tristram of Blent," he added with a nod. "Though I suppose you didn't tell her so?"

To Lady Tristram of Blent! She had never once thought of that while they talked. The shock of the idea was great, so great that Mina forgot to repudiate it, or to show any indignation at Harry's claims being passed by in contemptuous silence. All the while they talked, she had thought of the girl as far removed from Blent, as even more of a visitor to the countryside than she herself was, a wonderful visitor indeed, but no part of their life. And she was—well, at the least she was heir to Blent! How had she forgotten that? The persistent triumph of Duplay's smile marked his sense of the success of his sally.

"Yes, and she'll be installed there before many months are out," he went on. "So I hope you made yourself pleasant, Mina?"

Mina gave him one scornful glance, as she passed by him and ran out on to her favorite terrace. There was a new thing to look and to wonder at in Blent. The interest, the sense of concern in Blent and its affairs, which the news of the engagement had blunted and almost destroyed, revived in her now. She forgot the prose of that marriage arrangement and turned eagerly to the poetry of Cecily Gainsborough, of the poor girl there in the house that was hers, unwitting guest of the man who was—— The Imp stopped herself with rude abruptness. What had she been about to say, what had she been about to think? The guest of the man who was robbing her? That had been it. But no, no, no! She did not think that. Confused in her mind by this new idea, none the less she found her sympathy going out to Harry again. He was not a robber; it was his own. The blood, she cried still, and not the law. But what was to be done about Cecily Gainsborough? Was she to go back to the little house in London, was she to go back to ugliness, to work, to short commons? There seemed no way out. Between the old and the new attraction, the old allegiance and the new claim to homage that Cecily made, Mina Zabriska stood bewildered. She had a taste now of the same perplexity that she had done so much to bring on poor Mr Neeld at Fairholme. Yet not quite the same. He did not know what he ought to do; she did not feel sure of what she wanted. Both stood undecided. Mr Cholderton's Journal was still at its work of disturbing people's minds.

But Major Duplay was well content with the day's work. If his niece had a divided mind she would be easier to bend to his will. He did not care who had Blent, if only it passed from Harry. But it was a point gained if Mina could think of its passing from Harry to somebody who would be welcome to her there. Then she would tell the story which she had received from her mother, and the first battle against Harry Tristram would be won. The excitement of fighting was on the Major now. He could neither pity the enemy nor distrust his own cause till the strife was done.

Amongst all the indecision there was about, Duplay had the merit of a clear vision of his own purpose and his own desires.



XIII

IN THE LONG GALLERY

The man with whom the fighters and the doubters were concerned, in whose defence or attack efforts and hopes were enlisted, round whom hesitation and struggles gathered, was thinking very little about his champions or his enemies. No fresh whispers of danger had come to Harry Tristram's ears. He knew nothing of Neeld and could not think of that quiet old gentleman as a possible menace to his secret. He trusted Mina Zabriska and relied on the influence which he had proved himself to possess over her. He did not believe that Duplay would stick to his game, and was not afraid of him if he did. The engagement was accomplished; the big check, or the prospect of it, lay ready to his hand; his formal proofs, perfect so long as they were unassailed, awaited the hour when formal proofs would be required. To all appearance he was secure in his inheritance and buttressed against any peril. No voice was raised, no murmur was heard, to impugn the right of the new Lord Tristram of Blent. The object of all those long preparations, which had occupied his mother and himself for so many years, was achieved. He sat in Addie Tristram's place, and none said him nay.

His mind was not much on these matters at all. Even his engagement occupied him very little. Janie's letter had arrived and had been read. It came at mid-day, and the evening found it still unacknowledged. It had broken in from outside as it were, intruding like something foreign into the life that he had begun to live on the evening before Addie Tristram was buried, the evening when for an instant he had thought he saw her phantom by the Pool; a life foreshadowed by the new mood which Mina had noticed in him while Lady Tristram still lived, but brought into reality by the presence of another. It seemed a new life coming to one who was almost a new man, so much of the unexpected in him did it reveal to himself. He had struggled against it, saying that the Monday morning would see an end of this unlooked-for episode of feeling and of companionship. Accident stepped in; Gainsborough lay in bed with a chill and could not move. Harry acquiesced in the necessity of his remaining, not exactly with pleasure, rather with a sense that something had begun to happen, not by his will, but affecting him deeply. What would come of it he did not know; that it would end in a day or two, that it would be only an episode and leave no permanent mark seemed now almost impossible; it was fraught with something bigger than that.

But with what? He had no reasoned idea; he was unable to reason. He was passive in the hands of the feelings, the impressions, the fancies that laid hold of him. Addie Tristram's death had moved him strangely; then came that hardly natural, eerily fascinating reminiscence—no, it was more than that—that re-embodiment or resurrection of her in the girl who moved and talked and sat like her, who had her ways though not her face, her eyes set in another frame, her voice renewed in youthful richness, the very turns of her head, even her old trick of sticking out her foot. He scowled sometimes, he was surprised into laughter sometimes; at another moment he would rebel against the malicious Power that seemed to be having a joke with him; for the most part he looked, and looked, and looked, unwilling to miss a single one of the characteristic touches which had been Addie Tristram's belongings and which he had never expected to see again after her spirit had passed away. And the outcome of all his looking was still the same as the effect of his first impression on the evening before the funeral—a sort of despair. A thing was there which he did not know how to deal with.

And she was so happy, so absurdly happy. She had soon found that he expected no conventional solemnity; he laughed himself at the idea of Addie Tristram wanting people to pull long faces, and keep them long when pulled, because she had laid her burden down and was at peace. Cecily found she might be merry, and merry she was. A new life had come to her too, a life of river and trees and meadows; deeper than that, a life of beauty about her. She absorbed it with a native thirst. There was plenty of it, and she had been starved so long. She seized on Blent and enjoyed it to the full. She enjoyed Harry too, laughing now when he stared at her and making him laugh, yet herself noting all his ways, his pride, his little lordlinesses—these grew dear to her—his air of owning the countryside, and making no secret of her own pleasure in being part of the family and in living in the house that owned the countryside. It is to be feared that Mr Gainsborough and his chill were rather neglected, but he got on very well with Addie Tristram's ancient maid; she had the nobility at her fingers' ends and even knew something about their pedigrees. Cecily was free, or assumed the freedom, to spend her time with Harry, or, if he failed her, at least with and among the things that belonged to him and had belonged to beautiful Addie Tristram who had been like her—so Harry said, and Cecily treasured the thought, teasing him now sometimes, as they grew intimate, with a purposed repetition of a pose or trick that she had first displayed unconsciously, and found had power to make him frown or smile. She smiled herself in mischievous triumph when she hit her mark, or she would break into the rich gurgle of delight that he remembered hearing from his young mother when he himself was a child. The life was to her all pure delight; she had no share in the thoughts that often darkened his brow, no knowledge of the thing which again and again filled him with that wondering despair.

On the evening of the day when Major Duplay went to Fairholme, the two sat together in the garden after dinner. It was nine o'clock, a close still night, with dark clouds now and then slowly moving off and on to the face of a moon nearly full. They had been silent for some minutes, sipping coffee. Cecily pointed to the row of windows in the left wing of the house.

"I've never been there," she said. "What's that?"

"The Long Gallery—all one long room, you know," he answered.

"One room! All that! What's in it?"

"Well, everything mostly," he smiled. "All our treasures, and our pictures, and so on."

"Why haven't you taken me there?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "You never asked me," he said.

"Well, will you take me there now—when you've finished your cigar?"

There was a pause before he answered, "Yes, if you like." He turned to the servant who had come to take away the coffee. "Light up the Long Gallery at once."

"Yes, my lord." A slight surprise broke through the respectful acceptance of the order.

"It was lighted last for my mother, months ago," Harry said, as though he were explaining his servant's surprise. "She sat there the last evening before she took to her room."

"Is that why you haven't taken me there?"

"I expect it is." His tone was not very confident.

"And you don't much want to now?"

"No, I don't know that I do." But his reluctance seemed vague and weak.

"Oh, I must go," Cecily decided, "but you needn't come unless you like, you know."

"All right, you go alone," he agreed.

Window after window sprang into light. "Ah!" murmured Cecily in satisfaction; and Mina Zabriska saw the illumination from the terrace of Merrion on the hill. Cecily rose, waved her hand to Harry, and ran off into the house with a laugh. The next moment he saw her figure in the first window; she threw it open, waved her hand again, and again laughed; the moon, clear for a moment, shone on her face and turned it pale.

He sat watching the lighted windows. From time to time she darted into sight; once he heard the big window at the end facing the river flung open, the next instant she was in sight at the other extremity of the Gallery. Evidently she was running about, examining all the things. She came to a window presently and cried, "I wish you'd come and tell me all about it." "I don't think I will," he called back. "Oh, well——!" she laughed impatiently, and disappeared. Minutes passed and he did not see her again; she must have settled down somewhere, he supposed; or perhaps her interest was exhausted and she had gone off to her father's room. No, there she was, flitting past a window again. His reluctance gave way before curiosity and attraction. Flinging away his cigar, he got up and walked slowly into the house.

The passage outside the Gallery was dimly lighted, and the door of the Gallery was open. Harry stood in the shadow unseen, watching intently every movement of the girl's. She was looking at a case of miniatures and medals, memorials of beauties and of warriors. She turned from them to the picture of an Elizabethan countess, splendid in ruff and rich in embroidery. She caught up a candle and held it over her head, up toward the picture. Then setting the candle down she ran to the end window and looked out on the night. Addie Tristram's tall arm-chair still stood by the window. Cecily threw herself into it, sighing and stretching her arms in a delighted weariness. Mina Zabriska could make out a figure in the Long Gallery now.

Slowly and irresolutely Harry Tristram came in; Cecily's face was not turned toward the door, and he stood unnoticed just within the threshold. His eyes ranged round the room but came back to Cecily. She was very quiet, but he saw her breast rise and fall in quick breathing. She was stirred and moved. A strange agitation, an intensity of feeling, came over him as he stood there motionless, everything seeming motionless around him, while his ancestors and hers looked down on them from the walls, down on their successors. The Lords of Blent were about him. Their trophies and their treasures decked the room. And she sat there in Addie Tristram's chair, in Addie Tristram's place, in Addie Tristram's attitude. Did the dead know the secret? Did the pictures share it? Who was to them the Lord of Blent?