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                               THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER

             _Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons_

                               BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1920

Published October, 1912
by
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

TO
ANSTEY GUTHRIE




[Illustration: Archibald Marshall.]




CONTENTS


I A Court Ball

II In the Bay of Biscay

III The Clintons of Kencote

IV Clintons Young and Old

V Melbury Park

VI A Good Long Talk

VII The Rector

VIII By the Lake

IX The Question of Marriage

X Town Versus Country

XI A Wedding

XII Food and Raiment

XIII Ronald Mackenzie

XIV The Plunge

XV Bloomsbury

XVI The Pursuit

XVII The Contest

XVIII After the Storm

XIX The Whole House Upset

XX Mrs. Clinton

XXI Cicely's Return

XXII The Life




CHAPTER I

A COURT BALL


"I recollect the time," said the Squire, "when two women going to a ball
were a big enough load for any carriage. You may say what you like about
crinolines, but I've seen some very pretty women in them in my time."

There were three people in the carriage passing slowly up the Mall in
the string, with little jerks and progressions. They were the Squire
himself, Mrs. Clinton, and Cicely, and they were on their way to a Court
Ball.

The Squire, big, florid, his reddish beard touched with grey falling
over the red and gold of his Deputy-Lieutenant's uniform, sat back
comfortably beside his wife, who was dressed in pale lavender silk, with
diamonds in her smooth, grey-yellow hair. She was short and rather
plump. Her grey eyes, looking out on the violet of the night sky, the
trees, and the crowd of hilarious onlookers who had not been invited to
Buckingham Palace, had a patient and slightly wistful expression. She
had not spoken since the carriage had left the quiet hotel in which they
were staying for their fortnight in London.

Cicely sat on the back seat of the carriage. On such an occasion as this
she might have been expected to be accorded the feminine privilege of
sitting at the side of her mother, but it had not occurred to the Squire
to offer it to her. She was a pretty girl, twenty-two years of age, with
a fair skin and abundant brown hair. She was dressed in costly white
satin, her gown simply cut. As she had stood before her glass, while her
mother's maid had held for her her light evening cloak, her beautiful
neck and shoulders had seemed warmly flushed by contrast with the dead
pallor of the satin. She also had hardly spoken since they had driven
off from their hotel, which was so quiet and private that it was hardly
like an hotel, and where some of the servants had stood in the hall to
see them get into their carriage, just as they might have done at home
at Kencote.

It was a great occasion for Cicely. Her brothers--Dick, who was in the
Grenadier Guards, and Humphrey, who was in the Foreign Office--were well
enough used to the scenes of splendour offered by a London season, but
Cicely had hardly ever been in London at all. She had been brought up
four years before to be presented, and had been taken home again
immediately. She had seen nothing of London gaieties, either then or
since. Now she was to enjoy such opportunities of social intercourse as
might be open to the daughter of a rich squire who had had all he wanted
of town life thirty years before, and had lived in his country house
ever since. A fortnight was as long as the Squire cared to be away from
Kencote, even in the month of June; and a fortnight was to be the extent
of Cicely's London season. This was to be the crowning night of it.

The Squire chattered on affably. He had had a good dinner and had not
been hurried over it, or afterwards. That was the worst of those
theatres, he would say; they didn't give you time even to drink your
glass of wine; and he had not been affable with his wife and daughter
the evening before, when driving to the play. But now he was rather
pleased with himself. He did not care for all this sort of thing, of
course; he had had quite enough of it as a subaltern, dancing about
London all night, and going everywhere--all very well for a young
fellow, but you got tired of it. Still, there was a certain flavour
about a Court Ball, even for a one-time subaltern in the Blues, who had
taken part in everything that was going on. Other people scrambled for
such things--they had to if they wanted them, and why they should want
them if they didn't come to them naturally, the Squire couldn't tell. To
a man of the importance of Edward Clinton of Kencote, they came as a
matter of course, and he accepted them as his due, but was pleased, too,
at having his social importance recognised in such a way, without his
stirring a finger. As a matter of cold fact, a finger had been stirred
to procure this particular honour, although it had not been his. But of
that he was not aware.

The carriage drove slowly with the rest into the big court-yard, where a
military band was playing bright music. Cicely suddenly felt exhilarated
and expectant. They drove up before the great entrance, red-carpeted,
brightly lit, and went through the hall up the stairs into the
cloak-room. Cicely had a flush on her cheeks now as she waited for her
mother, who seemed to be taking an interminable time to settle her lace
and her jewels. Mrs. Clinton looked her over and her eyes brightened a
little. "Are you nervous, darling?" she asked; and Cicely said, "No,
mother, not a bit." The scent of flowers was in her nostrils, the
strains of the music expectantly in her ears. She was going to dance in
a royal palace, and she was such a country mouse that she was excited at
the prospect of seeing royalty at close quarters. She had been far too
nervous to take in anything when she had been presented, and that had
been four years ago.

They went out and found the Squire waiting for them. He did not ask
them, as he generally did, why they had been so long.

They seemed to go through interminable wide corridors, decorated in red
and gold, with settees against the walls and beautiful pictures hanging
above them, but came at last to the great ball-room.

Cicely drew her breath as she entered. This was better than the
Meadshire County Ball, or the South Meadshire Hunt Ball. The women were
mostly in white, or pale colours, but their jewels were beyond anything
she had ever imagined. The lights from the great lustre chandeliers
seemed to be reflected in those wonderful clusters and strings and
devices of sparkling gems. Cold white and cold fire for the women,
colour for the men. Scarlet and gold pre-dominated, but there were
foreign attaches in uniforms of pale blue and silver, and other
unfamiliar colours, eastern robes and dresses encrusted with jewels or
richly embroidered in silks. It was gorgeous, a scene from fairyland.

There was a sudden ebbing of the tide of chatter. The band in the
gallery began to play "God save the King." Doors were thrown open at the
end of the great room, and the royal party came in slowly, passed down
the open space on the red carpet between the lines of bowing and
curtseying guests, and took their places on the dais. Cicely gazed her
fill at them. They were just as she had seen them a hundred times in
pictures in the illustrated papers, but more royal, and yet, more human.

They danced their opening quadrille, and after that every one could
dance. But of all the people there Cicely knew no one who would be
likely to dance with her. She sat by her mother on one of the raised
settees that ran in four rows the length of the room. The Squire had
found friends and was talking to them elsewhere. Her brother Dick, who
she knew was to have been there, she had not yet seen. Everything
depended upon him. Surely, people did not come casually late to a Court
Ball! If something had prevented his coming at all, it seemed to her
that she would have to sit there all the evening.

Her eyes brightened. There was Dick making his way towards them. He
looked very smart in his guardsman's uniform, and very much at home with
himself, as if the King's ball-room was no more to him than any other
ball-room. He was always provokingly leisurely in his movements, and
even now he stopped twice to talk to people whom he knew, and stood with
them each time as if he would stay there for ever. Really, Dick could be
almost as provoking as the Squire, where their womenfolk were concerned.

But at last he came, smiling very pleasantly. "Hullo, mother!" he said.
"Hullo, Siskin! Now you've seen the Queen in her parlour, eh? Well, how
do you like yourself?"

He was a good-looking fellow, Dick, with his well-shaped, closely
cropped head, his well-trained moustache, his broad, straight shoulders
and lean waist and hips. He was over thirty, but showed few signs as yet
of the passing of youth. It was quite plain by the way he looked at her
that he was fond of his sister. She was nearly ten years younger than he
and still a child to him, to be patronised and petted, if she was taken
notice of at all. He didn't take much notice of his mother, contenting
himself with telling her that she "looked as smart as any of 'em." But
he stood and talked to Cicely, and his eyes rested on her as if he were
proud of her.

In the meantime the delicious strains of a valse were swinging through
the great room, and the smooth floor was full of dancers, except in the
space reserved for the royalties, where only a few couples were
circling. Cicely's feet were moving. "Can't we dance, Dick?" she said.

"Come on," said Dick, "let's have a scurry," and he led her down on to
the floor and floated her out into a paradise of music and movement.
Dick was the best partner she had ever danced with. He had often snubbed
her about her own dancing, but he had danced with her all the same, more
than most brothers dance with their sisters, at country balls, which
were the only balls she had ever been to. He was a kind brother,
according to his lights, and Cicely would have liked to dance with him
all the evening.

That, of course, was out of the question. Dick knew plenty of people to
dance with to-night, if she didn't. In fact, he seemed to know half the
people in the room, although he gave her the impression that he thought
Court Balls rather mixed affairs. "Can't be certain of meeting your
friends here," he said, and added, "of course," as admitting handsomely
that people might be quite entitled to be asked who did not happen to be
his friends. "You're not the only country cousins, Siskin," he said,
which gave Cicely somehow a higher opinion of herself, his dissociation
of himself in this matter of country cousinhood from his family striking
her as nothing unreasonable. Indeed, it was not unreasonable with regard
to the Clintons, the men taking their part, as a matter of course, in
everything to which their birth and wealth entitled them, so long as
they cared to do so, the women living, for the most part, at home, in a
wide and airy seclusion.

"Want to dance, eh?" said Dick, in answer to her little plea. "All
right, I'll bring up some young fellows."

And he did. He brought up a succession of them and delivered them
off-hand to his mother and sister with a slight air of authority, doing
his duty very thoroughly, as a kind brother should.

Most of them were quite young--as young, or younger than Cicely herself.
Some of them wore the uniform of Dick's own regiment, and were
presumably under his orders, professionally if not in private life. Some
of them were amazingly patronising and self-possessed, and these did not
ask Cicely to dance again. She felt, when they returned her to her
mother, that she had not been a success with them. Others were boyish
and diffident, and with them she got on pretty well. With one, a modest
child of nineteen or so with a high-sounding title, she was almost
maternally friendly, and he seemed to cling to her as a refuge from a
new and bewildering world. They ate ices together--he told her that he
had been brought up at home in Ireland under a priest, and had never
eaten enough ices at a sitting until he had joined his regiment a
fortnight before. He could not dance well, indeed hardly at all,
although he confessed to having taken lessons, and his gratitude when
Cicely suggested that they should go and look at some of the rooms
instead, warmed her heart to him and put their temporary friendship on
the best possible footing.

They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace,
explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the
buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been
school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of
grown-ups. The boy became volubly friendly and bubbling over with
unexpected humour and high spirits. He tried to persuade Cicely to stay
away from the ball-room for a fourth dance. Nobody would miss them, he
explained. But she said she must go back, and when they joined the crowd
again her partner was haled off with a frightened look to the royal
circle, and she found her mother standing up before the seat on which
she had sat all the evening searching anxiously for her with her eyes,
and her father by her side.

An old man, looking small and shrunken in his heavy uniform, but
otherwise full of life and kindliness, with twinkling eyes and a short
white beard, was with them, and she breathed a sigh of relief, for if
she was not frightened of what her mother might say about her long
absence, she rather dreaded the comments her father might be pleased to
pass on it. But her kinsman, Lord Meadshire, Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, a great magnate in the eyes of the world, was to her just a very
kind and playful old man, whose jokes only, because of their inherent
feebleness, caused her any discomfort. Cousin Humphrey would preserve
her from the results of her fault if she had committed one.

"Well, my dear," he said in an affectionate, rather asthmatical voice,
"you've brought us some of the Meadshire roses, eh, what? Hope you're
enjoying yourself. If you had come a little earlier, I would have asked
you to dance with me."

"Where have you been so long, Cicely?" asked her mother, but the twinkle
in Lord Meadshire's eyes showed that a joke was in progress, and he
broke in hurriedly, "Forty or fifty years earlier, I mean, my dear," and
he chuckled himself into a fit of coughing.

The Squire was not looking quite pleased, but whatever the cause of his
displeasure it was not, apparently, Cicely's prolonged absence, for he
also asked if she was enjoying herself, and looked at her with some
pride and fondness. Going home in the carriage, she learned later that
Lord Meadshire, who would have done a great deal more to provide her
with social gaiety if he had not been living, now, mostly in retirement
with an invalid wife, had procured those commands which had brought them
up to London, and are not generally bestowed unasked on the belongings
of a country squire, however important he may be in the midst of his own
possessions.

Lord Meadshire stayed with them for some little time and pointed out to
her some of the notabilities and the less familiar royalties. Then Dick
came up and took her away to dance again. After that she sat by her
mother's side until the end. She saw the boy with whom she had made
friends eying her rather wistfully. He had danced a quadrille with a
princess, and the experience seemed so to have shattered his nerve that
he was not equal to making his way to her to ask her to bear him company
again, and she could not very well beckon him, as she felt inclined to
do. The ball became rather dull, although she looked a good deal at the
King and Queen and thought how extraordinary it was that she should be
in the same room with them.

Before she had quite realised that it had begun, the ball was over. The
band played "God save the King" again. Everybody stood up and the royal
procession was formed and went away to supper. With the light of royalty
eclipsed, her own supper seemed an ordinary affair. At country dances
she had shirked it whenever she could, taking advantage of a clearer
floor to dance with some willing partner right through a valse or a
two-step from beginning to end. After supper she danced once or twice,
but as she drove back to the very private hotel at about half-past one,
she only felt as if she had not danced nearly enough, and as she
undressed she hardly knew whether she had enjoyed herself or not.




CHAPTER II

IN THE BAY OF BISCAY


On the night on which Cicely Clinton was enjoying herself at the Court
Ball, the _Punjaub_ homeward bound from Australia _via_ Colombo and the
Suez Canal was steaming through the Bay of Biscay, which, on this night
of June had prepared a pleasant surprise for the _Punjaub's_ numerous
passengers by lying calm and still under a bright moon.

Two men were leaning over the side of the upper deck, watching the
phosphorescent gleam of the water as it slid past beneath them, and
talking as intimate friends. They were Ronald Mackenzie, the explorer,
returning home after his adventurous two years' expedition into the
wilds of Tibet, and Jim Graham, whose home was at Mountfield, three
miles away from Kencote, where the Clintons lived. They were not
intimate friends, in spite of appearances. They had joined the ship
together at Colombo, and found themselves occupying the same cabin. But
acquaintanceship ripens so fast on board ship that the most dissimilar
characters may adhere to one another for as long as a voyage lasts,
although they may never meet again afterwards, nor particularly wish to.

Mackenzie was a tall, ruggedly fashioned man, with greying hair and a
keen, bold face. Jim Graham was more slightly built. He had an open,
honest look; he was rather deliberate in speech, and apparently in
thought, for in conversation he would often pause before speaking, and
he sometimes ignored a question altogether, as if he had not heard it,
or had not understood it. There were those who called him stupid; but it
was usually said of him that he was slow and sure. He had a rather ugly
face, but it was that pleasant ugliness which, with a well-knit athletic
body, clear eyes and a tanned skin, is hardly distinguishable, in a man,
from good looks.

They were talking about London. "I can smell it and see it," said
Mackenzie. "I hope it will be raining when I get home. I like the wet
pavements, and the lights, and the jostling crowds. Lord! it will be
good to see it again. How I've pined for it, back there! But I'll be out
of it again in a month. It's no place for a man like me, except to get
back to every now and then."

"That's how most of us take it," said Jim, "unless we have to work
there. I'm glad I haven't to, though I enjoy it well enough for a week
or two, occasionally."

"Do you live in the country all the year round?"

"Yes."

Mackenzie threw him a glance which seemed to take him in from top to
toe. "What do you do?" he asked.

Jim Graham paused for a moment before replying. "I have a good deal to
do," he said. "I've got my place to look after."

"That doesn't take you all your time, does it?"

"It takes a good deal of it. And I'm on the bench."

"That means sending poor devils to prison for poaching your game, I
suppose."

"Not quite that," said Jim, without a smile.

"I suppose what it all does mean is that you live in a big country house
and shoot and hunt and fish to your heart's content, with just enough
work to keep you contented with yourself. By Jove, some men are lucky!
Do you know what my life has been?"

"I know you have been through many adventures and done big things," said
Jim courteously.

"Well, I'm obliged to you for putting it like that. Seems to me I didn't
put my idea of your life quite so nicely, eh?" He stood up and stretched
his tall figure, and laughed. "I'm a rough diamond," he said. "I don't
mind saying so, because it's plain enough for any one to see. I
sometimes envy people like you their easy manners; but I've got to be
content with my own; and after all, they have served my turn well
enough. Look at us two. I suppose I'm about ten years older than you,
but I had made my name when I was your age. You were born in a fine
country house."

"Not so very fine," said Jim.

"Well, pretty fine compared to the house I was born in, which was the
workhouse. You were educated at Eton and Christchurch, and all that sort
of thing----"

"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim,
"but I was at Winchester and New College."

"That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse
school till I was twelve. Then I ran away and sold papers in the
streets, and anything else that I could pick up a few coppers by--except
steal. I never did that. I always made up my mind I'd be a big man some
day, and--I'm glad I didn't steal."

"I didn't either, you know," said Jim, "although I'm not a big man, and
never shall be."

"Ah, that's where the likes of me scores. You've no call to ambition.
You have everything you can want provided for you."

"There have been one or two big men born as I was," said Jim. "But
please go on with your story. When did you go on your first journey?"

"When I was sixteen. I looked much older. I shipped before the mast and
went out to Australia, and home round Cape Horn. By Jove, I shan't
forget that. The devil was in the wind. We were five months coming home,
and nearly starved to death, and worked till we were as thin as hungry
cats. Then I shipped with the Boyle-Geering expedition--you know--North
Pole, and three years trying to get there. Then I tried a change of
climate and went to Central Africa with Freke. I was his servant, got
his bath, shaved him, brushed his clothes--he was always a bit of a
dandy, Freke, and lived like a gentleman, though I don't believe he was
any better than I was when he started; but he could fight too, and there
wasn't his equal with <DW65>s. We had trouble that trip, and the men who
went out with him were a rotten lot. They'd found the money, or he
wouldn't have taken them. He knew a man when he saw one. When we came
home I was second in command.

"It was easy after that. I led that expedition through Uganda when I was
only twenty-five; and the rest--well, the rest I dare say you know."

"Yes, I know," said Jim. "You've done a lot."

"Not so bad, eh, for a workhouse brat?"

"Not so bad for anybody."

"I'm up top now. I used to envy lots of people. Now most people envy
me."

Jim was silent.

Mackenzie turned to him. "I suppose you've had a pretty easy time
travelling," he said. There was a suspicion of a sneer on his long thin
lips.

"Pretty easy," said Jim.

"Ah! Your sort of travelling is rather different from mine. If you had
been roughing it in Tibet for the last two years you would be pretty
glad to be getting back."

"I'm glad to be getting back as it is."

Mackenzie turned and leaned over the rail again. "Well, I don't know
that I don't envy you a bit after all," he said. "I've got no friends in
England. I'm not a man to make friends. The big-wigs will take me up
this time. I know that from what I've seen. I shall be a lion. I suppose
I shall be able to go anywhere I like. But there's nowhere I want to go
to particularly, when I've had enough of London. You've got your country
home. Lord, how I've thought of the English country, in summer time!
Thirsted for it. But it has to belong to you, in a way. I've a good mind
to buy a little place--I shall be able to afford it when my book comes
out. But I should want a wife to keep it warm for me. You're not
married, I suppose?"

"No."

"Going to be?"

Jim made no reply.

Mackenzie laughed. "Mustn't ask questions, I suppose," he said. "I'm a
rough diamond, Graham. Got no manners, you see. Never had any one to
teach 'em to me. I apologise."

"No need to," said Jim.

There was silence for a space. The great round moon shone down and
silvered the long ripples on the water.

"I don't mind answering your question," said Jim, looking out over the
sea. "There are some country neighbours of mine. One of the sons is my
chief pal. We were brought up together, more or less. He's going to
marry my sister. And--well, I hope I'm going to marry his."

His face changed a little, but Mackenzie, looking straight before him
did not notice it. "Sounds a capital arrangement," he said drily.

Jim flushed, and drew himself up. "Well, I think I'll be turning in," he
said.

Mackenzie faced him quickly. "Tell me all about it," he said. "How old
is she? You have known her all your life. When did you first find out
you wanted to marry her? When are you going to be married?"

Jim looked at him squarely. "You are taking liberties," he said.

Mackenzie laughed again--his harsh, unamused laugh. "All right," he
said. "One has to be as delicate as a fine lady talking to fellows like
you. It's not worth it. When you live like a savage half your life, you
sort of hunger after hearing about things like that--people living in
the country, falling in love and getting married, and going to church
every Sunday--all the simple, homely things. A man without all the
nonsense about good form and all that sort of thing--a man who'd done
things--he would know why you asked him, and he would know he couldn't
find anybody better to tell his little happy secrets to."

"Oh, well," said Jim, slightly mollified.

"I dare say you're right, though," said Mackenzie. "One doesn't blab to
every stranger. Even I don't, and I'm a rough diamond, as I've told
you."

"Yes, you've told me that."

"Is the fellow who is going to marry your sister a country gentleman,
too?"

"No. His father is. He's a younger son. He's a doctor."

"A doctor! Isn't that a funny thing for a country gentleman's son to
be?"

"I don't know that it is. He's a clever fellow. He went in for science
at Oxford, and got keen."

"That's good hearing. I like to hear of men getting keen about a real
job. You might tell me about him, if I'm not taking another liberty in
asking."

"Oh, look here, Mackenzie, I'm sorry I said that. I didn't understand
why you asked what you did."

"I've told you. I like to hear about everything that goes on in the
world. It isn't curiosity, and yet in a way it is. I'm curious about
everything that goes on--everywhere. It isn't impertinent curiosity,
anyway."

"I see that. I'll tell you about Walter Clinton. He's a good chap. His
father has a fine place next to mine. He's a rich man. His family has
been there since the beginning of all things. Walter is just my age.
We've always been a lot together."

"Is there a large family? What do his brothers do?"

"There's Dick, the eldest son. He's in the Guards. There's Humphrey in
the Foreign Office, and a younger son, a sailor. And--and there are
three girls--two of them are children--twins."

"Well, now, aren't I right in saying it's odd for a son in a family like
that to become a doctor?"

"Oh, well, I suppose in a way you are, though I can't see why he
shouldn't be. The fact is that they wanted to make a parson of
him--there's a rather good family living. But he wasn't taking any."

"Ah! I thought I knew something about your country gentry. Well, I
admire the doctor. Was there a row?"

"His father was rather annoyed. Perhaps it's not to be wondered at. His
half-brother is Rector at Kencote now, and when he dies they'll have to
give the living to a stranger. Of course they would rather have one of
the family."

"It's like a chapter in a book--one of the long, easy ones, all about
country life and the squire and the parson. I love 'em. And the doctor
is going to marry your sister. Can I give 'em a skin for a wedding
present?"

"I'm sure they would be gratified. You'd better come down and make their
acquaintance."

"I'll do that. I'd like to come and see you, Graham; and you mustn't
mind my roughness peeping out occasionally. I haven't had many chances
in life."

There was a pause, and then Jim said, "Walter Clinton's sister comes
next to him in the family. She's six or seven years younger. Of course,
I've known her ever since she was a baby. When I came back from Oxford
one summer vac., I found her almost grown up. She seemed quite different
somehow. I was always over there all the summer, or she was with my
sister. We fixed it up we would get married some day. They laughed at
us, and said we had better wait a few years; but of course they were
pleased, really, both my people and hers, though they thought it a bit
premature; she was only seventeen. When I went back to Oxford and
thought it over I said to myself it wasn't quite fair to tie her down at
that age. I would wait and see. So we fell back to what we had been
before."

He stopped suddenly. "Is that all?" asked Mackenzie in some surprise.

"It's all at present."

There was a long pause. "It's disappointing, somehow," said Mackenzie.
"I suppose I mustn't ask questions, but there are a lot I'd like to
ask."

"Oh, ask away. When the ice is once broken one can talk. It does one
good to talk sometimes."

"Women talk to each other about their love affairs. Men don't--not the
real ones--except on occasions."

"Well, we'll let this be an occasion, as you have started the subject."
He laughed lightly. "You've got a sort of power, Mackenzie. If any one
had told me yesterday that I should be talking to you to-night about a
thing I haven't mentioned to a soul for five years--except once or twice
to Walter Clinton--I should have stared at them. I'm not generally
supposed to be communicative."

"It's impersonal," said Mackenzie, "like telling things to a priest. I'm
not in the same world as you. Five years, is it? Well, now, what on
earth have you been doing ever since? She's not too young to marry now."

"No. I was at Oxford a year after what I told you of. Then I went for a
year to learn estate management on my uncle's property. When I came home
I thought I would fix it up with my father--he was alive then. He said,
wait a year longer. He was beginning to get ill, and I suppose he didn't
want to face the worry of making arrangements till he got better. But he
never got better, and within a year he died."

"And then you were your own master. That's two years ago, isn't it? And
here you are coming back from a year's trip round the world. You seem to
be pretty slow about things."

"One doesn't become one's own master immediately one succeeds to the
ownership of land. These death duties have altered all that. I shan't be
free for another year. Then I hope you will come to my wedding,
Mackenzie."

"Thanks. Didn't the young lady object to keeping it all hanging on for
so long?"

Jim did not reply for a moment. Then he said a little stiffly, "I wrote
to her from Oxford when I had thought things over. I thought it wasn't
fair to tie her up before I was ready to marry, and she so young."

"And that means that you have never allowed yourself to make love to her
since."

"Yes, it means that."

"And yet you have been in love with her all the time?"

"Yes."

"Well, it shows a greater amount of self-control than most people
possess--certainly a good deal more than I possess, I suppose you are
sure of her."

Jim did not reply to this, but he said presently, "If it wasn't for the
death duties I should have hoped to be married before this."

"I'll tell you what I don't understand," said Mackenzie. "I suppose you
live in much the same way as your father did before you."

"Yes. My mother lives with me, and my sister."

"Well, surely you _could_ get married if you wanted to. You've got your
house and everything, even if there isn't quite so much money to spend
for a bit. And as for ready money--it doesn't cost nothing to travel for
a year as you're doing."

"Oh, an uncle of mine paid for that," said Jim. "I got seedy after my
father's death. There was a lot of worry, and--and I was fond of the old
man. The doctors told me to go off. I'm all right now. As for the
rest--well, there are such things as jointures and dowries. No, I
couldn't marry, giving my wife and my mother and sister everything they
ought to have, before another year. Even then it will be a close thing;
I shall have to be careful."

They fell silent. The dark mass of the ship's hull beneath them slipped
on through the water, drawing ever nearer towards home. The moon climbed
still higher into the sky. "Well, we've had an interesting talk," said
Mackenzie, drawing himself up. "What you have told me is all so entirely
different from anything that would ever happen in my life. If I wanted
to marry a girl I should marry her, and let the money go hang. She'd
have to share and share. But I dare say when I want a thing I want it
for the moment a good deal more than you do; and, generally, I see that
I get it. Now I think I shall turn in. Give me ten minutes."

He went down to the cabin they both occupied. As he undressed he said to
himself, "Rather a triumph, drawing a story like that from a fellow like
that. And Lord, _what_ a story! He deserves to lose her. I should like
to hear her side of it."

Jim Graham smoked another cigarette, walking round the deck. He felt
vaguely dissatisfied with himself for having made a confidant of
Mackenzie, and at the same time relieved at having given vent to what he
had shut up for so long in the secret recesses of his mind.

A day or two later the two men parted at Tilbury. They had not again
mentioned the subject of their long conversation in the Bay of Biscay.




CHAPTER III

THE CLINTONS OF KENCOTE


Cicely was returning home with her father and mother after her short
taste of the season's gaieties. It was pleasant to lean back in a corner
of the railway carriage and look at the rich Meadshire country, so
familiar to her, running past the window. She had not wanted to go home
particularly, but she was rather glad to be going home all the same.

The country in South Meadshire is worth looking at. There are
deep-grassed water-meadows, kept green by winding rivers; woods of beech
and oak; stretches of gorse and bracken; no hills to speak of, but
gentle rises, crowned sometimes by an old church, or a pleasant-looking
house, neither very old nor very new, very large nor very small. The big
houses, and there are a good many of them, lie for the most part in what
may be called by courtesy the valleys. You catch a glimpse of them
sometimes at a little distance from the line, which seems to have shown
some ingenuity in avoiding them, standing in wide, well-timbered parks,
or peeping from amongst thicker trees, with their court of farm and
church and clustered village, in dignified seclusion. For the rest,
there are picturesque hamlets; cottages with bright gardens; children,
and fluttering clothes-lines; pigs and donkeys and geese on the cropped
commons; a network of roads and country lanes; and everywhere a look of
smiling and contented well-being, which many an English county of higher
reputation for picturesque scenery might envy.

The inhabitants of South Meadshire will tell you that it is one of the
best counties for all-round sport. Game is preserved, but not
over-preserved, and the mixture of pasture and arable land and frequent
covert, while it does not tempt the fox-hunting Londoner, breeds stout
foxes for the pleasure of those who know every inch of it; and there is
enough grass, enough water, and stiff enough fences to try the skill of
the boldest, and to provide occasionally such a run as from its
comparative rarity accords a gratification unknown to the frequenter of
the shires. Big fish are sometimes caught in the clear streams of South
Meadshire, and they are caught by the people who own them, or by their
friends. For in this quiet corner of England the life of the hall and
the village still goes on unchanged. At the meets--on lawn, at
cross-road, or by covert-side--everybody knows everybody else, at least
by sight; neighbours shoot with one another and not with strangers; and
the small fry of the countryside get their share of whatever fun is
going on.

In the middle of this pleasant land lies the manor of Kencote, and a
good many fat acres around it, which have come to the Clintons from time
to time, either by lucky marriages or careful purchase, during the close
upon six hundred years they have been settled there. For they are an old
family and in their way an important one, although their actual
achievements through all the centuries in which they have enjoyed wealth
and local consideration fill but a small page in their family history.

The Squire had, in the strong room of the Bathgate and Medchester Bank,
in deed-boxes at his lawyers, and in drawers and chests and cupboards in
his house, papers worthy of the attention of the antiquary. From time to
time they did engage the antiquary's attention, and, scattered about in
bound volumes of antiquarian and genealogical magazines, in the
proceedings of learned societies, and in county histories, you may find
the fruits of much careful and rewarding research through these various
documents. When the Squire was approached by some one who wished to
write a paper or read a paper, or compile a genealogy, or carry out any
project for the purposes of which it was necessary to gain access to the
Clinton archives, he would express his annoyance to his family. He would
say that he wished these people would let him alone. The fact was that
there were so few really old families left in England, that people like
himself who had lived quietly on their property for eight or nine
hundred years, or whatever it might be, had to bear all the brunt of
these investigations, and it was really becoming an infernal nuisance.
But he would always invite the antiquary to Kencote, give him a bottle
of fine claret and his share of a bottle of fine port, and every
facility for the pursuit of his inquiries.

_A History of the Ancient and Knightly Family of Clinton of Kencote in
the County of Meadshire_, was compiled about a hundred years ago by the
Reverend John Clinton Smith, M.A., Rector of Kencote, and published by
Messrs. Dow and Runagate of Paternoster Row. It is not very accurate,
but any one interested in such matters can, with due precaution taken,
gain from it valuable information concerning the twenty-two generations
of Clintons who have lived and ruled at Kencote since Sir Giles de
Clinton acquired the manor in the reign of Edward I.

The learned Rector devoted a considerable part of his folio volume to
tracing a connection between the Clintons of Kencote and other families
of Clintons who have mounted higher in the world. It is the opinion of
later genealogists that he might have employed his energies to better
purpose, but, in any case, the family needs no further shelter than is
supplied by its own well-rooted family tree. You will find too, in his
book, the result of his investigations into his own pedigree, in which
the weakest links have to bear the greatest strain, as is often the case
with pedigrees.

It remains only to be said that the Squire, Edward Clinton, had
succeeded his grandfather, Colonel Thomas, of whom you may read in
sporting magazines and memoirs, at the age of eighteen, and had always
been a rich man, and an honest one.

Kencote lies about six miles to the south-west of the old town of
Bathgate. The whole parish, and it is an exceptionally large one,
belongs to the Squire, with a good deal more land besides in
neighbouring parishes. Kencote House is a big, rather ugly structure,
and was built early in the eighteenth century after the disastrous fire
which destroyed the beautiful old Tudor hall and nearly all its hoarded
treasures. This catastrophe is worth a brief notice, for nowadays an
untitled family often enjoys some consideration from the possession of
an old and beautiful house, and the Clintons of Kencote would be better
known to the world at large if they did not live in a comparatively new
one.

It happened at the dead of a winter night. Young William Clinton had
brought home his bride, Lady Anne, only daughter and heiress of the Earl
of Beechmont, that afternoon, and there had been torches and bonfires
and a rousing welcome. Nobody knew exactly how it happened, but they
awoke to find the house in flames, and most of the household too
overcome by the results of their merry-making to be of any use in saving
it. The house itself was burnt to a shell, but it was long enough in the
burning to have enabled its more valuable contents to have been saved,
if the work had been set about with some method. The young squire, in
night-cap, shirt, and breeches, whether mindful of his pedigree at that
time of excitement, or led by the fantastic spirit that moves men in
such crises, threw as much of the contents of his muniment room out of
the window as he had time for, and the antiquarians bless him to this
day. Then he went off to the stables, and helped to get out his horses.
My Lady Anne, who was only sixteen, saved her jewels and one or two of
her more elaborate gowns, and then sat down by the sun-dial and cried.
The servants worked furiously as long as the devouring flames allowed
them, but when there was nothing left of Kencote Hall but smouldering,
unsafe walls, under a black, winter sky, and the piled-up heap of things
that had been got out into the garden came to be examined, it was found
to be made up chiefly of the lighter and less valuable pieces of
furniture, a few pictures and hangings, many tumbled folios from the
library, kitchen and house utensils, and just a few pieces of plate and
other valuables to salt the whole worthless mass.

So perished in a night the chief pride of the Clintons of Kencote, and
the noble house, with its great raftered hall, its carved and panelled
chambers, its spoil of tapestries and furniture, carpets, china, silver,
pictures, books, all the possessions that had been gathered from many
lands through many years, was only a memory that must fade more and more
rapidly as time went on.

The young couple went back to her ladyship's father, not many miles
away, and Kencote was left in its ruins for ten years or so. Then my
Lord Beechmont died, sadly impoverished by unfortunate dealings with the
stock of the South Sea Company, the house and land that remained to him
were sold, and Kencote was rebuilt with the proceeds, much as it stands
to-day, except that Merchant Jack, the father of Colonel Thomas, bitten
with the ideas of his time, covered the mellow red brick with a coating
of stucco and was responsible for the Corinthian porch, and the
ornamental parapet surmounted by Grecian urns.

Merchant Jack had been a younger son and had made his fortune in the
city. He was modern in his ideas, and a rich man, and wanted a house as
good as his neighbours. Georgian brick, and tall, narrow, small-paned
windows had gone out of fashion. So had the old formal gardens. Those at
Kencote had survived the destruction of the house, but they did not
survive the devastating zeal of Merchant Jack. They were swept away by a
pupil of Capability Brown's, who allowed the old walls of the kitchen
garden to stand because they were useful for growing fruit, but
destroyed walls and terraces and old yew hedges everywhere else, brought
the well-treed park into relation, as he thought, with the garden, by
means of sunk fences, planted shrubberies, laid down vast lawns, and
retired very well pleased with himself at having done away with one more
old-fashioned, out-of-date garden, and substituted for it a few more
acres of artificial ugliness.

He did just one thing that turned out well; he made a large lake in a
hollow of the park and ringed it with rhododendrons, which have since
grown to enormous size. At the end of it he caused to be built a stucco
temple overhung with weeping ashes, designed "to invite Melancholy."
There is no showing that Merchant Jack had any desire to respond to such
an invitation, but it was the fashion of the time, and no doubt he was
pleased with the idea.

Merchant Jack also refurnished the house when his architect had had his
way with it and the workmen had departed. A few good pieces he kept, but
most of the furniture, which had been brought into the house when it was
rebuilt after the fire, disappeared, to make way for heavy mahogany and
rosewood. Some of it went down to the dower house, a little Jacobean
hall in a dark corner of the park, and there is reason to fear that the
rest was sold for what it would fetch.

In all these lamentable activities, good, rich, up-to-date Merchant Jack
was only improving his property according to the ideas of his time, and
had no more idea of committing artistic improprieties than those people
nowadays who buy a dresser from a farm-house kitchen to put in their
drawing-room, and plaster the adjacent walls with soup plates. His
memorial tablet in Kencote church speaks well of him and his memory must
be respected.

But we have left Edward Clinton with his wife and daughter sitting for
so long in the train between Ganton and Kencote, that we must now return
to them without any further delay.

Having got into the railway carriage at the London terminus as a private
gentleman, of no more account than any other first-class passenger, and
weighed only by his potential willingness to pay handsomely for
attentions received, as the successive stages of his journey were
accomplished, he seemed to develop in importance. At Ganton, where a
change had to be made, although it was twenty miles and more from his
own parcel of earth, peaked caps were touched to him, and the
station-master himself, braided coat and all, opened his carriage door,
expressing, as he did so, a hope that the present fair weather would
continue. One might almost, until one had thought it over, have imagined
him to be appealing to the Squire as one who might take a hand in its
continuance if he were so minded, at any rate in the neighbourhood of
Kencote.

At Kencote itself, so busy was the entire station staff in helping him
and his belongings out of the train, that the signal for starting was
delayed a full minute, and then given almost as an after-thought, as if
it were a thing of small importance. Heads were poked out of carriage
windows, and an impertinent stranger, marking the delay and its cause,
asked the station-master, as he was carried past him, where was the red
carpet. The answer might have been that it was duly spread in the
thoughts of all who conducted the Squire from the train to his carriage,
and was as well brushed as if it had been laid on the platform.

The Squire had a loud and affable word for station-master and porters
alike, and another for the groom who stood at the heads of the two fine
greys harnessed to his phaeton. He walked out into the road and looked
them over, remarking that they were the handsomest pair he had seen
since he had left home. Then he took the reins and swung himself up on
to his seat, actively, for a man of his age and weight. Mrs. Clinton
climbed up more slowly to her place by his side, Cicely sat behind, and
with a jingle and clatter the equipage rolled down the road, while the
groom touched his hat and went back to the station omnibus in which Mrs.
Clinton's maid was establishing herself in the midst of a collection of
wraps and little bags. For, unless it was unavoidable, no servant of the
Clintons sat on the same seat of a carriage as a member of the family.

It was in the drowsiest time in the afternoon. The sun shone on the
hay-fields, from which the sound of sharpened scythes and the voices of
the hay-makers came most musically. Great trees bordered the half-mile
of road from the station to the village, and gave a grateful shade. The
gardens of the cottages were bright with June flowers, and the broad
village street, lined with low, irregular buildings, picturesque, but
not at all from neglected age, seemed to be dozing in the still, hot
air. A curtsy at the lodge gates, a turn of the Squire's wrist, and they
were bowling along the well kept road through the park.

A minute more, and they had clattered on to the stones under the big
porch.

"Well, here we are again, Probin," said the Squire to his head coachman,
who himself took the reins from his hands. "And here, please God, we'll
stay for the present."




CHAPTER IV

CLINTONS YOUNG AND OLD


The family tradition of the Clintons, whereby the interests and
occupations of the women were strictly subordinated to those of the men,
had not yet availed to damp the spirits or curb the activities of Joan
and Nancy, of whom Mrs. Clinton had made a simultaneous and somewhat
belated present to the Squire thirteen years before. Frank, the sailor,
the youngest son, had been seven at the time the twins were born, and
Dick a young man at Cambridge. Joan and Nancy were still the pets of the
household, strong and healthy pets, and unruly within the limits
permitted them. Released from their schoolroom, they now came rushing
into the hall, and threw themselves on to their parents and their sister
with loud cries of welcome.

The Squire kissed them in turn--they approached him first as in duty
bound. It had taken him three or four years to get used to their
presence, and during that time he had treated them as the sort of
unaccountable plaything a woman brings into a house and a male
indulgently winks his eye at, a thing beneath his own notice, like a new
gown or a new poodle, or a new curate, but one in which she must be
permitted, in the foolish weakness of her sex, to interest herself. Then
he had gradually begun to "take notice" of them, to laugh at their
childish antics and speeches, to quote them--he had actually done this
in the hunting-field--and finally to like to have them pottering about
with him when duties of investigation took him no further than the
stables or the buildings of the home farm. He had always kept them in
order while they were with him; he had never lost sight of the fact that
they were, after all, feminine; and he had never allowed them to
interfere with his more serious pursuits. But he had fully accepted them
as agreeable playthings for his own lighter hours of leisure, just as he
might have taken to the poodle or the curate, and so treated them still,
although their healthy figures were beginning to fill out, and if they
had been born Clintons of a generation or two before they would have
been considered to be approaching womanhood.

He now greeted them with hearty affection, and told them that if they
were good girls they might come and look at the pheasants with him when
he had read his letters and they had had their tea, and then took
himself off to his library.

Mrs. Clinton's greeting was less hearty, but not less affectionate. She
lingered just that second longer over each of them which gives an
embrace a meaning beyond mere convention, but she only said, "I must go
and see Miss Bird. I suppose she is in the schoolroom." She gathered up
her skirts and went upstairs, but when the twins had given Cicely a
boisterous hug, they went back to their mother, and walked on either
side of her. She was still the chief personage in their little world,
although their father and even their brothers were of so much more
importance in the general scheme of things. And not even in the presence
of their father and brothers did they "behave themselves" as they did
with their mother.

The schoolroom was at the end of a long corridor, down two steps and
round a corner. It was a large room, looking on to the park from two
windows and on to the stableyard from a third. There were shelves
containing the twins' schoolbooks and storybooks, a terrestrial and a
celestial globe, purchased many years ago for the instruction of their
great-aunts, and besides other paraphernalia of learning, signs of more
congenial occupations, such as bird-cages and a small aquarium, boxes of
games, a big doll's house still in tenantable repair though seldom
occupied, implements and materials for wood-carving, and in a corner of
the room a toy fort and a surprising variety of lead soldiers on foot or
on horseback. Such things as these might undergo variation from time to
time. The doll's house might disappear any day, as the rocking-horse had
disappeared, for instance, a year before. But the furniture and other
contents of the room were more stable. It was impossible to think of
their being changed; they were so much a part of it. The Squire never
visited the room, but if he had done so he would have recognised it as
the same room in which he had been taught his own letters, with
difficulty, fifty years before, and if any unauthorised changes had been
made, he would certainly have expressed surprise and displeasure, as he
had done when Walter had carried off to Oxford the old print of Colonel
Thomas on his black horse, Satan, with a view of Kencote House, on a
slight eminence imagined by the artist, in the background. Walter had
had to send the picture back, and it was hanging in its proper place
now, and not likely to be removed again.

Miss Bird, commonly known as "the old starling," to whom Mrs. Clinton
had come to pay an immediate visit upon entering the house, as in duty
bound, was putting things away. She was accustomed to say that she spent
her life in putting things away after the twins had done with them, and
that they were more trouble to her than all the rest of the family had
been. For Miss Bird had lived in the house for nearly thirty years, and
had acted as educational starter to the whole race of young Clintons, to
Dick, Humphrey, Walter, Cicely, and Frank, and had taken a new lease of
life when the twins had appeared on the scene with the expectation of a
prolonged period of service. She was a thin, voluble lady, as old as the
Squire, to whom she looked up as a god amongst mankind; her educational
methods were of an older generation and included the use of the globes
and the blackboard, but she was most conscientious in her duties, her
religious principles were unexceptionable, and she filled a niche at
Kencote which would have seemed empty without her.

"O Mrs. Clinton I am so glad to see you back," she said, almost
ecstatically, "and you too Cicely dear--oh my a new hat and such a
pretty one! You look quite the town lady, upon my word and how did you
enjoy the ball? you must tell me all about it every word now Joan and
Nancy I will not put away your things for you once more and that I
declare and you hear me say it you are the most shockingly untidy
children and if I have told you that once I have told you a hundred
times O Mrs. Clinton a new bonnet too and I declare it makes you look
five years younger _at_ least."

Mrs. Clinton took this compliment equably, and asked if the twins had
been good girls.

"Well, good!" echoed the old starling, "they know best whether they have
been good, of their lessons I say nothing and marks will show, but to
get up as you might say in the dead of the night and let themselves down
from a window with sheets twisted into a rope and not fit to be seen
since, all creased, _most_ dangerous, besides the impropriety for great
girls of thirteen if any one had been passing as I have told them and
should be _obliged_ to report this behaviour to you Mrs. Clinton on the
first opportunity."

Joan and Nancy both glanced at their mother tentatively. "We were only
playing Jacobites and Roundheads," said Joan. "It makes it more real."

"And it wasn't in the middle of the night," added Nancy. "It was four
o'clock, and quite light."

"Why, you might have killed yourselves!" exclaimed Cicely.

"_Exactly_ what I said the very words," corroborated the old starling.

"We tied the sheets very tight," said Joan.

"And tested them thoroughly," added Nancy.

"And we won't do it again, mother," said Joan coaxingly.

"Really, we won't," said Nancy impressively.

"But what else will you do?" asked Mrs. Clinton. "You are getting too
big for these pranks. If your father were to hear of it, I am sure I
don't know what he would say."

She knew pretty well that he would have laughed boisterously, and told
her that he didn't want the children molly-coddled. Time enough for that
by and by when they grew up. And the twins probably knew this too, and
were not unduly alarmed at the implied threat. But there was a quality
in their mother's displeasure, rare as it was, which made them
apprehensive when one of their periodical outbursts had come to light.
They were not old enough to perceive that it was not aroused by such
feats as the one under discussion, which showed no moral delinquency,
but only a certain danger to life and limb, now past. But their
experience did tell them that misbehaviour which caused her displeasure
was not thus referred to their father, and with many embraces and
promises of amendment they procured future oblivion of their escapade.

"Well, I have done my duty," said the old starling, "and very unpleasant
it was to have to welcome you home with such a story, Mrs. Clinton, and
now it is all over and done with I will say and am glad to say that it
is the only _blot_. And that is what I said to both Joan and Nancy that
it was _such_ a pity to have spoilt everything at the last moment, for
otherwise two better behaved children it would have been impossible to
find anywhere."

At which Joan and Nancy both kissed the old starling warmly, and she
strained them to her flat but tender bosom and called them her precious
pets.

They went with Cicely into her bedroom while she "took off her things."
They betrayed an immense curiosity for every detail of her recent
experiences, particularly that crowning one of the Court Ball. She was
exalted in their eyes; she had long been grown up, but now she seemed
more grown up than ever, a whole cycle in advance of their active,
sexless juvenility.

"I don't know," said Joan doubtfully, fingering the new hat which Cicely
had taken off, "but I almost think it must be rather fun to wear pretty
things sometimes."

But Nancy, the younger by some minutes, rebuked that unwholesome
weakness. "What rot, Joan," she said indignantly. "Sis, we have made up
our minds to ask mother if we may wear serge knickerbockers. Then we
shall be able to do what we like."

When this sartorial revolution had been discussed, Cicely asked, "Has
Muriel been over while I have been away?"

"Yes," replied Joan. "Walter was at Mountfield on Sunday, and they came
over in the afternoon. They prowled about together. Of course they
didn't want us."

"But they had us all the same," said Nancy, with a grin. "We stalked
them. They kissed in the Temple, and again in the peach-house."

"But there were lucid intervals," said Joan. "They have made up their
minds about something or other; we couldn't quite hear what it was. They
were in the kitchen garden, and we were on the other side of the wall."

"You weren't listening, darling?" hazarded Cicely.

"Oh, rather not! We wouldn't do such a thing. But Nancy and I like to
pace up and down the yew walk in contemplation, and of course if they
liked to pace up and down by the asparagus beds at the same time, we
couldn't help hearing the murmur of their voices."

"It is something very serious," said Nancy. "Walter is going to tackle
Edward about it at once. And Muriel is quite at one with him in the
matter. She said so."

"How they do go on together, those two!" said Joan. "You would think
they had never met in their lives until they got engaged six months ago.
When they came out of the peach-house Nancy said, 'And this is love!'
Then she ran away."

"Only because Walter ran after me," said Nancy.

"And Muriel put her arm round my neck," continued Joan, "and said, 'O
Joan, _darling_! I am so happy that I don't care _who_ sees me.'
Positively nauseating, I call it. You and Jim don't behave like that,
Sis."

"I should think not," said Cicely primly.

"Well, you're engaged--or as good as," said Nancy. "But I do rather
wonder what Walter is going to tackle Edward about. It can't be to hurry
on the wedding, for it's only a month off now."

"We shall know pretty soon," said Joan. "Father doesn't keep things to
himself."

"No, I expect Edward will make a deuce of a row," said Nancy.

"Nancy!" said Cicely sharply, "you are not to talk like that."

"Darling!" said Nancy in a voice of grieved expostulation. "It is what
Walter said to Muriel. I thought there _couldn't_ be any harm in it."

The twins--they were called "the twankies" by their brothers--went off
after tea in the schoolroom to see the young pheasants with their
father. They were lively and talkative, and the Squire laughed at them
several times, as good-humoured men do laugh at the prattle of innocent
childhood. Arrived at the pens he entered into a long and earnest
conversation with his head keeper, and the twins knew better than to
interrupt him with artless prattle at such a time as that. But going
home again through the dewy park, he unbent once more and egged Nancy on
to imitate the old starling, at which he roared melodiously. He was a
happy man that evening. He had come back to his kingdom, to the serious
business of life, which had a good deal to do with keepers and broods of
pheasants, and to his simple, domestic recreations, much enhanced by the
playful ways of his "pair of kittens."

The mellow light of the summer evening lay over the park, upon the thick
grass of which the shadows of the trees were lengthening. Sheep were
feeding on it, and it was flat round the house and rather uninteresting.
But it was the Squire's own; he had known every large tree since the
earliest days of his childhood, and the others he had planted, seeing
some of them grow to a respectable height and girth. He would have been
quite incapable of criticising it from the point of view of beauty. The
irregular roofs of the stables and other buildings, the innumerable
chimneys of the big house beyond them, seen through a gap in the trees
which hemmed it in for the most part on three sides, were also his own,
and objects so familiar that he saw them with eyes different from any
others that could have been turned upon them. The sight of them gave
him a sensation of pleasure quite unrelated to their aesthetic or even
their actual value. They meant home to him, and everything that he
loved in the world, or out of it. The pleasure was always there
subconsciously--not so much a pleasure as an attitude of mind--but this
evening it warmed into something concrete. "There's plenty of little
dicky-birds haven't got such a nest as my two," he said to the twins,
who failed to see that this speech, which they wriggled over, but
privately thought fatuous, had the elements of both poetry and religion.

In the meantime Cicely had made her way over the park in another
direction to visit her aunts in the dower-house, for she knew they would
be itching for an account of her adventures, and she had not had time to
write to them from London.

Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura were the only surviving representatives of the
six spinster daughters of Colonel Thomas Clinton, the Squire's
grandfather. One after the other Aunt Mary, Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Anna
and Aunt Caroline had been carried out of the dark house in which they
had ended their blameless days to a still darker and very narrow house
within the precincts of Kencote church, and the eldest sister, now an
amazingly aged woman, but still in the possession of all her faculties,
and the youngest, who although many years her junior, was well over
seventy, were all that were left of the bevy of spinster ladies.

On their father's death, now nearly forty years ago, they had removed in
a body from the big house in which they had lived in a state of subdued
self-repression to the small one in which, for the first time, they were
to taste independence. For their father had been a terrible martinet
where women were concerned, and would as readily have ordered Aunt Ellen
to bed, at the age of fifty, if he had been displeased with her, as if
she had been a child of ten. And if he had ordered her she would have
gone.

Some of the rooms in the dower-house had been occupied by the agent to
the Kencote estate who at that time was a bachelor, and the rest had
been shut up. The six sisters spent the happiest hours they had hitherto
known in the arrangement of their future lives and of the beautiful old
furniture with which the house was stocked. The lives were to be active,
regular, and charitable. Colonel Thomas, who had allowed them each
twenty pounds a year for dress allowance and pocket-money during his
lifetime, had astonished everybody by leaving them six thousand pounds
apiece in his will, which had been made afresh a year before his death.
He had just then inherited the large fortune of his younger brother, who
had succeeded to the paternal business in Cheapside, lived and died a
bachelor, and saved a great deal of money every year. By his previous
will they would have had a hundred a year each from the estate, and the
use of the dower-house. But even that would have seemed wealth to these
simple ladies as long as they remained together, and all of them alive.
For Colonel Thomas had forgotten, in that first will, to make provision
for the probability of one of them outliving the rest and being reduced
to a solitary existence on a hundred pounds a year. However, with
fifteen hundred a year or so between them, and no rent to pay, they were
exceedingly well off, kept their modest carriage, employed two men in
their garden, and found such pleasures in dividing their surplus wealth
amongst innumerable and deserving charities that the arrival by post of
a nurseryman's catalogue excited them no more than that of an appeal to
subscribe to a new mission.

The beautiful old furniture, huddled in the disused rooms and in the
great range of attics that ran under the high-pitched roof, gave them
immense happiness in the arrangement. They were not in the least alive
to its value at that time, though they had become so in some degree
since, but kept rather quiet about it for fear that their nephew might
wish to carry some of it off to the great house. They thought it very
old-fashioned and rather absurd, and they also held this view of the
beautifully carved and panelled rooms of their old house, which were
certainly too dark for perfect comfort. But they disposed everything to
the best advantage, and produced without knowing it an effect which no
diligent collector could have equalled, and which became still more
delightful and satisfying as the years went on.

Cicely walked across the level park and went through a deep wood,
entering by an iron gate the garden of the dower-house, which seemed to
have been built in a clearing, although it was older than the oldest of
the trees that hemmed it round. On this hot summer afternoon it stood
shaded and cool, and the very fragrance of its old-fashioned garden
seeming to be confined and concentrated by the heavy foliage. There was
not a leaf too many. But in the autumn it was damp and close and in the
winter very dark. A narrow drive of about a hundred yards led straight
from the main road to the porch and showed a blue telescopic glimpse of
distant country. If all the trees had been cut down in front to the
width of the house it would have stood out as a thing of beauty against
its green background, air and light would have been let into the best
rooms and the pleasant view of hill and vale opened up to them. But the
Squire, tentatively approached years before by his affectionate and
submissive aunts, had decisively refused to cut down any trees at all,
and four out of the six of them had taken their last look of this world
out of one or other of those small-paned windows and seen only a great
bank of laurels--even those they were not allowed to cut down--across a
narrow space of gravel, and the branches of oaks not quite ripe for
felling, above them.

Cicely went through a garden door opening on to a stone-floored passage
which ran right through the house, and opened the door of her aunts'
parlour. They were sitting on either side of the fireless grate with
their tea-table not yet cleared between them. Aunt Ellen, ninety-three
years of age, with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over
her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore
no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large
knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a
little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing,
though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but
her hearing was almost perfect. Aunt Laura, who was seventy-five,
looked, except for her hair, which was not quite white, the older of the
two. She was bent and frail, and she had taken to spectacles some years
before, to which Aunt Ellen alluded every day of her life with contempt.
They said the same things to each other, on that and on other subjects,
time after time. Every day for years Aunt Ellen had said that if dear
Edward had only been able to cut down the trees in front of the house it
would give them more light and open up the view, and she had said it as
if it had only just occurred to her. And Aunt Laura had replied that she
had thought the same thing herself, and did Ellen remember how dear
Anne, who was always one to say out what she wanted, had asked him if he
thought it might be done, but he had said--quite kindly--that the trees
had always been there, and there they would stay.

The two old ladies welcomed Cicely as if she had been a princess with
whom it was their privilege to be on terms of affectionate intimacy. She
was, in fact, a princess in their little world, the daughter of the
reigning monarch, to whom they owed, and gave, loyal allegiance. Aunt
Laura had been up to the house that morning and heard that they were to
return by the half-past four o'clock train. They had been quite sure
that Cicely would come to see them at once and tell them all her news,
and they had debated whether they would wait for their own tea or not.
They had, in fact, waited for a quarter of an hour. They told her all
this in minute detail, and only by painstaking insistence was Aunt Ellen
herself prevented from rising to ring the bell for a fresh supply to be
brought in. "Well, my dear, if you are quite sure you won't," she said
at last, "I will ring for Rose to take the things away."

Cicely rang the bell, and Rose, who five-and-thirty years before had
come to the dower-house as an apple-cheeked girl from the village
school, answered the summons. She wore a cap with  ribbons--the
two sisters still shook their heads together over her tendency to
dressiness--and dropped a child's curtsey to Cicely as she came in. She
had been far too well-trained to speak until she was spoken to, but Aunt
Ellen said, "Here is Miss Clinton returned from London, Rose, where she
has seen the King and Queen." And Rose said, "Well, there, miss!" with a
smile at Cicely, and before she removed the tea-tray settled the white
shawl more closely round Aunt Ellen's shoulders.

"Rose is a good girl," said Aunt Ellen, when she had left the room, "but
I am afraid more fond of admiration than she should be. Well, dear, now
tell us all about what you have seen and done. But, first of all, how is
your dear father?"

"Oh, quite well, thank you, Aunt Ellen," replied Cicely, "and very
pleased to get home, I think."

"Ah!" said Aunt Ellen. "We have all missed him sorely. I am sure it is
wonderful how he denies himself all kinds of pleasure to remain here and
do his duty. It is an example we should all do well to follow."

"When he was quite a young man," said Aunt Laura, "there was no one who
was gayer--of course in a _nice_ way--and took his part in everything
that was going on in the higher circles of the metropolis. Your dear
Aunt Elizabeth used to cut out the allusions to him in the _Morning
Post_, and there was scarcely a great occasion on which his name was not
mentioned."

"But after two years in his regiment he gave it all up to settle down
amongst his own people," said Aunt Ellen. "All his life has been summed
up in the word 'duty.' I wish there were more like him, but there are
not."

"It seems like yesterday," said Aunt Laura, "that he joined the Horse
Guards Blue. We all wished very much to see him in his beautiful
uniform, which so became him, and your dear Aunt Anne, who was always
the one to make requests if she saw fit, asked him to bring it down to
Kencote and put it on. Dear Edward laughed at her, and refused--quite
kindly, of course--so we all took a little trip to London--it was the
occasion of the opening of the International Reformatory Exhibition at
Islington by the Prince of Wales, as he was then--and your dear father
was in the escort. How noble he looked on his black horse! I assure you
we were all very proud of him."

Cicely sat patiently silent while these reminiscences, which she had
heard a hundred times before, were entered upon. She looked at Aunt
Ellen, fumbling with her knitting-needles, and wondered what it must be
like to be so very old, and at Aunt Laura, who was also knitting, with
quick and expert fingers, and wondered if she had ever been young.

"Did the King show your dear father any special mark of esteem?" asked
Aunt Ellen. "It did occur to your Aunt Laura and myself that, not
knowing how heavy are the duties which keep him at Kencote, His Majesty
might have been--I will not say annoyed, because he would not be
that--but perhaps disappointed at not seeing him more often about his
Court. For in the days gone by he was an ornament of it, and I have
always understood, though not from him, that he enjoyed special
consideration, which would only be his due."

"The King didn't take any notice of father," said Cicely, with the
brusque directness of youth, and Aunt Ellen seemed to be somewhat
bewildered at the statement, not liking to impute blame to her
sovereign, but unable for the moment to find any valid excuse for him.

"I thought," she said hesitatingly, "that sending specially--the
invitation for all of you--but I suppose there were a great many people
there."

Cicely took her opportunity, and described what she had seen and done,
brightly and in detail. She answered all her aunts' questions, and
interested them deeply. Her visits, and those of her mother, or the
twins with Miss Bird, were the daily enlivenment of the two old ladies,
and were never omitted. The Squire seldom went to the dower-house, but
when he did look in for a minute or two, happening to pass that way,
they were thrown into a flutter of pleasure and excitement which lasted
them for days.

When Cicely took her leave an hour later, Aunt Ellen said: "The
consideration with which dear Edward's family treats us, sister, is
something we may well be thankful for. I felt quite sure, and I told
you, that some one would come to see us immediately upon their return.
Cicely is always so bright and interesting--a dear girl, and quite takes
after her father."

"Dear Anne used to say that she took after her mother," said Aunt Laura;
to which Aunt Ellen replied: "I have not a word to say against Nina; she
has been a good wife to dear Edward, though we all thought at the time
of their marriage that he might have looked higher. But compared with
our nephew, quiet and unassuming as she is, she has very little
character, while Cicely _has_ character. No, sister, Cicely is a
Clinton--a Clinton through and through."




CHAPTER V

MELBURY PARK


Family prayers at Kencote took place at nine o'clock, breakfast
nominally at a quarter past, though there was no greater interval
between the satisfaction of the needs of the soul and those of the body
than was necessary to enable the long string of servants to file out
from their seats under the wall, and the footmen to return immediately
with the hot dishes. The men sat nearest to the door and frequently
pushed back to the dining-room against the last of the outflowing tide;
for the Squire was ready for his breakfast the moment he had closed the
book from which he had read the petition appointed for the day. If there
was any undue delay he never failed to speak about it at once. This
promptness and certainty in rebuke, when rebuke was necessary, made him
a well-served man, both indoors and out.

Punctuality was rigidly observed by the Clinton family. It had to be;
especially where the women were concerned. If Dick or Humphrey, when
they were at home, missed prayers, the omission was alluded to. If
Cicely, or even Mrs. Clinton was late, the Squire spoke about it. This
was more serious. In the case of the boys the rebuke hardly amounted to
speaking about it. As for the twins, they were never late. For one thing
their abounding physical energy made them anything but lie-abeds, and
for another, they were so harried during the ten minutes before the gong
sounded by Miss Bird that there would have been no chance of their
overlooking the hour. If they had been late, Miss Bird would have been
spoken to, and on the distressing occasions when that had happened, it
had put her, as she said, all in a twitter.

When it still wanted a few minutes to the hour on the morning after the
return from London, Cicely was standing by one of the big open windows
talking to Miss Bird, the twins were on the broad gravel path
immediately outside, and two footmen were putting the finishing touches
to the appointments of the table.

It was a big table, although now reduced to the smallest dimensions of
which it was capable, for the use of the six people who were to occupy
it. But in that great room it was like an island in the midst of a waste
of Turkey carpet. The sideboards, dinner-wagon, and carving-table, and
the long row of chairs against the wall opposite to the three windows
were as if they lined a distant shore. The wallpaper of red flock had
been an expensive one, but it was ugly, and faded in places where the
sun caught it. It had been good enough for the Squire's grandfather
forty years before, and it was good enough for him. It was hung with
portraits of men and women and portraits of horses, some of the latter
by animal painters of note. The furniture was all of massive mahogany,
furniture that would last for ever, but had been made after the date at
which furniture left off being beautiful as well as lasting. The
mantelpiece was of brown marble, very heavy and very ugly.

At one minute to nine Mrs. Clinton came in. She carried a little
old-fashioned basket of keys which she put down on the dinner-wagon,
exactly in the centre of the top shelf. Cicely came forward to kiss her,
followed by Miss Bird, with comma-less inquiries as to how she had spent
the night after her journey, and the twins came in through the long
window to wish her good morning. She replied composedly to the old
starling's twittering, and cast her eye over the attire of the twins,
which was sometimes known to require adjustment. Then she took her seat
in one of the big easy-chairs which stood on either side of the
fireplace, while Porter, the butler, placed a Bible and a volume of
devotions, both bound in brown leather, before the Squire's seat at the
foot of the table, and retired to sound the gong.

It was exactly at this moment that the Squire, who opened his letters in
the library before breakfast, was accustomed to enter the room, and,
with a word of greeting to his assembled family, perch his gold-rimmed
glasses on his fine straight nose, and with the help of two book-markers
find the places in the Bible and book of prayers to which the year in
its diurnal course had brought him. The gong would sound, either
immediately before or immediately after he had entered the room, the
maids and the men who had been assembling in the hall would file in, he
would throw a glance towards them over his glasses to see that they were
all settled, and then begin to read in a fast, country gentleman's voice
the portion of Scripture that was to hallow the day now officially
beginning.

The gong rolled forth its sounding reverberation, Miss Bird and the
three girls took their seats, and then there was a pause. In a house of
less rigid habits of punctuality it would have been filled by small
talk, but here it was so unusual that when it had lasted for no more
than ten seconds the twins looked at one another in alert curiosity and
Cicely's eyes met those of her mother, which showed a momentary
apprehension before they fixed themselves again upon the shining steel
of the fire bars. Another ten seconds went by and then the library door
was heard to open and the Squire's tread, heavy on the paved hall.

Four pairs of eyes were fixed upon him as he entered the room, followed
at a short but respectful interval by the servants. Mrs. Clinton still
looked inscrutably at the grate. The Squire's high colour was higher
than its wont, his thick grizzled eyebrows were bent into a frown, and
his face was set in lines of anger which he evidently had difficulty in
controlling. He fumbled impatiently with the broad markers as he opened
the books, and omitted the customary glance towards the servants as he
began to read in a voice deeper and more hurried than usual. When he
laid down the Bible and took up the book of prayers he remained
standing, as he sometimes did if he had a touch of rheumatism; but he
had none now, and his abstention from a kneeling position amounted to a
declaration that he was willing to go through the form of family prayers
for routine's sake but must really be excused from giving a mind to it
which was otherwise occupied.

It was plain that he had received a letter which had upset his
equanimity. This had happened before, and the disturbance created made
manifest in much the same way. But it had happened seldom, because a man
who is in possession of an income in excess of his needs is immune from
about half the worries that come with the morning's post, and any
annoyance arising from the administration of his estate was not usually
made known to him by letter. The Squire's letter-bag was normally as
free of offence as that of any man in the country.

The twins, eying one another with surreptitious and fearful pleasure,
conveyed in their glances a knowledge of what had happened. The thing
that Walter and Muriel had made up their minds about, whatever it
was--that was what had caused the Squire to remain behind a closed door
until he had gained some slight control over his temper, and led him now
to prefer the petitions appointed in the book bound in brown leather in
a voice between a rumble and a bark. Perhaps everything would come out
when Porter and the footman had brought in the tea and coffee service
and the breakfast dishes, and left the room. If it did not, they would
hear all about it later. Their father's anger held no terrors for them,
unless it was directed against themselves, and even then considerably
less than might have been supposed. He was often angry, or appeared to
be, but he never did anything. Even in the memorable upheaval of seven
years before--when Walter had finally refused to become a clergyman and
announced his determination of becoming a doctor--which had been so
unlike anything that had ever happened within their knowledge that it
had impressed itself even upon their infant minds, and of which they had
long since worried all the details out of Cicely, he had made a great
deal of noise but had given way in the end. He would give way now,
however completely he might lose his temper in the process. The twins
had no fear of a catastrophe, and therefore looked forward with
interest, as they knelt side by side, with their plump chins propped on
their plump hands, to the coming storm.

The storm broke, as anticipated, when the servants had finally left the
room, and the Squire had ranged over the silver dishes on the side-table
for one to his liking, a search in which he was unsuccessful.

"I wish you would tell Barnes that if she can't think of anything for
breakfast but bacon, and scrambled eggs, and whiting, and mushrooms, she
had better go, and the sooner the better," he said, bending a terrifying
frown on his wife. "Same thing day after day!" But he piled a plate with
bacon and eggs and mushrooms and carried it off to his seat, while his
daughters and Miss Bird waited round him until he had helped himself.

"I have just had a letter from Walter," he began directly he had taken
his seat, "which makes me so angry that, 'pon my word, I scarcely know
what to do. Nina, this milk is burnt. Barnes shall go. She sends up food
fit for the pig-tub. Why can't you see that the women servants do their
duty? I can't take _everything_ on my shoulders. God knows I've got
enough to put up with as it is."

"Joan, ring the bell," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Oh--God's sake--no, no," fussed the Squire. "I don't want the servants
in. Give me some tea. Miss Bird, here's my cup, please. Take it, please,
_take_ it, Miss Bird. I don't know when I've felt so annoyed. You do all
you can and put yourself to an infinity of trouble and expense for the
sake of your children, and then they behave like this. Really, Walter
wants a good thrashing to bring him to his senses. If I had nipped all
this folly of doctoring in the bud, as I ought to have done, I might
have been able to live my life in peace. It's too bad; 'pon my word,
it's too bad."

The twins, sustaining their frames diligently with bacon and eggs and
mushrooms--the whiting was at a discount--waited with almost too obvious
expectation for the full disclosure of Walter's depravity. Cicely,
alarmed for the sake of Muriel, ate nothing and looked at her father
anxiously. Miss Bird was in a state of painful confusion because she had
not realised effectively that the Squire had wanted his cup of coffee
exchanged for a cup of tea, and might almost be said to have been
"spoken to" about her stupidity. Only with Mrs. Clinton did it rest to
draw the fire which, if she did it unskilfully, might very well be
turned upon herself. A direct question would certainly have so turned
it.

"I am sorry that Walter has given you any further cause of complaint,
Edward," she said.

This was not skilful enough. "Cause of complaint!" echoed the Squire
irritably. "Am I accustomed to complain about anything without good
reason? You talk as if I am the last man in the world to have the right
to expect my wishes to be consulted. Every one knows that I gave way to
Walter against my better judgment. I allowed him to take up this
doctoring because he had set his mind on it, and I have never said a
word against it since. And how now does he reward me when he has got to
the point at which he might begin to do himself and his family some
credit? Coolly writes to me for money--_to me_--_for money_--to enable
him to buy a practice at Melbury Park, if you please. Melbury _Park_!
Pah!!"

The Squire pushed his half-emptied plate away from him in uncontrollable
disgust. He was really too upset to eat his breakfast. The utterance of
the two words which summed up Walter's blind, infatuated stampede from
respectability brought back all the poignant feelings with which he had
first read his letter. For the moment he was quite beside himself with
anger and disgust, and unless relief had been brought to him he would
have left his breakfast unfinished and stalked out of the room.

Nancy brought the relief with the artless question, "Where is Melbury
Park, father?"

"Hold your tongue," said the Squire promptly, and then drew a lurid
picture of a place delivered over entirely to the hovels of nameless
people of the lower middle classes, and worse, a place in which you
would be as effectually cut off from your fellows as if you went to live
in Kamschatka. Indeed, you would not be so cut off if you went to
Kamschatka, for you might be acknowledged to be living there, but to
have it said that you lived at Melbury Park would _stamp_ you. It would
be as easy to say you were living in Halloway Goal. It was a place they
stopped you at when you came into London on the North Central Railway,
to take your tickets. The Squire mentioned this as if a place where they
took your tickets was of necessity a dreadful kind of a place. "Little
have I ever thought," he said, "when I have been pulled up there, and
looked at those streets and streets of mean little houses, that a son of
mine would one day want to go and _live_ there. 'Pon my word, I think
Walter's brain must be giving way."

It was Cicely who asked why Walter wanted to live at Melbury Park, and
what Muriel said about it.

"He doesn't say a word about Muriel," snapped the Squire. "I suppose
Muriel is backing him up. I shall certainly speak to Jim and Mrs. Graham
about it. It is disgraceful--positively disgraceful--to think of taking
a girl like Muriel to live in such a place. She wouldn't have a soul to
speak to, and she would have to mix with all sorts of people. A doctor's
wife can't keep to herself like other women. Oh, I don't know why he
wants to go there. Don't ask me such questions. I was ready to start him
amongst nice people, whatever it had cost, and he might have been in a
first-class position while other men of his age were only thinking about
it. But no, he must have his own silly way. He shan't have his way. I'll
put my foot down. I won't have the name of Clinton disgraced. It has
been respected for hundreds of years, and I don't know that I've ever
done anything to bring it down. It's a little too much that one of my
own sons should go out of his way to throw mud at it. I've stood enough.
I won't stand any more. Melbury Park! A pretty sort of _park_!"

Having thus relieved his feelings the Squire was enabled to eat a fairly
good breakfast, with a plateful of ham to follow his bacon and eggs and
mushrooms, a spoonful or two of marmalade, and some strawberries to
finish up with. It came out further that Walter was coming down by the
afternoon train to dine and sleep, and presumably to discuss the
proposal of which he had given warning, and that the Squire proposed to
ask Tom and his wife to luncheon, or rather that Mrs. Clinton should
drop in at the Rectory in the course of the morning and ask them, as he
would be too busy.

Then Cicely asked if she might have Kitty, the pony, for the morning,
and the Squire at once said, "No, she'll be wanted to take up food for
the pheasants," after which he retired to his room, but immediately
returned to ask Cicely what she wanted the pony for.

"I want to go over to Mountfield," said Cicely.

"Very well, you can have her," said the Squire, and retired again.

Mrs. Clinton made no comment on the disclosures that had been made, but
took up her basket of keys and left the room.

"Now, Joan and Nancy, do not linger but get ready for your lessons at a
quarter to ten punctually," Miss Bird broke forth volubly. "Every
morning I have to hunt you from the breakfast table and my life is spent
in trying to make you punctual. I am sure if your father knew the
trouble I have with you he would speak to you about it and then you
would see."

"Melbury Park!" exclaimed Nancy in a voice of the deepest disgust, as
she rose slowly from the table. "'Pon my word, Joan, it's too bad. I
spend my life in trying to make you punctual and then you want to go to
Melbury Park! Pah! A nice sort of a _park_!"

"Are you going to see Muriel, Cicely?" asked Joan, also rising
deliberately. "Starling, _darling_! Don't hustle me, I'm coming. I only
want to ask my sister Cicely a question."

"Yes," said Cicely. "If I couldn't have had Kitty I should have walked."

"How unreasonable you are, Cicely," said Nancy. "The pony is wanted to
take chickweed to the canaries at Melbury Park."

"Find out all about it, Cis," said Joan in process of being pushed out
of the room. "Oh, take it, Miss Bird, _please_, take it."

Cicely drove off through the park at half-past ten. Until she had passed
through the lodge gates and got between the banks of a deep country
lane, Kitty went her own pace, quite aware that she was being driven by
one whose unreasonable inclinations for speed must subordinate
themselves to the comfort of pony-flesh as long as she was in sight of
house or stables. Then, with a shake of her head, she suddenly quickened
her trot, but did not escape the cut of a whip which was always
administered to her at this point. With that rather vicious little cut
Cicely expressed her feelings at a state of things in which, with
fourteen or fifteen horses in the stable and half a dozen at the home
farm, the only animal at the disposal of herself and her sisters was
always wanted for something else whenever they asked for it.

The Squire had four hunters--sometimes more--which nobody but himself
ever used, and the price of a horse that would carry a man of his weight
comfortably ran into treble figures more often than not. Dick kept a
couple always at Kencote, even Walter had one, and Humphrey and Frank
could always be mounted whenever they wanted a day with the South
Meadshire. There were nine or ten horses, standing in stalls or loose
boxes or at grass, kept entirely for the amusement of her father and
brothers, besides half a dozen more for the carriages, the station
omnibus, the luggage cart, and all the dynamic demands of a large
household. The boys had all had their ponies as soon as their legs could
grip a saddle. This very pony that she was driving was really Frank's,
having been rescued for him from a butcher's cart in Bathgate fourteen
years before, and nobody knew how old she was. She was used for the
mowing machine and for every sort of little odd job about the garden,
and seemed as if she might go on for ever. It was only when Cicely or
the twins drove her that the reminder was given that she was not as
young as she had been, and must not be hustled.

And she was all they were ever allowed to drive, and then only when she
was not wanted for something else. It was a Clinton tradition, deriving
probably from Colonel Thomas and his six stay-at-home daughters, that
the women of the family did not hunt. They were encouraged to drive and
allowed to ride to the meets of hounds if there was anything to carry
them, and in Cicely's childhood there had been other ponies besides
Kitty, left-offs of her elder brothers, which she had used. But she had
never been given a horse of her own, and the hunters were far too
precious to be galled by a side-saddle. What did she want to ride for?
The Squire hated to see women flying about the country like men, and he
wasn't going to have any more horses in the stable. The men had more
than enough to do as it was. It was part of the whole unfair scheme on
which life at Kencote was based. Everything was done for the men and
boys of the family, and the women and girls must content themselves with
what was left over.

Pondering these and other things, Cicely drove along the country lanes,
between banks and hedges bright with the growth of early summer, through
woods in which pheasants, reared at great expense that her father and
brothers and their friends might kill them, called one another hoarsely,
as if in a continual state of gratulation at having for a year at least
escaped their destined end; between fields in which broods of partridges
ran in and out of the roots of the green corn; across a bridge near
which was a deep pool terrifically guarded by a notice-board against
those who might have disturbed the fat trout lying in its shadows;
across a gorse-grown common, sacred home of an old dog-fox that had
defied the South Meadshire hounds for five seasons; and so, out of her
father's property on to that of Jim Graham, in which blood relations of
the Kencote game and vermin were protected with equal care, in order
that the Grahams might fulfil the destiny appointed for them and the
Clintons and the whole race of squirearchy alike.

The immediate surroundings of Mountfield were prettier than those of
Kencote. The house stood at the foot of a wooded rise, and its long
white front showed up against a dark background of trees. It was older
in date than Georgian Kencote, and although its walls had been stuccoed
out of all resemblance to those of an old house, its high-pitched roof
and twisted chimney stacks had been left as they were. The effect was so
incongruous that even unaesthetic Alexander Graham, Jim's father, had
thought of uncovering the red brick again. But the front had been
altered to allow for bigger windows and a portico resembling that at
Kencote, and the architect whom he had consulted, had pressed him to
spend more money on it than he felt inclined to. So he had left it alone
and spent none; and Jim, who was not so well off as his father by the
amount of Muriel's portion and the never-to-be-forgiven Harcourt duties,
was not likely to have a thousand pounds to spare for making his rooms
darker for some years to come.

The old stable buildings, untouched by the restorer, flanked the house
on one side and the high red brick wall of the gardens on the other. The
drive sloped gently up from the gates through an undulating park more
closely planted than that of Kencote. There were some very old trees at
Mountfield and stretches of bracken here and there beneath them. It was
a pity that the house had been spoilt in appearance, but its amenities
were not wholly destroyed. Cicely knew it almost as well as she knew
Kencote, but she acknowledged its charm now as she drove up between the
oak and the young fern. Under the blue June sky strewn with light
clouds, it stood for a peaceful, pleasant life, if rather a dull one,
and she could not help wondering whether her friend would really be
happier in a house of her own in Melbury Park, which, if painted in
somewhat exaggeratedly dark colours by Cicely's father, had not struck
her, when she had seen it from the railway, as a place in which any one
could possibly live of choice. Perhaps Walter had over-persuaded her.
She would know very soon now, for Muriel told her everything.




CHAPTER VI

A GOOD LONG TALK


Mrs. Graham--she was the Honourable Mrs. Graham, a daughter of the
breeder of Jove II. and other famous shorthorns--came out of the door
leading to the stableyard as Cicely drove up. She had been feeding young
turkeys, and wore a shortish skirt of brown tweed, thick boots and a
green Tyrolean hat, and was followed by three dogs--a retriever, a
dachshund, and one that might have been anything. She was tall and
spare, with a firm-set, healthy face, and people sometimes said that she
ought to have been a man. But she was quite happy as a woman, looking
after her poultry and her garden out of doors, and her dogs and her
household within. She had hardly moved from Mountfield since her
marriage thirty years before, and the only fly in the ointment of
content in which she had embalmed herself was that she would have to
leave it when Jim married. But she greeted Cicely, who was expected to
supplant her, with bright cordiality, and lifted up a loud voice to
summon a groom to lead off Kitty to the stable.

"My dear," she said; "such a nuisance as this wedding is you never knew.
It's as much as I can do to keep the birds and the animals fed, and how
_I_ shall look in heliotrope and an aigrette the Lord only knows. But I
suppose nobody will look at me, and Muriel will be a picture. Have you
heard that Walter is going to take her to live at Melbury Park? It seems
a funny place to go to live in, doesn't it? But I suppose they won't
mind as long as they are together. I never saw such a pair of
love-birds."

"Walter wrote to father about it this morning," said Cicely, "and he is
coming down this afternoon. Father is furious with him."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know why," said Mrs. Graham equably. "I
shouldn't care to live in Melbury Park myself, and I don't suppose Mr.
Clinton would. But nobody asks him to. If _they_ want to, it's their own
affair. I'm all for letting people go their own way--always have been. I
go mine."

"Why does Walter choose such a place as that to take Muriel to?" asked
Cicely, who had not remained quite unimpressed by the Squire's diatribe
against the unfortunate suburb.

"Oh, it's convenient for his hospital and gives him the sort of practice
he wants for a year or two. _I_ don't know. They won't live there for
ever. I don't suppose it will kill them to know a few people you
wouldn't ask to dinner. It hasn't killed me. I get on with farmers'
wives better than anybody--ought to have been one."

"Father is going to ask you to put your foot down and say Muriel shan't
go there," said Cicely.

"Well then, I won't," replied Mrs. Graham decisively. "I'm not a snob."
Then she added hurriedly, "I don't say that your father is one either;
but he does make a terrible fuss about all that sort of thing. I should
have thought a Clinton was good enough to be able to know anybody
without doing himself any harm. But you had better go and talk to Muriel
about it, my dear. You will find her upstairs, with her clothes. Oh,
those clothes! I must go and look after the gardeners. They are putting
liquid manure on the roses, and I'm afraid they will mix it too strong."

Mrs. Graham went off to attend to her unsavoury but congenial task, and
Cicely went indoors and up to Muriel's room, where she found her friend
with a maid, busy over some detail of her trousseau. They greeted one
another with coolness but affection, the maid was sent out of the room,
and they settled down in chintz-covered easy-chairs by the window for
the usual good long talk.

Muriel was a pretty girl, less graceful than Cicely, but with her big
brown eyes and masses of dark hair, a foil to her friend's fair beauty.
She had her mother's sensible face, but was better-looking than her
mother had ever been.

"Now you must tell me every word from the beginning," she said. "You
said nothing in your letters. You didn't make me see the room, or any
one in it."

Cicely had a good deal to say about her late experiences, but her
friend's own affairs were of more recent interest. "But I want to hear
about Walter and Melbury Park first," she said. "There is a rare to-do
about it at Kencote, I can tell you, Muriel."

"Is there?" said Muriel, after a short pause, as if she were adjusting
her thoughts. "That was what Walter was afraid of."

"Don't you mind going to live in a place like that?" asked Cicely.
"Father thinks it is a shame that Walter should take you there."

"O my dear," said Muriel, with a trifle of impatience, "you know quite
well what I think about all that sort of thing. We have talked it over
hundreds of times. Here we are, stuck down in the middle of all this,
with nothing in the world to do but amuse ourselves, if we can, and
never any chance of pushing along. We have _got_ it all; there is
nothing to go for. That's what I first admired about my darling old
Walter. He struck out a line of his own. If he had been content just to
lop over the fence into Kencote Rectory, I don't think I should ever
have fallen in love with him. I don't know, though. He _is_ the sweetest
old dear."

"Oh, don't begin about Walter," urged Cicely.

"Yes, I will begin about Walter," replied Muriel, "and I'll go on with
Walter. He says now that the only thing he is really keen about--except
me--is his work. He always liked it, in a way, but when he made up his
mind to be a doctor it was only because he knew he must have some
profession, and he thought he might as well have one that interested
him. But now it takes up all his thoughts, except when he comes down
here for a holiday, and you know how the old pet enjoys his holidays.
Well, I'm going to do all I can to help him to get on. He says this
practice at Melbury Park is just what he wants, to get his hand in; he
won't be worried with a lot of people who aren't really ill at all, but
have to be kept in a good humour in case they should go off to another
doctor. It will be hard, sound work, and he will be in touch with the
hospital all the time. He is immensely keen about it. I don't want to
say anything against Mr. Clinton, but why _can't_ he see that Walter is
worth all the rest of your brothers put together, because he has set out
to do something and they are just having a good time?"

"Oh, well, Muriel, I can't allow that," said Cicely. "Dick is quite a
good soldier. He got his D.S.O. in the war. And besides, his real work
is to look after the property, and he knows as much about that as
father. And Humphrey _has_ to go about a lot. You must, in the Foreign
Office. And Frank--he is doing all right. He was made doggy to his
Admiral only the other day."

"Well, at any rate," replied Muriel, "they start from what they are. And
you can't say that their chief aim isn't to have a good time. Walter has
gone in against men who _have_ to work, whether they want to or not, and
he has done as well as any of them. He owes nothing to being the son of
a rich man. It has been against him, if anything."

"Father hoped he was going to set up as a consulting physician," said
Cicely.

"Yes, and why?" asked Muriel. "Only because he wants him to live amongst
the right sort of people. He doesn't care a bit whether he would make a
good consultant or not. Walter says he isn't ready for it. He wants more
experience. It will all come in time. He is not even quite sure what he
wants to specialise on, or if he wants to specialise at all. At present
he only wants to be a G.P., with plenty of work and time for the
hospital."

"What is a G.P.?" asked Cicely.

"Oh, a general practitioner. It's what Walter calls it."

"Then why can't he be a G.P. in a nicer place than Melbury Park? It is
rather hard on you, Muriel, to take you to a place where you can't know
anybody."

"O my dear, what _do_ I care for all that nonsense about knowing people?
Surely there's enough of that here! Is this person to be called on, who
has come to live in a house which nobody ever called at before, or that
person, because nobody has ever heard of her people? I'm sick of it.
Even mother won't call on Bathgate people, however nice they may be, and
she's not nearly so stuck up as most of the county women."

"Yes, I know all that, and of course it's nonsense. But you must admit
that it is different with people who aren't gentle-people at all."

"I'm not a fool, and I don't pretend that I'm going to make bosom
friends of all Walter's patients, though I _am_ going to do what I can
to make things pleasant all round. We shall see our friends in London,
of course. Jim is going to give us a jolly good motor-car, and we shall
be able to dine out and go to the play and all that if we want to, and
people ask us. But it is all so unimportant, Cicely, that side of it.
Walter wants to get out of it. He'll be very busy, and the best times we
shall have will be in our own little house alone, or going right away
when we get a holiday."

"I dare say you are quite right," said Cicely. "Of course it will be
jolly to have your own house and do what you like with it. Has Walter
got a house yet?"

"There is quite a decent one we can have where the man who wants to sell
the practice lives. It is really bigger than we want, although it's only
a semi-detached villa. I should be able to have my friends to stay with
me. Cicely, you _must_ come directly we move in, and help to get things
straight, if we go there."

"Oh, you'll go there all right, if Walter has made up his mind about
it," said Cicely. "Father thinks he will hold out, but he knows, really,
that he won't. That's what makes him so wild."

Both the girls laughed. "He is a funny old thing," said Muriel
apologetically, "but he has been very nice to me."

"Only because you have got ten thousand pounds, my dear, and are the
right sort of match for Walter. He wouldn't be very nice to you if
Walter had found you at Melbury Park; not even if you had your ten
thousand pounds. Oh dear, I wish I had ten thousand pounds."

"What would you do with it?"

"I should travel. At any rate I should go away from Kencote. Muriel, I
am sick to death of it."

"Ah, that is because it seems dull after London. You haven't told me a
word about all that you have been doing, and I have been talking about
myself all the time."

"I didn't care a bit about London. I didn't enjoy it at all--except the
opera."

"Don't try to be _blasee_, my dear girl. Of course you enjoyed it."

"I tell you I didn't. Look here, Muriel, really it _is_ unfair the way
the boys have everything in our family and the girls have nothing."

"I do think it is a shame you are not allowed to hunt."

"It isn't only that. It is the same with everything. I have seen it much
more plainly since I went to London."

"Well, my dear, you went to a Court Ball, and to all the best houses.
The boys don't do more than that. I shouldn't do as much if I went to
London in the season."

"Yes, I went. And I went because Cousin Humphrey took the trouble to get
cards for us. He is an old darling. Do you suppose father would have
taken the smallest trouble about it--for me and mother?"

"He knows all the great people. I suppose a Clinton is as good as
anybody."

"Yes, a _man_ Clinton. That is just it. Dick and Humphrey go everywhere
as a matter of course. I saw enough of it to know what society in London
means. It is like a big family; you meet the same people night after
night, and everybody knows everybody else--that is in the houses that
Cousin Humphrey got us invited to. Dick and Humphrey know everybody like
that; they were part of the family; and mother and I were just country
cousins who knew nobody."

"Well, of course, they are there all the time and you were only up for a
fortnight. Didn't they introduce you to people?"

"O yes. Dick and Humphrey are kind enough. They wanted me to have a good
time. But you are not supposed to want introductions in London. You are
supposed to know enough men to dance with, or you wouldn't be there. And
the men don't like it. I often heard Dick and Humphrey apologising to
their friends for asking them to dance with me. You know the sort of
thing, Muriel: 'You might take a turn with my little sister, old man, if
you've nobody better. She's up here on the spree and she don't know
anybody.'"

"O Cicely, they wouldn't give you away like that."

"Perhaps not quite as bad as that. Dick and Humphrey are nice enough as
brothers, and I believe they're proud of me too, in a way. They always
danced with me themselves, and they always noticed what I was wearing,
and said I looked a topper. I know I looked all right, but directly I
opened my mouth I gave myself away, just like a maid in her mistress's
clothes."

"O Cicely!"

"Well, it was like that. I had nothing to talk about. I don't know
London; I can't talk scandal about people I don't know. Of course I had
to tell them I had always lived in the country, and then they began to
talk about hunting at once. Then I had to say that I didn't hunt, and
then they used to look at me through their eyeglasses, and wonder what
the deuce I did do with myself. The fact is, that I can't do anything.
Even the ones with brains--there _were_ a few of them--who tried me with
things besides hunting, couldn't get anything out of me, because there
is nothing to get. I've never been anywhere or seen anything. I don't
know anything--nothing about books or pictures or music or plays. Why on
earth _should_ they want to talk to me? Hardly any of them did twice,
unless it was those who thought I was pretty and wanted to flirt with
me. I felt such a _fool_!"

She was almost in tears. Her pretty face under its white motor-cap was
flushed; she twisted her gloves in her slender hands.

"O Cicely, darling!" said Muriel sympathetically, "you are awfully
bright and clever, really. You've many more brains than I have."

"I'm not clever, but I've got as many brains as other girls. And what
chance have I ever had of learning anything? Dick and Humphrey and
Walter were all sent to Eton and Oxford or Cambridge. They have all had
the most expensive education that any boys could have, and as long as
they behaved themselves pretty well, nobody cared in the least whether
they took advantage of it or not. What education have _I_ had? Miss
Bird! I don't suppose she knows enough to get a place as teacher in a
village school. I suppose I know just about as much as the girls who do
go to a village school. I haven't even had lessons in drawing or music,
or anything that I might perhaps have been good at. I'm an ignorant
_fool_, and it's all father's fault, and it isn't fair."

She had talked herself into actual tears now. Muriel said, in a dry
voice which did not accord with her expression of face, "This sudden
rage for learning is a new thing, my dear."

Cicely dabbed her eyes impatiently and sat up in her chair. "I dare say
I am talking a lot of nonsense," she said, "but I have been wondering
what I _do_ get for being the daughter of a rich country gentleman;
because father _is_ rich, as well as being the head of an important
family, as he is always reminding us, though he pretends to think
nothing of it. He has never gone without anything he wanted in the whole
of his life, and the boys have everything they want too, that can be got
for money."

"Your allowance was just twice as much as mine, when father was alive,"
Muriel reminded her.

"Oh, I know I can have plenty of nice clothes and all that," said
Cicely, "and I have nice food too, and plenty of it, and a nice room,
and a big house to live in. But I don't call it living, that's all.
Father and the boys can live. We can't. Outside Kencote, we're nobody at
all--I've found that out--and mother is of no more importance than I am.
We're just the women of the family. Anything is good enough for us."

"I don't think you are quite fair, Cicely. Mrs. Clinton doesn't care for
going about, does she? It would depend more upon her than your father
and brothers."

"What would depend on her?"

"Well, I mean you grumble at Dick and Humphrey knowing more people than
you do."

"I suppose what you do mean is that the Birkets aren't as good as the
Clintons."

There was the slightest pause. Then Muriel said, a little defiantly,
"Well, the Grahams aren't as good as the Conroys."

"I know that mother isn't only as good as father; she is a great deal
better."

Cicely spoke with some heat, and Muriel made a little gesture with her
hands. "Oh, all right, my dear," she said, "if you don't want to talk
straight." It was a formula they used.

Cicely hesitated. "If you mean," she began, but Muriel interrupted her.
"You know quite well what I mean, and you know what I don't mean. You
know I would never say that Mrs. Clinton wasn't as good as anybody in
the world, in the sense you pretended to take my words. We were talking
of something quite different."

"Sorry, Muriel," replied Cicely. This was another formula. "We did go to
a dance at Aunt Emmeline's, you know. If I hadn't been to all those
other houses I should have enjoyed it immensely. Well, I did enjoy
it--better, really. Aunt Emmeline saw that I had heaps of partners and I
got on well with them. They were mostly barristers and people like that.
They took the trouble to talk, and some of them even made me talk. It is
a lovely house--of course not like one of the great London houses, but
with two big drawing-rooms, and Iff's band, and everything done very
well. If I had gone straight up from here to that ball, it would have
been one of the best I had ever gone to."

"Well, Mr. Birket is a famous barrister, and I suppose is very well off
too. I should think he knows as many interesting people as anybody."

"Interesting people, yes; but there wasn't a soul there that I had seen
at the other houses, except Dick and Humphrey."

"Were they there?"

"There!" cried Cicely triumphantly. "You see you are quite surprised at
that."

"Well," said Muriel firmly, "they _were_ there. And how did they
behave?"

"Oh, they behaved all right. Humphrey went away early, but Dick stayed
quite a long time. Dick can be very sweet if he likes, and he doesn't
give himself airs, really--he only takes it for granted that he is a
great personage. And so he is; you would say so if you saw him in
London. Do you know, Muriel, I was next to the Duchess of Pevensey at
Dunster House, and I heard her whisper to her daughter, quite sharply,
'Evelyn, keep a valse for Captain Clinton, in case he asks you.' Of
course she hadn't an idea that I was Captain Clinton's sister. She had
looked down her nose at me just before, and wondered what I was doing
there."

"I suppose she didn't say so."

"Her nose did. You should have seen her face when Dick came up the
moment after and said, 'Here you are, Siskin; come and have a spin'; and
didn't take any notice of dear Evelyn, who must have been at least
thirty."

"Well, go on about Mrs. Birket's."

"Yes, well, Dick said, 'Now, Siskin, I don't know any of the pretty
ladies here, and I'm going to dance with you.' But when Aunt Emmeline
came up and insisted upon introducing him to a lot of girls, he went off
as nicely as possible and danced with the whole lot of them. And, you
know, a man like Dick isn't supposed to have to do that sort of thing."

Muriel laughed; and Cicely, who had recovered her good humour, laughed
too. "Of course, it wasn't anything to fuss about, really," she said,
"but you see what I mean, Muriel, don't you?"

"No, I don't," said Muriel, "unless you mean exactly what I said just
now, and you bit my head off for. Mr. Clinton is what some people call a
swell, and Dick is a swell too. The Grahams aren't swells, and the
Birkets aren't either. And if you want it quite straight, my dear,
neither you nor I are swells; we're only what they call county."

"You're so sensible, Muriel darling!" said Cicely.

"And you've had your head turned, Cicely darling!" retorted Muriel. "You
have been taken up by your great relations, and you have come back to
your simple home discontented."

"It's all very well, though," said Cicely, becoming serious again, "but
I'm a Clinton just as much as the boys are, and just as much as you are
a Graham. You say the Grahams are not swells--you do use horrible
language, Muriel dear--but I suppose Lord Conroy is, and so, according
to your argument, you ought to be."

"Uncle Blobs isn't a swell--he's only a farmer with a title."

"Oh! then I don't know what you mean by a swell."

"Well, of course the Conroys _are_ swells in a way, but they don't care
about swelling. If mother had liked--and father had let her--she could
have been a fashionable lady, and dear Muriel could have been a
fashionable girl, with her picture in the illustrated papers, sitting in
front of a lattice window with a sweet white frock and a bunch of
lilies. 'We give this week a charming photograph of Miss Muriel Graham,
the only daughter of the Honourable Mrs. Graham. Mrs. Graham is a
daughter of' and so on. As it is, dear Muriel is just the daughter of a
country squire."

"That is all dear Cicely is, though you said just now that father was a
swell. I don't see, really, that he is much more of a swell than Mr.
Graham was--here."

"No--he isn't--here. That's just it. That is what you are running your
head against, my dear. Perhaps he isn't really a swell at all, now. But
he could be if he liked, and he was when he was young. It is because he
likes being a country squire best that you have got to put up with being
a country squire's daughter. I'm sorry for you, as you seem to feel it
so much, but I'm afraid there's no help for it. I don't think, really,
you have much to grumble at, but I suppose if you live for a fortnight
exclusively amongst dukes and duchesses, you _are_ apt to get a little
above yourself. Now tell me all about the Court Ball."

Cicely told her all about the Court Ball; then they talked about other
things, and Muriel said, "You have never asked about Jim. His ship is
due in London next Wednesday and he will be home the day after."

"Dear old Jim," said Cicely--she was at work on some embroidery for
Muriel. "It will be jolly to see him back again. But it doesn't seem
like a year since he went away."

"_You_ don't seem to have missed him much."

"O yes, I have. But it was like when the boys went back to school or to
Cambridge--frightfully dull at first, and then you got used to it, and
they were back before you knew where you were."

"Yes, I know. But I don't feel like that about Walter now. I don't know
what I should do if he were to go off for a year."

"Oh, that's quite different. You are deeply in love, my dear."

"So were you once."

"Never in the world, Muriel, and you know that quite well. I was a
little donkey. I had only just put my hair up and I thought it a fine
thing to be engaged. Not that that lasted long. Dear old Jim soon
repented, and I don't blame him."

"Jim is pretty close about things, but I sometimes doubt whether he has
repented."

"You mean that he still cherishes a tender passion for sweet Cicely
Clinton."

"I shouldn't wonder."

"Well, I should. Anyway, it isn't returned. I love Jim, but if I heard
that he had come home engaged, as I dare say he will, I shouldn't mind
in the very least. I should be the first to congratulate him."

"No, you wouldn't. He would tell mother and me first. And you needn't
give yourself airs, you know. Jim would be a very good match for you.
You would be mistress of Mountfield. I'm not making half such a
brilliant alliance."

"Brilliant! I'm quite sure you would rather be going to marry somebody
who had his way to make, like Walter, than trickle off from one big,
dull country house to another. Wouldn't you, now?"

"Well, yes, I would. But it wouldn't make any difference to me, really,
if I had Walter. If Dick were to die, which I'm sure I hope he won't,
and Walter were to succeed to Kencote, I should like it just as much."

"Well, I dare say it would be all right when one got older. At present I
think it would be burying yourself alive when you ought to have the
chance of doing something and seeing something. No, Muriel, dear. I have
been a squire's daughter all my life, and there's no money in it, as
Humphrey says. The last thing I want to be at present is a squire's
wife. I believe Jim has forgotten all that silliness as much as I have.
If I thought he hadn't, I shouldn't be so glad as I am at the prospect
of seeing him back."

"I dare say he has. You're not good enough for him."

"And he isn't good enough for me. I must be going home, or father will
accuse me of over-driving Kitty. I always do over-drive her, but he
doesn't notice unless I am late. Good-bye, Muriel. It has done me good
to talk to you."




CHAPTER VII

THE RECTOR


The Rector was shown into the library where the Squire was reading the
_Times_, for which a groom rode over to Bathgate every morning at eleven
o'clock, and woe betide him if he ever came back later than half-past
twelve. It was a big room lined with books behind a brass lattice which
nobody ever opened. Though the Squire used it every day, and had used it
for five-and-thirty years, he had never altered its appointments, and
his grandfather had not lived in it. Merchant Jack had furnished it
handsomely for a library, and the Reverend John Clinton Smith, the
historian of Kencote, had bought the books for him, and read most of
them for him too. If he had returned from the tomb in which he had lain
for a hundred years to this room where he had spent some of the happiest
hours of his life, he would only have had to clear out a boxful or two
of papers from the cupboards under the bookshelves and the drawers of
the writing-tables, and remove a few photographs and personal
knick-knacks, and there would have been nothing there that was not
familiar, except the works of Surtees and a few score other books, which
he would have taken up with interest and laid down again with contempt,
in some new shelves by the fireplace. The Squire had no skill with a
room. He hated any alteration in his house, and he had debated this
question of a new bookcase to hold the few books he did read from time
to time with as much care as the Reverend John Clinton Smith, book-lover
as he was, had devoted to the housing of the whole library.

"Ah, my dear Tom," said the Squire heartily, "I'm glad you came up. I
should have come down to you, but I've been so busy all the morning that
I thought you wouldn't mind a summons. Have you brought Grace?"

"She is with Nina," said the Rector, and sat heavily down in the
easy-chair opposite to that from which the Squire had risen. He was a
big man, with a big face, clean shaven except for a pair of abbreviated
side whiskers. He had light-blue eyes and a mobile, sensitive mouth. His
clothes were rather shabby, and except for a white tie under a
turned-down collar, not clerical. His voice, coming from so massive a
frame, seemed thin, but it was of a pleasant tenor quality, and went
well with the mild and attractive expression of his face. All the
parishioners of Kencote liked the Rector, though he was not at all
diligent in visiting them. Perhaps they liked him the better on that
account.

The Rector was the Squire's half-brother. Colonel Thomas Clinton, the
Squire's grandfather, had followed, amongst other traditions of his
family, that of marrying early, and marrying money. His wife was a city
lady, daughter of Alderman Sir James Banket, and brought him forty
thousand pounds. Besides his six daughters, he had one son, who was
delicate and could not support the fatigue of his own arduous pursuit of
sport. He was sent to Eton and to Trinity College, and a cornetcy was
bought for him in the Grenadier Guards. He also married early, and
married, following an alternative tradition, not money, but blood. His
wife was a sister of a brother officer, the Marquis of Nottingham, and
they were happy together for a year. He died of a low fever immediately
after the birth of his son, Edward, that Squire of Kencote with whom we
have to do.

Colonel Thomas took a great deal more pride in his sturdy grandson than
ever he had been able to take in his weakly son. He taught him to ride
and to shoot, and to tyrannise over his six maiden aunts, who all took a
hand in bringing him up. His own placid, uncomplaining wife had died
years before, and Lady Susan Clinton, tired of living in a house where
women seemed to exist on sufferance, had married again, but had not been
allowed to take her child to her new home. She had the legal right to do
so, of course, but was far too frightened of the weather-beaten,
keen-eyed old man, who could say such cutting things with such a sweet
smile upon his lips, to insist upon it. Her second husband was the
Rector of a neighbouring parish, who grew hot to the end of his days
when he thought of what he had undergone to gain possession of his
bride. He did not keep her long, for she died a year later in giving him
a son. That son was now the Reverend Thomas Beach, Rector of Kencote, to
which preferment the Squire had appointed him nearly thirty years
before, when he was only just of canonical age to receive it. And in the
comfortable Rectory of Kencote, except for a year's curacy to his
father, he had lived all his clerical life.

The Squire and the Rector were not altogether unlike in appearance. They
were both tall and well covered with flesh, and there was a family
resemblance in their features. But the Squire's bigness and ruddiness
were those of a man who took much exercise in the open air, the Rector's
of a man physically indolent, who lived too much indoors, and lived too
well.

But if they were not unlike in appearance, they were as dissimilar as
possible in character. The Squire's well-carried, massive frame
betokened a man who considered himself to have a right to hold his head
high and plant his footsteps firmly; the Rector's big body disguised a
sensitive, timorous character, and a soul never quite at ease in its
comfortable surroundings. That ponderous weight of soft flesh, insistent
on warmth and good food and much rest, had a deal to answer for. Spare
and active, with adventures of the spirit not discouraged by the
indolence of the flesh, the Rector of Kencote might have been anything
in the way of a saint that his Church encourages. He would certainly not
have been Rector of Kencote for thirty years, with the prospect of being
Rector of Kencote for thirty years more if he lived so long. He had a
simple, lovable soul. It told him that he did nothing to speak of in
return for his good income and the fine house in which he lived in such
comfort, and troubled him on this score more than it would have troubled
a man with less aptitude for goodness; and it omitted to tell him that
he had more direct influence for righteousness than many a man who would
have consciously exercised all the gifts with which he might have been
endowed. He simply could not bring himself to visit his parish
regularly, two or three afternoons a week, as he had made up his mind to
do when he was first ordained. The afternoons always slipped away
somehow, and there were so many of them. The next would always do. So it
had been for the first years of his pastorate, and he had long since
given way altogether to his indolence and shyness in respect of visiting
his flock; but his conscience still troubled him about it. He was a
great reader, but his reading had become quite desultory, and he now
read only for his own entertainment. His sermons were poor; he had no
delivery and no gift of expression; he could not even give utterance to
the ideas that did, not infrequently, act on his brain, nor hardly to
the human tenderness which was his normal attitude towards mankind. But
he did go on writing fresh ones, stilted and commonplace as they were.
Mental activity was less of a burden to him than bodily activity, and he
had kept himself up to that part of what he thought to be his clerical
duty.

For the rest, he was fond of his books and his garden, fond of his
opulent, well-appointed house, and all that it contained, and fond of
the smaller distractions of a country life, but no sportsman. He had no
children, but a graceful, very feminine wife, who reacted pleasantly on
his intellect and looked well after the needs of his body. He sometimes
went to London for a week or two, and had been to Paris; but he liked
best to be at home. He watched the progress of the seasons with
interest, and knew something about birds, something about flowers and
trees, was a little of a weather prophet, and often thought he would
study some branch of natural science, but had lacked the energy to do
so. He liked the winter as well as the summer, for then his warm house
called him more seductively. He liked to tramp home along muddy country
roads in the gloaming, drink tea in his wife's pretty drawing-room, chat
to her a little, and then go into his cosy, book-lined study and read
till dinner-time. He would have been a happy man as a layman, relieved
of that gnawing conviction that his placid, easy life was rather far
from being apostolic. And nobody, not even his wife, had any idea that
he was not quite contented, and grateful for the good things that he
enjoyed.

"Well, Tom," said the Squire, "I'm infernally worried again. It's that
boy Walter. What do you think he wants to do now?" He spoke with none of
the heat of the morning. It might have been thought that he had already
accepted the inevitable and was prepared to make the best of it.

"I don't know, Edward," said the Rector; and the Squire told him.

"And you have a particular objection to this place, Melbury Park?"
inquired the Rector guilelessly.

"O my dear Tom," said the Squire impatiently, "have you ever seen the
place?"

"From the railway only," admitted the Rector; "and chiefly its
back-gardens. It left an impression of washing on my mind."

"It left an impression of _not_ washing on mine," said the Squire, and
leant back in his chair to laugh heartily at his witticism.

The Rector also did justice to it, perhaps more than justice, with a
kind smile. "Well, Edward," he said, "it may be so, but it is,
otherwise, I should say, respectable. It is not like a slum. Has Walter
any particular reason for wishing to go there?"

The Squire gave a grudging summary of the reasons Walter had advanced
for wishing to go there, and made them appear rather ridiculous reasons.
He also produced again such of the arguments he had advanced at
breakfast-time as seemed most weighty, and managed to work himself up
into a fair return of his morning's feeling of being very badly treated.

"Well, Edward," said the Rector gently, when he had come to an end, "I
think if I were you I should not make any objections to Walter's going
to Melbury Park."

"You wouldn't?" asked the Squire, rather weakly.

"No, I don't think I would. You see, my dear Edward, some of us are
inclined to take life too easily. I'm sometimes afraid that I do
myself."

"You do your duty, Tom. Nobody is asked to do more than that."

"Well, you may be right, but I am not sure. However, what I was going to
say was that one cannot help respecting--perhaps even envying--a young
fellow like Walter who doesn't want to take life easily."

"He has stuck to his work," said the Squire. "I will say that for the
boy; and he's never come to me for money to pay bills with, as Humphrey
has, and even Dick--though, as far as Dick goes, he'll have the property
some day, and I don't grudge him what he wants now within reason."

"You see, Edward, when a man has congenial work which takes up his time,
he is not apt to get into mischief. I think, if I may say so, that you
ought to admit now, however much you may have objected to Walter's
choice of a profession in the first instance, that he has justified his
choice. He put his hand to the plough and he has not looked back. That
is a good deal to say for a young man with Walter's temptations towards
an easy, perhaps idle, life."

"Well," said the Squire, "I do admit it. I do admit it, Tom. I have my
natural prejudices, but I'm the last man in the world that any one has a
right to call obstinate. I objected to Walter becoming a doctor in the
first instance. It was natural that I should. He ought to have succeeded
you, as Dick will succeed me. And none of our family have ever been
doctors. But I gave way, and I've every wish, now, that he should
succeed in his profession. And the reason I object to this move so
strongly is that as far as my judgment goes it is not a step in the
right direction. It might be so for the ordinary doctor--I don't know
and I can't say--but I'm willing to help a son of mine over some of the
drudgery, and it will be very disagreeable for me to have Walter
settling down to married life in a place like Melbury Park, when he
might do so much better. You must remember, Tom, that he is the first of
the boys to get married. Dick will marry some day soon, I hope and
trust, and Humphrey too, but until they do, Walter's son, if he has one,
will be heir to this property, eventually. He ought _not_ to be brought
up in a place like Melbury Park."

"There is a good deal in what you say, Edward," replied the Rector, who
privately thought that there was very little; "but the contingency you
mention is a very unlikely one."

"I don't lay too much stress on it. If I thought that Walter was right
from the point of rising in his profession to go to this place I would
leave all that out of the question."

"Well, I'll tell you what, Edward," said the Rector, with an engaging
smile, "supposing you keep an open mind on the question until you have
heard what Walter has to say about it. How would that be?"

The Squire hummed and ha'd, and thought that on the whole it might be
the best thing to do.

"You see," said the Rector in pursuance of his bright idea, "it is just
possible that there may be reasons which Walter has considered, and may
wish to urge, that _might_ make it advisable for him, even with the
exceptional advantages you could give him, to go through the training
afforded by just such a practice as this. I should let him urge them,
Edward, if I were you. I should let him urge them. You can but repeat
your objections, if they do not appeal to your judgment. You will be in
a better position to make your own views tell, if you dispose your mind
to listen to his. I should take a kindly tone, I think, if I were you.
You don't want to set the boy against you."

"No, I don't want that," said the Squire. "And I should have done what
you advise, in any case. It's the only way, of course. Let us go in and
have some luncheon. Then you don't think, Tom, that there would be any
serious objection to my giving way on this point, if Walter is
reasonable about it?"

"Well, Edward, do you know, I really don't think there would," replied
the Rector, as they crossed the hall to the dining-room.

The ladies were already there. Mrs. Beach was by the window talking to
the twins, who adored her. She was getting on for fifty, but she was
still a pretty woman, and moved gracefully as she came across the room
to shake hands with her brother-in-law. "It is very nice to see you back
again, Edward," she said, with a charming smile. "You do not look as if
London had disagreed with you."

"My dear Grace," said the Squire, holding her white, well-formed hand in
his big one. "I'll tell you my private opinion of London, only don't let
it go any further. It can't hold a candle to Kencote." Then he gave a
hearty laugh, and motioned her to a seat on his right. The twins cast a
look of intelligence at one another, and Cicely glanced at her mother.
The Squire had recovered his good humour.

"For these an' all his mercies," mumbled the Squire, bending his
head.--"Oh, beg your pardon, Tom," and the Rector said grace.

"Have you heard what that silly fellow Walter wants to do, Grace?" asked
the Squire.

"Nothing except that he hopes to get married next month," replied Mrs.
Beach, helping herself to an omelette, "and I hope that he will make a
better husband than Tom."

The Rector, already busy, spared her a glance of appreciation, and the
twins giggled at the humour of their favourite.

"Yes, he is going to be married, and he proposes to take Muriel to live
at Melbury Park, of all places in the world."

"Then in that case," replied Mrs. Beach equably, "Tom and I will not
give them the grand piano we had fixed upon for a wedding present. They
must content themselves with the railway whistles."

The twins laughed outright and were ineffectively rebuked by Miss Bird.
That they were to be seen and not heard at table was a maxim she had
diligently instilled into them. But they were quite right to laugh. Aunt
Grace was surpassing herself. She always kept the Squire in a good
humour, by her ready little jokes and the well-disguised deference she
paid him. The deference was not offered to him alone, but to all men
with whom she came in contact, even her husband, and men liked her
immensely. She teased them boldly, but she deferred to their manhood.
Women sometimes grew tired of her sweetness of manner, which was
displayed to them too, and quite naturally. She was a sweet woman, if
also, in spite of her ready tongue, rather a shallow one. Mrs. Clinton
did not like her, but did not show it, except in withholding her
confidence, and Mrs. Beach had no idea that they were not intimate.
Cicely was indifferent towards her, but had loved her as a child, for
the same reason that the twins thought her the most charming of
womankind, because she treated them as if they were her equals in
intelligence, as no doubt they were. It had never occurred to them to
mimic her, which was a feather in her cap if she had known it. And
another was that Miss Bird adored her, being made welcome in her house,
and, as she said, treated like anybody else.

By the time luncheon was over the Squire had so overcome his bitter
resentment at the idea of Walter's going to live at Melbury Park, that
he could afford to joke about it. Aunt Grace had suggested that they
should all go and live there, and had so amused the Squire with a
picture of himself coming home to his villa in the evening and eating
his dinner in the kitchen in his shirt sleeves, with carpet slippers on
his feet, which was possibly the picture in her mind of "how the poor
live," that he was in the best of humours, and drank two more glasses of
port than his slightly gouty tendency usually permitted.

The twins persuaded Miss Bird to take them to the station to meet Walter
in the afternoon. They were not allowed to go outside the park by
themselves, and walked down the village on either side of the old
starling, each of them over-topping her by half a head, like good girls,
as she said herself. They wore cool white dresses, and shady hats
trimmed with poppies, and looked a picture. When they reached the
by-road to the station, Joan said, "One, two, three, and away," and they
shot like darts from the side of their instructress, arriving on the
platform flushed and laughing, not at all like good girls, while Miss
Bird panted in their rear, clucking threats and remonstrances, to the
respectful but undisguised amusement of the porter, and the groom who
had preceded them with the dog-cart.

Walter got out of a third-class carriage when the train drew up and
said, "Hullo, twanky-diddleses! Oh, my adorable _Sturna vulgaris vetus_,
embrace me! Come to my arms!"

"Now, Walter, do behave," said Miss Bird sharply. "What will people
think and Joan 'n Nancy I shall certainly tell Mrs. Clinton of your
_disgraceful_ behaviour I am quite ashamed of you running off like that
which you _know_ you are not allowed to do you are very _naughty_ girls
and I am seriously displeased with you."

"Ellen Bird," said Walter, "don't try and put it on to the twankies. I
looked out of the carriage window and saw you sprinting along the
station road yourself. You have had a little race and are annoyed at
being beaten. I shall put you up in the cart and send you home, and I
will walk back with the twankies." And in spite of Miss Bird's almost
frenzied remonstrances, up into the cart she was helped, and driven off
at a smart pace, with cheers from the twins, now entirely beyond her
control.

"Well, twanky dears," said Walter, starting off at a smart pace with a
twin on either side, "I suppose there's a deuce of a bust up, eh? Look
here, you can't hang on. It's too hot."

"It wouldn't be too hot for Muriel to hang on," said Joan, her arm
having been returned to her.

"There was a bust up this morning at breakfast," said Nancy. "Edward
came in purple with passion two minutes late for prayers."

"Eh?" said Walter sharply. "Look here, you mustn't speak of the governor
like that."

"It's only her new trick," said Joan. "She'll get tired of it."

"You're not to do it, Nancy, do you hear?" said Walter.

"Oh, all right," said Nancy. "Mr. Clinton of Kencote, J.P., D.L., was so
put out that he wouldn't kneel down to say his prayers."

"Annoyed, eh?" said Walter.

"Yes," said Joan, "but he's all right now, Walter. Aunt Grace came to
lunch, and beat Bogey."

"What!"

"It's only her new trick," said Nancy. "She'll get tired of it. She
means put him in a good humour."

"Really, you twankies do pick up some language. Then there's nothing
much to fear, what?"

"No, we are all coming to live at Melbury Park, and Aunt Grace is going
to take in our washing."

"Oh, that's the line taken, is it?" said Walter. "Well, I dare say it's
all very funny, but I can't have you twankies giving yourselves airs,
you know. I don't know why they talk over things before you. The
governor might have kept it to himself until he had seen me."

"Mr. Clinton doesn't keep things to himself," said Nancy. "You might
know that by this time; and Joan and I are quite old enough to take an
intelligent interest in family affairs. We do take the deepest interest
in them, and we know a lot. Little pitchers have long ears, you know."

"So have donkeys, and they get them pinched if they're not careful,"
retorted Walter. "How are you getting on with your lessons, twankies?"

"I believe our progress is quite satisfactory, thank you, Dr. Clinton,"
replied Joan. "Perhaps you would like to hear us a few dates, so that
our afternoon walk may not pass entirely unimproved."

"You had much better look at Joan's tongue," said Nancy. "Starling said
last night that her stomach was a little out of order, and we rebuked
her for her vulgarity."

"You are a record pair, you two," said Walter, looking at them with
unwilling admiration. "I don't believe any of us led that poor old woman
the dance that you do. Do you want some jumbles, twankies?"

"Ra-_ther_," said the twins with one voice, and they turned into the
village shop.

The tea-table was spread on the lawn, and the Squire came out of the
window of the library as Walter reached the garden. "Well, my boy," he
said, "so you're going to settle down at Melbury Park, are you? That's a
nice sort of thing to spring on us; but good luck to you! You can always
come down here when you want a holiday."




CHAPTER VIII

BY THE LAKE


Whitsuntide that year fell early in June, and the weather was glorious.
Cicely awoke on Friday morning with a sense of happiness. She slept with
her blinds up, and both her windows were wide open. She could see from
her pillow a great red mass of peonies backed by dark shrubs across the
lawn, and in another part of the garden laburnums and lilacs and
flowering thorns, and all variations of young green from trees and grass
under a sky of light blue. Thrushes and blackbirds were piping sweetly.
She loved these fresh mornings of early summer, and had often wakened to
them with that slight palpitation of happiness.

But, when she was fully awake, it had generally happened that the
pleasure had rather faded, at any rate of late years, since she had
grown up. In her childhood it had been enough to have the long summer
day in front of her, especially in holiday time, when there would be no
irksome schoolroom restraint, nothing but the pleasures and adventures
of the open air. But lately she had needed more, and more, at Kencote,
had seldom been forthcoming. Moreover she had hardly known what the
"more" was that she had wanted. She had never been unhappy, but only
vaguely dissatisfied, and sometimes bored.

This morning her waking sense of well-being did not fade as she came to
full consciousness, but started into full pleasure as she remembered
that her cousins, Angela and Beatrice Birket, with their father and
mother, were in the house. And Dick and Humphrey had come down with them
the evening before. Guests were so rare at Kencote that to have a party
of them was a most pleasurable excitement. Dick and Humphrey would see
that there was plenty of amusement provided, quiet enough amusement for
them, no doubt, but for Cicely high pleasure, with something to do all
the day long, and people whom she liked to do it with.

And--oh yes--Jim had returned home from his travels the day before, and
would be sure to come over, probably early in the morning.

She jumped out of bed, put on her dressing-gown, and went to the window.
The clock from the stable turret struck six, but she really could not
lie in bed on such a morning as this, with so much about to happen. She
would dress and go out into the garden. A still happier thought--she
would go down to the lake and bathe from the Temple of Melancholy. It
was early in the year, but the weather had been so warm for the last
month that it was not too early to begin that summer habit. Perhaps the
twins would come with her. They were early risers.

She was just about to turn away from the window when she saw the twins
themselves steal round the corner of the house. Their movements were
mysterious. Although there was nobody about, they trod on tiptoe across
the broad gravel path and on to the dewy lawn. Joan--she could always
tell them apart, although to the outside world they were identical in
form and feature--carried a basket which probably contained provisions,
a plentiful supply of which was generally included in the elaborate
arrangements the twins made for their various games of adventure. There
was nothing odd in this, but what was rather odd was that she also held
a long rope, the other end of which was tied around Nancy's neck, while
Nancy's hands were knotted behind her.

When they got on to the grass they both turned at the same moment to
glance up at the windows of the house, and caught sight of Cicely, who
then perceived that Joan's features were hidden by a mask of black
velvet. She saw them draw together and take counsel, and then, without
speaking, beckon her insistently to join them. She nodded her head and
went back into the room, smiling to herself, while the twins pursued
their mysterious course towards the shrubberies. She thought she would
not bathe after all; but she dressed quickly and went down into the
garden, a little curious to learn what new invention the children were
busying themselves with.

It proved to be nothing more original than the old game of buccaneers.
Nancy had awakened to find herself neatly trussed to her bed and Joan in
an unfinished state of attire, but wearing the black velvet mask,
brandishing in her face a horse pistol, annexed from the collection of
old-fashioned weapons in the hall. Thus overpowered she had succumbed
philosophically. It was the fortune of war, and if she had thought of it
she might just as well have been kneeling on Joan's chest, as Joan was
kneeling, somewhat oppressively, on hers. Given her choice of walking
the plank from the punt on the lake or being marooned on the
rhododendron island, she had accepted the latter alternative,
stipulating for an adequate supply of food; and a truce having been
called, while pirate and victim made their toilets and raided together
for the necessary rations, she had then allowed herself to be bound and
led off to the shore where the pirate ship was beached.

All this was explained to Cicely--the search for provisions having no
particular stress laid on it--when she joined them, and she was awarded
the part of the unhappy victim's wife, who was to gaze across the water
and tear her hair in despair at being unable to go to the rescue.

"You must rend the air with your cries," Joan instructed her, "not too
loud, because we don't want any one to hear. The pirate king will then
appear on the scene, and stalking silently up behind you--well, you'll
see. I won't hurt you."

Nancy was already comfortably marooned. She could be seen relieved of
her bonds seated amongst the rhododendrons, which were in full flower on
the island and all round the lake, making her first solitary meal off
cold salmon and a macedoine of fruit, and supporting her painful
situation with fortitude.

Cicely accepted her role, but dispensed with the business of tearing her
hair. "O my husband!" she cried, stretching her arms across the water.
"Shall I never see thee more? What foul ruffian has treated thee thus?"

"Very good," said Nancy, with her mouth full--she was only twenty yards
away--"keep it up, Sis."

"I will not rest until I have discovered the miscreant and taken his
life," proceeded Cicely.

"Shed his blood," corrected Nancy. "Say something about my bones
bleaching on the shore."

"Thy bones will bleach on the shore," Cicely obeyed. "And I, a
disconsolate widow, will wander up and down this cruel strand--oh,
don't, Joan, you are hurting."

For she found herself in the grip of the pirate king, who hissed in her
ear, "Ha, ha, fair damsel! Thou art mine at last. 'Twas for love of thee
I committed this deed. Thy lily-livered husband lies at my mercy, and
once in Davy Jones's locker will be out of my path. Then the wedding
bells shall ring and we will sail together over the bounding main.
Gently, gently, pretty dove! Do not struggle. I will not hurt thee."

"Unhand me, miscreant," cried Cicely. "Think you that I would forget my
brave and gallant husband for such as thou, steeped in crime from head
to foot? Unhand me, I say. Help! Help!"

"Peace, pretty one!" cooed the pirate king. "Thou art in my power and
thy cries do not daunt me. I have only to lift my voice and my brave
crew will be all around me. Better come with me quietly. There is a
cabin prepared for thee in my gallant barque. None shall molest thee.
Cease struggling and come with me."

Urged towards the shore by the pirate king, Cicely redoubled her cries
for assistance, but no one was more surprised than she to see an elderly
gentleman in a grey flannel suit and a straw hat bound from behind the
bushes, level a latch-key at the head of the masked bandit, and cry,
"Loose her, perjured villain, or thy brains shall strew the sand."

Nancy's clear, delighted laugh came from the island, Joan giggled and
said, "O Uncle Herbert!"

"Uncle me no Herberts," said Mr. Birket. "Put up your hands or I shoot.
(Cicely, if you will kindly swoon in my arms--Thank you.) Know, base
buccaneer, that I represent his Britannic Majesty on these seas, and
wherever the British flag flies there is liberty. Allow me to disarm you
of your weapon."

"I yield to superior force," said the bold buccaneer in stately tones.

"Very wise of you. I should fold my arms and scowl if I were you.
Behold, the lady cometh to. She is, yes she is, the daughter I have
mourned these many years. And you, base marauder, though you know it
not, are the long-lost brother of that luckless wight starving, if I
mistake not, to death on the island. Well for you that your hands are
not imbrued in his gore. Put off at once in your stout ship--and be
careful not to tumble overboard--and restore him to his hapless bride."

"I will obey your bidding," said the pirate king proudly. "The claims of
relationship are paramount."

"Well put. I have hopes of you yet. I am also hungry. Bring back the
victim's basket, and we will eat together and forget this unfortunate
occurrence."

Joan punted across to the island and the marooned Nancy was brought to
the mainland with her somewhat depleted store of provisions. Mr. Birket
dropped his role while the embarkation proceeded, and mopped his brow
with a bandana handkerchief. He was a short, grey-haired man with a keen
lawyer's face. "Well, my dear," he said to Cicely, "I think that went
off very well, but it is somewhat exhausting."

Cicely laughed. "The twins will never forget it," she said. "Did you see
them come out?"

"I saw them come on to the lake. I was in the Temple, getting through a
little work."

"What ever time did you get up?"

"Oh, half-past five. My regular hour in the summer. I'm kept pretty
busy, my dear. But I don't generally have such a charming place as this
to work in. Now then, pirate, hurry up with those victuals. Your uncle
is hungry."

They picnicked on the shore--the twins' provisioning having fortunately
been ample--and Mr. Birket proved himself an agreeable companion. Joan
said to Nancy afterwards that the practice of the law seemed to brighten
people's brains wonderfully. He smoked a cigar, told them stories, and
made them laugh. At half-past eight he fetched his papers from the
Temple and they went indoors to get ready for breakfast. "I think," he
said, as they crossed the lawn, "we had better say nothing about the
startling occurrences of the morning. They might come as a shock to our
elders and betters." And Joan and Nancy, remembering the contents of the
basket and the source from which they had been derived, agreed.

Herbert Birket was Mrs. Clinton's only brother. Their father had been a
Colonel in the Indian Army, and had retired to end his days in a little
house on the outskirts of Bathgate, desiring nothing more than to read
the _Times_ through every morning and find something in it to disagree
with, walk so many miles a day, see his son well started in the
profession he had chosen, and his daughter well, but not splendidly,
married. He had gained his desires in all but the last item. The young
Squire of Kencote, in all the glory of his wide inheritance and his
lieutenancy in the Household Cavalry, had ridden past the little house
on his way to Bathgate and seen a quiet, unassuming, fair-haired girl
watering her flowers in the garden, had fallen in love with her, met her
at a county ball, fallen still more deeply in love, and finally carried
her off impetuously from the double-fronted villa in the Bathgate Road
to rule over his great house at Kencote.

South Meadshire had rung with the romance, and old Colonel Birket had
not been altogether delighted with his daughter's good fortune, wishing
to spend his last days in peace and not in glory. The wedding had taken
place in London, with a respectable show of relations on the bride's
side and all the accompaniments of semi-military parade on the
bridegroom's. There was no talk of a misalliance on the part of his
friends, nor was there a misalliance, for the Birkets were good enough
people; but the young Squire's six maiden aunts had returned to the
dower-house at Kencote after the wedding and shaken their respective
heads. No good would come of it, they said, and had, perhaps, been a
little disappointed ever afterwards that no harm had come of it, at any
rate to their nephew.

The old Colonel had long since been laid in his grave, and the little
house in the Bathgate Road, now in the respectable occupancy of a
retired druggist, would have seemed as strange a dwelling-place to the
daughters of Herbert Birket, who had prospered exceedingly, as to the
children of Mrs. Clinton of Kencote.

Angela and Beatrice Birket were handsome girls, both of them younger
than Cicely, but with their assured manners and knowledge of the world,
looking older. They had been brought up strictly by their mother, who
had paid great attention to their education. They might have been seen
during their childhood on any reasonably fine afternoon walking in
Kensington Gardens or Hyde Park with a highly priced French governess,
two well, but plainly dressed children with long, straight hair and
composed faces. They never appeared in their mother's drawing-room when
visitors were there, being employed in a room upstairs either at
lessons, or consuming the plainest variety of schoolroom tea. They were
taken sometimes to an afternoon concert, and on very rare occasions to a
play. When they were at home in London, their days were given to their
lessons, with the requisite amount of regular exercise to keep them in
good health. In holiday time, in the summer, at Christmas and at Easter,
they were allowed to run quite wild, in old clothes at some
out-of-the-way seaside place, in country farmhouses, where they
scrambled about on ponies and amongst ducks and chickens, or in the
country houses of their friends and relations, where there were other
children of their age for them to play with. So they had loved the
country and hated London, and had never been so surprised in their lives
as when they were duly presented and launched in society to find that
London was the most amusing place in the world and that all the pains
and drudgery to which they had been put there had prepared them for the
enjoyment of the manifold interests and pleasures that came in their
way. They had developed quickly, and those who had known them in their
rather subdued childhood would hardly have known them now.

Of all the places in which they had spent their holidays in days gone by
they had liked Kencote best. It had been a paradise of fun and freedom
for them; they and Cicely had been happy from morning till night. The
elder boys home from school or college had been kind to them, and Frank,
the sailor, who was about their own age, and not too proud to make a
companion of his sister and cousins, had led the way in all their happy
adventures. And they had loved the twins, whom they had seen grow up
from babyhood. No, there had been no place like Kencote in the old days,
and the pleasure of a visit there still persisted, although it was no
longer the most congenial house at which they visited.

All the party assembled for prayers in the dining-room. That was
understood to be the rule. The twins were there, very clean and well
brushed and very demure. Mr. Birket wished them good-morning solemnly
and hoped that they had slept well, at which they giggled and were
rebuked by Miss Bird, when their uncle turned away to ask the same
question of Cicely. As Miss Bird said,--What would their uncle think of
them if they could not answer a civil question without behaving in that
silly fashion? At which they giggled again. Angela and Beatrice, tall
and glossy-haired, dressed in white, made a handsome quartet with Dick
and Humphrey, the one in smart grey flannel, the other in white.

"This little rest will do you both good," said Dick. "You shall lie
about, and Miss Bird shall read to you. You will go back to the
excitements of the metropolis thoroughly refreshed."

"Oh, we are going to be very energetic," said Angela. "We want to play
lawn tennis, for one thing. One never gets a chance nowadays, and we
both hate croquet."

"We'll get up a tournament," said Humphrey, "and invite the
neighbourhood. You'll see some queer specimens. I hear you're writing a
book, Trixie."

Beatrice laughed, and blushed a little. "I've left off," she said.

"Ah, I've heard stories about you," said Dick. "Soon have something else
to do, eh? Don't blush. I won't tell anybody. Look here, we'll play golf
this morning. We laid out quite a decent little course in the park last
autumn. And in the afternoon we'll have a picnic."

"Oh, preserve us!" said Humphrey.

"Oh, do let us have a picnic," said Angela.

"It will be like old times," said Beatrice.

"We'll go to Blackborough Castle," said Dick, "and take the twankies. We
must give them a little fun. Siskin, how about a picnic?"

Mrs. Birket was telling Mrs. Clinton that Beatrice's engagement would be
announced when they returned to London. "She is young," she said, "but
both the girls are older in mind than in age."

"You have educated them well," Mrs. Clinton said. She looked across the
room at the two handsome, smiling girls, and at her own pretty daughter,
who had not been very well educated and was not older in mind than in
age. But just then the gong sounded, every one took their seats, the
Squire came in with a hearty "Good-morning! Good-morning!" which
greeting his assembled family and guests might take and divide amongst
them, and the proceedings of the day began.

Later in the morning Angela and Beatrice, Dick and Humphrey were
actively engaged at lawn tennis. Cicely was sitting under a great lime
on the lawn waiting for her turn. The twins, having discovered an
unusually congenial companion in their uncle, had carried him off
somewhere out of sight, and Cicely was alone for the moment. A voice
behind her, "Hullo, Cicely!" made her start, and then she sprang up.
"Jim!" she cried. "How jolly to see you back! I thought you would come
over this morning."

The game had to be interrupted while the returned traveller was
welcomed. "You look as fit as a fiddle, old boy," said Dick. "You'll be
able to stay at home and enjoy yourself now, I hope. Will you play when
we've finished this? I can lend you a pair of shoes."

"No thanks," said Jim. "I'll talk to Cicely." So the others went back on
to the lawn.

"Come and have a stroll round," Jim suggested; and Cicely, with a
half-regretful glance at the tennis lawn, rose to go with him.

They went to the rhododendron dell round the lake. It was where every
one went naturally if they wanted to walk and talk at the same time.
Jim's honest, weathered face was very frequently turned towards Cicely's
fair, young one, and there was a light in his eyes which made her turn
hers away a little confusedly when they met it. But Jim's voice was
level enough, and his speech ordinary. "I'm jolly glad to get back
again," he said. "I've never liked Mountfield half so well. I was up at
six o'clock this morning, and out and about."

"So was I," said Cicely, and she told him, laughing, of the events of
the morning.

"I expect they've grown, those young beggars," said Jim, alluding thus
disrespectfully to the twins. "I've often thought of them while I've
been away, and of everybody at Kencote--you especially."

"We've all thought of you, too," said Cicely, "and talked about you. You
haven't been forgotten, Jim."

"I hoped I shouldn't be," he said simply. "By Jove, how I've looked
forward to this--coming over here the first moment I could. I wish you
hadn't got all these people here, though."

"All these people!" echoed Cicely. "Why, Jim, you know them as well as
we do."

"Yes, I'm a selfish beggar. I wanted to have you all to myself."

Cicely was a little disturbed in her mind. Jim had not talked to her
like this for five years. Ever since that long, happy summer when he and
she had been together nearly every day, when he had made love to her in
his slow, rather ponderous way, and she, her adolescence flattered, had
said "yes" when he had asked her to marry him--or rather ever since he
had written to her from Oxford to say that he must wait for some years
before he could expect to marry and that she was to consider herself
quite free--he had never by word or sign shown whether he also
considered himself free, or whether he intended, when the time came, to
ask her again to be his wife. When he had come back to Mountfield at
Christmas he had been in all respects as he had been up to six months
before, friendly and brotherly, and no more. It made it easier for her,
for her pride had been a little wounded. If he had held aloof, but shown
that, although he had given her her freedom, he hoped she had not
accepted it, she would have felt irked, and whatever unformed love she
had for Jim would quickly have disappeared. But, as it was, his equable
friendship kept alive the affection which she had always felt for him;
only it seemed to make the remembrance of their love passages a little
absurd. She was not exactly ashamed of what had happened, but she never
willingly thought of it, and after a year or so it became as much a part
of her past life as the short frocks and pinafores of her childhood. She
had been mildly chaffed about Jim on occasions, and there was no doubt
that in the minds both of her family and of Jim's the expectation of an
eventual marriage had never altogether subsided. Nor, strangely enough,
had it altogether subsided in hers, although if she had ever asked
herself the question as to whether she was in love with Jim in the
slightest degree she would have answered it forcibly in the negative.
But--there it was, as it is with every young girl--some day she would be
married; and it might happen that she would be married to Jim.

"Do you remember," Jim asked her when they had walked the length of the
lake and come out in front of the Temple, "how you used to try to teach
me to draw here?"

Yes, it was obviously Jim's intention to open up a buried subject, and
she was not by any means prepared for that. The sketching lessons had
been a shameless subterfuge for obtaining privacy, for Jim had about as
much aptitude for the arts as a dromedary, and his libels on the lake
and the rhododendrons would have made old Merchant Jack and his
landscape gardener turn in their graves.

Cicely laughed. "Have you brought back any sketches from your travels?"
she asked.

"No. I've got lots of photographs, though." Jim was always literal.

"Angela and Beatrice paint beautifully," Cicely said. "We are going to
make sketches at Blackborough this afternoon. Will you come with us,
Jim? We are all going."

"Yes, I'll come," said Jim. "Cicely, are you glad to see me home again?"

"Yes, of course, I'm glad. We have all missed you awfully, Jim."

"You can't think how bucked up I am to think that I need never leave
Mountfield again as long as I live. That's what's so jolly about having
a place of your own. It's part of you. You feel that, don't you,
Cicely?"

"Well, as I haven't got a place of my own, Jim, I don't know that I do."

"When those beastly death duties are paid off," Jim began, but Cicely
would not let him finish. "Anyhow," she said, "I should hate to think I
was going to stay in one place all my life, however much I liked it. Of
course, it is natural that you should feel as you do when you have been
travelling for a year. If I ever have the chance of travelling for a
year perhaps I shall feel like that about Kencote." She laughed and
looked him in the face, blushing a little. "Let us go back and play
tennis," she said.

His face fell, and he walked by her side without speaking. Cicely little
knew how keen was his disappointment. This was the hour he had been
looking forward to every day for the last year, and this the place, with
the sun glinting through the young green of beech and ash and lighting
up those masses and drifts of brilliant colour everywhere about them. It
was true that he had meant to come to no conclusions with the girl he
loved with all his heart. The time for that would not be for another
year at least, according to the decision he had long since come to. But
he had so hungered for her during his long exile, for such it had seemed
to him in spite of the various enjoyments and interests he had gained
from it, that the thought had grown with him that he would take just a
little of the sweetness that a word from her, to show that she was his
as he was hers, would give him. She had not spoken the word, and Jim's
heart was heavy as he walked back to the garden by her side.




CHAPTER IX

THE QUESTION OF MARRIAGE


"Blackborough Castle?" said the Squire at luncheon. "Well, if you
like--but you'll take your tea in the company of Dick, Tom and Harry,
and I think you would be more comfortable at home."

"I don't suppose there'll be anybody else there to-day," said Dick, "and
the spirit of youth cries aloud for tea on the floor." So it was
settled. Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Birket went in the carriage, Angela rode
with Humphrey, and Dick drove the rest of the party, which did not
include the Squire, in the brake.

"You look like bean-feasters," said Humphrey, as they drove past him and
Angela. "But you need not behave as such," said Miss Bird to the twins,
who, one on each side of their uncle, were inclined to be a trifle
uproarious.

They had the old keep of the castle pretty well to themselves, spread
their cloth on the green turf by the battlements, where centuries ago
men-at-arms had tramped the now covered stones, and made merry in true
picnic style. There was a footman to clear away, and the party broke up
into little groups, and explored the ruins, and wandered in the thick
woods which surrounded them.

Jim looked a little wistfully at Cicely as she went away with her arm in
that of Beatrice Birket, but made no attempt to join her, and presently
allied himself to the storming party which Joan was collecting to rescue
Miss Bird, confined in the deepest dungeon.

"Now, Trixie, you have got to tell me all about it," Cicely said, when
the two girls were out of hearing of the rest.

"My dear," said Beatrice, laughing, "I told you last night that he had
asked me and I had said yes, and that I am very happy."

"Oh, I know. But that was before Angela, and she said we were to have no
raptures. I want raptures, please."

"Well, I'm afraid you won't get them. I'm too well drilled. You know,
Cicely, I rather envy you being brought up as you were. You're more
natural, somehow, than Angela and I."

"Well, I envy _you_; so we're quits. But never mind about that now.
Trixie, is Angela just the least bit jealous?"

"No, not a bit," said Beatrice loyally. "But you see she's a year older,
and ever so much cleverer, and prettier too."

"She's none of those things except a year older. But she's a dear all
the same, and so are you. I don't wonder at anybody falling in love with
you. Are you very much in love too?"

"Well, Cicely, I don't mind telling you in strict confidence that I am.
But, perhaps, it's in a way you would not sympathise with particularly."

"Tell me in what way, and you'll see."

"Of course George isn't especially good-looking; in fact he isn't
good-looking at all, except for his eyes. I used to think I should never
love anybody unless he was as handsome as--as, well, Dick is, for
instance--that sort of man--you know--smart and well set up, and"--with
a laugh--"rather ignorant."

"Dick isn't ignorant," said Cicely indignantly.

"My dear, compared to George he is a monument of ignorance, a pyramid of
it; so are most men. It was just that; George is so clever, and he's
making such use of his brains too. He is one of the youngest men in
parliament, and is in office already. It was looking up to him as a
pillar of wisdom, and then finding that he looked to me of all people,
to help him on."

"I'm sure you will help him on. I heard some one say in London that many
politicians owed a great deal of their success to their wives."

"I don't mean quite in that way. I don't think George is ambitious,
though I am for him. He wants to get things done. Father says it is
because he is so young. He tells me about everything, and it makes me
grateful--you know, I think when you are very grateful, that is being in
love."

"You dear thing!" said Cicely, squeezing her arm. "Does Uncle Herbert
like him? They are not on the same side in politics, are they?"

"No. But it doesn't seem to matter. It doesn't matter in the least to
me. Of course, there _are_ things. George is a tremendous churchman, you
know, and I have never thought much about religion--not deeply, I mean.
But it is a real thing with him, and I'm learning. You see, Cicely, we
are rather a different engaged couple from most, although we don't
appear so to the world at large. Outside our two selves, George is a
coming man, and I am a lucky girl to be making such a match."

"I'm glad you have told me about it all," Cicely said. "It must be
splendid to be looking forward to helping your husband in all the good
things he is going to do."

"Oh, it is. I am ever so happy. And George is the dearest soul--so kind
and thoughtful, for all his cleverness. Cicely, you must meet him."

"I should love to," said Cicely simply. "I never meet anybody
interesting down here." Her incipient sense of revolt had died down for
the time; she was young enough to live in the present, if the present
was agreeable enough, as it was with this mild, unwonted, holiday stir
about her. She only felt, vaguely, a little sorry for herself.

"It is lovely," said Beatrice; "but I own I shouldn't care for it all
day and every day. It is rather jolly to feel you're in the middle of
things."

"Oh, I know it is," said Cicely, laughing. "_I_ was in the middle of
things in London, and I enjoyed it immensely."

Beatrice's engagement was the subject of another conversation that
evening. When the party got back from the picnic, Cicely set out for the
dower-house. Nobody had been near the old aunts that day; it was seven
o'clock, and there was just time to pay them a short visit. Mr. Birket
was in the hall as she passed through, and she asked him to go with her.

"I should like to pay my respects to those two admirable ladies," he
said. "They make me feel that I am nobody, which is occasionally good
for the soul of man."

"Ah," said Cicely, as they went across the garden together, "you are a
wicked Radical, you see, and you want to disestablish their beloved
Church."

"Do I?" said Mr. Birket. "How truly shocking of me. My dear, don't
believe everything you hear. I am sure that my chief fault is that I
don't possess land. Cicely, how much land must you possess if you really
want to hold your head up? Would a hundred acres or so do the trick? I
suppose not. Two hundred acres, now! I might run to that if the land was
cheap."

"Two hundred acres, I should think, uncle," said Cicely, "with a
manor-house, and, say, a home farm. And if you could get the advowson of
a living, it would be all to the good."

"Would it? Thank you for telling me. But then I should have to ask the
parson to dinner, and we might not get on. And I should have to go to
church. I like going to church when I'm not obliged to--that is if
they'll preach me a good sermon. I insist upon a good sermon. But if I
had to go to set an example--well, I shouldn't go; and then I should get
into trouble."

"Yes, I think you would, uncle. You can't live your own life entirely in
the country. There are responsibilities."

"Ah, you've thought of that, have you? You do think things over?"

"Yes. I do think things over. There's nothing much else to do."

Mr. Birket cast a side glance at her. The sun striking through the trees
of the park flushed translucently the smooth, fair flesh of her cheek
and her ungloved hand. In her white frock, moving freely, with the
springy grace of a young animal, she attracted the eye. Her head, under
her wide hat-brim, was pensive, but she looked up at him with a smile.
"If you could bring yourself to it, you know," she began, and broke off.
"I mean," she began again, "I think you must either be a man, or--or
very young, or not young at all."

Mr. Birket was a man of very quick perception. His face softened a
little. "My dear," he said, "when you are very young things are
happening every day, when you are a little older anything may happen,
and when you are older still happenings don't matter. But you haven't
got to the third stage yet."

"No," Cicely said, "I suppose not. Happenings do matter to me; and there
aren't enough of them."

The two old ladies received Mr. Birket courteously. He was accidentally
allied to the Clintons, and in his own path of life had striven, not
without success, to make himself worthy of the alliance. He came to see
them, two old ladies who had lived all their long lives in a small
country village, had hardly ever been to London, and never out of
England, who had been taught to read and write and to add up pounds,
shillings and pence, and had never felt the lack of a wider education.
He came with his great reputation, his membership of Parliament, his
twenty thousand a year of income earned by the exercise of his brain,
and a judgeship looming in the near future, and as far as they were
concerned he came straight out of the little house on the Bathgate Road,
now fitly occupied by a retired chemist. But far be it from them to show
a brother of their nephew's wife that he was not welcome among them.

They talked of the weather, of Blackborough Castle, of Jim Graham's
return, and of Walter's coming marriage with Muriel.

"Well, that will be the first wedding in the new generation," said Mr.
Birket. "But there will be another very soon. Have you heard that my
girl, Beatrice, is going to be married?"

The old ladies had not heard this piece of news and expressed their
interest. Privately they thought it a little odd that Mr. Birket should
talk as if there were any connection between the two events, although,
of course, it was true that Walter was of the new Birket generation as
well as the new Clinton generation.

"She is rather young," pursued Mr. Birket, "but George Senhouse is a
steady fellow as well as a successful one. It is George Senhouse she is
going to marry--you have heard of him?"

"Any relation, if I may ask, to Sir George Senhouse of whom we read in
the House of Parliament?" asked Aunt Ellen.

"Yes--George Senhouse--that's the man. Not on my side, you know, Miss
Clinton, but I'm sure you won't think that a drawback."

Indeed it was not. Mr. Birket was a Liberal, and therefore a deadly foe
to the true religion of the Church of England as by compromise
established, and to all the societies for raising mankind to a just
appreciation of that religion which the Misses Clinton supported. And
Sir George Senhouse, a capable and earnest young man, with an historic
name, had early devoted his powers to the defence of those things in the
outside world which they held dear. It was, indeed, a surprising piece
of good fortune for Mr. Birket--and no wonder that he was so evidently
pleased.

"I hope your daughter will be strengthened to assist him in all the good
work he does," said Aunt Ellen.

"I sincerely hope she will," said Mr. Birket. "The engagement is not
announced yet; but I tell _you_, Miss Clinton--and Miss Laura."

"Oh, we should not say a word before the proper time," said Aunt Laura.

When Cicely and Mr. Birket had gone, Aunt Ellen said, "You may take my
word for it, sister, that it is owing to the Clinton connection. We have
lived a retired life, but I know very well how these things tell."

As Cicely dressed for dinner--it was the first time she had been alone
during the day--she thought about Jim, and what he had said to her, or
tried to say to her, early in the morning. He had disturbed her mind and
given her something that she had to think about. She had told Mr. Birket
that she thought things over, and it was true; she had courage in that
way. With but little in her education or scope of life to feed it, her
brain was active and inquiring. It worked on all matters that came
within her ken, and she never shirked a question. She was affectionate,
loyal, and naturally light-hearted, but she was critical too, of herself
no less than of others. It would have been easy for her, if she had had
less character, to put away from her, as she had done for the last five
years, the consideration of her relationship to Jim, to have ignored his
approach to her, since she had stopped him from coming closer, and to
have deferred searching her own mind until he should have approached her
again and in such a way that she could no longer have avoided it. But
she had locked up the remembrance of the happenings of five years before
in a cupboard of her brain, and locked the key on it. If she had thought
of it at all, she would have had to think of herself as having made a
present to Jim which he had returned to her. And because she could not
altogether escape from the memory of it, she had come to look upon
herself as a rather foolish and very immature young person in those
days, who had not in the least known what she was about when she allowed
herself to be made love to.

With regard to Jim her thoughts had been even less definite. His
attitude to her had been so entirely brotherly that she had never felt
the necessity of asking herself whether he was still keeping his
expressed love for her alive, although he would not show it, or whether
he, too, thought of their love-making as a piece of rather childish
folly, and had put it completely behind him. Beyond the first slight
awkwardness of meeting him when he came back from Oxford after his
letter to her, she had felt none in his presence, and until this very
morning her attitude towards him had been frank and her feelings
affectionate. He had made that possible by showing the same attitude and
apparently the same feelings.

But what she now had to consider was whether he had actually been so
frank towards her as she to him; whether he had not been keeping
something back, and, in effect, playing a part. If it were so, their
relationship was not as she had thought it, and would have to be
adjusted.

She turned her mind to this point first. It would really be rather
surprising if Jim had been in love with her all this time and she had
not known it. She thought she must have known if it were so, and she
rejected the idea. What she could not get away from--it hardly needed
stating in her mind--was that he had tentatively made love to her that
morning. Or rather--and here she rather congratulated herself on making
the distinction, as a process of pure thought--he had seemed to show her
that marriage was in his mind, perhaps as a thing already settled
between them, although she, for her part, had long since given up
thinking of it as a matter to be considered, however loosely, settled.
Of course she knew he was fond of her, as she was of him. If he was not
in love with her, as once he had been, he might still want to marry her,
as the nicest person he could find, and the requisite impulsion might
come from his return after a long absence. She would be included in his
heightened appreciation of all his home surroundings. These
considerations passed through her mind, in no logical sequence of
thought, but at various points of her self-questioning, and when she was
also thinking further of her own part in what might follow, trying to
discover what she wanted and to decide what she should do. The fact that
he had opened and would probably open again the subject of their
marriage was all that really mattered, and she knew that without
thinking.

She knew, too, without thinking, that she did not want to engage herself
again to marry Jim, at any rate not yet; and, in fact, she would not do
so. What her honesty of mind impelled her to was the discovery of the
root from which this femininely instinctive decision had flowered. What
were her reasons for not wanting to marry Jim now, or soon; and would
they take from her, when examined, that always present but always
unstated possibility of some day finding herself living at Mountfield as
his wife? She a little dreaded the conclusion, which may have shown that
she had already made up her mind; but it was here that an answer had to
be found, and she faced it bravely.

She was not ready to marry Jim now, or soon, because in the first place
she did not love him--not in that way--and in the second place because
she did not love, in any way, what he stood for.

When she said to herself that she did not love Jim her mind recoiled a
little. He was such a good sort, so kind, so reliable. It was just as if
she had said that she did not love her brothers. It was ungracious, and
ungrateful. She did love him. Dear old Jim! And she would be sorry to
cause him pain. But, if she did not want him to make love to her--and
certainly she didn't--she couldn't possibly love him as a girl ought to
love her prospective husband--as Beatrice, for instance, loved her young
parliamentarian. That seemed settled. And because she did think things
over, and was no longer very young indeed, she saw that the change of
circumstances in a girl's life when she was going to be married counted
for something, something of the pleasure, something of the excitement.
It was so with Beatrice, and with Muriel. They loved the men they were
going to marry, but they also got a great deal of satisfaction out of
the change in their surroundings, quite apart from that. What sort of
change would she have as Jim's wife? She would step straight out of one
large house into another, and she would no more be the mistress of
Mountfield than she had been of Kencote. So she told herself. For the
mistresses of houses like Kencote and Mountfield were really a sort of
superior housekeeper, allowed to live with the family, but placed where
they were with the sole object of serving their lords and masters, with
far less independence than a paid housekeeper, who could take her money
and go if she were dissatisfied with her position.

What a prospect! To live out the rest of her life in the subjection
against which she had already begun to rebel, in exactly similar
surroundings and in exactly the same atmosphere! If she married Jim she
would not even have the pleasure of furnishing her own house. It would
be Jim's house, and the furniture and all the appurtenances of it were
so perfect in Jim's eyes that she knew he would never hear of her
altering a thing. She would not be able to rearrange her drawing-room
without his permission. That was what it meant to marry a country
gentleman of Jim's sort, who disliked "gadding about," and would expect
his wife to go through the same dull round, day after day, all her life
long, while he amused himself in the way that best suited him.

When she had reached this point, and the end of her toilet together,
Cicely suddenly determined that she would _never_ marry Jim, and if he
pressed her she would tell him so. She didn't want to marry anybody. If
only she could get away from Kencote and be a hospital nurse, or
something of the sort, that was all she wanted. With this rather
unsatisfactory conclusion she cleared her mind, ran downstairs, and
found Jim himself alone in the drawing-room.




CHAPTER X

TOWN _versus_ COUNTRY


"Hullo!" said Jim. "You're down early."

"I didn't know you were here," said Cicely, and was annoyed at herself,
and blushed in consequence.

But whatever conclusion Jim may have drawn from her hurried, rather
eager entrance, her denial, and her blush, he only said, "Mother and
Muriel are upstairs."

"I wonder why Muriel didn't come to my room," said Cicely. "I think I'll
go and find her."

"All right," said Jim, and Cicely went out of the room again.

Jim took up a book from a table, turned over a few leaves, and then
threw it down and went to the window, where he stood looking out, with
his hands in his pockets.

By and by Mr. Birket came in, and joined him. "Shame to be indoors on an
evening like this," he said. "I should like to dine at nine o'clock in
the summer."

"What about the servants?" asked Jim.

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Birket. "Is it true you are a Free Trader, Graham?"

"Yes, I am," said Jim, with a shade of defiance.

"So am I," said Mr. Birket.

Jim smiled. "Well, you've got to be in your party," he said.

"Not at all. It isn't a question of party. It's a question of
common-sense."

"That's just what I think. I've looked into it with as much intelligence
as I'm capable of--they say about here that isn't much--and I can't see
why you shouldn't be a Tory as good as any of 'em and still stick to
Free Trade."

"Nor can I," said Mr. Birket. "But they won't let you. You had better
join us, Graham. Anybody with any dawning of sense must be very
uncomfortable where you are."

"I should be a jolly sight more uncomfortable with you," said Jim. "And
I've got keen on the Empire since I've been travelling."

"Oh, if you've seen it," said Mr. Birket, somewhat cryptically, and then
the door opened, and Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Birket came in together.

Mrs. Birket was a tall, good-looking woman, who held herself upright,
was well dressed and well informed. She had a good manner, and in mixed
company never allowed a drop in the conversation. But as she talked well
this was not so tiresome as it might have been. She was quoted amongst
her circle, which was a wide one, as an excellent hostess, and the
tribute was deserved, because, in addition to her conversational
aptitude, she had the art of looking after her guests without apparent
effort. She had been strict with her daughters, but they were now her
companions, and devoted to her. Mrs. Clinton talked to her, perhaps more
than to any other woman she knew, and the two were friends, although the
circumstances of their lives were wide apart.

The two ladies were followed by the four girls, who came in chattering,
and by Mrs. Graham, who, even in evening clothes, with a necklace of
diamonds, looked as if she liked dogs. Then came Humphrey,
extraordinarily well dressed, his dark hair very sleek; and Dick, very
well dressed too, but with less of a town air; and then the Squire, just
upon the stroke of eight, obviously looking forward to his dinner.

"Nina, what on earth can have become of Tom and Grace?" he asked when he
had greeted Mrs. Graham and Muriel. "No sign of 'em anywhere. We can't
wait, you know."

Mrs. Clinton glanced at the ormolu clock, representing Time with a
scythe and hour-glass, on the mantelpiece, but said nothing. As it began
to chime the door opened and the Rector and Mrs. Beach were announced.

"Grace! Grace!" said the Squire, holding up a warning finger, but
smiling affably. "I've never known you run it so fine before."

"My dear Edward," said Mrs. Beach, with her sweet smile, "Tom broke a
collar stud. It is one of those little accidents that nobody can foresee
and nobody can guard against."

"Except by laying in a stock," said Mrs. Graham.

"Well, my dear Grace, you were just _not_ late," said the Squire, "I
will forgive you."

So they all went in to dinner amicably, and a very good dinner it was,
although there was an entire absence of what the Squire called French
fal-lals. English _versus_ French cooking was a favourite dinner-table
topic of his, and he expatiated on it this evening. "It stands to
reason," he said, "that natural food well cooked--of course it must be
well cooked, before an open range, and so on--is better than made-up
stuff. Now what have we got this evening?" He put on his gold-rimmed
glasses and took up a menu-card. A shade of annoyance passed over his
face when he discovered that it was written in French. "Who wrote this
rubbish?" he asked, looking over his glasses at Mrs. Clinton.

"I did, father," said Cicely, blushing.

"Good for you, Siskin!" broke in Dick. "Very well done. It gives the
entertainment an air."

"I helped with the accents," said Angela.

"Well," said the Squire, "I don't like it. As far as I can make out it's
a purely English dinner, except, perhaps, the soup, and it ought to be
described in English. What's the good of calling roast lamb 'agneau
roti'?" He pronounced it "rotty," with an inflection of scorn. "There's
no sense in it. But as I was saying--where are you going to find better
food than salmon and roast lamb, new potatoes, asparagus, peas--of
course they're forced, but they're English--and so on?" He threw down
the card and took off his glasses. "Everything grown on the place except
the salmon, which old Humphrey Meadshire sent me."

"You've left out the 'Peche a la Melba'," said Mrs. Beach. "It is the
crowning point of the whole dinner. But I quite agree with you, Edward,
you couldn't have a better one anywhere."

"Rather on the heavy side," commented Humphrey.

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "The fruits of the earth in due season,
or, if possible, a little before it; that's the best dinner any man can
have."

"Every country has its own cooking," said Mrs. Birket. "I really think
the English is the best if it is well done."

"Which it very seldom is," said Mrs. Graham.

"Of course this is the very best time of all the year for it," said the
Rector. "Did you bring back any new curry recipes from India, Jim?"

Jim replied that he had not, and the Squire said, "By the bye, Jim, I
see that fellow Mackenzie came home in the _Punjaub_. The papers are
full of him this evening. Did you happen to meet him?"

Jim said that he had shared the same cabin, and that Mackenzie had
promised to spend a week-end at Mountfield some time or other.

"We are going to make a lion of him in London," said Humphrey. "We
haven't had an explorer for a long time. I believe he's shaggy enough to
be a great success."

"You must bring him over to dine, Jim," said the Squire. "It's
interesting to hear about these fellows who trot all over the world. But
heavens, what a life!"

"A very good life, I think," said Mr. Birket. "Not much chance to get
moss-grown."

"Now, I'm sure that is a dig at us people who live in the country," said
Mrs. Beach. "Because _you_ don't get moss-grown, Mr. Birket."

"He would if he lived in the country," said Mrs. Birket. "He would lie
on his back all day long and do nothing at all. He has an unequalled
power of doing nothing."

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "I'm a very hard worker. Cicely caught me
at it at six o'clock this morning, didn't you, my dear?"

"You've no responsibilities, Herbert," the Squire broke in. "If you
owned land you wouldn't want to lie on your back."

"He is trying to make the land lie on _our_ backs," said Dick. "We
shan't have any left soon."

"All you Radicals," began the Squire; but Mrs. Beach had something to
say: "Mr. Birket, you despise us country folk at the bottom of your
heart. I'm sure you do."

"Not at all," said Mr. Birket. "I think you live a peaceful and idyllic
existence, and are much to be envied."

"Peaceful!" the Squire snorted. "That's all you Radicals know about it.
I assure you we work as hard as anybody, and get less return for it. I
wish you'd tell your precious leaders so, Herbert."

"I will," said Mr. Birket.

"What with one thing and another," proceeded the Squire, "the days are
gone as soon as they are begun."

"But when they are finished something has always been done," said Mrs.
Beach. "That is the difference between a town life and a country life.
In London you are immensely busy and tire yourself to death, but you've
nothing to show for it."

"Your brains are sharpened up a bit," said Humphrey.

"If you have any," suggested Mrs. Graham.

"Mother, don't be rude," said Muriel.

"The remark had no personal bearing," said Humphrey, with a grin.

"I didn't say so," retorted Mrs. Graham.

"I think it is a matter of temperament," said Mrs. Birket. "Everybody
who lives in London likes the country, and everybody who lives in the
country likes London--for a change. But if you had to live in one or the
other all the year round----"

"I would choose the country," said Mrs. Beach, "and I'm sure you would,
Edward."

"Of course I would," said the Squire. "I do live in the country all the
year round. I've had enough of London to last me all my life."

"Two for the country," said Dick. "Now we'll go round the table. Mother,
where do your tastes lie?"

Mrs. Clinton did not reply for a moment; then she said, "I don't think I
should mind which it was if I had my family round me."

"Oh, come now, Nina," said the Squire, "that's no answer. Surely _you_
don't want to become a town madam."

"You mustn't bring pressure, Edward," said Mrs. Beach. "We shall have
quite enough on our side."

"Mother neutral," said Dick. "Jim?"

"Oh, the country," said Jim.

"Three for the country. Angela?"

"London."

"You must give a reason," said Mrs. Beach.

Angela laughed. "I like music, and plays," she said, "and hearing people
talk."

"Well, surely you can hear people talk in the country," said the Squire.

"And such talk!" added Mrs. Graham, at which everybody laughed except
the Squire, who saw no humour in the remark.

"Three to one," said Dick. "Aunt Grace, you've had your turn. Now it's
mine. I don't want to bury myself yet awhile, but when the time comes I
expect I shall shy at London as the governor does. I'm country."

"Why?" asked Angela.

"Oh, because there's more to do. Now then, Beatrice. You're London, I
suppose."

"Yes," said Beatrice. "Because there's more to do."

"Good for you! That's four to two. Mrs. Graham!"

"Can you ask?" said that lady. "And I won't give any reasons. I like the
country best because I like it best."

"Father is country. Five to two."

"And my reason," said the Squire, "is that every man who doesn't like
the country best, when he can get it, isn't a man at all. He's a
popinjay."

"Well, at the risk of being called the feminine for popinjay," said Mrs.
Birket, with a smile, "I must choose London."

"Oh, but I don't include the women, my dear Emmeline," said the Squire.
"And I don't include men like Herbert either, who've got their work to
do. I'm thinking of the fellows who peacock about on pavements when they
might be doing 'emselves good hunting, or some such pursuit. It's
country sport that's good for a man, keeps him strong and healthy; and
he sees things in the proper light too. England was a better country
than it is now when the House of Commons was chiefly made up of country
gentlemen. You didn't hear anything about this preposterous socialism
then. I tell you, the country gentlemen are the backbone of England, and
your party will find it out when you've turned them out of the country."

"Oh, but we shan't do that," said Mr. Birket. "That would be too
dreadful."

"No politics," said Dick. "We're five to three. Tom, you're a country
man, I'm sure."

But the Rector was not at all sure that he was. He sometimes thought
that people were more interesting than Nature. On the whole, he thought
he would choose the town.

"Then I change round," said Mrs. Beach. "Where thou goest, Tom, I will
go. Dick, I'm town."

"Then that changes the game. Town's one up. Muriel, be careful."

"Certainly not country," said Muriel. "I've had enough of it. I think
the best place to live in is a suburb."

"Melbury Park!" laughed the Squire. "Ha! ha!"

"That's town," said Dick. "Four to six. We yokels are getting worsted."

"I'll come to your rescue," said Humphrey. "I don't want to be cut off
with a shilling. Give me a big country house and a season ticket, and
I'm with you."

"Five to six then. Now, Siskin, make it all square."

"No," said Cicely. "I hate the country."

"What!" exclaimed the Squire.

"It's so dreadfully dull," said Cicely. "There's nothing in the world to
do."

"But this is a revolt!" said Dick.

"Nothing to do!" echoed the Squire, in a voice of impatient censure.
"There's everything to do. Don't talk nonsense, Cicely. You have got to
live in the country whether you like it or not, so you had better make
the best of it."

"Very sound advice," said Mr. Birket. "I follow it myself. It may
surprise the company, but I'm for the country. Cows enrapture me, and as
for the buttercups, there's no flower like 'em."

"Town has it," said Dick. "Seven to six--a very close match."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Mr. and Mrs. Birket were alone together that night, Mr. Birket
said, "My dear, I think Edward Clinton gets more intolerable every time
I see him. I hope I have succeeded in disguising that opinion."

"Perfectly, Herbert," said his wife. "And you must please continue to do
so for Nina's sake."

Mr. Birket sighed. "Poor dear Nina!" he said. "She was so bright as a
girl. If she hadn't married that dunderhead she'd have been a happy
woman. I bet she isn't now. He has crushed every bit of initiative out
of her. And I'll tell you what, my dear, he'll crush it out of Cicely if
she doesn't get away from these deadly surroundings. Heavens, what a
life for a clever girl!"

"Do you think Cicely clever?"

"She doesn't know anything, because they have never let her learn
anything. But she thinks for herself, and she's beginning to kick at it
all. If she'd had the chances our girls have had, she'd have made use of
them. Can't we give her a chance, Emmeline? She's a particularly nice
girl. Have her up to London for a month or two. The girls are fond of
her--and you're fond of her too, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm very fond of her," said Mrs. Birket.

"Well--then, why not?"

"Do you think Edward would let her come?"

"My private opinion of Edward would probably surprise him, if he could
hear it, but I don't think even he would go so far as to deny his
children a pleasure so long as it didn't put him out personally."

"Well, I'll ask, if you like. I should be very glad to have her. But
some one might fall in love with her, you know, Herbert. She's very
pretty, and there's always the chance."

"And why on earth not? He doesn't want to keep her an old maid, does
he?"

"He wants her to marry Jim Graham."

"I thought that was all over years ago."

"As far as she is concerned, perhaps. I'm sure Edward still looks upon
it as going to happen some day."

"I don't believe she'll marry Graham, even if he wants her. He's just
such another as Edward, with a trifle more sense."

"No, Herbert, he is quite different. I like him. I think it would be a
good thing for Cicely to marry him."

"She ought to have the chance of seeing other fellows. Then, if she
likes to embark afresh on a vegetable existence, it will be her own
choice. Of course, you needn't vegetate, living in the country, but the
wife of Jim Graham probably would. Give her her chance, anyway."

But this particular chance was denied to Cicely. The Squire wouldn't
hear of it. "My dear Emmeline," he said, "it is very kind of you--very
kind of you indeed. But she'd only get unsettled. She's got maggots in
her head already. I hope some day to see her married to a country
gentleman, like her mother before her. Though I say it, no women could
be better off. Until the time comes, it's best for Cicely to stay at
home."

"Idiot!" said Mr. Birket, when the decision was conveyed to him. "I was
mistaken in him. I think now he would be capable of any infamy. Don't
tell Cicely, Emmeline."

But the Squire told her, and rebuked her because the invitation had been
offered. "What you have to do," he said, "is to make yourself happy at
home. Heaven knows there's enough to make you so. You have everything
that a girl can want. For goodness' sake be contented with it, and don't
always want to be gadding about."

Cicely felt too sore to answer him, and retired as soon as his homily
was over. In the afternoon--it was on Sunday--she went for a walk with
her uncle. He did not express himself to her as he had done to Mrs.
Birket, but gave her the impression that he thought her father's refusal
unfortunate, but not unreasonable, smiling inwardly to himself as he did
so.

"I should have loved to come, you know, Uncle Herbert," she said.

"And we should have loved to have you, my dear," he said. "But, after
all, Kencote is a very jolly place, and it's your own fault if you're
bored in it. Nobody ought to be bored anywhere. I never am."

"Well then, please tell me what to do with myself."

"What do you do, as it is?"

"I read a little, and try to paint, and----"

"Then read more, and try to paint better. Effort, my dear,--that's the
secret of life. Give yourself some trouble."

He gave her more advice as they walked and talked together, and she
listened to him submissively, and became interested in what he said to
her.

"I should like to make myself useful in some way," she said. "I don't
want to spend all my life amusing myself or even improving myself."

"Oh, improving yourself! That's not quite the way to put it. Expressing
yourself--that's what you want to do--what everybody ought to do. And
look here, my dear, when you say you want to make yourself useful--I
suppose you mean hospital nursing or something of that sort, eh?"

Cicely laughed. "I have thought of that," she said.

"Well then, don't think of it any more. It's not the way--at least not
for you. You make yourself useful when you make yourself loved. That's a
woman's sphere, and I don't care if all the suffragettes in the country
hear me say it. A woman ought to be loved in one way or another by
everybody around her; and if she is, then she's doing more in the world
than ninety-nine men out of a hundred. Men want opportunities. Every
woman has them already. Somebody is dependent on her, and the more the
better for her--and the world. What would your old aunts do without you,
or your mother, or indeed anybody in the place? They would all miss you,
every one. Don't run away with the idea you're not wanted. Of course
you're wanted. _We_ want you, only we can't have you because they want
you here."

"You give me a better conceit of myself," she said gratefully.

"Keep it, my dear, keep it," said Mr. Birket. "The better conceit we
have of ourselves the more we accomplish. Now I think we'd better be
turning back."




CHAPTER XI

A WEDDING


The London newspapers devoted small space, if any, to the wedding of
Walter Clinton, Esq., M.D., third son of Edward Clinton, Esq., of
Kencote, Meadshire, and Muriel, only daughter of the late Alexander
Graham, Esq., and the Honourable Mrs. Graham of Mountfield, Meadshire,
but the _Bathgate Herald and South Meadshire Advertiser_ devoted two of
its valuable columns to a description of the ceremony, a list of the
distinguished guests present, and a catalogue of the wedding presents.
No name that could possibly be included was left out. The confectioner
who supplied the cake, the head gardeners at Kencote and Mountfield
who--obligingly--supplied the floral decorations; the organist who
presided, as organists always do, at the organ, and gave a rendering, a
very inefficient one, of Mendelssohn's Wedding March; the schoolmaster
who looked after the children who strewed flowers on the churchyard
path; the coachman who drove the happy pair to the station; the
station-master who arranged for them a little salvo of his own, which
took the form of fog-signals, as the train came in--they were all there,
and there was not an error in their initials or in the spelling of their
names, although there were a good many in the list of distinguished
guests, and still more in the long catalogue of presents.

There was a large number of presents, more than enough to open the eyes
of the readers of the _Melbury Park Chronicle and North London
Intelligencer_, which, by courtesy of its contemporary, printed the
account in full, except for the omission of local names, and in _minion_
instead of _bourgeois_ type. Some of the presents were valuable and
others were expensively useless, and the opinion expressed in Melbury
Park was that the doctor couldn't possibly find room for them all in his
house and would have to take a bigger one. Melbury Park opened its eyes
still wider at the number of titles represented amongst the donors, for
the Clintons, as has been said, had frequently married blood, and many
of their relations were represented, Walter had been popular with his
school and college friends, and on Muriel's side the Conroys and their
numerous connections had come down handsomely in the way of Georgian
sugar-sifters, gold and enamelled umbrella tops, silver bowls and
baskets and bridge boxes, writing-sets, and candlesticks, and other
things more or less adapted to the use of a doctor's wife in a rather
poor suburb of London.

The wedding, if not "a scene of indescribable beauty, fashion and
profusion," as the Bathgate reporter, scenting promotion, described it,
was a very pretty one. The two big houses produced for the occasion a
sufficient number of guests, and the surrounding country of neighbours,
to fill Mountfield church with a congregation that was certainly well
dressed, if not noticeably reverent. The bride looked beautiful, if a
trifle pale, under her veil and orange blossoms, and the bridegroom as
gallant as could be expected under the circumstances. There were six
bridesmaids, the Honourable Olivia and Martha Conroy and Miss Evelyn
Graham, cousins of the bride, and the Misses Cicely, Joan, and Nancy
Clinton, sisters of the bridegroom, who were attired--but why go further
into these details, which were so fully gone into in the journals
already mentioned? Suffice it to say that the old starling, in a new
gown and the first _toque_ she had ever worn, wept tears of pride at the
appearance of her pupils, and told them afterwards, most unwisely, that
the Misses Olivia and Martha Conroy could not hold a candle to them in
respect of good looks.

The twins--there is no gainsaying it--did look angelic, with their blue
eyes and fair hair, and the Misses Conroy, who were of the same sort of
age, were not so well favoured by nature; but that was no reason why
Joan should have told them that they were a plain-headed pair, and Nancy
that they had spoilt the whole show, when some trifling dispute arose
between them at the close of a long day's enthusiastic friendship. The
Misses Conroy, though deficient in beauty, were not slow in retort, and
but for the fine clothes in which all four were attired, it is to be
feared that the quarrel would have been pushed to extremes. It was a
regrettable incident, but fortunately took place in a retired corner of
the grounds, and stopped short of actual violence.

Jim Graham gave his sister away, and Dick acted as best man to his
brother, piloting him through the various pitfalls that befall a
bridegroom with the same cool efficiency as he displayed in all
emergencies, great or small. It was this characteristic which chiefly
differentiated him from his father, who may have been efficient, but was
not cool.

Jim Graham's eyes often rested on Cicely during the wedding ceremony.
She was by far the prettiest of the bridesmaids, and it was little
wonder if his thoughts went forward to the time when he and she would be
playing the leading part in a similar ceremony. But there was some
uneasiness mixed with these anticipations. Cicely was not quite the same
towards him as she had been before his journey, although since that
morning by the lake he had made no attempt to depart from the brotherly
intimacy which he had told himself was the best he had a right to until
he could claim her for his own. She had never seemed quite at her ease
with him, and he was beginning to follow up the idea, in his slow,
tenacious way, that his wooing, when he should be ready for it, would
have to be done all over again--that it might not be easy to claim her
for his own. And, of course, that made him desire her all the more, and
added in his eyes to her grace and girlish beauty.

Afterwards, in the house and on the lawn, where a band played and a tent
for refreshments had been put up, he talked to her whenever he could and
did his best to keep a cheerful, careless air, succeeding so well that
no one observing him would have guessed that he had some difficulty in
doing so. Except Cicely; she felt the constraint. She felt that he was
in process of marking the difference in her attitude towards him, and
was impatient of the slow, ruminating observation of which she would be
the object. As long as he was natural with her she would do her best to
keep up the same friendly and even affectionate relations which had
existed between them up to a year ago, but she could not help a slight
spice of irritation creeping into her manner in face of that subtle
change behind his ordinary address. She was trying to clear up her
thoughts on many matters, and Jim was the last person in the world to
help her. She wanted to be left alone. If only he would do that! It was
the only possible way by which he could gain the end which, even now,
she was not quite sure that she would refuse him in the long-run.

"Well, you needn't be snappy," Jim said to her, with a good-humoured
smile on his placid face when he had asked her for further details of
her visit to London.

She made herself smile in return. "Was I?" she said. "I didn't mean to
be; but I have been home nearly a month now, and I'm rather tired of
talking about London."

"All right," replied Jim. "I agree that this is a better place. Come and
have a look at the nags. There has been such a bustle that I haven't
been near them to-day."

But Cicely refused to go and look at the nags. Nags were rather a sore
point with her, and the constant inspection and weighing of the
qualities of those at Kencote was enough for her without the addition of
the stables at Mountfield. So they went back from the rose-garden where
they were standing to join the crowd on the lawn.

Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura sat in the shade of a big cedar and held a
small reception. During their long lives they had been of scarcely any
account in the ebb and flow of Clinton affairs, but the tide of years
had shelved them on a little rock of importance, and they were paid
court to because of their age. Old Lord Meadshire was the only other
member of their generation left alive. He was their first cousin. His
mother had been the youngest of Merchant Jack's five daughters. He had
never failed to pay them courteous attention whenever he had been at
Kencote, and he was talking to them now, as Cicely joined them, of the
days when they were all young together. The two old ladies had quite
come to believe that they and their cousin Humphrey had spent a large
part of their childhood together, although he was fifteen years younger
than Aunt Ellen, and his visits to Kencote during his youth had been
extremely rare. Colonel Thomas had been too busy with his chosen
pursuits to have much time for interchange of social duties, proclaimed
himself a fish out of water, and behaved like one, whenever he went to
the house of his youngest sister, and had little to offer a lady of high
social importance and tastes in a visit to his own.

"Well, my dear," Lord Meadshire said to Cicely, as she approached, "I
was reminding your aunts of the time when we used to drive over from
Melford to Kencote in a carriage with postillions. Very few railways in
those days. We old people like to put our heads together and talk about
the past sometimes. I recollect my grandfather--_our_ grandfather," and
he bowed to the two old ladies--"Merchant Jack they used to call him
here, because he had made his money in the city as younger sons used to
do in those days, and are beginning to do again now, but they don't go
into trade as they did then; and he was born in the year of the Battle
of Culloden. That takes you back--what?"

"I recollect," said Aunt Ellen in a slow, careful voice, "when our Uncle
John used to come down to Kencote by the four-horse coach, and post from
Bathgate."

"Ah," said Lord Meadshire sympathetically, "I never saw my Uncle John,
to my knowledge, though he left me a hundred pounds in his will. I
recollect I spent it on a tie-pin. I was an extravagant young dog in
those days, my dear. You wouldn't have suspected me of spending a
hundred pounds on a tie-pin, would you?"

"Uncle John was very kind to us," said Aunt Laura. "There were six of
us, but he never came to the house without bringing us each a little
present."

"He was always dressed in black and wore a tie-wig," said Aunt Ellen.
"Our dear father and he were very dissimilar, but our father relied on
his judgment. It was he who advised him to send Edward to Bathgate
Grammar School."

"He would take a kind interest in our pursuits," said Aunt Laura, "and
would always walk with us and spend part of the day with us, however
occupied he might be with our father."

"Edward was very high-spirited as a child," said Aunt Ellen, "and our
dear father did not sufficiently realise that if he encouraged him to
break away from his lessons, which we all took it in turns to give him,
it made him difficult to teach."

"And when Uncle John went away in the morning he gave us each one a
present of five new sovereigns wrapped in tissue paper," said Aunt
Laura, "and he would say, 'That is to buy fal-lals with.'"

"So our Uncle John and our Uncle Giles, the Rector, persuaded our father
to send Edward to Bathgate Grammar School, where he remained until he
went to Eton, riding over there on Monday morning and returning home on
Saturday," concluded Aunt Ellen.

Lord Meadshire took his leave of the old ladies, and Aunt Ellen said, "I
am afraid that our cousin Humphrey is ageing. We do not see him as much
as we used to do. He was very frequently at Kencote in the old days, and
we were always pleased to see him. With the exception of your dear
father, there is no man for whom I have a greater regard."

"He is a darling," said Cicely. "He is as kind as possible to everybody.
Would you like me to get you anything, Aunt Ellen? I must go to Muriel
now."

"No thank you, my dear," said Aunt Ellen. "Your Aunt Laura and I have
had sufficient. We will just rest quietly in the shade, and I have no
doubt that some others of our kind friends will come and talk to us."

It was getting towards the time for the bride and bridegroom to depart
for their honeymoon, which they were to spend in Norway. Walter had had
no holiday of any sort that year and had thought the desire for solitude
incumbent on newly married couples might reasonably be conjoined with
the desire for catching salmon; and Muriel had agreed with him.

The men were beginning to show a tendency to separate from the ladies.
The Rector of Kencote and the Vicar of Melbury Park, a new friend of
Walter's who happened, as the Squire put it, to be a gentleman, were
talking together by the buffet under the tent. The Vicar, who was thin
and elderly, and looked jaded, was saying that the refreshment to mind
and spirit, to say nothing of body, which came from living close to
Nature was incalculable, and the Rector was agreeing with him, mentally
reserving his opinion that the real refreshment to mind and spirit, to
say nothing of body, was to be found, if a man were strong enough to
find it, in hard and never-ending work in a town.

At the other end of the buffet Dick and Humphrey and Jim Graham were
eating sandwiches and drinking champagne. They were talking of fishing,
with reference to Walter's approaching visit to a water which all four
of them had once fished together.

"It is rather sad, you know," said Humphrey. "Remember what a good time
we had, Jim? It'll never happen again. I hate a wedding. It'll be you
next."

Jim looked at him inscrutably. "Or Dick," he said.

Dick put down his glass. "I'm not a starter," he said. "I must go and
see that Walter doesn't forget to change his tie."

The Squire and Mrs. Clinton and Lord Conroy were in a group together on
the lawn. Lord Conroy, bluff and bucolic, was telling Mrs. Clinton about
his own marriage, fifteen years before. "Never thought I should do it,"
he said, "never. There was I, forty and more, but sound, Mrs. Clinton,
mind you, sound as a bell, though no beauty--ha, ha! And there was my
lady, twenty odd, as pretty as paint, and with half the young fellows in
London after her. I said, 'Come now, will you have me? Will you or won't
you? I'm not going near London,' I said, 'not once in five years, and I
don't like soup. Otherwise you'll have your own way and you'll find me
easy to get on with.' She took me, and here we are now. I don't believe
there's a happier couple in England. I believe in marrying, myself. Wish
I'd done it when I was a young fellow, only then I shouldn't have got my
lady. I'm very glad to see my niece married to such a nice young fellow
as your son--very glad indeed; and my sister tells me there's likely to
be another wedding in both families before long--eh? Well, I mustn't be
too inquisitive; but Jim's a nice young fellow too, a very nice young
fellow, though as obstinate as the devil about this Radical kink he's
got in his brain."

"Oh, he'll get over that," said the Squire. "It isn't sense, you know,
going against the best brains in the country; I tell him we're not _all_
likely to be wrong. And he's got a stake, too. It don't do to play old
Harry with politics when you've got a stake."

"Gad, no," assented Lord Conroy. "We've got to stand together. I'm
afraid your brother's against us, though, eh, Mrs. Clinton?"

"Oh, Herbert!" said the Squire. "He's a lawyer, and they can always make
white black if it suits 'em."

Mrs. Clinton flushed faintly, and Lord Conroy said, "He's a very rising
man, though, and not so advanced as some. He told me a story just now
about a judge and one of those Suffragettes, as they call 'em, and I
haven't heard such a good story for many a long day." And Lord Conroy
laughed very heartily, but did not repeat the story.

The carriage drove round to the door, the coachman and the horses
adorned with white favours, and the guests drifted towards the house and
into the big hall. Walter and Dick came down the staircase, and Muriel
and her mother and Cicely followed immediately afterwards. Muriel's eyes
were wet, but she was merry and talkative, and Mrs. Graham was more
brusque in her speech than usual, but very talkative too. Every one
crowded round them, and Walter had some difficulty in leading his bride
through the throng. There was laughter and hand-shaking and a general
polite uproar. At last they got themselves into the carriage, which
rolled away with them to their new life. It was really Joan and Nancy
who had conceived the idea of tying a pair of goloshes on behind, but
the Misses Conroy had provided them, one apiece, and claimed an equal
share in the suggestion. It was arising out of this that their quarrel
presently ensued, and they might not have quarrelled at all had not Miss
Bird told the twins in the hearing of their friends that where they had
learned such a vulgar notion passed her comprehension. It was really a
dispute that did all four young ladies very great credit.




CHAPTER XII

FOOD AND RAIMENT


The Rector gave out his text, "Is not the life more than meat and the
body more than raiment?" and proceeded to read his homily in a
monotonous, sweet-toned voice which had all the good effects of a
sleeping-draught and none of the bad ones.

Kencote church was old, and untouched by modern restoration or Catholic
zeal. The great west door was open, and framed a bright picture of trees
and grass and cloudless sky. The hot sunshine of an August morning shone
through the traceried windows in the nave, and threw a square of bright
colour from the little memorial window in the chancel on to the wide,
uneven stone pavement. But the church was cool, with the coolness of
ancient, stone-built places, which have resisted for centuries the
attacks of sun and storm alike, and gained something of the tranquil
insensibility of age.

The congregation was penned, for the most part, in high pews. When they
stood up to sing they presented a few score of heads and shoulders above
the squares and oblongs of dark woodwork; when they sat or knelt the
nave seemed to be suddenly emptied of worshippers, and the drone of the
responses mounting up to the raftered roof had a curious effect, and
seemed to be the voice of the old church itself, paying its tribute to
the unseen mysteries of the long ages of faith.

On the north side of the chancel, which was two steps higher than the
nave, was the Squire's pew. Its occupants were shielded from the gaze of
those in the body of the church by a faded red curtain hung on an iron
rail, but the Squire always drew it boldly aside during the exhortation
and surveyed the congregation, the greater part of which was dependent
on him for a livelihood and attended church as an undergraduate "keeps
chapels," for fear of unpleasant consequences.

The Squire's pew occupied the whole of the space usually devoted to the
organ and the vestry in modern built churches, and had a separate
entrance from the churchyard. It had a wooden floor, upon which was a
worn blue carpet sprinkled with yellow fleurs de lis. The big hassocks
and the seat that ran along the north wall were covered with the same
material. In front of the fixed bench was a row of heavy chairs; in the
wall opposite to the curtain was a fireplace. Mrs. Clinton occupied the
chair nearest to the fire, which was always lit early on Sunday morning
in the winter, but owing partly to the out-of-date fashion of the grate
and partly to the height and extent of the church, gave no more heat
than was comfortable to those immediately within its radius, and none at
all to those a little way from it. The Squire himself remained outside
its grateful influence. His large, healthy frame, well covered with
flesh, enabled him to dispense with artificial warmth during his hour
and a half's occupation of the family pew, and also to do his duty by
using the last of the row of chairs and hassocks, and so to command the
opportunities afforded by the red curtain.

On the stone walls above the wainscoting were hung great hatchments, the
canvas of some fraying away from the black quadrangular frames after a
lapse of years, and none of them very recently hung there. The front of
the pew was open to the chancel, and commanded a full view of the
reading-desk and a side glimpse of the pulpit through the bars of the
carved, rather battered rood-screen. Flanked by the reading-desk on one
side and the harmonium on the other were the benches occupied by the
school-children who formed the choir, and behind them were other benches
devoted to the use of the Squire's household, whose devotions were
screened from the gaze of the common worshippers by no curtain, and who,
therefore--maids, middle-aged women, and spruce men-servants--provided a
source of interested rumination when heads were raised above the wooden
partitions, and bonnets, mantles, and broadcloth could be examined, and
perhaps envied, at leisure.

Cicely had played the Rector up into the pulpit with the last verse of a
hymn, had found the place from which she would presently play him down
again with the tune of another, had propped the open book on the desk of
the harmonium, and had then slid noiselessly into a chair on a line with
the front choir bench, where she now sat with her hands in her lap,
facing the members of her assembled family, sometimes looking down at
the memorial brass of Sir Richard Clinton, knight, obiit 1445, which was
let into the pavement at her feet, sometimes, through the open doors of
the rood screen, to where that bright picture of sunlit green shone out
of the surrounding gloom at the end of the aisle.

"Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?" The text had
been given out twice and carefully indexed each time. The Squire had
fitted his gold-rimmed glasses on to his nose and tracked down the
passage in his big Bible. Having satisfied himself that the words
announced were identical with the words printed, he had put the Bible on
the narrow shelf in front of him and closed his eyes. His first nod had
followed, as usual, about three minutes after the commencement of the
sermon. He had then opened his eyes wide, met the fascinated gaze of a
small singing-girl opposite to him, glared at her, and, having reduced
her to a state of cataleptic terror, pushed aside the red curtain and
transferred his glare to the body of the church. The bald head of a
respectable farmer and the bonnet of his wife, which were all he could
see of the congregation at the moment, assured him that all was well. He
drew the curtain again and went comfortably to sleep without further
ado.

Mrs. Clinton, at the other end of the row, sat quite still, with no more
evidence of mental effort on her comely, middle-aged face than was
necessary for the due reception of the Rector's ideas, and that was very
little. Joan and Nancy sat one on either side of Miss Bird, Joan next to
her mother. They looked about everywhere but at the preacher, and bided
with what patience they possessed the end of the discourse, aided
thereto by a watchful eye and an occasional admonitory peck from the old
starling. Dick had come in late and settled himself upon the seat behind
the row of chairs. Upon the commencement of the sermon he had put his
back against the partition supporting the curtain, and his long legs up
on the bench in front of him, and by the look on his lean, sunburnt face
was apparently resting his brain as well as his body.

"Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?" The
technique of the Rector's sermons involved the repetition of his text at
stated intervals. Cicely thought, as the words fell on her ears for the
third or fourth time, that she could have supplied a meaning to them
which had escaped the preacher. Food and raiment! That represented all
the things amongst which she had been brought up, the large, comfortable
rooms in the big house, the abundant, punctual meals, the tribe of
servants, the clothes and the trinkets, the gardens and stables,
well-stocked and well-filled, the home farm, kept up to supply the needs
of the large household, everything that came to the children of a
well-to-do country gentleman as a matter of course, and made life
easy--but oh, how dull!

No one seeing her sitting there quietly, her slender, ungloved hands
lying in her lap, prettily dressed in a cool summer frock and a shady,
flower-trimmed hat, with the jewelled chains and bracelets and brooches
of a rich man's daughter rousing the admiring envy of the
school-children, whose weekly excitement it was to count them up--nobody
would have thought that under the plaited tresses of this young girl's
shapely head was a brain seething in revolt, or that the silken laces of
her bodice muffled the beatings of a heart suffocated by the luxurious
dulness of a life which she now told herself had become insupportable.
Cicely had thought a great deal since her visit to London and Muriel's
wedding, and had arrived at this conclusion--that she was suffocating,
and that her life was insupportable.

She raised her eyes and glanced at her father, wrapped in the pleasant
slumber that overtakes healthy, out-of-door men when they are forced for
a time into unwonted quiescence, and at her brother, calm and
self-satisfied, dressed with a correct elaboration that was only
unobtrusive because it was so expensively perfect. The men of the
family--everything was done to bring them honour and gratification. They
had everything they wanted and did what they would. It was to them that
tribute and obedience were paid by every one around them, including
their own womenfolk.

She looked at her two young sisters. They were happy enough in their
free and healthy childhood; so had she been at their age, when the
spacious house and the big gardens, the stables and the farm and the
open country had provided everything she needed for her amusement. But
even then there had been the irksome restraint exercised by "the old
starling" and the fixed rules of the house to spoil her freedom, while
her brothers had been away at Eton, or at Oxford or Cambridge, trying
their wings and preparing for the unfettered delights of well-endowed
manhood.

She looked at her mother, placid and motionless. Her mother was
something of an enigma, even to her, for to those who knew her well she
always seemed to be hiding something, something in her character, which
yet made its mark in spite of the subjection in which she lived. Cicely
loved her mother, but she thought of her now with the least little shade
of contempt, which she would have been shocked to recognise as such. Why
had she been content to bring all the hopes and ambitions that must have
stirred her girlhood thus into subjection? What was the range of her
life now? Ruling her large house with a single eye to the convenience of
her lord and master, liable to be scolded before her children or her
household if anything went wrong; blamed if the faults of any one of the
small army of servants reached the point at which it disturbed his ease;
driving out in her fine carriage to pay dull calls on dull neighbours;
looking after the comfort of ungrateful villagers; going to church;
going to dinner-parties; reading; sewing; gardening under pain of the
head gardener's displeasure, which was always backed up by the Squire if
complaint was brought to him that she had braved it; getting up in the
morning and going to bed at night, at stated hours without variation;
never leaving her cage of confined luxury, except when it suited his
convenience that she should leave it with him. She was nothing but a
slave to his whims and prejudices, and so were all the women of the
family, slaves to wait upon and defer humbly and obediently to their
mankind.

"Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?" It was the
men who enjoyed the life, and the meat and raiment as well. While the
women vegetated at home, they went out into the world. It was true that
they were always pleased to come back again, and no wonder, when
everything was there that could minister to their amusement. It was
quite different for her, living at home all the year round. She was
quite sick of it. Why was not her father like other men of his wealth
and lineage, who had their country houses and their country sports, but
did not spend the whole year over them? Daughters of men of far less
established position than the Squire went to London, went abroad,
visited constantly at other country houses, and saw many guests in their
own houses. Her own brothers did all these things, except the last. They
seldom brought their friends to Kencote, she supposed because it was not
like other big country houses, at any rate not like the houses at which
they stayed. It was old-fashioned, not amusing enough; shooting parties
were nearly always made up from amongst neighbours, and if any one
stayed in the house to shoot, or for the few winter balls, it was nearly
always a relation, or at best a party of relations. And the very few
visits Cicely had ever paid had been to the houses of relations, some of
them amusing, others not at all so.

She was now rather ashamed of her diatribe to Muriel Graham about her
London visit. She must have given Muriel the impression that what she
hungered for was smart society. She remembered that she had compared the
ball at the house of her aunt, Mrs. Birket, unfavourably with those at
other houses at which she had danced, and blushed and fidgeted with her
fingers when she thought of this. She liked staying with Mrs. Birket
better than with any other of her relations, and she was still sore at
her father's refusal to allow her to spend some months with her. She met
clever, interesting people there, she was always made much of, and she
admired and envied her cousins. They had travelled, they heard music,
saw plays and pictures, read books; and they could talk upon all these
subjects, as well as upon politics and upon what was going on in the big
world that really mattered--not superficially, but as if they were the
things that interested them most, as she knew they were. It was that
kind of life she really longed for; she had only got her thoughts a
little muddled in London because she had been rather humiliated in
feeling herself a stranger where her brothers were so much at home. When
she saw Muriel again she must put herself right there. Muriel would
understand her. Muriel had cut herself adrift from the well-fed
stagnation of country life and rejoiced to be the partner of a man who
was doing something in the world. Life was more than food to her and the
body than raiment. Cicely wished that such a chance had come to her.

But the Rector had repeated his text for the last time, and was drawing
to the end of his discourse. She must slip back to her seat at the
harmonium, and defer the consideration of her own hardships until later.

The congregation aroused itself and stood up upon the stroke of the word
"now"; and, whilst the last hymn was being given out and played over,
the Squire started on a collecting tour with the wooden, baize-lined
plate which he drew from beneath his chair. The coppers clinked one by
one upon the silver already deposited by himself and his family, and he
closely scrutinised the successive offerings. His heels rang out
manfully upon the worn pavement beneath which his ancestors were
sleeping, as he strode up the chancel and handed the alms to the Rector.
He was refreshed by his light slumber, his weekly duty was coming to an
end, and he would soon be out in the open air inspecting his stables and
looking forward to his luncheon. He sang the last verses of the hymn
lustily, his glasses on his nose, a fine figure of a man, quite
satisfied with himself and the state in life to which he had been
called.

The congregation filed out of church into the bright sunshine. Dick,
with Joan on one side of him and Nancy on the other, set out at a smart
pace across the park, bound for the stables and the home farm. Cicely
walked with the old starling, who lifted her flounced skirt over her
square-toed kid boots, as one who expected to find dew where she found
grass, even in the hot August noonday. The Squire and Mrs. Clinton
brought up the rear, and the men and maids straggled along a footpath
which diverged to another quarter of the house.

Cicely left the rest of the family to the time-honoured inspection of
horses and live stock, always undertaken, summer and winter, after
church on Sunday morning, as a permissible recreation on a day otherwise
devoted to sedentary pursuits. It was one of the tiresome routine habits
of her life, and she was sick of routine. She dawdled in her bedroom, a
room at least twenty feet square, with two big windows overlooking the
garden and the park and the church tower rising from amongst its trees,
until the gong sounded, when she hurried downstairs and took her seat at
the luncheon table on the right of her father.

The sweets and a big cake were on the table, of which the appointments
were a mixture of massive silver plate and inexpensive glass and china.
The servants handed round the first hot dish, placed a cold uncut
sirloin of beef in front of the Squire and vegetable dishes on the
sideboard, and then left the room. After that it was every one help
yourself. This was the invariable arrangement of luncheon on Sundays,
and allowing for the difference of the seasons the viands were always
the same. If anybody staying in the house liked to turn up their noses
at such Sunday fare--one hot _entree_, cold beef, fruit tarts and milk
puddings, a ripe cheese and a good bottle of wine, why they needn't come
again. But very few people did stay in the house, as has been said, and
none of those who did had ever been known to object. There were no
week-end parties, no traffic of mere acquaintances using the house like
an hotel and amusing themselves with no reference to their host or
hostess. The Squire was hospitable in an old-fashioned way, liked to see
his friends around him and gave them of his best. But they must be
friends, and they must conform to the usages of the house.

The talk over the luncheon table began with the perennial topic of the
breeding of partridges and pheasants, and was carried on between the
Squire and Dick, while the women kept submissive silence in the face of
important matters with which they had no concern. Then it took a more
general turn, and drifted into a reminiscence of the conversation that
had taken place over the dinner table the night before. Mrs. Graham and
Jim had dined at Kencote and brought Ronald Mackenzie with them, who had
arrived the evening before on his promised week-end visit.

Humphrey's prophecy had come true. Mackenzie had been the lion of the
London season, and now that London was empty might have taken his choice
of country houses for a week-end visit from whatever county he pleased.
His visit was something of an honour, and was even chronicled in the
newspapers, which had not yet lost interest in his movements. He was a
star of considerable magnitude, liable to wane, of course, but never to
sink quite into obscurity, and just now a planet within everybody's ken.

It was characteristic of the Clinton point of view that the parentage of
this man, whose sole title to fame arose from the things that he had
done, should be discussed. Dick knew all about him. He did not belong to
any particular family of Mackenzies. He was the son of a Scots peasant,
and was said to have tramped to London at the age of sixteen, and to
have taken forcible shipment as a stowaway in the Black-Lyell Arctic
Expedition; and afterwards to have climbed to the leadership of
expeditions of his own with incredible rapidity. He had never made any
secret of his lowly origin, and was even said to be proud of it. The
Squire approved heartily of this.

It was also characteristic of the Squire that a man who had done big
things and got himself talked about should be accepted frankly as an
equal, and, outside the sphere of clanship, even as a superior. A great
musician would have been treated in the same way, or a great painter, or
even a great scholar. For the Squire belonged to the class of all others
the most prejudiced and at the same time the most easily led, when its
slow-moving imagination is once touched--a class which believes itself
divinely appointed to rule, but will give political adherence and almost
passionate personal loyalty to men whom in the type it most dislikes,
its members following one another like sheep when their first
instinctive mistrust has been overcome. Mackenzie was one of the most
talked of men in England at this moment. It was a matter of
congratulation that Jim had caught him for a two-days' visit, though
Jim's catch had involved no more skill than was needed to answer an
unexpected note from Mackenzie announcing his arrival on Friday
afternoon. The Clintons had dined at Mountfield on Friday night, the
Grahams and Mackenzie had dined at Kencote on Saturday, and it had been
arranged that Jim and his guest should drive over this afternoon and
stay to dine again.

When luncheon was over the Squire retired into the library with the
_Spectator_, which it was known he would not read, Dick went into the
smoking-room, Mrs. Clinton and Miss Bird upstairs, and the twins
straight into the garden, where Cicely presently followed them with a
book. She settled herself in a basket chair under a great lime tree on
the lawn, and leaving her book lying unopened on her lap, gave herself
over to further reverie.

Perhaps the sudden descent of this man from a strange world into the
placid waters of her life had something to do with the surging up of her
discontent, for she had not been so discontented since the Birkets'
visit two months before, having followed out to some extent her uncle's
advice and found life quite supportable in consequence. She knew she had
waited for Mackenzie's name to be mentioned at luncheon and had blushed
when she heard it, only, fortunately, nobody had seen her, not even the
sharp-eyed twins. She would have resented it intensely if her interest
and her blush had been noticed, and put down to personal attraction. It
was not that at all. She rather disliked the man, with his keen,
hawklike face, his piercing eyes, and his direct, unvarnished speech. He
was the sort of man of whom a woman might have reason to be afraid if
she were, by unaccountable mischance, attracted by him, and he by her.
He would dominate her and she would be at least as much of a chattel as
in the hands of a male Clinton. It was what he stood for that interested
her, and she could not help comparing his life with that of her father
and her brothers, or of Jim Graham, much to the disadvantage of her own
kind.

Her resentment, if it deserved that name, had fixed itself upon her
father and brothers, and Jim shared in it. He was just the same as they
were, making the little work incumbent on him as easy as possible and
spending the best part of his life in the pursuits he liked best. She
had come to the conclusion that there was no place for her in such a
life as that. When Jim proposed to her, as she felt sure he would do
when he was ready, she would refuse him. She felt now that she really
could not go through with it, and her determination to refuse to marry
Jim rose up in her mind and fixed itself as she sat in her chair under
the tree. If he had been a poor man, with a profession to work at, she
would have married him and found her happiness in helping him on. She
wanted the life. The food and the raiment were nothing to her, either at
Kencote or Mountfield.




CHAPTER XIII

RONALD MACKENZIE


Cicely rose from her seat and strolled across the lawn, through an iron
gate and a flower-garden, and on to another lawn verging on the
shrubberies. Joan and Nancy were employed here in putting tennis balls
into a hole with the handles of walking sticks. Cicely rebuked them,
for, according to his lights, the Squire was a strict Sabbatarian.

"Darling!" expostulated Joan, in a voice of pleading, "we are not using
putters and golf balls. There _can't_ be any harm in this."

Cicely did not think there was, and passed on through the shrubbery walk
to where a raised path skirting a stone wall afforded a view of the road
along which Jim and Ronald Mackenzie would presently be driving.

She hardly knew why she had come. It was certainly not to watch for Jim.
And if there was any idea in her mind of catching a glimpse of Ronald
Mackenzie, herself unobserved by him, so that she might by a flash gain
some insight into the character of a man who had interested her, she was
probably giving herself useless trouble, for it was not yet three
o'clock and the two men were not likely to arrive for another half-hour
or more.

But she had no sooner taken her stand by the stone wall and looked down
at the road from under the shade of the great beech which overhung it,
than Jim's dog-cart swung round the corner, and Ronald Mackenzie,
sitting by his side, had looked up and sent a glance from his bold dark
eyes right through her. She had not had time to draw back; she had been
fairly caught. She drew back now, and  with annoyance as she
pictured to herself the figure she must have presented to him, a girl so
interested in his coming and going that she must lie in wait for him,
and take up her stand an hour or so before he might have been expected.
At any rate, he should not find her submissively waiting for him when he
drove up to the door. She would keep out of the way until tea-time, and
he might find somebody else to entertain him.

The shrubbery walk, which skirted the road, wound for over a mile round
the park, and if she followed it she would come, by way of the kitchen
gardens and stableyard, to the house again, and could regain her bedroom
unseen, at the cost of a walk rather longer than she would willingly
have undertaken on this hot afternoon. But it was the only thing to do.
If she went back by the way she had come, she might meet Jim and his
friend in the garden, and of course they would think she had come on
purpose to see them. If she crossed the park she ran the risk of being
seen. So she kept to the shelter of the trees, and followed the windings
of the path briskly, and in rather a bad temper.

At a point about half-way round the circle, the dense shrubbery widened
into a spinney, and cut through it transversely was a broad grass ride,
which opened up a view of the park and the house. When Cicely reached
this point she looked to her right, and caught her breath in her throat
sharply, for she saw Ronald Mackenzie striding down the broad green path
towards her. He was about fifty yards away, but it was impossible to
pretend she had not seen him, or to go on without waiting for him to
catch her up. Indeed, the moment he caught sight of her he waved his
hand and called out, "I thought I should catch you." He then came up
with a smile upon his face, and no apparent intention of apologising for
his obvious pursuit of her.

What was the right attitude to take up towards a man who behaved like
that? Cicely blushed, and felt both surprised and annoyed. But she was
powerless to convey a hint of those feelings to him, and all he knew was
that she had blushed.

"You shouldn't have run away from me like that," he said, as he shook
hands with her and looked her straight in the face. "I shan't do you any
harm. We will go back this way"; and he walked on at a fairly smart rate
by the way she had been going, and left her to adapt her pace to his,
which she did, with the disgusted feeling that she was ambling along at
an undignified trot.

She was aware that if she opened her mouth she would say just the one
thing that she did not want to say, so she kept it closed, but was not
saved by so doing, because he immediately said it for her. "How did I
know where to find you? Well, I guessed you didn't expect to be spied
under that tree, and that you'd keep away for a bit. I didn't want that,
because I had come over on purpose to see you. So I cast my eye round
the country--I've an eye for country--saw where you would be likely to
go and the place to intercept you. So now you know all about it."

This was a little too much. Cicely found her tongue. "Thank you," she
said, with dignity, "I didn't want to know all about it," and then felt
like a fool.

"Then you have something you didn't want," he replied coolly. "But we
won't quarrel; there's no time. Do you know what I think about you and
about this place?"

He looked down at her and waited for an answer; and an answer had to be
given. She was not quite prepared, or it would be more accurate to say
that she hardly dared, to say, "No, and I don't want to," so she
compromised weakly on "No."

"Well, I'll tell you. It seems to me just Paradise, this lovely,
peaceful, luxurious English country, after the places I've been to and
the life I've led. And as for you, you pretty little pink and white
rose, you're the goddess that lives in the heart of it. You're the
prettiest, most graceful creature on God's earth, and you're in the
right setting."

Cicely felt like a helpless rabbit fascinated by a snake. Nothing that
she had ever learned, either by direct precept from the old starling, or
as the result of her own observation of life, had prepared her to cope
with this. Outrageous as were his words and tone, she could only show
that she resented them by implicitly accusing him of making love to her;
and her flurried impulse was to shun that danger spot.

She laughed nervously. "You use very flowery language; I suppose you
learned it in Tibet," she said, and felt rather pleased with herself.

"One thing I learned in Tibet," he answered, "if I hadn't learned it
before, was that England is the most beautiful country in the world. I'm
not sure that I wouldn't give up all the excitement and adventure of my
life to settle down in a place like Graham's--or like this."

Cicely congratulated herself upon having turned the conversation. She
was ready to talk on this subject. "You wouldn't care for it very long,"
she said. "It is stagnation. I feel sometimes as if I would give
anything to get out of it."

He looked down at her with a smile. "And what would you like to do if
you could get out of it?" he asked.

"I should like to travel for one thing," she said. "If I were a man I
would. I wouldn't be content to settle down in a comfortable country
house to hunt foxes and shoot pheasants and partridges all my life."

"Like Graham, eh? Well, perhaps you are right. You're going to marry
Graham, aren't you?"

"No," she said shortly.

"He thinks you are," he said, with a laugh. "He's a good fellow, Graham,
but perhaps he takes too much for granted, eh? But I know you are not
going to marry Graham. I only asked you to see what you would say. You
are going to marry me, my little country flower."

"Mr. Mackenzie!" She put all the outraged surprise into her voice of
which she was capable, and stopped short in the path.

He stopped too, and faced her. His face was firmly set. "I have no time
to go gently," he said. "I ask straight out for what I want, and I want
you. Come now, don't play the silly miss. You've got a man to deal with.
I've done things already and I'm going to do more. You will have a
husband you can be proud of."

He was the type of the conquering male as he stood before her, dark,
lean, strong and bold-eyed. His speech, touched with a rough northern
burr, broke down defences. He would never woo gently, not if he had a
year to do it in. Men of his stamp do not ask their wives in marriage;
they take them.

Cicely went red and then white, and looked round her helplessly. "You
can't run away," he said, and waited for her to speak.

His silence was more insolently compelling than any words could have
been. Her eyes were drawn to his in spite of herself, fluttered a
moment, and rested there in fascinated terror. So the women in ages of
violence and passion, once caught, surrendered meekly.

"You are mine," he said, in a voice neither raised nor lowered. "I said
you should be when I first saw you. I'll take care of you. And I'll take
care of myself for your sake."

Suddenly she found herself trembling violently. It seemed to be her
limbs that were trembling, not she, and that she could not stop them. He
put his arm around her. "There, there!" he said soothingly. "Poor little
bird! I've frightened you. I had to, you know. But you're all right
now."

For answer she burst into tears, her hands to her face. He drew them
away gently, mastering her with firm composure. "It was a shock, wasn't
it?" he said in a low, vibrating monotone. "But it had to be done in
that way. Jim Graham doesn't upset you in that way, I'll be bound. But
Jim Graham is a rich, comfortable vegetable; and I'm not exactly that.
You don't want to be either, do you?"

"No," she said, drying her eyes.

"You want a mate you can be proud of," he went on, still soothing her.
"Somebody who will do big things, and do them for your sake, eh? That's
what I'm going to do for you, little girl. I'm famous already, so I
find. But I'll be more famous yet, and make you famous too. You'll like
that, won't you?"

He spoke to her as if she were a little child. His boasting did not
sound like boasting to her. His strength and self-confidence pushed
aside all the puny weapons with which she might have opposed him. She
could not tell him that she did not love him. He had not asked for her
love; he had asked for herself; or rather, he had announced his
intention of taking her. She was dominated, silenced, and he gave her no
chance to say anything, except what he meant her to say.

He took his arms from her. "We must go back now," he said, "or they will
wonder what has become of us." He laughed suddenly. "They were a little
surprised when I ran away after you."

It occurred to her that they must have been considerably surprised. The
thought added to her confusion. "Oh, I can't go back to them!" she
cried.

"No, no," he said soothingly. "You shall slip into the house by a back
way. I shall say I couldn't find you."

They were walking along the path, side by side. His muscular hands were
pendant; he had attempted no further possession of her, had not tried to
kiss her. Perhaps he knew that a kiss would have fired her to revolt,
and once revolting she would be lost to him. Perhaps he was not guided
by policy at all, but by the instinctive touch of his power over
men--and women.

Cicely was beginning to recover her nerve, but her thoughts were in a
whirl. She was not angry; her chief desire was to go away by herself and
think. In the meantime she wanted no further food for thought. But that
was a matter not in her hands.

"I'm going away in a fortnight, you know," he said. "Back to Tibet. I
left some things undone there."

"You only came home a month ago," she said, clutching eagerly at a topic
not alarmingly personal.

"I know. But I'm tired of it--the drawing-rooms and the women. I want to
be doing. _You_ know."

She thought she did know. The rough appeal thrown out in those two words
found a way through her armour, which his insolent mastery had only
dented and bruised. It gave her a better conceit of herself. This was a
big man, and he recognised something of his own quality in her. At any
rate, she would stand up to him. She would not be "a silly miss."

"Of course, you have surprised me very much," she said, with an effort
at even speech, which probably came to him as hurried prattle. "I can't
say what I suppose you want me to say at once. But if you will give me
time--if you will speak to my father----"

He broke in on her. "Good heavens!" he said, with a laugh. "You don't
think I've got time for all that sort of thing, do you?--orange flowers
and church bells and all the rest of it. Don't you say a word to your
father, or any one else. Do you hear?"

His roughness nerved her. "Then what do you want me to do?" she asked
boldly.

"Do? Why, come to London and marry me, of course. You've got the pluck.
Or if you haven't, you're not what I thought you, and I don't want you
at all. There's no time to settle anything now, and I'm off to-morrow.
If I stay longer, and come over here again with Graham, they will
suspect something. Meet me to-night out here--this very spot, do you
see? I'll get out of the house and be over here at two o'clock. Then
I'll tell you what to do."

They had come to a little clearing, the entrance to a strip of planted
ground which led to a gate in the walled kitchen garden, and so to the
back regions of the house. She stood still and faced him. "Do you think
I am going to do that?" she asked, her blue eyes looking straight into
his.

He had aroused her indignant opposition. What would he do now, this
amazing and masterful man?

He looked down at her with an odd expression in his face. It was
protecting, tender, amused. "Little shy flower!" he said--he seemed to
cling to that not very original metaphor--"I mustn't forget how you have
been brought up, in all this shelter and luxury, must I? It is natural
to you, little girl, and I'll keep you in it as far as I can. But you've
got to remember what I am too. You must come out of your cotton wool
sometimes. Life isn't all softness and luxury."

Food and raiment! What had she been thinking of all the morning? Her
eyes fell.

"You can trust me, you know," he said, still speaking softly. "But you
believe in daring, don't you? You must show a little yourself."

"It isn't at all that I'm afraid," she said weakly.

"Of course not. I know that," he answered. "It is simply that you don't
do such things here." He waved his hand towards the corner of the big
house, which could be seen through the trees. "But you want to get out
of it, you said."

Did she want to get out of it? She was tired of the dull ease. She was
of the Clintons, of the women who were kept under; but there were men
Clintons behind her too, men who took the ease when it came to them, but
did not put it in the first place, men of courage, men of daring. It was
the love of adventure in her blood that made her answer, "Perhaps I will
come," and then try to dart past him.

He put out his arm to stop her. "I'm not going to walk six miles here
and back on the chance," he said roughly. But she was equal to him this
time. "If you don't think it worth while you need not come," she said.
"I won't promise." Then she was gone.

He walked back slowly to the garden. Jim Graham was lying back in a
basket chair, dressed in smart blue flannel and Russian leather boots,
talking to Joan and Nancy. Through the open window of the library the
top of the Squire's head could be seen over the back of an easy-chair.

Mackenzie joined the little group under the lime. "Couldn't find her,"
he said shortly.

"She'll turn up at tea-time," said Jim equably.

The clear eyes of the twins were fixed on Mackenzie. They had run round
to the front of the house on hearing the wheels of Jim's cart on the
gravel. They wanted to see the great man he had brought with him, and
they were not troubled with considerations of shyness. But the great man
had taken no notice of them at all, standing on the gravel of the drive
staring at him.

He had jumped down from the cart and made off, directly, round the
corner of the house.

"Where is he going?" asked the twins.

"He wants to show Cicely some drawings," said Jim. "He saw her in the
shrubbery. Want a drive round to the stables, twankies?"

Now the twins devoured Mackenzie with all their eyes. "I am Joan
Clinton, and this is my sister Nancy," said Joan. "Nobody ever
introduces us to anybody that comes here, so we always introduce
ourselves. How do you do?"

Mackenzie seemed to wake up. He shook hands with both twins. "How do you
do, young ladies," he said with a smile. "You seem very much alike."

"Not in character," said Nancy. "Miss Bird says that Joan would be a
very well-behaved girl if it were not for me."

"I'm sure you are both well behaved," said Mackenzie. "You look as if
you never gave any trouble to anybody."

"What we look and what we are are two very different things," said Joan.
"Aren't they, Jim?"

"Good Lord, I should think they were," said Jim. He had been bustled off
immediately after luncheon, and was lying back in his chair in an
attitude inviting repose. He had rather hoped that Mackenzie, whose
quick energy of mind and body were rather beyond his power to cope with,
would have been off his hands for half an hour when he had announced his
intention of going in search of Cicely. He would have liked to go in
search of Cicely himself, but that was one of the things that he did no
longer. He had nothing to do now but wait with what patience he could
until his time came. He had a sort of undefined hope that Mackenzie
might say something that would advance him with Cicely, praise him to
her, cause her to look upon him with a little refreshment of her favour.
But he had not welcomed the questions with which the twins had plied him
concerning his guest.

"Jim wants to go to sleep," said Nancy. "Would you like to come up into
the schoolroom, Mr. Mackenzie? We have a globe of the world."

"We can find Cicely if you want to see her," added Joan.

Mackenzie laughed his rough laugh. "We won't bother Miss Clinton," he
said. "But I should like to see the globe of the world."

So the twins led him off proudly, chattering. Jim heard Joan say, "We
have had a bishop in our schoolroom, but we would much rather have an
explorer," but by the time they had crossed the lawn he was sleeping
peacefully.

If he had known it, it was hardly the time for him to sleep.

"If you're ill, go to bed; if not, behave as usual," was a Clinton maxim
which accounted for Cicely's appearance at the tea-table an hour later,
when she would much rather have remained in her own room. The effort, no
small one, of walking across the lawn in full view of the company
assembled round the tea-table, as if nothing had happened to her within
the last hour, braced her nerves. She was a shade paler than ordinary,
but otherwise there was nothing in her appearance to arouse comment.
Mackenzie sprang up from his chair as she approached and went forward to
meet her. "I tried to find you directly I came, Miss Clinton," he said
in his loud voice, which no course of civilisation would avail to
subdue. "I've brought those sketches I told you about last night."

Cicely breathed relief. She had not been told the pretext upon which he
had started off in pursuit of her immediately upon his arrival, and had
had terrifying visions of a reception marked by anxious and inquiring
looks. But Jim greeted her with his painfully acquired air of accepted
habit, and immediately, she was sitting between him and Mackenzie,
looking at the bundle of rough pencil drawings put into her hands,
outlines of rugged peaks, desolate plains, primitive hillside villages,
done with abundant determination but little skill. She listened to
Mackenzie's explanations without speaking, and was relieved to hand over
the packet to the Squire, who put on his glasses to examine them, and
drew the conversation away from her.

Mackenzie spoke but little to her after that. He dominated the
conversation, much more so than on the previous evening, when there had
been some little difficulty in extracting any account of his exploits
from him. Now he was willing to talk of them, and he talked well, not
exactly with modesty, but with no trace of boastful quality, such as
would certainly have aroused the prejudices of his listeners against
him.

He talked like a man with whom the subject under discussion was the one
subject in the world that interested him. One would have said that he
had nothing else in his mind but the lust for strange places to conquer.
He appeared to be obsessed by his life of travel, to be able to think of
nothing else, even during this short interval in his years of adventure,
and in this stay-at-home English company whose thoughts were mostly
bound up in the few acres around them.

Cicely stole glances at him. Was he acting a carefully thought out plan,
or had he really forgotten her very existence for the moment, while his
thoughts winged their way to cruel, dark places, whose secrets he would
wrest from them, the only places in which his bold, eager spirit could
find its home? He radiated power. She was drawn to him, more than half
against her will. He had called to her to share his life and his
enterprise. Should she answer the call? It was in her mind that she
might do so.

He made no attempt to claim her after tea; but when the church bells
began to ring from across the park, and she had to go to play for the
evening service, he joined the little party of women--the Clinton men
went to church once on Sundays, but liked their women to go twice--and
sat opposite to her in the chancel pew, sometimes fixing her with a
penetrating look, sometimes with his head lowered on his broad chest,
thinking inscrutable thoughts, while the dusk crept from raftered roof
to stone floor, and the cheap oil lamps and the glass-protected candles
in the pulpit and reading-desk plucked up yellow courage to keep off the
darkness.

The congregation sang a tuneful, rather sentimental evening hymn in the
twilight. They sang fervently, especially the maids and men in the
chancel pews. Their minds were stirred to soothing and vaguely aspiring
thoughts. Such hymns as this at the close of an evening service were the
pleasantest part of the day's occupations.

The villagers went home to their cottages, talking a little more
effusively than usual. The next morning their work would begin again.
The party from the great house hurried home across the park. The sermon
had been a little longer than usual. They would barely have time to
dress for dinner.

Jim Graham's dog-cart came round at half-past ten. The Squire, who had
been agreeably aroused from his contented but rather monotonous
existence by his unusual guest, pressed them to send it back to the
stable for an hour. "The women are going to bed," he said--they were
always expected to go upstairs punctually at half-past ten--"we'll go
into my room."

But Mackenzie refused without giving Jim the opportunity. "I have a lot
of work to do to-night," he said. "Don't suppose I shall be in bed much
before four; and I must leave early to-morrow."

So farewells were said in the big square hall. Mrs. Clinton and Cicely
were at a side-table upon which were rows of silver bedroom
candlesticks, Mrs. Clinton in a black evening dress, her white, plump
neck and arms bare, Cicely, slim and graceful, in white. The men stood
between them and the table in the middle of the hall, from which Dick
was dispensing whisky and soda water; the Squire, big and florid, with a
great expanse of white shirt front, Jim and Mackenzie in light overcoats
with caps in their hands. Servants carried bags across from behind the
staircase to the open door, outside of which Jim's horse was scraping
the gravel, the bright lamps of the cart shining on his smooth flanks.

The Squire and Dick stood on the stone steps as the cart drove off, and
then came back into the hall. Mrs. Clinton and Cicely, their candles
lighted, were at the foot of the staircase.

"Well, that's an interesting fellow," said the Squire as the butler shut
and bolted the hall door behind him. "We'll get him down to shoot if
he's in England next month."

"And see what he can do," added Dick.

Cicely went upstairs after her mother. The Squire and Dick went into the
library, where a servant relieved them of their evening coats and handed
them smoking-jackets, and the Squire a pair of worked velvet slippers.




CHAPTER XIV

THE PLUNGE


When Cicely had allowed the maid who was waiting for her to unfasten her
bodice, she sent her away and locked the door after her. During the
evening she had sketched in her mind a portrait of herself sitting by
the open window and thinking things over calmly. It seemed to be the
thing to do in the circumstances.

But she could not think calmly. She could not even command herself
sufficiently to go on with her undressing. The evening had been one long
strain on her nerves, and now she could only throw herself on her bed
and burst into tears. She had an impulse to go in to her mother and tell
her everything, and perhaps only the fact that for the moment her
physical strength would not allow her to move held her back.

After a time she became quieter, but did not regain the mastery of her
brain. She seemed to be swayed by feeling entirely. The picture of her
mother, calm and self-contained, kneeling at her long nightly devotions,
faded, and in its place arose the image of the man who had suddenly
shouldered his way into her life and with rude hands torn away the
trappings of convention that had swathed it.

He attracted her strongly. He stood for a broad freedom, and her revolt
against the dependence in which she lived was pointed by his contempt
for the dull, easy, effortless life of the big country house. Her mind
swayed towards him as she thought of what he had to offer her in
exchange--adventure in unknown lands; glory, perhaps not wholly
reflected, for there had been women explorers before, and her strong,
healthy youth made her the physical equal of any of them; comradeship in
place of subjection. She weighed none of these things consciously; she
simply desired them.

There came to her the echo of her brother's speech as she had come up
the stairs: "And let us see what he can do." He stood before her in his
rugged strength, not very well dressed, his greying head held upright,
his nostrils slightly dilated, his keen eyes looking out on the world
without a trace of self-consciousness; and beside him stood Dick in his
smart clothes and his smoothed down hair, coolly ignoring all the big
things the man had done, and proposing to hold over his opinion of him
till he saw whether he could snap off a gun quickly enough to bring down
a high pheasant or a driven partridge. If he could pass that test he
would be accepted without further question as "a good fellow." His other
achievements, or perhaps more accurately the kind of renown they had
brought him, would be set against his lack of the ordinary gentleman's
upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider
though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech--she
called it stupid--affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of
the ruck, and made him bulk bigger.

She got up from her bed and took her seat by the open window, according
to precedent. She had seen herself, during the evening, sitting there
looking out on to the moonlit garden, asking herself quietly, "What am I
going to do?" weighing the pros and cons, stiffening her mind, and her
courage. And she tried now to come to a decision, but could not come
anywhere near to laying the foundation of one. She had not the least
idea what she was going to do, nor could she even discover what she
wanted to do.

She got up and walked about the room, but that did not help her. She
knelt down and said her prayers out of a little well-worn book of
devotions, and made them long ones. But it was nothing more than
repeating words and phrases whose meaning slipped away from her. She
prayed in her own words for guidance, but none came. There existed only
the tumult of feeling.

She heard her father and brother come up to bed and held her breath in
momentary terror, then breathed relief at the thought that if they
should, unaccountably, break into her room, which they were not in the
least likely to do, they could not know what was happening to her, or
make her tell them. They went along the corridor talking loudly. She had
often been disturbed from her first sleep by the noise the men made
coming up to bed. She heard a sentence from her father as they passed
her door. "They would have to turn out anyhow if anything happened to
me."

Dick's answer was inaudible, but she knew quite well what they were
discussing. It had been discussed before her mother and herself, and
even the twins and Miss Bird, though not before the servants, during the
last few days. Lord and Lady Alistair MacLeod, she a newly wed American,
had motored through Kencote, lunched at the inn and fallen in love with
the dower-house. Lady Alistair--_he_ would have nothing to do with
it--had made an offer through the Squire's agent for a lease of the
house, at a rental about four times its market value. The Squire did not
want the money, but business was business. And the MacLeods would be
"nice people to have about the place." All that stood in the way was
Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura. They could not be turned out unless they were
willing to go, but the Squire knew very well that they _would_ go if he
told them to. There was a nice little house in the village which would
be the very thing for them if he decided to accept the tempting offer.
He would do it up for them. After all, the dower-house was much too
large and there were only two of them left. So it had been discussed
whether Aunt Ellen, at the age of ninety-three, and Aunt Laura, at the
age of seventy-five, should be notified that the house in which they had
spent the last forty years of their lives, and in which their four
sisters had died, was wanted for strangers.

That was not the only thing that had been discussed. The question of
what would be done in various departments of family and estate business
when the Squire should have passed away--his prospective demise being
always referred to by the phrase, "if anything should happen to me"--was
never shirked in the least; and Dick, who would reign as Squire in his
stead, until the far off day when something should happen to _him_, took
his part in the discussion as a matter of course. These things were and
would be; there was no sense in shutting one's eyes to them. And one of
the things that would take place upon that happening was that Mrs.
Clinton, and Cicely, if she were not married, and the twins, would no
longer have their home at Kencote, unless Dick should be unmarried and
should invite them to go on living in his house. He would have no legal
right to turn Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura out of the dower-house, if they
still remained alive, but it had been settled ever since the last death
amongst the sisters that they would make way. It would only be
reasonable, and was taken for granted.

And now, as it seemed, her father and brother had made up their minds to
exercise pressure--so little would be needed--to turn out the poor old
ladies, not for the sake of those who might have a claim on their
consideration, but for strangers who would pay handsomely and would be
nice people to have about the place. Cicely burned with anger as she
thought of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two o'clock struck from the clock in the stable turret. Cicely opened
her door softly, crept along the corridor and through a baize door
leading to a staircase away from the bedrooms of the house. At the foot
of it was a door opening into the garden, which she was prepared to
unlock and unbolt with infinite care to avoid noise. But the
carelessness of a servant had destroyed the need of such caution. The
door was unguarded, and with an unpleasant little shock she opened it
and went out.

The night was warm, and the lawns and trees and shrubs of the garden lay
in bright moonlight. She hurried, wrapped in a dark cloak, to the place
from which she had fled from Mackenzie in the afternoon. She felt an
impulse of shrinking as she saw his tall figure striding up and down on
the grass, but she put it away from her and went forward to meet him.

He gave a low cry as he turned and saw her. "My brave little girl!" he
said, and laid his hands on her shoulders for a moment, and looked into
her face. He attempted no further love-making; his tact seemed equal to
his daring. "We have come here to talk," he said. "When we have made our
arrangements you shall go straight back. I wouldn't have asked you to
come out here like this if there had been any other way."

She felt grateful. Her self-respect was safe with him. He understood
her.

"Will you come with me?" he asked, and she answered, "Yes."

A light sprang into his eyes. "My brave little queen of girls!" he said,
but held himself back from her.

"What time can you get out of the house without being missed for an hour
or two?" he asked.

She stood up straight and made a slight gesture as if brushing something
away, and thenceforward answered him in as matter-of-fact a way as he
questioned her.

"In the afternoon, after lunch," she said.

"Very well. There is a train from Bathgate at four o'clock. Can you walk
as far as that?"

"Oh yes."

"You can't go from here, and you can't drive. So you must walk. Is there
any chance of your being recognised at Bathgate?"

"I am very likely to be recognised."

He thought for a moment. "Well, it can't be helped," he said. "If there
is any one in the train you know you must say you are going up to see
Mrs. Walter Clinton. Graham has told me all about her and your brother."

"I shan't be able to take any luggage with me," she said.

"No. That is a little awkward. We must trust to chance. Luck sides with
boldness. You can buy what you want in London. I have plenty of money,
and nothing will please me better than to spend it on you, little girl."
His tone and his eyes became tender for a moment. "I shall be on the
platform in London to meet you," he said. "I shall be surprised to see
you there until you tell me there is nobody to fear. I hate all this
scheming, but it can't be helped. We must get a start, and in two days
we shall be married. Don't leave any word. You can write from London to
say you are going to marry me. I'll do the rest when we are man and
wife."

Cicely's eyes dropped as she asked, "Where shall I be till--till----"

"Till we're married? My little girl! It won't be very long. There is a
good woman I know. I'll take you there and she will look after you. I
shall be near. Leave it all to me and don't worry. Have you got money
for your journey?"

"Yes, I have enough."

"Very well. Now go back, and think of me blessing the ground you walk
on. You're so sweet, and you're so brave. You're the wife for me. Will
you give me one kiss?"

She turned her head quickly. "No," he said at once. "I won't ask for it;
not till you are mine altogether."

But she put up her face to him in the moonlight. "I'm yours now," she
said. "I have given myself to you," and he kissed her, restraining his
roughness, turning away immediately without another word to stride down
the grass path into the darkness of the trees.

Cicely looked after him for an instant and then went back to the house
and crept up to her room.




CHAPTER XV

BLOOMSBURY


Mackenzie met her at the London terminus. She had seen no one she knew
either at the station at Bathgate or in the train. She was well dressed,
in a tailor-made coat and skirt and a pretty hat. She got out of a
first-class carriage and looked like a young woman of some social
importance, travelling alone for once in a way, but not likely to be
allowed to go about London alone when she reached the end of her
journey. She was quite composed as she saw Mackenzie's tall figure
coming towards her, and shook hands with him as if he were a mere
acquaintance.

"I have seen nobody I know," she said, and then immediately added, "I
must send a telegram to my mother. I can't leave her in anxiety for a
whole night."

He frowned, but not at her. "You can't do that," he said, "you don't
want the post-office people to know."

"I have thought of that. I will say 'Have come up to see Muriel. Writing
to-night.' It isn't true, but I will tell them afterwards why I did it."

"Will that satisfy them?"

"I am deceiving them anyhow."

"Oh, I don't mean that. Will they think it all right--your coming up to
your sister-in-law?"

"No, they will be very much surprised. But the post-office people will
not gather anything."

"They will wire at once to your brother. You had much better leave it
till to-morrow."

"No, I can't do that," she said. "I will wire just before eight o'clock.
Then a return wire will not go through before the morning."

"Yours might not get through to-night."

"Oh yes, it will. They would take it up to the house whatever time it
came."

"Very well," he said. "Now come along," and he hailed a hansom.

"Please don't think me tiresome," she said, when they were in the cab,
"but there is another thing I must do. I must write to my mother so that
she gets my letter the very first thing to-morrow morning."

He gave an exclamation of impatience. "You can't do that," he said
again. "The country mails have already gone."

"I can send a letter by train to Bathgate. I will send it to the hotel
there with a message that it is to be taken over to Kencote the first
thing in the morning."

"You are very resourceful. It may give them time to get on to our track,
before we are married."

"I have promised to marry you," she said simply. It was she who now
seemed bold, and not he.

"I don't see how they could get here in time," he said grudgingly.
"Graham only knows the address of my club, and they don't know there
where I live." He brightened up again. "Very well, my queen," he said,
smiling down at her. "You shall do what you like. Write your letter--let
it be a short one--when you get in, and we will send that and the wire
when we go out to dinner."

They drove to a dingy-looking house in one of the smaller squares of
Bloomsbury. During the short journey he became almost boisterous. All
the misgivings that had assailed her since they had last parted, the
alternate fits of courage and of frightened shrinking, had passed him
by. This was quite plain, and she was right in attributing his mood
partly to his joy in having won her, partly to his love of adventure. It
was an added pleasure to him to surmount obstacles in winning her. If
his wooing had run the ordinary course, the reason for half his
jubilation would have disappeared. She felt his strength, and,
woman-like, relinquished her own doubts and swayed to his mood.

"You have begun your life of adventure, little girl," he said,
imprisoning her slender hand in his great muscular one, and looking down
at her with pride in his eyes. She had an impulse of exhilaration, and
smiled back at him.

The rooms to which he took her, escorted by a middle-aged Scotswoman
with a grim face and a silent tongue, were on the first floor--a big
sitting-room, clean, but, to her eyes, inexpressibly dingy and
ill-furnished, and a bedroom behind folding doors.

"Mrs. Fletcher will give you your breakfast here," he said, "but we will
lunch and dine out. We will go out now and shop when you are ready."

She went into the bedroom and stood by the window. Fright had seized her
again. What was she doing here? The woman who had come from her dark,
downstairs dwelling-place to lead the way to these dreadful rooms, had
given her one glance but spoken no word. What must she think of her? She
could hear her replying in low monosyllables to Mackenzie's loud
instructions, through the folding doors.

Again the assurance and strength and determination which he exhaled came
to her aid. She had taken the great step, and must not shrink from the
consequences. He would look after her. She washed her hands and face--no
hot water had been brought to her--and went back to the sitting-room. "I
am hoping you will be comfortable here, miss," the woman said to her.
"You must ask for anything you want."

She did not smile, but her tone was respectful, and she looked at Cicely
with eyes not unfriendly. And, after all, the rooms were clean--for
London.

Mackenzie took her to a big shop in Holborn and stayed outside while she
made her purchases. She had not dared to bring with her even a small
hand-bag, and she had to buy paper on which to write her letter to her
mother.

"I lived in Mrs. Fletcher's rooms before I went to Tibet," Mackenzie
said as they went back to the house. "I tried to get them when I came
back--but no such luck. Fortunately they fell vacant on Saturday. We'll
keep them on for a bit after we're married. Must make ourselves
comfortable, you know."

She stole a glance at him. His face was beaming. She had thought he had
taken her to that dingy, unknown quarter as a temporary precaution.
Would he really expect her to make her home in such a place?

She wrote her letter to her mother at the table in the sitting-room.
Mrs. Fletcher had brought up a penny bottle of ink and a pen with a J
nib suffering from age. Mackenzie walked about the room as she wrote,
and it was difficult for her to collect her thoughts. She gave him the
note to read, with a pretty gesture of confidence. It was very short.

     "My own darling Mother,--I have not come to London to see Muriel,
     but to marry Ronald Mackenzie. I said what I did in my telegram
     because of the post-office. I am very happy, and will write you a
     long letter directly we are married.--Always your very loving
     daughter,

     "Cicely."

"Brave girl!" he said as he returned it to her.

She gave a little sob. "I wish I had not had to go away from her like
that," she said.

"Don't cry, little girl," he said kindly. "It was the only way."

She dried her eyes and sealed up the note. She had wondered more than
once since he had carried her off her feet why it was the only way.

They carried through the business of the letter and the telegram and
drove to a little French restaurant in Soho to dine. The upstairs room
was full of men and a few women, some French, more English. Everybody
stared at her as she entered, and she blushed hotly. And some of them
recognised Mackenzie and whispered his name. The men were mostly
journalists, of the more literary sort, one or two of them men of note,
if she had known it. But to her they looked no better than the class she
would have labelled vaguely as "people in shops." They were as different
as possible from her brothers and her brothers' friends, sleek,
well-dressed men with appropriate clothes for every occasion, and a
uniform for the serious observance of dinner which she had never
imagined a man without, except on an unavoidable emergency. She had
never once in her life dined in the same frock as she had worn during
the day and hardly ever in the company of men in morning clothes.

This cheap restaurant, where the food and cooking were good but the
appointments meagre, struck her as strangely as if she had been made to
eat in a kitchen. That it did not strike Mackenzie in that way was plain
from his satisfaction at having introduced her to it. "Just as good food
here as at the Carlton or the Savoy," he said inaccurately, "at about a
quarter of the price; and no fuss in dressing-up!"

She enjoyed it rather, after a time. There was a sense of adventure in
dining in such a place, even in dining where nobody had thought of
dressing, although dressing for dinner was not one of the conventions
she had wished to run away from; it was merely a habit of cleanliness
and comfort. Mackenzie talked to her incessantly in a low voice--they
were sitting at a little table in a corner, rather apart from the rest.
He talked of his travels, and fascinated her; and every now and then,
when he seemed furthest away, his face would suddenly soften and he
would put in a word of encouragement or gratitude to her. She felt proud
of having the power to make such a man happy. They were comrades, and
she wanted to share his life. At present it seemed to be enough for him
to talk to her. He had not as yet made any demand on her for a return of
confidence. In fact, she had scarcely spoken a word to him, except in
answer to speech of his. He had won her and seemed now to take her
presence for granted. He had not even told her what arrangements he had
made for their marriage, or where it was to be; nor had he alluded in
any way to the course of their future life or travels, except in the
matter of Mrs. Fletcher's room in Bloomsbury.

"When are we going to Tibet again?" She asked him the question point
blank, as they were drinking their coffee, and Mackenzie was smoking a
big briar pipe filled with strong tobacco.

He stared at her in a moment's silence. Then he laughed. "Tibet!" he
echoed. "Oh, I think now I shan't be going to Tibet for some months. But
I shall be taking you abroad somewhere before then. However, there will
be plenty of time to talk of all that." Then he changed the subject.

He drove her back to her rooms and went upstairs with her. It was about
half-past nine o'clock. "I have to go and meet a man at the Athenaeum at
ten," he said. "Hang it! But I will stay with you for a quarter of an
hour, and I dare say you won't be sorry to turn in early."

He sat himself down in a shabby armchair on one side of the fireless
grate. He was still smoking his big pipe. Cicely stood by the table.

He looked up at her. "Take off your hat," he said, "I want to see your
beautiful hair. It was the first thing I noticed about you."

She obeyed, with a blush. He smiled his approval. "Those soft waves," he
said, "and the gold in it! You are a beautiful girl, my dear. I can tell
you I shall be very proud of you. I shall want to show you about
everywhere."

He hitched his chair towards her and took hold of her hand. "Do you
think you are going to love me a little bit?" he asked.

She blushed again, and looked down. Then she lifted her eyes to his. "I
don't think you know quite what you have made me do," she said.

He dropped her hand. "Do you regret it?" he asked sharply.

She did not answer his question, but her eyes still held his. "I have
never been away from home in my life," she said, "without my father or
mother. Now I have left them without a word, to come to you. You seem to
take that quite as a matter of course."

The tears came into her eyes, although she looked at him steadily. He
sprang up from his chair and put his hand on her shoulder. "My poor
little girl!" he said, "you feel it. Of course you feel it. You've
behaved like a heroine, but you've had to screw up your courage. I don't
want you to think of all that. That is why I haven't said anything about
it. You mustn't break down."

But she had broken down, and she wept freely, while he put his arm round
her and comforted her as he might have comforted a child. Presently her
sobbing ceased. "You are very kind to me," she said. "But you won't keep
me away from my own people, will you--after--after----"

"After we are married? God bless me, no. And they won't be angry with
you--at least, not for long. Don't fear that. Leave it all to me. We
shall be married to-morrow. I've arranged everything."

"You have not told me a word about that," she said forlornly.

"I didn't mean to tell you a word until to-morrow came," he said. "You
are not to brood."

"You mean to rush me into everything," she said. "If I am to be the
companion to you that I want to be, you ought to take me into your
confidence."

"Why, there!" he said, "I believe I ought. You're brave. You're not like
other girls. You can imagine that I have had a busy day. I have a
special license, signed by no less a person than the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Think of that! And we are going to be married in a church. I
knew you would like that; and I like it better too. You see I have been
thinking of you all the time. Now you mustn't worry any more." He patted
her hand. "Go to bed and get a good sleep. I'll come round at ten
o'clock to-morrow morning, and we're to be married at eleven. Then a new
life begins, and by the Lord I'll make it a happy one for you. Come,
give me a smile before I go."

She had no difficulty in doing that now. He took her chin in his
fingers, turned her face up to his and looked into her eyes earnestly.
Then he left her.

She had finished her breakfast, which had been cleared away, when he
came in to her the next morning. She was sitting in a chair by the empty
grate with her hands in her lap, and she looked pale.

Mackenzie had on a frock coat, and laid a new silk hat and a new pair of
gloves on the table as he greeted her with unsentimental cheerfulness.

"Will you sit down?" she said, regarding him with serious eyes. "I want
to ask you some questions."

He threw a shrewd glance at her. "Ask away," he said in the same loud,
cheerful tone, and took his seat opposite to her, carefully disposing of
the skirts of his coat, which looked too big even for his big frame.

"I have been thinking a great deal," she said. "I want to know exactly
what my life is to be if I marry you."

"_If_ you marry me!" he took up her words. "You _are_ going to marry
me."

"You said something last night," she went on, "which I didn't quite
understand at the time; and I am not sure that you meant me to. Are you
going to take me with you to Tibet, and on your other journeys, or do
you want to leave me behind--here?" There was a hint of the distaste she
felt for her surroundings in the slight gesture that accompanied the
last word. But she looked at him out of clear, blue, uncompromising
eyes.

He did not return her look. "Here?" he echoed, looking round him with
some wonder. "What is the matter with this?"

"Then you do mean to leave me here."

"Look here, my dear," he said, looking at her now. "I am not going to
take you to Tibet, or on any of my big journeys. I never had the
slightest intention of doing so, and never meant you to think I had. A
pretty thing if I were to risk the life of the one most precious to me,
as well as my own, in such journeys as I take!"

"Then what about me?" asked Cicely. "What am I to do while you are away,
risking your own life, as you say, and away perhaps for two or three
years together?"

"Would you be very anxious for me?" he asked her, with a tender look,
but she brushed the question aside impatiently.

"I am to live alone, while you go away," she said, "live just as dull a
life as I did before, only away from my own people, and without anything
that made my life pleasant in spite of its dulness. Is that what you are
offering me?"

"No, no," he said, trying to soothe her. "I want you to live in the
sweetest little country place. We'll find one together. You needn't stay
here a minute longer than you want to, though when we are in London
together it will be convenient. I want to think of you amongst your
roses, and to come back to you and forget all the loneliness and
hardships. I want a home, and you in it, the sweetest wife ever a man
had."

"I don't want that," she said at once. "You are offering me nothing that
I didn't have before, and I left it all to come to you--to share the
hardships and--and--I would take away the loneliness."

"You are making too much of my big journeys," he broke in on her
eagerly. "That is the trouble. Now listen to me. I shall be starting for
Tibet in March, and----"

"Did you know that when you told me you were going in a fortnight?" she
interrupted him.

"Let me finish," he said, holding up his hand. "It is settled now that I
am going to Tibet in March, and I shan't be away for more than a year.
Until then we will travel together. I want to go to Switzerland almost
directly to test some instruments. You will come with me, and you can
learn to climb. I don't mind that sort of hardship for you. At the end
of October we will go to America. I hadn't meant to go, but I want money
now--for you--and I can get it there. That's business; and for pleasure
we will go anywhere you like--Spain, Algiers, Russia--Riviera, if you
like, though I don't care for that sort of thing. When I go to Tibet
I'll leave you as mistress of a little house that you may be proud of,
and you'll wait for me there. When I get back we'll go about together
again, and as far as I can see I shan't have another big job to tackle
for some time after that--a year, perhaps two years, perhaps more."

She was silent for a moment, thinking. "Come now," he said, "that's not
stagnation. Is it?"

"No," she said unwillingly. "But it isn't what I came to you for." She
raised her eyes to his. "You know it isn't what I came to you for."

His face grew a little red. "You came to me," he said in a slower,
deeper voice, looking her straight in the eyes, "because I wanted you. I
want you now and I mean to have you. I want you as a wife. I will keep
absolutely true to you. You will be the only woman in the world to me.
But my work is my work. You will have no more say in that than I think
good for you. You will come with me wherever I think well to take you,
and I shall be glad enough to have you. Otherwise you will stay behind
and look after my home--and, I hope, my children."

Her face was a deep scarlet. She knew now what this marriage meant to
him. What it had meant to her, rushing into it so blindly, seemed a
foolish, far off thing. Her strongest feeling was a passionate desire
for her mother's presence. She was helpless, alone with this man, from
whom she felt a revulsion that almost overpowered her.

He sat for a full minute staring at her downcast face, his mouth firmly
set, a slight frown on his brows.

"Come now," he said more roughly. "You don't really know what you want.
But I know. Trust me, and before God, I will make you happy."

She hid her face in her hands. "Oh, I want to go home," she cried.

He shifted in his chair. The lines of his face did not relax. He must
set himself to master this mood. He knew he had the power, and he must
exercise it once for all. The mood must not recur again, or if it did it
must not be shown to him.

And there is no doubt at all that he would have mastered it. But as he
opened his mouth to speak, Cicely sitting there in front of him, crying,
with a white face and strained eyes, there were voices on the stairs,
the door opened, and Dick and Jim Graham came into the room.




CHAPTER XVI

THE PURSUIT


Cicely had not been missed from home until the evening. At tea-time she
was supposed to be at the dower-house, or else at the Rectory. It was
only when she had not returned at a quarter to eight, that the maid who
waited upon her and her mother told Mrs. Clinton that she was not in her
room.

"Where on earth can she be?" exclaimed Mrs. Clinton. Punctuality at
meals being so rigidly observed it was unprecedented that Cicely should
not have begun to dress at a quarter to eight. At ten minutes to eight
Mrs. Clinton was convinced that some accident had befallen her. At five
minutes to, she tapped at the door of the Squire's dressing-room.
"Edward," she called, "Cicely has not come home yet."

"Come in! Come in!" called the Squire. He was in his shirt sleeves,
paring his nails.

"I am afraid something has happened to her," said Mrs. Clinton
anxiously.

"Now, Nina, don't fuss," said the Squire. "What can possibly have
happened to her? She must be at the dower-house, though, of course, she
ought to be home by this time. Nobody in this house is ever punctual but
myself. I am always speaking about it. You _must_ see that the children
are in time for meals. If nobody is punctual the whole house goes to
pieces."

Mrs. Clinton went downstairs into the morning-room, where they were wont
to assemble for dinner. Dick was there already, reading a paper. "Cicely
has not come home yet," she said to him.

"By Jove, she'll catch it," said Dick, and went on reading his paper.

Mrs. Clinton went to the window and drew the curtain aside. It was not
yet quite dark and she could see across the park the footpath by which
Cicely would come from the dower-house. But there was no one there. Mrs.
Clinton's heart sank. She knew that something _had_ happened. Cicely
would never have stayed out as late as this if she could have helped it.
She came back into the room and rang the bell. "I must send down," she
said.

Dick put his paper aside and looked up at her. "It _is_ rather odd," he
said.

The butler came into the room, and the Squire immediately behind him.
"Edward, I want some one to go down to the dower-house and see if Cicely
has been there," Mrs. Clinton said. "I am anxious about her."

The Squire looked at her for a moment. "Send a man down to the
dower-house to ask if Miss Clinton has been there this afternoon," he
said, "and if she hasn't, tell him to go to the Rectory."

The butler left the room, but returned immediately with Cicely's
telegram. It was one minute to eight o'clock. He hung on his heel after
handing the salver to Mrs. Clinton and then left the room to carry out
his previous instructions. It was not his place to draw conclusions, but
to do as he was told.

Mrs. Clinton read the telegram and handed it to the Squire, searching
his face as he read it. "What, the devil!" exclaimed the Squire, and
handed it to Dick.

The big clock in the hall began to strike. Porter threw open the door
again. "Dinner is served, ma'am," he said.

"You needn't send down to the dower-house," Dick said, raising his eyes
from the paper. "Miss Clinton has gone up to stay with Mrs. Walter."
Then he offered his arm to his mother to lead her out of the room.

"Shut the door," shouted the Squire, and the door was shut. "What on
earth does it mean?" he asked, in angry amazement.

"Better have gone in to dinner," said Dick. "I don't know."

Mrs. Clinton was white, and said nothing. The Squire turned to her.
"What does it mean, Nina?" he asked again. "Did you know anything about
this?"

"Of course mother didn't know," said Dick. "There's something queer.
It's too late to send a wire. I'll go up by the eleven o'clock train and
find out all about it. Better go in now." He laid the telegram
carelessly on a table.

"Don't leave it about," said the Squire.

"Better leave it there," said Dick, and offered his arm to his mother
again.

They went into the dining-room, only a minute late.

"Tell Higgs to pack me a bag for two nights," said Dick when the Squire
had mumbled a grace, "and order my cart for ten o'clock. I'm going up to
London. I shan't want anybody."

Then, as long as the servants were in the room they talked as usual. At
least Dick did, with frequent mention of Walter and Muriel and some of
Cicely. The Squire responded to him as well as he was able, and Mrs.
Clinton said nothing at all. But that was nothing unusual.

When they were alone at last, the Squire burst out, but in a low voice,
"What on earth does it mean? Tell me what it means, Dick."

"She hasn't had a row with any one, has she, mother?" asked Dick,
cracking a walnut.

Mrs. Clinton moistened her lips. "With whom?" she asked.

"I know it's very unlikely. I suppose she's got some maggot in her head.
Misunderstood, or something. You never know what girls are going to do
next. She _has_ been rather mopy lately. I've noticed it."

"She has not seen Muriel since she was married," said Mrs. Clinton. "She
has missed her."

"Pah!" spluttered the Squire. "How dare she go off like that without a
word? What on earth can you have been thinking of to let her, Nina? And
what was Miles doing? Miles must have packed her boxes. And who drove
her to the station? When did she go? Here we are, sitting calmly here
and nobody thinks of asking any of these questions."

"It was Miles who told me she had not come back," said Mrs. Clinton.
"She was as surprised as I was."

"Ring the bell, Dick," said the Squire.

"I think you had better go up, mother, and see what she took with her,"
said Dick. "Don't say anything to anybody but Miles, and tell her to
keep quiet."

Mrs. Clinton went out of the room. Dick closed the door which he had
opened for her, came back to the table, and lit a cigarette. "There's
something queer, father," he said, "but we had better make it seem as
natural as possible. I shouldn't worry if I were you. I'll find out all
about it and bring her back."

"Worry!" snorted the Squire. "It's Cicely who is going to worry. If she
thinks she is going to behave like that in this house she is very much
mistaken."

Dick drove into Bathgate at twenty minutes to eleven. He always liked to
give himself plenty of time to catch a train, but hated waiting about on
the platform. So he stopped at the George Hotel and went into the hall
for a whisky-and-soda.

"Oh, good evening, Captain," said the landlord, who was behind the bar.
"If you are going back to Kencote you can save me sending over. This
letter has just come down by train." He handed Dick a square envelope
which he had just opened. On it was his name and address in Cicely's
writing, and an underlined inscription, "Please send the enclosed letter
to Kencote by special messenger as early as possible to-morrow morning."
Dick took out the inner envelope which was addressed to his mother, and
looked at it. "All right," he said, "I'll take it over," and slipped it
into the pocket of his light overcoat. He ordered his whisky-and-soda
and drank it, talking to the landlord as he did so. Only a corner of the
bar faced the hall, which was otherwise empty, and as he went out he
took the letter from his pocket and opened it.

"The devil you will!" he said, as he read the few words Cicely had
written. Then he went out and stood for a second beside his cart,
thinking.

"I'm going to Mountfield," he said as he swung the horse round and the
groom jumped up behind. The groom would wonder at his change of plan and
when he got back he would talk. If he told him not to he would talk all
the more. Wisest to say nothing at present. So Dick drove along the five
miles of dark road at an easy pace, for he could catch no train now
until seven o'clock in the morning and there was no use in hurrying, and
thought and thought, as he drove. If he failed in stopping this
astonishing and iniquitous proceeding it would not be for want of
thinking.

Mountfield was an early house. Jim himself unbarred and unlocked the
front door to the groom's ring. The chains and bolts to be undone seemed
endless. "Take out my bag," said Dick, as he waited, sitting in the
cart. "I'm going to stay here for the night. There'll be a note to take
back to Mrs. Clinton. See that it goes up to her to-night."

He spoke so evenly that the groom wondered if, after all, there was
anything going on under the surface at all.

"Hullo, old chap," Dick called out, directly Jim's astonished face
appeared in the doorway. "Cicely has bolted off to see Muriel, and the
governor has sent me to fetch her back. I was going up by the eleven
o'clock train, but I thought I'd come here for to-night, and take you up
with me in the morning. There's nothing to hurry for."

Then he got down from the cart and gave the reins to the groom. "I just
want to send a note to the mater so that she won't worry," he said, as
he went into the house.

He went across the hall into Jim's room, and Jim, who had not spoken,
followed him. "Read that," he said, putting the letter into his hand.

Jim read it and looked up at him. There was no expression on his face
but one of bewilderment.

"You think it over," said Dick, a little impatiently, and went to the
writing-table and scribbled a note.

     "Dear Mother,--I thought I would come on here first on the chance
     of hearing something, and glad I did so. There is a letter from
     Cicely. It is all right. Jim and I are going up to-morrow morning.
     Don't worry.

     "Dick."

Then, without taking any notice of Jim, still standing gazing at the
letter in his hand with the same puzzled expression on his face, he went
out and despatched the groom, closing the hall door after him.

He went back into the room and shut that door too. "Well!" he said
sharply. "What the devil does it mean?"

Jim's expression had changed. It was now angry as well as puzzled. "It
was when he went after her on Sunday," he said. "_Damn_ him! I
thought----"

"Never mind what you thought," said Dick. "When did he see her alone?"

"I was going to tell you. When we came over yesterday afternoon he saw
her over the wall, and directly we got to the house he bolted off after
her. He said he had promised to show her some sketches."

"But he didn't find her. He said so at tea-time--when she came out."

Jim was silent. "Perhaps that was a blind," said Dick. "How long was it
before he came back and said he couldn't find her?"

"About half an hour, I should think. Not so much."

"He _must_ have found her. But, good heavens! he can't have persuaded
her to run away with him in half an hour! He had never been alone with
her before."

"No."

"And he didn't see her alone afterwards."

Jim's face suddenly went dark. "He--he--went out after we went up to
bed," he said.

"What?"

"He asked me to leave the door unlocked. He said he might not sleep, and
if he didn't he should go out."

The two men looked at one another. "That's a nice thing to hear of your
sister," said Dick bitterly.

"It's a nice thing to hear of a man you've treated as a friend," said
Jim.

"How long have you known the fellow?"

"Oh, I told you. I met him when I was travelling, and asked him to look
me up. I haven't seen him since until he wrote and said he wanted to
come for a quiet Sunday."

"Why did he want to come? I'll tell you what it is, Jim. She must have
met him in London, and you were the blind. Yes, that's it. She's been
different since she came back. I've noticed it. We've all noticed it."

"I don't believe they met before," said Jim slowly.

"Why not?"

"I don't believe they did. Dick, do you think they can be married
already? Is there time to stop it?"

"Yes, there's time. I've thought it out. We'll go up by the seven
o'clock train. Where does the fellow live?"

Jim thought a moment. "I don't know. He wrote from the Royal Societies
Club."

"Well, we'll find him. I'm not going to talk about it any more now. I'm
too angry. Cicely! She ought to be whipped. If it _is_ too late, she
shall never come to Kencote again, if I have any say in the matter, and
I don't think my say will be needed. Let's go to bed. We shall have
plenty of time to talk in the train."

"I'll go and get hold of Grove," said Jim. "He must get a room ready,
and see that we get to the station in the morning," and he went out of
the room.

Dick walked up and down, and then poured himself out whisky-and-soda
from a table standing ready. He lit a cigarette and threw the match
violently into the fireplace. When Jim returned he said, "I've managed
to keep it pretty dark so far. The governor would have blurted
everything out--everything that he knew. I'm glad I intercepted that
letter to the mater. I haven't any sort of feeling about opening it.
_I'm_ going to see to this. If we can get hold of her before it's too
late, she must go to Muriel for a bit; I must keep it from the governor
as long as I can--until I get back and can tackle him. He'll be so
furious that he'll give it away all round. He wouldn't think about the
scandal."

"Pray God we shan't be too late," said Jim. "What a fool I've been,
Dick! I took it all for granted. I never thought that she wasn't just as
fond of me as I was of her."

Dick looked at him. "Well, I suppose that's all over now," he said, "a
girl who behaves like that!"

Jim turned away, and said nothing, and by and by they went up to bed.

They drove over to Bathgate the next morning and caught the seven
o'clock train to Ganton, where they picked up the London express. Alone
in a first-class smoking-carriage they laid their plans. "I have an idea
that is worth trying before we do anything else," said Jim. "When we
were travelling together that fellow told me of some rooms in Bloomsbury
he always went to when he could get them."

"Do you know the address?"

"Yes," said Jim, and gave it. "He said they were the best rooms in
London, and made me write down the address. I found it last night."

"Why on earth didn't you say so before?"

"I had forgotten. I didn't suppose I should ever want to take rooms in
Bloomsbury."

"It's a chance. We'll go there first. If we draw blank, we will go to
his club, and then to the Geographical Society. We'll find him
somewhere."

"We can't do anything to him," said Jim.

"I'm not thinking much of him," Dick confessed. "It would be a comfort
to bruise him a bit--though I dare say he'd be just as likely to bruise
me. He's got an amazing cheek; but, after all, a man plays his own hand.
If she had behaved herself properly he couldn't have done anything."

He flicked the ash of his cigar on to the carpet and looked carelessly
out of the window, but turned his head sharply at the tone in which Jim
said, "If I could get him alone, and it couldn't do her any harm
afterwards, I'd kill him." And he cursed Mackenzie with a deliberate,
blasphemous oath.

Dick said nothing, but looked out of the window again with an expression
that was not careless.

Jim spoke again in the same low voice of suppressed passion. "I told him
about her when I was travelling. I don't know why, but I did. And after
you dined on Friday we spoke about her. He praised her. I didn't say
much, but he knew what I felt. And he had got this in his mind then. He
must have had. He was my friend, staying in my house. He's a liar and a
scoundrel. For all he's done, and the name he's made, he's not fit
company for decent men. Dick, I'd give up everything I possess for the
chance of handling him."

"I'd back you up," said Dick. "But the chief thing is to get her away
from him."

"I know that. It's the only thing. We can't do anything. I was thinking
of it nearly all night long. And supposing we don't find him, or don't
find him till too late."

"We won't think of that," said Dick coolly. "One thing at a time. And
we'll shut his mouth, at any rate. I feel equal to that."

They were silent for a time, and then Jim said, "Dick, I'd like to say
one thing. She may not care about seeing me. I suppose she can't care
for me much--now--or she wouldn't have let him take her away. But I'm
going to fight for her--see that? I'm going to fight for her, if it's
not too late."

Dick looked uncomfortable in face of his earnestness. "If you want her,"
he began hesitatingly, "after----"

"Want her!" echoed Jim. "Haven't I always wanted her? I suppose I
haven't shown it. It isn't my way to show much. But I thought it was all
settled and I rested on that. Good God, I've wanted her every day of my
life--ever since we fixed it up together--years ago. I wish I'd taken
her, now, and let the beastly finance right itself. It wouldn't have
made much difference, after all. But I wanted to give her everything she
ought to have. If I've seemed contented to wait, I can tell you I
haven't been. I didn't want to worry her. I--I--thought she understood."

"She's behaved very badly," said Dick, too polite to show his surprise
at this revelation. Jim had always been rather a queer fellow. "If you
want her still, she ought to be precious thankful. The whole thing
puzzles me. I can't see her doing it."

"I couldn't, last night," said Jim, more quietly. "I can now. She's got
pluck. I never gave her any chance to show it."

They were mostly silent after this. Every now and then one of them said
a word or two that showed that their thoughts were busy in what lay
before them. The last thing Jim said before the train drew up at the
same platform at which Cicely had alighted the day before was, "I can't
do anything to him."

They drove straight to the house in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Fletcher opened the
door to them. "Mr. Mackenzie is expecting us, I think," said Dick
suavely, and made as if to enter.

Mrs. Fletcher looked at them suspiciously, more because it was her way
than because, in face of Dick's assumption, she had any doubts of their
right of entrance. "He didn't say that he expected anybody," she said.
"I can take your names up to him."

"Oh, thanks, we won't trouble you," said Dick. "We will go straight up.
First floor, as usual, I suppose?"

It was a slip, and Mrs. Fletcher planted herself in the middle of the
passage at once.

"Wait a moment," she said. "What do you mean by 'as usual'? Neither of
you have been in the house before. You won't go up to Mr. Mackenzie
without I know he wants to see you."

"Now, look here," said Dick, at once. "We are going up to Mr. Mackenzie,
and I expect you know why. If you try to stop us, one of us will stay
here and the other will fetch the policeman. You can make up your mind
at once which it shall be, because we've no time to waste."

"Nobody has ever talked to me about a policeman before; you'll do it at
your peril," she said angrily, still standing in the passage, but Dick
saw her cast an eye towards the door on her left.

"I'm quite ready to take the consequences," said Dick, "but whatever
they are it won't do you any good with other people in your house to
have the police summoned at half-past ten in the morning. Now will you
let us pass?"

She suddenly turned and made way for them. Dick went upstairs and Jim
followed him. The door of the drawing-room was opposite to them. "I'll
do the talking," said Dick, and opened the door and went in.




CHAPTER XVII

THE CONTEST


Mackenzie sprang up and stood facing them. His face had changed in a
flash. It was not at all the face of a man who had been caught and was
ashamed; it was rather glad. Even his ill-made London clothes could not
at that moment disguise his magnificent gift of virility. So he might
have looked--when there was no one to see him--face to face with sudden,
unexpected danger in far different surroundings, dauntless, and eager to
wrest his life out of the instant menace of death.

Dick had a momentary perception of the quality of the man he had to deal
with, which was instantly obliterated by a wave of contemptuous
dislike--the dislike of a man to whom all expression of feeling, except,
perhaps, anger, was an offence. He had looked death in the face too, but
not with that air. Assumed at a moment like this it was a vulgar
absurdity. He met Mackenzie's look with a cool contempt.

But the challenge, and the reply to it, had occupied but a moment.
Cicely had looked up and cried, "O Dick!" and had tried to rise from her
chair to come to him, but could not. The tone in which she uttered that
appeal for mercy and protection made Jim Graham wince, but it did not
seem to affect her brother. "Go and get ready to come with us," he said.

Jim had never taken his eyes off Cicely since he had entered the room,
but she did not look at him. She sat in her chair, trembling a little,
her eyes upon her brother's face, which was now turned toward her with
no expression in it but a cold authority.

She stood up with difficulty, and Jim took half a step forward. But
Mackenzie broke in, with a gesture towards her. "Come now, Captain
Clinton," he said. "You have found us out; but I am going to marry your
sister. You are not going to take her away, you know." He spoke in a
tone of easy good humour. The air, slightly theatrical, as it had
seemed, with which he had faced their intrusion, had disappeared.

Dick took no notice of him whatever. "I am going to take you up to
Muriel," he said to Cicely. "There's a cab waiting. Have you anything to
get, or are you ready to come now?"

She turned to go to her room, but Mackenzie interposed again. "Stay
here, please," he said. "We won't take our orders from Captain Clinton.
Look here, Clinton, I dare say this has been a bit of a shock to you,
and I'm sorry it had to be done in such a hurry. But everything is
straight and honest. I want to marry your sister, and she wants to marry
me. She is of age and you can't stop her. I'm going to make her a good
husband, and she's going to make me the best of wives."

He still spoke good-humouredly, with the air of a man used to command
who condescends to reason. He knew his power and was accustomed to
exercise it, with a hand behind his back, so to speak, upon just such
young men as these; men who were socially his superiors, and on that
very account to be kept under, and taught that there was no such thing
as social superiority where his work was to be done, but only leader and
led.

But still Dick took no notice of him. "Come along, Cicely," he said,
with a trifle of impatience.

Mackenzie shrugged his shoulders angrily. "Very well," he said, "if
you've made up your mind to take that fool's line, take it and welcome.
Only you won't take _her_. She's promised to me. My dear, tell them so."

He bent his look upon Cicely, the look which had made her soft in his
hands. Dick was looking at her too, standing on the other side of the
table, with cold displeasure. And Jim had never looked away from her.
His face was tender and compassionate, but she did not see it. She
looked at Dick, searching his face for a sign of such tenderness, but
none was there, or she would have gone to him. Her eyes were drawn to
Mackenzie's, and rested there as if fascinated. They were like those of
a frightened animal.

"Come now," said Mackenzie abruptly. "It is for you to end all this. I
would have spared you if I could--you know that; but if they must have
it from you, let them have it. Tell them that I asked you to come away
and marry me, and that you came of your own accord. Tell them that I
have taken care of you. Tell them that we are to be married this
morning."

She hesitated painfully, and her eyes went to her brother's face again
in troubled appeal. He made no response to her look, but when the clock
on the mantelpiece had ticked half a dozen audible beats and she had not
spoken, he turned to Mackenzie.

"I see," he said. "You have----"

"Oh, let her speak," Mackenzie interrupted roughly, with a flashing
glance at him. "You have had your say."

"It is quite plain, sir," proceeded Dick in his level voice, "that you
have gained some sort of influence over my sister."

"Oh, that is plain, is it?" sneered Mackenzie.

"Excuse me if I don't express myself very cleverly," said Dick. "What I
mean is that somehow you have managed to _bully_ her into running away
with you."

They looked into one another's eyes for an instant. The swords were
crossed. Mackenzie turned to Cicely. "Did I do that?" he asked quietly.

"If I might suggest," Dick said, before she could reply, "that you don't
try and get behind my sister, but speak up for yourself----"

"Did I do that?" asked Mackenzie again.

"O Dick dear," said Cicely, "I said I would come. It was my own fault."

"Your own fault--yes," said Dick. "But I am talking to this--this
gentleman, now."

Mackenzie faced him again. "Oh, we're to have all that wash about
gentlemen, are we? I'm not a gentleman. That's the trouble, is it?"

"It is part of the trouble," said Dick. "A good big part."

"Do you know what I do with the _gentlemen_ who come worrying me for
jobs when I go on an expedition, Captain Clinton--the gentlemen who want
to get seconded from your regiment and all the other smart regiments, to
serve under me?"

"Shall we stick to the point?" asked Dick. "My cab is waiting."

Mackenzie's face looked murderous for a moment, but he had himself in
hand at once. "The point is," he said, "that I am going to marry your
sister, with her consent."

"The point is how you got her consent. I am here in place of my
father--and hers. If she marries you she marries you, but she doesn't do
it before I tell her what she is letting herself in for."

"Then perhaps you will tell her that."

"I will." Dick looked at Cicely. "I should like to ask you to begin with
when you first met--Mr. Mackenzie," he said.

"Dear Dick!" cried Cicely, "don't be so cruel. I--I--was discontented at
home, and I----"

"We met first at Graham's house," said Mackenzie, "when you were there.
I first spoke to her alone on Sunday afternoon, and she promised to come
away and marry me on Sunday night. Now go on."

"That was when you told Graham that you couldn't sleep, I suppose, in
the middle of the night."

"I walked over from Mountfield, and she came to me in the garden, as I
had asked her to. We were together about three minutes."

Dick addressed Cicely again, still with the same cold authority. "You
were discontented at home. You can tell me why afterwards. You meet this
man and hear him bragging of his great deeds, and when he takes you by
surprise and asks you to marry him, you are first of all rather
frightened, and then you think it would be an adventure to go off with
him. Is that it?"

"It's near enough," said Mackenzie, "except that I don't brag."

"I've got my own ears," said Dick, still facing Cicely. "Well, I dare
say the sort of people you're used to don't seem much beside a man who
gets himself photographed on picture postcards, but I'll tell you a few
of the things we don't do. We don't go and stay in our friends' houses
and then rob them. You belonged to Jim. You'd promised him, and this man
knew it. We don't go to other men's houses and eat their salt and make
love to their daughters behind their backs. We don't tell mean lies. We
don't ask young girls to sneak out of their homes to meet us in the
middle of the night. We respect the women we want to marry, we don't
compromise them. If this man had been a fit husband for you, he would
have asked for you openly. It's just because he knows he isn't that he
brings all his weight to bear upon you, and you alone. He doesn't dare
to face your father or your brothers."

Cicely had sunk down into her chair again. Her head was bent, but her
eyes were dry now. Mackenzie had listened to him with his face set and
his lips pressed together. What he thought of the damaging indictment,
whether it showed him his actions in a fresh light, or only heightened
his resentment, nobody could have told. "Have you finished what you have
to say?" he asked.

"Not quite," replied Dick. "Listen to me, Cicely."

"Yes, and then listen to me," said Mackenzie.

"What sort of treatment do you think you're going to get from a man who
has behaved like that? He's ready to give you a hole-and-corner
marriage. He wants you for the moment, and he'll do anything to get you.
He'll get tired of you in a few weeks, and then he'll go off to the
other side of the world and where will _you_ be? How much thought has he
given to _your_ side of the bargain? He's ready to cut you off from your
own people--_he_ doesn't care. He takes you from a house like Kencote
and brings you here. He's lied to Jim, who treated him like a friend,
and he's behaved like a cad to us who let him into our house. He's done
all these things in a few days. How are you going to spend your life
with a fellow like that?"

Cicely looked up. Her face was firmer, and she spoke to Mackenzie. "We
had begun to talk about all these things," she said. "I asked you a
question which you didn't answer. Did you know when you told me you were
going back to Tibet in a fortnight and there wasn't time to--to ask
father for me, that you weren't going until next year?"

"No, I didn't," said Mackenzie.

"When did he tell you that?" asked Dick.

"On Sunday."

"I can find that out for you easily enough. I shouldn't take an answer
from him."

Again, for a fraction of a second, Mackenzie's face was deadly, but he
said quietly to Cicely, "I have answered your question. Go on."

"You know why I did what you asked me," she said. "I thought you were
offering me a freer life and that I should share in all your travels and
dangers. You told me just before my brother came in that you didn't want
me for that."

"I told you," said Mackenzie, speaking to her as if no one else had been
in the room, "that you _would_ have a freer life, but that I shouldn't
risk your safety by taking you into dangerous places. I told you that I
would do all that a man could do to protect and honour his chosen wife,
and that's God's truth. I told you that I would make you happy. That I
know I can do, and I will do. Your brother judges me by the fiddling
little rules he and the like of him live by. He calls himself a
gentleman, and says I'm not one. I know I'm not his kind of a gentleman.
I've no wish to be; I'm something bigger. I've got my own honour. _You_
know how I've treated you. Your own mother couldn't have been more
careful of you. And so I'll treat you to the end of the chapter when you
give me the right to. You can't go back now; it's too late. You see how
this precious brother of yours looks at you, after what you have done.
You'll be sorry if you throw yourself into _his_ hands again. Show some
pluck and send him about his business. You can trust yourself to me. You
won't regret it."

The shadow of his spell was over her again. She hesitated once more and
Dick's face became hard and angry. "Before you decide," he said, "let me
tell you this, that if you do marry this fellow you will never come to
Kencote again or see any of us as long as you live."

"You won't see your eldest brother," said Mackenzie. "I'll take care of
that. But you _will_ see those you want to see. I'll see to that too.
It's time to end this. I keep you to your word. You said you were mine,
and you meant it. I don't release you from your promise."

Cicely's calm broke down. "Oh, I don't know what to do," she cried. "I
did promise."

"I keep you to your promise," said Mackenzie inexorably.

Then Jim, who had kept silence all this time, spoke at last. "Cicely,"
he said, "have you forgotten that you made _me_ a promise?"

"O Jim," she said, without looking at him, "don't speak to me. I have
behaved very badly to you."

"You never wanted to marry him," said Mackenzie roughly. "He's not the
husband for a girl of any spirit."

Jim made no sign of having heard him. His face was still turned towards
Cicely. "It has been my fault," he said. "I've taken it all for granted.
But I've never thought about anybody else, Cicely."

Mackenzie wouldn't allow him to make his appeal as he had allowed Dick.
"He has had five years to take you in," he said. "He told me so. And he
hasn't taken you because he might have less money to spend on himself,
till he'd paid off his rates and taxes. He told me that too. He can
afford to keep half a dozen horses and a house full of servants. He
can't afford a wife!"

He spoke with violent contempt. Dick gazed at him steadily with
contemptuous dislike. "This is the fellow that invited himself to your
house, Jim," he said.

"Let me speak now, Dick," said Jim, with decision. "He can't touch me,
and I don't care if he does. He's nothing at all. I won't bother you.
Cicely, my dear. I've always loved you and I always shall. But----"

"No, he won't bother you," interrupted Mackenzie with a sneer. "He's
quite comfortable."

"But you will know I'm there when you are ready to be friends again. If
I haven't told you before I'll tell you now. I've kept back all I've
felt for you, but I've never changed and I shan't change. This won't
make any difference, except that----"

"Except that he's lost you and I've won you," Mackenzie broke in. "He's
had his chance and he's missed it. You don't want to be worried with his
drivel."

Cicely looked up at Mackenzie. "Let him speak," she said, with some
indignation. "I have listened to all you have said."

Mackenzie's attitude relaxed suddenly. After a searching glance at her
he shrugged his shoulders and turned aside. He took up his grey kid
gloves lying on the table and played with them.

"I don't blame you for this--not a bit," said Jim, "and I never shall.
Whatever you want I'll try and give you."

"O Jim, I can't marry you now," said Cicely, her head turned from him.
"But you are very kind." She broke into tears again, more tempestuous
than before. Her strength was nearly at an end.

"I've told you that I shan't worry you," Jim said. "But you mustn't
marry this man without thinking about it. You must talk to your
mother--she'll be heart-broken if you go away from her like this."

"Oh, does she want me back?" cried Cicely.

"Yes, she does. You must go up to Muriel now. She'll want you too. And
you needn't go home till you want to."

"I shall never be able to go home again," she said.

Mackenzie threw his gloves on to the table. "Do you want to go home?" he
asked her. His voice had lost that insistent quality. He spoke as if he
was asking her whether she would like to take a walk, in a tone almost
pleasant.

"I want to go away," she said doggedly.

"Then you may go," said Mackenzie, still in the same easy voice. "I
wanted you, and if we had been in a country where men behave like men, I
would have had you. But I see I'm up against the whole pudding weight of
British respectability, and I own it's too strong for me. We could have
shifted it together, but you're not the girl to go in with a man. I'll
do without you."

"You had better come now, Cicely," said Dick.

Mackenzie gave a great laugh, with a movement of his whole body as if he
were throwing off a weight.

"Shake hands before you go," he said, as she rose obediently. "You're
making a mistake, you know; but I don't altogether wonder at it. If I'd
had a day longer they should never have taken you away. I nearly got
you, as it was."

Cicely put her hand into his and looked him squarely in the face.
"Good-bye," she said. "You thought too little of me after all. If you
had really been willing for me to share your life, I think I would have
stayed with you."

His face changed at that. He fixed her with a look, but she took her
hand out of his and turned away. "I am ready, Dick," she said, and again
he shrugged his broad shoulders.

"I wish I had it to do over again," he said. "Well, gentlemen, you have
won and I have lost. I don't often lose, but when I do I don't whine
about it. You can make your minds easy. Not a word about this shall pass
my lips."

Dick turned round suddenly. "Will you swear that?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, if you like. I mean it."

Dick and Cicely went out of the room. "Well, Graham, I hope you'll get
her now I've lost her," said Mackenzie.

Jim took no notice of him, but went out after the other two.




CHAPTER XVIII

AFTER THE STORM


Cicely had an air at once ashamed and defiant as she stepped up into the
cab. Dick gave the cabman the address. "See you to-night, then," he said
to Jim. It had been arranged between them that when Cicely had been
rescued Jim should fall out, as it were, for a time. "Good-bye, Cicely,"
he said. "Give my love to Walter and Muriel," and walked off down the
pavement.

"You can tell me now," said Dick, when the cab had started, "what went
wrong with you to make you do such a thing as that."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," said Cicely. "I know I have made a
mistake, and I know you will punish me for it--you and father and the
boys. You can do what you like, but I'm not going to help you."

Tears of self-pity stood in her eyes, and her face was now very white
and tired, but very childish too. Dick was struck with some compunction.
"I dare say you have had enough for the present," he said, not unkindly.
"But how you could!--a low-bred swine like that!"

Cicely set her lips obstinately. She knew very well that this weapon
would be used freely in what she had called her punishment. Men like
Dick sifted other men with a narrow mesh. A good many of those whom a
woman might accept and even admire, if left to herself, would not pass
through it. Certainly Mackenzie wouldn't. She would have had to suffer
for running away, but she would suffer far more for running away with "a
bounder." And what made it harder was that, although she didn't know it
yet, in the trying battle that had just been waged over her, the sieve
of her own perceptions had narrowed, and Mackenzie, now, would not have
passed through that. She would presently be effectually punished there,
if Dick and the rest should leave her alone entirely.

Dick suddenly realised that he was ravenously desirous of a cigarette,
and having lit one and inhaled a few draughts of smoke, felt the
atmosphere lighter.

"By Jove, that was a tussle," he said. "He's a dangerous fellow, that.
You'll thank me, some day, Cicely, for getting you away from him."

"You didn't get me away," said Cicely. "You had nothing whatever to do
with it."

"Eh?" said Dick.

"If you had been just a little kind I would have come with you the
moment you came into the room. I was longing for some one from home. You
made it the hardest thing in the world for me to come. If I had stayed
with him it would have been your fault. I'll never forgive you for the
way you treated me, Dick. And you may do what you like to me now, and
father may do what he likes. Nothing can be worse than that."

She poured out her words hurriedly, and only the restraint that comes
with a seat in a hansom cab within full view of the populace of Camden
Town prevented her bursting into hysterical tears.

Dick would rather have ridden up to the mouth of a cannon than drive
through crowded streets with a woman making a scene, so he said, "Oh,
for God's sake keep quiet now," and kept quiet himself, with something
to think about.

Presently he said, "No one knows at home yet that you aren't with
Muriel. You've got me to thank for that, at any rate."

Cicely blushed with her sudden great relief, but went pale again
directly. "I wrote to mother," she said. "She would get the letter early
this morning."

"I've got the letter in my pocket," said Dick. "She hasn't seen it."

"You opened my letter to mother!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, I did, and lucky for you too. It was how we found you."

She let that pass. It was of no interest to her then to learn by what
chance they had found her. "Then do you really mean that they don't know
at home?" she asked eagerly.

"They know you have gone to Muriel--you'll be there in half an hour--and
nothing else."

"O Dick, then you won't tell them," she cried, her hand on his sleeve.
"You can't be so cruel as to tell them."

She had the crowded streets to thank for Dick's quick answer, "I'm not
going to tell them. Do, for Heaven's sake, keep quiet."

She leant back against the cushions. She had the giddy feeling of a man
who has slipped on the verge of a great height, and saved himself.

"You'll have plenty to answer for as it is," said Dick, with a short
laugh. "You've run away, though you've only run away to Muriel. You
won't get let down easily."

She was not dismayed at that. The other peril, surmounted, was so
crushingly greater. And there had been reasons for her running away,
even if she had not run away to Mackenzie. She stood by them later and
they helped her to forget Mackenzie's share in the flight. But now she
could only lean back and taste the blessed relief that Dick had given
her.

"Do Walter and Muriel know I am coming?" she asked.

"I sent them a wire from Ganton this morning to say that I should
probably bring you, and they weren't to answer a wire from home, if one
came, till they had heard from me. You've made me stretch my brains
since last night, Cicely. You'd have been pretty well in the ark if it
hadn't been for me."

"You didn't help me for my own sake though," said Cicely.

Both of them spoke as if they were carrying on a conversation about
nothing in particular. Their capacity for disturbing discussion was
exhausted for the time. Cicely felt a faint anticipatory pleasure in
going to Muriel's new house, and Dick said, "This must be Melbury Park.
Funny sort of place to find your relations in!"

But Adelaide Avenue, to which the cabman had been directed, did not
quite bear out the Squire's impressions, nor even the Rector's, of the
dreary suburb; and lying, as it did, behind the miles of shop-fronts,
mean or vulgarly inviting, which they had traversed, and away from the
business of the great railway which gave the name of Melbury Park, its
sole significance to many besides the Squire, it seemed quiet, and even
inviting. It curved between a double row of well-grown limes. Each
house, or pair of houses, had a little garden in front and a bigger one
behind, and most of the houses were of an earlier date than the modern
red brick suburban villa. They were ugly enough, with their stucco
fronts and the steps leading up to their front doors, but they were
respectable and established, and there were trees behind them, and big,
if dingy, shrubs inside their gates.

Walter's house stood at a corner where a new road had been cut through.
This was lined on each side with a row of two-storied villas behind low
wooden palings, of which the owner, in describing them, had taken
liberties with the name of Queen Anne. But Walter's house and the one
adjoining it in the Avenue, though built in the same style, or with the
same lack of it, were much bigger, and had divided between them an old
garden of a quarter of an acre, which, although it would have been
nothing much at Kencote, almost attained to the dignity of "grounds" at
Melbury Park.

There was a red lamp by the front gate, and as they drew up before it,
Muriel came out under a gabled porch draped with Virginia creeper and
hurried to welcome them to her married home.

She looked blooming, as a bride should, even on this hot August day in
London. She wore a frock of light holland, and it looked somehow
different from the frocks of holland or of white drill which Cicely had
idly observed in some numbers as she had driven through the streets and
roads of the suburb. She had a choking sensation as she saw Muriel's
eager face, and her neat dress, just as she might have worn it at home.

"Hullo, Dick," said Muriel. "Walter will be in to lunch. O Cicely, it
_is_ jolly to see you again. But where's your luggage? You've come to
stay. Why, you're looking miserable, my dear! What on earth's the
matter? And what did Mr. Clinton's telegram mean, and Dick's? We haven't
wired yet, but we must."

They had walked up the short garden path, leaving Dick to settle with
the cabman, who had been nerving himself for a tussle, and was surprised
to find it unnecessary.

"I'm in disgrace, Muriel," said Cicely. "I'll tell you all about it when
we are alone, if Dick doesn't first."

Muriel threw a penetrating look at her and then turned to Dick, who
said, with a grin, "This is the drive, is it, Muriel?"

"You are not going to laugh at my house, Dick," said Muriel. "You'll be
quite as comfortable here as anywhere. Come in. This is the hall."

"No, not really?" said Dick. "By Jove!"

It was not much of a hall, the style of Queen Anne as adapted to the
requirements of Melbury Park not being accustomed to effloresce in
halls; but a green Morris paper, a blue Morris carpet, and white
enamelled woodwork had brought it into some grudging semblance of
welcoming a visitor. The more cultured ladies of Melbury Park in
discussing it had called it "artistic, but slightly _bizarre_," a phrase
which was intended to combine a guarded appreciation of novelty with a
more solid preference for sanitary wallpaper, figured oilcloth and paint
of what they called "dull art colours."

"Look at my callers," said Muriel, indicating a china bowl on a narrow
mahogany table that was full to the brim with visiting cards. "I can
assure you I'm the person to know here. No sniffing at a doctor's wife
in Melbury Park, Dick."

"By Jove!" said Dick. "You're getting into society."

"My dear Dick, don't I tell you, I _am_ society. Oh, good gracious, I
was forgetting. Walter told me to send a telegram to Kencote the very
moment you came. Mr. Clinton wired at eight o'clock this morning and
it's half-past twelve now."

Cicely turned away, and Dick became serious again. "Where's the wire?"
he asked. "I'll answer it."

"Come into Walter's room," said Muriel, "there are forms there."

"I wonder he hasn't wired again," said Dick, and as he spoke a telegraph
boy came up to the open door.

     "Cannot understand why no reply to telegram. Excessively annoyed.
     Wire at once.--Edward Clinton," ran the Squire's second message,
     and his first, which Muriel handed to Dick: "Is Cicely with you.
     Most annoyed. Wire immediately.--Edward Clinton."

"I'll soothe him," said Dick, and he wrote, "Cicely here. Wanted change.
Is writing. Walter's reply must have miscarried.--Dick." "Another lie,"
he said composedly.

"I want some clothes sent, please, Dick," said Cicely in a constrained
voice.

"Better tell 'em to send Miles up," said Dick, considering.

"No, I don't want Miles," said Cicely, and Dick added, "Please tell
Miles send Cicely clothes for week this afternoon."

"I suppose you can put her up for a week, Muriel," he said.

"I'll put her up for a month, if she'll stay," said Muriel, putting her
arm into Cicely's, and the amended telegram was despatched.

"Now come and see my drawing-room," said Muriel, "and then you can look
after yourself, Dick, till Walter comes home, and I will take Cicely to
her room."

The drawing-room opened on to a garden, wonderfully green and shady
considering where it was. The white walls and the chintz-covered chairs
and sofa had again struck the cultured ladies of Melbury Park as
"artistic but slightly _bizarre_," but the air of richness imparted by
the numberless hymeneal offerings of Walter's and Muriel's friends and
relations had given them a pleasant subject for conversation. Their
opinion was that it was a mistake to have such valuable things lying
about, but if "the doctor" collected them and took them up to put under
his bed every night it would not so much matter.

"They all tell me that Dr. Pringle used this room as a dining-room,"
said Muriel. "It is the first thing they say, and it breaks the ice. We
get on wonderfully well after that; but it is a pretty room, isn't it,
Dick?"

She had her arm in Cicely's, and pressed it sometimes as she talked, but
she did not talk to her.

"It's an uncommonly pretty room," said Dick. "Might be in Grosvenor
Square. Where did you and Walter get your ideas of furnishing from,
Muriel? We don't run to this sort of thing at Kencote and Mountfield.
Content with what our forefathers have taught us, eh?"

"Oh, we know what's what, all right," said Muriel. "We have seen a few
pretty rooms, between us. Now I'm going to take Cicely upstairs. You can
wander about if you like, Dick, and there are cigarettes and things in
Walter's room."

"I'll explore the gay parterre," said Dick. Then he turned to Cicely and
took hold of her chin between his thumb and finger. "Look here, don't
you worry any more, old lady," he said kindly. "You've been a little
fool, and you've had a knock. Tell Muriel about it and I'll tell Walter.
Nobody else need know."

She clung to him, crying. "O Dick," she said, "if you had only spoken to
me like that at first!"

"Well, if I had," said Dick, "I should have been in a devil of a temper
now. As it is I've worked it off. There, run along. You've nothing to
cry for now." He kissed her, which was an unusual attention on his part,
and went through the door into the garden. Muriel and Cicely went
upstairs together.

Dick soon exhausted the possibilities of the garden and went into the
house again and into Walter's room. It had red walls and a Turkey
carpet. There was a big American desk, a sofa and easy-chairs and three
Chippendale chairs, all confined in rather a small space. There was a
low bookcase along one wall, and above it framed school and college
photographs; on the other walls were prints from pictures at Kencote.
They were the only things in the room, except the ornaments on the
mantelpiece, and a table with a heavy silver cigarette box, and other
smoking apparatus, that lightened its workmanlike air. But Dick was not
apt to be affected by the air of a room. He sat down in the easy-chair
and stretched his long legs in front of him, and thought over the
occurrences of the morning.

He was rather surprised to find himself in so equable a frame of mind.
His anger against Cicely had gradually worked up since the previous
evening until, when he had seen her in the room with Mackenzie, he could
have taken her by the shoulders and shaken her, with clenched teeth. She
had done a disgraceful thing; she, a girl, had taken the sacred name of
Clinton in her hands and thrown it to the mob to worry. That he had
skilfully caught and saved it before it had reached them did not make
her crime any the less.

But he could not now regain--he tested his capacity to regain, out of
curiosity--his feeling of outraged anger against her. Curious that, in
the train, he had felt no very great annoyance against Mackenzie. He
asked himself if he hadn't gone rather near to admiring the decisive
stroke he had played, which few men would have attempted on such an
almost complete lack of opportunity. But face to face with him his
dislike and resentment had flared up. His anger now came readily enough
when he thought of Mackenzie, and he found himself wishing ardently for
another chance of showing it effectively. It was this, no doubt, that
had softened him towards his little sister, whom he loved in his
patronising way. The fellow had got hold of her. She was a little fool,
but it was the man who was to blame. And his own resource had averted
the danger of scandal, which he dreaded like any woman. He could not but
be rather pleased with himself for the way in which he had carried
through his job, and Cicely gained the advantage of his
self-commendation. There was one thing, though--his father must never
know. The fat would be in the fire then with a vengeance.

Turning over these things in his mind, Dick dropped off into a light
doze, from which he was awakened by the entrance of Walter. Walter wore
a tall hat and a morning coat. It was August and it was very hot, and in
Bond Street he would have worn a flannel suit and a straw hat. But if he
did that here his patients would think that _he_ thought anything good
enough for them. There were penalties attached to the publication of
that list of wedding presents in the _Melbury Park Chronicle and North
London Intelligencer_, and he had been warned of these and sundry other
matters. He was not free of the tiresome side-issues of his profession
even in Melbury Park. "Hullo, Dick, old chap!" he said as he came in
with cheerful alacrity. "Is Cicely here, and what has happened?"

"Hullo, Walter!" said Dick. "Yes, Cicely is here and I have wired to the
governor. She has led us a nice dance, that young woman. But it's all
over now."

"What has she done? Run away with some fellow?"

"That's just what she did do. If I hadn't been pretty quick off the post
she'd have been married to him by this time."

Walter sat down in the chair at his writing-table. His face had grown
rather serious. He looked as if he were prepared to receive the
confidences of a patient.

"Who did she go off with?" he asked.

Dick took a cigarette from the silver box, and lit it. "Mr. Ronald
Mackenzie," he said, as he threw the match into the fireplace.

"Ronald Mackenzie! Where did she pick _him_ up?"

"He picked her up. He was staying at Mountfield."

"I know, but he must have seen her before. He can't have persuaded her
in five minutes."

"Just what I thought. But he did; damn him!" Then he told Walter
everything that had happened, in his easy, leisurely way. "And the great
thing now is to keep it from the governor," he ended up.

"Really, it's pretty strong," said Walter, after a short pause. "Fancy
Cicely! I can't see her doing a thing like that."

"I could have boxed her ears with pleasure when I first heard of it,"
said Dick. "But somehow I don't feel so annoyed with her now. Poor
little beggar! I suppose it's getting her away from that brute. He'd
frightened her silly. He nearly got her, even when we were there
fighting him."

"But what about poor old Jim?" asked Walter. "It's too bad of her, you
know, Dick. She was engaged to Jim."

"Well, it was a sort of engagement. But I don't blame her much there. If
Jim had gone off and married some other girl I don't know that any of us
would have been very surprised."

"I should."

"Well, you know him better than I do, of course. I must say, when he
told me in the train coming up that he was as much struck on Cicely as
ever, it surprised me. He's a funny fellow."

"He's one of the best," said Walter. "But he keeps his feelings to
himself. He has always talked to me about Cicely, but I know he hasn't
talked to anybody else, because Muriel was just as surprised as you were
when I told her how the land lay."

"He told Mackenzie--that's the odd thing," said Dick.

"Did he?"

"Yes. It makes the beast's action all the worse."

"Well, I don't understand that. Perhaps he had a suspicion and gave him
a warning."

"I don't think so. He let him go off after her on Sunday afternoon, and
didn't think anything of it. However, he's had a shaking up. He won't
let her go now."

"Does he want to marry her still?"

"O Lord, yes, more than ever. That's something to be thankful for. It
will keep the governor quiet if we can hurry it on a bit."

"But he's not to know."

"He knows she ran away here, without bringing any clothes. That's got to
be explained. It's enough for the governor, isn't it?"

"I should think so. Enough to go on with. Didn't Jim want to throttle
that fellow?"

"He did before we got there, but he knew he couldn't do anything. It
would only have come back on Cicely. He behaved jolly well, Jim did. He
didn't take the smallest notice of Mackenzie from first to last, but he
talked to Cicely like a father. _She_ says--_I_ don't say it, mind
you--that it was Jim who got her away from him; she wouldn't have come
for me." Dick laughed. "I dare say we both had something to do with it,"
he said. "I got in a few home truths. I think Mr. Ronald Mackenzie will
be rather sorry he came poaching on our land when he turns it over in
his mind."

"Well," said Walter, rising, as the luncheon bell rang, "it's a funny
business altogether. You must tell me more later. Like a wash, Dick? Is
Cicely going to stay here for a bit?"

"Oh, yes," replied Dick, as they went out of the room. "Muriel says
she'll keep her. We've wired for clothes." He lowered his voice as they
went upstairs. "You must go easy with her a bit, you and Muriel," he
said. "She's been touched on the raw. You'll find her in rather an
excited state."

"Oh, I shan't worry her," said Walter. "But I think she's behaved badly
to Jim all the same."

But Walter's manner towards his erring sister, when they met in the
dining-room, showed no sign of his feelings, if they were resentful on
behalf of his friend. She was there with Muriel when he and Dick came
down. She was pale, and it was plain that she had been crying, but the
parlour-maid was standing by the sideboard, and the two girls were
talking by the window as if they had not just come from a long talk
which had disturbed them both profoundly.

"Well, Cicely," said Walter. "Come to see us at last! You don't look
very fit, but you've come to the right man to cure you." Cicely kissed
him gratefully, and they sat down at the table.

The dining-room was Sheraton--good Sheraton. On the walls were a plain
blue paper and some more prints. The silver and glass on the fresh cloth
and on the sideboard were as bright as possible, for Muriel's
parlour-maid was a treasure. She earned high wages, or she would not
have demeaned herself by going into service at Melbury Park, where,
however, she had a young man. The cook was also a treasure, and the
luncheon she served up would not have disgraced Kencote, where what is
called "a good table" was kept. It was all great fun--to Muriel, and
would have been to Cicely too at any other time. The little house was
beautifully appointed, and "run" more in the style of a little house in
Mayfair than in Melbury Park. Muriel, at any rate, was completely happy
in her surroundings.

They drank their coffee in the veranda outside the drawing-room window.
They could hear the trains and the trams in the distance, and it seemed
to be a favourite pursuit of the youths of Melbury Park to rattle sticks
along the oak fencing of the garden, but otherwise they were shut in in
a little oasis of green and could not be seen or overheard by anybody.
There were certain things to be said, but no one seemed now to wish to
refer to Cicely's escapade, the sharp effect of which had been over-laid
by the ordinary intercourse of the luncheon table.

It was Cicely herself who broke the ice. She asked Dick nervously when
he was going back to Kencote.

"Oh, to-morrow, I think," said Dick. "Nothing to stay up here for."

Muriel said, "Cicely would like Mrs. Clinton to come up. She doesn't
want to ask her in her letter. Will you ask her, Dick?"

Dick hesitated. "Do you want to tell mother--about it?" he asked of
Cicely.

"Yes," she said.

"Well, I think you had much better not. It'll only worry her, and she
need never know."

"I am going to tell her," said Cicely doggedly.

"I wouldn't mind your telling her, if you want to," said Dick, after a
pause, "but it's dangerous. If the governor suspected anything and got
it out of her----"

"Oh, she wouldn't tell Mr. Clinton," said Muriel. "I think Cicely is
quite right to tell her. Don't you, Walter?"

"I suppose so," said Walter. "But I think it's a risk. I quite agree
with Dick. It _must_ be kept from the governor. It's for your own sake,
you know, Cicely."

"None of you boys know mother in the least," said Cicely, in some
excitement. "She's a woman, and so you think she doesn't count at all.
She counts a great deal to me, and I want her."

"All right, my dear," said Walter kindly. "We only want to do what's
best for you. Don't upset yourself. And you're all right with Muriel and
me, you know."

"You're both awfully kind," said Cicely, more calmly, "and so is Dick
now. But I do want mother to come, and I _know_ she wouldn't tell
father."

"I know it too," said Muriel. "I will write to her to-night and ask her;
only we thought Mr. Clinton might make some objection, and you could get
over that, Dick."

"Oh, I'll get over that all right," said Dick. "Very well, she shall
come. Do you want me to tell her anything, Cicely, or leave it all to
you?"

"You can tell her what I did," said Cicely in a low voice.

"All right. I'll break it gently. Now are we all going to Lord's, or are
you two going to stay at home?"

"Cicely is going to lie down," said Muriel, "and I think I will stay at
home and look after her." She threw rather a longing look at Walter. He
didn't often allow himself a half holiday, and she liked to spend them
with him.

"Don't stay for me, Muriel," Cicely besought her. "I shall be perfectly
all right, and I'd really rather be alone."

"No," said Muriel, after another look at Walter. "I'm going to stay at
home." And she wouldn't be moved.

Walter telephoned for his new motor-car and changed his clothes. "Do you
know why Muriel wouldn't come with us?" he asked, when he and Dick were
on their way. "It was because she thought you and I would rather sit in
the pavilion."

"So we would," said Dick, with a laugh. "But she's a trump, that girl."




CHAPTER XIX

THE WHOLE HOUSE UPSET


The twins arose betimes on the morning after Cicely's flight,
determined, as was their custom, to enjoy whatever excitement, legal, or
within limits illegal, was to be wrested from a long new summer day, but
quite unaware that the whole house around them was humming with
excitement already.

For upon Dick's departure the night before the Squire had thrown caution
to the winds, and be-stirred himself, as he said, to get to the bottom
of things. Not content with Mrs. Clinton's report of Miles's statement,
which was simply that she knew nothing, he had "had Miles up" and
cross-examined her himself. He had then had Probin up, the head
coachman, who would have known if Cicely had been driven to the station,
which it was fairly obvious she had not been. He also had Porter the
butler up, more because Porter was always had up if anything went wrong
in the house than because he could be expected to throw any light on
what had happened. And when the groom came back from Mountfield with
Dick's note to Mrs. Clinton, late as it was, he had _him_ up, and sent
him down again to spread his news and his suspicions busily, although he
had been threatened with instant dismissal if he said a word to anybody.

Having thus satisfied himself of what he knew already, that Cicely had
walked to the station and had taken no luggage with her, and having
opened up the necessary channels of information, so that outdoor and
indoor servants alike now knew that Cicely had run away and that her
father was prepared, as the phrase went, to raise Cain about it, the
Squire went up to bed, and breaking his usual healthy custom of going to
sleep immediately he laid his head on his pillow, rated Mrs. Clinton
soundly for not noticing what was going on under her very nose. "I can't
look after everything in the house and out of it too," he ended up. "I
shall be expected to see that the twins change their stockings when they
get their feet wet, next. Good-night, Nina. God bless you."

So, to return to the twins; when the schoolroom maid came to awaken them
in the morning and found them, as was usual, nearly dressed, they
learned, for the first time, what had been happening while they had
slept, all unconscious.

"Why can't you call us in proper time, Hannah?" said Joan, as she came
in. "We told you we wanted our hot water at half-past three, and it has
just struck seven. You'll have to go if you can't get up in time."

Hannah deposited a tray containing two large cups of tea and some
generous slices of bread and butter on a table and said importantly,
"It's no time to joke now, Miss Joan. There's Miss Clinton missing, and
most of us kep' awake half the night wondering what's come of her."

Hannah had not before succeeded in making an impression upon her young
mistresses, but she succeeded now. Joan and Nancy stared at her with
open eyes, and gave her time to heighten her effects as they redounded
to her own importance.

"But I can't stop talking now, miss," she said. "I'll just get your 'ot
water and then I must go and 'elp. Here I stop wasting me time, and
don't know that something hadn't 'appened and I may be wanted."

"You're wanted here," said Joan. "What do you mean--Miss Clinton
missing? Has she gone away?"

"I'll just tell you what I know, Miss Joan," said Hannah, "and then I
must go downstairs and 'elp. I was going along the passage by the room
last night, jest when they was ready to take in dinner, and Mr. Porter
came along and says to me, 'What are _you_ doing here?' Well, of course,
I was struck all of a 'eap, because----"

"Oh, don't let's waste time with her," interrupted Nancy, "let's go and
ask Miss Bird what it's all about."

"Wait a minute, Miss Nancy," cried Hannah. "I was telling you----"

But the twins were at the door. "Lock her in," said Joan. "We shall want
her when we come back." And they locked her in, to the great damage of
her dignity, and went along the passage to the room which had sheltered
Miss Bird's virgin slumbers for nearly thirty years. They were at first
refused admission, but upon Joan's saying in a clear voice outside the
door, "We want to know about Cicely. If you won't tell us we must go and
ask the servants," Miss Bird unlocked the door, and was discovered in a
dressing-gown of pink flannel with her hair in curl papers. The twins
were too eager for news to remark upon these phenomena, and allowed Miss
Bird to get back into bed while they sat at the foot of it to hear her
story.

"Well, you must know some time," said Miss Bird, "and to say that you
will ask the servants is _not_ the way to behave as you know very well
and I am the proper person to come to."

"Well, we have come to you," said Joan, "only you wouldn't let us in.
Now tell us. Has Cicely run away?"

"Really, Joan, that is a most foolish question," said Miss Bird, "to
call it running away to visit Walter and Muriel her _own_ brother and
sister too as you might say and that is all and I suppose it is that
Hannah who has been putting ideas into your head for I came in to see
you last night and you knew nothing but were both in a _sweet_ sleep and
I often think that if you could see yourselves then you would be more
careful how you behave and especially Nancy for it is innocence and
goodness itself and a pity that it can't be so sleeping _and_ waking."

"I've seen Joan asleep and she looked like a stuck pig," said Nancy.
"But what _has_ happened, starling darling? Do tell us. Has Cicely just
gone up to stay with Muriel? Is that all?"

"It is very inconsiderate of Cicely," said Miss Bird, "nobody could
_possibly_ have objected to her going to stay with Muriel and Miles
would have packed her clothes and gone up to London with her to look
after her and to go by herself without a _word_ and not take a _stitch_
to put on her back and Mr. Clinton in the greatest anxiety and very
naturally annoyed for with all the horses in the stable to walk to
Bathgate in this heat for from Kencote she did _not_ go one of the men
was sent there to inquire I wonder at her doing such a thing."

"Keep the facts in your head as they come, Joan," said Nancy. "She
didn't tell anybody she was going. She didn't take any clothes. She
walked to Bathgate, I suppose, to put them off the scent."

"But whatever did she do it for?" asked Joan. "Something must have upset
her. It is running away, you know. I wish she had told us about it."

"We'd have gone with her," said Nancy. "She must have done it for a
lark."

"Oh, don't be a fool," said Joan. This was one of the twins' formulae. It
meant, "There _are_ serious things in life," and was more often used by
Joan than by Nancy.

"Joan how often am I to tell you not to use that expression?" said Miss
Bird, "I may speak to the winds of Heaven for all the effect it has
don't you know that it says he that calleth his brother thou fool shall
be in danger of hell fire?"

"Nancy isn't my brother, and I'll take the risk," said Joan. "Didn't
Cicely tell mother that she was going?"

"No she did not and for that I blame her," said Miss Bird. "Mrs. Clinton
came to me in the schoolroom as I was finishing my dinner and although
her calmness is a lesson to all of us she was upset as I could see and
did my _very_ best to persuade her not to worry."

"It's too bad of Cicely," said Joan. "What are they going to do now?"

"Your brother Dick went up to London by the late train and a telegram
was to be sent the _first_ thing this morning to relieve all anxiety
though with Muriel no harm can come to Cicely if she got there safely
which I hope and trust may be the case although to go about London by
herself is a thing that she knows she would not be allowed to do, but
there I'm saying a great deal too much to you Joan 'n Nancy you must not
run away with ideas in your head Cicely no doubt has a _very_ good
reason for what she has done and she is _years_ older than both of you
and you must not ask troublesome questions when you go downstairs the
only way you can help is by holding your tongues and being good girls."

"Oh, of course, that's the moral of it," said Nancy. "If the roof were
to fall in all we should have to do would be to be good girls and it
would get stuck on again. Joan, I'm hungry; I must go and finish my
bread and butter."

"Thank you, starling darling, for telling us," said Joan, rising from
her seat on the bed. "It seems very odd, but I dare say we shall get to
the bottom of it somehow. Of course we shan't be able to do any lessons
to-day."

"Oh, indeed Joan the very _best_ thing we can do to show we----" began
Miss Bird, but the twins were already out of the room.

They had to wait some little time before they could satisfy their
curiosity any further, because, in spite of their threat to Miss Bird,
and the excellent relations upon which they stood with all the servants
in the house, they were not in the habit of discussing family affairs
with them, and this was a family affair of somewhat portentous bearings.
They kept Hannah busy about their persons and refused to let her open
her mouth until they were quite dressed, and when they had let
themselves loose on the house for the day paid a visit to Cicely's room.

Its emptiness and the untouched bed sobered them a little. "What _did_
she do it for?" exclaimed Joan, as they stood before the dressing-table
upon which all the pretty silver toilette articles lying just as usual
seemed to give the last unaccountable touch of reality to the sudden
flight. "Nancy, do you think it could have been because she didn't want
to marry Jim?"

"Or because Jim didn't want to marry her," suggested Nancy.

But neither suggestion carried conviction. They looked about them and
had nothing to say. Their sister, who in some ways was so near to them,
had in this receded immeasurably from their standpoint. They were face
to face with one of those mysterious happenings amongst grown ups of
which the springs were outside the world as they knew it. And Cicely was
grown up, and she and they, although there was so much that they had in
common, were different, not only in the amount but in the quality of
their experience of life.

They always went in to their mother at eight o'clock, but were not
allowed to go before. They did not want to go out of doors while so much
was happening within, nor to stay in their schoolroom, which was the
last place to which news would be brought; so they perambulated the hall
and the downstairs rooms and got in the way of the maids who were busy
with them. And at a quarter to eight were surprised by their father's
entrance into the library, where they happened to be sitting for the
moment.

Their surprise was no greater than his, nor was it so effectively
expressed. He saw at once, and said so, that they were up to some
mischief, and he would not have it, did they understand that?

"We were only sitting talking, father," said Joan. "There was nowhere
else to go."

"I won't have this room used as a common sitting-room," said the Squire.
"Now go, and don't let me catch you in here again."

The twins went out into the big hall. "Why couldn't you cry a little at
being spoke to like that?" said Nancy. "He would have told us
everything."

"That's worn out," replied Joan. "The last time I did it he only said,
'For God's sake don't begin to snivel.' Besides I was rather
frightened."

Just then the Squire opened his door suddenly. The twins both jumped.
But he only said, "Oh, you're there. Come in here, and shut the door."

They went in. "Now look here," said the Squire, "you are old enough now
to look at things in a sensible light. I suppose you have heard that
your sister has taken it upon herself to take herself off without a with
your leave or by your leave and has turned the whole house
topsy-turvy--eh?"

"Yes, father," said the twins dutifully.

"Who told you--eh?"

"Miss Bird, father."

"I wish Miss Bird would mind her own business," said the Squire. "What
did she tell you for?"

"Because she wanted us to be good girls, and not worry you with
questions," replied Nancy.

"Oh! Well, that's all right," said the Squire, mollified.

"Now what I want to know is--did Cicely say anything to either of you
about going away like this?"

"Oh no, father," replied the twins, with one voice.

"Well, I'm determined to get to the bottom of it. No daughter of mine
shall behave in that way in this house. Here's everything a girl can
want to make her happy--it's the ingratitude of it that I can't put up
with, and so Miss Cicely shall find when she condescends to come home,
as she shall do if I have to go to fetch her myself."

Neither of the twins saw her way to interpose a remark. They stood in
front of their father as they stood in front of Miss Bird in the
schoolroom when they "did repetition."

"Do either of you know if Cicely wasn't contented or anything of that
sort?" inquired the Squire.

"She has been rather off her oats since Muriel was married," said Joan.

"Eh! What's that!" exclaimed the Squire, bending his heavy brows on her
with a terrific frown. "Do you think this is a time to play the
fool--with me? Off her oats! How dare you speak like that? We shall have
you running away next."

Joan's face began to pucker up. "I didn't mean anything, father," she
said in a tremulous voice. "I heard you say it the other day."

"There, there, child, don't cry," said the Squire. "What I may say and
what you may say are two very different things. Off her oats, eh? Well,
she'd better get _on_ her oats again as quick as possible. Now, I won't
have you children talking about this, do you understand?--or Miss Bird
either. It's a most disagreeable thing to have happened, and if it gets
out I shall be very much annoyed. I don't want the servants to know, and
I trust you two not to go about wagging your tongues, do you hear?"

"O father, we shouldn't think of saying anything about it to anybody,"
exclaimed Nancy.

"Eh? What? There's nothing to make a mystery about, you know. Cicely has
gone up to London to visit Walter and Muriel. No reason why anybody
should know more than that. There _isn't_ any more to know, except what
concerns me--and I won't have it. Now don't interrupt me any more. Go
off and behave yourselves and don't get in the way. You've got the whole
house to yourselves and I don't want you here. Ring the bell, Joan, I
want Porter to send a telegram."

The twins departed. They could now go up to their mother. "Don't want
the servants to know!" said Nancy as they went upstairs. "Is it the
camel or the dromedary that sticks its head in the sand?"

"The ostrich," said Joan. "It seems to me there's a great deal of fuss
about nothing. Cicely wanted to see her dear Muriel, so she went and
_saw_ her. I call it a touching instance of friendship."

"And fidelity," added Nancy.

Their view of the matter was not contradicted by anything that Mrs.
Clinton did or said when they went in to her. She was already dressed
and moving about the room, putting things to rights. It was a very big
room, so big that even with the bed not yet made nor the washstand set
in order, it did not look like a room that had just been slept in. It
was over the dining-room and had three windows, before one of which was
a table with books and writing materials on it. There were big,
old-fashioned, cane-seated and backed easy-chairs, with hard cushions
covered with chintz, other tables, a chintz-covered couch, a bookcase
with diamond-paned glass doors. On the broad marble mantelpiece were an
Empire clock and some old china, and over it a long gilt mirror with a
moulded device of lions drawing chariots and cupids flying above them.
On the walls, hung with a faded paper of roses, were water-colour
drawings, crayon portraits, some fine line engravings of well-known
pictures, a few photographs in Oxford frames. The bedroom furniture
proper was of heavy mahogany, a four-post bed hung with white dimity, a
wardrobe as big as a closet. Nothing was modern except the articles on
the dressing-table, nothing was very old.

Never later than eight o'clock the Squire would rise and go into his
dressing-room, and when Mrs. Clinton had dressed and in her orderly
fashion tidied her room she would sit at her table and read until it was
time to go down to breakfast. Whenever he got up earlier she got up
earlier too, and had longer to spend by the window open to the summer
morning, or in the winter with her books on the table lit by candles.
They were for the most part devotional books. But once the Squire had
come in to her very early one October morning when he was going
cub-hunting and found her reading _The Divine Comedy_ with a translation
and an Italian dictionary and grammar. He had talked of it downstairs as
a good joke: "Mother reading Dante--what?" and she had put away those
books.

She was a little paler than usual this morning, but the twins noticed no
difference in her manner. She kissed them and said, "You have heard that
Cicely went to London yesterday to stay with Muriel. Father is anxious
about her, and I am rather anxious too, but there is nothing really to
worry about. We must all behave as usual, and two of us at least mustn't
give any cause of complaint to-day."

She said this with a smile. It was nothing but a repetition of Miss
Bird's exhortation to hold their tongues and be good girls, but they
embraced her, and made fervent promises of good behaviour, which they
fully intended to keep. Then they read something for a few minutes with
their mother and left her to her own reading and her own thoughts.

The morning post brought no letter from Cicely, and again the Squire
remained standing while he read prayers. Immediately after breakfast he
went down to the Rectory, ostensibly to warn Tom and Grace not to talk,
actually to have an opportunity of talking himself to a fresh relay of
listeners. He expressed his surprise in the same terms as he had already
used, and said repeatedly that he wouldn't have it. Then, as it was
plain that, whether he would or no, he already had had it, he rather
weakly asked the Rector what he would do if he were in his place.

"Well, Edward," said the Rector thoughtfully, "of course it is very
tiresome and all that, and Cicely ought not to have gone off in that way
without any warning. Still, we don't know what is going on in girls'
minds, do we? Cicely is a sensible girl enough, and I think when she
comes back if you were to leave it to Nina to find out what there was to
make her go off suddenly like that--well, how would that be, eh?"

"I can't understand it," said the Squire for the twentieth time. "Nina
knows no more about it all than I do. I can't help blaming her for that,
because----"

"O Edward," said Mrs. Beach, "whoever is to blame, it is not Nina.
Cicely is devoted to her, and so are the dear twins, for all their
general harum-scarumness."

"Well, I was going to say," said the Squire, who had been going to say
something quite different, "that Nina is very much upset about this. She
takes everything calmly enough, as you know, but she's a good mother to
her children--I will say that for her--and it's enough to upset any
woman when her daughter behaves to her in this monstrous fashion."

"How do you think it would be," asked the Rector, "if Nina were to go up
to London and have a talk with Cicely there?"

The Squire hummed and ha'd. "I don't see the sense of making more fuss
about it than has been made already," he said. "I told Nina this
morning, 'If you go posting off to London,' I said, 'everybody will
think that something dreadful has happened. Much better stop where you
are.'"

"If she wants to go," said Mrs. Beach, "I think it would be the very
best thing. She would bring Cicely to a right frame of mind--nobody
could do it better; and you would be at home, Edward, to see that
nothing was done here to complicate matters. I think that would be very
important, and nobody could do that but you."

"So you think it would be a good idea if I let Nina go up to her?" said
the Squire.

The Rector and Mrs. Beach both thought it would be a very good idea.

"Well," said the Squire, "I thought perhaps it would, but I hadn't quite
made up my mind about it. I thought we'd better wait, at any rate, till
we got an answer to my wire to Walter. And that reminds me--I'd better
be getting back. Well, good-bye, Tom, good-bye, my dear Grace. Of course
I needn't ask either of _you_ not to let this go any further."

The non-arrival of an answer to his message had a cumulative effect upon
the Squire's temper during the morning. At half-past eleven o'clock he
gained some temporary relief to his discomfort by despatching another
one, and did not entirely recover his balance until Dick's telegram
arrived about luncheon time. Then he calmed down suddenly, joked with
the twins over the table and told Miss Bird that she was getting younger
every day. He also gave Mrs. Clinton her marching orders. "I think you
had better go up, Nina," he said, "and see what the young monkey has
been after. I'm excessively annoyed with her, and you can tell her so;
but if she really _is_ with Walter and Muriel I don't suppose any harm
has come to her. I must say it's a relief. Still, I'm very angry about
it, and so she'll find out when she comes home."

So another telegram was despatched, and Mrs. Clinton went up to London
by the afternoon train accompanied by the discreet and faithful Miles.




CHAPTER XX

MRS. CLINTON


That night Cicely and her mother sat late together in Mrs. Clinton's
bedroom. Mrs. Clinton was in a low easy-chair and Cicely on a stool at
her feet. Outside was the continuous and restless echo of London pushing
up to the very feet of its encircling hills, but they were as far
removed from it in spirit as if they had been at home in still and
spacious Kencote.

Mrs. Clinton had arrived at Muriel's house in time for dinner. Walter
had come home from Lord's soon enough to meet her at the station and
bring her out in his motor-car. He had made Miles sit in front with his
servant and he had told his mother what Dick would have told her if she
had waited to come to Cicely until after he had returned to Kencote. She
had listened to him in silence as he unfolded his story, making no
comment even when he told her of Dick's opening her daughter's letter to
her; but when he told her that Cicely had asked that she should be sent
for she had clasped her hands and said, "Oh, I am so glad."

Muriel had met her at the door, but Cicely had stayed in the
drawing-room, pale and downcast. She had gone in to her alone and kissed
her and said, "I am glad you wanted your mother, my darling. You shall
tell me everything to-night when we go upstairs, and we won't think
about it any more until then."

So the evening had passed almost pleasantly. At times even Cicely must
have forgotten what lay behind and before her, for she had laughed and
talked with a sort of feverish gaiety; only after such outbursts she had
grown suddenly silent and trembled on the verge of tears. Walter had
watched her and sent her upstairs before ten o'clock, and her mother had
gone up with her and helped her to undress as if she had been a child
again. Then she had put on her dressing-gown and gone to Mrs. Clinton's
room, and resting her head on her mother's knee had told her everything
with frequent tears and many exclamations at her own madness and folly.

It was more difficult to tell even than she had thought. When all was
said about her discontent and the suddenness with which she had been
urged towards a way of escape from surroundings that now seemed
inexpressibly dear to her, there remained that inexcusable fault of
leaving her mother without a word, for a man whom she couldn't even
plead that she loved. With her mother's hand caressing her hair it
seemed to her incredible that she could have done such a thing. She
begged her forgiveness again and again, but each time that she received
loving words in answer she felt that it must be impossible that they
could ever be to one another again what they had been.

At last Mrs. Clinton said, "You must not think too much of that, my
darling. You were carried away; you hardly knew what you were doing. It
is all wiped out in my mind by your wanting me directly you came to
yourself. We won't talk of it any more. But what we ought to talk of,
Cicely dear, and try to see our way through, is the state of mind you
had got into, which made what happened to you possible, and gave this
man his opportunity. I think that six months ago, although he might have
tried to behave in the same way, you would only have been frightened;
you would have come straight to me and told me."

"Oh yes, I should, mother," she cried.

"Then what was it that has come between us? You have told me that you
were discontented at home, but couldn't you have told me that before?"

Cicely was silent. Why hadn't she told her mother, to whom she had been
used to tell everything, of her discontent? A sudden blush ran down from
her cheeks to her neck. It was because she had judged her mother, as
well as her father and brothers, her mother who had accepted the life
that she had kicked against and had bent a meek head to the whims of her
master. She couldn't tell her that.

"The thing that decided me," she began hesitatingly, "when I was sitting
in my room that night not knowing what I was going to do, I heard father
and Dick talking as they came up, and they had decided to turn Aunt
Ellen and Aunt Laura out of the house they had lived in nearly all their
lives and let it to those MacLeod people. It seemed to me so--so selfish
and--and horrible."

"You cannot have heard properly," said Mrs. Clinton. "It was what they
had decided not to do. Father woke me up to tell me so. But even if----I
don't understand, Cicely dear."

"O mother, can't you see?" cried Cicely. "If I was wrong about that, and
I'm very glad I was, it is just what they _might_ have done. They had
talked it all over again and again, and they couldn't make up their
minds--and before us!"

"Before us?"

"Yes. We are nobodies. If father were to die Dick would turn us out of
the house as a matter of course. He would have everything; we should
have nothing."

Mrs. Clinton was clearly bewildered. "Dick would not turn us out of the
house unless he were married," she said, "and we should not have
nothing. We should be very well off. But surely, Cicely, it is
impossible that you can have been thinking of money matters in that way!
You cannot be giving me a right impression of what has been in your
mind."

"No, it isn't that," said Cicely. "I don't know anything about money
matters, and I haven't thought about them--not in that way. But father
and the boys do talk about money; a lot seems to depend upon it, and I
can't help seeing that they spend a great deal of money on whatever they
want to-do, and we have to take what's left."

"Still I don't understand, dear," said Mrs. Clinton. "Certainly it costs
a great deal to keep up a house like Kencote; but it is our home; we are
all happy there together."

"Are you quite happy there, mother?" asked Cicely.

Mrs. Clinton put by the question. "You know, of course," she went on,
"that we are well off, a good deal better off than most families who
have big properties to keep up. For people in our position we live
simply, and if--if I were to outlive father, and you and the children
were still unmarried, we should live together--not in such a big house
as Kencote--but with everything we could desire, or that would be good
for us."

"And if we lived like that," said Cicely, "wouldn't you think some
things good for us that we don't have, mother? If we had horses,
wouldn't you let me have one to ride? Wouldn't you take me to London
sometimes, not to go to smart parties, but to see something of
interesting people as Angela and Beatrice do at Aunt Emmeline's, and see
plays and pictures and hear music? Wouldn't you take us abroad
sometimes? Should we have to live the whole year round in the country,
doing nothing and knowing nothing?"

Mrs. Clinton's hand stopped its gentle, caressing movement, and then
went on again. During the moment of pause she faced a crisis as vital as
that which Cicely had gone through. She had had just those desires in
her youth and she had stifled them. Could they be stifled--would it be
right to stifle them--in the daughter who had, perhaps, inherited them
from her?

"You asked me just now," she said, "whether I was happy. Yes, I am
happy. I have my dear ones around me, I have my religion, I have my
place in the world to fill. I should be very ungrateful if I were not
happy. But if you ask me whether the life I lead is exactly what it
would be if it rested only with me to order it--I think you know that it
isn't?"

"But why shouldn't it be, mother? Other women do the things they like,
and father and the boys do exactly what they like. If you have wanted
the same things that I want now, I say you ought to have had them."

"If I had had them, Cicely, I should not have found out one very great
thing--that happiness does not come from these things; it does not come
from doing what you like, even if what you like is good in itself. I
might almost say that it comes from not doing what you like. That is the
lesson that I have learned of life, and I am thankful that it has been
taught me."

Cicely was silent for a time. She seemed to see her mother, dear as she
had been to her, in a new light, with a halo of uncomplaining
self-sacrifice round her. Her face burned as she remembered how that
morning in church, and since, she had thought of her as one who had
bartered her independence for a life of dull luxury and stagnation. It
came upon her with a flash of insight that her mother was a woman of
strong intelligence, who had, consciously, laid her intellectual gifts
on the altar of duty, and found her reward in doing so. The thought
found ineffective utterance.

"Of course it is from you that Walter gets his brains," she said.

Mrs. Clinton did not reply to this. "You are very young to learn the
lesson," she said. "I am not sure--I don't think it is a lesson that
every one need learn--that every woman need learn. I should like you to
make use of your brains--if that is really what you have been unhappy
about, Cicely. But is it so, my dear?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Cicely. "I suppose not. If I had wanted to
learn things, there are plenty of books at Kencote and I had plenty of
time. It was in London--it was just one of the things. First I was
jealous--I suppose it was that--because Dick and Humphrey had always had
such a good time and seemed to belong to everything, and I was so out of
it all. I still think that very unfair. Then when I went to Aunt
Emmeline's and saw what a good time Angela and Beatrice had in a
different sort of way--I wanted that too. And I think _that_ is unfair.
When I talked to them--I like them very much, but I suppose they wanted
to show how much better off they were than I am--the only thing they
seemed to think I was lucky in was my allowance, and even then they said
they didn't see how I could spend it, as I never went anywhere. I felt
so _ignorant_ beside them. Once Angela said something to me in
French--the maid was in the room--and I didn't understand her. I was
ashamed. Mother, I think I ought to have had the chances that Angela and
Beatrice have had."

Mrs. Clinton listened with a grave face. How could she not have believed
most of it to be true? She knew that, in marrying her, her husband had
been considered to be marrying rather beneath him. And yet, her
brother's daughters were--there was no doubt of it--better fitted to
take a place, even a high place, in the world than her own daughter. Her
husband could never have seen it, but she knew that it was true. Her
younger niece was already engaged to be married to a man of some mark in
the world, and she would be an intellectual companion to him. If Cicely
had caught the fancy of such a man she would have had everything to
learn. Even in this deplorable danger through which she had just passed,
it was her ignorance that had laid her open to it. Perhaps her very
ignorance had attracted the man to her, but he certainly would not have
been able so to bend her to his will if she had lived more in the world.

"There is one thing, darling," said Mrs. Clinton, "that we have not
spoken of. I don't want to complicate the troubles you are passing
through, but it has a bearing on what you have been saying."

"You mean about Jim," said Cicely courageously.

"Yes. Father and I have both been very glad of what we have always
looked upon as an engagement, although it could not be a recognised one
when--when it was first mooted. You must remember, dear, that we are
country people. It seems to us natural that our daughters should marry
country gentlemen--should marry into the circle of our friends and
neighbours. And the prospect of your living near us has always given us
great pleasure. You seemed to me quite happy at home, and I thought you
would have the best chance of happiness in your married life in another
home not unlike ours. I thought you were well fitted to fill that place.
I did not think of you--I don't think it ever crossed my mind to think
of you--as wanting a different life, the sort of life that your cousins
lead, for instance."

"Jim was very good to me, this morning," Cicely said, in a low voice. "I
love him for it. Of course I do love him, in a way, just as I love Dick
or Walter. I was very much ashamed at having left _him_ like that, for
somebody who--who isn't as good as he is. Jim _is_ good, in a way a man
ought to be. But, mother--I can't marry Jim now, after this."

"It is too soon to talk of it, or perhaps even to think of it. And you
have no right to marry anybody unless you love him as a woman should
love her husband, not as you love your brothers. We need not talk of
marriage now at all. But, my dearest, I want you to be happy when you
come home again. If you come back to think that you are badly used,
that----"

"Oh, but, mother," Cicely interrupted her, "that is all over. I have
only been trying to tell you what I did feel. I never thought of the
other side at all. Last night I lay awake and simply longed for home. I
have been very ungrateful. I love Kencote, and the country and
everything I do there, really. I never knew before how much I loved it.
It was a sort of madness that came over me."

"I am glad you feel like that. You have a very beautiful home, and you
are surrounded by those who love you. You _ought_ to be able to make
yourself happy at home, even if you have not got everything that you
might like to have. Can you do so?"

"Yes, mother, I can. I was happy enough before."

"Before you went to London."

"Oh, yes, I suppose it was that. I must be very foolish to let a visit
to London upset me. I don't want to see London again now for a long
time. O mother, I have been very wicked. You won't be different to me,
will you?"

She buried her face in her mother's lap. She was overwrought and
desperately tired. Mrs. Clinton felt that except for having done
something towards healing the wound made by her late experience she had
accomplished little. Cicely's eyes had been partially opened, and it was
not in her mother's power to close them again. It was only natural that
she should now turn for a time eagerly towards the quiet life she had
been so eager to run away from. But when her thoughts had settled down
again, when weeks and months had divided her from her painful awakening,
and its memory had worn thin, would she then be content, or would these
desires, which no one could say were unreasonable, gain strength again
to unsettle and dispirit her? It was only too likely. And if they did,
what chance was there of satisfying them?

Mrs. Clinton thought over these things when she had tucked Cicely up in
her bed and sat by her side until she was asleep. Cicely had begged her
to do this, Cicely, her mother's child again, who, the night before had
lain awake hour after hour, alone, trembling at the unknown and longing
for the dear familiar. There was deep thankfulness in the mother's heart
as she watched over her child restored to her love and protection, but
there was sadness too, and some fear of the future, which was not
entirely in her hands.

Cicely was soon asleep. Mrs. Clinton gently disengaged the hand she had
been holding, stood for a time looking down upon her, fondly but rather
sadly, and crept out of the room. It was nearly one o'clock, so long had
their confidences lasted, but as she came downstairs, for Cicely's room
was on the second floor, Walter came out of his bedroom dressed to go
out.

"Hullo, mother!" he said. "Not in bed yet! I've been called up. Child
with croup. I don't suppose I shall be long, and Muriel is going down to
make me some soup. If you'd like a yarn with her----"

Muriel came out in her dressing-gown. "I said I would always make him
soup when he was called out at night," she said, "and this is the first
time. I'm a good doctor's wife, don't you think so, Mrs. Clinton? Is
Cicely asleep?"

"Yes, I have just left her. I will come down with you, dear, and help
you make Walter's soup."

So they went down together and when they had done their work, bending
together over a gas stove in the kitchen, which was the home of more
black beetles than was altogether desirable, although it was otherwise
clean and bright and well-furnished, they sat by the dining-room table
awaiting Walter's return.

There was sympathy between Mrs. Clinton and her daughter-in-law, who
recognised her fine qualities and loved her for them, privately thinking
that she was a woman ill-used by fate and her husband. Mrs. Graham
thought so too, but she and Mrs. Clinton had little in common, and in
spite of mutual esteem, could hardly be called friends. But the tie
which had bound Muriel to Kencote all her life had depended almost as
much upon Mrs. Clinton as upon Cicely, and until the last few months
more than it had upon Walter. They could talk together knowing that each
would understand the other, and Muriel's downrightness did not offend
Mrs. Clinton.

She plunged now into the middle of things. "You know it is Jim I am
thinking of, Mrs. Clinton," she said, "now that this extraordinary
business is over. I want to know where Jim comes in."

"I am afraid, my dear," said Mrs. Clinton, with a smile, "that poor Jim
has come in very little."

"Did you know," asked Muriel, "that Jim was head over ears in love with
Cicely, or did you think, like everybody else, that he was slack about
it?"

Mrs. Clinton thought for a moment. "I have never thought of him as head
over ears in love with Cicely," she said.

"And I didn't either, till Walter told me. But he is. He behaved like a
brick to-day. Dick told Walter. And Cicely told me too. It was Jim who
got her away from that man--the horrible creature! How can a man be such
a brute, Mrs. Clinton?"

"I don't want to talk about him, Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton quietly. "He
has come into our life and he has gone out again. I hope we shall never
see him again."

"If I ever see him," said Muriel, "nothing shall prevent my telling him
what I think of him. How Cicely could! Poor darling, she doesn't know
how she could herself, now. She told me that she saw him as he was
beside Jim and Dick. He isn't a gentleman, for all the great things he
has done, and somehow that little fact seemed to have escaped her until
then. Don't you think it is rather odd that it matters so tremendously
to women like us whether the men we live with are gentlemen or not, and
yet we are so liable at first to make mistakes about them?"

Mrs. Clinton was not quite equal to the discussion of a general
question. "It would matter to any one brought up as Cicely has been,"
she said, "or you. Can you tell me exactly what you mean when you say
that Jim is head over ears in love with Cicely? I don't think he has
shown it to her."

"Nobody quite knows Jim, except Walter," replied Muriel. "I don't, and
mother doesn't; and dear father never did. I suppose there is not much
doubt about his being rather slow. Slow and sure is just the phrase to
fit him. He is sure of himself when he makes up his mind about a thing,
and I suppose he was sure of Cicely. He was just content to wait. You
know, I'm afraid Walter thinks that Cicely has behaved very badly to
him."

"Do you think so?" asked Mrs. Clinton.

Muriel hesitated. "I think what Walter does," she said, rather doggedly.
"But I don't feel it so much. I love Cicely, and I am very sorry for
her."

"Why are you sorry for her?"

"Oh, well, one could hardly help being after what she has gone through."

"Only that, Muriel?"

Muriel hesitated again. "I don't think she has had quite a fair chance,"
she said.

"She has had the same chances that you have had."

"Not quite, I think," said Muriel. She spoke with her head down and a
face rather flushed, as if she was determined to go through with
something unpleasant. "I'm not as clever as she is, but if I had
been--if I had wanted the sort of things that she wants--I should have
had them."

"I think she could have had them, if she had really wanted them," said
Mrs. Clinton quietly. "I think I should have seen that she did have
them."

"Oh, dear Mrs. Clinton, don't think I'm taking it on myself to blame
you. You know I wouldn't do that. But I must say what I think. Life is
desperately dull for a girl at houses like Kencote or Mountfield."

"Kencote and Mountfield?"

"Well, don't be angry with me if I say it is much more dull at Kencote
than at Mountfield. Cicely isn't even allowed to hunt. I was, and yet I
was glad enough to get away from it, although I love country life, and
so does Walter. We never see anybody, we never go anywhere. I am heaps
and heaps happier in this little house of my own than I was at
Mountfield."

"Muriel," said Mrs. Clinton "what is it that Cicely wants? You and she
talk of the same things. First it is one thing and then it is another.
First it is that she has had no chances of learning. What has she ever
shown that she wants to learn? Then it is that she does not go away, and
does not see new faces. Is that a thing of such importance that the want
of it should lead to what has happened? Then it is that she is not
allowed to hunt! I will not add to Cicely's trouble now by rebuking
these desires. Only the first of them could have any weight with me, and
I do not think that has ever been a strong desire, or is now, for any
reason that is worth taking into consideration. But the plain truth of
the whole trouble is that Cicely had her mind upset by her visit to
London two months ago. _You_ should not encourage her in her discontent.
Her only chance of happiness is to see where her duty lies and to gauge
the amusements that she cannot have at their true value."

"I haven't encouraged her," said Muriel, "I said much the same as you
have when she first talked to me. I told her she had had her head
turned. But, all the same, I think there is something in what she says,
and at any rate, she has felt it so strongly as nearly to spoil her life
in trying to get away from it all. She'll be pleased enough to get home
now, if--if--well, excuse my saying it, but--if Mr. Clinton will let her
alone--and yet, it will all come back on her when she has got used to
being at home. Do you know what I think, Mrs. Clinton? I think the only
thing that will give her back to herself now is for her to marry Jim as
quickly as possible."

"But Kencote and Mountfield both are desperately dull for a girl!"

Muriel laughed, "She wouldn't find Mountfield so if she really loved
Jim. I don't know whether she does or not. She won't hear of him now."

Mrs. Clinton was silent for a time. Then she said slowly, "It was Jim
who rescued her to-day from a great danger. I think it is only Jim who
can rescue her from herself."




CHAPTER XXI

CICELY'S RETURN


"When Cicely comes, send her in to me at once," said the Squire, with
the air of a man who was going to take a matter in hand.

Cicely, convoyed by the reliable Miles, was returning to Kencote after
having stayed with Muriel for a fortnight. Mrs. Clinton had left her at
Melbury Park after a three days' visit.

"And I won't have the children meeting her, or anything of that sort,"
added the Squire. "She is not coming home in triumph. You can go to the
door, Nina, and send her straight in to me. We'll get this business put
right once for all."

Mrs. Clinton said nothing, but went out of the room. She could have
small hopes that her husband would succeed when she had failed in
putting the business right. She told herself now that she had failed.
During her many talks with Cicely, although she had been able, with her
love and wisdom, to soothe the raw shame that had come upon her daughter
when she had looked back in cold blood to her flight with Mackenzie, she
had not been able to do away with the feeling of resentment with which
Cicely had come to view her home life. Her weapons had turned back upon
herself. Neither of them had been able to say to each other exactly what
was in their mind, and because Cicely had to stay herself with some
reason for her action, which with her father, at any rate, must be
defended somehow, she had fallen back upon the causes of her discontent
and held to them even against her mother. And there was enough truth in
them to make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to combat her attitude,
without saying, what she could not say, that it was the duty of every
wife and every daughter to do as she had done, and rigidly sink her own
personality where it might clash with the smallest wish or action of her
husband. She claimed to have gained her own happiness in doing so, but
the doctrine of happiness through such self-sacrifice was too hard a one
for a young girl to receive. She had gained Cicely's admiration and a
more understanding love from the self-revelation which in some sort she
had made, but she had not availed to make her follow her example, and
could not have done so without holding it up as the one right course.
Cicely must fight her own battle with her father, and whichever of them
proved the victor no good could be expected to come of it. She was firm
in her conviction now that in Jim Graham's hands lay the only immediate
chance of happiness for her daughter. But Jim had held quite aloof. No
word had been heard from him, and no one had seen him since he had
parted with Dick on the evening after their journey to London, when they
had dined together and Jim had said he would bide his chance. If he were
to sink back now into what had seemed his old apathy, he would lose
Cicely again and she would lose her present chance of happiness.

The twins, informed by their mother that they must not go to the station
to meet Cicely, or even come down into the hall, but that she would come
up to them when she had seen her father, of course gathered, if they had
not gathered it before, that their elder sister was coming home in
disgrace, and spent their leisure time in devising methods to show that
they did not share in the disapprobation; in which they were alternately
encouraged and thwarted by Miss Bird, whose tender affection for Cicely
warred with her fear of the Squire's displeasure.

Mrs. Clinton was in the hall when the carriage drove up. Cicely came in,
on her face an expression of mixed determination and timidity, and her
mother drew her into the morning-room. "Father wants to see you at once,
darling," she said. "You must be good. If you can make him understand
ever so little you know he will be kind."

It was doubtful if this hurried speech would help matters at all, and
there was no time for more, for the Squire was at his door asking the
servants where Miss Clinton was, for he wanted to see her at once.

"I am here, father," said Cicely, going out into the hall again.

"I want you in here," said the Squire. They went into his room and the
door was shut, leaving Mrs. Clinton alone outside.

The Squire marched up to the empty fireplace and took his stand with his
back to it. Cicely sat down in one of the big chairs, which seemed to
disconcert him for a moment.

"I don't know whether you have come home expecting to be welcomed as if
nothing had happened," he began.

"No, I don't expect that, father," said Cicely.

"Oh! Well now, what is the meaning of it? That's what I want to know. I
have been pretty patient, I think. You have had your fling for over a
fortnight, the whole house has been upset and I've said nothing. Now I
want to get to the bottom of it. Because if you think that you can
behave in that way"--here followed a vivid summary of the way in which
Cicely had behaved--"you are very much mistaken." The Squire was now
fairly launched. It only rested with Cicely to keep him going with a
word every now and then, for she knew that until he had wrought himself
into a due state of indignation and then given satisfactory vent to it,
nothing she could say would have any effect at all.

"I am very sorry, father," she said. "I know it was wrong of me, and I
won't do it again."

This was all that was wanted. "Won't do it again?" echoed the Squire.
"No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that." He then went
on to bring home to her the enormity of her offence, which seemed to
have consisted chiefly in upsetting the whole house, which he wouldn't
have, and so on. But when he had repeated all he had to say twice, and
most of it three or four times, he suddenly took his seat in the chair
opposite to her and said in quite a different tone, "What on earth made
you do it, Cicely?" and her time had come.

"I was not happy at home, father," she said quietly.

This set the Squire off on another oration, tending to show that it was
positively wicked to talk like that. There wasn't a girl in England who
had more done for her. He himself spent his days and nights chiefly in
thinking what he could do for the happiness of his children, and the
same might be said of their mother. He enumerated the blessings Cicely
enjoyed, amongst which the amount of money spent upon keeping up a place
like Kencote bulked largely. When he had gone over the field a second
time, and picked up the gleanings left over from his sheaves of oratory,
he asked her, apparently as a matter of kindly curiosity, what she had
to grumble about.

She told him dispiritedly, leaving him time after each item of her
discontent to put her in the wrong.

Item: She had nothing to do at home.

He said amongst other things that he had in that very room a manuscript
volume compiled by her great-great-grandmother full of receipts and so
forth, which he intended to get published some day to show what women
could do in a house if they really did what they ought.

Item: She hadn't been properly educated.

That was wicked nonsense, and he wondered at a daughter of his talking
such trash. In the course of further remarks he said that when all the
girls in the board schools could play the piano and none of them could
cook, he supposed the Radicals would be satisfied.

Item: There were a great many horses in the stable and she was not
allowed to ride one of them.

Did she think she had gone the right way to work to have horses given
her, bolting out of the house without a with your leave or a by your
leave, etc.? Had her six great-aunts ever wanted horses to ride? Hunting
he would not have. He might be old-fashioned, he dared say he was, but
to see a woman tearing about the country, etc.----! But if she had come
to him properly, and it had been otherwise convenient, he gave her to
understand that a horse might have been found for her at any time. He
did not say that one would be found for her _now_.

Item: She never went anywhere.

A treatise on gadding about, with sub-sections devoted to the state of
drains in foreign cities, the game of Bridge, as played in country
houses, and the overcrowded state of the Probate and Divorce Court.

Item: She never saw anybody interesting.

A flat denial, and in the course of its expansion a sentence that
brought the blood to Cicely's face and left her pale and terrified.
"Why, only the other day," said the Squire, "one of the most talked of
men in England dined here. I suppose you would call Ronald Mackenzie an
interesting man, eh? Why, what's the matter? Aren't you well?"

"Oh yes, father dear. Please go on."

The Squire went on. Fortunately he had not noticed the sudden blush, but
only the paleness that had followed it. Supposing he had seen, and her
secret had been dragged out of her! She gave him no more material on
which to exercise his gift of oratory, but sat silent and frightened
while he dealt further with the subject in hand and showed her that she
was fortunate in living amongst the most interesting set of people in
England. Her uncle Tom knew as much as anybody about butterflies, her
Aunt Grace played the piano remarkably well for an amateur, Sir Ralph
Perry, who lived at Warnton Court, four miles away, had written a book
on fly-fishing, the Rector of Bathgate had published a volume of
sermons, the Vicar of Blagden rubbed brasses, Mrs. Kingston of Axtol was
the daughter of a Cambridge professor, and the Squire supposed he was
not entirely destitute of intelligence himself. At any rate, he had
corresponded with a good many learned gentlemen in his time, and they
seemed anxious enough to come to Kencote, and didn't treat him exactly
as if he were a fool when they did come.

"The upshot of it all is, Cicely," concluded the Squire, "that you want
a great many things that you can't have and are not going to have, and
the sooner you see that and settle down sensibly to do your duty the
better."

"Yes, father," said Cicely, longing to get away.

The Squire bethought himself. He had nothing more to say, although as he
was considering what to do next he said over again a few of the more
salient things that he had said before. He hoped he had made an
impression, but he would have liked to end up on a note rather less tame
than this. With Cicely so meek and quiet, however, and his indignation
against her, already weakened by having been spread over a fortnight,
having now entirely evaporated by being expressed, as his indignation
generally did evaporate, he had arrived somehow at a loose end. He
looked at his daughter for the first time with some affection, and
noticed that she was pale, and, he thought, thinner.

"Come here and give me a kiss," he said, and she went to him and put her
head on his big shoulder. "Now you're going to be a good girl and not
give us any more trouble, aren't you?" he said, patting her on the
sleeve; and she promised that she would be a good girl and not give any
more trouble, with mental reservations mercifully hidden from him.

"There, don't cry," said the Squire. "We won't say any more about it;
and if you want a horse to ride, we'll see if we can't find you a horse
to ride. I dare say you think your old father a terrible martinet, but
it's all for your good, you know. You must say to yourself when you feel
dissatisfied about some little twopenny-halfpenny disappointment that he
knows best."

Cicely gave him a hug. He was a dear old thing really, and if one could
only always bear in mind the relative qualities of his bark and his bite
there would be no need at all to go in awe of him. "Dear old daddy," she
said. "I am sorry I ran away, and I'm very glad to get home again."

Then she went upstairs quite lightheartedly, and along the corridor to
the schoolroom. The twins, arrayed in long blue overalls, were tidying
up, after lessons, and Miss Bird was urging them to more conscientious
endeavour, avowing that it was no more trouble to put a book on a shelf
the right way than the wrong way, and that if there were fifty servants
in the house it would be wrong to throw waste paper in the fireplace,
since waste paper baskets existed to have waste paper thrown into them
and fireplaces did not.

After a minute pause of observation, the twins threw themselves upon
Cicely with one accord and welcomed her vociferously, and Miss Bird
followed suit.

"My own darling," she said warmly, "we have missed you dreadfully and
how are Muriel and Walter I suppose as happy as anything now Joan 'n
Nancy there is no occasion to pull Cicely to pieces you can be glad to
see her without roughness and go _at once_ and take off your overalls
and wash your hands for tea I dare say Cicely will go with you."

"Have you been to your room yet, darling?" asked Joan.

"Not yet," said Cicely.

"Now _straight_ to your own room first," said Miss Bird, clapping her
hands together to add weight to her command. "You can go with Cicely
afterwards."

"All right, starling darling, we'll be ready in time for tea," said
Nancy. "You finish clearing up" and one on each side of Cicely, they led
her to her own bedroom, and threw open the door. The room was garlanded
with pink and white paper roses. They formed festoons above the bed and
were carried in loops round the walls, upon which had also been hung
placards printed in large letters and  by hand. "Welcome to our
Sister," ran one inscription, and others were, "There is No Place like
Home," "Cicely for Ever," and "No Popery."

The twins watched eagerly for signs of surprised rapture and were
abundantly rewarded. "But that's not all," said Joan, and led her up to
the dressing-table, upon which was an illuminated address running as
follows:

     "We, the undersigned, present this token of our continued esteem to
     Cecilia Mary Clinton, on the occasion of her home-coming to Kencote
     House, Meadshire. Do unto others as you would be done by.

     "_Signed_, Joan Ellen Clinton Nancy Caroline Clinton."

"I think it's rather well done," said Nancy, "though our vermilions had
both run out and we didn't like to borrow yours without asking. Starling
bought us the gold paint on condition that we put in the Golden Rule. It
doesn't look bad, does it, Cicely?"

"I think it's lovely," said Cicely. "I shall always keep it. Thanks so
much, darlings."

After the subsequent embraces, Nancy eyed her with some curiosity. "I
say, there _was_ a dust-up," she said. "Have you made it up with father,
Cis?"

"Don't be a fool," said Joan. "She doesn't want you bothering her. It is
quite enough that we're jolly glad to have her back."

"I was rather dull," said Cicely, with a nervous little laugh, "so I
went away for a bit."

"Quite right too," said Joan. "I should have done the same, and so would
Nancy. We thought of putting up 'Don't be Downtrodden,' but we were
afraid mother wouldn't like it, so we put up 'No Popery' instead. It
comes to the same thing."

"We're doing the Gordon Riots in history," Nancy explained further.
"Father was awful at first, Cis, but he has calmed down a lot since. I
think Dick poured oil on the troubled waters. Dick is a brick. He gave
us half a sovereign each before he went up to Scotland."

"We didn't ask him for it," said Nancy.

"No," said Joan, "we only told him we were saving up for a camera, and
it took a long time out of a bob a week each pocket-money."

"Flushed with our success," said Nancy, "we tried father; but the moment
was not propitious."

"It was your fault," said Joan. "You would hurry it. Directly I said,
'When we get our camera we shall be able to take photographs of the
shorthorns,' you heaved a silly great sigh and said, 'It takes _such_ a
long time to save up with only a shilling a week pocket-money,' and of
course what _could_ he say but that when he was our age he only had
sixpence?"

"I don't believe it for a moment," said Nancy.

"It doesn't matter. He had to say it. I was going to lead up much more
slowly. How often has starling told you that if a thing's worth doing at
all it's worth doing well?"

Here Miss Bird herself appeared at the door and said it was just as she
had expected, and had they heard her tell them to do a thing or had they
not, because if they had and had then gone and done something else she
should go straight to Mrs. Clinton, for she was tired of having her
words set at nought, and it was time to take serious measures, although
nobody would be more sorry to have to do so than herself, Joan and Nancy
being perfectly capable of behaving themselves as they should if they
would only set their minds to it and do exactly as she told them.

Cicely heard the latter part of the address fading away down the
corridor, shut the door with a smile and began to take off her hat with
a sigh. The chief ordeal was over, but there was a good deal to go
through still before she could live in this room again as she had lived
in it before. If, indeed, she ever could. She looked round her, and its
familiarity touched her strangely. It spoke not of the years she had
occupied it, the five years since she had left the nursery wing, but of
the one night when she had prepared to leave it for ever. It would be
part of her ordeal to have that painful and confusing memory brought
before her whenever she entered it. She hated now to think of that night
and of the day and night that had followed it. She flushed hotly as she
turned again to her glass, and called herself a fool. Then she
resolutely turned pictures to the wall of her mind and made herself
think of something else, casting her thoughts loose to hit upon any
subject they pleased. They struck against her aunts at the dower-house,
and she grappled the idea and made up her mind to go and see them after
tea, and get that over.

She found them in their morning-room, engaged as before, except that
their tea-table had been cleared away. "Well, dear Aunt Ellen and Aunt
Laura, I have come back," she said, kissing them in turn. "Muriel's
house _is_ so pretty. You would love to see it."

But Aunt Ellen was not to be put off in this way. The Squire had come
down to them on the afternoon of the day after Cicely had disappeared,
and had gained more solid satisfaction from the attitude taken up by
Aunt Ellen and Aunt Laura when he had unfolded his news than from any
reception it had before or after. Cicely was still in their black books.

"Oh, so you have returned at last," said Aunt Ellen, receiving her kiss,
but not returning it. Aunt Laura was not so unforgiving. She kissed her
and said, "O Cicely, if you had known what unhappiness your action would
cause, I am sure you would have thought twice about it."

Cicely sat down. "I have made it all right with father now," she said.
"I would rather not talk about it if you don't mind, Aunt Laura. Muriel
sent her love to you. I said I should come and see you directly I came
back."

"When I was a girl," said Aunt Ellen--"I am speaking now of nearly
eighty years ago--I upset a glass of table ale at the commencement of
luncheon, and your great-grandfather was very angry. But that was
nothing to this."

"I have seldom seen your dear father so moved," said Aunt Laura. "I
cannot see very well without my glasses, and I had mislaid them; they
were on the sideboard in the dining-room where I had gone to get out a
decanter of sherry; but I believe there were tears in his eyes. If it
was so it should make you all the more sorry, Cicely."

"I am very sorry," said Cicely, "but father has forgiven me. Mayn't we
talk about something else?"

"Your father was very high-spirited as a child," said Aunt Ellen, "and I
and your aunts had some difficulty in managing him; not that he was a
naughty child, far from it, but he was full of life. And you must always
remember that he was a boy. But I feel quite sure that he would never in
his wildest moments have thought of going away from home and leaving no
word of his address."

"I sent a telegram," pleaded Cicely.

"Ah, but telegrams were not invented in the days I am speaking of," said
Aunt Ellen.

"Pardon me, sister," said Aunt Laura. "The electric telegraph was
invented when Edward was a boy, but not when we were girls."

"That may be so, sister," said Aunt Ellen. "It is many years since we
were girls, but I say that Edward would not have run away."

"Certainly not," said Aunt Laura. "You should never forget, Cicely, what
a good father you have. I am sure when I heard the other day from Mr.
Hayles that your dear father had instructed him to refuse Lady Alistair
MacLeod's most advantageous offer to rent this house, solely on account
of your Aunt Ellen and myself, I felt that we were, indeed, in good
hands, and fortunate to be so."

"It is quite true," said Aunt Ellen, "that this house is larger than
your Aunt Laura and I require, I told your father that with my own lips.
But at the same time it is unlikely that at my age I have many more
years to live, and I said that if it could be so arranged, I should wish
to die in this house as I have lived in it for the greater part of my
life."

"He saw that at once," said Aunt Laura. "There is nobody that is quicker
at seeing a thing than your dear father, Cicely. He spoke very kindly
about it. He said we must all die some time or other, which is perfectly
true, but that if your Aunt Ellen did not live to be a hundred he should
never forgive her. He is like your dear Aunt Caroline in that; he is
always one to look at the bright side of things."

"But didn't he tell you at once that he didn't want to let the house?"
asked Cicely. "Did he leave it to Mr. Hayles to tell you afterwards?"

"There was a delicacy in that," replied Aunt Laura. "If there is one
thing that your dear father dislikes, it is being thanked. And we could
not have helped thanking him. We had gone through a week of considerable
anxiety."

"Which he might have saved you," Cicely thought, but did not say.

"When we lived at Kencote House with our father," said Aunt Ellen, "it
was never thought that the dower-house possessed any advantages to speak
of. I do not say that we have made it what it is, for that would be
boasting, but I do say that it would not be what it is if we had not
made it so; and now that the danger is past, it causes both your Aunt
Laura and myself much gratification, and would cause gratification to
your other dear aunts if they could know what had happened, as no doubt
they do, that it should now be sought after."

The topic proved interesting enough to occupy the conversation for the
rest of Cicely's visit. She kept them to it diligently and got through
nearly an hour's talk without further recurrence to her misdoings. Then
she took her leave rather hurriedly, congratulating herself that she had
got safely over another fence.




CHAPTER XXII

THE LIFE


Mrs. Graham, in spite of her good points, was not overburdened with the
maternal spirit. She had little love for children as children, and when
her own were small she had lavished no great amount of affection on
them. In the case of other people's children she frankly averred that
she didn't understand them and preferred dogs. But she was equable by
nature and had companionable gifts, and as Jim and Muriel had grown up
they had found their mother pleasant to live with, never anxious to
assert authority, and always interested in such of their pursuits as
chimed in with her own inclinations; also quite ready with sensible
advice and some sympathy when either was required of her, and showing no
annoyance at all if the advice was not followed.

It was not altogether surprising then that Jim, when he had been back at
Mountfield for three or four days, should have taken her into his
confidence. She had heard what, thanks to the Squire, every one in that
part of the county had heard, that Cicely had run off to London without
taking any clothes with her--this point always emerged--and that Dick,
and, for some as yet unexplained reason, Jim, had gone up after her. But
when Jim returned, and told her simply that Cicely was staying with
Muriel and that everything was all right, she had asked no further
questions, although she saw that there was something that she had not
been told. She had her reward when Jim, sitting in her drawing-room
after dinner, told her that he would like to talk over something with
her.

The drawing-room at Mountfield was a long, rather low room, hung with an
old French paper of nondescript grey, upon which were some water-colours
which were supposed to be valuable. The carpet was of faded green, with
ferns and roses. The curtains were of thick crimson brocade under a gilt
canopy. There was a large Chippendale mirror, undoubtedly valuable, over
the white marble mantelpiece, upon which were three great vases of blue
Worcester and some Dresden china figures. The furniture was upholstered
in crimson to match the curtains. There was an old grand piano, there
were one or two china cabinets against the walls, a white skin rug
before the fire, palms in pots, a rosewood table or two, and a low glass
bookcase with more china on the top of it. There was nothing modern, and
the chairs and sofas were not particularly comfortable. The room had
always been like that ever since Jim could remember, and his mother,
sitting upright in her low chair knitting stocking tops, also belonged
to the room and gave it a comforting air of home. She had on a black
gown and her face and neck were much redder than the skin beneath them,
but, like many women to whom rough tweeds and thick boots seem to be the
normal wear, she looked well in the more feminine attire of the evening.

"Talk away, my dear boy," she said, without raising her head. "Two heads
are better than one. I suppose it is something about Cicely."

"When Cicely went away the other day she didn't go to see Muriel; she
went to marry Mackenzie."

She did raise her head then to throw an astonished look at her son, who
did not meet it, but she lowered it again and made one or two stitches
before she replied, "She didn't marry him, of course?"

"No. Dick and I found them, and got her away just in time. That is all
over now, and I can't think about that fellow."

"Well, I won't ask you to. But I suppose you won't mind telling me why
she did such an extraordinary thing."

"Because she is bored to death at Kencote, and I don't wonder at it."

"And do you still intend to bring her to be bored to death at
Mountfield?"

"Yes, I do, if she will come. And I'll see that she's not bored. At
least that is what I want to talk to you about. Muriel could tell me
what she wants to make her happy, but I can't go to Muriel as long as
Cicely is there, and I can't write; I've tried. You've been happy enough
here, mother. You ought to be able to tell me."

Mrs. Graham kept silence for a considerable time. Then she said, "Well,
Jim, I'm glad you have come to me. I think I can help you. In the first
place, you mustn't play the martinet as Mr. Clinton does."

"It isn't likely I should treat her as he does Mrs. Clinton, if that is
what you mean."

"I mean a good deal more than that. If Mr. Clinton knew how disagreeable
it was to other people to hear him talk to her as he does, he probably
wouldn't do it. But even if he didn't he might still make her life a
burden to her, by taking away every ounce of independence she had. I
don't know whether her life is a burden to her or not; I don't pretend
to understand her; but I do know that you couldn't treat Cicely like
that, and I suppose this escapade of hers proves it."

"The poor old governor was a bit of a martinet," said Jim, after a
pause.

"He thought he was," said Mrs. Graham drily.

Jim looked at her, but did not speak.

"I know what it all means," his mother went on. "I think things over
more than you would give me credit for, Jim, and I've seen it before.
This quiet country life happens to suit me down to the ground, but I
don't believe it satisfies the majority of women. And that is what men
don't understand. It suits _them_, of course, and if it doesn't they can
always get away from it for a bit. But to shut women up in a country
house all the year round, and give them no interests in life outside
it--you won't give one woman in ten what she wants in that way."

"What _do_ they want then?"

"It is more what Cicely wants, isn't it? I don't know exactly, but I can
give a pretty shrewd guess. If you want to find out something about a
person, it isn't a bad thing to look at their parentage on both sides.
On one side she comes of a race of yokels."

"Oh, come, mother. The Birkets are----"

"I'm not talking about the Birkets, I'm talking about the Clintons. Poor
dear Mr. Clinton _is_ a yokel, for all his ancestry. If he had been
changed at birth and brought up a farm labourer, he wouldn't have had an
idea in his head above the average of them; he would only have had a
little more pluck. Any Birket's brains are worth six of any Clinton's in
the open market. Mrs. Clinton is a clever woman, although she doesn't
show it, and her dear, stupid old husband would smother the brains of
Minerva if he lived with her. You've only got to look at their children
to see where the Birket comes in. Dick is exactly like his father,
except that he is not a fool; Humphrey _is_ a fool to my thinking, but
not the same sort of fool; Walter--there's no need to speak of him;
Frank I don't know much about, but he isn't a yokel; Cicely simply
hasn't had a chance, but she'll take it fast enough when she gets it;
and as for the twins, they're as sharp as monkeys, for all their blue
eyes and sweet innocence."

"Well, what does it all lead to, mother?"

"It leads to this, Jim: I believe Cicely will be as happy living in the
country as most girls, but at Kencote she doesn't even get the pleasures
that a woman _can_ get out of the country; those are all kept for the
men. You _must_ take her about a bit. Take her to other houses and get
people to come here. Don't shut her up. Take her to London every now and
then, and try and let her see some of the sort of people that go to her
Uncle Herbert Birket's house. I believe she could hold her own with any
of them, and you'll be proud of her. Let her stir her mind up; she
doesn't know what's in it yet. Take her abroad. That always helps; even
I should have liked it, only your father didn't, and I wasn't keen
enough to let it make a disturbance. Give her her head; that's what it
comes to. She won't lose it again."

Jim thought for a long time while Mrs. Graham went on knitting.

"A woman wants some brightness in her life, especially before the babies
begin to come," she said, before he spoke.

"Thanks, mother," he said simply. "I'll think it all over."

"I have thought it over," she answered, "and it's all sound sense."

Jim's next speech was some time coming, but when it did come it was
rather a startling one.

"I've given Weatherley notice to leave the Grange at Christmas."

Mrs. Graham's needles stopped, and then went on again rather more
quickly. Her voice shook a little as she said in a matter-of-fact tone,
"I suppose you won't mind altering the stables for me. There is only one
loose-box."

"I thought it would be best to add on a couple under another roof," said
Jim, and they went on to discuss other alterations that would be
necessary when Mrs. Graham should leave Mountfield to go to live at the
Grange, but without any approach to sentiment, and no expressions of
regret on either side.

When they had done, and there had followed another of those pauses with
which their conversations were punctuated, Mrs. Graham said, "You are
making very certain of Cicely, Jim."

"I'm going to claim her," said Jim quietly. "I was a fool not to do it
before. I've wanted her badly enough."

Perhaps this news was as fresh to Mrs. Graham as it had been to all
those others who had heard it lately. Perhaps it was no news at all. She
was an observant woman and was accustomed to keep silence on many
subjects, except when she was asked to speak, and then she spoke
volubly.

"I have often wondered," she said, "why you left it so long."

Jim did not reply to this, but made another surprising statement. "I'm
going to stand for Parliament," he said.

Mrs. Graham's observation had not covered this possibility. "Good
gracious!" she exclaimed. "Not as a Liberal, I hope!"

"No, as a Free Trade Unionist."

"I should think you might as well save your time and your money."

"I don't expect to get in. But if I can find a seat to fight for, I'll
fight."

"Well, I'll help you, Jim. I believe the others are right, but if you
will give me something to read I dare say I can persuade myself that
they're wrong. I like a good fight, and that is one thing you don't get
the chance of when you live with your pigs and your poultry. Excuse me
asking, but what about the money?"

"I've settled all that, and I'm going to let this place for two years at
least."

Mrs. Graham dropped her knitting once more. "Well, really, Jim!" she
said. "Have you got anything else startling to break to me, because I
wish you would bring it out all at once now. I can bear it."

"That's all," said Jim, with a grin. "I shall save a lot of money. I
shall take a flat or a little house in London and do some work. There
are lots of things besides Free Trade; things I'm keener about, really.
I don't think Cicely will mind. I think she will go in with me."

Mrs. Graham took up her knitting again and put on another row of
stitches. Then she said, "I don't know why you asked my advice as to
what Cicely wanted. It seems to me you have thought it out pretty well
for yourself."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jim rode over to Kencote two days after Cicely's return. It was a lovely
morning, and harvesting was in full swing as he trotted along between
the familiar fields. He felt rather sad at being about to leave it all;
he was a countryman at heart, although he had interests that were not
bucolic. But there was not much room for sadness in his mind. He was
sure of himself, and had set out to grasp a great happiness.

He met the Squire on his stout cob about a mile from Kencote, and pulled
up to speak to him.

"How are you, Jim?" he said heartily. "Birds doing all right? Ours are
first-class this year."

"I was coming to see you," he said. "I've got something to say."

"Well, say it here, my boy," said the Squire, "I'm not going to turn
back."

So they sat on their horses in the middle of the road and Jim said, "I
want to marry Cicely as soon as possible."

The Squire's jaw dropped as he stared at the suitor. Then he threw back
his head and produced his loud, hearty laugh. "Well, that's a funny
thing," he said. "I was only saying to my wife this morning that Cicely
would die an old maid if she looked to you to come and take her."

Jim's red face became a little redder, but the Squire did not give him
time to reply. "I was only joking, you know, Jim, my boy," he said
kindly. "I knew _you_ were all right, and I tell you frankly there's
nobody I'd sooner give my girl to. But why do you want to rush it now?
What about those rascally death duties?"

"It's only a question of income," said Jim shortly. "And I'm going to
let Mountfield for a year or two."

The Squire's jaw fell again. "Let Mountfield!" he cried. "O my dear
fellow, don't do that, for God's sake. Wait a bit longer. Cicely won't
run away. Ha! ha! Why she did run away--what? Look here, Jim, you're
surely not worrying yourself about that. She won't do it again, I'll
promise you that. I've talked to her."

"I think it is time I took her," said Jim, "if she'll have me."

"Have you? Of course she'll have you. But you mustn't let Mountfield.
Don't think of that, my boy. We'll square it somehow, between us. My
girl won't come to you empty-handed, you know, and as long as the
settlements are all right you can keep her a bit short for a year or
two; tell her to go easy in the house. She's a good girl, and she'll do
her best. No occasion to let down the stables, and you must keep a good
head of game. We'll make that all right, and it won't do you any harm to
economise a bit in other ways. In fact it's a good thing for young
people. You might put down your carriage for a year, and perhaps a few
maids--I should keep the men except perhaps a gardener or two. Oh, there
are lots of ways; but don't let the place, Jim."

"Well, I'll think about it," said Jim, who had no intention of
prematurely disclosing his intentions to the Squire, "but you'll let me
have her, Mr. Clinton? I thought of going over to see her now."

"Go by all means, my boy," said the Squire heartily. "You'll find her
about somewhere, only don't make her late for lunch. You'll stay, of
course. You haven't seen Hayles about anywhere, have you? He's not in
the office."

Jim had not, and the Squire trotted off to find his agent, with a last
word of dissuasion on letting Mountfield.

The ubiquitous twins were in the stableyard when he rode in, raiding the
corn bin for sustenance for their fantails. "Hullo, Jim, my boy," said
Joan. "You're quite a stranger."

"You'll stay to lunch, of course," said Nancy. "How are the birds at
Mountfield? I think we ought to do very well here this year."

"Where is Cicely?" asked Jim, ignoring these pleasantries.

"She's out of doors somewhere," said Joan. "We'll help you find her. We
ought to be going in to lessons again, but starling won't mind."

"I can find her myself, thanks," said Jim. "Is she in the garden?"

"We'll show you," said Nancy. "You can't shake us off. We're like the
limpets of the rock."

But here Miss Bird appeared at the schoolroom window, adjuring the twins
to come in _at once_. "Oh, how do you do, Jim?" she cried, nodding her
head in friendly welcome. "Do you want to find Cicely she has gone down
to the lake to sketch."

"Bother!" exclaimed Joan. "Starling is so officious."

"You will find our sister in the Temple of Melancholy," said Nancy. "It
will be your part to smooth the lines of trouble from her brow."

"Oh, coming, coming, Miss Bird!" called out Joan. "We've only got an
hour more, Jim--spelling and dictation; then we will come and look you
up."

Jim strode off across the park and entered the rhododendron dell by an
iron gate. He followed a broad green path between great banks of shrubs
and under the shade of trees for nearly a quarter of a mile. Every now
and then an open grassy space led to the water, which lay very still,
ringed with dark green. He turned down one of these and peeped round the
edge of a bush from whence he could see the white pillared temple at the
head of the lake. Cicely was sitting in front of it, drawing, and his
heart gave a little leap as he saw her. Then he walked more quickly, and
as he neared the temple began to whistle, for he knew that, thinking
herself quite alone. Cicely would be disagreeably startled if he came
upon her suddenly.

Perhaps she thought it was a gardener who was coming, for she did not
move until he spoke her name, coming out from behind the building on to
the stained marble platform in front of it. Then she looked up with a
hot blush. "O Jim!" she said nervously. "I was just trying to paint a
picture."

"It's jolly good," said Jim, looking at it with his head on one side,
although she had not as yet gone further than light pencil lines.

"It won't be when I've finished," she said hurriedly. "How is Mrs.
Graham? I am coming over to see her as soon as I can, to tell her about
Muriel."

"She's all right, thanks," said Jim. "She sent her love. Do you mind my
watching you?"

"I'd much rather you didn't," she said, with a deprecating laugh. "I
shall make an awful hash of it. Do you want to see father? I'll go and
find him with you if you like."

"No, I've seen him," said Jim, going into the temple to get himself a
chair. "I've come to see you, to tell you something I thought you'd be
interested in. I want to stand for Parliament, and I'm going to let
Mountfield."

She looked up at him with a shade of relief in her face. "O Jim," she
said, "I do hope you will get in."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't expect to get in," said Jim. "They
won't have fellows who think as I do in the party now if they can help
it. But there's a good deal to do outside that. I kept my eyes open when
I was travelling, and I do know a bit about the Colonies, and about land
too. There are societies I can make myself useful in, even if I don't
get into Parliament. Anyway I'm going to try."

"I am so glad, Jim," said Cicely. "But won't you miss Mountfield
awfully? And where are you going to live?"

"In London for a year or two. Must be in the thick of things."

"I suppose you won't go before the spring."

"I want to. It depends on you, Cicely."

She had nothing to say. The flush that  her delicate skin so
frequently, flooded it new.

"I want you to come and help me," said Jim. "I can't do it without you,
my dear. You're much cleverer than I am. I want to get to know people,
and I'm not much good at that. And I don't know that I could put up with
London, living there by myself. If you were with me I shouldn't care
where I lived. I would rather live all my life at Melbury Park with you,
than at Mountfield without you."

"O Jim," she said in a low voice, bending over her drawing board, "you
are good and generous. But you can't want me now."

"Look here, Cicely dear," he said, "let's get over that business now,
and leave it alone for ever. I blame myself for it, I blame--that man,
but I haven't got the smallest little piece of blame for you, and I
shouldn't have even if I didn't love you. Why, even Dick is the same. He
was angry at first, but not after he had seen you. And Walter thinks as
I do. I saw him one day and we had it all out; you didn't know. There's
not a soul who knows who blames you, and nobody ever will."

"I know," she said, "that every one has been most extraordinarily kind.
I love Dick and Walter more than ever for it, because I know how it must
have struck them when they first knew. And you too, Jim. It makes me
feel such a beast to think how sweet you were to me, and how I've
treated you."

Jim took her hand. "Cicely, darling," he said. "I'm a slow fellow, and,
I'm afraid, rather stupid. If I hadn't been this would never have
happened. But I believe I'm the only person in the world that can make
you forget it. You'll let me try, won't you?"

She tried to draw away her hand, but he held it.

"Oh, I don't know what to say," she cried. "It is all such a frightful
muddle. I don't even know whether I love you or not. I do; you know
that, Jim. But I don't know whether I love you in the right way. I
thought before that I didn't. And how can I when I did a thing like
that? I'm a girl who goes to any man who calls her."

She was weeping bitterly. All the shame in her heart surged up. She
pulled her hand away and covered her face.

"You never loved that man--not for a moment," said Jim firmly.

"No, I didn't," she cried. "I _hate_ him now, and I believe I hated him
all the time. If I were to meet him I should die of shame. Oh, why did I
do it? And I feel ashamed before you, Jim. I can't marry you. I can't
see you any more. I am glad you are going away."

"I am not going unless you come with me, Cicely," he said. "I want you.
I want you more than ever; I understand you better. If this hadn't
happened I shouldn't have known what you wanted; I don't think I should
have been able to make you happy. Good heavens! do you think I believe
that you wanted that man? I _know_ you didn't, or I shouldn't be here
now. You wanted life, and I had never offered you that. I do offer it
you now. Come and help me to do what I'm going to do. I can't do any of
it without you."

She smiled at him forlornly. "You _are_ good," she said. "And you have
comforted me a little. But you can't forget what has happened. It isn't
possible."

"Look here, my dear," said Jim simply. "Will you believe me when I say
that I have forgotten it already? That is to say it doesn't come into my
mind. I don't have to keep it out; it doesn't come. I've got other
things to think of. There's all the future, and what I'm going to do,
and you are going to help me to do. Really, if I thought of it, I ought
to be glad you did what you did, in a way, for all I've thought of since
comes from that. I saw what you were worth and what you could make of a
man if he loved you as I do, and you loved him. We won't play at it,
Cicely. I'm in earnest. I shall be a better fellow all round if I'm
trying to do something and not only sitting at home and amusing myself.
We shall have to make some sacrifices. We shall only be able to afford a
flat or a little house in London. I must keep things going here and put
by a bit for an election, perhaps. But I know you won't mind not having
much money for a time. We shall be together, and there won't be a thing
in my life that you won't share."

She had kept her eyes fixed upon him as he spoke. "Do you really mean
it, Jim?" she asked quietly. "Do you really want _me_, out of all the
people in the world?"

"I don't want anybody but you," he said, "and I don't want anything
without you."

"Then I will come with you, dearest Jim," she said. "And I will never
want anything except what you want all my life."

He took her in his arms, and she nestled there, laughing and crying by
turns, but happier than she had ever thought she could be. They talked
of a great many things, but not again of Cicely's flight. Jim had
banished that spectre, which, if it returned to haunt her thoughts
again, would not affright them. They came no nearer to it than a speech
of Cicely's, "I do love you, dear Jim. I love you so much that I must
have loved you all the time without knowing it. I feel as if there was
something in you that I could rest on and know that it will never give
way."

"And that's exactly how I feel about you," said Jim.

Two swans sailed out into the middle of the lake, creasing the still
water into tiny ripples. The air was hot and calm, and the heavy leaves
of trees and shrubs hung motionless. The singing-birds were silent. Only
in the green shade were the hearts of the two lovers in tumult--a tumult
of gratitude and confident happiness.

The peace, but not the happiness, was brought to an end when the twins,
relaxed from bondage, heralded their approach by a vociferous rendering
of "The Campbells are coming." They came round the temple arm-in-arm.
Cicely was drawing, and Jim looking on.

"Yes, that's all very well," said Joan, "but it doesn't take two hours
to make three pencil scratches."

"Girls without the nice feeling that we possess," said Nancy, "would
have burst upon you without warning."

"Without giving you time to set to partners," said Joan.

Cicely looked up at them; her face was full of light. "Shall I tell
them, Jim?" she said.

"Got to, I suppose," said Jim.

"My child," said Joan, "you need tell us nothing."

"Your happy faces tell us all," said Nancy.

Then, with a simultaneous relapse into humanity, they threw themselves
upon her affectionately, and afterwards attacked Jim in the same way. He
bore it with equanimity.

"You don't deserve her, Jim," said Joan, "but we trust you to be kind to
her."

"From this day onwards," said Nancy, "you will begin a new life."




_CHRONICLES OF THE CLINTONS_

BY ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

_To be read in the following order_

    THE SQUIRE'S DAUGHTER
    THE ELDEST SON
    THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS
    THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH
    THE CLINTONS, AND OTHERS






End of Project Gutenberg's The Squire's Daughter, by Archibald Marshall

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