The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stella Fregelius, by H. Rider Haggard

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Stella Fregelius

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Release Date: April 22, 2006 [EBook #6051]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STELLA FREGELIUS ***




Produced by John Bickers; Dagny





STELLA FREGELIUS

A TALE OF THREE DESTINIES


By H. Rider Haggard


First Published 1904.




     "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
     Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
     Subjecit pedibus; strepitumque Acherontis avari."




DEDICATION

My Dear John Berwick,

When you read her history in MS. you thought well of "Stella Fregelius"
and urged her introduction to the world. Therefore I ask you, my severe
and accomplished critic, to accept the burden of a book for which you
are to some extent responsible. Whatever its fate, at least it has
pleased you and therefore has not been written quite in vain.

H. Rider Haggard.

Ditchingham,

25th August, 1903.




AUTHOR'S NOTE

The author feels that he owes some apology to his readers for his
boldness in offering to them a modest story which is in no sense a
romance of the character that perhaps they expect from him; which has,
moreover, few exciting incidents and no climax of the accustomed order,
since the end of it only indicates its real beginning.

His excuse must be that, in the first instance, he wrote it purely to
please himself and now publishes it in the hope that it may please some
others. The problem of such a conflict, common enough mayhap did we
but know it, between a departed and a present personality, of which
the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete
possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that
had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure, he
treated the difficult theme, not indeed as he would have wished to do,
but as best he could.

He may explain further that when he drafted this book, now some five
years ago, instruments of the nature of the "aerophone" were not so much
talked of as they are to-day. In fact this aerophone has little to
do with his characters or their history, and the main motive of its
introduction to his pages was to suggest how powerless are all such
material means to bring within mortal reach the transcendental and
unearthly ends which, with their aid, were attempted by Morris Monk.

These, as that dreamer learned, must be far otherwise obtained, whether
in truth and spirit, or perchance, in visions only.

1903.





STELLA FREGELIUS



CHAPTER I

MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE

Above, the sky seemed one vast arc of solemn blue, set here and there
with points of tremulous fire; below, to the shadowy horizon, stretched
the plain of the soft grey sea, while from the fragrances of night and
earth floated a breath of sleep and flowers.

A man leaned on the low wall that bordered the cliff edge, and looked
at sea beneath and sky above. Then he contemplated the horizon, and
murmured some line heard or learnt in childhood, ending "where earth and
heaven meet."

"But they only seem to meet," he reflected to himself, idly. "If I
sailed to that spot they would be as wide apart as ever. Yes, the stars
would be as silent and as far away, and the sea quite as restless and
as salt. Yet there must be a place where they do meet. No, Morris, my
friend, there is no such place in this world, material or moral; so
stick to facts, and leave fancies alone."

But that night this speculative man felt in the mood for fancies, for
presently he was staring at one of the constellations, and saying to
himself, "Why not? Well, why not? Granted force can travel through
ether,--whatever ether is--why should it stop travelling? Give it time
enough, a few seconds, or a few minutes or a few years, and why should
it not reach that star? Very likely it does, only there it wastes
itself. What would be needed to make it serviceable? Simply this--that
on the star there should dwell an Intelligence armed with one of my
instruments, when I have perfected them, or the secret of them. Then
who knows what might happen?" and he laughed a little to himself at the
vagary.

From all of which wandering speculations it may be gathered that Morris
Monk was that rather common yet problematical person, an inventor who
dreamed dreams.

An inventor, in truth, he was, although as yet he had never really
invented anything. Brought up as an electrical engineer, after a very
brief experience of his profession he had fallen victim to an idea and
become a physicist. This was his idea, or the main point of it--for
its details do not in the least concern our history: that by means of
a certain machine which he had conceived, but not as yet perfected,
it would be possible to complete all existing systems of aerial
communication, and enormously to simplify their action and enlarge their
scope. His instruments, which were wireless telephones--aerophones he
called them--were to be made in pairs, twins that should talk only
to each other. They required no high poles, or balloons, or any other
cumbrous and expensive appliance; indeed, their size was no larger than
that of a rather thick despatch box. And he had triumphed; the thing was
done--in all but one or two details.

For two long years he had struggled with these, and still they eluded
him. Once he had succeeded--that was the dreadful thing. Once for a
while the instruments had worked, and with a space of several miles
between them. But--this was the maddening part of it--he had never been
able to repeat the exact conditions; or, rather, to discover precisely
what they were. On that occasion he had entrusted one of his machines to
his first cousin, Mary Porson, a big girl with her hair still down her
back, rather idle in disposition, but very intelligent, when she chose.
Mary, for the most part, had been brought up at her father's house,
close by. Often, too, she stayed with her uncle for weeks at a stretch,
so at that time Morris was as intimate with her as a man of eight and
twenty usually is with a relative in her teens.

The arrangement on this particular occasion was that she should take the
machine--or aerophone, as its inventor had named it--to her home. The
next morning, at the appointed hour, as Morris had often done before, he
tried to effect communication, but without result. On the following day,
at the same hour, he tried again, when, to his astonishment, instantly
the answer came back. Yes, as distinctly as though she were standing by
his side, he heard his cousin Mary's voice.

"Are you there?" he said, quite hopelessly, merely as a matter of
form--of very common form--and well-nigh fell to the ground when he
received the reply:

"Yes, yes, but I have just been telegraphed for to go to Beaulieu; my
mother is very ill."

"What is the matter with her?" he asked; and she replied:

"Inflammation of the lungs--but I must stop; I can't speak any more."
Then came some sobs and silence.

That same afternoon, by Mary's direction, the aerophone was brought back
to him in a dog-cart, and three days later he heard that her mother,
Mrs. Porson, was dead.

Some months passed, and when they met again, on her return from the
Riviera, Morris found his cousin changed. She had parted from him a
child, and now, beneath the shadow of the wings of grief, suddenly
she had become a woman. Moreover, the best and frankest part of their
intimacy seemed to have vanished. There was a veil between them. Mary
thought of little, and at this time seemed to care for no one except
her mother, who was dead. And Morris, who had loved the child, recoiled
somewhat from the new-born woman. It may be explained that he was afraid
of women. Still, with an eye to business, he spoke to her about the
aerophone; and, so far as her memory served her, she confirmed all the
details of their short conversation across the gulf of empty space.

"You see," he said, trembling with excitement, "I have got it at last."

"It looks like it," she answered, wearily, her thoughts already far
away. "Why shouldn't you? There are so many odd things of the sort. But
one can never be sure; it mightn't work next time."

"Will you try again?" he asked.

"If you like," she answered; "but I don't believe I shall hear anything
now. Somehow--since that last business--everything seems different to
me."

"Don't be foolish," he said; "you have nothing to do with the hearing;
it is my new receiver."

"I daresay," she replied; "but, then, why couldn't you make it work with
other people?"

Morris answered nothing. He, too, wondered why.

Next morning they made the experiment. It failed. Other experiments
followed at intervals, most of which were fiascos, although some were
partially successful. Thus, at times Mary could hear what he said. But
except for a word or two, and now and then a sentence, he could not hear
her whom, when she was still a child and his playmate, once he had heard
so clearly.

"Why is it?" he said, a year or two later, dashing his fist upon the
table in impotent rage. "It has been; why can't it be?"

Mary turned her large blue eyes up to the ceiling, and reflectively
rubbed her dimpled chin with a very pretty finger.

"Isn't that the kind of question they used to ask oracles?" she asked
lazily--"Oh! no, it was the oracles themselves that were so vague. Well,
I suppose because 'was' is as different from 'is' as 'as' is from 'shall
be.' We are changed, Cousin; that's all."

He pointed to his patent receiver, and grew angry.

"Oh, it isn't the receiver," she said, smoothing her curling hair; "it's
us. You don't understand me a bit--not now--and that's why you can't
hear me. Take my advice, Morris"--and she looked at him sharply--"when
you find a woman whom you can hear on your patent receiver, you had
better marry her. It will be a good excuse for keeping her at a distance
afterwards."

Then he lost his temper; indeed, he raved, and stormed, and nearly
smashed the patent receiver in his fury. To a scientific man, let it
be admitted, it was nothing short of maddening to be told that the
successful working of his instrument, to the manufacture of which he
had given eight years of toil and study, depended upon some pre-existent
sympathy between the operators of its divided halves. If that were so,
what was the use of his wonderful discovery, for who could ensure a
sympathetic correspondent? And yet the fact remained that when, in
their playmate days, he understood his cousin Mary, and when her quiet,
indolent nature had been deeply moved by the shock of the news of her
mother's peril, the aerophone had worked. Whereas now, when she had
become a grown-up young lady, he did not understand her any longer--he,
whose heart was wrapped up in his experiments, and who by nature feared
the adult members of her sex, and shrank from them; when, too, her
placid calm was no longer stirred, work it would not.

She laughed at his temper; then grew serious, and said:

"Don't get angry, Morris. After all, there are lots of things that you
and I can't understand, and it isn't odd that you should have tumbled
across one of them. If you think of it, nobody understands anything.
They know that certain things happen, and how to make them happen; but
they don't know why they happen, or why, as in your case, when they
ought to happen, they won't."

"It is all very well for you to be philosophical," he answered, turning
upon her; "but can't you see, Mary, that the thing there is my life's
work? It is what I have given all my strength and all my brain to make,
and if it fails in the end--why, then I fail too, once and forever. And
I have made it talk. It talked perfectly between this place and Seaview,
and now you stand there and tell me that it won't work any more because
I don't understand you. Then what am I to do?"

"Try to understand me, if you think it worth while, which I don't; or
go on experimenting," she answered. "Try to find some substance which is
less exquisitely sensitive, something a little grosser, more in key with
the material world; or to discover someone whom you do understand. Don't
lose heart; don't be beaten after all these years."

"No," he answered, "I don't unless I die," and he turned to go.

"Morris," she said, in a softer voice, "I am lazy, I know. Perhaps
that is why I adore people who can work. So, although you don't think
anything of me, I will do my honest best to get into sympathy with you
again; yes, and to help in any way I can. No; it's not a joke. I would
give a great deal to see the thing a success."

"Why do you say I don't think anything of you, Mary? Of course, it isn't
true. Besides, you are my cousin, and we have always been good friends
since you were a little thing."

She laughed. "Yes, and I suppose that as you had no brothers or sisters
they taught you to pray for your cousin, didn't they? Oh, I know all
about it. It is my unfortunate sex that is to blame; while I was a mere
tom-boy it was different. No one can serve two masters, can they? You
have chosen to serve a machine that won't go, and I daresay that you are
wise. Yes, I think that it is the better part--until you find someone
that will make it go--and then you would adore her--by aerophone!"



CHAPTER II

THE COLONEL AND SOME REFLECTIONS

Presently Morris heard a step upon the lawn, and turned to see his
father sauntering towards him. Colonel Monk, C.B., was an elderly man,
over sixty indeed, but still of an upright and soldierly bearing. His
record was rather distinguished. In his youth he had served in the
Crimea, and in due course was promoted to the command of a regiment of
Guards. After this, certain diplomatic abilities caused him to be sent
to one of the foreign capitals as military attache, and in reward of
this service, on retiring, he was created a Companion of the Bath. In
appearance he was handsome also; in fact, much better looking than his
son, with his iron-grey hair, his clear-cut features, somewhat marred
in effect by a certain shiftiness of the mouth, and his large dark eyes.
Morris had those dark eyes also--they redeemed his face from plainness,
for otherwise it showed no beauty, the features being too irregular, the
brow too prominent, and the mouth too large. Yet it could boast what, in
the case of a man at any rate, is better than beauty--spirituality,
and a certain sympathetic charm. It was not the face which was so
attractive, but rather the intelligence, the personality that shone
through it, as the light shines through the horn panes of some homely,
massive lantern. Speculative eyes of the sort that seem to search
horizons and gather knowledge there, but shrink from the faces of women;
a head of brown hair, short cut but untidy, an athletic, manlike form to
which, bizarrely enough, a slight stoop, the stoop of a student, seemed
to give distinction, and hands slender and shapely as those of an
Eastern--such were the characteristics of Morris Monk, or at least those
of them that the observer was apt to notice.

"Hullo! Morris, are you star-gazing there?" said Colonel Monk, with a
yawn. "I suppose that I must have fallen asleep after dinner--that comes
of stopping too long at once in the country and drinking port. I notice
you never touch it, and a good thing, too. There, my cigar is out. Now's
the time for that new electric lighter of yours which I can never make
work."

Morris fumbled in his pocket and produced the lighter. Then he said:

"I am sorry, father; but I believe I forgot to charge it."

"Ah! that's just like you, if you will forgive my saying so. You take
any amount of trouble to invent and perfect a thing, but when it comes
to making use of it, then you forget," and with a little gesture of
impatience the Colonel turned aside to light a match from a box which he
had found in the pocket of his cape.

"I am sorry," said Morris, with a sigh, "but I am afraid it is true.
When one's mind is very fully occupied with one thing----" and he broke
off.

"Ah! that's it, Morris, that's it," said the Colonel, seating himself
upon a garden chair; "this hobby-horse of yours is carrying you--to the
devil, and your family with you. I don't want to be rough, but it is
time that I spoke plain. Let's see, how long is it since you left the
London firm?"

"Nine years this autumn," answered Morris, setting his mouth a little,
for he knew what was coming. The port drunk after claret had upset
his father's digestion and ruffled his temper. This meant that to
him--Morris--Fate had appointed a lecture.

"Nine years, nine wasted years, idled and dreamt away in a village upon
the eastern coast. It is a large slice out of a man's life, my boy. By
the time that I was your age I had done a good deal," said his father,
meditatively. When he meant to be disagreeable it was the Colonel's
custom to become reflective.

"I can't admit that," answered Morris, in his light, quick voice--"I
mean I can't admit that my time has either been idled away or wasted. On
the contrary, father, I have worked very hard, as I did at college,
and as I have always done, with results which, without boasting, I may
fairly call glorious--yes, glorious--for when they are perfected they
will change the methods of communication throughout the whole world."
As he spoke, forgetting the sharp vexation of the moment, his face was
irradiated with light--like some evening cloud on which the sun strikes
suddenly.

Watching him out of the corner of his eye, even in that low moonlight,
his father saw those fires of enthusiasm shine and die upon his son's
face, and the sight vexed him. Enthusiasm, as he conceived, perhaps with
justice, had been the ruin of Morris. Ceasing to be reflective, his tone
became cruel.

"Do you really think, Morris, that the world wishes to have its methods
of communication revolutionised? Aren't there enough telephones and
phonograms and aerial telegraphs already? It seems to me that you merely
wish to add a new terror to existence. However, there is no need to
pursue an academical discussion, since this wretched machine of yours,
on which you have wasted so much time, appears to be a miserable
failure."

Now, to throw the non-success of his invention into the teeth of the
inventor, especially when that inventor knows that it is successful
really, although just at present it does not happen to work, is a very
deadly insult. Few indeed could be deadlier, except, perhaps, that of
the cruelty which can suggest to a woman that no man will ever look at
her because of her plainness and lack of attraction; or the coarse
taunt which, by shameless implication, unjustly accuses the soldier of
cowardice, the diplomat of having betrayed the secrets of his country,
or the lawyer of having sold his brief. All the more, therefore, was it
to Morris's credit that he felt the lash sting without a show of temper.

"I have tried to explain to you, father," he began, struggling to free
his clear voice from the note of indignation.

"Of course you have, Morris; don't trouble yourself to repeat that long
story. But even if you were successful--which you are not--er--I cannot
see the commercial use of this invention. As a scientific toy it may be
very well, though, personally, I should prefer to leave it alone, since,
if you go firing off your thoughts and words into space, how do you know
who will answer them, or who will hear them?"

"Well, father, as you understand all about it, it is no use my
explaining any further. It is pretty late; I think I will be turning
in."

"I had hoped," replied the Colonel, in an aggrieved voice, "that you
might have been able to spare me a few minutes' conversation. For some
weeks I have been seeking an opportunity to talk to you; but somehow
your arduous occupations never seem to leave you free for ordinary
social intercourse."

"Certainly," replied Morris, "though I don't quite know why you should
say that. I am always about the place if you want me." But in his heart
he groaned, guessing what was coming.

"Yes; but you are ever working at your chemicals and machinery in the
old chapel; or reading those eternal books; or wandering about rapt
in contemplation of the heavens; so that, in short, I seldom like to
trouble you with my mundane but necessary affairs."

Morris made no answer; he was a very dutiful son and humble-spirited.
Those who pit their intelligences against the forces of Nature, and
try to search out her secrets, become humble. He could not altogether
respect his father; the gulf between them was too wide and deep. But
even at his present age of three and thirty he considered it a duty to
submit himself to him and his vagaries. Outside of other reasons, his
mother had prayed him to do so almost with her last breath, and, living
or dead, Morris loved his mother.

"Perhaps you are not aware," went on Colonel Monk, after a solemn pause,
"that the affairs of this property are approaching a crisis."

"I know something, but no details," answered Morris. "I have not liked
to interfere," he added apologetically.

"And I have not not liked to trouble you with such sordid matters,"
rejoined his parent, with sarcasm. "I presume, however, that you are
acquainted with the main facts. I succeeded to this estate encumbered
with a mortgage, created by your grandfather, an extravagant and
unbusiness-like man. That mortgage I looked to your mother's fortune
to pay off, but other calls made this impossible. For instance, the
sea-wall here had to be built if the Abbey was to be saved, and half a
mile of sea-walling costs something. Also very extensive repairs to the
house were necessary, and I was forced to take three farms in hand when
I retired from the army fifteen years ago. This has involved a net loss
of about ten thousand pounds, while all the time the interest had to be
paid and the place kept up in a humble fashion."

"I thought that my uncle Porson took over the mortgage after my mother's
death," interrupted Morris.

"That is so," answered his father, wincing a little; "but a creditor
remains a creditor, even if he happens to be a relative by marriage. I
have nothing to say against your uncle John, who is an excellent
person in his way, and well-meaning. Of course, he has been justified,
perfectly justified, in using his business abilities--or perhaps I
should say instincts, for they are hereditary--to his own advantage.
In fact, however, directly or indirectly, he has done well out of this
property and his connection with our family--exceedingly well, both
financially and socially. In a time of stress I was forced to sell him
the two miles of sea-frontage building-land between here and Northwold
for a mere song. During the last ten years, as you know, he has cut this
up into over five hundred villa sites, which he has sold upon long lease
at ground-rents that to-day bring in annually as much as he paid for the
whole property."

"Yes, father; but you might have done the same. He advised you to before
he bought the land."

"Perhaps I might, but I am not a tradesman; I do not understand these
affairs. And, Morris, I must remind you that in such matters I have had
no assistance. I do not blame you any more than I blame myself--it is
not in your line either--but I repeat that I have had no assistance."

Morris did not argue the point. "Well, father," he asked, "what is the
upshot? Are we ruined?"

"Ruined? That is a large word, and an ugly one. No, we are no more
ruined than we have been for the last half-dozen years, for, thank
Heaven, I still have resources and--friends. But, of course, this place
is in a way expensive, and you yourself would be the last to pretend
that our burdens have been lessened by--your having abandoned the
very strange profession which you selected, and devoted yourself to
researches which, if interesting, must be called abstract----"

"Forgive me, father," interrupted Morris with a ring of indignation
in his voice; "but you must remember that I put you to no expense. In
addition to what I inherited from my mother, which, of course, under
the circumstances I do not ask for, I have my fellowship, out of which
I contribute something towards the cost of my living and experiments,
that, by the way, I keep as low as possible."

"Of course, of course," said the Colonel, who did not wish to pursue
this branch of the subject, but his son went on:

"You know also that it was at your express wish that I came to live here
at Monksland, as for the purposes of my work it would have suited me
much better to take rooms in London or some other scientific centre."

"Really, my dear boy, you should control yourself," broke in his father.
"That is always the way with recluses; they cannot bear the slightest
criticism. Of course, as you were going to devote yourself to this line
of research it was right and proper that we should live together. Surely
you would not wish at my age that I should be deprived of the comfort of
the society of an only child, especially now that your mother has left
us?"

"Certainly not, father," answered Morris, softening, as was his fashion
at the thought of his dead mother.

Then came a pause, and he hoped that the conversation was at end; a vain
hope, as it proved.

"My real object in troubling you, Morris," continued his father,
presently, "was very different to the unnecessary discussions into which
we have drifted."

His son looked up, but said nothing. Again he knew what was coming, and
it was worse than anything that had gone before.

"This place seems very solitary with the two of us living in its
great rooms. I, who am getting an old fellow, and you a student and a
recluse--no, don't deny it, for nowadays I can barely persuade you to
attend even the Bench or a lawn-tennis party. Well, fortunately, we
have power to add to our numbers; or at least you have. I wish you would
marry, Morris."

His son turned sharply, and answered:

"Thank you, father, but I have no fancy that way."

"Now, there's Jane Rose, or that handsome Eliza Layard," went on the
Colonel, taking no notice. "I have reason to know that you might have
either of them for the asking, and they are both good women without
a breath against them, and, what in the state of this property is not
without importance, very well to do. Jane gets fifty thousand pounds
down on the day of her marriage, and as much more, together with the
place, upon old Lady Rose's death; while Miss Layard--if she is not
quite to the manner born--has the interest in that great colliery and a
rather sickly brother. Lastly--and this is strange enough, considering
how you treat them--they admire you, or at least Eliza does, for she
told me she thought you the most interesting man she had ever met."

"Did she indeed!" ejaculated Morris. "Why, I have only spoken three
times to her during the last year."

"No doubt, my dear boy, that is why she thinks you interesting. To her
you are a mine of splendid possibilities. But I understand that you
don't like either of them."

"No, not particularly--especially Eliza Layard, who isn't a lady, and
has a vicious temper--nor any young woman whom I have ever met."

"Do you mean to tell me candidly, Morris, that at your age you detest
women?"

"I don't say that; I only say that I never met one to whom I felt much
attracted, and that I have met a great many by whom I was repelled."

"Decidedly, Morris, in you the strain of the ancestral fish is too
predominant. It isn't natural; it really isn't. You ought to have been
born three centuries ago, when the old monks lived here. You would have
made a first-class abbot, and might have been canonised by now. Am I to
understand, then, that you absolutely decline to marry?"

"No, father; I don't want you to understand anything of the sort. If I
could meet a lady whom I liked, and who wouldn't expect too much, and
who was foolish enough to wish to take me, of course I should marry her,
as you are so bent upon it."

"Well, Morris, and what sort of a woman would fulfil the conditions, to
your notion?"

His son looked about him vaguely, as though he expected to find his
ideal in some nook of the dim garden.

"What sort of a woman? Well, somebody like my cousin Mary, I suppose--an
easy-going person of that kind, who always looks pleasant and cool."

Morris did not see him, for he had turned his head away; but at the
mention of Mary Porson's name his father started, as though someone had
pricked him with a pin. But Colonel Monk had not commanded a regiment
with some success and been a military attache for nothing; having filled
diplomatic positions, public and private, in his time, he could keep
his countenance, and play his part when he chose. Indeed, did his
simpler-minded son but know it, all that evening he had been playing a
part.

"Oh! that's your style, is it?" he said. "Well, at your age I should
have preferred something a little different. But there is no accounting
for tastes; and after all, Mary is a beautiful woman, and clever in
her own way. By Jove! there's one o'clock striking, and I promised old
Charters that I would always be in bed by half-past eleven. Good night,
my boy. By the way, you remember that your uncle Porson is coming to
Seaview to-morrow from London, and that we are engaged to dine with him
at eight. Fancy a man who could build that pretentious monstrosity and
call it Seaview! Well, it will condemn him to the seventh generation;
but in this world one must take people as one finds them, and their
houses, too. Mind you lock the garden door when you come in. Good
night."

"Really," thought Colonel Monk to himself as he took off his dress-shoes
and, with military precision, set them side by side beneath a chair, "it
does seem a little hard on me that I should be responsible for a son who
is in love with a damned, unworkable electrical machine. And with his
chances--with his chances! Why he might have been a second secretary in
the Diplomatic Service by now, or anything else to which interest could
help him. And there he sits hour after hour gabbling down a little
trumpet and listening for an answer which never comes--hour after hour,
and month after month, and year after year. Is he a genius, or is he an
idiot, or a moral curiosity, or simply useless? I'm hanged if I know,
but that's a good idea about Mary; though, of course, there are things
against it. Curious that I should never have considered the matter
seriously before--because of the cousinship, I suppose. Would she have
him? It doesn't seem likely, but you can never know what a woman will or
will not do, and as a child she was very fond of Morris. At any rate the
situation is desperate, and if I can, I mean to save the old place, for
his sake and our family's, as well as my own."

He went to the window, and, lifting a corner of the blind, looked out.
"There he is, still staring at the sea and the sky, and there I daresay
he will be till dawn. I bet he has forgotten all about Mary now, and is
thinking of his electrical machine. What a curiosity! Good heavens; what
a curiosity! Ah, I wonder what they would have made of him in my old
mess five and thirty years ago?" And quite overcome by this reflection,
the Colonel shook his grizzled head, put out the candle, and retired to
rest.



His father was right. The beautiful September dawn was breaking over the
placid sea before Morris brushed the night dew from his hair and cloak,
and went in by the abbot's door.

What was he thinking of all the time? He scarcely knew. One by one,
like little clouds in the summer sky, fancies arose in his mind to sail
slowly across its depth and vanish upon an inconclusive and shadowy
horizon. Of course, he thought about his instruments; these were never
absent from his heart. His instinct flew back to them as an oasis, as an
island of rest in the wilderness of this father's thorny and depressing
conversation. The instruments were disappointing, it is true, at
present; but, at any rate, they did not dwell gloomily upon impending
ruin or suggest that it was his duty to get married. They remained
silent, distressingly silent indeed.

Well, as the question of marriage had been started, he might as well
face it out; that is, argue it in his mind, reduce it to its principles,
follow it to its issues in a reasonable and scientific manner. What were
the facts? His family, which, by tradition, was reported to be Danish
in its origin, had owned this property for several hundred years, though
how they came to own it remained a matter of dispute. Some said the
Abbey and its lands were granted to a man of the name of Monk by Henry
VIII., of course for a consideration. Others held, and evidence existed
in favour of this view, that on the dissolution of the monastery the
abbot of the day, a shrewd man of easy principles, managed to possess
himself of the Chapter House and further extensive hereditaments, of
course with the connivance of the Commissioners, and, providing himself
with a wife, to exchange a spiritual for a temporal dignity. At least
this remained certain, that from the time of Elizabeth onwards Morris's
forefathers had been settled in the old Abbey house at Monksland; that
the first of them about whom they really knew anything was named Monk,
and that Monk was still the family name.

Now they were all dead and gone, and their history, which was
undistinguished, does not matter. To come to the present day. His father
succeeded to a diminished and encumbered estate; indeed, had it not been
for the fortune of his mother, a Miss Porson and one of a middle class
and business, but rather wealthy family, the property must have been
sold years before. That fortune, however, had long ago been absorbed--or
so he gathered--for his father, a brilliant and fashionable army
officer, was not the man to stint himself or to nurse a crippled
property. Indeed, it was wonderful to Morris how, without any particular
change in their style of living, which, if unpretentious, was not cheap,
in these bad times they had managed to keep afloat at all.

Unworldly as Morris might be, he could easily guess why his father
wished that he should marry, and marry well. It was that he might
bolster up the fortunes of a shattered family. Also--and this touched
him, this commanded his sympathy--he was the last of his race. If
he died without issue the ancient name of Monk became extinct, a
consummation from which his father shrank with something like horror.

The Colonel was a selfish man--Morris could not conceal it, even from
himself--one who had always thought of his own comfort and convenience
first. Yet, either from idleness or pride, to advance these he had
never stooped to scheme. Where the welfare of his family was concerned,
however, as his son knew, he was a schemer. That desire was the one
real and substantial thing in a somewhat superficial, egotistic, and
finessing character.

Morris saw it all as he leaned there upon the railing, staring at the
mist-draped sea, more clearly, indeed, than he had ever seen it before.
He understood, moreover, what an unsatisfactory son he must be to a man
like his father--if it had tried, Providence could hardly have furnished
him with offspring more unsuitable. The Colonel had wished him to enter
the Diplomatic Service, or the Army, or at least to get himself called
to the Bar; but although a really brilliant University career and
his family influence would have given him advantages in any of these
professions, he had declined them all. So, following his natural bent,
he became an electrician, and now, abandoning the practical side of
that modest calling, he was an experimental physicist, full of deep but
unremunerative lore, and--an unsuccessful inventor. Certainly he owed
something to his family, and if his father wished that he should marry,
well, marry he must, as a matter of duty, if for no other reason. After
all, the thing was not pressing; for it it came to the point, what woman
was likely to accept him? All he had done to-night was to settle
the general principles in his own mind. When it became necessary--if
ever--he could deal with the details.

And yet this sort of marriage which was proposed to him, was it not an
unholy business? He cared little for women, having no weakness that way,
probably because of the energy which other young men gave to the pursuit
of them was in his case absorbed by intense and brain-exhausting study.
Therefore he was not a man who if left to himself, would marry, as so
many do, merely in order to be married; indeed, the idea to him was
almost repulsive. Had he been a woman-hater, he might have accepted it
more easily, for then to him one would have been as the other. But the
trouble was that he knew and felt that a time might come when in his
eyes one woman would be different from all others, a being who spoke not
to his physical nature only, if at all, but to the core within him. And
if that happened, what then?

Look, the sun was rising. On the eastern sky of a sudden two golden
doors had opened in the canopy of night, and in and out of them seemed
to pass glittering, swift-winged things, as souls might tread the Gate
of Heaven. Look, too, at the little clouds that in an unending stream
floated out of the gloom--travellers pressed onwards by a breath of
destiny. They were leaden-hued, all of them, black, indeed, at times,
until they caught the radiance, and for a while became like the pennons
of an angel's wings. Then one by one the glory overtook and embraced
them, and they melted into it to be seen no more.

What did the sight suggest to him? That it was worth while, perhaps,
to be a mere drift of cloud, storm-driven and rain-laden in the bitter
Night of Life, if the Morning of Deliverance brought such transformation
on its wings. That beyond some such gates as these, gates that at times,
greatly daring, he longed to tread, lay the answer to many a mystery.
Amongst other things, perhaps, there he would learn the meaning of true
marriage, and why it is denied to most dwellers of the earth. Without
a union of the spirit was there indeed any marriage as it should be
understood? And who in this world could hope to find his fellow spirit?

See, the sun had risen, the golden gates were shut. He had been
dreaming, and was chilled to the bone. Wretchedness, mental and bodily,
took hold of him. Well, often enough such is the fate of those who
dream; those who turn from their needful, daily tasks to shape an angel
out of this world's clay, trusting to some unknown god to give it life
and spirit.



CHAPTER III

"POOR PORSON"

Upon the morning following his conversation with Morris, Colonel Monk
spent two hours or more in the library. Painfully did he wrestle
there with balance-sheets, adding up bank books; also other financial
documents.

"Phew!" he said, when at length the job was done. "It is worse than I
thought, a good deal worse. My credit must be excellent, or somebody
would have been down upon us before now. Well, I must talk things over
with Porson. He understands figures, and so he ought, considering that
he kept the books in his grandfather's shop."

Then the Colonel went to lunch less downcast than might have been
expected, since he anticipated a not unamusing half-hour with his
son. As he knew well, Morris detested business matters and money
calculations. Still, reflected his parent, it was only right that he
should take his share of the family responsibilities--a fact which he
fully intended to explain to him.

But "in vain is the net spread," etc. As Morris passed the door of the
library on his way to the old chapel of the Abbey, which now served
him as a laboratory, he had seen his father bending over the desk and
guessed his occupation. Knowing, therefore, what he must expect at
lunch, Morris determined to dispense with that meal, and went out, much
to the Colonel's disappointment and indignation. "I hate," he explained
to his brother-in-law Porson afterwards, "yes, I hate a fellow who won't
face disagreeables and shirks his responsibilities."

Between Monksland and the town of Northwold lay some four miles of
cliff, most of which had been portioned off in building lots, for
Northwold was what is called a "rising watering-place." About half-way
between the Abbey and this town stood Mr. Porson's mansion. In fact, it
was nothing but a dwelling like those about it, presenting the familiar
seaside gabled roofs of red tiles, and stucco walls decorated with sham
woodwork, with the difference that the house was exceedingly well built
and about four times as large as the average villa.

"Great heavens! what a place!" said the Colonel to himself as he halted
at the private gateway which opened on to the cliff and surveyed it
affronting sea and sky in all its naked horror. "Show me the house and
I will show you the man," he went on to himself; "but, after all, one
mustn't judge him too hardly. Poor Porson, he did not arrange his own
up-bringing or his ancestors. Hello! there he is.

"John, John, John!" he shouted at a stout little person clad in a black
alpaca coat, a straw hat, and a pair of spectacles, who was engaged in
sad contemplation of a bed of dying evergreens.

At the sound of that well-known voice the little man jumped as though he
had trodden on a pin, and turned round slowly, muttering to himself,

"Gracious! It's him!" an ungrammatical sentence which indicated
sufficiently how wide a niche in the temple of his mind was filled with
the image of his brother-in-law, Colonel Monk.

John Porson was a man of about six or eight and fifty, round-faced,
bald, with large blue eyes not unlike those of a china doll, and
clean-shaven except for a pair of sandy-coloured mutton-chop whiskers.
In expression he was gentle, even timid, and in figure short and stout.
At this very moment behind a hundred counters stand a hundred replicas
of that good-hearted man and worthy citizen, John Porson. Can he be
described better or more briefly?

"How are you Colonel?" he said, hurrying forward. He had never yet dared
to call his brother-in-law "Monk," and much less by his Christian name,
so he compromised on "Colonel."

"Pretty well, thank you, considering my years and botherations. And how
are you, John?"

"Not very grand, not very grand," said the little man; "my heart has
been troubling me, and it was so dreadfully hot in London."

"Then why didn't you come away?"

"Really I don't know. I understood that it had something to do with a
party, but I think the fact is that Mary was too lazy to look after the
servants while they packed up."

"Perhaps she had some attraction there," suggested the Colonel, with an
anxiety which might have been obvious to a more skilled observer.

"Attraction! What do you mean?" asked Porson.

"Mean, you old goose? Why, what should I mean? A young man, of course."

"Oh! I see. No, I am sure it was nothing of that sort. Mary won't be
bothered with young men. She is too lazy; she just looks over their
heads till they get tired and go away. I am sure it was the packing,
or, perhaps, the party. But what are you staring at, Colonel? Is there
anything wrong?"

"No, no; only that wonderful window of yours--the one filled with
bottle-glass--which always reminds me of a bull's-eye lantern standing
on a preserved-beef tin, or the top of a toy lighthouse."

Porson peered at the offending window through his spectacles.

"Certainly, now you mention it, it does look a little odd from here," he
said; "naked, rather. You said so before, you remember, and I told them
to plant the shrubs; but while I was away they let every one of the poor
things die. I will ask my architect, Jenkins, if he can't do anything;
it might be pulled down, perhaps."

"Better leave it alone," said the Colonel, with a sniff. "If I know
anything of Jenkins he'd only put up something worse. I tell you, John,
that where bricks and mortar are concerned that man's a moral monster."

"I know you don't like his style," murmured Porson; "but won't you come
in, it is so hot out here in the sun?"

"Thank you, yes, but let us go to that place you call your den, not to
the drawing-room. If you can spare it, I want half-an-hour with you.
That's why I came over in the afternoon, before dinner."

"Certainly, certainly," murmured Porson again, as he led the way to
the "den," but to himself he added: "It's those mortgages, I'll bet. Oh
dear! oh dear! when shall I see the last of them?"

Presently they were established in the den, the Colonel very cool and
comfortable in Mr. Porson's armchair, and Porson himself perched
upon the edge of a new-looking leather sofa in an attitude of pained
expectancy.

"Now I am at your service, Colonel," he said.

"Oh! yes; well, it is just this. I want you, if you will, to look
through these figures for me," and he produced and handed to him a
portentous document headed "List of Obligations."

Mr. Porson glanced at it, and instantly his round, simple face became
clever and alert. Here he was on his own ground. In five minutes he had
mastered the thing.

"Yes," he said, in a quick voice, "this is quite clear, but there is
some mistake in the addition making a difference of 87 pounds 3s. 10d.
in your favour. Well, where is the schedule of assets?"

"The schedule of assets, my dear John? I wish I knew. I have my pension,
and there are the Abbey and estates, which, as things are, seem to
be mortgaged to their full value. That's about all, I think.
Unless--unless"--and he laughed, "we throw in Morris's patent electrical
machine, which won't work."

"It ought to be reckoned, perhaps," replied Mr. Porson gravely; adding
in a kind of burst, with an air of complete conviction: "I believe in
Morris's machine, or, at least, I believe in Morris. He has the makings
of a great man--no, of a great inventor about him."

"Do you really?" replied the Colonel, much interested. "That is
curious--and encouraging; for, my dear John, where business matters are
concerned, I trust your judgment."

"But I doubt whether he will make any money out of it," went on Porson.
"One day the world will benefit; probably he will not benefit."

The Colonel's interest faded. "Possibly, John; but, if so, perhaps
for present purposes we may leave this mysterious discovery out of the
question."

"I think so, I think so; but what is the point?"

"The point is that I seem to be about at the end of my tether, although,
as yet, I am glad to say, nobody has actually pressed me, and I have
come to you, as a friend and a relative, for advice. What is to be done?
I have sold you all the valuable land, and I am glad to think that you
have made a very good thing of it. Some years ago, also, you took over
the two heaviest mortgages on the Abbey estate, and I am sorry to say
that the interest is considerably in arrear. There remain the floating
debts and other charges, amounting in all to about 7,000 pounds, which
I have no means of meeting, and meanwhile, of course, the place must be
kept up. Under these circumstances, John, I ask you as a business man,
what is to be done?"

"And, as a business man, I say I'm hanged if I know," said Porson, with
unwonted energy. "All debts, no assets--the position is impossible.
Unless, indeed, something happens."

"Quite so. That's it. My only comfort is--that something might happen,"
and he paused.

Porson fidgeted about on the edge of the leather sofa and turned red. In
his heart he was wondering whether he dared offer to pay off the debts.
This he was quite able to do; more, he was willing to do, since to him,
good simple man, the welfare of the ancient house of Monk, of which his
only sister had married the head, was a far more important thing than
parting with a certain number of thousands of pounds. For birth and
station, in his plebeian humility, John Porson had a reverence which
was almost superstitious. Moreover, he had loved his dead sister
dearly, and, in his way, he loved her son also. Also he revered his
brother-in-law, the polished and splendid-looking Colonel, although it
was true that sometimes he writhed beneath his military and aristocratic
heel. Particularly, indeed, did he resent, in his secret heart, those
continual sarcasms about his taste in architecture.

Now, although the monetary transactions between them had been many, as
luck would have it--entirely without his own design--they chanced in the
main to have turned to his, Porson's, advantage. Thus, owing chiefly
to his intelligent development of its possibilities, the land which he
bought from the Monk estate had increased enormously in value; so much
so, indeed, that, even if he lost all the other sums advanced upon
mortgage, he would still be considerably to the good. Therefore, as it
happened, the Colonel was really under no obligations to him. In these
circumstances, Mr. Porson did not quite know how a cold-blooded offer
of an advance of cash without security--in practice a gift--would be
received.

"Have you anything definite in your mind?" he hesitated, timidly.

The Colonel reflected. On his part he was wondering how Porson would
receive the suggestion of a substantial loan. It seemed too much
to risk. He was proud, and did not like to lay himself open to the
possibility of rebuff.

"I think not, John. Unless Morris should chance to make a good marriage,
which is unlikely, for, as you know, he is an odd fish, I can see
nothing before us except ruin. Indeed, at my age, it does not greatly
matter, but it seems a pity that the old house should come to an end in
such a melancholy and discreditable fashion."

"A pity! It is more than a pity," jerked out Porson, with a sudden
wriggle which caused him to rock up and down upon the stiff springs of
the new sofa.

As he spoke there came a knock at the door, and from the further side of
it a slow, rich voice was heard, saying: "May I come in?"

"That's Mary," said Mr. Porson. "Yes, come in, dear; it's only your
uncle."

The door opened, Mary came in, and, in some curious quiet way, at once
her personality seemed to take possession of and dominate that shaded
room. To begin with, her stature gave an idea of dominion, for, without
being at all coarse, she was tall and full in frame. The face also was
somewhat massive, with a rounded chin and large, blue eyes that had a
trick of looking half asleep, and above a low, broad forehead grew her
waving, golden hair, parted simply in the middle after the old Greek
fashion. She wore a white dress, with a silver girdle that set off the
beautiful outlines of her figure to great advantage, and with her a
perfume seemed to pass, perhaps from the roses on her bosom.

"A beautiful woman," thought the Colonel to himself, as she came in, and
he was no mean or inexperienced judge. "A beautiful woman, but a regular
lotus-eater."

"How do you do, Uncle Richard?" said Mary, pausing about six feet away
and holding out her hand. "I heard you scolding my poor dad about his
bow-window. In fact, you woke me up; and, do you know, you used exactly
the same words as you did at your visit after we came down from London
last year."

"Bless me, my dear," said the Colonel, struggling to his feet, and
kissing his niece upon the forehead, "what a memory you have got! It
will get you into trouble some day."

"I daresay--me, or somebody else. But history repeated itself, uncle,
that is all. The same sleepy Me in a lounge-chair, the same hot day,
the same blue-bottle, and the same You scolding the same Daddy about
the same window. Though what on earth dad's window can matter to anyone
except himself, I can't understand."

"I daresay not, my dear; I daresay not. We can none of us know
everything--not even latter day young ladies--but I suggest that a few
hours with Fergussen's 'Handbook of Architecture' might enlighten you on
the point."

Mary reflected, but the only repartee that she could conjure at
the moment was something about ancient lights which did not seem
appropriate. Therefore, as she thought that she had done enough for
honour, and to remind her awe-inspiring relative that he could not
suppress her, suddenly she changed the subject.

"You are looking very well, uncle," she said, surveying him calmly;
"and younger than you did last year. How is my cousin Morris? Will the
aerophone talk yet?"

"Be careful," said the Colonel, gallantly. "If even my grey hairs can
provoke a compliment, what homage is sufficient for a Sleeping Beauty?
As for Morris, he is, I believe, much as usual; at least he stood this
morning till daybreak staring at the sea. I understand, however--if he
doesn't forget to come--that you are to have the pleasure of seeing him
this evening, when you will be able to judge for yourself."

"Now, don't be sarcastic about Morris, uncle; I'd rather you went on
abusing dad's window."

"Certainly not, my dear, if it displeases you. But may I ask why he is
to be considered sacred?"

"Why?" she answered, and a genuine note crept into her bantering voice.
"Because he is one of the few men worth anything whom I ever chanced to
meet--except dad there and----"

"Spare me," cut in the Colonel, with admirable skill, for well he knew
that his name was not upon the lady's lips. "But would it be impertinent
to inquire what it is that constitutes Morris's preeminent excellence in
your eyes?"

"Of course not; only it is three things, not one. First, he works harder
than any man I know, and I think men who work adorable, because I am so
lazy myself. Secondly, he thinks a great deal, and very few people do
that to any purpose. Thirdly, I never feel inclined to go to sleep when
he takes me in to dinner. Oh! you may laugh if you like, but ask dad
what happened to me last month with that wretched old member of the
Government, and before the sweets, too!"

"Please, please," put in Mr. Porson, turning pink under pressure of some
painful recollection. "If you have finished sparring with your uncle,
isn't there any tea, Mary?"

"I believe so," she said, relapsing into a state of bland indifference.
"I'll go and see. If I don't come back, you'll know it is there," and
Mary passed through the door with that indolent, graceful walk which no
one could mistake who once had seen her.

Both her father and her uncle looked after her with admiration. Mr.
Porson admired her because the man or woman who dared to meet that
domestic tyrant his brother-in-law in single combat, and could issue
unconquered from the doubtful fray, was indeed worthy to be honoured.
Colonel Monk for his part hastened to do homage to a very pretty and
charming young lady, one, moreover, who was not in the least afraid of
him.

Mary had gone, and the air from the offending window, which was so
constructed as to let in a maximum of draught, banged the door behind
her. The two men looked at each other. A thought was in the mind of
each; but the Colonel, trained by long experience, and wise in his
generation, waited for Mr. Porson to speak. Many and many a time in the
after days did he find reason to congratulate himself upon this superb
reticence--for there are occasions when discretion can amount almost to
the height of genius. Under their relative circumstances, if it had
been he who first suggested this alliance, he and his family must have
remained at the gravest disadvantage, and as for stipulations, well, he
could have made none. But as it chanced it was from poor Porson's lips
that the suggestion came.

Mr. Porson cleared this throat--once, twice, thrice. At the third rasp,
the Colonel became very attentive. He remembered that his brother-in-law
had done exactly the same thing at the very apex of a long-departed
crisis; indeed, just before he offered spontaneously to take over the
mortgages on the Abbey estate.

"You were talking, Colonel," he began, "when Mary came in," and he
paused.

"I daresay," replied the Colonel indifferently, fixing a contemptuous
glance upon some stone mullions of atrocious design.

"About Morris marrying?"

"Oh, yes, so I was! Well?"

"Well--she seems to like him. I know she does indeed. She never talks of
any other young man."

"She? Who?"

"My daughter, Mary; and--so--why shouldn't they--you know?"

"Really, John, I must ask you to be a little more explicit. It's no good
your addressing me in your business ciphers."

"Well--I mean--why shouldn't he marry her? Morris marry Mary? Is that
plain enough?" he asked in desperation.

For a moment a mist gathered before the Colonel's eyes. Here was
salvation indeed, if only it could be brought about. Oh! if only it
could be brought about.

But the dark eyes never changed, nor did a muscle move upon that pale,
commanding countenance.

"Morris marry Mary," he repeated, dwelling on the alliterative words
as though to convince himself that he had heard them aright. "That is a
very strange proposition, my dear John, and sudden, too. Why, they are
first cousins, and for that reason, I suppose, the thing never occurred
to me--till last night," he added to himself.

"Yes, I know, Colonel; but I am not certain that this first cousin
business isn't a bit exaggerated. The returns of the asylums seem to
show it, and I know my doctor, Sir Henry Andrews, says it's nonsense.
You'll admit that he is an authority. Also, it happened in my own
family, my father and mother were cousins, and we are none the worse."

On another occasion the Colonel might have been inclined to comment on
this statement--of course, most politely. Now, however, he let it pass.

"Well, John," he said, "putting aside the cousinship, let me hear what
your idea is of the advantages of such a union, should the parties
concerned change to consider it suitable."

"Quite so, quite so, that's business," said Mr. Porson, brightening up
at once. "From my point of view, these would be the advantages. As you
know, Colonel, so far as I am concerned my origin, for the time I have
been able to trace it--that's four generations from old John Porson,
the Quaker sugar merchant, who came from nobody knows where--although
honest, is humble, and until my father's day all in the line of retail
trade. But then my dear wife came in. She was a governess when I married
her, as you may have heard, and of a very good Scotch family, one of
the Camerons, so Mary isn't all of our cut--any more," he added with a
smile, "than Morris is all of yours. Still for her to marry a Monk would
be a lift up--a considerable lift up, and looked at from a business
point of view, worth a deal of money.

"Also, I like my nephew Morris, and I am sure that Mary likes him, and
I'd wish the two of them to inherit what I have got. They wouldn't have
very long to wait for it, Colonel, for those doctors may say what they
will, but I tell you," he added, pathetically, tapping himself over the
heart--"though you don't mention it to Mary--I know better. Oh! yes, I
know better. That's about all, except, of course, that I should wish to
see her settled before I'm gone. A man dies happier, you understand, if
he is certain whom his only child is going to marry; for when he is
dead I suppose that he will know nothing of what happens to her. Or,
perhaps," he added, as though by an afterthought, "he may know too much,
and not be able to help; which would be painful, very painful."

"Don't get into those speculations, John," said the Colonel, waving his
hand. "They are unpleasant, and lead nowhere--sufficient to the day is
the evil thereof."

"Quite so, quite so. Life is a queer game of blind-man's buff, isn't it;
played in a mist on a mountain top, and the players keep dropping over
the precipices. But nobody heeds, because there are always plenty more,
and the game goes on forever. Well, that's my side of the case. Do you
wish me to put yours?"

"I should like to hear your view of it."

"Very good, it is this. Here's a nice girl, no one can deny that, and a
nice man, although he's odd--you will admit as much. He's got name, and
he will have fame, or I am much mistaken. But, as it chances, through no
fault of his, he wants money, or will want it, for without money the
old place can't go on, and without a wife the old race can't go on. Now,
Mary will have lots of money, for, to tell the truth, it keeps piling up
until I am sick of it. I've been lucky in that way, Colonel, because I
don't care much about it, I suppose. I don't think that I ever yet made
a really bad investment. Just look. Two years ago, to oblige an old
friend who was in the shop with me when I was young, I put 5,000 pounds
into an Australian mine, never thinking to see it again. Yesterday I
sold that stock for 50,000 pounds."

"Fifty thousand pounds!" ejaculated the Colonel, astonished into
admiration.

"Yes, or to be accurate, 49,375 pounds, 3s., 10d., and--that's where the
jar comes in--I don't care. I never thought of it again since I got the
broker's note till this minute. I have been thinking all day about my
heart, which is uneasy, and about what will happen to Mary when I am
gone. What's the good of this dirty money to a dying man? I'd give it
all to have my wife and the boy I lost back for a year or two; yes, I
would go into a shop again and sell sugar like my grandfather, and live
on the profits from the till and the counter. There's Mary calling. We
must tell a fib, we must say that we thought she was to come to fetch
us; don't you forget. Well, there it is, perhaps you'll think it over at
your leisure."

"Yes, John," replied the Colonel, solemnly; "certainly I will think it
over. Of course, there are pros and cons, but, on the whole, speaking
offhand, I don't see why the young people should not make a match. Also
you have always been a good relative, and, what is better, a good friend
to me, so, of course, if possible I should like to fall in with your
wishes."

Mr. Porson, who was advancing towards the door, wheeled round quickly.

"Thank you, Colonel," he said, "I appreciate your sentiments; but don't
you make any mistake. It isn't my wishes that have to be fallen in
with--or your wishes. It's the wishes of your son, Morris, and my
daughter, Mary. If they are agreeable I'd like it well; if not, all the
money in the world, nor all the families in the world, wouldn't make me
have anything to do with the job, or you either. Whatever our failings,
we are honest men--both of us, who would not sell our flesh and blood
for such trash as that."



CHAPTER IV

MARY PREACHES AND THE COLONEL PREVAILS

A fortnight had gone by, and during this time Morris was a frequent
visitor at Seaview. Also his Cousin Mary had come over twice or thrice
to lunch, with her father or without him. Once, indeed, she had stopped
all the afternoon, spending most of it in the workshop with Morris. This
workshop, it may be remembered, was the old chapel of the Abbey, a very
beautiful and still perfect building, finished in early Tudor times, in
which, by good fortune, the rich stained glass of the east window still
remained. It made a noble and spacious laboratory, with its wide nave
and lovely roof of chestnut wood, whereof the corbels were seraphs,
white-robed and golden-winged.

"Are you not afraid to desecrate such a place with your horrid vices--I
mean the iron things--and furnace and litter?" asked Mary. She had sunk
down upon an anvil, on which lay a newspaper, the first seat that she
could find, and thence surveyed the strange, incongruous scene.

"Well, if you ask, I don't like it," answered Morris. "But there is no
other place that I can have, for my father is afraid of the forge in the
house, and I can't afford to build a workshop outside."

"It ought to be restored," said Mary, "with a beautiful organ in a
carved case and a lovely alabaster altar and one of those perpetual
lamps of silver--the French call them 'veilleuses', don't they?--and the
Stations of the Cross in carved oak, and all the rest of it."

Mary, it may be explained, had a tendency to admire the outward
adornments of ritualism if not its doctrines.

"Quite so," answered Morris, smiling. "When I have from five to seven
thousand to spare I will set about the job, and hire a high-church
chaplain with a fine voice to come and say Mass for your benefit. By the
way, would you like a confessional also? You omitted it from the list."

"I think not. Besides, what on earth should I confess, except being
always late for prayers through oversleeping myself in the morning, and
general uselessness?"

"Oh, I daresay you might find something if you tried," suggested Morris.

"Speak for yourself, please, Morris. To begin with your own account,
there is the crime of sacrilege in using a chapel as a workshop. Look,
those are all tombstones of abbots and other holy people, and under
each tombstone one of them is asleep. Yet there you are, using strong
language and whistling and making a horrible noise with hammers just
above their heads. I wonder they don't haunt you; I would if I were
they."

"Perhaps they do," said Morris, "only I don't see them."

"Then they can't be there."

"Why not? Because things are invisible and intangible it does not follow
that they don't exist, as I ought to know as much as anyone."

"Of course; but I am sure that if there were anything of that sort about
you would soon be in touch with it. With me it is different; I could
sleep sweetly with ghosts sitting on my bed in rows."

"Why do you say that--about me, I mean?" asked Morris, in a more earnest
voice.

"Oh, I don't know. Go and look at your own eyes in the glass--but
I daresay you do often enough. Look here, Morris, you think me very
silly--almost foolish--don't you?"

"I never thought anything of the sort. As a matter of fact, if you want
to know, I think you a young woman rather more idle than most, and with
a perfect passion for burying your talent in very white napkins."

"Well, it all comes to the same thing, for there isn't much difference
between fool-born and fool-manufactured. Sometimes I wake up, however,
and have moments of wisdom--as when I made you hear that thing, you
know, thereby proving that it is all right, only useless--haven't I?"

"I daresay; but come to the point."

"Don't be in a hurry. It is rather hard to express myself. What I mean
is that you had better give up staring."

"Staring? I never stared at you or anyone else, in my life!"

"Stupid Morris! By staring I mean star-gazing, and by star-gazing I mean
trying to get away from the earth--in your mind, you know."

Morris ran his fingers through his untidy hair and opened his lips to
answer.

"Don't contradict me," she interrupted in a full steady voice. "That's
what you are thinking of half the day, and dreaming about all the
night."

"What's that?" he ejaculated.

"I don't know," she answered, with a sudden access of indifference. "Do
you know yourself?"

"I am waiting for instruction," said Morris, sarcastically.

"All right, then, I'll try. I mean that you are not satisfied with
this world and those of us who live here. You keep trying to fashion
another--oh! yes, you have been at it from a boy, you see I have got a
good memory, I remember all your 'vision stories'--and then you try to
imagine its inhabitants."

"Well," said Morris, with the sullen air of a convicted criminal,
"without admitting one word of this nonsense, what if I do?"

"Only that you had better look out that you don't _find_ whatever it is
you seek. It's a horrible mistake to be so spiritual, at least in that
kind of way. You should eat and drink, and sleep ten hours as I do, and
not go craving for vision till you can see, and praying for power until
you can create."

"See! Create! Who? What?"

"The inhabitant, or inhabitants. Just think, you may have been building
her up all this time, imagination by imagination, and thought by
thought. Then her day might come, and all that you have put out
piecemeal will return at once. Yes, she may appear, and take you, and
possess you, and lead you----"

"She? Why she? and where?"

"To the devil, I imagine," answered Mary composedly, "and as you are
a man one can guess the guide's sex. It's getting dark, let us go
out. This is such a creepy place in the dark that it actually makes
me understand what people mean by nerves. And, Morris, of course
you understand that I have only been talking rubbish. I always liked
inventing fairy tales; you taught me; only this one is too grown
up--disagreeable. What I really mean is that I do think it might be a
good thing if you wouldn't live quite so much alone, and would go out
a bit more. You are getting quite an odd look on your face; you are
indeed, not like other men at all. I believe that it comes from your
worrying about this wretched invention until you are half crazy over the
thing. Any change there?"

He shook his head. "No, I can't find the right alloy--not one that can
be relied upon. I begin to doubt whether it exists."

"Why don't you give it up--for a while at any rate?"

"I have. I made a novel kind of electrical hand-saw this spring, and
sold the patent for 100 pounds and a royalty. There's commercial success
for you, and now I am at work on a new lamp of which I have the idea."

"I am uncommonly glad to hear it," said Mary with energy. "And, I say,
Morris, you are not offended at my silly parables, are you? You know
what I mean."

"Not a bit. I think it is very kind of you to worry your head about
an impossible fellow like me. And look here, Mary, I have done some
dreaming in my time, it is true, for so far the world has been a place
of tribulation to me, and it is sick hearts that dream. But I mean to
give it up, for I know as well as you do that there is only one end to
all these systems of mysticism." Mary looked up.

"I mean," he went on, correcting himself, "to the mad attempt unduly and
prematurely to cultivate our spiritual natures that we may live to and
for them, and not to and for our natural bodies."

"Exactly my argument, put into long words," said Mary. "There will
be plenty of time for that when we get down among those old gentlemen
yonder--a year or two hence, you know. Meanwhile, let us take the world
as we find it. It isn't a bad place, after all, at times, and there are
several things worth doing for those who are not too lazy.

"Good-bye, I must be off; my bicycle is there against the railings.
Oh, how I hate that machine! Now, listen, Morris; do you want to do
something really useful, and earn the blessings of an affectionate
relative? Then invent a really reliable electrical bike, that would look
nice and do all the work, so that I could sit on it comfortably and get
to a place without my legs aching as though I had broken them, and a red
face, and no breath left in my body."

"I will think about it," he said; "indeed, I have thought of it already
but the accumulators are the trouble."

"Then go on thinking, there's an angel; think hard and continually until
you evolve that blessed instrument of progression. I say, I haven't a
lamp."

"I'll lend you mine," suggested Morris.

"No; other people's lamps always go out with me, and so do my own, for
that matter. I'll risk it; I know the policeman, and if we meet I will
argue with him. Good-bye; don't forget we are coming to dinner to-morrow
night. It's a party, isn't it?"

"I believe so."

"What a bore, I must unpack my London dresses. Well, good-bye again."

"Good-bye, dear," answered Morris, and she was gone.

"'Dear,'" thought Mary to herself; "he hasn't called me that since I was
sixteen. I wonder why he does it now? Because I have been scolding him,
I suppose; that generally makes men affectionate."

For a while she glided forward through the grey twilight, and then began
to think again, muttering to herself:

"You idiot, Mary, why should you be pleased because he called you
'dear'? He doesn't really care two-pence about you; his blood goes no
quicker when you pass by and no slower when you stay away. Why do you
bother about him? and what made you talk all that stuff this afternoon?
Because you think he is in a queer way, and that if he goes on giving
himself up to his fancies he will become mad--yes, mad--because--Oh!
what's the use of making excuses--because you are fond of him, and
always have been fond of him from a child, and can't help it. What a
fate! To be fond of a man who hasn't the heart to care for you or for
any other woman. Perhaps, however, that's only because he hasn't found
the right one, as he might do at any time, and then----"

"Where are you going to, and where's your light?" shouted a hoarse voice
from the pathway on which she was unlawfully riding.

"My good man, I wish I knew," answered Mary, blandly.



Morris, for whom the day never seemed long enough, was a person who
breakfasted punctually at half-past eight, whereas Colonel Monk, to
whom--at any rate at Monksland--the day was often too long, generally
breakfasted at ten. To his astonishment, however, on entering the
dining-room upon the morrow of his interview in the workshop with Mary,
he found his father seated at the head of the table.

"This means a 'few words' with me about something disagreeable," thought
Morris to himself as he dabbed viciously at an evasive sausage. He
was not fond of these domestic conversations. Nor was he in the least
reassured by his father's airy and informed comments upon the contents
of the "Globe," which always arrived by post, and the marvel of its
daily "turnover" article, whereof the perpetual variety throughout the
decades constituted, the Colonel was wont to say, the eighth wonder of
the world. Instinct, instructed by experience, assured him that these
were but the first moves in the game.

Towards the end of the meal he attempted retreat, pretending that he
wanted to fetch something, but the Colonel, who was watching him over
the top of the pink page of the "Globe," intervened promptly.

"If you have a few minutes to spare, my dear boy, I should like to have
a chat with you," he said.

"Certainly, father," answered the dutiful Morris; "I am at your
service."

"Very good; then I will light my cigar, and we might take a stroll
on the beach, that is, after I have seen the cook about the dinner
to-night. Perhaps I shall find you presently by the steps."

"I will wait for you there," answered Morris. And wait he did, for a
considerable while, for the interview with the cook proved lengthy.
Moreover, the Colonel was not a punctual person, or one who set an undue
value upon his own or other people's time. At length, just as Morris was
growing weary of the pristine but enticing occupation of making ducks
and drakes with flat pebbles, his father appeared. After "salutations,"
as they say in the East, he wasted ten more minutes in abusing the cook,
ending up with a direct appeal for his son's estimate of her capacities.

"She might be better and she might be worse," answered Morris,
judicially.

"Quite so," replied the Colonel, drily; "the remark is sound and applies
to most things. At present, however, I think that she is worse; also
I hate the sight of her fat red face. But bother the cook, why do you
think so much about her; I have something else to say."

"I don't think," said Morris. "She doesn't excite me one way or the
other, except when she is late with my breakfast."

Then, as he expected, after the cook came the crisis.

"You will remember, my dear boy," began the Colonel, affectionately, "a
little talk we had a while ago."

"Which one, father?"

"The last of any importance, I believe. I refer to the occasion when you
stopped out all night contemplating the sea; an incident which impressed
it upon my memory."

Morris looked at him. Why was the old gentleman so inconveniently
observant?

"And doubtless you remember the subject?"

"There were a good many subjects, father; they ranged from mortgages to
matrimony."

"Quite so, to matrimony. Well, have you thought any more about it?"

"Not particularly, father. Why should I?"

"Confound it, Morris," exclaimed the Colonel, losing patience; "don't
chop logic like a petty sessions lawyer. Let's come to the point."

"That is my desire," answered Morris; and quite clearly there rose
up before him an inconsequent picture of his mother teaching him the
Catechism many, many years ago. Thereat, as was customary with his mind
when any memory of her touched it, his temper softened like iron beneath
the influence of fire.

"Very good, then what do you think of Mary as a wife?"

"How should I know under the circumstances?"

The Colonel fumed, and Morris added, "I beg your pardon, I understand
what you mean."

Then his father came to the charge.

"To be brief, will you marry her?"

"Will she marry me?" asked Morris. "Isn't she too sensible?"

His father's eye twinkled, but he restrained himself. This, he felt, was
not an occasion upon which to indulge his powers of sarcasm.

"Upon my word, if you want my opinion, I believe she will; but you have
to ask her first. Look here, my boy, be advised by me, and do it as soon
as possible. The notion is rather new to me, I admit; but, taking her
all round, where would you find a better woman? You and I don't always
agree about things; we are of a different generation, and look at the
world from different standpoints. But I think that at the bottom we
respect each other, and I am sure," he added with a touch of restrained
dignity, "that we are naturally and properly attached to each
other. Under these circumstances, and taking everything else into
consideration, I am convinced also that you will give weight to my
advice. I assure you that I do not offer it lightly. It is that you
should marry your cousin Mary."

"There is her side of the case to be considered," suggested Morris.

"Doubtless, and she is a very shrewd and sensible young woman under all
her 'dolce far niente' air, who is quite capable of consideration."

"I am not worthy of her," his son broke in passionately.

"That is for her to decide. I ask you to give her an opportunity of
expressing an opinion."

Morris looked at the sea and sky, then he looked at his father standing
before him in an attitude that was almost suppliant, with head bowed,
hands clasped, and on his clear-cut face an air of real sincerity. What
right had he to resist this appeal? He was heart-whole, without any
kind of complication, and for his cousin Mary he had true affection and
respect. Moreover, they had been brought up together. She understood
him, and in the midst of so much that was uncertain and bewildering
she seemed something genuine and solid, something to which a man could
cling. It may not have been a right spirit in which to approach this
question of marriage, but in the case of a young man like Morris,
who was driven forward by no passion, by no scheme even of personal
advancement, this substitution of reason for impulse and instinct was
perhaps natural.

"Very well, I will," he answered; "but if she is wise, she won't."

His father turned his head away and sighed softly, and that sigh seemed
to lift a ton's weight off his heart.

"I am glad to hear it," he answered simply, "the rest must settle
itself. By the way, if you are going up to the house, tell the cook that
I have changed my mind, we will have the soles fried with lemon; she
always makes a mess of them 'au maitre d'hotel.'"



CHAPTER V

A PROPOSAL AND A PROMISE

Although it consisted of but a dozen people, the dinner-party at the
Abbey that night was something of a function. To begin with, the old
refectory, with its stone columns and arches still standing as they
were in the pre-Reformation days, lit with cunningly-arranged and shaded
electric lights designed and set up by Morris, was an absolutely
ideal place in which to dine. Then, although the Monk family were
impoverished, they still retained the store of plate accumulated by past
generations. Much of this silver was old and very beautiful, and when
set out upon the great side-boards produced an affect well suited to
that chamber and its accessories. The company also was pleasant and
presentable. There were the local baronet and his wife; the two beauties
of the neighbourhood, Miss Jane Rose and Miss Eliza Layard, with their
respective belongings; the clergyman of the parish, a Mr. Tomley, who
was leaving the county for the north of England on account of his wife's
health; and a clever and rising young doctor from the county town.
These, with Mr. Porson and his daughter, made up the number who upon
this particular night with every intention of enjoying themselves, sat
down to that rather rare entertainment in Monksland, a dinner-party.

Colonel Monk had himself very carefully placed the guests. As a result,
Morris, to whose lot it had fallen to take in the wealthy Miss Layard,
a young lady of handsome but somewhat ill-tempered countenance, found
himself at the foot of the oblong table with his partner on one side
and his cousin on the other. Mary, who was conducted to her seat by Mr.
Layard, the delicate brother, an insignificant, pallid-looking specimen
of humanity, for reasons of her own, not unconnected perhaps with the
expected presence of the Misses Layard and Rose, had determined to look
and dress her best that night. She wore a robe of some rich white silk,
tight fitting and cut rather low, and upon her neck a single row of
magnificent diamonds. The general effect of her sheeny dress, snow-like
skin, and golden, waving hair, as she glided into the shaded room,
suggested to Morris's mind a great white lily floating down the quiet
water of some dark stream, and, when presently the light fell on her,
a vision of a silver, mist-laden star lying low upon the ocean at the
break of dawn. Later, after she became acquainted with these poetical
imaginings, Mary congratulated herself and her maid very warmly on the
fact that she had actually summoned sufficient energy to telegraph to
town for this particular dress.

Of the other ladies present, Miss Layard was arrayed in a hot-looking
red garment, which she imagined would suit her dark eyes and complexion.
Miss Rose, on the contrary, had come out in the virginal style of muslin
and blue bows, whereof the effect, unhappily, was somewhat marred by a
fiery complexion, acquired as the result of three days' violent play at
a tennis tournament. To this unfortunate circumstance Miss Layard, who
had her own views of Miss Rose, was not slow in calling attention.

"What has happened to poor Jane?" she said, addressing Mary. "She looks
as though she had been red-ochred down to her shoulders."

"Who is poor Jane?" asked that young lady languidly. "Oh! you mean Miss
Rose. I know, she has been playing in that tennis tournament at--what's
the name of the place? Dad would drive me there this afternoon, and it
made me quite hot to look at her, jumping and running and hitting for
hour after hour. But she's awfully good at it; she won the prize.
Don't you envy anybody who can win a prize at a tennis tournament, Miss
Layard?"

"No," she answered sharply, for Miss Layard did not shine at Tennis. "I
dislike women who go about what my brother calls 'pot-hunting' just as
if they were professionals."

"Oh, do you? I admire them. It must be so nice to be able to do anything
well, even if it's only lawn tennis. It's the poor failures like myself
for whom I am so sorry."

"I don't admire anybody who can come to out to a dinner party with a
head and neck like that," retorted Eliza.

"Why not? You can't burn, and that should make you more charitable. And
I tie myself up in veils and umbrellas, which is absurd. Besides, what
does it matter? You see, it is different with most of us; Miss Rose is
so good-looking that she can afford herself these little luxuries."

"That is a matter of opinion," replied Miss Layard.

"Oh! I don't think so; at least, the opinion is all one way. Don't
you think Miss Rose beautiful, Mr. Layard?" she said, turning to her
companion.

"Ripping," said that gentleman, with emphasis. "But I wish she wouldn't
beat one at tennis; it is an insult to the stronger sex."

Mary looked at him reflectively. His sister looked at him also.

"And I am sure that you think her beautiful, don't you, Morris?" went on
the imperturbable Mary.

"Certainly, of course; lovely," he replied, with a vacuous stare at the
elderly wife of the baronet.

"There, Miss Layard, now you collect the opinions of the gentlemen
all along your side." And Mary turned away, ostensibly to talk to her
cavalier; but really to find out what could possibly interest Morris so
deeply in the person or conversation of Lady Jones.

Lady Jones was talking across the table to Mr. Tomley, the departing
rector, a benevolent-looking person, with a broad forehead adorned like
that of Father Time by a single lock of snowy hair.

"And so you are really going to the far coast of Northumberland, Mr.
Tomley, to exchange livings with the gentleman with the odd name? How
brave of you!"

Mr. Tomley smiled assent, adding: "You can imagine what a blow it is
to me, Lady Jones, to separate myself from my dear parishioners and
friends"--here he eyed the Colonel, with whom he had waged a continual
war during his five years of residence in the parish, and added: "But
we must all give way to the cause of duty and the necessities of health.
Mrs. Tomley says that this part of the country does not agree with
her, and is quite convinced that unless she is taken back to her native
Northumberland air the worst may be expected."

"I fancy that it has arrived in that poor man's case," thought Mary
to herself. Lady Jones, who also knew Mrs. Tomley and the power of her
tongue, nodded her head sympathetically and said:

"Of course, of course. A wife's health must be the first consideration
of every good man. But isn't it rather lonely up there, Mr. Tomley?"

"Lonely, Lady Jones?" the clergyman replied with energy, and shaking his
white lock. "I assure you that the place is a howling desert; a great
moor behind, and the great sea in front, and some rocks and the church
between the two. That's about all, but my wife likes it because she used
to stay at the rectory when she was a little girl. Her uncle was the
incumbent there. She declares that she has never been well since she
left the parish."

"And what did you say is the name of the present inhabitant of this
earthly paradise, the man with whom you have exchanged?" interrupted the
Colonel.

"Fregelius--the Reverend Peter Fregelius."

"What an exceedingly odd name! Is he an Englishman?"

"Yes; but I think that his father was a Dane, and he married a Danish
lady."

"Indeed! Is she living?"

"Oh, no. She died a great many years ago. The old gentleman has only one
child left--a girl."

"What is her name?" asked someone idly, in a break of the general
conversation, so that everybody paused to listen to his reply.

"Stella--Stella Fregelius; a very unusual girl."

Then the conversation broke out again with renewed vigour, and all that
those at Morris's end of the table could catch were snatches such as:
"Wonderful eyes"; "Independent young person"; "Well read and musical";
"Oh, yes! poor as church mice, that's why he accepted my offer."

At this point the Doctor began a rather vehement argument with Mr.
Porson as to the advisability of countervailing duties to force foreign
nations to abandon the sugar bounties, and no more was heard of Mr.
Tomley and his plans.

On the whole, Mary enjoyed that dinner-party. Miss Layard, somewhat sore
after her first encounter, attempted to retaliate later.

But by this time Mary's argumentative energy had evaporated. Therefore,
adroitly appealing to Mr. Layard to take her part, she retired from the
fray till, seeing that it grew acrimonious, for this brother and sister
did not love each other, she pretended to hear no more.

"Have you been stopping out all night again and staring at the sea,
Morris?" she inquired; "because I understand it is a habit of yours. You
seem so sleepy. I know that I must have looked just like you when that
old political gentleman took me in to dinner, and I made an exhibition
of myself."

"What was that?" asked Morris.

So she told him the story of her unlawful slumbers, and so amusingly
that he burst out laughing and remained in an excellent mood for the
rest of the feast, or at any rate until the ladies had departed. After
this event once more he became somewhat silent and distant.

It was not wonderful. To most men, except the very experienced,
proposals are terrifying ordeals, and Morris had made up his mind, if he
could find a chance, to propose to Mary that night. The thing was to be
done, so the sooner he did it the better.

Then it would be over, one way or the other. Besides, and this was
strange and opportune enough, never had he felt so deeply and truly
attracted to Mary. Whether it was because her soft, indolent beauty
showed at its best this evening in that gown and setting, or because
her conversation, with its sub-acid tinge of kindly humour amused him,
or--and this seemed more probable--because her whole attitude towards
himself was so gentle and so full of sweet benevolence, he could not
say. At any rate, this remained true, she attracted him more than any
woman he had ever met, and sincerely he hoped and prayed that when he
asked her to be his wife she might find it in her heart to say Yes.

The rest of the entertainment resembled that of most country
dinner-parties. Conducted to the piano by the Colonel, who understood
music very well, the talented ladies of the party, including Miss Rose,
sang songs with more or less success, while Miss Layard criticised, Mary
was appreciative, and the men talked. At length the local baronet's
wife looked at the local baronet, who thereupon asked leave to order
the carriage. This example the rest of the company followed in quick
succession until all were gone except Mr. Porson and his daughter.

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Porson, "I suppose that we had better be off
too, or you won't get your customary nine hours."

Mary yawned slightly and assented, asserting that she had utterly
exhausted herself in defending Miss Rose from the attacks of her rival,
Miss Layard.

"No, no," broke in the Colonel, "come and have a smoke first, John. I've
got that old map of the property unrolled on purpose to show you, and
I don't want to keep it about, for it fills up the whole place. Morris
will look after Mary for half an hour, I daresay."

"Certainly," said Morris, but the heart within him sank to the level of
his dress-shoes. Here was the opportunity for which he had wished, but
as he could not be called a forward, or even a pushing lover, he was
alarmed at its very prompt arrival. This answer to his prayers was
somewhat too swift and thorough. There is a story of an enormously fat
old Boer who was seated on the veld with his horse at his side, when
suddenly a band of armed natives rushed to attack him. "Oh, God, help!"
he cried in his native _taal_, as he prepared to heave his huge form
into the saddle. Having thus invoked divine assistance, this Dutch
Falstaff went at the task with such a will that in a trice he found
himself not on the horse, but over it, lying upon his back,
indeed, among the grasses. "O God!" that deluded burgher exclaimed,
reproachfully, as the Kaffirs came up and speared him, "Thou hast helped
a great deal too much!"

At this moment Morris felt very much like this stout but simple dweller
in the wilderness. He would have preferred to coquet with the enemy
for a while from the safety of his saddle. But Providence willed it
otherwise.

"Won't you come out, Mary?" he said, with the courage which inspires
men in desperate situations. He felt that it would be impossible to say
those words with the electric lights looking at him like so many eyes.
The thought of it, even, made him warm all over.

"I don't know; it depends. Is there anything comfortable to sit on?"

"The deck chair," he suggested.

"That sounds nice. I have slumbered for hours in deck chairs. Look,
there's a fur rug on that sofa, and here's my white cape; now you get
your coat, and I'll come."

"Thank you, no; I don't want any coat; I am hot enough already."

Mary turned and looked him up and down with her wondering blue eyes.

"Do you really think it safe," she said, "to expose yourself to all
sorts of unknown dangers in this unprotected condition?"

"Of course," he answered. "I am not afraid of the night air even in
October."

"Very well, very well, Morris," she went on, and there was meaning in
her voice; "then whatever happens don't blame me. It's so easy to be
rash and thoughtless and catch a chill, and then you may become an
invalid for life, or die, you know. One can't get rid of it again--at
least, not often."

Morris looked at her with a puzzled air, and stepped through the window
which he had opened, on to the lawn, whither, with a quaint little shrug
of her shoulders, Mary followed him, muttering to herself:

"Now if he takes cold, it won't be _my_ fault." Then she stopped,
clasped her hands, and said, "Oh! what a lovely night. I am glad that we
came out here."

She was right, it was indeed lovely. High in the heavens floated a
bright half-moon, across whose face the little white-edged clouds
drifted in quick succession, throwing their gigantic shadows to the
world beneath. All silver was the sleeping sea where the moonlight fell
upon it, and when this was eclipsed, then it was all jet. To the right
and left, up to the very borders of the cliff, lay the soft wreaths
of roke or land-fog, covering the earth as with a cloak of down, but
pierced here and there by the dim and towering shapes of trees. Yet
although these curling wreaths of mist hung on the edges of the cliff
like white water about to fall, they never fell, since clear to the
sight, though separated from them by a gulf of translucent blackness,
lay the yellow belt of sand up which, inch by inch, the tide was
creeping.

And the air--no wind stirred it, though the wind was at work aloft--it
was still and bright as crystal, and crisp and cold as new-iced wine,
for the first autumn frost was falling.

They stood for a few moments looking at all these wonderful beauties
of the mysterious night--which dwellers in the country so rarely
appreciate, because to them they are common, daily things--and listening
to the soft, long-drawn murmuring of the sea upon the shingle. Then they
went forward to the edge of the cliff, but although Morris threw the fur
rug over it Mary did not seat herself in the comfortable-looking deck
chair. Her desire for repose had departed. She preferred to lean upon
the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in
their season, harebells and wallflowers. Morris came and leant at her
side; for a while they both stared at the sea.

"Pray, are you making up poetry?" she inquired at last.

"Why do you ask such silly questions?" he answered, not without
indignation.

"Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were
trying to get the lines to scan. Also the sea, and the sky, and the
night suggest poetry, don't they?"

Morris turned his head and looked at her.

"_You_ suggest it," he said, with desperate earnestness, "in all that
shining white, especially when the moon goes in. Then you look like a
beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world."

At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from
Morris, great. She had never heard him say so much as that before. Then
she thought an instant, and the echo of the word "spirit" came back to
her mind, and jarred upon it with a little sudden shock. Even when he
had a lovely woman at his side must his fancy be wandering to these
unearthly denizens and similes.

"Please, Morris," she said almost sharply, "do not compare me to a
spirit. I am a woman, nothing more, and if it is not enough that I
should be a woman, then----" she paused, to add, "I beg your pardon,
I know you meant to be nice, but once I had a friend who went in for
spirits--table-turning ones I mean--with very bad results, and I detest
the name of them."

Morris took this rebuff better than might have been expected.

"Would you object if one ventured to call you an angel?" he asked.

"Not if the word was used in a terrestrial sense. It excites a vision of
possibilities, and the fib is so big that anyone must pardon it."

"Very well, then; I call you that."

"Thank you, I should be delighted to return the compliment. Can you
think of any celestial definition appropriate to a young gentleman with
dark eyes?"

"Oh! Mary, please stop making fun of me," said Morris, with something
like a groan.

"Why?" she asked innocently. "Besides I wasn't making fun. It's only my
way of carrying on conversation; they taught it me at school, you know."

Morris made no answer; in fact, he did not know what on earth to say, or
rather how to find the fitting words. After all, it was an accident and
not his own intelligence that freed him from his difficulty. Mary moved
a little, causing the white cloak, which was unfastened, to slip from
her shoulders. Morris put out his hand to catch it, and met her hand. In
another instant he had thrown his arm round her, drawn her to him, and
kissed her on the lips. Then, abashed at what he had done, he let her go
and picked up the cloak.

"Might I ask?" began Mary in her usual sweet, low tones. Then her voice
broke, and her blue eyes filled with tears.

"I beg your pardon; I am a brute," began Morris, utterly abased by the
sight of these tears, which glimmered like pearls in the moonlight,
"but, of course, you know what I mean."

Mary shook her head vacantly. Apparently she could not trust herself to
speak.

"Dear, will you take me?"

She made no answer; only, after pausing for some few seconds as though
lost in thought, with a little action more eloquent than any speech, she
leant herself ever so slightly towards him.

Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, words came to him readily enough:

"I am not worth your having," he said. "I know I am an odd fellow, not
like other men; my very failings have not been the same as other men's.
For instance--before heaven it is true--you are the first woman whom I
ever kissed, as I swear to you that you shall be the last. Then, what
else am I? A failure in the very work that I have chosen, and the heir
to a bankrupt property! Oh! it is not fair; I have no right to ask you!"

"I think it quite fair, and here I am the judge, Morris." Then, sentence
by sentence, she went on, not all at once, but with breaks and pauses.

"You asked me just now if I loved you, and I told you--Yes. But you did
not ask me when I began to love you. I will tell you all the same. I
can't remember a time when I didn't; no, not since I was a little girl.
It was you who grew away from me, not me from you, when you took to
studying mysticism and aerophones, and were repelled by all women,
myself included."

"I know, I know," he said. "Don't remind me of my dead follies. Some
things are born in the blood."

"Quite so, and they remain in the bone. I understand. Morris, unless you
maltreat me wilfully--which I am sure you would never do--I shall always
understand."

"What are you afraid of?" he asked in a shaken voice. "I feel that you
are afraid."

"Oh, one or two things; that you might overwork yourself, for instance.
Or, lest you should find that after all you are more human than you
imagine, and be taken possession of by some strange Stella coming out of
nowhere."

"What do you mean, and why do you use that name?" he said amazed.

"What I say, dear. As for that name, I heard it accidentally at table
to-night, and it came to my lips--of itself. It seemed to typify what I
meant, and to suggest a wandering star--such as men like you are fond of
following."

"Upon my honour," said Morris, "I will do none of these things."

"If you can help it, you will do none of them. I know it well enough. I
hope and believe that there will never be a shadow between us while we
live. But, Morris, I take you, risks and all, because it has been my
chance to love you and nobody else. Otherwise, I should think twice; but
love doesn't stop at risks."

"What have I done to deserve this?" groaned Morris.

"I cannot see. I should very much like to know," replied Mary, with a
touch of her old humour.

It was at this moment that Colonel Monk, happening to come round the
corner of the house, walking on the grass, and followed by Mr. Porson,
saw a sight which interested him. With one hand he pointed it out to
Porson, at the same moment motioning him to silence with the other.
Then, taking his brother-in-law by the arm, he dragged him back round
the corner of the house.

"They make a pretty picture there in the moonlight, don't they, John, my
boy?" he said. "Come, we had better go back into the study and talk over
matters till they have done. Even the warmth of their emotions won't
keep out the night air for ever."



CHAPTER VI

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

For the next month, or, to be accurate, the next five weeks, everything
went merrily at Monk's Abbey. It was as though some cloud had been
lifted off the place and those who dwelt therein. No longer did the
Colonel look solemn when he came down in the morning, and no longer
was he cross after he had read his letters. Now his interviews with the
steward in the study were neither prolonged nor anxious; indeed,
that functionary emerged thence on Saturday mornings with a shining
countenance, drying the necessary cheque, heretofore so difficult to
extract, by waving it ostentatiously in the air. Lastly, the Colonel did
not seem to be called upon to make such frequent visits to his man of
business, and to tarry at the office of the bank manager in Northwold.
Once there was a meeting, but, contrary to the general custom, the
lawyer and the banker came to see him in company, and stopped to
luncheon. At this meal, moreover, the three of them appeared to be in
the best of spirits.

Morris noted all these things in his quiet, observant way, and from
them drew certain conclusions of his own. But he shrank from making
inquiries, nor did the Colonel offer any confidences. After all, why
should he, who had never meddled with his father's business, choose this
moment to explore it, especially as he knew from previous experience
that such investigations would not be well received? It was one of the
Colonel's peculiarities to keep his affairs to himself until they grew
so bad that circumstances forced him to seek the counsel or the aid
of others. Still, Morris could well guess from what mine the money was
digged that caused so comfortable a change in their circumstances, and
the solution of this mystery gave him little joy. Cash in consideration
of an unconcluded marriage; that was how it read. To his sensitive
nature the transaction seemed one of doubtful worth.

However, no one else appeared to be troubled, if, indeed, these things
existed elsewhere than in his own imagination. This, Morris admitted,
was possible, for their access of prosperity might, after all, be
no more than a resurrection of credit, vivified by the news of his
engagement with the only child of a man known to be wealthy. His uncle
Porson, with a solemnity that was almost touching, had bestowed upon
Mary and himself a jerky but earnest blessing before he drove home on
the night of the dinner-party. He went so far, indeed, as to kiss them
both; an example which the Colonel followed with a more finished but
equally heartfelt grace.

Now his uncle John beamed upon him daily like the noonday sun. Also
he began to take him into his confidence, and consult him as to the
erection of houses, affairs of business, and investments. In the course
of these interviews Morris was astonished, not to say dismayed, to
discover how large were the sums of money as to the disposal of which he
was expected to express opinions.

"You see, it will all be yours, my boy," said Mr. Porson one day, in
explanation; "so it is best that you should know something of these
affairs. Yes, it will all be yours, before very long," and he sighed.

"I trust that I shall have nothing to do with it for many years,"
blurted out Morris.

"Say months, say months," answered his uncle, stretching out his hands
as though to push something from him. Then, to all appearances overcome
by a sudden anguish, physical or mental, he turned and hurried from the
room.

Taking them all together, those five weeks were the happiest that Morris
had ever known. No longer was he profoundly dissatisfied with things in
general, no longer ravaged by that desire of the moth for the star which
in some natures is almost a disease. His outlook upon the world was
healthier and more hopeful; for the first time he saw its wholesome,
joyous side. Had he failed to do so, indeed, he must have been a very
strange man, for he had much to make the poorest heart rejoice.

Thus Mary, always a charming woman, since her engagement had become
absolutely delightful; witter, more wideawake, more beautiful. Morris
could look forward to the years to be spent in her company not only
without misgiving, but with a confidence that a while ago he would have
thought impossible. Moreover, as good fortunes never come singly, his
were destined to be multiplied. It was in those days after so many years
of search and unfruitful labour that at last he discovered a clue which
in the end resulted in the perfection of the instrument that was the
parent of the aerophone of commerce, and gave him a name among the
inventors of the century which will not easily be forgotten.

Strangely enough it was Morris's good genius, Mary, who suggested the
substance, or, rather, the mixture of substances, whereof that portion
of the aerophone was finally constructed which is still known as the
Monk Sound Waves Receiver. Whether, as she alleged, she made this
discovery by pure accident, or whether, as seems possible, she had
thought the problem out in her own feminine fashion with results that
proved excellent, does not matter in the least. The issue remains the
same. An apparatus which before would work only on rare occasions--and
then without any certitude--between people in the highest state of
sympathy or nervous excitement, has now been brought to such a stage of
perfection that by its means anybody can talk to anybody, even if their
interests are antagonistic, or their personal enmity bitter.

After the first few experiments with this new material Morris was not
slow to discover that although it would need long and careful testing
and elaboration, for him it meant, in the main, the realisation of
his great dream, and success after years of failure. And--that was the
strange part of it--this realisation and success he owed to no effort of
his own, but to some chance suggestion made by Mary. He told her this,
and thanked her as a man thanks one through whom he has found salvation.
In answer she merely laughed, saying that she was nothing but the wire
along which a happy inspiration had reached his brain, and that more
than this she neither wished, nor hoped, nor was capable of being.

Then suddenly on this happy, tranquil atmosphere which wrapped them
about--like the sound of a passing bell at a child's feast--floated the
first note of impending doom and death.

The autumn held fine and mild, and Mary, who had been lunching at the
Abbey, was playing croquet with Morris upon the side lawn. This game was
the only one for which she chanced to care, perhaps because it did not
involve much exertion. Morris, who engaged in the pastime with the same
earnestness that he gave to every other pursuit in which he happened
to be interested, was, as might be expected, getting the best of the
encounter.

"Won't you take a couple of bisques, dear?" he asked affectionately,
after a while. "I don't like always beating you by such a lot."

"I'd die first," she answered; "bisques are the badge of advertised
inferiority and a mark of the giver's contempt."

"Stuff!" said Morris.

"Stuff, indeed! As though it wasn't bad enough to be beaten at all; but
to be beaten with bisques!"

"That's another argument," said Morris. "First you say you are too proud
to accept them, and next that you won't accept them because it is worse
to be defeated with points than without them."

"Anyway, if you had the commonest feelings of humanity you wouldn't beat
me," replied Mary, adroitly shifting her ground for the third time.

"How can I help it if you won't have the bisques?"

"How? By pretending that you were doing your best, and letting me
win all the same, of course; though if I caught you at it I should be
furious. But what's the use of trying to teach a blunt creature like you
tact? My dear Morris, I assure you I do not believe that your efforts
at deception would take in the simplest-minded cow. Why, even Dad sees
through you, and the person who can't impose upon my Dad----. Oh!" she
added, suddenly, in a changed voice, "there is George coming through
the gate. Something has happened to my father. Look at his face, Morris;
look at his face!"

In another moment the footman stood before them.

"Please, miss, the master," he began, and hesitated.

"Not dead?" said Mary, in a slow, quiet voice. "Do not say that he is
dead!"

"No, miss, but he has had a stroke of the heart or something, and
the doctor thought you had better be fetched, so I have brought the
carriage."

"Come with me, Morris," she said, as, dropping the croquet mallet, she
flew rather than ran to the brougham.

Ten minutes later they were at Seaview. In the hall they met Mr.
Charters, the doctor. Why was he leaving? Because----

"No, no," he said, answering their looks; "the danger is past. He seems
almost as well as ever."

"Thank God!" stammered Mary. Then a thought struck her, and she looked
up sharply and asked, "Will it come back again?"

"Yes," was his straightforward answer.

"When?"

"From time to time, at irregular periods. But in its fatal shape, as I
hope, not for some years."

"The verdict might have been worse, dear," said Morris.

"Yes, yes, but to think that _it_ has passed so near to him, and he
quite alone at the time. Morris," she went on, turning to him with an
energy that was almost fierce, "if you won't have my father to live with
us, I won't marry you. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly, dear, you leave no room for misconception. By all means let
him live with us--if he can get on with my father," he added meaningly.

"Ah!" she replied, "I never thought of that. Also I should not have
spoken so roughly, but I have had such a shock that I feel inclined to
treat you like--like--a toad under a harrow. So please be sympathetic,
and don't misunderstand me, or I don't know what I shall say." Then by
way of making amends, Mary put her arms round his neck and gave him a
kiss "all of her own accord," saying, "Morris, I am afraid--I am afraid.
I feel as if our good time was done."

After this the servant came to say that she might go up to her father's
room, and that scene of our drama was at an end.

Mr. Porson owned a villa at Beaulieu, in the south of France, which he
had built many years before as a winter house for his wife, whose chest
was weak. Here he was in the habit of spending the spring months, more,
perhaps, because of the associations which the place possessed for him
than of any affection for foreign lands. Now, however, after this last
attack, three doctors in consultation announced that it would be well
for him to escape from the fogs and damp of England. So to Beaulieu he
was ordered.

This decree caused consternation in various quarters. Mr. Porson did
not wish to go; Mary and Morris were cast down for simple and elementary
reasons; and Colonel Monk found this change of plan--it had been
arranged that the Porsons should stop at Seaview till the New Year,
which was to be the day of the marriage--inconvenient, and, indeed,
disturbing. Once those young people were parted, reflected the Colonel
in his wisdom, who could tell what might or might not happen?

In this difficulty he found an inspiration. Why should not the wedding
take place at once? Very diplomatically he sounded his brother-in-law,
to find that he had no opposition to fear in this quarter provided that
Mary and her husband would join him at Beaulieu after a week or two of
honeymoon. Then he spoke to Morris, who was delighted with the idea.
For Morris had come to the conclusion that the marriage state would be
better and more satisfactory than one of prolonged engagement.

It only remained, therefore, to obtain the consent of Mary, which would
perhaps, have been given without much difficulty had her uncle been
content to leave his son or Mr. Porson to ask it of her. As it chanced,
this he was not willing to do. Porson, he was sure, would at once give
way should his daughter raise any objection, and in Morris's tact and
persuasive powers the Colonel had no faith.

In the issue, confident in his own diplomatic abilities, he determined
to manage the affair himself and to speak to his niece. The mistake was
grave, for whereas she was as wax to her father or her lover, something
in her uncle's manner, or it may have been his very personality, always
aroused in Mary a spirit of opposition. On this occasion, too, that
manner was not fortunate, for he put the proposal before her as a thing
already agreed upon by all concerned, and one to which her consent was
asked as a mere matter of form.

Instantly Mary became antagonistic. She pretended not to understand;
she asked for reasons and explanations. Finally, she announced in idle
words, beneath which ran a current of determination, that neither her
father nor Morris could really wish this hurried marriage, since had
they done so one or other of them would have spoken to her on the
subject. When pressed, she intimated very politely, but in language
whereof the meaning could hardly be mistaken, that she held this fixing
of the date to be peculiarly her own privilege; and when still further
pressed said plainly that she considered her father too ill for her to
think of being married at present.

"But they both desire it," expostulated the Colonel.

"They have not told me so," Mary answered, setting her red lips.

"If that is all, they will tell you so soon enough, my dear girl."

"Perhaps, uncle, after they have been directed to do so, but that is not
quite the same thing."

The Colonel saw that he had made a mistake, and too late changed his
tactics.

"You see, Mary, your father's state of health is precarious; he might
grow worse."

She tapped her foot upon the ground. Of these allusions to the possible,
and, indeed, the certain end of her beloved father's illness, she had a
kind of horror.

"In that event, that dreadful event," she answered, "he will need me, my
whole time and care to nurse him. These I might not be able to give if I
were already married. I love Morris very dearly. I am his for whatever I
may be worth; but I was my father's before Morris came into my life, and
he has the first claim upon me."

"What, then, do you propose?" asked the Colonel curtly, for opposition
and argument bred no meekness in his somewhat arbitrary breast.

"To be married on New Year's Day, wherever we are, if Morris wishes it
and the state of my father's health makes it convenient. If not, Uncle
Richard, to wait till a more fitting season." Then she rose--for this
conversation took place at Seaview--saying that it was time she should
give her father his medicine.

Thus the project of an early marriage fell through; for, having
once been driven into announcing her decision in terms so open and
unmistakable, Mary would not go back on her word.

Morris, who was much disappointed, pleaded with her. Her father also
spoke upon the subject, but though the voice was the voice of Mr.
Porson, the arguments, she perceived, were the arguments of Colonel
Monk. Therefore she hardened her heart and put the matter by, refusing,
indeed, to discuss it at any length. Yet--and it is not the first time
that a woman has allowed her whims to prevail over her secret wishes--in
truth she desired nothing more than to be married to Morris so soon as
it was his will to take her.

Finally, a compromise was arranged. There was to be no wedding at
present, but the whole party were to go together to Beaulieu, there
to await the development of events. It was arranged, moreover, by all
concerned, that unless something unforeseen occurred to prevent it, the
marriage should be celebrated upon or about New Year's Day.



CHAPTER VII

BEAULIEU

Beautiful as it might be and fashionable as it might be, Morris did
not find Beaulieu very entertaining; indeed, in an unguarded moment he
confessed to Mary that he "hated the hole." Even the steam launch in
which they went for picnics did not console him, fond though he was of
the sea; while as for Monte Carlo, after his third visit he was heard
to declare that if they wanted to take him there again it must be in his
coffin.

The Colonel did not share these views. He was out for a holiday, and he
meant to enjoy himself. To begin with, there was the club at Nice, where
he fell in with several old comrades and friends. Then, whom should he
meet but Lady Rawlins: once, for a little while in the distant past,
they had been engaged; until suddenly the young lady, a beauty in her
day, jilted him in favour of a wealthy banker of Hebraic origin. Now,
many years after, the banker was aged, violent, and uncomely, habitually
exceeded in his cups, and abused his wife before the servants. So it
came about that to the poor woman the Colonel's courteous, if somewhat
sarcastic, consolations were really very welcome. It pleased him also to
offer them. The jilting he had long ago forgiven indeed, he blessed her
nightly for having taken that view of her obligations, seeing that Jane
Millet, as she was then, however pretty her face may once have been, had
neither fortune nor connections.

"Yes, my dear Jane," he said to her confidentially one afternoon, "I
assure you I often admire your foresight. Now, if you had done the other
thing, where should we have been to-day? In the workhouse, I imagine."

"I suppose so," answered Lady Rawlins, meekly, and suppressing a
sigh, since for the courtly and distinguished Colonel she cherished
a sentimental admiration which actually increased with age; "but you
didn't always think like that, Richard." Then she glanced out of the
window, and added: "Oh, there is Jonah coming home, and he looks so
cross," and the poor lady shivered.

The Colonel put up his eyeglass and contemplated Jonah through the
window. He was not a pleasing spectacle. A rather low-class Hebrew who
calls himself a Christian, of unpleasant appearance and sinister temper,
suffering from the effects of lunch, is not an object to be loved.

"Ah, I see," said the Colonel. "Yes, Sir Jonah ages, doesn't he?
as, indeed, we do all of us," and he glanced at the lady's spreading
proportions. Then he went on. "You really should persuade him to be
tidier in his costume, Jane; his ancestral namesake could scarcely have
looked more dishevelled after his sojourn with the whale. Well, it is
a small failing; one can't have everything, and on the whole, with your
wealth and the rest, you have been a very fortunate woman."

"Oh, Richard, how can you say so?" murmured the wretched Lady Rawlins,
as she took the hand outstretched in farewell. For Jonah in large doses
was more than the Colonel could stomach.

Indeed, as the door closed behind him she wiped away a tear, whispering
to herself: "And to think that I threw over dear Richard in order to
marry that--that--yes, I will say it--that horror!"

Meanwhile, as he strolled down the street, beautifully dressed, and
still looking very upright and handsome--for he had never lost his
figure--the Colonel was saying to himself:

"Silly old woman! Well, I hope that by now she knows the difference
between a gentleman and a half-Christianised, money-hunting,
wine-bibbing Jew. However, she's got the fortune, which was what she
wanted, although she forgets it now, and he's got a lachrymose, stout,
old party. But how beautiful she used to be! My word, how beautiful she
used to be! To go to see her now is better than any sermon; it is an
admirable moral exercise."

To Lady Rawlins also the Colonel's visits proved excellent moral
exercises tinged with chastenings. Whenever he went away he left behind
him some aphorism or reflection filled with a wholesome bitter. But
still she sought his society and, in secret, adored him.

In addition to the club and Lady Rawlins there were the tables at Monte
Carlo, with their motley company, which to a man of the world could not
fail to be amusing. Besides, the Colonel had one weakness--sometimes he
did a little gambling, and when he played he liked to play fairly
high. Morris accompanied him once to the "Salles de jeu," and--that was
enough. What passed there exactly, could never be got out of him, even
by Mary, whose sense of humour was more than satisfied with the little
comedies in progress about her, no single point of which did she ever
miss.

Only, funny as she might be in her general feebleness, and badly as
she might have behaved in some distant past, for Lady Rawlins she felt
sorry. Her kind heart told Mary that this unhappy person also possessed
a heart, although she was now stout and on the wrong side of middle age.
She was aware, too, that the Colonel knew as much, and his scientific
pin-pricks and searings of that guileless and unprotected organ struck
her as little short of cruel. None the less so, indeed, because the
victim at the stake imagined that they were inflicted in kindness by the
hand of a still tender and devoted friend.

"I hope that I shan't quarrel with my father-in-law," reflected Mary
to herself, after one of the best of these exhibitions; "he's got an
uncommonly long memory, and likes to come even. However, I never shall,
because he's afraid of me and knows that I see through him."

Mary was right. A very sincere respect for her martial powers when
roused ensured perfect peace between her and the Colonel. With his
son, however, it was otherwise. Even in this age of the Triumph of the
Offspring parents do exist who take advantage of their sons' strict
observance of the Fifth Commandment. It is easy to turn a man into a
moral bolster and sit upon him if you know that an exaggerated sense of
filial duty will prevent him from stuffing himself with pins. So it came
about that Morris was sometimes sat upon, especially when the Colonel
was suffering from a bad evening at the tables; well out of sight and
hearing of Mary, be it understood, who on such occasions was apt to
develop a quite formidable temper.

It is over this question of the tables that one of these domestic
differences arose which in its results brought about the return of the
Monks to Monksland. Upon a certain afternoon the Colonel asked his son
to accompany him to Monte Carlo. Morris refused, rather curtly, perhaps.

"Very well," replied the Colonel in his grandest manner. "I am sure I
do not wish for an unwilling companion, and doubtless your attention is
claimed by affairs more important than the according of your company to
a father."

"No," replied Morris, with his accustomed truthfulness; "I am going out
sea-fishing, that is all."

"Quite so. Allow me then to wish good luck to your fishing. Does Mary
accompany you?"

"No, I think not; she says the boat makes her sick, and she can't bear
eels."

"So much the better, as I can ask for the pleasure of her society this
afternoon."

"Yes, you can ask," said Morris, suddenly turning angry.

"Do you imply, Morris, that the request will be refused?"

"Certainly, father; if I have anything to do with it."

"And might I inquire why?"

"Because I won't have Mary taken to that place to mix with the people
who frequent it."

"I see. This is exclusiveness with a vengeance. Perhaps you consider
that those unholy doors should be shut to me also."

"I have no right to express an opinion as to where my father should
or should not go; but if you ask me, I think that, under all the
circumstances, you would do best to keep away."

"The circumstances! What circumstances?"

"Those of our poverty, which leaves us no money to risk in gambling."

Then the Colonel lost all control of his temper, as sometimes happened
to him, and became exceedingly violent and unpleasant. What he said does
not matter; let it suffice that the remarks were of a character which
even headstrong men are accustomed to reserve for the benefit of their
women-folk and other intimate relations.

Attracted by the noise, which was considerable, Mary came in to find her
uncle marching up and down the room vituperating Morris, who, with quite
a new expression upon his face--a quiet, dogged kind of expression--was
leaning upon the mantel-piece and watching him.

"Uncle," began Mary, "would you mind being a little quieter? My father
is asleep upstairs, and I am afraid that you will wake him."

"I am sorry, my dear, very sorry, but there are some insults that no man
with self-respect can submit to, even from a son."

"Insults! insults!" Mary repeated, opening her blue eyes; then, looking
at him with a pained air: "Morris, why do you insult your father?"

"Insult?" he replied. "Then I will tell you how. My father wanted to
take you to play with him at Monte Carlo this afternoon and I said that
you shouldn't go. That's the insult."

"You observe, my dear," broke in the Colonel, "that already he treats
you as one having authority."

"Yes," said Mary, "and why shouldn't he? Now that my father is so weak
who am I to obey if not Morris?"

"Oh, well, well," said the Colonel, diplomatically beginning to cool,
for he could control his temper when he liked. "Everyone to their taste;
but some matters are so delicate that I prefer not to discuss them," and
he looked round for his hat.

By this time, however, the cyclonic condition of things had affected
Mary also, and she determined that he should not escape so easily.

"Before you go," she went on in her slow voice, "I should like to say,
uncle, that I quite agree with Morris. I don't think those tables are
quite the place to take young ladies to, especially if the gentleman
with them is much engaged in play."

"Indeed, indeed; then you are both of a mind, which is quite as it
should be. Of course, too, upon such matters of conduct and etiquette we
must all bow to the taste and the experience of the young--even those of
us who have mixed with the world for forty years. Might I ask, my dear
Mary, if you have any further word of advice for me before I go?"

"Yes, uncle," replied Mary quite calmly. "I advise you not to lose so
much of--of your money, or to sit up so late at night, which, you
know, never agrees with you. Also, I wish you wouldn't abuse Morris for
nothing, because he doesn't deserve it, and I don't like it; and if we
are all to live together after I am married, it will be so much more
comfortable if we can come to an understanding first."

Then muttering something beneath his breath about ladies in general and
this young lady in particular, the Colonel departed with speed.

Mary sat down in an armchair, and fanned herself with a
pocket-handkerchief.

"Thinking of the right thing to say always makes me hot," she remarked.

"Well, if by the right thing you mean the strong thing, you certainly
discovered it," replied Morris, looking at her with affectionate
admiration.

"I know; but it had to be done, dear. He's losing a lot of money, which
is mere waste"--here Morris groaned, but asked no questions--"besides,"
and her voice became earnest, "I will not have him talking to you like
that. The fact that one man is the father of another man doesn't give
him the right to abuse him like a pickpocket. Also, if you are so good
that you put up with it, I have myself to consider--that is, if we are
all to live as a happy family. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly," said Morris. "I daresay you are right, but I hate rows."

"So do I, and that is why I have accepted one or two challenges to
single combat quite at the beginning of things. You mark m