TRANSPLANTED




BY MRS. ATHERTON


Historical

  The Conqueror

A few of Hamilton’s Letters

  California: _An Intimate History_

War Book

  The Living Present

Fiction

                    _California_

  Rezánov
  The Doomswoman
  The Splendid Idle Forties (_1800-46_)
  A Daughter of the Vine (_The Sixties_)
  Transplanted (_The Eighties_)
  The Californians (_Companion Volume to Transplanted_)
  A Whirl Asunder (_The Nineties_)
  Ancestors (_Present_)
  The Valiant Runaways; A Book for Boys (_1840_)

            _In Other Parts of the World_

  The Avalanche
  The White Morning
  Mrs. Balfame
  Perch of the Devil (_Montana_)
  Tower of Ivory (_Munich and England_)
  Julia France and Her Times (_B. W. I. and England_)
  Rulers of Kings (_Austria, Hungary and the Adirondacks_)
  The Travelling Thirds (_Spain_)
  The Gorgeous Isle (_Nevis, B. W. I._)
  Senator North (_Washington_)
  Patience Sparhawk and Her Times (_California and New York_)
  The Aristocrats (_The Adirondacks_)
  The Bell in the Fog (_Short Stories of various Climes and Places_)




  TRANSPLANTED

  A NOVEL

  _By_ GERTRUDE ATHERTON

  _Author of “The Conqueror,”
  “Tower of Ivory,” etc._

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD
  AND COMPANY      1919




  COPYRIGHTED, 1898
  BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
  As “American Wives and English Husbands”

  New and revised edition
  Copyrighted, 1919
  By Gertrude Atherton




  _TO
  THE LADIES OF RUE GIROT
  BOIS GUILLAUME_




TRANSPLANTED




TRANSPLANTED

[Illustration]




PART ONE




CHAPTER I


Mrs. Hayne’s boarding-house stood on the corner of Market Street and
one of those cross streets which seem to leap down from the heights of
San Francisco and empty themselves into the great central thoroughfare
that roars from the sandy desert at the base of Twin Peaks to the
teeming wharves on the edge of the bay. On the right of Market Street,
both on the hills and in the erratic branchings of the central plain,
as far as the eye can reach, climbs and swarms modern prosperous San
Francisco; of what lies beyond, the less said the better. On the left,
at the far southeast, the halo of ancient glory still hovers about
Rincon Hill,[A] growing dimmer with the years: few of the many who made
the social laws of the Fifties cling to the old houses in the battered
gardens; and their children marry and build on the gay hills across the
plain. In the plain itself is a thick-set, low-browed, dust-coloured
city; “South of Market Street” is a generic term for hundreds of
streets in which dwell thousands of insignificant beings, some of whom
promenade the democratic boundary line by gaslight, but rarely venture
up the aristocratic slopes. By day or by night Market Street rarely
has a moment of rest, of peace; it is a blaze of colour, a medley of
sound, shrill, raucous, hollow, furious, a net-work of busy people and
vehicles until midnight is over. Every phase of the city’s manifold
life is suggested there, every aspect of its cosmopolitanism.

To a little girl of eleven, who dwelt on the third floor of Mrs.
Hayne’s boarding-house, Market Street was a panorama of serious study
and unvarying interest. She knew every shop window, in all the mutable
details of the seasons, she had mingled with the throng unnumbered
times, studying that strange patch-work of faces, and wondering if
they had any life apart from the scene in which they seemed eternally
moving. In those days Market Street typified the world to her; although
her school was some eight blocks up the hill it scarcely counted. All
the world, she felt convinced, came sooner or later to Market Street,
and sauntered or hurried with restless eyes, up and down, up and down.
The sun rose at one end and set at the other; it climbed straight
across the sky and went to bed behind the Twin Peaks. And the trade
winds roared through Market Street as through a mighty cañon, and the
sand hills beyond the city seemed to rise bodily and whirl down the
great way, making men curse and women jerk their knuckles to their
eyes. On summer nights the fog came and banked there, and the lights
shone through it like fallen stars, and the people looked like wraiths,
lost souls condemned to wander unceasingly.

When Mrs. Tarleton was too ill to be left alone, Lee amused herself
watching from above the crush and tangle of street cars, hacks,
trucks, and drays for which the wide road should have been as wide
again, holding her breath as the impatient or timid foot-passengers
darted into the transient rifts with bird-like leaps of vision and
wild deflections. Occasionally she assumed the part of chorus for her
mother, who regarded the prospect beneath her windows with horror.

“Now! She’s started--_at last_! Oh! _what_ a silly! Any one could have
seen that truck with half an eye. She turned back--_of course_! Now!
Now! she’s got to the middle and there’s a funeral just turned the
corner! She can’t get back! She’s got to go on. Oh, she’s got behind
a man. I wonder if she’ll catch hold of his coat-tails? There--she’s
safe! I wonder if she’s afraid of people like she is of Market Street?”

“If I ever thought you crossed that street at the busy time of the
day, honey, I should certainly faint or have hysterics,” Mrs. Tarleton
was in the habit of remarking at the finish of these thrilling
interpretations.

To which Lee invariably replied: “I could go right across without
stopping, or getting a crick in my neck either; but I don’t, because I
wouldn’t make you nervous for the world. I go way up when I want to
cross and then turn back. It’s nothing like as bad.”

“It is shocking to think that you go out at all unattended; but what
cannot be cannot, and you must have air and exercise, poor child!”

Lee, who retained a blurred, albeit rosy impression of her former
grandeur, was well pleased with her liberty; and Mrs. Tarleton was not
only satisfied that any one who could take such good care of her mother
was quite able to take care of herself, but, so dependent was she on
the capable child, that she was frequently oblivious to the generation
they rounded. Mrs. Tarleton was an invalid, and, although patient,
she met her acuter sufferings unresistingly. Lee was so accustomed
to be roused in the middle of the night that she had learned to make
a poultice or heat a kettle of water while the receding dreams were
still lapping at her brain. She dressed her mother in the morning and
undressed her at night. She frequently chafed her hands and feet by
the hour; and cooked many a dainty Southern dish on the stove in the
corner. Miss Hayne, who had a sharp red nose and the anxious air of
protracted maidenhood, but whose heart was normal, made it her duty to
fetch books for the invalid from the Mercantile Library, and to look in
upon her while Lee was at school.

Lee brushed and mended her own clothes, “blacked” her boots with a
vigorous arm, and studied her lessons when other little girls were
in bed. Fortunately she raked them in with extreme rapidity, or Mrs.
Tarleton would have made an effort and remonstrated; but Lee declared
that she must have her afternoons out-of-doors when her mother was well
and companioned by a novel; and Mrs. Tarleton scrupulously refrained
from thwarting the girl whose narrow childhood was so unlike what her
own had been, so unlike what the fairies had promised when Hayward
Tarleton had been the proudest and most indulgent of fathers.

  FOOTNOTE:
  [A] This was written before the earthquake and fire of 1906.




CHAPTER II


Marguerite Tarleton’s impression of the hour in which she found herself
widowed and penniless was very vague; she was down with brain fever in
the hour that followed.

The Civil War had left her family with little but the great prestige
of its name and the old house in New Orleans. Nevertheless, the house
slaves having refused to accept their freedom, Marguerite had “never
picked up her handkerchief,” when, in a gown fashioned by her mammy
from one of her dead mother’s, she made her début in a society which
retained all of its pride and little of its gaiety. Her mother had been
a creole of great beauty and fascination. Marguerite inherited her
impulsiveness and vivacity; and, for the rest, was ethereally pretty,
as dainty and fastidious as a young princess, and had the soft manner
and the romantic heart of the convent maiden. Hayward Tarleton captured
twelve dances on this night of her triumphant début, and proposed a
week later. They were married within the month; he had already planned
to seek for fortune in California with what was left of his princely
inheritance.

When Tarleton and his bride reached San Francisco the fortune he had
come to woo fairly leapt into his arms; in three years he was a rich
man, and his pretty and elegant young wife a social power. It was a
very happy marriage. Marguerite idolised her handsome dashing husband,
and he was the slave of her lightest whim. Their baby was petted and
indulged until she ruled her adoring parents with a rod of iron, and
tyrannised over the servants like a young slave-driver. But the parents
saw no fault in her, and, in truth, she was an affectionate and amiable
youngster, with a fund of good sense for which the servants were at
a loss to account. She had twenty-six dolls at this period, a large
roomful of toys, a pony, and a playhouse of three storeys in a corner
of the garden.

Then came the great Virginia City mining excitement of the late
Seventies. Tarleton, satiated with easy success, and longing for
excitement, gambled; at first from choice, finally from necessity. His
nerves swarmed over his will and stung it to death, his reason burnt to
ashes. He staggered home one day, this man who had been intrepid on the
battle-field for four blood-soaked and exhausting years, told his wife
that he had not a dollar in the world, then went into the next room and
blew out his brains.

The creditors seized the house. Two hours before Mrs. Tarleton had been
carried to Rincon Hill to the home of Mrs. Montgomery, a Southerner
who had known her mother and who would have offered shelter to every
stricken compatriot in San Francisco if her children had not restrained
her. Lee, who had been present when her father spoke his last words to
his wife, and had heard the report of the pistol, lost all interest in
dolls and picture-books forever, and refused to leave the sick-room.
She waited on her mother by day, and slept on a sofa at the foot of the
bed. Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed that the child was positively uncanny,
she was so old-fashioned, but that she certainly was lovable. Her own
young children, Tiny and Randolph, although some years older than
Lee, thought her profoundly interesting, and stole into the sick-room
whenever the nurse’s back was turned. Lee barely saw them; she retained
no impression of them afterward, although the children were famous for
their beauty and fine manners.

When Mrs. Tarleton recovered, her lawyer reminded her that some years
before her husband had given her a ranch for which she had expressed an
impulsive wish and as quickly forgotten. The deeds were at his office.
She gave her jewels to the creditors, but decided to keep the ranch,
remarking that her child was of more importance than all the creditors
put together. The income was small, but she was grateful for it. Her
next of kin were dead, and charity would have been insufferable.

Mrs. Hayne, a reduced Southerner, whom Tarleton had started in
business, offered his widow a large front room on the third floor
of her boarding-house at the price of a back one. In spite of Mrs.
Montgomery’s tears and remonstrances, Mrs. Tarleton accepted the offer,
and persuaded herself that she was comfortable. She never went to the
table, nor paid a call. Her friends, particularly the Southerners of
her immediate circle, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Geary, Mrs. Brannan, Mrs.
Cartright, and Colonel Belmont were faithful; but as the years passed
their visits became less frequent, and Mrs. Montgomery was much abroad
with her children. Marguerite Tarleton cared little. Her interest in
life had died with her husband; such energies as survived in her were
centred in her child. When there was neither fog nor dust nor wind
nor rain in the city, Lee dressed her peremptorily and took her for a
ride in the cable-cars; but she spent measureless monotonous days in
her reclining chair, reading or sewing. She did not complain except
when in extreme pain, and was interested in every lineament of Lee’s
busy little life. She never shed a tear before the child, and managed
to maintain an even state of mild cheerfulness. And she was grateful
for Lee’s skill and readiness in small matters as in great; her
unaccustomed fingers would have made havoc with her hair and boots.

“Did you never, never button your own boots, memmy?” asked Lee one day,
as she was performing that office.

“Never, honey. When Dinah was ill your father always buttoned them, and
after she died he wouldn’t have thought of letting any one else touch
them; most people pinch so. Of course he could not do my hair, but he
often put me to bed, and he _always_ cut up my meat.”

“Do all men do those things for their wives?” asked Lee in a voice of
awe; “I think they must be very nice.”

“All men who are fit to marry, and all Southern men, you may be sure.
I want to live long enough to see you married to a man as nearly like
your father as possible. I wonder if there are any left; America
gallops so. He used to beg me to think of something new I wanted,
something it would be difficult to get; and he fairly adored to button
my boots; he never failed to put a little kiss right there on my instep
when he finished.”

“It must be lovely to be married!” said Lee.

Mrs. Tarleton closed her eyes.

“Was papa perfectly perfect?” asked Lee, as she finished her task and
smoothed the kid over her mother’s beautiful instep.

“Perfectly!”

“I heard the butler say once that he was as drunk as a lord.”

“Possibly, but he was perfect all the same. He got drunk like a
gentleman--a Southern gentleman, I mean, of course. I always put him to
bed and never alluded to it.”




CHAPTER III


Lee had no friends of her own age. The large private school she
attended was not patronised by the aristocracy of the city, and Mrs.
Tarleton had so thoroughly imbued her daughter with a sense of the vast
superiority of the gentle-born Southerner over the mere American, that
Lee found in the youthful patrons of the Chambers Institute little
likeness to her ideals. The children of her mother’s old friends were
educated at home or at small and very expensive schools, preparatory
to a grand finish in New York and Europe. Lee had continued to meet
several of these fortunate youngsters during the first two of the
five years which had followed her father’s death, but as she outgrew
her fine clothes, and was put into ginghams for the summers and stout
plaids for the winters, she was obliged to drop out of fashionable
society. Occasionally she saw her former playmates sitting in their
parents’ carriages before some shop in Kearney Street. They always
nodded gaily to her with the loyalty of their caste; the magic halo of
position survives poverty, scandal and exile.

“When you are grown I shall put my pride in my pocket, and ask Mrs.
Montgomery to bring you out, and Jack Belmont to give you a party
dress,” said Mrs. Tarleton one day. “I think you will be pretty, for
your features are exactly like your father’s, and you have so much
expression when you are right happy, poor child! You must remember
never to frown, nor wrinkle up your forehead, nor eat hot cakes, nor
too much candy, and always wear your camphor bag so you won’t catch
anything; and _do_ stand up straight, and you _must_ wear a veil when
these horrid trade winds blow. Beauty is the whole battle of life for
a woman, honey, and if you only do grow up pretty and are properly
_lancée_, you will be sure to marry well. That is all I am trying to
live for.”

Lee donned the veil to please her mother, although she loved to feel
the wind in her hair. But she was willing to be beautiful, as beauty
meant servants and the reverse of boarding-house diet. She hoped to
find a husband as handsome and devoted as her father, and was quite
positive that the kidney flourished within the charmed circle of
society. But she sometimes regarded her sallow little visage with deep
distrust. Her black hair hung in lank strands; no amount of coaxing
would make it curl, and her eyes, she decided, were altogether too
light a blue for beauty; her mother had saved Tarleton’s small library
of standard novels from the wreck, and Lee had dipped into them on
rainy days; the heroine’s eyes when not black “were a dark rich blue.”
Her eyes looked the lighter for the short thick lashes surrounding
them, and the heavy brows above. She was also very thin, and stooped
slightly; but the maternal eye was hopeful. Mrs. Tarleton’s delicate
beauty had vanished with her happiness, but while her husband lived she
had preserved and made the most of it with many little arts. These she
expounded at great length to her daughter, who privately thought beauty
a great bore, unless ready-made and warranted to wear, and frequently
permitted her mind to wander.

“At least remember this,” exclaimed Mrs. Tarleton impatiently one
day at the end of a homily, to which Lee had given scant heed, being
absorbed in the adventurous throng below, “if you are beautiful you
rule men; if you are plain, men rule you. If you are beautiful your
husband is your slave, if you are plain you are his upper servant. All
the brains the blue-stockings will ever pile up will not be worth one
complexion. (I do hope you are not going to be a blue, honey.) Why are
American women the most successful in the world? Because they know how
to be beautiful. I have seen many beautiful American women who had
no beauty at all. What they want they will have, and the will to be
beautiful is like yeast to dough. If women are flap-jacks it is their
own fault. Only cultivate a complexion, and learn how to dress and walk
as if you were used to the homage of princes, and the world will call
you beautiful. Above all, get a complexion.”

“I will! I will!” responded Lee fervently. She pinned her veil all
round her hat, squared her shoulders like a young grenadier, and went
forth for air.

Although debarred from the society of her equals, she had friends
of another sort. It was her private ambition at this period to keep
a little shop, one half of which should be gay and fragrant with
candies, the other sober and imposing with books. This ambition she
wisely secluded from her aristocratic parent, but she gratified it
vicariously. Some distance up Market Street she had discovered a book
shop, scarcely wider than its door and about eight feet deep. Its
presiding deity was a blonde young man, out-at-elbows, consumptive
and vague. Lee never knew his name; she always alluded to him as
“Soft-head.” He never asked hers; but he welcomed her with a slight
access of expression, and made a place for her on the counter. There
she sat and swung her legs for hours together, confiding her ambitions
and plans, and recapitulating her lessons for the intellectual benefit
of her host. In return he told her the histories of the queer people
who patronised him, and permitted her to “tend shop.” He thought her a
prodigy, and made her little presents of paper and coloured pencils.
Not to be under obligations, she crocheted him a huge woollen scarf,
which he assured her greatly improved his health.

She also had a warm friend in a girl who presided over a candy store,
but her bosom friend and confidante was a pale weary-looking young
woman who suddenly appeared in a secondhand book shop in lowly Fourth
Street, on the wrong side of Market. Lee was examining the dirty and
disease-haunted volumes on the stand in front of the shop one day,
when she glanced through the window and met the eager eyes and smile
of a stranger. She entered the shop at once, and, planting her elbows
on the counter, told the newcomer hospitably that she was delighted to
welcome her to that part of the city, and would call every afternoon
if she would be permitted to tend shop occasionally. If the stranger
was amused she did not betray herself; she accepted the overture with
every appearance of gratitude, and begged Lee to regard the premises
as her own. For six months the friendship flourished. The young woman,
whose name was Stainers, helped Lee with her sums, and had a keenly
sympathetic ear for the troubles of little girls. Of herself she never
spoke. Then she gave up her own battle, and was carried to the county
hospital to die. Lee visited her twice, and one afternoon her mother
told her that the notice of Miss Stainers’ death had been in the
newspaper that morning.

Lee wept long and heavily for the gentle friend who had carried her
secrets into a pauper’s grave.

“You are so young, and you have had so much trouble,” said Mrs.
Tarleton with a sigh, that night. “But perhaps it will give you more
character than I ever had. And nothing can break your spirits. They are
your grandmother’s all over; you even gesticulate like her sometimes
and then you look just like a little creole. She was a wonderful woman,
honey, and had forty-nine offers of marriage.”

“I hope men are nicer than boys,” remarked Lee, not unwilling to be
diverted. “The boys in this house are horrid. Bertie Reynolds pulls my
hair every time I pass him, and calls me ‘Squaw;’ and Tom Wilson throws
bread balls at me at the table and calls me ‘Broken-down-aristocracy.’
I’m sure _they’ll_ never kiss a girl’s slipper.”

“A few years from now some girl will be leading them round by the nose.
You never can tell how a boy will turn out; it all depends upon whether
girls take an interest in him or not. These are probably scrubs.”

“There’s a new one and he’s rather shy. They say he’s English. He and
his father came last night. The boy’s name is Cecil; I heard his father
speak to him at the table to-night. The father has a funny name; I
can’t remember it. Mrs. Hayne says he is very _distingué_, and she’s
sure he’s a lord in disguise, but I think he’s very thin and ugly. He
has the deepest lines on each side of his mouth, and a big thin nose,
and a droop at the corner of his eyes. He’s the stuck-uppest looking
thing I ever saw. The boy is about twelve, I reckon, and looks as if he
wasn’t afraid of anything but girls. He has the curliest hair and the
loveliest complexion, and his eyes laugh. They’re hazel, and his hair
is brown. He looks much nicer than any boy I ever saw.”

“He is the son of a gentleman--and English gentlemen are the only ones
that can compare with Southerners, honey. If you make friends with him
you may bring him up here.”

“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed Lee. Her mother had encouraged her to
ignore boys, and disliked visitors of any kind.

“I feel sure he is going to be your next friend, and you are so lonely,
honey, now that poor Miss Stainers is gone. So ask him up if you like.
It makes me very sad to think that you have no playmates.”

Lee climbed up on her mother’s lap. Once in a great while she laid
aside the dignity of her superior position in the family, and demanded
a petting. Mrs. Tarleton held her close and shut her eyes, and strove
to imagine that the child in her arms was five years younger, and that
both were listening for a step which so often smote her memory with
agonising distinctness.




CHAPTER IV


Lee sat limply on the edge of her cot wishing she had a husband to
button her boots. Mrs. Tarleton had been very ill during the night,
and her daughter’s brain and eyes were heavy. Lee had no desire for
school, for anything but bed; but it was eight o’clock, examinations
were approaching, and to school she must go. She glared resentfully
at the long row of buttons, half inclined to wear her slippers, and
finally compromised by fastening every third button. The rest of her
toilette was accomplished with a like disregard for fashion. She was
not pleased with her appearance and was disposed to regard life as a
failure. At breakfast she received a severe reprimand from Mrs. Hayne,
who informed her and the table inclusively that her hair looked as if
it had been combed by a rake, and rebuttoned her frock there and then
with no regard for the pride of eleven. Altogether, Lee, between her
recent affliction, her tired head, and her wounded dignity, started for
school in a very depressed frame of mind.

As she descended the long stair leading from the first floor of the
boarding-house to the street she saw the English lad standing in the
door. They had exchanged glances of curiosity and interest across
the table, and once he had offered her radishes, with a lively blush.
That morning she had decided that he must be very nice indeed, for he
had turned scarlet during Mrs. Hayne’s scolding and had scowled quite
fiercely at the autocrat.

He did not look up nor move until she asked him to let her pass; he was
apparently absorbed in the loud voluntary of Market Street, his cap on
the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, his feet well apart.
When Lee spoke, he turned swiftly and grabbed at her school-bag.

“You’re tired,” he said, with so desperate an assumption of ease that
he was brutally abrupt, and Lee jumped backward a foot.

“I beg pardon,” he stammered, his eyes full of nervous tears.
“But--but--you looked so tired at breakfast, and you didn’t eat; I
thought I’d like to carry your books.”

Lee’s face beamed with delight, and its fatigue vanished, but she said
primly: “You’re very good, I’m sure, and I like boys that do things for
girls.”

“I don’t usually,” he replied hastily, as if fearful that his dignity
had been compromised. “But, let’s come along. You’re late.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. The lad’s courage appeared
exhausted, and Lee was casting about for a brilliant remark; she was
the cleverest girl in her class and careful of her reputation. But her
brain would not work this morning, and fearing that her new friend
would bolt, she said precipitately:

“I’m eleven. How old are you?”

“Fourteen and eleven months.”

“My name’s Lee Tarleton. What’s yours?”

“Cecil Edward Basil Maundrell. I’ve got two more than you have.”

“Well you’re a boy, anyhow, and bigger, aren’t you? I’m named after a
famous man--second cousin, General Lee. Lee was my father’s mother’s
family name.”

“Who was General Lee?”

“You’d better study United States history.”

“What for?”

The question puzzled Lee, her eagle being yet in the shell. She replied
rather lamely, “Well, Southern history, because my mother says we are
descended from the English, and some French. It’s the last makes us
creoles.”

“Oh! I’ll ask father.”

“Is he a lord?” asked Lee, with deep curiosity.

“No.”

The boy answered so abruptly that Lee stood still and stared at him.
He had set his lips tightly; it would almost seem he feared something
might leap from them.

“Oh--h--h! Your father has forbidden you to tell.”

The clumsy male looked helplessly at the astute female. “He isn’t a
lord,” he asserted doggedly.

“You aren’t telling me all, though.”

“Perhaps I’m not. But,” impulsively, “perhaps I will some day. I hate
being locked up like a tin box with papers in it. We’ve been here two
weeks--at the Palace Hotel before we came to Mrs. Hayne’s--and my head
fairly aches thinking of everything I say before I say it. I hate this
old California. Father won’t present any letters, and the boys I’ve met
are cads. But I like you!”

“Oh, tell me!” cried Lee. Her eyes blazed and she hopped excitedly on
one foot. “It’s like a real story. Tell me!”

“I’ll have to know you better. I must be sure I can trust you.” He had
all at once assumed a darkly mysterious air. “I’ll walk every morning
to school with you, and in the afternoons we’ll sit in the drawing-room
and talk.”

“I never tell secrets. I know _lots_!”

“I’ll wait a week.”

“Well; but I think it’s horrid of you. And I can’t come down this
afternoon; my mother is ill. But to-morrow I have a holiday, and if you
like you can come up and see me at two o’clock; and you shall carry my
bag every morning to school.”

“Indeed!” He threw up his head like a young racehorse.

“You must,”--firmly. “Else you can’t come. I’ll let some other boy
carry it.” Lee fibbed with a qualm, but not upon barren soil had the
maternal counsel fallen.

“Oh--well--I’ll do it; but I ought to have offered. Girls ought not to
tell boys what to do.”

“My mother always told her husband and brothers and cousins to do
everything she wanted, and they always did it.”

“Well, I’ve got a grandmother and seven old maid aunts, and they never
asked me to do a thing in their lives. They wait on me. They’d do
anything for me.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Boys were _made_ to wait on
girls.”

“They were not. I never heard such rot.”

Lee considered a moment. He was quite as aristocratic as any
Southerner; there was no doubt of that. But he had been badly brought
up. Her duty was plain.

“You’d be just perfect if you thought girls were more important than
yourself,” she said wheedlingly.

“I’ll never do that,” he replied stoutly.

“Then we can’t be friends!”

“Oh, I say! Don’t rot like that. I won’t give you something I’ve got in
my pockets, if you do.”

Lee glanced swiftly at his pockets. They bulged. “Well, I won’t any
more to-day,” she said sweetly. “What have you got for me? You _are_ a
nice boy.”

He produced an orange and a large red apple, and offered them
diffidently.

Lee accepted them promptly. “Did you really buy these for me?” she
demanded, her eyes flashing above the apple. “You are the _best_ boy!”

“I didn’t buy them on purpose, but my father bought a box of fruit
yesterday and I saved these for you. They were the biggest.”

“I’m ever so much obliged.”

“You’re welcome,” he replied, with equal concern for the formalities.

“This is my school.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“You’ll come up at two to-morrow? Number 142, third floor.”

“I will.”

They shook hands limply. He glanced back as he walked off, whistling.
Lee was standing on the steps hastily disposing of her apple. She
nodded gaily to him.




CHAPTER V


The next afternoon Lee made an elaborate toilette. She buttoned her
boots properly, sewed a stiff, white ruffle in her best gingham frock,
and combed every snarl out of her hair. Mrs. Tarleton, who was sitting
up, regarded her with some surprise.

“It’s nowhere near dinner time, honey,” she said, finally. “Why are you
dressing up?”

Lee blushed, but replied with an air: “I expect that little boy I told
you about, to come to see me--the English one. He carried my bag to
school yesterday, and gave me an apple and an orange. I’ve kept the
orange for you when you’re well. His name’s Cecil Maundrell.”

“Ah! Well, I hope he is a nice boy, and that you will be great friends.”

“He’s nice enough in his way. But he’d just walk over me if I’d let
him. I can see that.”

Mrs. Tarleton looked alarmed. “Don’t let him bully you, darling.
Englishmen are dreadfully high and mighty.”

There was a faint and timid rap upon the door.

“That’s him,” whispered Lee. “He’s afraid of me all the same.”

She opened the door. Young Maundrell stood there, his cheeks burning,
his hands working nervously in his pockets. He looked younger than
most lads of his age, and had all that simplicity of boyhood so lacking
in the precocious American youth.

“Won’t you come in?” asked Lee politely.

“Oh--ah--won’t you come out?”

“Come in--do,” said Mrs. Tarleton. She had a very sweet voice and a
heavenly smile. The boy walked forward rapidly, and took her hand,
regarding her with curious intensity. Mrs. Tarleton patted his hand.

“You miss the women of your family, do you not?” she said. “I thought
so. You must come and see us often. You will be always welcome.”

His face was brilliant. He stammered out that he’d come every day. Then
he went over to the window with Lee, and with their heads together they
agreed that Mrs. Tarleton was a real angel.

But Cecil quickly tired of the subdued atmosphere, and of the crowd
below. He stood up abruptly and said:

“Let’s go out if your mother doesn’t mind. We’ll take a walk.”

Mrs. Tarleton looked up from her book and nodded. Lee fetched her hat
and jacket, and they went forth.

“My father took me to the Cliff House one day. We’ll go there,”
announced the Englishman.

“I was going to take you to a candy store--”

“Nasty stuff! It’s a beautiful walk to the Cliff House, and there are
big waves and live seals.”

“Oh, I’d love to go, but I’ve heard it’s a queer kind of a place, or
something.”

“I’ll take care of you. Can you walk a lot?”

“Of course!”

But like all San Franciscans, she was a bad walker, and she felt very
weary as they tramped along the Cliff House road. However, she was
much interested in the many carriages flashing past, and too proud to
confess herself unequal to the manly stride beside her. Cecil did not
suit his pace to hers. He kept up a steady tramp--his back very erect,
his head in the air. Lee forgot her theories, and thought him adorable.
His shyness wore off by degrees, and he talked constantly, not of his
family life, but of his beloved Eton, from which he appeared to have
been ruthlessly torn, and of his feats at cricket. He was a champion
“dry bob,” he assured her proudly. Lee was deeply interested, but
would have liked to talk about herself a little. He did not ask her a
question; he was charmed with her sympathy, and confided his school
troubles, piling up the agony, as her eyes softened and flashed. When
she capped an anecdote of martyrdom with one from her own experience,
he listened politely, but when she finished, hastened on with his own
reminiscences, not pausing to comment. Lee experienced a slight chill,
and the spring day seemed less brilliant, the people in the carriages
less fair. But she was a child, the impression quickly passed, and her
interest surrendered once more.

“We’ll be there in two minutes,” said Cecil. “Then we’ll have a cup of
tea.”

“My mother doesn’t let me drink tea or coffee. She hopes I’ll have a
complexion some day and be pretty.”

She longed for the masculine assurance that her beauty was a foregone
conclusion, but Cecil replied:

“Oh! the idea of bothering about complexion. I like you because you’re
not silly like other girls. You’ve got a lot of sense--just like a boy.
Of course you mustn’t disobey your mother, but you must have something
after that walk. You’ve got a lot of pluck, but I can see you’re blown
a bit. Would she mind if you had a glass of wine? I’ve got ten dollars.
My stepmother sent them to me.”

“My!--I don’t think she’d mind about the wine, I’ve never tasted it.
Oh, goodness!”

They had mounted one of the rocks, and faced the ocean. Lee had thought
the bay, girt with its colourous hills very beautiful, as they had
trudged along the cliffs, but she had had glimpses of it many times
from the heights of San Francisco. She had never seen the ocean before.
Its roar thrilled her nerves, and the great green waves, rolling in
with magnificent precision from the grey plain beyond, to leap abruptly
over the outlying rocks, their spray glittering in the sunlight
like a crust of jewels, filled her brain with new and inexpressible
sensations. She turned suddenly to Cecil. His eyes met hers with deep
impersonal sympathy; their souls mingled on the common ground of
nervous exaltation. He moved closer to her and took her hand.

“That’s the reason I wanted to come again,” he said. “I love it.”

The words shook his nerves down, and he added: “But let’s go and
freshen up.”

She followed him up the rocks to the little shabby building set into
the cliff and overhanging the waves. She knew nothing of its secrets;
no suspicion crossed her innocent mind that if its walls could speak,
San Francisco, highly seasoned as it was, would shake to its roots, and
heap up its record of suicide and divorce; but she wondered why two
women, who came out and passed her hurriedly, were so heavily veiled,
and why others, sitting in the large restaurant, had such queer-looking
cheeks and eyes. Some inherited instinct forbade her to comment to
Cecil, who did not give the women a glance. He led her to a little
table at the end of the piazza, and ordered claret and water, tea, and
a heaping plate of bread and butter.

It was some time before they were served, and they gazed delightedly
at a big ship going out, and wished they were on it; at the glory of
colour on the hills opposite; and at the seals chattering on the rocks
below.

“It’s heavenly, perfectly heavenly,” sighed Lee. “I never had such a
good time in all my life.”

She forgot her complexion and took off her hat. The salt breeze stung
the blood into her cheeks, and her eyes danced with joy.

The waiter brought the little repast. The children sipped and nibbled
and chattered. Cecil scarcely took his eyes off the water. He and his
father went off on sailing and fishing excursions every summer, he told
Lee, and he was so keen on the water that it had taken him fully three
months after he entered Eton to decide whether he would be a “wet
bob,” or a “dry bob.” Cricket had triumphed, because he loved to feel
his heels fly.

Lee gave him a divided attention: her brain was fairly dancing, and
seemed ready to fly off in several different directions at once. “Oh!”
she cried suddenly, “I’m not a bit tired any more. I feel as if I could
walk miles and miles. Let’s have an adventure. Wouldn’t it be just
glorious if we could have an adventure?”

The boy’s eyes flashed. “Oh, _would_ you. I’ve been thinking about
it--but you’re a girl. But you’re such a jolly sort! We’ll get one of
those fishing-boats to take us out to sea, and climb up and down those
big waves. Oh, fancy! I say!--will you?”

“Oh, won’t I? Youbetcherlife I will.”

Cecil paid his reckoning, and the children scrambled along the rocks
to a cove where a fishing smack was making ready for sea. Lee wondered
why her feet glanced off the rocks in such a peculiar fashion, but she
was filled with the joy of exhilaration, of a reckless delight in doing
something of which the entire Hayne boarding-house would disapprove.

Cecil made a rapid bargain with the man, an ugly Italian, who gave him
scant attention. A few moments later they were skimming up and down the
big waves and making for the open sea. At first Lee clung in terror to
Cecil, who assured her patronisingly that it was an old story with him,
and there was no danger. In a few moments the exhilaration returned
five-fold, and she waved her arms with delight as they shot down the
billows into the emerald valleys. Out at sea the boat skimmed along an
almost level surface, and the children became absorbed in the big fish
nets, and very dirty. Lee thought the flopping fish nasty and drew up
her feet, but Cecil’s very nostrils quivered with the delight of the
sport, although his surly hosts had snubbed his offer to lend a hand.

Suddenly Lee rubbed her eyes. The sun had gone. He had been well above
the horizon the last time she had glanced across the waters. Had he
slipped his moorings? She pointed out the phenomenon to Cecil. He
stared a moment, then appealed to the Italians.

“Da fogga, by damn!” exclaimed the Captain to his mate. “What for he
coming so soon? Com abouta.”

The little craft turned and raced with the breeze for land. The
children faced about and watched that soft stealthy curtain swing
after. It was as white as cloud, as chill as dawn, as eerie as sound
in the night. It took on varying outlines, breaking into crags and
mountain peaks and turrets. It opened once and caught a wedge of
scarlet from the irate sun. For a moment a ribbon of flame ran up and
down its length, then broke into drops of blood, then hurried whence it
came. Through the fog mountain came a long dismal moan, the fog-horn of
the Farallones, warning the ships at sea.

The children crept close together. Lee locked her arm in Cecil’s.
Neither spoke. Suddenly the boat jolted heavily and they scrambled
about, thinking they were on the rocks. But the Italians were tying
the boat to a little wharf, and unreefing her. The dock was strangely
unfamiliar. Cecil glanced hastily across the bay. San Francisco lay
opposite.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you going across before that fog
gets here?”

“Si you wanta crossa that bay you swimming,” remarked the Captain,
stepping ashore.

Cecil jumped after him with blazing eyes and angry fists. “You know I
thought you were going back there,” he cried. “Why, you’re a villain!
And a girl too! I’ll have you arrested.”

The man laughed. Cecil, through tears of mortification, regarded that
large bulk, and choked back his wrath.

“My father will pay you well if you take us back,” he managed to
articulate.

“No crossa that bay to-night,” replied the man.

“But how are we to get back?”

“Si you walka three, four, five miles--no can remember--you finda one
ferra-boat.” And he sauntered away.

Cecil returned to the boat and helped Lee to land. “I’m awfully sorry,”
he said. “What a beastly mess I’ve got you into!”

“Oh, never mind,” said Lee cheerfully. “I reckon I can walk.”

“You _are_ a jolly sort. Come on then.” But his brow was set in gloom.

Lee took his hand. “You looked just splendid when you talked to that
horrid man,” she said. “I am sure he was afraid of you!”

Cecil’s brow shot forth the nimbus of the conqueror.

“Lee,” he said in a tone of profound conviction, “you have more sense
than all the rest of the girls in the world put together. Come on and
I’ll help you along.”

They climbed the bluff. When they reached the top the world was white
and impalpable about them.

Cecil drew Lee’s hand through his arm. “Never mind,” he said, “I think
I have a good bump of locality, and one can see a little way ahead.”

Lee leaned heavily on his arm. “I can’t think why I feel so sleepy,”
she murmured. “I never am at this time of day.”

“Oh, for mercy’s sake don’t go to sleep. Let’s run.”

They ran headlong until they were out of breath. Then they stopped and
gazed into the fog ahead of them. Tall dark objects loomed there. They
seemed to touch the unseen stars, and they were black even in that
gracious mist.

“They’re trees. They’re redwoods,” said Cecil. “I know where we are
now--at least I think I do. Father and I came over to this side one
day and drove about. It’s a regular forest. I do hope----” He glanced
uneasily about. “It’s too bad we can’t walk along the edge of the
cliffs. But if we keep straight ahead I suppose it’ll be all right.”

They trudged on. The forest closed about them. Those dark rigid shafts
that no storm ever bends, no earthquake ever sways, whom the fog feeds
and the trade winds love, looked like the phantasm of themselves in the
pale hereafter. The scented underbush and infant redwoods grew high
above the heads of the children, and there were a hundred paths. The
roar of the sea grew faint.

Lee gave a gasping yawn and staggered. “Oh, Cecil,” she whispered, “I’m
asleep. I can’t go another step.”

Cecil was also weary, and very much discouraged. He sat down against
a tree and took Lee in his arms. She was asleep in a moment, her head
comfortably nestled into his shoulder.

He was a brave boy, but during the two hours that Lee slept his nerves
were sorely tried. High up, in the unseen arbours of the redwoods,
there was a faint incessant whisper: the sibilant tongues of moisture
among the brittle leaves. From an immeasurable distance came the long,
low, incessant moan of the Farallones’ “syren.” There was no other
sound. If there were four-footed creatures in the forest they slept.
Just as Cecil’s teeth began to chatter, whether from cold or fear he
did not care to scan, Lee moved.

“Are you awake?” he asked eagerly.

Lee sprang to her feet. “I didn’t know where I was for a minute. Let’s
hurry as fast as we can. Memmy will be wild--she might be dreadfully
ill with fright----”

“And father’s got all the policemen in town out after me,” said Cecil
gloomily. “We can’t hurry or we’ll run into trees; but we can go on.”
In a few minutes he exclaimed: “I say! We’re going up hill, and it’s
jolly steep too.”

“Well?”

“That Italian didn’t say anything about hills.”

“Then I suppose we’re lost again,” said Lee, with that resignation so
exasperating to man.

“Well, if we are I don’t see who’s to help it in the fog at night in
a forest. Perhaps the ferry is over the hill, and as this is the only
path we’ll have to go on.”

“I wouldn’t mind the hill being perpendicular if memmy was at the top.”

Cecil softened at once. “Don’t you worry; we’ll get there soon. I’ll
get behind and push you.”

They toiled and panted up the hill, which grew into a mountain. The
forest dropped behind and a low dense shrubbery surrounded them.
They were obliged to rest many times, and once they ate a half-dozen
crackers Lee found in her pocket and were hungrier thereafter. But
they forebore to discourse upon their various afflictions; in fact,
they barely spoke at all. Their clothes were torn, their hats lost,
their hands and faces scratched. When they paused to rest and the
vague disturbances of night smote their ears, they clung together and
were glad to hasten on. Lee longed to cry, but panted to be a heroine
in Cecil’s eyes, and win the sweets of masculine approval; and Cecil,
whose depression was even more profound, never forgot that the glory
of the male is to be invincible in the eyes of the female. So did the
vanity of sex mitigate the terrors of night and desolation and the
things that devour.

The fog was far below them, an ocean of froth, pierced by the black
tips of the redwoods. On either side the children could see nothing but
the great shoulders of the mountain. They seemed climbing to the vast
cold glitter above.

Gradually they left the brush, and their way fell among stones, rocks,
and huge boulders. Not a shrub grew here, not a blade of grass. They
climbed on for a time, they reached level ground, then the point of
descent. They could see nothing but rocks, brush, and an ocean of fog.
Their courage took note of its limitations.

“I’m not going to cry,” said Lee sharply. “But I think we’d better
talk till the sun gets up and that fog melts. Besides, if we talk we
won’t feel so hungry. Tell me that thing about yourself--your father--I
suppose you can trust me now?”

“We’re friends for life, and I like you better than my chum. You’re a
brick. Hold up your right hand and swear that you’ll never tell.”

Lee took the required oath, and the two battered travellers made
themselves as comfortable as they could in the hollow of an upright
rock.

“There ain’t so much to tell. My father and my stepmother don’t hit
it off--quarrel all the time. But my stepmother has the money and is
awfully keen on me, so they live together usually. Besides, until two
years ago my stepmother thought she’d be a bigger somebody, and my
father thought he’d have money of his own one day because his uncle was
old and had never married. But Uncle Basil--I’m named for him--married
two years ago and his wife got a little chap right off. So that knocked
my father out, and my stepmother was just like a hornet. I love her,
and she’s seldom been nasty to me, but I _have_ seen her so that when
you spoke to her she’d scream at you; and when she’s in a real nasty
temper I always go out. Once I got mad because she was abusing Uncle
Basil--I always spent my vacations at Maundrell Abbey, and he was
good to me and gave me a gun and lots of tips--and I told her she was
nasty to abuse him and I shouldn’t like her unless she stopped. Then
she cried and kissed me--she’s great on kissing--and said she loved me
better than any one in the world, and would do anything I wanted. Did
I tell you she is an American? My father says the Americans are very
excitable, and my stepmother is, and no mistake. But she dotes on me--I
suppose because she hasn’t any children of her own, and no one else to
dote on, for that matter; so I like her, whatever she does.

“One day, she and my father got into a terrible rage. I was in the
room, but they didn’t pay any attention to me. Father wanted a lot
of money, and she wouldn’t give it to him. She said he could ask his
mother to pay his gambling debts. (Granny has money and is going to
leave me some of it.) He said he’d asked her and she wouldn’t. Granny
and father don’t hit it off, either, only granny never quarrels with
anybody. Then my stepmother--her first name’s Emily and I call her
Emmy--called him dreadful names, and said she’d leave him that minute
if it wasn’t for me. And my father said she was the greatest snob
in London and had gone off her head because she’d lost her hopes of
a title. Then he said he’d get even with her; he couldn’t stay in
London any longer, so he’d go as far away from her as he could get and
then she’d see what her position amounted to without him. ‘You’re an
outsider--you’re on sufferance,’ he said, and he went out and banged
the door. She went off into hysterics, but she didn’t think he’d do it.
He did though. He bolted the next day, and took me with him to spite
her and granny. He’s always been decent to me, so I wouldn’t mind, only
I’d rather be at Eton. He came here because it wouldn’t cost him much
to live, and he’s keen on sport and knows some Englishmen that have
ranches. He hopes Emmy’ll repent, but she hasn’t written him a line.
She wrote to me, and sent me two pounds, but she never mentioned his
name.”

“Goodness, gracious!” exclaimed Lee. She was deeply disappointed at
this unromantic chronicle. And it gave all her preconceived ideas of
matrimony an ugly jar. “My papa and mamma were just devoted to each
other,” she said. “It must be terrible not to be.”

“Oh, I expect people get used to it. And there are a lot of other
things to think about. My stepmother has a very jolly time, and father
doesn’t come home very much when we are in London; and in the autumn we
have a lot of people in the house--Emmy rents a place in Hampshire.”

“Then your father isn’t a lord?”

“No; Uncle Basil is.”

The lord in the family was the only redeeming feature of this sordid
story; he gave it one fiery touch of the picturesque. Suddenly she
forgot her disappointment, and patted Cecil’s scratched and grimy
fingers.

“You haven’t been a bit happy, like other little boys, have you?” she
said, “and you are so kind and good. I’m sorry, and I wish you could
live with memmy and me.”

That Cecil loved sympathy there could be no manner of doubt. He
expanded at once upon the painful subject, consigning the devotion
of his granny, his seven aunts, his stepmother, the kindness of his
uncle, and his unfettered summers, to oblivion. He could not see Lee’s
face in the shadow of the rock, but he felt the tensity of her mind,
concentrated on himself. They forgot their anxious parents, the dark
clinging night, the awful silence, hunger and fatigue. Lee forgot all
but Cecil; Cecil forgot all but himself. When he had exhausted his
resources, Lee cried:

“I’ll always like you better than any one else in the whole world
except memmy! I know I will! I swear I will!”

“Couldn’t you like me better than your mother?” he asked jealously.

Lee hesitated. Her youthful bosom was agitated by conflicting emotions.
Feminine subtlety dictated her answer.

“I can’t tell yet. When I’m a big grown-up person I’ll decide.”

“What’s the use of doing anything by halves? I don’t. I like you better
than anybody.”

“I’ll have to wait,” firmly.

“Oh, very well,” he said crossly. “Of course, if I knew some boys
here, it wouldn’t matter so much.”

“Then if you had boys to play with you wouldn’t love me? Oh, you unkind
_cruel_ boy!”

“No--you know what I mean; I’d like you just the same, but I shouldn’t
need you so much. There’s nothing to get angry about-- Now?-- What?--
Oh!”

For Lee was weeping bitterly.

Cecil suddenly remembered that he was cold, and hungry, and tired, and
lost. And he was confronted with a scene. What Lee was crying about he
had but a vague idea. For a moment he contemplated a hug,--on general
principles,--but remembered in time that when his father attempted
cajolement his stepmother always wept the louder. So he remarked with
the nervous haste of man when he knows that he is not rising to the
occasion:

“We’ll stay here till morning and then I’ll take your apron off and
put it on the top of a long stick and somebody’ll be sure to see. It’s
exactly like being shipwrecked.”

“I never was shipwrecked,” sobbed Lee; “I’m sure I shouldn’t like it.”

“We’ve had adventures, anyhow, and that’s what you wanted.”

“I don’t like adventures. They’re not very interesting, and I’m all
scratched up, and hungry, and tired.”

“We’ve not been attacked by a bear. You ought to be thankful for that.”

Lee, who would have been comforted at once by the hug, arose with
dignity, found a soft spot and composed herself to sleep, forlorn and
dejected. Cecil haughtily extended himself where he was. But he, too,
was sensible of a weight on his spirits, which hunger, nor fatigue, nor
cold, nor straits, had rolled there. In a few moments he took off his
jacket and went over to Lee and slipped it under her head. She whisked
about and caught his head in her arms, and they were fast asleep in an
instant.




CHAPTER VI


Lee awoke first. She remembered at once where she was, and sat up with
a sense of terror she had not experienced in the darkness of the night.
The fog was gone, the sun was well above the horizon. She and Cecil
were alone on a mountain peak so high above the world that the blue
depths of space seemed nigher than the planet below. The redwood forest
at the foot of the mountain looked like brush; on a glassy pond were
hundreds of toy boats; beyond was a toy city on toy hills. Far to the
South another solitary peak lifted itself into the heavens, dwarfing
the mountain ranges about it. Lee glanced to the left. Nothing there
but peak after peak bristling away into the north, black and rigid with
redwoods.

But it was not the stupendous isolation that terrified Lee. It was a
vague menace in the atmosphere about her, an accentuated stillness.
Over the scene was a grey web, so delicate, so transparent, that it
concealed nothing. Lee rubbed her eyes to make sure it was really
there. It might have been the malignant breath of the evil genius of
California. As she gazed, the mist slowly cohered. It became an almost
tangible veil through which San Francisco looked the phantom of a city
long since sunken to the bed of the Pacific. The sun glared through
it like the suspended crater of an angry volcano. The forests on the
mountain all at once seemed dead. The very air was petrified. The
silence was awful, appalling.

Lee caught Cecil by the shoulder and pulled him upright.

“Something terrible is going to happen,” she gasped. “Oh, I wish we
were home! I wish we were home.”

Cecil rubbed his eyes. He barely grasped the meaning of her words.
There was a dull muffled roar, which seemed to spring from the depths
of the planet, a terrible straining and rocking, and the very heart of
the mountain leaped under them.

Cecil saw Lee make a wild dart to the left. Then he was conscious of
nothing but a rapid descent amidst a hideous clatter of rock, and
the sensation that he was sliding from the surface of the earth into
space. Down he went, down, down, with the rumble below and the roar of
loosened earth and rock about him. Inside of him he fancied he could
hear the icicles of his blood rattle against each other. In his skull
was a horrible vacuum.

The slide stopped abruptly. Cecil looked dully about him, wondering
why the still trembling rocks had not ground him to pulp. He stumbled
to his feet mechanically, worked his way beyond the slide, then
climbed toward the cone from which he had been so abruptly evicted.
His knowledge of what he sought was very vague, a primal instinct.
Presently he saw Lee running toward him. Behind her was a man in the
rough garb of a mountaineer.

“It was an earthquake,” cried Lee, as she flung herself into Cecil’s
arms, “and he’s going to take us home.”




CHAPTER VII


Between a night of maternal agonies and an earthquake which wrenched
the city to its foundations, Mrs. Tarleton’s spirit was very nearly
shaken out of her frail body.

Mr. Maundrell, after despatching two detectives in search of the
truants, spent the greater part of the night pacing up and down the
upper hall. He called upon Mrs. Tarleton late in the evening, and
assured her that his son was a manly little chap, and would take
good care of Lee. As the night waxed he called again. Miss Hayne was
holding salts to the invalid’s nostrils, and fanning her. Mrs. Tarleton
implored him to remain near her; he was so cool he gave her a little
courage. He consented hastily and retreated. When the earthquake came
he entered Mrs. Tarleton’s room unceremoniously and stood by her bed,
throwing a shawl over her head to protect it from falling plaster.
The chandelier leapt from side to side like a circus girl at the end
of a rope, then came down with a crash which drew an exhausted shriek
from the bed. The wardrobe walked out into the middle of the room,
the pictures sprang from the walls. Mrs. Tarleton, stifled, flung the
shawl from her head. Mr. Maundrell stood, imperturbable, beside her, a
monocle in his eye, critically regarding the evidences of California’s
iniquity. She began to laugh hysterically, and he fled from the room
and begged Miss Hayne--who had rushed out shrieking--to return.

He went down to his own rooms. It was eight o’clock in the morning.
People in various stages of undress were grouped in the halls volubly
giving their experiences. Not a woman but Mrs. Hayne had a dress on,
not a woman had her hair out of curl-papers. The men had paused long
enough to fling on dressing-gowns and blankets. They were visibly
embarrassed.

Three hours later Mr. Maundrell was in his sitting-room reading an
earthquake “extra.” The door opened and a small boy, with a cold in his
head, dirty, ragged, scratched, and apologetic, entered and awaited his
doom. Mr. Maundrell glanced up. Cecil shivered.

“Go and take a bath,” said his father curtly. “You are positively
sickening. And kindly do not bore me with your adventures. I have
really had as much as I can stand.”




CHAPTER VIII


Lee went neither to school nor to her meals for a week. She nursed her
mother with the ardour of maternal affection and remorse. For the first
two days Cecil dared not approach that door; it seemed written large
with his misdoings. On the third he knocked timidly, then put his hands
behind him.

Lee opened the door, threw back her head, and half closed her eyes--to
conceal the delight in them.

“Well,” she said freezingly. “I am glad to see you haven’t forgotten
all about me--I am sure I am!”

Cecil attempted no apology. He produced a bag of candy, and an apple
nearly as big as his head.

“I thought you’d like these as you couldn’t go out to get any,” he said
with tact.

Lee almost closed her eyes. She drew back. “You are so kind!” she said
sarcastically.

Cecil must have had great ancestors. He replied never a word. He stood
with both arms outstretched, the tempting offerings well within the
door, and under Lee’s very nose.

Her eyes slowly opened. The corners of her mouth invaded her cheeks.
Her hands rose slowly, fluttered a moment, then closed firmly over the
tributes to her sex.

“Won’t you come in?” she asked graciously.

Cecil promptly closed the door behind him.

“I’m coming every afternoon to take care of your mother,” he announced.

“The idea of a boy being a nurse,” said Lee disdainfully; but she
brought her lashes together again.

“You go and take a nap. Which medicine does she take next?”

Lee allowed herself to be overborne, and fell asleep. Mrs. Tarleton
opened her eyes suddenly to meet a hypnotic stare. Cecil did nothing by
halves.

Mrs. Tarleton smiled faintly, then put out her hand and patted his.

“You are a good boy, Cecil,” she said.

The good boy reddened haughtily. “I’m not trying to be thought a
milksop,” he remarked.

“Oh, I know, I know! I mean most boys are selfish. I knew you would
bring Lee safely back.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you said you forgave me.”

“I do. I do. Only please don’t do it again.”

He gave her the medicine. She closed her eyes, but he saw that she did
not sleep. Occasionally she frowned and sighed heavily. Finally she
opened her eyes again.

“I wish you were a little older,” she said abruptly.

He sat up very straight. “I’m quite old,” he said thickly. “I’m much
older than Lee.”

“I mean I wish you were really grown and your own master, and as fond
of Lee as you are now. I must die soon; I had hoped to live until Lee
was grown and married, but my will won’t last me much longer. It is of
that I think constantly as I lie here, not of my pain.”

“I’ll marry Lee if you like,” said Cecil obligingly. “I like her very
much; it would suit me jolly well to have her in England.”

Mrs. Tarleton raised herself on her arm. Her thin cheeks fairly
expanded with the colour that flew to them. The boy could see the
fluttering of her exhausted heart.

“Cecil,” she said solemnly, “promise me that you will marry Lee. I am
a good judge of human nature. I know that you would be kind to her. I
know of no one else to leave her to. Promise me.”

“I promise,” said Cecil promptly. But he had an odd sensation that the
room had grown suddenly smaller.

“If I die before you go, take her with you if your father will consent.
She has a little money and will not be a burden. If your father won’t
take her come back for her when you are of age. Remember that you have
given your solemn promise to a dying woman.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Cecil faintly. He was young and masculine and
unanalytical; but instinct told him that Mrs. Tarleton was unfair, and
he cooled to her, and to the sex through her, for the time being. He
slipped out as Lee awoke.

The next day when he returned, the unpleasant sensations induced by
Mrs. Tarleton had almost vanished. On the fourth day, as he and Lee
were sitting before the fire popping corn--Mrs. Tarleton’s nerves
being under the influence of morphine--Lee remarked with some asperity:

“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me so.”

“I was just thinking,” he said. “I am going to be your husband, you
know.”

“What?” Lee dropped the popper into the fire. Her head went back, her
nostrils out. “Who said you were, I’d like to know? _I_ didn’t.”

“Your mother asked me to marry you, and I said I would. So I’m going
to.”

The American girl arose in her wrath, and stamped her foot.

“The very idea! Try it, will you? The idea, the _idea_ of saying you’re
going to marry a girl just ’cause you want to!--without _asking_ her! I
just won’t marry you--so there!”

Young Maundrell rose to his feet, plunged his hands into his pockets
and regarded her with angry perplexity. He knew what he would have done
had she been a boy; he would have thrashed her. But a girl was a deeper
problem than earthquakes. He descended to diplomacy.

“Of course I’ll ask you if you prefer it that way.”

“You just bet your life I do.”

“Well--” He got very red and trembled all over. He threw his weight
first on one foot and then on the other. His nails clawed at his
trousers pockets.

“Well?”

“Oh--ah--that is--you can marry me, if you like-- Oh, hang it, Lee! I
don’t know how to propose. I feel like a rotter.”

“That isn’t the way,” said Lee icily. She hastily reviewed her glimpses
of standard works.

“You must go down on your knees,” she added.

“I’d see myself dead sooner,” cried Cecil.

“You must.”

“I won’t.”

“Then I won’t marry you.”

“I don’t care whether you do or not.”

“But you promised!”

“I’m not going to be an ass if I did.”

Said Lee sweetly: “I don’t much care about the going down on the knees
part. I’m afraid I’d laugh. Just say, ‘Will you marry me?’”

He sulkily repeated the formula.

“Now we’re engaged,” said Lee complacently; “and the popper’s burnt
up. But we’ve got a lot popped, and I’ll make a syrup and stick some
together into a nice ball for you. It’s lovely to eat when you’re in
bed.” She leaned forward and adjusted his agitated necktie. “You look
as if you just owned the whole world when you get mad,” she said.

And the male ate his sweets and was pacified.




CHAPTER IX


The tide in Mrs. Tarleton rose once more; on Monday she was able to
sit up, and Cecil took Lee for a walk; but returned betimes, having
received a brief parental admonition that if he did not, he’d be caned.
After that, they explored Market Street every afternoon, and on Sunday
trotted off to church together.

On the following afternoon, as Lee was walking down the hill from
school, she saw an excited group of boys in the street, before the
side entrance of Mrs. Hayne’s boarding-house. As she approached, she
inferred that two were fighting, as some eight or ten others were
cheering and betting.

Lee raised herself on tiptoe and looked over the shoulder of a short
boy. The belligerents were Bertie Reynolds and Cecil Maundrell. Her
first impulse was to scream--an impulse which she quickly repressed.
Her second was to cheer Cecil. This she also repressed, remembering
that she was a girl, or, as her mother would have put it, a Southerner.

She mounted a box and watched the battle, her hands clenched, her
eyes blazing, her heart sick; for her Cecil was getting the worst of
it. He looked as sturdy as a little oak, and he planted his blows
scientifically; but his antagonist was twice his size, lean and wiry,
and full of nervous fire. Moreover, the surrounding influences were
all for the American: Cecil was not only English, but he had snubbed
these boys of Mrs. Hayne’s boarding-house for three consecutive weeks.
Vengeance had been in the air for some time.

The boys fought like young savages. Their faces made Lee shudder and
ponder. But that impression passed, for there was worse to come. Cecil
got a huge lump over his right eye. Cecil got a damaged nose. Cecil’s
immaculate shirt turned an angry scarlet. Cecil got a blow under his
jaw, and went down.

Then was Lee’s opportunity. She leaped from the box, straight into the
ring--which was giving unearthly cat-calls--and took Cecil’s head in
her arms.

“You just help me carry him inside, you horrid, hateful bully,” she
commanded young Reynolds. “Take his feet--there!”

The national instinct prompted obedience, and Cecil was safely
deposited on the lower step of the side entrance, Reynolds retiring in
haste before the concentrated fury in Lee’s eyes and teeth and nails.
She gathered Cecil into her bosom, and wept bitterly.

“I say!” murmured the wounded hero. “Don’t cry! I’m all right. I’ve got
a beastly headache, that’s all.”

“Those loathsome boys!” sobbed Lee.

“Well, they know I can fight, if I didn’t beat.” But his voice was
thick, and there was no pride about him anywhere.

Lee’s tears finished, and were succeeded by curiosity.

“What did you fight about?” she asked, drying her eyes on her
ensanguined pinafore.

“They all said the United States licked England twice, and I said it
didn’t. They said I didn’t know history, and I--well, I told them they
were liars, and that Reynolds offered to fight for the crowd, and we
fought.”

“Don’t get excited,” said Lee soothingly. “Do you think you can walk up
to your room? You’ll feel better if you lie down, and I can do a lot of
things for you.”

He got to his feet, climbed wearily to his room, and flung himself
on the bed. Lee was in her element. She sponged him off, and fetched
ice, and bound up his damaged face. She felt his nose to see if it was
broken. It was swelling rapidly, and he shrieked as she prodded it.
Lee wished that she did not feel a disposition to laugh, but her hero
certainly looked funny. When she had bound two compresses about his
face--his upper lip was also cut--she closed the inside blinds, and sat
down beside the bed. It was her duty to go to her mother, but she was
loath to leave her comrade.

“Lee,” said a stifled voice, “pull off my boots.”

Lee rose, hesitated a moment, then removed the boots, and threw his
jacket over his feet. She walked to the window, peered through the
slats, then returned to the bed.

“The United States did lick England,” she said.

Cecil was on his elbow in an instant.

“It did not,” he cried hoarsely. “If you were a boy I’d thrash you.”

“I finished United States history last term. We licked you in the
Revolution and in 1812.”

Cecil was erect on the edge of his bed, glaring at her out of his
attenuated eye, over the rising sun of his nose. “I tell you you
didn’t,” he growled. And his bandages slipped, and his wounds bled.

Lee flung her arms about him in an agony of remorse and pushed him back
among the pillows.

“I’m just horrid,” she sobbed; “I don’t know why I said that.” And once
more she bathed and bound him.

“Lee,” whispered a weary voice. “Say that you didn’t lick us.”

Lee gave him a little hug. “Of course not,” she said, as to a sick
child; “of course not.”




CHAPTER X


It was something over a week later that Lee awoke suddenly in the night
and sat erect, with stiffened muscles. Her skin was chilled as if her
sleeping body had been caught in a current of night air. A taper burned
in a cup of oil. She glanced towards the door. It was closed. Her cot
was in a corner, out of the reach of window draughts. Her shoulders
approached each other. Something was certainly wrong, quite different
from the usual routine of night. The taper faintly illumined the
large room over which her expanding eyes roved. A red light flashed
across the wall like a scythe, accompanied by the dull grumble of the
cable car. Everything in the room was as she had arranged or left
it for the night. Even the flannel petticoat Mrs. Tarleton had been
embroidering for her daughter was on the table where she had dropped
it. The needle stood up straight and focussed a beam of light. It was
the same commonplace comfortable room, with whose every feature Lee
was intimate; yet over these features to-night rested a thin film of
something unfamiliar.

Lee gave way to unreasoning terror. “Memmy!” she called, “memmy!”

Mrs. Tarleton was a light sleeper, but she did not answer.

Lee sprang to the floor and ran towards her mother’s bed. She paused
within a foot of it, her knees jerking. Mrs. Tarleton lay on her side,
her face to the wall, her arm along the counterpane. In both arm and
hand was the same suggestion of unreality, of change, as in the room.

Lee fled out into the hall and down the stairs to Cecil’s room. His
door was unlocked. He awakened to find himself standing on his feet,
striking out furiously.

“It’s only me,” gasped Lee, who had received a smart blow in the
shoulder. “Something’s the matter with memmy. Come quick.”

“All right, I will. You stay here and I’ll go into father’s room and
dress.”

He lifted Lee to the bed and went into the next room. Mr. Maundrell
entered a moment later and lit the gas. He looked keenly at Lee’s
scared white face, then went out by the hall door. He did not return
for some little time. When he did he met his son and Lee--who was
enveloped in Cecil’s overcoat--ascending the stairs. He turned them
back.

“Mrs. and Miss Hayne are with your mother,” he said. “Get into Cecil’s
bed and go to sleep. I will take him in with me.”

“I never leave memmy to other people,” faltered Lee; and then she put
her hands to her ears, and shuddered, and crouched against Cecil. “I
can’t sleep,” she gasped. “Don’t leave me alone.”

“Very well,” said Mr. Maundrell hastily. “You go into the sitting-room,
both of you. Cecil, you had better make her a cup of tea.”

Cecil half carried Lee into the sitting-room, put her on the sofa, lit
all the burners, and fell to making tea with nervous fingers and every
sign of deep embarrassment. When he had finished he walked rapidly over
to Lee, jerked her upright, and held the cup to her lips.

“Drink it!” he said in his most peremptory manner. Lee gulped it down.
Cecil returned to the table, drank a large measure, then went back to
Lee and put his arms about her.

“Now,” he said with an effort which brought his brows together and sent
the blood to his hair, “you can cry if you like.”

Lee promptly buried her head in his bosom and wept wildly, with abrupt
and terrible insight. Cecil could think of nothing to say, but he
gathered her in and gave her little spasmodic hugs. He felt very much
like crying himself, and at the same time wished with all his heart
that it were three days later. He concluded that a girl must get all
cried out in that time.




CHAPTER XI


All of Mrs. Tarleton’s old friends sent flowers, and many of them
attended the funeral service, which took place in the death chamber.
Mrs. Hayne had decided that a church funeral would be too expensive,
and her boarders would have objected to the association of a coffin
with the back parlour. Lee, holding Cecil’s hand tightly, sat in a
corner, looking smaller and darker than ever in her black frock, the
novelty of which had mitigated her grief for the moment. All of the
ladies kissed her and told her that she must be sure to come to see
them; and Mrs. Montgomery, who had just returned from Europe, and was
very much agitated, asked her to come home with her at once. But Lee
only shook her head. She and Cecil had other plans.

Her cot was taken into Miss Hayne’s room and she went to school as
usual. Her grief waxed rather than waned, and she stooped so that Mrs.
Hayne put her into braces, which confirmed her gloomy views of life.
But her woman’s instincts were very keen, and she knew that if she was
to have the solace of Cecil’s companionship, she must reserve her tears
for solitude. He was very kind, and informed her that he loved her the
better because she had such a jolly lot of grit and kept her back up
(Lee had not mentioned the braces), and that his father--who hated
Americans--had condescended to say that Lee was a jolly little thing,
and had more character and good sense at the age of eleven than his own
selection had accumulated in five-and-thirty years.

She and Cecil took many long walks, and rode back and forth on the
Oakland and Sausalito boats, munching molasses candy; Cecil was rapidly
falling a victim to the national vice. One day the father and son took
her to the country on a fishing expedition. It was a very long day, and
it was very hot. She sat on the bank and watched the others fish. Their
concentration amounted to genius, and except at luncheon, which she
prepared, they never addressed a word to her. She had never seen Mr.
Maundrell look so happy, and as for Cecil, his hazel eyes sparkled like
champagne. In spite of the blue sky, the warm sunshine, the beautiful
depths of the redwood forest, the singing stream, she felt lonely and
depressed, and went home with a sun-burned nose, and a heart full of
those obscure forebodings which assail woman when man forgets the
lesson of civilisation and pays a brief and joyous visit to the plane
of his sovereign ancestors.




CHAPTER XII


It was about a month after Mrs. Tarleton’s death that Cecil kicked Lee
under the breakfast-table and jerked his eyebrows at his father, who
sat opposite. Mr. Maundrell was reading his English mail. His pale face
was flushed. His impassive features threatened a change of expression.

That afternoon, as Lee was returning from school, Cecil met her
half-way up the hill.

“My uncle Basil and the little chap are dead, and father’s the heir,”
he announced.

“Is he a lord?” cried Lee, with bated breath.

“Yes.”

Lee’s eyes danced. Romance revived. Care fled.

“A duke?”

“No, an earl.”

“Earl’s much prettier than duke. I mean a prettier word.”

“He’s got a title of course. He’s Lord Barnstaple.”

“That’s not so pretty.”

“I----” Cecil thrust his hands into his pockets and turned very red.
“I don’t mind telling you--I’ve got a title too--what they call a
courtesy title. You see my father’s the Earl of Barnstaple and Viscount
Maundrell. So I’m Lord Maundrell. I shouldn’t think of mentioning it
to any one else,” he added hastily.

“Cecil!” Lee waved her arms wildly and danced up and down. “I never
_heard_ of anything so lovely. I feel exactly as if we were inside
Scott or Shakespeare or something. Shall you wear a crown and an ermine
robe?”

“I’m not a king,” said Cecil loftily. “Talk about _my_ not knowing
anything about United States history! You Americans are so funny. Fancy
you caring so much about such things.” His tone was almost his father’s
upon occasion.

“Why not? The idea! I think it’s perfectly romantic and lovely to be
lords and ladies. Whole shelves full of books have been written about
them--the standard works of fiction, that everybody reads. And plays,
and ballads, and poems, and pictures too! I’ve often heard my mother
talk about it, and I used to read the descriptions out loud to her in
the winter--she said it would form my taste for elegant literature. I
could just see the whole thing--the kings and dukes, and the beautiful
processions, and the castles and tournaments, and princesses and
falcons. Oh my! Of course I care. I’d be a silly little ninny if I
didn’t care. I just wish I’d been born like all that. I’m sure there’s
nothing very romantic about San Francisco--particularly Market Street.”

“Well,” said Cecil, bringing down his eyebrows and consenting to
establish himself at Lee’s view-point. “You’re going to be ‘like that.’
You’re going to marry me.”

Lee stopped short, her mouth open. “So I am,” she gasped. “So I am.
Could we be married right off, do you think?”

Cecil dropped his head and shook it gloomily. “I had a talk with father
to-day;” he shivered as he recalled that conversation; “and he says he
won’t take you back with us; that he likes you well enough, but one
American in the family is as much as he can stand--and, oh, a lot of
rot. We’ll have to wait till I grow up, and then I’ll come back for
you, or perhaps some one will bring you over.”

They entered the side door of the boarding-house. Cecil pulled Lee down
beside him on the stair.

“Oh, Lee,” he said in a high falsetto, “we’re going to-morrow. And I
hate to go away and leave you. I do! I do!”

“Going to-morrow!” gasped Lee, “and without me!” She burst into a storm
of tears, and Cecil forgot his manly pride and wept too.

“I wish I were grown,” sobbed Cecil. “And I won’t be for years. I’ve
got to finish at Eton, and then I’ve got to go to Oxford. I’m only
fifteen and one month. I won’t be my own master for six years, and I
won’t be through Oxford when I am. It takes so beastly long to educate
a fellow. It may be eight years before I see you again.”

“Eight years! I shall _die_. Why won’t he take me? I can pay for
myself. Mrs. Hayne says I have eighty dollars a month. Don’t you think
he’ll change his mind?”

“He won’t! he won’t!”

When Lee had wept herself dry, she adjusted herself to fate. “Well,”
she said, with a heavy sigh, “we’ll write every week, won’t we?”

It was Cecil’s turn to be appalled. This was a phase of the tragedy
that had not occurred to him.

“Oh, Lee,” he faltered, “I hate to write letters!”

“But you will?” she cried shrilly. “You will?”

“Oh, I’ll try! I’ll try! But only one a month.”

“One a week or I won’t write at all. And it’s nice to get letters.”

“One a fortnight then.”

To this Lee finally consented, and then went upstairs and helped
him to pack. Their faces were so funereal at dinner that they were
the subject of much good-natured chaff. Many disapproving glances
were directed at Mr. Maundrell,--with whose ascent they had not been
made acquainted,--for the children had furnished the house with much
amusement, and they commanded no little sympathy.

After dinner Cecil and Lee sat in one of the bay windows in the front
parlour and talked of the future. Cecil good-naturedly promised that
life should be exactly like one of Scott’s novels, any one that Lee
preferred. After some excogitation she concluded that she liked the
poems best, particularly “Marmion,” and Cecil agreed to qualify for the
part. Lee in return vowed to go fishing and shooting with him, never to
scream at the wrong time, even if a blackbeetle got on her, and never
to get into rages and call him names. They also exchanged tokens. Lee
gave him a little gold heart with her picture--cut from a tin-type--and
a strand of her lank hair in it, and he gave her a ring cut with the
arms of his house, and begged her to keep it in her pocket when his
father was round.

The next morning Lee was graciously permitted to accompany the
travellers across the bay. She and Cecil paced up and down the deck
of the boat, too excited for melancholy; both under that spell which
cauterises so many wounds. Lee was to be left behind, but she was in
the midst of an event. Moreover, she was shortly to see what a Pullman
car was like. She wrung one more solemn promise from Cecil to write.

Lord Barnstaple had taken a drawing-room for himself and his son, and
Lee examined the ornate interior and thought it very vulgar.

“You’ll be sure not to put your head out of the window, won’t you,
Cecil?” she asked anxiously. “And you’ll hold on tight at night and not
be pitched out of these things.”

Cecil grunted. She had hung a camphor bag on him, and presented him
with a large package of cough drops.

Lord Barnstaple took out his watch. “We start in eight minutes,” he
said. “You had better let me put you in the hack; I have told the man
to take you home.” He paused and smiled slightly. He was at peace with
the world, and inclined to be gracious to everybody; moreover, there
was just a chance, a bare chance, that this boy-and-girl affair might
come to something. His son had a tenacious will, and these Americans
were the devil and all for getting their own way. If Lee should turn
out a great heiress--he had a vague idea that all American girls
became heiresses as soon as they grew up--and should fulfil her promise
of even temper and sturdy character, Cecil might, of course, do worse.
Far be it from him to encourage the invasion of the British aristocracy
by the undisciplined American female, but if another in the family was
to be his unhappy fate, as well drop into the plastic mind a few seeds
from the gardens of civilisation.

“We may see you in England, some day,” he said; “you Americans are
always travelling. Try to make yourself like English girls. Study hard
and improve your mind. A smattering is such a trial; it rhymes with
chattering. Don’t talk too much, and above all never have hysterics.
I am sure they are only a habit and can be controlled if you begin
early. And--ah--your manners are somewhat abrupt, and you have a way
of sprawling. Your mother, I am told, was a very elegant woman. Try to
grow like her. Mrs. Hayne says it is likely that some of your mother’s
friends will offer you a home. Accept, by all means; it would be quite
dreadful to be brought up in a boarding-house. I believe that is all.
Now say good-bye.”

Cecil gave Lee a mighty hug and winked rapidly. Lord Barnstaple allowed
them one minute, then took Lee firmly by the hand and marched her to
the hack.

“Good-bye,” he said kindly. “You are a jolly little thing--you don’t
make any fuss. Mind you never have hysterics.”

But Lee cried audibly all the way home, secure in the pawing of the
horses about her on the boat, and in the noise of the hack on the
cobble-stones thereafter. Cecil was gone, and there was no mother
awaiting her in the boarding-house. She could not even go into the old
room and cry on her mother’s bed, for strangers were there. She was
very forlorn, and life was as black as pitch.




CHAPTER XIII


After several weeks’ exchange of vague suggestions, Mrs. Montgomery,
Mrs. Brannan, Mrs. Geary, and Mrs. Cartright met at the house of
the former to discuss the future of Marguerite Tarleton’s child.
Mrs. Cartright was the aunt of Helena Belmont, whose energies were
bottled for the moment in school. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Brannan
were also preparing for the difficult rôles of mothers of beauties.
Mrs. Geary was a degree less important, her daughter being bright
rather than pretty. Mrs. Cartright, between the imperious Helena
and the incorrigible Colonel, her brother, over whose home she had
presided since his wife’s death, had long since surrendered what little
character she had brought to California; but having a wide popularity,
and a mighty flow of words, was never absent from the counsels of
her friends. Mrs. Montgomery was “very Southern,” very impulsive,
rather prone to do the wrong thing when caught in the cyclone of her
emotions. Mrs. Brannan was merely the gorgeous Ila’s mother, but like
the others of her intimate circle was a Southerner, and had been a
close friend of Marguerite Tarleton. Mrs. Geary was the practical
wife of a millionaire. Her husband, a man from Maine, who looked not
unlike a dried cod-fish, had panned for gold in ’49, bought varas and
ranches in the Fifties, become a banker of international importance in
the Sixties, and had succeeded in making his Southern wife as close
and practical as himself. Her advice was always in demand by her more
impetuous friends.

“It’s just this,” said Mrs. Cartright, beginning at once, “that dear
child cannot be brought up in a boarding-house, even in Mrs. Hayne’s.
Lee is a great-niece or second cousin of General Robert E. Lee and
third cousin of the Breckinridges, and Randolphs and Carrolls and
Prestons, to say nothing of the Tarletons. As long as poor dear proud
Marguerite lived we could do nothing, but now Lee belongs to us,
particularly as dear brother Jack and Mr. Brannan are her mother’s
executors and Lee’s guardians. Now, of course, I’d just jump at the
chance of taking her, if it were not for darling imperious Helena.
She will be home in a year now, and if they didn’t get on it would be
really dreadful. Helena is really the most kind-hearted creature in the
world--but such a tyrant! Her will has _never_ been crossed, you see.
You don’t know what I go through sometimes, although I fairly worship
her. And Lee, you see, has simply managed poor dear Marguerite and done
exactly as _she_ pleased for eleven years. It would be really terrible
if she didn’t give in to Helena, and I’m afraid she never would. And
it would be almost cruel to bring her up in a house where she would
have almost no individuality, although, of course, Helena may marry at
once----”

“How much income has she?” interrupted Mrs. Geary.

“Eighty dollars a month. Isn’t it shocking? Fancy Hayward Tarleton’s
daughter growing up on eighty dollars a month!”

“It’s quite enough to educate and dress her, and when she is ready to
come out we can each give her a frock, and help with the trousseau when
she marries.”

“But she’s got to have a home, meanwhile; that’s the point,” said Mrs.
Montgomery, who seemed to be repressing her own eloquence, as great
upon occasion as Mrs. Cartright’s. “She must have a home and a mother,
poor little thing. Think if it were Tiny! I have cried myself ill. And
she can’t grow up from pillar to post either; she would become quite
demoralised, quite unworthy of her blood----”

“The very oldest families of the South!” cried Mrs. Cartright with
enthusiasm.

“That’s all very well, but I can’t see why she shouldn’t be placed at
Mill’s Seminary for the next seven years,” said Mrs. Geary. “Of course,
she could spend her vacations in Menlo with us.”

Mrs. Montgomery shook her head with emphasis. “She must have a home!
She must have a mother! She’s full of feeling. It would wound and
demoralise her to feel a waif, with no anchor, no one in particular who
took an interest in her--it is too terrible to think of!”

“It comes to this then,” said Mrs. Geary: “one of us must take her.”

“That is what I mean,” said Mrs. Montgomery eagerly.

“If it were not for Helena----” began Mrs. Cartright, ready to
recapitulate. Mrs. Brannan interrupted her with unusual firmness.

“I’m afraid I cannot,” she said. “I’d really love to, and she would be
such company for Coralie; but Ila is so exacting and jealous, and as
imperious in her quiet way as Helena. I wait on her like a slave, and
she’d fairly hate an outsider who made any claim on me. Fortunately
Coralie adores her and is so sweet. It was all I could do to persuade
Ila to let me come back and look after Mr. Brannan and Coralie for a
few months--and I do hate Paris! I’ll do everything I can in the way
of a good substantial present at Christmas, and she and Coralie might
study together; that would save a little on both sides, and I’m sure
they’d get on, but I don’t dare risk taking her.”

“Of course you would take her if you could,” said Mrs. Montgomery; “we
all know how good and kind you are. And you, Maria?”

Mrs. Geary shook her head emphatically. “Mr. Geary wouldn’t listen
to it for a moment. He detests sentiment and everything out of the
common, and he has a special prejudice against adopting other people’s
children. Besides, as you know, Marguerite used to snub him, as she did
all Northerners, and he’s not the kind that ever forgets. No, I haven’t
even thought of it. I’ll make her little presents, and give her a party
dress when she’s eighteen, but I can’t do more.”

“And I’m afraid to venture,” sighed Mrs. Cartright, “but Jack will do
something handsome----”

“Then it’s settled,” cried Mrs. Montgomery. “I am to have her! The
very day of the funeral I begged her to come home with me, but she
wouldn’t: she thought that heartless Englishman would take her, poor
little innocent thing--but Cecil was a dear, quite as nice as any
Southern lad before the war. Well, when I got home, I reflected that
perhaps it was as well that Lee had refused, as I have made so many
resolutions to consult my children before taking any important step--it
is their right. I thought all night and finally decided that it did
not concern any one but Tiny and Randolph, as the others are married.
I spoke to Randolph the next morning, and he said he could see no
objection; he’s sixteen now, and so sensible; and after breakfast I
wrote a letter of ten pages to Tiny and told her all about it, and how
deeply I felt on the subject, and dilated upon the brilliant prospects
of Lee’s babyhood, and the distinguished blood in her veins--a Tarleton
of Louisiana! to say nothing of all the others! I begged her to think
it over carefully and write at once--it does take so long to get an
answer from Paris! I told her I would leave it entirely to her. She
has so much heart, but her head is far cooler than mine. Even when she
was a child I respected her judgment, and she quite managed her elder
sisters. I’ve rarely seen her excited. Well! I had her answer this
morning. That is the reason I asked you to come to-day and decide once
for all. She is so sweet and sensible about it. She began by saying
that of course it would be a great risk to take an alien into the
family, no matter how well we had known the parents: for no matter how
many different characters there were in a family there was always a
sort of general disposition among them that carried things off. And we
were all so devoted to each other, and so happy together. It would be
quite terrible if Lee should turn out a strong individuality. Therefore
she begged me not to take her unless Mrs. Tarleton’s other friends
absolutely refused to do so. But if they did refuse, then I must not
hesitate--I must take her by all means and make her as much like my own
children as possible--after all, she was only eleven. So it’s decided!
She’s mine!”

“Tiny certainly has a level head,” said Mrs. Geary dryly. “And I really
don’t see how Lee could do better, or as well, if you really care to
take her. You will see that her manners are all that could be desired,
and that nobody ever speaks a cross word to her; and Tiny will see that
you do not spoil her, and that she acquires the family disposition.”

“You dear sarcastic Maria! You know you’d just love to spoil her
yourself. I’m so happy. I haven’t dared go to see her, but I’ve sent
her candy, and fruit, and a new coat and hat. I’ll go straight away and
fetch her.”

Thus was the momentous question decided, and Lee entered upon the third
chapter of her life.




CHAPTER XIV


That same day she was installed in the old Montgomery house on Rincon
Hill. It was a low irregularly built house, wooden, but substantial.
The walls of the lower storey were panelled, and covered with portraits
of Southern ancestors and relations. The furniture and carpets
were worn, but as both had been bought in the golden days of Mr.
Montgomery’s career, before he, like Hayward Tarleton, had speculated
and lost, they were of the first quality, and would last for many years
to come. Moreover, his widow had picked up many bibelots and much
antique furniture in Europe, which added to the reserved, aristocratic,
and un-Californian atmosphere of the house. And her silver and crystal
were the finest in San Francisco.

Mrs. Montgomery was no longer wealthy, but she was as exclusive as in
the Fifties, when exclusiveness meant self-protection, and, if not
a social power, a person whom it showed a proper pride to know. Mr.
Montgomery had not lost his entire fortune, by any means, and what his
wife and the unmarried children inherited was unencumbered. It was
also sufficient to enable Mrs. Montgomery to indulge her passion for
travelling, to educate Tiny in Paris, to give Randolph his leisurely
choice of careers, to keep up the Rincon Hill and the Menlo Park
property, and to enable the family generally to live as became one of
the “old families of California,” _i. e._, of the early Fifties.

The house was on the crest of the hill, and commanded a fine view of
the city and mountains and water. It stood in a dilapidated high-walled
garden, full of the Castilian roses, pinks, gladiolus, and fuchsias
of the older time. In one corner was a large weeping-willow, and in
the middle the remains of a stone fountain. The hum of the city on the
plain, and on the heights beyond, never reached that quiet old garden,
which symbolised a phase of California’s life already remote.

Lee was given a pretty blue bedroom overlooking the city, and found
her new life very pleasant, albeit her roving propensities could no
longer be gratified. Mrs. Montgomery, indulgent and yielding in most
things, was inexorable on all points of deportment, and gave Lee
strict orders that she must never put her foot outside the gate alone.
She also missed not being obliged to think for herself, to have no
responsibility but punctuality at meals; even her studies were over
for the summer. But she was very young; the artificial habits of the
last five years fell from her, and the instincts of her nature reached
forth to the conditions which had been hers during her earlier years
and her mother’s before her. She was never quite so young and so
dependent as other children, but in less than a month she would have
shuddered at the mere mention of Market Street; and she loved the
repose and low-toned richness of her surroundings after the clatter
and vulgarities of a boarding-house. She still mourned her mother with
sudden childish outbursts, but she enjoyed the unbroken rest of her
nights, and felt strong and unfatigued as a little girl should.

Randolph was a dark handsome boy--“exactly like his father, who was the
picture of his grandfather, who was a perfect cavalier, my dear!”--and
so polite that he made Lee feel like a Red Indian. When she rose to
leave the room he opened the door. He never sat until she had placed
herself, and he rose when she rose, ignoring the gulf between sixteen
and childhood. He was always on hand to adjust her cape, and his
attentions at table were really beautiful. He treated his mother with
a deference which was surely Southern, and when Lee lamented that she
was “so gawky,” and that Lord Barnstaple had told her so, he assured
her that the traditionally irreproachable Tiny had been quite gauche
by comparison at the age of eleven. After that compliment Lee almost
wavered in her allegiance to Cecil, who doubtless would have told her
the truth and asked her why she bothered about “such things.” But she
felt that she certainly was improving, with her well-brushed hair in
a tight plait, her dainty white frocks, her thin boots, and hands no
longer discoloured by liniments, but washed in bran water and manicured
once a week. She gave strict attention to her poses, and forbade her
legs to fly up and herself to bounce down on the edge of her backbone.
The mere fact that her skirts were the same length all round made her
feel less awkward.

She renewed her baby acquaintance with Coralie Brannan, a fair delicate
child who promised a few years of ethereal beauty before withering like
a hot-house plant in the rude winds of life. She was sweet and bright
and adaptable, and adored Lee at once, succumbing to the stronger
nature, but companionable through the liveliness of her mind. Of
course she was permitted to read Cecil’s letters; and she was volubly
sympathetic over every phase of that extraordinary friendship.

The summer months were passed in Menlo Park, which, although it boasted
a village and a very smart railway station of the English pattern, was
practically a collection of large plain substantial country houses
with deep verandahs, and surrounded by grounds more or less extensive.
These were scattered over an area of some six miles in the great San
Mateo Valley, along whose western rim towered a mountain range covered
with redwood forests. The Montgomery, Yorba, Geary, Belmont, Brannan,
Randolph, Folsom, and Washington estates dated, in their present
sub-division, from the early Fifties: and these families (not all of
whom appear in this chronicle) may be said, for want of a better term,
to have represented the landed aristocracy of California’s second
era--counting the arcadian episode of the Spaniards as the first.

Cecil wrote with a praiseworthy attempt at regularity. He had returned
at once to Eton and to cricket. His parents were living in comparative
harmony, and his stepmother had promised him a new horse and a boat.
His letters were very brief, and there was the creak of protesting
machinery in every line, but he rarely failed to assure Lee that her
letters were “jolly,” and to beg her to be faithful, as he did so love
to get mail.

When Lee returned to town in the autumn, plump and strong and pink,
she settled down at once with Coralie to hard study under private
tutors. She was not only to be “thoroughly educated,” but “highly
accomplished.” Her studies were conducted entirely in French. She
pounded the piano daily until her back ached, covered countless pads
with birds and flowers and trees, tinkled the guitar with her head
on one side, attacked the German language, and took three dancing
lessons a week. These studies were pursued in the old schoolroom at
the back of the house, where there was always a big fire roaring, and
a polished floor. Randolph and Tom Brannan attended the dancing-class
when at home, and bestowed their favours impartially. Tom was fourteen,
a round-faced youth with a large mouth, an amiable temper, and an
inflammable heart. He sent Lee an immense package of peanuts the day
after he met her, and announced himself violently in love. Both he
and Randolph danced to perfection, and between the two Lee rapidly
developed the inherent grace of her creole blood.




CHAPTER XV


Her life from eleven to eighteen was very monotonous and very happy.
Mrs. Montgomery petted and indulged her, the boys were her slaves, and
assured her, every time they came home from school, and later from
their whirl at College, that she was growing up the prettiest girl in
San Francisco. After Tiny’s return from Paris, which was shortly after
Lee entered her thirteenth year, the child caught little glimpses
of the world from her secluded tower. Tiny entered society at once,
and was as much of a belle as any girl so constitutionally bored and
indifferent could be. But her beauty made an immediate impression;
she was much entertained, and during her first winter the young men
came in shoals to the house on Rincon Hill. She was very small and
marvellously dignified. With a long train and a high coiffure, her
fine head held well back, emphasising her fine aquiline profile, she
actually had a presence. Her hair was soft and brown; her brown eyes,
under their level brows, very sweet and thoughtful, her skin had the
pure cold whiteness of the camellia; and her admirers swore that her
feet and hands necessitated a magnifying glass. She was thin and
delicate, but she had great force of character and a sweet inflexible
will. Lee conceived for her one of those girlish adorations peculiar to
the impulsive and imaginative of her sex, and quite bitterly resented
the rival claims to belledom of the overwhelming Helena, the sinuous
tropical Ila, the clever Miss Geary, and the wealthy Miss Yorba.
When Mrs. Montgomery gave a party she was permitted to contemplate
these radiant beings in the dressing-room, and preferred Miss Yorba,
with her tragically plain face, because she was the only one who
ever condescended to notice her. Later, when she was supposed to be
in bed, she lay prone at the top of the stairs watching the dancing
and flirting. In summer, she saw even more of the mysterious life of
grown people; who appeared to live on the verandahs, and had many
picnics. When she was sixteen, men began to notice her, despite Mrs.
Montgomery’s efforts to keep her in the background and “a child as long
as possible.” But creole blood is quick and magnetic, and long before
it was time to take her place in society it was prophesied that Lee was
to succeed that famous trio of belles, Helena Belmont, Ila Brannan,
and Tiny Montgomery. Her own imaginings on the subject were very
satisfactory, but she studied hard and read so many books that Tiny
begged her to be careful lest she be thought clever.




CHAPTER XVI


Cecil, some five months after his eighteenth birthday, went up to
Oxford and entered Balliol. Here he gave the cold shoulder to cricket,
and took to the water with the enthusiasm of a man who has the honour
of his college to uphold and his blue to get. He also took more kindly
to correspondence, and wrote Lee long letters on the tendencies of
modern civilisation. His letters struck his friend, used to the lighter
mood of Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Brannan, as decidedly priggish, and she
worried over the development not a little,--being unaware that the
University youth of Great Britain must take priggishness in the regular
course of measles, mumps, whooping-cough, Public School wickedness, the
overwhelming discovery of his own importance as an atom of the British
Empire, and cynicism.

During the second term he became profoundly and theologically
religious, and Lee wept at the prospect of being a parson’s wife. His
excursions into the vast echoing region of spiritual mysteries nearly
addled her brains, and she felt quite miserable at times to think that
there was so little of the old Cecil left. But during the spring of his
second year there seemed to be a healthy reaction. A letter dated from
Maundrell Abbey informed Lee that he had been sent down for breaking
windows and attempting to feed a bonfire in the quadrangle with an
objectionable don. He further confided that upon the last hilarious
night before his exile he had been discovered by a good Samaritan at
the foot of his stairs calling imperiously upon the Almighty to carry
him up to his room and put him to bed.

During the months of his exile he travelled on the Continent. His
letters at this period were less like essays for posterity, and much of
his old self flashed through them. When he returned to Oxford in the
autumn he went in bitterly for politics, announced himself a Liberal,
and made cutting references to the House of Peers. Indeed, shortly
after he had been elected President of the Union, he gave full rein
to his eloquence and his new-born convictions, and so scathingly and
vituperously assailed the entire territorial system that he finished
in a perfect pandemonium of cheers and hisses, and was pestered for
months by the enterprising Socialist. During the following vacation
he attempted to convert his father, who was a blue-hot Tory; and the
fixity and bitterness of his convictions and his arrogant assumption
of advanced thinking so irritated Lord Barnstaple that he damned his
offspring for a prig; forgetting that in his own time he had been
as pretty a prig as Oxford had ever turned out. Cecil’s keynote at
this time--frequently quoted to Lee--was Matthew Arnold’s unpleasant
arraignment of their common country: “Our world of an aristocracy
materialised and null, a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower
class crude and brutal.” Lord Maundrell was for reforming all three.
Unlike the great poet who inspired those lines, there was no danger of
his being the “passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope, who,
ignorant of the future, and unconsoled by its promises, nevertheless
waged against the conservatism of the old impossible world so fiery
battle.” To-day the future was quite clear, that is to say, it was to
be what its brilliant and determined youth chose to make it.

Lee thought these sentiments simply magnificent, and expressed her
approval with such fire and enthusiasm that Cecil wrote with increasing
frequency, and assured her that the way her style had improved was
really remarkable.

During his last year his fads had pretty well run their course,
although he was temporarily interested in “The Influence of Zola on
Modern Thought,” and bi-metallism. But his ideals, so he assured Lee,
were leaving him. All he really cared for in life was to take a double
first in Greats and History, and he was working like a horse. There
were long intervals between his letters, and when he wrote it was to
apologise on the score of fatigue. He was “dog tired.” So were all the
men. If they weren’t drivelling idiots when the thing was over it was
because nothing could really knock an Englishman out. Of course he was
on the water more or less, and took a turn every day at cricket, which
kept him in fair condition, although he was far from fit. Meanwhile Lee
was to pray that he was not ploughed. He liked women to pray. Religion
had gone with his other ideals, but it was a beautiful thing in a
woman.




CHAPTER XVII


A railroad sliced off a corner of Lee’s ranch and paid her a large
indemnity, which was invested by Mr. Brannan in first mortgages; and
an earthquake presented another section of the ranch with a fine
assortment of mineral springs warranted to cure as many ills. A hotel
and bath-houses were promptly erected, and a heavy patronage followed.
Mrs. Montgomery insisted that every detail of her business affairs
should be explained to Lee after she passed her sixteenth birthday, and
that upon her eighteenth she should assume the entire control of her
property.

“I want Lee to know so much that no man can cheat her, and no
complication take her unawares,” she said, in a memorable interview
with Mr. Brannan, in which she completely routed that conservative
person. “Look at the women in this town who were once distinguished
members of society, and who are now getting their bread Heaven only
knows how. Their husbands died involved, and they were helpless--for
they had been petted dolls, nothing more.”

Lee awoke one morning and found herself eighteen. It was very early,
and the world was intensely still. The spring birds were silent in the
willow, the stars burned low.

She was very happy and very expectant: the princess was to come down
from her tower into the great hall of the castle and take part in the
beautiful and mysterious drama called Life. She was quite convinced
that not in the whole world was there a girl so fortunate as herself.
She was lovely to look at, her manners were soft and convent-like: even
the hypercritical Mrs. Montgomery assured her that they were as fine as
those of the women who had been the glory of their country before the
war; and her income added to her consequence and would leave no wish
she could think of ungratified. She was delighted with the prospect
of being a woman of affairs. She felt very important and very proud;
and as the original hotel on her property was flimsy and hideous, she
and Randolph, who was an architect, had already planned a new one. It
was to be a huge edifice of adobe in the old Californian style, with a
courtyard full of palms, and a fountain tossing the least offensive of
the waters.

Lee thought of all these things this morning, and of more. In the
background of her musings there was always the fairy prince. It was
hard work idealising Cecil in the light of his Oxford effusions, but
Lee did it; he was seven thousand miles away. And he belonged to the
land of poetry and romance, crusaders, castles, and splendour; he
would be the eighth earl and the eleventh viscount of his line, and
the very repairs of his ancestral home were older than the stars on
her flag. Deep in her imagination dwelt an ideal Cecil, a superb and
lovable creature upon whom Oxford had never breathed her blight, with
whom fads had never tampered, who was serious only when in love, and
who would descend upon her like a god and bear her off to the abbey of
his fathers. She never regretted the utter absence of sentiment and
tenderness in Cecil’s letters; it would have accorded ill with Cecil
in the present trying stages of his development. Cecil, as a man of
the world, was to be all that ever sprang from the fertile brain of a
romanticist. He would not condescend to be photographed, but he could
not fail to be handsome, and she could only pray that he was tall. She,
with a fine instinct, had never sent him her portrait, nor alluded to
her brilliant prospects. She wrote of her daily life, of the books she
read, and of himself, and, having a ready pen and a generous endowment
of femininity, never failed to make her letters amusing. She wondered
if, as he sauntered through the moonlit gardens of Oxford--she, too,
had read Matthew Arnold--or rowed alone on the Isis at night, he
dreamed tender and impassioned dreams of her. If he did he gave no
sign. On the other hand, there was never the flutter of a petticoat in
his letters. She had asked him once if there were no girls in Oxford,
and he had replied that he had too much to do to think about girls, and
that she was the only one he could ever endure, anyhow. Those he met in
his vacations bored him to extinction; but he liked the married women,
and intended to cultivate them one of these days.

Lee yawned and sat up lazily. It was her duty to take another nap,
for she was to go to her first ball to-night. But sleep was a waste
of time, and her first day of young-ladyhood should be as long as
possible. Her hair was braided. She shook it loose and spread it about
her. It was fine and soft, and black enough to be sown with stars,
but it had never a wave in it. She took a hand-mirror from the table
beside her bed and regarded herself with some approval. Her skin was
very white, her cheeks and lips were pink, her light blue eyes were
very large and very radiant. The lashes were still short, but black and
thick, and the underlid was full. The hair grew about her low forehead
in a waving line, and her eyebrows, although straight and heavy,
seemed, like the irregular nose and mouth, to have been made for her
face alone. The short nose with its slight upward slope had a spirited
nostril; what the mouth lacked in conventional prettiness it made up in
colour and curves; and if the lower part of her face was square, few
took note of the lines under so much beauty of texture. She knew her
good points perfectly--her eyes, complexion, poise of head, and length
of limb--and she already knew how to make the most of them.

She laughed, stretched herself, and slipped to the edge of her bed,
where she sat for a few moments in apparent indecision. The truth was
that she was in no haste to face the great fact of life, now that the
door stood ajar. Until she was dressed and had gone forth into those
parts of the house which were not her own exclusive bower, she still
lingered in the period of dreams and anticipation, and it was very
pleasant.

She thrust her feet into her night slippers, wandered about the room
for a moment, then opened a window and leaned out. The perfume of roses
and violets and lilacs came up to her from the old garden below and
from many another about. One or two of these gardens she had full view
of, others showed only a corner in the triangle of crumbling walls
built about the queer old-fashioned houses when the city was young.
At this early hour their secrets seemed whispering along the eaves,
cowering in the dark gardens, ready to lift their heads and laugh. What
Lee had not heard of the ancient history of San Francisco had not been
worth repeating, for Coralie had grown up with her elders and missed
nothing. In South Park, at the foot of the hill, she could see the
chimneys of the Randolph House, whose tragedy seemed separated from her
time by a dozen generations; so rapid had been the evolution of the
city, so furious its energies. Beyond lay the plain and the steep hills
bristling with the hives of human beings, who dreamed of gold, and the
loud peremptory roar of Market Street. Telegraph Hill, sharp and bare
and brown, passed over in contempt by the dwellers on the fashionable
heights, its surface broken only by an occasional hovel, looked like
an equally contemptuous old grandmother. Far across the bay, to the
right of Rincon Hill, were the pink ranges of the coast; at the other
end of the plain the brown Twin Peaks, as yet unhonoured by the hideous
dwellings of rich and poor; and then the slopes of Lone Mountain,
its white slabs and vaults grey in the dawn, the sharp cone with its
Calvary behind black in the dull void.

The city looked grey and old, as if the gold in its veins had turned to
lead and its uneasy head were thick with ashes.

It was the first time in many years that Lee had seen San Francisco
in an ugly mood, for she was not given to early rising. She had found
it beautiful from her eyrie, with its brilliant floods of winter and
spring sunshine, its white mist robes and wild dust-cloak of summer.
She had almost forgotten the flare and glare of Market Street; and she
had rarely crossed that plain since her mother’s death,--never except
in the seclusion of Mrs. Montgomery’s carriage. She had as seldom
entered a shop. Her life in some respects had been almost cloistered.
To-day all was to be changed. She should never go out alone, of course,
but she was no longer to hold herself aloof from the details of life.
And to-night she was to go to her first party! She hardly knew whether
she was glad or sorry.

As the sun rose and the city turned pink, and a fine white mist rode
in and hung itself about the sparkling windows on the heights, and
the bay deepened into blue, and the bare peaks looked a richer brown,
the Contra Costa range a deeper pink patched with blue, the darkness
of night lingering only in its cañons, Lee decided that she was glad.
The world was very beautiful out there. San Francisco, clad in her
rosy gown, looked like the Sleeping Princess on her wedding-morn, but
peaceful and still--and happy. Lee could hardly realise that it was
a monster with a million nerves, a fevered brain, its tainted blood
swarming with the microbes of every vice, of every passion; raging
for gold and alcohol with a thirst that never slept; a monster that
had killed her father and Mr. Montgomery, and Colonel Belmont, and Mr.
Polk, and Don Roberto Yorba, and countless others whose families were
scattered to the winds; that it had in its records as many terrible
tragedies, as many shameful secrets as it had nails in the spires of
its churches. Over there, beyond her range of vision, was a whole city
of rottenness in which she would never set her foot, which counted
as nothing in her carefully guarded life, and yet was crowded with
beings, many of them young, not all of them wholly bad. Mrs. Montgomery
would not have a newspaper in her house, but Lee knew that horrid and
picturesque crimes were not infrequent in those mysterious regions
known as Barbary Coast, Sailor Town, Spanish Town, and China Town, and
longed for details with that kindliness for sensation inherent in the
American not wholly a Southerner.

But what she could see was beautiful. She smiled indulgently into the
face of that great Fact out there. For Lee was a dreamer who knew that
she dreamed. In the background, ineffaced, were the hard practical
years of her youth; surrounding her was the lore she had gathered from
books and Coralie; to say nothing of the intellectual agonies undergone
at the hands of Lord Maundrell, and the observations on the world as it
is to young men settling themselves in life, with which she had been
favoured by her two faithful swains, Randolph and Tom Brannan. She
had helped them both to choose their careers. Randolph had hovered
between architecture and the law, and Tom’s aspirations were directed
equally towards ranching in a cow-boy outfit, and stockbrokering, until
persuaded by Lee that he was too lazy to sit a horse all day and would
be useful to her in town.

But she was none the less expectant, demanded none the less the richest
and most picturesque treasures of life, its most poignant and abiding
happiness. Beyond those hills, beyond the grey ocean, whose roar came
faintly to her, was the fairy prince--Cecil, with the faint musty
perfume of the ages about him, and the owls hooting in the ruined
cloisters of his abbey.




CHAPTER XVIII


“Lee, darling; I am afraid you will take cold.”

Lee whirled about. Tiny, muffled in a pink dressing-gown, her brown
hair hanging about her lovely imperturbable face, had entered, and was
smiling at the dreamer.

“I want to be the first to kiss you,” she said. Lee gave her an
enthusiastic hug and swung her up to the table.

Tiny laughed and made herself comfortable. “You look for all the world
like a long white lily in your night-gown,” she said; “but I do believe
you are as strong as Randolph.”

Lee threw herself backward until her finger-tips touched the floor,
then writhed her slender body until she looked like a snake uncoiling.
Tiny gasped.

“No wonder you are graceful,” she said. “Who taught you to do that?”

“Want to see me kick?”

“No, no,” said Tiny hurriedly. “I don’t think it is nice to kick, dear.
But I am not going to scold you. I can’t realise that you are eighteen.
It makes me feel a grandmother--I am twenty-four.”

“Why don’t you marry? I think it must be horrid to be an old maid.”

“How horrid of _you_, Lee. I’m not an old maid.”

“You look just sixteen; but why don’t you marry?”

“Of course you will ask till you find out. Well, Lee, considering that
you are really grown-up to-day, I’ll tell you something. I’m thinking
about it.”

Lee gave a little shriek of delight, sat down on the floor, and
embraced her knees.

“Quick! Tell me.”

“He’s an Englishman.”

“Tiny!”

“I met him in London two years ago, and he asked me then; but I
couldn’t make up my mind. It’s such a bore making up one’s mind. I
didn’t bother much, but we corresponded, and it came about with less
trouble than I thought it would: I wrote him last night definitely. He
has been so faithful--when I think of those that have come and gone
meanwhile!--and he really is very nice. Not very amusing, but, _enfin_,
not too talkative.”

“What is his name?”

“Lord Arrowmount.”

“That makes it just perfect!”

“I wish he were not. It will be such a bore living up to things one
wasn’t born to. And after the lazy freedom of California! When I was
in London it seemed to me that the poor women were worked to death.
I’d far rather have married an American--if it were a mere matter of
nationality.”

“They won’t make you do anything over there that you don’t want to,”
said Lee wisely. “You have the sweetest little face and the softest
voice in the world, but the cool way in which you walk straight at what
you want--it’s too clever!”

Tiny laughed. “It’s you that are quite too frightfully clever. Be
careful, dear, that you don’t talk books to any of the young men
to-night.”

“I suppose I won’t have any one to talk books with till Cecil comes,”
said Lee with some viciousness. “Is Lord Arrowmount clever?”

“No, thank Heaven! He is just a nice, quiet, big, kind Englishman.
He takes photographs, but I don’t mind that, as he doesn’t talk much
about it; and when I said I’d rather not stand in the broiling sun with
my eyes puckered up for ten minutes at a time, he never mentioned it
again. I think we shall be quite happy. Of course we’ll come back to
California every few years, or mother will come to us.”

“Of course. So shall I. I never could leave California for very long.”

“Englishmen are not so easy to manage as American men, but I believe
that as soon as I understand Arthur I shall be able to manage him quite
easily. I should simply _hate_ it if he were always contradicting me.”

“He won’t. I don’t know that I should care to manage Cecil. I think it
must be magnificent to be lorded over by a man you love; but I should
want my own way all the same. I’d storm and beg and cajole, and then of
course I’d get it.”

Tiny laughed. “I don’t know much about Englishmen, but I think you know
less.”

“But, you see, I shan’t meet Cecil again for several years, and by that
time I shall be quite experienced. Besides, I’ve made a regular study
of Randolph and Tom. I think it must be so interesting to understand
men--and so useful.”

“You look so knowing--just like a baby owl.”

“There can’t be such an extraordinary amount of difference, considering
that we are descended from them and speak the same language. And for
that matter, I’m saturated with English literature. It’s the only one I
know, and it has formed my mind. I’ve scarcely read an American novel,
and never an American poem--is there one? And I know English history
backwards, and adore it.”

“All the same, you are American straight into your marrow, and I feel
surer and surer, the more I see of English people--and I have had two
seasons and one autumn in England--that there are no two peoples on the
earth so unlike.”

“Well. I think it’s very strange,” said Lee crossly. “I don’t
understand it at all.”

“We are not even like the Americans of a quarter of a century ago. Why
should we expect to be like our ancestors of several centuries back?”

“Oh, true, I suppose. And Cecil! If he’s anything like his letters he’s
certainly not much like Randolph and Tom. But I had an idea he was
going through a sort of freak stage, and would be just like other men
(only nicer) when he got over it.”

“There are, doubtless, hundreds like him; and I wish you would not use
slang, dear.”

“Well, I won’t. What is your Arthur?”

“A baron--nothing so very wonderful; but he has a very long descent: I
looked it out in Burke. And at least I am not buying him. He knows that
I have very little. I believe he is wealthy. He’s thirty-six; a very
good age. I do hate boys.”

“Is he frightfully in love?”

Tiny nodded and blushed. “When an Englishman falls in love--well!”

Lee jerked her knees up to her chin and gave a gurgle of delight. “Are
you in love with him?” she asked softly. “Do tell me, Tiny?”

Tiny’s massive dignity relaxed under a pink flood. “I have had other
offers, you know, and some from very rich men,” she said as she slipped
to the floor, “and it’s really commonplace nowadays to marry a title.
Give me a kiss, and tell me you want me to be happy, and I’ll go back
to bed. I’m cold.”




CHAPTER XIX


“I have taken a day off in honour of the great event,” said Randolph at
the breakfast-table.

Lee smiled sweetly, but one of her shoulders gave an impatient little
jerk. Randolph had proposed four times already, since his return from
Europe, three weeks ago. Mrs. Montgomery smiled approvingly. She had
tolerated the correspondence with Cecil Maundrell out of respect to the
wishes of the dead; but she had long since permitted herself to hope
that the ridiculous boy-and-girl engagement would die a natural death,
and that there would be one change the less in her happy domestic
life. She had covered the table with wild flowers, sent from Menlo, in
honour of Lee’s birthday, and had ordered three different varieties
of hot bread, besides the usual meed of griddle cakes, chicken, hash,
hominy and eggs. It was to Lee’s happy indifference to the popular
American breakfast that she owed her superb health and colour. Tiny
looked as fragile as porcelain beside her; and even Randolph, although
he had achieved height and sinews, had the dull complexion and thin
cheeks of the American who adds the tax of alcohol and late hours to
the decimating national diet. He was by no means dissipated, for San
Francisco; but he worked very hard during the day, and, when free of
the social claims of his family--to whom he was devoted--took his
recreations with other youths by night. He had left college at the
end of his first year, studied architecture for another year in New
York and Paris, and had sold his first plan--for a Bonanza king’s
“palatial residence” on Nob Hill--three months later. Since then he
had had little leisure, and had made money: he was practical, with a
zigzag of originality, and planned and worked with marvellous rapidity.
There were lines about his sharp nervous grey eyes, and, six months
before, he had broken down, and gone to England to rest, and visit
Lord Arrowmount. His manners were not what they had been in his remote
boyhood, but they were still fine, and he had a certain distinction, in
spite of a slight stoop and a decided restlessness of manner.

After breakfast he followed Lee to the garden, and they sat down under
the willow.

“Don’t propose just yet,” said Lee. “I feel in a perfectly beatific
humour, and I wouldn’t be made cross for the world.”

“_Not_ for the world, if you don’t wish it,” said Randolph airily. “I
will postpone it until to-morrow afternoon at six. That will give me
just half an hour before dinner.”

“I don’t believe you ever are really serious. You wouldn’t be half so
nice if you were.”

“It is difficult to be serious with a habit. Whenever I propose I have
a sudden vision of pinafores, and braids, and angles. It takes all my
mental nimbleness to realise that you are really marriageable--in
spite of your beauty.”

He spoke in his usual bantering voice, and his eyes smiled, but his
nervous hands were pressed hard against each other.

Lee saw only his eyes. She smiled saucily and tossed her head. “I’m to
be reckoned with,” she remarked. “There are no pinafores on my plans
for the season.”

Randolph threw back his head, and laughed heartily. “Perhaps you
suspect that you are going to be a great belle to-night,” he said in a
moment.

“I? _Oh_, Randolph! how can you be sure?”

“The men have planned it between them. Don’t start out to-night
oppressed with any doubts.”

Lee clapped her hands. Her eyes flashed with delight.

“Who? Who? Tell me! Of course it was you first of all.”

“You may be sure that I would do everything I could to make you a
success; and so would Tom Brannan and Ned Geary. The others you know
only by name.”

“I suppose Mr. Geary will propose to-night,” said Lee with resignation.
“I am used to you and Tom, but when the others begin I shall really be
quite frantic. I suppose I’ll have to tell them about Cecil----”

Randolph threw back his head and laughed again, although he caught in
his under lip. “Fancy you marrying a little tin god of an Englishman!”

“That’s enough!”

“I beg pardon. Don’t singe me with that blue-fire of yours, and I
won’t call him names. But you took me by surprise. I thought you had
forgotten all about him.”

“Why, you know I correspond with him.”

“Do you still--really? I don’t know that I am surprised, however: you
are the kindest and most unselfish of girls, and Englishmen have a
stolid fashion of plugging away at anything that has become a habit.”

“Cecil is not stolid. He has changed his mind fifty times about other
things. You can read his letters if you like.”

“God forbid! I know of nothing in life so objectionable as the Oxford
prig. But you don’t mean to tell me, my dearest girl, that you consider
yourself engaged to him?”

“Of course I do!”

“But, Lee, the thing is a farce. You were children. And you have not
seen each other for seven years. When you meet again you will be two
different beings; if you don’t detest each other it will be a miracle.”

“We shall find each other the more interesting; and people don’t change
so much as all that.”

“Am I what I was at sixteen? Well, let that point go. You haven’t
reflected, perhaps, that there would be enormous opposition on the part
of his family. The Maundrells are paupers. Old Lord Barnstaple left
the greater part of his private fortune to his young wife, and the
present earl soon made ducks and drakes of the rest. Cecil must marry
a fortune, and yours is entirely too small; they want millions over
there. Lady Barnstaple has cut into her capital trying to keep up with
smart London. She is simply mad to be known as one of the three or four
smartest women in society, and _the_ smartest American; and her case is
hopeless. She hasn’t money enough, she never was a beauty, and now is
nothing but an anxious-eyed faded pretty woman; and she hasn’t an atom
of personality. I was in the same house with her for a week.”

“What is she like?” Curiosity routed her irritation.

“A bad imitation of the loud English type, and fairly exudes larkiness
and snobbery. She and Barnstaple lead a cat-and-dog life. She gives him
immense sums to keep him from leaving her, for without him she’d drop
out; she has no real hold. When she calls him a cad, he calls her a
tuft-hunter, a parvenu, and a pushing failure.”

“Who was she? Cecil never told me.”

“Something very common--from Chicago, I think. She went to London a
rich widow, but without letters to the other Americans in power, who
are mostly New Yorkers with a proper contempt for the aristocracy of
wealth in its first generation. She worked the Legation to some extent,
and managed a few easy and gluttonous titles. But the big doors were
shut in her face; she was managing herself badly, she had picked up
with the wrong people, and she was about to give up the game when
Maundrell and his debts came along. They flew at each other; he was
heir presumptive to the earldom of Barnstaple, and his uncle was old.
Maundrell’s first wife was a daughter of the Duke of Beaumanoir, a
beautiful and charming creature, and one of the most popular women in
London for eight years. The present owner of her precious husband could
not have made a worse move than to succeed her. Well, to return to
Cecil. He won’t have a penny but what his grandmother and stepmother
allow him; and what he may inherit from both will not be enough to keep
up the title, the way things are going now. Therefore, he must marry
money----”

“Oh, bother! I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Answer me this--if Cecil Maundrell were out of the question, would you
marry me?”

“You promised----”

“Not to propose. Fancy a man proposing at this hour in the morning, and
after eight buckwheat cakes! To discuss the question in the abstract is
quite another matter.”

“I don’t believe I could ever think of a man I had grown up with as
anything but a brother.”

“You could if you would. It is merely a matter of readjusting yourself
mentally. I am not your brother; I have hardly seen as much of you as
Tom Brannan has; and----” he hesitated a moment--“you do not know me
half so well as you think you do.”

Lee looked at him with a flash of curiosity, then she lifted her chin.
“You want to intrigue me, as the French say. But I am not so easily
managed, I know you quite well.”

“You think I could never be really serious, I suppose.”

“I can’t imagine any man I ever met being really serious. And you are
much nicer as you are. Please don’t try to be.”

“Why do you suppose I am working like a dog?”

“To get rich and ahead of everybody else, of course. You want to be an
architect that all America talks about, and to make stacks and stacks
of money.”

“You are right as far as you go. I want to get to the top, and be the
first in my line, and I must have wealth; but the two are ashes without
the woman. I not only love you, but I should be prouder of you than of
anything else that I achieved. If I made millions you could spend them,
and the more you dazzled the eyes of the world the better I should like
it. You should never have a duty that was repugnant or irritating to
you, and never a wish ungratified.”

“Would you button my boots?” asked Lee merrily.

“Of course I would.”

“I don’t believe you’d have time. You’ll never be through getting rich,
if you are like the other millionaires of San Francisco. Tom says they
work like old cart-horses from morning till night, and then die in
harness.”

“Every man with energy and ambition wants to make his pile; and then,
of course, when a man has made millions he must watch them or they will
run away; but I should always _know that you were there_. That would
satisfy me.”

Lee made no reply. Her lip curled, her lashes approached each other,
and she looked dreamily through the green lattice of the willow to the
mountains beyond the bay.

“What are you thinking of?” said Randolph abruptly.

“I want more than that. I don’t care for enormous wealth, and I haven’t
any great ambition to dazzle the world--I suppose I am not a very good
American.”

“What do you want?”

She turned very pink, shook her head shyly and looked down.

“You fancy you will find it with an Englishman, I suppose--with whom
you would be a sort of necessary virtue, and who would have forgotten
after three months of matrimony whether you were beautiful or not.”

“It is too bad of you to have such a poor opinion of Englishmen when
Tiny is going to marry one.”

“I wish she were not, although Arrowmount is a first-rate fellow, and
I like him. Besides, it is quite another matter for Tiny to marry an
Englishman: she has the adaptability of indifference, and she is a
born diplomatist and manager. Southern girls are not American in the
modern sense, and when they are educated in Europe they practically
revert to the conditions out of which their ancestors came. My mother
has seen to it that Tiny is as Southern as if she had never set foot
in this extraordinary chaos called California. She tried it on me, and
it worked until I had to go out in the world and hustle. She tried it
on you, and you are a magnificent compound of the South, California,
and yourself. Before you have been out a year you will have an
individuality as pronounced as Helena Belmont’s; and no woman with
individuality can get along with an Englishman. For the American, she
can’t have too much.”

“Three of Tiny’s friends are married to Englishmen, and they get on.”

“Which is another point: when an Englishman settles down in California
he sheds a part of his national individuality into the surroundings he
loves. A Californian wife is part of the scheme. He loves the country
first, and the woman as a natural sequence. You are not Tiny, and it
is not in the least likely that Cecil Maundrell will settle down in
California. I repeat what I said a moment ago, and I should like to
have you think it over: as my wife you would be a queen; as his wife
you would be a mere annex until you ceased to be on speaking terms----”

“Oh, bother! I like to believe that everything in the world is
beautiful, and I’m going to as long as I can. Go and get the plans for
the hotel, and don’t talk another word of nonsense to me to-day.”




CHAPTER XX


“Yes,” said Tiny to Lee that night, “you are lovely--_perfectly_
lovely: but it should have been white. I think it was _quite_ weak of
us to give way. No girl _ever_ made her début in black before.”

“That’s why I wanted to--that, and because it’s so becoming. Why should
I wear a silly little white frock just because it’s the custom?”

“The more you make yourself like other people, dear, the easier time
you will have in this world.”

Lee tossed her head. “I’m going to have my own way _in_ my own way,”
she announced.

She was dressed for her party, in black gauze. Mrs. Montgomery had
wept at the bare suggestion. Tiny had expressed herself with unusual
emphasis, and Coralie, who expected to be a vision in white, had
remonstrated until Lee had fallen asleep.

Lee had an instinct for dress. She knew that she would look superb in
black, and merely sweet and pretty in white. She had chosen a gauze
as blue-black as her hair, and ordered it to be made with a light
simplicity which increased her clean length of limb and threw into
sharp relief the dazzling white of her skin. She wore her hair brushed
away from her face and knotted at the back of her head.

“I may not be a great beauty,” she remarked, “but I _am_ stunning!”

“You are a symphony in black and blue; and white and pink; your eyes
are so _very_ blue in that dress, and your hair, and brows, and
lashes seem so much blacker than usual--one almost forgets even your
complexion. You are _despairingly_ pretty.”

Tiny looked placidly pretty in pink and white.

“Ah! Well, I intend to be thought so, whether I am or not. If I see
anybody looking at me as if they were criticising my nose and mouth
I’ll just blaze my eyes at them and walk across the room.”

Tiny laughed. “The beauty carriage is half the battle. I’ve seen rather
plain girls carry themselves as if they were satiated with admiration,
and get far more than some modest beauty.”

“Youbetcherlife--I beg pardon, Tiny; I’ll never use a word of slang
again--I vow I won’t. Is it true that Englishwomen use a lot of slang?”

“Smart Englishwomen have an absurd fiction that they are above all
laws, and some of them are as vulgar as underbred Americans--I
cannot say more than that. But like other properly bred Americans--
Southerners, I mean, of course--I have my own standards.”

“But if you do not adopt their argot you may not get on over there,”
said Lee, with a flash of insight.

“I should like nothing better than to be unpopular with people whose
manners I did not like, and whose race for amusement bored me. They
can think me just as provincial and old-fashioned as they like. There
are always charming people in every society. The thing is to have the
entrée, and then pick and choose.”

“I shan’t care at all about society when I’m married. Cecil and I will
be frightfully in love, and live in an old castle, and stay out all day
on the moors and in the woods, and climb fells and things.”

“So you fancy yourself in love with Cecil,” remarked Miss Montgomery.
“You’ve been dreaming about him all these years.”

Lee turned as pink as one of the Castilian roses under her window. She
had been imprudent more than once to-day and betrayed her precious
secret.

“Well--it _is_ rather romantic. I--well, you’d think about him in that
way, too--you know you would.”

“Not if I had been obliged to read his letters. But if you really
love him and intend to marry him, I think you should announce the
engagement.”

“Well, I’m not going to announce it, and spoil all my fun. An engaged
girl has a simply dismal time.”

“But it’s not fair to other men. I do hope, dearest, that you are not
going to be an unprincipled flirt.”

“I don’t care a bit about flirting or having men fall in love with me.
I only want to have a good time. If I see any man fixing to fall in
love with me--I beg pardon--I mean showing signs of it, I’ll tell him,
for I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I’m sure it must be horrid to see
men look serious and glum. But I do want to be the belle of all the
parties, and have flowers sent to me, and get nearly all the favours at
the germans. Surely I have a right to a girl’s good time.”

“You certainly have, dear. Why not break the engagement? Have you
considered that it is hardly fair to Cecil?”

“What?” Lee whirled about. “Do you think _he_ would wish it broken off?
He’s never even hinted at such a thing.”

“Of course not; he’s too honourable. But when you are a year older
you will write and tell him that you no longer hold him to a childish
compact.”

“I won’t! He’s mine, and I’ll keep him. How can you be so cruel, Tiny?
It’s my first party, and now I want to cry!”

“You did not let me finish. I had no intention of speaking of this
to-night, and I would not spoil your pleasure for the world. I was only
going to say that a year from now you will feel very differently about
everything. You will have seen more of the world, and you will realise
the difference between fact and fancy.”

“All the same I won’t give up Cecil,” said Lee obstinately. “It has
been my dearest dream, and I won’t even think about it’s being all a
sham.”




CHAPTER XXI


But a year later, as Tiny had predicted, Lee wrote to Cecil Maundrell
and gave him his freedom.

It is little that a girl learns of the world in San Francisco:
where the home-bred youths are a remarkable compound of guile
and ingenuousness, alcohol and tea-cakes, and where the more
highly-seasoned Easterner rarely tarries. But that little had taught
Lee several things. She had not only been the belle of her set, but
her charm was potent and direct, and she had caught more than one
glimpse of the passions of men. Randolph’s had waxed with her growing
consciousness of her power, and upon two memorable occasions the fiery
impetuosity of his Southern blood had routed his practical Americanism,
his aversion to gravity. Tom Brannan, whose mouth and heart grew no
smaller with the years, and who was by no means a fool, although
somewhat rattle-brained, had shown himself capable of imbecility. Ned
Geary, clever, versatile, indolent, who employed his larger energies
in protest against his father’s insistence that he should make money
instead of spending it, and who was the uncertain object of many
maidenly hopes, not only proposed regularly to Lee by word and letter,
but was inspired to excellent rhyme. He was famed for breaking social
engagements of the most exacting nature, and was at pains to assure
Lee that the nice precision with which he adjusted his pleasure to his
politeness whenever herself was in question was the signal proof of the
depth of his feelings. He even answered Mrs. Montgomery’s notes when
she invited him to dinner, and his fair gay face was never absent from
her “evenings.” When he pleaded his cause that face became an angry
red, and the veins stood out on his forehead, but Lee, who was very
observing, noted that when he sang he underwent precisely the same
facial changes--contortions she phrased it--and refused to be moved.
Perhaps she was a trifle heartless at this period, as all girls are
apt to be in the first flush of their triumphs, when the love of men
is flung at their feet and their dearest art is to dodge a proposal.
Lee liked both Ned and Tom, for their spirits were high and they were
very good fellows, and offered them her life-long friendship. For
Randolph she had much placid affection, and she respected him, for he
had brains and rather more knowledge of books than the average of his
kind; but she prayed that he would transfer his affections to Coralie,
who secretly pined for them.

Between the three she arrived at the knowledge that men were practical
creatures and must be treated as such, not as dream-stuff.

When Lord Arrowmount arrived she applied herself to the study of
him, but she ran into impenetrable dusk some few inches from the
entrance of his every avenue of approach. He was uniformly polite,
in a stiff unself-conscious way, and seemed kind, and sensible, and
good, but he barely opened his mouth. Tiny insisted that during their
walks together--he arrived in summer--he delivered himself of many
consecutive sentences; but her statement was regarded as an erratic
manifestation of the romantic condition of her affections. Lee,
baffled at all other points, descended to pumping his knowledge of the
Maundrells; but his brief comments that “Barnstaple was rather mad,”
and “Lady Barnstaple was going at the deuce of a pace,” summed up, if
not his information, at least his communications. Of Cecil he had never
heard. When she questioned him regarding his own experience at Oxford,
he looked blank, and replied that he supposed it had been the usual
thing.

It seemed incredible that Cecil could ever develop into an artificially
animated sarcophagus of England’s greatness, but the pink atmosphere
of her day-dreams faded to ashes-of-roses; particularly as Randolph,
who had spent six months in England, and Ned Geary, who had spent six
months in Europe, assured her that Lord Arrowmount was a “type.”

After the wedding, and the departure of the Arrowmounts, she strove
to reconstruct her castles and resuffuse their atmosphere. But her
intervals for meditation were few; she was not only a belle surrounded
by admirers and friends, but business claimed a considerable share
of her attention. The new hotel was almost finished, and the hungry
energies of the Press had found it and its young owner so picturesque
as “copy,” that the consequent boom necessitated two extra wings and
another row of bath-houses. Mrs. Montgomery was horrified at the
notoriety, and would not permit Lee to be photographed, lest the artist
should weaken under the unholy methods of the Press; but Lee herself
found resignation possible, and even cherished a private gratitude for
the sensationalism of the rival dailies; her income was doubled, and it
was not unpleasant to be a personage.

Altogether, she found life intensely interesting, if quite unlike the
dreams of a less practical epoch; and although she wanted nothing
on earth so much as to marry Cecil Maundrell, when the end of the
year came, she knew that it was her duty to release him from a boy’s
chivalrous promise to a dying woman,--and did so.

Cecil was in his last year of infrequent favours, studying mightily
for his first; but his reply was prompt enough, and of unusual length
for this period. There was a good deal to the point, and more between
the lines. With him (haughtily) a promise was a promise; he had never
given a thought to release, any more than he had ever thought twice
about another woman; he had taken it for granted, of course, that they
should eventually marry; and if she stopped writing to him he should
feel dismembered; forced to readjust himself when he needed all his
faculties for the honours he was determined to take; should, in fact,
feel himself full up against a stone wall, bruised and blinking. His
similes were many and varied, and he seemed anxious that his letter
should do equal credit to his principles and his culture. What Lee
read between the lines was that he was aghast, that he had practically
forgotten the engagement; and had long since come to regard his
correspondent as a sort of second himself, an abstract sympathy, a
repository of his coruscations, a sexless confessor.

Lee, who had hastened upstairs to read the letter in her virgin bower,
hung and festooned with dream-memories of Cecil, was more miserable
than she had been since the death of her mother, and cried until
nothing was visible of her beautiful eyes but a row of sharp black
points above two swollen cheeks. Her castles rattled about her ears,
and were possessed of imps who laughed the tenacious remnants of her
dreams to death.

When the fire was out of her brain, she wrote to Cecil a gay
matter-of-fact letter, insisting upon the end of the engagement, but
promising to write as regularly as if nothing had happened.

  “And nothing really has, you know,” she added, “except that we are
  no longer babies. You are thirty years older--with your wonderful
  Oxford!--than the little boy I popped corn with and sponged after a
  fight for the honour of Britain; and I am a most practical person
  with not an ounce of romance in me”--(she had less than an atom at
  the moment of writing)--“and quite determined to make no mistakes
  with my life. So many girls do, Cecil; you can’t think! Four of the
  girls that came out about the same time as Tiny are married and
  divorced. It seems to me quite terrible that people should marry in
  that reckless manner, knowing next to nothing of the world and less
  of each other! In each case it was the man’s fault--they usually
  drank; but the girls, it seems to me, were as much to blame for not
  making as sure as one can that the men they expected to live their
  lives with--I suppose they did--had character and principles they
  could respect. I have been brought up in a very old-fashioned way,
  and nothing would induce me to get a divorce, so I shall hesitate
  a long while before I take the final step. Of course you will not
  misunderstand me--we are such firmly knit friends we never could
  misunderstand each other, I think--I know as well as if I had seen
  you every day for the last eight years that you would never give
  any woman cause for divorce; but if we happened to have different
  tastes in all things, we should be just as unhappy as if you were a
  little Western savage. And we probably have, for our civilisations
  are as opposite as the poles. I have been as carefully reared as all
  Californian girls of my class, but those that know me best tell me
  that I am Californian clear into my marrow; so I am, doubtless, as
  little like an English girl as if I were a Red Indian. But what is
  the use of all this (attempted) analysis? Of course you will come to
  California to see me one of these days, and as I shall not marry for
  years, if ever, we shall meet in plenty of time to find out whether
  or not we were wise to break our engagement. Meanwhile, we are both
  free. I insist upon that, and, you know, I always would have my own
  way.”

Lee was extremely proud of this epistle, particularly of the touch
about racial differences, and its general essay-like flavour; she
was ambitious to stand well with so terrible an intellect as Lord
Maundrell’s. She could not fascinate him across seven thousand
miles--she exchanged a glance of mysterious confidence with her mirror,
her nostrils expanding slightly--but she could command and hold his
attention until those seven thousand miles were wrought into the past
with the years of separation. She glanced at her mirror again.

His second reply was equally prompt. He accepted her decree, of course.
She had exercised her woman’s privilege, and he was bound to respect
it; but he held her to her promise that the correspondence should
continue exactly as before; and, indeed, after the first two paragraphs
of his letter, there was nothing to indicate that the correspondence
had been agitated for a moment. It was not exactly relief that breathed
through the letter, for Cecil’s mind seemed without vulgarity; but the
alacrity with which he took up the broken thread, after having tied the
knot with a double loop, made Lee laugh outright.

“He’s really wonderfully decent,” she thought, “considering that he
has been harrowed for a month with the prospect of a scrawny, yellow,
and lank-haired wife. What a fright I must have been! And, of course,
he has that tin-type. Fate would never have been so kind as to let him
lose it!”




CHAPTER XXII


Cecil finished his Oxford epoch, taking his double first and crowning
his athletic career as stroke of his college eight. He wrote to Lee
that he was a wreck mentally, and was going on a tour round the world
to shoot big game; he should eventually land in California, where he
expected she would have a grizzly for him. He hoped for tigers in
India, lions and elephants in Africa, and buffalo in the “Western”
United States. He should also take a run through South America. When he
had finished with the grizzly, he should feel a man once more, not a
worn-out intellect.

  “It would be quite dreadful not to have gone through Oxford,” he
  confessed, “for nothing else moulds a man’s brain into shape--if
  he’s got one. How odd and unfinished your American men must be! I
  understand that few of those who go to the Universities take the
  whole course--which is a kindergarten compared to ours--and that the
  majority scorn education after eighteen; but I am more than willing
  to forget all I ever knew for at least two years. After that, of
  course, I shall think seriously of what I am to do with my life. I
  did not tell you, I think, that my grandmother is dead, and that I am
  not quite a pauper. I feel reasonably sure that the political life
  will be my choice, and I shall manage to learn something of each of
  our colonies that I visit.”

Lee understood Ned Geary, Tom Brannan and more than one other of the
men who had given her opportunity to study them. At times she was
sure that she knew Randolph, leaf by leaf. The habit in which the
average American lives may be said to be an illuminated manuscript of
himself, profusely illustrated with drawings by the author. When he
is not disclosing his inmost mind, he is criticising life, within the
narrow horizon of his experience, from the personal view-point; which
reflections are as self-revealing as annotations by the ambitious
editor of a great poet. There was no mystery about any of them for
Lee, and, like all bright imaginative girls, she loved mystery. She
felt that it would be long before she could understand the least of
Cecil, particularly if he was anything like Lord Arrowmount. It is true
that he had often written at great length, and by no means ignored the
sacred subject of himself; but there was always a magnificent reach
about Cecil, and a corresponding lack of ingenuousness.

She wondered if she had given him the same suggestion of a complex
mind and nature, and one day re-read his letters. The first fifteen
or twenty contained references to the episodes of their brief
companionship. Later, these episodes seemed quite forgotten. And he not
only demanded no return of confidences, he evinced no curiosity. In all
his letters there was not a reference to her inner life. Occasionally
he asked what she was reading, and if she were happy in her new home;
that was all.

“How is one to prepare oneself for such a man as that?” thought Lee.
“What does he want? An ear--nothing more? He seems different enough
from American men. They seem either to understand me, or to suggest
that it doesn’t matter whether they do or not; I am perfect all the
same. But Cecil Maundrell!” She kicked out her little foot rather
viciously. After all, why should she adapt herself to anybody? She was
an individuality, more of one every month of her life, and extremely
interesting to herself and other people. Englishwomen, she had been
told, were very much of a pattern--the result of centuries of breeding
in uninterrupted conditions. It was the very reverse that made up
nine-tenths of the fascination of the American woman. When she married
Cecil Maundrell--she had tossed “if” out of her vocabulary--they might
take a year or two to adjust themselves to each other; but they both
had brains enough to succeed in the end; and he could not fail to be
charmed with a wife cut out of her own piece of cloth, and specially
designed for himself.




CHAPTER XXIII


Lee spent the following winter in New York and Washington, with friends
of Mrs. Montgomery, who met and made much of her Del Monte. Her social
success in both places was very great, and she carried off all the
honours that an ambitious young beauty could desire. She met many
men-of-the-world. The species rather alarmed her at first, but, after
she had posed herself, they amused her more; in their way, they were
as ingenuous as the callow youth of San Francisco. She returned to
California wiser than when she had left it, and a trifle more subtle,
but with an undiminished vitality of spirit, and with the romantic
imp in the depths of her brain as active as ever. It had been Mrs.
Montgomery’s intention to join Lee in the spring, take her to visit
Tiny, then to the great show places of Europe--invented by a benign
Providence for the American tourist; but an attack of rheumatism
defeated the project, and Lee hastened home to her.

She was not sorry to return. The East quickly palls on the Californian
of temperament and imagination, and before the winter was over Lee had
begun to long for the mysterious Latin charm of her own country, and
for its unvarying suggestion of unlimited space. Moreover, she feared
to miss Cecil Maundrell if she went abroad at this time; his movements
seemed very erratic, and his letters were brief and unexplanatory. He
might change his plans, and come to California at any moment. Above
all, she wanted to meet him on her own ground, in the country which
had gone largely into the making of her; not in Tiny’s drawing-room,
surrounded by a conventional house-party.

Sometimes she wondered at the persistence of her desire for Cecil
Maundrell, considering how little it had to feed upon, and preferred
to conclude that they were held together by some mysterious bond
compounded in the laboratory of Nature, whose practical manifestation
only awaited the pleasure of Time. It is true that there were periods
when she was rebellious and angry, and during one of Cecil’s long
silences--he had not written for four months--she came very close
to marrying Randolph. He was ever at her elbow, with a persistence
generally quiet, occasionally impassioned. He made himself useful to
her in a thousand ways, and studied her tastes; reading her favourite
books, and keeping up with her fads. He was clever and companionable,
and would, indubitably, make a good husband. He did not interest her;
she knew him too well, and her power over him was too sure, but her
second winter in San Francisco had bored her; she was out of tune with
the world for the moment, and very human; she was in the mood, failing
the best, to hang her ideals upon the man who pleased her most, and to
love him by sheer exercise of imagination; a mood that has ruined the
life of more women than one.

She was balancing the pros and cons more seriously than she was aware,
when she received a letter from Cecil Maundrell.

It was early spring. The family had moved down to Menlo sooner than
usual on account of Mrs. Montgomery’s health, which was still delicate;
and Lee was starting for a ride to the hills, when the stable-boy
returned from the village with the morning mail. She sent her other
letters into the house, unopened, and rode off rapidly with Cecil’s. It
was of unusual thickness; she had not received one so heavy since the
Sturm und Drang of his Oxford days.

When she was half-way down the lane that led to the hills she read his
letter. Its length was its one point of resemblance to his note-books
of Oxford. Several of its pages were filled with half-tender,
half-humorous reminiscences of “the happiest and most piquant weeks
of his life”; the rest to the enthusiasm with which he was filled at
the prospect of seeing her again, mingled with unsubtle masculine
suggestions that he would take a friendly pleasure in learning that she
had not committed her future to some man who was not half good enough
for her. The letter was dated New York, where he had been visiting an
American college friend for two weeks. He expected to start immediately
for the ranch of some English friends in the “Far West,” and to reach
California in five or six weeks. Would she write him at once to the
enclosed address, and tell him news of herself?

Lee’s horse was walking slowly up the lane between hedges of wild
roses and fragrant chaparral. She glanced about vaguely, hardly
recognising the familiar beautiful scene: the green foothills crouched
close against the great mountains that were dark and still with their
majestic redwoods crowding like brush and piercing the sky on the long
irregular crest; the dazzling blue sky, the soft blue haze on the
mountains, the glory of colour in the fields, and on the lower slopes
of the hills; for the poppies and baby-eyes, lupins, and California
lilies, were swarming over the land.

What did the letter mean? Had Cecil Maundrell written it in a dream,
in which she, perchance, had visited him? She read it again. It was
remarkably wide-awake. And it was almost a love-letter.

She glanced about more appreciatively. The soft rich mysterious beauty
of the day and of California symphonised with the flush on her cheeks,
the rapt languor of her eyes, the quickening within her.

She spent the greater part of the day in the hills, buying a glass of
milk and some bread at a farmhouse. When she reached the redwoods on
the long slopes, she tethered her horse, and wandered far into the
forest. The very mystery of life brooded in those dim cool aisles,
whose silence was undisturbed by the low roar of spring waters, whose
feathery green undergrowth was barely flecked by the brilliant sun
above the dense arbours high on the grey columns of the forest.

She lay on the edge of the bluff above the creek and watched the salmon
moving in lazy and unperturbed possession of their sparkling waters,
the darting trout, the wilderness of ferns and lilac and lily down on
the water’s edge. A deer climbed down the opposite bank and drank; owls
cried to each other in the night of the forest; two hundred feet above
her head the squirrels exchanged drowsy remarks; in the warm green
twilight of the afternoon the very birds went to sleep.

It was not the first time that Lee had dreamed of Cecil Maundrell in
this forest; she doubted if he would seem as naturally encompassed by
the beech woods and fells, the ruins and traditions of his English
home. Certainly this was as old, and as surely it was a part of her.

They both had unnumbered generations behind them: his were thick with
men and events; hers with redwoods, whose aisles were unpeopled, in
whose impenetrable depths tradition itself was lost.

She returned home late in the afternoon. Randolph, who had just come
from town, was standing on the steps, and ran forward to lift her down.

“My mother was beginning to worry,” he said; “you ought to take a boy
with you. If you don’t want a servant, I will stay down and accompany
you.”

Lee flicked him lightly with her whip. “Then I wouldn’t go,” she said.
“I love to ride about for hours by myself. Fancy if one could never get
away from men.”

She spoke airily, but Randolph looked hard at her.

“What has happened?” he demanded. “There is something quite unusual
about you.”

Lee blushed, but Cecil’s letter was safe in her bosom.

“Don’t ask impertinent questions, and see that you don’t talk me to
death to-night; I’m tired,” and she ran upstairs.

Her other mail lay on her dressing-table. She opened a letter from
Coralie, who was visiting friends in New York.

  “Well,” it began abruptly, “I have met your Cecil. It was last night,
  at a dinner-party at the Forbes’. He _is_ tall, you will be pleased
  to learn, and I fancy he might look quite athletic and ‘masterful’
  (your style) in evening clothes that fitted him. But I believe he
  has been sporting round the world with a couple of portmanteaux, and
  avoiding polite society. He wore a suit belonging to Schemmerhorn
  Smith, whom he is visiting, and it was just two sizes too small. He
  didn’t seem in the least embarrassed about it, and his manners are
  quite simple and natural. He doesn’t talk very much, but is a good
  deal easier to get on with than that awful Lord Arrowmount. At first
  I was frightfully afraid of him--of course, being the lord of the
  party, he took in Mrs. Forbes, but I sat on the other side of him,
  and Mrs. Forbes had a scientific thing on her other side, and had to
  give him most of her attention. Well, where was I? Scared to death
  in the memory of _those_ letters--of course I didn’t breathe that
  I’d read them--but he’s not in the least like them--at all events
  not at dinner-parties. He was very much interested when I told him
  I was your intimate friend, although not so much as later--but wait
  a minute. You may be sure I said everything under Heaven in your
  praise, but, curiously, I never mentioned your beauty, although I
  dilated upon your success, and all the scalps you wore at your belt,
  and that you had a room whose walls were simply covered with german
  favours. He warmed to the theme as time went on, and said you had
  always been his greatest chum, and that he was going to California
  for two things only--to kill a grizzly and see you. He put the
  grizzly first, but never mind--he’s English. Now comes the point.
  After dinner, as soon as the men came in, he made for me--I didn’t
  tell you that I’m sure he’s shy--and I took him straight to your
  photograph, which is enthroned on a table all by itself.

  “‘There she is,’ I said.

  “He took it up. ‘Who?’ he asked, staring at it with all his
  eyes--they are nice honest hazel eyes, by the way, that often laugh,
  although I’ll bet he has a temper.

  “‘Who?--Why, Lee, of course!’

  “He stared harder at the picture--it is the low-necked one you had
  taken here, in black gauze and coloured--then he turned and stared
  at me. ‘Lee?’ he said. ‘_This_ is Lee?’ and if he were not burnt a
  beautiful mahogany, I do believe he would have turned pale. He’s got
  a mouth on him, my dear, that means things, and it trembled.

  “‘She’s grown up very pretty,’ he said in a moment, as carelessly as
  he could manage. ‘I never suspected that she would--that she had. Of
  course some of your enterprising Americans have snatched her up. I
  haven’t heard from her for a long time. Is she engaged?’

  “‘Not that I know of,’ I said, ‘although she has three or four
  admirers so persistent, you never know what you may hear any minute.’
  I thought a little worry wouldn’t hurt him; he looks altogether too
  satisfied, as if he had been born to plums, and never had anything
  else. All he said was ‘Ah!’ He put the picture back, and we went off
  to the music-room, but he managed to pass that table twice before
  the evening was over--and I must say, I’ve seen American men manage
  things more diplomatically. But there’s something rather magnificent
  about him, all the same. He’s not very entertaining--Randolph would
  fairly scintillate beside him--but his air of repose and remoteness
  from the hustling every-day world are really fine. If he had worn a
  potato sack instead of his almost equally grotesque get-up, he would
  have looked as unmistakably what he is. I hunted industriously for
  all his good points to please you, but give me an American every
  time. I never was intended for a miner, and you have to go into an
  Englishman’s brain with a pick and shovel. Your Cecil suggests that
  he’s got a solid mine of real intellect, developed with all the
  modern improvements, inside his skull; but what’s the good, when
  you can’t hear the nuggets rattle? He wouldn’t even tell me his
  adventures--shut up like a clam, and said they were just like any
  other fellow’s; and Schemmerhorn Smith told me that same evening
  that the men Lord Maundrell was with said he was one of the crack
  sportsmen of the day. Do you remember when Tom killed that panther
  that attacked him in the redwoods? We had it for breakfast, lunch,
  and dinner for a month. Of course a happy medium’s the thing; but for
  my part, I don’t like too much modesty. I’m suspicious of it....”

So it was her beauty that had shifted the strata in Lord Maundrell’s
solid mine of intellect? It must have caused something of a shock to
have resulted in a letter which almost committed him. It was both a jar
and a relief to discover that he was much like other men. She re-read
his letter. Then she glanced into her mirror.

“So much the better,” she remarked.




CHAPTER XXIV


Her admirers had a sorry time of it for the next two weeks; she was
capricious, even irritable, absent-minded, and at no pains to conceal
that they bored her. Her appetite remained good, or Mrs. Montgomery
would have grown alarmed.

The answer to Cecil’s letter had required an entire day of anxious
thought. Her pen ran over with the emotions he had quickened; but pride
conquered, and she finally wrote him a gay friendly letter, assuring
him of a welcome in which curiosity would play no insignificant part,
but studiously concealing her burning interest.

She was profoundly thankful to the inspiration which dictated that
letter when his answer came. It was very brief, and its only enthusiasm
was inspired by the buffalo. There was not a mutually personal line in
it. He concluded by remarking that if he did not write again, she could
expect him any time just outside of a month. He should go to Southern
California first to visit some English ranchers, whom he had known at
Oxford, and to kill his grizzly.

Lee tore this letter into strips, and plunged into a desperate
flirtation with Randolph, giving him an unusual meed of dances at the
little parties of Menlo, making him get up at unearthly hours to ride
with her before his day in town--he detested riding--and driving every
evening to the station to meet him. He was puzzled, but inclined to
take the pleasant caprices of the gods without analysis. He was very
busy, and it was enough to know, as he sat at his table, his pencil
working at the thousand and one prosaic details of a huge iron building
he was designing, that his evenings and Sundays were to be made radiant
by the smiles of the most charming woman in the world. He forgot Cecil
Maundrell; and the future he tenaciously desired seemed imminent.




CHAPTER XXV


“Here comes a tramp up the avenue again,” said Mrs. Montgomery, with
irritation. “That makes the second this week. I shall have to build a
lodge. Why can’t they go to the farmhouse? Tramps are very trying.”

“He doesn’t walk like a tramp,” said Lee, “although his clothes
certainly _are_--” Being a trifle shortsighted, she raised her
lorgnette. She rose suddenly, turning her back to Mrs. Montgomery,
and descended the steps of the verandah. Her knees and hands shook
violently, and the blood rushed to her head; but she was some three
minutes reaching the stranger, who had lifted his cap, then plunged his
hands in his pockets, and at the end of that time her nerves were in
the leash of her will.

“Well, if it isn’t like you, Cecil Maundrell, to come in those awful
clothes!” she cried gaily. “Mrs. Montgomery took you for a tramp.”

He laughed nervously as he swung her hand to and fro. “We were burnt
out last night, and they’re all I’ve got left. I’ll go on to San
Francisco in a day or two and get some.”

“I don’t believe Aunty will let you in the house, much less sit down at
the table.”

“Really? How curious! I didn’t know you were so conventional out here.
But I’ll go on at once, if you say so.”

“No, no. Only make an elaborate enough apology to Mrs. Montgomery,
and she will be as nice as possible. But we’re not only frightfully
conventional out here, but rather sensitive. A duke came down to a
dinner-party in Menlo once in his shooting-jacket, and we’ve never
gotten over it.”

“What a bounder. I’ll go out and eat with the farm hands. I like the
rough and ready American very much.”

“I don’t know any, so I can’t argue. You look perfectly splendid, and
I’m _so_ glad you’re tall. You really have changed very little, except
that you’ve lost your pretty complexion--although I prefer this. You
make other men look positively ill. Oh, Cecil, I _am_ glad to see you!”

Her face and voice were animated by the friendliest feeling. Cecil
stared hard at her, the smile dying out of his eyes. “You are very
beautiful,” he said abruptly.

“I hear a carriage. Some people are coming to call. Let us get out of
the way--not that I’m ashamed of you, but you don’t want to meet Mrs.
Montgomery before a lot of other people.”

“I don’t want to meet her at all--or anybody else but yourself. To tell
the truth, it never occurred to me that there would be any one else,
and I knew you wouldn’t mind these old shooting rags. I do look like a
tramp. I really never thought about it. I remember people rather stared
at me in the train. A flashy-looking fellow in the smoking-car asked
me if I was looking for work, and I told him No, I was looking for a
fight. He said nothing more until we reached a station, when he asked
me to get out and take a drink.”

“Did you? I can’t imagine your unbending that far.”

“Oh, I take everybody as a matter of course, knocking about. I accepted
the drink and stood him another. After that I went to sleep to get rid
of him. Of course he wanted to talk--that is to say, monologue.”

“Let us sit down here.”

They had left the avenue, and crossed a side garden. There were two
rustic chairs under a great oak. They took them, and faced each other.

“Did you kill your grizzly?”

“No; not one has been heard of in the neighbourhood of San Luis
Obispo for three years. I never was so disappointed in my life. Now,
I suppose, there is no hope; it is too much to ask of men who have
been burnt out to bother about grizzlies. My other friends--the ones
I’ve been with for the last two years--didn’t come further West than
Montana.”

Lee had on a white summer frock, girdled with a ribbon the colour of
her eyes. Her black hair was coiled loosely. She was fully aware that
she looked very lovely.

“You are the only man living that would look for a grizzly first and
for me after,” she said with a certain arching of her brows and pouting
of her lips ... “Cecil, you always could stare harder than any one I
ever knew.”

“I believe I’ve thought quite as much about you as the grizzly.”

“Thanks!”

“No; but I am serious.” He looked away. Lee fancied that his triple
coat of tan really paled. “I’ve never been so upset in my life,” he
continued lucidly.

“It never did take you long to come to the point. What a relief--there
are not to be a half-dozen weeks of flirtatious fencing. Do come out
with it.”

He laughed, but without any great amount of ease. “I’ll be perfectly
frank,” he said. “I saw your photograph in New York; I nearly went off
my head. I lay awake all night. It was the first time any woman had
bowled me over. My two or three fancies were hardly worth recalling.
You see, I put your beauty with all I knew of you mentally, and of our
delightful companionship when you were older than most girls of your
age--and the sweetest little thing!--and the combination made my brain
whirl. Before morning I wrote you that letter----”

“Well?”

Lee was twirling her lorgnette, her eyes lowered. Cecil had not removed
his eyes from the horizon. He spoke jerkily, with an evident effort.

“When I cooled down, I was sorry I had sent that letter,” he brought
out brutally, after an instant’s further hesitation. “You see, I had
never thought of you in that way at all, or I shouldn’t even have
started for California. I don’t believe in international marriages----”

“But, my dear Cecil,” exclaimed Lee, opening wide surprised eyes,
“we’re not going to marry! I settled all that long ago.”

Cecil was too perturbed and too masculine to mark the rapid change of
tactics. He turned his face about and stared at her. He was visibly
paler, and his eyes were almost black.

“You have not settled it as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I knew it
was all up with me when you came toward me down that avenue. I’ve done
nothing but deliberate for five weeks; I’ve weighed every pro and con;
I’ve recalled every scene between my father and stepmother; I’ve argued
with myself on the folly of marrying anything under a fortune; and the
moment I saw you I knew that I had wasted five weeks, and that I should
marry you if you would have me.”

Lee’s eyes had returned to the study of her lap. Pride and passion
battled again. After a full moment’s silence, she looked up with so
sweet a smile that he leaned forward impulsively to take her hand. But
she drew it back.

“Cecil,” she said, “I forbid you to make love to me until you have made
me love you first. Of course I can’t say if I ever shall.” She looked
about vaguely, her lips still smiling. “But, at least, we start fair; I
don’t care a straw for any one else, and I’ve always liked you better
than anybody in the world. To-day is the twenty-sixth of April. You may
propose to me again on the twenty-sixth of May.”

He looked at her helplessly, his lips twitching. “You don’t care at
all?” he asked. His voice still thickened when he was agitated.

“How can I, Cecil--in that way--when I haven’t laid eyes on you for ten
years? You admit that I was only an abstraction to you before you saw
my picture. You could not expect more of me, and I never even had a
glimpse of a photograph. And women don’t take fire so easily as men.”
She prayed he would not catch her up in his arms and kiss her. “I have
not even been inspired to deliberation.” She gave a little laugh just
tipped with malice. “What would you think, I wonder, if I accepted you
on a moment’s notice.”

“You certainly wouldn’t have my excuse. What a guy I must be!” He stood
up with a sudden diffidence which made him look like a big awkward boy,
and Lee loved him the more.

“What time does the next train go to San Francisco?” he added. He had
taken out his watch.

“Twelve-ten.”

“I have just time to catch it. I’ll be back when I’ve got some decent
clothes. I suppose there are tailors in San Francisco--in Market
Street?”

“Go and see Randolph, Crocker Building. He will take you to his.”

“Thanks. Good-bye.”

He shook her hand, avoiding her eyes, and strode away. When he reached
the avenue, he plunged his hands into his pockets and began to run.
Lee found time to laugh at his picturesque lack of self-consciousness
before she turned and fled across the lane into the friendly solitude
of the Yorba woods.




CHAPTER XXVI


He returned three days later, clad in immaculate grey, a trunk in his
wake containing much smart linen and four suits of clothes, which had
been ordered at the best house in San Francisco by a stockbroker who
had retired from business and his country the day before Cecil, with
similar measurements and similar needs, was presented to the tailor by
Randolph.

Mrs. Montgomery had done the one thing possible under the
circumstances--she had asked Cecil to make her house his home so long
as he remained in that part of California. Her eyes were very red on
the morning after his first appearance, but she made no comment to Lee,
who spent the greater part of those three days by herself, but appeared
quite normal when with the family. Cecil had gone at once to see and
consult Randolph, who remarked, when he came home that night, that the
Englishman seemed a very good sort, but that he should prefer not to
walk down Kearney Street with him again until he was properly rigged
out. He really didn’t know why they hadn’t been mobbed, and two imps of
newsboys had made audible remarks about “blarsted Britishers.”

“I don’t see why you can always tell an Englishman,” he added, with
some impatience. “To say nothing of his get-up to-day, look at the
difference between his figure and Coe’s. The clothes will fit Maundrell
to perfection, but his figure is no more like Coe’s than it’s like
mine. He’s a lean athletic Englishman, every inch of him; Coe was thin
and angular. It’s quite remarkable.”

“Is he very handsome?” asked Mrs. Montgomery faintly.

“I really couldn’t say. He looks like an Englishman--that’s all.”

Lee darted a swift side-glance; he was eating with his usual nervous
haste. She knew him better than in the old days, but could detect no
sign of agitation in him. In a moment he began to talk about a new pair
of carriage horses he had bought his mother; and during the evening
he asked Lee to play for him in the dark, as usual. Once she turned
her head suddenly and caught a fixed steely gleam from the depths of
his chair. She averted her eyes hastily, and gazed thoughtfully at the
keys, playing mechanically, with nothing of her usual expression.

She always wore white in summer, in accordance with an unwritten law
of Menlo Park, and for the evening of Cecil’s second appearance she
selected her softest and airiest, one, moreover, that was cut several
inches below her throat, and one or two above her elbows. Full-dress,
except at the rare dinner-parties in honour of some-one-with-letters,
was tabooed in that exclusive borough. As Cecil came from town with
Randolph she left the honours of introduction to the host, and did not
make her appearance until a few minutes before dinner. She found Mrs.
Montgomery and Cecil amiably discussing California, and Randolph gently
jeering at them for their lack of originality.

“Several volumes have been written on the ‘Resources of California,’
but the one to which she shall owe her permanent fame has never had so
much as a paragraph. It awaits its special biographer.”

“But there can be originality even on an exhausted theme,” said
Lee, who had shaken hands with Cecil, and was anxious to keep the
conversation light. “Captain Twining’s remark two days after his
arrival in California is already quite famous.” She glanced at Cecil,
and lifted her chin with defiant coquetry. “He said that he had only
heard of two things Californian before he came--Miss Tarleton and the
climate.”

“He wasn’t very polite to call you a thing,” said Cecil, laughing; he
seemed in excellent spirits.

“Perhaps he took her for a perfume or a flower,” said Randolph quickly.

The two men measured each other with a swift glance.

“That was really very neat,” remarked Lord Maundrell. “You might have
blushed, Lee.”

“She has had too many compliments; she is quite spoiled for anything
less than downright uxoriousness.”

“Ah!” observed Lord Maundrell.

They went in to dinner. Cecil was not to be laughed out of his interest
in California; the grape industry had interested him during his brief
sojourn in the South, and he wanted to know all about it, from its
incipience to its finalities. Randolph, who knew little about the
grape industry, and cared less, answered in glittering generalities,
and headed him off to the subject of mission architecture. Cecil
immediately instituted a comparison between the results of Indian
labour and the characteristic edifices of Spain--more particularly
of Granada, and then branched off to the various divergences under
native and climatic influences to be found in South America. Of all
this Randolph knew practically nothing. Like most Americans, he was a
specialist, and had studied only that branch of his art necessary to
his own interests. But his mind was very nimble, and he so successfully
concealed from the Englishman his superficial knowledge of the subject,
that Lee, who followed the conversation with rapt interest, did not
know whom to admire most. She was wondering if Cecil could make as
brilliant a showing as Randolph on next to nothing, when, in reply to
a question of his host’s regarding the gold mines of Peru, he replied
indifferently:

“I don’t know anything about them. They didn’t interest me,” and
dismissed the subject; one upon which Randolph happened to have some
knowledge. He had invested heavily in a newly-discovered mine of which
one of his friends was secretary.

The conversation turned to politics. Randolph was at his best analysing
and illustrating the party differences, but when Cecil questioned him
about the genesis of the two parties, the constitution of the United
States, and the historic significance of the various presidents,
even generalities failed him, and he was obliged to confess himself
nonplussed.

“Upon my word,” he exclaimed laughing, “I do believe that the only
thing I remember about United States history is its covert admonition
to grow up as fast as I could and lick the English.”

Lee and Cecil laughed simultaneously. “Have you ever told the story
of my attempt to lick the United States?” asked Cecil. “That defeat
rankled for years.”

“Never!”

Cecil told the story very well. It was evident that his bitterness had
passed, and he concluded:

“The odd part of it all is, that although you Americans beat us, it is
you who are bitter, and not ourselves. It was the same way with those
boys. They gave me sour disapproving glances every time they met me
until I left. On the other hand, I nearly thrashed the life out of a
man in Montana, and I never made such an enthusiastic friend.”

“Oh, we have to be bullied,” said Randolph frankly. “We love to brag
and boast and swagger. You see we are such an extraordinary nation that
we can’t help being a little cocky, and the only man we really respect
is the one who lays us on our back with a black eye and a nose out of
joint. We always get up--nothing can keep an American on his back--but
we go to our graves with a wondering admiration of the muscle, mental
or physical, that floored us.”

“That is very interesting,” said Cecil thoughtfully, “very.” He added
in a moment: “I fancy the bitterness would have died out by this time,
in spite of our failure to keep the finest of our colonies, but for our
diplomacy, which is a trifle too subtle and sinuous to please the rest
of the world. I don’t know that the United States stands alone in her
antagonism.” And he laughed.

Randolph knew less about English diplomacy than he did about the past
history of American politics, but he made a rapid calculation: if he
led Cecil on, the Englishman, with his exact and profound knowledge,
would distinguish himself and win the grateful admiration of the woman.
On the other hand, unless he kept him talking, he should be called
upon for information which he had always considered superfluous in
an American who had but one short life in which to “get there,” and
which was of no particular interest to himself; he had cut his college
course down to one year in order to make the most of his youthful
energies, and to run no risk of losing Lee Tarleton. Moreover, if he
drew his guest out, he should not only be doing his duty as a host,
but Lee’s approval for himself would be as large as her admiration of
his rival. There was more than a chance, clever as she was, that she
would give him full credit for generosity and for the courtesy of his
fathers. He made up his mind in an instant, threw out an observation of
epigrammatic vagueness on the diplomacy of England, and in ten minutes
had Cecil monopolising the conversation, under the impression that he
was forced into an argument.

Lee forgot her dinner, and listened intensely. She had heard men talk
more brilliantly--for Cecil had cultivated none of the graces of
oratory, and of the epigram he appeared to have a healthy scorn--but
she had never heard any one talk who knew so well what he was talking
about, and who yet suggested that he was merely skimming up the spray
of a subject whose deeps were trite to him straight down to its
skeletons and flora. His knowledge of English diplomacy suggested an
equally minute knowledge of the diplomatic history of every country
into which England had run her horns. He talked without priggishness,
rather as if he were used to discussing the subject with men who were
as well grounded as himself.

As they left the dining-room, Lee lingered behind a moment with
Randolph.

“It was awfully nice of you,” she said. “You like to do the talking
yourself, and England has never interested you much.”

“I knew that it would interest you. I was bored to extinction; but it
is time you had a little variety.”

“You _are_ good.” She hesitated a moment. “He has real intellect,
hasn’t he?” she asked.

“He knows things. He can knock the spots out of us when it comes to
solid information. But in a contest of wits I’d engage him in a match
without any qualms. He’s straight out from the shoulder, and if he were
stacked up against American nimbleness and adaptability for any great
length of time, he’d go under.”

“He’s quick enough.”

“With an answer--yes; but that’s not what I mean.”




CHAPTER XXVII


They had remained longer at dinner than usual, and when Lee went out to
the verandah, she found Mr. and Mrs. Brannan and Mr. Trennahan, a New
Yorker who had recently married and settled in Menlo. Cecil was at her
elbow in a moment.

“Let us take a walk,” he said. “Will it be rude to leave these people?”

“Oh, no; we are very informal among ourselves, and they are Mrs.
Montgomery’s friends rather than mine.”

They crossed the grounds, entered Fair Oaks Lane, and walked toward the
hills. It was moonlight, and the redwoods on the crest of the mountain
were sharp against the sky.

“Can I smoke a cigar?”

“Of course.”

“Should not you have something else round you?”

“This shawl is camel’s hair and very warm. How do you like Randolph?”

“A very decent chap. Is he in love with you?”

“Why is it that when a man admires a woman he fancies every other man
is in love with her?”

“That’s not answering my question. Not that it is necessary. No man
could grow up with you and not love you.”

“You are learning to pay compliments. You will be sending me candy and
flowers next.”

“I’ll never send you candy, nor anything that’s not good for you.”

“Have you spent the last three days regretting that you proposed on
Monday?”

“What an ass you must think me. I proposed, and that was the end of it;
my only regret was that I did it so badly. I have spent the last three
days racking my brains over a different matter, not a wholly foreign
one.”

Lee made no reply. Her hand hung at her side. He took it in a quiet
but determined pressure. “How am I to make you love me?” he asked. “I
haven’t the vaguest idea how to go about it.”

“In the very bottom of your mind wouldn’t you really rather that you
could not? I, too, have been thinking hard during the last three days.
Of course, I know of international marriages that have turned out
very well; but that doesn’t alter the fact that many have turned out
badly--although, for that matter, the United States fairly reeks with
divorce. It is a question to puzzle wiser heads than mine. Are most
English marriages happy?”

“Probably not; but the point is that if you marry your own sort, you
know where you are. If I had ever met an English girl who attracted
me one half as much as you do, and had married her, we should have
followed along certain traditional lines and got on fairly well, even
if there were no great happiness. You see an Englishman is certain of
several things if he marries a perfectly normal Englishwoman of his
own class. She will obey him, she will have as many children as he
wishes, her scheme of life will be his, and, no matter how bright she
may be, she will adapt herself to him--which is not the least important
point. An Englishman simply cannot adapt himself to anybody. It isn’t
in him. He can be a good husband on his own lines, particularly if he
loves his wife; and if he loves her enough, and she makes herself more
charming than other women, he’ll be faithful to her, and do what he can
to make her happy. But she must adapt herself to him.”

“You have the virtue of frankness! Are you trying to frighten me off?”

“It would not be fair of me to deceive you.” He certainly looked very
serious. Lee studied his profile meditatively, but she did not withdraw
her hand. “I don’t see why it should frighten you. We have always been
most sympathetic. We really loved each other when we were little chaps,
and were drawn together at once. In all these years I have had no such
confidante, no one who has been so necessary to me. And you have not
been indifferent; never was there so faithful a correspondent. If you
loved me enough, we should be very happy. Theories go to the winds when
a man wants a woman as much as I want you, and love would settle all
our differences.”

“I wonder!” They walked on in silence for a moment; then she said: “How
brave you are! Much braver than I should be if I consented to marry
you; for I, at least, know you fairly well, whereas you are merely
generalising, and do not know me in the least. I might give you an
exhaustive description of the conditions in which I had been brought
up, from that in which my mother played no small part to the men that
have been my slaves ever since I put on long frocks. I might analyse
to you the growth of my individuality, describing the influence which
the management of my own affairs has had on my character, the fact that
I have done my own thinking all my life, and then--these three years
in which I have been a real belle, and seen more than one man make an
idiot of himself. I might tell you all that, and even enter into a
wise dissertation on the racial differences of our two civilisations;
but nothing could give you a real idea of myself, the idea you would
have absorbed if you had been a part of my environment for the last
ten years. Nothing could be wiser than your observation that we should
marry our own sort. As far as I can figure it out, it comes to this:
If I married Randolph he would spend his life buttoning my boots. If I
married you, I should spend my life pulling off yours----”

“Good heavens, no! What a little beast I was!”

He laughed heartily, although, oddly enough, his laughter did not
interfere with his seriousness in the least. It would have dissipated
that of any other man she knew; but he went on at once. “I should not
quarrel with Fate for giving me a wife who interested me more than any
woman of my own sort could do, if you were always perfectly open and
frank with me. I should hate being intrigued, and I should never have
the patience nor the inclination to sit down and unravel any woman’s
complexities. If you did not go to work deliberately to puzzle me, I
should soon know you, and I cannot imagine you other than absolutely
charming.”

“If I pluck out my complexities--in other words, my individuality--by
the roots, and adapt myself to you.”

“You could adapt yourself to me without sacrificing the least of your
individuality. I wouldn’t have you other than you are. Where would your
charm be?”

“You began very practically, but you are getting rather Utopian.”

“No, because we are both young. It is true that I am twenty-five,
and that my character is quite formed--a difficult thing for a woman
used to American men to understand. But I still have all the fresh
enthusiasm of youth for anything that interests me, and an immense
capacity for affection, which has been satisfied very little. If you
loved me well enough--that would be the whole point.”

“In other words, the entire responsibility of this matrimonial
experiment would lie on my shoulders.”

“Don’t call it an experiment, for God’s sake! It is life and death for
me. If I take you I take you forever, and if you decide to marry me,
you must make up your mind that we _will_ be happy.”

They walked on for another moment in silence. He felt her fingers curl
up stiffly, but she said quite calmly:

“I decided long ago, when I was sixteen, I think, to marry you, and
I have never changed my mind for a moment. I always knew that you
would come. On Monday, I could not make up my mind to fall into your
arms like a ripe apple; but you are so serious that you have made me
serious, and I cannot coquet any longer.”

Cecil had dropped her hand and stopped short, facing her.

“Is it possible that you love me?” he asked. “Is it possible?”

“I have loved you twenty times more than any one on earth for years and
years, and I shall love no one else as long as I live.... Cecil, you
_do_ stare so!”

But in another second he had ceased to stare.




CHAPTER XXVIII


They decided to keep their engagement to themselves for a short while,
but on the fourth day Mrs. Montgomery entered Lee’s room abruptly.

“I must have the truth, my dear child,” she said. “In the first place,
unless you are engaged to Lord Maundrell, I cannot permit you to take
these long walks and rides alone with him; you never did such a thing
before. And in the second place----”

“Don’t cry,” said Lee, fondling her nervously. “That is one reason I
haven’t said anything about it. I knew you would be disappointed about
Randolph, and I can’t even bear to think of leaving you----”

“If you only could have loved Randolph!”

“Really and truly, I tried--two or three times. But I made up my mind
long ago that I would not make a mistake when I married, if I could
help it. I don’t expect a bed of roses with Cecil--he’s too high and
mighty, and he’s too self-centred--but at least I love him well enough
to put up with anything, and nothing could make me love him less--no
matter what happened.”

“Oh, I hope you will be happy!--I hope you will be happy! Lord
Maundrell is really most interesting and charming; his air and his
manners are really--_really_. And Tiny is very happy with Arthur. But I
shall be so lonely--and poor Randolph!”

“Can’t you and he come to England to live?”

“I have six other daughters and five grandchildren here, remember, and
Randolph is in too great a hurry to get rich to begin over again in a
new country. Tiny will be here soon now for a year, and I shall go back
with her. Of course, I shall see you then, but you are really lost to
me.”

Lee, whose tears were quick, wept passionately at this aspect; she had
not thought of it before. When both were calmer, Mrs. Montgomery asked:

“Did you tell him that you had a great deal more money?”

Lee nodded.

“What did he say?”

“He was delighted, and said so as frankly as he says everything. He
says we shall have three thousand pounds a year between us, and can get
along very nicely; although the tug will come when we have to keep up
Maundrell Abbey. His stepmother has made her will in his favour; but
he says she has cut into her capital, and lately she has had to pay a
tremendous amount for repairs on the Abbey. Lord Barnstaple certainly
came high!”

“What a terrible marriage! Thank Heaven, there is no disgraceful
commercial transaction where you and Tiny are concerned. Lord Maundrell
seems clever enough for anything; why doesn’t he go into business and
make a fortune?”

“He would never think of such a thing; he’s going to stand for
Parliament at the next elections. His ideas are quite fixed, and he has
his whole career mapped out.”

“Of course he’ll be Prime Minister. Of course he’s ambitious.”

“He’s not so ambitious as he is terribly serious. He thinks it’s
his duty--his vocation. A lot of his ancestors have been statesmen,
although they’ve generally been in the House of Lords. Cecil’s so glad
he’s not going to be for ages. His father started out brilliantly, but
had a great row with his party about something, and dropped out. Then,
after his first wife’s death, he became rather dissipated. Cecil says
he began life with high ideals. His uncle Basil was a distinguished
Parliamentarian, and a Bill or a Law or something is called after
him--I expect to know English politics backward by this time next year.”

“You will!--You will! You were made to be the wife of a great man, and
he’ll be so proud of you!”

“You are the most partial person!”

“Yes, I am; but I’ve always been able to see my children’s faults, much
as I adore them. But I don’t feel a qualm about you. Your mind is so
quick; and, thank Heaven, I paid such strict attention to your manners.
They are simply perfect.”

“Think if you’d left me to grow up in a boarding-house! You may be sure
I never forget my debts. I didn’t tell you that Cecil is no longer a
Radical. He’s a Conservative, straight into his marrow; his ancestors
have never been anything else, and he’s outlived all his fads.”

“He’s painfully mature,” said Mrs. Montgomery, with a sigh. “Englishmen
seem to remain boys a long time, and then to grow old all at once. I
suppose it’s that dreadful Oxford. Our boys are little old men who get
their youth somewhere in their twenties, and are not really grown again
until after thirty. It’s very singular. Randolph, of course, has worked
a good deal of his boyishness out of him, but he is always laughing and
joking. And look at Tom and Ned--they are mere children beside Lord
Maundrell. I was really mortified when they tried to talk to him last
night, and I had always thought them bright.”

“So they are. But if men won’t cultivate their brains, what can
they expect? Tom thinks of nothing but business--which he takes as
a joke--dancing, and football, and Ned boasts that he has only read
ten books in his life. Tom would only remain eight months at Harvard,
and Ned wouldn’t go at all. Both have had every opportunity, and they
are full of American quickness and wit; but they have a genuine scorn
for intellect. I can see that they regard Cecil as a freak. Randolph
respects brains, but even he is bored.”

“Yes, it’s true--it’s true. Will you tell Randolph? I haven’t the
courage.”

“Yes; I’ll tell him to-night--we’re dining alone, aren’t we? Don’t
worry about him. Men always get over things.”




CHAPTER XXIX


That evening, as they were walking up the hall from the dining-room to
the verandah, Lee put her hand on Randolph’s arm and drew him into the
parlour.

“I want to tell you something,” she said nervously. “You know I have
always loved Cecil Maundrell. I am going to marry him.”

“So I have inferred.”

The room was dark. She could not see his face.

“I am so glad you don’t mind. You used to fancy yourself in love with
me--that was the only thing that worried me. I’m afraid I’m hopelessly
conceited.”

“You have every reason to be. Maundrell has floored me. I respect him.
But, as I remarked once, an American never stays on his back.”

“You’ll forget me? You’ll marry Coralie?”

He brought his hand down on her shoulder and jerked her close to him.
She could see his white face dimly.

“I mean that sooner or later--this year or ten years from now--I will
have you, and that you will come to me of your own accord.”

“I never will! What a detestable---- No matter what happened, I’d never
love any man but Cecil Maundrell! I belong to him!”

“We shall see.”

He left her then and went out to the verandah. Lee heard his light
laugh a moment later.

“He certainly can be serious,” she thought; “but I’m sure he hates it.
That laugh means either that he’s delighted to forget his momentary
drop, or that he’s past master of the great national game of bluff. In
his way he’s not uninteresting.”




CHAPTER XXX


Several days later she took Cecil to the redwoods. Mrs. Montgomery
consented reluctantly--Lee had always been a little beyond her--but
put up the lunch herself. They started early, for the weather was very
warm, and as they rode hard there was little conversation, although
both were in high spirits. When they reached the foothills they were
obliged to slacken speed, and Cecil said:

“I feel exactly as if we had started out in search of adventures again.
Let us hope there will not be a fog nor an earthquake.”

They had talked old times threadbare, and, after shuddering once more
over that memory, Lee said: “The redwoods are just the place for
stories of thrilling adventures with tigers and lions and things. As
Coralie says, you are altogether too modest. I shall insist.”

“I don’t mind telling you anything you like; but to sit up by the hour
and rot to other people about oneself--it’s too much like----”

“American brag?”

“Well, I don’t like to be rude, but that was what I meant. Of course
there are exceptions,” he added hastily. “Take Mr. Trennahan, for
instance. I have noticed that the American who has lived a good deal
abroad neither brags nor is in any way provincial. And, as Montgomery
says, the others have every excuse. They would have a right to be cocky
about their country, if only on account of what Nature has done for it.”

“They are lovely, aren’t they?” Lee pointed her whip proudly to the
forest above. It began on the next slope they ascended, straggling
carelessly for a mile or more, then seemingly knit into a black and
solid wall of many tiers. Presently the hills closed about them, the
great arms of the mountain reached down on every side, its grass burnt
golden, its redwoods casting long shadows, until their own shade grew
too heavy. As the riders ascended higher, there was often, far down
on one side of the road, a cañon set thick with the rigid trees, and
cut with a blade of water; an almost perpendicular wall on the other.
Finally, they passed the outposts, and entered a long steep avenue of
redwoods leading to the depths of the forest.

“I never knew anything so intensely still, nor so solemnly beautiful,”
said Cecil. “Couldn’t we come here for our honeymoon? Is there a house
to be had?”

“The Trennahans have one. I am sure they would lend it to us. Oh, I
should like nothing so much as that!”

“Nor I! Fancy!”

When they felt that they were really in the forest, they tethered their
horses and sat down at once with their luncheon. It was a very good
one, and they ate it with relish, for they had been in the saddle
several hours. When it was over, Cecil made a pillow of his saddle, and
smoked a pipe.

“You look quite happy,” said Lee sarcastically.

“Oh, I am! I never knew anything so jolly!”

“Would you like me to pull off your boots?”

“What an unforgiving spirit you have. I should be much happier if you
would sit as close to me as you can.”

Lee sat down beside the saddle.

“Now, tell me your adventures,” she commanded.

Whatever the final results of her inspiration, the immediate were
very agreeable. Cecil’s adventures had been many, and the enthusiasm
of the sportsman made him eloquent. It was soon evident that he had
returned heart and soul into the past two years; and although Lee was
pleased to observe that his grasp on her hand did not relax, his pipe
was permitted to go out. Although his adventures did not consist of a
series of hairbreadth escapes, they were novel and exciting, and Lee
was thrilled.

“You always were the most sympathetic listener,” he exclaimed. “Fancy
my talking to any one else like this! I do believe my tongue has been
wagging for two hours.”

“I don’t wonder you love sport. I should, too. It was a mere name to me
before. The boys go fishing once a year; they camp out in this forest;
and, occasionally, they go duck or snipe shooting, or kill a few quail;
but I never heard even the expression ‘big game’ except from you.”

“And with grizzlies and pumas--fancy! What are the men thinking of?”

“Of course there are lots of old mountaineers and trappers who have
shot more bears and things than they can count; but even those of our
men that are not chasing the mighty dollar don’t seem to take to sport.”

“It’s not a tradition with them. It will come with more leisure, more
Englishmen, and the inevitable imitation of ourselves in that and in
other things. They hate us, but the tail of their eye is always on
England’s big finger writing on the wall. The Eastern men copy our
accent, our clothes, our customs. The New Yorkers are already good
sportsmen, and they owe it to us that they are. They began with a
spirit that did them little credit, but they are twice the men they
would be otherwise--this generation of them, I mean. I am given to
understand that, in its mad rush for money, the race has deteriorated
since the Civil War. Your Californians are slower, because they are on
the edge of the world, and customs take longer to reach them; but one
day some idle young blood will spend a year in England, then come back
and make sport the fashion, and the next generation will be men with
healthy bodies and healthy minds.”

“And better manners! I am so glad you are not going to hustle for
money. I hate the loathsome stuff--except to have it; it has so much
to answer for. I should think the race has deteriorated. Look at the
Southerners! Look at Randolph! The only picture Mrs. Montgomery has of
her husband was taken when he had been out here twenty years, and then
his face had become very sharp and keen; but his father and grandfather
were most aristocratic-looking men--full of fire, but with a repose as
fine as yours. And Randolph was a most courtly boy; it is doubtful if
you think him a gentleman.”

“Oh, yes, yes! The American armour fairly rattles on him, and when he’s
old he’ll look like the American eagle; but I feel jolly sure that when
it came to the point, he’d never do anything unworthy of a gentleman.”

“Not even to get a woman?”

“All’s fair in love; but he would never do anything tricky or vulgar.”

“Once he wouldn’t; but he has been rubbing elbows with dishonest and
common men for so many years. His standards are lowered; I can see the
change from year to year.”

“Blood is blood. He will never descend quite to the level of the men of
one generation. I’ve just thought of another yarn.”

“Oh, do tell it! Let us walk.”

They wandered about for an hour or two, pushing through the low forest
of fronds and young redwoods, sometimes silent and happy, sometimes
planning out the days of their honeymoon, sometimes absorbed in the
vast silence, the almost overwhelming suggestion of immensity and power
and antiquity of the redwoods.

“They are a thousand years old--some of them.”

“They are so new to me that I can hardly realise their age. But they
make the rest of the world seem a thousand miles away, and there is
something about them that agitates soul and sense, and promises--almost
everything. If Trennahan won’t lend us his house, we’ll come here and
camp out.”

They went down to the flashing creek whose walls were brilliant with
green and scarlet, and counted the fish, Cecil hungrily sighing for a
rod.

“I’ll let you fish during the honeymoon--you remember, I promised--but
only one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon.”

“I see you are determined to make a good wife without sacrificing your
precious individuality. But, my dear, we must go.”

As they descended the mountain out of the redwoods, Cecil looked back
with a sigh. “If we had only _seen_ something,” he said. “I have talked
so much sport to-day that I’m all on fire again for my grizzly.”




CHAPTER XXXI


And it was that evening at the dinner table that Randolph remarked:

“Unless you’ve lost your interest in sport, there’s a chance for you.
The grizzly’s a rare bird in California, these times, but the agent of
a ranch my mother has in the Santa Lucia Mountains writes me that he
has seen two of late, and has been thinking about killing or trapping
them. It takes him several weeks to make up his mind to do anything, so
the grizzlies are yours, if you care about them.”

Cecil had nearly risen from his seat. “I’ll start to-night!” he said.
“How do you get there?”

“If you really care to go, I’ll walk over after dinner and ask
Trennahan if he’ll go with you. I’m sorry that I can’t go myself, but
I am not a sportsman, and I’m very much rushed. Trennahan is nearly
as enthusiastic as yourself, and would be sure to go. You could start
early to-morrow morning.”

“I will indeed! How jolly of you to think of it. I really am
tremendously obliged. I’ve seldom been so keen about anything.”

Lee kept her eyes lowered. They were the feature she could least
control, and she knew that they were blazing. Randolph told eighteen
anecdotes of the grizzly, to which Cecil listened with undivided
attention.

As they passed out into the hall, Lee tapped Cecil’s arm with her fan.

“Will you come to the library a moment?” she said. “I want to speak to
you.”

The library was in a wing of the house; they were sure to be out of
earshot. She lit the gas, and then turned her eyes upon him. He moved
uneasily and raised his eyebrows.

“Are you angry about something?”

“Do you really mean that you would leave me to go to spend two weeks
tracking a grizzly bear?”

“It need not be as long as that.”

“It’s almost sure to be. It takes nearly two days to get to the ranch,
and is such a tiresome trip that you will have to rest for another
before you go out. You will be gone a fortnight at the very least.”

Cecil made no reply.

“We have not been engaged two weeks. Do you really mean that you
will--that you can leave me for a loathsome grizzly bear?”

“I don’t want to leave you, of course. Couldn’t you come too?”

“And rough it? I never even camp out in the redwoods; and you have no
idea what travelling in the wild parts of California means.”

“Of course you mustn’t come, then. But, you see, this is my only
chance; and that is one of the things I came to California for--one
that I started round the world after, for that matter. Surely you
wouldn’t have me miss it! You told me to-day that you understood my
feeling for sport.”

“I don’t understand at all how you can leave me! I’m not your own sort,
you see, or, doubtless, I should.”

“It isn’t that only. You have led too many men round by the nose.”

“Not one of them would have left me for a _bear_.”

“Which does not argue that they loved you better than I, merely that
they are different. None of them succeeded in winning you, I may
observe; and the way you treat them when they bore you makes me blush
for my sex. Yesterday you fairly swept Mr. Geary out with a broom.”

“I wanted to be alone with you.”

Cecil was facing her, his hands in his pockets. His eyes were smiling,
but his jaw was set in a way she had taken note of two days before: she
had demanded a confession of his past relations with women, and he had
merely set his jaw and made no reply.

“Are you going?”

He nodded, still smiling. His hands were working nervously in his
pockets, but she did not see them.

She gasped slightly. “I cannot believe it,” she said.

“That I can love you as passionately as a man ever loved a woman,
and yet leave you to complete a record which means a good deal to
me? If I were going to live in California I would put it off for a
year--with scarcely a regret; but it is now or never. Surely you will
be reasonable.”

“You can go if you like, but you need not come back!” and she made a
rush for the door.

He caught her in his arms, and held her so closely that she could not
move. “I shall go, and I shall come back, and I shall marry you on the
first of July. And believe this--I cannot get back quickly enough.”

“I can’t bear the thought of having you go, and I can’t bear the
thought of being put aside for a bear,” sobbed Lee.

“Console yourself with the thought that you will never be able to
get rid of me for more than two weeks at a time. I do not believe in
matrimonial vacations.”

“You will never make another long sporting tour round the world?”

“Never! I have had that. I want a home more than anything on earth.”

“I wish I had more influence over you.”

“You mean that I was your blind besotted slave. When you have forgotten
your false ideas of the relations of men and women, and accepted the
right one, you will not bother yourself about trifles; and there is no
reason why any one on earth should be happier than we.”

“After I have adapted myself!”

He gave her a little shake. “When you have swung round to the old
world, and the only logical point of view. A state of society is all
wrong where women rule--that is to say, it is in a semi-chaotic
transition period. When your greatest country on the face of the earth
has shaken down, men and women will occupy exactly the same relative
positions that they do in older countries. And there will be fewer
divorces.”

“How can you stand up here and lecture me?”

“I don’t want to lecture you. I want to kiss you.”

“I can’t help being an American. I was made one, and I have grown up
one. How can I make myself over?”

“Think less about it. You Americans--particularly you Californians--
carry your individuality round like a chip on your shoulder. You are
as self-conscious about it as a little boy with his first pair of
trousers. I hear Trennahan’s voice. I must leave you in five minutes,
and I may not see you alone again. We have talked enough.”

And as they were both people who did nothing by halves, they parted
with fervour, and mutual assurance of the other’s impeccability.




CHAPTER XXXII


The next evening, Lee rose abruptly from her seat between Mrs. Yorba
and Mrs. Trennahan, who had dined with them, and walked hastily over to
Randolph who sat alone in a corner of the verandah.

“Did you send Cecil to the Santa Lucia Mountains hoping that he would
be killed?” she demanded.

“What do you take me for?--the ten-cent villain in the melodrama? He’s
got the strength and the nerve of two men, and I’ve written to Joe Mann
not to leave him for an instant. His precious skin is safe enough. I
merely wanted to show you what you had to expect if you married him--a
correct but unflattering glimpse of your power over him.”

“You did it on purpose?”

“I did it on purpose; and the infantile manner in which he walked into
the trap, and turned himself inside out, was really delicious.”

“It’s because he’s as honest and straightforward as--as your
grandfather was. You are a horrid tricky American!”

Randolph brought his teeth together, but he answered: “All’s fair in
love. Moreover, if I were entirely out of the question, I should study
your interests as I should those of my sister. You are not married yet.
Think it over carefully before he comes back.”

“Do you suppose I’d break my engagement? I’ve given him my word, and
it’s announced.”

“If you had engaged yourself to me before Maundrell came, would you not
have thrown me over?”

“Yes, I would.”

“Your femininity is your greatest charm--to me. Its somewhat
anarchistic quality may not commend itself to Cecil Maundrell. Better
think it over.”

“You can plot all you like, but I’d marry Cecil Maundrell if he went
after grizzlies every month in the year.”

She had passed through several phases since that morning, when she had
risen at four to see her future lord depart. The strong passion of
her nature responded with sensuous delight to the heavy hand of the
master; she was primal woman first, and American after. But she was
American “all the same,” she reminded herself with a proper pride. She
was willing to excuse Cecil from buttoning her boots, but she would
have liked him to manifest a natural desire to kiss her slipper. Of
the strength of his passion she had no misgivings, but she was too
clear-sighted to permit herself to hope that idolatry had any part in
it. And if she had a primal instinct for submission to the worshipped
strength of the male, she had quite as strong an instinct for her own
way. Not only had the conditions of her life fostered a tenacious will,
but she inherited a love of power and adulation from a mother and a
grandmother to whom the neck of man was a familiar footstool.

Two days later Tiny arrived with Lord Arrowmount and the Honourable
Charles Edward Richard Thornton, the last in the arms of his nurse.
Tiny was as pretty and as placid as ever, and Lord Arrowmount, if not
so pretty, was quite as placid, and as silent as of yore. The note of
command was not manifest in his voice, and it was evident that he was
not on the alert.

“Have you adapted yourself?” asked Lee that night.

Tiny smiled her old inscrutable smile. “He thinks I have, so it amounts
to quite the same thing.”

“I wish I could manage things that way, but I can’t. Cecil is horribly
clever, and I don’t take things calmly.”

“It is all a matter of temperament, of course. Try and not expect too
much, and it will be easier. An Englishman simply won’t keep on telling
you that he loves you--”

“Mine will, or there’ll be trouble.”

“They’re so lazy about talking. I’m afraid he won’t. It’s pure laziness
that has made them clip so many names, and throw all their accents
backward, fairly swallowing the last syllables. When they’ve told you
once they love you, they don’t see why you can’t take it for granted
ever after, and when one gets over that I’m positive they are the most
agreeable husbands in the world. They give so little trouble, and take
such good care of one, and do all the thinking. Arthur is the most
comfortable person. He is generous, and has no temper at all if he is
not crossed, and is more than willing to think me quite perfect because
I always look pretty, and never contradict him, and entertain all his
stupid shooting friends without a grimace.”

“What do you get out of it all?”

“Those things can’t be analysed; he suits me. I am really very fond
of him. I love people who are good-tempered and not nervous, and
can be awfully fond of one without making a fuss about it. I love
him well enough to bore myself in a good many ways, but I have this
compensation--_I can make him do anything I choose._ We spend every
winter where I want to spend it, and he’s none the wiser. I entertain
his friends in the summer and autumn, but I have my own in town, and we
always go to at least three houses that I like.”

“It is evident that Cecil and I will have to work out our own problem.”

He returned in two weeks and two days with his grizzly’s skin--a huge,
hideous, and ill-favoured trophy. Lee lifted her delicate nose, and
drew away her skirts, but assured him warmly that she was quite as
delighted as he was, and so proud of him she feared every one would
laugh at her.

“Trennahan got the other, but mine was the biggest,” he said intensely.
“It’s a long and exciting story. The old chap nearly got me. Let me go
and clean up, and then we’ll go for a walk, and I’ll tell you all about
it. And that’s the least of what I have to tell you.”

They went for their walk, and there was no doubt left in Lee’s mind
that he had been in a hurry to get back to her, although he had waited
until his grizzly’s skin was peppered and dried. Her doubts went to
rest, and she was happy.

They were married on the first of July, in the library, in the presence
of the family and intimate friends. Coralie returned in time to be
bridesmaid and to bring the wedding-dress and veil,--in which Lee
looked so lovely, that, as she entered the room on Randolph’s arm,
Cecil put his hands suddenly into his pockets, as was his habit when
his nervous fingers betrayed him. His face was impassive, and he went
through the ceremony very creditably. So did Randolph.

After the wedding-breakfast, the newly-wed, amidst showers of rice,
started for the redwoods on horseback. Mr. Trennahan had offered his
house, and their luggage had gone the day before. Their host had asked
them to remain indefinitely, as he and his wife purposed to pass
the summer at Lake Tahoe. They took the house for a fortnight. They
remained a month.

As soon as they had gone, Randolph went to town, saying he could
not return until the next day. He pleaded business, and his mother,
who had watched him closely, was satisfied. He spent the night
in a private room of a fashionable saloon, before a small table,
drinking--drinking--drinking, his face growing whiter, the fire in his
brain hotter, his ideas more lucid. Once he took a letter from his
pocket and re-read it. It notified him that the Peruvian mine in which
he had invested was several times richer than had been anticipated, and
that a syndicate would offer him a million dollars for his interest. He
tore the letter to strips. When the dawn came he was still sober.




PART TWO




CHAPTER I


It is seldom that the imagination is disappointed in the “ancestral
piles” of England. The United Statesian, particularly, surrounded from
birth by all that is commonplace and atrocious in architecture, is
affected by the grey imposing Fact, brooding heavily under the weight
of its centuries, with a curious commixion of delight, surprise,
and familiarity. All the rhapsodies of the poets, all the minute
descriptions of the old romanticists, train the imagination, bend it
into a certain relationship with the historic decorations of another
hemisphere, yet stop short of conveying an impression of positive
reality. The product of a new world, a new civilisation, as he stands
before the carved ruins of an abbey’s cloisters, or the grey ivy-grown
towers and massive scarce-punctured walls of an ancient castle, feels
a slight shock of surprise that it is really there. But the surprise
quickly passes; in a brief time, with the fatal adaptability of the
American, it is an old story, a habit. He examines it with curiosity,
intelligent or vulgar, according to his rank, but novelty has fled.

Maundrell Abbey stands in the very middle of an estate six miles
square. The land undulates gently from the gates to the house, woods
on one side of the drive, a moor on the other. At the opposite end
of the estate are several farms, a fell of great height, and several
strips of woods, in the English fashion. Not far from the Abbey, on a
steep low hill set with many trees, are a chapel and a churchyard.

As Cecil and Lee drove toward their home at the close of an August
day the bride forgot the bridegroom in her eagerness to knit fact to
fancy. The moor was turning purple, the woods close by were full of
sunlight, a wonderful shimmer of gold and green; with no hint that they
too, before the greed of man fell heavily upon them, may have been as
dark and solemn as the forests of California. Now and again she had a
glimpse of a grey pile and a flash of water.

They reached the top of a hillock of some altitude, and Cecil ordered
the coachman to pause. Lee rose in her seat and looked down on the
Abbey. It was quite different from the structure in her brain, but
no less satisfying. All that was in ruin was a long row of Gothic
arches, so fragile that the yellow sunlight pouring through seemed
a crucible in which they must melt. The rest of the building was an
immense irregular mass at the back, but continued from the cloisters in
a straight severe line, which terminated in a tower. Weeds and grass
sprang from the arches, ivy covered the tower; before the Abbey was a
lake, on which swans were sailing; peacocks strutted on the lawns. The
fell behind was turning red; in a field far away were many cows; over
all hung the low powdered sky, brooded the peace and repose, which,
were one shot straight from the blue, one would recognise as English.

“It is the carving that makes the cloisters look so fragile,” said
Cecil. “They will stand a long while yet. The crypt, which is now
the entrance hall, and a stone roof which once covered a part of the
church and is now over the drawing-room, are all that is left of the
original Abbey, except two stone staircases. The tower is Norman, and
as there is a tradition that a Maundrell owned these lands before
the Church, when the latter was despoiled, and Henry VIII. gave the
estate to another Maundrell, it took the family name. Oliver Cromwell
left precious little of the Abbey, but it was rebuilt in the reign of
Charles II., and there is nothing later than the succeeding reign. That
chapel on the hill dates from Henry VIII. only. We have service there
on Sundays. Our vault is underneath. Only the old abbots and monks are
buried in the graveyard. Well? Are you satisfied?”

Lee nodded and smiled. She was so well satisfied that she hoped to lose
herself in the pleasurable sensation of a dream realised, and forget
certain disappointments and tremors. She had indulged in the dream of
an enthusiastic welcome by the tenantry, triumphal arches, and other
demonstrations of which she had read; for Cecil was the heir of this
splendid domain, and he was bringing home his bride. But they had
driven from the station as unobtrusively as two guests invited for a
week’s shooting. Tiny had said to her the day before her departure for
England:

“Make up your mind not to expect anything over there, and you will
save yourself a great deal of disappointment. When you feel a chill
settling over you, shake it off with the reflection that English ways
are not our ways. They are the most casual people in the world, and
their hospitality, although genuine, is so different from ours, that it
seems at first no hospitality at all.”

Lee deliberately forced these words into her mind as Cecil lifted her
from the carriage and she passed between two rigid footmen into the
crypt of the Abbey. The vast dim columned greyness of the crypt was
beautiful and impressive, and surely it was haunted in the midnight by
indignant friars, but, save for the approaching butler, it was empty.

“Aren’t your father and stepmother at home?” asked Lee, as Cecil joined
her.

“Father’s probably on the moors, and Emmy always lies down in the
afternoon,” said Cecil indifferently. “We’ll go straight up to my old
rooms. I hope you’ll like them, but of course if you don’t, you can
take your choice of the others.”

They followed the butler up an immense stone staircase, then down five
long corridors, whose innumerable windows framed so many different
views of the grounds that Lee felt sure nothing less than a reel of
silk would guide her back and forth. The corridors were lined with
pictures and cabinets and curiosities of many centuries, but Lee barely
glanced at them, so absorbed was she in wondering if the Abbey were a
mile square. Cecil’s rooms were in the tower, and the tower was at the
extreme right of the building’s front, but those corridors appeared to
traverse the entire back and every wing. At length they passed under
a low stone arch, ascended a spiral stone staircase, entered a small
stone room fitted up with a desk, a sofa, and two chairs, and Cecil
said:

“Here we are.”

“Well, I shall be glad to rest. Isn’t there a short cut to the grounds?
If there isn’t, I’ll have to take all my exercise indoors.”

“There’s a door at the foot of the tower. And you’ll be a famous walker
this time next year. You Californians are so lazy.”

He opened the door of the bedroom, a large old-fashioned
severely-furnished room with a dressing-room beyond. Lee, who was
luxurious by nature and habit, did not like it, but consoled herself
with the charming landscape beyond the window.

“Do you think you’ll like it up here?” asked Cecil anxiously. “I’d
never feel at home anywhere else. I insisted upon these rooms when I
was a boy, because Charles II. hid in them once for a week; but another
reason why I like them now is because they are out of earshot of all
the row--Emmy’s house-parties are rather noisy.”

“Oh, I am sure I shall love it, and I like the idea of being quite
alone with you; but do let me fix them up a little; I should feel like
a nun.”

“Do anything you like. And if that room is hopeless, there are any
number of boudoirs to choose from. This is the only part of the Abbey
that isn’t full of windows. And your maid will sleep quite close. We’ll
have a bell put in.” He took out his watch. “It’s just five. I’ll send
you tea at once, and then go and look up father. You’d better lie down
until it’s time to dress for dinner.”

“Well, for Heaven’s sake, come back for me, or I’ll not move.”

Cecil pinched her cheek, kissed her, and departed. Her own maid had
refused to cross the ocean, and Cecil had written to the housekeeper
requesting that a new one might await them. The girl arrived with the
tea-tray, asked Lee for her keys, and without awaiting orders, began
at once to unpack the trunks that had arrived with the travellers.
She accomplished her task so swiftly and so deftly, that Lee, with a
long train of inefficient maids in mind, reflected gratefully that she
would doubtless be spared any personal effort for the thousand and one
details which went to make up the physical comfort she loved.

The maid laid a wrapper over the back of a chair, dragged the trunks
into the antechamber, returned, and courtesied.

“Will your ladyship take off your frock and rest awhile?” she asked.

Lee gave a little jump. It was the first time she had been so saluted.
It made her feel a part of that ancient tower, she reflected, with what
humour was in her at the moment,--more at home. The maid undressed her,
and she lay down on the sofa in the sitting-room to await the return of
her lord. The maid, remarking that she should return at seven to dress
her ladyship for dinner, retired.




CHAPTER II


Although Lee was happy, she had a hard fight with an attack of tearful
repining. Surrounded all her life with demonstrative affection,
each homecoming after a brief holiday an event of rejoicing and
elaborate preparation, this chill casual entrance into a huge historic
pile--apparently uninhabited, and as homelike as a prison--flooded
her spirits with an icy rush. Cecil, who had been so close to her,
seemed to have mounted to a niche in the grey staircase, and turned
to stone. The domestic machinery appeared to run with the precision
of an expensive eight-day clock. Were her future associates equally
automatic? She remembered the inexcitable Mr. Maundrell, and shuddered.
Perhaps even “Emmy” by this time was a mere machine, warranted to have
hysterics at certain intervals. Surely a woman who would not sacrifice
her routine to receive a petted stepson after two years’ absence and a
stranger in a strange land--and so important an addition to the family
as her daughter-in-law--must be painfully systematised.

“However,” thought Lee, curling herself down in the hope of a nap, “I
can hold my own, that is one comfort. Thank Heaven, I have been brought
up all my life to think myself somebody, and that I have plenty of
money; it would be tragic if I were a timid, nervous, portionless
little person.”

She heard a light step, and the agreeable sibilation of linings and
flounces. In a second she had run to the mirror in her bedroom. Her
hair was smooth, and the wrapper of white camel’s hair and blue velvet
sufficiently enhancing. There was colour in her cheeks, and the only
suggestion of fatigue came from a vague shadow beneath her lashes. She
felt that she had nothing to fear from the critical eyes of the other
woman.

“May I come in?” Lady Barnstaple had rapped and opened the door
simultaneously. “How do you do? Are you tired? You look abominably
fresh. And how tall you are! I thought you’d be in a wrapper, so I
didn’t send for you. Lie down again, and I’ll sit here. These chairs
are stuffed with bricks.”

She was a short woman, with a still beautiful figure above the waist;
it was growing massive below. Her colouring was nondescript, but her
features must once have been delicate and piquant; now they were sharp,
and there were fine lines about the eyes, and weak determined mouth.
Her cheeks were charmingly painted, her hair elaborately coiffed;
she wore an airy tea-gown of black chiffon, with pink bows, in which
she looked like a smart fluffy doll. Her carriage, short as she was,
would have been impressive had it not been for the restlessness of
her manner. If she had come to England with a Chicago accent, she had
sent it home long since. Her voice was abrupt and unpleasing, but its
syllabic presentment was wholly English, and her manner was curiously
like an Englishwoman’s affectation of American animation. Her eyes, for
some time after she entered the room, had the round vacant stare of a
newly-arrived infant. When the exigencies of conversation removed this
stare, they flashed with the nervous irritable domineering character
of the woman. It was some time before they were removed from Lee’s
face for an instant. Lee was tired, but she obeyed the instinct of the
savage who scents a fight, and sat upright.

“You won’t stay in this hole, of course--one might as well live in a
dungeon--there is one at the bottom of the tower, for that matter.
In the only letter that Cecil condescended to write me after his
engagement, he said he wanted his old rooms to be ready for him, and he
hoped I wouldn’t put any guests in them. But of course you can’t stand
them. Fancy not being able to turn round without falling over a man!
You’d be at each other’s throats in a week.”

“Isn’t there another room underneath these that I could fix up as a
sitting-room? I like this tower.”

“Fancy, now! I believe there is a lumber-room, or something; but what
can you do with a tower-room with walls five feet thick, and _such_
windows? Of course I don’t know your tastes, but I must have fluffy
airy things in bright colours about me, and floods of light--through
pink shades, nowadays,” she added, with a bitter little laugh. “What a
lovely complexion you have! I had one too, once, but it’s gone!--it’s
gone! I don’t know whether I’m pleased or not that you’re a beauty.
Barnstaple assured me that it was impossible you could be, that Cecil
must be mad--the English children are so pretty; but I thought it
unlikely that Cecil would sacrifice his chances of a fortune for
anything less than downright beauty. Of course you’ll be a great
card for me. I can make out a lot of you; but on the other hand it’s
disgusting having anything so fresh forever at one’s elbow. Repose is
not the fashion now, and of course you are a bit of a prude--young
married women who are in love with their husbands are always so
fiercely virtuous!--and of course you haven’t half enough money; but
I can see that you will be a success. We all know that you’re clever,
and they like clever people over here, and your voice isn’t nasal--it’s
really lovely. It’s a thousand pities--a thousand pities that you
couldn’t bring Cecil a fortune!” Her voice gave a sudden querulous
break. “He could have had one--probably a dozen--for the asking, and
I think the Abbey should have been his first consideration. He won’t
inherit a penny from Barnstaple, and Heaven knows what I’ll have left!
He can’t possibly keep it up on what you and he have together--your
house in town will take every penny--and he’ll either have to break the
entail and sell it, or rent the moor, and cut the rest up into farms,
and perhaps let the Abbey itself. I should turn in my grave, for the
Abbey is the one real love of my life--”

Her restless eyes had been moving about the room; they suddenly met her
daughter-in-law’s. Lee had very beautiful eyes, but they were capable
of a blue-hot flame of passion at times. Lady Barnstaple blinked
rapidly; her own seemed scorching under that blue-fire.

“Oh, of course, it doesn’t signify! Nothing really signifies in this
world. I really didn’t mean to be nasty, but I always flare up when
the Abbey is in question--and then that old superstition!--But bother!
I really want to be nice! Do tell me about your clothes. If you had
sent me a lining I could have ordered everything for you in Paris. I
shouldn’t have minded running over a bit.”

“My things were made in New York, and will probably answer.”

“Oh, of course! New York’s every bit as smart as Paris, only it eats
your head off. Have you many jewels?”

“Very few--compared with the shop-window decorations of New York and
English women.”

“We do overload ourselves,” said Lady Barnstaple amiably. “I’ve seen
women turn actually grey under the weight of their tiaras. Still,
unless you blaze at a great party, you are simply not seen. But of
course the Barnstaple jewels are mine till I die, and I sold all my
own after having them copied; you could wear some of those if you
liked, although, being fresh from the other side, you’d probably scorn
imitations.”

“I certainly should.”

“Oh, you’ll get over all that! We are all shams nowadays.”

“You are certainly frank enough.”

“A mere habit--a fashion. Everybody shouts all he knows just now. We
even talk of things at the table that would quite shock--Chicago,
for instance. And as for your poor little San Francisco--there are
the most amusing points of resemblance between the Americans and the
English middle-class.”

“Then perhaps you would not mind telling me if you would have taken the
trouble to meet us this afternoon if I had brought a million with me.”

“Dear me, no; not if you had arrived at such an unearthly hour. I
assure you I did not intend to be rude, but I always sleep from half
after four to half after five. I don’t take my tea with the others.”

“And there would have been no demonstration, I suppose.”

“Well--yes, frankly, perhaps there would have been. Barnstaple
did say something about it, but I told him I couldn’t think of
affording it, and I couldn’t. Don’t be bitter about it; but we need
money--money--money so horribly.”

“I am not bitter in the least. I merely asked out of curiosity.”

“Oh, my dear, when one is young and beautiful one would be a fool to
be bitter about anything. You probably think me a devil, but if you
knew what my life has been! To-day I’m in one of my moods. I’m sorry it
happened so, and I hate myself for being nasty, but I can’t help it. I
haven’t any particular reason for being; they just come down on me, and
I want to scratch everybody’s eyes out. I may be as cheerful as a lark,
and as amiable as a kitten for a week. You have no idea what a popular
little person I am!”

Lee’s anger had passed, giving way to a commingling of curiosity,
disgust and pity. Was this a sample of engrafted America? She asked if
there were any other English-Americans staying at the Abbey.

Lady Barnstaple scowled, and the scowl routed what little youth she had
left. “I’m not on speaking terms with a single American but yourself
and Lady Arrowmount, and I barely know her. I adore the English, but
the jealousy and rivalry of other Americans! But I’m sent in ahead of
the ones I hate most! I am!--I am! It’s been war to the knife between
three of us for years now, and I’ve got to go under, because I haven’t
the money to smash ’em. That is one reason why I’m a bit off my head
about Cecil not having married a million. With a rich and beautiful--
But here comes your maid. I must go to mine. I’ll swear you shall think
me an angel to-morrow.”




CHAPTER III


Lee found no time to think that night. As soon as her maid had left
her, Cecil entered from his dressing-room and said that his father
would like to see her for a moment before they joined the guests in the
library.

“I saw Emmy for a few minutes, and she said she had been to see
you--and many complimentary things.”

“How kind of her!”

“Didn’t you like her? Most people do.”

“It’s not polite to criticise your relations, but I may be excused, as
she is my countrywoman first. I have been carefully brought up, and I
never before met that sort of American. Of course the Middle West is
very new, and it is hardly fair to criticise it, but I should think
twenty years or so of England would have done something more than
remove her accent.”

Cecil smiled. “American women are so popular in England that I fancy
they grow more and more American as the years go by. I don’t know much
about it.”

“It is rather odd having to stand just behind a stepmother whom I
shouldn’t think of knowing at home.”

“Of course there are no distinctions in regard to Americans over here;
it is all personality and money. Emmy hasn’t much of the first in a
large sense, but she knows how to make herself popular. People find her
likeable and amusing--even the women, because, of course, she is so
different from themselves; and she is really the best-hearted little
creature in the world. I see you don’t like her, but wait a little;
perhaps she was nervous to-day.”

“I am not going to be so commonplace as to quarrel with my
mother-in-law, but I certainly shall not like her. As you would say,
she is not my own sort.”

“Neither am I,” said Cecil laughing, “but you like me.”

“We represent the fusion of the two greatest nations on earth. Why do
not you tell me that I am looking particularly well?”

They were traversing one of the long corridors. Cecil glanced uneasily
about, then put his arm round her and kissed her.

“I am doing my best to live up to the American standard, and tell you
once a day how much I love you, and how beautiful you are. When do you
think you will take it for granted?”

“Never! never! Are you proud of me to-night?”

“You never looked lovelier--except when we were married. You nearly
knocked me over then.”

“What a pity I can’t wear a wedding-veil on all state occasions.”

“I have a suspicion that as you are a bride you should wear white for a
time.”

“All my day summer frocks are white, and I simply won’t wear it at
night. I shall take full advantage of the fact that I am an American.”

She wore a wonderful gown of flame-coloured gauze, more golden than
red, and so full of shimmer and sheen, that she had reflected, with
some malice, it would outblaze all of Lady Barnstaple’s jewels, and had
concluded to wear none.

“To-morrow and the next day I am going out with the other men, and
you are coming to luncheon with us on the moor--at least Emmy and the
others generally come when the weather is fine; but on Sunday I’ll show
you over the Abbey. I’d like to do it myself, but I’m afraid we can’t
get into the state bedrooms until the guests are gone.”

“Are they in the rooms that kings and queens and all the rest have
slept in?”

“You are improving. How is it you didn’t say ‘kings and queens and
things’? I’m afraid they are. This house is all corridors and rooms
for entertaining and boudoirs; there are not more than twenty-five
bedrooms. Here we are.”

They entered a small room furnished as a study, and Lord Barnstaple
entered from the adjoining bedroom almost immediately. He looked rather
more impassive and rather more cynical, but hardly ten years older. His
monocle might never have been removed. Somewhat to Lee’s surprise, he
not only kissed her, but shook her warmly by the hand.

“So another American is my fate, after all,” he said. “You see, I
suspected as much the day I left. Have you ever had hysterics?”

“Never!”

“I almost hope you have a temper--oh, you have, you have, with those
eyes!” He chuckled. “Turn it loose on her! Give it to her! Gad! but I’d
like to see her well trounced! She doesn’t mind me, but you’re a woman,
and young, and beautiful, and--nearly twice her height. Gad! how she’ll
hate you! But trounce her--trounce her! Don’t give her any quarter!”

Cecil laughed, “Why do you sow these seeds of discord in the family?”

“Oh, we’ll keep out of the way. But fancy Emmy limp and worn out, and
not daring to call her soul her own! ’Twould be the happiest day of my
life! But I’m famished.”

They entered the library only a moment before dinner was announced. It
was a very long room breaking the series of corridors, and only three
times their width. Its panelling was black, and its books appeared to
be musty with age; above the high cases were many Maundrells; even the
furniture looked as ancient as the Abbey. But flooding all was a pink
glare of electric light.

The room was full of people, who regarded the bride with descriptive
curiosity. Lady Barnstaple was flitting about, her expression in
perfect order, her superlatively smart French gown quivering with
animation. She came at once toward Lee, followed by a tall good-looking
young man, whom she presented as Captain Monmouth.

“What a love of a gown! I’m so glad you know how to dress!” she
exclaimed. “You are to go in with Miss Pix,” she added to her stepson.

Cecil drew his brows together. “Why do you send me in with Miss Pix?”
he muttered angrily. “You know she bores me to death.”

“To punish you for not marrying her. You can’t get out of it; she
expects you.”

Lee overheard the conversation. So did Lord Barnstaple, who was
laughing softly at his son’s discomfiture. She had no time to question
him, for they went down at once to dinner, and his attention for a
time was claimed by the woman on his left. Cecil was on the other side
of the table, some eight or ten seats down. Lee studied his partner
attentively while talking with Captain Monmouth, who sat on her right.

The immense room looked like the banqueting hall of kings, but, so
far as Lee could judge--and she had one half of the guests within
her visual range--the young woman with the dreadful name looked more
the traditionally cold haughty aristocrat, for whom such rooms were
built, than any one present. The others appeared to have nothing of
the massive repose of their caste; they seemed, in fact, to vie with
each other in animation, and they certainly talked very loud and very
fast. But Miss Pix had that air of arrested development peculiar to the
best statuary. Her skin was as white as the tablecloth, her profile
was mathematically straight, suggesting an antique marble or a sheep.
Her small flaxen head was held very high, and her eyelids had the most
aristocratic droop that Lee had ever conceived of.

“Who is she?” the bride asked her companion, who appeared to be an
easy and untraditional person. “And why is she so different from the
rest--with that name? She looks like one of Ouida’s heroines--the quite
impossible ones.”

Captain Monmouth laughed. “Her father was a brewer, disgustingly rich.
Her parents are dead. She and her brother--dreadful bounder--have been
trying to get into Society for years--only been really successful the
last three. Lady Barnstaple took ’em up, for some reason or other.
She’s usually rather nasty to new people. Only girl, and has three
millions, but doesn’t marry and isn’t popular--scarcely opens her
mouth, and has never been known to unbend. Fancy it’s rather on her
mind that she wasn’t born into the right set. So she fakes it for all
it’s worth, as you Americans would say. I do like American slang. Can
you teach me some?”

“I know more than I’ve ever dared to use, and you shall have it all, as
my husband disapproves of it. I think Miss Pix has done rather well.
She is what we would call a good ‘bluffer.’”

“Quite so--quite so. The women say all sorts of nasty things about
her--that all that white is put on with a brush or a sponge or
something, as well as that haughty nostril; and that she has had the
muscles cut in her eyelids--ghastly thought, ain’t it? Nature gave her
that profile, of course; can’t have the bridge of your nose raised--can
you?--even with three millions. It’s the profile that made all the
trouble, I fancy. She’s livin’ up to it. Must be deuced aggravatin’ to
be born with a cameo profile and a Lancashire accent. No wonder she’s
frozen.”

“Has she got rid of the accent?”

“Oh, rather! She was educated in Paris with a lot of swagger French
girls. She’s quite correct--in a prehistoric way--only she overdoes it.”

His attention was claimed by the woman on his other side, and Lee asked
Lord Barnstaple:

“What did Lady Barnstaple mean? Did she want Cecil to marry that Miss
Pix?”

“Didn’t she! She never worked so hard for anything in her life. She
was ill for two weeks after Cecil went off. It wouldn’t have been a
bad thing. I’d have wanted it myself if she hadn’t. I like you--always
did--but I wish to gad you had more money! Don’t you think you’ll
discover a gold mine on that ranch of yours some day?”

Lee laughed, although the sensation of dismay induced by Lady
Barnstaple’s visit returned at his words. “I’m afraid not. Sulphur and
arsenic and iron are as much as can be expected of one poor little
ranch.”

“Perhaps we can sell the springs to a syndicate--who knows? Syndicates
are always buyin’ things and givin’ seven figgers for ’em. I’ll tell
you what we’ll do. The next old Jew or brewer that wants to get into
Society we’ll send for and tell him that the ranch at seven figgers
is our price for a week’s shooting at the Abbey and three dinners in
town,” and he gave his ungenial chuckle.

“You aren’t all really as bad as that over here, are you?”

“Oh, we’re mixed, like you Americans. We’re all right so long as
we don’t need money; but, you see, we need such a cursed lot of
it--several thousand times more than the nobodies who sit outside
and criticise us. It’s in our blood, and when we can’t get it one way
we try another. We all cling to certain ideals, though: I’ve never
gambled with a parvenu. It’s true I made an ass of myself and married
one, but I pulled up just after. Miss Pix is the only other that has
got inside my doors. That’s the one point Emmy and I agree on: I have
my ideals”--he laughed again--“and, like all upstarts, she despises
other upstarts. Monmouth is the only person in the house except Miss
Pix without an hereditary title, and he’s grandson of a duke, and
a Guardsman. Some of the smartest women of the day are untitled,
but Emmy won’t have ’em. Wonder who she’ll have this time five
years?--Second-rate actors and long-haired poets, probably.”

Lee wondered at even a dilapidated set of ideals, and at a pride--and
pride was written all over him--which would permit him to live on a
woman’s money. Of course he may have argued that Lady Barnstaple was
paying a fair yearly rent for the title and the Abbey, but it was an
old-world view-point, to which it would take a long period of habit to
accustom the new. She wondered if she had any right to despise a man
who was a mere result of a civilisation so different from her own, but
felt unindulgent. In the United States, if a penniless man married for
money, he had the decency to affect the habit of the worker, if it were
only to write alleged poems for the magazines, or to attach himself to
a Legation.

After dinner she went with the women into another immense room, also
panelled to the ceiling. Each panel was set with a portrait, several
of which she knew at a glance to be the originals of bygone masters.
Their flesh tints were uniformly pink: Lee glanced upward. The stone
ceiling, arched and heavily carved, was set with electric pears. It was
an irritating anomaly.

Lee thought the women looked very nice, and wondered if she was ever
to be introduced to anybody. Emmy was flitting about again--rather
the upper part of her seemed to flit as if propelled by the somewhat
unwieldy machinery below. She looked indubitably common, despite her
acquired “air” and the exquisite taste of her millinery; and Lee
wondered what these women--who, well-dressed or ill, loud-voiced or
semi-subdued, delicately or heavily modelled of face, intensely modern
all of them, looked what they were, and as if they assumed the passing
fad in manners, even the fad of vulgarity, as easily and adjustably as
a new sleeve or a larger waist--could find in this particular American
to their fancy.

“Do sit here by me!” A young woman on a small sofa swept aside her
skirts and nodded brightly to Lee. She had sat opposite at dinner,
and spoken across the table several times to Captain Monmouth, whom
she addressed as “Larry.” She had a large open voice and a large open
laugh, and, to use an unforgettable term of Lord Barnstaple’s, she
rather sprawled. But she was exquisitely fine of feature and cold of
colouring, although charged straight up through her lithe figure with
assumed animation or ungoverned nervousness, Lee could not determine
which. The bride sat down at once.

“You are Lady Mary Gifford,” she said smiling. “I asked Captain
Monmouth who you were.”

“Oh, did you ask who I was? How nice! I wish everybody in the room was
talking about me as they are about you. But my day for that is past.
Would you guess I was twenty-four?”

Lee shook her head, smiling. In spite of the persistent depression
within her, she found her new friends very interesting.

“Twenty-four, not married, and only sixty pounds a year to dress
on! Isn’t it a tragedy? I wish I were an American. They’re all so
frightfully rich. At least, all those are that come over here; they
wouldn’t dare to come if they weren’t.”

“I have dared, and I am not--not as you count riches.”

“No--really now? But of course you’re joking, Cecil Maundrell simply
had to marry a ton----”

Lee laughed, with a nearer approach to hysteria than she had ever
known. “Would you mind not talking about that?” she said. “If ever I
know you as well as I hope I shall, I’ll tell you why.”

“Fancy my being so rude! But I’m quite horribly outspoken, and Cecil
Maundrell’s so good-looking, of course he’s been discussed threadbare.
Of course we all knew the Abbey must go to another American, and we’ve
been so anxious to see you. Emmy is a duck, but she’s not a beauty--few
Americans really are, to my mind. They just ‘chic it’ as the French
painters say. Everybody is simply staring at you, and you’re so used to
it, you don’t appear to see them. You’re going to be a great success.
I know all the signs--seen ’em too often!”

“Well, I hope so. I suppose an American failure would be painfully
conspicuous.”

“Oh, _wouldn’t_ she! Tell me, is it really true that you have different
grades of society, as we have--an upper and middle-class, and all that
sort of thing? Some of the Americans over here have always turned up
their noses at Emmy, and it seems so very odd--you are only a day or
two old; how _can_ you have so many distinctions? Of course I know that
some are rich and some are poor, which means that some are educated and
some are not, but I should think that would make just two classes. But
Emmy is--has been--awfully rich, and yet she has had a hard fight with
two or three other Americans that are dead against her. She hasn’t it
in her, poor little soul, to be quite as smart as Lady Vernon Spencer
and Mrs. Almeric Sturt--you could be!--but she’s ‘popular,’ and unless
the Abbey burns down--oh, it’s the sweetest thing in England, and the
shootings are famous! But do explain to me.”

“About our social differences? Of course to be really anybody you must
have come from the South, one way or another.”

“What South?--South America?”

Lee endeavoured to explain, but Lady Mary quickly lost interest, and
made one of her dazzling deflections: it was evident that more than
three minutes of any one subject would bore her hopelessly. But Lee
had realised in a flash the utter indifference of the English to the
most imposing of the new world’s family trees. The haughty Southerner
and the raw Westerner were “varieties,” nothing more. She might be
pronounced better style than her stepmother, and doubtless would
be more respected, but no one would ever think of looking down the
perspective of each for the cause. She felt doubly depressed.




CHAPTER IV


She awoke late next morning, after a restless night Cecil had risen
without disturbing her and gone to his grouse. In a happier frame of
mind she would have indulged in a sentimental regret at this defection,
but now she only wanted to be alone to think; and to think she must get
out-of-doors.

The maid was in the outer room awaiting orders, and went for her tea
at once. Lee hurriedly dressed herself, and while she was attacking
her light breakfast told the girl to go down to the foot of the tower
and see if the outer door could be opened. At the end of a half-hour
the rusty key and hinges had been induced to move, and Lee, having
convinced herself that no one was in sight, left the shelter of her
tower and went hastily toward the woods.

The air had a wonderful softness and freshness, and the country showed
a dull richness of colour under a pale sky. The woods looked black as
she approached them, but within they were open and full of light. There
were no majestic aisles here, no cavernous vistas, but, in their way,
they were lovely, as many trees massed together with a wilderness of
bracken between must always be.

Lee selected as secluded a spot as she could find, and sat down to
think. She was terrified and depressed and homesick, and longed
passionately for some one of her “own sort” to whom she could present
the half of her troubles, and with whom dissect her uneasy forebodings.
Cecil was not the man to whom a woman could take her daily worries. He
would be a rock of strength in the great primary afflictions of life;
he looked after her as carefully as if she were blind and lame; and she
had not been called upon for an independent decision since the day of
her marriage. Moreover, she was firmly convinced that no man had ever
loved a woman so much before; but, she had admitted it with dismay more
than once, there was a barrier. It was humiliating, almost ridiculous,
that she, Lee Tarleton, should live to confess it, but she was just a
little in awe of her husband. Why, she had not been able to guess until
yesterday, for he had been the most enamoured of bridegrooms; he had
even yielded laughingly to more than one whim (tentative, each), and he
had been rather less high and mighty than before marriage; but, and he
had given her many opportunities to look into him, at the end of each
of his vistas there was something terrifyingly like a blank wall. It
had not worried her deeply in the redwoods, where she had been as happy
as mortals ever are, nor yet on their long journey home, monotonous and
uninteresting as it had been, but she had instinctively refrained from
talking over her own small affairs with him, as had been her habit with
Randolph and the other members of her family; and it was not until the
flat disappointment of the drive from the station yesterday, that she
had suspected what this deprivation would mean to her.

And it was not until she had looked down upon the Abbey that she had
begun to understand. Centuries had gone to the welding together of
Cecil Maundrell, and he was as coherent and unmalleable as the walls of
his historic home, as aloof in spirit, as self-contained as if he no
more had mingled with men than had the Abbey altered its expression to
the loud restless fads with which it so often resounded. His wife might
be the object of his most passionate affection, she might even be his
companion, for he was the man to satisfy the wants of his nature, but
it was doubtful if he was capable of opening the inner temple of his
spirit, had such a thing ever occurred to him. He would want so much of
a woman, and no more. He was English; he had been born, not made. And
the men within whose influences her mind and character had developed
had been little more than liquids in a huge furnace whose very moulds
were always changing.

But Lee put this new interpretation of Cecil aside for the present,
realising that it would torment her sufficiently in the future, and
that she had better shut her eyes as long as she could, and linger over
the pleasant draughts of the moment.

But it was of the future that she thought, and she longed for wings
that she might fly to California for a day. England was beautiful,
and it satisfied her imagination, but its absolute unlikeness to
California, combined with the incidents of her brief sojourn, filled
her with a desperate homesickness. It might have been dissipated in a
moment if she had had one Californian to talk to--Mrs. Montgomery, or
Coralie, or Randolph. On the whole, she would have preferred Randolph,
not only because she had run to him with most of her troubles during
the last ten years, but because his advice had always been sound and
practical.

His assertion some years before that the Maundrells needed millions,
and Cecil’s subsequent graceful remark that he had argued with himself
on the folly of marrying anything under a fortune, had been mere words
to her. It is difficult for a Californian who has not known grinding
poverty or the suicidal care of vernal millions to realise the actual
value of money. In that land of the poppy, where the luxuries of
severer climes are a drug in the market, where the earth over which
people sprawl their tasteless “palatial residences” is, comparatively
speaking, inexpensive, where a man with a hundred thousand dollars can
live almost as smartly as a man with a million, where there is little
inclination for display, even among the fungi, and where position is in
no wise dependent upon the size of one’s income, one never conceives
the most approximate idea of the absolute necessity of great wealth
to men born to other conditions of climate, race, and to the enormous
responsibilities of territorial inheritance.

To Lee, millions had always been associated with vulgarity, as
belonging exclusively to low-born people whom Mrs. Montgomery would
not have permitted to cross her door-mat. It is doubtful if her father
or Mr. Montgomery or Mr. Brannan had ever been worth eight hundred
thousand dollars, although they had been stars of the first magnitude
in their day. Colonel Belmont had left little more, and the Yorbas
and Gearys were the only families of the old set who were known by
their riches. The great wealth of these had meant nothing to Lee; Mrs.
Montgomery lived quite as well, and entertained far more brilliantly.
Her own income had seemed very large to her, her jump from eighty
dollars a month to nearly a thousand one of the glittering romances
of California. She had sincerely pitied the people whose malodorous
opulence made them the target of the terrible Mr. Bierce, and whose
verbal infelicities had contributed standing jests to those outer rings
of Society which had opened to them. To-day she was almost ready to
envy them bitterly, to barter her honoured name and illustrious kin for
their ungrammatical millions.

Lord and Lady Barnstaple and Lady Mary Gifford, even the speechless
Miss Pix, had succeeded in making her feel as guilty as if Cecil were
a half-witted boy whom she had entrapped. One of the great homes of
England--one, moreover, to which he was passionately attached--was the
price he had paid for his wife. She was too charged with the arrogance
of youth and beauty to wonder if he would live to regret his choice;
but she was far-sighted enough in other matters, and she was as certain
of his capacity for suffering as for deep and intense affection. The
day he lost the Abbey he would cease to be Cecil Maundrell.

And she had cause bitterly to reproach herself; Randolph had begged her
to sell her ranch and invest in the Peruvian mine. She had replied that
she “had enough,” in tranquil scorn of the United Statesian’s frantic
lust for gold. If she had only known! She conceived a humble and
enduring respect for a metal that meant so much more to man than the
response to his material wants and his greed.

She went to the edge of the wood, and looked down on the Abbey. Its
lids seemed lowered in haughty mute reproach. She saw a thousand new
beauties in it, and knew that she should shake and thrill with the
pride of its possession, exult in the destiny which had made it her
home, were it not that the stranger bided his time at the gates.

Had Cecil Maundrell been mad? Were all men really mad when they loved a
woman? Or had it been that he, too, had but an abstract appreciation of
the value of money? This splendid estate had fitted him too easily, and
he had worn it too long, for it not to seem as inevitable as the stars,
in spite of much desultory talk; and his personal wants were simple,
and had always been liberally supplied.

She turned her back on the Abbey, which seemed actually to lift its
lids and send her a glance of stern appeal, and returned to her nook.
What should she do? There was not a cell of morbid matter in her
brain; she contemplated neither suicide nor divorce--in favour of Miss
Pix. There seemed but one solution of the difficulty. She must find a
million--dollars, if not pounds. The latter were desirable, but the
former would do. She decided to write to Randolph that very day. He had
a genius for making money, and he must place it at her disposal.

She heard the sound of many voices rising with the slight ascent
between the Abbey and the wood, and hastily sought the deceptive
shades beyond. These people had been very charming to her the night
before, and she had no doubt that she should, in time, like all good
Americans, fall under their spell; but at present she rather resented
their failure to differentiate between herself and “Emmy.” And she was
harassed, and they were not her “own sort.”




CHAPTER V


She escaped from the wood into her tower, and wrote a letter to
Randolph. She made no attempt at diplomacy; she told him the truth.
Randolph loved her, and she was a woman of sufficient humour, but there
was no one else to appeal to, and she argued that he would respect
her frankness; and it had been his habit for many years to obey her
commands. Moreover, in the sequestered recesses of his brain he was
a Southerner, chivalrous and impulsive. She believed that he must by
now have accepted the fact that she was another man’s wife, and she
believed that he would help her.

After breakfast, which she took in solitude, as she was very late, she
went to call on her mother-in-law, who had graciously intimated the
night before that she would be visible at twelve. The maid conducted
her to a suite of apartments removed from Lord Barnstaple’s by almost
the width of the building, and Lee wondered if he had caused the walls
to be padded. The bedroom was certainly very pink, and as fluffy as
much lace and fluttering silk could make it. Miss Pix, in a white serge
tailor-made frock, was seated in a large carved chair, with her profile
in bold relief. Lady Barnstaple, in a pink peignoir, looked like a ball
of floss in the depths of an arm chair. She smiled radiantly as Lee
entered.

“So good of you to come!” she said. “Lee, dear, this is my intimate
friend, Miss Pix. How perfectly brilliant you look! Of course you have
been out. I almost went myself. I feel _quite_ fit to-day; one would
think I’d never had a nerve. Victoria, my beautiful daughter-in-law has
been such a belle in the States, and has had an unheard-of number of
offers, three of them from immensely wealthy members of the peerage,
Lord Arrowmount’s friends. But it was an old boy-and-girl affair
between her and Cecil, and I think it is all too romantic and sweet!
I’ve felt ever so much younger since she came. I never had one spark
of romance in my life. Men are in the way, though--we’ll have ever
so much nicer times a year from now when you and Cecil have learned
to exist without each other--not that I can complain that Barnstaple
was ever in my way. Things might have turned out differently if he
had been occasionally, for I was young enough, and romantic enough,
when I married him; but he always was, and always will be, the most
cold-blooded brute in England. Once I cared, but now I don’t. I’m
content to have got the upper hand of him. It was that or being simply
ground to powder myself. But, to say nothing of the fact that he
sold himself in the most bare-faced manner, I soon learned that when
I played a tune on my nerves he’d give in at any price; there are
more ways of getting ahead of an Englishman than one. Still he was a
fascinating creature--but that’s passed. Cecil always was sweet to me,
and I’ve always simply adored him. If _he’d_ been his father--well! It
would have made me simply ill if he hadn’t married a woman worthy of
him. I believe he’s the only human being I’ve ever really loved. And
he simply adores--but I shan’t be personal. Your clothes are really
perfect--”

She rattled on, with brief intermissions, for nearly an hour. It was
evident that her mood had undergone a metamorphosis in the night, and
that she desired to be amiable. Lee could understand her “popularity”;
her manner and certain intonations were most fascinating, and she
constantly swept little glances of suffering appeal and voiceless
admiration into her disciplined orbs. Her tiny hands fluttered, and
from head to foot, in a pink light, she pleased the eye. Her smile
was rare and dazzling. Lee wondered why, when she was young, Lord
Barnstaple had not loved her.

Miss Pix made one or two sensible remarks in a low excellent voice,
which had evidently received scientific training. When Cecil was
flashing among his stepmother’s conversational pyrotechnics, her cheek
looked less like paper for a moment, but her profile stood the strain.

Suddenly Lady Barnstaple jumped up. “You must dress and I must dress,”
she said to Lee. “We’re going out to luncheon on the moor, and
afterward we’ll stay and watch them shoot, if you like. Of course,
everything will interest you so much--I envy you! I’m sick to death of
shooting-talk myself! One doesn’t hear another topic from the twelfth
of August until the first of November, and then one has hunting and
racing for a change. I live for the London season--and the Riviera.
I’ve had to give up dear, delightful Homburg. Well, ta, ta!”




CHAPTER VI


A fortnight later Lee scanned her new boudoir with complacency and
pride. The large tower-room beneath the suite above had been cleared
of its rubbish, and she had availed herself to the full of Lady
Barnstaple’s careless permission to take what she liked. Lee liked
beautiful things, and, having been surrounded by many during the
greater part of her life, regarded the best that could be had as her
natural right. Therefore her stone walls had disappeared behind ancient
tapestries, which she had thoughtfully selected from different rooms,
that they might not be missed. Round two sides of the room ran a deep
divan, made by a village carpenter, which was covered with Persian
rugs, and cushions of many, but harmonious styles. Persian rugs also
covered the floor. Some of the furniture was carved, high-backed, and
ancient, cut with the Maundrell arms; other pieces were modern and
luxurious. In two of the window-seats, which were five feet deep,
were cushions, in the others noble marbles and bronzes. The room was
further glorified by a writing-table which had belonged to Charles II.,
a wonderful brass and ivory chest with secret drawers which had been
the property of Katherine of Aragon, an ancient spinet with a modern
interior, a table inlaid with lapis-lazuli, a tortoise-shell cabinet,
and a low bookcase curiously carved. On the mantel, heavily draped with
the spoils of an obscure window, and on the top of the bookcase, were
not too many bibelots, selected after much thought and comparison. The
tapestries could meet across the narrow windows at night, but flat
against the glass were silk curtains of a pale yellow colour, as a
background for the marbles and bronzes. Altogether, Lee felt that she
had some reason to be proud of her taste.

She sat down to await her father-in-law. He was kept at home by a
sprained wrist, and she had invited him to be the first to pay her a
call. He entered in a few moments, raised his eyebrows, then gave vent
to a chuckle of unusual length.

“What amuses you?” asked Lee, rather tartly. “Don’t you think my room
is pretty?”

“Oh, it’s charming! It’s close to being the prettiest room in the
house. I congratulate you. You have excellent taste--and you are
delicious!”

Lee never expected to understand her father-in-law, and felt little
inclination to attempt the dissecting of him; she merely begged him to
take the most comfortable chair, placed a cushion under his elbow, and
sat down opposite him with an expression of genuine welcome; she liked
him so much better than she liked Emmy that she was almost persuaded
that she loved him. And he had been consistently kind and polite to
her, whereas her mother-in-law had twice been the victim of a “mood,”
and cut her dead in the corridors.

“It’s just as well to tell you,” said Lord Barnstaple, “that if Emmy
happens to come to this room when she’s in one of her infernal tempers,
she’ll raise the deuce of a row, and order you to send these things
where they came from. If she does, stand to your guns, and tell her I
gave ’em to you. They’re mine, not hers. Don’t refer her to me, for
God’s sake! You’re quite able to take care of yourself.”

“She shan’t have them--and thanks so much. You can smoke if you like.
I’ll light it for you.”

“Upon my word, I believe this will be the pleasantest room in the
house--a haven of refuge! Well, how do you like us? What do you
think of us? You’re an interesting child. I’m curious to hear your
impressions.”

“I must say I do feel rather like a child since I came over here”--Lee
made this admission with a slight pout--“and I thought I was quite a
person-of-the-world after two winters in San Francisco and one in the
East.”

“Oh, we’re pickled; you’re only rather well seasoned over there. But do
you like us?”

“Yes--I think I do. The women are very nice to me, and although I don’t
understand half they say, and they are quite unlike all my old ideals,
and I’m never exactly sure whether they’ll speak to me the next time
they see me, I feel as if I’d get on with them. I must say, though, I
don’t see any reason why I should attempt to make myself over into a
bad imitation of them, like Emmy----”

“Some of them--your countrywomen--are such jolly good imitations--that
they no longer amuse the Prince of Wales. Emmy happens to be a fool.”

“The men look as if they’d be really charming if they could talk about
anything but grouse, and I had one last night at dinner who was so
tired he never made one remark from the time he sat down till he got
up.”

“Men are not amusing during the shooting season; but, after all, my
dear, men were not especially designed to amuse women.”

“That’s your way of looking at it.”

“Do you expect Cecil to amuse you?”

“Cecil has stayed home with me three whole days, and we’ve roamed all
over the place, and had the jolliest times imaginable. He has a lot of
fun in him when he has nothing on his mind.”

“I never attempt to discuss men during those periods when they are
engaged in proving the rule. Cecil is in love. Long may he remain
so”--he waved his uninjured hand gallantly--“but unless I am much
mistaken, the longer you know him the less amusing you will find him.
It is the prerogative of greatness to be dull. England is the greatest
nation on earth, and is as dull as befits its dignity--mind you, I
don’t say stupid, which is a wholly different quantity. Conversely,
many of the most brilliant men living are Englishmen, but they are not
great in the national sense. Read _The Times_, and you will see what I
mean.”

“Do you think Cecil has it in him to be great?” asked Lee eagerly.

“Sometimes I’ve thought so. He has as good a brain for its age as
there is in England, and I believe he’s ambitious. Do you think he is?”

“I can’t make out. I don’t think he knows, himself.”

“He’ll find out as soon as he’s in the running. Just now I fancy he
imagines himself oppressed with the weight of family traditions, which
I have neglected. But there are no half measures about him, and if he
develops ambition he’ll make straight for the big prizes. It will be
all or nothing.”

“I hope he’s ambitious.”

“Ah! Ambition is an exacting mistress--a formidable rival!”

“I’d not be afraid of that; I don’t know that I can explain.”

“Do--try.” Lord Barnstaple could be very charming when he chose; he
tossed aside his cynical impassivity as it were a mask, and assumed
an expression of profound and tender interest. His son was the only
living being that he loved, and he had planned for an uninterrupted
interview with Lee in order to ascertain, as far as was possible,
what were Cecil’s prospects of happiness. He liked and admired his
daughter-in-law as far as he knew her, but he despised and distrusted
all women, and he had heretofore hated Americans with monotonous
consistency.

Lee was very susceptible to a warm personal interest, and this was
the first she had experienced in England. And she was in a surcharged
state of mind to speak out freely at the first sign of unmistakable
sympathy. Lord Barnstaple took the one step farther that was necessary.

“I am not given to sentimentalising, but I love Cecil. And next to him,
I want you to regard me as your best friend in England.”

He was rewarded and somewhat taken aback by an enthusiastic hug and a
kiss on either cheek. He laughed, but he felt more amiably disposed
toward Americans.

“Now, tell me,” he said, “why do you want Cecil to be ambitious? Do you
want a great political _salon_?”

“I shouldn’t mind a bit, but that’s not the reason. The more Cecil
wanted of life, the more he’d be dependent on me for consolation and
encouragement--the most successful have so many disappointments. If he
went through life animated by duty alone, content with the niche he
drifted into, he’d close up at all points, become a mere spoke in the
wheel, without a weak spot that I could get at. And then he _would_
be dull. It’s in Cecil to become terribly solid or to spread out in
several different directions. I want him to spread out.”

“Ah! I see you have done some thinking, if you are a mere child.”

“I’m no child--really. I took care of my mother and did all her
thinking for five years, and I have been treated like an individual,
not like an Englishman’s necessary virtue, ever since. I’ve managed
my own business affairs; I’ve read more books than any woman in this
house; I’ve had heaps and heaps of men in love with me; and I’ve done a
lot of thinking--particularly about Cecil.”

Lord Barnstaple at another moment might have smiled, but for the
present his concern had routed his cynicism.

“You look as if you’d merely been made to fall in love with,” he said
gallantly. “But I am surprised and gratified. Tell me what you have
been thinking about Cecil.”

“I’d day-dreamed for years about him before he came, but it was all
romantic and impossible nonsense. I don’t think I ever realised that he
was the author of his own letters, and I persisted in imagining him a
mixture of Byron, Marmion, Robert Dudley, Eugene Wrayburn, Launcelot,
and several of Ouida’s earlier heroes. Of course, my imagination
wore down a good deal after I came out and saw more of the world;
nevertheless, when Cecil did come, he was wholly unlike anything I had
concocted. But, somehow, he seemed quite natural, even in the first
moment, and I would not have had him otherwise for the world. He seemed
made for me, and it didn’t take me a second to get used to him.”

“Well?” Lord Barnstaple was watching her closely; the slightest acting
would not have escaped him. She spoke with some hesitation, her eyes
turned aside.

“He only stayed a little while, and I didn’t see him again for three
days. During those days, and during two weeks a little later when I was
alone again--he left me for a bear!--I did harder thinking than I’d
ever done before. I realised two things, especially the second time: I
was frightfully in love with him, and the whole happiness of our future
was in my hands. Cecil had told me, with his usual frankness, that I’d
have to do the adapting--he couldn’t. I’m sure he had no idea of being
egoistical; he always looks facts in the face, and he merely stated
one. And there’s no doubt about it! He’s made for good and all--he’s
centuries old. That threw the whole thing on me.”

“Considering that you look things in the face with something of the
intellectuality of a man, you have undertaken no light responsibility.”

“It’s the less light because I am a Californian, and we have twice
the individuality and originality of any people in the United States.
We always get quite huffy when we are spoken of as merely Americans.
Of course we take enormous pride in our Southern descent, but we
are--those of us that were born there--Californians, first and last.”

“These fine distinctions are beyond me at present. Of course you will
be good enough to initiate me further.”

“You need not laugh. Cecil did at first, but now he quite understands
that it is the United States _and_ California. What I was going to
say was this: it’s the harder for us to adapt ourselves, in spite
of the fact that we are malleable and made of a thousand particles.
Compared with Englishwomen, who--who--are much more conservative
and traditional, we are in a state of fusion. But the fact remains
that we have tremendous individuality, and that we are--as Cecil
says--self-conscious about it.”

“And you don’t fancy adapting yourself to anybody. Quite so.”

“It irritated and worried me at first, for I’d not only been on a
pedestal, but I’d been a fearful little tyrant with men. You wouldn’t
believe the way I used to treat them. Now”--she paused a moment, then
blurted out: “I’m so much in love that I don’t care a rap about my
individuality. I don’t care for a thing on earth but to be happy.
Of course, before I married, I had made up my mind to make the best
of many things I probably shouldn’t like, and not to attempt the
impossible task of making Cecil over. But there is so much more in it
than that. I am determined that my marriage shall be a success. I have
had already enough happiness to want always more and more and more.
I’ll live for that. I buried my private ambitions in the redwoods. It
is a curious contradiction, that happiness is the one thing people
really want, and that it is the one thing nearly everybody misses. I
believe it is because people do not concentrate on it. They wish for it
and make little grabs at it. I intend to concentrate on it, and live
for nothing else. And of course that means that Cecil will be happy
too. I’ll simply fling aside the thought of certain attributes I would
wish Cecil had, and make the most of what he has. And, Heaven knows,
Nature was not niggardly with him!”

Lord Barnstaple held his breath for half a moment. His interest had
ceased to be speculative, and even, for the moment, paternal. He was
in the presence of elemental passion and a shrewd modern brain, and
the combination was a force from which he received a palpable shock.
There was so profound a silence for several moments that Lee stirred
uneasily, wondering if she had tried his interest too far. When he
spoke, it was in his most matter-of-fact tone.

“If I were a younger man I should say many pretty things to you,
notably one which I don’t doubt Cecil has said very often--that you
are the sort of woman a man imagines he could cheerfully die for. I am
no longer young, but I recognise the type.” He hesitated a moment. “My
wife belonged to it. Now, I am going to give you some hard practical
advice. If you adopt it, I believe that, taken in connection with your
purpose and with what Nature has been kind enough to do for _you_,
it will insure your success if anything can. Identify yourself with
every one of Cecil’s pleasures and pursuits. By the first of October
the guests will have gone, and Emmy with them; she spends the rest
of the autumn and early winter in London, and in a round of visits
further South. Cecil and I always stay on here for the pheasants, and
I usually ask two or three men down at a time. There will be no other
women here until next August. Come out with us, learn to shoot, stay
out all day, and----_learn to like it_. I doubt, though, if you could
help it. Then comes the hunting season. We always spend the month of
November in Warwickshire at Beaumanoir, my brother-in-law’s place--you
will remember he was here when you came. Cecil tells me that you are
a fine horse-woman. You will learn to ride to hounds in no time, and
Cecil is particularly keen on hunting. So much for his pleasures; and
you will soon learn that you cannot know too much about sport of every
sort. In December we must return here. Parliament may be prorogued
for elections at any moment after February, and Cecil must begin as
soon as possible to nurse his constituency. It’s been nursing for him
in a way for several years, for it has always been understood that
Cecil was to succeed old Saunderson, who has now had enough of it, and
practically notified the Division. Nevertheless, Cecil has work of his
own to do, for the Liberal element has been gaining strength here for
some time. He must make speeches, open libraries, or whatever else
demands the grace of his presence--and I believe several things of the
sort are finishing. He must do everything he can to make himself known
and liked, and to inspire confidence. And he will have to study very
hard--will study, for he does nothing by halves. You must go about with
him, and also visit a little among the village people. You will be a
great help, for the lower classes love the compound of beauty and rank;
and if it is known that you will sit on the platform while he speaks
he will be doubly sure of a large audience. He may give an occasional
lecture or preside at a magic-lantern show at the village schools. It
is expected of us, for some six or eight villages skirting the estate
were once ours. I, too, have been an oracle in my day. The bare thought
bores me now, but it will amuse you and Cecil. And--here is another
point--study with him. That will not be so interesting; in fact, it
will bore you----”

“No, it will not. I’m immensely interested in English politics
already.”

“You’ll find it something of a pull, tramping through Blue Books,
Reports, Public Speeches, Statesman’s Year-Books, and all the data on
the great question of the Landlord _v._ the Farmer. But if you have the
brains and the energy to stick to it--and I believe you have--you will
succeed in getting closer to Cecil than you ever would in any other
way. He will be flattered at first, and pleased with the prospect of
companionship; later, you will become his second self, and he could no
more do without you than without one of his legs or arms. It’s a risky
thing to say to a woman, but to live comfortably with an Englishman
you’ve got to become his habit, and to be happy with him you’ve got to
become his second self. Englishwomen are the first from tradition. When
they have brains they usually bolt in the opposite direction. That is
because they are deficient in passion. Let me see what you will make of
the combination. I believe you will succeed. Thank Heaven, here comes
the tea! I’ve never talked so much in my born days, and I’m as dry as a
herring.”

They took their tea cosily in the dim beautiful room, and Lee, being
a woman of tact, dropped the subject of herself, and attempted the
seemingly impossible task of amusing Lord Barnstaple. She succeeded so
well that he discarded his usual chuckle, and laughed heartily no less
than five times.

“I foresee that you and Cecil and I shall be three jolly good comrades.
Of course I shan’t see quite so much of you in London; you and Cecil
will have to take a house of your own, and I’ve got to live under the
same roof with Emmy, for decency’s sake. But here we can be a really
comfortable family party. This year we’ll be here till April, and after
that, of course, you’ll have to move up to London in January. Do you
look forward to being the beauty of a London season? What a question!”

“Of course I want to be admired; and what is more, I don’t intend to
let Cecil forget that I can be, when I choose. I suppose I’ll look
horrid in a shooting outfit.”

“I am sure you will look charming; and, I don’t wish to be rude--Cecil
will not know whether you do or not. But that’s not the point, and you
can make yourself fascinating at dinner. Tea-gowns----” He waved his
hand vaguely.

Lee’s eyes sparkled. “I have a delightful sensation of novelty,” she
said. “I want to get right into the middle of it all. It may not be
like my old dreams, but it glitters, all the same. I love doing new
things.”

“Novelty is the half of many battles,” observed Lord Barnstaple dryly.

The conversation drifted again to other matters, but as he was leaving
her a half-hour later, he turned at the door, and said:

“Cecil is very much under your spell. Keep him there.”

“I intend to.” Lee’s eyes rarely failed to express what leaped into the
foreground of her mind. As Lord Barnstaple picked his way down the dark
and winding stair his smile was much as usual.




CHAPTER VII


As Lee sat alone, pondering deeply over her father-in-law’s advice, her
American mail was brought up. She opened a letter from Mrs. Montgomery.
After several pages of lamentation in many keys for her lost child, and
several more of advice, the good lady got down to news.

  “And I’ve lost another, for a whole year at the very least--I’ll join
  him somewhere in Europe when Tiny goes back, and then, of course,
  he’ll come with us to England, and has almost persuaded me to take
  up my real abode in Europe and pay visits to California. Of course
  I mean Randolph, darling. He decided, after all, not to sell his
  share in the mine, but formed a syndicate--himself, Mr. Geary, Mr.
  Trennahan, Mr. Brannan, and others of unimpeachable integrity--and
  now they own the mine, and Randolph says he’ll be worth five millions
  at least. As soon as it was all settled he told me that as there
  was nothing in particular for him to do he should go abroad. I
  couldn’t believe my ears when he said: ‘I never want to hear the word
  “business” again. I am sick of being a hustling American. I want the
  repose of the old world, and all it must be able to give and do for a
  man. I want to read and study, too. I feel half-educated, half-baked.
  If I could only have got a million out of the mine I should have been
  satisfied, and turned my back on money-grabbing just the same, but of
  course my instincts were too strong to take one million where there
  was chance of five.’ So he’s gone! I’ve cried until I can’t see, for,
  although Arthur’s the best of men, and I love him like my own son,
  he’s not Randolph, and even Tiny couldn’t call him entertaining. When
  I tell him my troubles, he merely says, ‘Ah!’ at regular intervals.
  But I’m glad, for one reason: I’ve always _hated_ money-_making_;
  money was never made for anything but to spend with an open hand
  without asking for change, and I could never shut my eyes to the fact
  that Randolph was not what his grandfathers were--and his father
  when the latter was a young man. And he looks so like his paternal
  grandfather--the very image, and old Colonel Montgomery always looked
  as if he’d just come from a private audience with the king--of course
  there wasn’t any king, but he made one think there was. Europe does
  wonders for people. I never saw an American woman go over for one
  year that she didn’t come back improved. The men don’t usually stay
  long enough, but when they do--look at Mr. Trennahan. I’m sure it
  will give Randolph just the one thing he needs....”

Lee dropped the letter in dismay. If hers ever reached Randolph,
would he interrupt his first real holiday to attend to her affairs?
And it would be a year at least before he arrived in England. For a
few moments she was nervously excited and very depressed. Then she
bethought herself of her resolution to worry about nothing she could
not alter. Both her parents-in-law would, in all probability, live for
many years to come, and Lady Barnstaple seemed by no means at the end
of her resources. By hook or by crook she would get the money before it
was needed; but until she could take her next step she would agitate
herself no further about it.

Her mind wandered to Randolph. It was on the cards that he would be
much changed and improved the next time they met. He inspired her with
quite a new interest, and she anticipated his advent with a lively
curiosity.

She opened a letter from Coralie:

  “I am going to marry, too,” announced Miss Brannan; “Ned Geary. I
  used to fancy myself rather _éprise_ with Randolph, as you know; but
  really one’s affections can’t thrive on disinterested friendship, so
  I’ve transferred mine, bag and baggage, to the uncertain Teddy. I
  don’t believe Randolph will ever marry. I’m light and Ned is light,
  like the North American atmosphere and Californian claret; but
  Randolph is the kind that takes things clear down to his boots. He’s
  as blue as paint, and it’ll be a long while before he spruces up.
  However, he’s got several millions to console him, so I expect he’ll
  pull through.”

Lee felt a slight irritation at the rapid consolement of Mr. Geary, and
smiled at the assurance of Randolph’s unaltered devotion. Then, out of
her fuller knowledge, she sent him a little sigh of pity, and shortly
after dismissed him from her mind.

In a few moments she went out to meet Cecil on his return from the
moors. On the top of a hillock she turned and looked back at the Abbey.
During the last fortnight she had studied it in every light and from
every side. She understood why even Emmy loved it, and why Cecil had
cared for no other home, even when a child, and with a bare prospect
of inheritance; she herself had conceived a feeling that was almost a
passion for it. Cecil had rehabilitated its past, and the tales were
heroic and dramatic and ghostly enough to satisfy even her girlish
imagination; small wonder that she loved the Abbey as the one thing
that had been wholly without disappointment, and had made no demands
upon her powers of adaptability.

It was nearly half an hour before she met the brakes with the returning
sportsmen. The undulations of the moor soon hid every other feature
of the landscape. It was a vast and lonely expanse, as primitive
and as widely lonely as any prairie of the New World. And it was so
beautiful that Lee was faithless to her redwoods; for it came to her
with something of a shock that the expression “purple twilight” was
not a mere poetic felicity. Whether or not the atmosphere absorbed
the heather’s colour, all the light on the moor, and on the mountain
beyond, was purple. She had read of the dreary moorland, and had
pictured it a dun grey thing; possibly it was in winter. But in its
autumn purples it was mysterious and enchanting. And it gave the
impression of shouldering the horizon on every side--of possessing the
Earth. Far away was a solitary hut; near by a pond of ugly traditions.
It was all as it should be, Lee reflected with a quizzical smile.
Within the walls of the Abbey Emmy held romance by the throat, but
out here on the moor it was impossible to realise her existence, or
anything but the England of the poets.




CHAPTER VIII


What Lee did at all she did thoroughly, volatile as she was in some
respects; original force of character, fostered and augmented by
certain conditions, overbalanced for long periods the lighter qualities
of her native atmosphere. She had wanted Cecil for the greater part of
her life, and she had got him; to be completely happy with him, and
to be all to him that it is given to one mortal to be to another was
her fixed purpose, and she applied herself to it with the energy and
concentration which have carried many men to their pedestal in a public
square.

Cecil was not disposed to desert the grouse after the last of the
guests had left the Abbey, and she went out every day with him and
the keepers--Lord Barnstaple was still nursing his wrist; and, having
a quick eye and a steady hand, occasionally managed to bring down a
bird. It was true that walking on the moor was much like walking on a
spring-mattress, and, being the child of an earthquake country, she was
never quite able to rid herself of an uneasy anticipation of collapse;
but so great was the enthusiasm of her nature that she was not only
interested, but delighted with this, as with other novelties of her
present life.

Shooting in the covers was a more difficult matter, and when she
scratched her face or caught her hair on a briary branch, she said
things under her breath which would have shocked Mrs. Montgomery or
Cecil; but there was no doubt that sport, if one went into it with
one’s entire brain, was really exciting, and, had it not been, Cecil’s
delight in his wife’s latest development would have sustained her.

In hunting, she took an unqualified pleasure. No Englishwoman had a
finer seat in the saddle than she, and, having always loved riding
for itself, the additional incentive of pursuit, and the picturesque
appearance of the field, made the pastime quite the most perfect she
had ever known. Before the season was far advanced she rode as straight
as any woman in the county; and perhaps Cecil’s compliments at this
period were the most spontaneous of his life. There was no doubt that
he was very proud of her, and once he went so far as to hint that he
felt rather sorry for the majority of men.

The month at Beaumanoir was rather fatiguing, but very gay--at least,
everybody laughed a great deal, and seemed full of energy. Emmy came
for a few days, and Lady Mary Gifford remained a fortnight, and
bestowed much of her society on Lee.

When they returned to the Abbey there was still more or less shooting
and hunting, but Cecil applied himself seriously to the imminent
elections. As time passed, and the defeat of his party loomed large in
the possibilities, Lee noted that his interest became less impersonal
and considerably more acute; his latent ambitions and energies felt
their first prick.

He spoke frequently at this time, and as the roar of the storm grew
nearer, his own accents lost the cold deliberation of the first weeks
and became impassioned and convincing. He had little doubt of his own
election, but the threatened downfall of his party harassed and angered
him. It was then that his wife discovered that he had not outlived his
boyish love of sympathy; and the boudoir in the tower and the lonely
moorland were the scenes of many long and intense conversations, until
it became his habit to demand the sympathy of his wife for every
strait, great and small, in which his country and his party found
themselves.

If a solid winter of politics bored Lee, her husband never knew it.
Neither did Lord Barnstaple, who watched her critically; he had no more
intimate talks with her. But although she was destined to find much in
English politics more interesting than Home Rule, the present crisis
was certainly exciting. And the two facts, that Cecil was expanding,
not solidifying, and that he showed signs of becoming almost dependent
on her, were satisfying alike to the pride of her purpose and to the
might of her affections.

On the first stormy day, Cecil announced his intention to begin the
course of study he had planned, and was surprised and gratified when
his wife invited him to bring his tomes to her boudoir.

“I’m tired of novels, and I’ve nothing else to do, and I’m so
tremendously interested myself, that I think I’ll read with you,” she
said, as Cecil littered her lapis-lazuli table. “Would it bore you to
explain things to me?”

“You are sure it wouldn’t bore _you_?” Cecil looked across the ugly
volumes at his beautiful wife, his eyes sparkling as eagerly as
when she had, ten years ago, at the Cliff House, put into words his
half-formed desire for an adventure. “I should like it--above all
things.”

“I should be much more bored roaming round the Abbey by myself, or
sitting here twirling my thumbs. I think I can understand. I’ve read
_The Times_ every morning for three months, and I feel equal to
anything.” She did not add that at each finish she invariably stuck
a pin up to its head into the pride of England, lest her surcharged
spirits find vent upon the gentlemen of her household.

“You can understand anything,” replied Cecil, who did not appreciate
the humour of her remark. “And I’ll get along twice as well myself if I
have somebody to talk things over with. But you mustn’t tire yourself.”
And he went over to the other side of the table.

They read together the long winter through, seeing Lord Barnstaple
only at the table and in the evenings: he had congenial spirits in the
neighbourhood, and he paid several visits to London. The conversation
between the three was invariably of politics. When the weather was fine
Cecil and his wife spent two or three hours of every day out-of-doors,
and occasionally attended a meet.

The fascination of politics, when the mind has fairly opened to
them, is indubitable; and Lee not only felt proud of herself that
her understanding and her patience stood the strain of this mass of
facts--whose skeletons fairly rattled--which mounted higher and higher
on her lapis-lazuli table and encroached upon the divan and all of the
ancient chairs, but she took a keen mental delight in the acquiring
of knowledge; and what knowledge to the alert modern mind can equal
the charm of current history? Although her primary purpose was to bind
her husband to her by every fetter she could devise, she occasionally
saw herself the centre of a political _salon_, when the world had
pronounced her the brilliant wife of a great man.

It was not later than the beginning of the second month of their close
mental intercourse that Lee made one of her most important discoveries
regarding her husband; he had intellectual heights and depths which
she would never touch. She had cleverness far above the average of
her sex, and, had she chosen, she would have had every right to pose
as an intellectual woman; but she had distinct limitations, and one
proof of her cleverness was that she recognised and accepted them.
The discovery arrived in the wake of a pleased reflection that it was
certainly a privilege to be in constant contact with a mind like Cecil
Maundrell’s, and that she was distinctly grateful for it. For a time
she was mortified and depressed, for it was her first intimation that
she was not all that the gods or man could desire; but it was her
mental habit to face facts and digest them, and when this was disposed
of she considered its possible results. Her conclusions soothed her.
She knew something of men. When Cecil tasted to the full the sweets of
masculine superiority over the mate with whom he was so delighted,
and of whom so justly proud, there would be still another bond between
them. Far be it from her to attempt to throw dust into his keen eyes by
feminine blandishment and subterfuge; she admitted the truth, whenever
the opportunity offered, with spontaneous bursts of admiration; and if
Cecil had not been flattered he would have been less than human.

“I don’t see how I shall ever be permitted to become discouraged,” he
said one day with some humour, looking into the rapt and beautiful eyes
opposite him. “I believe if I made an egregious ass of myself in the
House, you would persuade me that I was too great to be understood by
my fellow-men.”

“I’m not a goose, thank you. But you’ll never make an ass of yourself,
so it doesn’t matter. Of course you’ll be a great man.”

“I wish I could believe it.”

“It’s plain enough to every one else. All you need is ambition, and I
can see that growing already. If your party is defeated, so much the
better for you. You can devote your energies and your gifts to putting
new life into it. You’re just what the old fogies need. I don’t see how
you could start out more favourably, and I don’t see what is to prevent
your being the next great man.”

Cecil’s nostrils quivered suddenly. He looked for an instant longer
into the eyes that had expressed many more things to him than
admiration for his intellectual equipment, put out his hand impulsively
and took hers, then returned to his studies.




CHAPTER IX


They moved up to town on the third of April. Lady Barnstaple had taken
a tiny and costly house for them in Green Street, and as there had been
much correspondence on the subject, and many samples had travelled from
London to Yorkshire and back, it was almost in order when the young
couple arrived to take possession.

“For goodness’ sake, have it light and bright,” Lady Barnstaple had
written. “London is such a grimy hole, people simply love colour. Don’t
mind bothering me; if I were poor I’d be a house decorator. The only
fault I had to find with the Abbey was that it was furnished.”

Lee found her doll’s house a delicious nest of colour and luxury after
the feudal severity of her tower; and although Cecil was even more
serious than when he had married, she managed, during that first spring
in London, to make him feel that they were playing at keeping house and
at the lighter side of life. She could always amuse and interest him
when she thought it wise to do so.

They went out very little, for he detested crushes in hot
ill-ventilated rooms, and large dinners were not more to his taste;
but he liked the play, and they were always to be seen at Tattersall’s
on Sunday afternoons, and often in the Park, which had not yet been
vulgarised as a promenade. In the mornings they rose early and rode
either through the Park with the many of stereotyped habits, or out
into the country; occasionally to Richmond, where they breakfasted at
the Star and Garter, and tried to imagine that it was still brilliant
and wicked. Sometimes, of an afternoon, they traversed three or four
“At Homes,” where Lee had an enchanting sense of being in the great
world at last, and Cecil kept his eyes longingly on the windows. At
the play they always took a box, as Cecil became restless in the
narrower confines of the stalls, and Lord Barnstaple and Mary Gifford
usually accompanied them. Lady Barnstaple, although she sang her
daughter-in-law’s praises in a loud high key, flatly refused to elevate
her passing charms into a box of which Lee was the radiant and novel
star. Lee was greatly admired, and knew that she could have been the
bride of the season, had Cecil permitted; but although she felt some
natural regret, especially when her mother-in-law expostulated, and
Lady Mary Gifford commiserated, on the whole she did not care. Cecil
barely let her out of his sight, and once he sulked for an entire
day because she went to a luncheon; she was happy, and nothing else
mattered. When she was stared out of countenance at the opera and
theatre he took it as a matter of course, but the newspaper comments
were less to his taste, and he peremptorily forbade her to give her
photograph to any of the illustrated weeklies, or to be the heroine of
certain enterprising “lady-journalists,” who wished to exploit her
beauty and her many delectable gowns. Her semi-seclusion gave her a
touch of mystery, and one woman’s magazine would have made her known to
fifty thousand provincials; but Cecil was disgusted at the bare idea of
sharing his wife with the public, and flung the artful request for an
interview into the fire. Lee was much amused, and assured him that Mrs.
Montgomery had brought her up to regard notoriety with horror.

“And after all,” she said to Lady Barnstaple, “suppose I did become a
professional beauty, that would place Cecil in a contemptible position,
and I’d rather be a desperate failure than do that.”

“Oh, bother! But it’s no use talking to a woman in love. You’ll
sacrifice your youth to a selfish brute of a man and spend your
thirties regretting it and your forties making up for lost time. I love
Cecil, and of course I’m glad to see him happy, but he’s as selfish as
all men, and you’re making him more so. I don’t say you won’t keep him.
I believe you will, for he’s the sort that would rather be faithful to
his wife than not--doesn’t take after his illustrious parent--but he’ll
soon take you as a matter of course, and then you’ll realise what the
world could do for you. God knows what I should have done without it,
and if I ever have to go under, a dose of laudanum will do the rest.”

But Cecil gave no sign of taking his wife as a matter of course. It
is true that he took all and gave nothing--except his love. That Lee
might have an inner life of her own never crossed his mind; that it
had ever crossed any one’s else that she was fitted for a career more
or less apart from his own, however parallel with it, he would have
resented as an insult to them both; and he had long since dismissed
from his thoughts certain complexities which had puzzled and worried
him during the weeks of their engagement. He was perfectly satisfied
with her; although he had begged to be released from paying her
compliments, and had received his discharge, he would have had her
changed in nothing. Her beauty and passion held him in thrall, and he
was more than grateful for the companionship she offered him, to say
nothing of the incense. He would have liked to be rich that he might
have had the pleasure of making her many beautiful presents, but he was
philosophical, and wasted no time in regrets. And he was not wholly an
egoist, for he occasionally reminded himself that he was the luckiest
chap alive; and when he glanced along the future, and reflected that
for each of the severe trials, mortifications, and disappointments of
his public career he should find solace, and even forgetfulness, in his
home, he felt that there were indeed no limits to his good fortune.

Did he ever think of Maundrell Abbey at this time? He gave no sign.
But possibly he saw no reason for anxiety. Emmy was entertaining
magnificently, and had informed her family that Chicago had taken a
sudden leap in the direction of certain of her town lots, and trebled
their value. Lee, in spite of the gossip with which Lady Mary Gifford
regaled her concerning almost every woman in Society, was not inclined
to think evil spontaneously of any one, but she overheard one woman say
to another, with a shrug of the shoulders, that “Lady Barnstaple had
taken up with the wrong man,” and she was surprised at the constant
presence of Mr. Algernon Pix in her mother-in-law’s house. Mr. Pix had
none of his sister’s aristocratic beauty, although he was good-looking
in a common way; he was very dark, with eyes set close together, and
he had a neat little figure. His manner was polite to exaggeration,
but his accent was fatal, and three years of Society had not curbed
his love of diamonds. In truth, his position was very precarious.
Some women liked him, but the men barely accepted him, despite the
determined bolstering of several of Victoria’s powerful friends; and
as he had never even attempted to handle a gun, and feared a horse as
he feared the snub of a Duchess, his social future ran off into vague
perspectives. He was wise enough never to accept invitations to the
country, and Lee had not met him until she moved up to town. He was the
sort of man whom she had heretofore associated with drapers’ counters
and railway trains, and inevitably she snubbed him.

“I’d be very much obliged to you if you’d treat my friends decently,”
said Lady Barnstaple sharply, when they were alone.

“Surely he is not a friend of yours.”

“His sister is my very most intimate friend; and as for him--well, yes,
I do like him--immensely. It means something to me, I can tell you, to
have a man show me the thousand and one little attentions that women
love--and to think me still beautiful; _and he does_. I don’t say he
would if I were not the Countess of Barnstaple, and miles above him
socially--I’m no fool--but that he can be really dazzled means a great
deal to me, and when you’re my age you’ll know why.”

Lee reflected that probably the bond between them was the commonness
of both, and that “Emmy” was a striking instance of heredity, then
dismissed the subject from her mind. Lord Barnstaple, who never took a
meal in his wife’s house, except in company with many others, and took
many at the little house in Green Street, was apparently unaware of the
existence of Mr. Pix, although he commented freely, and with caustic
emphasis, upon the idiosyncrasies of his legal wife.




CHAPTER X


On June twenty-eighth Parliament was prorogued for the elections, and
Cecil and Lee went to Yorkshire at once.

Lord Maundrell made a number of speeches, made himself agreeable
to many men whom he would have preferred to kick, and received his
nomination. The contest was bitter and exciting, and Lee designated
her husband during this period, for want of a better term, as “less
English” than she had yet known him. There were times when he let her
see just how perturbed and excited he was, carefully as he secluded his
inner mind from others. Lee, in the little stone villages, that looked
as if they might have been built by the heirs of the cave-dwellers,
played the part made familiar to her by the novel and the stage, and,
for the life of her, could not take herself seriously. Her difficulty
was increased by the fact that she could not understand two words in
ten of the Yorkshire dialect. The villagers understood her as little,
but there was no doubt that her uncommon beauty and her gracious and
magnetic manner duly impressed them.

Cecil was returned, but his party was defeated; and he convinced Lee
that without her his melancholy would have lasted fully a month.

There were still two weeks before the twelfth of August, and they took
a run over to Normandy. After their return, life until December was
precisely what it had been the year before. The same people, almost
without exception, came in four instalments to the Abbey for the six
weeks which followed the opening of the grouse season, and it seemed
to Lee that they talked about precisely the same things. The men spent
the day on the moors, and at dinner talked when they felt like talking
at all, of the bags which had been made, the condition of the birds
and the moor, and the weather prospects, occasionally indulging in
reminiscences of other years. The women played tennis and golf, rode
or drove, or sat about the Abbey. After dinner the men roused, and
permitted themselves to be flirted with, either in historic boudoirs
or across the billiard tables, and there were many who played high and
late. Cecil and Lee usually started on their long walk to the tower
about midnight after a long and fatiguing day.

When Emmy’s guests had gone, Lee went out with Lord Barnstaple, her
husband, and half a dozen other enthusiasts, and persuaded herself that
sport was really absorbing whether one had been brought up to it or
not. It was certainly preferable to wandering all day long by oneself
over an immense and echoing Abbey, or driving to neighbouring estates,
and taking tea with women who rarely went up to London.

When the hunting season came, although the novelty of riding hard after
a yelping pack with some twenty men in beautiful pink coats, or even
of dancing with the latter at hunt balls, was no longer a part of her
pleasure, she felt that the chase would wear when other things had
palled, although she would have been glad to return to the Abbey for
December. They visited, however, and they hunted, and they shot; they
graced farmers’ balls and hunt races with their presence, and they even
attended a great magic-lantern show; only returning to the Abbey for
a few days at Christmas. Lord Barnstaple went to Paris, and the young
people were alone. It was a blessed interval of rest, during which Lee
exacted from Cecil a solemn promise that he would not mention sport,
adding hastily that she adored it, but was horribly jealous, and did
not want him to think of a thing but herself for an entire week. And
to his credit it must be said that he seemed to find no difficulty in
humouring her.

In January they went to Paris for a fortnight, as Lee’s wardrobe needed
replenishing, and in February Cecil’s parliamentary duties began, and
they settled down in London when it was at its dreariest and ugliest,
and the rest of England was moist but beautiful. Lee was alone now,
for the greater part of the week, from three in the afternoon until
midnight or the small hours of the morning, although she frequently
went to the Ladies’ Gallery of the House and brought Cecil back to
dinner; or took tea with him on the Terrace, which she thought very
interesting. There was always--for a reasonable time--at least one
distinguished man to be pointed out, and she liked to conjure up
the days when the Thames was gay with the barges of sovereigns and
their courtiers, instead of mildly picturesque with penny boats and
queer-looking water vehicles for which Cecil had no name.

When the young member was not too busy they still rode or walked in
the morning, and attended the play or the opera at night. Occasionally
they went to a dinner or a party, and as Emmy’s entertaining this year
took the form of morning concerts, with divas and tenors to beckon the
fickle world, Cecil made a martyr of himself upon these occasions as
gracefully as he could.

On the whole, Lee, although she left a good many cards and received on
Tuesdays, saw less of Society than during the preceding season, and
learned of its doings and of what faint interest it still felt in her
from Lord Barnstaple and Mary Gifford, who came frequently to luncheon
or tea. However, she assured herself that after the late hours of the
autumn and early winter she was glad to get her beauty sleep again, and
went to bed at ten o’clock.

When there was an important debate on in the House she always attended,
and more than once came home with Cecil at two in the morning. Such
speeches as she did not hear she read next morning, as well as the
comments thereon in no less than six different newspapers; and she
frequently assured herself that her political education was comparable
with that of any Englishwoman born. Her enthusiasm undoubtedly had its
reward, for not only was Cecil pleased and grateful, but when they
attended dinners of more or less political significance she invariably
incited her partner to speech, no matter how silent Heaven had made
him. One, and he was famous and stout, and had buried conversation
with other follies of his past, surprised himself by informing her that
she could talk politics with her eyes more eloquently than any woman
in England with all the resources of a large vocabulary and all the
ambition inspired by the heroines of Disraeli.

Lord Barnstaple laughed when she related this anecdote.

“Oh, you will be wanting a _salon_ next,” he said. “It is quite
natural you should picture statesmen crowding your rooms--I am making
no reflection on the size of your house--and whispering their secrets
in your pretty little ear--or seeing themselves upside down in your
eloquent eyes.”

Lee coloured and lifted her chin in a manner which even a father-in-law
must find charming. “I could have one if I liked--and that quite
satisfies me, thank you.”

“I’m sorry you can’t go out more, though,” he said tentatively. “You
are young and admired, and of course you like what women call pleasure.”

“I don’t care a rap about it,” she said with emphasis. “I am sure one
hard London season would bore me to death.”

“Quite so. Quite so. It’s just a beastly grind, nothing more. You’re
really far better off in the way you have chosen. I am glad to see you
so happy. Cecil is certainly a lucky dog.”

“You gave me some good advice that day.” She smiled brilliantly into
his watchful eyes.

“Oh, you were quite clever enough to have arrived at the same
conclusions without my help. Of course if you had wanted a flashing
career of your own, or had been a silly woman, greedy for admiration
and intrigue, it would have been a different matter--a terribly
different matter for Cecil. But you wanted happiness, and there is only
one way to get it.”




CHAPTER XI


It was not long before Cecil’s abilities were recognised. Something was
expected of him, for he came of a line of able Parliamentarians; and as
he was already famous as a sportsman, he commanded an interest by no
means inspired by the average young man of an illustrious house.

When the time came for him to make his first speech, shortly before
the end of the Session, Lee sat in the gallery with an icy exterior
surrounding a furious nerve storm. The day was dark and depressing.
Those long rows of faces had never looked more apathetic; it was
enough to make a novice feel, as he rose and confronted the bored
old veterans, that he was on trial for his life. If Cecil failed Lee
felt that she could hate him, not because the world would curl its
lip, but because Cecil, mortified, stammering, a failure, would be an
ideal in collapse. She might oust these unworthy sentiments later,
and sympathise with him in his distress, but she could never quite
rehabilitate him. He might be defeated in the most significant climaxes
of his career, his party might turn upon and rend him, and she would
pour all the wealth of her nature at his feet, but if he made a fool of
himself, she’d never forgive him.

But Cecil had no intention of making a fool of himself. Moreover, his
training at Oxford, when the Union had rung with his salad eloquence,
made itself manifest among the other foundations of his mind and
character. He was neither nervous nor too diffident. In fact he opened
so easily that Lee thrilled with pride and excoriated herself. When
he got his first “Hear!” her knees jerked; she realised how excited
she was, and glanced about the gallery hastily; but in that dim cage
she had little to fear. He demanded the attention of the House for
something over an hour, and he would have scorned to amuse it; but
his speech was terse and packed with his own thought; it had not a
platitude in it, nor a time-honoured sentiment. He might or might not
become a brilliant speaker when he had acquired sufficient practice
and confidence to let himself go, but that he was a Maundrell to be
reckoned with had been conceded long before he sat down.

Lee was with him in the lobby when he received the congratulations of
men many years older than himself, and the next morning she brought all
the newspapers, and pasted the highly laudatory articles on the rising
sun into a scrap-book. She cunningly persuaded him to be photographed,
and as his reputation waxed she supplied the weekly papers with his
distinguished profile. He was moved to wrath, but his wife’s fervid
admiration was very sweet to him, and when she pleaded it as her excuse
for taking a step without consulting him, he forgave her instantly.

They could not get away in time for a trip abroad that year, much to
Lee’s disappointment; for the Continent was one vast romantic ruin to
her, varied with shops and the picturesque costumes of peasants. The
late summer and autumn and early winter were precisely like the summer
and autumn and early winter of the year before. They entertained the
same people, visited the same houses; and this time Lee had the novel
feeling of amazement for a people who were just as much pleased and
just as absorbed as if a benign Providence had gifted them with the
instinct for variety.

“No wonder they are great,” she thought, with a sigh.

In January the London _maisonnette_ was open again, and as gay as
flowers and upholstery and lamp shades could make it. Cecil for some
time past had meditated a Bill for the relief of certain manufacturers,
and had worked at it on odd days during the recess. He introduced
it, and it failed, for it was practically a demand for the exclusion
of much that was “made in Germany,” and was regarded as a covert and
audacious attack on Free Trade. His Speech in its behalf was the
most brilliant he had yet made, and he was bitterly denounced by the
Liberal and Radical press next morning. Nor did their attentions cease
with their comments on his Bill and Speech. From that time on he was
regarded by the Opposition as a man to be sneered into the cooler
regions of private life. His constituency was warned by that section of
its press whose principles he did not represent, and he was accused of
having pledged his abilities, “such as they were,” to a life-long fight
against progress, and of a criminal indifference to Home Rule and to
the unfortunate Armenian.

Of these jeremiads--which Cecil refused to read, having made up his
mind and being at peace with his conscience--Lee was as proud as of
the many compliments which the young member received, and she pasted
them dutifully in the scrap-book. Of Society she saw something less
than ever, although her mother-in-law adjured her not to “make a fool
of herself.” She admitted that she should like to go to some of the
great parties, and to an occasional supper at the Savoy, under Lady
Barnstaple’s wing; for her evenings were lonely, and politics would
have been even more interesting if seasoned with variety. She asked
Cecil, with an apologetic blush, if he would mind.

He plunged his hands into his pockets.

“Are you very keen on it?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m not mad about it, but I haven’t seen much of London Society,
and it interests me; and I have so much time on my hands.”

“I’m afraid you must get rather bored. I’m sorry I have to be so much
away from you. But--I hate to see women running about without their
husbands. Besides it’s always the beginning of the end--when a woman
goes her way and a man his. It’s selfish of me, but I like to think of
you as always here. As you know, I break away sometimes, and come home
unexpectedly----”

“You haven’t this year.”

“We’ve been so confoundedly busy. But I often think of you, and I like
to picture you in this room with a book, or asleep when other women
are baking their complexions.”

Lee smiled. “That was very astute. You would rather I did not go out,
then?”

“I feel a selfish brute. Let me know what you particularly want to go
to, and I’ll try to pair and take you myself.”

But Lee knew that he hated the very thought of it, and he was more and
more absorbed in his work. Of his ambition there was now no question;
he had even gone so far as to half admit it to her. He did not return
to the subject, upon which their conversation had, indeed, been so
brief that he might be pardoned for forgetting it. Lee attempted to
find oblivion in the mass of data elucidative of colonial history, past
and present, to which Cecil, with his usual thoroughness, was devoting
his leisure. It had been his purpose, from the moment he had decided
upon his career, to achieve a full and sympathetic understanding of the
colonies. He had given no little attention to politics in India and
South Africa, as well as to their peoples, during his sporting tour,
and he intended to revisit these and other parts of the Empire as soon
as he felt reasonably sure of his footing at home, and had mastered the
enormous bulk of colonial conditions in the abstract. He had no belief
in home-made theories for governing the alien millions of the English
race.

Lee looked forward to these journeyings with some interest, although
she would have preferred to explore the crumbling and rather more
picturesque civilisations of Europe. Travel would be more comfortable,
and the Continent was a superb theatre, under superb management--to
take it seriously was out of the question; but although it did not
appeal to the soul, it was a delight to the imagination. But neither
the one change in her programme nor the other seemed imminent; Cecil
found too much to do in England. The present routine bid fair to last
for three or four years to come.

And to have argued that social success would have conduced to her
husband’s advancement would have been a waste of words, for Cecil was
a man of ideals and regarded meretricious connectives with scorn. He
was very much elated at this period, for there was every indication
that the Liberal tenure was a brief one, and that his party was
regaining all it had lost, and more. He intended to speak throughout
the North, pending the next elections, and he had good reason to
anticipate that his services to his party would be rewarded with that
first stepping-stone to power, an Under-Secretaryship. Lee was to go
about with him, of course; he would as soon have thought of leaving
one of his members at home, and she looked forward to the variation of
the usual autumn programme with some enthusiasm. She was tremendously
proud of her gifted and high-minded young husband, and when disposed to
repine, forced into her mind her ten years of unremitting determination
and desire to marry Cecil Maundrell, and her girlish hopes and dreams,
some of which had certainly been realised.

It was just after the Easter recess that he began to feel the need
of a secretary, for he was doing certain work outside the House. Lee
disliked the idea of a stranger in her _maisonnette_, to say nothing
of the fact that she would see less of her husband by many hours,
and offered herself for the post. He was surprised and delighted,
for he was reserved almost to secrecy with every one else, and had
contemplated admitting a stranger into the privacy of his study with
much distaste.

“Are you sure it won’t tire you?” he asked fondly. He was always very
careful of her.

“Of course not! And I haven’t a thing to do, now that all my clothes
are made. I’m sick of the sight of Bond Street. You know I love to feel
that I am of use to you.”

“You are always that, whether you are doing anything for me or not.
I’m quite selfish enough to accept your offer, if you really mean it.
I simply hated the thought of an outsider. But if I find it tires or
bores you, we can put a stop to the arrangement any day.”

It bored her, but he never knew it. As she had an exuberant vitality,
it did not tire her, although she sometimes felt very nervous. She
marvelled at the greatness of the masculine mind which could master
such details and find them interesting, and wondered if she were a real
politician after all. Somewhat to her amusement, she found herself
looking forward with pleasure to the sporting season; it would be an
interval of comparative liberty and rest. She enjoyed the sensation
of being useful to her husband, and the increased companionship; but
it was trying to spend so much of the morning indoors, and to sit up
by herself copying, when she preferred being in bed, or reading such
novels as were clever enough to satisfy a mind now quite tuned to
serious things. The theatre was neglected during the last two months of
the Session, for Cecil grew busier and busier, and worked late on his
off nights. Occasionally he examined his wife’s lovely face anxiously
to see if she were losing her colour, or acquiring any little fine
lines, and when he could discover no outward symbol of injured health
he begged her to tell him if she were really equal to the strain. When
she assured him that she was profoundly interested, and had never
felt better, he assured her in return that she was, indeed, a wife of
whom any man might be proud. Sometimes she wished, with a sigh, that
his wants were more spiritual. She might revive her enthusiasm if he
had need of sympathy and solace, but the world was treating him very
well, and he was satisfied and happy. She wondered if he had ever been
anything else; he certainly seemed one of the favoured of earth.




CHAPTER XII


A day or two before the end of the season Lee received a letter from
Mrs. Montgomery which suggested another variation in the autumn
programme. That lady and Randolph were leaving France for England,
and after a brief visit to Tiny they hoped to be welcome at Maundrell
Abbey. The junior Gearys, who were taking a belated honeymoon (Mr.
Geary had died a week after the wedding), would arrive in England in
the latter part of August.

Lee had seen nothing of her old friends since her departure from
California. Lord Arrowmount had amused himself with a ranch until a
month ago, when he had returned to England with his family, and gone
straight to his place in the Midlands. Mrs. Montgomery had remained
in California with them for two years, and spent the last year with
Randolph, who had bought a _château_ in Normandy and seemed to be
devoting himself to the pleasures of the _chasse_. For two years he
had sauntered leisurely about the world, and had finally made his home
in France, as the sky and air reminded him of California and the life
did not. He had written Lee a brief note occasionally, in which he
said little about himself, and gave no indication that his sentiments
towards her were other than fraternal. Nor could she guess what
changes might have been wrought in him, although he remarked once that
the longer he remained away from America the less he ever wanted to see
it again. Out of the chaos of Mrs. Montgomery’s letters Lee gathered
that he was improved; but she hoped that he was not too much changed,
for with the prospect of her old friends’ advent came a lively desire
for something like a renewal of old times. To her letter in behalf
of Maundrell Abbey he had never alluded, and she had not revived the
subject, for she had expected him to appear at any moment.

She went at once to the house in Upper Belgrave Street, and asked her
mother-in-law to invite the entire party to the Abbey for two or three
weeks in August and September. Lady Barnstaple happened to be in a
particularly gracious humour.

“I shall be delighted to see some new faces,” she announced. “One
gets sick of the same old set year after year. I quite liked Lady
Arrowmount, what little I saw her--rather prim and middle-classy,
but, _enfin_, quite _convenable_; one must not expect too much of
the ancient aristocracy of San Francisco. You’ve improved so much,
dearest. You never look shocked any more, and you’ve quite lost your
provincialisms. When you came you were like a sweet little wild flower
that had got lost in a conservatory. Now you are _tout à fait grande
dame_, and it is quite remarkable, as you go out so little. But you
always could dress, and the Society papers actually mention your
frocks, which is also remarkable. As a rule one has to be _en évidence_
all the time to retain any sort of interest. But you are pretty, and
Cecil is so clever--a selfish beast, though. How long are you going to
keep this thing up?”

“Oh, I am a mere creature of habit now. Who else is going down for the
twelfth?”

“Mary Gifford--couldn’t you marry her to Randolph Montgomery? It’s
really tragic the way she hangs on!”

“Her sisters have married, so I suppose she could. I don’t think she
wants to marry. Under all her loudness she’s a queer porcelain-like
creature, and rather shrinks from men.”

“Fiddlesticks! She’s waiting for eighty thousand a year! And she’s
quite right. Whether she’ll get it or not----she’s a real beauty, and
the way she keeps on looking just eighteen! Well, let me see: there
will be the Pixes----Mr. Pix has really consented to come at last;
never breathe it, but he’s been taking private lessons and has actually
learned how to shoot as straight as anybody. I think Mary has her eye
on him, but she’d better not!”

“Why not--since you are interested in her future?”

“Because I’m positive he’s the only man living that doesn’t see
my wrinkles, and in my pocket he’ll stay. Well--there will be the
Arrowmounts, Montgomerys, Gearys, Pixes, Mary, and sixteen or eighteen
of the usual crowd: the Beaumanoirs, Larry Monmouth, the Duke and
Duchess of Launcester, Lord and Lady Regent, and, oh, the ones one has
to have or drop out. But I’d like to shake them all for one year.”

“I thought you adored English people.”

“I do and I don’t. I get mad sometimes at all the trouble they give me.
Look at Mary Gifford! She hasn’t a penny, doesn’t lift her finger, and
she’s in and out of every great house in England.”

“Well--surely; she belongs to them. She’s related to half of them--her
father was a Marquis----”

“That’s just it,” said Lady Barnstaple, with a heavy scowl. “She
belongs to them. I don’t. I can’t complain that they haven’t even run
after me, but I’m not intimate, not dead intimate with one of ’em, all
the same.”

“What does it matter? You had ambitions and you’ve satisfied them.
There must always be something beyond one’s grasp.”

“There’s a good deal beyond mine,” said Lady Barnstaple with a sigh. “I
can’t be young again; and when I had youth I made so little of it.”

“Well, you dazzle Mr. Pix,” said Lee lightly. “Let that console you.”




CHAPTER XIII


Lord Arrowmount and Randolph wrote to Lady Barnstaple that they would
arrive at the Abbey on the eleventh; Mrs. Montgomery was indisposed,
but hoped to come a week later with Lady Arrowmount. The Gearys wrote
from Paris to expect them any time during August.

Lee laughed as Lady Barnstaple tossed her back Coralie’s letter with a
sharp exclamation.

“They are both spoiled children, you know, and Ned has ignored social
obligations all his life.”

“He can’t take any liberties with me if I am an American--or was.”

“Oh, you’re quite English.”

Lee and her mother-in-law exchanged hooded sarcasms occasionally,
but on the whole were excellent acquaintances. Lady Barnstaple had
never paid a second visit to the tower, and was ignorant of her
daughter-in-law’s depredations; no other excuse for a quarrel had
occurred. Lee having made up her mind to accept “Emmy”--there being no
alternative--veiled her with philosophy, and saw as little of her as
possible. Lady Barnstaple forgave the younger woman her beauty, as,
according to her lights, it might as well have blossomed in Sahara; and
she uneasily respected the obvious will beneath that lovely exterior,
and frankly admired Lee’s genius for dress.

On the evening of the eleventh Lee selected her gown with unusual care.
During the past three years she had dressed for no man but her husband,
who occasionally informed her that she always looked exactly the same
to him no matter what she had on, and she had been as indifferent to
the admiring glances of other men as a beautiful woman can be. She had
not indulged in so much as a dinner flirtation, and had kept her ideal
of matrimonial bliss so close to her eyes that she had occasionally
received a hint of myopic dangers and a benumbing of certain mental
faculties. Her glance, rising on the wing of a phlegmatic fancy,
sometimes strayed to the right or left of the steel track she paced,
but it returned submissively; and the only alteration in her face was a
slightly accentuated determination in the curves of her mouth. During
the last six months she had been conscious of a certain restiveness,
but had refused to analyse it.

It was quite natural to dress for Randolph, for he was an old and
valued friend; and it was certainly a pleasure to dress for him, for
he appreciated every detail and his taste was exquisite. She therefore
selected the sort of gown in which he had always most admired her, a
black gauze made with the dashing simplicity which suited her so well.

He would arrive about five. She sent him word to dress early and come
to the tower. She knew that he would doubtless be detained by Cecil
in the library for a time, but she was in her boudoir before seven.
Her flutter of excitement was very agreeable. As it trembled along
her nerves it brought with it an admitted desire for a whole series
of sudden and brilliant changes. She wished that Randolph had come
straight from California, for she could have fancied the wild winds of
the Pacific blowing about him. She had learned to keep California out
of her mind for many months at a time, but to-night as she stood in
her tower looking through the narrow ancient window on the calm beauty
of the English landscape, she shook with homesickness for that land
which seemed to have all space just above it, and as many moods and
features as the imagination of Byron. The sudden nostalgia was as much
of the body as of the spirit. Her very veins seemed full of tears; in
her brain was a distinct sensation of nausea. She was a child of the
redwoods, not of the landscape garden.

Randolph came up the stair with a slower step than of old, but with as
light a foot. Lee was conventional at once.

“You have been long enough crossing the Channel to see me,” she said
gaily, and shaking him warmly by the hand; “but you know I never
harbour malice, and now--I am simply delighted to welcome you.”

“It was my mother that kept me in France after I got within crossing
distance of the Channel; her health is really broken, I am afraid.”

They talked of Mrs. Montgomery for some time, while studying each
other. Lee hoped that if he found her changed his surprise and approval
would equal her own. He had transformed himself into what he would
have become years since had his mother taken him to Europe while he was
still a boy, and kept him there. His restless Americanism, his careless
stoop, the nervous play of his features, even the lines about his eyes
and mouth had gone. His erect and graceful carriage made him look
almost as tall as Cecil Maundrell. He was a trifle stouter than when he
had left California; and he was, in his new habit, so handsome and so
distinguished, that Lee thrilled with the pride of the Montgomerys, and
of the South before the War. His manner was scarcely fraternal, nor did
it hint of the lover, discarded and tenacious; it was merely that of an
amiable man-of-the-world pleased to renew an intimate friendship with a
charming woman.

“Am I as much changed as you are?” asked Lee impulsively.

“Am I changed? You--I will tell you when I have been here a little
longer. There is a difference--although that gown makes you look very
natural. I cannot decide what it is. You are more beautiful than ever,
if that could be possible.”

It was so long since Lee had received a vigorous compliment that she
blushed with delight.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Randolph,” she exclaimed. “Do talk to me
about old times and California, even if you do hate the thought of it.”

“I hate the thought of it?”

“Well, you hate America.”

“Why will even the cleverest of women add so many little frills? I am
immensely proud of the United States; I would have been born under
no other flag. What I do hate is the modern spirit of the country as
typified by New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. I love California,
and am beginning to get a little homesick for her. I fancy it won’t be
long before I shall suddenly pack my trunk and go back for a year.”

“Oh, if I could go! If I could go!”

“Couldn’t we all go back together next year?”

“Cecil cannot leave England. I suppose you have not heard----”

“That great things are expected of him. I take several London papers;
and, when travelling, they are always at the clubs. How proud you must
be of him.”

“I am;” but she was thinking of California; and there seemed to be a
hundred things to be talked about at once. There had been a time when
she had talked to Randolph about nearly everything that passed through
her mind. That time came sharply back to her.

“That is one of the changes in you,” he was saying. “You have the least
little more pride in your carriage. You never were very humble, but
this is a sort of double duplicated pride, as it were. And--yes--you
are more intellectual looking. It is that which has dissipated your
girlishness without ageing you a particle.”

“Oh, I am intellectual! I’ve been on one long intellectual orgie for
the last three years. I’m ready for a change. If you’ve been cramming
your brain, don’t you try to impress me; and don’t you dare to mention
politics.”

Randolph laughed. “I should not think of such a thing. My interest is
too cursory to burden my conversation. And as for books--I’ve read a
good many on rainy days since I saw you last, and am better for them;
but I have spent the greater part of the time living books of many
sorts.”

“Have you grown serious? You used to take life so lightly. So did
everybody. So did I.”

“I am afraid I still take life with reprehensible lightness. I have got
an immense amount of fun out of the old world.”

“Do you remember how we used to roar--you and Coralie and Tom and I?
And about nothing! We _were_ such good laughers!”

“I hope you haven’t forgotten how.”

“Not much! But I’m out of practice. Let’s go up on top of the fell
to-morrow, and sit down on the ground and shriek.”

Randolph threw back his head and laughed so heartily that Lee caught
the infection of it, and in a moment was leaping from peal to peal. She
caught herself up.

“I shall have hysterics. And it’s nearly dinner time. I’ve got to go
down and talk grouse prospects and the tantalising peculiarities of
that loathsome bird for two hours. I don’t know if I dare put you on my
other side. I’m afraid I’d giggle like an idiot all through dinner if I
did. I suppose it’s reaction, but I really feel on the verge of idiocy.”

“The result of my sudden appearance. I am immensely flattered.”

“Oh, you would be if you knew! Cecil is simply perfect; don’t think I
am casting the faintest reflection on him. It’s the life! Oh, I must!
I must! I always did tell you things, Randolph, and you always were so
sympathetic. Have you read many English novels that aim to initiate
the outside world into the life of our class--the truth without any
frills, and all that sort of thing? After I’d been here two years I
made a terrible mistake: out of curiosity--to see the influence of
England on the imagination circumscribed by conscience--I read, one
after the other, about twelve novels of that sort--the sort that might
be called the current history of social England. Then I realised what
I had got into--that unchanging, inevitable, mathematically precise
_mise en scène_, that wheel that goes round and round with never a
change of spoke nor of speed. You know--begin with the twelfth of
August: house-parties for grouse shooting. Men--same men--out all day.
Women--same women--at home. Sporting talk at luncheon. Sporting talk
varied with politics at dinner. Little gambling, little flirting,
a rowdy game or two in the evening. Next month same thing in other
houses for partridge and pheasant shooting. Next two months hunting
and hunting talk for a change; otherwise the same, only a little more
hard work for the women. Races and race talk thrown in all along the
line. Then the Riviera for some, and for me two months of life in
grime and fog and mud. Then the roasting crush of the London season,
in which everybody works like a horse, and the women are reduced to
a mere combination of bones and paint. Then more races, a few days’
breathing space, and again the Twelfth of August. I wish I hadn’t
read those books; I wouldn’t have realised it so soon. But really,
I’ve hardly admitted it before to-night. My own programme is slightly
varied. I shoot, and I don’t go to the Riviera, and I’ve had no chance
to get tired of London Society. But it surrounds me--that automatically
shifting _mise en scène. I know it is there._ I am a part of most of
it--a fly on its paint. I may get the whole thing any day. That is
one reason I don’t really rebel against being out of it in London.
Politics are the best there is in the whole thing, because there is
some variety, and there is always the promise of some tremendous
excitement--only there hasn’t been any yet.”

She sprang to her feet, overturning her chair.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” she cried, her eyes blazing, her voice
pitched high with delight. “Do you remember how you and Coralie and Tom
and I used to lock ourselves up in the schoolroom, and swear as loud
and as fast as we could when Tiny had been primmer than usual, or Aunty
had been holding forth on the South before the War? Well, that’s the
way I feel to-day, and I’ve been feeling that way for a long time, only
I didn’t know it.”

She stopped for want of breath. Randolph had risen too, but his back
was against the light. If his voice was not as steady as it had been
she was too excited to notice it.

“You certainly ought to return to California,” he said. “We are all
half savage--the strongest of us Californians. The great civilisations
fascinate us, but they don’t satisfy, and in time they pall.”

“I’d like to put dynamite under the whole business, and then take Cecil
and go and shoot bears with him in the Santa Lucia Mountains and sleep
under the redwoods without so much as a tent. I believe I’d be willing
to eat acorns.” She sat down and glanced up at him with all her old
coquetry.

“You don’t think I’ve made an idiot of myself, do you?” she asked
anxiously.

“You could never be other than the most charming woman in the world.”

“Will you pay me three compliments a day, Randolph?”

“I shall probably pay you twenty.”

“I hope to Heaven you will! I need them--I do really _need_ them. Now
go and wait for me in the library: I must go up and put some powder on;
I feel that I have the colour of a dairy-maid. It’s so nice to order
you about--and I couldn’t speak out to a soul on earth as I have to
you! I should have burst if you hadn’t come soon. If you get lost in
those everlasting corridors ring a bell.”

The promptness with which Randolph obeyed her command, with the little
laugh that had always saved his dignity, was the first of his signals
that the old Randolph still flourished within that mellowed and
polished exterior.

Lee ran up to her room. The door of the dressing-room was open; Cecil
was ready for dinner, and alone. Her conscience hurt her, and she was
still excited. With all her old impulsiveness she ran in, flung her
arms round her husband’s neck and kissed him.

The “Imp of the Perverse” is always hovering near to man awaiting the
more subtle climaxes of his life. Cecil adored his wife, but he liked
to do the love-making; and Lee, long since, had accepted the submissive
and responsive rôle her beloved autocrat demanded. And he was a man of
moods, which were deep and showed little on the surface. To-night he
was keen for the sport of the morrow, for a renewal of the brief and
congenial conversation he had had with his men guests before dinner;
and if his wife were to be too absorbed in her friends for several days
to give him a moment he should not miss her. He had had a hard Session
and the reaction to sport and open air was violent, that was all.

He returned Lee’s kiss politely, and took up a hair brush.

“You seem nervous,” he said. “Do calm yourself before dinner. It is
always a relief to me that you do not talk as loud as the rest of the
women.”

And when his wife rushed out and banged the door, he frowned, then
shrugged his shoulders, and went down to the library.




CHAPTER XIV


“In other words,” said Randolph, “loving an Englishman means hard work
and plenty of it.”

They were on top of the fell and had been roaming about all the
afternoon. Randolph had begun by amusing her and putting her into
the best of tempers, then he had led her on to speak of her long and
determined struggle to be many things foreign to her disposition and
habit, evincing so deep and genuine an interest that Lee’s ego, so long
the down-trodden subject of her imperious will, had leaped hilariously
to its own and confessed itself steadily for two hours.

“I’m not disloyal for a moment, and you’re really my brother; and I
could not speak to any one else living like this: the others I know as
well would not understand. I don’t see why I complain. I’ve got almost
everything I ever imagined myself wanting.”

“You’ve surrendered your individuality. It is that that gnaws, and
almost devitalises you.”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. I could be very quickly spoiled and get it all
back; but that would mean that I should not be happy in the same way,
nor Cecil either.”

“Are you happy?”

“I thought I was until lately--the last--oh, it is hard to say
exactly. But I never was intended for quite such hard and fast routine.
I feel positive that in certain conditions I should not mind being a
mere second self to Cecil. When you love a man nothing much matters up
to a certain point; and after that, nothing would matter at all if the
nerves could be made to hum occasionally to something like uncertainty.
This cut-and-dried life of England’s leisure class, which reminds me
of a grandfather’s clock in magnificent running order, may suit many
temperaments, but not mine. As you say, the old civilisations fascinate
us who are two-thirds made up of the unruly instincts of the new, but
they don’t satisfy, and they certainly do pall. Three years more of
this and I shall be a machine without a nerve, or--I shall hate Cecil
Maundrell. I’ve been horribly upset ever since you came; you actually
brought an earthquake with you, and I’ve thought and thought and
thought----”

“Well?” he said gently.

“If I’ve relapsed into the national monologue it’s your fault.”

“Have you been fashioning your mental habits on an up-to-date
novelette? People always monologue in private life. Do go on.”

“You know I never had a morbid nor a hysterical moment; but there must
come a time to all strong natures when all they have inherited and all
they have been in their plastic years finds itself in violent conflict
with an alien present. The problem would be solved if we could get
away, if Cecil’s genius could make a leap into other lines. If I could
only have had a finger in the moulding of our two destinies Cecil
would have been a great pioneer, an ‘Empire-maker,’ like Cecil Rhodes.
There would have been no stagnation then; I should have felt all the
stimulation of trampling down obstacles and defying the prejudices
of a million little minds in opening up a new and savage country by
the sheer insolent force of one great man’s personality. And then the
excitement of not knowing what would happen next, where we or the whole
country would be this time next year! And in a new country, where
civilisation is still in the making, man is greater than the State, and
he is much more alive and individual, much more primitive and at the
same time many-sided than when he is the slow and logical result of a
rounded and fagged civilisation which has caught him fast. But there
is no hope.... Even if Cecil discovered the instinct of the pioneer in
him he would not listen to it, for he is very proud and very ambitious.
When a man towers in an isolated field like Mr. Rhodes, every man who
plants his heels in the same field in the same epoch is a moon to
Jupiter. And no two men in a century will ever have all the gifts of
the Empire-maker united in one brain. Cecil is highly gifted, and he
has enormous energy, but his gifts are on the old conservative lines.”

Randolph, who had been absently tearing up the heather by the roots,
his eyes apparently absorbed in his task, extended himself at her feet.

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“What can I do? It has been an unspeakable relief to talk to you--have
I bored you?”

“I’ll not answer such a foolish question. Do you still love your
husband?”

“Oh, I’m sure I do, down deep; but my brain is in a chaotic state; the
whole of me in an ugly rebellious temper. We’ve had our first real
misunderstanding these last two days, and Cecil is so absorbed in
grouse he doesn’t even know it.”

Randolph laughed so heartily that Lee was forced to smile. “If that
were all,” she said with a sigh.

“I can think of no better temporary remedy than that you should come
back to California with us for a year. You might find that England had
weaned you after all, and California was an idealised memory. And as
for your husband--there is nothing like an occasional vacation. Mother
is already homesick: we’ll return this year.”

“Cecil would never consent. He’s really devoted to me.”

“I should hope so. But English wives are not slaves, I suppose. If you
asserted yourself he would neither tie you up nor divorce you.”

“He really needs me tremendously. If I were not a little beast I’d be
contented with my lot. And as I’ve tried to make him happy for purely
selfish reasons for three years, I don’t see that I have the right to
make him miserable because I have wheeled about and want something that
he can’t give me.”

“Or awakened?”

“It’s not only that. I shut my eyes deliberately to a great deal at the
first--that I could not be everything to him, that there were depths in
his nature that were way beyond me.”

“My dear child, no woman can be everything to a man; that would be
Utopia.”

“He could at least be more to me.”

“Ah, that is another matter,” said Randolph softly.

They returned to the subject many times. Randolph spent but a part
of the day on the moors. He was an admirable shot, and took care
to distinguish himself, but was at no pains to conceal his lack of
enthusiasm. On the fourth day of his visit, as Lee was showing him over
the Abbey, she said abruptly:

“Did you ever get a letter I wrote to you the day after I arrived here?”

“The day after----”

“It was all about the Abbey. I told you that Emmy might leave nothing,
and that everybody had expected Cecil to marry a fortune, or else lose
his inheritance. They wanted him to marry that Miss Pix, and they all
seemed to think I was a criminal for not being worth a million. I felt
a fool, I can assure you, for not investing in the Peruvian mine.”

“And you wrote to your old slave to make a million for you. I did not
get the letter, but I can see every word of it.”

“I don’t think I should have the same assurance to-day, but I’d be very
thankful if you’d advise me.”

“Oh, you have changed! It’s really tragic!”

They were in the crypt of the Abbey, an immense rambling and shadowy
vault. Lee put her hands to her face suddenly and began to cry.
Randolph took her in his arms and patted her gently.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to make love to you. I’m only
your big brother. But you must come back with me to California.”

“Oh, I want to go--the more I think of it, the more I want to go. The
first time I have a chance I’ll speak to Cecil about it; but he comes
home just in time to dress and is so tired he’s asleep before he’s
fairly in bed and in the morning he’s gone before I’m awake.”

“You were certainly never intended for a sportsman,” said Randolph
dryly. “I have written to mother to urge you to return with us. And as
for the other matter, we’ll see to it when we get there----”

“I am serious about that. I love the Abbey. I should think I had been
born to some purpose if I could save it. And I look upon it as almost
my mission; for should Cecil lose it, it would be through me. I’d never
forgive myself.”

“It strikes me that Cecil would have no one to blame but himself. He
was no raw stripling when he married you, but a man with a remarkably
mature mind----”

“But he was frightfully in love.”

“And never wiser. However, if you wish to make the Abbey your mission
in life you can command my services, as always. I will take the matter
in hand as soon as I get back.”

“_Will_ you?”

“Yes, but you must come too. It takes a month to get a letter answered
from here, and business secrets cannot be cabled.”

“I will go then. A double object gives me double courage. But I’ve
bored you long enough. You listen to my woes by the yard, and you never
talk about yourself except to amuse me----”

“I came to England for no other purpose but to see you and to hear you
talk.”

“Well, I can tell you then, that you were inspired by the real
missionary spirit, for I needed you badly.”




CHAPTER XV


After dinner that night, Lee and Lady Mary Gifford, instead of
following the other women, strolled along the corridors for a quiet
chat. They were not intimate, for they had too little in common,
but they admired each other and Lee had seen something more of Lady
Mary than of any of the Englishwomen whom she received in her little
drawing-room on Tuesdays or maintained a community of interests with
during that division of the year allotted to house-parties.

“I like your cousin, or whatever he is,” announced Lady Mary, clasping
her hands behind her. “He doesn’t talk through his nose and he’s quite
at his ease. As a rule I detest American men as much as I like the
women. Of course he’s rich--you can always tell.”

“He’s very rich.”

“Now don’t jump--I’d like you to marry me to him.”

Lee did jump. “Really?” she said dryly.

“I’d rather never marry: if I had a talent I’d go and set up a studio
in Kensington, or take chambers and write a popular novel. Of course
I could make hats or open a florist’s shop, but neither is to my
taste; and I really can’t hang on any longer--twenty-seven and my
ninth season--it’s positively sickening. I have had one or two good
offers--in the long ago--but I hated the thought of marrying then more
than I do now--when a thing has to be it never seems quite so bad. Of
course I could get any numbers of parvenus, and I’d almost made up my
mind to Mr. Pix, but I should feel quite reconciled to Mr. Montgomery.”

“That is very amiable of you, but I don’t see what you are offering
to Mr. Montgomery; and as he is almost my oldest friend I have his
happiness to consider. He would not care a rap for your title----”

“Wouldn’t he? How very odd. But I’d make him quite happy. You know I am
fascinating. Some men have gone quite off their heads about me.”

“If you send Randolph off his head he’ll undoubtedly propose to you.
You will have plenty of opportunity.”

“I see you don’t like the idea----”

“You are quite mistaken. I have had no time to think it over. Of course
if I thought you would be happy together----”

“Oh, I’m sure we’d arrange everything quite amicably. I have immense
tact, you know, and American men are said to make such indulgent
husbands; and he’s really distinguished-looking. And of course he’d be
quite sure of me. I’d scorn to do the things most women do. That’s one
reason why I like you so much--you haven’t a lover.”

Lee laughed. “I can’t see the superior virtue of selling oneself.”

“My dear, we must each do what is best for ourselves, whether it is
money we want or love. Standards have never insured happiness yet.
We must do our own thinking and try for what we most want. Here is a
secret for you to keep--until a year ago I expected my godmother’s
fortune. She had all but promised it to me and that is the real reason
I never married. She died without a will. I _can’t_ be a stranded old
maid living off my alternate relations. And perhaps you can imagine
what it would mean to me to marry a man like Mr. Pix.”

Lady Mary had drawn in her wide voice, and it vibrated slightly. It was
the first time Lee had known her to display anything like feeling, and
she softened at once.

“I’ll do what I can,” she said. “Randolph is a gentleman, and very
clever. Try to fall in love with him, and make him fall in love with
you.”

“You _are_ good. And Emmy can keep her Pix and welcome; by the way, I
suppose you have noticed, there’s not so smart a crowd here this year
as usual--except the Beaumanoirs, and Larry Monmouth and the other
single men.”

“I had not--there is not, come to think of it.”

“The Launcesters and Regents can be got by anybody that will feed
them----”

“What are you driving at?”

“I mean that Emmy has been a little too careless this last year. People
simply won’t swallow Pix--the men hate him so. There was a little
doubt before, but of course there’s none now. She let him go to the
Riviera with her.”

“Are you trying to make me believe that Mr. Pix is Emmy’s lover?”

“You don’t mean to say you are an infant in arms?”

“Of course I’m well enough used to women and their lovers, by this
time; but somehow one never thinks that sort of thing can happen in
one’s own family. It is plain enough, I suppose. She might at least
have chosen a gentleman.”

“She might indeed; that’s her crime. Pick up with the wrong man, and
Society is on its hind legs in no time. I’ve seen it coming for an age.
She certainly must know that she’s got off the track as well as any
one can tell her, and considering the way she’s worked for one thing
for five-and-twenty years, it’s rather surprising; but the trouble is,
she’s in love with him, I fancy.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it; but if her original
commonness demanded a mate she certainly could have found a bounder
with a little more gilding. There are one or two with the title she
adores.”

Lee spoke with heat and bitterness. She had the indifference of
familiarity to many things that had horrified her youthful ideals, but
a lover under the family roof filled her with protest.

“Emmy’s a curious contradiction----” began Lady Mary.

“What’s to be done? Of course it can’t go on. Lord Barnstaple or Cecil
could put a stop to it, but I can’t tattle on any woman----”

“My dear, I don’t advise you to put a stop to it unless you want to see
the Abbey put up at public auction.”

“Mary Gifford!”

“Now don’t shriek out; but I have more than one reason to think that
I’m right.”

“And perhaps we’re eating his bread?”

“I don’t know that it’s as bad as that, but I am positive that she
borrowed from him first and mortgaged her properties heavily--he
was over in America last year. Now, he is certainly in love with
her. He would marry me, of course, because I could give him what
Emmy cannot--but--however! Better not say anything, my child. Lord
Barnstaple has always been too indifferent to give two thoughts to his
wife’s private affections; but if he were made to know anything, of
course he’d have to kick the man out. And he and Cecil would have to
break the entail, and the Abbey would go to the highest bidder--who
would probably be one of the Pixes. Victoria the Silent has never
stopped wanting it from the day she first saw it; nor Cecil Maundrell
either, for that matter.”

“Well, she won’t get it. What a ghastly business! I wish you hadn’t
told me.”

“I wish I hadn’t, but it never occurred to me that you couldn’t see the
length of your nose.”

“Something has to be done; it’s a horrible position for Lord Barnstaple
and Cecil.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them--it is though. What’s the use of
platitudinising? Everybody else knows--or guesses, and it _is_ rough
on them. But let things drift along for a little. Who knows what may
happen?”

“If you don’t mind, and if you will make an excuse for me, I’ll go up
to my room. I’m tired out, and I’d like to be alone.”

“Do go, that’s a dear; and don’t bother too much about other people.
Almost everybody’s too selfish to be worth it!”

She returned to the great drawing-room of the Abbey, where people were
hovering about many little tables, smiled brilliantly on Randolph, and
marched him off to a charming boudoir where she detained him agreeably
for the rest of the evening. Her young blue eyes were very keen and she
took pains at once to assure him that Lee would be visible no more that
night.




CHAPTER XVI


Lee went to her bedroom, and, in accord with some curious feminine
sympathy of mental and material habit, immediately took off her gown
and put on a wrapper. Then she sat down, and, to use her own phrase,
endeavoured to take hold of herself. It was the first time that she had
been alone for several days, and she had a good deal of thinking to do.

The most gifted of men are successful in analysing women up to a
certain point only; when they find themselves confronted with utter
unreasonableness, perversity, and erratic curvatures of temper, they
solve the problem with a baby, and pass on. A woman may be in superb
condition, she may be leading the most normal of lives, she may not
have a care worthy of mention, and yet she may find herself in a state
of nervous and rebellious antagonism to the whole scheme of creation.
The women who work and exhaust their brain vitality with a certain
regularity are less prone to such attacks, but the woman of leisure
is liable to them at any moment. For the feminine imagination is a
restless and virile quantity, and a clever woman is often its victim to
an extent which no man can appreciate. That men are, on the whole, so
patient with what must often confound and incense them, constitutes
their chief claim to the forgiveness of many sins.

If Lee was by nature neither morbid nor hysterical, she felt that she
was doing her best to overcome the deficiency. Randolph’s appearance
had shattered the routine of her married life, and with it her
self-control. She was aghast, and she was furious with herself. Cecil
had ceased to be an ideal for whom no sacrifice was too great: he
merely represented a sudden and violent change in the order of her
inner life; and if his personal fascination and his incalculable
advantage of a previous ten years’ sojourn in her imagination had
accomplished this revolution and kept him master of the field for
three additional years, the reaction to a strong and long-fostered
individuality was but the more violent. What she wanted she was
scarcely able to define, but she felt sure that she wanted several
dozen things that she would never have as the wife of Cecil Maundrell.

She searched diligently for his faults, and was obliged to confess that
they were few and would play a small part in the balancing of accounts.
He was, if exacting, the kindest of husbands; if not amusing, he was
always interesting; although moody, he showed no sign of ceasing to
be a lover; if devoted to sport, she had never, in her most feminine
moments, been able to persuade herself that he was not several times
more devoted to her; and she had the most profound admiration for him
both as a man and as an intellect. His only imperfection was that he
was a strong and dominating personality with whom a woman must live
as a second self or not at all; and Lee felt herself a fool. But,
unfortunately, the supreme tragedies in the lives of two people who
love and are happy have often their genesis in no facts that can be
analysed and disposed of.

Of one desire, Lee was acutely conscious; to get away from her husband
for a time and return to California--to that stupendous country of many
parts where she had been Herself, where she had stood alone, where
she had munched consecutively for twenty-one years those sweets of
Individuality so dear to the American soul. And, this desire suddenly
defined itself, she wanted to be volatile, she wanted to be free from
every responsibility; she wanted, in short, to get out of the rôle of a
serious factor in the life of a serious man.

And Cecil? She made no excuses for herself, attempted no self-delusion:
she looked down steadily, although with eyes of horror and disgust, at
those depths of selfishness peculiar to the soul of woman--more so to
the souls of women of the younger civilisations. He was practically
blameless, and she was meditating a punishment meet for a brute of
a husband. He loved her and needed her, and she was condemning him
to the acutest suffering she could devise, short of her own death.
Nevertheless, if the situation were to be saved at all, she must get
away from him, she must be Herself for a time--for a year. After that?
Doubtless she would love him the better. Certainly she would never
love any other man. Her prediction that hatred of her husband might
be the result of three more uninterrupted years of him and of England
had been a mere verbal expression of nervous tension; even in the
present adventurous and overworked state of her imagination she knew
that she loved him, and would so long as consciousness survived in her.
If she could have had that most plausible of all excuses, the death
of affection and passion, she would have felt quite ready to justify
herself. As it was, there were no limits to her self-abasement And,
logically, there were no limits to her unreasoning anger with her
husband.

She wanted her Individuality back; that was the long and the short of
it.

Regarding Randolph, she felt a certain disquiet He had not betrayed
himself by so much as a glance, but her woman’s instinct told her
that he still loved her. There was nothing to apprehend, however,
beyond a possible scene at a remote period. If he was playing a big
game it was for heavy stakes, and he would not show his cards for
many a day. It was more than possible that he hoped everything from
a return to the scene of her girlish freedom and triumphs, and from
her withdrawal from her husband’s influence; but he would watch and
wait for the crucial moment before suggesting the facile American
specific for matrimonial jars. He was very clever, and she did not
doubt that if he were playing for the supreme desire of his life he
would be sufficiently unscrupulous. But he was a gentleman and he
would not demand her hand as the price of the Abbey’s rescue. If she
had never met Cecil Maundrell she believed that she could have loved
him, for he understood her. He was, now that he had found himself, a
charming and companionable man, with no raw edges to irritate the most
sensitive romanticism; and her Individuality would have flourished like
a green bay-tree. And he had plenty of brains and was just serious
enough. She could never have given him the half of what she had given
Cecil Maundrell, but there would have been no violent and humiliating
reactions from too much high-thinking and attempting to realise a
serious man’s ideal. Now, neither he nor any other man but her husband
could satisfy her for a moment; but as she had no desire to do Randolph
any more harm than she had done him already she determined to take Mary
Gifford to California with her and give that odd and attractive young
person all the advantages of propinquity and comparison.

Emmy’s peccancy was but a final reason for her desire to separate
herself for a time from her present life. She was charitable, but she
was fastidious. Had Emmy been an outsider she might have had twenty
lovers; but the proximity disgusted her.




CHAPTER XVII


Of course Cecil did the worst thing possible for himself: he appeared
just as she had finished elaborating her case and before she had
started upon the argument between her higher and her pettier self which
she had dimly contemplated. As he ran up the stair she rose nervously
to her feet, regretting for the first time that she had not a room of
her own in which she could lock herself. They had continued to put up
with the trifling inconveniences of the tower because its isolation and
historic associations made it a tenacious symbol in their own romance.

She sat down as he entered.

“I just missed you,” he said anxiously, “and some one told me that you
had not been in the drawing-room since dinner. Are you ill?”

“No; and I am glad you have come up. I want to ask you something.”

He sat down beside her and took her hand.

“What is it?” he asked. “Something has gone wrong?”

“I want to go back to California for a year.”

“But, my dear, I can’t get away. I should be mad--”

“But you can let me go. Mrs. Montgomery wants to take me back with
her.”

If he had given her time she would doubtless have approached the
subject with tact and many delicate subterfuges; but her mind was
wearied and possessed.

He stared at her incredulously.

“I really mean it. The only reasons I can put into shape are that I
am desperately tired of this everlasting round of English life, and
homesick for California.”

“Are you tired of me?”

“No; but I believe that a short separation would be better for us both.
I can’t make you understand, for you have never cared to understand me.
I adapted myself, and you took me for granted--”

“Have you been playing a part?”

“Heaven knows I have been serious enough. It is that as much as
anything else--I want to cease being serious for a while.”

Cecil continued to stare at her. His tan had worn off, and he paled
slightly. When a man after several years of married life is suddenly
informed that he does not understand his wife the shock is trying to
his mental faculties and to his patience.

“I do not know you to-night,” he said coldly. “I have seen you in a
number of moods, and occasionally in a temper, but I have never before
seen you when you were not--sweet.”

“I don’t feel sweet. I wish I did. I hate to hurt you.”

Cecil seized the suggestion. “You have certainly hurt me; and nobody
could know better than you how much. What _is_ the matter with you?”

“I want a change, that is all.”

“I’m afraid I’ve really done something quite abominable, although I
don’t remember--and it isn’t like you not to speak out.”

“I haven’t a fault in the world to find with you. I wish I had!”

“I don’t understand you,” he said helplessly. “And as I am so dense,
perhaps you will be good enough to explain. I really think I have the
right to demand it.” He would have liked to shake her, for he had not
yet been made to realise that she was in anything but a surprisingly
nasty temper.

Lee was quite sure that he had the right to demand a full explanation,
and she cast about for the phrases which would point it best. But her
reasons put their tails between their legs and scampered to the back of
her brain, where they looked petty enough. So she began to cry instead.

Cecil took her in his arms instantly, excoriating himself for his
desire to shake her. “You are ill; I know you are ill,” he whispered,
“and you are so unused to it that it has quite demoralised you.” Then,
his knowledge of women being primitive indeed, he descended to bribery.
“I am going to ask father to give you my mother’s jewels; I never knew
he had them--that there were any--till the other day. There are some
wonderful pieces.”

Lee pricked up her ears, then despised herself and sobbed the harder.
Suddenly, she shrank visibly from him, slipped from his embrace and
walked over to the fireplace, turning her back to her husband. It had
flashed into her mind that Randolph’s arms had been round her that
morning. She had thought no more of it at the time than if they had
been Mrs. Montgomery’s or Coralie’s; but of a sudden her quiescence
seemed an act of infidelity, if for no other reason than because Cecil
would be furious if he knew it. She decided that she certainly must be
growing morbid, and she resigned herself to being just as unpleasant as
her resources permitted.

Cecil went over to her and wheeled her about sharply. There was no
question about his pallor now; his very lips were white. “That was the
first time you ever shrank from me,” he said. “What does it mean?”

“I mean that I _will_ go to California.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I simply can’t explain, but I’ll try to in my letters. I promise that
if you don’t understand me now you shall before I get back.”

“I have no time to read a woman’s novels about herself. I once read
several volumes of women’s ‘letters.’ There never yet was a woman who
could write about herself unself-consciously; she is always addressing
an imaginary audience. Say what you’ve got to say now, and have done
with it. If I’ve failed in anything I love you well enough to do all I
can--you know that.”

“You told me when you proposed to me that you would hate understanding
a woman’s complexities, that she had no right to have any, that a woman
must become a mere adjunct of her husband.”

“I don’t remember ever having said anything of the sort. But if I
did--I very dimly realised at that time all that you would become to
me. Now I would do anything in my power to keep you as you have been
these three years.”

Lee almost relented; but her conscience was in a state of abnormal
activity. It had reminded her that she had talked her husband over
with another man, and that the act was both disloyal and in bad taste.
She would have given all she possessed to return her confidences where
they belonged, much as she had needed the relief. She hated Randolph
Montgomery and she hated herself. So she stamped her foot at Cecil.

“I _wish_ you would let me alone,” she exclaimed. “If I feel like it
later I’ll explain, but I won’t say another word to-night.”

There was really nothing for Cecil to do but to go out and bang the
door, so he went out and banged it.




CHAPTER XVIII


Lee slept more soundly that night than she had expected, and awoke the
next morning feeling very much ashamed of herself. Her determination
to leave England for a time was unaltered, but she would have given a
great deal to have come to an amicable understanding with Cecil. She
had treated him abominably, and he was the last person she desired to
wound. When she was in exactly the right temper she would make herself
as legible to him as she could, and, as he was the quickest of men, he
would understand as much as any mere man could, and would agree that
the separation--she might reduce it to six months--was advisable for
them both. He would do a good deal of thinking during her absence and
the result could not fail to be happy.

She went out on the moor to luncheon and was so amiable and charming
and so pointedly bent upon charming no man but her husband that
Cecil’s brow cleared and he sunned himself in her presence. But he
was seriously disturbed, and she saw it. She had awakened him roughly
out of what was doubtless beginning to look like a dream, and he was
not the man to close his eyes again until he had quite determined of
what stuff his dreams were made. But when they were alone he pointedly
avoided the subject.

The Gearys arrived next morning, and it seemed to Lee that the whole
Abbey was filled with Coralie’s light laughter. She wanted to see
everything at once, and the four Californians spent the entire day
moving restlessly over the house and grounds.

“Just think,” cried Coralie, flitting about the ghostly gloom of the
crypt. “I’m in an _Abbey_--an old stone thing a thousand years old--oh!
well, never mind, a few hundred years more or less don’t matter.
It’s _old_, and it’s stone, and it’s carved, and it’s haunted, and
grey-hooded friars were once just where I am. I think it’s lovely.
Isn’t it, Ned? Isn’t it?”

But Mr. Geary smiled with the true Californian’s mere toleration of all
things non-Californian. Coralie knew that smile, and tossed her head.

“Well, thank Heaven I’m not quite so provincial as that!” she cried
with sarcasm. “I’m going to keep you abroad three years. _I never in my
life_ saw any one so improved as Randolph.”

Whereupon Mr. Geary coloured angrily and strode off in a huff.

“Tell me some more,” demanded Coralie. “Don’t slam the door, Teddy.
Hasn’t there ever really been a hooded friar seen stalking through this
crypt at night?”

“They do say--You know all the dead earls lie here for a week; and on
alternate nights the tenantry and the servants sit up. Those people
are superstitious, and they vow that they see shadowy forms way over
there; of course lamps are hung on the columns near by--perhaps I can
show you a whole chest full of the silver lamps that have been used
for centuries. They make the rest of the crypt fairly black, and it
is easy enough to imagine anything. The interment always takes place
at midnight, by torchlight, even when there is a moon; and there is
popularly supposed to be an old abbot telling his beads just behind the
procession.”

“How simply gorgeous! Of course I don’t want Lord Barnstaple to die,
but I should _love_ to be in at that sort of thing. When Mr. Geary died
of course he was just laid out in the back parlour--drawing-room I
shall always call it hereafter; poor Mrs. Geary has never been out of
California since she left the immortal South--and he really did look
so uninteresting, and his casket was so hideously expensive. But an
earl--laid out in a crypt--of an ancient Abbey--with tenantry kneeling
round and shivering at hooded friars in the background--I’m really
alive for the first time! Is there an Abbey we could rent anywhere? I’d
only want it for about six months, but I’d have a simply heavenly time
so long as the novelty lasted.”

“It would take you six months to get used to the size of it,” said
Randolph, “and by the time it had begun to fit perhaps you would feel
that everything else was commonplace.” He spoke to Coralie, but he
looked at Lee.

She smiled and brought her lashes together. “Sometimes there are things
one wants more than magnificence,” she said. “Well--Emmy must be
awake. I’ll go and speak to her about Tom.”

For Tom was in London and had asked his sister to make known that he
desired an invitation to the Abbey, and had come to England merely to
look upon its future _châtelaine_.

Lee found Lady Barnstaple in one of her freshest and fluffiest wrappers
and in one of her ugliest tempers--attributable doubtless to the fact
that Mr. Pix, after three days of hard shooting, had been obliged to go
to London on business, and had not yet returned.

“Ask all California if you like,” she said crossly, “but tell them to
keep out of my way. I know their airs of old.”

“It’s not at all likely that your guests would put on airs with you.
For the matter of that you have the rank that all good Americans
approve of--”

“Some people are putting on airs with me,” said Lady Barnstaple darkly.

This was an obvious opportunity to approach a delicate subject, but Lee
shrank from it. Moreover, the thing would have run its natural course
before her return and one more unpleasantness been avoided. Lady Mary’s
advice was wise and appealed to her present craving for a long period
of irresponsibility. So she said instead:

“I think of going to California for a visit--with Mrs. Montgomery,
about the middle of October.”

Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes and stared at her daughter-in-law. Even
in the pink light it was evident that she changed colour. She dropped
her eyes suddenly.

“California is a long way off,” she said dryly. “I wonder Cecil
consents; but these little separations are always advisable. How long
shall you stay?”

“A year, possibly. I am going to take Mary Gifford with me if Mrs.
Montgomery will invite her--as of course she will.”

“Oh, do marry her to Randolph Montgomery! It would be an act of
charity.”

“How pleased she would be! But I think it can be managed, particularly
as Tiny likes her; and Mrs. Montgomery would be sure to fall in love
with her and conceive it her mission to modify her voice.”

“Well, I hope she’ll stay in California. I’m sick of her. I’m sick of
the rudeness of English people, anyhow.”

“You have cultivated their rudeness with a good deal of energy.
It seems to me that most Americans cultivate that attribute more
successfully than they cultivate any others of the many English
attributes they admire so profoundly,” Lee observed.

“Well, I wish you’d let me alone!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. “Don’t
speak another word to me to-day.”

Lee hastily retreated and sent off a telegram to Tom, then went out in
search of the others. She found them by the lake feeding the swans.

“The swans and the peacocks make it all just perfect!” cried Coralie.
“I want Ned to sit up all night with me in the crypt to see if there
won’t be a ghost, and he won’t do it.”

“As if there were such things,” said Mr. Geary disdainfully.

Lee turned to Randolph. “You look a whole generation older than Ned,”
she said, with the sensation of having just made the discovery of how
much improved he was. “I believe you could almost bring yourself to
believe in a ghost.”

He smiled and opened her parasol. “And you, I am afraid, have taken on
at least a century--without being aware of the fact. I am afraid you
will realise it when you return to California.”

“I want California more and more every day.”

“We shall see. The changes of association are very subtle. I can only
hope they are not so deeply wrought in you as they sometimes appear to
be--that you will really enjoy your year in California, I mean.”

They were walking toward the fell, and the others were some distance
behind.

“I am going to ask Aunty to invite Mary Gifford to go back with us. She
is my best friend here and she is simply dying for a change.”

“I am sure mother will be delighted. She will undertake her reformation
at once.”

“That is what I told Emmy. How do you like her--Mary, I mean?”

“She interests me very much, if only to see how wide she can open her
mouth.”

“No, but seriously--Mary is such a problem to me.”

“Well, she’s a beauty, like a blue and white moonlight in mid-winter;
and has a tantalising sort of elusiveness. I detest Englishwomen as
a rule, but I never met a woman before who talked so loud and at the
same time suggested an almost exaggerated shrinking and modesty. The
combination is certainly striking.”

“It isn’t that she’s really cold,” said Lee, with the deep subtlety of
her sex, “but she’s never met the right man. I only hope she won’t fall
in love with you, but she admires you tremendously.”

“Ah!”

“Do pay her a lot of compliments and show her a lot of little
attentions; Englishwomen get so tired of doing all the work. But don’t
make love to her.”

“I have no intention of making love to her,” said Randolph; but if he
had a deeper meaning he kept it out of his eyes--those eyes which had
lost their nervous facility of expression, and rarely looked otherwise
than cold and grey and thoughtful.

Tom arrived next morning, talkative, restless, and irresponsible; but
although he frankly avowed himself as much in love as ever, he hastened
to add that he would not mention it any oftener than he could help. For
several days Lee neglected the other guests and devoted herself to her
old friends. The last three had certainly brought the breezes of the
Pacific with them, and they talked California until Lady Mary, who had
joined them several times, declared she could stand it no longer.

“I’ll go with you gladly if Mrs. Montgomery will take me; and I intend
to make love to her, you may be sure,” she said to Lee, “but I really
can’t stand feeling so out of it. And besides you are all so intimate
and happy together, it’s almost a sin to intrude. You’re looking much
brighter since they came.”

“It has done me good to see them again, and it’s made me want to go
back more than ever.”

“I can understand. But it’s a pity Cecil can’t go with you. He’s
looking rather glum. Is that what’s the matter with him?”

“I am not sure,” said Lee uneasily. “I’m going to have a talk with
him on Sunday. I did say something about it on Monday night, but of
course--well----”

“It’s hard to persuade an English husband that he’s got to conform
to the American habit of matrimonial vacations and plenty of them.”
Lady Mary laughed. “Speaking of vacations, Mr. Pix is taking rather a
long one, but I believe he returns on Monday. I can’t quite make out,
but I fancy the men have rather snubbed him--as much as they decently
can. He must feel frightfully out of it. I only hope he won’t lose his
temper. He’s got a nasty one, and if he let it go he’s underbred enough
to shriek out anything. I saw with my own eyes that Lord Barnstaple
avoided playing with him the night before he left. Of course Lord
Barnstaple carried it off as he does everything, but I think the man
noticed it all the same.”

“Then I wish he had pride enough to keep out of the house, but of
course he hasn’t.”

“Your Californians now are so different. They are quite _comme il
faut_----”

“Mary Gifford, you are really intolerably rude!”

“Upon my word I don’t mean to be. And as you know, I want to marry
one.” She paused a moment, then raised her cold blue eyes to Lee’s.
“I too have a will of my own,” she announced, “and when I make up my
mind to do a thing I do it. I am going to marry Mr. Montgomery, and
whether you go back to California or not I am going with my future
mother-in-law.”

“Of course I shall go; and it is seldom that a woman--particularly
a beauty--fails to get a man if she makes up her mind to it. He is
interested; there’s that much gained.”




CHAPTER XIX


Mrs. Montgomery arrived the next day without Tiny, whose children were
ailing. As the following day was Sunday, and as Mrs. Montgomery would
hardly let Lee out of her sight, the definite understanding with Cecil
had to be postponed. She had seen practically nothing of him since
Tuesday. Mr. Geary and Mr. Brannan laughed at the bare idea of tramping
about all day carrying a heavy gun, nor did they, nor Coralie, fancy
the idea of luncheon on the moor. They wanted Lee to themselves, and
they had a little picnic every day. Mrs. Montgomery was too old for
picnics, and Lady Mary announced her intention of taking the good lady
on her own hands. Before sunset she had bewildered and fascinated her
victim, and by noon the next day had received the desired invitation.

“I wish I could have had the bringing up of her,” said Mrs. Montgomery
earnestly to Lee. “She’s really very peculiar, and has shockingly bad
manners, but with it all she is high-bred; it’s really very strange.
With us it’s either one thing or the other. And she’s so sweet. I’m
sure if I scold her a little after a while she won’t mind it a bit.”

“I’m sure she’ll take it like an angel,” said Lee, who had told Mary
what she was to expect, and could still hear that young lady’s loud
delighted laugh. “And be sure you’re good to her. She’s very much alone
in the world.”

Lee’s conscience hurt her less at this deliberate scheming than it
might have done a few weeks since, for she had by this time convinced
herself that Mary was really in love with Randolph; and she was
certainly a wife of whom any man might be proud.

On Tuesday evening as Lee and her friends were descending the fell--on
whose broad summit they had laughed the afternoon away, and Lee had
been petted and flattered to her heart’s content--she paused suddenly
and put her hand above her eyes. Far away, walking slowly along the
ridge of hillocks that formed the southeastern edge of the moor, was
a man whose carriage, even at that distance, was familiar. She stared
hard. It was certainly Cecil. He was alone, and, undoubtedly, thinking.
She made up her mind in an instant.

“I see Cecil,” she said. “I’m going to bring him home. You go on to the
Abbey.” And she hurried away.

Doubtless he had been there for some time, and had sought the solitude
deliberately: the men were shooting miles away; apparently even
sport had failed him. She made tight little fists of her hands. Her
morbidity had not outlasted the night of her momentous interview with
her husband, but her old friends had both satisfied her longings for
previous conditions, and rooted her desire for a few months’ freedom.
It was true that, with the exception at Randolph, they bored her a
little at times, but the fact remained that they symbolised the freest
and most brilliant part of her life, and that they were in delightful
accord with the lighter side of her nature. Cecil, outlined against the
sky over there in the purple, alone, and, beyond a doubt, perturbed and
unhappy, made her feel as cruel and selfish as she could feel in her
present mood. She rebelled against the serious conversation before her,
and wondered if she had slipped from her heights forever. They had been
very pleasant.

Cecil saw her coming and met her half-way. She smiled brilliantly,
slipped her hand in his, and kissed him.

“You are thinking it over,” she said, with the directness that he liked.

“I have been thinking about a good many things. I have been wondering
how I could have lived with you for three years and known you so
little. I hardly knew you the other night at all, and I never believed
that you would care to leave me.”

“Cecil! You are so serious. You take things so tragically. I _can’t_
look at it as you do, because I have seen women going to Europe all my
life without their husbands. One would think I was wanting to get a
divorce!”

“Are you trying to make me feel that I am making an ass of myself? I
think you know that I have my own ideas about most things, and that
I am not in the least ashamed of them. I married you to live with
you, to keep you here beside me so long as we both lived. I have no
understanding of and no patience with any other sort of marriage. And
I think you knew when you accepted me that I had not the making of an
American husband in me.”

“I never deluded myself for a moment. And you must admit that I have
been English enough! Believe me when I say that a brief relapse on my
part is necessary----”

“I cannot understand your having a ‘relapse’ unless you are tired of
me.”

“I am not in the least tired of you; no one could ever tire of you. It
is all so subtle----”

“Don’t talk verbiage, please. There are no subtleties that can’t
be turned into black and white if you choose to do it. I can quite
understand your being homesick for California, and I’ve fully intended
to take you back some day. But you might wait. I have kept you pretty
hard at the grind, and if it were not for all the political work I’ve
got to do this autumn and winter, I’d take you over to the Continent
for a few months. And after a year or two we shall do a great deal of
travelling, I hope: I want more and more to study the colonies.”

“That is one reason I thought it best to go now--you are going to be so
busy you won’t miss me at all. When you’re travelling about, speaking
here and speaking there, you’ll be surrounded by men all the time. You
won’t need me in the least.”

“It is always the greatest possible pleasure to me to know that you are
where I can see you at any moment, and that you have no interests apart
from my own.”

“That is just the point. I should like a few trifling ones for a time.
If you want it in plain English, here it is--I want to be an Individual
for just one year. I made a great effort to surrender all I had to you,
and you must admit that I was a success. But reaction is bound to come
sooner or later, and that is what is the matter with me.”

Cecil stood still and looked at her. “Oh,” he remarked. “That is it?
Why didn’t you say so at once? I ought to have expected it, I suppose.
I saw what you were before I married you--about the worst spoiled woman
I had ever met in my life. But you had brains and character, and you
loved me. I hoped for everything.”

“And you can’t be so ungrateful as to say that you have been
disappointed.”

“No. I certainly have not been--up to a week ago: I thought you the
most perfect woman God ever made.”

Lee flushed with pleasure and took his hand again.

“I wouldn’t make you unhappy for the world,” she said. “Only I thought
I could show you that it was for the best. We are what we are. Brain
and will and love can do a great deal, an immense amount, but it can’t
make us quite over. We bolt our original self under and he gnaws at
the lock and gets out sooner or later. The best way is to give him his
head for a little and then he will go back and be quiet for a long time
again. But----” she hesitated for so long a time that Cecil, who had
been ramming his stick into the ground, turned and looked at her. “If
I can’t make you agree with me,” she said, “I won’t go.”

“But you would stay unwillingly.”

“Oh, I do want to go!”

“Then go, by all means,” he said.




CHAPTER XX


During the following week Lee was not so absorbed in her friends that
she would have been oblivious to a certain discomposure of the Abbey’s
atmosphere, even had Mary Gifford not called her attention to it. Some
of the guests had given place to others, but the Pixes, Lady Mary, and
the Californians still remained. Of course they were all scattered
during the day, but the evenings were spent in the great drawing-room
and adjoining boudoirs and billiard-room, and it was obvious to the
most indifferent that there was a discord in the usual harmony of the
Abbey at this season. Lady Barnstaple’s temper had never been more
uncertain, but no one minded that: Emmy was always sure to be amusing,
whether deliberately or otherwise; that was her rôle. Nor was any one
particularly disturbed by the increased acidity of Lord Barnstaple’s
remarks; for when a man is clever he must be given his head, as Captain
Monmouth had remarked shortly before he left; “and some pills are
really cannon balls,” he had added darkly.

Mr. Pix was the disturbing element. He had managed to keep an effective
shade over the light of his commonness in London, for he did not go
out too much and was oftener in Paris. Moreover, Victoria, who was
painfully irreproachable, had provided a sort of family reputation
on which he travelled. But in the fierce and unremitting light of a
house-party he revealed himself, and it was evident that he was aware
of the fact; his assumption of ease and of the manner to which his
fellow-guests were born grew more defiant daily, and there were times
when his brow was dark and heavy. Everybody wondered why he did not
leave. He handled his gun clumsily, and with manifest distaste, and it
was plain that he had not so much as the seedling of the passion for
sport. Nevertheless he stuck to it, and asserted that he longed for
October that he might distinguish himself in the covers.

If the man had succeeded in giving himself an acceptable veneer, or if
he had had the wit to make himself useful financially to the men with
whom he aspired to associate, he would have gone down as others of his
gilded ilk had gone down; but, as it was, every man in the Abbey longed
to kick him, and they snubbed him as pointedly as in common courtesy to
their host they could.

“I am actually uneasy,” said Lady Mary to Lee one evening as they stood
apart for a moment in the drawing-room. The guests looked unconcerned
enough. They were talking and laughing, some pretending to fight for
their favourite tables; while in the billiard-room across the hall a
half-dozen of the younger married women were romping about the table,
shrieking their laughter. But Victoria Pix, looking less like a marble
than usual, stood alone in a doorway intently regarding her brother,
who was also conspicuously alone. And although Emmy was flitting about
as usual, there was an angry light in her eyes and an ugly compression
of her lips.

“I wish it were the last of September,” replied Lee.

“So do I--or that we were in California. I feel as if some one had a
lighted fuse in his hand and was hunting for dynamite. It’s really
terrible to think what might happen if that man lost his temper and
opened his mouth.”

“I don’t want to think of it. And where there are so many people
nothing is really likely to happen; there are so many small diversions.”

But she broached the subject to Cecil as they were walking along the
corridors to their tower some hours later. Apparently they were the
best of friends again, for Cecil was not the man to do anything by
halves. He had not even returned to the subject; and if he were still
wounded and unquiet he gave no sign.

“I wish that horrid Mr. Pix would go,” said Lee tentatively. “He’s so
out of it, I wonder he doesn’t.”

“I can’t imagine what he came for. I never saw a man look such an ass
on the moors.”

“He must get on your father’s nerves.”

“I fancy he does. I suppose Emmy asked him here. She could hardly avoid
it, she’s so intimate with Miss Pix. By the way, that woman actually
talked at dinner to-night; you may not have noticed, but I had her
on my left; I suppose I’m in Emmy’s bad graces for some reason or
other. But she really seemed bent on making herself entertaining. She
has something in her head, I fancy. If less of it were snobbery she
wouldn’t be half bad.”

“Fancy what you escaped. If you had never come to America they might
have married you to the Pixes.”

“The person has yet to be born who could do my marrying for me,” said
Cecil; and there was no doubt that he knew himself.




CHAPTER XXI


The next afternoon as Lee was taking tea with the other guests
in the library she happened to glance out of the window, and saw
Lord Barnstaple returning from the moors, alone. It was an unusual
occurrence, for he was an ardent and vigorous sportsman. Ten minutes
later she became aware that a servant in the corridor was endeavouring
to attract her attention. She went out at once and closed the door. The
servant told her that Lord Barnstaple desired an interview with her in
his own sitting-room; he feared interruptions in her boudoir.

Lee went rapidly to his rooms, curious and uneasy. She felt very much
like running away, but Lord Barnstaple had been consistently kind to
her, and was justified in demanding what return she could give him.

He was walking up and down, and his eyebrows were more perturbed than
supercilious.

“I want to know if you will give me a little help,” he said abruptly.

“Of course I will do anything I can.”

“I want that bounder, Pix, put out of this house. I can’t stand him
another day without insulting him, and of course I don’t want to do
that. But he is Emmy’s guest and she can get rid of him--I don’t
care how she does it. Of course I can’t speak to her; she would be in
hysterics before I was half through; and would keep him here to spite
me.”

“And you want me to speak to her?”

“I’m not asking you to undertake a very pleasant task; but you’re the
only person who has the least influence over her, except Cecil--and I
don’t care to speak to him about it.”

“But what am I to say to her? What excuse?”

Lord Barnstaple wheeled about sharply. “Can’t you think of any?” he
asked.

Lee kept her face immobile, but she turned away her eyes.

Lord Barnstaple laughed. “Unless you are blind you can see what is
becoming plain enough,” he said harshly. “I’ve seen him hanging about
for some time, but it never occurred to me that he might be her lover
until lately. I don’t care a hang about her and her lovers, but she
can’t bring that sort to the Abbey.”

“I can tell her that everybody is talking and that the women are
hinting that unless she drops him she’ll be dropped herself.”

“Quite so. You’ll have a nasty scene. It is good of you to undertake it
without making me argue myself hoarse.”

“I am one of you; you must know that I would willingly do anything for
the family interests that I could.”

“You do belong to us,” said Lord Barnstaple with some enthusiasm.
“And that is what Emmy has never done for a moment. By the way,” he
hesitated, “I hate to mention it now, it looks as if I were hastening
to reward you; but the fact is I had made up my mind to give you my
wife’s jewels. They are very fine, and Emmy does not even know of their
existence. I suppose it would have been rather decent of me to have
given them to you long ago: but----”

Lee nodded to him, smiling sympathetically.

“Yes,” he said, “I hated to part with them. But I shan’t mind your
having them. I’ll write to my solicitors at once to send them down;
I’ve got to pass the time somehow. For Heaven’s sake come back and tell
me how she takes it.”

“I don’t suppose I shall be long. I haven’t thanked you. Of course I
shall be delighted to have the jewels.”

“You ought to have the Barnstaple ones, but she’s capable of outliving
the whole of us.”




CHAPTER XXII


As Lee walked along the many corridors to her mother-in-law’s rooms she
reflected that she was grateful Lord Barnstaple had not refrained from
mentioning the diamonds: their vision was both pleasing and sustaining.
She was obliged to give serious thought to the coming interview, but
they glittered in the background and poured their soothing light along
her nerves.

Lady Barnstaple had but just risen from her afternoon nap and was
drinking her tea. She looked cross and dishevelled.

“Do sit down,” she said, as Lee picked up a porcelain ornament from the
mantel and examined it. “I hate people to stand round in spots.”

Lee took a chair opposite her mother-in-law. She was the last person to
shirk a responsibility when she faced the point.

“You have seemed very nervous lately,” she said. “Is anything the
matter?”

“Yes, everything is. I wish I could simply hurt some people. I’d go a
long ways aside to do it. What right have these God-Almighty English to
put on such airs, anyhow? One person’s exactly as good as another. I
come from a free country and I like it.”

“I wonder you have deserted it for five-and-twenty years. But it is
still there.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt you’d like to get rid of me. But you won’t. I’ve
worn myself out getting to the top, and on the top I’ll stay. I’d be
just nothing in New York. And Chicago--_good_ Lord!”

“You’ve stepped down two or three rungs, and if you’re not careful
you’ll find yourself at the foot--”

“What do you mean?” screamed Lady Barnstaple. “I’ve half a mind to
throw this teacup at you.”

“Don’t you dare to throw anything at me. I should have a right to
speak even if I did not consider your own interest--which I do; please
believe me. Surely you must know that Mr. Pix has hurt you.”

“I’d like to know why _I_ can’t have a lover as well as anybody else.”

“Do you mean to acknowledge that he is your lover?”

“It’s none of your business whether he is or not! And I’m not going to
be dictated to by you or anybody else.”

Lady Barnstaple was too nervous and too angry to be cowed by the cold
blue blaze before her, but she asserted herself the more defiantly.

“I have no intention of dictating to you, but it certainly is my
business. And it’s Lord Barnstaple’s and Cecil’s--”

“You shut up your mouth,” screamed Lady Barnstaple; her language always
revealed its pristine simplicity when her nerves were fairly galloping.
“The idea of a brat like you sitting up there and lecturing me. And
what do you know about it, I’d like to know? You’re married to the
salt of the earth and you’re such a fool you’re tired of him already.
If you’d been tied up for twenty years to a cold-blooded brute like
Barnstaple you might--yes, you might have a little more charity----”

“I am by no means without charity, and I know that you are not happy.
I wish you were; but surely there are better ways of consoling
oneself----”

“_Are_ there? Well, I don’t know anything about them and I guess you
don’t know much more. I was pretty when I married Barnstaple, and I
was really in love with him, if you want to know it. He was such a
real swell, and I was so ambitious, I admired him to death; and he was
so indifferent he fascinated me. But he never even had the decency
to pretend he hadn’t married me for my money. He’s never so much as
crossed my threshold, if you want to know the truth.”

“People say he was in love with his first wife, and took her death very
much to heart. Perhaps that was it.”

“That was just it. He’s got her picture hanging up in his bedroom;
won’t even have it in his sitting-room for fear somebody else might
look at it. I went to see him once out of pure charity, when he was
ill in bed and he shouted at me to get out before I’d crossed the
threshold. But I saw _her_.”

“I must say I respect him more for being perfectly honest, for
not pretending to love you. After all, it was a square business
transaction: he sold you a good position and a prospective title.
You’ve both got a good deal out of it----”

“I hate him! I hate a good many people in England, but I hate him the
most. I’m biding my time, but when I do strike there won’t be one ounce
of starch left in him. I’d do it this minute if it wasn’t for Cecil.
What right has he got to stick his nose into my affairs and humiliate
the only man that ever really loved me----”

“If you mean Mr. Pix, it seems to me that Lord Barnstaple has
restrained himself as only a gentleman can. He is a very fastidious
man, and you surely cannot be so blind as not to see how an
underbred----”

“Don’t you dare!” shrieked Lady Barnstaple. She sprang to her feet,
overturning the tea-table and ruining her pink velvet carpet. “He’s
as good as anybody, I tell you, and so am I. I’m sick and tired
of airs--that cad’s that’s ruined me and your ridiculous Southern
nonsense. I’m not blind! I can see you look down on me because I ain’t
connected with your old broken aristocracy! What does it amount to,
I’d like to know? There’s only one thing that amounts to anything on
the face of this earth and that’s money. You can turn up your nose at
Chicago but I can tell you Chicago’d turn up its nose at you if it had
ever heard of you. You’re just a nonentity, with all your airs, and all
your eyes too for that matter, and I’m known on two continents. I’m the
Countess of Barnstaple, if I was--but it’s none of yours or anybody
else’s business who I was. I’m somebody now and somebody I’m going to
stay. If I’ve gone down three rungs I’ll climb up again--I will! I
will! I will! And I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! I haven’t a penny left!
Not a penny! Not a penny! I’m going to kill myself----”

Lee jumped up, caught her by the shoulders and literally shook the
hysterics out of her. Then she sat her violently into a chair.

“Now!” she said. “You behave yourself or I’ll shake you again. I’ll
stand none of your nonsense and I have several things to say to you
yet. So keep quiet.”

Lady Barnstaple panted, but she looked cowed. She did not raise her
eyes.

“How long have you been ruined?”

“I don’t know; a long while.”

“And you are spending Mr. Pix’s money?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do the Abbey lands pay the taxes and other expenses?--and the expenses
of the shooting season?”

“They pay next to nothing. The farms are too small. It’s all woods and
moor.”

“Then Mr. Pix is running the Abbey?”

“Yes he is--and he knows it.”

“And you have no sense of responsibility to the man who has given you
the position you were ready to grovel for?”

“He’s a beastly cad.”

“If he were not a gentleman he could have managed you. But that has
nothing to do with it. You have no right to enter a family to disgrace
it. I suppose it’s not possible to make you understand; but its honour
should be your own.”

“I don’t care a hang about any such high-falutin’ nonsense. I entered
this family to get what I wanted, and when it’s got no more to give me
it can be the laughing-stock of England for all I care.”

“I thought you loved Cecil.”

The ugly expression which had been deepening about Lady Barnstaple’s
mouth relaxed for a moment.

“I do; but I can’t help it. He’s got to go with the rest. I don’t know
that I care much, though; you’re enough to make me hate him. What I
hate more than everything else put together is to give up the Abbey.
And you can be sure that after the way Mr. Pix has been treated----”

“Mr. Pix will leave this house to-night. If you don’t send him I shall.”

“You’re a fool. If you knew which side your bread was buttered on
you’d make such a fuss over him that everybody else would treat him
decently----”

“I have fully identified myself with my husband’s family, if you have
not, and I shall do nothing to add to its dishonour. There are worse
things than giving up the Abbey--which can be rented; it need not be
sold. The Gearys would rent it to-morrow.”

“If you think so much of this family I wonder you can make up your mind
to leave it.”

Lee hesitated a moment. Then she said: “I shall never leave it so long
as it needs me. And it certainly needs somebody just at present. Mr.
Pix must leave; that’s the first point. Lord Barnstaple and Cecil must
be told just so much and no more. Don’t you dare tell them that Mr. Pix
has been running the Abbey. You can have letters from Chicago to-morrow
saying that you are ruined.”

“If Mr. Pix goes I follow. Unless I can keep the Abbey--and if I’ve got
to drop out----”

“You can suit yourself about going or remaining. Only don’t you tell
Lord Barnstaple or anybody else whose money you have been spending.”

“I’d tell him and everybody else this minute if it weren’t for Cecil.
He’s the only person who’s ever really treated me decently. And as for
the Abbey----”

She paused so long that Lee received a mental telegram of something
still worse to come. As Lady Barnstaple raised her eyes slowly and
looked at her with steady malevolence she felt her burning cheeks cool.

“He wouldn’t have the Abbey, anyhow, you know,” said Lady Barnstaple.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you jabbering with Barnstaple and Cecil not long since about
the Abbey and its traditions, but either they hadn’t told you or you
hadn’t thought it worth remembering--that there is a curse on all Abbey
lands and that it has worked itself out in this family with beautiful
regularity.”

“I never heard of any curse.”

“Well, the priests, or monks, or whatever they were, cursed the Abbey
lands when they were turned out. And this is the way the curse works.”
She paused a moment longer with an evident sense of the dramatic. “They
never descend in the direct line,” she added with all possible emphasis.

“I am too American for superstition,” but her voice had lost its
vigour.

“That hasn’t very much to do with it. I’m merely mentioning facts. I
haven’t gone into other Abbey family histories very extensively, but
I know this one. Never, not in a single instance, has Maundrell Abbey
descended from father to son.”

Lee looked away from her for the first time. Her eyes blazed no longer;
they looked like cold blue ashes.

“It is time to break the rule,” she said.

“The rule’s not going to be broken. Either the Abbey will go to a
stranger, or Cecil will die before Barnstaple is laid out in the
crypt----”

Lee rose. “It is an interesting superstition, but it will have to
wait,” she said. “I am going now to speak to Mr. Pix--unless you will
do it yourself.”

“I’ll do it myself if you’ll be kind enough to mind your business that
far.”

“Then I shall go and tell Lord Barnstaple that you have consented----”

“Ah! He sent you, did he? I might have known it.”

Lee bit her lip. “I am sorry--but it doesn’t matter. If to-day is
a sample of your usual performances, you can’t expect him to court
interviews with you.”

“Oh, he’s afraid of me. I could make any man afraid of me, thank
Heaven!”




CHAPTER XXIII


Lee returned to her father-in-law more slowly than she had advanced
upon the enemy. She longed desperately for Cecil, but he was the last
person in whom she could confide.

Lord Barnstaple opened the door for her.

“How pale you are!” he said. “I suppose I sent you to about the
nastiest interview of your life.”

“Oh. I got the best of her. She was screaming about the room and I got
tired of it and nearly shook the life out of her.”

Lord Barnstaple laughed with genuine delight. “I knew she’d never get
the best of you,” he cried. “I knew you’d trounce her. Well, what else?”

“She promised to tell Mr. Pix he must go to-night.”

“Ah, you did manage her. How did you do it?”

“I told her I’d tell him if she didn’t.”

“Good! But of course she’ll get back at us. What’s she got up her
sleeve?”

“I don’t think she knows herself. She’s too excited. I think she’s
upset about a good many things. She seems to have been getting bad news
from Chicago this last week or two.”

“Ah!” Lord Barnstaple walked over to the window. He turned about in a
moment.

“I have felt a crash in the air for a long time,” he said pinching
his lips. “But this last year or two her affairs seemed to take a new
start, and of course her fortune was a large one and could stand a good
deal of strain. But if she goes to pieces----” he spread out his hands.

“If Cecil and I could only live here all the year round we could keep
up the Abbey in a way, particularly if you rented the shootings; but
our six months in town take fully two thousand----”

“There’s no alternative, I’m afraid: we’ll all have to get out.”

“But you wouldn’t sell it?”

“I shall have to talk it over with Cecil. The rental would pay the
expenses of the place; but I can’t live forever, and when I give place
to him the death duties will make a large hole in his private fortune.
I have a good many sins to repent of when my time comes.”

He had turned very pale, and he looked very harassed. Lee did not fling
her arms round his neck as she might once have done, but she took his
hand and patted it.

“You and Cecil and I can always be happy together, even without the
Abbey,” she said. “If Emmy really loses her money she will run away
with Mr. Pix or somebody. We three will live together, and forget all
about her. And we won’t be really poor.”

Lord Barnstaple kissed her and patted her cheek, but his brow did not
clear.

“I am glad Cecil has you,” he said, “the time may come when he will
need you badly. He loves the Abbey--more than I have done, I suppose,
or I should have taken more pains to keep it.”

Lee felt half inclined to tell him of Randolph’s promise; but sometimes
she thought she knew Randolph, and sometimes she was sure she did not.
She had no right to raise hopes, which converse potentialities so
nicely balanced. Then she bethought herself of Emmy’s last shot, which
had passed out of her memory for the moment. She must speak of it to
some one.

“She said something terrible to me just before I left. I’d like to ask
you about it.”

“Do. Why didn’t you give her another shaking?”

“I was knocked out: it took all my energies to keep her from seeing it.
She said that Abbey lands were cursed, and never descended from father
to son.”

Lord Barnstaple dropped her hand and walked to the window again.

“It has been a curious series of coincidences in our case,” he said,
“but as our lands were not cursed more vigorously than the others,
and as a good many of the others have gone scot free or nearly so,
we always hope for better luck next time. There is really no reason
why our luck shouldn’t change any day. The old brutes ought to be
satisfied, particularly as we’ve taken such good care of their bones.”

“Well, if the Abbey has to go, I hope the next people will be haunted
out of it,” said Lee viciously. “I must go and dress for dinner. Don’t
worry; I have a fine piece of property, and it is likely to increase
in value any day.” She felt justified in saying this much.

“You had an air of bringing good luck with you when you came. It was a
fancy, of course, but I remember it impressed me.”

“That is the reason you didn’t scold me for not bringing a million, as
Emmy did?”

“_Did_ she? The little beast! Well, go and dress.”




CHAPTER XXIV


As Cecil and Lee were descending the tower stair an hour later he said
to her:

“Don’t look for me to-night when you are ready to come home; I am
coming straight here after dinner. It’s high time I got to work on my
speeches.”

She slipped her hand into his. “Shall I come too and sit with you?”

He returned her pressure and did not answer at once. Then he said: “No;
I think I’d rather you didn’t. If I am to lose you for a year I had
better get used to it as soon as possible.”

She lifted her head to tell him that she had no intention of leaving
him for the present, then felt a perverse desire to torment him a
little longer. She intended to be so charming to him later that she
felt she owed that much to herself. But she was dressed to-night for
his special delectation. If Cecil had a preference in the matter of
her attire it was for transparent white, and she wore a gown of white
embroidered mousseline de soie flecked here and there with blue.

They were still some distance from the door which led into the first
of the corridors, for the stair was winding, worn, and steep, and, in
spite of several little lamps, almost dark. Cecil paused suddenly and
turned to her, plunging his hands into his pockets. She could hardly
see his face, for a slender ray from above lay full across her eyes;
but she had thought, as she had joined him in the sitting-room above a
few moments since, that he had never looked more handsome. He grew pale
in London, but a few days on the moors always gave him back his tan;
and it had also occurred to her that the past two weeks had given him
an added depth of expression, robbed him of a trifle of that serenity
which Circumstance had so persistently fostered.

“There is something I should like to say,” he began, with manifest
hesitation. “I shouldn’t like you to go on thinking that I have not
appreciated your long and unfailing sacrifice during these three years.
I was too happy to analyse, I suppose, and you seemed happy too;
but of course I can see now that you were making a deliberate--and
noble--attempt--to--to make yourself over, to suppress an individuality
of uncommon strength in order to live up to a man’s selfish ideal.
Of course when I practically suggested it, I knew what I was talking
about, but I was too much of a man to realise what it meant--and I had
not lived with you. I can assure you that, great as your success was, I
have realised, in this past week, that I had absorbed your real self,
that I understood you as no man who had lived with you and loved you
as much as I--no man to whom you had been so much, could fail to do.
I am expressing myself about as badly as possible, but the idea that
you should think me so utterly selfish and unappreciative after all
you have given up--have given me--has literally tortured me. I don’t
wonder you want a fling. Go and have it, but come back to me as soon as
you can.”

She made no reply, for she wanted to say many things at once. But it is
possible that he read something of it in her eyes--at least she prayed
a few hours later that he had--for he caught her hard against him and
kissed her many times. Then he hurried on, as if he feared she would
think he had spoken as a suppliant.

When she joined him in the corridor the Gearys were waiting for them,
and Coralie immediately began to chatter. Her conversation was like
a very light champagne, sparkling but not mounting to the brain. Lee
felt distinctly bored. She would have liked to dine alone with Cecil
and then to spend with him a long evening of mutual explanation and
reminiscence, and many intervals. She answered Coralie at random, and
in a few moments her mind reverted with a startled leap to the pregnant
hours of the afternoon. Could she keep Cecil ignorant of the disgrace
which had threatened him? Had Pix gone? Would Emmy hold her counsel?
She had forgotten to ask Lord Barnstaple to keep away from her; but
such advice was hardly necessary.

“Where on earth did you disappear to this afternoon?” Coralie was
demanding. “I hunted over the whole Abbey for you and I got lost and
then I tried to talk to _that_ Miss Pix and she asked me all about
divorce in the United States--of all things! I wonder if she’s got
a husband tucked away somewhere--those monumental people are often
bigger fools than they look. I told her that American divorces were
no good in England unless they were obtained on English statutory
grounds--we’d known some one who’d tried it. She looked as mad as a
hornet, just like her brother for a minute. And he fairly makes me ill,
Lee. Just fancy _our_ having such people in the house. I must say that
the English with all their blood----”

“Oh, do keep quiet!” said Lee impatiently. Then she apologised
hurriedly. “I have a good deal to think about just now,” she added.

Coralie was gazing at her with a scarlet face. “Well, I think it’s
about time you came back to California,” she said sarcastically. “Your
manners need brushing up.”

But Lee only shrugged her shoulders and refused to humble herself
further. She was beset with impatience to reach the library and
ascertain if Pix had gone.

He was there. And he was standing apart with his sister. His set thick
profile was turned to the door. He was talking, and it was evident that
his voice was pitched very low.

As the company was passing down the corridor which led to the stair
just beyond the dining-room, Lady Barnstaple’s maid came hastily from
the wing beyond and asked Lee to take her ladyship’s place at the table.

It seemed to Lee as the dinner progressed that with a few exceptions
every one was in a feverish state of excitement. The exceptions were
the Pixes, who barely made a remark, Cecil, who seemed as usual and
was endeavouring to entertain his neighbour, and Lord Barnstaple,
whose brow was very dark. Mary Gifford’s large laugh barely gave its
echoes time to finish, and the others certainly talked even louder
and faster than usual. Randolph alone was brilliant and easy, and, to
Lee, was manifestly doing what he could to divert the attention of his
neighbours. Before the women rose it was quite plain that they were
really nervous; and that the influence emanated from Pix. His silence
alone would have attracted attention, for it was his habit to talk
incessantly in order to conceal his real timidity. And he sat staring
straight before him, scarcely eating, his heavy features set in an ugly
sneer.

“I’m on the verge of hysterics,” said Mary Gifford to Lee as they
entered the drawing-room. “That man’s working himself up to something.
He’s a coward and his courage takes a lot of screwing, but he’s getting
it to the sticking point as fast as he can, and I met him coming out of
Emmy’s rooms about an hour before dinner. I ran over to speak to her
about something, but I was not admitted. He looked as if they’d been
having a terrible row and he was ready to murder some one. I’m in a
real funk. But if he’s meditating a _coup de théâtre_ we can baulk him
for to-night at least. It’s a lovely night. Get everybody out-of-doors
and then I’ll see that they scatter. I’ll start a romp the moment the
men come out.”

“Good. I’ll send up for shawls at once. I’ll tell Coralie to look after
Lord Barnstaple; she always amuses him. Then--I’ll dispose of Mr. Pix.”

“Oh, I wish I could be there to see. He’ll sizzle and freeze at once,
poor wretch. Well, let’s get them out. I’ll deposit Mrs. Montgomery in
the Sèvres room, and tell her to look at the crockery and then go to
bed.”

Lee had intended to return with Cecil to the tower and inform him that
his bitter draught was to be sweetened for the present, but Pix must be
dealt with summarily. If she did not get him out of the house before
Lord Barnstaple lost his head there would be consequences which even
her resolute temper, born of the exigencies of the hour, refused to
contemplate.

The women, pleased with the suggestion of a romp on the moor, strolled,
meanwhile, about the lake, looking rather less majestic than the
swans, who occasionally stood on their heads as if disdainful of the
admiration of mere mortals. When the men entered the drawing-room Lee
asked them to go outside immediately, and Coralie placed her hand in
Lord Barnstaple’s arm and marched him off.

Lee went down to the crypt with them, then slipped back into the
shadows and returned to the drawing-room. Pix had greeted her
suggestion with a sneer and a scowl, but it was evident that his plans
had been frustrated, and that he was not a man of ready wit. He had
sat himself doggedly in a chair, obviously to await the return of
Lord Barnstaple and his guests. He sat there alone as Lee re-entered,
looking smaller and commoner than usual in the great expanse of the
ancient room, with its carven roof that had been blessed and cursed,
and the priceless paintings on the panels about him. The Maundrells
of Holbein, and Sir Joshua, and Sir Peter seemed to have raised their
eyebrows with supercilious indignation. He was in accord with nothing
but the electric lights.

As Lee entered he did not rise, but his scowl and his sneer deepened.

She walked directly up to him, and as he met her eyes he moved
slightly. When Lee concentrated all the forces of a strong will in
those expressive orbs, the weaker nature they bore upon was liable
to an attack of tremulous self-consciousness. She knew the English
character; its upper classes had the arrogance of the immortals;
millions might bury but could never exterminate the servility of
the lower. Let an aristocrat hold a man’s plebeianism hard against
his nostrils and the poor wretch would grovel with the overpowering
consciousness of it. Lee had determined that nothing short of insolent
brutality would dispose of Mr. Pix. And for sheer insolence the true
Californian transcends the earth.

“Why haven’t you gone?” she asked as if she were addressing a servant.

Pix too had his arrogance, the arrogance of riches. Although he turned
pale, he replied doggedly:

“I’m not ready to go and I don’t go until I am. I don’t know what you
mean.” He spoke grammatically, but his accent was as irritating as only
the underbred accents of England can be.

“You know what I mean. You saw Lady Barnstaple this afternoon. She told
you you must go. We don’t want you here.”

“I’ll stay as long as I----”

“No, my good man, you will not; you will go to-night. I have ordered
the carriage for the eleven-ten train to Leeds, where you can stay the
night. Your man is packing your box.”

“I won’t go,” he growled, but his chest was heaving.

“Oh yes you will, if you have to be assisted into the carriage by two
footmen.”

He pulled himself together, although it was evident that his nerves,
subjected to a long and severe strain, were giving way, and that the
foundations of his insolence were weakened by the position in which she
had placed him. He said quite distinctly:

“And who’s going to feed this crowd?”

“My husband and myself; and I’ll trouble you for your bill.”

“It’s a damned big bill.”

“I think not. I have no concern with what you may have spent elsewhere.
I shall ascertain exactly when my mother-in-law’s original income
ceased and I know quite as well as you do what is spent here; so be
careful you make no mistakes. Now go, my good man, and see that you
make no fuss about it.”

The situation would unquestionably have been saved, for the man was
confounded and humiliated, but at that moment Lord Barnstaple entered
the room.

“My dear child,” he said, “I was a brute to leave this to you. Go out
to the others. I will follow in a moment.”

Lee, who was really enjoying herself, wheeled about with a frown. “Do
go,” she said emphatically. “Do go.”

“And leave you to be insulted by a cur who doesn’t know enough to stand
up in your presence. I am not quite so bad as that.” He turned to Pix,
whose face had become very red; even his eyeballs were injected.

“I believe you have been told that you cannot stay here,” he said. “I
am sorry to appear rude, but--you must go. There are no explanations
necessary, and I should prefer that you did not reply. But I insist
upon you leaving the house to-night.”

Pix jumped to his feet with hard fists. “Damn you! Damn you!” he
stuttered hysterically, but excitement giving him courage as he went
on: “and what’s going to become of you? Where’ll you and all this land
that makes such a h--l of a difference between you and me be this
time next year? It’ll be mine as it ought to be now! And where’ll
you be? Who’ll be paying for your bread and butter? Who’ll be paying
your gambling debts? They’ve made a nice item in my expenses, I can
tell you! If you’re going to make your wife’s lover pay your debts of
honour--as you swells call them--you might at least have the decency to
win a little mor’n you do.”

He finished and stood panting.

Lord Barnstaple stood like a stone for a moment, then he caught the man
by the collar, jerked him to an open window, and flung him out as if he
had been a rat. He was very strong, as are all Englishmen of his class
who spend two-thirds of their lives in the open air, and his face was
merely a shade paler as he turned to Lee. But she averted her eyes
hastily from his, nevertheless.

“Doubtless that man spoke the truth,” he said calmly, “but she must
corroborate it,” and he went towards the stair beyond the drawing-room
that led to his wife’s apartments.

Lee ran to the window. Pix was sitting up on the walk holding a
handkerchief to his face. No one else was in sight. Presently he got to
his feet and limped into the house. Lee went to the door opposite the
great staircase and saw him toil past: it was evident that he was quite
ready to slink away.

She sat down and put her hand to her eyes. It seemed to her that
they must ache forever with what they had caught sight of in Lord
Barnstaple’s. In that brief glance she had seen the corpse of a
gentleman’s pride.

What would happen! If Emmy lost her courage, or if her better nature,
attenuated as it was, conquered her spite, the situation might still
be saved. Lord Barnstaple would be only too willing to receive the
assurance that the man, insulted to fury, had lied; and, above all,
Cecil need never know. There was no doubt that Lord Barnstaple’s
deserts were largely of his own invoking, but she set her nails into
her palms with a fierce maternal yearning over Cecil. He was blameless,
and he was hers. One way or another he should be spared.

She waited for Lord Barnstaple’s return until she could wait no longer.
If he were not still with Emmy--and it was not likely that he would
prolong the interview--he must have gone to his rooms by the upper
corridors. She went rapidly out of the drawing-room and up the stair.
She could not be regarded as an intruder and she must know the worst
to-night. _What_ would Lord Barnstaple do if Emmy had confessed the
truth? She tried to persuade herself that she had not the least idea.




CHAPTER XXV


He was sitting at his desk writing; and as he lifted his hand at her
abrupt entrance and laid it on an object beside his papers she received
no shock of surprise. She went forward and lifted his hand from the
revolver.

“Must you?” she asked.

“Of course I must. Do you think I could live with myself another day?”

“Perhaps no one need ever know.”

“Everybody in England will know before a week is over. She gave me to
understand that people guessed it already.”

“_This_ seems such a terrible alternative to a woman--but----”

“But you have race in you. You understand perfectly. My honour has been
sold, and my pride is dead: there is no place among men for what is
left of me. And to face my son again! Good God!”

“Can nothing be done to keep it from Cecil?”

“Nothing. It is the only heritage I leave him and he’ll have to stand
it as best he can. It won’t kill him, nor his courage; he’s made of
stronger stuff than that. And if I’ve brought the family honour to
the dust, he has it in him to raise it higher than it has ever been.
Never let him forget that. You’ve played your part well all along, but
you’ve a great deal more to do yet. You’ll find that Fate didn’t steer
you into this family to play the pretty rôle of countess----”

“I am equal to my part.”

“Yes: I think you are. Now--I have an hour’s work before me. I can’t
let you go till I have finished. You are a strong creature--but you are
a woman, all the same. You must stay here until I am ready to let you
go.”

“I want to stay with you.”

“Thank you. Sit down.”

He handed her a chair, and returned to his writing.

Lee knew that if he had condemned her to the corridor under a vow of
secrecy she should have paced up and down with increasing nervousness.
But she felt calm enough beside him. He wrote deliberately, with a
steady hand, and out of the respect he commanded she felt as profound a
pity for him as she would feel when she stood beside him in the crypt.
The soul had already gone out of him: it did not even strike her as
eerie that the vigorous body beside her would demand its last rites in
an hour.

Although taught to forgive her father, she had been brought up in a
proper disapprobation of suicide. The impressions rooted in her plastic
years rose and possessed her for a moment: but she wisely refused to
consider what was none of her business. She did not even argue Lord
Barnstaple’s case, nor remind herself that she understood him. It was
exclusively his own affair, and to approve or condemn him was equally
impertinent.

Her chair faced the window. The crystal moon hung low above the park.
The woods looked old and dark: night gave them back their mystery. The
lovely English landscape was steeped in the repose which the centuries
had given it. The great forests and terrible mountains of California
may have been born in earlier throes, but they still brooded upon the
mysteries of the future. England was worn down to peace and calm by
centuries of passing feet. She had the repose of a great mind in the
autumn of its years.

Lee melted into sympathy with the country of her adoption. California
loomed darkly in the background, majestic but remote, and folding
itself in the mists of dreams. It had belonged to her, been a part of
her, in some bygone phase of herself. She was proud to have come out of
it and glad to have known it, but it would be silent to her hereafter.
She was as significantly a Maundrell as if she had been born in her
tower; for she was, and indivisibly, a part of her husband.

She was too sensible to waste time in upbraiding herself for her
conduct of the past fortnight. It had been as inevitable as exhaustion
after excitement, or mental rebellion after years of unremitting
study; and the suffering it had caused could easily be transformed
into gratitude. The important points were that her reaction had worn
itself out, and that the tremendous climax on its heels had forced her
prematurely into the consciousness that the three years’ effort to be
something she had not developed in the previous twenty-one, had changed
her character and her brain as indubitably as the constant action of
water changes the face of a rock. One month of her old life would have
bored her to extinction. Two months and she would have anathematised
the continents of land and water between herself and her husband. A
fortnight later she would have been in her tower. Solemn as the passing
moments were, she could not ignore the prick of ironical relief that
her future was to lack the determined effort of the past three years.
Her new self would fit her with the ease of a garment long worn. Love
had sustained her when she had desired nothing so much as happiness;
but she knew that she had hardly known the inchoation of love until
to-night. Cecil, in his terrible necessity, had taken her ego into his
own breast.

Her thoughts went to him in their tower, writing, like his father,
but with far less calm; for he grew nervous and impatient over his
work. It seemed a strange and terrible thing that he should sit there
unconscious of the double tragedy preparing for him, but she was glad
to prolong his unconsciousness as long as she could. And she would be
the one to tell him.

Lord Barnstaple laid down his pen and sealed his letters. He stood up
and held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” he said.

They shook hands closely and in silence. Then she went out and he
closed the door behind her. She stood still, waiting for the signal.
She could not carry the news of his death to his son until he was gone
beyond the shadow of a doubt. It was so long coming that she wondered
if his courage had failed him, or if he were praying before the picture
of his wife. It came at last.




CHAPTER XXVI


She walked rapidly along the corridor toward the tower. But in a moment
or two she turned back and went in the direction of the library. It
was Randolph’s habit to read there when the other guests were playing
and romping. To-night’s frolic would certainly not have appealed to
him. It was more than possible that he was there alone, or in his room;
and to-morrow he must go with the others. It might be years before she
would see him again, and it would be culpable not to make him a last
appeal. If the Abbey was lost it should not be for want of effort on
her part.

Randolph was in the library, and alone. He rose with a brilliant smile
of pleasure, then stood and looked hard at her.

“Something has happened,” he said. “You look as if you had just come
back from the next world.”

“You are not so far wrong. Lord Barnstaple has just killed himself.
Things had come to his knowledge that I hope you may never hear. But he
is dead, and to-morrow you will have gone.”

They were standing close together.

“You will not return to California with us.”

“I would never leave Cecil Maundrell for an hour again if I could help
it.”

They exchanged a long look, and when it was over each understood the
other. Lee looked down; then, in the unendurable silence, raised her
eyes again. She averted them hastily. His were the eyes of men who look
their last. It was the second time she had looked into a man’s soul
to-night, and she felt cold and faint. What should she see in Cecil’s?

And how was she to speak of the Abbey in the face of a tragedy like
this? She turned to go, but her feet clung to the floor. The Abbey
was Cecil’s, and Cecil’s it must remain if its rescue were within the
compass of her determined hands. But words were hard to find.

Then she remembered that she had very eloquent eyes, and that Randolph
was versed in their speech. She raised them slowly and let them travel
about the beautiful old room, then out to the cloisters under whose
crumbling arches hooded shadows seemed passing to and fro; then raised
them once more to his with an expression of yearning and appeal.

“Is it true that Lady Barnstaple is ruined?”

“She has not a penny.”

There was another silence, so intense that they heard the echo of a
laugh, far out on the moor.

Randolph picked up a book from the table, and examined its title, then
laid it down again, and turned it over.

“I have never yet broken my word,” he said.

Lee flashed him a glance full of tears and tribute. Then once more that
night she shook hands with a man who was sick with the bitterness of
life.

She left the library and went rapidly down the corridor. As she passed
Lord Barnstaple’s door she noted with gratitude that there was no sign
of discovery. If the blow could be softened it was by her alone.

She was traversing the last corridor but one when her eyes were
arrested by the chapel and the churchyard on the hill. She paused
a moment and regarded them intently. A week from to-night she and
her husband would follow Lord Barnstaple up that hill to the vault
beneath the chapel’s altar. She had hardly realised his death before,
but that solitary hill, cold under the moonlight, cold in its bosom,
coldly biding its Maundrells, generation after generation, century
after century, made the tragedy of the earl’s death one of the several
sharply-cut facts of her life. They were five; she counted them
mechanically: the violent death of her father, her meeting with Cecil,
the death of her mother, her union with her husband, the violent death
of her husband’s father. There was certainly a singular coincidence
between the first and the last.

As she continued to look out at the graveyard, dark even under the
moon, and wondering if the next great fact in her life would be the
birth of a child, to be borne up that hill supinely in his turn,
following the father who had gone long since, she became aware that
the word coincidence was swinging to and fro in her mind, although the
other words of its company had gone to their dust-heap. She frowned
and reproached herself for giving way to melancholy; then reflected
that she would be less than mortal if she did not ... the reiteration
of the word annoyed her, and in a moment she had fitted it into her
conversation with Lord Barnstaple that afternoon.

Her stiffening eyes returned to the hill, and their vision stabbed
through the mounds to the bones of the abbots, whose brothers had
cursed the Abbey. It had been but a coincidence perhaps, but it had
worked itself out with astonishing regularity.

Lee became conscious that she was as cold as ice. The Abbey was saved
to the Maundrells. Was Cecil dead? Had he died before his father?
Nothing could be more unlikely, for he was the healthiest of men, and
there was no one to murder him.

She shook herself violently and took her nerves in hand. Two years ago
she would have flung off the superstition as quickly, but to-day the
old world and all its traditions had taken her imagination into its
mould. Had Pix--or that silent, persistent, unfathomable woman, his
sister----

She ran towards the tower, gripping her nerves; for if Cecil were
there she would have need of all her faculties. It was no part of her
programme to burst in upon him and scream and stammer her terrible
bulletin. But she was a woman, frightened, horrified, overwrought with
hours of nervous tension. When she reached the stair her knees were
shaking, and she climbed the long spiral so slowly that she would have
called her husband’s name could she have found her voice. She wished
she had asked him to write in her boudoir, whose open door was as black
as the entrance to a cave; but he was--should be--in his own little
sitting-room above.

She climbed the next flight with something more of resolution; courage
comes to all strong natures as they approach the formidable moments
of their lives. At the last turning she saw a blade of light, but the
door was too thick to pass a sound. When she reached it her fear and
superstition, and the obsession they had induced, left her abruptly,
and she opened the door at once. Cecil was writing quietly.


THE END.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.