Christian began his walk with swift, energetic steps, and a guiding eye fixed resolutely on a distinguishing mark in the distant line of tree-tops beyond, as if both speed and directness of course were of utmost urgency to his purpose. While his body moved forward thus automatically, however, his mind remained engrossed with what had been said and done in the room he was leaving behind.
His brain reproduced over and over again the appearance of the two young brothers, their glances at each other, their sneering scowls at him. The picture of Augustine whispering in Edward’s ear, and of Edward shaking his sulky head, stuck in his memory as a living thing. He had continued to see it after he had turned his back on them and gone to the window. The infamous words which had been spoken about his father were a part of this picture, and their inflection still rang in his ears just as the young men still stood before his eyes, compact of hostility to him and his blood.
The noise of guns in the wood he approached was for a time subordinated in his mind to those bitter echoes of Edward’s speech. When at last these reports of firing attracted his attention, he had passed out of sight of Caermere, and found himself on a vaguely defined path at the end of a broad heath, much overgrown with heather and broom and low, straggling, inhospitable-looking shrubs novel to his eye. Curious movements among this shaggy verdure caught his wandering notice, and he stopped to observe them more closely. A great many rabbits—or would they be hares?—were making their frightened escape from the wood in front of him, and darting about for cover in this undergrowth. He became conscious now of an extraordinary tumult in the wood itself—a confused roar of men’s voices raised in apparently meaningless cries, accompanied by an unintelligible pounding of sticks on timber and crackling brush. This racket almost drowned the noise of the remote firing; its effect of consternation upon the small inhabitants of the thicket was only less than the bewilderment that it caused in Christian’s mind. Forgetting altogether his own concerns, he pushed cautiously forward to spy out the cause of the commotion.
Somewhat later, he emerged from the wood again, having obtained a tolerable notion of what was going on. He had caught a view of one line of beaters making their way through a copse, diagonally away from him—rough men clad for the most part in white jackets, who shouted and thrashed about them with staves as they went—and it was easy enough to connect their work, and the consequent rise and whirring rush of birds before it, with the excited fusillade of guns farther on. Christian did not get a sight of the sportsmen themselves. Albeit with some doubts as to the dignity of the proceeding, he made a detour of the piece of woodland, with the idea of coming out upon the shooting party, but when he arrived at the barrier it was to find on the spot only a couple of men in greenish corduroys, whom he took to be underkeepers. They were at work before a large heap of pheasants, tying the birds in pairs by the necks, and hanging them over a long stick, stretched between two trees, which already bent under its burden. They glanced up from their employment at Christian, and when he stooped to pick up one of the cartridge cases with which the ground at his feet was strewn, they exchanged some muttered comment at which both laughed aloud. He instinctively threw the little tube down, and looked away from the men. The thought occurred to him that if they only knew who he was their confusion would be pathetic, but as it was, they had the monopoly of self-possession, and it was he who shyly withdrew.
The whole diversion, however, had cleared and sweetened his mood. He retraced his steps through the wood and then struck off in a new direction across the heath, at a more leisurely pace than he had come, his mind dwelling pleasurably upon the various picturesque phases of what he had witnessed. The stray glimpses ofla chassewhich had been afforded him in the South had had nothing in common with this. The unkempt freedom of the growths about him appealed to his senses as cultivated parks and ordered forests had never done. It was all so strong and simple and natural—and the memory of the beaters smashing along in the thicket, bawling and laying about them with their clubs, gave it a primitive note which greatly pleased his fancy.
The heath was even finer, in his eyes, than the wood. The air stirring across it, for one thing, had a quality which he seemed never to have known before—and the wild, almost savage, aspect of its squat gray and russet herbage, the sense of a splendidly unashamed idleness and unproductiveness suggested by its stretches of waste land, charmed his imagination. He said to himself, as he sauntered here, that he would gallop every day across this wonderful plain, with a company of big dogs at his horse’s heels. The thought of the motion in the saddle inspired him to walk faster. He straightened himself, put his hands to his coat at the breast as he had seen young Englishmen do on their pedestrian tours, and strode briskly forward, humming to himself as he moved. The hateful episode of the morning had not so much faded from his thoughts, as shaken itself into a new kaleidoscopic formation. Contact with these noble realities out of doors had had the effect, as it were, of immeasurably increasing his stature. When he thought of those paltry cousins of his, it was as if he looked down upon their insignificance from a height.
He came at last face to face with a high stone wall, the pretensions and obvious antiquity of which told him at once that he had returned to the vicinity of the castle. Sure enough, there were discernible at a considerable distance down to the right some of the turrets and roofs of Caermere, and he turned his course in that direction. It seemed to him a long way that he walked by the side of this great wall, marveling as he did so at its size and at the ambitious views of the persons who built it. The reflection that they were ancestors of his own came to his mind, and expanded therein. He also would build like a great nobleman in his time! What was there so grand as building?—he mused as he looked about him—unless it might be the heath and the brownish-purple hills beyond, and these also one intuitively thought of as having been built.
Presently a small doorway appeared in the massive wall, and Christian, finding it unlocked, passed through it into a vast garden. The inner and sunny side of the wall, as far as he could see in either direction, was veined with the regularly espaliered branches of dwarf trees flattened against it, from which still depended here and there belated specimens of choice fruit. On the other side of the path following close this wall, down which he proceeded, were endless rows of small trees and staked clumps of canes, all now bereft of their season’s produce. The spectacle did not fit with what had been mentioned to him of the poverty of Caermere. Farther on, a tall hedge stretching at right angles from the wall separated this orchard from what he saw now, by glimpses through an open arch, to a be a flower garden. He quickened his pace at the sight, for flowers were very near his heart.
At first there was not much to move his admiration. The sunlit profusion of his boyhood’s home had given him standards of size and glowing color which were barely approached, and nowhere equaled, here. Suddenly he came upon something, however, before which he perforce stopped. It was the beginning of a long row of dahlias, rounded flowers on the one side of him, pointed and twisted cactus varieties on the other, and he had imagined nothing like this before in his life. Apparently no two of the tall plants, held upright to the height of his breast by thick stakes, were alike, and he knew not upon which to expend the greater delight, the beauty of their individual blossoms or the perfection of skill exhibited in the color-arrangement of the line.
He moved slowly along, examining the more notable flowers in detail with such ardor that a young lady in a black gown, but with a broad hat of light straw on her pale hair, advanced up the path, paused, and stood quite near him for some moments before he perceived her presence. Then with a little start, he took off his hat, and held it in his hands while he made a stiff bow.
“You are fond of flowers?” Lady Cressage said, more as a remark than an inquiry. She observed him meanwhile with politely calm interest.
“These dahlias are extraordinary!” he exclaimed, very earnestly. “I have never seen such flowers, and such variety. It surprises me a great deal. It is a spécialité in England, n’est ce pas?”
“I think I have heard that we have carried the dahlia further than other countries have done,” responded the lady, courteously giving the name the broad-voweled sound he had used. She added with a pleasant softening of eyes and lips: “But you ought not to begrudge us one little triumph like this—you who come from the very paradise of flowers.”
The implication in her words caused him to straighten himself, and to regard her with a surprised new scrutiny. He saw now that she was very beautiful, and he strove to recall the few casual remarks Lord Julius had dropped, concerning the two ladies at the castle, as a clue to her identity. One had been an actress, he remembered—and this lady’s graceful equanimity had, perhaps, something histrionic in it. But if she happened not to be the actress, then it would no doubt anger her very much to be taken for one. He knew so little of women—and then his own part in the small drama occurred to him.
“It is evident that you understand who I am,” he said, with another bow. The further thought that in either case she was related to him, was a part of the family of which he would soon be the head, came to give him fresh confidence. “It is not only dahlias that are carried to unrivaled heights of beauty in England,” he added, and bowed once more.
She smiled outright at this. “That is somewhat too—what shall I say?—continental for these latitudes,” she remarked. “Men don’t say such glowing things in England. We haven’t sun enough, you know, properly to ripen rose-hips—or compliments. I should like to introduce myself, if I may—I am Edith Cressage—and Lord Julius has told me the wonderful story about you.”
She held out her hand as she spoke, with a deliberate gesture, which afforded Christian time to note its exquisite modeling, if he had had the eyes for it. But he took the hand in his own rather cursorily, and began speaking with abruptness before he had finished his bow and relinquished it.
“It is much too wonderful,” he said, hastily. “It frightens me. I cannot get used to it. I have the feeling that I should go away somewhere, and live by myself, till it became all familiar to me. But then I see it would be just as painful, wherever I went.”
“Oh, let us hope it would be least painful here, of all places,” urged the lady, in gentle deprecation of his tone. “Caermere is not gay, but it can be soothing and restful—to those who stand in need of solace. It has come to be my second home—I never thought one could grow so deeply attached to a place. It has been to me like a tender old nurse and confidante—in times when—when its shelter and consolation were very welcome”—she faltered for an instant, with averted face, then raised her moist eyes to his, and let them sparkle—“and oh, you will grow to love Caermere with all your heart.”
Christian felt himself much moved. He had put on his hat, and stepped now to her side.
“I have seen nothing of it at all,” he said. “I am going to ask that you shall show it to me—you who love it so much. But if I shall remain here now, that I cannot in the least tell. Nothing is arranged, so far as I know. I am quite in Lord Julius’ hands—thus far.”
They had tacitly begun to move down the path together, loitering to look at plants on either side which particularly invited notice.
“Lord Julius is a remarkable man,” she said. “If one is fortunate enough to enlist his friendship, there is no end to what he can do for him. You can hardly imagine what a difference it makes for you in everything—the fact that he is warmly disposed towards you.”
“Yes, that I have been told,” said Christian, “and I see it for myself, too. I do not feel that I know him very well, as yet. It was only yesterday morning that I met him for the first time at an hotel in Brighton. We breakfasted together, we looked through papers together and then we began a long railway journey together, which only ended a few hours ago. We have talked a great deal in this time, but, as I have said, the man himself is not very clear to me yet. But no one could have been kinder—and I think he likes me.”
“Oh, of course he does,” affirmed Lady Cressage, as if anything else would have been incredible. “And—talking with him so much, so continuously, you no doubt understand the entire situation. I am glad that he at least left it to me to show you over Caermere; there is apparently nothing else in which I can be of use.”
Christian, though he smiled in kindly recognition of her attitude, offered no verbal comment, and after a wandering digression about dahlias, she returned to the subject.
“If thereisanything I can tell you—about the family, the position of affairs in general, and so on—you should not stand on ceremony with me. Has he, for example, explained about money affairs?”
The young man looked keenly at her for an instant, as if the question took him by surprise. Then he answered frankly enough: “Nothing definite. I only gather that it will be made easier for me than it would have been for—for other members of the family, if they—had been in my place. But perhaps that is not what I should say to you.”
Lady Cressage smiled on him reassuringly.
“Oh, don’t think of me in that light,” she pleaded. “I stand quite outside the—what shall I say?—the interested family circle. I have no ax of any description to grind. You, of course, have been told my position in the castle—that is, so far as it can be told by others. It is a simple enough story—I was to have been everything, and then the wind happens to change off the Welsh coast and lo! I am nothing—nothing! It is not even certain that I am not a beggar—living here on alms. Legally, everything is in such confusion that no one knows how he stands. But so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter. My cup has been filled so full—so long:—that a little more or less trouble is of no importance. Oh, I assure you, I do not desire to be considered in the matter at all.”
She made this last declaration with great earnestness, in immediate response to the sympathetic look and gesture with which Christian had interrupted her narrative.
His gentle eyes regarded her troubled beauty with compassionate softness. “I venture to think that you will be considered a good deal, none the less,” he remarked, in a grave yet eager tone. The sense of elation at being able to play the part of Providence to such a lady spread through his mind and possessed his being. The lofty possibilities of the powers devolving upon him had never been so apparent before. He instinctively put out his arm toward her, in such overt fashion that she could but take it. She did not lean upon it, but imparted to the contact instead a kind of ceremonial reserve which directly ministered to the patrician side of his mood.
They walked, if possible, still more slowly now, pausing before almost every stake; their talk was of the flowers, with occasional lapses into the personal.
“What you said about Lord Julius,” she remarked, in one of these interludes, “is quite true. He has it in his power to say whether the duke shall be a rich man or a pauper, and until yesterday he was all for the pauper. If poor Porlock and his sons had lived, they knew very well that Lord Julius was no friend of theirs, and would starve the title whichever of them had it. And so with these others—Edward and Augustine—only with them, it isn’t merely dislike but loathing that Lord Julius has for them.”
“I met those young gentlemen this morning,” said Christian stiffly. “It seemed to me that Lord Julius went quite out of his way to be kind with them. I should never have gathered that he hated them.”
“Oh, not personally,” she explained. “I don’t think he dislikes anybody personally. But in what you may call their representative capacity he is furious with people if they don’t measure up to his idea of what they should be. I never heard of any other family that had such a man in it. I used to admire him very much—when I was newly married—I thought his ideals for the family were so noble and fine—but I don’t know—”
“Do you have suspicions of Julius, then?” asked Christian, hurriedly.
“Oh, no, no!” she protested. “Nothing is farther from my thoughts. Only I have seen it all, here. I have lived in the very heart of it—and much as I sympathize with his feelings, I can’t help feeling that he is unjust—not willfully, but still unjust. He and his son are men of great intelligence and refined tastes; they would do honor to any position. But is it quite fair of them to be so hard on cousins of theirs who were not given great intelligence, and who had no capacity whatever for refinement? That is what I mean. You saw those young men this morning. They are not up to much, certainly; their uncle Porlock and his sons averaged, perhaps, even a shade lower—you see I am speaking quite frankly—but when it is all said and done, they were not so remarkably worse than other men of their class. If any of the six had succeeded to the title, he would not have been such a startling anomaly in the peerage. I doubt if he would have attracted attention, one way or the other. But it became a fixed idea with Lord Julius years ago to get control of the estates, and to use this control to bully the elder line into the paths of sweetness and light. It didn’t succeed in the least—and I think he grew a little spiteful. That is all. And besides—what does it matter? It is all ancient history now.”
Christian was looking straight before him, with a meditative gaze. They walked for some moments in silence before he spoke. “And how did he know that he would like me?” he demanded, musingly. “How should he be confident that I was better than the others? Perhaps—do you know?—was he very fond of my father?”
“I have no idea,” she responded. It was impossible not to note the brevity of her tone.
“No one speaks willingly of my father,” he broke forth with impulsive bitterness. “Even Lord Julius would tell me nothing of him. And the young lady on the boat—she too—”
He paused, and his companion, who had been looking away, glanced again at him. “The young lady on the boat,” she said, more by way of suggesting to him a safe topic than as an inquiry.
“Oh, I much want to know who she can be,” he cried, unconsciously accepting the diversion. He described the meeting at Rouen, the conversation and, after a fashion of his own, the girl herself. “She said,” he went on, “that she had personally something to do with the story—‘remotely’ was the word she used. I asked Lord Julius, but he could not think who she might be. She earns her own living—she told me that—and she had never been out of England before. She is not well educated—in the school sense, I mean—her French was ridiculous. But she spoke very beautifully her own language, and her mind filled me with charm, but even more so her good heart. We swore friendship for all time—or at least I did.”
“Dear me!” said Lady Cressage. Her thoughts had not been idle, and they brought to her now on the instant a satisfactory clue. She pondered it for a little, before she decided to speak. “I think I know who this remarkable young lady must be,” she observed then. “This Captain Edward whom you met this morning—he has a wife.”
“Yes, I know,” put in Christian abruptly—“the actress-lady; Julius told me of her.”
“I suppose ‘actress’ would cover the thing,” she answered, with an air of amiable indifference. “She danced more than she acted, I believe, but ‘actress’ is a very general term. Well, your eternal friend is, I suspect, her younger sister. ‘I have never seen her, but by accident I happen to know that she is aware of your coming to England.”
Christian’s mobile face had lengthened somewhat. “Is she also an—an ‘actress’?” he asked, dolefully.
Lady Cressage looked skyward, with halfclosed eyes, in an effort of memory. “I really seem to have heard what she did,” she mused, hesitatingly. “I know her sister has often spoken of her. Is it ‘barmaid’? No. ‘Telegraph’? No, it’s her father who’s in the General Post Office. Why, now, how stupid of me! She can’t be a nurse, of course, or there would have been her uniform. Oh, now I remember—she’s a typewriter.”
It was not clear to her whether Christian wholly comprehended the term, now that she had found it. She perceived, however, that he disliked something in what she had said, or in her manner of saying it. The remarkable responsiveness of his countenance to passing emotions and moods within him had already impressed her. She regarded his profile now with a sidelong glance, and reconstructed some of her notions about him by the help of what she saw. Nothing was said, until suddenly he paused, gazing with kindled eye upon the prospect opened before him.
They had come to the end of the garden, and stood at the summit of a broad stone-kerbed path descending in terraces. Above them, the dense foliage of the yews rising at either side of the gap in the hedge had been trained and cut into an arched canopy. From under this green gateway Christian looked down upon a Caermere he had not imagined to himself before.
The castle revealed itself for the first time, as he beheld it now, in its character as a great medieval fortress. On his arrival in the morning, emerging from the shadowed driveway into the immediate precinct of the house, he had seen only its variously modernized parts; these, as they were viewed from this altitude, shrank to their proper proportions—an inconsiderable fraction of the mighty whole. All about, the massive shoulders of big hills shelved downward to form the basin-like hollow in which the castle seemed to stand, but their large bulk, so far from dwarfing Caermere, produced the effect of emphasizing its dimensions. Its dark-gray walls and towers, with their bulging clumps of chimneys and turrets, and lusterless facets of many-angled roofings, all of somber slate, were visibly the product, the very child, of the mountains. A sensation of grim, adamantine, implacable power took hold of the young man’s brain as he gazed. For a long time he did not want to talk, and felt vaguely that he was signifying this by the slight, sustained pressure of his arm against hers. At all events, she grasped his wish, and preserved silence, holding herself a little behind him, so that he might look down, without distraction, upon his kingdom.
“These Torrs,” he burst forth all at once, with a nervous uncertainty in his tones as of one out of breath, “these ancestors of mine—the family I belong to—did they produce great men? You must know their history. Julius says we are the most ancient family in England. I have not had the time yet to learn anything of what we did. Were there heroes and famous soldiers and learned scholars among us? To look at that wonderful castle there at our feet, it seems as if none but born chiefs and rulers of mankind could ever have come out of it.”
“Captain Edward and his brother Augustine were both born there,” she permitted her own over-quick tongue to comment.
He let her arm drop from his with a swift gesture, and wheeled round to look her in the face. The glance in his eyes said so much to her that she hastened to anticipate his speech.
“Forgive me!” she urged hastily. “It was silly thoughtlessness of mine. I do not know you at all well as yet, you know, and I say the wrong things to you. Do tell me you forgive me! And it is only fair to myself to say, too, that I have been in a bad school these last few years. Conversation as one practices it at Caermere is merely the art of making everything pointed and sharp enough to pierce thick skins. I should have remembered that you were different—it was unpardonable of me! But I have really angered you!”
Christian, still looking at her, found himself gently shaking his head in reassurance. It was plain enough to him that this beautiful young woman had suffered much, and that at the hands of his own people. What wonder that acrid memories of them should find their way to her lips? He also had been unhappy. He smiled gravely into her face at the softening recollection.
“We were speaking of different things, I think,” he commented, and nodded approval at sight of the relieved change which his tone brought to her countenance. “I know very well there are many disagreeable and unpleasant matters close about us—when we are down below, there. But now we are up above them, and we forget them all, or ignore them—and I was asking you about the history of the family—its ancient history.”
She put her hand lightly upon his arm again. “Lord Julius is right about it being a very, very long history,” she said, putting into her voice a tacit recognition of his magnanimity. “I know it, in a certain way, but I can hardly make a good story of it, I’m afraid. The family is Keltic, you know. That is what is always said about it, as its most distinguishing characteristic. It is the only large English one which managed to survive through the Saxon period, and then the Norman period, and keep its name and its estates and its territorial power. This makes it very interesting to historians and archaeologists. There are many stone circles and Druidic monuments about here, some of which are said to be connected with the introduction of Christianity into Britain. You will see them another day, and read the legends about them. Well, it is said that the chief who possessed this land here, and who had some kind of a stronghold there where the castle is, at that time, was a Torr. Of course, there were no surnames then, but it would have been his tribal appellation, or something of the sort. The fact itself, I believe, is generally accepted—that the family that was here in St. David’s time is here now. It is a tradition that there should always be a David in the family; it used to be the leading name, but now Christian is usually the duke’s name, and the others are all saints, like Anselm, Edward, Augustine and—and so forth.”
The young man looked down in meditation upon the gloomy, historic pile. “It is a very grand beginning,” he said, thoughtfully.
“Perhaps it was too grand for mere mortals to live up to,” she ventured, with a cautious sidelong eye on him.
“I see your meaning,” he assented, nodding. “Yes, no doubt it is natural. It is as if a boy were named Napoleon. He would be frightened to think what he had done to make his name and himself fit together—and very likely he would never do anything at all.”
“Yes, that is it,” she answered, and drew a long, consolatory breath.
They had begun to move down the wide winding path, and when they paused presently at one of the steps to note a new view of the buildings, she called his attention to something by a little exclamation and a pointing finger.
“Do you see the balcony there, up above and to the left of the flat-topped tower—no, this side of the highest chimneys—there are figures coming out on it from the window.”
“There is some one in a reclining chair, n’est ce pas?” he asked, following her finger.
“It is your grandfather,” she said softly. “Those are his apartments—the rows of windows with the white woodwork. When the sun gets round to them, they bring him out—if he is strong enough. Evidently this is one of his good days.”
Christian, gazing eagerly, made out beyond the attendants and the couch they bore, another figure, with a splash of white like a shield upon its front.
“Is it not Julius?” he asked swiftly, pressing her arm. “Oh, then by this time my grandfather knows of me—knows that I am here! Should you not think so? And no doubt, since it is his good day, they will take me to see him. Is that not probable?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” she responded, after a momentary pause, “either as to what Lord Julius has told him, or as to how much he is capable of understanding. Except from this distance, I have not seen him since he was struck down with paralysis. I know nothing of his condition beyond a stray, guarded word now and then from the doctors. If I were a professional thief and he a crown jewel, I could not have been more securely shut out from him!”
The melancholy bitterness of her words, and tone appealed to the young man. He drew her hand closer to his side by a delicate pressure of the arm. “I can see that you have been very unhappy,” he said, compassionately.
“Oh-h-h!” she murmured, with a shuddering sigh. “Don’t—don’t speak of it, I beg of you!”
“I also have had a sad youth,” he went on, unconsciously tightening his arm. “But now”—and he lifted his head and smiled—“who knows? Who shall say that the bad days are not all gone—for both of us?”
Only the flutter of the hand against his arm made answer. They walked oh together down the broad sunlit path.
At the foot of the terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which Lady Cressage had led Christian described a formal curve to the right, across a lawn which he recognized as belonging to his morning’s experiences. The angle of the high, domed conservatory recalled itself to him. Beyond it, on the same side, would be the window from which he had quitted the house.
To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and he was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle itself—an ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn sunlight lay upon this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed softly among the leaves and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree trained upon it. This garden preserved the outlines of some former quaint arrangement of walks and beds, but these were comfortably softened everywhere, and in part obscured, by the untrammeled freedom of vegetation. Even over the moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had been suffered to creep unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here and there, and at one corner there rose a colony of graceful white lilies, the scent of which filled the air. It was all very restful and charming, and Christian, pausing to gaze about him, gave little exclamations of pleasure at what he saw.
In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could be made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured inquiry, led the way toward this—and then perceived that Lord Julius, who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue, was standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly smile.
“This ismyparticular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the young man.
“In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave it alone—as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose there—but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago—before either of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in becoming acquainted.”
Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before she replied. They had exchanged this same glance—on her side at once puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly pointed with cynicism—very often during the last four years, without affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must be quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an afterthought, and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have promised to show him over the house and the castle.”
“Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially.
He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show him my old garden first.”
“Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation. “May I confess it?—when you’re not here I call itmygarden, too. I knew it was your mother’s—and I was always going to ask you to tell me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall truly not be in the way if I stop?”
The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,” he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the two young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow path, followed at his heels.
He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton Court. Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were said to have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other primitive weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not agreed as to the possibility of the well having been in existence at any very remote period, but it was not unlikely that this small garden had been the center of interest—perhaps the scene of Druidical sacrifices, or even of the famous conversion of the tribe resident here by St. David—at the beginning of things. These speculations as to precise localities were interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall at the end was a more definite affair. It had been built after the Third Crusade by Stephen de la Tour, as the Normanized name went then.
“Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest of the query seemed hardly to warrant.
“Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’ and Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name of Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that many others of them are, too.”
“Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If a man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?”
“Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side. Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing it Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official spelling—for the present, at least.”
“This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may keep my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian Tower’! That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think of abandoning the name my father liked. He always both spelled and pronounced it ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the same.”
An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute.
“Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord Julius,” put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one must take it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You were going to tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you remember her, here in this dear old garden. And positively nothing has been changed since!”
“I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly. He seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time; but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties have been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that corner, for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times removed, of the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips from other slips of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used to sit and look at with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are gone, and yet they are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been dead for sixty years, and yet this is still her garden, and she is still here—here in the person of me, her son, and of Christian, her great-grandson.”
“And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I alone am an intruding new species—like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’ buds on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright little nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand, wheeled round and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge.
The two men watched her till she vanished.
“She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and very courteous, too.”
Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with his gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then, without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way:
“If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed company, to my father as possible.”
“Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young man, stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled with impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to something else when I speak his name—all but those abominable young men who offered him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk about!”
“I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At least, I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself—a harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody, yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But let me understand first: what do you know about your father?”
“Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told you,” panted Christian.
“Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the Victoria Cross in the Mutiny—the youngest man in all India to do so. That is for you to remember always—in your own mind—for your own pride and consolation.”
“Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son.
“And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of—-but still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember—that you must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.”
“Go on!” said Christian.
“Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as a soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know that splendid soldiers may easily be—how shall I say?—not so splendid in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare twenty-three—poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it, I was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England, I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him; and of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case of a young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to turn even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in Europe. I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word for it that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to the Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was a very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were mentioned—but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of many influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come back to England—there are many ways of managing such matters—but there was one of them who never returned.”
Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of concentration.
“This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The way was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him—that is, at first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had a stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his family—with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself went to Sicily many years ago—it was as soon as I had got back from the East—and learned the facts, and found out what could be done; and I tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak with me, or even remain under the same roof with me—and so I could do nothing. Or yes, there was one thing—that is to maintain some kind of watch over you—after his death, and that we did. My own idea was to have brought you over to England years ago—as soon as your mother died—but Emanuel thought otherwise.”
He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was obviously no longer listening to him.
Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and lips being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed to the old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate battle with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he spread out his hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius.
“You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be a fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not mention my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice. Without doubt it is right—just as it is right that I should speak less of my brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me, and now I will remember this. But I should like”—he came forward as he spoke, still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness up into the other’s face—“I should like to have you understand that Salvator is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and have pride in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind, as you advise—but one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I will write my name always ‘Tower.’”
The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should not dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell us luncheon is ready.”
He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening in the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to move in that direction.
“One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and hurriedly—“from the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather—in his chair, on the balcony. You said just now that my father hated him—was furious with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?”
“Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.”
“But unjustly?”
“Oh, no, not unjustly, either—if only because he never in his life possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so I am free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty years—which is, I believe, unprecedented—but he has been an ass still longer than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to him this afternoon.”
Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his depressed mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire of his, who held so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so contemptuously, but they did not translate themselves into speech. Nor, later, during the luncheon, was this great personage more than indirectly alluded to.
The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms, opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What these apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle distinguished them apart in their own minds, Christian could not imagine. To his rapid and curious inspection, they seemed all alike—each with its bare, indifferently polished floor, its huge stone fireplace, its wainscoting, walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued wood, and its scant store of furniture which only heightened the ruling impression of big empty spaces. An occasional portrait was dimly to be discerned up in the duskiness of the oak panels, but the light from the narrow and small-paned windows was too faint to examine them by. More cheerless or apparently useless rooms the young man had never seen.
Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part—what might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according to Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big windows were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our notions. The men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about daylight, at least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible under roofs, to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at dark. When they were forced to be under cover, they valued security above all things, and the fewer openings there were in the walls, the better they liked it. They did no reading whatever, but after they had gorged themselves with food, sat around the fire and drank as much as they could hold, and listened to the silly rubbish of their professional story-tellers and ballad-singers till they fell asleep. If it happened that they wanted to gamble instead, a handful of rush-lights or a torch on the wall was enough to see the dice by.
“Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them to tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on a bottle now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture to the others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls, examined the modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and lingered in admiring scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above the cavernous hearth, on which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This chimney-piece was fairly architectural in its dimensions. It was as full of detail, and seemed almost as big, as the west front of a church, and he tipped his head back to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme of scrollwork, its heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to point the significance, as it were, of the central escutcheon—and all in old wood of so ripe a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a fragrance exhaled from it.
“That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to stand beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the Mortimers. Itisthe Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord Julius for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.”
“Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they took their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is represented in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of the Egertons, the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or ravens of the Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches ruled England, and their great families, all married and intermarried and bolstered up by the feudal structure, were like a nation by themselves. The Mortimers, you know,” he added, turning to Christian, “became practically kings of England. At least they had their grandsons on the throne—but they couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day of these parts was really over before Bosworth Field. The printing press and Protestantism finished the destruction of its nobility. Only a house here and there has survived among us. Some few of the old names are preserved, like flies in amber, over in Ireland, but I should not know where to look to-day for a De Lacy, or a Tregoz, or a west country Le Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I suppose, in fact, we have more of the Mortimer blood among us than there is anywhere else.”
Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread as a background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at the escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize himself with the fact that they were a part of his own history—that the grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage.
There was some talk going on between the others—conversation which, for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an attack upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch, as impostors and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by fostering all the mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that they might secure a dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the horrors their own low tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman developed these violent theories without heat or any trace of excitement, and even maintained a genial expression of countenance while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed entertained, and even helped on the diatribe now and again with pertinent quips of her own. But Christian could see very little sense in such an assault upon a respectable profession, and his attention wandered willingly again to the splendid chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all there was to learn of the heraldry and local history embodied in this sumptuous decoration, without delay. But then, on every conceivable side there was so much to learn!
Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves on the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at least was something Caermere could not teach him about—nor, for that matter, as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the country, he reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish. Vegetables and fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or seasoning, bread heavy and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a thing too ridiculous for words—so his indictment shaped itself. He felt it his duty to argue to himself that quite likely this graceless and repellent diet was the very thing which made the English such physical and temperamental masters of the world, but the effort left him sad. He made a resolution that if ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped Agostino, in Cannes, should be imported forthwith. Then he became conscious again of what was being said at the table.
“If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius, “what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten what intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard ten consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description. Let me see—it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin Alstead; he has been here once since—but in your absence he put on such a pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him at all—and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”—they had risen now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of appeal in her glance into his face—“perhaps, as matters have turned, you will come oftener henceforth?”
Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth his hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to show him the house—and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an hour before we go to my brother—and our train does not leave Clune till nearly six.”
“You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly.
The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed beyond hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for dragging him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to dine at Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no others.”
“He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a confidential murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of Porlock’s things—I suppose—I suppose poor Cressage’s—would be too big for him. Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t you send a telegram instead?”
Her tone was as frank as her speech—and on the instant her glance at his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank.
He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of him, later on.”
“Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for speaking in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling. “And it isn’t only him—I had hoped you would be stopping some days at least—for I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position here—the uncertainty of everything—is intolerable to bear.” She lifted her head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes.
“If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more freely with you.”
“Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less think them. I can understand your impatience—but it will be possible to straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to have suffered by the delay.”
“Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody assures me of the most magnanimous intentions—but in the meantime”—she checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the tears which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile—“in the meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing here—all alone—or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to receive anybody. But now”—she raised her voice in an eager simulation of gaiety—“shall the personally conducted tour begin?”
Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large, but all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him to perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of England’s show-places. His companions between them kept his attention busy with comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they passed through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby immensity he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to postpone comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more convenient time was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it.
Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase, and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins.
“They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned and furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I used to venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a boy,” he added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black as a sweep.”
There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit token that the journey was at an end.
“Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot poised tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs. “I shall have tea in the conservatory when you come down.”
Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very appreciative—but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to be understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all—you will understand what I mean. But I thank you very much.”
She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her, that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action. For a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts with the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward to grasp more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a hand like a lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware that this was an error, and that he was trembling instead because the moment for confronting his grandfather had come.
Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow.