The April sun was shining into two pleasant sitting-rooms, only divided by a partially drawn curtain. Their long windows opened on a wide gravel walk. Beyond this lay a garden, bright with the airy, leafless charm of spring. The grass was grey-green as yet, the borders brown earth, but there were lines and patches of gay spring flowers, and a blithe activity of birds, while the white clouds floated far away in the breezy sky.
Adrian Scarlett, who was a guest in the house, came slowly sauntering along one ofthe sunshiny paths, between the yellow daffodils, with eyes intent on a handful of printed leaves. Now and again he stopped short, trying a different reading of a line, or twisting his little pointed beard with white fingers, while he questioned some doubtful harmony of syllables. Once he took a pencil from his pocket, and with indignant amusement marked a misprint. After each of these pauses he resumed his dreamy progress, unconscious of any wider horizon than the margin of his page.
Presently his loitering walk brought him to one of the tall, shining windows, and thrusting the little bundle of proofs into his pocket, he unfastened it and stepped in. He found the room untenanted, except by two or three flies, which buzzed in the sunny panes as if summer time had come. A piano stood open, with some music lyingon it, and the young man sat down with his back to the curtained opening, began to play, and amused himself for a while in an agreeably discursive fashion. But after a time he felt that he was not alone. The conviction stole upon him gradually, though, as far as he knew, there had been no sound in the further room, and he had previously believed that everybody was out. He glanced over his shoulder more than once, but saw nothing.
"Shall I go and look?" he asked himself. "But it may be somebody I don't know, and don't want to know. Suppose it should be a housemaid come to be hired, and waiting till Mrs. Wilton comes in. What should I say to the housemaid? Or, by the way, the parson said something about Easter offerings yesterday, perhaps this is the clerk or somebody come for them.Perhaps if I go in he'll ask me for an Easter offering. I think I won't risk it. Shall I go into the garden again?"
While he debated the question, he went on playing, feeling that the music justified an apparent unconsciousness of the invisible companionship. The sunshine lighted up the reddish golden tint of his hair and moustache, and the warm flesh colours of his face. Presently his wandering fingers slackened on the keys, and then after a momentary pause of recollection he struck the first notes of a simple air, and played it, with his head thrown back and a smile on his lips.
Near him an old-fashioned mirror hung, a little slanted, on the wall, and as his roving eyes fell on it, a beardless, sharply-cut face appeared in its shadows, motionless and pale, gazing out of the heavy framewith a singular look of eagerness.
Adrian started, but his surprise was so quickly mastered that it was hardly perceptible, and he continued as if nothing had happened, apparently suffering his glances to wander as before, though in reality he watched the dark eyes and sullen brows bent on him from the wall. The face appearing so picturesquely, interested him, and after a moment the interest deepened. As he had before become gradually conscious of the man's presence, so now did a certainty steal over him that he was somehow familiar with the features in the mirror.
The stranger was evidently standing where he might see and not be seen, and he leant on a high-backed chair so that he was partially hidden.
"Who the deuce is he? and where haveI seen him? and what does he want here?" said Scarlett to himself, continuing to play the tune which had evoked the apparition. "He doesn't look as if he went round for Easter offerings. Can't want to tune the piano, or why didn't he begin before I came in? Hope he isn't an escaped lunatic—there's something queer and fixed about his eyes; perhaps I had better soothe him with a softer strain. By Jove! Ihaveseen him somewhere, and uncommonly good-looking he is, too! How can I have forgotten him? He isn't the sort of man to forget. He doesn't look quite modern, somehow, with his full, dark hair, and his beardless face; or, rather, Ifeelas if he were not quite modern—but why?"
Adrian glided into the accompaniment to an old song, and sang a quaint verse or two softly to himself. The face in themirror relaxed a little. After a moment the man straightened himself, drew back, and vanished. Adrian finished his song, and then, in the silence that ensued, a slight movement was audible, enough to warrant his entering the further room, as if he had just suspected the presence of a visitor.
The man of the mirror was sitting in an arm-chair, with a book in his hand. He looked up a little hesitatingly and awkwardly, as if he were doubtful whether to rise or not. Adrian hastened to apologise for his musical performance.
"I had no idea there was any one here," he said. "I hope I didn't disturb you?"
"Not at all," said the stranger, glancing at the book he held, and furtively reversing it. "An enviable talent," he added, withan evident effort.
"For oneself, perhaps," answered Scarlett. "But I'm not sure it is desirable in a next-door neighbour."
He was still trying to identify his companion. The voice, unmusical and almost harsh, did not help him in the least, and, oddly enough, now that they were actually face to face, he was less absolutely certain that he ought to recognise the man. "It may be only a likeness to somebody I know," he reflected. "But to whom, then? And why does he look at me like that?Heseems to think he knowsme!"
"I hope you'll go on if you feel inclined," said the stranger.
Adrian shook his head.
"Thank you, but I think I've made about noise enough for one morning."
He took up the paper and skimmed acolumn or two. Presently he looked from behind it, and their eyes met.
"I can't help thinking," he said, "that we have met before somewhere, haven't we? I don't know where, but I have an idea that your memory is better than mine."
The other was obviously taken by surprise.
"No," he said, drawing back and frowning. "No—in fact I'm sure we haven't met—at least not to my knowledge. My name is Harding."
Scarlett owned that the name conveyed nothing to his mind, but when in return he mentioned his own, he was certain that he caught a flash of recognition in the other's eyes. "He expected that," he soliloquised, as he picked up his paper again. "Here is a mystery! Deuce take the fellow—why did he stare at me so? He isn't as handsomeas I thought he was in the glass—he's ill-tempered and awkward; it isn't a pleasant face, though of course the features are good. He might make a good picture—and, by Jove! that's what he was—a picture! and I didn't know him out of his frame! I wonder whether it's a chance resemblance, or whether——"
"Were you ever at a place called Mitchelhurst?" he asked, abruptly.
The blood mounted to Harding's face.
"Yes," he said.
"Then," said Adrian, "you must surely be some connection of the family at the old Place—theoldfamily at the old Place, I mean. I have made out the likeness that puzzled me. There is a picture there——"
"I am connected with the family," said Harding, "on my mother's side. It isn'tmuch to boast of——"
"If you come to that," Scarlett answered lightly, "what is? But I'll confess—I dare say I ought to be ashamed of myself—but I'll confess that Idocare about such things. I don't want to boast, but I would rather my ancestors were gentlemen, than that they were butchers and bakers and—well, the candlestick-makers might be decorative artists in their way, and so a trifle better."
Harding scowled, but did not speak.
"You don't agree with me," Adrian went on, with his pleasant smile. "Well, you can afford to scorn the pride of long descent if you choose. And, mind you, though I prefer the gentleman, I dare say the trades-man might be more valuable to the community at large!"
"I hope so," said Harding with a sneer."My grandfather was a pork-butcher."
"Oh!" exclaimed Adrian, blankly. "You combine both, certainly!" He was decidedly taken aback by the announcement, as the other had intended, but he recovered himself first. It was Harding who looked sullen and ill at ease after the revelation into which he had been betrayed, as if his grandfather had somehow recoiled upon him, and knocked him down.
Young Scarlett felt that he could not get up and go away the moment the pork-butcher was introduced, though he half regretted that he had come from the piano to talk to his sulky descendant. "Well, you get your looks from your ancestors at Mitchelhurst," he said; "it's quite wonderful. I studied those portraits a good deal, and there's one on the right-hand side of the fire-place in the yellow drawing-room, asthey call it—do you know the house well?"
"Yes, well enough. Yes, I know Anthony Rothwell's picture."
"It might be yours," said Adrian.
Reynold's only answer was a doubtful "Hm!"
"A fine old house!" Scarlett remarked, as he rose from his chair. If his companion intended to treat him to such curt, half-hostile speeches, he would leave him alone, and ask Mrs. Wilton, or one of the girls, about him, later. He might satisfy his curiosity so, more pleasantly.
But, "A fine old house!" Harding repeated. "Yes, a fine, dreary, chilly, decaying, melancholy old house." He leant back in his chair and looked up at Scarlett, "Did you ever see a more hopeless place in all your life?"
"Come! Not so bad as that!"
"Well, it seems to me that there is no hope about it," Reynold persisted; "no hope at all. A ghastly nightmare of a house. Why doesn't somebody pull it down!"
"You must have seen it under unfavourable circumstances."
"Very likely. I was there last October. It might be better in the summer-time."
"You stayed there?"
"Yes, a few days."
"Did they tell you I had been?" Scarlett asked, impulsively. "Did they speak of me—Mr. Hayes, and—Miss Strange?"
The men looked at each other as the name was spoken, Reynold's dark gaze crossing the bright grey-blue gleam of Adrian's glance. "They said something of a Mr. Scarlett who had been there—yes."
"And they were well, I hope?"
"Well enough—then."
"Then?" cried Adrian. "Then! Why, what has happened since?"
"Didn't you know old Hayes was dead?"
The young man drew a long breath. "No, I didn't!"
"Died just a week before Christmas. The old house is shut up."
Adrian was silent for a moment. "Poor old fellow!" he said at last. "I'm very sorry to hear it. And the house shut up—of course Miss Strange would go back to her people in Devonshire." Reynold looked at him silently. "I wonder who will take the old Place!" said Adrian. "If I were rich—" Their glances met once more, and he stopped short, and strolled towards the window.
"A castle in the air," he said, presently. "I don't suppose I shall ever see Mitchelhurstagain, since the poor old gentleman is gone. But I shall always remember the place. Not for its beauty, precisely. I know when I went there first I was surprised that he should care to live in a corner of that great white pile. Something rather sepulchral about it. Did you ever notice it by moonlight?"
Reynold Harding said, Yes, he had.
"I recollect an almost startling effect one night," Scarlett continued. "And the avenue too—that queer avenue—gnarled boughs, with thin foliage quivering in the wind, and glimpses of summer sky shining through. I think if I were a painter I would make a picture of those trees."
Therewasa picture of them, stripped of their leaves, and wrestling with an October gale, before the eyes of the man to whom he spoke. "They might be worth painting,"he said. "I suppose they weren't worth cutting down. If they had been, I fancy there wouldn't be any avenue left."
"I suppose not. Well, anyhow I'm glad it was spared. There's an individuality about the place—melancholy it may be, perhaps dreary, as you say, but it isn't commonplace, so it misses the worst dreariness of all." He recurred to his first idea. "I wonder who will live there now poor old Hayes is dead."
"Rats," said Reynold. "And perhaps an old man and his wife, to take care of it."
Scarlett stood, with a shadow on his pleasant face. He had meant to go back to Mitchelhurst quite early in the summer, and he slipped a hand into his pocket, and fingered the little bundle of printed leaves which had played a part in his day-dream. He had counted on a welcome from thewhite-haired old gentleman, whose whims and oddities he understood and did not dislike, and he had waited contentedly enough till the time should come. In fact, he had found plenty to do that winter, what with Christmas visits, and the preparation of his poems for the press. As Adrian looked back, he realised that it had been a very agreeable winter, and that it had slipped away very quickly. The thought of Mitchelhurst had been there through it all, but, to tell the truth, it had not been very prominent. He would have spoken to Barbara in the autumn, if he had been left to himself, yet he had recognised the wisdom of the old man's prohibition, he had enjoyed the pathos of that unspoken farewell, and the sonnet which he touched and retouched with dainty grieving, and he had looked forward, very happily, tothe end of his probation. Barbara, who was certainly very young, was growing a little older while he waltzed, and sang, and polished his rhymes, and made new friends wherever he went. Adrian had too much honesty to pretend to himself that he had been broken-hearted in consequence of their separation. He had not even felt uneasy, for, without being boastful, he had been very frankly and simply sure of the end of his love-story. He knew Barbara liked him.
And now it seemed that his testy little white-haired friend had gone out of the great old house into a smaller dwelling-place, and he had been reckoning on a dead man's welcome. A welcome—to what? To the cold clay of Mitchelhurst churchyard? The week before Christmas—Scarlett remembered that he had been very busy theweek before Christmas, helping in some theatricals at a country house. He had been called, and called again at the end of the performance. And just then, at Mitchelhurst, the curtain had fallen for ever on the little part which Mr. Hayes had played, and Barbara had looked on its black mystery.
He bit his lip impatiently. There had been no harm in the theatricals, just the usual joking and intimacy among the actors behind the scenes, and the usual love-making and embraces on the stage. Adrian's conscience was clear enough, and yet the recollection of the girl who played the heroine (painted and powdered a little more than was absolutely necessary, for the mere pleasure of painting and powdering, as is the way with amateurs), came back to him with unpleasant distinctness. He could seeher face, close to his own, as he remembered it on the hot little gaslit stage, in their great reconciliation scene, the scene that was always followed by a burst of applause. Everybody had admired his very becoming dress, and Scarlett himself had been rather proud of it. But now in a freak of his vivid imagination, he pictured the masquerading figure that he was, all showy pretence, with a head full of cues and inflated speeches, set down suddenly in the wintry loneliness of Mitchelhurst Place, and passing along the corridors to the threshold of the dead man's room, to see Barbara turn with startled eyes in the midst of the shadows. God! how pitiful and incongruous was that frippery, as he saw it in his fancy, brought thus into the presence of the last reality!
And Barbara, had she wondered at hissilence during all these months? Never one word of regret for the old man who had been kind to him! "I wouldn't have had it happen for anything!" he said to himself. "What has she thought of me?"
Harding, with eyelids slightly drooping, was watching him, and Scarlett suddenly became aware of the fact.
"No, I suppose nobody is likely to take the old house," he said hurriedly. "I used to think it must be dull for Miss Strange, shut up there with nobody but her uncle."
"I should say it was."
"Well, Devonshire's a nice county, not that I know much of it. What part of Devonshire do the Stranges live in—do you know?"
"North Devon," Reynold Harding answered, and then added, half reluctantly,"Sandmoor, near Ilfracombe."
"Ah, it isn't a part I know at all," said Adrian aloud, and to himself he repeated "Sandmoor, near Ilfracombe."
At that moment the door opened, and one of the daughters of the house came in. "Oh, Mr. Harding!" she exclaimed, advancing, and shaking hands in a quick, careless fashion, "I'm afraid you've been kept waiting a long while."
"It doesn't matter," said Harding, standing very stiffly. "Is Guy ready now, Miss Wilton?"
"Yes, he's waiting in the hall. Bob got him away to the stables, and I didn't know he was there till just now: you know what those boys are when they get together. I thought Guy hadbetterwait in the hall, for I'm afraid he's not as clean as he might be."
"It doesn't matter," Harding repliedagain. "He very seldom is."
"I did try to brush him," said the girl good-humouredly, "but I didn't do much good."
"Wanted something a good deal more thorough, no doubt," Adrian suggested.
"I hope he delivered his message?" Harding inquired. "It is his birthday to-morrow, and his father is going to take him for the day to the seaside. He was to ask if your brother would go with him."
"Oh, Bob will be delighted, I'm sure," said Miss Wilton. "I should thinkyouwould enjoy the holiday, Mr. Harding, you must be thankful to get rid of your charge now and then."
Scarlett, sitting on the end of the sofa, saw Harding's face darken with displeasure. "It makes very little difference, thank you," said the tutor coldly. "I think I'll go andfind Guy now." And he bowed himself out of the room in his sullen fashion. The girl looked after him, and then turned to Adrian and laughed.
"Aren't we dignified?" she said. "What did I say to make him so cross? I didn't mean any harm."
"Oh, I don't know—I don't think you said anything very dreadful. Who is Guy?"
"Guy Robinson. His father has no end of money, Jones and Robinson the builders, you know, who are always getting big contracts for things in the newspapers—you see their names for ever. Old Robinson has bought the Priory, so they are neighbours of ours. Guy is twelve or thirteen, the only boy, and they won't send him to school."
"Mr. Harding is his tutor?"
Miss Wilton nodded.
"I shouldn't much fancy him for mine," said Scarlett reflectively. "I'm rather inclined to pity Master Guy."
"You needn't," the girl made answer, glancing shrewdly. "I think Mr. Harding is there under false pretences."
"False pretences?"
"Yes. I believe they think he is stern, and will keep Guy in order, and my private conviction is that he does nothing of the kind. Nobodycouldkeep Guy in order, without perpetual battles, and Mr. Robinson always ends the battles, by dismissing the tutor. I never hear of any battles with Mr. Harding."
"I see. You think he spoils the boy."
"Spoils him? Well, I think that in his supreme contempt for Guy and all the Robinsons, he just takes care that he doesn'tdrown himself, or blow himself up with gunpowder, or break his neck, and I don't believe he troubles himself any further. I wonder what made the boy want to go to the seaside."
"How far is it?"
"Well, about thirty miles if they go to Salthaven. There's a railway—I should think old Robinson will have a special. Bob will have a great deal too much to eat and drink, and he'll be ill the day after. And if he and Guy can think of any senseless mischief, they are sure to be up to it, and the old man will swagger and pay for the damage. Boys will be boys," said Miss Wilton, with pompous intonation.
Adrian laughed. "Perhaps Mr. Harding will go too."
"Oh no! I know he won't."
"How do you know?"
"Mr. Robinson won't take him. My belief is that he's rather afraid of Mr. Harding. Oh! there he goes with Guy, out by the garden way."
Scarlett looked over her shoulder. "What a handsome fellow he is!"
"Handsome?" Miss Wilton turned her head, and looked doubtfully at her companion.
"Yes. Don't you think so?"
"N-no. It never occurred to me. Do you mean it really, or are you laughing?"
"Of course I mean it. Didn't you ever look at him?"
"Why yes, often."
"Well, then?"
"I suppose his features are good, when one comes to think about them," said the girl, with a dubious expression in her eyes. "Yes, I suppose they are."
"I wish mine were anything like asgood," said Scarlett, with dispassionate candour.
"You wish yours——" Miss Wilton began, and ended with an amazed and incredulous laugh which was exceedingly flattering. It was so evidently genuine.
"I don't think you half believe me now," he said. "But I assure you, if you were to ask an artist he would tell you——"
"An artist? Oh, I dare say an artist might say so. But I don't believe awomanwould say that Mr. Harding was good-looking."
"How ifshewere an artist?"
"Oh, then she wouldn't count."
"But why wouldn't a woman think so?"
She paused to consider. "I don't know," she said, "and yet I do mean it, somehow. He may be handsome, but he doesn't seem like it. I think a woman would want himto seem as well as to be."
"Do you mean that she wouldn't admire him unless he gave himself airs? That's not very complimentary to the woman, you know."
Miss Wilton shook her head. "I don't mean that. He might not think about himself at all—I should like him all the better." She stood for a minute with her eyes raised to Adrian's, yet was plainly looking back at the image of Reynold Harding which she had called up for the purpose of analysis. At last, "He isn't a bit unconscious!" she exclaimed. "He is themostself-conscious man I know. I believe he isalwaysthinking about himself!"
"If he is," said Scarlett, "as far as I could judge I should say he didn't enjoy it much." "That's it!" she said. "He doesn't findhimself attractive, and so—no more do we.Isn'tthat it?"
He smiled. "There's something in the idea as far as it goes. But it doesn't alter his features, you know."
"Of course not. But we don't look at them."
Adrian stood, pulling his moustache, and still smiling. He was not afraid, yet he found it rather pleasant to be told that this picturesque tutor, who had been shut up in Mitchelhurst Place with Barbara, was not the kind of man to take a woman's fancy. It was pleasant, but of course it did not mean much. Molly Wilton might be perfectly right, and yet it would not mean much. It is easy to lay down general rules about women, and very clever rules they often are. The mistake is, in applying these admirable theories to any oneparticular woman—she is certain to be an exception. Scarlett, while he listened to his companion, did not forget that there are always women enough to supply a formidable minority.
"I say," Miss Wilton exclaimed, with a real kindling of interest in her face, "I'll just go and take off my hat, and then we might try over that duet, you know."
To this he readily assented, but when she left the room he lingered by the window, and presently ejaculated "Poor devil!" It is hardly necessary to say that he was not thinking of Molly Wilton, who assuredly was neither angel nor devil, but a bright, wholesome, rather substantial young woman.