ITwas the sultriest of weather in London—days when the city lay in a fog of heat, when the paving cracked, and the brow was damp from the slightest movement and the mind of the stranger was tortured by the thought of airy downs and running rivers. The leaves in the Green Park were withered and dusty, the window-boxes in Mayfair had a tarnished look, and horse and man moved with unwilling languor. A tall young man in a grey frockcoat searched the street for shadow, and finding none entered the doorway of a club which promised coolness.
Mr. George Winterham removed his top-hat, had a good wash, and then sought the smoking room. Seen to better advantage, he was sufficiently good-looking, with an elegant if somewhat lanky frame, a cheerful countenance, and a great brown moustache which gave him the air military. But he was no soldier, being indeed that anomalous creature, the titular barrister, who shows his profession by rarely entering the chambers and by an ignorance of law more profound than Necessity’s.
He found the shadiest corner of the smoking room and ordered the coolest drink he could think of. Then he smiled, for he saw advancing to him across the room another victim of the weather. This was a small, thin man, with a finely-shaped dark head and the most perfectly-fitting clothes. He had been deep in a review, but at the sight of the wearied giant in the corner he had forgotten his interest in the “Entomology of the Riviera.” He looked something of the artist or the man of letters, but in truth he had no taint of Bohemianism about him, being a very respectable person and a rising politician. His name was Arthur Mordaunt, but because it was the fashion at the time for a certain class of people to address each other in monosyllables, his friends invariably knew him as “John.”
He dropped into a chair and regarded his companion with half-closed eyes.
“Well, John. Dished, eh? Most infernal heat I ever endured! I can’t stand it, you know. I’ll have to go away.”
“Think,” said the other, “think that at this moment somewhere in the country there are great, cool, deep woods and lakes and waterfalls, and we might be sitting in flannels instead of being clothed in these garments of sin.”
“Think,” said George, “of nothing of the kind. Think of high upland glens and full brown rivers, and hillsides where there is always wind. Why do I tantalize myself and talk to a vexatious idiot like you?”
This young man had a deep voice, a most emphatic manner of speech, and a trick of cheerfully abusing his friends which they rather liked than otherwise.
“And why should I sit opposite six feet of foolishness which can give me no comfort? Whew! But I think I am getting cool at last. I have sworn to make use of my first half-hour of reasonable temperature and consequent clearness of mind to plan flight from this place.”
“May I come with you, my pretty maid? I am hideously sick of July in town. I know Mabel will never forgive me, but I must risk it.”
Mabel was the young man’s sister, and the friendship between the two was a perpetual joke. As a small girl she had been wont to con eagerly her brother’s cricketing achievements, for George had been a famous cricketer, and annually went crazy with excitement at the Eton and Harrow match. She exercised a maternal care over him, and he stood in wholesome fear of her and ordered his doings more or less at her judgment. Now she was married, but she still supervised her tall brother, and the victim made no secret of the yoke.
Suddenly Arthur jumped to his feet. “I say, what about Lewis Haystoun? He is home now, somewhere in Scotland. Have you heard a word about him?”
“He has never written,” groaned George, but he took out a pocket-book and shook therefrom certain newspaper cuttings. “The people I employ sent me these about him to-day.” And he laid them out on his knee.
The first of them was long, and consisted of a belated review of Mr. Haystoun’s book. George, who never read such things, handed it to Arthur, who glanced over the lines and returned it. The second explained in correct journalese that the Manorwater family had returned to Glenavelin for the summer and autumn, and that Mr. Lewis Haystoun was expected at Etterick shortly. The third recorded the opening of a bazaar in the town of Gledsmuir which Mr. Haystoun had patronised, “looking,” said the fatuous cutting, “very brown and distinguished after his experiences in the East.”—“Whew!” said George. “Poor beggar, to have such stuff written about him!”—The fourth discussed the possible retirement of Sir Robert Merkland, the member for Gledsmuir, and his possible successor. Mr. Haystoun’s name was mentioned, “though indeed,” said the wiseacre, “that gentleman has never shown any decided leanings to practical politics. We understand that the seat will be contested in the Radical interest by Mr. Albert Stocks, the well-known writer and lecturer.”
“You know everybody, John. Who’s the fellow?” George asked.
“Oh, a very able man indeed, one of the best speakers we have. I should like to see a fight between him and Lewie: they would not get on with each other. This Stocks is a sort of living embodiment of the irritable Radical conscience, a very good thing in its way, but not quite in Lewie’s style.”
The fifth cutting mentioned the presence of Mr. Haystoun at three garden-parties, and hinted the possibility of a mistress soon to be at Etterick.
George lay back in his chair gasping. “I never thought it would come to this. I always thought Lewie the least impressionable of men. I wonder what sort of woman he has fallen in love with. But it may not be true.”
“We’ll pray that it isn’t true. But I was never quite sure of him. You know there was always an odd romantic strain in the man. The ordinary smart, pretty girl, who adorns the end of a dinner-table and makes an admirable mistress of a house, he would never think twice about. But for all his sanity Lewie has many cranks, and a woman might get him on that side.”
“Don’t talk of it. I can picture the horrid reality. He will marry some thin-lipped creature who will back him in all his madness, and his friends will have to bid him a reluctant farewell. Or, worse still, there are scores of gushing, sentimental girls who might capture him. I wish old Wratislaw were here to ask him what he thinks, for he knows Lewie better than any of us. Is he a member here?”
“Oh yes, he is a member, but I don’t think he comes much. You people are too frivolous for him.”
“Well, that is all the good done by subscribing to a news-cutting agency for news of one’s friends. I feel as low as ditch water. There is that idiot who goes off to the ends of the earth for three years, and when he comes back his friends get no good of him for the confounded women.” George echoed the ancient complaint which is doubtless old as David and Jonathan.
Then these two desolated young men, in view of their friend’s defection, were full of sad memories, much as relations after a funeral hymn the acts of the deceased.
George lit a cigar and smoked it savagely. “So that is the end of Lewis! And to think I knew the fool at school and college and couldn’t make a better job of him than this! Do you remember, John, how we used to call him ‘Vaulting Ambition,’ because he won the high jump and was a cocky beggar in general?”
“And do you remember when he got his First, and they wanted him to stand for a fellowship, but he was keen to get out of England and travel? Do you remember that last night at Heston, when he told us all he was going to do, and took a bet with Wratislaw about it?”
It is probable that this sad elegy would have continued for hours, had not a servant approached with letters, which he distributed, two to Arthur Mordaunt and one to Mr. Winterham. A close observer might have seen that two of the envelopes were identical. Arthur slipped one into his pocket, but tore open the other and read.
“It’s from Lewie,” he cried. “He wants me down there next week at Etterick. He says he is all alone and crazy to see old friends again.”
“Mine’s the same!” said George, after puzzling out Mr. Haystoun’s by no means legible writing. “I say, John, of course we’ll go. It’s the very chance we were wishing for.”
Then he added with a cheerful face, “I begin to think better of human nature. Here were we abusing the poor man as a defaulter, and ten minutes after he heaps coals of fire on our heads. There can’t be much truth in what that newspaper says, or he wouldn’t want his friends down to spoil sport.”
“I wonder what he’ll be like? Wratislaw saw him in town, but only for a little, and he notices nothing. He’s rather famous now, you know, and we may expect to find him very dignified and wise. He’ll be able to teach us most things, and we’ll have to listen with proper humility.”
“I’ll give you fifty to one he’s nothing of the kind,” said George. “He has his faults like us all, but they don’t run in that line. No, no, Lewie will be modest enough. He may have the pride of Lucifer at heart, but he would never show it. His fault is just this infernal modesty, which makes him shirk fighting some blatant ass or publishing his merits to the world.”
Arthur looked curiously at his companion. Mr. Winterham was loved of his friends as the best of good fellows, but to the staid and rising politician he was not a person for serious talk. Hence, when he found him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own, he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness.
“You know I’ve always backed Lewie to romp home some day,” went on the young man. “He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn’t jib and bolt altogether.”
“I don’t see why you should talk of your friends as if they were racehorses or prize dogs.”
“Well, there’s a lot of truth in the metaphor. You know yourself what a mess of it he might make. Say some good woman got hold of him—some good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the adventuress. I suppose he’d be what you call a ‘good husband.’ He would become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and flower shows. And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in life; but we—you and I and Tommy—who know him better, would feel that it was all a ghastly failure.”
Mr. Lewis Haystoun’s character erred in its simplicity, for it was at the mercy of every friend for comment.
“What makes you dread the women so?” asked Arthur with a smile.
“I don’t dread ’em. They are all that’s good, and a great deal better than most men. But then, you know, if you get a man really first-class he’s so much better than all but the very best women that you’ve got to look after him. To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn’t matter a straw, but I won’t have Lewie throwing himself away.”
“Then is the ancient race of the Haystouns to disappear from the earth?”
“Oh, there are women fit for him, sure enough, but you won’t find them at every garden party. Why, to find the proper woman would be the making of the man, and I should never have another doubt about him. But I am afraid. He’s a deal too kindly and good-natured, and he’d marry a girl to-morrow merely to please her. And then some day quite casually he would come across the woman who was meant by Providence for him, and there would be the devil to pay and the ruin of one good man. I don’t mean that he’d make a fool of himself or anything of that sort, for he’s not a cad; but in the middle of his pleasant domesticity he would get a glimpse of what he might have been, and those glimpses are not forgotten.”
“Why, George, you are getting dithyrambic,” said Arthur, still smiling, but with a new vague respect in his heart.
“For you cannot harness the wind or tie—tie the bonds of the wild ass,” said George, with an air of quotation. “At any rate, we’re going to look after him. He is a good chap and I’ve got to see him through.”
For Mr. Winterham, who was very much like other men, whose language was free, and who respected few things indeed in the world, had unfailing tenderness for two beings—his sister and his friend.
The two young men rose, yawned, and strolled out into the hall. They scanned carelessly the telegram boards. Arthur pointed a finger to a message typed in a corner.
“That will make a good deal of difference to Wratislaw.”
George read: “The death is announced, at his residence in Hampshire, of Earl Beauregard. His lordship had reached the age of eighty-five, and had been long in weak health. He is succeeded by his son the Right Hon. Lord Malham, the present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.”
“It means that if Wratislaw’s party get back with a majority after August, and if Wratislaw gets the under-secretaryship as most people expect, then, with his chief in the Lords, he will be rather an important figure in the Commons.”
“And I suppose his work will be pretty lively,” said George. He had been reading some of the other telegrams, which were, as a rule, hysterical messages by way of foreign capitals, telling of Russian preparations in the East.
“Oh, lively, yes. But I’ve confidence in Tommy. I wish the Fate which decides men’s politics had sent him to our side. He knows more about the thing than any one else, and he knows his own mind, which is rare enough. But it’s too hot for serious talk. I suppose my seat is safe enough in August, but I don’t relish the prospect of a three weeks’ fight. Wratislaw, lucky man, will not be opposed. I suppose he’ll come up and help Lewis to make hay of Stock’s chances. It’s a confounded shame. I shall go and talk for him.”
On the steps of the club both men halted, and looked up and down the sultry white street. The bills of the evening papers were plastered in a row on the pavement, and the glaring pink and green still further increased the dazzle. After the cool darkness within each shaded his eyes and blinked.
“This settles it,” said George. “I shall wire to Lewie to-night.”
“And I,” said the other; “and to-morrow evening we’ll be in that cool green Paradise of a glen. Think of it! Meantime I shall grill through another evening in the House, and pair.”
A JULYmorning had dawned over the Dreichill, and the glen was filled with sunlight, though as yet there seemed no sun. Behind a peak of hill it displayed its chastened morning splendours, but a stray affluence of brightness had sought the nooks of valley in all the wide uplands, courier of the great lord of heat and light and the brown summer. The house of Etterick stands high in a crinkle of hill, with a background of dark pines, and in front a lake, set in shores of rock and heather. When the world grew bright Lewis awoke, for that strange young man had a trick of rising early, and as he rubbed sleep from his eyes at the window he saw the exceeding goodliness of the morning. He roused his companions with awful threats, and then wandered along a corridor till he came to a low verandah, whence a little pier ran into a sheltered bay of the loch. This was his morning bathing-place, and as he ran down the surface of rough moorland stone he heard steps behind him, and George plunged into the cold blue waters scarcely a second after his host.
It was as chill as winter save for the brightness of the morning, which made the loch in open spaces a shining gold. As they raced each other to the far end, now in the dark blue of shade, now in the gold of the open, the hill breeze fanned their hair, and the great woody smell of pines was sweet around them. The house stood dark and silent, for the side before them was the men’s quarters, and at that season given up to themselves; but away beyond, the smoke of chimneys curled into the still air. A man was mowing in some field on the hillside, and the cry of sheep came from the valley. By and by they reached the shelving coast of fine hill gravel, and as they turned to swim easily back a sleepy figure staggered down the pier and stumbled rather than plunged into the water.
“Hullo!” gasped George, “there’s old John. He’ll drown, for I bet you anything he isn’t awake. Look!”
But in a second a dark head appeared which shook itself vigorously, and a figure made for the other two with great strokes. He was by so much the best swimmer of the three that he had soon reached them, and though in all honesty he first swam to the farther shore, yet he touched the pier very little behind them. Then came a rush for the house, and in half an hour three fresh-coloured young men came downstairs, whistling for breakfast.
The breakfast-room was a place to refresh a townsman’s senses. Long and cool and dark, it was simply Lewis’s room, and he preferred to entertain his friends there instead of wandering among unused dining-rooms. It had windows at each end with old-fashioned folding sashes; and the view on one side was to a great hill shoulder, fir-clad and deep in heather, and on the other to the glen below and the shining links of the Avelin. It was panelled in dark oak, and the furniture was a strange medley. The deep arm-chairs by the fire and the many pipes savoured of the smoking-room; the guns, rods, polo sticks, whips, which were stacked or hung everywhere, and the heads of deer on the walls, gave it an atmosphere of sport. The pictures were few but good—two water-colours, a small Raeburn above the fireplace, and half a dozen fine etchings. In a corner were many old school and college groups—the Eton Ramblers, the O.U.A.C., some dining clubs, and one of Lewis on horseback in racing costume, looking deeply miserable. Low bookcases of black oak ran round the walls, and the shelves were crammed with books piled on one another, many in white vellum bindings, which showed pleasantly against the dark wood. Flowers were everywhere—common garden flowers of old-fashioned kinds, for the owner hated exotics, and in a shallow silver bowl in the midst of the snowy table-cloth was a great mass of purple heather-bells.
Three very hungry young men sat down to their morning meal with a hearty goodwill. The host began to rummage among his correspondence, and finally extracted an unstamped note, which he opened. His face brightened as he read, and he laid it down with a broad smile and helped himself to fish.
“Are you people very particular what you do to-day?” he asked.
Arthur said, No. George explained that he was in the hands of his beneficent friend.
“Because my Aunt Egeria down at Glenavelin has got up some sort of a picnic on the moors, and she wants us to meet her at the sheepfolds about twelve.”
“Oh,” said George meditatively. “Excellent! I shall be charmed.” But he looked significantly at Arthur, who returned the glance.
“Who are at Glenavelin?” asked that simple young man with an air of innocence.
“There’s a man called Stocks, whom you probably know.”
Arthur nodded.
“And there’s Bertha Afflint and her sister.”
It was George’s turn to nod approvingly. The sharp-witted Miss Afflint was a great ally of his.
“And there’s a Miss Wishart—Alice Wishart,” said Lewis, without a word of comment. “And with my Aunt Egeria that will be all.”
The pair got the cue, and resolved to subject the Miss Wishart whose name came last on their host’s tongue to a friendly criticism. Meanwhile they held their peace on the matter like wise men.
“What a strange name Egeria is!” said Arthur. “Very,” said Lewis; “but you know the story. My respectable aunt’s father had a large family of girls, and being of a classical turn of mind he called them after the Muses. The Muses held out for nine, but for the tenth and youngest he found himself in a difficulty. So he tried another tack and called the child after the nymph Egeria. It sounds outlandish, but I prefer it to Terpsichore.”
Thereafter they lit pipes, and, with the gravity which is due to a great subject, inspected their friend’s rods and guns.
“I see no memorials of your travels, Lewie,” said Arthur. “You must have brought back no end of things, and most people like to stick them round as a remembrance.”
“I have got a roomful if you want to see them,” said the traveller; “but I don’t see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and ends. I like homely and native things about me when I am in Scotland.”
“You’re a sentimentalist, old man,” said his friend; and George, who heard only the last word, assumed that Arthur had then and there divulged his suspicions, and favoured that gentleman with a wild frown of disapproval.
As Lewis sat on the edge of the Etterick burn and looked over the shining spaces of morning, forgetful of his friends, forgetful of his past, his mind was full of a new turmoil of feeling. Alice Wishart had begun to claim a surprising portion of his thoughts. He told himself a thousand times that he was not in love—that he should never be in love, being destined for other things; that he liked the girl as he liked any fresh young creature in the morning of life, with youth’s beauty and the grace of innocence. But insensibly his everyday reflections began to be coloured by her presence. “What would she think of this?” “How that would please her!” were sentences spoken often by the tongue of his fancy. He found charm in her presence after his bachelor solitude; her demure gravity pleased him; but that he should be led bond-slave by love—that was a matter he valiantly denied.
THEsheepfolds of Etterick lie in a little fold of glen some two miles from the dwelling, where the heathy tableland, known all over the glen as “The Muirs,” relieves the monotony of precipitous hills. On this day it was alert with life. The little paddock was crammed with sheep, and more stood huddling in the pens. Within was the liveliest scene, for there a dozen herds sat on clipping-stools each with a struggling ewe between his knees, and the ground beneath him strewn with creamy folds of fleece. From a thing like a gallows in a corner huge bags were suspended which were slowly filling. A cauldron of pitch bubbled over a fire, and the smoke rose blue in the hot hill air. Every minute a bashful animal was led to be branded with a great E on the left shoulder and then with awkward stumbling let loose to join her naked fellow-sufferers. Dogs slept in the sun and wagged their tails in the rear of the paddock. Small children sat on gates and lent willing feet to drive the flocks. In a corner below a little shed was the clippers’ meal of ale and pies, with two glasses of whisky each, laid by under a white cloth. Meantime from all sides rose the continual crying of sheep, the intermittent bark of dogs, and the loud broad converse of the men.
Lewis and his friends jumped a fence, and were greeted heartily in the enclosure. He seemed to know each herd by name or rather nickname, for he had a word for all, and they with all freedom grinnedbadinageback.
“Where’s my stool, Yed?” he cried. “Am I not to have a hand in clipping my own sheep?”
An obedient shepherd rose and fetched one of the triangular seats, while Lewis with great ease caught the ewe, pulled her on her back, and proceeded to call for shears. An old pair was found for him, and with much dexterity he performed the clipping, taking little longer to the business than the expert herd, and giving the shears a professional wipe on the sacking with which he had prudently defended his clothes.
From somewhere in the back two boys came forward—the Tam and Jock of a former day—eager to claim acquaintance. Jock was clearly busy, for his jacket was off and a very ragged shirt was rolled about two stout brown arms. The “human collie” seemed to be a gentleman of some leisure, for he was arrayed in what was for him the pink of fashion in dress. The two immediately lay down on the ground beside Lewis exactly in the manner of faithful dogs.
The men talked cheerfully, mainly on sheep and prices. Now talk would touch on neighbours, and there would be the repetition of some tale or saying. “There was a man in the glen called Rorison. D’ye mind Jock Rorison, Sandy?” And Sandy would reply, “Fine I mind Jock,” and then both would proceed to confidences.
“Hullo, Tam,” said Lewis at last, realizing his henchman’s grandeur. “Why this magnificence of dress?
“I’m gaun to the Sabbath-school treat this afternoon,” said that worthy.
“And you, Jock-are you going too?”
“No me! I’m ower auld, and besides, I’ve cast out wi’ the minister.”
“How was that?”
“Oh, I had been fechtin’,” said Jock airily. “It was Andra Laidlaw. He called me ill names, so I yokit on him and bate him too, but I got my face gey sair bashed. The minister met me next day when I was a’ blue and yellow, and, says he, ‘John Laverlaw, what have ye been daein’? Ye’re a bonny sicht for Christian een. How do ye think a face like yours will look between a pair o’ wings in the next warld?’ I ken I’m no bonny,” added the explanatory Jock; “but ye canna expect a man to thole siccan language as that.”
Lewis laughed and, being engaged in clipping his third sheep, forgot the delicacy of his task and let the shears slip. A very ugly little cut on the animal’s neck was the result.
“Oh, confound it!” cried the penitent amateur. “Look what I’ve done, Yed. I’ll have to rub in some of that stuff of yours and sew on a bandage. The files will kill the poor thing if we leave the cut bare in this infernal heat.”
The old shepherd nodded, and pointed to where the remedies were kept. Jock went for the box, which contained, besides the ointment, some rolls of stout linen and a huge needle and twine. Lewis doctored the wound as best he could, and then proceeded to lay on the cloth and sew it to the fleece. The ewe grew restless with the heat and the pinching of the cut, and Jock was given the task of holding her head.
Clearly Lewis was not meant by Providence for a tailor. He made lamentable work with the needle. It slipped and pricked his fingers, while his unfeeling friends jeered and Tam turned great eyes of sympathy upwards from his Sunday garments.
“Patience, patience, man!” said the old herd. “Ca’ cannier and be a wee thing quieter in your langwidge. There’s a wheen leddies comin’ up the burn.”
It was too late. Before Lewis understood the purport of the speech Lady Manorwater and her party were at the folds, and as he made one final effort with the refractory needle a voice in his ear said:
“Please let me do that, Mr. Haystoun. I’ve often done it before.”
He looked up and met Alice Wishart’s laughing eyes. She stood beside him and deftly finished the bandage till the ewe was turned off the stool. Then, very warm and red, he turned to find a cool figure laughing at his condition.
“I’ll have to go and wash my hands, Miss Wishart,” he said gravely. “You had better come too.” And the pair ran down to a deep brown pool in the burn and cleansed from their fingers the subtle aroma of fleeces.
“Ugh! my clothes smell like a drover’s. That’s the worst of being a dabbler in most trades. You can never resist the temptation to try your hand.”
“But, really, your whole manner was most professional, Mr. Haystoun. Your language—”
“Please, don’t,” said the penitent; and they returned to the others to find that once cheerful assembly under a cloud. Every several man there was nervously afraid of women and worked feverishly as if under some great Taskmistress’s eye. The result was a superfluity of shear-marks and deep, muffled profanity. Lady Manorwater ran here and there asking questions and confusing the workers; while Mr. Stocks, in pursuance of his democratic sentiments, talked in a stilted fashion to the nearest clipper, who called him “Sir” and seemed vastly ill at ease.
Lewis restored some cordiality. Under her nephew’s influence Lady Manorwater became natural and pleasing. Jock was ferreted out of some corner and, together with the reluctant Tam, brought up for presentation.
“Tam,” said his patron, “I’ll give you your choice. Whether will you go to the Sabbath-school treat, or come with us to a real picnic? Jock is coming, and I promise you better fun and better things to eat.”
It was no case for hesitation. Tam executed a doglike gambol on the turf, and proceeded to course up the burn ahead of the party, a vision of twinkling bare legs and ill-fitting Sunday clothes. The sedate Jock rolled down his sleeves, rescued a ragged jacket, and stalked in the rear.
ONCEon the heathy plateau the party scattered. Mr. Stocks caught the unwilling Arthur and treated him to a disquisition on the characteristics of the people whose votes he was soon to solicit. As his acquaintance with the subject was not phenomenal, the profit to the aggrieved listener was small. George, Lady Manorwater, and the two Miss Afflints sought diligently for a camping-ground, which they finally found by a clear spring of water on the skirts of a great grey rock. Meanwhile, Alice Wishart and Lewis, having an inordinate love of high places, set out for the ridge summit, and reached it to find a wind blowing from the far Gled valley and cooling the hot air.
Alice found a scrap of rock and climbed to the summit, where she sat like a small pixie, surveying a wide landscape and her warm and prostrate companion. Her bright hair and eyes and her entrancing grace of form made the callous Lewis steal many glances upwards from his lowly seat. The two had become excellent friends, for the man had that honest simplicity towards women which is the worst basis for love and the best for friendship. She felt that at any moment he might call her by some one or other of the endearing expressions used between men. He, for his part, was fast drifting from friendship to another feeling, but as yet he gave no sign of it, and kept up the brusque, kindly manners of his common life.
As she looked east and north to the heart of the hill-land, her eyes brightened, and she rose up and strained on tiptoe to scan the farthest horizon. Eagerly she asked the name of this giant and that, of this glint of water—was it loch or burn? Lewis answered without hesitation, as one to whom the country was as well known as his own name.
By and by her curiosity was satisfied and she slipped back into her old posture, and with chin on hand gazed into the remote distances. “And most of that is yours? Do you know, if I had a land like this I should never leave it again. You, in your ingratitude, will go wandering away in a year or two, as if any place on earth could be better than this. You are simply ‘sinning away your mercies,’ as my grandfather used to say.”
“But what would become of the heroic virtues that you adore?” asked the cynical Lewis. “If men were all home-keepers it would be a prosaic world.”
“Can you talk of the prosaic and Etterick in the same breath? Besides, it is the old fallacy of man that the domestic excludes the heroic,” said Alice, fighting for the privileges of her sex.
“But then, you know, there comes a thing they call the go-fever, which is not amenable to reason. People who have it badly do not care a straw for a place in itself; all they want is to be eternally moving from one spot to another.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I am not a sufferer yet, but I walk in fear, for at any moment it may beset me.” And, laughing, he climbed up beside her.
It may be true that the last subject of which a man tires is himself, but Lewis Haystoun in this matter must have been distinct from the common run of men. Alice had given him excellent opportunities for egotism, but the blind young man had not taken them. The girl, having been brought up to a very simple and natural conception of talk, thought no more about it, except that she would have liked so great a traveller to speak more generously. No doubt, after all, this reticence was preferable to self-revelation. Mr. Stocks had been her companion that morning in the drive to Etterick, and he had entertained her with a sketch of his future. He had declined, somewhat nervously, to talk of his early life, though the girl, with her innate love of a fighter, would have listened with pleasure. But he had sketched his political creed, hinted at the puissance of his friends, claimed a monopoly of the purer sentiments of life, and rosily augured the future. The girl had been silent—the man had thought her deeply impressed; but now the morning’s talk seemed to point a contrast, and Mr. Lewis Haystoun climbed to a higher niche in the temple of her esteem.
Afar off the others were signaling that lunch was ready, but the two on the rock were blind.
“I think you are right to go away,” said Alice. “You would be too well off here. One would become a very idle sort of being almost at once.”
“And I am glad you agree with me, Miss Wishart. ‘Here is the shore, and the far wide world’s before me,’ as the song says. There is little doing in these uplands, but there’s a vast deal astir up and down the earth, and it would be a pity not to have a hand in it.”
Then he stopped suddenly, for at that moment the light and colour went out of his picture of the wanderer’s life, and he saw instead a homelier scene—a dainty figure moving about the house, sitting at his table’s head, growing old with him in the fellowship of years. For a moment he felt the charm of the red hearth and the quiet life. Some such sketch must the Goddess of Home have drawn for Ulysses or the wandering Olaf, and if Swanhild or the true Penelope were as pretty as this lady of the rock there was credit in the renunciation. The man forgot the wide world and thought only of the pin-point of Glenavelin.
Some such fancy too may have crossed the girl’s mind. At any rate she cast one glance at the abstracted Lewis and welcomed a courier from the rest of the party. This was no other than the dandified Tam, who had been sent post-haste by George—that true friend having suffered the agonies of starvation and a terrible suspicion as to what rash step his host might be taking. Plainly the young man had not yet made Miss Wishart’s acquaintance.
THEsun set in the thick of the dark hills, and a tired and merry party scrambled down the burnside to the highway. They had long outstayed their intention, but care sat lightly there, and Lady Manorwater alone was vexed by thoughts of a dinner untouched and a respectable household in confusion. The sweet-scented dusk was soothing to the senses, and there in the narrow glen, with the wide blue strath and the gleam of the river below, it was hard to find the link of reality and easy to credit fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man, whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached the highway and the farm where the Glenavelin traps had been put up, they found themselves a clear ten minutes in advance of the others.
As they sat on the dyke in the soft cool air Alice spoke casually of the place. “Where is Etterick?” she asked; and a light on a hillside farther up the glen was pointed out to her.
“It’s a very fresh and pleasant place to stay at,” said Arthur. “We’re much higher than you are at Glenavelin, and the house is bigger and older. But we simply camp in a corner of it. You can never get Lewie to live like other people. He is the best of men, but his tastes are primeval. He makes us plunge off a verandah into a loch first thing in the morning, you know, and I shall certainly drown some day, for I am never more than half awake, and I always seem to go straight to the bottom. Then he is crazy about long expeditions, and when the Twelfth comes we shall never be off the hill. He is a long way too active for these slack modern days.”
Lewie, Lewie! It was Lewie everywhere! thought the girl. What could become of a man who was so hedged about by admirers? He had seemed to court her presence, and her heart had begun to beat faster of late when she saw his face. She dared not confess to herself that she was in love—that she wanted this Lewis to herself, and bated the pretensions of his friends. Instead she flattered herself with a fiction. Her ground was the high one of an interest in character. She liked the young man and was sorry to see him in a way to be spoiled by too much admiration. And the angel who records our innermost thoughts smiled to himself, if such grave beings can smile.
Meantime Lewis was delivered bound and captive to the enemy. All down the burn his companion had been Mr. Stocks, and they had lagged behind the others. That gentleman had not enjoyed the day; he had been bored by the landscape and scorched by the sun; also, as the time of contest approached, he was full of political talk, and he had found no ears to appreciate it. Now he had seized on Lewis, and the younger man had lent him polite attention though inwardly full of ravening and bitterness.
“Your friend Mr. Mordaunt has promised to support my candidature. You, of course, will be in the opposite camp.”
Lewis said he did not think so—that he had lost interest in party politics, and would lie low.
Mr. Stocks bowed in acquiescence.
“And what do you think of my chances?”
Lewis replied that he should think about equal betting. “You see the place is Radical in the main, with the mills at Gledfoot and the weavers at Gledsmuir. Up in Glenavelin they are more or less Conservative. Merkland gets in usually by a small majority because he is a local man and has a good deal of property down the Gled. If two strangers fought it the Radical would win; as it is it is pretty much of a toss-up either way.”
“But if Sir Robert resigns?”
“Oh, that scare has been raised every time by the other party. I should say that there’s no doubt that the old man will keep on for years.”
Mr. Stocks looked relieved. “I heard of his resignation as a certainty, and I was afraid that a stronger man might take his place.”
So it fell out that the day which began with pastoral closed, like many another day, with politics. Since Lewis refrained from controversy, Mr. Stocks seemed to look upon him as a Gallio from whom no danger need be feared, nay, even as a convert to be fostered. He became confident and talked jocularly of the tricks of his trade. Lewis’s boredom was complete by the time they reached the farmhouse and found the Glenavelin party ready to start.
“We want to see Etterick, so we shall come to lunch to-morrow, Lewie,” said his aunt. “So be prepared, my dear, and be on your best behaviour.”
Then, with his two friends, he turned towards the lights of his home.
THEday before the events just recorded two men had entered the door of a certain London club and made their way to a remote little smoking-room on the first floor. It was not a handsome building, nor had it any particular outlook or position. It was a small, old-fashioned place in a side street, in style obviously of last century, and the fittings within were far from magnificent. Yet no club carried more distinction in its membership. Its hundred possible inmates were the cream of the higher professions, the chef and the cellar were things to wonder at, and the man who could write himself a member of the Rota Club had obtained one of the rare social honours which men confer on one another. Thither came all manner of people—the distinguished foreigner travelling incognito, and eager to talk with some Minister unofficially on matters of import, the diplomat on a secret errand, the traveller home for a brief season, the soldier, the thinker, the lawyer. It was a catholic assembly, but exclusive—very. Each man bore the stamp of competence on his face, and there was no cheap talk of the “well-informed” variety. When the members spoke seriously they spoke like experts; otherwise they were apt to joke very much like schoolboys let loose. The Right Hon. Mr. M—— was not above twitting Lord S—— with gunroom stories, and suffering in turn good-natured libel.
Of the two men lighting their pipes in the little room one was to the first glance a remarkable figure. About the middle height, with a square head and magnificent shoulders, he looked from the back not unlike some professional strong man. But his face betrayed him, for it was clearly the face of the intellectual worker, the man of character and mind. His jaw was massive and broad, saved from hardness only by a quaintly humorous mouth; he had, too, a pair of very sharp blue eyes looking from under shaggy eyebrows. His age was scarcely beyond thirty, but one would have put it ten years later, for there were lines on his brow and threads of grey in his hair. His companion was slim and, to a hasty glance, insignificant. He wore a peaked grey beard which lengthened his long, thin face, and he had a nervous trick of drumming always with his fingers on whatever piece of furniture was near. But if you looked closer and marked the high brow, the keen eyes, and the very resolute mouth, the thought of insignificance disappeared. He looked not unlike a fighting Yankee colonel who had had a Puritan upbringing, and the impression was aided by his simplicity in dress. He was, in fact, a very great man, the Foreign Secretary of the time, formerly known to fame as Lord Malham, and at the moment, by his father’s death, Lord Beauregard, and, for his sins, an exile to the Upper House. His companion, whose name was Wratislaw, was a younger Member of Parliament who was credited with peculiar knowledge and insight on the matters which formed his lordship’s province. They were close friends and allies of some years’ standing, and colloquies between the two in this very place were not unknown to the club annals.
Lord Beauregard looked at his companion’s anxious face. “Do you know the news?” he said.
“What news?” asked Wratislaw. “That your family position is changed, or that the dissolution will be a week earlier, or that Marka is busy again?”
“I mean the last. How did you know? Did you see the telegrams?”
“No, I saw it in the papers.”
“Good Heavens!” said the great man. “Let me see the thing,” and he snatched a newspaper cutting from Wratislaw’s hand, returning it the next moment with a laugh. It ran thus: “Telegrams from the Punjab declare that an expedition, the personnel of which is not yet revealed, is about to start for the town of Bardur in N. Kashmir, to penetrate the wastes beyond the frontier. It is rumoured that the expedition has a semi-official character.”
“That’s our friend,” said Wratislaw, putting the paper into his pocket.
Lord Beauregard wrinkled his brow and stared at the bowl of his pipe. “I see the motive clearly, but I am hanged if I understand why an evening paper should print it. Who in this country knows of the existence of Bardur?”
“Many people since Haystoun’s book,” said the other.
“I have just glanced at it. Is there anything important in it?”
“Nothing that we did not know before. But things are put in a fresh light. He covered ground himself of which we had only a second-hand account.”
“And he talks of this Bardur?”
“A good deal. He is an expert in his way on the matter and uncommonly clever. He kept the best things out of the book, and it would be worth your while meeting him. Do you happen to know him?”
“No—o,” said the great man doubtfully. “Oh, stop a moment. I have heard my young brother talk of somebody of the same name. Rather a figure at Oxford, wasn’t he?”
Wratislaw nodded. “But to talk of Marka,” he added.
“His mission is, of course, official, and he has abundant resources.”
“So much I gathered,” said Wratislaw. “But his designs?
“He knows the tribes in the North better than any living man, but without a base at hand he is comparatively harmless. The devil in the thing is that we do not know how close that base may be. Fifty thousand men may be massed within fifty miles, and we are in ignorance.”
“It is the lack of a secret service,” said the other. “Had we that, there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka, keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious.”
“And meantime there is that thousand-mile piece of desert of which we know nothing, and where our friends may be playing pranks as they please. Well, well, we must wait on developments. It is the last refuge of the ill-informed. What about the dissolution? You are safe, I suppose?”
Wratislaw nodded.
“I have been asked my forecast fifty times to-day, and I steadily refuse to speak. But I may as well give it to you. We shall come back with a majority of from fifty to eighty, and you, my dear fellow, will not be forgotten.”
“You mean the Under-Secretaryship,” said the other. “Well, I don’t mind it.”
“I should think not. Why, you will get that chance your friends have hoped so long for, and then it is only a matter of time till you climb the last steps. You are a youngish man for a Minister, for all your elderly manners.”
Wratislaw smiled the pleased smile of the man who hears kind words from one whom he admires. “It won’t be a bed of roses, you know. I am very unpopular, and I have the grace to know it.”
The elder man looked on the younger with an air of kindly wisdom. “Your pride may have a fall, my dear fellow. You are young and confident, I am old and humble. Some day you will be glad to hope that you are not without this despised popularity.”
Wratislaw looked grave. “God forbid that I should despise it. When it comes my way I shall think that my work is done, and rest in peace. But you and I are not the sort of people who can court it with comfort. We are old sticks and very full of angles, but it would be a pity to rub them off if the shape were to be spoiled.”
Lord Beauregard nodded. “Tell me more about your friend Haystoun.”
Wratislaw’s face relaxed, and he became communicative.
“He is a Scots laird, rather well off, and, as I have said, uncommonly clever. He lives at a place called Etterick in the Gled valley.”
“I saw Merkland to-day, and he spoke his farewell to politics. The Whips told me about it yesterday.”
“Merkland! But he always raised that scare!”
“He is serious this time. He has sold his town house.”
“Then that settles it. Lewis shall stand in his place.”
“Good,” said the great man. “We want experts. He would strengthen your feeble hands and confirm your tottering knees, Tommy.”
“If he gets in; but he will have a fight for it. Our dear friend Albert Stocks has been nursing the seat, and the Manorwaters and scores of Lewie’s friends will help him. That young man has a knack of confining his affections to members of the opposite party.”
“What was Merkland’s majority? Two-fifty or something like that?”
“There or about. But he was an old and well-liked country laird, whereas Lewie is a very young gentleman with nothing to his credit except an Oxford reputation and a book of travels, neither of which will appeal to the Gledsmuir weavers.”
“But he is popular?”
“Where he is known—adored. But his name does not carry confidence to those who do not know the man, for his family were weak-kneed gentry.”
“Yes, I knew his father. Able, but crotchety and impossible! Tommy, this young man must get the seat, for we cannot afford to throw away a single chance. You say he knows the place,” and he jerked his head to indicate that East to which his thoughts were ever turning. “Some time in the next two years there will be the devil’s own mess in that happy land. Then your troubles will begin, my friend, and I can wish nothing better for you than the support of some man in the Commons who knows that Bardur is not quite so pastoral as Hampshire. He may relieve you of some of the popular odium you are courting, and at the worst he can be sent out.”
Wratislaw whistled long and low. “I think not,” he said. “He is too good to throw away. But he must get in, and as there is nothing in the world for me to do I shall go up to Etterick tomorrow and talk to him. He will do as I tell him, and we can put our back into the fight. Besides, I want to see Stocks again. That man is the joy of my heart!”
“Lucky beggar!” said the Minister. “Oh, go by all means and enjoy yourself, while I swelter here for another three weeks over meaningless telegrams enlivened by the idiot diplomatist. Good-bye and good luck, and bring the young man to a sense of his own value.”
ASthe three men went home in the dusk they talked of the day. Lewis had been in a bad humour, but the company of his friends exorcised the imp of irritation, and he felt only the mellow gloom of the evening and the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing the air like the wild ass of the desert with which the metaphorical George had erstwhile compared him. That young man meanwhile was occupied with his own reflections. His good nature had been victimized, he had been made to fetch and carry continually, and the result was that he had scarcely spoken a word to Miss Wishart. His plans thus early foiled, nothing remained but to draw the more fortunate Arthur, so in a conspirator’s aside he asked him his verdict. But Arthur refused to speak. “She is pretty and clever,” he said, “and excellent company.” And with this his lips were sealed, and his thoughts went off on his own concerns.
Lewis heard and smiled. The sun and wind of the hills beat in his pulses like wine. To have breathed all day the fragrance of heather and pines, to have gladdened the eye with an infinite distance and blue lines of mountain, was with this man to have drunk the cup of intoxicating youth. The cool gloaming did not chill; rather it was the high and solemn aftermath of the day’s harvesting. The faces of gracious women seemed blent with the pageant of summer weather; kindly voices, simple joys—for a moment they seemed to him the major matters in life. So far it was pleasing fancy, but Alice soon entered to disturb with the disquieting glory of her hair. The family of the Haystouns had ever a knack of fine sentiment. Fantastic, unpractical, they were gluttons for the romantic, the recondite, and the dainty. But now had come a breath of strong wind which rent the meshes of a philandering fancy. A very new and strange feeling was beginning to make itself known. He had come to think of Alice with the hot pained affection which makes the high mountains of the world sink for the time to a species of mole-hillock. She danced through his dreams and usurped all the paths of his ambition. Formerly he had thought of himself—for the man was given to self-portraiture—as the adventurer, the scorner of the domestic; now he struggled to regain the old attitude, but he struggled in vain. The ways were blocked, a slim figure was ever in view, and lo! when he blotted it from his sight the world was dark and the roads blind. For a moment he had lost his bearings on the sea of life. As yet the discomfiture was sweet, his confusion was a joy; and it is the first trace of weakness which we have seen in the man that he accepted the unsatisfactory with composure.
At the door of Etterick it became apparent that something was astir. Wheel-marks were clear in the gravel, and the ancient butler had an air of ceremony. “Mr. Wratislaw has arrived, sir,” he whispered to Lewis, whereat that young man’s face shone.
“When? How? Where is he now?” he cried, and with a word to his companions he had crossed the hall, raced down a lengthy passage, and flung open the door of his sanctum. There, sure enough, were the broad shoulders of Wratislaw bending among the books.
“Lord bless me, Tommy, what extraordinary surprise visit is this? I thought you would be over your ears in work. We are tremendously pleased to see you.”
The sharp blue eyes had been scanning the other’s frank sunburnt face with an air of affectionate consideration. “I got off somehow or other, as I had to see you, old man, so I thought I would try this place first. What a fortressed wilderness you live in! I got out at Gledsmuir after travelling some dreary miles in a train which stopped at every farm, and then I had to wait an hour till the solitary dogcart of the inn returned. Hullo! you’ve got other visitors.” And he stretched out a massive hand to Arthur and George.
The sight of him had lifted a load from these gentlemen’s hearts. The old watchdog had come; the little terriers might now take holiday. The task of being Lewis’s keeper did not by right belong to them; they were only amateurs acting in the absence of the properly qualified Wratislaw. Besides, it had been anxious work, for while each had sworn to himself aforetime to protect his friend from the wiles of Miss Wishart, both were now devoted slaves drawn at that young woman’s chariot wheel. You will perceive that it is a delicate matter to wage war with a goddess, and a task unblest of Heaven.
Supper was brought, and the lamps lit in the cool old room, where, through the open window, they could still catch the glint of foam on the stream and the dark gloom of pines on the hill. They fell ravenously on the meal, for one man had eaten nothing since midday and the others were fresh from moorland air. Thereafter they pulled armchairs to a window, and lit the pipes of contentment. Wratislaw stretched his arms on the sill and looked out into the fragrant darkness.
“Any news, Tommy?” asked his host. “Things seem lively in the East.”
“Very, but I am ill-informed. Did you lay no private lines of communication in your travels?”
“They were too short. I picked up a lot of out-of-the-way hints, but as I am not a diplomatist I cannot use them. I think I have already made you a present of most. By the by, I see from the papers that an official expedition is going north from Bardur. What idiot invented that?”
Wratislaw pulled his head in and sat back in his chair. “You are sure you don’t happen to know?”
“Sure. But it is just the sort of canard which the gentry on the other side of the frontier would invent to keep things quiet. Who are the Englishmen at Bardur now?”
The elder man looked shrewdly at the younger, who was carelessly pulling a flower to pieces. “There’s Logan, whom you know, and Thwaite and Gribton.”
“Good men all, but slow in the uptake. Logan is a jewel. He gave me the best three days’ shooting I ever dreamed of, and he has more stories in his head than George. But if matters got into a tangle I would rather not be in his company. Thwaite is a gentlemanlike sort of fellow, but dull—very, while Gribton is the ordinary shrewd commercial man, very cautious and rather timid.”
“Did you ever happen to hear of a man called Marka? He might call himself Constantine Marka, or Arthur Marker, or the Baron Mark—whatever happened to suit him.”
Lewis puzzled for a little. “Yes, of course I did. By George! I should think so. It was a chap of that name who had gone north the week before I arrived. They said he would never be heard of again. He seemed a reckless sort of fool.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“No. But why?”
“Simply that you came within a week of meeting one of the cleverest men living, a cheerful being whom the Foreign Office is more interested in than any one else in the world. If you should hear again of Constantine Marka, Marker, or Mark, please note it down.”
“You mean that he is the author of thecanard,” said Lewis, with sharp eyes, taking up a newspaper.
“Yes, and many more. This graceful person will complicate things for me, for I am to represent the Office in the Commons if we get back with a decent majority.”
Lewis held out a cordial hand. “I congratulate you, Tommy. Now beginneth the end, and may I be spared to see!”
“I hope you may, and it’s on this I want to talk to you. Merkland has resigned; it will be in the papers to-morrow. I got it kept out till I could see you!”
“Yes?” said Lewis, with quickening interest.
“And we want you to take his place. I spoke to him, and he is enthusiastic on the matter. I wired to the Conservative Club at Gledsmuir, and it seems you are their most cherished possibility. The leaders of the party are more than willing, so it only remains for you to consent, my dear boy.”
“I—don’t—think—I—can,” said the possibility slowly. “You see, only to-day I told that man Stocks that Merkland would not resign, and that I was sick of party politics and would not interfere with his chances. The poor beggar is desperately keen, and if I stood now he would think me disingenuous.”
“But there is no reason why he should not know the truth. You can tell him that you only heard about Merkland to-night, and that you act only in deference to strong external pressure.”
“In that case he would think me a fool. I have a bad enough reputation for lack of seriousness in these matters already. The man is not very particular, and there is nothing to hinder him from blazoning it up and down the place that I changed my mind in ten minutes on a friend’s recommendation. I should get a very complete licking.”
“Do you mind, Lewie, if I advise you to take it seriously? It is really not a case for little scruples about reputation. There are rocks ahead of me, and I want a man like you in the House more than I could make you understand. You say you hate party politics, and I am with you, but there is no reason why you should not use them as a crutch to better work. You are in your way an expert, and that is what we will need above all things in the next few years. Of course, if you feel yourself bound by a promise not to oppose Stocks, then I have nothing more to say; but, unless the man is a lunatic, he will admit the justice of your case.”
“You mean that you really want me, Tommy?” said the young man, in great doubt. “I hate the idea of fighting Stocks, and I shall most certainly be beaten.”
“That is on the knees of the gods, and as for the rest I take the responsibility. I shall speak to Stocks myself. It will be a sharp fight, but I see no reason why you should not win. After all, it is your own countryside, and you are a better man than your opponent.”
“You are the serpent who has broken up this peaceful home. I shall be miserable for a month, and the house will be divided against itself. Arthur has promised to help Stocks, while the Manorwaters, root and branch, are pledged to support him.”
“I’ll do my best, Lewie, for old acquaintance’ sake. It had to come sooner or later, you know, and it is as well that you should seize the favourable moment. Now let us drop the subject for to-night. I want to enjoy myself.”
And he rose, stretched his great arms, and wandered about the room.
To all appearance he had forgotten the very existence of things political. Arthur, who had a contest to face shortly, was eager for advice and the odds and ends of information which defend the joints in a candidate’s harness, but the well-informed man disdained to help. He tested the guns, gave his verdict on rods, and ranged through a cabinet of sporting requisites. Then he fell on his host’s books, and for an hour the three were content to listen to him. It was rarely that Wratislaw fell into such moods, but when the chance came it was not to be lightly disregarded. A laborious youth had given him great stores of scholarship, and Lewis’s books were a curious if chaotic collection. On the fly-leaf of a little duodecimo was an inscription from the author of Waverley, who had often made Etterick his hunting-ground. A Dunbar had Hawthornden’s autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis’s own special books—college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic interest—were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping, browsing, reading a score of lines.
“What a nice taste you have in arrangement!” he cried. “Scott, Tolstoi, Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of theCorpus Boreale, some Irish reprints, Stevenson’s poems, Virgil and thePilgrim’s Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them. And then an odd Badminton volume, FrenchMemoires, a Dante, a Homer, and a badly printed German text of Schopenhauer! Three different copies of Rabelais, a De Thou, a Horace, and-bless my soul!—about twenty books of fairy tales! Lewie, you must have a mind like a lumber-room.”
“I pillaged books from the big library as I wanted them,” said the young man humbly. “Do you know, Tommy, to talk quite seriously, I get more erratic every day? Knocking about the world and living alone make me a queer slave of whims. I am straying too far from the normal. I wish to goodness you would take me and drive me back to the ways of common sense.”
“Meaning—?
“That I am getting cranky and diffident. I am beginning to get nervous about people’s opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a sad case for a man who never used to care a straw for a soul on earth.”
“Lewie, attend to me,” said Wratislaw, with mock gravity. “You have not by any chance been falling in love?”
The accused blushed like a girl, and lied withal like a trooper, to the delight of the un-Christian George.
“Well, then, my dear fellow, there is hope for you yet. If a man once gets sentimental, he desires to be normal above all things, for he has a crazy intuition that it is the normal which women really like, being themselves but a hair’s-breadth from the commonplace. I suppose it is only another of the immortal errors with which mankind hedges itself about.”
“You think it an error?” said Lewis, with such an air of relief that George began to laugh and Wratislaw looked comically suspicious.
“Why the tone of joy, Lewie?”
“I wanted your opinion,” said the perjured young man. “I thought of writing a book. But that is not the thing I was talking about. I want to be normal, aggressively normal, to court the suffrages of Gledsmuir. Do you know Stocks?”
“Surely.”
“An excellent person, but I never heard him utter a word above a child’s capacity. He can talk the most shrieking platitudes as if he had found at last the one and only truth. And people are impressed.”
Wratislaw pulled down his eyebrows and proceeded to defend a Scottish constituency against the libel of gullibility. But Lewis was not listening. He did not think of the impression made on the voting powers, but on one small girl who clamorously impeded all his thoughts. She was, he knew, an enthusiast for the finer sentiments of life, and of these Mr. Stocks had long ago claimed a monopoly. He felt bitterly jealous—the jealousy of the innocent man to whom woman is an unaccountable creature, whose habits and likings must be curiously studied. He was dimly conscious of lacking the stage attributes of a lover. He could not pose as a mirror of all virtues, a fanatic for the True and the Good. Somehow or other he had acquired an air of self-seeking egotism, unscrupulousness, which he felt miserably must make him unlovely in certain eyes. Nor would the contest he was entering upon improve this fancied reputation of his. He would have to say hard, unfeeling things against what all the world would applaud as generous sentiment.
When the others had gone yawning to bed, he returned and sat at the window for a little, smoking hard and puzzling out the knots which confronted him. He had a dismal anticipation of failure. Not defeat—that was a little matter; but an abject show of incompetence. His feelings pulled him hither and thither. He could not utter moral platitudes to checkmate his opponent’s rhetoric, for, after all, he was honest; nor could he fill the part of the cold critic of hazy sentiment; gladly though he would have done it, he feared the reproach in girlish eyes. This good man was on the horns of a dilemma. Love and habit, a generous passion and a keen intellect dragged him alternately to their side, and as a second sign of weakness the unwilling scribe has to record that his conclusion as he went to bed was to let things drift—to take his chance.