"And of Elizabeth, for sixty-one years the faithful wife and helpmate of Ezra Cummings, mother of his children, and his partner in the life everlasting."
"And of Elizabeth, for sixty-one years the faithful wife and helpmate of Ezra Cummings, mother of his children, and his partner in the life everlasting."
Her knees began to shake. There was a momentary darkness before her eyes. She felt for the tombstone and sat down.
The churchyard gate was opened and closed noisily. They both glanced up. Stephen Strangewey was coming slowly toward them along the flinty path. Louise, suddenly herself again, rose briskly to her feet.
"Here comes your brother," she said. "I wish he wouldn't glower at me so! I really am not such a terrible person as he seems to think."
John muttered a word or two of polite but unconvincing protest. They stood together awaiting his approach. Stephen had apparently lost none of his dourness of the previous night. He was dressed in gray homespun, with knickerbockers and stockings of great thickness. He wore a flannel shirt and collar and a black wisp of a tie. Underneath his battered felt hat his weather-beaten face seemed longer and grimmer than ever, his mouth more uncompromising. As he looked toward Louise, there was no mistaking the slow dislike in his steely eyes.
"Your chauffeur, madam, has just returned," he announced. "He sent word that he will be ready to start at one o'clock."
Louise, inspired to battle by the almost provocative hostility of her elder host, smiled sweetly upon him.
"You can't imagine how sorry I am to hear it," she said. "I don't know when, in the whole course of my life, I have met with such a delightful adventure or spent such a perfect morning!"
Stephen looked at her with level disapproving eyes—at her slender form in its perfectly fitting tailored gown; at her patent shoes, so obviously unsuitable for her surroundings, and at the faint vision of silk stockings.
"If I might say so without appearing inhospitable," he remarked, with faint sarcasm, "this would seem to be the fitting moment for your departure. A closer examination of our rough life up here might alter your views."
She turned toward John, and caught the deprecating glance which flashed from him to Stephen.
"Your brother is making fun of me," she declared. "He looks at me and judges me just as I believe he would judge most people—sternly and without mercy. After all, you know, even though I am a daughter of the cities, there is another point of view—ours. Can you not believe that the call which prompts men and women to do the things in life which are really worth while is heard as often amid the hubbub of the city as in the solitude of these austere hills?"
"The question is a bootless one," Stephen answered firmly. "The city calls to its own, as the country holds its children, and both do best in their own environment. Like to like, and each bird to his own nest. You would be as much out of place here with us, madam, as my brother and I on the pavements of your city."
"You may be right," she admitted, "yet you dismiss one of the greatest questions in life with a single turn of your tongue. It is given to no one to be infallible. It is even possible that you may be wrong."
"It is possible," Stephen agreed grimly.
"The things in life which are worth while," she continued, looking down into the valley, "are common toall. They do not consist of one thing for one man, another for another. To whom comes the greater share of them—the dweller in the city, or you in your primitive and patriarchal life? You rest your brains, you make the seasons feed you, you work enough to keep your muscles firm, and nature does the rest. She brings the food to your doors, and when your harvest is over your work is done. There are possibilities of rust here, Mr. Strangewey!"
Stephen's smile was almost disdainful.
"Madam," he declared, "you have six or seven million people in London. How many of them live by really creative and honorable work? How many are there of polyglot race—Hebrews, Germans, foreigners of every type, preying upon one another, making false incomes which exist only on paper, living in false luxury, tasting false joys? The sign-post of our lives must be our personal inclinations. Our inclinations—my brother's inclinations and mine—lead us, as they have led my people for hundreds of years, to seek the cleaner things in life and the simpler forms of happiness. If I do not have the pleasure, madam, of seeing you again, permit me to wish you farewell."
He turned and walked away. Louise watched him with very real interest.
"Do you know," she said to John, "there is something which I can only describe as biblical about your brother, something a little like the prophets of the Old Testament, in the way he sees only one issue and clings to it. Are you, too, of his way of thinking?"
"Up to a certain point, I believe I am," he confessed. "I do not think I could ever have lived in the city. I do not think I could ever have been happy in any of the professions."
"Certainly I could not imagine you as a stock-broker or a lawyer. I feel it hard to realize you in any of the ordinary walks of life. Still, you know, the greatest question of all remains unanswered. Are you content just to live and flourish and die? Are there no compelling obligations with which one is born? Do you never feel cramped—in your mind, I mean?—feel that you want to push your way through the clouds into some other life?"
"I feel nearer the clouds here," he answered simply.
"I suppose you are sure of content—that is to say, if you can keep free from doubts. Still, there is the fighting instinct, you know; the craving for action. Don't you feel that sometimes?"
"Perhaps," he admitted.
They were leaving the churchyard now. She paused abruptly, pointing to a single grave in a part of the churchyard which seemed detached from the rest.
"Whose grave is that?" she inquired.
He hesitated.
"It is the grave of a young girl," he told her quietly.
"But why is she buried so far off, and all alone?" Louise persisted.
"She was the daughter of one of our shepherds," he replied. "She went into service at Carlisle, and returned here with a child. They are both buried there."
"Because of that her grave is apart from the others?"
"Yes," he answered. "It is very seldom, I am glad to say, that anything of the sort happens among us."
For the second time that morning Louise was conscious of an unexpected upheaval of emotion. She felt that the sunshine had gone, that the whole sweetness ofthe place had suddenly passed away. The charm of its simple austerity had perished.
"And I thought I had found paradise!" she cried.
She moved quickly from John Strangewey's side. Before he could realize her intention, she had stepped over the low dividing wall and was on her knees by the side of the plain, neglected grave. She tore out the spray of apple-blossom which she had thrust into the bosom of her gown, and placed it reverently at the head of the little mound. For a moment her eyes drooped and her lips moved—she herself scarcely knew whether it was in prayer. Then she turned and came slowly back to her companion.
Something had gone, too, from his charm. She saw in him now nothing but the coming dourness of his brother. Her heart was still heavy. She shivered a little.
"Come," she said, "let us go back!"
They commenced the steep descent in silence. Every now and then John held his companion by the arm to steady her somewhat uncertain footsteps. It was he at last who spoke.
"Will you tell me, please, what is the matter with you, and why you placed that sprig of apple-blossom where you did?"
His tone woke her from her lethargy. She was a little surprised at its poignant, almost challenging note.
"Certainly," she replied. "I placed it there as a woman's protest against the injustice of that isolation."
"I deny that it is unjust."
She turned around and waved her hand toward the little gray building.
"The Savior to whom your church is dedicatedthought otherwise," she reminded him. "Do you play at being lords paramount here over the souls and bodies of your serfs?"
"You judge without knowledge of the facts," he assured her calmly. "The girl could have lived here happily and been married to a respectable young man. She chose, instead, a wandering life. She chose, further, to make it a disreputable one. She broke her mother's heart and soured her father's latter years. She brought into the world a nameless child."
Louise's footsteps slackened.
"You men," she sighed, "are all alike! You judge only by what happens. You never look inside. That is why your justice is so different from a woman's. All that you have told me is very pitiful, but there is another view of the case which you should consider. Let us sit down upon this boulder for a few moments. There is something that I should like to say to you before I go."
They sat upon a ledge of rock. Below them was the house, with its walled garden and the blossom-laden orchard. Beyond stretched the moorland, brilliant with patches of yellow gorse, and the hills, blue and melting in the morning sunlight.
"Don't you men sometimes realize," she continued earnestly, "the many, many guises in which temptation may come to a woman, especially to the young girl so far from home? She may be very lonely, and she may care; and if she cares, it is so hard to refuse the man she loves. The very sweetness, the very generosity of a woman's nature prompts her to give, give, give all the time. There are other women, similarly circumstanced, who think only of themselves, of their own safety and happiness, and they escape the danger; butare they to be praised and respected, while she that yields is condemned and cast out? I feel that you are not going to agree with me, and I do not wish to argue with you; but what I so passionately object to is the sweeping judgment you make—the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. That is how man judges; God looks further. Every case is different. The law by which one should be judged may be poor justice for another."
She glanced at him almost appealingly, but there was no sign of yielding in his face.
"Laws," he reminded her, "are made for the benefit of the whole human race. Sometimes an individual may suffer for the benefit of others. That is inevitable."
"And so let the subject pass," she concluded, "but it saddens me to think that one of the great sorrows of the world should be there like a monument to spoil the wonder of this morning. Now I am going to ask you a question. Are you the John Strangewey who has recently had a fortune left to him?"
He nodded.
"You read about it in the newspapers, I suppose," he said. "Part of the story isn't true. It was stated that I had never seen my Australian uncle, but as a matter of fact he has been over here three or four times. It was he who paid for my education at Harrow and Oxford."
"What did your brother say to that?"
"He opposed it," John confessed, "and he hated my uncle. He detests the thought of any one of us going out of sight of our own hills. My uncle had the wander-fever."
"And you?" she asked suddenly.
"I have none of it," he asserted.
A very faint smile played about her lips.
"Perhaps not before," she murmured; "but now?"
"Do you mean because I have inherited the money?"
She leaned a little toward him. Her smile now was more evident, and there was something in her eyes which was almost like a challenge.
"Naturally!"
"What difference does my money make?" he demanded.
"Don't you realize the increase of your power as a human being?" she replied. "Don't you realize the larger possibilities of the life that is open to you? You can move, if you will, in the big world. You can take your place in any society you choose, meet interesting people who have done things, learn everything that is new, do everything that is worth doing in life. You can travel to the remote countries of the globe. You can become a politician, a philanthropist, or a sportsman. You can follow your tastes wherever they lead you, and—perhaps this is the most important thing of all—you can do everything upon a splendid scale."
He smiled down at her.
"That all sounds very nice," he admitted, "but supposing that I have no taste in any of the directions you have mentioned? Supposing my life here satisfies me? Supposing I find all that I expect to find in life here on my own land, among my own hills? What then?"
She looked at him with a curiosity which was almost passionate. Her lips were parted, her senses strained.
"It is not possible," she exclaimed, "that you can mean it!"
"But why not?" he protested. "I have not the tortuous brain of the modern politician. I hate cities—thesmell of them, the atmosphere of them, the life in them. The desire for travel is only half born in me. That may come—I cannot tell. I love the daily work here; I am fond of horses and dogs. I know every yard of land we own, and I know what it will produce. It interests me to try experiments—new crops, a new distribution of crops, new machinery sometimes, new methods of fertilizing. I love to watch the seasons come and reign and pass. I love to feel the wind and the sun, and even the rain. All these things have become a sort of appetite to me. I am afraid," he wound up a little lamely, "that this is all very badly expressed, but the whole truth of it is, you see, that I am a man of simple and inherited tastes. I feel that my life is here, and I live it here and I love it. Why should I go out like aDon Quixoteand search for vague adventures?"
"Because you are a man!" she answered swiftly. "You have a brain and a soul too big for your life here. You eat and drink, and physically you flourish, but part of you sleeps because it is shut away from the world of real things. Don't you sometimes feel it in your very heart that life, as we were meant to live it, can only be lived among your fellow men?"
He looked upward, over his shoulder, at the little cluster of farm-buildings and cottages, and the gray stone church.
"It seems to me," he declared simply, "that the man who tries to live more than one life fails in both. There is a little cycle of life here, among our thirty or forty souls, which revolves around my brother and myself. You would think it stupid and humdrum, because the people are peasants; but I am not sure that you are right. The elementary things, you know, are the greatest,and those we have. Our young people fall in love and marry. The joy of birth comes to our mothers, and the tragedy of death looms over us all. Some go out into the world, some choose to remain here. A passer-by may glance upward from the road at our little hamlet, and wonder what can ever happen in such an out-of-the-way corner. I think the answer is just what I have told you. Love and marriage, birth and death happen. These things make life."
Her curiosity now had become merged in an immense interest. She laid her fingers lightly upon his arm.
"You speak for your people," she said. "That is well. I can understand their simple lives being as absorbing to them as ours are to us. I can imagine how, here among your hills, you can watch as a spectator a cycle of life which contains, as you have pointed out, every element of tragedy and happiness. But you yourself?"
"I am one of them," he answered, "a necessary part of them."
"How you deceive yourself! I am sure you are honest, I am sure you believe what you say, but will you remember what I am going to tell you? The time will come, before very long, when you will feel doubts."
"Doubts about what?"
She smiled enigmatically.
"Oh, they will assert themselves," she assured him, "and you will recognize them when they come. Something will whisper to you in your heart that after all you are not of the same clay as these simple folk—that there is a different mission in the world for a man like you than to play the part of feudal lord over a few peasants. Sooner or later you will come out into theworld; and the sooner the better, I think, Mr. John Strangewey, or you will grow like your brother here among your granite hills."
He moved a little uneasily. All the time she was watching him. It seemed to her that she could read the thoughts which were stirring in his brain.
"You would like to say, wouldn't you," she went on, "that your brother's is a useful and an upright life? So it may be, but it is not wide enough or great enough. No one should be content with the things which he can reach. He should climb a little higher, and pluck the riper fruit. Some day you will feel the desire to climb. Something will come to you—in the night, perhaps, or on the bosom of that wind you love so much. It may be a call of music, or it may be a more martial note. Promise me, will you, that when you feel the impulse you won't use all that obstinate will-power of yours to crush it? You will destroy the best part of yourself, if you do. You will give it a chance? Promise!"
She held out her hand with a little impulsive gesture. He took it in his own, and held it steadfastly.
"I will remember," he promised.
Along the narrow streak of road, from the southward, they both watched the rapid approach of a large motor-car. There were two servants upon the front seat and one passenger—a man—inside. It swung into the level stretch beneath them, a fantasy of gray and silver in the reflected sunshine.
Louise had been leaning forward, her head supported upon her hands. As the car slackened speed, she rose very slowly to her feet.
"The chariot of deliverance!" she murmured.
"It is the Prince of Seyre," John remarked, gazing down with a slight frown upon his forehead.
She nodded. They had started the descent, and she was walking in very leisurely fashion.
"The prince is a great friend of mine," she said. "I had promised to spend last night, or, at any rate, some portion of the evening, at Raynham Castle on my way to London."
He summoned up courage to ask her the question which had been on his lips more than once.
"As your stay with us is so nearly over, won't you abandon your incognito?"
"In the absence of your brother," she answered, "I will risk it. My name is Louise Maurel."
"Louise Maurel, the actress?" he repeated wonderingly.
"I am she," Louise confessed. "Would your brother," she added, with a little grimace, "feel that he had given me a night's lodging under false pretense?"
John made no immediate reply. The world had turned topsyturvy with him. Louise Maurel, and a great friend of the Prince of Seyre! He walked on mechanically until she turned and looked at him.
"Well?"
"I am sorry," he declared bluntly.
"Why?" she asked, a little startled at his candor.
"I am sorry, first of all, that you are a friend of the Prince of Seyre."
"And again why?"
"Because of his reputation in these parts."
"What does that mean?" she asked.
"I am not a scandalmonger," John replied dryly. "I speak only of what I know. His estates near here are systematically neglected. He is the worst landlord in the country, and the most unscrupulous. His tenants, both here and in Westmoreland, have to workthemselves to death to provide him with the means of living a disreputable life."
"Are you not forgetting that the Prince of Seyre is a friend of mine?" she asked stiffly.
"I forget nothing," he answered. "You see, up here we have not learned the art of evading the truth."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"So much for the Prince of Seyre, then. And now, why your dislike of my profession?"
"That is another matter," he confessed. "You come from a world of which I know nothing. All I can say is that I would rather think of you—as something different."
She laughed at his somber face and patted his arm lightly.
"Big man of the hills," she said, "when you come down from your frozen heights to look for the flowers, I shall try to make you see things differently!"
The prince, who had just been joined by Stephen, had descended from his car and was waiting in the road when Louise and John approached. He came a few paces forward to meet her, and held out both his hands.
"My dear wandering guest!" he exclaimed. "So I have found you at last! What shall I say to this mishap which has robbed me of so many hours of your visit? I am too happy, though, to know that you have suffered no personal inconvenience."
"Thanks to the great kindness of my hosts," Louise replied, smiling a little mockingly at Stephen, "I have been completely spoiled here, prince, and I can only regard my accident as a delightful little interlude."
The prince bowed, and half held out his hand to Stephen. The latter, however appeared not to notice the movement.
"I shall always remember with gratitude," the prince declared, "the kindness of Mr. Strangewey and his brother to my lost guest. I fear," he went on regretfully, "that I do not seem very neighborly. I am not often at Raynham Castle, except in August and September. I find your northern air somewhat too severe for me."
"Your tenants, prince," Stephen remarked calmly, "would like to see a little more of you."
The prince shrugged his shoulders. He was a man of medium height, slender, with a long and almost colorless face. He carried himself with the good-humoredair of the man of the world among strange surroundings toward which he desired to express his toleration. His clothes and voice were perfectly English, although the latter was unusually slow and soft. At first sight there was no apparent evidence of his foreign birth. He turned once more toward Stephen.
"My agent, Mr. Simon, is a very excellent man, and I have every confidence in his discretion. My tenants here could scarcely feel toward me as they might have done if Raynham had come into my possession in the direct line. However, this year, as it happens, I have made up my mind to spend more time here. My keepers tell me that after four bad seasons the prospects for grouse on my higher moors are excellent. I shall hope," he added, turning to John, "to have you join us often. I must confess that the only time I had ever heard your name, before the newspapers advertised your recent good fortune, was in connection with shooting. They tell me that you are the best shot and the finest horseman in Cumberland."
"You were probably told that at Raynham," John remarked. "Our people always exaggerate the prowess of their own folk, and my brother and I are natives."
"I trust," the prince concluded, "that you will give me the opportunity of judging for myself. And now, dear lady," he went on, turning to Louise, "I am loath to lose another minute of my promised visit. I have taken the liberty of telling your maid to place your wraps in my car. We can reach Raynham in time for a late lunch. Your own car can follow us and bring your maid."
For a moment Louise did not reply. The prince had moved a few steps away, to give some directions to his chauffeur, and he saw nothing of the strange look ofindecision that had suddenly crept into her face. Her eyebrows were contracted. She had turned, and was gazing up the precipitous strip of moorland toward the gray-walled church. Then she glanced at John Strangewey, and her eyes seemed filled with the questioning of a child. It was as if she had abandoned the rôle of mentor, as if she herself were seeking for guidance or help.
John's unspoken response was prompt and unmistakable; and she smiled ever so slightly. She no longer thought him narrow and prejudiced, an unfair judge of things beyond his comprehension. He had helped her in a moment of trial. An idea had flashed between them, and she acted upon it with amazing promptitude.
"Alas, prince," she sighed, as he turned back toward them, "I am so sorry, but I fear that this little accident must change all my plans! As you know, mine was to have been only a brief stay at Raynham, and I fear now that even that is impossible."
The prince drew a step nearer. Something of the calm suavity had suddenly gone from his manner. When he spoke, his measured words were full of appeal.
"But, my dear friend," he begged, "you will not rob me altogether of this visit, to which I have looked forward so eagerly? It was to receive you for a few hours that I came from Paris and opened Raynham Castle. You yourself shall decide the length of your stay, and a special train shall take you back to London the moment you give the word. In that way you will both save time and spare me—one of the greatest disappointments of my life!"
She shook her head, slowly and very decisively.
"You cannot imagine how sorry I am, prince," she said, "but as it is I must take a special train from Kendal,if there is not one starting soon after I reach the station. I wish to reach London either this evening or very early in the morning."
The prince was holding himself in restraint with a visible effort. His eyes were fixed upon Louise's face, as if trying to read her thoughts.
"Is the necessity so urgent?" he asked.
"Judge for yourself," she replied. "Henri Graillot is there, waiting for me. You know how impatient he is, and all London is clamoring for his play. Night to him is just the same as day. I shall telegraph from Kendal the hour of my arrival."
The prince sighed.
"I think," he said quietly, "that I am the most unfortunate man in the world! At least, then, you will permit me to drive you to Kendal? I gather from your chauffeur that your car, although temporarily repaired, is not altogether reliable."
She answered him only after a slight hesitation. For some reason or other, his proposition did not seem wholly welcome.
"That will be very kind of you," she assented.
"If we start at once," the prince suggested, "we shall catch the Scotch mail."
"You will surely lunch first—and you, prince?" John begged.
She laid her hand upon his arm.
"My friend, no," she replied. "I am feverishly anxious to get back to London. Walk with me to the car. I will wave my adieus to Peak Hall when we are up among the hills."
She drew him on a few paces ahead.
"I am going back to London," she continued, lowering her voice a little, "with some very strange impressionsand some very pleasant memories. I feel that your life here is, in its way, very beautiful, and yet the contemplation of your future fills me with an immense curiosity. I have not talked to you for very long, Mr. Strangewey, and you may not be quite the sort of person I think you are, but I am seldom mistaken. I am an artist, you see, and we have perceptions. I think that even here the time will come when the great unrest will seize you, too, in its toils. Though the color may not fade from your hills, and though the apple-blossom may still glorify your orchard, and your flowers bloom and smell as sweetly, and your winds bring you the same music, I think that the time will come when the note in you which answers to these things, and which gives you contentment, will fail to respond. Then I think—I hope, perhaps—that we may meet."
She spoke very softly, almost under her breath, and when she had finished there seemed everywhere a strange emptiness of sound. The panting of the engine from the motor-car, Stephen's measured words as he walked with his uncongenial companion, seemed to come to John from some other world.
His voice, when he spoke, sounded a little harsh. Although he was denying it fiercely to himself, he was filled with a dim, harrowing consciousness that the struggle had already begun. Notwithstanding the unrealized joy of these few hours, his last words to Louise were almost words of anger; his last look from beneath his level, close-drawn eyebrows was almost militant.
"I hope," he declared, "that what you have said may not be true. I hope fervently that the time may never come when I shall feel that I need anything more in life than I can find in the home I love, in the work which is second nature to me, in my books and my sports!"
The prince, escaping gracefully from a companion who remained adamant to all his advances, had maneuvered his way to their side. The last few steps were taken together. In a few moments they were in the car and ready to start. Stephen, with a stiff little bow, had already departed. Louise leaned out from her place with outstretched hands.
"And now good-by, dear Mr. Strangewey! Your brother would not let me make my little speech to him, so you must accept the whole of my thanks. And," she went on, the corners of her mouth twitching a little, although her face remained perfectly grave, "if the time should come when the need of reinvestments, or of some new machinery for your farm, brings you to London, will you promise that you will come and see me?"
"I will promise that with much pleasure," John answered.
She leaned back and the prince took her place, holding out his hand.
"Mr. Strangewey, although your luck has been better than mine, and you have robbed me of a visit to which I had looked forward for months, I bear you no ill-will. I trust that you will do me the honor of shooting with me before long. My head keeper arranges for the local guns, and I shall see that he sends you a list of the days on which we shall shoot. May I beg that you will select the most convenient to yourself? If you have no car here, it will give me additional pleasure to welcome you at Raynham as my guest."
John, struggling against an instinctive dislike of which, for many reasons, he was a little ashamed, murmured a few incoherent words. The prince leaned back and the car glided away, followed, a few minutes later,by Louise's own landaulet, with Aline in solitary state inside.
John watched the little procession until it finally disappeared from sight; then he turned on his heel and went into the house. Stephen, who had just filled a pipe, was smoking furiously in the hall.
"Have they gone?" he demanded.
John nodded.
"They are racing into Kendal to catch the Scotchman for London."
"The sooner she gets there, the better," Stephen growled.
John raised his head. The light of battle flashed for a moment in his eyes.
"She came here unbidden," he said, "and we did no more than our bounden duty in entertaining her. For the rest, what is there that you can say against her? Women there must be in the world. Why do you judge those who come your way so harshly?"
Stephen withdrew the pipe from his mouth and dealt the black oak table in front of him a blow with his great fist. Even John himself was struck with the sudden likeness of his brother's face to the granite rocks which were piled around their home.
"I'll answer your question, John," he said. "I'll tell you the truth as I see it and as I know it. Women there must be to breed men's sons, to care for their households; even, I grant you, to be their companions and to lighten the dark days when sorrow comes. But she isn't that sort. She is as far removed from them as our mountain road is from the scented thoroughfares of Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, where she might take her daily exercise. I'll tell you about her, John. She is one of those who have sown the hatred of womenin my heart. Do you know what I call them, John? I call them witch-women. There's something of the devil in their blood. They call themselves artists. They have the gift of turning the heads and spoiling the lives of sober, well-living men, till they make them dance to their bidding along the ways of shame, and turn their useful lives into the dotage of a love-sick boy. They aren't child-bearing women, that sort! They don't want to take their proper place in your household by your side, breed sons and daughters for you, sink their own lives in the greater duties of motherhood. There's generally a drop of devilish foreign blood in their veins, as she has. Our grandmother had it. You know the result. The empty frame in the lumber-room will tell you."
John, half angry, half staggered by his brother's vehemence, was for the moment a little confused.
"There may be women like that, Stephen," he confessed. "I am not denying the truth of much that you say. But what right have you to class her among them? What do you know of her?"
"It's written in her face," Stephen answered fiercely. "Women like her breathe it from their lips when they speak, just as it shines out of their eyes when they look at you. An actress, and a friend of the Prince of Seyre! A woman who thought it worth her while, during her few hours' stay here—" John had suddenly straightened himself. Stephen clenched his teeth. "Curse it, that's enough!" he said. "She's gone, anyway. Come, let's have our lunch!"
Once more that long, winding stretch of mountain road lay empty under the moonlight. Three months had passed, and none of the mystery of the earlier season in the year remained. The hills had lost their canopy of soft, gray mist. Nature had amplified and emphasized herself. The whole outline of the country was marvelously distinct. The more distant mountains, as a rule blurred and uncertain in shape, seemed now to pierce with their jagged summits the edge of the star-filled sky.
Up the long slope, where three months before he had ridden to find himself confronted with the adventure of his life, John Strangewey jogged homeward in his high dog-cart. The mare, scenting her stable, broke into a quick trot as they topped the long rise. Suddenly she felt a hand tighten upon her reins. She looked inquiringly around, and then stood patiently awaiting her master's bidding.
It seemed to John as if he had passed from the partial abstraction of the last few hours into absolute and entire forgetfulness of the present. He could see the motor-car drawn up by the side of the road, could hear the fretful voice of the maid, and the soft, pleasant words of greeting from the woman who had seemed from the first as if she were very far removed indeed from any of the small annoyances of their accident.
"I have broken down. Can you help?"
He set his teeth. The poignancy of the recollectionwas a torture to him. Word by word he lived again through that brief interview. He saw her descend from the car, felt the touch of her hand on his arm, saw the flash of her brown eyes as she drew close to him with that pleasant little air of familiarity, shared by no other woman he had ever known.
Then the little scene faded away, and he remembered the tedious present. He had spent two dull days at the house of a neighboring landowner, playing cricket in the daytime, dancing at night with women in whom he was unable to feel the slightest interest, always with that far-away feeling in his heart, struggling hour by hour with that curious restlessness which seemed to have taken a permanent place in his disposition. He was on his way home to Peak Hall. He knew exactly the welcome which was awaiting him. He knew exactly the news he would receive. He raised his whip and cracked it viciously in the air.
Stephen was waiting for him, as he had expected, in the dining room. The elder Strangewey was seated in his accustomed chair, smoking his pipe and reading the paper. The table was laid for a meal, which Jennings was preparing to serve.
"Back again, John?" his brother remarked, looking at him fixedly over his newspaper.
John picked up one or two letters, glanced them over, and flung them down upon the table. He had examined every envelope for the last few months with the same expectancy, and thrown each one down with the same throb of disappointment.
"As you see."
"Had a good time?"
"Not very. We were too strong for them. They came without a bowler at all."
"Did you get a good knock?"
"A hundred and seven," John replied. "It was just a slog, though. Nothing to eat, thank you, Jennings. You can clear the table so far as I am concerned. I had supper with the Greys. Have they finished the barley-fields, Stephen?"
"All in at eight o'clock."
There was a brief silence. Then Stephen knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to his feet.
"John," he asked, "why did you pull up on the road there?"
There was no immediate answer. The slightest of frowns formed itself upon the younger man's face.
"How did you know that I pulled up?"
"I was sitting with the window open, listening for you. I came outside to see what had happened, and I saw your lights standing still."
"I had a fancy to stop for a moment," John said; "nothing more."
"You aren't letting your thoughts dwell upon that woman?"
"I have thought about her sometimes," John answered, almost defiantly. "What's the harm? I'm still here, am I not?"
Stephen crossed the room. From the drawer of the old mahogany sideboard he produced an illustrated paper. He turned back the frontispiece fiercely and held it up.
"Do you see that, John?"
"I've seen it already."
Stephen threw the paper upon the table.
"She's going to act in another of those confounded French plays," he said; "translations with all the wit taken out and all the vulgarity left in."
"We know nothing of her art," John declared coldly. "We shouldn't understand it, even if we saw her act. Therefore, it isn't right for us to judge her. The world has found her a great actress. She is not responsible for the plays she acts in."
Stephen turned away and lit his pipe anew. He smoked for a minute or two furiously. His thick eyebrows came closer and closer together. He seemed to be turning some thought over in his mind.
"John," he asked, "is it this cursed money that is making you restless?"
"I never think of it except when some one comes begging. I promised a thousand pounds to the infirmary to-day."
"Then what's wrong with you?"
John stretched himself out, a splendid figure of healthy manhood. His cheeks were sun-tanned, his eyes clear and bright.
"The matter? There's nothing on earth the matter with me," he declared.
"It isn't your health I mean. There are other things, as you well know. You do your day's work and you take your pleasure, and you go through both as if your feet were on a treadmill."
"Your fancy, Stephen!"
"God grant it! I've had an unwelcome visitor in your absence."
John turned swiftly around.
"A visitor?" he repeated. "Who was it?"
Stephen glowered at him for a moment.
"It was the prince," he said; "the Prince of Seyre, as he calls himself, though he has the right to style himself Master of Raynham. It's only his foreign blood which makes him choose what I regard as the lesser title.Yes, he called to ask you to shoot and stay at the castle, if you would, from the 16th to the 20th of next month."
"What answer did you give him?"
"I told him that you were your own master. You must send word to-morrow."
"He did not mention the names of any of his other guests, I suppose?"
"He mentioned no names at all."
John was silent for a moment. A bewildering thought had taken hold of him. Supposing she were to be there!
Stephen, watching him, read his thoughts, and for a moment lost control of himself.
"Were you thinking about that woman?" he asked sternly.
"What woman?"
"The woman whom we sheltered here, the woman whose shameless picture is on the cover of that book."
John swung round on his heel.
"Stop that, Stephen!" he said menacingly.
"Why should I?" the older man retorted. "Take up that paper, if you want to read a sketch of the life of Louise Maurel. See the play she made her name in—'La Gioconda'!"
"What about it?"
Stephen held the paper out to his brother. John read a few lines and dashed it into a corner of the room.
"There's this much about it, John," Stephen continued. "The woman played that part night after night—played it to the life, mind you. She made her reputation in it. That's the woman we unknowingly let sleep beneath this roof! The barn is the place for her and her sort!"
John's clenched fists were held firmly to his sides. His eyes were blazing.
"That's enough, Stephen!" he cried.
"No, it's not enough!" was the fierce reply. "The truth's been burning in my heart long enough. It's better out. You want to find her a guest at Raynham Castle, do you?—Raynham Castle, where never a decent woman crosses the threshold! If she goes there, she goes as his mistress. Well?"
An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the back door, passed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled moonlight lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble; up the rough ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard.
He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of unwreaked passion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he had escaped the miasma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions of his brother's, so far as they concerned himself and his life during the last few months.
Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his whole outlook upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people, his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo of her half-mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears.
He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages, the bailiff's house, the whole little colony around which his life seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward which he had looked so many nights at this hour.
Across the viaduct there came a blaze of streaming light, a serpentlike trail, a faintly heard whistle—the Scottish Express on its way southward toward London. His eyes followed it out of sight. He found himself thinking of the passengers who would wake the next morning in London. He felt himself suddenly acutely conscious of his isolation. Was there not something almost monastic in the seclusion which had become a passion with Stephen, and which had its grip, too, upon him—a waste of life, a burying of talents?
He rose to his feet. The half-formed purpose of weeks held him now, definite and secure. He knew that this pilgrimage of his to the hilltop, his rapt contemplation of the little panorama which had become so dear to him, was in a sense valedictory.
After all, two more months passed before the end came, and it came then without a moment's warning. It was a little past midday when John drove slowly through the streets of Market Ketton in his high dogcart, exchanging salutations right and left with the tradespeople, with farmers brought into town by the market, with acquaintances of all sorts and conditions. More than one young woman from the shop-windows orthe pavements ventured to smile at him, and the few greetings he received from the wives and daughters of his neighbors were as gracious as they could possibly be made. John almost smiled once, in the act of raising his hat, as he realized how completely the whole charm of the world, for him, seemed to lie in one woman's eyes.
At the crossways, where he should have turned up to the inn, he paused while a motor-car passed. It contained a woman, who was talking to her host. She was not in the least like Louise, and yet instinctively he knew that she was of the same world. The perfection of her white-serge costume, her hat so smartly worn, the half-insolent smile, the little gesture with which she raised her hand—something about her unlocked the floodgates.
Market Ketton had seemed well enough a few minutes ago. John had felt a healthy appetite for his midday meal, and a certain interest concerning a deal of barley upon which he was about to engage. And now another world had him in its grip. He flicked the mare with his whip, turned away from the inn, and galloped up to the station, keeping pace with the train whose whistle he had heard. Standing outside was a local horse-dealer of his acquaintance.
"Take the mare back for me to Peak Hall, will you, Jenkins, or send one of your lads?" he begged. "I want to catch this train."
The man assented with pleasure—it paid to do a kindness for a Strangewey. John passed through the ticket-office to the platform, where the train was waiting, threw open the door of a carriage, and flung himself into a corner seat. The whistle sounded. The adventure of his life had begun at last.
The great French dramatist, dark, pale-faced, and corpulent, stood upon the extreme edge of the stage, brandishing his manuscript in his hand. From close at hand, the stage manager watched him anxiously. For the third time M. Graillot was within a few inches of the orchestra-well.
"If you would pardon me, M. Graillot," he ventured timidly, "the footlights are quite unprotected, as you see."
Graillot glanced behind him and promptly abandoned his dangerous position.
"It is you, ladies and gentlemen," he declared, shaking his manuscript vigorously at the handful of people upon the stage, "who drive me into forgetfulness and place me in the danger from which our friend here has just rescued me. Do I not best know the words and the phrases which will carry the messages of my play across the footlights? Who is to judge, ladies and gentlemen—you or I?"
He banged the palm of his left hand with the rolled-up manuscript and looked at them all furiously. A slight, middle-aged man, clean-shaven, with a single eyeglass, and features very well known to the theatergoing world, detached himself a little from the others.
"No one indeed, dear M. Graillot," he admitted, "could possibly know these things so well as you; but, on the other hand, when you write in your study atFontainebleau you write for a quicker-minded public than ours. The phrase which would find its way at once to the brain of the French audience needs, shall I say, just a little amplification to carry equal weight across the footlights of my theater. I will admit that we are dealing with a translation which is, in its way, not sufficiently literal, but our friend Shamus here has pointed out to me the difficulties. The fact is, M. Graillot, that some of the finest phrases in your work are untranslatable."
"There are times," the dramatist asserted, moistening his lips vigorously with his tongue, "when I regret that I ever suffered Mr. Shamus or anybody else to attempt to translate my inimitable play into a language wholly inadequate to express its charm and subtlety!"
"Quite so," the actor remarked sympathetically; "but still, since the deed has been done, M. Graillot, and since we are going to produce the result in the course of a fortnight or so, or lose a great deal of money, don't you think that we had all better try our utmost to insure the success of the production?"
"The only success I care for," Graillot thundered, "is an artistic success!"
"With Miss Maurel playing your leading part, M. Graillot," the actor-manager declared, "not to speak of a company carefully selected to the best of my judgment, I think you may venture to anticipate even that."
The dramatist bowed hurriedly to Louise.
"You recall to me a fact," he said gallantly, "which almost reconciles me to this diabolical travesty of some of my lines. Proceed, then—proceed! I will be as patient as possible."
The stage manager shouted out some directions from his box. A gentleman in faultless morning clothes, whoseemed to have been thoroughly enjoying the interlude, suddenly adopted the puppetlike walk of a footman. Other actors, who had been whispering together in the wings, came back to their places. Louise advanced alone, a little languidly, to the front of the stage. At the first sound of her voice M. Graillot, nodding his head vigorously, was soothed.
Her speech was a long one. It appeared that she had been arraigned before a company of her relatives, assembled to comment upon her misdeeds. She wound up with a passionate appeal to her husband, Mr. Miles Faraday, who had made an unexpected appearance. M. Graillot's face, as she concluded, was wreathed in smiles.
"Ah!" he cried. "You have lifted us all up! Now I feel once more the inspiration.Mademoiselle, I kiss your hand," he went on. "It is you who still redeem my play. You bring back the spirit of it to me. In you I see the embodiment of myThérèse."
Miles Faraday gave a little sigh of relief and glanced gratefully toward Louise. She nodded back to him and gave her hand to the Frenchman, who held it to his lips.
"You flatter me, M. Graillot," she said. "It is simply that I feel the force of your beautiful words.Thérèseis a wonderful conception! As to those disputed passages—well, I feel myself in a very difficult position. Artistically, I am entirely in accord with you, and yet I understand exactly what Mr. Faraday means from the commercial point of view. Let us submit the matter to the prince. He knows something of both sides of the question."
The Prince of Seyre, who was seated in the orchestra-leader's chair, looked reproachfully toward Louise.
"Is this fair?" he protested. "Remember that I am more than half a Frenchman, and that I am one of our friend's most faithful disciples. I realize the delicacy of the situation, and I understand Mr. Faraday's point of view. I tell you frankly that the thought of an empty theater appals me. It is not the money—I am sure you all know that—but there isn't a single man or woman in the world who can do his best unless he or she plays to a full house. Somehow or other, we must secure our audience."
"It really comes to this," Faraday intervened. "Shall we achieve a purely artistic triumph and drive the people away? Or shall we—at the expense, I admit, of some of the finest passages in M. Graillot's superb drama—compromise the matter and keep our box-office open? In a more humble way I hope I also may call myself an artist; and yet not only must I live myself, but I have a staff of employees dependent upon me."
Graillot waved his hand.
"So! No more!" he exclaimed grandiloquently. "The affair is finished. My consent is given. Delete the lines! As to the scene laid in the bedroom ofmadame, to-night I shall take up my pen. By noon to-morrow I will give you a revision which will puff out the cheeks of the Philistines with satisfaction. Have no fear,cher amiFaraday! Mothers shall bring their unmarried daughters to see our play. They shall all watch it without a blush. If there is anything to make the others think, it shall be beneath the surface. It shall be for the great artist whom it is my supreme joy to watch," he went on, bowing to Louise, "to act and express the real truth of my ideas through the music of innocent words."
"Then all is arranged," Miles Faraday concluded briskly. "We will leave the second act until tomorrow; then M. Graillot will bring us his revision. We will proceed now to the next act. Stand back a little, if you please, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Maurel, will you make your entrance?"
Louise made no movement. Her eyes were fixed upon a certain shadowy corner of the wings. Overwrought as she had seemed a few minutes ago, with the emotional excitement of her long speech, there was now a new and curious expression upon her face. She seemed to be looking beyond the gloomy, unlit spaces of the theater into some unexpected land.
Curiously enough, the three people there most interested in her—the prince, Graillot, and her friend, Sophy Gerard—each noticed the change. The little fair-haired girl, who owed her small part in the play to Louise, quitted her chair to follow the direction of her friend's eyes. Faraday, with the frown of an actor-manager resenting an intrusion, gazed in the same direction.
To Sophy, the newcomer was simply the handsomest young man she had ever seen in her life. To Faraday he represented nothing more nor less than the unwelcome intruder. The prince alone, with immovable features, but with a slight contraction of his eyebrows, gazed with distrust, almost with fear, unaccountable yet disturbing, at the tall hesitating figure that stood just off the stage.
Louise only knew that she was amazed at herself, amazed to find the walls of the theater falling away from her. She forgot the little company of her friends by whom she was surrounded. She forgot the existence of the famous dramatist who hung upon her words, andthe close presence of the prince. Her feet no longer trod the dusty boards of the theater. She was almost painfully conscious of the perfume of apple-blossom.
"You!" she exclaimed, stretching out her hands. "Why do you not come and speak to me? I am here!"
John came out upon the stage. The French dramatist, with his hands behind his back, made swift mental notes of an interesting situation. He saw the coming of a man who stood like a giant among them, sunburnt, buoyant with health, his eyes bright with the wonder of his unexpected surroundings; a man in whose presence every one else seemed to represent an effete and pallid type of humanity.
The dramatist and the prince were satisfied, however, with one single glance at the newcomer. Afterward, their whole regard was focused upon Louise. The same thought was in the mind of both of them—the same fear!
Those first few sentences, spoken in the midst of a curious little crowd of strangers, seemed to John, when he thought of his long waiting, almost piteously inadequate. Louise, recognizing the difficulty of the situation, swiftly recovered her composure. She was both tactful and gracious.
"Do tell me how you got in here," she said. "No one is allowed to pass the stage door at rehearsal times. Mr. Faraday, to whom I will introduce you in a moment, is a perfect autocrat; and Mr. Mullins, our stage manager, is even worse."
"I just asked for you," John explained. "The doorkeeper told me that you were engaged, but I persuaded him to let me come in."
She shook her head.
"Bribery!" she declared accusingly.
"I heard your voice, and after that it was hard to go away. I'm afraid I ought to have waited outside."
Louise turned to Miles Faraday, who was looking a little annoyed.
"Mr. Faraday," she said appealingly, "Mr. Strangewey comes from the country—he is, in fact, the most complete countryman I have ever met in my life. He comes from Cumberland, and he once—well, very nearly saved my life. He knows nothing about theaters, and he hasn't the least idea of the importanceof a rehearsal. You won't mind if we put him somewhere out of the way till we have finished, will you?"
"After such an introduction," Faraday said in a tone of resignation, "Mr. Strangewey would be welcome at any time."
"There's a dear man!" Louise exclaimed. "Let me introduce him quickly. Mr. John Strangewey—Mr. Miles Faraday, M. Graillot, Miss Sophy Gerard, my particular little friend. The prince you already know, although you may not recognize him trying to balance himself on that absurd stool."
John bowed in various directions, and Faraday, taking him good-naturedly by the arm, led him to a garden-seat at the back of the stage.
"There!" he said. "You are one of the most privileged persons in London. You shall hear the finish of our rehearsal. There isn't a press man in London I'd have near the place."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure," John replied. "Is this, may I ask, the play that you are soon going to produce?"
"Three weeks from next Monday, I hope," Faraday told him. "Don't attempt to judge by anything you hear this afternoon. We are just deciding upon some cuts. See you later. You may smoke, if you like."
Twenty-four hours away from his silent hills, John looked out with puzzled eyes from his dusty seat among ropes and pulleys and leaning fragments of scenery. What he saw and heard seemed to him, for the most part, a meaningless tangle of gestures and phrases. The men and women in fashionable clothes, moving about before that gloomy space of empty auditorium, looked more like marionettes than creatures of flesh and blood, drawn this way and that at the bidding of thestout, masterly Frenchman, who was continually muttering exclamations and banging the manuscript upon his hand.
He kept his eyes fixed upon Louise. He told himself that he was in her presence at last. As the moments passed, it became more and more difficult for him to realize the actuality of the scene upon which he was looking. It seemed like a dream-picture, with unreal men and women moving about aimlessly, saying strange words.
Then there came a moment which brought a tingle into his blood, which plunged his senses into hot confusion. He rose to his feet. Faraday was sitting down, and Louise was resting both her hands upon his shoulders.
"Is there nothing I can be to you, then, Edmund?" she asked, her voice vibrating with a passion which he found it hard to believe was not real.
Faraday turned slowly in his chair. He held out his arms.
"One thing," he murmured.
John had moved half a step forward when he felt the prince's eyes fixed upon him, and was conscious of a sudden sense of ignorance, almost of uncouthness. It was a play which they were rehearsing, of course! It was a damnable thing to see Louise taken into that cold and obviously unreal embrace, but it was only a play. It was part of her work.
John resumed his seat and folded his arms. With the embrace had fallen an imaginary curtain, and the rehearsal was over. They were all crowded together, talking, in the center of the stage. The prince, who had stepped across the footlights, made his way to where John was sitting.
"So you have deserted Cumberland for a time?" he courteously inquired.
"I came up last night," John replied.
"You are making a long stay?"
John hesitated. He felt that no one knew less of his movements than he himself. His eyes had wandered to where Louise and Graillot were talking.
"I can scarcely tell yet. I have made no plans."
"London, at this season of the year," the prince observed, "is scarcely at its best."
John smiled.
"I am afraid," he said, "that I am not critical. It is eight years since I was here last, on my way down from Oxford."
"You have been abroad, perhaps?" the prince inquired.
"I have not been out of Cumberland during the whole of that time," John confessed.
The prince, after a moment's incredulous stare, laughed softly to himself.
"You are a very wonderful person, Mr. Strangewey," he declared. "I have heard of your good fortune. If I can be of any service to you during your stay in town," he added politely, "please command me."
"You are very kind," John replied gratefully.
Louise broke away from the little group and came across toward them.
"Free at last!" she exclaimed. "Now let us go out and have some tea."
They made their way down the little passage and out into the sudden blaze of the sunlit streets. Two cars were drawn up outside the stage door.
"The Carlton or Rumpelmayer's?" asked the prince, who had overtaken them upon the pavement.
"The Carlton, I think," Louise decided. "We can get a quiet table there inside the restaurant. You bring Sophy, will you, Eugène? I am going to take possession of Mr. Strangewey."
The prince, with a little bow, pointed to the door of his limousine, which a footman was holding open. Louise led John to a smaller car which was waiting in the rear.
"The Carlton," she told the man, as he arranged the rugs. "And now," she added, turning to John, "why have you come to London? How long are you going to stay? What are you going to do? And—most important of all—in what spirit have you come?"
John breathed a little sigh of contentment. They were moving slowly down a back street to take their place in the tide of traffic which flooded the main thoroughfares.
"That sounds so like you," he said. "I came up last night, suddenly. I have no idea how long I am going to stay; I have no idea what I am going to do. As for the spirit in which I have come—well, I should call it an inquiring one."
"A very good start," Louise murmured approvingly, "but still a little vague!"
"Then I will do away with all vagueness. I came to see you," John confessed bluntly.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed, looking at him with a little smile. "How downright you are!"
"Country methods," he reminded her.
"Don't overdo it," she begged.
"The truth—" he began.
"Has to be handled very carefully," she said, interrupting him. "The truth is either beautiful or crude, and the people who meddle with such a wonderful thingneed a great deal of tact. You have come to see me, you say. Very well, then, I will be just as frank. I have been hoping that you would come!"
"You can't imagine how good it is to hear you say that," he declared.
"Mind," she went on, "I have been hoping it for more reasons than one. You have come to realize, I hope, that it is your duty to try to see a little more of life than you possibly can leading a patriarchal existence among your flocks and herds."
"That may be so," John assented. "I have often thought of our conversation. I don't know, even now, whether you were right or wrong. I only know that since you went away I have felt something of the unrest with which you threatened me. I want to settle the matter one way or the other. I want to try, for a little time, what it is like to live in the crowded places, to be near you, to see, if I may, more of you and your way of living."
They were silent for several moments.
"I thought you would come," Louise said at last; "and I am glad, but even in these first few minutes I want to say something to you. If you wish to succeed in your object, and really understand the people you meet here and the life they lead, don't be like your brother—too quick to judge. Do not hug your prejudices too tightly. You will come across many problems, many situations which will seem strange to you. Do not make up your mind about anything in a hurry."
"I will remember that," he promised. "You must remember, though, that I don't expect ever to become a convert. I believe I am a countryman, bred and born. Still, there are some things that I want to understand,if I can, and, more than anything else—I want to see you!"
She faced his direct speech this time with more deliberation.
"Tell me exactly why."
"If I could tell you that," he replied simply, "I should be able to answer for myself the riddle which has kept me awake at night for weeks and months, which has puzzled me more than anything else in life has ever done."
"You really have thought of me, then?"
"Didn't you always know that I should?"
"Perhaps," she admitted. "Anyhow, I always felt that we should meet again, that you would come to London. The problem is," she added, smiling, "what to do with you now you are here."
"I haven't come to be a nuisance," he assured her. "I just want a little help from you."
She became indiscreet. She looked at him with a little smile at the corners of her lips.
"Nothing else?" she asked, almost under her breath.
"At the end of it all, yes," he answered simply. "I want to understand because it is your world. I want to feel myself nearer to you. I want—"
She gripped at his arm suddenly. She knew well enough that she had deliberately provoked his words, but there was a look in her face almost of fear.