Not until her son was actually born did Dorothy apprise the dowager of the event. It was lucky that spring was already warm over France and that the sudden famineof mittens did not inconvenience the troops at this season, because the instant withdrawal of the dowager, Lady Jane, and Lady Arabella from the house in Grosvenor Square left the twenty ladies they had gathered together with neither wool to continue their good work nor with addresses to which it could be sent. The dowager in a state of perfect happiness began to trace in the lineaments of the baby a strong likeness to her dead son, and, as Dorothy had expected, to lament loudly his disinheritance; Lady Jane insisted that he must be taken at once to Chatfield, where Uncle Chat would be more than delighted to look after him entirely; Bella, who had been working herself up into a state of great excitement over a baby that Connie expected to bring into the world at the end of May, ceased to take the least interest in Connie or her child and celebrated the advent of her nephew, the sixth earl, by abandoning prose for a pæan of rhapsodic verse. As for Dorothy, she who during the months of waiting had supposed that she had at last reached that high summit of complete indifference to the world, lost nearly all her superiority, and with her strength renewed and increasing every day was on fire to secure somehow or other to her son the material prosperity that his rank demanded. She was still averse to taking him to Chatfield, because even if at such an early age it was improbable that the externals of Chatfield would make the least impression upon his character, she did not like to surrender all her fine schemes of independence at once. She compromised by consenting to take the baby to Cherrington Cottage, where his arrival elicited from their former tenants a most moving demonstration of affection for the family.
Clare Court was still vacant, and during that summer Dorothy used to wheel the perambulator of her baby round and round the domains of which he had been robbed. For his name she had gone back to her old choice of Lucius, and she felt that by doing so she wasconferring upon this posthumous son the greatest compliment in her capacity. The dowager was at first a little distressed that he was not christened Anthony, but when Dorothy read to her, out of a volume of Clarendon she borrowed from the rector, that this namesake was "'a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' 'Thus,'" Dorothy read on, "'fell that incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the true business of life that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocency.'"
"Yes, yes," sighed the dowager. "Dear old Tony! He was in his thirty-second year. Dear old boy!"
Dorothy looked at her mother-in-law to see if she were serious; when she saw that indeed she was she had not the heart to say that the eulogy might as a description of Tony's life be considered somewhat elevated. After all, Tony had died for his king and his country; Lord Falkland had died for his king only.
On the anniversary of the fifth earl's death, when the wind at dusk was cooing round Cherrington Cottage like a mighty dove, Dorothy was seized with a sudden restlessness and a desire to encounter the mysterious and uneasy air of this gusty twilight of late summer. Her son was fast asleep, with both his grandmother and his aunt Arabella ready to minister to his most incomprehensible baby wish and serve him, were it possible, with the paradisal milk of which he dreamed. He had been restless all day, and now that he was sleeping so calmly Dorothy felt that she could allow herself to take air and exercise. Owing to the continued emptiness of the Court, she hadgrown into the habit of walking about the park whenever she felt inclined, and except for the solemnity and silence of the house itself she was hardly conscious that she was no longer the mistress of Clare, because the lodge-keepers and various servants of the estate were familiar to her and always showed how glad they were to see her among them.
The park that evening was haunted by strange noises; but Dorothy's mind never ran on the supernatural, and neither swooping owl, nor flitting bat, nor weasel swiftly jigging across her path, nor sudden scurry of deer startled at their drinking-pool alarmed her. She walked on until the dusk had deepened to a wind-blown starlight, and she found herself in the gardens, where on the curved seat of the pergola she sat until the moon rose and the statues shivered like ghosts in a light changing from silver to gray, from gray to silver, as the scud traveled over the moon's face. But Dorothy had no eyes that night for shadows. She was keeping the anniversary of the fifth earl's death by concentrating upon one supreme problem—the restoration of all these moonlit acres, of all these surging yews and cedars, of every stone and statue, to the rightful heir. If any ghost had walked in Clare that night she would have thought of nothing but the best way to retain him for her son's service. Each extravagant idea that came into her head seemed to stay there but for an instant before it was caught by the wind and blown out of reach forever. Restlessly she left the pergola and wandered round the empty house where the wind in the pines on either side was like a sea and the scent of the magnolias in bloom against the walls swirled upon the air with an extraordinary sweetness. She entered one of the groves and passed through to the lawn behind, where a wild notion came into her head, inspired by the wild night and this mad close of summer, to find an ax and deface the escutcheon of Clare, to mutilate the angelic supporters, to eclipse forever that stone moon in her complement, and so spoil for the intruding ownerat least one of his trophies. The unheraldic moon was not yet above the pine-trees on the eastern side of the house, and such was the force of the wind blowing straight off the sea from the northwest—blowing here with redoubled force on account of the gap in the cliffs through which it had to travel—that when a cloud passed over the still invisible moon on the far side, Dorothy had the impression that the luminary was being blown out like a lamp, so dark did it then become here in the shadow of the house. She had an impulse to defy this wind, to walk down to the headland's edge and watch the waves leaping like angry, foaming dogs against the face of the cliff; but half-way to the sea she had to turn round, exhausted, and surrender to the will of the wind. Her hair blown all about her shoulders, spindrift and spume racing at her side, she let herself sail back along the lea toward the house, looking to any one who should see her like a mermaid cast up by the tempest upon a haunted island. Haunted it was, indeed, for just as the moon shining down a gorge of clouds rose above the pines she met the Caliban of this island.
"You!" she cried. "I knew it was you the whole time."
Houston was unable to speak for a minute, so frightened had he been by this apparition from the sea, so frightened was he to be wandering round this stolen house and in his wanderings to have provoked this spirit of the place, and in the end more frightened than ever, perhaps, to find who the spirit really was. Dorothy did not realize how strange she looked, how magical and debonair, how perilous, how wild; she whose brain was throbbing with one thought perceived in Houston's expression only the shame he should naturally feel for having robbed her son.
"You look tremendously blown about," he managed to say, finally. "Won't you come inside for a minute?"
Then suddenly as if the wind had got into his brain he said to her, "Dorothy, why don't you marry me and take all this back for yourself?"
"Could I?"
She had appealed to herself, not to him; but he, misunderstanding her question, began like a true Oriental to praise the gifts he would offer her.
"Stop," she commanded. "All these things that you want to give to me, will you give them to my son? Don't be so bewildered. You knew I had a son? I can't stop here to argue about myself and what I can give you or you can give me. If you will make over Clare as it stands with all its land—oh yes, and buy back the Hopley estate which Tony's father sold—to my son, I'll marry you."
"If you'll marry me I'll do anything," he vowed.
There was a momentary lull in the wind, and as if in the silence that followed he was able to grasp how much he had undertaken, he stammered, nervously:
"And you and I? Suppose you and I have children?"
"Well," said Dorothy, "they'll be half brothers and sisters of the sixth Earl of Clarehaven, which will be quite enough forthem, won't it?"
And that night, while the wind still cooed round Cherrington Cottage, Dorothy, Countess of Clarehaven, wrote out for Debrett and read to Augusta, Countess of Clarehaven:
"Clarehaven, Earl of (Clare.) (Earl. U.K. 1816. Bt. 1660.) Lucius Clare; 6th Earl and 11th Baronet;b.April 25, 1915;s.1915; is patron of one living.
"Arms—Purpure, two flanches ermine, on a chief sable a moon in her complement argent.Crest—A moon in her complement argent, arising from a cloud proper.Supporters—Two angels, vested purpure, winged and crined, or, each holding in the exterior hand a key or.
"Seat—Clare Court, Devonshire."
THE END