Part 3, Chapter VI.

Part 3, Chapter VI.Hopes and Fears.But Art is impersonal. Downy palms and snown blackthorn may be offered to an artist as subjects for a sketch, just as well as if they would not also serve as tokens of love and hope. As Guy, one sunny morning, followed the path that all through Flete Dale led along by the riverside, he suffered no bud or blossom that indicated the coming of his tardy northern spring to escape him. As he gathered and combined them, it struck him that the glory of them was in the relief of their delicate tints and airy forms in the cold spring sunshine, against the pale spring sky, and that the thing would be to show them to Florella where they grew.And, turning round a great tangle of rosy stems and shining brown buds, he saw her in the brown dress that had a sort of woodland tinting, and suited her, he thought, as well as harebell blue. She was listening to a tall, strong-limbed girl, with the handsome features and wind-blown complexion of the district, picturesquely set off by the yellow handkerchief which she wore on her head, listening with a troubled face. Her companion’s face was quite impassive, though there was a melancholy tone in her voice, as at sight of Guy, she turned off with a “Good day t’ye, sir.”“Is that one of the girls you have been making friends with?” he said, after he had offered his spring buds to Florella, and she had taken them smiling, but still with wistful eyes.“Yes. But I feel so ignorant and stupid with them. It is difficult quite to understand.” It was still more difficult, it was impossible to keep on the surface of things, when these two were together. But perhaps the inhabitants of Waynflete might be treated as an abstract subject, like the spring flowers. Rawdie thought that the discussion of their needs might occupy some time, and went off to investigate water-rats and other objects of interest.“They talk to you, of course,” said Guy. “But no other stranger would get a word out of our folks.”“They don’t talk much,” she answered. “But, one seems half to find out—and then one comes across such real troubles, and temptations. It seems so hard.”“But, Clifton shouldn’t!” exclaimed Guy, with a sudden change. “There are very few people here fit foryouto have anything to do with.”“Oh, not that,” said Florella. “But, you see, I haven’t known much of any one but girls of my own sort. A friend of mine looks after a girl’s club in London, and some of us go to teach French and drawing there, or to sing. She thinks every one ought to spread whatever good things they may have. But it isn’t French and drawing that these girls want!”“Do tell me just what you mean?” he said entreatingly, as they walked slowly on by the riverside.“I mean,” she said, with a glow at thus taking counsel with him, which he little guessed, “that girls like me, tell each other their troubles, and we try to help each other, and sometimes we can. But one finds out much worse sorrows and trials than we ever have.”“That is what you ought to have nothing to do with!” exclaimed Guy, imperatively.“But,” she said, “you can’t help people just by being sorry for them in a general way. You have got tofeelinyourselfjust what they feel. So one must try to understand them.”Guy was silent. He could not keep his angel to himself. The more divine was the help she gave him, the more freely it must flow. He felt responsible for the welfare of Waynflete; he knew that he did not fight his battle for himself alone; but she had no obligations but the impulse to give herself in helpful love. She touched the flowers in her hand, and, with a sudden smile, said—“You know, one has to ‘see.’”“Yes,” he said, gravely. “Well! So the world was saved!”She had given him the thought; but to herself it was new. She could not speak; while Guy felt for the moment as if the power to understand her had been cheaply bought by all the agony of his own experience.They were brought suddenly back to earth again, to the spring flowers and the sunlight, and to the squalid cottages across the field, by wild and frantic barks from Rawdie, who rushed into view, wet and muddy, with a large rat in his mouth, while Jem Outhwaite, climbing up the bank behind him, cried out triumphantly, “He’ve got ’im, sir; he’ve got ’im hissel’!”Rawdie went home in a state of absolute self-satisfaction. For Guy, it had been a moment for which to live; but, such are the conditions of this poor mortal life, that it was followed by a great reaction, by passionate longings to take this beloved maiden to himself, by the old disgust at all that was abnormal in his fate. He soon went back to Ingleby, where he puzzled Godfrey by fitful spirits, intermittent efforts to seem more like other people, and by hours of gloom and silence. The mental fever quieted down after a time, or perhaps he learnt to endure it.But Florella was happier for the moment of approach. They had not ceased to understand each other. She could not paint the sun on the spring flowers, she could not satisfy herself with any tint with which she tried to match them. But, if light and hue escaped her, she could seize on their form, and she made delicate and exquisite pen-and-ink sketches of every swelling leaf and bursting bud.She went, also, and stood on the bridge which she had seen in vision on that murky autumn evening, when her soul had followed Guy’s through its strange encounter. She looked at the laughing, living water, sparkling in the spring sunshine, and at the woods, now fresh and green. It was the fairest spot that ever was cursed by haunting memories. And yet, in the midst of all its sweetness, she felt conscious of something that she did not see, that eluded any insight that she might possess. And she did make some friends, and took into her heart some troubles, and learnt to love the weird and lovely place, because Guy loved it so much. She did not regret the London season which she was missing; she would not go and stay with the Stauntons to see the pictures; there were pictures enough in the woods, such as she had never seen before.Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry—some one who could give her a career.”Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote—“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage aprivateinterview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss —, will offer me a lectureship here. Only inthatway shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.

But Art is impersonal. Downy palms and snown blackthorn may be offered to an artist as subjects for a sketch, just as well as if they would not also serve as tokens of love and hope. As Guy, one sunny morning, followed the path that all through Flete Dale led along by the riverside, he suffered no bud or blossom that indicated the coming of his tardy northern spring to escape him. As he gathered and combined them, it struck him that the glory of them was in the relief of their delicate tints and airy forms in the cold spring sunshine, against the pale spring sky, and that the thing would be to show them to Florella where they grew.

And, turning round a great tangle of rosy stems and shining brown buds, he saw her in the brown dress that had a sort of woodland tinting, and suited her, he thought, as well as harebell blue. She was listening to a tall, strong-limbed girl, with the handsome features and wind-blown complexion of the district, picturesquely set off by the yellow handkerchief which she wore on her head, listening with a troubled face. Her companion’s face was quite impassive, though there was a melancholy tone in her voice, as at sight of Guy, she turned off with a “Good day t’ye, sir.”

“Is that one of the girls you have been making friends with?” he said, after he had offered his spring buds to Florella, and she had taken them smiling, but still with wistful eyes.

“Yes. But I feel so ignorant and stupid with them. It is difficult quite to understand.” It was still more difficult, it was impossible to keep on the surface of things, when these two were together. But perhaps the inhabitants of Waynflete might be treated as an abstract subject, like the spring flowers. Rawdie thought that the discussion of their needs might occupy some time, and went off to investigate water-rats and other objects of interest.

“They talk to you, of course,” said Guy. “But no other stranger would get a word out of our folks.”

“They don’t talk much,” she answered. “But, one seems half to find out—and then one comes across such real troubles, and temptations. It seems so hard.”

“But, Clifton shouldn’t!” exclaimed Guy, with a sudden change. “There are very few people here fit foryouto have anything to do with.”

“Oh, not that,” said Florella. “But, you see, I haven’t known much of any one but girls of my own sort. A friend of mine looks after a girl’s club in London, and some of us go to teach French and drawing there, or to sing. She thinks every one ought to spread whatever good things they may have. But it isn’t French and drawing that these girls want!”

“Do tell me just what you mean?” he said entreatingly, as they walked slowly on by the riverside.

“I mean,” she said, with a glow at thus taking counsel with him, which he little guessed, “that girls like me, tell each other their troubles, and we try to help each other, and sometimes we can. But one finds out much worse sorrows and trials than we ever have.”

“That is what you ought to have nothing to do with!” exclaimed Guy, imperatively.

“But,” she said, “you can’t help people just by being sorry for them in a general way. You have got tofeelinyourselfjust what they feel. So one must try to understand them.”

Guy was silent. He could not keep his angel to himself. The more divine was the help she gave him, the more freely it must flow. He felt responsible for the welfare of Waynflete; he knew that he did not fight his battle for himself alone; but she had no obligations but the impulse to give herself in helpful love. She touched the flowers in her hand, and, with a sudden smile, said—

“You know, one has to ‘see.’”

“Yes,” he said, gravely. “Well! So the world was saved!”

She had given him the thought; but to herself it was new. She could not speak; while Guy felt for the moment as if the power to understand her had been cheaply bought by all the agony of his own experience.

They were brought suddenly back to earth again, to the spring flowers and the sunlight, and to the squalid cottages across the field, by wild and frantic barks from Rawdie, who rushed into view, wet and muddy, with a large rat in his mouth, while Jem Outhwaite, climbing up the bank behind him, cried out triumphantly, “He’ve got ’im, sir; he’ve got ’im hissel’!”

Rawdie went home in a state of absolute self-satisfaction. For Guy, it had been a moment for which to live; but, such are the conditions of this poor mortal life, that it was followed by a great reaction, by passionate longings to take this beloved maiden to himself, by the old disgust at all that was abnormal in his fate. He soon went back to Ingleby, where he puzzled Godfrey by fitful spirits, intermittent efforts to seem more like other people, and by hours of gloom and silence. The mental fever quieted down after a time, or perhaps he learnt to endure it.

But Florella was happier for the moment of approach. They had not ceased to understand each other. She could not paint the sun on the spring flowers, she could not satisfy herself with any tint with which she tried to match them. But, if light and hue escaped her, she could seize on their form, and she made delicate and exquisite pen-and-ink sketches of every swelling leaf and bursting bud.

She went, also, and stood on the bridge which she had seen in vision on that murky autumn evening, when her soul had followed Guy’s through its strange encounter. She looked at the laughing, living water, sparkling in the spring sunshine, and at the woods, now fresh and green. It was the fairest spot that ever was cursed by haunting memories. And yet, in the midst of all its sweetness, she felt conscious of something that she did not see, that eluded any insight that she might possess. And she did make some friends, and took into her heart some troubles, and learnt to love the weird and lovely place, because Guy loved it so much. She did not regret the London season which she was missing; she would not go and stay with the Stauntons to see the pictures; there were pictures enough in the woods, such as she had never seen before.

Once Godfrey came over on business about the estate, and came to call. He had lost his boyish manner, and had caught his brother’s gravity and reticence.

“Ah!” said Mrs Palmer, afterwards, when he had somehow extracted the fact that Constancy was working hard at college, and thinking of nothing but her examinations, “I’ve always known that boy admired Cosy. He’s too young for her, and Ingleby wouldn’t suit her at all. But clever girls often take to handsome men with nothing in them.”

“But Godfrey Waynflete has a good deal in him, Aunt Con.”

“Well, he hasn’t much to say. I expect Guy was too clever for old Mrs Waynflete, and wouldn’t give her her own way. But what Cosy will do when she comes home, I can’t think. She’ll never find enough to occupy her talents. I wish she would marry—some one who could give her a career.”

Florella did not pass over to her aunt a letter which she had just received from Constancy.

That Florella had powers of an unusual kind, except for painting, was an idea that had never formulated itself in the elder girl’s mind. Nevertheless, she was always open with her, and was never quite happy under her disapproval. She wrote—

“People ought not to have to decide on their future lives till they are thirty at least. I feel so extremely young sometimes. It’s much easier to learn moral philosophy than to find it make any difference in one’s life. I shall go in for society, and see if that has a developing effect. New sorts of people teach one more than hooks. I got heaps of ideas from Mrs Waynflete. All that business life was so new to one. I do like meeting new kinds of people. Every one here is so groovy. University life is very narrow. It is much more original and interesting, if you have brains, to spend them on doing than on learning. Mrs Waynflete was far cleverer than any literary woman. I am glad Guy is better, and that ‘Mr Godfra’,’ as old Cooper called him, is being such a good boy, and minding his business. If you can manage aprivateinterview with Rawdie, you might give him my love. The only thing I regret in the events of last summer, is that that enchanting beast’s former master promised to get me a similar puppy. And now that chance is lost to me for ever. Well, I have no more time. If I don’t come a cropper, I believe Miss —, will offer me a lectureship here. Only inthatway shall I think of coming back again. But I think a London winter would pay best. The tour with the Stauntons is the next thing, at any rate, and I mean to enjoy that to my heart’s content.” Florella mused over this letter. She thought it significant that Cosy should find time to speculate on life, when her final examination was imminent, and she understood the veiled allusion to the attentive professor, whose attentions, though she did not know it, had been so carefully brought to Godfrey’s notice by Cousin Susan. She had always thought that Cosy had liked Godfrey better than she had chosen to confess. But she had done her best to offend him, and with her sister he was stiff and shy. Besides, there was a general belief that he was engaged to Jeanie. He did not look very happy, and Guy had never dropped a hint of such an arrangement, and always managed to put Godfrey in a favourable light, in any chance mention of his name.

But Florella had heard Cuthbert Staunton call him a “young ruffian,” and she could not think him good enough for her brilliant sister. He was certainly on Constancy’s conscience; but whether he was also on her heart, was a different matter. On the whole, Florella hoped not.

Part 3, Chapter VII.Life and Death.Constancy’s college career ended, as had always been anticipated, with credit, and even with a share of renown. She helped to prove the power of her sex to compete for laurels formerly reserved for the other, and she was made much of accordingly. She was very much pleased, and not greatly surprised, for the kind of power that she possessed is rarely unconscious. It was not through the sense of intellectual failure that the gospel was to come to her. She was not even tired with the hard work, only ready for a holiday, and Kitty and Violet Staunton were glad enough to share it with her.So off they went, prepared for every sort of exercise and adventure. After about a fortnight of successful sight-seeing the three ladies found themselves in a charming little settlement in a broad mountain valley, which we will here call Zwei-brücken, where cool green rivers rushed through green fields and flowed from the heart of dark, snow-tipped mountains. There were large fawn-coloured oxen and little fawn-coloured goats, houses surprisingly like toy Swiss cottages, and a new hotel in the same style, with the usual variety of tourists. It was a centre for mountain ascents and for excursions, and Constancy and Violet sat under a wide verandah, on the afternoon of their arrival, and watched the groups of travellers.“Don’t you remember,” said Constancy, “talking about the feeling of London? What’s the feeling of this? It’s green, it’s cool, it’s windy, it’s rushing and fresh.”“When Guy Waynflete came in in the middle, and we settled about Moorhead,” said Violet, “I was provoked with him this year for not going abroad when he promised, for Cuthbert simply buried himself in the British Museum, and said all the sources of culture were to be found there.”Constancy did not answer; she had fallen into a dream. She leant her chin on her hand, and looked over the wide valley, while into her open eyes there came the same look with which Florella “saw” the picture in her flowers. At such moments there was a promise for the future in Constancy’s young face of which, with all her successes, the present had shown no performance. Suddenly her intent look brightened.“The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” she exclaimed. “You can’t get ‘back of that.’ Free, free, free! That’s the feeling of it! The river, the wind, the sky—every one out on a holiday, and—the curate there in his flannels, how he enjoys them. It makes one a little mad— Why, Vi! Good gracious!”For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”“I have known long enough to mitigate my alarm at your greeting. Your letters were at the post-office. Yes—here we are. How do you do, Miss Vyner?”“I shall believe in brain-waves in future,” said Constancy, as she gave him her hand. “I had just recalled a conversation with you and Mr Waynflete, and I see you coming. Is he with you?”“Yes, at last. His brother thought him overworked, and very sensibly wrote to me to come and carry him off. There he is.”Constancy had not seen Guy for more than nine months, her last remembrance of him was among the dancers at the Kirkton Hall garden-party, and she realised at once, as he came along the verandah, that the slight youth with his pathetic eyes had grown into a very remarkable person.“Why—he looks like a mystic, or a martyr!” she thought. “No wonder people turn and look at him. It’s a startling face.”Guy’s greeting was, however, simple enough. He was cordial, but he smiled his little reserved smile as he said—“Yes, it was very good of Staunton to wait for me. I couldn’t get away before. When I go back, I hope Godfrey will go to Scotland and get some shooting.”“And Rawdie? Is he thriving? And have you seen my aunt and Florella? Are they quite settled at Waynflete?”Guy answered appropriately, and presently took his letters, and went away to study them.He was still sitting in a quiet corner of the verandah, when Staunton, who had remained to exchange news and plans with his sisters, came in search of him.“The girls are getting coffee,” he said, “and then they are going to stroll out and see the bridges. Will you come?”“Better not. I walk so slowly. I’ll come and meet you.”“Come now,” said Cuthbert. “This trip isn’t quite answering for you. What is it? You must tell me just what you like.”“Well—new places and so many changing people worry me.He—it looks uncommonly grim and grotesque in new combinations. It spoils the look of the world. It’s a little queer, you know, and tiring. I’m much stronger, really; I can do what I’ve got to do. But I expect that’s about all. It’s months since the real trouble touched me; but I think there’s something more to come—some day.”“Suppose we find some more out-of-the-way place, and stay there quietly. What you really want is rest.”“No. I like this place, and everything is really going on well with us. Godfrey shall get out of his hole yet. Oh no, I’m not beaten. We’re not going to the dogs ourselves, nor is Waynflete. And as for other things—well—the world goes wrong with others.”He glanced at Cuthbert for a moment, then sat upright, and said—“It won’t do, of course, to shirk any of it. I’ll come. I want to cultivate Miss Constancy, and improve my mind.”Cuthbert made no demur. He thought that the change, however painful, had not come a moment too soon. He had never favoured the notion of a definite task to be accomplished; a definite foe to be conquered. He could not square such a view with any habit of his mind. But Guy had certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much, and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into “the level of every day,” how natural and healthful were the hopes, and even the fears, that had dawned on Guy’s spirit. But could flowers grow on such a field of battle?Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at Zwei-brücken.Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert hoped that he enjoyed them. Constancy had always liked him, and was ready to plunge into all the new discussions for which her recent studies had prepared her. She was well aware that he now and then said things which enabled her to think as well as talk, and he argued with her, and drew her out, feeling as if she were a clever and agreeable child. When he cut out a square of tiny flowerets and still tinier growths of leaf and blade, and packed it carefully in a sandwich box to send it home, he felt as if he was laying an offering before a shrine. When he studied the names of the flowers with Constancy, he felt that he had a good comrade in a mountain ramble.One day something happened to her. She went out alone by a little craggy path behind the hotel, which led along the top of a steep descent to the river. She pursued it thinking of nothing but of adding a new specimen or two to her store of flowers, and presently saw a dog-rose of a peculiarly bright pink, hanging over the edge, and bent to pick it; the stone on which she stepped gave way, and she slid downwards, and stopped herself by catching at the rose just on the edge of—nothing. An inch further, and she would have fallen into the roaring torrent a hundred feet below.For one awful moment, she believed that she could not turn and save herself; the next, strong, cool, and active, she had cautiously felt for hand and foot hold, and began to climb up again, to find her hand, as she neared the top, enclosed in a firm clasp, while Guy’s voice said—“Steady; you’re all right. Hold on. I can’t lift you, but I won’t let you go.”As he spoke, she was safe on the path again, but shaking from head to foot. He drew her away from the edge of the precipice, and she sat down on a bit of rock, and hid her face in her hands. She was mentally, as well as physically, dizzy, and he did not speak to her till she dropped her hands on her lap, and said, with an odd ring in her voice—“Well! I was nearly killed!”“Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was an awkward place. Remember, you can’t be too careful on a mountain.”“Well!” she said again, “I thought I should be killed; I thought of everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me—about my being found—and Florella—”“Yes,” said Guy, “one does think, in such moments, of the dearest.”Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and neck down to her very finger-tips.Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face.“If I had been killed, there’d have been an end of me to all intents and purposes. I don’t care for anything thatcouldgo on. Oh, I don’t mean anything about opinions; but therecouldn’tbe anything afterwards that’s real tome. There couldn’t be anything thatIwant.”“You have found that out,” said Guy.“I never thought about God at all,” she said abruptly. “He never came into my head!”“Well, He has come now,” said Guy.She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts.“Well,” she cried again, “if I didn’t believe in Him, I’d have stood to it, and not been afraid. But I do—I always have—and yet I just forgot Him—then.”“But not now,” said Guy. “I think I ought to take you back,” he added; “you ought to rest, and recover yourself.”“I’ll go back,” she said, standing up. “But I’m quite well.”She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again.“You’ve been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and leave off everything would be—horrid?”“No,” he answered. “For one thing, when I’ve been in danger, I’ve been too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face—destruction. And certainly there is something beyond it.”She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel.“I’m awfully obliged to you,” she said, in girlish speech, but in a deeply moved voice.“You’ll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly.”Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together.

Constancy’s college career ended, as had always been anticipated, with credit, and even with a share of renown. She helped to prove the power of her sex to compete for laurels formerly reserved for the other, and she was made much of accordingly. She was very much pleased, and not greatly surprised, for the kind of power that she possessed is rarely unconscious. It was not through the sense of intellectual failure that the gospel was to come to her. She was not even tired with the hard work, only ready for a holiday, and Kitty and Violet Staunton were glad enough to share it with her.

So off they went, prepared for every sort of exercise and adventure. After about a fortnight of successful sight-seeing the three ladies found themselves in a charming little settlement in a broad mountain valley, which we will here call Zwei-brücken, where cool green rivers rushed through green fields and flowed from the heart of dark, snow-tipped mountains. There were large fawn-coloured oxen and little fawn-coloured goats, houses surprisingly like toy Swiss cottages, and a new hotel in the same style, with the usual variety of tourists. It was a centre for mountain ascents and for excursions, and Constancy and Violet sat under a wide verandah, on the afternoon of their arrival, and watched the groups of travellers.

“Don’t you remember,” said Constancy, “talking about the feeling of London? What’s the feeling of this? It’s green, it’s cool, it’s windy, it’s rushing and fresh.”

“When Guy Waynflete came in in the middle, and we settled about Moorhead,” said Violet, “I was provoked with him this year for not going abroad when he promised, for Cuthbert simply buried himself in the British Museum, and said all the sources of culture were to be found there.”

Constancy did not answer; she had fallen into a dream. She leant her chin on her hand, and looked over the wide valley, while into her open eyes there came the same look with which Florella “saw” the picture in her flowers. At such moments there was a promise for the future in Constancy’s young face of which, with all her successes, the present had shown no performance. Suddenly her intent look brightened.

“The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” she exclaimed. “You can’t get ‘back of that.’ Free, free, free! That’s the feeling of it! The river, the wind, the sky—every one out on a holiday, and—the curate there in his flannels, how he enjoys them. It makes one a little mad— Why, Vi! Good gracious!”

For Violet, in startling confirmation of the last words, had suddenly rushed forward and launched herself on the neck of a young man in brown tweed, who was coming up the steps of the verandah.

“Cuth, Cuth! Oh, how lovely! Oh, did you know we were here?”

“I have known long enough to mitigate my alarm at your greeting. Your letters were at the post-office. Yes—here we are. How do you do, Miss Vyner?”

“I shall believe in brain-waves in future,” said Constancy, as she gave him her hand. “I had just recalled a conversation with you and Mr Waynflete, and I see you coming. Is he with you?”

“Yes, at last. His brother thought him overworked, and very sensibly wrote to me to come and carry him off. There he is.”

Constancy had not seen Guy for more than nine months, her last remembrance of him was among the dancers at the Kirkton Hall garden-party, and she realised at once, as he came along the verandah, that the slight youth with his pathetic eyes had grown into a very remarkable person.

“Why—he looks like a mystic, or a martyr!” she thought. “No wonder people turn and look at him. It’s a startling face.”

Guy’s greeting was, however, simple enough. He was cordial, but he smiled his little reserved smile as he said—

“Yes, it was very good of Staunton to wait for me. I couldn’t get away before. When I go back, I hope Godfrey will go to Scotland and get some shooting.”

“And Rawdie? Is he thriving? And have you seen my aunt and Florella? Are they quite settled at Waynflete?”

Guy answered appropriately, and presently took his letters, and went away to study them.

He was still sitting in a quiet corner of the verandah, when Staunton, who had remained to exchange news and plans with his sisters, came in search of him.

“The girls are getting coffee,” he said, “and then they are going to stroll out and see the bridges. Will you come?”

“Better not. I walk so slowly. I’ll come and meet you.”

“Come now,” said Cuthbert. “This trip isn’t quite answering for you. What is it? You must tell me just what you like.”

“Well—new places and so many changing people worry me.He—it looks uncommonly grim and grotesque in new combinations. It spoils the look of the world. It’s a little queer, you know, and tiring. I’m much stronger, really; I can do what I’ve got to do. But I expect that’s about all. It’s months since the real trouble touched me; but I think there’s something more to come—some day.”

“Suppose we find some more out-of-the-way place, and stay there quietly. What you really want is rest.”

“No. I like this place, and everything is really going on well with us. Godfrey shall get out of his hole yet. Oh no, I’m not beaten. We’re not going to the dogs ourselves, nor is Waynflete. And as for other things—well—the world goes wrong with others.”

He glanced at Cuthbert for a moment, then sat upright, and said—

“It won’t do, of course, to shirk any of it. I’ll come. I want to cultivate Miss Constancy, and improve my mind.”

Cuthbert made no demur. He thought that the change, however painful, had not come a moment too soon. He had never favoured the notion of a definite task to be accomplished; a definite foe to be conquered. He could not square such a view with any habit of his mind. But Guy had certainly accomplished something. Was it given to man to do so much, and yet to have more? Cuthbert knew well how sweet the outlook was into “the level of every day,” how natural and healthful were the hopes, and even the fears, that had dawned on Guy’s spirit. But could flowers grow on such a field of battle?

Constancy and her friends intended to spend at least a week at Zwei-brücken.

Guy said that it looked bad to ride when the ladies were walking, but he was able in this way to share in mountain expeditions, and Cuthbert hoped that he enjoyed them. Constancy had always liked him, and was ready to plunge into all the new discussions for which her recent studies had prepared her. She was well aware that he now and then said things which enabled her to think as well as talk, and he argued with her, and drew her out, feeling as if she were a clever and agreeable child. When he cut out a square of tiny flowerets and still tinier growths of leaf and blade, and packed it carefully in a sandwich box to send it home, he felt as if he was laying an offering before a shrine. When he studied the names of the flowers with Constancy, he felt that he had a good comrade in a mountain ramble.

One day something happened to her. She went out alone by a little craggy path behind the hotel, which led along the top of a steep descent to the river. She pursued it thinking of nothing but of adding a new specimen or two to her store of flowers, and presently saw a dog-rose of a peculiarly bright pink, hanging over the edge, and bent to pick it; the stone on which she stepped gave way, and she slid downwards, and stopped herself by catching at the rose just on the edge of—nothing. An inch further, and she would have fallen into the roaring torrent a hundred feet below.

For one awful moment, she believed that she could not turn and save herself; the next, strong, cool, and active, she had cautiously felt for hand and foot hold, and began to climb up again, to find her hand, as she neared the top, enclosed in a firm clasp, while Guy’s voice said—

“Steady; you’re all right. Hold on. I can’t lift you, but I won’t let you go.”

As he spoke, she was safe on the path again, but shaking from head to foot. He drew her away from the edge of the precipice, and she sat down on a bit of rock, and hid her face in her hands. She was mentally, as well as physically, dizzy, and he did not speak to her till she dropped her hands on her lap, and said, with an odd ring in her voice—

“Well! I was nearly killed!”

“Your nerve saved you. You were nearly safe when I came up, but it was an awkward place. Remember, you can’t be too careful on a mountain.”

“Well!” she said again, “I thought I should be killed; I thought of everything. I thought of the bit in the college magazine about me—about my being found—and Florella—”

“Yes,” said Guy, “one does think, in such moments, of the dearest.”

Constancy was silent. A deep crimson blush burned over her face and neck down to her very finger-tips.

Suddenly she turned, and looked up in his face.

“If I had been killed, there’d have been an end of me to all intents and purposes. I don’t care for anything thatcouldgo on. Oh, I don’t mean anything about opinions; but therecouldn’tbe anything afterwards that’s real tome. There couldn’t be anything thatIwant.”

“You have found that out,” said Guy.

“I never thought about God at all,” she said abruptly. “He never came into my head!”

“Well, He has come now,” said Guy.

She recognised his tone of conviction. Thoughts, speculations, flashed into her mind, at last, not as words, but as facts.

“Well,” she cried again, “if I didn’t believe in Him, I’d have stood to it, and not been afraid. But I do—I always have—and yet I just forgot Him—then.”

“But not now,” said Guy. “I think I ought to take you back,” he added; “you ought to rest, and recover yourself.”

“I’ll go back,” she said, standing up. “But I’m quite well.”

She walked on slowly beside him; but presently broke out again.

“You’ve been very ill, I know. Did you think then that to die, and leave off everything would be—horrid?”

“No,” he answered. “For one thing, when I’ve been in danger, I’ve been too bad to know it. But I do know what it is to face—destruction. And certainly there is something beyond it.”

She turned round to him as they came up to the hotel.

“I’m awfully obliged to you,” she said, in girlish speech, but in a deeply moved voice.

“You’ll not tell any one, will you? I want to think about it quietly.”

Guy promised, and they came back on to the verandah together.

Part 3, Chapter VIII.Mr Van Brunt.There was a little commotion in front of the verandah, caused by some new arrivals, as Guy and Constancy approached it from the side. A stout lady in a bonnet and a handsome travelling-cloak, came up the steps, looked round her, and made a sudden rush towards them.“My dear Guy! Oh, what a delightful surprise! I never was so glad to see any one. After all these months, it is indeed a relief to see some one of the family.”And Mrs Joshua Palmer seized Guy’s hands, and all but embraced him; a ceremony he had carefully avoided from his earliest childhood.“Why, Cousin Susan! I didn’t know you were still abroad. I’m very glad to see you,” he said, astonished at this effusive greeting.“And Miss Vyner? How do you do, my love? Well, Guy, and how are you? and isdearGodfrey here too? Jeanie, Jeanie, here’s your cousin.”Jeanie, blooming, and very well turned out, came up also with outstretched hand.“How d’ye do, Guy? I’m very glad we’ve met you.”“You look very warm, Cousin Susan,” said Guy; “won’t you sit down and have some coffee? I suppose your courier—you have one, I see—has engaged your rooms?”“Oh, my dear Guy, that is part of the pleasure of seeing you. For I am quite certain that courier is a cheat, and if you, with your head for figures, would only look at our bills—” Here she tore open a travelling-bag, and thrust a bundle of papers into his hands. “I can speak toyou...”“Well, mother,” said Jeanie, “you never would allow any one else to help you to manage, however well accustomed they were to travelling.”“No, Jeanie,” said Mrs Palmer, emphatically, “that I certainly would not.”Constancy, unable for once to come to the front, sat down at a little distance. She heard Jeanie, with a much readier, and more assured manner than of old, saying all the things to the Stauntons that might be expected from a young lady on her travels. She said that the mountains were perfectly sweet, and so were the cows and the peasants. Mother got into fusses sometimes, but it did not matter; she was quite happy when she could sit down. They had metcharmingpeople. Constancy felt a frightful conviction that, if she spoke, she should cry.After the manner of her day, and of her kind, however, she got over her agitation for herself. She never could have supposed that the sight and sound of Jeanie would be so aggravating. No more than she could have guessed beforehand, that the one face that would flash before her mental vision in that supreme moment, when life and death had hung in the balance, would be Godfrey’s, angry and miserable, as it had looked at her from the doorway at Moorhead, or in the dim light of the Stauntons’ drawing-room. That had come to her, and that was all.Constancy endured this self-revelation in silence. She had not, at any rate, revealed this to Guy, in the moment of impulsive confidence that had ensued. What had induced her to say so much? She remembered that, in one of the discussions in which she delighted, she had cheerfully asked him what he thought Tennyson had meant by “the abysmal deeps of personality,” and he had answered dryly—“I haven’t quite sounded them—yet.”It had passed for a jest; but as she recalled the short, unexpected sentences with which he had answered her, she felt that he had meant it for a statement of fact, and of very remarkable fact too. It was characteristic of her that she speculated about Guy even at this moment of personal emotion.She gave herself a little mental shake, and turned to get ready for thetable-d’hôte.She had never been really unhappy in her life before. She had never really been beset by a thought that prevented her from thinking of what she wished to think of, and claimed her for its own.Guy disliked the fatigue of the long dinner, and rarely attended it. He was sitting in his favourite corner, when a movement made him aware that people were coming out again, and Mrs Palmer, in much smarter clothes than of old, but with an unmistakable air of Ingleby and home, came and sat down by him.“My dear Guy,” she said, “you’re one of the family, and I want to confide in you.”Guy was not given to consider himself as one of the Palmers, but he accepted the compliment, and said—“Is anything the matter, Cousin Susan?”“Well, yes, Guy. I think there’s a great deal the matter. Indeed, perhaps it’s my duty to write to Mr Matthew; but he isn’t exactly considerate at a distance.”Guy allowed that this might be the case.“And—my responsibilities are great with Jeanie, so much admired and an heiress. And I’m quite sure there’s nothing to be gained by going out of one’s own circle, especially among foreigners and Americans—people of no character at all.”Guy said that this charge was rather sweeping.“Was there any American in particular?”“Yes; there is a Mr Van Brunt. He has been most attentive, and followed us about. I shouldn’t be surprised if he came here. He speaks of himself as a man of fortune, and says his father has a great dry-goods store in Chicago. It doesn’t sound well—astoreis a shop—very different from a mill. And, besides, if there’s one thing I like it’s constancy; and poor Godfrey at home in England—such cruel treatment for him, after that week at the Rabys.”“But, Cousin Susan, it’s quite as easy to inquire about a man in Chicago as in London. Of course he ought to give a reference. And as for constancy,”—Guy could not help a little smile as he spoke,—“of course Godfrey knows that Jeanie is perfectly free. Our affairs made that imperative.”“Oh, my dear Guy, I’d rather trust Palmer Brothers, in difficulties, than all the dry-goods stores in America out of them. Do reason with her, my dear Guy, and plead Godfrey’s cause. Jeanie is a very good girl; but, of course, she feels her independence. Couldn’t Godfrey come out, and look after his own interests?”Guy was capable of hearing a good deal without committing himself. He would not promise to reason with Jeanie, nor to telegraph to Godfrey; but he agreed to interview Mr Van Brunt, and in his secret heart, he hoped that that dry-goods store in Chicago might prove to be solvent, and its owner’s character and intentions clear as the day, and that his duty as “one of the family” would not be to protect Jeanie from the snares of an adventurer.There were sounds of arrival late that night, and when he came down the next morning, Jeanie waylaid him on the stairs, looking, in spite of her smart tailor-made frock and well-dressed hair, very like the shy Jeanie of the Mill House, Ingleby.“Oh, Guy,” she said, “mother’s been talking to you—and please—I’ve got something to say. It’s your brother’s own fault, if I’ve changed my mind. Besides, I hadn’t seen anything of societythen. I’ve quite a right, it was settled I had—to choose for myself.”“Certainly,” said Guy, leading the way out on to the verandah. “I’ve promised your mother to talk to Mr Van Brunt, if he comes.”“He has come,” said Jeanie, meekly. “He came after we went to bed last night. Oh,”—sitting down at one of the little tables laid for breakfast, and making a pattern on the tablecloth with the rolls—“people are silly—and—and there was ever so much nonsense at Kirkton. But there—Godfrey won’t be disappointed. I’m sure, if he had wanted to come back, he never would have stopped away because you were ill. Any one may give away roses to anybody. But when you leave them behind on your dressing-table, and they come down in the vase, to be done up for the next person—well, you don’t care very much anyhow. Oh—oh—you didn’t stay long at Munich, Mr Van Brunt—good morning. This is my cousin—Mr Waynflete.”A slender, dark-haired young man, with bright eyes behind a pair ofpince-nez, made Guy a formal bow, and Jeanie vanished, while her “cousin,” considerably embarrassed, bowed much less gracefully, and remarked that it was a fine morning.“It is so,” remarked the American; “but, Mr Waynflete, I’m very glad to make your acquaintance, understanding that you take quite the place of a brother to Miss Palmer.”“Well—a—not exactly,” began Guy, thinking that Jeanie must have come down very early to produce this understanding.“She assures me that, if you are satisfied, her mother’s scruples will be set at rest. Allow me to make it clear. Here is my card—Lawrence P. Van Brunt. I refer to my bankers, — and —, London, and to the American Minister in Great Britain, also the British Consul at Chicago. I—I dare say I may seem hurried, but I came over a month ago on business, and must cross again in a fortnight.”He laid a row of papers and letters of introduction beside the rolls on the table.“I—I don’t care what I do to post you up in my circumstances—it’s all perfectly square, I assure you. And Miss Palmer allows me to hope.”“I see no reason why you should not apply to Miss Palmer’s uncle and trustee,” said Guy, after a little more had passed.“Yes; but I’m told you have great influence with her mamma!” said the young American, wistfully.“I didn’t know it,” said Guy; but he met the stranger’s eyes, and they both laughed. “Won’t you have some breakfast? Staunton, this is a friend of Mrs Palmer’s, Mr Van Brunt. Have you ordered coffee?”Mr Van Brunt swept up his papers, and sat cheerfully down, proceeding to make himself very agreeable. The other little tables filled. Jeanie and her mother sat at one some way off. Constancy, with her friends, watched curiously, till the stranger, as soon as he politely could, edged off towards the object of his attraction.“Eh what?” said Staunton, as the grave Guy for once went off into a hearty fit of laughter.“Oh, I say!” he said; “it was quite outfacing. Fancy playing heavy father to Jeanie! I’d better wire to Godfrey at once.”The energetic American produced a Continental Bradshaw, and proposed to start that afternoon to interview Mr Matthew. First, however, he went to walk with Jeanie.And poor Cousin Susan, wiping her eyes, and with a heart full of feelings, of which the young ones took little enough heed, exclaimed, as she finally yielded the point—“Oh, Guy, dear aunt would have thought me so weak. Chicago!”The party soon dispersed. Jeanie and her mother followed the ardent lover home to Rilston; Constancy and her friends pursued their intended path among the heights of the Tyrol; while the good-hearted Cuthbert managed to find sources of culture wherever he fancied that Guy was most at ease.Godfrey was evidently ashamed to express relief on paper, and simply wrote, “I shall begin again,” but there was new purpose in every line of his letters, and most affectionate promises of keeping everything straight, if Guy would only stay away, get strong, and enjoy himself.Guy said no more about himself; but he had little ways which showed his friend that he still had something to undergo. The steady look round in a fresh place, the shading hand over his eyes, the trick he had of finding a special corner, and of keeping to it, with his face turned one way, were significant; and he was more silent and quiet than ever; but also much more gentle. Cuthbert hardly knew how, one still bright evening, when some trifle recalled his own past, he found himself telling the story long buried even from himself.Guy listened, looking at him with his searching eyes.“Does it all seem over?” he said.“Ah well,” said Cuthbert, with a long sigh, “I can’t say no. For average people like me, deathisparting for the present, and as to the future—I’ll leave it in the Hands that frame it. But for me, the moss has grown over her grave, I’m not unhappy, but I think the kind of business is over for me. No, Gladys was quite human, it all belonged to this good earth of ours, and itwas verygood—while it lasted—and worth while.”“Love does not belong to earth,” said Guy; “it is never over.”“Ah, my boy,” said Cuthbert, “not for you, perhaps; but I’m a blind old earthworm, and my soul doesn’t soar. Yours is a blessed conviction.”“Yes,” said Guy; “it is. But it isn’t quite so sweet—as—as having it now.”He moved hurriedly away. He had gained a “blessed conviction.” But it is very hard to feel as well as to know, that the soul is worth the whole world, the whole “good earth,” as Cuthbert truly called it.He came home early in August, with much-improved physical health, to find Godfrey like another man, full of the prospects of the business, and as he shortly expressed it, “out of his hole.” Rawdie was in raptures.“He has got along,” said Godfrey, “by worrying cats and hiding bones. But he will sleep on your bed, and sit on your slippers. Just look at the sentimental little beggar, cuddling into your waistcoat.”Guy sat down when his brother left him, in his old corner in the study, with Rawdie on his knee, and looked round him. The sense of constant effort slipped away from him.“I candohere,” he said to himself, in his northern idiom, “I’m used to it. One must pay the price.”

There was a little commotion in front of the verandah, caused by some new arrivals, as Guy and Constancy approached it from the side. A stout lady in a bonnet and a handsome travelling-cloak, came up the steps, looked round her, and made a sudden rush towards them.

“My dear Guy! Oh, what a delightful surprise! I never was so glad to see any one. After all these months, it is indeed a relief to see some one of the family.”

And Mrs Joshua Palmer seized Guy’s hands, and all but embraced him; a ceremony he had carefully avoided from his earliest childhood.

“Why, Cousin Susan! I didn’t know you were still abroad. I’m very glad to see you,” he said, astonished at this effusive greeting.

“And Miss Vyner? How do you do, my love? Well, Guy, and how are you? and isdearGodfrey here too? Jeanie, Jeanie, here’s your cousin.”

Jeanie, blooming, and very well turned out, came up also with outstretched hand.

“How d’ye do, Guy? I’m very glad we’ve met you.”

“You look very warm, Cousin Susan,” said Guy; “won’t you sit down and have some coffee? I suppose your courier—you have one, I see—has engaged your rooms?”

“Oh, my dear Guy, that is part of the pleasure of seeing you. For I am quite certain that courier is a cheat, and if you, with your head for figures, would only look at our bills—” Here she tore open a travelling-bag, and thrust a bundle of papers into his hands. “I can speak toyou...”

“Well, mother,” said Jeanie, “you never would allow any one else to help you to manage, however well accustomed they were to travelling.”

“No, Jeanie,” said Mrs Palmer, emphatically, “that I certainly would not.”

Constancy, unable for once to come to the front, sat down at a little distance. She heard Jeanie, with a much readier, and more assured manner than of old, saying all the things to the Stauntons that might be expected from a young lady on her travels. She said that the mountains were perfectly sweet, and so were the cows and the peasants. Mother got into fusses sometimes, but it did not matter; she was quite happy when she could sit down. They had metcharmingpeople. Constancy felt a frightful conviction that, if she spoke, she should cry.

After the manner of her day, and of her kind, however, she got over her agitation for herself. She never could have supposed that the sight and sound of Jeanie would be so aggravating. No more than she could have guessed beforehand, that the one face that would flash before her mental vision in that supreme moment, when life and death had hung in the balance, would be Godfrey’s, angry and miserable, as it had looked at her from the doorway at Moorhead, or in the dim light of the Stauntons’ drawing-room. That had come to her, and that was all.

Constancy endured this self-revelation in silence. She had not, at any rate, revealed this to Guy, in the moment of impulsive confidence that had ensued. What had induced her to say so much? She remembered that, in one of the discussions in which she delighted, she had cheerfully asked him what he thought Tennyson had meant by “the abysmal deeps of personality,” and he had answered dryly—

“I haven’t quite sounded them—yet.”

It had passed for a jest; but as she recalled the short, unexpected sentences with which he had answered her, she felt that he had meant it for a statement of fact, and of very remarkable fact too. It was characteristic of her that she speculated about Guy even at this moment of personal emotion.

She gave herself a little mental shake, and turned to get ready for thetable-d’hôte.

She had never been really unhappy in her life before. She had never really been beset by a thought that prevented her from thinking of what she wished to think of, and claimed her for its own.

Guy disliked the fatigue of the long dinner, and rarely attended it. He was sitting in his favourite corner, when a movement made him aware that people were coming out again, and Mrs Palmer, in much smarter clothes than of old, but with an unmistakable air of Ingleby and home, came and sat down by him.

“My dear Guy,” she said, “you’re one of the family, and I want to confide in you.”

Guy was not given to consider himself as one of the Palmers, but he accepted the compliment, and said—

“Is anything the matter, Cousin Susan?”

“Well, yes, Guy. I think there’s a great deal the matter. Indeed, perhaps it’s my duty to write to Mr Matthew; but he isn’t exactly considerate at a distance.”

Guy allowed that this might be the case.

“And—my responsibilities are great with Jeanie, so much admired and an heiress. And I’m quite sure there’s nothing to be gained by going out of one’s own circle, especially among foreigners and Americans—people of no character at all.”

Guy said that this charge was rather sweeping.

“Was there any American in particular?”

“Yes; there is a Mr Van Brunt. He has been most attentive, and followed us about. I shouldn’t be surprised if he came here. He speaks of himself as a man of fortune, and says his father has a great dry-goods store in Chicago. It doesn’t sound well—astoreis a shop—very different from a mill. And, besides, if there’s one thing I like it’s constancy; and poor Godfrey at home in England—such cruel treatment for him, after that week at the Rabys.”

“But, Cousin Susan, it’s quite as easy to inquire about a man in Chicago as in London. Of course he ought to give a reference. And as for constancy,”—Guy could not help a little smile as he spoke,—“of course Godfrey knows that Jeanie is perfectly free. Our affairs made that imperative.”

“Oh, my dear Guy, I’d rather trust Palmer Brothers, in difficulties, than all the dry-goods stores in America out of them. Do reason with her, my dear Guy, and plead Godfrey’s cause. Jeanie is a very good girl; but, of course, she feels her independence. Couldn’t Godfrey come out, and look after his own interests?”

Guy was capable of hearing a good deal without committing himself. He would not promise to reason with Jeanie, nor to telegraph to Godfrey; but he agreed to interview Mr Van Brunt, and in his secret heart, he hoped that that dry-goods store in Chicago might prove to be solvent, and its owner’s character and intentions clear as the day, and that his duty as “one of the family” would not be to protect Jeanie from the snares of an adventurer.

There were sounds of arrival late that night, and when he came down the next morning, Jeanie waylaid him on the stairs, looking, in spite of her smart tailor-made frock and well-dressed hair, very like the shy Jeanie of the Mill House, Ingleby.

“Oh, Guy,” she said, “mother’s been talking to you—and please—I’ve got something to say. It’s your brother’s own fault, if I’ve changed my mind. Besides, I hadn’t seen anything of societythen. I’ve quite a right, it was settled I had—to choose for myself.”

“Certainly,” said Guy, leading the way out on to the verandah. “I’ve promised your mother to talk to Mr Van Brunt, if he comes.”

“He has come,” said Jeanie, meekly. “He came after we went to bed last night. Oh,”—sitting down at one of the little tables laid for breakfast, and making a pattern on the tablecloth with the rolls—“people are silly—and—and there was ever so much nonsense at Kirkton. But there—Godfrey won’t be disappointed. I’m sure, if he had wanted to come back, he never would have stopped away because you were ill. Any one may give away roses to anybody. But when you leave them behind on your dressing-table, and they come down in the vase, to be done up for the next person—well, you don’t care very much anyhow. Oh—oh—you didn’t stay long at Munich, Mr Van Brunt—good morning. This is my cousin—Mr Waynflete.”

A slender, dark-haired young man, with bright eyes behind a pair ofpince-nez, made Guy a formal bow, and Jeanie vanished, while her “cousin,” considerably embarrassed, bowed much less gracefully, and remarked that it was a fine morning.

“It is so,” remarked the American; “but, Mr Waynflete, I’m very glad to make your acquaintance, understanding that you take quite the place of a brother to Miss Palmer.”

“Well—a—not exactly,” began Guy, thinking that Jeanie must have come down very early to produce this understanding.

“She assures me that, if you are satisfied, her mother’s scruples will be set at rest. Allow me to make it clear. Here is my card—Lawrence P. Van Brunt. I refer to my bankers, — and —, London, and to the American Minister in Great Britain, also the British Consul at Chicago. I—I dare say I may seem hurried, but I came over a month ago on business, and must cross again in a fortnight.”

He laid a row of papers and letters of introduction beside the rolls on the table.

“I—I don’t care what I do to post you up in my circumstances—it’s all perfectly square, I assure you. And Miss Palmer allows me to hope.”

“I see no reason why you should not apply to Miss Palmer’s uncle and trustee,” said Guy, after a little more had passed.

“Yes; but I’m told you have great influence with her mamma!” said the young American, wistfully.

“I didn’t know it,” said Guy; but he met the stranger’s eyes, and they both laughed. “Won’t you have some breakfast? Staunton, this is a friend of Mrs Palmer’s, Mr Van Brunt. Have you ordered coffee?”

Mr Van Brunt swept up his papers, and sat cheerfully down, proceeding to make himself very agreeable. The other little tables filled. Jeanie and her mother sat at one some way off. Constancy, with her friends, watched curiously, till the stranger, as soon as he politely could, edged off towards the object of his attraction.

“Eh what?” said Staunton, as the grave Guy for once went off into a hearty fit of laughter.

“Oh, I say!” he said; “it was quite outfacing. Fancy playing heavy father to Jeanie! I’d better wire to Godfrey at once.”

The energetic American produced a Continental Bradshaw, and proposed to start that afternoon to interview Mr Matthew. First, however, he went to walk with Jeanie.

And poor Cousin Susan, wiping her eyes, and with a heart full of feelings, of which the young ones took little enough heed, exclaimed, as she finally yielded the point—

“Oh, Guy, dear aunt would have thought me so weak. Chicago!”

The party soon dispersed. Jeanie and her mother followed the ardent lover home to Rilston; Constancy and her friends pursued their intended path among the heights of the Tyrol; while the good-hearted Cuthbert managed to find sources of culture wherever he fancied that Guy was most at ease.

Godfrey was evidently ashamed to express relief on paper, and simply wrote, “I shall begin again,” but there was new purpose in every line of his letters, and most affectionate promises of keeping everything straight, if Guy would only stay away, get strong, and enjoy himself.

Guy said no more about himself; but he had little ways which showed his friend that he still had something to undergo. The steady look round in a fresh place, the shading hand over his eyes, the trick he had of finding a special corner, and of keeping to it, with his face turned one way, were significant; and he was more silent and quiet than ever; but also much more gentle. Cuthbert hardly knew how, one still bright evening, when some trifle recalled his own past, he found himself telling the story long buried even from himself.

Guy listened, looking at him with his searching eyes.

“Does it all seem over?” he said.

“Ah well,” said Cuthbert, with a long sigh, “I can’t say no. For average people like me, deathisparting for the present, and as to the future—I’ll leave it in the Hands that frame it. But for me, the moss has grown over her grave, I’m not unhappy, but I think the kind of business is over for me. No, Gladys was quite human, it all belonged to this good earth of ours, and itwas verygood—while it lasted—and worth while.”

“Love does not belong to earth,” said Guy; “it is never over.”

“Ah, my boy,” said Cuthbert, “not for you, perhaps; but I’m a blind old earthworm, and my soul doesn’t soar. Yours is a blessed conviction.”

“Yes,” said Guy; “it is. But it isn’t quite so sweet—as—as having it now.”

He moved hurriedly away. He had gained a “blessed conviction.” But it is very hard to feel as well as to know, that the soul is worth the whole world, the whole “good earth,” as Cuthbert truly called it.

He came home early in August, with much-improved physical health, to find Godfrey like another man, full of the prospects of the business, and as he shortly expressed it, “out of his hole.” Rawdie was in raptures.

“He has got along,” said Godfrey, “by worrying cats and hiding bones. But he will sleep on your bed, and sit on your slippers. Just look at the sentimental little beggar, cuddling into your waistcoat.”

Guy sat down when his brother left him, in his old corner in the study, with Rawdie on his knee, and looked round him. The sense of constant effort slipped away from him.

“I candohere,” he said to himself, in his northern idiom, “I’m used to it. One must pay the price.”

Part 3, Chapter IX.The Arch-Fear.One sunny afternoon towards the end of August, Florella was sitting on the wall of old Peggy Outhwaite’s garden, sketching a tuft of house-leek that adorned the roof of the ancient and ill-kept cottage. This little homestead, which was Peggy’s own, and had belonged to her fathers before her, was tucked into a corner of the wood above the Flete, through which the footpath led up to the Hall; the cottage was reached from that side by a little side-track.The like of Florella had never come into Peggy’s life before, and she took to this new kind of creature very kindly, finding her a most attentive listener to Waynflete traditions.Whether in old Peggy, inglorious, though not mute, there rested the soul of a romance writer, or whether, as she herself averred, the Outhwaites knew a deal, she told “Miss Flowra,” as she called Florella, more about “t’ owd Guy” than any one had ever heard before. She was a true reciter; and while Florella sketched, she would stand before her, and describe the passage of the Flete on that awful night when Waynflete was lost, as if she herself had been standing by. She told her the original legend of the traitor who had betrayed his friend’s life, and therefore had “walked” ever since. She mentioned his appearances, and talked about him with a kind of grotesque familiarity as if “t’ owd gen’leman” had been in the habit of taking constitutionals about the valley. But now and then her tone deepened.“Eh, my dear,” she said, “ye mun look on’t aright. A poor lost soul does na’ coom back to tempt, but to warn—to warn us fra’ sin, Missy. He’s boun’ to coom, though happen the devil drives ’un. But ’tisna a’ can see. T’ owd Guy may walk oop till most on us, and we be noon wiser. There’s my Jem, puir lad, sees ’un, he do, and Mr Guy, he knaws ’un well.”“Did he ever tell you so?” said Florella.“Eh, d’ye think I need tellin’? Eh, there a be. Good day to ye, sir.”Florella’s palette fell out of her hand before this friendly greeting revealed to her that it was not the old, but the young Guy, who stood at the garden gate.He had not been at Waynflete since his return, and now came forward with outstretched hand, while Jem appeared behind him like his shadow.“Godfrey has been away,” he said, “and I couldn’t get over before. I have come to the Vicarage for a week. There are a good many arrangements to make, and I want to ask Mrs John Palmer a favour. I should like—it’s an odd fancy—but I should like old Miss Maxwell, the Stauntons’ cousin, to come to the church opening. You saw her, I think. I know Mrs Palmer is going kindly to do the entertaining.”“Oh yes,” said Florella. “I had thought of her. But she’d like you to ask her yourself.”“So I know,” he said; “I shall ride over. Staunton says he won’t come in the character of an hereditary foe; but I shall get him somehow.”“We asked Violet,” said Florella, “and she says that ancestors are such a novelty that she is delighted to have even a villain.”Guy and Florella had a laugh in common as he turned and spoke to Peggy, and she gathered up her sketching things.“Eh,” said the old woman, as they went out at the gate together, “t’ owd Guy winna mak’ an end yet o’ Waynfletes!”When old Miss Maxwell, picking York and Lancaster roses in her little garden, looked down the bleak grey street of Ouselwell, and beheld a stranger riding up, she felt, as she said afterwards, a presentiment of something unusual, which, as strange and striking young men were not common in Ouselwell, was perhaps not surprising. But it was fulfilled when the stranger left his horse at the inn, and walking up to her gate, bowed politely, and introduced himself as Guy Waynflete, a friend of her cousin, Mr Cuthbert Staunton.Miss Maxwell made him a formal bow and led him into her little drawing-room, and the little old maid and the tall young man sat down opposite to each other, and Guy said quite simply—“Miss Maxwell, we have been restoring Waynflete Church. It is to be opened on Michaelmas Day, and my brother and I wish very much that you should be with us on the occasion. We have to thank you for the family papers which you allowed us to have.”“You do me a great honour, Mr Waynflete,” said the old lady, formally. “It is long since I was so far from home; but I should, I assure you, be glad to share in the rejoicing. Although the relations between our families were not as happy as could be wished, yet somehow, sir, any connection so long ago creates an interest.”“Yes,” said Guy; “that is just my feeling.”Then she gave Guy bread and salt in the shape of tea and hot cakes, and lapsed into more friendly chat, shaking hands tenderly with him when he took leave, and the interview, a somewhat quaint one for the end of the nineteenth century, concluded.“A most distinguished young man,” as she wrote to Kitty Staunton; “but I fear he has the look of a doom upon him.”“Which only means that he looks delicate,” said Constancy, when this cheerful sentence found its way to Waynflete.For Constancy was there, having finished her trip, and having assured herself that Godfrey was pretty well tied to Ingleby. The world was going well. The old incapable tenant of Upper Flete, the only farm on the estate of any value, died, and was succeeded by a nephew, with more education and capital, who came to terms with Godfrey as to needful improvements, and rented some more land. A purchaser was found for the copse-wood, which had not been cut for many years, who bought it standing, and undertook all the expenses of cutting and carriage. A great change would therefore soon be seen in the whole aspect of the valley, and, as for the house, Mrs John Palmer’s fancy for it continued, and she thought of taking it, as she could well afford to do, for a summer residence; in which case, she would, no doubt, prove a good friend to the village.Godfrey came forward and made all the arrangements without any apparent reluctance; but a queer little smile, not unlike his brother’s, came over his face when he was questioned by the neighbouring squires on his views on preserving or politics, and he would not commit himself as to the future.All this was satisfactory to Guy, and so, in another way, was his “reconciliation” with the last of the Maxwells of Ouseley. Matters seemed to be drawing towards a point of success, of which the coming gathering was a kind of symbol. As he was returning from a ride in the broad, spreading sunlight of an August afternoon, he thought of all that the past year had brought to him. It was but a year since he had shown Florella the picture in the octagon-room, and her words had roused him to make a fight for his freedom. Till she touched his spirit, he had been tossed and driven in helpless and hopeless bondage to fear, his one notion of fortitude, concealment, his one refuge, a remedy worse than the disease. That danger he recognised with critical self-knowledge, had, in his case, been born of fear, and was itself something of a spectre of his fancy. Apart from maddening terror, he would never “take to drink.” And, after this year of stern and steady conflict, it did not seem to him that any bewilderment of the senses could ever again terrify him beyond the power of self-control. While, as for that inward sense of possession, that presence, which for him lay behind all else, if that should spring into consciousness again, after its long sleep, he was prepared to face it. There was another force, deeper and stronger still, which, in dim and awful glory, had made itself felt within him.Guy believed that his soul was saved. There are no other words for it, though these may convey a hundred other meanings. But there was “more to come.” Whether this conviction was well-founded, or whether, as Cuthbert would have told him, it sprang from the depression of exhausted nerves and spirits; from the melancholy too often associated with trials such as his, it equally proved that he was not free as other men were for the sweetness of life and love.As other men? Were other men free? “The drink” might have been a bugbear to him, but it was an awful fact to thousands of those others. How many devils had possessed his rough ancestors, whose clutch had not closed on him, because the one great gain of old Margaret’s courage had been that he and his brother began life on a higher level? How did this poor Jem Outhwaite, who burlesqued and caricatured his own grim experiences, come to be what he was? As this thought occurred to him, Jem himself started out of a gateway beside him, and, after a grin and nod of greeting, picked up Rawdie, and carried him over a muddy piece of ground, through which he himself humbly shambled beside Guy’s horse. The royal favourite should not needlessly wet his feet.Jem was a conversational person, and fired off short remarks at intervals.“Owd Cowperthwaite says Waynfletes’ll tak’ t’ bread out o’s mouth.”“Old Cowperthwaite’s a scoundrel,” said Guy.“Ay, sir,” said Jem, cheerfully. Then, after a pause, “I see twa rabbits over Flete Edge. Mr Godfrey can shoot ’em.”“Ay, I dare say he will.”“I see t’ owd gen’leman by t’ brig on Friday,” said Jem, in the same contented treble.“Nay, Jem, I don’t think you did,” said Guy, didactically.“I see Miss Flowra,” said Jem, in the same tone of cheerful indifference.Guy sprang from his horse, and Jem, setting Rawdie delicately down on a bit of turf, grinned, nodded, shambled away across a field towards the river, and was out of sight in a minute.“Oh,” said Florella, as she came up, “I hope Jem will go straight home, he has been about all day. Old Peggy is really ill. She got a chill the other day waiting for him at the bridge in the rain. You know he stops at the Dragon, and the doctor says he must be found quick, or it may go hard with her.”“I know,” said Guy, briefly. “I’ll just go and put my horse up, and then go and fetch him. He’ll come with me. He was here this minute.”“You know,” said Florella, in a half-whisper, “that he says t’ owd Guy stops him.”“I know,” said Guy. “But don’t listen to stories about him.Youmustn’t get to fancy the place is haunted.”“I am not afraid,” she said, and there was a touch of reproach in her voice. Guy paused a moment, then spoke in another tone.“I think I have been wrong,” he said. “I wanted you to forget what you had done for me, for fear the least influence from which you have saved me should breathe on your spirit. But you ought to know that you have saved me. Youhaveled me to that saving Presence of which you spoke. Whatever may come, whatever it may cost, yet the snare is broken, and Iamdelivered.”She looked at him without a word.He went on in the same steady, controlled tones. “Now you see there’s another. Will you help that poor lad through the next hour, I think he’ll be hard pressed? Good-bye, he shall come to his mother. He shan’t betoo late.” He took her hands, and bent as if to kiss them. A little sob broke from her, and in a moment the kiss was on her lips.He was gone before the blood had time to burn up in her cheek, and she broke into a passion of tears, while formless and awful, all the terror that he might be going to meet, rushed over her spirit. She felt helpless, powerless, certain of evil. Her soul was full of mist and cloud. All she could do was, like a child, to follow his behest, and pray for Jem.Guy, thrilled with a new and high excitement, put up his horse, and with Rawdie still at his heels, pursued his way towards the Dragon, intending to call Jem away from its enticing attractions, and to escort him over the old footbridge back to his mother. A simple thing to do, but he had only crossed that bridge once before.The hot bright sunlight had thickened into a thundery mist, and the light rapidly faded. Guy was not tired now, he walked easily enough, nor did any perplexing thoughts beset him. He saw—no more than usual. He felt no inward horror. But upon his rapturous mood there fell as strong a conviction that he was going to dare his fate as if he had gone to pick up a bomb of dynamite. He felt as if the very air was a resisting force as he pushed on through it. He went on, and a deep sadness came upon him, and all in a moment, as he came to the top of the hollow, he knew that it was the expectation of death. He stopped and looked down into the mist. He could not see across the valley, and he could not see across that expectation. He could not think of any definite danger. He stood still with his eyes on the ground; upon the mist the spectral shape that went before him, showed out sharp and clear. Words came into his mind. “Fear not him that can kill the body.” But “the body” meant life and work, and love and joy. It meant Florella. Perhaps his body was the price that had to be paid for his soul. And when the end was past? What did death mean? When the spirit was free from the flesh, would the spiritual foes be gone? Or would the last veil be withdrawn from their terrible faces? What would await him in the world where the other Guy had gone before?Guy went on down the hill till into the misty air gleamed the paraffin lamps of the Dragon public, and into his misty thoughts came the need of sharp and prompt action.He stepped inside the door, and called out, “Is Jem Outhwaite here? I want him.”Two or three men were standing about, in the bar. They looked at Guy, and fell back before him with surprising readiness.“Here a be, sir,” said one, pushing Jem’s reluctant figure forward, as he tried to slink behind them.“Come Jem,” said Guy; “your mother’s bad, and I’m going to take you back to her across the bridge. Come along with me.”He laid his hand on Jem’s arm, and with a short “Good evening,” pulled him out of the cheerful circle, into the foggy dusk. Jem, who followed him usually like a dog, now hung back, and dragged against his hold, trembling and reluctant; not drunk, he thought, but manifestly dazed with fear. He was tall and big, and perhaps it was the dead weight of his resistance that made Guy feel as if the very mist oppressed him, and forced him back. Against himself, against his poor companion, against uncomprehended forces he struggled on.“Sithee, there a be. We canna get by. He’ll get me!” gasped Jem, as he struggled.“Jem,” said Guy, “I have got past him, though I was just as much afraid as you. And I am not going to let him stop you. He can’t do it, Jem. Say your prayers your mother taught you, and come on. He can’t stop you.”“Eh, but he can—but he can! He’s a coomin’; he’s a gripped me!” gasped Jem, flinging his arms round Guy, and dragging him back, then shrinking behind him.“No, he hasn’t, Jem,” said Guy, in clear, firm tones. “I’m going first over the bridge; so if he gets either of us, he’ll have me. You come after, like a man, and God have mercy on us both!”Guy pushed forward. Surely the poor fellow would follow now! But again Jem held him back.“Naw, sir,” said the poor half-wit, in his cracking treble, “I’ll gang ower first, and yo’ coom arter,” and with a quick, unsteady run, he shambled on to the bridge.

One sunny afternoon towards the end of August, Florella was sitting on the wall of old Peggy Outhwaite’s garden, sketching a tuft of house-leek that adorned the roof of the ancient and ill-kept cottage. This little homestead, which was Peggy’s own, and had belonged to her fathers before her, was tucked into a corner of the wood above the Flete, through which the footpath led up to the Hall; the cottage was reached from that side by a little side-track.

The like of Florella had never come into Peggy’s life before, and she took to this new kind of creature very kindly, finding her a most attentive listener to Waynflete traditions.

Whether in old Peggy, inglorious, though not mute, there rested the soul of a romance writer, or whether, as she herself averred, the Outhwaites knew a deal, she told “Miss Flowra,” as she called Florella, more about “t’ owd Guy” than any one had ever heard before. She was a true reciter; and while Florella sketched, she would stand before her, and describe the passage of the Flete on that awful night when Waynflete was lost, as if she herself had been standing by. She told her the original legend of the traitor who had betrayed his friend’s life, and therefore had “walked” ever since. She mentioned his appearances, and talked about him with a kind of grotesque familiarity as if “t’ owd gen’leman” had been in the habit of taking constitutionals about the valley. But now and then her tone deepened.

“Eh, my dear,” she said, “ye mun look on’t aright. A poor lost soul does na’ coom back to tempt, but to warn—to warn us fra’ sin, Missy. He’s boun’ to coom, though happen the devil drives ’un. But ’tisna a’ can see. T’ owd Guy may walk oop till most on us, and we be noon wiser. There’s my Jem, puir lad, sees ’un, he do, and Mr Guy, he knaws ’un well.”

“Did he ever tell you so?” said Florella.

“Eh, d’ye think I need tellin’? Eh, there a be. Good day to ye, sir.”

Florella’s palette fell out of her hand before this friendly greeting revealed to her that it was not the old, but the young Guy, who stood at the garden gate.

He had not been at Waynflete since his return, and now came forward with outstretched hand, while Jem appeared behind him like his shadow.

“Godfrey has been away,” he said, “and I couldn’t get over before. I have come to the Vicarage for a week. There are a good many arrangements to make, and I want to ask Mrs John Palmer a favour. I should like—it’s an odd fancy—but I should like old Miss Maxwell, the Stauntons’ cousin, to come to the church opening. You saw her, I think. I know Mrs Palmer is going kindly to do the entertaining.”

“Oh yes,” said Florella. “I had thought of her. But she’d like you to ask her yourself.”

“So I know,” he said; “I shall ride over. Staunton says he won’t come in the character of an hereditary foe; but I shall get him somehow.”

“We asked Violet,” said Florella, “and she says that ancestors are such a novelty that she is delighted to have even a villain.”

Guy and Florella had a laugh in common as he turned and spoke to Peggy, and she gathered up her sketching things.

“Eh,” said the old woman, as they went out at the gate together, “t’ owd Guy winna mak’ an end yet o’ Waynfletes!”

When old Miss Maxwell, picking York and Lancaster roses in her little garden, looked down the bleak grey street of Ouselwell, and beheld a stranger riding up, she felt, as she said afterwards, a presentiment of something unusual, which, as strange and striking young men were not common in Ouselwell, was perhaps not surprising. But it was fulfilled when the stranger left his horse at the inn, and walking up to her gate, bowed politely, and introduced himself as Guy Waynflete, a friend of her cousin, Mr Cuthbert Staunton.

Miss Maxwell made him a formal bow and led him into her little drawing-room, and the little old maid and the tall young man sat down opposite to each other, and Guy said quite simply—

“Miss Maxwell, we have been restoring Waynflete Church. It is to be opened on Michaelmas Day, and my brother and I wish very much that you should be with us on the occasion. We have to thank you for the family papers which you allowed us to have.”

“You do me a great honour, Mr Waynflete,” said the old lady, formally. “It is long since I was so far from home; but I should, I assure you, be glad to share in the rejoicing. Although the relations between our families were not as happy as could be wished, yet somehow, sir, any connection so long ago creates an interest.”

“Yes,” said Guy; “that is just my feeling.”

Then she gave Guy bread and salt in the shape of tea and hot cakes, and lapsed into more friendly chat, shaking hands tenderly with him when he took leave, and the interview, a somewhat quaint one for the end of the nineteenth century, concluded.

“A most distinguished young man,” as she wrote to Kitty Staunton; “but I fear he has the look of a doom upon him.”

“Which only means that he looks delicate,” said Constancy, when this cheerful sentence found its way to Waynflete.

For Constancy was there, having finished her trip, and having assured herself that Godfrey was pretty well tied to Ingleby. The world was going well. The old incapable tenant of Upper Flete, the only farm on the estate of any value, died, and was succeeded by a nephew, with more education and capital, who came to terms with Godfrey as to needful improvements, and rented some more land. A purchaser was found for the copse-wood, which had not been cut for many years, who bought it standing, and undertook all the expenses of cutting and carriage. A great change would therefore soon be seen in the whole aspect of the valley, and, as for the house, Mrs John Palmer’s fancy for it continued, and she thought of taking it, as she could well afford to do, for a summer residence; in which case, she would, no doubt, prove a good friend to the village.

Godfrey came forward and made all the arrangements without any apparent reluctance; but a queer little smile, not unlike his brother’s, came over his face when he was questioned by the neighbouring squires on his views on preserving or politics, and he would not commit himself as to the future.

All this was satisfactory to Guy, and so, in another way, was his “reconciliation” with the last of the Maxwells of Ouseley. Matters seemed to be drawing towards a point of success, of which the coming gathering was a kind of symbol. As he was returning from a ride in the broad, spreading sunlight of an August afternoon, he thought of all that the past year had brought to him. It was but a year since he had shown Florella the picture in the octagon-room, and her words had roused him to make a fight for his freedom. Till she touched his spirit, he had been tossed and driven in helpless and hopeless bondage to fear, his one notion of fortitude, concealment, his one refuge, a remedy worse than the disease. That danger he recognised with critical self-knowledge, had, in his case, been born of fear, and was itself something of a spectre of his fancy. Apart from maddening terror, he would never “take to drink.” And, after this year of stern and steady conflict, it did not seem to him that any bewilderment of the senses could ever again terrify him beyond the power of self-control. While, as for that inward sense of possession, that presence, which for him lay behind all else, if that should spring into consciousness again, after its long sleep, he was prepared to face it. There was another force, deeper and stronger still, which, in dim and awful glory, had made itself felt within him.

Guy believed that his soul was saved. There are no other words for it, though these may convey a hundred other meanings. But there was “more to come.” Whether this conviction was well-founded, or whether, as Cuthbert would have told him, it sprang from the depression of exhausted nerves and spirits; from the melancholy too often associated with trials such as his, it equally proved that he was not free as other men were for the sweetness of life and love.

As other men? Were other men free? “The drink” might have been a bugbear to him, but it was an awful fact to thousands of those others. How many devils had possessed his rough ancestors, whose clutch had not closed on him, because the one great gain of old Margaret’s courage had been that he and his brother began life on a higher level? How did this poor Jem Outhwaite, who burlesqued and caricatured his own grim experiences, come to be what he was? As this thought occurred to him, Jem himself started out of a gateway beside him, and, after a grin and nod of greeting, picked up Rawdie, and carried him over a muddy piece of ground, through which he himself humbly shambled beside Guy’s horse. The royal favourite should not needlessly wet his feet.

Jem was a conversational person, and fired off short remarks at intervals.

“Owd Cowperthwaite says Waynfletes’ll tak’ t’ bread out o’s mouth.”

“Old Cowperthwaite’s a scoundrel,” said Guy.

“Ay, sir,” said Jem, cheerfully. Then, after a pause, “I see twa rabbits over Flete Edge. Mr Godfrey can shoot ’em.”

“Ay, I dare say he will.”

“I see t’ owd gen’leman by t’ brig on Friday,” said Jem, in the same contented treble.

“Nay, Jem, I don’t think you did,” said Guy, didactically.

“I see Miss Flowra,” said Jem, in the same tone of cheerful indifference.

Guy sprang from his horse, and Jem, setting Rawdie delicately down on a bit of turf, grinned, nodded, shambled away across a field towards the river, and was out of sight in a minute.

“Oh,” said Florella, as she came up, “I hope Jem will go straight home, he has been about all day. Old Peggy is really ill. She got a chill the other day waiting for him at the bridge in the rain. You know he stops at the Dragon, and the doctor says he must be found quick, or it may go hard with her.”

“I know,” said Guy, briefly. “I’ll just go and put my horse up, and then go and fetch him. He’ll come with me. He was here this minute.”

“You know,” said Florella, in a half-whisper, “that he says t’ owd Guy stops him.”

“I know,” said Guy. “But don’t listen to stories about him.Youmustn’t get to fancy the place is haunted.”

“I am not afraid,” she said, and there was a touch of reproach in her voice. Guy paused a moment, then spoke in another tone.

“I think I have been wrong,” he said. “I wanted you to forget what you had done for me, for fear the least influence from which you have saved me should breathe on your spirit. But you ought to know that you have saved me. Youhaveled me to that saving Presence of which you spoke. Whatever may come, whatever it may cost, yet the snare is broken, and Iamdelivered.”

She looked at him without a word.

He went on in the same steady, controlled tones. “Now you see there’s another. Will you help that poor lad through the next hour, I think he’ll be hard pressed? Good-bye, he shall come to his mother. He shan’t betoo late.” He took her hands, and bent as if to kiss them. A little sob broke from her, and in a moment the kiss was on her lips.

He was gone before the blood had time to burn up in her cheek, and she broke into a passion of tears, while formless and awful, all the terror that he might be going to meet, rushed over her spirit. She felt helpless, powerless, certain of evil. Her soul was full of mist and cloud. All she could do was, like a child, to follow his behest, and pray for Jem.

Guy, thrilled with a new and high excitement, put up his horse, and with Rawdie still at his heels, pursued his way towards the Dragon, intending to call Jem away from its enticing attractions, and to escort him over the old footbridge back to his mother. A simple thing to do, but he had only crossed that bridge once before.

The hot bright sunlight had thickened into a thundery mist, and the light rapidly faded. Guy was not tired now, he walked easily enough, nor did any perplexing thoughts beset him. He saw—no more than usual. He felt no inward horror. But upon his rapturous mood there fell as strong a conviction that he was going to dare his fate as if he had gone to pick up a bomb of dynamite. He felt as if the very air was a resisting force as he pushed on through it. He went on, and a deep sadness came upon him, and all in a moment, as he came to the top of the hollow, he knew that it was the expectation of death. He stopped and looked down into the mist. He could not see across the valley, and he could not see across that expectation. He could not think of any definite danger. He stood still with his eyes on the ground; upon the mist the spectral shape that went before him, showed out sharp and clear. Words came into his mind. “Fear not him that can kill the body.” But “the body” meant life and work, and love and joy. It meant Florella. Perhaps his body was the price that had to be paid for his soul. And when the end was past? What did death mean? When the spirit was free from the flesh, would the spiritual foes be gone? Or would the last veil be withdrawn from their terrible faces? What would await him in the world where the other Guy had gone before?

Guy went on down the hill till into the misty air gleamed the paraffin lamps of the Dragon public, and into his misty thoughts came the need of sharp and prompt action.

He stepped inside the door, and called out, “Is Jem Outhwaite here? I want him.”

Two or three men were standing about, in the bar. They looked at Guy, and fell back before him with surprising readiness.

“Here a be, sir,” said one, pushing Jem’s reluctant figure forward, as he tried to slink behind them.

“Come Jem,” said Guy; “your mother’s bad, and I’m going to take you back to her across the bridge. Come along with me.”

He laid his hand on Jem’s arm, and with a short “Good evening,” pulled him out of the cheerful circle, into the foggy dusk. Jem, who followed him usually like a dog, now hung back, and dragged against his hold, trembling and reluctant; not drunk, he thought, but manifestly dazed with fear. He was tall and big, and perhaps it was the dead weight of his resistance that made Guy feel as if the very mist oppressed him, and forced him back. Against himself, against his poor companion, against uncomprehended forces he struggled on.

“Sithee, there a be. We canna get by. He’ll get me!” gasped Jem, as he struggled.

“Jem,” said Guy, “I have got past him, though I was just as much afraid as you. And I am not going to let him stop you. He can’t do it, Jem. Say your prayers your mother taught you, and come on. He can’t stop you.”

“Eh, but he can—but he can! He’s a coomin’; he’s a gripped me!” gasped Jem, flinging his arms round Guy, and dragging him back, then shrinking behind him.

“No, he hasn’t, Jem,” said Guy, in clear, firm tones. “I’m going first over the bridge; so if he gets either of us, he’ll have me. You come after, like a man, and God have mercy on us both!”

Guy pushed forward. Surely the poor fellow would follow now! But again Jem held him back.

“Naw, sir,” said the poor half-wit, in his cracking treble, “I’ll gang ower first, and yo’ coom arter,” and with a quick, unsteady run, he shambled on to the bridge.

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