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Title: The Invisible Foe
       A Story Adapted from the Play by Walter Hackett

Author: Louise Jordan Miln

Release Date: October 12, 2015 [EBook #50188]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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                                  THE

                             INVISIBLE FOE

                     A STORY ADAPTED FROM THE PLAY
                           BY WALTER HACKETT

                                   BY
                           LOUISE JORDAN MILN
                      (MRS. GEORGE CRICHTON MILN)





                                NEW YORK
                      FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                      _Copyright, 1918, 1920, by_
                      FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
                         _All rights reserved_




                 *        *        *        *        *

                        “_Blind, blind, blind_”

                 *        *        *        *        *

                                CONTENTS

                           BOOK I The Children
                           BOOK II The Dark
                           BOOK III The Quest
                           BOOK IV The Light

       Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.




                                 BOOK I


                              THE CHILDREN


                               CHAPTER I

Stephen lay on his stomach, one sharp elbow comfortable in a velvet bed
of moss, his chin cupped in his palm, his beautifully shaped head thrown
back, his alert face lifted to the sky, his eager eyes following
hungrily the flight of a bird.

Hugh, crunched up against the big oak tree, was making a chain of
blossoms, and making it awkwardly enough, with many a restless boy-sigh,
many a destruction of delicate spring wild flower.

Helen was playing by herself.

Nothing could have been more characteristic of the three children than
their occupations of the moment.

Stephen usually was watching birds fly, when he was out of doors, and
birds were to be seen. And the only time his uncle Richard had ever laid
a hand (except in rare caress or in approbation) on the orphan boy, had
been when Stephen, three months after his arrival at Deep Dale, had
opened its cage, and lost Helen her pet canary—all because he “wanted
to see just how he flies.”

“And I did see, too,” he had told Hugh an hour after his stoically
endured caning. “It was worth more than a few smacks. Bet I can fly too,
some day. You wait.”

Hugh had said nothing. He was used to Stephen and Stephen’s vivid
ambitions. And he was stolid.

Stephen had suffered his slight chastisement proudly—if not quite
gladly—but with each faltering fall of his uncle’s cane a seed of
bitterness had entered the child’s soul. He never had felt the same to
“Uncle Dick” since—which was no small pity, for the orphan boy was
love-hungry, and Richard Bransby his best friend.

The small punishment bred deceit but worked no cure. The men in the
fowl-yard could have told sad tales of staid hens aggravated to
indignant, fluttering flight, and the old gardener of peacocks goaded to
rise from their self-glorified strutting and preening to fly stiff and
screaming the few spaces which were their farthest. But neither the farm
hands nor the gardener told. Why—it is not easy to say. They did not
particularly like Stephen—few people did. But they feared him. He
mastered their wills. A solitary child, not half so happy as childhood
has every right to be, the boy met few he did not influence sharply. His
was a masterful nature. Little altogether escaped his subtle dominance.

Stephen was not essentially cruel. His cruelty was corollary and
accessory to his passion—a passion for power and for the secrets of
aerial skill. He bore the birds no ill-will. He simply was obsessed to
see their flight, and to study it, garnering up in his odd, isolated,
accretive child’s mind—and heart—every vibrant curve and beat of their
wings, every angle and bend of their bodies.

Stephen usually was watching the flight of a bird, or scheming some
mechanical imitation of it.

Hugh usually was doing something for wee Helen, doing it with perspiring
and sighful awkwardness and for scant thanks—or for none.

Helen usually was playing by herself, and pretending, as now, to be
sharing the sport of some playfellow, perfectly tangible to her, but
invisible, non-existent to the boys—a form of persistent “make believe”
which greatly amused Hugh and as greatly irritated Stephen.

“Don’t pretend like that; it’s a simpleton way of going on,” the older
boy called to her now, without moving his head or his eyes.

“It’s nothing of the kind,” the girl replied scornfully. “You’re blind,
that’s what’s the matter—blinder’n a bat, both of you.” And she
continued to laugh and chat with her “make-believe” playmates.

An elfin child herself, the children of her own delicate myth did seem
the more suitable fellows for her dainty frolic than either queer
Stephen or stolid, clumsy Hugh.

The little girl was very pretty, a queenly little head heavy with vivid
waves of gold-red hair, curved red lips eloquent of the history of
centuries of womanhood, wide blue eyes, and the prettiest hands and arms
that even feminine babyhood (and English babyhood, Celtic-dashed at
that) had ever yet achieved; every pink-tipped finger a miracle, and
each soft, beautifully molded elbow, dimpled and dented with witching
chinks that simply clamored for kisses—and often got them; a sunny,
docile child, yielding but unafraid, quiet and reserved, but hiding
under its rose and snow robe of provocatively pretty flesh, a will that
never swerved: the strongest will at Deep Dale—and that says everything
of it—for both Stephen Pryde, fourteen years old, and his uncle,
nearing fifty, had stronger wills than often fall to us weak mortals of
drift and vacillation. These two masculine strengths of will lay rough
and prominent on the surface and also sank soul-deep. The uncle’s never
abated. Circumstances and youth curbed the boy’s, at times—but neither
chilled nor softened it. Helen’s will lay deep and still. Her pretty,
smiling surface never showed it by so much as a gentle ripple. She kept
it as a sort of spiritual “Sunday best” laid away in the lavender and
tissue of her secret self. As yet only her old Scotch nurse even
suspected its existence and of all her little, subservient world, only
that old Scotch nurse neither laughed at Helen’s dream friends—nor
scoffed. In her sweet six years of life her father’s will and hers had
never clashed. That, when the almost inevitable clash of child and
parent, old and young, cautious experience and adventurous inexperience,
came, Helen’s should prove the stronger will, and hers the victory,
would have seemed absurd and incredible to all who knew them—to every
one except the nurse.

Stephen and Hugh, in their different boyish ways, loved the girl-child,
and wooed her.

She tolerated them both, patronized, tyrannized, and cared little for
either.

Hugh was thick-set and had sweaty hands. Often he bored her.

Stephen’s odd face, already at fourteen corrugated by thought, ambition
and strident personality painfully concealed, repelled her—even
frightened her a little, a very little; for her cherished life and
serene soul gave her little gift of fear.

Their wills clashed daily—but almost always over things about which she
cared little or less than little, and did not trouble to be insistent.
She yielded over such trifles—out of indifference and almost
contemptuous good-nature sheerly. And the boy, “blind” here at least,
misread it. But on one point Stephen never could prevail against her.
She would neither renounce her invisible playmates nor even concede him
that they were indeed “make-believe.”

Her will and Hugh’s never clashed. How could they? He had no will but
hers.

Hugh was her slave.

Stephen, loving her as strongly and as hotly, sought to be her master.
No conscious presumption this: it was his nature.

Deep Dale was all simmering blue and green to-day—with softening
shadows and tones of gray; blue sky, green grass, trees green-leafed,
gray-trunked—green paths, gray and green-walled, blue roofed, the early
spring flowers (growing among the grasses but sparsely as yet, and being
woven, too often broken-necked, into Hugh’s devoted jewelering) too tiny
of modest bud and timid bloom to speck but most minutely the picture
with lemon, violet or rose. The little girl’s wealth of red hair made
the glory and the only emphatic color of the picture. Hugh’s hair was
ash brown and dull—Stephen’s darker, growing to black—but as dull.
Even the clothes of these three children painted in perfectly with the
blue and green of this early May-day, Nature’s spring-song. The lads,
not long out of mourning, were dressed in sober gray. Helen’s frocks
came from Hanover Square, when they did not come from the _Rue de
Rivoli_, and to-day her little frock of turquoise cashmere was
embroidered and sashed with green as soft and tender as the pussy
willows and their new baby leafage.

But the sun—a pale gray sun at best all day—was slipping down the
sky’s blue skirt. Helen, tiring of her elvish play, or wholesomely
hungry for “cambric” tea and buns, slid off the tree trunk, smiled back
and waved her hand—to nothing, and turned towards the house. Hugh
trotted after her, not sorry to suspend his trying toil, not sorry to
approach cake and jam, but carrying his stickily woven tribute with him.
But Stephen, enthralled, almost entranced, lay still, his fine chin
cupped in his strong hand, his eyes—and his soul—watching a flock of
birds flying nestward towards the night.


                               CHAPTER II

Richard Bransby had few friends because he tolerated few. Unloving
towards most, rather than unlovable, his life and his personality cut
deep, but in narrow channels. To him pictures were—canvas and paint,
and a considerable item of expense; for he was too shrewd a business man
to buy anything cheap or inferior. Knowing his own limitations as few
men have the self-searching gift to do, he took no risks with his
strenuously earned sovereigns, lavishly as he spent them. He spent
magnificently, but he never misspent. He had too much respect to do
that—respect for his money and for himself and for the honest,
relentless industry with which that self had amassed that same money. He
never selected the pictures for which he paid, nor even their frames.
Latham did all that for him. Horace knew almost as much about pictures
and music as he did about nerves, and could chat with as much suave
authority about Tintoretto and Liszt, _motif_ and _chiaro-oscuro_ as he
could about diphtheria or Bell’s palsy, and was as much at his old
friend’s service in matters of art as in matters of cerebellum and
aorta. Bransby cared nothing for horses, and liked dogs just “well
enough”—out of doors. He was a book-worm—with one author, scarcely
more. He was indifferent to his dinner, and he cared nothing at all for
flowers. This last seems strange and contradictory, for the women he had
loved had each been peculiarly flowerlike. But who shall attempt to
gauge or plumb the contradictorinesses of human nature, or be newly
surprised at them?

Richard Bransby had loved three women passionately, and had lost them
all. He was no skeptic, but he was rebel. He could not, or he would not,
forgive God their death, and he grudged the Heaven, to which he doubted
not they had gone, their presence. Nothing could reconcile or console
him—although two strong affections (and beside which he had no other)
remained to him; and with them—and his books—he patched his life and
kept his heart just alive.

He loved the great ship-building business he had created, and steered
through many a financial tempest, around rocks of strikes and quicksands
of competition, into an impregnably fortified harbor of millionairedom,
with skill as devoted and as magnificent as the skill of a Drake or the
devotion of a Scott, steering and nursing some great ship or tiny bark
through the desperate straits of battle or the torture perils of polar
ice floes.

And he loved Helen whom he had begotten—loved her tenderly for her own
sweet, lovable sake, loved her more many times, and more quickly, for
the sake of her mother.

He cared nothing for flowers, but he had recognized clearly how markedly
the three women he had adored (for it had amounted to that) had
resembled each a blossom. His mother had been like a “red, red rose that
blooms in June”—a Jacqueminot or a Xavier Olibo. And it was from her he
had inherited the vivid personality of his youth. She had died
suddenly—when he had been in the City, chained even then to the great
business he was creating—boy of twenty-three though he was—and his hot
young heart was almost broken; but not quite, for Alice, his wife, had
crept into it then, a graceful tea-rose-like creature, white,
pink-flushed, head-heavy with perfume. Violet, his only sister, had been
a pale, pretty thing, modest and sweet as the flower of her name. Helen
he thought was like some rare orchid, with her elusive piquant features,
her copper-red hair, her snow face, her curved crimson lips, her
intangible, indescribable charm—irregular, baffling.

Alice had died at Helen’s birth, but he blamed God and turned from Him,
blamed not or turned from the small plaintive destroyer who laughed and
wailed in its unmothered cradle. The young wife’s death had unnerved,
and had hardened him too. It injured him soul-side and body: and the
hurt to his physical self threatened to be as lasting and the more
baneful. A slight cardiac miscarriage caught young Dr. Latham’s trained
eye on the very day of Alice Bransby’s death—and the disturbance it
caused, controlled for six silent years by the one man’s will and the
other man’s skill, had not disappeared or abated. Very slowly it grimly
gained slight ground, and presaged to them both the possibility of worse
to come.

Only yesterday Richard Bransby had taken little Helen on his knee, and
holding her sunny head close to his heart had talked to her of her
mother. He often held the child so—but he rarely spoke to her of the
mother—and of that mother to no one else did he ever speak. Only his
own angry heart and the long hungry nights knew what she had been to
him—only they and his God. God! who must be divine in pity and
forgiveness towards the rebel rage of husbands so sore and so faithful.

Yesterday, too, he had told the child of how like a flower his Alice,
her mother, had been, and seeing how she caught at the fancy (odd in so
prosaic a man) and liked it, he had gone on to speak of his own mother,
her “granny,” for all the world like a deep, very red rose, and of
Violet, her aunt.

Helen wriggled her glowing head from the tender prison of his hands,
looked up into his sharp, tired face, clapped her own petal-like little
palms, and said with a gurgling laugh and a dancing wink of her fearless
blue eyes, “And you—Daddy—are just like a flower, too!”

He shook her and called her “Miss Impudence.”

“Oh! but yes, you are. I’ll tell you, you are that tall ugly cactus that
Simmons says came from Mexicur—all big prickles and one poor little
lonely flower ’way up at the top by itself, grown out of the ugly leaves
and the ugly thorns, and not pretty either.”

Bransby sighed, and caught her quickly closer to him again—one poor
insignificant attempt of a blossom lonely, alone; solitary but for
thorns, and only desirable in comparison with them, and because it was
the flowering—such as it was—of a plant exotic and costly: a magenta
rag of a flower that stood for much money, and for nothing else!

The baby went on with the parable—pretty as he had made it, grotesqued
now by her. “An’ Aunt Carline’s anover flower, too. She’s a daleeah.”

Bransby laughed. Caroline Leavitt was rather like a dahlia; neat,
geometrically regular, handsome, cut and built by rule, fashionable,
prim but gorgeous, as far from poetry and sentiment as anything a flower
could be.

Mrs. Leavitt was his widowed cousin and housekeeper—called “Aunt” by
the children. Richard and Violet had been the only children of John and
Cora Bransby.

Violet, several years younger than Richard, had married six years
earlier—married a human oddity, half-genius, half-adventurer,
impecunious, improvident, vain. He had misused and broken her. His death
was literally the only kindness he had ever done her—and it had killed
her—for weak-womanlike she had loved him to the end. Perhaps such
weakness is a finer, truer strength—weighed in God’s scales—than
man-called strength.

Violet Pryde, dying five years after Alice’s death, left two children;
the boys playing with six-year-old Helen under the oak trees. Bransby
had been blind to his sister’s needs while Pryde had lived; but indeed
she had hidden them with the silence, the dignity and the deft, quiet
subterfuge of such natures—but at her husband’s death Bransby had
hastened to ask, as gently as he could (and to the women he loved he
could be gentleness itself), “How are you off? What do you need? What
would you like best? What may I do?” pressing himself to her as suitor
rather than almoner. But she had refused all but friendship, indeed
almost had refused it, since it had never been given her dead. Her
loyalty survived Pryde’s disloyal life, and even dwarfed and stunted her
mother-instinct to do her utmost for her boys: her boys and Pryde’s. But
her own death had followed close upon her husband’s, and then Richard
Branbsy had asserted himself. He had gathered up into his own capable
hands the shabby threads of her affairs—mismanaged for years, but—even
so—too scant to be tangled, and the charge of her two orphaned boys.

He had brought Stephen and Hugh at once to Deep Dale and had established
them there on an almost perfect parity with Helen—a parity impinged by
little else than her advantage of sex and charm and presumable heirship.

Such was—in brief—the home and the home folk of Deep Dale, the
millionaire shipbuilder’s toy estate a mile or two from Oxshott.

And Helen ruled it—and them.

Caroline Leavitt housekept, but small Helen reigned. Her reign was no
ephemeral sovereignty—not even a constitutional queenship; it was
autocracy gracious and sunshiny, but all of autocracy for all that.
Helen ruled.


                              CHAPTER III

Richard Bransby had amassed a fortune and perfected a fad, but he had
amassed no friends. In the thirty-five years in which he had gathered
and nursed his fortune (for he began at fifteen) he had made but the one
friend—Latham. And even this sole friendship was largely professional
and in small degree quick or vibrant.

Helen might have had twenty playmates, but she greatly cared for none
but her dear “make believes,” and tolerated no others but her cavalierly
treated cousins.

Mrs. Leavitt gave tea to the well-to-do of the neighborhood, and took it
of them. Very occasionally she and Richard dined with them alternately
as hosts and guests. But none of it ran to friendship, or shaped towards
intimacy. She was too fussy a woman for friendship, he too embittered
and too arrogant a man.

The vicinity of Claygate and Oxshott teemed with the stucco and ornate
wood “residences” of rich stockbrokers and successful business
men—living elaborately in the lovely countryside—but not of it: of
London still, train-catching, market-watching, silk-hatted,
bridge-playing.

Bransby rarely hatted in silk, and he preferred Dickens to bridge. He
nodded to his rich fellow-villagers, but he clasped them no hand-clasp.

He, too, was in the country but not of it, he too was Londoner to the
core; but both in a sense quite different from them.

Deep Dale was a beautiful excrescence—but an excrescence—an elaborate
florescence of his wealth, but he had never felt it “home,” except
because Alice had rather liked it, and never would feel it “home” again
except as Helen and his books might grow to make it so.

There was a flat, too, in Curzon Street Alice had liked it rather more
than she had Deep Dale, and while she lived he had too; except that they
had been more alone, and in that much more together, at Oxshott, and for
that he had always been grateful to Deep Dale, and held it, for that, in
some tenderness still. And Helen had been born there.

But to him “Home” meant a dingy house in Marylebone, in which he had
been born and his mother died. He avoided seeing it now (an undertaker
tenanted the basement and the first floor, a dressmaker, whose
_clientèle_ was chiefly of the slenderly-pursed _demimonde_, the other
two floors), but he still held it in his stubborn heart for “home.”

In business Bransby was hard, cold and implastic. He had great talent in
the conduct of his affairs, indefatigable industry, undeviating
devotion. Small wonder—or rather none—that he grew rich and steadily
richer. But had he had the genius to rule kindlier, to be friend as well
as master, to win, accept and use the friendship of the men he employed
(and now sometimes a little crushed of their best possibility of service
by the ruthlessness of his rule and by the unsympathy of his touch), his
might well have grown one of the gigantic, wizard fortunes.

Even as things were, Morton Grant, head and trusted clerk, probably
attained nearer to friendship with Richard Bransby than did any one else
but Latham.

For Grant nothing was relaxed. He was dealt with as crisply and treated
as drastically as any office boy of the unconsidered and driven all.
Bransby’s to order; Grant’s to obey. But, for all that, the employer
felt some hidden, embryonic kindliness for the employee. And the clerk
was devoted to the master: accepted the latter’s tyranny almost
cordially, and resented it not even at heart or unconsciously.

The two men had been born within a few doors of each other on the same
long, dull street. That was a link.

Grant cherished and doted on the business of which he was but a servant
as much as Bransby did—not more, because more was an impossibility. He
rose for it in the morning. He lay down for it at night. He rested—so
far as he did rest—on the Sabbath and on perforced holidays for it. He
ate for it. He dressed for it. He went to Margate once a year, second
class, for it. That was a link.

Unless it involves some form of rivalry—as cricket, competitive
business, acting, popular letters, desire for the same woman, two men
cannot live for the selfsame thing without it in some measure breeding
in them some tinge of mutual liking.

And these two reserved, uncommunicative men _had_ loved the same woman,
and contrary to rule, that too was a link—perhaps the strongest of the
three—though Bransby had never even remotely suspected it.

Morton Grant could not remember when he had not loved Violet Bransby. He
had yearned for her when they both wore curls and very short dresses. He
had loved her when, short-sighted and round-shouldered then as now, he
had been in her class at dancing school and in the adjacent class at the
Sunday School, in which the pupils, aged from four to fourteen, had been
decently and discreetly segregated of sex. He had loved her on her
wedding-day, and wept the hard scant tears of manhood defeated, denied
and at bay, until his dull, weak eyes had been bleared and red-rimmed,
and his ugly little button of a nose (he had almost none) had flamed
gin-scarlet. And for that one day the beloved business had been to him
nothing. He had loved her when she lay shrouded in her coffin—and now,
a year after, he loved her dust in its grave—and all so silently that
even she had never sensed it. For the old saying is untrue: a woman does
not _always_ know.

This poor love of his was indeed a link between the man and his
master—and all the stronger because Richard had been as suspicionless
as Violet herself. For Bransby would have resented it haughtily, but
less and less hotly than he had resented her marriage with that
“mountebank” (the term is Bransby’s and not altogether just)—but of the
two he would greatly have preferred Grant as a brother-in-law.

Under Helen’s sway, Grant had never come. She was not Violet’s child. He
would rather even that Bransby were childless and his fortune in entire
keeping for Violet’s boys. For herself he neither liked nor disliked the
little girl. But he was grateful to her for being a girl. That left the
business undividedly open for Stephen and Hugh—for their future
participation and ultimate management at least. And he hoped that of so
large a fortune an uncle so generous to them, and so fond of Violet,
would allot the brothers some considerable share.

Unlike Mr. Dombey and many other self-made millionaires, Richard Bransby
had never wished for a son. Not for treble his millions would he have
changed her of sex: Helen satisfied him—quite.

And perhaps unconsciously he was some trifle relieved that no son,
growing up to man’s assertion, could rival or question his sole headship
of “Bransby’s.”


                               CHAPTER IV

As Helen and Hugh came singing up the path, Bransby was driving Grant
from the door. It was no friendliness that had led him to speed his
visitor so far, but a desire to see if Helen were not coming. The sun
was setting, and the father thought it high time she came indoors.

Grant was in disgrace. He had come unbidden, forbidden, in fact—and so
unwelcome.

Advised by Latham (still a youthful, but daily growing famous physician)
and enforced by his own judgment, Bransby was taking a short holiday.
Thorough in all things, the merchant had abandoned his business affairs
and their conduct entirely—for the moment. Grant had been ordered to
manage and decide everything unaided until the master’s return, and by
no means to intrude by so much as a letter or a telegram.

He had disobeyed.

That it was the first turpitude of thirty years of implicit, almost
craven, fealty in no way tempered its enormity. “Preposterous!” had been
Bransby’s greeting. “Preposterous,” was his good-by.

Something had gone wrong at the office, or threatened to go wrong, so
important that the faithful old dog had felt obliged to come for his
master’s personal and immediate decision. But he had come trembling. For
his pains he had had abuse and reprimand. But he had gained his point.
He had got his message through, and learned Bransby’s will. And he was
going away—back to his loved drudgery, not trembling, but alert and
reassured.

And though Bransby abused, secretly he approved. The link was
strengthened.

Bransby was angry—but also he was flattered. He was not, concerning his
business at least, and a few other things, altogether above flattery.
Who is? Are you?

In his quaint way he had some interior warm liking for his commonplace
factotum. He trusted him unreservedly; and trust begets liking more
surely and more quickly than pity begets love. After Horace Latham,
Morton Grant stood to Bransby for all of human friendship and of living
comradeship.

Bransby had adopted Violet’s boys, out of love for her and out of a
nepotism that was conscience rather than instinct—and, too, it was
pride.

They had been with him nearly a year now, and because he counted them as
one of his assets, possible appanages of his great business—and because
of their daily companionship with Helen—he watched them keenly. He did
not suspect it, as yet, but both little fellows were creeping slowly
into a corner of the heart that still beat true enough and human under
his surface of granite and steel. And Stephen began to interest him
much. Indisputably Stephen Pryde was interesting. He had personality
beyond Nature’s average dole to each individual of that priceless though
dangerous quality. And the personality of the boy, in its young way, had
no slight resemblance to that of the uncle. Stephen was an eccentric
in-the-making, Richard an eccentric made and polished. Each hid his
eccentricity under intense reserve and a steely suavity of bearing. That
this should be so in the experienced man of fifty, disciplined by time,
by experience and by personal intention, was natural, and not unusual in
such types. That it was so in the small boy untried and untutored was
extraordinary—it spoke much of force and presaged of his future large
things good or bad, whichever might eventuate, and one probably as apt
to eventuate as the other, and, whichever came, to come in no small
degree. And truly the lad had force even now: perhaps it was his most
salient quality, and stood to him for that useful gift—magnetism—which
he somewhat lacked.

As Grant went out the two children came in. Helen took her father’s
hand, and led him back to the room he had just left—and Hugh followed
her doglike. The word is used in no abject sense, but in its noblest.

“Ring the bell,” Richard said to the boy, sitting down in the big chair
to which his tiny mistress had propelled him. She climbed into her
father’s lap and snuggled her radiant head against his arm.

“Light the fire,” Bransby ordered the maid who answered the bell almost
as it rang. Bells always were answered promptly in Richard Bransby’s
house. In some ways Deep Dale was more of the office or counting-house
type than of the home-type, and had been so, at least, since Alice
Bransby’s death.

But it was a pleasant place for all that, if somewhat a stiff, formal
casket for so dainty a jewel as the red-headed child who reigned there,
and life ran smoothly rather than harshly in its walls and its gates.

Certainly this was a pleasant room; and it was the master’s own room.

The fire took but an instant to catch. It was well and truly laid, and
scientifically nice in its proportions and arrangement of paper,
anthracite and ship’s-logs.

If the novels of Charles Dickens had pride of place as Bransby’s one
fad, as they certainly had pride of place on his room’s book-full
shelves, open fires came near to being a minor fad. He was inclined to
be cold.

But the late afternoon was growing chilly, and little Helen watched the
red and orange flames approvingly as they licked and leapt through the
chinks of the fuel.

Hugh, a stocky, tweed-clad boy, as apt to be too warm as was his uncle
to be too cold, lay down on the floor at a discreet distance from the
hearth, but not unsociably far from the armchair.

He did not move when Mrs. Leavitt came in, but he smiled at her
confidently, and she smiled back at him.

Stephen, had he been there, would have risen and moved her chair, or
brought her a footstool, and she would have thanked him with a smile a
little less affectionate than the one she had just given negligent Hugh.

As she sat down she glanced about the large room anxiously. Then she
sighed happily and fell to crocheting contentedly. Really the room was
quite tidy. One book lay open—face down—on a table, but nothing else
was awry, and that she would put in its place presently, when Richard
carried Helen up to the nursery, as at bedtime he always did. Two dolls,
one very smart, one very shabby, lay in shockingly latitudinarian
attitudes on the chesterfield. But those she could not touch: it was
forbidden.

Caroline Leavitt was a notable housewife, but sadly fussy. But she
curbed her own fussiness considerably in Richard’s presence, and what of
it she could not curb he endured with a good humor not commonly
characteristic of him, for he appreciated its results of order and
comfort. He was an orderly man himself, and it was only by his books
that they often annoyed each other. He rarely left anything else about
or out of place.

She very much wished that he strewed those on chair and window-seat less
often, and he very much wished that she would leave them alone. But they
managed this one small discord really quite admirably and amicably. To
do him justice he never was reading more than one volume at a time. To
do her justice she never moved that one except to put it primly where it
belonged on the shelves. And he knew the exact dwelling-spot of every
book he owned—and so did she. They were many, but not too many—and he
read them all—his favorites again and again. She never opened one of
them, but she kept their covers burnished and pleasant to touch and to
hold. There were five editions of Dickens, and Bransby was reading for
the tenth time his favorite author from the great-hearted
wizard-of-pathos-and-humor’s Alpha of “Boz” to his unfinished Omega of
“Edwin Drood”—Bransby’s book of the moment was “David Copperfield.” He
had been reading a passage that appealed to him particularly when he had
been interrupted by Grant’s intrusion. That had not served to soften the
acerbity of the employer’s “Preposterous!”

“And what have you been doing?” Richard asked the dainty bundle on his
knee.

“Playing.”

“With your cousins?”

She shook an emphatic head, and her curls glowed redder, more golden in
the red and gold of the fire’s reflection. “Wiv Gertrude.”

Mrs. Leavitt stirred uncomfortably. But the father laughed tolerantly.
He regarded all his daughter’s vagaries (she had several) as part of the
fun of the fair, and quite charming. She rarely could be led to speak of
her “make-believe” playmates, but he knew that they all had names and
individualities, and that “Gertrude” was first favorite. And he knew
that many children played so with mates of their own spirit’s finding.
Gertrude seemed a virtuous, well-behaved young person, quite a suitable
acquaintance for his fastidious daughter.

Servants carried high-tea in just then, and Stephen slipped into the
room with it.

Caroline Leavitt rolled up her crocheting disapprovingly. She detested
having food carried all over the house and devoured in inappropriate
places, and she disliked high-tea. Crumbs got on the Persian carpet and
cream on the carved chairs, and once, when the hybrid refection had been
served in the drawing-room, jam had encrusted the piano. Caroline had
gained a prize for “piano proficiency” in her girlhood’s long-ago. Every
day at four-fifteen it was her habit to commemorate that old victory by
playing at least a few bars of the Moonlight Sonata. For some time after
the episode of the jam, whenever she touched the instrument’s ivory,
small bubbles of thickly boiled blackberry and apple billowed up on to
her manicured nails and her rings. No—she did not approve of
“high-tea”—and _such_ high-tea “all over the house.” But this was the
children’s hour at Deep Dale, and the children’s feast—and wherever
Helen chanced to be at that hour, there that meal was served. Helen
willed it so. Richard Bransby willed it so. Against such an adamant
combine of power and of will-force determined and arrogant, Caroline
knew herself a mere nothing, and she wisely withheld a protest she
realized hopeless.

So now, she laid her lace-work carefully away, and addressed herself to
the silver tea-pot. And she did it in a cheerful manner. She was not a
profound woman, but she was a wise one. The unprofound are often very
wise. And this is especially true of women.


                               CHAPTER V

It was not a boisterous meal. There was not a naturally noisy person
there. Bransby was too cold, Stephen too sensitive, Hugh too heavy, to
be given to the creation of noise. Mrs. Leavitt thought it bad form, and
she was just lowly enough of birth to be tormentedly anxious about good
form. And she was inclined to be fat. Helen was ebullient at times, but
never noisily so; her voice and her motions, her mirth and her
reprovings, were all silvery.

It was a homely hour, and they were all in homely and friendly mood. But
it was Stephen who made himself useful. It was Stephen who remembered
that Aunt Caroline preferred buttered toast to cream sandwiches, and he
carried her the plate on which the toast looked hottest and crispest.
And it was Stephen who checked her hand unobtrusively when she came near
to putting sugar in Bransby’s tea.

Helen had slipped from her father’s knee—she was a hearty little
thing—and motioned Hugh to put one of a nest of tables before the chair
she had selected, and dragged close to Richard’s.

“And what have you been doing all afternoon?” he asked Stephen, as the
boy brought him the cake.

“Thinking.”

“Story,” Helen said promptly, through a mouthful of cream and cocoanut
“You wus just watching the birds.”

“Yes, so I was,” the boy said gently, “and thinking about them.”

“What?” demanded Bransby.

“Thinking how stupid it was to be beaten by birds.”

“Beaten?”

“They fly. We can’t.”

“I see. So you’d like to fly.”

“I’m not sure. I think I might. But I’d jolly well like to be _able_
to.”

The man followed the theme up with the boy. In his stern heart Hugh had
already found a warmer place than Stephen had, and Bransby’s kindliness
to the brothers was as nothing compared to his love of Helen. But it
was—of the three—to Stephen that he talked most often and longest, and
with a seriousness he rarely felt or showed in talk with the others.
Stephen Pryde interested his uncle keenly. Bransby did not think Hugh
interesting, and Helen not especially so—charming (he felt her charm,
and knew that others did who lacked a father’s prejudiced
predisposition), but not notably interesting as a mentality or even as a
character.

She was not an over-talkative child. Bransby suspected that also she was
not over-thoughtful. And he was quite right. She felt a great deal: she
thought very little. And her small thinkings were neither accurate,
searching nor synthetic.

But Stephen thought much and keenly, and the boy talked well, but not
too well. Stephen Pryde made few mistakes. When he did he would probably
make bad ones. He was not given to small blunders. And such few mistakes
as he did make he was gifted with agility to cover up and retrieve
finely. Richard enjoyed talking with Stephen.

Helen was not interested in the flight of birds, and still less in its
possible application to affairs of mercantile profit, or of national
power. She interrupted them at a tense and interesting turn, and neither
the man nor the boy resented it.

“What have you been doing?” she demanded of her father.

“Reading ‘David Copperfield’ until Grant came.”

“Is it a nice book?”

“Yes—very.”

“Is it a story book?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll let you read me some, and see if I like it.”

Bransby pointed to the volume, and Stephen brought it to him, still open
at the passage he had been reading when his clerk had interrupted him.

“Shall I begin at the beginning?”

“No—I mayn’t like it. Do a bit just where you wus. Wait, till I get
back,” and she climbed daintily on to his knee.

And Bransby read, smiling:—“‘“We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I
know,” I replied, “and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is
rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought
Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could
ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should
do—go out of my mind, I think?” “Ah, Trot!” said my aunt, shaking her
head, and smiling gravely, “blind, blind, blind!” “Some one that I know,
Trot,” my aunt pursued, after a pause, “though of a very pliant
disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of
poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain
him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.” “If
you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!” I cried. “Oh, Trot!” she
said again; “blind, blind!” and without knowing why, I felt a vague
unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.’”

“Silly man!” exclaimed Helen. She was bored. “No one shouldn’t be blind.
I’m not blind—not a bit. I see.”

“You! you’ve eyes in the back of your head,” Hugh said, speaking for the
first time in half an hour. In those early days he had a talent for
silence. It was by way of being a family gift.

It seems a pity to feel obliged to record it of the one remark of a
person who so infrequently made even that much conversational
contribution, but Hugh was wrong. Helen was not a particularly observing
child. She felt, she dreamed; but she was as lax of observation as she
was indolent of thought. Perhaps she realized or sensed this, for she
said promptly, “I have not. I see with my front.”

“What do you see now?” her father asked idly.

She pointed to the glowing fire, and sighed dreamily: “I see things, in
there. I see Gertrude. Her face is in there all smiley. And she looks
sleepy.”

Bransby smiled indulgently and cuddled the pretty head nestling in the
crook of his arm.

“David Copperfield” slid to the floor. The opportunity was too good to
be neglected—too inviting. The volume was bound in calf, full limp
calf, and had all the Cruikshank’s illustrations finely reproduced.
Caroline got up very carefully and took up the book. Bransby saw her,
but he only smiled indulgently, and she seized the license of his humor,
and carried volume xi. to its own space on the shelves.

Encouraged craftily by her amused father, Helen chatted on to her friend
Gertrude, and of her. Mrs. Leavitt was shocked, but did not dare show
it, and what would have been the use? Nothing! she knew. But she did so
disapprove of Richard’s encouraging the child in the habit of telling
“stories”—to name very mildly such baseless and brazen fabrications.

Hugh was puzzled, but not unsympathetically so, and less puzzled than
might have been expected of so stolid a boy, and at so self-absorbed an
age.

Stephen was uneasy and angry. _He_ thrilled somewhat to Helen’s fancy,
but he disliked both her claim and his own emotion to it.

All three of these children (for why beat longer about our bush?) in
ways totally, almost antagonistically different, were somewhat
“psychic.”

No one suspected it, much less knew it—and they themselves least of
all. Hugh could not. Stephen would not. Helen was too young.

Psychic science or revelation had not, in those days, had much of a look
in socially. And in Oxshott it had barely been heard of—merely heard of
enough to give Ignorance a meaningless laugh. Spiritual planes and
delicate soul-processes would seem to have little vibration with that
environment of mundane interests and financial aggrandizement. But the
souls of the other plane peep in through odd nooks, and work in
seemingly strange ways. And, too, this one group of people, for all
their wealth and their luxuries, lived rather “apart”—they were in the
social swim—to an extent, and in the commercial ether up to their
necks, but even so, in it, they were in another, and perhaps a more real
and significant, way “cloistered” in it: apart.

“Gertrude is sleepy. I am sleepy too. Gertrude says: ‘Good-night,
Helen.’ Good-night, Gertrude.”

Bransby swung her up to his shoulder and carried her off to bed. And
Hugh, at a gesture of an imperious little hand, gathered up the two
dolls, and followed after with them carefully. Helen was a motherly
little thing—intermittently, and had her children to sleep with
her—sometimes. The chain of flowers lay dying and forgotten.


                               CHAPTER VI

Stephen was not happy. He was loving but not lovable—on the surface at
least. He was sensitive to a fault, brooding, secretive. He had loved
his mother dearly, and Hugh had been her favorite. But that had soured
and twisted him less than had the marriage-misery of her last years. He
had seen and understood most of it; and it had aged and lined his young
face almost from his perambulator days. His two earliest memories were
of her face blistered with tears, and a tea-table on which there had
been no jam, and not too much bread. Secure at Deep Dale, he had jam,
and all such plenties, to spare. And he intended to command jam of his
very own—and cut-glass dishes to serve it in—before he was much older,
and as long as he lived. His days of jam-shortage were past. And they
had left but little scar—if only he could forget that she had shared
and hated it. But the tear-scars on her face, and on her heart, could
never be erased—or from his—or forgotten.

Small boy as he was, all the future lines of his character were clearly
drawn, and Time had but to give them light and shade—and color: there
was nothing more to be done—the outline and the proportions were
complete and unalterable. And at fourteen and a few months he was the
victim of two gnawing wants: heart-hunger and ambition. Few boys of
fourteen are definitely and greatly ambitious, or, if they are, greatly
disturbed as to the feasibility and the details of its fulfillment.
Fourteen is not an age of masculine self-distrust. Masculine
self-depreciation and under-apprisement come slowly, and fairly late in
life. There are rare, notable men to whom they never come. Such men
carry on them a visible and easily-to-be-recognized hall-mark. Their
vocabulary may be scant or Milton-much, but invariably its every seventh
word is “I” or “me” or “my” or “mine.”

Stephen Pryde had no doubt of his own ability to earn success. But his
mind was wide-eyed and clear-eyed, and he doubted if circumstances would
not thwart, much less abet him. Already he saw that he could gain a
great deal through his uncle and in his uncle’s way. The man had said as
much. But Stephen was no disciple, and he was ill-content to win even
success itself in subordination to any other, or in imitation of others
or of their methods. He longed to carve and to climb unaided and alone.
He wished to cleave uncharted skies—as the birds did. Ah! yes, there he
was meek to imitate—to follow and imitate the birds, but not any other
man.

Partly was this ingrained; firm-rooted independence, egoism, partly it
came from the poor opinion he had already formed of his own sex. He
thought none too well of men: his own father had done that to him.
Towards all women he had a sort of pitying, tender chivalry. That his
mother had done to him. He did not over-rate female intellect or
character (like the uncle, whom he resembled so much, intellect in
womenkind did not attract him, and he prized them most when their
virtues were passive and not too diverse), but he bore them one and all
good-will, and the constant small attentions he paid Mrs. Leavitt, and
even the maid-servants, were almost as much a native tenderness as a
calculated diplomacy. Mrs. Leavitt and the maids were not ungrateful.
Women of all sorts and of all conditions are easiest purchased, and
held, with small coins. A husband may break all the commandments, and
break them over his wife’s very back roughly, and be more probably
forgiven than for failing to raise his hat when he meets her on the
street. Stephen was very careful about his hat, indoors and out. He had
seen his father wear his in his mother’s sitting-room, and by her very
bedside. The lesson had sunk, and it stuck.

But his love of his mother, and its jealous observance of her, had
trained him to feel for women rather than to respect them. He had seen
her sicken and shiver under the storm, and bow down and endure it
patiently, when he would have had her breast and quell it. He had not
heard Life’s emphatic telling—he was too young to catch it—that
strength is strongest when it seems weak and meek, that great loyalty is
the strongest of all strength as well as the highest of all virtues, and
that often Loyalty for ermine must wear a yoke,—and always must it bear
uncomplainingly a “friend’s infirmities.”

The boy was a unique, and a blend of his father and his “Uncle Dick.” He
was wonderfully like each. From his mother he had inherited nothing but
a possibility, an aptitude, a predisposition even, towards great
loyalty, which in her had crystallized and perfected into everlasting
and invincible self-sacrifice. In her son it was young yet, plastic and
undeveloped. In maturity it might match, or even exceed, her own; or, on
the other hand, experiences sufficiently rasping and deforming might
wrench and transmute it, under the black alchemy of sufficient tragedy,
even into treachery itself.

If few boys of fourteen are tormented by ambition, very many such
youngsters suffer from genuine heart-hunger. We never see or suspect or
care. They scarcely suspect themselves, and never understand. But the
canker is there, terribly often, and it eats and eats. The heart-ache of
a little child is a hideous tragedy, and when it is untold and unsoothed
it twists and poisons all after life and character. Angels _may_ rise
above such spiritual catastrophe—men don’t.

Even more than Stephen longed to succeed, he longed to be loved. And in
a hurt, dumb boy-way he realized that he did not, as a rule, attract
love.

“Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole
existence.” Hum? There are men _and_ men. (There are even women and
women.) Stephen longed to be very rich, and planned to do it. He longed
to contrive strange, wonderful things that would cleave the air as birds
clove it, revolutionize both Commerce and her servant and master
Transport, make travel a dance and a melody, redraw the map of the
world, carry armies across the hemispheres with a breath, hurl kings
from their thrones, annihilate peoples in an hour—and he planned to do
it: planned as he lay on the grass and watched the birds, planned as he
sat in the firelight, planned as he lay in bed. But more than all this
he longed to be loved: longed but could not plan it. The child knew his
own limitations; and that he did was at once his ability and inability:
it was equipment and drag-chain.

He ached for love. He longed to feel his uncle’s hand in caress on his
shoulder. Once in the twilight he cuddled Helen’s doll to him, in fierce
longing and loneliness of heart. And night after night he prayed that in
his dreams he might hear his mother’s voice. And sometimes he did.
Science asserts that we never _hear_ in our sleep. Science still has
some things to learn.

Stephen loved Hugh, and this affection was returned. But Stephen wanted
more than that; Hugh loved every one. Their mutual fondness was placid
and moderate. And it lacked novelty.

If Hugh loved every one, every one loved Hugh—unless Helen did not. And
Helen was merely a baby, and cared for no one but her father—unless it
was “Gertrude,” whom Stephen hated.

Even Richard Bransby himself, hard and impassive, began to warm to the
younger boy, and Stephen sensed it. He was keen to such things, and read
his uncle the more readily because they resembled each other in so much.

But, much as he desired to be loved, Stephen was not jealous of Hugh.
Jealousy had as yet no hand in his hopes, his fears or his plans:
Jealousy, sometimes Love’s horrid bastard-twin, sometimes Love’s
flaming-sworded angel.

Possibly Stephen’s as-yet escape from jealousy and all its torments he
owed in no small part to Helen’s indifference to Hugh, and to the fact
that Hugh’s fondness of every one made Hugh’s fondness of Helen somewhat
inconspicuous.

For odd Stephen loved wee Helen with a great love—greater than the love
he had given his mother.

The day the boys had first come to Deep Dale Helen, running at play, had
lost a tiny blue shoe in the grounds. Stephen had found and had kept it.

Helen liked her “pretty blue shoes,” and Mrs. Leavitt was sensibly
frugal. The grounds had been searched until they had been almost dug up,
and the entire servant-staff had been angrily wearied of blue kid shoes
and of ferns and geraniums. But Stephen had kept it. He had it still.
And he would have fought any man-force, or the foul fiend himself,
before he would have yielded that bit of sky-blue treasure.

No one understood Stephen, not even the uncle he so resembled. He was
alone and unhappy, only fourteen years old—a quivering personality
concealed beneath a suave mask of ice, and young armor of steel.

Stephen had a tutor.

Helen and Hugh shared a governess.

Both instructors were “daily,” one coming by train from Guildford, the
other by train from London.

Stephen was going to public school in a year or two, Hugh then falling
heir to the tutor.

How long the governess would retain her present position had never been
considered. Probably she would do so for some time. Helen liked her.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                BOOK II


                                THE DARK


                              CHAPTER VII

The years sped.

In the autumn of 1916 Helen was twenty.

The governess had left three years ago. Helen had found her a curate,
and had given her her silver abundant.

Already that curate had had preferment. Richard Bransby had contrived
that, but Helen had instigated.

Stephen and Hugh had gone, in due course, from the tutor to Harrow, from
Harrow to Oxford.

Stephen would have preferred education more technical, and Hugh would
have preferred none.

Hugh was not lazy, but he had little thirst for learning and none for
tables, declensions or isms.

Stephen, might he have followed his own bent, would have studied only
those things which promised to coach him toward aviation in all its
branches and corollaries. But Richard was not to be handled, and to the
school and the ’varsity he chose the boys went.

Being there, Stephen worked splendidly—took honors and contrived to
gain no little of the very things he desired. He had carpentry at
Harrow—and excelled in it. And at Magdalen he bent physics and
chemistry to his particular needs. At both places his conduct and his
industry were exemplary.

Hugh barely passed into Harrow, and barely stayed there. He ran and he
boxed, and at that glorified form of leap-frog which public schools
dignify as “hurdles” he excelled. But he was lax and mischievous, and
twice he only just escaped expulsion. His stay at Oxford was brief and
curtailed. The authorities more than hinted to Bransby that his younger
nephew was not calculated to receive or to give much benefit at Oxford.

Hence the brothers began on the same day a severe novitiate at the great
shipbuilding and shipping offices.

Strangely enough they both did well. Hugh had a happy knack of jumping
to the right conclusions, and he got his first big step up from dreaming
in his sleep the correct solution of a commercial tangle that was vexing
his uncle greatly.

That Hugh’s mind had worked so in his sleep, accomplishing what it had
failed to finish when normally awake, as human minds do now and then,
proved that at core he was interested in the business his careless
manner had sometimes seemed to indicate that he took too lightly. And
this pleased and gratified Richard Bransby even more than the
elucidation of a business difficulty did. As an evidence of the peculiar
psychological workings of human intelligence it interested Bransby not
at all.

Stephen worked hard and brilliantly. From the first he had dreams of
inducing his uncle to add the building of aircraft to their already
enormous building of ships. He nursed his dream and it nursed his
patience and fed his industry. Morton Grant watched over both young men
impartially and devotedly. All his experience was sorted and furbished
for them. All his care and solicitude were shared between them and the
business.

At the first beat of Kitchener’s drum Hugh begged to follow the flag.
And when Bransby at last realized that the war would not “be over by
Christmas” he withdrew his opposition, and Hugh was allowed to join the
army. He had not done ill in the O. T. C. at Harrow. He applied for a
commission and got it. But it was understood that at the end of the war
he would return to the firm. Richard Bransby would tolerate nothing
else.

There had been no talk—no thought even—of soldiering for Stephen. He
was nearly thirty, and seemed older. Never ill, he was not too robust.
He was essential now to his uncle’s great business concern. And
“Bransby’s” was vitally essential to the Government and to the
prosecution of the war: no firm in Britain more so. Stephen was no
coward, but soldiering did not attract him. He had no wish to join the
contemptible little army, destined saviors of England. Had he wished to
do so, the Government itself and the great soldier-dictator would have
forbidden it. Emphatically Hugh belonged in the army. As emphatically
Stephen did not; but did, even more emphatically, belong in the great
shiphouse.

Time and its passing had changed and developed the persons with whom
this history is concerned—as time usually does—along the lines of
least resistance.

Helen had “grown up” and, no longer interested, even intermittently, in
dolls—“Gertrude” and her band quite forgotten—introduced a dozen new
interests, a score of new friends into the home-circle. Guests came and
went. Helen flitted from function to function, and took her cousins with
her, and sometimes even Bransby himself. Aunt Caroline was a sociable
creature for all her Martha-like qualities. She was immensely proud of
the ultra-nice gowns Helen ordered and made her wear, and quite enjoyed
the dinners and small dances they occasionally gave in return for the
constant hospitalities pressed upon the girl and her cousins.

Helen was as flower-like as ever. She loved her father more than all the
rest of the world put together, or had until recently—but after him her
keenest interest, until recently, was in her own wonderful frocks. She
had a genius for clothes, and journeyed far and wide in quest of new and
unusual talent in the needlework line. But above all, her personality
was sweet and womanly. In no one way particularly gifted, she had the
great general, sweeping gift of charm. And her tender, passionate
devotion to her father set her apart, lifted her above the average of
nice girlhood—perfumed her, added to her charm of prettiness and
gracefulness, a something of spiritual charm not to be worded, but
always felt and delightful to feel.

Between the girl and the father was one of the rare, beautiful
intimacies, unstrained and perfect, that do link now and then just such
soft, gay girl-natures to fathers just so rigid and still. And, as it
usually is with such comrades, in this intimate and partisan comradeship
Helen the gentle was the dominant and stronger ruling, with a gay
tyranny, that sometimes swung to a sweet insolence and a caressing
defiance that were love-tribute and flattery, the man of granite and
quiet arrogance.

Wax to Helen, Richard Bransby was granite and steel to others. Grant,
still his man Friday and, even more than indispensable Stephen, his good
right-hand, trusted but ruled, still stood, as he always had and always
would, in considerable awe of him. But the years had sweetened
Bransby—the Helen-ruled years. He had always striven to be a just
man—in justice to himself—but his just-dealing was easier now and
kindlier, and he strove to be just to others for their sakes rather than
for his own. It was less a duty and more an enjoyment than it had been:
almost even a species of stern self-indulgence. Once it had been a
penance. It was penance no longer. With good men penances
conscientiously practised tend to grow easy and even agreeable. The
devout penitent and the zealot need to find new substitutes periodically
for old scourges smooth-worn.

Caroline’s fussinesses amused Richard more than they irritated him. And
Helen no longer was sole in his love. He loved the boys—both of them.
Stephen he loved with pride and some reservation. Their wills clashed
not infrequently, and on one matter always. Hugh, who often compelled
his disapproval, he loved almost as an own son.

Latham found him a more tractable patient than of old. Horace Latham had
reached no slight professional importance now; owned his place on Harley
Street, made no daily rounds, studied more than he practised, had an
eloquent bank account, and “consulted” more often than he directly
practised.

Helen’s little coterie of friends and acquaintances found him an
amiable, if not a demonstrative, host. Even Angela Hilary he suffered
suavely, if not eagerly.

A Mrs. Hilary had bought a bijou place near theirs a few years ago, and
cordial, if not intimate, relations had been established quickly between
Helen Bransby and the rich, volatile American widow in accordance with
the time-honored rule that opposites attract. But some things they had
in common, if only things of no higher moment than chiffons and a pretty
taste in hospitality. Both danced through life—rather. But theirs was
dancing with all the difference. Helen never romped. Her dancing, both
actual and figurative, was seemly and slow as the dance on a Watteau
fan—thistle-down dignified—minuet. Angela’s, fine of its sort, was
less art and more impulse, and yet more studied, less natural. It almost
partook of the order of skirt-dancing. Both dancings were pretty to
watch, Helen’s the prettier to remember. For the matter of that both
dancers were pretty to watch. Helen Bransby at twenty was full as lovely
as her childhood had promised. She had been exquisitely loved, and love
feeds beauty and adds to it. Angela Hilary had the composite comeliness
so characteristic of the well-circumstanced American woman: Irish eyes,
a little shrewder, a little harder, than the real thing, hands and feet
Irish-small, skin Saxon-fair, soft, wayward hair Spanish-dark, French
_chic_, a thin form Slavic-svelt and Paris-clad, the wide red mouth of
an English great-grandmother, and a self-confidence and a social
assurance to which no man ever has attained, or ever will, and no woman
either not born and bred between Sandy Hook and the Golden Gate—a
daring woman, never grotesque; daring in manner, more daring in speech,
most daring of all in dress; but never too daring—for her; fantastic,
never odious—least of all gross. Each of her vagaries suited her, and
the most surprising of all her unexpected gowns became and adorned her:
an artificial, hot-house creature, she was the perfectly natural product
of civilization at once extravagant, well-meaning and cosmopolitan, if
insular too, and she had a heart of gold. A great many people laughed at
Mrs. Hilary, especially English people, and never suspected how much
more she laughed at them, or how much more shrewdly and with how much
more cause—some few liked her greatly, and every one else liked her at
least a little; every one except Horace Latham. Latham was afraid of
her.


                              CHAPTER VIII

One evening, early in the autumn of 1916, Morton Grant passed nervously
by the lodge of Deep Dale, and along the carriage drive that twisted and
curled to the house.

He had cause enough to be nervous. For the second time in thirty years
he was disobeying his chief grossly; and the cause of his present
turpitude could scarcely have been more unpleasant or less reassuring.

Under one arm he carried a large book carefully wrapped in brown paper.
He carried it as if he feared and disliked it, and yet it and its
fellows had been the vessels of his temple and his own dedication for
years.

Grant barely came to Deep Dale. Richard Bransby dealt with his
subordinates not meanly. A turkey at Christmas, a suitable sum of money
on boxing-day, leniency at illness, and a coffin when requisite, were
always forthcoming—but an invitation to dinner was unheard and
unthought of, and even Grant, in spite of the responsibility and
implicit trustedness of his position, and of the intimacy of their
boyhood, scarcely once had tasted a brew of his master’s tea.

A nervous little maid, palpably a war-substitute either for the spruce
man-servant or the sprucer parlor-maid, one of whom had always admitted
him heretofore, answered his ring, and showed him awkwardly into the
library. She collided with him as they went in, and collided with the
door itself as she went out to announce his presence.

“Tell Mr. Bransby I should be most grateful if he would see me when he
is disengaged, and—er—you might add that the matter
is—er—urgent—er—that is, as soon as they have quite finished dinner.
Just don’t mention my being here until he has left the
dining-room—er—in fact, not until he is disengaged—er—alone.”

Left by himself Grant placed his top hat on a table and laid his parcel
beside it. He unfastened the string, and partly unwrapped the ledger.
Walking to the fireplace, he rolled up the string very neatly and put it
carefully in his waistcoat pocket; ready to his hand should he carry the
ledger back to London with him; ready to some other service for “Bransby
and Co.”—if the ledger remained with his chief.

The clerk glanced about the room—and possibly saw it—but he never
turned his back on the big buff book, or his eyes from it long.

It was a fine old-fashioned room, paneled in dark oak. Not in the least
gloomy, yet even when, as now, brilliantly lit, fire on the hearth, the
electric lamps and wall-lights turned up, it seemed invested with
shadows, shadows lending it an impalpable suggestion of mystery. The
room was not greatly changed since the spring evening thirteen years ago
when Helen had sat on her father’s knee here and grown sleepy at his
reading of Dickens. The curtains were new, and two of the pictures. The
valuable carpet was the same and most of the furniture. The flowers
might have been the same—Helen’s favorite heliotrope and carnations.
The dolls were gone. But the banjo on the chesterfield and the box of
chocolates on the window-seat scarcely spoke of Bransby, unless they
told of a subjugation that had outlasted the dollies.

In the old days the room had been rather exclusively its master’s “den,”
more than library, and into which others were not apt to come very
freely uninvited. Helen had changed all that, and so had the years’ slow
mellowing of Bransby himself. “Daddy’s room” had become the heart of the
house, and the gathering-place of the family. But it was _his_ room
still, and in his absence, as his presence, it seemed to breathe of his
personality.

Grant had waited some minutes, but he still stood nervously, when the
employer came in. He eyed Grant rather sourly. Grant stood confused and
tongue-tied.

The master let the man wait long enough to grow still more
uncomfortable, and then said crisply, “Good-evening, Grant.”

The clerk moved then—one eye in awe on Bransby, one in dread on the
ledger. He took a few steps towards Bransby, and began apologetically,
“Good—er—ahem—good-evening, Mr. Bransby. I—er—I trust I am not
disturbing you, but——”

Bransby interrupted sharply, just a glint of wicked humor in his eye,
“Just come from town, eh?”

“Yes, sir—er—quite right——”

“Come straight here from the office, I dare say?” Bransby spoke with a
harshness that was a little insolent to so old, and so tried, a servant.

Morton Grant’s pitiful uneasiness was growing. “Well—er—yes, sir, as a
matter of fact, I did.”

“I knew it,” Bransby said in cold triumph. It was one of the
ineradicable defects of his nature that he enjoyed small and cheap
triumphs, and irrespective of what they cost others.

Grant winced. His uneasiness was making him ridiculous, and it
threatened to overmaster him. “Er—ahem—” he stammered, “the matter on
which I have come is so serious——”

“Grant,” Bransby’s tone was smooth, and so cold that its controlled
sneer pricked, “when my health forced me to take a holiday, what
instructions did I give you?”

“Why, sir—er—you said that you must not be bothered with business
affairs upon any account—not until you instructed me otherwise.”

“And have I instructed you otherwise?” The tone was absolutely sweet,
but it made poor Morton Grant’s veins curdle.

“Well, sir,” he said wretchedly—“er—no, sir, you haven’t.”

Bransby looked at his watch. Almost the tyrant was smiling. “There’s a
train leaving for town in about forty-five minutes—you will just have
time to catch it.” He turned on his heel—he had not sat down—and went
towards the door.

Grant began to feel more like jelly than like flesh and bone, but he
pulled himself together, remembering what was at stake, and spoke more
firmly than he had yet done—more firmly than his employer had often
heard him speak. “I beg your pardon,”—he took a step towards
Bransby—“sir”—there was entreaty in his voice, and command too—“but
you must not send me away like this.”

His tone caught Bransby’s attention. It could not well have failed to do
so. The shipbuilder turned and looked at the other keenly. “Why not?” he
snapped.

“The thing that brought me here is most important.”

“So important that you feel justified in setting my instructions aside?”

“Yes, sir!” holding his ground now.

Bransby eyed him for a long moment.

Grant did not flinch.

“Sit down.”

Grant did so, and with a sigh of relief—the tension a little eased.
What he had before him was hard enough, Heaven knew—but the first point
was gained: Bransby would hear him.

“I always thought,” moving towards his own chair beside the
writing-table, “that obeying orders was the most sacred thing in your
life, Grant. I am anxious to know what could have deprived you of that
idea.”

Anxious to know! And when he did know!—Morton Grant began to tremble
again, and was speechless.

Bransby studied him thoughtfully. “Well?” he spoke a shade more kindly.

“The matter I—I—I——”

“Yes—yes?” impatience and some sympathy for the other’s distress were
struggling.

Well—it had to be told. He had come here to tell it—and to tell it had
braved and breasted Bransby’s displeasure as he had never done before.
But he could not say it with his eyes on the other’s. He hung his head,
ashamed and broken. But he spoke—and without stammer or break: “We’ve
been robbed of a large sum of money, sir.”


                               CHAPTER IX

Bransby watched Grant under beetling brows, his thin lips set, stiff and
angry. He valued his money. He had earned it hard, and to be robbed of a
farthing had always enraged him. But more than any money—much more, he
valued the prestige of his business and the triumphant working of his
own business methods. Its success was the justification of his
arbitrariness and his egoism.

He was angry now, in hot earnest—very angry. “Robbed?” he said at last
quietly. It was an ominous quietude. When he was angriest, invariably he
was quietest.

“Ten thousand pounds, sir,” Grant said wearily.

“Ten thousand pounds. Have you reported it to the police?”

“No, sir.”

“Why do you come to me instead of them?”

“Well, sir, you see it only came to light this afternoon. You know the
war has disturbed all our arrangements—made us very backward.”

Richard Bransby knew nothing of the sort. His business prevision and his
business arrangements were far too masterly to be greatly disarranged by
a mere war, had Heaven granted him subordinates with half his own grit
and devise. But he let that pass.

And Grant continued. “The accountants have been unable to make their
yearly audit of our books until this week. It was during their work
to-day that they discovered the theft. So I thought before taking any
action I had best come straight to you.”

“Who stole it?”

Morton Grant’s terrible moment had come—his ordeal excruciating and
testing. He looked piteously toward his hat. He felt that it might help
him to hold on to it. But the hat was too far to reach, and alone,
without prop, he braced himself for his supreme moment of loyalty.

“Who stole it?” Bransby’s patience was wearing thin. The fumbling man
prayed for grit to take the plunge clean and straight. But the deep was
too cold for his nerve. He shivered and slacked.

“Why—er—the fact of the matter is—we are not quite sure.”

“Yes, you are—who stole it?”

“Mr. Bransby, I—” the dry old lips refused their office.

Even in his own impatience, tinged with anxiety now (it disturbed him to
have trusted and employed untrustworthy servants), Bransby was sorry for
the other’s painful embarrassment. And for that he said all the more
roughly, “Come, come, man. Out with it.”

“Well, sir,” Grant’s voice was nervously timid, almost craven—and not
once had he looked at Richard Bransby—“all the evidence goes to prove
that only one man could have done it.”

“And who is that man?” demanded the quick, hard voice.

With a supreme effort of courage, which a brave man never knows—it is
reserved for the cowards—Grant lifted his eyes square to the other, and
answered in a voice so low that Bransby scarcely could have heard the
words had they not rung clear with desperation and resolve, “Your—your
nephew, Mr. Hugh Pryde.”

For a moment Richard Bransby yielded himself up to amazement,
over-sweeping and numb. Then his face flushed and he half rose. For that
one instant Morton Grant was in danger of his employer’s fingers
fiercely strangling at his throat—and he knew it. His eyes filled with
tears—not for himself, pity for Bransby.

Then Bransby laughed. It was a natural laugh—he was genuinely
amused—but full of contempt. “My nephew Hugh?” he said good-humoredly.

“Yes, sir.” The low words were emphatic. Grant was past flinching now.

“Grant, you must be out of your senses——”

“It’s the truth, sir; I am sorry, but it’s the truth.”

Bransby disputed him roughly. “It can’t be. He is my own flesh and
blood. I love the boy. Why, he’s just received his commission, Grant.
And you come sneaking to me accusing him like this—” He threw his head
up angrily and his eyes encountered Helen’s eyes in the portrait of her
that hung over the fireplace: a breathing, beautiful thing, well worth
the great price he had paid for it. As he looked at it his words died on
his lips, and then rushed on anew in fresh and uncontrolled fury—“How
dare you say he’s a thief—how dare you?”

Grant rose too. He was standing his ground resolutely now. The worst was
over for him: the worst for Richard Bransby was just to come. Pity made
the clerk brave and direct. “I’ve only told you the truth, sir,” he said
very quietly.

Grant’s calmness checked Bransby’s rage. For a moment or two he wavered
and then, reseating himself quietly, he said in a voice quiet and
restrained, “What evidence do you base this extraordinary charge on?” As
he spoke he picked up from the table a little jade paper-weight and
fingered it idly. He had had it for years and often handled it so. No
one else ever touched it—not even Helen. He dusted it himself, with a
silk handkerchief kept for that purpose in a drawer to his hand. It was
worth its weight in pure gold, a moon-faced, green Chinese god squatted
on a pink lotus flower.

Grant answered him immediately. “The shortage occurred in the African
trading account.”

“Well?”

“That was entirely in charge of Mr. Hugh; except for him,” Grant
continued, with the kind relentlessness of a surgeon, “no one has access
to those accounts but his brother, Mr. Stephen, and myself. I do not
think that you will believe that either Mr. Stephen Pryde or myself
tampered——”

Bransby brushed that aside with a light sharpness that was something of
an apology, and completely a vote of credit. “Of course not. Go on.”

“Those accounts have been tampered with.”

“But Hugh has not been at the office for months,” Bransby said eagerly,
the hopefulness of his voice betraying how sharp his fear had been in
spite of himself. Acute masters do not easily doubt the conviction of
the word of this world’s rare Morton Grants—“not for months. He’s been
training.”

“The theft occurred before he left us.”

“Oh!” trying to conceal his disappointment, but succeeding not too well.

“Drafts made payable to us are not entered in the books. The accounts
were juggled with so that the shortage would escape our notice.”

Bransby’s teeth closed on his lip. “Is that the entire case against
Hugh?” he demanded sharply, clutching at any hope.

Grant stood up beside the ledger, and opened it remorselessly. What the
remorse at his old heart was only the spirit of a dead woman knew—_if_
the dead know. “The alterations in the books are in his handwriting,” he
said.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I brought the ledger down so that you might see for yourself, sir.” He
placed the volume on the table before Bransby, took a memorandum from
his waistcoat pocket, and consulted it. “The irregularities occur on
pages forty-three——”

Bransby put on his glasses and opened the book scornfully. He believed
in Hugh, and now his belief would be vindicated. Grant was faithful, no
question of that, but a doddering old blunderer. Well, he must not be
too hard on Grant, and he would not, for really he had been half
afraid—from the so-far evidence—himself for a breath or two.

“Page forty-three—yes.” He looked at it. “Yes.” His face was
puzzled—his voice lacked triumph.

“Fifty-nine,” Grant prompted.

Bransby turned to it. “Fifty-nine—yes.”

“Eighty-eight.”

“Eighty-eight.” He looked at it steadily. Slowly belief in Hugh was
sickened into suspicion. Bransby put down the jade toy held till now
idly, and took up a magnifying glass. Suspicion was changing to
conviction. “Yes,” he said grimly. Just the one word—but the one word
was defeat. He was convinced, convinced with the terrible conviction of
love betrayed and outraged—loyalty befouled by disloyalty. Violet
seemed to stand before him—Violet as a child. A lump sobbed in his
throat.

“One hundred and two.”

Staring straight before him, “What number?” he said.

“One hundred and two,” Grant repeated.

“One hundred and two—yes.” But he did not look at the page, he was
still staring straight before him, looking through the long years at the
sister he had loved—Violet in her wedding dress. “Yes.” Still it was
Violet he saw—he had no sight for the page of damnation and treachery.
Violet as he had seen her last, cold in her shroud. Slowly he closed the
book—slowly and gently. He needed it no more. He had nothing more to
fear from it, nothing more to hope. He was convinced of his nephew’s
guilt. “My God.” It was a cry to his Maker for sympathy—and rebuke
rather than prayer.

“The alterations are unmistakably in Mr. Hugh’s handwriting, sir,” Grant
said sorrowfully.

“But why,” Richard Bransby cried with sudden passion, “why should he
steal from me, Grant? Answer me that. Why should he steal from me?”

“Some time ago, sir—after Mr. Hugh had joined the army—it came to my
ears—quite by accident, as a matter of fact—through an anonymous
letter——”

Bransby uttered a syllable of contempt.

Grant acquiesced, “Yes, sir, of course—_but_—I—er—verified its
statements that while Mr. Hugh was still with us—he had been gambling
rather heavily and for a time was in the hands of the money-lenders.”

“Certain of this?”

“Quite.”

“And I trusted that boy, Grant. I would have trusted him with
anything”—his eyes turned to the pictured face over the
fireplace—“anything”—and his hand playing with the jade paper-weight
trembled.

“I know.” And Grant did know. Had not he trusted him too—and loved
him—and for the same woman’s sake?

The hand on the little jade god grew steady and still. The man gripped
it calmly; he had regained his grip of self. “Except yourself, who has
any knowledge of this affair?”

“Only the accountants, sir. Mr. Stephen Pryde has not been at the office
for the past few days.”

“I know. He is staying here with me.” Then the mention of Stephen’s name
suggested to him a pretext and a vent to give relief to his choking
feelings, and he added in querulous irritation, “He’s down here to worry
me again about that cracked-brain scheme of his for controlling the
world’s output of aeroplane engines. He’s as mad as the Kaiser, and
about as ambitious and pig-headed. I’ve told him that Bransby and Co.
built ships and sailed ’em, and that was enough. But not for him. He’s
the first man I’ve ever met who thinks he knows how to conduct my
business better than I do—the business I built up myself. Of course I
know he has brains—but he should have ’em—he’s my nephew—that’s why I
left him the management of my business at my death—fortunate,
fortunate——”

“Yes, sir. But about Mr. Hugh?”

“Ah!” In his irritation over Stephen—an old irritation—the thought of
Hugh had for a moment escaped their uncle. It returned to him now, and
his face fell from anger to brooding sorrow, “Yes, yes, about Hugh.” He
stared in front of him in deep thought, his face working a little.

“I think that, perhaps——” the clerk began timidly.

But Bransby silenced him with an impatient gesture. “The accountants?
Can you trust them?”

“Absolutely.”

“They won’t talk?”

“Not one word.”

“I know there is no need to caution you.”

“Thank you.”

“I must think this over for a day or two—I must think what is best to
be done. Go back to town and have everything go on as if nothing had
happened. Go back on the next train. And, Grant, you’d best leave the
house at once. Hugh is staying here with me, too. I don’t want him to
know you’ve been here.”

“Very good, Mr. Bransby,” Grant said, picking up his hat, and turning to
the ledger.

But Bransby stayed him. “I’ll keep the ledger here with me. I shall want
to look over it again.”

Grant took the memorandum slip from the pocket to which he had restored
it when Bransby shut the book, and held it towards his employer in
silence. In silence Bransby took it.

“I am—er—I am very sorry, sir,” Grant faltered, half afraid to voice
the sympathy that would not be stifled.

“Yes, yes, Grant, I know,” Richard Bransby returned gently. They looked
in each other’s eyes, two old men stricken by a common trouble, a common
disappointment, and for the moment, as they had not been before, in a
mutual sympathy. “You shall hear from me in a day or two.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And, Grant——”

Grant turned back, nearly at the door, “Yes, sir?”

With a glint of humor, a touch of affection, and a touch of pathos,
Bransby said, “You were quite justified in setting aside my orders.”


                               CHAPTER X

The two stricken men parted then, one going down the road with slouched
shoulders and aimless gait, feeling more than such a type of such years
and so circumstanced often has to feel, but devising nothing, suffering
but not fighting. There was no fight in him—none left—his interview
with Bransby had used it all up—to the last atom.

Richard Bransby sat alone with his trouble, cut, angry, at bay—already
devising, weighing, fighting, twisting and turning the bit of jade in
his nervous fingers. He rose and pulled open a drawer of his table and
laid the ledger in it with a quiet that was pathetic. For a moment he
stood looking at the book sadly.

How much that book had meant to this man only just such men could gauge.
It was his _libra d’ora_, his high commission in the world’s great
financial army, and his certificate of success in its far-flung battle
front. It was his horoscope, predicted and cast in his own keen boy’s
heart and head, fulfilled in his graying old age. It was the record of
over forty years of fierce fight, always waged fairly, of a business
career as stiff and sometimes as desperate and as venturesome as
Napoleon’s or Philip’s, but never once smirched or touched with
dishonor—no, not with so much as one shadow of shame. He had
fought—ah! how he had fought, from instinct, for Alice, for Helen—and,
by God! yes, lately for Violet’s boys too—he had fought, and always he
had fought on and on to success: bulldog and British in tenacity, he had
been Celtic-skillful, and many a terrible corner had he turned with a
deft fling of wrist and a glow in his eye that might have been
envied—and certainly would have been applauded and loved—on Wall
Street, or that fleeter, less scrupulous street of high-finance—La
Salle. It was his escutcheon—all the blazon he had ever craved—and
now——He closed the drawer swiftly and softly. Many a coffin lid has
been closed with pain less profound.

Then his quiet broke, and for a moment the frozen tears melted down his
trembling face, and the terrible sobs of manhood and age thwarted and
hurt to the quick shook his gaunt body. A cry broke from him—a cry of
torture and love. “Hugh—Hugh!”

For a few moments he let the storm have its will of him; he had to. Then
his will took its turn, asserted itself and he commanded himself again.

Bransby turned quietly away with a sigh. For a space he stood in deep
thought. Quite suddenly a pain and a faintness shot through him,
bullet-quick, nerve-racking. He forgot everything else—everything:
which is perhaps the one pleasant thing that can be said of such
physical pain; it banishes all other aches, and shows heart and head who
is their master.

White to his lips, pure fright in his eyes, Bransby contrived to reach a
chair by a side-table on which a tantalus stood unobtrusively. It always
was there. There was one like it in his bedroom, and another in his
private room at the office. And Richard Bransby was an abstemious man,
caring little for his meat, nothing at all for his drink. Tobacco he had
liked once, but Latham had stinted him of tobacco. With the greatest
difficulty he managed to pour out some brandy—and to gulp it. For a
short space he sat motionless with closed eyes. But some one was coming.

With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together. He got out of the
chair, tell-tale near that tantalus, and with the criminal-like
secretiveness of a very sick man, pushed his glass behind the decanter.
He had sauntered to another seat, moving with a lame show of
nonchalance, and taking up his old plaything, when the footsteps he had
heard came through the door.

It was Horace Latham. “Alone?”

“Oh! is that you, doctor? Come in—come in. Have a cigar?”

The physician stood behind his host, smiling, debonair, groomed to a
fault, suspiciously easy of manner, lynx-eyes apparently unobservant, he
himself palpably unconcerned. “Thanks,” he said—“I find a subtle joy in
indulging myself in luxuries which my duties compel me to deny to
others.” He chose a cigar—very carefully—from the box Bransby had
indicated. But he diagnosed those Havanas with his touch-talented
finger-tips. His microscope eyes were on Bransby.

Bransby knew this, or at least feared it, though Latham stood behind
him.

Still fighting desperately against his weakness (he had much to do just
now; Latham must not get in his way), he said, doing it as well as he
could, “Oh, I—I don’t mind—next to smoking myself—I like to watch
some one else enjoying a good cigar.”

Latham’s face did not change in the least, nor did his eyes shift. He
came carelessly around the table, facing his host now, never relaxing a
covert scrutiny, as bland as it was keen. “In order,” he said, “to give
you as much pleasure as possible I shall enjoy this one thoroughly. Can
you give me a match?”

“Of course. Stupid of me.” Bransby caught up a match-stand with an
effort and offered it. Latham pretended not to see it. Bransby was
forced to light a match. He contrived to, and held it towards Latham, in
a hand that would shake. The physician threw his cigar aside with a
quick movement, and caught his friend’s wrist, seized the flaming match
and blew it out.

“I knew it,” Latham said sternly. “Bransby, you are not playing fair
with me. You’ve just had another of those heart attacks.”

“Nonsense,” the other replied with uneasy impatience.

“Then why are you all of a tremble? Why is your hand shaking? Why is
your pulse jumping?”

“I had a slight dizziness,” Bransby admitted wearily.

“What caused it?” Latham asked sharply.

“Grant brought me some bad news from the office.”

“Well—what of it? The air is full of bad news now. You can afford to
lose an odd million now and then. But what business had Grant here? What
business had you to see him? You promised me that you would not even
think of business, much less discuss it with any one, until I gave you
leave.”

“This was exceptional.”

The physician sat down, his eyes still on his patient, and said, his
voice changed to a sudden deep kindness, “Bransby, I am going to be
frank with you—brutally frank. You’re an ill man—a very ill man
indeed. A severe attack of this—‘dizziness’ as you call it—will—well,
it might prove fatal. Your heart’s beat shown by the last photograph we
had taken by the electric cardigraph was bad—very bad.”

“I’ve heard all this before.”

“And have paid no heed to it. Bransby, unless you give me your word to
obey my instructions absolutely, I will wash my hands of your case.”

“Don’t say that.” In spite of himself Bransby’s voice shook.

“I mean it.” Latham’s voice came near shaking too, but professional
training and instinct saved it. “Well?”

“This—this news I have just had—I must make a decision concerning it.
It can’t cause me any further shock. As soon as I have dismissed it, and
I will very soon, I give you my word, I’ll do precisely as you say.”


                               CHAPTER XI

“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room,
Daddy.”

As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing
look, and shifted a little from the light.

Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I
kept him.”

“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice.

“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips,
a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took
a quick half-step towards him.

“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?”

The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham
could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more
anxious.

“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential
chat about?”

Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her
flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was
asking your advice about matrimony.”

“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his
precious jade god with which he was still toying.

Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the
world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely.

“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the
adamant bachelor of Harley Street?”

Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is
contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.”

“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now.

Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss
Bransby exaggerates the danger——”

“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?”

“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby.

“Angela Hilary.”

Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh?
Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear
fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh! he hasn’t proposed _yet_, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent.

“He has not!” assented Latham briskly.

“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly.

“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention
of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.”

“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor.

“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment.

“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”

“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really
considerably alarmed.

Helen was delighted. “I think it may.”

“Good heavens!”

“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he
always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the
opposite sex.”

Latham groaned.

“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is
entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come
about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.”

“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered.

“Really?” quizzed Bransby.

“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a
physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has
nobly resolved to cure him of it.”

“But I don’t wish to be cured.”

“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a
patient of yours who talked like that?”

Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know
I am staying with you?”

“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red
head.

But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which
Richard Bransby winced again.

“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad
to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.”

“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his
shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young
figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second
lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the
throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus
leaves.

“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said,
laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you,
sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.”

“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He
already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting.

“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her.

“No, not yet.”

Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came
quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope
Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said.

Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive
look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?”

“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked
no further questioning.

Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been
strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle
chuckling.

“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one
chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning,
he treats it as if it was a national calamity.”

Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face.
It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant
has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely.

Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a
good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he
strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave
way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its
treasures.

Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought
him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?”

“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.”

Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had
heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly.

Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however,
that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of
aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.”

Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly.

Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with
me?”

“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it
blindly, simply because it came from me——”

But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it
because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it
were, I would have thought of it.”

“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the
elder had, but there was pleading in his voice.

Latham was watching them now—closely.

“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly,
“and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my
establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to
induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only
that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able
that can be turned to that use.”

“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world
will be in the air.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And no one believed in steel ships.”

“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and
always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen.

“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of
transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who
realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.”

“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our
business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on
ambitious schemes. We make money enough.”

“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me
keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.”
The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer,
Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now
on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The
voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly
pleading—“Uncle Dick——”

But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its
revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no
resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell
you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all
about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that
ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——”

Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, you _must not_
excite yourself.”

Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down
with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter.

Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a
half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but
black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes.


                              CHAPTER XII

The same group was gathered in the same room just twenty-three hours
later. But Mrs. Leavitt, detained last night on one of her many domestic
cares (she never had learned to wear her domestic cares lightly, and
probably would have enjoyed them less if she had) was here also
to-night: an upright, satin-clad figure very busy with an elaborate
piece of needlework. She made no contributions to the chat—the new
stitch was difficult—but constantly her eye glanced from her needle,
here, there and everywhere—searching for dust.

Richard Bransby had not yet readied his decision, and the self-suspense
was punishing him badly. Latham was anxious. His keen eyes saw a dozen
signs he disliked.

Stephen sat apart smoking moodily, but watchful—a dark, well-groomed
man, with but one beauty: his agile hands. They looked gifted, deft and
powerful. They were all three.

Again Helen and Hugh were together at a far end of the big room,
chatting softly. Bransby watched them uneasily. (Stephen was glad to
notice that.)

Bransby stood it a little longer, and then he called, “Helen!”

She rose and came to him at once, “Yes, Daddy?”

Bransby fumbled rather—at a loss what to say—what excuse to make for
having called her. He even stammered a little. “Why—why—” then
glancing by accident towards the book-shelves, a ruse occurred to him
that would answer, that would keep her from Hugh, as his voice had
called her from him. “I don’t think,” he said, “that Latham has seen
that new edition of Dickens of mine. Show it to him. Show him the
illustrations especially.”

Latham raised a hand in mock horror. “_Another_ edition!”

But even a better diversion was to hand. Barker stood palpitating in the
door with which she had just collided, her agitation in no way soothed
by the fact that Hugh winked at her encouragingly. “Mrs. Hilary,” she
announced, crimsoning. The girl could scarcely have blushed redder if
she had been obliged to read her own banns.

Angela Hilary came in with almost a run; seeing Helen, she rushed on her
and embraced her dramatically with a little cry. She was almost
hysterical—but prettily so, quite altogether prettily so. She wore the
unkempt emotion as perfectly as she did her ravishing frock—you
couldn’t help thinking it suited her—not the frock—though indeed that
did, too, to a miracle.

“Helen! Oh, my dear!” Seeing Bransby, she released the smiling Helen,
and dashed at him, seizing his hand. “Mr. Bransby, oh—I am so glad!
Dear Mrs. Leavitt, too: I am so relieved”—which was rather more than
Caroline could have said. She disliked being hugged, especially just
after dinner, and she had lost count, and dropped her fine crochet-hook.

Mrs. Hilary turned to Stephen and wrung his hand warmly, half sobbing,
“It is Mr. Pryde?”

“Yes,” he told her gravely, “I have not changed my name since last
week.”

But Angela paid no attention to what he said. She rarely did pay much
attention to what other people said. “Dear Mr. Pryde,” she bubbled on at
him, “oh! and you are quite all right.” Hugh came strolling down the
room. Angela Hilary was a great favorite of his. She rushed to him and
caught him by the shoulder, “Lieutenant Hugh. Oh, how do you do?” Then
she caught sight of Latham. She pounced on him. He edged away, a little
embarrassed. She followed the closer—“Dr. Latham! Now my cup _is_ full.
Oh! this is wonderful.”

“Yes, isn’t it!” he stammered, greatly embarrassed. Through the back of
his head he could see Helen watching him. What a nuisance the woman was,
and how fiendishly pretty! Really, American women ought to be locked up
when they invaded London, at least if they were half as lovely and a
quarter as incalculable as this teasing specimen. Interning Huns seemed
fatuous to him, when such disturbers of Britain’s placidity as this were
permitted abroad. Positively he was afraid of this bizarre creature.
What would she say next? What do?

What she did was to seize him by his beautifully tailored arm. Latham
hated being hugged, and at any time, far more than Mrs. Leavitt did.
Indeed he could not recall that he ever had been hugged. He was
conscious of no desire to be initiated into that close procedure—and,
of all places to suffer it, this was about as undesirable as he could
imagine. And this woman respected neither places nor persons. She had
hugged poor Mrs. Leavitt unmistakably. What if——He flushed and tried
to extricate his coat sleeve.

Angela held him the tighter and looked tenderly into his eyes with her
great Creole eyes, surely inherited from some southern foremother. He
thought he heard Helen giggle softly. “My _dear_ Dr. Latham! Oh!”—then,
with a sudden change of manner, that was one of her most bewildering
traits, an instant change this time from the hysterical to the
commonplace—“You will have lunch with me to-morrow—half-past one.” It
was not a question, but simply an announcement.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Latham began. “I am returning to town on an early
train.” Yes, he _did_ hear Helen smother a laugh?—hang the girl! and
that was Hugh’s chuckle.

“Pouf!” Angela Hilary blew his words aside as if they had been a wisp of
thistledown. “Then you’ll have to change your plans and take a later
one.”

“But really I——”

“We’ll consider it settled. You men here all need reforming,” she added
severely to Hugh, catching his eye. “In America we women bring up our
men perfectly: they do us great credit.”

“But this is not America,” Stephen Pryde interposed indolently.

Angela Hilary drew herself up to all her lovely, graceful height. “But I
am American—an American woman.” She said it very quietly. No English
woman living could have said it more quietly or more coldly. It was all
she said. But it was quite enough. Horace Latham took out his
engagement-book, an entirely unnecessary bit of social by-play on his
part, and he knew it. He knew in his startled bachelor heart that he
would not forget that engagement, or arrive late at the tryst. But he
was not going to marry any one, much less be laughed into it by Helen
Bransby, or witched into it by bewildering personality and composite
loveliness. And as for marrying an American wife—he, Horace Latham,
M.D., F.R.C.P.—the shades of all his ancestors forbid! But what was the
tormenting thing doing now?

Suddenly remembering the object of her visit, she pushed an easy-chair
into the center of the room (claiming and taking the stage as it were)
and sank into it hysterically.

Mrs. Leavitt looked up uneasily; she hated the furniture moved about.

“Oh! thank Heaven,” cried Angela, “you are all here.”

“Why shouldn’t we be all here?” laughed Helen.

“I’ve seen all my friends in the neighborhood now,” Angela answered,
relaxing and lying back in relief, “and every one is all right.”

Even Bransby was amused. “Why shouldn’t they be all right?” he asked,
laughing, and motioning Latham towards the cigars.

“Don’t jest, Mr. Bransby,” she implored him. “I have had a very solemn
communication this afternoon.”

“Good gracious!” Hugh said.

“Communication?” Helen queried.

They all gathered about her now—with their eyes—in amused
bewilderment. Even Aunt Caroline looked up from her lace-making.

Angela nodded gravely. “Yes.”

“A—er—communication from whom?” Stephen asked lazily.

“From Wah-No-Tee.”

“Who in the world is Wah-No-Tee?” Pryde demanded.

“Why, my medium’s Indian control.”

Hugh chuckled—his laugh always was a nice boyish chuckle. Mrs. Leavitt
looked shocked—Stephen winked at his cigarette as he lit it. Latham
laid down the cigar he had selected but not yet lit.

“Indian control?” Bransby said—quite at a loss.

Helen explained. “Mrs. Hilary is interested in spiritualism, Daddy.”

“Oh!” Bransby was frankly disgusted. Either Angela did not notice this,
or was perfectly indifferent.

Stephen was greatly amused. A charming smile lit his sharp face. “Is it
permitted to ask what Wah-No-Tee’s communication was, Mrs. Hilary?” he
said—almost caressingly.

“She told me——”

“Oh—” interjected Stephen—“Wah-No-Tee is a lady?”

“Oh! Quite. She told me this morning that one of my dearest friends was
just ‘passing over.’ I was so worried. I hurried back from town as
quickly as I could, and ever since dinner I have been rushing about
calling on every dear friend I have”—she gave Latham a soft look. “And,
as I said—they are all quite all right. Silly mistake!”

Bransby gave a short grunt. “Surely, Mrs. Hilary,” he said irritably,
“you’re not serious.”

“I am always serious,” she told him emphatically. “I love being
serious.”

Bransby picked up the paper-weight and shook it irritably, god, lotus
and all. “But you can’t believe in such rubbish.”

Helen caught his hand warningly. “Daddy! you’ll break poor old Joss!”
For a moment his hand and her young hand closed together over the costly
toy, and then she made him put it down, prying under his heavy fingers
with her soft ones.

“Of course, I believe in it,” Angela said superiorly. “Why, there have
been quite a number of books written about it lately.”

“Foolish books,” snapped Bransby.

Mrs. Hilary answered him most impressively. “There are more
what-you-may-call-’ems in Heaven and Earth, Horatio——” she said
earnestly.

Bransby interrupted her, absently in his irritation taking up “Joss”
again. “But, my dear lady——”

“Even men of science believe.” Angela Hilary could interrupt as well as
the next.

“Now-a-days men of science believe anything—even such stuff as this.”
Again Helen gently rescued the bit of jade.

“‘Stuff!’ Mr. Bransby; it is not ‘stuff’!”

“But your own words prove that it is,” Bransby continued the duel.

“My own words?”

“You’ve just admitted your—‘communication’ I think you called it—was a
silly mistake.”

For one time in her life she was completely non-plused. There had not
been many such times.

“Well—well——” she began, but she could find no useful words. Her
annoyance was so keen that Helen feared she was going to cry. She could
cry, too—Helen had seen her do it. Helen caught up a box of cigarettes
and carried them to Angela, hoping to divert her.

“Do have a cigarette,” she urged.

Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently, but sadly. Helen threw Hugh a look
of despair.

That warrior was no diplomatist, but a beautifully obedient lover. He
hurried to Mrs. Hilary and bent over her almost tenderly, and said,
“Ripping weather—what?”

Mrs. Hilary gave him a baleful look—almost a glare—and turned her
shoulder on him. Hugh shrugged his shoulders helplessly, throwing Helen
an apologetic look.

Helen, in despair, nodded imploringly at Stephen. He smiled, lowered his
cigarette, and addressed their volatile guest. “What a charming frock
that is, Mrs. Hilary.”

The delightful comedienne threw him a sharp look—and melted. “Do you
think so really?”

“It’s most becoming,” he said enthusiastically.

A smile creamed sunnily over the petulant, delicate face. “I think it
does suit me,” she said joyfully.

They all gave a sigh of relief.

“Who made it for you, Angela?” Helen asked hurriedly.

“Clarice—you know, in Albemarle Street.” The cure was complete.

But Helen repeated the dose. “She does make adorable things. I am going
to try her. You know Mrs. Montague goes to her, and she says——”

But what Mrs. Montague said was never told, for at the Verona-like name
Angela Hilary sprang to her feet with a scream of “Good Heavens!”

“Why, what’s up?” Hugh exclaimed.

“I forgot to call on the Montagues—and poor dear Mr. Montague has such
dreadful gout. How could I be so heartless as to forget the Montagues?
Such perfectly dreadful gout. Oh, well, one never knows—one never
knows. Good-night, everybody. I am sure you won’t mind my rushing off
like this”—both Bransby and Caroline looked resigned—“but I am so
worried. Good-night—good-night.” She paused in the door, “Don’t forget,
Dr. Latham, to-morrow at half-past one sharp.” She threw him a sweet,
imperative look, and was gone—as she had come—in a silken whirl and a
jangle of jewels and chains.


                              CHAPTER XIII

Richard Bransby looked after her sourly.

“Humph,” he said. “What a foolish woman.”

“Yes, silly,” Stephen agreed.

“So foolish she dares to believe—in things,” Horace Latham said slowly.

They all looked at him in amazement. “Latham!” Bransby exclaimed.

The physician turned and met his gaze. “Yes?”

“You don’t mean to tell me that you believe in all this hopeless drivel
of ‘mediums’ and ‘control’ and spirit communications.”

“I don’t know,” Latham said musingly.

“Well, upon my word!”

“Of course,” Latham continued, “some of it—much of it—sounds
incredible—beyond belief—and yet—well, some years ago wireless
telegraphy, the telephone, a hundred other things that we have seen
proved, would have seemed quite as incredible. With those things in
mind, how can we absolutely deny this thing? How can we be sure that
these people—foolish as some of them certainly appear—are not upon the
threshold of a great truth?”

The hand that held the paper-weight tightened angrily. “And you, a
sensible man, tell me that you believe that the spirits of those who
have gone before us come back to earth, and spend their time knocking on
walls, rocking tables, whirling banjos, and giving silly women silly
answers to silly questions!”

“No—not that exactly.” Latham was smiling. “But my profession—it
brings me very close to death—I’ve seen so much suffering lately.
Well—if one believes in God—how can we believe that death is the end?
I know I don’t.”

Helen’s hand lay on the table, she was standing near her father. He laid
his palm on hers—and sat musing.

“No,” he said after a pause, “neither do I.”

“I’m sure it isn’t!” the girl said.

“This is getting a bit over my head,” Stephen Pryde said with a shrug,
rising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a stroll.”

Latham looked at him with a smile of apprisement, “I take it you don’t
share our belief, Pryde?”

Stephen smiled in return, and a little contemptuously.

“I am afraid I am what you would call a rank materialist. To me death is
the end—complete annihilation. That’s why I mean to get everything I
can out of life.”

“Oh, Stephen—no!” his cousin cried. “You mustn’t believe that! You
can’t! Think! What becomes of the mind, the heart, the soul, the thing
that makes us think, and love and hate and eat and move, quite aside
from muscles and bones and veins? The thing that is we, and drives us,
the very life of us?”

“Just what becomes of an aeroplane when it flies foul, or is _killed_,
and comes crashing down to earth: done, killed, I tell you, just as much
as a dead man is killed—and no more. Last week, near Hendon, I saw a
biplane, a single seater, fighter, die. Something went wrong when she
was high, going beautifully, she side-slipped abruptly to port, and
trembled on her wing-tip just as I’ve seen a bird do a thousand times,
and she sickened and staggered down to her doom, faint, torn and
bleeding, twisted and moaned on the grass, gave a last convulsive groan,
a last shudder, and then lay still, a huddled mass of oil, broken
struts, smashed propeller, petrol dripping slowly from her shattered
engine, her sectional veins bleeding, her rudder gone, her ailerons
useless, forever, her landing-gear ruined: killed—dead—a corpse—for
the rubbish heap.”

“Oh! Stephen,” whispered Helen, “and the pilot?”

“The pilot?” Pryde said indifferently. “Oh! he was dead too, of course.”

He picked up a fresh cigarette and sauntered from the room.

Of the injured and destroyed machine he had spoken with more emotion
than any one of them had ever heard in his voice before. And there was a
long pause before Bransby, turning again to Latham, said:

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your argument, Doctor. Surely one can
believe in immortality without believing in spiritualism?”

“I don’t know that that is my argument. But lately one has thought a
great deal over such things. The war has brought them very close to all
of us.”

“Yes,” Bransby concurred thoughtfully. And Caroline Leavitt laid down
her work a moment and echoed sadly, “Yes.”

And Latham continued: “Those lives that were given out there—so
unselfishly—surely that cannot be the end—and, if we don’t really die,
how can we be certain that the spiritual power—the _driving_ force,
that continues to exist, cannot come back and make its existence felt?
Oh! I don’t mean in rocking tables, or ringing bells, or showing lights,
or in ghostly manifestations at séances.”

“What do you mean, then?” Bransby was half fascinated, half annoyed.

“They might make an impression upon the consciousness of the living.”

But Bransby was unimpressed by that.

“A sort of supernatural telepathy, eh?”

Latham pondered a moment. “I dare say I can explain best by giving you
an example.”

“Well?”

“Suppose a man—a man whose every instinct was just and generous—had
done another man a great wrong and found it out too late. If his
consciousness remained, isn’t it possible—isn’t it probable, that he
would try to right that wrong and, since he had cast away all material
things, he couldn’t communicate in the old way—yet he’d try—surely he
would try——”

“You believe that?” Bransby exclaimed.

“I believe,” Latham said very slowly, “that he’d try—but whether he’d
succeed or not—I don’t know.”

“Oh!” Helen cried with a rapt, glowing face, laying a pleading hand on
the hand holding the jade, “it must be so—it’s beautiful to believe it
is so.”

“And if,” Latham continued, “one would try for the sake of justice,
can’t you think that others would try, because of the love they had for
the living they had left behind—who still needed them? I dare say that
every one of us has at one time or another been conscious of some
impalpable thing near us—some of us have believed it was a spirit
guarding us.”

“Yes,” Helen whispered.

“If we knew,” Latham went on, “the way, we might understand what they
wanted to tell us—if only we knew the way——”

Again there was a pause. Bransby shifted impatiently, and put his toy
down with a slight clatter, but kept his hand on it still.

Latham spoke, his manner completely changed. He got up, and he spoke,
almost abruptly. “Well, I am afraid I have bored you people sufficiently
for to-night, and I have some rather important letters to write—if you
will excuse me.”

“Of course,” Helen said, as he moved to the door, “but oh! you haven’t
bored us, Dr. Latham.”

Latham smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll take my cigar,” he added, picking it
up.

“I shan’t be able to enjoy seeing you enjoy it,” Bransby protested.

“Try telepathy,” was the smiling rejoinder. “Good-night.”


                              CHAPTER XIV

Mrs. Leavitt had not noticed the physician go. She had not been
listening for some time, the turn of her pattern had been at its most
difficult point. But she had managed it, and now sat counting
contentedly. Helen was gazing into the fire, her face all tender and
tense. Bransby had watched the door close, a queer purse on his lips.
Presently he said grimly—half in jest, half in earnest—

“Well, he’s a queer kind of a doctor. I shall have to consult some one
else.”

Mrs. Leavitt rose with a startled cry. Glancing up from the endless
pattern, at an easy stage now, the dust-searching eye had discovered
much small prey. She gathered up her work carefully and bustled about
the room.

“If that dreadful Barker didn’t forget to straighten out this room while
we were at dinner. Dr. Latham and Mrs. Hilary will think I am the most
careless housekeeper. I do hope, Helen, that you explain to our friends
how the war has taken all our servants. You should tell everybody that
before it began Barker was only a tweeny, and now she is all we have in
the shape of a butler and parlor-maid and three-quarters of our staff.
And she is so careless and clumsy.” She went from cushion to vase, from
fireplace to table, straightening out the room somewhat to her
satisfaction: the father and the daughter watching her with resigned
amusement.

A book lay open, face down on the writing-table. She pounced on the
volume. Bransby’s amusement vanished. “Careful there, Caroline, I am
reading that book.”

“Not now, you’re not—and books belong in book-cases.” She closed it
with a snap.

“Now you’ve lost my place!”

“Well, the book’s in its proper place,” she said, thrusting it into its
shelf. “There, that’s better. Now I wonder how the drawing-room is. I
must see. Dear me, this war has been a great inconvenience,” she sighed
as she went from the room—taking Hugh, none too willing, with her.

Caroline Leavitt was not an unpatriotic woman. Simply, to her home and
house were country and universe too—her horizon enclosed nothing beyond
them. She loved England, because her home and her housekeeping, this
house and her vocation, were in it; and not her home, as some do,
because it was in England. England was a frame, a background. Her
emotions began at Deep Dale’s front door, and ended in its kitchen
garden. There are many such women in the world.

“Your aunt is a martinet, Helen,” Bransby grumbled smilingly. “She never
lets me have my books about as I like them—and she is always losing my
place.”

Helen laughed.

“Do you know,” her father continued, “I have found rare good sport in my
books? Some of those chaps there—and Dickens especially—now—he _was_
a card. Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Well, when I’m a bit low in my mind, I like to read it—more than any
other book, I think—I find it sort of comforting. A man is never really
lonely when he has books about him. Ah! I remember my place now—where
Copperfield passes the blind beggar. It goes—let me see—yes: ‘He made
me start by muttering as if he were an echo of the
morning—“Blind—blind—blind.”’”

“I’m glad you find your books good company, Daddy.”

“Are you? Why?”

“Well—well—if—if we were ever parted, it would make me happy to think
you had friends near you.”

Bransby laid his paper-weight down quickly and looked at his girl
anxiously. “If we were ever parted? What do you mean, Helen?”

She turned from him a little as she replied softly, “Haven’t
you—haven’t you ever looked forward to a time when we might be?”

“No—of course not!”

“Sure?” she whispered.

“Oh!”—her father’s breath came quickly—“You mean that some day you
might marry?”

“Well—you want me to marry—some day—don’t you, Daddy?”

“Why—why, yes. Yes, of course I do. It would be a wrench, a bad wrench,
but—I should feel safer, if I knew there was some good man to take care
of you.”

The girl came to him then, and he reached and took her hand and held it
to his cheek.

“There is a good man who wants to—now.” She spoke very low—only just
said it. But Richard Bransby heard every word; and every word cut him.

“Who is he?” There was fear in his voice and fear on his face. He
dropped her hand.

“Can’t you guess?”

“Not—not Hugh?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He turned and walked as if groping his way towards the window.

Helen watched him, surprised and disappointed. “Why—why—Daddy!”

“Helen,” he said, still turned from her, “suppose—suppose I didn’t
approve of your marrying Hugh—what would you do?”

The girl pouted a little. “Daddy dear,” she rebuked him, “do be
serious.”

“I am serious.” He turned and faced her, sadly and gravely, far the more
troubled of the two.

And she took a step towards him, and spoke clearly. “But why suppose
such a thing? You would never refuse your consent to my marrying Hugh.
You have loved him better than any one else in the world—except
me—always since they came. Why, it has been almost as if he were your
very own son.”

Her words affected him keenly. It was with a stern effort that he kept
traces of his emotion from his voice. “But, if I didn’t approve?” he
insisted.

Helen looked at him with startled eyes, realizing for the first time
that he was serious. “You mean—you mean—you don’t!”

“Yes,” he told her.

“Why?” she cried.

The question was very, very difficult for him, so difficult that for a
moment he could find no answer. At last he said slowly, “I don’t believe
Hugh is the man to make you happy.”

“Don’t you think I am the best judge of that?” Helen said
gently—quickly.

His answer was quicker: “No.”

The girl lost something of her self-control then, and there was a
pitiful note in the young voice saying: “Daddy, this isn’t all a silly
joke? You aren’t trying to tease me?”

“I’m not joking, Helen.” There were tears in his voice.

“Then,” she cried, “why have you suddenly changed towards Hugh? Our
house has always been his home—all these years. I can only just
remember when he came: I can’t remember when he was not here. You have
purposely thrown us together.” There was accusation in her tone, but no
anger.

She had pricked him, and he answered sharply: “I never said that it was
my wish that you should marry him.”

“Not in words—no—but in a hundred other ways. Why have you changed?
Why?”

“I don’t want to answer that question.”

“I have the right to know.”

Richard Bransby was suffering terribly—and physically too. He yearned
over her, and he ached to get it over and done. But he could not bring
himself to denounce the boy he had loved so—so loved still.

But Helen, at bay too, would give him no respite: how could she? “You
haven’t answered me—yet,” she said, more coldly. Her tone was still
gentle; but her fixed determination was quite evident—unmistakable.

“Very well, then, I will,” and he gathered himself for the ordeal,
his—and hers. Then again he hesitated. “Helen,” he pleaded, “won’t you
accept my decision? You—you know a little—just a little—what you are
to me—how all the world—ah! my Helen—you wouldn’t break my old heart,
would you? Say that you could not—would not—say it——”

“Daddy! My daddy,” she whispered.

“Say it,” he cried.

“Daddy,” her tears had come now—near; but she held them—“I mean to
marry Hugh,” she said very quietly—even in his distressed agitation he
recognized and honored her grit—the wonderful grit of such delicate
creatures—“with your approval, I hope—but, in any case, I mean to
marry him.”

“Think how I’ve loved you, child,” the father cried, catching her wrists
in his hands, “you wouldn’t set my wishes aside?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Helen.” It was a sob in his throat.

“Just think for a moment,” she said, “he has given up everything to join
the army. Any day, now, he may go—out there. He loves me, Daddy—and I
love him.”

“He is not worthy of you—” Bransby was commanding himself—at what cost
only he knew—and Horace Latham might partly have guessed.

After a pause—painful to him—she was too indignant to suffer much
now—at last she spoke—sternly. “Why do you say that?”

“Don’t press the question,” he pleaded, “you know how much I care for
you—how dear you are to me. Surely you must know that I would not come
between you and your happiness if I hadn’t a good reason.”

“But I must know that reason.”

“You won’t give him up—for me?”

Pity for his evident distress welled over her, and she answered him
tenderly: “I can’t, dear.”

She waited. He waited too. He could count his heart thump, and almost
she might have counted it too.

At last he nerved himself desperately, went to his desk and pulled the
ledger from the drawer. He put it down ready to his hand, if he had to
show it to her at last; then turned and laid his hands on her shoulders.

When he could command himself—it was not at once—he said, speaking
more gently than in all his long, gentle loving of her he had ever
spoken to her before, “Helen, Hugh is a thief.”

There was silence between them; a silence neither could ever forget. It
punctuated their mutual life.

She broke it. For a while she stood rigid and dazed—and then she
laughed.

No lash in his face—even from her hand—could have hurt him so.

Again she waited: haughty and outraged now.

“He has stolen ten thousand pounds from me.”

She neither spoke nor stirred.

“That is why Grant came here last night—to tell me.”

The girl made a gesture of infinite scorn, of unspeakable rebuke.

“My dear, I would have spared you this—if I could.”

She answered him then, contempt in her voice, no faintest shadow of fear
in her brave young eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“I didn’t believe it—at first. But the proof,”—he went to the desk and
laid one hand sorrowfully on the big buff book—“well, it’s too strong
to be denied. You shall see it yourself.”

“I will not look. I would not believe it if Hugh told me himself.” She
turned quietly and left him, and he dared not stay her.

But he heard her sob as she passed along the hall.

At the sound his white face quivered and he crouched down in a chair and
laid his tired face on the table. He sat so for a long time—perfectly
still. Presently a wet bead of something salt lay in the heart of the
rose lotus flower.


                               CHAPTER XV

“What a fashion plate!” Angela Hilary exclaimed as she came across her
ornate little morning room to greet her guest.

Latham smiled amiably. No one dressed more carefully than he, and he had
no mock shyness about having it noted.

“You don’t look especially dowdy yourself,” he returned, as he took in
his hand one of her proffered hands and eleven of her rings.

The visit was an unqualified success, and more than once Horace Latham
thought ruefully what an ass he had been to fight shy of so delightful a
morning.

He was the only guest: it goes without saying, and Latham himself had
hoped for nothing else. That he foreknew that it would be a function
strictly for two had both assuaged and augmented his maiden nervousness.
If this dominant and seductively pretty young widow was determined to
press her suit (and quite aside from Helen Bransby’s tormenting
prompting he had an odd, fluttering feeling that it was a suit, and not
to be side-tracked easily), her opportunities to do so would be
tenfolded under her own roof—and they alone. On the other hand, he
thought that he could manage himself better, and far more smoothly, safe
from the disconcerting flicker of Helen’s mocking eyes, and the not
improbable comments, aside and otherwise, of her impish tongue. And, if
it came to such stress of issue between them (himself and the widow)
that he had no strategical escape left short of brutality, he felt that
he would find the exercise of such brutal harshness somewhat less
abominable and repugnant when no third one was present to witness
Angela’s discomfiture.

But he had misjudged his lady—and soon he sensed it.

Under all her flare for willfulness, and her disconcerting blend of
dainty atrocities and personal aplomb, Mrs. Hilary had sound instincts
and inherited good taste. She fluttered her skirts with some rumpus of
silken _frou-frou_ (to speak in metaphor), but she never lifted them
above her ankles. Her home was her temple, she, its goddess, was chaste
as erratic, and to her half-southern blood a guest was very sacred.

She gave him an exquisite meal and a thoroughly good time, but she never
once made love to him or even gave him a provocative opening to make
love to her. And with admirable masculine consistency almost he felt
that had she done either or both he might have borne
it—yes—cheerfully.

But she did not. She was grave. She was gay. She showed him her
_cloisonné_ and her ivories, her etchings and her Sargent, she played to
him, and she sang a little. She flattered him, and she gave him some
rare dole of subtle petting, but she did no wooing, and seemed inclined
to brook none.

What a woman! She set him to thinking. And he thought.

Next to his profession, in which he was deeply absorbed—but not
narrowly so, for this dapper, good-looking man was a great physician,
and not in-the-making—Horace Latham cared more for music, and needed it
more, than he did for anything else—even pictures. All that was most
personal to him, all that was strongest and finest in him, quivered and
glowed quickest, surest, longest, at the side of a dissecting table, and
to the sound of music, violin-sweetness, harp-magic, the song of a
piano, the invocation of an organ, the lyric lure of a voice.

But it had to be good music. Helen played prettily, and bored him. Hugh
was everlastingly discoursing rag-time with his two first fingers, and
Latham itched to chloroform him.

He had never heard Mrs. Hilary attempt music. And when, after lunch,
uninvited she sat down at her piano he winced.

She played wonderfully. What a surprising woman! She played Greig to him
and Chopin, and then she sang just twice: “Oft in the Stilly Night”—his
mother had sung that to him in the dear long-ago, and then a quaint
pathetic darky melody that he had never heard before.

“Oh! please,” he begged as she rose.

“No more—to-day,” she told him, “enough is better than too much feast.”

“And what a feast!” he said sincerely.

“Do you like Stephen Pryde?” she demanded abruptly, closing the piano.

“I’ve known him since he was a child.”

She accepted the evasion, or rather, to be more exact, spared him
putting its admission into cruder wording.

“Well—you’re wrong. You’re all wrong. I like him. No one else does,
except Hugh, and Hugh doesn’t count. But I do: and I like Stephen Pryde
immensely.”

“You certainly do count, very much,” Latham told her emphatically. And
she did not contradict him by so much as a gesture of her ring-covered
hands or a lift of the straight black eyebrows. “Why doesn’t Hugh
count?” he asked.

“Because he likes every one. The people who like every one never do
count. It is silly. It’s too silly. Now, Stephen Pryde does no such
thing.”

“No,” agreed Latham, “he does not; and certainly ‘silly’ is the last
word I should employ to describe him.”

“Silly!” Angela said with high scorn. “There isn’t a silly hair on his
head. He’s a genius—and he’s hungry—oh! so hungry.”

“Geniuses usually are,” Latham interrupted.

Angela ignored this as it deserved, and he himself thought it feeble and
regretted it as soon as he had perpetrated it.

“He’s a genius—and his uncle throttles it. Now, I want you to make
Richard Bransby behave—you and Helen. You can, you two; together you
can do anything with him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Hilary, please listen to me,” the physician was genuinely
alarmed, “on no account must Mr. Bransby be bothered or
irritated—positively _on none_.”

She studied him for a moment. “So,” she said slowly—“as ill as
that—poor Helen.”

She did not say, “Poor Mr. Bransby,” and Latham liked her for the nice
justice of her differentiation.

“And that’s why you stay here so much.”

Latham made no reply—and she seemed to expect none. She had affirmed;
she had asked no question. Really she had some very satisfactory
points—most satisfactory!

Then she gave a surprising little cry. “Oh! I am so sorry—so sorry for
Helen.”

“I hope,” the doctor began, but she paid no attention to him whatever.

“Don’t you remember?—Wah-No-Tee told me. How wonderful! How stupid of
me not to have understood! Oh! I must ’phone for another appointment
to-morrow. I mustn’t forget,” and she made a dash for her engagement
book, and began to scribble something in it. As she wrote she said to
him over her shoulder, “Won’t Helen look just too lovely in mourning?”

What a woman! He gazed at her speechless. What would the incalculable
creature say next—what do?

What she did was to move a stool near to his chair, and seat herself.
What she said was, “Well—then—of course—that makes a difference. Let
me see—yes—I have it—I’ll lend Stephen the money—lots of money; I
can, you know, just as easy as not.”

“Lend Stephen the money!” Latham said dumb-foundedly.

“Oh—of course,” Angela added impatiently; “Stephen Pryde wouldn’t
borrow money of me—of course not. That’s where you come in.”

“Oh! where I come in——”

“Yes, of course, don’t you see——”

“No, I certainly do not.”

“How stupid! It’s perfectly simple. I think a blind man would see it—if
he was fair-to-middling smart. You are to lend him the money.”

“I!”

“Yes, stupid—_you_: my money.”

“Oh!”

“Listen—don’t sit there staring and just say, ‘I! Oh! Ah!’ as if you
were trying to sing: ‘Do—re—mi—fa—sol—la.’ You are to manage
Stephen.”

“Instead of handling Bransby,” Latham said with light sarcasm.

But Mrs. Hilary beamed on him approvingly. “Exactly.”

“It occurs to me,” Latham remarked softly, “that you intend me to
renounce medicine for diplomacy.”

“They’re much the same thing—but—oh! I’ll manage it all really.”

“Yes—I inferred that. Now, please, the details. To begin at the
beginning, you wish to endow Pryde with your fortune.”

“I wish to do nothing of the sort,” she said severely. “I am going to
lend him part of it; or rather invest it in him. I shall get it all back
a thousand times.”

“Good interest!”

“Oh—be quiet——”

Latham sat in smiling silence.

“You will do it? You must!”

“I begin to see. I am to lend Pryde a slice—shall we say?—of your
fortune. Now, just that I may act intelligently, may I enquire how
much?”

“That’s what you are to find out.”

“Oh! that’s what I am to find out——”

“Of course.”

“May I—dare I ask, what he wishes it for—or needs it—or is to have
it?”

“To build aircraft. You ought to know that. I think you are dense
to-day, Dr. Latham.”

“I think you are very charming—to-day, Mrs. Hilary.”

“_And_ you will help me? Say you will. Say it now!”

“I am thinking——”

“Don’t think. Just promise.”

Latham was minded to tell her, “Some one must think,” but he refrained,
and said instead, “We’ll talk it over at least, several times, if we
may. Yes, I’ll come soon again and talk it over, if you’ll let me.”

She seemed quite satisfied at that. Probably she foresaw several
_tête-à-tête_ luncheons. Perhaps Latham did also.

He would have stayed to tea, but Angela did not ask him; and at last he
got up slowly. Even then she might ask him, he thought, but she did not.

But she gave him a deep red rose—at his request.

Just as he was going he turned back to say, “I do know, of course, that
Pryde is obsessed about aviation, and that Bransby will have none of
it—and, between you and me, I think that Bransby is wrong—but why do
you care? Are you interested in the air?”

“Good gracious, no. I love the earth—and indoors for choice. Give me a
good rocking-chair. I’d rather have that than the best horse that ever
was driven or ridden, though I like horses too. I’m just sheer sorry for
Stephen Pryde. I like him. And I’d just love to help him. He’ll succeed
too, I think; but that’s not the point. I want him to have his own way.
He never has—in anything. Only think, how horrid, never to have your
own way.”

“Much you know about it.”

She ignored that. Angela was terribly in earnest. “He is very intense.
He is strong too. And with all his strength he has desired two things
intensely. Hugh, his own brother, has thwarted him in one; Richard
Bransby in the other. One we can’t give him. The other we can. And we
are going to—you and I.” She held out her hand in “good-by,” but Latham
knew she meant it even more in compact.

He was thoughtful all his way back to Deep Dale, and silent at dinner.

Undressing for sleep—if sleep came—he looked at his red rose with an
odd rueful smile, and put it carefully in water.

At that moment Angela Hilary laughed softly as she let her dark hair
fall free to the white hem of her nightgown. Then she threw a kiss to
herself in the mirror.

The first thing Latham saw the next morning when he woke was a deep
crimson rose. He lay very still for a long time watching it.


                              CHAPTER XVI

Morton Grant had delivered his sorry news on Monday. Dr. Latham had
lunched with Mrs. Hilary on Wednesday.

Thursday was bleak and cold, and a slow chilly rain fell all day.

Helen and her father were alone in the library when the brothers joined
them. She felt that her father meant to “have it out” then, and she was
glad. For him and for her the tension was already too cruel. And it was
Hugh’s due to know, and to know without longer delay. Once or twice she
had felt that she herself must tell him. But the girlish lips he had
kissed refused the words and the office; and she had an added instinct
of reticence, part a reluctance to tale-bear, part a hurt, angry
determination to leave her father to do his own “dirty work.”

“Stephen says you want to have a chat with me, Uncle Dick.”

So—her father had sent for Hugh; had sent Stephen.

“Yes, Hugh,” Bransby said gently.

“Righto,” the boy replied. In several senses he was not “sensitive,” and
nothing of his uncle’s strain, or of Helen’s, had reached him.

Bransby turned to his daughter. “Helen, will you leave us for a little
while?”

“I’d rather stay, Daddy.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Helen met his gaze quietly, and sat down. She had been standing near the
fire when her cousins came in.

Bransby sighed. But he saw it was useless to command her. She would not
go.

Stephen had been looking at the books in the case. He turned sharply now
and eyed them all intently. He was “sensitive,” and keenly so where
Helen was concerned.

Hugh turned to Helen, smiling and happy: “I say, have you told him,
then, Helen?”

“Yes—Tuesday night.”

Hugh turned to Bransby with a boyish laugh, a very slight flush of
embarrassment on his young face, love, pride and victory in his eyes. “I
suppose I am in for a wigging, eh?”

“Hugh,” Helen broke in, “Daddy has refused his consent.”

Hugh took a sharp step forward and threw up his head. “Refused his
consent? Why?”

She gestured towards her father. _She_ could not say it.

“Why, sir?”

Bransby answered him sadly: “Don’t you know, Hugh?”

“No, sir. Of course I know I am not good enough for her—who could be?
But you know I love her very dearly.”

“Hugh,” Bransby said more sorrowfully and sternly, “didn’t you realize
that some day you were certain to be found out?”

Stephen Pryde started, but controlled himself instantly.

Hugh gazed at his uncle blankly. “Found out? What in the world—I don’t
know what you mean, sir.”

“Can’t you think why Grant came here on Monday?”

“No. How could I?”

“Why did he come, sir?” Stephen interposed.

“A shortage has been discovered in the accounts at the office.”

“A shortage in our accounts?” Stephen spoke incredulously. “Impossible.”

“I’m most awfully sorry, sir,” Hugh said sympathetically, taking a step
nearer his uncle.

“Some one has stolen ten thousand pounds.”

“Who?” Stephen asked quickly.

“The money was taken from the African trading account.”

“From the African trading account?” Stephen echoed. “But that’s
impossible—Hugh has always had charge of that.”

“I know,” Bransby said dully.

“Uncle Dick,” Hugh cried, suddenly realizing that he was being
accused—“Uncle Dick, you don’t mean that you think that I——” The
passionate voice choked and almost broke.

Stephen stopped him. “Quiet, Hugh; of course he can’t mean anything so
absurd as that. Besides, you’ve not been at the office for months.”

Helen threw toward Stephen a look full of gratefulness.

But her father said despairingly, “The money was taken while he was
still at the office.”

“How do you know that, sir?” Stephen spoke almost sternly to his uncle.

But the older man did not resent that. “Certain alterations were made in
the ledger during the time he had charge of it,” he explained drearily.

Hugh broke in hotly, “I know nothing of them.”

“Of course not,” his brother said cordially. “You see, sir——” turning
to Bransby.

“The alterations are in Hugh’s handwriting.”

“Impossible,” Hugh cried indignantly—contemptuously too.

Stephen said very quietly, “I don’t believe it.”

“I can convince you.” Their uncle opened the ledger, one hand on its
pages, the other on the jade weight.

Helen sat proudly apart, but the brothers hurried to him. Hugh threw
himself in a chair at the table where the book lay, Stephen stood behind
his brother, his hand on his shoulder.

There was a significant pause.

Stephen shook his head. “It is very like,” he said slowly.

Bransby turned to another page. “And this?”

“Oh, yes, it is. It is very like too.” Stephen’s reluctance was apparent
and deep. And a hint of conviction escaped him.

“There is no need to go further,” Bransby said wearily. “These were made
when the money was taken.”

Hugh sat gazing at the open ledger in bewilderment. “It—it,” he
stammered—“it seems to be my handwriting—but”—he was not stammering
now—“I swear I never wrote it.”

“I believe you, Hugh,” Stephen said simply.

Bransby said sternly—but not altogether without a subcurrent of hope in
his tired voice, “Besides you, only Stephen and Grant had access to that
ledger. Will you accuse either of them of making these alterations?”

Hugh laughed. “Of course not. Old Stephen and Grant—why, you know, sir,
that that’s absurd. But what have I ever done that you should think me
capable of being a thief?”

The old man shook his head. But Stephen answered, his hand on Hugh’s
shoulder, “Nothing, Hugh, nothing! You’ve known my brother always,
sir”—turning to their uncle, speaking with passionate earnestness. “You
_know_ he’s not a thief. If he has been a bit wild—it was only the
wildness of youth.” There was anxious entreaty in face and in voice, and
the face was very white and drawn. Of the four Stephen Pryde
unmistakably was not suffering the least.

But Bransby was despairingly relentless now. “While he was at the office
he was gambling—he borrowed from money-lenders.”

“It isn’t true,” cried Stephen hotly.

Bransby swung to his younger nephew. “Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Hugh!” the elder brother said in quick horror.

“But I won enough to clear myself, and that’s why I——”

“Hugh,” Stephen’s voice broke, “I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Hugh turned on his brother in dismay: “Stephen! you don’t mean that
_you_ think——”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were in trouble?” Pryde said sorrowfully. “I
would have helped you, if I could.”

“But I wasn’t in trouble,” the boy protested impatiently. “I tell you
I’m innocent.”

With a gesture of infinite sadness and his face quivering Stephen Pryde
laid his hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “Hugh,” he said, and now his voice
broke as a mother’s might have broken, “Hugh, I am your brother—I love
you—can’t you trust me?” he pleaded. “Even now we may find a way out of
this, if you will only tell the truth.”

“But I have told the truth,” Hugh asserted helplessly. His voice broke,
too, as he said it.

Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle and they exchanged a slow look—a look
of mutual sorrow and despair. Hugh saw the look, shrugged his shoulders
and crossed to Helen’s chair.

“Helen, you don’t believe this, do you?”

Stephen turned and watched them intently.

The girl smiled. “No, Hugh.”

“Thank you, dear.” And he smiled back at her.

“I would give a great deal not to believe it, Hugh”—there was entreaty
in Bransby’s voice, if not in his words, almost too a slight something
of apology—“but the evidence is all against you.”

Hugh had grown angry a few moments ago, but at Helen’s smile all his
anger had died, and even the very possibility of anger. And he answered
Bransby as sadly and as gently as the older man himself had spoken, “I
realize that, sir; but there must be some way to prove my innocence—and
I’ll find it.”

“And in the meantime?” Bransby demanded.

“In the meantime,” his nephew echoed—“oh—yes—what do you want me to
do?”

“The right thing.”

Helen sprang to her feet—but quietly, and even yet she said nothing. Of
them all she was the least disturbed. But perhaps she was also the most
intent. Hers was a watching brief. She held it splendidly.

“The right thing?” Hugh asked, puzzled but fearful.

“You must tell Helen that no marriage can take place between
you—unless—until you have cleared yourself of this—this suspicion.”

Stephen protested. “But, sir—” He was watching and listening almost as
sharply as the girl was; but for the life of him he could not tell
whether or not his uncle had indeed given up all hope. At the elder’s
last words he had winced—for some reason.

Helen looked only at Hugh now. “No, Hugh, no,” she cried proudly—and
then at the look on his face, “No—no,” she pled.

Hugh Pryde’s face was the grimmest there now. But he answered her
tenderly. “He’s right, dear. It can’t take place until I have cleared
myself. Oh, don’t look startled like that. Of course it can’t. But I’ll
do that. Helen, listen, somehow I’ll do that.”

“Oh!” she almost sobbed, both hands groping for his—and finding
them—“but, my dear——”

Bransby broke in, and, to hide his own rising and threatening emotion,
more harshly than he felt: “And until then you must not see each other.”

For a moment Hugh held her hands to his face—and then he put them away
from him and said, smiling sadly but confidently, and speaking to her
and not to her father, answering the cry in her eyes, the rebellion in
the poise of her head, “No—until then we must not see each other.”

She drew herself up, almost to his own height, and laid her arms about
his neck, folding and holding him. “I can’t let you go from me like
this, Hugh, I can’t let you.”

Stephen Pryde watched them grimly—torture in his eyes; but Bransby
turned his eyes away, and saw nothing, unless he saw the green and rose
bauble he held and handled nervously.

Very gently Hugh Pryde took her arms from his neck, and half led, half
pushed her to the door. “You must.”

She turned back to him with outstretched arms. “Oh, Hugh, Hugh,” she
begged.

Still he smiled at her, and shook his head.

For a moment longer she pleaded with him—mutely; then, with a little
hurt cry, she ran from the room.

Hugh stood looking after her sadly until Stephen spoke. “Hugh, my boy,
be frank with me. Let me help you.”

At that the younger grew petulant, and answered shortly, “There’s
nothing to be frank about.” Then his irritation passed as quickly as it
had come. “Oh! why won’t you believe that I never did this thing?”

Stephen hung his head sadly. But Bransby was wavering. “Hugh,” he said,
“if you can prove yourself innocent, no one will be happier than I—but
until you do——”

“I understand, sir. But—oh—I say—what about—what about
my—commission?” His face twitched, and he could scarcely control
himself to utter the last word with some show of calmness. He was very
young—and very driven.

“You will have to relinquish that,” Bransby replied pityingly. “You can
leave the matter in my hands—my boy. I will arrange it.”

Hugh could hardly speak. But he managed. “Very good, sir. Then I—may
go?”

Bransby could not look at him. “You will leave here to-night?”

“At once.”

“That would be best.”

“Good-by,” Hugh said abruptly.

Stephen held out his hand, and after an instant Hugh clasped it. He
turned to his uncle.

Bransby rose stiffly from his chair. He was trembling. Neither seemed
able to speak. For a bad moment neither moved. Then Richard Bransby held
out—both hands. Hugh flushed, then paled, and took the proffered hands
in his. There was pride as well as regret in his gesture, affection even
more than protest. Then without a word—a thick sound in his throat was
not a syllable—with no other look—he went.

Bransby caught at the back of his chair. He motioned Stephen to follow
Hugh. “See that he has money—enough,” he said hoarsely.

Stephen nodded and left him.

Richard Bransby looked about the silent room helplessly. “My poor
Helen,” he said presently—“Violet! Violet!”—but he pulled himself
together and moved towards the bookcase. Perhaps he could find
distraction there.

He sat down again, the volume he had selected on his knee, and opened it
at random, turning the pages idly—one hand on the jade joss, that as it
lay on the table; seemed to blink in the firelight.

The printed words evaded him. To focus his troubled mind he began to
read aloud softly:—

“‘There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my
head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me
start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: “Blind! Blind!
Blind!”’”


                              CHAPTER XVII

Richard Bransby was breaking. He could not bear much more, and he knew
it. He had felt very faint at lunch. Latham would have driven him to his
bed, but Latham had been again lunching at Mrs. Hilary’s.

Now he was alone in the library. The room seemed to his tired, tortured
mind haunted by Hugh and by trouble.

He looked up at the clock. The boy had been gone just twenty-four hours.
Where had he gone? What was he doing? Violet’s boy!

The sick man felt alone and deserted. Helen had scarcely spoken to him
all day. Indeed she had stayed in her room until nearly dinner-time, and
at dinner she and Latham had almost confined their chat to each other.

He picked up “David Copperfield,” opened it at random—then shook his
head and laid it down, still open. He’d read presently; he could not
now.

A step at the door was welcome. It was Stephen.

Bransby began abruptly: “Last night, when you saw him off—he protested
his innocence to the last?”

“Yes, sir. Oh! yes.”

“Oh! why didn’t he tell me the truth. If he had confessed, I could have
found it in my heart to forgive him.”

Stephen sighed, and sat down near his uncle. “I told him that. I begged
him to throw himself on your mercy. But he wouldn’t even listen.”

Bransby’s face changed suddenly. “You told him that—that you were sure
I’d forgive it, let it pass even, and he still persisted that he was
innocent.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Stephen,” Bransby said anxiously, rising in his agitation and looking
down on the other almost beseechingly, “have you thought—thought that
we may be mistaken?”

“Mistaken? In what way?”

“About Hugh, of course. When he was here, even though everything was
against him, his attitude was that of an innocent man. Then his refusal
to you to confess even when mercy—forgiveness—were promised—that,
too, is the action of an innocent man.” Bransby spoke more in entreaty
for confirmation than in his usual tone of conviction and personal
decision.

Stephen responded musingly, “Yes—it is. And I believe he is innocent. I
can’t quite believe that he isn’t, at least—only——”

“Only what?”

Pryde hesitated—and then reluctantly, “It was such a shock to have
discovered that he deceived us about his gambling. I had never thought
Hugh deceitful. He always seemed so frank—so open—as he seemed last
night in this room.”

“Yes,” Bransby groaned. “Yes—he did deceive us about his gambling—and
he knew it was contrary to my orders—how I hated it.”

“But that doesn’t _prove_,” the nephew said promptly, “that he did this
other thing” (his uncle looked up quickly, gratefully). “Of course, it’s
true that gambling sometimes tempts men to steal.”

“It always does.” Bransby lapsed back into despair, and shrank back into
his chair.

“But Hugh seemed so innocent,” Stephen added reflectively.

“He seemed innocent, too, when he was gambling,” the other retorted.

“Yes—that’s true.”

“And I loved him—I trusted him—I—he was always my favorite. Even now,
I’m not treating you fairly. You must be suffering horribly—my poor
Stephen.”

“I am suffering, sir. On your account, on my own, on poor misguided
Hugh’s, I loved him too, I always shall love him; but I am suffering
more, a thousand times more, for—Helen.”

Bransby gave him a startled look. He had spoken her name in a tone
unmistakable. “Yes, Uncle Dick, it’s just that. It has always been that.
It will never be anything else, any other way than that with me.”

In his surprise Bransby picked up his joss and put it down again several
times, beating with it a nervous tattoo on the table. “Does she know?”

“Helen? No. It would only have hurt her to know. It has always been Hugh
with her. But now——”

Bransby checked him—not unkindly—he sensed something of what it must
have cost him, this unanswered affection; he knew Stephen’s nature ran
deep and keen—but he spoke decidedly, feeling, too, that there was
something callous, almost something of treachery, in a brother who could
hint at hope so quick on a brother’s ruin, and Helen’s heart newly hurt
and raw. “Put it out of your mind, Stephen. Helen will never change;
least of all now. The women of our family are constant forever. Now we
must act—you and I. We must arrange that there shall be no scandal
about Hugh’s disappearance. We must protect his name—on Helen’s
account—and the firm’s. About his commission—almost I regret saying he
must throw it up. It might—it might have been the way out. Have you any
idea where he is?”

“None.”

“Well—then—we must act at once. Already I’ve let a day slip—I—I’m
not well—I said I’d attend to it. We’ll attend to it now. I don’t think
there’ll be any trouble about that. Oh! he ought to have written his
resignation, though, before he went. My fault—my fault. However, I’ll
do it now. No! I can’t.” He held out the hand with the Chinese curio in
it. The hand was trembling so that the jade thing winked and rainbowed
in the light of the fire. “You must write it. That will do. Sit there
and do it now. Make it brief and formal as possible. I’ll go to town
to-morrow and see his Colonel myself, if necessary—Latham willing or
no.”

Stephen crossed to the writing-table thoughtfully. He began to
write—Bransby walking about still carrying the paper-weight
absent-mindedly—and thinking aloud as he moved. “His leave isn’t up for
another three days. Yes—I think that gives us time. Yes—we’ll get into
touch with his Colonel to-morrow and find out just how to proceed. I
hope I shan’t have to tell the real reason.”

“Will this do?” Pryde had finished, and passed his uncle the sheet.

Bransby glanced at it carelessly at first. “Yes, yes.” He held it
towards Pryde—then something prompted—a strong impulse—he drew it
back, looked at it, then he fell to studying it. A terrible change
passed over his face. He gazed at the paper in amazement, then looked in
horror from it to the man who had written it—then back at the note,
crimson flooding his neck, a gray shadow darkening his rigid face. He
raised his haggard eyes and stared at Stephen thunderstruck.

Stephen felt the fierce eyes, and looked up. “Why—why—what is it,
sir?”

But even as he spoke Stephen Pryde knew—as Bransby himself had learned
in a flash—one of those terrible forked flashes of illumination that
come to most of us once in life.

Bransby answered slowly, coldly, carefully. “You have signed Hugh’s name
to this, and it is Hugh’s handwriting. If I didn’t _know_ otherwise, I
would have sworn he wrote it himself.”

Stephen lost his head. His hand shook, and his tongue. “That’s odd,” he
stammered with a sick laugh, “I—I didn’t realize.” He put his hand out
for the letter—Bransby drew it back, looking him relentlessly in the
eyes. The brain that had made and controlled one of the greatest
businesses ever launched, and complicated in its immense ramifications,
was working now at lightning speed, rapier-sharp, sledge hammer in
force, quick, clear and sure.

“It was no accident. You can’t patch it up that way—or in any—I _see_.
You have practiced his handwriting. You have done this before.”

Stephen gathered himself together feebly. “Of what do you accuse me?” he
fumbled.

“Tell me the truth—I must know the truth.”

Then Stephen added blunder to blunder. He pointed to the ledger. “I know
nothing of it—nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“Uncle Dick!”

“You are lying, Stephen Pryde—it’s as plain on your face as the truth
was on Hugh’s—and, God forgive me, I wouldn’t believe him.”

“I didn’t do it, I tell you!” Stephen was blustering fiercely now.

“You had access to that ledger as well as Hugh. You can’t deny the
damnable evidence of this you’ve just written before my eyes. Oh! how
blind I’ve been—blind—blind! Stephen,” he panted in his fury, “unless
you tell me the truth now, by the mother that bore you, I’ll show you no
mercy—none.”

For a space Stephen stared at him, fascinated—caught. All at once his
courage quite went, and he sagged down in his chair, crumpled and
beaten. “I did it,” he said hoarsely. “I had to.”

“You made the alteration in the ledger after Hugh left?”

“Yes.”

“My God! and you wrote the anonymous letter to Grant, too! Why?”

“I wanted power—dominion—they are all that make life worth living. You
drove me to it. You never cared for me—not as you did for Hugh—you
thwarted me always. I wanted power, I tell you. I would have given it to
you—such power as you never dreamed of—such power as few men ever have
had. But you always stood in my way. You kept me a subordinate—and I
hated it. You threw Helen and Hugh together, and I could have killed
you. When the war broke out I saw my chance. I meant to take for myself
the place I could have won for you—and would have won—for you—and for
her—but I needed money—so—I speculated—and lost.”

“And then you put the crime on your brother’s shoulder. You would have
ruined his life—destroyed his happiness.”

“What does the life and happiness of any one matter, if they stand in
the way? Hugh! Hugh meant nothing to the world—Hugh’s a fool. I could
have done great things—I could have given England the Air—The Air.”

“Yes,” Bransby said piteously. “Yes, I believed in you. I have left the
control of my business to you—after my death. Thank God for
to-morrow—to alter that, to——”

Stephen shrugged an insolent shoulder, and said coldly—he was cool
enough now, “Well, what are you going to do—with me?”

The answer was ready. “Take up that pen again—write—and see to it that
the handwriting’s your own.”

Pryde glowered at Bransby with rebel eyes, and then—almost as if
hypnotized—did as he was told—writing mechanically, his face
twitching, but his hand moving slowly, to Richard Bransby’s slow
dictation.

The dictation was relentless: “I confess that I stole”—the quivering
face of the younger man looked up for an instant, but Bransby did not
meet the look (perhaps he, too, was suffering), his eyes were on space,
his fingers lifting and falling on his carved toy. Stephen looked up,
but his pen moved mechanically on—“ten thousand pounds from my uncle,
Richard Bransby—and I forged my brother Hugh’s handwriting in the
ledger.” Pryde laid down the pen.

“Sign it.”—He did.

“Date it.”—He did.

“Give it to me.” The hand that took the paper shook more than the hand
that had written it.

“Do you know where your brother has gone? Have a care that you tell me
the truth from this on—it’s your only chance. Do you know where he has
gone?”

“No!”

“Go find him—if you hope for mercy. Bring him back here by to-morrow.”

Stephen rose with a shrug. For an evil moment Richard Bransby’s life was
in peril. Stephen stood behind him, murder hot in his heart, insane in
his eyes, and clenched in his fist: all the hurt and the thwart of years
joined with the rage and dilemma of the moment, ready to spring, to
avenge and to kill. Bransby saw nothing—not even the jade he still
fingered. Then with a gesture of scorn he tore into bits the note of
resignation he had made Stephen write. “I’ll see the Colonel myself.
That will be best,” he said.

At that instant, Bransby’s head bowed, Pryde’s hand still raised, Mrs.
Leavitt’s voice rose in the hall, fussed and querulous, “Who left this
here? Barker!” Bransby did not hear her, but Pryde did. His arm fell to
his side, he forced a mask of calm to his face, and then without a word
he went. He did not even look towards his uncle again; but at the door
he turned and looked bitterly, hungrily, at the picture over the
fireplace. Poor Stephen!

In the hall Caroline Leavitt hailed him. “Not going out, Stephen?”

“Yes; I’ve to run up to London for Uncle Dick,” he told her lightly. She
exclaimed at the hour, followed him with sundry advice about a rug and a
warmer coat, and he answered her cordially. Perhaps he was not
ungrateful for so much creature kindliness, such small dole of
mothering—just then.

Presently the front door slammed. “Dear me, that’s not like Stephen,”
she said aloud.

Richard Bransby heard nothing. For a little he sat lost in his own
bitter thoughts. Then he read Stephen’s confession over with scrupulous
care. “Blind—Blind—Blind,” he murmured as he folded it. Ah! that
terrible faintness was coming on again. He dropped the paper; it fell on
the still open pages of “David Copperfield.” For once the book astray
had escaped Caroline’s eye. This was torture. Could he get to the
brandy? Where was Latham? Helen—he wanted Helen. He thought he was very
ill. Helen must know the truth—about Hugh—and they must put the proof
in safe keeping before—before anything happened to him. Helen’s
happiness—yes, he must secure that—and Hugh—Hugh whom he had so
wronged—he must atone to Hugh.

In his effort to conquer his spasm he caught hold of the volume of
Dickens, and it closed in his convulsive fingers. Helen—he must get to
Helen. He staggered to his feet, the book forgotten on the table, the
paper-weight forgotten too, but still gripped close in one unconscious
hand. For a space he stood swaying—then he contrived to turn, and
staggered to the door, calling, “Helen—Helen!”

His voice rang through the house with the far-carrying of fright and
despair.

Barker reached him first, and began to cry and moan hysterically.

Caroline Leavitt pushed her aside. “He has fainted. Call Dr. Latham.”

But Latham had heard Bransby’s cry, and so, too, had Helen. They came
together from the billiard room hurriedly. The girl threw herself down
by her father, all the bitterness gone, only the old love and gratitude
left. Latham knelt by him, too, and after a touch of Bransby’s hand, a
look at his face, said, “Mrs. Leavitt—you and Miss Bransby wait in the
library.”

“No, I want to stay here,” Helen insisted.

“You must do as I say.”

“Come, dear,” and Caroline led her away, and put her into her father’s
chair.

“Poor Daddy—poor Daddy.”

“He will be all right in a few moments,” the older woman said feebly.
But Helen was not attending to her. Caroline stood looking pitifully at
the shaken girl, and then turned away sadly. The disorder of the table
caught her eye. Not thinking, not caring now, but obeying the habit of
her lifetime, she took up the volume of “David Copperfield,” and carried
it to the bookcase. As she replaced it on its shelf Latham came in. He
went to Helen and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Daddy?”

The physician met her eyes pityingly. He had no healing—for her.

With a shudder the girl rose and turned to the hall.

“Helen,” Mrs. Leavitt pled.

“He would want me near him,” the girl said quite calmly. And the
physician neither stayed nor followed her; and he motioned Mrs. Leavitt
to do neither.


                             CHAPTER XVIII

Three days later they laid him down by his wife.

Until then Helen scarcely left him. And not once did her pitiful young
calm break or waver.

Stephen came from London. Latham’s telephone message had reached Pont
Street before Pryde had.

No word came of Hugh, no word or sign from him.

They laid him in his coffin almost as they found him. Helen insisted
that it be so. Much that when dead we usually owe to strange hands, to
professional kindliness, the girl, who had not seen death before, did
for this dead.

The blackdraped trestle, the casket on it, was placed in the room where
the tragedy that had killed him had fallen.

He lay as if he slept, all the pain and doubt gone from his still face.
Only one flower was with him—just one in his hand. And in the other
hand he still held the odd Chinese carving. Helen had intended the
costly trifle he had so affected—so often handled—it seemed almost a
part of him—to remain with him. But, at last, something, some new
vagary of Grief’s many piteous, puzzling vagaries, impelled her to take
it from him.

She scarcely left him all the hours he lay in his favorite room and took
there his last homekeeping, there where he had lived so much of his
life, done so much of his thinking, welcomed such few friends as he
valued, read again and again the books he liked.

He rested with Helen’s picture, radiant, gay-clad, smiling down on him
serene and immovable, and Helen black-clad, pallid, almost as
quiet,—moving only to do him some new little service, to give him still
one more caress.

It was their last tryst—kept tenderly in the old room where they had
kept so many. Such trysts are not for chronicling.

At the last—alone for the “good-by” that must be given—but never to be
quite ended or done, live she as long as she may—Helen unclenched the
cold—oh! so cold—fingers, and drew away the bit of jade.

Sobbing—she had scarcely cried until now—she carried it to the
writing-table, and put it just where it had always stood.

“I want it, Daddy,” she said, smiling down wet-eyed on the still face.
“You don’t know how much you handled it. I seem always to have seen it
in your hand. No one shall touch it again but me—just yours and mine,
Daddy—our little jade doll, in a pink cradle. Stay there!” she told the
joss, and then sobbing, but pressing back her tears, and wiping them
away when they _would_ come, that her sight might be clear for its last
loving of that dear, dead face, she bent over the coffin, spending their
last hour together, saying—good-by.

“Oh, Daddy—my Daddy——” The sobs came then, long and louder. Latham,
watching in the hall, heard them, but he did not go to the girl; nor let
any one else do so.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                BOOK III


                               THE QUEST


                              CHAPTER XIX

The spring waxed into radiant molten summer, mocking with its lush of
flower-life, its trill of bird-voice, its downpouring of sunshine, the
agony of the nations, and the pitiful grief in one English girl’s
inconsolable heart.

Other girls lost their lovers. Never a home in England but held some
bereavement now, never a heart in Christendom but nursed some ache. But
most of the sorrow and suffering was ennobled and blazoned. Other girls
walked proud with their memories—_his_ D.S.O. pinned in their black,
the ribbon of _his_ Military Cross worn on their heart, tiny wings of
tinsel, of gold, or of diamonds rising and falling with their breath, a
regimental badge pinning their lace, a sailor’s button warm at a soft
white throat—telling of a “boy” sleeping cold, unafraid in the North
Sea, or (proudest of all these) a new wedding-ring under a little black
glove—and, perhaps——

Other girls packed weekly boxes for Ruhleben, or walked the London
streets and the Sussex lanes with the man on whose arm they had used to
lean leaning on theirs, blinded, a leg gone, or trembling still from
shell-shock, a face mutilated, broken and scarred in body,
nerve-wrecked, but _hers_, hers to have and to hold, to love and to
mother, to lean on her love, to respond to her shy wooing, to beget her
children; to show the world, and God, how English women love.

But she—Helen—was alone. No field-card for her—no last kiss at
Victoria, no trophy, no hope.

Hugh had been posted as a deserter. It was some hideous mistake, Helen
knew that, but the world did not know. Hugh! Hugh dishonored, despised.
She knew that he had not deserted. But what had happened? Had he been
killed? Had his mind broken? That he had not taken his own life—at
least not knowingly—that she knew. But what, what, then, had happened?
He had disappeared from her, as from every one else—no trace—not a
clue. Where was he? How was he? Did he live? Not a word came—not a
whisper—not a hint. And his name was branded. _Her_ name—the name she
had dreamed to wear in bridal white and in motherhood. “Mrs. Hugh
Pryde”—“Helen Pryde”—how often she had written those, alone in her
room—as girls will. “Mrs. Hugh Pryde,” she had liked it the better of
the two, and sometimes she had held it to her dimpling, flushed face
before she had burned it.

For what the world thought, for what the world said, she held her young
head but the higher, and went among men but the more proudly. But under
her pride and her scorn her heart ached until she felt old and
palsied—and some days she looked it.

She put pictures of Hugh about her rooms conspicuously. Caroline Leavitt
and Stephen both wished she had not, but neither commented on it;
neither dared. Angela Hilary loved her for it as she had not done
before. And for it Horace Latham formed a far higher estimate of her
than he had in her happier girl-days.

Spring grew to summer, summer sickened to winter. Still Hugh did not
come, or send even a word. The wind whined and sneered in the leafless
trees, rattling their naked branches. The snow lay cold on the ground.

A few days after her father’s funeral, Helen left Deep Dale—forever,
she thought. But such servants as the war had left them there, she
retained there, and there she established her “Aunt Caroline.”

Mrs. Leavitt had been well enough pleased to stay as vicereine at Deep
Dale. She would have preferred to come and go with Helen; Curzon Street
had its points, but Helen preferred to be alone and said so simply,
brooking no dispute. If the girl had been willful before, she was
adamant now. Even Stephen found it not easy to suggest or to argue, and
never once when he did carried his point.

She locked up the library herself, and forbade that any should enter it
in her absence. She pocketed her father’s keys, and scarcely troubled to
reply to the suggestion that they might be needed by her cousin.

She had lived alone—except for her servants—in Curzon Street. At that
Caroline Leavitt had protested—“so young a girl without even a figure
head of a chaperon will be misunderstood”—and as much more along the
same lines of social rectitude and prudence as Helen would tolerate.

Helen’s toleration was brief. “My mourning is chaperon enough,” she said
curtly, “and if it isn’t, it is all I shall ever have. I wish to be
alone. I intend to be.”

“No one to be with you at all—to take care of you,” Stephen had
contributed once to Mrs. Leavitt’s urgency.

“No one at all, until Hugh comes home to take care of me.”

Pryde bit his lip angrily, and said no more.

Helen was her own mistress absolutely.

A will disposing of so large a fortune had not often been briefer than
Richard Bransby’s, and no will had ever been clearer.

There were a few minor bequests. Caroline Leavitt was provided for
handsomely, and so also were Stephen and Hugh. (The will had been signed
in 1911.) To Stephen had been left the management of the vast business.
Everything else—and it was more than nine-tenths of the immense
estate—was Helen’s, absolutely, without condition or control. And even
Stephen’s management was subject to her veto, even the legacies to
others subject to her approval. She had approved, of course, at once,
and the legacies were now irrevocable. But Stephen’s dictatorship she
could terminate a year from the day she expressed and recorded her
desire to do so, and in the meantime she could greatly curtail it.
Bransby had left her heir to an autocracy. And already, in several small
ways, her rule had been autocratic. Always willful, her sorrow had
hardened her, and Stephen knew that when their wills clashed, hers would
be maintained, no matter at what cost to him. Where she was indifferent,
he could have his way absolutely. Where she was interested, he could
have no part of it, unless it luckily chanced to be identical with hers.
He understood, and he chafed. But also he was very careful.

He lived still in Pont Street, in the bachelor rooms he and Hugh had had
since their ’Varsity days; for Bransby had liked to have Helen to
himself often.

Stephen spent as much time with his cousin as she would let him, and he
had from the day of his uncle’s death. And he “looked after” her as much
as she would brook.

Vast as the Bransby fortune had been, even in this short time of his
stewardship he had increased it by leaps and bounds. A great fortune a
year ago, now it was one of the largest, if not the largest, of the
war-fortunes. They still built ships and sailed them. He had suggested
nothing less to Helen—he had not dared. But they dealt in aircraft too.
Stephen had suggested that at a favorable moment, and she had conceded
it listlessly.

Air was still his element, and its conquest his desire. His own room at
Pont Street was now, as it had been all along, and as every nook of his
very own when a boy had been, an ordered-litter of aeroplane models,
aerodrome plans, “parts,” schemes, dreams sketched out, estimates,
schedules, inventions tried and untried, lame and perfected. They knew
him at the Patent Office, and at least one of his own contrivances was
known and flown in both hemispheres.

For Helen’s love he still waited, hungry and denied. But his dreams of
the air were fast coming true.

Helen had no comrades in these drear days, and scarcely kept up an
acquaintance. Angela Hilary had refused to be “shunted,” as she termed
it, and she and Horace Latham gained Helen’s odd half-hours oftener than
any one else did. The girl had always “enjoyed” Angela, and when sorrow
came, gifting her with some of its own wonderful clairvoyance, she had
quickly sensed the worth and the tenderness of the persistent woman. And
Dr. Latham was secure in her interest and liking, because she associated
him closely with her father, and remembered warmly his tact and kindness
in the first hours of her bereavement. And, sorry as her own plight was,
and dreary as her daily life, she could not be altogether dull to the
pretty contrivances and the nice management of the older girl’s
love-affair. Grief itself could but find some amusement and take some
warmth from Angela’s brilliant, deft handling of that difficult matter.
It would have made a colder onlooker than Helen tingle—and sometimes
gasp. It certainly made Latham tingle, and not infrequently gasp.


                               CHAPTER XX

Begun half in fun, the pretty widow’s advance towards the physician had
grown a little out of her own entire control, and she found herself in
some danger of being hoist by her own petard. Easy enough she found it
to handle the man—she had handled men from her cradle—but she found
her own wild heart not quite so manageable.

Helen half expected Angela to make the proposal which Latham, the girl
felt sure, never would. She was sure that Angela was in deadly earnest
now, and she was confident that in love, as in frolic, Angela would
stick at nothing.

And Angela was in deadly earnest now—the deadliest. But she had no
intention of proposing to Horace. She knew a trick worth ten of that.

Wah-No-Tee still stood to Mrs. Hilary for friend, philosopher and guide,
but, believed in as staunchly as ever, she was sought rather less
frequently, and on the affair-Latham the disembodied spirit, who was
also “quite a lady,” was consulted not at all. For the subjugation of
the physician Angela Hilary besought no sibyl, bought no love-philter.

She lived, when in London, in a tiny private hotel, just off Bond
Street, and as expensive as it was small. In her sitting-room there
Latham and she were lounging close to the log-heaped fire one dark
December day, exploiting an afternoon tea transatlantically
heterogeneous.

“You know, I don’t approve of this at all,” the medico said, shaking his
head at hot muffins heavy with butter and whipped cream, his hand
hovering undecidedly over toasted marshmallows and a saline liaison of
popcorn and peanuts. “We deserve to be very ill, both of us—and my
country is at war, and the _Morning Post_ says——”

“Food-shortage! Eat less bread!” Angela gurgled, burying her white teeth
in a very red peach. “Well, there’s no bread here, not a crust. And the
children in the East End and badly wounded Tommies might not thrive on
this fare of mine.”

“They might not,” the physician said cordially. “Yes, please, I will
have two lumps and cream: my constitution requires it.”

As she poured his tea, all her rings flashing in the fire-flicker, her
face, usually so white, just flushed with rose from the flecks of the
flames, he fell to watching her silently.

“Talk!” she commanded.

He smiled, and said nothing.

“Oh, a penny, then, for your thoughts, Mr. Man, if you want to be
bribed.”

“I wonder if I dare.”

“Be bribed? What nonsense.”

“It takes a great deal of courage sometimes. But that was not what I
meant.”

“What did you mean?—if you meant anything.”

“Oh! yes—I meant.”

“What? Hurry up!”

“I meant that I wondered if I dared tell you my thoughts—what I was
thinking just then.”

“H’m,” was all the help she vouchsafed him.

“Will you be angry?”

“Very like—how can I tell?”

“Shall I plunge, and find out?”

“As you like. But I don’t mind making it six-pence.”

“The fee nerves me. I was wishing I knew, and could ask without
impertinence, something about your first marriage.”

“My first marriage indeed!” she cried indignantly. “How often are you
pleased to imagine I have been married? I’ve only been married once, I’d
have you know.”

Latham flushed hotly, and she tilted back in her chair and laughed at
him openly. Then the dimpling face—her dimples were
delightful—sobered, and she leaned towards the fire—brooding—her
hands clasped on her knees, her foot on the fender. “I’ll tell you,
then, as well as I can—why not? John was quite unlike any man you’ve
known. You don’t grow such men in England. It isn’t the type. He was
big, and blond and reckless—‘all wool and a yard wide.’ I loved my
husband very dearly. We American women usually do. We can, you know, for
we don’t often marry for any other reason. Why should we? Mr. Hilary was
a lawyer—a great criminal pleader. He saved more murderers than any
other one man at the Illinois bar. He was a Westerner—every bit of him.
His crying was wonderful, and oh! how he bullied his juries. He made
them obey him. He made every one obey him.”

“You?” Latham interjected.

“Me! Good gracious, man, American women don’t obey. Me! I wouldn’t obey
Georgie Washington come to life and richer than Rothschild. Obey!” Only
an American voice could express such contempt, and no British pen convey
it. “But the juries obeyed him all right—as a rule! Those were good
days in Chicago. There’s no place like Chicago.”

“So I’ve heard,” Latham admitted.

“But they didn’t last long. An uncle of John’s died out in California,
and left us ever so many millions.”

“I say—that was sporting!”

“What was?”

“Leaving his money to you as well as to his nephew.”

“Land’s sake, but you English are funny! Of course Ira Hilary did
nothing of the sort. I don’t suppose he’d ever heard of me—though he
might if he read the Chicago papers; a dress or two of mine were usually
in on Sunday—or something I’d done. But I dare say he didn’t even know
if John had a wife. He’d gone to the Pacific coast when he was a boy,
before John was born—and he’d never been back East, or even written,
till he wrote he was dead. It’s like that in America. _Our_ men are
busy.”

“I see,” Latham asserted.

“No, you don’t. No one could who hadn’t lived there. Throw another log
on.”

Latham did, and she continued, half chatting to him, half musing: “My!
how it all comes back, talking about it. Well, he left us all that
money, left it to me as much as if he’d said so, and very much more than
he left it to John. That’s another way we have in America that you
couldn’t understand if you tried; so I wouldn’t try, if I were you.”

“I won’t,” her guest said meekly. “Go on, please. I am interested.”

“Well, Uncle Ira died, and I made John retire.”

“Retire?”

“Give up the bar. And we traveled. I love to travel, I always have. And
now we could afford to go anywhere and do everything. Of course I’d
always had money, heaps and heaps. Papa was rich, and he left me
everything. Oh! Richard Bransby wasn’t the only pebble on that beach.
Gracious! we run to such fathers in America. But, of course, we’d had to
live on John’s money.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she blazed at him. “Why? Why, because my money wasn’t his. He
hadn’t earned it. John Hilary never had so much as a cigar out of my
money. He dressed shockingly. I had to burn half the ties he bought. And
his hats! But he supported me, I didn’t support him. American men don’t
sponge on their wives. They wouldn’t do it. And if they would, we
wouldn’t let them—not we American women. I say, Dr. Latham, you’ve a
lot to learn about America—all Englishmen have.”

“Go on. Teach me some more. I like learning.”

“There’s not much more to tell. We were not together long, John and I.
It was like a story my father used to tease me with, when he was tired
and I teased him to tell me stories. ‘I’ll tell you a story about Jack
A’Manory, and now my story’s begun. I’ll tell you another about Jack and
his brother, and now my story’s done.’ I was eighteen, nearly, when I
was married. It was four years after that that John said good-by to his
murderers and absconders. Just a year after he died in Hong
Kong—cholera. That teased me some.” The pretty lips were quivering and
Latham saw a tear pearl on the long lashes.

After a pause he said gently, “Will you ever give any one else his
place, do you think?”

“John’s place? Never. No one could.” She did not add that there were
other places that a man—the right man—might make in her heart, and
that she was lonely. But the thought was clear in her mind, and it
glanced through Latham’s.

“How long is it—since you were in Hong Kong?” he ventured presently.

Angela Hilary dimpled and laughed. “I’ll be twenty-eight next week.”

“And I was forty-seven last week.” And then he added earnestly, “Thank
you for telling me.”

“Oh, I was glad to.” Neither referred to her confidence about her age,
or thought that the other did.

At that moment “Mr. Pryde” was announced. Angela welcomed him
effusively, brewed him fresh tea and plied him with molasses candy and
hot ginger-bread.

Latham watched her; it was always pleasant to watch this woman,
especially when plying some womanly craft, as now, but he spoke to
Stephen. “I am glad to have this chance of offering you my
congratulations, Pryde.”

Stephen raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Your congratulations?”

“I hear that since you have become the head of the house of Bransby you
have done great things.”

“Oh,” Stephen said non-committally.

“They tell me that you are the big man in the Aeroplane World, and that
you are going to grow bigger. Perhaps success means nothing to you,
but——”

“Success means everything to me, to every man worth his salt. The people
who say it doesn’t are liars.”

“So, after all, you were right and Bransby was wrong.”

“Yes, I was right, and Uncle Dick was wrong. But as for my rising to
great heights—well—after all, it is the house of Bransby that will
reap the benefit. It was very trusting of Uncle Dick to leave me the
management of the business, but Helen is the house of Bransby.”

“But surely she won’t interfere with your management,” said Latham.

And Angela cried, “Oh no, she must never do that.”

“No—she must never do that,” Pryde said, more to himself than to them,
stirring his tea musingly and gazing wistfully, stubbornly into the
fire. He looked up and caught Mrs. Hilary’s eye, and spoke to them both,
and more lightly. “I dare say I shall find a way to persuade her to let
me go on as I have.”

Their hostess sprang up with a cry. Latham just saved her cup, and an
almonded eclair tumbled into the fire—past all saving. “Oh! it is
lovely, perfectly lovely!”

“What?” the men both asked.

“To fly like a bird. I used to dream I was flying when I was a child. It
was perfectly sweet. I used to dream it, too, sometimes when I first
came out and went to Germans (cotillions, you call ’em) and things every
night—oh!”

“Perhaps that came from your dancing,” Pryde said gallantly. Angela
danced well.

“More probably it was the midnight supper she’d eaten,” laughed Latham,
pointing a rueful professional finger at the tea-table.

“Perhaps it was both,” the hostess said cheerfully. “And my, it was
beautiful. But oh, we never had supper at midnight. No fear! Two or
three was nearer the hour. But such good suppers. You don’t know how to
eat over here,” she added sadly. “For one thing, you simply don’t know
how to cook a lobster—not one of you.”

“How should a lobster be cooked?” Pryde said lazily.

“Hot—hot—hot. Or it’s good in a mayonnaise. But who ever saw a
mayonnaise in London? No one.”

“I am not greatly surprised that you dreamed at some height, if you
regularly supped off lobster, Mrs. Hilary, at three in the morning,
either frappé or sizzling hot,” Latham told her.

“And champagne with it,” Stephen ventured.

“Never! I detest champagne with shellfish.”

“Stout?” Pryde quizzed.

Angela made a face.

“What, then, was the beverage? If one is permitted to ask,” Stephen
persisted meekly.

“Cream—when I could get it. I do love cream.”

The physician groaned. “I wonder,” he said severely, “that instead of
dreaming of flying you did not in reality fly.”

She giggled, and helped herself to a macaroon, still standing on the
hearthrug, facing them. “Oh, I knew a lovely poem once—we all had to
learn it by heart at school—probably you did too?”

“I think it highly improbable,” Latham protested.

“I am positive I did not,” Pryde asserted.

“Not learn to recite ‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine’! My, you do
neglect your children in this country. You poor things! I wonder if I
can remember it and say it to you.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and faced them with dancing eyes.
“‘Darius Green and His Flying Machine,’” she declaimed solemnly. And
very solemnly, but with now and then a punctuation point of giggle, she
recited in its entirety the absurd classic which has played no
inconspicuous part in the transatlantic curriculum. Her beautiful Creole
voice, now pathetic and velvet, now lifted as the wing of a bird in
flight, her face dimpling till even Stephen was bewitched, and Latham
could have kissed it, and might have been tempted to essay the
enterprise had only they been alone. Richard Bransby, whose fond fancy
had compared the women of his love each to some distinct flower, might
have thought her like some rich magnolia of her own South as she swayed
and postured in the gleaming firelight. But perhaps all beautiful women
are rather flower-like.

She ended the performance with a shiver and sigh of elation. “Oh, isn’t
it a love of a poem? Have some more tea.”

Stephen came to see Mrs. Hilary not infrequently. She liked him
genuinely, and her liking soothed and helped him. He was terribly
restless often. Never once had he repented. He had loved Hugh, and loved
him still. He would have given a great deal to have known where he was,
and to have helped him. He would have given far more to know that the
brother would never come back—come back to thwart him of Helen—perhaps
to expose him of crime. He loved Hugh and he mourned him; but two things
to him were paramount: to make Helen his wife, and to be an “Air-King.”
One goal was in sight, the other he could not, and would not,
relinquish. And to gain these two great desires, soul-desires both, he
would hesitate at nothing, regret nothing, and least of all their cost
to any other, no matter how dear to him that other, no matter how
terrible that cost.

Latham left a few moments after the tragic descent of Darius into the
barnyard mud. Angela Hilary went to the door to speed her parting guest,
and gave him her hand, her right hand, of course. Latham dropped it
rather abruptly and took her left hand in his. “How many rings do you
own?” he demanded.

“Dozens. I’ve not counted them for years. There’s a list somewhere.”

“You need two more,” he said softly—and went.


                              CHAPTER XXI

The jade Joss had the room to himself. There was little enough light and
no fire. Gray shadows hung thick in the place, palpable and dreary. The
blinds were down and the curtains all drawn. It was late afternoon in
January—a cold, forbidding day; and the room itself, once the heart of
the house, was even colder, more ghoul-like. Only one or two thin shafts
of sickly light crept in, penetrating the gloom—but not lifting it,
intensifying it rather.

Joss looked cold, neglected and alien. The rose-colored lotus looked
pinched, gray and frozen—poor exiled pair, and here and so they had
been since a few days after Richard Bransby’s death, when Helen had left
the room, locking it behind her, and pronounced it taboo to all others.

But now a key turned in the door, creaking and stiffly, as if long
unused to its office.

In the hall, Mrs. Leavitt drew back with a shiver and motioned
imperatively to Stephen to precede her. “How dark it is,” she said, and
not very bravely, following him in not ungingerly.

“Yes,” he answered crisply. He had not come there to talk. And, like
her, he was intensely nervous; but from a very different cause. Dead
men, and the places of their last earthly resting, meant nothing to him.

“And cold. Stephen, light the fire while I draw the curtains. Have you
matches?”

“Of course.” He knelt at the fireplace and set a match to the gas logs.
Mrs. Leavitt drew the curtain aside and raised the blinds. The winter
sunlight came streaming through the windows, a chilled unfriendly
sunshine, but it flooded the room. Pryde looked about quickly, and the
woman did too.

She was much affected. “Oh, Stephen, how this room does bring it all
back to me! It seems as if it were only yesterday that Richard was
here—poor Richard.” Then her eyes caught their old prey—dust—and
dust—dust everywhere. She pulled open a drawer under the bookshelves
and caught up a little feather duster that had always been kept there.

But Stephen checked her abruptly. “Don’t touch that table—don’t touch
anything on any of the tables,” he said sharply.

“Well, I’m sure——”

“No—you must not. I—I promised Helen——”

“Promised Helen?”

“That no one should lay hand on even one thing, no one but myself, and
that I would touch as little as possible—just to find the papers.”

“Well, I’m sure——”

His eye fell upon the bit of jade and he pointed to it, laughing
nervously. “Especially, I had to promise her that I’d not lay a finger
on that. You remember how Uncle Dick used absent-mindedly to play with
it. And Helen declares that no one shall ever touch it again but
herself, and she only to dust it.”

“Well, it needs dusting now, right enough,” Mrs. Leavitt remarked
resentfully.

“Are you quite sure that everything here is exactly as Uncle Dick left
it?” In spite of himself he could not keep his hideous anxiety out of
his voice.

But Mrs. Leavitt did not notice. She was looking furtively about the
unkempt room with disapproving eyes. She answered mechanically,
“Oh—yes—everything. The day Richard’s coffin was carried out of it,
Helen locked it up herself, just as it was. It has never been opened
since.”

“She didn’t disturb any of the papers on this table?”

“No.”

“And no one has been here since, you are sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she replied acidly. “If I refused you, my own
nephew, admission twenty times at least, I wouldn’t allow any one else
in, would I? Helen said, before she went up to town to live because she
couldn’t bear to stay here, poor child—it’s very lonely without
her—well, she said that she did not want any one to come in here until
she returned. Naturally I respected her wishes—orders, you might call
them, since this is her house now—not that I grudge that. Well, now you
come with this letter from her, saying that you are to do what you like
in the library, and are to have her father’s keys—so of course I opened
it for you—and glad enough to get it opened at last—and here are the
keys; it’s only recently I’ve had them. Helen kept them herself for a
long time.”

Stephen took them from her quickly—almost too quickly, had she been a
woman observant of anything but dust and disorder. “I persuaded her to
write it,” he said. “It is time her father’s papers were looked over,
and it would be too heavy a task for her—too sad.”

“Stephen, is she still grieving over Hugh’s disappearance?”

Pryde shrugged his shoulders. “H’m, yes.”

“Poor child—poor child! It seems as if everything were taken from her
at once. And to think that a nephew of mine—well, nearly a
nephew—should desert from the army, and in war time, too—that there
should be a warrant out for his arrest! Just do look at that dust!”

Stephen’s patience was wearing thin. “If you’ll excuse me now, Aunt
Caroline——”

“Of course—you have a great deal to do, and I have too; the servants
get worse and worse. Servants! They’re not servants; war impostures, I
call them. Well, I’ll leave you now.” But at the door she turned again.
“Stephen!”

“Yes.” He tried not to say it too impatiently.

“There isn’t anything of great value in this room, is there?”

“Why, no,” he said nervously.

“That’s odd.”

“Why—odd?” His voice was tense, and he did not look at her.

“Three times since Richard died, burglars have tried to force their way
through the windows in this room.”

“Oh!” Pryde managed to say, and it was all he could manage to say.

“Always the same windows, you understand. Each time, fortunately, we
frightened them away.”

“You have reported the matter to the police?” The anxiety made his voice
husky.

“Yes, but all they ever did was to make notes.”

“You have no idea who the burglar was? Burglars, I mean,” correcting
himself awkwardly. “You never caught sight of him—them?”

“No—not a glimpse.”

“No—oh, just some tramp, I dare say.”

He was easier now, but his voice was a little unsteady from strain and
with relief. “And now please——”

“Yes, I’ll hurry away now. Barker is dusting the best dinner service—if
I’m not there to watch, she’s sure to break something. Call me, if you
want me.”

“I shan’t want you, Aunt Caroline.”


                              CHAPTER XXII

As the fussy, bustling footsteps died away Stephen sank into an
easy-chair—Richard’s own, as it chanced—and laid his head on a table.
He was worn out with tension and uncertainty.

The tall clock in the corner had run down. The gas fire made no sound.
No room could have been stiller.

The day was mending toward its close, and the late level sun flooded in
from the windows, as if to make up for lost time and eight months of
exclusion. The light of the fire lit up the room’s other side, and
between the two riots of light and of warmth the man sat dejected,
distraught and shivering—alone with his self-knowledge, his fear and
his gruesome task.

Where was the damnatory sheet of paper? In this room in all human
probability. Its ink had scarcely dried when Bransby had died, and it
had not been found on the body; Stephen Pryde had made sure of that.

For eight terrible months he had schemed and tortured to get here and
find it—even playing housebreaker in his desperation. Yet now here at
long last he shrank inexplicably from beginning the search. Why? That he
knew not in the least. But, for one thing, he was hideously cold, almost
cramped with chill. The arms of the chair felt like ice. Little billows
of cold seemed to buffet against his face. The room had been shut up and
fireless for so long. His feet ached with cold, almost they felt
paralyzed. His legs were quivering, and so cold! And his hands were
blueing.

At last he forced his numb frame from the seat.

He looked about with frightened, agonized eyes.

No paper lay on any one of the tables apparently. The wastepaper basket!
He seized it with a hand that shook as if palsied. Oh—a crumpled
whiteness lay on the bottom of the basket. Pray Heaven—he thrust in a
fumbling hand—and gave a cry of disappointment. This was not paper, but
some bit of soft cloth. He jerked it out impatiently, and then, when he
saw what it was, dropped it on the table with a sharp sigh; a
handkerchief—Helen’s.

From table to table he went, examining each article on them, searching
every crevice. Each drawer he searched again and again. He looked in
every possible place, and, as the anxious searchers for lost things have
from time immemorial, in many impossible places. He overlooked
nothing—he was sure of that. Again and again he searched the tables and
then researched them.

With a puzzled frown he rose and stared about the room. Then he moved
about it slowly and carefully, looking for some possible hidden
cupboard. He sounded the wainscoting. He scrutinized the ceiling, he
pulled at the seats of the chairs.

Finally he halted before the bookcase and stood staring at it a long
time. He drew out one or two volumes. Could the thin sheet be behind
one? But the dust came out thickly, and he put them back. Something
seemed to pull him away, and drive him back to the table. Why, of
course, it must be there. Where else would the dead man have hidden it?
Nowhere, of course. Why waste time looking anywhere else? Again he began
the weary business all over. Again and again his cold, trembling hands
felt and searched, and his eyes, wild now and baffled, peered and
studied. Almost he prayed. His breath came in gasps. Sweat stood on his
forehead and around his clenched lips.

Nothing! Nowhere! He sank back in his seat, convinced and defeated. The
confession was not here; or, if it was, he could not find it. And it
_might_ be somewhere else. Probably it had been destroyed, intentionally
or accidentally, by some one else. But it _might_ be in existence. And
some day it might be found to damn and to ruin.

How tired he was—and how cold! Why couldn’t he get warmer? And where
did those icy drifts of wind come from, goose-fleshing his face and his
hands and making his spine creep?

He crouched over the fire, and held out his blue hands to its heat. No
use! He was growing colder and colder.

Then he began in his groping misery to think of birds flying. That was
always his vision in moments of over-tension or of great
aspiration—birds in full flight. To watch such flight had been the
purest joy of his boyhood. To contrive and to achieve its emulation had
been the fight and the triumph of his manhood.

He lifted the morsel of cambric to his face, saluting it, and wiping
away with it the cold moisture on his cheek and his lips. Who should say
his extraordinary ambition, extraordinarily pursued, extraordinarily
fulfilled, ignoble? No one quite justly. Certainly he had wanted
success, power, prestige and great wealth for himself. But, as much as
he had desired them for himself, no less had he desired them for
Helen—to lay at her feet, to keep in her hands.

And, too, he had dreamed to make England mightier yet by his air fleets
and their victories. Patriotism is a virtue enhanced and embellished by
all other virtues, even as it enhances and embellishes all other
virtues. But it is a virtue sole and apart, and not impossible to hearts
and to lives in all else besotted and ignoble. Only yesterday Stephen
himself had seen an example of this. Waiting at Victoria, he had watched
some hundreds of German prisoners detrained and retrained. As they sat
waiting and guarded, a bunch of English convicts, manacled and pallid,
had slouched on to the platform—“old timers” of the worst type, from
their looks, with heads ill-shaped and shapeless, more appropriate to an
asylum for idiots than a prison for miscreants, and with countenances
that would have disgraced and branded the lowest form of quadruped brute
life—“men” compared with whom, unless their appearance grossly libeled
them, Bill Sykes must have been quite the gentleman and no little of an
Adonis. But not one of them all, bestial, hardened and deficient, but
slunk or weakly brazened as they shuffled along, ashamed and unnerved,
abashed of God’s daylight and of the glance of their unincarcerated
fellows. Among them was chained one boy (he was scarcely older than
that) with a fine head and a gifted face—a boy, not unlike what Stephen
remembered himself in his unscorched days. It was a spiritual face even
now, as Stephen’s own was. Probably the boy’s crime had been some sin of
passion. Murderers often are of the spiritual type, but very rarely
housebreakers or thugs. Perhaps he had murdered a brother, loved by the
girl he himself craved. Perhaps he had killed some enemy or friend who
well deserved such slaughter. Or had his guilt been more sordid,
begotten in some schoolboy escapade, growing and nourished fœtuslike in
the fructive womb of youth’s temptations and young manhood’s cowardice:
money misused, trust betrayed, sex tarnished? Whatever his crime it had
left no scar on his face, no record except of suffering. And of them
all, this young convict’s plight was the most pitiful, his chagrin the
most woeful, of all that sorry gang. At a word from a warder, they
turned their poor cropped heads and saw the Hun prisoners. The cravened
faces cleared, the handcuffed figures straightened, the haggard, clouded
eyes brightened, the broken gait mended; criminals, exhibited in their
hideous livery of shame, for the moment they were men once
more—Englishmen, belligerent, proud and rejoiced—of the race of the
victors, lifted out and above the slime of their personal defeat—all of
them, the oldest and most beast-like, and the boy with the finely
chiseled face and the heart-broken eyes.

Stephen Pryde’s own eyes, as he sat brooding between the fire and the
sunshine, were as haggard as any of those cinnamon-clad miserables had
been. He was ill—with the inexplicable chill, the grave-smell of the
room, and the nausea of disappointment and of his dilemma. He was at bay
indeed now.

But the face that hung over the fire was a spiritual face. He had
betrayed a trust. He had stolen. He had borne false witness. In this
very room he had knotted his fist to do murder—and against the man who
had given him home, affection, position and luxury; and against his own
brother, whose mother and his had placed their hands palm in palm when
death already had muted her lips—his kiddy brother!—he had sinned with
a sin and a dastardy, compared to which Cain’s was venial and kind. Why?
And having so sinned, why was his face still fine, the hallmark of the
spiritual type still stamped there, clear and unblurred?

Ah, who shall say? The riddle is dense.

Perhaps ’twas because his vice was indeed “but virtue misapplied,”
because circumstances had betrayed him. Mary Magdalene in her common
days probably had some foretelling of saintship on her lureful face, and
might more easily have nursed babes on her breast than lured men to her
lair, been mother more gladly than wanton.

However it was, however it came, there was a high something, a fineness,
on Stephen Pryde’s face that no one else of his milieu had—not even
Helen, certainly not Hugh; but his, for all time, to descend with him
into the grave, to go with him wherever he went, Heavenward or
Hellward—his gift and his birth-right. Few indeed ever sensed this.
Spirituality was almost the last trait friends or relatives would have
attributed to him. But one acquaintance had espied it—the American
woman, whom he had held in some sneering tolerance in the days of their
first meeting. “He has the face of a saint—a sour saint—but a saint, a
soul apart,” Angela had said of him the day he had been introduced to
her. And he had said of her after the same occasion, “What a
preposterous rattle of a woman! She rushes from whim to absurdity, back
and forth and getting nowhere—‘cluck, cluck, cluck’—like a hen in
front of a motor-car.” And this of the woman who had understood him at a
glance, as his own people had not in a lifetime. Why? Another riddle.
Perhaps it was because, underneath her cap and bells, Angela Hilary,
too, wore the hallmark, smaller, lighter cut—but there, and the same.
There is no greater mistake—and none made more often—than to think
that those who laugh and dance through life are earthbound. Heaven is
full of little children, clustered at her knee, playing with Our Lady’s
beads.

After Stephen, dreamer and sinner, Angela Hilary had the most spiritual
of all the personalities with which this tale is concerned; and, after
her, the self-contained, conventional, well-groomed doctor of Harley
Street.

Mrs. Leavitt’s step came along the hall, and her voice, upbraiding some
domestic delinquency, ordering tea and toast.

With a shivering effort, Pryde rose from his seat, put the handkerchief
away carefully—in his pocket, and strolled nonchalantly into the hall,
closing the door behind him.

The jade Joss had the room to himself.


                             CHAPTER XXIII

About noon the next day Helen motored from London and took them all by
surprise.

Mrs. Leavitt was delighted. It was lonely at Deep Dale—very lonely
sometimes. For the first time in his life Stephen was sorry to see his
cousin. Her visit, he felt, foreboded no good to his momentary
enterprise, and her presence could but be something of an entanglement.
He was manager—dictator almost—at Cockspur Street, at the Poultry and
at Weybridge, and could carry it off with some show of authority, and
with some reality of it too. But here he was nothing, nobody. Helen was
everything here. No one else counted. Her rule was gentle, but not
Bransby’s own had been more autocratic or less to be swayed except by
her own fancy or whim.

Only too well he knew how this home-coming would move her. What might
she not order and countermand? Her permission to him to search and to
docket had been scant and reluctant enough in London. Here, any instant
she might rescind it. Above all he dreaded her presence in the
library—both for its interference with his further searching (of course
he had determined to search the already much-searched room again) and
for the effect of the room and its associations upon her.

She had little to say to him, and almost he seemed to avoid her. But he
ventured to follow her to the library the afternoon of her arrival—and
he did it for her sake almost as much as for his own.

She was standing quietly looking about the well-loved room; and he could
see that she was holding back her tears with difficulty. Almost he
wished that she would not restrain them—though he liked to see a
woman’s weeping as little as most men do—so drawn and set was her face.

“Who is it?” she asked presently.

“It’s I, Helen.”

She turned to him wearily—then turned to the table; he put out his hand
to restrain her, but she did not see, or she ignored it, and took up the
green and pink jade and wiped it carefully with her handkerchief. A
strange rapt look grew in her face, as she pressed the cambric into the
difficult crannies of the intricate, delicate carving. She sighed when
she had finished, and put the little fetish down—very carefully, just
where it had stood before.

“Is—is anything wrong, Helen?”

“No.”

“Then why are you here? You said you couldn’t come.”

“I know, but at the last minute I had to.”

“You had to?”

“Yes,” she answered wearily, seating herself on the broad window-seat.
“Have you looked over Daddy’s papers?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found anything—anything—about Hugh?” The listless voice was
keen and eager enough now.

“No—nothing,” he told her.

“Are you sure, Stephen?”

“Quite,” he said sadly. “Why, dear, what makes you think——”

“I don’t know—only—something told me——” She rose and came towards
the writing-table. Stephen moved too, getting between her and it—“I
felt—that we should find something here that would help us prove his
innocence—that would bring him back to me.”

The man who loved her as neither Hugh nor Richard Bransby had, winced at
the love and longing in the girl’s voice. But he answered her gently,
“There is nothing here.” For a space he stood staring at the table,
puzzled, thinking hard. “Helen.”

“Well?” she was back at the window now, looking idly out at the
leafless, snow-crusted trees.

“Had Uncle Dick any secret cupboard or safe where he kept important
papers?”

“No—you know he hadn’t. He always kept his important things at the
office—you know that.”

“Then, if there was anything about Hugh here it would be on this table.”

“Yes.” But even at Hugh’s name she did not turn from the window, but
still stood looking drearily out at the dreary day.

Perplexed and still more perplexed, Stephen stood motionless, gazing
down on the writing-table. Suddenly a thought struck him. His face lit a
little. The thought had possessed him now: a welcome thought. Surely the
paper, the hideous paper, had fallen from the table on which his uncle
had left it, fallen into the fire, and been burnt. He measured the
distance with a kindling eye. Yes! Yes! It might have been that. Surely
it had been that. It must be; it should be. Fascinated, he stood
estimating the chances—again and again. Helen sighed and turned and
came towards him slowly. He neither saw nor heard her. “That’s it. Yes,
that’s it!” he exclaimed excitedly—triumphant, speaking to himself, not
to Helen.

And, if Helen heard, she did not heed. After a little she came close to
him and said beseechingly, “You don’t think there is any hope, do you,
Stephen?”

He pulled himself together with a sharp effort—so sharp that it paled a
little his face which had flushed slightly with his own relief of a
moment ago. He took her hand gently. “I am sure there is not,” he told
her sadly.

She left her hand in his for a moment—glad of the sympathy in his
touch, then turned dejectedly away. “Poor Hugh!” she said as she moved.
“Poor Hugh,” she repeated, slipping down on to the big couch.

Stephen Pryde followed her. “Helen,” he begged, “you mustn’t grieve like
this—you must not torture yourself so by hoping to see Hugh again. You
must put him out of your mind.” Her mother could not have said it more
gently. He moved a light chair nearer the couch and sat down.

“I can’t,” she said simply.

He left his chair and sat down quietly beside her “Why won’t you let me
help you? Why won’t you——”

The girl shrank back into her corner. “Don’t, Stephen—please. We’ve
gone all through this before. It’s impossible.”

“But Hugh is unworthy of you. Oh!”—at a quick gesture from her—“don’t
misunderstand me. I love Hugh—love him still—always shall——” There
was the ring of sincerity in his voice, and indeed, so far, he had said
but the truth. “Day in and day out I go over it all in my mind, and at
night, and try to find some possible loophole for hope, hope of his
innocence. But there is none. And then the deserting! But I’d do
anything for Hugh—anything. And I’d give all I have, or ever hope to
have, to clear him. I shall always stick to him, if ever he comes back,
and in my heart at least, if he doesn’t. But you—oh! Helen—to waste
all your young years, spill all your thought and all your caring—I
can’t endure that—for your own sake—if my love and my longing are
nothing to you—I implore you—he has proved himself
unworthy—acknowledged it even——”

“Daddy loved him—even when the trouble came—and I know he would want
me to help him—if I could.”

“Helen,” Stephen said after a short pause, speaking in a low even voice
(really he was managing himself splendidly—heroically), “you want to do
everything that your father wished, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You know that.”

“After Hugh left that night, Uncle Dick told me that it would make him
happy to think that—some day—you and I would be married——”

The last words were almost a whisper, so gently he said them. But, for
all his care, they stabbed her.

“Stephen!——” It was a cry and a protest.

The smooth voice went on, “He knew that I had always cared for you, and
that you would be safe with me. He would have told you had he lived. He
meant to——”

Never was wooing quieter. But the room pulsed about him, perhaps she
felt it throb too, so intense and so true was his passion, so crying his
longing.

“You have never told me this—before——” she began, not unmoved.

“No, dear, I didn’t want to worry you. And I—I wanted it to come from
you—the gift—of yourself. I wanted to teach you to love me—unaided.
But I couldn’t—so I turned to him—to Uncle Dick to help me—as I
always turned to him for everything from the day mother died. Oh, Helen,
can’t you, won’t you, don’t you see how I love you? I have always loved
you.”

“Please—not now——” Her face was very white. “I can’t talk to you now.
I must have time—to think—we—we can talk—another time.” She got up
unsteadily and moved to the door.

He opened it simply, and made not even a gesture to delay her.

Alone—he breathed a long sigh of mingled feelings. There was
satisfaction in it—and other things, satisfaction that she was no
longer here in this danger zone of his where the confession _might_ be
after all, and might be found at any moment to confront and undo him.
And there was satisfaction too that he had come a little nearer
prosperity in his hard wooing than he had ever come before. She had not
repulsed him—not at least as she had done before. Perhaps—perhaps—he
would win her yet—and—if he did—if he did!

Standing by the table he rested his hand there, and it just brushed the
piece of jade. He drew his hand back quickly. Helen had desired that no
one but she herself should ever touch it again. Not for much would he
have disobeyed her in this small thing. Her every wish was law to
Stephen Pryde, except only when some wish of hers threatened his two
great passions.

The paper—the cursed paper—must have gone to cinder. Surely it had
been so. He searched a drawer and found notepaper—and made a sheet to
the size—as he remembered it—of the missing piece. He laid it on the
table, brushed it off with a convulsive motion of his arm. Brief as his
instant of waiting was, it trembled his lip with suspense. Thank God!
Thank God! The paper had fallen on to the glowing asbestos. It caught.
It burned. It was gone—absolutely obliterated—destroyed as if it had
never been.

He sank down into Richard Bransby’s chair, and began to laugh. Long and
softly the hysterical laughter of his relief—sadder than any
sobbing—crept and shivered through the room.

The green Joss blinked and winked in the flickering of the high-turned
fire. The pink jade lotus grew redder in the crimson laving of the
setting sun.


                              CHAPTER XXIV

Of course any feeling of security built upon so slight foundation, and
concerning a matter of such paramount and vital moment, could but be
transient. With the next daylight, dread and anxiety reasserted
themselves. And Pryde was again the victim of restlessness and
uncertainty.

Helen’s presence, her nearness to the library all the time, and her
actual occupation of it whenever she chose, disconcerted him. He hoped
that she would go back to Curzon Street almost at once. Anxious as he
was to go over his feverish searching again and still again, he would
eagerly have turned the key in the library door, and taken her back to
London, deferring for a few days what he again believed and hoped would
be the result and the reward of yet one more hunt. It had been great
relief to feel that the deadly document was already destroyed. It would
be a thousandfold more comfort to see it burn—and ten thousand times
more satisfactory. He should _know_ then. He could _never_ know else. He
should be free and unafraid then. In no other way could he ever attain
unalloyed freedom, in no other way escape the rough clutch of fear.

But Helen had come to Oxshott to stay—for the present. And on the
second day Pryde learned to his annoyance that she was expecting Dr.
Latham by an afternoon train.

Well, what would be would be, more especially if Helen had decreed it,
and he accepted the physician’s appearance with a patient shrug—as
patient a shrug as he could muster.

It naturally fell to him to act host to this man guest of Helen’s, and
he liked Latham more than he liked most men, and resented his intrusion
as little as he could any one’s, unless Angela Hilary might have come in
the doctor’s stead. Angela would have played the better into his hands,
by the shrill claim she would have made upon Helen with a chatter of
frocks and a running hither and thither. And, too, he had come to enjoy
Mrs. Hilary quite apart from any usefulness to be wrung from the vibrant
personality. He enjoyed the breeze of it, and often turned into her
hotel as other overworked and brain-fagged men run down to Brighton or
Folkestone for a day of relaxation, and the tonic sea-air. He had come
to find positive refreshment in occasional whiffs of her saline sparkle,
and no little diversion in speculating as to what she would say next,
and about what. And this of the woman of whom he had once said that she
and her inconsequent chatter of kaleidoscope nonsenses reminded him of
nothing but the wild fluttings and distraught flutterings of a hen in
front of a motor! Truly with him she was an acquired taste. But as truly
he had acquired it. He had come more nearly to know her—her as she was,
as well as her as she seemed. Many people acquired that taste—when they
came to more know the blithe alien—and not a few felt it instinctively
at the first of acquaintance.

But Angela Hilary was not here, and Horace Latham was—and Pryde did his
best to make the latter’s visit pleasant, but without the slightest
effort or wish to prolong it.

“Do you know, Pryde,” Latham said musingly, as they smoked together
after dinner—alone for the moment in the library—“it always puzzled
me——”

“Puzzled you?”

“I have so often wondered about it—it came so suddenly—Bransby’s
death. As a physician I could not just understand it then, and I have
never been quite able to understand it since. And as a physician—I’d
like to. It’s been rather like losing track of the end of a case you’ve
been at particular pains to diagnose. It’s unsatisfactory.”

“I don’t quite see——”

“It must have been a shock that killed him—a great shock.” Latham’s
voice and manner were the manner and voice of his consulting-room. He
was probing—kindly and easily—but probing skillfully. Pryde felt it
distinctly. “Did he, by any chance, know that your brother intended to
desert?”

“No—I don’t think so.” Stephen was well on his guard. “But he knew that
Hugh was in some trouble at the office. That was why Grant came here
that night.”

“Oh, yes,” Latham nodded. “I remember. No, it wasn’t that. His interview
with Grant disturbed him, I know—but it was something bigger that
killed him!”

“Why, how—how do you mean?” Stephen spoke as naturally as he could.

“You were the last person who saw him alive, were you not?” Latham
questioned for question.

“Yes.”

“How was he when you left him—when you said good-night?”

“He was all right,” Pryde spoke reflectingly.

“If my memory serves me,” the physician continued, “you had gone from
the house.”

“When he died? Yes—some time before he died. I was on my way to London.
There was something Uncle Dick wanted me to do for him in town—er it
was nothing important.”

“Then,” Latham added musingly, “it was after you left that this shock
occurred to him. It must have come from something in this room.”

“Something in this room?” Strive as he might, and he strove his utmost,
Stephen could not keep the sharp agitation he felt out of his voice.

But Latham did not notice it—or did not appear to. “Yes,” he said in
his same level voice, “a letter—some papers. Was anything of importance
found on his table?”

“Nothing.”

“Curious!”

Pryde, fascinated by his own device and his hope, the device born of the
hope, was lost in thought, and sat looking from table to fire, measuring
again with his trained eyes distance and angles. And, seeing the other’s
absorption, Latham was watching him openly now, with eyes also well
trained, and, because less anxious, probably shrewder. The physician was
diagnosing.

Stephen spoke first. Latham had intended that he should. “Latham?”

“Yes?”

“If you were right,” rising in his tense interest,—“if there had been
some papers that caused the shock that killed him—isn’t it
possible”—returning to his chair as suddenly as he had quit it—“isn’t
it probable that while he had it in his hand, sitting just here perhaps,
he tried to rise, he was faint and tried to reach the bell, and the
paper fell from his hand, fell into the fire and was destroyed?” As he
spoke he enacted, rising, turning ineffectually, convulsively toward the
bell, let an imaginary paper drift from his hand. Then he caught the
significance of his own excitement, ruled himself, and sauntered to the
fireplace.

But the diagnosis was completed. “I dare say that might have happened,”
Latham said consideringly.

“It’s the only way I can explain it,” Pryde’s voice vibrated with his
infinite relief.

“Explain what, Pryde?” Latham asked in his Harley Street voice. To the
insinuation of that deft tone many a patient had yielded a secret
unconsciously.

But Stephen recalled himself, and was on his guard again.
“Why—why—this sudden death.” A slight smile just flicked the
physician’s serene face. Pryde rose once more and stood again gazing,
half hypnotized by his own suggestion. “It was a great blow to me,
Latham, a great blow”—a sigh, so sharp that it seemed to shake him,
ended his sentence. “I torture myself trying to picture just what
happened after I left this room.”

Latham made no reply. Presently Pryde spoke again, repeating his own
words rather wildly. “Torture myself trying to picture just what
happened after I left this room.”

Still Latham said nothing. He was considering.


                              CHAPTER XXV

In a little room high up in the house, her very own sitting-room, heaped
with roses and heliotrope and carnations, its windows looking out to the
Surrey hills and a gurgling brook—blue as steel in the winter cold, its
snow-white banks edged with irregular shrubberies icicle-hung, Helen and
Latham sat in close conference.

A glorious fire flamed on the broad hearth in the corner. Helen had
inherited her father’s love of fires. When the war came, crippling their
servant staff both at Curzon Street and at Deep Dale, and making the
replenishing of coal cellars arduous, and posters on every hoarding
admonished patriotism to economize fuel, Richard Bransby had installed a
gas-fire in his library. Helen had opposed this, she had so loved the
great mixed fire of logs and of coal before which so many of her
childhood’s gloamings had been spent, so many of her acute young dreams
dreamed, but for once the father had not yielded to her. In one
particular the gas-fire had appealed to him—it minimized the intrusions
of servants when he best liked to have his “den” to himself. Humbly
born, but with none of the excrescent caddishness of smaller-souled
_nouveaux riches_, he had no liking for the visible presence of his
domestic retinue, and when servants were ill-trained and imperfectly
unobtrusive, little irritated him more than to have them about, and,
except by Helen, he was a man easily irritated. So gas had replaced wood
and anthracite in his room. But not so in Helen’s. She meant well by her
country, but the logs piled high on her hearth. The patriotisms of youth
are apt to be thoughtless, in every country. Often Youth makes the great
sacrifice—England needs no telling of that—but Age makes the ten
thousand daily burnt-offerings that in their infinite aggregate heap
high in the scale of a people’s devotion; and, perhaps, win as tender
approval from the Angel that records.

The morning sun streamed in riotously. A room could not be prettier or
more cozy. It made a brilliant background to the slender, black-clad
girl-figure, and the handsome, middle-aged man, dressed as carefully as
she—in a gray morning suit—and almost as slender. Dr. Latham took
every care of his figure.

“I hope you are not going to be angry with me,” Helen said, looking at
him a little ruefully.

“My dear child!”

“Because, you see, I have brought you here under false pretenses.”

“False pretenses!” her old friend laughed contentedly, “that’s
actionable.”

“I’m not ill. It isn’t about my health I want to see you.”

“Then I’ve lost a very attractive patient,” he mocked at her in
affectionate retort.

“Don’t joke—please. It is very serious.”

“So you wrote.”

“And I didn’t say I was ill. But, of course, that would be what you
thought, when I begged you to come for a few days, and knowing how busy
you always are, and asking you to say nothing to Aunt Caroline or any
one, but just seem to be on an ordinary visit.”

“I was delighted to come,” he assured her gravely. “And, as it happens,
I did not think you were ill.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How was that, Dr. Latham?”

“Can’t say in the least; but I didn’t. And—now—well—tell me.”

“It’s about something you once said.”

He wondered if it were something he had said about Angela Hilary. He
hoped not. He had said some very foolish things—but that was long
ago—before he really knew that radiant woman. “Something I once said?”
he echoed a little anxiously.

Helen nodded.

“I am afraid I don’t remember. What was it?”

“That night that——” But she choked at the words. For a moment she
could not speak. Latham gave her time. He was used to giving people
time—and especially women. Presently she went on, finding another way
to put it—“That last night—when you spoke of the dead coming back. You
said that if two people loved each other very dearly, and one was left
behind and needed the one who had gone, he would come back.”

“I said he might try,” Latham corrected her gently.

“You were right.”

“What do you mean?” The man was half amused, half startled, but the
physician was anxious.

“Daddy—Daddy is trying to come back to me,” she said very simply.

“Miss Bransby!” For a moment he wondered if Angela had been taking this
overwrought child to materializing circles or trumpet mediums or some
other such bosh. But no, Angela wouldn’t. She did the wildest
things—small things—but in the important things she had the greatest
good sense: he had proved it.

“Oh,” Helen assured him, “I am sure of it—I am sure of it. There’s
something he wants me to do, but I can’t understand what it is. That is
why I asked you to come here—I thought you might help me.”

Latham was moved, and perturbed. “My dear child,” he began lamely.

But Helen could brook no interruption now. Her words came fast enough,
now she had started. “For weeks,” she insisted breathlessly, “I’ve had
this feeling—for weeks I’ve known that he was doing his utmost to tell
me something. At first I tried to put it aside. I thought it was my
grief or my longing for him that deceived me into thinking this—but I
couldn’t. It always came back stronger than ever—until to-day when I
suddenly realized—I can’t tell you just how—there is something he
wants _me_ to do _in the library_.”

“My dear, my dear, my idle remarks have put these ideas in your head.”
The doctor was thoroughly alarmed for her now, though still he could
detect no hint of illness or disorder. “You are overwrought.”

“No, no!” the girl cried. “It isn’t that. It’s the strain of not being
able to understand—it’s almost more than I can bear. Oh, Dr. Latham,
can’t you help me to find out what it is that Daddy wants me to do?”

He studied her gravely—puzzled, troubled, strange thoughts surging in
his mind. She seemed perfectly normal. And he knew that while love,
religious mania, money troubles, filled insane asylums almost to
bursting, that the percentage of patients so incarcerated as the result
of spiritualism was almost _nil_, and quite negligible—general rumor
notwithstanding. (Rumor’s a libelous jade.) He felt less sure of a right
course than he often did. And he said sadly, but with little conviction,
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Miss Bransby.”

“But surely——” She rose and stood before him, her eyes flushed with
entreaty, her clasped hands stretched toward him in pleading.

He rose too and laid a grave arm about her slight shoulder, saying
tenderly, “What I said that night—it was no more than an idle
speculation—I had no ground for it. And, naturally, your great grief
coming so soon afterwards impressed my words upon your mind.”

“Oh, no——” Helen said, her tears gathering.

“Come! come!” Latham coaxed her. “You’re imagining things.”

She pulled from his arm, and moved to the window, answering him almost
violently, “No, no! _It’s too vivid—it’s too real!_”

“But surely,” he urged, “if your father could bring you to this house,
direct you to the library—you said the library?”—she nodded her head
emphatically—“he could tell you what he wanted you to do there. You
have had to bear a great sorrow—it has unsettled you and given you this
delusion—a delusion that comes to so many people who have lost what you
have lost; you must conquer it!”

Perhaps he might have convinced and influenced her more, had he been
more convinced himself, had she convinced and influenced him less. She
persisted with him, wearily. “But—don’t you see? I thought you would
see. Oh, please try to see. If I lose this—I lose—everything. I was so
sure it was about Hugh—I was so sure Daddy was going to bring him back
to me.” She sat down by the fire crying piteously now.

Latham’s own eyes felt odd. He knelt down on the hearthrug, and gathered
her hands into his. “Poor child!” It was all he could say. What else was
there to say?

She looked at him desperately. “Then you don’t believe?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he admitted—very softly.

He saw her mouth quiver, and then the sobs came thick and fast, and she
hid her face on his shoulder.


                              CHAPTER XXVI

She seemed quite herself at luncheon, and Latham was the life and the
jest of the table. Women are bred so; and such is the craft of his
trade.

Even Stephen watching jealously—he had known of the _tête-à-tête_ of
the morning—learned nothing. And Caroline Leavitt rejoiced and was
grateful to see the girl so much more nearly herself.

But still Stephen watched—and waited.

At twilight he found Helen alone in the library. He joined her almost
timidly, fearing she might drive him away. He sensed well enough that
she wished to be alone. But she neither welcomed nor dismissed him.

“I didn’t know you were ill, Helen,” he said, seating himself where he
could see her face well.

“I am not ill,” she replied, a little impatiently, rising and crossing
the room, and standing at the window, facing it, not him.

“But you sent for Latham.”

Helen made no answer.

Stephen persisted, “And you carried him off to your room after
breakfast, and said plainly enough, that you wished to be undisturbed
there.”

“Yes, and I meant it. But it was to talk to him of something quite
different from my health.”

“May I know what it was?” Pryde asked, going to the window, looking at
her searchingly with his keen, speculative eyes.

“You, Stephen? No.” She could scarcely have spoken more coldly. And
again she crossed the room, and stood looking down into the fire this
time, her face once more out of the range of his eyes.

Pryde bit his lip, but he made no further bid for her confidence. He
knew it would be useless—and worse. Neither spoke again for some time.
Only the tick-tick of the grandfather’s clock, rewound and set now,
touched the absolute silence. At last he said, “Helen.”

“Yes.” She turned and faced him, but both her voice and her face were
cold and discouraging. He was risking too much, he was rasping his
cousin; and he knew it. But for the life of him he could not desist.
Such moments come to men sometimes, and against the impulse the firmest
will is helpless.

“Do you remember losing a little blue shoe, years ago?” he began.

“I? No.”

“You did—the day we first came here. I found it. And I kept it. I have
it still. I’ve always had it. I had it at Oxford.”

Helen sat down wearily, looking bored.

“I loved that little blue shoe, even the day I found and kept
it—because it was yours. I have treasured it all these years—because
it was yours. I shall keep it always.”

The girl shrugged her shoulders a little unkindly. “Well,” she said
indifferently, “I don’t suppose it would fit me now.”

Her irresponsiveness stung him. He crossed to her quickly and laid a
masterful hand on her chair. “Have you thought over what I told
you?—about what I feel—about what Uncle Dick wished?”

She answered him then, and anything but indifferently. “Not now,
Stephen,” she said impatiently, “I can’t talk of that now.”

“But you must.”

“Must?”

Her voice should have warned him. There was anger in it, contempt even,
indignation, no quarter. And it was final. Not so do coquettes parry and
fence and invite. Not so do women who love, or are learning to love,
postpone the hour they half fear, the joy they hesitate to reveal or
confess. Perfectly, too, Stephen caught the portents of her tone, but he
was past warning. Love and impatience goaded him. He had reached his
Rubicon, and he must cross it, or go down in it, engulfed and defeated.
A vainer man would have taken alarm and retreated definitely from sure
discomfiture and chagrin. A man who loved less would have spared the
girl and himself. A wiser man, more self-contained, would have waited.
Stephen Pryde plunged on, and plunged badly—every word an offense,
every tone provocation.

“Can’t you see how vital this is to me?” he demanded roughly, his voice
as impatient as hers had been, and altogether lacking her calm. “I must
know what you are going to do, I must know.” He could not even deny
himself the dire word the most obnoxious a man can use to a woman. A
blow from his hand, if she loves him enough, a woman may forgive, in
time half forget—some women (the weakest type and the strongest)—but
“must” never.

Helen Bransby smiled, and looked up at Pryde squarely, with a sigh of
resignation—and of something else too. “Oh! if you must know now, if I
‘must’ tell you, I must.” Then the longing in his face smote her, and
the thought of her father quickened her gentleness, as it always did,
and she stayed her sting. “Are you certain,” she concluded earnestly,
almost kindly, “that it was Daddy’s wish that we should be married—you
and I?”

“Quite certain,” Pryde answered in a firm voice. But his hands were
trembling.

“I want to do everything he wanted,” Helen said wistfully.

The man turned away, even took a few steps from her, to grapple a moment
with his own mad emotion. He felt victory in his grasp—victory hot on
his craven fear, victory after despair, victory after hunger and thirst.
He swung round and came back reaching towards her—his face
transfigured, his voice clarion sweet, his eyes flashing, _and_
brimming. “Helen——”

She motioned him back. “Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I can’t do this. I
told Daddy, when he was here, that it was Hugh or no one for me. Even to
please him then I couldn’t change. I can’t change now.”

“And Hugh—that’s the only reason?” Pryde persisted doggedly. But he
spoke breathlessly now, for a fear had chilled in on his ardor: did she
suspect him? had she found anything? What had she and Latham said to
each other? “Is that the only reason, Helen?” he besought her again.

“Yes,” she replied, considering him gravely.

“Then perhaps in time,” he begged.

She rose impatiently and crossed to another seat, speaking as she went.
His nearness annoyed her.

“No, Stephen, never.”

He blanched, but again he would have spoken, but Helen gave him no time.
“Now, please,” she said very clearly, “leave me here for a little
while—I want to be alone _here_.”

“No,” he exclaimed peremptorily, with sudden fear. “No, I can’t leave
you here—not in this room, anywhere else, but not here. This room is
bad for you. Come.”

“You are to go,” she told him quietly, “and now, please.”

“Why—why do you want to be alone—here?” he pleaded.

She answered him gently. “Just to think of Daddy. You know I haven’t
been here since——”

His love, his tenderness reasserted his manhood then. “Of
course—forgive me—I understand—I did not mean to speak sharply—but I
hate to see you grieve so.” For a moment he stood looking down on her
bowed head. Then he just touched her hand—it lay on the back of her
chair—lingeringly, reverently, and said again as he went from the room,
“I hate to see you grieve so.”

The girl sat bowed and brooding. After a time she rose and moved about
the familiar place, touching old trifles, recalling old scenes. She
stood a long time by the bookcase gazing at the volumes he had loved and
handled, peering with brimming eyes at their well-known titles. She did
not touch the jade Joss, but she lingered at it longest, choking,
trembling. Then her face cleared—transfigured. A rapt look came over
it—a look of love, longing, great expectation. Men have turned such
looks to the bride of an hour. Mothers have bent such looks on the babe
first, and new come, at their breast. She reached out her young arms in
acceptance, obedience, greeting, entreaty—and said to the air—to the
room—“I’m here, Daddy. I’m here.”


                             CHAPTER XXVII

But no father came to her call, no companion from the void to her tryst.
She waited, feeling, or thinking that she felt, the air touch her hair,
brush her face, cool but kindly, and once cross her lips. She waited,
but only the light air, or her fancy of it, came.

She knelt down by the old chair in which she had seen him last until she
had seen him in his majesty, on the floor, in the hall. She laid her
head on the seat that had been his, and wept there softly, disappointed,
overwrought.

Some one was coming; some one very much of this world. High heels
clattered on the inlaid hall floor, silk sounded crisply, and an
expensive Persian perfume—attar probably—came in as a hand turned the
knob on the other side and pushed the door open, and with the perfume
the silken frou-frou, a jumble of several furs, lace and pearls, and
Angela in a very big hat and a chinchilla coat. She closed the door
behind her—an odd thing for an unexpected, uninvited guest to do, and
she closed it quietly, for her very quietly. She tip-toed across the
room stealthily, caught sight of Helen and screamed.

At the sound of some one coming Helen had risen to her feet and pulled
herself together with the quick pluck of her sex. But she was still too
overwrought to grasp entirely the strangeness of her friend’s behavior.
Mrs. Hilary was dumfounded. She had thought Helen in London. She had
crept into the house through a side door, come through the halls
secretly and as silently as such shoes and so much silk and many
draperies could, meeting no one and hoping neither to be seen nor heard.
Her errand was particularly private. She had not been surprised to find
the library door unlocked, for she had not been deeper in the house than
the drawing-room since Mr. Bransby’s death. She and Mrs. Leavitt were
far from intimate. And Mrs. Hilary had not heard of the taboo Helen had
placed on the father’s room. She was dumfounded to find Helen here, and
bitterly disappointed. But she noticed little amiss with the girl. Each
was too agitated to realize the agitation of the other.

Helen pulled herself together and waited, Angela pulled herself together
and gushed; each with the woman’s shrewd instinct to appear natural and
much as usual.

Angela supplemented her cry of dismay with an even shriller cry of
enthusiastic delight.

“My dearest Helen! How perfectly lovely!”

“This is a surprise,” Helen said more quietly. Of the two she was the
less surprised and far the more pleased.

“Yes—isn’t it—a surprise?”

“You didn’t expect to see me?” What had brought Angela rushing into this
room, then?

Mrs. Hilary saw her blunder as soon as she made it, even while she was
making it almost. She was greatly confused—a thing that did not often
befall Angela Hilary. She and embarrassment rarely met.

“No,” she stammered. “No—I—uh—yes, yes, I came over to——” She was
utterly at a loss now. “Well,” she went on desperately, “I happened to
be passing——” She broke off suddenly, looking anxiously at the window,
and then looked away from it pointedly, and hurried on with, “I came to
see if, by any chance, it was you Margaret McIntyre caught a glimpse of
in the grounds yesterday. But—I—I didn’t see you when I came in here.
It’s so dark here, after the hall. When did you come? Are you going to
stay long?”

“I came suddenly—on an impulse—to find something. I may stay. I may go
back to-morrow. I don’t know. But I haven’t unpacked much.”

Mrs. Hilary seized on the pretext this offered to get rid of Helen. She
had been searching her excited mind for one wildly for some moments.
“Then,” she said sharply, “you must see at once that your things are
properly unpacked. Nothing spoils things like being crushed in trunks.
And, as for chiffons! Go at once.”

“But,” Helen began.

“At once. I insist. You must not let me keep you. I shall be all right
here, and when you have finished——” She was pushing Helen towards the
door.

“Don’t be absurd, Angela,” the girl laughed—freeing herself, “my things
can wait—I may not unpack them at all.”

“Are you sure—sure they can wait?” Mrs. Hilary said lamely.

“Of course I am sure, you absurdity. Besides, tea must be ready in the
drawing-room. Angela, Dr. Latham is here.”

Angela dimpled and flushed. “Oh! is he—is he really?”

Helen nodded.

Angela sat down and opened her vanity bag. She propped the mirror up on
the table, shook out her powder puff, tried it on one cheek, refilled
and applied it liberally, thinking, thinking, as she beautified. How
could she get rid of Helen? She wanted to see Horace Latham, of course,
but she had something much more important to attend to first. Latham
could wait—for once in a way. As she piled on powder, and flicked it
off, another idea came to her. She seized it. “You go along now, dear,
and I’ll follow you.”

Helen shook her head. “You will stop prinking and come with me, now.”

“Very well,” Mrs. Hilary said reluctantly, letting Helen take her arm
and lead her to the door. At the door she cried, “Oh! Oh!” pressed her
hand to her side and staggered back to a chair. She did it beautifully.
It scarcely could have been done better.

“What is it, Angela?” Helen was thoroughly alarmed.

“Oh! the whole room is swimming.”

“My dear——”

“You must think I am awfully silly.” She could only just speak.

“You poor thing—of course I don’t. Perhaps a glass of water——”

Mrs. Hilary shook her head violently—far too violently for so ill a
woman.

“I’ll get Dr. Latham.”

“Please don’t,” the invalid said sharply, and then, “I’m not well enough
to see a doctor,” she wailed.

“But I’m worried about you, Angela.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. It’s only the pain, the pain and the
faintness, the horrid faintness. If only I had some smelling salts,” she
moaned.

“There are some in my dressing-case,” Helen said quickly. “I’ll ring.”

“Oh no, no, you mustn’t!” Mrs. Hilary cried. “I—I—can’t let Barker see
me like this. No, no! Don’t do that. Couldn’t you get them yourself,
dear? Couldn’t you? Do you mind?”

“Why, no—of course not.” Helen was puzzled—and a little amused. How
absurd Angela was—even when ill.

“How long will it take you?” Mrs. Hilary asked faintly.

“About two minutes.”

“That will do nicely,” the sick woman said with sudden cheerfulness.
“Helen,” she cried fretfully as the other turned to go, “don’t hurry.
You are not to hurry. Promise me you won’t hurry. It drives me crazy to
have people hurry.”

Helen studied her friend for a moment, shook a puzzled and a now
somewhat suspicious head, and went slowly out.

As the door closed the fainting one bounced up, searched the room
rapidly with her sharp American eyes, rushed to the window, threw it
open, and leaned out far over the sill.

“It’s all right, thank goodness, at last! Come in!” she called in a
shrill whisper.

A brown hand clasped the sill in a moment. In another a khaki-clad man
swung up into the room. Hugh had come home.

Not the spick and span serviceless subaltern of eight months ago, but a
sergeant, battered and brown—his uniform worn and faded, his face thin
and alert. Hugh Pryde’s face had never been that before.

“My, but I’ve had a time,” Angela Hilary told him.

Once in the familiar room he looked about it quickly, heaved a great
sigh of relief, threw his cap on the table, and laid his hands on the
back of a chair affectionately, as if greeting an old friend.

Mrs. Hilary shut the window carefully. “Did any one see you come through
the garden?” she asked.

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Quite.”

“Well, thank Heaven for that much.”

“Helen?” he begged. “No danger of her seeing me?” he added.

“No—no—of course not,” Angela replied promptly. “I told you she was in
town.”

Hugh sighed. “I want to see her—but I mustn’t.”

“Of course you mustn’t.” Mrs. Hilary was plainly shocked at the very
idea. “Of course not—but I’m sure she’d want to see you, if she
knew—and, if she hadn’t been in town, she might help you. Do you know?
I almost wish she’d come in by accident, and find you.”

Hugh drew a sharp breath. “No, no!” he said quickly, “I promised not to
see her until I could show that I was innocent.”

“Well, now that you _are_ in this room, I hope you can prove it quickly.
This atmosphere of conspirator is wearing me to a frazzle. I’m so jumpy
my powder won’t half stick on, and that’s awful. And every time I see a
policeman the cold chills run up and down my spine, and I speckle all
over with goose-flesh. This morning one of them came to see me about a
dog license and I was so terrified I went wobbly and almost fainted away
in his arms. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have some tea.” She
turned to go, elated and dimpling—like the child that she was.

“Mrs. Hilary!” Hugh delayed her. She turned back to him. “You’ve been a
dear.”

“I always am.”

He caught her hands. “I’ve a lot to thank you for. You know I can’t say
things—I never could. But I want you to know how I appreciate it.”

“Oh! that’s nothing,” she said gayly. “You mustn’t thank me. It wasn’t
kindness. It’s just sheer creature weakness; it’s simply that I don’t
seem able to resist a uniform, I never could. There was a German band in
’Frisco——” But she heard a light step in the hall. “Good gracious! I’m
forgetting Dr. Latham. Good luck!” she cried hysterically and sped from
the room, as Helen stood in the door.


                             CHAPTER XXVIII

Angela Hilary was half crying, half laughing, when she danced into the
drawing-room. The tea still stood on the low table, steam still hissed
from the kettle. But only Latham was there, alone, on the hearthrug. She
swept him a low curtsey, caught him by the shoulders and swung him into
the center of the room, whistling a ravishing melody in three-four time.
He put his arm about her gravely, and they waltzed on and on until
Barker cried, “Oh lor!” in the doorway.

“It’s all right,” Angela told her. “It’s callisthenics. Dr. Latham R-Xed
for my health. I’ve a touch of gout, Barker.” But Barker had fled
giggling.

“You’ve more than a touch of the devil,” the physician corrected her
severely. Angela giggled too at that, a sweeter, more seductive giggle
than Barker’s.

“Mein kleiner Herr Doktor!” she began sweetly. They were still standing
where they had been when Barker arrested their waltzing. Latham caught
her and shook her. “Bitte erlauben Sie! ich bin nicht eine Ihrer armen
Kranken und verbitte mir Auftreten. Jetzt sind Sie erzürnt, über nichts,
wahrhaftig nichts. Ach! die Männer, wie sind Sie dumm!” She poured out
at him. It irritated the Englishman to be chattered to in intimate
German, and Angela Hilary delighted in doing it. She had done it to him
many times more than once, and the more he squirmed the more eloquent,
the swifter grew her German. She had spoken to him in the hated language
all through an otherwise dull dinner-party, a dour Bishop on her other
side, an indignant and very bony suffragette just across the table. She
had done it at Church Parade, and at Harrods (she had dragged him out
shopping twice), in the Abbey and in the packed stalls of the Garrick.

“Hush, or I’ll make you,” he warned her now. He intended her to say,
“How?” And she knew it and smiled. But she said nothing of the
sort—but, almost gravely, “Oh! but I’m happy!”

“You look it.”

“So happy. So glad.”

“It suits you,” he said. “Do you know, I rather intend to try it
myself.”

“It?”

“Happiness.”

Angela flushed. “Shall we dance some more?” she said quickly.

Latham picked her up and put her into a chair. “Barker’s face was
enough. I prefer to avoid Mrs. Leavitt’s.”

Mrs. Hilary looked up at him wickedly. “Please, must I stay-put?”

“Must you what?”

“Insular Englishman, ‘stay-put’ is graphic American. By the way, why do
you dislike Americans so?”

“I should like you even better as a British subject,” he admitted.

Angela Hilary turned to the fire and spoke into it. “Oh, this war—this
wretched war! But, do you know, Dr. Latham,” swinging back to him—she
could not keep turned from him long—“do you know, I’ve been thinking.”
Latham smiled indulgently. “Oh! I think a great deal, a very great
deal.”

“When?”

“Well—for one thing—I think most all night—every night.”

He let the enormity pass. “And this last cogitation, of which you were
about to speak——”

“When you interrupted me rudely.”

“When I interrupted you with flaming interest. It was about our present
war, I apprehend.”

“I was thinking what a lot of good people were getting out of
it—different people such different good. I don’t suppose there’s any
one who hasn’t reaped some real benefit from it, if they’d stop and
think.”

Horace Latham shook his head slowly. “I wonder.”

“Oh, I don’t; I’m sure.”

He studied the fire flames gravely for a time. Then he sighed, shook off
the mood her words had called forth, and turned to her lightly.

“And what benefit has Mrs. Hilary reaped from the war?”

She knitted her brows, and sat very still. Suddenly her face kindled and
her lips quivered mutinously.

“I know. I’ve learned how to spell sugar.”

Latham laughed. This woman who spoke three other tongues as fluently and
probably as erratically as she did English, and whose music was such as
few amateurs and not all professionals could approach, was an atrocious
speller, and every one knew it who had ever been favored with a letter
from her. Latham had been favored with many. He had waste-paper-basketed
them at first—but of late he did not.

“I can!!” she insisted. “S-U-G-A-R. There! Sugar, color, collar, their,
reign, oh! what I’ve suffered over those words! I spent a whole day once
at school hunting for ‘sword’ in the dictionary (I do think of all the
silly books dictionaries are the silliest), and then I never found it.
Think of shoving a _w_ into sword. Who wants it? I don’t. Nobody needs
it. Silly language.”

“Which language can your high wisdomship spell the least incorrectly?”
he asked pleasantly.

“Mein werter Herr Doktor, das Buchstabiren ist mir Nebensache. Ich
sprache vier Sprachen flissend—Sie kaum im Stande sind nur eine zu
stammeln doch glauben Sie dass eine Frau ohne Fehler sei wenn sie
richtig Englisch schreibt und nur an die drei k’s denkt—wir man in
Deutschland zu sagen pflegt—Kirche, Kinder und Küche,” she said in a
torrent.

“You are ill,” he said, “I am going to prescribe for you.”

“What?” She made a wry face. “What?”

“This,” he gathered her into his arms and kissed her swiftly—and then
again—more than once.

At last she pushed him away. “It took some doing,” she told herself in
the glass that night. But to him she said gravely, “To be taken only
three times a day—after meals.”

“No fear!” Her physician cried, “To be taken again and again!” And it
was.

The chatterbox was silent and shy. But Horace Latham had a great deal to
tell her. He had only begun to say it, haltingly at first, then swifter
and swifter, man dominating and wooing his woman, when Angela cried
imploringly, “Hush!”

He thought that she heard some one coming. But it was not that. Angela
Hilary was planning her wedding-dress. He hushed at her cry, and sat
studying her face. Presently she fell to knotting and unknotting his
long fingers.

“Silk has most distinction,” she said to the fire, “and satin has its
points. Oh, yes, satin has points, but I think velvet, yes—velvet and
white fox.”

“What are you talking about?” demanded her lover.

Angela giggled.


                              CHAPTER XXIX

For a long time neither spoke, or moved. Then Hugh held out his arms,
and Helen came into them. And still neither spoke. The old clock ticked
the moments, and the beat of their hearts throbbed tremblingly.

At last they spoke, each at the same instant.

“Helen”—“Hugh.”

She lifted her hand from his shoulder, and fondled his face.

Of course, she spoke first, when either could speak beyond that first
syllable.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” she said. “I thought you were never coming back
to me.”

He caught her hands and held them against his heart.

“I couldn’t come, Helen. You know that—not until I had made things
right.”

The glad blood rushed to her face. “Oh! Hugh,” she cried, “then you have
made things right, you have found out? I am so glad, so glad!”

“Why no, dear,” he faltered, “not yet. But that’s why I’ve come.”

She paled a little, but her voice and her eyes were brave. “It doesn’t
matter—nothing matters, now that you have come back to me. Oh, I’m so
glad—I’ve missed you so, Hugh—I’ve missed you so”—the bravery had
died in a little girlish wail.

“My dear”—it was all he could say.

“Where have you been all these months?” she asked, pushing him to a
chair, and kneeling beside him, her arms on his knee.

“When I left here that night”—he laid a hand on her hair—“and had to
give up my commission, I went straight to a recruiting office—and
joined up as a private, under another name.”

“And now,” she said with a soft laugh, laying her cheek against the
stripes on his sleeve, “you’re a sergeant. You have been to the front?”
The young voice was very proud as she said it. Her man had given battle.

“I went almost at once.”

“And I never knew.” How much she had missed!

“It wasn’t until a few weeks ago I learned of Uncle Dick’s death,” Hugh
said gently.

“He died that night, Hugh,” Helen whispered—“just there—in the hall.”

“Yes—I know,” he nodded, his arm on her shoulder. Neither said more for
a space. Presently he told her, “I’ve had luck out there. I have been
recommended for a commission.”

“I think I like this best,” the girl said, stroking his sleeve. “But
it’s splendid that you’ve won through the ranks. That’s the kind of
commission worth having—the only kind.”

“But I can’t accept it until I can tell them who I am. That’s why I got
leave—to come back and try and clear myself. I didn’t know until I
reached England that I had been published as a deserter—that there was
a warrant for my arrest.”

“You didn’t know that?” Helen said, in her surprise rising to her feet.

“No—Uncle Dick promised to arrange matters—he must have died before he
had the chance—of course he did—but I never thought of that. So now
I’ve got to clear my name—of two pretty black things—or give myself
up,” he said, rising and standing beside her, face to face.

She shuddered a little, and she could not keep all her anxiety out of
her voice.

“And you think you can clear yourself? You have some plan?”

“Not a plan exactly,” he shook his head gropingly, “only a vague sort
of—I don’t know what to call it.”

Helen was bitterly disappointed. “Why, what do you mean?” she asked
wistfully.

“Helen,” he said awkwardly, diffidently. “You mustn’t think me quite
mad—but I don’t know that I can make you understand—only—well—all
these months out there—I have been haunted by an idea—oh! Helen,
strange things have come to many of us out there—at night—in the
trenches—lying by our guns waiting—in the thick of the fight
even—things that will never be believed by those who didn’t see
them—never forgotten, or doubted again, by those who did. I don’t know
how it came to me—or when exactly—but somehow I came to believe that,
yes, to _know_ it, that, if I could come back to this room, I would find
something to prove my innocence. I don’t know how, I didn’t know how,
but the thing was so strong I couldn’t resist it.”

Helen Bransby’s heart stood still. Something fanned on her face. She
stood before Hugh almost transfixed. Slowly, reluctantly even, her eyes
left his face, and moved mechanically until they halted and rested on a
green-and-pink toy blinking in the sunset. Sunset was fast turning to
twilight. The room was flooded and curtained with shadows.

“I always felt,” Hugh continued, “that when I got to this room something
would come to me.” Then his manner changed abruptly, the scorn of the
modern man mocking and scoffing the embryo seer, and he said bitterly,
“I dare say I’ve been a fool—but it all seemed so real—so vivid—so
real.” His last words were plaintive with human longing and uncertainty.

“I know,” she smiled a little, but her voice was deeply earnest.

Hugh regarded her in amazement. “You know?” he said breathlessly,
catching her hand.

“Yes.” She seemed to find the rest difficult to say. He waited tensely,
and with a long intaking of breath she went on, “Hugh, did you ever
think where this feeling might come from?”

“Well—no,” he replied lamely, “how could I? It was an impression, I
dare say, just because this room was so much in my thoughts.”

“No, it wasn’t that,” Helen said staunchly. “Hugh, I have had this
feeling too.”

“You, Helen!”

“Yes. _I have it now_—strongly. For a long time I’ve felt that there
was something that I could do—something I must do—something that would
make things right for you.”

“But, my dear”—Hugh was frightened, anxious for her.

“That’s why I came down here a few days ago. Why I came to this room an
hour ago——” she hurried on—“all at once, in London, I knew that there
was something in this room that would clear you.”

Hugh was baffled—and strangely impressed. “That is curious,” he said
very slowly.

“Hugh,” she whispered clearly, “don’t you realize where this
feeling—that we both have—comes from?”

He shook his head slowly—puzzled—quite in the dark.

“Think!”

Again a slow shake of the head.

“Daddy—Daddy is trying to help us!”


                              CHAPTER XXX

Too amazed to speak, too stunned to think, Hugh Pryde stood
rigid—dumfounded. Helen was breathing rapidly, her breast rising and
falling in great heaves, waves of alternate shadow and sunset veiling
and lighting her face, her eyes far off and set, her hands reaching out
to——

“Helen, my dear——” he said, brought to himself by her strangeness.

“Oh!” she cried fiercely, great longing fluting her voice—she was more
intensely nervous than her companion had ever seen any one before, and
he had seen hundreds of untried boys on the eve of battle—“Oh! it must
be so. Why should the same thought come to us both—you at the front—I
in London—come—so—vividly? And without any reason!—I am sure it’s
Daddy.”

At the sight of her exaltation all his cocksure masculinity reasserted
itself. He laid a patronizing, affectionate hand on her arm. “Don’t
distress yourself with this, dear,” he said soothingly, “I can’t let
you. Our both having the same feeling must have been only a
coincidence.”

She shook off his hand with gentle impatience, the sex impatience of
quick woman with man’s dullness, a delicate rage as old as the Garden of
Eden. “No, no,” she said chidingly. “It wasn’t only that—it wasn’t only
that.”

Her earnestness shook him a little—and perhaps his wish did too: any
port in a storm, even a supernatural one!

“But if Uncle Dick could bring us to this room,” he asked slowly, “why
doesn’t he show us what to do?”

“He will,” she said—almost sternly—“he will—now that he has brought
us here—why, that proves it! Don’t you see? I see!—now that he has
brought us here—_He will come to us._” She sank down into a low chair
near the writing-table, her eyes rapt, riveted on space.

Again masculine superiority reasserted itself, and something
creature-love, and chivalry too—jostling aside the “almost I am
persuaded” that the moment before had cried in his soul, and Hugh put a
pitying hand on her shoulder, saying,

“I don’t want to make you unhappy, Helen, but that’s impossible.”
Thought-transference, spiritual-wireless—um—well, perhaps—but
_ghosts_!—perish the folly!

Helen looked up, and, at something in her face, he took his hand from
her shoulder. The girl shivered. And in another moment the khaki-clad
man shivered too—rather violently. “How cold it is here,” he said, and
repeated somewhat dreamily—“How cold!”

“Yes,” Helen echoed in an unnatural voice, “cold.”

“I must have left the window open,” Hugh said with an effort. He went to
the casement. “No,” he said with a puzzled frown. “I did close
it—tight.” He crossed to Helen again and stood looking down on
her—worried and at sea. She sighed and looked up—almost he could see
her mood of exaltation, or emotion, or whatever it was, pass. She spoke
to him in a clear, natural voice. “What are we going to do, Hugh? We
must do something.”

“I don’t know,” he said hopelessly—and began moving restlessly about
the room.

Suddenly Helen sat upright and gave a swift half-frightened look over
her shoulder.

“Hugh!”

He came to her at once. “Yes.”

“Don’t think me hysterical—but we don’t _know_ that Daddy couldn’t come
back—we _can’t be sure_. What if he were here, in this room now, trying
to tell us something, and we couldn’t understand?”

“Helen, my dearest,” Hugh deprecated.

“Wait,” she whispered, rising slowly. “Wait!” For an instant she stood
erect, her slim height carved by the last of the sunshine out of the
shadows—trance-like, rigid. But at that sybil-moment Stephen Pryde
opened the door softly and came through it. The girl’s taut figure
quivered, relaxed, and with a moan—“No—no—I—no—no——” she sank
down again and buried her face in her hands.

Richard Bransby come from the dead could scarcely have confounded
Stephen more than the sight of Hugh did. For a moment of distraught
dismay the elder brother stood supine and irresolute on the threshold.
Then forcing himself to face dilemma, and to deal with it, if possible,
as such natures do at terribly crucial moments—until they reach their
breaking point—he called his brother by name.

Hugh swung round with a glad exclamation of surprise, and held out his
hand. Stephen gripped it; and, when he could trust his voice, he said,

“I had no idea you were here.”

Helen rose and went to them eagerly. “He has come back to us, Stephen,
he has been to France—he has been offered a commission—he has proved
himself,” she poured out in one exultant breath.

“I am glad to see you, Hugh, very glad——” Stephen said gravely, “but
you shouldn’t have come.”

“Why not?” the girl demanded.

Stephen turned to her then; he had paid no attention to her before,
scarcely had known of her presence.

“The warrant,” he said to her sadly. “Hugh,” at once turning again to
him, “didn’t you know that there was a warrant out for your arrest?”

“I only heard of it a day or two ago.”

“Then you must realize what a risk you run in coming here. Why did you
take such a chance?”

“He came to clear himself,” Helen interposed.

“What?” Stephen cried, his dismay undisguised, but the others were too
overwrought to catch it. “What?” Stephen repeated huskily.

“He believes—and so do I——” Helen answered—“that there is something
in this room that will prove his innocence.”

“In this room?” Stephen Pryde’s voice trembled with fear; fear so
obvious that only the intensest absorption could have missed it.

“Yes,” Helen said firmly.

Stephen controlled himself with a great effort—it was
masterly—“What—what is it?” he forced himself to ask, turning directly
to Hugh and looking searchingly into his eyes.

“I don’t know—yet,” Hugh said regretfully. Stephen gave a breath of
relief, and sat down; his legs were aching from his mental anxiety and
tension. “But,” Hugh went on, “I am certain I can find something that
will clear me, if Helen will allow me to search this room.”

Hugh search this room! At that suggestion, panic, such as even yet he
had not known, in all these hideous months of hidden panic, caught
Stephen Pryde and shook him, man as he was and man-built, as if
palsy-stricken. Neither Helen nor Hugh could possibly have overlooked a
state so pitiful and so abject, if either had looked at him at that
moment. But neither did.

“Allow!” the girl said scornfully, both hands on Hugh’s shoulders.
“Allow! Me allow you! You are master here,” she added proudly.

Once more Stephen Pryde commanded himself. It was bravely done. Hugh’s
head was bent over Helen—the woman Stephen loved—Hugh’s lips were
lingering on her hair. Stephen commanded himself, and spoke with quiet
emphasis—

“No—no! You must not do that.”

“Why not?” Helen said sharply, turning a little in Hugh’s arm.

“Don’t you see?” Stephen answered smoothly, his eyes very kind, his
voice affectionate and solicitous. “Every moment you stay here, Hugh,
you run a great risk. You must get away, at once, to some safe place,
and then—I’ll make the search for you. Indeed I intended doing so.”

“No—no—that wouldn’t be right,” Hugh said impulsively, not in the
least knowing why he said it. “I don’t know why,” he added slowly, “but
that wouldn’t be right.” As he spoke he turned his head and looked over
his shoulder almost as if listening to some one from whose prompting he
spoke. The movement of his head was unusual and somehow suggested
apprehension. And he spoke hesitatingly, automatically, as if some one
else threw him the word.

“What are you looking at?” Stephen said uneasily.

Hugh turned back with an awkward laugh. “Ah—um—nothing,” he said
lamely.


                              CHAPTER XXXI

Often life seems one long series of interruptions; and, more often than
not, interruptions are petty and annoying. That it is our
inconsequential acquaintances who interrupt us most frequently is easily
enough understood—far more easily understood than accepted. But it is
much more difficult to understand how often some crisis is transmuted or
decided by some very minor personality, and a personality in no way
concerned in the crucial thing it decides or alters.

Stephen was determined that Hugh should go—and go now.

Hugh was determined to stay, at all cost, until he had searched, and
exhausted search of, this room to which both he and Helen had been so
stupendously impressed.

Helen wished him to stay, but feared his staying. Her will in the matter
swung an unhappy pendulum to and fro between the two wills of the
brothers.

Hugh, Helen, and Stephen, and of all the world they alone, were vitally
interested in the pending decision and in its consequences. How that
decision would have gone, left to them, can never be known.

Barker the inept, and old Morton Grant fated an intruder at Deep Dale,
interrupted, and, so to speak, decided the issue.

“Nothing,” Hugh had replied evasively to his brother’s “What are you
looking at?” and had gone to the window, as if to avoid further
question. Stephen, unsatisfied, was following him persistently when
Barker opened the door and announced, “Mr. Grant.” Helen started to
check her, but Stephen with a quick gesture, stayed her, and before she
could speak speech was too late. Barker blundered out, and Grant came
timidly in.

The old clerk had aged and broken sadly in eight months. Very evidently
he was more in awe of Stephen Pryde than at the worst of times he had
been of Richard Bransby. He stood awkwardly just inside the room, and
fumbled with his hat, and fumbled for words.

“Good—er—good-afternoon, Mr. Pryde. How do you do, Miss Bransby? I
trust——”

Stephen interrupted him sharply. “Well, Grant?”

“Er—I—I—am very sorry to intrude on you like this——”

“Yes, yes; but what do you want?” Stephen snapped.

“It’s—it’s about Mr. Hugh, sir.”

Stephen and Helen exchanged a quick look, she all apprehension, he
trying to hide his elation, trying to look anxious too. Hugh turned at
his name and came toward the others.

“About me? Well, here I am. What about me, Grant?”

The old man was amazed and moved. “Mr. Hugh,” he stammered, letting his
inseparable hat fall into a chair. “God bless me—it _is_ Mr. Hugh.”

“Accurate as ever, Grant, eh?” Hugh chaffed him, smiling with boyish
friendliness.

Morton Grant went to him eagerly, almost as if about to verify his own
eyesight by touch.

“You are all right, sir? You are well?”

“Never better.”

“I am glad, sir. I’m very glad indeed,” the old man said brokenly.

Stephen Pryde had had enough of this. “Yes, yes, yes,” he interrupted
testily; “but why are you here, Grant? You said it was about Hugh.”

“It is, sir,” the clerk answered quickly, recalled to his errand;
“the—the authorities came to the office to-day, searching for him.”

“Well, that’s cheerful,” Hugh commented.

Helen gave a little sob.

“It appears,” Grant continued, “that he has been seen and recognized
lately. They thought we might have news of him.”

Stephen turned to Hugh curtly, but still trying to hide his triumph.

“You see the risks you are running.”

“What did you tell them, Grant?” Hugh asked.

“I said we knew nothing of your whereabouts, sir. Then I came directly
here.”

“Were you followed?” Stephen asked sharply.

The question and the idea took Grant aback. “I—I don’t think so, sir!”
he said feebly. “It never occurred to me that such a thing was possible.
I’ve never had any experience with the police,” he apologized sadly.

“Your common sense should have told you not to come,” Stephen said
brutally.

“I dare say, sir,” Grant admitted piteously; “but it seemed to me to be
the only thing I could do.”

“You must go back at once,” Stephen ordered.

“Very good, sir,” Grant agreed meekly.

“And if you are questioned again——”

For the first time in his life, Morton Grant interrupted an employer.
And he did it brusquely and with determined self-assertion.

“I shall say that I have seen nothing of Mr. Hugh—absolutely nothing.”

Hugh went to him with outstretched hand; but Helen was there first.

“Oh yes, that’s fine—fine,” Stephen said briskly.

Helen caught Grant’s arm in her hands, and thanked him without a
word—with swimming eyes. But Hugh spoke.

“Thank you, Grant.”

Grant paid no attention to Stephen Pryde, and Helen he gave but an
embarrassed scant look. Hugh’s hand he took in his. He was much
affected, and the old voice shook.

“Mr. Hugh—I want you to know—I’ve always wanted you to know—that
telling Mr. Bransby about the—about the shortage—was the hardest thing
I ever did. But I had to do it.”

Hugh pressed the hand he held. “I know, Grant,” he said cordially. “And
you were quite right to tell him.”

“God bless you, Mr. Hugh.” Morton Grant felt for his handkerchief. He
thought he was filling up for a cold.

“God bless you, Grant,” the young fellow said, still holding the old
clerk’s hand.

Stephen Pryde intervened sharply. “Come, come, Grant, you mustn’t waste
time like this.”

“Very good, sir, I’ll—I’ll go at once.” But at the door he turned and
lingered a moment to say to Hugh,

“I hope—I trust that everything will be all right for you, sir.”

“That ought to convince you that I am right,” Stephen said imperatively
to his brother, as the door closed behind Grant. “You _must_ get away
from here now—the quicker the better.”

“But I can’t go now, Stephen,” the younger man pled; “I simply can’t go
until—not yet——”

“They are certain to come here for you,” Stephen insisted; “they are
certain to do that.”

“But before they can come I will have searched.”

But Stephen interrupted again, more sharply.

“Besides, Latham is in the house. He may come into this room at any
minute—we couldn’t ask him to be a party to this. By Jove! no; he
mustn’t see you; now I think of it, he suspects something already; he
was questioning me shrewdly yesterday. I didn’t like it then, I like it
very much less now. The coast’s quite clear,” he said, looking through
the door. “Go up to my room—you will be safe there. Go! Go now. I’ll
come to you presently, and we can talk things over—arrange everything.”

Hugh Pryde hesitated. It seemed to him that some strong impulse forbade
him to leave the room. He looked at Helen, but she seemed as hesitating
as he, and at last he muttered something about, “Another word to old
Grant, the old brick,” and went reluctantly into the hall.


                             CHAPTER XXXII

Neither followed him, and Stephen did not even call after him “not to
linger in the hall, running the risk of being seen,” but turned at once
to Helen, who sat brooding and puzzled.

“Helen,” Pryde said earnestly, “you must help me persuade him to go at
once.”

“I can’t do that, Stephen,” the girl replied slowly.

“But it’s madness for him to stay here.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “I have the
same feeling that he has—exactly the same feeling.”

“Helen, be sensible!” he begged roughly. “Look things in the face! What
evidence could there be here that would help you?”

“I can’t answer that,” she replied musingly, “at least not yet. All I
know is that this is our one chance.”

“Our one chance?”

“Yes—Hugh’s and mine.”

Stephen Pryde winced. Hers and Hugh’s! They two linked by her, and
always. “Yours and Hugh’s,” he said acidly. “Yes, but, Helen, aren’t you
forgetting?”

“Forgetting what?”

“Your father’s wishes.”

“Oh,” she returned impatiently, “that was when he believed Hugh guilty;
if he proves his innocence——”

“He hasn’t proved it yet,” Stephen broke in viciously.

“But he will,” she said firmly. “Stephen, I am sure he will. You—you
wouldn’t wish to stand between us then?”

“Don’t you understand, Helen,” Pryde retorted, “that this is just what
your father wanted to save you from? He realized that, if you ever came
under Hugh’s influence again, he would make you believe in him.”

“Then you don’t believe in him?” She spoke coldly, and she was fully
alert now.

“God knows I wish I could.”

“Stephen!” she cried, rising indignantly, recoiling from him in
amazement.

“But I can’t,” Pryde added doggedly. He was furious now.

“Well, I can and do,” the girl said icily. “And I am going to stand by
him, no matter what happens. I know he is innocent. But if he were
guilty, a thousand times guilty, it would make no difference to me, none
at all in my love. I’d only care for him the more, stand by him the
more, and for ever and ever.”

The fierce color rushed to Pryde’s face, and his hands knotted together
in pain.

“Helen,” he pled, “you are making things very difficult for me.”

“I am sorry, Stephen,” she said a little perfunctorily; “but I love
Hugh,” she added proudly. “He is all I have in the world.”

“You don’t understand,” he retorted sternly. “I promised your father to
take care of you. I mean to keep that promise.”

“No, I do not understand,” Helen said haughtily. She, too, was
infuriated now.

“You must send Hugh away at once,” Stephen told her abruptly.

“Must? Do you think to force me to do as you wish?”

“Yes.”

She had spoken insolently, and he was white to his lips. He loved her,
all his life he had loved her; and she knew it. An older woman would
have spared him a little, because of that love, because of his pain.
Helen hit him again. She went a step nearer, and laughed in his face—a
taunting laugh of scorn and dislike.

There was a bitter pause, and then Stephen spoke more carefully, groping
to retrieve somewhat the ground his passion had lost.

“You don’t seem to realize that Hugh is in a very dangerous position.
If—if some one should inform the authorities of his whereabouts——”

“Inform the authorities?” she repeated his words wonderingly. He had not
meant to say them, and already regretted them. He bit his lip. Suddenly
their meaning dawned on her.

“Stephen,” her voice was stiff with horror, horror of him, not fear for
Hugh. “You wouldn’t do that?”

“I!” he said thickly. “I—no—no—no.”

“I’d hate you, if you did that,” Helen said quietly. Pryde realized how
much too far he had gone. He owed his place in the world to this girl’s
favor, his hope, still ardent, to fulfill the dreams he had dreamt as a
boy, watching the birds; he could not afford to incur her enmity. If
love was lost, ambition remained. Fool, fool that he was to imperil that
too. He changed his tone, and said shiftily—

“No—no—you misunderstand me—of course I wouldn’t.”

“It would disgrace Hugh,” she persisted hotly; “ruin his whole life,
just when he has fought his way up again.”

“But don’t you see,” Stephen urged eagerly, taking quick advantage of
the opening her words gave, “that is just what I am trying to prevent?
If he is caught, he is certain to be disgraced. The whole truth about
the theft would have to come out. That is why I want him to go from here
quickly. It’s for his sake—to save him. I’m thinking of him, only of
him.”

At the word “theft,” Helen threw her head up haughtily. But Stephen
Pryde was almost past picking his words now. On the whole, though, he
was playing his part well, his cards shrewdly. His last words rang true,
whatever they in fact were; and Helen was not unimpressed. Incredible as
it may seem, Pryde’s affection for his brother was not dead, and at
sight of Hugh, for all the dilemma with which Hugh’s reappearance
threatened him, that old-time affection had leapt in the older man’s
guilt-heavy heart. And it was that, probably, that had given some warmth
of truth to his last words, some semblance of conviction to Helen.

But she stood her ground. “He can’t go—until he has made his search,”
she said with quiet finality. “His only chance of proving his innocence
is through that.”

“But that’s absurd,” Pryde disputed impatiently. “What evidence could he
find here?”

“I don’t know yet,” Helen admitted. “But I am sure there is something.”

“Sure? Why are you so sure?” He spoke eagerly, all his uneasiness
rekindled at her confident words, the poor thief in him fearing each
syllable an officer.

His cousin thought a little, and then she answered him, and more kindly.

“Stephen, I haven’t been quite frank with you, because I know you don’t
believe what I believe, but I must tell you the truth now.”

“Well?” he said breathlessly.

“Hugh and I have both had a message from Daddy, telling us that the
proof that would clear him is in this room.”

“A message—a message from your father?” His agitation was increasing,
but he did his utmost to conquer it.

“Yes,” Helen replied gravely.

“He left you—he left you letters?” Pryde’s voice was thick with terror.
Few as his words were, he spoke them with difficulty.

“No!” Helen shook her head.

“Then how”—his voice trembled and so did his hands—“how did the
message come?”

“It only came lately—from the other side.”

“From the other side?” Stephen asked blankly.

Helen nodded. For a moment he looked at her in utter perplexity, and
then a light broke faintly.

“Oh!” he said incredulously. “You—you mean the messages came from a
dead man?”

“Yes,” Helen said assuredly.

Pryde’s relief was so great that he could scarcely control it or
himself. He felt faint and sick with elation, and presently he broke
into hysterical laughter. It was the second time he had laughed so in
this room.

Helen regarded him offendedly. Indeed, feeling as she felt, and at stake
what she had at stake, his mirth was offensive. But the boisterous
merriment was his safety-valve.

When he was able to check himself, and he did as soon as he could, he
said, more affectionately than superiorly,

“Helen, surely you can’t be serious?”

“I am,” she answered curtly. She was indignant.

“But,” Stephen persisted, “you can’t believe such preposterous nonsense.
A message from the dead! It’s too absurd!”

“You will see that it is not,” the girl told him coldly.

“I shall have to wait a long time for that, I am afraid,” he returned
patronizingly. He was quite himself now. He rose carelessly and strolled
to the writing-table. But as he went the menace that still threatened
him reasserted itself in his mind. He turned again to Helen. “And this
message from the dead, as you call it, is your only reason for believing
that there was some evidence in this room that would clear Hugh?”

“Yes.” She vouchsafed the word inimically.

Pryde drew a long breath of relief, and turned from her vexed face. As
he turned, his eye fell again on the writing-table and traveled, as
before, from it to the fireplace. He stood musing, and presently,
scarcely conscious of what he was saying, said—

“And for a time you quite impressed me. I thought you had found out
about——” He broke off abruptly, realizing with a frightened start that
he had been on the verge of a damning admission. His great relief had
weakened his masterly defense—made him careless.

Helen regarded him curiously. “About what?” she said.

“Why, about—about this evidence,” he replied, laughing lightly. He was
well on his guard again.

“Don’t make fun of me, Stephen,” she said, rising. “You hurt me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. “I didn’t mean to do that. Where are you
going?” he added, as she reached the door.

“I am going to Hugh,” she said quietly, without halting or looking
toward him. And he neither dared stay her nor follow her.

Alone in the fateful room, Stephen Pryde moved about it restlessly.

He lit a cigarette, but after a few whiffs he tossed it to the fire.
Suddenly he looked apprehensively over his shoulder. He was shivering
with cold. He walked about uncomfortably. “A message from the dead,” he
said aloud, contempt, amusement, and dread blended in his voice. “A
message from the dead.” He went hurriedly to the side table where the
decanters stood and mixed himself a drink. He carried his glass to the
fireplace, as if for warmth, and drank, looking down at the flames.
Suddenly he swung round with a cry of horror. “Uncle Dick!” The thin
glass fell and shivered into a dozen fragments on the hearth. “Who’s
there?” he cried, twitching convulsively. “Who’s there?” And with a
distraught moan, he sank cowering into the chair from which Richard
Bransby had risen to die.

                 *        *        *        *        *




                                BOOK IV


                               THE LIGHT


                             CHAPTER XXXIII

The wretched man sat helpless in the grip of his terror. Cold puffs of
air buffeted his trembling face. A hand of ice lay on his forehead.
Afraid of what he almost saw dimly, and clearly sensed now, he hid his
face in his hands and waited, unable to move, except as his own abject
fear shook him, unable to call for help. And he would have welcomed any
human help now—any human companionship.

But such wills as Stephen Pryde’s are neither conquered nor broken by
one defeat. Presently he took down his hands, and the uncovered face was
again the face of a man.

He was calmer now, and with his wonderful will and the habits of thought
of a lifetime he was overcoming his fear. He looked about the big room
quickly, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed slightly—a rather
mirthless laugh of self-contempt. He got up in another moment, and moved
about steadily, turning on the electric lights. Again he laughed as he
stood warming his hands before the glow of the gas fire. Clearly he was
ashamed of himself for having permitted his nerves to get the better of
him and of his commonsense. Yet the quick, stealthy glances he could not
refrain from throwing over his shoulder now and then, and an odd
apprehensiveness in his bearing, proved that there was still some doubt
in his mind—a doubt and a fear of which he could not rid
himself—absolutely.

He was still wandering aimlessly about the room when his tired eyes fell
on the writing-table. It suggested the missing paper to him again, of
course: it always would, whenever he saw it. He went close to the table,
dragged there, as it were, and, as they had done before again and again,
his eyes traveled to the fire. A thought flashed to his troubled mind.
He went eagerly to the fireplace, and kneeling down searched feverishly
for some charred fragments of the paper that so threatened him. Nothing
could have shown more clearly how unhinged he was. A paper burnt eight
months ago would scarcely be traceable, by even one atom, near a fire
that had been burning constantly since Helen’s return some days ago, or
in a fireplace, or on a hearthrug, that Caroline Leavitt most certainly
had had thoroughly cleaned each day since the partial removal of Helen’s
taboo had made such cleanly housewifery possible. It had been a crazed
thought, bred in an overwrought mind. Often acute mania discloses itself
in just some such small irregularity of conduct.

Of course, he found nothing where there could be nothing to find. But it
unsettled him again greatly. He rose from his knees and stood a long
time deeply troubled, staring vacantly into space.

Presently he looked quickly behind him, but not this time with the
nervous tremor of the ghost-ridden, but rather with the trained, skilled
investigation of the steel-nerved housebreaker, the quick movement of
one who wishes to make sure he is unobserved.

“Afraid of a dead man!” He laughed at the very thought. But the
living—ah, that was very much another matter. He was afraid of the
living, deadly afraid of his own brother—of poor hunted Hugh—of a slip
of a girl, and of every breathing creature that might find, through
search or by accident, and disclose, the incriminating document. For it,
murder had been in his heart, in the hour he had written it. And because
of it, something akin to murder throbbed and sickened in him now.

He looked about the room again and again for some possible hiding-place.
Then all at once he looked at the door through which Hugh had gone, and
his face grew livid and terrible. Hugh _must_ go. He must not, he should
not, search this room and its hideous possibilities again. He must go:
he should. If only the boy’d go and go into safety! How gladly he,
Stephen, would aid him, and provide for him too. But, if Hugh would not
go in that way, why, then he should go in another. Pryde had taken his
resolve. He would not waver now.

He rang the bell, and moved to the table, and stood looking down on the
notepaper there.

“You rung, sir?” Barker asked.

“Yes. There’s a camp near here, I believe?”

“Just over the hill, sir.”

“Simmons the gardener still lives in the cottage?”

“Yes, sir.” The girl glowed, and was almost inarticulate with eagerness.
“But, sir, if you want some one to go over to the camp, sir——”

“That will do,” Pryde told her curtly.

“Very—very good, sir,” she almost sobbed it, and slunk out,
disappointed and abashed.

Stephen watched her go impatiently, and then turned back to the table,
his face tense and set. He picked up a piece of paper, sat down, dipped
a pen in the ink—and then laid the pen down, remembering what had, in
all probability, been last written at that table, with ink from this
well—perhaps with this penholder! The nib was new, and careful “Aunt
Caroline” had had the inkstand cleaned and filled. Stephen sighed and
took up the pen. Then he frowned—at the embossed address at the head of
the sheet. He tore it off, looked at the waste-paper basket, then at the
fire, but neither seemed quite safe enough to share this latest secret
of his penmanship. He put the torn-off engraved bit of paper carefully
in his pocket, and began to write very slowly, with wonderful care.

The writing was not his own. Versatility in hand-writings had always
been the greatest deftness of his versatile hands. “Hugh Pryde, wanted
for desertion, is in hiding at Deep Dale. A Friend.” He wrote it
relentlessly, his lip curving in scorn at the threadbare pseudonym. Then
he gave a long look up at Helen’s portrait still radiant over the
mantel. Then a thought of Hugh, and of the boyhood days they had shared,
came to him chokingly. He propped his head in his hands, and sat and
gazed ruefully at the treachery he had just written. So absorbed was he
in his sorry scrutiny that he did not hear a step in the hall, and he
jumped a little, woman-like, when his cousin closed the door behind her.
With a quick, stealthy movement he folded the sheet of paper and thrust
it into his coat “Oh, Helen, it’s you!” he said rather jerkily.

“Hugh is growing very impatient, Stephen,” she said, coming nearer;
“will you go to him now?”

“Yes—yes—of course. I was just going. There’s no time to lose; none. I
hope he has grown more reasonable.”

“How do you mean?” Helen spoke sharply.

“About leaving here, of course.” His voice was as sharp.

“We both know that he can’t do that yet,” she returned decidedly—“not
until——”

Stephen came to her imperiously. “Helen, it’s folly for him to stay.”

“No,” she retorted hotly. “For I am sure, quite sure, we are going to
find the proofs we want—and it is only here we can look for them.”

“But if you don’t find them?” he reminded her.

“We will.”

“You haven’t yet,” Stephen told her impatiently.

“In just a little while the way will come to us,” the girl said. “I am
sure it will.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will,” her cousin said mendaciously. “But in the
meantime the men are searching for Hugh. And, if he doesn’t leave at
once, I feel certain they will come here and arrest him. I’m going to
him now, to try to persuade him once more to be reasonable.” And he went
from the library, his anonymous note in his pocket. Helen made no
attempt to dissuade him. His words had troubled her deeply. Ought Hugh
indeed to go? She couldn’t say. She could scarcely think.


                             CHAPTER XXXIV

She looked in the fire. She counted the clock’s ticking. She gazed at
the Joss. What should she do? She asked them all that. What ought Hugh
to do? They gave her no answer, no help. She rang the bell, and sank
dejectedly into her father’s chair. “Do you know where Dr. Latham is?”
she asked Barker when the girl came.

“No, Miss.”

“Find him. Tell him I want him—here, at once.”

It seemed an unconscionable time to her that she waited. But it was not
long, as the clock told it. Barker had been quick for once.

“Dr. Latham, you must help me, you must help me now,” Helen cried
excitedly as he came in.

At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door
carefully. Then he came to her.

“Help you—something has happened?”

“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back
to me.”

The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your
mind,” he told her pityingly.

She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he
is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t
hear.”

“My dear child——”

“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,”
she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high
back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find
out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he
is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.”
Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his
hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help
me, I know you would.”

Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in
their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction.
He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from
hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional
equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely—

“What are the circumstances?”

“I know I can trust you.”

Latham smiled. “Of course.”

“Hugh has come back.”

“No?” Great physicians are rarely surprised. Horace Latham was very much
surprised.

“He came this afternoon. Dr. Latham, he didn’t desert. Daddy told him he
must give up his commission—he promised Hugh that he would arrange it;
he must have died before he had the chance, but Hugh never knew. He
enlisted under another name.”

Angela had always said that Hugh Pryde had done nothing shabby. She knew
that. There was some explanation. Latham remembered it. Clever woman!

“But,” he said, “why did your father——”

“He thought Hugh had taken some money from the office,” Helen rushed on
breathlessly. “The evidence was all against him; but he was innocent,
Dr. Latham.” Latham’s face was non-committal, but he bowed his head
gravely. “I know he was innocent,” the girl insisted, “and Daddy knows
it now. Oh, Dr. Latham, can’t you help me?” She laid her little hands on
his arm, and her tearful eyes pled with him eloquently.

Latham was moved. “My dear, how can I?” he said very gently.

“You don’t realize how vital this is,” she urged, “The authorities
suspect Hugh’s whereabouts; they were at the office to-day, looking for
him. If they find him before he can clear himself——”

“Yes——” Latham saw clearly the gravity of that. But _what_ could he
do? “Yes?”

“Don’t you see now that I must find out what Daddy wants to tell me?”

Latham was badly troubled. Hugh _might_ be innocent, but the chances
were the other way. Angela was the most charming creature in all the
universe. Helen was very charming. But their added convictions were no
evidence in a court of law, and not much before the tribunal of his own
masculine judgment.

“Miss Bransby,” he told the trembling girl sadly, “if I could help you
to understand, I would; but I—I—don’t know the way.”

“But you believe there is a way?” Helen said, eagerly. Even that much
from his lips would be something. Every one knew Dr. Latham was wise and
thoughtful and careful. “You do believe there is a way?” she repeated
wistfully.

“Perhaps.” He spoke almost as wistfully as she had. “If one could only
find it; but so many unhappy people have tried to stretch a hand across
that gulf, and so few have succeeded—and even when they have—most of
the messages that have come to them have been either frivolous or beyond
our understanding.”

“But we shall find the way—we shall find it,” Helen told him
positively.

“Well,” Latham said, begging the psychic question—putting it aside for
the more material quandary, “somehow we will find a way to get Hugh out
of this difficulty. Where is he now?”

“With Stephen,” Helen told him.

“Stephen—Stephen’s the very man to help us,” Latham said cheerfully.

Helen felt perfectly sure that Stephen might be bettered for the work in
hand, but she had no time to say so, even if she would, for at that
moment Mrs. Hilary ran through the door, opening it abruptly, and
closing it with a clatter.

“Oh! Helen,” she cried—and then she saw Latham, and paused
disconcerted.

“He knows all about Hugh, Angela,” Helen said.

“Thank goodness! Now perhaps we shan’t be long! Something dreadful has
happened. My chauffeur has just brought me a note. The detectives have
found out that Hugh has been at my house. Two detectives are waiting
there now to question me. They may be here any moment. Thank goodness
Palmer had the sense to send me word. But, what shall we do? They may be
here any moment, I tell you.”

“Yes,” Latham said, “unless they have been here already.” He went to the
bell and rang it. Why he rang he did not say. And neither of the women
asked him, only too content, as all but the silliest women, or the
bitterest, are, to throw the responsibility of immediate practical
action in such dilemmas on to a man they trusted. The three waited in
silence until Barker said—

“You rang, miss?”

“I rang, Barker,” Latham answered. “Has any one been here lately asking
for Mr. Hugh?”

“Yes, sir. This afternoon, sir.”

“This afternoon!” Helen cried in dismay.

“Yes, miss, about an hour ago, two men come—came.”

“What did you tell them?” Latham asked quickly. “I told them the truth,
sir, of course, as I ’adn’t never been told to tell them anything else,
that he has never been here, not once since the master died.”

“Quite right,” Latham said cordially. “And, Barker, if they should
happen to come back, let me know at once, and I’ll speak to them.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And—Barker, did they see any one but you?”

“No, sir.”

“You are sure?”

“Oh yes, sir. I stood at the hall window and watched them until the road
turned, and I couldn’t see them no more.”

“They will come back,” Helen almost sobbed as the door closed behind
Barker.

“When they come back Hugh will not be here,” Latham told her
confidently.

“Then you are going to help us?”

“Of course.” Latham smiled at her. In all his years of conventional
rectitude, he had never defied the law of his land; and he fully
realized the heinousness of aiding a deserter soldier to escape
arrest—and in war time too—and its possible consequences. But he was
staunch in friendship, he was greatly sorry for Helen, be the merits of
Hugh’s case what they might, and he knew that Angela’s eye was on him.
And this thing he could do. To raise the dead to the girl’s aid he had
no necromancy, but to smuggle Hugh away he might easily compass, if no
more time were lost. “Of course,” he repeated. “I must. Go and tell Hugh
to come here as quickly as he can.”

“Yes,” Helen said eagerly. “Oh, thank you, Doctor.”

“That’s all right,” he said cheerfully.

Helen hurried away. Latham held out his hand, and Angela came to him and
put hers in it. She asked him no question, and for a space he stood
thinking.

“Now, dear,” he said in a moment.

“Yes,” she said eagerly.

“You must go at once.”

“I know—but where can I go?”

“Home.”

“Home!” She echoed his word in consternation.

“Yes, go back as if nothing had happened.” He put his arm about her and
led her towards the door.

“As if nothing had happened?” she said feebly.

“Keep those men there until we have a chance to get Hugh safely away.”

“Oh——” she cried in a panic. “Oh—I couldn’t.”

“You must.” If “must” is the one word no woman forgives any man
ordinarily, it can on the other hand be the sweetest she ever hears—at
the right moment, from the right man. Angela accepted it meekly, and
proudly too. “But what can I say to them?” she begged.

“Oh, say—anything, anything.”

“But, Horace, what does one say to detectives?”

“You can say whatever comes into your head,” he replied, smiling into
her eyes. “After all they are only men.”

Angela dimpled. “Yes—so they are—just men. I dare say I can manage.”

“I dare say you can,” Horace Latham retorted dryly.


                              CHAPTER XXXV

“Hugh will be down directly,” Helen told Latham as she came in, a moment
after Mrs. Hilary had gone.

“Good. I will take him away in my car, and find some place where he can
stay safely until we can get at the truth of this.”

“Ah, that is good of you,” Helen thanked him.

“Remember,” Latham reminded her gravely, “sooner or later Hugh must give
himself up.”

“He knows that,” Helen said bravely.

“I drive my own car now,” the doctor said briskly, “so we can start at
once. Be sure he’s ready.”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Then I’ll get the car and bring it round,” he said over his shoulder as
he went.

She scarcely heard his last words, or realized that he had gone. She
stood very still, one hand on the table—one on her breast. There was
something trance-like in the tense, slender figure. Her wide eyes
glazed. Her breath came in slow, heavy beats. Presently she gave a great
sigh, lifted her hand from her breast to her head, then moved slowly
towards the bookcase, her hand stretched out in front of her now, as if
leading and pointing. She moved mechanically, as sleep walkers move, and
almost as if impelled from behind. Her face was still and mask-like.

She had almost reached the bookshelves, almost touched with her outheld
hand “David Copperfield,” when Stephen came into the room. Instantly
something odd and uncanny in her manner arrested him. For one moment he
stood riveted, spell-bound, then he shook off furiously the influence
that held him, and exclaimed abruptly, peremptorily, “Helen! Helen!”

His voice broke the spell, and she turned to him blankly, like one who
had but just awakened from heavy sleep. A moment she gazed at him
unseeingly; then she moaned and tottered. She would have fallen, but
Stephen caught her and held her. The spell, the faintness, whatever it
was, passed or changed, and she moved slowly from his hold, greatly
excited, but conscious, and more nearly normal; the rapt look on her
face still, but penetrated more and more by her own personality, awake
and normally sentient.

All at once she realized. In one flash of time, one great beat of
emotion, _she saw_.

“Stephen!” she panted.

“What is it?” Pryde said, guiding her to a chair, and urging her into it
gently.

“Stephen,” she repeated, both palms pressed on her forehead. “Oh!”

“What is the matter?” he asked hoarsely, dazed and perturbed.

“Just now—when you spoke”; her voice gathered tone as she continued,
grew bell-clear, ringing, flute-fine, “the message was coming—it almost
got through, it almost got through! Something was telling me what to do
to save Hugh.”

Her eyes glowed like deep blue lamps, around her face a veil of
transparent lambent whiteness clung, and transfigured it. The girl was
in ecstasy.

Stephen Pryde was terribly shaken. He looked at Helen in fear and
amazement. Then, unable to refrain, though he tried his strongest, he
looked over his shoulder uneasily. When he could speak his voice was
harsh and unnatural.

“Impossible,” he said roughly; “impossible.”

“No, no,” the girl whispered exultantly, clearly. “_I know_—I can’t
tell you anything, but that I know, I know, I know.”

There was a power in the girl-voice that reached and subdued Stephen. He
was impressed, almost convinced.

“You know,” he said slowly, wonderingly. “Did this message—did it
indicate some paper—tell you where to look for it?” For his soul, for
his life, for his whole future at stake, he could not keep the words
back. They were forced from him, as the hand of the player plucks the
melody from a harp—the melody, or the discord. Something stronger than
he ever had been, or ever could be, commanded and he obeyed, bowed to
the infinite; his own conscience turned traitor and linked against him,
linked with some nameless mightiness he had scoffed at and denied and
defied.

“Paper?” Helen said. “What paper do you mean?”

He rushed on, goaded and driven. “I don’t know—only if there were some
evidence here that would clear Hugh, it would be in the shape of a paper
that—that——” His tongue clove thick in his mouth, clotted and mumbled
with nervousness. He could scarcely enunciate; he could not enunciate
clearly—“that seems reasonable, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” Helen agreed. “No—nothing of that sort came to
me—the whole thing was so vague—so indistinct. But I am sure now; it
will come back to me—and help me—I am sure it will.” The glow on her
face, the great light in her eyes, grew brighter and brighter.

Stephen Pryde was almost in the state he had been in when he had dropped
his glass on the fender and cried, “Who’s there? Uncle Dick!” While
Helen spoke he kept looking over his shoulder. He was tremblingly
conscious of a _something_ in the room, a something that he felt was a
some one—a presence. It almost overpowered him, the conviction, the
chill, and the unprecedented sensation, but, summoning his iron will, he
resolved to fight on; and with a flash of chicanery that was nothing
short of genius, and nothing less than satanic, he determined even to
take advantage of the dead man’s message. For it had come to that with
him now. That Richard Bransby was in the room, and trying “to
communicate,” he now no more doubted than Helen herself did. Well! let
it be so. Let the dead man get the message through, if he could! He—he,
Stephen—would take it, twist it, turn it, use it, seize it—_destroy_
it, if need were. He had defied God and His angels, his own conscience,
fate, the law of the land, and now he defied the soul and the
consciousness and all the craft of one old man dead—dead and returned.

He turned to Helen impressively. “If—if it would only come to you now.”

“What?” the girl said uncomprehendingly.

“If I could find whatever it is—if you would help me to find it,” he
insinuated earnestly.

“How can I?” she faltered.

“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands
were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm,
his eyes imperative, compelling.

“I can’t,” Helen said piteously.

“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence.

“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking.

“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly.

Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly,
pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for
motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message.

Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze
on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her
sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge
through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all
her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying
dully—

“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!”

The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart,
danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of
time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had
failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be
done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff
nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from
tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he,
Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once
for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of
dust or of rot in a grave!

He turned to Helen in cold triumph. “I knew it—I knew it,” he exulted.
“Don’t you see now, Helen, how you are deceiving yourself? If there was
a message for you, why shouldn’t it come? I tried to help you—to put
myself in sympathy—you saw how useless it was.”

But Helen had been too near the unseen, too far across the dread
borderland. Doubt could not touch her again. She had stood in the edge
of the light. She had felt. Almost she had heard and had seen. She knew.
She shook her head, without troubling to answer him or look toward him.
She shook her head and she smiled.

“Where’s Latham?” Pryde said in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone.

She answered him as crisply, and as commonplace in manner and word.

“He is going to take poor Hugh away in his car; he has gone to get it
ready.”

“Oh!”

“He is going to take him to some place where he will be safe until we
can find the evidence that will clear him.”

“But there isn’t any,” Pryde said with truculent brutality; and his eyes
measured yet again, gloatingly, the distance and the angle from the
writing-table to the fireplace.

“I know there is,” Helen said quietly.

“There can’t be,” Stephen stormed, almost losing grip of himself—very
nearly had he reached his breaking-point. “I tell you, there can’t be.”

Helen sat and studied her cousin curiously. She was not a thoughtful
girl, and the abnormal strains through which she had been passing for
some time now had conspired to make thought peculiarly difficult; but
there was much in Stephen’s manner, in what he said and in how he said
it, in his face, his eyes, his gestures, his inconsistencies, to compel
thought and arouse suspicion, even in a mind as tired and as little
given to analysis as hers was.

She was on his track now, not in the least knowing or surmising what was
hidden in his soul, but sensing that there was something, something that
it behooved her, for Hugh’s sake, to fathom. Whether she might have
fathomed it, as she sat watching him with troubled, doubting eyes, would
be difficult to guess. And in a few moments her detective train of
thought was broken by Hugh’s voice. He came in gravely but cheerfully,
and said, as he stood smiling down on her tenderly—

“Here I am, Helen.”

She smiled back at him, little minded to show less courage than her man
did in this climax moment of their ordeal.

“Doctor Latham will be here in a minute; he’s going to take you away in
his car,” she said as cheerfully as Hugh himself had spoken, and rising
and linking her arm in his.

“But I can’t go, Helen,” Hugh told her,—“not yet—it wouldn’t be right
for me to go until I have searched this room—I—why, if I turn towards
the door even, something _pushes_ me back. I mustn’t go, dear; I must
search first. It won’t take long—I can do it before they get here.”

Stephen came to his brother, and laid his hands on Hugh’s shoulders. As
Stephen came towards them, Helen drew a little away.

“No,” Stephen said earnestly, “no; why not go with Latham now, and then,
come back—when it is safe?”

Hugh wavered. This elder brother had always influenced him much. They
had been orphans together, and in their early orphaned days, the elder
had been something of father and mother too to Hugh Pryde. Stephen’s
earliest recollection was of their mother; Hugh’s earliest was of
Stephen, mending a broken toy for him, and comforting him with a silver
threepence. A thousand times Stephen had befriended him. Stephen was
proved wise, again and again, and kind and disinterested.

“That would give me more time,” the boy said, looking gratefully into
the affectionate, brotherly eyes that were bent steadily on his—“that’s
not a bad idea. If Latham took me as far as the Heath they’d never find
me there—never—then late to-night I could come back.”

“No,” Stephen interrupted, “not the Heath—it must be some place where I
can get to you; it may not be safe to come back to-night—they may leave
some one here to watch.”

“Yes,” Hugh agreed, “they’re almost sure to do that. Where shall I wait,
Stevie?”

Stephen Pryde winced at the old name of their playfellow days—Hugh had
not used it for years. But he had put his foot upon the fratricidal
plowshare of deceit and treachery, and it was beyond him to withdraw it
now. At that bitter moment he would have spared his brother if he
could—but it was too late. Suffering acutely (probably Cain suffered so
once), he said emphatically, “Oakhill! The wood on the other side.”

“But if they find me there,” Hugh objected, “I wouldn’t have a chance to
get away.”

Stephen’s hands were still on his brother’s shoulders and he leaned his
weight upon them.

“They won’t find you, my boy, trust me.”

It was enough, and Hugh’s answer came instant and content.

“All right, Stephen!”

“Good-by,” the elder said hastily. “I’ll go hurry up Latham; the sooner
you are away from here now the better.” He released Hugh, and turned to
go. But Hugh held out both his hands, and for a long moment the brothers
stood looking earnestly into each other’s eyes, hands gripped—Helen,
apart, watching them, dissatisfied. Then Stephen turned on his heel and
walked resolutely away, out of the room.


                             CHAPTER XXXVI

As Stephen’s step died in the distance, all Hugh’s uncertainty came
back, and he turned to Helen disconcertedly.

“I hope this is the right thing I am doing.”

“I am sure it is,” the girl said. “Dr. Latham thinks so too.”

“Are you? Still something keeps telling me I shouldn’t go—I dare say
it’s my imagination.”

“Why, yes,” she reassured him, “what difference could it make, Hugh,
whether you search this afternoon or this evening?”

“None, of course,” he admitted; “the strain has lasted so long it’s on
my nerves. Oh,” he broke out anew, “if I could only think where to look
now. But I can’t—I can’t.” He looked about the room distractedly.

Helen came to him, and put her hand on him. “It is going to be all
right, Hugh—I’m certain it’s going to be all right.”

“Yes, I hope so,” he said; “but, Helen, if it shouldn’t?”

“If it shouldn’t?” she said, startled, and touched too now by his
discomfort, his vacillation.

“This would have to be good-by, Helen.”

“No—no—no!” she said, choking.

“It would,” Hugh insisted sadly. “Oh, I dare say my record at the
front—would help me; no doubt the penalty wouldn’t be very severe—but
the whole story of the robbery would have to come out—the scandal would
always cling to me—I couldn’t let you share that.”

“Do you think I’d mind?”

He took her face in his hands. “You don’t realize what unhappiness it
would bring you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said proudly. “I _want_ to share it with you.”

“No, Helen—unless I clear myself I can never see you again.” She caught
his hands, and held, them to her heart. He whitened under and over his
war-tan, but he added almost sternly, “I mean it.”

“And what about me?” she cried passionately. “Have you thought about
that?”

“It’s you I am thinking of, believe that.”

“Oh!” she cried, hurt, angry, rebellious, freeing herself from his
touch; but he caught her back and held her fast. He kissed her again and
again, and then—again.

“Hugh, my boy, my boy,” Mrs. Leavitt sobbed, bustling in upon them.

Helen moved away, and sat down wearily. Hugh bent to his aunt’s embrace.
“There, there, Aunt Caroline, don’t cry,” he entreated, as soon as he
could disentangle himself enough to be articulate.

“I can’t help it—I can’t help it,” Mrs. Leavitt wailed.

“Yes, but such big tears,” he coaxed, dabbing at them affectionately
with his khaki-colored handkerchief; “there, there, dear.”

But the poor childless Niobe would not be comforted.

“Oh! Hugh,” she sobbed, “you won’t let them take you away—you are not
going to let them take you away—promise me.”

“Why, of course not,” he said soothingly.

“I’m so frightened,” the woman moaned.

“There is no need to be frightened,” he told her briskly, “if you will
only do your part, dear Aunt Caroline.”

“What is my part?” Caroline Leavitt asked falteringly.

“None of the servants know I have been here—not even Barker has seen
me—get them away so they won’t see me leave.”

“Yes, dear,” his aunt said promptly, alert, business-like, Martha ready
and practical again under the stimulant of something definite to do,
some tangible service to render, some woman’s help to contribute.

“Go quickly, won’t you?” But he need not have said it, for already she
was hurrying from the room, and only half pausing to say, “Yes, at once.
You will come back, Hugh—you are sure to come back?”

“Yes,” he said confidently, “don’t worry, I’ll come back.”

“I’ll get them all in the kitchen and lock the door,” she said grimly,
and went.

Hugh nodded and he smiled until the door closed. Then he turned sadly to
Helen.

“Well, dear, I’d better go now.” She could not speak, but she nodded—as
bravely as she could. “Yes—keep up your courage, dear,” he told her;
“everything will turn out all right.”

But at that she broke down and threw her arms about him convulsively.

“I can’t let you go, Hugh, I can’t let you go.”

“I must go, dear, you know I must.” He kissed her—just once, and put
her from him, and went resolutely to the door. But in the doorway Dr.
Latham met him, and pushed him back into the room.

“I have bad news, Hugh,” the physician said.

“Bad news?” Helen cried.

Hugh said nothing. He knew.

“They have come for you—they know you are here,” Latham said quietly.

Hugh turned pityingly to Helen—his one thought of her, to comfort her.
But Helen, womanlike, was all courage now. She held out both hands; a
moment he pressed them, then turned and went, with a soldier’s gait,
toward the door.

“Scotland Yard men or a sergeant?” he asked Latham as he passed him.

“Soldiers,” Latham said.

“It’s tecs,” Barker cried in a wrathful panic, bursting through the
doorway. “Me not know tecs! That’s likely. I knew it was tecs the ’stant
I laid eyes on ’em—dressed up in a uneeform—but they’s tecs.” True to
her type, she had sensed “police” even through tunics and khaki. The
dullest servant, and the most inexperienced, have an unfailing flare for
the “tec.”

Latham pushed her gently from the room, but she ran down the hall
crying, “It’s tecs, I tell you; it’s tecs!”


                             CHAPTER XXXVII

“Military police, I suppose, or a non-com. and two privates,” Hugh said
as he and Latham went toward the morning room.

“Two outside the door,” Latham said, “a non-commissioned officer in the
morning room—a decent chap—very.”

Hugh nodded. “Oh, yes—and he’ll behave very decently to me—they
usually do in such cases—and a good deal is left to their discretion.
Undoubtedly it’s a non-com. and a trusted one. Good-by, Latham, and, I
say, thanks awfully.”

“I’m coming in with you.”

“No, go back to Helen, I’d rather.”

Latham wrung Hugh’s hand; and Hugh passed into the morning room and
closed the door.

“Here I am,” he said briskly.

The soldier standing waiting stepped back with an oath.

“Tare an’ ’ounds,” he exclaimed violently, “don’t you bey after tellin’
me it’s you, Carter.”

“Yes, Kinsella, I’m Pryde, wanted for desertion, all right. But, I say,
it’s hellish luck that they’ve sent you after me!”

“Sent and bey damned to thim. Oi’ll not bey after doin’ ut. The loikes
uv you! Oi’ll toike the stroips from me coat and ate ’em forst. Oi’ve
fought the Hoons for ’em, and Oi’ll bey after foighten uv ’em again, but
sorra a fist or a harm’ll Oi putt on you, Tom Carter—or Mister Proid,
sor, whichiver, whoiver, ye are.”

“I’m both,” Hugh told him. “Where’s your warrant?”

“Me warrent is it? It’s no warrent uv moin, my boy, ‘_sor_’ I’m after
mainin’. It’s a dirthy scrap uv paiper, an’ that’s what it is, fut to
spat at the Imperur uv the Hoons—cursed bey the doiy they giv’ it
myself.”

“Where are we going?” Hugh asked.

“To Hell wid going! you’re stayin’.”

“That’ll mean shooting, if not hanging, for both of us, Kinsella.”

“Mother of God! is it axin’ me to bey toiking ye that ye are? Me, that
ye carried on yer back and fed from yer cup fer all this woirld’s uf
Oi’d been yer baby an’ you the own mither uv me! We’ve starved and we’ve
shivered togither. We’ve stuck in the mud to our necks, glued there
loike flies in th’ amber, we’ve shared our rum tot and our billy, we’ve
gone over the top shoulder to shoulder—we’ve stood so close Oi’ve heard
your heart bate, and you’ve heard moine, whin we’ve been waitin’ for the
wurd to come to dash into the curtain uv fire uv the barrage, and
togither we’ve watched the flammin’ ruins uv Europe—and our pals
dropping and writhing under the very feet uv us as if they’d been lice
and Wilheim their Moses—Me arrest you! Oi’d sooner bey stealin’ the
shillin’s off the eyelids uv a dead baby!” His own Irish eyes were
brimful, and there was almost a sob in the lilt of the brogue on the tip
of his tongue.

Hugh Pryde marched up to him with a laugh and pushed him down into a
chair, then he swung himself onto a table and leaned over Kinsella, one
hand gripped on his arm.

“Listen to reason,” he said. “We are soldiers——”

“Begorra thin Oi’m a man though, an’ whin Oi can’t bey the both, it’s
man Oi’m choosin’ to bey, an’ not spalpeen.”

“We are soldiers,” Hugh said sternly; “you are here to arrest me, and
you are going to do it.”

“And Oi’m not thin,” the other retorted. “Our Lady’d blush to own me, if
ever Oi did such an Orangeman dirthy trick—an’ me a mimber of the
Sodality meself win Oi was a boy. Oi’d sooner bey shootin’ me own brains
into puddin’, an’ savin’ the Hoons the throuble uv it. Me shame the
loikes uv yerself—Oi’d as soon say a wrongin’ wourd to the Saints in
their shrines.”

“Listen,” Hugh told him again. “You want to help me?”

“Oi do that very same thing, thin.”

“Then do precisely as I tell you. I am going with you. I’d have had to
give myself up in a day or two. I was going to—as soon as I’d done
something I had to do here—something important. Now, I want you to stay
here quietly, and let me go back for half an hour. Then I’ll come here,
and we’ll go together and do what has to be done.”

“We will not thin.”

“You want to help me?”

“Sure it’s yourself as knows that.”

“Then you will do—as I say. It’s the only way, partner. I’ll be back.”
At the door he turned to say, “By the way, Kin, I did not desert.”

“Glory bey to God, as if Oi didn’t know that.”

“But I seemed to have done so. It can be cleared up, and it shall; but
the authorities are quite in the right—they thought I had.”

“An’ be damned to ’um—as blithering a set of auld wimin as iver wore
petticoats. Authorities is ut? Meddlin’ and blunderin’ an’ playin’ the
goat uv ut. That’s how they’ve been runnin’ this war from the furst day,
and from the furst day Oi’ve said it. Oh!” he broke forth, “don’t ye bey
after givin’ yerself up—and don’t ye bey after axin’ me to help ye do
it. Oi’d—Oi’d—Oi’d rather turn Hoon and lick-spitter their cur uv a
Kaiser than hurt wan hair uv yer head. I luv ye, Tom Carter. Oi sensed
ye were a gintleman the furst toime Oi saw ye—and Oi loiked ye in spoit
uv ut.”

“Will you wait for me for half an hour?”

“Toike yer toime,” Kinsella said grimly.

In the hall Hugh found Barker, and gave her a startling order for a tray
of refreshments to be taken to his “friend” in the morning room.

True to her word Mrs. Leavitt had packed the servants into the
kitchen—and then locked it. But she had been unable to find Barker, and
was still beating the house for her.

The larder was accessible, and Barker foraged nobly.

She carried a tray so heavy with good things that she only just could
carry it, into the morning room, a delighted smile on her face and her
best apron, hurriedly donned, very much askew.

But the morning room was empty.

The window was open, and down the path marched two surprised privates,
hurried and cursed by Sergeant Patrick Kinsella.

“Uv all th’ auld fools uv wimin,” he muttered, “ut isn’t the man wat’s
wanted at all at all, but anither entoirly. The bloak we’re after
wantin’s been gonn two hours and more—halfway to London, and out ur th’
counthry by this. Doouble-quick, now.” And they double-quicked.


                            CHAPTER XXXVIII

When Latham returned to the library he found Helen sitting by the
writing-table, one hand lying idly and resting on the jade paper weight.
He spoke to her, and she looked up and smiled at him rather vacantly,
but she said nothing. He gave her a sharp look, and then picked up a
magazine and sat down, pretending to read.

She sat very still. She seemed resting—and though he watched her, he
decided not to disturb her, to make no effort to arouse her.

And so they sat without a word until Hugh came back. Latham looked round
in surprise, but Helen scarcely seemed to notice.

“An hour’s reprieve,” Hugh said lightly. “Awfully decent chap in there.
Knew him at the front. He’ll make it as comfortable for me as he can.
I’ve told Barker to do him uncommonly well. And now, to search this room
in earnest!”

Stephen followed his brother into the library. “Some one has given you
away, Hugh,” he said sorrowfully. “The soldiers knew you were here, when
they came—the sergeant was so positive that all my denials were
useless. Who could it have been?”

“Don’t you know, Stephen?” Helen said softly, rising—the Joss in her
hand, but not even glancing at Pryde.

“How on earth would Stephen know?” Hugh said, going to his brother.

Stephen put out his hand. “I—I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Hugh.”

Hugh smiled at the elder. “I know, old boy, I know. And I’m not
worrying. It’ll come all right.”

Helen moved suddenly, sharply, as if some shock of electricity had
currented through her. Then she spoke, and her voice was strange.
“Blind—blind—blind!” It seemed as if she said it unconsciously. The
three men watched her intensely, each moved and apprehensive in a
different way, and from a different cause. She spoke again in the same
queer, mechanical manner, but this time her voice was louder, clearer,
more vibrant. “Blind—blind—blind!” To Hugh and to Latham the one word
repeated again and again conveyed nothing, but suddenly Stephen Pryde
remembered where he had heard it last, and he shuddered. She spoke
on—“As if he were an echo of the morning—‘Blind—blind—blind’!”

“Helen!” Hugh cried, alarmed for her.

“What is it?” Latham said to her insistently.

Stephen went to her quickly. “It’s nothing,” he said sharply.
“Nothing—only the parting with Hugh. It’s been a great strain on her.”
He turned to Hugh. “You had better go now, quickly.”

“No, no!” she said sharply, but looking at neither of them.

“Helen!” Hugh pled—distracted.

She heard him, and ran to him, brushing by Stephen.

“My dear,” she began, and faltered.

He put his arms about her. “There—there—you’re all right.”

The voice she loved best recalled her. “Of course I am,” she said
brightly.

“But why did you say those words just now?” he said, impelled to ask it,
though he understood a gesture of Latham’s that forbade all simulation
of her strange excitement.

“I don’t know. And I didn’t exactly seem to say them—they said
themselves. I don’t know what they mean, or where they come from; but
they keep running through my head—I can’t stop them somehow.”

“That’s odd,” Latham remarked, his interest in what seemed to him a
unique psychological case out-weighing his fear for the patient, “very
odd. I seem to have heard them before too. But I can’t think where.
What’s that you have in your hand?”

“Why—why, it’s his paper-weight—Daddy’s.” She held it up and gazed at
it intently, as an Indian seer gazes at his crystal. In a moment she
spoke again, her voice once more quite changed. “Did you ever read
‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?”

“What?” Latham said, unprofessionally tremulous with surprise and with
interest.

“Did you ever read ‘David Copperfield,’ Helen?” the mechanical voice
repeated automatically. The girl’s face was white and expressionless as
a death mask.

“‘David Copperfield’!” Stephen Pryde exclaimed hoarsely. And as he said
it he knew. And Helen knew too. She had readied the light. At that
moment Richard Bransby had got his message through. Stephen’s eyes went
to the table where the volume lay when he left the room the night his
uncle died—then slowly they traveled to the bookcase. In that moment
the whole thing was clear to him—as clear as if he had seen his
confession shut in the volume, the volume by some one at sometime
replaced on its shelf.

And Helen had grasped the meaning of the words she had uttered so oddly,
and repeatedly. She shrined the jade god in her hands, and looked raptly
at its green and rose surfaces and curves. Then she put it gently down
on the table, reverently too, as some devout Catholic might handle and
lay down a relic most holy—a relic miraculous and well proven. A dozen
lights played and quivered in and out of its multiple indentations and
intricate clefts; and the rose-hue petals seemed to quiver and color in
response, but the green face of the god was immovable, expressionless,
mute. But Latham’s eyes, scalpel-sharp, following Helen’s hands, thought
they saw a tiny eidolon star-shaped, yellow and ambient, slip from the
deep of the odd little figure, and hover a moment above it
significantly, before it broke with a bubble of fiercer light and
dissolved in a scintillation of minute flame. And Stephen Pryde,
watching only Helen, was sure that a rim of faint haze, impalpable,
delicately tinted and living, bordered and framed her.

Richard Bransby had gotten his message through—recorded at the moment
of his passing, and held safe ever since in the folds of the toy he had
treasured and handled with years-long habit and almost with
obsession—or flashed from his heart still living and potent to the soul
of his child. Richard Bransby had gotten his message through. And each
in their different way knew, received, and accepted it. The old room was
strangely cold. But not one of the four waiting and asking felt the
smallest sensation of fear—not even Stephen, defeated, convicted.

Helen spoke, and her voice rang clear and assured, the beautiful color
creeping back to her face, a great light in her eyes.
“Doctor—Hugh—Daddy asked me that very question just before he died.”

“That’s strange,” Latham said musingly, pondering as in all his
thoughtful years of reflection he had never pondered before.

Hugh was speechless. Stephen picked up a cigarette, and laid it down
again, with a bitter smile—the hopeless smile of final defeat.

“Just before he died,” Helen said.

“‘David Copperfield,’” Latham exclaimed; “of course—I remember now.
Those words you just said were a quotation from ‘David
Copperfield’—where he passes the blind beggar.”

“I think you are wrong, Latham.” Stephen Pryde made his last throw more
in cynical indifference than in desperation. His long game was up: that
was the special message that had come through to him. But he’d fight on,
cool and callous now, and meet his defeat in the last ditch of all—not
an inch sooner.

“No,” Latham said sternly; “I am not wrong.”

“Yes,” Stephen smiled with slight contemptuousness as he said it; “I am
sure you are.”

“I’ll show you,” Latham retorted. He went to the bookcase and took down
the ‘David Copperfield’ volume.

“Yes,” Helen said quietly; “‘David Copperfield’ has a message for
me—from Daddy.”

“This is nonsense,” Stephen said impatiently. “Latham, I appeal to you.”

“I tell you the message is there,” Helen said imperiously.

“It’s impossible,” Pryde began with a shrug.

“Then prove it to me,” the girl said hotly; “prove it to me—that’s the
only way you can convince me.”

“She’s right,” Hugh exclaimed; “of course, that’s the only way to help
her.”

There was a brief, tense pause, and then Latham, assuming the judiciary
and the dictatorship to which his being the one disinterested person
there entitled him, said—

“Yes. Well. If there was a message, it would be in the words you just
spoke—and their context.”

Helen nodded.

“I could find the place blindfold,” Latham continued. He sat down, the
book still in his hand. He opened it, turned but a page or two, and
said, “Yes, here it is.” The three listened with breathless eagerness,
as he read, “‘There was a beggar in the street when I went down, and as
I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm, seraphic
eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the
morning, “Blind—Blind—Blind.”’” He closed the book and turned to
Helen.

“You see,” Stephen remarked quietly, “there’s nothing in it.”

“No,” Latham concurred reluctantly, disappointed, in spite of himself,
scientist as he was, skeptic as he once had thought himself; “no, your
suddenly remembering those words—it could have been no more than a
coincidence.”

“Yes, a coincidence,” Stephen echoed.

“That paper-weight,” the physician analyzed on, “was associated in your
mind with your father. When you took it in your hand, unconsciously you
went back to the last time you saw him alive.”

“That’s it,” Stephen said cordially. Really Latham could not have given
better service if he had briefed him.

Helen looked from one to another, she was on the verge of a breakdown
now—and just when she had been so sure. She held out her hands, and
Hugh came and led her gently back to the chair by the writing-table.
“Rest awhile,” he begged. “I’ll hunt in a moment.” He glanced anxiously
up at the clock.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy,” Helen sobbed; “why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t
you help me?”

“Helen,” Stephen said gravely, bending over her chair, “that question is
answered. Your father’s dead—the dead never return. All this belief of
yours in immortality is a delusion. If you had listened to me, you would
have understood. But you wouldn’t. I tried to spare you suffering, but
you were so obstinate. You made me fight this dead man—” His voice,
which at first had been bitter but even, grew angry and discordant. His
iron nerve was cracking and bleating under the hideous strain—“you
tried to haunt me with some presence in this room—it’s been
ghastly—ghastly”—he was so cold he could scarcely articulate, his
tongue clicked icily against his stiffening cheek, and grew thicker and
thicker—“but this invisible foe, I’ve conquered it—this obsession of
yours, I’ve shown you how false, how hopeless it is—all this rubbish
about this book of Copperfield—and now you must put it all away for the
sake of others as well as yourself.” Helen rose very slowly, paying her
cousin not the slightest attention. Suddenly she grew rigid again; Hugh
and Latham, who had been regarding Stephen in amazement, looked only at
her now. Stephen continued speaking to her peremptorily, haranguing her
almost, “You understood that now, don’t you?”

Very slowly, again almost somnambulant, Helen turned, her hand
outstretched as it was before, towards the bookcase.

“Well,” Stephen Pryde cried roughly, “why don’t you answer me? Why don’t
you answer me? You heard what I said!” She moved slowly across the room.
“For the future you must rely on me, on me,” Pryde pounded on. “Your
father can’t help you now,” he added brutally. Still she paid no heed.
Still she moved—so slowly that she scarcely seemed to move, across the
room. All at once Pryde understood where she was going, what she was
going to do. He was horror-struck, and made as if to pull her back
roughly, but Latham moved in between them.

“Helen, what are you doing?” Stephen shrieked—“what are you doing?”

Still she paid no attention, but moved slowly, serenely on, until she
reached the mahogany table on which Latham had placed “David
Copperfield.” Not looking at it, her head held high, her eyes wide but
sightless and glazed, she put out her hand and lifted up the volume,
holding it by one cover only. An instant she stood with the book at
arm’s length.

Stephen’s breath came in great noisy pants, audible both to Hugh and
Latham.

Helen moved her arm gently, shaking the volume she held. Slowly,
quietly, as if conscious of its own significance, a paper slipped from
between the inverted pages, and fell to the floor.

“Oh, my God!” Stephen sobbed with a nasty choke. Then he swooped towards
the paper. But Latham, who had been watching him again, and this time
with a physician’s taut scrutiny, reached it first and secured it. Pryde
fell back with a piteous laugh, maudlin, pathetic.

“Read it, I can’t,” Helen said, pointing to the paper. Latham and Hugh
bent over it together.

Hugh read only the first few lines, and then hid his shamed face in his
hands, and sobbed like a child. But Latham read on till he had read it
all.

Helen hurried to Hugh, but Latham held out the document to her with a
gesture not to be disregarded, even for a moment. She went to him, and
took the paper. For an instant she shook so that the writing danced and
mocked her. Then she drew herself up, and read it through, slowly and
carefully—from its first word to its last. Read, she refolded it, and
with an earnest look handed it back to Latham.

Slowly, quietly she turned—not to Hugh, but to Stephen. He stood near
the door, trembling and cringing, his eyes fixed and staring—at
something—cringing as if some terrible hand clutched or menaced him.
With a cry of pain and of terror, such as the sufferers in Purgatory may
shriek, he rushed from the room, sobbing and gibbering,

“Don’t touch me, Uncle Dick! Don’t touch me!”

Helen, scorn, hatred on her face, and no atom of pity, was following
him; but Latham stayed her.

“I’ll go,” he said; “there is mania in his eyes. Stay with Hugh, he
needs you. I’ll see to Pryde.” He thrust the confession in his
pocket-book, the pocket-book in his coat. “That paper,” he told her,
“will straighten out Hugh’s trouble. He’ll be free and clear to-morrow,
believe me. But stay with him now; he needs you.”

Helen yielded. She went and knelt down by Hugh and laid her hands on his
knee. As Latham was leaving the room, she said to him, with a grave
smile—

“You see, you were wrong, Doctor. Daddy did come to me.”

“I wonder,” was his reply. “I wonder. Finding the paper in that book may
all have been coincidence—who knows?”

“Daddy and I know,” Helen said; “Daddy and I know.”


                             CHAPTER XXXIX

Stephen turned restlessly on his pillows, and Angela Latham bent down
and cozied them deftly.

“You’re a wonderful nurse,” he told her gratefully.

“Not bad, am I?”

“I’ve made you a great deal of trouble.”

“You have,” Mrs. Latham returned cordially. “But you know what Mrs.
Hemans says, or perhaps it’s Mark Twain, I always get them mixed, ‘the
labor we delight in physics pain’—I’ve quite enjoyed the trouble—and
Georgie Washington, but you begin to do me credit. You’re going to be a
good boy now and do just as I say.”

“Am I?” Pryde said skeptically.

Angela held out her ring-heavy hand. “Put it there, pard,” she
commanded. And after a moment the sick man lifted his thin, bloodless
hand and laid it in hers. “Perhaps I’m going to be good—though it
hadn’t occurred to me till you mentioned it—but I can scarcely be
required to be a boy. I was quite a year or two old at your birth.”

“Never mind, I’ve been a mother to you.”

“Heavens, yes; you have,” Stephen replied.

He lay in his own bed in Pont Street, and nothing was much changed in
his room from what it had been for years; a temple and workshop of
flight. Pictures of birds, of bats and of butterflies and of man-made
aircraft covered the walls. The skeleton of a flying fox shared the
glass case of a flying fish. A long workmanlike table stretched the
length of the room—a table stacked with orderly piles of plans and
designs, groups of models, trays of “parts” and of tools. Every book in
the room (and they were many) treated of the air and air navigation.
“Not a novel in the whole show,” Angela had told her husband
disgustedly. And on Stephen’s desk lay a half-finished manuscript
positively bristling with small detail drawings of rotary and fixed
engines, sketches of exhaust manifolds and working diagrams of
many-bladed propellers, his pen beside it, as he had left it on the last
day he had journeyed to Oxshott.

The woman bustled about the room and the man lay and watched her, a
gentler look in his eyes than those poor anxious organs had shown for
years.

“That’s a wonderful frock,” he said lazily.

“Great Scott, and I with no apron on! Why didn’t you tell me before?”
she said excitedly, and dashed to the chest of drawers, opened one
drawer, and shook out a voluminous apron, all-covering as a hospital
apron, but more decorative.

“It’s a shame to cover it,” Stephen objected.

“It’s my going-away dress, the very first dress Angela M. Latham ever
was hooked and laced into, and you needn’t think I’m going to spill ox
tail soup, Top Bronnen water, peaches and wine over it. The chinchilla
it’s trimmed with cost eighty guineas, and every inch of the lace cost
half a crown—hand crocheted.” She relentlessly tied the frilled and
ribboned strings of the apron about her slim waist. “If you like this, I
wonder what you’d have said to my wedding dress. I’m going to be painted
in it—by one of the very biggest big-bugs. I want Poynter, because he’s
the president of the brush and paint boys, and the president seemed
about the right thing to draw an American’s picture, but Horace says
Poynter doesn’t do portraits. My wedding dress was—well, really it
was—and I designed it two minutes after we were engaged. Quick work. It
was velvet, just _not_ white, the faintest, loveliest tinge of green you
ever saw; there was white fox at the hem, not too much, that’s half the
art of dressing—narrow really in front, but it widened out as it went
around till it measured over two feet at the very back. And my bonnet,
not much bigger than a big butterfly, nothing but pearls and one ear of
point lace, lined with green—emerald green to show it up—You’re not
listening.”

“Look here,” Stephen told her. “You are simply marking time. You have
something to tell me, and you are nervous and afraid to say it. The
sooner such things are said and done with the better. But first there
are one or two things I want to know, that I must know and am going to
know. So we’ll have them now, please.”

“I quite agree,” Angela said, relieved at the prospect of the immediate
passing of a tension. “Fire ahead. Question number one?”

“I want to know just what happened—when I was taken ill—what happened
afterwards and all along. My mind’s a bit blank. But first tell me
about—Helen.”

Angela busied herself desperately at the toilet-table, dusting already
speckless silver with her absurd apron, sniffing interrogatively at
toilet bottles with the contents of which she was perfectly familiar,
moving brushes recklessly, but she answered briskly, and with merciful
promptitude.

“They were married six weeks ago. No fuss, not even a cake, a gray dress
plainer’n plain. A week knocking about in a motor-car, Heaven knows
where. Hugh is doing some fool thing or other at the War Office.
Temporary something or other. He goes back to the front next week. Now
I’ll go back to the beginning and tell you everything.”

“Please don’t,” Stephen said grimly. “Just the important items briefly.”

“Right-o,” Mrs. Latham said amicably, perching herself on the foot of
the bed—“perfectly plain, no trimming, no colored lights, no slow
music. Well! Helen found a paper that cleared Hugh. There were Tommies
in the morning room, or somewhere, sent to arrest Hugh, but when he and
Horace went in, nary a Tommy was there—and the silver was all right
too—and not even the beer touched. Barker had got rid of them—charmed
them away: awfully clever girl, Barker, only your aunt never could see
it. Well, Hugh couldn’t be arrested because there was nobody there to
arrest him, but he went up to Whitehall the next day with Horace and Sir
Somebody Something who’s no end of a lawyer and a very big-wig, and
after a few miles of your charming British red tape, well, that was
O.K.! See? Forgiven. Forgotten. Commission restored.” She slid from the
bed and strutted daintily about the room tooting the Anthem from an
imaginary bugle, its mouthpiece her own sparkling hand. It was a pretty
piece of burlesque—delicately done—and briefly.

Pryde waited quietly; it was simplest, easiest so, he thought, and far
quickest. “Rule, Britannia,” followed the Anthem, “John Brown’s Body”
followed “Rule, Britannia,” and then she discoursed “Deutschland,
Deutschland über alles.” But Pryde was invulnerable, not to be teased as
Horace Latham was; and she ceased as suddenly as she had begun and
perched back on the bed. “By the way,” she said, “Hugh burned
that—that—document thing Helen’d found in the Thackeray book—or
perhaps it was Charlotte Brontë, or ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ We Southerners
don’t think any too much of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”

“Burned it?” Stephen said sharply. “Are you sure?”

“Quite.” Mrs. Latham nodded.

“Why?”

“You can search me. But far’s I remember, it was to get rid of it—and
that seems a likely reason. I think Hugh said it wouldn’t be needed
again. Helen is ‘Bransby’s’—no one else could make any trouble—and
something had been fixed up—all hunky-dorey and everything.”

“Was—was she willing—willing it should be burned?”

“She was not. But Hugh had his way. Men do in this upside-down,
inside-out old country. But I bet you a gooseberry to a guinea Horace
Latham won’t—not so you’d notice it.”

“I decline the wager,” Pryde told her. “Go on.”

“Well, you—you were feverish, and fancied all sorts of things that
time—when the paper was found. Thought you saw things.”

“I saw Uncle Dick, if that’s what you mean,” Stephen said quietly. “I
know I’ve been very ill—had brain fever, and all that—but I did see
Uncle Dick. It was no delusion.”

Angela nodded gravely. “Of course you did. _I’ve_ never doubted it for a
moment. Isn’t it perfectly wonderful—oh!—if they’d only let the
Spiritualists run this war, we’d have the poor old Kaiser dished in a
jiff. But they won’t.”

“No, probably not,” Pryde concurred. “Go on.”

“I am going on—as fast as I can. Well, you sailed out of the library,
the night you fell ill, and went up to your room, and rammed some things
in a bag—Horace followed you up and found you doing it. He saw you were
queer, and he ordered you to bed, but you just ordered him out of your
room and left the house. No one could stop you. I don’t think Hugh or
Horace really wanted to: anyway they couldn’t and they didn’t. You piled
up here to London. Where you went here or what you did here, I can’t
tell you, for nobody knows. But two days after you left Oxshott, I was
having tea in my sitting-room at my hotel—I’d come up to hustle my
dressmakers—when in you walked. You were as mad as six March hares—and
in about five minutes you fell down with a fit.”

“Fit?” Stephen said it rather indignantly.

“Well—if it wasn’t, it was a pretty good imitation one. I called it a
fit. Horace called it something in Latin. And you began saying things
you’d no business to say, so I wasn’t going to call any one in. So I
just got you into the next room, and on to the bed.”

“You?”

“Me!”

“But you couldn’t.”

“No, of course I couldn’t. But I did. You can’t faze an American woman.
We’re not made that way. You’re not so awfully heavy, and I just hauled
and twisted until I’d done it. You never know till you try. I don’t go
in much for horses—I never did. But once I held a runaway team of Blue
Grass Kentuckies for three miles on the Shell Road, outside ’Frisco.
They pulled. But I held on. And I slowed them down all right in the end.
I got you on to the bed and telephoned for Horace. No strangers wanted!
You fussed about a bit—but I managed.”

“Why did you bother?” he asked in a curious tone. Her answer was prompt.
“Because I like you. I always have liked you—very much indeed.”

The sick man’s thin hand crept over the eiderdown and rested on hers.

“Horace came,” she continued, “and we bundled you up in blankets and
things and brought you around here. At first I said you shouldn’t be
moved. But Horace said you’d be better here than so near Bond Street,
and, after all, he’s a doctor. So—well, we just moved you.”

“And you’ve nursed me ever since.”

“I’ve done most of it,” Angela said proudly. “I’m some nurse. I always
was. And you did talk so. Talk about women! I simply couldn’t let a
stranger come pothering. You were very ill, but you soon got better, and
Mr. Grant helped me.”

“Yes—I’ve known he was here.” Stephen had thought Grant on guard for
Helen and Hugh. He knew better now. He lay for a while very quiet,
thinking it over.

“He stayed with you all the time the week we were married. It didn’t
take long—getting married doesn’t take long, if you go about it the
right way.”

“It takes more than a lifetime sometimes,” Stephen said bitterly.

Angela rubbed his thin hand against her face. “I know, dear,” she said.

“You had a very short honeymoon. Was that on my account?”

“Four days. Yes, you poor child, I wasn’t going to leave you too long.”

Stephen said nothing. He couldn’t—say anything.

“Are you happy?” he asked after a time.

“Me and Horace? Oh! so-so.” But she dimpled and flushed eloquently.
“So-so—but our troubles have begun already: servants. Horace’s have all
given us notice—the silly old frumps. They don’t like me chattering
German all over the house. You English haven’t much sense of humor, and
English servants have none. Noah—the butler, his name is Ryder, but I
call him ‘Noah,’ he’s been with Horace since the flood—Noah sulked
whenever I spoke to him in German, and the housekeeper was rude. Well, I
bundled her off lickety-click. Then I began to teach Horace German. He
read it well enough, but his accent was awful. So I took him in hand.
And last night—after dinner—he’d been singing to me—the sweetest love
song ever made—in Germany—don’t you think so? ‘Du bist wie eine Blume,
So hold, und schön und rein!’—The head parlor-maid and the cook—and
the buttons and all the rest, flounced in and gave notice in a bunch.
When this war’s over, I shall send to a woman I know in Hong Kong to
send me a boat-load of decent servants. I never had real-servant comfort
but once in all my life—and that was in ’Frisco, where every maid we
had was a Chinaman.”

“I doubt if they’d fit in in Harley Street,” Stephen said lazily. “I’d
try ’em at Oxshott first, if I were you.”

“They’ll fit in anywhere; that’s the beauty of them. I’ll have them in
both places—no fear! I’m not very sure that I like Harley Street—and
there isn’t a nook, or a twist or a turn in our entire house. But I’m
going to have Horace stick a roof-garden on.”

“Why don’t you make him move?”

“He won’t. I’ve told him to over and over. Oh! I can manage Horace easy
enough—_except_ where his profession comes in; he will have his own way
there—and, after all, he is a doctor, you know.”

Pryde smiled.

“Have you thought of what you’d do the next few years?” Angela asked
rather timidly when some silent moments had passed.

“A deuce of a lot!”

“Well—that’s one of the two things _I_ want to talk about, only it’s
hard to begin. But I’ve got it all planned—every bit—”

Stephen Pryde laughed.

“You’ve nothing at all to do, but agree—not a thing. First of all,
guess who’s coming?”

“Hugh?”

The woman nodded.

“I’d rather he didn’t.”

“I know,” she said—“but please—”

Pryde shrugged his shoulder against the pillow. “Oh! all right. What
does it matter? He coming here? When?”

Mrs. Latham glanced at the clock. “In about half an hour.”


                               CHAPTER XL

Hugh was embarrassed and awkward when he came in; Stephen was neither.
He lay comfortably on his plumped-up pillows and regarded his brother
with a slight, cynical smile.

“Hello, Steve,” the younger said.

Stephen said nothing.

“Jolly fine to see you getting on—Ripping—what—”

“Take it easy,” Stephen said amusedly. “I don’t worry: you needn’t.”

Mrs. Latham pushed a chair to the bed, and Hugh sat down awkwardly, and
put down on the small table near Stephen’s pillow a parcel. Stephen eyed
it quizzically. “Grapes,” Hugh remarked lamely.

“Why have you come?” the elder demanded.

“To see you, old fellow,” his brother told him.

“What do you want?”

“Haven’t you told him?” Hugh asked Angela, in a palpable panic. She
shook her head. “Funked it?”

“Certainly not,” she replied severely. “Merely I hadn’t got to it yet.”

“See here.” Stephen spoke crisply. “We’ll cut all the circumlocutions
out. You needn’t be so damned crumpled up, Hugh. If you’ve come here
with any idea of letting me down easy, you’ve wasted your time.”

He raised himself up on his pillows and faced his brother defiantly.
Hugh blushed like a girl, and fumbled his cap—but sat speechless.

“When we were children you had all the best of it,” Stephen continued.
“You’ve had all the best of it all along. You’ve got the best of it
now.” Hugh dropped his eyes to his boots, a picture of guilt and
discomfort. “We both cared—a good deal—for—Mother. You were her
favorite. I was willing. You were the kid—and, believe it or not, I was
willing. And I was good to you—for years.”

“God—yes—very,” Hugh said heartily, lifting his troubled eyes to
Stephen’s.

“We came to Deep Dale. My heart was sorer than yours. I’d known Mother
longer; I missed her more than you did; I needed her more. Well—you had
all the fat of it—at Oxshott: there was none of it I grudged you,
none—but I was a boy too, and I wanted my share; and I didn’t get it. I
had clothes, and food, and servants, and saw a future open up before me,
a future of wealth and power. But I wanted love too. I had more brains
in my toe than you had in your carcass—and Uncle Dick saw it. He began
to take interest in me, to talk to me, to draw me out, he took no end of
pains over my education, and before long to plan my future as his
ultimate successor at ‘Bransby’s’—but he loved you. And I would have
given my poor little hide to have had just half of that love. All my
life—ever since I can remember—every day of it, I’ve wanted some one
to love me—and no one ever has really—Mother—did half; since she
died, no one.”

The fire hissed and flamed in the hearth, and Stephen lay watching it
moodily. No one spoke for a long time. It seemed as if none of them
could. Hugh was choking. Angela Latham was crying.

At last Stephen spoke, taking up again the sorry parable of his tragedy.
“I waited on Aunt Caroline; she waited on you—and I—I wanted a little
mothering so. I worked like a navvy, and won prizes at Harrow and
Oxford. Uncle Dick said, ‘Creditable, Stephen, quite creditable,’ and
gave me a fiver—and I—I wanted the feel of his hand on my shoulder.
You played the silly goat at Harrow and at Magdalen, and Uncle Dick
said, ‘Tut-tut,’ and bought you a hunter, and coddled you generally. I
was driven in on myself, I tell you, at every point. I wanted human
affection, and I was left alone to browse on my own canker. Well—I
did—I lived alone. There wasn’t a beast on the place, or a servant
either, that didn’t come at your whistle and fawn on you, and run from
me, if it dared. I lived alone—and was lonely. I lay in the woods as a
boy. I worked at that bench when I was older. I dreamed and I planned
and I schemed to do a big thing, a damned fine thing too—a bigger thing
than you ever could have understood. But Richard Bransby could have
understood; he had brains. If you’d wanted to fly on a contrivance of
dragon-flies to the moon, he’d have considered whether he couldn’t
gratify you, and have turned you down in the end, kindly and
generously—but me—it wasn’t the flying and the aircraft I cared about
really in the first place; it was the dreaming, and something to take
the place of people—the people I wanted and couldn’t have—” Mrs.
Latham was sobbing. “Then, presently, I got caught in the charm of the
wonderful thing—and went mad—dæmonized, as the old Greeks were—the
men who did the great things, the greatest the world has ever had done.
Birds were my prophets—my playfellows, the only ones I had, poor little
devil. You played with Helen, I sat apart—and watched you—and then I
got to watching the birds and the bats and the insects that flew
instead—sometimes. I worked tremendously at drawing and maths and fifty
other things that I might be able to invent aircraft and perfect it. But
no—Uncle Dick would have none of it. But, by God, I’ll do it yet, I
tell you—”

Angela slipped in between the bed and the table, and sat down on the
coverlet.

“You must not talk too long,” she said gently.

“Won’t you try some grapes?” Hugh said huskily.

Stephen laughed mirthlessly. “No.” To Mrs. Latham he said, “I’m almost
done. There was something I wanted more than I wanted an aerial career,”
he went on, looking Hugh full in the face—“more than you ever wanted
anything in your life—or could want anything—or many men could. It was
not for me. And I might have won it, if it hadn’t been for Uncle Dick.
Oh! it wasn’t you who thwarted me—you needn’t think it was—it was he.
Always he thwarted me. I did my best to thwart him in return. I wasn’t
glad to hurt you, Hugh, truly I wasn’t—” For just an instant his voice
softened and suspended. Then he went bitterly on, “You were in the way,
and you had to go—that was all—but I’d very much rather it had been
any one else. I owed Uncle Dick a good deal, and I tried to pay it. And
I’d do it again.”

Hugh held out his hand timidly; it was in apology too. Stephen ignored
it, and bent his eyes to the fire.

“Now,” he said, after a long, brooding pause, “you know the depth of my
penitence. We’ll talk about something else.”

“We will,” Angela said briskly, but her voice shook. “You say you are
going to succeed at the aircraft thing yet. Do you know how you are
going to do it?”

“No,” Stephen said gruffly.

“Well, then, I do. We’ve planned it all—Hugh and I.”

Stephen sat up in the bed, he shot her a glance, and then fixed his eyes
on his brother. Hugh nodded and went horribly red.

“You are going to do it in South America. That’s the place, where you
won’t be overlooked, and half your inventions and things stolen before
you’ve perfected them. It’s going to be an enormous thing, our
firm—just we three partners. Your brains, your control, my money—and a
little from Hugh, and your own too, of course—and all ‘Bransby’s,’
influence and co-operation back of us. It will need a rare lot of
capital. Well, it’s ready.”

Stephen paid no attention to her, but he said to his brother—

“Do you mean it?”

“Yes, Stevie—and jolly glad, and pleased—”

Stephen silenced him with a gesture. “Well, I don’t. I’d die first.”

“You’ll die after,” Mrs. Latham remarked.

She put her hand on his face. “You are going to do this for me. I’ve
millions, and you are going to double them.”

“I could.”

“You are going to.”

He looked at her then. “Why do you wish to do this—this big thing?”

“Because I like you. And when I like, I like. Never again dare say no
one cares for you, Stephen. I care. I liked you cordially from the very
first—and believed in you. I like you a thousand times more now. Next
to Horace, there is no one in all the world I care for half so much.
Won’t you do this for me—consent for my sake?”

A slow color crept into the sick, white face. “I’d like to,” Pryde said
gently—“but I can’t. Don’t—don’t say any more about it—please.”

Then Hugh Pryde did the one dramatic thing of his life. A calendar hung
on the wall. Hugh pointed to it.

“Do you know what day this is, Stephen?”

Stephen nodded. “I never forget—” There was mist in his stubborn eyes.
And in a flash of intuition, Angela understood: this was Violet Pryde’s
birthday.

“Won’t you consent, for her sake?” Hugh said. “She would ask you to if
she could.”

“Perhaps she is asking you to?” Angela whispered.

Half a moment beat out in silence. Then Stephen said—

“Yes, Hugh, I’ll do it—and thank you both—I’ll do it for Mrs. Latham’s
sake—and for Mother’s.” He held out his thin hand—Hugh gripped it. But
Angela bent swiftly over Stephen—and kissed him.

                                THE END

                 *        *        *        *        *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Minor printer errors have been corrected without note. Inconsistency in
hyphenation has been retained. Other errors have been corrected as noted
below:

On page 193 of the book, Paul Latham was used as a name for Dr. Latham.
In all other locations in the book, he was named Horace.
Paul has been replaced with Horace.

Paul Latham shook his head ==> Horace Latham shook his head





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