THE HALF-HEARTED

by

JOHN BUCHAN




NOTE

For the convenience of the reader it may
be stated that the period of this tale is the
closing years of the 19th Century.




CONTENTS

PART I

      I. EVENING IN GLENAVELIN
     II. LADY MANORWATER'S GUESTS
    III. UPLAND WATER
     IV. AFTERNOON IN A GARDEN
      V. A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS
     VI. PASTORAL
    VII. THE MAKERS OF EMPIRE
   VIII. MR. WRATISLAW'S ADVENT
     IX. THE EPISODES OF A DAY
      X. HOME TRUTHS
     XI. THE PRIDE BEFORE A FALL
    XII. PASTORAL AND TRAGEDY
   XIII. THE PLEASURES OF A CONSCIENCE
    XIV. A GENTLEMAN IN STRAITS
     XV. THE NEMESIS OF A COWARD
    XVI. A MOVEMENT OF THE POWERS
   XVII. THE BRINK OF THE RUBICON
  XVIII. THE FURTHER BRINK
    XIX. THE BRIDGE OF BROKEN HEARTS

PART II

     XX. THE EASTERN ROAD
    XXI. IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS
   XXII. THE OUTPOSTS
  XXIII. THE DINNER AT GALETTI'S
   XXIV. THE TACTICS OP A CHIEF
    XXV. MRS. LOGAN'S BALL
   XXVI. FRIEND TO FRIEND
  XXVII. THE ROAD TO FORZA
 XXVIII. THE HILL-FORT
   XXIX. THE WAY TO NAZRI
    XXX. EVENING IN THE HILLS
   XXXI. EVENTS SOUTH OF THE BORDER
  XXXII. THE BLESSING OF GAD




THE HALF-HEARTED




PART I




CHAPTER I

EVENING IN GLENAVELIN


From the heart of a great hill land Glenavelin stretches west and south
to the wider Gled valley, where its stream joins with the greater water
in its seaward course. Its head is far inland in a place of mountain
solitudes, but its mouth is all but on the lip of the sea, and salt
breezes fight with the flying winds of the hills. It is a land of green
meadows on the brink of heather, of far-stretching fir woods that climb
to the edge of the uplands and sink to the fringe of corn. Nowhere is
there any march between art and nature, for the place is in the main for
sheep, and the single road which threads the glen is little troubled
with cart and crop-laden wagon. Midway there is a stretch of wood and
garden around the House of Glenavelin, the one great dwelling-place in
the vale. But it is a dwelling and a little more, for the home of the
real lords of the land is many miles farther up the stream, in the
moorland house of Etterick, where the Avelin is a burn, and the hills
hang sharply over its source. To a stranger in an afternoon it seems a
very vale of content, basking in sun and shadow, green, deep, and
silent. But it is also a place of storms, for its name means the "glen
of white waters," and mist and snow are commoner in its confines than
summer heats.

On a very wet evening in June a young man in a high dogcart was driving
up the glen. A deer-stalker's cap was tied down over his ears, and the
collar of a great white waterproof defended his neck. A cheerful
bronzed face was shadowed by the peak of his cap, and two very keen grey
eyes peered out into the mist. He was driving with tight rein, for the
mare was fresh and the road had awkward slopes and corners; but none the
less he was dreaming, thinking pleasant thoughts, and now and then
looking cheerily at the ribs of hill which at times were cleared of
mist. His clean-shaven face was wet and shining with the drizzle, pools
formed on the floor of the cart, and the mare's flanks were plastered
with the weather.

Suddenly he drew up sharp at the sight of a figure by the roadside.

"Hullo, Doctor Gracey," he cried, "where on earth have you come from?
Come in and I'll give you a lift."

The figure advanced and scrambled into the vacant seat. It was a little
old man in a big topcoat with a quaint-fashioned wide-awake hat on his
head. In ill weather all distinctions are swept away. The stranger
might have been a statesman or a tramp.

"It is a pleasure to see you, Doctor," and the young man grasped a
mittened hand and looked into his companion's face. There was something
both kindly and mirthful in his grey eyes.

The old man arranged his seat comfortably, buttoned another button at
the neck of the coat, and then scrutinised the driver. "It's four
years--four years in October since I last cast eyes on you, Lewie, my
boy," he said. "I heard you were coming, so I refused a lift from
Haystounslacks and the minister. Haystounslacks was driving from
Gledsmuir, and unless the Lord protects him he will be in Avelin water
ere he gets home. Whisky and a Glenavelin road never agree, Lewie, as I
who have mended the fool's head a dozen times should know. But I
thought you would never come, and was prepared to ride in the next
baker's van." The Doctor spoke with the pure English and high northern
voice of an old school of professional men, whose tongue, save in
telling a story, knew not the vernacular, and yet in its pitch and
accent inevitably betrayed their birthplace. Precise in speech and
dress, uncommonly skilful, a mild humorist, and old in the world's
wisdom, he had gone down the evening way of life with the heart of a
boy.

"I was delayed--I could not help it, though I was all afternoon at the
job," said the young man. "I've seen a dozen and more tenants and I
talked sheep and drains till I got out of my depth and was gravely
corrected. It's the most hospitable place on earth, this, but I thought
it a pity to waste a really fine hunger on the inevitable ham and eggs,
so I waited for dinner. Lord, I have an appetite! Come and dine,
Doctor. I am in solitary state just now, and long, wet evenings are
dreary."

"I'm afraid I must excuse myself, Lewie," was the formal answer, with
just a touch of reproof. Dinner to Doctor Gracey was a serious
ceremony, and invitations should not be scattered rashly. "My
housekeeper's wrath is not to be trifled with, as you should know."

"I do," said the young man in a tone of decent melancholy. "She once
cuffed my ears the month I stayed with you for falling in the burn.
Does she beat you, Doctor?"

"Indeed, no," said the little old gentleman; "not as yet. But
physically she is my superior and I live in terror." Then abruptly, "For
heaven's sake, Lewie, mind the mare."

"It's all right," said the driver, as the dogcart swung neatly round an
ugly turn. "There's the mist going off the top of Etterick Law,
and--why, that's the end of the Dreichill?"

"It's the Dreichill, and beyond it is the Little Muneraw. Are you glad
to be home, Lewie?"

"Rather," said the young man gravely. "This is my own countryside, and
I fancy it's the last place a man forgets."

"I fancy so--with right-thinking people. By the way, I have much to
congratulate you on. We old fogies in this desert place have been often
seeing your name in the newspapers lately. You are a most experienced
traveller."

"Fair. But people made a great deal more of that than it deserved. It
was very simple, and I had every chance. Some day I will go out and do
the same thing again with no advantages, and if I come back you may
praise me then."

"Right, Lewie. A bare game and no chances is the rule of war. And now,
what will you do?"

"Settle down," said the young man with mock pathos, "which in my case
means settling up also. I suppose it is what you would call the crucial
moment in my life. I am going in for politics, as I always intended,
and for the rest I shall live a quiet country life at Etterick. I've a
wonderful talent for rusticity."

The Doctor shot an inquiring glance from beneath the flaps of his hat.
"I never can make up my mind about you, Lewie."

"I daresay not. It is long since I gave up trying to make up my mind
about myself."

"When you were a very small and very bad boy I made the usual prophecy
that you would make a spoon or spoil a horn. Later I declared you would
make the spoon. I still keep to that opinion, but I wish to goodness I
knew what shape your spoon would take."

"Ornamental, Doctor, some odd fancy spoon, but not useful. I feel an
inner lack of usefulness."

"Humph! Then things are serious, Lewie, and I, as your elder, should
give advice; but confound it, my dear, I cannot think what it should be.
Life has been too easy for you, a great deal too easy. You want a
little of the salt and iron of the world. You are too clever ever to be
conceited, and you are too good a fellow ever to be a fool, but apart
from these sad alternatives there are numerous middle stages which are
not very happy."

The young man's face lengthened, as it always did either in repose or
reflection.

"You are old and wise, Doctor. Have you any cure for a man with
sufficient money and no immediate profession to prevent stagnation?"

"None," said the Doctor; "but the man himself can find many. The chief
is that he be conscious of his danger, and on the watch against it. As
a last expedient I should recommend a second course of travel."

"But am I to be barred from my home because of this bogey of yours?"

"No, Lewie lad, but you must be kept, as you say, 'up to scratch,'" and
the old face smiled. "You are too good to waste. You Haystouns are
high-strung, finicking people, on whom idleness sits badly. Also you
are the last of your race and have responsibilities. You must remember
I was your father's friend, and knew you all well."

At the mention of his father the young man's interest quickened.

"I must have been only about six years old when he died. I find so few
people who remember him well and can tell me about him."

"You are very like him, Lewie. He began nearly as well as you; but he
settled down into a quiet life, which was the very thing for which he
was least fitted. I do not know if he had altogether a happy time. He
lost interest in things, and grew shy and rather irritable. He
quarrelled with most of his neighbours, and got into a trick of
magnifying little troubles till he shrank from the slightest
discomfort."

"And my mother?"

"Ah, your mother was different--a cheery, brave woman. While she lived
she kept him in some measure of self-confidence, but you know she died
at your birth, Lewie, and after that he grew morose and retiring. I
speak about these things from the point of view of my profession, and I
fancy it is the special disease which lies in your blood. You have all
been over-cultured and enervated; as I say, you want some of the salt
and iron of life."

The young man's brow was furrowed in a deep frown which in no way broke
the good-humour of his face. They were nearing a cluster of houses, the
last clachan of sorts in the glen, where a kirk steeple in a grove of
trees proclaimed civilization. A shepherd passed them with a couple of
dogs, striding with masterful step towards home and comfort. The cheery
glow of firelight from the windows pleased both men as they were whirled
through the raw weather.

"There, you see," said the Doctor, nodding his head towards the
retreating figure; "there's a man who in his own way knows the secret of
life. Most of his days are spent in dreary, monotonous toil. He is for
ever wrestling with the weather and getting scorched and frozen, and the
result is that the sparse enjoyments of his life are relished with a
rare gusto. He sucks his pipe of an evening with a zest which the man
who lies on his back all day smoking knows nothing about. So, too, the
labourer who hoes turnips for one and sixpence the day. They know the
arduousness of life, which is a lesson we must all learn sooner or
later. You people who have been coddled and petted must learn it, too;
and for you it is harder to learn, but pleasanter in the learning,
because you stand above the bare need of things, and have leisure for
the adornments. We must all be fighters and strugglers, Lewie, and it
is better to wear out than to rust out. It is bad to let choice things
become easily familiar; for, you know, familiarity is apt to beget a
proverbial offspring."

The young man had listened attentively, but suddenly he leaned from the
seat and with a dexterous twitch of his whip curled it round the leg of
a boy of sixteen who stood before a cottage.

"Hullo, Jock," he cried. "When are you coming up to see me? Bring your
brother some day and we'll go and fish the Midburn." The urchin pulled
off a ragged cap and grinned with pleasure.

"That's the boy you pulled out of the Avelin?" asked the Doctor. "I had
heard of that performance. It was a good introduction to your
home-coming."

"It was nothing," said the young man, flushing slightly. "I was
crossing the ford and the stream was up a bit. The boy was fishing,
wading pretty deep, and in turning round to stare at me he slipped and
was carried down. I merely rode my horse out and collared him. There
was no danger."

"And the Black Linn just below," said the Doctor, incredulously. "You
have got the usual modesty of the brave man, Lewie."

"It was a very small thing. My horse knew its business--that was all."
And he flicked nervously with the whip.

A grey house among trees rose on the left with a quaint gateway of
unhewn stone. The dogcart pulled up, and the Doctor scrambled down and
stood shaking the rain from his hat and collar. He watched the young
man till, with a skilful turn, he had entered Etterick gates, and then
with a more meditative face than is usual in a hungry man he went
through the trees to his own dwelling.




CHAPTER II

LADY MANORWATER'S GUESTS


When the afternoon train from the south drew into Gledsmuir station, a
girl who had been devouring the landscape for the last hour with eager
eyes, rose nervously to prepare for exit. To Alice Wishart the country
was a novel one, and the prospect before her an unexplored realm of
guesses. The daughter of a great merchant, she had lived most of her
days in the ugly environs of a city, save for such time as she had spent
at the conventional schools. She had never travelled; the world of men
and things was merely a name to her, and a girlhood, lonely and
brightened chiefly by the companionship of books, had not given her
self-confidence. She had casually met Lady Manorwater at some political
meeting in her father's house, and the elder woman had taken a strong
liking to the quiet, abstracted child. Then came an invitation to
Glenavelin, accepted gladly yet with much fear and searching of heart.
Now, as she looked out on the shining mountain land, she was full of
delight that she was about to dwell in the heart of it. Something of
pride, too, was present, that she was to be the guest of a great lady,
and see something of a life which seemed infinitely remote to her
provincial thoughts. But when her journey drew near its end she was
foolishly nervous, and scanned the platform with anxious eye.

The sight of her hostess reassured her. Lady Manorwater was a small
middle-aged woman, with a thin classical face, large colourless eyes,
and untidy fair hair. She was very plainly dressed, and as she darted
forward to greet the girl with entire frankness and kindness, Alice
forgot her fears and kissed her heartily. A languid young woman was
introduced as Miss Afflint, and in a few minutes the three were in the
Glenavelin carriage with the wide glen opening in front.

"Oh, my dear, I hope you will enjoy your visit. We are quite a small
party, for Jack says Glenavelin is far too small to entertain in. You
are fond of the country, aren't you? And of course the place is very
pretty. There is tennis and golf and fishing; but perhaps you don't
like these things? We are not very well off for neighbours, but we are
large enough in number to be sufficient to ourselves. Don't you think
so, Bertha?" And Lady Manorwater smiled at the third member of the
group.

Miss Afflint, a silent girl, smiled back and said nothing. She had been
engaged in a secret study of Alice's face, and whenever the object of
the study raised her eyes she found a pair of steady blue ones beaming
on her. It was a little disconcerting, and Alice gazed out at the
landscape with a fictitious curiosity.

They passed out of the Gled valley into the narrower strath of Avelin,
and soon, leaving the meadows behind, went deep into the recesses of
woods. At a narrow glen bridged by the road and bright with the spray
of cascades and the fresh green of ferns, Alice cried out in delight,
"Oh, I must come back here some day and sketch it. What a Paradise of a
place!"

"Then you had better ask Lewie's permission." And Lady Manorwater
laughed.

"Who is Lewie?" asked the girl, anticipating some gamekeeper or
shepherd.

"Lewie is my nephew. He lives at Etterick, up at the head of the glen."

Miss Afflint spoke for the first time. "A very good man. You should
know Lewie, Miss Wishart. I'm sure you would like him. He is a great
traveller, you know, and has written a famous book. Lewis Haystoun is
his full name."

"Why, I have read it," cried Alice. "You mean the book about Kashmir.
But I thought the author was an old man."

"Lewie is not very old," said his aunt; "but I haven't seen him for
years, so he may be decrepit by this time. He is coming home soon, he
says, but he never writes. I know two of his friends who pay a Private
Inquiry Office to send them news of him."

Alice laughed and became silent. What merry haphazard people were these
she had fallen among! At home everything was docketed and ordered.
Meals were immovable feasts, the hour for bed and the hour for rising
were more regular than the sun's. Her father was full of proverbs on
the virtue of regularity, and was wont to attribute every vice and
misfortune to its absence. And yet here were men and women who got on
very well without it. She did not wholly like it. The little
doctrinaire in her revolted and she was pleased to be censorious.

"You are a very learned young woman, aren't you?" said Lady Manorwater,
after a short silence. "I have heard wonderful stories about your
learning. Then I hope you will talk to Mr. Stocks, for I am afraid he
is shocked at Bertha's frivolity. He asked her if she was in favour of
the Prisons Regulation Bill, and she was very rude."

"I only said," broke in Miss Afflint, "that owing to my lack of definite
local knowledge I was not in a position to give an answer commensurate
with the gravity of the subject." She spoke in a perfect imitation of
the tone of a pompous man.

"Bertha, I do not approve of you," said Lady Manorwater. "I forbid you
to mimic Mr. Stocks. He is very clever, and very much in earnest over
everything. I don't wonder that a butterfly like you should laugh, but
I hope Miss Wishart will be kind to him."

"I am afraid I am very ignorant," said Alice hastily, "and I am very
useless. I never did any work of any sort in my life, and when I think
of you I am ashamed."

"Oh, my dear child, please don't think me a paragon," cried her hostess
in horror. "I am a creature of vague enthusiasms and I have the sense
to know it. Sometimes I fancy I am a woman of business, and then I take
up half a dozen things till Jack has to interfere to prevent financial
ruin. I dabble in politics and I dabble in philanthropy; I write review
articles which nobody reads, and I make speeches which are a horror to
myself and a misery to my hearers. Only by the possession of a sense of
humour am I saved from insignificance."

To Alice the speech was the breaking of idols. Competence,
responsibility were words she had been taught to revere, and to hear
them light-heartedly disavowed seemed an upturning of the foundation of
things. You will perceive that her education had not included that
valuable art, the appreciation of the flippant.

By this time the carriage was entering the gates of the park, and the
thick wood cleared and revealed long vistas of short hill grass, rising
and falling like moorland, and studded with solitary clumps of firs.
Then a turn in the drive brought them once more into shadow, this time
beneath a heath-clad knoll where beeches and hazels made a pleasant
tangle. All this was new, not three years old; but soon they were in
the ancient part of the policy which had surrounded the old house of
Glenavelin. Here the grass was lusher, the trees antique oaks and
beeches, and grey walls showed the boundary of an old pleasure-ground.
Here in the soft sunlit afternoon sleep hung like a cloud, and the peace
of centuries dwelt in the long avenues and golden pastures. Another
turning and the house came in sight, at first glance a jumble of grey
towers and ivied walls. Wings had been built to the original square
keep, and even now it was not large, a mere moorland dwelling. But the
whitewashed walls, the crow-step gables, and the quaint Scots baronial
turrets gave it a perfection to the eye like a house in a dream. To
Alice, accustomed to the vulgarity of suburban villas with Italian
campaniles, a florid lodge a stone's throw from the house, darkened too
with smoke and tawdry with paint, this old-world dwelling was a patch of
wonderland. Her eyes drank in the beauty of the place--the great blue
backs of hill beyond, the acres of sweet pasture, the primeval woods.

"Is this Glenavelin?" she cried. "Oh, what a place to live in!"

"Yes, it's very pretty, dear." And Lady Manorwater, who possessed half a
dozen houses up and down the land, patted her guest's arm and looked
with pleasure on the flushed girlish face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two hours later, Alice, having completed dressing, leaned out of her
bedroom window to drink in the soft air of evening. She had not brought
a maid, and had refused her hostess's offer to lend her her own on the
ground that maids were a superfluity. It was her desire to be a very
practical young person, a scorner of modes and trivialities, and yet she
had taken unusual care with her toilet this evening, and had spent many
minutes before the glass. Looking at herself carefully, a growing
conviction began to be confirmed--that she was really rather pretty.
She had reddish-brown hair and--a rare conjunction--dark eyes and
eyebrows and a delicate colour. As a small girl she had lamented
bitterly the fate that had not given her the orthodox beauty of the dark
or fair maiden, and in her school days she had passed for plain. Now it
began to dawn on her that she had beauty of a kind--the charm of
strangeness; and her slim strong figure had the grace which a wholesome
life alone can give. She was in high spirits, curious, interested, and
generous. The people amused her, the place was a fairyland and outside
the golden weather lay still and fragrant among the hills.

When she came down to the drawing-room she found the whole party
assembled. A tall man with a brown beard and a slight stoop ceased to
assault the handle of a firescreen and came over to greet her. He had
only come back half an hour ago, he explained, and so had missed her
arrival. The face attracted and soothed her. Abundant kindness lurked
in the humorous brown eyes, and a queer pucker on the brow gave him the
air of a benevolent despot. If this was Lord Manorwater, she had no
further dread of the great ones of the earth. There were four other
men, two of them mild, spectacled people, who had the air of students
and a precise affected mode of talk, and one a boy cousin of whom no one
took the slightest notice. The fourth was a striking figure, a man of
about forty in appearance, tall and a little stout, with a rugged face
which in some way suggested a picture of a prehistoric animal in an old
natural history she had owned. The high cheek-bones, large nose, and
slightly protruding eyes had an unfinished air about them, as if their
owner had escaped prematurely from a mould. A quantity of bushy black
hair--which he wore longer than most men--enhanced the dramatic air of his
appearance. It was a face full of vigour and a kind of strength,
shrewd, a little coarse, and solemn almost to the farcical. He was
introduced in a rush of words by the hostess, but beyond the fact that
it was a monosyllable, Alice did not catch his name.

Lord Manorwater took in Miss Afflint, and Alice fell to the dark man
with the monosyllabic name. He had a way of bowing over his hand which
slightly repelled the girl, who had no taste for elaborate manners. His
first question, too, displeased her. He asked her if she was one of the
Wisharts of some unpronounceable place.

She replied briefly that she did not know. Her grandfathers on both
sides had been farmers.

The gentleman bowed with the smiling unconcern of one to whom pedigree
is a matter of course.

"I have heard often of your father," he said. "He is one of the local
supports of the party to which I have the honour to belong. He
represents one great section of our retainers, our host another. I am
glad to see such friendship between the two." And he smiled elaborately
from Alice to Lord Manorwater.

Alice was uncomfortable. She felt she must be sitting beside some very
great man, and she was tortured by vain efforts to remember the
monosyllable which had stood for his name. She did not like his voice,
and, great man or not, she resented the obvious patronage. He spoke
with a touch of the drawl which is currently supposed to belong only to
the half-educated classes of England.

She turned to the boy who sat on the other side of her. The young
gentleman--his name was Arthur and, apparently, nothing else--was only
too ready to talk. He proceeded to explain, compendiously, his doings of
the past week, to which the girl listened politely. Then anxiety got
the upper hand, and she asked in a whisper, _a propos_ of nothing in
particular, the name of her left-hand neighbour.

"They call him Stocks," said the boy, delighted at the tone of
confidence, and was going on to sketch the character of the gentleman in
question when Alice cut him short.

"Will you take me to fish some day?" she asked.

"Any day," gasped the hilarious Arthur. "I'm ready, and I'll tell you
what, I know the very burn--" and he babbled on happily till he saw that
Miss Wishart had ceased to listen. It was the first time a pretty girl
had shown herself desirous of his company, and he was intoxicated with
the thought.

But Alice felt that she was in some way bound to make the most of Mr.
Stocks, and she set herself heroically to the task. She had never heard
of him, but then she was not well versed in the minutiae of things
political, and he clearly was a politician. Doubtless to her father his
name was a household word. So she spoke to him of Glenavelin and its
beauties.

He asked her if she had seen Royston Castle, the residence of his friend
the Duke of Sanctamund. When he had stayed there he had been much
impressed--

Then she spoke wildly of anything, of books and pictures and
people and politics. She found him well-informed, clever, and dogmatic.
The culminating point was reached when she embarked on a stray remark
concerning certain events then happening in India.

He contradicted her with a lofty politeness.

She quoted a book on Kashmir.

He laughed the authority to scorn. "Lewis Haystoun?" he asked. "What
can he know about such things? A wandering dilettante, the worst type
of the pseudo-culture of our universities. He must see all things
through the spectacles of his upbringing."

Fortunately he spoke in a low voice, but Lord Manorwater caught the
name.

"You are talking about Lewie," he said; and then to the table at large,
"do you know that Lewie is home? I saw him to-day."

Bertha Afflint clapped her hands. "Oh, splendid! When is he coming
over? I shall drive to Etterick to-morrow. No--bother! I can't go
to-morrow, I shall go on Wednesday."

Lady Manorwater opened mild eyes of surprise. "Why didn't the boy
write?" And the young Arthur indulged in sundry exclamations, "Oh,
ripping, I say! What? A clinking good chap, my cousin Lewie!"

"Who is this Lewis the well-beloved?" said Mr. Stocks. "I was talking
about a very different person--Lewis Haystoun, the author of a foolish
book on Kashmir."

"Don't you like it?" said Lord Manorwater, pleasantly. "Well, it's the
same man. He is my nephew, Lewie Haystoun. He lives at Etterick, four
miles up the glen. You will see him over here to-morrow or the day
after."

Mr. Stocks coughed loudly to cover his discomfiture. Alice could not
repress a little smile of triumph, but she was forbearing and for the
rest of dinner exerted herself to appease her adversary, listening to
his talk with an air of deference which he found entrancing.

Meanwhile it was plain that Lord Manorwater was not quite at ease with
his company. Usually a man of brusque and hearty address, he showed his
discomfort by an air of laborious politeness. He was patronized for a
brief minute by Mr. Stocks, who set him right on some matter of
agricultural reform. Happening to be a specialist on the subject and an
enthusiastic farmer from his earliest days, he took the rebuke with
proper meekness. The spectacled people were talking earnestly with his
wife. Arthur was absorbed in his dinner and furtive glances at his
left-hand neighbour. There remained Bertha Afflint, whom he had
hitherto admired with fear. To talk with her was exhausting to frail
mortality, and he had avoided the pleasure except in moments of
boisterous bodily and mental health. Now she was his one resource, and
the unfortunate man, rashly entering into a contest of wit, found
himself badly worsted by her ready tongue. He declared that she was
worse than her mother, at which the unabashed young woman replied that
the superiority of parents was the last retort of the vanquished. He
registered an inward vow that Miss Afflint should be used on the morrow
as a weapon to quell Mr. Stocks.

When Alice escaped to the drawing-room she found Bertha and her sister--a
younger and ruddier copy--busy with the letters which had arrived by the
evening post. Lady Manorwater, who reserved her correspondence for the
late hours, seized upon the girl and carried her off to sit by the great
French windows from which lawn and park sloped down to the moorland
loch. She chattered pleasantly about many things, and then innocently
and abruptly asked her if she had not found her companion at table
amusing.

Alice, unaccustomed to fiction, gave a hesitating "Yes," at which her
hostess looked pleased. "He is very clever, you know," she said, "and
has been very useful to me on many occasions."

Alice asked his occupation.

"Oh, he has done many things. He has been very brave and quite the
maker of his own fortunes. He educated himself, and then I think he
edited some Nonconformist paper. Then he went into politics, and became
a Churchman. Some old man took a liking to him and left him his money,
and that was the condition. So I believe he is pretty well off now and
is waiting for a seat. He has been nursing this constituency, and since
the election comes off in a month or two, we asked him down here to
stay. He has also written a lot of things and he is somebody's private
secretary." And Lady Manorwater relapsed into vagueness.

The girl listened without special interest, save that she modified her
verdict on Mr. Stocks, and allowed, some degree of respect for him to
find place in her heart. The fighter in life always appealed to her,
whatever the result of his struggle.

Then Lady Manorwater proceeded to hymn his excellences in an
indeterminate, artificial manner, till the men came into the room, and
conversation became general. Lord Manorwater made his way to Alice,
thereby defeating Mr. Stocks, who tended in the same direction. "Come
outside and see things, Miss Wishart," he said. "It's a shame to miss a
Glenavelin evening if it's fine. We must appreciate our rarities."

And Alice gladly followed him into the still air of dusk which made hill
and tree seem incredibly distant and the far waters of the lake merge
with the moorland in one shimmering golden haze. In the rhododendron
thickets sparse blooms still remained, and all along by the stream-side
stood stately lines of yellow iris above the white water-ranunculus.
The girl was sensitive to moods of season and weather, and she had
almost laughed at the incongruity of the two of them in modern clothes
in this fit setting for an old tale. Dickon of Glenavelin, the sworn
foe of the Lord of Etterick, on such nights as this had ridden up the
water with his bands to affront the quiet moonlight. And now his
descendant was pointing out dim shapes in the park which he said were
prize cattle.

"Whew! what a weariness is civilization!" said the man, with comical
eyes. "We have been making talk with difficulty all the evening which
serves no purpose in the world. Upon my word, my kyloes have the best
of the bargain. And in a month or so there will be the election and I
shall have to go and rave--there is no other word for it, Miss
Wishart--rave on behalf of some fool or other, and talk Radicalism which
would make your friend Dickon turn in his grave, and be in earnest for
weeks when I know in the bottom of my heart that I am a humbug and care
for none of these things. How lightly politics and such matters sit on
us all!"

"But you know you are talking nonsense," said the serious Alice. "After
all, these things are the most important, for they mean duty and courage
and--and--all that sort of thing."

"Right, little woman," said he, smiling; "that is what Stocks tells me
twice a day, but, somehow, reproof comes better from you. Dear me!
it's a sad thing that a middle-aged legislator should be reproved by a
very little girl. Come and see the herons. The young birds will be
everywhere just now."

For an hour in the moonlight they went a-sightseeing, and came back very
cool and fresh to the open drawing-room window. As they approached they
caught an echo of a loud, bland voice saying, "We must remember our
moral responsibilities, my dear Lady Manorwater. Now, for instance--"

And a strange thing happened. For the first time in her life Miss Alice
Wishart felt that the use of loud and solemn words could jar upon her
feelings. She set it down resignedly to the evil influence of her
companion.

In the calm of her bedroom Alice reviewed her recent hours. She
admitted to herself that she would enjoy her visit. A healthy and
active young woman, the mere prospect of an open-air life gave her
pleasure. Also she liked the people. Mentally she epitomized each of
the inmates of the house. Lady Manorwater was all she had pictured
her--a dear, whimsical, untidy creature, with odd shreds of cleverness
and a heart of gold. She liked the boy Arthur, and the spectacled
people seemed harmless. Bertha she was prepared to adore, for behind
the languor and wit she saw a very kindly and capable young woman
fashioned after her own heart. But of all she liked Lord Manorwater
best. She knew that he had a great reputation, that he was said to be
incessantly laborious, and she had expected some one of her father's
type, prim, angular, and elderly. Instead she found a boyish person
whom she could scold, and with women reproof is the first stone in the
foundation of friendship. On Mr. Stocks she generously reserved her
judgment, fearing the fate of the hasty.




CHAPTER III

UPLAND WATERS


When Alice woke next morning the cool upland air was flooding through
the window, and a great dazzle of sunlight made the world glorious. She
dressed and ran out to the lawn, then past the loch right to the very
edge of the waste country. A high fragrance of heath and bog-myrtle was
in the wind, and the mouth grew cool as after long draughts of spring
water. Mists were crowding in the valleys, each bald mountain top shone
like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of
morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron
rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the
_plonk-plonk_ of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds
mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of the
full-uddered cows in the distant meadows. Abashed and enchanted, the
girl listened. It was an elfin land where the old witch voices of hill
and river were not silenced. With the wind in her hair she climbed the
slope again to the garden ground, where she found a solemn-eyed collie
sniffing the fragrant wind in his morning stroll.

Breakfast over, the forenoon hung heavy on her hands. It was Lady
Manorwater's custom to let her guests sit idle in the morning and follow
their own desire, but in the afternoon she would plan subtle and
far-reaching schemes of enjoyment. It was a common saying that in her
large good-nature she amused people regardless of their own expense.
She would light-heartedly make town-bred folk walk twenty miles or bear
the toil of infinite drives. But this was after lunch; before, her
guests might do as they pleased. Lord Manorwater went off to see some
tenant; Arthur, after vain efforts to decoy Alice into a fishing
expedition, went down the stream in a canoe, because to his fool's head
it seemed the riskiest means of passing the time at his disposal; Bertha
and her sister were writing letters; the spectacled people had settled
themselves below shady trees with voluminous papers and a pile of books.
Alice alone was idle. She made futile expeditions to the library, and
returned with an armful of volumes which she knew in her heart she would
never open. She found the deepest and most comfortable chair and placed
it in a shady place among beeches. But she could not stay there, and
must needs wander restlessly about the gardens, plucking flowers and
listlessly watching the gardeners at their work.

Lunch-time found this young woman in a slightly irritable frame of mind.
The cause direct and indirect was Mr. Stocks, who had found her alone,
and had saddled her with his company for the space of an hour and a
half. His vein had been _badinage_ of the serious and reproving kind, and
the girl had been bored to distraction. But a misspent hour is soon
forgotten, and the sight of her hostess's cheery face would have
restored her to good humour had it not been for a thought which could
not be exorcised. She knew of Lady Manorwater's reputation as an
inveterate matchmaker, and in some subtle way the suspicion came to her
that that goddess had marked herself as a quarry. She found herself
next Mr. Stocks at meals, she had already listened to his eulogy from
her hostess's own lips, and to her unquiet fancy it seemed as if the
others stood back that they two might be together. Brought up in an
atmosphere of commerce, she was perfectly aware that she was a desirable
match for an embryo politician, and that sooner or later she would be
mistress of many thousands. The thought was a barbed vexation. To Mr.
Stocks she had been prepared to extend the tolerance of a happy
aloofness; now she found that she was driven to dislike him with all the
bitterness of unwelcome proximity.

The result of such thoughts was that after lunch she disregarded her
hostess's preparations and set out for a long hill walk. Like all
perfectly healthy people, much exercise was as welcome to her as food
and sleep; ten miles were refreshing; fifteen miles in an afternoon an
exaltation. She reached the moor beyond the policies, and, once past
this rushy wilderness, came to the Avelin-side and a single plank bridge
which she crossed lightly without a tremor. Then came the highway, and
then a long planting of firs, and last of all the dip of a rushing
stream pouring down from the hills in a lonely wooded hollow. The girl
loved to explore, and here was a field ripe for adventure.

Soon she grew flushed with the toil and the excitement; climbing the bed
of the stream was no child's play, for ugly corners had to be passed,
slippery rocks to be skirted, and many breakneck leaps to be effected.
Her spirits rose as the spray from little falls brushed her face and the
thick screen of the birches caught in her hair. When she reached a
vantage-rock and looked down on the chain of pools and rapids by which
she had come, a cry of delight broke from her lips. This was living,
this was the zest of life! The upland wind cooled her brow; she washed
her hands in a rocky pool and arranged her tangled tresses. What did
she care for Mr. Stocks or any man? He was far down on the lowlands
talking his pompous nonsense; she was on the hills with the sky above
her and the breeze of heaven around her, free, sovereign, the queen of
an airy land.

With fresh wonder she scrambled on till the trees began to grow sparser
and an upland valley opened in view. Now the burn was quiet, running in
long shining shallows and falling over little rocks into deep brown
pools where the trout darted. On either side rose the gates of the
valley--two craggy knolls each with a few trees on its face. Beyond was
a green lawnlike place with a great confusion of blue mountains hemmed
around its head. Here, if anywhere, primeval peace had found its
dwelling, and Alice, her eyes bright with pleasure, sat on a green
knoll, too rapt with the sight for word or movement.

Then very slowly, like an epicure lingering at a feast, she walked up
the banks of the burn, now high above a trough of rock, now down in a
green winding hollow. Suddenly she came on the spirits of the place in
the shape of two boys down on their faces groping among the stones of a
pool.

One was very small and tattered, one about sixteen; both were barefoot
and both were wet and excited. "Tam, ye stot, ye've let the muckle yin
aff again," groaned the smaller. "Oh, be canny, man! If we grip him
it'll be the biggest trout that the laird will have in his basket." The
elder boy, who was bearing the heat and burden of the work, could only
groan "Heather!" at intervals. It seemed to be his one exclamation.

Now it happened that the two ragamuffins lifted their eyes and saw to
their amazement a girl walking on the bank above them, a girl who smiled
comrade-like on them and seemed in no way surprised. They propped
themselves on their elbows and stared. "Heather!" they ejaculated in
one breath. Then they, too, grinned broadly, for it was impossible to
resist so good-humoured an intruder. She held her head high and walked
like a queen, till a turn of the water hid her. "It's a wumman," gasped
the smaller boy. "And she's terrible bonny," commented the more
critical brother. Then the two fell again to the quest of the great
trout.

Meanwhile the girl pursued her way till she came to a fall where the
bank needed warier climbing. As she reached the top a little flushed
and panting, she became conscious that the upland valley was not without
inhabitants. For, not six paces off, stood a man's figure, his back
turned towards her, and his mind apparently set on mending a piece of
tackle.

She stood for a moment hesitating. How could she pass without being
seen? The man was blissfully unconscious of her presence, and as he
worked he whistled Schubert's "Wohin," and whistled it very badly. Then
he fell to apostrophizing his tackle, and then he grew irritable.
"Somebody come and keep this thing taut," he cried. "Tam, Jock! where
on earth are you?"

The thing in question was lying at Alice's feet in wavy coils.

"Jock, you fool, where are you?" cried the man, but he never looked
round and went on biting and tying. Then an impulse took the girl and
she picked up the line. "That's right," cried the man, "pull it as
tight as you can," and Alice tugged heroically at the waterproof silk.
She felt horribly nervous, and was conscious that she must look a very
flushed and untidy young barbarian. Many times she wanted to drop it
and run away, but the thought of the menaces against the absent Jock and
of her swift discovery deterred her. When he was done with her help he
might go on working and never look round. Then she would escape
unnoticed down the burn.

But no such luck befell her. With a satisfied tug he pronounced the
thing finished and wheeled round to regard his associates. "Now, you
young wretches--" and the words froze on his lips, for in the place of
two tatterdemalion boys he saw a young girl holding his line limply and
smiling with much nervousness.

"Oh," he cried, and then became dumb and confused. He was shy and
unhappy with women, save the few whom he had known from childhood. The
girl was no better. She had blushed deeply, and was now minutely
scanning the stones in the burn. Then she raised her eyes, met his, and
the difficulty was solved by both falling into fits of deep laughter.
She was the first to speak.

"I am so sorry I surprised you. I did not see you till I was close to
you, and then you were abusing somebody so terribly that to stop such
language I had to stop and help you. I saw Tam and Jock at a pool a
long way down, so they couldn't hear you, you know."

"And I'm very much obliged to you. You held it far better than Tam or
Jock would have done. But how did you get up here?"

"I climbed up the burn," said Alice simply, putting up a hand to confine
a wandering tress. The young man saw a small, very simply dressed girl,
with a flushed face and bright, deep eyes. The small white hat crowned
a great tangle of wonderful reddish gold hair. She held herself with
the grace which is born of natural health and no modish training; the
strong hazel stick, the scratched shoes, and the wet fringes of her gown
showed how she had spent the afternoon. The young man, having received
an excellent education, thought of Dryads and Oreads.

Alice for her part saw a strong, well-knit being, with a brown,
clean-shaven face, a straight nose, and a delicate, humorous mouth. He
had large grey eyes, very keen, quizzical, and kindly. His raiment was
disgraceful--an old knickerbocker suit with a ruinous Norfolk jacket,
patched at the elbows and with leather at wrist and shoulder.
Apparently he scorned the June sun, for he had no cap. His pockets
seemed bursting with tackle, and a discarded basket lay on the ground.
The whole figure pleased her, its rude health, simplicity, and disorder.
The atrocious men who sometimes came to her father's house had been
miracles of neatness, and Mr. Stocks was wont to robe his person in the
most faultless of shooting suits.

A fugitive memory began to haunt the girl. She had met or heard of this
man before. The valley was divided between Glenavelin and Etterick. He
was not the Doctor, and he was not the minister. Might not he be that
Lewie, the well-beloved, whose praises she had heard consistently sung
since her arrival? It pleased her to think that she had been the first
to meet the redoubtable young man.

To them there entered the two boys, the younger dangling a fish. "It is
the big trout ye lost," he cried. "We guddled 'um. We wad has gotten
'um afore, but a wumman frichted 'um." Then turning unabashed to Alice,
he said in accusing tones, "That's the wumman!"

The elder boy gently but firmly performed on his brother the operation
known as "scragging." It was a subdued spirit which emerged from the
fraternal embrace.

"Pit the fush in the basket, Tam," said he, "and syne gang away wide up
the hill till I cry ye back." The tones implied that his younger brother
was no fit company for two gentlemen and a lady.

"I won't spoil your fishing," said Alice, fearing fratricidal strife.
"You are fishing up, so I had better go down the burn again." And with a
dignified nod to the others she turned to go.

Jock sprang forward with a bound and proceeded to stone the small Tam
up the hill. He coursed that young gentleman like a dog, bidding him
"come near," or "gang wide," or "lie down there," to all of which the
culprit, taking the sport in proper spirit, gaily responded.

"I think you had better not go down the burn," said the man
reflectively. "You should keep the dry hillside. It is safer."

"Oh, I am not afraid," said the girl, laughing.

"But then I might want to fish down, and the trout are very shy there,"
said he, lying generously.

"Well, I won't then, but please tell me where Glenavelin is, for the
stream-side is my only direction."

"You are staying there?" he asked with a pleased face. "We shall meet
again, for I shall be over to-morrow. That fence on the hillside is
their march, and if you follow it you will come to the footbridge on the
Avelin. Many thanks for taking Jock's place and helping me."

He watched her for a second as she lightly jumped the burn and climbed
the peaty slope. Then he turned to his fishing, and when Alice looked
back from the vantage-ground of the hill shoulder she saw a figure
bending intently below a great pool. She was no coquette, but she could
not repress a tinge of irritation at so callous and self-absorbed a
young man. Another would have been profuse in thanks and would have
accompanied her to point out the road, or in some way or other would
have declared his appreciation of her presence. He might have told her
his name, and then there would have been a pleasant informal
introduction, and they could have talked freely. If he came to
Glenavelin to-morrow, she would have liked to appear as already an
acquaintance of so popular a guest.

But such thoughts did not long hold their place. She was an honest
young woman, and she readily confessed that fluent manners and the air
of the _cavaliere servente_ were things she did not love. Carelessness
suited well with a frayed jacket and the companionship of a hill burn
and two ragged boys. So, comforting her pride with proverbs, she
returned to Glenavelin to find the place deserted save for dogs, and in
their cheering presence read idly till dinner.




CHAPTER IV

AFTERNOON IN A GARDEN


The gardens of Glenavelin have an air of antiquity beyond the dwelling,
for there the modish fashions of another century have been followed with
enthusiasm. There are clipped yews and long arched avenues, bowers and
summer-houses of rustic make, and a terraced lawn fringed with a
Georgian parapet. A former lord had kept peacocks innumerable, and
something of the tradition still survived. Set in the heart of hilly
moorlands, it was like a cameo gem in a tartan plaid, a piece of old
Vauxhall or Ranelagh in an upland vale. Of an afternoon sleep reigned
supreme. The shapely immobile trees, the grey and crumbling stone, the
lone green walks vanishing into a bosky darkness were instinct with the
quiet of ages. It needed but Lady Prue with her flounces and furbelows
and Sir Pertinax with his cane and buckled shoon to re-create the
ancient world before good Queen Anne had gone to her rest.

In one of the shadiest corners of a great lawn Lady Manorwater sat
making tea. Bertha, with a broad hat shading her eyes, dozed over a
magazine in a deck-chair. That morning she and Alice had broken the
convention of the house and gone riding in the haughlands till lunch.
Now she suffered the penalty and dozed, but her companion was very wide
awake, being a tireless creature who knew not lethargy. Besides, there
was sufficient in prospect to stir her curiosity. Lady Manorwater had
announced some twenty times that day that her nephew Lewis would come to
tea, and Alice, knowing the truth of the prophecy, was prepared to
receive him.

The image of the forsaken angler remained clear in her memory, and she
confessed to herself that he interested her. The girl had no
connoisseur's eye for character; her interest was the frank and
unabashed interest in a somewhat mysterious figure who was credited by
all his friends with great gifts and a surprising amiability. After
breakfast she had captured one of the spectacled people, whose name was
Hoddam. He was a little shy man, one of the unassuming tribe of
students by whom all the minor intellectual work of the world is done,
and done well. It is a great class, living in the main in red-brick
villas on the outskirts of academic towns, marrying mild blue-stockings,
working incessantly, and finally attaining to the fame of mention in
prefaces and foot-notes, and a short paragraph in the _Times_ at the
last.... Mr. Hoddam did not seek the company of one who was young,
pretty, an heiress, and presumably flippant, but he was flattered when
she plainly sought him.

"Mr. Lewis Haystoun is coming here this afternoon," she had announced.
"Do you know him?"

"I have read his book," said her victim.

"Yes, but did you not know him at Oxford? You were there with him, were
you not?"

"Yes, we were there together. I knew him by sight, of course, for he
was a very well-known person. But, you see, we belonged to very
different sets."

"How do you mean?" asked the blunt Alice.

"Well, you see," began Mr. Hoddam awkwardly--absolute honesty was one
of his characteristics--"he was very well off, and he lived with a
sporting set, and he was very exclusive."

"But I thought he was clever--I thought he was rather brilliant?"

"Oh, he was! Indubitably! He got everything he wanted, but then he got
them easily and had a lot of time for other things, whereas most of us
had not a moment to spare. He got the best First of his year and the
St. Chad's Fellowship, but I think he cared far more about winning the
'Varsity Grind. Men who knew him said he was an extremely good fellow,
but he had scores of rich sporting friends, and nobody else ever got to
know him. I have heard him speak often, and his manner gave one the
impression that he was a tremendous swell, you know, and rather
conceited. People used to think him a sort of universal genius who
could do everything. I suppose he was quite the ablest man that had
been there for years, but I should think he would succeed ultimately as
the man of action and not as the scholar."

"You give him a most unlovely character," said the girl.

"I don't mean to. I own to being entirely fascinated by him. But he
was never, I think, really popular. He was supposed to be intolerant of
mediocrity; and also he used to offend quite honest, simple-minded
people by treating their beliefs very cavalierly. I used to compare him
with Raleigh or Henri IV.--the proud, confident man of action."

Alice had pondered over Mr. Hoddam's confessions and was prepared to
receive the visitor with coldness. The vigorous little democrat in her
hated arrogance. Before, if she had asked herself what type on earth
she hated most, she would have decided for the unscrupulous, proud man.
And yet this Lewis must be lovable. That brown face had infinite
attractiveness, and she trusted Lady Manorwater's acuteness and goodness
of heart.

Lord Manorwater had gone off on some matter of business and taken the
younger Miss Afflint with him. As Alice looked round the little
assembly on the lawn, she felt for the first time the insignificance of
the men. The large Mr. Stocks was not at his best in such
surroundings. He was the typical townsman, and bore with him wherever
he went an atmosphere of urban dust and worry. He hungered for
ostentation, he could only talk well when he felt that he impressed his
hearers; Bertha, who was not easily impressed, he shunned like a plague.
The man, reflected the censorious Alice, had no shades or half-tones in
his character; he was all bald, strong, and crude. Now he was talking
to his hostess with the grace of the wise man unbending.

"I shall be pleased indeed to meet your nephew," he said. "I feel sure
that we have many interests in common. Do you say he lives near?"

Lady Manorwater, ever garrulous on family matters, readily enlightened
him. "Etterick is his, and really all the land round here. We simply
live on a patch in the middle of it. The shooting is splendid, and
Lewie is a very keen sportsman. His mother was my husband's sister, and
died when he was born. He is wonderfully unspoiled to have had such a
lonely boyhood."

"How did the family get the land?" he asked. It was a matter which
interested him, for democratic politician though he was, he looked
always forward to the day when he should own a pleasant country
property, and forget the troubles of life in the Nirvana of the
respectable.

"Oh, they've had it for ages. They are a very old family, you know, and
look down upon us as parvenus. They have been everything in their
day--soldiers, statesmen, lawyers; and when we were decent merchants in
Abbeykirk three centuries ago, they were busy making history. When you
go to Etterick you must see the pictures. There is a fine one by
Jameson of the Haystoun who fought with Montrose, and Raeburn painted
most of the Haystouns of his time. They were a very handsome race, at
least the men; the women were too florid and buxom for my taste."

"And this Lewis--is he the only one of the family?"

"The very last, and of course he does his best to make away with himself
by risking his precious life in Hindu Kush or Tibet or somewhere." Her
ladyship was geographically vague.

"What a pity he does not realize his responsibilities!" said the
politician. "He might do so much."

But at the moment it dawned upon the speaker that the shirker of
responsibilities was appearing in person. There strode towards them,
across the lawn, a young man and two dogs.

"How do you do, Aunt Egeria?" he cried, and he caught her small woman's
hand in a hard brown one and smiled on the little lady.

Bertha Afflint had flung her magazine to the winds and caught his
available left hand. "Oh, Lewie, you wretch! how glad we are to see
you again." Meantime the dogs performed a solemn minuet around her
ladyship's knees.

The young man, when he had escaped from the embraces of his friends,
turned to the others. He seemed to recognize two of them, for he shook
hands cordially with the two spectacled people. "Hullo, Hoddam, how are
you? And Imrie! Who would have thought of finding you here?" And he
poured forth a string of kind questions till the two beamed with
pleasure.

Then Alice heard dimly words of introduction: "Miss Wishart, Mr.
Haystoun," and felt herself bowing automatically. She actually felt
nervous. The disreputable fisher of the day before was in ordinary
riding garments of fair respectability. He recognized her at once, but
he, too, seemed to lose for a moment his flow of greetings. His tone
insensibly changed to a conventional politeness, and he asked her some
of the stereotyped questions with which one greets a stranger. She felt
sharply that she was a stranger to whom the courteous young man assumed
more elaborate manners. The freedom of the day before seemed gone. She
consoled herself with the thought that whereas then she had been warm,
flushed, and untidy, she was now very cool and elegant in her prettiest
frock.

Then Mr. Stocks arose and explained that he was delighted to meet Mr.
Lewis Haystoun, that he knew of his reputation, and hoped to have some
pleasant talk on matters dear to the heart of both. At which Lewis
shunned the vacant seat between Bertha and that gentleman, and stretched
himself on the lawn beside Alice's chair. A thrill of pleasure entered
the girl's heart, to her own genuine surprise.

"Are Tam and Jock at peace now?" she asked.

"Tam and Jock are never at peace. Jock is sedate and grave and old for
his years, while Tam is simply a human collie. He has the same endearing
manners and irresponsible mind. I had to fish him out of several
rock-pools after you left."

Alice laughed, and Lady Manorwater said in wonder, "I didn't know you
had met Lewie before, Alice."

"Miss Wishart and I forgathered accidentally at the Midburn yesterday,"
said the man.

"Oh, you went there," cried the aggrieved Arthur, "and you never told
me! Why, it is the best water about here, and yesterday was a
first-rate day. What did you catch, Lewie?"

"Twelve pounds--about four dozen trout."

"Listen to that! And to think that that great hulking chap got all the
sport!" And the boy intercepted his cousin's tea by way of retaliation.

Then Mr. Stocks had his innings, with Lady Manorwater for company, and
Lewis was put through a strict examination on his doings for the past
years.

"What made you choose that outlandish place, my dear?" asked his aunt.

"Oh, partly the chance of a shot at big game, partly a restless interest
in frontier politics which now and then seizes me. But really it was
Wratislaw's choice."

"Do you know Wratislaw?" asked Mr. Stocks abruptly.

"Tommy?--why, surely! My best of friends. He had got his fellowship
some years before I went up, but I often saw him at Oxford, and he has
helped me innumerable times." The young man spoke eagerly, prepared to
extend warm friendship to any acquaintance of his friend's.

"He and I have sometimes crossed swords," said Mr. Stocks pompously.

Lewis nodded, and forbore to ask which had come off the better.

"He is, of course, very able," said Mr. Stocks, making a generous
admission.

His hearer wondered why he should be told of a man's ability when he had
spoken of him as his friend.

"Have you heard much of him lately?" he asked. "We corresponded
regularly when I was abroad, but of course he never would speak about
himself, and I only saw him for a short time last week in London."

The gentleman addressed waved a deprecating hand.

"He has had no popular recognition. Such merits as he has are too aloof
to touch the great popular heart. But we who believe in the people and
work for them have found him a bitter enemy. The idle, academic,
superior person, whatever his gifts, is a serious hindrance to honest
work," said the popular idol.

"I shouldn't call him idle or superior," said Lewis quietly. "I have
seen hard workers, but I have never seen anything like Tommy. He is a
perfect mill-horse, wasting his fine talent on a dreary routine, merely
because he is conscientious and nobody can do it so well."

He always respected honesty, so he forbore to be irritated with this
assured speaker.

But Alice interfered to prevent jarring.

"I read your book, Mr. Haystoun. What a time you must have had! You
say that north of Bardur or some place like that there are two hundred
miles of utterly unknown land till you come to Russian territory. I
should have thought that land important. Why doesn't some one penetrate
it?

"Well, for various causes. It is very high land and the climate is not
mild. Also, there are abundant savage tribes with a particularly
effective crooked kind of knife. And, finally, our Government
discourages British enterprise there, and Russia would do the same as
soon as she found out."

"But what a chance for an adventurer!" said Alice, with a face aglow.

Lewis looked up at the slim figure in the chair above him, and caught
the gleam of dark eyes.

"Well, some day, Miss Wishart--who knows?" he said slowly and
carelessly.

But three people looked at him, Bertha, his aunt, and Mr. Stocks, and
three people saw the same thing. His face had closed up like a steel
trap. It was no longer the kindly, humorous face of the sportsman and
good fellow, but the keen, resolute face of the fighter, the schemer,
the man of daring. The lines about his chin and brow seemed to tighten
and strengthen and steel, while the grey eyes had for a moment a glint
of fire.

Three people never forgot that face. It was a pity that the lady at his
side was prevented from seeing it by her position, for otherwise life
might have gone differently with both. But the things which we call
chance are in the power of the Fateful Goddesses who reserve their right
to juggle with poor humanity.

Alice only heard the words, but they pleased her. Mr. Stocks fell
farther into the background of disfavour. She had imagination and fire
as well as common sense. It was the purple and fine gold which first
caught her fancy, though on reflection she might decide for the
hodden-grey. So she was very gracious to the young adventurer. And
Arthur's brows grew dark as Erebus.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lewis rode home in the late afternoon to Etterick in a haze of golden
weather with an abstracted air and a slack bridle. A small, dainty
figure tripped through the mazes of his thoughts. This man, usually
oblivious of woman's presence, now mooned like any schoolboy. Those
fresh young eyes and the glory of that hair! And to think that once he
had sworn by black!




CHAPTER V

A CONFERENCE OF THE POWERS


It was the sultriest of weather in London--days when the city lay in a
fog of heat, when the paving cracked, and the brow was damp from the
slightest movement and the mind of the stranger was tortured by the
thought of airy downs and running rivers. The leaves in the Green Park
were withered and dusty, the window-boxes in Mayfair had a tarnished
look, and horse and man moved with unwilling languor. A tall young man
in a grey frockcoat searched the street for shadow, and finding none
entered the doorway of a club which promised coolness.

Mr. George Winterham removed his top-hat, had a good wash, and then
sought the smoking room. Seen to better advantage, he was sufficiently
good-looking, with an elegant if somewhat lanky frame, a cheerful
countenance, and a great brown moustache which gave him the air
military. But he was no soldier, being indeed that anomalous creature,
the titular barrister, who shows his profession by rarely entering the
chambers and by an ignorance of law more profound than Necessity's.

He found the shadiest corner of the smoking room and ordered the coolest
drink he could think of. Then he smiled, for he saw advancing to him
across the room another victim of the weather. This was a small, thin
man, with a finely-shaped dark head and the most perfectly-fitting
clothes. He had been deep in a review, but at the sight of the wearied
giant in the corner he had forgotten his interest in the "Entomology of
the Riviera." He looked something of the artist or the man of letters,
but in truth he had no taint of Bohemianism about him, being a very
respectable person and a rising politician. His name was Arthur
Mordaunt, but because it was the fashion at the time for a certain class
of people to address each other in monosyllables, his friends invariably
knew him as "John."

He dropped into a chair and regarded his companion with half-closed
eyes.

"Well, John. Dished, eh? Most infernal heat I ever endured! I can't
stand it, you know. I'll have to go away."

"Think," said the other, "think that at this moment somewhere in the
country there are great, cool, deep woods and lakes and waterfalls, and
we might be sitting in flannels instead of being clothed in these
garments of sin."

"Think," said George, "of nothing of the kind. Think of high upland
glens and full brown rivers, and hillsides where there is always wind.
Why do I tantalize myself and talk to a vexatious idiot like you?"

This young man had a deep voice, a most emphatic manner of speech, and a
trick of cheerfully abusing his friends which they rather liked than
otherwise.

"And why should I sit opposite six feet of foolishness which can give me
no comfort? Whew! But I think I am getting cool at last. I have sworn
to make use of my first half-hour of reasonable temperature and
consequent clearness of mind to plan flight from this place."

"May I come with you, my pretty maid? I am hideously sick of July in
town. I know Mabel will never forgive me, but I must risk it."

Mabel was the young man's sister, and the friendship between the two was
a perpetual joke. As a small girl she had been wont to con eagerly her
brother's cricketing achievements, for George had been a famous
cricketer, and annually went crazy with excitement at the Eton and
Harrow match. She exercised a maternal care over him, and he stood in
wholesome fear of her and ordered his doings more or less at her
judgment. Now she was married, but she still supervised her tall
brother, and the victim made no secret of the yoke.

Suddenly Arthur jumped to his feet. "I say, what about Lewis Haystoun?
He is home now, somewhere in Scotland. Have you heard a word about
him?"

"He has never written," groaned George, but he took out a pocket-book
and shook therefrom certain newspaper cuttings. "The people I employ
sent me these about him to-day." And he laid them out on his knee.

The first of them was long, and consisted of a belated review of Mr.
Haystoun's book. George, who never read such things, handed it to
Arthur, who glanced over the lines and returned it. The second
explained in correct journalese that the Manorwater family had returned
to Glenavelin for the summer and autumn, and that Mr. Lewis Haystoun
was expected at Etterick shortly. The third recorded the opening of a
bazaar in the town of Gledsmuir which Mr. Haystoun had patronised,
"looking," said the fatuous cutting, "very brown and distinguished after
his experiences in the East."--"Whew!" said George. "Poor beggar, to
have such stuff written about him!"--The fourth discussed the possible
retirement of Sir Robert Merkland, the member for Gledsmuir, and his
possible successor. Mr. Haystoun's name was mentioned, "though
indeed," said the wiseacre, "that gentleman has never shown any decided
leanings to practical politics. We understand that the seat will be
contested in the Radical interest by Mr. Albert Stocks, the well-known
writer and lecturer."

"You know everybody, John. Who's the fellow?" George asked.

"Oh, a very able man indeed, one of the best speakers we have. I should
like to see a fight between him and Lewie: they would not get on with
each other. This Stocks is a sort of living embodiment of the irritable
Radical conscience, a very good thing in its way, but not quite in
Lewie's style."

The fifth cutting mentioned the presence of Mr. Haystoun at three
garden-parties, and hinted the possibility of a mistress soon to be at
Etterick.

George lay back in his chair gasping. "I never thought it would come to
this. I always thought Lewie the least impressionable of men. I wonder
what sort of woman he has fallen in love with. But it may not be true."

"We'll pray that it isn't true. But I was never quite sure of him. You
know there was always an odd romantic strain in the man. The ordinary
smart, pretty girl, who adorns the end of a dinner-table and makes an
admirable mistress of a house, he would never think twice about. But
for all his sanity Lewie has many cranks, and a woman might get him on
that side."

"Don't talk of it. I can picture the horrid reality. He will marry
some thin-lipped creature who will back him in all his madness, and his
friends will have to bid him a reluctant farewell. Or, worse still,
there are scores of gushing, sentimental girls who might capture him. I
wish old Wratislaw were here to ask him what he thinks, for he knows
Lewie better than any of us. Is he a member here?"

"Oh yes, he is a member, but I don't think he comes much. You people
are too frivolous for him."

"Well, that is all the good done by subscribing to a news-cutting agency
for news of one's friends. I feel as low as ditch water. There is that
idiot who goes off to the ends of the earth for three years, and when he
comes back his friends get no good of him for the confounded women."
George echoed the ancient complaint which is doubtless old as David and
Jonathan.

Then these two desolated young men, in view of their friend's defection,
were full of sad memories, much as relations after a funeral hymn the
acts of the deceased.

George lit a cigar and smoked it savagely. "So that is the end of
Lewis! And to think I knew the fool at school and college and couldn't
make a better job of him than this! Do you remember, John, how we used
to call him 'Vaulting Ambition,' because he won the high jump and was a
cocky beggar in general?"

"And do you remember when he got his First, and they wanted him to stand
for a fellowship, but he was keen to get out of England and travel? Do
you remember that last night at Heston, when he told us all he was going
to do, and took a bet with Wratislaw about it?"

It is probable that this sad elegy would have continued for hours, had
not a servant approached with letters, which he distributed, two to
Arthur Mordaunt and one to Mr. Winterham. A close observer might have
seen that two of the envelopes were identical. Arthur slipped one into
his pocket, but tore open the other and read.

"It's from Lewie," he cried. "He wants me down there next week at
Etterick. He says he is all alone and crazy to see old friends again."

"Mine's the same!" said George, after puzzling out Mr. Haystoun's by no
means legible writing. "I say, John, of course we'll go. It's the very
chance we were wishing for."

Then he added with a cheerful face, "I begin to think better of human
nature. Here were we abusing the poor man as a defaulter, and ten
minutes after he heaps coals of fire on our heads. There can't be much
truth in what that newspaper says, or he wouldn't want his friends down
to spoil sport."

"I wonder what he'll be like? Wratislaw saw him in town, but only for a
little, and he notices nothing. He's rather famous now, you know, and
we may expect to find him very dignified and wise. He'll be able to
teach us most things, and we'll have to listen with proper humility."

"I'll give you fifty to one he's nothing of the kind," said George. "He
has his faults like us all, but they don't run in that line. No, no,
Lewie will be modest enough. He may have the pride of Lucifer at heart,
but he would never show it. His fault is just this infernal modesty,
which makes him shirk fighting some blatant ass or publishing his merits
to the world."

Arthur looked curiously at his companion. Mr. Winterham was loved of
his friends as the best of good fellows, but to the staid and rising
politician he was not a person for serious talk. Hence, when he found
him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own,
he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness.

"You know I've always backed Lewie to romp home some day," went on the
young man. "He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn't jib
and bolt altogether."

"I don't see why you should talk of your friends as if they were
racehorses or prize dogs."

"Well, there's a lot of truth in the metaphor. You know yourself what a
mess of it he might make. Say some good woman got hold of him--some
good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the
adventuress. I suppose he'd be what you call a 'good husband.' He would
become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and
flower shows. And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in
life; but we--you and I and Tommy--who know him better, would feel that
it was all a ghastly failure."

Mr. Lewis Haystoun's character erred in its simplicity, for it was at
the mercy of every friend for comment.

"What makes you dread the women so?" asked Arthur with a smile.

"I don't dread 'em. They are all that's good, and a great deal better
than most men. But then, you know, if you get a man really first-class
he's so much better than all but the very best women that you've got to
look after him. To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn't matter a
straw, but I won't have Lewie throwing himself away."

"Then is the ancient race of the Haystouns to disappear from the earth?"

"Oh, there are women fit for him, sure enough, but you won't find them
at every garden party. Why, to find the proper woman would be the
making of the man, and I should never have another doubt about him. But
I am afraid. He's a deal too kindly and good-natured, and he'd marry a
girl to-morrow merely to please her. And then some day quite casually
he would come across the woman who was meant by Providence for him, and
there would be the devil to pay and the ruin of one good man. I don't
mean that he'd make a fool of himself or anything of that sort, for he's
not a cad; but in the middle of his pleasant domesticity he would get a
glimpse of what he might have been, and those glimpses are not
forgotten."

"Why, George, you are getting dithyrambic," said Arthur, still smiling,
but with a new vague respect in his heart.

"For you cannot harness the wind or tie--tie the bonds of the wild ass,"
said George, with an air of quotation. "At any rate, we're going to
look after him. He is a good chap and I've got to see him through."

For Mr. Winterham, who was very much like other men, whose language was
free, and who respected few things indeed in the world, had unfailing
tenderness for two beings--his sister and his friend.

The two young men rose, yawned, and strolled out into the hall. They
scanned carelessly the telegram boards. Arthur pointed a finger to a
message typed in a corner.

"That will make a good deal of difference to Wratislaw."

George read: "The death is announced, at his residence in Hampshire, of
Earl Beauregard. His lordship had reached the age of eighty-five, and
had been long in weak health. He is succeeded by his son the Right Hon.
Lord Malham, the present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs."

"It means that if Wratislaw's party get back with a majority after
August, and if Wratislaw gets the under-secretaryship as most people
expect, then, with his chief in the Lords, he will be rather an
important figure in the Commons."

"And I suppose his work will be pretty lively," said George. He had
been reading some of the other telegrams, which were, as a rule,
hysterical messages by way of foreign capitals, telling of Russian
preparations in the East.

"Oh, lively, yes. But I've confidence in Tommy. I wish the Fate which
decides men's politics had sent him to our side. He knows more about
the thing than any one else, and he knows his own mind, which is rare
enough. But it's too hot for serious talk. I suppose my seat is safe
enough in August, but I don't relish the prospect of a three weeks'
fight. Wratislaw, lucky man, will not be opposed. I suppose he'll come
up and help Lewis to make hay of Stock's chances. It's a confounded
shame. I shall go and talk for him."

On the steps of the club both men halted, and looked up and down the
sultry white street. The bills of the evening papers were plastered in
a row on the pavement, and the glaring pink and green still further
increased the dazzle. After the cool darkness within each shaded his
eyes and blinked.

"This settles it," said George. "I shall wire to Lewie to-night."

"And I," said the other; "and to-morrow evening we'll be in that cool
green Paradise of a glen. Think of it! Meantime I shall grill through
another evening in the House, and pair."




CHAPTER VI

PASTORAL


I

A July morning had dawned over the Dreichill, and the glen was filled
with sunlight, though as yet there seemed no sun. Behind a peak of hill
it displayed its chastened morning splendours, but a stray affluence of
brightness had sought the nooks of valley in all the wide uplands,
courier of the great lord of heat and light and the brown summer. The
house of Etterick stands high in a crinkle of hill, with a background of
dark pines, and in front a lake, set in shores of rock and heather.
When the world grew bright Lewis awoke, for that strange young man had a
trick of rising early, and as he rubbed sleep from his eyes at the
window he saw the exceeding goodliness of the morning. He roused his
companions with awful threats, and then wandered along a corridor till
he came to a low verandah, whence a little pier ran into a sheltered bay
of the loch. This was his morning bathing-place, and as he ran down the
surface of rough moorland stone he heard steps behind him, and George
plunged into the cold blue waters scarcely a second after his host.

It was as chill as winter save for the brightness of the morning, which
made the loch in open spaces a shining gold. As they raced each other
to the far end, now in the dark blue of shade, now in the gold of the
open, the hill breeze fanned their hair, and the great woody smell of
pines was sweet around them. The house stood dark and silent, for the
side before them was the men's quarters, and at that season given up to
themselves; but away beyond, the smoke of chimneys curled into the still
air. A man was mowing in some field on the hillside, and the cry of
sheep came from the valley. By and by they reached the shelving coast
of fine hill gravel, and as they turned to swim easily back a sleepy
figure staggered down the pier and stumbled rather than plunged into the
water.

"Hullo!" gasped George, "there's old John. He'll drown, for I bet you
anything he isn't awake. Look!"

But in a second a dark head appeared which shook itself vigorously, and
a figure made for the other two with great strokes. He was by so much
the best swimmer of the three that he had soon reached them, and though
in all honesty he first swam to the farther shore, yet he touched the
pier very little behind them. Then came a rush for the house, and in
half an hour three fresh-coloured young men came downstairs, whistling
for breakfast.

The breakfast-room was a place to refresh a townsman's senses. Long and
cool and dark, it was simply Lewis's room, and he preferred to entertain
his friends there instead of wandering among unused dining-rooms. It
had windows at each end with old-fashioned folding sashes; and the view
on one side was to a great hill shoulder, fir-clad and deep in heather,
and on the other to the glen below and the shining links of the Avelin.
It was panelled in dark oak, and the furniture was a strange medley.
The deep arm-chairs by the fire and the many pipes savoured of the
smoking-room; the guns, rods, polo sticks, whips, which were stacked or
hung everywhere, and the heads of deer on the walls, gave it an
atmosphere of sport. The pictures were few but good--two water-colours,
a small Raeburn above the fireplace, and half a dozen fine etchings. In
a corner were many old school and college groups--the Eton Ramblers, the
O.U.A.C., some dining clubs, and one of Lewis on horseback in racing
costume, looking deeply miserable. Low bookcases of black oak ran round
the walls, and the shelves were crammed with books piled on one another,
many in white vellum bindings, which showed pleasantly against the dark
wood. Flowers were everywhere--common garden flowers of old-fashioned
kinds, for the owner hated exotics, and in a shallow silver bowl in the
midst of the snowy table-cloth was a great mass of purple heather-bells.

Three very hungry young men sat down to their morning meal with a hearty
goodwill. The host began to rummage among his correspondence, and
finally extracted an unstamped note, which he opened. His face
brightened as he read, and he laid it down with a broad smile and helped
himself to fish.

"Are you people very particular what you do to-day?" he asked.

Arthur said, No. George explained that he was in the hands of his
beneficent friend.

"Because my Aunt Egeria down at Glenavelin has got up some sort of a
picnic on the moors, and she wants us to meet her at the sheepfolds
about twelve."

"Oh," said George meditatively. "Excellent! I shall be charmed." But
he looked significantly at Arthur, who returned the glance.

"Who are at Glenavelin?" asked that simple young man with an air of
innocence.

"There's a man called Stocks, whom you probably know."

Arthur nodded.

"And there's Bertha Afflint and her sister."

It was George's turn to nod approvingly. The sharp-witted Miss Afflint
was a great ally of his.

"And there's a Miss Wishart--Alice Wishart," said Lewis, without a word
of comment. "And with my Aunt Egeria that will be all."

The pair got the cue, and resolved to subject the Miss Wishart whose
name came last on their host's tongue to a friendly criticism.
Meanwhile they held their peace on the matter like wise men.

"What a strange name Egeria is!" said Arthur. "Very," said Lewis; "but
you know the story. My respectable aunt's father had a large family of
girls, and being of a classical turn of mind he called them after the
Muses. The Muses held out for nine, but for the tenth and youngest he
found himself in a difficulty. So he tried another tack and called the
child after the nymph Egeria. It sounds outlandish, but I prefer it to
Terpsichore."

Thereafter they lit pipes, and, with the gravity which is due to a great
subject, inspected their friend's rods and guns.

"I see no memorials of your travels, Lewie," said Arthur. "You must
have brought back no end of things, and most people like to stick them
round as a remembrance."

"I have got a roomful if you want to see them," said the traveller; "but
I don't see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and
ends. I like homely and native things about me when I am in Scotland."

"You're a sentimentalist, old man," said his friend; and George, who
heard only the last word, assumed that Arthur had then and there
divulged his suspicions, and favoured that gentleman with a wild frown
of disapproval.

As Lewis sat on the edge of the Etterick burn and looked over the
shining spaces of morning, forgetful of his friends, forgetful of his
past, his mind was full of a new turmoil of feeling. Alice Wishart had
begun to claim a surprising portion of his thoughts. He told himself a
thousand times that he was not in love--that he should never be in love,
being destined for other things; that he liked the girl as he liked any
fresh young creature in the morning of life, with youth's beauty and the
grace of innocence. But insensibly his everyday reflections began to be
coloured by her presence. "What would she think of this?" "How that
would please her!" were sentences spoken often by the tongue of his
fancy. He found charm in her presence after his bachelor solitude; her
demure gravity pleased him; but that he should be led bond-slave by
love--that was a matter he valiantly denied.


II

The sheepfolds of Etterick lie in a little fold of glen some two miles
from the dwelling, where the heathy tableland, known all over the glen
as "The Muirs," relieves the monotony of precipitous hills. On this day
it was alert with life. The little paddock was crammed with sheep, and
more stood huddling in the pens. Within was the liveliest scene, for
there a dozen herds sat on clipping-stools each with a struggling ewe
between his knees, and the ground beneath him strewn with creamy folds
of fleece. From a thing like a gallows in a corner huge bags were
suspended which were slowly filling. A cauldron of pitch bubbled over a
fire, and the smoke rose blue in the hot hill air. Every minute a
bashful animal was led to be branded with a great E on the left shoulder
and then with awkward stumbling let loose to join her naked
fellow-sufferers. Dogs slept in the sun and wagged their tails in the
rear of the paddock. Small children sat on gates and lent willing feet
to drive the flocks. In a corner below a little shed was the clippers'
meal of ale and pies, with two glasses of whisky each, laid by under a
white cloth. Meantime from all sides rose the continual crying of
sheep, the intermittent bark of dogs, and the loud broad converse of the
men.

Lewis and his friends jumped a fence, and were greeted heartily in the
enclosure. He seemed to know each herd by name or rather nickname, for
he had a word for all, and they with all freedom grinned _badinage_ back.

"Where's my stool, Yed?" he cried. "Am I not to have a hand in clipping
my own sheep?"

An obedient shepherd rose and fetched one of the triangular seats, while
Lewis with great ease caught the ewe, pulled her on her back, and
proceeded to call for shears. An old pair was found for him, and with
much dexterity he performed the clipping, taking little longer to the
business than the expert herd, and giving the shears a professional wipe
on the sacking with which he had prudently defended his clothes.

From somewhere in the back two boys came forward--the Tam and Jock of a
former day--eager to claim acquaintance. Jock was clearly busy, for his
jacket was off and a very ragged shirt was rolled about two stout brown
arms. The "human collie" seemed to be a gentleman of some leisure, for
he was arrayed in what was for him the pink of fashion in dress. The
two immediately lay down on the ground beside Lewis exactly in the
manner of faithful dogs.

The men talked cheerfully, mainly on sheep and prices. Now talk would
touch on neighbours, and there would be the repetition of some tale or
saying. "There was a man in the glen called Rorison. D'ye mind Jock
Rorison, Sandy?" And Sandy would reply, "Fine I mind Jock," and then
both would proceed to confidences.

"Hullo, Tam," said Lewis at last, realizing his henchman's grandeur. "Why
this magnificence of dress?

"I'm gaun to the Sabbath-school treat this afternoon," said that worthy.

"And you, Jock-are you going too?"

"No me! I'm ower auld, and besides, I've cast out wi' the minister."

"How was that?"

"Oh, I had been fechtin'," said Jock airily. "It was Andra Laidlaw. He
called me ill names, so I yokit on him and bate him too, but I got my
face gey sair bashed. The minister met me next day when I was a' blue
and yellow, and, says he, 'John Laverlaw, what have ye been daein'?
Ye're a bonny sicht for Christian een. How do ye think a face like
yours will look between a pair o' wings in the next warld?' I ken I'm no
bonny," added the explanatory Jock; "but ye canna expect a man to thole
siccan language as that."

Lewis laughed and, being engaged in clipping his third sheep, forgot the
delicacy of his task and let the shears slip. A very ugly little cut on
the animal's neck was the result.

"Oh, confound it!" cried the penitent amateur. "Look what I've done,
Yed. I'll have to rub in some of that stuff of yours and sew on a
bandage. The files will kill the poor thing if we leave the cut bare in
this infernal heat."

The old shepherd nodded, and pointed to where the remedies were kept.
Jock went for the box, which contained, besides the ointment, some rolls
of stout linen and a huge needle and twine. Lewis doctored the wound as
best he could, and then proceeded to lay on the cloth and sew it to the
fleece. The ewe grew restless with the heat and the pinching of the
cut, and Jock was given the task of holding her head.

Clearly Lewis was not meant by Providence for a tailor. He made
lamentable work with the needle. It slipped and pricked his fingers,
while his unfeeling friends jeered and Tam turned great eyes of sympathy
upwards from his Sunday garments.

"Patience, patience, man!" said the old herd. "Ca' cannier and be a wee
thing quieter in your langwidge. There's a wheen leddies comin' up the
burn."

It was too late. Before Lewis understood the purport of the speech Lady
Manorwater and her party were at the folds, and as he made one final
effort with the refractory needle a voice in his ear said:

"Please let me do that, Mr. Haystoun. I've often done it before."

He looked up and met Alice Wishart's laughing eyes. She stood beside
him and deftly finished the bandage till the ewe was turned off the
stool. Then, very warm and red, he turned to find a cool figure
laughing at his condition.

"I'll have to go and wash my hands, Miss Wishart," he said gravely.
"You had better come too." And the pair ran down to a deep brown pool in
the burn and cleansed from their fingers the subtle aroma of fleeces.

"Ugh! my clothes smell like a drover's. That's the worst of being a
dabbler in most trades. You can never resist the temptation to try your
hand."

"But, really, your whole manner was most professional, Mr. Haystoun.
Your language--"

"Please, don't," said the penitent; and they returned to the others to
find that once cheerful assembly under a cloud. Every several man there
was nervously afraid of women and worked feverishly as if under some
great Taskmistress's eye. The result was a superfluity of shear-marks
and deep, muffled profanity. Lady Manorwater ran here and there asking
questions and confusing the workers; while Mr. Stocks, in pursuance of
his democratic sentiments, talked in a stilted fashion to the nearest
clipper, who called him "Sir" and seemed vastly ill at ease.

Lewis restored some cordiality. Under her nephew's influence Lady
Manorwater became natural and pleasing. Jock was ferreted out of some
corner and, together with the reluctant Tam, brought up for
presentation.

"Tam," said his patron, "I'll give you your choice. Whether will you go
to the Sabbath-school treat, or come with us to a real picnic? Jock is
coming, and I promise you better fun and better things to eat."

It was no case for hesitation. Tam executed a doglike gambol on the
turf, and proceeded to course up the burn ahead of the party, a vision
of twinkling bare legs and ill-fitting Sunday clothes. The sedate Jock
rolled down his sleeves, rescued a ragged jacket, and stalked in the
rear.


III

Once on the heathy plateau the party scattered. Mr. Stocks caught the
unwilling Arthur and treated him to a disquisition on the
characteristics of the people whose votes he was soon to solicit. As
his acquaintance with the subject was not phenomenal, the profit to the
aggrieved listener was small. George, Lady Manorwater, and the two Miss
Afflints sought diligently for a camping-ground, which they finally
found by a clear spring of water on the skirts of a great grey rock.
Meanwhile, Alice Wishart and Lewis, having an inordinate love of high
places, set out for the ridge summit, and reached it to find a wind
blowing from the far Gled valley and cooling the hot air.

Alice found a scrap of rock and climbed to the summit, where she sat
like a small pixie, surveying a wide landscape and her warm and
prostrate companion. Her bright hair and eyes and her entrancing grace
of form made the callous Lewis steal many glances upwards from his lowly
seat. The two had become excellent friends, for the man had that honest
simplicity towards women which is the worst basis for love and the best
for friendship. She felt that at any moment he might call her by some
one or other of the endearing expressions used between men. He, for his
part, was fast drifting from friendship to another feeling, but as yet
he gave no sign of it, and kept up the brusque, kindly manners of his
common life.

As she looked east and north to the heart of the hill-land, her eyes
brightened, and she rose up and strained on tiptoe to scan the farthest
horizon. Eagerly she asked the name of this giant and that, of this
glint of water--was it loch or burn? Lewis answered without hesitation,
as one to whom the country was as well known as his own name.

By and by her curiosity was satisfied and she slipped back into her old
posture, and with chin on hand gazed into the remote distances. "And
most of that is yours? Do you know, if I had a land like this I should
never leave it again. You, in your ingratitude, will go wandering away
in a year or two, as if any place on earth could be better than this.
You are simply 'sinning away your mercies,' as my grandfather used to
say."

"But what would become of the heroic virtues that you adore?" asked the
cynical Lewis. "If men were all home-keepers it would be a prosaic
world."

"Can you talk of the prosaic and Etterick in the same breath? Besides,
it is the old fallacy of man that the domestic excludes the heroic,"
said Alice, fighting for the privileges of her sex.

"But then, you know, there comes a thing they call the go-fever, which
is not amenable to reason. People who have it badly do not care a straw
for a place in itself; all they want is to be eternally moving from one
spot to another."

"And you?"

"Oh, I am not a sufferer yet, but I walk in fear, for at any moment it
may beset me." And, laughing, he climbed up beside her.

It may be true that the last subject of which a man tires is himself,
but Lewis Haystoun in this matter must have been distinct from the
common run of men. Alice had given him excellent opportunities for
egotism, but the blind young man had not taken them. The girl, having
been brought up to a very simple and natural conception of talk, thought
no more about it, except that she would have liked so great a traveller
to speak more generously. No doubt, after all, this reticence was
preferable to self-revelation. Mr. Stocks had been her companion that
morning in the drive to Etterick, and he had entertained her with a
sketch of his future. He had declined, somewhat nervously, to talk of
his early life, though the girl, with her innate love of a fighter,
would have listened with pleasure. But he had sketched his political
creed, hinted at the puissance of his friends, claimed a monopoly of the
purer sentiments of life, and rosily augured the future. The girl had
been silent--the man had thought her deeply impressed; but now the
morning's talk seemed to point a contrast, and Mr. Lewis Haystoun
climbed to a higher niche in the temple of her esteem.

Afar off the others were signaling that lunch was ready, but the two on
the rock were blind.

"I think you are right to go away," said Alice. "You would be too well
off here. One would become a very idle sort of being almost at once."

"And I am glad you agree with me, Miss Wishart. 'Here is the shore, and
the far wide world's before me,' as the song says. There is little
doing in these uplands, but there's a vast deal astir up and down the
earth, and it would be a pity not to have a hand in it."

Then he stopped suddenly, for at that moment the light and colour went
out of his picture of the wanderer's life, and he saw instead a homelier
scene--a dainty figure moving about the house, sitting at his table's
head, growing old with him in the fellowship of years. For a moment he
felt the charm of the red hearth and the quiet life. Some such sketch
must the Goddess of Home have drawn for Ulysses or the wandering Olaf,
and if Swanhild or the true Penelope were as pretty as this lady of the
rock there was credit in the renunciation. The man forgot the wide
world and thought only of the pin-point of Glenavelin.

Some such fancy too may have crossed the girl's mind. At any rate she
cast one glance at the abstracted Lewis and welcomed a courier from the
rest of the party. This was no other than the dandified Tam, who had
been sent post-haste by George--that true friend having suffered the
agonies of starvation and a terrible suspicion as to what rash step his
host might be taking. Plainly the young man had not yet made Miss
Wishart's acquaintance.


IV

The sun set in the thick of the dark hills, and a tired and merry party
scrambled down the burnside to the highway. They had long outstayed
their intention, but care sat lightly there, and Lady Manorwater alone
was vexed by thoughts of a dinner untouched and a respectable household
in confusion. The sweet-scented dusk was soothing to the senses, and
there in the narrow glen, with the wide blue strath and the gleam of the
river below, it was hard to find the link of reality and easy to credit
fairyland. Arthur and Miss Wishart had gone on in front and were now
strayed among boulders. She liked this trim and precise young man,
whose courtesy was so grave and elaborate, while he, being a recluse by
nature but a humanitarian by profession, was half nervous and half
entranced in her cheerful society. They talked of nothing, their hearts
being set on the scramble, and when at last they reached the highway and
the farm where the Glenavelin traps had been put up, they found
themselves a clear ten minutes in advance of the others.

As they sat on the dyke in the soft cool air Alice spoke casually of the
place. "Where is Etterick?" she asked; and a light on a hillside
farther up the glen was pointed out to her.

"It's a very fresh and pleasant place to stay at," said Arthur. "We're
much higher than you are at Glenavelin, and the house is bigger and
older. But we simply camp in a corner of it. You can never get Lewie
to live like other people. He is the best of men, but his tastes are
primeval. He makes us plunge off a verandah into a loch first thing in
the morning, you know, and I shall certainly drown some day, for I am
never more than half awake, and I always seem to go straight to the
bottom. Then he is crazy about long expeditions, and when the Twelfth
comes we shall never be off the hill. He is a long way too active for
these slack modern days."

Lewie, Lewie! It was Lewie everywhere! thought the girl. What could
become of a man who was so hedged about by admirers? He had seemed to
court her presence, and her heart had begun to beat faster of late when
she saw his face. She dared not confess to herself that she was in
love--that she wanted this Lewis to herself, and bated the pretensions of
his friends. Instead she flattered herself with a fiction. Her ground
was the high one of an interest in character. She liked the young man
and was sorry to see him in a way to be spoiled by too much admiration.
And the angel who records our innermost thoughts smiled to himself, if
such grave beings can smile.

Meantime Lewis was delivered bound and captive to the enemy. All down
the burn his companion had been Mr. Stocks, and they had lagged behind
the others. That gentleman had not enjoyed the day; he had been bored
by the landscape and scorched by the sun; also, as the time of contest
approached, he was full of political talk, and he had found no ears to
appreciate it. Now he had seized on Lewis, and the younger man had lent
him polite attention though inwardly full of ravening and bitterness.

"Your friend Mr. Mordaunt has promised to support my candidature. You,
of course, will be in the opposite camp."

Lewis said he did not think so--that he had lost interest in party
politics, and would lie low.

Mr. Stocks bowed in acquiescence.

"And what do you think of my chances?"

Lewis replied that he should think about equal betting. "You see the
place is Radical in the main, with the mills at Gledfoot and the weavers
at Gledsmuir. Up in Glenavelin they are more or less Conservative.
Merkland gets in usually by a small majority because he is a local man
and has a good deal of property down the Gled. If two strangers fought
it the Radical would win; as it is it is pretty much of a toss-up either
way."

"But if Sir Robert resigns?"

"Oh, that scare has been raised every time by the other party. I should
say that there's no doubt that the old man will keep on for years."

Mr. Stocks looked relieved. "I heard of his resignation as a
certainty, and I was afraid that a stronger man might take his place."

So it fell out that the day which began with pastoral closed, like many
another day, with politics. Since Lewis refrained from controversy, Mr.
Stocks seemed to look upon him as a Gallio from whom no danger need be
feared, nay, even as a convert to be fostered. He became confident and
talked jocularly of the tricks of his trade. Lewis's boredom was
complete by the time they reached the farmhouse and found the Glenavelin
party ready to start.

"We want to see Etterick, so we shall come to lunch to-morrow, Lewie,"
said his aunt. "So be prepared, my dear, and be on your best
behaviour."

Then, with his two friends, he turned towards the lights of his home.




CHAPTER VII

THE MAKERS OF EMPIRE


The day before the events just recorded two men had entered the door of
a certain London club and made their way to a remote little smoking-room
on the first floor. It was not a handsome building, nor had it any
particular outlook or position. It was a small, old-fashioned place in
a side street, in style obviously of last century, and the fittings
within were far from magnificent. Yet no club carried more distinction
in its membership. Its hundred possible inmates were the cream of the
higher professions, the chef and the cellar were things to wonder at,
and the man who could write himself a member of the Rota Club had
obtained one of the rare social honours which men confer on one another.
Thither came all manner of people--the distinguished foreigner travelling
incognito, and eager to talk with some Minister unofficially on matters
of import, the diplomat on a secret errand, the traveller home for a
brief season, the soldier, the thinker, the lawyer. It was a catholic
assembly, but exclusive--very. Each man bore the stamp of competence on
his face, and there was no cheap talk of the "well-informed" variety.
When the members spoke seriously they spoke like experts; otherwise they
were apt to joke very much like schoolboys let loose. The Right Hon.
Mr. M---- was not above twitting Lord S---- with gunroom stories, and
suffering in turn good-natured libel.

Of the two men lighting their pipes in the little room one was to the
first glance a remarkable figure. About the middle height, with a
square head and magnificent shoulders, he looked from the back not
unlike some professional strong man. But his face betrayed him, for it
was clearly the face of the intellectual worker, the man of character
and mind. His jaw was massive and broad, saved from hardness only by a
quaintly humorous mouth; he had, too, a pair of very sharp blue eyes
looking from under shaggy eyebrows. His age was scarcely beyond thirty,
but one would have put it ten years later, for there were lines on his
brow and threads of grey in his hair. His companion was slim and, to a
hasty glance, insignificant. He wore a peaked grey beard which
lengthened his long, thin face, and he had a nervous trick of drumming
always with his fingers on whatever piece of furniture was near. But if
you looked closer and marked the high brow, the keen eyes, and the very
resolute mouth, the thought of insignificance disappeared. He looked
not unlike a fighting Yankee colonel who had had a Puritan upbringing,
and the impression was aided by his simplicity in dress. He was, in
fact, a very great man, the Foreign Secretary of the time, formerly
known to fame as Lord Malham, and at the moment, by his father's death,
Lord Beauregard, and, for his sins, an exile to the Upper House. His
companion, whose name was Wratislaw, was a younger Member of Parliament
who was credited with peculiar knowledge and insight on the matters
which formed his lordship's province. They were close friends and
allies of some years' standing, and colloquies between the two in this
very place were not unknown to the club annals.

Lord Beauregard looked at his companion's anxious face. "Do you know
the news?" he said.

"What news?" asked Wratislaw. "That your family position is changed, or
that the dissolution will be a week earlier, or that Marka is busy
again?"

"I mean the last. How did you know? Did you see the telegrams?"

"No, I saw it in the papers."

"Good Heavens!" said the great man. "Let me see the thing," and he
snatched a newspaper cutting from Wratislaw's hand, returning it the
next moment with a laugh. It ran thus: "Telegrams from the Punjab
declare that an expedition, the personnel of which is not yet revealed,
is about to start for the town of Bardur in N. Kashmir, to penetrate the
wastes beyond the frontier. It is rumoured that the expedition has a
semi-official character."

"That's our friend," said Wratislaw, putting the paper into his pocket.

Lord Beauregard wrinkled his brow and stared at the bowl of his pipe.
"I see the motive clearly, but I am hanged if I understand why an
evening paper should print it. Who in this country knows of the
existence of Bardur?"

"Many people since Haystoun's book," said the other.

"I have just glanced at it. Is there anything important in it?"

"Nothing that we did not know before. But things are put in a fresh
light. He covered ground himself of which we had only a second-hand
account."

"And he talks of this Bardur?"

"A good deal. He is an expert in his way on the matter and uncommonly
clever. He kept the best things out of the book, and it would be worth
your while meeting him. Do you happen to know him?"

"No--o," said the great man doubtfully. "Oh, stop a moment. I have
heard my young brother talk of somebody of the same name. Rather a
figure at Oxford, wasn't he?"

Wratislaw nodded. "But to talk of Marka," he added.

"His mission is, of course, official, and he has abundant resources."

"So much I gathered," said Wratislaw. "But his designs?

"He knows the tribes in the North better than any living man, but
without a base at hand he is comparatively harmless. The devil in the
thing is that we do not know how close that base may be. Fifty thousand
men may be massed within fifty miles, and we are in ignorance."

"It is the lack of a secret service," said the other. "Had we that,
there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there
and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news
comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka,
keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious."

"And meantime there is that thousand-mile piece of desert of which we
know nothing, and where our friends may be playing pranks as they
please. Well, well, we must wait on developments. It is the last
refuge of the ill-informed. What about the dissolution? You are safe,
I suppose?"

Wratislaw nodded.

"I have been asked my forecast fifty times to-day, and I steadily refuse
to speak. But I may as well give it to you. We shall come back with a
majority of from fifty to eighty, and you, my dear fellow, will not be
forgotten."

"You mean the Under-Secretaryship," said the other. "Well, I don't mind
it."

"I should think not. Why, you will get that chance your friends have
hoped so long for, and then it is only a matter of time till you climb
the last steps. You are a youngish man for a Minister, for all your
elderly manners."

Wratislaw smiled the pleased smile of the man who hears kind words from
one whom he admires. "It won't be a bed of roses, you know. I am very
unpopular, and I have the grace to know it."

The elder man looked on the younger with an air of kindly wisdom. "Your
pride may have a fall, my dear fellow. You are young and confident, I
am old and humble. Some day you will be glad to hope that you are not
without this despised popularity."

Wratislaw looked grave. "God forbid that I should despise it. When it
comes my way I shall think that my work is done, and rest in peace. But
you and I are not the sort of people who can court it with comfort. We
are old sticks and very full of angles, but it would be a pity to rub
them off if the shape were to be spoiled."

Lord Beauregard nodded. "Tell me more about your friend Haystoun."

Wratislaw's face relaxed, and he became communicative.

"He is a Scots laird, rather well off, and, as I have said, uncommonly
clever. He lives at a place called Etterick in the Gled valley."

"I saw Merkland to-day, and he spoke his farewell to politics. The
Whips told me about it yesterday."

"Merkland! But he always raised that scare!"

"He is serious this time. He has sold his town house."

"Then that settles it. Lewis shall stand in his place."

"Good," said the great man. "We want experts. He would strengthen your
feeble hands and confirm your tottering knees, Tommy."

"If he gets in; but he will have a fight for it. Our dear friend Albert
Stocks has been nursing the seat, and the Manorwaters and scores of
Lewie's friends will help him. That young man has a knack of confining
his affections to members of the opposite party."

"What was Merkland's majority? Two-fifty or something like that?"

"There or about. But he was an old and well-liked country laird,
whereas Lewie is a very young gentleman with nothing to his credit
except an Oxford reputation and a book of travels, neither of which will
appeal to the Gledsmuir weavers."

"But he is popular?"

"Where he is known--adored. But his name does not carry confidence to
those who do not know the man, for his family were weak-kneed gentry."

"Yes, I knew his father. Able, but crotchety and impossible! Tommy,
this young man must get the seat, for we cannot afford to throw away a
single chance. You say he knows the place," and he jerked his head to
indicate that East to which his thoughts were ever turning. "Some time
in the next two years there will be the devil's own mess in that happy
land. Then your troubles will begin, my friend, and I can wish nothing
better for you than the support of some man in the Commons who knows
that Bardur is not quite so pastoral as Hampshire. He may relieve you
of some of the popular odium you are courting, and at the worst he can
be sent out."

Wratislaw whistled long and low. "I think not," he said. "He is too
good to throw away. But he must get in, and as there is nothing in the
world for me to do I shall go up to Etterick tomorrow and talk to him.
He will do as I tell him, and we can put our back into the fight.
Besides, I want to see Stocks again. That man is the joy of my heart!"

"Lucky beggar!" said the Minister. "Oh, go by all means and enjoy
yourself, while I swelter here for another three weeks over meaningless
telegrams enlivened by the idiot diplomatist. Good-bye and good luck,
and bring the young man to a sense of his own value."




CHAPTER VIII

MR. WRATISLAW'S ADVENT


As the three men went home in the dusk they talked of the day. Lewis
had been in a bad humour, but the company of his friends exorcised the
imp of irritation, and he felt only the mellow gloom of the evening and
the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking
with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing the air like the wild
ass of the desert with which the metaphorical George had erstwhile
compared him. That young man meanwhile was occupied with his own
reflections. His good nature had been victimized, he had been made to
fetch and carry continually, and the result was that he had scarcely
spoken a word to Miss Wishart. His plans thus early foiled, nothing
remained but to draw the more fortunate Arthur, so in a conspirator's
aside he asked him his verdict. But Arthur refused to speak. "She is
pretty and clever," he said, "and excellent company." And with this his
lips were sealed, and his thoughts went off on his own concerns.

Lewis heard and smiled. The sun and wind of the hills beat in his
pulses like wine. To have breathed all day the fragrance of heather and
pines, to have gladdened the eye with an infinite distance and blue
lines of mountain, was with this man to have drunk the cup of
intoxicating youth. The cool gloaming did not chill; rather it was the
high and solemn aftermath of the day's harvesting. The faces of
gracious women seemed blent with the pageant of summer weather; kindly
voices, simple joys--for a moment they seemed to him the major matters in
life. So far it was pleasing fancy, but Alice soon entered to disturb
with the disquieting glory of her hair. The family of the Haystouns had
ever a knack of fine sentiment. Fantastic, unpractical, they were
gluttons for the romantic, the recondite, and the dainty. But now had
come a breath of strong wind which rent the meshes of a philandering
fancy. A very new and strange feeling was beginning to make itself
known. He had come to think of Alice with the hot pained affection
which makes the high mountains of the world sink for the time to a
species of mole-hillock. She danced through his dreams and usurped all
the paths of his ambition. Formerly he had thought of himself--for the
man was given to self-portraiture--as the adventurer, the scorner of the
domestic; now he struggled to regain the old attitude, but he struggled
in vain. The ways were blocked, a slim figure was ever in view, and lo!
when he blotted it from his sight the world was dark and the roads
blind. For a moment he had lost his bearings on the sea of life. As
yet the discomfiture was sweet, his confusion was a joy; and it is the
first trace of weakness which we have seen in the man that he accepted
the unsatisfactory with composure.

At the door of Etterick it became apparent that something was astir.
Wheel-marks were clear in the gravel, and the ancient butler had an air
of ceremony. "Mr. Wratislaw has arrived, sir," he whispered to Lewis,
whereat that young man's face shone.

"When? How? Where is he now?" he cried, and with a word to his
companions he had crossed the hall, raced down a lengthy passage, and
flung open the door of his sanctum. There, sure enough, were the broad
shoulders of Wratislaw bending among the books.

"Lord bless me, Tommy, what extraordinary surprise visit is this? I
thought you would be over your ears in work. We are tremendously
pleased to see you."

The sharp blue eyes had been scanning the other's frank sunburnt face
with an air of affectionate consideration. "I got off somehow or other,
as I had to see you, old man, so I thought I would try this place first.
What a fortressed wilderness you live in! I got out at Gledsmuir after
travelling some dreary miles in a train which stopped at every farm, and
then I had to wait an hour till the solitary dogcart of the inn
returned. Hullo! you've got other visitors." And he stretched out a
massive hand to Arthur and George.

The sight of him had lifted a load from these gentlemen's hearts. The
old watchdog had come; the little terriers might now take holiday. The
task of being Lewis's keeper did not by right belong to them; they were
only amateurs acting in the absence of the properly qualified Wratislaw.
Besides, it had been anxious work, for while each had sworn to himself
aforetime to protect his friend from the wiles of Miss Wishart, both
were now devoted slaves drawn at that young woman's chariot wheel. You
will perceive that it is a delicate matter to wage war with a goddess,
and a task unblest of Heaven.

Supper was brought, and the lamps lit in the cool old room, where,
through the open window, they could still catch the glint of foam on the
stream and the dark gloom of pines on the hill. They fell ravenously on
the meal, for one man had eaten nothing since midday and the others were
fresh from moorland air. Thereafter they pulled armchairs to a window,
and lit the pipes of contentment. Wratislaw stretched his arms on the
sill and looked out into the fragrant darkness.

"Any news, Tommy?" asked his host. "Things seem lively in the East."

"Very, but I am ill-informed. Did you lay no private lines of
communication in your travels?"

"They were too short. I picked up a lot of out-of-the-way hints, but as
I am not a diplomatist I cannot use them. I think I have already made
you a present of most. By the by, I see from the papers that an
official expedition is going north from Bardur. What idiot invented
that?"

Wratislaw pulled his head in and sat back in his chair. "You are sure
you don't happen to know?"

"Sure. But it is just the sort of canard which the gentry on the other
side of the frontier would invent to keep things quiet. Who are the
Englishmen at Bardur now?"

The elder man looked shrewdly at the younger, who was carelessly pulling
a flower to pieces. "There's Logan, whom you know, and Thwaite and
Gribton."

"Good men all, but slow in the uptake. Logan is a jewel. He gave me
the best three days' shooting I ever dreamed of, and he has more stories
in his head than George. But if matters got into a tangle I would
rather not be in his company. Thwaite is a gentlemanlike sort of
fellow, but dull--very, while Gribton is the ordinary shrewd commercial
man, very cautious and rather timid."

"Did you ever happen to hear of a man called Marka? He might call
himself Constantine Marka, or Arthur Marker, or the Baron Mark--whatever
happened to suit him."

Lewis puzzled for a little. "Yes, of course I did. By George! I
should think so. It was a chap of that name who had gone north the week
before I arrived. They said he would never be heard of again. He
seemed a reckless sort of fool."

"You didn't see him?"

"No. But why?"

"Simply that you came within a week of meeting one of the cleverest men
living, a cheerful being whom the Foreign Office is more interested in
than any one else in the world. If you should hear again of Constantine
Marka, Marker, or Mark, please note it down."

"You mean that he is the author of the _canard_," said Lewis, with sharp
eyes, taking up a newspaper.

"Yes, and many more. This graceful person will complicate things for
me, for I am to represent the Office in the Commons if we get back with
a decent majority."

Lewis held out a cordial hand. "I congratulate you, Tommy. Now
beginneth the end, and may I be spared to see!"

"I hope you may, and it's on this I want to talk to you. Merkland has
resigned; it will be in the papers to-morrow. I got it kept out till I
could see you!"

"Yes?" said Lewis, with quickening interest.

"And we want you to take his place. I spoke to him, and he is
enthusiastic on the matter. I wired to the Conservative Club at
Gledsmuir, and it seems you are their most cherished possibility. The
leaders of the party are more than willing, so it only remains for you
to consent, my dear boy."

"I--don't--think--I--can," said the possibility slowly. "You see, only
to-day I told that man Stocks that Merkland would not resign, and that I
was sick of party politics and would not interfere with his chances.
The poor beggar is desperately keen, and if I stood now he would think
me disingenuous."

"But there is no reason why he should not know the truth. You can tell
him that you only heard about Merkland to-night, and that you act only
in deference to strong external pressure."

"In that case he would think me a fool. I have a bad enough reputation
for lack of seriousness in these matters already. The man is not very
particular, and there is nothing to hinder him from blazoning it up and
down the place that I changed my mind in ten minutes on a friend's
recommendation. I should get a very complete licking."

"Do you mind, Lewie, if I advise you to take it seriously? It is really
not a case for little scruples about reputation. There are rocks ahead
of me, and I want a man like you in the House more than I could make you
understand. You say you hate party politics, and I am with you, but
there is no reason why you should not use them as a crutch to better
work. You are in your way an expert, and that is what we will need
above all things in the next few years. Of course, if you feel yourself
bound by a promise not to oppose Stocks, then I have nothing more to
say; but, unless the man is a lunatic, he will admit the justice of your
case."

"You mean that you really want me, Tommy?" said the young man, in great
doubt. "I hate the idea of fighting Stocks, and I shall most certainly
be beaten."

"That is on the knees of the gods, and as for the rest I take the
responsibility. I shall speak to Stocks myself. It will be a sharp
fight, but I see no reason why you should not win. After all, it is
your own countryside, and you are a better man than your opponent."

"You are the serpent who has broken up this peaceful home. I shall be
miserable for a month, and the house will be divided against itself.
Arthur has promised to help Stocks, while the Manorwaters, root and
branch, are pledged to support him."

"I'll do my best, Lewie, for old acquaintance' sake. It had to come
sooner or later, you know, and it is as well that you should seize the
favourable moment. Now let us drop the subject for to-night. I want to
enjoy myself."

And he rose, stretched his great arms, and wandered about the room.

To all appearance he had forgotten the very existence of things
political. Arthur, who had a contest to face shortly, was eager for
advice and the odds and ends of information which defend the joints in a
candidate's harness, but the well-informed man disdained to help. He
tested the guns, gave his verdict on rods, and ranged through a cabinet
of sporting requisites. Then he fell on his host's books, and for an
hour the three were content to listen to him. It was rarely that
Wratislaw fell into such moods, but when the chance came it was not to
be lightly disregarded. A laborious youth had given him great stores of
scholarship, and Lewis's books were a curious if chaotic collection. On
the fly-leaf of a little duodecimo was an inscription from the author of
Waverley, who had often made Etterick his hunting-ground. A Dunbar had
Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the
handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others
had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves
had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special
books--college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and
a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic
interest--were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced
his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping,
browsing, reading a score of lines.

"What a nice taste you have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi,
Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the _Corpus
Boreale_, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above
them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French _Memoires_, a Dante, a
Homer, and a badly printed German text of Schopenhauer! Three different
copies of Rabelais, a De Thou, a Horace, and-bless my soul!--about
twenty books of fairy tales! Lewie, you must have a mind like a
lumber-room."

"I pillaged books from the big library as I wanted them," said the young
man humbly. "Do you know, Tommy, to talk quite seriously, I get more
erratic every day? Knocking about the world and living alone make me a
queer slave of whims. I am straying too far from the normal. I wish to
goodness you would take me and drive me back to the ways of common
sense."

"Meaning--?

"That I am getting cranky and diffident. I am beginning to get nervous
about people's opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a
sad case for a man who never used to care a straw for a soul on earth."

"Lewie, attend to me," said Wratislaw, with mock gravity. "You have not
by any chance been falling in love?"

The accused blushed like a girl, and lied withal like a trooper, to the
delight of the un-Christian George.

"Well, then, my dear fellow, there is hope for you yet. If a man once
gets sentimental, he desires to be normal above all things, for he has a
crazy intuition that it is the normal which women really like, being
themselves but a hair's-breadth from the commonplace. I suppose it is
only another of the immortal errors with which mankind hedges itself
about."

"You think it an error?" said Lewis, with such an air of relief that
George began to laugh and Wratislaw looked comically suspicious.

"Why the tone of joy, Lewie?"

"I wanted your opinion," said the perjured young man. "I thought of
writing a book. But that is not the thing I was talking about. I want
to be normal, aggressively normal, to court the suffrages of Gledsmuir.
Do you know Stocks?"

"Surely."

"An excellent person, but I never heard him utter a word above a child's
capacity. He can talk the most shrieking platitudes as if he had found
at last the one and only truth. And people are impressed."

Wratislaw pulled down his eyebrows and proceeded to defend a Scottish
constituency against the libel of gullibility. But Lewis was not
listening. He did not think of the impression made on the voting
powers, but on one small girl who clamorously impeded all his thoughts.
She was, he knew, an enthusiast for the finer sentiments of life, and of
these Mr. Stocks had long ago claimed a monopoly. He felt bitterly
jealous--the jealousy of the innocent man to whom woman is an
unaccountable creature, whose habits and likings must be curiously
studied. He was dimly conscious of lacking the stage attributes of a
lover. He could not pose as a mirror of all virtues, a fanatic for the
True and the Good. Somehow or other he had acquired an air of
self-seeking egotism, unscrupulousness, which he felt miserably must
make him unlovely in certain eyes. Nor would the contest he was
entering upon improve this fancied reputation of his. He would have to
say hard, unfeeling things against what all the world would applaud as
generous sentiment.

When the others had gone yawning to bed, he returned and sat at the
window for a little, smoking hard and puzzling out the knots which
confronted him. He had a dismal anticipation of failure. Not
defeat--that was a little matter; but an abject show of incompetence.
His feelings pulled him hither and thither. He could not utter moral
platitudes to checkmate his opponent's rhetoric, for, after all, he was
honest; nor could he fill the part of the cold critic of hazy sentiment;
gladly though he would have done it, he feared the reproach in girlish
eyes. This good man was on the horns of a dilemma. Love and habit, a
generous passion and a keen intellect dragged him alternately to their
side, and as a second sign of weakness the unwilling scribe has to
record that his conclusion as he went to bed was to let things drift--to
take his chance.



CHAPTER IX

THE EPISODES OF A DAY


It is painful to record it, but when the Glenavelin party arrived at
noon of the next day it was only to find the house deserted. Lady
Manorwater, accustomed to the vagaries of her nephew, led the guests
over the place and found to her horror that it seemed undwelt in. The
hall was in order, and the tart and rosy lairds of Etterick looked down
from their Raeburn canvases on certain signs of habitation; but the
drawing-rooms were dingy with coverings and all the large rooms were in
the same tidy disarray. Then, wise from experience, she led the way to
Lewis's sanctum, and found there a pretty luncheon-table and every token
of men's presence. Soon the four tenants arrived, hot and breathless,
from the hill, to find Bertha Afflint deep in rods and guns, Miss
Wishart and Lady Manorwater ensconced in the great armchairs, and Mr.
Stocks casting a critic's eye over the unruly bookshelves.

Wratislaw's presence at first cast a certain awe on the assembly. His
name was so painfully familiar, so consistently abused, that it was hard
to refrain from curiosity. Lady Manorwater, an ancient ally, greeted
him effusively, and Alice cast shy glances at this strong man with the
kind smile and awkward manners. The truth is that Wratislaw was acutely
nervous. With Mr. Stocks alone was he at his ease. He shook his hand
heartily, declared himself delighted to meet him again, and looked with
such manifest favour on this opponent that the gentleman was cast into
confusion.

"I must talk shop," cried Lady Manorwater when they were seated at
table. "Lewie, have you heard the news that poor Sir Robert has
retired? What a treasure of a cook you have, sir! The poor man is
going to travel, as his health is bad; he wrote me this morning. Now
who is to take his place? And I wish you'd get me the recipe for this
tomato soup."

Lewis unravelled the tangled skein of his aunt's questions.

"I heard about Merkland last night from Wratislaw. I think, perhaps, I
had better make a confession to everybody. I never intended to bother
with party politics, at least not for a good many years, but some people
want me to stand, so I have agreed. You will have a very weak opponent,
Stocks, so I hope you will pardon my impertinence in trying the thing."

The candidate turned a little pale, but he smiled gallantly.

"I shall be glad to have so distinguished an opponent. But I thought
that yesterday you would never have dreamed of the thing."

"No more I should; but Wratislaw talked to me seriously and I was
persuaded."

Wratislaw tried to look guileless, failed signally, and detected a
sudden unfavourable glance from Mr. Stocks in his direction.

"We must manage everything as pleasantly as possible. You have my aunt
and my uncle and Arthur on your side, while I have George, who doesn't
count in this show, and I hope Wratislaw. I'll give you a three days'
start if you like in lieu of notice." And the young man laughed as if
the matter were the simplest of jokes.

The laugh jarred very seriously on one listener. To Alice the morning
had been full of vexations, for Mr. Stocks had again sought her
company, and wearied her with a new manner of would-be gallantry which
sat ill upon him. She had come to Etterick with a tenderness towards
Lewis which was somewhat dispelled by his newly-disclosed political
aims. It meant that the Glenavelin household, including herself, would
be in a different camp for three dreary weeks, and that Mr. Stocks
would claim more of her society than ever. With feminine inconsistency
she visited her repugnance towards that gentleman on his innocent rival.
But Mr. Lewis Haystoun's light-hearted manner of regarding the business
struck the little Puritan deeper. Politics had always been a thing of
the gravest import in her eyes, bound up with a man's duty and honour
and religion, and lo! here was this Gallio who not only adorned a party
she had been led to regard as reprobate, but treated the whole affair as
a half-jocular business, on which one should not be serious. It was
sheer weakness, her heart cried out, the weakness of the philanderer,
the half-hearted. In her vexation her interest flew in sympathy to Mr.
Stocks, and she viewed him for the occasion with favour.

"You are far too frivolous about it," she cried. "How can you fight if
you are not in earnest, and how can you speak things you only half
believe? I hate to think of men playing at politics." And she had set
her little white teeth, and sat flushed and diffident, a Muse of
Protest.

Lewis flushed in turn. He recognized with pain the fulfilment of his
fears. He saw dismally how during the coming fight he would sink daily
in the estimation of this small critic, while his opponent would as
conspicuously rise. The prospect did not soothe him, and he turned to
Bertha Afflint, who was watching the scene with curious eyes.

"It's very sad, Lewie," she said, "but you'll get no canvassers from
Glenavelin. We have all been pledged to Mr. Stocks for the last week.
Alice is a keen politician, and, I believe, has permanently unsettled
Lord Manorwater's easy-going Liberalism. She believes in action;
whereas, you know, he does not."

"We all believe in action nowadays," said Wratislaw. "I could wish at
times for the revival of 'leisureliness' as a party catch-word."

And then there ensued a passage of light arms between the great man and
Bertha which did not soothe Alice's vexation. She ignored the amiable
George, seeing in him another of the half-hearted, and in a fine heat of
virtue devoted herself to Mr. Stocks. That gentleman had been
melancholy, but the favour of Miss Wishart made him relax his heavy
brows and become communicative. He was flattered by her interest. She
heard his reminiscences with a smile and his judgments with attention.
Soon the whole table talked merrily, and two people alone were aware
that breaches yawned under the unanimity.

Archness was not in Alice's nature, and still less was coquetry. When
Lewis after lunch begged to be allowed to show her his dwelling she did
not blush and simper, she showed no pretty reluctance, no graceful
displeasure. She thanked him, but coldly, and the two climbed the ridge
above the lake, whence the whole glen may be seen winding beneath. It
was still, hot July weather, and the far hills seemed to blink and
shimmer in the haze; but at their feet was always coolness in the blue
depth of the loch, the heath-fringed shores, the dark pines, and the
cold whinstone crags.

"You don't relish the prospect of the next month?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "After all, it is only a month, and it will
all be over before the shooting begins."

"I cannot understand you," she cried suddenly and impatiently. "People
call you ambitious, and yet you have to be driven by force to the
simplest move in the game, and all the while you are thinking and
talking as if a day's sport were of far greater importance."

"And it really vexes you--Alice?" he said, with penitent eyes.

She drew swiftly away and turned her face, so that the man might not see
the vexation and joy struggling for mastery.

"Of course it is none of my business, but surely it is a pity." And the
little doctrinaire walked with head erect to the edge of the slope and
studied intently the distant hills.

The man was half amused, half pained, but his evil star was in the
ascendant. Had he known it, he would have been plain and natural, for
at no time had the girl ever been so near to him. Instead, he made some
laughing remark, which sounded harshly flippant in her ears. She looked
at him reproachfully; it was cruel to treat her seriousness with scorn;
and then, seeing Lady Manorwater and the others on the lawn below, she
asked him with studied carelessness to take her back. Lewis obeyed
meekly, cursing in his heart his unhappy trick of an easy humour. If
his virtues were to go far to rob him of what he most cared for, it
looked black indeed for the unfortunate young man.

Meantime Wratislaw and Mr. Stocks had drawn together by the attraction
of opposites. A change had come over the latter, and momentarily
eclipsed his dignity. For the man was not without tact, and he felt
that the attitude of high-priest of all the virtues would not suit in
the presence of one whose favourite task it was to laugh his so-called
virtues to scorn. Such, at least to begin with, was his honourable
intention. But the subtle Wratislaw drew him from his retirement and
skilfully elicited his coy principles. It was a cruel performance--a
shameless one, had there been any spectator. The one would lay down a
fine generous line of policy; the other would beg for a fact in
confirmation. The one would haltingly detail some facts; the other
would promptly convince him of their falsity. Eventually the victim
grew angry and a little frightened. The real Mr. Stocks was a man of
business, not above making a deal with an opponent; and for a little the
real Mr. Stocks emerged from his shell.

"You won't speak much in the coming fight, will you? You see, you are
rather heavy metal for a beginner like myself," he said, with commercial
frankness.

"No, my dear Stocks, to set your mind at rest, I won't. Lewis wants to
be knocked about a little, and he wants the fight to brace him. I'll
leave him to fight his own battles, and wish good luck to the better
man. Also, I won't come to your meetings and ask awkward questions."

Mr. Stocks bore malice only to his inferiors, and respected his betters
when he was not on a platform. He thanked Wratislaw with great
heartiness, and when Lady Manorwater found the two they were beaming on
each other like the most ancient friends.

"Has anybody seen Lewie?" she was asking. "He is the most scandalous
host in the world. We can't find boats or canoes and we can't find him.
Oh, here is the truant!" And the renegade host was seen in the wake of
Alice descending from the ridge.

Something in the attitude of the two struck the lady with suspicion.
Was it possible that she had been blind, and that her nephew was about
to confuse her cherished schemes? This innocent woman, who went through
the world as not being of it, had fancied that already Alice had fallen
in with her plans. She had seemed to court Mr. Stocks's company, while
he most certainly sought eagerly for hers. But Lewis, if he entered the
lists, would be a perplexing combatant, and Lady Manorwater called her
gods to witness that it should not be. Many motives decided her against
it. She hated that a scheme of her own once made should be checkmated,
though it were by her dearest friend. More than all, her pride was in
arms. Lewis was a dazzling figure; he should make a great match; money
and pretty looks and parvenu blood were not enough for his high
mightiness.

So it came about that, when they had explored the house, circumnavigated
the loch, and had tea on a lawn of heather, she informed her party that
she must get out at Haystounslacks, for she wished to see the farmer,
and asked Bertha to keep her company. The young woman agreed readily,
with the result that Alice and Mr. Stocks were left sole occupants of
the carriage for the better half of the way. The man was only too
willing to seize the chance thus divinely given him. His irritation at
Lewis's projects had been tempered by Alice's kindness at lunch and
Wratislaw's unlooked-for complaisance. Things looked rosy for him; far
off, as on the horizon of his hopes, he saw a seat in Parliament and a
fair and amply dowered wife.

But Miss Wishart was scarcely in so pleasant a humour. With Lewis she
was undeniably cross, but of Mr. Stocks she was radically intolerant.
A moment of pique might send her to his side, but the position was
unnatural and could not be maintained. Even now Lewis was in her
thoughts. Fragments of his odd romantic speech clove to her memory.
His figure--for he showed to perfection in his own surroundings--was so
comely and gallant, so bright with the glamour of adventurous youth,
that for a moment this prosaic young woman was a convert to the coloured
side of life and had forgotten her austere creed.

Mr. Stocks went about his duty with praise-worthy thoroughness. For
the fiftieth time in a week he detailed to her his prospects. When he
had raised a cloud-built castle of fine hopes, when he had with manly
simplicity repeated his confession of faith, he felt that the crucial
moment had arrived. Now, when she looked down the same avenue of
prospect as himself, he could gracefully ask her to adorn the fair scene
with her presence.

"Alice," he said, and at the sound of her name the girl started from a
reverie in which Lewis was not absent, and looked vacantly in his face.

He took it for maidenly modesty.

"I have wanted to speak to you for long, Alice. We have seen a good
deal of each other lately, and I have come to be very fond of you. I
trust you may have some liking for me, for I want you to promise to be
my wife."

He told his love in regular sentences. Unconsciously he had fallen into
the soft patronizing tone in which aforetime he had shepherded a Sunday
school.

The girl looked at the large sentimental face and laughed. She felt
ashamed of her rudeness even in the act.

He caught her hands, and before she knew his face was close to hers.
"Promise me, dear," he said. "We have everything in common. Your
father will be delighted, and we will work together for the good of the
people. You are not meant to be a casual idler like the people at
Etterick. You and I are working man and woman."

It was her turn to flush in downright earnest. The man's hot face
sickened her. What were these wild words he was speaking? She dimly
caught their purport, heard the mention of Etterick, saw once again
Lewis with his quick, kindly eyes, and turned coldly to the lover.

"It is quite out of the question, Mr. Stocks," she said calmly. "Of
course I am obliged to you for the honour you have done me, but the
thing is impossible."

"Who is it?" he cried, with angry eyes. "Is it Lewis Haystoun?"

The girl looked quickly at him, and he was silent, abashed. Strangely
enough, at that moment she liked him better than ever before. She
forgave him his rudeness and folly, his tactless speech and his comical
face. He was in love with her, he offered her what he most valued, his
political chances and his code of fine sentiments; it was not his blame
if she found both little better than husks.

Her attention flew for a moment to the place she had left, only to
return to a dismal reflection. Was she not, after all, in the same
galley as her rejected suitor? What place had she in the frank
good-fellowship of Etterick, or what part had they in the inheritance of
herself and her kind? Had not Mr. Stocks--now sitting glumly by her
side--spoken the truth? We are only what we are made, and generations
of thrift and seriousness had given her a love for the strenuous and the
unadorned which could never be cast out. Here was a quandary--for at
the same instant there came the voice of the heart defiantly calling her
to the breaking of idols.




CHAPTER X

HOME TRUTHS


I

It is told by a great writer in his generous English that when the
followers of Diabolus were arraigned before the Recorder and Mayor of
regenerate Mansoul, a certain Mr. Haughty carried himself well to the
last. "He declared," says Bunyan, "that he had carried himself bravely,
not considering who was his foe or what was the cause in which he was
engaged. It was enough for him if he fought like a man and came off
victorious." Nevertheless, we are told, he suffered the common doom,
being crucified next day at the place of execution. It is the old fate
of the freelance, the Hal o' the Wynd who fights for his own hand; for
in life's contest the taking of sides is assumed to be a necessity.

Such was Lewis's reflections when he found Wratislaw waiting for him in
the Etterick dogcart when he emerged from a meeting in Gledsmuir. He
had now enjoyed ten days of it, and he was heartily tired. His throat
was sore with much speaking, his mind was barren with thinking on the
unthinkable, and his spirits were dashed with a bitter sense of
futility. He had honestly done his best. So far his conscience was
clear; but as he reviewed the past in detail, his best seemed a very
shoddy compromise. It was comfort to see the rugged face of Wratislaw
again, though his greeting was tempered by mistrust. The great man had
refused to speak for him and left him to fight his own battles;
moreover, he feared the judgment of the old warrior on his conduct of
the fight. He was acutely conscious of the joints in his armour, but he
had hoped to have decently cloaked them from others. When he heard the
first words, "Well, Lewie, my son, you have been making a mess of it,"
his heart sank.

"I am sorry," he said. "But how?"

"How? Why, my dear chap, you have no grip. You have let the thing get
out of hand. I heard your speech to-night. It was excellent, very
clever, a beautiful piece of work, but worse than useless for your
purpose. You forget the sort of man you are fighting. Oh, I have been
following the business carefully, and I felt bound to come down to keep
you in order. To begin with, you have left your own supporters in the
place in a nice state of doubt."

"How?"

"Why, because you have given them nothing to catch hold of. They
expected the ordinary Conservative confession of faith--a rosy sketch of
foreign affairs, and a little gentle Socialism, and the old rhetoric
about Church and State. Instead, they are put off with epigrams and
excellent stories, and a few speculations as to the metaphysical basis
of politics. Believe me, Lewie, it is only the very general liking for
your unworthy self which keeps them from going over in a body to
Stocks." And Wratislaw lit a cigar and puffed furiously.

"Then you would have me deliver the usual insincere platitudes?" said
Lewis dismally.

"I would have you do nothing of the kind. I thought you understood my
point of view. A man like Stocks speaks his platitudes with vehemence
because he believes in them whole-heartedly. You have also your
platitudes to get through with, not because you would stake your soul on
your belief in them, but because they are as near as possible the
inaccurate popular statement of your views, which is all that your
constituents would understand, and you pander to the popular craving
because it is honest enough in itself and is for you the stepping-stone
to worthier work."

Lewis shook his head dismally.

"I haven't the knack of it. I seem to stand beside myself and jeer all
the while. Besides, it would be opposing complete sincerity with a very
shady substitute. That man Stocks is at least an honest fool. I met
him the other day after he had been talking some atrocious nonsense. I
asked him as a joke how he could be such a humbug, and he told me quite
honestly that he believed every word; so, of course, I apologized. He
was attacking you people on your foreign policy, and he pulled out a New
Testament and said, 'What do I read here?' It went down with many
people, but the thing took away my breath."

His companion looked perplexedly at the speaker. "You have had the
wrong kind of education, Lewie. You have always been the spoiled child,
and easily and half-unconsciously you have mastered things which the
self-made man has to struggle towards with a painful conscious effort.
The result is that you are a highly cultured man without any crudeness
or hysteria, while the other people see things in the wrong perspective
and run their heads against walls and make themselves miserable. You
gain a lot, but you miss one thing. You know nothing of the heart of
the crowd. Oh, I don't mean the people about Etterick. They are your
own folk, and the whole air of the place is semi-feudal. But the
weavers and artisans of the towns and the ordinary farm workers--what do
you know of them? Your precious theories are so much wind in their
ears. They want the practical, the blatantly obvious, spiced with a
little emotion. Stocks knows their demands. He began among them, and
at present he is but one remove from them. A garbled quotation from the
Scriptures or an appeal to their domestic affections is the very thing
required. Moreover, the man understands an audience. He can bully it,
you know; put on airs of sham independence to cover his real obeisance;
while you are polite and deferent to hide your very obvious scorn."

"Do you know, Tommy, I'm a coward," Lewis broke in. "I can't face the
people. When I see a crowd of upturned faces, crass, ignorant,
unwholesome many of them, I begin to despair. I cannot begin to explain
things from the beginning; besides, they would not understand me if I
did. I feel I have nothing in common with them. They lead, most of
them, unhealthy indoor lives, their minds are half-baked, and their
bodies half-developed. I feel a terrible pity, but all the same I
cannot touch them. And then I become a coward and dare not face them
and talk straight as man to man. I repeat my platitudes to the ceiling,
and they go away thinking, and thinking rightly, that I am a fool."

Wratislaw looked worried. "That is one of my complaints. The other is
that on certain occasions you cannot hold yourself in check. Do you
know you have been blackguarded in the papers lately, and that there is
a violent article against you in the Critic, and all on account of some
unwise utterances?"

Lewis flushed deeply. "That is the worst thing I have done, and I feel
horribly penitent. It was the act of a cad and a silly schoolboy. But
I had some provocation, Tommy. I had spoken at length amid many
interruptions, and I was getting cross. It was at Gledfoot, and the
meeting was entirely against me. Then a man got up to tackle me, not a
native, but some wretched London agitator. As I looked at him--a little
chap with fiery eyes and receding brow--and heard his cockney patter, my
temper went utterly. I made a fool of him, and I abused the whole
assembly, and, funnily enough, I carried them with me. People say I
helped my cause immensely."

"It is possible," said Wratislaw dryly. "The Scot has a sense of humour
and has no objection to seeing his prophets put to shame. But you are
getting a nice reputation elsewhere. When I read some of your sayings,
I laughed of course, but I thought ruefully of your chances."

It was a penitent and desponding man who followed Wratislaw into the
snuggery at Etterick. But light and food, the gleam of silver and
vellum and the sweet fragrance of tobacco consoled him; for in most
matters he was half-hearted, and politics sat lightly on his affections.


II

To Alice the weeks of the contest were filled with dire unpleasantness.
Lewis, naturally, kept far from Glenavelin, while of Mr. Stocks she was
never free. She followed Lady Manorwater's lead and canvassed
vigorously, hoping to find distraction in the excitement of the fight.
But her efforts did not prosper. On one occasion she found herself in a
cottage on the Gledsmuir road, her hands filled with election
literature. A hale old man was sitting at his meal, who greeted her
cordially, and made her sit down while she stumbled through the usual
questions and exhortations. "Are ye no' bidin' at Glenavelin?" he
asked. "And have I no seen ye walking on the hill wi' Maister Lewie?"
When the girl assented, he asked, with the indignation of the
privileged, "Then what for are ye sac keen this body Stocks should win
in? If Maister Lewie's fond o' ye, wad it no be wiser--like to wark for
him? Poalitics! What should a woman's poalitics be but just the same
as her lad's? I hae nae opeenion o' this clash about weemen's
eddication." And with flaming cheeks the poor girl had risen and fled
from the old reactionary.

The incident burned into her mind, and she was wretched with the anomaly
of her position. A dawning respect for her rejected lover began to rise
in her heart. The first of his meetings which she attended had
impressed her with his skill in his own vocation. He had held those
people interested. He had spoken bluntly, strongly, honestly. To few
women is it given to distinguish the subtle shades of sincerity in
speech, and to the rule Alice was no exception. The rhetoric and the
cheers which followed had roused the speaker to a new life. His face
became keen, almost attractive, without question full of power. He was
an orator beyond doubt, and when he concluded in a riot of applause,
Alice sat with small hands clenched and eyes shining with delight. He
had spoken the main articles of her creed, but with what force and
freshness! She was convinced, satisfied, delighted; though somewhere in
her thought lurked her old dislike of the man and the memory of another.

As ill-luck would have it, the next night she went to hear Lewis in
Gledsmuir, when that young gentleman was at his worst. She went
unattended, being a fearless young woman, and consequently found herself
in the very back of the hall crowded among some vehement politicians.
The audience, to begin with, was not unkind. Lewis was greeted with
applause, and at the first heard with patience. But his speech was
vague, incoherent, and tactless. To her unquiet eyes he seemed to be
afraid of the men before him. Every phrase was guarded with a proviso,
and "possiblys" bristled in every sentence. The politicians at the back
grew restless, and Alice was compelled to listen to their short,
scathing criticisms. Soon the meeting was hopelessly out of hand. Men
rose and rudely marched to the door. Catcalls were frequent from the
corners, and the back of the hall became aggressive. The girl had sat
with white, pained face, understanding little save that Lewis was
talking nonsense and losing all grip on his hearers. In spite of
herself she was contrasting this fiasco with the pithy words of Mr.
Stocks. When the meeting became unruly she looked for some display of
character, some proof of power. Mr. Stocks would have fiercely cowed
the opposition, or at least have spoken the last word in any quarrel.
Lewis's conduct was different. He shrugged his shoulders, made some
laughing remark to a friend on the platform, and with all the
nonchalance in the world asked the meeting if they wished to hear any
more. A claque of his supporters replied with feigned enthusiasm, but a
malcontent at Alice's side rose and stamped to the door. "I came to
hear sense," he cried, "and no this bairn's-blethers!"

The poor girl was in despair. She had fancied him a man of power and
ambition, a doer, a man of action. But he was no more than a creature
of words and sentiment, graceful manners, and an engaging appearance.
The despised Mr. Stocks was the real worker. She had laughed at his
incessant solemnity as the badge of a fool, and adored Lewis's
light-heartedness as the true air of the great. But she had been
mistaken. Things were what they seemed. The light-hearted was the
half-hearted, "the wandering dilettante," Mr. Stocks had called him,
"the worst type of the pseudo-culture of our universities." She told
herself she hated the whole affectation of breeding and chivalry. Those
men--Lewis and his friends--were always kind and soft-spoken to her and
her sex. Her soul hated it; she cried aloud for equal treatment, for a
share of the iron and rigour of life. Their manners were a mere cloak
for contempt. If they could only be rude to a woman, it would be a
welcome relief from this facile condescension. What had she or any
woman with brains to do in that galley? They despised her kind, with
the scorn of sultans who chose their women-folk for looks and graces.
The thought was degrading, and a bitterness filled her heart against the
whole clique of easy aristocrats. Mr. Stocks was her true ally. To
him she was a woman, an equal; to them she was an engaging child, a
delicate toy.

So far she went in her heresy, but no farther. It is a true saying that
you will find twenty heroic women before you may meet one generous one;
but Alice was not wholly without this rarest of qualities. The memory
of a frank voice, very honest grey eyes, and a robust cheerfulness
brought back some affection for the erring Lewis. The problem was
beyond her reconciling efforts, so the poor girl, torn between common
sense and feeling, and recognizing with painful clearness the complexity
of life, found refuge in secret tears.

III

The honours of the contest, so far as Lewis's party was concerned, fell
to George Winterham, and this was the fashion of the event. He had been
dragged reluctantly into the thing, foreseeing dire disaster for
himself, for he knew little and cared less about matters political,
though he was ready enough at a pinch to place his ignorance at his
friend's disposal. So he had been set to the dreary work of
committee-rooms; and then, since his manners were not unpleasing,
dispatched as aide-de-camp to any chance orator who enlivened the
county. But at last a crisis arrived in which other use was made of
him. A speaker of some pretensions had been announced for a certain
night at the considerable village of Allerfoot. The great man failed,
and as it was the very eve of the election none could be found for his
place. Lewis was in despair, till he thought of George. It was a
desperate chance, but the necessity was urgent, so, shutting himself up
for an hour, he wrote the better part of a speech which he entrusted to
his friend to prepare. George, having a good memory, laboriously
learned it by heart, and clutching the friendly paper and
whole-heartedly abusing his chief, he set out grimly to his fate.

Promptly at the hour of eight he was deposited at the door of the
Masonic Hail in Allerfoot. The place seemed full, and a nervous
chairman was hovering around the gate. News of the great man's
defection had already been received, and he was in the extremes of
nervousness. He greeted George as a saviour, and led him inside, where
some three hundred people crowded a small whitewashed building. The
village of Allerfoot itself is a little place, but it is the centre of a
wide pastoral district, and the folk assembled were brown-faced herds
and keepers from the hills, plough-men from the flats of Glen Aller, a
few fishermen from the near sea-coast, as well as the normal inhabitants
of the village.

George was wretchedly nervous and sat in a cold sweat while the chairman
explained that the great Mr. S---- deeply regretted that at the last
moment he was unfortunately compelled to break so important an
engagement, but that he had sent in his stead Mr. George Winterham,
whose name was well known as a distinguished Oxford scholar and a rising
barrister. George, who had been ploughed twice for Smalls and had
eventually taken a pass degree, and to whom the law courts were nearly
as unknown as the Pyramids, groaned inwardly at the astounding news.
The audience might have been a turnip field for all the personality it
possessed for him. He heard their applause as the chairman sat down
mopping his brow, and he rose to his feet conscious that he was smiling
like an idiot. He made some introductory remarks of his own--that "he
was sorry the other chap hadn't turned up, that he was happy to have the
privilege of expounding to them his views on this great subject "--and
then with an ominous sinking of heart plucked forth his papers and
launched into the unknown.

The better part of the speech was wiped clean from his memory at the
start, so he had to lean heavily on the written word. He read rapidly
but without intelligence. Now and again a faint cheer would break the
even flow, and he would look up for a moment with startled eyes, only to
go off again with quickened speed. He found himself talking neat
paradoxes which he did not understand, and speaking glibly of names
which to him were no more than echoes. Eventually he came to an end at
least twenty minutes before a normal political speech should close, and
sat down, hot and perplexed, with a horrible sense of having made a fool
of himself.

The chairman, no less perplexed, made the usual remarks and then called
for questions, for the time had to be filled in somehow. The words left
George aghast. The wretched man looked forward to raw public shame.
His ignorance would be exposed, his presumption laid bare, his pride
thrown in the dust. He nerved himself for a despairing effort. He
would brazen things out as far as possible; afterwards, let the heavens
fall.

An old minister rose and asked in a thin ancient voice what the
Government had done for the protection of missionaries in
Khass-Kotannun. Was he, Mr. Winterham, aware that our missionaries in
that distant land had been compelled to wear native dress by the
arrogant chiefs, and so fallen victims to numerous chills and epidemics?

George replied that he considered the treatment abominable, believed
that the matter occupied the mind of the Foreign Office night and day,
and would be glad personally to subscribe to any relief fund. The good
man declared himself satisfied, and St. Sebastian breathed freely
again.

A sturdy man in homespun rose to discover the Government's intention on
Church matters. Did the speaker ken that on his small holding he paid
ten pound sterling in tithes, though he himself did not hold with the
Establishment, being a Reformed Presbyterian? The Laodicean George said
he did not understand the differences, but that it seemed to him a
confounded shame, and he would undertake that Mr. Haystoun, if
returned, would take immediate steps in the matter.

So far he had done well, but with the next question he betrayed his
ignorance. A good man arose, also hot on Church affairs, to discourse
on some disabilities, and casually described himself as a U.P. George's
wits busied themselves in guessing at the mystic sign. At last to his
delight he seemed to achieve it, and, in replying, electrified his
audience by assuming that the two letters stood for Unreformed
Presbyterian.

But the meeting was in good humour in spite of his incomprehensible
address and unsatisfying answers, till a small section of the young
bloods of the opposite party, who had come to disturb, felt that this
peace must be put an end to. Mr. Samuel M'Turk, lawyer's clerk, who
hailed from the west country and betrayed his origin in his speech, rose
amid some applause from his admirers to discomfit George. He was a
young man with a long, sallow face, carefully oiled and parted hair, and
a resonant taste in dress. A bundle of papers graced his hand, and his
air was parliamentary.

"Wis Mister Winterham aware that Mister Haystoun had contradicted
himself on two occasions lately, as he would proceed to show?"

George heard him patiently, said that now he was aware of the fact, but
couldn't for the life of him see what the deuce it mattered.

"After Mister Winterham's ignoring of my pint," went on the young man,
"I proceed to show ..." and with all the calmness in the world he
displayed to his own satisfaction how Mr. Lewis Haystoun was no fit
person to represent the constituency. He profaned the Sabbath, which
this gentleman professed to hold dear, he was notorious for drunkenness,
and his conduct abroad had not been above suspicion.

George was on his feet in a moment, his confusion gone, his face very
red, and his shoulders squared for a fight. The man saw the effect of
his words, and promptly sat down.

"Get up," said George abruptly.

The man's face whitened and he shrank back among his friends.

"Get up; up higher--on the top of the seat, that everybody may see and
hear you! Now repeat very carefully all that over again."

The man's confidence had deserted him. He stammered something about
meaning no harm.

"You called my friend a drunken blackguard. I am going to hear the
accusation in detail." George stood up to his full height, a terrible
figure to the shrinking clerk, who repeated his former words with a
faltering tongue.

He heard him out quietly, and then stared coolly down on the people. He
felt himself master of the situation. The enemy had played into his
hands, and in the shape of a sweating clerk sat waiting on his action.

"You have heard what this man has to tell you. I ask you as men, as
folk of this countryside, if it is true?"

It was the real speech of the evening, which was all along waiting to be
delivered instead of the frigid pedantries on the paper. A man was
speaking simply, valiantly, on behalf of his friend. It was cunningly
done, with the natural tact which rarely deserts the truly honest man in
his hour of extremity. He spoke of Lewis as he had known him, at school
and college and in many wild sporting expeditions in desert places, and
slowly the people kindled and listened. Then, so to speak, he kicked
away the scaffolding of his erection. He ceased to be the apologist,
and became the frank eulogist. He stood squarely on the edge of the
platform, gathering the eyes of his hearers, smiling pleasantly, arms
akimbo, a man at his ease and possibly at his pleasure.

"Some of you are herds," he cried, "and some are fishers, and some are
farmers, and some are labourers. Also some of you call yourselves
Radicals or Tories or Socialists. But you are all of you far more than
these things. You are men--men of this great countryside, with blood in
your veins and vigour in that blood. If you were a set of pale-faced
mechanics, I should not be speaking to you, for I should not understand
you. But I know you all, and I like you, and I am going to prevent you
from making godless fools of yourselves. There are two men before you.
One is a very clever man, whom I don't know anything about, nor you
either. The other is my best friend, and known to all of you. Many of
you have shot or sailed with him, many of you were born on his and his
fathers' lands. I have told you of his abilities and quoted better
judges than myself. I don't need to tell you that he is the best of
men, a sportsman, a kind master, a very good fellow indeed. You can
make up your mind between the two. Opinions matter very little, but
good men are too scarce to be neglected. Why, you fools," he cried with
boisterous good humour, "I should back Lewis if he were a Mohammedan or
an Anarchist. The man is sound metal, I tell you, and that's all I
ask."

It was a very young man's confession of faith, but it was enough. The
meeting went with him almost to a man. A roar of applause greeted the
smiling orator, and when he sat down with flushed face, bright eyes, and
a consciousness of having done his duty, John Sanderson, herd in Nether
Callowa, rose to move a vote of confidence:

"That this assembly is of opinion that Maister Lewis Haystoun is a guid
man, and sae is our friend Maister Winterham, and we'll send Lewie back
to Parliament or be--"

It was duly seconded and carried with acclamation.




CHAPTER XI

THE PRIDE BEFORE A FALL


The result of the election was announced in Gledsmuir on the next
Wednesday evening, and carried surprise to all save Lewis's nearer
friends. For Mr. Albert Stocks was duly returned member for the
constituency by a majority of seventy votes. The defeated candidate
received the news with great composure, addressed some good-humoured
words to the people, had a generous greeting for his opponent, and met
his committee with a smiling face. But his heart was sick within him,
and as soon as he decently might he escaped from the turmoil, found his
horse, and set off up Glenavelin for his own dwelling.

He had been defeated, and the fact, however confidently looked for,
comes with a bitter freshness to every man. He had lost a seat for his
party--that in itself was bad. But he had proved himself incompetent,
unadaptable, a stick, a pedantic incapable. A dozen stings rankled in
his soul. Alice would be justified of her suspicions. Where would his
place be now in that small imperious heart? His own people had forsaken
him for a gross and unlikely substitute, and he had been wrong in his
estimate alike of ally and enemy. Above all came that cruelest
stab--what would Wratislaw think of it? He had disgraced himself in the
eyes of his friend. He who had made a fetish of competence had
manifestly proved wanting; he who had loved to think of himself as the
bold, opportune man, had shown himself formal and hidebound.

As he passed Glenavelin among the trees the thought of Alice was a sharp
pang of regret. He could never more lift his eyes in that young and
radiant presence. He pictured the successful Stocks welcomed by her,
and words of praise for which he would have given his immortal soul,
meted out lavishly to that owl-like being. It was a dismal business,
and ruefully, but half-humorously, he caught at the paradox of his fate.

Through the swiftly failing darkness the inn of Etterick rose before
him, a place a little apart from the village street. A noise of talk
floated from the kitchen and made him halt at the door and dismount.
The place would be full of folk discussing the election, and he would go
in among them and learn the worst opinion which men might have of him.
After all, they were his own people, who had known him in his power as
they now saw him in his weakness. If he had failed he was not wholly
foolish; they knew his few redeeming virtues, and they would be
generous.

The talk stopped short as he entered, and he saw through the tobacco
reek half a dozen lengthy faces wearing the air of solemnity which the
hillman adopts in his pleasures. They were all his own herds and
keepers, save two whom he knew for foresters from Glenavelin. He was
recognized at once, and with a general nervous shuffling they began to
make room for the laird at the table. He cried a hasty greeting to all,
and sat down between a black-bearded giant, whose clothes smelt of
sheep, and a red-haired man from one of the remoter glens. The notion
of the thing pleased him, and he ordered drinks for each with a lavish
carelessness. He asked for a match for his pipe, and the man who gave
it wore a decent melancholy on his face and shook his head with unction.

"This is a bad job, Lewie," he said, using the privileged name of the
ancient servant. "Whae would have ettled sic a calaamity to happen in
your ain countryside? We a' thocht it would be a grand pioy for ye, for
ye would settle down here and hae nae mair foreign stravaigins. And
then this tailor body steps in and spoils a'. It's maist vexaatious."

"It was a good fight, and he beat me fairly; but we'll drop the matter.
I'm sick--tired of politics, Adam. If I had been a better man they
might have made a herd of me, and I should have been happy."

"Wheesht, Lewie," said the man, grinning. "A herd's job is no for the
likes o' you. But there's better wark waiting for ye than poalitics.
It's a beggar's trade after a', and far better left to bagman bodies
like yon Stocks. It's a puir thing for sac proper a man as you."

"But what can I do?" cried Lewis in despair. "I have no profession. I
am useless."

"Useless! Ye are a grand judge o' sheep and nowt, and ye ken a horse
better than ony couper. Ye can ride like a jockey and drive like a
Jehu, and there's no your equal in these parts with a gun or a
fishing-rod. Forbye, I would rather walk ae mile on the hill wi' ye
than twae, for ye gang up a brae-face like a mawkin! God! There's no a
single man's trade that ye're no brawly fitted for. And then ye've a
heap o' book-lear that folk learned ye away about England, though I
cannot speak muckle on that, no being a jidge."

Lewis grinned at the portraiture. "You do me proud. But let's talk
about serious things. You were on sheep when I came in. Get back to
them and give me your mind on Cheviots. The lamb sales promise well."

For twenty minutes the room hummed with technicalities. One man might
support the conversation on alien matters, but on sheep the humblest
found a voice: Lewis watched the ring of faces with a sharp delight.
The election had made him sick of his fellows--fellows who chattered and
wrangled and wallowed in the sentimental. But now every line of these
brown faces, the keen blue eyes, the tawny, tangled beards, and the
inimitable soft-sounding southern speech, seemed an earnest of a real
and strenuous life. He began to find a new savour in existence. The
sense of his flat incompetence left him, and he found himself speaking
heartily and laughing with zest.

"It's as I say," said the herd of the Redswirebead. "I'm getting an
auld man and a verra wise ane, and the graund owercome for the world is
just 'Pay no attention.' Ye'll has heard how the word cam' to be. It
was Jock Linklater o' the Caulds wha was glen notice to quit by the
laird, and a' the countryside was vexed to pairt wi' Jock, for he was a
popular character. But about a year after a friend meets him at
Gledsmuir merkit as crouse as ever. 'Lodsake, Jock, man, I thocht ye
were awa',' says he. 'No,' says Jock, 'no. I'm here as ye see.' 'But
how did ye manage it?' he asked. 'Fine,' says Jock. 'They sent me a
letter tellin' me I must gang; but I just payed no attention. Syne they
sent me a blue letter frae the lawyer's, but I payed no attention. Syne
the factor cam' to see me.' 'Ay, and what did ye do then, Jock?' says
he. 'Oh, I payed no attention. Syne the laird cam' himsel.' 'Ay, that
would fricht ye,' he says. 'No, no a grain,' said Jock, verra calm. 'I
just payed no attention, and here I am.'"

Lewis laughed, but the rest of the audience suffered no change of
feature. The gloaming had darkened, and the little small-paned window
was a fretted sheet of dark and lucent blue. Grateful odours of food
and drink and tobacco hung in the air, though tar and homespun and the
far-carried fragrance of peat fought stoutly for the mastery.

One man fell to telling of a fox-hunt, when he lay on the hill for the
night and shot five of the destroyers of his flock before the morning,
it was the sign--and the hour--for stories of many kinds--tales of
weather and adventure, humorous lowland escapades and dismal mountain
realities. Or stranger still, there would come the odd, half-believed
legends of the glen, told shamefully yet with the realism of men for
whom each word had a power and meaning far above fiction. Lewis
listened entranced, marking his interest now by an exclamation, and
again by a question.

The herd of Farawa told of the salmon, the king of the Aller salmon, who
swam to the head of Aller and then crossed the spit of land to the head
of Callowa to meet the king of the Callowa fish. It was a humorous
story, and was capped there and then by his cousin of the Dreichill, who
told a ghastly tale of a murder in the wilds. Then a lonely man, Simon
o' the Heid o' the Hope, glorified his powers on a January night when he
swung himself on a flood-gate over the Aller while the thing quivered
beneath him, and the water roared redly above his thighs.

"And that yett broke when I was three pairts ower, and I went down the
river with my feet tangled in the bars and nae room for sweemin'. But I
gripped an oak-ritt and stelled mysel' for an hour till the water
knockit the yett to sawdust. It broke baith my ankles, and though I'm a
mortal strong man in my arms, thae twisted kitts keepit me helpless.
When a man's feet are broke he has nae strength in his wrist."

"I know," said Lewis, with excitement. "I have found the same myself."

"Where?" asked the man, without rudeness.

"Once on the Skifso when I was after salmon, and once in the Doorab
hills above Abjela."

"Were ye sick when they rescued ye? I was. I had twae muscles sprung
on my arm, but that was naething to the retching and dizziness when they
laid me on the heather. Jock Jeffrey was bending ower me, and though he
wasna touching me I began to suffocate, and yet I was ower weak to cry
out and had to thole it."

"I know. If you hang up in the void for a little and get the feeling of
great space burned on your mind, you nearly die of choking when you are
pulled up. Fancy you knowing about that."

"Have you suffered it, Maister Lewie?" said the man.

"Once. There was a gully in the Doorabs just like the Scarts o' the
Muneraw, only twenty times deeper, and there was a bridge of tree-trunks
bound with ropes across it. We all got over except one mule and a
couple of men. They were just getting off when a trunk slipped and
dangled down into the abyss with one end held up by the ropes. The poor
animal went plumb to the bottom; we heard it first thud on a jag of rock
and then, an age after, splash in the water. One of the men went with
it, but the other got his legs caught between the ropes and the tree and
managed to hang on. The poor beggar was helpless with fright; and he
squealed--great heavens! how he did squeal!"

"And what did ye dae?" asked a breathless audience.

"I went down after him. I had to, for I was his master, and besides, I
was a bit of an athlete then. I cried to him to hang on and not look
down. I clambered down the swaying trunk while my people held the ropes
at the top, and when I got near the man I saw what had happened.

"He had twisted his ankles in the fall, and though he had got them out
of the ropes, yet they hung loose and quite obviously broken. I got as
near him as I could, and leaned over, and I remember seeing through
below his armpits the blue of the stream six hundred feet down. It made
me rather sick with my job, and when I called him to pull himself up a
bit till I could grip him I thought he was helpless with the same
fright. But it turned out that I had misjudged him. He had no power in
his arms, simply the dead strength to hang on. I was in a nice fix, for
I could lower myself no farther without slipping into space. Then I
thought of a dodge. I got a good grip of the rope and let my legs
dangle down till they were level with his hands. I told him to try and
change his grip and catch my ankles. He did it, somehow or other, and
by George! the first shock of his weight nearly ended me, for he was a
heavy man. However, I managed to pull myself up a yard or two and then
I could reach down and catch his arms. We both got up somehow or other,
but it took a devilish time, and when they laid us both on the ground
and came round like fools with brandy I thought I should choke and had
scarcely strength to swear at them to get out."

The assembly had listened intently, catching its breath with a sharp
_risp_ as all outdoor folks will do when they hear of an escapade which
strikes their fancy. One man--a stranger--hammered his empty pipe-bowl
on the table in applause.

"Whae was the man, d'ye say?" he asked. "A neeger?"

Lewis laughed. "Not a nigger most certainly, though he had a brown
face."

"And ye risked your life for a black o' some kind? Man, ye must be
awfu' fond o' your fellow men. Wad ye dae the same for the likes o' us?

"Surely. For one of my own folk! But it was really a very small
thing."

"Then I have just ae thing to say," said the brown-bearded man. "I am
what ye cal a Raadical, and yestreen I recorded my vote for yon man
Stocks. He crackit a lot about the rights o' man--as man, and I was wi'
him. But I tell ye that you yoursel' have a better notion o' human
kindness than ony Stocks, and though ye're no o' my party, yet I
herewith propose a vote o' confidence in Maister Lewis Haystoun."

The health was drunk solemnly yet with gusto, and under cover of it
Lewis fled out of doors. His despondency had passed, and a fit of
fierce exhilaration had seized him. Men still swore by his name; he was
still loved by his own folk; small matter to him if a townsman had
defeated him. He was no vain talker, but a doer, a sportsman, an
adventurer. This was his true career. Let others have the applause of
excited indoor folk or dull visionaries; for him a man's path, a man's
work, and a man's commendation.

The moon was up, riding high in a shoreless sea of blue, and in the
still weather the streams called to each other from the mountain sides,
as in some fantastic cosmic harmony. High on the ridge shoulder the
lights of Etterick twinkled starlike amid the fretted veil of trees. A
sense of extraordinary and crazy exhilaration, the recoil from the
constraint of weeks, laid hold on his spirit. He hummed a dozen
fragments of song, and at times would laugh with the pure pleasure of
life. The quixotic, the generous, the hopeless, the successful;
laughter and tears; death and birth; the warm hearth and the open
road--all seemed blent for the moment into one great zest for living.
"I'll to Lochiel and Appin and kneel to them," he was humming aloud,
when suddenly his bridle was caught and a man's hand was at his knee.

"Lewie," cried Wratislaw, "gracious, man! have you been drinking?" And
then seeing the truth, he let go the bridle, put an arm through the
stirrup leathers, and walked by the horse's side. "So that's the way
you take it, old chap? Do you know that you are a discredited and
defeated man? and yet I find you whistling like a boy. I have hopes
for you, Lewie. You have the Buoyant Heart, and with that nothing can
much matter. But, confound it! you are hours late for dinner."




CHAPTER XII

PASTORAL AND TRAGEDY


The news of the election, brought to Glenavelin by a couple of ragged
runners, had a different result from that forecast by Lewis. Alice
heard it with a heart unquickened; and when, an hour after, the flushed,
triumphant Mr. Stocks arrived in person to claim the meed of success,
he was greeted with a painful carelessness. Lady Manorwater had been
loud in her laments for her nephew, but to Mr. Stocks she gave the
honest praise which a warm-hearted woman cannot withhold from the
fighter.

"Our principles have won," she cried. "Now who will call the place a
Tory stronghold? Oh, Mr. Stocks, you have done wonderfully, and I am
very glad. I'm not a bit sorry for Lewis, for he well deserved his
beating."

But with Alice there could be neither pleasure nor its simulation. Her
terrible honesty forbade her the easy path of false congratulations.
She bit her lip till tears filled her eyes. What was this wretched
position into which she had strayed? Lewis was all she had feared, but
he was Lewis, and far more than any bundle of perfections. A hot,
passionate craving for his presence was blinding her to reason. And
this man who had won--this, the fortunate politician--she cared for him
not a straw. A strong dislike began to grow in her heart to the
blameless Mr. Stocks.

Dinner that night was a weary meal to the girl. Lady Manorwater
prattled about the day's events, and Lord Manorwater, hopelessly bored,
ate his food in silence. The lively Bertha had gone to bed with a
headache, and the younger Miss Afflint was the receptacle for the moment
of her hostess's confidences. Alice sat between Mr. Stocks and Arthur,
facing a tall man with a small head and immaculate hair who had ridden
over to dine and sleep. One of the two had the wisdom to see her humour
and keep silent, though the thought plunged him into a sea of ugly
reflections. It would be hard if, now that things were going well with
him, the lady alone should prove obdurate. For in all this politician's
daydreams a dainty figure walked by his side, sat at his table's head,
received his friends, fascinated austere ministers, and filled his pipe
of an evening at home.

Arthur was silent, and to him the lady turned in vain. He treated her
with an elaborate politeness which sat ill on his brusque manners, and
for the most part showed no desire to enliven the prevailing dulness.
But after dinner he carried her off to the gardens on the plea of fresh
air and a fine sunset, and the girl, who liked the boy, went gladly.
Then the reason of his silence was made plain. He dismayed her by
becoming lovesick.

"Tell me your age, Alice," he implored.

"I am twenty at Christmas time," said the girl, amazed at the question.

"And I am seventeen or very nearly that. Men sometimes marry women
older than themselves, and I don't see why I shouldn't. Oh, Alice,
promise that you will marry me. I never met a girl I liked so much, and
I am sure we should be happy."

"I am sure we should," said the girl, laughing. "You silly boy! what
put such nonsense in your head? I am far too old for you, and though I
like you very much, I don't in the least want to marry you." She seemed
to herself to have got out of a sober world into a sort of Mad
Tea-party, where people behaved like pantaloons and spoke in conundrums.

The boy flushed and his eyes grew cross. "Is it somebody else?" he
asked; at which the girl, with a memory of Mr. Stocks, reflected on the
dreadful monotony of men's ways.

A solution flashed upon his brain. "Are you going to marry Lewie
Haystoun?" he cried in a more cheerful voice. After all, Lewis was his
cousin, and a worthy rival.

Alice grew hotly uncomfortable. "I am not going to marry Mr. Lewis
Haystoun, and I am not going to talk to you any more." And she turned
round with a flaming face to the cool depths of the wood.

"Then it is that fellow Stocks. Oh, Lord!" groaned Arthur, irritated
into bad manners. "You can't mean it, Alice. He's not fit to black
your boots."

Some foolish impulse roused the girl to reply. She defended the very
man against whom all the evening she had been unreasonably bitter. "You
have no right to abuse him. He is your people's guest and a very
distinguished man, and you are only a foolish boy."

He paled below his sunburn. Now he believed the truth of the horrid
suspicion which had been fastening on his mind. "But--but," he
stammered, "the chap isn't a gentleman, you know."

The words quickened her vexation. A gentleman! The cant word, the
fetish of this ring of idle aristocrats--she knew the hollowness of the
whole farce. The democrat in her made her walk off with erect head and
bright eyes, leaving a penitent boy behind; while all the time a sick,
longing heart drove her to the edge of tears.

       *       *       *       *       *

The days dragged slowly for the girl. The brightness had gone out of
the wide, airy landscape, and the warm August days seemed chill. She
hated herself for the wrong impression she had left on the boy Arthur's
mind, but she was too proud to seek to erase it; she could but trust to
his honour for silence. If Lewis heard--the thought was too terrible to
face! He would resign himself to the inevitable; she knew the temper of
the man. Good form was his divinity, and never by word or look would he
attempt to win another man's betrothed. She must see him and learn the
truth: but he came no more to Glenavelin, and Etterick was a far cry for
a girl's fancy. Besides, the Twelfth had come and the noise of guns on
every hill spoke of other interests for the party at Etterick. Lewis
had forgotten his misfortunes, she told herself, and in the easy way of
the half-hearted found in bodily fatigue a drug for a mind but little in
need of it.

       *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon Lady Manorwater came over the lawn waving a letter. "Do
you want to go and picnic to-morrow, Alice?" she cried. "Lewis is to
be shooting on the moors at the head of the Avelin, and he wants us to
come and lunch at the Pool of Ness. He wants the whole party to come,
particularly Mr. Stocks, and he wants to know if you have forgiven him.
What can the boy mean?"

As the cheerful little lady paused, Alice's heart beat till she feared
betrayal. A sudden fierce pleasure burned in her veins. Did he still
seek her good opinion? Was he, as well as herself, miserable alone?
And then came like a stab the thought that he had joined her with
Stocks. Did he class her with that alien world of prigs and dullards?
She ceased to think, and avoiding her hostess and tea, ran over the
wooden bridge to the slope of hill and climbed up among the red heather.

A month ago she had been heart-whole and young, a simple child. The
same prejudices and generous beliefs had been hers, but held loosely
with a child's comprehension. But now this old world had been awakened
to arms against a dazzling new world of love and pleasure. She was led
captive by emotion, but the cold rook of scruple remained. She had read
of women surrendering all for love, but she felt dismally that this
happy gift had been denied her. Criticism, a fierce, vulgar antagonism,
impervious to sentiment, not to be exorcised by generous impulse--such
was her unlovely inheritance.

As she leaned over a pool of clear brown water in a little burn, where
scented ferns dipped and great rocks of brake and heather shadowed, she
saw her face and figure mirrored in every colour and line. Her
extraordinary prettiness delighted her, and then she laughed at her own
vanity. A lady of the pools, with the dark eyes and red-gold hair of
the north, surely a creature of dawn and the blue sky, and born for no
dreary self-communings. She returned, with her eyes clear and something
like laughter in her heart. To-morrow she should see him, to-morrow!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the utter burning silence of midday, when the man who toils loses
the skin of his face, and the man who rests tastes the joys of deep
leisure. The blue, airless sky, the level hilltops, the straight lines
of glen, the treeless horizon of the moors--no sharp ridge or cliff
caught the tired eye, only an even, sleep-lulled harmony. Five very
hungry, thirsty, and wearied men lay in the shadow above the Pool of
Ness, and prayed heaven for luncheon.

Lewis and George, Wratislaw and Arthur Mordaunt were there, and Doctor
Gracey, who loved a day on the hills. The keepers sat farther up the
slope smoking their master's tobacco--sure sign of a well-spent morning.
For the party had been on the moors by eight, and for five burning hours
had tramped the heather. All wore light and airy shooting-clothes save
the doctor, who had merely buckled gaiters over his professional black
trousers. All were burned to a tawny brown, and all lay in different
attitudes of gasping ease. Few things so clearly proclaim a man's past
as his posture when lounging. Arthur and Wratislaw lay, like townsmen,
prone on their faces with limbs rigidly straight. Lewis and George--old
campaigners both--lay a little on the side, arms lying loosely, and
knees a little bent. But one and all gasped, and swore softly at the
weather.

"Turn round, Tommy," said George, glancing up, "or you'll get sunstroke
at the back of the neck. I've had it twice, so I ought to know. You
want to wet your handkerchief and put it below your cap. Why don't you
wear a deer-stalker instead of that hideous jockey thing? Feugh, I am
warm and cross and thirsty. Lewis, I'll give your aunt five minutes,
and then I shall go down and drink that pool dry."

Lewis sat up and watched the narrow ribbon of road which coiled up the
glen to the pool's edge. He only saw some hundreds of yards down it,
but the prospect served to convince him that his erratic aunt was late.

"If my wishes had any effect," said George, "at this moment I should be
having iced champagne." And he cast a longing eye to the hampers.

"You won't get any," said Lewis. "We are not sybarites in this
glen, and our drinks are the drinks of simple folk. Do you
remember Cranstoun? I once went stalking with him, and we had
_pate-de-foie-gras_ for luncheon away up on the side of a rugged
mountain. That sort of thing sets my teeth on edge."

"Honest man!" cried George. "But here are your friends, and you had
better stir yourself and make them welcome."

Five very cool and leisurely beings were coming up the hill-path, for,
having driven to above the village, they had had an easy walk of
scarcely half a mile. Lewis's eye sought out a slight figure behind the
others, a mere gleam of pink and white. As she stepped out from the
path to the heather his eye was quick to seize her exquisite grace.
Other women arrayed themselves in loose and floating raiment, ribbons
and what not; but here was one who knew her daintiness, and made no
effort to cloak it. Trim, cool, and sweet, the coils of bright hair
above the white frock catching the noon sun--surely a lady to pray for
and toil for, one made for no facile wooing or easy conquest.

Lewis advanced to Mr. Stocks as soon as he had welcomed his aunt, and
shook hands cordially. "We seem to have lost sight of each other during
the last few days. I never congratulated you enough, but you probably
understood that my head was full of other things. You fought
splendidly, and I can't say I regret the issue. You will do much better
than I ever could."

Mr. Stocks smiled happily. The wheel of his fortunes was bringing him
very near the top. All the way up he had had Alice for a companion; and
that young woman, happy from a wholly different cause, had been
wonderfully gracious. He felt himself on Mr. Lewis Haystoun's level at
last, and the baffling sense of being on a different plane, which he had
always experienced in his company, was gone, he hoped, for ever. So he
became frank and confidential, forgot the pomp of his talk and his
inevitable principles, and assisted in laying lunch.

Lady Manorwater drove her nephew into a corner.

"Where have you been, Lewis, all these days? If you had been anybody
else, I should have said you were sulking. I must speak to you
seriously. Do you know that Alice has been breaking her heart for you?
I won't have the poor child made miserable, and though I don't in the
least want you to marry her, yet; I cannot have you playing with her."

Lewis had grown suddenly very red.

"I think you are mistaken," he said stiffly. "Miss Wishart does not
care a straw for me. If she is in love with anybody, it is with
Stocks."

"I am much older than you, my dear, and I should know better. I may as
well confess that I hoped it would be Mr. Stocks, but I can't
disbelieve my own eyes. The child becomes wretched whenever she hears
your name."

"You are making me miserably unhappy, because I can't believe a word of
it. I have made a howling fool of myself lately, and I can't be blind
to what she thinks of me."

Lady Manorwater looked pathetic. "Is the great Lewis ashamed of
himself?"

"Not a bit. I would do it again, for it is my nature to, as the hymn
says. I am cut all the wrong way, and my mind is my mind, you know.
But I can't expect Miss Wishart to take that point of view."

His aunt shook a hopeless head. "Your moral nature is warped, my dear.
It has always been the same since you were a very small boy at
Glenavelin, and read the Holy War on the hearthrug. You could never be
made to admire Emmanuel and his captains, but you set your heart on the
reprobates Jolly and Griggish. But get away and look after your guests,
sir."

Lunch came just in time to save five hungry men from an undignified end.
The Glenavelin party looked on with amusement as the ravenous appetites
were satisfied. Mr. Stocks, in a huge good humour, talked discursively
of sport. He inquired concerning the morning's bag, and called up
reminiscences of friends who had equalled or exceeded it. Lewis was
uncomfortable, for he felt that in common civility Mr. Stocks should
have been asked to shoot. He could not excuse himself with the plea of
an unintentional omission, for he had heard reports of the gentleman's
wonderful awkwardness with a gun, and he had not found it in his heart
to spoil the sport of five keen and competent hands.

He dared not look at Alice, for his aunt's words had set his pulses
beating hotly. For the last week he had wrestled with himself, telling
his heart that this lady was beyond his ken for ever and a day, for he
belonged by nature to the clan of despondent lovers. Before, she had
had all the icy reserve, he all the fervours. The hint of some spark of
fire behind the snows of her demeanour filled him with a delirious joy.
Every movement of her body pleased him, every word which she spoke, the
blitheness of her air and the ready kindness. The pale, pretty Afflint
girls, with their wit and their confidence, seemed old and womanly
compared with Alice. Let simplicity be his goddess
henceforth--simplicity and youth.

The Pool of Ness is a great, black cauldron of clear water, with berries
above and berries below, and high crags red with heather. There you may
find shade in summer, and great blaeberries and ripening rowans in the
wane of August. These last were the snare for Alice, who was ever an
adventurer. For the moment she was the schoolgirl again, and all sordid
elderly cares were tossed to the wind. She teased Doctor Gracey to that
worthy's delight, and she bade George and Arthur fetch and carry in a
way that made them her slaves for life. Then she unbent to Mr. Stocks
and made him follow her out on a peninsula of rock, above which hung a
great cluster of fruit. The unfortunate politician was not built for
this kind of exercise, and slipped and clung despairingly to every root
and cleft. Lewis followed aimlessly: her gaiety did not fit with his
mood; and he longed to have her to himself and know his fortune.

He passed the panting Stocks and came up with the errant lady.

"For heaven's sake be careful, Miss Wishart," he cried in alarm.
"That's an ugly black swirl down there."

The girl laughed in his face.

"Isn't the place glorious!" she cried. "It's as cool as winter, and
oh! the colours of that hillside. I'm going up to that birk-tree to
sit. Do you think I can do it?"

"I am coming up after you," said Lewis.

She stopped and regarded it with serious eyes. "It's hard, but I'm
going to try. It's harder than the Midburn that I climbed up on the
day I saw you fishing."

She remembered! Joy caught at his heart, and he laughed so gladly that
Alice turned round to look at him. Something in his eyes made her turn
her head away and scan the birk-tree again.

Then suddenly there was a slip of soil, a helpless clutch at fern and
heather, a cry of terror, and he was alone on the headland. The black
swirl was closing over the girl's head.

He had been standing rapt in a happy fancy, his thoughts far in a world
of their own, and his eyes vacant of any purpose. Startled to
alertness, he still saw vaguely, and for a second stood irresolute and
wondering. Then came another splash, and a heavy body flung itself into
the pool from lower down the rock. He knew the black head and the round
shoulders of Mr. Stocks.

The man caught the girl as she struggled to get out of the swirl and
with strong ugly strokes began to make for shore. Lewis stood with a
sick heart, slow to realize the horror which had overtaken him. She was
out of danger, though the man was swimming badly; dismally he noted the
fact of his atrocious swimming. But this was the hero; he had stood
irresolute. The thought burned him like a hot iron.

Half a dozen pairs of hands relieved the swimmer of his burden. Alice
was little the worse, a trifle pale, very draggled and unhappy, and
utterly tired. Lady Manorwater wept over her and kissed her, and hailed
the dripping Stocks as her preserver. Lewis alone stood back. He
satisfied himself that she was unhurt, and then, on the plea of getting
the carriage, set off down the glen with a very grey, quivering face.




CHAPTER XIII

THE PLEASURES OF A CONSCIENCE


It was half-way down the glen that the full ignominy of his position
came on Lewis with the shock of a thunder-clap. A hateful bitterness
against her preserver and the tricks of fate had been his solitary
feeling, till suddenly he realized the part he had played, and saw
himself for a naked coward. Coward he called himself--without
reflection; for in such a moment the mind thinks in crude colours and
bold lines of division. He set his teeth in his lip, and with a heart
sinking at the shameful thought stalked into the farm stables where the
Glenavelin servants were.

He could not return to the Pool. Alice was little hurt, so anxiety was
needless; better let him leave Mr. Stocks to enjoy his heroics in
peace. He would find an excuse; meanwhile, give him quiet and solitude
to digest his bitterness. He cursed himself for the unworthiness of his
thoughts. What a pass had he come to when he grudged a little _kudos_
to a rival, grudged it churlishly, childishly. He flung from him the
self-reproach. Other people would wonder at his ungenerousness, and his
sulky ill-nature. They would explain by the first easy discreditable
reason. What cared he for their opinion when he knew the far greater
shame in his heart?

For as he strode up the woodland path to Etterick the wrappings of
surface passion fell off from his view of the past hour, and he saw the
bald and naked ribs of his own incapacity. It was a trivial incident to
the world, but to himself a momentous self-revelation. He was a
dreamer, a weakling, a fool. He had hesitated in a crisis, and another
had taken his place. A thousand incidents of ready courage in past
sport and travel were forgotten, and on this single slip the terrible
indictment was founded. And the reason is at hand; this weakness had at
last drawn near to his life's great passion.

He found a deserted house, but its solitude was too noisy for his
unrest. Bidding the butler tell his friends that he had gone up the
hill, he crossed the sloping lawns and plunged into the thicket of
rhododendrons. Soon he was out on the heather, with the great slopes,
scorched with the heat, lying still and fragrant before him. He felt
sick and tired, and flung himself down amid the soft brackens.

It was the man's first taste of bitter mental anguish. Hitherto his
life had been equable and pleasant; his friends had adored him; the
world had flattered him; he had been at peace with his own soul. He had
known his failings, but laughed at them cavalierly; he stood on a
different platform from the struggling, conscience-stricken herd. Now
he had in very truth been flung neck and crop from the pedestal of his
self-esteem; and he lay groaning in the dust of abasement.

Wratislaw guessed with a friend's instinct his friend's disquietude, and
turned his steps to the hill when he had heard the butler's message. He
had known something of Lewis's imaginary self-upbraidings, and he was
prepared for them, but he was not prepared for the grey and wretched
face in the lee of the pinewood. A sudden suspicion that Lewis had been
guilty of some real dishonour flashed across his mind for the moment,
only to be driven out with scorn.

"Lewie, my son, what the deuce is wrong with you?" he cried.

The other looked at him with miserable eyes.

"I am beginning to find out my rottenness."

Wratislaw laughed in spite of himself. "What a fool to go making
psychological discoveries on such a day! Is it all over the little
misfortune at the pool?"

Tragedy grew in Lewis's eyes. "Don't laugh, old chap. You don't know
what I did. I let her fall into the water, and then I stood staring and
let another man--the other man--save her."

"Well, and what about that? He had a better chance than you. You
shouldn't grudge him his good fortune."

"Good Lord, man, you don't think it's that that's troubling me! I felt
murderous, but it wasn't on his account."

"Why not?" asked the older man drily. "You love the girl, and he's in
the running with you. What more?"

Lewis groaned. "How can I talk about loving her when my love is such a
trifling thing that it doesn't nerve me to action? I tell you I love
her body and soul. I live for her. The whole world is full of her.
She is never a second out of my thoughts. And yet I am so little of a
man that I let her come near death and never try to save her."

"But, confound it, man, it may have been mere absence of mind. You were
always an extraordinarily plucky chap." Wratislaw spoke irritably, for
it seemed to him sheer folly.

Lewis looked at him imploringly. "Can you not understand?" he cried.

Wratislaw did understand, and suddenly. The problem was subtler than he
had thought. Weakness was at the core of it, weakness revealed in
self-deception and self-accusation alike, the weakness of the finical
dreamer, the man with the unrobust conscience. But the weakness which
Lewis arraigned himself on was the very obvious failing of the diffident
and the irresolute. Wratislaw tried the path of boisterous
encouragement.

"Get up, you old fool, and come down to the house. You a coward! You
are simply a romancer with an unfortunate knack of tragedy." The man
must be laughed out of this folly. If he were not he would show the
self-accusing front to the world, and the Manorwaters, Alice,
Stocks--all save his chosen intimates--would credit him with a cowardice
of which he had no taint.

Arthur and George, resigned now to the inevitable lady, had seen in the
incident only the anxiety of a man for his beloved, and just a hint of
the ungenerous in his treatment of Mr. Stocks. They were not prepared
for the silent tragic figure which Wratislaw brought with him.

Arthur had a glint of the truth, but the obtuse George saw nothing. "Do
you know that you are going to have the Wisharts for neighbours for a
couple of months yet? Old Wishart has taken Glenavelin from the end of
August."

This would have been pleasant hearing at another time, but now it simply
drove home the nail of his bitter reflections. Alice would be near him,
a terrible reproach--she, the devotee of strength and competence. He
could not win her, and it is characteristic of the man that he had
ceased to think of Mr. Stocks as his rival. He would lose her to no
rival; to his ragged incapacity alone would his ill fortune be due.

He struggled to act the part of the cheerful host, and Wratislaw watched
his efforts grimly. He ate little at dinner, showed no desire to smoke,
and played billiards so badly that Wratislaw, an execrable player, won
the first and last game of his life. The victor took him out of doors
thereafter to walk on the moonlit, fragrant lawn.

"You are taking things to heart," said he.

"And I'm blessed if I can understand you. To me it's sheer mania."

"And to me it's the last link in a chain. I have suspected myself for
long, now I know myself and--ugh! the knowledge is a hideous thing."

Wratislaw stood regarding his companion seriously. "I wonder what will
happen to you, Lewie. Life is serious enough without inventing a
crotchety virtue to make it miserable."

"Can't you understand me, Tommy? It isn't that I'm a cad, it's that I
am a coward. I couldn't be a cad supposing I tried. These things are a
matter chiefly of blood and bone, and I am not made that way. But God
help me! I am a coward. I can't fight worth twopence. Look at my
performance a fortnight ago. The ordinary gardener's boy can beat me at
making love. I am full of generous impulses and sentiments, but what's
the use of them? Everything grows cold and I am a dumb icicle when it
comes to action. I knew all this before, but I thought I had kept my
bodily courage. I've had a good enough training, and I used to have
pluck."

"But you don't mean to tell me that it was funk that kept you out of the
pool to-day?" cried the impatient Wratislaw.

"How do I know that it wasn't?" came the wretched answer.

Wratislaw turned on his heel and made to go back.

"You're an infernal idiot, Lewie, and an infernal child. Thank heaven!
your friends know you better than you know yourself."

The next morning it was a different man who came down to breakfast. He
had lost his haggard air, and seemed to have forgotten the night's
episode.

"Was I very rude to everybody last night?" he asked. "I have a vague
recollection of playing the fool."

"You were particularly rude about yourself," said Wratislaw.

The young man laughed. "It's a way I have sometimes. It's an awkward
thing when a man's foes are of his own household."

The others seemed to see a catch in his mirth, a ring as of something
hollow. He opened some letters, and looked up from one with a twitching
face and a curious droop of the eyelids. "Miss Wishart is all right,"
he said. "My aunt says that she is none the worse, but that Stocks has
caught a tremendous cold. An unromantic ending!"

The meal ended, they wandered out to the lawn to smoke, and Wratislaw
found himself standing with a hand on his host's shoulder. He noticed
something distraught in his glance and air.

"Are you fit again to-day?" he asked.

"Quite fit, thanks," said Lewis, but his face belied him. He had
forgiven himself the incident of yesterday, but no proof of a non
sequitur could make him relinquish his dismal verdict. The wide morning
landscape lay green and soothing at his feet. Down in the glen men were
winning the bog-hay; up on the hill slopes they were driving lambs; the
Avelin hurried to the Gled, and beyond was the great ocean and the
infinite works of man. The whole brave bustling world was astir, little
and great ships hasting out of port, the soldier scaling the breach, the
adventurer travelling the deserts. And he, the fool, had no share in
this braggart heritage. He could not dare to look a man straight in the
face, for like the king in the old fable he had lost his soul.




CHAPTER XIV

A GENTLEMAN IN STRAITS


The fall of the leaf found Etterick very full of people, and new
dwellers in Glenavelin. The invitations were of old standing, but Lewis
found their fulfilment a pleasant trick of Fortune's. To keep a
bustling household in good spirits leaves small room for brooding, and
he was famous for his hospitality. The partridges were plentiful that
year, and a rainless autumn had come on the heels of a fine summer. So
life went pleasantly with all, and the master of the place cloaked a
very sick heart under a ready good-humour.

His thoughts were always on Glenavelin, and when he happened to be near
it he used to look with anxious eyes for a slim figure which was rarely
out of his fancy. He had not seen Alice since the accident, save for
one short minute, when riding from Gledsmuir he had passed her one
afternoon at the Glenavelin gates. He had earnestly desired to stop,
but his curious cowardice had made him pass with a lifted hat and a
hasty smile. Could he have looked back, he might have seen the girl
watching him out of sight with tearful eyes. To himself he was the
hopeless lover, and she the scornful lady, while she in her own eyes was
the unhappy girl for whom the soldier in the song shakes his bridle
reins and cries an eternal adieu.

Matters did not improve when the Manorwaters left and Mr. Wishart
himself came down, bringing with him Stocks, a certain Mr. Andrews and
his wife, and an excellent young man called Thompson. All were pleasant
people, with the manners which the world calls hearty, well-groomed,
presentable folk, who enjoyed this life and looked forward to a better.

Mr. Wishart explored the place thoroughly the first evening, and
explained that he was thankful indeed that he had been led to take it.
He was a handsome man with a worn, elderly face, a square jaw and
somewhat weary eyes. It is given to few men to make a great fortune and
not bear the signs of it on their persons.

"I expect you enjoyed staying with Lady Manorwater, Alice?" Mrs.
Andrews declared at dinner. "They are very plain people, aren't they,
to be such great aristocrats?

"I suppose so," said the girl listlessly.

"I once met Lady Manorwater at Mrs. Cookson's at afternoon tea. I
thought she was badly dressed. You know Manorwater, don't you, George?"
said the lady to her husband, with the boldness which comes from the use
of a peer's name without the handle.

"Oh yes, I know him well. I have met him at the Liberal Club dinners,
and I was his chairman once when he spoke on Irish affairs. A
delightful man!"

"I suppose they would have a pleasant house-party when you were here, my
dear?" asked the lady. "And of course you had the election. What fun!
And what a victory for you, Mr. Stocks! I hear you beat the greatest
landowner in the district."

Mr. Stocks smiled and glanced at Alice. The girl flushed; she could
not help it; and she hated Mr. Stocks for his look.

Her father spoke for the first time. "What is the young man like, Mr.
Stocks? I hear he is very proud and foolish, the sort of over-educated
type which the world has no use for."

"I like him," said Mr. Stocks dishonestly. "He fought like a
gentleman."

"These people are so rarely gentlemen," said Mrs. Andrews, proud of her
high attitude. "I suppose his father made his money in coal and bought
the land from some poor dear old aristocrat. It is so sad to think of
it. And that sort of person is always over-educated, for you see they
have not the spirit of the old families and they bury themselves in
books." Mrs. Andrews's father had kept a crockery shop, but his
daughter had buried the memory.

Mr. Wishart frowned. The lady had been asked down for her husband's
sake, and he did not approve of this chatter about family. Mr. Stocks,
who was about to explain the Haystoun pedigree, caught his host's eye
and left the dangerous subject untouched.

"You said in your letters that they had been kind to you at this young
man's place. We must ask him down here to dinner, Alice. Oh, and that
reminds me I found a letter from him to-day asking me to shoot. I don't
go in for that sort of thing, but you young fellows had better try it."

Mr. Stocks declined, said he had given it up. Mr. Thompson said,
"Upon my word I should like to," and privately vowed to forget the
invitation. He distrusted his prowess with a gun.

"By the by, was he not at the picnic when you saved my daughter's life?
I can never thank you enough, Stocks. What should I have done without
my small girl?"

"Yes, he was there. In fact he was with Miss Alice at the moment she
slipped."

He may not have meant it, but the imputation was clear, and it stirred
one fiery expostulation. "Oh, but he hadn't time before Mr. Stocks
came after me," she began, and then feeling it ungracious towards that
gentleman to make him share a possibility of heroism with another, she
was silent. More, a lurking fear which had never grown large enough for
a suspicion, began to catch at her heart. Was it possible that Lewis
had held back?

For a moment the candle-lit room vanished from her eyes. She saw the
warm ledge of rock with the rowan berries above. She saw his flushed,
eager face--it was her last memory before she had fallen. Surely
never--never was there cowardice in those eyes!

Mrs. Andrews's vulgarities and her husband's vain repetitions began to
pall upon the anxious girl. The young Mr. Thompson talked shrewdly
enough on things of business, and Mr. Stocks abated something of his
pomposity and was honestly amiable. These were her own people, the
workers for whom she had craved. And yet--were they so desirable? Her
father's grave, keen face pleased her always, but what of the others?
The radiant gentlewomen whom she had met with the Manorwaters seemed to
belong to another world than this of petty social struggling and awkward
ostentation. And the men! Doubtless they were foolish, dilettanti,
barbarians of sport, half-hearted and unpractical! And she shut her
heart to any voice which would defend them.

Lewis drove over to dine some four days later with dismal presentiments.
The same hopeless self-contempt which had hung over him for weeks was
still weighing on his soul. He dreaded the verdict of Alice's eyes, and
in a heart which held only kindness he looked for a cold criticism. It
was this despair which made his position hopeless. He would never take
his chance; there could be no opportunity for the truth to become clear
to both; for in his plate-armour of despair he was shielded against the
world. Such was his condition to the eyes of a friend; to himself he
was the common hopeless lover who sighed for a stony mistress.

He noticed changes in Glenavelin. Businesslike leather pouches stood in
the hall, and an unwontedly large pile of letters lay on a table. The
drawing-room was the same as ever, but in the dining-room an escritoire
had been established which groaned under a burden of papers. Mr.
Wishart puzzled and repelled him. It was a strong face, but a cold and
a stupid one, and his eyes had the glassy hardness of the man without
vision. He was bidden welcome, and thanked in a tactless way for his
kindness to Mr. Wishart's daughter. Then he was presented to Mrs.
Andrews, and his courage sank as he bowed to her.

At table the lady twitted him with graceful badinage. "Alice and you
must have had a gay time, Mr. Haystoun. Why, you've been seeing each
other constantly for months. Have you become great friends?" She
exerted herself, for, though he might be a parvenu, he was undeniably
handsome.

Mr. Stocks explained that Mr. Haystoun had organized wonderful picnic
parties. The lady clapped her many-ringed hands, and declared that he
must repeat the experiment. "For I love picnics," she said, "I love the
simplicity and the fresh air and the rippling streams. And washing up
is fun, and it is such a great chance for you young men." And she cast a
coy glance over her shoulder.

"Do you live far off, Mr. Haystoun?" she asked repeatedly. "Four
miles? Oh, that's next door. We shall come and see you some day. We
have just been staying with the Marshams--Mr. Marsham, you know, the
big cotton people. Very vulgar, but the house is charming. It was so
exciting, for the elections were on, and the Hestons, who are the great
people in that part of the country, were always calling. Dear Lady
Julia is so clever. Did you ever meet Mr. Marsham, by any chance?"

"Not that I remember. I know the Hestons of course. Julia is my
cousin."

The lady was silenced. "But I thought," she murmured. "I thought--they
were--" She broke off with a cough.

"Yes, I spent a good many of my school holidays at Heston."

Alice broke in with a question about the Manorwaters. The youthful Mr.
Thompson, who, apart from his solicitor's profession, was a devotee of
cricket, asked in a lofty way if Mr. Haystoun cared for the game.

"I do rather. I'm not very good, but we raised an eleven this year in
the glen which beat Gledsmuir."

The notion pleased the gentleman. If a second match could be arranged
he might play and show his prowess. In all likelihood this solemn and
bookish laird, presumably brought up at home, would be a poor enough
player.

"I played a lot at school," he said. "In fact I was in the Eleven for
two years and I played in the Authentics match, and once against the
Eton Ramblers. A strong lot they were."

"Let me see. Was that about seven years ago? I seem to remember."

"Seven years ago," said Mr. Thompson. "But why? Did you see the
match?"

"No, I wasn't in the match; I had twisted my ankle, jumping. But I
captained the Ramblers that season, so I remember it."

Respect grew large in Mr. Thompson's eyes. Here were modesty and
distinction equally mated. The picture of the shy student had gone from
his memory.

"If you like to come up to Etterick we might get up a match from the
village," said Lewis courteously. "Ourselves with the foresters and
keepers against the villagers wouldn't be a bad arrangement."

To Alice the whole conversation struck a jarring note. His eye kindled
and he talked freely on sport. Was it not but a new token of his
incurable levity? Mr. Wishart, who had understood little of the talk,
found in this young man strange stuff to shape to a politician's ends.
Contrasted with the gravity of Mr. Stocks, it was a schoolboy beside a
master.

"I have been reading," he said slowly, "reading a speech of the new
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I cannot understand the temper of
mind which it illustrates. He talks of the Bosnian war, and a brave
people struggling for freedom, as if it were merely a move in some
hideous diplomatists' game. A man of that sort cannot understand a
moral purpose."

"Tommy--I mean to say Mr. Wratislaw--doesn't believe in Bosnian
freedom, but you know he is a most ardent moralist."

"I do not understand," said Mr. Wishart drily.

"I mean that personally he is a Puritan, a man who tries every action of
his life by a moral standard. But he believes that moral standards vary
with circumstances."

"Pernicious stuff, sir. There is one moral law. There is one Table of
Commandments."

"But surely you must translate the Commandments into the language of the
occasion. You do not believe that 'Thou shalt not kill' is absolute in
every case?"

"I mean that except in the God-appointed necessity of war, and in the
serving of criminal justice, killing is murder."

"Suppose a man goes travelling," said Lewis with abstracted eyes, "and
has a lot of native servants. They mutiny, and he shoots down one or
two. He saves his life, he serves, probably, the ends of civilization.
Do you call that murder?"

"Assuredly. Better, far better that he should perish in the wilderness
than that he should take the law into his own hands and kill one of
God's creatures."

"But law, you know, is not an absolute word."

Mr. Wishart scented danger. "I can't argue against your subtleties,
but my mind is clear; and I can respect no man who could think
otherwise."

Lewis reddened and looked appealingly at Alice. She, too, was
uncomfortable. Her opinions sounded less convincing when stated
dogmatically by her father.

Mr. Stocks saw his chance and took it.

"Did you ever happen to be in such a crisis as you speak of, Mr.
Haystoun? You have travelled a great deal."

"I have never had occasion to put a man to death," said Lewis, seeing
the snare and scorning to avoid it.

"But you have had difficulties?"

"Once I had to flog a couple of men. It was not pleasant, and worst of
all it did no good."

"Irrational violence seldom does," grunted Mr. Wishart.

"No, for, as I was going to say, it was a clear case where the men
should have been put to death. They had deserved it, for they had
disobeyed me, and by their disobedience caused the death of several
innocent people. They decamped shortly afterwards, and all but managed
to block our path. I blame myself still for not hanging them."

A deep silence hung over the table. Mr. Wishart and the Andrews stared
with uncomprehending faces. Mr. Stocks studied his plate, and Alice
looked on the speaker with eyes in which unwilling respect strove with
consternation.

Only the culprit was at his ease. The discomfort of these good people
for a moment amused him. Then the sight of Alice's face, which he
wholly misread, brought him back to decent manners.

"I am afraid I have shocked you," he said simply. "If one knocks about
the world one gets a different point of view."

Mr. Wishart restrained a flood of indignation with an effort. "We
won't speak on the subject," he said. "I confess I have my prejudices."

Mr. Stocks assented with a smile and a sigh. In the drawing-room
afterwards Lewis was presented with the olive-branch of peace. He had
to attend Mrs. Andrews to the piano and listen to her singing of a
sentimental ballad with the face of a man in the process of enjoyment.
Soon he pleaded the four miles of distance and the dark night, and took
his leave. His spirits had in a measure returned. Alice had not been
gracious, but she had shown no scorn. And her spell at the first sight
of her was woven a thousand-fold over his heart.

He found her alone for one moment in the hall.

"Alice--Miss Wishart, may I come and see you? It is a pity such near
neighbours should see so little of each other."

His hesitation made him cloak a despairing request in the garb of a
conventional farewell.

The girl had the sense to pierce the disguise. "You may come and see
us, if you like, Mr. Haystoun. We shall be at home all next week."

"I shall come very soon," he cried, and he was whirled away from the
light; with the girl's face framed in the arch of the doorway making a
picture for his memory.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the others had gone to bed, Stocks and Mr. Wishart sat up over a
last pipe by the smoking-room fire.

The younger man moved uneasily in his chair. He had something to say
which had long lain on his mind, and he was uncertain of its reception.

"You have been for a long time my friend, Mr. Wishart," he began. "You
have done me a thousand kindnesses, and I only hope I have not proved
myself unworthy of them."

Mr. Wishart raised his eyebrows at the peculiar words. "Certainly you
have not," he said. "I regard you as the most promising by far of the
younger men of my acquaintance, and any little services I may have
rendered have been amply repaid me."

The younger man bowed and looked into the fire.

"It is very kind of you to speak so," he said. "I have been wondering
whether I might not ask for a further kindness, the greatest favour
which you could confer upon me. Have you made any plans for your
daughter's future?"

Mr. Wishart sat up stiffly on the instant. "You mean?" he said.

"I mean that I love Alice ... your daughter ... and I wish to make
her my wife. If you will give me your consent, I will ask her."

"But--but," said the old man, stammering. "Does the girl know anything
of this?"

"She knows that I love her, and I think she will not be unkind."

"I don't know that I object," said Mr. Wishart after a long pause. "In
fact I am very willing, and I am very glad that you had the good manners
to speak to me first. Yes, upon my word, sir, I am pleased. You have
had a creditable career, and your future promises well. My girl will
help you, for though I say it, she will not be ill-provided for. I
respect your character and I admire your principles, and I give you my
heartiest good wishes."

Mr. Stocks rose and held out his hand. He felt that the interview
could not be prolonged in the present fervour of gratitude.

"Had it been that young Haystoun now," said Mr. Wishart, "I should
never have given my consent. I resolved long ago that my daughter
should never marry an idle man. I am a plain man, and I care nothing
for social distinctions."

But as Mr. Stocks left the room the plain man glanced after him, and
sitting back suffered a moment's reflection. The form of this worker
contrasted in his mind with the figure of the idler who had that evening
graced his table. A fool, doubtless, but a fool with an air and a
manner! And for one second he allowed himself to regret that he was to
acquire so unromantic a son-in-law.




CHAPTER XV

THE NEMESIS OF A COWARD


Two days later the Andrews drove up the glen to Etterick, taking with
them the unwilling Mr. Wishart. Alice had escaped the ordeal with some
feigned excuse, and the unfortunate Mr. Thompson, deeply grieving, had
been summoned by telegram from cricket to law. The lady had chattered
all the way up the winding moorland road, crying out banalities about
the pretty landscape, or questioning her very ignorant companions about
the dwellers in Etterick. She was full of praises for the house when it
came in view; it was "quaint," it was "charming," it was everything
inappropriate. But the amiable woman's prattle deserted her when she
found herself in the cold stone hall with the great portraits and the
lack of all modern frippery. It was so plainly a man's house, so
clearly a place of tradition, that her pert modern speech seemed for one
moment a fatuity.

It was an off-day for the shooters, and so for a miracle there were men
in the drawing-room at tea-time. The hostess for the time was an aunt
of Lewis's, a certain Mrs. Alderson, whose husband (the famous big-game
hunter) had but recently returned from the jaws of a Zambesi lion.
George's sister, Lady Clanroyden, a tall, handsome girl in a white
frock, was arranging flowers in a bowl, and on the sill of the open
window two men were basking in the sun. From the inner drawing-room
there came an echo of voices and laughter. The whole scene was sunny
and cheerful, youth and age, gay frocks and pleasant faces amid the old
tapestry and mahogany of a moorland house.

Mr. Andrews sat down solemnly to talk of the weather with the two men,
who found him a little dismal. One--he of the Zambesi lion episode--was
grizzled, phlegmatic, and patient, and in no way critical of his
company. So soon he was embarked on extracts from his own experience to
which Mr. Andrews, who had shares in some company in the neighbourhood,
listened with flattering attention. Mrs. Alderson set herself to
entertain Mr. Wishart, and being a kindly, simple person, found the
task easy. They were soon engaged in an earnest discussion of
unsectarian charities.

Lady Clanroyden, with an unwilling sense of duty, devoted herself to
Mrs. Andrews. That simpering matron fell into a vein of confidences
and in five brief minutes had laid bare her heart. Then came the
narrative of her recent visit to the Marshams, and the inevitable
mention of the Hestons.

"Oh, you know the Hestons?" said Lady Clanroyden, brightening.

"Very well indeed." The lady smiled, looking round to make sure that
Lewis was not in the room.

"Julia is here, you know. Julia, come and speak to your friends."

A dark girl in mourning came forward to meet the expansive smile of Mrs.
Andrews. Earnestly the lady hoped that she remembered the single brief
meeting on which she had built a fictitious acquaintance, and was
reassured when the newcomer shook hands with her pleasantly. Truth to
tell, Lady Julia had no remembrance of her face, but was too
good-natured to be honest.

"And how is your dear mother? I was so sorry to hear from a mutual
friend that she had been unwell." How thankful she was that she read
each week various papers which reported people's doings!

A sense of bewilderment lurked in her heart. Who was this Lewis
Haystoun who owned such a house and such a kindred? The hypothesis of
money made in coal seemed insufficient, and with much curiosity she set
herself to solve the problem.

"Is Mr. Haystoun coming back to tea?" she asked by way of a preface.

"No, he has had to go to Gledsmuir. We are all idle this afternoon, but
he has a landowner's responsibilities."

"Have his family been here long? I seem never to have heard the name."

Lady Clanroyden looked a little surprised. "Yes, they have been rather
a while. I forget how many centuries, but a good many. It was about
this place, you know, that the old ballad of 'The Riding of Etterick'
was made, and a Haystoun was the hero."

Mrs. Andrews knew nothing about old ballads, but she feigned a happy
reminiscence.

"It is so sad his being beaten by Mr. Stocks," she declared. "Of
course an old county family should provide the members for a district.
They have the hearts of the people with them."

"Then the hearts of the people have a funny way of revealing
themselves," Lady Clanroyden laughed. "I'm not at all sorry that Lewie
was beaten. He is the best man in the world, but one wants to shake him
up. His motto is 'Thole,' and he gets too few opportunities of
'tholing.'"

"You all call him 'Lewie,'" commented the lady. "How popular he must
be!"

Mabel Clanroyden laughed. "I have known him ever since I was a small
girl in a short frock and straight-brushed hair. He was never anything
else than Lewie to his friends. Oh, here is my wandering brother and my
only son returned," and she rose to catch up a small, self-possessed boy
of some six years, who led the flushed and reluctant George in tow.

The small boy was very dirty, ruddy and cheerful. He had torn his
blouse, and scratched his brow, and the crown of his straw hat had
parted company with the brim.

"George," said his sister severely, "have you been corrupting the
manners of my son? Where have you been?"

The boy--he rejoiced in the sounding name of Archibald--slapped a small
leg with a miniature whip, and counterfeited with great skill the pose
of the stable-yard. He slowly unclenched a smutty fist and revealed
three separate shillings.

"I won um myself," he explained.

"Is it highway robbery?" asked his mother with horrified eyes.
"Archibald, have you stopped a coach, or held up a bus or anything of
the kind?"

The child unclenched his hand again, beamed on his prize, smiled
knowingly at the world, and shut it.

"What has the dreadful boy been after? Oh, tell me, George, please. I
will try to bear it."

"We fell in with a Sunday-school picnic along in the glen, and Archie
made me take him there. And he had tea--I hope the little chap won't be
ill, by the by. And he made a speech or a recitation or something of
the sort. Nobody understood it, but it went down like anything."

"And do you mean to say that the people gave him money, and you allowed
him to take it?" asked an outraged mother.

"He won it," said George. "Won it in fair fight. He was second in the
race under twelve, and first in the race under ten. They gave him a
decent handicap, and he simply romped home. That chap can run, Mabel.
He tried the sack race, too, but the first time he slipped altogether
inside the thing and had to be taken out, yelling. But he stuck to it
like a Trojan, and at the second shot he got started all right, and
would have won it if he hadn't lost his head and rolled down a bank. He
isn't scratched much, considering he fell among whins. That also
explains the state of his hat."

"George, you shall never, never, as long as I live, take my son out with
you again. It is a wonder the poor child escaped with his life. You
have not a scrap of feeling. I must take the boy away or he will shame
me before everybody. Come and talk to Mrs. Andrews, George. May I
introduce my brother, Mr. Winterham?"

George, who wanted to smoke, sat down unwillingly in the chair which his
sister had left. The lady, whose airs and graces were all for men, put
on her most bewitching manner.

"Your sister and I have just been talking about this exquisite place,
Mr. Winterham. It must be delightful to live in such a centre of old
romance. That lovely 'Riding of Etterick' has been running in my head
all the way up."

George privately wondered at the confession. The peculiarly tragic and
ghastly fragments which made up "The Riding of Etterick," seemed
scarcely suited to haunt a lady's memory.

"Had you a long drive?" he asked in despair for a topic.

"Only from Glenavelin."

He awoke to interest. "Are you staying at Glenavelin just now? The
Wisharts are in it, are they not? We were a great deal about the place
when the Manorwaters were there."

"Oh yes. I have heard about Lady Manorwater from Alice Wishart. She
must be a charming woman; Alice cannot speak enough about her."

George's face brightened. "Miss Wishart is a great friend of mine, and
a most awfully good sort."

"And as you are a great friend of hers I think I may tell you a great
secret," and the lady patted him playfully. "Our pretty Alice is going
to be married."

George was thoroughly roused to attention. "Who is the man?" he asked
sharply.

"I think I may tell you," said Mrs. Andrews, enjoying her sense of
importance. "It is Mr. Stocks, the new member."

George restrained with difficulty a very natural oath. Then he looked
at his informant and saw in her face only silliness and truth. For the
good woman had indeed persuaded herself of the verity of her fancy. Mr.
Stocks had told her that he had her father's consent and good wishes,
and misinterpreting the girl's manner she had considered the affair
settled.

It was unfortunate that Mr. Wishart at this moment showed such obvious
signs of restlessness that the lady rose to take her leave, otherwise
George might have learned the truth. After the Glenavelin party had
gone he wandered out to the lawn, pulling his moustache in vast
perplexity and cursing the twisted world. He had no guess at Lewis's
manner of wooing; to him it had seemed the simple, straightforward love
which he thought beyond resistance. And now, when he learned of this
melancholy issue, he was sore at heart for his friend.

He was awakened from his reverie by Lewis himself, who, having ridden
straight to the stables, was now sauntering towards the house. A trim
man looks at his best in riding clothes, and Lewis was no exception. He
was flushed with sun and motion, his spirits were high, for all the
journey he had been dreaming of a coming meeting with Alice, and the
hope which had suddenly increased a thousand-fold. George marked his
mood, and with a regret at his new role caught him by the arm and
checked him.

"I say, old man, don't go in just yet. I want to tell you something,
and I think you had better hear it now."

Lewis turned obediently, amazed by the gravity of his friend's face.

"Some people came up from Glenavelin this afternoon and among them a
Mrs. Andrews, whom I had a talk to. She told me that Al--Miss Wishart
is engaged to that fellow Stocks."

Lewis's face whitened and he turned away his eyes. He could not credit
it. Two days ago she had been free; he could swear it; he remembered
her eyes at parting. Then came the thought of his blindness, and in a
great horror of self-mistrust he seemed to see throughout it all his
criminal folly. He, poor fool, had been pleasing himself with dreams of
a meeting, when all the while the other man had been the real lover.
She had despised him, spared not a thought for him save as a pleasing
idler; and he--that he should ever have ventured for one second to hope!
Curiously enough, for the first time he thought of Stocks with respect;
to have won the girl seemed in itself the proof of dignity and worth.

"Thanks very much for telling me. I am glad I know. No, I don't think
I'll go into the house yet."

       *       *       *       *       *

The days passed and Alice waited with anxious heart for the coming of
the very laggard Lewis. To-day he will come, she said each morning; and
evening found her--poor heart!--still expectant. She told herself a
thousand times that it was sheer folly. He meant nothing, it was a mere
fashion of speech; and then her heart would revolt and bid common sense
be silent. He came indeed with some of the Etterick party on a formal
call, but this was clearly not the fulfilment of his promise. So the
girl waited and despaired, while the truant at Etterick was breaking his
heart for the unattainable.

Mr. Stocks, having won the official consent, conducted his suit with
commendable discretion. Suit is the word for the performance, so full
was it of elaborate punctilios. He never intruded upon her unhappiness.
A studied courtesy, a distant thoughtfulness were his only compliments.
But when he found her gayer, then would he strive with subtle delicacies
of manner to make clear the part he desired to play.

The girl saw his kindness and was grateful. In the revulsion against
the Andrews he seemed a link with the more pleasant sides of life, and
soon in her despair and anger his modest merits took heroic proportions
in her eyes. She forgot her past dislike; she thought only of this, the
simple good man, contrasted with the showy and fickle-hearted--true
metal against glittering tinsel. His very weaknesses seemed homely and
venial. He was of her own world, akin to the things which deep down in
her soul she knew she must love to the last. It is to the credit of the
man's insight that he saw the mood and took pains to foster it.

Twice he asked her to marry him. The first time her heart was still
sore with disappointment and she refused--yet half-heartedly.

He waited his time and when the natural cheerfulness of her temper was
beginning to rise, he again tried his fortune.

"I cannot," she cried. "I cannot. I like you very much, but oh, it is
too much to ask me to marry you."

"But I love you with all my heart, Alice." And the honesty of his tone
and the distant thought of a very different hope brought the tears to
her eyes.

He had forgotten all pompous dreams and the stilted prospects with which
he had aforetime hoped to beguile his wife. The man was plain and
simple now, a being very much on fire with an honest passion. He may
have left her love-cold, but he touched the sympathy which in a true
woman is love's nearest neighbour. Before she knew herself she had
promised, and had been kissed respectfully and tenderly by her delighted
lover. For a moment she felt something like joy, and then, with a
dreadful thought of the baselessness of her pleasure, walked slowly
homewards by his side.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning Alice rose with a dreary sense of the irrevocable. A
door seemed to have closed behind her, and the future stretched before
her in a straight dusty path with few nooks and shadows. This was not
the blithe morning of betrothal she had looked for. The rapturous
outlook on life which she had dreamed of was replaced by a cold and
business-like calculation of profits. The rose garden of the "god
unconquered in battle" was exchanged for a very shoddy and huckstering
paradise.

Mrs. Andrews claimed her company all the morning, and with the
pertinacity of her kind soon guessed the very obvious secret. Her
gushing congratulations drove the girl distracted. She praised the good
Stocks, and Alice drank in the comfort of such words with greedy ears.
From one young man she passed to another, and hung lovingly over the
perfections of Mr. Haystoun. "He has the real distinction, dear," she
cried, "which you can never mistake. It only belongs to old blood and
it is quite inimitable. His friends are so charming, too, and you can
always tell a man by his people. It is so pleasant to fall in with old
acquaintances again. That dear Lady Clanroyden promised to come over
soon. I quite long to see her, for I feel as if I had known her for
ages."

After lunch Alice fled the house and sought her old refuge--the hills.
There she would find the deep solitude for thought. She was not
broken-hearted, though she grieved now and again with a blind longing of
regret. But she was confused and shaken; the landmarks of her vision
seemed to have been removed, and she had to face the grim narrowing-down
of hopes which is the sternest trial for poor mortality.

Autumn's hand was lying heavy on the hillsides. Bracken was yellowing,
heather passing from bloom, and the clumps of wild-wood taking the soft
russet and purple of decline. Faint odours of wood smoke seemed to flit
over the moor, and the sharp lines of the hill fastnesses were drawn as
with a graving-tool against the sky. She resolved to go to the Midburn
and climb up the cleft, for the place was still a centre of memory. So
she kept for a mile to the Etterick road, till she came in view of the
little stone bridge where the highway spans the moorland waters.

There had been intruders in Paradise before her. Broken bottles and
scraps of paper were defacing the hill turf, and when she turned to get
to the water's edge she found the rushy coverts trampled on every side.
From somewhere among the trees came the sound of singing--a silly
music-hall catch. It was a sharp surprise, and the girl, in horror at
the profanation, was turning in all haste to leave.

But the Fates had prepared an adventure. Three half-tipsy men came
swinging down the slope, their arms linked together, and bowlers set
rakishly on the backs of their heads. They kept up the chorus of the
song which was being sung elsewhere, and they suited their rolling gait
to the measure.

"For it ain't Maria," came the tender melody; and the reassuring phrase
was repeated a dozen times. Then by ill-luck they caught sight of the
astonished Alice, and dropping their musical efforts they hailed her
familiarly. Clearly they were the stragglers of some picnic from the
town, the engaging type of gentleman who on such occasions is drunk by
midday. They were dressed in ill-fitting Sunday clothes, great flowers
beamed from their button-holes, and after the fashion of their kind
their waistcoats were unbuttoned for comfort. The girl tried to go back
by the way she had come, but to her horror she found that she was
intercepted. The three gentlemen commanded her retreat.

They seemed comparatively sober, so she tried entreaty. "Please, let me
pass," she said pleasantly. "I find I have taken the wrong road."

"No, you haven't, dearie," said one of the men, who from a superior
neatness of apparel might have been a clerk. "You've come the right
road, for you've met us. And now you're not going away." And he came
forward with a protecting arm.

Alice, genuinely frightened, tried to cross the stream and escape by the
other side. But the crossing was difficult, and she slipped at the
outset and wet her ankles. One of the three lurched into the water
after her, and withdrew with sundry oaths.

The poor girl was in sad perplexity. Before was an ugly rush of water
and a leap beyond her strength; behind, three drunken men, their mouths
full of endearment and scurrility. She looked despairingly to the level
white road for the Perseus who should deliver her.

And to her joy the deliverer was not wanting. In the thick of the idiot
shouting of the trio there came the clink-clank of a horse's feet and a
young man came over the bridge. He saw the picture at a glance and its
meaning; and it took him short time to be on his feet and then over the
broken stone wall to the waterside. Suddenly to the girl's delight
there appeared at the back of the roughs the inquiring, sunburnt face of
Lewis.

The men turned and stared with hanging jaws. "Now, what the dickens is
this?" he cried, and catching two of their necks he pulled their heads
together and then flung them apart.

The three seemed sobered by the apparition. "And what the h-ll is your
business?" they cried conjointly; and one, a dark-browed fellow, doubled
his fists and advanced.

Lewis stood regarding them with a smiling face and very bright, cross
eyes. "Are you by way of insulting this lady? If you weren't drunk,
I'd teach you manners. Get out of this in case I forget myself."

For answer the foremost of the men hit out. A glance convinced Lewis
that there was enough sobriety to make a fight of it. "Miss
Wishart ... Alice," he cried, "come back and go down to the road
and see to my horse, please. I'll be down in a second."

The girl obeyed, and so it fell out that there was no witness to that
burn-side encounter. It was a complex fight and it lasted for more than
a second. Two of the men had the grace to feel ashamed of themselves
half-way through, and retired from the contest with shaky limbs and
aching faces. The third had to be assisted to his feet in the end by
his antagonist. It was not a good fight, for the three were
pasty-faced, overgrown young men, in no training and stupid with liquor.
But they pressed hard on Lewis for a little, till he was compelled in
self-defence to treat them as fair opponents.

He came down the road in a quarter of an hour with a huge rent in his
coat-sleeve and a small cut on his forehead. He was warm and
breathless, still righteously indignant at the event, and half-ashamed
of so degrading an encounter. He found the girl standing statue-like,
holding the bridle-rein, and looking into the distance with vacant eyes.

"Are you going back to Glenavelin, Miss Wishart?" he asked. "I think I
had better go with you if you will allow me."

Alice mutely assented and walked beside him while he led his horse. He
could think of nothing to say. The whole world lay between them now,
and there was no single word which either could speak without showing
some trace of the tragic separation.

It was the girl who first broke the silence.

"I want to thank you with all my heart," she stammered. And then by an
awkward intuition she looked in his face and saw written there all the
hopelessness and longing which he was striving to conceal. For one
moment she saw clearly, and then the crooked perplexities of the world
seemed to stare cruelly in her eyes. A sob caught her voice, and before
she was conscious of her action she laid a hand on Lewis's arm and burst
into tears.

The sight was so unexpected that it deprived him of all power of action.
Then came the fatally easy solution that it was but reaction of
over-strained nerves. Always ill at ease in a woman's presence, a
woman's tears reduced him to despair. He stroked her hair gently as he
would have quieted a favourite horse.

"I am so sorry that these brutes have frightened you. But here we are
at Glenavelin gates."

And all the while his heart was crying out to him to clasp her in his
arms, and the words which trembled on his tongue were the passionate
consolations of a lover.




CHAPTER XVI

A MOVEMENT OF THE POWERS


At Mrs. Montrayner's dinner parties a world of silent men is sandwiched
between a _monde_ of chattering women. The hostess has a taste for busy
celebrities who eat their dinner without thought of the cookery, and
regard their fair neighbours much as the diners think of the band in a
restaurant. She chose her company with care, and if at her table there
was not the busy clack of a fluent conversation, there was always the
possibility of _bons mots_ and the off-chance of a State secret. So to
have dined with the Montrayners became a boast in a small social set,
and to the unilluminate the Montrayner banquets seemed scarce less
momentous than Cabinet meetings.

Wratislaw found himself staring dully at a snowy bank of flowers and
looking listlessly at the faces beyond. He was extremely worried, and
his grey face and sunken eyes showed the labour he had been passing
through. The country was approaching the throes of a crisis, and as yet
the future was a blind alley to him. There was an autumn session, and
he had been badgered all the afternoon in the Commons; his even temper
had been perilously near its limits, and he had been betrayed
unconsciously into certain ineptitudes which he knew would grin in his
face on the morrow from a dozen leading articles. The Continent seemed
on the edge of an outbreak; in the East especially, Russia by a score of
petty acts had seemed to foreshadow an incomprehensible policy. It was
a powder-barrel waiting for the spark; and he felt dismally that the
spark might come at any moment from some unlooked-for quarter of the
globe. He ran over in his mind the position of foreign affairs. All
seemed vaguely safe; and yet he was conscious that all was vaguely
unsettled. The world was on the eve of one of its cyclic changes, and
unrest seemed to make the air murky.

He tried to be polite and listened attentively to the lady on his right,
who was telling him the latest gossip about a certain famous marriage.
But his air was so manifestly artificial that she turned to the
presumably more attractive topic of his doings.

"You look ill," she said--she was one who adopted the motherly air
towards young men, which only a pretty woman can use. "Are they
over-working you in the House?"

"Pretty fair," and he smiled grimly. "But really I can't complain. I
have had eight hours' sleep in the last four days, and I don't think
Beauregard could say as much. Some day I shall break loose and go to a
quiet place and sleep for a week. Brittany would do--or Scotland."

"I was in Scotland last week," she said. "I didn't find it quiet. It
was at one of those theatrical Highland houses where they pipe you to
sleep and pipe you to breakfast. I used to have to sit up all night by
the fire and read Marius the Epicurean, to compose myself. Did you ever
try the specific?"

"No," he said, laughing. "I always soothe my nerves with Blue-books."

She made a mouth at the thought. "And do you know I met such a nice man
up there, who said you were a great friend of his? His name was
Haystoun."

"Do you remember his Christian name?" he asked.

"Lewis," she said without hesitation.

He laughed. "He is a man who should only have one name and that his
Christian one. I never heard him called 'Haystoun' in my life. How is
he?"

"He seemed well, but he struck me as being at rather a loose end. What
is wrong with him? You know him well and can tell me. He seems to have
nothing to do; to have fallen out of his niche, you know. And he looks
so extraordinarily clever."

"He _is_ extraordinarily clever. But if I undertook to tell you what
was wrong with Lewie Haystoun, I should never get to the House to-night.
The vitality of a great family has run to a close in him. He is strong
and able, and yet, unless the miracle of miracles happens, he will never
do anything. Two hundred years ago he might have led some mad Jacobite
plot to success. Three hundred and he might have been another Raleigh.
Six hundred, and there would have been a new crusade. But as it is, he
is out of harmony with his times; life is too easy and mannered; the
field for a man's courage is in petty and recondite things, and Lewie is
not fitted to understand it. And all this, you see, spells a kind of
cowardice: and if you have a friend who is a hero out of joint, a great
man smothered in the wrong sort of civilization, and all the while one
who is building up for himself with the world and in his own heart the
reputation of a coward, you naturally grow hot and bitter."

The lady looked curiously at the speaker. She had never heard the
silent politician speak so earnestly before.

"It seems to me a clear case of _chercher la femme_," said she.

"That," said Wratislaw with emphasis, "is the needle-point of the whole
business. He has fallen in love with just the wrong sort of woman.
Very pretty, very good, a demure puritanical little Pharisee, clever
enough, too, to see Lewie's merits, too weak to hope to remedy them, and
too full of prejudice to accept them. There you have the makings of a
very pretty tragedy."

"I am so sorry," said the lady. She was touched by this man's anxiety
for his friend, and Mr. Lewis Haystoun, whom she was never likely to
meet again, became a figure of interest in her eyes. She turned to say
something more, but Wratislaw, having unburdened his soul to some one,
and feeling a little relieved, was watching his chief's face further
down the table. That nobleman, hopelessly ill at ease, had given up the
pretence of amiability and was now making frantic endeavours to send
mute signals across the flowers to his under secretary.

The Montrayner guests seldom linger. Within half an hour after the
ladies left the table Beauregard and Wratislaw were taking leave and
hurrying into their greatcoats.

"You are going down to the House," said the elder man, "and I'll come
too. I want to have some talk with you. I tried to catch your eye at
dinner to get you to come round and deliver me from old Montrayner, for
I had to sit on his right hand and couldn't come round to you.
Heigho-ho! I wish I was a Trappist."

The cab had turned out of Piccadilly into St. James's Street before
either man spoke again. The tossing lights of a windy autumn evening
were shimmering on the wet pavement, and faces looked spectral white in
the morris-dance of shine and shadow. Wratislaw, whose soul was sick
for high, clean winds and the great spaces of the moors, was thinking of
Glenavelin and Lewis and the strong, quickening north. His companion
was furrowing his brow over some knotty problem in his duties.

In Pall Mall there was a lull in the noise, but neither seemed disposed
to talk.

"We had better wait till we get to the House," said Beauregard. "We
must have peace, for I have got the most vexatious business to speak
about." And again he wrinkled his anxious brows and stared in front of
him.

They entered a private room where the fire had burned itself out, and
the lights fell on heavy furniture and cheerless solitude. Beauregard
spread himself out in an arm-chair, and stared at the ceiling.
Wratislaw, knowing his chief's manners, stood before the blackened grate
and waited.

"Fetch me an atlas--that big one, and find the map of the Indian
frontier." Wratislaw obeyed and stretched the huge folio on the table.

The elder man ran his forefinger in a circle.

"There--that wretched radius is the plague of my life. Our reports stop
short at that line, and reliable information begins again some hundreds
of miles north. Meanwhile--between?" And he shrugged his shoulders.

"I got news to-day in a roundabout way from Taghati. That's the town
just within the Russian frontier there. It seems that the whole country
is in a ferment. The hill tribes are out and the Russian frontier line
is threatened. So they say. I have the actual names of the people who
are making the row. Russian troops are being massed along the line
there. The whole place, you know, has been for long a military beehive
and absurdly over-garrisoned, so there is no difficulty about the
massing. The difficulty lies in the reason. Three thousand square
miles or so of mountain cannot be so dangerous. One would think that
the whole Afghan nation was meditating a descent on the Amu Daria." He
glanced up at his companion, and the two men saw the same anxiety in
each other's eyes.

"Anything more of Marka?" asked Wratislaw.

"Nothing definite. He is somewhere in the Pamirs, up to some devilry or
other. Oh, by the by, there is something I have forgotten. I found out
the other day that our gentleman had been down quite recently in
south-west Kashmir. He was Arthur Marker at the time, the son of a
German count and a Scotch mother, you understand. Immensely popular,
too, among natives and Europeans alike. He went south from Bardur, and
apparently returned north by the Punjab. At Bardur, Logan and Thwaite
were immensely fascinated, Gribton remained doubtful. Now the good
Gribton is coming home, and so he will have the place for a happy
hunting-ground."

Wratislaw was puffing his under-lip in deep thought. "It is a sweet
business," he said. "But what can we do? Only wait?"

"Yes, one could wait if Marka were the only disquieting feature. But
what about Taghati and the Russian activity? What on earth is going on
or about to go on in this square inch of mountain land to make all the
pother? If it is a tribal war on a first-class scale then we must know
about it, for it is in the highest degree our concern too. If it is
anything else, things look more than doubtful. All the rest I don't
mind. It's open and obvious, and we are on the alert. But that little
bit of frontier there is so little known and apparently so remote that I
begin to be afraid of trouble in that direction. What do you think?"

Wratislaw shook his head. He had no opinion to offer.

"At any rate, you need fear no awkward questions in the House, for this
sort of thing cannot be public for months."

"I am wondering whether somebody should not go out. Somebody quite
unofficial and sufficiently clever."

"My thought too," said Beauregard. "The pinch is where to get our man
from. I have been casting up possibilities all day, and this one is too
clever, another too dull, another too timid, and another too
hare-brained."

Wratislaw seemed sunk in a brown study.

"Do you remember my telling you once about my friend Lewis Haystoun?" he
asked.

"I remember perfectly. What made him get so badly beaten? He ought to
have won."

"That's part of my point," said the other. "If I knew him less well
than I do I should say he was the man cut out by Providence for the
work. He has been to the place, he knows the ropes of travelling, he is
exceedingly well-informed, and he is uncommonly clever. But he is badly
off colour. The thing might be the saving of him, or the ruin--in which
case, of course, he would also be the ruin of the thing."

"As risky as that?" Beauregard asked. "I have heard something of him,
but I thought it merely his youth. What's wrong with him?"

"Oh, I can't tell. A thousand things, but all might be done away with
by a single chance like this. I tell you what I'll do. After to-night
I can be spared for a couple of days. I feel rather hipped myself, so I
shall get up to the north and see my man. I know the circumstances and
I know Lewis. If the two are likely to suit each other I have your
authority to give him your message?"

"Certainly, my dear Wratislaw. I have all the confidence in the world
in your judgment. You will be back the day after to-morrow?"

"I shall only be out of the House one night, and I think the game worth
it. I need not tell you that I am infernally anxious both about the
business and my friend. It is just on the cards that one might be the
solution of the other."

"You understand everything?"

"Everything. I promise you I shall be exacting enough. And now I had
better be looking after my own work."

Beauregard stared after him as he went out of the room and remained for
a few minutes in deep thought. Then he deliberately wrote out a foreign
telegram form and rang the bell.

"I fancy I know the man," he said to himself. "He will go. Meantime I
can prepare things for his passage." The telegram was to the fugitive
Gribton at Florence, asking him to meet a certain Mr. Haystoun at the
Embassy in Paris within a week for the discussion of a particular
question.




CHAPTER XVII

THE BRINK OF THE RUBICON


The next evening Wratislaw drove in a hired dogcart up Glenavelin from
Gledsmuir just as a stormy autumn twilight was setting in over the bare
fields. A wild back-end had followed on the tracks of a marvellous
summer. Though it was still October the leaves lay heaped beneath the
hedgerows, the bracken had yellowed to a dismal hue of decay, and the
heather had turned from the purple of its flower to the grey-blue of its
passing. Rain had fallen, and the long road-side pools were fired by
the westering sun. Glenavelin looked crooked and fantastic in the
falling shadows, and two miles farther the high lights of Etterick rose
like a star in the bosom of the hills. Seen after many weeks' work in
the bustle and confinement of town, the solitary, shadow-haunted world
soothed and comforted.

He found Lewis in his room alone. The place was quite dark for no lamp
was lit, and only a merry fire showed the occupant. He welcomed his
friend with crazy vehemence, pushing him into a great armchair, offering
a dozen varieties of refreshment, and leaving the butler aghast with
contradictory messages about dinner.

"Oh, Tommy, upon my soul, it is good to see you here! I was getting as
dull as an owl."

"Are you alone?" Wratislaw asked.

"George is staying here, but he has gone over to Glenaller to a big
shoot. I didn't care much about it, so I stayed at home. He will be
back to-morrow."

Lewis's face in the firelight seemed cheerful and wholesome enough, but
his words belied it. Wratislaw wondered why this man, who had been wont
to travel to the ends of the earth for good shooting, should deny
himself the famous Glenaller coverts.

At dinner the lamplight showed him more clearly, and the worried look in
his eyes could not be hidden. He was listless, too, his kindly,
boisterous manner seemed to have forsaken him, and he had acquired a
great habit of abstracted silence. He asked about recent events in the
House, commenting shrewdly enough, but without interest. When Wratislaw
in turn questioned him on his doings, he had none of the ready
enthusiasm which had been used to accompany his talk on sport. He gave
bare figures and was silent.

Afterwards in his own sanctum, with drawn curtains and a leaping fire,
he became more cheerful. It was hard to be moody in that pleasant room,
with the light glancing from silver and vellum and dark oak, and a
thousand memories about it of the clean, outdoor life. Wratislaw
stretched his legs to the blaze and watched the coils of blue smoke
mounting from his pipe with a feeling of keen pleasure. His errand was
out of the focus of his thoughts.

It was Lewis himself who recalled him to the business.

"I thought of coming down to town," he said. "I have been getting out
of spirits up here, and I wanted to be near you."

"Then it was an excellent chance which brought me up to-night. But why
are you dull? I thought you were the sort of man who is sufficient unto
himself, you know."

"I am not," he said sharply. "I never realized my gross insufficiency
so bitterly."

"Ah!" said Wratislaw, sitting up, "love?"

"Did you happen to see Miss Wishart's engagement in the papers?"

"I never read the papers. But I have heard about this: in fact, I
believe I have congratulated Stocks."

"Do you know that she ought to have married me?" Lewis cried almost
shrilly. "I swear she loved me. It was only my hideous folly that
drove her from me."

"Folly?" said Wratislaw, smiling. "Folly? Well you might call it
that. I have come up 'ane's errand,' as your people hereabouts say, to
talk to you like a schoolmaster, Lewie. Do you mind a good talking-to?"

"I need it," he said. "Only it won't do any good, because I have been
talking to myself for a month without effect. Do you know what I am,
Tommy?"

"I am prepared to hear," said the other.

"A coward! It sounds nice, doesn't it? I am a shirker, a man who would
be drummed out of any regiment."

"Rot!" said Wratislaw. "In that sort of thing you have the courage of
your kind. You are the wrong sort of breed for common shirking cowards.
Why, man, you might get the Victoria Cross ten times over with ease, as
far as that goes. Only you wouldn't, for you are something much more
subtle and recondite than a coward."

It was Lewis's turn for the request. "I am prepared to hear," he said.

"A fool! An arrant, extraordinary fool! A fool of quality and parts, a
fool who is the best fellow in the world and who has every virtue a man
can wish, but at the same time a conspicuous monument of folly. And it
is this that I have come to speak about."

Lewis sat back in his chair with his eyes fixed on the glowing coal.

"I want you to make it all plain," he said slowly. "I know it all
already; I have got the dull, dead consciousness of it in my heart, but
I want to hear it put into words." And he set his lips like a man in
pain.

"It is hard," said Wratislaw, "devilish hard, but I've got to try." He
knocked out the ashes from his pipe and leaned forward.

"What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?" he asked.

"The sense of competence," was the answer, given without hesitation.

"Right. And what do we mean by competence? Not success! God knows it
is something very different from success! Any fool may be successful,
if the gods wish to hurt him. Competence means that splendid joy in
your own powers and the approval of your own heart, which great men feel
always and lesser men now and again at favoured intervals. There are a
certain number of things in the world to be done, and we have got to do
them. We may fail--it doesn't in the least matter. We may get killed
in the attempt--it matters still less. The things may not altogether be
worth doing--it is of very little importance. It is ourselves we have
got to judge by. If we are playing our part well, and know it, then we
can thank God and go on. That is what I call happiness."

"And I," said Lewis.

"And how are you to get happiness? Not by thinking about it. The great
things of the world have all been done by men who didn't stop to reflect
on them. If a man comes to a halt and analyses his motives and
distrusts the value of the thing he strives for, then the odds are that
his halt is final. You strive to strive and not to attain. A man must
have that direct practical virtue which forgets itself and sees only its
work. Parsons will tell you that all virtue is self-sacrifice, and they
are right, though not in the way they mean. It may all seem a tissue of
contradictions. You must not pitch on too fanciful a goal, nor, on the
other hand, must you think on yourself. And it is a contradiction which
only resolves itself in practice, one of those anomalies on which the
world is built up."

Lewis nodded his head.

"And the moral of it all is that there are two sorts of people who will
never do any good on this planet. One is the class which makes formulas
and shallow little ideals its gods and has no glimpse of human needs and
the plain issues of life. The other is the egotist whose eye is always
filled with his own figure, who investigates his motives, and hesitates
and finicks, till Death knocks him on the head and there is an end of
him. Of the two give me the second, for even a narrow little
egotistical self is better than a formula. But I pray to be delivered
from both."

"'Then who shall stand if Thou, O Lord, dost mark iniquity?'" Lewis
quoted.

"There are two men only who will not be ashamed to look their work in
the face in the end--the brazen opportunist and the rigid Puritan.
Suppose you had some desperate frontier work to get through with and a
body of men to pick for it, whom would you take? Not the ordinary,
colourless, respectable being, and still less academic nonentities! If
I had my pick, my companions should either be the narrowest religionists
or frank, unashamed blackguards. I should go to the Calvinists and the
fanatics for choice, but if I could not get them then I should have the
rankers. For, don't you see, the first would have the fear of God in
them, and that somehow keeps a man from fearing anything else. They
would do their work because they believed it to be their duty. And the
second would have the love of the sport in them, and they should also be
made to dwell in the fear of me. They would do their work because they
liked it, and liked me, and I told them to do it."

"I agree with you absolutely," said Lewis. "I never thought otherwise."

"Good," said Wratislaw. "Now for my application. You've had the
misfortune to fall between the two stools, Lewie. You're too clever for
a Puritan and too good for a ranker. You're too finicking and
high-strung and fanciful for a prosaic world. You think yourself the
laughing philosopher with an infinite appreciation of everything, and
yet you have not the humour to stand aside and laugh at yourself."

"I am a coward, as I have told you," said the other dourly.

"No, you are not. But you can't bring yourself down to the world of
compromises, which is the world of action. You have lost the practical
touch. You muddled your fight with Stocks because you couldn't get out
of touch with your own little world in practice, however you might
manage it in theory. You can't be single-hearted. Twenty impulses are
always pulling different ways with you, and the result is that you
become an unhappy, self-conscious waverer."

Lewis was staring into the fire, and the older man leaned forward and
put his hand very tenderly on his shoulder.

"I don't want to speak about the thing which gives you most pain, old
chap; but I think you have spoiled your chances in the same way in
another matter--the most important matter a man can have to do with,
though it ill becomes a cynical bachelor like myself to say it."

"I know," said Lewis dismally.

"You see it is the Nemesis of your race which has overtaken you. The
rich, strong blood of you Haystouns must be given room or it sours into
moodiness. It is either a spoon or a spoiled horn with you. You are
capable of the big virtues, and just because of it you are
extraordinarily apt to go to the devil. Not the ordinary devil, of
course, but to a very effective substitute. You want to be braced and
pulled together. A war might do it, if you were a soldier. A religious
enthusiasm would do it, if that were possible for you. As it is, I have
something else, which I came up to propose to you."

Lewis faced round in an attitude of polite attention. But his eyes had
no interest in them.

"You know Bardur and the country about there pretty well?"

Lewis nodded.

"Also I once talked to you about a man called Marka. Do you remember?"

"Yes, of course I do. The man who went north from Bardur the week
before I turned up there?"

"Well, there's trouble brewing thereabouts. You know the Taghati
country up beyond the Russian line. Things are in a ferment there,
great military preparations and all the rest of it, and the reason, they
say, is that the hill-tribes in the intervening No-man's-land are at
their old games. Things look very ugly abroad just now, and we can't
afford to neglect anything when a crisis may be at the door. So we want
a man to go out there and find out the truth."

Lewis had straightened himself and was on his feet before Wratislaw had
done. "Upon my word," he cried, "if it isn't what I expected! We have
been far too sure of the safety of that Kashmir frontier. You mean, of
course, that there may be a chance of an invasion?"

"I mean nothing. But things look ugly enough in Europe just now, and
Asia would naturally be the starting-point."

Lewis made some rapid calculations in his head which he jotted on the
wood of the fireplace. "It would take a week to get from Bardur to
Taghati by the ordinary Kashmir rate of travelling, but of course the
place is unknown and it might take months. One would have to try it?"

"I can only give you the bare facts. If you decide to go, Beauregard
will give you particulars in town."

"When would he want to know?"

"At once. I go back to-morrow morning, and I must have your answer
within three days. You would be required to start within a week. You
can take time and quiet to make up your mind."

"It's a great chance," said Lewis. "Does Beauregard think it
important?"

"Of the highest importance. Also, of course it is dangerous. The
travelling is hard, and you may be knocked on the head at any moment as
a spy."

"I don't mind that," said the other, flushing. "I've been through the
same thing before."

"I need not say the work will be very difficult. Remember that your
errand will not be official, so in case of failure or trouble we could
not support you. We might even have to disclaim all responsibility. In
the event of success, on the other hand, your fortune is something more
than made."

"Would you go?" came the question.

"No," said Wratislaw, "I shouldn't."

"But if you were in my place?"

"I should hope that I would, but then I might not have the courage. I
am giving you the brave man's choice, Lewie. You will be going out to
uncertainty and difficulty and extreme danger. On the other hand, I
believe in my soul it will harden you into the man you ought to be.
Lord knows I would rather have you stay at home!"

The younger man looked up for a second and saw something in Wratislaw's
face which made him turn away his eyes. The look of honest regret cut
him to the heart. Those friends of his, of whom he was in nowise
worthy, made the burden of his self-distrust doubly heavy.

"I will tell you within three days," he said hoarsely. "God bless you,
Tommy. I don't deserve to have a man like you troubling himself about
me."

It was his one spoken tribute to their friendship; and both, with the
nervousness of honest men in the presence of emotion, hastened to change
the subject.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE FURTHER BRINK


Wratislaw left betimes the next morning, and a long day faced Lewis with
every hour clamouring for a decision. George would be back by noon, and
before his return he must seek quiet and the chances of reflection. He
was happy with a miserable fluctuating happiness. Of a sudden his
horizon was enlarged, but as he gazed it seemed to narrow again. His
mind was still unplumbed; somewhere in its depths might lie the
shrinking and unwillingness which would bind him to the dreary present.

He went out to the autumn hills and sought the ridge which runs for
miles on the lip of the glen. It was a grey day, with snow waiting in
cloud-banks in the north sky and a thin wind whistling through the
pines. The scene matched his humour. He was in love for the moment
with the stony and stormy in life. He hungered morbidly for
ill-fortune, something to stamp out the ease in his soul, and weld him
into the form of a man.

He had got his chance and the rest lay with himself. It was a chance of
high adventure, a great mission, a limitless future. At the thought the
old fever began to rise in his blood. The hot, clear smell of rock and
sand, the brown depths of the waters, the far white peaks running up
among the stars, all spoke to him with the long-remembered call. Once
more he should taste life, and, alert in mind and body, hold up his chin
among his fellows. It would be a contest of wits, and for all his
cowardice this was not the contest he shrank from.

And then there came back on him, like a flood, the dumb misery of
incompetence which had weighed on heart and brain. The hatred of the
whole struggling, sordid crew, all the cant and ugliness and ignorance
of a mad world, his weakness in the face of it, his fall from common
virtue, his nerveless indolence--all stung him like needle points, till
he cried out in agony. Anything to deliver his soul from such a
bondage, and in his extreme bitterness his mind closed with Wratislaw's
offer.

He felt--and it is a proof of his weakness--a certain nameless feeling
of content when he had once forced himself into the resolution. Now at
least he had found a helm and a port to strain to. As his fancy dwelt
upon the mission and drew airy pictures of the land, he found to his
delight a boyish enthusiasm arising. Old simple pleasures seemed for
the moment dear. There was a zest for toils and discomforts, a
tolerance of failure, which had been aforetime his chief traveller's
heritage.

And then as he came to the ridge where the road passes from Glenavelin
to Glen Adler, he stopped as in duty bound to look at the famous
prospect. You stand at the shedding of two streams; behind, the green
and woodland spaces of the pastoral Avelin; at the feet, a land of
stones and dwarf junipers and naked rifts in the hills, with
white-falling waters and dark shadows even at midday. And then, beyond
and afar, the lines of hill-land crowd upon each other till the eye is
lost in a mystery of grey rock and brown heather and single bald peaks
rising sentinel-like in the waste. The grey heavens lent a chill
eeriness to the dim grey distances; the sharp winds, the forerunners of
snow, blew over the moors like blasts from a primeval night.

By an odd vagary of temper the love of these bleak hills blazed up
fiercely in his heart. Never before had he felt so keenly the nameless
glamour of his own heritage. He had not been back six months and yet he
had come to accept all things as matters of course, the beauty of the
place, its sport, its memories. Rarely had he felt that intimate joy in
it which lies at the bottom of all true souls. There is a sentiment
which old poets have made into songs and called the "Lilt of the
Heather," and which is knit closer to man's heart than love of wife or
kin or his own fair fortune. It had not come to him in the time of the
hills' glory, but now on the brink of winter the far-off melancholy of
the place and its infinite fascination seemed to clutch at his
heart-strings. It was his own land, the place of his fathers; and now
he must sever himself from it and carry only a barren memory.

And yet he felt no melancholy. Rather it was the immortal gaiety of the
wanderer, to whom the homeland is dearest as a memory, who pitches his
camp by waters of Babylon and yet as ever the old word on his lip, the
old song in his ear, and the kindly picture in his heart. Strange that
it is the little races who wander farthest and yet have the eternal
home-sickness! And yet not strange, for to the little peoples, their
land, bare and uncouth and unfriendly for the needs of life, must be
more the ideal, the dream, than the satisfaction. The lush countries
give corn and wine for their folks, the little bare places afford no
more than a spiritual heritage. Yet spiritual it is, and for two men
who in the moment of their extremity will think on meadow, woodland, or
placid village, a score will figure the windy hill, the grey lochan, and
the mournful sea.

For the moment he felt a self-pity which he cast from him. To this
degradation at least he should never come. But as the thought of Alice
came up ever and again, his longing for her seemed to be changed from
hot pain to a chastened regret. The red hearth-fire was no more in his
fancy. The hunger for domesticity had gone, and the girl was now less
the wife he had desired than the dream of love he had vainly followed.
As he came back across the moors, for the first time for weeks his
jealous love left him at peace. His had been a fanciful Sylvia, "holy,
fair, and wise"; and what if mortal Sylvia were unkind, there was yet
comfort in this elusive lady of his memories.

       *       *       *       *       *

He found George at the end of a second breakfast, a very ruddy, happy
young man hunting high and low for a lost tobacco-jar.

"Oh, first-class," he said in answer to Lewis's question. "Out and out
the best day's shooting I've had in my life. You were an ass not to
come, you know. A lot of your friends there, tremendously disappointed
too, and entrusted me with a lot of messages for you which I have
forgotten."

His companion's high spirits infected Lewis and he fell into cheery
gossip. Then he could contain the news no more.

"I had Tommy up last night on a flying visit. He says that Beauregard
wants me to go out to Kashmir again. There has been some threatening of
a row up there, and he thinks that as I know the place I might be able
to get good information."

"Official?" asked George.

"Practically, yes; but in theory it's quite off my own bat, and they are
good enough to tell me that they will not acknowledge responsibility.
However, it's a great chance and I am going."

"Good," said the other, and his face and voice had settled into gravity.
"Pretty fair sport up in those parts, isn't there?"

"Pretty fair? it's about the best in the world. Your ordinary man who
goes the grand tour comes home raving about the sport in the Himalayan
foothills, and it's not to be named with this."

"Good chance too of a first-rate row, isn't there? Natives troublesome,
and Russia near, and that sort of thing?" George's manner showed a
growing enthusiasm.

"A rather good chance. It is about that I'm going, you know."

"Then if you don't mind, I am coming with you."

Lewis stared, incredulous.

"It's quite true. I am serious enough. I am doing nothing at the Bar,
and I want to travel, proper travelling, where you are not coddled with
railways and hotels."

"But it's hideously risky, and probably very arduous and thankless. You
will tire of it in a week."

"I won't," said George, "and in any case I'll make my book for that.
You must let me come, Lewie. I simply couldn't stand your going off
alone."

"But I may have to leave you. There are places where one can go when
two can't."

"When you come to that sort of place I'll stay behind. I'll be quite
under your orders."

"Well, at any rate take some time to think over it."

"Bless you, I don't want time to think over it," cried George. "I know
my own mind. It's the chance I've been waiting on for years."

"Thanks tremendously then, my dear chap," said Lewis, very ill at ease.
"It's very good of you. I must wire at once to Tommy."

"I'll take it down, if you like. I want to try that new mare of yours
in the dog-cart."

When his host had left the room George forgot to light his pipe, but
walked instead to the window and whistled solemnly. "Poor old man," he
said softly to himself, "it had to come to this, but I'm hanged if he
doesn't take it like a Trojan." And he added certain striking comments
on the ways of womankind and the afflictions of life, which, being
expressed in Mr. Winterham's curious phraseology, need not be set down.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alice had gone out after lunch to walk to Gledsmuir, seeking in the
bitter cold and the dawning storm the freshness which comes from
conflict. All the way down the glen the north wind had stung her cheeks
to crimson and blown stray curls about her ears; but when she left the
little market-place to return she found a fine snow powdering the earth,
and a haze creeping over the hills which threatened storm. A mile of
the weather delighted her, but after that she grew weary. When the fall
thickened she sought the shelter of a way-side cottage, with the purpose
of either sending to Glenavelin for a carriage or waiting for the
off-chance of a farmer's gig.

By four o'clock the snow showed no sign of clearing, but fell in the
same steady, noiseless drift. The mistress of the place made the girl
tea and dispatched her son to Glenavelin. But the errand would take
time, for the boy was small, and Alice, ever impatient, stood drumming
on the panes, watching the dreary weather with a dreary heart. The
goodwife was standing at the door on the look-out for a passing gig, and
her cry brought the girl to attention.

"I see a machine comin'! I think it's the Etterick dowg-cairt. Ye'll
get a drive in it."

Alice had gone to the door, and lo! through the thick fall a dog-cart
came into view driven by a tall young man. He recognized her at once,
and drew up.

"Hullo, Miss Wishart! Storm-stayed? Can I help you?"

The girl looked distrustfully at the very restless horse and he caught
her diffidence.

"Don't be afraid. 'What I don't know about 'oases ain't worth
knowin','" he quoted with a laugh; and leaning forward he prepared to
assist her to mount.

There was nothing for it but to accept, and the next minute she found
herself in the high seat beside him. Her wraps, sufficient for walking,
were scarcely sufficient for a snowy drive, and this, to his credit, the
young man saw. He unbuttoned his tweed shooting-cape, and gravely put
it round her. A curious dainty figure she made with her face all bright
with wind, framed in the great grey cloak.

The horse jibbed for a second and then swung along the wild road with
the vigorous ease of good blood skilfully handled. George was puzzling
his brain all the while as to how he should tell his companion something
which she ought to know. The strong drift and the turns of the road
claimed much of his attention, so it is possible that he blurted out his
news somewhat baldly.

"Do you know, Miss Wishart, that Lewis Haystoun and I are going off next
week? Abroad, you know."

The girl, who had been enjoying the ecstasy of swift motion through the
bitter weather, glanced up at him with pain in her eyes.

"Where?" she asked.

"To the Indian frontier. We are going to be special unpaid unofficial
members of the Intelligence Department."

She asked the old, timid woman's question about danger.

"It's where Lewis was before. Only, you see, things have got into a
mess thereabouts, and the Foreign Office has asked him to go out again.
By the by, you mustn't tell any one about this, for it's in strict
confidence."

The words were meaningless, and yet they sent a pang through her heart.
Had he no guess at her inmost feelings? Could he think that she would
talk to Mr. Stocks of a thing which was bound up for her with all the
sorrow and ecstasy of life?

He looked down and saw that her face had paled and that her mouth was
drawn with some emotion. A sudden gleam of light seemed to break in
upon him.

"Are you sorry?" he asked half-unwittingly.

For answer the girl turned her tragic eyes upon him, tried to speak, and
faltered. He cursed himself for a fool and a brute, and whipped up an
already over-active horse, till it was all but unmanageable. It was a
wise move, for it absorbed his attention and gave the poor child at his
side a chance to recover her composure.

They came to Glenavelin gates and George turned in. "I had better drive
you to the door, in this charming weather," he said. The sight of the
pale little face had moved him to deep pity. He cursed his blindness,
the blindness of a whole world of fools, and at the same time, with the
impotence of the honest man, he could only wait and be silent.

At the door he stopped to unbutton his cape from her neck, and even in
his nervousness he felt the trembling of her body. She spoke rapidly
and painfully.

"I want you to take a message from me to--to--Lewis. Tell him I must
see him. Tell him to come to the Midburn foot, to-morrow in the
afternoon. Oh, I am ashamed to ask you, but you must tell him." And
then without thanks or good-bye she fled into the house.




CHAPTER XIX

THE BRIDGE OF BROKEN HEARTS


Listless leaves were tossing in the light wind or borne downward in the
swirl of the flooded Midburn, to the weary shallows where they lay,
beached high and sodden, till the frost nipped and shrivelled their
rottenness into dust. A bleak, thin wind it was, like a fine sour wine,
searching the marrow and bringing no bloom to the cheek. A light snow
powdered the earth, the grey forerunner of storms.

Alice stood back in the shelter of the broken parapet. The highway with
its modern crossing-place was some hundreds of yards up stream, but
here, at the burn mouth, where the turbid current joined with the cold,
glittering Avelin, there was a grass-grown track, and an ancient,
broken-backed bridge. There were few passers on the high-road, none on
this deserted way; but the girl in all her loneliness shrank back into
the shadow. In these minutes she endured the bitter mistrust, the sore
hesitancy, of awaiting on a certain but unknown grief.

She had not long to wait, for Lewis came down the Avelin side by a
bypath from Etterick village. His alert gait covered his very real
confusion, but to the girl he seemed one who belonged to an alien world
of cheerfulness. He could not know her grief, and she regretted her
coming.

His manners were the same courteous formalities. The man was torn with
emotion, and yet he greeted her with a conventional ease.

"It was so good of you, Miss Wishart, to give me a chance to come and
say good-bye. My going is such a sudden affair, that I might have had
no time to come to Glenavelin, but I could not have left without seeing
you."

The girl murmured some indistinct words. "I hope you will have a good
time and come back safely," she said, and then she was tongue-tied.

The two stood before each other, awkward and silent--two between whom no
word of love had ever been spoken, but whose hearts were clamouring at
the iron gates of speech.

Alice's face and neck were dyed crimson, as the impossible position
dawned on her mind. No word could break down the palisade, of form.
Lewis, his soul a volcano, struggled for the most calm and inept words.
He spoke of the weather, of her father, of his aunt's messages.

Then the girl held out her hand.

"Good-bye," she said, looking away from him.

He held it for a second. "Good-bye, Miss Wishart," he said hoarsely.
Was this the consummation of his brief ecstasy, the end of months of
longing? The steel hand of fate was on him and he turned to leave.

He turned when he had gone three paces and came back. The girl was
still standing by the parapet, but she had averted her face towards the
wintry waters. His step seemed to fall on deaf ears, and he stood
beside her before she looked towards him.

Passion had broken down his awkwardness. He asked the old question with
a shaking voice. "Alice," he said, "have I vexed you?"

She turned to him a pale, distraught face, her eyes brimming over with
the sorrow of love, the passionate adventurous longing which claims true
hearts for ever.

He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.

"Oh, Alice, darling," he cried. "What has happened to us? I love you,
I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it."

She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drew
back.

"Sweetheart," he cried. "Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart,
though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot help
ourselves."

The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.

"Oh, the misery of things," she said half-sobbing. "I have given my
soul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, did
you not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you never
came."

A sense of his folly choked him.

"And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is out
of joint for us!"

The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him.
The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts should
always cross the chasm of their severance.

"I am going away," he said, "to make reparation. I have my repentance
to work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Ours
must be an austere love."

She looked at him till her pale face flushed and a sad exultation woke
in her eyes.

"You will never forget?" she asked wistfully, confident of the answer.

"Forget!" he cried. "It is my only happiness to remember. I am going
away to be knocked about, dear. Wild, rough work, but with a man's
chances!"

For a moment she let another thought find harbour in her mind. Was the
past irretrievable, the future predetermined? A woman's word had an old
right to be broken. If she went to him, would not he welcome her
gladly, and the future might yet be a heritage for both?

The thought endured but a moment, for she saw how little simple was the
crux of her destiny. The two of them had been set apart by the fates;
each had salvation to work out alone; no facile union would ever join
them. For him there was the shaping of a man's path; for her the
illumination which only sorrows and parting can bring. And with the
thought she thought kindly of the man to whom she had pledged her word.
It was but a little corner of her heart he could ever possess; but
doubtless in such matters he was not ambitious.

Lewis walked by her side down the by-path towards Glenavelin. Tragedy
muffled in the garments of convention was there, not the old picturesque
Tragic with sword and cloak and steel for the enemy, but the silent
Tragic which pulls at the heart-strings.

"The summer is over," she said. "It has been a cruel summer, but very
bright."

"Romance with the jarring modern note which haunts us all to-day," he
said. "This upland country is confused with bustling politics, and
pastoral has been worried to death by sickness of heart. You cannot
find the old peaceful life without."

"And within?" she asked.

"That is for you and me to determine, dear. God grant it. I have found
my princess, like the man in the fairy-tale, but I may not enter the
kingdom."

"And the poor princess must sit and mope in her high stone tower? It is
a hard world for princesses."

"Hard for the knights, too, for they cannot come back and carry off
their ladies. In the old days it used to be so, but then simplicity has
gone out of life."

"And the princess waits and watches and cries herself to sleep?"

"And the knight goes off to the World's End and never forgets."

They were at Glenavelin gates now, and stood silent against the moment
of parting. She flew to his arms, for a second his kisses were on her
lips, and then came the sundering. A storm of tears was in her heart,
but with dry eyes she said the words of good-bye. Meanwhile from the
hills came a drift of snow, and a dreary wind sang in the pines the
dirge of the dead summer, the plaint of long farewells.




PART II




CHAPTER XX

THE EASTERN ROAD


If you travel abroad in certain seasons you will find that a type
predominates among the travellers. From Dover to Calais, from Calais to
Paris, there is an unnatural eagerness on faces, an unrest in gait, a
disorder in dress which argues worry and haste. And if you inquire
further, being of a speculative turn, you will find that there is
something in the air. The papers, French and English, have ugly
headlines and mystic leaders. Disquiet is in the atmosphere, each man
has a solution or a secret, and far at the back sits some body of men
who know that a crisis is near and square their backs for it. The
journalist is sick with work and fancied importance; the diplomat's hair
whitens with the game which he cannot understand; the statesman, if he
be wise, is in fear, knowing the meaning of such movements, while, if he
be foolish, he chirps optimistically in his speeches and is applauded in
the press. There are grey faces at the seats of the money-changers, for
war, the scourge of small cords, seems preparing for the overturning of
their tables, and the castigation of their persons.

Lewis and George rang the bell in the Faubourg St. Honoré on a Monday
afternoon, and asked for Lord Rideaux. His lordship was out, but, if
they were the English gentlemen who had the appointment with M. Gribton,
Monsieur would be with them speedily.

Lewis looked about the heavily furnished ante-room with its pale yellow
walls and thick, green curtains, with the air of a man trying to recall
a memory. "I came over here with John Lambert, when his father had the
place. That was just after I left Oxford. Gad, I was a happy man then.
I thought I could do anything. They put me next to Madame de Ravignet
because of my French, and because old Ankerville declared that I ought
to know the cleverest woman in Europe. Séry, the man who was Premier
last year, came and wrung my hand afterwards, said my fortune was
assured because I had impressed the Ravignet, and no one had ever done
it before except Bismarck. Ugh, the place is full of ghosts. Poor old
John died a year after, and here am I, far enough, God knows, from my
good intentions."

A servant announced "Monsieur Gribton," and a little grizzled man
hobbled in, leaning heavily on a stick. He wore a short beard, and in
his tanned face two clever grey eyes twinkled sedately. He shook hands
gravely when Lewis introduced George, but his eyes immediately returned
to the former's face.

"You look a fit pair," he said. "I am instructed to give you all the
help in my power, but I should like to know your game. It isn't sport
this time, is it, Haystoun? Logan is still talking about his week with
you. Well, well, we can do things at our leisure. I have letters to
write, and then it will be dinner-time, when we can talk. Come to the
club at eight, 'Cercle des Voyageurs,' corner of Rue Neuve de St.
Michel. I expect you belong, Haystoun; and anyway I'll be there."

He bowed them out with his staccato apologies, and the two returned to
their hotel to dress. Two hours later they found Gribton warming his
hands in the smoking-room of the Cercle, a fussy and garrulous
gentleman, eager for his dinner. He pointed out such people as he knew,
and was consumed with curiosity about the others. Lewis wandered about
the room before he sat down, shaking hands with several and nodding to
many.

"You seem to know the whole earth," said Gribton.

"I suppose that a world of acquaintance is the only reward of
slackness," Lewis said, laughing. "It's a trick I have. I never forget
a face and I honestly like to see people again."

George pulled his long moustache. "It's simply hideous the way one is
forgotten. It's all right for the busy people, for they shift their
sets with their fortune, but for drones like me it's the saddest thing
in life. Before we came away, Lewie, I went up for a day to Oxford to
see about some things, and stopped a night there. I haven't been down
long, and yet I knew nobody at the club except the treasurer, and he had
nothing to say to me except to ask after you. I went to dinner with the
dons at the high table, and I nearly perished of the blues. Little
Riddell chirped about my profession, and that bounder Jackson, who was
of our year, pretended that he had been your bosom friend. I got so
bored that I left early and wandered back to the club. Somebody was
making a racket in our old rooms in the High, windows open, you know,
and singing. I stopped to look at them, and then they started, 'Willie
brewed a peck o' maut,' and, 'pon my soul, I had to come away. Couldn't
stand it. It reminded me so badly of you and Arthur and old John
Lambert, and all the honest men that used to be there. It was
infernally absurd that I should have got so sentimental, but that wasn't
the worst of it. For I met Tony and he made me come round to a dinner,
and there I found people I didn't know from Adam drinking the old toasts
we started. Gad, they had them all. 'Las Palmas,' 'The Old Guard,'
'The Wandering Scot,' and all the others. It made me feel as low as an
owl, and when I got back to the club and saw poor old John's photograph
on the wall, I tell you I went to bed in the most wretched melancholy."

Lewis stared open-mouthed at George, the irrepressible, in this new
attitude. He, as the hardened traveller, had had little more than a
decent pang of home-sickness. His regret was far deeper and more real
than the sentimental article of commerce, and he could afford to be
almost gay while George sat in the depths.

"I'm coming home, and I'm not happy; you young men are going out, and
you have got the blues. There's no pleasing weak humanity. I say,
Haystoun, who's that old man?" Gribton's jovial looks belied his words.

Lewis mentioned a name for his host's benefit. The room was emptying
rapidly, for the Cercle dined early.

"Now for business," said Gribton, when a waiter had brought the game
course, and they sat in the midst of a desert of linen and velvet. "I
have given the thing up, but I spent twenty of my best years at Bardur.
So, as I am instructed to do all in my power to aid you, I am ready.
First, is it sport?

"Partly," said George, but Lewis's head gave denial.

"Because, if it is, I am not the best man. Well, then, is it
geographical? For if it is, there is much to be done."

"Partly," said Lewis.

"Then I take it that the residue is political. You are following the
popular avenue to polities, I suppose. Leave the 'Varsity very raw,
knock about in an unintelligent way for three or four years on some
frontier, then come home, go into the House, and pose as a specialist in
foreign affairs. I should have thought you had too much humour for
that."

"Only, you see, I have been there before. I am merely going back upon
my tracks to make sure. I go purely as an adventurer, hoping to pick up
some valuable knowledge, but prepared to fail."

Gribton helped himself to champagne. "That's better. Now I know your
attitude, we can talk like friends. Better come to the small
smoking-room. They've got a '51 brandy here which is beyond words.
Have some for a liqueur."

In the smoking-room Gribton fussed about coffee and cigars for many
minutes ere he settled down. Then, when he could gaze around and see
his two guests in deep armchairs, each smoking and comfortable, he
returned to his business.

"I don't mind telling you a secret," he said, "or rather it's only a
secret here, for once you get out there you will find 'Gribton's view,'
as they call it, well enough known and very much laughed at. I've
always been held up to ridicule as an alarmist about that Kashmir
frontier, and especially about that Bardur country. Take the whole
province. It's well garrisoned on the north, but below that it is all
empty and open. The way into the Punjab is as clear as daylight for a
swift force, and the way to the Punjab is the way to India."

Lewis rose and went to a rack on the wall. "Do you mind if I get down
maps? These French ones are very good." He spread a sheet of canvas on
the table, thereby confounding all Gribton's hospitable manoeuvring.

"There," said Gribton, his eyes now free from drowsiness, and clear and
bright, "that's the road I fear."

"But these three inches are unknown," said Lewis. "I have been myself
as far as these hills."

Gribton looked sharply up. "You don't know the place as I know it.
I've never been so far, but I know the sheep-skinned devils who come
across from Turkestan. I tell you that place isn't the impenetrable
craggy desert that the Government of India thinks it. There's a road
there of some sort, and if you're worth your salt you'll find it out."

"I know," said Lewis. "I am going to try."

"There's another thing. For the last three years all that north part of
Kashmir, and right away south-west to the Punjab borders, has been
honoured with visits from plausible Russian gentlemen who may come down
by the ordinary caravan routes, or, on the other hand, may not. They
turn up quite suddenly with tooth-brushes and dressing-cases, and they
can't have come from the south. They fool around in Bardur, and then go
down to Gilgit, and, I suppose, on to the Punjab. They've got excellent
manners, and they hang about the clubs and give dinners and charm the
whole neighbourhood. Logan is their bosom friend, and Thwaite declares
that their society reconciles him to the place. Then they go away, and
the place keeps on the randan for weeks after."

"Do you know a man called Marker by any chance?" Lewis asked.

Gribton looked curiously at the speaker. "Have you actually heard about
him? Yes, I know him, but not very well, and I can't say I ever cared
for him. However, he is easily the most popular man in Bardur, and I
daresay is a very good fellow. But you don't call him Russian. I
thought he was sort of half a Scotsman."

"Very likely he is," said Lewis. "I happen to have heard a good deal
about him. But what ails you at him?"

"Oh, small things," and the man laughed. "You know I am getting elderly
and cranky, and I like a man to be very fair and four-square. I confess
I never got to the bottom of the chap. He was a capital sportsman, good
bridge-player, head like a rock for liquor, and all that; but I'm hanged
if he didn't seem to me to be playing some sort of game. Another thing,
he seemed to me a terribly cold-blooded devil. He was always slapping
people on the back and calling them 'dear old fellows,' but I happened
to see a small interview once between him and one of his servants.
Perhaps I ought not to mention it, but the thing struck me unpleasantly.
It was below the club verandah, and nobody happened to be about except
myself, who was dozing after lunch. Marker was rating a servant in some
Border tongue--Chil, it sounded like; and I remember wondering how he
could have picked it up. I saw the whole thing through a chink in the
floor, and I noticed that the servant's face was as grey as a brown
hillman's can be. Then the fellow suddenly caught his arm and twisted
it round, the man's face working with pain, though he did not dare to
utter a sound. It was an ugly sight, and when I caught a glimpse of
Marker's face, 'pon my soul, those straight black eyebrows of his gave
him a most devilish look."

"What's he like to look at?" George asked.

"Oh, he's rather tall, very straight, with a sort of military carriage,
and he has one of those perfect oval faces that you sometimes see. He
has most remarkable black eyes and very neat, thin eyebrows. He is the
sort of man you'd turn round to look at if you once passed him in the
street; and if you once saw him smile you'd begin to like him. It's the
prettiest thing I've ever seen."

"I expect I'll run across him somewhere," said Lewis, "and I want badly
to know him. Would you mind giving me an introduction?"

"Charmed!" said Gribton. "Shall I write it now?" And sitting down at a
table he scribbled a few lines, put them in an envelope, and gave it to
Lewis.

"You are pretty certain to know him when you see him, so you can give
him that line. You might run across him anywhere from Hyderabad to
Rawal Pinch, and in any case you'll hear word of him in Bardur. He's
the man for your purpose; only, as I say, I never liked him. I suspect
a loop somewhere."

"What are Logan and Thwaite like?" Lewis asked.

"Easy-going, good fellows. Believe in God and the British Government,
and the inherent goodness of man. I am rather the other way, so they
call me a cynic and an alarmist."

"But what do you fear?" said George. "The place is well garrisoned."

"I fear four inches in that map of unknown country," said Gribton
shortly. "The people up there call it a 'God-given rock-wall,' and of
course there is no force to speak of just near it. But a tribe of
devils incarnate, who call themselves the Bada-Mawidi, live on its
skirts, and there must be a road through it. It isn't the caravan
route, which goes much farther east and is plain enough. But I know
enough of the place to know that every man who comes over the frontier
to Bardur does not come by the high-road."

"But what could happen? Surely Bardur is strongly garrisoned enough to
block any secret raid."

"It isn't bad in its way, if the people were not so slack and easy.
They might rise to scratch, but, on the other hand, they might not, and
once past Bardur you have the open road to India, if you march quick
enough."

"Then you have no man sufficiently adventurous there to do a little
exploring?"

"None. They care only about shooting, and there happens to be little in
those rocks. Besides, they trust in God and the Government of India. I
didn't, so I became unpopular, and was voted a bore. But the work is
waiting for you young men."

Gribton rose, yawned, and stretched himself. "Shall I tell you any
more?"

"I don't think so," said Lewis, smiling; "I fancy I understand, and I am
sure we are obliged to you. Hadn't we better have a game?"

They went to the billiard-room and played two games of a hundred up,
both of which George, who had the idler's knack in such matters, won
with ease. Gribton played so well that he became excessively
good-humoured.

"I almost wish I was going out again if I had you two as company. We
don't get the right sort out there. Our globe-trotters all want to show
their cleverness, or else they are merely fools. You will find it
miserably dull. Nothing but bad claret and cheap champagne at the
clubs, a cliquey set of English residents, and the sort of stock sport
of which you tire in a month. That's what you may expect our frontier
towns to be like."

"And the neighbourhood?" said Lewis, with lifted eyebrows.

"Oh, the neighbourhood is wonderful enough; but our people there are too
slack and stale to take advantage of it. It is a peaceful frontier, you
know, and men get into a rut as easily there as elsewhere. The
country's too fat and wealthy, and people begin to forget the skeleton
up among the rocks in the north."

"What are the garrisons like?"

"Good people, but far too few for a serious row, and just sufficiently
large to have time hang on their hands. Our friends the Bada-Mawidi now
and then wake them up. I see from the _Temps_ that a great stirring of
the tribes in the Southern Pamirs is reported. I expect that news came
overland through Russia. It's the sort of canard these gentry are
always getting up to justify a massing of troops on the Amu Daria in
order that some new governor may show his strategic skill. I daresay
you may find things a little livelier than I found them."

As they went towards the Faubourg St. Honoré a bitter Paris
north-easter had begun to drift a fine powdered snow in their eyes.
Gribton shivered and turned up the collar of his fur coat. "Ugh, I
can't stand this. It makes me sick to be back. Thank your stars that
you are going to the sun and heat, and out of this hideous grey
weather."

They left him at the Embassy, and turned back to their hotel.

"He's a useful man," said Lewis, "he has given us a cue; life will be
pretty well varied out there for you and me, I fancy."

Then, as they entered a boulevard, and the real sweep of the wind met
their faces, both men fell strangely silent. To George it was the last
word of the north which they were leaving, and his recent home-sickness
came back and silenced him. But to Lewis, his mind already busy with
his errand, this sting of wind was the harsh disturber which carried him
back to a lonely home in a cold, upland valley. It was the wintry
weather which was his own, and Alice's face, framed in a cloak, as he
had seen it at the Broken Bridge, rose in the gallery of his heart. In
a moment he was disillusioned. Success, enterprise, new lands and faces
seemed the most dismal vexation of spirit. With a very bitter heart he
walked home, and, after the fashion of his silent kind, gave no sign of
his mood save by a premature and unreasonable retirement to bed.




CHAPTER XXI

IN THE HEART OF THE HILLS


All around was stone and scrub, rising in terraces to the foot of sheer
cliffs which opened up here and there in nullahs and gave a glimpse of
great snow hills behind them. On one of the flat ridge-tops a little
village of stunted, slaty houses squatted like an ape, with a vigilant
eye on twenty gorges. Thin, twisting paths led up to it, and before, on
the more clement slopes, some fields of grain were tilled as our Aryan
forefathers tilled the soil on the plains of Turkestan. The place was
at least 8,000 feet above the sea, so the air was highland, clear and
pleasant, save for the dryness which the great stone deserts forced upon
the soft south winds. You will not find the place marked in any map,
for it is a little beyond even the most recent geographer's ken, but it
is none the less a highly important place, for the nameless village is
one of the seats of that most active and excellent race of men, the
Bada-Mawidi, who are so old that they can afford to look down on their
neighbours from a vantage-ground of some thousands of years. It is well
known that when God created the earth He first fashioned this tangle of
hill land, and set thereon a primitive Bada-Mawidi, the first of the
clan, who was the ancestor, in the thousandth degree, of the excellent
Fazir Khan, the present father of the tribe.

The houses clustered on the scarp and enclosed a piece of well-beaten
ground and one huge cedar tree. Sounds came from the near houses, but
around the tree itself the more privileged sat in solemn conclave. Food
and wine were going the round, for the Maulai Mohammedans have no taboos
in eating and drinking. Fazir Khan sat smoking next the tree trunk, a
short, sinewy man with a square, Aryan face, clear-cut and cruel. His
chiefs were around him, all men of the same type, showing curiously fair
skins against their oiled black hair. A mullah sat cross-legged, his
straggling beard in his lap, repeating some crazy charm to himself and
looking every now and again with anxious eyes to the guest who sat on
the chief's right hand.

The guest was a long, thin man, clad in the Cossacks' fur lined military
cloak, under which his untanned riding-boots showed red in the
moonlight. He was still busy eating goat's flesh, cheese and fruits,
and drinking deeply from the sweet Hunza wine, like a man who had come
far and fast. He ate with the utmost disregard of his company. He
might have been a hunter supping alone in the solitary hills for all the
notice he took of the fifty odd men around him.

By and by he finished, pulled forth a little silver toothpick from an
inner pocket, and reached a hand for the long cherry-wood pipe which had
been placed beside him. He lit it, and blew a few clouds into the calm
air.

"Now, Fazir Khan," he said, "I am a new man, and we shall talk. First,
have you done my bidding?"

"Thy bidding has been done," said the great man sulkily. "See, I am
here with my chiefs. All the twenty villages of my tribe have been
warned, and arms have been got from the fools at Bardur. Also, I have
the Yarkand powder I was told of, to give the signals on the hills. The
Nazri Pass road, which we alone know, has been widened. What more could
man do?"

"That is well," said the other. "It is well for you and your people
that you have done this. Your service shall not be forgotten.
Otherwise--"

"Otherwise?" said the Fazir Khan, his hand travelling to his belt at the
sound of a threat.

The man laughed. "You know the tale," he said. "Doubtless your mother
told you it when you clutched at her breast. Some day a great white
people from the north will come down and swallow up the disobedient.
That day is now at hand. You have been wise in time. Therefore I say
it is well."

The stranger spoke with perfect coolness. He looked round curiously at
the circle of dark faces and laughed quietly to himself. The chief
stole one look at him and then said something to a follower.

"I need not speak of the reward," said the stranger. "You are our
servants, and duty is duty. But I have authority for saying that we
shall hold your work in mind when we have settled our business."

"What would ye be without us?" said the chief in sudden temper. "What
do ye know of the Nazri gates or the hill country? What is this talk of
duty, when ye cannot stir a foot without our aid?"

"You are our servants, as I said before," said the man curtly. "You
have taken our gold and our food. Where would you be, outlaws, vagrants
that you are, hated of God and man, but for our help? Your bodies would
have rotted long ago on the hills. The kites would be feeding on your
sons; your women would be in the Bokhara market. We have saved you a
dozen times from the vengeance of the English. When they wished to come
up and burn you out, we have put them past the project with smooth
words. We have fed you in famine, we have killed your enemies, we have
given you life. You are freemen indeed in the face of the world, but
you are our servants."

Fazir Khan made a gesture of impatience. "That is as God may direct
it," he said. "Who are ye but a people of yesterday, while the
Bada-Mawidi is as old as the rocks. The English were here before you,
and we before the English. It is right that youth should reverence
age."

"That is one proverb," said the man, "but there are others, and in
especial one to the effect that the man without a sword should bow
before his brother who has one. In this game we are the people with the
sword, my friends."

The hillman shrugged his shoulders. His men looked on darkly, as if
little in love with the stranger's manner of speech.

"It is ill working in the dark," he said at length. "Ye speak of this
attack and the aid you expect from us, but we have heard this talk
before. One of your people came down with some followers in my father's
time, and his words were the same, but lo! nothing has yet happened."

"Since your father's time things have changed, my brother. Then the
English were very much on the watch, now they sleep. Then there were no
roads, or very bad ones, and before an army could reach the plains the
whole empire would have been wakened. Now, for their own undoing, they
have made roads up to the very foot of yon mountains, and there is a new
railway down the Indus through Kohistan waiting to carry us into the
heart of the Punjab. They seek out inventions for others to enjoy, as
the Koran says, and in this case we are to be the enjoyers."

"But what if ye fail?" said the chief. "Ye will be penned up in that
Hunza valley like sheep, and I, Fazir Khan, shall be unable to unlock
the door of that sheepfold."

"We shall not fail. This is no war of rock-pigeons, my brothers. Our
agents are in every town and village from Bardur to Lahore. The
frontier tribes, you among the rest, are rising in our favour. There is
nothing to stop us but isolated garrisons of Gurkhas and Pathans, with a
few overworked English officers at their head. In a week we shall
command the north of India, and if we hold the north, in another week we
shall hold Calcutta and Bombay."

The chief nodded his head. Such far-off schemes pleased his fancy, but
only remotely touched his interest. Calcutta was beyond his ken, but he
knew Bardur and Gilgit.

"I have little love for the race," he said. "They hanged two of my
servants who ventured too near the rifle-room, and they shot my son in
the back when we raided the Chitralis. If ye and your friends cross the
border I will be with you. But meantime, till that day, what is my
duty?"

"To wait in patience, and above all things to let the garrisons alone.
If we stir up the hive in the valleys they may come and see things too
soon for our success. We must win by secrecy and surprise. All is lost
if we cannot reach the railway before the Punjab is stirring."

The mullah had ceased muttering to himself. He scrambled to his feet,
shaking down his rags over his knees, a lean, crazy apparition of a man
with deep-set, smouldering eyes.

"I will speak," he cried. "Ye listen to the man's words and ye are
silent, believing all things. Ye are silent, my children, because ye
know not. But I am old and I have seen many things, and these are my
words. Ye speak of pushing out the English from the land. Allah knows
I love not the breed! I spit upon it, I thirst for the heart of every
man, woman, and child, that I might burn them in the sight of all of
you. But I have heard this talk before. When I was a young priest at
Kufaz, there was word of this pushing out of the foreigner, and I
rejoiced, being unwise. Then there was much fighting, and at the end
more English came up the valleys and, before we knew, we were paying
tribute. Since then many of our people have gone down from the
mountains with the same thought, and they have never returned. Only the
English and the troops have crept nearer. Now this stranger talks of
his Tsar and how an army will come through the passes, and foreigner
will fight with foreigner. This talk, too, I have heard. Once there
came a man with a red beard who spoke thus, and he went down to Bardur,
and lo! our men told me that they saw him hanged there for a warning.
Let foreigner war on foreigner if they please, but what have we to do in
the quarrel, my children? Ye owe nothing to either."

The stranger regarded the speaker with calm eyes of amusement.

"Nothing," said he, "except that we have fed you and armed you. By your
own acts you are the servants of my master."

The mullah was rapidly working himself into a frenzy. He swung his long
bony arms across his breast and turned his face skywards. "Ye hear
that, my children. The free people, the Bada-Mawidi, of whose loins
sprang Abraham the prophet, are the servants of some foreign dog in the
north. If ye were like your fathers, ye would have long ago ere this
wiped out the taunt in blood."

The man sat perfectly composed, save that his right hand had grasped a
revolver. He was playing a bold game, but he had played it before. And
he knew the man he had to deal with.

"I say again, you are my master's servants by your own confession. I
did not say his slaves. You are a free people, but you will serve a
greater in this affair. As for this dog who blasphemes, when we have
settled more important matters we will attend to him."

The mullah was scarcely a popular member of his tribe, for no one
stirred at the call. The stranger sat watching him with very bright,
eager eyes. Suddenly the priest ceased his genuflexions, there was a
gleam of steel among his rags, then something bright flashed in the air.
It fell short, because at the very moment of throwing, a revolver had
cracked out in the silence, and a bullet had broken two of his fingers.
The man flung himself writhing on the ground, howling forth
imprecations.

The stranger looked half apologetically at the chief, whose glum
demeanour had never relaxed. "Sorry," he said; "it had to be done in
self-defence. But I ask your pardon for it."

Fazir Khan nodded carelessly. "He is a disturber of peace, and to one
who cannot fight a hand matters little. But, by Allah, ye northerners
shoot quick."

The stranger relinquished the cherry-wood pipe and filled a meerschaum
from a pouch which he carried in the pocket of his cloak. He took a
long drink from the loving-cup of mulled wine which was passing round.

"Your mad priest has method in his folly," he said. "It is true that we
are attacking a great people; therefore the more need of wariness for
you and me, Fazir Khan. If we fail there will be the devil to pay for
you. The English will shift their frontier-line beyond the mountains,
and there will be no more lifting of women and driving of cattle for the
Bada-Mawidi. You will all be sent to school, and your guns will be
taken from you."

The chief compressed his attractive features into a savage scowl. "That
may not be in my lifetime," he said. "Besides, are there no mountains
all around? In five hours I shall be in China, and in a little more I
might be beyond the Amu. But why talk of this? The accursed English
shall not escape us, I swear by the hilt of my sword and the hearts of
my fathers."

A subdued murmur of applause ran around the circle.

"You are men after my own heart," said the stranger. "Meanwhile, a word
in your own ear, Fazir Khan. Dare you come to Bardur with me?"

The chief made a gesture of repugnance. "I hate that place of mud and
lime. The blood of my people cries on me when I enter the gates. But
if it is your counsel I will come with you."

"I wish to assure myself that the place is quiet. Our success depends
upon the whole country being unsuspicious and asleep. Now if word has
got to the south, and worse still to England, there will be questions
asked and vague instructions sent up to the frontier. We shall find a
stir among the garrisons, and perhaps some visitors in the place. And
at the very worst we might find some fool inquiring about the Nazri
Pass. There was once a man in Bardur who did, but people laughed at him
and he has gone."

"Where?" asked the chief.

"To England. But he was a harmless man, and he is too old to have any
vigour."

As the darkness grew over the hills the fires were brightened and the
curious game of _khoti_ was played in groups of six. The women came to
the house-doors to sit and gossip, and listened to the harsh laughter of
their lords from beside the fires. A little after midnight, when the
stars were picked out in the deep, velvet sky, Fazir Khan and the
stranger, both muffled to the ears, stole beyond the street and
scrambled down the perilous path-ways to the south.




CHAPTER XXII

THE OUTPOSTS


Towards the close of a wet afternoon two tongas discharged Lewis,
George, two native servants, and a collection of gun-cases in the
court-yard of the one hotel in Bardur. They had made a record journey
up country, stopping to present no letters of introduction, which are
the thieves of time. Now, as Lewis found himself in the strait valley,
with the eternal snows where the sky should be, and sniffed the dry air
from the granite walls, he glowed with the pleasure of recollection.

The place was the same as ever. The same medley of races perambulated
the streets. Sheep-skinned Central Asians and Mongolian merchants from
Yarkand still displayed their wares and their cunning; Hunza tribesmen,
half-clad Chitralis, wild-eyed savages from Yagistan mingled in the
narrow stone streets with the civilized Persian and Turcoman from beyond
the mountains. Kashmir sepoys, an untidy race, still took their ease in
the sun, and soldiers of South India from the Imperial Service Troops
showed their odd accoutrements and queer race mixtures. The place
looked and smelled like a kind of home, and Lewis, with one eye on the
gun-cases and one on the great hills, forgot his heart-sickness and had
leisure for the plain joys of expectation.

"I am going to get to work at once," he said, when he had washed the
dust out of his eyes and throat. "I shall go and call on the Logans
this very minute, and I expect we shall see Thwaite and some of the
soldiers at the club to-night." So George, much against his will, was
compelled to don a fresh suit and suffer himself to be conducted to the
bungalow of the British Resident.

The Sahib was from home, at Gilgit, but Madame would receive the
strangers. So the two found themselves in a drawing-room aggressively
English in its air, shaking hands with a small woman with kind eyes and
a washed-out complexion.

Mrs. Logan was unaffectedly glad to see them. She had that trick of
dominating her surroundings which English ladies seem to bear to the
uttermost ends of the globe. There, in that land of snows and rock,
with savage tribesmen not thirty miles away, and the British
frontier-line something less than fifty, she gave them tea and talked
small talk with the ease and gusto of an English country home.

"It's the most unfortunate thing in the world," she cried. "If you had
only wired, Gilbert would have stayed, but as it is he has gone down to
Gilgit about some polo ponies, and won't be back for two days. Things
are so humdrum and easy-going up here that one loses interest in one's
profession. Gilbert has nothing to do except arrange with the foreman
of the coolies who are making roads, and hold stupid courts, and consult
with Captain Thwaite and the garrison people. The result is that the
poor man has become crazy about golf, and wastes all his spare money on
polo ponies. You can have no idea what a godsend a new face is to us
poor people. It is simply delightful to see you again, Mr. Haystoun.
You left us about sixteen months ago, didn't you? Did you enjoy going
back?"

Lewis said yes, with an absurd sense of the humour of the question. The
lady talked as if home had been merely an interlude, instead of the
crisis of his life.

"And what did you do? And whom did you see? Please tell me, for I am
dying for a gossip."

"I have been home in Scotland, you know. Looking after my affairs and
idling. I stood for Parliament and got beaten."

"Really! How exciting! Where is your home in Scotland, Mr. Haystoun?
You told me once, but I have forgotten. You know I have no end of
Scotch relatives."

"It's in rather a remote part, a place called Etterick, in Glenavelin."

"Glenavelin, Glenavelin," the lady repeated. "That's where the
Manorwaters live, isn't it?"

"My uncle," said Lewis.

"I had a letter from a friend who was staying there in the summer. I
wonder if you ever met her. A Miss Wishart. Alice Wishart?"

Lewis strove to keep any extraordinary interest out of his eyes. This
voice from another world had broken rudely in upon his new composure.

"I knew her," he said, and his tone was of such studied carelessness
that Mrs. Logan looked up at him curiously.

"I hope you liked her, for her mother was a relation of my husband, and
when I have been home the small Alice has always been a great friend of
mine. I wonder if she has grown pretty. Gilbert and I used to bet
about it on different sides. I said she would be very beautiful some
day."

"She is very beautiful," said Lewis in a level voice, and George,
feeling the thin ice, came to his friend's rescue. He could at least
talk naturally of Miss Wishart.

"The Wisharts took the place, you know, Mrs. Logan, so we saw a lot of
them. The girl was delightful, good sportswoman and all that sort of
thing, and capital company. I wonder she never told us about you. She
knew we were coming out here, for I told her, and she was very
interested."

"Yes, it's odd, for I suppose she had read Mr. Haystoun's book, where
my husband comes in a good deal. I shall tell her about seeing you in
my next letter. And now tell me your plans."

Lewis's face had begun to burn in a most compromising way. Those last
days in Glenavelin had risen again before the eye of his mind and old
wounds were reopened. The thought that Alice was not yet wholly out of
his life, that the new world was not utterly severed from the old,
affected him with a miserable delight. Mrs. Logan became invested with
an extraordinary interest. He pulled himself together to answer her
question.

"Oh, our errand is much the same as last time. We want to get all the
sport we can, and if possible to cross the mountains into Turkestan. I
am rather keen on geographical work just now, and there's a bit of land
up here which wants exploring."

The lady laughed. "That sounds like poor dear Mr. Gribton. I suppose
you remember him? He left here in the summer, but when he lived in
Bardur he had got that northern frontier-line on the brain. He was a
horrible bore, for he would always work the conversation round to it
sooner or later. I think it was really Mr. Gribton who made people
often lose interest in these questions. They had to assume an indolent
attitude in pure opposition to his fussiness."

"When will your husband be home?" Lewis asked.

"In two days, or possibly three. I am so sorry about it. I'll wire at
once, but it's a slow journey, especially if he is bringing ponies. Of
course you want to see him before you start. It's such a pity, but
Bardur is fearfully empty of men just now. Captain Thwaite has gone off
after ibex, and though I think he will be back to-morrow, I am afraid he
will be too late for my dance. Oh, really, this is lucky. I had
forgotten all about it. Of course you two will come. That will make
two more men, and we shall be quite a respectable party. We are having
a dance to-morrow night, and as the English people here are so few and
uncertain in their movements we can't afford to miss a chance. You
_must_ come. I've got the Thwaites and the Beresfords and the Waltons,
and some of the garrison people who are down on leave. Oh, and there's
a man coming whom you must know. A Mr. Marker, a most delightful
person. I don't think you met him before, but you must have heard my
husband talk about him. He is the very man for your purpose. Gilbert
says he knows the hills better than any of the Hunza tribesmen, and that
he is the best sportsman he ever met. Besides, he is such an
interesting person, very much a man of the world, you know, who has been
everywhere and knows everybody."

Lewis congratulated himself on his luck. "I should like very much to
come to the dance, and I especially want to meet Mr. Marker."

"He is half Scotch, too," said the lady. "His mother was a Kirkpatrick
or some name like that, and he actually seems to talk English with a
kind of Scotch accent. Of course that may be the German part of him.
He is a Pomeranian count or something of the sort, and very rich. You
might get him to go with you into the hills."

"I wish we could," said Lewis falsely. His curiosity was keenly
excited.

"Why does he come up here such a lot?" George asked.

"I suppose because he likes to 'knock about,' as you call it. He is a
tremendous traveller. He has been into Tibet and all over Turkestan and
Persia. Gilbert says that he is the wonder of the age."

"Is he here just now?"

"No, I don't think so. I know he is coming to-morrow, because he wrote
me about it, and promised to come to my dance. But he is a very busy
man, so I don't suppose he will arrive till just before. He wrote me
from Gilgit, so he may find Gilbert there and bring him up with him."

Marker, Marker. The air seemed full of the strange name. Lewis saw
again Wratislaw's wrinkled face when he talked of him, and remembered
his words. "You were within an ace of meeting one of the cleverest men
living, a cheerful being in whom the Foreign Office is more interested
than in any one else in the world." Wratislaw had never been in the
habit of talking without good authority. This Marker must be indeed a
gentleman of parts.

Then conversation dwindled. Lewis, his mind torn between bitter
memories and the pressing necessities of his mission, lent a stupid ear
to Mrs. Logan's mild complaints, her gossip about Bardur, her eager
questions about home. George manfully took his place, and by a
fortunate clumsiness steered the flow of the lady's talk from Glenavelin
and the Wisharts. Lewis spoke now and then, when appealed to, but he
was busy thinking out his own problem. On the morrow night he should
meet Marker, and his work would reveal itself. Meanwhile he was in the
dark, the flimsiest adventurer on the wildest of errands. This easy,
settled place, these Englishmen whose minds held fast by polo and games,
these English ladies who had no thought beyond little social devices to
relieve the monotony of the frontier, all seemed to make a mockery of
his task. He had fondly imagined himself going to a certainty of toil
and danger; to his vexation this certainty seemed to be changing into
the most conventional of visits to the most normal of places. But
to-morrow he should see Marker; and his hope revived at the prospect.

"It is so pleasant seeing two fresh fellow-countrymen," Mrs. Logan was
saying. "Do you know, you two people look quite different from our men
up here. They are all so dried up and tired out. Our complexions are
all gone, and our eyes have got that weariness of the sun in them which
never goes away even when we go home again. But you two look quite keen
and fresh and enthusiastic. You mustn't mind compliments from an old
woman, but I wish our own people looked as nice as you. You will make
us all homesick."

A native servant entered, more noiseless and more dignified than any
English footman, and announced another visitor. Lewis lifted his head,
and saw the lady rise, smiling, to greet a tall man who had come in with
the frankness of a privileged acquaintance. "How do you do, Mr.
Marker?" he heard. "I am so glad to see you. We didn't dare to expect
you till to-morrow. May I introduce two English friends, Mr. Haystoun
and Mr. Winterham?"

And so the meeting came about in the simplest way. Lewis found himself
shaking hands cordially with a man who stood upright, quite in the
English fashion, and smiled genially on the two strangers. Then he took
the vacant chair by Mrs. Logan, and answered the lady's questions with
the ease and kindliness of one who knows and likes his fellow-creatures.
He deplored Logan's absence, grew enthusiastic about the dance, and
produced from a pocket certain sweetmeats, not made in Kashmir, for the
two children. Then he turned to George and asked pleasantly about the
journey. How did they find the roads from Gilgit? He hoped they would
get good sport, and if he could be of any service, would they command
him? He had heard of Lewis's former visit, and, of course, he had read
his book. The most striking book of travel he had seen for long. Of
course he didn't agree with certain things, but each man for his own
view; and he should like to talk over the matter with Mr. Haystoun.
Were they staying long? At Galetti's of course? By good luck that was
also his headquarters. And so he talked pleasingly, in the style of a
lady's drawing-room, while Lewis, his mind consumed with interest, sat
puzzling out the discords in his face.

"Do you know, Mr. Marker, we were talking about you before you came in.
I was telling Mr. Haystoun that I thought you were half Scotch. Mr.
Haystoun, you know, lives in Scotland."

"Do you really? Then I am a thousand times delighted to meet you, for I
have many connections with Scotland. My grandmother was a Scotswoman,
and though I have never been in your beautiful land, yet I have known
many of your people. And, indeed, I have heard of one of your name who
was a friend of my father's--a certain Mr. Haystoun of Etterick."

"My father," said Lewis.

"Ah, I am so pleased to hear. My father and he met often in Paris, when
they were attached to their different embassies. My father was in the
German service."

"Your mother was Russian, was she not?" Lewis asked tactlessly, impelled
by he knew not what motive.

"Ah, how did you know?" Mr. Marker smiled in reply, with the slightest
raising of the eyebrows. "I have indeed the blood of many nationalities
in my veins. Would that I were equally familiar with all nations, for I
know less of Russia than I know of Scotland. We in Germany are their
near neighbours, and love them, as you do here, something less than
ourselves."

He talked English with that pleasing sincerity which seems inseparable
from the speech of foreigners, who use a purer and more formal idiom
than ourselves. George looked anxiously towards Lewis, with a question
in his eyes, but finding his companion abstracted, he spoke himself.

"I have just arrived," said the other simply; "but it was from a
different direction. I have been shooting in the hills, getting cool
air into my lungs after the valleys. Why, Mrs. Logan, I have been down
to Rawal Pindi since I saw you last, and have been choked with the sun.
We northerners do not take kindly to glare and dust."

"But you are an old hand here, they tell me. I wish you'd show me the
ropes, you know. I'm very keen, but as ignorant as a babe. What sort
of rifles do they use here? I wish you'd come and look at my
ironmongery." And George plunged into technicalities.

When Lewis rose to leave, following unwillingly the convention which
forbids a guest to stay more than five minutes after a new visitor has
arrived, Marker crossed the room with them. "If you're not engaged for
to-night, Mr. Haystoun, will you do me the honour to dine with me? I
am alone, and I think we might manage to find things to talk about."
Lewis accepted gladly, and with one of his sweetest smiles the gentleman
returned to Mrs. Logan's side.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE DINNER AT GALETTI'S


"I have heard of you so much," Mr. Marker said, "and it was a lucky
chance which brought me to Bardur to meet you." They had taken their
cigars out to the verandah, and were drinking the strong Persian coffee,
with a prospect before them of twinkling town lights, and a mountain
line of rock and snow. Their host had put on evening clothes and wore a
braided dinner-jacket which gave the faintest touch of the foreigner to
his appearance. At dinner he had talked well of a score of things. He
had answered George's questions on sport with the readiness of an
expert; he had told a dozen good stories, and in an easy, pleasant way
he had gossiped of books and places, people and politics. His knowledge
struck both men as uncanny. Persons of minute significance in
Parliament were not unknown to him, and he was ready with a theory or an
explanation on the most recondite matters. But coffee and cigars found
him a different man. He ceased to be the enthusiast, the omnivorous and
versatile inquirer, and relapsed into the ordinary good fellow, who is
no cleverer than his neighbours.

"We're confoundedly obliged to you," said George. "Haystoun is keen
enough, but when he was out last time he seems to have been very slack
about the sport."

"Sort of student of frontier peoples and politics, as the newspapers
call it. I fancy that game is, what you say, 'played out' a little
nowadays. It is always a good cry for alarmist newspapers to send up
their circulation by, but you and I, my friend, who have mixed with
serious politicians, know its value."

George nodded. He liked to be considered a person of importance, and he
wanted the conversation to get back to ibex.

"I speak as of a different nation," Marker said, looking towards Lewis.
"But I find the curse of modern times is this mock-seriousness. Some
centuries ago men and women were serious about honour and love and
religion. Nowadays we are frivolous and sceptical about these things,
but we are deadly in earnest about fads. Plans to abolish war, schemes
to reform criminals, and raise the condition of woman, and supply the
Bada-Mawidi with tooth-picks are sure of the most respectful treatment
and august patronage."

"I agree," said Lewis. "The Bada-Mawidi live there?" And he pointed to
the hill line.

Marker nodded. He had used the name inadvertently as an illustration,
and he had no wish to answer questions on the subject.

"A troublesome tribe, rather?" asked Lewis, noticing the momentary
hesitation.

"In the past. Now they are quiet enough."

"But I understood that there was a ferment in the Pamirs. The other
side threatened, you know." He had almost said "your side," but checked
himself.

"Ah yes, there are rumours of a rising, but that is further west. The
Bada-Mawidi are too poor to raise two swords in the whole tribe. You
will come across them if you go north, and I can recommend them as
excellent beaters."

"Is the north the best shooting quarter?" asked Lewis with sharp eyes.
"I am just a little keen on some geographical work, and if I can join
both I shall be glad. Due north is the Russian frontier?

"Due north after some scores of the most precipitous miles in the world.
It is a preposterous country. I myself have been on the verge of it,
and know it as well as most. The geographical importance, too, is
absurdly exaggerated. It has never been mapped because there is nothing
about it to map, no passes, no river, no conspicuous mountain, nothing
but desolate, unvaried rock. The pass to Yarkand goes to the east, and
the Afghan routes are to the west. But to the north you come to a wall,
and if you have wings you may get beyond it. The Bada-Mawidi live in
some of the wretched nullahs. There is sport, of course, of a kind, but
not perhaps the best. I should recommend you to try the more easterly
hills."

The speaker's manner was destitute of all attempt to dissuade, and yet
Lewis felt in some remote way that this man was trying to dissuade him.
The rock-wall, the Bada-Mawidi, whatever it was, something existed
between Bardur and the Russian frontier which this pleasant gentleman
did not wish him to see.

"Our plans are all vague," he said, "and of course we are glad of your
advice."

"And I am glad to give it, though in many ways you know the place better
than I do. Your book is the work of a very clever and observant man, if
you will excuse my saying so. I was thankful to find that you were not
the ordinary embryo-publicist who looks at the frontier hills from
Bardur, and then rushes home and talks about invasion."

"You think there is no danger, then?"

"On the contrary, I honestly think that there is danger, but from a
different direction. Britain is getting sick, and when she is sick
enough, some people who are less sick will overwhelm her. My own
opinion is that Russia will be the people."

"But is not that one of the old cries that you object to?" and Lewis
smiled.

"It was; now it is ceasing to be a cry, and passing into a fact, or as
much a fact as that erroneous form of gratuity, prophecy, can be. Look
at Western Europe and you cannot disbelieve the evidence of your own
eyes. In France you have anarchy, the vulgarest frivolity and the
cheapest scepticism, joined with a sort of dull capacity for routine
work. Germany, the very heart of it eaten out with sentiment, either
the cheap military or the vague socialist brand. Spain and Italy
shadows, Denmark and Sweden farces, Turkey a sinful anachronism."

"And Britain?" George asked.

"My Scotch blood gives me the right to speak my mind," said the man,
laughing. "Honestly I don't find things much better in Britain. You
were always famous for a dogged common sense which was never tricked
with catch-words, and yet the British people seem to be growing nervous
and ingenuous. The cult of abstract ideals, which has been the curse of
the world since Adam, is as strong with you as elsewhere. The
philosophy of 'gush' is good enough in its place, but it is the devil in
politics."

"That is true enough," said Lewis solemnly. "And then you are losing
grip. A belief in sentiment means a disbelief in competence and
strength, and that is the last and fatalest heresy. And a belief in
sentiment means a foolish scepticism towards the great things of life.
There is none of the blood and bone left for honest belief. You hold
your religion half-heartedly. Honest fanaticism is a thing intolerable
to you. You are all mild, rational sentimentalists, and I would not
give a ton of it for an ounce of good prejudice." George and Lewis
laughed.

"And Russia?" they asked.

"Ah, there I have hope. You have a great people, uneducated and
unspoiled. They are physically strong, and they have been trained by
centuries of serfdom to discipline and hardships. Also, there is fire
smouldering somewhere. You must remember that Russia is the
stepdaughter of the East. The people are northern in the truest sense,
but they have a little of Eastern superstition. A rational, sentimental
people live in towns or market gardens, like your English country, but
great lonely plains and forests somehow do not agree with that sort of
creed. That slow people can still believe freshly and simply, and some
day when the leader arrives they will push beyond their boundaries and
sweep down on Western Europe, as their ancestors did thirteen hundred
years ago. And you have no walls of Rome to resist them, and I do not
think you will find a Charlemagne. Good heavens! What can your
latter-day philosophic person, who weighs every action and believes only
in himself, do against an unwearied people with the fear of God in their
hearts? When that day comes, my masters, we shall have a new empire,
the Holy Eastern Empire, and this rotten surface civilization of ours
will be swept off. It is always the way. Men get into the habit of
believing that they can settle everything by talk, and fancy themselves
the arbiters of the world, and then suddenly the great man arrives, your
Caesar or Cromwell, and clears out the talkers."

"I've heard something like that before. In fact, on occasions I have
said it myself. It's a pretty idea. How long do you give this
_Volkerwanderung_ to get started?"

"It will not be in our time," said the man sadly. "I confess I am
rather anxious for it to come off. Europe is a dull place at present,
given up to Jews and old women. But I am an irreclaimable wanderer, and
it is some time since I have been home. Things may be already
changing."

"Scarcely," said Lewis. "And meantime where is this Slav invasion going
to begin? I suppose they will start with us here, before they cross the
Channel?"

"Undoubtedly. But Britain is the least sick of the crew, so she may be
left in peace till the confirmed invalids are destroyed. At the best it
will be a difficult work. Our countrymen, you will permit the name, my
friends, have unexpected possibilities in their blood. And even this
India will be a hard nut to crack. It is assumed that Russia has but to
find Britain napping, buy a passage from the more northerly tribes, and
sweep down on the Punjab. I need not tell you how impossible such a
land invasion is. It is my opinion that when the time comes the attack
will be by sea from some naval base on the Persian Gulf. It is a mere
matter of time till Persia is the Tsar's territory, and then they may
begin to think about invasion."

"You think the northern road impossible! I suppose you ought to know."

"I do, and I have some reason for my opinion. I know Afghanistan and
Chitral as few Europeans know it."

"But what about Bardur, and this Kashmir frontier? I can understand the
difficulties of the Khyber, but this Kashmir road looks promising."

Marker laughed a great, good-humoured, tolerant, incredulous laugh. "My
dear sir, that's the most utter nonsense. How are you to bring an army
over a rock wall which a chamois hunter could scarcely climb? An
invading army is not a collection of winged fowl. I grant you Bardur is
a good starting-point if it were once reached. But you might as well
think of a Chinese as of a Russian invasion from the north. It would be
a good deal more possible, for there is a road to Yarkand, and
respectable passes to the north-east. But here we are shut off from the
Oxus by as difficult a barrier as the Elburz. Go up and see. There is
some shooting to be had, and you will see for yourself the sort of
country between here and Taghati."

"But people come over here sometimes."

"Yes, from the south, or by Afghanistan."

"Not always. What about the Korabaut Pass into Chitral? Ianoff and the
Cossacks came through it."

"That's true," said the man, as if in deep thought. "I had forgotten,
but the band was small and the thing was a real adventure."

"And then you have Gromchevtsky. He brought his people right down
through the Pamirs."

For a second the man's laughing ease deserted him. He leaned his head
forward and peered keenly into Lewis's face. Then, as if to cover his
discomposure, he fell into the extreme of bluff amusement. The
exaggeration was plain to both his hearers.

"Oh yes, there was poor old Gromchevtsky. But then you know he was what
you call 'daft,' and one never knew how much to believe. He had hatred
of the English on the brain, and he went about the northern valleys
making all sorts of wild promises on the part of the Tsar. A great
Russian army was soon to come down from the hills and restore the
valleys to their former owners. And then, after he had talked all this
nonsense, and actually managed to create some small excitement among the
tribesmen, the good fellow disappeared. No man knows where he went.
The odd thing is that I believe he has never been heard of again in
Russia to this day. Of course his mission, as he loved to call it, was
perfectly unauthorized, and the man himself was a creature of farce. He
probably came either by the Khyber or the Korabaut Pass, possibly even
by the ordinary caravan-route from Yarkand, but felt it necessary for
his mission's sake to pretend he had found some way through the rock
barrier. I am afraid I cannot allow him to be taken seriously."

Lewis yawned and reached out his hand for the cigars. "In any case it
is merely a question of speculative interest. We shall not fall just
yet, though you think so badly of us."

"You will not fall just yet," said Marker slowly, "but that is not your
fault. You British have sold your souls for something less than the
conventional mess of pottage. You are ruled in the first place by
money-bags, and the faddists whom they support to blind your eyes. If I
were a young man in your country with my future to make, do you know
what I would do? I would slave in the Stock Exchange. I would spend my
days and nights in the pursuit of fortune, and, by heaven, I would get
it. Then I would rule the market and break, crush, quietly and
ruthlessly, the whole gang of Jew speculators and vulgarians who would
corrupt a great country. Money is power with you, and I should attain
it, and use it to crush the leeches who suck our blood."

"Good man," said George, laughing. "That's my way of thinking. Never
heard it better put."

"I have felt the same," said Lewis. "When I read of 'rings' and
'corners' and 'trusts' and the misery and vulgarity of it all, I have
often wished to have a try myself, and see whether average brains and
clean blood could not beat these fellows on their own ground."

"Then why did you not?" asked Marker. "You were rich enough to make a
proper beginning."

"I expect I was too slack. I wanted to try the thing, but there was so
much that was repulsive that I never quite got the length of trying.
Besides, I have a bad habit of seeing both sides of a question. The
ordinary arguments seemed to me weak, and it was too much fag to work
out an attitude for oneself."

Marker looked sharply at Lewis, and George for a moment saw and
contrasted the two faces. Lewis's keen, kindly, humorous, cultured,
with strong lines ending weakly, a face over-bred, brave and finical;
the other's sharp, eager, with the hungry wolf-like air of ambition,
every line graven in steel, and the whole transfused, as it were, by the
fire of the eyes into the living presentment of human vigour.

It was the eternal contrast of qualities, and for a moment in George's
mind there rose a delight that two such goodly pieces of manhood should
have found a meeting-ground.

"I think, you know, that we are not quite so bad as you make out," said
Lewis quietly. "To an outsider we must appear on the brink of
incapacity, but then it is not the first time we have produced that
impression. You will still find men who in all their spiritual sickness
have kept something of that restless, hard-bitten northern energy, and
that fierce hunger for righteousness, which is hard to fight with.
Scores of people, who can see no truth in the world and are sick with
doubt and introspection and all the latter-day devils, have yet
something of pride and honour in their souls which will make them show
well at the last. If we are going to fall our end will not be quite
inglorious."

Marker laughed and rose. "I am afraid I must leave you now. I have to
see my servant, for I am off to-morrow. This has been a delightful
meeting. I propose that we drink to its speedy repetition."

They drank, clinking glasses in continental fashion, and the host shook
hands and departed.

"Good chap," was George's comment. "Put us up to a wrinkle or two, and
seemed pretty sound in his politics. I wish I could get him to come and
stop with me at home. Do you think we shall run across him again?"

Lewis was looking at the fast vanishing lights of the town. "I should
think it highly probable," he said.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE TACTICS OF A CHIEF


There is another quarter in Bardur besides the English one. Down by the
stream side there are narrow streets built on the scarp of the rock,
hovels with deep rock cellars, and a wonderful amount of cubic space
beneath the brushwood thatch. There the trader from Yarkand who has
contraband wares to dispose of may hold a safe market. And if you were
to go at nightfall into this quarter, where the foot of the Kashmir
policeman rarely penetrates, you might find shaggy tribesmen who have
been all their lives outlaws, walking unmolested to visit their friends,
and certain Jewish gentlemen, members of the great family who have
conquered the world, engaged in the pursuit of their unlawful calling.

Marker speedily left the broader streets of the European quarter, and
plunged down a steep alley which led to the stream. Half way down there
was a lane to the left in the line of hovels, and, after stopping a
moment to consider, he entered this. It was narrow and dark, but smelt
cleanly enough of the dry granite sand. There were little dark
apertures in the huts, which might have been either doors or windows,
and at one of these he stopped, lit a match, and examined it closely.
The result was satisfactory; for the man, who had hitherto been
crouching, straightened himself up and knocked. The door opened
instantaneously, and he bowed his tall head to enter a narrow passage.
This brought him into a miniature courtyard, about thirty feet across,
above which gleamed a patch of violet sky, sown with stars. Below a
door on the right a light shone, and this he pushed open, and entered a
little room.

The place was richly furnished, with low couches and Persian tables, and
on the floor a bright matting. The short, square-set man sitting
smoking on the divan we have already met at a certain village in the
mountains. Fazir Khan, descendant of Abraham, and father and chief of
the Bada-Mawidi, has a nervous eye and an uneasy face to-night, for it
is a hard thing for a mountaineer, an inhabitant of great spaces, to sit
with composure in a trap-like room in the citadel of a foe who has many
acts of rape and murder to avenge on his body. To do Fazir Khan justice
he strove to conceal his restlessness under the usual impassive calm of
his race. He turned his head slightly as Marker entered, nodded gravely
over the bowl of his pipe, and pointed to the seat at the far end of the
divan.

"It is a dark night," he said. "I heard you stumbling on the causeway
before you entered. And I have many miles to cover before dawn."

Marker nodded. "Then you must make haste, my friend. You must be in
the hills by daybreak, for I have some errands I want you to do for me.
I have to-night been dining with two strangers, who have come up from
the south."

The chief's eyes sparkled. "Do they suspect?"

"Nothing in particular, everything in general. They are English. One
was here before and got far up into your mountains. He wrote a clever
book when he returned, which made people think. They say their errand
is sport, and it may be. On the other hand I have a doubt. One has not
the air of the common sportsman. He thinks too much, and his eyes have
a haggard look. It is possible that they are in their Government's
services and have come to reconnoitre."

"Then we are lost," said Fazir Khan sourly. "It was always a fool's
plan, at the mercy of any wandering Englishman."

"Not so," said Marker. "Nothing is lost, and nothing will be lost. But
I fear these two men. They do not bluster and talk at random like the
others. They are so very quiet that they may mean danger."

"They must remain here," said the chief. "Give me the word, and I will
send one of my men to hough their horses and, if need be, cripple
themselves."

Marker laughed. "You are an honest fool, Fazir Khan. That sort of
thing is past now. We live in the wrong times and places for it. We
cannot keep them here, but we must send them on a goose-chase. Do you
understand?"

"I understand nothing. I am a simple man and my ways are simple, and
not as yours."

"Then attend to my words, my friend. Our expedition must be changed and
made two days sooner. That will give these two Englishmen three days
only to checkmate it. Besides, they are ignorant, and to-morrow is lost
to them, for they go to a ball at the Logan woman's. Still, I fear them
with two days to work in. If they go north, they are clever and
suspicious, and they may see or fancy enough to wreck our plans. They
may have the way barred, and we know how little would bar the way."

"Ten resolute men," said the chief. "Nay, I myself, with my two sons,
would hold a force at bay there."

"If that is true, how much need is there to be wary beforehand! Since
we cannot prevent these men from meddling, we can give them rope to
meddle in small matters. Let us assume that they have been sent out by
their Government. They are the common make of Englishmen, worshipping a
god which they call their honour. They will do their duty if they can
find it out. Now there is but one plan, to create a duty for them which
will take them out of the way."

The chief was listening with half-closed eyes. He saw new trouble for
himself and was not cheerful.

"Do you know how many men Holm has with him at the Forza camp?"

"A score and a half. Some of my people passed that way yesterday, when
the soldiers were parading."

"And there are two more camps?

"There are two beyond the Nazri Pass, on the fringe of the Doorab hills.
We call the places Khautmi-sa and Khautmi-bana, but the English have
their own names for them."

Marker nodded.

"I know the places. They are Gurkha camps. The officers are called
Mitchinson and St. John. They will give us little trouble. But the
Forza garrison is too near the pass for safety, and yet far enough away
for my plans." And for a moment the man's eyes were abstracted, as if in
deep thought.

"I have another thing to tell of the Forza camp," the chief interrupted.
"The captain, the man whom they call Holm, is sick, so sick that he
cannot remain there. He went out shooting and came too near to
dangerous places, so a bullet of one of my people's guns found his leg.
He will be coming to Bardur to-morrow. Is it your wish that he be
prevented?

"Let him come," said Marker. "He will suit my purpose. Now I will tell
you your task, Fazir Khan, for it is time that you took the road. You
will take a hundred of the Bada-Mawidi and put them in the rocks round
the Forza camp. Let them fire a few shots but do no great damage, lest
this man Holm dare not leave. If I know the man at all, he will only
hurry the quicker when he hears word of trouble, for he has no stomach
for danger, if he can get out of it creditably. So he will come down
here to-morrow with a tale of the Bada-Mawidi in arms, and find no men
in the place to speak of, except these two strangers. I will have
already warned them of this intended rising, and if, as I believe, they
serve the Government, they will let no grass grow below their feet till
they get to Forza. Then on the day after let your tribesmen attack the
place, not so as to take it, but so as to make a good show of fight and
keep the garrison employed. This will keep these young men quiet; they
will think that all rumours they may have heard culminate in this rising
of yours, and they will be content, and satisfied that they have done
their duty. Then, the day after, while they are idling at Forza, we
will slip through the passes, and after that there will be no need for
ruses."

The chief rose and pulled himself up to his full height. "After that,"
he said, "there will be work for men. God! We shall harry the valleys
as our forefathers harried them, and we shall suck the juicy plains dry.
You will give us a free hand, my lord?"

"Your hand shall be free enough," said Marker. "But see that every word
of my bidding is done. We fail utterly unless all is secret and swift.
It is the lion attacking the village. If he crosses the trap gate safely
he may ravage at his pleasure, but there is first the trap to cross. And
now it is your time to leave."

The mountaineer tightened his girdle, and exchanged his slippers for
deer-hide boots. He bowed gravely to the other and slipped out into the
darkness of the court. Marker drew forth some plans and writing
materials from his great-coat pocket and spread them before him on the
table. It was a thing he had done a hundred times within the last week,
and as he made his calculations again and traced his route anew, his
action showed the tinge of nervousness to which the strongest natures at
times must yield. Then he wrote a letter, and, yawning deeply, he shut
up the place and returned to Galetti's.




CHAPTER XXV

MRS. LOGAN'S BALL


When Lewis had finished breakfast next morning, and was sitting idly on
the verandah watching the busy life of the bazaar at his feet, a letter
was brought him by a hotel servant. "It was left for you by Marker
Sahib, when he went away this morning. He sent his compliments to the
sahibs and regretted that he had to leave too early to speak with them,
but he left this note." Lewis broke the envelope and read:

/#
     DEAR MR. HAYSTOUN,

     When I was thinking over our conversation last night, chance put a
     piece of information in my way which you may think fit to use. You
     know that I am more intimate than most people with the hill tribes.
     Well, let this be the guarantee of my news, but do not ask how I
     got it, for I cannot betray friends. Some of these, the Bada-Mawidi
     to wit, are meditating mischief. The Forza camp, which I think you
     have visited--a place some twenty miles off--is too near those
     villages to be safe. So to-morrow at latest they have planned to
     make a general attack upon it, and, unless the garrison were
     prepared, I should fear for the result, for they are the most
     cunning scoundrels in the world. What puzzles me is how they have
     ever screwed up the courage for such a move, for lately they were
     very much in fear of the Government. It appears as if they looked
     for backing from over the frontier. You will say that this proves
     your theory; but to me it merely seems as if some maniac of the
     Gromchevtsky type had got among them. In any case I wish something
     could be done. My duties take me away at once, and in a very
     different direction, but perhaps you could find some means of
     putting the camp on their guard. I should be sorry to hear of a
     tragedy; also I should be sorry to see the Bada-Mawidi get into
     trouble. They are foolish blackguards, but amusing.

     Yours most sincerely,

     ARTHUR MARKER.
#/

Lewis read the strange letter several times through, then passed it to
George. George read it with difficulty, not being accustomed to a
flowing frontier hand. "Jolly decent of him, I call it," was his
remark.

"I would give a lot to know what to make of it. The man is playing some
game, but what the deuce it is I can't fathom."

"I suppose we had better get up to that Forza place as soon as we can."

"I think not," said Lewis.

"The man's honest, surely?"

"But he is also clever. Remember who he is. He may wish to get us out
of the way. I don't suppose that he can possibly fear us, but he may
want the coast clear from suspicious spectators. Besides, I don't see
the good of Forza. It is not the part of the hills I want to explore.
There can be no frontier danger there, and at the worst there can be
nothing more than a little tribal disturbance. Now what on earth would
Russia gain by moving the tribes there, except as a blind?"

"Still, you know, the man admits all that in his letter. And if the
people up there are going to be in trouble we ought to go and give them
notice."

"I'll take an hour to think over it, and then I'll go and see Thwaite.
He was to be back this morning."

Lewis spread the letter before him. It was a simple, friendly note,
giving him a chance of doing a good turn to friends. His clear course
was to lay it before Thwaite and shift the responsibility for action to
his shoulders. But he felt all the while that this letter had a
personal application which he could not conceal. It would have been as
easy for Marker to send the note to Thwaite, whom he had long known.
But he had chosen to warn him privately. It might be a ruse, but he had
no glimpse of the meaning. Or, again, it might be a piece of pure
friendliness, a chance of unofficial adventure given by one wanderer to
another. He puzzled it out, lamenting that he was so deep in the dark,
and cursing his indecision. Another man would have made up his mind
long ago; it was a ruse, therefore let it be neglected and remain in
Bardur with open eyes; it was good faith and a good chance, therefore
let him go at once. But to Lewis the possibilities seemed endless, and
he could find no solution save the old one of the waverer, to wait for
further light.

He found Thwaite at breakfast, just returned from his travels.

"Hullo, Haystoun. I heard you were here. Awfully glad to see you. Sit
down, won't you, and have some breakfast." The officer was a long man,
with a thin, long face, a reddish moustache, and small, blue eyes.

"I came to ask you questions, if you don't mind. I have the regular
globe-trotter's trick of wanting information. What's the Forza camp
like? Do you think that the Bada-Mawidi, supposing they stir again,
would be likely to attack it?"

"Not a bit of it. That was the sort of thing that Gribton was always
croaking about. Why, man, the Bada-Mawidi haven't a kick in them.
Besides, they are very nearly twenty miles off and the garrison's a very
fit lot. They're all right. Trust them to look after themselves."

"But I have been hearing stories of Bada-Mawidi risings which are to
come off soon."

"Oh, you'll always hear stories of that sort. All the old women in the
neighbourhood purvey them."

"Who are in charge at Forza?"

"Holm and Andover. Don't care much for Holm, but Andy is a good chap.
But what's this new interest of yours? Are you going up there?

"I'm out here to shoot and explore, you know, so Forza comes into my
beat. Thanks very much. See you to-night, I suppose."

Lewis went away dispirited and out of temper. He had been pitchforked
among easy-going people, when all the while mysterious things, dangerous
things, seemed to hang in the air. He had not the material for even the
first stages of comprehension. No one suspected, every one was
satisfied; and at the same time came those broken hints of other things.
He felt choked and muffled, wrapped in the cotton-wool of this easy
life; and all the afternoon he chafed at his own impotence and the
world's stupidity.

When the two travellers presented themselves at the Logans' house that
evening, they were immediately seized upon by the hostess and compelled,
to their amusement, to do her bidding. They were her discoveries, her
new young men, and as such, they had their responsibilities. George,
who liked dancing, obeyed meekly; but Lewis, being out of temper and
seeing before him an endless succession of wearisome partners, soon
broke loose, and accompanied Thwaite to the verandah for a cigar.

The man was ill at ease, and the sight of young faces and the sound of
laughter vexed him with a sense of his eccentricity. He could never,
like George, take the world as he found it. At home he was the slave of
his own incapacity; now he was the slave of memories. He had come out
on an errand, with a chance to recover his lost self-respect, and lo!
he was as far as ever from attainment. His lost capacity for action was
not to be found here, in the midst of this petty diplomacy and
inglorious ease.

From the verandah a broad belt of lawn ran down to the edge of the north
road. It lay shining in the moonlight like a field of snow with the
highway a dark ribbon beyond it. Thwaite and Lewis walked down to the
gate talking casually, and at the gate they stopped and looked down on
the town. It lay a little to the left, the fort rising black before it,
and the road ending in a patch of shade which was the old town gate.
The night was very still, cool airs blew noiselessly from the hills, and
a jackal barked hoarsely in some far-off thicket.

The men hung listlessly on the gate, drinking in the cool air and
watching the blue cigar smoke wreathe and fade. Suddenly down the road
there came the sound of wheels.

"That's a tonga," said Thwaite. "Wonder who it is."

"Do tongas travel this road?" Lewis asked.

"Oh yes, they go ten miles up to the foot of the rocks. We use them for
sending up odds and ends to the garrisons. After that coolies are the
only conveyance. Gad, I believe this thing is going to stop."

The thing in question, which was driven by a sepoy in bright yellow
pyjamas, stopped at the Logans' gate. A peevish voice was heard giving
directions from within.

"It sounds like Holm," said Thwaite, walking up to it, "and upon my soul
it is Holm. What on earth are you doing here, my dear fellow?"

"Is that you, Thwaite?" said the voice. "I wish you'd help me out. I
want Logan to give me a bed for the night. I'm infernally ill."

Lewis looked within and saw a pale face and bloodshot eyes which did not
belie the words.

"What is it?" said Thwaite. "Fever or anything smashed?"

"I've got a bullet in my leg which has got to be cut out. Got it two
days ago when I was out shooting. Some natives up in the rocks did it,
I fancy. Lord, how it hurts." And the unhappy man groaned as he tried
to move.

"That's bad," said Thwaite sympathetically. "The Logans have got a
dance on, but we'll look after you all right. How did you leave things
in Forza?"

"Bad. I oughtn't to be here, but Andy insisted. He said I would only
get worse and crock entirely. Things look a bit wild up there just now.
There has been a confounded lot of rifle-stealing, and the Bada-Mawidi
are troublesome. However, I hope it's only their fun."

"I hope so," said Thwaite. "You know Haystoun, don't you?"

"Glad to meet you," said the man. "Heard of you. Coming up our way? I
hope you will after I get this beastly leg of mine better."

"Thwaite will tell you I have been cross-examining him about your place.
I wanted badly to ask you about it, for I got a letter this morning from
a man called Marker with some news for you."

"What did he say?" asked Holm sharply.

"He said that he had heard privately that the Bada-Mawidi were planning
an attack on you to-morrow or the day after."

"The deuce they are," said Holm peevishly, and Thwaite's face
lengthened.

"And he told me to find some way of letting you know."

"Then why didn't you tell me earlier?" said Thwaite. "Marker should
know if anybody does. We should have kept Holm up there. Now it's
almost too late. Oh, this is the devil!"

Lewis held his peace. He had forgotten the solidity of Marker's
reputation.

"What's the chances of the place?" Thwaite was asking. "I know your
numbers and all that, but are they anything like prepared?"

"I don't know," said Holm miserably. "They might get on all right, but
everybody is pretty slack just now. Andy has a touch of fever, and some
of the men may get leave for shooting. I must get back at once."

"You can't. Why, man, you couldn't get half way. And what's more, I
can't go. This place wants all the looking after it can get. A row in
the hills means a very good possibility of a row in Bardur, and that is
too dangerous a game. And besides myself there is scarcely a man in the
place who counts. Logan has gone to Gilgit, and there's nobody left but
boys."

"If you don't mind I should like to go," said Lewis shamefacedly.

"You," they cried. "Do you know the road?"

"I've been there before, and I remember it more or less. Besides, it is
really my show this time. I got the warning, and I want the credit."
And he smiled.

"The road's bound to be risky," said Thwaite thoughtfully. "I don't
feel inclined to let you run your neck into danger like this."

Lewis was busy turning over the problem in his mind. The presence of
the man Holm seemed the one link of proof he needed. He had his word
that there were signs of trouble in the place, and that the Bada-Mawidi
were ill at ease. Whatever game Marker was playing, on this matter he
seemed to have spoken in good faith. Here was a clear piece of work for
him. And even if it was fruitless it would bring him nearer to the
frontier; his expedition to the north would be begun.

"Let me go," he said. "I came out here to explore the hills and I take
all risks on my own head. I can give them Marker's message as well as
anybody else."

Thwaite looked at Holm. "I don't see why he shouldn't. You're a wreck,
and I can't leave my own place."

"Tell Andy you saw me," cried Holm. "He'll be anxious. And tell him to
mind the north gate. If the fools knew how to use dynamite they might
have it down at once. If they attack it can't last long, but then they
can't last long either, for they are hard up for arms, and unless they
have changed since last week they have no ammunition to speak of."

"Marker said it looked as if they were being put up to the job from over
the frontier."

"Gad, then it's my turn to look out," said Thwaite. "If it's the
gentlemen from over the frontier they won't stop at Forza. Lord, I hate
this border business, it's so hideously in the dark. But I think that's
all rot. Any tribal row here is sure to be set down to Russian
influence. We don't understand the joint possession of an artificial
frontier," he added, with an air of quoting from some book.

"Did you get that from Marker?" Holm asked crossly. "He once said the
same thing to me." His temper had suffered badly among the hills.

"We'd better get you to bed, my dear fellow," said Thwaite, looking down
at him. "You look remarkably cheap. Would you mind going in and trying
to find Mrs. Logan, Haystoun? I'll carry this chap in. Stop a minute,
though. Perhaps he's got something to say to you."

"Mind the north gate ... tell Andy I'm all right and make him look
after himself ... he's overworking ... if you want to send a
message to the other people you'd better send by Nazri ... if the
Badas mean business they'll shut up the road you go by. That's all.
Good luck and thanks very much."

Lewis found Mrs. Logan making a final inspection of the supper-room.
She ran to the garden, to find the invalid Holm in Thwaite's arms at the
steps of the verandah. The sick warrior pulled off an imaginary cap and
smiled feebly.

"Oh, Mr. Holm, I'm so sorry. Of course we can have you. I'll put you in
the other end of the house where you won't be so much troubled with the
noise. You must have had a dreadful journey." And so forth, with the
easy condolences of a kind woman.

When Thwaite had laid down his burden, he turned to Lewis.

"I wish we had another man, Haystoun. What about your friend Winterham?
One's enough to do your work, but if the thing turns out to be serious,
there ought to be some means of sending word. Andover will want you to
stay, for they are short-handed enough."

"I'll get Winterham to go and wait for me somewhere. If I don't turn up
by a certain time, he can come and look for me."

"That will do," said Thwaite, "though it's a stale job for him. Well,
good-bye and good luck to you. I expect there won't be much trouble,
but I wish you had told us in the morning."

Lewis turned to go and find George. "What a chance I had almost
missed," was the word in his heart. The errand might be futile, the
message a blind, but it was at least movement, action, a possibility.




CHAPTER XXVI

FRIEND TO FRIEND


He found George sitting down in the verandah after waltzing. His
partner was a sister of Logan's, a dark girl whose husband was Resident
somewhere in Lower Kashmir. The lady gave her hand to Lewis and he took
the vacant seat on the other side.

He apologized for carrying off her companion, escorted her back to the
ballroom, and then returned to satisfy the amazed George.

"I want to talk to you. Excuse my rudeness, but I have explained to
Mrs. Tracy. I have a good many things I want to say to you."

"Where on earth have you been all night, Lewis? I call it confoundedly
mean to go off and leave me to do all the heavy work. I've never been
so busy in my life. Lots of girls and far too few men. This is the
first breathing space I've had. What is it that you want?"

"I am going off this very moment up into the hills. That letter Marker
sent me this morning has been confirmed. Holm, who commands up at the
Forza fort, has just come down very sick, and he says that the
Bada-Mawidi are looking ugly, and that we should take Marker's word. He
wanted to go back himself but he is too ill, and Thwaite can't leave
here, so I am going. I don't expect there will be much risk, but in
case the rising should be serious I want you to do me a favour."

"I suppose I can't come with you," said George ruefully. "I know I
promised to let you go your own way before we came out, but I wish you
would let me stick by you. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing desperate," said Lewis, laughing. "You can stay on here and
dance till sunrise if you like. But to-morrow I want you to come up to
a certain place at the foot of the hills which I will tell you about,
and wait there. It's about half distance between Forza and the two
Khautmi forts. If the rising turns out to be a simple affair I'll join
you there to-morrow night and we can start our shooting. But if I
don't, I want you to go up to the Khautmi forts and rouse St. John and
Mitchinson and get them to send to Forza. Do you see?"

Lewis had taken out a pencil and began to sketch a rough plan on
George's shirt cuff. "This will give you an idea of the place. You can
look up a bigger map in the hotel, and Thwaite or any one will give you
directions about the road. There's Forza, and there are the Khautmis
about twenty miles west. Half-way between the two is that long Nazri
valley, and at the top is a tableland strewn with boulders where you
shoot mountain sheep. I've been there, and the road between Khautmi and
Forza passes over it. I expect it is a very bad road, but apparently
you can get a little Kashmir pony to travel it. To the north of that
plateau there is said to be nothing but rock and snow for twenty miles
to the frontier. That may be so, but if this thing turns out all right
we'll look into the matter. Anyway, you have got to pitch your tent
to-morrow on that tableland just above the head of the Nazri gully.
With luck I should be able to get to you some time in the afternoon. If
I don't turn up, you go off to Khautmi next morning at daybreak and give
them my message. If I can't come myself I'll find a way to send word;
but if you don't hear from me it will be fairly serious, for it will
mean that the rising is a formidable thing after all. And that, of
course, will mean trouble for everybody all round. In that case you'd
better do what St. John and Mitchinson tell you. You're sure to be
wanted."

George's face cleared. "That sounds rather sport. I'd better bring up
the servants. They might turn out useful. And I suppose I'll bring a
couple of rifles for you, in case it's all a fraud and we want to go
shooting. I thought the place was going to be stale, but it promises
pretty well now." And he studied the plan on his shirt cuff. Then an
idea came to him.

"Suppose you find no rising. That will mean that Marker's letter was a
blind of some sort. He wanted to get you out of the way or something.
What will you do then? Come back here?"

"N--o," said Lewis hesitatingly. "I think Thwaite is good enough, and I
should be no manner of use. You and I will wait up there in the hills
on the off-chance of picking up some news. I swear I won't come back
here to hang about and try and discover things. It's enough to drive a
man crazy."

"It is rather a ghastly place. Wonder how the Logans thrive here. Odd
mixture this. Strauss and hill tribes not twenty miles apart."

Lewis laughed. "I think I prefer the hill tribes. I am not in the
humour for Strauss just now. I shall have to be off in an hour, so I am
going to change. See you to-morrow, old man."

George retired to the ballroom, where he had to endure the reproaches of
Mrs. Logan. He was an abstracted and silent partner, and in the
intervals of dancing he studied his cuff. Miss A talked to him of polo,
and Miss B of home; Miss C discovered that they had common friends, and
Miss D that she had known his sister. Miss E, who was more observant,
saw the cause of his distraction and asked, "What queer hieroglyphics
have you got on your cuff, Mr. Winterham?"

George looked down in a bewildered way at his sleeve. "Where on earth
have I been?" he asked in wonder. "That's the worst of being an
absent-minded fellow. I've been scribbling on my cuff with my programme
pencil."

Soon he escaped, and made his way down to the garden gate, where Thwaite
was standing smoking. A _sais_ held a saddled pony by the road-side.
Lewis, in rough shooting clothes, was preparing to mount. From indoors
came the jigging of a waltz tune and the sound of laughter, while far in
the north the cliffs of the pass framed a dark blue cleft where the
stars shone. George drew in great draughts of the cool, fresh air. "I
wish I was coming with you," he said wistfully.

"You'll be in time enough to-morrow," said Lewis. "I wish you'd give
him all the information you can about the place, Thwaite. He's an
ignorant beggar. See that he remembers to bring food and matches. The
guns are the only things I can promise he won't forget."

Then he rode off, the little beast bucking excitedly at the patches of
moonlight, and the two men walked back to the house.

"Hope he comes back all right," said Thwaite. "He's too good a man to
throw away."




CHAPTER XXVII

THE ROAD TO FORZA


The road ran in a straight line through the valley of dry rocks, a dull,
modern road, engineered and macadamized up to the edge of the hills.
The click of hoofs raised echoes in the silence, for in all the great
valley, in the chain of pools in the channel, the acres of sun-dried
stone, the granite rocks, the tangle of mountain scrub, there seemed no
life of bird or beast. It was a strange, deathly stillness, and
overhead the purple sky, sown with a million globes of light, seemed so
near and imminent that the glen for the moment was but a vast jewel-lit
cavern, and the sky a fretted roof which spanned the mountains.

For the first time Lewis felt the East. Hitherto he had been unable to
see anything in his errand but its futility. A stupider man, with a
sharp, practical brain, would have taken himself seriously and come to
Bardur with an intent and satisfied mind. He would have assumed the air
of a diplomatist, have felt the dignity of his mission, and in success
and failure have borne himself with self-confidence. But to Lewis the
business which loomed serious in England, at Bardur took on the colour
of comedy. He felt his impotence, he was touched insensibly by the easy
content of the place. Frontier difficulties seemed matters for romance
and comic opera; and Bardur resolved itself into an English suburb, all
tea-parties and tennis. But at times an austere conscience jogged him
to remembrance, and in one such fitful craving for action and enterprise
he had found this errand. Now at last, astride the little Kashmir pony,
with his face to the polestar and the hills, he felt the mystery of a
strange world, and his work assumed a tinge of the adventurer. This was
new, he told himself; this was romance. He had his eyes turned to a new
land, and the smell of dry mountain sand and scrub, and the vault-like,
imperial sky were the earnest of his inheritance. This was the East,
the gorgeous, the impenetrable. Before him were the hill deserts, and
then the great, warm plains, and the wide rivers, and then on and on to
the cold north, the steppes, the icy streams, the untrodden forests. To
the west and beyond the mountains were holy mosques, "shady cities of
palm trees," great walled towns to which north and west and south
brought their merchandise. And to the east were latitudes more
wonderful, the uplands of the world, the impassable borders of the
oldest of human cultures. Names rang in his head like tunes--Khiva,
Bokhara, Samarkand, the goal of many boyish dreams born of clandestine
suppers and the Arabian Nights. It was an old fierce world he was on
the brink of, and the nervous frontier civilization fell a thousand
miles behind him.

The white road turned to the right with the valley, and the hills crept
down to the distance of a gun-shot. The mounting tiers of stone and
brawling water caught the moonlight in waves, and now he was in a cold
pit of shadow and now in a patch of radiant moonshine. It was a world
of fantasy, a rousing world of wintry hill winds and sudden gleams of
summer. His spirits rose high, and he forgot all else in plain
enjoyment. Now at last he had found life, rich, wild, girt with
marvels. He was beginning to whistle some air when his pony shied
violently and fell back, and at the same moment a pistol-shot cracked
out of a patch of thorn.

He turned the beast and rode straight at the thicket, which was a very
little one. The ball had wandered somewhere into the void, and no harm
was done, but he was curious about its owner. Up on the hillside he
seemed to see a dark figure scrambling among the cliffs in the fretted
moonlight.

It is unpleasant to be shot at in the dark from the wayside, but at the
moment the thing pleased this strange young man. It seemed a token that
at last he was getting to work. He found a rope stretched taut across
the road, which accounted for the pony's stumble. Laughing heartily, he
cut it with his knife, and continued, cheerful as before, but somewhat
less fantastic. Now he kept a sharp eye on all wayside patches.

At the head of the valley the waters of the stream forked into two
torrents, one flowing from the east in an open glen up which ran the
road to Yarkand, the other descending from the northern hills in a wild
gully. At the foot stood a little hut with an apology for stabling,
where an old and dirty gentleman of the Hunza race pursued his calling
till such time as he should attract the notice of his friends up in the
hills and go to paradise with a slit throat.

Lewis roused the man with a violent knocking at the door. The old
ruffian appeared with a sputtering lamp which might have belonged to a
cave man, and a head of matted grey hair which suggested the same
origin. He was old and suspicious, but at Lewis's bidding he hobbled
forth and pointed out the stabling.

"The pony is to stay here till it is called for. Do you hear? And if
Holm Sahib returns and finds that it is not fed he will pay you nothing.
So good night, father. Sound sleep and a good conscience."

He turned to the twisting hill road which ran up from the light into the
gloom of the cleft with all the vigour of an old mountaineer who has
been long forced to dwell among lowlands. Once a man acquires the art
of hill walking he will always find flat country something of a burden,
and the mere ascent of a slope will have a tonic's power. The path was
good, but perilous at the best, and the proximity of yawning precipices
gave a zest to the travel. The road would fringe a pit of shade, black
but for the gleam of mica and the scattered foam of the stream. It was
no longer a silent world. Hawks screamed at times from the cliffs, and
a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous
falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and
tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the
crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all
made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his boots on the rocky
road.

He remembered the way as if he had travelled it yesterday. Soon the
gorge would narrow and he would be almost at the water's edge. Then the
path turned to the right and wound into the heart of a side nullah,
which at length brought it out on a little plateau of rocks. There the
road climbed a long ridge till at last it reached the great plateau,
where Forza, set on a small hilltop, watched thirty miles of primeval
desert. The air was growing chilly, for the road climbed steeply and
already it was many thousand feet above the sea. The curious salt smell
which comes from snow and rock was beginning to greet his nostrils. The
blood flowed more freely in his veins, and insensibly he squared his
shoulders to drink in the cold hill air. It was of the mountains and
yet strangely foreign, an air with something woody and alpine in the
heart of it, an air born of scrub and snow-clad rock, and not of his own
free spaces of heather. But it was hill-born, and this contented him;
it was night-born, and it refreshed him. In a little the road turned
down to the stream side, and he was on the edge of a long dark pool.

The river, which made a poor show in the broad channel at Bardur, was
now, in this straitened place, a full lipping torrent of clear, green
water. Lewis bathed his flushed face and drank, and it was as cold as
snow. It stung his face to burning, and as he walked the heartsome glow
of great physical content began to rise in his heart. He felt fit and
ready for any work. Life was quick in his sinews, his brain was a
weathercock, his strength was tireless. At last he had found a man's
life. He had never had a chance before. Life had been too easy and
sheltered; he had been coddled like a child; he had never roughed it
except for his own pleasure. Now he was outside this backbone of the
world with a task before him, and only his wits for his servant. Eton
and Oxford, Eton and Oxford--so it had been for generations--an
education sufficient to damn a race. Stocks was right, and he had all
along been wrong; but now he was in a fair way to taste the world's iron
and salt, and he exulted at the prospect.

It was hard walking in the nullah. In and out of great crevices the
road wound itself, on the brink of stupendous waterfalls, or in the
heart of a brushwood tangle. Soon a clear vault of sky replaced the
out-jutting crags, and he came out on a little plateau where a very cold
wind was blowing. The smell of snow was in the air, a raw smell like
salt when carried on a north wind over miles of granite crags. But on
the little tableland the moon was shining clearly. It was green with
small cloud-berries and dwarf juniper, and the rooty fragrance was for
all the world like an English bolt or a Highland pasture. Lewis flung
himself prone and buried his face among the small green leaves. Then,
still on the ground, he scanned the endless yellow distance. Mountains,
serrated and cleft as in some giant's play, rose on every hand, while
through the hollows gleamed the farther snow-peaks. This little bare
plateau must be naked to any eye on any hill-side, and at the thought he
got to his feet and advanced.

At first sight the place had looked not a mile long, but before he got
to the farther slope he found that it was nearer two. The mountain air
had given him extraordinary lightness, and he ran the distance, finding
the hard, sandy soil like a track under his feet. The slope, when he
had reached it, proved to be abrupt and boulder-strewn, and the path had
an ugly trick of avoiding steepness by skirting horrible precipices.
Luckily the moon was bright, and the man was an old mountaineer;
otherwise he might have found a grave in the crevices which seamed the
hill.

He had not gone far when he began to realize that he was not the only
occupant of the mountain side. A whistle which was not a bird's seemed
to catch his ear at times, and once, as he shrank back into the lee of a
boulder, there was the sound of naked feet on the road before him. This
was news indeed, and he crept very cautiously up the rugged path. Once,
when in shelter, he looked out, and for a second, in a patch of
moonlight, he saw a man with the loose breeches and tightened girdle of
the hillmen. He was running swiftly as if to some arranged place of
meeting.

The sight put all doubts out of his head. An attack on Forza was
imminent, and this was the side from which least danger would be
expected. If the enemy got there before him they would find an easy
entrance. The thought made him quicken his pace. These scattered
tribesmen must meet before they attacked, and there might still be time
for him to get in front. His ears were sharp as a deer's to the
slightest sound. A great joy in the game possessed him. When he
crouched in the shelter of a granite boulder or sprawled among the scrub
while the light footsteps of a tribesman passed on the road he felt that
one point was scored to him in a game in which he had no advantages. He
blessed his senses trained by years of sport to a keenness beyond a
townsman's; his eye, which could see distances clear even in the misty
moonlight; his ear, which could judge the proximity of sounds with a
nice exactness. Twice he was on the brink of discovery. A twig snapped
as he lay in cover, and he heard footsteps pause, and he knew that a
pair of very keen eyes were scanning the brushwood. He blessed his
lucky choice in clothes which had made him bring a suit so near the hue
of his hiding-place. Then he felt that the eyes were averted, the
footsteps died away, and he was safe. Again, as he turned a corner
swiftly, he almost came on the back of a man who was stepping along
leisurely before him. For a second he stopped, and then he was back
round the corner, and had swung himself up to a patch of shadow on the
crag-side. He looked down and saw his enemy clearly in the moonlight; a
long, ferret-faced fellow, with a rifle hung on his back and an ugly
crooked knife in his hand. The man looked round, sniffing the air like
a stag, and then, satisfied that there was nothing to fear, turned and
went on. Lewis, who had been sitting on a sharp jag of rock, swung an
aching body to the ground and advanced circumspectly.

In an hour or two he came to the top of the slope and the beginning of
the second tableland. A grey dimness was taking the place of the dark,
and it had suddenly grown bitterly cold. Dawn in such high latitudes is
not a thing of violent changes, but of slow and subtle gradations of
light, of sudden, coy flushes of colour, of thin winds and bright
fleeting hazes. He lay for a minute in the scrub of cloud-berries, the
collar of his coat buttoned round his throat, and the morning wind,
fresh from leagues of snow, blowing chill on his face. Behind was the
slope alive with men who at any moment might emerge on the plateau. He
waited for the sight of a figure, but none came; clearly the muster was
not yet complete. A thought grew in his brain, and a sudden clearness
in the air translated it into action; for in the hazy distance across
the tableland he saw the walls of Forza fort.

The place could not be two miles off, and between it and him there was
the smooth benty plateau. He might make a rush for it and cross
unobserved. Even now the early sun was beginning to strike it. The
yellow-grey walls stood out clear against the far line of mountains, and
the wisp of colour which fluttered in the wind was clearly the British
flag. The exceeding glory of the morning gave him a new vigour. Why
should not he run with any tribesman of the lot? If he could but avoid
the risk of a rifle bullet at the outset, he would have no fear of the
issue.

He glanced behind him. The place seemed still, though far down there
was a tinkle as of little stones falling. He stood up, straightened
himself for one moment till he had filled his lungs with the clean air.
Then he started to run quickly towards the fort.

The full orb of the sun topped the mountains and the dazzle was in his
eyes from the first. If he covered the first half-mile unpursued he
would be safe; otherwise he might expect a bullet. It was a comic
feeling--the wide green heath, the fresh air, the easy vigour in his
stride, the flush of the morning sun, and that awkward, nervous weakness
in the small of his back where a bullet might be expected to find a
lodgment.

He never looked back till he had gone what seemed to him the proper
distance, and then he glanced hurriedly over his shoulder.

Two men had emerged from the scrub and stood on the edge of the slope.
They were gazing intently at him, and suddenly one lifted a Snider to
his shoulder and fired. The bullet burrowed in the sand to the right of
him. Again he looked back and there they were--five of them now--crying
out to him. Then with one accord they followed over the plateau.

It was now a clear race for life. He must keep beyond reasonable
rifle-shot; otherwise a broken leg might bring him to a standstill. He
cursed the deceptive clearness of the hill air which made it impossible
for his unpractised eye to judge distances. The fort stood clear in
every stone, but it might be miles off though it looked scarcely a
thousand yards. Apparently it was still asleep, for no smoke was
rising, and, strain his ears as he might, he could hear no sound of a
sentry's walk. This looked awkward indeed for him. If the people were
not awake to receive him, he would be potted against its wall as surely
as a rat in a corner. He grew acutely nervous, and as he drew nearer he
made the air hideous with shouts to wake the garrison. A clear race in
the open he did not mind; but he had no stomach for a game of
hide-and-seek around an unscalable wall with an active enemy.

Apparently the gentry behind him were growing despondent. Two rifle
bullets, fired by running men, sang unsteadily in his wake. He was now
so near that he could see the rough wooden gate and the pyramidal nails
with which it was studded. He could guess the number of paces between
him and safety. He was out of breath and a little tired, for the
scramble up the nullah had not been a light one. Again he yelled
frantically to the dead walls, beseeching their inmates to get out of
bed and save his life.

There was still no sound from the sleeping fortress. He was barely a
hundred yards off, and he saw now that the walls were too high to climb
and that nothing remained but the gate. He picked up a stone and flung
it against the woodwork. The din echoed through the empty place, but
there was no sound of life. Just at the threshold there was a patch of
shadow. It was his one way of escape, and as he reached the door and
kicked and hammered at the wood, he cowered down in the shade, praying
that his friends behind might be something less than sharpshooters.

The pursuit saw its chance, and running forward to get within easy
range, proceeded to target practice. Lewis, kicking diligently at the
door, was trying to draw himself into the smallest space, and his mind
was far from comfortable. It needs good nerves to fill the position of
a target with equanimity, and he was too tired to take it in good part.
A disagreeable cold sweat stood on his brow, and his heart beat
violently. Then a bullet did what all his knocking had failed to do,
for it crashed into the woodwork and woke the garrison. He heard feet
hurrying across a yard, and then it seemed to him that men were
reconnoitring from the top of the wall. A second later--when the third
bullet had buried itself in dust a foot beyond his head--the heavy gate
was half opened and a man's hand assisted him to crawl inside.

He looked up to see a tall figure in pyjamas standing over him. "Now I
wonder who the deuce you are?" it was saying.

"My name's Haystoun. H-a-y-s;" then he broke off and laughed. He had
fallen into his old trick of spelling his name to the Oxford tradesmen
when he was young and hated to have it garbled.

He looked up at the questioner again. "Bless me, Andy, so it's you."

The man gave a yell of delight. "Lewis, upon my soul. Who'd have
thought it? It is a Providence. By Gad, I believe I'm just in time to
save your life."




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HILL-FORT


Lewis got to his feet and blinked at the morning sun across the yard.

"That was a near shave. Phew, I hate being a target for sharpshooting!
These devils are your friends the Bada-Mawidi."

"The deuce they are," said Andover lugubriously. "I always knew it.
I've told Holm a hundred times, and now here is the beggar away sick and
I am left to pay the piper."

"I know. I met him in Bardur, and that's why I'm here. He told me to
tell you to mind the north gate."

"More easily said than done. We're too few by half here if things get
nasty. How was the chap looking?"

"Pretty miserable. Thwaite and I put him to bed. Then they sent me off
here, for I've got news for you. You know a man called Marker?"

Andover nodded.

"I was dining with him the day before yesterday, and yesterday morning I
got a note from him. He says that he has heard from some private source
that the Bada-Mawidi were arming and proposed an attack on Forza to-day.
He thinks they may have got their arms from the other side, you know.
At any rate he asked me to try to let you hear, and when I saw Holm last
night and heard that such a thing was possible, I came off at once. I
suppose Marker is the sort of man who should know."

"What did Thwaite say?"

"He was keen that I should come at once. Do you think that it's a false
alarm?"

"Oh, it will be genuine enough on Marker's part, but he may have been
misinformed. What beats me is the attack by day. I know the Badas as I
know my own name, and they're too few at the best to have any chance of
rushing the place. Besides, they are poor fighters in the open. On the
other hand they are devils incarnate in a night attack, as we used to
find to our cost. You are sure he said to-day?"

"Sure. Some time this morning."

"Wonder what their game is. However, he ought to be right if anybody
is, and we are much obliged to you for your trouble. You had a pretty
hard time in the open, but how on earth did you get up the hill?"

"Deerstalking style. It was good sport. But for heaven's sake, Andy,
give me breakfast, and tell me what you want me to do. I am under your
orders now."

"You'd better feed and then sleep for a bit. If you don't mind I'll
leave you, for I've got to be very busy. And poor old Holm looked
pretty sick, did he? Well, I am glad he has been saved this affair
anyhow."

A Sikh orderly brought Lewis breakfast. Beyond the tent door there was
stir in the garrison. Men were deployed in the yard, Gurkhas mainly,
with a few Kashmir sepoys, and the loud harsh voice of Andover was
raised to give orders. It was a hot still morning, with something
thunderous in the air. Hot sulphurous clouds were massing on the
western horizon, and the cool early breeze had gone. The whole place
smelt of powder.

Half-way through the meal Andover returned, his lean face red with
exertion. "I've got things more or less in order. They may easily
starve us out, for we are wretchedly provisioned, but I don't think
they'll get us with a rush. I wonder when the show is to commence." He
drank some coffee, and then filled a pipe.

"I left a man at Nazri. If the thing turns out to be a small affair I
am to meet him there to-night; but if I don't come he is to know that it
is serious and go and warn the Khautmi people. You haven't a connection
by any chance?"

"No. Wish we had. The heliograph is no good, and the telegraph is
still under the consideration of some engineer man. But how do you
propose to get to Nazri? It's only twelve miles, but they are mostly up
on end."

"I did it when I was here before. It's easy enough if you have done any
rock-climbing, and I can leave with the light. Besides, there's a
moon."

Andover laughed. "You've turned over a new leaf, Lewis. Your energy
puts us all to shame. I wish I had your physical gifts, my son. The
worst of being long and lanky in a place like this is that you're always
as stiff as a poker. I shall die of sciatica before I am forty. But
upon my word it is queer meeting you here in the loneliest spot in
creation. When I saw you in town before I came out, you were going into
Parliament or some game of that kind. Then I heard that you had been
out here, and gone back; and now for no earthly reason I waken up one
fine morning to find you being potted at before my gate. You're as
sudden as Marker, and a long chalk more mysterious."

Lewis looked grave. "I wish Marker were only as simple as me, or I as
sudden as him. It's a gift not learned in a day. Anyhow I'm here, and
we've got a day's sport before us. Hullo, the ball seems about to open."
Little puffs of smoke and dust were rising from beyond the wall, and on
the heavy air came the faint ping-ping of rifles.

Andover stretched himself elaborately. "Lord alive, but this is absurd.
What do these beggars expect to do? They can't shell a fort with stolen
expresses."

The two men went up to the edge of the wall and looked over the plateau.
A hundred yards off stood a group of tribesmen formed in some semblance
of military order, each with a smoking rifle in his hand. It was like a
parody of a formation, and Andover after rubbing his eyes burst into a
roar of laughter.

"The beggars must be mad. What in heaven's name do they expect to do,
standing there like mummies and potting at a stone wall? There's two
more companies of them over there. It isn't war, it's comic opera." And
he sat down, still laughing, on the edge of a gun-case to put on the
boots which his orderly had brought.

It was comic opera, but the tinge of melodrama was not absent. When a
sufficient number of rounds had been fired, the tribesmen, as if acting
on half-understood instructions from some prehistoric manual, slung
their rifles on their shoulders and came on. The fire from the fort did
not stop them, though it broke their line. In a minute they were
clutching at every hand-grip and foothold on the wall, and Andover with
a beaming face directed the disposition of his men.

Forza is built of great, rough stones, with ends projecting in places
cyclopean-wise, which to an active man might give a foothold. The
little garrison was at its posts, and picked the men off with carbines
and revolvers, and in emergencies gave a brown chest the straight
bayonet-thrust home. The tribesmen fought like fiends, scrambling up
silently with long knives between their teeth, till a shot found them
and they rolled back to die on the sand at the foot. Now and again
a man would reach the parapet and spring down into the courtyard. Then
it was the turn of Andover and Lewis to account for him, and they did
not miss. One man with matted hair and beard was at Lewis's back before
he saw him. A crooked knife had nearly found that young man's neck, but
a lucky twisting aside saved him. He dodged his adversary up and down
the yard till he got his pistol from his inner pocket. Then it was his
turn to face about. The man never stopped and a ball took him between
the eyes. He dropped dead as a stone, and his knife flying from his
hand skidded along the sand till it stopped with a clatter on the
stones. The sound in the hot sulphurous air grated horribly, and Lewis
clapped his hands to his ears to find that he too had not come off
scathless. The knife had cut the lobe, and, bleeding like a pig, he
went in search of water.

The assailants seemed prepared to find paradise speedily, for they were
not sparing with their lives. The attacking party was small, and
apparently there was no reserve, for in all the wide landscape there was
no sign of man. Then for no earthly reason the assault was at an end.
One by one the men dropped back and disappeared from the plateau. There
was no overt signal, no sound; but in a little the annoyed garrison were
looking at vacancy and one another.

"This is the devil's own business," said Andover, rubbing his eyes. The
men, too astonished to pick off stragglers, allowed the enemy to melt
into space; then they set themselves down with rifles cuddled up to
their chins, and stared at Andover.

"It beats me," said that disturbed man. "How many killed?"

"Seven," said a sergeant. "About five more wounded. None of us
touched, barring a bullet in my boot, and two Johnnies slashed on the
cheek. Seems to me as if the gen'lman, Mr. 'Aystoun, was 'it, though."

At the word Andover ran for his quarters, where he found his servant
dressing Lewis's wounded ear. That young man with a face of great
despair was inclining his head over a basin.

"What's the matter, Andy? Don't tell me the show has stopped. I
thought they were game to go on for hours, and I was just coming to join
you."

"They've gone, every mother's son of them. I told you it was comic
opera all along. Seven of them have found the part too much for them,
but the rest have cleared out like smoke. I give it up."

Lewis stared at the speaker, his brain busy with a problem. For a
moment before the fight, and for a little during its progress he had
been serenely happy. He had done something hard and perilous; he had
risked bullets; he had brought authentic news of a real danger. He was
happily at peace with himself; the bland quiet of conscience which he
had not felt for months had given him the vision of a new life. But the
danger had faded away in smoke; and here was Andover with a mystified
face asking its meaning.

"I swear that those fellows never had the least intention of beating us.
There were far too few of them for one thing. They looked like
criminals fighting under sentence, you know, like the Persian fellows.
It was more like some religious ceremony than a fight. The whole thing
is beyond me, but I think no harm's done. Hang it, I wish Holm were
here. He's a depressing beggar, but he takes responsibility off my
shoulders."

The dead men were buried as quickly and decently as the place allowed
of. Things were generally cleaned up, and by noon the little fort was
as spick as if the sound of a rifle had never been heard within its
walls. Lewis and Andover had the midday meal in a sort of gun-room
which looked over the edge of the plateau to a valley in the hills. It
had been arranged and furnished by a former commandant who found in the
view a repetition of the one in a much-loved Highland shooting-box.
Accordingly it was comfortable and homelike beyond the average of
frontier dwellings. Outside a dripping mist had clouded the hills and
chilled the hot air.

The two men smoked silently, knocking out their ashes and refilling with
the regularity of clockwork. Lewis was thinking hard, thinking of the
bitterness of dashed hopes, of self-confidence clutched at and lost. He
saw as if in an inspiration the trend of Marker's plans. He had been
given a paltry fictitious errand, like a bone to a dog, to quiet him.
Some devilry was afoot and he must be got out of the road. For a second
the thought pleased him, the thought that at least one man held him
worthy of attention, and went out of his way to circumvent him. But the
gleam of satisfaction was gone in a moment. He could not even be sure
that there was guile at the back of it. It might be all foolish
honesty, and to a man cursed with a sense of weakness the thought of
such a pedestrian failure was trebly intolerable.

But honesty was inconceivable. He and he alone in all the frontier
country knew Marker and his ways. To Andover, sucking his pipe dismally
beside him, the thing appeared clear as the daylight. Marker, the best
man alive, had word of some Bada-Mawidi doings and had given a friendly
hint. It was not his blame if the thing had fizzled out like damp
powder. But to Lewis, Marker was a man of uncanny powers and
intelligence beyond others, the iron will of the true adventurer. There
must be devilry behind it all, and to the eye of suspicion there was
doubt in every detail. And meantime he had fallen an easy victim.
Marooned in this frontier fort, the world might be turned topsy-turvy at
Bardur, and he not a word the wiser. Things were slipping from his
grasp again. He had an intense desire to shut his eyes and let all
drift. He had done enough. He had come up here at the risk of his
neck; fate had fought against him, and he must succumb. The fatal
wisdom of proverbs was all on his side.

But once again conscience assailed him. Why had he believed Marker,
knowing what he knew? He had been led by the nose like a crude
school-boy. It was nothing to him that he had to believe or remain idle
in Bardur. Another proof of his folly! This importunate sense of
weakness was the weakest of all qualities. It made him a nervous and
awkward follower of strength, only to plunge deeper into the mud of
incapacity.

Andover looked at him curiously. His annoyance was of a different
stamp--a little disappointment, intense boredom, and the ever-present
frontier anxiety. But such were homely complaints to be forgotten over
a pipe and in sleep. It struck him that his companion's eyes betrayed
something more, and he kicked him on the shins into attention.

"Been seedy lately? Have some quinine. Or if you can't sleep I can
tell you a dodge. But you know you are looking a bit cheap, old man."

"I'm pretty fit," said Lewis, and he raised his brown face to a glass.
"Why I'm tanned like a nigger and my eye's perfectly clear."

"Then you're in love," said the mysterious Andover. "Trust me for
knowing. When a man keeps as quiet as you for so long, he's either in
love or seedy. Up here people don't fall in love, so I thought it must
be the other thing."

"Rot," said Lewis. "I'm going out of doors. I must be off pretty soon,
if I'm to get to Nazri by sundown. I wish you'd come out and show me
the sort of lie of the land. There are three landmarks, but I can't
remember their order."

An hour later the two men returned, and Lewis sat down to an early
dinner. He ate quickly, and made up sandwiches which he stuffed into
his pocket. Then he rose and gripped his host's hand.

"Good-bye, Andy. This has been a pleasant meeting. Wish it could have
been longer."

"Good-bye, old chap. Glad to have seen you. My love to George, if you
get to Nazri. Give you three to one in half-crowns you won't get there
to-night."

"Done," said Lewis. "You shall pay when I see you next." And in the
most approved style of the hero of melodrama he lit a short pipe and
went off into Immensity.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE WAY TO NAZRI


Our traveller did not reach Nazri that night for many reasons, of which
the chief shall be told. The way to Nazri is long and the way to Nazri
is exceedingly rough. Leaving the table-land you plunge down a
trackless gully into the dry bed of a stream. Thence it is an hour's
uneasy walking among stagnant pools and granite boulders to the foot of
another nullah which runs up to the heart of the hills. From this you
pick your way along the precipitous side of a mountain, and if your head
is good and your feet sure, may come eventually to a place like the roof
of the house, beyond which lies a thicket of thorn-bushes and the Nazri
gully. At first sight the thing seems impossible, but by a bold man it
can be crossed either in the untanned Kashmir shoes or with the naked
feet.

Lewis had not gone a mile and had barely reached the dry watercourse,
when the weather broke utterly in a storm of mist and fine rain. At
other times this chill weather would have been a comfort, but here in
these lonely altitudes, with a difficult path before him, its result was
to confound confusion. So long as he stuck to the stream he had some
guidance; it was hard, even when the air was like a damp blanket, to
mistake the chaos of boulder and shingle which meant the channel. But
the mist was close to him and wrapped him in like a quilt, and he looked
in vain for the foot of the nullah he must climb. He tried keeping by
the edge and feeling his way, but it only landed him in a ditch of
stagnant slime. The thing was too vexatious, and his temper went; and
with his temper his last chance of finding his road. When he had
stumbled for what seemed hours he sat down on a boulder and whistled
dismally. The stream belonged to another watershed. If he followed it,
assuming that he did not break his neck over a dry cataract, he would be
through the mountains and near Taghati quicker than he intended.
Meantime the miserable George would wait at Nazri, would rouse the
Khautmi garrison on a false alarm, and would find himself irretrievably
separated from his friend. The thought was so full of irritation, that
he resolved not to stir one step further. He would spend the night if
need be in this place and wait till the mist lifted.

He found a hollow among the boulders, and improvidently ate half his
store of sandwiches. Then, finding his throat dry, he got up to hunt
for water. A trickle afar off in the rocks led him on, and sure enough
he found water; but when he tried to retrace his steps to his former
resting place he found that he had forgotten the way. This new place
was conspicuously less sheltered, but he sat down on the wet gravel, lit
a pipe with difficulty, and with his knees close to his chin strove to
possess his soul in patience.

He was tired, for he had slept little for two days, and the closer air
of the ravine made him drowsy. He had lost any sense of discomfort from
the wet, and was in the numb condition of the utterly drenched. He
could not spend the night like this, so he roused himself and stood
staring, pipe in teeth, into the drizzle. The mist seemed clearer. He
was a little stupid, so he did not hear the sound of feet on stones till
they were almost on him. Then through the haze he saw a procession of
figures moving athwart the channel. They were not his countrymen, for
they walked with the stoop forward which no Englishman can ever quite
master in his hill-climbing. Lewis turned to flee, but in his numbness
of mind and body missed footing, and fell sprawling over a bank of
shingle. He scrambled to his feet only to find hands at his throat, and
himself a miserable prisoner.

The scene had shifted with a vengeance, and his first and sole impulse
was to laugh. It is possible that if the scarf of a brawny tribesman
had not been so tight across his chest he would have astonished his
captors with hysterical laughter. But the jolt as he was dragged up
hill, tied close to a horse's side, was unfavourable to merriment, and
raw despondency filled his soul. This was the end of his fine doings.
The prisoner of unknown bandits, hurried he knew not whence, a pretty
pass for an adventurer. This was the seal on his ineffectiveness. Shot
against a rock, held up to some sordid ransom, he was as impotent for
good or ill as if he had stayed at home. For a second he longed to pull
horse and captor with one wrench over the brink to the kindly gulf where
all was quiet.

The bitterest ill-humour possessed this meekest of men. Normally he
would have been afraid, for he was an imaginative being who feared
horrors and had little relish for them. But there is a certain perfect
bad temper which casteth out fear, and this held him in its grip. He
cursed the mountain solitude and he cursed the Bada-Mawidi with awful
directness. Then he chose silence as the easier part, and trudged like
a stolid criminal till, half in a daze of weariness and sleep, he found
that the cavalcade had halted.

The place was the edge of a little tableland where in a hollow among
rocks lay a collection of mud-walled huts. A fire, in spite of the damp
weather, blazed cheerfully in the midst of the clearing. There was
commotion in the huts, every door was opened, and evil-smelling people
poured forth with cries and questions. The leader of the newly arrived
party bowed himself before a short, square man whom we have met before,
and spoke something in his ear. Fazir Khan looked up sharply at Lewis,
then laughed, and spoke something to his men in his own tongue.

Lewis comprehended barely a few words of Chil, the Bada tongue, and he
knew little of the frontier speeches. But to his amazement the chief
addressed him in tolerable, if halting, English. It was not for nothing
that Fazir Khan had harried the Border and sojourned incognito in every
town in North India.

"Allah has given thee to us, my son," he said sweetly. "It is vain to
fight against God. I have heard of thee as the Englishman who would
know more than is good for man to know. You were at Forza to-day."

Lewis's temper was at its worst. "I was at Forza to-day, and I watched
your people running. Had they waited a little longer we should have
slain them all, and then have come for you."

The chief smiled unpleasantly. "My people did not fight at Forza
to-day. That was but the sport to draw on fools. Soon we shall fight
in earnest, but in a different place, and thou shalt not see."

"I am your prisoner," said Lewis grimly, "and it is in your power to do
with me as you please. But remember that for every hair of my head my
people will take the lives of four of your cattle-lifters."

"That is an old story," said Fazir Khan wearily, "and I have heard it
many times before. You speak boldly like a man, and because you are not
afraid I will tell you the truth. In a very little there will be not
one of your people in the land, only the Bada-Mawidi, and others whom I
do not name."

"That is a still older story. I have heard it since I was in my
mother's arms. Do you think to frighten me by such a tale?"

"Let us not talk of fear," said the chief with some politeness. "There
are two races in your people, one which talks and allies itself with
Bengalis and swine, and one which lives in hard places and follows war.
The second I love, and had it been possible, I would have allied myself
with it and driven the others into the sea." This petty chieftain spoke
with the pride of one who ruled the destinies of the earth.

Lewis was unimpressed. "I am tired of your riddles," he said. "If you
would kill me have done with it. If you would keep me prisoner, give me
food and a place to sleep. But if you would be merciful, let me go and
show me the way to Bardur. Life is too short for waiting."

Fazir Khan laughed loudly, and spoke something to his people.

"You shall join in our company for the night," he said. "I have eaten
of the salt of your people and I do not murder without cause. Also I
love a bold man."

Lewis was led into the largest of the huts and given food and warm Hunza
wine. The place was hot to suffocation; large beads of moisture stood
on the mud walls, and the smell of uncleanly clothing and sweating limbs
was difficult to stand. But the man's complexion was hard, and he made
an excellent supper. Thereafter he became utterly drowsy. He had it in
his mind to question this Fazir Khan about his dark sayings, but his
eyes closed as if drawn by a magnet and his head nodded. It may have
been something in the wine; it may have been merely the vigil of the
last night, and the toil of the past hours. At any rate his mind was
soon a blank, and when a servant pointed out a heap of skins in a
corner, he flung himself on them and was at once asleep. He was utterly
at their mercy, but his course, had he known it, was the wisest. Even a
Bada's treachery has its limits, and he will not knife a confident
guest. The men talked and wrangled, ate and drank, and finally snored
around him, but he slept through it all like a sleeper of Ephesus.

When he woke the hut was cleared. The village slept late but he had
slept later, for the sun was piercing the unglazed windows and making
pattern-work on the earth floor. He had slept soundly a sleep haunted
with nightmares, and he was still dazed as he peered out into the square
where men were passing. He saw a sentry at the door of his hut, which
reminded him of his condition. All the long night he had been far away,
fishing, it seemed to him, in a curious place which was Glenavelin, and
yet was ever changing to a stranger glen. It was moonlight, still,
bright and warm on all the green hill shoulders. He remembered that he
caught nothing, but had been deliriously happy. People seemed passing
on the bank, Arthur and Wratislaw and Julia Heston, and all his
boyhood's companions. He talked to them pleasantly, and all the while
he was moving up the glen which lay so soft in the moonlight. He
remembered looking everywhere for Alice Wishart, but her face was
wanting. Then suddenly the place seemed to change. The sleeping glen
changed to a black sword-cut among rocks, his friends disappeared, and
only George was left. He remembered that George cried out something and
pointed to the gorge, and he knew--though how he knew it he could not
tell--that the lost Alice was somewhere there before him in the darkness
and he must go towards her. Then he had wakened shivering, for in that
darkness there was terror as well as joy.

He went to the door, only to find himself turned back by the sheep-skin
sentry, who half unsheathed for his benefit an ugly knife. He found
that his revolver, his sole weapon, had been taken while he slept.
Escape was impossible till his captors should return.

A day of burning sun had followed on the storm. Out of doors in the
scorching glare from the rock there seemed an extraordinary bustle. It
was like the preparations for a march, save that there seemed no method
in the activity. One man burnished a knife, a dozen were cleaning
rifles, and all wore the evil-smelling finery with which the hillman
decks his person for war. Their long oiled hair was tied in a sort of
rude knot, new and fuller turbans adorned the head, and on the feet were
stout slippers of Bokhara make. Lewis had keen eyesight, and he strove
to read the marks on the boxes of cartridges which stood in a corner.
It was not the well-known Government mark which usually brands stolen
ammunition. The three crosses with the crescent above--he had seen them
before, but his memory failed him. It might have been at Bardur in the
inn; it might have been at home in the house of some great traveller.
At any rate the sight boded no good to himself or the border peace. He
thought of George waiting alone at Nazri, and then obediently warning
the people at Khautmi. By this time Andover would know he was missing,
and men would be out on a very hopeless search. At any rate he had done
some good, for if the Badas meant marching they would find the garrisons
prepared.

About noon there was a bustle in the square and Fazir Khan with a dozen
of his tail swaggered in. He came straight to the hut, and two men
entered and brought out the prisoner. Lewis stiffened his back and
prepared not reluctantly for a change in the situation. He had no
special fear of this smiling, sinister chieftain. So far he had been
spared, and now it seemed unlikely that in the midst of this bustle of
war there would be room for the torture which alone he dreaded. So he
met the chief's look squarely, and at the moment he thanked the lot
which had given him two more inches of height.

"I have sent for thee, my son," said Fazir Khan, "that you may see how
great my people is."

"I have seen," said Lewis, looking round. "You have a large collection
of jackals, but you will not bring many back."

The notion tickled Fazir Khan and he laughed with great good-humour.
"So, so," he cried. "Behold how great is the wisdom of youth. I will
tell you a secret, my son. In a little the Bada-Mawidi, my people, will
be in Bardur and a little later in the fat corn lands of the south, and
I, Fazir Khan, will sit in King's palaces." He looked contemptuously
round at his mud walls, his heart swelling with pride.

"What the devil do you mean?" Lewis asked with rising suspicion. This
was not the common talk of a Border cateran.

"I mean what I mean," said the other. "In a little all the world shall
see. But because I have a liking for a bold cockerel like thee, I will
speak unwisely. The days of your people are numbered. This very night
there are those coming from the north who will set their foot on your
necks."

Lewis went sick at heart. A thousand half-forgotten suspicions called
clamorously. This was the secret of the burlesque at Forza, and the new
valour of the Badas. He saw Marker's game with the fatal clearness of
one who is too late. He had been given a chance of a little piece of
service to avert his suspicions. Marker had fathomed him well as one
who must satisfy a restless conscience but had no stomach for anything
beyond. Doubtless he thought that now he would be enjoying the rest
after labour at Forza, flattering himself on saving a garrison, when all
the while the force poured down which was to destroy an empire. An army
from the north, backed and guided by every Border half-breed and
outlaw--what hope of help in God's name was to be found in the sleepy
forts and the unsuspecting Bardur?

And the Kashmir and the Punjab? A train laid in every town and village.
Supplies in readiness, communications waiting to be held, railways ready
for capture. Europe was on the edge of a volcano. He saw an outbreak
there which would keep Britain employed at home, while the great power
with her endless forces and bottomless purse poured her men over the
frontier. But at the thought of the frontier he checked himself. There
was no road by which an army could march; if there was any it could be
blocked by a handful. A week's, a day's delay would save the north, and
the north would save the empire.

His voice came out of his throat with a crack in it like an old man's.

"There is no road through the mountains. I have been there before and I
know."

Again Fazir Khan smiled. "I use no secrecy to my friends. There is a
way, though all men do not know it. From Nazri there is a valley
running towards the sunrise. At the head there is a little ridge easily
crossed, and from that there is a dry channel between high precipices.
It is not the width of a man's stature, so even the sharp eyes of my
brother might miss it. Beyond that there is a sandy tableland, and then
another valley, and then plains."

The plan of the place was clear in Lewis's brain. He remembered each
detail. The long nullah on which he had looked from the hill-tops had,
then, an outlet, and did not end, as he had guessed, in a dead wall of
rock. Fool and blind! to have missed so glorious a chance!

He stood staring dumbly around him, unconscious that he was the
laughingstock of all. Then he looked at the chief.

"Am I your prisoner?" he asked hoarsely.

"Nay," said the other good-humouredly, "thou art free. We have
over-much work on hand to-day to be saddled with captives."

"Then where is Nazri?" he asked.

The chief laughed a loud laugh of tolerant amusement. "Hear to the bold
one," he cried. "He will not miss the great spectacle. See, I will
show you the road," and he pointed out certain landmarks. "For one of
my own people it is a journey of four hours; for thee it will be
something more. But hurry, and haply the game will not have begun. If
the northern men take thee I will buy thy life."

Four hours; the words rang in his brain like a sentence. He had no
hope, but a wild craving to attempt the hopeless. George might have
returned to Nazri to wait; it was the sort of docile thing that George
would do. In any case not five miles from Nazri was the end of the
north road and a little telegraph hut used by the Khautmi forts. The
night would be full moonlight; and by night the army would come. His
watch had been stolen, but he guessed by the heavens that it was some
two hours after noon. Five hours would bring him to Nazri at six, in
another he might be at the hut before the wires were severed. It was a
crazy chance, but it was his all, and meanwhile these grinning tribesmen
were watching him like some curious animal. They had talked to him
freely to mock his feebleness. His dominant wish was to escape from
their sight.

He turned to the descent. "I am going to Nazri," he said.

The chief held out his pistol. "Take your little weapon. We have no
need of such things when great matters are on hand. Allah speed you,
brother! A sure foot and a keen eye may bring you there in time for the
sport." And, still laughing, he turned to enter the hut.




CHAPTER XXX

EVENING IN THE HILLS


The airless heat of afternoon lay on the rocks and dry pastures. The
far snow-peaks, seen for a moment through a rift in the hills, shimmered
in the glassy stillness. No cheerful sound of running water filled the
hollows, for all was parched and bare with the violence of intemperate
suns and storms. Soon he was out of sight and hearing of the village,
travelling in a network of empty watercourses, till at length he came to
the long side of mountain which he knew of old as the first landmark of
the way. A thin ray of hope began to break up his despair. He knew now
the exact distance he had to travel, for his gift had always been an
infallible instinct for the lie of a countryside. The sun was still
high in the heavens; with any luck he should be at Nazri by six o'clock.

He was still sore with wounded pride. That Marker should have divined
his weakness and left open to him a task in which he might rest with a
cheap satisfaction was bitter to his vanity. The candour of his mind
made him grant its truth, but his new-born confidence was sadly
dissipated. And he felt, too, the futility of his efforts. That one
man alone in this precipitous wilderness should hope to wake the Border
seemed a mere nightmare of presumption. But it was possible, he said to
himself. Time only was needed. If he could wake Bardur and the north,
and the forts on the passes, there would be delay enough to wake India.
If George were at Nazri there would be two for the task; if not, there
would be one at least willing and able.

It was characteristic of the man that the invasion was bounded for him
by Nazri and Bardur. He had no ears for ultimate issues and the ruin of
an empire. Another's fancy would have been busy on the future; Lewis
saw only that pass at Nazri and the telegraph-hut beyond. He must get
there and wake the Border; then the world might look after itself. As
he ran, half-stumbling, along the stony hillside he was hard at work
recounting to himself the frontier defences. The Forza and Khautmi
garrisons might hold the pass for an hour if they could be summoned. It
meant annihilation, but that was in the bargain. Thwaite was strong
enough in Bardur, but the town might give him trouble of itself, and he
was not a man of resources. After Bardur there was no need of thought.
Two hours after the telegraph clicked in the Nazri hut, the north of
India would have heard the news and be bestirring itself for work. In
five hours all would be safe, unless Bardur could be taken and the wires
cut. There might be treason in the town, but that again was not his
affair. Let him but send the message before sunset, and he would still
have time to get to Khautmi, and with good luck hold the defile for
sixty minutes. The thought excited him wildly. His face dripped with
sweat, his boots were cut with rock till the leather hung in shreds, and
a bleeding arm showed through the rents in his sleeve. But he felt no
physical discomfort, only the exhilaration of a rock climber with the
summit in sight, or a polo player with a clear dribble before him to the
goal. At last he was playing a true game of hazard, and the chance gave
him the keenest joy.

All the hot afternoon he scrambled till he came to the edge of a new
valley. Nazri must lie beyond, he reasoned, and he kept to the higher
ground. But soon he was mazed among precipitous shelves which needed
all his skill. He had to bring his long stride down to a very slow and
cautious pace, and, since he was too old a climber to venture rashly, he
must needs curb his impatience. He suffered the dull recoil of his
earlier vigour. While he was creeping on this accursed cliff the
minutes were passing, and every second lessening his chances. He was in
a fever of unrest, and only a happy fortune kept him from death. But at
length the place was passed, and the mountain shelved down to a plateau.
A wide view lay open to the eye, and Lewis blinked and hesitated. He
had thought Nazri lay below him, and lo! there was nothing but a tangle
of black watercourses.

The sun had begun to decline over the farther peak, and the man's heart
failed him utterly. These unkind stony hills had been his ruin. He was
lost in the most formidable country on God's earth, lost! when his
whole soul cried out for hurry. He could have wept with misery, and
with a drawn face he sat down and forced himself to think.

Suddenly a long, narrow black cleft in the farther tableland caught his
eye. He took the direction from the sun and looked again. This must be
the Nazri Pass, which he had never before that day heard of. He saw
where it ended in a stony valley. Once there he had but to follow the
nullah and cross the little ridge to come to Nazri.

Weariness was beginning to grow on him, but the next miles were the
quickest of the day. He seemed to have the foot of a chamois. Down the
rocky hillside, across the chaos of boulders, and up into the dark
nullah he ran like a maniac. His mouth was parched with thirst, and he
stopped for a moment in the valley bottom to swallow some rain-water.
At last he found himself in the Nazri valley, with the thin sword-cut
showing dark in the yellow evening. Another mile and he would be at the
camping-place, and in five more at the hut.

He kept high up on the ridge, for the light had almost gone and the
valley was perilous. It must be hideously late, eight o'clock or more,
he thought, and his despair made him hurry his very weary limbs.
Suddenly in the distant hollow he saw the gleam of a fire. He stopped
abruptly and then quickened with a cry of joy. It must be the faithful
George still waiting in the place appointed. Now there would be two to
the task. But it was too late, he bitterly reflected. In a little the
moon would rise, and then at any moment the van of the invader might
emerge from the defile. He might warn Bardur, but before anything could
be done the enemy would be upon them. And then there would be a
southward march upon a doubtful and half-awakened country, and then--he
knew not.

But there was one other way. It had not occurred to him before, for it
is not an expedient which comes often to men nowadays, save to such as
are fools and outcasts. We are a wise and provident age, mercantile in
our heroics, seeking a solid profit for every sacrifice. But this
man--a child of the latter day--had not the new self-confidence, and he
was at the best high-strung, unwise, and unworldly. Besides, he was
broken with toil and excited with adventure. The last dying rays of the
sun were resting on the far snow walls, and the great heart of the west
burned in one murky riot of flame. But to the north, whence came
danger, there was a sea of yellow light, islanded with faint roseate
clouds like some distant happy country. The air of dusk was thin and
chill but stirring as wine to the blood, and all the bare land was for
the moment a fairy realm, mystic, intangible and untrodden. The
frontier line ran below the camping place; here he was over the border,
beyond the culture of his kind. He was alone, for in this adventure
George would not share. He would earn nothing, in all likelihood he
would achieve nothing; but by the grace of God he might gain some
minutes' respite. He would be killed; but that, again, was no business
of his. At least he could but try, for this was his one shred of hope
remaining.

The thought, once conceived, could not be rejected. He was no coward or
sophist to argue himself out of danger. He laid no flattering unction
to his soul that he had done his best while another way remained
untried. For this type of man may be half-hearted and a coward in
little matters, but he never deceives himself. We have all our own
virtues and their defects. I am a well-equipped and confident person,
walking bluffly through the world, looking through and down upon my
neighbours, the incarnation of honesty; but I can find excuses for
myself when I desire them, I hug my personal esteem too close, and a
thousand to one I am too great a coward at heart to tell myself the
naked truth. You, on the other hand, are vacillating and ill at your
ease. You shrink from the hards of life which I steer happily through.
But you have no delusions with yourself, and the odds are that when the
time comes you may choose the "high that proved too high" and achieve
the impossibly heroic.

A tired man with an odd gleam in his eye came out of the shadows to the
firelight and called George by name.

"My God, Lewis, I am glad to see you! I thought you were lost. Food?"
and he displayed the resources of his larder.

Lewis hunted for the water-bottle and quenched his thirst. Then he ate
ravenously of the cold wild-fowl and oatcake which George had provided.
He was silent and incurious till he had satisfied his wants; then he
looked up to meet George's questions.

"Where on earth have you been? Andover said you started out to come
here last night. I did as you told me, you know, and when you didn't
come I roused the Khautmi people. They swore a good deal but turned
out, and after an infernal long climb we got to Forza. We roused up
Andover after a lot of trouble, and he took us in and gave us supper.
He said you had gone off hours ago, and that the Bada-Mawidi business
had been more or less of a fraud. So I slept there and came back here
in the morning in case you should turn up. Been shooting all day, but
it was lonely work and I didn't get the right hang of the country.
These beggars there are jolly little use," and he jerked his head in the
direction of the native servants. "What _have_ you been after?"

"I? Oh, I've been in queer places. I fell into the hands of the Badas
a couple of hours after I left Forza. There was a storm up there and I
got lost in the mist. They took me up to a village and kept me there
all night. And then I heard news--my God, such news! They let me go
because they thought I could do no harm and I ran most of the way here.
Marker has scored this time, old man. You know how he has been going
about all North India for the last year or two getting things much his
own way. Well, to-night when the moon rises the great blow is to be
struck. It seems there is a pass to the north of this; I knew the place
but I didn't know of the road. There is an army coming down that place
in an hour or so. It is the devil's own business, but it has got to be
faced. We must warn Bardur, and trust to God that Bardur may warn the
south. You know the telegraph hut at the end of the road, when you
begin to climb up the ravine to the place? You must get down there at
once, for every moment is precious."

George had listened with staring eyes to the tale. "I can't believe
it," he managed to ejaculate. "God, man! it's invasion, an unheard-of
thing!"

"It's the most desperate truth, unheard-of or no. The whole thing lies
in our hands. They cannot come till after midnight, and by that time
Thwaite may be ready in Bardur, and the Khautmi men may be holding the
road. That would delay them for a little, and by the time they took
Bardur they might find the south in arms. It wouldn't matter a straw if
it were an ordinary filibustering business. But I tell you it's a great
army, and everything is prepared for it. Marker has been busy for
months. There will be outbreaks in every town in the north. The
railways and arsenals will be captured before ever the enemy appears.
There will be a native rising. That was to be bargained for. But God
only knows how the native troops have been tampered with. That man was
as clever as they make, and he has had a free hand. Oh the blind
fools!"

George had turned, and was buttoning the top button of his shooting-coat
against the chilly night wind. "What shall I say to Thwaite?" he
asked.

"Oh, anything. Tell him it's life or death. Tell him the facts, and
don't spare. You'll have to impress on the telegraph clerk its
importance first and that will take time. Tell him to send to Gilgit
and Srinagar, and then to the Indus Valley. He must send into Chitral
too and warn Armstrong. Above all things the Kohistan railway must be
watched, because it must be their main card. Lord! I wish I understood
the game better. Heaven knows it isn't my profession. But Thwaite will
understand if you scare him enough. Tell him that Bardur must be held
ready for siege at any moment. You understand how to work the thing?"

George nodded. "There'll be nobody there, so I suppose I'll have to
break the door open. I think I remember the trick of the business.
_Then_, what do I do?"

"Get up to Khautmi as fast as you can shin it. Better take the servants
and send them before you while you work the telegraph. I suppose
they're trustworthy. Get them to warn Mitchinson and St. John. They
must light the fires on the hills and collect all the men they can spare
to hold the road. Of course it's a desperate venture. We'll probably
all be knocked on the head, but we must risk it. If we can stop the
beggars for one half-hour we'll give Thwaite a better chance to set his
house in order. How I'd sell my soul to see a strong man in Bardur!
That will be the key of the position. If the place is uncaptured
to-morrow morning, and your wires have gone right, the chief danger on
this side will be past. There will be little risings of wasps' nests up
and down the shop, but we can account for them if this army from the
north is stopped."

"I wonder how many of us will see to-morrow morning," said George
dismally. He was not afraid of death, but he loved the pleasant world.

"Good-bye," said Lewis abruptly, holding out his hand.

The action made George realize for the first time the meaning of his
errand.

"But, I say, Lewie, hold on. What the deuce are you going to do?"

"I am dog-tired," said the impostor. "I must wait here and rest. I
should only delay you." And always, as if to belie his fatigue, his eyes
were turning keenly to the north. At any moment while he stood there
bandying words there might come the sound of marching, and the van of
the invaders issue from the defile.

"But, hang it, you know. I can't allow this. The Khautmi men mayn't
reach you in time, and I'm dashed if I am going to leave you here to be
chawed up by Marker. You're coming with me."

"Don't be an ass," said Lewis kindly. This parting, one in ignorance,
the other in too certain knowledge, was very bitter. "They can't be here
before midnight. They were to start at moonrise, and the moon is only
just up. You'll be back in heaps of time, and, besides, we'll soon all
be in the same box."

It was a false card to play, for George grew obstinate at once. "Then
I'm going to be in the same box as you from the beginning. Do you
really think I am going to desert you? Hang it, you're more important
than Bardur."

"Oh, for God's sake, listen to reason," Lewis cried in despair. "You
must go at once. I can't or I would. It's our only chance. It's a
jolly good chance of death anyway, but it's a naked certainty unless you
do this. Think of the women and children and the people at home. You
may as well talk about letting the whole thing slip and getting back to
Bardur with safe skins. We must work the telegraph and then try to hold
the road with the Khautmi men, or be cowards for evermore. We're
gentlemen, and we are responsible."

"I didn't mean it that way," said George dismally. "But I want you to
come with me. I can't bear the thought of your being butchered here
alone, supposing the beggars come before we get back. You're sure there
is time?"

"You've three hours before you, but every moment is important. This is
the frontier line, and this fire will do for one of the signals. You'll
find me here. I haven't slept for days." And he yawned with feigned
drowsiness.

"Then--good-bye," said George solemnly, holding out his hand a second
time. "Remember, I'm devilish anxious about you. It's a pretty hot job
for us all; but, gad! if we pull through you get the credit."

Then with a single backward glance he led the way down the narrow track,
two mystified servants at his heels.

Lewis watched him disappear, and then turned sadly to his proper
business. This was the end of a very old song, and his heart cried out
at the thought. He heaped more wood on the blaze from the little pile
collected, and soon a roaring, boisterous fire burned in the glen, while
giant shadows danced on the sombre hills. Then he rummaged in the tent
till he found the rifles, carefully cleaned and laid aside. He selected
two express 400 bores, a Metford express and a smooth-bore Winchester
repeater. Then he filled his pockets with cartridges, and from a small
box took a handful for his revolver. All this he did in a sort of
sobbing haste, turning nervous eyes always to the mouth of the cañon.
He filled his flask from a case in the tent, and, being still ravenously
hungry, crammed the remnants of supper into a capacious game-pocket.
Then, all preparations being made, he looked for a moment down the road
where his best friend had just gone out of his ken for ever. The
thought was so dreary that he did not dare to delay longer, but with a
bundle of ironmongery below his arms began to scramble up the glen to
where the north star burned between two peaks of hill.

He did the journey in an hour, for he was in a pitiable state of
anxiety. Every moment he looked to hear the tramp of an army before
him, and know his errand of no avail. Over the little barrier ridge he
scrambled, and then up the straight gully to the little black rift which
was the gate of an empire. His unquiet mind peopled the wilderness with
voices, but when, breathless and sore, he came into the jaws of the
pass, all was still, silent as the grave, save for an eagle which
croaked from some eyrie in the cliffs.




CHAPTER XXXI

EVENTS SOUTH OF THE BORDER


Thwaite was finishing a solitary dinner and attempting to find interest
in a novel when his butler came with news that the telephone bell was
ringing in the gun-room. Thwaite, being tired and cross, told him to
answer it himself, expecting some frivolous message about supplies. The
man returned in a little with word that he could not understand it.
Then Thwaite arose, blessing him, and went to see. The telegraph office
proper was on the other side of the river, on the edge of the native
town, but a telephone had been established to the garrison.

Thwaite's first impulse was to suspect a gigantic hoax. A scared native
clerk was trying to tell him a most appalling tale. George had not
spared energy in his message, and the Oriental imagination as a medium
had considerably increased it. The telegrams came in a confused order,
hard to piece together, but two facts seemed to stand out from the
confusion. One was that there was an unknown pass in the hills beyond
Nazri through which danger was expected at any moment that night; the
other was that treason was suspected throughout the whole north. Then
came the name of Marker, which gave Thwaite acute uneasiness. Finally
came George's two words of advice--keep strict watch on the native town
and hold Bardur in readiness for a siege; and wire the same directions
to Yasin, Gilgit, Chitral, Chilas, and throughout Kashmir and the
Punjab. Above all, wire to the chief places on the new Indus Valley
railway, for in case of success in Bardur, the railway would be the
first object of the invader.

Thwaite put down the ear-trumpet, his face very white and perspiring.
He looked at his watch; it was just on nine o'clock. The moon had
arisen and the telegram said "moonrise." He could not doubt the
genuineness of the message when he had heard at the end the names
Winterham and Haystoun. Already Marker might be through the pass, and
little the Khautmi people could do against him. He must be checked at
Bardur, though it cost every life in the garrison. Four hours' delay
would arm the north to adequate resistance.

He telephoned to the telegraph office to shut and lock the doors and
admit no one till word came from him. Then he summoned his Sikh
orderly, his English servant, and the native officers of the garrison.
He had one detachment of Imperial Service troops officered by Punjabis,
and a certain force of Kashmir Sepoys who made ineffective policemen,
and as soldiers were worse than useless. And with them he had to defend
the valley, and hold the native town, which might give trouble on his
flank. This was the most vexatious part of the business. If Marker had
organized the thing, then nothing could be unexpected, and treachery was
sure to be thick around them.

The men came, saluted, and waited in silence. Thwaite sat down at a
table and pulled a sheaf of telegraph forms to pieces. First he wired
to Ladcock at Gilgit, beseeching reinforcements. From Bardur to the
south there is only one choice of ways--by Yasin and Yagistan to the
Indus Valley, or by Gilgit and South Kashmir. Once beyond Gilgit there
was small hope of checking an advance, but in case the shorter way to
the Indus by the Astor Valley was tried there might be hope of a delay.
So he besought Ladcock to post men on the Mazeno Pass if the time was
given him. Then he sent a like message to Yasin, though on the high
passes and the unsettled country there was small chance of the wires
remaining uncut. A force in Yasin might take on the flank any invasion
from Afghanistan and in any case command the Chitral district. Then
came a series of frantic wires at random--to Rawal Pindi, to the Punjabi
centres, to South Kashmir. He had small confidence in these messages.
If the local risings were serious, as he believed them to be, they would
be too late, and in any case they were beyond the country where
strategical points were of advantage against an invader. There remained
the stations on the Indus Valley railway, which must be
the earliest point of attack. The terminus at Boonji was held by a
certain Jackson, a wise man who inspired terror in a mixed force of
irregulars, Afridis, Pathans, Punjabis, Swats, and a dozen other
varieties of tribesmen. To him he sent the most lengthy and urgent
messages, for he held the key of a great telegraphic system with which
he might awake Abbotabad and the Punjab. Then, perspiring with heat and
anxiety, he gave the bundle into the hands of his English servant, and
told off an officer and twenty men to hold the telegraph office. A blue
light was to be lit in the window if the native town should prove
troublesome and reinforcements be needed.

Soon the force of the garrison was assembled in the yard, all but a few
who had been sent on messages to the more isolated houses of the English
residents. Thwaite addressed them briefly: "Men, there's the devil's
own sweet row up the north, and it's moving down to us. This very night
we may have to fight. And, remember, it's not the old game with the
hillmen, but an army of white men, servants of the Tsar, come to fight
the servants of the Empress. Therefore, it is your duty to kill them
all like locusts, else they will swallow up you and your cattle and your
wives and your children, and, speaking generally, the whole bally show.
We may be killed, but if we keep them back even for a little God will
bless us. So be steady at your posts."

The garrison was soon dispersed, the guns in readiness, pointing up the
valley. It was ten o'clock by Thwaite's watch ere the last click of the
loaders told that Bardur was awaiting an enemy. The town behind was in
an uproar, men clamouring at the gates, and seeking passports to flee to
the south. Chinese and Turcoman traders from Leh and Lhassa, Yarkand
and Bokhara, with scared faces, were getting their goods together and
invoking their mysterious gods. Logan, who had returned from Gilgit
that very day, rode breathless into the yard, clamouring for Thwaite.
He received the tale in half a dozen sentences, whistled, and turned to
go, for he had his own work to do. One question he asked:

"Who sent the telegrams?"

"Haystoun and Winterham."

"Then they're alone at Nazri?"

"Except for the Khautmi men."

"Will they try to hold it?"

"I should think so. They're all sportsmen. Gad, there won't be a soul
left alive."

Logan galloped off with a long face. It would be a great ending, but
what a waste of heroic stuff! And as he remembered Lewis's frank
good-fellowship he shut his lips, as if in pain.

The telegrams were sent, and reply messages began to pour in, which kept
one man at the end of the telephone. About half-past ten a blue light
burned in the window across the river. There seemed something to do in
the native town of narrow streets and evil-smelling lanes, for the sound
of shouting and desultory firing rose above the stir of the fort. The
telegraph office abutted on the far end of the bridge, and Thwaite had
taken the precaution of bidding the native officer he had sent across
keep his men posted around the end of the passage. Now he himself took
thirty men, for the native town was the most dangerous point he had to
fear. The wires must not be cut till the last moment, and, as they
passed over the bridge and then through the English quarter, there was
small danger if the office was held. He found, as he expected, that the
place was being maintained against considerable odds. A huge mixed
crowd, drawn in the main from the navvies who had been employed on the
new road, armed with knives and a few rifles, and encouraged by certain
wild, dancing figures which had the look of priests, was surging around
the gate. The fighting stuff was Afridi or Chitrali, but there was
abundance of yelling from this rabble of fakirs and beggars who
accompanied them. Order there was none, and it was clear to Thwaite
that this rising had been arranged for but not organized. His men had
small difficulty in forcing a way to the office, where they served to
complete the cordon of defence and the garrison of the bridge-end. Two
men had been killed and some half-dozen of the rioters. He pushed into
the building, and found a terrified Kashmir clerk sternly watched by his
servant and the Sikh orderly. The man, with tears streaming down his
face, was attempting to read the messages which the wires brought.

Thwaite picked up and read the latest, which was a scrawl in quavering
characters over three telegraph forms. It was from Ladcock at Gilgit,
saying that he was having a row of his own with the navvies there, and
that he could send no reinforcements at present. If he quieted the
trouble in time he would try and hold the Mazeno Pass, and meanwhile he
had done his best to wake the Punjab. As the wires would be probably
cut within the next hour there would be no more communications, but he
besought Thwaite to keep the invader in the passes, as the whole south
country was a magazine waiting for a spark to explode. The message ran
in short violent words, and Thwaite had a vision of Ladcock, short,
ruddy, and utterly out of temper, stirred up from his easy life to hold
a frontier.

There was no word from Yasin, as indeed he had expected, for the tribes
on the highlands about Hunza and Punial were the most disaffected on the
Border, and doubtless the first to be tampered with. Probably his own
message had never gone, and he could only pray that the men there might
by the grace of God have eyes in their heads to read the signs of the
times. There was a brief word from Jackson at Boonji. There attacks
had been made on the terminus and the engine-sheds since sunset, which
his men had luckily had time to repulse. A large amount of
rolling-stock was lying there, as five freight trains had brought up
material for the new bridge the day before. Of this the enemy had
probably had word. Anyhow, he hoped to quiet all local disturbances,
and he would undertake to see that every station on the line was warned.
He would receive reinforcements from Abbotabad by the afternoon of the
next day; if Bardur and Gilgit, or Yasin as it might be, could delay the
attack till then everything might be safe--unless, indeed, the whole
nexus of hill-tribes rose as one man. In which case there would be the
devil to pay, and he had no advice to give.

Thwaite read and laughed grimly. It was not a question of a day's
delay, but of an hour's, and the hill-tribes, if he judged Marker's
cleverness rightly, would act just as Jackson feared. The business had
begun among the navvies at Bardur and Gilgit and Boonji. In a little
they would have news of real tribal war--Hunzas, Pathans, Chitralis,
Punialis, and Chils, tribes whom England had fought a dozen times before
and knew the mettle of; now would be the time for their innings. Well
supplied with money and arms--this would have been part of Marker's
business--they would be the forerunners of the great army. First savage
war, then scientific annihilation by civilized hands--a sweet prospect
for a peaceful man in the prime of life!

He returned to the fort to find all quiet and in order. It commanded
the north road, but though the eye might weary itself with looking on
the moonlit sandy valley and the opaque blue hills, there was no sight
or sound of men. The stars were burning hard and cold in the vault of
sky, and looking down somewhere on the march of an army. It was now
close on midnight; in five hours dawn would break in the east and the
night of attack would be gone. But death waited between this midnight
hour and the morning. What were Haystoun and the men from Khautmi
doing? Fighting or beyond all fighting? Well, he would soon know. He
was not afraid, but this cursed waiting took the heart out of a man!
And he looked at his watch and found it half-past twelve.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Yasin there was the most severe fighting. It lasted for three days,
and in effect amounted to a little tribal war. A man called Mackintosh
commanded, and he had the advantage of having regulars with him, Gurkhas
for the most part, who were old campaigners. The place had seemed
unquiet for some days, and certain precautions had been taken, so that
when the rioting broke out at sunset it was easy to get the town under
subjection and prepare for external attack. The Chiling Pass into
Chitral had given trouble of old, but Mackintosh was scarcely prepared
for the systematic assaults of Punialis and Tangiris from the east and
south. Having always been famous as an alarmist he put the right
interpretation on the business, and settled down to what he half hoped,
half feared, might be a great frontier war. The place was strong only
on the north side, and the defence was as much a question of engineering
as of war. His Sepoys toiled gallantly at the incomplete defences,
while the rest fought hand to hand--bayonet against knife, Metford
against Enfield--to cover their labour. He lost many men, but on the
evening of the next day he had the satisfaction of seeing the
fortifications complete, and he awaited a siege with equanimity, as he
was well victualled.

On the second night the enemy again attacked, but the moon was bright,
and they were no match for his sharpshooters. About two in the morning
they fell back, and for the next day it looked as if they proposed to
invest the garrison. But by the third evening they began to melt away,
taking with them such small plunder as they had won. Mackintosh, who
was a man of enterprise, told off a detachment for pursuit, and cursed
bitterly the fate which had broken his ankle with a rifle-bullet.

In the south along the railway the warnings came in good time. At Rawal
Pindi there was some small difficulty with native officials, a large
body of whom seemed to have unaccountably disappeared. This delayed for
some time the sending of a freight-train to Abbotabad, but by and by
substitutes were found, and the works left under guard. The telegram to
Peshawur found things in readiness there, for memories of old trouble
still linger, and people sleep lightly on that frontier. Word came of
native riots in the south, at Lahore and Amritsar, and the line of towns
which mark the way to Delhi. In some places extraordinary accidents
were reported. Certain officers had gone off on holiday and had not
returned; odd and unintelligible commands had come to perplex the minds
of others; whole camps were reported sick where sickness was least
expected. A little rising of certain obscure rivers had broken up an
important highway by destroying all the bridges save the one which
carried the railway. The whole north was on the brink of a sudden
disorganization, but the brink had still to be passed. It lay with its
masters to avert calamity; and its masters, going about with haggard
faces, prayed for daylight and a few hours to prepare.

       *       *       *       *       *

George had sent his men to Khautmi before he entered the telegraph hut,
and he followed himself in twenty minutes. Somewhere upon the hill-road
he met St. John with a dozen men, who abused him roundly and besought
details.

"Are you sure?" he cried. "For God's sake, say you're mistaken. For,
if you're not, upon my soul it's the last hour for all of us."

George was in little mood for jest. He told Lewis's tale in a few
words.

"A pass beyond Nazri," the man cried. "Why, I was there shooting buck
last week. Up the nullah and over the ridge, and then a cleft at the
top of the next valley? Does he say there's a pass there? Maybe, but
I'll be hanged if an army could get through. If we get there we can
hold it."

"We haven't time. They may be here at any moment. Send men to Forza
and get them to light the fires. Oh, for God's sake, be quick! I've
left Haystoun down there. The obstinate beggar was too tired to move."

Over all the twenty odd miles between Forza and Khautmi there is a chain
of fires which can be used for signals in the Border wars. On this
night Khautmi was to take the west side of the Nazri gully and Forza the
east, and the two quickest runners in the place were sent off to Andover
with the news. He was to come towards them, leaving men at the
different signal-posts in case of scattered assaults, and if he came in
time the two forces would join in holding the Nazri pass. But should
the invader come before, then it fell on the Khautmi men to stand alone.
It was a smooth green hollow in the stony hills, some hundred yards
wide, and at the most they might hope to make a fight of thirty minutes.
St. John and George, with their men, ran down the stony road till the
sweat dripped from their brows, though the night was chilly. Mitchinson
was to follow with the rest and light the fires; meantime, they must get
to Nazri, in case the march should forestall them. St. John was
cursing his ill-luck. Two hours earlier and they might have held the
distant cleft in the hills, and, if they were doomed to perish, have
perished to some purpose. But the holding of the easy Nazri pass was
sheer idle mania, and yet it was the only chance of gaining some paltry
minutes. As for George, he had forgotten his vexatious. His one
anxiety was for Lewis; that he should be in time to have his friend at
his side. And when at last they came down on the pass and saw the
camp-fire blazing fiercely and no trace of the enemy, he experienced a
sense of vast relief. Lewis was making himself comfortable, cool beggar
that he was, and now was probably sleeping. He should be left alone; so
he persuaded St. John that the best point to take their stand on was on
a shoulder of hill beyond the fire. It gave him honest pleasure to
think that at last he had stolen a march on his friend. He should at
least have his sleep in peace before the inevitable end.

He looked at his watch; it was almost half-past eleven.

"Haystoun said they'd be here at midnight," he whispered to his
companion. "We haven't long. When do you suppose Andover will come?"

"Not for an hour and a half at the earliest. Afraid this is going to be
our own private show. Where's Haystoun?"

George nodded back to the fire in the hollow, and the tent beside it.
"There, I expect, sleeping. He's dog-tired, and he always was a very
cool hand in a row. He'll be wakened soon enough, poor chap."

"You're sure he can't tell us anything?"

"Nothing. He told me all. Better let him be." Mitchinson came up with
the rearguard. Living all but alone in the wilds had made him a silent
man compared to whom the taciturn St. John was garrulous. He nodded to
George and sat down.

"How many are we?" George asked.

"Forty-three, counting the three of us. Not enough for a good stand.
Wonder how it'll turn out. Never had to do such a thing before."

St. John, whose soul longed for Maxims, posted his men as best he
could. There was no time to throw up earthworks, but a rough cairn of
stone which stood in the middle of the hollow gave at least a central
rallying-ground. Then they waited, watching the fleecy night vapours
blow across the peaks and straining their ears for the first sound of
men.

George grew impatient. "It can't be more than five miles to the pass.
Shouldn't some of us try to get there? It would make all the
difference."

St. John declined sharply. "We've taken our place and we must stick to
it. We can't afford to straggle. Hullo! it's just on twelve. Thwaite
has had three hours to prepare, and he's bound to have wakened the
south. I fancy the business won't quite come off this time."

Suddenly in the chilly silence there rose something like the faint and
distant sound of rifles. It was no more than the sound of stone
dropping on a rock ledge, for, still and clear and cold though the night
was, the narrowness of the valley and the height of the cliffs dulled
all distant sounds. But each man had the ear of the old hunter, and
waited with head bent forward.

Again the drip-drip; then a scattering noise as when one lets peas fall
on the floor.

"God! That's carbines. Who the devil are they fighting with?"
Mitchinson's eye had lost its lethargy. His scraggy neck was craned
forward, and his grim mouth had relaxed into a grimmer smile.

"It's them, sure enough," said St. John, and spoke something to his
servant.

"I'm going forward," said George. "It may be somebody else making a
stand, and we're bound to help."

"You're bound not to be an ass," said St. John. "Who in the Lord's
name could it be? It may be the Badas polishing off some hereditary
foes, and it may be Marker getting rid of some wandering hillmen. Man,
we're miles beyond the pale. Who's to make a stand but ourselves?"

Again came the patter of little sounds, and then a long calm.

"They're through now," said St. John. "The next thing to listen for is
the sound of their feet. When that comes I pass the word along. We're
all safe for heaven, so keep your minds easy."

But the sound of feet was long in coming. Only the soft night airs, and
at rare intervals an eagle's cry, or the bleat of a doe from the valley
bottom. The first half-hour of waiting was a cruel strain. In such
moments a man's sins rise up large before him. When his future life is
narrowed down to an hour's compass, he sees with cruel distinctness the
follies of his past. A thousand things he had done or left undone
loomed on George's mental horizon. His slackness, his self-indulgence,
his unkindness--he went over the whole innocent tale of his sins. To
the happy man who lives in the open and meets the world with a square
front this forced final hour of introspection has peculiar terrors.
Meantime Lewis was sleeping peacefully in the tent by the still cheerful
fire. Thank God, he was spared this hideous waiting!

About two Andover turned up with fifteen men, hot and desperate. He
listened to St. John's story in silence.

"Thank God, I'm in time. Who found out this? Haystoun? Good man,
Lewis! I wonder who has been firing out there. They can't have been
stopped? It's getting devilish late for them anyhow, and I believe
there's a little hope. It would be too risky to leave this pass, but I
vote we send a scout."

A man was chosen and dispatched. Two hours later he returned to the
mystified watchers at Nazri. He had been on the hill-shoulder and
looked into the cleft. There was no sign of men there, but he had heard
the sound of men, though where he could not tell. Far down the cleft
there was a gleam of fire, but no man near it.

"That's a Bada dodge," said Andover promptly. "Now I wonder if Marker
trusted too much to these gentry, and they have done us the excellent
service of misleading him. They hate us like hell, and they'd sell
their souls any day for a dozen cartridges; so it can't have been done
on purpose. Seems to me there has been a slip in his plans somewhere."

But the sound of voices! The man was questioned closely, and he was
strong on its truth. He was a hillman from the west of the Khyber, and
he swore that he knew the sound of human speech in the hills many miles
off, though he could not distinguish the words.

"In thirty minutes it will be morning," said George. "Lord, such a
night, and Lewis to have missed it all!" His spirits were rising, and he
lit a pipe. The north was safe whatever happened, and, as the inertness
of midnight passed off, he felt satisfaction in any prospect, however
hazardous. He sat down beneath a boulder and smoked, while Andover
talked with the others. They were the frontier soldiers, and this was
their profession; he was the amateur to whom technicalities were
unmeaning.

Suddenly he sprang up and touched St. John on the shoulder. A great
chill seemed to have passed over the world, and on the hill-tops there
was a faint light. Both men looked to the east, and there, beyond the
Forza hills, was the red foreglow spreading over the grey. It was dawn,
and with the dawn came safety. The fires had burned low, and the
vagrant morning winds were beginning to scatter the white ashes. Now
was the hour for bravado, since the time for silence had gone. St.
John gave the word, and it was passed like a roll-call to left and
right, the farthest man shouting it along the ribs of mountain to the
next watch-fire. The air had grown clear and thin, and far off the dim
repetition was heard, which told of sentries at their place, and the
line of posts which rimmed the frontier.

Mitchinson moistened his dry lips and filled his lungs with the cold,
fresh air. "That," he said slowly, "is the morning report of the last
outpost of the Empire, and by the grace of God it's 'All's well.'"




CHAPTER XXXII

THE BLESSING OF GAD


"Gad--a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last."

Lewis peered into the gorge and saw only a thin darkness. The high
walls made pits of shade at the foot, but above there was a misty column
of light which showed the spectres of rock and bush in the nullah
beyond. It was all but dark, and the stars were coming out like the
lights on a sea-wall, hard and cold and gleaming. Just in the throat of
the pass a huge boulder had fallen and left a passage not two yards
wide. Beyond there was a sharp descent of a dozen feet to the gravelled
bottom which fell away in easier stages to the other watershed. Here
was a place made by nature for his plans. With immense pains he rolled
the biggest stones he could move to the passage, so that they were
poised above the slope. He tried the great boulder, too, with his
shoulders, and it seemed to quiver. In the last resort this mass of
rock might be sent crashing down the incline, and by the blessing of God
it should account for its man.

He brought his rifles forward to the stones, loaded them and felt the
cartridges easy in his pocket. They were for the thirty-yards range;
his pistol would be kept for closer quarters. He tried one after the
other, cuddling the stocks to his cheek. They were all dear-loved
weapons, used in deer-stalking at home and on many a wilder beat. He
knew the tricks of each, and he had little pet devices laughed at by his
friends. This one had clattered down fifty feet of rock in Ross-shire
as the scars on the stock bore witness, and another had his initials
burned in the wood, the relic of a winter's night in a Finnish camp. A
thousand old pleasant memories came back to him, the sights and scents
and sounds of forgotten places, the zest of toil and escapade, the joy
of food and warmth and rest. Well! he had lived, had tasted to the
full the joys of the old earth, the kindly mother of her children. He
had faced death thoughtlessly many times, and now the Ancient Enemy was
on his heels and he was waiting to give him greeting. A phrase ran in
his head, some trophy from his aimless wanderings among books, which
spoke of death coming easily to one "who has walked steadfastly in the
direction of his dreams." It was a comforting thought to a creature of
moods and fancies. He had failed, doubtless, but he had ever kept some
select fanciful aim unforgotten. In all his weakness he had never
betrayed this ultimate Desire of the Heart.

Some few feet up the cliff was a little thicket of withered thorns. The
air was chilly and the cleft was growing very black. Why should not he
make a fire behind the great boulder? He gathered some armfuls and
heaped them in a space of dry sand. They were a little wet, so they
burned slowly with a great smoke, which the rising night wind blew
behind him. He was still hungry, so he ate the food he had brought in
his pockets; and then he lit his pipe. How oddly the tobacco tasted in
this moment of high excitement! It was as if the essence of all the
pipes he had ever smoked was concentrated into this last one. The smoke
blew back, and as he sniffed its old homely fragrance he seemed to feel
the smell of peat and heather, of drenched homespun in the snowy bogs,
and the glory of a bright wood fire and the moorland cottage. In a
second his thoughts were many thousand miles away. The night wind
cooled his brow, and he looked into the dark gap and saw his own past.

The first picture was a cold place on a low western island. Snow was
drifting sparsely, and a dull grey Atlantic swell was grumbling on the
reefs. He was crouching among the withered rushes, where seaweed and
shells had been blown, and snow lay in dirty patches. He felt the thick
collar of his shooting-coat tight about his neck, while the December
evening grew darker and colder. A gillie, who had no English, was lying
at his right hand, and far out at sea a string of squattering geese were
slowly drifting shorewards with the wind. He saw the scene clear in
every line, and he remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday. It
had been one of his periods of great exultation. He had just left
Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the
taste of civilization from his mouth among the island north-westers. He
had had a great day among the woodcock, and now was finishing with a
stalk after wild geese. He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to
the bone, but riotously happy. His future seemed to stretch before him,
a brighter continuation of a bright past, a time for high achievement,
bold work, and yet no surcease of pleasure. He had been master of
himself in that hour, his body firm and strong, his soul clear, his mind
a tempered weapon awaiting his hands.

And then the scene changed to a June evening in his own countryside. He
was deep in the very heart of the hills beside a little loch, whose
clear waves lapped on beaches of milky sand, it was just on twilight,
and an infinite sighing of soft winds was around him, a far-away
ineffable brightness of sunset, and the good scents of dusk among thyme
and heather. He had fished all the afternoon, and his catch lay on the
bent beside him. He was to sleep the night in his plaid, and already a
fire of heather-roots behind him was prepared for supper. He had been
for a swim, and his hair was still wet on his forehead. Just across a
conical hill rose into the golden air, the highest hill in all the
countryside, but here but a little thing, for the loch was as high as
many a hill-top. Just on its face was a scaur, and there a raven--a
speck--was wheeling slowly. Among the little islands broods of mallard
were swimming, and trout in a bay were splashing with wide circles. The
whole place had seemed caught up into an ecstasy, a riot of gold and
crimson and far-off haunting shades and scents and voices. And yet it
was no wild spectacle; it was the delicate comfort of it all which had
charmed him. Life seemed one glorious holiday, the world a garden of
the gods. There was his home across the hills, with its cool chambers,
its books and pictures, its gardens and memories. There were his
friends up and down the earth. There was the earth itself waiting for
his conquest. And, meantime, there was this airy land around him, his
own by the earliest form of occupation.

The fire died down to embers and a sudden scattering of ashes woke him
out of his dreaming. The old Scots land was many thousand miles away.
His past was wiped out behind him. He was alone in a very strange
place, cut off by a great gulf from youth and home and pleasure. For an
instant the extreme loneliness of an exile's death smote him, but the
next second he comforted himself. The heritage of his land and his
people was his in this ultimate moment a hundredfold more than ever.
The sounding tale of his people's wars--one against a host, a foray in
the mist, a last stand among the mountain snows--sang in his heart like
a tune. The fierce, northern exultation, which glories in hardships and
the forlorn, came upon him with such keenness and delight that, as he
looked into the night and the black unknown, he felt the joy of a
greater kinship. He was kin to men lordlier than himself, the
true-hearted who had ridden the King's path and trampled a little world
under foot. To the old fighters in the Border wars, the religionists of
the South, the Highland gentlemen of the Cause, he cried greeting over
the abyss of time. He had lost no inch of his inheritance. Where,
indeed, was the true Scotland? Not in the little barren acres he had
left, the few thousands of city-folk, or the contentions of unlovely
creeds and vain philosophies. The elect of his race had ever been the
wanderers. No more than Hellas had his land a paltry local unity.
Wherever the English flag was planted anew, wherever men did their duty
faithfully and without hope of little reward--there was the fatherland
of the true patriot.

The time was passing, and still the world was quiet. The hour must be
close on midnight, and still there was no sign of men. For the first
time he dared to hope for success. Before, an hour's delay was all that
he had sought. To give the north time for a little preparation, to make
defence possible, had been his aim; now with the delay he seemed to see
a chance for victory. Bardur would be alarmed hours ago; men would be
on the watch all over Kashmir and the Punjab; the railways would be
guarded. The invader would find at the least no easy conquest. When
they had trodden his life out in the defile they would find stronger men
to bar their path, and he would not have died in vain. It was a slender
satisfaction for vanity, for what share would he have in the defence?
Unknown, unwept, he would perish utterly, and to others would be the
glory. He did not care, nay, he rejoiced in the brave obscurity. He
had never sought so vulgar a thing as fame. He was going out of life
like a snuffed candle. George, if George survived, would know nothing
of his death. He was miles beyond the frontier, and if George, after
months of war, should make his way to this fatal cleft, what trace would
he find of him? And all his friends, Wratislaw, Arthur Mordaunt, the
folk of Glenavelin--no word would ever come to them to tell them of his
end.

But Alice--and in one wave there returned to him the story which he had
striven to put out of his heart. She had known him in his weakness, but
she would never think of him in his strength. The whimsical fate
pleased him. The last meeting on that grey autumn afternoon at the
Broken Bridge had heartened him for his travellings. It had been a
compact between them; and now he was redeeming the promise of the tryst.
And she would never know it, would only know that somewhere and somehow
he had ceased to struggle with an inborn weakness. Well-a-day! It was
no world of rounded corners and complete achievements. It was enough if
a hint, a striving, a beginning were found in the scheme of man's
frailty. He had no clear-cut conception of a future--that was the happy
lot of the strong-hearted--but he had a generous intolerance of little
success. He did not ask rewards, but he prayed for the hope of a good
beginning or a gallant failure. The odd romance which lies in the
wanderer's brain welcomed the paradox. Alice and her bright hair
floated dim on the horizon of his vision, something exquisite and dear,
a memory, a voice, a note of tenderness in this last exhilaration. A
sentimental passion was beyond him; he was too critical of folly to
worship any lost lady; and he had no love for vain reminiscences. But
the girl had become the embodied type of the past. A year ago he had
not seen her, now she was home and childhood and friends to him. For a
moment there was the old heart-hunger, but the pain had gone. The
ineffectual longing which had galled him had perished at the advent of
his new strength.

For in this ultimate moment he at last seemed to have come to his own.
The vulgar little fears, which, like foxes, gnaw at the roots of the
heart, had gone, even the greater perils of faint hope and a halting
energy. The half-hearted had become the stout-hearted. The resistless
vigour of the strong and the simple was his. He stood in the dark gully
peering into the night, his muscles stiff from heel to neck. The
weariness of the day had gone: only the wound in his ear, got the day
before, had begun to bleed afresh. He wiped the blood away with his
handkerchief, and laughed at the thought of this little care. In a few
minutes he would be facing death, and now he was staunching a pin-prick.

He wondered idly how soon death would come. It would be speedy, at
least, and final. And then the glory of the utter loss. His bones
whitening among the stones, the suns of summer beating on them and the
winter snowdrifts decently covering them with a white sepulchre. No man
could seek a lordlier burial. It was the death he had always craved.
From murder, fire, and sudden death, why should we call on the Lord to
deliver us? A broken neck in a hunting-field, a slip on rocky
mountains, a wounded animal at bay--such was the environment of death
for which he had ever prayed. But this--this was beyond his dreams.

And with it all a great humility fell upon him. His battles were all
unfought. His life had been careless and gay; and the noble
commonplaces of faith and duty had been things of small meaning. He had
lived within the confines of a little aristocracy of birth and wealth
and talent, and the great melancholy world scourged by the winds of God
had seemed to him but a phrase of rhetoric. His creeds and his
arguments seemed meaningless now in this solemn hour; the truth had been
his no more than his crude opponent's! Had he his days to live over
again he would look on the world with different eyes. No man any more
should call him a dreamer. It pleased him to think that, half-hearted
and sceptical as he had been, a humorist, a laughing philosopher, he was
now dying for one of the catchwords of the crowd. He had returned to
the homely paths of the commonplace, and young, unformed, untried, he
was caught up by kind fate to the place of the wise and the heroic.

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly on his thoughts there broke in a dull tread of men, a sound of
slipping stones and feet upon dry gravel. He broke into the cold sweat
of tense nerves, and waited, half hidden, with his rifle ready. Then
came the light of dull lanterns which showed a thin, endless column
beneath the rock walls. They advanced with wonderful quietness, the
sound of feet broken only by a soft word of command. He calculated the
distance--now it was three hundred yards, now two, now a bare eighty.
At fifty his rifle flew to his shoulder and he fired. His nerves were
bad, for one bullet clicked on the rock, while the second took the dust
a yard before the enemy's feet. Instantly there was a halt and the
sound of speech.

The failure had steadied him. The second pair of shots killed their
men. He heard the quick cry of pain and shivered. He was new to this
work and the cry hurt him. But he picked up his express and fired
again, and again there was a cry and a fall. Then he heard a word of
command and the sound of men creeping in the side of the nullah. Eye
and ear were marvelously acute at the moment, for he picked out the
scouts and killed them. Then he loaded his rifles and waited.

He saw a man in the half-light not five yards below him. He fired and
the man dropped, but he had used his rifle and the great spattering of
earth showed his whereabouts. Now was the time for keen eye and steady
arm. The enemy had halted thirty yards off and beneath the slope there
was a patch of darkness. He kept one eye on this, for it might contain
a man. He fixed his attention on a ray of moonlight which fell across
the floor of the gully. When a man crept past this he shot, and he
rarely failed.

Then a command was given and the column came forward at the double. He
fired two shots, but the advance continued. They passed the ray of
light and he saw the whites of their eyes and the gleam of teeth and
steel. They paused a second to fire a volley, and a storm of shot
rattled about him. He had stepped back into his shelter, and was
unscathed, but when he looked out he saw the enemy at the foot of the
slope. His weapons were all loaded except the express, and in mad haste
he sent shot after shot into the ranks. The fire halted them, and for a
second they were on the edge of a panic. This unknown destruction
coming out of the darkness was terrifying to the stoutest hearts. All
the while there was wrath behind them. This stopping of the advance
column was throwing the whole force into confusion. Angry messages came
up from the centre, and distracted officers cursed their native guides.

Meanwhile Lewis was something wholly unlike himself, a maddened creature
with every sense on the alert, drinking in the glory of the fight. He
husbanded the chances of his life with generous parsimony. Every chance
meant some minutes' delay and every delay a new link of safety for the
north. His cartridges were getting near an end, but there still
remained the stones and his pistol and the power of his arm hand to
hand.

Suddenly came a second volley which all but killed him, bullets glancing
on all sides of him and scraping the rocks with a horrid message of
death. Then on the heels of it came a charge up the slope. The turn
had come for the last expedient. He rushed to the stone and with the
strength of madness rooted it from its foundations. It wavered for a
second, and then with a cloud of earth and gravel it plunged downwards.
A second and it had ploughed its way with a sickening grinding sound
into the ranks of the men below. There was one wild scream of terror,
and then a retreat, a flight, almost a panic.

Down in the hollow was a babel of sound, men yelping with fright,
officers calming and cursing them, and the shouting of the forces
behind. For Lewis the last moment was approaching. The neck of the
pass was now bare and wide and half of the slope was gone. He had lost
his weapons in the fall, all but his express, and the loosening of the
stone had crushed his foot so that he could scarcely stand. Then order
seemed to be restored, for another volley rang out, which passed over
his head as he crouched on the ground. The enemy were advancing slowly,
resolutely. He knew that now there was something different in their
tread.

He was calm and quiet. The mad exhilaration was ebbing and he was
calculating chances as dispassionately as a scientist in his study. Two
shots, the six chambers of his pistol, and then he would be ground to
powder. The moon rode over the top of the cleft and a sudden wave of
light fell on the slope, the writhing dead, and below, the advancing
column. It gave him a chance for fair shooting, and he did not miss.
But the men were maddened with anger and taunts, and they would have
charged a battery. They came up on the slope with a fierce rush,
cursing in gutturals. He slipped behind the old friendly jag of rock
and waited till they were abreast. Then began a strange pistol
practice. Crouching in the darkness he selected his men and shot them,
making no mistake. The front ranks of the column turned to the right
and lunged with their bayonets into the gloom. But the man knew his
purpose. He climbed farther back till he was above their heads, looking
down on ranks of white inhuman faces mad with slaughter and the courage
which is next door to fear. They were still advancing, but with an
uncertain air. He saw his chance and took it. Crying out he knew not
what, he leapt among them with clutched rifle, striking madly to right
and left. There was a roar of fright, and for a moment a space was
cleared around him. He fought like a maniac, stumbling with his crushed
foot and leaving two men stunned at his feet. But it was only for a
moment. A bayonet entered his side and his rifle snapped at the stock.
He grappled with the nearest man and pulled him to the ground, for he
could stand no longer. Then there came a wild surge around, a dozen
bayonets pierced him, and in the article of death he was conscious of a
great press which ground him into the earth. The next moment the column
was marching over his body.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dawn came with light and sweet airs to the dark cleft in the hills.
Just at that moment, when the red east was breaking into spires and
clouds of colour, and the little morning winds were beginning to flutter
among the crags, two men were standing in the throat of the pass. The
ground about them was ploughed up as if by a battery, the rock seamed
and broken, and red stains of blood were on the dry gravel. From the
north, in the direction of the plain, came the confused sound of an army
in camp. But to the south there was a glimpse through an aperture of
hill of a far side of mountain, and on it a gleam as of fire.

Marka, clad in the uniform of a captain of Cossacks, looked fiercely at
his companion and then at the beacon.

"Look," he said, "look and listen!" And sure enough in the morning
stillness came the sound as of a watchword cried from post to post.

"That," said he, "is the morning signal of an awakened empire and the
final proof of our failure."

"It was no fault of mine," said Fazir Khan sourly. "I did as I was
commanded, and lo! when I come I find an army in confusion and the
frontier guarded." The chief spoke with composure, but he had in his
heart an uneasy consciousness that he had had some share in this
undoing.

Marka looked down at a body which lay wrinkled across the path. It was
trodden all but shapeless, the poor face was unrecognizable, the legs
were scrawled like a child's letters. Only one hand with a broken gold
signet-ring remained to tell of the poor inmate of the clay.

The Cossack looked down on the dead with a scowling face. "Curse
him--curse him eternally. Who would have guessed that this fool, this
phrasing fool, would have spoiled our plans? Curse his conscience and
his honour, and God pity him for a fool! I must return to my troops,
for this is no place to linger in." The man saw his work of years
spoiled in a night, and all by the agency of a single adventurer. He
saw his career blighted, his reputation gone. It is not to be wondered
at if he was bitter.

He turned to go, and in leaving pushed the dead man over with his foot.
He saw the hand and the broken ring.

"This thing was once a gentleman," he said, and he went down the pass.

But Fazir Khan remained by the body. He remembered his guest of two
days before, and he cursed himself for underrating this wandering
Englishman. He saw himself in evil case. His chances of spoil and
glory had departed. He foresaw expeditions of reprisal, and the
Bada-Mawidi hunted like partridges upon the mountains. He had staked his
all on a desperate chance, and this one man had been his ruin. For a
moment the barbarian came out, and in a sudden ferocity he kicked the
dead.

But as he looked again he was moved to a juster appreciation.

"This thing was a man," he said.

Then stooping he dipped his finger in blood and touched his forehead.
"This man," he said, "was of the race of kings."