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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la methods. 1 2 3 4 5 6 NNCROCOrV MSOUJTION TKT CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 7) >»PPLIED IM/1GE Inc I6SJ East Main Strxl .^och«»t«r, N«w York U609 (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon* (716) 288-5989 -Fox USA i.. If I A MODERN ANTAEUS A MODERN ANTAEUS BY THE WRITER OP AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S LOVE-LETTEBS" TORONTO GEORGE N. MORANG & COMPANY, UMITED 1901 BBtm4aeeordi«f to Act of tb* ParliMnMt of CttMa*. !■ Ui« yMr NiMtMa Huadnd mat Om. br Ommb N. Moiuiw ft Compamt, Limitad. -X Um DtpvtaMat of Acriraitar*. '^And VtutA, I most kw4til tktt^ T^pmrpoM was sogrtati But thtfots that ad assmil thtt Win stromgsr than thyfatt^ Ami thy ktart it was so ruddy na That tvsry anksr knew IVktrt 4# might btst in^aU thtt And irtvt his arrows tkrotigh.* II. "-elow. "All right!" he grumbled aloud, apprehensive of detection in so all wrong an attitude. But the alarm was false ; nobody came ; and the respite set him off upon his legs again. Across the hall toward the front door his boots made a big feeble clatter ; those ends of him had become noisy and too heavy for management ; they bumped his feet down at random, and seemed half-stuck to the ground before each step. That he had been ill all over for weeks, he remembered ; but only now when he tried to walk did he realise how ill his legs had been. All the house seen.ed to have been ill, too ; the coat-rack was emptied of its appendages, and through an open door he saw bare boards, lowered blinds, carpets rolled and stacked into • corner, and dust-sheets over the few large pieces of niture that amained. The whole place — the hall, the staircase, and the banisters — smelt, as he did, of embrocations. Every sight that met his eye denied him recognition, mutilated his feelings, and decimated his affections; and a 6 A MODERN ANTAEUS vague resentment grew in the child's mind against sickness and the absence of friends, as if these were one and the same thing, or arose from the same causes. In his own case it was mainly true. H.;s illness had come late to prove the expediency of a change already determined on. The house that had long seemed unhealthy had even then been vacated by the rest of its tenants, and nothing but the boy's illness from a linger- ing fever had prolonged the partial occupancy. So now the revival of his early childish int« !Ugence was to synchronise rather unfitly with the snapping of old associations, when the word "home" would have once more to shape a meaning for itself out of new settings, on the top of others, which were never quite to lose their significance. Tristram's brain, from the camera obscura of his sick room, was destined to receive briefly, as on a sensitive film, this impression of old things in dissolu- tion, of things which he had already learned vaguely to love, and would meet with no more in life. Overhead the nurse's voice called " Tristram ! " Before him the front door stood open ; he went gravely on, and stepping out on to the gravel, took his first stare at the sunshine and a world new and old. He knew the ways of this garden well enough, but not its looks. What he remembered best was a place of bare boughs, which had suddenly all gone white and sick, like the furniture under its dust-sheets. After that had followed his own sickness ; and from his bed he had watched, at times, a dull sky and the tops of trees that had no green in them. Now it seemed a thousand new things had stepped in ; the garden was full of sweet disturbances, flittings of birds, and siftings of a light wind coming and going among the boughs. Also in the heart of the stems was a thick flush of green ; and here and there a foam of blossom cast itself white L THE NURSING OF ANTAEUS 7 against dark piles of evergreen, or broke in soft dusk against the gay air. Out of laurels hard by a blackbird broke cover, and fled chinking to a more distant shelter. To the child that loud note, sounded so near and so suddenly, was like a buffet in the face. Other cries pealed round him, the arrogant laughter of bright lives disregarding his. He grew sick for a little recognition, and turned to look up at the windows of the house. White blinds looked back at him. Lower than the rest of the first storey, but above his reach, was one irregularly set, and with raised blind, that he remembered with special affection ; the lower branches of an easy climbing-tree led up to its sill. " Auntie Dorrie ! " called the child, trusting that the radiant visitor who had brought gry intervals to his sick-chamber might be there within call, "Auntie Dorrie!" And a little anger mixed with his surprise that the windows did not fly open to him. Within doors Tristram's nurse was rummaging in comers for her escaped charge ; not dreaming to look for him so far out of hand, she searched in vain. Presently from the end of a small corridor she heard tabberings on glass, and the cry of " Auntie Dorrie I " that began to be a wail. Tracking the sounds in anxious wrath, she came flurrying to the little sun-lit sitting-room, half-bared of its belongings, and saw a white face among branches, flattening ii:self against the pane. To Tristram the angry apparition which flew hastily to the window to grab at him was that of an entire stranger : a dearer vision had so strong a hold on his expectations. He went down solid into the bush below him ; and his nurse's scream was ever after a part in the bird-chorus that fluted through his memories of that first day. CHAPTER II GERMINAL FOR his health's sake and for out-of-the-way quiet they brought Tristram to a small hillside cottage, three miles from his late home, which had lain too low, draining an old graveyard, and hemmed round by elms' as ancient as the house itself. Now, like a pot-plant turned out ^o sun, he sat in a trellised porch, where after a while suiall old-fashioned magenta roses began to bloom, and imbibed there a liking for a colour whrch turns vicious when transferred from its flowery texture to any fabric of man's weaving. This was the home of his old nurse, who had been his mother's nurse also, and had here retired, worn by domestic strain, on savings and a pension. Coming to this hale locality, she had greened into fresh vigour, and hearing of Tristram convalescent after his long illness, she had clamoured to have that latest of her babes back into her arms. The sight of the welcoming face which leaned into the carriage on his arrival, brought with it only a vague sense of familiarity ; but soon her habits with him, and the little home she had made round her of knick- knacks gathered in long service, coaxed his memoiy to recover the charm of their old relations. This place where he found himself was hardly beautiful ; but to Tristram's eyes it became so. Two cottages backed by a barton stood off the road on a GERMINAL 9 bank, with a bright edge of garden dividing them from the rural traffic that went by. Round them stood fields, rather treeless, but thick in crops, for the service of which the barton stood as stable-yard and granary, an ofT-shoot from a lai^er farm. The light lay still inart:culate and blanched on the child's mind, brought to renew its sense of local colour in that simple place. His body had still some tremors of its recent i.lness, and his brain took fright easily at darkness or unexpected sounds; loneliness, on the other hand, began already to be one of his pleasures. All the more quickly did he receive the inspirations of the small rural world, which in a few days contained nothing that was stranger to him than the safe open spaces where he might be alone, yet within sound of Mrs Harbour's chiding call. Within a fortnight he vegetated into a true cottager. No doubt his small doings in the few weeks he was there had a plain prosaic exterior ; but this ring of fields and farm and garden became fo: '"ristram an enchanted spot ; memory made him look back on it as the nest where he first fledged, the holy ground on which, so it seemed to him then, he had stood and watched the tree of life brimming with fire yet not consumed. Unknown to himself the boy was renewing the associations of a still earlier visit, discovering a mysterious familiarity in things he had seen while yet in the first toddling stage of infancy, and again forgotten. No chronicle can take in a whole life, and follow it without gaps and omissions ; there is a blind spot in the eye of each one of us: only by that incompleteness do we see anything. Autobiographers leave whole tracts of themselves undiscovered ; nor could Tristram in after years have given more than a maimed account 10 A MODERN ANTAEUS of himself. Even this chronicle, depending on many synoptic records, has to stray backwards and forwards for hints of him, uncertain of their true sequence. Some of them perhaps were earlier than the day already told of when consciousness first struck hard upon his faculties, belonging in that case to his previous coming into the locality where wt now find him. Hints only, for to follow elaborately the schooling of early years would only be wearisome. Young life picking out its five- fingered exercises sounds monotonous when heard without intermission ; only now and then does accented experience break in on the routine. Then the exercise changes and becomes a sort of tune ; out of it the gods get humorous promptings of what troubles their puppet is likely to be in hereafter, and, having heard, set the callow tunester back again to his stiff digital drill. Mrs Ann Harbour, the "Nan-nan" of Tristram's, youth, tells in her grey old age of his two visits to her hillside cottage many things that would other- wise be forgotten. To her ears the daily noise of him never grew monotonous : of nurses, gods and men may learn a lesson in patience and kind charity. But to the outer worid we give no more than random pictures of him, cinematograph glimpses, faces that he threw on and off, till life, taking his measure, found a face-mould to fit him, or to cramp him into that like- ness which it chose that he should wear. These faces are the lives through which all that is human passes in its growth ; and one wonders how many of them will be allowed to appear before that last Court of Appeal, where Theology calls souls up to judgment. Will each face in turn come pleading its creation, and claiming a soul to inhabit it, as scrupulous Moslems teach to veto the painted and the graven image? Ot is it only the last mask of all, the worn-out one lying under the death-sheet, that counts ? At the end of most men's GERMINAL II Hve« there are seven bodies demanding resurrection, a d which of them all docs the soul Ukc to wife? Surely an unbiassed record of life must almost of necessity put a note of interrogation in the place of any final Amen. So here you may find it when all is done. Of Tristram's earliest days memories have hoarded things which he himself had soon forgotten. Mrs Harbour tells of him, that from the hour when he could first walk, never was there such a child for getting into water. She might have added— for getting out of it also, from the many times Tristram had stood before her in an unexplained state of drench, requiring dressings in two kinds, each preventive of cold to the system. It was on this point that his tongue first learned to babble fiction, ascribing to a fabulous being whom he named "the Kitchyman" the wringing wetness of his attire. Presently, however, finding that he had to bear the Kitchyman's sins in his own body, he resumed the glory which he had laid aside, let the Kitchyman's name go th: way of dreams, and Avowed himself independently the culprit Once he appeared dragging by the collar a large amiable retriever, and demanded backsheesh for the quadruped. For wetness there was not a dry hair to choose between them; but the dog, he insisted, was good, while for Baba he had no kind word— thus early distinguishing a moral difference between his own dampness and that of an unclothed animal. The dog was rewarded with fire-warmth and a meal, din.ly sus- pected of a deed of modest heroism which was born to blush unseen in his own dumb beast's conscious- ness. Tristram meeting him afterwards about the lanes and fields, would point him out as " Kitchyman's wow- wow," and the two kept up a tail-wagging acquaintance. Yet it may be curiously noted that the only recollection Tristram had of the affair in later years was friendship la A MODERN ANTAEUS for a large dog, the origin of which lay forgotten behind the genial character of their meetings. rairKT**!?.*";" T^y* **»«« early yearn proved him a rare handful ; but in the direction of water he seemed m'^'^C**** himself with a sort of chemical affinity. His old Nan-nan. after she had wrung him out to dry time and again, wept at last, believing that she saw the drowned end of him already revealing itself. She became so apprehensive on the subject that her application of the discipline ceased. On a dry skin he contmued to pay tribute to her motherings: wet. he became a sacred object to her. Obstinate questionings began m her devout mind whether her charge h«l ever been properly baptised or no; and as the pious dread presented itaelf, she beheld all at once a reason why on every occasion he should gravitate to that element where his spiritual birthright lay denied to him. The closing duty of her domestic service had F^rl^ ^•*='^^'^^^^^" /'•o'n the hands of a gabbling French donne, and she doubted whether pure Christianity could come out of a land where the English tongue was r !r. u"' u^u ^'°"' '°"^ *° '*»°^ 't ^^ borne in on her that her babe was in spiritual distress, and his soul damounng by outward and visible signs for a remedy. oZ^^ 'n' "^ '"u*'"" °"*^ ^^y *° ^^^' h'™ talking over the wells mouth and coining back answers from that the child had a familiar spirit; so, in the hopes of setting a barrier between him and further communica- tions, she nerved herself the same night to give him provisional baptism in the large crock tub wherein she bathed him, choosing the name of an old heroic race and the one which she herself applied to the sturdy troublesomeness of her bantling, as likely to be effectual against any future assaults of the enemy "Trojer. I baptise thee!" was the formal beginning GERMINAL IS of that exordsm, and the name tickled a place for itself in the child's memory. She followed it up by complete immersion, put extra prayers into his mouth before bed, and tucked him between the sheets with a satisfied sense that she had made a whole Christian of him. A couple of days later, her confidence sank to a queegle of alarm when she overheard something of the following colloquy taking place over the well's edge; and, as before, inaudible answers seemed to be finding their way up from below. Tristram had begun by dropping down a pebble; listening till he heard the sound of its splash below, he called over the brim : " Kitchyman, you 'wake down there?" The question was repeated with insistence till a satis- factory answer seemed to arrive. Kitchyman having awakened ; " Why can't you climb up here ? " was the next enquiry. Repeated as before, it gained impressiveness ; the studied deafness of the oracle made him a more real person to the child's brain. Presently an answer was vouchsafed. "Oh, is that why?" came lristr?m's surprise. The child cogitated : then spoke further : " How am I to come down — in - bucket ? " And after longer de- liberation, roving off on a fresh theme, "Shall I frow you down some inore stones?" The stones were thrown till the child wearied. He ben*: forward on his knees and peered down into the well. After a pause he said : " Now I'm going to play in the garden ; when you want me you've got to call." There was a further pause, "What?" said Tristram, preparing to go. Then again, lore interrogatively, "What?" 14 A MODERN ANTAEUS f This time he was able to gather the Kitchyman's. meaning. " Oh I " he blabbed, " call * Trojer ' I " As the word went out of him he felt himself caught up from behind and borne away indoors, there to be set down to say his prayers in the presence of kitchen-chairs and fire-irons, and with the smell of dinner seething to him from under saucepan-lids — a thing disturbing to his small jog-trot sense of theology. For the rest of that day, and for many days afterwards, his well was forbidden him. Other talkings to himself which she overheard on his second visit to her, had the effect of raising in the old body beliefs which had grown dormant It was evident to her senses that the child knew of places whither his legs did not carry him, and saw things for which ex- perience provided him with no name. His powers of escape were phenomenal ; when she thought him most safe in one direction, he would return to her mildewed and mired from another. Mrs Harbour seriously doubted within herself whither he had not two states. She tempted his confidence with the best she had to give : on the tablets of his brain her characters stood writ large. But though she was a veritable storehouse of wise lore which he was free to rummage for the satisfaction of his own terrors, never could he be persuaded to repay her in kind: over the parallel wonders of his own life his lips shut stolidly. The fairies and the evil chances, and the happen- ings which filled hobgoblin corners of Mrs Harbour's superstitious soul did but push into the deepest recesses of his secrecy the child's assured sense of their truth. Her mouth was a medium for dark and oracular utter- ances ; he worshipped its sound silently. Words of a gory flavour that she used, he loved and waited for ; they lay sensationally at certain points of her stories, like murder-stains on a carpet whose pattern he knew by GERMINAL 15 heart. Left unexplained, they made for themselves enlarged meanings in his brain : horror enriched itself with the sensuous opulence of their sound. " A whole menagerie of wives," was a phrase in the " Blue Beard " story, against which his mind aired itself aghast; and from "Jack the Giant Killer," the "out tumbled his tripes and his troUibones," which described the haggis-like undoing of the hospitable giant, at whose table Jack treacherously sat down, gave him another freezing vision. Such dear terrors childhood hugs, nor wills to be rid of them ; prefers rather, like older greedy dyspeptics, to suffer horribly from the satisfaction of its fundamental cravings. The appetite for knowledge has lasted well since our first parents implanted it in us, and we hunt it more through life than we do happiness. Beside its charms blissful ignorance nods, a withered wall-flower. One portion of childhood, that especially between the ages of three and seven, is almost entirely dominated by the dreams of waking and sleeping, which spring from undigested knowledge. When those years are over, they leave behind them a field ploughed alike by battle and by burial, wherein at least one phase of theological thought has died and another sprung. Here, one may think, meets the mingled blood of ancestry, and we feel our parentage fighting within us to a confused end for the predominance of race. During that time of his life, names and sounds and things had for Tristram a weight and terror which worked out into a species of fetish worship. Strange little antipathies moved in him also, as opposed to the terrors of which he grew fond. Mrs Harbour saw him rise up one day from his crawHngs with a white face, crying to her that he had touched a " pussy cat" Knowing of nothing that could be there, she explored, and found a ball of fluff, such as collects i6 A MODERN ANTAEUS i li from the brushing of carpets ; and as she handled it, the child whimpered, imploring her to put it away. Upon Tristram's solitary goings a wonderful troop of potencies waited, big and black and bogey-like. In his pursuit of, and flight from the evil chances which dodged his footsteps, he became something of a gambler with fate ; yet had, too, the elation of a hunted thing sure of its agility and speed. Adventurous instinct would draw the child on to snuff the tainted air of dark comers, and to tempt, where mystery and danger lurked, the spring which he never saw, but felt rearing at his back as he turned and ran. Many of these potencies had come out of the lullabies sung to him by his old Nan-nan, dreamy suggestions of Shem gradually becoming more real as their Irjends fixed themselves in his mind, till each at last grew into a separate godhead. Robin the Bobbin was one of these, a deep-mouthed brute, swelling visibly over his Sunday dinner of priests, people, and churches. " Robin the Bobbin, the big-bellied Ben, Ate more meat than fourscore men ; He ate a cow, he ate a calf, He ate a butcher and a half ; He ate the church, he ate the steeple, He ate the priest and all the people." So the song ran. Tristram used to wonder how and why, out of that rapacious appetite, the second half of one poor butcher escaped. His imagination gave him sight of a pair of legs shooting in panic round the world, anywhere, anywhere, to be out of it ; and his fear was lest some day in the lane he might meet them running. Another of his mo : cherished bogeys was the " Korn- kree," that had lived for many days in a great fixed wardrobe of the now vacated home, but had easily trans- ferred its dwelling to the dark cof¥in-like stair-cupboard i GERMINAL 17 of Mrs Harbour's small cottage. Never could Tristram climb that stair alone without a dreadful anticipation in his two legs that some day the devil would take the hindmost and have him fast The ritual and religion of Tristram's life were far more bound up in these hobgoblin observances than in the small forms, which he said over by rote night and morning at his old nurse's knee. Started from so pagan a setting, a similar, dissimilar being, germinating out of the innumerable births and deaths of these mental microbes, we are presently to see him come to youth's and man's estate. If by now the reader has a smattering of Tristram's intellectual and physical equipment, he will be ready to follow him for a while through incidents toward which the motive force lies here behind. CHAPTER in SHOWS THAT OUT OF A MARE'S NEST MAY SPRING NIGHTMARE 'TpHE barton at the rear formed a boundary for A poultry, which lay in the care of Mrs Tracy, the tenant of the adjoining cottage. She and her daughter Sally would often take Tristram with them when they went the rounds on a search after eggs ; and before long the child became familiar with the queer habits of broody hens, and found zest in tracking these cenotaphs of maternity to their shadowy nesting-places. Every day gave chance of discovering lyings-in illicitly conducted ; and to pry out some nest richly lined with accumulated deposit was a delight to the boy's maraud- ing instinct To the methodical egg-collector, on the other hand, these brood-cravings were a worry and a waste of profit, eggs of doubtful date and condition having to be tabled off from the results on which payment was earned. It was natural, therefore, that unauthorised sittings should be sternly suppressed. Tristram saw one day with squirmy horror an obstinate brooder ducked almost to death ; pleaded for its life, and watched it slowly revive from the heap of rubbish where the callous-hearted Sally had flung it to drain. It was as broody as ever the next day, and for its persistence went up in the urchin's estimation, while its foiled persecutor went down. 18 A MARE'S NEST 19 Though at times he played with the children from the neighbouring cottages, his games with them gave the least effective employment to his intellect He preferred loneliness, or to stand at elbow of older folk, watching doings that for him had a far greater sugges- tion of real purpose. He would follow the farm-hands as they fed and stabled their horses ; or when the hay- making had set free the fields by the lower farm, would accompany the beasts down to their night-pastures, himself proudly at perch on the broad back of a dark favourite. There, no rider, the boy would hang, clinging to a last tuft of worn mane, and, if the creature stopped to browse, was as likely to get tumbled off as to stink on, but would in no case ask to be dismounted till the end was reached. One morning he awoke to a busy humming noise abroad in air, and to feel his bed shaken under him by an accompanying vibration. Looking out of his small lattice, he saw, for the first time, a threshing- machine busy at work in the yard below ; workers were up aloft, and round them motes were flying, making a mist in the bright air. The machine itself was backed close upon the wall against vhich rested Tristram's bed, so that from his window he almosf could look down the black throat of the monster who inspired him with so little fear : and for many absorbed hours of that day, he stood watching the steam-thing and its human accessories at work. Then it chanced that, peep" into the water-tank from which it drew supply, he fc a mouse that had wantonly been thrown there to slow death, paddling round the sides in endeavour to escape, and reaching instinctively to pull it out, got surprisingly bitten for his pains. He threw off the rescued vermin in a sort of horror, while frightened wonder took possession of him at the un-understanding- ness of the creature he had been moved to pity. Creeping ao A MODERN ANTAEUS furtively away with his bleeding finger-end, he cried softly to himself, not for the pain, but for the shock to his hurt feelings. The incident aged him, thrust life at him m a fresh aspect ; and it was as a tired morsel of himself that he came soon after, and dropped to sleep long before bed-time, in Mrs Harbour's arms. Thus from one and another, and only at times from himself, we get a few memorable factors of the child's life, its wild-honey storing itself in the cells of many diverse minds. Mrs Harbour, as she clasped him sleeping, and wondered at that early weariness, did not know how his small brain already held beginnings of an old age, which was to be so much before he was twenty-two. Some days later at breakfast, while he sat mugging his bread and milk, Tristram's ears were ravished by hearing the name of his Aunt Doris read out to him from a letter which Mrs Nannie was holding. It was from the dear lady herself, and contained in one part devout messages addressed to her boy, ending in a long series of round O's, an established form of epistolary greeting between her and the illiterate eyes of her godchild. Tristram demanded his own, and hugging them with a fondling remembrance of their author's niceness, babbled to have repeated to him once more all that the letter had said. While he kept fast possession, Mrs Harbour recited the substance of news which put a term to her own happy tenure of authority: within a few days he would be under his god- mother's roof, there to await the re-gathering of kindred, who had almost dropped out of recollection. In the names read over to him, those of his mother and of Marcia, his sister, were the fainter memories. The sunny South of France had held them estranged ; even now, with the former, his meeting was likely to be A MARE'S NEST ai delayed till the most equable conditions of sea and weather could add ease to the long journey, and so northward a return. But for Tristram the thought of his Aunt Doris was sufficient for the day ; behind that all happiness blew. His mind went out into his small world on a search for her whereabouts. To his question "Where is she now ? " the name of Little Towberry for answer carried a flavour of fruits, a garden, and a creeper-covered house, lighting on a mind in which sweet tastes and scents were the keenest prompters of memory. To spot it down on his picture-puzzle of places, he asked how long it would take them to get there ; and his nurse, meaning by train, reckoned it as only an hour. He retained the letter with a parade of ownership which Mrs Nannie was at no trouble to dispute, know- ing that at the day's end it would return to her safely enough, with all the dirt of his affections upon it, but in MO other way damaged. His instinct for treasure was tenacious ; this particular one accompanied him through the many occupations of a long day. She saw him building it round with a wall of pebbles on the brick floor of the porch, till near the hour of noon ; later he was tempting the snap-dragons to take bites of it ; and at tea-time he sold her the comer kiss on the last page, in return for some sugar upon his bread. When the indulgence had been won, the mercenary character of the transaction lay upon his conscience ; so the kiss was bought back by a promise to be good and obedient under charge of Sally Tracy, while Mrs Harbour went off with the girl's mother for an evening's marketing. To be put to bed by any hands but the customary ones of his own Harbour was purgatory to the subtle, shy instincts of the child's anatomy. On a previous Tuesday night he had sat up stolid and stormy, refusing the ministration of strange hands ; and had fallen into M A MODERN ANTAEUS Mrs Harbour's bosom on her late return, weeping loudly for relief after the long tension of his resistance. Sally Tracy had in her nature the growing-pains of the bully, and remembered against him the impotence to which her short spell of management had been reduced. Now, however, Tristram's promise of goodness extended even to an engagement that Sally should do the necessaries of his toilet Mrs Harbour relinquished him with a few parting injunctions, and the child watched her till out of sight round the comer of the lane. Sally chose for a beginning to be nice to him, inviting his company on her evening search for ^;gs among the farm out-buildings ; and the small, willing body followed her blissfully about, peeping behind ladders and boards, and under piles of farm-implements, in huge content over being made useful. He found two ^;gs himself in a spot which she had overlooked ; and her apron being heavy, she allowed him to carry them. He held them as carefully as if they had been chickens, and with small r^ard for anything else, followed her about with the tremulous enthusiasm of a child when 't feels itself emphatically good. Into a dark corner went Sally, peering for spoil. Coming too closely behind with no eyes but for what he held, Tristram set foot on a nest hidden among straw. At sight of three fair yokes spilled ruinously from cracked egg-shells, away went his heart into his boots ; he cried out on himself in sheer dismay over so deplorable a mishap. Could Sally have trounced him on the spot, or shaken the breath out of his body as he deserved, her temper had been relieved ; but her lapful of eggs was in the way. To give vent to her feelings she let her tongue go, and assailed him in venomous words. Tristram heard the dread arm of the Law invoked : was assured in all seriousness that a policeman should A MARE'S NEST as be fetched that very night to take htm away to the town-gaol " No, no I " the child protested ; his voice rose up in a wail and hung ready to expend itself in weeping. " But I say yes I " retorted Sally ; " you wait till I've taken all the eggs in, then see i And it'll be handcuffs as well if you go dropping those other two." He stretched them out to her in terror lest the thing should happen ; but now she would not do him the bare kindness of taking them from him. She shot at him another threatening look, and returned to her occupa- tion, little knowing how hard a blow she had alresidy struck. As for Tristram, wherever she went, he followed her about mutely ; in the gathering dusk of the day's end he saw a Robin the Bobbin of real flesh and blood waiting for him, a vision which had not the exaltation of imaginary horrors. For a time, fearing the greater desolation of solitude, he clung to his persecutor ; while she, seeing what eflect her words had, started to harp once more upon the terrors she had conjured. Then the fear of being put to bed by her, there to wait till the Law's arm should reach out and claim him, became once more a mastering horror, and he set to planning a hiding-place for himself till Mrs Harbour's return. Sally spied legs b^inning to lag, and this hint of old insubordination jogged her to fresh cruelty. Happily to her purpose she found waiting at the threshold, when she brought in her takings, a bullock-eyed youth who had begun loutishly to seek her favour, and to carry on with her in the long summer evenings an incipient and desultory courtship. He came now to invite her to a walk in the lanes. Sally, having Tristram on hand, could not well leave him and go; she suggested, therefore, as a thing of sound sense, that they should set off and meet the policeman, so as to save him one half of the journey. The bullock-eyed youth, told how matters stood, ii M A MODERN ANTAEUS grunted ominously, and guessed he knew a Wt of road where they would be certain to meet him. Tristram had not a word to say against it ; in the presence of this new enemy his spirit died utterly, and he went as a lamb to the slaughter, feeling but a slight alleviation of his distress, when for a while they ignored him to talk of their own aHairs. The last bands of level sunlight were casting them- selves through high hedges on to opposing slopes of pasture, when they came to the division of roads which Sally's follower had spoken of. There, on the angular grass-plot which the trisecting traffic spared, for lack of other employment they ti>med their idle minds once more to Tristram's discomfiture. When the giri dropped her threats from dull-witted weariness, her swain to flatter her, took up the tale ; he pictured the gaol, thumbing its horrors in clumsy fashion, but effectively enough for a child's imagination. Tristram had at last reached that point of panic when to be desperately brave or cowardly becomes equally possible. Boots and the leathery creak of corduroys sounded along the lane; farm-hands whom the child had come to know from their nijjhtV passings were returning after work in the fields. He rose to his feet with determination, and no doubt in a visibly scared way, but without a word said, pushed his hand into the fist of the first he could get to. The two on the grass-patch called for him to come back ; Tristram tightened his clasp, and the man getting a rough comprehension of his plight, turned and let go some rough words on the pair of them. His beneficent oathi! flew with sufficient moral weight to strike cowardice into the culprits ; they made no struggle for the possession of their prey, and the child went off with his new-found protector, forgetting almost in his sudden relief the terror that still lay ahead. When they were A MARE'S NEST «5 ! ll come to the two cottages, his companion paused, and was for letting the boy go at what he judged must be his intended destination. But the place still looked empty, and Tristram feared to be left where the othe. . might return and find him. So, to friendly en- quiries, he replied stoutly that he meant to go on with them to the farm, there to meet Mrs Nannie as she returned ; and the man was quite satisfied. Within the rickyard from a dark comer of the cart- shed, he watched the waggons housing for the night, and began to be comfortably assured that no police- man would come to look for him there. He thought to be safe at least until the return of Mrs Harbour, whom he would see as she went by up the road. Stepping !nore and more into the shade, he was presently for- gotten by the men busy over the wind-up of their work : before the rick-stands had become wholly frocked in the shadows of approaching night he found himself left alone. But in a little while the comfort of solitude was devoured by the increasing dusk, and the influences of an hour impressive to a child's fears ; limb-bound he had not strength or will to return alone up the darken- ing lane. Yonder, or still more when the cottages were reached, he might find the dreaded hand-cuffs lying in wait for him ; and he realised, with a chilly dread of being altogether forgotten, that there he must stay on till he was called for. A child in distress waits upon many hopes, and is very slow in letting each one go by. For a long time Tristram hoped that his Nan-nan would come here and find him. He doubted whether he had kept his promise to her, or been good at all ; but he had reached so low a stage of fear that an honest scolding from a familiar tongue would be welcome to him. Mrs Nannie's beneficence shone to him palely like the beginning of evening's star. Was it not to her bed that he crept out of the way j6 a modern ANTAEUS of evil dreams ? In fevered wakefulness also It was her bosom that had soothed him, and often over wasp- stings and other evils of life her mitigating influence had been displayed. In his comfortlessness he longed for her, but with the delay longing had grown sad ; there was no radiant hope In it now. Pitted against the terrors that were pressing upon him even Nan-nan might prove no sure tower of defence. When darkness in its full degree had settled over his hiding-place, he became so dispirited that he had a mind to cry out to the next footstep that went by. Yet when some undetermined wayfarer came down the road and halted to peer In over the rickyard gate, he found all at once that even the courage to cry out for succour had been wrung out of him. As soon as the intruder was gone and he could feel himself safe from observation, to make concealment doubly sure he climbed up into the waggon by which he had been standing, and finding it thickly stowed with sacks, crept into a hollow comer where lay some straw. There he curled himself into a tight ball, and began wearily to cogitate whether, when light came to release him, he would not go boldly ahead, and, from certain peril to a chance of safety, turn runaway. He remembered with soft affection that somewhere in the world was his Aunt Doris, the fair keystone of dreams only a few hours old, living, if he could only know in what direction to look for her, not more than an hour's journey from where he was. Thinking of her so near to hand, and of the probability of finding her if he kept straight along the one road he knew, he let his eyes close on the saddest day's end of his whole life ; and it was with no evil dreams to break the com- pleteness of the relief that mild-handed sleep at last stole in on him, and let her balm soak through the pores of his tired faculties. i ^ CHAPTER IV FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM WHEN he awoke it was with an apprehension of sound which had grown customary to him during sleep. The waggon was in forward motion, and through all its boards and beams, wos grumbling and exclaiming at the unevenness of the way; the sudden jolting of a patch of rough road-mendings had shaken Tristram back to consciousness. Overhead were vanishings of starlight; and an atmosphere, grey within grey, lifting itself slowly back toward life, told of an hour altogether unusual and strange. Presently, as the waggon eased from the toil of its ascent into level going along a brief ridge of hill, he became convinced of new daylight : like a splinte; of straw thrust through a partition into the pent space where he lay, joggled a ray of sunbeam. The child peered out; in amazement he found himself nowhere at all ; the short landmarks of his life had dis- appeared, and so far as his knowledge went, he was as much adrift as a castaway with no horizon on all sides save dead levels of water. On the foot-board against the partition where he leaned, sat a carter \ 'th feet dangling over the shaft. Tristram, by putting his hand through the railed side of the waggon, could have touched the man's coat When, presently, he summoned up courage to do so, off 87 38 A MODERN ANTAEUS he had stepped across^n to^fte t^T ^"^^ bully-ragging of habitual watc(ifnln~. IT^ ? " send Tristram bolting Jv,ntf'^-^''^°^, '» till he had ««mbled through a^ tj" fl''" ^' wh\s^r-"ed"dtf^''r^^^^ began what he w«t do neLt '^S f =!? '^' """"" to the road till the wareon h?^ "« /eared to go back an absurd feeling t hlrrcanet ^„1^ af 'ighf^f h"" a^T^-btra„^nr;si::^rsLr^ ^"r^'t^r^-tS:="^fff^^s^^^^ he might from the highe Tound finf'"?'"™- *« country lay round him ^ """^ "■"* «"•' °f -un"dotaX.:trTJ' '■%*.=^"^ P--«y *e la.e hay-cutting iTt rgolngtn" He"'f:«'^"=/'^' the sound till it brought him tough a^ SprtdT of copp,ce to the brink of a bare field ov^'^'hicl^: FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM 39 figure was stepping methodically under the pure hght of early day. Tristram stayed to watch within cover of the plantation. The man scythed, but he scythed ill ; along his track lay jagged edges and uncut tufts, and his strokes lacked confidence and breaddi. Now and again he gave a sanguine flourish, and was pulled up as the point of his implement skegged the turf. When this hap p< red, he did not use the language of ordinary men • he sa; J, " Dear, dear ! " in a soft, grieved voice, and went over .he piece he had bungled with slow and painstaking huniility. * Tristram had enough knowledge to tell him that here was no farm-hand. It was a small elderly figure, dressed m clothes of a peculiar grey, and wearing a bright blue tie ; the coat which had been taken off lay neatly folded on a shorn space of ground hard by. He noticed also that one of the hands which wrestled with the scythe wore a ring with a green stone in it. Bold curiosity quickened ; the thought grew formed, « I will go and let him see that I am looking at him • then he will speak to me." It was the child's most diplo- matic way of securing an introduction. He stepped cautiously to the adventure, with his eye upon the swing of the scythe, till he came within the mower's sphere of vision. The movement stopped ; the man stood up, and saw a fragile apparition of childhood gravely standing within the borders of his privacy. Tristram felt the inquisition of a clear blue eye pervading his identity, and was as much trapped as though a hand had been laid upon his collar. A voice of gentle sprightliness saluted him with "Good-morning." Where had he sprung from? he was asked. " I came in a cart," said the boy. " A cart ? Not up here," objected the other. "Iran." so A MODERN ANTAEUS "An entirely right thing to do! "was the genial re sponse. " And where are you for now ? " " I'm going to find Auntie Dorrie," said the boy. " And ' Auntie Dorrie ' ; where is she ? " " I don't know. She's somewhere where I've been once. I want to go to her." " But are you going to her all alone ? " With a lip that began to quiver Tristram mumbled 'Yes;" adding: "Please I don't want anyone else to knowl" The mower put down his scythe. "Where have you come from now?" he asked. Tristram's eyes showed tears. " I don't want to go back there at all I " he pleaded. « I only want to go to Auntie Dorrie." ^ "Have no fear, you shall go to her! But you have not yet told me what your name is." The child became suspicious at the question, and made a beginning of reserve. "Please, I would rather not tell you," said he. To that the stranger nodded in courteous agreement, and taking up his fallen scythe, wiped it meditatively with a wisp of mown grass. Presently he looked towards the boy again. "You seem tired; chilly, too, eh? Sit down there on my coat, then, while I finish what I'm about. Wrap yourself in it and go to sleep if you like." " I'm not tired," said Tristram, " I went to sleep in the cart" But he went and curied himself down on the coat. One of his queer instincts was to judge of people with whom he wished to make friends by the smell of their raiment Before altogether trusting him he wished to know what sort of smell this new acquaintance carried about with him. A very brief sniff approved to his judgment the man he had to deal with : the coat actu- ally bore the scent of lavender. He sat up in fuU i FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM 31 reassurance to watch the scythe when it resumed its play ; and as the other went on working without seem- ing to observe him at all, the child grew convinced that Providence had sent to him here a person altogether good and kind and fit to be trusted. Presently, when the stranger had finished a square, he leaned his implement against the fence and straightened himself with a sigh of relief. Glancing across to Tristram, "Little prince," said he, "are you hungry?" The child found an explanation suddenly supplied for the gnawing pain within him. The world had jone so wrong with him in the last twelve hours, that*he had forgotten to think of its ordinary comforts. Now with a big sense of injury, he confessed to have had nothing since tea the day before. "Since tea!" cried his friend. "Why, you must be famished! There's some oat-bread in that left-hand pocket ; eat and be filled ! " The boy munched his way blithely through a hunch of home-made brown. The other, after regarding him for some time, put on his coat with decision, and said, " Come along with me and have some breakfast" Tristram hesitated, having a conscience to purge of offence against this angelic being who accepted his existence on such generous and unenquiring terms He went forward to give himself frankly up into the custody of a kindness which had overthrown his sus- picions. They joined hands. "My name is Trampv" said the boy. '^^' "And a very good name tool" chuckled his com- panion. "Auntie Dorrie is Trampy also, I suppose?" " No, that's my name ; it's what she calls me." " It is not your father's, either? " "Oh no I it's nobody's but mine; it means Tristram. Nan-nan calls me 'Trojer'; but Tristram Gavney is what I am." 32 A MODERN ANTAEUS "And which of all these names am I to call vou?* The boy's heart was all up in love and ei. • , for this benign sending of fate, but as yet he could not utter his feelings. He became garrulous upon other matters • his quick bird-like voice chirruped and prattled by the old man's side ; and while susceptible youth rippled a tale concerning the simple facts of its life, susceptible age bent flattered ears to listen, and thought much was wonderful which was really quite ordinary. They walked through long grass on a short cut to the house, which could be seen ahead, bowered over by trees • and all the way Tristram ran breathless over names and things, but had not a word to say of the events which had brought him to his present pass. " Tristram Gavney I am," he repeated; "I've been ill, but I'm well now. Auntie Dorrie is going to havre me to stay with her • I've got a letter from her in my pocket Mother's away' because she can't get well over here; she's got Marcia with her. I remember Marcia. Mother couldn't take me because I'm a boy and too noisy; Marcia's noisier though, when she's here." To an enquiry from his friend: "Oh, Marcia ?— that's my sister; they used to call us twins once ; but I know I'm taller than her now Nan-nan says she's a tomboy. Mother and father are fondest of her, and Auntie Dorrie is fondest of me • I'd rather have Auntie Dorrie fond of me. My father's rich, and that's why he has to be often away. I don't remember him much. When mother comes back we shall all be together again and live in a big house because my father's rich. Are you rich, too ? " «I have more than is good for me, I'm afraid," replied his companion. ^ "Then why do you have to mow? "asked Tristram. ' It's only the poor people who mow where we are." "The grass wants cutting, so I am learning how to do it I like to find out how things are done." ite FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM 33 •' Then do you want to be a labourer really ? " " Yes, a labourer really ; that's the best thing on earth that one can be." "And what are you now?** " I'm a poor thing they call a philosopher.** Tristram went back to his own interests ; he had a simple genius for happiness: Life's primaries glowed under his artless handlinf , and his listener did not tire. A wonderful friendship sprang up there and then between the two, as they went damp-footed over dewy clover towards the railings which hemmed in shaven and shorn turf and bright garden beds. Crossing a slight indentation of ground, Tristram put down his foot : " Is there water under there ? " he enquired. " No," returned his companion, " it's only that the dew lies a little heavier there ; it's what comes at night with- out rain." " Is it all down there, then ? " asked the child. The Sage took gentle pains to explain the matter. Tristram said : " There's often water where there's long grass ; once I didn't see it, and I fell in." Had his nurse been by she would have n:arvelled to hear him speak of "once" ; but to the child many occasions had become only one memory. When they were entering the house, at sight of a man- servant, Tristram drew back. « Is there any policeman there ? " he enquired. Friendly intelligence grew enlightened in some small degree as to his disorder. "Oh no," said the phil- osopher. " I don't let policemen in here ; I've no use for them." He felt the child's hand tighten upon his. "You won't let them take me?" His hand affirmed friendship, " L eed I won't ! " he responded. There was silence: then, "I broke three eggs yesterday ! " said Tristram. C 34 A MODERN ANTAEUS " Does Auntie Dorrie know ? " His answer, "No; I want to tell her I "was uttered with wild eagerness. During breakfast the whole tale was told ; and at the finish, in spite of those friendly eyes, the child had grown white over the telling of it. The philosopher smiled, and put the law to him with sage simplicity of speech. "What you did by accident," he said, for a wind-up, "Miss silly Sally thought you had done on purpose. Knowing what I know, not a policeman in the kingdom would want to touch you. Now I, too, keep fowls, and somebody has been stealing mine, for which thing our local policeman is a little to blame. Now, if you would like to see a policeman scolded, come and behold my biddies first while we send for him, and the deed shall be done. Then, when I have chastened him, you can send word by him to yours of the mistake there has been about you. I myself will take care that Miss Sally's mind gets put straight" Tristram listened with large breaths until the last shadow of doubt had been removed from his under- standing ; once delivered, the rush of his faculties back to their wonted liberty of action would have struck memorably on a heart less tender than the one now open to him. The Sage, on telling it afterwards, made note of the sensitive face with sorrow in it, like that of^ some wild creature straining to be free ; and, suddenly finding itself so, giving in the joy of its abandonment, a poignant indication of the unnatural anguish through which it had passed. It was only with some reserve that he allowed himself to speak of the wild outburst of gratitude which a cruel contrivance of dull wits had indirectly won for him. Tristram fairly romped through the rest of that day. To the inn enquiry was sent, bringing back in- formation as to the precise locality from which Tristram FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM 35 and his waggon had come ; for of names and places that could give postal guidance, Tristram had only words of domestic usage in his memory, and in his pocket the letter bearing at its head the Little Towberry address of his Aunt Doris. The charitable phil- osopher had the thought to send two telegrams — one to a rather chance address for the blameless Nan-nan, whose distracted condition needed no guessing on his part Before noon wires sped in two directions com- fortable tidings of the small tramp's safety, and offer of a welcome to any friend who might come to claim him. An answer came with dispatch that his Aunt Doris was already flying to receive him, roundabout, but with all speed possible. Rich apologies for the causing of trouble followed; the philosopher smiled at the pretty wording of them, and reckoned ruefully the few short hours left to him of the small creature who now gambolled unabashed through the ordered privacy of his domain. The comfort when it came to Mrs Harbour was badly needed ; her poor humiliated soul lay in a state of wreck and hot fiery indignation. The blow dealt to her prestige was felt by that most loyal old body amid her shrewdest grief Sally had confessed to a part at least of her wickedness; and Mrs Nannie, wringing heart and hands over the dimly understood sufferings of her babe, shut her door at once and for ever against her neighbours, being of that charity which in most cases is extreme, but has its moments of becoming adamant Only, when some days later, she clasped Tristram once more to her bosom, and, to the child's tender astonishment, lifting up her voice, wept over him, did any d^ree of comfort return to her. Finding that her babe loved her as of old, she was able at last to forgive herself the thing for which nobody else blamed her. li 36 A MODERN ANTAEUS Miss Doris Foley, arriving late in the afternoon, found Tristram on terms of intimacy with an elderly gentle- man of homely looks, bearing a distinguished name. She fluttered into apologetic speeches, holding the child clasped in her arms ; for the rapture at having hold of her was very great, and not eas. to be assuaged. " You are fond of him ? " smiled the celebrity, when the child had been packed out of the room for the two to talk over his escapade. " Oh, am I not I " cried the lady, hugging the memory of but just finished endearments. " I have spent the day turning him inside out, while we awaited your coming," said the Sage. '"Tis a dear laddie, promising to have a shapely mind if life and time will allow." •' Oh, he is healthy I " she made anxious protest. •• Yes ? " admitted the other with interrogation. " But things affect him curiously. Youth in health ought not to have nerves like that. He has had a fright ; and it is as if he had had an illness. Sane I should certainly call him ; but all his nature is quick to be up and off in alarms and excursions. Life exhausts him. You will see him sleeping like a top to-night— I wish it could be here, for I am loth to lose him." He returned to the thought presently, saying, " Could I prevail upon you at no notice to accept an old bachelor's invitation for the night? I have a home-made housekeeper very much at your service." The lady shook her head, smiling ; the honour of it alarmed her. Her eyes beamed softly in gratitude as she pressed her refusal ; for here indeed was a wonder- ful new addition to Tristram's conquests. She was proud of her boy, and saw that she might babble of him. Two enthusiasts talked, dove-tailing their eager sentences ; he had only a day's doings to retail— he gave it full of laughter: she, a short lifetime. ^ FOLLY LEADS TO WISDOM 37 "Oh, excellent, excellent!" cried he, watching how devotion in her was balanced by insight and n^ish management of an innocent sinner; "his aunt is wrthy of him 1" j " Oh, high praise I " said she ; •• may I live to deserve it!" "Only let him live his life confidently, and do you keep yourself in his confidence ; he will be safe then. Be the leash which he will never have to be aware of. Your name should be Cynthia, I think ; you remember the poem : — 'Oh, huntress soul, with leash and thong, Keep and control these hands and feet I'— and the rest ; that is your task— a happy one, I think it." When she was starting to carry her precious handful away with her, the Sage said, " If he should ever ask to come and see me again, do not be afraid of troubling me ; let him come I I like to have a will-o'-the-wisp dancing over my old bones." He gave his hand to Tristram gravely upon the moment of parting; and all at once the child became shy and constrained, finding their affectionate union disturbed. "It seems you keep them all for your aunt now!" smiled his host, wickedly laying the burden upon him. The child's confidence came back at a rush. "Yes, yes! Only don't choke me!" protested the old man, de- positing him in the carriage by the side of his lady-love. Even upon the way Tristram slept well, snuggling closely into the warmth of that adored companionship ; nor had he full consciousness again until, late the next morning, he woke to find Marcia prancing in night- gown attire upon his bed, and calling out to him in funny French ways of speech. In five minutes they ceased to be strangers, and Tristram was realising his ! ! ♦ 11 ss A K.ODERN ANTAEUS sudden growth that made him, at least in physical things, the leader, where before he had only been the follower. The physical race between them was already over ; but it was to be years before Marcia lost her mental supremacy. Among the elders talk went chiefly about Tristram's capture of a splendid celebrity, whose fame ran to the ends of the earth, but whose door was shut so closely i^inst the ordinary inroads of society. Word of it went to Mrs Gavney, still gathering up health in foreign parts, and unable as yet to travel ; and she, writ- ing almost as a stranger, enquired wistfully about this indefinable charm which drew people toward the younger of her two offsprings. Her letters failed not every week to bring from her sister Doris replies in a devout strain ; for to that lady the famous man's friendship, so readily accorded, was a crowning proof, if any were needed, that her boy was all that she declared of him. And while Tristram's scape-grace charms had drawn to him this large conquest, record should not be missed of homage rendered from a much humbler quarter. The new home to which he was soon going seemed too far away for the fond ageing bosom that had nursed him. After their last parting Mrs Harbour's heart-strings were strained to cracking point ; also by asperity of demeanour she had made herself neighbourless. So one day she moved herself and her few belongings into a green court, which lay behind the main street of Bembridge, the post-town two miles distant from Tristram's new home. And there, shaping garments of a rather nondescript cut, she tailored for him till the conventions of school-days rescued him from her amorous stitchings. Her woollens and knittings followed him through life, and the last garment she worked for him was made when her eyes were nearly as blind as Love's own, and was never seen by him. CHAPTER V REAL CHARACTERS AND FICTITIOUS PERSONS THE reader will by this time be perceiving that what is to be told here is history and not fiction. A hero of romance at five or six years of s^e is not too young to start on a life of manly adventure. In the "Rule Britannia" school of fiction we find dauntless midshipmites showing their first teeth to an affrighted foe, and shouting their country's war-cries in treble tones. Given a hero who, before his seventh year, has broken from leading strings and cleared himself for action and a life of " over the h.'lls and far away," no writer of fiction will sacrifice the situation and return him the very next day to the dull rounds of domesticity. Here, however, are we already upon anti-climax: life takes the Tramp back almost to the point whence he first started. He comes, with but a slight shift of locality, to his new home, a house set in terraced grounds, overlooking a broad valley whose woody knolls and rising pasture-lands shut away from view the not far distant market-town of Bembridge. Over a broad roll of hill westward hang the dark edges of Randogger, wood-lands which will play a deep part in the story to follow. Below them run on a lower level the ups and downs of a rich arable tract whose well-clipped boundaries witness by common features to a single ownership. i 40 A MODERN ANTAEUS Between Hill Alwyn, the "place" of the locality, and Little Alwyn and Long Alwyn, its rural appendages, there was no house of standing to disturb the social seclusion of the district, save the one in which the Gavneys now found themselves. All round lay a delectable country, whose only drawback was the privacy which stood erected across so many by-ways attractive to the eye, a thing altogether inconvenient to one in whom ere long the lust of the eye was to become the ruling passion. How he adapted himself to those impediments will be seen later. The Gavney family was still waiting for the maternal presence to make it complete. Marcia talked much to Tristram of their mother in those days, and was restless for the day when she might show to each other the two between whom, from more recent intercourse, she felt herself in a way the connecting link. Being jealous for Tristram to feel as she did, she raged to find him so satisfied with his Aunt Doris. She averred that their mother was far more beautiful : he as stoutly denied it It was their continual and long-standing quarrel. Mr Gavney appeared among them only at a late hour of the day or for brief week-ends. Pre-occupied with affairs and fretted by the absence of his wife, he took but small pleasure in the new home and its sur- roundings. In those first days the children came little into his society. Marcia, who claimed proprietary rights over him until her mother's return, knew him best by the patte-ns upon his waistcoats, against which she would compulsorily come to be nursed. Tristram, on such occasions, would cuddle down into another lap spread open to him; and the two children would correspond silently by eye-signal, while the talk of the elders went on over their heads. Doris Foley assured her brother-in-law in reply to Ik i REAL CHARACTERS 41 his enquiries that she was not dull ; her visit to install and look after the new minagt she declared to be a pleasure. "But society— you get none. Until we have Anna here, naturally the neighbourhood delays." " Oh, people from Bembridge are calling." "Ah, yes! that one would expect But there is Lady Petwyn." His voice paused interrogatively over the name. " Lady Petwyn has not called," said his sister-in-law. " No : as I say ; she waits, I have no doubt, to hear of Anna's return." "I should be sorry if she did otherwise," said his companion, and started to draw a blithe picture of her doings with the two children. He objected that it was time now for them to be under regular tuition. She pleaded the beauty oi the summer days for a respite, adding, " I assure you they are learning ; every day I teach them something." But she acquiesced when the date for a new order of things was fixed upon. " Only three weeks more I " she sighed, " then we will go picnicing to-morrow I " They visited the great Randoggers, and came home in a violent fall of the weather, which, when it was over, seemed to have carried green-hearted summer away with it, and to have started the withering autumnal tints. A few days later Mr Gavney was hurrying away to bring his wife back from the South : to whom went also a letter from Doris, worded with welcome, and touching on the changes her sister would find, coming after long absence to new home and sur- roundings. "Marcia," wrote her correspondent, " you will find all on tiptoe; absence stiffens her affections. She is absolutely dogged : loves you and the Tramp, and, I believe, no other thing. Just as she had hankerings 42 A MODERN ANTAEUS after him when abroad with us, so now she has hanker- ings after you, and U jealously striving to work up Trampy to the same state. As for him, you will have for a time not to be jealous of me : he has been making much of me— for lack of you, and his small heart- strings are all entangled; you will get them back quickly enough, and then / shall be desolate. . r!L^^ ^^^ "^" "'^ ^^ °^^^ ^y ^**^ ™y ^^^ tJown. Oh, Auntie Dorrie, how beautiful you are!' he cried. Its a real romance; the wee one was almost in tears. He makes me sing to him, too, on all occasions— the other day for an hour in the rain, under dripping boughs. I must tell you about that, for it connects with a queer notion that has got into my head about him There's a knowingness, a sort of weather-cock wisdom he has, which is almost uncanny : it came out comically the very day I refer to. We were off on a picnicing jaunt, under a blue sky, which seemed to have no end to it Just at the start Trampy was missing. I am never for waiting, so I whistled him and went on. Presently he comes after, dragging a great water-proof, for me, if you please, ^nd would bring it I I laughed at him ; but before the day's end, we were all under it, and thankful for the shelter. " And thaf s the creature who himself likes to get wet I You, my Nannette, will remember where in the worid he was during the insufferable heat and drought of that one summer we spent in France ; how you lay and gasped for air so many weary hours of each day ; till one evening late the heavens were moved, and you thanked God and got to bed in haste, while Pierre rode off for the doctor through a night loud with rain. The last thing you said to me was, ' Is it raining still ? ' "It never stopped all that night I remember also how on his return Pierre waited drenched for two whole hours in order to have safe news of you, before going off REAL CHARACTERS 43 to his own home. Poor people take to you, my dear, and your boy has the same gift of winning them ; but he tramps impartially over all sorts and conditions; birth and great intellect are not safe from the spell of him. A propos: I prophecy that Lady Petwyn will come calling on him some day : she has not yet done so on me, your proxy. Beresford is alarming himself on the subject You know how, if he gets a thing on his mind, he fusses over it Better persuade him you want no formidable callers. I hear she is a crank, of aldermanic origin, no aristocrat — married a bad specimen of the breed, and disembarrassed the estates, which have now become hers. She is a recently confirmed widow, and, they say, a jubilant one : walks lame, rides in defiance of orders : there is all I know about her." A letter which touched lightly over the many interests of the new neighbourhood, wound up with a return to family topics, and a last mention of the two children. "They are sitting together now on the terrace steps," she wrote, "hatching mischief, by the look of them, which will probably mean mud-heaps for me before bed-time. Their little back-views send you much love." Among the thick of her correspondence Doris Foley had before her eyes as she wrote fresh proof of Tristram's conquest of " intellect " Less than a month's waiting had brought from the Sage a letter, whimsically pathetic, begging not to be dropped. Naming the Tramp, it was apparent he meant both. She burned humbly in reply to do him the honours of her own house, as soon as ever she could return to Little Towberry. " Whenever you can come, the boy shall be with me," she wrote, and begged for a day to be named. Looking out, she saw the two small back-views still in position, and wondered what the plot could be which kept them so long sedentaiy. 44 A MODERN ANTAEUS Tristram and Marcia were at the moment deep in a comparison of experiences. Of the two, though Tristram might be the romantic one, Marcia was the romancer. She saw life out of a level eye, and for her age was a stern thinker ; within her were the makings of a rigorously truthful character, but the time for truth of that quality had not arrived in the seventh year of her conscience's up-bringing: merely did it leaven her grim powers of invention to be very logical and circumspect, as the present instance will show. Tristram was hearing from Marcia the true story of her life; and as the narrative went in sombr« phrase, as an unpleasant duty having to be done, he without a quiver of suspicion drew into his brain a vision of her fitting well enough with his own vague inspirations and dreams. Marcia h^an by asking him if he had not noticed her to be different on some days from others ; had she not looked sulkier and prettier now and again? Tris- tram thought it over, and was ready to be sure he had. Marcia having her quarry up and on the run, drove him nimbly down the ways of her will. She bid him know the reason. "I'm two different people," she declared; *'one of them is me and the other isn't" " Which of them isn't you ? " asked Tristram. " The sulky and pretty one." That one, she told him came and took her place during the recurring periods of her absence ; and the likeness between them was so close that even fathers and aunts were taken in by it Tristram questioned why she had to go away at all Marcia plucked for him the heart of her mystery " It's because," said she, "I've got two fathers and two mothers. Even when father and mother are both here I've still another father and mother living somewhere' REAL CHARACTERS 4$ else ; and when they want me, they send the other girl to take my place, and she's so like me it doesn't matter— nobody finds out the difference." Tristram wanted to know, with the beginnings of a small jealousy in the matter, why she had two fathers and mothers. " Oh," said Marcia, « it's the way I was bom ; they knew I was going to be troublesome, so they gave me two. You need a lot of fathers and mothers when you are naughty." « But I'm just as naughty as you ! " cried Tristram, in protest, at finding himself so much of an orphan. " Oh no, you are not I And there's children naughtier than me, too. Where I and mamma were, there was a little girl who used to go about with three mothers. She wanted me to exchange with her, but I wouldn't, because my own mother wanted me." "How often Jo you go away?" he enquired, intent on waylaying and accompanying her at her next flitting. " I go every week," said Marcia. " I've got to go away to-day. The next time you see me it won't be me at all ; it will be the other one." Tristram became all agog for the appointed hour. Misery at the thought of losing her, determination not to let her go, made him staunch in his refusals of her request that he would run on a small errand indoors for her: walking-boots were the things she wanted. Presently, vowing that she must be gone, if unutterable woes were to be avoided, she shed real tears over him, kissed him, and cried good-bye ! She begged him to be good to the other one for her sake ; then, with a resolute push, sent him tumbling down the steps to the grass-patch below, and made away at full speed through the shrubbery, in the direction of the fowl-pens. The Tramp gathered himself up, and went after her ; his excitable small body shook with sobs that choked 4tf A MODERN ANTAEUS him as he ran. When he got round to the back pre- mises, the fugitive was no longer in sight He butted himself against the first door, and finding it would not open, beat lamentably upon it Then he ranged the premises in all directions for half-an-hour, searching in vain for traces of the missing one. Presently he heard a voice, not quite Marcia's, cooeying to him from a far- away spot in the back-gardens. That way he went in all haste, and there found Marcia sitting demurely among the currant bushes, her lips stained by the red of the fruit, and looking, to be sure, prettier and sulkier than as he had last seen her. He drew near with a sort of awe, spying to find more strangeness in her. She eyed him aslant, and nodded over a mouthful, saying never a word. « Is it you ? " he asked at last, « or are you the other one?" Marcia threw a full stare at him. «I don't know what you mean I " was her first parrying answer. " I mean, are you Marcia ; or are you the girl that comes to take her place when her other home wants her?" At that the other swung herself round with an air of being wonderfully startled. "Do you mean to say she told you ? " cried the new Marcia. " Why, she could be put to death for doing that ! " " Oh, but I won't tell !" cried Tristram : "you mustn't either." " No ; for if we were to, she would never be allowed to come bacK again. If you want to see her J^ain, you must promise never to say that she has told you I " The promise given, Tristram began to examine his new companion soberly ; he looked her over from top to toe, up into her eyes, and under her chin. " How like you are I " he said at last " When you come, do you have to change clothes ? " REAL CHARACTERS 47 *No/' she answered; "we have dresses made alike for our going-away days." He asked her, next, what her real name was. "Georgiana," she told him; "but here I have to be Marcia." Tristram thought that funny. " Georgiana," said he, " is Marcia's favourite name." After thinking for a little she answered, "Marcia's mine," adding, "I'd give anything to be Marcia!" a remark which showed that Georgiana was at present but an implement in Marcia's hands, an underling to her stronger personality. " Aren't her other father and mother good to her ? " was Tristram's next question. " Oh yes ! but they are very poor ; th^ can't afford to keep her as well dressed as she is when she is here." Tristram fell into deep thought : presently it came into his head to say : " Has she any brothers or sisters ? " " Of course," said the crafty Georgiana ; " she has a brother there exactly like you." The Tramp's intellect fidgeted under this new fact " Why doesn't he come here, then, and change with me ? " he enquired. " Because," said Georgiana, " he is always so ill : he's lame, too, and can't walk. She goes there to nurse him ; so do I when it's my turn." Tristram was thinking that he knew now where his old clothes must go to. But a fresh idea drove him abruptly to enquire: "Don't you ever get punished for things she has done the day you change places ? " " If I do," said the other grimly, " I pay her out when my turn comes ; that's quite easy." "Aren't you fond of her?" asked Tristram rather wistfully, wondering how he was to divide into two his own affection for Mycia. Geoi^iana's answer to that was : " You see, I hardly I '^ A$ A MODERN ANTAEUS ever meet her ; we are always having to be in different places." The stoiy took a long telling, for many details of deception had to be gone through. Marcia-Georgiana played her part with the utmost gravity, and Tristram took it all in, and never murmured ; he gazed enchanted upon this new sister, who was prettier and sulkier than the old one, and who had a small lame brother exactly like himself For many days afterwards his heart yearned towards his afflicted double, whom he was never to see ; at night he dreamed of him, and would sometimes in his waking hours play at being lame, with Geoi^iana look- ing on serious and unamused. Now from this incident those who live by the letter rather than by the spirit, will conclude that there was not much to choose morally between the Marcia Gavney of this chapter, and the Sally Tracy of a previous one. Like priests in the dark ages, both of them bore rule by their means; but to a different end. The effect of the story on Tristram was strange : he loved Georgiana better than the old Marcia; and Marcia herself, when she returned, better than both. When she returned : for, a few days afterwards, Marcia came running up to him from nowhere, and throwing her arms round his neck, "I've come back again, Trampy ! " she cried, " I'm Marcia. How did you like Georgiana ? " Tristram owned that he saw but a shade of difference between them ; unless, may be, the other were a little bit the taller. " Ah, yes ! " Marcia seized on the admission. " They are getting rather anxious about that at my other home. She is growing so fast that they are beginning to be afraid of sending her in my place for fear of being found out" i REAL CHARACTERS 49 In course of time Georgiana was allowed to grow so fast that Marcia could no longer be exchanged with safety : the legend seemed to be dying a natural death. Yet more than a year went by before Tristram was sufficiently advanced to say doubtfully : " Marcie, was it true what you used to tell me about your changing places with Georgiana?" Marcia herself had grown fast in the last year. She turned on him an eye of fierce sorrow. " Oh, Tris, why did you ask me that? Marcia died while she was at her other home a year ago. I'm Georgiana ; I'm taking her place for good and all now." Possessive instinct prompted her to add : " He's dead too : Chris, I mean, —the poor little lame boy. They were buried the same day." And from that position all Tristram's arguments, exhortations and denials could not bring her to budge. It were shame to say how long afterwards he still carried about with him a vague ghostly belief that the story might have been a true one, after all. Even when he stood clear in his teens his faith in Marcia's consistency kept life; and he knew that had he questioned her again on the subject of that foolish, childish fable, she would have turned on him a steady eye as of old, and answered under a sense of honourable obligation, " I am Georgiana." 'I CHAPTER VI TRISTRAM'S HEART HAS ITS GROWING-PAINS 'T^HE day during which Mrs Gavne/s return was -■• waited for, proved one of constant bickerings and peace-makings between brother and sister. Marcia awoke unnaturally bright, with a fixed eye. She laged over the delays in her dressing, grudging Tristram his turns. To his babble of soatter-brained remarks about all the things he would have to say and show when their mother was with them, she opposed a harsh doubt, whether they would be seeing her at all that day. Steel- ing herself for disappointment she said, " I'm sure she won't come!" and reiterated it with such a parade of gloomy conviction, that Tristram flew off in scared appeal to his Aunt Doris. He triumphed back to the nursery with his expectations confirmed. "She is coming," he cried ; " Auntie Dorrie says so'! " For that Marcia slapped his face. They fought, and had to be divided. An hour later Marcia raided his solitude ; kissed him, declared that she loved him, and flew out again. After a time they were loosed once more into each other's com- pany, but could not agree in their differences. Tristram was for being happy with his playthings. Encamped in a general litter of them, his own and hers mixed, he b<^n whispering to all that had ears or insides where- with to hear, news of the great event which was at hand. GROWING-PAINS 51 Marcia made a jealous swoop, picked out those which were her separate property, and packed them severely back into their cupboard. There remained to become a bone of contention an article in which they held common ownership ; Tristram was for keeping it out, Marcia for having it in. They broke it in the struggles which put a close to arguments ; a useless piece of it went into the cupboard ; Tristram kept possession of the equally useless remains. « This is my halfl" he said, and played with it They were summoned from a state of rumbling hostility to their morning's airing. Their Aunt Doris was busy over household preparations, and to have the nurse as her substitute, made the exercise definitely dis- tasteful. Marcia wished to know where they were going and rebelled, being sure now that her mother would arrive prematurely in their absence. Tristram begged for the Bembridge road, so that in any case they might meet her ; and the concession was granted him. It left Marcia without a grievance, but with a temper that showed itself in a staid deportment during the whole of their walk. While Tristram ranged, she followed the nurse at heel just too distant for conversation. Seeing cows coming, of which she had a dread, she remembered that the road was her brother's choosing, and said to herself, " So, if they toss me, it will be Trampy's fault I " They did not: before the cattle came much nearer Tristram remembered her weakness; he trotted back and slipped his hand into hers. She gave him an affectionate squeeze, and they were better friends for a while. Nevertheless it remained for her a day of sharp edges, and companionship was the thing which proved least suited to her complaint. During the afternoon they played in the garden ; but before long she took refuge in her pet climbing-tree and would not come down. Tristram made daring climbs i 1 ^f fi A MODERN ANTAEUS In her neighbourhood to heights he had never aimed at before, but could not tempt her to a following. He left her at last, and they did not meet again till tea-time. Over their cups and cake they fell into a conciliatoi/ mood: word had come by telegram that Mrs Gavney was really on the way, but to arrive an hour later than timed. They feasted on certainty : Tristram's brain became crowded with plans. "Mayn't we," he demanded, " go along the road and meet her, before any one else does?" Restraint was set upon any such highway attack on a tired traveller. Marcia looked across at him with an eye that spoke volumes ; but when the meal was over she avoided his signals, had her bib unfastened, and went hastily out of the room. Tristram roamed about to catch sight of his Aunt Doris, whom he had hardly seen that day. He fell upon her at the store-closets, and starting impatient enquiries as to how many hours longer he would have to wait, was warned when the time came to be more gentle in his raptures: those romping attacks of affection.delight- ful to her, would not do where convalescent nerves were concerned : "Take tliem up tenderly, lift them with care I " explained Doris, thinking of her tired sister's arrival. " Will she be afraid of r ? " queried Tristram. " No no ! " cried the dc lady, " who could be ! " She let herself be hugged, ar * ordered the boy off: "Go and find Marcia, and be ready when the time comes ! " " We are both ready now," he declared ; but his nurse thought differently ; he was caught on the run, and put through the process of washing and clean-collaring it had been his plan to avoid. His sister had been beforehand in submitting to the inevitable : there were no signs of her in the nursery when he went up. His impatience to get down and out again, brought on him only a cajoling measure of reproof: so near now was GROWING-PAINS 53 the moment for which all the household stood in expectation. At the sound of carriage wheel* from a distance, just before dusk, Tristram cried out for Marcia, and ran in a flutter of haste to search out the missing link to his happiness. One of the servants had seen Miss Marcia going down the drive. He skurried out to overtake her, and was shouting " Marcia I " as the brougham emerged upon the sweep at the front Marcia's head came serenely out of the carriage-window ; her face was flushed with happiness. •' She's in here, Trampy I She's in here I Come and look at her I " was the invitation flung out to him. Tristram jumped up on to the step, and saw vague things within. "My boy!" cried a sweet voice, "my boy!" His father's arms lifted him across the sill ; from a comer of the shadowy interior a pale face smiled at him, bring- ing sudden memories. Tumbling to be clasped, he heard another voice, Marcia's, saying, " This is Trampy." Out of breath he felt a heart under his — tears that were not his own, flowing warm over his cheeks ; and twisting his mouth free to whisper that he was glad, saw eyes strange and familiar, and Marcia, with a fast hold on them both, lean down her face to join theirs. They embraced all three together; mists were on Tristram; he kissed mother and sister, scarcely knowing them apart till the carriage drew up. There waiting her turn to come in and be kissed he saw his dear Aunt Lady-love, and with a great cry of affection, threw himself on her too, as though fearing lest new love had been a sort of treason to the old. When weicomings were over, Marcia alone had dry eyes. Yet that night she was the one that lay wakeful and cried of her happiness. The next morning an early awakening moved Tristram : 5 S4 A MODERN ANTAEUS to go and tap at his Aunt Doris's door and make plea for admittance. Sweet sleepy speech bade him entca-. "You I" she cried, surprised, as he frolicked up to her bedside and crouched for an invitation to spring in. She opened her arms through a sea of golden-brown (ocks. "Jump!" cried she: and he, nestling his ear n the soft frills under his lad/s chin, cried, 'Sing I" t id purred for the notes to follow. She sang to him of Cock Robin ; " And, why do you liiten like that?" she asked him. "Oh, I like to 'xar it m the tunnel before it conies out!" was the -xi' ,<: given her to laugh at It made love to her in funny quaint speeches, and ?ii . red to let her see she was loved to-day as much as ytjs; rday ; but could not put himself into words. She Ulkefl to him of his mother ; he, listening with grave attention, asked, "Is she going to be well now? "and was troubled not to get a more sure answer. In his mind, so susceptible to emotions of pity, a tender filial devotion had begun toward that mother who was ever to remain a sort of stranger to him : a piety evoked by the frailty of a body aged before its time, and destined never to renew its youth or feel again the joy of un- hindered health. " You, Auntie Dome, are always quite well, are you not ? " he asked, eyeing her dear beauty. "Oh, quite, quite, quite!" she cried, with a sudden shoot of colour to her cheeks. She started talking to him of his old man, the Sage, and of the promised return visit which she hoped to arrange. Would Trampy come? Indeed, and would he not! The mere mention was enough to spring fondness to his memories of that one day's acquaintance : she could not tell him fast enough a tithe of the things he wished breathlessly to know. And this remained characteristic of the boy all through life: utterly con- GROWING-PAINS 55 tented though he might seem with present surroundings to be reminded in absence of those he loved gave him a curious restlessness, a disturbed sense that he had been remiss toward their claims on him. It seemed to him always, then, that he had never yet loved them as they deserved; and if some had reason at times to think him the most forgetful of lovers, they found him at others astonishingly the most grateful. Doris Foley spoke of him with some insight in regard to his friend- ships, when she declared that his heart was a thorn working through his body in all directions, and constantly coming out at his sleeve; and the Sage, who had a weakness for finding truth and beauty eternally allied, gave extravagant praise to a saying that came from lips' so fair, " Almost the only wise things I hear now-a-days, come ifom the young 1" he declared. "I am finding young people the best book of wisdom for my old age." " Ah ! but I am no longer young," sighed the lady. - Twenty-five, I should judge," he answered, " if I may be allowed to put Time's cage round you." " You are generous : you have spared me two whole years in your reckoning ! " was her reply. " But I judge of age by looking forward, ot by looking back. I shall never be very ol<1 ; and thereiure I have ceased to be very young." She smiled gaily, adding, " I have lived one of the happiest lives I know, and till live it I Surely you can judge of that, who sighed just now for jealousy of me over Trampy's ways uf giving us our ' good-nights ' ! He loves you well enough ; but I am his first romance. I shall die with that in my proud possession." This was the lar whose sense of the fleetingness of things expressed L«e!f so well in the sigh uttered just a month bef« -e: Only three weeks! then we will go picnicing lu-morrow" Little Towber y lay but four miles on the other side of Bembridge, or six from the Valley House, and the goings 56 A MODERN ANTAEUS ii to and fro between the two homes were frequent Even Mrs Gavney, before the cold of winter came to make her a prisoner within doors, could drive over the distance, stay a night, and return on the next day. It was thus that she came, with Tristram under her weak wing, for the day that brought the great Sage to her sister's roof. Mr Beresford Gavney came also from his place of business in Sawditch, and at first in the presence of Tristram's celebrity showed less ease than did his wife and sister-in-law. It was with difficulty that Miss Foley, during dinner, kept him from talking "county," that height toward which he furtively aimed, and from which his women-kind, with a better sense of fitness, strove to keep him retired. "If Beresford would only take a pride in the wheels he himself runs on, and have less of a wish to run behind other people's, what a happy man of business he might be ! " his sister-in-law had said in early days when she knew him less well than now. She had struck at once on the weakest point of a character, whose surfaces did not fairly correspond to the merits underneath. Mr Gavney was a discontented man of business, vain of his capacity, ashamed of his calling. As a young man succeeding to the business which his father had founded he had sacrificed some of the goodwill that a fixed appellation carries, lest his name should stand con- nected with the sources of his income. He now traded as a firm, a device by which few were deceived, and outside business hours nervously avoided all mention of the commodities and processes about which he knew most "Beresford always stops short at the point where he could become informing!" was another of his sister-in- law's small shafts. But it would be a mistake to think that she had no affection for the man whom she thus probed with slight ridicule. Before her sister she was GROWING-PAINS Jf always careful to spare him ; spoke warmly indeed, and had cause, for he was a devoted and impeccable spouse. " It is a mercy," she declared to others of her family, "that in spite of appearances his heart does not run entirely to waistcoat; under that patterned exterior there's a pattern of a man. Anna is never quite happy when she's without him, and never quite unhappy when with hir Can one say much more when the poor health suc nas cuts her off from the more active enjoy- ments of life ? He is a man I like genuinely whenever I see him with her ; and respect always when he does not try to make himself respected outside his limitations." "Positively, I could be thankful sometimes, if he would drop one of those carefully held *H's' of his !" was a complaint the same friendly on-looker made against his manner of going into society. Mr Gavney had looked forward with flattered trepi- dation to the half-hour's tite-H-tite with a great celebrity which the wine after dinner would secure him, and had laid up stock of polite conversation which he hoped might put them at ease one with another. He emei^ed at the end of that period of promised felicity with a scared feeling of satisfaction over the impression he had made, but a lowered sense of the Sage's gentility. He had talked — ^well, he believed ; but on what topics ? Doris, when the two reappeared, sent her brother-in- law a smile of amused interrogation. " How did you get on ? " the smile seemed to say ; " And if well, — as by the look of you, — then, how so ? " Mr Gavney had nothing that his lips could impart. Was he to go over to his sister-in-law and own that against his will he had been talking informingly on the one subject he knew thoroughly, and had found genius most meanly interested in it, for all the world like a shopman ? He glowed over the proceeding, and blushed with shame. Where had he placed himself socially in i \ f I 5« A MODERN ANTAEUS ]'■ ml the great man's estimation, he wondered. Had thev met to talk factory^? All that talk had been wrung from him ; he was for dismissing It quickly from his tnoughts. But the Sage having tasted at the fresh springs of knowledge, was hardly ready as yet to relinquish the topic. "Miss Foley," he cried, " I have come from so much good wme and so much good instruction, that they have, between them, almost atoned to me for the absence of my hostess. I am refreshed and informed. I am on better terms witii tiie habiliments I live in : I feel myself larger : my intelligence passes into the shell which encloses me. Until to-day I was packed like a parcel ; now my garb is a part of me; cloth has a real meaning to me at last ;-Mr Gavney has been expound- ing everything and with the modesty of a master—" He g^ot no furtiier; Beresford Gavney's modesty mastered all further speech of it He became eager to know If his sister's guest had yet heard the voice tiiat her family was proud of "It is one of tiiose things I have come for!" cried the Sage. « If you are readers of Mr Browning's poems you will remember tiiat one which deals with both these things together-textiles and song: Tyrian purple, the clotii of kings, and tiie porridge of John Keats. In literature « purple patches' we say ; tiie t^'o lend terms to explain each otiier. Mr Gavney, I come to be shown your works tiie first fine day; only promise that I see none of your fair young factory girls dipped in tiie blues : no Plutonian -Voserpines, I beg of you ! " Mr Gavney in care for his wife was able to cover his embarrassment He craved leave tiiat she might witii- draw; she already looked tired, he told her; still half an invalid, she was under orders to observe early hours, positively must go. He apologised, and witii fond, fussy sohcitude led her out of the room. GROWING-PAINS 59 "A proud man ; it is pretty to see them," remarked the Sage, when the door closed on the retiring pair. * An honest man, too, I take him to be." Doris, smiling, laid her hand on his arm. •• He has," said she, " two best sides to his character ; now you have seen him in both. He is a good husband and a good man of business. But I must b^ you, if you would let him be comfortable, not to pursue your subject when he returns ; business makes him blush." She added, " Did you talk to him at all of our boy?" " A little," said the old man, " but they seem to be strangers. Our boy, as we see him, appears to be almost unknown to him." "That is going to be the tragedy," she murmured. "Yes, and with my sister it is the same. But you see his dear nature ; he picks up fathers and mothers as he goes along." Her smile adopted him to a share in the spiritual relationship. She crossed to the piano, and sang to ravished old ears. Her voice filled up the rest of the evening, preserving to her brother-in-law the good impression he had created. He and the Sage parted corHiqily ; but no fine day ever brought that invitation to View the dye-works and cloth-making for which the other had bargained. This was the first of a series of meetings under Doris Foley's roof between a trio of lovers. The offer used to be hung over the Tramp's head shamelessly, as a bribe to industry; and he would wriggle patiently through a week of hard sittings at sums and words of two syllables, for the sure prospect of his two dear de- lights waiting to give him joy at the end of it Marcia went also at first, from a curiosity, to see this wonderful being of whom Tristram raved. She settled not to like him, because of a quizzical look his blue eyes had when they turned on her, and because Tristram lavished on him an intimacy of «» A MODERN ANTAEUS affection which she considered unseemly when bestowed outside the family circle. She found fault with his ways. "Why does he go like that ? "—she imitated an uncouth habit the Sage had of looking down the arm-hole of each sleeve in turn, like a bird when it preens its wings. « And why does he put 'r.r.r.r.' into everything he says?"— she made a mock of his north-country accent In everything about him she found something to object to, fighting hard against an mstmct which told her he was lovable. She offered him no more than an abrupt hand-shake after witnessing the Tramp's warmer demonstrations of welcome, and in all ways was stiff and priggish, with a determination not to be liked. After their one meeting she chose to imagine that her mother was too ill to spare her— for it was but once that Mrs Gavney was able to be of the party— and would beg off more often than not, after her going had been thought settled. Behind her back the Sage spoke of her with waggish awe, and revelled in Tristram's tales of her great wisdom Marca would listen in a fever for report of any crumbs of his speech that had reference to her; and having secured them, professed utter indifference as to what he thought or said. "Between me and your Marcia, there will only be a death-bed reconciliation," prophesied the Sage. " The question is, which of us shall bring it about by making haste to die ? " Marcia pondered the saying deeply. All she said was, « I think he is a silly old man." Her feelings were hurt ; his chanty was merely a way of putting her in the wrong. To have one of his adorations thus unappreciated was to Tristram like the discovery of a defect in his own character ; he kept trying to put it right; the more Marcia objected to his idol, the more she brought in argument to her side. GROWING-PAINS 6l After a quarrel, she was always specially demonstrative of her love for him. She ran gloriously, and climbed better than he; in swarming, short skirts give a grip. He was the better kangaroo ; Marcia excelled as a monkey. She had one climbing-tree of her very own; the Tramp never came into it without leave ; many recon- ciliations between the two took place there. He had his own climbing-tree also, but of that she was made free without any conditions at all ; he had not the gift of exclusiveness which, in her, grew to so fine an edge. One day well on in winter, Tristram alone was sent over to Little Towberry, and found cousins old and young, — the Sage amongst them, at his sociable best, dispelling the awe which gathered when his name was pronounced. In a comer, not looking well, sat the beautiful Aunt Doris, she who was generally the centre. The child spied at her, and questioned. She patted his mouth to stop all foolish, tender enquiries, and became gay when presently the Sage's mastery of the revels had thrown the whole company into merriment. Tristram vibrated between his two stars, a giddy meteor never to be held still. It was the dressing-bell ringing for his elders that skurried him to bed late. His beloved had forgotten to sing to him ; he called out to her as she went down to dinner. She peeped in at him beautifully arrayed. " No time now, my Tramp ; afterwards I will, if you are still awake. But you will find le a bird without a voice — no coo, all croak ! " She ran away and forgot one, with whom bed meant, touch the pillow and it is to-morrow She never dreamed of his keeping awake. It is what he did. Waiting wide-eyed till social sounds ascended once more from the drawing-room, he expected to hear her voice at the piano, and would «• A MODERN ANTAEUS have gone to sleep upon that But from singing when her visitor preferred a petition to that end Dons excused herself. She blamed her throat and tiie weather; but her face, in spite of smiles, showed distress. *vlr?u**°'"! *^' '*** "^^ dragging herself to bed, more tired than she knew. Tristram's little voice called her to him. «'My song, Auntie Dome, my song I" he whimpered, almost aggrieved. i: « ^r' '^^""Py' yo" poor, wakeful little imp I " she cried. fiiU of ruth at having forgotten him. She took him up and let his head go where it loved to nestie. Twice she tried : then sang. Tristram heard the beautiful notes thrown high, break quavering and come down with a sob ; there was a soft nwwng sound and stillness. Doris let herself fall back under the child's weight into the bed his body had made warm. She lay motionless. He clawed at her in the dark; and, at her breast, where her closed hands were, felt crumpled paper. Without knowing it, he had touched the tragedy of Dons Foley's life. It was then but a day old. The next morning she kissed him from her bed Aough it was mid-day when he came to bid her good- bye Her smile was ravishingly sweet to him— yet he felt guilty. Had he, he wondered, done her some injury ? The week could not pass without an exchange of letters between the two. At the end of it he came to be reassured, found a bright face waiting for him, and Ae old Auntie Dome quite renovated, with not a difference that he could discover. She sang him his songs at first asking, and deceived him thoroughly as to her state. Marcia was in their company, and the three had the house to themselves. "I sent all my visitors away m a bundle last week!" said Miss Foley It GROWING. PAINS 63 •uggested brown paper to Tristram, and on his return home, he had himself delivered absurdly at his mother's door in a huge parcel done about with strings. Marda helped at the untying, and there was much merriment and kissing when the crackling had been removed. We made mother laugh," was the report Tristram had to send back, CHAPTER VII 1 1 \ § \l ARBOREAL CHILDHOOD A FEW weeks later Doris Foley was again at the -**• Valley House, and owned that it would be for something more than a short stay. " I want you and my boy with your belongings, and not a thing in the way of visitors I " she said to her sister, and having shut up her home at Little Towberry, declared that she felt relieved of all care. Her hands became in reality more full than when she was merely her own mistress ; taking over the house- keeping of an establishment which taxed too heavily Mrs Gavneys frail energies, she had enough to think and do. Knowing herself welcome, she claimed to be a defending providence to the family. " If I could not have come," was her argument, " it would have been a case of sending for Julia Gavney; you may choose between us yet ! That last letter of hers reads peckishly ; 'tis like a benevolent bird of prey she hovers over you ! " "Julia is good; but she is too managing," said Mrs Gavney, " and Beresford gratified me by saying that I should find you the better companion." It was the dear lady's way to put on the chains of her husband's authority as articles of adomment "These are my jewels!" she seemed to say, ;d would quote his opinions on quite slight matters. : saved her a world of thinking ; these decisions of life she left gladly to others. ARBOREAL CHILDHOOD 65 In this instance Mr Gavney was glad that his wife^s favourite sister should be with her. In spite of a ten y^' difference in their ages, the two fitted companion- ably together; nor was he unmindful of that social charm for which Doris, of all the Foleys, stood first Across the valley Hill Alwyn stood out to view; quite likely was it that his very presentable sister-in-law might be of use in bringing the two houses to a neighbourly footing. ' Coming between the children and the jarred nerves of her invalid sister, Miss Foley was a relief to both sides. She allowed her charges to run more wild than was generally told ; the neighbourhood got to know them, a fast-stepping trio, with wide-awake voices, and always in full spirits over the business on hand. Their walks took adventurous shapes, and sent them home, often a little more weary than was well. Making a fairly wide range over the country, they touched, when time allowed the dark borders of Randogger, counting their miles roughly by the brooks which moistened the dip of each green valley. Woodsides just then were beginning to break into soft flower; overhead were larch trees rushing into a spurt of green and knobs of red blossom • catkins came tumbling like a plague of caterpillars from' the black poplars along the roads ; pushed out of place by the turbulent growth behind, so eager to lay hold on air, they littered the ways like autumn already come. Every d«y the wind, sunning its wings in thicket and meadow disclosed new eyes and set new doors a-swing to the bright world. Earth lay in the rapids of time ; spring's green flood rushing over its sides forced it to the caress of life. Doris Foley was resolute to see the beauty of each day as it flew by ; to her the spring-quickening of that year spoke as she remembered no other to have done; each morning to enquiry she was able to say, « I feel well," and to herself declared constantly « I am happy I •• 66 A MODERN ANTAEUS There could be no doubt ihe leemed kx Triitnun had visions of her afterwards with her lap full of the flowers gathered on thdr different rambles: dafibdils, violets, {Mrimroses, she helped them to bear home. On a later day white wood-anemones were their spoil, quick-fading things, which drooped and grew old in the hand that carried them, refusing an indoor Hie. The children named each small dell after the things that grew there. They chanced on the anemone wood for the first time, when its flowers were in full snow, and the walk which brought them new wood and new flower together was remembered long after as a spedal stroke of good fortune. For Tristram that wood hekl magic, it seemed like a promised land flowing with milk and honey ; he fell down on all fours to wallow in its beauty, and ran carrying white armfuls, unwilling to let any of them go, till he saw his Aunt Doris sitting in a snow- dr of the oflferings Marcia had heaped on her. Nor did that day's ramble finish without some further adventure. Up the steep bank of wood Tristram heard a wild note of distress, and bounding to find the cause, saw a stoat, disturbed by the noise of his approach, slip from a young rabbit's back and dart away into the undergrowth. The little wounded thing ran quite fear- lessly to the boy's feet ; stopping then, half-stunned, it let itself be taken up and fondled, and without b^ging it, seemed to suffer gladly the shelter his presence ex- tended. Tristram feared to let it go again where destruction awaited it ; mothering instinct prompted him to carry it away home, heal its wound, and bring it restored again to its own place. Just behind the ears, where the stoat had fastened, blood was flowing; the child imagined that human, if not medical treatment was necessary ; he ran back to his aunt with its small anatomy hugged fast, and between them they made a most benevolent to-do ARBOREAL CHILDHOOD «7 over the little beast, fancying they could read grateful recognition through the round opening of its eyes. Tristram made a pannier for it under his coat, lined with grass and flowers, and brought it home, putting it into an improvised hutch for the night It was quite alive the next day, eating what was set before it with a sober cheerful demeanour. If the hutch was rough, the lying was soft and the food plentiful; nor had it a dull moment while Tristram was free to come and give it company. Withered wood-anemones thrust through the bars were to remind it of home. On the second morning, Tristram broke in upon Marcia wild-eyed. "Where's Mike?" he demanded. Mike was Marcia's very special, and was, at that moment, reposing on his young mistress's lap. "He has eaten my rabbit I" squealed Tristram, on catching sight of the culprit "Oh, the black devil I Just you give hini to me I " He struck a demanding attitude. Marcia stood up for defence. " How do you know ? " she demanded, in doubt as to the evidence. " Who else would ? " retorted Tristram. " Bring him down to the hutch, and see if he doesn't show it I Oh, Marcia I my poor little rabbit is all gone I " " He got out," was suggested. "Oh no, he wouldn't I He was much too tame!" Tristram wept with rage for the loss of his dear two- day-old. Marcia refused to be convinced. Being a wild rabbit, of course he went, was her theory. Could Tristram show a better ? The boy made a sudden dart on Mike, crying : " Look, there's grey fur on his paws, and his whiskers are bloody ! You shall let me have him I " " He shan't be hurt ! " stuck out Marcia. Tristram smote in with all his might The cat fuffed, I w « A MODERN ANTAEUS and dug claws. Resenting on Tristnun the pains her flesh had to endure, Marcia held up Mike's body, now ramping in heraldic attitude, and darted him, all fours out, on Tristram. The cat dealt him rather more of a scratch than its mistress intended; she made haste to get the table between them for a barrier. Tristram dropped the fight, threw up a bleeding chin and marched out, crying: "Yes, that's the way girls fight, like cats; all spittings and scratchings." He called back from the passage: "If I catch Mike, I kill him I Mind that ! " "You won't catch him!" said Marcia; and to make sure, carried him off there and then to the gardener's lodge, and begged for him to be locked away in a safe place till called for. Coming back to the house under cover of the shrubbery she beheld flagrant trespass taking place— Tnstram up aloft, where he had least right to be in her own climbing-tree, wagging its high branches defi- antly, and singing shrill scorn of her at the top of his voice. It was apparent that he hoped to have her with- m hearing; but his eye prowled, and had not lighted yet upon her whereabouts. She knew the words of his summons well enough it was their established battle-cry, an insult she had never yet let pass. She heard " Cowardy custard " sent forth to rhyme with "mustard"; "slugs, snails, and puppy- dogs' tails" were the ingredients which went to her making. It was choice language ; children have the gift for finding it Marcia was all but in honour bound to take up the cudgels when that song was borne in on her. Now, however, she stopped, sought deeper shelter m the shrubs, and, avoiding every bit of open, skulked in by a back way. In truth, her sense of justice smote her for on further examination there had been no doubt that Mike's black paws had grey fur on them. ARBOREAL CHILDHOOD 69 Her mean evasion left Tristram to the weary bother of remaining enskied for the whole hour preceding lesson- time, and of singing- his throat dry, like a scarer of birds, with the challenge that remained unanswered At the end of that time he began to guess what dog^;ed under- hand tectics she opposed to him, for he knew well that bright sunshine and the leisure-hour would have brought her out of doors, had not crafty knowledge kept her away. He pulled out his pocket-knife, carved his initials large on her pet climbing-branch, and came down, Durinp. lessons they stiffened their necks at each other like two towers in Coventry. Tristram's eye was waiting to shoot disdainful fires whenever she looked up He curled a superior lip at every mistake she made; but, for reasons, knew his own lessons badly enouf^h. By dint r.f headstrong blundering he got himself kept in, and, having secured the penalty, tossed his nose in triumph, as to say: "Anything rather than be in your company, Sister Marcia I '* Her own tasks ended, Marcia went away soberly without looking at him. Presently she cair-j .,ark into the school-room, and sat down to a lersc u i. Tris- tram grew puzzled, for he remembr - h ^ •:• ,,rar- whoops had kept her at an eariier ; ir from her usual run in the open air. Outside tiie sun shone still; Marcia, as he looked at her now, wore a demure air of penance. Her meaning remained dark to him. In the silence that followed Tristram's perfunctory scratchings upon his slate, these two qjieer natures acted and re-acted on each other's consciences. Com- punction dripped steadily in the mild corners of their hearts. Presently Marcia must raise gloomy eyes to see Tristram's burning hot upon hers. She endured his . f! 70 A MODERN ANTAEUS gue, softening her glance the while, but making no other siga It was not till the slow tedium of luncheon was over that she took his hand, and led him out siloitly to the scene of last night's tragedy. She jerked her head, and showed him her pride brought low in the person of her beloved special,— Mike, in such disgrace as had never before fallen upon his sacred sleek body. He sat a hunch of misery in the desolated rabbit-hutch, among scatterings of bran and withered lettuce-stalks, mewing miserably to be let out Round his neck was a bow of black which drooped long weeper-ends. Never did quadruped show a mote pilloried sense of shame. Tristram, who knew how unbending was Marcia's pride in her own belongings, became awed by such a sight Remorse rained into his soul also ; he too, now, had a guilt which he must own to. "Oh, Marcia!" he mumbled, "I didn't know you'd done that, ; so I " So far he got, and paused. Her eye required that he should make an end of what he had to say. " So I carved my name up in your tree, thaf s what I did!" said Tristram. She gave him a long stare, saying nothing ^i^le you might have counted ten. "All right, Trampy," she said, at last "you may have it!" Her tree for his rabbit was, after all, no robbery. She kissed him, feeling that the magnanimity lay more on her side now, then went slowly and unfastened the door of the rabbit-hutch. Mike leapt out with an afflicted air, and went stumbling over the trailing ends of his scarf " He may wear that till he can get it off," observed Marcia. For her and Tristram the incident was over ; th^r were as good as gold to each other the same day. If the ARBOREAL CHILDHOOD 7« Tramp wept for his rabbit, it was not when Marcia was by. As for Mike, it was days before his mistress caressed him again in Tristram's presence ; but furtively, when they were in private together, she made him divine amends. He did not have to wear his weeds many days. it U CHAPTER VIII MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION ^HE Sage had spoken confidently of Tristram to his -^ aunt as " our boy," meaning to say, « You and I have this right to him above others, seeing that we know him best. In truth they had a common sympathetic understanding of the sweet, sociable animal he was. of quick heart and intellect, built upon highly-strung nerves ; yet It may be doubted if they had a notion of the depths of him. Solitude, as we have seen, turned him into another creature, difficult to track. Into that part of his being Marcia made the deepest guess, waylaid it where she could, yet knew that something escaped her. There were times when she would see Tristram by himself, full of small gesticulations, asseverations and denials of the head, forefinger or fist at play, foot stamping out arffu- mcnt-all the live springs in him at work. But if she joined herself to him then, blank looks put up a barrier of secrecy : nothing would he tell. In all their games of make-believe, it was from her that the invention had first to come. Tristram would submit himself to her inspiration when any definite game was up, and would footit well to the other's tune; but there were times when to Marcia's imperious "I want you I" his answer in effect would be "I want myself I" nor could com- panionship then be got out of him. He was off like quick-sUver from a jerked palm, to gather for himself MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION 73 there is no telling what handfuls of mystery. In that world of his own he dwelt hidden : Marcia knew of it, but little enough of what went on there. Streamside dwellers will tell how they have lived on a spot for years, and watched the current water and the fishers up and down its banks, but have never once seen the solitary otter that has his range there. Yet he is no sentimentalist, this diver shy of men's eyes: he seems to know well that hands are dead against him, that his is a dying race, of a savagery which Nature, no longer wild, seeks to shake off: knows it with a tragic intensity that does not belong to the water-vole or the other small vermin, for whom there is still space and to spare. Dog of Pan I when the hounds get upon his trail, something of the heroic age runs in him, and dies fight- ing great odds. Look for it among humans, this survival of a breed fierce and aboriginal, now become hermetic from men's eyes; traces of it you shall find, yet they shall not bring you to its lair. There, hidden yet in our midst, an old atavism of the race dies hard, rebellious against Time, savage, yet wondrously shy so shy that it may be at your side, or under your own roof, and you not know that it is there. The survivors of the tribe make few signs, caring, perhaps, but little to be recognised by their fellows : solitaries they stale it out, till it grows faint in the blood. Civilised custom so soon makes us unfaithful to the natural man that is within us. The domestic d<^ is more staunch, and will wind himself round three times before he settles, though he lies in a kennel and wears collar and chain. What follows of Tristram, grotesque though it be, gives you him at no game of shadowy make-believe! Growing experience and every-day fact have done little to put sobriety into his brain, or bring his thoughts into open play. Just below the surface, not to be tracked, his mind runs like a mole : the earth of ancestry 'i 74 A MODERN ANTAEUS clings to it You find here the fears of the savage, pre- served and cropping up with strange force ; all his furtive- ness and sly dealings with the odds and chances of life ready again to become strong. With Tristram there was little need to pick and choose a day to have sight of the two natures in him— the social and the solitary. New places excited him : to light on a fresh field-way, still more to enter a new bit of wood, started the kindling process, and the less then did he care for the fellowship of his own kind. If in that mood he were to come upon a stream, then it must be crossed, no matter how ; to be at the other side of everything, and to beat pursuit in getting there, became a sort of a necessity. A mile from home the sense of adventure b^an. One wild morning of March and wind homeless between earth and cloud, brother and sister had run up into the wilderness above the house, to give a short stretch to their limbs. Tristram had vowed to Maroia that before clock-stroke he would be quit of her company, and the tussle of pursuit and escape grew hot The hour grew close : they ran and tumbled to an accompaniment of squeals, Marcia determined, Tristram beginning to be scared. She had him by the coat; he left it in her hands ; she was driving him down to- wards a high fence ; it challenged his eye desperately. Could he leap it ? enquired fear. Suddenly the whole thing became dead earnest, a matter of life and death to him. Her laugh was behind him: "You can't do it, Trampyl" and he, with a wild catch of the heart, went up into air, broke across the obstacle, and leapt away to possess himself of solitude. The imperious mood had come like a seizing hand through his hair, and lifted him clean back to savagery. Marcia might then cry after him in vain ; he had other companions. When her feet ceased running, these ceased not to follow me day he might be absent or ill In tinT^? ^e even might he go away for good, nclver to return • yet the Post would still be demanding its daily di^t lLT::ii:."'' ^°"''""«'- ^^exlfore di7he^^w push forward his stewardship of the mysteries, that in the years ahead he might stand blameless, with a con- sciousness of duties fully performed. biiSlL^^ ^* "^^ *^*' ,"P?" '^^ *°P ^^ ^» Po»t were Mrd-dioppmgs a natural defilement which displeased Ws sense of the reverence owed there. To prevent ^ T^!!?" ^* *~^ * ^^'^^ bottie-sheaS^Td fitted It to the post; and beholdl an old symbol of ^-worship, blindly, fortuitously attained. And r^und ttis for many days and months Tristram gyrated in his heart; till on a day of festival, as he grovelled cc^oniously he chanced to look' up, LF^fd ^t^ismay the «>lemn great eyes of Marda starSg '! CHAPTER IX THE ROD THAT BUDDED ALL through the summer and autumn of that year the Doris-days extended, shaping a golden memory for all concerned. Their only drawback was that they passed so quickly, bearing with them in their retreat irrevocable delights. The lady herself was too conscious of their fleeting character not to feel it so. When crocus and fruit-blossom, laburnum and peony died against the warming heart of the season's life, she watched them go with a wonder whether she had ever before found them so fair, and with a quickened sense of the autumnal mood which the year holds for ever in its blood. She had taught the children her own love of gardening, and to keep them in good countenance became the proprietor of ground close to theirs, which no hands but her own might plant or water. The gardener himself was supposed to share with the children their envy of the beauty of " Auntie Dorrie's garden." Flowers from it stood on birthday breakfast- tables, and in their fragrant depths held offerings which were doubly delightful, sprung from such floral foldings. Tristram helped himself to a large measure of earth, and gave up most of it to romantic experiments, of which nothing remained in the years after but a fig-tree and a plantation of foxgloves that throve rankly when '90 A MODERN ANTAEUS nylect became their portion. His weakness was to bnng in wild things from his walks, and give them a nch soil to Jive in. The others named it his weed- garden. « At least it keeps him dirty!" said Doris, as though that in itself were a craving of his nature, good to be satisfied. * Marcia let her ground go to the flowers that pleased her mother's fancy: to mignonette, over which she Claimed a monopoly, to periwinkle, and dark, velvet- eyed sweet-williams, and white pinks, and the rock- loving valerian: all these were serviceable to her purpose: she was jealous against imitation. In their several ways the three gardens flourished ; but even Marcia had to admit that Auntie Dorrie's stood un- rivalled, though liking her own better. During a fortnight of dry summer weather Doris, havingto be away, left her garden in Tristram's hands. He performed the task faithfully and with humility entering upon no freakish experiment of his own ; and upon her re: urn presented her to nurslings, whose T -if "^u"^^ '^^^^ ^"" ^''^^t'^g requirements. sm!nVn . "^^ ^y ^'^^^^y' ^^"''""S »»» hair with small pulls to get at his attention, "Will you look aftc/ It, then, always, whenever I am away ? Always ? " He was for promising straight off " Oh I don't want pi. ises," she said ; "you ht break them But I would like you to; so remember it!" it^rT^ .If K^"" ^ P^'"^ *"^' *"^ ^^<=ed him to Dorfi " h 5 ^^^^""&-<^^"- " I've beaten Auntie Dome! he cried out in triumph to Marcia. It was an event to have done that «• ii was Those days that rippled with the flowing charm of her companionship wrote themselves happy ones on the tablets of two memories, and made quiet history, better than eventful, to look back upon. One afternoon, in the warm glows of middle autumn. THE ROD THAT BUDDED 91 the Sage came on them by surprise. He had taken a good part of the day to arrive, driving a quaint shandry-dan of his own through the country lanes, and was the more pleased with himself in consequence. He declared that he felt fit and morally braced through having avoided fifteen miles of railway — a living creature instead of a thing ignominiously shoved and shunted from place to place, mere parcel with ticket attached — label he chose to call it — needing to be classed also, first, second, or third — an indignity to himself or his fellow-passengers — lowering, he declared, to any man's conscience. In a word, having ridden his hobby for over four hours, he was slow to get off it again. At the end of all his sweet crabby nonsense, he was forced to own apologetically that as he had so come, they must put up with him for the night Doris dropped him a low curtsey and leaned her face for a salute, understanding the gentle amorousness of his r^ard. Her ways of welcome made it so easy for him to forget that he was a celebrity at all. She loved the garrulous quaint foolishness to which he gave way when in privacy, and was ever at intrig-ie to get more of it. " And where is the Tramp ? " was his question, when greetings to the two sisters were over. " Not run away again, I hope ? " Doris thought it likely, since he was nr . in sigh*, nor to be heard of; and declared that she believed him t«^ be always on the verge oi it " I have but to speak of you," she said, " to see the wandering-fever take hold of him." " And I," replied the Sage, " never go out, but I leav word with my housekeeper to hold him till my return , so confidently am I expecting him some day or another ! But the anniversary is past; I look now for some change of the wind to bring him. I prophesy to you, Hi 99 A MODERN ANTAEUS Mjd«n of time, when you will not be able to hold b^l ^Ltn*?**"*^!^; '^^'^ »»*"• •"d like . Wte Jell itraln; loote him, «r.d he comes fo earth. Let Wm^eel fre^and he will twi^ on one leT^ld ^ ^Z ^/T? "^^^ "^ "" ^^y '^'^**^ «hou1d not be SuLS^hlm *" ?"" "^ *^'*y *^^»*~«««» her. She wo^alfo "**? '^.°'"' *"** "'^»«"' »han the others would allow, and cited his gentle ways with her Z P^how eas.ly he could be made^omestic and J I have only to speak quietly to him," she said with a £?<:^c:rnr^^^"^ And the fact was true.^: n,nf^"H'i* T''" "^^ I^O"»."«>me fine day he will «You „^ '.l"** ^'^ *«*'"' ^^-^ " »he added Vou need never be anxious for him " But Mrs Gavncy had a mother's belief in her own Yort^V"' ''\"'' "°' ''' ^° »»^^ ^^*'™ to knowlS^ yoii^uSrkt.ir/ii^r^^'^^^ '''''-''^--' her SS '""^^' "^ '*''*"^*^ "°^ "^ ^*'"^"^ himi" said - Not to be tame," thought Doris. "Not to be a wild animal," maintained Mrs Gavney theX w^;:' ""' "^ ^^'-^^-^'-^ -"^^^ ^'^ criU fhZu^^ ^'^ "*^ *^ "^'*h« wild nor animal I" «ned the e der s«ter, casting timorous thoughts to^d the propensities of youth. « wwarc fnZr "^^f ^r^^ •" '*^* Sage, "is why the phrase fnghens you I You damn the words separatel?^ doubly damn them in company, letting the'^T^Ve ^ THE ROD THAT BUDDRT) 93 on the noun like a led rag on a bull SepA.-k^e them fairly, and lee if they may not become innocent To be animal one needs not to be bestial ; and to be wild means to be unharnessed rather than savage. Th«l boy of yours now—I take the wild in him first : w. Jl him wild, if you will, at wind-ilowers, clover, and i'. cte»* . March are wild ; or as the wild bee who makes hone ^ sweetly and industriously as the one we hive and take toll from. He may be wild as a bird's notes are, which contain trills our trained voices cannot equal, or as water which runs pure on its native hillside. Have you any fear of such wild things as '.. « that your boy must not be like them ? " " I would prefer to see even his best qualities dis- ciplined," demurred Mrs Gavney. "By their own laws I" th« Sage assented. "They will be : these they live by. Dew, and song, and sunlight, and cloud ai-; all wild things untameable by man. Though you can sadden the lark's song by caging it, you cannot re-shape it to your liking. Would you wish to? It is the wildness that springs eternal out of Nature's unspoiled beauty. It rose up before the Fall, and caTie unchanged to us out of Eden, and remains divine. There 's another wildness, wanton and pn latory, that comes of 'brmity ; vhere creation groans you find it ; in l.'keness ,0 that, man becomes base. But apart fron. tb-^t, to be wild is not to be libert'ne; while to be tame a . seldom mean to be free. What do you think, ;nadam?" Mrs Gavney replied, with an unintended touch of irony, " I think, dear Professor, that you have been talking poetry." Doris laughed. "And I know," said she, " ,«rhat Anna's definition of poetry would be: something beautiful, which we know not to be true. For my part, I accept my Tramp's wildness on thosr terms 94 A MODERN ANTAEUS with a whole heart; it is the foundation to start from Now, for the animal in him; will you not expound that also?" The Sage answered : « The poetry for that. Madam, is m the word itself; I have merely to be etymological For 'ammal '-what is it but the name of the soul m the most durable language on earth, linked into daily use by the softest letter of our alphabet When the animal body dies, 'tis but a single letter of its nature that perishes; its accident vanishes; 'anima' the substance, lives. Man bulks but by reason of the breath of life, breathed into his nostrils by God • as the wind-bag shrivels to a small thing when the air IS out of it. so the corruptible body; 'tis a microscopic part of us, grass cut down ; only when it stood up and was filled with the breath of Heaven, had it the stature and the fulness of a man. Animal to me says soul- and death, I believe, holds a far smaller kingdom' in us than appears: the symbols of our quickening lie everywhere." ^ The Sage put forth the faith that was in him with some fervency, and while he did so noted how the two sisters, with eyes that met in wavering and tender enquiry, were each at gaze into the other's thoughts. The significance of that silent correspondence of the two faces was not missed by him ; intuitively he read a meaning. "Adieu, adieu, oh, adieu, dear Beloved- think me not gone when I am!" the looks of one seemed to say; and where regards of aflTection and grief so equal were exchanged, it was but natural that he should misread the giver for the receiver So It was the elder lady his mind fixed on ; and he thought compassionately, how natural was her dread, even of the small running away on Tristram's part with which they had playfully threatened her. Watching the frail, languid figure, he wondered if only a few months THE ROD THAT BUDDED 95 or a whole year remained to a life destined to last for twenty. Doris spoke out of reverie: "Your mention of bees in reference to Tristram, reminds me ; he has them in his bonnet to a certainty. I found him the other day at the hives, handling them as they went in and out. And an odd thing he had to say I — ' Don't touch me, Auntie Dorrie, or they'll sting I' — himself, not me, he meant He owned to having been stung, but very seldom ; and when that happens, what do you think he does? He runs till he drops, and assures me that then all the pain has gone out of him." " There," remarked the Sage, " do you behold the true animal : the ' anima,' the breath of its life relieving it of its humours. Fain and disease come mainly from dwelling on them. Death itself, without man's morbid dread of it, might be staved off till the day when it was desired. It is said that snake-bitten natives are beaten to divert their attention ; if it is done sufficiently, they don't die. You must go on according to the receipt for the pig and the Gosky patHes — ^"If he squeals, beat him again ! ' But, 'tis melancholy, if after a beating they do die! Dare one risk such a thing on one's conscience as to have beaten a man through his last moments ? " "Oh, my dear Professor," complained Doris, "why do you always give practical doctrine such a sad wind-up? Put sins for snake bites — now I shall never be able to beat the Tramp for any of his sins, lest, through my not beating him enough, he should die in them!" " Never beat for the deadly sins, and you will be safe," answered the Sage. " Beat for the lesser ones, and a short beating won't matter." " But do you ever have to beat him, my dear ? " enquired Mrs Gavney ; whereat Doris and the Sage II 9« A MODERN ANTAEUS broke into merry laughter, which put an end to the matter of their present discussion. Tristram was not then to be found ; only Marcia. who for once was gracious to the old man, and took him to see their gardens. He praised hers for what he called Its contented veracity ; Doris's he named the garden of a soul; he flattered it by saying that Dante and Beatrice should meet there. Doris owned that she had found footmarks, and had consolation now for the ^!L -/tT lu'T .^'^^^"^ ^^^^ '^'^'"P'^ portion, the b^e said. I think he wants the beating I " It showed a dry soil, the result of a week's n^lect "It's my fault," said Marcia; and when asked how, .. wr^.°"J. u^*""*' "^'^ * ^°''^°™ ^^°^ of indifference. While I m here he won't come I "she explained, and added, we are having a quarrel, and if s not finished ; and Trampy says he hates me I " When hunger and the tea-hour called him. the Tramp turned up from a place which he defined as "Oh nowhere." He was very abashed to find that he had missed two hours of the Sage's company. They had much to say to each other then, but talk did not flow with quite the uninterrupted gaiety of previous occa- sions. The Sage watched him thoughtfully. The next day, after their visitor had departed. Tristram, the godless, chanced to roam by the gardens where Marca was at work, and saw that his own had been tampered with. "What have you been doing to my garden?" he demanded. It had been raked to a neat surface, and 'LTl T^"^' ''"^ something to represent an olive- branch, lifting up its green head and arms to him. « J.^« «ot to"<=hed it I " said Marcia, and walked away. No? he muttered in retort, to gratify his owri ears: then you did it without touching; that's alll" And hardening himself, he pulled up the Uttle emblem THE ROD THAT BUDDED 97 of peace, cast it across on to Marcia's border, and went off to nurse his demon afresh. The two were at their lessons when Doris looked in on them to say, " Marcia, have you been touching any one's garden but your own ? " " I ? no ! " said Marcia, surprised, and looked across to Tristram. " Oh, then it's all right," was Doris's quiet answer, and she went away, leaving the Tramp a very nice little problem to think out Thinking brought him near to the facts, and he passed the next two hours in a purgatory, which wrought havoc on his marks for good conduct and efficiency. On the instant that lessons were over he darted off to forestall other eyes, and reinstate the despised olive branch. That moral emblem was nowhere to be found. He divined a hand ; and was for kissing it in abject penitence. Coming to Doris with a face of sad confusion, he asked, "Auntie Dorrie, who put that tree into mv garden?" ' And she ; " Who pullea it out again, Trampy ?" " I did," he confessed. Said Doris, « The Professor put it in." The boy looked at her hard. " And you ? " " Oh yes, I helped. Your garden has been growing weedy. We thought we might put it straight for you. Marcia thought not. I see she was right." "That's the worst of Marc'a!" grumbled the bov « She always is right." " Then if she was right, the poor Professor and I have to make our apologies." "No!" he contradicted, "she wasn't right; she was wrong! I mean she has got a nasty way of being right generally. And she does know it so, too I " G 9S A MODERN ANTAEUS I think she will " Prove her wrong, then, this once forgive you." The boy's demon struggled with him for a while: then, " Where is it ? " he said at last " Where is what?" " That tree thing." *You want it?" "Yes, Auntie, you know I do! where is it, please?" " Marcia knows already ; I have told her," said Doris. "Do you want me to show it to you?" She made a small pretence of being occupied. « No, I'll ask Marcia ! " said the Tramp, and started to go ; then returned and taking her hand, " come with me! "he pleaded. Her willingness had its reward: she was witness to a pretty ceremony, of which she wrote word to the Sage. " A week's quarrel ! " she commented, '' all on his side, I believe, this time. Think of the evil courage and the obstinacy, to make such a thing possible in a creature of his years ! And would to Heaven that all quarrels ended as quickly ! " " So," wrote the Sage in reply, "you have been beating him?" "With your rod!" washer retort, "and it budHed!" CHAPTER X THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS TX7HEN autumn fell into its chills, the Valley House ▼ y garden whispered all day with the fall of leaves. From the adjacent woodland more drifted in ; and in every nook and angle of the walks piled a great waste and litter which to the children seemed wealth. Doris had become so much a member of the house- hold, that a word she let fall as she watched her young couple piling a storage of leaf-mould for their gardens, had little meaning to their ears. "Tramp," she said, "do you know that in a week I shall be gone ? " The boy looked up and said, " Where?" and, " How long for?" nor troubled to take his hands off his work, thinking so little could be meant " In a kind of way, for good," she answered. "Not to Little Towberry ; further away than that" "Oh, but we don't want you to go!" objected Tristram. " Don't want to go myself, silly one ! It's a case of •must'!" "Why? "asked the boy. " All this fall of the leaf doesn't suit me. I am going to hunt the summer, and suck honey by the sea." Hunt the summer! The phrase brought back the long delight of the months that were just over. She 100 A MODERN ANTAEUS had been goddess to them through the green of the year ; wherever she went, it seemed, summer would go with her. " I wish I could go, too, then," pleaded Tristram. " I've never seen the sea. I want to I " " Come, and lend me your eyes, then I " she invited in sweet tones ; and sat dov n on a bench, making a lap for him to climb into. *• Now look, and tell me what colour?" "Biue," said the child. " I see grey," she returned ; "prey, and a wheel with a squirrel running round inside. That's my Tramp. Where does a squirrel carry its memory, Tramp? In its eyes or its tail?" His eyes, star-gazing into hers, answered for him. " Put into yours, then, the colour these give you ; take a long look and remember I Then when I'm away by the sea, think of these two poor eyes of mine, and you will have sea-colour to think of." " Auntie, why are you crying ? " asked the boy. "Only salt water 1" she assured him. "It comes of my eyes being sea-like I " She kissed him and shook him off, while he hungered not to be let go. Tristram remembered afterwards his long gaze into those blues which moistened as he looked at them ; but her final farewell of a week later was a mere good-night, so lightly spoken, that it made no place for itself in his memory. He woke the morning after to find flowers on his pillow, a bunch of Japanese anemones, tied to a note in Doris's handwriting, that bid him look after her garden while she was gone. It is to be feared that after the first fortnight he rendered but a fitful obedience to her request, thinking more of the sea for which her eyes promised to remain an emblem. Before long, Marcia was to be found taking up his unfulfilled trust and keeping to reality things which under his handling THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS loi tended so soon to become a dream. By no word would she jver bring herself to admit the fondness of which her drudgery gave token ; she regarded it as an unruly affection, for she could never entirely rid her- self of a jealousy for preference in the heart where Tristram held first place : though with her, too, love of Tristram came first To console herself, she was keen to claim a rival ownership. "Aunt Doris belongs to Trampy," she explained to her governess one day; ••Mother belongs to me." For ideal content she must have all three as her belongings. Following upon the Doris regime came that of Miss Julia Gavney, of which there is in the beginning less to ta told. The children were now more with their governess, whose daily comings and goings were changed into residence wh* n Doris was no longer at hand to take charge of their leisure. Winter settled down, and brought with it discontent to both, but especially to Tristram. Letters from Doris, full of the South and sunshine, came to cheer them at intervals through a penitential season. With- out a companion who could go at the stretch they wished, and safely conduct their energies to exhaustion, there was no doubt the children ran into mischief; or[ to be exact, one ran, and one, out of loyalty, followed. Tristram measured out his miles by the rod that sought to rule him. "Let's invent something!" he would say, not meaning the invention to be altogether innocent: and would collect his thoughts for some doing more scatter-brained than that for which he had last been punished. Miss Gavney reflected adversely on a supervision which could have allowed the boy to get so out of hand. There was discontent all round. Tristram also found a subtle change taking place in Marcia : her loyalty to him grew strained when she saw him plunging into escapades merely that he might tot A MODERN ANTAEUS make himself a spectacle distressing to the authorit)' at home. Not all at once, but gradually, he discovered under all her staunchness that she harboured dis- approval of his doings; at times she stuck her heels dead into the ground, refusing to join his vagrancies. One day, hearing that ice boi ., on the smaller of the two ponds in the Hill-Alwyn woods, he proposed forthwith to go skating. The promise had been given them of a free day so soon as the ice should prove safe enough. Here was the occasion; of the ice he had no doubts; of immediate permission he had : better, he thought, to go first and find out afterwards if full leave had been granted. « But is it safe yet ? * queried Marcia. Tristram affirmed that it was : young John Tunny had been there at hockey with other lads heavier than him- self, and the ice had borne them. "Who let them in there, though?" she asked. "Nobody. They were chevied off by the bailiff; but we'd go to the lodge and get leave." Marcia said : " I don't think we were meant to go on to the Hill-Alwyn ponds at all." "But it's all the ice there is!" argued Tristram. " Old Grey at the mill breaks his up every morning with a punt, because he says mill-ice isn't safe." Marcia was curt « I shan't go ! " she said. •• Then I shall I " retorted the boy at once. "You'd better ask first" * I shan't do that either : Aunt Julie's cross with me this morning, and would say no, out of spite." ••Ask mother, then!" *• She's frightened of ice until if s a foot thick, and would fancy we were going to be drowned all the time. Come on 1 Miss Binning can only keep us in some other day ; and it may be all gone by then." The discussion ended with Marcia going in to lessons. THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS 103 and Tristram off* by himself. He was ri^t about the ice; but got less enjoyment than he had hoped. Marcia had put an effective damper upon his morning's pleasure, merely by sitting at home and submitting her- self to stale duty's call. The bailiff came and looked at him, and asked hm.' he got in there. " I asked at the lodge," said Tristram. '• That's not enough," objected the sub-magnate ; * you should have come to me." But, as he was there, he let him stay. "If any one comes down from the House, though, you must be off," said the bailiff. " This is private: only those who have keys are supposed to come." The vicar of Little Alwyn had a key, Tristram knew ; he wondered why his father had not also. The Valley House was bigger than the Vicarage, and they were nearer neighbours. About noon Raymond Hannam, the vicar's son, turned up, and cried "Hullo!" on seeing him. He was a big lad three years Tristra i senior. Hitherto they had hardly met but in church, where they had exchanged nods and tokens of outside interests over the edges of their respective pews. The Tramp in- clined toward friendship with one who held a free pass to those solitudes of wood and water. He drew up and watched the other putting on his skates. They swung away together; Tristram's blades kept time. He dropped behind that he might see and imitate the other's action. With a big heart he shouted " I'll race you I " and shot out, just to see. " Where to ? " was demanded. " Anywhere ! " he cried. " Round the island and back ?" They raced : Tristram was easily beaten. " I'll give you a start," said Raymond. Tristram was too proud to take all that was offered him. They raced I04 A MODERN ANTAEUS Jgjln ; toward the end it was neck and neck fora whOe: Tristram was just beaten. Jl !J!!i; i****,^^ yo» >»««> J««»ing ? " young Hannam enquired in a friendly way. 1^ Last year," answered Tristram, " Not half bad I " commented the other. « Youll do I " Finding himself approved, the Tramp said,"My i^unt Doris teught me ; she Uught Marcia, toa She could beat you, she could I " Raymond refrained from direct contradiction. "Can she do this?" he queried, and executed a flourish. There's nothing she can't do I" declared Tristram stoutly. •• Oh, that's all nonsense f » retorted the other : « a man can always do more than a woman can." This was news to Tnstram ; he contested the point doggedly, and was left unconvmced. The boys glided into a quick liking for each other's society as their feet buzzed up and down those clear sohtudes of frost, where thwarted reflections of hoar beechwood lay shadowing the crusted surface like dryad- ghosts hankering for a dip. Raymond Hannam had brought sandwiches, and offered a share to Tristram improvident in his truancy. They sat down on the island to eat Overhead the Tramp spied a solitary heron s nest ; Raymond said he had seen the youne ones. "In the summer," he explained, "I come here then to swim. I can't do that next year though; not t^l ttler?" '"''"'^"- ' '''" "'« * P""»<= Tristram said : « What are they like ? " "Schools?" queried Raymond. "No," corrected Tristram. "Herons, I meant: young ones like those you saw." The other only remembered that they had feathen, THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS 105 and were much like the older birds; he could give no nearer description. About big schools he had much more to say. There were more games there, more Urks, more fighting than in smaller schools. Rowing and swimming were what he liked best He talked as if the brink of the world were before him : just a jump and he would be in it Tristram thought him a wonderfully fine fellow ; three years' seniority made him almost grown up in the small boy's eyta. At parting Raymond asked whether he was for coming again another day. Tristram answered : •• Yes, to-morrow, if theyll let me out I ran away from lessons to come here," he ex- plained, and was not the worse thought of for that He came home famished, just before dark, and received the discipline of bed and dry fare, as a natural wind-up to the experiences of the day. Marcia stole up to him after dark, and snuggling under an eider-down from the cold, heard him loud in the praises of his new friend. "He's ever sc big and strong," cried the boy ecstatically. " He could knock down a man easily. He calls me Tramp, and he says I'm to call him Ray ; and he's coming here, too, and I'm to go and see him. I say, Marcia, you will like him! You'll come to- morrow, won't you? Can't he skate, too! What did Miss Binning say when she found I was gone?" " She asked where you were." " And what did you say ? " « I said I didn't know. I didn't— not just then ; and she never thought of asking where you were going to so I hadn't to say that" ' Marcia, it may be gathered from this, was becoming truthful. As a growing-pain affecting her speech, or a sense of tidiness attaching to facts instead of to things, she accepted it with a sort of pride. It sprang not so much out of any instinct or moral notion, as out of 106 A MODERN ANTAEUS Klf^onsciouineu ; the told the truth to ntisfy henelf,— not in the least because she felt that she owed It to othe people. Probably we derive most of our virtues froi i quite unvirtuous motives to begin with, till we hear the world applauding them as good v^aallties. Marcia started on a good honest home-brew of self-applause. Tristram's truthfulness went on dilferent lines. He would tell the truth with uncalculating candour, so long as he was not challenged for it ; any attempt to hector him into an admission against his will, produced dogg«jd silence. His only reason for not lying was that lying was generally mean; he would be evasive to Mcure freedom, never to escape punishment "That boy of yours has a devil I" said Miss Julia Gavney with becoming conviction to his father one night, when Mrs Gavney's retirement had left them alone. She had her reasons for putting off the recital till Anna was out of the way ; for without any intention to misstate the facts, c:m\il not dissociate them from a personal grievance,— a reason w../ the whole truth of the tale w«e hardly to be le-med by the reader, if it were left to her telling. Even the historian sUtes the case with a certain bias. The affair was a very simple one. Julia had left a sixpence on some packages which awaited the carrier and on her return the money was missing. Tristram had been seen to go into the room, and owned, when charged to haying gone out by the window. The evidence was sufficient for a lady of hasty logic, whose mind was always at jangle like a bunch of keys, over the details of her energetic housekeeping. To her his absence meant flight; catching sight of him at a distance she went after him at a hot run as though he were an escaping convict: collared him, and cried, "Give me back that sixpence, at once I " Tristram wished to know what sixpence. THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS 107 She f hook him. saying, " Give It me I If you don't, I turn out your pockets i " The boy kicked against the violation of Ms person, till overpowered by superior force. Many absurd things tumbled into the light of day: nothing that mattered; but the exposure of them roused him to fury. Along with them came a few coppers, but no sixpence ; nor did any linings or comers reveal him the culprit Julia Gavne/s remedy was to take the coppers in present payment for the sixpence. Tristram's was to rush to his mother and declare that his Aunt Julia had been robbing him. She came on his heels and delivered her own version of the affair. Anna, with her natural conciliatoriness of speech, slipped into wisdom by mere accident " But, my dear boy, have you really taken it ? " she asked. " No, mother, of course not I " said the boy in a tone of high H.isdain. And to the "Why then?" of further enquiry, replied, " She never even asked me ! ** Lliss Gavney was amazed at Anna's weakness of mind when she heard herself invited to make a wider search after the missing coin. But, sure enough, when she lifted the top parcel again from the pile, the thing dropped out o' a fold in the brown paper, under w'lich it had sltppeii ; a dhiouement which cleared Tristram altogether of the charge, and left her looking a little foolish. Mrs Gavney had a soft triumph over her sister-in- law, and let it show as she kissed the boy's still flu led and angry face. To Julia, the offence of his innocence was greater than his guilt would have been ; its effect was to undermine her authority. " It is a pity Tristram so much dislikes telling th*? truth, that it has to be dragged out of him 1 " was t e way in which she covered her retreat H f 108 A MODERN ANTAEUS The incident augured ill for their future relations: It showed clear to her view the devil of opposition that was ni the boy's nature. She had the faculty, it ap- peared, for calling it out. ^ ^^?5''f^^°'''* ^*^"^y ^^^y thought that the affair proved Tristram to be ripe for heavier tutorial discipline : and suggested that in the coming summer term he would be old enough to enter as a day-boy the Fnars-gate School at Bembridge. As a result of their consultation the Tramp found Latin added to his daily tasks, and when told the reason, could only regret that his years had kept him behind, and that I^fore he feft "if ** ^^°°^' ^*y™^"'* "^"na™ wo"W have Of his new friend he spoke constantly to Marcia, and always with applause. Once or twice she had the opportunity of seeing him when he came up to the Va ley House to carry Tristram off on some expedition, or to find sport with him on the grounds. ShVjoined vigorously m their games when invited to, and found it quite easy to dislike the new-comer for a way he had of saymg " That's jolly good for a girl I " about^hings she hid T\T.rV' '^"'''""^' ^' ^^^ ^ phrase «he had taught the Tramp not to use. Doris, too. had su^rioSy '" ^^^ knowledge of masculine Seeing clearly that influences of separation were at cwL^-r';, ''"'^' ""^ ^"^^^^'"' Marcia chose characteristically to put the blame of it all on others and take none on herself. She could not look in and t^lr w'^t:?^ ^^'^ *''° ^* ^°'^' ""^°»"& the tie of their old ,boon-companionship. not to be knit again till present phases in both should be past One of the first unsettlings of life, which, looking Uck. we see to have modified so much our apprecia! tion of It as a thing merely of weathers and seai,ns, is THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS 109 the growth of the moral sense. To the animal in us it is a calamity; to the spiritual at first but a doubtful benefit The moral sense seldom makes us better at the first infection; only more conscious of the evil that is in us, and a little more disagreeable to our neighbours than we were before. As a rule, it is the crirl who stumbles into it first, obeying the new order with less resistance than her brother in affliction. The (misfortune is hers as well as his; she begins to feel deserted, not knowing why; unconscious that she herself has moved, she sees that she is estranged from his side. Hitherto she has been his rib and very good comrade ; the half-skirting about her limbs has been a mere accident, carrying with it no present significance. Within that symbol of coming doom, the tomboy has gambolled at large, unabashed and undefiant, having nothing to be ashamed of or to dread. Alas! Greek Atalanta becomes Eve again ; and stooping to take up the apples of her maiden sex, finds she may run no more wi!:h the same spirit A lamentable self-conscious- ness hampers her actions; she consults a self within herself of which she has hitherto been ignorant, and as a whole companion is done for. So, until the youth also has gone through that corresponding state of complexity out of which adolescence has to fret its way, she being bound, he still free, they come naturally to loggerheads, knock and strike sparks, and start asunder, wondering sullenly at the opposition that has come on them. And let her take her share of the knocks as penitentially as she may, he will not value her the better for meekness where incompatibility is the offence. Instead of a support she becomes a flaw in that structure of concealment, which youth with the most moral future before it will rear against the over-reachings of authority. Under such circumstances it is quite likely that the girl, though morally the aggressor, suffers more, if "0 A MODERN ANTAEUS nor is she consoled that conscience is on her side. Here is the moment in the lives of young Adam and Eve when the gods still deal out poetic justice ; Z Tc woman suffers for her importation of the interrogative no e of conscience into youth's Eden of the appetiL. ^Ve were twins once," Tristram had said on one Tte^r H'S'm'"'i^^^^*^' ^^"^ "'^'"^^ «^tchTng o^ a term which had been fictitiously applied to them when their two heads were found on a level. For a much Aef h?^'' ^^^IP'^y^'^^J gro^h had sent him ahead, tiiey had remained twins in effect Now tiie moral law deaded for them Uiat it was no longer to be. Marc^ with the encumbrance of spirit adding itself to flesh, was' for tiie time outgrowing him; she no longer gave to his mmd's eye pictures of the world ns it ought to be. When she stood up one day before the bar of enquiry hke an uprooted mandrake of the eartii her miment streaming pellets of soil, she confessed T;nce what she had been doing. « IVe been burying myself a least. Tristram did it ; I asked him to." Alsf sSd plain home-truths over the wettings and tearings of her frocks. It got itself wet." and, « It came tom.^ were no longer terms to satisfy her ear for detail Conscientbut ness never made her a tell-tale; all the more did 1^ as a moral deterrent on Tristram. Her betravals of herself disheartened him; they made his o^n Secy seem craven. After one or two despairing .ff^Z recover her as an accomplice, his spirit forsook her and Marcia buried her foriom life in much book-reading and punished him by the accuracy of her le^5 lessons, against which he cut but a^poor figure. M^ ftr'buTof' "^^'u'' "'"^^'^ ^ dfterioratin" hJ^ '° '""'^^ *^ appeared. Hitherto there hv ^K ?u T""^" ^^'"P^^* b^t^^n the two by which they had kept each other's shortcom „^' THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS in in countenance: they had only allowed themselves to do so much, or so much; to be word-perfect was counted by them as uppishness. Thus had the rigours of discipline fallen more mildly across backs that were true yoke-fellows. Marcia's morals wrought havoc in that old code of theirs. Tristram resisted the change by doing rather worse. Thus it came about that war simmered between them, and for his scrapes Tristram chose loneliness. If occasionally, in his search for them, honest accident overtook him, he no longer had an eye-witness at hand to help him out in a good cause; and he found to his surprise that, singly, he bore a reputation for untruth- rilness. One day some error of judgment made from the high bird's-eye-view of authority, had ordered him to a tea of dry bread without butter or jam. The jam chanced to be a particular one; he reached out his hand for it, reasserting his innocence. Restrained by the presiding power, he cast his bread to float in the contents of his tea-cup : though sopped food was distasteful to him, he would not eat dry bread, not for all the thunders that were! It did not mollify him in the least that Marcia, sitting opposite, w as joining herself to his cause in this instance by meekly foregoing the syrupy object of his desires, lest comparison should the more inflame his mind. Her kind self-denial only irritated him; with savage contrariness he remarked : " Why don't you have any jam ? Nobody h z told lies about ^w< / Go on ! Eat your own and my share as well ! I give it you ; nobody else has a rig^'t to it ! " This defiant gift of his rights he would at least make, even under the nose of Miss Binning's authority. But Marcia remained a creature of mean spirit, a deserter : she sat and made no sign, lifting up dry mouthfuls. lit A MODERN ANTAEUS fr.^ *^™^ J''*" ""T *'"**'^* '*» ^-teh the soppy fragments of his own bread being spooned out of Ws matted to him : his tea returned to him crumby and c«>l from much spiUing. and dry bread was again^lettf^^' tZ K m'"^ "r "^^^^'^^ ^^ ^^'"^t food in that fonn he would pensh rather than own to being hungry^. In the free hour following the conclusion of the meal Maraa roaming down the pantry passage, sighted Tnstram. a figure of guilt, fleeing out of a rfc;ss ft h« idea of detecting crime, led her to pursuit. She caught h.m up as he was wrestling with the spring-door to o^n It The Tramp with a squeal of rage huddled himself hiV^at * *'°™'""' ''°''*""^ '°"*' P"'^ ""''^'' ^^ ^*P °^ h„?r/'^'!'V^''^*;? '^*'"* ^'y ' '^*''«* ^^^<1 her tongue but did not loose him. "What iiave you there?" she asked, when the coast was clear. "You mustn't look, Marcia!" he protested; "it's a secret ! Cn^^ '^f'^'^'^. honourably, though not convinced. Compunction seized Tristram; such generous dealing forced him to forego deceitful secrecy. He sat up dis- closing a pot of the identical jam of which he had been robbed at tea-time, already ravished of its covering and indented by tell-tale spoon marks. Tristram had been remedying the injustice of the authorities by a loray on his own account. Marcia was moved by his voluntary self-betrayal but was none the less concerned at the revelation The moral sense made her say : « Tris, you've been stealing it I You must put it back "No," he protested; "it wasn't fair to do me out of my jam I And besides." he added. « I've begun it now." THE AFFLICTION OF MORALS ,13 There was decided satisfaction in that ; the Rubicon had been crossed. In the face of that, let moral quest? on- mgs hide a diminished head. A bright idea struck him : either"''*' Proposed, "you had none at tea Marcia pressed refusing lips over a mouth that watered. There was, she .-.aw, a plain difficulty over the restitution of the theft; out not the less was what he proposed unjustifiable to her conscience TaLT^^I *°/.r ^^"^ J*™ ^°' ™y *«*'" '"s^ted il^w ""^ 'i "^^ ^^'^ *° ^"'^^^ »t' a wAo/e pot wou dn t be missed ; nobody is likely to think of count- ing tnem. It was wicked gospel truth. But Marcia's feminine soul had acquired a dignity lacking to the male. You ought not to have done it!" she declared. Trampy dear, can't you smooth it down, and put it back again?" ' *^ ' " Tristram was dogged on that point; rather would he R^ 1 1 I f'^^ r^f remainder, and be found out. But It was half ruefully, at last, that he sat down in a retired spot to oispose wholescle of the thing he could not restore entire. Marcia eyed him remorselessly the whole time; and ^e jam tasted very ill. She even followed him to see how he got rid of the empty jar. Her doing so made that oart of his task doubly distasteful ; for cleariy it was vond his rights to dispose of the jam-pot: his cia d not extend beyond its contents R'- nng it conspicuously into the dust-heap, he turned upon her resentfully. " Now, go and tell I " he sneered. Giris are all sneaks ! " He knew the statement to be untrue, but to set injustice agamst injustice relieved his feelings. After sulking for the rest of the evening as in duty bound, he was for r^arding the incident as closed. H "4 A MODERN ANTAEUS He was mistaken. It was not until tea-time the next day that the moral sense b^an to unmask the full aspect of its tyranny. For three weeks from that date, with faithful r^ularity, Marcia puzzled Miss Binning, and admonished her brother by refusing jam to her tea. Tristram took it all the more, in large helpings, as fodder to his wrath, hoping by such callous defiance to rouse her; but he made no impression. To Miss Binning, who sought a private explanation, she said, " Trampy was unfairly punished last week ; that's why ! " A re- mark which made Miss Binning believe that she saw the true culprit now before her, doing penance in a fashion of her own choosing. Marcia was let alone to complete it She was angelically sweet-tempered through it all, going out of her way to show Tristram that she bore him no grudge, that this merely was duty. She was indeed very sorry for him, and for herself too, while the three weeks lasted. Tristram watched her, trying to make out what new creature was this ; the downright tyranny of the experi- ment was what chiefly struck his mind. And while his brain mazed, he questioned within his rankled bosom how a girl could so smile and smile, and yet be a villain 1 CHAPTER XI IN WHICH A GENTLE CHARACTER DISAPPEARS FROM THE STORY CPRING was again showing bright edges of green the children s feet grew alive with memories of her as f:Zl^^'' ''^ '°^^ ^"^^«^ ^^^ 'o t^e Places^f To Tristram they almost cried her name An epistolary fervour seized him; he seemed for a' whole winter to have forgotten her. Now he pestered hs mother to send to her the great handfuls of wild -flowers he brought home: they were all for his Aunt DorT flowlrs' '""' '^^"'^ '"^ '^''^' ^^^ ~"ld be no A few specimens his mother consented to slip between the pages of her correspondence; but such things as wood-anemones were too perishable for ^:^:tL^-i^' -'-'^ ^° -^ -<^^^ Doris, hearing of the boy's floral mood, sent to enquire after her own garden. He fell to energetic upS: appearing. He even probed beneath the surface to sov tiie whereabouts of late comers; many a tend^ g.^^ nose got frost-nipped in consequence ^ One day he drove over with his mother to Little Uf 110 A MODERN ANTAEUS • f Towberry, where certain matters required to be arranged for its absent mistress, and fell into a sort of awe over the oppression of the shut-up house, once so full of life. The caretaker opened shutters to let in light; and while Mrs Gavney turned over the contents of carefully arranged drawers, Tristram looked out on a desolate garden. "Why does nobody do anything to this garden?" he asked. •• Doesn't Auntie Dorrie mean ever to come back here?" His mother had just got her hand on one of the things she sought " Come here, Tristram I " she called to him. "This is for you." She held out a little miniature ; in it were blue eyes and a face he knew. "Oh!" he cried, looking, "that is Auntie Dorrie, I know!" and realising he was to be its possessor, fell into extravagant love for it during the rest of the day. His mother studied him in gentle perplexity, puzzled at the wild tenderness which had broken out of his roughened surface. She sent word of it to Doris. " Ah ! " wrote that dear latly out of her fast banish- ment, " if I could be given one selfish wish now, it would be to see you again, and him ! Dear, I write it down only the more to forbid it : you must not come ! (let good news of your health come instead !), and the other thing is out of the question. Besides I am sure that I am much better, so the need can wait." In a later letter she asked that out of her own plot of garden Tristram should send her one gathering of its spring-beauties as a proof of his stewardship. May was beginning then, and letters were no longer in her own handwriting. The letter arrived late one evening; Tristram had the message when he went in to say good-night to his parents. His mother kissed him with a troubled A CHARACTER DISAPPEARS 117 countenance as she told him. "To-morrow, dear,- she ■aid. It was then dark; but the boy was in a fever to be off at once into the garden, and picV his flowers ready for the first morning post It seemed to him an act of unfaithfulness to postpone fulfilment of the request M« Gavney whispered, " Do as I say. dear ; to-morrow will be time enough." And he went She came up to his room just as he was getting into bed, and asked: "Tristram, have you said your " Oh yes, I think so !" said the boy doubtfully, with one leg out He was quite willing to do them again to make sure. ^ Did he pray, she asked him, for his Aunt Doris ? Oh yes, I do, mother," he said ; "always for her." &he left him then, saying no more. A quarter of an k!J'k!*-!' J?*""'* *^"* *"*° ^^ "«™ "»d got on to the "It isl Mother told me; and I know ifs true from the way she said it" " How did she say it ? " could ^n. ^*«'\«hook herself for an explanation she tn.in° ^'""^ ^ ^^°°"y conviction pervaded her that "111 meant very ill ; she did not spare to speak her thoughts to him. She talked into pitch darknSs hS voice over his head seemed to move^o and fro ifa' ^n dread that there was reason in what she uttered, only he wished and wished that she would leave off speiking of Jt^ to argue m the dark was like kicking again'Tt a bfank J^^^'^tK^'"' "°^^' ''™ g°'"& back to bed agam. Good-mght, Tramp." They exchanged kisses. •5 "« A MODERN ANTAEUS !a?T °^ unreasoning remorse over the days when mindfulness of Doris and the service due to L hS been put aside or forgotten. «» o"« «> Her had In the middle of the night Marcia, a heavy sleeoer g-^ half awake with a belief that she saw T^tram^' her s.de. clothed and standing, a dim figure bT^" her ."ind ir/^::^ ^'l* '^ ^'^ «^' did nS^nde" stand She turned afresh, cheek to pillow and lost consciousness; then starting suddenly\w^e lookS up to see sure enough that the d^h which had filled and broken his night's rest Day dawned gloomy; he woke late and found that the desire had worn itself out; it lay in him now ^Si teforTfan " '^r'T '"^ '° ^ ^°"*- Neverthel^s ^fn !i w^ '?'*""*^ ^' ^^ °"* °^ '^^ house to find a Ufi i!^ blowmg over the ground where there had of late been raia Across the borders of Doris's garden flowers, and wondered if they could be his own. Solitaiy ^fdt^at that chUl gathering, a Dante missing hb Close on the breakfast hour he returned from his task, beanng a double handful of flowers: Marcia met A CHARACTER DISAPPEARS 119 him with a strange face. Something of a hush had Uken hold of the establishment She looked at the flowers, then at him. "No, no, Trampyl" she said; "mother mustn't see them I "and told him in a quick whisper the news that had just come Into the house of grief not many hours old. His hands became insensible of what they held. Staring at her for an amazed moment with a stunned sense of shame, he tried to believe that he had heard foolishly something not true ; yet did not dare to ask for it to be repeated to him. Marcia told him that the news had come by telegram; their mother was expecting it; she held it for a long time unopened, weeping bitterly. Tristram remembered to have seen the messenger not many minutes ago, returning down the drive; and with the prosaic vision presented, the reality darted into him like a wound into the flesh. He spun round, letting the flowers fall in a heap, and raced out into the garden. Marcia saw him at top speed, disappearing down the field under the terrace ; and the practical thought that he was gone without his breakfast crossed her mind to call up troubled pity for him, and remained when long hours brought no sign of his return. In the afternoon she watched for him out of an upper window, and spied him at last creeping into the stables by a back way. She found him in the dark of the small granary, munching at a handful of com. "Tris," she said, "mother has been wanting to know where you are." « Tell her I am here I » mumbled the boy. ** But she wants you. I think she's ill." "How ill? "he asked. spea^s?^^ '*°'^ ^" **" ^^^ ' ^ '^''"'' ^"""^ • '^^ ^^'^^y "What time is it?" enquired Tristram. She told nim. i i »«> A MODERN ANTAEUS A few minutes later there wa. a rub at Mr. Gavney". -Mother?- y'^'*^ "My boy." T^ two ha^ fell to an embrace on the same oiUow yJa, no, my dear, not yet" "Where are you iU, then ?" •I won't talk!" he said; and thev lav .«„. f '4r.;:j^^ :^r^^i ix^-; ""^ - long « , c^„„^^, l:^ J^^ ~ P-.y ! jnd^I r«n«nber the first tin,e d» was p„. i„" t; ♦u ^ "» "cr g».ei Dons seemed to smile At u^ ^nhV^dis.Arj:r"??eTlf- motterl" and still found much to «;: "" ""^ to ease him of the stiin, " I am S dtS"^e' '"J* '^ much b«.er,.. and was su.p "^"rfintir^- ^„ Put down your hands now; they must te ""tnmg. boon Anna found that she had him bat ill- nd A CHARACTER DISAPPEARS lai "lecp in her arms; and all her heart went motherly which had crept to her for comfort of ito want* ♦« K- "*r' *j™°f'!«'' *o understand him," she thought to herself and with that grew consoled over all the aspects of his troublesomcness. She lay quite out of Chr* ^i'k ^^"^^ '" ^" «*^"'^*^ P"^« ^y »»»« feeling !mll!f ! **". ?" **7 ^^"^ "°' ^"•^"S'^"- The thought proof that Dons could be a little wrong. A H CHAPTER XII SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS JN the life Of childhood Earth re-acts her stoty ; there „ ^^ }^ °*^ ^^'^ *^^*'^°n becomes told again in mall, and eads on to a ve^^ similar end. Creation n L"Z?r. '""t "^"; ^" interrogating mind, face o face with the tree whose fruit it is peril for him to taste of; and with the fall that follows, creation proper may tt'^fLh ^r '".'''' '"^ ^^"'"^^^■°"' the probl?^-pTa^ the fabrication of a single species, as opposed to the consenting movement of a whole order, to have begun TJuk!! r ~"^ '° * P°'"t •" the life of manXre childhood, the natural creation, is done for. anlth^ artificial recipe of civilisation takes its place: when the pots which hands, not Nature's, have prepared Or we may make the parable more personal* to the mdmdual and see in childhood once agkin the form ng of the first man. Taken up out of common earth, he re! cerv« m his nostrils breath already sweet with scents of quickening for his soul. The doors of his being sway freely to the draughts of Heaven; lai^e natu^Hn^ spirations predominate in the stir.abou?of hT Wo^ Memory looking back, thereafter has the burden^f o?h";:f •'^1'^''''^^" "^^^'""^ ^«" -«nt to the balance of his being than when civilisation in him was comple^ Surely^ was better for his mere happiness when e^ SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS .23 thing in Nature had its own broad meaning, unassociated with man's sad right of usufruct ; when sheep in the fields did not stand for meat, nor grass for fodder, nor roads for the dull jointing of trade, nor women for travail, nor men for labour, but all were alike useless and wonderful things, to be enjoyed as the uninstructed senses might direct; when desire held up a cup to catch the whole reflection of the sun, and drank, not wine, but the light and warmth of Heaven. Your average man-child gets an abrupt addition to his first principles of knowledge when he goes forth from his home to become one in the educational community. Caught and set down in no garden, but a walled town, he stands before the Tree of Knowledge under a new law; and, "Thou shalt eat of it!" is now the word of command. That is well enough ; as logical followers of Adam, since we aim not to reverse his record, we do rightly to exalt his deed and eat of the same damnation. But time has caused the Tree to throw out rank seedlings, and the city of Wisdom whose high places it crowns has its slums also— outskirts which lie to be crossed by the infarer. And is it not amazing, if you thmk of it, that we are content to let the slums give to the raw citizen his first dip into new knowledge, that we let him run loose into by-ways where the gutter is almost the only footpath to walk in ? And meanwhile the human parent, smug worshipper of the conventional sanctities, stands like an ostrich, buiying an obtuse head from all avoidable recognition of consequences. The fact is but stated here as a short means to history, where unattractive ground has to be crossed over : a reminder in brief of how in the first years of schooling the Devil holds his confirmation classes, so that, if you become not his converts henceforth, it is not his fault nor the fault of your sponsors. At least he makes sure that youth shall no longer be the same thing ; for here a il tH A MODERN ANTAEUS line, sharp as the furrow of a sacrificial knife, s drawn over the human body ; and at a blow the life of childhood IS ended. The reader knows by now that it is no life of a saint we are recording. In Tristram's nature influences of good and bad were for ever at touch and go. As the arrow must be free on the string that sends it, so with h,m for a motion to have weight it was essential that he should be at liberty to fly. I„ this new Antaeus the instinct of the spiritual law is not come at by fasting and ho^ obedience; and if you find him ever on his knees, tis as the half-way sign of a grace in him whose whole aim is a full-length roll on the tawny clay of mother-earth. ^ ^ The beginning of autumn saw Tristram entered as a day-scholar at the Friars-gate school of Bembridge, with a two miles stretch of limb morning and evening to make an acceptable sandwich of the food there forced upon his brain. He went believing he would like better than anything the social contact of his own kind which school promised him; but in the event he found himself lonelier with a crowd than with a Friars-gate, as then constituted, was a foundati of mixed condition and history, a compromise between claims deriving from an old pious endowment of pre- reformation times, and the acquisitiveness which marks m educational matters the upper middle classes of our own day; for the benefits of the institution had been argely transferred to a class higher in the social scale than the one which the charitable founder had originally in view. The school still existed by right of an ancienT charter which secured twenty scholarships to sons of the Bembridge townspeople: it prospered on more mod ., lines as a proprietary boarding-house, where the sons of gentry were trained for a University career. A SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 125 certain social difference, in consequence, marked these two constituent bodies of the school ; there was to some extent also a separation of interests. As a day-boy, Tristram found himself one of a race somewhat looked down on by those whose presence gave the school its standing, but who, as regards the original mtention of the founders, were interlopers. Many names were bandied between the two parties, expres- sive ofa continuous small friction, which, not generally amounting to much, was never quite absent The daily arrivals from the outer worid were scornfully reminded of the plebeian dust they bore about them by the appellation of 'Door-mats.' They responded with an elegant feat in tu quoque by naming as 'Bed-brats' those who slept on the premises. Epithets, first fired m mutual derision by opposing wits of one generation, stuck and became the common phraseology of school- life; in time these produced playful variations, coming in pairs for the most part, the result of repartee. Thus the 'Doorers' was a hit which produced the 'Snorers' as a more successful counterstroke on the day-boy side. The 'Dormers' and the 'Attics' were paler comparisons, lacking in contrast of meanine- while the 'Dormice' and the ' Bedouins ' made a sh^i^ turn-over of the significance with which this war of words had started. They are set down here merely that, m use hereafter, they may be understood at their poor native worth— the efforts of crude wit in a race which, starting from Shakespeare himself, has always had more difficulty in making a tolerable play on language, than in turning it to humorous extravagance. Shakespeare and your average school-boy pun very much on a par. At the date of Tristram's coming to Friars-gate the schools fortunes were under the direction of one who held the old-fashioned claim to tutorial office ofa Doctor's i 126 A MODERN ANTAEUS degree in Divinity. Without the 'Doctor* his name Coney, made an insufficient fittir •- passive presence wherem weight and dignity stood ponderously balanced The nickname applied to him by his scholars behind his back had also been inadequate, but that its double meaning saved it ; for ' Beak,' applied as it undoubtedly had been m the first instance to his chief facial character- istic, bore also a magisterial significance; and the magistenal side of him was not lost upon those who came under his tutelage. It had made the school what It was. He was a man presenting that marble majesty of front which provokes the irreverent from a distance to utter high ridicule, but is formidable when confronted Only once in each month was the school able to vent before his face any whisper of the disrespect it strove hard to cherish. The whisper was in fact a roar ; for to that grew the dull perfunctory mumblings of recponse when, at evening prayer in the school^hapel upon each twentieth day, the red-letter verse of the whole psalter came to be recited. « And so are the stony rocks for the conies, was the cry which would then rise in crescendo off three-score rebellious tongues, and straightway the hubbub would die down again till another month should renew to their lips that delirious draught of an inspired utterance. Th2 Doctor stood with an unmoved face while that safety-valve uttered its steam in outrageous attack upon his ears ; causing thereby very much debate whether he was aware at all of the provocation hurled at him Stony rt>ck' was indeed his refuge; behind that marble none could guess whether lay dark ire or amuse- ment at the paltry satisfaction of the herd. Youn^ Coney who held the difficult position of eldest son to his father and school-fellow to those who felt his father's sway, assured curious enquirers that he did not know his parent's mind on the subject But it was to that SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 127 youth's credit that he was no filterer of news through his double relationship to tutor and tutored ; and as he had earned an honourable name for carrying no tales out of school, so too, maybe was it his rule to bring none in. His school-fellows, even when mischief was a-foot, could see undisnriyed tlie Doctor walking with his hand on his son's shoulder, and be without suspicion of foul-play or countermine. Moreover, in class he had the virtue of being quite as much afraid of the Beak m his father as any of the others. The sight of Tom Coney trembling like the rest of them over his stumbles in construe, gave the school an added sense of respect towards a power whose affection never showed itself through fp.vour; and though it could not be doubted that the Doctor was a despot by nature, and something of a bully, a sharp assault on his central dignity was needed to make him unfair or vindictive in the penalties he imposed. If hereafter we see him and our hero at loggerheads, it will be because the latter went wilfully to the attack, with his eyes well open : nor is the reader to think that records of hair-brained adventure how- ever moving, are set do^ here to throw any colour of virtue over proceedings in themselves doubtful It is the picturesque and not the moral side of things which must commend itself to the historian of Tristram's youth whereof movement was the most essential characteristic -movement carrying with it its proper complement of occasional immobility, which in the moral category would have to be prejudiced under the term obstinacy And If out of a non-moral presentment a moral is sought to this story, I say that, over every donkey's back amongst us morals hang in pairs like panniers; and that when the weight of .3m has broken it fo; him you shall have the two to choose from, to find in which of theni lay the last straw that caused his overthrow But for the present Tristram's life piles its record less "8 A MODERN ANTAEUS in Ae restraint of his school-hours than in the loosenings of h,s vacations. The Doctor's verdict on him at tte !n^lv >" T.r" '^' ""* ^^ » "»'"d. but fails to apply It, and the reports of his class-masters carried the same accusation. No definite charge of idleness was made against him ; one of the most lenient of his in- structors put the case sympathetically: « If a window is Tf ./" ?7°?™ '^^*''* ^^ '' *' ^'■'^' *»" brain flies out of It And the remark gave just the right colour to his lack of industry. The end of term was like a window set open to him: on the last day he raced home in rapturous spmts, and seemed quite pleased with himself- merely to have endured through the first three months of his schooling seemed to him an achievement almost for boasting. * Two days later young Raymond Hannam was also home again at Little Alwyn. Tristram found him loud in ptaise of his new school; and it seemed to matter little to his pride that he, too, was near the bottom of his class. The difference between the two boys lay in u' ^^l "^^^'^^ ^^ '^'^"'P ^^^^d nothing for the school-hfe from which holiday gave him an escape, Rayniond found m it all that he had longed for Hfe preached its joys to a heart that showed little wish'to be converted. " I'd like to be wherever you are. Ray," said Tristram, busy twmmg new heart-strings, "but there isn't much else about it I think I'd care for." He hinted a distaste for the companionship of his own kind ; and of school- games said he did not care for them. It was an odd outcome, for the Ixyy had tremendous ener^ and animal spirits. He had been through his fii^t fight and rather liked it; though he was in doubt whether he had lost or won. " We got tired and left off" he said, m telling Raymond. « I offered to go on agai'n next day, but we forgot aU about it" So it would ^m SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 129 he and his antagonist had fought for the mere mood . ^r*",.^**^^^^- "«a"n& of it, his friend began' teachmg him to box, that he might «lick any fellow of his own size." It was Ra/s idea that as a good fighter he would become popular and like his school-life better Yet, m the event, Tristram fought but one other battle before he left Bembridge. The two boys became inseparable. Marcia was allowed to hear of doings in which she had less and less of a part When at last she went to share the schooling of some cousins at their own home, the separation of her life from Tristram's would have been almost complete, had not ruth and inclination then turned him into a correspondent In absence, his heart returned to her • and she found herself on paper taken back into his con-' fidence m a way that recalled the old days: for with scrapes that had already happened she could safely be trusted ; nor was it her trick to preach when she wrote back to him. Thus, she learned astonishing things that Tu' !;?'l^ *^ ^'' °^ ^^ «^^^^«' ^nd had a map of his life that to them was so much unknown country. Kaymond s flag flew over most of it That first term and the holidays following were typical of a good many that came after. In the summer vaca- tion It became necessary to order Tristram to be at home for at least one meal a day, besides breakfast The injunction followed Miss Julia Gavney's discovery that It was not at the Vicarage that her nephew made up for meals missed at home. Mr Hannam washed his hands in innocency as to the general whereabouts of the boys ramblmgs. « I don't know where they go " s^'anf;;^;."''^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^"-^^^ -- ^^e;, Hil,.o ?!?;!. ^"^^"^"""^ singularly incurious. He astonished Miss Gavney by appearing to regard I ! ISO A MODERN ANTAEUS Trfatram as a sort of safe-guard to his own bigger off- spring. «*I find him a nice little fellow," he asserted under correction. "He's as troublesome as they make themr declared Miss Julia, and told an anecdote or two. The vicar's "Dear me!" was uttered in mere polite- ness, receptive of a point of view that passed straight- way out of mind. His thoughts went back to the parish matters, wherein he felt his only true responsibility. His wife had made the mistake of leaving him a widower with one boy to look after; the mistake was hers not his. He did his duty so far as the object of it came under his eye, but could hardly be expected to divert himself from his work, on account of one who showed a nice manly faculty for looking after himself He came out of his clouds to adminster a rebuke now and again, and was always gratified to find how well the boy took his occasional displays of authority. Ray- mond came to his father for extra pocket-money with a quite ingenuous confidence in their relations, and answered all questions frankly. On these grounds his father was ready to swear that he had a boy of good honest character to deal with, one without much brain, but enough for the Church, to which he destined him! If in holiday time Raymond chose the son of so advantageous a neighbour as Mr Beresford Gavney for a c-mpanion, Mr Hannam trusted that he need trouble himself no further in the matter. So long as Raymond came home of nights, he was free to go far a-field in the day-time. Thus the companionship secured extra freedom for them both. If to get far a-field was his aim, Raymond found that in this one thing the Tramp was ahead of him, and, though not aspiring to be his leade., proved himself a* bom guide. He knew the country as far a-foot as they cared to go to quite an astonishing degree. He knew SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 131 ti»e people also. Up at the Beacon Farm, he assured Raymond, there was food and a welcome for them whenever they liked to ga And it was not the only homestead to which the same hospitable truth applied "I'm going to be a farmer I" said Tristram, and when occasion offered, showed he could handle a pitchfork as to the manner bom. He could use sickle or scythe, too, and bind a sheaf He pointed out to Raymond a sheep he had helped to shear ; but had to confess he knew it by a certain scar on its side. The farmer to whom it belonged vowed it was none the worse mutton for a little blood-letting. Tristram professed himself a connoisseur in cider; at Beacon Farm there was a story against him on the point, telling how in his raw ignorance, he had been beguiled and overcome by the potent beverage, and had been carried up to bed to recover from the novel effects of his initiation into alcohol as a thirst-quencher. The farmer's offer of more cider now ever took the stereotyped form of, "And do'ant yo' spare it. Muster Tristram; yor bed be upstairs, made." This, with a waggish turn of the head, suggesting that the memoiy was worth recalling Raymond owned that his friend had cheek beyond his own when one dark night, hungry, belated, and far from home, Tristram's soft tongue got them mounted up by the coachman of a carriage returning to its stables and in the end set down to sup off dishes that came straight from the table of a country magnate. The boy had an easy faculty for getting at the sociable side of men, even of that haughty under-aristocracy, which as a rule is most unbending to those a little above it m the social scale. Nevertheless over this particular episode his conscience showed an uneasiness. He pleaded to Ray their ravenous state of hunger for an excuse, and cleared out his own and his friend's pockets in a gratuity to the butler, who had acted as 13a A MODERN ANTAEUS h ) mine host to them over his master's wine and viands. " It wouldn't have done, would it," he enquired, " to have offered help him wash-up?" The awkwardness of the final thanksgiving taught him in future to prefer yeomen and cottagers, people with whom he could feel on an equality. "Why," he wondered, "does being in the households of lords and high gentry make the serving classes less human ? " Raymond thought incongruous imitation and the high pampering of coarse grain did the mischief: an eternal aping of habits and manners that didn't belong to them. " Share a kennel with a blood-hound," said he, "and you catch his fleas, not his breed." He instanced the Hill Alwyn establish- ment — every man Jack of them with the temper and expletives of its mistress, — curses caught down from on high, and sent the rounds. Talking of curses— the alcoholic elements of speech — Raymond said, "D'you know old Haycraft?" and proposed an early excursion to the old man's domain. " He keeps ferrets," was added as an inducement ; and the morrow saw them on the confines of Randogger, where the old scamp had his abode. Of all the country lying between Hill-Alwyn and Hiddenden, north and south, Pitchley and Compton Covey, east and west, the true centre was Randogger. Many-roofed Bembridge sat apart, — only on market-days a rallying-point for all the scattered rustic community. Randogger's single roof, green and sparsely inhabited, laid the weight of its solitude with almost hourly insist- ence on the rough-grained life of the whole district One who understood the locality could judge with sufficient accuracy by the build of the homesteads and the appearance of 'heir inhabitants, in what relation they stood to the country's main feature. 'Twas a centralisation that betokened a veritable moral aloof- ness from the hurrying of the age : a stranger was a SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 133 marked man in the quiet cart-tracks which threaded these wood-ways. Randogger, for all its complexity, had a singular unity ; the eye ranging over it from higher ground saw only an impressive monotony. "Where is anything?" one might say, if in search for landmarks. Yet a closer investigation showed how life lay round it in concentric rings like the rind enclosing a tree, till the inner ring was quick with the growth and sap of the wood itself. Tree-like, it threw random seedlings of itself; or, let us say, like some great fowl with brr "d bulging from beneath its wing, whence here and there ran a straggler, recognis- able still, a fledgling of the common nest The neigh- bourhood was named after its offspring. Here and there, at the distance of a few fields, lay Pedlar's Thicket, Wooton Hatch, Rippenstow, and the Quarry Coppice • Hill-Alwyn Wood itself seemed but a lusty str^gler gone farther than the rest Tucked into a comer of this last, between it and Randogger Edge, Parson's Copse affronted the symmetry of the larger estate. It was glebeland attaching to the living of Little Alwyn, and in the days gone by had been the cause of standing feud between Parson and Squire. Those were days when Parson was a week-day sports- man, and Squire sucked liquor in curtained privacy to relieve the tedium of the Sunday's sermon. In this parish they fell to feud : the man of God was the first to take up the cudgels. The Squire, Parson averred, poked his fire and clinked his glasses when pulpit- eloquence grew wearisome to him. And would I vowed the irate magnate: he knew a good sermon when he heard it— which was seldom ; and his pew was his own property; he was not to be ousted from that He would behave there how he chose, and would apply cushions external and internal to suit his own comfort ! Week- day partnership hi the stubble was thenceforth over 134 A MODERN ANTAEUS i between them. " My pew," the Parson forthwith nick- named his bit of copse, and bagged on it more game than his due. " You poke when I preach, I poach while you preserve I " was his way of putting the case. On that text he secured a substantial revenge. They took to shooting each other's dogs; and in all ways set a strange example of Christianity for the parish to look up ta One bleak winter's day sent a blast which flared out after a brief draught the vital fire animating the body of each. It was recuided that on his death-bed the parson ate pheasant, and died two full days earlier in consequence. With their deaths the personal squabble came to an end, but a traditional coldness passed on to their successors. Now, in Lady Petwyn's day, the manorial pew stood unoccupied ; but the parson's " pew " had a tenant, and something of the old grievance was revived. Mr Theodore Hannam, the vicar, not himself a sports- man, without an intention of malice, had let the place go to a wrong occupant Haycraft now had a lease and could not be turned out While Sir Cooper Petwyn was drinking to his own riddance, there had been little game-preserving on the estate, and Haycraft's methods had not mattered. When, under bailiffs and keepers, things were set in order once more, stem eyes and com- plaint were directed against him. It was the old parson's game that he was playing. Lady Petwyn wrote of him to Mr Hannam as, "your poacher by Church established," and at length made a point of sending no game to the Vicarage. There could be no doubt she had a grievance. Haycraft had poach- ing in his blood, and by a shrewd stroke of wit the old marauder had procured a settlement for his old age which satisfied his instincts. He made his bit of wood attractive to the pheasants of the neighbouring estate, and could be heard by the keepers potting merrily at SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 135 Wrdi he had done nothing to rear. Hard words were bandied to and fro across the boundaries ; but Haycraft, for all his roughness of tongue, had an imperturbable temper, and would oflTer to sell his filchings when emptier fists were shaken at him. The vicar was brought at last to remonstrate. Hay- craft swore that he bred birds of his own. He did, to the extent of a single sitting of pheasants' eggs each year, and took so little care of them that the rats and stoats of the neighbourhood carried most of them away. On the strength of that outlay he bagged weekly through five months of the year, and sold in the market birds which had cost his neighbour much and him nothing. Over at the Vicarage it was his office to be useful twice a week as odd-jobber; the employment fitted into a knack he had of getting through a day's work without any show of energy. Look at him, you would say he was a loafer : test his muscle, you would believe he had had his day as a prize-fighter. Whatever records he held in that direction had been achieved far a-field ; now, only a wild outlandish reverie of eye told something of an adventurous life over which his lips shut fast He was never to be seen in a hurry, never in drink, never in a temper, and never in church! By comparison with many of his neighbours he could say that this was to have a good character. On the Church question, his parson tkckled him ; he listened dutifully, and at the end let go a fervent utterance, expressive of a mind fully prepared for the great change. " When a' can do no more rotting and robbiting. Parson, then a'll be ready and willing for the Lord to take me." In that submission con- cluded his creed; could a body in reason, he asked, say more ? On the stroke of that hour he would be as ready with his * Nunc dimittis" as any saint in the / / i - 136 A MODERN ANTAEUS calendar. The vicar spoke to him of his language which was bad enough in the village, and far worse when the game-controversy was on up at his own holding. He contended that language was given to a man to defend himself from the assaults of his enemies ; It was a matter of give and take. He caUed his pastor to witness that he had never to him used words un- scriptural ; and held the fact up as a proof of his innocence with the world at large. Haycraft was still reckoned to be the tallest man on Randogger side, though his shoulders had now begun to stoop, and his sap to run dry. Thirty years before he had disappeared from the neighbourhood under some cloud ; and from that day nothing was heard of him save, from across the county, a vague rumour that he had been seen among gipsies at Bambury fair, with Welsh ponies for sale; till one night, ten years before the date of the present chapter, he had turned up again in his native place, carrying a child on his arm, with money enough in his pocket to make some show at the village ale-house. It was told of him that he stood treat, and took treat on that occasion with every villager who entered the inn-parlour, and at the end of the ordeal was as sober in his skin as a man need be. Those present on the occasion could relate how, through the whole of that carouse, the child had slept in the rigid circle of his arm, only waking once to cry "Mammy!" and be strictiy hushed back again to sleep in tones of com- mand; and of Haycraft's face, how it bore marks of conflict, seeming to have run the gauntlet of terrible buffetings ; yet how his eye, what was left of it, carried a victorious light "Here I am home again!" he had said; and no other word was vouchsafed or asked as to what lay bdund. ^ SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 137 This was the man, now in his sere and yellow leaf from a tempestuous past, whom Raymond was taking Tristram to visit They found him among his guns in the low-beamed kitchen of his cottage by Randogger Edge ; the place seemed a tool-shed more than a living-room ; ferrets squirmed in a comer near the door ; nets and other tackle lay about ; yet the abode had an appearance of cleanliness and was draughted through by fresh air. Behind the old fellow's chair sat a young girl basket making. She looked up bright-eyed as the two boys entered ; after that she shook forward a thick mane of black hair, and seemed by the act to be shutting herself off from observation, and from consciousness of anything that went on outside her own task. Haycraft had bidden the boys in, without rising from his seat, gruffly enough ; but the question of the ferrets set his hinges rustily in motion. He swung his great length up till he stood near to the roof, then dropping two of the vermin into the mouth of a capacious pocket, led the way round toward the warren behind the house. The Tramp began to consider his face; it was keen, with a sort of stagnant intelligence, a face behind which the processes of thought moved cumbrous and slow. The impression he got was of one whose ear was attuned less to human voices than to the sounds given forth by trees, whose eye took in the indications of the weather for a week ahead. He had, in fine, wisdom with which the boy wished to communicate. Raymond named his friend. " Oh, ah," said the old fellow, " I know 'im ; I've seed 'im when he haven't seed me. Times I 'ave." He turned a slow look of scrutiny on to the boy's face. Tristram thrilled queerly, and wondered where and in what way his solitude had been spied on. Haycraft went on slowly, " CoUecks eggs, don't yer ? " Li I*. 138 A MODERN ANTAEUS adding with an ironic chuckle, «I seed 'im ater a pheasant's one day. Lord, if Mr MacAllister had caueht yer ; he'd a g*en yer what for I " He asked further what particular eggs he wanted. Tnstram named a few. "When we come back to the house, you ask my Uz to show you what she's got; maybe she'll sell you some. ' Tristram said « I don't care to buy them. I want to get th*m myself." " Oh," said the old fellow, "you be a sportsmaa I likes 'em hatched." He indicated the gun across his shoulder: one of his many mdustries was to supply naturalists with specimens. When they came back into the house, Haycraft. with scarcely more than a sign, bade his daughter up and get down her egg-boxes for the young gentleman to ie. Instram bent over the hoard and saw things that he coveted * The girl gave him monosyllabic information as to where they had been found. She had king-fisher's eggs; touching them he seemed to see the haunts of that shy bird, and its flight like a blue flame; ever a stroke that made magic to his eye. Settling the box-lid back to Its place, his hand rested for a moment upon hers. « Got anything else ? " he asked Her fingers uncurled under his, and let them in to where a dormouse lay nesting within the hollows of her palm • no word was said ' Caressing the little beast, their two hands fell into famUianty, cradle and coverlet to the drowsy life curled between. Their eyes met and struck friendship. To Ray's observation she seemed of a sulky breed He said so on the road home. The Tramp's answer was but to wish he had known how to get at all the eggs she had shown him. She was without books, yet could lay SCHOOL-DAYS AND HOLIDAYS 139 her finger unerringly on every ^g after its kind, could tell him what differentiated the markings of one from another, and needed no labels to remind her of know- ledge gathered at Nature's breast A sort of envious cupboard-love grew in him for an adept whose faculties were clearly ahead of his own. Had the boy's thoughts run less on collector lines, he might have remembered her by the dormouse asleep in the hollow of her palm. That small indication of her love of soft things to touch he forgot at the time, though over it for a moment they had made friends. ^1 fj ii i ;' I 'ijii ii ii 1,1! '■ !i ) CHAPTER XIII A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS A FEW months later the boys were together again, went off"?; ^" T °i '^'" ^^' ^^y^ °^ ^°«d^y ^ey went off to a mee on the outskirts of Pedlar's Thicket Wth luck, and intelligence to forecast eve* .s. it w2 possible for one on foot to see a good part of ihe run always supposing it avoided the fiasco of a break cT^' '"'°w f'^"^' °^ Randogger. It was difficult country; but foxes were plentiful, and carried on traditions to which skilful huntsmen had learned to m^Jh^"h ^l"*^^""' pedestrians attending each meet might hope to see something of the finish at least twice ,n a season. A cut over Beacon Hill at the nght moment, in the direction of Fox's Gully, was in hZ t^r.^:;' °^'f '^^ ^^^^"^ *° reckon for; the hunt that had vanished to the west would reappear setting eastward once more, on a last scamper bacHo the borders of Randogger. There below the eye the last heat decided itself; often it was in favour'^f Z The boys went off to the meet in high spirits, for Aey knew the country-side, and were confident of their ^m^ taZ'"" '""^f ^"d threes. Young HannaSi seemed to know most of them : one he saluted was A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 141 a lady who came riding solitary, with a bleak face and dark imperious eye. Tristram had his first sight of Lady Petwyn. Behind her back Raymond made a wry face. "Look how she rides, though I" he was forced to exclaim. "She's a capital old Tartar!" "But she isn't old," objected Tristram. " See her off horseback and you'd say so ! " said his friend. "She's fifty-five if she's a day. Goes mostly on one leg : no one sees her hardly except riding." " Is that why she never comes to Church ? " "No; or, if it is, it's the least reason. She'd loathe the notion. My father says she's a veritable pagan. 'Old humgruffin' is my name for her." The subject of their discussion had disappeared from view, when a groom came clattering down the road behind them, and pulled up to ask: "Mr Raymond, has my lady been along ? " Raymond nodded him ahead : the man was off. He vanished over the rise to reappear presently, retracing his way at double speed. " Didn't you find her?" Raymond sang out. "Find her? Yes; damn her, I did! "cried the man in irate tones, and was gone. The boys laughed. Raymond said: "That's what she's like. Jove ! she's always scratching and fighting them. But she keeps them, and they stick to her. It's her money, I suppose. She's a generous old jade ; you may give her that!" Tristram queried— then, how about Cob's Hole, and the poor people living there in ram-shackle hovels at high rent: all workers on the estate? "Oh," explained Ray, "that's where MacAllister, the bailiff, comes in : he's a skin-flint, and has his pickings, you bet!" Upon the field they saw Lady Petwyn again, and heard her in high voice and spirits to the men gathered !i'^ 1 in !. M* A MODERN ANTAEUS about her. Ladies eyed her distantly. It was Tristram's first glance into the social grades ; but the sight, had he been old enough to calculate on its significance, would have been misleading: Lady Petwyn's reputa- tion stood high ; and the distance, for the most part, was of her own choosing. The hounds were already at work in the adjoining wood. Lady Petwyn cast an eye round for her missing man. She signalled Raymond across to her. " If we're off," she said, * when my fool returns, send him to wait in the lower lane below Beacon Farm ; that'll be safe unless we go altogether in the other direction, then, he must simply follow, and catch me up when he can." Raymond said, " But I shan't be here, Lady Petwyn I" She said brusquely, " Then I ask you to be. I can't risk going without my food. If you like to bring it on yourself, tell him to mount you : you ride ? " Raymond produced a packet of his own and presented it with a gallant air. It indicated the farthest he would do for the satisfaction of her whims. " Good I " said the lady, and took it without more ada " Exchange is no robbery." Raymond returned to his companion, chuckling over her graspingness and lack of conscience. "They say she's the greediest woman in the county, and I believe it now I " he declared, prompted by personal loss ; and in that at least did the dame an injustice, since it was more the imperative demands of disease than of health which made her fierce for her food. She would have eaten crusts to ride barebacked steeds rather than stay at home and live on cushions and French cookery. All she did was with such an air of head-strong will as to earn her a reputation for more vices than she possessed. Once off, and they had not long to wait, the lads saw little more of her that day. Luck was against them for any dose share in the day's proceedings. Getting to the , Mi , A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 143 fiirther side of the Beacon they heard of an ea^ kill a mile below. Thence the hounds had been taken across the neck of the Randc^^ers to draw a coppice lying out on its north side. They followed hot-foot, but arrived late, and saw nothing save far off a field of red-coats making in the direction of Hiddenden : there was no over-taking them on that line : it was already two o'clock, long after the reasonable hour for luncheon. Raymond's thoughts ran back to the robbery of the morning. "Now she's eating my sandwiches!" he grumbled ; he had shared Tristram's, with the result that they both remained hungry as ogres. Through all the wide rolling country before them was now no sign of the hunt, and but little likelihood of its return. Raymond prayed Providence to show him where lay the nearest inn. Tristram said a cottage would do: where there was a roof there was bread. They had a shilling between them. Tristram's was the wish which found readiest fulfil- ment They procured bread and cheese and well-water fix)m an old deaf woman at a lonely cottage far from any broad beaten track. Since they had come now even beyond the Tramp's reckoning, they shouted down her ear to enquire in what part of the worid they were. She named the places around and the distances : there seemed to be no name at all for the spot where they were then standing. At the mention of Mander's Hill a mile away, Tristram brightened and turned to his companion, "Then I know where we will go," said he. He named, as worth a visit, the caves which lay under shelter of that shaggy ridge. The chance of further adventure made them forget to think if they were tired, or of distance or of time. For the food she had already supplied, and for the matches and candle they now asked for, the old woman refused to take more than a few coppers. Tristram I p ■it- i IM 144 A MODERN ANTAEUS Uid three more under the bucket by the well's month M they departed. "She wUl find them to-morrow," he said, " when she -oes for her /our Mre," and was pleased to think of the little surprise that lay ahead for her. They found their way to the caves with some diffi- culty; gruesome holes to enter. Raymond gave a groan: "This is where the murder was," said he. " Didn't you hear Mander's ghost ? " The oracular dark- ness ahead, sounded like a blanketed drum, as their voices rang into the crannies and windings of the way. They passed in, leaving cold daylight behind them. Four hours elapsed before they again crossed that threshold. It was seven of the clock and a cloudy night, when the throat of the cave became filled with boyish laughter: Tnstram was crying what idiots they had been. He stumbled out, and dropping exhausted to ground, cried : "Midnight!" Ray said: "Now for Mander's ghost to finish us I " Up went Tristram's laugh, pealing once more. "And It was just round the corner all the time I Oh, my socks I " He held in his hand a bunch of unravelled worsted. Most ludicrous to them now seemed those ingenious threadings of the labyrinth. They had lost themselves, and despaired, and hoped, and hungered, and thirsted, all within twenty yards of the outer world. Only now after weary hours of vain searching did the truth dawn on them. Tristram rolled helpless against Ray's shoulder: "Oh, my socks, my socks!" he cried again, and grew voiceless. The dark wood-slopes rang with the youth's merriment. But however they might laugh and laugh they were obliged to recognise at last that their situation was somewhat dismal. They began to realise, now that the adventure was over, how dog-tired they really were. They had but a few coppers between them, and were A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 145 something like twelve miles from home. It was night • stars shone faintly through mist, and there was no moon! Black hummocks of ground waited to entrap their feet 'Through Randogger it would only be eight," said Tristram ; "if we could find the way we came, it would cutoffall Hiddenden." Raymond voted for the short cut « Only save us " said he, " from getting lost again I " ' "I'm all right" the Tramp declared, « once we hit on the right track ; then it's due west I can do that by instinct : it's my bump of locality." Randogger they came to after two miles of stumbling m rutty lanes. * "This looks like it" said Tristram, peering through a Wack hole in the boundaries, beside which only a ruined gate-post remained. "If the stars would show up one could make quite sure. Hullo, here are two piths- right hand must mean west— come on I " * A hundred yards further, he toppled head-foremost into a gully down which the track unexpectedly descended. A miry bottom broke his fall, but did not altogether save him ; he picked himself out dazed and shaken. « Oh, I say I " he held his hand up to his fore- head, " I've a bump of locality the size of a hen's ege here I " cried he. ^^ Raymond helped him to his feet They tramped stolidly along, holding arms Tristram carried a swim- ming head, and reckoned little of the way. An hour's heavy plodding seemed to bring them nowhere. "It's the cave over again!" growled Raymond. Whenever will we get home?" "Oh, bother it ! " sighed Tristram. " It's not home, ifs bed or a place to sit down, I want now ! I'm walking without socks. Home's ten miles off by now, I guess • " he went on, "and we are going away from it ; the ve^ name makes me sick ! That cave's haunted ; Mander's K •■^i! I4tf A MODERN ANTAEUS ghost hangs out in it ; Maundtr must be his real name Now we've got to maunder up and down for ever •"ore You and I arent real people any more ; we are ghosts ; we came out of that cave dead f " His companion bade him talk sense or be quiet "Better to know when you are dead," persisted the Tramp, "because then you don't expect anything, and won't be disappointed at not getting it Even to meet the Devil now would be cheering. What's the time ? Have you a match left ? " Raymond struck a light and discovered that it was nearer nine than eight The Tramp groaned. " Doesn't knowing the time make one hungry ? " he remarked. " Why did you ask, tten ? " "Being hungry's not a bad thing if one wants to have something to think of If you think about getting home, your heart goes into your boots; think of food, and it stops at your stomach, and that* s only half-way' What are we walking into ? " It was a gate. "Well, that shows we are some- where, at any rate!" was Tristram's comment "We aren't so dead as I thought we were." They were in fields ; uncertain forms loomed ahead seeming to be far vbuildings. To the boys' great relief a faint light shr ,d stationary between two large bulks of shade. The r turned out to be ricks stranded lonely in the now bare field which had supplied their building Wattles made an enclosure of the intervening space. There, over the light of a lantern, stooped a besmocked figure m an old beaver hat Catching a glimpse of what was within, Raymond said, "Why, there's lambinjr going on; it's early I" ** They halted to look in over the fence, and beheld distressed maternity. The man in the smock, intent on humane service, was too much wrapped up in his A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS employment to take notice of their approach. 147 When Raymond called out, "Gaffer, will you tell us where we are? we are out of our reckonnigs," it accmed that for the second time that day he had put the question to one hard of hearing. The man made no start at a voice thus coming to him out of the darkness : he finished the matter in hand before enquiring in a soft high voice whither they were intending to go. Raymond was naming the Alwyn district; Tristram, with the conviction of exhausted energies, broke in and declared for food and bed. Where they might be' he cared not. The three Alwyns were eight miles away, they heard. told^^HlSdrden^ "'"'" "'^ ^*^"°"'^ *"' ^" " Then we've come the round after all I - he declared utterly vexed at their continued ill-luck. ' Tristram said, "We've maundered!" as though the thing were Fate's, and had to be. But concern for themselves came to be forgotten for a while ; under their eyes a very common tragedy was taking place. The stricken ewe stretched herself in- effectively in a last effort to overcome destiny and gave up the struggle. Her life went out in a few gasps; a meek, pathetic, almost human resignation seemed to come upon her at the moment of death. In the dark and chilly atmosphere sounded the feeble bleating of a new-bom lamb. The man in the smock showed an agitation in which something of resentment mingled ; yet he spoke mildly. "The poor dam, the poor dam !" he muttered, smooth- mg down the thick fleece with his hand. "Three mortal hours of pain, and this for the end to it all." Without moving to look round he addressed himself to his hearers : " 'Twas a sorry chance : the hounds come along by here to-day, and killed in the very paddock I ' )!i i::'! 148 A MODERN ANTAEUS where a dozen of 'cm were. Of course they were all about the place then, and the mischief was done. The other she'p were all right, but this one; ay, it was a case from the first; she lay panting and never moved till her turns took her." Tristram had begun peering round to get a glimpse of the speaker's face. When presently the latter rose and, holdmg the lamb in one arm, stooped to take up his lantern, its rays fell strongly on his large horse-like features. The boy recognised his old childish horror. " It s Daddy Wag-top I " he whispered. The yeoman showed he had keen hearing "Ay" rv, said. « I'm Daddy Wag-top ; that's what they call mi. Who may you be ? " The boys gave their names. "Well," said he, "you'll not get home to-mVht, I reckon ; come along wi' me." He added with a queer note of apology, " I ask you to be so goorl ; ' and started to show them the way. "You say you are hungry," he said presently over his shoulder; " I dunno' what may be in the house, but whatever it is you'll be quite welcome." The path led through dark farm-buildings and a low door into the black opaqueness of an interior. They sounded their way along a passage, their host murmur- mg apologetically that the woman who did for him left for home at eight o'clock. The very mention of such an arrangement indicated a strange solitariness of habit When a light showed, they found themselves in a heavily beamed room, with tiled floor; a broad ingle scat, made comfortable with patchwork cushions, enclosed the hearth. Two dogs came out of the ashes and wagged a dubious welcome. The boys dropped like two stones. " Put your feet up !" said their host Removing their boots they did so, and were thankful. A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 149 •• Oh, I forgot ; I'm all over mud I " said Tristram, and got up agam. ' Daddy Wag.top viewed him with a concerned eye. -YouVehada all?"saidhe. Openingadeep dresTer. « V "^ ?.n * ''^*'.*" '"°*^''' " L»« °n ^at," said he. No 1 11 put tt on," said the boy, "if I may?" It swathed him to his ankles ; within the sleeves his hands rambled helplessly till he had turned back six inches of wnst Raymond could not but laugh out loud at the sight dnft said he, when the other had settled back on to his bench. Light and warmth restored their spirits. Daddy Wag-top's first care was for the sock-lamb. J*"?,J u. I ^^^^ ^>' ^^ ^*^rth he fetched rum, and milk which he set to warm ; a rude feeding-bottle was rn waiting. "Young gentlemen," said he " I ask your pardon ; but accidents have to be attended o nrst. They made apologies in return for ciisturbing his quiet ' ts a pleasure," said he, "that don't often happen to me. Pity caught Tristram by the throat : he looked at this solitary man from whom ue had fled wh- n a child Now he seemed a creature dignified past the ordinary of mankind. The old beaver laid aside showed a hieh forehead seamed wr.h care ; a sort of perplexed thought had set Its mark there A hamed of his panic of six years ago, the boy ^^-.^hed genuinely to make amends "You are awfully good to trouble about us" he declared half shyV. " Will you tell us your name ? " "My nam. >" aid their host; « Bagstock-Benjamin Bac^tock : h.^ f^.^v use it : ' Wag-top ' i« like enough, and comes ea ler. * It was very true the nickname did fit ; but to the two lads he was Mr Bagstock thenceforward. Behind his I! II tS!i, i ii'li k 150 A MODERN ANTAEUS back, when household preparations took him out of the chamber, Raymond thumped his fist down with the remark, « I tell you what, Tramp, that old boy's a by- ordinaiy good sort ; he's a gentleman I " The notion was aided by the sight they had of waUs lined with books. While their host was bringing them their supper from the rear, Raymond got up and examined the titles. "HuUoI" he sang out, "Classics!— Livy, Horace, Virgil, and no end to them I Here's one whose name I can't read ; it's rubbed off. By Jove, though, they are dusty I He doesn't take them down often, I think. Here's Homer, too; and commentaries without end. Don't you feel small, Tramp?" ^ -I do, in this thing;" Tristram indicated the smock. " It seems a sort of pastoral doctor's gown ; graduates wore them once, didn't they ?— regular smocks— in Milton's day, I mean. • For we were shepherds on the self-same hill,'" he quoted to support his contention; but the mere sound of English in verse caused Ray's mind to become unintelligent. The farmer returned, and found that young gentle- man still nosing his book-shelves with a puzzled air. The youth spoke respectfully : " Mr Bagstock, you seem to be a scholar." "Seem! is about all I can do," answered his host, setting down provender on the board. "They were my father's books before me; they're not mine. I can only sit and look at the outsides of them, or, now and then— now and then, for the sake of old memories, I take one in my hands. Young gentlemen, draw up chairs for yourselves "(he spoke from over a saucepan faito which he was setting down eggs to boil); "you are welcome to everything but the milk and the rum, which must go to the feeding-bottle. If you are for saying grace over such poor fare, let it be Latin : Latin was A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 151 my father's language ; I've lost the sound of it, but .my ears would welcome it again. I b^ you to b^n.". He left them to fetch in ale. "Latin, eh?" quoth Raymond with a vny face. " ' Benedictus, Benny Bagstock ! ' says my sentiments for me I " and with that for thanksgiving they fell to. Their host had no need to apolt^ise of poor fare to such appetites. The boys out of politeness to one thus almost f d into entertaining them, made a point of talking, in spite of weariness and the rage their mouths had for food and drink. It was evident that their coming was a welcome event in that lonely abode. "Your father, Mr Bagstock, will you tell us of him?" asked Tristram. " Was he a great scholar ? " "Nothing more than a country school - master," answered his host ; " but a student, sir ; he never called himself a scholard. Books were like flesh and blood to him. He used to say that to know Latin made one equal to men of birth. The Squire of the place where he lived thought so too : would have him over of an evening to see him : lent him books, and at his death left him a part of his library — what you see here." He waved his hand round the chamber with a dejected air. " It was then I remember him," he went on. " A little mon^ accompanied the bequest We came here ; my mother did the farming, did everything; I cannot remember her without something in her hand to do. My father, I fear, helped her but little: he was a wonderful man ; at fifty he had the spirits of a boy at having found leisure to become a scholard. Ay, he used to sit here, where I do now, and bum rush-dips over the page (we didn't have candles in those days). Often he took me in hand, making me read aloud to him. I learned things by heart too; he believed I should come at it better that way — get it into me * living,' he used to say ; but he died too socm. On his IV •Sa A MODERN ANTAEUS ^-bed he wa> talking Ulia • Tim,r mortis cm- T J ] ."■»«"'«• Wm saying over and over^l Farmer Bagstock named tlie scope of the work con- JfenUy, as though it had merely been a qSo^of 2™ to get such a thing ended. The con<2pH™ U tte achievement It was clear to his mind th™ ^ Oe thing been done, his father would have ™k«llv Homer for future generations. ^ dki&^edT"^'""^'""^«=^""=-'"««''e ^^KhXtdijtf?^e^e^^5=,etl' jrating there till the Last Trump should call it back to whictT^*" ^""""?"> « " ""t? the unfinished things JW._ I« wa...„g m dead minds till God neSs vi<^^ "3 tte " "°','"",'* ""'^'*^ """o ""«* con- vicoon and the simple eloquence of hU sneech Th;. ^Warmer of crude iedge and rictus « tenor, mspired them with respect ^Trutram said, - Mr Bagstock, how much Latin do you " To be honest," answered the farmer, « I should sav "i»i grows less every day. Hear now I " He spoke five lines of Virgil, the opening of the A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 153 standstil. Raymond prompted him. "Right rieht!" L'o^ fi*'".'^' ''^I'''"^ "P' ""^ pieced on' another n^ruZ ' ^"^•,*'" "^'"°'y &*^^ °"t- His tongue pitched m a sea of false quantities. Stopping abruotlv he said, « Then you know Latin, sir ? " ^ ^^ « V ^ l!^™ ?'" f*''* Raymond with honesty, adding. refers tr*^'^'' *'^^^' ^^ Bagstock ; «„'t you Tu r ^^" y°"'' "memory breaks down ? " The farmer shook his head : « I can't find the places. What was that from, that I said just now ? " Raymond told him. He reached down the book with excitement, and had thep^ce found for him. He plunged, reading aioud whh homd smg-song mtonation. which suddenly fell into false quantities and breaches of metre. Seeming to I learned, he explained. « I was seven years old when my father first put that into my mouth ; it is many a heS' "°'' "' '' "'"' ""'^- ' ^ °"^y *«" -hen The old fellow became so stirred by the returning re- cc... ..on ^at the boys were almost ashamed to remain observers of h,s emotion. They had risen from the table leaving a board fairly cleared. Tristram went acro^to th^ h^h^ """^ ''"'"^^ '^P^"'"^ '" ^^ s^*>- fr°«» Bagstock recurred to his duties as host "Ynun^ gentlemen." said he. "excuse me for one moment^ to-nightmustbeafeast!" He disappeared aTcame back bearing two dusty black bottled he exhiWt^ ti^m witn decent complaisance as containing stuff who!« worth he was sure of. hJ^'""" *^!.^f'."»« Madeira, sent to my father by ^hrJ^T "';** •" ***" °^^ ^^y- » Christmas gift- three dozen they were once. 'Wine, wisdom, and S!i(lf 154 A MODERN ANTAEUS women be three good things.' the Squire wrote when sending them. 'You've samples of two'— my father's book-learning, and my mother, he meant to say—' now sample the third!' The three dozen came regularly every year so long as the Squire lived. My father left some half dozen still unopened when he died; they are as he left them. Ah, well I you wonder at me, but this is how it was : he would sit at his books, I by him, my mother over there knitting or mending.' Suppei over, out would come this wine. My father would take a glass and stand it by him : a bottle lasted him a week. Now and then, when he had taught me anything new, he would give me perhaps a quarter of a glass in water. I used to taste it, and think it strong stuff in those days. He would say — ah, I can't quote it now — some name to do with the Muses, and I would toss off the draught, and say my piece over again to him. Maybe, if I learned more, he might offer me a second ; then my mother would say : ' Ben, it's time you were in bed I' Latinity was not in my poor mother's composition- how she escaped it, having had me, I can't say. So,' you see, I used to taste wine as a reward for my new' learning. Now, when learning is past me, I let it stand. But for the sake of that memory I've sat here on winter nights with books at my elbow and a bottle unopened at my side, and thought of him. You'll understand he was a wonderful man!" The boys b^an to think so. Bagstock drew out the corks, and filled three glasses. "To-night," he said, "I come back to where I left off when a boy ; I feel as if my father were in the room. Master Hannam, Master Gavney, I beg you : you have the books there— you may delight my ears once more. Things, as you read, perhaps I shall remember." A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 155 nalVr^ /, '*'^/*' Situation: two boys without a particle of love for Latin, and only a compulsory ^HoT !*'r"^'^.^* d<»-n by an old mZ TxLt, ,'^"°^^^&^ °f »t» °»«»ning. to spout to him extracts from the poets. "Get hold of something we know I" suggested Tnstram ; and Raymond found a place to begin t J!r ""^ ^""u ^'^'*^" *^"° ^^ ^y^ knocked ^^Z ^ T^^ *'°"''™^ ^'^^y Wag-top leaned over the table m a state of ecstatic happiness, and sipped nectar while the numbers rolled. TheTouths a^so took a taste of his wine, and exchanged shy glances. No doubt it had once been liquof fit for a lord, but Its day had gone by while waiting in wS" 7';'"^J"- ^* ^"^«^ "°^ *° repent of a wasted and heady youth, in flavours thafbore a fanciful resemblance to sackcloth and ashes Its taste did not dim tiieir host's enthusiasm for its history ; he poured it down his gullet on trust, past a palate that told him nothing of its decay ^ P"* * "A fine Winer he cried, holding it up to the light; my fatiier used to say so; he was a good judge Young gentlemen, I shall remember this night while I live, and thank you for itl Come; I fill up your glasses and my own ; anotiier bottie remainsf Ah now I recall the name; now it comes back to mei Mnemosyne!' he used to say: have I it right? Memory, the mother of song; strar re that I should have fo gotten it!" He struck h forehead. "To be sure! to be sure! I could say tnat now; I have not repeated it, since when ? " He broke forth once more into recitative : he be^n, and came presentiy upon famous lines. He gave them with gesture, seeming to know their meaning. 'in > 1 156 A MODERN ANTAEUS «Twas so my father used to bid me say it" he ex plained to his hearers. ^ * * " Raymond sakl^Tha^s Greek: Apollo and his arn,w.'' l^reek I Bagstock would scarcely believe his ears or h,s tongue: to have stumbled on such good fo^^ Mts forty years ago," he cried, "I beHeved I h.J fo^otten it The one bit of Gi^k hi ^^TugL me -heTtL^'.r'"'"^''^°™^''"' Mnemosyne r --he uttered the name with an exalted air-" it came when her name returned to me I " He emptied the glass and refilled it again. After that t^rr '°^'T ''^ • ^^^'^ st^merings iroke from his tongue; old cells of memory openS under tiie mfluence of the fusty beverage as Tmoum^ acroM the board Bacchus sat in pantaloon age and tippled mto a riotous flow of speech? bot/r'.v'* "^^Pil?"'"'""'^ ^y' *"d seized the bottie. You must help. Tramp ; we shall be ill • but a little more, and he'll be dead I '• ' The charitable youths got the remainder of a bottie empty between them; under the table portions ha^ to service. Old Wag-top had passed, then, beyond coenis ance of Ae small things that went on ^und hhn ^ L W^: 'v' T \*"-"P'^nt ring, till he discemS diSy ^AZv'\""''' ^^'^Jy dropping with fatigue. "" « Ti^H ^f "^"'■^"'^ vague words of hospitality : ^r rnVrh'ipr ^°"^ ^^ '• '' ^^- '- ^^ Raymond replied, « If you are sure that we an. nof dZl^°» °'" °' ""^■' "*" "-"'^ „^n" H« host declared there was a bed for them to share They helped him to mount the suirs, and Z^M to a chamber roughly got r^y. ,„ hi, «,ber ^te A CHAPTER OF PURSUITS 157 Daddy Wag-top must have had the hands of a house- wife, to make such swift and quiet preparations for his guests. *», '" u' J'r^-^^r ^^ ^"^* *i"*^*^ *«»^«Jy g«teft«i to the old fellow ; they saw him into his room, set his candle m a place of safety, and shook his hands, bidding him good-night ** Feeling the cares of the establishment upon them they descended to lock up. a rather needless precaution and to coax the sock-Iamb to its last possible feed fo^ the night. Their efforts made it querulous and wakeful • packing It warm they left the bottle by its side, hoping that If It grew hungry in the small hours, it would have sense to discover comfort for itself. It was long after eleven o'clock when they crawled up again to the bed that awaited them. *^ "Oh, Lord! we've earned it!" cried Tristram, for prayer and thanksgiving, and dropped himself, smock and al into the sheets. He and his companion lay like logs felled to earth until the next day's sun was abroad and Bagstock himself, restored and in his right mind' came to rouse them to breakfast. ' At parting they found it difficult to speak their own gratitude against his. The Tramp said, with final protestation of thanks, « May we come again, some day ? " whereto their host replied, his face hungry with anticipa- tfTou dTd^'"^ ''"'^"°"'^'""'^ "" young agkTn One of them, at least, required no fur her invitation 5.. 1 CHAPTER XIV THE WATER-FINDER TD EADERS who remember Tristram'i early incllna- -■•V tions wUl not imagine he was to be kept out of water, because its cool silver eye beckoned to him from the recesses of a guarded privacy. Even had there been other pools available, he had so often in Raymond's company been through the lodge gates and tht other locked wickets of the Hill-Alwyn domain, that he came at last to regard himself as a privileged trespasser, agamst whose comings and goings no barrier would oppose itself. Therein he reckoned without MacAlIister. That worthy had an eye on him, or, at least, on the many footmarks of him which he had come to recognise on cross-cuts over the estate. Nor did it escape his observation that elsewhere the youth was to be met in Haycraffs company, a circumstance in itself sufficient to make the bailiff regard him with suspicion. A busy popping up at Parson's Coppice in the late autumn had brought him to see from afar Tristram shouldering a gun at pheasants that flew over, out of the Hili-Alwyn covers; and within an hour, red-handed from the busi- ness, bavmg with him a brace of his own shooting the boy had given him good - in passing, as though being m leape with a half-, aching old vagabond who dramed a neighbour's preserve laid no weight what- ever on his conscience. IM THE WATER-FINDER 159 The Tramp grew aware that one face at least made a •uriy response to his glances, and that tawny MacAllister was no friend to him. The man asked him curtly one day— had he a gun-license? and got for answer a sUtemcnt at how many hundred yards Tristram chose to tWnk he could bring down a bird, the boy regard- ing his skill as a sportsman a proof of his right to practise the art He gave instances. "Whose Wrds?" the bailiff wanted to know, and was met by a cheeky enquliy, whether he thought he had hatched them himself, and whether In that case he was prepared to recognise them again by a squint in the left eye. Such bandying of words, left the makings of a very pretjy quarrel between the two. MacAllister coming the following summer upon Tristram just up from bath- ing m one of the ponds, gave him curt warning to keep away unless he could come as a key-holder. Tristram said, as If to ask was to receive, that he would write to Lady Petwyn for the privilege. MacAllister retorted that the matter rested with hkn his eyes showing a clear negative. Orders against tres- passing were repeated and with emphasis. On that Tristram promised that If Lady Petwyn would state a complaint against him, he would never again set foot on her acrei His tone inferred that he judged Mac- AUister officious, a Jack-in-office, and a boaster of more power than he wielded. On their parting, it was quite evident that the boy Intended to disobey. His enemy kept watch for him around the ponds reckoning on what would be the likeliest hours foi^ catching him. Two days later he beheld his quarry bobbing hke a dab-chick midway between bank and island. A short search under the trees brought the bailiff on a deposit of raiment; in a twinkling he be- held his advantage, and with true Celtic rapacity seized n t l«o A MODERN ANTAEUS It to the uttermost MacAllister, that is to say was not content with holding ground which would have ditions humihating to the culprit immediately on his landing but must remove the whole pile to a depth of thicket hard by the boat-house, whence he could survey unseen the approaching discomfiture of our hera Tristram had swum round the island and out of sight up to the far end of the pond; landing there he had raced back through the wood to the spot where his cast-off garments should have been lying. Behold them vanished! MacAllister's heavy trail did not tend to concealment ; the situation became clear to the culprit's understanding. ^ A very little stalking was needed to show him the whereabouts of his enemy. The red-headed bully was to be seen glaring steadfastly out over the water in ex- pectation of the swimmer's return; under him lay the bundle of clothes safely sat on. The sight produced retrograde movement: it was not the modesty of the flesh which persuaded the boy to retreat, but the knowledge that, MacAllister having planned one thing, it was his bounden duty to plan another. Beholding MacAllister at watch like a spider for his fly. the Tramp determined that to catch the one he was after he should be driven into becoming a water- spider. "How can I make him come for meF" he cogitated, and was quick at devising a way. "Query," he said to himself, "can the beast sn-Im? In any case, will he?" thought he; and settled to doubt It MacAllister's peerings had become rather anxious for the bather who remained so long at the head of the lake. Possibly the Tramp had only to lie hidden close by, and curiosity would move the other to a quest up the banks, leaving the spoil behind him. Possibly THE WATER.FINDER uto fgwn. not; he might imell a nt- ttw^ «- ^ spread out daws for the bait ^ "" headlong to the boat-hoiue, 1«» h« bower. Arrived ^dlZLTZ ""^^^^^l^ -^ " Mr MacAllislS wouiQ you tnrow me up my boot ? " ehiS'" ^I""**"*. ""■" °" '^'h » ■«°>"f jerk of the ^n You may ju,t as well come now a. e»er- Tratram stuHied hta, as though for the fint time Mr MacAU^.. fc. ^<,_ .y„„ ,^|^ P J«K- w^ .™ar^"« • ""'^ - vio.»t .bsuXiiit''ca:i'h^^:~'" ■« "■•^- ^" *« «"« THE WATER.PINDER ,«, ^J'AndtW.i.oUn.l. 1-ok. oa. MacAUb..,. b«,d, J . Ju^t"'" •°°'' *' ""^'*~' "^ '^"•o-t the «ir of yo:"^-rr:j^"§.r-:^v." «jd He, .„a r™t„rr;i,'5otrT£H-«- You ™y com. down for' .Twhli^^^TlH:: """'"'""* ^th , but he had gone too far with his tongue to retrTt "Mr MacAHistcr." he addressed his enemy in wheed theSHfr^X""'"'""'""^"^"^^'^ "And do you always mean what you do?" You may say yes to that" J )!?r ^°" "'*•'* * P""' «^ ~""d and round on itself for mstance, are you beatina- tk. « ^ . ^"» beating you?" ^ ^ ^ P""'' ^'^ »» ^he punt For the moment the bailiff contained his temoer Talk away! young gentleman." said he "vouK answered presentiy." ' ^°" " °^ Tristram said with an emotional stress that threw i« A MODERN ANTAEUS ridicule on the words ; " Mr MacAllister, you tried to save my life then ! Will you save it again ? - The boy smUed with meaning, and beheld a visage suddenly inflamed : at last he had got MacAllister up to storming pitch. The big man dashed about under the boughs and flourished his whip; words inarticilate with wrath flew from him. Tristram stood up on his branch. -Here, catch I" he cried, all at once, and cast the remaining boot MacAllister saw too late his line of escape, and was helpless. The boy ran like a squirrel along the bough out over the water, dropped to a lower, and plunged! carrying leaves and twigs with him. When he rose he was far out in the open. " Oh, Mr MacAllister I " he cried, "come and save me, come and save me I " All the woods round rang with his laughter. He was out upon the other side long before the bailiff could get round either end of the long pond to be after him. To run home bare-footed was nothing to him It was true MacAllister had his boots : on the whole, con- sidering the return "rise" got out of him. he was welcome to the trophy. Tristram meeting Lizzie Haycraft the day after, told her of the encounter with glee ; and detected in her eyes during the recital, an extreme hatred of MacAUister's name. So bitter was it she could not rightly take in the laughable aspect of the affair ; that MacAllister was the subject spoiled everything ; she would not say why They were on their way up to the Beacon Farm, where water-scarcity on high ground and an easily drained soil had cropped up in an aggravated form. The dry season had made the only well on the premises unusable ; nothing but mud came up from it Men THE WATER-FINDER ,«, u'^oSIi'^r'*""'^'"^ '^'"" <=««■« «•" owr « fortnight, a nngle sp,rk carried in tlieir direction might mean doom for the farmer", rick.. There^lM Aft TT?'' ''; ""««e««»" once started. Alter bonngs had been tried for over a week »,>k-. „ "cces,, the iarmer. nervously anxio«Z« rha^lt kl 3si^di;T.rdVr.^i- '^'^' drink which z "i^ ^r^ rr r^' *! come from wells. Out of his own'^X^hetlm' a great man, and accepted freelv when „«-!!S 6-t man;s privUeges: ?o sitt'iik llTpaJ^rLd* brag of his mysterious powers meant thVfim r » to the pjofit of the landlord; '.husTi„"^Lp Farmer Duffin, seeing his state ffues«^ K.-«, - STtt, %'^"'/?' ^ oc"^^'S^^ore'™w"gr supulated for hi, return-fare to belrsT ;:id\^ .'^ "Thee dor aud the dowKr; "'twas to be ««/ 168 m A MODERN ANTAEUS liquor." So, he pointed out ran the t«^. «r merit that had bro^lght hioT ^"^ ""^ *«^ " Right ye be I " quoth the big farmer •• On f k. • u that meant Y'arcn't on it Vm ^* J°^' swindler * ^**' ^ ^^t housing tw? tS;h*:r'" ^^'l.^fl^P^^P^ration of the mystic nwg wherewith the search was to be conducted I^a finder wen. for it with huZguf „„Uik*'f .* "'T thi«fe.the mo„ likely he to^Lon ft? ' '''«=-*« Be easy I" quoth the farmer- "v.. K- wouldn't know water if 'e saw it ! •' ' ^ °"^ ^^° "Ye mean. I doan't know me business th^r,3.. -^ the insulted wizard. ""smess. then ?" said "I mean, ye don't let it touch vourin'ar^« « cufards more than ye can helpiT mlt; b^'/^"' here so gone in liquor as you'd strike on thf. u .""f and call it a well—and h/fr..u- ** ^^^ '*"!« lie! You La bucket wJh **r"l"' P"^' '« ^^^ ^he continued t^: farmer f4^;^^^ '°"°'?' ^^^ t>«"' d.pumpofa.inrror\K[;^:^^^^^^^^^^ Whether or no the dowser had for oil ur",]l , *«on.b.en spying .he I.nd'^^d^^C^/l^ir' '""l; chances it offered of creHif '" f^^'^^"'"? what small » he .ade „o ,^^^.T:L^t ^r^^, " successful operation would have won hfm • h^ T^^ J THE WATER.FINDER ,& •nd forthwith turned hl> back on Um. As the fell«- ,m «l c«n.Ing «rf demanding he.rt«!^„« fce^*^ hl^'S' '° "^ «^' «• «« »toot.. ^l^t^ carted up for the occasion." " After he had gone, rustics stood handhn? the tw.v i.- had left behind him. «This is the wry 'tis ^'^.^^ quotii one. and showed them how. uZ Jricd .k hands, but manifested no eraso of 7h« m!^ ^^""^ Farmer Duffin looked oT^rd^^^^^^^^^ wasted morning. The field all a^TtTe VaSd"L* ^fatt^r "^^ as though some gr^t '::ZT^^^ evJ'^hlf " "'^'^^u '^"^ P'^'"'^^' <^a«»«n& a judicial ZVJ^l 7^r^ '^^' '■°'' ^"y tokens that mighri^a guide for fresh experiment. He returned at 1.1 .a pointing to a tree that stood over on the far siJ^of .k foredraft which led up to the farm. 4here oult tot tTeL^'r •" f ' ""'■ "^°*'- ^- thrro^^ts^g o an^ the boughs; they haven't the curve of tho^ ^,'u there's pull at work somewhere." "^ °'*'"" ' The farmer sbook his head incredulously as a m«n who had heard a tafc told too often. « TtL^\\Tr 7^^TJ:i:T'^'''^' "wev;;ri::;"aiiitr; tl^6sX^tZ^r -^- '^'^t on the land sinc^ Tristram took up the divining rod. He had ren^ how the thing was done, and the little knowledge .^v^ him quite a professional air. Taking off hlT^f. ^ f :;;i 170 A MODERN ANTAEUS were thick and had nails in them, be started on a methodical course up and down the well-explored field. The rod held out by its two prongs before him stayed quite unresp<»isive, but already the mummery of the thing pleased him ; it fitted in with things he had done when a child to avert the evil chance; and as he followed the ritual, an underlying belief in its truth began to take hold of him. He bent his head intent on the character of the ground under his feet, and watching the rod for an indication he was half ready to expect He forgot where he was. Presently he felt shadow: his foot struck on to tree-root under grass. He halted and threw back his head quickly to see boughs, and just before him the bole of the tree to which he had first pointed. As he did so^ up swung the twig. On the hazard he accepted the omen, and cried, " Water i " Mr Beresford Gavney, taking his wife for an evening drive in the lanes threading the outskirts of Randogger, came suddenly on a shocking sight A party of labourers, emerging from a field-path on to the public way, revealed to him on nearer view one of themselves as his own son, Tristram. The lad was miry, daubed over with red clay from head to foot, and in extraordinary spirits. The sight of his parents puzzling their eyes to recognise him did not abash him in the very least He ran forward and mounted the low foot-board of the carriage, crying : "Mother, mother, only think! I've found water. I have I Up at Beacon Farm. Old Dufiin says it's worth a hundred pounds to him. And it runs like the Nile ; looks as if it were going to be the biggest river in England I" " Really, my dear Tristram, you alarm me ! " said Mrs Gavney, hearing of so large a thing as so near a neigh- bour. " Is it safe for you to do such things ? " His father in cold tones bade him get off the carriage i i' THE WATER-FINDER 171 ** If you must get yourself into that state, keep your distance. You are too dirty to be seen. A pity you can never be given liberty without forgetting that you are a gentleman." Tristram in haste to make them realise the situation, passed over the reproof. " Yes, but I found water I " said he. " Duffin wanted to give me a horse ; but I thought you wouldn't like it, so I said no." There was a note of interrogation in his voice, as ke gave the information, but it drew no concession: he had been quite right, of course, to say no to any such suggestion. The carriage moved on, leaving him alone in his glory; but that was sufficient to keep him satisfied in the face of any slight rebuffs. To appreciate the honour- able mire his clothes bore on them, it was necessary to have seen the rush of water that had followed the first boring. He had done so ; and had heard stout yokels applauding with honest delight The taste of the Beacon Farm cider was still sweet on his palate ; but, somehow, sweeter still was the red stained water which, with a stroke like that of Moses, he had fetched forth out of the dry earth. Henceforth it seemed to him that his name must belong to Beacon Hill, and he be a part of it along with that welling spring, that veritable river, which he had conjured forth to tte service of man and beast. Farmer Duffin had proved the value of his service by the offer willingly made, even prc&sed, and by him reluctantly declined. Tristram had the generosity which hates to refuse a gift that is cordially intended ; but he hardly remembered his regret in the almost passionate pleasure of the day's fortune. His sleep that night was fevered by dreams of it, and contrary to habit he awoke to find night scarcely half over. It was one or two in the morning. Not merely awakened, but wakeful, be wanted to stir and be doing. ! f • m A MODERN ANTAEUS the impabe, but at l«t roi «iid omS^ kTIL!! under the bU«I, looked outrtoS 5^ "* "^ «^ .''^[Si ""^ wonderful; not MMllep, but under. ^ ; consdou. „ute but dert OvTS^y CSiJ ^.^Sl.''*?^:? **"««"' • mltten^d^SZ •eewed to h«re clced Shape, that Aowed out h^ d«p pod of impenetrable «h«Ie. He « tte .Uble^ ^t^r '^ ^<^'-P«»doclc. herded «,dl^2 ^Uit^ .^r^K* ""^ *»'"y»*«y «<« n»tnUnr.preS o^«n ; while the tree, rtood aware of night. \Se hw lu^drew m a deep breath ; It .eemed, then, that hfa body beome infected with the spirit of nighT' "" rS! ?* TT* "*»**« »P»«; the house^ogli^^ "■B, uie snuffle m the fowl-house of a herT nrv^ »♦. "*e oppoBie dope, the co'echo^l fro„ «„ ^^ a bieath. ^^^ "eemed to send forth ■no ai the world grew wide. The bov's soirit «#^«,2i aark-roofed solitudes, under three miU. «r^^.! emp.,«i of hu^an-kind, he bSZ g^of . h"^ AH e«th, muffled «,d mute environ J^ .°l;t *^ ««re (how m«h of „„.„„ did ncHhe t^^ the road mingle with the thought of itVus uZn tb^ I.ke an .„vil. wa, the nSg of th,Ir4Tlrf .._ ^"^ WATER-FINDER ,,. The „„„d ^TJ^J^ dW* rlfcL" 5°! » more distant riae. Once o»> .i". "■™, "««'ne "ot to return N^t .h«k Ti,^,^' " P"^ not for io„eTrhation, „e itfindsusinamo^aT^XnstriL'*'/^' "°»- the mind to discover allTh-T "^' '"^ »«mulatcs convey. The ru^: 4 .h« Z'lZ ^^'J^^^u '° Of night-bound earth map "t aL,br,„ .k J'''- """^ whereabouts and traces of ^l^-^L "" ■"■''» *« tracts invisible unS^ shl Xh" """»"''>: ^"'■e'' fflinir. left over from a tl der lute" e°",:L''L r^ joined the fov »f«,uk . *''^» '^'^ seem to have l«n.reo^%?"i,eXtTnH'',7"''' '^°"«'' "» ^/f rotlthirrt-a:!^/ "'-^ '^ --- u^t^tsT^i^rr---^^^^^^ V4 A MODERN ANTAEUS J- 1 and knows not why. WiUe it fo; nay, nthcr, b tdstd by the Inspintioa, as the prieateie when she feeds on tiie gaseous ftimet of the oracle; and the lesult is straightway beyond iu power to control Soiae name h the divine voice. Youth, at least, unconscious of the source, recognises when it has heard the inevitable call From that moment a new vagibondage todc hold of the Tramp^s heart It was to hiin like the discovery of a new dimensioa He saw n^t then as for the first time, sleepless night, lifting a conscfous eye. To him, sleepless, she beckoned : the hour of initiation was here and now, his window the door out into her world. Quickly he dreised, slid down by the water-pipe to the lean-to below, and was out to the fields. His feet were tasting the deep and wonderful dampness of the crops ; his heart was drawing him on to follow the sound that had beckoned from the woody ridge below Beacon Farm. So, before long he came where thick coppice circled the upland he sought ; high oa whose crest heart and foot now longed to be. In the shivering and uprising twilight he mounted the hill-skle, the goal of his fantastic quest ; turned to look back, and saw the woods black below him still ; stooped and drank, and heard in the tree overhead, sharp as a blade, the cry of the first awakened bird ; looked up, and saw at the farm the yellow gleam of blinds behind which labour arose to its work. On the way home he passed Haycraft's solitaiy abode. Father and daughter were already up; and the bread he shared with them seemed the sweetest he had ever tasted. _ ■^^ CHAPTER XV TRB nrm op November TT wu said of an ill-constitutioned monaith that A nothing in hit life became him so well ai hit manner of quitting it Certainly by that retirement he accomplished more to his purpose than by all the egregious acts of his reign. Picturesquely he stands out in history, not altogether a failure; going do%m to his house justified, if to live long in men's minds be a thing worthy to die for. Of Tristram Gavney's school-life also some would hold that nothing in it became him better than the last wild act which brought down the curtain. That would have been the verdict of his school-fellows. So high a picture did he leave of himself in that final flourish, that even adverse critics were fain to admit he had carried the folly through in a gallant style. Thereafter his name stood in tradition along with one mad epispde little relished of the authorities, but lifting him high in the eyes of his contemporaries. At the end of the autumn vacation, when the school met, rumour went round that an old commemorative tradition of Friars-gate was about to perish, and that the half-holidays of the mid-term were to lose that peculiar jollity which had marked their recurring place in the school-calendar. There was to be no November bonfire. Big schools were letting the celebration go; little schools were in a hurry to follow. ^i "octocorr rbowtion tbt chart (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) JSS '853 Eott Main StrMt (716) 462 - 0300 - Phon. ^ (7t«) 288 -5989 -Fax 176 A MODERN ANTAEUS Next to paper-chasing nothing was so accordant with Tristram's mind as those log-rolling jaunts to Randogger and the out-lying farmsteads, which had been the game twice a week for a whole month preceding the day of conflagration. In these expeditions the Tramp had figured well ; he knew the locality and was known and liked at the farms. Also he loved the hard manual labour of hauling and hoisting the odd scraps of timber which were given them. Often the formula was, when some big decayed log was in request— for the boys were arrant beggars— "Ay, you may take it if you can carry it" And Tristram, returning once with a picked body and a strong sniall- wheeled trolley, had succeeded in carrying oflF a mighty weight abandoned a few days before, which had been offered to a party of them on such terms. The farmer who had been chaffing them, nieaning no such gift, beheld a pound's worth of good timber gone on the strength of his rash word. He wagged his head and bore his loss sportsmanlike, only saying, "You'll find me stingier, come twelvemonth." Tristram had promised to test him. Now, it seemed, these honest marauding expeditions were to be over, and even the great blowing woodland of Randogger to which a day's permit had always been available was to remain unrifled of its dead wood ; and the pity was that high gales were ab.oad promising a rich harvest All Friars-gate growled, and wondered how most effectively to show its sulks. Some suggested that, deprived of their trolleyings, they should be resolutely slack and do nothing, neither at football nor in the chase. "Rot!'* said Tristram, and preserved a cheerful countenance, perceiving with his histrionic faculty awake, that there might be glory ahead for the down-trodden Door-mats. He held conference with a THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER 177 few leading spirits, and at the end of it briefly an- nounced that the Attics might do as they pleased, but so far as the Dormers were concerned, the bonfire was still to be. It so happened that quite early in the term, the Door-mats were made to feel their outside standing in a matter which touched their honour more than their in- clinations ; and thereafter the prospect of their coming vantage was the more sweet to them. An upper school-boarder detected in villainous bullying was to receive public chastisement, and for the preliminary call-over the whole school trooped in obedient to bell- summons. At the end of the recitation, the Door- mats were informed that they might retire beyond the threshold, Dr Coney holding this to be a boarding- house matter of no concern to the town element. The slight was felt, and the unfairness, for the big culprit had bullied not boarders only. Shipton minor bore bruises, and had a vindictive wish to see himself avenged. Climbing up by two tiers of backs, he got an eye to a lower window-pane and made report of what went on within. Down below, an open-air indig- nation meeting mouthed for a while ; but on the signal of commencement, windy talk about not going in to the next call-over died down. When the swishing started, the outsiders found that their position was not without its attraction. Shipton up aloft, reported merrily his bird's-eye- view of the proceedings. " Treacles has him ! " word came down. " All right ; wait now ! One, two, three ; can you fellows hear it ? Oh yes, I'm counting! Seven, eight, nine. What?— only nine ; and I've had twenty from the brute myself! Oh ! the Beak's jawing a moral in between ; it's to be sandwiched. Stop :— four more. Ah ! that's something like ! Treacles lets him down ; he don't seem to know which leg to stand on. He won't sleep ^n his back to- I 7, I ■t UJ 178 A MODERN ANTAEUS night, I bet,— the beast ! Hullo ! the Beak's looking ; he'll not recc^ise such a bit of me though. Let me down ! " Little Shipton slithered to ground with a countenance of beatific contentment Yes, exclusion had its charms; but for all that the injustice was remembered. It was the old qu*^stion of prestige; though the word lay outside a school-boy's vocabulary, its essence was u .dd. How you may choose to waste your leisure outside is another matter. You understand ? " " Yes, sir," said Tristram, " I quite understand that" He waited with deference for anything more to be said, and received his short dismis^a with a demure aspect November's Fifth fell on a Saturday. In the afternoon the day-boys came on to the foot-ball held with looks of overbearing importance ; they showed pockets which bulged with chrysalis explosives. "Where is it going to be?" asked boarders, hungry with curiosity, and received winks to stimulate inteUi- gence. Yet when seven o'clock sounded for lock-up, se' ■ or the lower school into hall, and the upper into' stui..cs, there was no sign of the promised bonfire. The grass-widower, parading the lower field with a yoke of buckets, began to feel foolish. Treacles was for reporting the evident break-down of the conspiracy. ito A MODERN ANTAEUS Quite suddenly, to the other side of the school build- ings, on the higher ground of Hartop's grazing land, a light broke, and revealed the audacioui whereabouts of the whole business. The field in question jutted like a squared elbow into a rear angle of the Fnars-gate acr«s; half the windows of the school looket' out on it. Treacles said, " They've got Hartop's, and there's naught to be done. Come you on I " and went to report to Doctor Coney the evasion of his jurisdiction. Disconsolate boarders, sitting mewed up in their studies, saw, too, the triumph of the despised Door- mats. Gaping flames leered at them across their boundaries, and wagged derision of their tame surrender to outrageous authority. Presently, it was not only the fire getting to work at its big meal which raised rebel feelings, there was also a merry pyrotechnic display going on; shooting rockets dropped their sticks over the playground wall; dark figures ran and gesticulated against the glare, familiar to the envious eyes that watched. The revellers made much more noise than their numbers warranted, bent as they were on throwing word to attendant ears of the full jollity that possessed them. It became more at last than some flesh and blood could stand. Before long, ground-floor study-windows lay ajar; heads popped up over the top of the play-ground wall for a nearer view. Their owners received a cordial invitation to come over ; and ofiers cf fair barter in the matter of squibs and cra<;kers completed the seduction. Over a dozen bold spi/its leapt out of bounds to join in the revelry, trusting to darkness, a posting of sentries, luck and fleetncss of foot, for the avoidance of detec- tion and capture. The playground was broad and had a high wall ; the two offered to calculating eyes a sufficient interposition in the way of approaching danger. THE FIB.TH OF NOVEMBER i8i The new-comers were in time to see the crowning glory of the show ; a trussed figure treveted on three poles, was borne forward, and set to swing across the flarnes. The fiery element, like a hungry fledgling on Its nest, threw up its beak peckishly to snatch at the impending worm. • Treaccs ' figured in black on a white label, stuck into the effigy's head-gear; a choleric red-face dripped wax to the flames below. When the straw in the stuffed legs caught fire, it was time for the spectators to back to a respectful distance: up higher lay the keg of villainous saltpetre containing dissolution for the poor object of their ridicule. The boom of the explosion when it broke, adding to the report carried in to him by his myrmidons, brought up Doctor Coney to take a far view of the scene. Going for a more commanding view from an upper window, he looked, in passing, into one of the studies, and found It empty. A few minutes later the school-bell rang and gave a momentary hitch to the consciences of a few bound-breakers. "What ? Then it must be half-past eight already ! " exclaimed one, ««and we've got to get back before nine ! Time of course passed quickly ; the explanation gave them the hour without the trouble of consulting their watches, and freed them from qualm about what for the moment had seemed to be an unfamiliar bell. So the sport danced on, nimble-legged, beyond the high- wall boundary. There was no denying that the Door- mats had scored their point; it seemed better to make the admission frankly, and go in for a share in the feast Round and round flew the fire-worshippers in a glitter of powdered flame. Catherine wheels span ; Roman candles spat gobbets of light; underfoot crackers leapt Ike fiery grasshoppers across the ground ; overhead lordly rockets ran up like corn-stems of fire, and shed coloured grain to the stars. All round, the field ran I82 A MODERN ANTAEUS away velvety in shadow to the final swallowing-up and darkness of night Riot was still high when the small figure of Tabbin minor sprung in on the company. "Oh, I say, won't you fellows just catch it!" he cried, addressing the bound-breakers. " There's been a call-over ; word came round to the studies ; and fifteen names have gone up as absent Treacles has been all round and locked the outers, and the penny-slide's been fastened. I came over by the pigeon-houses. I'm off back again ; It's no use your hurrying, you're all caught. Oh I Chubby, the faf 11 be in the fire to-morrow I " He smacked his hand cheerily over the pillowy form of a large fellow from the lower-fourth, and scuttled out of sight The out-bounders formed a depressed group. " What shall you say ? " one queried. ■ Say ? Oh, say that I was nowhere, and didn't hear the word. How was I to know it was a call-over ? Thought it was the kid's bed-bell." " Tha*^ won't do ! Treacles went everywhere, you bet Your tale won't wash I " " Then it must pig it ; that's all ! " They let off their last remaining squibs in each other's faces, and seemed valiant to meet their fate. But the heart was gone from the game. The Door-mats were giving themselves superior airs of freedom ; they had stuck their light under no bushel but on a candlestick ; if moths came singeing their wings that was their own look-out The out-bounders began to slink away; conscious that they stood detected though no eye of authority had lighted on them, they felt now that to stay longer might involve them in deeper damnation. The event proved them wise. " Cave ! Cave ! " was sung up from the comer of the THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBl:-R 183 field «Now then, you Bed-brats, look alive! Here's the Beak coming." The word was hardly out when darkness swept them up from the glare of the flames. The Door-mats rubbed in their triumph ; shouting with unenslaved lungs, their song could be heard even up at the dormitories, to which the small boys of the lower forms had now mounted. " We won't go home till morning 1 " rang out defiantly above the crackling of the flames. Tristram led. Authority was over-stepping its limits and coming to overawe them ; their point was to make a full parade of a good conscience. " Gavney I " said the voice they were all expecting. Tristram came respectfully to attention, with cap off. ** Here, sir I " said he. " Oblige me by putting an end to this orgie. Eveiy one of you go to your homes." Tristram stood his ground. "But we've hired the field, sir!" "You will do as I say, sir!" said the Beak with asperity. " But, sir, we've all done our preparation. We've a right io do as we like now." " THere Gavney, we differ. Enough that I now tell yo,^ . retorted Tristram ; " I'm a Door-mat, and I sh here I am I " i... ..»octor swung himself sharply round, and made summons of authority. Treacles and the grass-widower ranged into sight Their orders were to dowse and scatter the bonfire. " If they try it on, sir, we shall squib them ! " said Tristram. The men faced a furious singeing; their buckets were dexterously tripped for them ; still they came on and began to beat open the fire-stack. The heat of that, glowing to a white incandescence within. i«4 A MODERN ANTAEUS drove them back for a moment to fetch breath. They found themselves bonneted with the empty pails, about the exterior of which sticks rattled. - Torches 1 " cried Tristram. He seized up a burning faggot and swung it. " Come on, you fellows I " Two or three others joined; mad blood was up- they advanced in a smother of fire and smoke, whiriing their weapons wide. Tristram's shin was caught by a descending bucket, he hacked it ahead of him ; that and its fellow went spinning down the field, a troop after them crying "Hurrah I" The torch-bearers stuck to their bigger game. The Doctor had to stond by with what dignity he could muster, and see his myrmidons harried to the boundaries. Tristram chose to be insolent in Latin. " Trespassores ftnnt prostmti r \ift ied. The language chosen, and the doggish use of it. gave it point to rhe ears for which it was intended. As soon as. with the rest, he had chevied the pair beyond bounds, he came back at . run to where the Beak was still standing. " I'm sorry, sir. that you set them on to us." was his first delivery. " I think you had no right to." "What my rights are, I shall prove to you very shortly, sir ! " said the enraged Doctor. Tristram said. " We'd do anything in reason to oblige you ; but the bonfire has taken us a lot of trouble, and our people know of it." -If they do not, Gavney, they certainly willl" said Doctor Coney. Tristram threw up his head. "Have you any com- plaint to make, sir?" he enquired with an amaziW assumption of innocence. "Something more than a complaint, you will find. Gavney 1 ' ' "The complaint here, sir, is ours, I think," retorted tne lad. THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER 185 " I don't discuss it with you," said the Doctor. - We return to the subject on Monday." He turned his back on them and walked away, Tristram, to show that he stood where he did befr j, sent a resolute word after the retreating figure. "Good.night,8irl" It echoed down the field unanswered The boys drew round Tristram with hushed applause ; they admired his momentary snatch of victory, but could not blink what must needs come after. In tones of awe and curiosity they asked him what he was going to do now. " Do I " said Tristram. " Are there any more rockets ? " In another minute a salvo went up. It was near mid- night when the Tramp reached home. The next day brought Jim Bowling, son of a Bem- bridge doctor, on a special errand to Tristram. What was he going to do ? he was asked once more. He had no intention of doing anything, and enquired why it was expected of him. He was told not to be an ass. " Look here ! " said Bowling. " My father's all on our side" (He wouldn't be if he wete the school-medical, thought Tristram), "and he says Coney's an interfering old ass, and de-'^rves all the setting-down he can get Well ; so has started a round-robin, and the rest have taken u up ; and every one of us is going to turn up to-morrow morning with a letter from our people to say that what we did was with their knowledge and consent That'll be all right, won't it ? " "Oh yes, that'll be all right for you," said Tristram. "Well, don't go leaving yourself in the lurch and standing out a martyr!" Bowling discerned that possible weakness in Tristram. "With me it's differer ," the other replied. "How different?" "Well, I'd give something to je able to leave school." 186 A MODERN ANTAEUS |i|' 1^ ;■ piii .1 ' " It mayn't be a matter of leaving." of thlt^r- *°"'^ *"*• ' '**''•• ^*^ "•^ ** ^^"y **^^ "Well." said Bowling, " I think he will touch you." Tristram answered. "Then, there's an end of it" And for any practical outcome of their present con- ference it was. Bowling reported on his return to Bem- bndge, that Gi iy had a mind for facing the switch without any parental protection; but he hinted that there might yet be a scene, and a problem in physics to be solved when the time came. ••If he kicks," said one, "shan't we back him ?" Bowling shrugged. "He dun't consult us." said he; why should we ? If he chooses his own way, he must go It alone." ' Neve heless there was expectation that Gavney would now tamely submit himself, nor become a public spectacle except by compulsion. They were mistaken. Instram had an early interview with Doctor Coney, and an opportunity to speak his mind. He found tiiat gentleman at his desk behind a pile of letters. " If you bring me a letter it will be of no avail for you ? " were the Doctor's first words. Tristram assured him he had none He beheld his fate in a determined eye. Nothing tiiat he saio at tiie interview diminished his offence. When at the end of morning school the bell rang all in to call-over, Tristram appeared with a calm face Names were read over; and at tiie finish day-boys had not to be excluded. It was no great merit to know how to take a licking; but for a fellow almost to go out of his way to let it fall on him was a little surprising The Doctor had his mind on Tr'- ..n's parting word : " Re- member, sir, if you pun.sh me publicly, I will repay it publicly I "and had his reinforcements at hand agJnst any event They were not needed. Tristram took his thwaclangs with stolid exterior. THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER 187 The whole school trooped out ittto the play-ground ; the Door-mats raised a loyal cheer and gath'^red round their stricken hero on his appearance. Tristram's cya were at sharp play ; lighting on young Tom Coney, they stopped from their qusst. That blameless youth heard his name sung out like a word of command, and beheiJ confronting him a white, stung face that bade him stand. Tristram was polite, " I'm sorry to have to hurt you," said he. " I should be sorry if you tried 1 " retorted the other, wondering what was meant. The two lads were of equal height ; Coney's was the thicker build. "Your father has thrasheJ ne,"said Tristram, "now I thrash you, unless you like to save trouble at once by carrying him this messa^^e for me." The message was indicated smartly ; young Coney was quick to let tht sender have it back again. Neither of them drew back then. Etiquette called them off to ground allowed by usage to stern encounters such as this. Sixty boys headed away in a rush to get places; on the way Tristram called on Bowling to be his second. Coats were soon off and belts made tight. "Now, if yor please, Dr Coney," said Tristram, for the rest to hea. fitting the title to his opponent ; and with a vis'onary': eye he sprang in to the attack. He made \11 perceive that it was the Beak himself he had before hin- every blow he dealt out was against that un. us' authont« , and those received coming from the same source only kindled him to a more virtuous ardour. Younj; Tom, with his father's honour to protect, hit out valiantly ; for ten minutes by the clock he seemed more unlike taking a thrashing than giving one to his opponent Bowling, whispering encouragement at a moment when it seemed sorely needed, heard Tristram mutter, " Oh, I'm all right Can't turn my tail, don't i88 A MODERN ANTAEUS you see I 'I and was relieved to discover his princioal he really d,d not feel the blows delivered against the fore-part of him. The panacea was behind^ " wa! bound to win." he said, "-short of a knock-out ^d I was just enough his equal for that not to be likely. i^S'first^ "'"' '° '^' '^"^ °' ^°"-'^' ^^'^ Yet it took him twenty minutes to arrive at his certemty At the finish, there were few pins to choose ^nl^T T' ^"' '^°"' ^""^y promised to carty the sense of Tristram's message to the Doctor-to state the ca.se that was to say The two boys shook hands on it. WmlTf^ fT'T^ '^\^'' °PP°"^"* ^^^« "°t to think tS loi:tr ' ''' ^^^^^^^ *'^ ^^^°""* ''^ ^"- The Door-mats. lifting their hero on high, bore him enthus.ast.ca% off the school grounds_a painflj; progress for h,m. and one that he was destined never to retrace. The next morning a letter was received at the Vallev the sSS"^'*^"^ ^' ^*''"*'^ *° ^'**^^^^^ ^'^ ^°" fr°™ CHAPTER XVI A CHAPTER OF CONTRASTS ^RISTRAM had never seen his father so moved ^ "My son expelled!" he kept repeating, and requested the culprit if he had any respect for himself to invent no excuses. Tristram had to sit and listen "What will your poor mother say!" cried his father seeing him remain stolid. ' "It depends on what she is told!" retorted the lad. " Told ! what is she to be told but the truth ? This is the way you shorten her life! The whole episode is disgraceful ! A son of mine i You associate with your mferiors; pick them out, it seems, as fitter material for the stirring up of rebellion : and from that go on publicly to insult your head-master. To-day I send him my apology, and shall promise him yours, to be made as he shall dictate, if he will consent to your return." Tristram cried out that no apology should come out of his lips. « I'd die first I " was his way of putting it "Where do you think you are going to finish your education?" his father asked, with a better sense of pro- portion; and when "other schools" were suggested (Tnstram having one particularly in his mind's eye) let his son understand with sudden frankness of speech that he could not afford it "If you think I am to spend extra money to relieve 190 A MODERN ANTAEUS you of the results of your folly," said Mr Gavney, " let me tell you that you come at the wrong time." " I thought " said Tristram, and paused. "You thought?" "That Aunt Doris had left enough: Mother told me something about it one day." The boy seemed ashamed to speak. His father said curtly, with offended tone, " Your cost already covers what is available. Understand, I can pay no more for you than I do now. You make but a poor return on the outlay, I think. Does this last exploit encourage me to increase it?" Tristram's face burned with confusion and anger. He said desperately in self-defence: "You never told me, sir, that we were poor." "Who tells you? who tells you?" cried Mr Gavney with irritation. "Am I to be questioned, and have words imputed to me if I cannot make my ends meet your extravagant expectations? Do you disgrace me, because you think I have means to repair your mistakes?" *- / r Tristram became altogether mute : his father beheld a stock-stolid face of impenitent opposition. It stung him to demand a definite submission. " On my return to-night you will have a written apology ready to accompany mine ! " was Mr Gavney's last word " You hear?" " I hear," said Tristram. When his father enquired for him twelve hours later he was not to be found. At that moment the Sage's housekeeper was having the benefit of his presence. He had arrived in the late afternoon only to find his old friend absent. By the looks of him he was fagged out, for his coming there was an after-thought, when fatigue had warned him to seek some destination for the night. A welcome waited him ; he had hardly to ask for a night's lodging, so A CHAPTER OF CONTRASTS 191 ready was the offer of it The evening of the morrow brought the Sage, and all the fine story of himself had to be gone over. The lad told it ruefully enough, but on certain points doggedly ; he did not now expect to be commended, but he was prepared to do battle for what he considered his principles. He was convinced at least, that he had done nothing disgraceful ; and the word had been hurled at him : had sent him out of the house " for ever," as he had declared to himself dramatically, vowing henceforth to be a free man. He had spent two object- less days in finding that the vocation hung heavy on his hands. The Sage's rebuke came from an unexpected quarter "What on earth," he demanded, "had sane, healthy English youth to do with that most vile of modem follies and abominations called fireworks. 'Twas a conspicuous product of Lucifer the fallen ; and came hot out of hell, its chief factory ; 'twas the gift of Prometheus to men derisively thrown to w ste; the folly of Babel breakmg out in the ministry of tire whose pure tongue was to preach the sacredness of the domestic hearth •" and a hundred more things over which the Sage made eloquent and giddy comparisons. He told the boy emphatically that to handle the fires of idolatry destroyed the moral consciousness ; that he was bound to be wrong enlisting himself in such a cause. Tristram took the rebuke in good part, knowing him- self free to argue on level terms with this antagonist m the mountains of whose prejudice existed no malice' who had the gift of making opposition the bond of friendship, and with whom to be poles apart implied no rancour deeper than of the tongue. The self-applause which affronted youth is keen to detect in the wisdom of Its elders lay but surface-deep-in the crustiness, that If- *u !Yr^^ ?^ "^'"^ rattle-pated Sage. To work off his hot blood, Tristram could not have come to a better 192 A MODERN ANTAEUS place of exercise. He carried the war into his mentor's comparisons, declaring the unfallen angels also to have a penchant for fireworks and citing Scripture. The Sage could point out to him in return that right-minded man had exhibited a wholesome dread of their display : expulsion from Eden and a crushed foot were the two results recorded on the points instanced. Tristram boasted a battered shin, a back yet more battered, and a face bearing the marks of desperate combat ; he thought he had earned honourably by these expulsion from a place which was to him no Eden at all. Through the frank laughter the Sage got out of him, showed the hard edge of a determination to make no retractation to an authority which had seized ells where inches were but its questionable property. The boy's final position came to be : « Yes, I may have behaved badly ; but I'd a right to ! " He had to laugh at himself as soon as that remark came to be heard. The Sage discerned the limits of his conquest: Tristram was no longer unduly proud of his achieve- ment ; internally he was moved to see error in himself- outwardly to those who had dealt high-handed judg- ment against him he was adamant. He put in another way, to the more sympathetic ears which now heard him, what he had already told his father. "It would be mere cowardice for me to go back and say what I did not feel ! " And the Sage, understanding how in that mood the wheat and tares stood mingled, and mindful of a \v:«e parable, became an advocate of the boy's claim to do penance without strains to his conscience. " Tristram is with me," he wrote to the boy's father. " An order from you for his return he would now obey • that is why I beg you not to send it." He followed up the request with rather wordy wisdom, in the main a true enough reading of that unruly character. Perhaps the dead hand of Doris gave some guidance to his pen. A CHAPTER OF CONTRASTS 193 Mr Gavney read little .neaning into the old man's periods, but was flattered that Celebrity should be at such pains and take so eloquent an interest in his son's career. He trusted there was sense in the advice, and accepted the glory of having a famous man for his confidential adviser. His thanks to t .c Sage conveyed to Tristram the inference of at least a formal pardon for his misdemeanour. He was not required to eat humble- pie before Dr Coney ; it seemed unnecessary to tell him that that offended dignitary had already refused the offer. Tristram wrote penitently to his father of the trouble he had caused, and a certain measure of gratitude warmed his words, making them humble. Mr Gavney styled it, "a very proper letter." It brought from Mrs Gavney a tender epistolary caress to the pardoned sinner ; and therewith a hinted reproach that he had not come to her for mediation and advice when difficulties had befallen him. Tristram's thoughts flew out in kisses to the delicate apprehensive face of his would-be confidante, who understood so little her inability to bear the worry of any thinking but what the conventions of life brought her. Cooler consideration showed to Mr Gavney that his son's school fail lire had relieved him of a difficulty ; he did not feel bound now to afford him the final pcJlish of a university career ; he regretted that the release should be so great a convenience under present circum- stances, but there it was. In the matter of another school also— a public school which would be so ex- pensive-he could plead Tristram's practical expulsion from Fnars-gate as an obstacle. It remained then to fit him for the inheritance in trade awaiting him at Sawditch, while still giving him the veneer of culture required in a gentleman. The Doiis legacy? well, he trusted as a parent that N 194 A MODERN ANTAEUS he was spending it honestly for his son's benefit— his eventual benefit, which was, after all, the business in which his life itself wculd have to be spent— without rendering an account to the uttermost farthing. When Tristram came of age he should hear a satisfactory ex- planation of the matter; in his own mind "& Son" would then be the virtual terms under which the business was to go flourishing. It was the generous out-look natural to a sanguine man; and he had the proud belief that his son, rid of the early tares of youth, would grow up like-minded to himself, with a disposition for business equal to his own. The problem of the completion of Tristram's educa- tion, more especially of his initiation into the theory of commerce, lay easy of solution: Mr Gavney found himself hand in glove with Fate. One, Gilpinger, for many years right-hand man and head clerk at the works, but lately retired from office on savings and a grievance, had come to live on the outskirts of Bembridge. Mr Gavney knew of no better man to give his son technical instruction in the commercial side of the business he was to belong to. A temper of increasing crustiness had caused Gilpinger to become a clog to the establishment. Clerks refused to work under him ; he had not the eye that could wink at venial irregularities ; the waste of a minute won threat of a report for dismissal ; his rectitude was austere growling, and without a grace in its manifestations' There had been storm ; a body of valuable clerks had offered their resignation. Mr Gavney had considered Gilpinger s age, his manifest infirmity of temper, and had bidden him take the rest he now deserved Thus It wa? that the old clerk sat at home, pathetically empty-handed, hating the sunshine of unoccupied hours while his eye could still snap up a column of figures' and his head foregather the meaning of disturbed A CHAPTER OF CONTRASTS 19c markets and fluctuating prices. Resentment perhaps caused him to utter jeremiads against the house which had shaken off his serviceable dust; yet a personal loyalty to his old employer still clung to him. The offer that he should have the coaching of Tristram in the large mysteries of commerce, was as a restored testimonial to his powers. It was settled that the youth should come to him three mornings a week for instruction ; old books of the firm were sent down to him, that he might have means at hand for practical demonstration ; he beheld himself surrounded by a library which represented the labours of a life- time, very different to that wherewith old Daddy Wag-top comforted his loneliness, Tristram, coming penitentially to bear the burden of his sins and to be for the first time in his life industrious at something lying right away from real interests, met and recognised an enthusiast. A mind wondrous lor docketed contents and innumerable pigeon-holes opened to give him its stores, and stuffy as they were, the boy discovered a perverted romance in mathematics that seethed with the hum of markets, and in figures that represented men rushing to ruin or to fortune. The old fellow's finger pointed the tortuous way the firm had wound past this and that peril, to safety and affluence; that was his work more perhaps than Mr Gavney was aware. Of what went on under present conditions, Mr Gilpinger indicated a jealous ignorance. Tristram watched with fascination the massive grasp the old man's mind had on years represented merely by columns of figures, checked over everywhere in red and blue ink. His memory could inspire his hand to turn back unerringly over a hundred pages and show cause and just impediment why this, or the other had not to be done for the firm's welfare ; and more too how the keen eye of pervision had detected an in- 196 A MODERN ANTAEUS efficient or dishonest stewardship. The sight was comparable to that of a general with commissariat army and transport. The boy's brain whirled, sea- sick and tossed; he began to settle that he had no head for figures, and must presently fall down in penitent despair at his father's feet and b^ to be let off. Presently the old man let him know that he had but taken him up on to Pisgah-top to give him a glimpse of the Promised Land, and a longing for its glories. He brought him down to dry figures, and so smoothed his teaching with the methodical accuracy of long experience, that Tristram, finding no difficulties at all, was left with the deadly dullness of the thing, and the caged thought somewhere at the back of his brain that he owed all this to a night of fire-works and a beating. Often at the end of his three hours' tuition, he would leap up wild of eye on the stroke of time, as if to hear another syllable on the subject would be too much for his endurance. For recompense he would arrive home breathless: his body became hard and lean with much running — the result of arithmetic and book-keeping. No new thing, one might suppose, since he had already been through some schooling; but with this difference: he began to see that instead of a thing almost meaningless, or laid on him for discipline, it meant life: days and days of what he was to expect, made bearable to him for the present only because old Gilpinger loved him after a sour fashion of his own, and took a pride in his progress. I ooking out with a glum eye on the clock to know if i.x;. pupil would be punctual, he would brighten his crabbed looks to welcome a . zrambled arrival which was always just not late. Tristram could have loved him in return, had the bond between them been a A CHAhTER OF CONTRASTS 197 little more to his liking ; as it was, his respect mounted to an enormous enthusiasm. He told Marcia, when writing word of his new studies, that the House was what it was, and they themselves what they were, be- cause old Gilpinger had the biggest head for figures in the three kingdoms. " When he's dead they ought to have his brain weighed I " he declared. Afterwards, with a puzzled sensation of distress, he heard one evening from his father, that this mighty mind of business was positively gratified over his application and progress. " Hopeful " was one of the words used ; and the youth's heart metaphorically rapped the floor over all that such hope betokened. Thus was Tristram inducted into the path destined for his feet. Over the other side of his training, gentle and classical, he had less cause to sigh: it brought Ray back to him. That youth was in trouble to pass his "smalls," a standard too high for his attainment after a course of public-school athletics, to which brain-work had stood secondary. If college was to be his next step, a coach had become necessary. The two friends went in company, morning and afternoon, to a solitary curate quartered at Long Alwyn under Randogger, as spiritual guide to all the scattered community living between Parscr/s Coppice and Hiddenden. The youths found it a good neighbourhood for the recreation which sandwiched perfunctory scholarship. Some of their Latinity they carried over to Hiddenden, and dropped raw and crude into the delighted ears of Daddy Wag-top. Wilder rambles found them in the company of old Haycraft. with whom sometimes Tristram would leave Raymond and be carried off by Lizzie to the less manly but more exciting sport of birds'-nesting. Few as were the words he ever get from her, he found that she had a fine instinct for the game. She would as often nod her meaning as speak it: she could keep a «98 A MODERN ANTAEUS •wret that habit seemed to say. It brought him to be observant of each passing look : often over a clutch of eggs their eyes met triumphantly, till at last, after many meetmgs and partings, the Tramp's began to carry a clear memory of the brownness in hers. The note they gave him of her inner character was very pleasant. He judged people by their eyes ; these were u TJ!;T* ^^ ^"""^ *'''*' '*^"' **>« <=Jearest depths of Tn/ ^ , u . '^'.^f^ *^** "°*« °f deadened gold nfimtely charged with shadows of a like tone; nothing that touched common air was quite the same. The boy,lookmg mto their mystery as into a picture-book was too raw as yet to read any romance into them ; but 3 V^J u^^^^J"" ^''"' -"^"^'ng comrad;ship easy. So d.d her bnet. d.rect utterance, and those long silences which, when a quest was on. made her so com- mendable a companion. She was two years his senior, and the beauty of early day which hung about hei^ visage, shadowy under dark folds of hair, promised to be greater. He noted her stride and the con- fidence with which she lifted weights; everything approved her to his eyes. Had he been sentimentally: drawn he would presently have been mooing calf- love to her; but he was still at the age when friendship not sex. kindles the mind to its romance. Latent, under the healthy run of his blood, the animal m him said a word or two; but it found and let go agam without any disturbances to their relations. She was a girl just bordering on womanhood, without that consciousness of the fact, which disturbs the charm while makmg it dangerous. Tristram recalled how Raymond had first put her down as sulky, and still so thmkmg. he supposed, by something in his manner, had taught her to dislike him; for of Raymond she fought shy. It mattered little: the Tramp's knack of comrade- ship lay m the limits of two. finding in three, according A CHAPTER OF CONTRASTS lyy to the adage, not company but society: to be one of four was to be in a crowd. The limitation made his affections appear more weather-cock-Hke than they really were; his life seemed a process of desertions, till the opportunity came for an affection to reassert itself. Marcia, home for a holiday from her own schooling, had her turn of finding herself approved once more. Her brother contemplated her for some days, puzzled and charmed by the stranger in her. He solved his problem at last by supposing her to be grown-up and " finished " in all the educa^ tional graces that were her due. He paid her a naive compliment by enquiring, "I say, Marcia, aren't you very pretty?" and really required to be told or rather confirmed in his own opinion, which might be the result of brotherly blindness or family prejudice in her favour. He consulted his mother on the subject, with Marcia's laugh ringing at him, and finally, to get an outsider's opinion, Raymond, who said, "Yes!" with an emphasis that made him proud. After that he remained quite certain of Marcia's exceeding prettiness. Her spirits were quite as they used to be, and the moral phase in her had been comfortably tucked to rest ; if it peeped ever, to moderation, it was with a twinkle. She gave him anecdotes of the cousins, outlining pleasant con- ditions, but letting him understand that the end of it would bring her back 'home' to him. Now they could have ridden together and taken big breaths of the country-side, but were confronted by a stable reduced to the modest requirements of Mrs Gavney's daily drive, a silent indication of things about which no word was ever said to them. Tristram said, "I get a ride, though, now and then?" and looked mysterious He told his sister he could ride bare-backed, and that no horse could get him off". She declared she had done the same for a wager 200 A MODERN ANTAEUS T^J^'f h»ve been thought unlad;iike th^ Jf h^ A Tir^T^ ^^' '^'^''^"^ »°™« f'^^ part Uxiie! he declared, and seemed to have hghted on Mrr.-J ♦ !! •*r'"b'*"« in looks as well, and took On Z- ""'^'' "^l ^^^"*'"^"<=« of her rustic double Sto tr rr"5 *u' "•^'^""^ ^«" »^^y- Li«le drew w^ Su ori d*?o h'°"tJ "^. *"'*"*'^'>'' »»^** Tristram T^a.W •"? ^'" ^'^"'^ **y *»>*» '^'e «ked her. Tog.veL.zz,eat,tle to such favour, he told his sister of the Amazon courage the girl possessed-Duffin's horses m the secluded fields under Randogger Edge anT2l Tk^^^ "'^ ^'^- ^^^" **» the ti'ne; he and she in he grey m.sts of that hour had ridden rkces under ach.ll air They had their eye. too. on a^ where lively colts ran loose, owner unknown. Marc a wSt '° "^^ '"^''^''^ '''' '-'^^' -"'"^ ^- Tristram should not have boasted: a week after Maraa s departure, he got a surprising fall. Unaccount- 3^1 '"'I ' ^^u.""*^ "°'^'^ ^^^ that met with damage. He got himself up, and tried limping with L.zzjes aid but had to give in; the jolt of if wL t^ much for h.m. They had two fields and a brook to cross before gettmg to any foot-track. Lizzie took him seU"le for th ' t" "^^ ^"' *° '^^ strength, and to" nrnti! H I ^^""^ *° '"^^^ '"^^^ ^^an a show of ci^ fn K '' ^^""y '^'^'"''' *° him in his disablement mSe of /h"^ T T °' '°"°""''^ °^''^^tion to make httle ofthepam: havmg a pang at one end he became the more fnvo ous at the other. It was ridiculous vet nlL^nfrL'""''"'°'^ ""y *'^ ^*-"^°f thisfi'rm piece of buddmg womanhood, who strode evenly under the weight of him. "After all." he said, "what's Ae A CHAPT R OF CONTRASTS 30i diflerence? Insteac of a colt I've got a filly I Woa, my girl I " Lizzie bade him not talk. He blew into her hair behind, called it her mane, and teased her with the phraseology of the stable. When she threatened to drop him if he did not cease his nonsense, he called her vicious, and talked about her mouth in terms of bit and bridle. Shy, he said was good for a woman, but bad for a horse. "Are you shy, my filly?" Beginning with boyish chaflT, his talk took a thoughtless run into mischief; the situation m? le him a little more foolish. Just when she stepped down with him to the brook, he thought a good moment for being rather more absurd than ever. A skin-deep idea that to be in love with her would be nice, caused him to rub his cheek on hers and ask like a fondling fool— Did she love him or no 1 Apparently no ; he found himself abruptly deposited legs m water, with a sharp wrench to the injured a.ikle • and beheld Lizzie sitting angry-eyed on the further bank. Sight of her face was suflficient to make him say "Serve me right I" and to beg pardon, humblv. He meant it, and had taken his lesson. It came at the right moment to help him over the crude mock-turtle season which raw youth goes through on its way to the ntiakings of a man. Lizzie, the playmate, had by a simple display of mettle, received stature and gained his respect She showed her magnanimity by coming back to fetch him across, and the culprit tnr.k the favour as a very proper chastisement. She had not again to com- plain of him. If thereafter Tristram cogitated on the growing chart! of womanhood, he did so with a greater respect than educational convention had taueht him and for that had to thank Lizzie. That good giri showed her forgiveness of him by making no change in her frank acceptance of his friend- 3oa A MODERN ANTAEUS sh p. Coming upon her at dawns in the yet twilight fields to help fill her mushroom basket, he found in her an untroubled and untroubling type of fair woman- hood, carrying out for him into the world of her sex the sisterhood of Marcia In those primal hours, when tentative lights and colours washed in faint waves over the threshold of the sun, she seemed to have part in the spirit of the wind which sprang, harbinger of day, equable and cool with the wide breath of health. Dawn, for those who will rise to it, is the daylight hour of the soul; so little then does the body hinder that perspective of the higher intelligence which moment- arily opens to us all. In this year of his life, following the freaks of his blood, Tristram grasped something of its health-giving significance, and felt in his veins a response to the divine alchemy. By his side during many of these hours Lizzie Haycraft moved humble yet sisterly. On a later day he had to remember that debt, and to the best of his ability he paid it CHAPTER XVII APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWYN 'T^WO days later Tristram was still limping tenderly -■• on a convalescent foot, when his father threw down before him a letter from Lady Petwyn, abrupt, and couched in outrageous terms, giving stiff warning that his son's trespasses were no longer to be tolerated. She spoke of previous communications ; none had come. Mr Gavney finding feud at work where he had still hoped one day to find favour, was the more indignant with his son as the cause of it He demanded to know what it all meant in a voice of irresolute chagrin. He fought the air to discover a larger grievance. "I have a right to be offended!" he exclaimed. "I have worries enough!" was a pathetic after-thought. He wished to be deaf to anything Tristram could say, as the way was with him ; argument upset his judgment But on this occasion his son showed a readiness to fall in with his strictest demands : he would go himself, he said, and apologise; no time should be lost A few hours afterwards he set off as proud as Lucifer on his self-imposed errand of humility. Underneath Lady Petwyn's terms of opprobrium he scented MacAllister the rank fox that he was ! By that wily official's contrivance the Tramp had been given long rope to hang himself. He had announced with covert insult that Lady Petwyn's word 204 A MODERN ANTAEUS would be enough for him ; nor did MacAllister doubt th^ a note from her, civilly worded, would have sufficed to put an end to the nuisance. But things had got to such a pitch between him and the youth that his rancour could not so be satisfied. He complained moderately to her ladyship at stated intervals, but omitted to send on the merely conventional complaints for which he received direction. Thus it came about at last that an absolute defiance in Tristram's attitude was conveyed to her. The affair of the loose-ridden colts, of which an eye- witness brought word, gave the finishing touch to an indignation artfully stimulated. MacAllister wanted to get his hand on the boy; but on cool reflection had decided that for such a step he required the backing of his employer's authority. When at last he got it he could assure himself that, whatever extremities he might proceed to, the legal penalties would not be allowed to fall upon him. Behind his back the lady's liking for a fair field and no favour undid all his plans. She wrote openly to Tristram s father that, ordinary complaints failing, she had given orders to her bailiff that the boy should be whipped off the ground if found committing depredations on her property. The Tramp was aware of none : in all his record he believed he had done no damage. With the possible exception of the colts-episode-and those he had not known to be her property-he had been guilty of nothine worse than fair trespass, a thing allowable under the broad laws of England. If his mood was apologetic it was with a high head that he rang at the doors of Hill Alwyn, and demanded admission to the presence of its mistress. A footman carried word of him, and returning after a while ushered him into the crippled presence. APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWYN aos Lady Petwyn was waiting to receive him. She re- mained seated, and bowed with ironic ceremony to a tall lad at the awkward age, whose movements escaped the reproach, showing even a grace, which the slight limp he brought with him tended to enhance. Prettily and frankly he made his apologies. She chose to think they were done to escape a beating, and gave him to understand that they came rather late after the offence. " That is not my fault," he said ; " your ladyship must have chosen an untrustworthy messenger. It is of that I have to complain." ' Oho ! " quoth the other, « so it's a complaint I'm to listen t', is it?" She heard the heads of it concisely put ; and was able to perceive that it was more an errand of protest than of apology that had brought him to her. " This morning," said Tristram, " I heard your wishes for the first time, though ever so long ago I gave my word to attend to them if you thought my running about did any harm. In your letter you are good enough to say I am to be horse-whipped off the estate. I promise you, your wish alone is sufficient. Mr MacAllister tried to get in with his horse-whip before, and failed." " It seems, however," said Lady Petwyn, " that v'ou have repeatedly ignored his remonstrances, though knowing him to be my agent" "He and I have had rows," answered Tristram ; " I took it he was merely trying on his authority to spite me. A word from you would have ended the matter; by not carrying out your instructions he has made me be unintentionally rude to you. I am very sorry." " Made me be very intentionally rude to _you, I suspect you to mean," said the lady, amusing herself over the boy's covert demand for an apology. " It shan't happen again," he promised. :; li 206 A MODERN ANTAEUS "No!" she laughed, catching at cross-purposes to confuse his assurance, "I'll do my best that it shan't. Apologies given and received ; we accept each other's excuses, /withdraw the horse-whip, and you let poor MacAlhster alone. Is that so ? " Tristram thanked her, adding, "Then I am to under- stand that you wish me to keep altogether off the estate ? " Before denying the wish, "It seems you have done damage," said the lady. "I go about everywhere," replied Tristram, "and none of the farmers make any complaint" " You have a taste for horses ; ride. It seems ; not always with discretion," was her countering stroke, to show that she had reason on her side. '• If I get a chance, I do," he admitted. " Other people's horses ; of course, with their per- mission?" She put the point with crafty interroga- " Oh, that?" Tristram smiled, to show that at last he gathered her meaning. " It's for a special thing, then I have to ask your pardon. I've been punished for 'it The colts, you mean? They were in one of Duffin's fields; I might have thought they were his. Had I supposed they were yours, I would have thought twice before making use of them." With Farmer Duffin's more genial qualities thus pleasantly hinted to her. Lady Petwyn enquired : " And what does your Duffin say when they happen to be his ? " -^ rr Tristram was lured on by the lady's tone to let go the roguish impertinence of a full statement ; "Oh, he and I are quite friends. Probably when he sees me next he says, ' Drat your carcass,' with, maybe, just another word thrown in." " A very suitable remark," observed the lady ; « without APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWYN 207 our being exactly friends I may be permitted to endorse it And your friendship with Duflfin continues ? " "Oh yes; you see, we understand each other," said the boy. " I accept the rebuke," said Lady Petwyn ; "you and I, it seems, do not My fault, no doubt So, since the other thing is beyond us, let us instead come to a full w/junderstanding, and have done with it! For the future, trampling over my land is forbidden you ; you will please quite to misunderstand that!" " I will obey your wishes. Lady Petwjm," he replied stiffly. *^ She laughed out at his defensive simplicity. " I think you are making a mock of me," she said. " But let that go ; we've done ! " Throughout the interview Tristram had been stand- ing ; now she pointed him to a chair. " So then " she said, "business is over; we've both apologised,' both been forgiven. Please to sit dow.i a moment I ask it as a favour." Tristram dropped to the seat indicated, and waited. She fixed him with an unwinking eye. and perused his features. He gazed back in frank curiosity to know what she meant by it, finding himself in the presence of a new and strange breed. Lady Petwyn finished her study of him. Decidedly she liked the creature. "Is it your friendship or your acquair* e I am to make?" she asked him abruptly. He was taken aback by her sudden cordiality " I think you are very kind to wish either," he replied, after you've found me so troublesome." "That." she retorted, "is the first dishonest remark you have made to me 1 " "Well." objected the youth, « I'm a trcspasser.and you've warned me off. How's friendship to come out of that ? - I I 308 A MODERN ANTAEUS ••When did I warn you off?" " You said I wasn't to trample." "That you were to wwunderstand : it seems that, like an idiot, you have done just the contrary. Listen, here! Do what you will; come and go as you will; don't break fences; be civil to MacAllister; and if you do a damage, report yourself! It has gone too far now for me to promise that he shan't frown at you ; but you shan't be horse-whipped. Will you write him a formal apology ? " " No, I won't ! To you, I will. Lady Petwyn." " Then / must— for letting you on ; that's all about it I After all, the man had my authority, and you flouted it Go and tell him I've winked at you ! " She sheered off, without listening to his protests and thanks, to enquire curiously: " And the other ; the petticoat, who also rides bare- backed, and can stick on, it seems : — who is she ? " Tristram laughed. « That was Lizzie Haycraft," he informed her. " What ? daughter of old Haycraft, the vicar's poacher ? Is she another of your friends ? " The Tramp's answer was a plump affirmative, heartily uttered. The old dame eyed him discreetly. " How old are she and you ? " " From seventeen and on. She's a bit the elder." " Very well ; you shouldn't teach a girl to straddle at that age. It damages her character." "She taught herself, though," said Tristram. "It's the natural way." " Loss of character is ? Oh yes, no doubt ! " Lady Petwyn let further thought on the subject lie unspoken. She said in matter-of-fact tones, "If you want to ride come and take one of my horses for an airing ; and if there is anything else that will enable our better acquaintance, if you can think of it, name it I " .■!:! APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWY N 309 Tristram asked if he might have the run of the ponda. " For fishing ? " she enquired. "Yes, if I may ; but I meant for boating or bathing It was over that that MacAllister and I fell to loggw^ heads." He told her the whole story; Lady Petwyn sat through it grim with suppressed laughter. "Well!" she exclaimed at the finish, "I must say you behaved abominably ; it's lucky, when MacAllister reproaches me, that I can plead ignorance. You got my word out of me first, remember that! Keys you'll want; they are not supposed to be transferable. If the vicar goes lending them to professional trespassers he may as well give them up altogether. I don't suppose he uses them." •;Oh, but Raymond does when he is at home." said Tnstram. " Raymond ; who is he ? " "Young Hannam ; he's my friend." "Oh! another friend," grunted the lady; "you are a dangerous gang, the whole lot of you." She vowed at parting that she must humble herself to MacAllister. Tristram anticipated her; he met the bail Iff at his own door. "Mr MacAllister," said he, "I've been to see Lady i'etwyn, and she has made matters right. I'm to be a trespasser no longer, and she says that you and I are not to quarrel any more. Since we can't be friends, lef s TK *■ ^ri°,^, "?*'■*''• ^^^" *^^t be the bargain ?» The bailiff looked at him under a fixed lowering of Ae eyelids, and made reply. "To be neutrals, Mr Gavney, one needs to have a bad memory. I've a good one I He turned and went into his house. "Well, you are an honest beast," said Tristram to himself watching him disappear. " Yet a dishonest one. too, or I m much mistaken." There could be no doubt that Lady Petwyn had made o 910 A MODERN ANTAEUS .'I her offer with the intention that it should be accepted A set of keys came to the Valley House for Tristram with her ladyship's compliments, and his letter of thanks brought an intimation that a horse was kicking its l^s off" in her stables waiting for him to try it The lady denied that she had any kindly intention in the matter. "You pay for the keys," she told him, "by exercising my horses. If you will only use one of the beasts regularly I can keep a groom the less. They have nothing to do but go out riding on what £^>are mounts I keep for my occasional visitors. Farmer Duffin, on the contrary, doesn't want his horses extra-ridden." Tristram became an occasional companion to the lady when she rode out She found his views of life entertain- ing : he quoted his friend, the Sage, and swore by all the unreasonable high morality of that great student of the eternal economies. It was her pleasure to flout him and put logical spokes into the wheel of his ailment, having, for her own part, strong notions of the uselessness of all man's efforts to mend a bad world not of his own making. " Why turn scavenger? " she asked him. "Leave that to the vestries, clerical and lay ; they are a breed by themselves." Her ideas to him sounded terrific and abominable Yet under mountains of evil-speaking and enmity, she concealed a contemptuously humane heart If she knew herself, it was only up to a point Stood she ever self- convicted of an act that went beyond her theory of limitations she would scold herself with angry repetition, and would endeavour to eradicate the weakness by an indulgence of unreasonable animosity in some other direction. Thus, if she pardoned a stableman for drink one day, she would probably give her cook notice the next She humoured herself infinitely in thinking proudly of her vices, and boasted childishly of things she should have been ashamed of. She claimed to have APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWYN an taught her butler to be honest with the wine, by throw- mg at his head a bottle of inferior quality which had come up for her consumption. "At his head," was her word for it ; actually, she hau pushed the offending vintage off the table. This had happened in the first days of her widowhood ; it taught tfie servant's hall that a knowledge of wine had not departed from the establishment with the defunct Sir Cooper. In wrath her tongue became abominable. Tristram hearing it for the first time was fairly aghast Noticing that he winced, she dismissed her victim, to say in boastful apology: "It took me ten years to beat Sir Cooper at his own game, and I can't afford to drop the habit now I've learned it I might marry again— w« women are all fools!" She had so dismissed ceremony from their relations that Tnstram was able to answer; "Don't marry old Haycraft. then, or you will find yourself a backward student I " She pretended a wish to have details of so rare a vocabulary. "He's gorgeous!" declared the Tramp, and there let the matter rest, without sample. She was so assiduous in showing off her vices to the youth that the wonder was he got through them and was able to like her. There was no doubt he did. She put him to the test and found him one who would not cringe for her favour At the second word of her worst, he got up and left her' and believed m doing so that he had made the breach between them irrevocable. A groom overtook him at toe gate, bearing him a scribbled apology. She greeted his return, which was immediate, with the words, " That's the last time I grovel to you, young man ! Explanations are not m my line. You must get to understand me I" tl« A MODERN ANTAEUS "Still ^^ said Tristram. " Oh yes I " growled the old Mold ; "you m.\y either stop up your ears, or run out of the room. But you will please to come back again without expecting me to run after you I " She asked him then why he had come back. - Because I like you," said the youth. " Like ? What is there to like ? " " When I know that, I'll tell you." " At present, then, you like me as a conundrum ?" •• Put it that way, ma'am, if you will." "My dear," she said, "what I suffer from is a hot head and a cold heart; and a tongue that gets wajjeed by the two of them." He told her at last that she was like Queen Elizabeth, and supposed that his affection for her must have a historical basis. He found her the next day reading Green's History. She threw the book at him, and asked —Did he expect rigadoons from her in her old age? "And I never patted a young man's neck in my life!" she protested. It was curious that at opposite poles she and the Sag." had the same gift; they could make him laugh at them, and like them all the better as a consequence. Something youthful lay crusted in both: to each of them he felt it possible to confess his follies— with very different results. Lady Petwyn might be depended on for a jocular encouragement of them; the Sage for extravagant blame. Yet in their secret estimate of him their views reversed: the lady considered him a delicious, sweet fool, gloriously headstrong; the Sage had hopes that, could he but beat the rebel out of his composition, he would grow up to deserve Doris's love for him. He held a letter of hers received but a few days before her death, requiring of him a promise: the answer to it had reached dead hands. APOLOGIES TO LADY PETWYN 313 Moralists might guess that at this point they saw Tristram divided between his two angels of good and evil ; and that question was henceforth to be, which of them should have the mastery. But complex influences seldom divide their forces with such simplicity. Had Tristram always followed Lady Petwyn's advice when she seriously gave it, this tale might have remained a comedy. The energetic dame industriously waylaid the youth's goings. Meeting him in the roads, she would dismount a groom to have his company ; and presently, had all the will to present to him the particular mount he favoured, but that to continue it as a loan brou^t him more certainly day by day to htr stables. When the call to attend his father to Sawditch on certain days of the week took Tristram off for the whole day, he came over to Hill-Alwyn to secure an early morning canter, at an hour when the grooms were still rubbing their eyes. Lady Petwyn growled like a dog c'efrauded of its bone. " You do that to avoid me," she snapped; " I'll be even with you !" and the next morning was true to her word. He assured her it was the dullest of dull reasons that drove him to be so unseasonably early, and heaved a tremendous sigh, naming the trade he was being put to. " Come out of it, and I'll allow you two hundred a year!" was the bait she threw him. He shook his head dolefully, "I'm paying debts," he said, not knowing how doubly true was the remark • "and besides " ' The truth was he could not tell what he wanted to be : could name no calling, unless that of water-finder, whose duties held colours of attraction to him. " A jockey, I might be," he jokingly suggested, after he had taken creditable part in a steeple-chase into which Lady Petwyn had urged the amateur riders of her side of the county. «4 A MODERN ANTAEUS But from a free choice he was subtly debarred hardlv realising a. yet how fast drcumstanc"^ ^crTiny^^!^ oJ^!f J'v *" ^^'u^^ ^^' ^^ *>^"«* to have become Curs tot' 'r\^°P^}>y «" indulgent extension of favours to malce his son's office-stool with its present drudgery seem to him the ladder to a thn>ne CoJSTe S^^'^rhadSJi' '""'"'"'^ °^* »^^'« <>' • spring- board it had been more to the purpose. * w.!j***r "^' ' ^'^^^ * business head!" Tristram Pjmbled to Marcia. « I have, if an ache is the slgnTf Mr Gavney began to look out sanguinely over present embarrassments. Some capital, it was true S sirwiror'r'^""''^'^ hehadsta::doTtt oay, Tristram on his coming of age could set the deficiency right Thereafter the firm would go f^rll^d w^Ui enlarged capacities, and with a highef stanXg The dofh r'r.'°"'*''"^ "^^^ ^^- P-Peroui' The cloth-merchanfs eye went over-sea to f'' -^inH ror:^%rhn'nt r hadiid'Tr ■" carried out her half-for^ed p„]S of^l^ »^" chai-vek xvni LADY PETWYN'S PAST 'T^HE world is slow to recognise romance out of its -■' accustomed grooves. Youth woos maid the spnng-time of two Hves rush together, Nature in an outbreak of extravagance looses on them more happi- ness than ever mortal could claim by right- and at once the over-rewarded creatures are made the darlines of popular sentiment. The world becomes green hstenmg to protestations of eternal fidelity, which sober sense knows to be false ; for the joy of a season must express itself from the topmost of its vocabulary and should the lover of a day swear a less word than forever m urgmg his suit, he were untrue to the emotion of a moment that carries in it the semblance of eternity. The disillusioned listen to the overflowings of this natuml hyperbole and fall to illusion once more. This pair of lovers, though all the millions paired since the world began have stopped short of their promise this pair, we say, shall attain their ideal, and justify that gr^nness of the human eye that springs not of jealousy And If the natural base of all this beauty be Nature's claim that the sexes shall meet and propagate, why does so slight a shifting of the desire make it such world's fr^'u.?"^ f '''°''*"" '" *^ '■^*=^ ^° ™^y callous or thoughtless beings ready to laugh at passion that has missed the blossoming season? The longing of the nr «8 A MODERN ANTAEUS old maid for a son to her barren body at the lonely to X" Moth" m'^' " ^""'^ " *^"^^^ ^ *-«™-^ to bitter Mother Nature as any the maiden can give under seal of her lover's lips. Nay. it is the ve^ of ?S- i i "^ 't^"" *^"°"^^ °^ *^'"g« "»°»-e deserving of "dicule than the passion with which the crabbed, the ofr^tlvT^H''' ^''' ^° '^''^ ^^ ^^ *o '«o-tr^ct or retrieve the past Some such longing had seized on the stiflF gnarled body and jaded mind of Lady Petwyn. at lighting ^ one who accepted her favour for the simple and suffident ^^n of a cordial liking; who had no fLof her ffo^ and could o-morrow be independent as air. were her' bhe studied him, puzzled to know wherein lav the TTT- ""'^ y°" '^^ "'y ^°"." she owned "I shouW have bullied you out of the .eiy thing I like you for being I " Maybe, for all the difference in their years, mstmct taught him to see in the debona r motions of his youth, the shadow of the thing she had^ought and missed as a match to her own sLng anf Z'^.^'"'' ft^^ '° *^^^" ^* °"<^^ *e spoiling and tiie making of him in her own hands. triJd him with her humours, cajoled him with her favours. resentS his independence yet admired it in the same breath. One day she made a pretext for cutting off his rides decUnng that he had lamed one horse and overridden mZ\ *"1/T *^"" J"st ^ happy on foot, and as fnendly. She became jealously convinced that bribes ^uld not bring him any nearer to her affections, a^ T !i ?\"°''« fl^tte'^l and taken to see him un- affected by her vile moods and occasional mor^ness of demeanour. «The cunning dog makes a p^tat of LADY PETWYN'S PAST 219 understaying his welcome," she told herself, to explain her irritated lik'ng for his company. It was quite an unconscious play of tact on Tristram's part; he believed himself merely quick to follow the signals of the lady herself. One day he came upon her sitting among heaps of musty documents. A post-mortem mood had seized on her ; she had a presentiment, she told him, that she was going to die— prayed it might be with the hoirnds during the coming winter: and was mindful to spare her executors unnecessary labour. " If to save trouble were all," she remarked, "I might as well put a match to every security I possess, and die intestate ; then cousins and the law could wrangle it out at leisure. Executors are usually one's friends: heirs, not necessarily: I've no friend among mine I There are Cooper-Petwyns, and Coopers, who seem to think because I was cooped up with one of them for all the best years of my life and bought up embarrassed property, that I owe it back to them. ' It should stay in the family,' is the phrase they have in their greedy mouths. I tell them they may buy it back if they want to. Their grievance is that Sir Cooper -I the benefit of a broken entail, if to pay one's crea y the sale of one's patrimony be indeed a benefit ! "Burn that, and that, and that!" she gave Tristram dusty bundles to throw to the flames. Presently a curious perturbation came over her face, as she crackled her fingers on a bunch of notes tied up with pack-thread; self-disgust seemed to pre- dominate. " Am I into my dc ^ j ? " she exclaimed. " It would ^m so.^ Here have I been hoarding a budget of my Skeleton's letters for over seventeen years without knowing it!" She glanced her eye through one of them. »» A MODERN ANTAEUS "Poor ghost," she murmured. -How he «bhiM^l i«y cnanty burned a large enough hole in mv ooclcet when .t had him to deal with. Thieves got aUt'^en ifs moth and rust now. Help us I What a liar tL' fellow was : writes he knows I have a kind heartT He Zr^^ f' ^°"*"'^' ''"' *^^* -- Bon^'I^i'ov" wantedaol^-'^,'"!"^^" ^' "^ ^^'^^ because he wanted a particular brand to which I had the kev and cursed me m his last will and testament ! made^' "' wfdow t^ that r T'^*^ ^"^ ^°' *° ^^^' -•* ' ''"> w|dow to that, my dear; my 'Ladyship' I got from "When he did his duty finally, and died I asked th^ doctor how long it would take him to becomt bot Medical science gave me a dat,. Aft /^^^e Done, into a bon*. m.TT • ; ^^ter he was turned And vet hts rh .^^r^'^^"^ °^ ^''^ ^^^™^ I^^^iWe! Dutlah • "'*'^" '^'**'^^^ reproached me for wa^^n't^o^l"/" r^-*--"'^ coffin; cremation w^^ are^th '" '^°!f. ^^^^ ^^^ ' ^^^t moles Tcanhir.R T.P''^^^''^'^ You know now why I call him Bones ; it strips him of his vices Can von imagine a skeleton taking too much to drSc T mstance? No; ifs a mercy!" ' ^""^ Tristram's sensitiveness showed a shn-ni,;.,^ r th« ta° rrxh "'* """r"' ™ *' '™"8 foot rr?,."™' «■" There's one of the things I h^m to Uunk h,™ out of the flesh for. for con,for./saKe tHs " not the love-stoo-, but it comes round to it BonL LADY PETWYN'S PAST 331 used tu beat his own dogs every day and all day long, but not my boy — till once. That day I heard curses, and all at once Billy give a cry. I knew it for his, out of all others, and ran — could run, I tell you, in those days I Out of window I saw my poor beast chained, and my other beast in top-boots kicking him. Murder's a quid: brew : two of us got the infection. Ever yo?''ve been in a real rage you've felt you could fly. Anyway, a woman before she's forty has her hallucinations at times. That was mine. In reality I came smash. There was I along the cobble-stones ; and, over the way, butchery by all the fiends I Bones was doing it : Bill> , staunch beast, tugging at his chain to be at him. Soon as he saw me, 'twas a double struggle : — he to get my way, I to get his, — I dragging pain along with me that was like a ton of mustard. Down goes Billy just as I got to him. The last I remembered was having hold of Bones's hand with my teeth where Billy had bitten him just before. And for the result of that day's work Sir Cooper had to do without an heir. "Five years I shared house with him after that Think of it, and me lame, hobbling with that thing for a memory I He never struck me ; I waited for it ; he seemed to know why. That's how it is, my dear, I never murdered him. People who knew what he was, thought me a model of duty ; and when I die, as I've made no provision against it, I suppose they will lay me alongside of Bones with all the decorum in the world. Poor Bones, how will he like it, I wonder I " From this narrative Tristram gathered for the first time the full meaning of a certain tombstone in Little Alwyn churchyard. After many years of neglect Lady Petwyn had one day set herself right with the neigh- bourhood by erecting a handsome memorial over the late Baronet's remains. That had been done within Tristram's own brief memory. He remembered the I 932 A MODERN ANTAEUS sTSn^l''^ •nscription.and sawnowits underlying the T.vi.hire Fo:±oJJ:t^°:rltl^r'^^'^^^ **"»- <^ Date of deat^ and date of erection followed • not a word of sentiment or untruth- onlv thT^'/ eloquence of costly stone to '^^''whetht Z ^r'^ had not once its value in men's eyes ^ ^' ro marry ft,m ? It s a life of me you will have to hear " So, then and there. Tristram heard from hard wlthS^ hps, a brave lady's love-story. witttercd The only love her gaoler of a heart had ever let eo to T. ''^ir^'J'^^"' ^^'"^ ^°""d of ga^T^ing hoofs on a road leading she knew not whither The |all^t fine gentleman, pauper, and rogue, all rolled info one h^A ^^ m'^k'^T'^'^" ""^ *^'"Pt«'- in that expS had beheld her first in a church pew. ranked whh the demure misses in their teens nfL-. • boarding school ; and. mor:i:rd\;'heThS d^!^ ^ance than by her fortune-for 'twas"^ whisX Xe tn.T/?^ .^^'•■^^^^ Of two hundred thousand pounds was tnistmgly confided to a man without a pennTtSa wS LADY PETWYN'S PAST 333 her father's safety. He bade her look at the bright world that flew past, and draw full breath at being out in it Did she wish to return ? " Where am I going ? " she asked him. Exactly wherever she liked, he told her,— to Scotland, whose marriages were more made by Heaven than were England's, for preference. He i '•omised her his heart, and white heather ins«-oad of orange blossom, yet declared that the decision of the matter rested with her. She tested him once, bidding him put the chaise about The thing was done promptly. The sight of the school roofs, and the sound of a bell at that moment giving harsh summons to drudgery from which she was free, made her reverse the order. They arrived very late at the inn which was to be their first resting-place. The lover had insisted, in spite of postilions ; had even allowed himself to appear in fear of pursuit. They roused a sleeping house; and the cause of his solicitude presently ap- peared in a respectable waiting-woman whom he had engaged beforehand to keep guard over a young giri's reputation. She received her mistress into safe-keeping, and was able to give evidence after, which was the un- doing of the whole scheme. " Heigho I " was the poor lady's regretful comment on that incongruity in the midst of an otherwise romantic and promising episode. The northward miles flew all too briefly ; separation followed hard. After an unchurched clinching before witnesses, the lover handed back his wedded wife to the pursuing and enraged relatives, and went gaily off to endure the legal penalty for abduction which he had incurred. Any church ceremony, if they wished for it, could wait his return to liberty. The giri-wife swore faith to his face and behind his back. It was noticeable that she met the parental eye without blushing. Enquiry was started; the waiting-woman was questioned; the gallant himself made a courteous avowal that he had post- ill , ! I «♦ A MODERN ANTAEUS for the space of two «ar?Vtl?J"'""'^ "°" "'«"» to give the lady-r^,^'";- J",!'^'^ *" 'ong enough cruelly to be reahsed s!m,Hl, ? °" ''°'*' <'""■'«' P"ham., ^ and ^^, JXg ft" fl^i^;"^!!'" Being a minor the poor eirl was left Jtt^^" msmage. •chool and .pL.erh^.'^^^Sta™ fit f"""! '" wards the wife of Sir r™ ° °'"™'. "ve years after- " I saw myself free to be my own mistress-and hi, u'^nd'srcr o^rTwe^-^dr '" -^'^ '^ hunted, .d.„„d him'^n^" rS^oXri then. Yet there was a mutual somethinff befw^« I knew to my cost that there was byaltv fn wJ p ""• rogue I to oass th^ f ..y,^ Z "'^^^ '" *»"". Poor l^menUryCba^r^,'^!!'^ ml^it.'ir' "' ' found what he had missTforti of" mS^ X^ r -i LADY PETWYN'S PAST 3,5 h^t m^ • 7 *^"^\^«^« uppermost, silence was the Dcst medicine for our chagrin. "I saw the wife : a good little thing, cut out to be the drudge of a brilliant ne'er-do-weel. His truth To Jer ^6 h vJl"?. '°"^1?'"^ • *^"« ^*^ »o «ttle need for it • and he pitied himself so hugely ! ' Hn'hKi"^''? '*7/'^*="» ^*'"; but it pleased me to dribble .ut a dole to that poor domestic squaw about which he was to know nothing. It gave hi^ an ^^ hersT"h% r^ '^^'' ^'^^*^^^'- ^' ^'d °' didn't dT^ he ' head H^^ 'Tl"" 'Z '" "°"*^ ^"^ ^ ^^^^ «-- corner m.n . ^^^ ^^"*' ^'*' *'"«'°°"' *nd odd- corner man to gay circles ; I don't know what he did to hTnett"tToo?'r^^ ^'°"'' doubtwhether he kept th?on: fv ? ^"" ^"^^""^y y^'^ *« ^a^h Ws death the one thing he proved slow over. When he was dy!ng Sab^''" "'^^' ' '"PP°'^ ^'' ^''■^ S°* soft-hearted and blabbed my name. A child had turned up to them absurdly just at the last, and the poor woman's LravS of my finger i„ their pie set him naming the thing afte me She sent me word of it in black edges-^w^ a widowand a godmother in one; also a puppy h^ad grate?u1 Zlc^ I '' ""^^^ ''^ '''' o^de'r^f with Ws Inil .K ?. ' ^ "^^ *° ^ *°^d. That was poor Billy: the dog only survived his master two v^rT Wsl bonesl bonesl there's three of theX S 1 J[S*''!T.^*'^ "°' * ^*^*^ ^^ <^°"Jd decently show She looked at him curiously. « I'm crlaH if n... T body snivel." she said ;^. it nL^'did' LTlZt ^aU de^ad history; there isn't an ounce of sentient left in And Tristram, with his heart raging for the oitv of th. romance which had fallen from thlse^d y 1 ps w2 read^ with youth's credulity to take her word fork i ^ P Mfi A MODERN ANTAEUS He had some reason to believe In h** «— 1 1. . of h..r. : he h«J talked to WCo^ 'JTl "T""" iMve made of them W,~i 7, '^ ^ ** '*°P'« pound, and m. ™' n,^TdU,nrto'r*''T"'' before three year, were ov" th^ 3ld L V '""^■ 2^ »~ r-. When yo.f7Zt^t'Z"l>,7i rest wa, chaff of Sam S?' "iT""' "'■''™ ^ *« from the boolht of opp^ition. Thejealous demon it seemed I'alnofdead i! CHAPTER XIX A FALL RASHLY REPENTED AT the fag end of a three months' idleness Raymond .In T. r>'"g heavily on his hands. Circum- maSr' 'P?"* i'? °^ "^"^ companionship which had made many long holidays spin merrily ; the Tramp was b::^zes"andT'" I"' r*^^' ^^""'"^ himself Tn'^" m^o^ f K, """^ °^ *'^" '^^' ^••^"ght to him a mtmojy of blue eyes. There, on a sunny slope high over the bay, Doris's name marked the place ^f her endunng exile. ^ Raymond had not Tristram's knack of busying him- self w,th solitude; and now. being left to hi! own mterests as a prehmmary training to the " call " which e^LJ^T. T" ^'u "^''^ °^^'"^tion. kept him adrift early and late from the paternal roof. "la parson!" At sound of the church-bell each mommg the thought shocked him out of sleep, to the knowledge that his father was already up ^ edt ng matms for an absent parish. The parLtaf examplf before h.s eyes made him shame-faced over his in- sflen^ T;'°" • >?* f ^'^^^^ compromised him into silence. Only once had he broached the subject directly mend J.l!° ^""^T "^^^^'^ °^ ^'"^^^'^- "'■« father com- mended them and passed them by. Had he. was the main question^ doubts that touched critically to the root of A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 339 Tat rlr 7?"."^' r '^'^ '^»^*''» """d forthwith ■et at rest Protesting himself not good enough hm spoke to a benevolent blank wall. « CbesTof us'-I^ unworthy/' «,id his father, and gave him a priest book o private devotions to keep^by hrpinow' ^'* The two were excellent friends, but shy in c«m men r'°" 1*' '^"^ °*^*'' *° »^'« ^*«^- alo^e of Til men Raymond was conscious of deceit and eye scmce neighbourhood of Littli. Ai««,„ ^ ' *^" *"* ^^^T srntis '-rrr .^'^^^ he shook his head savagely cuSS hfJ^Sr "'='>''"'<>". . fool and . worse thinTstil'l andtitithi ,""'"' ?' days. abse„c;"::i'';,J*',^-^^';af" after a few ttrough field, where httle^™^!,";^ t"L™'?'"« •.« was as like .o find muslCnras'^p^^^""- ajo MODERN ANTAEUS I other times a yet more solitary mood «ii,»hf u- beneath the sky ' ''"' '°°"<' *""> "» '"^ fever .„ h,s feet cany hta a hkely way « abn,pt ruffling an,ongTtt "■SSX""*!' had ghmpsed a blue print eown and =.n ! u crooking down the green' clustfr'so^ht^^'Se llZ thmg he had sought, he called it Fate : and ski^Z the quarries to a place wh<»r*. f««f .„ u skirting bolted up the ascent *'"^ '^*"^" P°^^'bJ<^' He reached the crest breathless, and pushed his A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 231 way through a thick screen of bninches, to the spot where he saw the picker at work. Her figure stood in dusk against ttie clear dayhght behind, laced over by a lattice-hke pattern of boughs and leaves. Below lay a wide andscape, wooded and pastoral, already tinting into golden decay; while picturclike between the bend Of her arm and her side, showed a group of red cattle grazing over a distant hill. So scaled the girl's form stood out large and impressive amid its surroundings- she seemed a Pomona of the woods, a goddess L' free, making the wilds her home. She paid no heed at all to the youth's approach, till the disingenuous " Hullo, Liz I" of his surprii at finding her bade her know that her solitude was invaded Thereat her head went round with a slow gesture of unwelcoming recognition. She returned his gaze, not his sa utation ; and while her hands continued to ply their task, went on eyeing him with a quiet air of enquiry. ^ h.!l!^'" ^ T'^ is nut-harvesting a man may lend hands and play at lightening her task for her. How- Raymond showed no embarrassment in holding his ground He gathered, and threw his handfuls into the pouch that depended from her waist, till to mix fine«! over the same bough became the natural thing It s a warm day, Liz I " he observed presently She answered, "Yes." and picked on. If hif choke was to stay, hers was to go on with her work. As she moved "Liz," he began, at length, with stress of tone "I SdVt°:^TeP'°"""°"'"^ '''''' ^^^ ' --• You " I wasn't looking behind me," she answered m »J» A MODERN ANTAEUS ■KSently. * '" '>«r«»n'orrw?»he pursued Tl»yll be down LlrstTh^^nT' """^ «^>'- C-r----.T„;x"S7^...d ;;Maybe not." replied the girl. You know what I a« thinking of?- Maybeldo.Idon'task'etosay'' hard. Sh.loX:kl^^H:Z'^'r''P'--^^rast.n6 the rough clu5 -rs r^S ^»- "1'k ""'^^ ^"'^ '*«ves. the youth's hands pIrteS tL^ '•' ^^^ ^^'^^ Suddenly Oh,Liz|" he criJd^h^n;3^°:f!"S:- "Liz.mybeauty';' They brushed retr^tlng swe^^^^^f^ ^^^^^ ^r he«. For a moment he saw o^i f' drawn back angrily with «^.''^'" '^'^''"^ visage accountably it cSngeJ Ver^" '^ °^ ^'^^'"- ^- horrid interrogating surarS V T""^ ^'^<^' f"" of his view; in her plr^Sheld , j'^^u ^"^ ^-- hand had released flew aero!, J /r^\ ^^^ '^"^h her over the face; it left hf^ ^"^^ ^^ ' '"^^' thmg that was happening '"^*^"^ *« the had t:^dtf ^u^erXrht ^^^ ^^ -^^r moment she felt herself standfnl ;f'''°"'"&- For one in another her feet had tL ^ ^^ °^ ^^ hushes; she was down. ^'''^" ^^>' <>" leathery turf; Horrified, but withonf « falling. Her handf ^^t o„T'tf ^k"' "^^^^^ ^«» snapped or came awly whol r '^''^ *' ^^ ^hat Nothing checked the decisive "^ * ^^*"°^ ^oil. Her feet came over a S 'T'"' ,°' ^^^ ^^^'^"t. a sheer edge; slipped as from A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 233 lrHfe.^''?h!*?^.T'"*'li"! """ °' ^^ '^^' »'<^W them TJr^iJ ' ^'^'^^^ ^°'^'"y ^"^''"^ to the gulf of space below; up overhead light nut-boughs bobLd in the wmd, airy hand-holds, not one within reach on tL^r *"*"? ^' ''^^' °^ ^^' *l^<*y half-lost, on the u ter verge of a slope where his feet could find no standing Yet had the attempt been rank folly he fnds of ff^T^^ '^'T^ °^ ^'■^*>' f°r both-the forked ends of a far-leanmg bough ; with that he sprang and slid the mclme. crying out to her to lay hands on Wm fie .. T.T* l°° '°°" ^'' ^«^' ^^°t i"to her nJtch • she caught h.m by ankle and shin, and clung oT^e t'^^if^^^Lf ""T- ,"* "'^ '""^ ^^- «^-" hew t^ Lrf • '^" '^"'P^ ^'"^ ^* that at hS With limbs sensitive to the crisis of fh- she shook horribly, and mfL::^ ^JTJT^' Her knees quaUed a, U,e earth gav^ ll^der ,heL ' lamgomgtoletgol-shemnrmur^l sobbings-a pS sld 'r"' ,t^t L" T" r r ""^'^ -^"""'"^ *"- ^' Sd s/L'Sd t; "Have pluck, then you'll feel «ferl" he told her you can lake hold of ray hand I " ^^"' """ reco^rStculHr^ShtlZt"' ""'"■"<' '«^" " / «u nis Dack, one hand stretched over his «34 A MODERN ANTAEUS head had hold of a few leafv .t— • main branch held the^Je^ht ' "*"' ** """*» »» to bring her kne^TcZ'tJe brinlcT"" ^ ''^^^^^ tinually gave under thlm "*%*'""'* ^ «»1 which con- and rdieVed of the ^'r .t^"''T^'"f ^^^^ ^ ^^ile. him by the k'nS IrfL^'^'S' '' '^'^ '""^ ^^'^ caught and gave her a full h- .^^ '^^'^'"S ^o^. drawn clear of Z^ *hl '?' "^ ^'^"^ '^^^t «he was ing the remainder of theX h T^ ^^°''* "'°""t- At once she became weak °r- ^ ^^^ .^°'"Pa"ion's aid. her head against hllnt T^"' '"^ '"^^ '°^^'"^ ^'^h move SoTongassLt?ht7L"T;ij^^-!^^ R'ymond had been tohemn m« tf ^ °''^'' ^^^^^ a rope or pole th^ ? for Z w r '^*" *" instrument, hand lay m'^his a Ittal thantr?""^*': ^^^ ^- both; shame and pTde new k^' *^""«^ ^^em bonds between them' Sh TosS^fr ""^'-"^ "^^^ attempt to recover possesion ofheXr " ' ^"'^ Raymond began to soeaW • .L f? ears, but must hear her ddi;erer '°"^^."°' ^"'^"^ ^^^ bitter blame he dese^ed '^fL^^^^^^^ ^" ^^'^ now seemed to her ingratitude ''^ '° ^' ^" lo his prayer for forgiveness "Dr .'f . , she whispered, "don't ever'" * 'P^*'' °^'t'" " But I must I " he insisted, and was selficK his claim for the word to kT T^ ^^^' Pushing Liz." he urged, «sun,Ssint '^u^T' "J"^* ^^ink. have been my ioing !^ ^ ^^" ^^^ ^one. it would "But you didn't. Mr Raymond ; you saved my iik. A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 235 Remember that ; no need to mind about the rat I It was folly ; you didn't mean nothing." "Eh, my girl, but I did I" said Raymond, unwilling to have that particular fault made light of. •• I meant a good deal— a deuced sight too much, and that's the truth I " She said no more for the moment Raymond, be- ginning to realise the cramping strain of his position, gave forth a groan of lenient complaint Getting his hand in under her arm, "Up with you!" he cried, "I am tired of dangling here like a pendulum. So!'' and had her. up on the slope beside him. They sat looking over the place which a few moments before had promised them death. The sense that she was but just ?-fe made him still hold her fast He got sight then fcr the first time of her poor face, blanched and haggard with its emotions. The havoc wrought on her physical beauty woke in him a more lively contrition ; he became a suitor for full and immediate pardon. " Poor Liz." he murmured, " poor dear heart call me a brute ; it's what I am ! " She turned her face away, mounting a colour she wished him not to see. He was urgent again to know whether she forgave him. "There's naught to forgive!" she declared. "You done nothing ; it was foolish of me to fling out as I did And now, whatever you'd done, I'd have to forgive 'c, and be in your debt always. It's not a thing to b^ spoken of." She ended by begging him to let her go. But for that their hearts are now too close ; neither of them could act quite honestly: each spoke the word and stayed, irresolute to perform. At length, to get herself free, she began gently to push off the hand which held her. In spite of the action, I : If A MODERN ANTAEUS faint effort to escape; a„droh,-^%'?"^* ^"^^ youth, drawing biJrho^\heL'-;K^'''" ^"«* *»»* fiwt "^ «« fire within, and held hei The nun in him ^^f 5 ,T^ " "" "on*- of it, p.i„. "^^^ T^"^ l-ke « «.imd g««„g fa. Show me you for«v#» «.- 1« • . "" Pnsoner. " I do. I do r ^'"^^ "* ' ""^ Ray ; « then I win- "Make me believe it I" £"^7^ ^2r j^rr^,?'-*- -^^ .^ «... the demand made by Ws^ '~ *^"" *« «". wa, 'he blue communing ofb^^^t''''' "'''■ ''"«■ her lover's fact * '*'™' i^ eyes fell bacli upon you have it-Liz.uJrich ,hT'^ ''«" you !_tt''«^ over I'd have gone too^nH vU ^ ^°" '"<' Sone over I'd have been^a m ",;bfc^:^" l""'"'' -"one for m"' t^;,! i- a .is, u.; ^f 'w*'„rx^ "°' '*"''"" '-'^""""-^ the g.-r,.b„.^. i,i(ii4 A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 237 •11 at once a face of crimson down by his. " Take 'em " •he whispered "take 'em. Mr Raymond, but never tell me no lies I Twas bound to be sa You love me just Z'^^LiXr '""^"''"'^"'''''' ''^^'"°"«* Raymond gathered her to him, surprised by the passion of her face in its surrender. She seemed a new woman uplifted by the pure effort of her heart to show him Its love. Conceiving dimly something in her nature U;anscending his. he felt a shame lest her eyes should discern the shortcomings he knew. He urged his tongue to speak flattery to her ears-self-flattery LtgTf htilrrt'^ ""' ^^'°" ^^" "^^ ^^*^"^°- You^^^'CuV'^^f: "'*'' "^y ^°'" * ^°"«^" t° talk f You can tell how I love you; for ifs certain I can't tell myself. You only see a comer of it all " She covered his lips with her cheek to keep them from words. "Don't 'e tell me no lies," she whuS again; "I can think you lo^e me well'enough. oTong as you don't speak it; and that's good enough -auf can ever want or hope." ^ ' She felt the protest his lips made. "No no Mr Raymond !" she cried, and drew herself away from'hhn "you could never love me as I do you. not if I was to ^ir^^^"^' ^°" ^^"'^"'* ^° ^^ T^-'^ no nZfT '' ^.fc '^'" "^^ Raymond, and had her fast once more. "See now I Which kisses best, you or I ? " But from the midst of his embrace she held herself hi^ ZT^J '""""^ ^^' ^"^^ *"^ ^o°ked away from by suchsfgL ''^'""'^ common-sense .0 be deceived Raymond felt a chill. Somehow she judged him- her very humility accused him and set her higher thTn 'i* A MODERN ANTAEUS IteoiiM pfeue U. comcwkc to feel Hi. went out with hm urosi the b.m.T1-J^^ ^"^^ •« fiCd-l-th. the bl«k.flr.T «;.^f ^™«L^ ««« to Its surcoundinea • «ftl.>o« j ™*" un-native -»«^ totheZg^Xl * ""'' ^°°"'^ ^« "Li^ look out the^r. S!'„?; fP?'!*^ ^'^ effort: ;;.one who believes h^nT.oH'^^T" "'' '^^^ Jumself. If he could look un h^^ ? * P**^" ^'^e now ? •• °°'' "P **«**. what would he think f-ifh^Ucet ^;f„^? ^'^"^^at the world's a Jtooped^form ^^^'l bL? a'd''^ '*^ *' *« figure of a man. ' * *'*"«' Preoccupied " You think that is the truth ? " au^^ p got himself up from the turf L^" "^ Raymond, and If I know," she answf^r*^ .. u ^ " I will ; tn^th is Sr^w ^^^ "^y '"" to-morro;. We-we "h'Tfl *'"'• ^'^hereirmoff «ha"we.Li., Yrta'^'^rV^-inahui^^ good as they make 'em W^f' I T^ ^''' As good-bye, Liz, but don't look at^V^^ ^"""^ ^^'-^X about itf" He turned hi, ? ^ " o^r J thafs all "Good-bye!" """^ ^ ^^^^ abruptly, aying liiJ A FALL RASHLY REPENTED 339 - Good-bye. Mr Raymond," said the girl, and without wiotW word reached back her hands to the nutting He d,d not see her face So they parted RayS ♦K."*" ^ ^i;* ^^^ "^^y ^°^" the dech-vity out of ctor^H^r !? T^"'"^ underwent^ sLp wS,^^ JT"^ *"^ '^^^ ^^^'^ *° the nut-coppice Tir-^co^eHng" '^ '*^ '^^ ' ^ ~ ^''- over but could not find her Ck- •"^'-'"=" ™f wooa h.'n, ;♦ -^ !i . ^* ^"® was away— lost to mn S5f ;h ^ ! momentary lapse into the unnatural man. Morels then to the youth seemed a veiy utter folly. CHAPTER XX ^ shaping behind his blck R • r "J:"^ "°*^'"g ^ad »"? showing at first%ht a ne.aH "'°'^' '' " ^™«" doing rather than a doir^J^r "^^''^'^^ «Pect, an un- fate. Yet there*" some sLffi ' "^ !.'^'*^^ ^^'«' »-e&ar. ' 'econdle him to the' act hi. TJ?''°" ^° ^">'th4 o «call. Now that he hid ?e..^ ^1 '" ^"^^ ^astf to all the more drawn^ tt wild l^l^^ ^'^ '^^* ^'"^^^^ her beauty had for him T^lt^^'^"'* enchantment keen .^pentance tha follolsu^"!' '"'^'^ ""'^ °^ *»^« correct actions. "P°" ^°™e of our most ' ^'"'e submitted more ea-^n,, * came not of her own initfaTive- h/-''^^'^'''°" ^*'^h »ts passion, her mc cha^ ten' * "^ ^^'^^^ ^*^J««d attendant on a stronger wHl I„ .'T 'V°°^ ^"'<^ent, MO &er will. In other hands now lay i " "'W unexpected Jh. had been quISt'^^dt^l^^-^IJ" t.7^ had called, and Aeh«l not an,we«i *" a flushed face n»\H\^„ ^u !• '^" ^'^^ and MacAlHste. VrXl^ e^c^t ^Tof b°^ any means the first she had had to put upllJh but o^f that Tristram knew nothing. Luzie h«^Lf hjL? • / to state her cause for compl^nt • wwt t w '^'^^'"^d part, took the evidence Wey« Iffo^S'fT' '•' ^'' ask questions. ^ afforded, forbearing to «q»ir. of beau^Tn S^^ """""* «"«"°'^'y. » "d muffed a Wn^afrF^"^ """" '^ '"P'''™- "uiteaaw. F,3t down on palm r^haed Q ? 243 A UOOKRH ANTAEUS conviction of » new rcuion for hatred between him and Tristram. Within . •• eelc a bloody head got from a knock behind on a lark night precipitated him Into further insane suspicion? utterly wide of the mark. A neighbourhood that bfi poachers gave cover also to released gaol-birds, '.;1a n whom and a prosecuting bailiff grudges ha (.:£MonaIly to be paid off. MacAUister-s vln.