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,A SOUL ASTRAT
A NOVEL
BY
MRS LOVETT CAMERON
Author of
' In a Grass Country' A Bad Lot,'
' JacBs SecretEtc.
FOURTH EDITION
LONDON
F. V. WHITE &■ CO.
14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1897
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I.—THIRTY YEARS AGO, ..... I
II. —ZILLA, ...... 12
III.—SWEETHEARTS, . . . . .21
IV.—THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION, . . . -33
V.—FALSE LOVE AND TRUE, . . . .42
VI.—AN INTERLUDE, $2
VII.—SUDDEN ORDERS AND A DEPARTURE, . ■ 59
VIII.—THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW, . . .67
IX.—THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM, . . -77
X.—FALSE WITNESS, ..... 89
XI.—THE ONE FRIEND, ..... 98
XII.—A DESPERA1 E RESOLVE, .... IO9
XIII.—A WEDDING PARTY, . . . . 119
XIV.—FORSAKEN, . . . . . .127
XV.—'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART,' .... 136
XVI.—SIX YEARS LATER, . . . . I46
XVII.—THE TWO WOMEN, ..... 154
XVIII.—MARY'S NEW LOVER, . . . . 163
XIX.—A STARTLING DISCOVERY, . . 174
XX.—UNCLE BEN, . ..... 186
XXI.—LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION, . . , 196
XXII.—RALPH THE HEIR, ..... 209
XXIII.—A KEEN ENCOUNTER, .... 2l8
XXIV.—ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD, . . 229
XXV.—' THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING,' . . . 243
XXVI.—THE BEAD NECKLACE, . . . .253
XXVII.—' FOR STEEVE'S SAKE,' .... 263
XXVIII.—AT LAST, . . . . • .272
XXIX.—THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE, . . . . 280
BeMcatfort
To YOU, MY OLD FRIEND, TO WHOM I AM
INDEBTED FOR THE OUTLINES OF THIS
EPISODE OF REAL LIFE, I DEDICATE MY
STORY, IN MEMORY OF MANY HAPPY HOURS
NOW LONG GONE BY.
E. I,. C
A SOUL ASTRAY
CHAPTER I
thirty years ago
The sun was just sinking behind the hills. The western
sky was all aflame with red and orange, and the wide
rolling landscape loomed purple and mysterious under
the deepening glow of the sunset. One behind the
other, the low hills stretched away on every side as
far as the eye could reach. Some were brown, and
bare with withered bracken and heather ; others were
clothed to their summits with dark pine woods, whose
sombre gloom was broken now and again with the
fast yellowing foliage of birch or oak. Down in the
hollows, a few acres of pasture land had been re-
deemed from the sandy soil, and lay like gems of
emerald set between the curved bosoms of the hills,
whilst here and there a clump of tall Scotch firs—the
relics perhaps of some forest fire—crowned the summit
of a barren slope in majestic solitude, lending yet
another touch of fantastic beauty to the strange, wild
country. And far away to the south, the pale out-
lines of a high range of downs hung pencilled in
a
2
A SOUL ASTRAY
faintest grey against the tender primrose of the
evening sky.
In all that wide expanse, reaching from east to
west, and from north to south, there was only one
living thing to be seen—a man who came toiling along
the straight yellow line of the high road, that cut the
wild country in twain as by the slash of a knife.
By his gait he was very old, and by his dress he
was very poor. His white locks streamed out upon his
shoulders from beneath a rough cap of what might once
have been some common fur, but which had now lost
all trace of its original substance ; his coat was ragged,
the sleeves fluttering into ribbons at the elbows, and a
dingy-red flannel shirt surmounting a tattered pair of
corduroy breeches, such as woodmen were in those
days accustomed to wear, completed his costume.
His boots were worn and old; and he was lame,
and walked with difficulty, supporting himself with his
right hand by a rough stake cut from the hedgerow,
and every now and then a racking cough forced him
to stand still to get his breath. On his left arm he
carried a small bundle wrapped up in a stained and
discoloured shawl that had once been scarlet or crim*
son. This bundle seemed to cause him some anxiety,
for several times he stopped and adjusted it more
carefully upon his arm, drawing the old shawl closer
around it, in order, as it seemed, to protect its
contents from the evening wind which, as the sun-
glow waned, came soughing drearily up over the
country.
For it was always windy on Cramer Forest; always
wind-tossed from the not-far-distant ocean, and often
wet with driving rain, or blotted out with white, chill
mists that came rolling up from the west and south.
But when on rare days it was fine, as now—then there
were wont to be wonderful effects of light and shadow
across its wide expanse, and such glorious, golden
sunsets as can only, perhaps, be witnessed in wild and
THIRTY YEARS AGO
3
uncultivated tracts of country where man has by some
miracle allowed Nature's work to remain almost un-
altered and unspoilt
They called it the ' Forest,' because in old times it
had been a royal demesne—a hunting-ground where
princes and their courtiers had gone forth to chase the
wild red deer, and concerning which certain charters
and ancient deeds still exist, with which the auctioneer
and the builder is not, even now in these latter days,
permitted to meddle. But thirty years ago, on that
golden October evening, when the old man carried
his bundle in a red shawl along the high road,
Cramer Forest was still almost uninhabited. There
were only some nomad tribes of gipsies who wandered
up and down it, setting up their tents for a time in
some sheltered hollow, or beneath some dark group
of firs, but always moving on again after a little while
to another resting-place; and there was a scattered
population of small yeomen, engaged chiefly in a
trade connected with the breeding and breaking-in
of the herds of rough ponies that frequented the dis-
trict, who led a secluded life in certain small and
primitive farm dwellings which were scattered at
wide distances amongst the rolling undulations of
this almost deserted land.
It was to one of the largest and most important of
these homesteads that the old man with the red
bundle was now bound.
When he had reached the top of a slight eminence,
he stood still, and shading his eyes with his withered,
claw-like hand, to shelter them from the level rays
of the fading sunset, he looked about him on all sides
as though seeking for some place which he knew
must be near, but of which he had forgotten the exact
locality. Presently, away over the brow of the hill to
the right of him, he spied a thin line of blue smoke
curling upwards through the air. The old man
uttered a grunt of recognition, and lowering his old
4
A SOUL ASTRAY
bones slowly and with caution, sat down upon a
stone by the roadside to wait.
There was a movement of the red bundle in his
arms, followed by a faint, wailing cry. The old man
parted the folds of the shawl and disclosed an infant
of a few weeks old. The very last crimson ray of the
vanishing sun lit up the tiny face for a brief moment.
The baby opened its eyes ; they were large, and dark,
and sombre, almost unnaturally so, for so young a child,
and its skin was of a rich, warm brown tone—the
queer dark eyes looked straight up into the old man's
face, that was brown and dark-eyed too—and his
rugged features softened.
' She is like her father!' he murmured; ' she has
his very eyes—not poor Esther's. I'd have kept her
myself if I could — even though the others won't
have her—but I'm old, and I sha'n't live long, with
this cough that tears me to pieces. And besides, I
must go west—the police are all agog since that
last wretched affair, and the tribe is scattered. If I
get down west quickly I shall be able to join the
others—but I can't carry a baby all those weary
miles. Let her mother's people bring her up—they
are well-to-do and respectable—it's only fair they
should keep her. But she will be one of us at heart
always—she has my boy's eyes ! Poor Davie !—he
were a good chap—too good to die in a ditch like
a dog—shot by them brutes, curse them !' and the
old man clenched and shook his lean fist as he
spoke.
All at once the sunset glow faded; the vivid
colouring of purple and of russet brown paled out
of the landscape, and long grey shadows began to
stalk out, ghost-like, one by one, over the face of the
wide, silent country. Below the hill, a narrow sheet
of water, irregular in form and bordered by rush-
covered, marshy ground, reflected the last white
glimmer of daylight upon its glassy surface. Then
THIRTY YEARS AGO
5
suddenly the silence was broken by a quick rush
of whirring wings overhead, and a flock of wild
duck, on their homeward way, fluttered down to their
night's rest among the reedy borders of the mere.
By the last faint gleam of light, the old man drew
a crumpled and dirty paper from the recesses of his
ragged coat, and pinned it on to the baby's shawl.
Then, when it had grown quite dark, he rose once more,
and struck across the rough, uneven moorland, in the
direction of that line of curling smoke which had in-
dicated to him the whereabouts of the house that he
had come a long way to find.
Miss Prudence Hardy had stirred the wood fire
into a ruddy blaze. The farm parlour, with its low
ceiling and dark oaken beams, with its carved settles
and high-backed chairs, with the tall clock that ticked
loudly in the corner, and the blue-and-white china
ranged above the high chimney-piece, looked cosy
and warm and home-like.
' The days are drawing in very quickly,' said Miss
Prudence to herself, as she drew the warm-hued
marone curtains close across the windows, and pro-
ceeded to lay a white cloth upon the polished oak
table, and to set out cut glass tumblers and willow-
patterned plates—three of each—upon it. 'And if
that lazy hussy hasn't got my brother's supper more
punctual to-night, why, I declare I'll send her about
her business, as I did the last girl, between this and
Christmas!'
At that moment, the person in question, Miss
Hardy's much-abused underling, appeared in the door-
way from the kitchen beyond, bearing the supper—
a hot rabbit pie and a round of cold beef, and a jug
of home-brewed ale upon a tray, which her mistress
proceeded to set out upon the table.
Miss Prudence was a brisk, active, little woman,
not much over forty, in those days. She had sharp,
needle-like eyes and soft brown hair, iust sprinkled
6
A SOUL ASTRAY
with grey at the temples, drawn smoothly back under
a white muslin cap, and she wore a black stuff gown,
and a kerchief, also of snowy muslin, pinned neatly
across the bodice of her dress. She was Simon
Hardy's half-sister, and his elder by ten years, and
when he had lost his wife some years ago, she had
come to take up her abode at the Warren Farm, to
keep house for him and to look after his motherless
boy. She was a good woman, was Miss Prudence,
though strict and precise—and some said a trifle
narrow-minded, given to prejudices and to old-
fashioned ways of thinking. Where she loved, she
loved strongly and devotedly; but if once her love
were shaken, it could never be restored, and she
never forgave either a sinner or a sin.
She loved her brother Simon and his boy with all
her strength, and once she had also loved someone
else—a beautiful wayward girl with blue eyes and a
mocking, merry laugh—who, five years ago, had dis-
appeared for ever from the Warren Farm. No one
ever spoke of Esther Hardy now, and only a few
remembered her story, although from time to time
reports had come of her to the home she had left so
suddenly and secretly for the love of a man who had
a living wife; reports that always spoke of her as
being well and happy in that rough, wandering life of
hardship which she had chosen of her own free will,
but unrepentant always, and sinful still.
But no one had brought news to the Warren Farm
of how the dark-browed gipsy, who had lured that
fair girl to her ruin, had been shot dead in a poaching
affray ten miles away, and of how poor, broken-
hearted Esther had given birth a few days later to a
girl child ; and of how, in bringing that frail life into
this hard and pitiless world, she had forfeited her
own,- and had gone away, painlessly and unconsci-
ously at the last, into that unknown world, where, if
her sins were reckoned up against her, surely her
THIRTY YEARS AGO
1
weakness and her temptation, and her faithful love,
would be taken into account also, by One whose
judgment is more merciful than man's.
Little Steeve had clambered up on his high chair
by the table ere yet his father's returning footsteps
had fallen across the doorstep without.
'You must wait for the rabbit pie till your father
comes in,' said Miss Prudence, as she put the tempt-
ing-looking dish down to the fire to keep it hot,' but
if you are very hungry, you may begin with the cold
beef.'
Steeve cast wistful eyes at the golden pastry of the
rabbit pie. He was a lovely boy of six years old,
with fair hair that lay in crisp, pale curls all over his
head, and eyes that were as blue as summer skies.
He had a sweet, serious little face, that was thought-
ful beyond his years, and he was full of that quaint,
old-fashioned wisdom which children who live en-
tirely amongst grown-up people are apt to acquire.
'Father is very late, and I am certainly hungry,
but I will wait for the pie, because I like it best,' he
said seriously, as though making a great concession
to his father's unpunctuality.
And then almost immediately there came the
longed-for footstep on the gravel path outside,
followed oddly by a sound that was new and un-
accustomed, for instead of the turning of the handle,
and the quiet opening of the door that usually
ushered in the farmer's return, there was a stumbling
noise outside, a smothered exclamation, followed by
a sound as of someone falling against the door; and
then, queerer and stranger than all, the wailing cry of
a young infant.
' Goodness gracious!' ejaculated Miss Hardy, and
flew to the door, which she flung widely open.
' What is it ? Who is there ?'
There were, you see, no burglars ever heard of on
Cramer Forest in those days; the gipsies were the
8
A SOUL ASTRAY
only thieves, but they only stole chickens and game,
so she was not the least nervous about opening the
front door. And the result justified her confidence,
for on the other side of the threshold stone stood
her half-brother, looking scared and astonished, for at
his feet, beneath him upon the doorstep, lay a very
young child, wrapped up in a dirty red woollen shawl.
'What on earth is the meaning of this?' cried
Simon, as his eyes met his sister's. ' A child upon
the doorstep. Where did it come from ? Who left
it here ?'
Miss Hardy stooped down to examine the baby.
' Don't touch it; don't pick it up,' she exclaimed
sharply, rising again hurriedly. ' It is one of those
horrid gipsy brats—left here no doubt by some good-
for-nothing vagabond tramp. They are always doing
it. Go round to the yard at once, Simon, and tell
Bill Goades to come and fetch it, and let him carry it
straight off to the Union.'
'But, my dear,' demurred Simon, 'it is late and
dark, and it is such a mite of a baby to turn out into
the cold again.'
' Don't you know that it brings ill-luck to take in
a gipsy foundling across the threshold of a respect-
able house ? Do you mind the Clovers at Brackmere
who took in a gipsy brat two years ago, that was
left upon the doorstep, just as this one is? They
only kept it a week, but it brought nothing but
misfortune along with it. The ponies that were
going up for sale that week broke out in a disease
nobody ever heard of before, and half of them died;
and a fox killed the whole of a fine brood of Mrs
Clover's young chickens; and little Mary fell ill
with a fever and all but died, and the lightning struck
the new barn and burned a great hole in the roof of
it, all in that one week ! They were glad enough to
get rid of the heathenish creature that had brought
them so much trouble, Mrs Clover told me. Don't
THIRTY YEARS AGO
9
you so much as lay a finger on it, Simon ! Do as I
tell you, man; go and fetch Goades, and send him to
the Union at Markton with the brat.'
' Sister,' answered Simon Hardy, gravely, looking
from Prudence's agitated face down again upon the
small bundle of helpless humanity that lay between
their feet, uttering strange, little, plaintive cries, as
though of prayer and pity, as if, poor babe, it knew
and understood that its whole future lay trembling in
the balance of fate. ' Sister—I don't believe that any
evils a poor, deserted baby could bring upon me or
mine would be half so bad as God's righteous anger
were I to do so vile a deed as turn it away from my
door into the coldness and hunger of the night. Aren't
we told in the Bible to feed the hungry and to shelter
the homeless ?'
'Yes, when they are Christians, Simon, of course!
But not when they are heathen gipsies, who have no
souls!' remonstrated his sister.
' Oh, what a dear, darling, little baby !' here broke
in a small, excited voice at her elbow.
Steeve, tired of sitting alone in his chair, and stirred
by curiosity to know what was going on, had slipped
from his place and had dropped upon his knees by
the side of the little bundle on the doorstep, and
now fell to kissing the baby's tiny face with childish
rapture.
'Steeve! Steeve!' almost shrieked Miss Hardy,
trying to drag the boy away, but Steeve's arms were
fast locked about the little stranger.
' Oh, father ! father!' he cried, ' mayn't I have it
for my very own to play with ? Let me carry it in,
please, and give it some supper !'
The infant, as though fascinated by the boy's voice,
left off crying, and put its tiny fingers up towards
Steeve's face, and the boy, hugging the red bundle
delightedly in his arms, staggered to his feet.
'"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings He
IO
A SOUL ASTRAY
hath ordained strength,' quoted the farmer rever-
ently. ' Sister, the child shall come in! Carry the
baby near the fire, Steeve, and make it warm.'
And thus it was that she crossed the threshold of
the home over which her dead mother's guilty foot-
steps had fled years ago—never more to return.
' See, aunty! there's a bit of paper pinned on to its
shawl,' cried Steeve, when he had carried the baby
into the warm circle of light around the hearth. ' It's
got something written on it.'
' Give it to me, boy,' said his father; ' it will be
perhaps something to say whose child it is.'
He stood reading the scrap of paper beneath the
lamp light, and as he read his face grew pale and awe-
stricken, and his hands trembled very much. When
he had read it through, he handed it without a word
to Pdiss Prudence.
On the crumpled page was written in a large,
straggling handwriting,—
' Farmer Hardy, this is Esther's child. Zilla is her
name. Esther is dead and David is dead. Zilla has
no one. Give her a home and take care of her, for
your sister Esther's sake.'
' It is the hand of God,' said the farmer, bowing his
head.
'It is a trick of those rascally gipsies!' muttered
Miss Hardy, angrily.
' Look, father, the baby is laughing!' called out
Steeve from the chimney corner.
His father and aunt came forward to see; the
infant had crooked her tiny fingers amongst Steeve's
yellow curls, and, warmed by the fire glow and by
the answering laugh in the fair, childish face bent
over her, was cooing and chuckling up at him in that
most delightful fashion that babies have of showing
that they are pleased.
THIRTY YEARS AGO
' Steeve,' said his father, laying a hand on his son's
curly head, 'that is your little cousin, and her name is
Zilla; she has no parents, and so God has sent her to
us to live with us always, so that we may love her
and take care of her.'
' I'm so glad, father; how jolly it will be to have a
real baby of our own,' cried the boy. ' A baby is ever
so much better than the kitten, or the white mouse,
or even than my lop-eared rabbit, I think.'
But Miss Prudence in the background lifted up her
hands and groaned,—
' I have warned you, Simon; remember that I have
warned you. She will bring us sorrow, and you will
live to rue this day. She is the child of sin—a gipsy
for her father and Esther for her mother. God help
us then, say I—God help us !'
CHAPTER II
zilla
And the long years went by—summer heats and
winter frosts in their appointed order—till the waif
left upon Simon Hardy's doorstep grew from a brown,
wild-eyed babe into a tall and beautiful woman.
Yet there was no one about her to whom this trans-
formation was an object of interest, or who realised
the effect which her wonderful beauty was certain to
produce upon a stranger.
Perhaps it was because life in the farmer's house-
hold was too full and complete ; each day bringing
its own routine of duty and work to every one, so that
no one had any time to mark the gradual develop-
ment of the human wildflower whom her vagabond
grandfather had dropped long ago in their midst.
As long as she was a child, Zilla, in common with
the other maidens of her class and age upon Cramer
Forest, had tramped her three miles across the moor-
land, backwards and forwards, to the day-school, to
receive what amount of education was there to be
gleaned. But beyond reading and writing, she learnt
very little else at school—save, indeed, to hide the
wounds which her companions inflicted upon her
under a pioud and often sullen reserve. For to the
neighbours, Zilla's origin was quite well known and
freely commented on. She was Esther Hardy's
' love-child,' a gipsy foundling who had made a bad
entrance into this world of sin, and whom, in the
12
ZILLA
13
eternal justice and fitness of things, was quite certain
consequently, to come to a bad end therein. Careful
mothers bade their daughters keep clear of the
' gipsy brat,' and the other girls whispered and tit-
tered when she came near them, and refused to share
either their lessons or their play with her.
' Gipsies have no soul,' they said one to another—
repeating, parrot-like, the old superstition which they
had learnt from their mother, and which neither
Christianity nor civilisation has ever quite succeeded
in stamping out amongst the inhabitants of Cramer
Forest
So they gave her a wide berth, and after a time
the girl understood, and passed them by with a bitter
and contemptuous silence.
Thrown thus more and more upon her own re-
sources, Zilla grew reserved and solitary in her life
and habits. With her teachers she was sullen and
obstinate, always imperfect in her tasks, and at the
bottom of her class. The schoolmistress declared
that she could teach her nothing, and that her aver-
sion to knowledge was so pronounced that she
speedily forgot even the little that had been instilled
into her.
But if she derived but little benefit from the in-
struction imparted to her at the primitive little school,
Zilla was strangely possessed of a vast amount of in-
tuitive knowledge on other subjects less commonly
studied by the rustic maidens who were her com-
panions.
The habits of the birds and beasts about her home
opened out a wide domain of delight and interest to
her. Accustomed as she was to ramble for long
hours together alone over the wild moorland country,
the furred and feathered creatures of Cramer Forest
became her daily and intimate companions. She
could imitate their cries so perfectly that they came
to her call and followed her in her walks. Sometimes
14
A SOUL ASTRAY
she had been seen seated upon a mossy bank, by the
margin of some reed-bordered pool, like a queen
surrounded by her court. There would be gathered
together around her sundry bright-eyed, soft-muzzled
creatures: brown field mice with inquisitive black
eyes, water rats that would come boldly to her feet,
nibbling at the edge of her gown—stoats, too, and
weasels, and even the timid conies themselves—
whilst a whole legion of birds would be seen flutter-
ing about in the low bushes about her. All these
gentle creatures that had come at her call, would
hover fearlessly about her, perching upon her hands
or upon her dress, recognising in her, perhaps, the
silent sympathy of another wild thing like them-
selves; and they would stay there, sunning them-
selves in the warmth, and preening their feathers
in happy familiarity by the hour together.
And these intimate relations between Simon
Hardy's niece and the animal world became bruited
abroad, and were commented on most unfavourably,
because commonplace minds, of whom mankind is
chiefly composed, cannot endure anything which is
outside the limits of their own experience; so that
there were many who honestly believed the girl to
be a witch, and who accounted these things unto her
as deadly sins.
Meanwhile, in her own home in the farmer's house,
Zilla's position was not altogether a happy one.
There was no love lost between Miss Prudence and
her niece. To Miss Prudence, Zilla had ever been
an object of mistrust, almost even of dislike ; she re-
garded her askance, as it were, and was continually
on the alert lest the evil eye, with which she secretly
credited her, should do some injury to the ponies
bred on the farm, or lest the Satanical forces she
imagined to be inherent in her blood, should break
out into some horrible visitation upon her brother's
household and property.
ZILLA
15
After she grew too old to go to school, her aunt
resented her presence in the house. She would not
trust her with those ordinary occupations which fall
to the lot of other girls of her age and station. If
she looked timidly into the dairy or the kitchen, she
would be hastily told that she was not wanted there ;
if she proffered her help in the store closet or the
still-room, it would be ungraciously refused. So, in the
end, Zilla grew sullen and resentful, and a dull sense
of grievance brooded for ever in her heart.
Yet to her uncle she was docile and obedient, gentle
in word and action, whilst upon her cousin the whole
pent-up strength of a deep and passionate nature was
secretly outpoured, and the full river of her heart—
dammed up and stemmed at every other channel—
rushed in a great and resistless tide into this one out-
let of her life.
For Steeve she would gladly have died. Little
Steeve had been her friend and champion from the
first. He had always stood up for her, and fought
her battles; to this hour he stood between her and
Miss Prudence, softening down the hard words
on the one side, and explaining away the rebellious
ones on the other. Yet though her heart burnt and
throbbed within her at his very presence in the house,
she was usually wayward and strange in her manner
to him, often breaking away from him hotly, or dis-
appointing him by the ungraciousness of her mood,
so that Steeve would say to her, 'What ails you,
my little sister?' For to Steeve, Zilla was still a
sister; but to Zilla—Ah! what was not Steeve to
Zilla!
He understood her no better than did the others.
At eighteen, therefore, Zilla was not only beautiful—
she was also inscrutable ; she resembled no other girl
upon Cramer Forest. She had neither friends nor
lovers—a proud reserve kept her free from both.
Moreover, the young men of the Forest kept aloof
16
A SOUL ASTRAY
from her. There was about her an unspoken element
which repelled them ; a touch of mystery, a something
indefinable and intangible, which kept the boldest of
them at arm's length, so that, in spite of her wonderful
and burning beauty, they passed her by, and sought
their sweethearts from amongst the more ordinary
types of the blue-eyed maidens of the Forest. And,
as time went on, Steeve himself became accustomed
to his cousin's strange vagaries of temper, and forgot
to take much notice of them—there were perhaps too
many other things in his mind.
Eighteen years had turned the beautiful boy into a
singularly handsome young man. He was tall, broad-
shouldered and manly; his eyes were blue and pierc-
ing; his flaxen hair curled crisply above his broad,
bronzed brow; his smile was frank and open; there
was no young fellow on all Cramer Forest so well-
looking or so popular as Steven Hardy. He was a
favourite with all, with the men as well as with the
women, with those above him as well as with those
of his own class. He excelled at all manly sports,
was captain of the cricket and football clubs, rode
straight to hounds, and never missed his bird when
invited to join in a day's shooting by the neighbouring
landlords. He was, moreover, his father's right hand,
and no man bore a higher character for upright and
honourable conduct, and for the pure stainlessness of
his life. With it all, he had the kindest of hearts and
the gentlest of natures ; would go out of his way to do
a good turn to anyone in trouble, and had never
spoken a harsh or unjust word of a fellow creature in
all his life.
He was a special favourite with the great man of
the county—Lord Netherby of Netherby Hall. It
was said that he had been offered the head keeper's
place at Netherby, but had refused it because his
father was getting old and could not get on without
his help; but it was well known that he might, had he
2illA
chosen, have been given almost any post of trust
on the Earl's estate, for there was no young man
amongst all his tenants of whom Lord Netherby held
a higher opinion. Often and often he had lingered
chatting to Steeve at the covert side on a winter day,
and many a time had the young man gone up to the
Hall to take a gun amongst his lordship's guests at
the great pheasant battues, or earlier in the year
when the partridge-shooting was in full swing in the
low-lying valleys beyond the limits of the Forest.
Yet always he remembered his place and his position,
and never exceeded it by word or by action. Modest
always in mind and in manner, Steeve was yet never
subservient or cringing to those above him—he knew
his own value, and respected himself—yet he was
quite free from the modern spirit of Socialism which
leads too many young men to respect no one else.
' Steeve Hardy is one of Nature's gentlemen,' the Earl
had said of him. ' Set him in any position you like,
and he would never be out of it As a prince or a
peasant, he would be equally in his proper place.'
The words were spoken to the Reverend John Lorrimer,
the Vicar, who happened to be dining at the Hall,
and he too had his good word for Steeve.
' The reason of it is,' he answered, ' that Steeve
Hardy is the most single-minded man I ever met; it
is religion—the simple religion of a guileless heart—
which is the moving spring of his nature. He is in-
capable of an evil thought, far less of an evil action.'
And there was another man present who laughed a
little cynically at this.
' Oh, don't you be too sure of that, sir! Those
quiet ones are always deep. Ten to one your model
parishioner will astonish you all some day. He will
break out into some piece of unexpected villainy
which will make your hair stand on end throughout
the length and breadth of the Forest.'
There came a day when Mr Lorrimer remembered
B
i8
A SOUL ASTRAY
these scoffing words with a shudder. But they were
not well received by the Earl—his younger son's re-
marks, indeed, were seldom well pleasing in his father's
ears.
' It is scarcely likely, Ralph, that you should be
able to appreciate such a character as Steeve Hardy's,'
he said dryly and a little contemptuously; adding
with something of a sigh, ' I only wish any son of
mine were like him.'
' Much obliged to the gov'nor, I'm sure,' muttered
Ralph back to a friend of his own who was seated
beside him ; ' he's complimentary to his own flesh
and blood. This fellow—this low-born farmer chap,
curse him !—has bewitched the good people about
here.'
The Honourable Ralph Lyndon was a thorn in the
flesh to his parents. From his boyhood upwards he
had brought sorrow and trouble upon them. There
had been the premature collapse of his Eton career,
into the causes of which kindly friends charitably
forebore to inquire—followed after a lapse of time
by a fresh attempt to re-establish his credit at the
university. But his college days ended even more
disastrously than his school days ; there were rumours
of a disgraceful nature—a scandal carefully hushed
up, out of regard to his father's name and position—
and young Ralph was sent down before the end of
his first year, and his name struck off the college
books. Then there had been efforts made to find
him something to do—for Lord Netherby was not a
wealthy man, and there would be but little for his
younger children—but not all the influence and popu-
larity of his father could induce business men to look
with a favourable eye upon the black sheep whose
whole career had been one long record of dissipation
and extravagance and general unsteadiness. At last,
after a few years of desultory idleness, spent partly in
travel and partly in knocking about London amongst
ZILLA
19
a very bad set of companions, Lord Netherby's in-
terest had procured for him a nomination in the
Mounted Cape Police, which Ralph had graciously
consented to accept, and it was whilst awaiting for his
actual starting orders that he was now hanging about
at home doing nothing.
'Let us have him at Netherby till he goes,' his
mother had pleaded with tears in her eyes. ' If he is
up in town, God knows if he will not do something
dreadful and lose this last chance ; and if he is at
Netherby with us, he can't get into much mischief
just in these few weeks.'
But Lady Netherby did not perhaps understand
that Satan is abroad and active, quite as much in the
quietest country home as in the whirl of London life—
and Ralph had capabilities for getting into mischief
which surpassed all human conception. In person he
was somewhat below the middle height and inclined
to be stout; his hair was auburn and his complexion
ruddy, yet he was by no means an ill-looking young
man. Indeed, if he had not had the shifty eye, the
loosened under lip and the ' devil-may-care' manner
which betokens a life wasted by excess and dissipa-
tion, he might almost have been called handsome.
As a young child, his beauty had been his mother's
delight and pride. But Vice had set her stamp upon
him early, and there was no mistaking the impress of
her baneful hand.
'What about Mary Clover?' Lord Netherby had
said uneasily to his wife when she had pleaded that
Ralph might spend his last months at home before
going out to South Africa—for to each other they
kept up no pretences.
'Oh, Mary Clover is as good as gold. I am not
afraid of her,' Lady Netherby had answered with con-
fidence. ' Besides, I believe her to be engaged to
young Hardy.'
' Ah, then she is engaged to one of the best fellows
20
A SOUL ASTRAY
on earth, lucky girl! and she is not very likely to
encourage the attentions of any other man.'
' No ; besides, Mary Clover is very high principled,'
added Lady Netherby with decision.
Now Mary Clover was at that time living up at the
Hall, as governess to the two little Ladies Lyndon.
CHAPTER III
SWEETHEARTS
It was Easter Monday, and Mary Clover was at
home for a three-days' holiday. She was standing in
her own little bedroom in her father's house, putting
on her hat before the glass. The glass—which was
by no means so clear or so large as the one she was
accustomed to consult in her more luxurious bed-
room at the Hall—reflected her sweet face, neverthe-
less, as best it knew, upon its blurred and misty sur-
face ; a face that was as fair and fresh and wholesome
as one of the spring flowers in the cracked brown jug
on the window shelf—the face of a clean-souled,
honest-hearted English girl.
When she had completed her small preparations,
she smiled at herself, and kissed her fingers lightly
to her own reflection, for she knew that she was fair
to look upon; and when a girl goes out to meet her
lover, for his sake she is glad to look her best.
Mary ran quickly down the steep wooden stair-
case into the farm kitchen, where her father was
smoking his pipe in the wide chimney corner.
' Going out, my girl ?' he said, catching at her hand
as she went by him,
' I am going for a walk with Steeve Hardy,'
answered Mary, with a fugitive blush which rendered
her infinitely lovely in her father's eyes.
' Steeve is a good fellow, Mary, and will make a good
husband. I don't know any man on all Cramer Forest
to whom I would give my daughter more gladly.'
21
22
A SOUL ASTRAY
Mary tossed up her chin with a little gesture of
saucy coquetry.
' Oh, as to that, father, I haven't made up my mind.
I am in no hurry to marry anybody yet—there's
plenty of time. I had sooner wait a little longer.'
' Well, don't you wait too long, my dear. A good
man is not to be had every day for the asking, and
Steeve may get tired of waiting, and go elsewhere if
you keep him dangling after you too long.'
' Oh, no fear of that, father !' laughed Mary gaily,
as she ran past him out of the house into the sun-
shine of the bright March day.
Joseph Clover rose and followed her to the door,
and stood there shading his eyes from the sun, and
looking after her slender figure as it sped lightly
away down the slope of the hill. He was very proud
of his girl. She was pretty, and she was as good as
gold—and she was clever, too, into the bargain. He
had spent, as he put it to himself,' a power of money'
on her education. He had sent her to the best
boarding school in Oldchester, and that school had
made her, as he said,' quite the lady;' and his money
had not been thrown away, for now she was reaping
the benefit of her superior education. It had been a
proud day indeed to farmer Clover when Lady
Netherby had called herself at his house to ask if
Mary might come to be her little girls' governess. It
was a position which rendered her an object of envy
to every other young woman on Cramer Forest;
though, to be sure, there was not another of them all
who was fit for such an honour, but his Mary!
And she was very happy at the Hall, for the
Netherbys were good, simple people who loved to live
amongst their own folk, in the good old patriarchal
fashion which is almost a thing of the past in these days
of change and high pressure. It was a sense of the
fitness of things which had induced Lady Netherby to
look about amongst their own people for a governess
SWEETHEARTS
23
for her children, for why give the place to a stranger
if there was any one of their own who could benefit
by it? Mary was very kindly treated by Lady
Netherby, and made to feel herself at home in her
house and as if she were one of the family. When
there were visitors at the Hall, they also took the
cue from their hostess, and spoke pleasantly to the
children's pretty governess. Her pupils were gentle-
mannered little girls of eight and nine, whose child-
ish hearts she easily learnt to win, and whom she soon
grew very fond of, whilst even Lord Netherby him-
self never passed the sweet-faced girl about the house
or grounds without bestowing on her a friendly word
and smile, so that Mary grew to have a happy sense
of being valued and liked by her employers, and it
was perhaps small wonder that she was in no hurry
to give up such a place—no, not even for Steeve
Hardy!
Steeve would certainly keep, she said to herself,
as she caught sight of him afar off waiting for her by
the edge of Brackmere Pool, seated patiently on a
tuft of heather till it should please her to come to
him, whilst the spring sunshine shone brightly down
on his uncovered, curly head. Steeve had waited so
long already—all her life, in fact!
Ever since Mary could remember anything, there
had never been a time when Steeve Hardy had not
wanted her to marry him, or when his entire devotion
had not been poured out at her feet And so perhaps
she made the woman's frequent mistake of under-
valuing that great, deep heart of which she was so
sure—of underestimating that rare thing to which
she had grown as accustomed as to the air which she
breathed—the true love of a good man. Steeve
sprang gladly to his feet when he caught sight of her
coming down the slope of the hill amongst the brown
tussocks of gorse and heather, and came eagerly for-
ward to meet her,
24
A SOUL ASTRAY
'Well, Steeve ?' putting her two small hands into his.
' Mary! I can hardly believe that it is really and
truly you at last. How beautiful you have grown,
darling—more beautiful than ever.'
The young man's love shone in his eyes. She was
his life, his queen, his dream. He had loved her ever
since he could remember anything at all; it had
never seemed to him that there was any other woman
in the whole world but Mary Clover.
' Oh, but you mustn't call me that, Steeve; and, oh
no, I couldn't possibly—possibly—'
'What! not one, Mary? Not one, after all these
long months I have hardly set eyes on you! Not
one kiss ?'
Mary, with a crimson face, wrenched her hands
away.
'You know very well you have no right to ask me
for such a thing,' she answered, all in a tremor of
shyness, mingled with a little coquetry as well.
' But, Mary, you promised that you would give me
the right this Easter! You told me at Christmas
that you would give me my answer,' he remon-
strated, dropping her hands meekly, however, as she
wished.
' I can't tell you for certain yet, Steeve. I must
think about it.'
' Haven't you thought long enough ?'
' No. How can one decide this sort of thing in a
hurry ?'
' But, Mary, we have known each other all our lives.
We have never had any secrets from one another—
at least—' as she tossed her little chin disdainfully,
' at least I have no secrets from you. I have always
loved you the same, ever since I was a little bit of
a chap; and now I am twenty-four and you are
twenty-two, so we are both old enough to know our
own minds. Won't you say "yes this time, Mary,
and marry me at Whitsuntide ?'
SWEETHEARTS
25
' I can't tell you till Whitsuntide comes whether I
will or no,' was her answer.
The young man sighed.
' Why not ?' he asked crestfallenly.
But Mary would not say.
The girl's head was just a little bit turned, perhaps.
It is not good for any of us to be lifted out of our
niche in life and taught to believe ourselves as good
as our betters. Mary had been made a great deal
of up at the Hall, and the good things of this world
had gone over her in a warm, weakening wave of
well-being and luxury. The beautiful house and
park, the crowd of soft-footed servants, the well-
appointed rooms—even the dainty food at table, and
the feeling of being at home in all this—had become
dear and precious to her. She wished passionately
that she had been a lady born. To marry Steeve
would be to go back irrevocably to her own lowlier
rank of life, to superintend some homestead like his
father's or her own, to cook the dinners and mend
the house linen, to look after the maids and see to
the dairy and the poultry. It was what she was born
to; but Mary had been taken out of her own grooves,
and set down in a life in which she could not
assuredly remain for ever, and yet which she loved
too well to resign easily.
' I should not like to leave my situation at
the Hall so soon,' she answered doubtfully. ' I am
very happy there; besides it would not be quite
fair to Lady Netherby—she has been so kind
to me. I should not like to put her to any in-
convenience.'
' But surely she could get someone else between
now and Whitsuntide?'
' Oh, I could not even tell her, Steeve. She
would think me ungrateful, and they have all been
so very good to me.'
'Still, I have waited so long, Mary,' he pleaded,
2 6
A SOUL ASTRAY
pressing the arm he held against his side,' so long—
so long, my darling !'
They were walking slowly along the edge of the
pool. There was a breath of spring in the air, the
long rushes were shooting up green and sweet at
the water's edge. There was the hum of whirling
insects abroad upon the breeze, the ' palms' and the
catkins, and the feathery white cotton-grass were
hanging out their tender, fluffy buds amongst the
low brushwood, the blackthorn was white with
blossom, and as they walked, an early yellow butter-
fly, born of the bright sunshine, flickered suddenly
across their path.
'Give me your promise, dear?' pleaded the young
man. ' I cannot live without you much longer—be
my wife, Mary.'
But she shook her bright head merrily.
' Oh, don't be in a hurry, Steeve! Why, suppose
we both were to change our minds ?'
' I shall not change,' answered the young man ear-
nestly; 'there is no other woman on earth for me,
but you.'
It was no light matter to Steeve; it was the
most solemn and sacred thing in the world to him,
this subject of his love and his hopes.
' Oh, I'm not so sure!' cried the girl gaily;
' there is that handsome cousin of yours—she is very
fond of you, Steeve.'
' What! Poor Zilla ? Oh, but that is ridiculous,
Mary!' and Steeve's face glowed suddenly at the
mere suggestion. ' Why, Zilla is like my little sister,
and I am like a brother to her.'
' Are you quite sure that Zilla looks upon you as a
brother ? If so, why does she scowl at me with those
black brows of hers, and look so savagely out of her
big eyes every time she meets me ?'
' That must be your fancy, Mary, dear. Zilla is
a queer girl—few people understand her. She is
SWEETHEARTS
27
shy and reserved. She has never made friends
with any of the girls about, but she is as true as
steel, and very affectionate to those who know her
well.'
' Mother says she has no soul.'
' Your mother should not say so. It is a wicked
thing to say of any one,' said Steeve quickly.
' But it is true enough that gipsies have no souls !'
persisted Mary with some obstinacy.
' Zilla is not entirely of gipsy blood. Her mother
was my aunt—my father's sister.'
' Still, that only entitles her to half a soul, any-
how, Steeve—you can't deny that!' said Mary,
laughing.
But Steeve did not laugh at all. He grew very
silent. He was thinking over the old saying and
wondering if it were true; and though he had said it
was wicked to say it, it went through his mind to
wonder if perhaps there were not something in it
after all, and if that possibly might not account for
things about Zilla which he could not understand—
no, nor any one else on the face of the earth.
So they two went along, arm in arm, as lovers should
do, by the margin of Brackmere Pool, and the water-
hens darted out of the rushes at the sound of their
footsteps and skimmed across the shining water,
and a grey heron stood motionless on one leg at the
further side, and watched them out of his wise,
keen eyes, pondering, no doubt, upon the vanity and
folly of the many pairs of young lovers whom he had
seen in his time, yet never surely a better-looking
couple than this ! For Mary was happy in spite of
herself. She hung on to the young man's arm and
looked up brightly into his face, whilst he was so
deeply in love—so absorbed in the mere happiness
of being near her—that he had no eyes for anything
but her.
A little higher up the slope above them someone
28
A SOUL ASTRAY
was keeping pace with them all the time. A girlish
figure, clad in a coarse brown homespun dress, that
bent down stealthily as it ran so as to conceal itself
behind the shelter of the slender larches and little
fir trees that dotted the hillside. There was a
curious serpentine grace in the rapid crouching
movements of her supple limbs, and ever as she
went, she was followed by a gentle fluttering of
wings in the air above her, and by a patter of
noiseless footsteps amongst the long grasses at her
feet Her jet-black hair was loosely bound with a
striped scarlet and yellow handkerchief, and every
now and again the sun caught the bright colours
of this strange head-dress, so that they flashed out
with a fierce and vivid gleam against the sober
greens and browns of the landscape ; but the lovers
were too much absorbed in each other to see her.
Presently, as they moved farther away, looking
neither to the right nor to the left of them, but only
into each other's faces, Zilla rose from her crouching
position and drew herself up to the full height of
her tall and slender figure, Shading her eyes with a
narrow, long-fingered, brown hand, she stood looking
long and steadfastly after them.
Her face was of a singular beauty, pure oval in
shape, and of the richest nut-brown colouring: not
swarthy but warmed into life by the red blood that
flushed beneath the skin. The outlines of her feat-
ures were cleanly chisled, and almost Grecian in char-
acter; the dark brows arched and strongly marked,
nearly meeting above the eyes, and the eyes them-
selves were large and deep and lustrous, whilst the
full scarlet lips, cleft like a cupid's bow, were parted
in the centre over teeth of a glittering whiteness.
It was altogether a strange and curious type of face
to meet: set as it was, into the quiet and homely
framework of an English sky and an English country.
For some moments she stood immovable, looking
SWEETHEARTS
29
after the two figures receding farther and farther
away from her along the edge of the mere. There
was a concentration of mingled anger and misery
in the great black eyes—a lost soul seemed to
look ,out of them in hopeless anguish, as if gazing
from afar upon the Paradise it cannot enter.
' He loves her!' she murmured sorrowfully. ' I
saw it in his eyes when he looked into her face—
he loves her, and I am nothing to him! yet she is
only a butterfly, a light thing that has no strength
to love—it is all vanity with her. Whilst I—ah,
how I love him ! How good I could be if he were
mine!' and the great eyes filled with tears, the
flushed cheek paled, her head hung low upon her
bosom, and with a pathetic gesture of despair she
sank upon the earth and covered her bowed face
with her hands, whilst the creatures whom she loved,
and who followed her, gathered about her unheeded,
perching upon her shoulder and pattering across
her skirts ; but Zilla had no eyes for them at all
to-day, because human love and human sorrow had
entered her riven heart.
Suddenly she dashed away her tears and flung
up her head, striking the brown hands together with
an action of despairing fury so that the small
wild things about her scattered in terror far and
wide.
' But she shall not have him !' she cried aloud. ' I
will not give him up to her. I would rather see him
dead than let that pink-and-white doll have him.
I would kill him first, or I would drag him down
in my arms so that he could never look into her
face again.'
For a long, long time she remained there alone,
whilst miserable thoughts surged in a chaotic tumult
within her, thoughts that were indeed so black and
evil that she almost shrank in shuddering loathing
of them herself, but to which she nevertheless gave
30
A SOUL ASTRAY
way with a certain lawless and savage delight in her
own ungovernable impulses.
' They have called me a witch—they tell me I have
no soul—perhaps they are right and it is true,' she
muttered presently as she dragged herself up to
her feet; 'they have cursed me all my life—even
he—even he—despises me, and is blind to my love.
Well, then, what does it matter what I do if I have
no soul—I can do as I please.'
And who can tell how far this poor, lonely child,
whose fresh nature had been poisoned at its sources by
the ignorant cruelty of those amongst whom her lot
had been cast, was responsible for the wild and
wicked fancies which tossed her poor aching soul back-
wards and forwards in their angry sport! Ah, better
far for Zilla, had she perished of cold and want upon
the doorstep where the old vagrant had laid her on
that October evening long ago.
Half-way home, two men passed her along the
high road—Lord Netherby riding home from the
last meet of the season, and Mr Lorrimer, the clergy-
man, walking slowly by his side. They were old
college friends these two, and were deep in conver-
sation, but both paused as the beautiful, sullen-
faced girl passed them, scarcely lifting her eyes
from the ground as she made them a brief and
surly curtsey.
' Isn't that old Hardy's gipsy niece ?' questioned
the Earl, half turning round in his saddle to look
after her. ' Good heavens, Lorrimer, what a beautiful
creature she has become !'
' Ah, poor Zilla—yes, I suppose she is handsome—
but her temper is so wild and wayward—I can do
nothing with her!' sighed the other, for Zilla had
long been a source of anxiety to him.
'She doesn't look amiable, certainly. But, good
lord, such beauty as that is enough to turn the heads
of all the young men in your parish, Lorrimer! I
SWEETHEARTS
31
trust my friend Steeve has not lost his heart irre-
vocably to his dark-browed cousin.'
' Oh, no, it is Mary Clover who is Steeve's sweet-
heart; he is safe enough.'
' Ah, yes, so I remember my wife told me, by the
way. Ah, well, Miss Mary had better not let Steeve
have too long a tether, I shall tell her. Such a face
as that in the house must be a dangerous temptation
to any young fellow.'
And presently after they had parted, and Lord
Netherby had trotted on alone, he caught up Mary
Clover herself, who also had just parted with her
companion, and who was now hastening homewards,
not ill satisfied with her own cleverness in having
successfully eluded the main point at issue between
them without having in any way diminished her in-
fluence over her lover.
'Well, Mary Clover!' cried out Lord Netherby
cheerily to her as he reined in his horse to greet his little
girls' governess, 'enjoying your holiday ? The house is
very dull without you. When are you coming back ?'
'To-morrow morning, my lord,' answered Mary
shyly and meekly, as it behoved a little insignificant
governess to do when addressed by so great a man,
but her blue eyes glanced up smilingly and pleasantly
into his, and Lord Netherby was not too old to be
insensible to the charm of them.
He and his horse were covered with mud splashes
from head to foot, and his hat had been damaged
against a thorn branch, and there was a scratch down
the side of his smooth-shaven face—but these little
blemishes did not at all detract from his appearance,
nor prevent him from looking what he was—one of
the smartest and best-turned-out men of his age in
the whole country.
' He is ever so much handsomer and pleasanter
than his son even now,' thought Mary to herself; and
perhaps her admiration was to be read in her eyes,
32
A SOUL ASTRAV
for Lord Netherby felt a very kindly impulse towards
the young girl at his side.
' Wasn't that Steeve Hardy, Mary, who was wish-
ing you good-bye just now?' he inquired.
Mary blushed up all over her face, and Lord
Netherby smiled.
' Ah, I see! you are great friends, I hear, with Steeve
Hardy, my dear? Well, you couldn't possibly do
better. I have a very high opinion of him. There
isn't anyone on all Cramer Forest bears a higher
character than he does.'
Mary murmured confusedly that she had known
Steeve all her life, and LoVd Netherby smiled again
as he answered,—
'Well, you've known a first-rate chap, then. Now,
just you take an old fellow's advice, Mary Clover.
Don't you keep Steeve dangling too long after you.
Sweethearting is all very well, but a man wants a
home and a wife of his own after a bit, and it's time
Steeve should marry and settle down; and you, my
dear, have played at governessing long enough. A
pretty woman ought to have her own fireside and a
good husband, and little children climbing about her
knees. Don't put it off too long, Mary. Besides, you
know, Steeve is a handsome fellow, and there might
be many other girls only too anxious to snap him up.
There's that good-looking gipsy cousin of his for one.
Ha! ha! a word to the wise, you know. Don't you
give her time to steal him from you. Let the wed-
ding be soon, Mary, and mind you ask me to come
and dance at it.'
And shaking his whip playfully at her in farewell,
Lord Netherby stuck his heels into his horse's sides
and trotted away towards home, leaving Mary all
smiles and blushes in the road behind him.
Ah ! how often in the days that were to come, did
not Mary Clover wish from the bottom of her heart
that she had taken the good man's kindly advice.
CHAPTER IV
THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION
SUPPER was over, and Miss Prudence Hardy had just
cleared away the remains of the meal from the table.
A wood fire burnt on the wide open hearth, and the red
glow shone warmly through the comfortable interior—
half kitchen, half parlour—which formed the principal
dwelling-room of the old-fashioned homestead. The
shifting firelight danced fitfully across the low ceiling,
barred with heavy, blackened cross-beams, conjuring
up a new dash of crimson into the faded stuff curtains
drawn closely across the windows, and flickering
merrily backwards and forwards over the rows of blue
and white willow-patterned plates and dishes ranged
in symmetrical order along the shelves of the old
oaken dresser. The tall grandfather clock still ticked
monotonously in its corner, and upon the high
mantelshelf stood the brown 'Toby' beer jugs, whilst
the Chelsea shepherds and shepherdesses simpered at
each other, just exactly as they had done eighteen
years ago. Of all these silent and inanimate things,
not one was changed, not one was missing since then.
It is only upon men and women whom Time lays
his relentless hand.
Miss Prudence, indeed, was less changed than her
brother—her small, wiry figure still bustled about,
upright and active as ever; her eye was as keen to
discriminate a speck of dust or a badly-scoured copper
saucepan, and her hair was scarcely greyer. But
Simon Hardy's head was silver now, and the weight
C
34
A SOUL ASTRAY
of work and of weather had bowed the once upright
and stalwart shoulders into the stoop of his fifty years.
But then there were the young ones—those indelible
landmarks of the swift-rushing years—who make us
all feel so old before our time, with their quick-grow-
ing inches and their ripening minds and opinions. A
boy and a maiden to-day—what are they to us to-
morrow ?—a man and a woman, with souls and lives
and theories in which we, poor out-of-date generation
gently dropping down to our decline, have no part
nor influence. So the farm kitchen seemed to be
most changed to-day by those two young figures,
by Steeve, bending over some wood carvings in a
corner and dreaming of his Mary, and by Zilla, sitting
idle in the chimney corner, with great, sad, passion-
filled eyes fixed hungrily upon her cousin, and with
God knows how many rebellious thoughts and lawless
desires surging at her woman's heart.
Simon Hardy sat by the table under the lamplight
and read his Bible as he was accustomed to do every
night of his life. His was the stern old Puritanical
creed of a hundred years ago—the creed which loved
to dwell upon the threats of eternal damnation, of
hell fire and of torturing devils, rather than upon
promises of mercy and forgiveness. The fierce de-
nunciations against sin and its irrevocable punish-
ment, the dreadful descriptions of the ungodly perish-
ing everlastingly in the lake of fire and brimstone,
seemed to warm the man's blood and arouse his
enthusiasm. Every now and then, as some passage
out of the holy book struck him forcibly, he would
read it aloud, bringing down his fist upon the table
to emphasise his approval ; and then Miss Prudence,
too—dusting, tidying, folding away the home-spun
linen into the great wooden chest in the corner—she
too, would look up and nod her solemn appreciation
of the terrible fulminations against the wicked which
her brother selected haphazard from the ' Book of Life.'
THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION
35
• The soul that sinneth it shall die,' the old man
would say—' die, you see—there's no getting out of
that. The death of the soul. It shall die in the fire of
Hell,  where the worm dieth not and the fire is not
quenched"—that is the sinner's portion.'
' Ay, down to the children's children,' muttered
Miss Prudence, vindictively, with a sour look at the
idle girl by the fireside.
But Zilla did not care. ' I have no soul,' she
thought. ' It can make no difference to me.'
Once, indeed, Steeve threw up his fair head, with a
quick, gasping breath, and sudden, rebellious words
came hurrying to his lips, but they went no farther.
After all, he said nothing, and dropped his face again
in silence over his work. ' Father don't mean it half,'
he thought; ' he is too kind-hearted to be down upon
any poor sinner really; it's more talk than anything
else with him.' But as for his aunt, Steeve was not so
sure about her ; if the sinner happened to be a woman
for instance, well, one never knew how hard one
woman could be upon another ! That was the best of
Mary—Mary was so gentle, so divinely good—so
pitiful to those in trouble ! And so the lover's thoughts
went back to the girl he loved, and in sweet dreams
of her goodness and her charm, his senses were dulled
and his ears deafened to all on earth besides. But
if Steeve had but looked across to the chimney
corner opposite, had he but met one glance of de-
vouring fire from those great, passionate, black eyes
that were fastened upon him, would it have been
possible that he could have remained so dully in-
sensible ? so lapped in happy love dreams as to gather
no timely warning from their lurid depths ? But he
did not look at her, and so the tragedy of his
life began to be played, and he knew nothing
of it.
Presently the old man closed the heavy Bible with
a thud, snapped the brass clasps across the well-worn
36
A SOUL ASTRAY
leaves, and came back to earthly matters with a sigh
of contentment.
c There's that gruel for Mayflower. Now, I wonder
if Bill Goades, careless loon that he is, thought to give
it her to-night before he went away ? He was in a
mortal hurry to be gone to-night; there's a Radical
meeting, if my memory misgives me not, at Laykham,
and he have gone silly with that stuff", have Bill. As
like as not, doited ass that he is, he was so took up
with the dratted rubbish, that Mayflower went clean
out of his mind altogether!'
41 will go and see to her, father,' said Steeve, rising
quickly.
' Ay, my boy, do—you'll easily find if she have
had the gruel—for the pail will be left.'
Now Mayflower was an Alderney cow who had
lately calved, and about whose health there had been
some anxiety at the farm.
Steeve put on his cap and went out at the front
door. Miss Hardy at the moment had gone into
£be back kitchen, where her voice could be distinctly
heard raised in violent vituperation over the faults
and failings of the two wenches whose hard fate it
was to learn their work under her tuition. They
got the rough side of Miss Prudence's tongue, these
' wenches' of hers, of whom a long succession had
followed one another in her service. But for all that
they were taught their business, and if a servant girl
were ever required in any of the better class houses
of the Forest for miles around, it was to Miss Hardy
that they applied to find her; so that the post was
much coveted by the mothers, albeit not a bed of
roses to the maidens themselves.
In the cow byre across the yard, Steeve was at-
tending to the wants of the neglected Mayflower.
A dull oil lamp hung on a nail high up against the
wall—proof positive that Bill Goades, in the fervour
of political enthusiasm, had forgotten his duty, or
THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION
3 7
the light would have been turned out. The dim
flicker threw vague shadows over the long row of
stalls where some twelve or fifteen of the gentle crea-
tures were tethered. The air was full of the warm,
sweet fragrance of their breath; there were soft
rustlings amongst the straw of their beds, the gentle
whisking of long tails, the rattle of the wooden nuts
swinging upon the ropes of their halters, as the beauti-
ful animals moved their restless heads. Steeve leant
against Mayflower's warm, smooth side, and stroked
her sleek neck caressingly, and the great soft-eyed beast
looked round lovingly at him now and again. It was
all very soothing and quiet out here with the cows
in the semi-darkness. It came into his mind to
wonder how anyone who was much with dumb
animals could ever believe in the flames of Hell and
the agonies of devil-tormented sinners—here amongst
these quiet creatures there was such peace, such well-
being, such a sense of the dignity and harmony of
God's works as fitted ill with the horrible curses and
threatenings, on which his father and aunt were so
fond of dwelling. ' The earth is the Lord's, and the
fulness thereof,' murmured Steeve to himself as
he laid his head down upon Mayflower's soft neck,
'and let all that is within me praise His Holy Name.'
There did not seem to be any further theological
requirements of life for Steeve just then—that was
surely enough.
* Steeve.'
He turned with a start. Amidst all the soft mur-
muring echoes of the dumb life about him, he had
failed to hear the soft opening of the door, the rustle
of a footstep in the straw litter behind him.
' Zilla, is it you ?'
' Steeve, Steeve, I cannot bear it any longer. I
cannot keep silence. My heart-is breaking. I think
it will burst and I shall die. Listen, Steeve ! oh, you
must, you shall, hear me.'
38
A SOUL ASTRAY
The passionate whispering words throbbed like
living things in the silence. She was close to him
now, so close that he could feel the warm breath of
her mouth upon his face and the beating of her
heart against his side; and then suddenly her two
soft, rounded arms, from which her loose, wide sleeves
slipped back, were thrown up about his head and
wound themselves around his neck.
' Steeve, I love you, I love you,' murmured the
broken, sobbing voice into his ear, and the soft lips
ended the words with a long kiss upon his bare
throat.
For a moment the young man's head went round,
and his senses were steeped in delirium, for he was
but a man after all, and she was a woman passing
fair—the contagion of her passion fired him—swept
over him, well nigh overwhelmed him.
Then of a sudden there shot through his heart—a
face—a name—
Mary !
And at the spell of that name his loyal soul re-
covered its balance, and the temptation became as
nothingness to him.
He put up his hands and thrust her arms from
about him with all his force.
' Zilla! you are mad; you don't know what you
are saying!' he cried in a voice that shook and was
a little hoarse, because of that horrible precipice over
which his soul had for a moment hung. ' My poor
girl, you must not say these things to me; it's all a
mistake you know, Zilla. I am your brother and
you my little sister, dear.'
She leant back against the cow's warm sides,
panting still, her great eyes fixed upon his face,
her arms fast prisoned in the grasp of his strong
hands.
'No. I am no sister to you, Steeve. I love you.
I want you. I will not—will not give you up.'
THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION
39
' But, Zilla, this is foolishness'; and he was quite
calm now—calm, and a little angry into the bargain,
for though Zilla was a law unto herself, it rasped
against his fastidious taste that any girl should declare
her love, unasked, so boldly. ' There can be no ques-
tion of love—of—of that kind between you and I.
We are cousins only; and besides, that is not all.
You must surely know that, with me, there is some-
one else—that I love Mary Clover, and that she will
be my wife one day'
A passion of jealous anger flamed into her eyes.
'You don't know what you are doing,' she cried,
' when you throw away such a love as mine for hers!
What can Mary Clover be to you, Steeve ? A light
butterfly creature, who doesn't even know the mean-
ing of love ! A shallow-hearted thing, who thinks of
her Sunday dress and the new ribbons to her bonnet
more than all your love and devotion ! Would she
keep you waiting as she does, dangling you like
a fish on a hook, if she really loved you ?' Steeve
winced a little at that, and Zilla saw it. ' I tell you,
she does not love you—she never will! She loves
herself, and her own pretty face—not you and your
great warm heart. How will that heart be content,
Steeve, with that washy, watery thing ?—that weak,
cold-blooded feeling which Mary Clover calls her
love ? Leave her and come to me. You will know
then what love means, Steeve. With me you will
have the heat, the July sunshine, the glow of the mid-
summer day—with her, but the cold, pale gleams of
a wintry sky that can never be warmed into life.
Let her go, Steeve. Don't be a fool. Take me.
Take me to your heart instead—'
With a wild effort, she suddenly wrenched her
hands free from his slackened grasp; and whilst
Steeve was hesitating with what words to repulse her
as kindly and as tenderly as he could, so as to hurt
and wound her as little as needs be—feeling, indeed,
40
A SOUL ASTRAY
more of pity than of disgust for the poor, half-crazed,
wayward girl whom he had always regarded as a
sister—before he could find the words or speak, she
had flung herself once more upon his breast, her
bosom beating and trembling against him, her beauti-
ful face pressed close to his, all quivering with the
intensity of her pleading. Wild, broken words rushed
headlong from her lips; and strong with the physical
strength of a free-limbed wild animal, she held him
captive once more in her clinging arms, striving by the
sheer force of bodily contact to storm the citadel of
his senses, although she knew well enough that the
heart that was filled with the image of a better and
purer love was steeled irrevocably against her.
Behind them the heavy door creaked loudly on its
hinges, and a flood of light poured into the darkened
gloom of the byre; and Bill Goades, carrying a
lantern in his hand, stood grinning in the open
doorway beyond.
Bill Goades had a villainous countenance, mainly,
if not, indeed, entirely, owing to the loss of one eye,
which had been knocked out in his early youth by the
pitchfork of a fellow labourer. But into the one eye
that was left to him, Bill Goades usually managed to
compress an amount of malignity, or of saturnine glee,
which his two-eyed fellow mortals might in vain strive
to emulate. Standing there against the background
of the black night, with the glare of the lantern in his
reddened face, with his short, rough hair scratched
up from his head, and the evil smile of a coarse-
minded boor upon his face, Bill Goades resembled
nothing so much as a satyr of the evil regions re-
joicing with devilish joy over the backslidings of frail
humanity.
' Ho ! ho ! never ye mind me, Measter Steeve !' and
the brutal laugh rang out with a mocking significance
which filled even Zilla with shame and disgust. ' Nor
you neither, missy. Bill Goades don't tell no tales of
THE HOUR OF TEMPTATION
41
men and maids as are taking their bit o' fun. I
coomed back to give the coo her mash, Measter
Steeve. Would ha' waited a bit outside if I'd ha'
known, so as not to have disturbed you and the
missy. But Bill Goades can hold his tongue—never
you fear.'
They were wide enough apart now. Steeve, flushed
and disconcerted, brazening it out as best he could
with exaggeratedly angry words over the man's
neglect of his duty, and Zilla stalking away with
scarlet cheeks and her head in the air, shamed a little,
perhaps, at being so ignominiously caught, but not
altogether ill-pleased, on the whole, that Bill Goades
had taken her for Steeve's sweetheart.
' You had no business to go away like that, without
seeing to the cow,' blustered Steeve. ' The gov'ner
was much annoyed ; if he hadn't remembered May-
flower and sent me to her, the poor beast would have
gone without her drink.'
' I was a-comin' back, Measter Steeve. I weren't
a-goin' to forget her. Only sorry to have introoded,'
with another leer of significance.
' Oh, as to Miss Zilla, she was only helping me to
get the gruel for Mayflower.'
But Bill Goades only gave a portentous wink of
his Cyclopsian eye at this, and vouchsafed no other
answer save a low peal of mocking laughter.
And the echoes of his deep-chested ' Ho ! ho ! ho !'
rang all night long through Steeve Hardy's dreams,
with the horrible reiteration of an ill-omened night-
mare.
CHAPTER V
false love and true
For three days Steeve went about oppressed with
shame. He could not lift his eyes to Zilla's face—
could not take her hand, could not speak to her in the
easy fashion of their customary intercourse. If he
met her about the house or farm, he passed by in
silence with averted eyes—at meals he was abstracted
and unlike himself, speaking little, eating less—and if
by chance, in handing a plate or a dish, his hand
happened to brush against his cousin's, he withdrew
it quickly and guiltily, as though the contact burnt
him. And all this shame was on her account. He
could think of nothing but of the agony of remorse
and humiliation which she must be going through.
' Poor girl! poor girl!' he would say to himself,
pityingly, ' what she must be enduring! What she
must be suffering! When that moment of madness
was over—for it was but a madness, poor child ! no-
thing more—how she must have longed to sink into
the earth! how her soul must have cried out to the
rocks to fall on her, and to the hills to cover her ! Oh,
if I only dared to tell her how deeply I pity her—how
my heart aches for her! but that is impossible—my
lips are sealed for ever—I can never speak of it. The
only good I could do her would be to go away, but
that is unfortunately out of the question—with the
ponies all to be taken up next week, and Markton
Fair so close at hand! No, all I can do is to avoid
her as much as I can, and to seem not to know or
42
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE
43
to guess the shame and self-abasement she is en-
during!'
But as a matter of fact, Zilla experienced no sense
of shame whatever. Wild animal that she was, such
a sentiment as womanly modesty had no portion in
her composition. Anger, she felt indeed—a blind,
wild anger; both with herself—in that she had been
foolish and had betrayed her love in vain—and with
him, because he had been deaf and blind to her
passion, and would have none of it. The embittered
stream of her love rushed back upon herself in gall
and wormwood, and already half the sweetness of
womanhood was killed within her.
' If he loved me, I could be so good,' thought poor
Zilla in her desolate misery. And she was right
enough. Love alone could work a miracle in her
lawless heart. Love might have saved her, happiness
might have redeemed her, for her heart was deep and
tender at its roots, and only needed softening to
purify and sweeten it. But adversity and disappoint-
ment only harden and sour the softer feelings ; and
anger, jealousy and hatred had begun to flourish like
rampant weeds within her, choking all the fairer
things which, in happier circumstances, might have
blossomed into life and flower.
She resented Steeve's averted glances and redden-
ing brow more even than his open repulse of her love.
She took his avoidance for disgust, his silence for dis-
pleasure—and her eyes grew black and sullen, and
she scowled menacingly at him as he passed her by.
Miss Prudence, who was lynx-eyed, looked from
one to the other of the cousins with puzzled and un-
easy glances.
' What ails them both ?' she said to herself. ' There
is something wrong here/ and it seemed to her that
there was guilt in Steeve's shame-faced looks, and
something perhaps of remorse in Zilla's surliness and
bad temper.
44
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Have you two quarrelled ?' she asked of her nephew
one evening, when the family quartette were gathered
around the supper-table.
' Quarrelled ?'
Steeve looked up hastily, with a startled expression
in his blue eyes.
'Yes—you and Zilla—you do not speak, you do
not look at each other—has there been a difference
between you ?'.
' Oh, no—oh, dear, no !' Steeve hastened to reply,
but his aunt noticed that the blood rushed hotly
into his face, whilst Zilla went on eating in silence.
' We are, as always, the best of friends, are we not,
little cousin ? ' went on Steeve, manfully and loyally,
looking brightly across the table at the girl's down-
cast face.
But still Zilla answered nothing, and Miss Prudence
said to herself,—
' All is not right here. I must watch and see.'
After that, Steeve said to himself that the wisest
thing he could do, and the best thing for Zilla, would
be to marry Mary Clover as soon as possible.
He was sorry that Zilla would not try to overcome
her very natural reluctance to meet him as usual. It
would be wiser, he thought, for her own sake, and
certainly for his, that she should consent to bury the
episode of that miserable evening in silence and ob-
livion. If he could forget it, surely she could do so
too. Yet he felt that it would be impossible to speak
to her to that effect.
He was glad of the annual football match which
was due to take place this week, and which, as he was
captain of the club, took up, naturally, a good deal of
his spare time. When that great event—patronised
by the gentry as well as by the smaller fry of the
neighbourhood—was satisfactorily over, and Steeve
had once more led the conquering team to victory—
'Cramer Forest' defeating 'Markton Town' by three
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE
45
goals to nothing—then he made time, late one after-
noon, to walk over to Netherby Hall.
It was not his practice to go there, for Mary was
busy, and had no time for courting ; and besides which,
he knew that Lady Netherby would not at all have
approved of her governess encouraging a lover about
the place, so that, except on Sundays, it was only on
accidental occasions that he ever caught sight of her.
But Steeve had a special purpose in view to-day, and
as he was an honourable and upright fellow, he deter-
mined to do nothing that should not be open and
above board. So he walked boldly up to the front
door, and asked to speak to Lord Netherby. He
was a favourite at the Hall, and after a very short
delay he was shown into the gun-room, where it so
happened that he found Lady Netherby also, as well
as her husband.
'Well, Hardy, what is it? anything I can do for
you ? ' said the Earl, shaking hands heartily with the
handsome young farmer.
' My lord, I came to ask whether I might be
allowed a few minutes' interview with Mary Clover.
I—had something special to say to her.'
' Oh, ho! that's the way the cat jumps, is it ?
Pray, what do you say to this, my lady ? Miss
Clover is more your affair than mine.'
' Is it true that you are engaged to Mary, Mr
Hardy?' inquired Lady Netherby, looking up kindly^
at him—for a genuine love affair Lady Netherby had
a true woman's sympathy. ' I have indeed heard
something of this before.'
' Mary and I have been sweethearts, my lady, for a
long time back,' admitted Steeve, ' and I want to ask
her to fix our wedding day,' he added boldly.
' Ah, then, I suppose I shall have to be looking out
for another governess soon,' she said, smiling very
sympathetically at him.
'To tell you the truth, my lady, that is what I
46
A SOUL ASTRAY
should like you to do. I had better be quite honest
about my intentions, had I not? I want to persuade
Mary to marry me at Whitsuntide. I have not yet
been able to get a definite answer from her—and—
I have had trouble—only little worries—at home
lately, and the long and short of it is I want her very
badly!' ended the young man, with a sudden burst
of uncontrollable energy, which made both Lord and
Lady Netherby laugh.
The latter got up and rang the bell.
'You shall have your chance, Mr Hardy; sorry as
we shall be to lose Mary, we would not stand in the
way of her happiness for a moment. James,' to the
footman who answered the bell, ' go upstairs and say
that the young ladies will dine with us to-night, and
tell Miss Clover to put on her bonnet and jacket, and
come downstairs to speak to me. I want her to go
out for me.'
Judge of Mary's surprise and confusion when, a few
minutes later, she entered the gun-room, and found
her lover seated in friendly conversation with her
pupils' parents.
' Mary,' said Lady Netherby, laying her hand
kindly on the girl's shoulder, ' I want you to have a
little holiday this evening; you are to go out for a
walk with Mr Hardy. The little girls will dine with
us for a treat, so that you need not come back till
half-past eight o'clock. Go for a good walk, and
mind you behave nicely to Mr Hardy,' she added
with a smile, in a lower voice, and then she gave the
girl a little gentle push in the direction of her lover.
It all seemed like a dream to Mary Clover. Steeve
sitting there. Lord Netherby smiling in a fatherly
manner at her over his spectacles. Lady Netherby
arranging for her to go out with her lover—what did
it mean? She looked from one to the other with
a little puzzled shyness, and her pretty face became
rosy with blushes.
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE
47
' Oh, my lady, you are very kind,' she stammered,
' but I couldn't think of leaving the children. There
are the lessons to prepare for to-morrow, and Mabel
has a special task to practise for her music master.'
'You will have to let them off, Miss Clover,' cried
the Earl, gaily, 'and Mabel must do her practising
alone for once. It seems, from what this gentleman
tells us, that we are likely to have a wedding before
long on Cramer Forrest.
' Steeve!' cried Mary, turning round on her lover
reproachfully, ' I never said so. Oh, my lady, I am
not at all anxious to be married. I would rather
stay as I am for a long time yet.'
Then Lady Netherby took the girl's hand in hers,
and held it firmly and kindly,—
' Mary Clover, don't be a fool!' she said, bluntly.
' Girls who play fast and loose with happiness don't
deserve to get any. A good husband is not to be had
every day, let me tell you ; and we are quite sure—
Lord Netherby and I—that Steven Hardy will make
you a good husband, and we think, too, that you will
make Steven Hardy a good wife. So all that you
two young people have got to do this evening is
to talk it all over and settle the wedding day.'
' And don't you put it off too long, Mary Clover,'
chimed in the Earl. ' If I were a good-looking young
chap, like my friend Steeve, here, and a girl kept me
shilly-shallying about after her, why, I should just
walk myself off and make love to someone else.'
' Oh, Steeve would never do that,' broke out Mary,
earnestly and breathlessly, which made the elderly
couple laugh, while Steeve bent his head and said,
' God bless her,' to himself, and wondered, with a
little shame in his heart, at the memory of that night-
mare, three days ago, in the cow byre, whether he
were indeed worthy of her perfect trust in him.
And presently the lovers were strolling together
across the' park, under the wide-spreading trees of a
48
A SOUL ASTRAY
lovely, grassy glade, with the level rays of the setting
sun in their eyes and the light of a happy content-
ment in their hearts.
Mary, it is true, assured Steeve emphatically that
his extraordinary action of taking Lord and Lady
Netherby into his confidence had driven her into con-
senting against her better judgment; but perhaps she
did not quite mean all she said, and perhaps, too, she
was not altogether sorry to be so driven, for, at her
heart, she knew that she loved Steeve better than
anyone in the world. And when he spoke to her,
vaguely, yet very earnestly, about home troubles and
worries, which had made his life unbearable, and of
his strong yearnings for a home of his own, and for
peace, and for her ! Mary pressed the arm upon which
she was leaning with a gentle and loving tenderness
which went straight to the young man's heart. He
did not like her any the less for her indecision and
reluctance. Indeed, her modesty and her blushes,
and the sweet maiden bashfulness that shrank, even
now, from the one kiss he succeeded in pressing upon
her trembling lips, all seemed to him to be doubly
sacred and priceless in the lurid recollection of that
other who had striven to force her love upon him,
unasked and undesired. He looked into Mary's
sweet face and met the pure light of her gentle eyes,
and he shuddered to himself when he remembered
Zilla. Ah ! here indeed was a love worth winning—
the love which Zilla had derided and mocked—the
love of a virgin heart, white with innocence and
purity, yet strong and steadfast and tender—the love
of a good and womanly woman. A man might
safely trust his happiness and his honour to such an
one as Mary Clover. Already, along the vista of
coming years, he seemed to perceive a fair vision of
his future life. The well-ordered, peaceful house, the
bright-faced children playing upon the hearth, and
the sweet central figure of that lovely picture the
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE
49
comely wife and mother, a little older, a little stouter,
perhaps—what did that matter ? She would be none
the less fair and sweet to him. There would be
always the same dear eyes, the same loving smile to
welcome him home after his day's work.
'Well, dear wife,' he seemed to hear that vision
of his future self exclaim ; and then, how he would
take her into his arms and kiss her—the love of his
youth, the wife of his manhood ! How he would be
her lover still through all the years to come. How
unchanged would be his heart, even when time would
have bent his back and silvered his hair. They
would have walked together, he and she, down the
gentle incline of life, through weal and woe, side by
side, and they would be as dear to one another still—
every whit as dear—as they were to-day, amidst all
the glad hopes of their opening love.
Ah! fair and beautiful dream ! too soon destined
to be rudely shaken ! In after years, Steeve was wont
to recall every incident of this happy evening, this
walk through the glades and avenues of Netherby
Park, with an intensity of anguish which was the
cruellest of all the pains he had to suffer.
He remembered how the herd of startled fallow deer
sprang from a thicket hard by and scampered across
their path, and how they two stood still, hand in hand,
like children, to watch the pretty creatures flying past,
and how Mary laughed aloud at the funny little
bounds and leaps of the tiny fawn who followed, the
last of all. He remembered, too, how she dropped
her glove, and how he picked it up and would not
give it back to her, but kissed it and put it into his
breast pocket, although she called him a silly goose
and tried to wrench it out of his hand. Steeve has
that glove still—a poor, faded little thing—safe locked
away in his desk. And then, how they talked—of all
the past, and of all the future, too—the ' When did you
begin first to care ?'' Was it on that day, or on that
D
50
A SOUL ASTRAY
other, that you knew you loved me ?'—those eternal
questions which lovers have put to each other with
the same unflagging interest ever since the beginning
of the world, and will doubtless continue to do until
this earth shall be swept away—as long, indeed, as
love and lovers shall exist upon its surface. Then a
a little, very little, sober talk of the ways and the
means ; of the farm that would be vacant at Michael-
mas, and which Steeve thought Lord Netherby would
let him have. Of the dread of leaving his father
yet; of how this new home would be so close by that
their herds and flocks might still be managed to-
gether, so as not to throw any extra work upon the
older man's hands. And then, how he noticed with
some amusement that Mary Clover continued to have
a decided will of her own, for that she would still not
hear of Whitsuntide, but consented to meet him half
way by promising to marry him at the beginning of
August. She was very obstinate about this; indeed
there was a fund of tenacity in Mary's composition,
in spite of all her gentle and kittenish little ways,
which Steeve had had occasion to notice before now.
He was obliged to give in to her, of course—indeed,
as he told her playfully, he was afraid he would have
to give in to her always, all his life.
' But you will stick to me, Mary ?' he asked her
anxiously; and they were back again near the Hall
when he said this to her, standing close together be-
neath the deep shadows of the high yew hedge in the
garden,—'You won't go back from your word, will you?
You will stick to me, won't you ?'
' I will never go back from my word, Steeve, and I
will stick to you, now and for ever.'
She answered with a strange, sweet solemnity of
which she was hardly conscious, and which, perhaps,
all unknown to them both, bore some prophetic in-
stinct about it.
And then he stooped and kissed her, gravely
FALSE LOVE AND TRUE
51
and tenderly, under the shadows and the star-
light.
' And may God do so to me, and more, if I am not
true to you, Mary,' he answered.
And then they parted.
Life went on for many years afterwards, but that
was Steeve's golden hour—the one hour, it is said, that
every man is permitted to steal once out of Eternity!
Other joys came to him later—much later—soberer
joys that brought their own satisfaction and comfort,
but never again that draught of Elysian nectar, that
divine elixir, that whisper of infinite delight that is
as the flutter of angels' wings in the air about us.
This, never again, nevermore !
For perfect happiness can never be to us more
than a breath that passes and is gone—a gleam of
light snatched at in the darkness, but never securely
caught—the faint prescience, perhaps, of that eternal
joy which can never be fully realised on earth.
Else, were this world too dear, and death too un-
welcome a friend.
CHAPTER VI
AN INTERLUDE
IT was evening. The day had been rough and
stormy, but the wind had gone down now, and the
sun was sinking redly, behind the hills, into a bank of
copper-coloured cloud.
Outside the low, wooden palings which encircled
Netherby Park, a clump of Scotch firs stood high
upon a round and grassy eminence. There were
many such clumps scattered far and wide across the
rolling breadth of Cramer Forest, although no one
could rightly say how they came to be there, whether
they had been originally planted by Nature or by
man, or whether, as I have said, they were left high
and dry by some devastating forest fire. They
served as beacons across the wild and almost track-
less country; and none amongst them all made so
conspicuous a landmark as did Netherby Knoll. It
was visible for miles around, and some forty or fifty
giant fir trees crowned its summit. The highroad
swept its base, and on the further side of the road
stretched the long line of grey paling, ragged and
rough with fern and bramble, and with graceful, cling-
ing trails of ivy. Beyond this paling lay the wooded
slopes of Lord Netherby's park—low hills clothed
with birch and chestnut undergrowth; stately avenues
of beeches, leading away down mossy glades that
might have opened out into the Forest of Arden ;
52
AN INTERLUDE
53
and here and there a grand old oak standing forth
alone in the open like a king. Down in the lower
valley there was a pale shimmer of water, where a
wide, glassy mere slept mysteriously beneath the
dark shadows of the woods; and away above the
tree-tops there could just be seen a glimpse of the
topmost chimneys of the grey stone house itself.
Upon the apex of Netherby Knoll, beneath the
tallest of the trees which crowned its summit, the
slender figure of a young woman was standing
motionless. The sinking sun, which had reddened
the stems of the Scotch firs into burnished copper,
shone, too, into the dark eyes of the girl, so that
they also were lit up with something of an un-
earthly fire, and the warm tones of her brown skin
glowed like amber, whilst all the russet shades of her
faded woollen gown were glorified into a ruddy har-
mony of blended colours—red and brown, green and
orange—mingling one with the other into a strange
and picturesque whole.
For some moments nothing moved save her eyes,
which swept the wide expanse of park and moor and
hill and dale before them with quick, roving glances.
Then suddenly they wandered no longer, but lifted
themselves to the branches of the tree above her head.
Then the full red lips pressed themselves closely to-
gether, and a queer little chuckling note came from
them—' Churruck !' once ; then a long silence ; then
again; and, after another long pause, yet once more.
Something moved high up in the topmost branch
of the tree. A little quiver seemed to stir the clusters
of spiky fir needles, and a morsel of bark fluttered
down on to the motionless figure below. Once more
Zilla uttered the strange little note of call, that
seemed to be formed somewhere in the back of her
throat, for her lips continued motionless ; in fact, her
whole figure might have been carved in wood, so
absolutely still and immovable was it.
54
A SOUL ASTRAY
Presently her quick ears, which were preternatur-
ally sharpened by constant contact with out-of-door
life, caught a sound in front of her, on the further
side of the paling, and, at the same time, another
fainter sound above her head. The former, which
was a human sound, was that of advancing footsteps
along a narrow path that was quite hidden from her
sight by the thick growth of the underwood; the
latter, which was animal, was the claw-like scrit-
scratting of small, hooked paws, stealthily descend-
ing the tree over her head.
It was characteristic of Zilla that, ignoring the
more human noise, she continued to concentrate her
whole attention upon the latter. For the moment, a
man coming along the path was nothing to her; the
animal descending from the tree, everything.
At length a small, furred, reddish object came into
sight; a little, quivering snout; sharp, pricked ears;
twinkling, bead-like eyes. Half a yard of cautious
descent, then a long pause of suspicion and inquiry ;
then once again, as the little ' churruck' came from
the throat of the girl below, another cautious down-
ward move; presently a little, frightened, upward
rush, with the whisk of a bushy, yellow tail, followed
again by reflection, repentance and a resumption of
the downward career. And so, nearer and nearer,
crept the small, wild creature, inch by inch draw-
ing closer to the charmer below, who, for her part,
never stirred, never took her upturned eyes away for
one second, never ceased to utter at intervals the
gentle, little call-note that lured it on, till at length
the squirrel paused upon the lowest branch, close
above the girl's head. There it sat, ears cocked, tail
erect, head a little on one side, bright eyes twinkling,
a picture of shy indecision. Then, very gently, Zilla
reached forth her arm, stretching it straightly out
from the shoulder, till her flattened palm touched the
bough upon which the little creature sat erect. Once
AN INTERLUDE
55
more the little ' churruck' came through her closed
teeth with a tender, caressing intonation, irresistible,
evidently, to the animal heart, for the squirrel took
courage, and ran quickly forward along the out-
stretched arm till it nestled contentedly close to her
chin. With a broad smile of triumph, Zilla's eyes
dropped downwards, and met those of a man who
stood looking up at her from the foot of the hummock.
' Witch !' exclaimed the man, admiringly.
'You didn't think I could do it ?'
'No; I thought it was all mere brag. By Jove!
you must be a witch. You ought to be burnt — a
hundred years ago you would have been burnt, you
know. How do you do it, Zilla ?'
' Ah! that is my secret.'
' Are you quite sure that it is a wild squirrel ? He
looks as much at home on your shoulder as a house
kitten. I believe he is nothing but a tame pet of
your own!'
' I swear I never set eyes on it before, nor it upon
me. Hush ! don't come any nearer ; you will frighten
him away! His heart is beating now.'
' And so is mine,' replied the young man, beginning
to scale the steep side of the grassy mound. 'You
attract me to you, Zilla, exactly in the same way that
you attracted the squirrel. I must come.'
' But I don't want you.'
' What do I care—I want you.'
He sprang lightly up the slope towards her. The
squirrel wrestled violently in Zilla's hands, tearing at
them with his sharp, curved claws till the blood came.
Then she released him—it was never her way to keep
an animal against its will—and it bounded back to
the branch, and fled in terror up the trunk of the tree.
' Why did you do that ?' asked the girl, stamping
her foot and frowning angrily at the man. 'You
have frightened it away. I told you not to come.'
' You little savage, don't look so angry! As if I
56
A SOUL ASTRAY
cared for the beast. You've had your triumph; let it
go. It's time you talked to me.'
' I don't want to talk to you. I told you so before.
Go away—I have nothing to say to you! I don't
love you—I love someone else, I tell you.'
'What do I care? You will get over it, gipsy!
The "someone else don't care a brass farthing for
you. I know all about him, Zilla. He doesn't trouble
his head about you, my dear. He thinks all day and
night of that pink-and-white little piece of propriety
we have got up at the Hall. He called for her yester-
day evening, and they went out for a walk together.
I saw them, when I was dressing for dinner, out of
my bedroom window. He was hanging over her as if
he could eat her up.'
Zilla lifted her clenched, brown fist, and struck out
savagely at his face.
'You beast! it's a lie! How dare you tell me that?
It's a lie—a lie!'
The man caught her doubled-up fist before the
blow touched him, and lifted it to his mouth with a
little mocking laugh. Then he slid his lips upwards
along her arm, pushing back her sleeve as he went,
till he almost reached her shoulder.
For a moment or two she struggled wildly, but he
had gripped her tightly with his other arm, and pre-
sently she shivered and was subdued.
' Now be reasonable, you little wild cat. Come for
a walk in the park. It's a lovely evening, and there's
no one about. They have gone out to dinner, and
won't be back till ever so late. There is a path along
the other side of the mere I want to show you, and a
moss-covered bench where we can sit and talk and
watch the waterfowl. You can exercise your witch-
craft upon them, if you like. Come, do be sensible !'
' I am going home,' she answered surlily.
' What, to the handsome cousin ?' with a sneer. ' I
wouldn't be such a fool, if I were you. Show a little
AN INTERLUDE
57
spirit, my dear. Show him that you don't care a
damn ; that you have got a lover of your own, and a
deuced sight better man than he is. A handsome
girl like you needn't go begging — needn't fret her
heart out after a chap who don't want her!'
The girl's face flushed darkly.
. 'You are a devil! I wish I had never set eyes on
you.'
' All right! It's too late to wish that now. I am a
devil, no doubt; but I'm just suited for you, then,
Zilla.'
He had passed his arm through hers, and was draw-
ing her down the steep, slippery slope. She went with
him—but unwillingly, haltingly, against the grain.
When they got to the small gate in the paling
through which he had come, and which led into the
park, she stopped short.
'What do you want with me?' she cried sus-
piciously, throwing back her head like a frightened
wild animal.
He gazed at her admiringly; she had never looked
so handsome, so enticing, so completely to his fancy
—her very resistance piqued him and lured him on.
' I am not coming with you, I tell you,' she went
on a little breathlessly, beginning to move away
from him ; perhaps, indeed, she was secretly afraid of
him, she who feared next to nothing I
He ran after her and seized her arm.
'You little fool! I am not going to let you go!
Besides, you know how to take care of yourself, don't
you, you wild-eyed hawk ? Be reasonable, child. I
only want you to come for a walk with me; it's early
yet, you can surely spare half-an-hour.'
' I don't love you,' she muttered, sulkily.
' I don't want you to love me,' he said, with a laugh,
but her reiterated assertion angered him. Secretly,
he felt he would like to pay her out for it. 'You
love your cousin, I know. We will let that stand
53
A SOUL ASTRAY
for granted !' he said lightly. ' Love's a beautiful
thing, my dear, but, to my mind, revenge is a better!'
' Revenge ?' She stopped short, struck by the word.
' How ?'
' Oh, dozens of ways! Come with me and we will
talk about it.'
For fully ten seconds she stood still, leaving one
hand quiescent in his, the other was pressed hard
against her forehead; she looked down upon the
road beneath her feet; she seemed to be plunged in
thought.
'Come,' he urged once more, and this time he
drew her gently by the hand towards the wicket gate.
' Come, show that you have a little spirit of your own,
Zilla.'
Without another word, she went with him towards
the little gate in the wood. And presently they
passed through it and disappeared together under the
overarching shadows of the trees.
CHAPTER VII
SUDDEN ORDERS AND A DEPARTURE
THREE or four days later, the inhabitants of Nether-
by Hall were thrown into sudden excitement and
confusion by the arrival of an official letter announc-
ing Ralph Lyndon's immediate appointment to the
Cape Mounted Police, and ordering him to join the
corps at once. There happened to be a steamer of the
British and African Company advertised to start from
Liverpool in four days' time, and it was hastily decided
that he must go by her. For some time past Ralph
had been practically ready for his marching orders,
which he had expected to receive long ago, so that
his outfit was virtually completed. But, of course,
there are always in such cases a great many little
things to be seen about at the last, and as there was
not a day to be lost, it was absolutely necessary that
he should spend the remainder of his time in London.
And then Lady Netherby discovered that she could
not possibly be happy unless she saw the last of her
black sheep, who, for all his sins, was still very dear
to her, so that it was hurriedly settled that both she
and the Earl should accompany him not only to
London but also on to Liverpool, in order to see him
safely on board and to wish him God-speed, for it
was certain that it must be many years before
he could possibly come home, even on leave;
59
6o
A SOUL ASTRAY
so that there followed naturally, upon the receipt
of the important document, a morning of the
wildest confusion — the house being turned tern-
porarily upside down, and everybody lending a
hand to the important operations of packing.
For when a son of the house goes forth into the
world, however unsatisfactory his previous career has
been, it is notable that to each member of his family
he becomes for the moment most dear and precious.
New hopes are formed for his future, and new prayers
and aspirations are offered up for the auspicious open-
ing of his fresh start in life.
Unworthy of love as Ralph was, there were aching
hearts at Netherby to-day over his departure; and
his little sisters wept bitterly and clung about his neck
when they wished him good-bye, as though he had
been the most exemplary of brothers. Ralph himself
was in a whirl of importance and bewilderment. The
morning was spent in confusion, then came a hasty
luncheon at an earlier hour than usual, and almost
before he had had time to realise that he was actually
going, or had been able to make any independent
arrangements of his own, he found himself in the
afternoon train, with his father and mother, on his way
up to town.
He was slightly abstracted and gloomy during the
first part of the journey, and sat staring silently and
vacantly out of the carriage window, oppressed with
somewhat miserable feelings of disgust and disturb-
ance, a frame of mind which Lady Netherby secretly
rejoiced to notice, and which she set down to his grief
at leaving his home and his sisters.
' After all/ thought the mother as she watched her
son's averted face anxiously, ' Ralph has a good
heart; he is evidently sorry to leave us all. This
quiet winter at home has sobered him, and given him
time to think seriously. There is good in him, I
know, and perhaps he has sown his wild oats by now,
SUDDEN ORDERS AND A DEPARTURE 61
and this appointment, rough and hard as the life will
be out there, may be the making of him, and he will
settle down and do some good in the world some day.'
For there is never a time when a mother will not
make excuses, and believe and hope the best of an
unsatisfactory son.
But towards the middle of the journey to London
—at the important station, in fact, where the evening
editions of the daily newspapers were to be procured
Ralph's spirits began to revive. He heaved a big
sigh of resignation to his fate, and he said to himself
philosophically, as he settled himself into his corner
behind the pink pages of the Globe,—
'Well, after all, perhaps it was a good thing I had
to come off in such a hurry, and that I hadn't a
moment to myself after getting the news. If I had
had to hang on for another twenty-four hours at
home, I should have been obliged to have squared
things up a bit, and there would have been no end of
a scene and a row—tears, reproaches, the Lord knows
what! A d—d nuisance altogether ! One knows so
exactly the sort of thing that is said on these occa-
sions. As it is, the whole thing has been taken out
of my hands entirely. I hadn't even the opportunity
of writing a line, for the mother never let me out of
her sight from the time the letter came till the
moment we started. Perhaps it's just as well, but I
should have liked another month of it, though ; when
one sits down to enjoy a feast, it's rather hard lines
to be torn away from the table before the end of
the first course. Well, it can't be helped, anyhow—
heigho ! it's a rum world !'
And thereupon Ralph fell to dreaming quite agree-
ably and pleasantly about the new life that lay before
him, and very soon succeeded in banishing all foolish
and unavailing regrets from his mind, with that easy
serenity of heart which was a part and parcel of his
nature
62
A SOUL ASTRAY
A few days afterwards, when Ralph had wished
farewell to his father and to his weeping mother, and
was standing looking at the swift-receding shores of
his native country, upon the deck of the good ship
Pretoria, one of the fastest and finest steamers of the
British and African Company, he said to himself once
more as he gave a last passing thought to a certain
episode of his home life at Netherby Hall,—' It's a
very good thing for me that I am off. If there
should ever be any disagreeables by-and-by, I am
as well out of it all.' After which he lit a pipe and
puffed away at it contentedly for a few moments,
then remarked half-aloud, as he inhaled the pleasant
fumes of the tobacco and lifted his face to the fresh
salt breeze which fanned his brow,—' And there are
just as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.'
After which profound piece of philosophy, he dis-
missed the whole affair from his mind altogether.
Outside the family circle, Mr Lyndon's departure
created but a faint amount of interest or excitement.
He had been little known by the people on his
father's property, and had never gone about amongst
them in the easy and familiar way which had en-
deared Lord Netherby to every man, woman and
child on the estate. Such secondary popularity as
the Earl's children enjoyed, was bestowed upon his
eldest son and heir, Lord Markton, who, however, was
but seldom at home, and was at present serving his
country with his regiment in India. But Ralph had
neither the easy manners of his father and elder
brother, nor had he ever taken the same friendly
interest in the lives and destinies of the people. It
was natural, therefore, that his departure should
create but little comment amongst them. If Lady
Netherby, who was worshipped, were unhappy at
losing her younger son, then, of course, they were
sorry for her; it amounted to that—nothing more.
' Gone, is he?' remarked Simon Hardy when the
SUDDEN ORDERS AND A DEPARTURE O3
news was told him by his son that same evening.
'And Lord Netherby gone to see him off, you say?
I wonder when he will be back. I just wanted to
speak to him rather special, though I daresay next
week will do as well.'
' He will be back by next week. I hear Mr Lyn-
don's ship was to start on Saturday.'
' He is not much of a comfort to his parents, I
fancy,' remarked Miss Hardy. ' A poor sort of
creature, as I've been told. Given his poor mother
a deal of anxiety, I daresay.'
' We know nought about that, Prudence, and so it's
best not to repeat rumours,' remarked the farmer,
severely.
' He's never done any good as I have ever heard
of,' persisted Miss Hardy.
' Well, he has at least done no harm, aunt,' amended
Steeve brightly,' and the man of whom that can be
said has at anyrate got a clean record.'
Zilla threw one swift glance at her cousin. There
was no vestige of distress in her beautiful face—no
shadow of regret in the dark eyes. Why should there
be indeed? The look she gave Steeve had in it a
certain amount of critical inquiry, nothing more.
Yet she asked no question.
Mr Ralph Lyndon's departure could surely pre-
sent no possible interest to Zilla, and it is quite cer-
tain that she experienced neither grief nor dismay at
the intelligence.
Later on, leaning out at the attic window of her
little bedroom under the sloping roof, Zilla rested her
soft chin in her brown palms and looked dreamily up
at the starry vault of the sapphire heavens above her.
The whole world was wrapped in sleep; the moon
had already set, but the faint, pale reflection of her
presence still lingered over the silent landscape in a
dim and softened radiance.
Zilla looked up coldly and hardly at the great,
64
A SOUL ASTRAY
star-flecked vault above her. No thought of the
grandeur of God's silent illumination, of the vast-
ness of the eternal heavens, or of the littleness of
all earthly hopes and longings, filled her mind. Her
soul—if indeed Zilla possessed a soul—was asleep,
astray, like a wandering thing that has no home or
place. God was nothing to her. The whole stage of
her being was filled by her own lawless passions—by
the torrent of her own unsatisfied desires.
' It is good for him that he is gone,' she thought.
' He tricked and deceived me. I wish I could have
killed him; if he had stayed, I should have, I daresay.
Such vipers are best stamped out. I hope he'll die
out there. I hope he'll never come home. I never
wanted him, and he got the best of me. I hate him
for that; I am glad he is gone, and that there is an
end of him.'
And then she fell to dreaming, with her great,
shadowy eyes fixed vacantly upon the hushed and
darkened world of night, and Heaven only knows
what these dreams were about. For this poor,
forlorn and lonely Zilla, who was not ' good' at
all in the primary meaning of the word, nor yet
even true according to her own lawless lights, was
nevertheless not all bad—not at this period, at least.
There was still within her the residue of something
that was not altogether base—a germ of better things,
which might have been warmed and nourished into
life. For it is said that one grain of real love within
the heart, if touched by the master hand that holds
the key of it, can be so made to grow and increase,
that in time it will purify and leaven the whole
lump; and if Steeve had had but the wit or'the
knowledge to appeal to this better instinct, it is
possible, nay probable, that he would not have
appealed in vain—he might have averted the evil
that was to come—he might have redeemed her
erring soul.
SUDDEN ORDERS AND A DEPARTURE 65
But Steeve neither knew nor understood, and the
time went by : till after a while it was too late.
A bat fluttered past in the darkness, an owl hooted
mournfully across the yard from amongst the thatched
roofs of the barn buildings; a night-jar uttered a
shrill and discordant note upon the slopes of the
moorland beneath the farm. Zilla heard them all
and smiled to herself a little contemptuously. She
reached out her arms, and the bat's wings, wet with
dew, brushed against her outstretched fingers. She
uttered a low, crooning sound between her teeth and
the great, white wings of the owl loomed close to
her for one brief moment out of the darkness, whilst
beneath the house the bird of night and of ill-omen
croaked once more—a hundred yards or so nearer to
the low garden wall.
Yes, this magic power was hers, this strange affinity
with the wild creatures, this curious attraction and
fascination which drew them to her as by a magnet,
and yet, of what avail was it? For was she not
utterly powerless to bring any nearer to herself the
one human being whom she loved above all others ?
The man for whom she had put forth all that strange
electric force which had never failed her with the
animal world, and yet to which he alone was
absolutely insensible.
Sometimes, in the intensity of her desire and
longing, her bodily strength seemed to fail and
desert her, and her very life seemed to ebb away
into physical prostration.
Even now, as she dropped her head, with a groan,
upon her outstretched arms, and the dark masses of
her hair were stirred as by a breeze by the winged
things that passed and re-passed the open window;
even now she was striving and struggling with an
intensity of will power that shook her whole frame.
' Steeve, Steeve, come!' she moaned, and there
were beads of anguish upon her aching brow. Oh
E
66
A SOUL ASTRAY
if love could touch, and longing reach, surely, surely
by now he would be standing beneath her window.
But Steeve lay sound asleep upon his bed ; a little
silver coin, that was strung about his neck by a
silken cord, rose and fell upon his broad chest with
his calm and regular breathing, a happy smile played
upon his parted lips, and in spirit he was far away,
wandering hand in hand with Mary Clover beneath
the beech avenues in Netherby Park.
CHAPTER VIII
the falling of the shadow
Miss Prudence Hardy stood at the garden gate,
looking anxiously out across the wide, open breadth
of the parched country in front of her.
It was now July, and the summer had been one of
intense heat. For a month past there had not fallen
a drop of rain, so that the springs on the higher
ground had run dry, and the garden produce was
withered up in the hard, cracked earth. The water
for the house and farm had all to be fetched up twice
a day in water carts from Brackmere Pool—there
were two of them now coming slowly up the steep,
rutty track below the homestead, but Miss Prudence
was not looking out for the water carts.
Half a mile or so away, across the brown and dried-
up moorland, there was a herd of some thirty or
forty of her brother's ponies, and Steeve and his
father were walking across the rough ground towards
them. Some of their own men had surrounded the
herd, and were engaged in dividing and sorting them,
preparatory to driving those that were to be sold up
to the farm, for next week it would be Markton
Summer Fair, and such of the ponies as were fit for
sale had to be brought in to-night to the enclosures
behind the house, and it was the process of selection
which was now going on. Usually Miss Prudence,
67
68
A SOUL ASTRAY
having lived in the heart of the pony traffic all her
life, took a very keen and business-like interest to-
wards Fair time in the appearance and condition of
these little, rough, half-broken animals, whose breed-
ing and sale constituted in those days the most im-
portant source of income to the Cramer Forest
farmers. She could tell to a fraction how much each
was likely to fetch, and was extremely learned about
the relative merits of the different foals of each year's
breeding. But to-day, somehow, she took no notice
of the ponies at all.
She stood motionless in the afternoon sunshine,
which beat down upon her almost as fiercely as
though it had been noonday, although it was now
five o'clock in the afternoon. She was a picture of
neatness, in her prim, muslin cap and snowy, folded
kerchief, and the spotless lilac cotton gown which she
held carefully gathered up in one hand, so as to lift it
well out of the sandy dust, whilst with the other she
shaded her eyes from the level rays of the burning
sun.
Before her stretched, as far as the eye could reach,
the wide-swelling curves and hollows of the heather
and pine - clad country, dotted over by shining
meres and pools that danced and glittered in the
sunshine. Most of these, indeed, had shrunk con-
siderably during the long drought, so that there were
unlovely borders of dry, grey mud along their margins.
Here and there, breaking the monotony of the moor-
land scenery, arose those strange, fir-crowned clumps
or tumuli, which formed, as I have said, one of the
most characteristic features of Cramer Forest.
Passing close below the homestead, the long,
yellow high road trended away towards the south
like a narrow ribbon, till it lost itself amongst the blue,
wooded hills of Netherby Park.
Far away, along the road, came a solitary figure ;
a mere speck in the distance as yet. But Miss
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 69
Hardy's sharp eyes had long ago caught sight of it,
and as it crept slowly onwards, her heart began to
beat, and a crowd of questions and conjectures rushed
tumultuously through her mind.
Why did she walk so slowly? What had made her
so long to-day ? And yet the walk to the Vicarage
was hot and shadeless—the strongest might well
linger a little by the way. Perhaps she had sat down
to rest, or perhaps she might even have fallen asleep
by the wayside under the shadow of some birch or
thorn. So Miss Prudence argued with herself, whilst
all the time, at the bottom of her heart, she knew that
her arguments brought no conviction to her mind.
For many days past, there had been a horrible and
growing disquiet within her, a brooding shadow, which
haunted her all day long and kept her tossing, sleep-
less, on her bed at night. Yet she would not put that
shadow into definite words—she could not—she dared
not.
This morning she had said to herself,—' It is the
Vicar's birthday. I will send her over to the Vicarage,
as I have-done every year. She will carry the basket,
and I shall tell her to come straight back, and I shall
see how long it will take her—last year she was gone
exactly one hour. I remember it well, because her
ladyship drove up in her carriage whilst she was gone,
and she asked to see her, and I looked at the clock
and told her that she had gone to the Vicarage an
hour ago, but that she was a quick walker and I ex-
pected her back every minute, and the words were
scarcely out of my mouth before we saw her come
dancing up the slope of the hill, as light and swift as
a puff of thistledown—and, to-day—well, I shall see
how long it will take her to go and come back.'
Every year it was the custom amongst the well-to-
do farmers of Cramer Forest to send offerings to the
Vicar on his birthday. Miss Prudence never failed to
do so, and Zilla, because she was idle, and did no
70
A SOUL ASTRAY
work on the farm—because, too, she was always trust-
worthy and fleet of foot—had invariably been her
deputed messenger.
Miss Prudence had filled her basket well to-day.
A pound of golden butter and a snowy cream cheese,
both of her own making ; some new-laid eggs, a jar of
clotted cream, and a tiny loin of one of her own dairy-
fed pigs. All this, wrapped in a white cloth, and
covered over with a fragrant nosegay of sweet peas,
and white pinks, with little sprays of sweetbriar and
rosemary laid in around them—the sort of basketful
which Mr Lorrimer loved, and would dearly appre-
ciate. Zilla herself had picked the flowers and laid
them in the basket ere she set out for her walk. Yet
it might have been a heavy load to carry in the heat
of the day—but two whole hours; how could she have
been gone so long ? Even if she had met the Vicar,
and had rested at the Vicarage, how was it possible
that she, who was so quick-footed, could have taken
two hours about it ?
The distant figure drew nearer and nearer. Miss
Prudence watched it narrowly. When she reached
the bottom of the hill, Zilla turned out of the high
road, and took the rough cart-track across the brown
moor which led up to the homestead.
The empty basket swung in her hand, her head
drooped listlessly, her back was bent, her slow feet
toiled painfully up the long slope, dragging them-
selves, the one after other, as though they moved with
difficulty.
Several times she stood still to rest. Once she
pressed her hand upon her side, as if she were in pain,
and always those same labouring, weary footsteps—
heavy as lead, lifeless as those of an old woman.
When she reached the brow of the hill, she stood
still, as though to recover her breath. She was un-
conscious of the watchful eyes by the garden gate
behind her. She believed herself alone. She turned
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 71
round, and stood looking back over the way she had
come. The summer sky behind her was cloudless,
all pale blue melting into primrose, and against the
wide, open expanse,. her motionless figure was
silhouetted in clear and sharp relief.
Miss Prudence drew in her breath sharply, and all
at once her old face grew older and greyer, and a
shadow, like a withering blight, swept across it.
Then Zilla turned and saw her watching her.
When she came up, Miss Prudence stepped back and
held the little green wooden gate wide open for her
to pass through, and as she did so she looked the girl
over slowly from head to foot.
Then the two women's eyes met—met in a blaze
of indignant fire on the one side, in a swift spasm
of craven fear on the other.
Zilla bowed her head silently, and went on into
the house alone.
Not one single word was exchanged between them ;
not a sound, not a sign.
Yet all was understood.
Late that evening Miss Hardy tapped at the
door of her brother's little office. It was Saturday
night, and Simon was at his weekly accounts, an
occupation during which, being but slow at figures,
he allowed no one to disturb him.
He looked up quickly, with annoyance, as his sister
came in.
' I am busy, Prudence.'
Miss Prudence came in, and closed the door behind
her.
' Not so busy but that you will have to hear what
I have got to say, brother,' she said, advancing into
the room.
Simon Hardy laid down his pen with a
frown.
' You know I can't bear to be interrupted when I'm
adding up figures,' he said, irritably, for even the
72
A SOUL ASTRAY
best of Christians have their moments of irritation.
' If it is of any importance, ask Steeve.'
' Steeve is gone up to Netherby. You know Mary
was to come home with the young ladies from the
seaside this afternoon. Steeve hasn't seen her for
six weeks, and he wants to settle about his wedding.
Besides, it's not about Steeve I have come to speak.
Steeve is no use to me in this matter. It is you,
and you only, who must know of it.'
She dragged a wooden chair up to the further side
of the table, and sat down opposite her brother. The
legs of the chair grated roughly against the boarded
floor. To his dying day that sound was sufficient
to bring back the whole scene to Simon Hardy's
mind—the wonderment at first, and then the con-
sternation, the horror of it.
'Women are very obstinate,'he muttered, grumb-
lingly.
' Simon, do you remember that night when you
brought the gipsy baby, left upon the doorstep, into
the house?'
Miss Prudence leant across the oak table, resting
her sharp chin in the palms of her hands, and riveted
her eyes upon her brother's face.
' The night our little Zilla came ? Why, yes,of course,
Prudence. Am I likely to forget it, do you think ? '
' Do you remember, Simon, how I told you then
that harm would come of it ? How I entreated you
not to let the gipsy brat in at the door, but to send
her right away to the workhouse ? How I warned
you against letting her cross the threshold of a
Christian house ?'
' I remember,' answered Simon, shifting uneasily in
his chair. ' I remember well that you said some
words not in accordance with the doctrines of
Christ, and of which I am sure you have repented
long ago.'
Miss Prudence brought down her closed hands
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 73
heavily upon the table before her. She took no
notice of the implied reproof.
' The words which I spoke that night were true
words, Simon. The evil which I warned you against
has come to us. The curse of the soulless thing has
fallen upon your house.'
' What do you mean ?' For the first time a vague
disquiet crept upon him. The woman's face before
him was terribly in earnest; the yellow, wrinkled brow
was stern and harsh; the lines about the shrunken
cheeks and mouth seemed intensified ; the keen eyes
flashed with a new and startling significance. ' Come,
come, sister!' he said soothingly, ' these are
strong words to use. Poor Zilla! why, what harm
has the child brought to us? You can't be meaning
that 'tis the drought that is her doing, or the sicken-
ing of that two-year-old with the strangles, that
would be mere childishness. We mustn't be slaves to
old superstitions, my dear; we must remember that
the charity of Christ's religion has swept all those
heathenish things away.'
' Simon Hardy,' cried the old woman passionately,
' I tell you that shame has fallen upon your house!
Strengthen your heart to hear the truth, and gird up
your loins to put forth the evil thing from amongst
us—so that your house may be purified from sin.'
The man rose slowly to his feet and faced her
across the table, his ruddy skin grew livid, his very
lips turned white.
' Shame ?' he repeated below his breath, in a hoarse
and hollow whisper. ' My God! do you mean it
woman ? shame, and to Zilla!'
' Yes, to Zilla—she has brought us to shame, I tell
you.'
For a moment Simon stood motionless, his rough
features working, his whole body trembling, then
suddenly he sank down again in his chair, and buried
his face upon his arms across the table, whilst great
74
A SOUL ASTRAY
sobs shook his powerful frame in a manner pitiful to
behold.
' My little Esther's child !' he sobbed. ' Oh, Esther !
my little sister, would God I had died first! would
God I had died !'
A long silence, till the sobs died slowly down, one
after the other, like breakers upon the shore.
' Be a man, Simon,' said Miss Prudence at last, and
there was just a faint tone of tenderness now in her
hard voice. ' What avails it now to weep over Esther ?
She sinned, and she is gone to her account, poor girl!
All the tears on earth can't alter or mend the past.
It's the present we have got to deal with. Esther is
dead and gone, but she left a heritage of sin and woe
to her child—bad blood will out, brother—it's God's
law. It's no use kicking against the pricks. We
ought never to have taken the brat in. Now you
must arouse yourself, and send the wretched girl away
before this shame becomes known to others, and the
disgrace of it bring down our grey hairs with sorrow
to the grave.'
Then, at those words, Simon Hardy did indeed
arouse himself, although not exactly in the way which
his sterner-souled sister intended.
' Hold hard, woman!' he cried. ' What is that
that you are saying ? Send the wench away ?—turn
her out of doors in her trouble, do you mean ? Why,
where's your womanhood, Prudence ? And is it true,
this tale that you are telling me ? Are you sure it is
true? Have you asked her? Does she not deny it?'
' It's true as gospel, brother. Have I not eyes—
am I not a woman to understand these things ?'
' By the God above us, then, there's stern work
enough for me to do without turning a poor, fallen
woman out of my house! Where is the blackguard
who has brought my Esther's child to ruin ? Where
is he, Prudence ? He must be found; he must be
made to do justice to her. Do you suppose I'll sleep
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW
7 5
easy in my bed until I make him do justice to her ?
He shall marry her, or I will kill him! and his blood
will be on his own head. Who is he ?'
Miss Prudence shook her head.
' I cannot tell you, brother. I did not think to
ask. Besides, she is dumb ; she will not speak. The
obstinate minx refuses to answer my questions ; it
is you who must deal with her. What does it matter
who he is ? Some wandering gipsy, no doubt, that she
has met in the Forest, where she is for ever mooning
about alone in her heathenish fashion. There are
plenty of them about, the scum! And it's her
father's race, remember. It's like enough the wild
blood in her veins would hark back to her father's
people.'
' And what were you about, woman, to let an
orphan girl wander about alone till she has fallen
into trouble ?' cried out the farmer indignantly.
' Had you not the care of her? Was she not of our
blood, too? Were you not responsible for her?
How is it that you have not watched over her
better ?'
A dull red flush mounted to the old woman's face.
Perhaps, indeed, her conscience reproached her some-
what; perhaps her brother's words struck home.
Full well did Miss Prudence Hardy know how a
natural revulsion had rendered her both careless and
unjust in her dealings with her dead half-sister's
child*
' If I have been at fault,' she said more humbly,
'then I too am punished. Do I not feel the shame
of it, Simon, bitterly—ay, more bitterly, perhaps,
than you can ?'
'We have both been in fault, sister,' answered the
farmer; ' and this is no time for reproaches and re-
criminations ; we have other work to do, Prudence.
The man shall be found ; if he is above ground, I
will find him. And be he gipsy or no, he shall marry
76
A SOUL ASTRAY
her; he shall repair the wrong he has done to her.
The first thing to be done is to find him ; to make
her tell us his name. Go and fetch the lass,
Prudence, and, for God's sake, do not be over hard
on her.'
He rose from the table, and they went out to-
gether into the kitchen beyond.
CHAPTER IX
the calm before the storm
Steeve was strolling homewards under the stars.
The night was warm and still. After the long heat
of the sun-parched day, the grateful dews lay thick
upon the grass beneath his feet. Warm, sweet
odours arose on every side of him—a pungent scent
of the resinous pine woods through which he passed ;
faint whiffs of heather and of broom, or of the golden
gorse that had wrapped the hillside in a blaze of
flower. Far away, a night-jar uttered a solitary note.
Some tiny creature, stoat or weasel, startled by his
footsteps, rustled quickly across his path into the low
bushes; and presently a little croaking chorus of
frogs echoed mysteriously through the silence from a
hidden mere in a hollow hard by. Steeve bared his
head, and drew in long, deep breaths of the dewy
fragrance, and lifted his eyes to where the crescent
moon glimmered in a narrow curve of silver above
the line of the dark horizon before him. He was
happy ; as happy as a man has every right to be, to
whom the great desire of his life draws nigh at last.
To-night he had seen Mary again. Poor Mary
had had but a sad time of it since Easter, and dis-
tressing circumstances had parted the lovers alto-
gether from each other, for, very soon after Lord
Ralph's departure for South Africa, the little Ladies
77
78
A SOUL ASTRAY
Lyndon had both sickened with scarlet fever, and the
youngest had been for some days very dangerously
ill. Mary, of course, had helped to nurse them, and
after a while the little girls recovered. But then
there had been the necessary change of air for the in-
valids, and the usual purification and disinfection to
the house which scarlet fever brings after it. Nether-
by Hall had been shut up for two months. Mary
accompanied her charges and their nurse to the sea-
side, whilst Lord and Lady Netherby took a fur-
nished house in town and went up to London.
All this while Steeve had, of course, been hopelessly
divided from his beloved, and the time had been very
heavy to him, for not only was she taken away from
the sight of his eyes, but, in addition, he was for a
very long time kept in daily anxiety lest she should
catch the fever.
But now all these troubles and fears were over, for
Mary had brought the children home to Netherby
again, perfectly restored to health and strength, and
looking brown and rosy herself from the invigorating
effects of the sea air, and Lord and Lady Netherby
were to join them to-morrow from London.
Steeve had lost no time in going over to the Hall
to greet her on her return. It was a busy day for
him, but he had made time after his work was over,
and had stolen away quickly across the moor. It
was something to have seen her once more, to have
held her in his arms, and to have poured forth anew
his love and his devotion ; and then, too, he had
pressed his reverent kisses upon her sweet, shy lips.
And she had been most dear and kind to him, for she
had consented at last to fix the day that was to make
her his for ever. In less than three weeks, she told
him, she would marry him. Lady Netherby herself
had written to her about the wedding. She was to
leave her situation the week after next and go home
to her father's, and Lady Netherby was to give her her
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
79
wedding dress — a real silk dress — and a bonnet
trimmed with orange blossoms, and the wedding cake
besides, and Lord Netherby had given her a silver tea-
pot and cream jug, and her little pupils some silver
spoons and forks ; and the servants, she had heard,
were going to club together and buy her a china break-
fast service. Mary was breathless with delight and
excitement over it all. And did Steeve know that
Lord and Lady Netherby had signified their inten-
tion of being present at their wedding ? And the little
Ladies Lyndon would be there too, of course ; such a
gay, grand wedding would not have taken place for
years on Cramer Forest! Steeve had listened to
it all like one in a happy dream—these sweet refer-
ences to the day which was to usher in their future
life together; that life, so soon now about to begin,
could not fail to be infinitely precious to him, and then
he too was glad and proud to think how highly his
darling was valued and esteemed by the great people
amongst whom she had lived.
Yet now, as he walked homewards under the star-
light, he found himself wishing that, amidst all these
important things she had talked about, he had had a
little more time for his lovemaking. He was filled
with those foolish regrets to which lovers are prone—
he wished that he had taken a few more kisses from
her lips, that he had made her tell him over again
once more how much she loved him, that he had assured
her more fervently how dear she was to him ; but all
these regrets were but as the faint shadow of sweet
sadness which underlies the infinite beauty of a sum-
mer's evening. For all the romance of his life lay in
Steeve's heart to-night.
And then, after he had parted from Mary, he had
gone round almost instinctively to the Vicarage. Here,
if anywhere on earth, he was sure of a welcome and of
sympathy. The Vicar was overjoyed to hear that the
marriage was to be so soon ; his thin, sensitive face lit
8o
A SOUL ASTRAY
up with pleasure at the news. Steeve sat himself
down in the Vicarage study and lit his pipe as Mr
Lorrimer asked him to do, and then and there he
opened his whole heart to him, telling him all about
his present happiness and his future plans, till an hour
or more had slipped quickly away.
For that was one of the charms of the Reverend
John Lorrimer—those who knew him opened their
hearts to him of free will. He had the rare gift of human
sympathy to a very high degree. Shy and reserved
concerning himself, as many men who live alone and
read much are wont to be, John Lorrimer had, never-
theless the warmest enthusiasm in the world with
regard to the interests of others. He knew how to
rejoice with those that rejoice, as thoroughly as how
to mourn with those who mourn. He had the faculty
of throwing himself, heart and soul, into the person-
ality of those about him, of seeing with their eyes, of
hearing with their ears ; he never prejudged anyone,
never decided a cause unheard, never laid down a
hard and fast rule about anything, for he knew that
to no two persons on earth is it given to think or to
feel alike, and that each separate individuality of soul
and character and disposition, brings about different
and often totally opposing results. And so he was
tolerant and merciful to all, and these qualities in him
had the power of drawing forth the confidence and
the trust of those who came in contact with him. It
was not in the bestowal of this world's goods that his
charity lay, for he was a poor man and had little to
give; it was in that large and beautiful charity of the
heart that hopeth all things and believeth all things,
the charity of which we are told that it covers a
multitude of sins.
Mr Lorrimer's own life had been a sad one ; he had
come amongst his scattered flock on Cramer Forest
many years ago as a very young man. In point of
fact, the living was in Lord Netherby's gift, and he
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM Si
had bestowed it upon his college chum as soon as it
had been possible for him to hold it after his taking
Holy Orders. Mr Lorrimer had brought with him to
Netherby Vicarage a young and lovely wife—a fair
and entrancing creature whom he had almost idolised.
A child was born to them, and all went well and
happily for some two or three years. Then a terrible
calamity had befallen the young Vicar—his beautiful
wife had disappeared one day from her home. For
a week or more Mr Lorrimer was away up in
London, and no one ever knew what he had heard
or found out there. Only, when he came home, his
hair had turned grey and his face was seamed with
wrinkles. He never spoke of her again. There was
no open scandal. There were no divorce proceedings
—nothing to indicate what had become of the adored
wife who had vanished out of his life. He said nothing
even to Lord Netherby, but he began to devote himself
to his child ; and in time, as she grew in years and in-
telligence, the smiles came gradually back to his sad
eyes, and a little of the brightness of his lost youth to
his careworn face. And then, just when time and
the love of this little, winsome creature were healing
up the old scars and helping him to happier things,
one hard winter, when she was six years old, the child
fell sick and died, and the lonely man stood bare-
headed and bereft of his all, beneath the falling snow-
flakes beside her open grave. Yet this second sorrow
was not, to him, like the first, for there are worse
things in life than death, and if there was heartrending
grief in his heart, there was at least no shame and no
bitterness left lying in that little grave.
After that, John Lorrimer's life—his own individual
life of joy or of suffering — practically ceased. He
lived no longer for himself, but only for others. He
read a good deal. He wrote an occasional critique
on books of divinity, or else a biographical sketch of
some great man or woman, which from time to time
F
82
A SOUL ASTRAY
attracted a good deal of notice in the world of letters.
He was offered preferment; he refused it. Lord
Netherby was his best friend, he said ; he would not
leave him. Moreover, he could not leave little Ada's
grave. That unspoken reason, even more than the
former one, must keep him for ever at Netherby. His
bones must be laid by hers.
Ever since he could remember, Steeve Hardy had
carried all his troubles and all his joys to Mr Lorri-
mer, and it was perhaps little wonder that the Vicar
loved him dearly. He had sympathised with all his
boyish successes; with his first big score at cricket;
with his first good run with the hounds; with the
double shot which had brought down the partridges
right and left on the first occasion when he had gone
out shooting with Lord Netherby's grand guests. Mr
Lorrimer remembered well how the lad of sixteen had
rushed in, breathless and flushed with delight, with his
brace of partridges in his hand, and how he had in-
sisted on giving them to him, and though his larder
was full of game at the time, he had accepted that
brace of partridges with as much apparent delight
and gratitude as though he had never eaten a par-
tridge before in his life. He had dined off them too,
whilst Lord Netherby's more ample gifts had gone
to feed the poor.
It was only when love, that sweet and most sacred
secret of a good man's life, grew up out of youthful af-
fection in Steeve's heart, that the young fellow became
shy and restrained with his kind old friend. And yet,
by a hundred little signs and tokens, the Vicar knew
what was going on with his favourite, and smiled to
himself across his reading-desk when he saw Steeve
and Mary Clover kneeling side by side, or singing the
hymn together out of the same hymn book.
He never forced confidence; and Steeve, until Mary
openly accepted him, told him nothing, yet somehow
Mr Lorrimer knew it all along. And now how glad
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM 83
he was to grasp him by the hand and wish him
joy.
' In all Cramer Forest, you could not have found a
better wife than Mary Clover, Steeve!' he cried
warmly. ' I say nothing about her looks and her grace;
it would ill become me to mention these to you, but
I know her to be so good. And after all, that is the
chief thing an honest man wants in a wife, is it not ?'
' She is as good as gold, sir.'
4 And you, my boy, you are not unworthy of her, I
know,' continued the Vicar, with his kind smile. 4 I've
not watched you from boyhood to manhood without
being sure of that, Steeve. You will bring a pure
heart and a clean record into your young wife's keep-
ing. There is no dark secret in your past to be con-
cealed from her. No black spot that you would be
ashamed for her innocent eyes to see. Of that I am
convinced, Steeve.'
Then for one moment Steeve had faltered, and his
eyes had dropped, as the memory of that evening in
the cow byre swept like an evil blast across his soul.
Should he make a clean breast of it to his kind old
friend ? Should he tell him how nearly once that
siren Zilla, with her beauty and her wiles, had swept
away the bulwarks of his truth and his honour ? A
deep flush mounted slowly to his brow. Ah ! to get
the loathed hour off his conscience! To rid himself
of that hateful sense of an unholy secret betwixt him-
self and his cousin.
Yet Steeve said nothing. There was Zilla to be
considered—poor, wild, half-civilised and wholly reck-
less Zilla! Had he any right to betray her—to lay
bare the miserable story of her misguided passion
for himself? Can a man, who has a spark of honour
or generosity about him, speak of such things—ever?
And moreover, was not Zilla his own kith and kin ?
And should he not be even more careful of her re-
putation than if she were a stranger ?
84
A SOUL ASTRAY
And oddly enough, it was Mr Lorrimer and not
Steeve who spoke her name at this moment.
' And your cousin, Steeve, poor Zilla ?—will she
not rejoice with you, and welcome sweet Mary Clover
into the family ?'
Steeve shook his head.
' I cannot tell,' he murmured confusedly. ' Zilla is a
strange girl,' and again he flushed and looked ill at
ease, and the Vicar's sharp eyes noticed it this time.
He sighed.
' Ah, poor girl, she has always been an anxiety to me.
Of all the girls in the parish, Zilla is the only one
whom I have never been able to get any hold of.'
' Mr Lorrimer,' said Steeve,stooping forward eagerly,
' do you think that old saying may, after all, be true
about gipsies ? That they have no souls ? Can there
be any truth, do you think, in it ?'
But the Vicar only laughed.
'Why, Steeve! this from you! You, at least,
ought to know better than that. You know very
well that it is only the remnant of a barbarous super-
stition—one of the myths of the Middle Ages. Ask
yourself how can such a thing be true? Has not
God created us all in His own image? From what,
I should very much like to know, does that extra-
ordinary idea arise ?' continued Mr Lorrimer, looking
at the young man curiously through his spectacles.
' Can you give me any idea of that, Steeve ? I have
often desired to know.'
'Well, sir, this is what I have been told. It was
old Goody Truepit, who died, as I daresay you will
remember now, some five or six years ago. She,
who used to live alone in that little white cottage,
yonder side of Dingle Mere; I used to go and see
her often when I was a youngster. And old Goody
was great upon the gipsies, and used to talk a great
deal about them. She was over ninety when she
died, and she was a clever old woman, and had heard
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
85
a great many things in her time. It was she who told
me, sir, about how it was. The gipsies, she said, were
all descended from Judas, who, as we know, betrayed
the Lord, and it was his own soul that he sold for
those thirty pieces of silver, so that he had no soul to
transmit to his children. And after he had done the
accursed deed, Judas did not die as it says in the
Scriptures, but was driven forth by the Devil over the
whole world, and he wandered up and down it for
centuries, for he could not die; it was he who was
called the "Wandering Jew"; and there are some
that say he is not dead yet. And so in time the
earth became filled with his descendants, and these
are the mysterious people which are to be found in
every country, and which in England we call gipsies.
And that is why a gipsy brings bad luck into a
Christian house, because, do what you will, you can
never make a Christian of him, for all the waters of
baptism are powerless to give him a soul.'
'And so that is the origin of it, is it?' said Mr
Lorrimer. ' Well, Steeve, I am very glad to have
heard a reasonable account of this very curious myth
at last. But, to begin with, do you know there were
gipsies in the east before Judas was born? although,
it is true, they were not heard of in Europe till the
fifteenth century. I think,' went on the Vicar with
his gentle smile, ' that we may, at least, be pretty
sure that your cousin is in no way connected with
the arch-traitor. There is no Jewish blood in that
beautiful face!'
Steeve sighed.
' I almost wish it were true,' he exclaimed almost
involuntarily. 'You see, sir, it would account for so
much in poor Zilla. One could make excuses for her
if one knew that she was not quite the same, and
hadn't the same responsibilities as other girls. If
one knew that she had not got a soul, one would feel
more towards her as though she were one of the
86
A SOUL ASTRAY
dumb beasts, that are God's creatures all the same as
ourselves, only we don't expect them to behave like
Christians, do you see, sir ?'
John Lorrimer stroked his chin thoughtfully with
the palm of, his hand. The subject interested him
deeply. He had often before come across this curious
superstition that was widely believed amongst the least
educated and intelligent of the people. But to find
it cropping up so strongly in the mind of such a
bright specimen as Steeve Hardy, who was the show
man of the parish as it were, struck him as being
very remarkable. Mr Lorrimer was a broad-minded
man, and he never pushed anything aside as un-
worthy of his notice, merely because he did not
understand it himself, and he was now trying to put
himself into Steeve's place, to try and see why
and how this old tradition, with which he had been
familiar since boyhood, reacting upon the practical fact
of Zilla's strange ways and wilful character, might have
disposed even Steeve's well-ordered mind to lean a
little towards a belief in the popular superstition.
' What I believe,' he said slowly at last—' in the
case of poor little Zilla, at least—is that there is no
doubt a taint of wild blood in her veins. Excuses
might very fairly be made for any of her vagaries on
that score; but, perhaps, her home training, Steeve,
has not been altogether sympathetic. Your aunt is a
good woman, but she is hard. Only this afternoon
Zilla was here bringing me a little basket of good things
from Miss Hardy. I found her sitting resting in the
porch, and I said a word or two to her on my way in,
and I thought she looked tired, and, perhaps, not very
happy. I would have stayed to talk to her, but she
seemed to shrink from me, and I did not want to
distress her. I almost fancy there were tears in her
eyes. I can't be sure. Poor child! if the soul,
indeed, be obscured and dim in her, then it is not
a soul that is lost, but a soul astray; a soul, perchance
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
87
asleep, which, in God's own time, will awaken out of
its trance, and lead her home to where true happi-
ness alone can be found.'
The good man spoke the last words gravely and
very reverently, and Steeve was impressed by what
he said, a great deal more than if he had pooh-
poohed his theories as foolishness, or condemned them
as a sin.
So, presently, he walked home at peace with the
world and with himself; and he told himself that
he would try to believe the best of poor Zilla—she
was perhaps not altogether responsible—even the
Vicar, with all his learning, had implied that! But
truth to say, his thoughts did not linger long with
Zilla. Before he was half-way across the moor, he
had forgotten her altogether, and his happy fancies
had reverted entirely to Mary; to his coming mar-
riage, to all that she had said to him—to the visit
he intended to pay in the morning to Mr and Mrs
Clover, and to the pleasure and delight which his
father would certainly experience at the news he was
bringing home to him.
Presently he caught sight of a far-away glimmer
to the right of him—the twinkling lights of Mary's
home—the house where she had been born, where
he used to go over and play with her when she was
still a tiny child, and where, even in those days, he
had always called her his little sweetheart. And it
was from that home that he was going to take her
away for ever. Soon, very soon—or ever the next
new moon trembled in the deep sapphire of the
summer night—Mary would be his own for all time
and till eternity, and nothing then, save death, could
part them any more.
And then the dark gables of his father's house
loomed above him on the brow of the hill, and Steeve
came back from heaven to earth as he noticed some
moving light across the yard and paddock enclosure.
83
A SOUL ASTRAY
There, to be sure, was Bill Goades doing all the work
without him, and the ponies to be got in and made
safe for the night—and he a full hour behind his
time!
And Steeve sprang up the hillside with quick,
swinging strides, and with all sorts of half-comic self-
reproaches over his own remissness. But his heart
was light within him—so light, that even the evil, one-
eyed countenance of the cowherd seemed to him to
be a pleasant and welcome sight, as he encountered
it half-way across the yard—and threw back a laugh-
ing answer to the old man's grumbling reproaches.
For, ah! what a thing it is to be young and to
be in love!—when one's love smiles kindly upon
one! No wonder that Steeve's heart was light!
How could he have foreseen, at that moment, the
many long years that lay before him, ere ever he
would be light-hearted again ?
CHAPTER X
FALSE WITNESS
ZlLLA stood facing them both on the further side of
the heavy oak table.
She was like a creature at bay ; breathless, pale,
half-bewildered, yet wholly reckless and desperate.
The light of the lamp, that stood betwixt her and them,
shone full on her face ; her eyes were wild and wander-
ing—great, dark caverns, as it were, that turned them-
selves incessantly about—half-piteously, half-defiantly,
from one to the other.
At that supreme moment of her life, she was
perhaps only conscious of one clear thought—an in-
stinctive longing to break loose—to escape—to be out
under the stars and the wide vault of heaven ! Why
could this thing not have taken place out of doors,
where the birds and the beasts and the breezes would
at least have been on her side ? Why was she
cramped and imprisoned within these four walls?—
now—at this hour, above all other hours? Like a
wild bird that beats its helpless wings against the bars
of its cage, she had struggled in vain to escape. But
they would not let her go—they had pushed her back
firmly with their strong old hands—they stood be-
tween her and the door of the house now, and the
doors behind her were locked.
' If you run away'— her uncle had said to her—' re-
member you can never come back ; you will have to
89
9°
A SOUL ASTRAY
stop away for ever, and work or starve—you and your
child.'
She was human enough to understand the meaning
of the word starvation. She might have begged—
begging would be in her blood—but she could not
work, for the innate laziness of her race was in her as
well; and, moreover, there lay before her the great
unknown trial of womanhood, which she dreaded. No,
she dared not risk it. She could not starve. There
was no escape possible for her. She turned her
frightened eyes about in helpless anguish—yet still
she kept silence.
' If you confess,' Simon Hardy said to her ; ' if you
give up the name of the sharer of your sin ; then I will
do what I can to see you righted. For my own sake
—for the child's sake. Speak girl—speak, I say !'
But as yet she had spoken nothing. The terror of
that stern-faced, white-haired man, standing facing
her, with the open Bible in front of him—of that cruel-
eyed old woman whom she had always hated, and who
had not a word now, in the time of her trouble, save a
curse to throw at her, were all that she had been able
as yet to realise—that, and the dull animal instinct
within her—to be away out of doors, alone with those
hundreds of gentle, timid creatures who were in sym-
pathy with her; far more in sympathy than these
others—these Christians who were her judges!
For more than half an hour that speechless battle
had gone on—speechless, at least, on her side.
' I will not speak,' she said to herself, numbly, yet ob-
stinately, ' for as long as I keep silence, I am stronger
than they are.'
But as yet no definite plan or thought had come to
her. Let us do her justice—the wrong that she wrought
was at least unpremeditated in the first instance. She
had no deliberate design, no cold-blooded scheme of
cruel injustice ready matured in her mind. Nothing
as yet had come to her clearly, beyond the fact that
FALSE WITNESS
91
she would not speak the name which they wanted to
know—no, never ! If she did so, would they even be-
lieve her ? Would they not laugh her to scorn ? And
what good would it do to her if they knew it ?
4 Do you not understand me ?' repeated the old man.
' Tell me his name, and I will see that justice is done
to you.'
4 It is some low, black-browed gipsy, you wicked
creature! if it were a decent Christian man that had
led you to your ruin, you would speak fast enough,
but you are ashamed to name a gipsy!'
It was Miss Prudence who said the words, fiercely
and bitterly.
Zilla uttered a short, rough laugh at that, and the
sound seemed to echo weirdly and uncannily round
the peaceful, homely kitchen. If Miss Prudence had
been a Catholic, she would certainly have crossed her-
self. Being a good Puritanical Protestant, she only
shuddered, and muttered a verse from the Psalms be-
low her breath—but there was more of hysteria than
of devilry in poor Zilla's laugh.
A gipsy indeed !
And then some sort of intelligence gleamed sud-
denly across the black chaos of her bewildered mind.
4 Why do you want to know his name ?' she asked,
breathlessly, of her uncle, breaking the long silence at
last.
4 That I may see you righted. Have I not told you
so twenty times over ?'
4 You mean—?'
41 mean that the man may marry you. Bad as you
are, Zilla, you are my sister's child ; and, for the sake
of my honour and my name, the blackguard who has
done you this wrong shall be made to marry you, so
that the shame of this sin may be covered up and
hidden from the world, and atoned for in the sight of
the Almighty.'
A slow light stole over her face; her great eyes
92
A SOUL ASTRAY
fixed themselves hungrily upon her uncle's face,
something seemed to be breaking in upon her—a
new thought—a breathless possibility.
Then through her mind there rushed headlong a
swift succession of distorted phantoms. She thought
of the man she had never loved, whom she even
hated with the impotent hatred of one who has been
worsted in an unequal fight. For a few brief days,
indeed, he had fed her vanity and her reckless desire
for excitement, and then he had vanished into a
distance so immeasurable that he might just as well
be dead. Out of those far-away ends of the earth,
it did not seem to poor Zilla's narrow limitations
that it would be any more possible to recall him than
if he had indeed been dead and buried; and, more-
over, she did not want him back, for she hated him.
Then, what chance for her if she were to tell the
truth ? Starvation, her uncle said, was the alternative
open to her; or, at best, he might condemn her to
work, and then there would be no more ease, no
more peace, nothing evermore save jeering fingers
uplifted as she passed, and the laugh that hurts
worse than a physical blow—the laugh of scornful
disbelief—the cruel, cutting words of shame and
derision. And, then, swiftly something else. A door-
way opened to hope—to rapture, even—to joy un-
speakable—to an ecstasy that barely to think of it
turned her heart faint and her head dizzy with its
unutterable suggestions!
'You say,' she repeated slowly, and her words
came out haltingly, one by one, because of the quick,
stinging pulses which beat so loudly through her
whole body ; ' you say—you would make him marry
me?'
' Yes, by God Almighty he shall. And it is I who
will see to it that he does.'
'And I should not starve, uncle ? You would see
that I never shall be left to starve ?'
FALSE WITNESS
93
'You will never starve, Zilla, if you will speak
the truth. For you are my sister's daughter—my
own flesh and blood—and neither you nor the child
of your sin shall want for bread as long as I live.'
She reached across the table and dragged the
heavy open Bible over till it lay between them.
' Swear it to me, then, on this book in which you
believe. See, I lay my hand in yours upon it. Now
swear it to me. If I tell you the man's name, you
will not turn me out to starve or to earn my bread ?'
' I swear it to you,' said Simon Hardy, laying his
hand upon hers.
Miss Prudence uttered an exclamation of horror,
and dragged violently at his arm.
' Brother, brother, what are you saying ? Think
again. Stop before you swear. What does she
deserve, this baggage? The worthless hussy, why
should we keep her here ?'
But Simon shook her off.
' Let me be, Prudence. I have sworn it on the
Book. If she confesses the man's name to me, I
will not turn her out of my house.'
And then all at once, behind the farmer's back,
the heavy oaken house door swung creakingly open
on its great wrought-iron hinges, and against the
background of the star-flecked sky, all solemn with
the mysterious hush of the summer night, behind
them, two men came into the low-ceiled kitchen.
They were Steeve and Bill Goades the cowherd.
' Bill Goades has been kept late, father,' said
Steeve's quiet, familiar voice. ' I have brought him
in to get a bit of supper.'
The little bit of homely, every-day working life
broke in strangely upon that atmosphere of passion
and of sin, of highly-wrought human emotion, of a
tragedy that was swinging to its full completion.
And when he had spoken the words, Steeve stood
still and looked at them. There came to him a
94
A SOUL ASTRAY
sudden sense of something wrong, something un-
wonted; the very air seemed charged with some
dangerous electric force. Mutely perplexed, he
looked from one to the other, from his father, stern
and solemn, with his sparse white hair pushed a
little wildly back from his broad, dignified brow, to
the angry figure of the old woman, clinging on to
his arm, with her eyes ablaze and her shrill, pro-
testing voice, then across at the girl opposite, stand-
ing erect and breathless, with her dark head thrown
back, and a kindling light like a sunset cloud sweep-
ing across her beautiful, quivering face, and a gleam
of something splendid ; half triumph, half malignant
cruelty, in the lustrous eyes that were now turned
upon himself.
He himself, with his bronzed skin and flaxen hair,
and with the reflex of a pure and holy happiness
still lingering in his clear blue eyes, formed no in-
significant figure in that singular and striking group,
whilst behind him, looking over his shoulder into the
room, was Bill Goades of the ill-omened face, blear-
ing and blinking with his one evil and glittering eye
at the scene before him.
Then Zilla raised her right arm, and stretched it
forth with pointing finger straight at Steeve.
' There stands the man, then,' she said ; ' if you will
have the truth out of me, then take it! It is your
own son.'
A silence as of death fell upon them all — and
Simon Hardy's face turned grey, and then white—
with the awful whiteness of one who is stricken to the
very heart.
Then from the old woman's lips, that worked with
a horrible rage and anger, there broke a volley of
fearful curses.
'You are mad, mad, mad! You devil's scum!
You child of hell!—Ah! woe the day you ever
crossed this threshold—imp of darkness that you
FALSE WITNESS
95
are! Brother, turn her out; she is mad—and she
lies. Turn her out, I say ; it is a foul, devilish lie that
she has spoken!'
But Zilla only smiled scornfully. -
' When I held my tongue you cursed me for that,
and now I have spoken the truth you tell me I lie!'
Then Steeve, bewildered and distressed, only half
comprehending what it all meant, stepped forward to
the table.
'What is it, Zilla?' he said, with a little strange
catch in his voice. ' I do not understand what this
is all about,' looking round at his father who had
dropped his white head upon his arms with a groan.
' Father, Aunt Prudence, what does it all mean ?'
There was a dead silence. Not one of them
answered him. Steeve's heart began to beat in loud
knocking thumps that seemed almost audible. At
last, out of the silence, something began slowly to
reveal itself to him.
Then the low, chuckling laugh of the cowherd be-
hind him broke the stillness with a horrible signifi-
cance.
' He! he! he! it doant taake naw wizzurd to see
the maning, my lad; it's clear as daylight! The
womun foalk is allers oop to their tricks and wayes,
and yoong men will be yoong men as loang as t'wurld
doa laast!'
Quick as lightning Zilla turned upon him,—
'You remember, Bill ? You know ! It is you who
can speak up for me—for you know—you saw ?'
' Ay, ay, missy, I mind very well. I doant forget
it. I mind wot I see'd in the cow byre that evenin'
I caught ye boath—laws, a mussy! how ye did
joomp. He! he ! but Bill Goades tells naw mean
tales—naw, naw—he can hold his toong, he can.
Doant ye be afeerd!' and the old man wagged his
head and chuckled again over his evil reminis-
cences.
9 6
A SOUL ASTRAY
Simon Hardy rose slowly to his feet; his face was
deadly pale, but his eye was resolute.
' In the name of truth and justice, I command you
to speak, man,' he said to the cowherd. ' What is it
you have seen, and what do you know of this ?'
Steeve made a hurried step forward and laid his
hand on his arm.
' Father, I entreat you, let me speak to you alone
first; this fellow knows nothing ; his insinuations are
as base as they are false. Zilla, you know as well as I
do—' but his father shook his hand from off his arm,
and Zilla would not look at him.
' Speak, speak !' she cried to the cowherd, with
feverish eagerness ; 4 it is I who tell you to speak,
Bill!'
And as the man still hesitated, looking uneasily
from one to the other, Simon Hardy said to him
again,—
' A great wrong has been done, and in God's name
I mean that it shall be set right. Bill Goades, if it is
in your power to throw light upon a dark deed, it is
your duty to do so.'
Thus adjured, Bill Goades shuffled from one foot to
the other, and swept the back of his hairy hand across
his lips.
' Wull, if I moost, I moost, but ye wer yoong yer-
self wunst, measter, and maybe ye had your bit o' fun
like the rest of us.'
' Go on,' interpolated the farmer sternly ; £ say what
you know and what you saw ; I want no other words.'
' Wull, it was this waay—I coomed into t' cow byre
one night, the time as Mayflower were sick, and
Measter Steeve and missy, they wus there together,
and they joomped awa' from each other, as if they
was scared, when they saw me coom in ; it made me
larf, measter, to see 'un !'
' And—when you came in— ? '
' They was just a-hangin' about each other's necks,
FALSE WITNESS
97
quite natchral and luvin'-like, a'-kissin' each other as
men and maids will—and small blaame to 'em says 1/
The words fell like the knell of doom upon Steeve's
ears—he threw one glance of despair at Zilla. Would
she accept so foul a slander ?—be content to let him
lie under so false an accusation ? But Zilla was look-
ing at Miss Hardy, who had sunk into a chair and
was sobbing bitterly. Her eyes were blazing with
malignant triumph, and her lips were curled in scorn ;
there was even a curious smile upon them, a smile
whose origin he could not fathom. How could she
smile in the presence of this man who had just spoken
such damning words against her ?
Then he turned to his father, who stood there in
stony silence, looking at him with blank, lack-lustre
eyes—eyes that were filled with an agony of shame
and sorrow.
'You will not surely take this man's word against
your own son's, father ?' he cried indignantly.
' Do you deny, then, what Bill Goades has said ?'
For a moment Steeve was silent.
' I cannot deny it entirely, unfortunately,' he said
slowly at length, feeling in his heart how terribly
circumstances told against him, and how hopeless
would be his defence if Zilla lent herself to the lie
implied. ' It is true that Zilla—that she kissed me—
that we did kiss each other ; but we are cousins. We
are like a brother and sister. There is no harm in
such kisses. Zilla, you know that they were inno-
cent!' he cried, turning desperately to her. But
Zilla made no answer, neither could she meet his
eyes. ' As God is my witness, I am innocent!' he
added passionately.
' Enough !' said the farmer, lifting his hand. ' Do
not add to your sin by taking God's Holy Name in
vain. We will speak no more of this to-night. Get
to bed, you women—and you, Bill Goades, go home.
We must speak of this matter again in the morning.'
G
CHAPTER XI
the one friend
And the evil report spread—as evil reports invari-
ably do. It matters not who set the slander going,
although there can be but little doubt that Bill Goades,
in spite of his boasts of reticence, was instrumental
in the matter, for a man cannot usually hold his
tongue to the wife of his bosom, however discreet he
may be towards the rest of the world; and if Bill let
the story out to Mrs Goades, it is certain that there
would be little occasion for him to do any more—
Mrs Goades being, as was well known, the veriest
scandalmonger and the most gossiping woman in
the whole parish.
She had a long tongue had Sarah Goades, and it
was not an over-kindly one. However that might be,
the story, in all its blackest colours, spread quickly;
and perhaps there were some who were not sorry
that Simon Hardy, who had always held his head so
high, should be humbled and shamed at last. And
there was Steeve, too, who was so perfect, so blame-
less, so much better spoken of than other people's
sons and brothers. ' Ah! but there's no knowing
what a man is really made of till you find him out,'
they whispered to one another, and they shook their
heads mournfully and sighed; and when Steeve came
along the village street they looked another way, and
98
THE ONE FRIEND
99
there were no more friendly words and pleasant
smiles to greet him on his way.
They were the blackest days of his whole life.
When he came to understand fully, which he scarcely
had done at first, what was the whole extent of
the accusation against him, and what was the act of
retribution which his father demanded of him, then
for the first time in his life did Steeve's brave spirit
fail him altogether, and the dark waters of despair
seemed to close in over his soul.
In the face of Zilla's persistent assertions, mere
denial, unsupported by evidence, became useless.
He was not able to see her and to reason with her,
for Miss Prudence locked her up in her room, and
carried about the key in her pocket; it was her
notion of the right and fitting punishment of a sinful
woman. His days were spent in fruitless arguments
with his father, who utterly refused to believe him.
In vain he reiterated his innocence, his absolute
blamelessness, pleaded his deep attachment to Mary,
his approaching marriage with her, and spoke of the
clean record of his whole previous life—nothing
availed him, nothing served to shake his father's
determination and conviction. The thing existed—
that was enough for Simon Hardy. The wrong had
been done, and there was none other upon whom it
could be fixed. Zilla had not been like other maidens ;
she had never been flighty or fond of men ; she had
been reserved and solitary in her habits; the young
fellows of Cramer Forest had avoided her. She had
had no followers, had kept company with no one.
There was only Steeve who had ever been much with
her—the inference seemed to h.im to be unanswerable.
The more he looked at it, the more did it seem to
him that Zilla's story was true. Steeve might regret
it bitterly, might wish the past undone ; sinners were
mercifully often brought to feel repentance for their
sins, yet must they accept their punishment in all
IOO
A SOUL ASTRAY
meekness and humility, and they must make retribu-
tion. There was no going back from that.
Before the Lord, and for the honour of his father's
name, Steeve must marry the girl he had injured.
' I cannot!' the unfortunate young man cried
despairingly; 'I am bound to Mary Clover. I will
not be false to her. Besides, I love her—our wedding
day is fixed.'
' I cannot help that. You should have thought of
that before. You should not have sinned. You must
give up Mary Clover now. You must marry Zilla.'
' Father, why will you not believe me ? I am
innocent! It is a false witness that Zilla has brought
against me.'
' Prove it to be so, then. Clear your name. Find
the man who is guilty. Ah ! you shake your head.
You know you cannot! Does a maid bring such
an accusation as that against a man, unless it be
true ?'
And so the arguments went on, hour after hour,
backwards and forwards, over the same worn and
weary ground. Steeve had no proofs, no knowledge,
no clue to anything concerning Zilla's condition. He
had nothing but his own word to go upon—he could
only appeal to his own past life and blameless re-
putation.
' Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall,' was his father's stern yet sorrowful reply to
that.
In these days he ought to have gone to see Mary.
He ought to have gone to her parents, but he had
not the heart or the courage to go near them with
this thing hanging over him.
' Let me clear myself first,' he said to himself; yet
each time he said it, he felt more acutely than the
last that it might be impossible to clear himself at all.
Three days went by; he did no work, his brain
was on fire, he could not close his eyes by night—by
THE ONE FRIEND
IOI
day his aching heart seemed to be torn in two.
Then, if he went out, wandering aimlessly hither and
thither to still the anguish of his mind, he began to
be conscious of how friends and neighbours avoided
him; how they turned into another road at his
approach, or passed him by with averted eyes; and
he grew to understand that the story had gone
abroad, and that the good, and upright name he had
been so proud of, was smirched and tarnished, and
that this tale of ill-doing was believed against him.
Then at last it seemed to him that he must summon
his courage and his manhood and face the thing
bravely, lest he sink ignobly into the shameful pit
that had been set for him.
That night, after supper, he walked across the
moor to Joseph Clover's farm, and knocked boldly
at the door. Mary's father rose slowly from the
chimney corner at his entrance, but he did not hold
out his hand to him, nor did his wrinkled face brighten
into a smile of welcome as it always used to do at his
appearance. Mr Clover only took the pipe out of his
mouth, and made a sign to his wife to leave the room.
The poor woman, whose eyes were heavy and red as
with weeping, obeyed him silently.
Then Joseph Clover stood looking at him sternly
and coldly. He did not ask him to be seated, so
Steeve stood near the door with his hat between his
hands.
' I wonder at your coming here, Steven Hardy,'
said Mr Clover at last. ' This is no longer any house
for you.'
' Mr Clover ! you can't surely believe this infamous
story against me ?' cried Steeve. ' I have come here
to protest to you my innocence, and to entreat you to
shut your ears to this slander—'
'Your own father is your judge and accuser, young
man.'
' Yes ; but you, sir—you who know how devotedly
102
A SOUL ASTRAY
I love Mary — how soon I hope to make her my
wife—'
'Hush!' said Joseph Clover, holding up his hand.
' Leave my daughter's name out. I will not have her
mentioned in this matter.'
' But, Mr Clover, Mary herself will surely stick to
me and believe me ? I know that she will refuse to
listen to this horrible story.'
' Have I not told you to leave her name alone ?' he
replied, with an angry frown. ' Mary can be nothing
more to you. She will never be your wife. Put her
out of your calculation, Steeve, and if you have any
manhood left in you, make what amends you can to
the unhappy girl whom you have betrayed.'
So, crestfallenly, and without another word, he
went his way again into the night, with drooping
head and breaking heart. Yet, even then, he said to
himself,—
' Mary will believe me ! She, out of all the world,
will at least be faithful. Unless she tells me with her
own lips that all is over between us, I will not de-
spair!'
On the following day he determined to go over to
Netherby Hall and see her. He. started forth full of
fresh hope and courage. He went by the road, be-
cause there had been rain in the night, and the roads
were in good order. He thought he could walk
quicker than by the track across the moor, which
was often marshy and rough in rainy weather. His
long footsteps measured the three miles quickly. It
seemed to lighten his heart that his face was set
towards Netherby. He went round to the back
entrance, as he was accustomed to do, and rang
the bell.
One of the maid-servants, whom he knew well, came
at his summons. The girl looked scared and some-
what astonished at the sight of him.
' Could you ask Miss Clover to speak to me for a
THE ONE FRIEND
103
minute, Jane? I won't keep her long—or if she is
busy, I can wait. Ask her if she will come out and
speak to me in the kitchen garden ?'
4 Miss Clover left this morning, Mr Hardy,' replied
the frightened-looking housemaid.
4 Left ? ' he repeated blankly. 4 Why—where has
she gone ?'
4 She has gone home. Her mother came for her.
My lady sent her back in the brougham.'
4 But she wasn't to leave till the week after next,'
he said bewilderedly. 4 Why has she gone now ?—
for pity's sake, Jane, tell me ! You are hiding some-
thing from me !—was she—was she ill ?' he faltered.
4 Yes, Mr Hardy, that was it,' admitted the house-
maid, with evident reluctance. 4 Miss Clover's father
came to see her yesterday morning, and after he had
left, she went off in a dead faint and couldn't do the
young ladies' lessons or anything, and she was very
bad all night, and so in the morning my lady sent for
the doctor, and he came and advised that she should
go home, and my lady sent for Mrs Clover, and she
came over about twelve o'clock, and my lord he in-
sisted on their both going back in the brougham.'
4And—was she very ill? Is she in danger?' he
gasped, leaning back breathlessly against the lintel
of the door, for this last blow seemed almost more
cruel than all the rest.
4 I can't tell you that. I heard the second house-
maid, who waited on her last night, say that she went
from one faint into another, and I did just catch
sight of her on the staircase this morning when she
was going away, and she seemed very white and weak
looking; she was holding on to her mother's arm
as she came down the staircase, poor thing!'
He turned away with a mute gesture of thanks—
hopeless and heartless. He knew what it was had
made her ill! Her father had told her—and the news
had half killed her.
104
A SOUL ASTRAY
He felt desperate as he walked away down the
drive through the park. Oh, if he might only see her
—if he might only look once into her face, surely she
would read his innocence in his eyes ! Yet now that
she was under her father's roof, he knew well enough
that he should not be able to get speech of her.
Mr Clover would shut the door in his face. And she
was ill—ill! and he could do nothing !
One hope only remained to him. Would Lady
Netherby remain his friend ? Would she hear his
story and believe it ? and would she intercede with
the Clovers for him, and carry some message of love
to his darling ?
As the thought was in his mind, he saw the Hall
barouche turn in at the lodge gates of the park in
front of him. Lady Netherby was alone in the car-
riage; now was his opportunity.
He stood bareheaded by the side of the road,
and awaited her approach. The sun shone full on
his fair, curly head—there was nothing between the
advancing barouche and his own stalwart figure—
neither tree, nor shrub, nor shadow to conceal him
him; it was impossible that she should not see him.
And yet when the carriage came alongside, Lady
Netherby sat bolt upright and looked straight in
front of her with a fixed and immovable face.
He made a wild rush after the carriage,—
' Lady Netherby! please stop, my lady ! please let
me speak to you !' he cried aloud, desperately.
The footman half turned in his seat; the coachman
prepared to draw in his horses.
'Drive on, Wolder,' called out the Countess in a
stern, cold voice, and the carriage went on; and
then she opened her sunshade and held it up between
her own face and his, so that he could see her no
longer.
He staggered back like a drunken man on to the
grass, and sank down in a heap by the wayside.
THE ONE FRIEND
105
There was no help in heaven or on earth for Steeve
now.
Late that afternoon, in a last and forlorn hope, he
wrote a note to Mary and sent it up by one of the farm
boys to the Clovers' house. He enclosed it in a letter
to her father, in which he entreated him by all that he
held sacred—in the name of truth and of justice—to
give his enclosure to Mary and to allow him to see
her once more—just once only !—even if he must give
her up for ever. He pleaded, that this, at least, was
his due—to see her once, and tell her his own version
of this terrible trouble.
He waited about outside, half-way between the two
farms, for the return of his messenger — walking
feverishly up and clown the path, and saying to him-
self, over and over again, that this at least must be
granted to him !—this one last interview with her he
loved! No man who had flesh and blood and a
heart within him could possibly refuse so reasonable
and humble a request.
After half-an-hour—which seemed to prolong itself
interminably—the boy came back, bearing a letter in
his hand.
Steeve tore open the envelope. His own letter to
Mary—untouched, unopened—dropped out of it, and
there were in addition a few lines from her father.
' I return you your letter to my daughter. She
has no wish to read it or to see you again. I beg
that you will cease to molest her. Your conduct
has made her seriously unwell, but she is bearing
the blow with Christian fortitude and resignation.
All she asks is that you will leave her alone.'
And so that was the end of it all—the end of years
of love and faithfulness—of the hopes and dreams of
a lifetime!
Steeve sat down listlessly upon the heather by the
106
A SOUL ASTRAY
side of the path—the letter fluttered from his nerve-
less fingers to the ground. His face was white and
worn and aged — already in these last few days,
although he knew it not, a few silver hairs had crept
into the gold of his head, and there were hard lines of
misery and bitterness traced about the eyes and
mouth that only one short week ago were so radiant
and youthful. All the world was against him—all the
world ! Father—sweetheart—friends—all had con-
demned and judged him unheard.
' Ah ! can there be a God above us, or is it all a lie
and a sham ?' he called out aloud in his agony, lifting
his wan face to the clear blue and crimson colouring of
the evening sky.
And after a while the pale stars came out one by
one and trembled in the wide vault of heaven ; yet
there came no sign from above, no answer to this heart-
broken and lonely man. He sat on alone, till the day-
light faded into dusk, and night's shadows began to
steal mysteriously across the silent world.
' Steeve !' cried a ringing voice at his elbow :' Steeve,
my poor fellow—my dear friend ! Ah, here you are
at last! I have been hunting for you high and low,
my dear boy ; and now, thank God, I have found you !'
Then Steeve rose to his feet like one in a dream, to
find his cold hands close grasped in two warm, cling-
ing ones, and kind, brown eyes, brimful of love and
sympathy, peering into his own through the dusk.
' Mr Lorrimer—you—sir ?' he faltered.
' Why, yes, Steeve, to be sure. Who else should it
be ? And you are in so great a trouble, my poor boy,
and yet you did not come to me. How's this ? How's
this ?'
' Oh, sir, I did not dare—to you of all people. How
could I bring such a tale to you ? '
' Why, you ought to have come straight off to me,
Steeve, straight off. Why didn't you, my dear
friend ?'
TIIE ONE FRIEND
107
' But, sir—have you heard all—all that they say
about me ? Do you know—'
'Yes, I have been told all they say—they have
heard it up at the Hall, you know—I was there just
two hours ago, and ever since I've been hunting for
you. Now let us face this false slander together, my
boy.'
'You call it a slander then, sir?' cried Steeve,
eagerly. ' You say it is false ? You—you—believe in
me, then ?'
' Why, of course I believe in you, Steeve. Have I
not known you, boy and man, these twenty years ?
Why, I could not doubt you any more than I could
doubt myself.'
' Oh ! thank God—thank God for that!' cried
Steeve, brokenly, and then, because of the joy and
reaction of it, his very heart melted within him, and
he sank down again upon the heather and burst into
a flood of tears, burying his face in his hands, whilst
the great sobs shook his whole frame.
John Lorrimer sat down quietly beside him, and
allowed his emotion to have its way. He just laid his
hand upon Steeve's shoulder, and every now and then
gave a little friendly pat of sympathy and compassion.
But he never spoke a word, but sat there waiting
patiently until the pent-up passion of grief in the
man's soul had had its full swing.
At last Steeve uplifted his tear-stained face.
' Forgive me, Mr Lorrimer, forgive me! But oh,
you don't know what it is to me to hear you say that.
God bless you for those words, sir—God bless you!
Do you know that you are the only one—not one
other creature on earth would believe me, or even
listen to me. God himself seemed to have hidden
His face from me, till you came and spoke those
blessed words,' and once again his utterance was
broken and choked with tears.
'No, no, my boy, God is always there — even
io8
A SOUL ASTRAY
through the blackness that is as the shadow of death,
I, who speak to you, have known it. I, too, have
walked through the furnace of suffering, till the fire
had well-nigh gone over me.'
' You, sir ? '
Steeve's voice was calm enough now, and then, as
he looked into the kind, sad face beside him, some
memory of that old trouble which Mr Lorrimer had
gone through years and years ago, when he himself
was a mere boy, came back to his recollection. He
had heard of the story of John Lorrimer's wedded life
from his father. Yes—this man's sympathy was real
—it was no mere form of stereotyped words ; it was
real and living, because it arose out of the depths of
his own stricken heart. Somehow, Steeve felt soothed
and comforted already. This man had suffered and
endured more than the bitterness of death, and he
had come through the flames victorious. Well, then,
if needs be, he too, could do the same.
' Now tell me all about it, Steeve—everything, from
the very beginning,' said Mr Lorrimer gently.
And then Steeve opened his whole heart and told
him everything.
And so, side by side, the two men sat on, upon
the heather, till the pale moon rose above them, and
swung her crescent light against the darkening sky,
and the heavens were ablaze from end to end with
the countless hosts of the glittering stars—so great, so
calm, so vast! and man so mean, so small, so restless !
So, to the end of time, the quiet eyes will look down
out of the infinite, where they dwell apart, down
upon the turmoil of our vexed and storm-tossed
passions, with never a word or a sign of help or of
succour, save that sweet, unspoken consolation that
lies for ever hidden under the immensity of their
solemn silence.
CHAPTER XII
a desperate resolve
Yet despite the much-needed sympathy and faith of
his one friend—a sympathy and faith which put new
life and vigour into poor Steeve's storm-tossed heart
—which inspired him with some courage, and drenched
away a good many hard and bitter thoughts out of
his mind ; in spite of this powerful and timely help
in his trouble,' things for some days longer went from
bad to worse with him. Mary's denial had been a
very crushing blow to him—nor did it occur to him
that the poor girl herself, who lay ill in bed, tossing
feverishly upon her pillows, might have had nothing
to say to the message which her father had sent him
in her name. As a matter of fact, Mary had never
heard of his letter, had never been told of his desire
to see her. Her parents, perhaps, acted within their
rights when they determined to keep her in ignorance.
For as it was now quite certain that she could not
marry Steeve Hardy, was it not, therefore, they said
to each other, their bounden duty to spare her the
painful ordeal of an interview with the man who had
been so false to her ?
But Steeve knew nothing of this decision, and it
only seemed to him that the light of his life was
quenched in darkness since Mary herself had repudi-
ated him.
109
110
A SOUL ASTRAY
And then, as we all know,' constant dropping wears
away a stone,' and Simon Hardy's incessant appeals
and injunctions began to take effect upon him. When
his father spoke of his ' sin,' and of the stern necessity
for atonement and reparation, Steeve, strong in the
conviction of innocence, could remain unmoved and
obstinate. But when the old man, touching a more
human chord, bewailed the fate of the poor girl who
had been confided to his care as an infant, who had
grown up under his roof, and who had come to such
a disastrous state; when, with tears in his eyes, he
alluded to his favourite sister—poor, dead Esther—who,
for all her sin, had been so dear to him, and who
might in some other world one day require her child's
soul at his hands; or when again he spoke of his
own life, upright, honourable and clean, of the honour
of his name, of the purity of his family pride, now
tarnished for the second time by the downfall of a
daughter of his house ; and when he quoted the words
of the patriarch of old, with broken voice and tremb-
ling lips, saying that now were his grey hairs brought
down in sorrow to the grave—then Steeve's resolution
began to give way, and all his arguments failed him
altogether.
In these days he spent long hours in deep thought
and in prayer. The old Puritanical spirit, so vital a
principle still amongst the class from which he sprung,
was in his blood. Old doctrines, inculcated in early
life, concerning self-sacrifice, renunciation and expia-
tion, returned upon him in full force, in this, the dark
time of his trouble, and began to take a renewed hold
upon his imagination.
At length the thick darkness through which he
blindly groped seemed to be suddenly pierced with
startling vividness by a ray of guidance and illumina-
tion. Might it not be the will of God that, in his own
person, he should make this atonement, not for any
fault of his own, but for those of his race and blood ?
A DESPERATE RESOLVE
III
That God in His infinite wisdom, had chosen him to be
the scapegoat who was to bear away upon his head
the scarlet fleece of the unrepented sins of Esther
Hardy and her child into the wilderness?
This strange idea, which came upon him one night
as he lay awake upon his bed, with so startling a
suddenness that it almost assumed the proportions
and solemn character of a special revelation from on
high, grew upon him rapidly and with an overwhelm-
ing force.
Little by little, the details of what his conduct was
to be began to piece themselves together in his mind.
He saw, or thought that he saw, how far along the
path of sacrifice the Divine Will ordered him to go,
and where the trial was to end. The Lord would not
assuredly lay more upon him than he was able to
bear ; of that he was convinced. Yet something was
required of him, and that something he now made up
his mind to pay.
The day came at length when, with a white and
set face, he said to his father,—
' It shall be as you wish, father. I will save your
name and your honour. I have determined to marry
my cousin Zilla. Make any arrangement you like,
only let it be the sooner the better.'
A gleam of satisfaction lit up Simon Hardy's eyes.
'You are doing what is right, Steeve, and may God
be merciful to you and to her,' he replied quietly.
'As you say, what has to be done must be done
quickly. Let us go at once and see Mr Lorrimer.'
And side by side the father and son walked almost
in silence across the moor to Netherby Vicarage.
But here a fresh difficulty awaited them. It had so
happened that Mr Lorrimer had been called away
from home, during the last few days, to the bedside of
a dying aunt in London. He had not known, there-
fore, how things had been going during his absence
with Steeve. Nor would he in an)' case have inter-
112
A SOUL ASTRAY
fered much. It was always his practice, as well as his
theory, to say little, to give but the guiding touch, to
suggest, and then to draw back and leave to the in-
dividual himself the development of his own destinies.
' The heart knoweth its own bitterness,' was no
empty form of words to John Lorrimer, for he knew
well that no man can share that bitterness with
another, and that each soul must work out its own
destiny alone.
' Parsons talk a great deal too much,' he was wont
to say to his friend, Lord Netherby; 'that is why, as
a rule, they do so little good. If there were less talk
and less preachifying amongst us, and more of silent
and human sympathy, the world would be all the
better for it.'
So that in his one long talk with Steeve, he had
not given him any special advice with regard to his
conduct. He had not felt himself competent to lay
down rules for the life of another—he had only held
out to him his hand in the strong grip of sympathy
and trust, and afterwards had just spoken a word or
two at parting, as to the source of all true counsel
and wisdom,—' Which you, Steeve, know of quite as
well as I do,' had been his words.
When Simon Hardy and Steeve entered his study
together to-day, the Vicar had only just returned
from London, and great was his astonishment when
the farmer proceeded to announce to him the object
of their visit.
Mr Lorrimer could scarcely believe that he heard
him rightly.
' Steeve,' turning from the father with positive con-
sternation to the silent figure of the son, ' can this in-
deed be your intention—your wish ? Have you really
consented to marry Zilla ?'
' I have quite determined to do so, sir.'
The downcast eyes were not raised to meet his,
but the voice was firm and resolute.
A DESPERATE RESOLVE
113
For a moment a swift pang of doubt darted through
John Lorrimer's mind—did this change of front mean
the downfall of his hero ? Was Steeve then guilty
after all ?
There were a few seconds of constrained silence,
during which the Vicar called to mind something
that had once been idly spoken, long ago, at Lord
Netherby's table by his son Ralph.
' Those quiet ones are always dark,' had said the
son of the house with his cynical sneer. 'Ten to one
some day, your model parishioner will break out
into some unexpected villainy which will astonish
you all.'
Mr Lorrimer winced a little when he remembered
the words. He was silent for a while and sat looking
away through the open window upon the little sunlit
lawn of his garden, now gay with summer flowers.
For just those few moments a horrible doubt stole
into his mind. Then he told himself emphatically
that it could not be—it was impossible !
' Steeve,' he said, turning suddenly round to him,
' tell me once more, in the presence of your father—in
the presence of One who is greater than we erring
men—tell me the truth. Are you guilty, or are you
innocent ?'
Then Steeve lifted his head and smiled at him
frankly and bravely, and the true heart within him
looked out of his eyes straightly and honestly into
those of the older man.
' I am innocent, Mr Lorrimer, as you well know.'
' And yet you intend to marry this unfortunate
girl ? How can you reconcile this to your con-
science ?'
' I have given my word to my father, sir, and I
intend to keep it,' replied Steeve, firmly.
John Lorrimer turned despairingly to the old man.
' Mr Hardy, you hear your son's protestation of
innocence; surely, surely, in the face of his word—
H
A SOUL ASTRAY
which no one who knows him as well as you and I
do, ought to doubt—surely you will not hold him to
such a promise. I am convinced that this sacrifice is
not required of him, either by God or man.'
' I am sorry, Mr Lorrimer, that I differ from you in
this matter,' answered the farmer, coldly and doggedly,
for he was a man who, having once made up his mind,
very seldom changed it. ' I cannot, unfortunately,
believe that Steeve is innocent. It may suit him to
maintain it to you, but, in the absence of any proof in
his favour, I must continue to hold my own opinion.
Besides, I have others to consider. My niece is as
dear to me as a daughter. Her future life and the
restitution of her character are essential.'
'Pray say no more to my father, Mr Lorrimer,'
here broke in Steeve. ' It is useless. He does not
believe me; perhaps he will do me justice some day
when it is too late. Believe me, sir, I have not agreed
to do as he desires, hastily or without deep thought
I firmly believe that I am about to do what is my
duty. I entreat you to say no more; it will only
make it harder for me.'
Steeve could be as obstinate as his father on occa-
sions, and the Vicar was aware of the fact.
After a few moments of constrained and painful
silence, he rose from his writing-table with a profound
sigh.
' In that case I will hold my tongue,' he said, in a
low voice. ' If you believe that you are doing right,
it is not for me, Steeve, to dissuade you, but—let me
ask you one question only—Have you considered how
such a marriage is to end ? What love, what domestic
peace can you or Zilla expect to enjoy ? What
blessings of prosperity and happiness can there be
upon a union based, as it will be, upon false vows and
estranged hearts ?'
' Mr Lorrimer,' answered Steeve, ' I am not going to
marry Zilla for any of these things that you speak of
A DESPERATE RESOLVE
115
—it is not for love or for peace and happiness, that I
intend to give her my name—the causes of this union
between us will indeed be widely different to those
you mention. My father knows my motives—I need
not repeat them. I only want to say to you both,
that as what I am doing in the present seems to me
to be what I am directed to do by my conscience, so
also that which I shall do in the future—of which I
will not speak now more fully—will also be my duty,
as it appears to me. Don't distress yourself on my
account, Mr Lorrimer. You were right when you
assured me that God had not forsaken me—I am in
His hands to do as He sees fit with me.'
But neither the Vicar nor his father understood
him. It was only later, in the light of later events,
that these words returned to their minds with a new
significance. At the time they seemed to be merely
a general expression of reliance upon Providence.
For some moments no one spoke. Then, at last,
Mr Lorrimer said, with a deeply troubled manner, and
with averted eyes,—
' It grieves me very much to say so to you, Steeve
—and to you too, Mr Hardy—for you are, both of
you, old and valued friends—yet I cannot go against
my conscience—my own duty is very clear to me in
this matter—I must refuse to marry you.'
' Sir!'
' Mr Lorrimer !'
The words broRe simultaneously, in horrified ac-
cents, from the lips of both men. Consternation
filled their faces. That their own 'parson' should
fail them, had never entered into their calculations, for
this out-of-the-world parish in Cramer Forest was in
those days so primitive, so old-world in its traditions
still, that no man or woman throughout it could con-
ceive it possible to be properly baptised, married or
buried without the concurrence of their own lawful
clergyman. There had been no talk of Disestablish-
ii6
A SOUL ASTRAY
ment, you see, in those, days, and the parish and the
parson were still one, their interests mutual—their
lives for good or evil, blended indissolubly together.
Moreover, Mr Lorrimer was a man who was especi-
ally beloved and respected. His great trouble had
touched the hearts of the older generation who
remembered it—his genial sympathy and unfailing
kindness and charity of heart had endeared him to
the younger ones. To him, in their troubles, great
and small, came every man, woman and child in the
parish, naturally, simply, as children come to a father
for help and counsel, and never once in all the long
years he had been amongst them, had he failed to
give them the affectionate sympathy which they
sought from him. Between him and his people there
existed a bond as strong as it is perhaps unusual.
When, therefore, Mr Lorrimer, stated that he would
not read the marriage service over Steven Hardy and
Zilla, it was small wonder that a blank dismay fell
upon the father and son.
' I cannot do it,' he continued hurriedly and em-
phatically. ' I cannot take upon myself such a
responsibility. I would rather cut off my right hand.
I can only implore you both to think this matter
over—to pause ere it is too late. The trial that has
been laid upon you, Steeve, is indeed a hard and
bitter one, and your father's lack of faith in you must
add sorely to the weight of your burden. But I en-
treat you to trust in God and to be patient!—it is not
like you, Steeve, to throw up the sponge in despair.
Be resolute, and bear the brunt of it like a man. In
time the truth must surely come to light, and your
name will be cleared and vindicated. Only be strong
—be patient—and wait!'
Brave words—yet hard; harder by far than any
that Steeve could have listened to. For to do and
to dare comes easy enough to most men, but to do
nothing—to wait whilst the waters of adversity roll
A DESPERATE RESOLVE
117
over the soul—to sit down under a false accusation
and endure it in silence—that is what is so unspeak-
ably hard—so well-nigh impossible.
Steeve's head had sunk low upon his breast, and
his heart failed him. There was a film across his
blue eyes, and Mr Lorrimer's voice sounded faint and
far away in his dulled and clouded ears, for he knew
that he could not learn that difficult lesson. It
seemed to him that life was over for him. If, indeed,
Mary had stuck to him—if she had sent him one word
of love—one sign of trust—then, perhaps, love and
hope might still have lived within him, and, for her
sake, he might have remained stedfast. But Mary
had given him up, and the man's spirit was broken!
It was less galling to his pride to offer himself up
as a sacrifice. He could still feel grateful to John
Lorrimer for his kindly faith and trust in him—but
his words struck cold upon his ears—they could no
longer quicken his heart. The heroism of a useless
self-immolation was now the only spark of vitality
that was left to him.
Meanwhile Simon Hardy, on his part, listened to
Mr Lorrimer with a face that grew stern and rigid
in its dogged disbelief, and the words he had listened
to, seemed, to the older man, to be mere foolishness.
' Parson Lorrimer is a good chap,' he said to his
son, gruffly, when presently the two found themselves
once more on the moor again—' a good chap enough,
but he is a mortal fool ! He is that good himself
that he don't know a rogue when he sees him ! 'Tis
a pity you stuck out to him, Steeve. A lie ain't no
sort of use to you, for the Lord knoweth the secrets
of the heart—'twould be truer repentance to own up
to the truth. Howsomever, I'll say no more since
you've turned your face in the right way, and maybe
the Lord will bring down your proud spirit still
further. As to Mr Lorrimer, why, we must just do
without him, best way we can. You and I'll have to
11B
A SOUL ASTRAY
go to Markton to-morrow, for, sin or no sin, 'tis Fair
Day, and the ponies will have to be taken in to be
sold, and—' he added, after a short pause—' we can
see to other matters at the same time. There's a
plenty of parsons down in Markton, I'm thinking.'
CHAPTER XIII
a wedding party
The high-wheeled dogcart stood waiting at the back
door. The sixteen-hand, raw-boned chestnut was
reaching impatiently at his bit, and pawing his restless
feet upon the rough cobble stones of the yard. Simon
Hardy had gathered up the reins, and Miss Prudence,
in her Sunday bonnet and mantle, had clambered
laboriously up to the front seat by his side. The
bride, too, had been pushed up on to the back seat,
with the help of a kitchen chair brought out for
her assistance, with many winks and innuendoes, by
Sarah Goades, who, with her husband, was to be left
in charge of the house for the day. Only the place
beside her still remained vacant.
' Come, come. Why isn't Steeve ready ? He was
here a minute ago,' grumbled the farmer, impatiently.
' Steady, will yer'—this to Ginger, the horse. ' Here,
Bill, go to his head. What keeps the lad ?'
' Steeve went back into the house,' said Miss
Prudence.
She spoke drearily, and with little interest. The
poor lady had aged a good deal during these last
few weeks. The fire had gone out of her sharp eyes,
and all the energy out of her voice.
Mr Hardy threw a suspicious look back over his
shoulder. He was uneasy still, even now, at the
eleventh hour, when all seemed so sure and safe,
119
120
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Go and see,' he began, to the women folk who
stood grouped about the door; but at that moment
he caught sight of Steeve's tall figure behind them,
coming out of the kitchen.
Simon Hardy turned his face quickly away again.
He did not want his son to see that he was afraid of
him. That was, perhaps, why he failed to notice that
Steeve carried a black bag in his hand, which he
shoved quickly, and a little surreptitiously, in at the
back, under the seat, beneath the horse-rug.
' Let go!' said the farmer, nodding to Bill Goades.
' Be sure you put those fowls down to roast in
good time,' called out Miss Prudence to the kitchen
girl, ' and see that you don't let the cakes get burnt
in the oven.'
And then Ginger gave a plunge, and the dogcart
bounded violently forwards, and swung through the
open gates of the yard round the corner into the
road.
A stranger wedding party had never, perhaps,
driven across the hills, and dales, and wild moorland
reaches of Cramer Forest.
It was a September day, and there had been a
chill of the coming autumn in the early morning air.
The sky was grey and overcast, and the distant hills
and woods were faintly blurred with mist. And now,
as the dogcart proceeded on its way, and turned into
the Markton Road, over the edge of the hill a
rugged wreath of cloud-like vapour came stealing up
from the south, followed swiftly by another, and yet
another, till a damp and penetrating veil spread
itself far and wide over the whole landscape. It was
one of those sea fogs which, in that district, are very
prevalent during the autumn and winter months, and
which form, perhaps, one of the most unpleasant
features of this strangely wild and yet charming
country. Soon there was nothing beautiful or
striking left to greet the eyes across the length and
A WEDDING PARTY
121
breadth of the wide, open landscape, save only the
white, wan vapour lying low and level upon the
bosom of the earth.
' Pull your shawl down well over your bonnet,'
cried Miss Hardy, half turning round in her seat
towards Zilla, and setting the example herself by
folding a thick wrap about her own headgear.
Zilla had set out with a great, rough shawl wrapped
about her head. She now pulled it closer about her
ears, and smiled to herself maliciously. A small
feminine revenge for all the railings and scoldings of
the past month lay still in her power, and that
morsel of revenge was sweet betwixt her teeth.
The white straw bonnet, of Quaker-like neatness
and simplicity, which Miss Prudence had trimmed
herself, and laid out upon her bed for the occasion,
lay there still, whilst round her tumbled jet locks Zilla
had, at the last moment, perversely knotted the old
scarlet and yellow silk handkerchief which she loved,
and against which her aunt had always waged war,
accentuating, as it seemed to do, the girl's gipsy
aspect and colouring. 'A heathenish thing,' Miss
Prudence was wont to call that kerchief.
It wasn't much, but it was still something! and
it gave the girl a fragmentary moment of pleasure
to anticipate poor Miss Plardy's looks of horror and
consternation when, at the end of the drive, she should
discover the ' heathenish' handkerchief upon her
niece's head, in the place of that modest and decor-
ous bonnet which she had so carefully prepared for
her to wear at her wedding. And that small, sorry
jest was perhaps the one and only gleam of a lighter
mood which shot across the gloom of those four
people.
They might have been driving to a funeral. Ten
long, weary miles, up hill and down hill, through the
brooding density of that sea mist; yet, for miles, never
9. word, never a sound from any one of them !
122
A SOUL ASTRAY
And yet to the two, at least, who sat behind, so
close together on that narrow seat, it was the most
momentous hour of their lives, and every inch of the
way was fraught with the most acute sensation.
It was the first time for a month that Steeve and
Zilla had been together. Since that fatal night when
she had branded his name and shattered his life, he
had not once set eyes upon her.
Miss Hardy had kept her a close prisoner in the
attic room beneath the sloping roof. The girl had
been cooped up, with doors locked fast upon her shame.
It was Miss Hardy's notion of punishment. The
long confinement had told upon Zilla. She had
grown thin. There were hollows round the great
dark eyes, and the rounded cheeks had lost their rich
pomegranate bloom of health. Miss Prudence trusted
that these drastic measures of hers—the locked door
and the scanty food—would have a salutary effect,
and subdue the erring girl to a penitential frame of
mind.
But Zilla was not repentant. She was only angry.
If it had not been for her love for Steeve, the wild
creature would have escaped from her prison long
ago. She could have easily got out of her dormer
window, and have clambered down by the creepers, for
she was as active and lithe as a cat. But her love
and her hopes kept her still—that, and the curse
of her womanhood, from which she could not escape
or shake herself free !
If she was wretched, miserable and unhappy, dur-
ing that long month of incarceration, it was not a
consciousness of sin—of a guilt worse than woman's
weakness, of a merciless and cruel treachery which
made her so; it was the awful contingency that
she might have perjured herself in vain; that
Steeve would perhaps stand out, that his father
might come to believe in him, and that he himself
might refuse to marry her.
A WEDDING PARTY
123
She had staked her all upon it. Would she lose,
or would she win ?
And she had pined in that solitary upper room;
pined for the fresh air and the long rambles across
the moorland to which she had been so long accus-
tomed. She missed the breath of the sky, the
murmur of the brook, and, more than all, she missed
the gentle sympathy of the dumb animals who had
always been her friends. The beasts were too far
away to hear her call, and even the birds would not
listen or come to her. All day long she leant out
of the narrow lattice window, stretching forth her
eager hands and uttering those little cooing notes
with which she had been accustomed to woo them to
her. Far away, she watched them swirl and hover,
sweeping in ever-widening circles upon their crescent
wings, but they came no closer to her. Perhaps they
were afraid to venture too near to the house with
its many windows—with its passing figures going
to and fro ; or perhaps she had, in her captivity,
lost something of the art of enticing them to her,
or, it might even be, and this was the worst
and most awful thought of all—a thought which
once shot through her like a faint glimmer of that
knowledge of good and evil in which she was said
to be lacking ; of the conscience, she was not sup-
posed to possess—it might be, that she had indeed
committed that dread sin against the Holy Ghost for
which there is no forgiveness in earth or heaven—
the sin of perjury and false witness. It might be
that those pure and guileless creatures, who had
loved her once, disowned her now with horror, and
would have no more to do with her!
This was absolutely the nearest approach to a
realisation of her own guilt which came home to
her during the four long weeks of her imprisonment.
Then came the news that Steeve was going to
marry her.
124
A SOUL ASTRAY
' It is more than you deserve,' Miss Prudence said
to her bitterly and harshly. ' A baggage like you to
get hold of an honest, God-fearing man, and spoil his
life ! Serve you right if you had been turned out
of the house !' for a woman is always harder on one
of her own sex in these cases than she is upon a
man, and Miss Prudence was no exception to the
rule. ' But Steeve has come to see that it's a duty
to marry you, so what you've got to do is to learn to
be grateful to him, and turn over a new leaf and
be as good a wife to him as you can,' and then she
fetched a deep sigh and shook her head mournfully
' for,' she said to herself; ' a leopard cannot change
his spots, nor yet a blackymore his skin, and no more
can a soulless gipsy woman make a good wife to
a Christian man. 'Taint in nature,' she said de-
spairingly to her brother; ' but there ! 'tis a cross laid
upon us by the Lord, to have to keep such an one
as her in the family, and doubtless you'll be in the
right, Simon, in insisting upon poor Steeve's marry-
ing her, for it is reparation and atonement that the
just God requires of us all; miserable sinners that we
are.'
But to Zilla it was the triumph of her evil doing!
She could scarcely contain her delight and rapture.
The desire of her life was to be given her! She
could never remember the time when Steeve had
not been her king and her god, when his approach-
ing footsteps had not made her tremble with joy,
when she had not hung upon his words and coveted
his smile, and when the touch of his hand had
not gone like wine into her head.
And now he was to be her own.
Little did the strange, perverted creature care at
what a price. The falsehood to which she had sworn
upon the holy book, the sin which should have bowed
her head in shame to the earth before him, and which
she might have known was sufficient to sunder him
A WEDDING PARTY
125
from her to all eternity, the cruel sorrow which she
had brought into the life of this man whom she pro-
fessed to love—all were the merest nothingness to
her. It is doubtful if she even remembered them
at all, in the great, overwhelming joy which now
possessed her.
She was a little shy, it is true, when she found her-
self so close beside Steeve on the back seat of the
dogcart—a little afraid to meet his eyes—a little un-
easy at what he might say to her. But she was quite
happy. The mere fact of being so near to him
was enough for her, and the occasional unconscious
brush of his sleeve against her shawl sent thrills of
delight through her whole being. But as the miles
went on one after the other through the mist, and
he neither spoke nor looked at her, keeping his
face averted so that she could only see the pale,
cold outline of his profile, a little petulant anger
stole into her heart.
' After all,' she said to herself, ' it's no such hard
fate. Steeve need not look so cross and glum ; he'll
have the handsomest wife on all Cramer Forest, and
one who loves him dearly at that,' and then she
plucked up her courage and spoke to him.
' Steeve !'
No answer. The man's heart and soul were far
away. Only his deadened body sat there by her side,
in a trance as it were.
' Steeve !' once more, after a few minutes of waiting.
This time the voice reached him. He started.
'Well,' he said dully, without turning his head.
' Steeve, say something kind to me, won't you ?'
'Kind!' he repeated in a strange voice, and then
he did turn slowly round, and looked at her—looked
at her from head to foot, with a scorn and contempt
unutterable.
Even Zilla's case-hardened conscience was pene-
trated by that look. She reddened a little, and
126
A SOUL ASTRAY
turned her face away with a peevish shrug of her
shoulder.
' Oh, come, you needn't look like that, Steeve!
After all, you are going to marry me, and it is our
wedding day, you know.'
' Do you know exactly why I am going to marry
you ?' he said very quietly after a pause. She made
no reply and he went on. ' I will tell you. It is be-
cause of my father's name, which you have dishonoured,
and which it is my duty to lift up out of the mud into,
which you have trampled it—you and your worthless
mother before you.'
They were the hardest words Steeve had ever
spoken to a woman in his life.
Zilla began to cry a little behind her shawl.
'You needn't say such horrid things, Steeve,' she
whimpered—' and I, who love you so well—'
'You—love me!' he said, with a short, scornful
laugh. ' A pretty way you have taken to show your
love, cutting me off from the girl who was all the
world to me.'
Zilla nestled up a little closer to him at this.
' I shall love you better than she ever would, Steeve.
You'd never have been happy with her—forget her.
I know I'll make you forget her. I am cleverer than
Mary Clover, and fifty times handsomer, and you will
see how dearly I will love you, what a good wife I
shall be. I'll behave quite different when once I'm
your wife, Steeve.'
'You will never have the chance,' he answered.
She cast a puzzled glance at his averted face.
' Why, what do you mean ? ' she asked. ' What do
you mean by that, Steeve ? '
But Steeve did not answer her. He never spoke
another word till the dogcart drew up at the ' Red
Lion' in Markton High Street.
CHAPTER XIV
forsaken
Oh, woe the day! the weary, weary day! Would
it never come to an end? Would the long hours
never wear themselves away ; the slow-ticking clock
never cease to drag out the endless minutes ?
Mary crept about the house feebly, a pale, wan
shadow of her former self. From window to window,
upstairs and downstairs, she wandered to and fro,
aimlessly, stupidly ; standing still sometimes for long
moments together, with her aching forehead pressed
against the panes, and her lack-lustre eyes staring
blindly and hopelessly out on to the world.
There was nothing to see outside. Only the thick,
white mist which rolled from heaven to earth, folding
the whole landscape in one dense pall of blank
nothingness. Here and there, quite close to the
house, the dark outline of a tree or the sharp angle
of a barn-roof loomed ghostlike through the fog,
whilst in the kitchen garden the nearmost currant
and gooseberry bushes were just faintly discernable,
the long, serried rows of their fellows behind them
pacing away quickly into an unfathomable distance of
space.
His wedding day ! his wedding day! There was
no other thought in her mind but this. The wedding
day of the man who was hers—who had loved her so
127
128
A SOUL ASTRAY
long and so well! and, with the horrible self-torture
common to all those who suffer, the picture unfolded
itself hour by hour, and bit by bit, before her imagina-
tion, in all its harrowing details.
Ten o'clock—Now they are starting. They will be
going in the dogcart, he and she, side by side. She
will be nestling up to him, looking up fondly and
confidingly into his face. Now he will turn and
smile at her; perhaps he will pass his arm round her.
Oh, pray God he may be driving so that he will have
to be minding the horse. Eleven—They are nearing
the town. Half-past Eleven—Now they are at the
church. Will it be St Luke's or Christ Church?
There will be a crowd—a crowd of strangers, though
—they could not be friends, real friends, to be there!
And Mr Lorrimer, who would not read the service
over them ! God bless him for ever and ever!
It will be a stranger. ' Steven Hardy, wilt thou
have this woman to be thy wedded wife. To have
and to hold, from this day forward, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer, till death do us part.'
Ah no, no, no; he cannot say them—cruel horrible,
blasphemous words—
Twelve o'clock now—'Tis over! They are man and
wife—there is no more hope—'tis past help now!
. . . There will be the wedding feast at home, the
smiles and jokes, the wishes of good luck and
prosperity—and she and he—hand in hand, per-
haps. Now he will kiss her; it is his right, nay, his
duty.
' Ah, God help me! If he were in his coffin I
could bear it better. God in heaven have mercy on
me—kill me—take me away—now—quickly, sud-
denly—send me rather to burn for ever in utter-
most hell—only be merciful, and crush this pain into
deadness—only steep my soul in eternal oblivion !'
' My lamb! my precious lamb!' It was her
FORSAKEN
129
mother's voice above her—her mother's arms that
raised her from the floor of the landing, where she
had fallen prone by the window, that gathered her
close and warm to her motherly breast ' My lamb,
my dear lamb, don't ye fret, don't ye fret!'
She was not clever, or wise, or educated—this
mother of Mary Clover's. She had no eloquence, no
flow of well-sounding words, no theories of sympathy
or of consolation. She was just a plain working
woman of the people, who scarce knew how to read
and write; who had milked the cows and made the
butter, and tended the poultry and 'minded' the house,
rising early and toiling late all the days of her life.
She did not know very well what to say in this sore
trouble of her child's ; but it does not need talent or
book-reading, or an advanced and liberal education to
teach a true woman to feel for the sorrows of another
woman, and that one her own child.
Mary, who had been so well taught, who had learnt
French and Latin, and music and mathematics, and
who spoke and wrote her native tongue like a lady
born, did not remember that her mother was homely
and ignorant as she lay sobbing her heart out upon
her warm, full bosom. At least, she felt and she under-
stood, for she, too, had loved and lost, and sorrowed.
Oh! divine universality of suffering, which lifts the
prince and the beggar together on to the same holy
platform ! Years and years ago, before Mary could
remember, Mrs Clover had laid her only son in the
grave, and had left the best part of her heart there
with him. And so Mary, in that early martyrdom,
in that memory of her unknown brother, reaped the
full fruits of sympathy and comprehension.
' Don't ye cry, my dearie—don't ye cry!' Common-
place words enough, and yet they sufficed, for the
torrent of her anguish was stayed. ' Don't ye cry.
It's too late now, my dearie, and ye must forget
him.'
T
130
A SOUL ASTRAY
'Oh! mother, but it's so hard to bear! It hurts
so—it hurts. I think sometimes that it will kill
me.'
' Ay, ay, I know. I mind well I felt the same the
day little Ernie were took. Sich a beautiful boy he
wer'—jes' turned ten. You were but a bit thing in
long clothes, Mary — and when I saw him a-layin'
there in his narrow coffin, so still like and white, I ses
to mysel':  I shall never smile no more. I shall just
lie down an' die too with him. But it's nigh on five-
and-twenty years ago now since Ernie died, and I'm
alive yet, and have grown old ; and I've had many a
hearty laugh and many a happy day since, and so will
you, Mary. Ah, but it's hard to believe in that when
the trouble is on us, my lamb—it's hard—hard—'
' Mother, if only I'd married him last Easter, when
he wanted me to !' said Mary, sitting up suddenly and
choking back her tears. ' That's what I keep on
thinking, for it's all my own fault—if I'd done as he
wished, then this trouble need never have come. And
Lord Netherby advised me, too.  Don't keep a good
man waiting too long, or you may lose him, Mary,
his lordship said to me. But I was so vain, mother,
so fond of living up at the Hall and pretending to be
a lady, that I would not listen to them. So I put him
off and off, just with words and promises, and now I
see that it is my own vanity that has been the cause
of my undoing, and has lost me the best and truest
lover a girl ever had !'
But Mrs Clover only shook her head and sighed.
She was by no means so sure as Mary was, that Steeve
was a good and true lover, or that he was any loss at
all. For, although her heart ached for her child in
her grief, yet in the main she agreed with her hus-
band as to Steeve's perfidy and wickedness. But she
would not say this to Mary — she only kissed and
smoothed the girl's ruffled brown head that lay on
her shoulder, crooning little sweet, meaningless words
FORSAKEN
of love over her, as she used to do when she was a
baby.
The old people had been very good and tender to
her during the last terrible weeks. Both father and
mother had petted and made much of her, treating
her more like an honoured guest than as a child of
the house. At first she had been really ill—almost
too ill to feel her trouble—and there had been nothing
to do for her in those days but to obey the doctor's
orders and nurse her through her sickness. But when
the fever left her, and she began to go about the house
again—then was the time when she realised the full
extent of her sorrow, and when they vied with one
another in their tender care and love towards their
stricken child.
But not all the love and tenderness in the world
could avail to help her through the first agony of
her loss. It seemed to her impossible, at first, that it
could be true—that it was Steeve, her boy lover, her
faithful sweetheart, who had dealt her this cruel blow,
and who had fallen away from his steadfast truth and
faith. In the old days she had been so sure of him,
so confident and careless, that she had perhaps
scarcely known how bound up he was into her very
existence. She had laughed at the bare idea that
Steeve could even look at another woman. The stars
might fall from their places in heaven, or the sun
cease to rise and set upon the world, sooner than that
Steeve Hardy could be untrue to her. And yet, by
some horrible and mysterious combination of circum-
stances, which even now she could not understand or
fathom, this thing had come to pass. Steeve was no
longer her lover, her husband to be. Her father
had forbidden her to marry him—and to-day, to-day
—he was married to another girl!
Yet, even on this direful day, she did not at her
heart believe that he had been guilty of the sin of
which he was accused. In spite of everything, she
132
A SOUL ASTRAY
would not, could not, believe it. More strongly than
all the arguments in the world against him, she felt
in her inmost soul, and in her instinctive appreciation
of the man's character, that he was innocent, and yet
it was equally certain that he had left her—to marry
Zilla ! Storm-tossed and heart-broken, the poor girl
could find no point of certainty or comprehension
upon which to lean her torn and battered faith. It
was all a dark, chaotic bewilderment to her, a wild
and tangled web, out of which she could see no escape
for the present, no gleam of hope for the future.
Yet through it all, through these, the darkest and
deepest of the waters of affliction, she still held firmly
to that one redeeming thought—her conviction of
Steeve's guiltlessness. Like Mr Lorrimer, she utterly
refused to doubt him.
But for all that, this day was a sore, sore trial to her.,
£ She will be better when it's over,' said Mr Clover
to his wife. 'Tell her to pluck up a bit of spirit. A
fine girl like our Mary will find plenty o' young fel-
lows glad enough to come forward and marry her after
a while, but she must smile and look spic and span
again. Young men won't come a-courting to tearful
faces. Tell her to show some pride.'
But Mrs Clover only shook her head.
"Taint new lovers as Mary wants, Joe, I'm think-
ing. 'Twere no sort o' use to speak of such things
to her now ; and as for pride and spirit—well, I never
knew the lass as is fretting after a man, as pride and
spirit could be any help to ! We must just let her be,
Joe. Ye can't heal a sore heart in any other way.
Let her be, she'll come round in time.'
So the mother's homely advice prevailed, and it
was agreed between them to ' let her be' till Time
should do his work of mercy and healing.
Towards the close of this sad day—the day of her
greatest trial, Steeve's wedding day—Mary seemed
suddenly to grow strangely calmer. She took her
FORSAKEN
133
accustomed place quietly and dutifully at the supper
table between her parents, and, to please her mother,
did her best to swallow the food which the good
woman heaped upon her plate. She even exerted
herself to talk to her father about the recent sale of
the ponies, the prospects of the young turkeys, and
other matters connected with the farm, but these
topics were all fraught with stumbling-blocks, against
which there were no danger signals, and Mr Clover
was perpetually running up against them. On the
subject, for instance, of the ponies—
' Oh, ay, I've done none so badly, though nothing
like some. Simon Hardy, I've heard say, has made
a pot o' money over last week's sale ;' then, at a
meaning look of rebuke from his wife, the poor
man coughed nervously, and dashed violently into
another subject He had met James Grey down at
Brackmere—' very full o' cheek and side he were—the
boys had just put him up to be captain of the football
and cricket club in place of—er—oh—ah—! How
is Fan's pups going on, my dear?' turning quickly to
his wife.
And then Mary said sweetly, with a little ghost of
a smile,—
' You needn't mind mentioning Steeve Hardy's
name to me, father. I shall have to hear of it often
enough ; but I'm sorry they've turned him out of the
clubs; it is a great shame, and very mean of them,
I think.'
But they neither of them made any comment upon
that.
When supper was over, she began to help her
mother to clear the table, and offered to wash up
the dishes for her, but her father called out at that.
' No, no, my girl! we can't have you spoiling your
pretty white hands ; when you've got strong and well
again, they'll be wanting you back to the Hall.'
' Oh, no, father, I can never go back to the Hall
134
A SOUL ASTRAY
now. Don't you know that Lady Netherby has
engaged another governess—a Miss Jennings—from
a high school in London ? Of course she has got the
situation now.'
' Oh, well, then maybe you'll be going up to Lon-
don to take a governess place yourself there ; it might
be a nice change for you ; or there's them banker
folk in Markton, I hear, is looking out for a teacher for
their children. It is quite a grand house in the High
Street, next to the bank, with a walled garden all
round—quite quality people, I'm told, is the Scar-
fields, though, of course, not equal to Lord and Lady
Netherby ; but you might like to try the place for a
bit, just to see how you get on, and it would be
nearer home, too, near enough for you to come over
sometimes on Sundays, if I fetched you out in the
cart on Saturday evenings after market. 'Twas Parson
Lorrimer as spoke to me about it only yesterday.'
' That was very kind of Mr Lorrimer, father,'
and then Mary stopped, and her eyes filled with
tears. ' Mr Lorrimer is a good, kind man. I should
like to go over and see him one day—to-morrow,
perhaps—but I shall tell him that I will not go to
that place in Markton. I've been thinking, that if
you don't mind having me at home, father, I feel I'd
rather stay on with you, and do what I can to help
mother in the house and dairy. She is not so young
and strong as she was, and when I pick up my
strength again, I shall be able to be very useful to
her, I am sure.'
'Just as you please, Mary. You shall do as you
like, lass, only remember 'tis a fine education you've
had, and a lot o' money spent on it, and it seems
kind o' wasting you, to keep you at home doing farm
servants' work.'
' Sometimes I wish you had not spent all the money
on me, father. You see, it only took me out of my
right place, and taught me to be vain and stuck up,
FORSAKEN
135
and to fancy myself a lady, when I am only a farmer's
daughter, just like mother, only not one-half so good
as she is ;' and she came up behind her father's chair
and kissed him tenderly on the top of his bald head,
and then she walked over to the window, and drew
back the curtain, and stood looking out into the night.
4 The fog is all gone,' she said ;4 it is quite a fine night,
the stars are shining.'
4 Won't you go up to your room, my dearie, and
get a good night's sleep ?' said her mother, putting
her arms about her neck.
4 I'll go to my room, mother, for I want to be alone,'
she answered gently and sadly, 4 but it's not much
sleep that I am likely to get to-night.'
CHAPTER XV
'goo d-b ye, sweetheart'
The night was fine and warm, and the stars were
shining.
The old couple were fast asleep in bed, but Mary
leant out of her bedroom window, still fully dressed ;
her chin resting on her hands, and her eyes sadly
fixed upon the dark vault of heaven above. The
chill, white mists had rolled away and vanished, and
the night was now still and balmy as midsummer.
The early autumn violets in the bed beneath her
window threw up faint whiffs of sweetness towards
her; there was as yet no moon, but under the dim,
pearly light of the stars the tall clumps of white and
lilac Michaelmas daisies stood out along the path
against the dark background of the ivy-clad barn
wall behind them. It was very still. There was no
sound save the distant lowing of some lost cow,
wandering upon the moorland, and the tinkle of
the babbling brook over its pebbles at the end of the
garden.
Suddenly the stillness was broken. • There was a
whisper—the faint echo of a voice.
' Mary!'
She started violently, and drew back quickly into
the room, then stood still again, listening intently, and
with a beating heart.
136
'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART'
137
' Mary !' once again.
Was she dreaming—was she alive, or, still more
awful thought, was it the voice of one who lay dying
now, who called to her with his latest breath ?
She leant forward once more out of the open
window, and peered eagerly down through the gloom.
A great clump of rhododendrons stood at the corner
of the grass plot beneath, and, faintly delineated
against its darkness, she seemed now to perceive the
figure of a man.
' Who spoke my name ?' she faltered. ' Who is
there ?'
' It is I, Mary.'
' Steeve !'
She could scarcely believe that she heard aright,
that it was really Steeve—and yet how could she
mistake his voice — that dear voice so familiar to
her from childhood ? Could it be his very self, or
was it perhaps his wraith—his spirit come to bid
her an eternal farewell? And the thought went
through her heart in that terrible moment, that Steeve,
in his despair, might have taken his own life! And
then he spoke once more, and she knew that it was
no ghostly visitation, but his very self.
' I only came to look up once more at your house,
Mary; but when I saw you there leaning out of
your window, I could not help coming over into
the garden just for the hope of a last word with
you.'
' But, Steeve, how is it that you are here ? Were
you not married to-day ? Oh, can it be that it was
put off at last, and you are not married ?'
But a long sigh of despair answered the eager
question in the negative.
' Come down and speak to me, Mary, for I am going
away for ever to-night. For pity's sake, and for the
sake of our old love, come out and speak to me,' was
all he said.
138
A SOUL ASTRAY
'Yes, I will come,' she answered, and drew back
quickly from the window.
Almost immediately the candle was extinguished
in the room, and presently the door below into the
garden opened softly, and she came out to him. He
took her hand in his, but he did not attempt to draw
her nearer to him. It was no tryst of happy lovers,
this meeting under the stars; it was only the outward
farewell of two sundered hearts that were parted
already, far as the poles asunder. For a few seconds
neither of them spoke, but the two hands which
clasped each other trembled exceedingly.
' Oh, Mary, how could you doubt me ?' said Steeve at
last, in an accent of deep reproach. ' How could you
send me that cruel, cruel message, and return me my
letter unopened ? Did you not know me well enough
to be sure that I was innocent of what they accused
me of? Did not your heart tell you ?'
' I don't understand you,' she interrupted quickly.
' I sent you no message. I had no letter from you !
and, Steeve, I believed in you always—then, as I do
now, from the bottom of my heart.'
' Good God ! then it was not true ? and the mes-
sage your father sent to me was a lie ?' and he fell
back from her with a groan, hiding his face in his
hands.
' My father acted for the best, I am sure, Steeve,'
said Mary with an effort, after a pause. ' I was very
ill, delirious, I believe—I knew nothing at all at first.
No doubt father believed he was doing what was right;
we must try not to blame him.'
' But for his letter I would have held out; I would
not have married her!' cried Steeve, brokenly. 'It
was only when you gave me up that I lost all hope
and heart.'
And then the poor girl burst into a flood of bitter
tears.
' Oh, Steeve, why could you not have waited a little
'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART'
139
longer—just a little longer? Why did you not trust
me a little better ? ' she cried between her sobs.
And Steeve had no answer to make to her, for he
had not trusted her—whilst she, God bless her! had
trusted him.
' It is too late now,' he said gloomily, at last, ' too
late ! Do not reproach me, Mary, and forgive me if you
can. I can at least thank and bless you for your
goodness to me. Although, even if I had not heard
those words from your lips, I should still have blessed
you to my dying day, as the best and sweetest woman
I have ever known. And now, Mary, I have come to
wish you good-bye, for I am going away to-night for
long, long years—it may be perhaps for ever.'
' Going away, Steeve ?' she repeated in bewilder-
ment. ' But why?—were you not married to her this
morning ? And this your wedding day ? What will
Zilla think ?—what have you told her ? '
' I have told her nothing, Mary; and what she
thinks, I cannot help. It is no part of my duty to
live with Zilla—it would be a sin if I were to do so.
Since I left her at the church door, I have not seen
her—they came home without me. I told my father
what was true—that I had business in Markton, and
that I would walk over later. When the dogcart
had driven away, I took my bag to the station, and I
did what I had to do—and then I walked back all
the way, just to look up at your window, Mary, just
to breathe a farewell to the house in which you were
sleeping! It has been more than I dared to hope
—that I should see you and speak to you ! God has
been good indeed to me, to grant me this! In all
the years that are to come, I shall at least have this
great happiness to remember—that I saw you again,
and that you talked with me and forgave me!'
' But, Steeve, you must not go !' she cried earnestly.
' You have a wife to whom you have sworn to be true
—you must stay with her.'
140
A SOUL ASTRAY
'No, Mary, I know that that is not required of me,'
he answered gently but very firmly. ' I have given
Zilla my name—to save her reputation, and to spare
my father from open disgrace—but more than that I
will 'not do. I cannot take her to my heart as a
man should take the wife of his bosom, and I will not
make any pretence of it. Zilla will be none the worse
for my absence. As my wife, my father will give her
a home and provide for her—and hers. To live under
the same roof with her, whilst my heart and faith are
yours, and whilst I turn from her with loathing and
contempt, is more than I can do. It has been shown
to me that I am not called upon to do so.'
And Mary's heart throbbed with joy as he spoke.
Was there a woman alive who would not have re-
joiced ! Already half her pain seemed mended.
' Tell me all about it, Steeve,' she whispered, and
she nestled up more closely to him, under the
shadows of the night, twisting her hands familiarly
round his arm just as she had always been used to
do in the old, happy days that were gone for ever—
for he was still hers !—' Let me hear everything.'
And he told her. There could be no reservations
between them now—it was not a time for reticence;
he held back nothing from her.
When the sad and shameful tale was told, there
were a few moments of silence between them—then a
long-drawn, shivering sigh broke from her very heart.
' Oh, my dear ! my dear !' she said brokenly, ' how
hardly you have been used! how bad it must have
been to bear !'
' Mary, I want to ask one last thing of you,' said
Steeve presently. ' It is a great and hard thing, yet I
believe that I shall not appeal to you in vain, for I
know you, Mary ; I know all your goodness of heart.'
' There is nothing that I will not do for you, Steeve,'
she replied quickly; ' but before you even tell me
what it is, there is something I too want to say to
' GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART'
141
you. Sometimes I know you can't have thought I
cared much for you, Steeve—I was so vain and silly—
so full of my own frivolous thoughts. Even the last
time we were together, do you remember, when we
were settling—you know. Ah, my dear!' and she
pressed his arm closer to her as a great sob broke
from him : e that day, I was so full of my clothes
and of my presents, I could talk and think of nothing
else; it was as though I did not value your great,
true love, Steeve, far, far above all those other stupid
little things. But now this great sorrow has shown
me how silly and foolish I have been—how un-
worthy of you.'
' No, no, my true and only love, you have always
been the same—the best and dearest girl on earth.'
' Ah, Steeve! I know better. I know how much I
fell short of your ideal of me. Yet I want you to
know now—now it is all over—that I did really love
you truly and deeply all the time. I have found it out
now that I have lost you. When I was lying upstairs
on my bed all those first days, I had plenty of time
to think; and I can see how much my own foolish
vanity has been the cause of all this trouble that has
fallen on us—'
' No, my Mary !—'
' Oh, yes, but it is true, Steeve. That is all I wanted
to say. Now, ask what you will of me, dear, for you
know that, for your sake, I will do anything.'
' It is about that poor girl—about poor Zilla. I
want you to help her.'
' Oh, Steeve !'
For the moment nature was too strong for her; she
drew back from him in revolt.
' Hear me out. ' I know that you will come to feel
as I do some day. Poor girl, I can't bear to think
about her; she has no one to teach her better, or to
speak kind words that might soften her hardened
heart. How can we tell, you and I, what depths of
142
A SOUL ASTRAY
cruel temptation she may have endured, what bitter-
ness of soul, before she was brought to this pass.'
' She has no soul,' repeated Mary dully.
' Ah, no, you know better than that, Mary. Let us
try to believe that poor Zilla's soul only lies dormant;
perhaps it has slept all these long years, and only
awaits the awakening touch of love and sympathy to
kindle it into life. Mr Lorrimer said to me about
her once, that her soul might be astray, and that in
due time it would come home to her. Mary, if you
can help that poor girl back to a better life, will you
refuse to reach out a kindly hand to her ?'
' You ask a hard thing of me, Steeve. I am only a
woman who loves, and she has taken from me my
all—out of malice, out of sheer, deliberate wickedness.'
' I think not, Mary. I believe that, in her own wild,
lawless way, Zilla really loves me.'
' Loves you ? But who then is this other—this
man whom no one can find ?'
' I do not know. I think it must have been some
wayfarer, perhaps some soldier over from Markton—
I cannot tell. Whoever it was, he has gone away and
there is no trace of him. And Zilla, in her despair
and remorse, clung to me as her only resource, and
threw herself upon my mercy. It is thus I try to
believe it was with her.'
' It was horrible,' murmured the girl with a shudder ;
' she is a very, very wicked woman, Steeve.'
' Not so wicked but that she may learn to become
better—confess the truth, perhaps. Ah, Mary, for my
sake, do not turn your back upon that poor, un-
fortunate and perverse creature. Be good to her if
you have a chance—it would be a deed of mercy and
charity if you could win her heart to better things—if
you could redeem her erring soul. Sometimes it seems
to me that I might have done so much more for her,
all these years that she and I have been like brother
and sister under one roof together; her life with my
' GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART'
143
aunt has not, I fear, been a happy one. I might have
made it brighter and happier; I might have taught her
to be true and honest, and have looked after her a
little. But I did nothing. I just neglected her and
went my own way, and allowed her to fall into sin,
unchecked and unbefriended. And now it seems as
though God had come to me and had required her
soul at my hands. But for me it is too late, it is out
of my power to do anything more for her. Mary, will
you take up the task I have left unfulfilled ? If the
chance comes your way, will you befriend her? Will
you remember that it was my last request to you ?'
'You have asked a hard thing of me, Steeve,' she
said once again. 'Yet I have told you that for the
sake of our love I can refuse you nothing. I cannot
indeed make a friend or companion of Zilla; my
horror of her treachery and of the cruel, false accusa-
tion she has brought against you must for ever stand
between us ; but if I ever see a chance of softening her
hard heart by kindness, or if ever she is in trouble,
and I can help her, I promise you that I will.'
' That is all I ask of you, Mary, and God bless you
for the promise. It has taken a great load off my
mind. And now, my dear—my dear, true love, I
must leave you. I have to get back on foot to Mark-
ton by daybreak, to catch the early train.
' Steeve, where is it you are going ? Is it far away ?
Will you not come back soon ?'
' I shall not come back soon, dearest, and it is very
far away that I am going. I will tell you the truth.
But remember that no one else but you must ever
know. I charge you to keep it secret. Mary, my
father must never find out where I am, or what I
have done ; it would grieve him too sorely.'
' What is it ? Where are you going ?' she cried
with sudden apprehension, for she saw all at once
by his words and by the hesitation of his manner
that he must certainly be upon the brink of some
144
A SOUL ASTRAY
desperate action, which he hardly dared to tell
her of.
' I am going to South Africa. I am due to start
from Southampton to-morrow night; the ship sails at
midnight. I must be on board her by noon.'
'You—are going to emigrate?' she faltered, and
for a moment she tottered and would have fallen,
only he put his arms about her and held her fast.
'Be brave, my own Mary. No; I am not emi-
grating.'
' What then ?'
' I have enlisted.'
' Oh, Steeve, Steeve !' she cried wildly. ' Oh, how
could you ? But you must not—you shall not. You,
so well brought up, so well educated, so above your
station, to go for a common soldier! Oh, you cannot,
shall not do it!'
' Hush, hush ! Mary, dear. It is not so dreadful a
thing at all. A soldier's life is a good and honour-
able one, and there is no disgrace about it, only a just
pride, to a man who does his duty, and serves his
queen and his country faithfully.'
'But there might be wars. You might be killed.
Oh, how am I to bear it ?'
' All that is in God's hands, my dear. If I were,
as you say, to be killed, to fall in battle, or to die of
fever, would it be so terrible an end after all to a life
that is marred and spoilt already, and is valueless to
myself even now ? If you ever hear that I am dead,
Mary, do not grieve for me; rather be glad that my
days are over, and that I have gone to a happier
world than this sad one. And, Mary, dear, I do not
want you to sorrow for me morbidly or foolishly. You
are young and pretty, and some other man, better and
worthier than I, will want you some day to be his
wife, and then you must not think you are bound to
stay single for my sake. You must marry him and
be happy.'
'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART
145
' I shall never, never marry, Steeve!' she cried
passionately. ' I swear to you that I will be true to
you all the days of my life.'
He strained her to his heart and kissed her again
and again.
' No ; don't take rash oaths, my dear. By-and-by
you may come to see things differently, and then
you will recall to mind that Steeve did not ask this
of you—that he had rather you were happy, and
remembered him only as your earliest friend, whose
love, alas! had only brought sorrow and suffering to
you. And now, my dear one, put your arms about
my neck and kiss me once, for I must go. I have a
long, long tramp before me, and the hours are passing
quickly. Kiss me again for the last, last time, Mary,
and go to bed, my dear one. Light your candle,
Mary darling, when you get upstairs, so that 1
may look back as long as I can on my way across
the moor. I shall see it as far off as Brackmere Pool,
love, where you and I have walked so often together
in all the long, happy years we have loved each other.
Good-bye, good-bye again—sweet love—sweetheart.'
And far away across the moor, the wanderer turned
and stood to watch the pale glimmer from her bed-
room window, looking back yet again and again to
wave his hand in mute farewell, till his path left the
dark mere behind, and a shoulder of the moor rose
between him and the house, so that he could see the
faint beacon light no longer.
K
CHAPTER XVI
SIX YEARS LATER
'TlS an old story now, and the gossips on Cramer
Forest have left off talking about it—how Steeve
Hardy disappeared on his wedding day, leaving his
new wife at the church door in Markton, and was
never seen or heard of more.
There had been some who thought they remembered
him the same afternoon going and coming about the
streets of the bustling market town; and a Cramer
Forest woman on a visit to her uncle, the grocer,
swore to having seen him pass outside the shop,
quite late in the evening, whilst a porter at the
station fancied he remembered someone answering
to the description of him on the platform early the
next morning, just before the first trains started, but
no further trace of him was ever discovered. There
were two trains that left Markton simultaneously at
six o'clock—the down one to Southampton, and the
up one to London. No one could tell which the tall,
fair-haired young man, who was sought by his friends,
had entered. There was usually a bustle on the plat-
forms for the early trains, and none of the officials were
Cramer Forest or even Markton men—they did not
know Steeve by sight—they could not remember him.
'We shall get a letter,' said Simon Hardy to his
sister. ' He will write.'
146
SIX YEARS LATER
147
But he did not write, and the days and weeks
lengthened themselves into months and years, and
nothing more was heard of him.
They might have traced him, of course, although
he had enlisted under an assumed name; but the
modern methods of obtaining intelligence and informa-
tion were not familiar to Simon Hardy and his sister.
They were primitively ignorant of ways and means
connected with Inquiry Agencies and detectives.
Neither did it occur to Simon to place his family
troubles in the hands of a solicitor. Indeed, his great
idea at first had been to hush up the mystery of his
son's disappearance, following so soon upon his
strange marriage, and to say nothing about it to
friends and neighbours so long as it was possible to
keep it secret; so that much valuable time had been
lost at the outset, which it would have been in any
case impossible to recover.
In time, the secret was a secret no longer, and
everybody knew everything there was to know
about Steeve's disappearance; and everybody com-
mented in his or her fashion upon the motives and
causes thereof; and there were some that said that he
had fled ignominiously because he was guilty, and
could not face the shame of his public disgrace.
And there were others who were of opinion that his
father should never have forced him to marry a
soulless gipsy, and that he must have seen the devil
look out of her eyes when he stood up by her side
in church, and so had fled away from her in terror;
and there were others again who said it was a crying
shame to have left a young wife, and she so near her
time, poor thing; and as he had done the right thing
and made an honest woman of her, why could he
not have stayed to be a good husband to her also ?
Most people, in fact, blamed Steeve more or less,
whilst a few shook their heads and thought there was
more in it than met the eye. And one or two, amongst
14B
A SOUL ASTRAY
whom Mr Lorrimer and Lord Netherby might be
reckoned, regretted him sincerely and deeply.
Time went on, and Steeve was mentioned no
more. The waters where he had gone down closed
over his head, and life flowed on again without him,
much the same as before.
There were the dreary winters—cold with frosts or
wet with heavy rains and drenching mists, as the
season might happen to be—followed in due course
by the long, golden days of summer. And the rough
ponies wandered in herds across the Forest; and there
were the branding days in early spring, when the
foals were young, and the June and August and
November sales, all in their order, and every man
went and came about his business and made money—
or lost it—as the case might be. And the women
milked the cows and fed the poultry and sold their
butter and eggs, just as they had always done, and
each one was full of his own affairs and interests, and
worked and toiled for his own advancement in life.
The youths grew up into men, and married and set
up house in farms or cottages of their own, and
comely maidens became buxom matrons with little
children clinging about their skirts; and some fell
out, and were buried and forgotten. And so life
went on until the story of Steeve Hardy became a
thing of the past.
Yet at the Warren Farm, changed although it was,
he was remembered still.
Simon Hardy grieved for his only son with a grief
which did not diminish with time. He had never
been the same man since. Very few months after
that fatal wedding day, and just at the time when a
new little personage first opened his baby eyes upon
this world of sin and sorrow, Simon Hardy had been
suddenly seized with an attack of illness which was
undoubtedly of the nature of a paralytic stroke. It
was probably mainly due to the accidental fact that
SIX YEARS AFTER
149
the best doctor in Markton happened to be in the
house at the time—on matters connected with the
aforementioned small existence that had only just
commenced—and that he was immediately available
by the old man's bedside, that the farmer recovered
from this visitation so quickly and so completely as he
did. Yet he was never afterwards able to do quite
as much as of old. His strength was broken, his
activity impaired, and he dropped all at once into an
old man.
When he got about again, he would ride a quiet
old cob leisurely about the place, or potter out with
a stick when it was fine, and in bad weather he sat
indoors in his chimney corner and did nothing. And
he grew to depend more and more on Bill Goades,
who, as time went on, slipped gradually into the
place of a sort of manager or factotum, and bought
and sold and cheated at his own sweet will.
Things all went badly now at the Warren Farm. It
seemed as though, since Steeve's departure, a blight
had fallen upon the once happy and prosperous
homestead. The ponies sold badly at the November
sale; many of them were undersized and fetched
next to nothing. One or two of the best of the young
colts died of strangles, and a valuable brood mare fell
over a gravel pit, during a sea mist, and broke her
leg and had to be shot.
The winter that followed was a very severe one, so
that the grass perished and the gorse was killed, and
there was no keep for the animals on the moor. Hay
was abnormally dear and bad, because of the long, dry
summer, which had ruined the hay harvest; and now
it had to be purchased at a ruinous price, so as to
keep the beasts alive. Then, too, many of the cows
fell sick, and the supply of milk failed, so that the
accounts on all sides fell into hopeless arrears of debts
and liabilities. It was all out-goings at last at the
Warren Farm, and no in-comings at all.
A SOUL ASTRAY
Then a sore and woful trouble befell Simon Hardy.
Since his illness, Miss Prudence had taken upon her-
self the whole burden of the establishment, both
outdoors and indoors ; she overlooked everything, and
her quick, managing eye and sturdy common-sense
had in a great measure staved off a total collapse, and
would no doubt in time have pulled things together
and tided through the evil days. But Miss Prudence,
by ill luck, caught a chill, just after Christmas Day,
from standing about too long in the cold whilst
superintending some alterations in the cow byres, and
she took to her bed and died, after a few days of ill-
ness, from acute inflammation of the lungs.
So the farmer was left alone—in broken health and
sorrowful spirits—falling more and more into the
unscrupulous hands of Bill Goades and Sarah his
wife, who now came to take up their abode in the
house, and with no other companionship save that
of his strange, dark-eyed daughter-in-law, and of the
child whom he honestly tried to believe was Steeve's.
For, as the child grew, from a mere shapeless bundle
of clothes, into a little toddling thing that could just
stagger across the parlour floor from chair to chair, or
come and stand chin high against his knee, holding on
with two chubby pink-and-white morsels of hands to
his corduroy breeches, it came to that at last, with
Simon Hardy, that he tried to believe that the boy
was his grandson.
For if he were not—and the doubt crept more and
more into his mind as the years went on—then what
sort of man was he who had driven forth his own son
into the world to make way for the son of a harlot ?
This was a thought which pursued and haunted
him day and night—night and day. His life was
spent in battling with it—in refusing to face it, in
staving it back, as it were, with both hands with all
his strength.
For either he had been right, and justice had been
SIX YEARS AFTER
151
done, and the Lord's righteous anger appeased—for
it was ever as an irate and avenging Deity that
Simon Hardy thought of his Maker—or else he had
committed an egregious and terrible mistake, and had
furthered and enforced an act of the grossest injustice
and cruelty upon his own son whom he loved !
The first doubts of his own deed had come into
mind at the time of Steeve's disappearance. For why
had Steeve gone away? Why had he left the girl
after going through the form of marriage with her,
unless it was that he utterly repudiated her claim
upon him ? Such a persistency of denial was not
without its effect upon Simon. He had taken it for
granted that, once the marriage had become a fact,
Steeve would do his duty to his wife and settle down
contentedly into the groove into which he had been
forced. Simon knew, and had reckoned upon the
fact, that Steeve was not at all the man to ill-treat or
neglect a woman who had a right to him, still less was
he one to turn his back upon an innocent child of
whom he was the father ; that he had done so—and
that so immediately and so effectually that the
integrity of his intention could not be doubted —
caused his father some very terrible and harassing
doubts and uncertainties.
Supposing after all that Steeve were innocent?
And then he called to mind all the long, blameless
years of his boy's life—his frank and open character,
his lovable and kindly disposition, and the high
reputation for honour and manliness which he had
earned for himself, and of which he, his father, had
been so justly proud; and many and many a night
did the old man lie awake on his bed and water his
pillow with bitter tears as he thought of it all, and
wondered sadly where that dear son was now—
and what might not be the straits and difficulties
which encompassed him about in his self - im-
posed exile.
152
A SOUL ASTRAY
And yet Zilla never wavered, never swerved in her
constant and repeated asseverations.
The lie that she had told, was told so often and so
emphatically, that it became at last almost as a truth
to her, and she more than half believed it herself.
Steeve was her husband, she argued—she bore his
name by right—no one could take him from her, and
the child had been called after him. But although he
had been duly christened ' Steven,' the babe himself
had re-named himself in his own way, as babies some-
times will. When he grew to babble about himself
and the world in general; the child called himself
'Tot,' some infantine contraction of his own for which
there seemed no apparent derivation, but which stuck
to him for life, so that he remained ' Tot' to the end
of it.
He grew into a lovely child—bright-haired and
grey-eyed and fair-complexioned—with little graceful
ways of his own which were altogether captivating.
But although he was so distinctly fair, and so utterly
unlike his dark-browed mother, it was clear to the
plainest understanding that his fairness was not that
of Steeve Hardy's. Steeve had the pale flaxen hair
and clear blue eyes of his Saxon ancestry. Tot's hair
was a warm red auburn, his eyes were darker—his
colouring altogether ruddier and more strongly
marked. Simon Hardy would sit for long minutes
together, his hand shading his brow and his keen
blue eyes fixed earnestly upon the small, toddling
creature, as it tottered about the old farm parlour,
trying with a painful intensity to recall Steeve's early
childhood to his failing memory. Sometimes he
seemed to discern in some trick of the baby fingers,
as they crooked themselves upon the arm of a chair,
or in some upturned look of glee at the dusty ray of
the sun shaft as it fell through the diamond-paned
window across the dark backgrounds of polished oak
and red-tiled floor—in some chance movement or
SIX YEARS AFTER
153
expression—something at which he could exclaim to
himself with a sudden joyful conviction,—
' There! that surely was like enough to Steeve at
his age! I remember—I remember—' but he did not
remember; for it is only in mothers' hearts that
such pictures of their children's early years remain
enshrined and encompassed, in sweet, embalming
spices for ever.
Nevertheless, the baby wound himself into the old
man's heart. The sweet seriousness of childhood
shone in Tot's grey eyes, and puckered his rosebud
mouth into preternatural gravity as he stood at his
reputed grandfather's knee, and stared up into the
wrinkled, care-worn face and haggard eyes above
him, not with any fear or sense of awe. Tot was not
in the least afraid—he would stand there gravely con-
templative for some minutes, and then suddenly he
would smile all over his plump, dimpled face, and
break into a little chuckling laughter that was like
the ripple of the brook over its pebbles after the rain,
or he would stretch out his pink-tipped fingers and
clutch at the old man's glittering watch-chain, or
make violent, struggling efforts with his short, chubby
legs to clamber up on to his knee, till Simon
would stoop and gather him up himself on to the
coveted throne, and hold him tightly to his heart.
And at such times Simon Hardy would say to him-
self,—' He is my son's child. Bone of my bone, and
flesh of my flesh ! It is nature that teaches him to
love me.'
And the old man would be soothed and happy,—
until the next time that the doubt crept back.
CHAPTER XVII
THE TWO WOMEN
ZiLLA lay stretched at full length upon the steep, sun-
bathed slope above Brackmere pool. It was mid-
summer, and there was a hum of bees in the air over
the flare of the scented gorse, a flutter of butterfly
wings, and the quick darting flash of a gaudy dragon
fly above the tall yellow flags upon the water's edge.
Zilla lay like a beautiful wild animal that revels in the
heat. She was handsomer than ever in these days of
her prosperity and idleness. She had no one to scold
and rail at her, now that poor Miss Prudence lay at
rest beneath the churchyard grass; no one to order
her about and to call her evil names, to preach at
her for her godlessness, and to rebuke her for her slat-
ternly ways.
Zilla was ' Mrs Steeve' now, and did pretty much
as she liked. The people about were more civil to
her than they had been in the old days. They did
not like her any better; they shunned her still for a
gipsy, and feared her secretly, lest she should breathe
incantations or cast spells upon them—but they
respected her far more. For Steeve had righted her
they argued, he had made an honest woman of her
—as the popular saying is—she bore his name, and
Simon Hardy kept her in his house, and acknow-
ledged her child. All these things had acted in
154
THE TWO WOMEN
155
Zilla's favour, and the neighbours were civil enough
to her now.
The old man seemed to give her plenty of money,
too, bad as the times were, they remarked to each
other, for the child was well-dressed in ready-made
suits, bought in a Markton shop—no expense spared,
idle vagabond that she was ! who knew not how to
cut and make her child's clothes herself, as other
young mothers did on Cramer Forest! But to her
face they were polite enough, calling her ' Mrs
Steeve,' and admiring the beauty of the boy.
And if Zilla had suffered—and it is certain that for
a time at least she did suffer, and that acutely—from
Steeve's desertion of her, there were no traces of
that suffering left now in her warm, rounded cheeks
and great, lazy eyes. Her feelings and passions were
strong and stormy, but brief and transient like those
of the animals.
The most enduring feeling she had ever had in her
life was her love and longing for Steeve. She had
won him and she had triumphed. She had lost him
and she had suffered—but both the triumph and the
suffering were outlived now. She had forgotten
them.
Her sorrow weighed no more heavily upon her than
her sin. Both were past and over now, and Zilla had
no power to live in the past; the present was enough
for her needs.
And for the present, she was content. She was
well fed and well clothed. She was left to be as idle
as the days were long—no one contradicted her or
interfered with her—and, like some great, soft, feline
creature that basks all day in the warmth of the sun
or the fire, she wanted nothing more than just to be
at peace. As long as the world let her alone, she was
harmless ; it was only when roused by contradiction
or by rebuke, that the evil of the animal nature with-
in her came actively to the surface.
A SOUL ASTRAY
As for her higher instincts—such as they were—they
were satisfied. If she had lost the man, she had got
the child, and for her child she had the strong yet
half-savage affection of the tigress for her cubs, of the
wild cat for her kittens.
She would cuff and beat Tot if the fancy took her,
would scold him fiercely or shake him till he trembled
with terror ; but if anyone else but herself laid a hand
on him, even in kindness, or gave him a word of chid-
ing or advice, then Zilla would fly at the rash intruder
with flaming eyes and furious words, resenting the
slightest interference with all the ferocity of her wild
and untamed nature.
It is certain that had she not been too ill at the
time to be capable of remonstrance, and had not Miss
Prudence been there and carried the delicate babe
off herself to the church to be christened, Zilla would
have kept him an unbaptised heathen to this day.
She was very angry when she heard what had been
done, and that Mr Lorrimer had performed the cere-
mony; and she had resented her aunt's prompt action
in the matter with all her might.
As Tot grew older, she flatly declined to allow him
to attend the infant schools.
Mr Lorrimer came himself to entreat her to recon-
sider her decision, and to plead with her, for the child's
own sake, to allow him to be taught with the other
children. But Zilla hated Mr Lorrimer because she
knew by his grave face of disapproval that he believed
in Steeve, and had credited his story, and not hers—
and so she would have none of his advice.
She would teach her child herself, she told him,
with a touch of defiance in her voice and look. And
as these were before the days of modern Board
Schools and compulsory education, she was able to
do as she liked.
What she taught him, or tried hard to teach him,
was what she knew herself—that strange animal lore
THE TWO WOMEN
157
that had come to her somehow with the wild blood in
her veins. But the boy was not a very apt pupil, and
her own powers of attraction and fascination had
never been quite so strong again as in the old days
before her purity had become smirched and blackened
by shame and falsehood. She was conscious of this
herself and felt it bitterly, and she struggled with all
her might against the lessening of her own singular
gift. It was with her still, but it was a diminished
force. It took her longer now to attract a furred or
feathered thing to her hand ; the gentle creatures were
seemingly more timid and suspicious; they came to
her more slowly and with greater reluctance, and
were more easily scared away from her touch than in
the old days. And this, to the half-bred gipsy's
curiously constituted mind, brought home to her
still the most tangible and definite idea of punish-
ment and of a just retribution of which she was
capable.
It gave her more pain to have lost some of her old
sympathetic communion with the dumb animals than
to have wrought the utter ruin of the man she had
loved, and the unhappiness of those to whom he was
dear. As she lay on her back upon the grass, there
came a sudden flutter of wings above her, against the
blue of the noonday sky. Something dropped into
the thorn bush hard by; Zilla rolled slowly over on
to her side. A dark-breasted starling, with twinkling
jewel eyes and yellow beak—sat perched upon a
branch above her head. The bird was so close she
might almost have touched him ; he held his speckled
head a little to one side in an attitude of questioning
and inquiry. Zilla ventured upon a little whistling
note. The bird fluttered suddenly off a little way and
waited, then hovered back, and poised again on a
swaying bough not quite so near to her. *
During this performance, Zilla, without moving her
eyes, which were fixed upon the bird, lifted her hand
i5S
A SOUL ASTRAY
and beckoned gently to the child, who was seated at
her feet making a buttercup chain.
Tot crept close to her and nestled within her arm.
' Now watch me,' she whispered to him. ' Keep
quite, quite still, and watch. Then you will see exactly
how I do it. Fix your eyes upon his, just as I do;
and listen.'
Then she began the low whistling notes once more,
and the starling fluttered a little bit nearer. Presently
she varied the sounds, making strange rippling noises
in her throat and between her closed lips, and the
bird came nearer still, whilst the child looked on with
breathless delight.
At last the starling came so close to them both
that with one more advance he would have perched
on Zilla's shoulder, her heart was throbbing high with
excitement, as it always did in these encounters of
hers with the animal world—she knew that she was
winning—when, alas ! in one moment all was undone !
For Tot could contain himself no longer, his ecstasy
was too much for him ; he clapped his hands together,
and shouted aloud with delight!
The starling uttered a shrill note of alarm, spread
his speckled wings, and flew far away,
Then one of those sudden tempests of rage, to
which she had always been liable^ overcame her.
She caught the boy by the shoulder and shook him
savagely, cuffing him fiercely about the head with her
strong brown hands ; and then flung him from her
with all her might, so that he fell backwards down
the slippery grass incline that trended steeply into
the mere.
There was a cry of horror behind her, a swift rush
of footsteps as someone shot suddenly past; and just
as the boy's falling body hovered above the dancing
water, he was caught by an outstretched arm that
clutched at the skirt of his little tunic, and dragged
him safely back upon the margin of the pool.
THE TWO WOMEN
159
Then Mary looked round—breathless and glad, yet
with eyes full of unutterable horror and reproach.
And for the first time for six long years, the two
women stood face to face.
4 Oh! how could you!' she gasped with panting
breath ; 4 he might have been drowned !'
' What business is it of yours ?'
They stood a couple or so of yards asunder, the
boy between them, crying and clinging to the skirts
of his deliverer.
4 Poor child—poor, sweet child !' murmured Mary,
feeling how the little body trembled against her, and
stooping over him to comfort him.
'Take your hands off my child instantly,' said the
other. ' Have you not had enough of trying to take
away, what is mine by right ?'
A burning blush covered Mary's face from brow
to chin.
'You are not worthy to have a child, if you treat it
so roughly,' she said bravely.
' Leave go of my child ; he is Steeve Hardy's boy,
and mine, not yours. Do you not think him like
Steeve?' she added audaciously with a cruel smile.
4 Come here to me, Steven; come to your mother.'
'I'm not Steven, I am Tot!' said the child, with
a little pouting grimace; yet he moved towards his
mother obediently, although with reluctance.
'You may call yourself anything you like, but your
name is Steven—Steven Hardy. He is like his
father, isn't he ?' she repeated once more, her bold
eyes glittering with an insolent assurance as they
looked straight into Mary's gentle face of confusion
and distress.
Zilla dragged the child to her with one hand, and
held him close against her; then she put her other
hand under his chin and turned his face up.
' Look at that, woman,' she said to him ; 41 want
you to show her your face, little Steeve Hardy! Show
i6o
A SOUL ASTRAY
her how pink and white your skin is — like your
father's and all his people.'
And for a moment Mary did look, searchingly and
earnestly, seeking almost unconsciously, in spite of
her own knowledge and conviction, for that likeness
to one who was gone—which she knew well enough
could not be there.
' He is not like Steeve,' she said quietly. ' I do
not see the faintest likeness to him.'
Zilla laughed harshly and pushed the child away
along the path before her.
' None so blind as those that won't see !' she cried,
looking back over her shoulder with her mocking,
handsome face. ' Ah, well, Mary Clover, you are
Mary Clover still; and I wouldn't waste my time, if
I were you, fretting after another woman's husband !
It doesn't make you look any younger. Why don't
you go about more? It must be dull work messing
about after an invalid mother. Go about and see
your friends and look more cheerful, and then perhaps
you'll pick up a husband of your own before you get
too old to have another chance! That will do you
much more good than pulling a long face all the
years of your life over a man that belongs to some-
one else.'
She waved her hand lightly with a little sneering
laugh of scorn and derision, and then she went her
way leisurely over the shoulder of the slope, the
child trotting contentedly along by her side.
Tot had picked up his chain of buttercups again
from the grass where it had fallen; he was counting
the flower heads over as he walked, as a devotee
counts the beads upon his chaplet. He was perfectly
happy again, for the storm was over, and, childlike, he
had forgotten it. Tot was not one of those who remem-
ber an injury. Mary stood looking after her as she
slowly climbed the slope. She could not but admire
the strange, wild grace of the tall, supple figure, clad
THE TWO WOMEN
161
in rough, brown homespun, with gay-striped scarves
of brilliant colours knotted about her head and waist,
and crossed in broad, deep folds over her bosom. For
Zilla still affected these outlandish methods of dress,
which her innate picturesqueness of feeling dictated
to her, and which had given such dire offence to poor
Miss Prudence ; but Miss Prudence was dead now, and
so Zilla dressed herself as she chose.
When she reached the top of the hill, she turned
and looked back; her slender form stood out against
the cloudless sky behind her, her fine dark head was
thrown back ; her white teeth gleamed through her
scarlet lips as she waved a last laughing farewell of
triumph and derision. It was Mary of the pure heart
and guileless life, who shrank and bent her head in
confusion and sorrow, but Zilla passed away out of
sight—proud, triumphant and gay—brazening it to the
last over the rival whom she had outwitted. Mary
sank hopelessly down upon the purple heather by
the water's edge—her eyes were blinded by bitter
tears.
' Oh, Steeve! Steeve !' she murmured aloud, ' this
is how I have kept my last promise to you ! This is
the kind sympathy I swore to you that I would show
to her! I have only estranged her further now, made
her hate me worse than ever, because I came between
her anger and that poor little child ! Oh, there is no-
thing to be done with one like Zilla! She is hardened
and cruel, she will never repent, and Steeve will never
be set free from her slanders.'
For a long time she sat there motionless, her hands
locked about her knees, staring with blinded eyes
upon the dimpling water of the mere. Ah, dear
water! by whose side she and he had wandered so
often in the sweet summer evenings long gone by,
hand in hand, prattling happily of the long, glad years
that lay before them, and now—and now— !
And Mary bowed her head upon her knees and
L
A SOUL ASTRAY
one great heart-rending sob broke from her, as though
it would tear her very soul in two.
' Why did I let her go like that ?' she cried aloud.
' Why did I not question her about him ? She may
have heard something, may have found out where he
is ! Oh, what a coward I am ! what a coward ! What
did her cruel insults signify to me, to me whom he
loved, whom he loves still if he lives ? Ah, but does
he live still ? and does she know where he is—does
she know ?'
For a long time she sat there battling with all these
miserable thoughts.
' Zilla is a hard and wicked woman,' she had said
to herself despairingly. Yet after a long while she
subdued the anger and indignation within her, and
grew calm and brave once more. Steeve's last injunc-
tion came back to her again. Steeve, who might be
dead, whom she might never see again ! Steeve had
told her to be good to Zilla.
' She is not in trouble now,' she thought, as she rose
at length and prepared to go home. ' I have not had
my chance with her yet Some day she may be ill—
or the child may be ill—who knows ? If I could go
to her then, when she was unhappy, her heart would
perhaps be softer, and I might be able to touch it.
For I will not believe that Zilla has no soul. Steeve
would not have it so ; neither will I. She will awaken
some day; success has hardened her in her sin, but
God will know how to bring her to Himself. I must
wait.'
And so, with gentler thoughts and calmer heart,
Mary rose at last and walked slowly homeward
through the lengthening shadows of the golden
afternoon.
CHAPTER XVIII
mary's new lover
Ever since her father's death, now nearly four years
ago, Mary Clover and her mother had lived together
in a little six-roomed cottage within half a mile of
their old home.
The widow had not found herself left well enough
off to enable her to carry on the work of the farm
after her husband's death, and so it had to be let;
but Lord and Lady Netherby had not forgotten
their old favourite and her sad story; they had found
an empty cottage for her—it had been tenanted
once by Joseph Clover's herdsman — and Lord
Netherby had had it put in thorough repair, and
had added a little to the tiny garden, and given it
rent free to Mrs Clover for her life, and for Mary's
life after her.
Mary had never gone out as a governess again.
Even during her father's lifetime, she had stuck to
her first resolution and remained at home to help
her mother. And now that that dear mother was
alone in the world, and broken in health and spirits,
it was more impossible than ever that she should
leave her.
So the two women lived quietly together in the
old thatched cottage, and Mary did the house work
and the cooking, and planted and sowed in the little
163
164
A SOUL ASTRAY
patch of garden, and looked after her mother, and
toiled early and late like any other working woman
on Cramer Forest, and it sometimes seemed to her
like a dream that she had once lived at Netherby
Hall, and had been as one of the family and had fared
delicately, sitting down to her meals with the rest in
the large, oak-panelled dining-room, with men-servants
handing silver dishes behind her chair, exactly as if
she had been a lady born herself.
'What I grieve over, Mary,' Mrs Clover used to
say to her sometimes, ' is all that fine education your
poor father gave you, and was so proud of, and all
the book learning that is thrown away !'
' It isn't thrown away, mother,' Mary would
answer cheerfully; ' it is the books that have taught
me to go back to my old life and be content with it.
Books teach one a great many more things than you
have any idea of, mother, dear! Besides which they
are the greatest pleasure of my life now. What
should I do without them in the long evenings, after
my work is done ?'
' Still, it's a sad thing for a girl so well taught and
so clever as you are, to be scrubbing and cooking
and working, for all the world like one of the com-
mon girls about, who hardly know how to read and
write!'
' Ah, it's not work that hurts me, mother, darling!'
Mary would answer, with a sigh.
' I know, I know!' the mother would reply, with
her loving look of sympathy. ' But as I told you
at first, my lamb, time helps, and has helped you
already.'
Yet it is doubtful whether time had helped Mary
as much as her mother fondly hoped and prophesied,
Time softens some blows—the blow of death espe-
daily—in a wonderful manner. But it is partly the
utter hoplessness of death which works its own
merciful miracle in our hearts. When we know
MARY'S NEW LOVER
165
that there is nothing more to be done—nothing more
to be hoped for—no reunion possible on this side of
the grave, then it becomes a hard necessity to take
up the broken life once more, and to still the aching
heart into the numbness of resignation.
But Mary's trouble was not of this kind. There
was never any rest or peace in her heart. She was
for ever hoping, expecting, longing, fearing.
The story could not end as it had done. There
must be a sequel to it some day or other.
Steeve, if he was alive, must be heard of again,
either for weal or woe. He might return at any time,
indeed, for the truth might be made plain, and his
name be miraculously cleared. God would not suffer
this great crime to triumph for ever; the injustice
would be swept away; the wicked doers would be
punished, the innocent vindicated—so she argued over
and over again to herself. Thus there was no for-
getting of the past for Mary. Her own share in
Steeve's life was, indeed, over—that she knew, and
submitted herself to. She wept no longer for her lost
lover, but only for his ruined and blighted life. If
only she might live to see him restored in honour to
his old place in the world, then she asked for nothing
for herself—it was all she prayed for.
The long years of trouble and of wearing anxiety
had left their traces upon her. Zilla had been right
enough when she had taunted her with aged looks
and diminished beauty. There were lines now where
once there had been smiles, about her tired eyes and
lips. The once rounded cheeks had lost their bloom
and had acquired that pathetic inward curve which
is not without a certain charm of its own ; the old,
merry, girlish laughter was silenced, her smiles were
few and far between, whilst here and there a silver
thread had stolen into the brown of her glossy hair.
But for all that, there was a beauty in Mary Clover's
face now which had been lacking to it in the old, happy
A SOUL ASTRAY
days of her careless, and somewhat vain and selfish,
girlhood—the beauty of a chastened heart, of a suffer-
ing which had refined and elevated her, of a patient
endurance under sorrow, which had strengthened and
purified her whole nature.
This subtle change, which had altered, without
diminishing, the character of her beauty, was one
which was naturally totally unappreciated by such
a one as Zilla.
But there were others who saw it and loved it in
her—Mr Lorrimer, who had grown to depend on
Mary for any deed of kindness and charity in the
parish that needed a woman's presence and influ-
ence, and who looked upon her with ever-increasing
affection and reverence. The gentle mother, too,
whose weary days of failing health were brightened
and sweetened by the tender care of her child, and
to whom Mary was still the loveliest as well as the
best of daughters. These two saw no diminution in
her beauty.
And there was one other besides, in whose eyes
Mary Clover was fairer and sweeter than any other
maiden in all Cramer Forest, however blooming and
young she might be.
Andrew Skelling was the tenant who had taken
Brackmere Farm on Joseph Clover's death. He was
a stranger, from the other side of Markton, and no
one had heard anything about him before he came,
save that he was a widower with no children, a fact
which aroused sundry hopes and aspirations in the
breasts of all the marriageable maidens of the neigh-
bourhood.
Andrew Skelling was forty years old, and young
looking for his age; and in view of his new venture
in taking over the end of the late Joseph Clover's
lease, including all the ponies, cattle, pigs, farm im-
plements and farm labourers, together with the greater
portion of the furniture of the house itself, and the
MARY'S NEW LOVER
167
whole of the muniments of the dairy and chicken
yards, he was not at all indisposed to enlarge that
venture by entering once more the holy estate of
matrimony. Skelling fully realised that his enterprise
was one of arduous responsibility, and that an active
and capable woman to take the head of some portion
of his affairs would add materially to the solidity of his
position, and to the prosperity of his establishment.
A wife was, in short, almost a necessity to him
at Brackmere. He had been attached to his first
wife, who had been a good and worthy creature, of
homely appearance and many sterling qualities; but
she had now been dead some years, and he felt that,
if he married again, it would be no disrespect to her
memory.
He was quite ready, therefore, to look about him
for some clever and agreeable young woman who
thoroughly understood the management of maids and
of dairy, whom he could like and respect, and who
would make him an agreeable, as well as a useful
companion. It was in this practical spirit that he
had sought out and married the late Mrs Skelling.
But unfortunately for the chances of several most
excellent young women who would have amply ful-
filled all the conditions that he desired, and would
have been only too happy to devote themselves to
the service of such a fine-looking man as the new
master of Brackmere, Andrew Skelling fell, almost
immediately after his installation in his new home,
under the spell of Mary Clover. He knew nothing
of her when he arrived, but he soon heard all her
story, or rather that version of it which the neighbours
took care to relate to him.
She had once been governess up at the Hall, they
told him, and had held her head mighty high—nobody
was good enough for Mary Clover in those days !—but,
poor thing, she had been sadly humbled and her pride
brought low; for just as she was going to be married
i68
A SOUL ASTRAY
and have a wonderful grand wedding, Lord and Lady
Netherby themselves having promised to be there,
and giving her all sorts of expensive presents that
were quite unsuited to her station in life—at the
last moment her young man threw her over for the
sake of his cousin, a gipsy girl who was no better
than she should be, whom he had got into trouble ;
and Steeve disappeared on his wedding day and
had never been heard of again ! Mary Clover had
nearly died of it, and had never got over it yet,
' leastways she's an old maid to this day, and likely
to remain so,' they added with an agreeable sense of
conviction.
Andrew listened to these accounts in silence, and
he filled in the details of the story later, from his own
observation, when he grew to know Mary Clover
better; and every time he met her, her image sank
deeper and deeper into his heart.
He never forgot the first day he saw her, when he
walked over to Mrs Clover's cottage, on the second
evening after his arrival, to pay his respects to the
old lady.
As he neared the low, thatched building, with the
rose bush on either side of the rustic porch, and the
holyoaks and sweet peas in full flower forming a
fence between the little garden and the open moor,
the first person he caught sight of was Mary
herself.
She was not gardening, or hanging up the clothes
to dry, or sitting at work with her needle, or doing
any of the many useful housewifely things which
Skelling had told himself that she, who was to be
his second wife, must be proficient in. She was just
leaning over the low gate, looking at the sun set-
ting behind Netherby Woods, and doing nothing.
Her hands were loosely locked together; her light
cotton dress was neatly gathered into a leather strap
around her dainty waist; her brown head was bare,
MARY'S NEW LOVER
and the red sun shone full into her face and showed
him all the little tiny, tired lines and wrinkles that
trouble had traced upon it, and there was, oh ! such a
sad and far-away look in her eyes! such a look of
having lived and loved, and felt—with every fibre of
her being—that Andrew Skelling had never seen its
like in any other woman's face before !
' That is a good, loving woman, I bet!' he said to
himself, as he drew nearer to her and stood, hat in
hand, and introduced himself to her, and then Mary
roused herself with a little start from her reverie,
and smiled upon him a kindly welcome, and he came
to the conclusion that it was the sweetest and
loveliest smile on earth ! £ And happy the man,' he
said to himself as he followed her into the house,
' who will be clever enough to banish the sorrow from
that sweet face, and to woo the smiles back into those
gentle eyes!'
And before that first visit was over, Andrew had
lost his heart irrevocably to Mary Clover, so that no
other woman in all Cramer Forest, however young
and fair, and however well suited to become the
mistress of his house, ever had a ghost of a chance
with him afterwards.
He had loved her now for several years, patiently
and perseveringly. It was long before he spoke to
her for the first time, for he had hoped very much at
first, and he was afraid to lose all by venturing all too
soon. But one day he met her in her favourite haunt
coming home from the Vicarage along the side of
Brackmere Pool, and she looked so sweet and gentle,
and smiled so kindly when she greeted him, that he
lost his head, and his secret burst from him before
he knew where he was. Then all at once Mary
had become quite another woman.
' Oh! Iam so sorry, Mr Skelling—so very, very sorry!'
That was all she said at first, but there was a shocked
and distressed look in her face.
170
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Don't say that, Mary, don't be sorry. I don't ask
for anything now, only just for a little hope—give me
leave to hope, Mary ? '
Perhaps, if it had not been by the margin of
Brackmere, she might have been kinder to him. But
here! where she and Steeve had loved and wandered
—where he had spoken to her, long ago, his first
words of love—where he had stood to watch for the
last time the light from her window after his last
farewell! How could Mary Clover listen to new
words of love spoken by a new voice here ?
' There can be no hope—none—none,' she had
answered a little incoherently. 'You do not perhaps
know my story, Mr Skelling ?'
' Oh yes, I have been told. I know how unhappy
you have been. But it is all so long ago now, Mary
—so long ago.'
' Long ago !' she repeated, with a little mirthless
laugh ; ' it does not seem long ago to me. For it is
always with me—always here—here in my heart!'
and she struck her hands upon her breast with a
pathetic gesture of hopelessness.
' Will you never get over it ?' he asked her sadly.
' Never be happy again ? '
' I don't know,' she answered simply. ' If you
mean, shall I forget Steeve Hardy? I don't think that
would be possible—never until the dews of death dim
all remembering—but—I am not unhappy, Mr Skell-
ing. I have my mother, and many kind friends—some
old ones who have known me all my life—and some
new ones, like yourself, whose friendship I value
also.'
' I do not want to be only one of your friends,
Mary; it is not friendship I ask you for—it is
love.'
' I can never give you that, Mr Skelling.'
' Will you at least give me the chance? Will you
marry me and see if I cannot end by winning your
MARY'S NEW LOVER
171
love? I would be very good to you, Mary,' he added
humbly.
But Mary shook her head.
' I can never marry you or any other man,' she
answered, ' because I love Steeve Hardy still with all
my heart.'
' But he is married !' he said, with a little impatient
persistence.
Mary was silent. But something in the droop of
her sad face showed the man that his last words
were ungenerous.
' Ah, forgive me, Mary ; now I am cruel to you !
but I love you so deeply, and I want you so much,
my dear.' He took her hand in his and held it fast.
' You are the best woman on earth—I honour you for
what you have said, even though I think you are
mistaken, for you are good.'
' I am not good, I am only faithful,' she replied
simply.
' And so will I be faithful,' he answered, ' for I will
never marry any other woman but you ; and I will
never give up hope, but will wait for you for
years.'
And from that resolve she found it impossible to
move him. All that had happened years ago, and
Andrew Skelling was still waiting and hoping. The
neighbours had given him up to confirmed bachelor-
hood by this time, and even he himself had come to
have very little hope of ever winning the day with
Mary.
Nearly every day, winter and summer, he walked
over to Mrs Clover's cottage after his work was over,
and sat by the chimney-corner in winter, and in the
tiny garden when it was warm, smoking his pipe and
chatting to the widow with his eyes fixed upon Mary,
until the two women grew quite accustomed to his
familiar presence, and they looked out for his coming,
and missed him sorely if by any chance he did not
172
A SOUL ASTRAY
appear at the usual hour. And sometimes, at rare
intervals, he would summon up courage to ask Mary
if she had thought better of it—if she would not
change her mind ? But Mary always gave him the
same answer,—
' No, I have not changed. Give it up.'
But he too said he did not change easily, and should
continue to hope.
Mrs Clover, too, often urged his claims upon Mary.
She would have been so glad to see her married to
this man who was honest and steadfast, and who
could have given her a good home and a solid
position.
' Think what is to become of you when I am dead
and gone, Mary, and you alone in the world ! The
man is a good man, and truly fond of you ; why can't
you make up your mind to have him ? It would be
better for you than fretting after poor Steeve, who
will never come back—perhaps he is dead, poor
fellow! and you wasting all your life for one who
can't marry you, even if he did come back. For
my sake, Mary, try if you can't bring yourself to
marry Andrew? It would make me so happy, my
dear.'
' I would do much to make you happy, mother,
darling, but oh, not that! Do not ask me to do
that!' and the bitter tears rose to the girl's eyes
as she spoke, for to resist her mother's pleading was
harder to her than all else. ' I would die for you,
mother, but I cannot marry any man—or be untrue
to him whom I have lost. Think ! could you love
or marry any other man now you have lost poor
father ?'
'Oh no, no! but that was different, Mary; your
father was my own—my husband—'
' And so, to me, was Steeve my own—my husband.
He was true to me, even though they made him
marry Zilla; he is no husband to her, he only gave
MARY'S NEW LOVER
173
her his name to satisfy his father; he was faithful to
me, and if he lives he is faithful to me still. I will
never give to any other man on earth the faith which
I promised to him ;' and from that resolve there was
no moving her.
CHAPTER XIX
a startling discovery
Lady Netherby was driving along the straight high
road that cuts the Forest in twain like a long line of
yellow ribbon between Markton and Rilchester. It
was her way home, and she was alone. She was
returning from a friend's house on the further side
of Markton, where she had left her two young
daughters—Mary's old pupils—who were grown-up
young ladies now. There was a little county gaiety
for them occasionally, during the summer months,
although the neighbourhood was but thinly-peopled
with gentlefolk, and her girls had been invited to this
little festivity—a tennis party followed by a dance—
and were spending the night at their entertainer's
house. Lady Netherby had grown very grey of late
years; she had had a good deal of trouble and sorrow,
and the cares of life had pressed hardly on her. An
elder married daughter, whose name has not been
mentioned in this narrative, had died in the prime of
her life—that was the first sorrow that befel her after
Steeve Hardy's marriage and disappearance. Lord
Markton, her eldest son, was still away, and often her
heart yearned for his return. But although Markton
had always been an exemplary young man in his
conduct, upright and honourable in all his dealings,
he was, nevertheless, a selfish and somewhat cold-
174
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
175
hearted person. He cared very little for his father
and mother, or, in fact, for anything else on earth
beyond the gratification of his own tastes and amuse-
ments.
Very much against his father's wish, he had lately
left the army, and he now lived entirely for sport.
For the last two years he had been wandering
amongst the mountainous districts and undiscovered
countries north of the Himalayas, tracking and shoot-
ing ' big game' and living completely alone amongst
the native tribes of these wild districts, unaccom-
panied by any civilised companion. He had, it was
reported, adopted the dress as well as the language
and customs of the people amongst whom he so-
journed. He scarcely ever wrote home, and it was
now many months since there had been any news of
him, and he seemed to be quite without any sense of
duty or responsibility towards his family, or with re-
gard to his future position at home.
Then there was always Ralph! Ralph was con-
stant in his letters home, but he invariably wrote on
one theme—to ask for more money! He had re-
mained but a very short time in the Mounted Police
Corps, in which it was hoped he would do so well and
make such a good fresh start.
Something had happened. What it was his
parents never exactly knew, because they only heard
Ralph's side of the question, and they were too sick
at heart to care to investigate the matter; but there
had certainly occurred something of an unpleasant
nature, and Ralph had written to them that he had
found it necessary to send in his resignation, the too
probable meaning of it being that he had been dis-
missed the service. However, they were so far
thankful that he did not suggest coming home, and
was not destined to be returned once more, idle and
discredited, upon their hands.
Ralph wrote that he had arranged to go into
176
A SOUL ASTRAY
partnership with a man he knew, who had an ostrich
farm in Natal, and who had offered him a share of
the profits. But of course he must have some money
to put down, and he named a considerable sum which
would be required, after which he said he should
never be obliged to appeal to his father again. At
some sacrifice, the money was raised and sent out to
him with the hope that he was at last provided for
and would now be able to support himself. But in
less than a year Ralph was again in hot water. He
and his partner had fallen out, the why and the
wherefore not being clearly defined ; anyhow, he wrote
that he was liable to the extent of £500, which he
requested his father to remit to him by return, or
else, he added mysteriously, ' the consequences might
be very serious.' To avert these unknown calamities,
which too probably pointed to the disgrace of an
imputation against his son's honesty, Lord Netherby
again found the money, and again Ralph's fortunes
were tinkered up for a little while. But this was by
no means the last of these applications, nor did the
unsatisfactory black sheep of the family seem to learn
any wisdom with advancing years. He was always
moving about, trying his hand first at one thing then
at another. News came of him at various times
from Mashonaland and from Bechuanaland; some-
times from the gold mines, and sometimes from some
cattle or sheep farm, where he had found a wonderful
new opening that was going to make his fortune, but
always, and invariably, Ralph wanted more money!
It was a bottomless pit into which thousands might
be cast and still avail nothing. Yet the parents sent
it always, or sent what they could, for it came to be
tacitly understood between them, that as long as
Ralph could possibly be kept out there, the better it
would be for everybody belonging to him. Anything
rather than that he should come home again with
nothing to do.
A STARTLING DISCOVERV 1??
On the top of these wearing and fretting troubles,
Lord Netherby's health began to cause some anxiety
to his wife. One winter he became less eager to hunt
—sold his best hunter, a splendid animal of high
mettle and spirit, and bought himself a safe, steady-
going cob, with no pretentions to being a fencer.
The next winter he gave it up altogether. He let
most of his shooting too, partly to meet the constant
drain upon his income caused by his younger son,
and partly because he could no longer enjoy a
long day's shooting in the same way that he used
to do. By degrees he let the whole of the shooting
up to the park gates, and the large parties at the
Hall in September and November were given up;
neither were there any London seasons now for the
two young girls just growing up. Lady Netherby
often said to herself, as so many others have done
with whom the ' going down hill' process has fairly
set in, that the end of life is a very sad and depress-
ing thing. So many of the glad hopes and bright
prospects of early years have faded or come to
naught. So much has gone out of ourselves, of that
first gay ardour with which we once greeted and em-
braced the warm tide of existence, so many joys have
perished, so few solid sources of happiness survive
the wreckage which death and disappointment have
left upon our shores, that our last decades seem
to most of us to be scarcely worth the trouble of
playing out to the end, and the ' gift of life' but a
sorry thing, which one would be glad enough to be
quit of.
For just as spring and summer are the best of the
year, so are childhood and youth the best part of life ;
and when these are over, there remain but the dust
and ashes of regret and weariness, that are rough and
bitter between the teeth.
Some such thoughts as these were in Lady
Netherby's mind as she drove towards her home
M
A SOUL ASTRAY
across the strange and beautiful country to which
she had come as a happy bride now nearly half a
century ago. Time had robbed her of a good deal
since that long-ago day of gladness. Her heart had
been bound up in her boys, and her boys had brought
her nothing but pain and disappointment. Every
year now witnessed a diminution of income, and a
cutting off of something or other which had once been
dear or precious, and there seemed nothing now left
to look forward to, or to hope for in the future, save
the grey silence which ends all things.
All at once amongst the tall bracken, a little- way
off to the right of her, Lady Netherby caugM a flash
of brilliant scarlet and orange. The sight diverted
her thoughts from her own troubles. ' That horrible
gipsy woman !' she thought.
Zilla was standing with her back to the road,
talking to someone—a rough-looking fellow who was
sitting below her in the hollow of a gravel pit, upon
the edge of which she stood. She did not see Lady
Netherby's carriage; or, perhaps, she did see it, but
purposely turned away, for she was sullenly resentful
towards the Hall and all its inmates — why, she
would have been puzzled to explain.
'A bad woman that!' said Lady Netherby to
herself, as she passed her. ' Who has she got hold of
now, I wonder ? Some loafing stranger—some tramp
or other, evidently ! Zilla Hardy is a disgrace to the
county!'
And then a sudden determination entered Lady
Netherby's mind. As that 'dreadful woman' was
well out of the way, she would go to the Warren
Farm and call on Simon Hardy! She gave a brief
order to the coachman, and the carriage turned and
went back a little way along the road, to the corner
where the rough cart track led up to the homestead.
It was a long time now since Lady Netherby had
set foot within the doors of the Warren Farm. She
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
179
had never been there, in fact, since Miss Prudence
Idardy's death; before that even—since their great
trouble had fallen upon them.
Lady Netherby could not forgive Steeve Hardy
or believe in him ; her heart had been all along with
Mary Clover, to whom she was warmly attached, and
whom she considered to have been most cruelly and
shamefully ill-treated. She sympathised in the main
with Simon Hardy, and thought he had only done
his duty in making Steeve marry Zilla, but she was
indignant with Steeve for all the misery he had
brought upon Mary, and for his perverted taste in
preferrii g his cousin to her; and as for Zilla, she had
no words in which to express her dislike and horror
of her. Lady Netherby could see no excuse in the
past, and no hope in the future, for the woman who
had dragged Steeve Hardy down, and caused him to
be unfaithful to so good and sweet a girl as Mary
Clover. As to believing it possible that Steeve could
be innocent, Lady Netherby would not, she declared,
even listen to such untenable nonsense! It might
suit Netherby, who had always made a little god of
the man, to say he believed in him still! or poor dear
John Lorrimer, who was simply a saint—too good for
this world—and saw no evil in anybody! But she,
thank Heaven ! had got a head on her shoulders with
a little common sense in it, and the thing did not
admit of a doubt to her, for if it wasn't Steeve, she
urged, using the same argument as Steeve's father
had done, then who on earth could it have been ?
This question, having never received any answer,
remained there for ever, like a flaming sword barring
the way to Steeve's rehabilitation in her mind, as well
as in the minds of all reasonable people. To believe
Steeve guilty was, in fact, the only solution of an in-
soluble problem ; which did not make Lady Netherby
dislike the woman—who had been the author and
instigator of his sin—any the less.
i8o
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Nothing would induce me to set foot in that house,'
she thought,' if I was not sure that that wicked creature
was out of it; but as I have seen her out of doors
with my own eyes, and up to no good, I should say,
I will just look in and say a kind word or two to poor
old Hardy ; he will be glad to see me, I daresay—poor
old fellow ! He has had sad trouble too, like ourselves
—the end of life must be  vanity and vexation  to
him also!'
The carriage drew up at the corner of the lane, the
footman let down the steps, and Lady Netherby got
out and walked up to the homestead. Simon was
sitting on a bench outside the housedoor, in the
sunny little garden, smoking a pipe. He rose gladly
and respectfully when he saw Lady Netherby coming
up the road, and went down to meet her at the gate.
' This is very good of you, my lady,' he said tremul-
ously, and Lady Netherby took his rough hand and
held it kindly in her own dainty, pearl-grey gloved
one.
41 was passing by, Mr Hardy, and I thought I
would come in and ask you how you are; it's a long
time since I saw you last.'
' Yes—a long time, my lady—a long time,' he
answered with a sigh.
She made him go back to his seat, and sat down
herself on the wooden bench by his side. It grieved
her to see how aged and broken he had become.
' It is his sorrow has done it!' she thought.
'We are both of us getting on in life, Mr Hardy,'
she went on aloud, ' and we are old friends of long
years' standing, you and I! Old friends should stick
to one another, shouldn't they ? It is one of the few
pleasures we elderly people have left to us, isn't it ?
—the seeing of our old friends now and then.'
'Yes, yes, my lady—old friends—as you say, it is
pleasant to see old friends, and then we have the little
ones too, that is always something to be thankful for.'
A STARTLING DISCOVERY l8l
For a moment, Lady Netherby was puzzled.
'You are thinking of my two daughters, Mi
Hardy, I daresay? I have just left them at Colonel
Graves', the other side of Markton—they are quite big
girls now, you know—seventeen and eighteen. The
years slip away so quickly, the children grow up
before one knows where one is !'
Simon Hardy was looking at her intently, and
before she finished her sentence she was aware that
he was not listening to what she was saying.
' I should like to show you my little grandson,
Lady Netherby,' he said abruptly, when she had
done speaking.
A little flush rose into her delicate face.
' The—the little boy ?'
' Steeve's little boy,' he answered. ' I want you to
see him.'
Lady Netherby felt for a moment that she was
sorry she had come. She had forgotten the child—
or perhaps she had taken it for granted that he was
out with his mother. She did not want to see it. It
was the child of sin ; the sign and token of Steeve's
ruin and downfall, and of the wreck of dear Mary
Clover's happiness—wretched little child, that had
spoilt so many good, innocent lives !
And then immediately Lady Netherby fell to scold-
ing herself for such hard and unkind thoughts towards
an innocent child. After all, poor wee mite ! could
he help it? Was he to be blamed for the sin of his
parents ? Was he to be loathed and shunned for the
evil for which he was in no way responsible ?
'Is he here?' she said, looking quickly about her.
' Oh, yes; certainly, if you wish me to see him, Mr
Hardy, I—I shall be very pleased, of course. Is he
a nice little boy ?'
' He is the only joy of my life, my lady,' said Simon,
with a warm fervour that went to her heart. ' God's
ways are wonderful. He has sent me a blessing in
182
A SOUL ASTRAY
disguise. He has taken so much away from me—has
brought my pride so low for His own wise purposes,
no doubt! I do not question the ways of the Lord,
or murmur at His decrees—but it is because He has
had mercy upon me that He has sent me this child—
the child of my old age, my lady !'
The old voice shook—the faded blue eyes filled with
tears—the withered hands that were crossed upon the
handle of his heavy stick shook and trembled.
Lady Netherby was touched. She had been wont
to look upon Simon Hardy as a hard old Puritan—
righteous, but stiff-necked and self-opinionated. This
little display of love and emotion went to her heart.
' Indeed, dear Mr Hardy,' she said kindly, laying
her hand on his arm, ' I am glad that this little child
has come to fill your lonely heart, and make up to
you a little for all that you have suffered and lost.
As you say, God is very merciful to us all. Where is
the boy ? Let me see him.'
Simon Hardy went to the open house door and
shouted aloud,—
'Tot! Tot! It's what he calls himself, my lady,'
turning round to her with a smile, 'though he was
christened Steven, after his poor father. The little
rascal will get into the back kitchen, helping old Sally
Goades to shell the peas, or peel the potatoes, or what
not. He is mortal fond of the kitchen is Tot!'
' So was my Mabel when she was a little thing.
Nobody could keep her out of the kitchen, I re-
member ; she was always wanting to  help the cook 
as she called it.'
And this little touch of mutual sympathy over
the natural inclinations of their children made the
Countess and the farmer both smile quite merrily, as
they looked into each other's faces. ,
And then both turned together. For there came a
pattering of quick footsteps across the red-tiled floor
behind them, and from the open doorway of the
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
183
sombre old parlour, with its glimpses of dark, polished
oak and shining crockery within, a little dancing
figure, clad all in summery white, came flying out into
the garden. A dream of lovely childhood, with red,
golden hair floating wide behind him, and with shining
eyes and rosy cheeks, and curved red lips parted into
a delightful smile over the little trim rows of pearly
teeth.
' Grandad, was it you that called for me ?' the
boy cried out—then half stopped with a charming
blush of confusion at the sight of the strange lady
sitting there beside the old man.
' Come here, my boy, come here !' and the old
man drew the child towards his visitor. ' Don't be
afraid of this kind lady, Tot; she has come to see
you—go up to her and shake hands like a man.'
He pushed the boy gently forward, till he stood
at Lady Netherby's knee.
' He's a real beauty, ain't he, my lady ?' the old
man went on proudly and fondly—' and should you
say that he is at all like his father, now ? ' he added,
with a curious, wistful intensity.
Already Lady Netherby had half extended her
arms to take the child up on her lap, when suddenly
she drew them back, and stared at him speechlessly;
and a slow horror rose into her eyes. Tot, who was
not at all accustomed to be repulsed, plumped his
fat hands boldly down upon her satin gown, and
smiled confidingly up into her face.
' Nice, kind lady !' said Tot, wheedlingly.
Lady Netherby turned deadly pale — her hand
went up weakly to her lips, and the scrap of lace-
edged handkerchief she held shook as she passed
it across her mouth.
The old man was busy tying up the long ends ol
Tot's white sash, which had dropped down a little
behind. He was awkward at the job, naturally enough
—it took up all his attention.
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Maybe you'll catch the likeness to Steeve,' he
went on ; ' it's a stranger's eyes as sees them things
better nor those as is more accustomed ; and it's
like enough you'd see it, my lady, for he ain't like his
mother at all, so it stands to reason it's poor Steeve
as he favours.'
' He is not like Steven Hardy,' said Lady Netherby.
The words seemed to be dragged out of her, almost
as if against her will, and her voice sounded choked
and far away, like a voice in a fog—and then she
shook off the dimpled hands that clutched at her satin
gown almost roughly, and rose suddenly to her feet.
' I must go now. I can't stay any longer. I am sorry,
Mr Hardy, but I must go.'
' Must you ?—oh !' and the old man looked up,
disappointed and a little bewildered. ' Oh! I don't
think you look quite well, my lady ?'
'No, I am a little over-tired, I think.'
'You will come in to the house and rest, then ? Is
there anything I could get for you ? A glass of
wine—or a cup of tea, if you would honour me by
accepting it ?'
'No, no, nothing! nothing at all! I am only a
little tired—let me go, that's all—let me go! let me
go, please!'
There was a wailing note of passion in her voice,
as she almost pushed past him towards the gate.
He followed her bewilderedly, yet meekly; he could
not understand, could not quite see why she should
go so soon—-be so suddenly tired and upset—but
still he obeyed her, and held the gate open for her to
pass through.
' If you must go, my lady, you must,' he said regret-
fully, ' and I have been morta pleased to see you, I
am sure ! But I am sorry that ye don't think the
boy is like his father!'
She bent her head-—her dry lips moved mechanic-
ally, but no sound came.
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
i85
Then she walked quickly away, down the rough
cart track towards the carriage that was waiting for
her at the corner of the high road.
' Like his father ! Like his father ! '
The words rang in her ears all the way home, like
the knell of doom.
Ah ! God in Heaven ! Was ever child so like his
father, so fearfully like—as Tot was?
CHAPTER XX
'UNCLE BEN '
MORE than once of late, in her wanderings over the
Forest, Zilla had come across a rough, dark figure of
a man, who had stopped her and accosted her. She
was, of course, accustomed to occasional encounters
with the nomad gipsies who strayed during the long
summer months over the open spaces of moorland,
or settled beneath the shelter of the dark pine
woods.
There had always been gipsies on Cramer Forest,
but they were by no means so numerous now as they
used to be in the old days when fair-haired Esther
Hardy had lent too willing an ear to the handsome,
swarthy fellow who had beguiled her from her home
and people. And oddly enough, Zilla, when it came
to the point, fought shy of the gipsy folk. If she
caught sight of a distant encampment, or of a blue
wreath of smoke curling up against the hillside far
away, she would turn back and go homewards.
4 They might want me to go with them,' she would
think to herself apprehensively. 4 It must be a rough,
hard life, under those little mats, making baskets and
such like; and always on the tramp. I am best off
where I am.'
For there was enough of civilisation, and of the
sensuous love of ease and plenty in her dual nature
186
'UNCLE BEN'
187
to cause her to dread the hardships, even although
she pined for the freedom of a wandering life spent
under the skies and stars.
And it so happened that no member of her own
particular tribe—the tribe of her father and her
grandfather—had ever, up till now, stumbled across
this child of their own blood and lineage.
Now, the gipsy folk are divided into tribes, as
distinctly and rigidly separate, one from the other, as
the castes of Hindostan. The particular tribe to
which Zilla belonged, by paternal origin, had ' gone
west' at the time of her father's death; and as
that death had been surrounded by tragic circum-
stances connected with poaching and murder, the
survivors of that fatal fray had not seen fit to show
their faces upon Cramer Forest for a very long time.
But one day that Zilla and Tot had strayed a
little further away from home than usual, they were
stopped by a rough-looking man, in a faded green
corduroy suit. He was a man of about sixty years
of age, and his curly hair, that had once been jet-
black, was now nearly white. His eyes were very
dark and lustrous, like Zilla's, and his eyebrows met
in a coal-black line across his low, brown forehead;
he wore a rough, fur cap on his head and small gilt
earrings, which gave him a queer, half-foreign aspect.
' I want to speak to ye, Zilla Hardy,' he said,
standing squarely in her path.
' Oh, I daresay ! And who may you be, pray, who
know my name so pat ? '
' That's what I am going to tell ye presently, my
girl. Whose child is that ?'
' Mine.'
' Ay ; but who's his father ?'
' What's that to you ? Let me pass.'
'Not yet. Yer are a good-looking lass, Zilla; the
living image of yer poor father.'
'You knew my father ?'
188
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Ay, ay, poor Davie!—knew him well, seeing as
he was my own twin brother.'
' Your twin brother! Then—you— ?'
' I am yer uncle, girl, come to see you.'
' My uncle—oh!' she gasped a little startled, and
then added, with the quick cunning of her race,—
' You've been a long time coming !'
' Ay, a long time. We haven't been in these
parts for years—not since before you were born, my
dear—when those damned gamekeepers of my lord's
killed yer father!'
' What?' This was startling news to Zilla. Her
eyes opened wide with terror. ' Killed my father, you
say ?'
' Ay, shot him as dead as a rabbit, curse 'em !'
' Who shot him ? Tell me that ?' she asked, clench-
ing her hands together, and staring at the man who
called himself her uncle.
He laughed carelessly.
' Oh, yer needn't look so fierce, my gal! The chap
as shot him paid for it dearly. It was I who saw to
that. His account was squared up before he was
many minutes older. It didn't take long for me to
settle him!'
' You mean—you—you— ?'
The gipsy nodded.
' That's it; ye needn't shout it out loud, my dear!
Bushes have ears sometimes, and it's five-and-twenty
years ago, come next Michaelmas—that's about as
old as you'll be, Zilla. That's a nice little kid of
yourn; looks an active little chap. Might be learnt
to dance on the tight-rope easy.'
Zilla caught the child by the arm and held him
close to her.
' He's not likely to do that, anyway,' she said
quickly. ' He's no need to work for his living,
hasn't Tot.'
' Ah-h !' The gipsy appeared thoughtful; his eyes
'UNCLE BEN '
189
were riveted with critical admiration on the child's
ruddy face and lithe, well-made limbs. Already, in
imagination, he saw him in spangles and tights, with
a balancing pole in his hands, the centre of an
admiring rustic crowd. ' Ah, that's a pity! It's a
good life enough, and lots of money to be made at
it. Say, little kid, how would you like to be dressed
up smart in a little scarlet chimmy, with bright yalla
gold beads sewed on all over it ?'
Tot's eyes opened wide with dawning interest.
' And to carry a long white stick,' continued the
tempter, insinuatingly; ' and Uncle Ben, that's me,
kiddy, would teach yer how to dance so lovely, all
the ladies would say how pretty you was, and the
brown pennies would come rattling down into yer
cap in hundreds.'
Tot seemed fascinated by this picture, and
dragged at his mother's hand to get nearer to the
speaker.
'Tell yer mammy to let yer come and stay with
Uncle Ben, lovey, and he'll show yer all sorts of
beautiful things.'
'You go along with your nonsense!' interrupted
Zilla angrily, ' fillin' the child's head with rubbish!
Come away home with me, Tot.'
'Tot wants to go with uncle and learn to dance!'
cried Tot himself, struggling to free himself from her
grasp.
And the swarthy, white-haired gipsy laughed and
showed all his gleaming teeth.
' Ay, ay! it's in the blood, Zilla—fair as he is,
it's in the blood ; and there have been fair ones
in the tribe before. He'll come back to us some
of these days of his own accord, that brat of
yourn !'
And then he swung round upon his heel and
sloped away quickly down the rough hillside and
was soon out of sight amongst the trunks of the
190
A SOUL ASTRAY
pines, into which he struck boldly as one who knew
his way.
When he was gone, Zilla caught the child to her
breast and covered him with sharp, fierce kisses.
'You'll not listen to that man, Tot, and leave your
mother! He's a bad man that; he would beat you
and starve you !'
' But he says he's my uncle, mammy !'
' And even if he is your uncle, he's not an uncle to
be proud of! Don't you tell your grandad we met
him, whatever you do.'
But after that day, a new fear awoke in Zilla's
shallow heart—the only fear that could, perhaps,
have had power to touch her—a fear that her
father's people had come back to find her boy and
take him from her.
The tribe did not evidently leave the district, for
she met the same man again on several occasions—
her Uncle Ben, her father's twin brother, as he called
himself—and she did not for one moment doubt that
he was what he represented himself to be. He talked
to her freely, and displayed an intimate knowledge of
the past life and history of her dead parents. Zilla
learnt more about her own origin, about the tragedy
of her father's violent death and the romantic story
of his love for her mother, than she had ever heard a
whisper of in all the long years of her life at the
Warren Farm.
Uncle Ben told her all about it. How her fair-
haired, white-skinned Christian mother had run away
from her home and kindred, all for the sake of her
handsome gipsy lover. And how for two long years
she had followed the fortunes of the tribe, casting in
her lot with theirs, dwelling in their tents like one of
themselves, tramping long miles by starlight amongst
the rest, cooking and eating the same rough food,
dressing as the other women dressed, in strange, out-
landish ways; but always cheerful, always happy, so
1 UNCLE BEN '
long as Davie was kind to her and allowed her to be
by his side.
' And then, just before you was born, poor Davie
was shot. It were down ten miles or more t'other
side of Netherby, Rilchester way. It was a beautiful
night for work, as dark as pitch, and we were netting
the rabbits by dozens, when all at once them devils
came upon us, creeping out of the ditch next to
the wood, a score or so of them cursed constables
and keepers! and, before you could say knife, bang!
bang! went their guns on every side of us! and
some of us cut and run for their lives and got away;
and one poor chap, Mike Coles was his name, was
nobbled, and a policeman clapped the bracelets on to
his wrists and he was taken to Rilchester jail, and
went up for his trial next Assizes, and what became
of him I never heard, but we none of us saw him
again.'
' And my father ? '
'Yer father was shot dead, I tell yer; but I had
my eye on the chap as murdered him, and I hit him
twice straight in the chest, and he tumbled over
on his face, as dead as a nail, before ye could count
ten.'
Zilla shuddered a little.
' Then there was no use in stopping on, so we
dragged poor Davie along between us—two of us as
were left, and took to our heels as fast as we could,
and somehow they got on the wrong scent and didn't
come after us, but went the other way. I've told you
it was a dark night, though the moon did show up
once or twice for a bit, and after a mile or so, when
we found they weren't following us, we stopped, my
pal and I, for poor Davie was heavy to drag with us,
and we just grubbed a hole under a gorse bush and
put him into it as best we could, and then got home
to the mats as fast we could to give the alarm to the
rest. Ye see we knew they'd be after us again by
192
A SOUL ASTRAY
daybrea^, as we'd killed two or three of their men, so
we had to make tracks as fast as we could—some one
way and some another. I went right south to the
sea by myself, and most of the others went west,
agreeing to meet down Cornwall way when we could.'
'And my mother? Tell me about my mother?'
' Ah, poor Esther! it was rough on her ! She so
near her time, and like to die with grief when she
heard her Davie was killed. Before daybreak they
had carried her ten miles away — my father, yer
grandfather, went with her, and some of the old men
and the other women, and then you was born, and
Esther she died. And the others that were with him
told my father he must take the baby back to her
mother's people; they couldn't drag a baby about,
you see. If it had been a boy, they might have kept
it—boys grow up useful—but a girl child were no
sort of use, so it was settled to send ye back, and
father agreed to walk all the way to the Warren
Farm by himself, and to leave you at the Hardys'
door. Ye see he were an old man and feeble, and
no one was likely to stop him if he went alone. And
afterwards he made his own way safely down west,
and joined the others, but he died a long time ago,
did father—yer grandfather he was.'
Zilla had listened spell-bound. The story inter-
ested her intensely. She seemed to see the whole
scene, the rough gipsy poachers at their work under
the dark night along the edge of the woods, the fitful
gleam of the moon breaking now and again through
the clouds ; then the sudden surprise, the noise of the
scuffle, the shouts of rage, and the quick banging of
the guns, and then the dead man falling prone on to
the blood-stained grass—her own father !
' And where's the little kid to-day?' asked Uncle
Ben, breaking in upon her vivid realisation of this long-
ago chapter of her history. ' Why didn't you bring him
out to see his great-uncle ?' this with a leering smile.
'UNCLE BEN '
193
Zilla started violently, the question recalled her
out of the past—to the present—to her present
fears.*
' Why should I bring him ?' she replied coldly.
' Your stories wouldn't amuse or interest him. He is
a Hardy. I married my cousin.'
' Oh, ho! Ye can go and tell that tale elsewhere,
Zilla ! I remember the Hardys well. They were all
fair as milk—they were never red. That boy is no
Hardy!'
' How dare you !' cried Zilla, scowling furiously at
him, and then she turned her back upon him and
walked away.
But that was by no means the last she saw of her
Uncle Ben! He met her at every turn—it seemed
as if he found out her haunts and lay in wait for
her. Sometimes she was lucky enough to descry
him afar off. He was a picturesque figure in
his rusty green suit, with the scarlet handkerchief
knotted loosely about his bare brown throat, he made
altogether a noteworthy and most striking object as
he came sauntering across the wide-rolling landscape
towards her. Uncle Ben would have delighted the
eye of an artist—he was so thoroughly in keep-
ing with his surroundings — so eminently the right
man in the right place. Yet Zilla, if she espied
him in the distance, lost no time in increasing that
distance — she would turn swiftly round and make
straight for home, more especially if Tot were
with her, and never draw breath till she was safe
within the farm wall or garden fence. But often he
would spring upon her unawares, from behind the
trees by her side, or from the gravel pits under her
feet, from unexpected ambushes and the deep sunk
banks of hidden meres, till she grew to be haunted
with the terror of him. A true instinct told her what
he wanted of her, and more and more she got into
the way of going out alone, leaving the boy behind
N
194
A SOUL ASTRAY
her—safe at home with Simon Hardy under Sarah
Goades' care. For she knew that the man wanted
Tot.
No doubt he saw his way to making money out of
him, for the gipsy folk are cunning and greedy of
gain, and Tot was beautiful and clever and active,
and so young that he could be easily moulded into a
new life and learn to forget his mother and his early
home. And if they were to steal him from her, there
would be no redress—because in a way Uncle Ben
would have a right to Tot; he was of his own blood
and lineage.
And so the terror grew and grew within her,
day after day, and week after week, till it op-
pressed her like the shadow of some inevitable
doom—and with the terror, something new began
also faintly to stir in Zilla's ice-bound soul—a some-
thing that had never found a resting-place there
before.
It was love which awoke in her heart! It was not
in the least like that stormy, animal passion which had
once rent her in twain for the sake of Steeve's hand-
some face, till it had driven her headlong down the
dark and tortuous ways of sin and, perjury: that,
had been an unholy madness, a scorching flame, to
which it would be profanation to give the name
of love.
The love which now crept into her hardened heart
was of a widely different nature. It was a pure love ;
for it was born of unselfishness, of fears and anxieties
which concerned not herself, but her child. For the
first time she understood that Tot was more to her
than her own life. And with that understanding,
vague and uncertain as it still was, the ice-bound soul
stirred faintly within her towards the dawning of a
new day.
And an angel swept the breath of his wings across
the dark places of her being ; and straightway within
'UNCLE BEN '
195
her there awoke a glimmer of that best and holiest of
all earthly loves—the mother love—which is God's
own gift—straight given from heaven to earth—to all
women who are mothers, for the dear sake of her who
was mother to God.
CHAPTER XXI
lady netherby's temptation
The sudden discovery of an evil thing, of which it
were truer wisdom and happiness to have remained
in eternal ignorance, is one of the most cruel experi-
ences which flesh is heir to.
Lady Netherby went about, for days after her visit
to the Warren Farm, like one in a dream. Whatever
she did—wherever she went—whoever she met or
conversed with—all through the quiet routine of her
daily life; the simple and uneventful life of a country
lady, who orders her family and her household dis-
creetly and prudently, fulfils her unexciting social
engagements, her visits, her garden parties, and finds
her best pleasures in her flowers and her poultry—
amidst all the hundred and one little innocent details
which filled up the tranquil course of her somewhat
monotonous, yet not at all unhappy, existence—there
was ever present in her mind one all-absorbing
thought, one overpowering memory which she could
not get rid of for a single moment either by day or
by night; for even when she slept, the thing was with
her in her dreams.
She had seen the truth! Never for one single
second did Lady Netherby have the shadow of a
doubt about that. Never once did she say to herself,
' I must have made a mistake, it could not be so ;
196
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 197
some chance resemblance has deceived me.' Never
did she so argue or strive, or try to reason herself out
of what she had seen. She was too honest a woman
to do so. She had looked into Tot's face, and in it
she had seen the face of Tot's father!
For a mother never forgets the faces of her children
as they were in their early years. However much time
and life may have altered them to other eyes, to their
mother they still bear in them the unfading bloom of
their infancy. Nothing can obliterate the fair vision
of their childhood out of her faithful heart, the sweet
picture lives there for ever in undying colours, and is
cherished amongst the most precious memories of her
life. To others, the boy's beauty may become merged
and forgotten in the hard and weather-beaten features
of the man, but never to the mother who has truly
loved her child.
Lady Netherby could recall, line for line, every trick
and turn of her little Ralph's radiant, childish face.
She could close her eyes and see him as a new-born
baby, as a little toddling child of three, as a jolly,
manly little fellow astride of his pony, or running
races down the lawn with his dog. She remembered
every stage of his life in succession, every varied
aspect of his face ; and with it, alas ! she remembered
also the gradual hardening and deterioration that had
slowly turned that sweet-faced baby into an untruth-
ful and unsatisfactory boy; and again, later on, how the
boy with the crafty eyes had grown into the man,
with dark traces of vice and dissipation blotting out
the fair promise of his innocent childhood.
Of all her children, Lady Netherby preserved these
shifting and changing pictures—they were firmly and
indelibly impressed upon her heart, as such pictures
always are upon the hearts of all true mothers.
And so, when Tot had come dancing up to her
knee, and had turned his fresh, beaming, six-year-old
face up to her, she had seen in him—not Steven Hardy,
198
A SOUL ASTRAY
whose name he bore—but her own son, Ralph Lyndon
—as Ralph had been at his age!
For some days the sheer dismay of what she had
seen so overpowered and overwhelmed her that she
was capable of nothing beyond the actual conscious-
ness of the fact; but little by little she began to realise
what this discovery meant to her. It meant, in the
first place, one of the most horrible and cruel posi-
tions in which a mother could possibly be placed.
For if Ralph Lyndon were Tot's father, then was
Steeve Hardy an innocent and calumniated man, who
had lain for years under a great and most appalling
injustice.
Steeve was innocent—and Mary, poor Mary, had
been sacrificed, her whole life blighted and wrecked,
because of the evil doing of one who had escaped
scot free, leaving others to suffer for the consequences
of his sins!
The thought of it was perfectly horrible to her.
Lady Netherby felt at first as if she should go mad
with it! She had wanted to shout it out aloud to the
trees and the hills, to cry to Heaven itself to relieve
her of the weight of this burden, to do some desperate
and frantic deed to rid herself of this knowledge
which had burst upon her with such horrible sudden-
ness. But, as a matter of fact, she did not utter a
single word about it to anyone. An instinct stronger
than herself caused her to lock up the secret in her
own heart, and to be silent.
For those first few days she was capable of little
more save that—the supreme instinct of silence which
bade her hide what she had discovered,
' I must say nothing,' she kept on repeating to her-
self. ' No one must know—not yet, not until I have
thought. I must not let anyone find out or guess
—not even Netherby—not Netherby above all others!'
Oh! why had she ever gone to visit old Simon
Hardy? What mocking spirit of evil had urged her
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 199
to turn back on her way on that fatal afternoon in
order to seek out this revelation of woe and horror?
If she had not gone to the Warren Farm, she would
not have known of it—might never have known it to
her life's end!
And then came other thoughts.
How was it that no one else had seen what she had
seen ? That the idea of her son Ralph as the betrayer
of Zilla—of Ralph, the ne'er-do-weel, the man of
loose and profligate life, to whom no woman had ever
been sacred—had never occurred to anybody else ?
Then she remembered that Ralph had been but
little known amongst the people on Cramer Forest.
He had always despised and derided them. He had
never had the pleasant, genial way of going about
and making friends with the farmers and tenants as
his father had. They must have seen very little of
him during the three months he had been at home—
many of them could hardly have known him by sight,
even.
' And I, who thought he was leading such a quiet,
steady life!' thought the poor woman, wringing her
hands together ; ' who congratulated myself when he
went that his time had been spent so innocently at
home, and that he had gone away without having
done any harm or got into any mischief!'
In the first confusion and bewilderment of her mind,
Lady Netherby had said to herself that now, of course,
the truth about Steeve would have to come to light—
that his name would be vindicated at last—that he
would be brought back—and then—
She could not think what would happen then. But
after a little while new thoughts began to prevail with
her.
What about Ralph? Was it indeed her duty to
lay this sin at her son's door—to drag the poor, black
sheep lower down into the abyss of his evil doings ?
Could it possibly be required of her, his mother ?
200
A SOUL ASTRAY
Could it indeed be right that she should become
the instrument of his utter ruin ? For if this thing
became known, it is certain that Ralph Lyndon could
never show his face in Cramer Forest again ; for as
long as he lived, his name would be held up to ever-
lasting execration throughout the length and breadth
of it. For the mother's heart was still warm and
tender towards her erring son. Badly as he had
behaved, heartless and wicked although he was, he
was still her child; he had lain in her bosom, had
been warmed against her heart. The vision of little
Tot seemed to bring it all back to her—all Ralph's
early years, his beauty, his pretty ways, the sweet
delight of his baby prattle. It seemed as though he
had been with her once more, as in the old days—in
that little child who had stood, for one minute, at her
knee, grasping the satin folds of her dress in his soiled,
chubby hands, and looking up into her face with his
clear and candid eyes. With all the pain of it, there
was still a poignant delight in the thought of that
child, for Ralph had been like that once !
He had caused his parents an infinity of sorrow
and anxiety. He had brought them to the verge of
disgrace and despair. He had made their hearts ache
over and over again by his reckless evil doings. But
for all that he was her child still, her little Ralph, who
was once so pretty and so dear !
' And if a man's mother does not stand by him
through evil as well as through good,' thought the poor
lady to herself,' who else is there in the wide world
who will ?'
And then, if she did speak, if she did betray her
poor, lost and fallen boy, what possible good could this
tardy revelation of the truth do to anybody ?
Would it benefit old Simon Hardy to know that
his daughter-in-law was even wickeder than he had
supposed her to be ? That she had falsely accused
his innocent son, and had ruined his home for a lie ?
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 201
And the child ! If the child were acknowledged
as Ralph's son, would it not become Lord Netherby's
duty to undertake his support and education, to take
him away from the corrupting influence of his
depraved mother, and see that he was properly and
suitably brought up ? And how would Simon Hardy
like to be bereft of the child whom he had called the
' joy of his life,' whom he blessed God for having sent
to him in his old age ?
And then there was poor Mary! If Steeve had been
a free man, then, for Mary's sake, it might well be
that it was Lady Netherby's duty to see that the truth
was brought to light; but Steeve was not free. He
had committed the crowning folly—for which really
Lady Netherby, not understanding the peculiar drift
of Steeve's mind, could see no rhyme or reason—the
folly of marrying a woman to whom he owed nothing,
and who was about to become the mother of another
man's child. If he came back, righted and cleared,
he could not marry Mary; he would have to live with
Zilla, to the great increase of Mary's unhappiness and
embarrassment. And meanwhile Mary had met
another admirer—for Lady Netherby had heard all
about Andrew Skelling and his aspirations, during the
course of a long confidential talk she had had one
afternoon with Mrs Clover, when the good woman
had expressed to her, her own secret hopes that so
excellent a would-be son-in-law might in the end
prevail upon Mary to forget ' that other old affair;'
and Lady Netherby, with a regretful sigh over the
sentimental view of the situation, had been forced to
agree with Mary's more practical-minded mother, and
to admit that nothing could certainly be more desir-
able than that her old favourite should become Mrs
Andrew Skelling.
' An upright, honest man is Skelling, as your lady-
ship must see for yourself,' Mrs Clover had urged,
' and he would make her a kind husband and give
202
A SOUL ASTRAY
her a comfortable home of her own, and I know that
Mary would be quite happy as his wife—not that I
mean to say that he would ever be the same thing as
poor Steeve Hardy would have been to her. That's
not to be expected, of course, but Lord bless me, my
lady! if a woman can't have the man she has set her
heart on, why, it's next best that she should take him
as has set his heart on her, and Mary ain't the only
woman in the world as has not been able to marry
her first sweetheart, and has ended by settling down
very comfortably with someone else, as you and I
knows well, my lady !'
And Lady Netherby had sighed again and had
answered,—'Very true, Mrs Clover, very true!' and
they had both been of opinion that if Mary could
only make up her mind to marry Andrew Skelling,
it would undoubtedly be the best thing in the world
for her happiness.
Lady Netherby believed that this 'making up of
her mind' was in process of operation now. But if
Steeve came back again—righted indeed, but still
unable to marry her—all this salutary process would
be knocked on the head at once. Her heart would go
straight back to her first love, her mind would once
more become fatally unsettled, she would be abso-
lutely and hopelessly wretched, and Andrew Skelling's
chances would vanish into thin air!
Therefore, to Mary Clover, the rehabilitation of
Steeve Hardy's character would be an unmixed evil.
And then lastly, there was Steeve himself. Where
was Steeve ? Did anyone know where to find him ?
Was he even alive ?
Lady Netherby remembered that his father had
alluded to him as ' poor Steeve,' as though he believed
him to be dead. She had not liked at the time to
re-open a scarcely-healed wound by inquiring whether
Simon Hardy had had any definite news of his son,
but she had certainly gathered, from the way he had
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 203
mentioned him, that he considered Steeve as one lost
to him for ever.
No one seemed to have heard anything of him
since he disappeared, although sometimes Lady
Netherby had had a passing impression that John
Lorrimer knew more about Steeve than anyone else
did, and the idea returned to her now a little uncom-
fortably. But even if Steeve were alive and could be
brought back, would he care to come home ?—to a
home where Zilla would be his lawful wife, and Mary
be parted from him for ever?
And so the upshot of all these speculations and
specious reasonings was that Lady Netherby yielded
to the greatest temptation that had ever assailed her
in her life. A temptation so subtle and so complex,
that to this hour, but for the small accusing voice
of a conscience that will not be silenced, she is not
altogether certain that she did in truth choose the
evil way and turn her back resolutely upon the good.
She held her tongue, and things went on as usual.
Yet Lady Netherby was no adept at deceit. She
had never connived at wrong and injustice before,
and she had hard work to preserve her secret. She
was in constant dread of discovery, in hourly appre-
hension lest she should betray herself.
In all her long and innocent life, no such burden
had ever lain upon her soul. To keep so great a
thing as this from the knowledge of her husband, to
whom she had told every thought of her heart for
nearly fifty years, was in itself so severe a tax upon
her mental and moral powers that she often thought
her mind would give way under the strain of it.
But it was here, in this very fact of her determination
to hide her discovery from Lord Netherby at all
hazards, that the knowledge of her own wrong-doing
came convincingly home to her. For she knew that
if she told him, he would at once make the thing
public. Lord Netherby would never be a party to
204
A SOUL ASTRAY
concealment, would never consent to screen his
own son at the expense of another man's char-
acter.
She knew so accurately what would infallibly be
his line of conduct, that she resolved that he was the
last person on earth to whom she would reveal it.
But the keeping of this secret from him, the deceiving
of the dear partner of her life, was a sore grief and
trouble to the poor lady. A sense of guilt towards
her husband spoilt her rest, and fretted and wore her
all day long. Fortunately for the preservation of her
secret, Netherby was not a man of quick perceptions ;
he was not given to minute analysis of the moods and
tempers of other people. He saw nothing changed
or unusual in Lady Netherby's conduct. He did not
even perceive that she looked worn and harassed
more than was habitual to her, that she frequently
made irrelevant remarks, would pull herself up in
the middle of a sentence, would flush hotly when
certain names and subjects were mentioned, and
would as often turn unaccountably pale, for no very
apparent cause or reason.
The person who did notice^all this, was the Reverend
John Lorrimer.
Mr Lorrimer noticed a great many things which
often escaped other people altogether. He came and
went at the Hall like one of themselves ; for the older
he grew, the more the Earl came to depend upon his
old ifriend. As the cares of life increased upon him,
as his prosperity waned, and his health began to fail
him, so too did a host of fine-weather friends and
acquaintances drop away into the middle distance,
ceasing to press their companionship upon one who
had not so much to give as in his younger and more
prosperous days. But John Lorrimer was always the
same to him, and he fell back with ever- increasing
satisfaction upon the society of this, the oldest and
staunchest of all his friends.
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 205
Mr Lorrimer was in and out of the house at all
hours. Lord Netherby could not cut down a tree or
repair a cottage without his advice, whilst all questions
as to leases and rents had to be referred to him as a
matter of course. He would settle nothing, in fact, till
he had talked it over with John.
In this way Mr Lorrimer came to be perpetually
dropping in to lunch and to dinner, sometimes even
to breakfast, and he saw a great deal of Lady
Netherby too, as well as of her husband. He was not
long in discovering, with the keen eye that he had for
character and disposition, that Lady Netherby had
something on her mind. Her moods and abstractions
were not lost upon him, her restlessness and varying
temper, her sudden changes of countenance, the look
of apprehension he often caught in her eyes, all
pointed to something strangely unusual in her life
and circumstances. Mr Lorrimer said to himself that
it was quite impossible that such a woman as Lady
Netherby, one of the best and truest and most high-
minded women on earth, could have any sin upon her
conscience, and yet, somehow, that was the impression
which, in spite of his reason and his judgment, was
gradually borne in upon his mind.
One afternoon, a curiously upsetting little incident
occurred to him. He had been talking to her in her
morning room, sitting there whilst he waited for Lord
Netherby to come in from his afternoon walk. He
had brought back some papers and pamphlets upon
scientific draining, which the Earl had asked him to
look over, and give him his opinion upon. Lady
Netherby gave him some tea, and he sat chatting to
her over the tea table ; they were alone, for the girls,
Mabel and Florence, were out with their father.
The talk ran for some time upon books—a new
novel they had both been reading, and a recently
published volume of biographical sketches. Then, at
a little pause in the conversation, in which Lady
206
A SOUL ASTRAY
Netherby had taken her part with all her old ease
and charm of manner, the clergyman remarked quite
at random,—
' By the way, Lady Netherby, I have seen several
of the gipsy people about again lately. Have you
noticed them ? I was rather in hopes they had all
taken their departure from Cramer Forest, but they
find the country about here suitable to their opera-
tions, I suppose, for every few years there seems to be
a fresh invasion of them.'
' I fancy I saw one of them one day,' she answered,
stirring her tea thoughtfully — ' a rough - looking
fellow.'
' I daresay they are all rough enough, poor
creatures! and a set of thieves most of them. Do
you think it possible that poor Zilla Hardy has
some secret communication with them ? I saw her
talking to a rough-looking man, such as you de-
scribe, yesterday.'
' It is very, likely,' she answered guardedly.
A sudden constraint fell upon her at the mention of
Zilla Hardy's name.
' I often think,' continued the parson, thoughtfully,
' that here lies the probable elucidation of that old
story, and that, when the truth comes to light, as it
most certainly will some day—'
Lady Netherby looked up, startled.
'You mean? you think?'—she faltered, and he
noticed that she turned pale.
' I think that Zilla's sin was probably connected
with one of these rough, lawless men—her father's
people, as we know—and that some day the child's
father will return, and Steeve will be vindicated.
Why do you look so distressed, Lady Netherby ?
Oh, I know that you refuse to believe in poor
Steeve! But I ask you—'
' Oh, don't ask me anything about it, Mr Lorrimer!'
she interrupted, nervously and impatiently. ' I don't
LADY NETHERBY'S TEMPTATION 207
want to think at all about that miserable and dis-
graceful story.'
' Ah ! but Lady Netherby, we shall all have to think
of it again some day, I am sure! Remember that
discovery of the truth is the only chance there can be
of softening the heart of that poor girl !'
'You can think of her! of a shameless woman of
that kind !'
' Assuredly I think of her. She has a soul to be
redeemed, and sins to be forgiven—just as we all
have, dear Lady Netherby—just as we all have !'
And at that moment the butler came in to tell Mr
Lorrimer that his lordship was in, and wanted to see
him in the library, so that the conversation came to
an end here.
Five minutes later, Mr Lorrimer discovered that he
must have left one of the letters he had brought with
him upon the table in Lady Netherby's boudoir, at
least it was not tied up with the others. He went
back quickly across the wide, marble-flagged hall and
down a long, carpeted passage which led to the
boudoir. He opened the door gently—John Lorrimer's
movements were always gentle—and then he stood
stock still in the doorway.
Lady Netherby had flung herself upon her knees
by the side of the sofa on which he had left her seated
decorously only five minutes ago ; her arms were
stretched wide across it, her face buried upon them,
and her whole body was shaken with convulsive but
almost inaudible sobs.
For a moment the clergyman stood there shocked
and startled beyond words. The sight of that bowed
head with its covering of scanty grey hair, of those
withered hands—the thin fingers, glittering with rings,
knotted together above it—of that abandonment of
grief, that utter breakdown in one whom he had
always hitherto seen hedged about with a calm and
quiet atmosphere of self-control and of dignity of
208
A SOUL ASTRAY
demeanour—the atmosphere in which a well-born and
well-mannered lady is so surrounded and enveloped
that she is inseparably associated with it, till it becomes
part of her very self, a second nature to her—to see
all this suddenly rent and flung aside, and to stand
face to face, as it were, with the real woman, with the
tragedy of the naked soul that is fighting out the
secret battle of life with itself—was even to him, who
had seen so much of the inner sorrows of his fellow-
creatures, a very terrible revelation indeed.
If, for one brief instant of uncertainty, an impulse
of pity or of charity moved John Lorrimer to come
forward and reveal his presence, to ask tender
questions of concern and anxiety, to proffer a blind
but well-meaning sympathy;—then that impulse was
but of very brief duration ; for the next instant he
had shut the door again upon that harrowing
spectacle of an old woman's sorrow, and was stealing
away again on tiptoe softly down the passage.
' I have not found the letter,' he said to Lord
Netherby, three minutes later in the library. ' It may
be at the Vicarage ; it doesn't matter, we can do very
well without it.'
CHAPTER XXII
ralph the heir
' Ralph must come home.'
' Oh no, no! anything but that!'
' Why should you be so much against it, my
dear ? Surely you will be glad to see him again ?
And now that his position will be so entirely
different here, to what it used to be, we may hope,
oh, yes! I do think we may certainly hope that he
will be sensible of the new responsibilities which have
now—alas ! alas ! devolved upon him.'
It was six weeks later that these words were
exchanged between Lord and Lady Netherby.
They were in the library, one on one side of the
writing-table and one on the other. Lady
Netherby was dressed in the deepest mourning.
Lord Netherby would have said he was in deep
mourning too, only that a man's outward evidence
of bereavement is often such an odd conglomera-
tion of garments, old and new, black and coloured,
that it is frequently difficult to appreciate its ex-
istence. But, at anyrate, there was the sombre
impress of a recent grief upon his face, as well as
upon that of his wife, for it was only yesterday
that they had stood together in the churchyard by
the open grave of their eldest son.
For this was the fresh and totally unexpected
trouble which had befallen them.
O
210
A SOUL ASTRAY
The very next day after that startling incident
which I have described in the previous chapter—
that glimpse of a hidden trouble on Lady Netherby's
mind, of which John Lorrimer had been so uninten-
tional a witness, a telegram from Lord Markton had
been received at the Hall.
' Have been badly mangled by a bear. Am start-
ing for home to-day in the P. & O. Empress'
This alarming telegram had been despatched
from Bombay, and when the time came for the
Empress to be due in England, Lord and Lady
Netherby, with mingled feelings of apprehension
concerning his health, and of hopeful anticipations
of reunion to the son from whom they had been
so long parted, set off together to meet him on
his arrival.
A great shock awaited them—Lord Markton
had succumbed to his injuries, which had been
seemingly of a very serious character, on the very
day that the ship had sighted the English coast.
For a time the sea voyage had seemed to revive
him, but then blood poisoning had set in and he
became rapidly much worse, and during the last
week all hope of saving his life had been aban-
doned. He had died within sight of England.
They brought him home and buried him with
his forefathers at Netherby, and great and uni-
versal was the sympathy which was felt by all,
both high and low, for his sorrowing parents.
For to the dead all things are forgiven, and
although Lord Markton might have better fulfilled
his duties to his home and kindred, those who
mourned for him were not eager to remember his
shortcomings now. His career had, at anyrate, been
an upright and fairly creditable one, and his un-
timely death aroused a sincere compassion and
RALPH THE HEIR
211
regret in the minds of all who knew his family.
There had been a large attendance at the church-
yard, the church had been crowded, and the coffin
heaped with wreaths of white flowers—many of
them contributed by people who had never spoken
to, or even seen, the dead man in their lives.
And it was the day after this sad and trying
ceremony that Lord Netherby said to his wife,—
' Ralph must come home.'
At once a whole legion of fears and dire possi-
bilities sprang up in her mind.
' Can there be any occasion, any necessity, for
that ?' she faltered.
' Certainly there is,' he replied with decision.
'Ralph is now my heir. He must accustom him-
self to his new position. My own health, as you know,
my dear, is not what it was a few years ago. I feel
that I am breaking, and this last blow seems to
have added ten years all at once to my age.
I must think of the future; Ralph will now, in the
course of nature, step ere very long into my shoes.
He must begin to learn how to fill my place. I
shall have a great many things to talk over with
him, many arrangements to make, for I wish to feel
that, when I am gone, he will look after the estate
and those who are dependent on us, as I have
endeavoured to do myself. I have been writing
to him, the African mail goes out to-day, you
know, and I have explained to him fully all the
reasons I have for desiring his presence at home.
I have told him to wind up his affairs out there,
whatever they may be, as speedily as possible, and
to take the first steamer he can for England. He
must live entirely at home now, learn to under-
stand the management of the property, familiarise
himself with the people, try to make himself
popular amongst them. He has had plenty of
time to sow his wild oats, and I trust he will settle
212
A SOUL ASTRAY
down now. He must marry, of course. You
might employ the interval in looking out for a
nice wife for him, my love,' this with a little smile—
'some nice girl, with, if possible, a little money.
I don't mean to be mercenary, but the times are
hard, and a little money would be a great help
towards starting Ralph in the right direction.'
Lady Netherby looked away out of the window,
and a little spasmodic shudder passed over her.
The Earl put forth his hand across the intervening
table and patted her arm.
' Don't despair of the boy, my dear old woman!
don't despair of him! This sad blow, this great
change in his future prospects, cannot fail to make
a profound impression upon him, and must surely
bring out all the good that is in him. A man cannot
be wholly bad at his age. Let us hope for the
best!'
Lady Netherby's tears dropped down one by one
over her cheeks.
' Oh, it is not that!' she said brokenly. ' No, no,
God forbid that I should despair of my poor boy!
It's not that—but, oh! if he need never come back
here'—the last words were choked with a sob, and
her husband did not catch them.
For a moment it had seemed to her as if she could
endure the weight of her secret no longer, as if she
must tell him all, as if she must shift some part, at
least, of the burden on to him—but then, again, there
arose before her mind a vision of Lord Netherby's
righteous indignation. She knew with what disgust
and anger he would receive this miserable story—
how it would cut him to the heart that this great
and irreparable wrong should have been committed
by his own son upon one of his own tenants. She
knew, too, how strong and unflinching was his sense
of right and of duty—and how sternly he would
insist upon an immediate confession of the truth, and
RALPH THE HEIR
213
upon the full and open restitution of Steeve Hardy's
damaged name and reputation.
She believed, moreover, that the knowledge of it
would break his heart He would never hold up his
head again, if he knew that Ralph had so disgraced
him—it would darken and embitter the remainder of
life—it might even materially shorten it.
So, neither as a mother, nor yet as a wife, could
Lady Netherby bring herself to speak the truth.
She was afraid to do it; those she loved were too
dear to her.
She smothered down the impulse that had arisen
within her—crushing it back with a firm decision to
adhere resolutely to the line of silence she had
already adopted.
Ralph must come home, she supposed, since his
father had so decreed it, and things must take their
chance.
Yet, when he did come—who could tell what
might not happen ? If he and Zilla met again, for
instance, or if someone else chanced to remark that
extraordinary likeness to the little child at the Warren
Farm which had come home with such overwhelming
conviction to herself!
Nevertheless, she was tongue-tied, and the letter to
Ralph, summoning him home, was duly written and
posted.
Many weeks must, of course, elapse before any
answer could be received from him, or before he
could bring his own answer home in person. Lord
Netherby had deemed it better not to summon Ralph
home by telegraph, but to write at length to him, so
that there might be no doubt as to his wishes and inten-
tions under the altered circumstances caused by his
brother's death. So that after the letter was written
and sent, there was nothing to do but to wait.
Yet the period of waiting was not one of mental
inactivity to Lady Netherby. Day and night she
214
A SOUL ASTRAY
was for ever thinking and brooding and racking her
brains to try and discover some way out of the diffi-
culties, which seemed to be gathering more and more
thickly and darkly upon the horizon. If only the
danger might be staved of and averted !—if only Zilla
might die! But she knew, of course, that Zilla was
not in the least likely to die. Why should she ? a
young, strong, healthy woman, in the prime of her
days; and besides, she told herself remorsefully, it
was a wretched thought—and it only brought home
to the poor lady's storm-tossed heart a fuller con-
viction of her own weakness.
When Lord Netherby spoke again to her, as he
did on several occasions, of the extreme desirability
of Ralph's marrying, she often scarcely knew how
to answer him. The Earl urged the idea of marriage
strongly upon her. Marriage, he said—and Lady
Netherby knew that he spoke truly—is very often
the salvation of a man who has been wild in early
life. A nice, sensible, ladylike girl, with a head on
her shoulders, would be Just the making of Ralph!
Many a man who has begun life as badly as he had,
has been pulled back by a good wife and made a
man of. And Ralph might easily marry now—he
was a good match, as matches go—a prospective title,
and a fine old country place are things not to be
despised, even although there may not be much for-
tune attached to them. There would be many young
women of good family only too glad to marry Ralph
now—and he was not a bad-looking fellow, either—
there was nothing to prevent a girl's being honestly
attracted to him. There was no earthly reason why
he should not marry very well indeed, Lord Netherby
considered. And Lady Netherby would sit by and
listen and nod and say ' yes ' at proper intervals, and
all the time her heart would be torn in twain within
her breast
For she said to herself that Ralph could not, and
RALPH THE HEIR
215
should not marry! No good and pure-souled girl
should be allowed to come home as his bride, to live
in all confiding innocence at Netherby, whilst that
other woman whom he had seduced, and that child
who was of his flesh and blood, were living there out-
side his own gates !
There might be many unredressed and uncon-
fessed wrongs in the world; but that wrong should
not, and must not, be, so long as she herself lived
to prevent it!
There must be a limit of all self-destruction, and
that limit was set by Lady Netherby upon Ralph's
marriage. Thus far would she go for him, but no
farther.
Things were at this point with her. There was a
sort of lull before the storm—a time of waiting for the
news which might come any day of Ralph and of his
return; when one fine September day, as she was
returning from her morning walk round her garden
and hothouses, the footman came out to meet her
on the lawn, and told her that a ' young person ' was
waiting to speak to her in the book room.
Now the book room was a little den on the ground
floor, which looked out on to the back of the house.
In old days, when the children were all young, it
had been used as a playroom, and the young people
were accustomed to keep all their little treasures
here, and to indulge in the usual childish messes of
paint-boxes and paste-pots. Here, dolls had been
dressed, and toffee had been made on wet after-
noons, and collections of birds' eggs and of wild
flowers had been gathered together, and stored by
eager young devotees of natural history, and here
also birds, and moles, and mice, had been skinned
or cooked, amidst odours unspeakable and inde-
scribable.
When the perpetrators of all these dear delights
had outgrown their juvenile tastes, the room had re-
216
A SOUL ASTRAY
mained empty, with such embellishments adorning
it as painted deal bookcases stored with juvenile
literature, glass cases of specimens of natural history
—eggs, fossils, or shells, and so forth, set up in various
corners, whilst a few framed prints or faded water-
colours hung against the walls, and here and there
a bare table and two or three rush-bottomed chairs
stood about in the middle of the room.
And nowadays, if anybody came up from the
village to seek a personal interview with Lady
Netherby, it was here that she was accustomed to
see them.
To hear, then, that a 'young person' awaited her
in the book room, was no new experience to her
whatever.
'Who is it, James?' she inquired, carelessly.
But James was a new institution, and was a
Londoner and not a Cramer Forest man. He did
not know who it was. The young person had not
stated her name.
Lady Netherby lingered a few minutes in her
boudoir by the way. There was no particular hurry.
'Young persons' from the village were accustomed
to await her pleasure. She placed a few Michaelmas
daisies she had brought in in her hand from the
garden into a flower vase, and set them on her
writing-table, then she inserted a sprig of groundsel
between the bars of her canary's cage and stood
watching the bird for a few minutes with a pleased
and interested smile, as it fluttered down to attack
the dainty. It was quite five or seven minutes later
that, with a leisurely step, she left the room, and
crossing the hall went down a somewhat dark pas-
sage that led to the book room.
The tall figure of a woman stood with her back
to the door, gazing up intently at a small, framed
water-colour drawing which hung against the op-
posite wall. She wore a dark cloak and a plain
RALPH THE HEIR
217
straw bonnet; there was nothing distinctive at all
about her back; it was only when she turned round
at the opening of the door behind her that, with
a positive shock of horror, Lady Netherby recognised
the dark hair and eyes and brilliant colouring of
Zilla Hardy.
CHAPTER XXIII
a keen encounter
For the moment Lady Netherby could not speak;
she stood stock still, staring aghast at her visitor.
To tell the truth, she was frightened. For what did
this woman want of her ? What had she come for ?
She was quite sure that Zilla Hardy had never in
her life set foot within the doors of Netherby Hall
before. What evil omen, therefore, did her unwonted
appearance portend? And it was Zilla who spoke
first.
' I was looking at this picture, my lady ; it must
have been very like what he was as a child. It is
meant for Ralph, isn't it ? '
There was an intentional audacity in the way she
spoke the name, which roused Lady Netherby's in-
dignation. How dared this woman speak to her
of her son as ' Ralph' ?
'Yes, it is a portrait of Mr Lyndon as a child,'
she answered, with an angry glitter in her cold eyes.
' Ah ! he was  Ralph  to me last time I saw him,'
replied Zilla, quite unabashed either by the implied
reproof or by the old lady's stern aspect of dis-
approval; 'and it is just about him that I came to
speak to you, my lady. They say he is coming
home soon—is that true ?'
218
A KEEN ENCOUNTER
219
* Who are you, to dare to question me about
my son's movements? What does it signify to you
whether he comes home or no ? What is my son to
you, Zilla Hardy ?'
The girl shrugged her shoulders, and a little, care-
less, insolent laugh broke from her.
' Not much! I don't mind if I never see his face
again,' she replied, contemptuously. ' I don't care
for Ralph. What I do care for,' she went on, with
a sudden change of voice and manner, ' is this!'
She turned round and tapped the tarnished frame
of the little water-colour portrait behind her with
her brown forefinger. 'Lady Netherby, you saw
my boy up at the farm the day you came when I
was out, when he was left with his grandad.
Doesn't the likeness strike you ?'
' I—I don't understand you.'
But as she faltered out the words, Lady Netherby
felt like a hunted animal driven to bay. Her sin—
the sin of concealment and deceit—was being brought
home to her; this woman—who was vile and shame-
less—had become both her judge and her sentence.
' Why, you must see that this picture is the living
image of him !' went on Zilla remorselessly, as it
seemed to her; 'it might be Tot himself. Surely
you can see as much ?'
Lady Netherby's lips moved, but no words
came.
' If anyone were to see Tot, and then come here
and look at this picture, they'd think it was painted
from him,' went on Zilla with conscious malice.
'Woman! why have you come here to torment
me?' burst from Lady Netherby's white and trem-
bling lips. 'Why do you say this thing? Are you
not Steeve Hardy's wife, whom he married on account
of your miserable child ? Is not Steeve Hardy his
father.'
' No, he is not,' answered Zilla, quietly.
220
A SOUL ASTRAY
And then there was a moment or two of absolute
silence.
' You are shameless—a depraved and degraded
creature ! Why do you come here to insult me by
blackening my son's name to me ?' burst forth Lady
Netherby all at once.
' Look here,' interrupted Zilla, and suddenly her
whole manner changed, and she was no longer in-
solent and arrogant, but a suppliant pleading for help.
' Oh, yes, I daresay I am all that, and as wicked
as you say I am, but I don't want to injure you or
Ralph — well, Mr Lyndon, if that pleases you
better, then! I want, what you want—to keep his
name out of it, so that no one shall ever guess the
truth. I am nothing but a poor, half-bred gipsy girl,
and you are a grand lady; but you and I want just
the same thing, for different reasons, perhaps—to save
Ralph's name from being mentioned.'
There was a strange eagerness in her manner ; her
eyes glowed, her lips trembled. She sank down, half
kneeling, on one of the wooden chairs which stood
between them, and caught at Lady Netherby's dress
with her hands. The brown, shapely fingers en-
twined themselves in the heavy crape folds of her
black gown, much as Tot's fingers had done. There
was a curious similitude of action. Even at that
moment, Lady Netherby was reminded of it, and the
clutch of Tot's fat, baby fingers upon her dress came
back to her with a strange sensation of the unreality
of all things.
' You are his grandmother, you know ; all said and
done, you are his grandmother, and I his mother.
Help me to save Tot!'
'To save Tot?' faltered Lady Netherby. 'How
do you mean ? What am I to do ? and is Tot in
danger, then ?'
Their eyes met—the old woman's, faded and anxious
with years and with trouble, shrinking a little from
A KEEN ENCOUNTER 221
the plain-spoken words; the younger woman's bold and
eager—there was a whole universe between them, a
gulf wide as heaven and hell are asunder; yet at that
moment those eyes were one—one in sympathy, one
in meaning—and a little child it was that lay between
them !
' Is Tot in danger ?' Lady Netherby said tremulously
once again. ' Is he ill ? Oh, tell me quick, quick ?'
' No—no, not ill ; but I am afraid for him. I can-
not tell you, I cannot explain; only help me, help
me to send him away !'
' To send him away ? Where ? Why ?'
' Because— Oh, you would not understand ! but
if I can only get him safe, somewhere away from
here, for a time, you know, just for a little time till
it has blown over. There is something that I am
afraid of, someone who wants to injure him, and I
have no money, for I daren't tell my uncle, and, be-
sides, he wouldn't let him go, he is that wrapped up
in him, and he would not understand what it is. I
can't explain ; but oh, if you love Ralph, if you love
your son, help me, help me to save mine. And he
has a claim upon you too, has little Tot. I'm a
wicked, sinful woman in your eyes, I daresay, Lady
Netherby, but I'm Tot's mother, and he is of your
own flesh and blood ; and if you will help me, tell me
where he can go to be safe, then I swear that Ralph's
name shall never come out. I will never say a word ;
he shall be Steeve's boy to the end—to the end.'
For a moment there was silence in the little,
gloomy room. Outside, amongst the evergreens
which darkened the window, a bird was chirruping
a shrill, single note ; along the passage a tall clock
ticked the minutes solemnly away with a little
vibrating pulsation, like a human heart that beats,
and the two women looked at one another.
All the rest of her life, Lady Netherby remembered
every detail of that moment—the silence in the small
222
A SOUL ASTRAY
room that seemed to be charged with some electric
current, the restless bird, the steady-ticking clock,
and the fierce battle that went on within her own
breast—the forces of habit and education struggling
against the forces of nature. On the one side were
ranged all the prejudices of her birth and position,
which recoiled from association with a woman of low
origin and of blemished character, all the instincts of
a clean and upright life, that shrinks like a sensitive
plant from the devious paths of deceit and intrigue ;
and then, on the other hand, there was Ralph!—
Ralph, who was coming home to take his place in his
father's house and amongst his father's people, and
upon whose bearing and conduct so much of the
happiness of that father's last days depended. To
save Ralph from disgrace, it might indeed be neces-
sary for her to strike a bargain with this woman, to
enter into a secret treaty with her, repellent as the
position was to her whole nature. Lady Netherby
shivered a little, and drew the fur cape she was wear-
ing closer about her shoulders ; the room seemed all
at once to turn cold—very cold.
Zilla was watching her intently. Her cunning eyes
saw the struggle, and appreciated it in all its details.
That was why she spoke anew.
' If you will not help me, I shall let things take
their course. I shall appeal to Ralph himself when
he comes home. I might bring Tot up here to see
him ; he would not disown him. Ralph will be a
rich man one day, and he's bound to help with the
boy. Why, if Lord Netherby were to see Tot—'
'No, no!' burst from Lady Netherby's dry lips,
'that is what you shall never do ! You have made
mischief enough, Zilla Hardy. You have spoilt one
man's life already—is not that enough for you ? For
God's sake leave my son alone! Give him a chance.'
' Will you help me, then ?'
11 will do anything—anything, if only you will
A KEEN ENCOUNTER
223
spare my son. You want money I suppose? How
much ?'
She took her purse out of her pocket and began
emptying the gold that was in it out on to the table
between them.
'You will help me to get Tot away?' said
Zilla.
'Yes, yes; that will be the best. Get him away
out of the country,' she assented with feverish
eagerness.
She forgot to ask why Zilla wanted to send the
child away, because, all at once, it seemed to her that
here was the very thing of all others which would serve
her own purpose best. There would be no danger
then, no fear that this gipsy woman, out of revenge
or spite, or Heaven knows what instinct of sheer
malice and mischief, would bring Tot up to the Hall,
confront him with Lord Netherby, or with Ralph!
—or appeal to that picture !
' Anything you like,' she said breathlessly; ' any-
thing, only say what you want.'
' I want you to arrange some place where to send
him,' said Zilla, who for certain had thought the
whole matter out beforehand. ' I am poor and
ignorant, but you are rich and you know people—
there must be someone to whom you could send
him, who would take money to look after him—
someone a long way off? '
' I know a woman living in London,' said Lady
Netherby, slowly, after a moment's reflection; ' a
woman who was once my maid, who married, and
whom I could trust.'
It seemed easy now—now she had struck the
bargain, and given this woman the mastery over
her.
' London would do,' said Zilla; ' but he must go
soon.'
' I shall have to write first.'
224
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Write quickly, then.'
Already the gipsy woman was assuming the upper
hand over her. Lady Netherby twisted her hands
together nervously, and her eyes wandered shiftily
about her.
' But what shall I say to her ? How am I to
explain about the child ? I shall have to tell her
something—account for him in some fashion,' she
said helplessly.
' That is your affair,' and Zilla shrugged her
shoulders; ' you can tell her anything you like—
the truth, if it pleases you.'
Lady Netherby made a gesture of dissent.
' It is more your object than mine to conceal
whose child he is,' went on Zilla remorselessly ; ' only
let me know when I am to take him, and I will
manage to get away for the day. I shall want this
money for the journey.'
She gathered up some of the gold pieces from
the table and tied them into a corner of her handker-
chief. Lady Netherby watched her with a curious
sense of impersonal interest. It seemed to her that
she was no longer herself—Countess Netherby of
Netherby Hall—the honoured wife, the respected
lady bountiful of the district, the head and leader
of the simple and yet dignified society which
gathered around her as subjects about a queen,
the woman whose whole life was patent to them all,
as the life of a stainless lady's should be, on whom
no breath of reproach had ever fallen.
It must surely be, not this woman but some other,
who stood watching the brown fingers as they fas-
tened the money into the red and yellow silk handker-
chief. It was the handkerchief that Zilla usually
tied about her head; and because she could not
knot it tightly enough with her hands, she tugged
at the corner of it with her strong, white teeth,
with a certain spasmodic ferocity, till she looked
A KEEN ENCOUNTER
225
like a beautiful wild animal that gnaws and worries
its prey.
And this woman was her ally — in her pay — her
accomplice in this evil deed — this conspiracy of
silence that was to save a guilty man's name for
ever at the expense of a guiltless one !
' He shall be Sleeve's son to the end!'
The words rang in her ears long after
Zilla had taken her departure, and after she had
pledged herself to find a home for the child in
London.
Yes ; that was where the great sin of it lay—
the sin that would be upon her soul to the end of
her days.
For a long time she sat, pen in hand, trying to
frame a letter to the woman in London, so that
there should not appear to be anything strange or
mysterious in the request that she was making that
she would take charge of a little child of six years old
who could have no possible claim upon her, save
that of charity ; yet, try as she would, the letter would
not read easily and naturally. Mrs Lang had been
a sensible person in the days when she lived as
lady's maid with Lady Netherby—in the early days
of her married life before Ralph's birth. She had
not become less so when she had married a butler
and set up a lodging-house in West Ken-
sington.
Lady Netherby, who had that rare virtue of never
dropping her old friends, however humble their
station might be, and who was indebted to Mrs
Lang because she had once nursed her through a
dangerous illness, had often gone to see her at the
West Kensington lodging-house. She had sat in
Mrs Lang's parlour and drunk her tea out of her
best china tea cups, and had sat chatting with her
in a friendly and familiar intercourse, and she
knew perfectly well that Mrs Lang was no fool, and
P
226
A SOUL ASTRAY
was as capable of putting two and two together as
most people. What would she think about this child
dropped from the clouds upon her? What strange
suspicions might not be aroused in her mind as to his
origin, and if Mrs Lang were to hear the whole story,
Lady Netherby knew that she would most certainly
refuse to be a party to fraud and deceit, for Mrs Lang
was a woman whose motto it was to ' speak the
truth, and shame the devil'—an honest woman to the
backbone, in thought and deed.
' And I am not—God help me ! I am not!' cried
out the poor woman miserably to herself, and then
she dropped her face into her hands and wept
bitterly, and it was with a very worn and har-
assed look that she somehow stumbled on to
the end of that letter, making out her little
story lamely and incompletely enough to the
ex-lady's maid.
Lang was a good, faithful creature, she thought,
and perhaps Lang would just be content to
do as she was told and to ask no questions!
That was her chief hope and consolation in the
matter.
Late that same evening, after she herself had
undressed and sent away her maid, and whilst
Lord Netherby was still sitting up in his library,
smoking and reading, as was his custom, Lady
Netherby, robed in a dark dressing-gown, and
with slippers on her feet, came stealing out of
her bedroom-door, flat candlestick in hand.
There was something she had to do, which she did
not dare to do by daylight, for a guilty conscience
makes cowards of us all. The house was quite still
and quiet. The two girls had long ago retired to
their rooms, and now all the servants also had gone
to bed. No one sat up for the Earl, for he was a bad
sleeper, and seldom left his library before one o'clock.
There was no danger of meetinp- anvbodv about.
A KEEN ENCOUNTER
227
Lady Netherby crept softly and cautiously down the
thick carpeted staircase, then on tiptoe across the
cold flags of the wide hall, where even her muffled
footsteps seemed to echo weirdly around and above
her, till her heart beat and she often stopped for whole
minutes together to be quite sure that no one was
about or likely to observe her. She got on better
when she had passed the hall and was safe in the
long, carpeted passage beyond, where the even ticking
of the tall clock, in its wooden case, seemed to cover
the soft sound of her steps, and to inspire her with
courage.
She reached the room at last. She had brought
a little framed photograph with her, which she
had subtracted during the course of the day from
one of the seldom - used spare rooms, for it would
not do to leave a blank space on the wall, she
said to herself; some housemaid might notice it and
wonder.
And by-and-by she got back again in the same
fashion to her own bedroom, cold and breathless,
but thankful for her successful return, for she had
carried away with her the water-colour sketch of
Ralph.
She had thought she would destroy it; but somehow,
when it came to the point, she could not—the child
with the grey-blue eyes, and the red-gold hair, smiled
at her so winningly out of the picture, that she could
not bring herself to take it out of the frame and
tear it into fragments, as she had intended to do,
for the pretty rounded face found its way once more
to her heart as it used to do, years and years ago—
only that now the red rose-leaf lips seemed to say to
her,' I am Tot, too—I am Tot, as well!' So she did
not destroy it, but locked it safely away at the very back
of a large, old-fashioned, oaken bureau under a moun-
tain load of papers and old account books that were
seldom moved or taken out—and where she told her-
228
A SOUL ASTRAY
self that no one would be likely to look for it; it
would be safe enough there, she thought—as she ex-
tinguished her candle, and laid her weary limbs
down in her bed—safe enough!
CHAPTER XXIV
on the other side of the world
The African sun, like a globe of red fire, was rising
slowly from behind a long range of low hills to the
east.
Soon the warm light scattered the grey shadows of
early dawn, and bathed the broad, green veldt with
golden haze. Across the undulating pasture land,
that was treeless—save for countless low clumps of
scrub which made the only break in the monotony
of the landscape—a wide, sluggish river, with flat,
muddy banks, wound its slow course in tortuous
curves.
The scene, which, in the uncertain light of dawn
might have seemed to be as peaceful as it was pastoral,
revealed in the growing light of day some hideous
and significant details, for in the midst of the emerald
green pastures,-still dotted over with scattered sheep
and lambs, lay the smouldering ruins of what had
been only a few days ago a large and prosperous
farm enclosure.
Nothing was left of it now, save heaps of charred
and blackened rubble, and a wreckage of broken
furniture and household appurtenances thickly strewn
all over the little garden plot, where a few flowers and
early vegetables still lifted their heads dauntlessly
amidst the grim desolation around them.
229
230
A SOUL ASTRAY
And all around this fated spot lay black heaps of
dead bodies piled up one upon the other; the bodies
of the dusky warriors who had fought there till they
fell. And there were in addition horrible birds of
evil omen that hovered on wide-reaching wings above
these ghastly heaps of slaughtered savages, that added
yet another gruesome touch of horror to the picture.
For one of those frequent little African wars, to which
we are all so well accustomed, was now going on—
a hand-to-hand struggle between the few scattered
Dutch and English settlers and the countless hordes
of warlike natives, who so fiercely resent the occupa-
tion of their country and the steady advance of civili-
sation into their lawless dominions. And two days
ago there had been a sharp fight here, around this
remote and poorly defended farm.
Two settlers, a half-bred Dutchman who was, in fact,
its owner, and an Englishman who had lately joined
him as partner, with a few Boers and their wives and
children, had managed to hold the place for many
hours against an overwhelming number of the enemy,
until a gallant little company of English soldiers had
arrived opportunely upon the scene to their rescue.
By that time the Matabele warriors were in possession
of the larger portion of the outhouses and farm
buildings.
There had been a fierce contest, a hand-to-hand
scuffle, a brilliant onslaught, and a dogged resistance.
Then the low mud embankment was forced and
the farm buildings, where the enemy had entrenched
himself, were carried and blown up with gunpowder,
followed by an immediate stampede of the dislodged
force, and a hot pursuit across the shallow river by
the victorious soldiers. After which—silence, dawn,
the rising sun, and the dead slain lying there with
their still faces upturned to the brazen glory of the
glad new day.
The owner of the farm settlement lay dead within
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 231
the ruined precincts of the farm. But his name was
not even mentioned in the official dispatches from
headquarters, which contained, nevertheless, a short
notice of this little night attack, amongst many other
incidents of the campaign of far greater importance
and significance.
'Topj&ra Farmhouse seized by the enemy, night of
14th ulto.—retaken and burnt same night by 3d
Company Southshire Regiment. Casualties — five
killed, two wounded—privates.'
Thus ran the brief record of this brilliant but totally
unimportant little affair, which was productive of no
sort of results in the general scope of the campaign.
Nevertheless, people at home read the telegram,
amongst the rest in their morning papers, with much
satisfaction, and congratulated themselves that this
place, wherever it might be—for it was not to be found
on any map—had been so easily taken and with so
little loss. Five men killed, and they not officers-—
which would have mattered more—but only common
soldiers who don't count for so much—a mere nothing!
Nothing, of course. Only five English homes made
barren and desolate, and five mothers or wives with
broken hearts and empty lives! But that signifies
very little in the great whirligig of life and eternity.
The only signs of human life now left in these once
prosperous and smiling plains were centred about and
within a small kraal or sheep enclosure, which lay
about a mile away from the destroyed farm, lower
down the course of the river.
In one corner of this kraal was a low mud hovel,
that had served as a shelter for the lambs and ewes
in wet weather. The ground, after a long season of
drought, was now hard and caked into a rough sur-
face of uneven mud, and within this poor shelter lay
a man, stretched upon a coarse heap of sacking. He
232
A SOUL ASTRAY
was the English settler, partner of the man who had
been killed, and he was apparently badly hurt, not so
much by the spears and arrows of the foe as by the
fire which had consumed his late home. His clothes
were nothing but burnt and blackened rags, and a
blood-stained linen bandage was tied across the
upper part of his face, reaching down nearly to his
mouth; beneath which straggled a rough, red beard.
He seemed feverish, and tossed and rolled about on
his hard couch, and one of his hands was disabled,
so that he could not use it.
Just outside the opening of the hut, but within
reach of the man inside, a big soldier, in a tattered
uniform, had propped himself with difficulty against
the mud wall. He had a jagged spear wound in the
thigh.
A third man, also a private, with one arm in a
sling, was occupied in trying to kindle a fire of caked
mud and scrub boughs, with a view to boiling a kettle
for the preparation of some sort of morning meal.
This man's name was Reed. Presently, having sue-
ceeded in getting the thin branches to light, he stood
up, and, shading his eyes with his uninjured hand
from the level rays of the morning sun, looked long
and anxiously towards the south, where a rough
track, that could scarcely be dignified by the name
of a road, reached away across the veldt.
' Do you see anything yet, Reed ?' asked the other
soldier, who was watching his comrade with deep
interest.
Far away, quite upon the distant horizon, a tiny
cloud of dust was just faintly discernible. It was upon
this hopeful sign that Reed's eyes were intently fixed.
' I—almost think so,' he answered slowly, after a
pause. ' I can't be sure—I don't like to be sure—but
there is something that looks like dust; it might
mean nothing, you know,' he added hastily, as though
unwilling to raise false hopes.
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 233
A faint sound within the hut. The soldier whose
leg was wounded dragged himself laboriously through
the narrow opening.
' Do you want anything ?' he inquired. ' Did you
call me?'
' Tell me what time it is,' asked the sick man
wearily.
' Five o'clock,' answered the other, and then he
stooped over him as best he could, and lifted him
a little upon the sack which served to support his
head.
' Five o'clock ! Why, it must be broad daylight.'
' Yes ; the sun has risen.'
' Don't tell lies, it is as black as pitch. Why is this
cursed bandage over my face ? What have you tied
it on for ? Here, take it off, can't you ?'
He tore at it impatiently with his uninjured hand.
The soldier tried to quiet him, and took hold of his
hand to prevent his wrenching the bandage off.
' I think you had better let it be till we get a
doctor,' he said gently and soothingly. ' They were
to send our doctor back with the waggon, as I told
you ; it can't be very long now. Let it be, till you
can have it properly attended to. You see your eyes
have got a bit hurt, that's why you can't see the light
well.'
The speaker was a big fellow, with broad shoulders
and a bronzed face. His fair hair was many shades
lighter than his brown skin, and curled crisply over
his head; and his thick moustache was a pale straw
colour. His eyes were very clear and blue, and there
was a look of patient endurance in them, a certain
steadfast intensity which made them singularly attrac-
tive; the tone of his voice was peculiarly gentle and
refined, and there was something in his manner and
general appearance which suggested a delicacy of
mind superior to his humble station.
' When is that damned waggon ever coming ?'
234
A SOUL ASTRAY
growled the man with the red beard irritably. ' They
have forgotten us.'
' That is not very likely; but it is at least seven-
teen miles to the camp; it would take them some time
to get back themselves, and then, you see, there would
be the waggon to find—there might be some delay in
sending it off—but Captain Grey swore to me that
he would send for us ; he is quite certain to keep his
word. I don't think it can be very much longer now ;
it is bound to be here this morning.'
The man upon the sacking muttered a curse, and
sank down into silence again.
After a few minutes he spoke once more,—
' Someone must have carried me out of the farm-
house after the place blew up ? I can't remember
anything after that. Was it you?'
' Yes.'
' Were you hurt ?'
' Only a flesh wound—a mere trifle—in the leg. I
can't stand, that's all.'
' And you got that when you carried me out of
the farm-yard, I suppose? Was the enemy still
attacking ?'
'Yes; but they were giving way by then. Ten
minutes later, and they were in full flight, and our
men after them.'
No thanks. Only a gruff noise like a grunt.
' Have you been long in this cursed country ?'
' Not this time. I was at Cape Town some years
ago, when I first joined; since then I have been to
India.'
' What brings you back here again ? This wretched
war, I suppose ?'
'Yes; the regiment was under orders for home,
and then came the news of this outbreak, and we
were sent to South Africa instead. We were shipped
off at once, and marched up-country directly we
landed.'
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 235
Another long silence.
£ What is your name ?' said the man with the
bandaged face, suddenly.
' Hall,' replied the other, and his bronzed face
flushed slightly.
' Private, I suppose ? Or are you a gentleman
come down in the world ? Your voice sounds like it.'
' I am not a gentleman. I am a private soldier.'
But he did not in return ask the name of the man he
had saved from the fire, and whom he was tending
now. Then came another long silence. When it
was broken it was again by the man with the red
beard, but this time his words took the form of a
feverish soliloquy about his private affairs. He had
apparently forgotten the presence of Private Hall.
' Just like my cursed luck,' he muttered. ' A week
later and I should have been off on my way home to
England. After all this knocking about out here, I
get the news that I am somebody, after all, and can
live on the fat of the land to my life's end, and never
need do another stroke of work, and now to be let in
for a fight and a damaged face! Well, I shall be
better to-morrow, I suppose. Curse it, how my eyes
sting ! No wonder I can't see. What an unlucky
devil I am !'
After that he began to ramble off into long, in-
coherent sentences which seemed to have no sense
and no connection with each other, and Private Hall
sat still on the hard ground by his side, and attempted
no reply.
An hour or so went by. Then all at once Reed
came to the door with a face beaming with delight.
' It is the waggon !' he cried, in a voice of suppressed
excitement. ' I can see it quite plainly now, coming
over the brow of the hill. They are waving a white
flag to let us know they have come, and I can see
some of our fellows sitting in front. They will be
here in a few minutes now.'
236
A SOUL ASTRAY
But the man upon the sacking was too ill by now
to hear him; he only went on muttering to himself
and grinding his teeth, and turning and twisting him-
self about. The good news fell upon ears that could
not take in its meaning.
Private Hall dragged himself outside to see.
There, sure enough, was the waggon with its team of
six white oxen coming slowly but steadily down the
long green slope from the south, with a dozen or so
of dusky, half-naked Kaffirs running alongside, cheer-
ing the beasts on with weird, guttural cries and long
stakes. From within the dark shadow of the canvas
hood came the flash of scarlet jackets and of English
faces, and soon there arose a faintly distant cheer
from English throats.
Reed ran joyfully down the hill to meet them, and
presently the great hooded waggon came slowly
toiling up the slope, and the steaming oxen stood in
the yoke, outside the opening to the kraal.
Captain Grey had been true to his word, for he
had sent the surgeon back in the waggon.
This was mainly for Hall's sake, who belonged to
his company, and with whom he was a great favourite
—indeed he was a popular man with the whole regi-
ment, and one that could be ill spared.
The doctor wanted to see to him first, but Hall
would not hear of it. The man inside the hut was
the worst, he told him. He was in high fever and
delirious—would Dr M'Leod go to him at once ?—it
might be even that he was dying.
Dr M'Leod nodded ' All right!' He carried a
black bag in his hand, and he went into the hut. He
was a man of few words, and he never wasted his
time.
The natives were outspanning the oxen, and taking
them down to water in the river. There would have
to be a halt of an hour or more before they pould
start on their return journey.
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 237
Reed sauntered away with the other soldier who
had come upon the waggon, and who had not been
one of the rescuing force, in the direction of the
blackened ruins of the farm, with its ghastly human
fortifications. He had a soldier's natural desire to
spin a yarn and to explain how it had all happened,
to someone who had not been present. The sun
stood high in the blue by now. It was hot and
breezeless inside the kraal. Private Hall propped
himself up in his old place in the shade, against the
mud wall outside the hovel.
His face had grown very grave and thoughtful. He
knew all about that red-bearded man who was tossing
about in the delirium of fever within the hut—he did
not need to be told his name. The beard had changed
him, of course, but he had recognised him immedi-
ately, even through the smoke and the din of the
fight. That was why, when he had seen him fall in
the shock of the blinding explosion of the blown-up
farm buildings, he had made for him at once, fighting
his way across the yard to reach him, had dragged
his senseless body out of the burning ruins, and had
carried him away himself to a place of safety.
' His father was good to me once,' he said to him-
self, as he bore him in his arms ; ' for his father's sake
I'll bring him out, alive or dead.' And he did. The
settler's face had been certainly badly damaged by
the explosion, but he was alive, and as to his eyes,
that might of course be merely a superficial injury,
and a few weeks might restore him much to what he
was. Private Hall hoped so—that was for the
surgeon to say.
' He has not seen me at all,' he thought, with satis-
faction, ' and by the time he gets his sight back we
shall be off again, and he will never recognise me or
know the name of the man who saved his life.'
He sat there for a long time waiting. By this
time he was in considerable pain, for, although no
238
A SOUL ASTRAY
bones were broken, there was a long, jagged spear
wound that had slashed his thigh open to the bone.
It ached and smarted very much now that the excite-
ment of the fight was over, and was becoming so stiff
that he could scarcely turn over on to his side.
Presently Reed and the other man came back, and
Reed brought him a little tin mug full of cold tea,
which had beeil brought in the waggon, and which
he swallowed eagerly. He began to feel very faint.
'You're precious bad yourself,' said Reed. 'They'll
be sending you down to Pretoria to the hospital
along with all the other sick and wounded. You will
get home again, I expect, before any of us.'
' I hope not,' replied Private Hall, with a faint
smile. ' That would be hard lines, just as we've got
a chance of seeing a little fighting! I hope it's
nothing much. When the doctor has properly
stitched it up, it will soon heal.'
But at the bottom of his heart he could not help
feeling that what his comrade prophesied about him
was exceedingly likely to come about. Then the two
men left him and went down to the waggon to super-
intend the inspanning of the oxen, and Private Hall
lay quite still, thinking over many things. He had
no desire whatever to go home. It had been a
welcome reprieve to him when the orders came for
the 2d Battalion of the Southshire Regiment to pro-
ceed to Africa instead of to Plymouth. Plymouth
certainly was a long way from Cramer Forest, and no
one was likely to know him there—but England is
England after all, and to be in his own country and
yet unable to go home, would be a harder and bitterer
thing than to be on the other side of the world.
The past came back to him very vividly to-day as
he sat alone and waited for the surgeon, who was a
long time in coming to attend to his injured leg. The
wound smarted and burnt, and ached and stung, but
he did not mind that much, not half so much as that
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 239
cruel ache, that gnawing pain which the meeting with
that red-bearded man who lay inside the mud hovel
had reawakened in his heart! No bodily suffering
that he knew could be compared to it. And it was
such a blow to him, too, because he had believed that
he had lived it down, and that time, and absence, and
change, had swept away the worst of it, had obliterated
the keenest part of the anguish till it had become
merely the faint memory of a sorrow that was over-
come.
Vain delusion ! Time had done nothing for him,
save to cover over the sore with a thin crust that at
any moment was liable to be broken.
For here, at the first sound of a voice from home,
at the sight of a face that had been a part and parcel
of old memories and old associations, all his self-sub-
dual was at an end, and the old pain was with him
once more, the old grief stirred up again as though it
had never gone to sleep. And that pain was such a
subtle and complex thing. At first it had been solely
the pain of leaving Mary. In the blind grief of that
severance, it had seemed to him that all the human
suffering that had ever been conceived or invented
since the beginning of the world was comprised. For
a long time he had been conscious of nothing else—
he had lost Mary, therefore life was at an end!
Then by degrees other things awoke in him, the
shame of his tarnished reputation, the disgrace that
had fallen through himself upon the blameless name
of an old and honourable, though humble, family, the
discredit into which he had sunk amongst his friends
and relatives, and, above all and over all, the indigna-
tion aroused in his father's mind against him. Then
by-and-by something else—the thin end of the wedge
of a terrible self-reproach stole into his endless medi-
tations on the past. Why had he put that wide and
eternal gulf betwixt himself and Mary? Why had
he married Zilla?
240
A SOUL ASTRAY
Often and often, as the days and the years went on,
Steeve asked himself that question; and the answer
came back to him with an ever-lessening sense of con-
fidence in his own wisdom. Sometimes he told him-
self boldly that he had committed a gigantic mistake
in marrying her. Often he recalled how Mr Lorrimer
had believed in him, and how he had urged him to
remain steadfast and true; how he had refused to
solemnise that unholy marriage, protesting against it
with all his might and power.
' Have faith ! Have faith !' John Lorrimer had said
to him. ' Put your trust in God and look to Him to
clear you from this false accusation.'
And,—
' God doesn't trouble Himself much about these kind
of things, sir!' Steeve had answered then, in his bitter-
ness, and in the hardness of his heart. And so, against
the counsel of that good and well-trusted friend, he
had taken his life into his own hands and had acted
rashly, blindly and headstrongly, to his own undoing.
Yes; he could see it all now, plainly enough. If
he had only had that faith, if he had only waited and
had taken up the burden laid upon him, meekly and
patiently, as one who, not seeing why he is so tried
and tested, yet is content to endure and to suffer;
then, no doubt, in God's good time the dark cloud
would have been lifted, and the truth would have
come to light.
But he had been rash and impatient. He had told
himself, and had told John Lorrimer, that he had
done his father's bidding to save his father's name
and credit, but at heart he knew that it was done far
more to ease his own pride from a burden of shame
which was intolerable to him. And to satisfy his
pride, he had also sacrificed Mary !
For it all came back to Mary in the end. Ah,
where was Mary now ? It was a long time since he
had heard anything of her, a year or more since his
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD 24I
only correspondent, Mr Lorrimer, had written to him ;
no doubt some of his letters, in the rapid changes
which had befallen him, must have gone astray.
But when last he wrote, Mr Lorrimer had told him
that she was looking well, and was still unmarried.
' But, my dear Steeve,' the Vicar had gone on to
say, ' I must not conceal from you that Mary is sin-
cerely loved by a most worthy man, Andrew Skelling
by name, the new tenant of Brackmere. He is most
persistent in his attentions, and her mother and all
Mary's best friends feel that it will be a very happy
thing for her if she can bring herself to marry him.
I am sure that even you must wish it.'
And Steeve's eyes had filled with tears as he read
the words.
'Yes, yes,' he had said to himself aloud ; ' I do, in-
deed I do wish it, and may God bless her and make
her happy.'
And that was over a year ago, and he had heard
nothing more since. No doubt by this time she was
a happy wife—a mother, perhaps.
Steeve rolled over on his side with a groan, and
buried his face in the grass.
' Does it hurt much, old chap ?' said the friendly
voice of his comrade, Reed, who had come back to
look after him.
'Yes, it hurts, it hurts!' he moaned in answer.
But he was not thinking of the gaping wound in
his thigh.
And then he was brought back to the present by
the re-appearance of the surgeon at the door of the
hut.
' Now, Hall, my man, it's your turn now,' said Dr
M'Leod, cheerfully, ' and about time, I think.'
' How is your patient in there, sir ?'
Doctor M'Leod shook his head.
' Baddish,' he replied curtly, as he proceeded to
examine Steeve's wound.
Q
242
A SOUL ASTRAY
' Do you mean that he will die ?' cried out Steeve
in dismay.
And his thoughts travelled back with a flash to
Netherby, and to the old parents bereft of their son.
'No; he won't die,' replied Dr M'Leod, who was
cutting away the blood-stained rags from Steeve's
wound with deft and practised fingers. ' Can you
turn a little over ? That will do. Ah, I see; only a
flesh wound, but a nasty deep one, and a little in-
flammation has set in, I am afraid—been left too long
—ah, well we must keep you quiet now, Hall. But
you won't be able to walk for at least six months;
that is certain. Oh ! about the poor fellow in there,
you want to know ? A man of good family, so I
gather from his rambling jabber—poor fellow, poor
fellow—a sad pity! No; he won't die. I don't
anticipate that, although the fever is pretty high just
at present, but I am sorry to say his sight is destroyed.
He will be blind for life.'
CHAPTER XXV
'THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING'
To the end of his life, Steeve never thought of that
journey down country to Pretoria without a shudder.
For days he lay in his corner of the great waggon—
one of a long procession filled with sick and wounded
sent back from the front, that toiled slowly and
laboriously along the rough roads under the glare and
heat of the scorching sun. The canvas hoods, if they
kept off the actual rays of the sun, kept out also every
stray breeze that might have fanned the sufferers'
aching heads. There were from four to six of them
in each waggon, and a surgeon in charge of the whole
lot, who came and inspected each waggon load briefly
at every halt, and doled out the small supply of
medicine, or tinned milk or hard crust or biscuit
steeped in water, to each man. Some of them were
badly wounded, with but little hope of ever reaching
the journey's end. Some of them were in raving fever,
shouting and screaming in the paroxysms of delirium;
others lay still and said nothing, bearing their agony
as best they might—and some again died by the way
and lay dead in the waggons beside the living till the
first halt revealed the fact of their death. And then
these were taken out and hastily buried by the road-
side in shallow, sandy graves, whence, long ere the
slow train of waggons had disappeared upon the
243
244
A SOUL ASTRAY
horizon, the hyenas had dislodged them, and the wild
beasts and the carrion birds tore and mangled their
fever-wasted bodies.
And the waggons jolted on, and the springless
wheels bumped against the ruts in the track, and the
rope and raw hide harness creaked and groaned, and
the natives screamed and yelled, and those in charge
who rode alongside shouted at them and swore ; and
over all, and through all, a swarm of mosquitoes and
flies, of winged and creeping insects of all sorts and
kinds, buzzed, and stung, and bit, as their natural habits
prompted them to do; whilst the sweltering heat went
on by day and by night, so that there was neither ease
nor peace, nor help, for those sick and wounded men.
Steeve was one of those who lay still and endured and
said nothing. He had heard his doom spoken by Dr
M'Leod with a sinking heart. He would probably be
always lame, and it might be many weeks before he
would be able to walk, even with crutches—he would
never be able to march again. And so he was to be
drafted home to the Military Hospital, and in due
course he would receive his discharge from Her
Majesty's service, and perhaps some day a pension,
and a medal for bravery displayed in action.
And so there was an end of his self-chosen career.
As to his present sufferings, they were bad certainly,
but not nearly so bad as those of many others about
him. His leg was strapped up in splints, and he had
nothing to do but to keep still and bear the dull,
grinding pain of it. He had been feverish at first at
the camp, before he had been put into the waggon
that was now his home, but he was better now and
his head was quite clear—clear enough to think about
a great many things that troubled him sorely, as well
as to realise to the full all the groans and the anguish
of those who were in greater pain than himself.
Lying next to him, alongside, under the low sweep of
the covered hood, was the man whom he had rescued
'THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING' 245
from the burning farm buildings, and in whose service
he had been wounded himself. Steeve had askdd
that he might be put near him—and his request had
been granted. For many days the life of this un-
happy man had hung upon a mere thread, and Steeve
sometimes thought, as he listened to his weary moan-
ing and unintelligible mutterings, that it was perhaps
a pity that he had ever dragged him alive out of the
burning house, and that it might be a merciful thing
now if his sufferings were to be stilled in death.
For a man can but die once, but to go on living till
old age, bereft of sight, is an awful and terrible fate to
contemplate.
Steeve did what he could for the poor fellow; he
could just manage to lift himself a little on the plank
which served him for a couch, and in this way he
contrived to carry out a few simple directions given
him by the doctor in attendance : to place a few drops
of some medicine now and again upon his parched
tongue, or to moisten the rag upon his head in a cup
of water placed by his side—water which was usually
tepid, and soon became filled with a swarm of struggl-
ing insects. What with the heat and the privations,
and the unavoidable sufferings of that painful journey,
it was a wonder indeed that the man did not die, as
so many others did. He seemed very near death at
one time, but then again nature reasserted itself, and
the fever began to subside, and after a time left him
altogether. Then his scattered wits returned to him ;
he became calm and perfectly conscious, only he was
so reduced and feeble that it almost seemed as though
he would die after all from sheer weakness. It was
Steeve who for a second time dragged back his totter-
ing feet from the dark river of death. All day long,
at brief intervals, he managed to feed him with small
particles out of the tin of beef jelly with which the
doctor had supplied him for the purpose, and which,
of course, with the number of patients he had to see
246
A SOUL ASTRAY
to, he would not have been able to administer himself.
And that beef jelly saved Ralph Lyndon's life. As
he grew stronger, he often talked to his companion,
whose voice he soon recognised to be that of his
deliverer, Private Hall.
' It's a cursed nuisance about my eyes,' he said to
him one day. ' I can't imagine what is the matter
with them, but of course a good oculist will soon put
me right. I shall go straight off to one the moment I
land in England, or I may telegraph to some London
man to meet me at Southampton. These army
doctors don't know much about anything beyond
bullet wounds and broken bones.'
Steeve was feeding him with jelly off the end of
a broken knife handle ; he made no answer. He
could not indeed find it in his heart to say what he
had heard Dr M'Leod state as a positive fact, nor
could he speak to him of his own observation of the
gaping sockets of the destroyed eyeballs.
' If I thought for a moment that I was to be blind
always, I would far rather be dead,' continued Ralph.
' I should be thankful to have been burnt to death or
killed outright by those savages—it would have been
better to have left me where I was, Hall. But—' and
then for some minutes he did not speak—' but it can't
be that I shall be blind always !' he broke out again
fiercely, almost desperately. ' I've heard of lots of
accidents as bad as mine, and they have always got
better under proper treatment—it might be a long
time, or it might mean an operation, possibly. I don't
mind going through that, and then, of course, I shall
get my eyesight back, in time. You agree with me,
don't you, Hall ?'
' I hope so,' was all Steeve could bring himself to
answer, but his heart ached with pity and compassion.
By degrees he believed that the poor fellow would
become conscious of the real state of the case. It
was better that he should find it out for himself, little
'THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING' 247
by little; to tell him the truth now would be rank
cruelty, and might throw him back again into fever.
One night, just at the end of the journey, Ralph
had a relapse. The day had been a very trying one,
hotter perhaps than any there had been as yet, and
the roads had seemed rougher, the dust more suffo-
eating, and the din and clamour around the waggons
louder than ever. The blind man was at a very low
ebb from sheer prostration and weakness. His pulse
was very feeble, he could scarcely turn his head.
The golden moon and the countless stars lit up the
whole night into a faint reproduction of day. A flap
of the canvas was turned back, and a little breath of
air—hot and sultry almost as noonday, but still wel-
come to the sufferers in the waggons—came stealing
through the aperture.
' Hall,' said Ralph Lyndon, suddenly, in a scarcely
audible whisper, ' can you put your face down close ?
I want to speak to you.'
Steeve dragged himself close.
' Here, give me your hand. I wish I could see
you. That's right. Now I know you are there. Do
you know, I sometimes think I shall never pull
through! I don't think I shall live to get back to
England again.'
' Oh, come, you mustn't be downhearted, sir! We
shall be at Pretoria to-morrow. This has been a bad
journey, but we are nearly at the end of it now.'
' It will be at an end for you, but it may be all over
with me before we get there. Look here, Hall, you've
been good to me. You saved my life. Perhaps it
was a mistake ; but, still, you did it for the best, and
you've looked after me as well as you could since. I
daresay you think I am an ungrateful sort of fellow,
but I really am grateful to you.'
' We won't talk of gratitude, sir. I only did what
every other man in my place would have done.'
'Well, that's neither here nor there; but I want
A SOUL ASTRAY
you to do something more for me now. I want you
to promise me something. It is quite certain that
you will get home, whilst I never may. I may be
left to rot out here. If I die, I want you to go and
see my people.'
Steeve bent his head mutely, and a great choking
breath came up suddenly from his heart.
' You are a queer sort of chap, Hall; you've never
asked me yet what my name is, or who I am, and
perhaps you don't know that I am a gentleman ? '
'Yes, I do, sir,' answered Steeve in a low voice.
' Ah, well,' with a short laugh,' it was clever of you
to guess it, then, for I expect there isn't much of the
gentleman left ab6ut me now, either in looks or
manners! My father is Earl Netherby, of Netherby
Hall, in Cramer Forest. You'll have to remember
that name and address, and go to find him.'
' Yes, sir.'
'Well, when I'm dead, I want you to go and tell
him that I would have come back if I had been
able. Do you know, Hall, some English letters
got to me just the very day before those cursed
niggers attacked us. There were several. Some
of them nearly a year old. But the most recent
of them told me to come home at once, as my eldest
brother was dead—'
' Lord Markton dead ?'
'What! You know his name ? Oh ! but perhaps
you may have met poor Markton, even if you never
heard of the Netherbys.'
If Ralph had had the use of his eyes, Steeve's con-
fusion might have betrayed him at that moment. He
remained discreetly silent, and Ralph continued,—
'You must take this ring off my finger to my
mother at Netherby Hall. She will know your story
is true then, because she will recognise it. She gave
it me herself when I was quite a youngster.'
'THROUGH PAIN AND SUFFERING' 249
And then he broke off, and sighed, and for a long
time was silent.
And Steeve was silent too. This request was a
disturbing one. What possibilities and chances did
it not open out to him ?
'Will you promise me to go, Hall?' said Ralph
at last.
' Promise to go to your people, you mean ?'
'Yes, and to give my ring to my mother, and
tell them how I died, and all about me?'
Then Steeve replied, gravely and thoughtfully,—
'Yes, if you die, I will do so; but, if you live, I
will not go within fifty miles of Cramer Forest.'
' How odd. Why? '
' I cannot tell you. It is my own affair.'
After that, for a long time there was silence be-
tween them. Steeve lay and looked at the stars.
He thought his companion had dropped off asleep.
The promise he had made him did not disturb
him over much, because he felt sure that Ralph
Lyndon was better again, even within the last few
hours. He would probably recover. But how about
his blindness? Might it not become his duty to
break the distressing news of this terrible affliction
to Lord and Lady Netherby? Ralph was now their
only son, and their heir. Whilst he was turning it
about in his mind, and wondering if indeed the
hand of fate was pushing him and driving him on
and on, first in one way, and then in another, back
to his home and Cramer Forest, Ralph spoke
again.
'I've been a bad son, and a bad man,' he said
slowly; ' but since I've been lying here, Hall, I've
thought over many things, and I would give some-
thing if I could undo some of the things I have done.
I would like, if I could—if I knew how—to make
some sort of amends.' A long pause. ' There was
a girl,' began Ralph, 'a poor girl—it was sheer
250
A SOUL ASTRAY
devilry on my part—she was handsome, and I had
nothing to do, and then I went away all at once,
and never saw her again.'
Another long pause.
'Yes?' queried Steeve at last, very softly, thinking
perhaps he was waiting for a helping word.
'Yes; well, it seems there was a child—I heard
afterwards—and that child is on my conscience, out
here, as I lie looking death in the face, you know.'
' Do you know where the child is ?'
' I have no idea. It may be with its mother still.
She got a poor fool of a fellow to marry her, I
heard. Took him in, I suppose, and tried to pass
off the child as his, I shouldn't wonder! But as
sure as you and I are lying here in this cursed
waggon, Hall, that child is mine.'
And then all at once the scales fell from Steeve
Hardy's eyes, and a strong fit of trembling shook him
from head to foot. For in that moment, even as
the words died away off Ralph's lips, Steeve saw
the truth. It was as if a flash of fire had lit up
all the dark places of the past, so that there was
no more mystery about them at all.
' I ought to do something for that child,' went on
Ralph, meditatively; ' it's on my conscience that I
ought to. I don't like to think of going out of
this world without having done my best to make
amends. A man ought always to do something
in these cases. I'm not thinking of the woman; I
don't suppose she was worth much, and she seems
to have consoled herself with the other chap pretty
quickly, but it's the child that sticks in my con-
science.'
' Can you tell me her name ?' asked Steeve in a
choked voice.
' The woman's ? Well, that's the oddest part about
it. I can't for the life of me remember her name!
She was niece to one of my father's tenants, I think.
'through pain and suffering' 251
If you tell him about it, he'll remember, I daresay.
The old boy knows every man, woman and baby
on his estate, I believe. I can remember what she
was like perfectly—a tall, dark, gipsy-looking girl—'
'Ah—h!'
'What's that?—Nothing?—I thought I heard you
call out; perhaps it was the fellow the other side
of me. Well, about the girl, as I was saying, a
handsome lass, and as independent as you please—
used to say she hated me and would have nothing
to say to me, and that she liked the other fellow
best—the fellow she married, you know. I think
that's what made me so keen about her, that and
having nothing on earth to do to get through my
days at home, and she was a bit queer and peculiar
in her ways, that girl. She could whistle and chirp
to the birds and the animals till they all came about
her like bees. I used to tell her she was a witch.
You'd not believe it, I daresay, if I were to tell
you—'
'Don't tell me any more. You have told me quite
enough already,' broke in Steeve, gruffly.
' Tired, old chap ? Well, I won't bore you any
longer now about my affairs. Only just this one thing
I want to say—if I die, and you go home and see
my people, you must tell my father about it, and
ask him if he'll find out that child. I don't know,
I'm sure, whether it was a boy or a girl, even; but
you tell my father to find it out, and do something for
it—educate it, or put it in the way of earning its living,
or something. You can tell him I was sorry for
what I'd done before I died, and ask him to forgive
me, and do that little bit of make up for me. I
think he'll do what he can about it, and I do believe
I could lie quieter in my grave, even if I'm left out
here to rot in this God-forsaken land, if I were quite
sure that poor little kid wasn't starving or being
ill-used, perhaps, by a drunken step-father, who pro-
252
A SOUL ASTRAY
bably found out the trick the woman must have
played on him, and be very likely to pay her out
by ill-treating the kid, d'ye see ?'
For long minutes again there was silence. Then
the stars began to pale and fade, and the dawn crept
up, grey and sweet and cool, over the parched world.
Then Steeve Hardy reached out his hand at last,
and laid it gently upon the thin and wasted one that
was clenched upon Ralph Lyndon's breast.
' If I reach England alive,' he said firmly,' I swear
to you solemnly that I will look after that child, as
though—as though it were my own.'
And no one, save Him who knoweth all the secrets
of the heart, ever knew what it cost Steeve Hardy
to say those words.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE BEAD NECKLACE
' If you will come along with me, I'll give it to yer,'
said Uncle Ben.
Zilla stood undecided, with her finger on her lower
lip.
' Why didn't you bring it, if you wanted me to have
it ?' she asked suspiciously.
' How was I to know that I was going to meet you ?'
retorted Uncle Ben. 'Yer a kind o' gal as no one
knows where yer'll meet.'
' What's it like, d'ye say ?' inquired Zilla, still hesi-
tating.
' It's a fine necklace o' beads—gold and coral beads
—two rows on 'em—I've kept it for ye all these years,'
added the artful gipsy, sentimentally.
' And you say it belonged to my mother ?'
' Ay, sure enough, it was poor Esther's—Davie
gave it her. I took it off her neck after she died,
poor gal!'
' It ought to have been mine from the first,' said
Zilla, resentfully; f it is mine. Why did you keep it ?'
' Come and fetch it now, then.'
But still Zilla doubted and hesitated.
Was this some deep-laid trap of Uncle Ben's, or was
it genuine ?
Her woman's wit told her that if he had really
253
254
A SOUL ASTRAY
wished to bestow this wonderful necklace upon her,
he would have brought it with him—yet still—it might
be as he said—he might not have expected to meet
her. And Tot was not with her. Tot was safe at
home with his ' grandfather,' as she took care to call
him always. It was Tot that Uncle Ben wanted, not
herself.
And to-morrow Tot would be safe enough, and far
away. It was all settled and arranged now—she had
seen Lady Netherby again, and Lady Netherby had
told her to take the boy up to London to-morrow, and
had given her the address to take him to. She was
going to get up early—before the old man was awake
—and steal away out of the house with the child to
catch the first train from Markton in the morn-
ing. And she would see London! That in itself
made her heart beat with a little natural feminine ex-
citement. London, with its crowds and its shops, and
its countless streets and palaces; and it would be
nice, certainly, to get this grand necklace in time to
wear up in the great city !
' Gold and coral beads,' she repeated meditatively,
as her suspicion and mistrust began to give way
before the temptation of the coveted trinket—for
Zilla possessed the strong love of bright colours and
gaudy finery inherent in her father's race—' that should
be fine.'
' It is fine, I tell yer!' insisted Uncle Ben. ' There
won't be no gal on Cramer Forest with a necklace like
that there, so I tell yer! Come along.'
' Is it far?'
' No—just a bit of a way across yonder, t'other side
of Brackmere and through the woods—the camp is
down in the hollow beyond that there hill.'
' I'm not going inside your dirty mats ! I won't go
near your people—I don't want to speak to them !'
' Well, no more you shall, if you don't want to,' said
Uncle Ben, soothingly. ' What a little wild cat it is
THE BEAD NECKLACE
255
to be sure! And if ye do turn up your nose at yer
father's people — why, I'm not goin' to be down on
yer for that! In course, yer only a half-bred un, my
lass, like Simon Hardy's ponies down there! I'll
not force ye to speak to anyone on 'em — though
they are all yer cousins in a way—blood relations, so
to say. But there, I'll not take ye among 'em. You
shall wait t'other side of the pool, quarter of a mile
away, if ye like—and I'll fetch the beads and bring
'em out to ye. Is that fair and square enough ? or
aint it, now ?'
She supposed it was, and at last she began slowly
moving along by his side in the direction he had
indicated. Yet—though she had made up her mind,
and had determined to risk it—she was not quite
free from misgivings. Why had she never been told
about this grand necklace before? Uncle Ben made
out now that he had come back to his old haunts in
the Forest, almost on purpose to bring her this heir-
loom, which was certainly hers by right, if it had been
her mother's, and yet the tribe had been more than a
month in the neighbourhood, and he had never men-
tioned it until to-day.
She kept on casting apprehensive glances to the
right and left of her as they walked. Once she
fancied she saw something crouching down behind
the bushes—and the long boughs of broom and
bracken certainly shook and swayed as she looked
towards the spot.
' There is somebody hiding there, Uncle Ben!
Who is it ?' she said, suspiciously, stopping short.
' Lord love yer, Zilla, 'tis only a hare ! I see plenty
on 'em about here. Well, for a gal with gipsy blood in
yer—yer certainly a gaby! Ye should know the wild
things better nor that! Have ye never charmed
'em to ye ?'
Now this touched Zilla's weak point—and her
vanity was up in arms at once.
256
A SOUL ASTRAY
Yes, of course she had charmed them to her, ' both
birds and beasts,' ' she told him, ' hosts and hosts of
times,' and then she launched forth into long descrip-
tions of how she had first learnt to imitate the cries
of the animals and the notes of the birds, and of that
wonderful day long, long ago, when she was a wee
bit of a girl, when she had first discovered that she
possessed the power of bringing them close to her,
right up to her feet, or to nestle in her hands—
merely by the exercise of this rare gift of hers which
no one else amongst all. the civilised people on the
Forest could understand or account for.
Uncle Ben listened with the deepest attention and
interest.
'Ay, ay,' he said, approvingly. 'And I'm not
surprised—not at all. The gift is in our family—my
grandfather was a wonder at it! He was the best
charmer I ever knew—there weren't a feathered or
four-footed thing for miles that he couldn't bring to
his call—Your father were a charmer, too — but
not so good—I was pretty fair myself once when I
was a lad, but I seem to have lost it a good bit
now.'
Zilla was much interested in this—and began to
explain to him how she, too, had begun to perceive a
falling off in her power of late years—ever since Tot
was born—it had become more difficult to her.
' Ah! it do go off generally,' admitted Uncle Ben
—and Zilla felt glad to hear it—it disproved her own
uneasy suspicions concerning the reasons of her fail-
ing gift.
' Once,' she said to him all at once, throwing up her
head at the remembrance—'once I drew a squirrel
down right down from the topmast tree on Netherby'
Knoll! I stood below without moving an inch for near
half-an-hour, and called to him—and down and down
he came — bit by bit—bough by bough—till he got
quite close—then I reached out my arm softly, and he
THE BEAD NECKLACE
257
crept down on to my hand, and ran along my arm
till he came and sat right up on my shoulder against
my face!'
Her eyes glowed with pride at the recollection, her
scarlet lips parted over her gleaming teeth—her heart
beat faster as she told of that long-gone-by triumph
over the animal world. She was like an old soldier
who describes over again the story of the glorious
victories of his youth. Then, all at once, something
else came back to her—the face of the man who
had stood below the Knoll and watched her, and
applauded her ; who had been to her what an enthusi-
astic audience is to the successful actor. She thought
suddenly of Ralph Lyndon !
A burning blush rushed up in a flame all over her
face and neck, and she could not go on telling Uncle
Ben any more about the squirrel.
A sudden realisation of what she was, and of what
she had done, overwhelmed her—she remembered
that the same day that had witnessed the innocent
triumph of her strange and wonderful gift, had been
also a witness of her direst downfall!
Then she looked about her and found that they
had come a long way beyond the point which Uncle
Ben had mentioned as the limit of their walk. Whilst
she had been talking, she had not noticed that Brack-
mere Pool was now far behind them, and that still
there was no sign of the gipsy settlement in front.
They were walking through a grove of tall Scotch firs.
' Where are we?' she asked, stopping short. 'Where's
the camp, Uncle Ben ? I don't see it anywhere—out
there, d'ye say? I can't see it. No, I'll not go one
step further, not one, I tell you !' . and she sank
down upon the soft carpet of pine needles beneath
their feet. ' I'll wait here, or I'll go back,' she per-
sisted with obstinacy. ' I won't go no farther away
from home. It's getting late, too, and there's rain
coming up from the south. See, over there, that black
R
258
A SOUL ASTRAY
bank of clouds! I'll not go any further, I tell
you.'
' Well, wait here, then, my gal! if it so pleases ye.
I'll not be gone very long, it's just close by now—over
yon hillside—but if you won't go further, ye won't
and I'll go and fetch the beads and bring 'em to ye.
I might p'r'aps stop and have a sup o' tea, if ye didn't
mind waiting ?' he added, persuasively.
' You can have a cup of tea if you'll be quick about
it—only come back as soon as you can, and I'll wait
here.'
Uncle Ben nodded an adieu as he strode away
down the rough slope, and presently she watched him
climb the further side of the bare brown hill beyond,
winding his way upwards through the clumps of
young birches and seedling firs that were dotted
amongst the heather and the gorse. When he got to
the top, he turned round once more and waved a
farewell to her with his hand, and even at that dis-
lance she could distinguish the shining black eyes,
and the white teeth parted into a smile, that almost,
to her fancy, seemed to have something of triumph
and mockery in it. For a moment more, the pic-
turesque figure in its rusty green corduroy suit, with
the dirty scarlet handkerchief knotted about the bare
brown throat, stood out clearly against the sombre
grey of the fast-darkening sky, then it dropped down
quickly out of sight, beyond the brow of the hill, and
Zilla saw no more of Uncle Ben. Later on, she was
to meet him again—once more, only once !
She sat and waited. As the rain clouds crept up
in a wall of blackness from the south, it grew colder,
and a little chilly wind came sweeping up before the
rain in spasmodic gusts and pufifs.
It was now October, and the bracken was brown
and dry; the thorn bushes were covered with deep
red berries, and their yellowing leaves were fluttering
fast in eddies to the ground. The long trails of
THE BEAD NECKLACE
259
bramble were bright with crimson and orange, with
scarlet hips and haws, and the birds were very busy
amongst them, finding their supper—too busy to
notice Zilla, when, to while away the time, she ven-
tured upon a little, gentle, chirruping note. They
did not even turn their round, black, bead-like eyes
towards her at the sound—the red berries were more
to their minds just now.
Presently it began to rain. Just a little, soft, light,
drizzling rain, that stole down without any fuss or
emotion, but that meant business all the same. The
birds all flew away with harsh little cries of disgust,
and disappeared each to the shelter of his own par-
ticular bush or tree.
Zilla turned her thick, woollen skirt up over her head
and wondered when Uncle Ben was coming back.
She did not mind the rain herself, for she was used to
be out in weathers of all kinds, but she began to
worry about Tot. She wondered if that fool Sarah
Goades had allowed him grub about in the garden in
his clean white suit, and muck it up, so that it would
be too dirty to wear up to London to-morrow. She
had forgotten to tell her to put his brown holland
pinny on if he went out; and Sarah was such an
old cat, she'd like him to get in a mess,, just out
of spite! she would be very late for tea, and she
wondered if the old woman would have the sense to
call the child in when it began to rain, and to give
him his tea, without waiting till she came back herself.
'Ten to one she won't!' said Zilla aloud to herself.
' She's such a spiteful beast!' and then she yawned,
and wondered once more if Ben was ever coming
back again.
If she had not wanted the bead necklace so badly,
she would not have waited any longer, but she did so
long to have it to wear up to London. It would
make her look so smart and dressy, and it was her
own, too—her very own—and she had a right to it.
26o
a soul astray
The rain beat softly into her face until it hung
upon the tips of her long eyelashes, and all over the
stray locks of her curly black hair, and upon the
rough surface of her woollen skirt in a bright shower
of diamond drops, so that for a time no queen upon
her throne could have been more gaily pranked with
glittering jewels than she was. But after a little while,
as the rain went on, the diamonds melted and ran
into each other, and all their beauty was spoilt.
Then they ran down in rivulets over her shoulders,
and soaked into her scarlet linsey petticoat, or fell
away in miniature cascades to the ground about her
feet and ankles.
And still Uncle Ben did not return. And right
away on the other side of the Warren Farm, quite in
the opposite direction to where she sat and waited,
two men were running fast down the hill towards the
high road with a little child between them. They
held him up under the arms, one on one side of him
and one on the other, so that they almost lifted him
from the ground as they ran, because his little struggl-
ing feet could not keep pace with their long strides.
His pretty white suit was smeared with mud and
drabbled with the rain, and his cap was drawn down
tight over the red gold of his wet curls, but he did
not seem at all frightened.
' Where's mammy ?' he asked of his companions.
'You said she was down here.'
' So she is, ducky,' replied one of the men, ' a-sittin'
up in a grand carriage like the queen's, all gold and
silver harness, down below in the road, and she sent
us to fetch yer, so that you might go along with her
for a drive to a fine big town, where there's lots of toy
shops, and children dressed all in silks and satins,
runnin' about it waitin' to play with yer. Come on,
lovey; come quick! case she goes on without
yer.'
'Yes, yes ; let's make haste. Oh, how beautiful it
THE BEAD NECKLACE
must be in that town ! And is there wooden horses
in the shops, sir ?'
' Yes ; in course, dozens of'em, all painted red and
white and yalla, with white spots on 'em.'
The other man chuckled grimly.
'And Uncle Ben, you say, is with my mammy,
sir?' inquired Tot as politely as he could, consider-
ing the speed of the pace and the shortness of his
breathing powers.
'Ay, ay! in course; Uncle Ben will be driving
the carriage hosses himself.'
' Why, is he a coachman, then, like Mr Green up at
Lord Netherby's stables?' inquired Tot, with eyes
round with wonder.
And then the men looked at each other and
laughed.
And down below, through the mist of driving rain,
there now loomed into sight a strange object stand-
ing by the roadside. A long, covered vehicle, with a
convex wooden roof, and glass windows alternating
with gaily-painted panels along the sides, and out of
the roof there rose the thin, black funnel of an iron
chimney, and an old woman, with draggled grey locks
and a red shawl about her head, reached a lean,
withered throat out of the doorway behind it, whilst a
man in a rusty velveteen suit stood on the road, look-
ing up expectantly towards them. One bony grey
horse stood limply between the shafts, whilst a hump-
backed and villainous-looking youth, in a slouch felt
hat, was perched up on a cross-board in front, holding
the rope reins in his hands.
' Why, what's that?' cried Tot, stopping short and
trying to struggle back out of his captors' grasp.
' That's not the grand carriage where my mammy is;
that's one of those nasty gipsy vans ! I've seen it
before, down—'
He said no more. All at once a thick wet shawl
descended over his head and shoulders, and, in spite
262
A SOUL ASTRAY
of his struggles, was firmly tied about his
waist.
Tot uttered one wild scream—only one, for the
next moment a big hand was clapped over his mouth.
He was picked up off his feet, and somebody ran
violently down the hillside with him, and he was
flung, half smothered and very nearly fainting with
fear, into the arms of the old woman in the van
below.
CHAPTER XXVII
'for steeve's sake'
There had been a great gathering down at Farmer
Keene's place on the Rilchester Road, in honour of
his silver wedding day. The farm kitchen had been
filled with guests, and a sumptuous feast—half dinner,
half tea—had been laid before them. Cold rounds
of beef, and chickens, and hams—cakes, too, of
Mrs Keene's own baking, and home-brewed ale
for the men, and pots of tea for the women. And
after the meal was over, every one had set to work
with a will to clear the tables and push them away
to one side, and then the younger ones had set to
and danced for an hour or more, to the tune of
old Tom Higg's fiddle. Then it began to get dark
—for all these festivities took place in the afternoon
on Cramer Forest. The distances were great, and the
good folks liked to get back to their homes before
night. And now the company was dispersing, for
rain was coming on, and many of them had a long,
wet drive before them and were in haste to be gone.
All the gigs and the tax carts and the covered farm
waggons, that had brought the guests from far
and wide, were gathered about the door, and Mr and
Mrs Keene stood in the honeysuckle porch and re-
ceived the farewell greetings and good wishes of
their friends. And much was the laughter and many
263
264
A SOUL ASTRAY
the jokes as they all packed themselves away into
the different vehicles—the young men trying to get
next to their sweethearts, and the maidens pretend-
ing to want to sit next their mothers, whilst all the
time, at their hearts, they knew they intended to get
near their young men at the last moment!
A covered cart—it was the Markton carrier's—
was just starting from the door crammed with some
of the older people, and amongst them was Mrs
Clover, who was in poor health, and thankful for the
offer of a lift home, with a roof over her head to keep
out the rain. So it came about, that although
Andrew Skelling had driven both mother and
daughter to the party in his dogcart, it fell to his
lot to take Mary home by herself.
'And you'll tell her to wrap my grey shawl well
round her legs, Mr Skelling,' said Mrs Clover to him,
as he helped her to her place in the carrier's waggon,
' and to keep her umbrella right down over her best
bonnet, for I know them new pink flowers in it will
be completely spoilt if she don't take care, and tell
her it would be best, perhaps, to tie her pocket-hand-
kerchief over it before she starts—you'll see to it,
won't you, Mr Skelling ? '
' I'll take every care of her, you may be sure of
that,' answered Andrew Skelling, and there was a
joyful light in his eyes as he spoke, for he had not
reckoned upon such a piece of good luck as this,
and he blessed the fast drizzling rain from his
heart.
Mary did not tie a pocket-handkerchief over her
best bonnet, but she felt a little shy and nervous as
she climbed up to her place by Andrew's side, and
after all the good-byes had been spoken and she
found herself bowling along the wet road in the
gathering twilight, alone with him, she began to
realise that it is very difficult for a woman to hold
her own in such a situation, when it is the man who
'FOR STEEVE'S SAKE'
265
loves her and wants her, who is driving. She knew very
well that before many minutes had gone by, Andrew
would begin to urge his suit once more. It was not
in nature that he should not, seeing that he had
never lost the faintest opportunity of speaking about
his love and his hopes for the past three years.
' Dear Mary,' he began softly, breaking the silence,
' I am so happy to have you with me like this ! Ah !
when will you be good to me, and put me out of
my long misery ? When will you learn to love me?'
' Don't let us talk about that, Mr Skelling,' answered
Mary, nervously.
' Ah, but I must talk about it, Mary; always, until
you marry somebody else—nothing else will ever
stop me.'
' I shall never marry. I have told you that, Mr
Skelling. I have not altered nor changed one bit.'
' Neither have I altered or changed,' he replied.
And then there was a long silence, and the big
brown mare splashed along the road, the rhythmetical
sound of her feet keeping time as she' went.
' One, two, three, four—one, two, three, four!'
Mary found herself counting them over and over
again, till the sounds beat into her brain and into her
heart.
For the first time in all these years a little sense
of insecurity in her own decision was stealing into
her mind, a faint desire to yield and to give way.
He loved her so deeply and so patiently. His
devotion was so humble and so persistent! Could
there be a woman in the whole world who would
fail to be touched by such a love as this ?
And the other? Was not that other lost to her for
ever ? Doubly lost—since even if he lived and came
home, he belonged not to her but to Zilla, his wife ?
And was she, Mary Clover, to lose her whole life,
to outlive her youth and its freshness, to forego all
the dear delights of home and little children, all for
2 66
A SOUL ASTRAY
a mere dream, a shadow out of the past, that was
dead and gone and cold ?
One, two, three, four, went the brown mare's foot-
beats. And the road gleamed white and wet in front
under the shifting gleams of the shadowy twilight,
and the slanting rain fell around them in long, pale
threads of shimmery grey, and on ahead, the distant
moor was shrouded in gathering white mists that
came creeping up like a veil over the wide, wild
landscape.
Then Andrew Skelling began to talk and to plead,
and he was an adept at pleading. He had the rare
gift of knowing how to ' make love,' for however
much they may be in love, there are but very few
men who understand how to give expression to that
love, so that it may wind its way into a woman's
heart and melt and soften it. That is a talent
which requires a little more than mere love itself.
It requires tact, and patience, and refinement, great
gentleness of manner and of action, and an instinctive
comprehension of the varying moods and phases of
the feminine nature. All these gifts did Andrew
Skelling possess to a very marked degree, and he
now put them forth to the very utmost of his powers,
for, perhaps, he felt intuitively that Mary's heart was
in an unusually melting mood towards him. 'She
did not say a word, indeed, but her very silence gave
him hope; and as the dogcart rolled a little from
side to side, so did her slight figure sway a little
towards his, and there seemed to be no repugnance
on her part at the light contact between his shoulder
and hers. She did not draw back or repulse him;
on the contrary, it almost seemed to him once or
twice that she leaned of her own accord a little
towards him.
'Give me a little hope, Mary?' he murmured,
bending down to her ear. ' I love you so well, my
dear—so well.'
'FOR STEEVE'S SAKE'
267
And Andrew Skelling never knew how near Mary
was at that moment to putting forth her hand upon
his and to saying 'yes' at last to his earnest and
constant pleadings.
But at that very instant there rang out a wild
scream along the road in front of them.
Mary started violently and pulled herself bolt
upright in her place.
' What was that ?' she cried ;' it sounded like a cry
for help.'
' There is something in front of us in the road,'
said Andrew, peering out before him with half-closed
eyes. ' It looks like some sort of covered cart or
van—it is standing still.'
' The scream came from close by it. It sounded
to me like a child in terror. Oh, Andrew!' and in
her excitement she called him unconsciously by his
Christian name, ' drive on quickly, do—it may be
somebody in trouble !'
He did not require a further incentive than to
hear his name upon her lips to make him do as she
asked, although he admitted to himself with a sigh
that that inopportune scream or cry, whatever it was,
had scared away the good angels who had been
befriending him, and that his golden opportunity had
vanished. But he touched up the brown mare with
his whip, and she started forward with a plunge and
trotted well up to her bit down the long incline.
She was a fast goer at all times, and it took her now
but a very few minutes to traverse the short distance
of road that lay between her and the heavy, dark
object drawn up by the wayside. When they got
near enough to distinguish it plainly, they saw that
it was a gipsy van, with a black, iron chimney. It
was just beginning to move on as they got up to it.
The hunchback youth sitting on the shaft flicked
the lean grey horse with an end of rope, and the
vehicle began to advance at a slow, lumbering trot.
268
A SOUL ASTRAY
There was not a sign of anyone else about, not a
light from within—all was apparently dark and
still.
Andrew Skelling pulled up his mare.
' What was that scream, my man ?' he inquired of
the evil-featured coachman.
' Scream ?—I 'eard no scream,' growled the youth
sulkily—sleepily, almost, as it seemed.
' Oh ! surely you must have heard it!' broke in
Mary, eagerly. ' It was close here ; a loud, piercing
shriek—like a child who is hurt.'
' I know naught about it,' said the hunchback,
sullenly.
'Then perhaps some of your friends inside can
tell us,' replied Skelling. 'Just wait a moment, and
let me question them—'
' There ain't no one inside—let me go by.'
But Andrew had planted himself in the middle of
the road.
' I'm a-taking the empty van to Rilchester to be
repaired—there ain't no one in 'er. Ye can see for
yourself that it's all dark.'
' I am almost sure I can hear something moving
inside,' whispered Mary to Skelling.
' I am afraid I can do nothing,' answered he, regret-
fully. ' I have nothing to go upon, you see, and
apparently the thing is empty. There might be some
woman inside who was beating a child ; but we could
not swear to what it was, and we saw nothing.'
He moved reluctantly to one side of the road, and
allowed the van to pass him. Then he went on.
' I don't feel at all easy about it,' said Mary pre-
sently. ' I am quite sure that scream came from a
child, either in pain or in deadly terror.'
' It was very strange, certainly; but I don't see that
we can do any more.'
After that they drove on in silence for about a mile
and a half.
' FOR STEEVE'S SAKE'
269
' There is someone in the road coming towards us,'
said Mary at last.
It was the figure of a woman—a tall, slender figure,
walking quickly, with long, free strides that seemed to
carry her forward with a swinging rhythm. There
was only one woman on Cramer Forest who walked
like that, and Mary knew her by her gait, and her
heart began to beat.
When they got close to her, Zilla stopped and called
out to them, and Andrew pulled up.
' Have you seen my little boy anywhere on the road?
—Oh ! Mr Skelling, it's you, and you, Mary Clover !
I can't find my little Tot. He ran out after his tea,
Sarah Goades says, to fetch in his guinea-pig that had
got out of the yard on to the moor, and she hasn't
seen him since.'
'No, we haven't met him,' answered Skilling; ' he
cannot have come this way.'
But, all of a sudden, Mary began to tremble.
' The scream—the child's scream !' she whispered
to Andrew.
'Well, he can't be Netherby way, neither,' said
Zilla,' because I've come from right away there my-
self, out beyond your place, Mr Skelling, close to
where them gipsy folk have got their camp.'
' The gipsy folk were all on the move to-day, Mrs
Steeve,' answered Skelling. ' Half of them were gone
by daybreak, and the rest were preparing to shift
their quarters before noon. Why, we have just
passed one of their vans going towards Rilchester,
about a mile and a half back from here—'
Then all at once Zilla beat her hands frantically
together, and cried out wildly and despairingly,—
' Ah ! then they have got him, the brutes!—they
have taken my boy, and that old fox has deceived
and tricked me! Oh! for God's sake help me, Mr
Skelling — go after them, stop them, get my child
away from them ! They have been after stealing him
270
A SOUL ASTRAY
from me for weeks back — for weeks. Oh, Mary
Clover, for Steeve's sake help me—help me !'
In a moment Mary had sprung down from the cart,
and was standing beside her in the road.
' Get up quickly,' she said; ' get up, and Andrew
Skelling will drive you back after them !'
' And leave you here alone in the road, Mary ?'
demurred Andrew. 'Won't you wait till I can put
down the back seat, then you can come too ?'
' No, no, there's no time—not a moment to be lost!
I shall be all right,' answered Mary, hurriedly, pushing
Zilla towards the high step of the dog-cart.
But Zilla, usually so lithe and swift of limb and of
movement, staggered and missed the step and tottered
back into her arms.
' Oh! Mary Clover,' she cried, with a choking sob
in her ear, as she flung her arms suddenly and im-
petuously around Mary's neck. ' Oh ! for this one
moment of your life, may God in heaven bless you
for ever and ever! Now I know what charity means,
and forgiveness and mercy—for I have wronged you
so, Mary Clover ! I have wronged you, and yet you
can turn round in my trouble and help me! Why!
if I was in your place, and you in mine, I'd have
laughed and driven on, and left you standing in the
road—all out of revenge, and to pay you back.'
' Oh, no, Zilla—oh, no, you wouldn't! You would
do just the same, dear; and there's that poor, dear
little boy—he hasn't hurt me, you know.'
' Ah, yes, my poor Tot! But he ain't Steeve's boy,
Mary—never was. Don't you forget that I told you
that! If I never was to see you again, don't you for-
get that. I tell it you because it's all I can do now
to make amends—to show you I ain't quite all the
bad girl I was once !'
And then she climbed up into the cart, and Andrew
Skelling turned the brown mare about and touched
her lightly with the whip, and she bounded forward
'FOR STEEVE'S SAKE'
271
between the shafts and sped away swiftly out of sight
down the darkening road.
And Mary was so little of a heroine that she sat
herself down by the roadside, all in the drizzling rain,
and burst into tears.
' Ah! the soul has come home at last!' she said
aloud through her tears—'the soul that had gone
astray, but that was to be found one day again, as
Mr Lorrimer said. Poor Zilla ! poor thing! to have
that sin on her conscience, and now her boy stolen
from her!' and then she wept anew for very pity and
compassion.
But after a long time she lifted her head again.
The rain had left off, and the moon was struggl-
ing out from a rent in the dark clouds, and a faint
gleam fell down upon her tear-stained face—and, in
spite of the tears, there was joy in them too.
' At last! at last!' she murmured, drawing a long
breath of pure delight. ' The truth at last, and
Steeve is righted ! Oh! my God, I thank Thee—I
thank Thee!'
And for certain, Andrew Skelling, for all his win-
some pleading and wooing, would never have a chance
with Mary Clover any more !
CHAPTER XXVIII
at last
parson Lorrimer had been at the ,silver wedding
too, for no festivity in all Cramer Forest was ever
complete if he was not present, so universally be-
loved was this good old man—for John Lorrimer was
growing old now—that it would have been a grief and
a disappointment to his people if his familiar, sensi-
tive face, with its gentle smile and its worn lines had
failed to show itself amongst them.
But naturally, the Vicar never stayed very long at
the friendly gatherings to which he was always in-
vited. On this occasion he had partaken of a little
of the good cheer, had sat down at the head of the
table by buxom, smiling Mrs Keene, in her violet
satin gown, had shaken the worthy couple by the
hand and wished them many more long years of
happiness; and then, before the feast was over, or
the thought of dancing possessed the younger and
more light-hearted spirits amongst the guests, he had
slipped away quietly, and no one but Farmer Keene,
who escorted him to the gate, knew exactly when he
had taken his departure.
' That was the best of the Vicar,' said one farmer
to another, when it was found that he was gone. ' He
always came and made himself affable and agreeable,
like the gentleman as he was, but he never intruded or
272
AT LAST
273
stopped too long, he didn't! Not like some. Mr
Lorrimer knew his place, and kept it; and here's to his
health, and a long life to him,' and they drank to his
health in a bumper after he had gone.
It was still quite early in the afternoon, and though
the sky was grey and overcast, the rain had not yet
begun. John Lorrimer found that he had plenty of
time, so he walked on into Rilchester, about two
miles farther, to see if he could find, at the book-
seller's, a coveted new book, which had been exten-
sively reviewed in some of the leading magazines,
and which he yearned to possess for his own.
Then he called on his friends at the Deanery, and
had some tea there; and finally he betook himself
to the Red Lion Inn, from whence a one-horse
omnibus ran daily, backwards and forwards, between
the long and hilly ten miles that stretched between
Rilchester and Markton.
By this time the rain was coming steadily down ;
and when the omnibus had climbed the steep incline
which led from the smiling and cultivated valley in
which the town of Rilchester was situated, up on to
the bleak upland confines of Cramer Forest, the
evening was already beginning to close in. A stalwart
Markton farmer, armed with a thick blackthorn stake,
who was but slightly known to him, was the only
other occupant of the omnibus; and as he and Mr
Lorrimer, after a friendly recognition on both sides,
had nothing particular to say to each other. They
subsided immediately into their own corners, and
both soon dropped off into a profound slumber.
The ' 'bus,' as it was usually called, although it par-
took mainly of the nature of a carrier's cart, was cer-
tainly not a luxurious vehicle. It jolted and shook on
its ill-made springs, whilst the old horse jogged along
resignedly, at a slow and and monotonous trot. It
was a wonder, indeed, that Mr Lorrimer could sleep
at all; but he was used to the paces of the 'bus, for
S
274
A SOUL ASTRAY
having no carriage or horse of his own, he had
occasion to make very frequent use of it—and he was
accustomed to going to sleep in it, too—for habit is
second nature, and given a quiet conscience, and a
sufficiency of work, one can learn to sleep, and to
sleep well, too, under the most unfavourable circum-
stances.
What awakened Mr Lorrimer thoroughly and sud-
denly was the fact that, on this particular evening,
about half-way to Netherby, the 'bus came to a dead
stop. Now, this was against all precedent; the 'bus
was slow and cumbersome ; it creaked and it groaned,
and it crept and it lingered ; but except to put down
and take up a fare or a parcel, no one had ever known
the 'bus to stop !
What made this startling event the more remark-
able was that, almost immediately after Mr Lorrimer
had been aroused to full consciousness by the extra-
ordinary occurrence, the driver opened the door and
put in his head.
' If you please, sir, I think there is something wrong
a-goin' on ahead of us.'
' Something wrong !'
Here the Markton athlete aroused himself too.
'Whatever d'ye mean, Jim Stone?' he questioned
eagerly. ' Wot's wrong ?'
'Well, jist you gentlemen come out and look,'
replied Jim Stone.
The two inside passengers jumped out quickly, and
immediately became aware that some unusual com-
motion was taking place about a couple of hundred
yards along the road in front of them. There
was a dark object, or objects perhaps—a vehicle or
two, apparently—and there were shouts and cries—a
woman's voice raised in shrill tones, first of expostu-
lation, then of entreaty. A volley of gruff oaths,
followed by the whacking thud of hard blows.
Mr Lorrimer was getting old, but he had been in
AT LAST
275
the football team of his college once, and the old
fighting fire burnt still in his veins, whilst, as to the
Markton farmer, the scent of a 'row' was quite
enough for him.
He brandished his stout stake, and shouted aloud,—
' Come on, sir, come on ! There's mischief a-goin'
on, and we'll be in it if we look sharp.'
And then he took to his heels, and the Vicar of
Netherby followed after him.
' It's them damned gipsies', he panted, as they drew
near. ' They'll have been up to some o' their blasted
tricks again.'
And the Reverend John Lorrimer made no sort of
protest whatever against the profanity of this language.
Perhaps it was soothing to him, too—just to listen
to!
Well, what followed is not very easy to describe.
There was a dogcart tied up to a gate hard by,
wherein a terrified brown mare was capering upon
her hind legs to the eminent danger of the vehicle be-
hind her; and there was a large, heavy object in the
centre of the road, which, as they got near enough to
distinguish it, resolved itself into a covered gipsy van
with a black iron funnel; and there was a lean grey
horse, which had tumbled down between the shafts,
and which was lying helplessly on its side in the road,
with a hunchback youth tugging desperately at the
broken fragments of cordage which were all that was
left of the reins. And by the side of the van there
was a confused hand-to-hand scuffle going on, which
was dimly lighted up by the flicker of a lantern,
which an old hag of a woman was dangling out of
one of the narrow windows of the van, whilst she
screamed out alternate oaths and yells of encourage-
ment over the heads of the combatants. And there
were the maddened cries of a frantic and desperate
woman, and now and again the piteous wail of a child
from inside the van.
276
A SOUL ASTRAY
But what was soon more apparent than anything
else, to the Vicar and to the Markton farmer, was
the fact that the fight was a grossly one-sided one,
being waged, in fact, by three men against one man
and a woman.
An Englishman never stops to consider the rights
or wrongs of a case in such a situation. In one
moment the Markton farmer had dashed his stalwart
body into the scale that was lightest, and was deal-
ing forth a volley of blows into the midst of the fray.
And the Vicar? Well, rumour has whispered that
the Vicar was not left very far behind him! but,
perhaps, all things considered, the least said about
that the better. Then, at a most respectable dis-
tance, but still unmistakably advancing also to the
rescue, John Stone, the driver of the 'bus, appeared
upon the outside fringe of the fray, and still further
turned the scale in the favour of the one man and
one woman. And all might have ended well, so
well! but for one disastrous and totally unexpected
event! For suddenly a fierce, grizzled head, and a
brown throat encircled by a dirty scarlet handkerchief,
was thrust violently out of one of the narrow windows
of the van. The pale light of the lantern fell for a
moment on the handsome, swarthy face that was dis-
torted now by ungovernable passion—then an arm
shot out swiftly, and a furious voice called out,—
'Ye she devil! ye traitor to yer father's people!
take that! and take that! and be damned to
you!'
A flash—a report—a puff of smoke ! A woman's
shriek of agony—then came silence—an awful silence
—and the fight was over !
A few seconds later a little group of horror-stricken
men were clustering about the fallen body of a woman
who lay in a pool of blood in the middle of the road,
whilst a grey-headed gipsy in a rusty green suit,
with a scarlet rag about his neck, was scuttling away
AT LAST
277
for dear life unnoticed by anyone else, up the steep
slope of the moor on the further side of the road.
And above all, into the midst of the silence, there
came the piteous cry of a little child.
' Mammy ! mammy ! Let me go to my mammy !'
They carried him to her as she lay dying in the
road, and laid him close against her, and John Lorri-
mer propped up her head with his arm, whilst one of
the rough gipsy men held up the lantern so that she
might see the child's face.
'Ah—he's safe—my little Tot—he's safe!' she
gasped, and the child, with a cry of joy, flung himself
down upon her breast, so that his little white coat
was dabbled all over with blood that came pouring in
a flood out of the gaping wound in her bosom.
'You'll take—him to Mary Clover—Andrew Skel-
ling—and you'll tell her to take care of him,' she said.
Andrew was kneeling at her side. He broke down
altogether as he took hold of her hand and lifted it
to his lips.
' I swear that I will. Mary will see to him. The
little 'un shall never lack for care, my poor girl.'
And then she turned and saw the Vicar kneeling on
the other side of her, with the tears running down
over his cheeks.
' Oh, don't cry for me, sir!' she said, putting up
her hand feebly till it touched his thin face. ' I ain't
worth a tear from such as you, Mr Lorrimer! I've
been a bad girl, and I've done a lot of evil in my
time, but I don't mind dying so much if it's been to
save Tot from that life. They may burn me in hell
as much as they like, so long as Tot gets his chance
in this world.'
'Oh, my poor Zilla,' cried John Lorrimer, brokenly,
' do not believe it! do not think of it! there is. no hell
for those that love, who have learnt to love as you do.'
'No? Well I must just leave all that to the Lord,
then,' she answered simply, but a little drowsily
2/8
A SOUL ASTRAY
by now, because the life blood was ebbing away fast,
and she was beginning to be faint. ' I can't think of
all that now, sir ; I haven't the time, you see, and that
ain't just my business, anyway. Only I want you to tell
Steeve that I am sorry I told that lie about him.
I have been sorry for it many a time of late, though
I'd have made him a good wife, tell him, if he'd only
have given me the chance ! Now he can come back—
he can come back, and marry Mary Clover! She
knows—she knows all about it; it wasn't Steeve, any-
way. I won't say his name who it was ; I've done
harm enough as it is, but it wasn't Steeve.'
Her voice died away into a thread, her head fell back,
and for a moment they all thought she was gone.
John Lorrimer began repeating the Lord's Prayer.
Somehow, he could think of no other prayer to say
just then, no human words seemed to fit this awful
moment so well as those divine ones whose beauty is
eternal. When he got to the words, ' and forgive us
our trespasses, as we forgive them,' she lifted her head
suddenly, and her eyes opened wide.
' Say that again—again !' she said.
1 And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
that trespass against us.'
She repeated the words after him in a clear voice.
John Lorrimer finished the prayer to the end, and
the rough men standing around him all said ' Amen'
at the end of it.
' Bring the light nearer,' said Zilla, suddenly.
Andrew Skelling took the lantern and held it down
close to her. The beautiful face was very grey now,
and damp with the dews of death, but the lustrous
eyes shone out large and deep, with something of an
unearthly splendour. The dim flicker of the lantern
made a pale circle of yellow light about her face and
the dark, disordered hair; and within that yellow
circlet lay the child's head, too, all dabbled with his
mother's blood. Tot did not shed a tear ; he did not
AT LAST
279
speak, he only looked at Zilla with strange, scared
eyes, and his red lips quivered.
She lifted her hand feebly; it was so weak now
that it was John Lorrimer who guided it, till it lay on
Tot's golden curls.
Just then the clouds broke above, and a pale moon-
beam straggled forth for a moment from behind them.
It fell upon her face, and there was one single star
that shone down bright and keen, like an angel's
shaft out of the deep blue beyond. Zilla looked over
Tot's head and saw it, and the star mirrored itself
back in her eyes.
' Be good, Tot,' she said simply.
Then her head dropped back, and death came.
So died poor, sinful, fallen Zilla, the half-bred gipsy.
Out on the breezy moorland, where she had been
born, under the sky, and the stars, and the broad, free
vault of heaven that she had always loved so well.
And although she had sinned so deeply, and her
wandering soul had strayed so far, who shall dare to
say that that soul was not restored to her at the last,
saved and shriven by virtue of the love and the
sorrow that had come to her through her child ?
For we know that, at least, if we know nothing
more, that ' Unto him that hath sinned much shall
much also be forgiven.'
CHAPTER XXIX
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE
ONE day, nearly two months later, Lady Netherby
was hurrying down to Southampton as fast as an
express train could take her, in answer to a telegram
which she had read at least fifty times over,
and which she still held crumpled up in her
glove.
' What I can't make out,' she said to the companion
of her journey, who was seated opposite to her, and
who was not, as might have been expected, the
Earl, but the Reverend John Lorrimer, 'what I can't
make out, is why he shouldn't come home straight.
Why did he want us to meet him ?'
She had asked this question a great many times
over already, and the Vicar had, naturally, no satis-
factory answer to give to it. He could only reply
soothingly that they would very soon know all about
it now, and that, anyhow, Ralph was safe again on
English ground.
'It's just as well, perhaps,' continued Lady Netherby,
' that Netherby is laid up, and can't leave his room,
for he would have fussed himself into a fever on the
journey, if he had come with me, and that would have
been so bad for his heart, you know. Whereas you
can always keep yourself cool and composed, my dear
280
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE 281
John,' added Lady Netherby, with a little touch of
asperity, as if she would have rather liked to add,
4 very much too irritably cool and composed, in fact!'
But the Vicar knew what she had meant, just as
well as if she had said it, and he only smiled his
quiet, indulgent smile.
Then Lady Netherby relieved the fever of her
mind by reading the telegram once again.
' Meet me to-morrow. Radley's Hotel, South-
ampton.'
That was all. And the telegram had been de-
spatched from Plymouth, where, apparently, the ship
had touched.
' Why did he want to be met ? Do you
think anything can be wrong ? Can the unhappy
boy have got into some fresh scrape, do you
suppose ?'
' Let us hope not.'
' Or—or—can it be any old business ? ' she went
on, hesitatingly. ' There can be no reason, can
there, John, why Ralph should be afraid to come
home ?'
'Do you know of any, Lady Netherby?' said
John Lorrimer, looking across at her very
straight.
Lady Netherby dropped her eyes.
The Vicar's look challenged confession. And
sometimes she thought, she feared, she fancied—that
he might have guessed more than she knew ! But it
could only be guesswork.
And—no, she would say nothing ! Why should she
betray her son, now that the woman was dead, and
her secret was buried with her ? There was no need
to speak now ; the danger for Ralph was over. She
had heard all about poor Zilla's tragic death, and of
how, with her dying lips, she had exonerated Steeve
282
A SOUL ASTRAY
Hardy, and that she had mentioned no one else. The
secret of Tot's paternity, therefore, had died with her.
No one knew. No one need ever know. And but
for that fatal likeness—ah! could John Lorrimer
have seen it too ?
But men do not notice these things as women do.
And Ralph was much altered. No one but his
mother would be likely to trace the childish features
still, and the tell-tale portrait was hidden, and locked
away safely where no one would find it. So she
reasoned, striving to comfort herself, No, she would
not tell John Lorrimer. Let him guess what he
liked ; it could only be guesswork !
Just as Ralph was back at home again, ready to
take up his new life, to begin afresh, to start anew,
was she to be the one to raise a stumbling-block
in his path ?
Steeve Hardy !
The name struck home like a cold blast. Why
could she not forget that wretched Steeve Hardy and
his troubles ?
He could came back now and marry Mary Clover^
whispered the voice of conscience again—that con-
science which would never let Lady Netherby have
any peace or rest, day or night.
But she shut her ears to the voice. She would not
listen. What were Steeve and Mary to her in com-
parison with her own flesh and blood ? Besides,
Steeve was away. No one had heard of him for
years. No one knew where he was. He was dead,
probably. At the bottom of her heart, Lady
Netherby, although she would have been shocked to
put such a thing into words, hoped that he was dead.
When they arrived at Southampton, they took a
fly, and drove straight to Radley's Hotel. There was
no sign of Ralph at the door or in the entrance hall.
Lady Netherby asked whether the Southern Queen
was in, and whether Mr Ralph Lyndon had arrived
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE 283
at the hotel. She was answered in the affirmative,
and the waiter showed her into a sitting-room on the
ground floor. It was unoccupied.
' But I want to see him at once,' she said, drawing
back. 11 am his mother. Take me to my son at
once.'
The man asked if she would mind waiting in this
room. The other gentleman had told him to show
her in here. He would let him know that Lady
Netherby was here.
' What other gentleman ? What do you mean ?'
she inquired bewilderedly, and with a strange and
growing uneasiness. ' I don't know about any
other gentleman. I only want to see Mr Lyndon.'
' If your ladyship will be good enough to wait a
few minutes. The doctors from London are with
him just now—'
' The doctors !' she repeated faintly, and sank down
into a chair.
John Lorrimer came and stood by her, and took
her hand and passed it under his arm, stroking it
gently with his other hand. He began to perceive
by now that there must be something seriously
wrong.
' Tell me at once,' she said to the waiter. ' Is
my son very ill ? What is the matter with
him ?'
But the man only muttered something inaudible,
and got himself away out of the room as quickly as
possible.
' I will send the other gentleman,' was all they
could catch, as he vanished.
Almost immediately there came a curious stumping
sound along the boarded passage outside. Someone
held open the door, and a man on crutches entered
the room.
' Steeve I'
284
A SOUL ASTRAY
It was John Lorrimer who uttered that shout of
joy and delight, as he rushed to meet the new comer
with outstretched hands ; but Lady Netherby shrank
away with a trembling cry, and covered her face with
her hands.
' My dear old Steeve !' cried the Vicar, joyfully,
seizing his hand. ' My dear chap ! is this indeed
you? But you are changed, my dear boy. That
moustache alters you. And those crutches—Ah!
my poor friend, that means that you have been
wounded. But I should have known you any-
where — anywhere! Welcome home, my dear
fellow.'
But Steeve just smiled at him, and pushed him
gently aside.
'One minute, sir. I must speak to Lady Netherby
first. Lord Ralph—'
She look up quickly.
' He is here, then ? With you ?'
' Yes ; we came home together.'
'Take me to him at once, then,' she said, springing
to her feet. 'Why is there all this delay? Why
can't I see my son ?'
'You shall see him now-—at once—but he
wished me to tell you something first, Lady
Netherby.'
' Something!' She turned pale and pressed her
clasped hands over her heart. ' Ah, then there is
something wrong. The waiter spoke of doctors
—Oh, Mr Hardy, tell me at once—is Ralph
dying?'
' No, no, dear Lady Netherby; no, he is well in
himself, quite well; only there was an accident—
a bad accident. He wanted the best advice at once,
so he telegraphed from Plymouth to London to a
specialist, who has just been down to see him,
but he is afraid, I am sorry to say, afraid he can
do nothing—'
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE
285
' Tell me what it is at once,' she cried.
' He is blind,' said Steeve, and he turned his head
away compassionately from her.
And then there came a voice at the door behind
them,—
' Mother, you are here, aren't you ?'
They all turned. The hotel waiter was leading the
blind gentleman into the room.
He looked well. The disfiguring scars on his
face were nearly healed, and the voyage had
strengthened him and restored his spirits and his
appetite.
But he was blind for life ! The London specialist
had come, and had delivered his verdict, and now he
had driven away again to catch his train; and Lord
Ralph Lyndon was left to face his future as best
he could.
And all said and done, he faced it like a man. He
had had all the voyage home to think about it, and
to get used to the thought of it, and although he had
carried out his original plan of telegraphing for the
great Sir William Slee to meet him at Southampton,
he had, by the time he landed, grown to have but
little hope of his being able to do anything for him.
When the blow had fallen at last, it seemed easier
to bear, than whilst he was still waiting in uncertainty,
dreading and fearing the worst; and Ralph, with
all his sins and failings, was no coward. He gave
one great gulping sigh when Sir William Slee pro-
nounced his doom, and then, after a moment, he said
aloud, with a half careless laugh,—
' I must grin and bear it, then, I suppose! In
fact, I've got to bear it, so I may as well
grin.'
If there was sorrow and consternation in that
dreary little hotel sitting-room that day, it was not
Ralph who suffered the most. It was the mother
who wept upon his neck, and whom, forgetting his
286
A SOUL ASTRAY
own sore trial, he exerted himself to comfort and
to console.
4 And I shall have to be always at home, mother
dear,' he said cheerfully, when a long hour's talk had
at length dried her tears and assuaged the first horror
of her anguish ; ' and I sha'n't be able to get into
any more scrapes, you know; or give you and my
father any more trouble and bother.'
John Lorrimer had slipped away in the first few
minutes with Steeve, leaving the mother and son
alone together. Steeve, in fact, had only been
allowed to come off the troopship on special leave,
that he might convey his blind friend into the care
of his relations. He now had to go back at once
and report himself. He was to be sent to Netley
Hospital with the rest of the sick and wounded
soldiers who had come home, and although he was
almost off the sick list, he expected to be kept there
for some weeks, until he was fit to go before the
Board which would sit upon his case, and go through
certain other formalities, before he could obtain his
discharge, and a small pension, to which he believed
he would be entitled.
Whilst he was explaining these matters to Mr
Lorrimer, they were driving back together to the
docks, for Steeve could only walk a very few steps
with the help of his crutches as yet, although the
doctors promised him that in time he would recover
the use of his leg to a considerable extent. They
were within sight of the ship, and Steeve had only
asked one question about home as yet—how his
father was—fearing, indeed, to ask news of anyone
else, when suddenly the Vicar said to him,—
'You have asked very little about home, Steeve?
Don't you want to know what has happened since
you got my last letter nearly a year ago ?'
Steeve set his face like a flint and looked straight
ahead.
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE 28?
'You can tell me, sir, anything that I ought to
know,' he said.
' Zilla is dead, Steeve.'
' Oh, sir—and Mary ?'
' Mary is unmarried still, Steeve,' said the Vicar
gently.
Then there was a long silence.
' But it can't make any difference,' said Steeve
at last in a suffocated voice, ' for how can I ask her to
be my wife when everyone still believes I did that
blackguard act ? and I can't clear myself, Mr Lorri-
mer—I can't! and I had far sooner bear the blame of
it myself, than try to !'
' Zilla cleared you herself, Steeve, with her dying
breath,' replied Mr Lorrimer; and then he told him
all the story of her tragic end,
' And she named no one else ? She did not say
who it was ?' he inquired eagerly.
' No one. She was plucky enough, poor thing!
and she said she would not tell, because she had done
harm enough already.'
' God bless her for that, anyway !' said Steeve with
a sigh of relief. Then turning suddenly to his com-
panion, he said in a low voice,—' Mr Lorrimer, I know
now who it was, but it is quite impossible for me ever
to say.'
John Lorrimer laid his hand quietly on his
arm.
' My dear boy, I know too, and Lady Netherby
knows ; and Mary has never doubted you for a
moment. That should be enough for you. As for
the rest of the world, Steeve, what does it matter ?
Come home and live it down. As soon as you get
your discharge, come back home and marry Mary;
she has waited long enough for you, poor girl!
No other word need ever be said about the past.
Let us bury the ugly story for ever in poor Zilla's
grave.'
288
A SOUL ASTRAY
' And my father ?'
' I think,' said John Lorrimer, thoughtfully, £ that I
will tell your father myself all that it is necessary for
him to know. He is old and broken, and he ought to
be convinced that you are cleared.'
' Then there is the child. I would like—you may
think it a strange thing, sir—but I should like to
keep the child myself.'
' Well, so would Mary, who has undertaken to take
care of him ; and as to your father, nothing would
induce him to part with Tot. He is just the very joy
of his life, so you will be all agreed there.'
Meanwhile, in the hotel sitting-room, Lady Nether-
by was saying to her blind son,—
' That man Hall must be a fine fellow, Ralph. I
should like to thank him for saving your life.'
' Such a wreck of a life, mother dear!'
' Ah, but it may be a very precious and valuable to
others still, my boy ! Think of the many noble lives of
of blind men who have served their fellow creatures
and done good in the world, in spite of their terrible
affliction ! Your father and I will be grateful to
Private Hall all our lives, Ralph, for giving you back
to us. We must have him up at Netherby and make
much of him by-and-by. But what I want so much
to know is, where did you come across Steeve
Hardy ?'
' Steeve Hardy ! You mean that young farmer at
the Warren Farm ? the chap that was spooning your
pretty governess ?'
'Yes; and who married that wretched gipsy girl
Zilla, as I think I wrote and told you.'
' What became of him ?' asked Ralph sharply, after
a short pause.
'Why, he was here with you just now,
Ralph!'
' Here !' he repeated bewilderedly. ' What do you
mean, mother ?'
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE
289
' He came to tell me about you, dearest; don't you
remember? You sent him to speak to me first. He
was on crutches, poor fellow !'
' On crutches! You say that was Steeve
Hardy ?'
' Why, yes, of course! He hasn't been home for
years. I suppose he enlisted, as I see he is in uni-
form. And now he has gone off somewhere with
the Vicar, who was always quite ridiculously foolish
about him.'
' So it was Steeve Hardy all the time !' said Ralph
slowly and wonderingly, and he drew in a long breath
between his teeth ; ' and—and he married Zilla the
gipsy, you say ? '
'Yes; and left her at the church door after the
wedding, and was never seen again !'
' Mother,' said Ralph in a queer, choked voice,
' that was Hall, who saved my life ! Steeve Hardy
and Hall are the same person.'
' Oh, Ralph !'
Then the blind man fell upon his knees before her,
and buried his head in her lap, just as he used to do
when he knelt down to say his prayers long ago,
when he was a little child, and a great gulping sob
broke from his very heart.
' Mother ! Steeve Hardy is a hero, and I, your
son, am the worst man alive ! I must tell you all.
I must confess the truth to you. That man has
borne the burden of my sin too long.'
' Hush, hush, Ralph ! I know it. I know it all, my
dear boy. Do not say it. Let us do what we can to
make amends; but say nothing, say nothing, for
God's sake! Your father is old and in breaking
health ; if he heard it, it would kill him.'
And so in one conspiracy of silence, a silence which
had at least the truest wisdom for its plea, as silence
so often has, the Truth, when at last it came to
light, was buried again, for the sake of those who
T
290
A SOUL ASTRAY
had suffered enough for Zilla's sin—in Zilla's
grave.
Steeve and Mary have been married a long time
now, and they have almost learnt to forget those long,
sad years of waiting and of sorrow. There are little,
flaxen-haired children clinging to Mary's skirts, or
running out to meet their father as he rides slowly
home from his work on the steady old pony upon
which he manages to get about quite easily by now,
though he is still very lame on foot and always will
be ; or sometimes the little knot of curly heads will be
climbing about old Simon Hardy's knees as he
sits outside the door in the sun, in the long, warm,
summer afternoons, while Mary's blithe voice is sing-
ing over her work within the house. But there is
a red-haired boy at the Warren Farm, too, who has
solemn eyes and a sober face ; who is older than the
rest, and graver and more thoughtful for his age than
such a child usually is ; who is always ready to run
on errands for others, and do little actions of kind-
ness ; who looks after the tiniest of the yellow-headed
babies with grave, paternal care; who fetches and
carries for Mary when she is busy, and who helps the
old grandfather backwards and forwards to his chair,
or lends him a shoulder to rest upon when he potters
about the garden.
Nobody can get on without Tot; he is everybody's
help and everybody's favourite. He is clever at his
books, too, and he has better chances than most
boys of his age, for Lady Netherby comes to see him
often, and gives him books and pays for his school-
ing herself. But Tot is always serious, and al-
ways a little sad — it is as though the dark
shadow of his birth and early years rested for ever
upon his life. Perhaps it is because he can never
forget that October evening when his mother lay
murdered and dying by the roadside; he cannot
pass the spot even now without a shudder of
THE TRUTH—AND SILENCE 291
pain and sorrow, and always when he does, he
seems to hear once more a faint echo of her last
words:—
' Be good, Tot!'
They were poor Zilla's only legacy to him, and he
will carry that injunction with him to the end of
his life. Could any mother have left a better legacy
to her child ?
Up at Netherby Hall the old Earl is dead, and the
new Earl is winning golden opinions, and all men's
hearts. The daughters of Netherby are married and
gone, but the blind Earl and his widowed mother live
together—the most inseparable of companions, and
the most sympathetic of friends. Lady Netherby
can be met most days driving her little pony carriage
about the country, with her afflicted son by her side;
and always the two are bound on some errand of
mercy or usefulness, for the new Earl leads a
very busy life in spite of his affliction. He sits upon
the board of every local charity, takes an active
interest in the county hospital and in the con-
valescent home, and his latest work is the build-
ing and endowment of a new church, schools,
and parsonage, in a remote corner of Cramer
Forest, a work for which many future genera-
tions of the moorland country will ' arise and call
him blessed.'
'But in course,' say the people one to the other;
' in course it were easy for him to know the right
thing to do, 'cos there's allers Parson Lorrimer, a'
helpin' and a-showin' him ; and if ever there was a
saint on earth 'tis Parson Lorrimer!'
Thus did Zilla's death serve to redeem the
lives of those whom she had wronged on earth;
and who shall dare to say that in that death,
and that redemption, her own poor wandering
soul was not caught up by angel hands, and
purified and redeemed as well?
292 A SOUL ASTRAY
John Lorrimer thought so at any rate, and I, too,
am content to think with him.
But Uncle Ben left no trace behind him. He was
never caught, and, as far as I know, has never been
brought to justice.
THE END
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