THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
 
 The Mountains of 
 the Moon 
 
 By 
 
 J. D. Beresford 
 
 Author of "The House in Demetrius Road" 
 
 Gassell and Company, Ltd 
 London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
 
 Ftr&l published 1915
 
 Gratefully Dedicated 
 to my Friend, 
 
 CAPT. A. K. HARVEY JAMES 
 
 (ARTHUR SCOTT CRAVEN), 
 who gave me this story
 
 "Incidentally this feat of exploration hat broken 
 a great tradition. The romance remain) ; but it it 
 different In kind. . . . All the old legends of tn- 
 acceuibility are gone. Those distant hillt have 
 been traversed and revealed, their secrett published 
 and shown to differ in no way from the secrets of 
 all other earthly mountains. . . . Coldness and 
 sterility abide on those heights, and the traveller in 
 the midst of them discovers those qualities rather 
 than any impression of beauty. Those gaunt masses 
 lack all the colour and vigour of life ; the tradition 
 of splendour is proved to be a fraud. . . . Never- 
 theless we haoe not lost our romance, it persists more 
 vital and glorious in the story of human achieve- 
 ment. Mankind is passing out of its childhood, and 
 the fairy tales of the nursery must give way to the 
 more virile romances of man's own endeavour, an 
 endeavour that at the last is expressed in his first 
 and final search for knowledge. . . ." 
 
 The Mountains of the Moon, 
 BY ARTHUR S. GREY.
 
 THE 
 MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ARTHUR GREY 
 
 SHEPSTON found his sister in the room that was 
 still known as "The Nursery," although it had 
 been converted to other uses for at least fifteen 
 years. He entered quietly, expecting to find 
 her asleep, for the other members of the house- 
 hold, and indeed most of the few people in 
 London who were of any account, had gone to 
 Goodwood. Lady Downham had evaded that 
 function. The knowledge that the King would 
 be present did not tempt her, and she owed no 
 duty to Society. If Society wanted her they 
 must seek her out; after twenty-five years, 
 Society, as such, had ceased to interest Lady 
 Downham. 
 
 She was not asleep when her brother came
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 in. He was faintly surprised to find her read- 
 ing with every appearance of stolid pertinacity, 
 and he stood by the heavy tapestry hanging that 
 shielded the arch through which he had come 
 and watched her for a moment before he made 
 his presence known by quietly rattling the rings 
 of the curtain. 
 
 Lady Downham looked up and yawned. 
 
 "Come in, Reggie," she said. "I wasn't 
 asleep." 
 
 "No. I've been watching you," he replied. 
 He walked across to her chair by the farther 
 window and looked down at her. " You 
 appeared to be deep in study," he said. 
 
 Lady Downham frowned. 
 
 "What's the book?" asked her brother. 
 
 She turned back to the title page, as if she 
 could not trust her memory to repeat the 
 required information, and announced, "It's by 
 a person named Grey Arthur S. Grey; it's 
 called ' The Mountains of the Moon : An Essay 
 in Sociology.' ' 
 
 "I know it," replied Shepston. 
 
 "Really, Reggie, you're very wonderful!" 
 his sister exclaimed on a note of admiration. 
 " I hardly ever see you reading, and I don't 
 know when you get time for it, but you seem
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 to read every book that comes out." She took 
 off her pince-nez and looked up at him hope- 
 fully. " I wish you would post me," she said. 
 
 "What's the object?" he asked. 
 
 *' I'm very interested in Socialism," she said, 
 with a puzzled frown. " I think one ought to 
 understand these things." 
 
 Shepston smiled at the spaces of the room. 
 " I know," he said. " But what's the present 
 object?" 
 
 " The man's coming to tea this afternoon." 
 
 "Canadian, isn't he?" 
 
 " Yes. I don't know that I should have 
 asked him, though I had heard of his book 
 before, but Adelaide Dales worth wrote and 
 wanted me to have him. They knew him in 
 Canada, when her husband was Governor- 
 General, and she says he's just come to town 
 to meet a few particular people, and that he's 
 very nice and she's sure I shall like him. So 
 I thought he might be able to explain Socialism 
 to me, and that I ought to read his book before 
 he comes." 
 
 "Oh, quite," Shepston said. He had his 
 hands in his coat pockets, and was still smiling 
 perfunctorily through his single eyeglass at 
 nothing in particular. He was a little man, 
 
 3
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 clean-shaven, with a round face and rather large 
 brown eyes. He might have been forty or fifty ; 
 his hair was still black, but he was getting very 
 bald over the temples. 
 
 " And you could tell me all I want to know 
 in ten minutes," continued his sister. 
 
 " What a heavenly condition !" he remarked. 
 " If I could find someone to tell me a tenth of 
 all I want to know in ten years, I'd go off with 
 him to an island somewhere and sit at his feet." 
 
 "Don't be silly, dear," pleaded Lady 
 Dowhham. " The man may be here directly. 
 I said five o'clock." 
 
 " Let him tell you what he means, then, my 
 dear Caroline," suggested Shepston. 
 
 " But I must pretend that I've read his 
 book." 
 
 Shepston sighed, but his habitual formal 
 smile still lingered about the set lines of his 
 mouth. 
 
 " Grey's an idealist," he said. " He believes 
 that there are quite a number of honest people 
 in the world he's made a mistake in coming 
 here to look for 'em and he has an enormous 
 faith in the value of endeavour work, you 
 know. He thinks that what's mainly the matter 
 with us all is the aristocratic idea, especially 
 
 4
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 what he has seen of it in the form of millionaire- 
 dom " 
 
 "But they're not an aristocracy," inter- 
 rupted Lady Downham. 
 
 "From his point of view they are," con- 
 tinued S heps ton. "He's up against the 
 mysteries of wealth and position, the ring-fence 
 the man with money can put round himself; 
 and Grey's panacea is the necessity for every 
 man to earn his own living. This book is a 
 sort of counterblast to that thing by another 
 American who wants to make out that the world 
 would be a very good place if the millionaires 
 would take a bit more interest in it. All 
 blether, according to Grey." 
 
 Lady Downham looked down at the book in 
 her lap with a puzzled frown and turned over a 
 few pages as if she hoped to find some wonderful 
 sentence to illuminate the whole purpose of the 
 essay. 
 
 * ' But what does he mean by * The Moun- 
 tains of the Moon,' Reggie?" she asked. 
 
 "Allegory," he replied briefly. "Mys- 
 terious place, you know, that's really as barren 
 as a moraine. Once you've been there and 
 kicked the rocks, you find 'em just like other 
 rocks. Now he's coming to kick us to see if 
 
 5
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 we're any different from the millionaires he's 
 kicked in Canada and the States." 
 
 " Adelaide said he was quite a nice man," 
 commented Lady Downham. 
 
 " Oh, quite," Shepston remarked ambigu- 
 ously. 
 
 " I think you might come and help me to 
 entertain him," his sister suggested. 
 
 " My dear Caroline, I shall be delighted," 
 Shepston said. " It will relieve my mind from 
 the anxiety I feel at having let Downham go 
 off to Goodwood with no one to look after him 
 but Dick and Tempe. Of course, there'll be 
 a dreadful scene before the afternoon's out." 
 
 " It's wonderful how you manage us all," 
 sighed Lady Downham. 
 
 " If only it didn't make my hair come out," 
 said her brother, with his stereotyped smile. 
 He put his hand up and softly explored his 
 temples. "I wonder if a rest cure would do 
 me good?" he remarked. 
 
 " Not before we've got over the Stratton 
 visit," implored his sister. " Dick and Tempe 
 do loathe it so. Wouldn't it be possible just for 
 once, this August, to persuade Richard to let us 
 go alone we three, you know? Dick and 
 
 Tempe both want to go to Mary's 
 
 6
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 Shepston interrupted her with a decided 
 negative. " No, I couldn't," he said. " I can 
 do much with Downham by strategy, but not 
 that. A fortnight at least you must have with 
 your family at Stratton, Caroline in August, 
 at Christmas, and at Easter. Don't ask me to 
 help you to evade that domesticity. That is 
 the gospel according to Downham, the long 
 tradition that stretches back into some dim past 
 beginning with the first Baron Stratton. It is 
 as settled and past dispute as it is also inevitable 
 that three times in each year you should say, 
 ' Reggie, isn't it possible just this once for you 
 to persuade Richard, etcetera.' ' 
 
 "We always quarrel," put in Lady Down- 
 ham regretfully. 
 
 * I have thought that that was the essential 
 use of the visit," commented Shepston. " We 
 all appreciate separation so much more vividly 
 when the visit is over." 
 
 They were still discussing the annoyances 
 of Lord Downham 's decree when the butler 
 entered. 
 
 Lady Downham did not look up when he 
 announced, " Mr. Grey, my lady," but Shep- 
 ston held out his hand for the card that lay 
 on the butler's salver. The salver was heavy, 
 
 7
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 crested, impressive; the card was thin, cheaply 
 printed from type, with the name, simply 
 *' Arthur S. Grey," and an address neatly 
 written in ink, " Boyle's Hotel, Southampton 
 Row, W.C." 
 
 GREY rose and bowed somewhat formally when 
 Lady Downham came into the small drawing- 
 room. He was a strongly built man, with a 
 frank, clever face; his eyes were a keen, rather 
 pale blue, and he had short, thick, black lashes 
 that had the effect of underlining and heighten- 
 ing the colour of the iris. He wore a rough 
 blue serge, decently cut, but with nothing of 
 that trim correctness that marked the clothes 
 of Shepston. Grey was clad, Shepston was 
 dressed. 
 
 " So good of you to come," began Lady 
 Downham at once. "I've read your book" 
 she had it in her hand and glanced at the title 
 before she added, " ' The Mountains of the 
 Moon,' and I want you to explain to me just 
 what you mean by it all; I'm so interested in 
 Socialism. I'm sure there's a lot in it." She 
 had replied to Grey's bow with a little nod, and 
 
 8
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 she talked herself into a chair without introduc- 
 ing her brother, who had followed her into the 
 room. 
 
 Shepston came forward and offered his hand. 
 " We've taken the opportunity of getting you 
 alone," he said, " while London's at Good- 
 wood, and we're going to cross-examine you as 
 the prophet of a new sociology." 
 
 "I'll be very glad," returned Grey simply, 
 as he sat down. "I don't expect you to take 
 my gospel seriously; it isn't natural that you 
 should, but " 
 
 "I don't think that's fair to us," inter- 
 rupted Lady Downham. " I assure you that 
 I'm most interested. I've been reading all 
 kinds of books about Socialism lately, by by 
 I've no memory for names, I'm afraid ' 
 
 " The usual books, of course," explained 
 Shepston; "Marx, Hyndman, Bebel " 
 
 Grey looked up with a flicker of eagerness. 
 ' ' You were good enough to call me the prophet 
 of a new sociology," he said, "but if you've 
 read all the pioneers I don't think I'll have 
 much to say." 
 
 "Ah! but it's that particular touch of 
 practical idealism you have added that makes 
 your work interesting to us," Shepston replied. 
 
 9
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 He would have continued, but Lady Downham 
 came in by saying : 
 
 "The point that always perplexes me is 
 this : I always feel that if all the wealth was 
 shared out, it would be all the same again in a 
 few years' time. No one has ever explained to 
 me how you can get over that." She frowned 
 slightly, put up her pince-nez, and looked with 
 a placid interest at her visitor. 
 
 Grey did not permit himself to smile at the 
 foolishness of her remark, but he sighed almost 
 inaudibly and leaned back in his chair. Shep- 
 ston was staring at the opposite wall with that 
 perfectly non-committal expression of his that 
 induced quite a large number of men and women 
 to believe that he was a rather stupid person. 
 
 " I believe, Lady Downham," Grey said, 
 " that the Utopists at the beginning of the last 
 century Robert Owen and some of his 
 followers must have given that theory of dis- 
 tribution a start in life. If they did, I hope 
 they turn in their graves whenever it's men- 
 tioned, which would mean that they are having 
 a very uneasy time. Anyway, no Socialist to- 
 day, unless it's one of those orators in Hyde 
 Park, has ever to my knowledge suggested that 
 we ought to have a general share out." 
 
 10
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 Lady Downham smiled complacently. 
 "Really!" she said. "Now that's just one of 
 the things I want you to explain to me ; I mean 
 what it is they do suggest." 
 
 Grey found himself in the position of a 
 master chess-player asked to explain the theory 
 of a gambit to a woman who had not the most 
 elementary knowledge of the moves of the 
 pieces. 
 
 Shepston stood on the hearthrug apparently 
 quite unembarrassed. 
 
 " I think I hear Garton coming with tea," 
 he remarked. "Do you make such a function 
 of tea in Canada, Grey?" 
 
 " We drink it fairly often," Grey said, as 
 Garton, the butler, entered with his acolytes. 
 
 But if Grey hoped for a diversion while the 
 function was in process, he was disappointed. 
 His hostess continued her examination with an 
 utter disregard of the three new listeners. 
 
 " Now we've got you alone like this," she 
 said, " you must tell us precisely what your own 
 scheme is." 
 
 " I have tried to put it in my book as plainly 
 as I could, Lady Downham," he said. "You'll 
 understand that it's hardly an attitude to be 
 expressed in a simple formula ; and as you'll have 
 
 ii
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 inferred, I want rather to teach a general 
 attitude than to propagate any cut-and-dried 
 scheme of nationalisation." 
 
 He paused, but as Lady Downham only 
 looked intelligent and said "Oh!" thought- 
 fully, he went on : 
 
 " That's not to say that I'm not interested 
 in the economic theory I began with that 
 but I would like to accelerate legislation, such 
 as you've begun over here, by trying to make 
 people think differently about the principle." 
 
 As he talked he glanced once or twice at the 
 expressionless masks of Garton and the two 
 footmen ; he felt like a man making an oration 
 to an audience that spoke no single word of the 
 language in which he addressed them. Only 
 Shepston puzzled him. Grey had a sense that 
 the little plump man with the set smile and 
 the eyeglass could understand if he would. 
 
 Lady Downham continued to make inept 
 comments and to contradict herself flatly when 
 the inappropriateness of her criticism was 
 politely explained to her. She had an air of 
 condescending to her visitor ; but whereas 
 another woman might have been embarrassed 
 by the realisation of her childish ineptitudes, 
 and have made some excuse or frank admission 
 
 12
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 that she could not understand, Lady Downham 
 preserved her manner of quiet complacence. 
 She seemed to be beyond the reach of any 
 possible teaching or correction. Between her 
 and Grey was an immense barrier ; she was as 
 serenely and unostentatiously superior to his 
 opinion as a smiling god. He felt that it was 
 impossible he could ever put her in the wrong ; 
 he believed that if he were suddenly to shout 
 some awful insult, she would look at him with 
 an interested surprise, and in so doing express 
 openly what was surely implied in her whole 
 attitude namely, that she was the daughter of 
 an Irish earl and the wife of the premier marquis 
 of England, and that her vis-a-vis was Mr. 
 Grey, recently from Canada, and at- present 
 staying at a third-class hotel in Southampton 
 Row. He did not resent the distinction ; he 
 was not annoyed by it. He had been prepared, 
 and he was supported by a knowledge of his 
 own power a power that he had no intention 
 to use. 
 
 The servants had left the room, and Grey 
 was wondering whether he might not decently 
 take his leave, when a motor horn sounded 
 imperatively in the square outside. 
 
 Shepston walked over to the window. 
 13
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "I expected it," he said, turning to his 
 sister. : ' Dick and Tempe alone in the car. 
 Heaven only knows what they've done with 
 Downham." 
 
 " They may have dropped him somewhere," 
 she suggested with faint anxiety. 
 
 Shepston shrugged his shoulders and moved 
 towards the door, but before he reached it his 
 niece, followed by her brother, came into the 
 room. 
 
 GREY rose to his feet, and Lady Tempe gave 
 him one quick, inquiring glance before she 
 turned to her mother. 
 
 "Pater's coming home with the Yaxleys," 
 she said. " At least, we expect he is." 
 
 " We left him talkin' to 'em," put in Lord 
 Stratton. 
 
 "The duke was there, you know, dear," 
 continued Tempe quickly, "and the pater was 
 towing us after him to go and talk just before 
 the last race. And the duke is such an infernal 
 old bore, isn't he? and Dickie and I thought 
 he and the pater might go on for weeks, so we 
 just slipped away. We couldn't find Jakes; he
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 was probably putting his shirt on the last race ; 
 but Dickie found the car and drove me home. 
 We got in front of the crowd and made record 
 time." 
 
 " But if " began Lady Downham. 
 
 Shepston interposed. "This settles it, my 
 children," he said. " You've only yourselves 
 to thank. Stratton Hall for you from the 
 fifteenth to the thirty-first of next month." 
 He waved aside their indignant protests with 
 a patronising gesture of his beautifully kept 
 hands. " You shouldn't make such silly asses 
 of yourselves," he went on calmly. " Down- 
 ham is probably in a stuffy train at this 
 moment in the company of bookies and race- 
 sharps 
 
 " We left him with the Yaxleys all right," 
 put in Lord Stratton. 
 
 "Don't be a fool, Dickie," replied his 
 uncle suavely. "Of course, he would go to 
 look for you after the last race, and quite 
 inevitably he would be left wandering vaguely 
 about till he met Jakes, who would tell him 
 that the car had gone; and by that time- 
 He made another gesture to express the un- 
 speakable results that would follow when his 
 brother-in-law found himself alone in an 
 
 15
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 unfamiliar world that had no respect for his 
 dignities. 
 
 f * Surely he would be able to get a carriage 
 to himself?" said Tempe. 
 
 "My dear Tempe!" was all the argument 
 that Shepston found necessary; and dismissed 
 the topic by turning to Grey. "Another 
 problem you should study," Shepston said, " is 
 the amazing independence of the young genera- 
 tion. No doubt you've noticed the same thing 
 in Canada?" 
 
 Grey smiled. He had been an interested 
 spectator of the scene that had passed, and had 
 drawn his own deductions. " Why, yes," he 
 said, " or, at least, another aspect of the same 
 attitude." 
 
 Tempe, who had been frowning discon- 
 tentedly, looked up when her uncle mentioned 
 Canada, and now regarded Grey for the first 
 time with serious attention. 
 
 " Oh ! I wonder if you could tell me what a 
 spiral staircase is?" she said with great earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 Grey put his hands in his coat pockets. 
 " Well, it's a staircase that goes up in a 
 spiral like a corkscrew, you know," he told 
 her. 
 
 16
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 She looked at him keenly, but he appeared 
 to be perfectly stolid and serious. 
 
 "Like a corkscrew?" she repeated, as if she 
 were utterly perplexed. 
 
 "Exactly," repeated Grey. He met her 
 stare with a look of innocent sincerity. Lord 
 Stratton was talking to his mother on the other 
 side of the room, but Shepston was watching 
 his niece's little comedy with his usual expres- 
 sion of perfunctory amusement. 
 
 Lady Tempe made a vague movement with 
 the forefinger of her right hand as if she were 
 sketching on an imaginary easel. " Like that?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Not a bit," returned Grey; and he leaned 
 forward as if he were quite absorbed in his 
 desire to correct her mistake. 
 
 " How then?" she asked. 
 
 " Exactly like a corkscrew," he said. " You 
 know how a corkscrew goes." 
 
 "Oh, well, never mind," she returned with 
 a little sigh. " I thought perhaps you would 
 know." 
 
 >l Grey's trick," remarked Shepston quietly. 
 
 Tempe had the grace to blush. " Did you 
 know?" she asked Grey. 
 
 ' Why, I had that little game played on me 
 
 c 17
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 a dozen years ago," he said. "But I suppose 
 you thought Canadians lived in the woods and 
 wore skins all the time?" 
 
 " No, I didn't," Lady Tempe said casually. 
 " I know it's an old trick, but I've got a bet 
 on with Sibyl Hamilton. I had scored nine to 
 her seven last night, and I thought you were 
 worth trying. We're only playing ten up." 
 
 " It's strange how strongly one is tempted 
 to answer that question with a gesticulating 
 finger," remarked Shepston. "I want to do it 
 
 even now." 
 
 " I might have guessed that you knew by 
 the way you put your hands in your pockets," 
 Tempe said; "but you did it rather well. By 
 the way, are you Mother's new Socialist?" 
 
 " I didn't realise that her interest was pro- 
 prietary," retorted Grey. 
 
 Tempe laughed pleasantly. " But you are 
 a Socialist, aren't you?" she asked. 
 
 " If you mean that I'm peculiarly interested 
 in a certain theory of Socialism yes," replied 
 Grey. "For the same reasons, I suppose, you 
 might describe yourself as a spiralist." 
 
 " Another trick to Grey," said Shepston. 
 
 "He is rather smart, isn't he?" Tempe re- 
 marked, looking up at her uncle; and then she 
 
 18
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 turned to Grey and said, evidently on a sudden 
 impulse, " I wish you would come and stay at 
 Stratton on the fifteenth will you? It'll be 
 frightfully dull, but I expect you'd find the 
 country jolly if you don't know it." 
 
 " And you think that I should be interesting 
 as a curiosity ; that I might alleviate the dull- 
 ness for you?" added Grey. 
 
 "You might," replied Tempe, unabashed. 
 
 "You take too many risks, Lady Tempe," 
 said Grey quietly, as he rose to his feet. 
 
 He was glad to go now. He felt that his 
 presence there was a protest against the air of 
 the house. He had wanted to see these people, 
 and he thought he knew all that he had come 
 to learn. They might not be shallow, but all 
 their interests were superficial, he thought. 
 Lady Downham and her exquisitely groomed 
 son were negligible, but this uncle Grey had 
 not heard his name mentioned evidently a man 
 of some ability, was so involved in the affairs 
 and interests of this one family of Stratton that 
 he could calmly watch Lady Tempe try to fool 
 a perfect stranger, and accept that rudeness as 
 a vagary excusable by her position. And Lady 
 Tempe herself was not a simpleton. In his 
 mind Grey tried to dismiss the inevitable pre- 
 19
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 judice created by her beauty, and to judge her 
 without bias as an intelligent young woman. 
 He tried to picture her roughing it in a shack, 
 with a coarse apron, bare arms, and hair screwed 
 into a knot; but the picture was unconvincing. 
 He saw a girl who was not Lady Tempe, but 
 merely wore her superficial physical likeness. 
 She herself was so much in harmony with her 
 setting that to destroy the setting was to destroy 
 also the portrait. That Goodwood frock of hers 
 in two softly contrasted shades of tan, repeated 
 in her hat and echoed in her gloves, shoes, and 
 stockings, so admirably threw up the dark glow 
 of her eyes and hair. How much thought, time, 
 and money must have gone to the production of 
 that effect. She could not be more than twenty 
 or twenty-one ; yet, if that costume was of her 
 own designing, she must already be a finished 
 artist. 
 
 He had not taken the invitation seriously ; 
 he had heard enough that afternoon to convince 
 him that Lady Downham's daughter was a 
 creature of tricks and sudden whims, and he 
 was startled when Shepston said : 
 
 * We should certainly be very glad to see 
 you at Stratton for a few days, Grey, if you 
 haven't any other engagements." 
 
 20
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 Grey's face expressed the question he did not 
 care to speak: "Why should they trouble to 
 ask him to stay at Stratton?" 
 
 " That's very kind of you," he said, with 
 obvious reserve and hesitation. 
 
 Shepston turned to his sister. "I am ask- 
 ing Mr. Grey if he would permit himself to be 
 bored by a visit to Stratton in August," he 
 said. 
 
 Lady Downham smiled pleasantly. " How 
 good of you," she said to Grey. " We've had no 
 chance of discussing your book this afternoon. 
 Now in Devonshire we shall have plenty of 
 time, and you must really give me a proper 
 explanation of it all. Any day after the 
 fifteenth that will suit you." She answered 
 his bow with a careless nod and continued what 
 appeared to be an expostulation with the sulky 
 Lord Stratton. Grey's acceptance was evidently 
 regarded as a matter of course. 
 
 " Could you manage the seventeenth?" sup- 
 plemented Shepston. 
 
 "May I write to you?" returned Grey. " I 
 can't be sure for the next day or two. I may 
 be going back to Ottawa." 
 
 Shepston nodded; and Grey, finding that 
 the butler was standing by the open door, 
 
 21
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 bowed and retreated. The four other occupants 
 of the room were talking among themselves, 
 oblivious of his presence before he had left the 
 room. 
 
 4 
 
 HE threw back his shoulders as he walked down 
 the steps into Portman Square. He had had 
 a new experience that afternoon. These people 
 and their manners had been strange and un- 
 expected. They were, for instance, quite unlike 
 Lord and Lady Dalesworth, who had stood for 
 him as the type of the English aristocracy. The 
 Dalesworths had been gracious and polite. 
 Lord Dalesworth, in his easy, self-possessed 
 way, treated everyone with an air of friendli- 
 ness while maintaining a certain dignity that 
 forbade the least attempt at familiarity. Lady 
 Dalesworth had been more formal in her rela- 
 tions, and had at times a faintly patronising 
 manner. But these Strattons had no airs of 
 dignity. They had not, with the exception of 
 Lady Downham's brother, troubled to be polite. 
 They had treated him as they might have treated 
 an intelligent child, making no attempt to dis- 
 guise their own ignorance and yet serenely con- 
 
 22
 
 Arthur Grey 
 
 fident of some superiority in themselves that put 
 criticism out of the question. 
 
 Grey shrugged his broad shoulders. He was 
 intrigued by some unfamiliar quality in the 
 experience, but he could not decide whether he 
 would accept that invitation to Devonshire. 
 His purpose in coming to London had been 
 achieved ; he had seen and conversed with three 
 of the four members of that family which was 
 to him of such peculiar interest ; he would gain 
 nothing by any further intimacy. Had he not 
 better return to Canada and take up his work 
 again? He had gained new material for 
 sociological study. 
 
 When he arrived at his hotel he went into 
 the coffee-room and found a peerage. All the 
 information to be gleaned from that work of 
 reference was known to him except the name 
 of Lady Downham's brother, which he noted as 
 the Hon. Reginald Shepston. But he wanted 
 to review it all again, the dignities and posses- 
 sions and the antiquity of the title that dated 
 back to Edward Stratton, created first Baron 
 Stratton in the reign of Edward I. 
 
 He wanted to pause for a moment on the 
 wonderful reflection that all these dignities and 
 possessions could belong to him, Arthur Strat- 
 
 23
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 ton, or Arthur S. Grey as he had always been 
 known, if he cared to stretch out his hand and 
 take them ! 
 
 He smiled grimly and closed the bulky peer- 
 age with a soft thud. All that wealth and 
 honour tempted him no more than the sight of 
 a diamond tiara in the window of a Bond Street 
 jeweller.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DISINHERITED 
 1 
 
 ARTHUR GREY'S philosophy had come to him 
 from his mother, both by an inheritance of her 
 temperament and by the influence of her teach- 
 ing. She had been a woman of quite unusual 
 capacity and intelligence, biased only by one 
 outstanding prejudice : her contempt for the 
 English family of Stratton, known to her by a 
 single member whom she had married when she 
 was nineteen. 
 
 The late Marquis of Downham's first mar- 
 riage to his cousin Lady Alice Yaxley, the third 
 daughter of the Duke of Liverpool, had not 
 been a success. Their two elder children died in 
 infancy, and the third child, Edward, although 
 apparently sound otherwise in body and mind, 
 developed an idiosyncrasy that is politely 
 described as kleptomania. His mother, after 
 shocking Society for ten years, eloped with a 
 professional singer, and left her son to the care 
 
 25
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 of a father who had no affection for him ; and 
 the stepmother who succeeded Lady Alice when 
 the divorce had been made good, found too 
 much occupation with her own three children to 
 spend her interest in the welfare of the boy who 
 had robbed her son Richard of the title of Earl 
 of Stratton and of heirship to the celebrated 
 Marquisate of Downham. 
 
 Almost inevitably Edward grew up to 
 become a plague and terror to his father, who 
 would gladly have disinherited him had not the 
 strictness of the entail made such an act impos- 
 sible. Stratton's chief failing was his utter 
 irresponsibility. He appeared to act as his mood 
 prompted, without a single thought of any 
 possible consequences ; and his weakness for 
 pocketing any valuable that caught his fancy at 
 the moment, increased as his opportunities for 
 theft widened. 
 
 It was the threatened action of a Bond Street 
 jeweller that finally decided Lord Downham to 
 send his son to Canada. Stratton was twenty- 
 seven at that time. People who knew him 
 slightly described him as a man of considerable 
 personal charm. He had graceful, easy man- 
 ners. He treated his groom and the duke, his 
 grandfather, with precisely the same air of faint 
 
 26
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 deference. He met any rebuke with the 
 acknowledgment that he was to blame, listened 
 patiently and attentively to threats or entreaties, 
 and then proceeded to repeat his offences as if 
 he were incapable of the least self-control. 
 
 When old Lord Downham insisted upon a 
 voyage to Canada and a decently long residence 
 in that country, Stratton conceded the necessity 
 without demur, and he was exiled, in company 
 with a carefully chosen tutor, without having 
 entered a single protest against his sentence of 
 banishment. 
 
 What happened in Canada the Stratton 
 family never knew, but some fourteen months 
 later the black sheep came back to England 
 alone and exhibiting the first symptoms of 
 general paralysis, a disease of which he died 
 some eighteen months after his return. The 
 tutor, a certain William Hayles, had presum- 
 ably remained on the far side of the Atlantic. 
 Probably he was aware that he had failed in his 
 trust ; in any case, Lord Downham heard no 
 more from him. 
 
 So the Strattons heaved a deep sigh of relief, 
 buried the scapegrace with all necessary cere- 
 mony, and gave more attention than ever to 
 Richard, the new heir, a somewhat unintelligent 
 
 27
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 but steady youth of twenty-two, who promised 
 to maintain all the traditions of the family. 
 
 As a fragment of history in the life of an old 
 British family, this story of Edward, Lord 
 Stratton, presents no aspect of peculiar interest. 
 The old Lord Downhafn's first marriage had 
 been an unfortunate one, but when the last 
 evidence of it was decently interred in the family 
 vault (Lady Alice had died years before in 
 Baden) no permanent stain soiled the Stratton 
 escutcheon. As the years passed, the memory 
 of Edward's doings was toned down to a reason- 
 able propriety. The kleptomaniac and his utter 
 failure to recognise any code of morality were for- 
 gotten, and he figured in the family tradition as a 
 young man of gentle manners with a regrettable 
 but quite aristocratic weakness for enjoying life 
 as he found it. 
 
 The old world makes such allowances for its 
 hereditary nobility, but the brief incursion of 
 Lord Stratton into Canada exhibits him in quite 
 another character. 
 
 Janet Grey, for example, saw him with very 
 different eyes, both before and after her brief 
 experience of married life. 
 
 28
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 At first he figured as some strange incarna- 
 tion of romance. That pleading, deferential 
 manner of his, the grace and charm of his indi- 
 viduality, appeared as the amazing renascence of 
 chivalric knighthood. He had dropped his title 
 and passed as Mr. Edward Stratton, but her 
 intuitions told her that he came of another race, 
 almost of another species. 
 
 She was working then as clerk in a small 
 hotel in Toronto. Hayles, the tutor, had 
 chosen a small hotel because he wanted to avoid 
 the temptations that any display presented to 
 his charge. They had been in Canada for more 
 than three months at that time, and Hayles was 
 sick of his job. He was well paid, but the 
 anxieties and constant tension he endured had 
 nearly worn him out. He was considering his 
 resignation when Stratton sprang the new sur- 
 prise by announcing that he was going to marry 
 Janet Grey, the hotel clerk. 
 
 There was no one to consult or, at that 
 distance from England, to raise objections. The 
 girl was an orphan, and had been earning her 
 own living in the hotel for two years. But what 
 weighed with Hayles a point, perhaps the only 
 one, that must be urged in his defence was that 
 Janet Grey seemed to offer a hope of Stratton 's 
 
 29
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 reform. She was so capable and so self -con- 
 trolled. She excelled in all those qualities that 
 Stratton lacked. If Hayles's nerves had not 
 been worn thin by the strain of the past three 
 months, he would not have taken this considera- 
 tion into account ; he must have been clutching 
 at straws at that time, but it is certain that from 
 the first he hardly raised any opposition to his 
 charge's proposal. No doubt his sojourn in 
 Canada had had some influence upon him. He 
 had been freed to a certain extent from that 
 servile attitude toward the greater English 
 nobility which is characteristic of his class. The 
 only representative of the adored aristocracy he 
 had seen since he left Liverpool was the feeble 
 creature whom he had come to loathe, and the 
 traditions that would have ruled him in Devon- 
 shire may have appeared paltry and meaningless 
 after even a superficial study of Canadian 
 independence. 
 
 Excuses might certainly be made for Hayles 
 if he had shown more courage, but it is obvious 
 that he was aware of his own disloyalty ; for 
 while he raised but the feeblest objection to the 
 marriage, he insisted that it must be kept secret. 
 Stratton agreed without demur, and Janet was 
 easily persuaded when she learnt from Hayles 
 
 30
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 the style and prospects of the man she was going 
 to marry. Expedience, temporary only, but 
 immediately necessary, was the form the argu- 
 ment took, and it must have seemed valid 
 enough. The tutor was not sufficiently honest 
 or courageous to give an outline of Stratton's 
 character and past history, but it is doubtful 
 whether Janet would have believed him if he 
 had. She was infatuated just then, as even a 
 woman of her strength and resolution may be 
 at this one particular crisis of life. She guessed 
 that her lover was weak, but his very weakness 
 was one of the chief of his attractions. 
 
 They were married legally but furtively, and 
 left Toronto the same day, and the only witness 
 who knew the contracting parties was William 
 Hayles. 
 
 3 
 
 JANET'S illusions concerning Edward Stratton 
 were broken within three days of her marriage. 
 There was a deep strain of Puritanism in her 
 character, and her husband had not the most 
 elementary conceptions of morals or decency. 
 If she had not been a woman of exceptional 
 resolution she would not have endured him for 
 
 3'
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the six weeks that marked the limit of their 
 marital relations. 
 
 She meant to reform him, of course ; but the 
 man was incapable of reformation. Reproaches, 
 pleading, or command had no effect of any kind 
 upon him. He had every outward appearance 
 of sanity, but he was no more subject to influ- 
 ence than a congenital idiot. Nevertheless, 
 Janet would have persisted for some time longer 
 if her husband had not come within the clutches 
 of a law that was more rigorous and less easily 
 placated than the laws of his own country. 
 
 The theft was not quite characteristic of his 
 recognisable kleptomaniacal tendencies, since 
 the object of it was a bundle of not too clean 
 dollar bills which could not have appealed to the 
 lust of his eyes. Moreover, the details of his 
 approach to the felony bore evidences of some 
 deliberation. He had spent most of the money 
 before he told his wife so casual an admission 
 could not be called a confession. He appeared 
 to believe that Hayles possessed some omni- 
 potent authority that could save the criminal 
 from the threatened consequences of his crime. 
 
 Hayles, largely relieved of the more exigent 
 duties that had devolved upon him, had never- 
 theless kept his charge under observation. He 
 
 32
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 was still receiving his salary and sending weekly 
 reports to Devonshire or Portman Square, omit- 
 ting any references that might hasten Lord 
 Stratton's recall to England. But when this 
 new complication was thrust upon him, Hayles 
 lost his head. He had only one suggestion to 
 make, and that was instant flight. 
 
 Even Stratton was faintly intimidated, a fact 
 that may explain his casual desertion of Janet 
 four days after they had escaped. When he was 
 found and arrested a fortnight later, he was 
 living with another woman and passing under 
 the name of Brown. 
 
 He adhered to that name on the advice of 
 Hayles, who saw him in prison when he was 
 brought back to the little township in which he 
 had been living with Janet. Hayles's one object 
 now was to keep the criminal's identity from 
 becoming known, an object that was achieved 
 without much difficulty. The name of Stratton 
 was reasonably supposed to have been the alias 
 and Bro\vn the patronymic. Janet was in 
 Ottawa, and did not appear at the trial. She 
 had finished for ever with the heir to the Mar- 
 quisate of Downham. She was just then the 
 most shocked and outraged woman in the 
 Dominion. 
 
 D 33
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 The trial of Edward Brown, who genially 
 pleaded guilty to stealing 150 dollars in bills, the 
 property of Richard Pryce, hotel keeper, created 
 no particular sensation in that little township of 
 6,000 inhabitants. The case was reported in the 
 local paper in the ordinary course, but any 
 version that appeared in more important journals 
 was too brief to include the fact that the prisoner 
 had been using the name of Stratton. He 
 received a sentence of nine months' imprison- 
 ment, and Mr. William Hayles remained in the 
 neighbourhood and continued to send quite un- 
 alarming reports to Devonshire or to Portman 
 Square and to receive his own and his charge's 
 allowances. 
 
 But he sent in his resignation a week before 
 Lord Stratton's release, and saw that nobleman 
 off on his return journey to Liverpool ten days 
 later. 
 
 Hayles had no fear that Stratton would give 
 his family any particulars of his life in Canada. 
 He had no gift for elaborate confessions, and if 
 he made any casual references to his wife or to 
 the inner workings of a Canadian prison, the 
 chances were that no one would take him 
 seriously ; and, in any case, Mr. William Hayles 
 would be beyond reach of the law. His failure 
 
 34
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 to report essentials was not criminal, and he had 
 been careful to keep no money that he could not 
 account for. Lord Stratton went home provided 
 with the savings of the nine months' allowance 
 that had accrued to him during his period of 
 enforced economy. 
 
 Hayles stayed in Canada and became a 
 prosperous citizen. 
 
 THAT sharp, bitter experience left a flaw on the 
 character of Janet Grey. She was violently 
 prejudiced in this single particular. In the first 
 few years after her son was born years of hard 
 struggle to earn a livelihood she watched him 
 with doubt and suspicion. If he had inherited 
 his father's likeness, whether physical or tem- 
 peramental, it is probable that Janet would have 
 killed him. She was not perfectly sane at that 
 time in her hatred for the man who had so 
 terribly outraged her every sense of decency. 
 But although she searched her little son with a 
 prejudice that might all too easily have created 
 the sign it sought, she was never able to detect 
 a feature or a trait of character that caused her 
 to wince with the fear of recognition. Perhaps 
 
 35
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 her very bias saved her. Her image of Edward 
 Stratton may have become so distorted that it 
 no longer bore any remarkable likeness to the 
 original. 
 
 Certainly, Arthur Grey inherited his 
 mother's character, while in general physique, 
 in colouring, and in certain tricks of gesture he 
 continually reminded her of the adored father 
 she had lost when she was fourteen years old. 
 No doubt ever marred the intimate, ideal rela- 
 tions of mother and son after he was six or seven 
 years old. 
 
 And as she became ever more sure of him, 
 and as the bitterness of her hatred against his 
 father was gradually dissipated and forgotten, 
 her old prejudice took a new shape. She became 
 eager to give her boy what she considered to be 
 a broad view of Society. She had an apprehen- 
 sive intellect, and she educated herself in order 
 that she might pass on her specialised education 
 to him. 
 
 Until Arthur was fifteen she endured many 
 hardships in the struggle to maintain existence. 
 It seemed that the luck was against her, so often 
 was she within sight of a relative independence 
 that was always denied her. But even when she 
 was harassed by the threat of possible starvation, 
 
 36
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 she persisted in her endeavours to buy or to 
 borrow the particular literature which had 
 become her only reading. 
 
 The tide of her fortune turned when she was 
 thirty-four years old. She obtained the post of 
 manageress to a second-rate hotel in Ottawa, 
 and seven years later, on the death of the pro- 
 prietor, she was able to borrow the money that 
 gave her the controlling interest in a venture 
 that increasingly prospered. When she died, 
 worn out by incessant overwork, her son found 
 himself in possession of enough capital to provide 
 him with a yearly income of some 3,000 dollars. 
 
 He was a man of thirty-one at that time, 
 and a professor of economics in an American 
 university. He had written and published one 
 or two essays that had attracted some attention 
 in professorial circles, and was engaged upon 
 the book that was to embody his whole theory 
 of sociology. The death of his mother inter- 
 rupted that work for a time. They had been 
 utterly devoted to each other, and for six months 
 he was as destitute of any interest in life as a 
 widowed lover. 
 
 But presently his determination reasserted 
 itself. He realised that he must go forward with 
 the work for which his mother had educated him 
 
 37
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 at such a cost. And as he took up the threads 
 again his old enthusiasm returned. He had 
 resigned his professorship, he was independent 
 of any profession now, and he devoted all his 
 energies to that book which had failed so com- 
 pletely to absorb the interest of Lady Downham 
 in Portman Square. 
 
 "The Mountains of the Moon*' had only 
 been published some six months when, at the 
 age of thirty-three, Arthur Grey went to 
 England for the first time; but already it had 
 brought him considerable recognition and the 
 promise of a large addition to his income. 
 
 His trip to Europe was undertaken for 
 educational purposes. He wanted to study at 
 first hand the conditions and theories that 
 obtained in the older civilisations ; but he wanted 
 also to meet some members of that family from 
 which he was descended. He was anxious to 
 investigate their attitude towards life and the 
 problems of sociology, to understand, if possible, 
 the true cause of difference between their out- 
 look and his own. His mother had told him 
 the whole story without reserve when he had 
 come to manhood ; but, whether by reason of 
 the manner of her telling or because her special- 
 ised education of him had become an essential 
 
 38
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 part of his outlook, he had never for one moment 
 been tempted by any thought of claiming his 
 position as a member of the titular aristocracy. 
 The thought of it was farcical, although the 
 material of the claim was quite indisputable. 
 
 William Hayles, in his sixtieth year, witness 
 not only to the marriage but also to the identity 
 of Lord Stratton, was a hale and prosperous 
 merchant in Toronto. 
 
 AFTER he had returned the bulky peerage to the 
 coffee-room bookcase, Grey went out to walk 
 round and round the unfrequented pavement 
 that encircles the gardens in the centre of 
 Russell Square. His mind was full of the 
 thought that he was surrounded by those 
 symbols that marked the prestige accorded to 
 the important figures of an era that was surely 
 passing away. He was conscious of a feeling of 
 elation and power, of superiority to the false 
 standards which could endure that statue of the 
 Duke of Bedford facing so stolidly and yet so 
 self-consciously towards the heart of London. 
 This man and his kind had done something, no 
 doubt, to improve the condition of their depend- 
 
 39
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 ants; but they had been so blind, so absurdly 
 inflated with their sense of a position that was 
 hardly less than royal. They had imagined an 
 insuperable barrier between themselves and what 
 they considered to be the lower orders of man- 
 kind as if God had created two species, the 
 rulers and the ruled, as distinct from each other 
 as the horse and the ass. And so sure had they 
 been of that distinction, and so relentless in the 
 use of their property to maintain it, that here, 
 in the old world, the masses had grown to accept 
 the division as one of the manifestations of the 
 eternal purpose. 
 
 Grey shrugged his shoulders with a touch of 
 impatience. He had been standing before the 
 bull-necked, curly-haired, self-satisfied image of 
 the statue, and he turned away from it as from 
 the representation of a stolid complacency that 
 was no longer the most important factor in the 
 sociological problem. The aristocracy had had 
 its day in England. It still bore an appearance 
 of solidity, but the tradition was being destroyed 
 by the new aristocracy of wealth represented by 
 the pretentious, protesting architecture of the 
 Hotel Russell that occupied a large proportion 
 of one side of the square. 
 
 To him, both representations seemed the 
 40
 
 The Disinherited 
 
 symbols of a stage in progress that the world 
 had outgrown. Beyond them was some ideal of 
 fraternity, of co-operation among men, of a 
 common purpose, of a well-being that should 
 include all humanity. It was no unattainable 
 ideal, no impossible Utopia, but it demanded 
 self-sacrifice, a denial of any personal striving 
 toward the power of wealth and position, a 
 refusal to work for purely personal ends. He 
 was not conscious that he was endowing the new 
 race of men he so clearly visualised with those 
 characteristics he had inherited from his mother ; 
 he was only aware of a certainty that all the 
 vices and evils of civilisation had sprung from 
 the meanness of personal ambition. 
 
 His thoughts turned to the family he had 
 met for the first time that afternoon. They 
 were harmless, well-meaning people, no doubt ; 
 but they had no true sense of their responsibili- 
 ties. They were blinded by the tradition that 
 enwrapped them. And then, with a sudden 
 emotion that was almost pity, he thought of 
 Lady Tempe. Surely she must still be open to 
 influence? She was too young finally to have 
 accepted the fetish of rank and position as the 
 only god worthy of service? Might he not do 
 something toward opening her eyes to the 
 
 4 1
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 futility of those old superstitions? And there 
 was Shepston, too ; he also had shown behind 
 the veil of his defensive mannerisms some 
 indication of truer perceptions. 
 
 Grey stopped and looked up into the deepen- 
 ing blue of the evening sky. Even in London 
 one could catch a glimpse of eternal things. He 
 was thinking that if after all he accepted that 
 invitation to Stratton, his time would not be 
 wasted. He would have a unique opportunity 
 to study the inside workings of a great estate 
 and the psychology both of the rulers and their 
 dependants. And he might do some work in 
 opening the eyes of the younger generation to 
 the truths of life. 
 
 He knew perfectly well that he had been 
 asked because none of the Strattons' friends 
 would visit them in Devonshire in mid- August. 
 He was a pis aller ; a kind of jester to alleviate 
 the dullness of that traditional sojourn imposed 
 by the head of the family. The thought amused 
 him. He was, in the Strattons' opinion, a 
 member of the lower orders ; someone whom 
 they could patronise as it pleased them, and 
 then forget. 
 
 Before he returned to his hotel he had 
 decided to accept the invitation. 
 
 42
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 STRATTON 
 1 
 
 SOME intimation of the attitude that might be 
 expected from dependants on the great estate 
 was provided when Grey alighted at Cole- 
 Stratton station. He had travelled third class, 
 and the attention of the stationmaster and the 
 one porter was entirely given to the other end 
 of the train until such time as they were satis- 
 fied that no first-class passenger was proposing 
 to get out at that stopping-place. It seemed 
 as if the train itself had been made up to 
 accommodate Stratton convenience, for the one 
 first-class coach was at the forward end, and 
 uad stopped precisely opposite a platform build- 
 ing that was markedly differentiated from the 
 other offices. It was, indeed, the Stratton 
 private waiting-room, and before the door of it 
 stood two menservants in livery. 
 
 For a few moments Grey did not realise that 
 these two impressive individuals had come to 
 
 43
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 meet him and to relieve him of all responsibility 
 on leaving the station. He had been willing to 
 wait patiently until the porter could spare time 
 to take out his two modest bags from the van ; 
 he had even been prepared to walk up to the 
 house, carrying his gripsack, and leaving his 
 heavier luggage to follow. He had written to 
 Lady Downham, giving the day, but not the 
 time of his arrival. 
 
 He walked up the platform and addressed 
 the porter. 
 
 "I've got two bags down there," Grey said, 
 pointing to the luggage that the guard had 
 ejected from the van. 
 
 " Where 'm they to be took to?" asked the 
 porter, holding out his hand for Grey's ticket. 
 
 " Stratton," replied Grey. 
 
 " Cole-Stratton?" returned the porter, with 
 the air of one who politely corrects a stranger's 
 ignorance. 
 
 "That's the name of the village, isn't it?" 
 Grey said. "No; I'm going up to the house, 
 to Lord Downham's." 
 
 The two menservants, standing within ear- 
 shot, had appeared rigidly oblivious of Grey's 
 presence until the magic word was spoken, but 
 at the sound of it they suddenly came to life. 
 
 44
 
 Stratton 
 
 One of them instantly turned and came for- 
 ward, and the hands of both of them were 
 automatically raised in salute. 
 
 "Mr. Grey? Yes, sir. The automobile is 
 outside, sir," said the man who had undertaken 
 the ambassadorial function. 
 
 Grey had his ticket in his hand, and the 
 ambassador respectfully relieved him of the 
 burden. 
 
 " I have two bags " began Grey. 
 
 * 1 will attend to the luggage, sir," was the 
 assurance he received. Plainly no visitor to 
 Stratton must be fatigued by the necessity for 
 identifying his own luggage. 
 
 The attitude of every man on the station had 
 wonderfully changed. The stationmaster and 
 his underling had withdrawn to a respectful 
 distance, but stood as if in attendance until 
 Stratton affairs should be magnificently dis- 
 posed of ; and the three or four other passengers 
 had all turned to gaze curiously as if they 
 might be honoured by the sight of Royalty, or 
 at least of a member of the Cabinet. 
 
 Grey found himself being passed on to the 
 second of the two menservants, who ushered 
 him through the private waiting-room to the 
 door of the motor that stood in a perfectly kept 
 
 45
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 gravel sweep, surrounded by an edging of 
 closely mown grass and a border of flower 
 beds, backed by a thick hedge of magnificent 
 rhododendrons . 
 
 This was Lord Downham's private entrance 
 to the station. The common people made their 
 exit through the booking-office to the approach 
 that led down under a bridge to the village of 
 Cole-Stratton on the farther side of the line. 
 On this side the park stretched down to the 
 railway, and the two and a half miles of gravel 
 road that separated the Hall from the station 
 lay entirely through this sacred private property 
 un violated by any public right of way. 
 
 The second servant had mounted the front 
 of the motor beside the chauffeur ; the first was 
 left to follow in a second motor with the 
 luggage. 
 
 " Good God !" murmured Grey, as he threw 
 himself back into the padded depths of fawn 
 velvet-covered cushions. 
 
 THE motor covered the two and a half miles in 
 slightly under four minutes, climbing most of 
 the way, and Grey had little chance to admire 
 
 4 6
 
 Stratton 
 
 the beauties of the park. He received an im- 
 pression of magnificent timber, here and there 
 he caught a flying glimpse of dim blue dis- 
 tances, of far hills and woods seen across a wide 
 valley ; for a quarter of a mile the road ran 
 parallel to a bright, clear stream that continually 
 splashed into white falls and rapids, and then he 
 entered the broad mile-long avenue of old elms 
 and saw the great facade of Stratton Hall, 
 brilliant in August sunlight. 
 
 The house was a disappointment. The old 
 Hall had stood on lower ground, half a mile 
 farther north, and had been built on the site of 
 the original keep. All that Elizabethan struc- 
 ture had been destroyed by fire during the Civil 
 War in the days of the third Earl of Stratton, 
 and only a carefully preserved ruin now re- 
 mained. The present Hall had been built by 
 the first marquis in the reign of George I., and 
 presented a flat, pedimented elevation, with a 
 wide balustraded terrace and a classic portico 
 that seemed out of place in this typical English 
 scenery. 
 
 The motor swept round to the right at the 
 head of the avenue, skirted a raised Italian 
 garden, blazing now with scarlet geraniums, and 
 then slowed down to take the wide, mounting 
 
 47
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 curve of the drive that ran through the arch of 
 a gateway to the flight of absurdly shallow steps 
 that led up to the portico. 
 
 Grey was received by Garton, the thick-set, 
 red-cheeked butler, who spoke with a Devon- 
 shire accent, and had been in service with the 
 family for thirty-eight years. He was assisted 
 by two unpowdered footmen in dark blue livery. 
 
 " Mr. Shepston is in the small library, sir," 
 Garton said, " unless you would prefer to go to 
 ybur own rooms." 
 
 " Thanks, I should prefer to see Mr. Shep- 
 ston," replied Grey. 
 
 " Shall I take your keys, sir?" asked 
 Garton. 
 
 "Eh?" ejaculated Grey. 
 
 " The keys of your luggage, sir," Garton 
 prompted him. 
 
 " Oh, yes, of course," said Grey, and 
 handed them over with a doubtful thought of 
 what the valet would find in his portmanteaux. 
 He had not packed with any anticipation of 
 servants' scrutiny. 
 
 He had visited the country houses of 
 American millionaires, but this place had a 
 different air. It was not the signs of wealth 
 that made him uncomfortable, but rather some 
 
 48
 
 Stratton 
 
 remote, unapproachable atmosphere of dignity. 
 He was conscious of a sense of humility that 
 irked and annoyed him and induced an un- 
 natural brusqueness in his manner when he 
 was confronted with the perfunctorily smiling 
 S heps ton. 
 
 " Georgian architecture, all this," Grey re- 
 marked when they had shaken hands. " It 
 shocked me in a way. I had pictured something 
 more Gothic in tone." He felt an overwhelm- 
 ing desire to depreciate the place, to deny that 
 anything about it could ever impress or intimi- 
 date him. 
 
 * Yes, the old place was smashed up by 
 Cromwell," replied Shepston in his thin high 
 tenor that was almost a falsetto. '* This is bad 
 Renaissance, the sort of blundering, heavy- 
 handed stuff they did in the days of the first 
 Hanoverians ; modernised, happily, to the 
 extent of electric light and bathrooms." 
 
 Grey nodded and looked up at the elabor- 
 ately moulded and too lofty ceiling. He had a 
 feeling of walking about at the bottom of a 
 shaft. The architect had planned his propor- 
 tions to suit the larger apartments, and in the 
 smaller rooms the effect was rather that of a 
 rectangular prism stood on end, 
 
 E 49
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "Done by a pupil of Wren's," remarked 
 Shepston. "Beastly ugly, some of it." He 
 paused for a moment and looked round as 
 if in search of further material for criticism, 
 and then went on, " I expect you'd like to 
 go upstairs. Dinner will be ready in half 
 an hour or so. There'll be nobody but our- 
 selves and Lady Adelaide Stratton, Downham's 
 aunt." 
 
 Grey understood that a dinner jacket and 
 black tie were suggested as the proper uniform 
 for the occasion, and he wondered if Shepston 
 had made an opportunity to see him solely in 
 order to give him this hint. 
 
 He dismissed the valet whom he found wait- 
 ing for him in his rooms a sitting-room, bed- 
 room, and bathroom en suite. On this floor 
 also he saw that the proportions were bad. 
 Without doubt his own suite had been designed 
 as a single apartment, and had been cut up by 
 partitions to suit more modern requirements. 
 But the outlook from the big windows they 
 were double-hung sashes, divided by great sash- 
 bars two inches wide was a compensation. 
 His rooms faced north, and on this side the park 
 fell rapidly, opening a view of the broad Devon- 
 shire valleys. The sun had set, but the sky was 
 
 50
 
 Stratton 
 
 still bright, and he could make out the dark blue 
 outlines of broken woods, and on the horizon 
 the black silhouette of a distant hill stood up 
 against the afterglow. 
 
 The prospect moved him. The beauty and 
 placidity of it all seemed to be his first sight of 
 the English spirit. His ancestors had lived in 
 this country for long centuries. A little to the 
 west he caught the gleam of that bright little 
 river that followed the road to the station, and 
 beyond the farther bank the grey pinnacle of a 
 ruined wall showed faintly against the heavy 
 background of foliage. That was the true 
 Stratton, no doubt what was left of it ; the 
 old Elizabethan house built on the foundations 
 of the castle that dated from the creation of the 
 title in the days of Edward I. 
 
 He had no wish to possess Stratton, but 
 some impulse in him stirred the desire to claim 
 kinship with it, to assert his relation to its place 
 in history, its associations with seven hundred 
 years of English life. If his father had been a 
 younger son he might almost have been tempted 
 to proclaim himself. Any such assertion would 
 not affect his life's work; indeed, it would 
 enormously enhance his power to reach and 
 impress a larger audience. As a member of 
 
 51
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the historical house of Stratton he could com- 
 mand attention. 
 
 He smiled at the absurdity of his dreams 
 and turned back to the darkening room. The 
 sound of a low rumbling gong reverberated 
 through the house and woke him to the fact 
 that he had been given only half an hour to 
 dress, and that he had probably spent the whole 
 of that time in gazing out of the window and 
 dreaming fantastic dreams. 
 
 He was not flurried, but he began to dress 
 quickly. Everything had been made easy for 
 him. A shirt had been laid out and his studs 
 fitted ; a collar and a black tie had been chosen ; 
 his dress-clothes were all ready to his hand. 
 There had been no need for Shepston to give 
 him any hint, and it seemed unlikely now that 
 that was the object of that brief reception. No, 
 probably Shepston had been there in order to 
 receive him. Lady Downham had been dress- 
 ing, and in any case she would probably not 
 have troubled, and her brother, with an inborn 
 politeness, had tried to put their visitor at his 
 ease, to make him feel that he was a welcome 
 guest.
 
 Stratton 
 
 3 
 
 HE found that his haste had been unnecessary 
 when he had been guided by Carton into 
 another of those prism-like apartments on the 
 ground floor. The room was empty, and he 
 paced up and down for nearly five minutes 
 before Lord Stratton entered somewhat 
 hurriedly. 
 
 "Hallo!'* he said when he saw Grey, and 
 offered him a limp hand. 
 
 "Pater not down?" he went on, when the 
 apparently empty ceremony had been happily 
 got over. 
 
 " I haven't seen him," Grey said. 
 
 Stratton gave himself a kind of congratu- 
 latory shake. 
 
 " You never know," he remarked. " Some- 
 times he's down on the tick, and if we're late 
 he sulks all through dinner." 
 
 An elaborate Louis Quinze clock on the 
 high carved stone mantelpiece tinkled out a 
 finicking little chime. 
 
 'There you are," said Stratton; "quarter- 
 past quarter of an hour late. You come from 
 America, don't you?" 
 
 53
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "Canada," replied Grey; "but I've lived 
 in America." 
 
 " Ever seen Travis?" inquired Stratton. 
 
 For a moment Grey was nonplussed, and 
 then he saw that his companion was playing an 
 imaginary putt on the hearthrug. 
 
 "Oh, the golfer?" he said. "No, I've 
 never met him." 
 
 "Saw him over here the year he won the 
 championship," Stratton said. " Been practis- 
 ing that putt of his more or less ever since. 
 We've got a rotten little eighteen holes through 
 the park. You play?" 
 
 "Yes," admitted Grey. "But I haven't 
 brought my clubs to England." 
 
 "You can have the pater's," Stratton said. 
 " He's only used 'em twice. Doctor recom- 
 mended him golf for exercise." 
 
 He spoke in short sentences in the intervals 
 of practising his imaginary putts. " Only thing 
 to do down here before September." 
 
 He hardly looked up from his occupation 
 when his father entered, followed by Shepston. 
 
 Lord Downham was a tall man, and would 
 still have been handsome had it not been for the 
 shape of his head. He was bald, save for a tuft 
 of dark hair above each ear, and his cranial 
 
 54
 
 Stratton 
 
 development was narrow and long and suggested 
 an ivory mallet with a conical end. Seen full- 
 face, he gave an impression of intellectuality, 
 an impression that was heightened by his 
 abstracted, thoughtful air. But it was impos- 
 sible to take his profile seriously. He had the 
 reputation of being a man of exceptional ability. 
 His speeches in the House of Lords were never 
 eloquent, and he was hopeless in debate, but 
 whenever he came prepared to open or oppose 
 an important measure he always showed con- 
 siderable grasp of his subject, and his opinions 
 were quoted as authoritative in Conservative 
 journals, and treated with decent respect by the 
 Liberals. 
 
 Shepston came forward and made the intro- 
 duction. 
 
 Lord Downham looked up thoughtfully, 
 adjusted the pince-nez he always wore, and said, 
 " Ah ! very pleased indeed." 
 
 Grey bowed, and was preparing to rush into 
 the safe topic of architecture when Lady Down- 
 ham came in with her daughter and Lady 
 Adelaide Stratton. 
 
 At the same moment the boom of the gong, 
 subdued now in volume, rumbled again from 
 the inner hall. 
 
 55
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Lord Downham turned to his wife. " Er 
 shall we go in?" he said. " I'm afraid we're all 
 very late to-night." 
 
 Lady Downham gave an inclusive assent to 
 both propositions. 
 
 There was no formality in their exit from the 
 smaller drawing-room across the hall to the big 
 dining-room, and Grey found himself walking 
 by the side of Lady Tempe. 
 
 "Did you get your tenth victim?" he 
 asked. 
 
 She understood his allusion at once, " Yes, 
 absolutely on the post," she said. " Sibyl and 
 I were nine all, and then I got the Prime 
 Minister at dinner. He was splendid. He 
 spiraled his finger up and up till he was nearly 
 out of his chair, and Sibyl was right opposite 
 and shrieked. Everyone looked, and I had to 
 explain it all to him, but he was very jolly about 
 it." She broke off, and then, as they entered 
 the dining-room, she said, "You're sure to be 
 next Aunt Adelaide at dinner ; don't be shocked 
 at the way she eats she does it on a theory, 
 y' know." 
 
 The dining-room was evidently one of those 
 Stratton apartments that had set the architect's 
 scale of proportions. The coffered and wonder- 
 
 56
 
 Stratton 
 
 fully enriched ceiling was not here the lid of a 
 box, but an integral part of the design. The 
 room had an effect of dignity ; apart from its 
 relation to the rest of the mansion, it was well 
 and justly designed. But the very scale and 
 Tightness of its proportions made it spectacular. 
 The tiny group of seven dwarfed human beings, 
 avoiding the wilderness of mahogany that had 
 been moved slightly back from the centre of the 
 room, and dining at what appeared quite a small 
 circular table set in a corner, might have been 
 some out-of -season party taking refuge in the 
 barren spaces of a vast deserted hotel. Not 
 until they were all seated did Grey realise that 
 the ' * small ' ' round table in the corner could 
 have offered comfortable accommodation to 
 twelve people. 
 
 As a social function, dinner could not be 
 counted a success. Lady Downham, with the 
 complete disregard of tact that was one of her 
 more salient characteristics, opened the topic of 
 Socialism. Evidently she had read some portions 
 of her guest's essay since they had last met, and 
 was more than a little inclined to congratulate 
 herself on having successfully mastered a very 
 intricate subject. 
 
 " So you think the Government ought to 
 57
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 manage everything for us?" she began by way 
 of a cheerful opening. 
 
 Lord Downham's views on that point, how- 
 ever falsely enunciated by his wife, were as well 
 known in England as the Albert Memorial, and 
 he frowned slightly, Booked immensely erudite, 
 and then became greatly interested in his soup. 
 
 But before Grey could take up the challenge 
 Lady Adelaide said suddenly, "So you're 
 another of us cranks, eh? Glad to hear it. 
 Mine's Fletcher. The stomach's vestigial, and 
 we want juices ; solids choke the passages. I 
 hesitated between Metchnikoff and Fletcher, 
 but I chose Fletcher because I've got a palate, 
 and sour milk made me sick. The theory 
 
 " Oh, aunt, don't I " screamed Lady Tempe. 
 " It's bad enough to see you do it, but if you're 
 going to explain I shall have my dinner 
 upstairs." 
 
 Lady Adelaide chuckled. She must have 
 been a woman of nearly seventy, but Fletcher- 
 ism seemed to have agreed with her, for she 
 was exceedingly active and alert, and her skin 
 was tanned a fine brown down to a hard line 
 about her still decently plump neck. 
 
 " Tempe 's squeamish," she said. "Young 
 58
 
 Stratton 
 
 gels gen'lly are. I s'pose you're one of the mild 
 Socialists, eh? All theory and no practice? I've 
 more respect for the other kind, but I don't 
 want to sit next 'em at dinner." 
 
 " Mr. Grey is going to convert us all to his 
 theory," put in Lady Downham. " I'm half 
 converted already. But there are one or two 
 things I must have explained to me." 
 
 Lady Adelaide was steadily chewing and 
 only grunted, and Grey at last found an oppor- 
 tunity to speak. He felt very like Alice between 
 the two Queens. He knew that nothing he 
 might say to Lady Downham would be under- 
 stood. 
 
 " I think," he said, struggling to find some 
 clear ground for his enunciation of theory, " I 
 think most of the misapprehension arises from 
 the abuse of the word i Socialism.' I never used 
 it in my book." 
 
 "But you are a Socialist?" Lady Down- 
 ham interposed, almost on a note of expostu- 
 lation. 
 
 He looked up at Lady Tempe and saw that 
 she was smiling. Shepston had been engaged by 
 Lord Downham, who was talking across his 
 daughter. Stratton was lost in meditation, 
 probably reconsidering Travis 's skill in putting 
 
 59
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 from a new angle. Grey realised that he was 
 cut off from any present hope of relief. 
 
 "I believe in a collective purpose," he said, 
 with a touch of brusqueness; "but I don't 
 believe in labels or in cut-and-dried schemes. 
 I've a certain faith in the possibilities of 
 humanity, and I want to see those possibilities 
 developed." 
 
 " Very true," commented Lady Downham 
 gravely. " But I certainly understood from 
 your book that you wanted the Government to 
 manage all our affairs for us, and I'm sure 
 Downham would never trust a Radical Govern- 
 ment to do that for him." 
 
 "In my Utopia," explained Grey, "there 
 couldn't be any Radicals or Conservatives. 
 We should progress by agreement, not by 
 dispute." 
 
 Lady Adelaide had absorbed the juices of the 
 instalment she had been working upon, and 
 seized the opportunity for speech before reload- 
 ing. 
 
 :< Don't badger him, Caroline," she said. 
 
 ' Let him talk. He's got a lot to say, and a 
 
 soothing flow of language'll help our digestions." 
 
 Grey leaned desperately back in his chair, 
 and then, looking across the table, he succeeded 
 
 60
 
 Stratton 
 
 in catching Shepston's eye and mutely pleaded 
 for deliverance. 
 
 "I don't think you ought to talk Socialism 
 at dinner, Caroline," Shepston said. " Spoils 
 two good things that are excellent apart but 
 don't mix like caviare and peche Melba, for 
 instance." 
 
 "What a beastly idea," commented Lady 
 Tempe. 
 
 Lord Downham touched his pince-nez and 
 cleared his throat, and his wife, who had been 
 about to answer her brother, returned to her fish 
 with a faint expression of weariness. 
 
 " My position with regard to the general 
 theory of Socialism," began Lord Downham, 
 paused to wave aside a footman who was stand- 
 ing patiently at his elbow, and then continued, 
 ; ' is that I fear the development of a rigid and 
 almost inhuman bureaucracy." He proceeded 
 to elaborate his judgment with special reference 
 to the parental and human relations possible 
 between an estate owner and his tenants and 
 workmen. 
 
 Grey was impressed. The argument was one 
 that needed careful treatment by an opponent. 
 As it was here used it touched upon much that 
 was indisputably fine in the English tradition. 
 
 61
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 He had no suspicion that Lord Downham was 
 reciting word for word he had quite a remark- 
 able textual memory one of his public speeches, 
 nor that the pause which followed a telling period 
 had been originally studied to take the inevitable 
 applause. The pause appeared to offer oppor- 
 tunity for reply, and Grey took it. 
 
 ' ' If it were only a question of estate owners 
 such as yourself, Lord Downham," he said, " I 
 would give way at once. It is commercialism 
 that has upset the whole theory of relationship 
 between employer and employed." 
 
 Lord Downham blinked with an air of deep 
 wisdom and looked at Shepston, who smiled 
 genially and said : 
 
 " Grey comes from a country where there are 
 no hereditary landlords in our sense. I'm going 
 to give him a course of lessons in the old-world 
 theory of estate management during the next few 
 days, and then we shall have common ground for 
 discussion. I particularly want him to meet old 
 Veale fine chap old Veale. He'll open your 
 eyes to the condition of Devonshire labour, 
 Grey." 
 
 ' But you'd better stop your ears," put in 
 Tempe; "he's got a voice like a corncrake." 
 
 Lord Downham evidently felt that he had 
 
 63
 
 Stratton 
 
 done all that was required of him, and had 
 returned to his interrupted dinner with the stern 
 dignity of a man who pondered deeply as he ate. 
 
 " Show you round the links in the morninV 
 remarked Lord Stratton it was his only contri- 
 bution to the conversation during the whole 
 meal. 
 
 " And you must see the ruins of the Hall," 
 said Lady Downham. " They're very pictur- 
 esque ; such a pity some of it couldn't have been 
 used in building this house." 
 
 Grey shuddered inwardly at the horribly in- 
 congruous picture this suggestion conjured up. 
 11 1 think I caught sight of those ruins from my 
 window this evening," he said. 
 
 Lady Downham became vaguely topo- 
 graphical. "Yes, beyond the close, over the 
 river," she said. " There's a bridge, of course." 
 She wandered pleasantly on to give further 
 equally important details. 
 
 Grey found no difficulty in punctuating her 
 explanations with a suitable monosyllable now 
 and again, while he looked round the table. 
 Shepston, having refused ice pudding, was lean- 
 ing back in his chair staring up at the ceiling ; 
 Lord Downham was lost in a brown study ; his 
 son was laying out a miniature golf course with 
 
 63
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 pills of bread ; Lady Adelaide, severely handi- 
 capped by her methods of gastronomy, steadily 
 chewed her way through some belated course ; 
 Lady Tempe was amusing herself with ice 
 pudding. 
 
 And it came to Grey that all these people 
 were finally and irremediably bored with life. 
 No interest, no excitement was possible for 
 them. They had no inducement to struggle, 
 nothing to achieve. They had been born to 
 luxury and honour. All the attainment they 
 sought had been theirs from childhood. 
 
 He was glad now that he had accepted the 
 invitation to Stratton. He understood the 
 futility of those visions he had dreamed upstairs. 
 If he had not come to this place he would never 
 have realised the vanity of such lives as these, 
 he would not have known how utterly his 
 mother's training of himself had been justified. 
 She had known in some way that it was not 
 good for a man to be born to wealth and pres- 
 tige. She had never been tempted to claim 
 such empty glories for him, and she had been 
 right beyond all question. 
 
 He became conscious that Lady Tempe was 
 regarding him across the table with an attentive 
 stare. 
 
 6 4
 
 Stratton 
 
 " Are you wishing yourself back in Canada, 
 Mr. Grey?" she asked with an unusual serious- 
 ness. 
 
 He was confused by the aptness of her 
 question, but Lady Downham saved him from 
 any necessity to make a polite denial. 
 
 4 ' I was telling Mr. Grey about the view 
 from Beacon Hill, dear," she said. "Is it' 
 warm enough to have coffee on the terrace?" 
 
 4 
 
 THE sky had become overcast since sunset. 
 Heavy clouds, just discernible as a paler dark- 
 ness, were moving in hasty procession overhead, 
 but not a breath of air disturbed the remote 
 stillness of the great forest trees in the park. 
 The white light from the brilliantly lit rooms 
 within, spread in broad fans across the width 
 of the terrace, threw the squat balusters and 
 panelled newels of the balustrade into sudden 
 relief, and, leaping the curve of the drive, 
 touched here and there the scarlet head of a 
 geranium in the Italian garden beyond. 
 
 Grey presently moved a little apart from 
 the group of four people who were sitting 
 by the open casements of the drawing-room 
 
 F 65
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 windows Lady Downham, indeed, was just 
 within the room itself. Tempe and her brother 
 had disappeared, and for the last quarter of an 
 hour the five other members of the party had 
 been carrying on a desultory conversation, 
 chiefly on the topic of the storm that was 
 plainly coming before long. But when Lady 
 Adelaide began some confidence in the ears of 
 her niece, and Lord Downham drifted into a 
 discussion of his tenantry that was obviously 
 unintelligible to anyone but Shepston, Grey 
 got up and walked to the edge of the terrace, 
 and then adventured into the darkness beyond 
 the portico where only one light, burning 
 faintly in the empty spaces of the deserted 
 dining-room, weakly penetrated the gloom of 
 the night. 
 
 He turned his back on the wide fagade of 
 the mansion and peered down at the dim masses 
 of the park trees. And once again the place 
 called to him, as if some ancient strain in his 
 blood recognised the old landmarks, while the 
 comparative modernity of the house repelled 
 him ; that Georgian mansion was an alien, 
 intruding thing. He would certainly go and 
 see those ruins to-morrow, he thought, and he 
 would ga alone. 
 
 66
 
 Stratton 
 
 The whisper of silk caught his ear, and he 
 looked up to see Lady Tempe emerge into the 
 thin stream of light that came from one of 
 the dining-room windows. She was coming 
 toward him, and he wondered whether she 
 would see him. He made no movement, think- 
 ing that she might pass him in the darkness of 
 the shadow, and then he heard her voice at his 
 elbow. 
 
 "Bored?" she asked. 
 
 " Not now," he returned on the impulse of 
 the moment. 
 
 " Meaning since you left the society of our 
 elders or since I interrupted your what were 
 they, by the way, dreams or solemn specula- 
 tions on the future of civilisation?" 
 
 '* Dreams," he said. 
 
 " And the first question?" 
 
 " Do you want me to make polite assevera- 
 tions?" 
 
 She laughed lightly, put her hands on the 
 broad coping of the balustrade, and with a 
 quick, easy movement raised herself and swung 
 round into a sitting posture. Her new position 
 brought her so close to him that their hands 
 almost touched. 
 
 "Gym.," she remarked. "I can beat 
 67
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Dickie into fits." And then she went on 
 rapidly, " No, I don't want polite asseverations, 
 if that's Canadian for compliments. You're 
 not good at them, you know. Too heavy." 
 
 " Too plain-spoken?" he asked. 
 
 " If you like to call it that. I shouldn't. 
 We are plain-spoken ; you wrap yourself up in 
 solemn phrases. I was dying to tell you to 
 come off it at dinner." 
 
 "Are you plain-spoken?" Grey asked. 
 " If you want me to be honest, as you seem 
 to, I should have said that you, all of you, 
 * wrapped yourself up ' even more than I do." 
 
 "Yes, you don't understand us a bit," 
 returned Tempe, gently lifting herself up and 
 down on her hands. " You've been far too 
 clever about us altogether. You think, for 
 instance, that Mater is a rather silly woman, 
 pretending to take an interest in your 
 Socialism." 
 
 He attempted a half-hearted expostulation. 
 
 "Of course you do," she went on. "A 
 blind crocodile could see that. But you're 
 quite wrong, and I thought, as you're going to 
 stay with us for a few days, it might be as well 
 to give you a few hints." 
 
 ' I wish you would," he said. 
 68
 
 Stratton 
 
 "I'll begin with my mother, then," she 
 said. " You see, the poor dear is really very 
 bored; anyone would be. But she is interested 
 in Socialism, or whatever you like to call it, 
 only she can't manage it alone. I'm sure she 
 doesn't understand half the words in your book. 
 Some of 'em were too much for me, and, 
 though you might not think it, I've had quite 
 a decent education. And then you are so 
 ponderous at times. However, the subject of 
 this exposition is your duty to your neighbour, 
 and that is to be more long-suffering and less 
 steam-rollerish, and generally to take us as we 
 are. You mayn't like us, and we mayn't like 
 you, but as we are going to have a pretty dull 
 time down here it's your duty to make the best 
 of it and us," 
 
 "I feel very like a schoolboy," Grey said 
 after a short pause. 
 
 " Schoolboys yelp and run about and 
 make themselves jolly," commented Teinpe. 
 " You're much more like a professor who finds 
 himself talking to an enfant terrible." 
 
 " I held a professorship in America for two 
 years," he said. " I suppose one cultivates a 
 
 manner.' 
 
 You hadn't got it when you came to 
 
 69
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Portman Square. I thought you were going to 
 be rather a lark." 
 
 " It is the effect of this house," he said. 
 " It's so spectacular. I'm sorry I was 
 pompous." 
 
 "Not pompous," she corrected him; "just 
 a little elephanty. But you're right about the 
 house. It's beastly. We all hate it. Even 
 Father hates it in his heart, though nothing 
 would ever induce him to say so. And it's 
 because he knows we hate it that he insists 
 on our coming here three times a year. He 
 doesn't like to think that the tradition should 
 be broken. I expect he'll make Dickie swear 
 honest Indian on the Bible that he'll keep it 
 up when he inherits." 
 
 " But the place, the park, the whole situa- 
 tion is beautiful," protested Grey. " Doesn't 
 that compensate you to some extent?" 
 
 "We're so used to doing things, you see," 
 she said. 
 
 " Do you never get tired of that, of the 
 endless routine of entertainment?" 
 
 She did not answer that question. 
 " Listen !" she said. " It's coming !" 
 
 The stillness of the night had been broken. 
 The air was full of a soft rustling that gradually 
 
 70
 
 Stratton 
 
 increased until it was like the sound of waves 
 on a shingle beach, and then fell again to a 
 whispering murmur as if the trees made hushed 
 protestations against the coming invasion. 
 Overhead the hurrying clouds had momentarily 
 thinned and a few pale stars seemed to be 
 hastening across a little lake of open sky 
 towards the refuge of the gathering obscurity. 
 The interval of relative silence lasted for a t few 
 moments, and the sound of voices and moving 
 chairs came from the other end of the terrace. 
 
 "We'll wait till it begins," Tempe said 
 softly. 
 
 Grey nodded. He was listening for the 
 beginning of the next attack. It came more 
 suddenly this time a rush of wind that spoke 
 with its own voice, a palpable presence that 
 swept past them. A few heavy drops of rain 
 splashed on the terrace. Grey looked up at 
 Lady Tempe. He could see her white dress 
 and the outline of her head set up against the 
 darkness of the background. She was gripping 
 the edge of the coping with her hands and her 
 face was raised to the sky. 
 
 "Hadn't you better go in?" he asked. 
 4 When the rain comes," she said quietly. 
 
 The rain was hissing furiously on the floor 
 71
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 of the terrace before she leapt lightly down 
 from the balustrade. "Now run!" she said, 
 and set him the example. 
 
 They went through the portico into the 
 hall. 
 
 THE light in the great drawing-room dazzled 
 him after the blackness of the terrace. He 
 came in still padding with his handkerchief at 
 the rain on his shirt-front. 
 
 "'Sh!" whispered Tempe at his elbow; 
 and he saw that the little group of four people 
 at the other end of the room were sitting round 
 a card-table. " Auction," Tempe advised him. 
 " Aunt Adelaide's a nailer, and insists on 
 silence." 
 
 Grey found his foot slipping on the highly 
 polished surface of the parquet between two 
 rugs, and pulling himself together, made his 
 way down the room with slightly exaggerated 
 precaution against noise. The roaring of the 
 wind and clatter of rain outside sounded 
 remotely, a background for the silence of the 
 interior. All disturbance had been shut away 
 behind closed windows and tapestry curtains. 
 
 The two invaders stood by the table for a 
 73
 
 Stratton 
 
 few minutes and watched the play of the hands. 
 Shepston had his sister for partner in that par- 
 ticular rubber, and Lady Adelaide on more 
 than one occasion frankly criticised the play of 
 her nephew. She alone of the four appeared 
 fiercely eager to win, and when the rubber was 
 finished and the table cut again for partners 
 she made no secret of her jubilation in cutting 
 with Shepston. 
 
 "You get worse every night, Richard," 
 she said to Lord Downham. " I wish you could 
 forget your confounded politics for half an hour 
 while you're playing bridge." 
 
 Lord Downham looked up with his usual 
 abstracted air. " Of course. Certainly. No 
 doubt one should," he said. ** I will really try 
 to concentrate my attention better." 
 
 :< Oh, you needn't bother for this rubber," 
 laughed Lady Adelaide. 
 
 Lady Downham asked Grey if it were still 
 raining, and then, with an amazing realisation 
 of her duties as a hostess, if he would not like 
 to find her son in the billiard-room. 
 
 Grey discovered that Tempe was gravely 
 nodding her head at him from behind her 
 father's chair. 
 
 I should. Certainly," Grey said. 
 73 
 
 . .
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Tempe will show you/' remarked Lady 
 Downham briefly. " What did you say, 
 Reggie? Two spades? Oh, I think two 
 clubs " 
 
 " They do it for Aunt Addie's sake, you 
 know," Tempe said to Grey when they had 
 left the room. " They don't actually try to 
 lose, but they want her to win. Poor Mother's 
 no good at all, and she hates playing ; and 
 Father's thinking of something else all the 
 time." 
 
 "Do they play for high stakes?" asked 
 Grey. 
 
 "No; not really high. Aunt Addie's 
 tremendously pleased if she wins twenty or 
 thirty pounds. She's rather hard up. I have 
 to cut in sometimes. Dickie won't. He isn't 
 keen on any game without a ball. We shall 
 find him upstairs practising shots for all he's 
 worth." 
 
 Her prophecy proved to be a true one. 
 Lord Stratton was at the moment confining his 
 attention to middle-pocket losers, with a young 
 footman in attendance to return his ball. 
 
 " It's nothin' to get the shot," he explained 
 to Grey. " It's gettin' the position again. I 
 did nineteen runnin' last night. D'you play?" 
 
 74
 
 Stratton 
 
 " Not up to your form, I'm afraid," Grey 
 said. 
 
 " Let's play snooker," put in Tempe, 
 " for pennies." 
 
 " Oh, I say began her brother, but 
 
 she caught him up quickly. 
 
 "Don't be an ass, Dickie," she said. 
 " You know I'm cleared out." 
 
 "Sorry!" mumbled Stratton; but Grey 
 understood that it was his own pocket she 
 wanted to save. He made no remonstrance. 
 He was not tempted to win money from these 
 people nor did he wish to lose to them. 
 
 " I'll owe thirty," Stratton announced. 
 
 Even with that handicap he succeeded in 
 winning over eleven shillings. 
 
 Grey excused himself soon after twelve 
 o'clock and went up to his own room. Tempe 
 told him that there was no necessity for any 
 formal making of good nights to the bridge 
 party in the drawing-room. " They won't 
 expect to see us again," she said. 
 
 " What time do you have breakfast?" asked 
 Grey. 
 
 " Any time you like," Tempe replied. 
 " It'll be there, you know, when you get 
 down." 
 
 75
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 IN his own room Grey was seized with a pro- 
 longed fit of yawning. The thought came to 
 him that he, too, was going to enter the depths 
 of boredom during the next few days. His 
 mind was enervated and he was conscious of a 
 sense of resentment against the whole family of 
 Stratton. How empty and useless they all 
 were. The only possible exception to the 
 generalisation was Lady Tempe. And already, 
 although she was barely twenty, she, too, had 
 begun to live for the excitement of the hour, 
 for constant diversion, for the strenuous, 
 exhausting search after pleasure. In another 
 twenty years she might become a hard, tired 
 Society figure ; or she might find an outlet in 
 some propagandist fad that had the seductive 
 form of useful work ; or, again, she might 
 decline to living that frankly sensuous life 
 which in a woman of inferior rank would be 
 condemned as flagrantly and unforgivably 
 immoral. She might become another Lady 
 Paignton. 
 
 Arthur Grey shivered slightly and began to 
 pace the ample length of his bedroom. Why 
 had he had that thought, he wondered. Was 
 
 76
 
 Stratton 
 
 it due merely to the effect of the girl's beauty 
 or to some careless audacity in her manner? 
 Undoubtedly she was beautiful. Her features 
 had that delicacy of moulding and contour that 
 he had observed in some American women. 
 But Lady Tempe had more than the beauty 
 of form ; her face was alert and expressive, and 
 her dark eyes held the promise of a capacity for 
 deep emotion. She was alive and conscious of 
 life. She would ask for all that life could offer 
 her. 
 
 He went to the window, threw up the lower 
 sash, and looked out into the night. The squall 
 that had heralded the storm had passed. All 
 was quiet now, save for the soft hush of steady 
 rain. The smell of the earth came to him 
 delicately altered by the scent of heliotrope, 
 verbena, and geraniums ; the primitive, mag- 
 nificent base sweetened and refined by art and 
 culture. 
 
 And that, it seemed to him, was the repre- 
 sentative spirit of the place, outside this osten- 
 tatious museum of a house. Here, indeed, was 
 the primitive age-old earth that had belonged 
 to his ancestors for seven hundred years, but it 
 had been cultured and toned by centuries of 
 tendance. It had lost the savage strength of 
 
 77
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the new lands in the West, and had become 
 humanised, even individualised. Some beauty 
 of grace and, as it were, of slenderness had been 
 added to it; it wore an air of breeding and of 
 immemorial associations. 
 
 He had a sudden longing for the power to 
 pull down this Georgian mansion and to rebuild 
 the old Stratton Hall. But even as the desire 
 was born he recognised its futility. No one 
 could re-create the spirit of the old house. 
 Modern labour and materials could do no more 
 than imitate the thing that was past. All this 
 aristocracy of feeling and association was mori- 
 bund. Something of it lived in the park and 
 about those ruins in the hollow, and it had in 
 its day been a fine and even a useful thing. 
 But the progress of humanity, not of a single 
 family, but of all mankind, could not be stayed. 
 Stratton and its like throughout England were 
 impediments that must be broken down. The 
 new luxury that had arisen out of the pro- 
 lifications of commerce by the instrument of 
 machinery had become a tool that was under- 
 mining the aristocratic tradition, and the tool 
 itself must be broken in the process. 
 
 His boredom had passed and given place to 
 the interest and sense of satisfaction of a com- 
 
 78
 
 Stratton 
 
 patently active mind. He wanted work, he 
 reflected, and decided that he would certainly 
 find relief from dullness by working every 
 morning during his stay at Stratton. He would 
 write an article for one of the American reviews 
 on the change that must come to such places 
 as this. He had not seen the library yet, but 
 he understood that it was well stocked. He 
 would find material there for the history of the 
 Strattons, which he could develop to point the 
 ine v itableness of the new order. 
 
 He turned back into the white brilliancy of 
 his great bedroom, leaving the window wide 
 open. He wished to be soothed to sleep by the 
 gentle, pattering murmur of the rain and the 
 altered scent of the sweet earth. 
 
 But when he lay back in bed and switched 
 off the light the thought that came to him was 
 of his mother. She had been right, indubitably 
 right, in her training of him ; but one side of 
 life, the side he was now exploring, had been 
 unknown to her. She had done well for him, 
 but she might have made him a bigot. And 
 yet would she, for instance, have condemned 
 Lady Tempe? Probably not, he thought. His 
 mother might have lacked experience, but the 
 fineness of her intuition, the inspiration of her 
 
 79
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 spirit was such that she could rise far above the 
 limitation of her circumstance. She had had 
 genius. 
 
 HE breakfasted alone the next morning. He 
 was down by eight o'clock, and it was evident 
 that Carton, discovered in his shirt-sleeves, was 
 scandalised by the sight of him at such an 
 unseemly hour. 
 
 " Breakfast is served in the mornin'-room, 
 sir," Garton said, and looked anxiously round 
 for his coat. " I'll go and see if it is ready, 
 sir," he added; but having provided himself 
 with an excuse for finding his coat, he paused 
 to administer a hint of rebuke. 
 
 "I'm afraid your 'ot water, sir?" he said. 
 
 " I didn't wait for it," replied Grey care- 
 lessly. He would have liked to open more 
 human relations with the man, but recognised 
 how impossible it was to make the least over- 
 ture. He felt that he had certainly been 
 criticised in the servants' hall, and that any 
 approach of his must necessarily fail between 
 condescension and familiarity. 
 
 He paced the terrace until breakfast was 
 ready. The sky was still overcast, but the rain 
 
 80
 
 Stratton 
 
 had ceased. The Italian garden looked 
 draggled, but two men were already at work 
 upon it. 
 
 The house reminded him more and more of 
 some magnificent hotel. 
 
 After breakfast he found the library, and 
 was presently found in turn by its librarian, a 
 thin, sour-looking man of fifty or so, with a 
 ridiculously stilted manner. 
 
 Grey was wandering along in front of the 
 endless bookcases, wondering rather hopelessly 
 how he should ever discover the volumes he 
 wanted and debating the possibility of finding 
 Shepston, when Bellingham, the librarian, 
 came in. Grey welcomed him eagerly and was 
 rebuffed. 
 
 ; ' Any works bearing on the history of 
 the family of Stratton?" repeated Bellingham, 
 paraphrasing and polishing Grey's inquiry. 
 1 Yes ; I will initiate you into the system of 
 the catalogue. We have adopted the card 
 index," he explained. 
 
 Grey tried valiantly to break through 
 Bellingham 's frigidity. He, surely, might be 
 treated as an equal. 
 
 :t Capital system, the card index, isn't it?" 
 Grey said genially. " I suppose you introduced 
 
 G 81
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 it yourself? Don't you find that it saves end- 
 less labour?" 
 
 " The suggestion originated from Mr. Shep- 
 ston some four years since," replied Belling- 
 ham. "It is, as you say, convenient. These 
 are the cases. Each book is indexed three 
 times : under title, author's name, and subject 
 heading. The key to the subject arrangement 
 is on this chart." 
 
 " A splendid piece of cataloguing," com- 
 mented Grey warmly. '* I wish they had the 
 same system at the British Museum." 
 
 " There are only some twenty-three thou- 
 sand books here," Bellingham said, "and I 
 have not yet completed the index after four 
 years' work." 
 
 He left it to be inferred that the re- 
 cataloguing of the Museum's millions would 
 entail an eighth labour far exceeding in mag- 
 nitude the cleansing of the Augean stables. 
 He discovered no sign of pride in his handiwork. 
 
 Grey understood that he had been snubbed. 
 ;< A tremendous undertaking, of course," he 
 said. 
 
 '' I don't think you will have any difficulty 
 in finding what you want," Bellingham re- 
 turned. ' If you would excuse me now?" 
 
 82
 
 Stratton 
 
 Was this another mark of the tradition? 
 wondered Grey. Was the very librarian afraid 
 of exhibiting some common sign of his 
 humanity? He was annoyed. All the snob- 
 beries that cling to an autocracy arise from this 
 subservience of the employed, he thought. 
 Does this fellow think he would presume by 
 treating me as an equal, or does he despise me 
 as being an inferior of the family he serves? 
 
 Despite the admirable system of the index, 
 he was a long time in finding the books he 
 required. The impetus to work that had come 
 to him last night was apparently expended. 
 He spent half an hour in criticising the resources 
 of the library under the heading of " Sociology 
 and Allied Subjects." In the former category 
 the most recent addition was Benjamin Kidd's 
 " Social Evolution," and the Economics, begin- 
 ning inevitably with Adam Smith, ended 
 abruptly with Mill, and the heading was the 
 old one of "Political Economy." And when, 
 at last, he found his books on the family one 
 of them a liberally illustrated monograph not 
 two years old that contained all the facts he 
 wanted, but was written in a spirit of crawling 
 adulation he could not settle down to read. 
 He was contemplating a walk across the park 
 
 83
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 when Shepston came in at twelve o'clock. He 
 was looking refreshingly spruce and neat. 
 
 "I thought I might find you here," he 
 said, and he came and sat on the edge of the 
 table at which Grey was sitting. "I'm afraid 
 you won't find much to interest you. As a 
 library it fails. It's late Georgian and early 
 Victorian at their dullest neither archaeological 
 nor useful for modern reference." 
 
 " I was reading the history of the Stratton 
 family," Grey said. 
 
 " You should get hold of Bellingham, our 
 curator. Have you seen him?" replied Shep- 
 ston. 
 
 "He's in there." Grey nodded towards 
 the closed door of the farther room. " Yes, I 
 saw him, and was snubbed." He turned to his 
 companion with a look of serious scrutiny. 
 " Now, Mr. Shepston, I wish you'd give me a 
 few pointers," he said, unconsciously lapsing 
 into the easier speech which had been overlaid 
 by his professorial manner. 
 
 Shepston smiled his orthodox smile. " Go 
 ahead !" he said. 
 
 "I want to understand all this," began 
 Grey, with a wide gesture of his right hand. 
 " It's all new to me and I haven't got the key. 
 
 84
 
 Stratton 
 
 I guess, and think I'm guessing right, and then 
 I'm upset by some trivial thing that puts me 
 all wrong again." 
 
 " I'm not at all sure that there is a key," 
 Shepston said amiably. " But for instance?" 
 
 "Well, that curator of yours. I wanted to 
 be friendly. I'd thought of trying the butler, 
 but I gave that up. I saw at once that it was 
 hopeless. But this curator of yours : I praised 
 his index he said it was your idea, by the way ; 
 I congratulate you well, he seemed to have a 
 poker up his back, and the temperature went 
 down to forty below. Now, why was that? 
 Was I supposed to be too high and mighty for 
 him to talk to, or wasn't I good enough for 
 him, or has your system dried out his human 
 juices?" 
 
 " In the first place," Shepston said, sway- 
 ing gently backwards and forwards, "you got 
 him on the raw, I'm afraid. That index you 
 praise is his bete noire, poor chap. He has been 
 writing a learned history of the family for ten 
 years used to have nothing else to do ; and 
 then He indicated the three cases of 
 
 index cards. " Takes all his time, you under- 
 stand. The fellow who wrote that book in 
 front of you finished him. He had Lord 
 
 .85
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Downham's permission, came down here, 
 pumped Bellingham, got all the information he 
 wanted in a week, and published that mono- 
 graph. Vile stuff, of course, a flagrant piece of 
 Grub Street book-making ; but his facts are 
 accurate and he has used all the most interesting 
 material. Poor Bellingham still goes on, but 
 his book will be as dry as sawdust published 
 by subscription, with Downham as the sub- 
 scriber, probably. However, you can under- 
 stand that Bellingham is still raw, and not 
 particularly in love with the index." 
 
 He looked at Grey, with a slightly quizzical 
 smile, through the single unribboned eyeglass 
 that was always so miraculously in its right 
 position. 
 
 "Yes, I was unfortunate," Grey said 
 thoughtfully. " I see that, but it doesn't begin 
 to explain the fellow." 
 
 "Can you explain anyone?" asked Shep- 
 ston, "yourself, for example?" 
 
 " Why, yes, in the sense I mean," Grey 
 said. " In the first place, why didn't your 
 Bellingham write the monograph himself? He 
 had six years start of the other fellow." 
 
 " Too scholarly. Too pedantic, if you 
 like." 
 
 86
 
 Stratton 
 
 " And is it his grievance that makes him 
 look as if he had been frozen so stiff that it 
 would take all hell to thaw him out?" 
 
 Shepston laughed his thin falsetto laugh. 
 " I remember a curator at the Bodleian who 
 had the same manner," he said. 
 
 "I think that helps my point," Grey 
 returned. " It's the influence of the atmo- 
 sphere they live in. Now, this fellow Belling- 
 ham's under the influence of the tradition. He 
 has no use for anything or anyone who isn't 
 part of Stratton. Isn't that so?" 
 
 Shepston looked up at the ceiling and sighed 
 almost inaudibly. " Ask me again in a week's 
 time," he said. 
 
 " I'll do that," agreed Grey. " But I don't 
 
 "Give us a week," interrupted Shepston. 
 * You'll know us better then, and you'll be 
 able to understand any explanation I may have 
 although I don't think that a verbal explana- 
 tion is possible." 
 
 ' There's another thing, if I may be quite 
 frank," Grey said after a moment's thought. 
 * Butt right in," murmured Shepston. 
 Grey smiled. " It's just that," he said. 
 ' I can talk to you. You've been real friendly 
 
 87
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 to me, but I get frozen with the others, except, 
 maybe, Lady Tempe. She told me last night 
 that I got wearing my professorial manners. 
 Well, it's true, and I can't seem to help it. 
 I'll be like that fellow Bellingham in a week, 
 and I don't fancy that would help me to under- 
 stand you any better than I do now." 
 
 Shepston was softly whistling under his 
 breath. " I'll enunciate one truth for you," he 
 said, "and you must accept it as gospel." 
 
 "Go ahead!" 
 
 "I'm the only dishonest person in the 
 family." 
 
 " I should have said " 
 
 "I'm being honest now," Shepston went 
 on. " Take this as a brief glimpse of my true 
 self revealed in response to your own delightful 
 candour, and believe me that my sister, her 
 husband, their two children, and Lady Adelaide 
 are simple, unsophisticated human beings, who 
 will welcome the kind of frankness you have 
 just shown to me. If they occasionally make 
 you uncomfortable, remember that in some 
 respects they are as ingenuous as children." 
 
 Grey looked puzzled. "Well," he said at 
 last, "I'll try it ; but I can't see myself talking 
 like that to Lord Downham." 
 
 88
 
 Stratton 
 
 8 
 
 "OH, by the way, I forgot to tell you," replied 
 Shepston, " you may, perhaps, find him a little 
 sore to-day. He has been upset." 
 
 "May I ask why?" 
 
 Shepston was gently smiling at the bookcase 
 in front of him. "A trivial thing," he said, 
 " but in some ways, I admit, annoying. The 
 morning papers came in half an hour ago, and 
 the Daily Post had a small paragraph a filler, 
 I think you call them to the effect that we 
 may expect a claimant to the title from 
 Canada." 
 
 The thing came so unexpectedly that Grey 
 was staggered. For a moment it seemed to 
 him that he was being charged with a hideous 
 crime that he had, indeed, committed, but had 
 concealed with a finality that had brought him 
 too great confidence. He felt as if the most 
 sacred secret of his life had been suddenly and 
 brutally revealed to the public stare. 
 
 " But how's that?" he asked, and wondered 
 if he had changed countenance ; so incalculably 
 swift had been the workings of his thought that 
 he believed he had not had time to alter his 
 expression. 
 
 89
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Shepston did not appear to have looked at 
 him. :< Ah ! you haven't turned that page of 
 the family history yet," he said carelessly. 
 " There was an elder brother of Downham's 
 a half-brother, to be exact who went to Canada 
 and disappeared for a year. There were reports 
 of him from the tutor who went with him, but 
 the tutor does not seem to have been altogether 
 trustworthy. It is not impossible, you see, 
 that the late Lord Stratton was legally married 
 in Canada, and that he might have had a 
 
 son.' 
 
 Grey had pulled himself together. He had 
 had time to weigh possibilities and make some 
 kind of a decision. " How long since was 
 that?" he asked. "I thought the present 
 marquis came into the title more than twenty 
 years ago." 
 
 " Yes, he did," agreed Shepston, softly 
 rocking himself to and fro; "he did. And if 
 this hypothetical claimant were alive now he 
 must be at least thirty-three." 
 
 "If he ever existed he would surely have 
 shown himself before this," suggested Grey. 
 
 " Oh, quite. Without doubt. We are not 
 seriously perturbed," Shepston said. " I only 
 told you in order that you might make allow- 
 
 90
 
 Stratton 
 
 ances for a possible display of ill-temper. 
 Downham is annoyed, you know; quite natur- 
 ally annoyed. The paragraph is unquestionably 
 due to lack of news in the silly season. The 
 point is, rather, that Downham dislikes that 
 particular family scandal being aired ; and a 
 thing like this revives it. People who had 
 forgotten all about it remember and begin to 
 talk again. Are you going out before lunch? 
 We lunch at two." 
 
 Grey had but one idea. He must see that 
 paragraph ; he must find out, if possible, 
 whence it had been inspired. It might indicate 
 himself, although he had not noticed the least 
 sign of suspicion in Shepston's manner. But 
 he found himself suddenly in the role of a 
 conspirator. For perhaps the first time in his 
 life he had some important thing to hide ; he 
 was compelled to be cunning and secret, to act 
 an elaborate unconcern. He was certainly not 
 less annoyed over this matter than Lord Down- 
 ham. 
 
 " Yes, I think I'll go for a stroll," he said; 
 considered the advisability of asking if there 
 was any other news of importance, and decided 
 that he dared not risk even that simple question. 
 
 * It's clearing up, I think," commented 
 91
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Shepston, alighting from the table. " I have 
 to see Bellingham," he added, nodded genially, 
 and moved towards the door in the farther 
 room. 
 
 Grey went out in the opposite direction. 
 He was debating whether, if he were unable to 
 find the Daily Post, he could dare to call in the 
 help of Garton. It seemed to him that he had 
 certainly become a desperate criminal in the last 
 five minutes, confronted with the necessity for 
 every kind of contemptible shift and device. 
 
 " I was a damned fool to come to this 
 place," he thought; and went on to consider 
 how soon he might diplomatically leave it. 
 
 As he came into the large hall he saw the 
 Daily Post conspicuously displayed among 
 other papers on a side table, and sighed his 
 relief. He found the paragraph with little 
 difficulty ; it was headed, "Alleged Claim to a 
 Marquisate," and ran : 
 
 " A correspondent in Toronto informs us 
 that a claim, well supported by documentary 
 evidence, may shortly be made to the title and 
 estates of the Marquis of Downham. The 
 claimant is asserted to be the son of the late 
 Earl of Stratton, elder brother of the present 
 marquis, and who was resident in Canada for 
 
 92
 
 Stratton 
 
 some months a year or two before his death. 
 Should the information, which comes from a 
 trustworthy source, be corroborated, this will 
 be the third claim made to an English peerage 
 within five years." 
 
 Grey was conscious of a sense of present 
 relief. There was nothing here to compromise 
 him; but what could have been the "trust- 
 worthy source "? Had William Hayles spoken 
 after all these years? 
 
 He looked up and saw Shepston coming 
 towards him. 
 
 :< Absolutely nothing in the papers," he 
 remarked carelessly as he passed. 
 
 "No, nothing," agreed Grey. He was 
 confused. He had an absurd feeling that he 
 had been caught in the performance of some 
 disgraceful and sinister act. 
 
 93
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUSPECT 
 1 
 
 ARTHUR GREY'S first thought after he had 
 heard of that mysteriously informed paragraph 
 in the Daily Post was that he must certainly 
 leave Stratton at the earliest possible moment. 
 He had even planned a walk to the village and 
 concocted a reply-paid telegram to an acquaint- 
 ance in town, the answer to which would give 
 him the semblance of an excuse for abruptly 
 terminating his visit. But when he had made 
 his way out into the park, and had considered 
 the circumstances of his recent encounter with 
 Shepston, a new aspect of the problem was 
 presented to him. 
 
 He was intrigued by the possibility that 
 Shepston had already connected that infernal 
 paragraph with the presence of the Strattons' 
 Canadian visitor. The display of the journal 
 in the hall, followed by his well timed return, 
 might conceivably have been a trap. The thing 
 
 94
 
 Suspect 
 
 was by no means unlikely. Possibly Shepston 
 concealed a romantic imagination behind that 
 perfunctorily smiling mask he had that morn- 
 ing proclaimed his "dishonesty" and he 
 might have leapt to a conclusion which was 
 amazingly justified in the central fact, although 
 it was as certainly false in its association of the 
 paragraph with Grey's presence in the house at 
 that moment. Or and in considering this 
 alternative Grey unconsciously displayed the 
 romanticism he had just attributed to Shepston 
 it was possible that the Strattons had private 
 and influential sources of information. The 
 report of Lord Downham's annoyance might 
 have been a rather clever piece of diplomacy. 
 
 Grey conceived a horrible picture of the 
 Stratton family, in full possession of the facts 
 of his birth, deliberately inviting him to Stratton 
 in order that they might test him and pass 
 judgment upon him. They might have thought 
 it worth while to determine whether he was the 
 sort of man they might be able to bribe? 
 
 He clenched his hands and unconsciously 
 quickened his walk. He saw no way to test 
 that last repulsive hypothesis by any examina- 
 tion of the attitude the family had so far dis- 
 played towards him. He did not know these 
 
 95
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 people. They were a strange type, with 
 different manners and different ways of thought 
 and speech from the people he had known. It 
 seemed quite conceivable that they had been 
 playing with him, drawing him on. It was 
 even possible that they had been responsible for 
 the insertion of that cursed paragraph ! They 
 would have influence enough, no doubt, for 
 such a thing as that. Indeed, who else could 
 have done it? The theory seemed to cover all 
 the facts, to explain the invitation to Devon- 
 shire, and their manner toward him. He had 
 superficially criticised them as shallow and unin- 
 telligent, when he should have known that in 
 their own way they were astonishingly clever. 
 
 And if he had, indeed, been tricked and 
 duped, what was he immediately to do? For 
 a few weak moments he contemplated the 
 thought of instant flight, but he put that away 
 from him. No, whatever happened now, he 
 must see this situation through, arrive at some 
 definite understanding. He must return to the 
 house prepared, temporarily at least, to act a 
 part, to pretend that that newspaper announce- 
 ment had had no possible interest for him. 
 He was as alert now as hitherto he had been 
 stupidly blind ; he would be in a position to 
 
 90
 
 Suspect 
 
 watch these people and to draw inferences from 
 their speech and their general behaviour toward 
 him. And if he had reason to believe that his 
 theory was true, he would not hesitate to tell 
 them the whole truth, to proclaim his contempt 
 for wealth and position. 
 
 The thought of such an avowal was in- 
 sidiously appealing. His standpoint would be 
 so magnificently assured ; none could deny his 
 sincerity in such unprecedented circumstances. 
 Not that he saw the scene as in any sense 
 theatrical, or even dramatic ; but only as a 
 wonderful opportunity to demonstrate his 
 theory of life and Society. Even the Strattons 
 would be forced to listen to him then. 
 
 He looked at his watch and found that it 
 was nearly half -past one. As he returned to 
 the house he had a new sense of confidence. 
 Even if they knew, he could soon convince 
 them that he had done nothing of which he or 
 anvone could be ashamed. 
 
 GREY was reassured upon one point long before 
 lunch was finished. Shepston had spoken the 
 truth when he had said that Lord Downham 
 was annoyed. 
 
 H 97
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 In the first ten minutes no reference of any 
 kind was made to the possible claimant, and 
 then Lady Adelaide unwisely opened the topic 
 by saying : 
 
 " What's this new canard about a claimant, 
 Richard?" 
 
 Grey looked across at Shepston and saw a 
 distinct shade of annoyance cross his usually 
 placid face. 
 
 " Just a canard," he said cnrtly. 
 
 Lord Downham frowned, cleared his throat 
 as if he were about to deliver an address, made 
 a vague gesture with his right hand, and said : 
 
 " Ridiculous nonsense." 
 
 Lady Downham snatched at so tempting an 
 opportunity to elaborate the obvious. 
 
 " They always do find something of the kind 
 in August," she remarked cheerfully; "and, 
 really, people must be getting a little tired of 
 sea-serpents. I've never quite understood why 
 newspapers want to print sensational things of 
 this sort, particularly when they aren't true ; 
 but I suppose there must be an excellent 
 reason, or they wouldn't do it." 
 
 ' That can't be the reason in this case," 
 snapped Lady Adelaide. " The whole thing 
 isn't more than that." She illustrated the 
 
 98
 
 Suspect 
 
 approximate size of the paragraph with a finger 
 and thumb that almost touched. " When they 
 begin a silly season topic they do it on the 
 grand scale," she added conclusively. 
 
 " Perhaps some of the evening papers will 
 take it up," put in Tempe. 
 
 " Make it look a bit queer for us if there 
 
 was a fellow from Canada ' began Stratton, 
 
 but his father interrupted him with an explosive 
 "Pooh!" 
 
 Stratton blinked. 
 
 " I mean I don't see why " he tried 
 
 again. 
 
 "Preposterous nonsense!" exclaimed Lord 
 Downham, throwing his head back. " I I 
 don't care to have the thing discussed. Poor 
 Edward was not at all the kind of man to to 
 marry a woman in Canada and say nothing 
 about it. Not at all the kind of man. He had 
 certain failings, but he wasn't vicious; not at 
 all vicious." 
 
 " I suppose it would have been rather 
 vicious to have done that," said Tempe 
 demurely. 
 
 "Quite beside the point in any case," was 
 her father's reply. " The what we have to 
 consider is er chiefly that it is hardly likely 
 
 99
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 after thirty-four years that a man that any 
 claim should be made after so long an interval." 
 
 " Might have only just found out, of 
 course," suggested Stratton. 
 
 " I can't agree with you," his father said. 
 
 Tempe raised her eyebrows. " He might 
 have met that tutor person what was his name 
 Hayles, or something? by accident," she 
 said. " Tremendously romantic meeting it 
 would have been, wouldn't it?" 
 
 "Not romantic for you, my dear Tempe," 
 Shepston remarked. 
 
 " I don't know," she returned. " It would 
 give us something to talk about for a time." 
 
 Lord Downham looked across at his 
 daughter with every sign of displeasure. " I 
 have said, Tempe, that I do not care to have 
 the thing discussed," he said. 
 
 :< But, my dear Richard," remonstrated 
 Lady Adelaide, " that looks as if we were afraid 
 there might be some truth in it." 
 
 " There cannot possibly be a grain of truth 
 in it," Lord Downham replied irritably. 
 
 And then Shepston intervened by saying : 
 
 :< Stratton has always been a cockshy for the 
 Daily Post. They've still got their knife into 
 us over Downham 's speech on the Small Hold- 
 
 IOO
 
 Suspect 
 
 ings Bill. No doubt this is another step in their 
 pin-prick policy. Nothing more than a political 
 significance in it. However, if you are all so 
 interested in politics, I can trace the Post's 
 campaign for you. It began, as I said, over the 
 Small Holdings Bill, and properly to understand 
 it you ought to have some idea of the principles 
 that were at stake " 
 
 " Uncle Reggie, dear, chuck it!" inter- 
 rupted Tempe. 
 
 " But you can't understand this morning's 
 paragraph if you don't know the history that 
 lies behind it," Shepston said. 
 
 Lord Downham nodded his silent approval 
 and murmured something inaudible a trick of 
 his in the House that was always faithfully 
 reported. 
 
 Tempe sighed. " We'll take it as said," 
 she conceded. 
 
 "And talk of something else," suggested 
 her uncle. 
 
 " But you really think that that is the 
 explanation, Reggie?" asked Lady Downham, 
 with obvious relief. 
 
 " Perfectly certain," her brother said, with 
 every appearance of satisfied conviction. 
 
 None of them had taken the least notice of 
 
 101
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Grey during this conversation. He had listened 
 attentively, but the only inference he could 
 draw was the comforting one that they all 
 seemed to regard him as being unconcerned in 
 what was essentially a family topic. He was 
 convinced that none of them was acting a part, 
 unless it were Shepston. Shepston was still 
 doubtful. Why, for instance, had he permitted 
 the subject to be discussed a subject plainly 
 very distasteful to Lord Downham when that 
 ingenious explanation of a journalistic policy 
 might have been advanced so much earlier? 
 But on the whole Grey was relieved. He saw 
 that that nightmare of his in the park had been 
 a monstrous conception, and if it had not been 
 for his one remaining doubt he would have 
 proceeded to carry out his earlier plan to 
 manufacture some excuse for leaving Stratton 
 the next day. The thought of Shepston's 
 possible suspicion still intervened. If that 
 suspicion existed it must be allayed ; and Grey 
 realised very clearly that his sudden departure 
 would probably be read in its true significance, 
 although in that case, also, his motive would 
 surely be misread. Shepston would imagine 
 that the claimant, having made all the investi- 
 gations he desired under the guise of friendship, 
 
 102
 
 Suspect 
 
 was returning to town to prosecute his case 
 an intolerable imputation. 
 
 Grey decided that before he escaped from 
 the unhappy situation into which he had so 
 innocently fallen he must find a means of 
 sounding Shepston. 
 
 3 
 
 AN opportunity offered immediately. 
 
 After lunch Stratton insisted on golf, 
 Tempe immediately volunteered, and then her 
 uncle suggested that he, too, was willing to 
 play. A foursome was the obvious arrange- 
 ment, and was readily accepted by all but 
 Stratton, who complained that a foursome was 
 "a rotten game." That objection, however, 
 was ruled out by the majority, and Grey noted 
 that Stratton gave way gracefully enough. He 
 appeared to be an amiable youth, Grey thought, 
 quite unlike some of the spoilt sons of million- 
 aires he had encountered in the States. 
 
 The question of partners in the game was 
 decided by a consideration of handicaps Grey 
 was plainly advanced in Stratton's opinion by 
 an admission of " five." 
 
 " You're on the limit mark, then," Stratton 
 103
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 said. " I'm nine, Tempe counts as sixteen, 
 and Reggie's anything up to twenty -five. 
 You'd better play with him, and Tempe and I 
 will give you a stroke at the third, the eleventh, 
 the fourteenth, and the seventeenth. It ought 
 to be a snip for you, because the course is so 
 short bogey's only sixty-one ; but Reggie's 
 always liable to give any hole away. I've known 
 him take seven at the eighth." 
 
 " The eighth, it should be explained," put 
 in Shepston genially, " is a hundred and five 
 yards from tee to hole. I could do it in a 
 certain four if Dickie would let me use a putter 
 throughout and play round the rhododendrons ; 
 but he insists on my lofting over them, and 
 simply anything may happen when you are well 
 into a rhododendron." 
 
 " It mayn't," returned Stratton, " because 
 we count it out of bounds to save the bushes. 
 You only lose a stroke and distance." 
 
 " And confidence," Shepston added. " I 
 believe on that historic occasion you mentioned, 
 Dickie, I successfully lofted three consecutive 
 balls into the same bush before you con- 
 descended to let me play round with a putter." 
 
 "We didn't let you; we made you," 
 Tempe said. 
 
 104
 
 Suspect 
 
 ** Unworthy of you to spoil a story for the 
 sake of historical fact," commented her uncle. 
 " If you're going to develop a talent in that 
 direction I shall add you to my list of persons 
 better avoided." 
 
 Grey was glad to find that Shepston was so 
 evidently in a genial mood. 
 
 " I wonder if that's a very long list of 
 yours?" he said. 
 
 " It grows," Shepston replied, with a touch 
 of bitterness. 
 
 For the first two holes the party kept 
 together. Shepston was playing, as he ad- 
 mitted, above his form, and he and his partner 
 won the first hole and halved the second. But 
 when they came to the comparatively long third 
 Shepston sliced his brassie shot right off the line 
 into long grass under the trees, and Grey seized 
 the opportunity to open the topic he wanted to 
 discuss. He had carefully considered his open- 
 ing, and believed that he had hit upon an 
 approach that would not betray his personal 
 interest. 
 
 " Is that true that you said at lunch?" he 
 began, as he and Shepston diverged from the 
 other pair to find the sliced ball. " I mean that 
 an English journal like the Daily Post would 
 
 105
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 deliberately carry a policy of pin-pricks to such 
 a length as to insert a paragraph like the one 
 you mentioned to me this morning? I had no 
 idea that your British papers would do a thing 
 like that. In America, of course He left 
 
 his analogy unfinished for fear of obscuring the 
 point of his question. 
 
 " Would it disappoint you to find that the 
 English Press was as corrupt as the American ? ' ' 
 asked Shepston guilelessly. 
 
 " Why, no. I can't say that I should be 
 disappointed," Grey said. " I just wanted to 
 know." 
 
 " Like Clenham in ' Little Dorrit,' you 
 remember ? ' ' 
 
 " Am I to understand then, that you 
 represent the Circumlocution Office?" returned 
 Grey. 
 
 Shepston laughed pleasantly. "Oh! I 
 think not," he said. " No, certainly not this 
 afternoon. I'm taking a holiday. No doubt 
 you think I'm another of the idle rich, but 
 really I work uncommonly hard for a living. 
 The Shepstons are a poverty-stricken family, 
 and I'm one of the first of 'em to earn my own 
 bread and butter. Surely that's our ball? No, 
 it's a button mushroom come up after the rain." 
 
 106
 
 Suspect 
 
 Grey wondered if this was merely light- 
 hearted prattle or if it represented a deliberate 
 avoidance of his question. He decided to make 
 another attempt. 
 
 " And my inquiry about the honesty of the 
 British Press came too near work for a holiday 
 afternoon?" he asked. 
 
 " Not at all," Shepston said. " You'll find 
 that as a mine of information I'm quite willing 
 to be worked. It's always so inspiriting to 
 display one's knowledge. But about the Daily 
 Post. I should say that the editor was quite a 
 reasonably honest, peer-respecting man. He 
 is one of those nice Liberals, you know, with 
 a strong sense of public decency." 
 
 " It seems to me, then, that you libelled 
 him rather badly at lunch-time," suggested 
 Grey. 
 
 "I confessed to dishonesty this morning," 
 Shepston said. "Justifiable dishonesty in this 
 case. My brother-in-law would have broken 
 his finger-bowl in another minute if I hadn't 
 interfered. He loses his temper badly at times. 
 I fancy Dickie is shouting to us. Would it be 
 criminal, do you think, to drop another ball 
 and play it?" 
 
 But Grey had already seen their ball and 
 107
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 had temporarily concealed the discovery for his 
 own purposes. He played a very nice iron shot 
 out of the rough, despite the fact that his mind 
 was occupied with the reflection that so far his 
 object was no nearer attainment. 
 
 He was aware of a certain pleasure in 
 matching his wits against those of his assumed 
 antagonist, and as the game progressed, and he 
 had opportunity to consider his position, he 
 realised very plainly that for the present he 
 must make no further attempt to lead the con- 
 versation towards the point at issue. It was 
 possible that Shepston had been deliberately 
 elusive in order to draw him on, to discover 
 whether he would display a suspicious eager- 
 ness to discuss the matter of that paragraph. 
 So far, Grey congratulated himself, he had not 
 given himself away. His curiosity with regard 
 to the morals of the English Press could not be 
 certainly interpreted as evidence of a desire to 
 discuss the topic of a claimant to the Stratton 
 title and estates. 
 
 But the more he came to consider the con- 
 versation during the perfunctory search for that 
 lost ball the more convinced was he that Shep- 
 ston was on the qui vive. If he had genuinely 
 wished to avoid the topic he would have main- 
 
 108
 
 Suspect 
 
 tained the explanation he had given over the 
 luncheon table. Instead of that he had deliber- 
 ately made an opening for Grey to press his 
 inquiry. 
 
 By the time they had come to the seventh 
 green Grey had decided he would initiate no 
 further reference as yet to the subject of the 
 claimant. He, too, would play a waiting game 
 and try to induce an attack from his opponent. 
 Meanwhile, whether owing to his preoccupation 
 or to the play of his partner, the game was 
 going against them, and he set himself to make 
 up lost ground. 
 
 Shepston had the " honour " at his old trap, 
 the eighth tee. 
 
 >l Shall I go out for it or play round?" 
 he asked, looking at his partner. 
 
 Grey made a pretence of surveying the 
 hazard. "I don't know," he said; "it seems 
 to me that your talents lie rather in the direction 
 of playing round." 
 
 "Of circumlocution, eh?" replied Shep- 
 ston. " You misjudge me, Grey. I have also 
 my moments of inspiration." He addressed 
 his ball and lofted a very creditable shot over 
 the rhododendrons. 
 
 And when they had walked round to the 
 109
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 green Shepston's ball was found on the lip of 
 the hole. 
 
 He affected an inordinate glee. 
 
 " On my day/' he said, " I'm simply 
 unbeatable." 
 
 Grey wondered whether, when the right 
 moment arrived, Shepston might not also "go 
 out " for himself? The prospect did not daunt 
 him. 
 
 The eighth hole proved to be the turning 
 point of the match. Grey was playing well 
 enough to earn the admiration of Stratton, who 
 showed no sign of chagrin when he and his 
 partner w r ere handsomely beaten. Shepston had 
 suddenly exhibited a quite remarkable brilliancy. 
 
 Tempe commented on her uncle's achieve- 
 ment by a remark that gave Grey a curious little 
 piece of information. 
 
 " You must have been working out a very 
 difficult problem to play a shot like that," she 
 remarked when Shepston had run down a 
 seven-foot putt on the thirteenth green. 
 
 Grey was standing at her elbow. " What's 
 the reference for that paradox?" he asked. 
 
 : ' Oh ! he always says that the only time 
 he can play golf decently is when he's thinking 
 of something else," she said. 
 
 IIO
 
 Suspect 
 
 Shepston had taken out his eye-glass this 
 was the first time that Grey had seen him 
 without it and was polishing it with his 
 handkerchief. 
 
 " One of the tarradiddles that amuse the 
 children," he explained; but it occurred to 
 Grey that for once Shepston appeared slightly 
 confused. 
 
 ONE thing was certain, namely, that the family 
 of Stratton, whether by mutual agreement or 
 by some tacit understanding, had decided to 
 make no further open reference to the subject 
 of the claimant. Lord Downham did not put 
 in an appearance at tea, but despite the absence 
 of the restraint his presence implied, no one 
 approached the topic which might fairly be 
 inferred to have been the dominant interest. 
 Had not Tempe said at lunch that the claim 
 would give them something to talk about? 
 Moreover, it seemed that on more than one 
 occasion the thing was in the minds of both 
 Lady Downham and Lady Adelaide, and that 
 they avoided it by a deliberate effort. Lady 
 Downham, more particularly, displayed a 
 
 in
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 tendency to drift into family history, and to 
 pull herself up abruptly by plunging quite 
 inappropriately into Socialism, the one subject 
 which she seemed to imagine would unfailingly 
 interest her visitor. 
 
 Shepston spoke only of his own achieve- 
 ments on the links that afternoon, protesting 
 that his handicap must be reduced by Dickie. 
 
 Stratton agreed. " I shall put you at 
 eighteen for the next foursome," he said, " and 
 you'll have to give Tempe and me a stroke." 
 
 Grey was wondering whether they would sit 
 on chattering in the small drawing-room until 
 it was time to dress, when Tempe jumped up 
 and said that he had not seen the ruins. 
 " We've just time now," she went on. "I'll 
 act as cicerone." 
 
 Grey expressed his readiness, and as no one 
 offered to accompany them, they set off alone. 
 Last night he had planned a solitary expedition 
 to the old home of the Strattons, but he no 
 longer had the least desire to encourage any 
 sentimental emotions. In some curious way that 
 unfortunate announcement in the Daily Post 
 had put him in a false position. He felt that 
 he was no longer a free agent ; he was on the 
 defensive, and the time might be at hand when 
 
 112
 
 Suspect 
 
 he would be obliged to offer a full explanation 
 of his intentions and motives. He could not 
 avoid the suggestion that he had been foolish 
 in the first instance to accept the invitation to 
 Stratton. His presence there might so easily 
 be mistaken in certain circumstances as evidence 
 of an intention to spy out the land. 
 
 When he agreed to the proposal to inspect 
 the ruins of the old Hall, he was prepared for 
 an hour's light, even frivolous, conversation. 
 Lady Tempe had appeared to be in a relatively 
 serious mood on the previous evening, but he 
 remembered that the essential of her advice to 
 him then had been to avoid seriousness ; and 
 with that advice in mind he was determined to 
 meet her supposed wishes. 
 
 " Have you any more advice for me this 
 afternoon?" he began. "And have I profited 
 at all by that issued on the terrace last night? 
 I'm such a beginner that I'm not at all sure 
 that I got your orders correctly." 
 
 She looked at him with a touch of im- 
 patience. " You didn't," she said. 
 
 Her tone was curt enough to make him 
 pause. He could not be sure that she was not 
 positively offended for some unknown reason. 
 
 "Well, how's that?" he asked. 
 
 i 113
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders. " I prefer you 
 ponderous, after all," she said. 
 
 " Does that mean that you've changed your 
 mind, Lady Tempe," he said, " or that my 
 altered mood didn't suit you?" 
 
 " Too much mood about it," she replied. 
 
 "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you," he 
 said. 
 
 " Why should you follow me or anyone 
 else?" 
 
 He thought over that for a moment. " You 
 certainly gave me clear instructions last night," 
 he urged more seriously ; " and I don't see that 
 I could have done better than try to carry them 
 out." 
 
 " You misread them," she told him. 
 
 " Well, can't you show me where I went 
 wrong?" he asked. 
 
 " No, I don't know that I can," she said. 
 
 For a minute or two they walked on in 
 silence. Tempe had taken the short cut to the 
 old Hall, past the long range of glass-houses, 
 and through the kitchen gardens. Grey was 
 embarrassed by the presence of the men who 
 were working in their neighbourhood they 
 passed at least half a dozen before they finally 
 made their way through a door in the high brick 
 
 114
 
 Suspect 
 
 wall that shut off the park lands on that side. 
 He was piqued by his companion's tone and 
 anxious to assert himself. On the terrace he 
 had been quite willing to listen to her advice, 
 but now he felt that he had a right to some 
 explanation. 
 
 "Well, I don't know that it's of any 
 importance one way or the other," he said 
 when they were clear of the kitchen gardens. 
 " I don't imagine that I'm likely to make any 
 permanent alteration in my manners." 
 
 " I was afraid you were considering it," she 
 returned. 
 
 " I think I'm beginning to follow you 
 now," he said. " Do you imply, Lady Tempe, 
 that I have been trying to put on manners that 
 didn't suit me?" 
 
 "Well, haven't you?" 
 
 " I guess I have," he admitted. 
 
 "Why do you?" 
 
 He stumbled over his answer. He was very 
 conscious that the fault did not wholly liepwith 
 him. If he had not been so hampered by that 
 secret knowledge of his he could have been more 
 natural. 
 
 "I don't know," he said. "I don't seem 
 to be able to meet you all on open ground. I 
 
 "5
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 can't expect you to agree with my opinions. 
 I'm forced to play some sort of part." 
 
 "You aren't," she said. "We don't. 
 We're perfectly honest." 
 
 "But you've got the whip hand," he pro- 
 tested. " You are above criticism, or you 
 believe you are " 
 
 Her laugh interrupted him. " That's 
 better," she said. 
 
 It occurred to him suddenly that she was 
 displaying a most flattering interest in his 
 personality. 
 
 "It's very kind of you to take so much 
 trouble over me," he said. 
 
 She gave him a whimsical smile. " What 
 bosh we are talking!" she said. 
 
 " I was taking it quite seriously," Grey 
 said ; and went on with an earnestness that 
 overrode her attempt to elude his gravity, 
 "and I know that, so far as you can be, you 
 were serious, too, just now and last night as 
 well." 
 
 She opened her eyes wide with an affecta- 
 tion of offended surprise. " As far as I can 
 be," she repeated. 
 
 " Well, I may be doing you an injustice in 
 that," he said, still with the same earnestness. 
 
 116
 
 Suspect 
 
 " I haven't had time to judge. But it seems to 
 me that you are all suffering from the want of 
 some reasonable purpose in life. You've been 
 honest with me, and given me to understand 
 that you don't care to see me fooling around 
 and trying to play the game you'd expect from 
 your ordinary acquaintances, and I'm glad you 
 said what you did; it was mainly true, though 
 there was another reason for it, too, that I can't 
 speak about just now." 
 
 "I love mysteries," commented Tempe. 
 
 He decided to ignore that remark. " Well, 
 I've taken your hints as a sign of friendship," 
 he continued, " and I'd like to return the com- 
 pliment." 
 
 " But if we think we're above criticism?" 
 Tempe quoted. 
 
 " You are young enough to learn," he said 
 severely. 
 
 They had reached the ruins now, and it 
 seemed that she was going to cut short the 
 discussion by taking up the role of cicerone. 
 
 "This is a bit of the old gateway," she 
 began. " It's Elizabethan, isn't it? Uncle 
 Reggie has told me all about it, but I've 
 forgotten." 
 
 " I think it would be kinder if you'd just 
 117
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 say right out that it's not my business to preach 
 to you," Grey said. 
 
 " Bother the man," replied Tempe. 
 " What is it you want to say?" 
 
 "It's no concern of mine, I know," he 
 said, " but it hurts me to think that you should 
 waste your life. I was thinking it over last 
 night." 
 
 She lifted herself up and sat down upon a 
 tall "mounting" stone that stood just outside 
 the gateway. 
 
 "I'm immensely flattered, of course," she 
 said, " that you should find me worthy of such 
 consideration." 
 
 He met her smile with another that was a 
 little grim. 
 
 " I don't know yet that you are," he said. 
 
 " And you want to find out?" 
 
 " I certainly do." 
 
 "Well, we've had the text; now for the 
 sermon," she said, " Do you prefer to stand 
 when you're preaching?" 
 
 "We'd be more on a level," he remarked; 
 and leaned against the jamb of the gateway. 
 
 Tempe demurely folded her hands in her 
 lap and looked down at them. She had wonder- 
 ful eyelashes, thick, black, and long, and for 
 
 118
 
 Suspect 
 
 the first time it crossed Grey's mind that she 
 might be flirting with him. He found the idea 
 curiously distasteful. 
 
 " Haven't you any ambitions to live?" he 
 asked curtly. "The life you lead isn't living; 
 it's trying to keep amused. And that will go 
 on getting harder as you grow older." 
 
 " I may marry," she put in. 
 
 "Sure," he said. "But will that help? 
 You'll have two or three children, and then 
 stop because it's too much trouble ; and after 
 that you'll get back to the old game of finding 
 fresh amusement." 
 
 " But what's the alternative?" she asked. 
 
 "Struggle! Fighting to achieve some- 
 thing. It doesn't matter a heap what, but it 
 must be big enough to take all your energy." 
 
 She looked up at him thoughtfully. " All 
 very well for a man," she commented, " but a 
 woman doesn't get the chance to do things big 
 enough to take all her energy." 
 
 " I can tell you about one who did," he 
 said. 
 
 " Who was that? Joan of Arc?" 
 
 "No; my mother. She worked for thirty 
 years to give me an education. She was near 
 starvation once or twice, and until I was a 
 
 119
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 grown man she had a terrible struggle. She'd 
 been an hotel clerk before she married, and for 
 fifteen years she used to depend on odd jobs in 
 hotels. You see, she wouldn't live in because 
 of me. She used to teach me herself when she 
 had a minute to spare, and I learnt more from 
 her than I ever learnt either at school or 
 college." 
 
 " What happened to your father?" 
 " He was a skunk. He deserted my mother 
 a few weeks after he'd married her." 
 " And she never saw him again?" 
 " No. She wouldn't have ever set eyes on 
 him again anyway ; she hated the sound of his 
 name, and she taught me to hate it, too, in a 
 different way. But he went back to England, 
 and died there a year or two later. He was one 
 of the idle rich ; one of the sort of people that 
 
 make a fetish of amusement. He ' Grey 
 
 stopped, suddenly aware that he was most 
 unwisely advertising his family history. 
 
 Lady Tempe had been listening to his story 
 with absorbed attention. "And I suppose 
 your mother taught you to be a Socialist?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " She taught me to work and to recognise 
 injustice when I saw it," he said. 
 
 1 20
 
 Suspect 
 
 " And you mean to go on working all your 
 life?" 
 
 " I certainly do." 
 
 "Suppose you made money? Got fairly 
 rich?" 
 
 " I wouldn't keep rich. Just now I'm 
 living on an income of three thousand dollars 
 a year, and I'll be getting more from royalties 
 on my book. Well, I reckon that's too much, 
 I'm keeping it for the present, because I've got 
 to finish my education. There are some things 
 I want to understand out here in Europe before 
 I go back to America. But in a year or two 
 I'm going to use the capital of that money." 
 
 "How?" she asked. 
 
 "I'm not sure yet," he said. " That's one 
 of the things I've got to learn. But I know 
 one thing about it for certain, and that is that 
 I'm going to work as hard in getting rid of 
 that money as my mother worked in saving it. 
 I'm not going to give it to any cause, not even 
 Socialist propaganda; I'm going to be my own 
 propagandist, and I hope to die poor." 
 
 He had no foolish hesitation in talking about 
 his plans. He was thinking greatly of his work 
 and the ends he meant to further, and not at 
 all of how his conduct might appear in the eyes 
 
 121
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 of his listener, and it came as a shock to him 
 when she said : 
 
 "You are very self-sacrificing!" 
 
 There was a touch of banter in her tone that 
 hurt him. 
 
 " Does it seem that way to you?" he asked. 
 " I suppose it would. You're judging me by 
 your own standards. Now, it doesn't seem to 
 me that I'm self-sacrificing at all. I'd just 
 hate as much to be rich as you'd hate to be 
 poor." 
 
 " You don't know that I should hate to be 
 poor," she returned. " You don't know any- 
 thing whatever about me." She was looking at 
 him quietly and steadily, and he thought she 
 was the loveliest woman he had ever seen. She 
 was grave now, and he saw not the beautiful 
 spoilt child of her environment, but a woman 
 full of immense potentialities for emotion and 
 self-sacrifice. 
 
 "No," he said. "That's quite true; I 
 don't." 
 
 She looked down at the white, slender little 
 hands crossed in her lap, and then held them 
 up for him to see. 
 
 ;< For years and years I've spent at least an 
 hour every day on those," she said. 
 
 122
 
 Suspect 
 
 " I can easily believe it,'* he returned, 
 
 " Don't you think it was an awful waste of 
 time?" 
 
 "In a way, yes," he prevaricated. 
 
 " Only in a way?" 
 
 He hesitated on the verge of an obvious com- 
 pliment, and then said, " From my point of 
 view it was a waste of time." 
 
 '" And I often spend another hour or more 
 on having my hair done," she continued, " and 
 even then we haven't begun to consider the 
 really important function of dressing." 
 
 " That's one of the ways you find amuse- 
 ment, I suppose?" he suggested. 
 
 She shook her head. " That's one of the 
 things you don't begin to understand," she 
 said. "It isn't an amusement; it's a dreadful 
 bore. I hate the process, but I love the result. 
 It's one of the satisfactions of my life. It gives 
 me the same sense of power that you get, 
 
 perhaps, from writing a book. To be ' 
 
 She hesitated, and then, with a frank smile, 
 said, "To be like this not to look like this, 
 you know, but to be like this is part of what 
 I live and work for. And I have to work 
 for it." 
 
 " Only a part?" he put in. 
 123
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " You think all the rest is merely to find 
 amusement ? ' ' 
 
 "I'm waiting for you to tell me." 
 
 " I suppose you would be immensely sur- 
 prised if I told you that sometimes I have 
 thought of going into a convent?" 
 
 " For religious reasons?" 
 
 Her denial of that was emphatic. 
 
 " For a new experience?" he tried. 
 
 She shook her head again. " No," she said, 
 " to satisfy something in me that I don't under- 
 stand myself." She leaned a little forward, 
 gripping the edge of the stone on which she 
 sat with those delicate, strong white hands of 
 hers. " And I've had to fight against it," she 
 went on, looking past him at the pitted, grey 
 stonework of the gateway, " just as I am going 
 to fight against your ideas. I won't allow 
 myself to think about them in a certain way 
 because I'm afraid of believing in them. And 
 I don't want to." 
 
 They were both silent for a few moments, 
 and then Grey said, " You needn't be afraid. 
 You'll never believe anything you don't want 
 to believe." 
 
 " That's isn't a bit true," she returned ; and 
 before he could answer she let herself easily 
 
 124
 
 Suspect 
 
 down from her stone seat and went on, " and 
 already you seem to have forgotten the most 
 important thing I've told you, that it takes me 
 at least an hour to dress, even when it's only 
 for my own family and for an idealist who 
 thinks that the better dressed I am the idler 
 I must be. That sounds like a quotation. How 
 do you like the ruins? I shall cross-examine 
 you at dinner on the tracery in the chapel 
 windows. I'm going to run." 
 
 He did not follow her as she raced away 
 from him, but as he watched her disappear he 
 had a sudden sense of great loss. He felt 
 strangely alone, as if in one instant he had been 
 snatched up from all the warmth and joy of 
 human contact and had been set down in some 
 remote, desolate universe, eternally separated 
 from the joys of life. He had seen new land- 
 scapes, and the thought of his work and the 
 purpose he had so enthusiastically enunciated a 
 few minutes before wore an unfamiliar aspect of 
 bleakness and futility. How little he could do, 
 and how little was he able to judge whether his 
 work was, after all, the right work! He had 
 only known one side. 
 
 As he made his way slowly back to the 
 house he was reflecting that in a day or two at
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 longest he must leave Stratton, and that he 
 would in all probability never again see the 
 place or any of its people. 
 
 LADY TEMPE did not fulfil her threat to 
 embarrass him by discussing at dinner the 
 tracery of the chapel windows ; on the contrary, 
 she saved him from confusion by deflecting her 
 mother's questions. 
 
 " You hardly had time to do the ruins 
 properly," Lady Downham began with the 
 soup. "You must go again; but I hope you 
 saw the buttery that's the really old part ' 
 
 "Was a buttery a kind of early dairy?" 
 interposed Tempe innocently. 
 
 Grey jumped at the opportunity to avoid 
 explanations which he had a marked disinclina- 
 tion to give. He had gone to see the old Hall, 
 and he had spent all his time in a particularly 
 intimate conversation with Lady Tempe ; and 
 in some way the fact had become a secret that 
 they delightfully shared. He wanted now to 
 preserve it. 
 
 "Why, no!" he said eagerly. "It had 
 nothing to do with butter. It was the place 
 
 126
 
 Suspect 
 
 where they kept the wine and beer. The word 
 derives from the same source as ' butts ' and 
 * bottles.'" 
 
 " Great idea !" put in Stratton. " I always 
 wondered why it was called a buttery at 
 Trinity." 
 
 " They must have drunk a tremendous lot 
 in those days," commented Lady Tempe, to 
 save a pause that might give her mother another 
 opening. 
 
 " I suppose they brewed their own ale once 
 a year," suggested Grey; and for a time the 
 conversation strayed about the life of the Middle 
 Ages. Even Lord Downham came in with an 
 occasional remark. 
 
 And they were well on into dinner before a 
 quiet interval gave Lady Downham another 
 chance to renew what she evidently thought was 
 a safe and interesting topic. 
 
 " Did you settle the problem of the leper 
 window?" she asked hopefully, as if she trusted 
 that this puzzling question would be definitely 
 answered at last. 
 
 "I'm afraid not," Grey hazarded; and 
 looked to his confederate for assistance. 
 
 " I didn't show him that," she said. " I'm 
 so tired of that endless discussion. And surely 
 
 127
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 that old archaeologist we had settled it by say- 
 ing that it was a sort of conventional leper 
 window, shoved in because it was the proper 
 thing to have." 
 
 " I wasn't satisfied with that explanation," 
 Lady Downham said. " I should like to have 
 Mr. Grey's opinion. I suppose you really are 
 something of an authority?" she added, turning 
 to her visitor. 
 
 " Indeed I'm not," he protested. " I have 
 read something about English mediseval archi- 
 tecture, but one can't learn very much without 
 studying examples." 
 
 "You hadn't much time for that?" Lady 
 Downham assumed. 
 
 " Well, I've had no opportunity," Grey 
 explained. 
 
 Lady Downham gave that a moment's 
 thought, and then light dawned upon her, and 
 she said, " I always forget that you haven't any 
 Gothic remains in America." Her tone seemed 
 to imply that a country without Gothic remains 
 was not worth remembering. " You ought 
 really to spend a whole day at the Hall," she 
 concluded. " You should get Reggie to take 
 you." 
 
 Grey bowed and hoped for a change of sub- 
 128
 
 Suspect 
 
 ject, but he was conscious of a boyish exultation 
 in the fact that he was sharing his disgrace with 
 Lady Tempe. Looking up, he saw an attentive 
 and rather quizzical eye regarding him from 
 behind Shepston's monocle. 
 
 " I should very much like to hear your 
 account of the ruins," Grey said. 
 
 " Tempe's really quite as efficient on her 
 day," Shepston replied, and his thin tenor voice 
 seemed to gather in the attention of the whole 
 table. " Obviously she was not in the mood this 
 evening." 
 
 "We were studying the gateway chiefly," 
 Tempe put in. 
 
 " A fine piece of Tudor work," corroborated 
 Grey. That was the single piece of information 
 he had been given, and he recalled the manner 
 in which it had been imparted, and wondered 
 why Lady Tempe had not wanted to expound 
 the place to him. Her uncle had certainly 
 implied that she was capable of doing it, and 
 yet she had said carelessly, " Elizabethan, isn't 
 it?" as if she had no kind of interest in a 
 knowledge of the old Hall. 
 
 ' Early sixteenth century," said Lord 
 Downham, with the air of one glad to be on 
 safe ground; and Grey was thankful that by 
 
 J 129
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 saying Tudor he had been saved from admitting 
 ignorance of the one item to which he had 
 inferentially given an hour's study. 
 
 After that the topic of the old Hall was 
 mercifully dropped, and later, while they were 
 having coffee on the terrace, Tempe whispered 
 her congratulations. 
 
 " Clever of you to say Tudor," she said. 
 
 "Pure luck," returned Grey; and then, in 
 the same confidential tone, he said, " But why, 
 if you know the place so well, did you say 
 Elizabethan?" 
 
 " Freakishness," she replied. "I've got to 
 play auction to-night. Father's got some 
 business or something to attend to." 
 
 And again Grey found an inexplicable 
 pleasure in the suggestion that he and this girl 
 were playing on the same side. 
 
 " That's a nuisance," he said, completing 
 the confidence. 
 
 "You'd better play billiards with Dickie," 
 she advised him. 
 
 He realised with a regret he did not pause 
 to analyse that he would have preferred to watch 
 the bridge-players. 
 
 130
 
 Suspect 
 
 6 
 
 STRATTON had gone upstairs to supervise the 
 brushing of the table, and Grey was standing 
 by the card-table watching the cut for partners, 
 when Garton came into the room and an- 
 nounced : " Mr. Fellowes called to see you, sir." 
 
 Grey, watching the table, thought the 
 announcement was addressed to Shepston, until 
 Shepston looked up and said, " For you, I 
 think, Grey.' 7 
 
 " Yes, sir, for Mr. Grey," corroborated 
 Garton. 
 
 "For me?" repeated Grey, and instinc- 
 tively his mind leapt to the thought of an 
 interviewer, " What did you say his name 
 was?" he asked. 
 
 "Mr. Fellowes, sir," Garton said. "An 
 American, I believe, sir." Garton had had 
 experience of American tourists. 
 
 "I'll come," Grey said. He was afraid to 
 ask for any further particulars. He had a 
 dreadful intuition that this mysterious visitor 
 had some connection with that amazing para- 
 graph in the Daily Post. And he was conscious 
 that Shepston, blandly smiling with an air of
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 friendly, almost concerned, interest, was alert 
 and inquisitive behind that wonderfully effective 
 mask of his. 
 
 Garton led the way to that well of a room 
 in which Shepston had received his visitor last 
 night. 
 
 Mr. Fellowes was standing on the hearth- 
 rug. He was a tall, heavily-made man, with 
 thick, black eyebrows and a clean-shaven, fleshy 
 face. Grey remembered him instantly as a 
 particularly able and, as report had it, a par- 
 ticularly unscrupulous member of the New 
 York Press. They had only met on one 
 occasion, and then Mr. Fellowes had published 
 an inaccurate and faintly satirical account of 
 Grey's views on Socialism. 
 
 He had, however, apparently no uneasiness 
 on the score of that former meeting. He came 
 forward w r ith a fine assumption of cordiality and 
 held out his hand. 
 
 * You'll hardly remember me, Mr. Grey," 
 he said. 
 
 Grey took the hand that was offered to him 
 and shook it without warmth. "I'd forgotten 
 your name for the moment," he said, "but I 
 remember you now very well, and your article 
 in the Sunday Sun." 
 
 132
 
 Suspect 
 
 " You mustn't blame me for that, Mr. 
 Grey," replied Fellowes. " My editor just 
 took my stuff and made pie of it. I meant to 
 write you about it and apologise, but I was 
 considerably hustled about that time, and I let 
 it go." 
 
 Grey nodded and dismissed the subject. 
 "Won't you sit down?" he said; but he did 
 not invite his visitor to remove the light over- 
 coat that he was wearing over his evening 
 dress. 
 
 "A remarkable place this," Fellowes began, 
 when he had sat down. " I walked up from 
 the village, through the park, and got some 
 kind of a view of it. The Marquis of Downham 
 seems to be better thought of than King 
 George down here." 
 
 Grey ignored this conversational opening. 
 " Why did you want to see me?" he asked. 
 
 "Why, I'll tell you right away," Fellowes 
 said ; and, instead of keeping his word, plunged 
 into an account of how he had come over to 
 Europe for a holiday. This was his fourth visit, 
 he said, and on each of his earlier vacations he 
 had been lucky enough to make a " scoop " that 
 had more than paid his expenses. He spoke in 
 a familiar, confiding tone, as if he were quite 
 
 133
 
 certain that his listener must be sympathetically 
 interested. 
 
 Grey listened without attempting an inter- 
 ruption. He had little doubt now as to the 
 purpose of this visit, but he wanted certain 
 information and a little time to consider his own 
 defence. 
 
 " I can't see how this interests me," he said 
 when Fellowes paused. 
 
 " I guess you haven't seen the Daily Post 
 this morning," replied Fellowes, " or maybe 
 you read it hurriedly." 
 
 He put his hand inside the breast of his 
 overcoat, produced a pocket-book, and then 
 passed a news-cutting over to Grey, who read 
 it carelessly and returned it. 
 
 "I had heard of that paragraph," he said; 
 " it was discussed at lunch to-day, but I can't 
 see that it has anything to do with me." 
 
 Mr. Fellowes' smile said quite plainly : 
 "I'll allow that you're cute, but I've got the 
 goods." 
 
 ' ' Gee ! " he remarked quietly. * ' The 
 family are considerable flustered, I guess," he 
 added. 
 
 "Not in the least," replied Grey. "I 
 gather that they've heard of that stunt before." 
 
 134
 
 Suspect 
 
 " It's a sure thing this time," Fellowes 
 said, still with that admiring but half-expostu- 
 latory smile. 
 
 Grey frowned. "I'm sorry to be rude, 
 Mr. Fellowes," he said, getting up, " but Lord 
 Stratton is waiting for me, and as I can't get 
 you to say what your business is with me, I'm 
 afraid I must go. When I get back to town, 
 perhaps " 
 
 Mr. Fellowes appeared to be deeply hurt. 
 " Now, why can't you trust me?" he said. 
 ' I'm willing to help you and to lie low till 
 you give me the right word " 
 
 "What the hell about?" snapped Grey. 
 
 Fellowes' shrug of the shoulders implied 
 that his companion was overacting his 
 innocence. 
 
 Grey turned to the door. "I'll send the 
 butler to show you out," he said over his 
 shoulder. He had grasped the handle before 
 Fellowes admitted that the bluff had succeeded. 
 
 "One minute, Mr. Grey," he said; and 
 Grey turned with his hand still on the door- 
 knob. 
 
 ' Is it anyway possible that you don't know 
 that all this place belongs to you?" Fellowes 
 asked. 
 
 '35
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Grey quoted the remark made by Lord 
 Downham at lunch. "Ridiculous nonsense!" 
 he said. 
 
 Fellowes was not deceived, and apparently 
 decided that the time had come to try a new 
 line. " I was very willing to chat with you in 
 a friendly way about this," he said, "but if 
 you won't give me your confidence I'll carry 
 the thing through my own way." 
 
 " Is that a threat?" asked Grey. 
 
 "Why, no, sir; it's sure not," Fellowes 
 replied. "I've gotten the whole story com- 
 plete from A to Z, and I'm ready to publish 
 any day; but naturally I thought I'd like to 
 discuss it with you first, just to see what you 
 thought about it." 
 
 Grey saw that he was in a tight corner, but 
 he attempted one more bluff before he showed 
 his hand. 
 
 " I wish you could be more explicit," he 
 said. " What, in God's name, is this story of 
 yours and where did you get it from?" 
 
 " There's a man living in Toronto of the 
 name of William Hayles, sir," Fellowes said, 
 " and he's going into politics in his old age. 
 Well, he wanted my help, and I gave it him 
 willingly enough, and his sense of gratitude 
 
 136
 
 Suspect 
 
 warmed him up to giving me a chance of 
 making the price of a trip to Europe. He gave 
 me the details, and I have since corroborated 
 them." 
 
 It was not a story that did credit to 
 Fellowes' journalistic ability. Grey did not 
 believe for one instant that the reason for 
 Hayles' betrayal of that old secret had been 
 one of gratitude it might far more probably 
 have been some kind of political blackmail. 
 But the authority was good, and although Grey 
 attempted one more denial, he knew that the 
 facts of his birth were known, however 
 uncertain the evidence. 
 
 " I know nothing about any William 
 Hayles," he said. 
 
 " Oh, well, it won't make any difference to 
 me," Fellowes replied. "I'm glad to have 
 seen the place, anyhow. I'll wish you good- 
 night, Mr. Grey." 
 
 It was evident that he held the cards. He 
 had come there no doubt to find out if Grey 
 himself knew the truth concerning his own 
 inheritance ; but even without that knowledge 
 Fellowes could make capital out of the story 
 he had. 
 
 They had both been standing for the last
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 five minutes, but now Grey sat down and 
 pointed to a chair opposite to him. ' This 
 story must not be published," he ssid. 
 
 "How's that?" asked Fellowes. 
 
 " Because I have not nor ever have had the 
 least intention of making the claim." 
 
 Fellowes accepted the admission without 
 comment. 
 
 "Staying here just by chance,. I guess?" 
 he said. 
 
 " No. I wanted to see the place. I wanted 
 to know the family," replied Grey. " But I 
 neither wish to possess the one nor to oust the 
 other. I've known the whole story for ten 
 years, and if I had felt the least inclination to 
 make any claim I should have done it long 
 before this." 
 
 " But do you mean to say began 
 
 Fellowes. 
 
 " I do mean just that. Nothing would ever 
 induce me to become a claimant for this title 
 and these estates." Grey's voice rang with a 
 note of conviction that could in no wise be 
 mistaken. 
 
 ' Well, you've got me whipped to a 
 frazzle," remarked Fellowes. He paused for a 
 moment, opened his mouth to speak as if his 
 
 138
 
 Suspect 
 
 thoughts had induced another doubt, and then, 
 looking at Arthur Grey's determined face, he 
 gently repeated, " whipped to a frazzle." 
 
 " I should deny the whole story," Grey 
 said firmly. 
 
 Fellowes' expression suddenly changed. He 
 stood up and held out his hand. " Grip," he 
 said. "I'm proud to meet a man, for the first 
 time in my newspaper experience, who was 
 ready to stick to his principles in face of a 
 temptation like this." 
 
 Grey shook hands, more warmly this time. 
 ;< I'm sorry to spoil your coup, Mr. Fellowes," 
 he said; "but you'll allow that your story 
 doesn't go without my agreement." 
 
 "Why, no. How could it?" Fellowes 
 admitted. " Well, I'm down and out over 
 this, but I'll get another scoop before I go back, 
 though it won't touch this one,' ; 
 
 Grey went out with him to the portico, and 
 shook hands with him again on the terrace. 
 
 *' Are you staying down here?'* he asked. 
 
 Fellowes shook his head. "No; I'll get 
 back first thing to-morrow," he said. "I've 
 nothing more to do here." 
 
 139
 
 As Grey came back into the hall he became 
 aware that the interview had shaken him more 
 than he could have thought possible. He had 
 won, apparently, but his nerves were still 
 trembling. And he could find no reason to 
 account for such perturbation. After all, he 
 had nothing at stake. If the story came out he 
 would lose the good opinion of the Strattons, 
 no doubt ; but what was their opinion to him ? 
 
 As he made his way back to the drawing- 
 room he tried to put the whole affair out of his 
 thoughts. 
 
 He found the bridge-table broken up, 
 Shepston gone, and the three ladies gathered 
 together about an evening paper. 
 
 They looked up as he came in, and Lady 
 Adelaide said : 
 
 " The scandal grows." 
 
 "How?" asked Grey. 
 
 " There's a leader about the claimant to 
 Stratton in the Evening Mail," Tempe replied, 
 " with oh ! all kinds of hints and a lot about 
 Tichborne." 
 
 For a moment Grey almost lost his self- 
 140
 
 Suspect 
 
 possession. He had an immense desire to fly 
 from the room and from the house. And when 
 he spoke, his voice sounded to himself forced 
 and unnatural. 
 
 " Do they mention the name of the claim- 
 ant?" he was saying. 
 
 Tempe shook her head. " They are being 
 very guarded at present," she said, " but they 
 promise particulars very soon ; and poor father 
 is dreadfully upset. Uncle Reggie has gone to 
 comfort and reassure him." 
 
 "Really very annoying, you know," re- 
 marked Lady Downham. 
 
 Lady Adelaide appeared to be thoroughly 
 enjoying herself. 
 
 " There isn't a grain of truth in it, of 
 course," Grey said. 
 
 "We don't know that there mayn't be," 
 Tempe replied. She was looking at Grey with 
 a curiously intent stare. 
 
 "There isn't," he said. "I feel perfectly 
 sure that the whole thing's a newspaper scandal. 
 We we are so used to that sort of thing in 
 America." 
 
 Tempe was still watching him. " And \vho 
 was your mysterious visitor?" she asked 
 suddenly.
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " A journalist," Grey said; " a man named 
 Fellowes. I had met him in America. He 
 wanted me to contribute to a a scare, some- 
 thing like this. 1 ' 
 
 "And are you going to?" asked Tempe, 
 with a touch of eagerness. 
 
 " Most certainly not," he said. 
 
 Had she, too, begun to suspect him, he 
 wondered ?
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TEMPE 
 
 ONE issue still stood out clearly before Grey 
 that night, and appeared no less inevitable 
 when subjected to the unprejudiced judgment 
 of his early morning thought. He must leave 
 Stratton at once. 
 
 Fellowes was not to be trusted. His 
 sudden burst of enthusiasm, even if it had been 
 genuine, would not endure the temptation to 
 make his travelling expenses out of the attrac- 
 tive information he had bought by influence, 
 perhaps from JVEr* Hayles. The details of 
 Fellowes' activity up to this point could be 
 inferred with comparative certainty. He had 
 attempted, in the first place, to use the in- 
 fluential columns of the Daily Post, and had 
 been refused by its editor, After that, and 
 armed no doubt with the promise of the non- 
 committal but helpful paragraph that had since 
 been published, he had gone on to the offices 
 
 '43
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 of the Evening Mail. But even there he might 
 have been received with a certain hesitation. 
 It seemed probable, however, that the Mail's 
 editor had decided, possibly on the strength of 
 the Daily Post's "filler," to risk an ambigu- 
 ously safe leader, and meant to "feature" the 
 story if Fellowes could obtain the claimant's 
 support. That support had been denied, and 
 Fellowes had thrown up the sponge with a 
 curious alacrity. He had made no protesta- 
 tions, no attempt at persuasion. He might 
 have been convinced, but it was more probable 
 that he had still another card to play, a third 
 market for his wares. 
 
 Grey was not sufficiently well versed in 
 English journalism to guess what might be the 
 third and lowest stage of the news market ; but 
 he knew that there must be papers even less 
 reputable than the Evening Mail, papers that 
 might be glad to use such material in the slack 
 season. And the only possible course he could 
 take in the circumstances was to leave Stratton 
 immediately. If some version of the story was 
 made public after he had gone, he could write 
 to Lord Downham, deny any connection with 
 the published report, and make plain his deter- 
 mination never to assert his claim. 
 
 144
 
 Tempe 
 
 And having arranged these plans to his own 
 satisfaction, Grey sighed. He was conscious of 
 a distinct unwillingness to leave Stratton that 
 day ; he would have preferred to have had one 
 more serious talk with Lady Tempe before she 
 went out of his life for ever. She interested 
 him. She had discovered to him unexpected 
 depths that he wished to understand. It 
 seemed to him so certain that those inward 
 stirrings of hers, those strange tendencies which 
 she had so desperately tried to inhibit, repre- 
 sented the true greatness of her, and that they 
 ought to be welcomed and encouraged. He 
 wanted to tell her that, and it seemed to him 
 an almost intolerable loss that he would never 
 now have an opportunity. For, apart from the 
 fact that every hour added to the risk of his 
 stay, this was Friday, and if he were to make 
 any excuse of business he could not convincingly 
 leave on a Saturday. 
 
 He found his Bradshaw and noted that the 
 best train in the day left Cole-Stratton at 10.45. 
 He must catch that, and then he would be out 
 of the house before the morning papers arrived. 
 But he must not run away ; he must see 
 Shepston as soon as possible and explain matters 
 to him. 
 
 K i
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 HE had finished breakfast by a quarter to 
 nine; the servants had been ready for him this 
 morning, and he wondered vaguely who was 
 responsible for the admirable management of 
 household affairs. He had learned that there 
 was still a rank above Garton among the men- 
 servants, a certain Mr. Hoskin, who filled the 
 high office of house-steward ; but surely there 
 must be some correspondingly dignified position 
 on the female side, a super-housekeeper of some 
 kind who ordered the more domestic arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 Garton, respectable to-day in his black 
 morning-coat even at the bourgeois hour of 
 eight o'clock, was uncertain whether Mr. Shep- 
 ston had yet left his room, but promised to 
 make instant inquiry ; and Grey awaited the 
 result of the quest with an uneasiness that he 
 found it impossible to explain away. He had 
 received two quite unimportant letters that 
 morning, and held them in his hand. He had 
 all the semblances that would give colour to his 
 excuse, but he knew that he was an unaccom- 
 plished liar. He had had no practice. How 
 
 146
 
 Tempe 
 
 completely he had failed to deceive Fellowes 
 last night ! And then his cause had been 
 unquestionably just. 
 
 Shepston appeared within five minutes, and 
 if he had in any way hurried his toilet his 
 appearance betrayed no sign of haste. He 
 nodded " Good-morning," and went straight to 
 the breakfast table. " Hope you've had every- 
 thing you wanted," he said cheerily. " Garton 
 has been a bit scandalised, I expect, by your 
 appearance at a time when all Stratton is sup- 
 posed to be safely in bed. I generally have 
 breakfast upstairs, but I thought I'd come 
 down this morning and have a chat with you 
 while we've got the house to ourselves. Unless 
 you don't feel equal to conversation so early?" 
 
 Grey was puzzled. He could not decide 
 whether this was politeness on Shepston 's part 
 or whether Garton had not delivered the 
 message entrusted to him. He might so easily 
 have missed Shepston somewhere between the 
 breakfast-room and his bedroom. Grey knew 
 of three distinct staircases between the ground 
 and first floors, and quite possibly there might 
 be others. He was a little put out by the 
 necessity to introduce his announcement 
 casually. 
 
 147
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " I should be very glad to have a long talk 
 with you," he said, " but I'm afraid ' 
 
 And then Garton came in ushering Shep- 
 ston's breakfast ; and Grey stopped. He could 
 not bring himself to lie before that larger 
 audience. 
 
 Apparently Shepston realised his guest's 
 embarrassment, for he waved the butler and 
 footman aside. " Put 'em down at this end of 
 the table," he said. "You needn't wait." 
 But when the servants had gone he seemed 
 deliberately to avoid giving Grey an opportunity 
 to make his announcement by plunging straight 
 into the topic of the Evening Mail's leader. 
 
 " It looks as if we're really in for it this 
 time," he said. " Poor Downham's badly 
 upset. I am writing to the Post and the Mail 
 this morning to insist upon their producing the 
 authority for their statements. If they decline, 
 we are to take action. Definitely libellous, you 
 understand, if they have no warrant for what 
 they've published. There are limits even to the 
 freedom of the English Press." He looked up 
 with his usual polite smile and added, "Very 
 annoying, of course." 
 
 'Very," agreed Grey, with considerable 
 feeling ; and it suddenly occurred to him that 
 
 148
 
 Tempe 
 
 he had a better excuse for leaving Stratton than 
 a stupid lie about some imaginary business. 
 " I've been thinking," he said, " that under the 
 circumstances it would be better if I went back 
 to London this morning." 
 
 Shepston shook his head. " On no account," 
 he said. " We all want you to stay. Down- 
 ham has asked me to apologise to you I was 
 leading up to that for his neglect of you. It 
 has been solely due to this stupid business. He 
 is most anxious to have a long discussion with 
 you on Canadian affairs." 
 
 " Later on, perhaps " began Grey. 
 
 " Not a bit of it; this is just the right time. 
 It will be better for Downham and for all of 
 us to divert our minds from this silly claimant 
 story. Indeed, I was congratulating myself 
 only this morning on your being here." 
 
 Grey realised that his excuse of business 
 had been horribly compromised by this false 
 start. 
 
 i( As a matter of fact, it isn't only that," 
 he began, glancing at the letters he still held; 
 but Shepston anticipated him by saying : 
 
 " No, no. There is really not the least need 
 for you to be polite and pretend business." 
 He looked at Grey almost affectionately as he 
 
 149
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 continued, " Honestly now, have you any im- 
 portant business to do in town anyone you 
 specially wish to see?" 
 
 Grey could not face the direct lie. " Why, 
 
 no," he said; "but " He was tempted to 
 
 tell the whole truth. That seemed to him the 
 only means of escaping from this distasteful coil 
 of deceptions in which he had become so inno- 
 cently entangled. It was all hateful to him, all 
 against the grain of his acquired opinions and 
 his natural bent of mind. Why should he not 
 take Shepston into his confidence, make a com- 
 plete explanation, and pledge him to secrecy 
 until such time as it might become essential that 
 the Strattons should know the truth of the 
 whole story? 
 
 "I'd like to explain ' he said, and 
 
 stopped. He could not decide what form his 
 confession should take. He was suddenly 
 divided between a desire to defend himself and 
 a revolt against any such implicit admission of 
 guilt. Two days ago he had been a free man, 
 and now he had become enslaved by the influ- 
 ence of this place and its people. He did not 
 want the place, or the position it would give 
 him, but the air of it had in some way hypno- 
 tised him. He had deferred to it. The age-old 
 
 150
 
 Tempe 
 
 consciousness of power was in the very spirit of 
 Stratton. He might criticise it, he might even 
 attempt to deny it, but every one of these 
 people, despite their lack of politeness, their 
 carelessness, their apparent attitude towards 
 himself, was hedged about by some dignity, 
 some fine self-reliance that he could not break 
 through. And he was afraid of it; afraid that 
 if he made his confession he might be drawn 
 into closer relations with all that Stratton 
 implied. His hesitation was a symptom that he 
 all too plainly understood. He had not dared 
 to speak the truth ; he had wanted to keep the 
 respect of these people whom he had tried to 
 persuade himself that he despised. And it came 
 to him that, if he were to keep his own self- 
 respect, he must face the position his short- 
 sighted acceptance of the original invitation had 
 created. He must take his chance of exposure, 
 and, if it came, he must tell his story openly, 
 and then go. 
 
 Shepston had finished his breakfast and was 
 smoking a cigarette. He had waited patiently 
 for his companion to speak, and at last he looked 
 up with his most blandly innocent expression 
 and said : 
 
 "Yes? You would like to explain?"
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Well, that I'm not very quick to under- 
 stand you," Grey replied. " You are a strange 
 people to me. You look at everything from a 
 different angle ; you make different assump- 
 tions. Now, about this matter of my going 
 away. I'm all in the dark as to what you would 
 all honestly like me to do. It makes very little 
 difference to me, but I wouldn't like to feel 
 that I was stupidly forcing myself upon you 
 just at a time when you'd be glad to have no 
 stranger around." 
 
 Shepston had been watching his com- 
 panion's face with an attention that was quite 
 uncharacteristic of him. He held up his beauti- 
 fully kept hands now (they could have received 
 little less care than those of his niece) in a 
 gesture of deprecation. " My dear Grey," he 
 said, "you are altogether too subtle. You 
 probe us for hidden motives. You will not 
 believe me when I tell you that we are candid 
 to the pitch of rudeness. I assure you that if 
 Downham and my sister wished you to go, you 
 would become only too painfully conscious of 
 their desire. Indeed, they would not mince 
 matters." 
 
 "Very well; I'll take your word for that," 
 Grey said. 
 
 152
 
 Tempe 
 
 " That's good," replied Shepston genially. 
 
 It was definitely settled between them that 
 Grey was to stay when Tempe came into the 
 room, but her uncle instantly referred the 
 question to her. 
 
 " Here is Grey being excruciatingly polite," 
 he announced ; ' * pretending that he feels him- 
 self de trop while we are waiting to welcome 
 the unknown heir to Stratton." 
 
 Tempe looked at Grey and smiled. " And 
 I have got down at half -past nine a record," 
 she said, " simply in order to make up for my 
 omissions of yesterday. I intended to have a 
 thoroughly archaeological morning." 
 
 " Shepston has persuaded me to change my 
 mind," Grey said. 
 
 She betrayed no sign of elation at the news. 
 '* Then you'll have to continue your educa- 
 tion," she said vaguely; and turned to her 
 uncle. " We're booked for a drive to Peddles- 
 more this afternoon," she said; " to call on the 
 doting dowager. O Lord!" 
 
 "I know," Shepston said. 
 
 Grey was sure of one thing : Shepston sus- 
 pected the truth. Of the other members of 
 the family he was uncertain, but he intended 
 to find out that morning about one of them.
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 He had a feeling that he would have had no 
 difficulty in telling his story to Lady Tempe. 
 He was sure that she would understand. 
 
 3 
 
 AND after all they never went near the ruins of 
 old Stratton. 
 
 "I'm taking you to see our view," Tempe 
 said, as they came out into the park. "It's 
 only a two-mile walk." 
 
 "Isn't that a shameful neglect of duty?" 
 asked Grey. 
 
 "I'm doing my duty this afternoon," she 
 said. " All the duty I'm up to in one day a 
 stately call on the old duchess, who is senile 
 and quite deaf. We shall leave you Dickie to 
 play golf with." 
 
 " And if I'm cross-examined about the 
 ruins?" he suggested. 
 
 " It's really quite easy to tell the truth," 
 she said coldly. 
 
 "I've discovered that," he replied. He felt 
 checked, even a little angry. With one remark 
 she had destroyed his sense of some vague 
 common understanding that had, he thought, 
 been established between them. 
 
 154
 
 Tempe 
 
 ' * Yes ? ' ' she returned ; and her tone was an 
 impertinence. 
 
 " I would not have made any pretence at 
 all last night if you hadn't given me a lead," 
 he said. 
 
 "Oh, that!" remarked Tempe carelessly. 
 " That was only a joke." 
 
 He resented the description ; he preferred 
 to fancy that they had shared a secret ; but the 
 implication of her remark was of more import- 
 ance than the dissolution of his pleasure in their 
 supposed confederacy. 
 
 !< Have you found me lying on other 
 occasions?" he asked. 
 
 " Not yet," she said. 
 
 ' You are making rather strange insinua- 
 tions, Lady Tempe," he said seriously. His 
 earlier doubts had returned to him. It seemed 
 to him that she was trying to probe his secret. 
 Was it not, indeed, quite probable that she and 
 her uncle had plotted against him? Perhaps 
 the whole family had succeeded iu getting some: 
 private information possibly through the 
 editor of the Daily Post and that now they 
 meant to make him confess himself? He saw 
 it was conceivable that they might offer to bribe 
 him. He cared nothing for that, but it hurt
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 him curiously to think that the girl beside him 
 might be acting the part of a spy. 
 
 She did not appear to hear him, and made 
 some inappropriate remark about a startled 
 squirrel that chattered at them from the high 
 branches of a beech. 
 
 He ignored the squirrel. " I think I have 
 a right to ask you what you mean by implying 
 that I don't speak the truth?" he insisted. 
 
 "Well, do you?" she asked; and looked 
 at him with a hard, slightly contemptuous 
 scrutiny. 
 
 "Why should you doubt it?" he returned. 
 He felt no impulse to confession at that 
 moment, but rather a keen determination to 
 parry her attempt to draw some admission from 
 him. 
 
 She pursed her lips. " It isn't of the least 
 consequence," she said, " and I'm not inter- 
 ested in knowing whether you tell the truth or 
 not. Shall we talk of something else ? Squirrels, 
 f or instance- If you knew England well, you 
 might be a trifle surprised to find so many wild 
 things on an estate like this. In most places 
 there's nothing left but game. Where they 
 preserve pheasants, you know, the gamekeepers 
 shoot everything else for the sake of them. 
 
 156
 
 Tempe 
 
 Even the smaller singing birds, in some cases, 
 I've heard." 
 
 "But why?" asked Grey, interested in 
 spite of himself. 
 
 " The gamekeepers get a lust for killing, 
 Reggie says." 
 
 " Then you don't preserve pheasants here?" 
 
 " Father won't. We've got another place 
 in Northamptonshire that we go to for the 
 shooting." 
 
 " And yet," Grey said, " you carry out the 
 principle on the human scale. This place is 
 preserved for you. You and other families like 
 you are the lordly pheasants, and all the smaller 
 birds have to be kept down to give you pre- 
 cedence. Look at all this parkland ; it's unpro- 
 ductive, wasted ; good land that is being kept 
 for your pleasure, and you visit it how often, 
 three times a year?" He was glad of an oppor- 
 tunity to express himself, and in doing so to 
 condemn the Strattons. He was suddenly 
 bitter against them all, and more particularly 
 against this beautiful girl who thought she could 
 so easily make a fool of him. 
 
 ' Do you really believe all that?" she asked, 
 with a little sneer. 
 
 " It's my religion," he said. 
 157
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "I've never had much faith in people who 
 made a profession of their religion," she 
 retorted. 
 
 " And naturally, as you said last night, you 
 would prefer not to believe in mine." 
 
 " It's so easy to be a Socialist when you have 
 everything to gain by it," she commented. 
 
 " What have I to gain?" he asked. 
 
 " I've been wondering," she said. 
 
 "What an intolerable family you are!" he 
 broke out. " You are so sure of yourselves, so 
 utterly regardless of the feelings of anyone out- 
 side your own precious little circle. You have 
 told me to be honest, and you certainly have 
 set me an example in kind ; well, I am taking 
 your advice and speaking my mind about you 
 all." 
 
 " Is that the only form your honesty 
 takes?" she put in. 
 
 He attempted no answer to that question. 
 Undoubtedly she was pumping him, pricking 
 him on by small insults to make a clean breast 
 of his whole position. He had solved the 
 problem he had come out to solve ; he knew 
 now that she also suspected him. He felt 
 something very like hate for her at that 
 moment, not because she so misjudged him 
 
 158
 
 Tempe 
 
 that was comprehensible enough but because 
 she was in league with her family against him. 
 Indeed, the thought of her complicity in some 
 Stratton plot to make him confess himself, 
 seemed an altogether unendurable thing. He 
 felt that he could not remain any longer in her 
 presence, and the contemplation of another 
 four or five days' stay at the Hall was a misery 
 too great to be borne. 
 
 For some minutes they walked on in silence, 
 and then she said quietly, " That is our view." 
 
 He looked up and gazed before him with a 
 faint gasp of amazement. 
 
 They had come to the highest point of the 
 park, and at their feet the ground broke and 
 plunged down into a steep, grass-grown cliff 
 dominating the rolling foot-hills that flowed in 
 broad undulations down to the keel of the 
 valley. On the farther side, misty blue in the 
 soft, almost visible air of the hot forenoon, 
 the outpost tors of the moor behind Okehamp- 
 ton rose faintly through the haze. It was all 
 intensely English, with some quality about it of 
 Irish fertility and nurtured richness ; but the 
 breadth and colour of it, the vivid beauty of 
 the gentle hills and the great masses of wood 
 filling the fall and rise of the wide valley with 
 
 159
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 a satisfying detail- that led the eye across to 
 those ultimate bastions of Dartmoor, splendidly 
 mysterious in the exaggerated distance all this 
 sweeping loveliness of form and tint brought a 
 wonderful, inexplicable sense of repose and 
 ecstasy. 
 
 Grey became conscious that Tempe was 
 speaking after, as it seemed to him, an immense 
 interval of absorption. 
 
 " . . . And before rain," she was saying, 
 " the tors grow black and hard, and march 
 closer, and the valley gets narrower and steeper, 
 and you wonder if the moors aren't coming to 
 wipe out the park, until the mist and clouds 
 fall all over them and wrap them away ; and 
 then the south wind brings the mist across the 
 valley, and you stand here and wait for the 
 
 rain.' 
 
 He thrilled at the picture she had conjured 
 up and at the knowledge that he and she at that 
 moment so perfectly understood one another. 
 It was quite impossible that they were the same 
 two people who had quarrelled so rudely as they 
 came through the wood. 
 
 ;< I feel the raindrops on my face," he 
 murmured, "like little, lost, drifting spirits." 
 And he shivered as if he were suddenly cold. 
 
 100
 
 Tempe 
 
 Tempe laughed. "In this hot sunshine? 
 she said. " Shall we sit down?" 
 
 HE turned his attention from the view and 
 looked at her. She had her hands clasped 
 round her knees, and was still staring out 
 towards the mysteries of the distant moor. He 
 thought that all the beauty of the valley had 
 found human expression in her face. 
 
 * I have been doubting you," he said at 
 last. 
 
 ' Doubting me ? ' Her eyes met his and 
 opened with that round, somewhat insolent 
 wonder she could so effectively assume. 
 
 He was not to be balked. He nodded 
 
 gravely. " You shall have the truth," he said. 
 
 4 1 believed that you were a spy, a Stratton 
 
 spy in league with your family, set on to catch 
 
 me tripping." 
 
 'Mercy!" she ejaculated softly; and then, 
 ' You admit you were there to be caught?" 
 
 He shook his head impatiently. " Don't 
 
 begin again," he said. "When you spoke of 
 
 the moors just now I knew that we might be 
 
 friends. There is something in you that I 
 
 L 161
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 understand. Perhaps it*s the bond of blood 
 between us." 
 
 She set her lips together and turned her 
 face away from him. "Is it really true?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " Absolutely," he replied. 
 
 " But why haven't you made the claim 
 before?" 
 
 " For the same reason that I haven't made 
 it now." 
 
 " Not openly," she flashed at him. " That 
 is what I've been hating you for." 
 
 " You can't mean that you think I was 
 responsible for those newspaper paragraphs?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "Well, of course I thought so," she said 
 emphatically. 
 
 After all I had said to you?" 
 I thought that must be humbug; part of 
 the game." 
 
 "Good God!" he said, with a spurt of 
 temper. 
 
 She leaned a little towards him. " And 
 what about you?" she retorted. " You thought 
 I was a filthy, mean, prevaricating spy." 
 
 " Yes, but I acquitted you without asking 
 to hear your defence." 
 
 162 
 
 . . 
 . .
 
 a 
 
 said. 
 
 Tempe 
 
 I should think you jolly well did," she 
 
 " You think that you ought to be above 
 suspicion, but that I " 
 
 " Had better explain yourself at once," she 
 interrupted. 
 
 " I resent the insinuation," he said. "Can't 
 you believe me without explanations?" 
 
 "Oh, bless the man!" Tempe exclaimed 
 impatiently. " Can't you see that I'm bursting 
 with curiosity?" 
 
 " There's nothing to tell," he said. " I was 
 a damned fool in the first place to accept Lady 
 Downham's invitation. I was interested in 
 you as a family. You were a new species to 
 me. I thought these people have asked me 
 because they expect to be bored in Devon- 
 shire, and they can't get anyone else to stay 
 there just now." 
 
 " Perfectly true," Tempe interpolated. 
 
 " Well," Grey went on, " how in Heaven's 
 name could I know that at that very time an 
 American journalist should have just arrived in 
 London with information about me that he had 
 blackmailed out of the one man in Canada who 
 knows the truth?" 
 
 " Who was that?" she asked quickly. 
 163
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " The tutor who went over with Edward 
 Stratton. His name's William Hayles. He 
 settled in Toronto and made a pile." 
 
 " Well, you must confess that it was a 
 wonderful coincidence," she remarked thought- 
 fully, and added, "how long have you known 
 that you were Edward Stratton's son?" 
 
 " Nearly fifteen years," he said. " My 
 mother told me the whole story." 
 
 "They really were married?" 
 
 " Sure. I've got an attested copy of the 
 certificate." 
 
 " You could prove it up to the hilt if you 
 wanted to?" 
 
 He nodded. "That tutor Hayles was a 
 witness to the marriage," he said. 
 
 For a few moments she stared out over the 
 valley in silence, and it was Grey who spoke 
 first. 
 
 " If your curiosity is satisfied, there are a 
 few questions that I should like to ask you," 
 he said. 
 
 " Such as " she suggested. 
 
 " How did you know about me?" 
 ' You told me, practically. The things you 
 said down at the old Hall last night put me 
 on the track ; and then when you came into 
 
 164
 
 Tempe 
 
 the drawing-room after you had seen that 
 journalist person I suppose that was the man 
 who came to see you? well, you absolutely 
 gave it all away." 
 
 " And when did you really begin to doubt 
 me?" 
 
 " After I went upstairs last night. I began 
 to think. I tried to make out a case for you; 
 I did, honestly ; and I didn't hate you much 
 then. But just now, in the wood, I felt sure 
 you were a humbug. You put me off so so 
 speciously." 
 
 She did not look at him as she spoke, and 
 he watched her with an absorbed admiration. 
 
 " I followed the same lines," he said when 
 she paused. " In the wood I hated you 
 fiercely." 
 
 She turned her head slightly and looked at 
 
 him out of the corners of her eyes. "If I 
 
 hadn't suspected you, too," she remarked, 
 
 ' I would never have forgiven you for thinking 
 
 me a spy. Eugh !" 
 
 " I had some excuse," he explained. " I 
 had begun to feel hunted, and that's an un- 
 pleasant feeling for an innocent man. There's 
 your uncle, too 
 
 " You don't think he suspects," she inter-. 
 165
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 rupted ; and she swung round and faced him, 
 suddenly alert and a little anxious. 
 
 "I do," he replied. "I've been fencing 
 with him for nearly twenty-four hours now." 
 And he told her how Mr. Shepston had caught 
 him examining the Daily Post in the hall the 
 day before, of their diplomacy on the links, and 
 of Shepston's apparent eagerness to keep the 
 Stratton visitor that morning. 
 
 " He's so clever," Tempe said. She 
 narrowed her eyes and looked into some in- 
 visible distance as she weighed the evidence 
 submitted to her. "He wanted to keep you 
 till he was certain," she announced, "and, 
 perhaps, to stop you doing anything more 
 with the papers. And yet he likes you, I 
 know." 
 
 " He may be pretending that for his own 
 purposes," suggested Grey. 
 
 " To you, yes," she returned; " but not to 
 
 me. Unless I wonder ' She stopped 
 
 abruptly, and then Grey saw her blush for the 
 first time. 
 
 " I do wish you wouldn't stare," she said 
 impatiently. 
 
 " I didn't realise ' he said, dropped his 
 eyes, and then went on, " You were going to 
 
 1 66
 
 Tempe 
 
 say about your uncle that he wouldn't pretend 
 to you that he liked me unless " 
 
 " I forget," she replied curtly. " You put 
 it out of my head by staring." 
 
 " But it's rather important to me," he 
 urged. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well, I want to know what Mr. Shep- 
 ston's attitude is likely to be." 
 
 " I can't see that it can make any 
 difference." 
 
 "It can," he said. "If he were to tell 
 your father and mother that I " 
 
 " He won't do that," she said positively. 
 " Not until he is absolutely certain. You see, 
 Uncle Reggie runs us all of us. He writes all 
 father's speeches, and does everything. He is 
 the Stratton ' ghost,' if you know what I mean. 
 And he is tremendously fond of us all, and we 
 are simply devoted to him ; but he doesn't 
 trust any of us to do a thing for ourselves not 
 my father, or anyone. So, you see, what I'm 
 coming to is that he won't say a word about 
 you until he has worked out his whole plan, 
 and then he'll just give us our parts, and we 
 shall have to play them. Dear Reggie, how 
 he must be enjoying himself now ! He's never 
 
 167
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 had quite such a big thing as this to tackle 
 before. Do lead him on a little. Make him 
 think you're really going to claim the title." 
 
 " I can't monkey with this," Grey replied 
 decisively. 
 
 4 ' Do you take it so seriously ? ' ' she asked 
 lightly, as if she, who half an hour before had 
 found him worthy of hate, could now only 
 regard him as a means of amusement. 
 
 "You were serious, too, a while ago," he 
 said. 
 
 " No, merely irritable, because you thwarted 
 my curiosity," replied Tempe. 
 
 He reflected for a moment, remembering 
 their conversation by the gateway of the old 
 Hall, and then decided to venture an explana- 
 tion of her mood. 
 
 "I'd have said," he began, "that you'd 
 been suffering another temptation one of 
 those unpleasant temptations to taste the 
 reality of life you spoke about last night." 
 
 " H ow clever of you!" she remarked on a 
 note of ridicule. 
 
 He was not to be thwarted by her taunts. 
 
 'I'm not much of a psychologist," he went 
 
 on, " but I have a feeling now and again that 
 
 I understand you in some queer way. It's a 
 
 1 68
 
 Tempe 
 
 feeling that comes and goes, but when 1 have 
 it I just feel dead sure." 
 
 " Got it now?" she asked. 
 
 " I have," he said. " I may be quite 
 wrong, but I feel sure that you've been looking 
 out at life, and that you're afraid of it. Some- 
 thing tells you that it's the only chance you 
 have to make the best of yourself, but you 
 won't listen " 
 
 " Oh, shut up!" she interrupted him 
 sharply. ' You're only elaborating what I 
 told you, and getting prosy and preachy about 
 it. If you're going to be steam-rollerish, I'm 
 going back." 
 
 Grey smiled. He knew that he was staring 
 at her again, but he dared to go on staring. 
 Her rebuff had not discouraged him ; indeed, it 
 had given him a strange sense of pleasure. He 
 felt that nothing she could say or do could 
 possibly offend him again, that every look and 
 word of hers must ever be for him a perfect 
 and characteristic expression of her beauty. 
 
 ;< Are you so afraid even of my re- 
 minder?" he asked. 
 
 She looked at him disdainfully. " Afraid?" 
 she said, " of you?" 
 
 He nodded complacently. 
 
 i6q
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 She returned his stare for a moment, and 
 then suddenly snapped her fingers at him. 
 "Stratton!" she said. 
 
 He flushed slightly at that taunt. "What 
 do you mean?" he asked. 
 
 "You!" she said. "How you could ever 
 have been in the house a minute without our 
 guessing, I don't know. Why, you're a self- 
 sufficient, self-satisfied Stratton to the back- 
 bone. It's taken another shape, that's all. 
 You haven't got the money or the position, so 
 you've found another cause for self-congratu- 
 lation. My dear man, you're only an intel- 
 lectual, ethical aristocrat, who thinks himself a 
 shade too good for the merely titled members 
 of his own family." She clapped her hands 
 excitedly. "Oh, why didn't I see that 
 before?" she asked the landscape. 
 
 He did not answer her at once. He was 
 remembering how anxiously his mother had 
 watched for some sign in him of Stratton 
 blood, and had never found one. She had 
 looked for the mark of his father's tempera- 
 ment, because he was the only one of the race 
 known to her. It might well be, Grey thought, 
 that he had inherited many qualities from 
 Stratton that his mother had not the knowledge 
 
 170
 
 Tempe 
 
 to recognise. The possibility did not shock 
 him as it might have shocked him a few weeks 
 before. 
 
 " We're quits, then," he remarked quietly. 
 
 " Why quits?" she asked. 
 
 " I mean we can argue from the same level 
 as relatives. I hesitated to claim that till you 
 found evidences in my character ; but now, as 
 a half -first-cousin, and as representing the elder 
 branch, I shall certainly take it upon me to 
 try and save you from the horror of living for 
 amusement." 
 
 She preferred to answer the faintly banter- 
 ing tone of his voice rather than the underlying 
 seriousness of his words. 
 
 " This is one of the things you can 
 'monkey' with, I suppose?" she suggested. 
 
 He became grave at once. " No," he said; 
 " I was never more in earnest." 
 
 She shook her head impatiently. '* I don't 
 like you in the role of professor," she announced 
 with decision. " And it's time we were going 
 back. Are you coming? You needn't if you'd 
 sooner stay, but we are having lunch early 
 because of this deadly visit of state." 
 
 ' I prefer to come back with you," he said, 
 getting to his feet ; and then he faced her and 
 
 171
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 added : " But I mean to talk to you about your 
 duty to yourself and to life." 
 
 A spasm of temper crossed her face ; she set 
 her teeth, and her eyes were dark with a sudden 
 fierce resentment. " I won't listen," she said. 
 " If you ever try to talk to me about that again, 
 I shall take no more notice of you." 
 
 "I'll risk that," he returned quietly. 
 
 " If you do I shall hate you," she said ; and, 
 indeed, at that moment her face expressed a 
 very positive dislike of him. 
 
 He did not shrink from her. " Why fight 
 so desperately against all that is best in your- 
 self?" he asked. 
 
 And then her mood suddenly gave way. 
 She seemed, incredibly, on the verge of tears. 
 
 "Oh, do leave me alone!" she said. "I 
 can't change myself ; you must see that I can't. 
 Please drop that subject. I was insane to 
 start it." 
 
 And, with that curious comprehension of 
 her moods that had come to him, he realised 
 that for the present he would be wise to give 
 way to her. But he knew that he had beaten 
 her, that he had the power to subdue her, and 
 he was furiously, ecstatically glad. 
 
 "Very well," he said. "I'll drop that 
 172
 
 Tempe 
 
 subject now." He paused and added : " We're 
 still friends?" 
 
 " I don't know," she returned. " You're 
 a quite objectionable bully. I don't think I 
 could ever like you." 
 
 He laughed happily. " What was it you 
 were telling me about squirrels a while ago?" 
 he said. " I have a feeling that we'd do well 
 to discuss squirrels on the way back." 
 
 But, almost inevitably, their conversation 
 gravitated towards his heirship to Stratton. 
 They shared an important secret that brought 
 them together in an alliance, while the rest of 
 the family were beyond a fence that they must 
 be prevented from scaling ; and the important 
 adversary was Shepston, at once generalissimo 
 and scout for his side. 
 
 Some sense of desertion from her own party 
 was evidently in Tempe 's mind, for as soon as 
 they had started she put aside some irrelevant 
 remark of her companion's and said : " It 
 bothers me rather that I can't tell any of 
 them, but I suppose it wouldn't do." She 
 made him understand by her manner that this 
 thing must be seriously discussed. 
 
 " If once the fact were admitted," Grey 
 said, " I should either have to prove it or allow 
 
 173
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 you all to think me a liar and a sharp ; and if 
 I produced my evidence I should put Lord 
 Downham in a very equivocal position." 
 
 Tempe shook her head. "I see that it 
 wouldn't do," she agreed; and then looked up 
 at him and asked : " Would nothing ever tempt 
 you to claim all this? Can't you think of any 
 conceivable thing that might tempt you to 
 do it?" 
 
 His ' ' No ' ' was given without the least 
 shade of hesitation. "If I wanted anything 
 very badly," he explained, and he had a new- 
 born application in his mind that was strangely 
 thrilling and attractive, " I wouldn't be proud 
 to win it that way." 
 
 "But if it were the only way?" she sub- 
 mitted. 
 
 " Why, I wouldn't think the thing worth 
 winning," he said. 
 
 " Oh!" Tempe commented, as if she found 
 little satisfaction in that statement of his 
 opinion ; and then she went on quickly : "Of 
 course, it's only Uncle Reggie that you need 
 be afraid of ; all the others are perfectly safe ; 
 they would as soon suspect you of being the 
 American President in disguise as the rightful 
 heir to Stratton."
 
 Tempe 
 
 "Yes; I'm afraid of your uncle," Grey 
 admitted. 
 
 " It would be awful if the truth came out," 
 Tempe went on after a thoughtful pause. 
 " Appalling ! I can't imagine what the effect 
 would be on the poor old pater. It would 
 break him up altogether, I think. He's the 
 one that really counts. I don't think Mother 
 would be badly hurt. She doesn't get much 
 joy out of it, as it is ; and just the title wouldn't 
 mean anything to her. And it would do Dickie 
 
 a lot of good; he wants waking up " She 
 
 broke off and looked up at him with a friendly 
 smile. " But I'm glad you're so safe," she 
 remarked. 
 
 Grey felt the blood rush to his face. If he 
 had ever felt any need for support, that simple 
 statement of hers would have reinforced his 
 determination a hundredfold; but it was so 
 sweet that he longed to hear it repeated. 
 ** How do you know I'm so safe?" he asked. 
 
 They were under the high stone wall that 
 fenced the gardens on the north side, and 
 Tempe 's fingers were on the handle of the little 
 green door before she replied. "You're so 
 strong," she said, with a little sigh; and then 
 she pushed the door open, and they were
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 within speaking distance of the head gardener. 
 Tempe called to him at once. " Oh, Mr. 
 McFie," she said, " aren't any of the wall 
 peaches ripe yet? I like them so much better 
 than those out of the houses." 
 
 "Well, I'm no sure, melady, that they'll 
 be just ready the day," McFie replied. 
 
 " He's always like that," Tempe explained, 
 as she and Grey went on towards the house. 
 " Whatever you ask him, there's always a 
 ' doot ' about it." And she kept to the fruitful 
 topic of McFie until they had entered the 
 house. 
 
 BUT Grey was well satisfied with the hope she 
 had given him. He faced the situation in a 
 new light that afternoon. He could no longer 
 pretend to evade the fact that he was in love 
 with Lady Tempe Stratton, and he found 
 nothing but happiness in the recognition. He 
 had to confront the obstacles that lay between 
 him and the attainment of his desire ; and the 
 greatest of them, as he believed, was Tempe's 
 own unwillingness. He did not flatter himself 
 for one instant that she was in love with him ; 
 
 176
 
 Tempe 
 
 he hardly contemplated the possibility that 
 was something too wonderful to be within his 
 scope as yet. But he believed that he had 
 reason to hope. She had admitted a certain 
 admiration for him. She had found him worthy 
 of liking, and had accepted his unsupported 
 statements about his parentage without a 
 moment's hesitation. More than this, she had 
 admitted last night and as he saw it with even 
 greater conviction this morning that she was 
 greatly tempted to explore the risks of life. 
 He relied immensely on that expression of her 
 individuality. He saw such fine possibilities in 
 her acknowledgment that her present life did 
 not satisfy her. In the flush of his afternoon's 
 enthusiasm he had faith in his own power to 
 influence her ; he cherished the exquisite 
 thought that in some sense they understood 
 one another. 
 
 And beside that overwhelming problem of 
 Tempe's own consent, the lesser obstacles 
 showed dimly as mere vexations that might 
 for a time postpone the ultimate attainment. 
 The opposition of her family was a thing that 
 could have little weight with her, he thought, 
 and might be overcome by sheer persistence on 
 his own part. It was possible that Shepston's 
 
 M i 77
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 influence might be thrown into the scale against 
 the Strattons. And it came to Grey that 
 Tempe might have had the same thought when 
 she had so cleverly shirked any explanation of 
 her uncle's possible reason for pretending B 
 feeling of friendship for the man who was 
 threatening the stability of Stratton. Un- 
 doubtedly she had meant that, Grey thought, 
 recalling her sudden blush and her hesitation. 
 For a time he lingered over the memory, find- 
 ing encouragement in the reflection that the 
 possibility had been so near the surface of her 
 own mind. She had, perhaps, even considered 
 him as a means to explore the great world 
 outside her experience. 
 
 And with Shepston as an ally the opposition 
 of the family appeared insignificant. Grey 
 found it in his heart to be more than a little 
 sorry for them. 
 
 A slight reaction came before the afternoon 
 was over. When he had played his round with 
 Stratton, had tea with him, and finally escaped 
 from the vexation of talking golf while his 
 thoughts were soaring among visions of an 
 incredibly beautiful future, Grey wandered 
 down toward the gate of the park through 
 which, as his inquiry had made clear, the motor 
 
 178
 
 Tempe 
 
 party must certainly return. They would be 
 home between five and six o'clock, Tempe 
 had said. 
 
 There was no lodge at the east gate, which 
 was only a subsidiary and little used entrance, 
 and for a time Grey leaned against the pier of 
 the wicket, looked out across the narrow Devon- 
 shire lane, and watched a reaper at work in 
 the field opposite. But presently he turned 
 back into the park. There was little traffic in 
 the lane, but it annoyed him that the occasional 
 passers-by should so subserviently curtsy or 
 touch their hats to him. Even a prosperous- 
 looking man in a rubber-tyred dogcart touched 
 his hat a tenant of the estate, no doubt. 
 
 He looked at his watch and found that the 
 time was a quarter to seven. A sudden feeling 
 of doubt and loneliness came to him. He 
 began to wonder if he had not been unduly 
 elated that morning. All that he had believed 
 a sign of encouragement might have been no 
 more than evidence of something like pity. 
 She had admired his determination, and had 
 been a little sorry for him ; had condescended 
 with a charming sympathy to enter for a 
 moment into a point of view that must have 
 been utterly remote from her own. And at 
 
 179
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 that thought he was suddenly conscious of 
 bitter desolation ; he felt forsaken and alone, 
 as he had felt when his mother died. He 
 shook his head impatiently and walked briskly 
 back to the gate, as if he would escape from his 
 fears by physical exercise. He went out into 
 the lane, and looked up to where the road 
 leaped into sight as it crossed the ridge of the 
 near hills. 
 
 But no motor was visible, and though he 
 listened attentively through an interval of 
 silence afforded by the cessation of the whir- 
 ring, clacking reaper, he could hear no distant 
 drumming of the car ascending the farther side 
 of the ridge. 
 
 She had gone out of his life that afternoon ; 
 had gone back into the world of her own people. 
 She was away from him, giving him no 
 thought; and he had no hold on her, no power 
 to recall her. And yet in his heart he felt that 
 in some way they two had always belonged to 
 each other, that he had come from Canada only 
 to meet and claim her. 
 
 Soon after seven o'clock he gave up his vigil 
 and hurried back to the house. He thought 
 that he must have missed them, that they had 
 returned by some other gate; and he had left 
 
 180
 
 Tempe 
 
 himself barely enough time to walk the two 
 miles back through the park and to dress for 
 dinner. 
 
 He was just entering the Stratton gardens 
 when he heard the motor coming up behind 
 him. 
 
 Tempe hardly looked at him as the car 
 passed. 
 
 And at dinner Lady Adelaide began, and 
 the others continued, a conversation that 
 played round the central topic of Tempe 's 
 probable engagement to a certain Eddie Yax- 
 ley, whom Grey presently placed as the son of 
 the Marquis of Cheshire, and heir to the duke- 
 dom of Liverpool. Incidentally this Eddie 
 Yaxley was his own second cousin, he remem- 
 bered. 
 
 They spoke of this possible alliance with no 
 sort of reserve or hesitation, and Tempe herself 
 came in with various comments and objections, 
 and with no more appearance of self-conscious- 
 ness than if she had been discussing the engage- 
 ment of a distant relative. 
 
 ;< If only I could take Eddie seriously for 
 one minute," she said once; "but he's so 
 exactly like everyone I've ever met." 
 
 Lady Adelaide made her usual preparations 
 181
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 for speech, and then looked up, with a chuckle. 
 " Bless you, Tempe," she said, "that's his 
 charm ; and, thank God, we've all of us got it. 
 If you want to marry anyone who hasn't, you'll 
 have to run off with an organ-grinder, like 
 Eddie's great-aunt of precious memory. And 
 she didn't get much fun out of it, poor thing. 
 I'm not sure she didn't come down to living at 
 Ostend or some other awful place before she 
 died." 
 
 !< I say, was that the claimant's grand- 
 mother?" asked Stratton. "I should say he'd 
 be a bit of a sport if he took after her." 
 
 Tempe looked thoughtfully at her brother 
 as if she were pondering some comment on 
 his remark, and then said : " Who won this 
 afternoon?" 
 
 " Oh, Grey six and four, and the bye, two 
 up. He was all round me," Stratton replied. 
 
 Grey had a. momentary wish that he had not 
 played quite so well. If he had been right off 
 his game, Tempe might have inferred that his 
 mind had been given to other things, 
 
 " I fancy you hardly did yourself justice," 
 he said to Stratton ; and then Lady Downham, 
 who had been following her own line of thought, 
 broke in with : 
 
 182
 
 Tempe 
 
 " I think the engagement ought to be 
 announced in October." 
 
 Grey expected a fierce rejection of this 
 drastic proposal; he believed that Tempe had 
 only been trifling with the topic so far he had 
 hoped that perhaps she was even teasing him 
 but she showed no sign of any perturbation as 
 she said : 
 
 *' Oughtn't you to get Eddie's consent 
 first ?" 
 
 Her father had taken little part in the 
 earlier conversation, but he joined in now by 
 saying : 
 
 "Eddie's willingness is is understood. 
 Cheshire and I were talking about it at at 
 Goodwood. The old duke is very very 
 anxious to have the affair settled," 
 
 " Eddie has never mentioned it to me," 
 Tempe said pertly. "I do think he might 
 have let me know that we are engaged. I had 
 no idea. It's very embarrassing." 
 
 " Seems to have come down from Scotland 
 on purpose to see you," remarked Stratton. 
 " Pretty decent hint, I should think. When's 
 he coming over?" 
 
 "He may be coming to-morrow/ 2 Lady 
 Downham said. " He wasn't quite sure." 
 
 '83
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " One of the hunters was seedy," put in 
 Tempe. " It depended on that. Probably he 
 meant to propose to me to-day, and forgot it. 
 If the mare's no better, perhaps he'll wire : 
 4 Hadn't we better get engaged, old girl ? 
 Yours, Eddie.' I distinctly remember his call- 
 ing me ' old girl ' when I was six, and he's 
 never lost the habit. I rather admired him in 
 those days." 
 
 Grey made no attempt to join in the con- 
 versation. He was furiously angry. The 
 Strattons were once again treating him as a 
 negligible outsider, and now, for the first time, 
 he resented their attitude. In thought he had 
 that day come very near to them all, had 
 regarded them in the new light of being 
 Tempe 's relatives ; in his mind he had opposed 
 and conquered them. But chiefly his anger 
 had flamed up against Tempe. He could not 
 believe that she was serious in her quiet accept- 
 ance of an engagement to this man for whom 
 she had so obviously no more sentiment than 
 that of a peculiarly placid friendship. He 
 thought that she was being false to herself and 
 unfair to her father and mother in thus pre- 
 tending to encourage them in their project of 
 re-confirming the old tradition of a Yaxley- 
 
 184
 
 Tempe 
 
 Stratton alliance. He knew from that mono- 
 graph he had read on the first morning of his 
 stay that this tradition went far back into the 
 history of the two families. The latest record 
 was of the marriage between his own grand- 
 parents, but plainly the disaster that had 
 followed that particular match was not to be 
 treated as a precedent. 
 
 He tried to hide the expression of his 
 impatience, and caught Shepston regarding 
 him with that bland stare which he had come 
 to mistrust. 
 
 " Must seem queer to you, Grey," Shepston 
 said, " to find yourself back in the Middle Ages 
 all this old business of state-arranged alliances, 
 eh?" 
 
 "I was puzzled," Grey said, "to know 
 why the high contracting parties had not been 
 married by proxy while they were in the school- 
 room." 
 
 He looked at Tempe, but her eyes avoided 
 his. She was smiling with a kind of demure 
 amusement. 
 
 He determined that he must speak to her 
 alone some time during the evening. 
 
 Lady Dow r nham was saying that the practice 
 of marriage by proxy was confined to royalty. 
 
 185
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "Indeed?" Grey said. 
 " I'm sure I don't know why," Lady 
 Downham concluded. 
 
 6 
 
 AFTER dinner Grey fretted impatiently through 
 a dreary half -hour on the terrace. He tried 
 continually to catch Tempe's eye, but she 
 would not look at him, and she had managed to 
 wedge herself into an unapproachable position 
 between her mother and Lady Adelaide. He 
 knew quite well that she was aware of his 
 attempts to attract her notice, and it angered 
 him to see the easy, self-confident way in which, 
 as she talked, she could single him out for avoid- 
 ance. Even when he directly addressed her she 
 would answer without looking at him, and yet 
 so naturally that no onlooker could have guessed 
 that she had any purpose in not meeting his 
 glance. He hated to think that her cleverness 
 should be directed against himself, but as yet he 
 was chiefly resentful of her long-continued per- 
 secution of him. He believed that if he could 
 see her for ten minutes alone he could break 
 through her assumption of indifference. 
 
 He refused Stratton's invitation to billiards 
 1 86
 
 Tempe 
 
 with a slight brusquerie, and, walking to the 
 edge of the terrace, stood there for a few 
 moments leaning over the balustrade with his 
 back to the little party under the drawing-room 
 windows; and when he turned round, Lady 
 Downham and Lady Adelaide were standing 
 up, and Tempe and Stratton had disappeared. 
 
 :< Coming in?" asked Shepston. 
 
 Grey shook his head. " Not yet," he said; 
 but he went to the drawing-room windows when 
 the bridge-party had sat down to their game, 
 and satisfied himself that Tempe was not one 
 of them. 
 
 She might be upstairs with her brother in 
 the billiard-room, he thought, and hesitated for 
 a moment as to whether he would not go and 
 seek her there. And then, with a sudden con- 
 tempt for the feeble, beseeching part he must 
 appear to be playing, he walked down the 
 terrace, past the portico, to the place where he 
 and she had talked two nights before. He 
 would run after her no longer, he decided. He 
 was acting the supplicant, the weak, entreat- 
 ing lover. No ; if she would not speak to him 
 of her own accord, he would make no effort 
 to thrust himself upon her. And he had a hope 
 that if she wanted to see him she would look 
 
 187
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 for him in this place. It was a perfect night- 
 he would wait for her here. 
 
 He leaned his arms on the breast-high 
 balustrade and stared out over the park. In 
 the west the pale sickle of the young moon was 
 dipping below the trees. 
 
 HE had been there more than an hour when 
 he heard the whisper of a silk dress on the 
 terrace behind him. He did not turn round, 
 but a picture of her sprang up suddenly before 
 his eyes, as he had seen her at dinner, pretend- 
 ing demure amusement. She had been dressed 
 in black that night, with a single blossom of 
 scarlet geranium in her hair. She had looked 
 older, he thought, and less simple. He had 
 had a glimpse of what she might become if she 
 married the future Duke of Liverpool a 
 brilliant, versatile, insincere woman. 
 
 She came and lifted herself on to the balus- 
 trade with the same easy grace she had shown 
 two nights ago ; but to-night she did not speak. 
 She was evidently waiting for him to begin, 
 but he did not even look at her. Now that she 
 was there so near him he had forgotten his 
 
 1 88
 
 Tempe 
 
 resentment and he was afraid afraid lest he 
 might not have the strength and courage to 
 hold her there. 
 
 If he began now to argue with her, to 
 reproach her, make any appeal, she might leave 
 him alone and desolate once more. If only she 
 would stay he felt that he could forgive her 
 anything. 
 
 " Nice night," she remarked at last. 
 
 He looked up at her then ; he could just see 
 the outline of her and the gleam of her white 
 shoulders and arms under the starlight. She 
 was not looking at him, and he thought there 
 was something a little constrained in her 
 attitude, as if, now, she was striving rather 
 desperately for the insouciance she plainly 
 meant to attempt. 
 
 He could not pretend banter at that 
 moment. He felt that, at whatever risk, he 
 must know the truth. 
 
 'You're not going to marry this Yaxley 
 man ? " he said ; and though he had meant to 
 make a statement he found that he had asked 
 a question. 
 
 *I can't help myself," she said quietly. 
 
 ;< Do you mean that?" His tone was 
 almost violent. 
 
 189
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Certainly," she said. 
 
 " But you don't care two buttons about 
 him," he returned. '- Do you admit that you 
 will let yourself be badgered into a marriage 
 like that? Why, it just means misery for you 
 both." 
 
 "You don't understand," she said, and her 
 voice was very cold and even. ;< I've known 
 Eddie all my life, and I like him very much." 
 
 " And you are content to drift through life, 
 to do nothing, to become a mere conventional 
 Society puppet, to live without love or passion 
 for any person or thing on this earth?" he 
 asked vehemently. 
 
 " Quite," she said. " I think I implied as 
 much this morning. That is the life for which 
 I am peculiarly fitted." 
 
 "By God, you shan't marry this fellow!" 
 he broke out. " I will not let you." 
 
 *' Speaking as head of the family?" she put 
 in. 
 
 "No; speaking as Arthur Grey, a simple 
 Canadian citizen," he said. 
 
 ; I can't think that you will have much 
 influence with the family," she commented. 
 ' Nor with you?" he asked passionately. 
 
 "Nor with me," she replied. 
 190
 
 Tempe 
 
 He came closer to her, so close that he 
 could see her eyes in the half-darkness of the 
 August night. "If I were the Marquis of 
 Downham, would you marry me?" he asked. 
 
 She leaned a little towards him, so that their 
 faces were but a few inches apart. 
 
 44 If I said * Yes,' would you make your 
 claim?" she said. 
 
 " Never in a thousand years." His answer 
 came without hesitation, with a ringing convic- 
 tion that could not be questioned. 
 
 She drew back slightly. " I am not worth 
 so much?" she asked. 
 
 "You! Why, you're worth the whole 
 world!" he said. "It's for your sake that I 
 wouldn't claim it. I wouldn't condemn you to 
 fossilisation. I wouldn't see you grow to 
 become a prejudiced, selfish aristocrat, with no 
 ideas outside your own silly position, keeping 
 yourself alive by pampering your own vanity. 
 You're too good for that. You're fine. You've 
 got a soul and an intelligence. Come out of 
 this false world of yours and live, and you'll be 
 one of the great women of your time. Maybe 
 your name won't be in the London papers, and 
 no one will know the sort of work you are 
 doing ; but you'll be realising yourself, getting 
 
 191
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the best out of your life you can't do more 
 than that." 
 
 " How am I to do all this?" she asked. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, and then took his 
 fate in his hands. " By marrying me as I 
 am," he said simply. 
 
 " Please don't," she said. " Surely you 
 realise that that is utterly impossible?" She 
 dropped down from the balustrade, and when 
 he put out his hand as if he would hold her, 
 she slipped past him in the darkness. 
 
 "Tempe!" he called. 
 
 She did not answer him. 
 
 192
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SHEPSTON 
 
 HE did not take that very definite refusal as 
 in any sense final. He was inclined to neglect 
 her feeling for himself he knew that she liked 
 him, all his sense of their mutual understanding 
 told him that but he gave much anxious 
 thought to the consideration of her attitude 
 toward her own desires, her own life. It was 
 so clear that, after her one unguarded moment 
 of expression by the gateway of the old Hall, 
 she had faced her problem and decided for her 
 own world. The visit to the old Duchess of 
 Liverpool and the meeting with Yaxley had 
 confirmed her in her choice. She had opposed 
 the uneasiness of her finer spirit, and for a time, 
 at least, she had conquered. And Grey, with 
 a sturdy confidence in his own influence, 
 believed that he might revive the struggle, 
 and that eventually the spirit of Lady Tempe 
 Stratton must triumph over her material long- 
 N 193
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 ings for the satisfactions of her position and 
 power. It was incredible to him, biased as 
 much on one side as she on the other, that 
 any other termination could be possible. He 
 attached little importance to the threat of the 
 formal engagement she had held over him. He 
 hardly believed her serious in that; but even if 
 some freak urged her to find another refuge 
 from temptation in an announcement of her 
 intention to marry Eddie Yaxley, it would not 
 constitute a binding promise. If she could 
 treat the making of it so lightly, the break- 
 ing could hardly be a matter of very great 
 importance. 
 
 He saw no reason why he should not now 
 stay another week at Stratton. His absorption 
 in the thought of Tempe had sent his fear of 
 some journalistic exposure of his identity into 
 the background. He hoped fervently that no 
 such exposure would be made, but the chance 
 of it had ceased to scare him. If it came, he 
 must make full explanation ; surely, he thought, 
 not such a difficult matter when Tempe already 
 knew the whole story. 
 
 And so steady was his mind, so fixed his 
 opinions with regard to his own objects in life, 
 that never for one moment did he contemplate 
 
 194
 
 Shepston 
 
 the possibility of making his claim to all that 
 wealth and honour which would instantly put 
 Tempe within his reach. She had become the 
 dearest thing in his life. He believed that if 
 she were lost to him he could never again find 
 the old zest in any occupation or purpose. In 
 those few days he had come to the realisation 
 that she was the true complement of himself, 
 the essential and only possible companion and 
 wife for whom he had waited, and for whom, 
 all unknowingly, he had kept his mind and body 
 clean. But the influence of that persistent 
 training his mother had given him was mani- 
 fested now in a curious rigidity toward this one 
 subject. No mediaeval saint was ever more con- 
 vinced of the truth of his religion than was Grey 
 of his own opinion in this regard. The saint 
 might "have been tempted to venial sin, but 
 never to deny his God ; and in the same way 
 Grey was sublimely unconscious of any tempta- 
 tion to claim Stratton. In that he was, as yet, 
 a bigot. 
 
 Nevertheless, among all his apparent certi- 
 tudes, he was conscious of an earnest hope that 
 Mr. Yaxley's mare would keep him away from 
 the Hall that day. Grey was aware, for the 
 first time in his life, that he was not free from 
 
 195
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the vice of jealousy. He knew that he was 
 being unreasonable, and vainly argued with 
 himself; but the picture of Tempe and this 
 unknown man away together somewhere in the 
 park, filled him with an impatient fury that he 
 could not control. 
 
 Tempe kept out of his way that morning. 
 He had expected that she would, and was not 
 the less disappointed when his expectation was 
 fulfilled. He went into the library at ten 
 o'clock, spent a restless, miserable hour there 
 trying to read, and then went down to the ruins 
 of the old Hall. He was like a very young 
 angler who, having once caught a fish in a 
 certain pool, haunts the same spot with per- 
 sistent confidence. If she wants to find me, 
 Grey thought, she will in all probability look 
 for me here ; but after a perfunctory study of 
 architectural remains, continually interrupted 
 by a return to the point from which he could 
 just see the green door in the high wall of 
 the garden, he set off, a little wistfully, 
 to the second spot that was associated with 
 her presence to the green cliff that parted 
 the broad valley between Stratton and Dart- 
 moor. 
 
 The walk relieved his impatience, and when 
 196
 
 Shepston 
 
 he had spent a few abstracted minutes in gazing 
 at the view, he decided to explore the park 
 farther, partly for the sake of the walk, and 
 partly as an exercise in discipline he must put 
 the thought of meeting her out of his head for 
 the time being ; he would certainly see her at 
 lunch. And he had a whole week yet before 
 him. 
 
 His detour presently landed him at the gate 
 on the lane, and he found that if he walked 
 back from there at a reasonably slow pace he 
 would arrive at the Hall just in time for lunch. 
 
 He had gone about a mile when he heard 
 the warning hoot of a motor behind him. He 
 stood aside to let the car pass, and carefully 
 observed its occupants as they approached him. 
 One was obviously a chauffeur, the other was 
 a broad-shouldered, handsome man of thirty or 
 so, with a short, brown moustache. Grey had 
 no doubt that he was the Honourable Edward 
 Yaxley. 
 
 The car was going slowly, and as it passed 
 the two men stared into each other's eyes for 
 a moment. An observer might have noticed a 
 certain physical resemblance between them. 
 
 197
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 TEMPE was late for lunch. She came in after 
 they had all sat down, gave a vague nod which 
 included everyone, and took her place next to 
 Yaxley. 
 
 "So the mare's better?" she said. 
 
 " Not necessarily, you know," Yaxley 
 replied. 
 
 " Necessarily," Tempe said firmly. " You 
 wouldn't have come if she hadn't been." 
 
 " Well, as a matter of fact, she is," Yaxley 
 admitted; "but I was coming in any case." 
 
 " Don't be obvious," returned Tempe; and 
 then she looked across the table at Grey. 
 
 " What have you been doing all the morn- 
 ing?" she asked. " Writing a pamphlet in the 
 Socialist interest, or mugging in the library?" 
 
 Grey searched her expression for any 
 evidence even if it were only some faint 
 defiance of a remembrance of their parting on 
 the terrace ; but her smile and slight air of con- 
 descension were just such as might have marked 
 her attitude to any such unimportant visitor as 
 himself. 
 
 '* I was in the library for an hour or so," 
 1 98
 
 Shepston 
 
 he said quietly; "but I don't think I 
 'mugged.' In fact, I'm not quite sure that 
 I know how one ' mugs.' ' 
 
 " Oh ! Isn't that a Canadian word?" asked 
 Tempe brightly. *' I expect I got it from 
 Dickie. It's the same as * swatting,' you know 
 grinding, stuffing over books." 
 
 Grey nodded carelessly. He was determined 
 that she should not be allowed to score off him 
 in that company. " Your English slang is very 
 inexpressive," he said. "It seems designed to 
 conceal its meaning. Now, American slang 
 definitely aims at some kind of expression." 
 
 Tempe appeared to be surprised. " Does 
 it?" she asked. "I've seen samples of it that 
 were simply gibberish to me." 
 
 :< Only because you didn't recognise the 
 root- words," Grey replied. " And, naturally, 
 journalists and a certain class of writers tend to 
 elaborate to a ridiculous extent; but that's for 
 the most part meant as an absurdity." He 
 spoke to her as if he were politely correcting 
 a precocious child. 
 
 "How interesting!" Tempe remarked; and 
 turned to Yaxley. "Did you ride over?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "No; I motored," he said. 
 199
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 And then the conversation was split up into 
 groups. Grey found that Lady Adelaide was 
 asking him a question, and his attention was 
 distracted from the two people opposite. To 
 snub Tempe had hurt him even more than her 
 pretence of indifference ; but he dared do 
 nothing else in that company when she so 
 deliberately set out to patronise him. The only 
 alternative he could see was a conciliatory 
 attitude that would have been humiliating and 
 useless. He stole a glance at her now and 
 again, and found it impossible to believe that 
 anything more than a slight misunderstanding 
 was separating them. If he could talk to her 
 for one uninterrupted hour, he was sure 
 
 Lady Adelaide was an unmitigated nuisance 
 during that meal. She had begun now to ques- 
 tion him about the American " constitution," 
 and when he attempted an explanation he 
 found that her interest was not in the principles 
 of government, but in the reported weakness of 
 the American digestion. 
 
 Tempe had not been so absorbed in her 
 partner's conversation but that she was able to 
 overhear his mistake. 
 
 "You are so dreadfully literal, Mr. Grey," 
 she put in maliciously ; and this time he had no 
 
 200
 
 Shepston 
 
 answer ready. He knew the application that 
 she intended to convey, but he believed that, 
 though he had erred in every other deduction 
 with reference to her, he had been right in 
 accepting quite literally that confession of her 
 temptation. 
 
 He repressed a sigh. I must give her time, 
 he thought, as he turned back to analyse the 
 causes of weakness in the American digestive 
 system. 
 
 " They drink gallons of iced water, I've 
 heard," Lady Adelaide was saying. 
 
 The remedy of giving Tempe time to dis- 
 cover the truth as Grey saw it might have 
 had a chance of success if it had not been for 
 the presence of Eddie Yaxley, a factor that 
 seemed likely to upset all calculations. 
 
 For Tempe, with apparent cruelty, was 
 evidently determined not only that her engage- 
 ment should be announced that night, but also 
 that Grey should see the inevitability of it. 
 She proposed golf after lunch, and pointedly 
 invited him to play. 
 
 With the ready gullibility of the man in 
 love, he thought that she was relenting, that 
 she meant, at least, to give him an opportunity 
 to speak to her alone. 
 
 2OI
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "I'll be delighted," he said as carelessly as 
 he was able. 
 
 "Good," replied Tempe. "Then we'll 
 have a foursome. We can find some old clubs 
 for you, Eddie." 
 
 "All right, old girl," Yaxley agreed good- 
 humouredly. " You know I'm no earthly, of 
 
 course." 
 
 Dickie's inclusion was taken for granted, 
 but when they came to the question of partners 
 he began to raise objections. 
 
 "How many are you going to give us?" 
 Tempe asked when they came to the first tee. 
 
 "Who's us?" replied Dickie. 
 
 " Eddie and I are going to take you on," 
 his sister said. 
 
 Dickie surveyed the pair of them with frank 
 contempt. " Two strokes a hole and a bisque, 
 I should think," he suggested. 
 
 "Cheeky young beggar!" commented 
 Yaxley. 
 
 "Oh, look here, Tempe," Dickie con- 
 tinued, "you'd better play with me. It won't 
 be such a bad match then, if Eddie can hit the 
 ball at all," 
 
 Tempe made a face at him. " It's all been 
 arranged, dear little boy," she said. " Now, 
 
 202
 
 Shepston 
 
 do be good. Eddie and I are going to see if 
 we can't lick you at a stroke a hole." 
 
 Yaxley's expression was one of perfect 
 complacency. 
 
 Dickie shrugged his shoulders as if he was 
 willing to accept for once the boredom of 
 entertaining this foolish couple. It wasn't 
 golf, of course, but 
 
 And even before they reached the first green 
 Grey saw that the game was going to be made 
 unbearable for him. 
 
 Tempe was flirting with an openness that 
 made him writhe. He had never seen her in 
 this reckless, exuberant mood, and it hurt him 
 to see with what gusto she could enter into the 
 spirit of it. To all appearance she was foolishly, 
 madly happy. 
 
 She hit a fairly good ball from the tee, but 
 Yaxley only moved it a few yards farther when 
 his turn came. 
 
 "I say, I'm sorry," he said; "but you 
 know I'm no good at all, and I haven't had 
 a club in my hand for six months.' 1 
 
 "Beautiful it's beautiful!" Tempe ex- 
 claimed. " Look what a lovely lie you've given 
 me.' ? And then she wildly sliced her brassie 
 
 shot into the rough. 
 
 203
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Dickie wore an air of bored resignation. 
 "Better let them find it alone," he suggested 
 to his partner. 
 
 Grey nodded, and they strolled on in the 
 direction of their own ball. 
 
 The finding of Tempe's ball was not a 
 matter of great difficulty, but to get It to the 
 green appeared to be beyond their powers. 
 Grey heard the sound of delighted laughter, 
 and when he looked in their direction Tempe 
 hailed him with a shout. " Seven so far," she 
 called, and held up her hands with three fingers 
 turned down, 
 
 Yaxley was evidently entering into the spirit 
 of her mood. -'Wait for us," he shouted; 
 " we've got a chance yet." 
 
 " Shall we play on alone and leave 'em to 
 it?" asked Dickie. 
 
 Grey agreed almost savagely. At that 
 moment he was ready to leave her to her choice 
 for all eternity, if necessary. He wanted only 
 to be out of sight of her, away from the sound 
 of her laughter. She had fooled him, he 
 thought. She had tried to fool him before she 
 had known him five minutes with her silly 
 tricks in Portman Square. He had seen 
 through her then, but now she had her revenge. 
 
 204
 
 Shepston 
 
 She had been too clever for him ; she had sized 
 him up, and played to entrap him by pretend- 
 ing a great seriousness. She had guessed that 
 that was his weak point, and now she had 
 scored. 
 
 "Oh, yes, for God's sake, let us go on," he 
 said to Dickie. 
 
 " Good egg," Dickie replied, and looked up 
 at his partner with something very like admira- 
 tion. 
 
 " Frightful piffle playing golf like that," he 
 said. 
 
 Grey nodded. " We'll start from the 
 second tee," he said. 
 
 The other pair hailed them once, but Dickie 
 and Grey pretended not to hear, and the hail 
 was not repeated. 
 
 3 
 
 AFTER that Grey concentrated his attention on 
 the game. He was determined that Tempe 
 should not guess how deeply he was wounded. 
 And all through the afternoon he was steeling 
 himself to meet her again at tea with a com- 
 posed and careless face, while he did his best 
 to beat Dickie in order that she might not 
 
 205
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 glory in even the minor triumph of having put 
 him off his game. In the latter object he 
 certainly succeeded. Dickie took his beating 
 with his usual good temper, but as they were 
 walking back to the house he remarked casually 
 that he thought his opponent's handicap ought 
 to be reduced for the Stratton links. 
 
 Grey agreed absent-mindedly. He was 
 dreading the ordeal before him, but already he 
 was hardening himself to regard a possible 
 future from which Tempe was completely 
 excluded. He fully expected that her engage- 
 ment to Yaxley would be announced at tea 
 time. 
 
 They were all in the large drawing-room 
 when he and Dickie came in, and the flirtation 
 was being continued. Tempe was still in 
 hilarious spirits, and she and Yaxley were sit- 
 ting slightly apart from the four other members 
 of the family, who appeared to be deliberately 
 confining their attention to their own group. 
 
 " Who won?'' Tempe called out, as soon as 
 Grey and Dickie came into the room. 
 
 Dickie nodded over his shoulder at Grey. 
 " Going to reduce his handicap for Stratton," 
 he said, as he went over to the tea-table to help 
 
 himself. 
 
 206
 
 Shepston 
 
 Grey joined the larger group and accepted 
 the services of the footman he found that he 
 had become curiously oblivious of the presence 
 of servants during his three days in that house. 
 " I shall have become a typical aristocrat by 
 the time I leave here," he thought, and tried 
 to persuade himself that he hoped that time 
 would not be long postponed. Meanwhile he 
 felt that he was playing his part of indifference 
 remarkably well. 
 
 Shepston materially helped him by starting 
 a discussion on American literature, and they 
 were quite engrossed when Tempe was suddenly 
 inspired to make a very daring and undiplomatic 
 remark. 
 
 "Reggie, dear!" she called out, focusing 
 everyone's attention, "don't you think there 
 is quite a remarkable likeness between Eddie 
 and Mr. Grey?" 
 
 Shepston looked round sharply and kept his 
 eyes on her as he said quietly : 
 
 " Yes. They might almost be er shall 
 we say second cousins?" 
 
 Grey saw a faintly scared look come into 
 Tempe 's eyes, and there could be no question 
 as to the guiltiness of her blush. She tried to 
 meet her uncle's gaze, but for a moment she 
 
 207
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 was obviously nonplussed. Then she laughed 
 with the same slightly boisterous gaiety she had 
 displayed all the afternoon. " How ridiculous 
 you are, dear," she said. " Are second cousins 
 ever alike?" 
 
 Shepston did not answer. He had turned 
 away from her and had removed and was polish- 
 ing his eyeglass. 
 
 Grey suffered a horrible shiver of doubt. It 
 seemed possible that he would be instantly 
 Called upon to explain himself. Shepston 
 knew that was certain now and he might 
 have told everything to Lord Downham. Grey 
 looked up prepared, if necessary, to face the 
 music. And he was not ready ; he knew in that 
 minute that he wanted much time and con- 
 sideration before he told his story and made his 
 declaration to all Stratton. 
 
 But Lord Downham was placidly sipping 
 his tea and had begun to detail a somewhat 
 wandering anecdote to his wife and Lady 
 Adelaide. He had certainly heard what had 
 been said, but he knew nothing as yet, and his 
 suspicions had evidently not been aroused. 
 
 Shepston had replaced his eyeglass, and it 
 was with his habitual bland smile that he 
 said : 
 
 208
 
 . . 
 
 Shepston 
 
 But I find your average American 
 novelist, Grey, still tied to the old romantic 
 tradition." 
 
 Grey nodded agreement, but he was not 
 listening. He had found another interpretation 
 of Shepston's audacious comment, and this 
 time he believed the inference was a true one. 
 Yes ; Shepston had wanted to find out if Tempe 
 knew. And he had succeeded. 
 
 Grey rallied his attention and returned to 
 the discussion on American literature, but he 
 was longing to be out of earshot of Tempe 's 
 laugh. It rang false, he thought, laboured and 
 unnatural. She must be conscious that she was 
 not being true to herself. 
 
 Shepston soon gave him an opening. 
 
 " By the way, you've never seen the picture 
 gallery, have you?" he said. 
 
 ; 'No; but I'd very much like to see it," 
 Grey replied, glad of an excuse to escape. He 
 got up at once and carefully avoided any glance 
 in Tempe's direction as he and Shepston left 
 the room. 
 
 The picture gallery was, in fact, the ball- 
 room the finest and least used apartment in 
 the Hall. The lighting was by no means ideal 
 for its present purpose, but the effect of the 
 
 o 209
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 room, with its three great fireplaces and its 
 well placed canvases, was splendidly imposing. 
 
 "Nothing but portraits of the family," 
 remarked Shepston, " and the majority of those 
 aren't worth twopence. This is the only 
 Reynolds Lady Stratton, wife of the fifth 
 earl : that was before the creation of the 
 marquisate ; and these two Lawrences are 
 Downham's grandmother and grandfather- 
 terrible old buffers, eh? That's the Sargent 
 of Tempe, done last year. Pretty good, eh? 
 Wouldn't think there was so much in the child 
 to hear her carrying on with Yaxley." 
 
 ' 4 Has the engagement been announced ? ' ' 
 Grey asked as casually as he could. The 
 Sargent made his heart ache, for the painter 
 had seen Tempe as he saw her himself : the 
 beautiful face was faintly smiling with the 
 quiet assurance of a woman at ease in any 
 society, but the eyes seemed to be asking some 
 immense question. He tried not to stare at it, 
 but the portrait held him. Looking at it, his 
 confidence began to return. No, she had not 
 fooled him, he thought ; she had spoken the 
 truth. He could not doubt her. 
 
 "The engagement?" Shepston said. "No, 
 it hasn't been announced, and I very much 
 
 2IO
 
 Shepston 
 
 doubt if it will be ; or, at least, if it is made 
 to-day, as it may possibly be in my little niece's 
 present mood, it will certainly be broken off 
 next week. She doesn't mean to marry him. 
 I have great faith in Tempe." 
 
 Grey was embarrassed, but he longed to 
 hear more, or even to hear that comforting 
 assertion repeated. "Faith?" he asked. "In 
 in what direction?" 
 
 " Oh, that's asking too much of me," Shep- 
 ston returned lightly. " Now, this is a portrait 
 that may interest you," he went on. " The 
 blackest sheep of the Stratton flock, Down- 
 ham's half-brother, Edward Stratton, the father 
 of that Stratton claimant I ought to hear who 
 he is to-morrow, by the way, if those confounded 
 editors know, themselves, and will condescend 
 to answer my letters." 
 
 Grey stared up at his father's portrait. 
 Perhaps Lord Stratton had been flattered, or 
 perhaps that charming manner of his had 
 fascinated the painter; in any case, there were 
 no signs of criminality in this gentle, kindly 
 face, only the weakness of one who did not 
 know the meaning of self-discipline. 
 
 "How old was he when this was done?" 
 Grey asked. He wanted a moment's time to 
 
 211
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 consider. He had no doubt now that Shepston 
 had brought him here to fulfil a deliberate pur- 
 pose, to give his visitor a chance to make some 
 statement. 
 
 " Twenty-two or -three, I believe," Shep- 
 ston said. " It was painted some time before 
 he was sent to Canada." 
 
 Grey's mind was working quickly. Many 
 things had puzzled him about Shepston that 
 seemed suddenly clear and comprehensible if 
 one astounding hypothesis were made. Was it 
 conceivable that this brilliant little man was not 
 averse to the idea of a possible claimant, if that 
 claimant w r as in his opinion a desirable master 
 for Stratton? That theory, taken in conjunc- 
 tion with the friendship that had apparently 
 been offered to himself, explained so much. 
 
 And with the thought there came to Grey 
 the first tremor of doubt that had ever shaken 
 him. For a moment he saw the whole problem 
 from another standpoint. Might it not after 
 all be better for such as himself to be the 
 minister of these estates than such a man as, 
 say, Dickie, might become? The alternative 
 flashed before him, and was almost instantly 
 refused; but he had, for the first time, con- 
 sidered it. 
 
 212
 
 Shepston 
 
 He looked at Shepston, who was blandly 
 smiling at the portrait of Edward Stratton as 
 if nothing could be farther from his thoughts 
 than the revolutionary plot that had just been 
 imputed to him. 
 
 "The point, of course," Grey said, "is 
 whether his marriage was legal." 
 
 "Quite," agreed Shepston. "We may say 
 that that is the only point." 
 
 "I think not," replied Grey. "It might 
 be also worth while to consider the possibility 
 that the man did not want Stratton." 
 
 " Would he be able to resist the temptation 
 in certain circumstances?" 
 
 " In any circumstances," Grey said. 
 
 Shepston still stared at the portrait of the 
 late Lord Stratton, 
 
 " In the present case, however,'- he said, 
 " your alternative need not be considered, 
 because the claim, according to the Post and 
 the Mail, is to be made." 
 
 " I have a theory about that," Grey replied. 
 " It seems possible to me that those para- 
 graphs were not inspired by the claimant 
 himself, who might, as I have said, be the kind 
 of man who had no sort of use for the title or 
 the money ; but some enterprising American 
 
 213
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 journalist had, perhaps, got hold of the story, 
 and, as he was in London, thought he might 
 try to make his travelling expenses out of the 
 affair." 
 
 " But what sort of evidence could a 
 journalist have?" 
 
 " Well, so far as we know, the evidence 
 may be uncommonly good and not difficult to 
 concoct. That tutor I've heard of, for example, 
 Hayles, may be still alive, and might have been 
 a witness to the marriage," Grey suggested. 
 
 Shepston turned, and for once his formal 
 smile had been smoothed away. 
 
 " You cannot deny the possibility that this 
 hypothetical claimant of yours may change his 
 mind," he said keenly; and his eyes searched 
 Grey's face with a steady stare. 
 
 " He will not change his mind," Grey said 
 with decision. 
 
 " In no circumstances?" 
 
 "In no circumstances whatever." 
 
 For a moment the two men faced each other 
 in silence, and then Shepston, with a smile that 
 was almost affectionate, took Grey's arm and 
 began to lead him toward the far end of the 
 gallery. 
 
 " This portrait of the first earl," he said, 
 214
 
 Shepston 
 
 4 ' is by a pupil of Vandyck's ; it is the only one 
 of the earlier period that was saved from the 
 old Hall. You see the corner of the frame is 
 charred. The light is rather bad now. You 
 must come again in the morning. You will be 
 staying for another week at least, I suppose?" 
 Grey hesitated. " For another three or 
 four days, perhaps," he said. 
 
 4 
 
 THAT night he stood for a long time by the 
 open window of his bedroom. 
 
 After dinner he had spent more than an 
 hour in Lord Downham's study over the 
 promised discussion on Canadian affairs. Shep- 
 ston had been present, and had guided the 
 conversation. He had asked all the essential 
 questions, but invariably with a certain indirect- 
 ness. His sentences had begun with " Lord 
 
 Downham wishes to know " or " Lord 
 
 Downham has been asking me ". There 
 
 had been an air of a state function about the 
 whole interview, with Shepston in the part of 
 a privileged secretary. Through it all Lord 
 Downham had maintained his dignity and the 
 effect of being perfectly conversant with the 
 
 215
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 subject in hand. When he interrupted Shep- 
 ston, or asked a question on his own account, 
 he was sure of his ground. But Grey inferred 
 that the silences which marked the vicarious 
 interrogatories were evidence of a well-concealed 
 ignorance ; and the silences had been many. 
 
 He is a figurehead, but with the powers of 
 an autocrat, Grey decided in the quiet of his 
 own bedroom. Stratton is a kind of grand 
 duchy with a ruler just clever enough to recog- 
 nise his own limitations and defer to the wisdom 
 of his viceregent. 
 
 He recognised now that he was in danger. 
 He had come at last to a consideration of the 
 question that he had hitherto regarded as no 
 question. 
 
 No doubt Tempe had been largely respon- 
 sible. She had dropped her vivacity after 
 Yaxley had gone off in his car after dinner ; 
 but she had treated Grey with a careless ease 
 that in no way singled him out as a person 
 deserving of any particular attention, and she 
 had cleverly avoided any possibility of being 
 left alone with him. And when they had all 
 been in the drawing-room together for a few 
 moments, before he had gone to his state inter- 
 view, she had announced to the company in 
 
 216
 
 Shepston 
 
 general : " Sorry I've got nothing to tell you. 
 Eddie didn't come to the point, after all. I 
 expect he forgot what it was he came over for. 
 Perhaps he was worried about the mare." 
 
 Grey had felt that the announcement was 
 certainly meant for him not less than for her 
 own people. She had drawn away from him 
 for a time, but if he could read her message it 
 was that she cared for him well enough, per- 
 haps, to marry him if he could give her the 
 position she was determined to keep. There 
 had been, he thought, a new look of hard 
 resolution about her eyes that night, as if she 
 had fought and definitely conquered all tempta- 
 tions to face experience, as if she had for ever 
 closed her ears to the call that bade her renounce 
 wealth and rank for the sake of her soul. 
 
 He had tried to persuade himself that he 
 was repelled and disgusted by that decision, 
 that she was no longer worthy of admiration. 
 But here in the silence he was honest with 
 himself; he knew that no ethical tests nor any 
 consideration of Tempe's attitude towards life 
 had any effect upon his feeling for her. If 
 she married Yaxley, and if she narrowed and 
 hardened in the course of years, Grey knew 
 that he would still love her as he did now.
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 There was some indefinable bond between them, 
 he was sure of that ; but something within him, 
 something that he was inclined to regard as 
 almost unworthy, cried out furiously against 
 the possibility of Tempe's marriage with anyone 
 but himself. He tried to reason away his 
 jealousy, but it was too strong for him. He 
 could not endure the thought that she could 
 give anything of herself to another man. 
 
 And yet, if he persisted in his present 
 attitude, was any other alternative possible? 
 Inevitably she would marry. She was so full 
 of eager life ; she must find some expression. 
 
 For a time he dared, with a recognisable 
 consciousness of temerity, to consider the whole 
 problem with a new detachment of mind. He 
 tried to regard himself as holding Stratton in 
 trust for the people. What power he would 
 have ! What opportunities for the spreading of 
 his gospel ! 
 
 The thought began to take hold of him ; he 
 became constructive, planning the means of his 
 propaganda. There was an education scheme 
 he had built up, and still hoped one day to 
 test if he could find some wealthy enthusiast 
 to finance it. That scheme might be carried 
 out at once and on a practical scale if he 
 
 218
 
 Shepston 
 
 stretched out his hand and took his own. And 
 he would have a seat in the House of Lords, 
 and might in time exert enough influence there 
 to form the nucleus of a new party. The 
 majority of the members of that House were, 
 no doubt, beyond the reach of any influence, 
 but there were a few who might, perhaps, 
 follow him. 
 
 He was pacing up and down the room, 
 warm with a new enthusiasm, when he caught 
 sight of the photograph of his mother that he 
 always carried with him and had now put out 
 on his dressing-table. He stopped his walk 
 abruptly, lifted the photograph, and gazed at it 
 intently under the white glare of the bunched 
 electric lamps that hung over the looking-glass. 
 And for the first time in his life he seemed to 
 see the marks of prejudice, of a provincial 
 narrowness, in that sweet, intent face. She 
 only knew one side, he thought ; she was so 
 horribly biased by the weakness of that unhappy 
 fool, his father. Those two parents of his had 
 never had a chance one had seen the face of 
 the coin, and the other the reverse; while he, 
 their son, could compare both images. 
 
 He made no decision that night, but he 
 permitted his mind to dwell on the conception 
 
 219
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 of himself as a kind of mediator between rank 
 and the people. He held that figure with a 
 stern resolution as the only condition of possible 
 recantation. He did not dare to contemplate 
 the thought that his love for Tempe had been 
 a predominant factor in the process. 
 
 SIIEPSTON came into the breakfast-room at nine 
 o'clock the next morning with a newspaper in 
 his hand. He looked unusually grave and 
 somewhat preoccupied. 
 
 " That damned journalist friend of yours 
 has been at it again/' he remarked. 
 
 "Hell!" murmured Grey. "What paper 
 is it?" 
 
 " One of those Sunday editions," Shepston 
 said, "that condense all the crime and scandal 
 of the week, preferably emphasising the dis- 
 reputable. This copy was probably sent by 
 your friend. We don't take it in as a rule, you 
 kno\v. It was addressed to Downham." 
 
 " Has he seen it?" Grey asked. 
 
 " Indeed he has," Shepston returned 
 grimly. 
 
 "Have they printed the whole story?" 
 
 220
 
 Shepston 
 
 "Oh, read it for yourself," Shepston said, 
 "and then we can talk." 
 
 Grey took the paper offered to him. It 
 was folded to display one of its inner pages, 
 the whole of which was devoted to the sensa- 
 tion. The headlines were reasonably explicit. 
 "Who is the Marquis?" was the first, and 
 below : " Unknown Canadian claims Wealth 
 and Honour. Great Peerage Threatened." 
 
 Grey plunged, frowning, into the body of 
 the article. It had named no one, but Stratton 
 was so clearly indicated as to be unmistakable. 
 Devonshire was mentioned, and Portman 
 Square, and one sentence contained dreadful 
 puns on the family's two titles. 
 
 Fellowes' hand was recognisable through- 
 out, restrained, however, by the timidity of the 
 London editor. The article began with a 
 resume of a few historical cases from Tichborne 
 to the Poulett organ-grinder, and then the facts 
 of Edward Stratton 's career were set out in 
 full : his early peccadilloes, his visit to Canada, 
 his marriage, and his return to die in Devon- 
 shire. The next column took up the story of 
 Grey's mother, describing in some detail her 
 struggles to make a livelihood, her hatred of the 
 man who had disgraced her, and her attitude 
 
 221
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 toward his family. Then Grey's achievements 
 were referred to, including a mention of his 
 book, the subject of which was epitomised, 
 although the title of it was withheld. The 
 article finished with rather an able piece of 
 rhetoric which was designed to enlist the sym- 
 pathy of the reader on behalf of the claimant. 
 
 Grey sighed and looked up. " No names 
 given," he said. " But I suppose Lord Down- 
 ham has guessed that I " 
 
 Shepston shook his head. " That escaped 
 him altogether," he remarked, " as it might 
 also escape my sister ; but if Lady Adelaide or 
 Tempe- " 
 
 "Lady Tempe knows," Grey interrupted. 
 
 "Ah! I thought that was possible," com- 
 mented Shepston. He paused for a moment, 
 and then went on : " But the important point 
 at present is how I am to relieve poor Down- 
 ham's mind. He's badly hipped. Your friend 
 has a most convincing manner, and I'm not at 
 all sure that Downham isn't afraid that there 
 really is some truth in the story. That 
 Canadian visit has always been a trifle er 
 Damoclean. In a sense, I think this stuff has 
 come rather as confirming an old dread than as 
 a sudden surprise. The blow was a little broken 
 
 222
 
 Shepston 
 
 by those earlier paragraphs." Shepston stopped 
 and surveyed his companion thoughtfully, but 
 as Grey made no comment, he continued : 
 
 " If I may put it this way, Downham is 
 just now much in the state of mind of a man 
 who has good reason to believe that he has a 
 a foreign growth somewhere in his body. He 
 wants, naturally, to get expert advice as soon 
 as possible suspense is the one unendurable 
 thing. And, if I can sum up his feelings, I 
 should say that he sees three alternatives. The 
 first is that the growth is malignant, and that 
 no operation is feasible ; that the claimant, in 
 fact, is an impossible person from Downham's 
 point of view, and that the case is unassailable. 
 The second is that an operation promises some 
 hope ; that the claimant might be in some ways 
 acceptable and might, perhaps, be willing to 
 make some kind of reasonable concession." 
 
 He stopped again and marked this second 
 alternative by a short pause before he con- 
 cluded : " The third, of course, is that there is 
 no growth, no claimant; that it's all a fizzle. 
 Only, how is one to put him out of suspense?" 
 
 Grey got up and walked to the window. 
 He wanted to hide his face from the shrewd 
 gaze of the little man on the hearthrug. He 
 
 223
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 was so puzzled to guess what precisely was 
 Shepston's game. Again the inference 
 appeared to be that he wanted his brother-in- 
 law to be deposed surely an incredible sup- 
 position. But why had he paused so unmis- 
 takably to emphasise that second alternative? 
 Was he hanging out a bait to tempt his fish 
 into some, as yet invisible, net? 
 
 Grey dismissed that perplexity as something 
 that was beyond his powers of comprehension, 
 and tried to consider the hardly less intricate 
 question of how Lord Downham's suspense 
 might be relieved. The morning had brought 
 cooler judgment, and in any case Grey felt that 
 he could not just now have discovered his 
 identity to the family. That Sunday paper 
 had cut the ground away from him for the 
 moment, had made the whole affair vulgar, 
 essentially commonplace. 
 
 He came back into the room, and, leaning 
 on the edge of the table, confronted Shepston, 
 who had been silently waiting, standing 
 patiently with his back to the empty fireplace. 
 
 : ' Can't you pretend some private informa- 
 tion that would put Lord Downham's mind at 
 rest?" Grey asked. 
 
 Shepston's right eyebrow lifted interroga- 
 224
 
 Shepston 
 
 lively ; his left maintained its steadfast hold of 
 his monocle. "No need to pretend," he re- 
 marked. "I've got it; but he won't accept 
 vague ambiguities. He wants certainty." 
 
 " That, unhappily, he can't very well 
 have," Grey replied. 
 
 "No?" inquired Shepston. 
 
 "Well, how can he?" 
 
 "There's the available truth, you know," 
 Shepston said. " Nice, honest sort of thing 
 the truth, when you can use it which, unfor- 
 tunately, isn't often." 
 
 " Impossible," muttered Grey. 
 
 Shepston's eyebrow rose a little farther, 
 giving him a curiously impish look. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, you must see that for yourself!" 
 Grey said impatiently. " If the family believed 
 me, they would, to say the least of it, be in a 
 most damnably equivocal position." 
 
 " You think that their sense of justice, 
 shall we say? might influence them to insist 
 on your wearing their laurels?" 
 
 "Their sense of family might." 
 
 " And you feel that their insistence might 
 be unpleasant for you?" 
 
 " In a way, yes." 
 
 P 225
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Er what do you suppose you would do 
 in those circumstances?" 
 
 Grey shrugged his shoulders. " You can't 
 force a title or a fortune on a man who doesn't 
 want it, I suppose," he said. " In any case I 
 could always run away." 
 
 " Yes, you might run away," Shepston 
 agreed lightly. " You might also marry, and 
 further complicate the problem by begetting 
 sons who might not be willing to subscribe to 
 their father's altruistic principles." 
 
 " I shouldn't marry," Grey said. 
 
 Shepston smiled blandly. " Oh, but that's 
 one of the things a man never knows!" he 
 remarked. " I have heard so many quiet 
 
 resolutions made to that effect, and yet ' 
 
 He waved his hand with a gesture that inti- 
 mated how easily those resolutions were after- 
 wards dissipated. " You must admit, Grey," 
 he added, " that the situation is considerably 
 complicated. Your refusal by no means covers 
 the whole ground." 
 
 This was an aspect of the problem that Grey 
 had never considered, but he saw instantly that 
 the fact of his potential fatherhood was a very 
 essential one. Moreover, it might possibly 
 explain to a certain extent Shepston 's apparent 
 
 226
 
 Shepston 
 
 willingness to admit the rights of the present 
 heir rather than to risk the possibly ruthless 
 claim of a younger generation. 
 
 "Couldn't I make some legal abdication?" 
 Grey asked. 
 
 " On your own behalf, you might; but not 
 on behalf of those possible sons of yours." 
 
 " I would undertake never to let them 
 know." 
 
 " By killing off all the journalists or 
 destroying the registers?" 
 
 "It's a thousand to one chance " 
 
 " And what do you calculate must have 
 been the odds against your staying here at the 
 very time that your journalist friend discovered 
 your identity? No, my dear Grey, it's so 
 commonly the altogether outside chances that 
 come off." 
 
 " Well, what is it you want me to do?" 
 
 "Oh, I?" Shepston said. "Really, you 
 know, it is only quite incidentally any affair 
 of mine. I am merely an ambassador, or 
 hardly that. You must regard me as nothing 
 more than a secretary." 
 
 " Even a secretary has the power to make 
 a suggestion." 
 
 "Not in this case," Shepston replied. "I 
 227
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 understand my function here to be confined to 
 the statement of facts. My own opinions must 
 obviously you surely agree with me? be 
 subordinated." 
 
 Grey nodded. He realised now how equi- 
 vocal was Shepston's position, and at the same 
 time how skilfully he seemed to be guiding 
 the issue. 
 
 For two or three minutes neither man 
 spoke, and then Shepston said : 
 
 " Am I to understand, then, that you 
 refuse to er to come up to Downham at 
 present?" 
 
 " Oh, definitely !" Grey replied on the spur 
 of the moment. 
 
 Shepston looked at his watch. " It's an 
 infernally difficult job having to accommodate 
 myself to two Lord Downhams," he remarked 
 casually; and then went on quickly: " Oh, by 
 the way, do you mind coming to church? We 
 all go on Sunday morning to the village. It's 
 another of Downham 's traditions. But visitors 
 are permitted to absent themselves. If you 
 have any conscientious objections 
 
 . . 
 
 I shall be glad to come," Grey said. 
 " Good," replied Shepston. " The big car 
 will be round in half an hour or so. There will 
 
 228
 
 Shepston 
 
 only be six of us. Lady Adelaide has a peculiar 
 religion of her own that goes with her gastric 
 theories. We used to drive behind a pair of 
 horses it seemed in a way more substantial 
 but Dickie and Tempe have vetoed that." 
 
 6 
 
 SOME of the old feeling of revolt, almost of 
 indignation, came back to Grey as he motored 
 with the rest of the party down to the parish 
 church of Cole-Stratton. The formality of the 
 whole proceeding evoked the same spirit of 
 criticism that had been called out when he had 
 been met by the two flunkeys at the station a 
 few days before. He recognised again the 
 arrogant attitude of the ruling aristocrat in his 
 manner of attending morning service. 
 
 Lord Downham himself (he was dressed in 
 a black morning-coat with a white slip under 
 his waistcoat), in assuming the expression he 
 deemed proper to the occasion, had put on an 
 air of slightly self-conscious dignity. It was 
 evident that any honour he might have won in 
 public life was won by him chiefly for Stratton. 
 It was Stratton that occupied the first place in 
 his thoughts. He was an important figure 
 
 229
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 everywhere, but at Stratton he was the supreme 
 figure. 
 
 The others in their separate ways were not 
 less arrogant. Lady Downham was obviously 
 thinking of something else. Grey would not 
 have been at all surprised if she had leaned 
 forward and begun that long-deferred discus- 
 sion on Socialism. Tempe and Dickie made no 
 attempt to conceal their boredom. To them 
 the congregation of the village church was 
 absolutely negligible. 
 
 Grey wondered, with a shiver of dread, if 
 they would all make some kind of state pro- 
 cession up the nave ; he deemed it not altogether 
 improbable that, if service had not begun, the 
 congregation would rise at their entrance. But 
 he was spared that ordeal. The family that 
 had a private waiting-room on the railway 
 station had also a private chapel in the parish 
 church. The north transept was theirs, 
 screened and remote, and they entered it as 
 they might have come into the back of the 
 royal box at the opera. (Dickie did not take 
 off his hat until he had sat down.) The common 
 herd in nave or chancel must peer through a 
 close tracery of woodwork, if it desired as it 
 obviously did desire any glimpse of its over- 
 
 230
 
 Shepston 
 
 lord, his family, or his guests. They had their 
 private apartment even in the church; that 
 carved oak screen utterly separated them from 
 all that was not Stratton. 
 
 The very furniture of the private chapel 
 was differentiated from that which serves the 
 ordinary worshipper. The seats were separate 
 and easily movable. It is true that the design 
 of them had an ecclesiastical turn, but they 
 were far more like arm-chairs than the usual 
 church seating. Stratton took its devotions in 
 physical comfort, condescending to use the 
 same building as the rest of the congregation, 
 but by its isolation arrogating to itself a free- 
 dom from all ordinary usages. Dickie, for 
 instance, quietly disappeared during the 
 Litany, and Grey had no doubt that he had 
 gone out to smoke a cigarette in the church- 
 yard. Indeed, Lord Downham was the only 
 one of the party who religiously followed the 
 service and obeyed the suggestions of the rubric 
 as to the propriety of sitting, kneeling, or 
 standing on specific occasions. 
 
 It was all horribly distasteful to Grey. He 
 had come into the presence of humanity, and 
 was shut off from his kind as if he were a 
 superior creation. Once he found himself 
 
 231
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 planning a new form of attendance, with him- 
 self in the part of marquis; a decently quiet 
 entrance to the back of the nave, taking his 
 chance of a vacant seat. He put the picture 
 away from him impatiently, less because he had 
 for a moment thought of himself as lord of 
 Stratton than because he saw that, however 
 sincere his attempt at humility, he would 
 inevitably be regarded with the same awe that 
 was now directed to Lord Downham in this 
 secluded apartment of his. How the school- 
 children would nudge each other, blush, and 
 edge away if the lord of Stratton elected to sit 
 among them ! And the people, the parson and 
 his wife, the tenants, the little shopkeepers, the 
 villagers, all would resent any attempt to treat 
 them as equals. They were trained in this 
 respect for the aristocracy ; it was one of the 
 essential facts of their life. Without question 
 they would deplore the coming of any marquis 
 who failed to maintain in any degree his state 
 and dignity. No ; Grey could not see himself 
 in that part. 
 
 He looked across at Tempe. He had tried 
 not to stare at her during the service, but twice 
 before he had caught her eye she seemed to 
 know when he was watching her. On each 
 
 232
 
 Shepston 
 
 occasion she had made a little grimace to 
 express her boredom, but there had been no 
 suggestion of intimacy in that exchange of 
 glances. She had that impertinent, slightly 
 supercilious air she had worn in Portman 
 Square ; she had patronised him by her acknow- 
 ledgment of his presence. He could only 
 interpret her grimace as an indication that she 
 had not changed her mind. 
 
 But this time, although he knew that she 
 was quite conscious of his regard, she did not 
 look in his direction. She was dressed in white 
 that morning, and, seen against the background 
 of the pale blue marble dado that encircled the 
 walls of the chapel up to the high sills of the 
 windows, her dark head and warm colour stood 
 out sharply beautiful in the soft light pouring 
 down from the nave clerestory through the 
 pointed arch that rose above the screen. 
 
 He found it so hard to believe that he was 
 separated from her by an abyss of misunder- 
 standing and diversity of purpose. He felt in 
 his heart that she was still the perfect friend 
 and lover he had so suddenly found and so 
 abruptly lost. Surely, if he could speak to her, 
 he would be able to reach her again? For a 
 day they had shared such wonderful confidences. 
 
 233
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 And then he forced himself to realise that 
 indeed there was no bond between them out- 
 side his own imagination, that he must soon go 
 away and leave her to marry the future Duke 
 of Liverpool, and that she would in all prob- 
 ability have entirely forgotten himself in a very 
 few days' time, or, remembering him, would 
 think of him only to be thankful that she had 
 escaped the consequences of a foolish and quite 
 ephemeral impulse. He set his teeth hard and 
 tried to face that lonely future of his as a man 
 might steel himself to face a dangerous operation 
 that, even if successful, would certainly cripple 
 his life. 
 
 He became aware that she was moving rest- 
 lessly in her upholstered church-seat. Her 
 colour had deepened, and she was frowning 
 impatiently. 
 
 He wondered if his thought had in .some 
 way reached her; if she were trying to frown 
 back the voice that told her her life was 
 unworthy ? 
 
 And when she at last turned and looked at 
 him her face was hard and defiant. She stared 
 at him haughtily, tacitly rebuking him for the 
 rudeness of his persistent gaze. He did not 
 drop his eyes, and after a brief struggle of wills 
 
 234
 
 Shepston 
 
 it was as real an opposition to them as if they 
 had been engaged in a spoken argument or even 
 a physical encounter she turned her chair right 
 round, and for the remainder of the service sat 
 with her back to him. 
 
 Grey, released from his preoccupation, 
 became suddenly aware that he was in the 
 presence of four other persons. But Lord 
 Downham was conscientiously listening to the 
 sermon, his wife was comfortably asleep, and 
 Dickie was intently pushing the little red 
 hassock about the floor with his feet, no doubt 
 planning a new arrangement of the Stratton 
 golf course. Shepston alone appeared to have 
 witnessed the momentous duel that had just 
 taken place; and, if his expression gave any 
 clue to his thoughts, he had found cause for 
 profound meditation in that clash of opposing 
 purposes. 
 
 There was a collection after the sermon, 
 and the spruce churchwarden came first to the 
 Stratton chapel. He entered by the door in 
 the screen, immediately closing it after him to 
 shut out the inquisitive peering of the common 
 crowd in the body of the church. When he 
 was inside he bowed once, formally, to the 
 occupants of the chapel, advanced to Lord 
 
 235
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Downham, received a bank-note on his plate, 
 and retired again without approaching any 
 other member of the family. The marquis 
 represented the house. He gave generously 
 to the offertory on behalf of all who might 
 be at Stratton, whether his own people or 
 visitors. 
 
 After he had made his contribution, Lord 
 Downham bowed his head gravely for a few 
 seconds, and then turned to his family. They 
 did not wait for the close of the service for 
 the last verse of the offertory hymn and the 
 vicar's blessing but went quietly out by their 
 private door to the waiting motor, and were 
 out of the village long before the remainder 
 of the congregation streamed into the church- 
 yard. 
 
 But through all his condemnation of the 
 method of such churchgoing as this, Grey 
 recognised some kind of an attitude that com- 
 pelled his admiration. There was no display 
 about these Stratton traditions. They made no 
 attempt to win adulation or even respect. For 
 just as no member of that family would have 
 troubled to draw his attention to the effigies 
 and memorial tablets that commemorated the 
 remains of that long line of Strattons who were 
 
 238
 
 Shepston 
 
 buried in the vaults below the chapel, so all 
 the dignities of their position were taken for 
 granted in their appearance before the world. 
 They had no occasion to insist upon their place 
 and power, no need to resort to any kind of 
 ostentation, and they were so perfectly un- 
 conscious of being anything but just themselves. 
 
 GREY hoped that some chance of being alone 
 with Tempe might offer itself between lunch 
 and dinner. He was trying that day to nerve 
 himself to a recognition of the fact that her 
 ways and his lay apart, but he was determined 
 to speak to her once more before he accepted 
 his fate. No opportunity was given him, how- 
 ever. She disappeared after lunch, and, after 
 refusing Dickie's challenge to golf on the new 
 handicap terms, he wandered moodily about the 
 house and the park until tea time. 
 
 Shepston also was not to be found, and 
 Grey wondered if he had yet discovered some 
 means of allaying his brother-in-law's mis- 
 givings. 
 
 Certainly there was no sign of uneasiness 
 among the family when they met for tea in 
 
 237
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the smaller drawing-room. Shepston particu- 
 larly seemed in the best of spirits, and the 
 greater part of his conversation was devoted to 
 discussing when some public announcement 
 could be made of Tempers engagement to Eddie 
 Yaxley. 
 
 " It's all very well, my dear girl," Shepston 
 said in answer to a petulant expostulation of 
 Tempe's that no engagement existed between 
 her and Eddie ; " but we all know that the mere 
 formality of a proposal is unnecessary in this 
 case. You've been engaged to him to all 
 intents and purposes since he was at Christ 
 Church. I remember that I found him kissing 
 you when you were fifteen." 
 
 " My dear Reggie, what rot!" Tempe 
 replied. " It doesn't follow that I want to 
 marry him now." 
 
 Shepston cocked up his disengaged eyebrow. 
 " You surely don't mean that you're going to 
 back out of it?" he asked. 
 
 " Really, I don't know," Tempe said 
 peevishly. " I wish to goodness you'd talk 
 about something else." 
 
 " But, Tempe dear, I thought it was prac- 
 tically settled," her mother put in. 
 
 And Lord Downham, making the one allu- 
 238
 
 Shepston 
 
 sion that passed with reference to the subject 
 of the claimant, added half jocosely, " I cer- 
 tainly think you'd better er secure your 
 position as soon as possible." 
 
 "Well, hadn't one of you better write to 
 Eddie and ask him his intentions?" Tempe said. 
 " He's going to Scotland to-morrow morning, 
 and it really doesn't seem necessary to consult 
 me in any way. Here I am for you to dispose 
 of." 
 
 " I don't see why we shouldn't write," 
 remarked Shepston gravely; and Lord and 
 Lady Downham, who had been ready to treat 
 Tempe 's suggestion as a piece of characteristic 
 foolishness, immediately took it up in all 
 seriousness. 
 
 " I don't see why we shouldn't," Lord 
 Downham agreed. " Personally, I have, as 
 you know, Tempe, a great wish that you should 
 marry Yaxley." 
 
 Tempe looked round as if she were suddenly 
 a little harassed by the importunities that were 
 besetting her. For a moment she hesitated as 
 if she were trying to find some loophole of 
 escape, and then she shrugged her shoulders 
 and said: "Very well, do write, if you think 
 you can do it decently." 
 
 239
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 . . 
 
 I think I can manage that," Shepston 
 said a little grimly. 
 
 And not till then did Grey guess that 
 Shepston was still intent upon his original pur- 
 pose, the full meaning of which was to be so 
 amazingly made clear that evening. 
 
 240
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE OUTBURST 
 1 
 
 THERE could be no doubt that a storm was 
 coming up. As they sat at dinner, with the 
 windows wide open, they could hear the distant 
 grumble of thunder far away. The air was very 
 still and close, and the oppression of it had 
 affected every member of the party. Lady 
 Downham was unusually quiet; she continually 
 leaned back in her chair and shut her eyes as if 
 the glare of the electric light hurt her. Her 
 husband was unquestionably irritable, and when 
 Lady Adelaide began to criticise the tenets of 
 the English Church he stopped her at once by 
 saying that he would not permit the subject to 
 be discussed. Dickie also suffered a sharp re- 
 proof for perpetually fidgeting with the silver 
 and glass. After that Lady Adelaide and 
 Dickie both sulked. Shepston was distrait ; his 
 smile was less in evidence, and once or twice he 
 frowned as if debating some question of con- 
 Q 241
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 siderable complexity. Tempe alone was deter- 
 mined to talk. The coming storm seemed to 
 be unduly exciting her. 
 
 "I should like to be on South Hill now," 
 she said, with a suggestion of rapture in her 
 voice. 
 
 " Get jolly wet," mumbled Dickie. 
 
 " I wonder if it's too late," she went on. 
 " Think how one would see the lightning behind 
 the tors, and then the rain coming across the 
 valley!" 
 
 Grey tried to catch her eye. He was ready 
 to go with her if she would give him the 
 smallest encouragement. But Lord Downham, 
 whether because he suspected the proposal of 
 so unconventional an adventure or simply 
 because he was in a bad humour, cut in by 
 saying : 
 
 "Don't be so absurd, Tempe; South Hill 
 would not be at all a safe place in a thunder- 
 storm." 
 
 "Of course it wouldn't," Tempe returned. 
 " But I don't want to be in a safe place. I'm 
 tired of safe places,* 1 
 
 Her father frowned and fidgeted. " Absurd 
 quite absurd," he muttered. 
 
 " I should like to stand on the hill and let 
 242
 
 The Outburst 
 
 the lightning play all round me," Tempe 
 persisted. 
 
 "Well, why don't you?" grumbled her 
 brother. 
 
 "Will you come with me?" she replied 
 quickly. 
 
 "Rather not," Dickie said. "I don't see 
 any sport in getting beastly wet, with the off- 
 chance of being struck by lightning." 
 
 :< I understand the attraction of it," Grey 
 put in. " I've watched storms in the Rockies. 
 It gives one a sense of power, of being a part 
 of Nature." 
 
 Tempe turned then and met his eyes at 
 last, but her own were cold and hard. 
 
 " I suppose our poor little English thunder- 
 storms seem very miniature affairs to you?" 
 she said. 
 
 " I haven't seen one yet," he replied. 
 
 "Would you care to walk to South Hill?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Certainly; I should enjoy it," Grey said; 
 but she did not answer him. 
 
 "Damn foolishness," Lady Adelaide re- 
 marked very distinctly; " shows your stomach's 
 out of order." 
 
 Lady Downham had her eyes shut as if she 
 243
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 were trying to picture herself in the midst of 
 the storm and herself a part of Nature. 
 
 A flash of lightning more vivid than any 
 that had preceded it suddenly glared over the 
 park, and they all sat silent for a few seconds 
 waiting for the thunder. When it came, still 
 appreciably distant, Lord Downham made a 
 sign to Garton to close the windows, and, when 
 that had been done, to draw down the blinds. 
 
 "Pity! I'm afraid it's too late," Tempe 
 said. " I shall have to watch it from the 
 terrace." 
 
 Her father threw a sharp, annoyed glance 
 at her, but he did not speak. 
 
 Grey was wondering whether he, too, might 
 be privileged to watch the storm from the 
 terrace. Tempe had certainly snubbed him, 
 but he could appreciate her mood, and he 
 believed that, given the opportunity, he could 
 find a way to appeal to her this evening. 
 Perhaps he might offer to play billiards with 
 Dickie, and excuse himself as soon as they were 
 out of the drawing-room? 
 
 Lady Downham opened her eyes and looked 
 round the table. "Have we all finished?" she 
 asked, and got up without waiting for an 
 answer. Dickie was already smoking. 
 
 244
 
 The Outburst 
 
 As they were following her across the hall 
 Shepston caught Grey up and took him by the 
 arm. 
 
 " We are all in alarmingly bad tempers," 
 Shepston said, " and it isn't only the storm. 
 Lady Adelaide had been badgering Downham 
 about this claimant affair. Most unfortunately 
 she got hold of the paper I'm afraid I must 
 have left it about somewhere and, being in a 
 spiteful mood, she thought fit to ask him what 
 steps he was going to take about it. That was 
 why she got snubbed at dinner ; but, if I know 
 her at all, she'll take her revenge, and Down- 
 ham knows it, too ; but he's singularly 
 obstinate in some ways he means, I think, to 
 face it and well, to discuss the whole thing 
 quite frankly." 
 
 The others had gone on into the drawing- 
 room, but Shepston kept Grey back. 
 
 "I'm afraid all this may be a little awkward 
 for you," he said. 
 
 " Perhaps I'd better not come in," Grey 
 suggested. He thought he saw a way now to 
 obtain his desire. And then he pictured himself 
 waiting alone on the terrace and Tempe snugly 
 chuckling at him in the drawing-room. 
 
 " Or, if I Came in for a few minutes, I 
 MS
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 might get out to play billiards or watch the 
 storm," he added. " I could surely find an 
 excuse to absent myself from a a private 
 family discussion?" 
 
 Shepston nodded. " That might be better," 
 he said. 
 
 THE heavy tapestry curtains were drawn across 
 the five great windows, and the drawing-room 
 shone in the soft illumination of the concealed 
 lights, but the oppression of the storm was 
 there as an almost visible presence. The many 
 flowers and plants filled the room with an 
 unusually heavy scent, as though they, tender 
 exotics as they were, expanded to meet the 
 coming rain. Involuntarily, Grey looked at 
 the windows and wished that he could tear back 
 the curtains and throw open the French case- 
 ments, could let in some breath of sweet, fresh 
 wind to blow away this air of dread and 
 expectation. 
 
 He accepted coffee automatically from 
 Garton, and then stood a little apart from the 
 others. He would not look at Tempe. He had 
 solicited her attention at dinner and been re- 
 
 246
 
 The Outburst 
 
 pulsed ; now he must await his opportunity and 
 compel her to listen to him. 
 
 She was leaning back in the corner of a 
 settee, smoking a cigarette with absorbed atten- 
 tion. She was wearing a gay dress to-night, a 
 dress that he had not seen before, one that had a 
 spiral motive of flame-coloured silk from which 
 her head and shoulders emerged as from an 
 obedient fire. It represented, he thought, a 
 mood of recklessness, yet it suited her but all 
 her dresses did that ; she was unquestionably an 
 artist in expressing the shades of her rich per- 
 sonality through the medium of her clothes. 
 Dress was for her, as she had implied, an outlet 
 for her creative ability. 
 
 Dickie was mooning about in the neighbour- 
 hood of the doorway into the hall, obviously 
 awaiting an opportunity to get to his game. 
 The other three, joined now by Shepston, 
 made a fairly compact group about one of the 
 Chippendale tables. 
 
 Lady Downham, apparently relieved to have 
 left the dining-room, was talking platitudes 
 about the effect of the storm. Her husband 
 listened politely, but he wore an anxious frown 
 as if he were preparing himself for an unpleasant 
 experience that was surely coming ; while Lady 
 
 247
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Adelaide, sipping a liqueur, wore a resolute 
 expression of eager vindictiveness. 
 
 " Oh, my dear Caroline," she broke in 
 suddenly, interrupting Lady Downham's third 
 repetition of the obvious, " we all know per- 
 fectly well that it will be cooler when the rain 
 
 comes.' 
 
 " It's a relief to talk about it," Lady Down- 
 ham explained. 
 
 Lady Adelaide snorted violently. " It 
 would be a relief to me if you'd tell me what 
 you're all going to do," she said. 
 
 " Nothing," put in her nephew curtly. 
 
 "Nothing?" Lady Adelaide repeated. 
 " You don't mean to tell me that you're 
 quietly going to let some American humbug 
 blackmail you for I suppose that's what it'll 
 come to?" 
 
 Lord Downham grunted impatiently. " Er 
 
 er " he began, and then pushed back his 
 
 chair and held up his hand as if to prevent 
 Shepston from helping him. " Er -you don't 
 seem to understand, my dear aunt, to grasp the 
 situation. There can't in any case be any any 
 question of blackmail : 
 
 He was going on, but Tempe interrupted 
 him by jumping up from her settee and saying : 
 
 248
 
 The Outburst 
 
 >f Goodness, if you're going into all this I'll say 
 good night." 
 
 " We can very well spare you," her father 
 replied. 
 
 Tempe made a moue and bowed elaborately 
 to the group by the table. She was going 
 towards the door when Lady Adelaide said 
 sharply : *' Don't you know that this concerns 
 you too, little idiot, or do you think you're 
 safe?" 
 
 " Pretty safe, aunt," Tempe said gaily, 
 paused a moment, and then added, " but, 
 darling, I really don't believe Fletchering does 
 agree with you." 
 
 Lady Adelaide was not at all offended. 
 " Feather-head," she remarked, waved her 
 great-niece away, and returned to the attack 
 with new virulence. " Well, Edward, you 
 were going to explain," she said. 
 
 Tempe spoke to Dickie by the door, and 
 they both left the room together. 
 
 Grey's attention wandered from the con- 
 versation that had now begun again with a 
 feeble gust of bickering between Lord Down- 
 ham and his aunt. He was listening for the 
 sound of the hall door, trying to hear whether 
 Tempe had carried out the intention she had 
 
 249
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 expressed at dinner. But no sound reached him 
 of any movement outside the room. In any 
 case he must take his chance now, he decided. 
 He had a good excuse for leaving the drawing- 
 room, even if the other occupants noticed his 
 going, a very unlikely contingency. 
 
 He was still holding his coffee-cup, and he 
 moved a little away and set it down on the table. 
 The rest of the manoeuvre was quite simple, and 
 he had reached the door when a single word of 
 the conversation, a word spoken in a raised 
 voice, snatched his attention : 
 
 " Harlot !" 
 
 He had heard, he thought, only that single 
 word, but as he hesitated, with his ringers on 
 the door handle, he remembered the sentence 
 that had preceded it. The sound of it seemed 
 to be still ringing in his ears: "The son of 
 some Canadian harlot." 
 
 He looked back along the room and saw 
 Shepston put out his hand with a quick gesture 
 of disapproval. 
 
 " No, no, Lady Adelaide," he said. 
 
 "No?" replied the old lady, in her high, 
 penetrating voice. " Have you got some par- 
 ticular information, then? If so, let's have it, 
 in God's name, my good Reginald." 
 
 250
 
 The Outburst 
 
 Shepston frowned and shook his head. He 
 kept his eyes away from the door, but he was 
 certainly aware that Grey had not yet left the 
 room. 
 
 Lady Adelaide shrugged her shoulders. 
 ' Then why negative my eminently reasonable 
 suggestion?" she said. "What's more likely 
 than that Edward should have had a child by 
 some gutter wench in Toronto ? It was just the 
 sort of thing he did do, poor silly fool." 
 
 Grey forgot Tempe and the storm on the 
 terrace. That conversation round the spindle- 
 legged table in this splendid room was his affair. 
 That foul-mouthed old lady was heaping terrible 
 insults upon his mother. The old lady was 
 innocent of any particular intention, but her 
 inferences were those that w r ould be canvassed 
 and probably adopted by the world at large. 
 She and Fellowes between them had started a 
 scandal that was horribly maligning the memory 
 of the woman who had sacrificed her life for 
 himself. 
 
 He could not stop to reason just then. He 
 saw a vision of his mother's sweet, earnest face, 
 and he felt as if this old harridan had struck 
 and defiled it. 
 
 And as he walked back unhurriedly to the 
 251
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 farther end of the room, his mind refused the 
 thought of anything but this one insult. He 
 was incapable of considering what might be the 
 far-reaching results of his interference. He 
 thought not at all of Tempe or the Stratton 
 inheritance. He saw nothing but a picture of 
 his mother's face branded and disfigured. 
 
 The discussion round the table was becom- 
 ing more heated. The three Strattons were 
 evidently oblivious of the presence of anyone 
 but themselves. But Shepston had pushed his 
 chair back and was polishing his eyeglass. For 
 so peculiarly confident and able a diplomatist, 
 he looked uncommonly ill at ease. 
 
 Grey came up and laid his hand on Lady 
 Adelaide's shoulder. 
 
 "I'll ask you to stop talking, and listen to 
 me," he said gravely. 
 
 He had a strangely intent look on his face, 
 as if his gaze were fixed on some near figure 
 that was quite invisible to the others. 
 
 8 
 
 LADY ADELAIDE looked up with an expression of 
 shocked surprise. 
 
 "Eh?" she said, and made a movement to
 
 The Outburst 
 
 release her naked shoulder from the grip of his 
 fingers. 
 
 Lord and Lady Downham were apparently 
 too startled to speak. They sat aghast and 
 stared as if they were witnessing some awful 
 but enthralling dramatic performance. 
 
 Outside the storm was coming nearer. A 
 long reverberating peal rolled on and on as if 
 it would never cease. 
 
 Grey released his grip, and the marks of his 
 fingers showed red on Lady Adelaide's white 
 skin. 
 
 "I've got to make you understand," he said. 
 
 " What in God's name are you talking 
 about, young man?" asked Lady Adelaide; 
 and Lord Downham, relieved from the spell 
 that the shock had put upon him, began his 
 usual grunting prelude to speech. 
 
 " Er er this is er " he stuttered. 
 
 Grey took no sort of notice of him. He was 
 trying to find some means of making his inten- 
 tion extraordinarily plain. He had a wild 
 impulse to go upstairs and fetch his mother's 
 photograph from the dressing-table. 
 
 "Listen, listen, woman! Don't interrupt 
 me," he said, and made an impatient gesture 
 with his hand. 
 
 253
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Lady Adelaide winced and moved her chair 
 farther away from him. 
 
 " You were speaking of Edward Stratton," 
 Grey said, " and the woman he married in 
 Canada. And you used certain epithets that 
 you are going to apologise for." 
 
 Lord Downham suddenly became articulate. 
 "I must protest," he began. "This is is 
 most unseemly. Really, I can't allow " 
 
 Grey turned and looked at him. 
 
 " I must ask you not to interrupt me, Lord 
 Downham," he said. " What I have to say 
 is very important." 
 
 " Er really, really " Lord Downham 
 
 protested angrily, but with a suggestion of 
 nervous uneasiness. 
 
 His wife still stared fixedly at Grey ; her 
 mouth was perceptibly open. 
 
 Shepston had stood up, and was tilting his 
 chair towards him, holding it by the back rail. 
 
 "We must hear what Mr. Grey has to 
 say," he put in, with an air of authority. " You 
 were speaking of the woman the late Lord 
 Stratton met in Toronto, I think," he con- 
 tinued. "You say he married her?" 
 
 " Why, of course," Grey said. " But that's 
 of no importance. I'll allow it was an import- 
 
 254
 
 The Outburst 
 
 ant thing to her, because she had fine ideals 
 of virtue and morality. But it's not that I'm 
 wanting to insist on at this moment. No; 
 what I have to make clear to you is just the 
 kind of woman Janet Grey was." 
 
 Lady Adelaide snorted. "Janet Grey!" 
 she repeated. " A relative of yours, young 
 man?" 
 
 " She was my mother," Grey said. 
 
 How utterly unsuspicious of that fact these 
 three people had been was proved by the frozen 
 amazement with which they greeted his an- 
 nouncement. They made no dramatic move- 
 ments ; they simply stared at Grey as if they 
 were uncertain whether they had rightly under- 
 stood him. Lady Adelaide was the first to find 
 speech. 
 
 "Eh?" she ejaculated in a thin squeak. 
 
 Grey's automatic repetition of his statement 
 was probably not heard by any of his listeners, 
 for at that moment a great fork of lightning 
 glared so blindingly outside, that the brilliance 
 of it flashed into the room through the crevices 
 between the curtain rings and through every 
 slit where the curtains themselves just failed to 
 meet. And with that intimidating blaze one 
 devastating crash of thunder burst like a vast 
 
 255
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 explosion, as if the whole of Stratton Hall had 
 been awfully, shattered into one instantaneous 
 ruin. 
 
 The two women blenched and shrieked, and 
 both Lord Downham and Shepston uncon- 
 sciously ducked their heads and closed their 
 eyes. 
 
 "Dear me," Lord Downham said, recover- 
 ing himself while still the din of that crash rang 
 in all their ears. " I don't know when I've 
 known such a storm. I wonder if anything was 
 struck?" He got up, walked to the window, 
 parted the curtains, and looked out. 
 
 Grey stood quite still. He seemed hardly 
 to have noticed the thunder. He was waiting 
 patiently to make his explanation. 
 
 Lady Adelaide had begun to chatter about 
 the storm to Lady Downham, when her hus- 
 band dropped the curtains and returned to the 
 group about the table. 
 
 "I hope Tempe isn't out on the terrace," 
 he said quietly ; and then to Grey : " You were 
 saying, I believe, that you claim to be er the 
 son of the late Lord Stratton?" 
 
 Lady Adelaide turned roimd and put up her 
 lorgnette. "Ah, yes," she remarked. "Please 
 go on."
 
 The Outburst 
 
 The whole atmosphere of the room had 
 changed. It was as if that culminating crash 
 had relieved all the tension. The Strattons had 
 providentially been given an opportunity to 
 recover their sangfroid at this most critical and 
 astounding moment of their lives. 
 
 "I'd like you to know the kind of woman 
 my mother was," said Grey, with no apparent 
 consciousness of the interruption or of the 
 change of attitude expressed by his hearers ; 
 "and I realise that you'll find it mighty hard 
 to understand, because you'd never meet a 
 woman of that sort in your own society. You 
 see, she was truly great. She had the purest 
 mind and the biggest heart ever woman had, 
 and she was so revolted and disgusted when she 
 learned the kind of man she had married that 
 she brought me up to loathe the name of 
 Stratton. She had no false pride either ; it was 
 just that she loved things that were clean and 
 honest. And she worked all her life to give me 
 such a chance in the world that I would never 
 want to take or claim money I had not earned. 
 I have never respected any other human being 
 as I respect her. She has been my hero ever 
 since I could remember. I've her photograph 
 in my room upstairs, and I'd like you to see it; 
 
 R 257
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 I think it might help you to understand some- 
 thing of what I'm telling you." 
 
 He paused, and Lady Adelaide opened her 
 mouth to speak, and then closed it again. The 
 quiet sincerity and intensity of Grey's speech 
 had subdued even her temper. 
 
 It was Lady Downham who broke the 
 silence. "Will you ring, Reggie," she said, 
 " and ask Garton to fetch the photograph from 
 Mr. Grey's room?" 
 
 Her husband nodded gravely. It seemed, 
 absurdly, that the photograph was to be pro- 
 duced as evidence. 
 
 4 
 
 THEY had listened to him attentively, they had 
 even shown signs of having been impressed by 
 his simple devotion to the memory of his 
 mother; but now, while Garton was away on 
 his errand, they gave him clearly to understand 
 that if they had been tricked into a grudging 
 admiration for his filial reverence, they were by 
 no means prepared to accept his story or him- 
 self at his own valuation. They had become 
 more formal, more polite than Grey had ever 
 seen them. 
 
 258
 
 The Outburst 
 
 * I suppose you don't remember your 
 father?" asked Lady Adelaide, with a notably 
 cynical inflection. 
 
 ! * He deserted my mother a few weeks after 
 he married her," Grey said. He had vindicated 
 his mother's memory, and his sense of realities 
 was coming back to him. For a few minutes, 
 while that strange passionate heat of determina- 
 tion had held him, these people had appeared 
 dwarfed, almost infantile. He had regarded 
 them as little, ignorant children who must be 
 punished for their naughtiness, and he had con- 
 trolled his temper in order to administer a more 
 telling rebuke. Now he was beginning to see 
 them again in their true relation to himself : as 
 his host and hostess, and as aristocrats who 
 counted in the social and political life of 
 England, whatever might be his own contempt 
 for the system that had given them their power. 
 Lastly, with a sudden flush of emotion that 
 surged through him like warm blood returning 
 freely to half -starved veins, he remembered that 
 these two people were Tempe's father and 
 mother. For a moment his problem took a 
 new shape. It seemed to him that he must 
 either persist in his claim or acknowledge that 
 he had lied; either deny his own and his 
 
 2 59
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 mother's principles, or asperse her memory and 
 relinquish all hope of Tempe. 
 
 " Indeed?" Lord Downham was saying. 
 " And and Edward, I understand, had made 
 no no provision for for your mother?" 
 
 Grey sat down and plunged his hands into 
 the pockets of his dinner-jacket. He felt like 
 a man who had come suddenly out of a world 
 of fierce action into this difficult calm life of 
 social intercourse. 
 
 "He did not, Lord Downham," he said. 
 " As far as I can gather, the late Lord Stratton 
 had no sense of his responsibilities." 
 
 "Perhaps not," agreed Lord Downham, 
 waving that point aside. " But his family had 
 -^er had a strong sense of responsibility for 
 him. If your mother had applied to my 
 father he would undoubtedly have have taken 
 steps to to make some proper provision for 
 her." 
 
 " Naturally," put in Lady Adelaide spite- 
 fully. 
 
 " She would never have done that," Grey 
 said. 
 
 The three Strattons, each in his or her own 
 manner, looked without any equivocation their 
 settled incredulity. That this was the weak 
 
 260
 
 The Outburst 
 
 point in his story was the conviction that their 
 faces confidently expressed. 
 
 ' 1 can't see why, quite why not," Lord 
 Downham said. 
 
 :< She was not the kind of woman who would 
 owe anything to the family of the man she 
 despised," Grey explained. 
 
 Lady Adelaide murmured something about 
 the " independent spirit of the poor," but Lady 
 Downham leaned forward as though she had 
 just discovered some sure ground for hope, and 
 interrupted her aunt by saying : 
 
 " Yes, but I don't see why she should have 
 married poor Edward if she disliked him so." 
 
 " Oh, she must have loved him when she 
 married him," Grey replied. " She would not 
 have married him for any other reason on earth. 
 It's that thought that has prejudiced me against 
 the man more than any other. I find it difficult 
 to imagine how fine a scoundrel he must have 
 been to have changed my mother's love to 
 loathing in a few weeks." 
 
 Lord Downham stiffened. " You are quite 
 in error, er quite," he said. " Poor Edward 
 was was weak and lacking in a sense of respon- 
 sibility we admit that but your description 
 of him is is I should have thought you 
 
 261
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 would have recognised is as unfitting as Lady 
 Adelaide's er perfectly innocent misdescrip- 
 tion of of your mother." 
 
 " Only I have some grounds for my infer- 
 ence; Lady Adelaide had none." 
 
 " I assure you that you are quite in error 
 as to your estimate of my half-brother," Lord 
 Downham returned, with an air of finality. 
 
 " Well, I'm prejudiced, no doubt," Grey 
 said quietly. " But that should help you to 
 understand, in a way, how difficult it is to take 
 another point of view ; but here are you imitat- 
 ing my mistake. I'll grant you that I may have 
 made a mistake with regard to my father's 
 character; he did something to prejudice my 
 mother, and I learnt all I know of him from 
 her. But can't you try to realise, on your side, 
 that you're all just as prejudiced with regard to 
 what I've been telling you about my mother? 
 I'd like you to get a truer picture of her than 
 I've been able to give you so far. I want you 
 to understand just why a woman of her splendid 
 character would owe nothing to the man who 
 had deceived and deserted her." 
 
 " Rather a curious analogy, isn't it?" asked 
 Lady Adelaide superciliously. 
 
 " I don't see why?" returned Grey sharply. 
 262
 
 The Outburst 
 
 "No?" commented Lady Adelaide. "Well, 
 it may seem natural enough to you. But, 
 of course, you have a story to make good; we 
 haven't." 
 
 * I would certainly like to convince you that 
 my mother was a noble-minded woman," Grey 
 said. 
 
 " Is that all?" asked Lady Adelaide. " It 
 seems to me that that is only a preliminary." 
 
 He could not misread her intention. He 
 knew that he was committed to a frank state- 
 ment, but he felt curiously disinclined to make 
 it. He wished now that he had not sent for 
 his mother's photograph. It would only be 
 despised, as he himself was being despised. He 
 was no longer a Stratton guest. He was a 
 vulgar opponent, who had stooped to unworthy 
 methods, who had insidiously obtained an entry 
 into the family circle, and then attacked it by 
 the secret and cowardly methods of newspaper 
 publicity. The Strattons had restrained them- 
 selves remarkably well, but he could not doubt 
 that this would be the last occasion on which 
 he would see them. They were maintaining 
 their dignity, but before to-morrow morning he 
 would be politely told that his visit must come 
 
 to an end. 
 
 263
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 He was not conscious of any sense of injury. 
 He did not resent the fact that these people 
 regarded him merely as a tricky Canadian. 
 The lassitude of mind that had supervened 
 upon his outbust of emotion was urging him 
 to a quiet acceptance of their opinion. What 
 did it matter if they thought his declaration 
 was only, as Lady Adelaide had said, a pre- 
 liminary to his direct attack upon their title 
 and estates? 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders and leaned back 
 in his chair as if he considered the innuendo 
 beneath his notice. 
 
 Lord Downham was evidently aware that 
 this matter must be handled discreetly, but his 
 wife displayed no such recognition of diplomatic 
 necessity. 
 
 " I suppose you do really believe it all, 
 yourself?" she asked on a note of doubt. 
 
 Lord Downham frowned and stammered, 
 and his hesitation gave Grey time to say : 
 
 " Believe that my mother was a great 
 woman ? ' ' 
 
 "Oh, it's hardly that, you see/' Lady 
 Downham replied. " I mean that doesn't so 
 much concern us. What is so important is 
 whether they were really married." 
 
 264
 
 The Outburst 
 
 " And whether I can prove it?" Grey 
 added. 
 
 " Exactly," put in Lady Adelaide. 
 
 Lord Downham looked at Shepston, who 
 had held so severely aloof from the discussion 
 since his brief interpolation, and who now, by 
 a scarcely perceptible movement of his hand, 
 indicated that there was no need to check his 
 sister's questions. Plainly the claimant was 
 showing his cards, while the family concealed 
 theirs. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I can prove the marriage," Grey 
 said carelessly. It all seemed such a tedious, 
 dreary business to him now. And he was won- 
 dering whether Tempe w r ould come back from 
 the terrace, whether he would see her again 
 that night or early next morning before he left, 
 whether he should ever see her again? He 
 could write, he reflected, but he had no con- 
 fidence in any appeal made to Tempe by those 
 means. 
 
 ' Yes, I can prove it," he repeated, trying 
 to fix his attention on the matter in hand. 
 4 ' There is the register ; my father was married 
 under his proper name and title." He paused 
 for a moment, and saw Shepston suddenly tilt 
 the chair he was still holding. No doubt that 
 
 265
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 was the point he had wanted more particularly 
 to know. "And besides that," Grey continued, 
 " William Hayles, Lord Stratton's tutor, is 
 still living, and he was a witness to the 
 marriage." 
 
 Lady Downham looked greatly distressed. 
 " Oh, dear, how very dreadful!" she said. 
 
 Even Lady Adelaide was quenched, and 
 looking half pityingly at her nephew. And 
 then all three of them looked at Shepston as if 
 he alone might still save them by some brilliant 
 stroke of invention. 
 
 "The Committee of Privileges the court 
 that would try such a case," Shepston said, 
 " would demand the most rigorous proof." 
 
 A spirit of cruelty transiently moved Grey 
 to make the most of his advantage. At this 
 moment he would avenge his mother for the 
 insult put upon her, living and dead, by the 
 Stratton family. He had them at his mercy. 
 
 " I know," he said carelessly ; " but I don't 
 suppose a clearer or better supported case was 
 ever tried. It seems almost a coincidence that 
 the evidence should be so strong. It is more 
 than thirty years since the marriage was 
 celebrated, I'll admit, but there are many 
 people still living in Toronto who could give 
 
 266
 
 The Outburst 
 
 evidence of identity. Then no one denies that 
 Lord Stratton was living in Canada at that 
 time; there is his recognisable handwriting on 
 the register (he had quite a characteristic signa- 
 ture, by the way that curiously schoolboyish 
 capital E, for example), and Hayles' testimony 
 would be, I should think, incontrovertible he 
 is a very prosperous citizen now, and is standing 
 for the Legislature." 
 
 Lord Downham winced visibly at the refer- 
 ence to his half-brother's signature. That 
 description was, apparently, an appallingly con- 
 vincing detail. And Shepston, the one hope of 
 the Strattons, had turned his back on them, and 
 was leaning his forehead against the carved 
 marble jamb of the great flower-filled fireplace. 
 
 Carton's tardy entrance with the photo- 
 graph he had been sent to fetch hardly created 
 a diversion. They looked at the portrait of 
 Grey's mother with unconcealed indifference. 
 The only possible interest they could have felt 
 in the woman's virtue had been taken from 
 them. 
 
 Outside the thunder had retreated, and 
 could only be heard faintly rumbling in the 
 distance ; but a faint crash of torrential rain 
 was falling on the terrace. 
 
 267
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 Lord Downham rose abruptly and went to 
 the nearest window ; he drew back the curtains 
 and then threw the tall French casements wide 
 open. A sweet, cool air blew into the room, 
 and the sound of the rain deepened into a roar. 
 In the morning not a petal would be left on that 
 scarlet field of geraniums before the house. 
 The Italian garden would be beaten flat and 
 its glory turned into a dismal wreck^ The 
 gardeners would soon be at work again, draw- 
 ing on their reserves from half a dozen hot- 
 houses. But the best of the summer was over; 
 perhaps the best days of Stratton were over 
 also. 
 
 The little party of those left about the table 
 was sitting in a depressed and gloomy silence 
 when Tempe re-entered the room. She came in 
 quickly, as if her exuberant mood had been 
 stimulated by her adventure in the storm, and 
 she were eager now to picture her wonderful 
 experience; but the sight of these five people, 
 each expressing so unmistakably some aspect of 
 despair, instantly checked her. 
 
 "Hallo!" she said; and then, as no one 
 responded, she came hesitatingly forward. 
 
 " Is anything the matter?" she asked. 
 
 268
 
 The Outburst 
 
 LADY DOWNHAM looked up. Her usual expres- 
 sion of faint perplexity had given place to one 
 of resignation that was also, in some way, 
 indicative of relief. 
 
 " I don't know, dear," she said. " It 
 almost seems as though we've no right to be 
 here at Stratton, I mean." And then she 
 added : " Of course, we've never liked it." 
 
 Tempe needed no interpretation of her 
 mother's cryptic explanation. She flushed 
 hotly and looked keenly at Grey He met her 
 gaze calmly, without any hint of confusion. 
 He could test her now, he thought, could dis- 
 cover whether she would, indeed, consider him 
 in a more favourable light if she regarded him 
 as a possible Marquis of Downham. 
 
 She did not answer at once. Her slightly 
 puckered forehead and intent eyes spoke of a 
 mind feverishly weighing motives, contingen- 
 cies, and effects. And her first words made it 
 clear that one of her perplexities concerned the 
 advisability of confessing her own earlier know- 
 ledge of the news that had so unexpectedly 
 shaken her family. 
 
 269
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Have you been talking about the claim- 
 ant?" she asked. "Is there any further 
 news?" 
 
 Lady Adelaide took upon herself the task of 
 explanation. " Let me introduce you, dear," 
 she said, and waved her hand in the direction 
 of Grey. " He came to convert us to Socialism, 
 I believe, and I think he has done it. He has 
 certainly convinced us that we have no right 
 here." 
 
 Tempe's eyes grew hard, and she glanced 
 across at her father, standing still at the window, 
 but talking now in undertones to Shepston. 
 
 "Does father know?" she asked. 
 
 " We all know," Lady Adelaide said. "We 
 have had the evidence put before us very 
 plainly." 
 
 " I guessed, you know !" Tempe announced, 
 solving the difficulty that was tying her tongue. 
 " Mr. Grey is so like Eddie Yaxley. I said so 
 
 at tea yesterday. But " She broke off and 
 
 looked keenly again at the cause of all the 
 trouble. There were doubt and inquiry in her 
 glance, as if she were still uncertain whether 
 he were not attempting some tremendous bluff. 
 Apparently she could find no answer to her 
 question in the unembarrassed stare that dared 
 
 270
 
 The Outburst 
 
 her to speak her mind, for she turned away and 
 went over to her father by the window. She 
 put her hand on his arm, and he looked down 
 at her affectionately and then drew her a little 
 closer to him it was the first endearment that 
 Grey had seen exchanged between any members 
 of that family. 
 
 He knew that they were all waiting for him 
 to get up and leave them alone. Lady Adelaide 
 had turned her back on him and was whispering 
 to her niece. He had been isolated. Without 
 any rudeness, they had made him aware that, 
 however clear his claim to be a member of their 
 family, he was an alien and an intruder. That 
 attitude did not hurt him. His sense of power 
 had returned. He had them all in the hollow 
 of his hand. They might hate him for what he 
 was and what they believed he had done, but 
 they could not afford to despise him. He could 
 wait. They would know soon what he stood 
 for ; meanwhile a little adversity was good for 
 them. And, above all, he wanted to be sure of 
 Tempe. 
 
 It was Lord Downham who took the first 
 step towards the establishment of a new under- 
 standing. 
 
 He signed to Shepston to close the window 
 271
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 and shut out the sound of the deluge, and then 
 came slowly back across the room and held out 
 his hand to Grey. 
 
 " May I greet you as a member of the 
 family?" Lord Downham said; and his stutter- 
 ing mannerisms of speech had almost left him. 
 He looked a little depressed, but he had not 
 the air of a man who had received an incurable 
 hurt. 
 
 Grey started to his feet and took the hand 
 that was offered to him. " Then you believe 
 my story, sir?" he asked. 
 
 " I have very little doubt of it," Lord 
 Downham replied. " This claim of yours has 
 not been altogether unforeseen by us. I had 
 
 hoped " He paused, and then, changing 
 
 his mind, continued : " Your claim will have to 
 be be made good in the proper course. There 
 will be involved and difficult formalities to be 
 undergone. But I shall not you may find it, 
 perhaps er, difficult to believe me I shall not 
 in some way be so so sorry to be released from 
 
 certain responsibilities " The end of the 
 
 sentence was lost in an incoherent mumble. 
 He had been speaking naturally, and Grey 
 realised that even his usual stuttering delivery 
 had been but another defence against a world 
 
 272
 
 The Outburst 
 
 that had always taken his intellectual abilities 
 at far too high a valuation. 
 
 Grey was moved then to make his declara- 
 tion of independence, and he still restrained 
 himself only because he must first learn Tempe's 
 mind with regard to himself. She was standing 
 aloof now, and he could not read her intention, 
 but he had no doubt that she believed him to 
 be serious in his determination to claim all that 
 was his. 
 
 "The responsibilities?" he echoed. "Yes, 
 the responsibilities must be overwhelming." 
 
 Lady Downham sighed. " One couldn't 
 retire," she remarked; but her husband 
 evidently took a more earnest view of his 
 duties. 
 
 " I should like to think," he said, and his 
 expression had in it some pathetic note of plead- 
 ing, "to think that the the tradition might 
 be upheld. The Strattons have stood for 
 something. It isn't quite easy to explain to 
 you just what I mean. I feel in speaking to 
 you, who who may perhaps prove to be the 
 true head of the family that I am speaking to 
 to one who has been brought up in such a 
 
 different tradition that " No training could 
 
 have made Lord Downham an efficient speaker, 
 
 s 273
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 and the thought of all the toil and application 
 that must have been expended in learning his 
 every public utterance by heart gave Grey a 
 deep sight of the man's sincere sense of duty. 
 Hardly less wonderful was his willingness to 
 conform to the tradition of the succession. 
 Indeed, his readiness not only to accept, but 
 also in some way to defer to the usurper who 
 threatened to rob him was more than royal. 
 
 Grey bowed his head. He recognised that 
 it was a fine spirit that animated this repre- 
 sentative of an old race. The man might be 
 inefficient, and his attempt to cover his in- 
 abilities by certain mannerisms and pomposities 
 might appear absurd, but underneath it all he 
 had a devoted, loyal heart ; he was willing to 
 sacrifice all his personal honour for the sake of 
 his principles. And before Grey could reply to 
 that touching appeal for the maintenance of the 
 Stratton tradition he received further evidence 
 of the same spirit, and this time from a source 
 that at last relieved him from further decep- 
 tions. 
 
 Tempe had come back into the circle, and 
 had again taken her father's arm, leaning her 
 head towards him with a beautiful gesture of 
 protection. 
 
 274
 
 The Outburst 
 
 " We mustn't count too much on Stratton 
 now, dear," she said. " But even if we are to 
 be known as the younger branch, you shall have 
 one of your ambitions fulfilled. I can marry 
 Eddie Yaxley still, you know ; it won't make 
 any difference to dear old Eddie." 
 
 She did not look at Grey, but he knew that 
 he had had his answer. He watched Lord 
 Downham's gentle response to his daughter's 
 consolation with a new pride in the fact that 
 he was related to these kindly people by the 
 ties of blood. 
 
 Then he lifted his head and faced them with 
 his old self-assertion. 
 
 "And now that you have all passed judg- 
 ment," he said, " will you be very patient and 
 hear what I have to say?" 
 
 "Of course, of course," Lord Downham 
 mumbled; but Tempe's eyes were narrowed 
 suspiciously. It seemed as if her faith in the 
 claimant had been utterly destroyed. 
 
 6 
 
 'Ix may be tedious, but I must explain," 
 Grey began; and finding that he could not 
 express the things that were burning within 
 
 275
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 him while he stood facing what proved to be an 
 attentive, even eager, audience, he talked 
 pacing backwards and forwards, his hands for 
 the most part in his jacket pockets. 
 
 "You have only seen one side," he said, 
 " and I know what a handicap that can be, for 
 until the last few days I had only seen one side 
 either. Why, when I came over to England I 
 had a far worse opinion of you than you could 
 ever have had of me, because I was ready to 
 take pains in discovering your faults, and you 
 would never have troubled yourselves to discover 
 
 mine.' 
 
 He paused a moment and looked half 
 whimsically at Lady Adelaide. 
 
 " Oh, yes; I came prepared to find you the 
 representatives of a rotten, decaderjt society," 
 he said. " I came to make scorn of you for an 
 American public, to hold you up to ridicule in 
 my next book." 
 
 "What a pity you changed your mind!" 
 put in Lady Adelaide. 
 
 "Why, no, madam," Grey returned 
 quickly. " If you will hear me out, you'll find 
 that you are as wrong on that score as you were 
 earlier in the evening. But you must try, if 
 you can, to appreciate my point of view, just 
 
 276
 
 The Outburst 
 
 as I have learned, to a certain extent, to 
 appreciate yours." 
 
 He glanced round at them and found on 
 every face some look of resignation to the 
 inevitable but Shepston looked as if he were 
 also suffering some pang of remorse. It was 
 quite evident that none of them guessed what 
 he had to say. They one and all believed that 
 he had been tempted by wealth and display, 
 that he had become a spurious convert to their 
 traditions. And he felt the joy of a public 
 speaker who knows that the audience are soft 
 clay for his modelling. 
 
 "Why, at this moment," he went on, 
 " you are all condemning me unheard. You 
 have arraigned and tried me and passed judg- 
 ment without hearing one single word of my 
 defence. I don't want to be didactic I'm not 
 a schoolmaster come to give you a lesson, but I 
 must oh, I do condemn you still for your 
 prejudices, despite all that is so great in you 
 and there is so much that I have come to admire 
 I do condemn your prejudice. You have 
 only seen one side, and there are many sides. 
 
 " Haven't you condemned yourselves by 
 crediting such a mean plan to me and such 
 mean motives? Are you all so blind that you 
 
 277
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 could think I should condescend to a trick like 
 newspaper publicity ? ' ' 
 
 He stopped again and stretched out his 
 hands towards them. " Can you honestly say 
 that you disliked me before this evening?" he 
 asked. 
 
 Lady Adelaide smiled grimly and twisted 
 her satirical old mouth a little to one side. 
 " Why, no, Mr. Grey," she said, mimicking 
 the accent he occasionally reverted to. " Not 
 till we found you'd come to cheat us of 
 Stratton." 
 
 He smiled at her frankly. " You're the 
 worst of them all, you know," he said; and she 
 tossed her head slightly, but showed no sign of 
 being offended. 
 
 He fell to his pacing again as he continued : 
 " Well, then, why did you condemn me so 
 readily? Just because you are ignorant of any 
 life but your own. You think there are but two 
 kinds of humanity, your kind and the others, 
 and you must learn that that isn't true. You 
 are not fit to rule while you believe that. 
 
 "I'm only an object lesson for you, but I 
 want to make the thing clear. Now, Mr. Shep- 
 ston knows and Lady Tempe knows one thing, 
 and that is that I had no hand at all in that 
 
 278
 
 The Outburst 
 
 newspaper rubbish. It was done by a journalist 
 who had ferreted out my story on his own 
 account; and after it had begun I did my best 
 to stop it. Of one thing you may be sure, this 
 foolishness in the Sunday paper is the last you'll 
 hear of it from these sources." 
 
 " Did did I understand you to say that 
 Shepston and my daughter knew that you 
 
 that ?" interpolated Lord Downham in 
 
 great perplexity, and then stopped as if he 
 imagined that his sentence were complete. 
 
 " Yes, they suspected me, and I confessed," 
 Grey said. 
 
 " But why ?" Lord Downham began. 
 
 " Why did they say nothing to you?" Grey 
 took him up. " Well, I can't guess Mr. Shep- 
 ston 's motives, but with regard to Lady Tempe, 
 she did me the honour to trust me." 
 
 "To trust you?" Lady Downham said, as 
 if the idea were inconceivably grotesque. 
 " Trust you to do what?" 
 
 " To be true to myself," Grey said. " True 
 to my mother's teaching." 
 
 The three older members of the Stratton 
 family stared their perplexity, and Lady 
 Adelaide was the first of them to recover her 
 wits. 
 
 279
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Let's hear the whole caboodle, Mr. Grey," 
 she remarked. " I think you said that you 
 weren't responsible for the newspaper scandals." 
 
 " I was certainly not," Grey replied. " Nor 
 did I come here with any sort of intention of 
 claiming this estate." 
 
 " What made you change your mind?" Lady 
 Adelaide asked. 
 
 " I never have changed my mind," Grey 
 said. 
 
 "But you've made your claim," returned 
 Tempe, with a flush of defiance. 
 
 " I have made no claim, nor do I intend to," 
 replied Grey. 
 
 The flat statement set them aback for a 
 moment. They failed to grasp immediately the 
 full significance of the thing he had said ; and 
 then Lord Downham rose to his feet with a 
 certain dignity and said : 
 
 " We are not used to to practical jokes, 
 Mr. Grey." 
 
 Grey flung out his hand with i* despairing 
 gesture. " Oh, haven't I asked you to listen to 
 me?" he said. " I want so much, for your sakes 
 as well as my own, to make this thing clear, but 
 you will jump to your own conclusions. Please 
 sit down, Lord Downham, and try to understand 
 
 280
 
 The Outburst 
 
 that I am not the kind of man who plays practical 
 jokes on anyone." 
 
 " But it is is incredible that you should 
 
 " Should refuse Stratton and all that it 
 stands for? Yes, perhaps it is ; just as incredible 
 as it is to me that you should prefer your way 
 of life to mine. Is it too hard for you all to 
 believe that?" 
 
 He paused for an answer, and Lady Down- 
 ham asked : " Do you mean that you don't 
 want Stratton?" 
 
 " I do mean that, Lady Downham," Grey 
 said; "and I mean, furthermore, that nothing 
 would induce me to take it." 
 
 Lord Downham was mumbling something 
 about "generosity." 
 
 Grey took him up quickly. "No, sir, no," 
 he said ; ' ' that is just the point that I am try- 
 ing so hard and so fruitlessly to make. This 
 attitude of mine has nothing to do with 
 generosity, nor with the real feeling I have 
 come to have for you, who are, after all, my 
 only kin. No, when I refuse to be loaded with 
 the responsibilities of title and wealth, I am 
 making no kind of sacrifice ; rather, I am admit- 
 ting a weakness that I've only just discovered 
 
 281
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 in myself. Believe me, I could not endure to 
 carry this state and these responsibilities. The 
 joy of my life is the common struggle upwards 
 against life ; the thought of the struggle to come 
 down, to take a high place in your English 
 Society, and, as it were, to fight to come down 
 to the level of my tenants, is utterly repulsive 
 to me. I love the people, and I could not 
 endure to separate myself from them. I hate 
 the society of your class, and in spite of all that 
 I have learnt in the past few days I still intend 
 to attack with all my strength the principle that 
 sets them on a sham pedestal." 
 
 And then he turned, and, standing quite 
 still, he looked straight at Tempe as he con- 
 tinued : " But there is another thing, too, and 
 that is to be free, to have a firm purpose in life, 
 but to be responsible to no man. You can 
 never be as free as I am. You are not inde- 
 pendent. You are tied by all the duties you 
 owe to your Society, and your ambitions are 
 limited by the means of your pleasure. You 
 are shut in, confined within such horribly 
 narrow walls. You can never feel the happiness 
 of new experience, of adventure, because you 
 never know the thrill of danger. To-night, 
 perhaps for the first time, you have come near 
 
 282
 
 The Outburst 
 
 to life. Yes, you too, Lady Tempe," he went 
 on. ' You came near a reality when you pro- 
 fessed yourself willing to marry Mr. Yaxley. 
 You meant it as a willing sacrifice." 
 
 ' What right have you to come and lecture 
 us all?" she replied sharply. 
 
 AND with her defiance of him the spell of his 
 influence was partly released. They, the 
 Strattons of Stratton, had sat and listened to 
 this almost unknown Canadian with a humility 
 that was strangely foreign to them. Now they 
 began to realise what they had done. 
 
 'Very upsetting," Lady Downham said, 
 turning to Lady Adelaide, and that old lady 
 replied acidly : 
 
 ' It seems that this young man, who never 
 plays practical jokes, has been having consider- 
 able sport with us." 
 
 Shepston intervened. He had so far been 
 curiously silent during the long scene that had 
 been partly of his making. 
 
 "If it were nothing more than sport, we 
 might forgive him without much difficulty," 
 he said. 
 
 283
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Quite so," agreed Lord Downham, auto- 
 matically taking his cue from the man who had 
 guided his career. 
 
 "Well? Clever Reggie!" Lady Adelaide 
 prompted. 
 
 " The whole affair is most infernally com- 
 plicated," Shepston went on. " Grey doesn't 
 want the title or its increments ; that is quite 
 certain. He proposes, I understand, to go 
 away and continue life under the name he has 
 assumed?" 
 
 Grey nodded his assent. 
 
 " But, as I have already pointed out to 
 him," Shepston continued, " that may only 
 postpone the difficulty. If he has children, a 
 son, he cannot possibly guarantee that that son 
 will not some day turn up and insist on his 
 rights." 
 
 " It will be very trying for us to know that 
 it's always hanging over us," remarked Lady 
 Downham. 
 
 "Oh, impossible, impossible!" her husband 
 agreed. He got to his feet and began to walk 
 slowly up and down the room, his head bent, 
 his eyes on the ground. The others watched 
 him, waiting for him to speak, and after a few 
 moments he paused and looked at Grey. 
 
 284
 
 The Outburst 
 
 " Candidly, I should be relieved if if you'd 
 take what belongs to you," he said. 
 
 And it seemed as if this were to be the 
 outcome of all their antagonisms, that by an 
 incredible turn of the wheel these five people 
 were after all about to unite in pressing upon 
 Grey all that he had so recently deemed to be 
 their dearest possession. 
 
 He did not answer at once. He looked 
 at Tempe, and she met his eyes with a 
 question. 
 
 " If I may say so," Lord Downham con- 
 tinued, " I have changed my opinion with 
 with regard to you as a possible owner of 
 Stratton. I cannot but think that when you 
 have realised all the responsibilities and and 
 traditions that you will not unworthily uphold 
 them. I have found much to admire in in 
 what you have said to us. I can under- 
 stand " 
 
 "Oh, please stop, Lord Downham," Grey 
 interrupted him. "What you are asking is 
 inconceivable. I should make no sort of master 
 for this place." 
 
 " You are determined to to return to 
 Canada?" 
 
 " Absolutely. Stratton is beautiful, and it 
 285
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 appeals to me in many ways, but it limits me. 
 I can't see the world from here ; I can't see the 
 problems of humanity. This place is a formula. 
 I don't say now that it doesn't still work in 
 a way, but I want to find a larger and more 
 inclusive theory of life. If I were master here, 
 I should be forced to assume the formulae that 
 have gone to the making of all that this stands 
 for in English Society. And that confines me. 
 I want I want to find knowledge that cannot 
 be reached by this formula. Do you under- 
 stand me?" 
 
 Lord Downham nodded gravely. " I under- 
 stand that you want more space," he said. 
 
 Tempe drew in her breath with an audible 
 gasp. "Oh, father, you too?" she asked. 
 " And I never guessed." 
 
 " Perhaps I hardly knew it myself," Lord 
 Downham replied simply. And then he smiled 
 and added : " But you, Tempe, do you mean 
 that you have felt and known that you wanted 
 er more space?" 
 
 "Oh, but immensely more!" she said 
 passionately. " To-night, while I was watching 
 the storm on the terrace, I had made up my 
 mind that I must somehow break out of all this. 
 But when I came in and found you all in such 
 
 286
 
 The Outburst 
 
 trouble, I thought I don't know, the very 
 threat of losing Stratton seemed to make us 
 more free." 
 
 " And will you be free as Duchess of Liver- 
 pool?" Grey asked. 
 
 She looked at him with steady eyes that no 
 longer held a question. 
 
 " It won't be necessary for me to marry 
 Eddie now that you aren't going to take 
 Stratton," she said. 
 
 "You don't wish to marry Yaxley?" her 
 father asked, with a suggestion of disappoint- 
 ment in his voice. 
 
 She jumped to her feet and shook her head 
 emphatically. 
 
 " Are you so tremendously keen, dear, on 
 that old Yaxley-Stratton alliance?" she asked; 
 and before her father had time to answer she 
 lifted her head, and, with a challenging glance 
 at Grey, continued : " Because, you know, 
 I had a proposal of marriage two nights ago 
 from Eddie's second cousin, and if you insist, 
 I think of the two I would almost sooner ' 
 
 She was already making for the door, and 
 was out of the room before her father or mother 
 had grasped the significance of what she had 
 said. 
 
 287
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "Eddie's second cousin?" Lady Downham 
 was saying. " Let me see, that would be 
 
 Grey had moved away from the group about 
 the table and was talking to Shepston. 
 
 Lady Adelaide was sound asleep in her 
 chair. 
 
 288
 
 THE storm had cleared the air, but had wrought 
 such havoc in the process that it had created 
 new conditions rather than alleviated old 
 ones. 
 
 The wreck of the parterre, the scattered 
 flower-heads and earth-soiled leaves, the chan- 
 nelled beds and pitted, blackened gravel was of 
 little account. In a few hours the glory of the 
 terrace could be restored to its old boasting 
 assertion of brilliance. But down there in the 
 park two of the ancient oaks had been struck, 
 one of them an historic tree, planted by Queen 
 Elizabeth in 1567. For more than three hun- 
 dred and forty years that mighty veteran had 
 defied all the powers of the air, and now it had 
 been riven by a single stroke that had left it in 
 danger of final destruction. 
 
 Grey, waking very early, had gone out into 
 the park before breakfast, and saw that already 
 
 T 289
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 the work of renovation had begun. The morn- 
 ing was overcast and threatening. It seemed 
 as if that great storm had marked the end of 
 the summer. 
 
 He left the parterre, finding something 
 that annoyed him in this preoccupation with 
 outward appearances, and wandered down the 
 hill until he came to the great oak that had 
 been so ruthlessly stricken. The head forester 
 and an assistant were there before him, diagnos- 
 ing the hurt. 
 
 " Do you think that it will be possible to 
 save it?" Grey asked. The forester stared 
 thoughtfully at the oak. " Oh, well, save it 
 for a time, sir," he said. "We can saw off 
 the big branch and clamp it up, but it'll never 
 be the same tree again. Once they've been 
 opened, the rot gets in, do what you will- 
 particularly an old tree like this." 
 
 He went a little nearer and pointed to the 
 cleft where the main branches threatened to 
 fall apart and split the great trunk. " But it 
 was none so sound as it looked outside, you 
 see, sir," he said. " If there hadn't been the 
 beginnings of rot at the fork, it would ha' been 
 good for another three hundred year. You 
 never know with this old timber what's going 
 
 290
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 on inside. I've seen trees that looked as sound 
 as a bell snapped off in a gale, and the trunk's 
 been little more than bark heart rotted clean 
 out of 'em." 
 
 Grey went a little closer to the oak, and 
 observed the dark tapering stain on the bright 
 surfaces of the fracture. 
 
 * Yes, it hnd begun to rot," he said. " But 
 you'll save the appearance of it for a long time 
 yet, I think." 
 
 The forester thought it very probable, and 
 added that ' ' his lordship ' ' set great store by 
 that tree. 
 
 WHEN he returned to the house Grey found 
 Shepston in the breakfast-room. The little 
 man was as spruce as ever, and his smile 
 when he said "Good morning" as charmingly 
 friendly and uncommunicative, but his eyes 
 looked tired and his face a little drawn, as if 
 he, too, had been permanently changed by the 
 great crisis of last night. 
 
 "Been out so soon?" he asked cheerily; 
 and Grey gave him the news of the Elizabeth 
 
 oak. 
 
 291
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " Older growths than that are keeping up 
 appearances with the rot eating into them," 
 Shepston said. It was evident that he, at least, 
 was not tempted to be sentimental about mere 
 timber, whatever its associations. 
 
 Grey did not affect to misunderstand him. 
 " I suppose there will have to be some sort of 
 definite arrangement made," he said. 
 
 "As a result of last night's hurricane?" 
 Shepston amended. " Yes, Grey, there will 
 indeed. But we can't discuss it here. If you 
 will, I should be glad if you could come to my 
 room when we've had breakfast. As a matter 
 of fact, I have a cut and dried proposition, 
 and I should prefer to discuss it with you 
 alone. Afterwards Downham may have certain 
 criticisms." 
 
 He concluded his sentence with a gesture 
 which suggested that Lord Downham 's part in 
 the business would be quite formal. 
 
 During the meal he discussed the Socialist 
 movement in America, displaying a remarkable 
 knowledge both of the literature and the con- 
 ditions; and Grey inferred that there was at 
 least one subject which could not be aired 
 before the Stratton servants. 
 
 Shepston 's room was a surprise. It was on 
 292
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 the first floor, and was, in fact, a particularly 
 well-organised office. 
 
 "My workshop!" he said. "Essentially 
 modern, and it's a hobby of mine to have 
 efficient appliances. I use card-indexes and 
 the last thing in letter files my secretary keeps 
 them all for me, of course. The secretary's 
 secretary," he added thoughtfully, as if he 
 wished to emphasise his own function in that 
 household; "and I have an estate telephone, 
 you see, so that I can talk to stewards and 
 tenants and all kinds of employees. I often 
 come down here alone, when the family is in 
 London, or abroad, or away somewhere, and 
 have a regular bout of estate management. I 
 flatter myself that the thing isn't badly done 
 on the whole." 
 
 " You are a perpetual surprise to me," 
 Grey said. 
 
 " And yet you know me better than most 
 people," Shepston replied. 
 
 "I?" Grey exclaimed. 
 
 " You've taken a certain amount of interest 
 and trouble, you see," Shepston said. " The 
 people I know would never do that." 
 
 Grey looked at him thoughtfully. " These 
 people must know uncommonly little about 
 
 293
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 you, then," he said. " For I must confess that 
 you have puzzled me." 
 
 Shepston threw himself back into an arm- 
 chair and passed one of his beautifully kept 
 hands rather wearily across his eyes. 
 
 " Sit down, Grey," he said. " There is no 
 hurry, and, now that we are no longer adver- 
 saries, we can talk. It's a relief to me, though 
 I thoroughly enjoyed our little diplomatic 
 duel. I beat you at first, but I should have 
 known that you were too strong for me. I 
 made the great mistake of undervaluing my 
 antagonist." 
 
 " I didn't do that, anyway," Grey re- 
 turned; "but I admit that you've still got me 
 guessing. I don't know this minute what your 
 game was or is." 
 
 "Was!" Shepston corrected him. "De- 
 finitely 'was.' But surely my interest was 
 clear enough?" 
 
 ; * I could only infer that you meant me to 
 make that claim." 
 
 " I did. And I meant you to make it 
 good." 
 
 * ' But why ? It seems to me that 
 
 : ' Good God, Grey, sometimes you are 
 amazingly simple," Shepston said, with a touch 
 
 294
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 of impatience. " Couldn't you draw your own 
 deductions from last night and credit me with 
 having known for years all that Downham had 
 tried to keep hidden even from me? Nothing 
 could have been better for him, or my sister, 
 or Dickie, than that they should lose Stratton 
 and the title. And they know it in their hearts, 
 but they just run on by a kind of inertia; and 
 they are unquestionably congratulating them- 
 selves this morning that they haven't got to 
 turn out and make any change in their lives. 
 I will admit that I had one bad moment last 
 night, when I thought that I had been mis- 
 taken and that Downham was going to take 
 it badly. I was scared and remorseful for about 
 five minutes, but I know now that I was a fool 
 to have been frightened. It would be the best 
 thing in the world for them all if you would 
 persist in your claim." 
 
 He paused a moment, and then went on : 
 " Oh, hopeless, I know. I saw that. You're 
 iron, but you'd make a damned fine marquis. 
 I should like to hear you speak in the Lords." 
 
 " But you," Grey put in. " Did you want 
 a change for your own sake?" 
 
 "Heavens, yes!" Shepston said. "I've 
 wanted it this ten years ; but I suffer from 
 
 295
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 inertia, too. It's in the air of all that apper- 
 tains to Stratton ; it's the dry rot that's affect- 
 ing all our big families in England. We run 
 on, you see. We don't do our job so badly, 
 but we've no initiative, no force; and unless 
 the big war in Europe comes within a year or 
 two, we shall be undermined from below. Oh, 
 yes, I wanted a change, but I've never had the 
 initiative to break away and begin again until 
 you came. You affected me that first afternoon 
 in Portman Square I liked your drive and 
 energy ; and when I began to suspect your 
 identity, down here, I was inspired with new 
 energy, too. I thought then that I could break 
 away. Incidentally, you've spoilt my last 
 chance in life by refusing Stratton." 
 
 " It isn't too late," Grey said. 
 
 Shepston waved him aside. " Ten years 
 too late," he returned. "I'm in the rut again 
 now. Nothing can ever lift me from it; which 
 reminds me that we have to settle one or two 
 points." 
 
 " I suppose there must be certain formali- 
 ties," Grey agreed. 
 
 He was trying this candid confession as a 
 solution of the puzzle that had intrigued him, 
 and he found that it fitted. And yet Shep- 
 
 296
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 ston himself still remained an enigma. He 
 might, with all his amazing capacities, have 
 been a cabinet minister at least, and he had 
 preferred to remain Lord Downham 's secre- 
 tary. Inertia? Did that explain everything? 
 Had that old oak been affected by the same 
 prevalent stagnation? Had its cells lost their 
 power of resistance to the invading rot? 
 
 '* It won't be difficult to arrange some form 
 of abdication for you," Shepston was saying. 
 :< Downham will, in effect, be your trustee, 
 although he will not be accountable to you in 
 any way. Strictly speaking, he will have no 
 right to use the title, but that can be arranged 
 privately. We can get the title conferred on 
 him for his lifetime, if necessary. The real 
 point of difficulty is that you cannot sign away 
 the succession, and as we must not risk future 
 complications, it will be essential for you to put 
 in all your proofs before you abdicate. Hayles, 
 for instance, will have to swear an affidavit." 
 
 " I don't see any difficulty so far," Grey 
 agreed. 
 
 " That is coming," Shepston replied. 
 "There is, you understand, Dickie; and, oh! 
 all sorts of contingencies to be provided against. 
 The chances are, for example, that Downham 
 
 297
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 will die before you, in which case provision 
 must be made for various eventualities, for your 
 having, or not having, a son, and for Dickie 
 being, or not being, alive. Because, you under- 
 stand, there is a collateral branch that might 
 inherit through Downham's uncle." 
 
 Grey sighed wearily. "I'm beginning to 
 realise the difficulties," he said. 
 
 " And you are inclined to shirk them?" 
 
 " Candidly, I am. It doesn't seem worth 
 while." 
 
 " Oh !" exclaimed Shepston, and pointed at 
 Grey with a triumphant finger. " So you are 
 not quite free from the Stratton inertia, eh? 
 It only takes another form." 
 
 " These endlessly tedious and foolish form- 
 alities about succession to something that one 
 of the parties won't have and the other doesn't 
 want " Grey began. 
 
 Shepston shook his head. " That's where 
 we have you," he said. " Given our theory of 
 life and society, we are capable of inexhaustible 
 energy in construction upon that base. It is 
 when we are faced with the necessity to create 
 a new theory that we fail. We may know that 
 our own theory is weak and that it is fostering 
 dry rot, but we cannot alter it ; the thought of 
 
 298
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 drastic change is paralysing, absolutely paralys- 
 ing. Now, you 
 
 * Yes ; I can't endure the restriction of your 
 theory," Grey agreed. ."I want to find a new 
 formula ; and I am paralysed by the contempla- 
 tion of all these immense calculations that must, 
 I know, be made. Yes, that is my symptom 
 of inertia. I have it, too. I would sooner drive 
 a new road than attempt to mend an old one." 
 
 Shepston nodded. 
 
 " Well, we will each stick to our own job," 
 he said. " I will work out this intricate docu- 
 ment can you understand that I shall enjoy 
 doing it? and you shall go off to Canada and 
 drive your new track, while I tediously patch 
 this age- worn road of ours." He paused for a 
 moment, and then continued : " But there's 
 one other point I must consult you about a 
 delicate one 
 
 " And one which I can't answer yet," Grey 
 said quickly. 
 
 "No?" Shepston commented. "Well, I 
 could, but I won't, and as you have already 
 told me all I want, I needn't press you." Then 
 he smiled and added : " There, too, I blundered 
 oh ! grossly. I felt so sure that Tempe 
 suffered from our form of inertia rather than 
 
 299
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 yours; and she suffers from neither. She is 
 supremely individual. And, by Jove ! I 
 wouldn't like to say now whether she'll go to 
 Canada or take the veil. On my honour, I 
 believe that it's an even chance either way." 
 
 8 
 
 SHEPSTON'S suggestion that Tempe hovered 
 between two alternatives was borne out by her 
 avoidance of Grey all that afternoon. 
 
 After a long confabulation with Lord 
 Downham, Shepston, and, finally, Dickie, who 
 had had the situation explained to him and 
 seemed decidedly relieved to hear that he might 
 never succeed to his father's position, Grey 
 figuratively threw back his shoulders and lifted 
 his head, as he had when he came out of the 
 Strattons' house in Portman Square. He felt 
 now that he was released ; released from the 
 secrecy that had vexed him when he had been 
 living under false pretences, from any further 
 responsibility concerning the arrangements that 
 would be admirably made for him, and, finally, 
 from the necessity to find some attitude in his 
 relation to the Downhams. He no longer 
 criticised them. For him they had ceased to 
 
 300
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 be representatives of a class, and had become 
 human beings. 
 
 But any pleasure he might have felt in the 
 new freedom brought by his declaration of the 
 night before was more than counterbalanced 
 by his uncertainty as to Tempe's probable 
 answer to the question she gave him no chance 
 to put to her. 
 
 She was unusually quiet at the luncheon 
 table, and afterwards she disappeared, possibly 
 to her own room ; and Grey spent the after- 
 noon playing golf with Dickie, and wondering 
 whether Tempe would still avoid him after tea. 
 But she did not put in an appearance in the 
 drawing-room at five o'clock, and he mooned 
 away the hours until it was time to dress for 
 dinner, finding ample excuse for the young 
 Strattons' condemnation of their ancestral 
 home as " a place where there was nothing to 
 do." 
 
 In his mind he had devised a test that might 
 alleviate the tedium of dinner. He had decided 
 that if she wore black that evening the chances 
 were in his favour, and against him if she were 
 in colours ; while if she wore again that flame- 
 coloured dress, with all its associations of reck- 
 less gaiety, he determined to refuse an oppor- 
 
 301
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 tunity of speaking to her alone, even if it were 
 offered. 
 
 And when she came down she upset all 
 his calculations by wearing an extraordinarily 
 simple, almost childish, frock of white. Even 
 her mother was moved to mild wonder. 
 
 " My dear Tempe, what have you got on?" 
 she asked. " You look as if you ought to have 
 your hair down." 
 
 " I feel so young to-night, mother," Tempe 
 said, " quite at the beginning of life, so I raked 
 this up out of an old wardrobe. I haven't 
 grown much since I was seventeen, have I? 
 Morgan hardly had to alter it." 
 
 Grey could gather nothing from her expres- 
 sion, and that girlish frock might have been the 
 symbol of devotion to religion quite as reason- 
 ably as the mark of her intention to risk life 
 on an income of about three thousand dollars 
 a year. 
 
 He was so absent-minded at dinner that 
 Shepston rallied him across the table. " Your 
 spirit must be in the large spaces of Canada, I 
 think, Grey," he said. "There's a vague look 
 in your eyes as if you were walking in an 
 immense silence." 
 
 Grey pulled himself together. " I'm afraid 
 302
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 I was wool-gathering," he said. "Yes, and I 
 believe I was thinking of Canada." 
 
 "Isn't it very cold over there?" Tempe 
 asked innocently. 
 
 " Well, it's a big place, you know," Grey 
 said. " Some of it is within the Arctic Circle, 
 and some of it farther south than London ; but 
 we certainly get harder winters in Ottawa than 
 you've ever seen in England." 
 
 " I always picture Canada as being under 
 snow," Tempe said. 
 
 " Despite the fact that the bread you're 
 eating is quite possibly made from Canadian 
 wheat?" 
 
 "Oh, you're quite wrong this time," she 
 returned in the tone of a child who has played 
 a successful trick on one of its elders. "All 
 our flour here comes from good Devonshire 
 corn Stratton grown. And. really, I didn't 
 know that such a lot of wheat was grown in 
 Canada. Why should I?" 
 
 " Oh, no reason why you should," Grey 
 said. He preferred any mood of hers to this 
 whimsical childishness that made her so un- 
 approachable. 
 
 No reference to the great change in the 
 Stratton succession was made during dinner, 
 
 303
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 nor at any time while servants were in the 
 room ; but on one or two occasions S heps ton 
 had to interrupt some speech of his sister's. It 
 was quite evident that she, at least, had come 
 to disregard any human faculty in the economy 
 of Garton or the footmen. 
 
 But afterwards in the drawing-room the 
 same taboo was still observed. They had come 
 to the verge of embarrassment when Lady 
 Adelaide said : 
 
 ** I don't see why we shouldn't play 
 bridge. ' ' 
 
 Even Lord Downham accepted the sug- 
 gestion with evident relief. 
 
 Dickie had sidled out of the room with a 
 hint of self-consciousness, and Tempe and 
 Grey, standing behind the card-players, faced 
 one another across the table. 
 
 She met his eyes with a slight frown, then 
 she shrugged her shoulders and said : 
 
 ; ' Do you want to go out on the terrace?" 
 
 He nodded without speaking. 
 
 The four bridge-players did not look up 
 from their game. 
 
 304
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 THEY went out by one of the drawing-room 
 windows and walked in silence up, past the 
 portico, to the half-darkness of the far end of 
 the terrace, where the solitary light of the 
 empty dining-room threw one feeble spoke of 
 illumination out into the night. 
 
 Grey would have preferred to walk up and 
 down, but Tempe lifted herself on to the 
 balustrade and sat herself just in the focus of 
 that one ray of light. 
 
 " We have to get this over," she said. 
 " No, please, don't interrupt. You must listen 
 to me. I'm not going to pretend that I don't 
 know that you've been looking out for me all 
 day, or that those dear blind people in the 
 drawing-room have done their little best to push 
 us into each other's company ; and I know that 
 they are quite ready now, even Reggie, to say 
 how glad they would be if I clinched their 
 arrangements by marrying the real heir, and at 
 the same time killed the other bird my father 
 has been potting at, by ' strengthening the old 
 alliance between the Strattons and the Yax- 
 leys.' She gave her last sentence all the air of 
 a quotation. 
 
 u 305
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 " But last night ! Grey interrupted 
 her. 
 
 "Oh, last night was twenty-four hours 
 ago!" she returned. "And last night was 
 different from to-night in a hundred ways. I 
 was sentimental. I was sorry for the pater, 
 and I had a moment's admiration for you when 
 you stood up and bullied us all. And I hadn't 
 recovered from the effects of the storm. But 
 now I am quite normal again, and I want you 
 to understand clearly oh, beyond the shadow 
 of a doubt ! firstly, that I'm not going to 
 marry you to please the sentimental ambition 
 of my family, and, secondly " she stopped as 
 if she wished to make the point very plain 
 and then said : " Oh, secondly, I'm not going 
 to marry you for the good of my soul. You 
 needn't begin to argue about it. I know now 
 everything you have to say. You were quite 
 explicit last night, and I've been thinking it 
 all over this afternoon. And I have definitely 
 decided that I won't be a counter in their game 
 or yours. What I shall do I don't know yet; 
 but I will be independent, whether I marry 
 Eddie who would never try to coerce me in 
 any way, poor dear or whether I take a line 
 of my own. 
 
 306
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 "I think that's all," she concluded. "I 
 suppose you have nothing to say? If you 
 attempt one of your old arguments, I shall get 
 down and go in." 
 
 He was standing very near her, his head on 
 a level with her shoulder, and he could see her 
 face faintly lit against the blackness of the 
 night. That pale outline stood out for him as 
 the one vision of reality among all the uncer- 
 tainties of the world. It seemed to him that 
 that beautiful face, shining softly out of the 
 darkness, had come to him from the obscurities 
 and perplexities as an enduring symbol of 
 something stronger than life or death. And 
 yet, as he worshipped, he knew that he must 
 realise all the manhood within him ; that if he 
 would retain his vision he must be willing to 
 dare all, to risk his principles, his ideals, his 
 very life if necessary, if he would penetrate the 
 ultimate and supreme mystery of love. 
 
 He did not hesitate. Very gently he put 
 his arms about her, and then, because he must 
 still worship even while he ruled, he bent his 
 head so that his forehead touched her shoulder. 
 
 She made one movement as if she would 
 release herself, but those gently enclosing arms 
 of his were immensely too strong for her. 
 
 307
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 "No, I've listened to all you had to say," 
 he said in a low, even voice; "now you must 
 listen to me. I have no arguments, only this " 
 he pressed his forehead against her shoulder, 
 and went on so softly that his words seemed to 
 come from some far depths of space " only 
 that I love you so well that I am ready to give 
 anything you ask. I am ready to make the last 
 sacrifice! but I will not release you. This isn't 
 any new, sudden love of the last few days. It 
 is older than life. Jt has always been. I am 
 yours and you are mine, and we came to each 
 other now, in this recent life of ours, to take 
 up our love again, clean and bright from some 
 old experience. We are equals, Tempe, and I 
 worship you while I command you ; but I will 
 not let you go." 
 
 He raised his head and looked at her; he 
 saw that her dark eyes glowed with understand- 
 ing, and then she stooped towards him until 
 her cheek touched his hair. 
 
 " What sacrifices would you make for me?" 
 she asked, 
 
 " Any that you care to ask,' ? he said. 
 
 " You would take the title and Stratton if 
 I wished it?" 
 
 "Yes," he said quietly. "My love does 
 308
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 not demand sacrifice from you. I claim nothing 
 but yourself, and I claim you because you are 
 mine, because you have always been mine*'* 
 
 For a long moment they did not speak. He 
 still held her, and her cheek leaned more heavily 
 now upon his hair. Then she said very gently : 
 ' You are a terrible boaster, aren't you? I 
 don't mean that you wouldn't do all you 
 promise, but you want me to believe that your 
 love is so much bigger than mine. If your love 
 doesn't demand sacrifices, why should mine? 
 Do you really think me such a feeble thing?" 
 
 " Oh, how can there be any question of 
 sacrifices between you and me?" he said. 
 
 " But you shan't have all the joy of 
 giving," she returned. 
 
 '* Does it matter?" he asked. 
 
 She released her arms and put her hands 
 on his shoulders, bent down to him, and kissed 
 him on the mouth a firm, brief kiss that left 
 his lips sealed with the ecstasy of her touch. 
 
 "You dear," she said. " Of course it 
 doesn't matter.' 
 
 309
 
 The Mountains of the Moon 
 
 PRESENTLY they crept softly back along the 
 terrace and looked into the brilliantly lighted 
 drawing-room. 
 
 The four bridge-players still sat at their 
 game. Lord Downham, the dummy in that 
 hand, leaned back in his chair, his gaze 
 abstracted from the table, his face set in his 
 habitual expression of reserved wisdom. 
 
 Lady Adelaide, his partner, leaned avidly 
 over the cards, ruthlessly intent on getting the 
 last trick out of her game. 
 
 Lady Downham frowned with a look of 
 ingenuous perplexity ; if only they would give 
 her release from these terrible problems, her 
 face said, she could be placidly content. 
 
 Shepston had his back to the two onlookers. 
 He must remain to them something of an 
 enigma always. But even in the set of his 
 shoulders there was a suggestion of quiet con- 
 fidence in his own ability to win the game he 
 had chosen to play. 
 
 Tempe gave a little sigh. 
 
 "I can't face them to-night," she said. 
 : ' But you must go in." She gently touched 
 
 310
 
 The Riven Oak 
 
 his sleeve with her cheek and slipped quietly 
 away into the darkness. 
 
 Grey stood for a moment watching the four 
 figures so sharply outlined in the high light of 
 the great Stratton drawing-room, and then he 
 lifted his head with something of his old con- 
 tempt and went in to give them his message.
 
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