PHI OPPE^ J2J2 THE HILLMAN What followed came like a thunder-clap. FRONTISPIECE. See page 304. The Hillman By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM Author of "The Kingdom of The Blind" "Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo," Etc. WITH FRONTISPIECE By GEORGE AVISON A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by Arrangement with LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY Copyright, 1917, Br LITTLE, BROWH, AND COMPANY. All right* reserved Published, January, 1917 Reprinted. January, 1917 (twice) February, 1917 (twice) March, 1917; April, 1917 sni URU . 5/15 THE HILLMAN Louise, self-engrossed, and with a pleasant sense of detachment from the prospective inconveniences of the moment, was leaning back among the cushions of the motionless car. Her eyes, lifted upward, traveled past the dimly lit hillside, with its patchwork of wall-enclosed .fields, up to where the leaning clouds and the unseen heights met in a misty sea of obscurity. The moon had not yet risen, but a faint and luminous glow, spreading like a halo about the topmost peak of that ragged line of hills, heralded its approach. Lou- ise sat with clasped hands, rapt and engrossed in the esthetic appreciation of a beauty which found its way but seldom into her town-enslaved life. She listened to the sound of a distant sheepbell. Her eyes swept the hillsides, vainly yet without curiosity, for any sign of a human dwelling. The voices of her chauffeur and her maid, who stood talking heatedly together by the bon- net of the car, seemed to belong to another world. She had the air of one completely yet pleasantly detached from all material surroundings. The maid, leaving her discomfited companion with a final burst of reproaches, came to the side of the car. Her voice, when she addressed her mistress, sank to a lower key, but her eyes still flashed with anger. " But would madame believe it ? " she exclaimed. 2 THE HILLMAN " It is incredible ! The man Charles there, who calls himself a chauffeur of experience, declares that we are what he calls * hung up ' 1 Something unexpected has happened to the magneto. There is no spark. Whose fault can that be, I ask, but the chauffeur's ? And such a desert we have reached 1 We have searched the map together. We are thirty miles from any town, many miles from even a village. What a misfortune ! " Louise turned her head regretfully away from the mysterious spaces. She listened patiently, but without Any sort of emotion, to her maid's flow of distressed words. She even smiled very faintly when the girl had finished. ** Something will happen," she remarked indiffer- ently. " There is no need for you to distress yourself. There must be a farmhouse or shelter of some sort near. If the worst comes to the worst, we can spend the night in the car. We have plenty of furs and rugs. You are not a good traveler, Aline. You lose heart too soon." The girl's face was a study. " Madame speaks of spending the night in the car ! " she exclaimed. "Why, one has not eaten since lunch- eon, and of all the country through which we have passed, this is the loneliest and dreariest spot." Louise leaned forward and called to the chauffeur. " Charles," she asked, " what has happened ? Are we really stranded here ? " The man's head emerged from the bonnet. He came round to the side of the car. " I am very sorry, madam," he reported, " but some- thing has gone wrong with the magneto. I shall have to take it to pieces before I can tell exactly what is wrong. At present I can't get a spark of any sort." THE HILLMAN 3 " There is no hope of any immediate repair, then ? " The chauffeur shook his head dolefully. " I shall have to take the magneto down, madam," he said. " It will take several hours, and it ought to be done by daylight." " And in the meantime, what do you suggest that we do? " she asked. The man looked a little helpless. His battle of words with Aline had depressed him. " I heard a dog bark a little while ago," he remarked. " Perhaps I had better go and see whether there isn't a farm somewhere near." " And leave us here alone ? " Aline exclaimed indig- nantly. ** It is a good suggestion. It comes well from the man who has got us into such trouble ! " Her mistress smiled at her reassuringly. " What have we to fear, you foolish girl ? For my- self, I would like better than anything to remain here until the moon comes over the top of that round hill. But listen! It is just as I told you. There is no ne- cessity for Charles to leave us." They all turned their heads. From some distance behind on the hard, narrow road, curling like a piece of white tape around the hillside, there came, faintly at first, but more distinctly every moment, the sound of horse's hoofs. " It is as I told you," Louise said composedly. " Some one approaches on horseback, too. He will be able to fetch assistance." The chauffeur walked back a few yards, prepared to give early warning to the approaching horseman. The two women, standing up in the car, watched the spot where the road, hidden for some time in the valley, came into sight. V THE HILLMAN Louder and louder came the sound of the beating of hoofs. Louise gave a little cry as a man on horseback appeared in sight at the crest of the hill. The narrow strip of road seemed suddenly dwarfed, an unreasonable portion of the horizon blotted out. In the half light there was something almost awesome in the unusual size of the horse and of the man who rode it. " It is a world of goblins, this, Aline ! " her mistress exclaimed softly. " What is it that comes ? " " It is a human being, Dieu merci! " the maid replied, vith a matter-of-fact little sigh of content. Conscious of the obstruction in the road, the rider blackened his speed. His horse, a great, dark-colored animal, pricked up his ears when scarcely a dozen yards away from the car, stopped short, and suddenly bolted out on the open moor. There was the sound of a heavy whip, a loud, masterful voice, and a very brief struggle, during which the horse once plunged and reared so high that Louise, watching, cried out in fear. A few mo- ments later, however, horse and rider, the former quiv- ering and subdued, were beside the car. "Has anything happened?" the newcomer asked, raising his whip to his hat. He addressed Louise, instinctively conscious, even in that dim light, that she was the person in authority. She did not at once reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the face of her questioner. There was little enough of him to be seen, yet she was aware of an exceptional in- terest in his dimly revealed personality. He was .young, unusually tall, and his voice was cultivated. Beyond that, she could see or divine nothing. He, for his part, with his attention still largely en- gaged in keeping his horse under control, yet knew, in those first few moments, that he was looking into the THE HILLMAN 5 face of a woman who had no kinship with the world in which he had been born and had lived his days. Those were fugitive thoughts which passed between them, only half conceived, yet strong enough to remain as first and unforgetable impressions. Then the commonplace in- terests of the situation became insistent. " I have broken down," Louise said. " My chauffeur tells me that it will take hours to effect some necessary repair to the car. And meanwhile here we are ! " " You couldn't have chosen a worse place for a break- down," the young man observed. " You are miles away from anywhere." " You are indeed a comforter ! " Louise murmured. " Do you think that you could possibly get down- and advise us what to do? You look so far away up there." There was another brief struggle between the man and his still frightened horse. Then the former swung himself down, and, with the bridle through his arm, came and stood by the car. " If there is any way in which I can help," he ven- tured, " I am quite at your service." Louise smiled at him. She remained unoppressed by any fear of inconvenience or hardship. She had the air of one rather enjoying her plight. " Well, you have begun very nicely by (doing what I asked you," she said. " Really, you know, to an im- pressionable person there was something rather terrify- ing about you when you appeared suddenly from out of the shadows in such a lonely place. I was beginning to wonder whether you were altogether real, whether one of those black hills there had not opened to let you out. You see, I know something of the legends of your country, although I have never been here before." 6 THE HILLMAN The young man was less at his ease. He stood tap- ping his boot nervously with his long riding-whip. " I am sorry if I frightened you," he said. " My horse is a little restive, and the acetylene light which your chauffeur turned on him was sufficiently alarm- ing." " You did not exactly frighten me," she assured him, " but you looked so abnormally large. Please tell us what you would advise us to do. Is there a village near, or an inn, or even a barn? Or shall we have to spend the night in the car? " *' The nearest village," he replied, " is twelve miles away. Fortunately, my own home is close by. I shall be very pleased I and my brother if you will honor us. I am afraid I cannot offer you very much in the way of entertainment " She rose briskly to her feet and beamed upon him. " You are indeed a good Samaritan ! " she exclaimed. " A roof is more than we had dared to hope for, al- though when one looks up at this wonderful sky and breathes this air, one wonders, perhaps, whether a roof, after all, is such a blessing." " It gets very cold toward morning," the young man said practically. " Of course," she assented. " Aline, you will bring my dressing-bag and follow us. This gentleman is kind enough to offer us shelter for the night. Dear me, you really are almost as tall as you appeared ! " she added, as she stood by his side. " For the first time in my life you make me feel undersized." He looked down at her, a little more at his ease now by reason of the friendliness of her manner, although he had still the air of one embarked upon an adventure, the outcome of which was to be regarded with some THE HILLMAN 7 qualms. She was of little more than medium height, and his first impressions of her were that she was thin, and too pale to be good-looking; that her eyes were large and soft, with eyebrows more clearly defined than is usual among Englishwomen ; and that she moved with- out seeming to walk. " I suppose I am tall," he admitted, as they started off along the road. " One doesn't notice it around here. My name is John Strangewey, and our house is just behind that clump of trees there, on the top of the hill. We will do our best to make you comfortable," he added a little doubtfully ; " but there are only my brother and myself, and we have no women servants in the house." "A roof of any sort will be a luxury," she assured him. " I only hope that we shall not be a trouble to you in any way." " And your name, please ? " he asked. She was a little amazed at his directness, but she answered him without hesitation. " My name," she told him, " is Louise." He leaned down toward her, a little puzzled. " Louise? But your surname? " She laughed softly. It occurred to him that nothing like her laugh had ever been heard on that gray-walled stretch of mountain road. "Never mind! I am traveling incognito. Who I am, or where I am going well, what does that matter to anybody? Perhaps I do not know myself. You can imagine, if you like, that we came from the heart of your hills, and that to-morrow they will open again and wel- come us back." *' I don't think there are any motor-cars in fairy- land," he objected. 8 THE HILLMAN " We represent a new edition of fairy lore," she told him. " Modern romance, you know, includes motor- cars and even French maids." " All the same," he protested, with masculine blunt- ness, " I really don't see how I can introduce you to my brother as ' Louise from fairyland.' " She evaded the point. " Tell me about your brother. Is he as tall as you, and is he younger or older? " " He is nearly twenty years older," her companion replied. " He is about my height, but he stoops more than I do, and his hair is gray. I am afraid that you may find him a little peculiar." Her escort paused and swung open a white gate on their left-hand side. Before them was an ascent which seemed to her, in the dim light, to be absolutely pre- cipitous. " Do we have to climb up that? " she asked ruefully. " It isn't so bad as it looks," he assured her, " and I am afraid it's the only way up. The house is at the bend there, barely fifty yards away. You can see a light through the trees." " You must help me, then, please," she begged. He stooped down toward her. She linked her fingers together through his left arm, and, leaning a little heavily upon him, began the ascent. He was conscious of some subtle fragrance from her clothes, a perfume strangely different from the odor of the ghostlike flow- ers that bordered the steep path up which they were climbing. Her arms, slight, warm things though they were, and great though his own strength, felt suddenly like a yoke. At every step he seemed to feel their weight more insistent a weight not physical, solely due to this rush of unexpected emotions. THE HILLMAN 9 It was he now whose thoughts rushed away to that medley of hill legends of which she had spoken. Was she indeed a creature of flesh and blood, of the same world as the dull people among whom he lived? Then he remembered the motor-car^ the chauffeur, and the French maid, and he gave a little sigh of relief. " Are we nearly there ? " she asked. " Do tell me if I lean too heavily upon you." '* It is only a few steps further," he replied encourag- ingly. " Please lean upon me as heavily as you like." She looked around her almost in wonder as her com- panion paused with his hand upon a little iron gate. From behind that jagged stretch of hills in the distance a corner of the moon had now appeared. By its light, looking backward, she could see the road which they had left below, the moorland stretching away into misty space, an uneasy panorama with its masses of gray boulders, its clumps of gorse, its hillocks and hollows. Before her, through the little iron gate which her es- cort had pushed open, was a garden, a little austere looking with its prim flower-beds, filled with hyacinths and crocuses, bordering the flinty walks. The trees were all bent in the same direction, fashioned after one pattern by the winds. Before them was the house a long, low building, part of it covered with some kind of creeper. As they stepped across the last few yards of lawn, the black, oak door which they were approaching sud- denly opened. A tall, elderly man stood looking in- quiringly out. He shaded his eyes with his hands. " Is that you, brother? " he asked doubtfully. John Strangewey ushered his companion into the square, oak-paneled hall, hung with many trophies of the chase, a few oil-paintings, here and there some io THE HILLMAN sporting prints. It was lighted only with a single lamp which stood upon a round, polished table in the center of the white-flagged floor. " This lady's motor-car has broken down, Stephen," John explained, turning a little nervously toward his brother. " I found them in the road, just at the bot- tom of the hill. She and her servants will spend the night here. I have explained that there is no village or inn for a good many miles." Louise turned graciously toward the elder man, who was standing grimly apart. Even in those few sec- onds, her quick sensibilities warned her of the hostility which lurked behind his tightly closed lips and steel- gray eyes. His bow was stiff and uncordial, and he made no movement to offer his hand. " We are not used to welcoming ladies at Peak Hall, madam," he said. " I am afraid that you will find us somewhat unprepared for guests." " I ask for nothing more than a roof," Louise as- sured him. John threw his hat and whip upon the round table and stood in the center of the stone floor. She caught a glance which flashed between the two men of ap- peal from the one, of icy resentment from the other. " We can at least add to the roof a bed and some supper and a welcome," John declared. " Is that not so, Stephen ? " The older man turned deliberately away. It was as if he had not heard his brother's words. " I will go and find Jennings," he said. " He must be told about the servants." Louise watched the disappearing figure until it was out of sight. Then she looked up into the face of the younger man, who was standing by her side. THE HILLMAN n "I am sorry," she murmured apologetically. "I am afraid that your brother is not pleased at this sud- den intrusion. Really, we shall give you very little trouble." He answered her with a sudden eager enthusiasm. He seemed far more natural then than at any time since he had ridden up from out of the shadows to take his place in her life. " I won't apologize for Stephen," he said. " He is a little crotchety. You must please be kind and not notice. You must let me, if I can, offer you welcome enough for us both." II Louise, with a heavy, silver-plated candlestick in her hand, stood upon the uneven floor of the bedroom to which she had been conducted, looking up at the oak- framed family tree which hung above the broad chim- ney-piece. She examined the coat of arms emblazoned in the corner, and peered curiously at the last neatly printed addition, which indicated Stephen and John Strangewey as the sole survivors of a diminishing line. When at last she turned away, she found the name upon her lips. " Strangewey ! " she murmured. " John Strange- wey! The name seems to bring something into my memory. Have I ever known any one with such a name, Aline?" The maid shook her head. " Never, madame, to the best of my belief," she de- clared. " Yet I, too, seem to have heard it, and lately. It is perplexing. One has seen it somewhere. One finds it familiar." Louise shrugged her shoulders. She stood for a mo- ment looking around her before she laid down the candlestick. The room was of unusual size, with two worm-eaten beams across the ceiling ; the windows were casemented, with broad seats in each recess. The dressing table, upon which her belongings were set out, was of solid, black oak, as was also the framework of the huge THE HILLMAN 13 sofa, the mirror, and the chairs. The ancient four- poster, hung with chintz and supported by carved pillars, was spread with fine linen and covered with a quilt made of small pieces of silk, lavender-perfumed. The great wardrobe, with its solid mahogany doors, seemed ancient enough to have stood in its place since the building of the house itself. A log of sweet-smell- ing wood burned cheerfully in the open fireplace. " Really," Louise decided, " we have been most for- tunate. This is an adventure! Aline, give me some black silk stockings and some black slippers. I will change nothing else." The maid obeyed in somewhat ominous silence. Her mistress, however, was living in a little world of her own. "John Strangewey!" she murmured to herself, glancing across the room at the family tree. " It is- really curious how that name brings with it a sense of familiarity. It is so unusual, too. And what an un- usual-looking person! Do you think, Aline, that you ever saw any one so superbly handsome ? " The maid's little grimace was expressive. " Never, madame," she replied. " And yet to think of it a gentleman, a person of intelligence, who lives here always, outside the world, with just a terrible old man servant, the only domestic in the house! Nearly all the cooking is done at the bailiff's, a quarter of a mile away." Louise nodded thoughtfully. " It is very strange," she admitted. " I should like to understand it. Perhaps," she added, half to herself, *' some day I shall." She passed across the room, and on her way paused before an old cheval-glass, before which were suspended 14 THE HILLMAN two silver candlesticks containing lighted wax candles. She looked steadfastly at her own reflection. A little- smile parted her lips. In the bedroom of this quaint farmhouse she was looking upon a face and a figure which the illustrated papers and the enterprise of the modern photographer had combined to make familiar to the world. A curious feeling came to her that she was looking at the face of a stranger. She gazed earnestly into the mirror, with new eyes and a new curiosity. She con- templated critically the lines of her slender figure in its neat, perfectly tailored skirt the figure of a girl, it seemed, notwithstanding her twenty-seven years. Her soft, white blouse was open at the neck, displaying a beautifully rounded throat. Her eyes traveled up- ward, and dwelt with an almost passionate interest upon the oval face, a little paler at that moment than usual ; with its earnest, brown eyes, its faint, silky eyebrows, its strong, yet mobile features; its lips a little full, perhaps, but soft and sensitive ; at the masses of brown hair drawn low over her ears. This was herself, then. Did she really justify her reputation for beauty, or was she just a cult, the pass- ing craze of a world a little weary of the ordinary standards? Or, again, was it only her art that had focused the admiration of the world upon her? How would she seem to these two men down-stairs, she asked herself the dour, grim master of the house, and her more youthful rescuer, whose coming had some- how touched her fancy? They saw so little of her sex. They seemed, in a sense, to be in league against it. Would they find out that they were entertaining an angel unawares? She thought with a gratified smile of her incognito. THE HILLMAN i$ It was a real trial of her strength, this! When she turned away from the mirror the smile still lingered upon her lips, a soft light of anticipation was shining in her eyes. John met her at the foot of the stairs. She noticed with some surprise that he was wearing the 'dinner- jacket and black tie of civilization. "Will you come this way, please?" he begged. " Supper is quite ready." He held open the door of one of the rooms on the other side of the hall, and she passed into a low dining room, dimly lit with shaded lamps. The elder brother rose from his chair as they entered, although his salu- tation was even grimmer than his first welcome. He .was wearing a dress-coat of old-fashioned cut, and a black stock, and he remained standing, without any smile or word of greeting, until she had taken her seat. Behind his chair stood a very ancient man servant in a gray pepper-and-salt suit, with a white tie, whose ex- pression, at the entrance of this unexpected guest, seemed curiously to reflect the inhospitable instincts of his master. Although conscious of this atmosphere of antago- nism, Louise looked around her with frank admiration as she took her place in the high-backed chair which John was holding for her. The correctness of the setting appealed strongly to her artistic perceptions. The figures and features of the two men Stephen, tall, severe, stately; John, amazingly handsome, but of the same type; the black-raftered ceiling; the Jacobean sideboard; the huge easy chairs; the fine prints upon the walls ; the pine log which burned upon the open hearth nowhere did there seem to be a single alien or modern note. X6 THE HILLMAN The table was laid with all manner of cold dishes, supplemented by others upon the sideboard. There were pots of jam and honey, a silver teapot and silver spoons and forks of quaint design, strangely cut glass, and a great Dresden bowl filled with flowers. " I am afraid," John remarked, " that you are not used to dining at this hour. My brother and I are very old-fashioned in our customs. If we had had a little longer notice " " I never in my life saw anything that looked so de- licious as your cold chicken," Louise declared. " May I have some and some ham? I believe that you must farm some land yourselves. Everything looks as if it were home-made or home-grown." " We are certainly farmers," John admitted, with a smile, " and I don't think there is much here that isn't of our own production." '* Of course, one must have some occupation, living- so far out of the world," Louise murmured. " I really am the most fortunate person," she continued. " My car comes to grief in what seems to be a wilderness, and I find myself in a very palace of plenty ! " " I am not sure that your maid agrees," John laughed. " She seemed rather horrified when she found that there was no woman servant about the place." " Aline is spoiled, without a doubt," her mistress de- clared. " But is that really the truth? " " Absolutely." "But how do you manage?" Louise went on. " Don't you need dairymaids, for instance? " " The farm buildings are some distance away from the house," John explained. " There is quite a little colony at the back, and the woman who superintends the dairy lives there. It is only in the house that THE HILLMAN 17 we are entirely independent of your sex. We man- age, somehow or other, with Jennings here and two boys." " You are not both woman-haters, I hope? " Her younger host flashed a warning glance at Louise, but it was too late. Stephen had laid down his knife and fork and was leaning in her direction. " Madam,'* he intervened, " since you have asked the question, I will confess that I have never known any good come to a man of our family from the friendship or service of women. Our family history, if ever you should come to know it, would amply justify my brother and myself for our attitude toward your sex." " Stephen ! " John remonstrated, a slight frown upon his face. '* Need you weary our guest with your pecu- liar views? It is scarcely polite, to say the least of it." The older man sat, for a moment, grim and silent. " Perhaps you are right, brother," he admitted. " This lady did not seek our company, but it may in- terest her to know that she is the first woman who has crossed the threshold of Peak Hall for a matter of six, years." Louise looked from one to the other, half incredu- lously. " Do you really mean it ? Is that literally true ? " she asked John. " Absolutely," the young man assured her ; " but please remember that you are none the less heartily welcome here. We have few women neighbors, and in- tercourse with them seems to have slipped out of our lives. Tell me, how far have you come to-day, and where did you hope to sleep to-night ? " Louise hesitated for a moment. For some reason or i8 THE HILLMAN other, the question seemed to bring with it some un- expected and disturbing thought. " I was motoring from Edinburgh. As regards to- night, I had not made up my mind. I rather hoped to reach Kendal. My journey is not at all an interesting matter to talk about," she went on. " Tell me about your life here. It sounds most delightfully pastoral. Do you really mean that you produce nearly everything yourselves? Your honey and preserves and bread and butter, for instance are they all home-made?" " And our hams," the young man laughed, " and everything else upon the table. You underestimate the potentiality of male labor. Jennings is certainly a bet- ter cook than the average woman. Everything you see was cooked by him. We have a sort of secondary kitchen, though, down at the bailiff's, where the pre- serves are made and some of the other things." "And you live here all the year round? " she asked. " My brother," John told her, " has not been further away than the nearest market-town for nearly twenty years." Her eyes grew round with astonishment. " But you go to London sometimes? " " I was there eight years ago. Since then I have not been further away than Carlisle or Kendal. I go into the camp near Kendal for three weeks every year Territorial training, you know." " But how do you pass your time? What do you do with yourself?" she asked. " Farm," he answered. " Farming is our daily oc- cupation. Then for amusement we hunt, shoot, and fish. The seasons pass before we know it." She looked appraisingly at John Strangewey. Not- withstanding his sun-tanned cheeks and the splendid THE HILLMAN 19 vigor of his form, there was nothing in the least agri- cultural about his manner or his appearance. There was humor as well as intelligence in his clear, gray eyes. She opined that the books which lined one side of the room were at once his property and his hobby. " It is a very healthy life, no doubt," she said ; " but somehow it seems incomprehensible to think of a man like yourself living always in such an out-of-the-way corner, with no desire to see what is going on in the world, or to be able to form any estimate of the changes in men's thoughts and habits. Human life seems to me so much more interesting than anything else. Does this all sound a little impertinent?" she wound up naively. " I am so sorry ! My friends spoil me, I be- lieve, and I get into the habit of saying things just as they come into my head." John's lips were open to reply, but Stephen once more intervened. *' Life means a different thing to each of us, madam," he said sternly. " There are many born with the lust for cities and the crowded places in their hearts, born with the desire to mingle with their fellows, to absorb the conventional vices and virtues, to become one of the multitude. It has been different with us Strange- weys." Jennings, at a sign from his master, removed the tea equipage, evidently produced in honor of their visitor. Three tall-stemmed glasses were placed upon the table, and a decanter of port reverently produced. Louise had fallen for a moment or two into a St of abstraction. Her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, from which, out of their faded frames, a row of grim-looking men and women, startlingly like her two hosts, seemed to frown down upon her. so THE HILLMAN " Is that your father ? " she asked, moving her head toward one of the portraits. " My grandfather, John Strangewey," Stephen told her. " Was he one of the wanderers ? " " He left Cumberland only twice during his life. He was master of hounds, magistrate, colonel in the yeo- manry of that period, and three times he refused to stand for Parliament." " John Strangewey ! " Louise repeated softly to her- self. " I was looking at your family tree up-stairs," she went on. " It is curious how both my maid and myself were struck with a sense of familiarity about the name, as if we had heard or read something about it quite lately." Her words were almost carelessly spoken, but she was conscious of the somewhat ominous silence which ensued. She glanced up wonderingly and intercepted a rapid look passing between the two men. More puzzled than ever, she turned toward John as if for an explanation. He had risen somewhat abruptly to his feet, and his hand was upon the back of her chair. " Will it be disagreeable to you if my brother smokes a pipe?" he asked. "I tried to have our little draw- ing-room prepared for you, but the fire has not been lit for so long that the room, I am afraid, is quite im- possible." " Do let me stay here with you," she begged ; " and I hope that both of you will smoke. I am quite used to it." John wheeled up an easy chair for her. Stephen, stiff and upright, sat on the other side of the hearth. He took the tobacco- jar and pipe that his brother had brought him, and slowly filled the bowl. THE HILLMAN 21 " With your permission, then, madam," he said, as he struck a match. Louise smiled graciously. Some instinct prompted her to stifle her own craving for a cigarette and keep her little gold case hidden in her pocket. All the time her eyes were wandering around the room. Suddenly she rose and, moving round the table, stood once more facing the row of gloomy-looking portraits. *' So that is your grandfather," she remarked to John, who had followed her. " Is your father not here?" He shook his head. " My father's portrait was never painted." " Tell the truth, John," Stephen en j oined, rising in his place and setting down his pipe. " Our father's portrait is not here, madam, because he was one of those of whom I have spoken one of those who were drawn into the vortex of the city, and who knew only jthe shallow ways of life. Listen ! " With a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, Ste- phen crossed the room. He raised them high above his head and pointed to the pictures one by one. " John Robert Strangewey, our great-grandfather," he began. " That picture was a presentation from the farmers of Cumberland. He, too, was a magistrate, and held many public offices in the county. " By his side is his brother, Stephen George Strange- wey. For thirty-five years he took the chair at the farmers' ordinary at Market Ketton on every Saturday at one o'clock, and there was never a deserving man in this part of the county, engaged in agricultural pur- suits, who at any time sought his aid in vain. They always knew where he was to be found, and every Satur- day, before dinner was served, there would be some one 22 THE HILLMAN there to seek his aid or advice. He lived his life to his own benefit and to the benefit of his neighbors the life which we are all sent here to lead. " Two generations before him you see my namesake, Stephen Strangewey. It was he who invented the first threshing-machine used in this county. He farmed the land that my brother and I own to-day. He was churchwarden at our little church, and he, too, was a magistrate. He did his duty in a smaller way, but zealously and honestly, among the hillmen of this dis- trict." " " There are gaps in your family history," Louise observed. " The gaps, madam," Stephen explained, " are left by those who have abandoned their natural heritage. We Strangeweys were hillfolk and farmers, by descent and destiny, for more than four hundred years. Our place is here upon the land, almost among the clouds, and those of us who have realized it have led the lives God meant us to lead. There have been some of our race who have been tempted into the lowlands and the cities. Not one of them brought honor upon our name. Their pictures are not here. They are not worthy to be here." Stephen se.t down the candlesticks and returned to his place. Louise, with her hands clasped behind her back, glanced toward John, who still stood by her side. " Tell me," she asked him, " have none of your peo- ple who went out into the world done well for them- selves ? " " Scarcely one," he admitted. " My brother's words seem a little sweeping, but they are very near the truth. The air of the great cities seems to have poisoned every Strangewey " THE HILLMAN 23 " Not one," Stephen interrupted. " Colonel John Strangewey died leading his regiment at Waterloo, an end well enough, but reached through many years of evil conduct and loose living." " He was a brave soldier," John put in quietly. "That is true," Stephen admitted. "His best friends have claimed no other quality for him. Madam," he went on, turning toward Louise, " lest my welcome to you this evening should have seemed inhos- pitable, let me tell you this. Every Strangewey who has left our county, and trodden the downward path of failure, has done so at the instance of one of your sex. That is why those of us who inherit the family spirit lgok askance upon all strange women. That is why no woman is ever welcome within this house." Louise resumed her seat in the easy chair. " I am so sorry," she murmured, looking down at her slipper. " I could not help breaking down here, could I?" " Nor could my brother fail to offer you the hospi- tality of this roof," Stephen admitted. " The incident was unfortunate but inevitable. It is a matter for re- gret that we have so little to offer you in the way of entertainment." He rose to his feet. The door had been opened. Jennings was standing there with a candlestick upon a massive silver salver. Behind him was Aline. " You are doubtless fatigued by your jour- ney, madam," Stephen concluded. Louise made a little grimace, but she rose at once to her feet. She understood quite well that she was being sent to bed, and she shivered a little when she looked at the hour barely ten o'clock. Yet it was all in keeping. From the doorway she looked back into the room, in which nothing seemed to have been touched for 24 THE HILLMAN centuries. She stood upon the threshold to bid her final good-night, fully conscious of the complete anach- ronism of her presence there. Her smile for Stephen was respectful and full of dignity. As she glanced toward John, however, some- thing flashed in her eyes and quivered at the corners of her lips, something which escaped her control, some- thing which made him grip for a moment the back of the chair against which he stood. Then, between the old man servant, who insisted upon carrying her candle to her room, and her maid, who walked behind, she crossed the white stone hall and stepped slowly up the broad flight of stairs. Ill Louise awoke the next morning filled with a curious sense of buoyant expectancy. The sunshine was pour- ing into the room, brightening up its most somber cor- ners. It lay across the quilt of her bed, and seemed to bring out the perfume of lavender from the pillow on which her head reposed. , Aline, hearing her mistress stir, hastened at once to the bedside. " Good morning, madame! " Louise sat up and looked around her, with her hands clasped about her knees. " Tell me everything, Aline," she said. " Have you my breakfast there? And what time is it?" " It is half-past nine, madame" Aline replied, " and your breakfast is here. The old imbecile from the kitchen has just brought it up." Louise looked approvingly at the breakfast tray, with the home-made bread and deep-yellow butter, the brown eggs and clear honey. The smell of the coffee was aromatic. She breathed a little sigh of content. " How delicious everything looks ! " she exclaimed. " The home-made things are well enough in their way, madame" Aline agreed, " but I have never known a household so strange and disagreeable. That M. Jennings, who calls himself the butler he is a person unspeakable, a savage ! " Louise's eyes twinkled. 1 25 THE HILLMAN " I don't think they are fond of women in this house- hold, Aline," she remarked. " Tell me, have you seen Charles?" " Charles has gone to the nearest blacksmith's forge to get something made for the car, madame" Aline re- plied. " He asked me to say that he was afraid he would not be ready to start before midday." " That does not matter," Louise declared, as she settled down to her breakfast. " I do not care how long it is before he is ready. I should love to spend a month here ! " Aline held up her hands. She was speechless. Her mistress laughed at her consternation. " Well," she continued, " there is no fear of their asking us for a month, or for an hour longer than they can help. The elder Mr. Strangewey, it seems, has the strongest objection to our sex. There is not a woman servant in the house, is there? " " Not one, madame" Aline replied. " I have never been in a household conducted in such a manner. It is like the kitchen of a monastery. The terrible Jennings is speechless. If one addresses him, he only mumbles. The sound of my skirts, or my footstep on the stone floor, makes him shiver. He is worse, one would im- agine, than his master." Louise ate and drank reflectively. " It is the queerest household one could possibly stumble upon," she remarked. " The young Mr. Strangewey he seems different, but he falls in with his brother's ways." Aline glanced at herself in the mirror. She was just out of her mistress's range of vision, and she made a little grimace at her reflection. " I met him twice this morning in the hall," she re- THE HILLMAN 27 marked. " He wished me good morning the first time. The second time he did not speak. He did not seem to see me." Louise finished her breakfast and strolled presently to the window. She gave a little sigh of pleasure as she looked out. " But, Aline," she exclaimed, " how exquisite ! " The maid glanced over her shoulder and went on pre- [ paring her mistress's clothes. " It is as madame finds it," she replied. " For my- self, I like the country for fete days and holidays only, and even then I like to find plenty of people there." Louise heard nothing. She was gazing eagerly out of the casement-window. Immediately below was a grass-grown orchard which stretched upward, at a pre- cipitous angle, toward a belt of freshly plowed field; beyond, a little chain of rocky hHls, sheer overhead. The trees were pink and white with blossom ; the petals lay about upon the ground like drifted snowflakes. Here and there yellow jonquils were growing among the long grass. A waft of perfume stole into the room through the window which she had opened. " Fill my bath quickly, Aline," Louise ordered. " I must go out. I want to see whether it is really as beau- tiful as it looks." Aline dressed her mistress in silence. It was not until she had finished lacing her shoes that she spoke another word. Then, suddenly, she stopped short in the act of crossing the room. Her eyes had happened to fall upon the emblazoned genealogical record. A little exclamation escaped her. She swung round toward her mistress, and for once there was animation in her face. " But, madame** she exclaimed, " I have remem- 28 THE HILLMAN bered ! The name Strangewey you see it there it was in our minds all the time that we had seen or heard of it quite lately. Don't you remember " " Yes, yes ! " Louise interrupted. " I know it re- minds me of something, but of what ? " " Yesterday morning," Aline continued, " it was you madame, who read it out while you took your coffee. You spoke of the good fortune of some farmer in the north of England to whom a relative in Australia had left a great fortune hundreds and thousands of pounds. The name was Strangewey, the same as that. I remember it now." She pointed once more to the family tree. Louise sat for a moment with parted lips. " You are quite right, Aline. I remember it all per- fectly now. I wonder whether it could possibly be either of these two men ! " Aline shook her head doubtfully. " It would be unbelievable, madame," she decided. " Could any sane human creatures live here, with no company but the sheep and the cows, if they had money money to live in the cities, to buy pleasures, to be happy? Unbelievable, madame! " Louise remained standing before the window. She was watching the blossom-laden boughs of one of the apple trees bending and swaying in the fresh morning breeze watching the restless shadows which came and went upon the grass beneath. "That is just your point of view, Aline," she mur- mured ; " but happiness well, you would not under- stand. They are strange men, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. He will live a very simple and honorable life. He will be what is it they call it ? a county THE HILLMAN 29 magistrate, chairman of many things, a judge at agri- cultural shows. When he dies, he will be buried up in that windy little churchyard, and people will come from a long way off to say how good he was. My hat, quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes I shall be miserable ! " Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and with her head turned upward toward the trees, she made her way toward the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclama- tion of pleasure, she drew down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek. She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of chicken-coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the breeze which came sweeping across the moorland from the other side of the house. Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against which she rested for a moment, lean- ing her arms upon the topmost bar. Before her was the little belt of plowed earth, the fresh, pungent odor of which was a new thing to her; a little way to the right, the rolling moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on the other side of the gray stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The sky unusually blue it seemed to her, and dotted all over with little masses of fleecy, white clouds seemed some- how lower and nearer ; or was she, perhaps higher up ? She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her brain and senses of what surely must be some newly kindled faculty of appreciation. There was a beauty in the world which she had not felt before. She turned her head almost lazily at the sound of a man's voice. A team of horses, straining at a plo\v, 30 THE HILLMAN were coming round the bend of the field, and by their side, talking to the laborer who guided them, was John Strangewey. She watched him as he came into sight up the steep rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was bare- headed, and she noticed for the first time that his closely cropped fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears. He walked in step with the plowman by his side, but without any of the laborer's mechanical plod with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well- fitting ; breeches and gaiters ; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the instructions he was giving that he was almost opposite the gate before he was aware of her presence. He promptly abandoned his task and approached her. " Good morning ! " he called out. She waved her hand. " Good morning! " " You have slept well? " he asked. " Better, I think, than ever before in my life," she answered. ** Differently, at any rate. And such an awakening ! " He looked at her, a little puzzled. The glow upon her face and the sunlight upon her brown hair kept him silent. He was content to look at her and wonder. " Tell me," she demanded impetuously, " is this a little corner of fairy-land that you have found? Does the sun always shine like this? Does the earth always smell as sweetly, and are your trees always in blossom? THE HILLMAN 31 Does your wind always taste as if God had breathed the elixir of life into it? " He turned around to follow the sweep of her eyes. Something of the same glow seemed to rest for a mo- ment upon his face. " It is good," he said, " to find what you love so much appreciated by some one else." They stood together in a silence almost curiously protracted. Then the plowman passed again with his team of horses, and John called out some instructions to him. She followed him down to earth. " Tell me, Mr. Strangewey," she inquired, " where are your farm-buildings ? " " Come and I will show you," he answered, opening the gate to let her through. " Keep close to the hedge until we come to the end of the plow; and then but no, I won't anticipate. This way ! " She walked by his side, conscious every now and then of his frankly admiring eyes as he looked down at her. She herself felt all the joy of a woman of the world im- bibing a new experience. She did not even glance toward the dismantled motor in the barn which they passed. " I am glad," he remarked presently, " that you look upon us more charitably than your maid." " Aline is a good girl," Louise said, smiling, " but hot-water taps and electric lights are more to her than sunshine and hills. Do you know," she went on, " I feel like a child being led through an undiscovered coun- try, a land of real adventures. Which way are we going, and what are we going to see? Tell me, please ! " " Wait," he begged. " It is just a queer little corner among the hills, that is all." 32 THE HILLMAN They reached the end of the plowed field, and, pass- ing through a gate, turned abruptly to the left and be- gan to climb a narrow path which bordered the bound- ary wall, and which became steeper every moment. As they ascended, the orchard and the long, low house on the other side seemed to lie almost at their feet. The road and the open moorland) beyond, stretching to the encircling hills, came more clearly into sight with every backward glance. Louise paused at last, breath- less. ** I must sit down," she insisted. " It is too beauti- ful to hurry over." " It is only a few steps farther," he told her, holding out his hand; "just to where the path winds its way round the hill there. But perhaps you are tired ? " " On the contrary," she assured him, " I never felt so vigorous in my life. All the exercise I take, as a rule, is in Kensington Gardens ; and look ! " She pointed downward to her absurd little shoes, and held out her hand, " You will have to help me," she pleaded. The last few steps were, indeed, almost precipitous. Fragments of rock, protruding through the grass and bushes, served as steps. John moved on a little ahead and pulled her easily up. Even the slight tightening of his fingers seemed to raise her from her feet. She looked at him wonderingly. " How strong you are ! " " A matter of weight," he answered, smiling. " You are like a feather. You walk as lightly as the fairies who come out on midsummer night's eve and dance in circles around the gorse-bushes there." " Is it the home of the fairies you are taking me to? " she asked. " If you have discovered that, no wonder you find us ordinary women outside your lives ! " THE HILLMAN 33 He laughed. " There are no fairies where we are going," he as- sured her. They were on a rough-made road now, which turned abruptly to the right a few yards ahead, skirting the side of a deep gorge. They took a few steps further, and Louise stopped short with a cry of wonder. Around the abrupt corner an entirely new perspec- tive was revealed a little hamlet, built on a shoulder of the mountains; and on the right, below a steep de- scent, a wide and sunny valley. It was like a tiny world of its own, hidden in the bosom of the hills. There was a long line of farm-buildings, built of gray stone and roofed with red tiles; there were fifteen or twenty stacks; a quaint, white-washed house of con- siderable size, almost covered on the southward side with creepers ; a row of cottages, and a gray-walled en- closure stretching with its white tombstones to the very brink of the descent in the midst of which was an ancient church, in ruins at the further end, partly rebuilt with the stones of the hillside. Louise looked around her, silent with wonder. A couple of sheep-dogs had rushed out from the farm- house and were fawning around her companion. In the background a gray-bearded shepherd, with Scot- tish plaid thrown over his shoulder, raised his hat. "It isn't real, is it?" she asked, clinging for a mo- ment to John Strangewey's arm. He patted one of the dogs and smiled down at her. " Why not ? William Elwick there is a very real shepherd, I can assure you. He has sat on these hills for the last sixty-eight years." She looked at the old man almost with awe. " It is like the Bible ! " she murmured. " Fancy the 34 THE HILLMAN sunrises he must have seen, and the sunsets ! The com- ing and the fading of the stars, the spring days, the music of the winds in these hollow places, booming to him in the night-time! I want to talk to him. May I?" He shook his head. The old man was already shambling off. " Better not," he advised. " You would be disap- pointed, for William has the family weakness he can- not bear the sight of a woman. You see, he is pretend- ing now that there is something wrong with the hill flock. You asked where the land was that we tilled. Now look down. Hold my arm if you feel giddy." She followed the wave of his ash stick. The valley sheer below them, and the lower hills, on both sides, were parceled out into fields, enclosed within stone walls, reminding her, from the height at which they stood, of nothing so much as the quilt upon her bed. " That's where all our pasture is," he told her, " and our arable land. We grow a great deal of corn in the dip there. All the rest of the hillside, and the moor- lands, of course, are fit for nothing but grazing; but there are eleven hundred acres down there from which we can raise almost anything we choose." Her eyes swept this strange tract of country back- ward and forward. She saw the men like specks in the fields, the cows grazing in the pasture like toy animals. Then she turned and looked at the neat row of stacks and the square of farm-buildings. " I am trying hard to realize that you are a farmer and that this is your life," she said. He swung open the wooden gate of the churchyard, by which they were standing. There was a row of graves on either side of the prim path. THE HILLMAN 35 " Suppose," he suggested, " you tell me about your- self now about your own life." The hills parted suddenly as she stood there looking southward. Through the chasm she seemed to see very clearly the things beyond. Her own life, her own world, spread itself out a world of easy triumphs, of throbbing emotions always swiftly ministered to, al- ways leaving the same dull sensation of discontent; a world in which the pathways were broad and smooth, but in which the end seemed always the same; a world of receding beauties and mocking desires. The faces of her friends were there men and women, brilliant, her intellectual compeers, a little tired, offering always the same gifts, the same homage. " My life, and the world in which I live, seem far away just now," she said quietly. " I think that it is doing me good to have a rest from them. Go on talk- ing to me about yourself, please." He smiled. He was just a little disappointed. " We shall very soon reach the end of all that I have to tell you," he remarked. " Still, if there is anything you would like to know " " Who were these men and women who have lived and died here ? " she interrupted, with a little wave of her hand toward the graves. " All our own people," he told her ; " laborers, shep- herds, tenant-farmers, domestic servants. Our clergy- man comes from the village on the other side of that hill. He rides here every Sunday on a pony which we have to provide for him." She studied the names upon the tombstones, spelling them out slowly. " The married people," he went on, " are buried on the south side; the single ones and children are nearer 36 THE HILLMAN the wall. Tell me," he asked, after a moment's hesita- tion, " are you married or single? " She gave a little start. The abruptness of the ques- tion, the keen, steadfast gaze of his compelling eyes, seemed for a moment to paralyze both her nerves and her voice. Again the hills rolled open, but this time it was her own life only that she saw, her own life, and one man's face which she seemed to see looking at her from some immeasurable distance, waiting, yet drawing her closer toward him, closer and closer till their hands met. She was terrified at this unexpected tumult of emo- tion. It was as if some one had suddenly drawn away one of the stones from the foundation of her life. She found herself repeating the words on the tombstone facing her : " And of Elizabeth, for sixty-one years the faithful wife and helpmate of Ezra Cumminps, mother of his children, and his partner in the life everlasting." Her knees began to shake. There was a momentary darkness before her eyes. She felt for the tombstone and sat down. IV The churchyard gate was opened and closed noisily. They both glanced up. Stephen Strangewey was com- ing slowly toward them along the flinty path. Louise, suddenly herself again, rose briskly to her feet. " Here comes your brother," she said. " I wish he wouldn't glower at me so ! I really am not such a ter- rible person as he seems to think." John muttered a word or two of polite but uncon- vincing protest. They stood together awaiting his ap- proach. Stephen had apparently lost none of his dourness of the previous night. He was dressed in gray homespun, with knickerbockers and stockings of great thickness. He wore a flannel shirt and collar and a black wisp of a tie. Underneath his battered felt hat his weather-beaten face seemed longer and grimmer than ever, his mouth more uncompromising. As he looked toward Louise, there was no mistaking the slow dislike in his steely eyes. " Your chauffeur, madam, has just returned," he announced. " He sent word that he will be ready to start at one o'clock." Louise, inspired to battle by the almost provocative hostility of her elder host, smiled sweetly upon him. " You can't imagine how sorry I am to hear it," she said. " I don't know when, in the whole course of my life, I have met with such a delightful adventure or spent such a perfect morning ! " 3 8 THE HILLMAN Stephen looked at her with level disapproving eyes at her slender form in its perfectly fitting tailored gown ; at her patent shoes, so obviously unsuitable for her surroundings, and at the faint vision of silk stock- ings. " If I might say so without appearing inhospitable,"" he remarked, with faint sarcasm, " this would seem to be the fitting moment for your departure. A closer ex- amination of our rough life up here might alter your [views." She turned toward John, and caught the deprecating glance which flashed from him to Stephen. ** Your brother is making fun of me," she declared. " He looks at me and judges me just as I believe he would judge most people sternly and without mercy. After all, you know, even though I am a daughter of the cities, there is another point of view ours. Can you not believe that the call which prompts men and women to do the things in life which are really worth while is heard as often amid the hubbub of the city as in the solitude of these austere hills ? " " The question is a bootless one," Stephen answered firmly. " The city calls to its own, as the country holds its children, and both do best in their own en- vironment. Like to like, and each bird to his own nest. You would be as much out of place here with us, madam, as my brother and I on the pavements of your city." " You may be right," she admitted, " yet you dis- miss one of the greatest questions in life with a single turn of your tongue. It is given to no one to be in- fallible. It is even possible that you may be wrong." " It is possible," Stephen agreed grimly. " The things in life which are worth while," she con- tinued, looking down into the valley, " are common to THE HILLMAN 39 all. They do not consist of one thing for one man, another for another. To whom comes the greater share of them the dweller in the city, or you in your primitive and patriarchal life? You rest your brains, you make the seasons feed you, you work enough to keep your muscles firm, and nature does the rest. She brings the food to your doors, and when your harvest is over your work is done. There are possibilities of rust here, Mr. Strangewey ! " Stephen's smile was almost disdainful. " Madam," he declared, " you have six or seven mil- lion people in London. How many of them live by really creative and honorable work? How many are there of polyglot race Hebrews, Germans, foreigners of every type, preying upon one another, making false incomes which exist only on paper, living in false lux- ury, tasting false joys? The sign-post of our lives must be our personal inclinations. Our inclinations my brother's inclinations and mine lead us, as they have led my people for hundreds of years, to seek the cleaner things in life and the simpler forms of happi- ness. If I do not have the pleasure, madam, of seeing you again, permit me to wish you farewell." He turned and walked away. Louise watched him with very real interest. " Do you know," she said to John, *' there is some- thing which I can only describe as biblical about your brother, something a little like the prophets of the Old Testament, in the way he sees only one issue and clings to it. Are you, too, of his way of thinking? " " Up to a certain point, I believe I am," he confessed. " I do not think I could ever have lived in the city. I do not think I could ever have been happy in any of the professions." 40 THE HILLMAN " Certainly I could not imagine you as a stock-broker or a lawyer. I feel it hard to realize you in any of the ordinary walks of life. Still, you know> the greatest question of all remains unanswered. Are you content just to live and flourish and die? Are there no com- pelling obligations with which one is born? Do you never feel cramped in your mind, I mean ? feel that you want to push your way through the clouds into some other life ? " " I feel nearer the clouds here," he answered simply. " I suppose you are sure of content that is to say, if you can keep free from doubts. Still, there is the fighting instinct, you know; the craving for action. Don't you feel that sometimes? " " Perhaps," he admitted. They were leaving the churchyard now. She paused abruptly, pointing to a single grave in a part of the churchyard which seemed detached from the rest. " Whose grave is that? " she inquired. He hesitated. " It is the grave of a young girl," he told her quietly. " But why is she buried so far off, and all alone?" Louise persisted. " She was the daughter of one of our shepherds," he replied. " She went into service at Carlisle, and ijeturned here with a child. They are both buried there." " Because of that her grave is apart from the others?" " Yes," he answered. " It is very seldom, I am glad to say, that anything of the sort happens among us." For the second time that morning Louise was con- scious of an unexpected upheaval of emotion. She felt that the sunshine had gone, that the whole sweetness of THE HILLMAN 41 the place had suddenly passed away. The charm of its simple austerity had perished. " And I thought I had found paradise ! " she cried. She moved quickly from John Strangewey's side. Before he could realize her intention, she had stepped over the low dividing wall and was on her knees by the side of the plain, neglected grave. She tore out the spray of apple-blossom which she had thrust into the bosom of her gown, and placed it reverently at the head of the little mound. For a moment her eyes drooped and her lips moved she herself scarcely knew whether it was in prayer. Then she turned and came slowly back to her companion. - Something had gone, too, from his charm. She saw in him now nothing but the coming dourness of his brother. Her heart was still heavy. She shivered a little. " Come," she said, " let us go back ! " They commenced the steep descent in silence. Every now and then John held his companion by the arm to steady her somewhat uncertain footsteps. It was he at last who spoke. " Will you tell me, please, what is the matter with you, and why you placed that sprig of apple-blossom where you did?" His tone woke her from her lethargy. She was a little surprised at its poignant, almost challenging note. " Certainly," she replied. " I placed it there as a woman's protest against the injustice of that isola- tion." " I deny that it is unjust." She turned around and waved her hand toward the little gray building. " The Savior to whom your church is dedicated 42 THE HILLMAN thought otherwise," she reminded him. " Do you play at being lords paramount here over the souls and bodieg of jour serfs? " " You judge without knowledge of the facts," he as- sured her calmly. " The girl could have lived here happily and been married to a respectable young man. She chose, instead, a wandering life. She chose, fur- ther, to make it a disreputable one. She broke her mother's heart and soured her father's latter years. She brought into the world a nameless child." Louise's footsteps slackened. " You men," she sighed, " are all alike ! You judge only by what happens. You never look inside. That is why your justice is so different from a woman's. All that you have told me is very pitiful, but there is an- other view of the case which you should consider. Let us sit down upon this boulder for a few moments. There is something that I should like to say to you be- fore I go." They sat upon a ledge of rock. Below them was the house, with its walled garden and the blossom-laden orchard. Beyond stretched the moorland, brilliant with patches of yellow gorse, and the hills, blue and melting in the morning sunlight. " Don't you men sometimes realize," she continued earnestly, " the many, many guises in which tempta- tion may come to a woman, especially to the young girl so far from home? She may be very lonely, and she may care ; and if she cares, it is so hard to refuse the man she loves. The very sweetness, the very generosity of a woman's nature prompts her to give, give, give all the time. There are other women, similarly cir- cumstanced, who think only of themselves, of their own safety and happiness, and they escape the danger ; but THE HILLMAN 43 are they to be praised and respected, while she that yields is condemned and cast out? I feel that you are not going to agree with me, and I do not wish to argue with you; but what I so passionately object to is the sweeping judgment you make the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. That is how man judges ; God looks further. Every case is different. The law by which one should be judged may be poor justice for another." She glanced at him almost appealingly, but there was no sign of yielding in his face. " Laws," he reminded her, " are made for the benefit of the whole human race. Sometimes an individual may suffer for the benefit of others. That is inevi- table." " And so let the subject pass," she concluded, " but it saddens me to think that one of the great sorrows of the world should be there like a monument to spoil the wonder of this morning. Now I am going to ask you a question. Are you the John Strangewey who has re- cently had a fortune left to him? " He nodded. " You read about it in the newspapers, I suppose," he said. " Part of the story isn't true. It was stated that I had never seen my Australian uncle, but as a matter of fact he has been over here three or four times. It was he who paid for my education at Harrow and Oxford." " What did your brother say to that? " *' He opposed it," John confessed, *' and he hated my uncle. He detests the thought of any one of us going out of sight of our own hills. My uncle had the wander- fever." "And you?" she asked suddenly. 44 THE HILLMAN " I have none of it," he asserted. A very faint smile played about her lips. " Perhaps not before," she murmured ; " but now ? " '* Do you mean because I have inherited the money? " She leaned a little toward him. Her smile now was more evident, and there was something in her eyes which was almost like a challenge. " Naturally!" " What difference does my money make ? " he de- manded. " Don't you realize the increase of your power as a human being?" she replied. "Don't you realize the larger possibilities of the life that is open to you? You can move, if you will, in the big world. You can take your place in any society you choose, meet interesting people who have done things, learn everything that is new, do everything that is worth doing in life. You can travel to the remote countries of the globe. You can become a politician, a philanthropist, or a sportsman. You can follow your tastes wherever they lead you, and perhaps this is the most important thing of all you can do everything upon a splendid scale." He smiled down at her. " That all sounds very nice," he admitted, " but sup- posing that I have no taste in any of the directions you have mentioned? Supposing my life here satisfies me? Supposing I find all that I expect to find in life here on my own land, among my own hills? What then? " She looked at him with a curiosity which was almost passionate. Her lips were parted, her senses strained. " It is not possible," she exclaimed, " that you can mean it ! " " But why not ? " he protested. " I have not the tortuous brain of the modern politician. I hate cities THE HILLMAN 45 the smell of them, the atmosphere of them, the life in them. The desire for travel is only half born in me. That may come I cannot tell. I love the daily work here ; I am fond of horses and dogs. I know every yard of land we own, and I know what it will produce. It interests me to try experiments new crops, a new dis- tribution of crops, new machinery sometimes, new methods of fertilizing. I love to watch the seasons come and reign and pass. I love to feel the wind and the sun, and even the rain. All these things have be- come a sort of appetite to me. I am afraid," he wound up a little lamely, " that this is all very badly ex- pressed, but the whole truth of it is, you see, that I am a man of simple and inherited tastes. I feel that my life is here, and I live it here and I love it. Why should I go out like a Don Quixote and search for vague ad- ventures ? " "Because you are a man!" she answered swiftly. " You have a brain and a soul too big for your life here. You eat and drink, and physically you flourish, but part of you sleeps because it is shut away from the world of real things. Don't you sometimes feel it in your very heart that life, as we were meant to live it, can only be lived among your fellow men? " He looked upward, over his shoulder, at the little cluster of farm-buildings and cottages, and the gray stone church. " It seems to me," he declared simply, " that the man who tries to live more than one life fails in both. There is a little cycle of life here, among our thirty or forty souls, which revolves around my brother and myself. You would think it stupid and humdrum, because the people are peasants; but I am not sure that you are right. The elementary things, you know, are the great- 46 THE HILLMAN est, and those we have. Our young people fall in love and marry. The joy of birth comes to our mothers, and the tragedy of death looms over us all. Some go out into the world, some choose to remain here. A passer-by may glance upward from the road at our little hamlet, and wonder what can ever happen in such an out-of-the-way corner. I think the answer is just what I have told you. Love and marriage, birth and death happen. These things make life." Her curiosity now had become merged in an im- mense interest. She laid her fingers lightly upon his arm. " You speak for your people," she said. " That is well. I can understand their simple lives being as ab- sorbing to them as ours are to us. I can imagine how, here among your hills, you can watch as a spectator a cycle of life which contains, as you have pointed out, every element of tragedy and happiness. But you yourself? " " I am one of them," he answered, " a necessary part of them." " How you deceive yourself ! I am sure you are hon- est, I am sure you believe what you say, but will you re- member what I am going to tell you? The time will come, before very long, when you will feel doubts." "Doubts about what?" She smiled enigmatically. " Oh, they will assert themselves," she assured him, " and you will recognize them when they come. Some- thing will whisper to you in your heart that after all you are not of the same clay as these simple folk that there is a different mission in the world for a man like you than to play the part of feudal lord over a few peasants. Sooner or later you will come out into the THE HILLMAN 47 world; and the sooner the better, I think, Mr. John Strangewey, or you will grow like your brother here among your granite hills." He moved a little uneasily. All the time she was watching him. It seemed to her that she could read the thoughts which were stirring in his brain. " You would like to say, wouldn't you," she went on, "that your brother's is a useful and an upright life? So it may be, but it is not wide enough or great enough. No one should be content with the things which he can reach. He should climb a little higher, and pluck the riper fruit. Some day you will feel the desire to climb. Something will come to you in the night, perhaps, or on the bosom of that wind you love so much. It may be a call of music, or it may be a more martial note. Promise me, will you, that when you feel the impulse you won't use all that obstinate will-power of yours to crush it? You will destroy the best part of yourself, if you do. You will give it a chance? Promise ! " She held out her hand with a little impulsive gesture. He took it in his own, and held it steadfastly. " I will remember," he promised. Along the narrow streak of road, from the south- ward, they both watched the rapid approach of a large motor-car. There were two servants upon the front seat and one passenger a man inside. It swung into the level stretch beneath them, a fantasy of gray and silver in the reflected sunshine. Louise had been leaning forward, her head supported upon her hands. As the car slackened speed, she rose very slowly to her feet. " The chariot of deliverance ! " she murmured. " It is the Prince of Seyre," John remarked, gazing down with a slight frown upon his forehead. 48 THE HILLMAN She nodded. They had started the descent, and she was walking in very leisurely fashion. " The prince is a great friend of mine," she said. " I bad promised to spend last night, or, at any rate, some portion of the evening, at Raynham Castle on my way to London." He summoned up courage to ask her the question which had been on his lips more than once. " As your stay with us is so nearly over, won't you abandon your incognito ? " " In the absence of your brother," she answered, '* I will risk it. My name is Louise Maurel." "Louise Maurel, the actress?" he repeated wonder- " I am she," Louise confessed. " Would your brother," she added, with a little grimace, " feel that he had given me a night's lodging under false pretense? " John made no immediate reply. The world had turned topsyturvy with him. Louise Maurel, and a gre&t friend of the Prince of Seyre! He walked on mechanically until she turned and looked at him. "Well?" " I am sorry," he declared bluntly. " Why? " she asked, a little startled at his candor. ** I am sorry, first of all, that you are a friend of the Prince of Seyre." " And again why ? " " Because of his reputation in these parts." " What does that mean ? " she asked. " I am not a scandalmonger," John replied dryly. ** I speak only of what I know. His estates near here Are systematically neglected. He is the worst land- lord in the country, and the most unscrupulous. His tenants, both here and in Westmoreland, have to work THE HILLMAN 49. themselves to death to provide him with the means of living a disreputable life." *' Are you not forgetting that the Prince of Seyre is. a friend of mine? " she asked stiffly. " I forget nothing," he answered. " You see, up here we have not learned the art of evading the truth." She shrugged her shoulders. " So much foi the Prince of Seyre, then. And now, why your dislike of my profession ? " " That is another matter," he confessed. " You come from a world of which I know nothing. All I can say is that I would rather think of you as something different." She laughed at his somber face and patted his arm. lightly. " Big man of the hills," she said, " when you come down from your frozen heights to look for the flower*, I shall try to make you see things differently ! '* The prince, who had just been joined by Stepheny had descended from his car and was waiting in the road when Louise and John approached. He came a few paces forward to meet her, and held out both his hands. *' My dear wandering guest ! " he exclaimed. " So I have found you at last ! What shall I say to this mis- hap which has robbed me of so many hours of your visit? I am too happy, though, to know that you have suffered no personal inconvenience." " Thanks to the great kindness of my hosts," Louise replied, smiling a little mockingly at Stephen, " I have been completely spoiled here, prince, and I can only regard my accident as a delightful little interlude." The prince bowed, and half held out his hand to Stephen. The latter, however appeared not to notice the movement. " I shall always remember with gratitude," the prince declared, " the kindness of Mr. Strangewey and his brother to my lost guest. I fear," he went on regret- fully, " that I do not seem very neighborly. I am not often at Raynham Castle, except in August and Septem- ber. I find your northern air somewhat too severe for me." " Your tenants, prince," Stephen remarked calmly, '* would like to see a little more of you." The prince shrugged his shoulders. He was a man of medium height, slender, with a long and almost color- less face. He carried himself with the good-humored THE HILLMAN 51 v air of the man of the world among strange surroundings toward which he desired to express his toleration. His clothes and voice were perfectly English, although the latter was unusually slow and soft. At first sight there was no apparent evidence of his foreign birth. He turned once more toward Stephen. " My agent, Mr. Simon, is a very excellent man, and I have every confidence in his discretion. My tenants here could scarcely feel toward me as they might have done if Raynham had come into my possession in the direct line. However, this year, as it happens, I have made up my mind to spend more time here, My keep- ers tell me that after four bad seasons the prospects for grouse on my higher moors are excellent. I shall hope," he added, turning to John, " to have you join us often. I must confess that the only time I had ever heard your name, before the newspapers advertised your recent good fortune, was in connection with shoot- ing. They tell me that you are the best shot and the finest horseman in Cumberland." " You were probably told that at Raynham," John, remarked. " Our people always exaggerate the prow- ess of their own folk, and my brother and I are natives." " I trust," the prince concluded, " that you will give me the opportunity of judging for myself. And now, dear lady," he went on, turning to Louise, " I am loath to lose another minute of my promised visit. I have taken the liberty of telling your maid to place your wraps in my car. We can reach Raynham in time for a late lunch. Your own car can follow us and bring your maid." For a moment Louise did not reply. The prince had moved a few steps away, to give some directions to his chauffeur, and he saw nothing of the strange look of $2 THE HILLMAN indecision that had suddenly crept into her face. Her eyebrows were contracted. She had turned, and was gazing up the precipitous strip of moorland toward the gray-walled church. Then she glanced at John Strangewey, and her eyes seemed filled with the ques- tioning of a child. It was as if she had abandoned the role of mentor, as if she herself were seeking for guid- ance or help. John's unspoken response was prompt and unmis- takable ; and she smiled ever so slightly. She no longer thought him narrow and prejudiced, an unfair judge of things beyond Ijis comprehension. He had helped her in a moment of trial. An idea had flashed between them, and she acted upon it with amazing promptitude. tf Alas, prince," she sighed, as he turned back toward them, " I am so sorry, but I fear that this little accident must change all my plans ! As you know, mine was to have been only a brief stay at Raynham, and I fear now that even that is impossible." The prince drew a step nearer. Something of the calm suavity had suddenly gone from his manner. When he spoke, his measured words were full of appeal. " But, my dear friend," he begged, " you will not rob me altogether of this visit, to which I have looked forward so eagerly? It was to receive you for a few hours that I came from Paris and opened Raynham Castle. You yourself shall decide the length of your stay, and a special train shall take you back to London the moment you give the word. In that way you will both save time and spare me one of the greatest dis- appointments of my life ! " She shook her head, slowly and very decisively. '* You cannot imagine how sorry I am, prince," she said, " but as it is I must take a special train from Ken- THE HILLMAN 53 dal, if there is not one starting soon after I reach the station. I wish to reach London either this evening or very early in the morning." The prince was holding himself in restraint with a visible effort. His eyes were fixed upon Louise's face, as if trying to read her thoughts. "Is the necessity so urgent?" he asked. *' Judge for yourself," she replied. " Henri Graillot is there, waiting for me. You know how impatient he is, and all London is clamoring for his play. Night to him is just the same as day. I shall telegraph from Kendal the hour of my arrival." The prince sighed. " I think," he said quietly, " that I am the most un- fortunate man in the world! At least, then, you will permit me to drive you to Kendal? I gather from your chauffeur that your car, although temporarily repaired, is not altogether reliable." She answered him only after a slight hesitation. For some reason or other, his proposition did not seem wholly welcome. " That will be very kind of you," she assented. " If we start at once," the prince suggested, " we shall catch the Scotch mail." "You will surely lunch first? and you, prince?" John begged. She laid her hand upon his arm. " My friend, no," she replied. *' I am feverishly anxious to get back to London. Walk with me to the car. I will wave my adieus to Peak Hall when we are up among the hills." She drew him on a few paces ahead. '* I am going back to London," she continued, lower- ing her voice a little, ** with some very strange impres- 54 THE HILLMAN sions and some very pleasant memories. I feel that your life here is, in its way, very beautiful, and yet the contemplation of your future fills me with an immense curiosity. I have not talked to you for very long, Mr. Strangewey, and you may not be quite the sort of per- son I think you are, but I am seldom mistaken. I am an artist, you see, and we have perceptions. I think that even here the time will come when the great unrest will seize you, too, in its toils. Though the color may not fade from your hills, and though the apple-blossom may still glorify your orchard, and your flowers bloom and smell as sweetly, and your winds bring you the same music, I think that the time will come when the note in you which answers to these things, and which gives you contentment, will fail to respond. Then I think I hope, perhaps that we may meet." She spoke very softly, almost under her breath, and when she had finished there seemed everywhere a strange emptiness of sound. The panting of the engine from the motor-car, Stephen's measured words as he walked with his uncongenial companion, seemed to come to John from some other world. His voice, when he spoke, sounded a little harsh. Although he was denying it fiercely to himself, he was filled with a dim, harrowing consciousness that the struggle had already begun. Notwithstanding the un- realized joy of these few hours, his last words to Louise were almost words of anger ; his last look from beneath his level, close-drawn eyebrows was almost militant. " I hope," he declared, " that what you have said may not be true. I hope fervently that the time may never come when I shall feel that I need anything more in life than I can find in the home I love, in the work which is second nature to me, in my books and my sports ! " THE HILLMAN 55 The prince, escaping gracefully from a companion who remained adamant to all his advances, had maneuvered his way to their side. The last few steps were taken together. In a few moments they were in the car and ready to start. Stephen, with a stiff little bow, had already departed. Louise leaned out from her place with outstretched hands. " And now good-by, dear Mr. Strangewey ! Your brother would not let me mate my little speech to him, so you must accept the whole of my thanks. And," she went on, the corners of her mouth twitching a little, although her face remained perfectly grave, " if the time should come when the need of reinvestments, or of some new machinery for your farm, brings you to London, will you promise that you will come and see me?" " I will promise that with much pleasure," John an- swered. She leaned back and the prince took her place, hold- ing out his hand. " Mr. Strangewey, although your luck has been bet- ter than mine, and you have robbed me of a visit to which I had looked forward for months, I bear you no ill-will. I trust that you will do me the honor of shoot- ing with me before long. My head keeper arranges for the local guns, and I shall see that he sends you a list of the days on which we shall shoot. May I beg that you will select the most convenient to yourself? If you have no car here, it will give me additional pleasure to welcome you at Raynham as my guest." John, struggling against an instinctive dislike of which, for many reasons, he was a little ashamed, mur- mured a few incoherent words. The prince leaned back and the car glided away, followed, a few minutes later, 56 THE HILLMAN by Louise's own landaulet, with Aline in solitary state inside. John watched the little procession until it finally dis- appeared from sight; then he turned on his heel and went into the house. Stephen, who had just filled a pipe, was smoking furiously in the hall. "Have they gone? " he demanded. John nodded. " They are racing into Kendal to catch the Scotch- man for London." " The sooner she gets there, the better," Stephen growled. John raised his head. The light of battle flashed for a moment in his eyes. " She came here unbidden," he said, " and we did no more than our bounden duty in entertaining her. For the rest, what is there that you can say against her? Women there must be in the world. Why do you judge those who come your way so harshly ? " Stephen withdrew the pipe from his mouth and dealt the black oak table in front of him a blow with his great fist. Even John himself was struck with the sudden likeness of his brother's face to the granite rocks which were piled around their home. " I'll answer your question, John," he said. " I'll tell you the truth as I see it and as I know it. Women there must be to breed men's sons, to care for their households ; even, I grant you, to be their companions and to lighten the dark days when sorrow comes. But she isn't that sort. She is as far removed from them as our mountain road is from the scented thoroughfares of Bond Street or the Rue de la Paix, where she might take her daily exercise. I'll tell you about her, John. She is one of those who have sown the hatred of women THE HILLMAN 57 in my heart. Do you know what I call them, John? I call them witch-women. There's something of the devil in their blood. They call themselves artists. They have the gift of turning the heads and spoiling the lives of sober, well-living men, till they make them dance to their bidding along the ways of shame, and turn their useful lives into the dotage of a love-sick boy. They aren't child-bearing women, that sort! They don't want to take their proper place in your household by your side, breed sons and daughters for you, sink their own lives in the greater duties of motherhood. There's generally a drop of devilish foreign blood in their veins, as she has. Our grandmother had it. You know the result. The empty frame in the lumber-room will tell you." John, half angry, half staggered by his brother's vehemence, was for the moment a little confused. " There may be women like that, Stephen," he con- fessed. *' I am not denying the truth of much that you say. But what right have you to class her among them? What do you know of her? " " It's written in her face," Stephen answered fiercely. *' Women like her breathe it from their lips when they speak, just as it shines out of their eyes when they look at you. An actress, and a friend of the Prince of Seyre ! A woman who thought it worth her while, dur- ing her few hours' stay here " John had suddenly straightened himself. Stephen clenched his teeth. " Curse it, that's enough ! " he said. " She's gone, any- way. Come, let's have our lunch ! " VI Once more that long, winding stretch of mountain road lay empty under the moonlight. Three months had passed, and none of the mystery of the earlier sea- son in the year remained. The hills had lost their canopy of soft, gray mist. Nature had amplified and emphasized herself. The whole outline of the country was marvelously distinct. The more distant mountains, as a rule blurred and uncertain in shape, seemed now to pierce with their jagged summits the edge of the star- filled sky. Up the long slope, where three months before he had ridden to find himself confronted with the adventure of his life, John Strangewey jogged homeward in his high dog-cart. The mare, scenting her stable, broke into a quick trot as they topped the long rise. Suddenly she felt a hand tighten upon her reins. She looked inquir- ingly around, and then stood patiently awaiting her master's bidding. It seemed to John as if he had passed from the partial abstraction of the last few hours into absolute and en- tire forgetfulness of the present. He could see the motor-car drawn up by the side of the road, could hear the fretful voice of the maid, and the soft, pleasant words of greeting from the woman who had seemed from the first as if she were very far removed indeed from any of the small annoyances of their accident. " I have broken down. Can you help ? " He set his teeth. The poignancy of the recollection THE HILLMAN 59 was a torture to him. Word by word he lived again through that brief interview. He saw her descend from the car, felt the touch of her hand on his arm, saw the flash of her brown eyes as she drew close to him with that pleasant little air of familiarity, shared by no other woman he had ever known. Then the little scene faded away, and he remembered the tedious present. He had spent two dull days at the house of a neighboring landowner, playing cricket in the daytime, dancing at night with women in whom he was unable to feel the slightest interest, always with that far-away feeling in his heart, struggling hour by hour with that curious restlessness which seemed to have taken a permanent place in his disposition. He was on his way home to Peak Hall. He knew exactly the wel- come which was awaiting him. He knew exactly the news he would receive. He raised his whip and cracked it viciously in the air. Stephen was waiting for him, as he had expected, in the dining room. The elder Strangewey was seated in his accustomed chair, smoking his pipe and reading the paper. The table was laid for a meal, which Jennings was preparing to serve. " Back again, John? " his brother remarked, looking at him fixedly over his newspaper. John picked up one or two letters, glanced them over, and flung them down upon the table. He had examined every envelope for the last few months with the same expectancy, and thrown each one down with the same throb of disappointment. " As you see." "Had a good time?" " Not very. We were too strong for them. They came without a bowler at all." 60 THE HILLMAN " Did you get a good knock ? " " A hundred and seven," John replied. " It was just a slog, though. Nothing to eat, thank you, Jennings. You can clear the table so far as I am concerned. I had supper with the Greys. Have they finished the barley-fields, Stephen ? " " All in at eight o'clock." There was a brief silence. Then Stephen knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to his feet. " John," he asked, " why did you pull up on the road there?" There was no immediate answer. The slightest of frowns formed itself upon the younger man's face. " How did you know that I pulled up ? " "I was sitting with the window open, listening for you. I came outside to see what had happened, and I saw your lights standing still." " I had a fancy to stop for a moment," John said ; " nothing more." " You aren't letting your thoughts dwell upon that woman ? " " I have thought about her sometimes," John an- swered, almost defiantly. " What's the harm? I'm still here, am I not? " Stephen crossed the room. From the drawer of the old mahogany sideboard he produced an illustrated paper. He turned back the frontispiece fiercely and held it up. " Do you see that, John ? " *' I've seen it already." Stephen threw the paper upon the table. " She's going to act in another of those confounded French plays," he said ; " translations with all the wit taken out and all the vulgarity left in." THE HILLMAN 61 " We know nothing of her art," John declared coldly. " We shouldn't understand it, even if we saw her act. Therefore, it isn't right for us to judge her. The world has found her a great actress. She is not respon- sible for the plays she acts in." Stephen turned away and lit his pipe anew. He smoked for a minute or two furiously. His thick eye- brows came closer and closer together. He seemed to be turning some thought over in his mind. *' John," he asked, " is it this cursed money that is making you restless ? " "I never think of it except when some one comes begging. I promised a thousand pounds to the in- firmary to-day." " Then what's wrong with you? " John stretched himself out, a splendid figure of healthy manhood. His cheeks were sun-tanned, his eyes clear and bright. "The matter? There's nothing on earth the mat- ter with me," he declared. '* It isn't your health I mean. There are other things, as you well know. You do your day's work and you take your pleasure, and you go through both as if your feet were on a treadmill." " Your fancy, Stephen ! " " God grant it ! I've had an unwelcome visitor in your absence." John turned swiftly around. "A visitor?" he repeated. "Who was it?*' Stephen glowered at him for a moment " It was the prince," he said ; " the Prince of Seyre, as he calls himself, though he has the right to style him- self Master of Raynham- It's only his foreign blood which makes him choose what I regard as the lesser title. 62 THE HILLMAN Yes, he called to ask you to shoot and stay at the castle, if you would, from the 16th to the 20th of next month." " What answer did you give him? " " I told him that you were your own master. [You must send word to-morrow." " He did not mention the names of any of his other guests, I suppose? " " He mentioned no names at all." John was silent for a moment. A bewildering thought had taken hold of him. Supposing she were to be there! Stephen, watching him, read his thoughts, and for a moment lost control of himself. " Were you thinking about that woman ? " he asked sternly. "What woman?" " The woman whom we sheltered here, the woman whose shameless picture is on the cover of that book." John swung round on his heel. " Stop that, Stephen ! " he said menacingly. "Why should I?" the older man retorted. "Take up that paper, if you want to read a sketch of the life of Louise Maurel. See the play she made her name in * La Gioconda ' ! " "What about it?" Stephen held the paper out to his brother. John read a few lines and dashed it into a corner of the room. " There's this much about it, John," Stephen con- tinued. " The woman played that part night after night played it to the life, mind you. She made her reputation in it. That's the woman we unknowingly let sleep beneath this roof! The barn is the place for her and her sort ! " THE HILLMAN 63 John's clenched fists were held firmly to his sides. His eyes were blazing. " That's enough, Stephen ! " he cried. " No, it's not enough ! " was the fierce reply. " Th truth's been burning in my heart long enough. It's better out. You want to find her a guest at Raynham Castle, do you? Raynham Castle, where never a de- cent woman crosses the threshold! If she goes there, she goes as his mistress. Well ? " An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the back door, passed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled moon- light lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble ; up the rough ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard. He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of unwreaked passion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he had escaped the mi- asma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions of his brother's, so far as they; concerned himself and his life during the last few; months. Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his whole out- look upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people, his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo of her half- mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears. 64 THE HILLMAN He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages, the bailiffs house, the whole little colony around which his life seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward which he had looked so many nights at this hour. Across the viaduct there came a blaze of streaming light, a serpentlike trail, a faintly heard whistle the Scottish Express on its way southward toward London. His eyes followed it out of sight. He found himself thinking of the passengers who would wake the next morning in London. He felt himself suddenly acutely conscious of his isolation. Was there not something almost monastic in the seclusion which had become a passion with Stephen, and which had its grip, too, upon him a waste of life, a burying of talents? He rose to his feet. The half-formed purpose of weeks held him now, definite and secure. He knew that this pilgrimage of his to the hilltop, his rapt contempla- tion of the little panorama which had become so dear to him, was in a sense valedictory. After all, two more months passed before the end came, and it came then without a moment's warning. It was a little past midday when John drove slowly through the streets of Market Ketton in his high dog- cart, exchanging salutations right and left with the tradespeople, with farmers brought into town by the market, with acquaintances of all sorts and conditions. More than one young woman from the shop-windows or THE HILLMAN 65 the pavements ventured to smile at him, and the few greetings he received from the wives and daughters of his neighbors were as gracious as they could possibly be made. John almost smiled once, in the act of raising his hat, as he realized how completely the whole charm of the world, for him, seemed to lie in one woman's eyes. At the crossways, where he should have turned up to the inn, he paused while a motor-car passed. It contained a woman, who was talking to her host. She was not in the least like Louise, and yet instinctively he knew that she was of the same world. The perfection of her white-serge costume, her hat so smartly worn, the half-insolent smile, the little gesture with which she raised her hand something about her unlocked the floodgates. Market Ketton had seemed well enough a few minutes ago. John had felt a healthy appetite for his midday meal, and a certain interest concerning a deal of barley upon which he was about to engage. And now another world had him in its grip. He flicked the mare with his whip, turned away from the inn, and galloped up to the station, keeping pace with the train whose whistle he had heard. Standing outside was a local horse- dealer of his acquaintance. " Take the mare back for me to Peak Hall, will you, Jenkins, or send one of your lads?" he begged. "I want to catch this train." The man assented with pleasure it paid to do a kindness for a Strangewey. John passed through the ticket-office to the platform, where the train was wait- ing, threw open the door of a carriage, and flung him- self into a corner seat. The whistle sounded. The ad- venture of his life had begun at last. vn The great French dramatist, dark, pale-faced, and corpulent, stood upon the extreme edge of the stage, brandishing his manuscript in his hand. From close at hand, the stage manager watched him anxiously. For the third time M. Graillot was within a few inches of the orchestra-well. " If you would pardon me, M. Graillot," he ventured timidly, " the footlights are quite unprotected, as you see." Graillot glanced behind him and promptly abandoned his dangerous position. " It is you, ladies and gentlemen," he declared, shak- ing his manuscript vigorously at the handful of people upon the stage, " who drive me into forgetfulness and place me in the danger from which our friend here has just rescued me. Do I not best know the words and the phrases which will carry the messages of my play across the footlights? Who is to judge, ladies and gentlemen you or I ? " He banged the palm of his left hand with the rolled- up manuscript and looked at them all furiously. A slight, middle-aged man, clean-shaven, with a single eye- glass, and features very well known to the theatergoing world, detached himself a little from the others. " No one indeed, dear M. Graillot," he admitted, '* could possibly know these things so well as you ; but, on the other hand, when you write in your study at THE HILLMAN 67; Fontainebleau you write for a quicker-minded public than ours. The phrase which would find its way at once to the brain of the French audience needs, shall I say, just a little amplification to carry equal weight across the footlights of my theater. I will admit that we are dealing with a translation which is, in its way, not suffi- ciently literal, but our friend Shamus here has pointed out to me the difficulties. The fact is, M. Graillot, that some of the finest phrases in your work are untranslat- able." " There are times," the dramatist asserted, moisten- ing his lips vigorously with his tongue, " when I regret that I ever suffered Mr. Shamus or anybody else to at- tempt to translate my inimitable play into a language wholly inadequate to express its charm and subtlety ! " " Quite so," the actor remarked sympathetically ; *' but still, since the deed has been done, M. Graillot, and since we are going to produce the result in the course of a fortnight or so, or lose a great deal of money, don't you think that we had all better try our utmost to insure the success of the production ? " *' The only success I care for," Graillot thundered, " is an artistic success ! " " With Miss Maurel playing your leading part, M. Graillot," the actor-manager declared, " not to speak of a company carefully selected to the best of my judg- ment, I think you may venture to anticipate even that." The dramatist bowed hurriedly to Louise. " You recall to me a fact," he said gallantly, " which almost reconciles me to this diabolical travesty of some of my lines. Proceed, then proceed! I will be as patient as possible." The stage manager shouted out some directions from his box. A gentleman in faultless morning clothes, who 68 THE HILLMAN seemed to have been thoroughly enjoying the interlude, suddenly adopted the puppetlike walk of a footman. Other actors, who had been whispering together in the wings, came back to their places. Louise advanced alone, a little languidly, to the front of the stage. At the first sound of her voice M. Graillot, nodding his head vigorously, was soothed. Her speech was a long one. It appeared that she had been arraigned before a company of her relatives, assembled to comment upon her misdeeds. She wound up with a passionate appeal to her husband, Mr. Miles Faraday, who had made an unexpected appearance. M. Graillot's face, as she concluded, was wreathed in smiles. " Ah ! " he cried. " You have lifted us all up ! Now I feel once more the inspiration. Mademoiselle, I kiss your hand," he went on. " It is you who still redeem my play. You bring back the spirit of it to me. In you I see the embodiment of my Therese" Miles Faraday gave a little sigh of relief and glanced gratefully toward Louise. She nodded back to him and gave her hand to the Frenchman, who held it to his lips. "You flatter me, M. Graillot," she said. "It is simply that I feel the force of your beautiful words. Thcrese is a wonderful conception! As to those dis- puted passages well, I feel myself in a very difficult position. Artistically, I am entirely in accord with you, and yet I understand exactly what Mr. Faraday means from the commercial point of view. Let us sub- mit the matter to the prince. He knows something of both sides of the question." The Prince of Seyre, who was seated in the orchestra- leader's chair, looked reproachfully toward Louise. THE HILLMAN 69 " Is this fair ? " he protested. " Remember that I am more than half a Frenchman, and that I am one of our friend's most faithful disciples. I realize the deli- cacy of the situation, and I understand Mr. Faraday's point of view. I tell you frankly that the thought of an empty theater appals me. It is not the money I am sure you all know that but there isn't a single man or woman in the world who can do his best unless he or she plays to a full house. Somehow or other, we must secure our audience." " It really comes to this," Faraday intervened. ** Shall we achieve a purely artistic triumph and drive the people away ? Or shall we at the expense, I ad- mit, of some of the finest passages in M. Graillot's su- perb drama compromise the matter and keep our box-office open? In a more humble way I hope I also may call myself an artist ; and yet not only must I live myself, but I have a staff of employees dependent upon me." Graillot waved his hand. " So ! No more ! " he exclaimed grandiloquently. '* The affair is finished. My consent is given. Delete the lines! As to the scene laid in the bedroom of madame, to-night I shall take up my pen. By noon to- morrow I will give you a revision which will puff out the cheeks of the Philistines with satisfaction. Have no fear, cher ami Faraday ! Mothers shall bring their unmarried daughters to see our play. They shall all watch it without a blush. If there is anything to make the others think, it shall be beneath the surface. It shall be for the great artist whom it is my supreme joy to watch," he went on, bowing to Louise, " to act and express the real truth of my ideas through the music of innocent words." 70 THE HILLMAN " Then all is arranged," Miles Faraday concluded briskly. " We will leave the second act until tomor- row; then M. Graillot will bring us his revision. We will proceed now to the next act. Stand back a little, if you please, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Maurel, will you make your entrance? " Louise made no movement. Her eyes were fixed upon a certain shadowy corner of the wings. Overwrought as she had seemed a few minutes ago, with the emotional excitement of her long speech, there was now a new and curious expression upon her face. She seemed to be looking beyond the gloomy, unlit spaces of the theater; into some unexpected land. Curiously enough, the three people there most inter- ested in her the prince, Graillot, and her friend^ Sophy Gerard each noticed the change. The little fair-haired girl, who owed her small part in the play to Louise, quitted her chair to follow the direction of her friend's eyes. Faraday, with the frown of an actor- manager resenting an intrusion, gazed in the same di- rection. To Sophy, the newcomer was simply the handsomest young man she had ever seen in her life. To Faraday he represented nothing more nor less than the unwel- come intruder. The prince alone, with immovable fea- tures, but with a slight contraction of his eyebrows, gazed with distrust, almost with fear, unaccountable yet disturbing, at the tall hesitating figure that stood just off the stage. Louise only knew that she was amazed at herself, amazed to find the walls of the theater falling away from her. She forgot the little company of her friends by whom she was surrounded. She forgot the existence of the famous dramatist who hung upon her words, and THE HILLMAN 71 the close presence of the prince. Her feet no longer trod the dusty boards of the theater. She was almost painfully conscious of the perfume of apple-blossom. " You ! " she exclaimed, stretching out her hands. *' Why do you not come and speak to me ? I am here ! " John came out upon the stage. The French drama- tist, with his hands behind his back, made swift mental notes of an interesting situation. He saw the coming of a man who stood like a giant among them, sunburnt, buoyant with health, his eyes bright with the wonder of his unexpected surroundings ; a man in whose pres- ence every one else seemed to represent an effete and pallid type of humanity. The dramatist and the prince were satisfied, however, with one single glance at the newcomer. Afterward, their whole regard was focused upon Louise. The same thought was in the mind of both of them the same fear! Those first few sentences, spoken in the midst of a curious little crowd of strangers, seemed to John, when he thought of his long waiting, almost piteously inade- quate. Louise, recognizing the difficulty of the situa- tion, swiftly recovered her composure. She was both tactful and gracious. " Do tell me how you got in here," she said. " No one is allowed to pass the stage door at rehearsal times. Mr. Faraday, to whom I will introduce you in a mo- ment, is a perfect autocrat ; and Mr. Mullins, our stage manager, is even worse." " I just asked for you," John explained. " The (doorkeeper told me that you were engaged, but I per-c suaded him to let me come in." She shook her head. '* Bribery ! " she declared accusingly. " I heard your voice, and after that it was hard to go away. I'm afraid I ought to have waited outside." Louise turned to Miles Faraday, who was looking a little annoyed. " Mr. Faraday," she said appealingly, " Mr. Strangewey comes from the country he is, in fact, the most complete countryman I have ever met in my life. He comes from Cumberland, and he once well, very nearly saved my life. He knows nothing about theaters, and he hasn't the least idea of the importance THE HILLMAN 73 of a rehearsal. You won't mind if we put him some- where out of the way till we have finished, will you ? " " After such an introduction," Faraday said in a tone of resignation, " Mr. Strangewey would be wel- come at any time." " There's a dear man ! " Louise exclaimed. " Let me introduce him quickly. Mr. John Strangewey Mr. Miles Faraday, M. Graillot, Miss Sophy Gerard, my particular little friend. The prince you already know, although you may not recognize him trying to balance himself on that absurd stool." John bowed in various directions, and Faraday, tak- ing him good-naturedly by the arm, led him to a garden- seat at the back of the stage. " There ! " he said. " You are one of the most privileged persons in London. You shall hear the finish of our rehearsal. There isn't a press man in London I'd have near the place." " Very kind of you, I'm sure," John replied. " Is [this, may I ask, the play that you are soon going to produce? " " Three weeks from next Monday, I hope," Faraday told him. " Don't attempt to judge by anything you hear this afternoon. We are just deciding upon some cuts. See you later. You may smoke, if you like." Twenty-four hours away from his silent hills, John looked out with puzzled eyes from his dusty seat among ropes and pulleys and leaning fragments of scenery. What he saw and heard seemed to him, for the most part, a meaningless tangle of gestures and phrases. The men and women in fashionable clothes, moving about before that gloomy space of empty auditorium, looked more like marionettes than creatures of flesh and blood, drawn this way and that at the bidding of the 74 THE HILLMAN stout, masterly Frenchman, who was continually mut- tering exclamations and banging the manuscript upon his hand. He kept his eyes fixed upon Louise. He told himself that he was in her presence at last. As the moments passed, it became more and more difficult for him to realize the actuality of the scene upon which he was looking. It seemed like a dream-picture, with unreal men and women moving about aimlessly, saying strange words. Then there came a moment which brought a tingle into his blood, which plunged his senses into hot confu- sion. He rose to his feet. Faraday was sitting down, and Louise was resting both her hands upon his shoulders. ** Is there nothing I can be to you, then, Edmund? " she asked, her voice vibrating with a passion which he found it hard to believe was not real. Faraday turned slowly in his chair. He held out his arms. " One thing," he murmured. John had moved half a step forward when he felt the prince's eyes fixed upon him, and was conscious of a sudden sense of ignorance, almost of uncouthness. It was a play which they were rehearsing, of course! It was a damnable thing to see Louise taken into that cold and obviously unreal embrace, but it was only a play. It was part of her work. John resumed his seat and folded his arms. With the embrace had fallen an imaginary curtain, and the rehearsal was over. They were all crowded together, talking, in the center of the stage. The prince, who had stepped across the footlights, made his way to where John was sitting. THE HILLMAN 75 '** So you have deserted Cumberland for a time? " he courteously inquired. " I came up last night," John replied. ** You are making a long stay ? " John hesitated. He felt that no one knew less of his movements than he himself. His eyes had wandered to where Louise and Graillot were talking. " I can scarcely tell yet. I have made no plans." " London, at this season of the year," the prince ob- served, " is scarcely at its best." John smiled. " I am afraid," he said, " that I am not critical. It is eight years since I was here last, on my way down from Oxford." " You have been abroad, perhaps ? " the prince in- quired. " I have not been out of Cumberland (during the whole of that time," John confessed. The prince, after a moment's incredulous stare, laughed softly to himself. " You are a yery wonderful person, Mr. Strange- wey," he declared. " I have heard of your good for- tune. If I can be of any service to you during your stay in town," he added politely, " please command me." " You are very kind," John replied gratefully. Louise broke away from the little group and came across toward them. " Free at last ! " she exclaimed. " Now let us go out and have some tea." They made their way down the little passage and out into the sudden blaze of the sunlit streets. Two cars were drawn up outside the stage door. " The Carlton or Rumpelmayer's ? " asked the prince, who had overtaken them upon the pavement. 76 THE HILLMAN " The Carlton, I think," Louise decided. " We can get a quiet table there inside the restaurant. You bring Sophy, trill you, Eugene? I am going to take possession of Mr. Strangewey." The prince, with a little bow, pointed to the door of his limousine, which a footman was holding open. Louise led John to a smaller car which was waiting in the rear. " The Carlton," she told the man, as he arranged the rugs. " And now," she added, turning to John, " why have you come to London ? How long are you going to stay ? What are you going to do ? And most im- portant of all in what spirit have you come? " John breathed a little sigh of contentment. They were moving slowly down a back street to take their place in the tide of traffic which flooded the main thor- oughfares. ** That sounds so like you," he said. " I came up last night, suddenly. I have no idea how long I am going to stay ; I have no idea what I am going to do. As for the spirit in which I have come well, I should call it an inquiring one." " A very good start," Louise murmured approvingly, " but still a little vague ! " " Then I will do away with all vagueness. I came to see you," John confessed bluntly. " Dear me ! " she exclaimed, looking at him with a little smile. " How downright you are ! " " Country methods," he reminded her. " Don't overdo it," she begged. " The truth " he began. " Has to be handled very carefully," she said, inter- rupting him. " The truth is either beautiful or crude, and the people who meddle with such a wonderful thing THE HILLMAN 77 need a great deal of tact. You have come to see me, you say. Very well, then, I will be just as frank. I have been hoping that you would come ! " " You can't imagine how good it is to hear you say that," he declared. " Mind," she went on, " I have been hoping it for more reasons than one. You have come to realize, I hope, that it is your duty to try to see a little more of life than you possibly can leading a patriarchal ex- istence among your flocks and herds." " That may be so," John assented. *' I have often thought of our conversation. I don't know, even now, whether you were right or wrong. I only know that since you went away I have felt something of the unrest with which you threatened me. I want to settle the matter one way or the other. I want to try, for a little time, what it is like to live in the crowded places, to be near you, to see, if I may, more of you and your way of living." They were silent for several moments. " I thought you would come," Louise said at last ; " and I am glad, but even in these first few minutes I want to say something to you. If you wish to succeed in your object, and really understand the people you meet here and the life they lead, don't be like your brother too quick to judge. Do not hug your prej- udices too tightly. You will come across many prob- lems, many situations which will seem strange to you. Do not make up your mind about anything in a hurry." " I will remember that," he promised. " You must remember, though, that I don't expect ever to become a convert. I believe I am a countryman, bred and born. Still, there are some things that I want to understand, 8 THE HILLMAN if I can, and, more than anything else I want to see you ! " She faced his direct speech this time with more de- liberation. " Tell me exactly why." " If I could tell you that," he replied simply, " I should be able to answer for myself the riddle which has kept me awake at night for weeks and months, which has puzzled me more than anything else in life has ever done." " You really have thought of me, then ? " "Didn't you always know that I should?" " Perhaps," she admitted. " Anyhow, I always felt that we should meet again, that you would come to Lon- don. The problem is," she added, smiling, " what to do with you now you are here." " I haven't come to be a nuisance," he assured her. " I just want a little help from you." She became indiscreet. She looked at him with a little smile at the corners of her lips. " Nothing else ? " she asked, almost under her breath. " At the end of it all, yes," he answered simply. " I want to understand because it is your world. I want to feel myself nearer to you. I want " She gripped at his arm suddenly. She knew well enough that she had deliberately provoked his words, but there was a look in her face almost of fear. " Don't let us be too serious all at once," she begged quickly. " If you have one fault, my dear big friend from the country," she went on, with a swiftly assumed gaiety, " it is that you are too serious for your years. Sophy and I between us must try to cure you of that! You see, we have arrived." He handed her out, followed her across the pavement, THE HILLMAN 79 and found himself plunged into what seemed to him to be an absolute vortex of human beings, all dressed in very much the same fashion, all laughing and talking together very much in the same note, all criticising every fresh group of arrivals with very much the same eyes and manner. The palm-court was crowded with little parties seated at the various round tables, partaking languidly of the most indolent meal of the day. Even, the broad passageway was full of men and women, standing about talking or looking for tables. One could scarcely hear the music of the orchestra for the babel of voices. The Prince of Seyre beckoned to them from the steps. He seemed to have been awaiting their arrival there > a cold, immaculate, and, considering his lack of height, a curiously distinguished-looking figure. '* I have a table inside," he told them as they ap- proached. " It is better for conversation. The rest of the place is like a beer-garden. I am not sure if they will dance here to-day, but if they do, they will come also into the restaurant." " Wise man ! " Louise declared. " I, too, hate the babel outside." They were ushered to a round table directly before the entrance, and a couple of attentive waiters stood behind their chairs. " We are faced," said the prince, as he took up the menu, " with our daily problem. What can I order for you?" " A cup of chocolate," Louise replied. "And Miss Sophy?" "Tea, please." John, too, preferred tea ; the prince ordered absinth. " A polyglot meal, isn't it, Mr. Strangewey ? " said So THE HILLMAN Louise, as the order was executed ; " not in the leas what that wonderful old butler of jours would under- stand by tea. We become depraved in our appetites, as well as in our sensations. We are always seeking for something new. Sophy, put your hat on straight if you want to make a good impression on Mr. Strange- wey. I am hoping that you two will be great friends." Sophy turned toward John with a little grimace. " Louise is so tactless ! " she said. " I am sure any idea you might have had of liking me will have gone already. Has it, Mr. Strangewey ? " " On the contrary," he replied, a little stiffly, but without hesitation, " I was thinking that Miss Maurel could scarcely have set me a more pleasant task." The girl looked reproachfully across at her friend. " You told me he came from the wilds and was quite unsophisticated ! " she exclaimed. " The truth," John assured them, looking with dis- may at his little china cup, " comes very easily to us. We are brought up on it in Cumberland." " Positively nourished on it," Louise agreed. " My dear Sophy, what he says is quite true. Up there a man would tell you that he didn't like the cut of your new blouse or the droop of your hat. It's a wonder- ful atmosphere, and very austere. You ought to meet Mr. Strangewey's brother, if you want to know the truth about yourself. Do go on looking about you, Mr. Strangewey ; and when you have finished, tell us just what you are thinking." " Well, just at that moment," he replied, " I was thinking that I ought not to have come here in these clothes." The girl by his side laughed reassuringly. "As a matter of fact, you couldn't have done any THE HILLMAN 81 thing more successful," she declared. " The one thing up here that every one would like to do if he dared is to be different from his fellows; but very few have the necessary courage. Besides, at heart we are all so frightfully, hatefully imitative. The last great suc- cess was the prince, when he wore a black stock with a dinner-coat ; but, alas, next evening there were forty or fifty of them ! If you come here to tea to-morrow aft- ernoon, I dare say you will find dozens of men wearing gray tweed clothes, colored shirts, and brown boots. I am sure they are most becoming ! " " Don't chatter too much, child," Louise said be- nignly. " I want to hear some more of Mr. Strange- wey's impressions. This is well, if not quite a fash- ionable crowd, yet very nearly so. What do you think of it the women, for instance ? " " Well, to me," John confesed candidly, " they all look like dolls or manikins. Their dresses and their hats overshadow their faces. They seem all the time to be wanting to show, not themselves, but what they have on." They all laughed. Even the prince's lips were parted by the flicker of a smile. Sophy leaned across the table with a sigh. " Louise," she pleaded, " you will lend him to me sometimes, won't you? You won't keep him altogether to yourself? There are such a lot of places I want to take him to ! " " I was never greedy," Louise remarked, with an air of self-satisfaction. " If you succeed in making a fa- vorable impression upon him, I promise you your share." " Tell us some more of your impressions, Mr. Strangewey," Sophy begged. 82 THE HILLMAN *' You want to laugh at me," John protested good- humoredlj. " On the contrary," the prince assured him, as he fitted a cigarette into a long, amber tube, " they want to laugh with you. You ought to realize your value as a companion in these days. You are the only person who can see the truth. Eyes and tastes blurred with custom perceive so little. You are quite right when you say that these women are like manikins ; that their bodies and faces are lost; but one does not notice it Until it is pointed out." " We will revert," Louise decided, " to a more primi- tive life. You and I will inaugurate a missionary en- terprise, Mr. Strangewey. We will judge the world afresh. We will reclothe and rehabilitate it." The prince flicked the ash from the end of his ciga- rette. '* Morally as well as sartorially ? " he asked. There was a moment's rather queer silence. The music rose above the hubbub of voices and died away again. Louise rose to her feet. " Quite an intelligent person, really," she said, mov- ing her head in the direction of the prince. " His little attacks of cynicism come only with indigestion or after absinth. Now, if you like, you shall escort me home, Mr. Strangewey. I want to show him exactly where I live," she explained, addressing the others, " so that he will have no excuse for not coming to pay his respects to me to-morrow afternoon." The prince, with a skilful maneuver, made his way to her side as they left the restaurant. "To-morrow afternoon, I think you said?" he re- peated quietly. " You will be in town then ? " "Yes, I think so." THE HILLMAN 83 " You have changed your mind, then, about " '* M. Graillot will not listen to my leaving London," she interrupted rapidly. "He declares that it is too near the production of the play. My own part may be perfect, but he needs me for the sake of the others. He puts it like a Frenchman, of course." They had reached the outer door, which was being held open for them by a bowing commissionnaire. John and Sophy were waiting upon the pavement. The prince drew a little back. " I understand ! " he murmured. IX The first few minutes that John spent in Louise's little house were full of acute and vivid interest. From the moment of his first meeting with Louise upon the moonlit Cumberland road, during the whole of that next wonderful morning until their parting, and afterward, through all the long, dreaming days and nights that had intervened, she had remained a mystery to him. It was amazing how little he really knew of her. Dur- ing his journey to town, he had sat with folded arms in the corner of his compartment, wondering whether in her own environment he would find her easier to un- derstand. He asked himself that question again now, as he found himself in her drawing-room, in a room entirely redolent of her personality. Their meeting at the the- ater had told him nothing. She had gratified his senti- ment by the pleasure she had shown at his unexpected appearance, but his understanding remained unsatisfied. The room that he was so eagerly studying confirmed his cloudy impressions of its owner. There was, for a woman's apartment, a curious absence of ornamenta- tion and knickknacks. The walls were black and white, an idea fantastic in its way, yet carried out with ex- treme lightness in the ceiling and frieze. The carpet was white ; the furniture, of which there was very little, of the French period before the rococo type, graceful in its outline, rather heavy in build, and covered with THE HILLMAN 85 old-rose colored chintz. There were water-colors upon the wall, an etching or two from a Parisian studio, and some small black-and-white fantasies, puzzling to John, who had never even heard the term Futurist, yet in their way satisfactory. There was a small-sized grand piano, which seemed to have found its way almost apologetically into a remote corner; a delightful open fireplace with rough, white tiles, and an old-fashioned brass box, in which was piled a little heap of sweet-smelling wood blocks. A table, drawn up to the side of one of the easy chairs, was covered with books and magazines, some Italian, a few English, the greater part French ; and upon a smaller one, close at hand, stood a white bowl full of pink roses. Their odor was somehow reminiscent of Louise, curi- ously sweet and wholesome an odor which suddenly took him back to the morning when she had come to him from under the canopy of apple-blossom. He drew a little sigh of contentment as he rose to his feet and walked to the window. The room charmed him. It was wonderful that he should find it like this. His heart began to beat with pleasure even before the opening of the door announced her presence. She came in with Sophy, who at once seated herself by his side. " We have been making plans," Louise declared, " for disposing of you for the rest of the day." John smiled happily. " You're not sending me away, then ? You're not acting this evening? " " Not until three weeks next Monday," she replied. " Then, if you are good, and the production is not post- poned, you may seat yourself in a box and make all the noise you like after the fall of the curtain. These are 86 THE HILLMAN real holidays for me, except for the nuisance of re* hearsals. You couldn't have come at a better time." Sophy glanced at the clock. " Well," she said, " I must show my respect to that most ancient of adages by taking my departure. I feel" " You will do nothing of the sort, child," Louise interrupted. " I want to interest you in the evolution of Mr. Strangewey." " I don't feel that I am necessary," Sophy sighed* " Perhaps I might take him off your hands some evening; when you are busy." " On this first evening, at any rate," Louise insisted, ** we are going to be a truly harmonious party of three.*' " Of course, if you really mean it," Sophy remarked, resuming her seat, " and if I sha'n't make an enemy for] life of Mr. Strangewey, I should love to come, too. Let's decide what to do with him, Louise." For a moment the eyes of the two others met. Lou- ise looked swiftly away, and John's heart gave a little leap. Was it possible that the same thought had been in her mind to spend the evening quietly in that little room ? Had she feared it ? " We must remember," Louise said calmly, '* that a heavy responsibility rests upon us. It is his first night in London. What aspect of it shall we attempt to show him? Shall we make ourselves resplendent, put on our best manners and our most gorgeous gowns, and show him the world of starch and form and fashion from the prince's box at the opera? Or shall we transform ourselves into Bohemians, drink Chianti at our beloved Antonio's, cat Italian food in Soho, smoke long ciga- rettes, and take him to the Palace? Don't say a word, Sophy. It is not for us to choose." THE HILLMAN 87 " I am afraid that isn't any choice," John (declared, his face falling. " I haven't any clothes except what you see me in." " Hooray ! " Sophy exclaimed. " Off with your smart gown, Louise! We'll be splendidly Bohemian. You shall put on your black frock and a black hat, and powder your nose, and we'll all go to Guido's first and drink vermuth. I can't look the part, but I can act it!" " But tell me," Louise asked him, " did you lose your luggage?" " I brought none," he answered. They both looked at him Sophy politely curious, Louise more deeply interested. He answered the in- quiry in her eyes. " You'll say, perhaps," he observed, " that living that quiet, half-buried life up in Cumberland one should have no moods. I have them sometimes. I was in Market Ketton, on my way to the hotel for lunch, when I heard the whistle of the London Express coming in. I just had time to drive to the station, leave the horse and dog-cart with a man I knew, and jump into the train. I had no ticket or luggage." They both stared at him. ** You mean," Louise demanded, *' that after waiting all these months you started away upon impulse like that without even letting your brother know or bringing any luggage ? " " That's exactly what I idid," John agreed, smiling. *' I had a sovereign in my pocket when I had bought my ticket ; and by the time I had paid for my dinner on the train, and tipped the men well, I hadn't a great deal left to go shopping with. I stayed at the St. Pancras : Hotel, and telephoned to my solicitor before I got up 88 THE HILLMAN this morning to have him send me some money. The joke of it was," he went on, joining in the girls' laugh- ter, " that Mr. Appleton has been worrying me for months to come up and talk over reinvestments, and take control of the money my uncle left me ; and when I came at last, I arrived like a pauper. He went out himself and bought my shirt." " And a very nice shirt, too," Sophy declared, glanc- ing at the pattern. " Do tell us what else hap- pened ! " " Well, not much more," John replied. " Mr. Ap- pleton stuffed me full of money and made me take a little suite of rooms at what he called a more fashionable hotel. He stayed to lunch with me, and I have prom- ised to see him on business to-morrow morning." The two girls sat up and wiped their eyes. " Oh, this is a wonderful adventure you have em- barked upon ! " Louise exclaimed. " You have come quite in the right spirit. Now I am going to change my clothes and powder my face, and we will go to Gui- de's for a little vermuth, dine at Antonio's, and sit side by side at the Palace. We shall have to take Sophy with us, but if you show her too much attention I shall send her home. It is your first night here, Mr. Strangewey, so I warn you that Sophy is the most ir- responsible and capricious of all my friends. She has more admirers than she knows what to do with, and she disposes of them in the simplest way in the world by getting new ones." Sophy made a grimace. " Mr. Strangewey," she begged earnestly, " you won't believe a word she says, will you? All my life I have been looking for a single and steadfast attachment. Of course, if Louise wants to monopolize you, I shall THE HILLMAN 89 fall into the background, as I usually do; but if you think that I am going to accept hints and let you go out to dinner alone, you are very much mistaken. To- night, at any rate, I insist upon coming ! " Louise shook her head. *' We shall have to put up with her," she told John with a little grimace. The door of the room was suddenly opened. The parlor maid stood at one side. " The Prince of Seyre, madam," she announced. Louise nodded. She was evidently expecting the yisit. She turned to John. " Will you come back and call for us here say at seven o'clock? Mind, you are not to bother about your clothes, but to come just as you are. I can't tell you," she added under her breath, " how much I am looking forward to our evening ! " Sophy sprang to her feet. " Won't you drop me, please, Mr. Strangewey ? " she asked. " Then, if you will be so kind, you can pick me tip again on your way here. You'll have to pass where I live, if you are at the Milan. I must go home and do my little best to compete." Louise's frown was so slight that even John failed to iiotice it. Upon the threshold they encountered the prince, who detained John for a moment. " I was hoping that I might meet you here, Mr. Strangewey," he said. " If you are in town for long, it will give me great pleasure if I can be of any service to you. You are staying at a hotel? " " I am staying at the Milan," John replied. " I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you," the prince continued. " In the meantime, if you need any service that a Londoner can offer you, be sure to let go THE HILLMAN me know. You will easily find my house in Grosveno? Square." " It is very kind of you indeed," John said gratefully. Sophy made a wry face as the prince entered the drawing-room. " Didn't some old Roman once write something about being afraid of Greeks who brought gifts ? " she asked, as they descended the stairs together. " Quite right," John assented. "Well, b(j careful!" she advised him. "That's all." John handed Sophy into the taxi and took his place beside her. " Where shall I put you down? " he asked. " It's such a terribly low neighborhood ! However, it's quite close to the Milan- No. 10 Southampton Street." John gave the address to the man, and they started off. They were blocked in a stream of traffic almost as soon as they reached Hyde Park Corner. John leaned forward all the time, immensely interested in the stream of passers-by. *' Your interest in your fellow creatures," she mur- mured demurely, '* is wonderful, but couldn't you con- centrate it just a little? " He turned quickly around. She was smiling at him most alluringly. Unconsciously he found himself smil- ing back again. A wonderful light-heartedness seemed to have come to him during the last few hours. " I suppose I am a perfect idiot," he admitted. " I cannot help it. I am used to seeing, at the most, three or four people together at a time. I can't understand these crowds. Where are they all going? Fancjr THE HILLMAN 91 every one of them having a home, every one of them struggling in some form or another toward happi- ness ! " " Do you know," she pronounced severely, " for a young man of your age you are much too serious? Please commence your psychological studies to-morrow. To-night we are going to have a really frivolous eve- ning, you and I and Louise. If you want to be a great success during the next few hours, what you have to do is to imagine that there are only two people in the world beside yourself Louise and I." " I think I shall find that very easy," he promised, smiling. *' I am quite sure you could be nice if you wanted to," she continued. " How much are you in love with Louise? " " How much am I what? " " In love with Louise," she repeated. ** All the men are. It is a perfect cult with them. And here am I, her humble companion and friend, absolutely neg- lected!" " I don't believe you are neglected at all," he replied. " You are too much too " He turned his head to look at her. She was so close to him that their hats collided. He was profuse in his apologies. " Too what ? " she whispered. " Too attractive," he ventured. " It's nice to hear you say so," she sighed. " Well, I have to get out here. This is where I live, up on the fourth floor." " How does one get there? " he inquired. She looked at him quickly. There was a little catch in her breath. 92 THE HILLMAN "What do you mean? " she murmured. *' Didn't you say that I was to come and fetch you, and then we could go on to Miss Maurel's together ? " " Of course," she assented slowly. " How stupid of me! Some day I'll show you, but I know you would lose the way now. If you like, I'll come for you to the Milan." " If you would really prefer it ? " " I am quite sure that I should," she decided. ** There are about seven turns up to my room, and I shall have to personally conduct you there three or four times before you'll ever be able to find your way. I will come as soon as I am ready, and then you can give me a cocktail before we set out." She disappeared with a little wave of the hand, and John drove on to his destination. His rooms at the Milan were immensely comfortable and in their way quite homelike. John made some small changes to his toilet and was still in his shirt-sleeves, with hair-brushes in his hands, when there came a ring at the bell. He answered it at once and found Sophy standing outside. He gave a little start. " I say, I'm awfully sorry ! " '* What for, you silly person ? " she laughed. " Which way is the sitting room, please? Oh, I see! Now, please ring for the waiter and order me a vermuth cock- tail, and one for yourself, of course ; and I want some cigarettes. How clever of you to get rooms looking out upon the Embankment! I wish they would light the lamps. I think the illuminated arcs along the Embank- ment and past the Houses of Parliament is the most wonderful thing in London. Don't please, look so ter- rified because you haven't got your coat on! Remem- ber that I have five brothers." THE HILLMAN 93 " I had no idea you would be here so soon," he ex- plained, " or I would have been downstairs, waiting for you." ' " Don't be stupid ! " she replied. " Please remember that when you are with me, at any rate, you are in Bohemia and not Belgravia. I don't expect such at- tentions. I rather like coming up to your rooms like this, and I always love the Milan. I really believe that I am your first lady visitor here." " You most assuredly are ! " he told her. She turned away from the window and suddenly threw up her arms. " Oh, I love this place ! " she exclaimed. " I love the sort of evening that we are going to have ! I feel happy to-night. And do you know? I quite like you, Mr. Strangewey ! " She clasped the back of her chair and from behind it looked across at him. She was petite and slender, with a very dainty figure. She wore a black tailor-made costume, a simple, round-black hat with a long quill set at a provoking angle, white-silk stockings, and black, patent shoes. She was unlike any girl John had ever known. Her hair was almost golden, her eyes a dis- tinct blue, yet some trick of the mouth saved her face from any suggestion of insipidity. She was looking straight into his eyes, and her lips were curled most in- vitingly. *' I wish I knew more about certain things," he said. She came round from behind the chair and stood a little nearer to him. "What things?" " You know," he said, " I am afraid there is no doubt about it that I am most horribly in love with another woman. I have come to London because of her. It 94 THE HILLMAN seems to me that everything in life depends upon how she treats me. And yet " " And yet what? " she asked, looking up at him a lit- tle wistfully. " I feel that I want to kiss you," he confessed. " Well, if you don't get it done before the waiter brings in those cocktails, I shall scream ! " He took her lightly in his arms for a moment and kissed her. Then she threw herself down in the easy chair and began to laugh softly. " Oh, why didn't you come before ? " she exclaimed. '* Fancy Louise never telling me about you ! " The waiter entered a few minutes later. He drew up a small round table between them, placed the two wine- glasses upon it, and departed expeditiously. John took one of the glasses over to Sophy. She accepted it and gave him her fingers to kiss. " Dear man," she sighed, " I am getting much too fond of you! Go and sit in your corner, drink your cocktail, and remember Louise. I love your rooms, and I hope you'll ask me to lunch some time." " I'll have a luncheon party to-morrow, if you like that is, if Louise will come." She looked up at him quickly. " Isn't Louise going to Paris ? " she asked. He set down the glass which he had been in the act of raising to his lips. '* Paris ? I didn't hear her say anything about it." ** Perhaps it is my mistake, then," Sophy went on hastily. " I only fancied that I heard her say so." There was a moment's silence. John had opened his lips to ask a question, but quickly closed them again. It was a question, he suddenly decided, which he had bet- ter ask of Louise herself. THE HILLMAN 95 ** If she does go, I shall be very sorry," he said ; " but I do not wish, of course, to upset her plans. We must talk to her about it to-night. I suppose we ought to go now." Sophy walked with him to the door and waited while he took his hat and gloves from the hat-stand. Sud- denly she laid her hand upon his arm. " If Louise goes to Paris," she whispered discon- solately, " I suppose there will be no luncheon-party? " For a single moment he hesitated. She was very al- luring, and the challenge in her eyes was unmistakable. " I think," he said quietly, " that if Miss Maurel goes to Paris, I shall return to Cumberland to-morrow." He opened the door, and Sophy passed out before him. She had dropped her veil. They drove down the Strand toward Knightsbridge. For a time there was a significant silence. Then Sophy raised her veil once more and looked toward John. '* Mr. Strangewey," she began, " you won't mind if I give you just a little word of advice? You are such a big, strong person, but you are rather a child, you know, in some things." " This place does make me feel ignorant," he ad- mitted. " Don't idealize any one here," she begged. " Don't concentrate all your hopes upon one object. Love is wonderful and life is wonderful, but there is only one life, and there are many loves before one reaches the end. People do such silly things sometimes," she wound up, ** just because of a little disappointment. There are many disappointments to be met with here." He took her hand in his. " Little girl," he said, *' you are very good to me, and 96 THE HILLMAN I think you understand. Are you going to let me feel that I have found a friend on my first evening in Lon- don?" " If you want me," she answered simply. " I like you, and I want you to be happy here ; and because I want you to be happy, I want you to come down from the clouds and remember that you have left your hills behind and that we walk on the pavements here." " Thank you," he whispered, " and thank you for what you have not said. If I am to find sorrow here in- stead of joy," he added, a little grimly, "it is better for me to stumble into the knowledge of it by myself." "Your hills have taught you just that much of life, i;hen? " Sophy murmured. The Prince of Seyre handed his hat and stick to the parlor maid and seated himself upon the divan. " I should be very sorry," he said politely, as the maid left the room, " if my coming has hastened the depar- ture of your visitors." " Not in the least," Louise assured him. " They were leaving when you were announced. Sophy and I are taking Mr. Strangewey to a Bohemian restaurant and a music-hall afterward." " Fortunate Mr. Strangewey ! " the prince sighed. " But, forgive me, why not a more dignified form of en- tertainment for his first evening? " " The poor man has no clothes," Louise explained. *' He came to London quite unexpectedly." " No clothes ? " the prince repeated. " It is a long journey to take in such a fashion. A matter of urgent business, perhaps ? " Louise shrugged her shoulders. She had risen to her feet and was busy rearranging some roses in the bowl by her side. " Mr. Strangewey has just come into a large fortune, as you know," he said. " Probably there are many things to be attended to." The prince made no further comment. He drew a tortoise-shell-and-gold cigarette-case from his pocket. " It is permitted that one smokes ? " he inquired. " It is always permitted to you," was the gracious reply. 98 THE HILLMAN *' One of my privileges," he remarked, as he blew out the match ; " in fact, almost my only privilege." She glanced up, but her eyes fell before his. "Is that quite fair?" " I should be grieved to do anything or to say any- thing to you that was not entirely fair." She crushed one of the roses to pieces suddenly in her hands and shook the petals from her long, nervous fingers. " To-day," she said, " this afternoon now you have come to me with something in your mind, something you wish to say, something you are not sure how to say. That is, you see, what Henri Graillot calls my intuition. Even you, who keep all your feelings under a mask, can conceal very little from me." " My present feelings," the prince declared, " I do not wish to conceal. I would like you to know them. But as words are sometimes clumsy, I would like, if it were possible, to let you see into my heart, or, in these days, shall I not say my consciousness? I should feel, then, that without fear of misunderstanding you would know certain things which I would like you to know." She came over and seated herself by his side on the divan. She even laid her hand upon his arm. " Eugene," she expostulated, " we are too old friends to talk always in veiled phrases. There is something you have to say to me. I am listening." " You know what it is," he told her. " You are displeased because I have changed my mind about that little journey of ours?" " I am bitterly disappointed," he admitted. She looked at him curiously and then down at her rose-stained fingers. THE HILLMAN 99 ** That does not sound quite like you," she said. ** And yet I ought to know that sometimes you do feel things, even though you show it so little. I am sorry, Eugene." " Why are you sorry ? " " Because I feel that I cannot take that journey." " You mean that you cannot now, or that you cannot at any time ? " " I do not know," she answered. " You ask me more than I can tell you. Sometimes life seems so stable, a thing one can make a little chart of and hang up on the wall, and put one's finger here and there * To-day I will do this, to-morrow I will feel that ' and the next morning comes and the chart is in the fire. I wish I understood myself a little better, Eugene ! " " Self-understanding is the rarest of all gifts," the prince remarked. " It is left for those who love us to understand us." "And you?" " I believe that I understand you better, far better, than you understand yourself," he declared. " That is why I also believe that I am necessary to you. I can prevent your making mistakes." " Then prevent me," she begged. " Something has happened, and the chart is in the fire to-day." " You have only," he said, " to give your maid her orders, to give me this little hand, and I will draw out a fresh one which shall direct to the place in life which is best for you. It is not too late." She rose from beside him and walked toward the fire- place, as if to touch the bell. He watched her with steady eyes but expressionless face. There was some- thing curious about her walk. The spring had gone from her feet, her shoulders were a little hunched. It loo THE HILLMAN was the walk of a woman who goes toward the things she fears. " Stop ! " he bade her. She turned and faced him, quickly, almost eagerly. There was a look in her face of the prisoner who finds respite. " Leave the bell alone," he directed. " My own plans are changed. I do not wish to leave London this week." Her face was suddenly brilliant, her eyes shone. Something electric seemed to quiver through her frame. She almost danced back to her place by his side. " How foolish ! " she murmured. " Why didn't you say so at once? " " Because," he replied, " they have only been changed during the last few seconds. I wanted to discover some- thing which I have discovered." " To discover something? " " That my time has not yet come." She turned away from him. She was oppressed with a sense almost of fear, a feeling that he was able to read the very thoughts forming in her brain ; to understand, as no one else in the world could understand, the things that lived in her heart. " I must not keep you," he remarked, glancing at the clock. " It was very late for me to call, and you will be "wanting to join your friends." " They are coming here for me," she explained. *' There is really no hurry at all. We are not changing anything. It is to be quite a simple evening. Some- times I wish that you cared about things of that sort, Eugene." He blew through his lips a little cloud of smoke from the cigarette which he had just lit. THE HILLMAN 101 (t I do not fancy," he replied, " that I should be much of a success as a fourth in your little expedition." " But it is silly of you not to visit Bohemia occasion- ally," she declared, ignoring the meaning that lay be- neath his words. " It is refreshing to rub shoulders with people who feel, and who show freely what they feel; to eat their food, drink their wine, even join in their pleasures." The prince shook his head. ** I am not of the people," he said, " and I have no sympathy with them. I detest the bourgeoisie of every country in the world my own more particularly." " If you only knew how strangely that sounds ! " she murmured. "Does it?" he answered. "You should read my family history, read of the men and women of my race who were butchered at the hands of that drunken, lust- ful mob whom lying historians have glorified. I am one of those who do not forget injuries. My estates are ad- ministered more severely than any others in France. No penny of my money has ever been spent in charity. I neither forget nor forgive." She laughed a little nervously. " What an unsympathetic person you can be, Eugene ! " " And for that very reason," he replied, " I can be sympathetic. Because I hate some people, I have the power of loving others. Because it pleases me to deal severely with my enemies, it gives me joy to deal gen- erously with my friends. That is my conception of life. May I wish you a pleasant evening? " " You are going now ? " she asked, a little sur- prised. He smiled faintly as he raised her fingers to his lips. 102 THE HILLMAN She had made a little movement toward him, but he took no advantage of it. " I am going now." " When shall I see you again? " she inquired, as she came back from ringing the bell. " A telephone-message from your maid, a line written with your own fingers," he said, " will bring me to you within a few minutes. If I hear nothing, I may come uninvited, but it will be when the fancy takes me. Once more, Louise, a pleasant evening ! " He passed out of the door, which the parlor maid was holding open for him. Crossing to the window, Louise watched him leave the house and enter his wait- ing automobile. He gave no sign of haste or disap- pointment. He lit another cigarette deliberately upon the pavement and gave his orders to the chauffeur with some care. As the car drove off without his having once glanced up at the window, she shivered a little. There was a silence which, it seemed to her, could be more minatory even than accusation. XI The little room was gaudily decorated and redolent with the lingering odors of many dinners. Yet Louise, who had dined on the preceding evening at the Ritz and been bored, whose taste in food and environment was al- most hypercritical, was perfectly happy. She found the cuisine and the Chianti excellent. " We are outstaying every one else," she declared ; ** and I don't even mind their awful legacy of tobacco- smoke. Do you see that the waiter has brought you the bill, Mr. Strangewey? Prepare for a shock. It is for- tunate that you are a millionaire ! " John laughed as he paid the bill and ludicrously over- tipped the waiter. " London must be a paradise to the poor man ! " he exclaimed. " I have never dined better." " Don't overdo it," Sophy begged. " I can only judge by results," John insisted. *' I have dined, and I am happy ; therefore, the dinner must have been good." " You are so convincing ! " Sophy murmured. " There is such a finality about your statements that I would not venture to dispute them. But remember that your future entertainment is in the hands of two women, one of whom is a deserving but struggling young artist without the means of gratifying her expensive tastes. There are heaps of places we are going to take you to which even Louise pretends she cannot afford. It is so fortunate, Mr. Strangewey, that you are rich ! " 104 THE HILLMAN **I believe you would be just as nice to me if I weren't," John ventured. " I am so susceptible ! " Sophy sighed, looking into her empty coffee-cup ; " much more susceptible than Louise." " I won't have Mr. Strangewey spoiled," Louise put in. " And don't build too much upon his being content with us as entertainers-in-chief. Remember the half- penny papers. In a few days he will be interviewed * Millionaire Farmer Come to London to Spend His Fortune.' He will become famous. He will buy a green morocco engagement-book, and perhaps employ a secretary. We shall probably have to ask ourselves to luncheon three weeks ahead." " I feel these things coming," John declared. " My children," said Louise, rising, " we must re- member that we are going to the Palace. It is quite time we started." They made their way down two flights of narrow stairs into the street. The commissionnaire raised his whistle to his lips, but Louise stopped him. " We will walk," she suggested. *' This way, Mr. Strangewey ! " They passed down the long, narrow street, with its dingy foreign cafes and shops scarcely one of which seemed to be English. The people who thronged the pavements were of a new race to John, swarthy, a little furtive, a class of foreigner seldom seen except in alien lands. Men and women in all stages of dishabille were leaning out of the windows or standing on the door- steps. The girls whom they met occasionally young women of all ages, walking arm in arm, with shawls on their heads in place of hats laughed openly in John's face. THE HILLMAN 105 " Conquests everywhere he goes ! " Louise sighed. " We shall never keep him, Sophy ! " " We have him for this evening, at any rate," Sophy replied contentedly ; " and he hasn't spent all his for- tune yet. I am not at all sure that I shall not hint at supper when we come out of the Palace." " No hint will be necessary," John promised. ** I feel the gnawings of hunger already." " A millionaire's first night in London ! " Sophy ex- claimed. " I think I shall write it up for the Daily Mail." "A pity he fell into bad hands so quickly," Louise laughed. " Here we are ! Stalls, please, Mr. Million- aire. I wouldn't be seen to-night in the seats of the mighty." John risked a reproof, however, and was fortunate enough to find a disengaged box. " The tone of the evening," Louise grumbled, as she settled herself down comfortably, " is lost. This is the most expensive box in the place." " You could restore it by eating an orange," Sophy suggested. " Or even chocolates," John ventured, sweeping most of the contents of an attendant's tray onto the ledge of the box. " After this," Sophy declared, falling upon them, ^* supper will be a farce." " Make you thirsty," John reminded her. They devoted their attention to the show, Louise and Sophy at first with only a moderate amount of interest, John with the real enthusiasm of one to whom every- thing is new. His laughter was so hearty, his apprecia- tion so sincere, that his companions found it infectious, and began to applaud everything. 106 THE HILLMAN " What children we are ! " Louise exclaimed. " Fancy shrieking with laughter at a ventriloquist whom I have seen at every music-hall I have been to during the last five or six years ! " " He was wonderfully clever, all the same," John in- sisted. " The bioscope," Louise decided firmly, " I refuse to have anything to do with. You have had all the enter- tainment you are going to have this evening, Mr. Coun- tryman." " Now for supper, then," he proposed. Sophy sighed as she collected the half-empty choco- late-boxes. " What a pity I've eaten so many ! They'd have saved me a luncheon to-morrow." " Greedy child," Louise laughed, " sighing for want of an appetite ! I think we'll insist upon a taxi this time. I don't like overcrowded streets. Where shall we take him to, Sophy? You know the supper places better than I do." " Luigi's," Sophy declared firmly. " The only place im London." They drove toward the Strand. John looked around him with interest as they entered the restaurant. " I've been here before," he said, as they passed through the doors. " Explain yourself at once," Louise insisted. " It was eight years ago, when I was at Oxford," he told them. " We were here on the boat-race night. I remember," he added reminiscently, " that some of us were turned out. Then we went on to " " Stop ! " Louise interrupted sternly. " I am horri- fied! The one thing I did not suspect you of, Mr. Strangewey, was a past." THE HILLMAN 107 " Well, it isn't a very lurid one," he assured them. " That was very nearly the only evening about town I have ever been guilty of." Luigi, who had come forward to welcome Sophy, es- corted them to one of the best tables. " You must be very nice to this gentleman, Luigi," she said. " He is a very great friend of mine, just ar- rived in London. He has come up on purpose to see me, and we shall probably decide to make this our favor- ite restaurant." " I shall be vairy happy," Luigi declared, with a bow. " I am beginning to regret, Mr. Strangewey, that I ever introduced you to Sophy," Louise remarked, as she sank back into her chair. " You won't believe that all my friends are as frivolous as this, will you ? " " They aren't," Sophy proclaimed confidently. " I am the one person who succeeds in keeping Louise with her feet upon the earth. She has never had supper here before. Dry biscuits, hot milk, and a volume of poems are her relaxation after the theater. She takes herself too seriously." " I wonder if I do ! " Louise murmured, as she helped herself to caviar. She was suddenly pensive. Her eyes seemed to be looking out of the restaurant. Sophy was exchanging amenities with a little party of friends at the next table. " One must sometimes be serious," John remarked, " or life would have no poise at all." " I have a friend who scolds me," she confided. '* Sometimes he almost loses patience with me. He de- clares that my attitude toward life is too analytical. When happiness comes my way, I shrink back. I keep my emotions in the background, while my brain works, dissecting, wondering, speculating. Perhaps what he io8 THE HILLMAN says is true. I believe that if one gets into the habit of analyzing too much, one loses all elasticity of emo- tion, the capacity to recognize and embrace the great things when they come." " 1 think you have been right," John declared ear- nestly. " If the great things come as they should come, they are overwhelming, they will carry you off your feet. You will forget to speculate and to analyze. Therefore, I think you have been wise and right to wait. You have run no risk of having to put up with the les- ser things.'* She leaned toward him across the rose-shaded table. For those few seconds they seemed to have been brought into a wonderfully intimate communion of thought. A wave of her hair almost touched his forehead. His hand boldly rested upon her fingers. " You talk," she whispered, " as if we were back upon your hilltops once more ! " He turned his head toward the little orchestra, which was playing a low and tremulous waltz tune. " I want to believe," he said, " that you can listen to the music here and yet live upon the hilltops." " You believe that it is possible ? " " I do indeed," he assured her. " Although my heart was almost sick with loneliness, I do not think that I should be here if I did not believe it. I have not come for anything else, for any lesser things, but to find " For once his courage failed him. For once, too, he failed to understand her expression. She had drawn back a little, her lips were quivering. Sophy broke suddenly in upon that moment of suspended speech. " I knew how it would be ! " she exclaimed. " I leave you both alone for less than a minute, and there you sit, as grave as two owls. I ask you, now, is this the place THE HILLMAN 109 to wander off into the clouds? When two people sit looking at each other as you were doing a minute ago, here in Luigi's, at midnight, with champagne in their glasses, and a supper, ordered regardless of expense, on the table before them, they are either without the least sense of the fitness of things, or else " " Or else what? " Louise asked. " Or else they are head over heels in love with each other!" Sophy concluded. " Perhaps the child is right," Louise assented toler- antly, taking a peach from the basket by her side. " Evidently it is our duty to abandon ourselves to the frivolity of the moment. What shall we do to bring ourselves into accord with it? Everybody seems to be behaving most disgracefully. Do you think it would contribute to the gaiety of the evening if I were to join in the chorus of 'You Made Me Love You,' and Mr. Strangewey were to imitate the young gentleman at the next table and throw a roll, say, at that portly old gentleman with the highly polished shirt-front ? " " There is no need to go to extremes," Sophy pro- tested. " Besides, we should get into trouble. The portly old gentleman happens to be one of the di- rectors." " Then we will just talk nonsense," Louise suggested. " I am not very good at it," John sighed ; " and there Is so much I want to say that isn't nonsense." " You ought to be thankful all your life that you have met me and that I am disposed to take an interest in you," Sophy remarked, as she moved her chair a little nearer to John's. "I am quite sure that in a very short time you would have become well, almost a prig. Providence has selected me to work out your salvation.'* " Providence has been very kind, then," John told her.. no THE HILLMAN " I hope you mean it," she returned. " You ought to, if you only understood the importance of light-heart- edness." The lights were lowered a few minutes later, and John paid the bill. " We've enjoyed our supper," Louise whispered, as they passed down the room. *' The whole evening has been delightful ! " " May I drive you home alone ? " he asked bluntly. "I am afraid we can't desert Sophy," she replied, avoiding his eyes. " She nearly always goes home with me. You see, although she seems quite a frivolous lit- tle person, she is really very useful to me keeps my accounts, and all that sort of thing." "And does her best," Sophy joined in, " to protect you against your ruinously extravagant habits ! " Louise laughed. They were standing in the little hall, and the commissionnaire was blowing his whistle for a taxi. " I won't be scolded to-night," she declared. " Come, you shall both of you drive home with me, and then Mr. Strangewey can drop you at your rooms on his way back." Sophy made a little grimace and glanced up at John anxiously. He was looking very big and very grim. " Shall you mind that ? " she asked. A slight plaintiveness in her tone dispelled his first disappointment. After all, it was Louise's decision. " I will try to bear it cheerfully," he promised, smil- ing, as he handed them into the cab. XII As they drove from Luigi's to Knightsbridge, Louise leaned back in her corner. Although her eyes were only half closed, there was an air of aloofness about her, an obvious lack of desire for conversation, which the others found themselves instinctively respecting. Even Sophy's light-hearted chatter seemed to have deserted her, somewhat to John's relief. He sat back in his place, his eyes fixed upon Louise. He was so anxious to understand her in all her moods and vagaries. He was forced to admit to himself that she had deliberately chosen not to take any portion of that drive home alone with him. And yet, as he looked back through the evening, he told himself that he was satisfied. He declined to feel even a shadow of discour- agement. After a time he withdrew his eyes from her face and looked out upon the human panorama through which they were passing. They were in the very vortex of London's midnight traffic. The night was warm for the time of year, and about Leicester Square and beyond the pavements were crowded with pedestrians, the women lightly and gaily clad, flitting, notwithstanding some sinister note about their movements, like butterflies or bright-hued moths along the pavements and across the streets. The pro- cession of taxicabs and automobiles, each with its human 112 THE HILLMAN freight of men and women in evening dress on their way home after an evening's pleasure, seemed endless. Presently Sophy began to talk, and Louise, too, housed herself. " I am only just beginning to realize," the latter said, *' that you are actually in London." " When I leave you," he replied, " I, too, shall find it hard to believe that we have actually met again and talked. There seems to be so much that I have to say," he added, looking at her closely, " and I have said noth- ing." " There is plenty of time," she told him, and once more the signs of that slight nervousness were apparent in her manner. " There are weeks and months ahead of us." " When shall I see you again ? " he asked. "Whenever you like. There are no rehearsals for a day or two. Ring me up on the telephone you will find my number in the book or come and lunch with me to-morrow, if you like." "Thank you," he answered; "that is just what I should like. At what time?" " Half past one. I will not ask either of you to come in now. You can come down to-morrow morning and get the books, Sophy. I think I am tired tired," she added, with a curious little note of self-pity in her tone. " I am very glad to have seen you again, Mr. Strange- wey," she said, lifting her eyes to his. " Good night ! " He helped her out, rang the bell, and watched her vanish through the swiftly opened door. Then he stepped back into the taxicab. Sophy retreated into the corner to make room for him. " You are going to take me home, are you not? " she asked. THE HILLMAN 113 " Of course," he replied, his eyes still fixed with a shade of regret upon the closed door of Louise's little house. " No. 10 Southampton Street," he told the driver. They turned round and spun once more into the net- work of moving vehicles and streaming pedestrians. John was silent, and his companion, for a little while, humored him. Soon, however, she touched him on the arm. " This is still your first night in London," she re- minded him, " and there is to-morrow. You are going to lunch with her to-morrow. Won't you talk to me, please ? " He shut the door upon a crowd of disturbing thoughts and fantastic imaginings, and smiled back at her. Her fingers remained upon his arm. A queer gravity had come into her dainty little face. " Are you really in love with Louise ? " she inquired, with something of his own directness. He answered her with perfect seriousness. " I believe so," he admitted, " but I should not like to say that I am absolutely certain. I have come here to find out." Sophy suddenly rocked with laughter. " You are the dearest, queerest madman I have ever met ! " she exclaimed, holding tightly to his arm. " You sit there with a face as long as a fiddle, wondering whether you are in love with a girl or not ! Well, I am not going to ask you anything more. Tell me, are you tired?" " Not a bit," he declared. " I never had such a rip- ping evening in my life." She held his arm a little tighter. She was the old Sophy again, full of life and gaiety. ii4 THE HILLMAN " Let's go to the Aldwych," she suggested, " and see the dancing. We can just have something to drink. We needn't have any more supper." " Rather ! " he assented readily. " But where is it, and what is it ? " " Just a supper club," she told him. " Tell the man No. 19 Kean Street. What fun ! I haven't been there for weeks." " What about my clothes ? " he asked. " You'll be all right," she assured him. " You're quite a nice-looking person, and the manager is a friend of mine." The cab stopped a few minutes later outside what seemed to be a private house except for the presence of a commissionnaire upon the pavement. The door was opened at once, and John was relieved of his hat and stick by a cloak-room attendant. Sophy wrote his name in a book, and they were ushered by the manager, who had come forward to greet them, into a long room, brilliantly lit, and filled, except in the center, with sup- per-tables. They selected one near the wall and close to the open space in which, at the present moment, a man and a woman were dancing. The floor was of hardwood, and there was a little raised platform for the orchestra. John looked around him wonderingly. The popping of champagne corks was almost incessant. A slightly voluptuous atmosphere of cigarette-smoke, mingled with the perfumes shaken from the clothes and hair of the women, several more of whom were now danc- ing, hung about the place. A girl in fancy dress was passing a great basket of flowers from table to table. Sophy sat with her head resting upon her hands and THE HILLMAN 115 her face very close to her companion's, keeping time with her feet to the music. "Isn't this rather nice?" she whispered. "Do you like being here with me, Mr. John Strangewey? " " Of course I do," he answered heartily. " Is this a restaurant? " She shook her head. " No, it's a club. We can sit here all night, if you like." "Can I join? "he asked. She laughed as she bent for a form and made him fill it in. " Tell me," he begged, as he looked around him, " who are these girls? They look so pretty and well dressed, and yet so amazingly young to be out at this time of night." " Mostly actresses," she replied, " and musical-com- edy girls. I was in musical comedy myself before Lou- ise rescued me." "Did you like it?" " I liked it all right," she admitted, " but I left it be- cause I wasn't doing any good. I can dance pretty well, but I have no voice, so there didn't seem to be any chance of my getting out of the chorus ; and one can't even pretend to live on the salary they pay you, unless one has a part." " But these girls who are here to-night ? " " They are with their friends, of course," she told him. " I suppose, if it hadn't been for Louise, I should have been here, too with a friend." " I should like to see you dance," he remarked, in a hurry to change the conversation. " I'll dance to you some day in your rooms, if you like," she promised. " Or would you like me to dance n6 THE HILLMAN here? There is a man opposite who wants me to. Would you rather I didn't? I want to do just which would please you most." " Dance, by all means," he insisted. " I should like to watch you." She nodded, and a minute or two later she had joined the small crowd in the center of the room, clasped in the arms of a very immaculate young man who had risen and bowed to her from a table opposite. John leaned back in his place and watched her admiringly. Her feet scarcely touched the ground. She never once glanced at or spoke to her partner, but every time she passed the corner where John was sitting, she looked at him and smiled. He, for his part, watched her no longer with pleas- ant interest, but with almost fascinated eyes. The spirit of the place was creeping into his blood. His long years of seclusion seemed like a spell of time lying curiously far away, a crude period, mislived in an at- mosphere which, notwithstanding its austere sweetness, took no account of the human cry. He refilled his glass with champagne and deliberately drank its contents. It was splendid to feel so young and strong, to feel the wine in his veins, his pulse and his heart moving to this new measure ! His eyes grew brighter, and he smiled back at Sophy. She suddenly released her hold upon her partner and stretched out her arms to him. Her body swayed back- ward a little. She waved her hands with a gesture in- finitely graceful, subtly alluring. Her lips were parted with a smile almost of triumph as she once more rested her hand upon her partner's shoulder. " Who is your escort this evening? " the latter asked feer, speaking almost for the first time. THE HILLMAN 117 " You would not know him," she replied. " He is a Mr. John Strangewey, and he comes from Cumber- land." " Just happens that I do know him," the young man remarked. " Thought I'd seen his face somewhere. Used to be up at the varsity with him. We once played rackets together. Hasn't he come into a pile just lately?" " An uncle in Australia left him a fortune." " I'll speak to him presently," the young man de- cided. " Always make a point of being civil to any- body with lots of oof!" " I expect he'll be glad to meet you again," Sophy re- marked. " He doesn't know a soul in town." The dance was finished. They returned together to where John was sitting, and the young man held out a weary hand. " Amerton, you know, of Magdalen," he said. " You're Strangewey, aren't you ? " " Lord Amerton, of course ! " John exclaimed. '* I thought your face was familiar. Why, we played in the rackets doubles together ! " " And won 'em, thanks to you," Amerton replied. " Are you up for long? " " I am not quite sure," John told him. " I only ar- rived last night." " Look me up some time, if you've nothing better to do," the young man suggested. " Where are you hang- ing out ? " " The Milan." " I am at the Albany. So-long ! Must get back to my little lady." He bowed to Sophy and departed. She sank a little breathlessly into her chair and laid her hand on John's n8 THE HILLMAN arm. Her cheeks were flushed, her bosom was rising and falling quickly. "J[ am out of breath," she said, her head thrown back, perilously near to John's shoulder. " Lord Am- erton dances so well. Give me some champagne ! " " And you you dance divinely," he told her, as he filled her glass. " If we were alone," she whispered, " I should want you to kiss me ! " The stem of the wine-glass in John's fingers snapped suddenly, and the wine trickled down to the floor. A passing waiter hurried up with a napkin, and a fresh glass was brought. The affair was scarcely noticed, but John remained disturbed and a little pale. " Have you cut your hand? " Sophy asked anx- iously. " Not at all," he assured her. " How hot it is here ! Do you mind if we go? " "Go?" she exclaimed disconsolately. "I thought you were enjoying yourself so much ! " " So I am," he answered, " but I don't quite under- stand " He paused. " Understand what ? " she demanded. " Myself, if you must know." She set down the glass which she had been in the act of raising to her lips. " How queer you are ! " she murmured. " Listen. You haven't got a wife or anything up in Cumberland, have you ? " " You know I haven't," he answered. " You're not engaged to be married, you have no ties, you came up here perfectly free, you haven't even said anything yet to Louise ? " THE HILLMAN ug " Of course not." " Well, then " she began. Her words were so softly spoken that they seemed to melt away. She leaned forward to look in his face. " Sophy," he begged, with sudden and almost pas- sionate earnestness, " be kind to me, please ! I am just a simple, stupid countryman, who feels as if he had lost his way. I have lived a solitary sort of life an un- natural one, you would say * and I've been brought up with some old-fashioned ideas. I know they are old- fashioned, but I can't throw them overboard all at once. I have kept away from this sort of thing. I didn't think it would ever attract me I suppose because I didn't believe it could be made so attractive. I have suddenly found out that it does ! " " What are you going to do ? " she whispered. " There is only one thing for me to do," he answered. w Until I know what I have come to London to learn, I shall fight against it." " You mean about Louise ? " " I mean about Louise," he said gravely. Sophy came still closer to him. Her voice was as soft as the lightest, finest note of music, trembling a lit- tle with that one thread of passion. She seemed so dainty, so quiet and sweet, that for a moment he found himself able to imagine that it was all a dream; that hers was just one of those fairy, disquieting voices that floated about on the summer breeze and rippled along the valleys and hillsides of his Cumberland home. Then, swift as the fancy itself, came the warm touch of her hand upon his, the lure of her voice once more, with its trembling cadence. "Why are you so foolish?" she murmured. "Lou- ise is very wonderful in her place, but she is not what 120 THE HILLMAN you want in life. Has it never occurred to you that you may be too late ? " " What do you mean ? " he demanded. " I believe what the world believes, what some day I think she will admit to herself that she cares for the Prince of Seyre." " Has she ever told you so ? " "Louise never speaks of these things to any living soul. I am only telling you what I think. I am try- ing to save you pain trying for my own sake as well as yours." He paid his bill and stooped to help her with her cloak. Her heart sank, her lips quivered a little. It seemed to her that he had passed to a great distance. " Very soon," John said, " I shall ask Louise to tell me the truth. I think that I shall ask her, if I can, to- morrow ! " XIII John's first caller at the Milan was, in a way, a sur- prise to him. He was sitting smoking an after-break- fast pipe on the following morning, and gazing at the telephone directory, when his bell rang. He opened the door to find the Prince of Seyre standing outside. " I pay you a very early visit, I fear," the latter be- gan. " Not at all," John replied, taking the pipe from his mouth and throwing open the door. " It is very good of you to come and see me." The prince followed John into the little sitting room. He was dressed, as usual, with scrupulous care. His white linen gaiters were immaculate, his trousers were perfectly creased, the hang of his coat had engaged the care of an artist. His tie was of a deep shade of violet, fastened with a wonderful pearl, and his fingers were perhaps a trifle overmanicured. He wore a bunch of Parma violets in his buttonhole, and he carried with him a very faint but unusual perfume, which seemed to John like the odor of delicate green tea. It was just these details, and the slowness of his speech, which alone ac- centuated his foreign origin. " It occurred to me," he said, as he seated himself in an easy chair, " that if you are really intending to make this experiment in town life of which Miss Maurel spoke, I might be of some assistance to you. There are 122 THE HILLMAN certain matters, quite unimportant in themselves, con* cerning which a little advice in the beginning may save you trouble." " Very good of you, I am sure," John repeated. " To tell you the truth, I was just looking through the telephone directory to see if I could come across the name of a tailor I used to have some things from." " If it pleases you to place yourself in my hands," the prince suggested, " I will introduce you to my own tradespeople. I have made the selection with some care." " That will suit me admirably," John declared. " If you will just give me the addresses I couldn't think of taking up your time." " I have, fortunately, an idle morning," the prince said, " and it is entirely at your disposal. At half past one I believe we are both lunching with Miss Maurel." John was conscious of a momentary sense of annoy- ance. His tete-a-tete with Louise seemed farther off than ever. At the prince's suggestion, however, he fetched his hat and gloves and entered the former's au- tomobile, which was waiting below. " Miss Maurel ! " the prince remarked, as they glided off westward, " is, I believe, inviting a few friends to meet you. If you would feel more comfortable in town clothes, I think the tailor to whom I am taking you will be able to arrange that. He makes special prepara- tions for such emergencies." " I will do what you think best," John agreed. They spent the morning in the neighborhood of Bond Street, and John laid the foundations of a wardrobe more extensive than any he had ever dreamed of pos- sessing. At half past one they were shown into Lou- ise's little dressing room. There were three or four THE HILLMAN 123 men already present, standing around their hostess and sipping some faint yellow cordial from long Venetian glasses. Louise came forward to meet them, and made a little grimace as she remarked the change in John's appear- ance. " Honestly, I don't know you, and I don't believe I like you at all ! " she exclaimed. " How dare you trans- form yourself into a tailor's dummy in this fashion? " " It was entirely out of respect to you," John said. " In fact," the prince added, " we considered that we had achieved rather a success." " I suppose I must look upon your effort as a com- pliment," Louise sighed, " but it seems queer to lose even so much of you. Shall you take up our manners and our habits, Mr. Strangewey, as easily as you wear our clothes ? " " That I cannot promise," he replied. *' The brain should adapt itself at least as readily as the body," the prince remarked. M. Graillot, who was one of the three men present, turned around. " Who is talking platitudes ? " he (demanded. " I write plays, and that is my monopoly. Ah, it is the prince, I see! And our young friend who interrupted us at rehearsal yesterday." " And whom I am anxious to have you meet again," Louise intervened. " You remember his name, perhaps Mr. John Strangewey." Graillot held out his left hand to the prince and his right to John. '* Mr. Strangewey," he said, " I congratulate you ! Any person who has the good fortune to interest Miss Maurel is to be congratulated. .Yet must I look at you i2 4 THE HILLMAN and feel myself puzzled. You are not an artist no ? You do not paint or write? " John shook his head. " Mr. Strangewey's claim to distinction is that he is just an ordinary man," Louise observed. " Such a re- lief, you know, after all you clever people! And that reminds me, Miles," she added, turning to the actor, " I asked you here, too, especially to meet Mr. Strangewey again. Mr. Faraday is one of the most dangerous guides in London a young man could have. He knows everybody and everything unknowable and yet worth knowing. I present him to you as a hero. He is going to make love to me three hours a night for very many nights, we hope." John shook hands with everybody and sipped the con- tents of the glass which had been handed to him. Then a butler opened the door and announced luncheon* Louise offered her hand to the prince, who stepped back. " It shall be the privilege of the stranger within our gates," he decided. Louise turned to John with a little smile. " Let me show you, then, the way to my dining room. I ought to apologize for not asking some women to meet you. I tried two on the telephone, but they were en- " I will restore the balance," the prince promised, turning from the contemplation of one of the prints hanging in the hall. " I am giving a supper party to- night for Mr. Strangewey, and I will promise him a pre- ponderance of your charming sex." " Am I invited ? " Louise inquired. The prince shook his head. " Alas, no ! " They passed into a small dining room, and here again THE HILLMAN 125 John noticed that an absolute simplicity was para- mount. The carpet was of some dark, almost indis- tinguishable color. The walls were white, hung with three or four French etchings in black reed frames. At one end a curved window looked out upon a vista of green trees and shrubs, and the recess was completely filled in with what appeared to be almost a grotto of flowers. The round table, covered with an exquisitely fine cloth, was very simply laid. There was a little glass of the finest quality, and a very little silver. For flowers there was only one bowl, a brilliant patch of some scarlet exotic, in the center. " A supper party to which I am not invited," said Louise, as she took her place at the table and motioned John to a seat by her side, " fills me with curiosity. Who are to be your guests, prince? " " Calavera and her sprites," the prince announced. Louise paused for a moment in the act of helping her- self to hors d'oeuvres. She glanced toward the prince. He was busy studying the- menu through his eye- glass. " By her sprites you mean " " The young ladies of her wonderful ballet," the prince replied. " I am also dipping into musical com- edy for a few of my guests. Calavera, however, is to be the piece de resistance" The prince dropped his eye-glass and glanced toward his hostess. For a moment their eyes met. Louise's lips were faintly curled. It was almost as if a chal- lenge had passed between them. " Mr. Strangewey," she said, turning to John, " let me warn you. You are to meet to-night a woman for whom kings are reported to sigh in vain, at whose feet the jeunesse doree of the world pours out its riches. 126 THE HILLMAN Is it kind of the prince, I wonder, to try and seal your fate so soon ? " John laughed easily. He met the challenge in her eyes and answered it. " If you are talking of the great Calavera," he said, *' she will be far too wonderful a lady to take any notice of a yokel like myself. And besides " " Besides ? " the prince intervened. " I have only seen her photographs and read of her," 'John remarked, " but I don't think she would attract me very much." They all laughed. Graillot leaned across the table. " My young friend," he exclaimed, " pray to your presiding genius, the presiding genius that won for you the friendship of our hostess, that Calavera never hears that speech, or within a week you will be at her chariot- wheels ! I have seen many women and loved many, but there are none like Calavera. In her way she is the greatest artist that ever breathed. As for her beauty, wait till you see her ! She has a body which makes me close my eyes and dream of Greece; eyes such as one seldom sees save in a few parts of southern Spain ; and as for her smile well, if I go on I shall begin to tell stories of her victims and neglect my lunch." The conversation drifted away to reminiscences of other great dancers. Louise, under its cover, devoted her attention to her guest, " First of all," she asked, " tell me how you like my little friend?" " I think she is charming," John answered without hesitation. " We went to a supper club last night and stayed there till about half past three." " A supper club ? " John nodded. THE HILLMAN 1233 ** I have forgotten the name of the place, but they made me a member. It was great fun. We had some; more champagne, and Sophy danced. I found a young; man there whom I used to know." " Really," said Louise, " I am not sure that I ap- prove of this! A supper club with Sophy until half past three in the morning ! ** He looked at her quickly. "You don't mind?" " My dear man, why should I mind ? " she returned. " What concern is it of mine if you and Sophy care to amuse each other? It is exactly what I hoped for." " That's all right, then," John declared, with a sigh of relief. " Do you know," he went on, lowering his voice, " that I am just a little disappointed about to- day?" "Disappointed? After I have taken the trouble to give a luncheon party for you ? " " I should have thought it a greater compliment, and liked it better, if you had asked me to lunch with you alone," he said. She shook her head. " It would have been a wasted opportunity. You have come up to London with a purpose. You have an experiment to make, an experiment in living. All these men can help you." " The greater part of my experiment," he pointed out, " needs the help of only one person, and that per- son is you." She moved a little uneasily in her chair. It might have been his fancy, but he imagined that she glanced under her eyelids toward the Prince of Seyre. The prince, however, had turned almost ostentatiously away 128 THE HILLMAN from her. He was leaning across the table, talking to Faraday. " You have not lost your gift of plain speech," she observed. " I hope I never shall," he declared. " It seems to me to be the simplest and the best plan, after all, to say what you feel and to ask for what you want." " So delightful in Cumberland and Utopia," she sighed ; " so impracticable here ! " " Then since we can't find Utopia, come back to Cum- berland," he suggested. A reminiscent smile played for a moment about her lips. " I wonder," she murmured, " whether I shall ever again see that dear, wonderful old house of yours, and the mist on the hills, and the stars shining here and there through it, and the moon coming up in the dis- tance!" " All these things you will see again," he assured her confidently. " It is because I want you to see them again that I am here." " Just now, at this minute, I feel a longing for them," she whispered, looking across the table, out of the win- dow, to the softly waving trees. At the close of the luncheon, a servant handed around coffee and liqueurs. The prince turned to Louise. " You must not keep our young friend too late," he said. " He has appointments with his tailor and other myrmidons who have undertaken to adorn his per- son." " Alas," replied Louise, rising, " I, too, have to go early to my dressmaker's. Do the honors for me, prince, will you? and I will make my adieus now." They all rose. She nodded to Graillot and Faraday. THE HILLMAN 129 The prince moved to stand by the door. For a moment she and John were detached from the others. " I want to see you alone," he said under his breath. "When can I?" She hesitated. " I am so busy ! " she murmured. " Next week there are rehearsals nearly every minute of the day." " To-morrow," John said insistently. " You have no rehearsals then. I must see you. I must talk to you without this crowd." It was his moment. Her half-formed resolutions fell away before the compelling ring in his voice and the earnest pleading in his eyes. " I will be in," she promised, " to-morrow at six o'clock." XIV After the departure of her guests, Louise seemed to forget the pressing appointment with her dressmaker. She stood before the window of her drawing-room, look- ing down into the street. She saw Faraday hail a taxi- cab and drive off by himself. She watched the prince courteously motion John to precede him into his wait- ing automobile. She saw the two men seat themselves side by side, and the footman close the door and take his place beside the chauffeur. She watched until the car took its place in the stream of traffic and disap- peared. The sense of uneasiness which had brought her to the window was unaccountable, but it seemed in some way deepened by their departure together. Then a voice from just behind suddenly startled her. " Lest your reverie, dear lady, should end in spoken words not meant for my ears, I, who often give myself up to reveries, hasten to acquaint you with the fact of my presence." She turned quickly around. It was Graillot who had returned noiselessly into the room. " You ? " she exclaimed. " Why, I thought you were the first to leave." " I returned," Graillot explained. " An impulse brought me back. A thought came into my mind. I wanted to share it with you as a proof of the sentiment which I feel exists between us. It is my firm belief that THE HILLMAN 131 the same thought, in a different guise, was traveling through your mind, as you watched the departure of your guests." She motioned him to a place upon the couch, close to where she had already seated herself. " Come," she invited, " prove to me that you are a thought-reader ! " He sank back in his corner. His hands, with their short, stubby fingers, were clasped in front of him. His eyes, wide open and alert, seemed fixed upon her with the ingenuous inquisitiveness of a child. " To begin, then, I find our friend, the Prince of Seyre, a most interesting, I might almost say a most fascinating, study." Louise did not reply. After a moment's pause he continued : " Let me tell you something which may or may not be unknown to you. A matter of eighty years ago, there was first kindled in the country places of France that fire which ultimately blazed over the whole land, devas- tating, murderous, anarchic, yet purifying. The fam- ily seat of the house of Seyre was near Orleans. In that region were many oppressors of the poor who, when they heard the mutterings of the storm, shivered for their safety. Upon not one of them did that furi- ous mob of men and women pause to waste a single mo- ment of their time. Without even a spoken word save one simultaneous, unanimous yell, they grouped to- gether from all quarters from every hamlet, from every homestead, men and women and even children and moved in one solid body upon the Chateau de Seyre. The old prince would have been burned alive but for a servant who threw him a pistol, with which he blew out his brains, spitting at the mob. One of the sons was 132 THE HILLMAN caught and torn almost to pieces. Only the father of our friend, the present Prince of Seyre, escaped." " Why do you tell me all this ? " Louise asked, shiver- ing. " It is such a chapter of horrors ! " " It illustrates a point," Graillot replied. " Among the whole aristocracy of France there was no family so loathed and detested as the seigneurs of Seyre. Those at the chateau, and others who were arrested in Paris, met their death with singular contempt and calm. Eu- gene of Seyre, whose character in my small way I have studied, is of the same breed." Louise took up a fan which lay on the table by her side, and waved it carelessly in front of her face. " One does so love," she murmured, " to hear one's friends discussed in this friendly spirit ! " " It is because Eugene of Seyre is a friend of yours that I am talking to you in this fashion," Graillot con- tinued. " You have also another friend this young man from Cumberland." "Well?" " In him," Gaillot went on, " one perceives all the primitive qualities which go to the making of splendid manhood. Physically he is almost perfect, for which alone we owe him a debt of gratitude. He has, if I judge him rightly, all the qualities possessed by men who have been brought up free from the taint of cities, from the smear of our spurious over-civilization. He is chivalrous and unsuspicious. He is also, unfortu- nately for him, the enemy of the prince." Louise laid down her fan. She no longer tried to conceal her agitation. " Why are you so melodramatic ? " she demanded. " They have scarcely spoken. This is, I think, their third meeting." THE HILLMAN 133 *' Wlien two friends," Graillot declared, *' desire the same woman, then all of friendship that there may have been between them is buried. When two others, who are so far from being friends that they possess opposite qualities, opposite characters, opposite characteristics, also desire the same woman " " Don't ! " Louise interrupted, with a sudden little scream. " Don't ! You are talking wildly. You must not say such things ! " Graillot leaned forward. He shook his head very slowly ; his heavy hand rested upon her shoulder. " Ah, no, dear lady," he insisted, " I am not talking wildly. I am Graillot, who for thirty years have writ- ten dramas on one subject and one subject only men and women. It has been given to me to study many varying types of the human race, to watch the outcome of many strange situations. I have watched the prince draw you nearer and nearer to him. What there is or may be between you I do not know. It is not for me to know. But if not now, some day Eugene of Seyre means you to be his, and he is not a person to be lightly resisted. Now from the skies there looms up this sud-