;?>' ^-J' kr "t a*^'"' •A 'MMMSih f* < . j-1. mmm^i The Honour of the Chntons BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE HOUSE OP MERRILEES RICHARD BALDOCK EXTON MANOR THE SQUIRE S DAUGHTER THE ELDEST SON THE HONOUR OF THE CLINTONS THE GREATEST OF THESE THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH WATERMEADS UPSIDONIA ABINGTON ABBEY THE GRAFTONS THE CLINTONS, AND OTHERS SIR HARRY The Honour of the Clintons By Archibald Marshall Author of "Exton Manor," "The Squire's Daughter,* "The Eldest Son," etc. New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1919 Copyright, 1913, by DODD. MEAD AND COMPANY • * • • 1. « • • . ■« • u , ^ • • • • • « f^ I ^ I To ARTHUR MARWOOD A "^j f\ ^"^ ' r^ CONTENTS BOOK I CHAPTEa PAGE I A HoME-CoMING 3 II A Vulgar Theft 18 III The Squike Is Drawx In S2 IV Joan Gives Her Evidence 43 V A Quiet Talk . 62 VI The Young Birds . 75 VII The Verdict BOOK II 84 I Bobby Trench Is Asked to Kencote II Joan and Nancy III Humphrey and Susan IV Coming Home from the Ball V Robert Recumbent VI Joan Rebellious VII Disappointments VIII Proposals .... 97 110 123 134 142 155 169 186 BOOK III I The Squire Confronted II A Very Present Help . vii 205 223 viii Contents CHAPTER III The Burpen IV This Our Sister PAGE 247 BOOK IV I A Return II Payment . III The Straight Path IV A Conclave V Waiting VI The Power of the VII Thinking It Out VIII Skies Clearing IX Skies Clear Storm 26S 281 291 300 312 324 341 351 366 BOOK I CHAPTER I A HOME-COMING The lilacs in the station-yard at Kencote were heavy with their trusses of white and purple ; the rich pastures that stretched away on either side of the line were yellow with buttercups. Out of the smiling peace of the country-side came puffing the busy little branch-line train. It came to and fro half a dozen times a day, making a rare contact between the outside world and this sunny placid corner of meadow and brook and woodland. Here all life that one could see was so quiet and so contented that the train seemed to lose its character as it crept across the bright levels, and to be less a noisy determined machine of progress than a trail of white steam, floating out over the grazing cattle and the willows by the brook- side, as much in keeping with the scene as the wisps of cloud that made delicate the blue of the fresh spring sky. The white cloud detached itself from the engine and melted away into the sky, and the train slid with a cheerful rattle alongside the platform and came to a stand-still. Nancy Clinton, who had been awaiting its arrival with some impatience, waved her hand and hur- ried to the carriage from which she had seen looking out a face exactly like her own. By the time she had •'4l-.' \/,:liUe Hcjuouv of the Clintons reached it her twin sister, Joan, had alighted, and was ready with her greeting. " Hullo, old girl ! " " You're nearly ten minutes late." The twins had been parted for a fortnight, which had very seldom happened to them before in the whole nineteen years of their existence, and both of them were pleased to be together once more. If they had been rather less pleased they might have said rather more. More was, in fact, said by the maid who stood at the carriage door with Joan's dressing-bag in her hand. " Good-afternoon, Miss Nancy. Lor, you are look- ing well, and a sight for sore eyes. We've come back again, you see, and don't want to go away from you no more. Miss Joan, please ketch 'old of this, and I'll get the other things out. Where's that porter? He wants somebody be'ind 'im with a stick." " Hullo, Hannah ! " said Nancy. " As talkative as ever! Come along, Joan. She can look after the things." The two girls went out through the booking-office, at the door of which the station-master expressed re- spectful pleasure at the return of the traveller, and got into the carriage waiting for them. There was a luggage cart as well, and the groom in charge of it touched his hat and grinned with pleasure ; as did alsa the young coachman on the box. " I seem to be more popular than ever," said Joan A Ilome-Coming 5 as she got into the carriage. " Why aren't we allowed a footman? " " You won't find you're at all popular when you get home," said Nancy. " The absence of a footman is intended to mark father's displeasure with you. He sent out to say there wasn't to be one, and William was to drive, instead of old Probyn. Father is very good at making his ritual expressive." " What's the trouble ? " enquired Joan. " My going to Brummels for the week-end? " " Yes. Without a rc^f/i-your-leave or bz/-your-leave. Such a house as that is no place for a well-brought-up girl, and what on earth Humphrey and Susan were thinking of in taking you there he can't think. I say, why did you all go in such a hurry? You didn't say anything about it when you wrote on Friday." " Because it was arranged all in a hurry. Lady Sed- bergh is going through a month's rest cure at Brum- mels, and she thought she'd have a lively party to say good-bye before she shuts herself up. It was Bobby Trench who made her ask us, at the last moment." "Joan, is Bobby Trench paying you attentions? You never told me anything in your letters, but he seems to have been always about." Joan laughed. " I'll tell you all about Bobby Trench later on," she said. " I've been saving it up. Mother isn't annoyed at my going to Brummels, is she? " " I don't think so. But she said Humphrey and Susan ought not to have taken you there without ask- ing." 6 The Honour of the Clintons " There wasn't time to ask. Besides, I wanted to go, just to see how the smart set really do behave when they're all at home together." "Well, how do they?" " It really is what Frank calls * chaude etoffeJ* I don't wonder that Lady Sedbergh wants a rest cure if that's how she spends her life. On Sunday we had a fancy dress dinner — anything w^e could find — and she came down as the Brummels ghost in a sort of night- gown with her hair down her back and her face whit- ened. She looked a positive idiot sitting at the head of the table. She must be at least fifty and the ghost was only seventeen." "What did you wear.?" " Oh, I borrowed Hannah's cap and apron ; and Susan's maid lent me a black dress. I was much ad- mired. Susan was a flapper. She had on some clothes of Betty Trench's, who is only fourteen, and about her size. She looked rather silly. Humphrey was properly dressed, except that he wore white trousers and a pink silk pyjama jacket. He said he was Night and Morn- ing. He looked the most respectable of all the men, ex- cept Lord Sedbergh, who said he wasn't playing. He's a dear old thing and lets them all do just what they like, and laughs all the time. Bobby Trench was a bathing woman, with a sponge bag thing on his head. He was really awfully funny, but he was funniest of all when he forgot what he looked like and languished at me. I was having soup, and I choked, and Lord Rokeby, who was sitting next to me, thumped me on the A Home-Coming 7 back. All their manners are delightfully free and nat- ural." "Well, you seem to have enjoyed yourself." " We finished up the evening with a pillow fight. Fancy ! — Lady Sedbergh and some of the other older women joined in, and made as much noise as anybody. You should have seen Hannah's face when I did at last get into my room, where she was waiting for me. She said a judgment was sure to fall on us for such goings on." "A judgment is certainly going to fall on you, my dear. Father will seize you the moment you get into the house and ask you what you mean by it." " Dear father ! " said Joan affectionately. " It is jolly to be home again, Nancy. How lovely the chest- nuts are looking ! Dear peaceful old Kencote ! " They drove in through the lodge gates, where Joan received a smile and a curtsey, and along the short drive through the park, and drew up beneath the porch of the big ugly square house. Mrs. Clinton was at the door, and Joan enveloped her in an ardent embrace, which was interrupted by the appearance of the Squire, big and burly, with a grizzled beard and a look of self- contented authority. " I've got som.ething to say to you. Miss Joan. Come into my room." He turned his back and marched off to the library, in which he spent most of his time when he was indoors. Joan, after another hug and kiss, followed him. It may or may not have been a sign of the deterioration 8 The Honour of the Clintons in manner, wrought by her visit to Brummels, that she winked at Nancy over her shoulder as she did so. "Aren't you going to kiss me, father?" she asked, going up to him. " I am very pleased to see you again, and I'm sure you're just as pleased to see me." The face that she lifted up to him could not pos- sibly have been resisted by any man who had not the privilege of close relationship. The Squire, however, successfully resisted it. " I don't want to kiss you," he said. " I'm very dis- pleased with you. What on earth possessed Humphrey and Susan to take you off to a house like that, without a with-your-leave or a by-y our-leave .^^ And what do you mean by going to places where you knew perfectly well you wouldn't be allowed to go.^^ " " But, father darling," expostulated Joan, with an expression of puzzled innocence, " I knew Lord Sed- bergh was an old friend of yours. I didn't think you could possibly object to my going there with Humphrey and Susan. They only got up their party on Friday evening, and there wasn't time to write home. Why do you mind so much ^ " " You know perfectly well why I mind," returned the Squire irritably. " All sorts of things go on in houses like that, and all sorts of people are welcomed there that I won't have a daughter of mine mixed up with. You've been brought up in a God-fearing house, and you've got to content yourself with the life we live here, I tell you I won't have it." A Home-Coming 9 " Well, I'm sorry, father dear. I won't do it again. Now give me a kiss." But the Squire was not yet ready for endearments. " Won't do it again ! " he echoed. " No, you won't do it again. I'll take good care of that. If you can't go on a visit to your relations without getting into mis- chief you'll stop at home." " I don't want anything better," replied Joan tact- fully. " I didn't know how ripping Kencote was till I drove home just now. Everything is looking lovely. How are the young birds doing .'^ " " Never mind about the young birds," said the Squire. " We've got to get to the bottom of this business. You must have known very well that I should object to your going to a house like Brummels. When that young Trench came here a few years ago you heard me object very strongly to the way he behaved himself. Cards on Sunday, and using the house like an hotel, never keeping any hours except what suited himself, and I don't know what all. Did they play cards on Sunday at Brummels.'^ " Joan was obliged to confess that they did. "Of course! Did t^ou play.? Did Humphrey and Susan play? " " Oh no, father ; I don't know how to play and I wouldn't think of it," replied Joan hurriedly, to the first question. "Did you go to church?" " Oh yes, father. I went with Lord Sedbergh. He is a dear old man, and hates cards now." 10 The Honour of the Clintons " I don't know why you should call him an old man. He is just the same age as I am. It's quite true that we were friends as young fellows. But that's a good many years ago. He has gone his way and I have gone mine. I don't suppose he is responsible for all the folly and extravagance that goes on in his house ; still, he lives an altogether different sort of life, and we haven't met for years. If he remembers my name it's about as much as he would do." " Oh, but he talked a lot about you, father. He told me all sorts of stories about when you were at Cam- bridge together. He said once you began to play cards after dinner and didn't leave off until breakfast time the next morning." " H'm ! ha ! " said the Squire. " Of course young fellows do a number of foolish things that they don't do afterwards. Did anyone but you and Lord Sed- bergh go to church on Sundaj''? " Joan was obliged to confess that they had been the only attendants. " Well, there it is ! " said the Squire. " Out of all that household, only two willing to do their duty to- wards God Almighty! I shall give Humphrey and Susan a piece of my mind. I blame them more for it than I do you. But at the same time you ought not to have gone, and I hope you fully understand that." " Oh, yes, father dear," replied Joan. " You have made it quite plain now. Don't be cross any more, and give me a kiss. I've been longing for one ever since I came in." A Home-Coming 11 The Squire capitulated. " Now run away," he said when he had satisfied the calls of filial affection, and paternal no less. " I've got some papers to look through. What 3'ou've got to do is to put it all out of your mind, and settle down and make yourself happy at home. God knows I do all / can to make my chil- dren happy. The amount that goes out in a house like this would frighten a good many people, and I expect some return of obedience to my wishes for all the sacrifices I make." When Joan had left him the Squire went to find his wife. " Nina," he said, " I'm infernally worried about Joan going to a house like Brummels. The child's a good child, but wants looking after. She ought never to have been allowed to go up to Susan. I thought trouble would come of it when it was suggested." Mrs. Clinton did not remind her husband that both the twins had stayed with their sister-in-law before, and that beyond a grumble at anybody preferring London to Kencote he had never made any objection. " I think they ought not to have taken her away on a visit without asking," said Mrs. Clinton. " But Joan and Nancy are grown-up now, and I think they are both too sensible to take any harm by being with Susan. What I feel is that they must see things for them- selves, and not be kept always shut up at home." " Shut up ! " repeated the Squire. " That's a fool- ish way of talking. Home is the best place for 3^oung girls ; and who could wish for a better home than Ken- 12 The Honour of the Clintons cote? The fact is tliat this London life is getting looser and more immoral every day. Look what an effect it is having on Humphrej^ and Susan! What with all that money that old Aunt Laura left them, and the allowance I make to Humphrey, and the few hun- dreds a year that Susan has, they could very well afford to keep up quite a nice little place in the country, and live a sensible healthy life. As it is they live in a poky flat that you can hardly turn round in, and yet they spK?nd twice as much money as Dick, w ho^ is i musldest son^ and is quite content to live here quietly in the f Dower House and not go running about all over the place. And they spend twice as much as Walter, who has a family to keep. And they don't really get on well together, either. Their marriage has been a great dis- appointment — a disappointment in every way. The fact is that a young couple without any children to look after and keep them steady are bound to get into mis- chief, especially if they've got the tastes that Humphrey and Susan have, and enough money to gratify them. Nina, I hate this set of people that the}^ make their friends of. Did you know that that Mrs. Amberley was staying at Brummels.^ " " I saw her name in the paper," said Mrs. Clinton. " A nice sort of woman for a young girl like Joan to be asked to meet ! She's a notoriously loose char- acter ; and a good many other members of the party are no better than they should be. Lady Sedbergh her- self is a frivolous fool, if she's no worse, and as for that young cub who came here a year or two ago, I don't A Home'Coming 13 know when I've seen a young fellow I object to more. I believe Sedbergh himself has the remains of decency and digiiity : but what does one person count amongst all that vicious gang? Upon my word, Humphrey and Susan ought to be whipped for taking a girl of Joan's age to such a place. The children shan't go to stay with them again. The fact is that they can't be trusted in anything. Well, I can't stay talking here; I must go back to my papers." In the meantime Joan had retired with Nancy to their own quarters. They still occupied one of the large nurseries as their bedroom, and used the old schoolroom as a place where they could enjoy the privacy necessary for their own intimate pursuits. Their elder sister and three of their brothers were mar- ried, their governess had left them at the end of the previous year, and as a rule they had these rooms on the second floor of the East wing entirely to themselves. But at this time, Frank, their sailor brother, was at home on leave, and had taken up his old quarters there. He was a rising young lieutenant of twenty-six, and the twins had been presented to their sovereign and let loose generally on a grown-up world. But between them they managed to produce a creditable revival of the period when the East wing had been full of the noise and games of childhood; for they were all three young at heart and the cares of life as yet sat lightly on them. " Frank and I have started schoolroom tea again," said Nancy, as she and Joan went up to their bedroom 14 The Honour of the Clintons together. " He says he wants eggs, after being out the whole afternoon; and mother doesn't mind. You will preside over the urn at five o'clock." " Jolly ! " said Joan. " Where is Frank.? " "He hacked over to Mountfield to see Jim and Cicely." (Cicely, the eldest of the Clinton girls, had married a country neighbour, Jim Graham, and lived about five miles from Kencote.) " But he said he would be back for tea. I suppose you calmed father down all right.?" " Oh yes. He's a dear old lamb, but he must have his say out. You only have to give him his head, and he works it all off. You know, Nancy, although father is rather tiresome at times, he is much better than all those silly old men you meet about London. He is over sixty, and he doesn't mind behaving like it. A lot of them expect you to treat them as if they were your own age, whether they are married or not." " You seem to have gone through some eye-opening experiences." " I have. I feel that I know the world now." She had taken off her hat, and stood in front of the glass, touching the twined masses of her pretty fair hair. The lines of her slim body, and her delicate tapering fingers, were those of a woman; but the child's soul had not yet faded out of her eyes, and still set its impress on the curves of her mouth. " Tell me about Bobby Trench." Joan laughed, with a ringing note of amusement. " Of course you know why we were all given such a sud- A Home-Coming 15 den and pressing invitation to Brummels," she said. Nancy jumped the implied question and answer. " Well, it was bound to come sooner or later," she said. " With both of us, I mean ; not you only. There is no doubt we possess great personal attractions. But I don't think you have much to boast about, if it's only Bobby Trench. What is he like.? Has he changed at all since he came here.'^ " "Oh, he is just as silly and conceited as ever; but love has softened him." " I shouldn't want him softened, myself. He'd be sillier than ever. Tell me all about it, Joan. How did he behave.'^ " Joan told her all about it ; and the recital would not have pleased Mr. Robert Trench, if he had heard it. With those cool young eyes she had remorselessly re- garded the antics of the attracted male, and found them only absurd. But she had not put a stop to them. " You know, Nancy," she said guilelessly, " it's all very well to talk as they do in books about a man being able to make a girl like him if he keeps at her long enough ; but I am quite sure Bobby Trench could never make me like him — in that way — ^^if he tried for a hundred years. Still, it is rather nice to feel that one is grown up at last." " The fact of the matter is, you have been flirting with Bobby Trench," said Nancy ; " and you ou^t to be ashamed of yourself." But Joan indignantly denied this. "What I did," she said, " was to prevent his flirting with me." 16 Tlie Honour of the Clintons There was a moment's pause. Then Nancy said un- concernedly, " I suppose I told you that John Spence came here." Joan turned round sharply, and looked at her. " No, you didn't," she said. After another moment's pause, she said, " You know you didn't." Then came the question : " Why didn't you ? " " He was only here for two nights," said Nancy. " At the Dower House, of course. If I didn't tell you, I meant to." Joan scrutinised her closely, and then turned away. " He was awfully sorry to miss you," Nancy said. " He told me to give you his love." " Thank you," said Joan, rather stiffly. John Spence was a friend of Dick Clinton, who had managed his estates for him for a year. He had first come to Kencote when the twins were about fifteen, and had impressed himself on their youthful imaginations. He was nearly twenty years older than they, but simple of mind, free of his laughter, and noticeably warm- hearted. He liked all young things ; and the Clinton twins had afforded him great amusement. He had been to Kencote occasionally as they were growing up, and the elder-brotherly intimacy with which he had treated them at the first had not altered. He was the friend of both of them, but when he had come twice to Kencote to shoot, during the previous season, he had seemed to show a very slight preference for the society of Joan. It had been so slight that the twins, who had never had A Home-Coining 17 thoughts which thej had not shared, had made no men- tion of it between them. But now, at a stroke, the great fact of sex came rushing in to affect these young girls, who had played with it in a light unknowing way, but had never felt it. They could amuse themselves, and each other, with the amorous advances of Bobby Trench, but the fact that Nancy had omitted to tell Joan of John Spence's visit was portentous, slight as the omission might seem. Their habitual intercourse was one of intimate humour, varied by frank disputes, which never touched the close ties that bound them. But this was a subject on which they could neither joke nor quarrel. It was likely to alter the relations that had always existed between them, if it was not faced at once. It was impossible for either of them not to face it. For the whole of their lives each had known exactly what was in the mind of the other. Each knew now, and the know^ledge could not be ignored. "Well, he was awfully nice," said Nancy, rather as if she were saying something she did not want to. " I liked him better than ever. But he sent his love to you." " I don't see why you shouldn't have told me that he had come," said Joan. But she saw very well, and in the light of her seeing John Spence ceased to be the openly admired friend of her and Nancy's childhood, and became something quite different. CHAPTER II A VULGAR THEFT In the great square dining-room at Kencote the Squire was sitting over his wine, with his eldest and youngest sons. From the walls looked down portraits of Clintons dead and gone, and of the horses and dogs that they had loved, as well as some pictures that by-gone owners of Kencote had brought back from their travels, or bought from contemporary rising and since famous ar- tists. There were some good pictures at Kencote, but nobody ever took much notice of them, except a visitor now and then. Yet their presence had its effect on these latest members of a healthy, ancient line. No family por- traits went back further than two hundred years, be- cause Elizabethan Kencote, with nearly all its treasures of art and antiquity, had been burnt down, and Geor- gian Kencote built in its place. Even Georgian Kencote had suffered at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury, at the hands of a rich and progressive owner ; rooms had been stripped of panelling, windows had been enlarged ; and, but for a few old pieces here and there, the furniture was massive but ugly. The Clintons were as old as any commoner's family in England, and had lived at Kencote without any intermission for some- 18 A Vulgar Theft 19 thing like six hundred years ; but there was little to show it in their surroundings as they were at present. Only the portraits of the last six or seven generations spoke mutely but insistently of the past, and their proto- types were as well-known by name and character to their descendants as if they had been known in the flesh. To us, observing Edward Clinton, twentieth century Squire of Kencote, with the eldest son who would some day succeed him, and the youngest son, who had taken to one of those professions to which the younger sons of a line undistinguished for all except wealth and lineage had taken as a matter of course throughout long generations, this background of family portraits is full of suggestion. One might ask how much of the continuity of life and habit it represents is stable, how much of it dependent upon fast-changing circumstance. How far is this robust elderly man, living on his lands and desiring to live nowhere else, and the handsome younger man, whose life has been spent in the centre of all modem happenings, — how far are they what they appear to be, representative of the well-to-do classes of modern England ; how far is their attitude to the life about them affected by ideas inherent in their long descent.? Are they really of the twentieth century, or in spite of superficial modernity, of a time already passed away? One might say that the life lived by the Squire was the same life, in all but accidentals, as that of the squires who had gone before him, and whose portraits 20 The Honour of the Clintons huno; on the walls, and that it would be lived in much the same way by the son who was to come after him. And so it was. But the lives of those dead squires had been part of the natural order of things of their time. Their lands had provided for it, and of themselves would provide for it no longer. It was only by the accident of our Squire being a rich man, and being able to leave his son a rich man, that either of them could go on living it. To this extent his life was not based upon his descent, and was indeed as much cut off from that of the previous owners of Kencote as if he had been a man of no ancestry at all, whose wealth, gained else- where, enabled him to enjoy an exotic existence as a country gentleman. If wealth disappeared the long chain would be broken, for a reason that would not have broken it before. But, when that is said, there still remains the whole ponderous weight of tradition, which makes of him something different from the rich outsider who, with no more than a generation or two behind him, or perhaps none at all, comes in to take the place of the dis- possessed owner whose land alone will no longer support liis state. What that counts for in inherited benevo- lence and sense of responsibility, qualified by strange spots of blindness where the awakened conscience of a community is beginning to see more clearly, it would be difficult to gauge. What one may say is that some flower whose perfume one can distinguish should be produced of a plant so many centuries rooted ; that twenty generations of men preserved from the struggle A Vulgar Theft • 21 for existence, and having power over their fellows, should end in something easily distinguishable from a man of yesterday; that such old established gentility should have some feelings not shared by the common mass, some peculiar sense of honour, some quality not dependent upon wealth alone, some clear principle emerging from the mists of prejudice and the mere dis- like of all change. So we come back to the Squire sitting with his sons . over their wine, their pictured forebears looking down on them from the walls, and wonder a little whether ther^ is anything in it all, or whether we are merely in the company of a man to whom chance has given the oppor- tunity of ordering his life on obviously opulent lines, like many another with no forebears that he knows any- thing of. Dick Clinton had held a commission in His Majesty's Brigade of Guards up to the time of his marriage four years before, and had been very much in the swim of everything that was going on in the world of rank and fashion. Now he lived for the most part quietly at the Dower House, which lay just across the park of Kencote, and busied himself with country pursuits and the management of the estate to which he would one day succeed. He was beginning ever so little to put on flesh, to look more like his father, to lose his interest in the world outside the manor of Kencote and the adjacent lands that went with it. But he was not yet a stay-at-home, as the Squire had long since become, and he and his wife had just returned from a fortnight 22 The Honour of the Clintons in London, well primed with the interests of their former associates. " Have jou heard about this business at Brummels ? " he said, as he passed the decanter. The Squire frowned at the mention of Brummels. " No. What business?" he asked. " Lady Sedbergh has had a pearl necklace stolen. It's said to be worth ten thousand pounds ; say five. She says that she kept it in a secret hiding-place, and the only person who could have known where it was is Rachel Amberley. She accuses her of stealing it. There's going to be a pretty scandal." The Squire frowned more ferociously than ever. " That's the sort of thing that goes on amongst people like that ! " he said with disgust. " They have no more sense of honour than a set of convicts. A vulgar theft 1 And there's hardly one of the whole lot that wouldn't be capable of it." " Well, I don't know about that," said Dick ; " but if Mary Sedbergh can be believed, there's not much doubt that Mrs. Amberley walked off with it. It seems that there's an old hiding-place in the morning-room at Brummels. You press a spring in the wainscot, and find a cupboard." "There are plenty of those about," said the Squire. " Anybody might find it. Still, I've no doubt that she's right, and it was that Mrs. Amberley who actually did steal it." Frank laughed suddenly. He was accustomed to suck amusement out of the most unlikely sources, and A Vulgar Theft 23 his father, whether unlikely or not, was one of them. " Why does she think Mrs. Amberley found it? " he asked. " Because she showed her the hiding-place in a mo- ment of expansion. It isn't just a cupboard behind the panelling. When you've found that you have only begun. There is another secret place behind the cup- board itself. Only Sedbergh and his wife knew of it. It's a secret that has been handed down ; and well kept." " Then why on earth did she tell a woman like Mrs. Amberley about it.^^ " enquired the Squire. " I don't know; though it's just like her to do it. I think Mrs. Amberley was at school with her, or some- thing of that sort. She had a big party at Brummels, and then emptied the house and went through a month's rest cure there. At the end of the month she looked for her necklace, and found it gone. A diamond star had gone as well ; but other things she had put away had been left." " So, whoever the thief was, she had a month's start," said Frank. " Yes. Sedbergh was called in, and they both went straight to Rachel Amberley and offered to hush it all up if she would give back the necklace." The Squire snorted. " Rachel Amberley bluffed it out. She said she would have them up for scandal if they breathed a word of suspicion anyvrhere. They have been breathing a good many. In fact, it's all over the place. And 24 The Honour of the Clintons nothing has happened yet. Everybody is wondering who will make the first move." " She won't," said the Squire, who had never met Mrs. Amberley. " I am not in the way of hearing much that goes on amongst people of that sort, now, but she's a notoriously loose woman. That's why I was so annoyed when I heard that Joan had been taken to a house where she was staying. By the by, this affair didn't take place at that particular time, did it?" " Yes. That's when it happened." The Squire's face was blacker than ever. " Then it will be known who was of the party," he said. " Our name will be dragged into one of these disgraceful scandals, and every Dick, Tom, and Harry in the country will be talking about us. Upon my word, it's maddening. I suppose I can't prevent Humphrey and Susan keeping what company they please, but it makes me furious every time I think of it — their taking Joan there." " I don't suppose Joan's name will come out," said Dick. " There were lots of people in the house at the time, and they are not likely to mention all of them." The Squire was forced to be content with this. " Well, don't say anything about it to her," he said. " It's an unsavoury business, and the less she knows about that sort of thing the better." " You can't keep her shut up for ever," said Dick ; but his father pressed more insistently for silence. " I A Vulgar Theft 25 don't want it mentioned," he said irritably. " Please don't say anything to her — or you either, Frank." Frank was mindful of this injunction when he next found himself alone with his sisters, which was at tea- time the next day. But he saw no harm in mentioning* the name of Mrs. Amberley. What had Joan thought of her during that visit to Brummels, made memorable by the disturbance that had affected her home-coming? " Oh, Fm sick of Brummels," she said. " Anyone would think it was — well, I won't sully my lips by repeating the name of the place. Anyhow, it was a good deal more amusing than Kencote." " Kencote is the j oiliest place in the world," said Frank. " You and Nancy are always running it down." " It may be the j oiliest place in the world to you," said Nancy, " because you are here so seldom, and you do exactly what you want to do when you are here. It is pretty slow for Joan and me, boxed up here all the year round." " Well, never mind about that," said Frank, " I want to know how the notorious Mrs. Amberley struck you, Joan." " Is she notorious ? " asked Joan. " She struck me as being old, if you want to know. Much older than mother, although I suppose they are about the same age, and mother's hair is white, and hers is vermilion." " Did you talk to her at all.?" " Not much. She isn't the sort of person who would care about girls. And I don't suppose they would care much about her, unless they were pretty 26 The Honour of the Clintoris advanced. I'm not, you know, Frank. I'm a bread and butter Miss from the country. I keep my mouth shut and my eyes open." " At the same time," said Nancy, " our splendid youth is really a great attraction. If Joan and I had lived in the eighteenth century, we should have been known as the beautiful Miss Clintons. And we should have had a very good time." " You have a very good time as it is," said Frank, " only you're not sensible enough to know it. You ought not to want anything much jollier than this." The windows of the big airy upstairs room were wide open to the summer breezes. Outside,''the spreading lawns of the garden, bordered by ancient trees, and the grassy level of the park lay quiet and spacious, flooded with soft sunshine. iThere was an air of leisure and undisturbed seclusion about the scene^ which was summed up in this room, retired from the rest of the house, where the happiness of childhood still lingered. It was not surprising that Frank, coming back to it after his long sea wanderings, should have been seized by the opulent tranquillity of his home. He was as happy as he could be, all day and every day, woke up to a clear sensation of pleasure at finding himself where he was, and watched the dwindling tail of his leave with hardly less regret than the end of the holi- days had brought him during his schooldays. At twenty-six, with ten years of the sea and the responsi- bilities of his profession behind him, he had stepped straight back into his boyhood. He was not reflective A Vulgar Theft 27 enough to realise that time would not stand still for him in this way for ever. It seemed to him that, what- ever else might change, Kencote would always be the same, and he could always recapture his boyhood there. That was partly why he disliked to hear his young sisters belittling its comparative stagnation, which was to him so delightful. He had thought them absurdly grown- up when he had first come home; but that effect had worn off. He was a boy, and they were children in the schoolroom again, their father and mother downstairs, out of the way of their noise. So it would be when he came home again in two or three years' time. So it would always be, as far as it was in him to look ahead. But his sisters had other ideas. Their wing-feathers were growing, and they were already beginning to flutter them. Perhaps in after years, whatever happi- ness might come to them — and all life in the future was, of course, to be happy, as well as much more exciting — ■ they too would look back upon these midsummer months with regret, and wish for their childhood back agam. A few days later Joan and Nancy were taking a country walk with their dogs. They were about a mile away from Kencote, when a motor-car came suddenly along the road towards them, driven by a smart-looking vouncf man in a screen hat and a blue flannel suit. The girls were on the grass by the side of the road holding two of the dogs until it should have passed, when to their surprise it sl topped, and a cheerful voice called out, 28 The Honour of the Clintons " Hullo, Miss Joan ! Here's a piece of luck ! I was just on my way to see you." Joan stood upright with a blush on her face, which she would have preferred not to have shown, while Mr. Robert Trench jumped down from the car and advanced to shake hands with her. He also shook hands with Nancy, remarking that he remembered her very well, and should have known her anywhere by her likeness to her sister. " What remarkable powers of observation you have ! " observed Joan, rallying her forces. Bobby Trench only grinned at her. " Chaffing, as usual ! " he said. " But, bless you, I don't mind. I say, I suppose you have heard about this beastly thing that has happened at Brummels — about my mother's necklace ? " " No, I haven't," said Joan. " What, not heard that it was stolen ! Why, it was when you were staying in the house too. Everybody is talking about it. Wherever have you been burying yourself that you've heard nothing? " " At home at Kencote," replied Joan. " You don't think I brought the necklace away with me, do you ^ " Bobby Trench grinned again. " We were talking it over last night," he said. " I think we have seen every- body that was in the house at the time except you, and I said, ' By Jove ! I wonder whether Miss Joan noticed anything .f^ ' We don't want to leave any stone un- turned, so I said I would run down and look you all up. A Vulgar Theft 29 It must be years since I came to Kencote. You were both jolly littie kids then." " I beg your pardon," said Nancy, " we were fifteen. We weren't kids at all." " I apologise," said Bobby. " Anyhow, I thought it was a chance not to be missed. Now, did you notice anything, Miss Joan.'' Oh, I forgot; I haven't told you the story yet." " I think you had better do that first," said Joan. Bobby Trench then told them the story, and when he came to describe the hiding-place Joan gave an exclamation. " Is it just where that little Dutch picture hangs? " she asked. " The one with the old woman cleaning a copper pot ? " " Yes. That's the place," said Bobby. " Why? Do you know anything about it ? " Joan's face was serious. "Are you quite sure that Mrs. Amberley took the necklace? " she asked. " We're about as sure as we could be, unless we had actually seen her doing it. I'll tell you what we have found out afterwards. You didn't see her opening the cupboard by any chance, did you? " Joan did not reply for a moment. Nancy looked at her with some excitement on her face. " What did you see? " she asked. Still Joan seemed unwilling to speak, and Bobby Trench said, " If you did see something, you ought to let us know. It's a very serious business. The things stolen are worth pots of money, and we know perfectly 30 The Honour of the Clintons well that it Ccin only be Mrs. Amberley who has taken them. Besides, we've pretty well proved it now. We have found people to whom she sold separate pearls ; but for goodness' sake don't let that out yet. I only tell you so that you may know that it wouldn't only rest on you." Joan raised her eyes to his. " I went into the morn- ing-room," she said, " and Mrs. Amberley was standing with her back to me by the fireplace." " By Jove ! " exclaimed Bobby Trench, staring at her as if fascinated. " She turned sharp round when I came in," said Joan, " and then she asked me if I didn't love old Dutch pic- tures, and showed me that one. That is why I remem- bered about it." " Was she actually looking at it when you came in.?" "Well, no. I don't think she was. It was just a little to the right of where she was standing. I had forgotten all about it, but I remember now that when she mentioned the picture I thought to myself that she seemed to have been looking at the bare panels, and not at the picture at all. Besides, she was blushing scarlet, and it was just as if I had caught her in something." "By Jove! you must jolly nearly have caught her with the panel open. Did you notice anything odd about the wall she was standing in front of as you came in.?" Joan thought for a moment. " No, I didn't," she said decidedly. A Vulgar Theft 81 " Had she got anything in her hand? " Joan thought again. " I didn't notice," she said. " But I believe she kept her hands behind her while she was talking to me. She didn't talk long. Just as I was looking at the picture she suddenly said she had some letters to write, and went out of the room." Bobby Trench, with growing excitement, asked houJd lie in the church that night, and the house would fill up with many of those who would follow her to the grave on the morrow, includ- ing some members of her own family, all of whom the Squire disliked or was prepared to disHkc. He ardently wished himself done with the painful ordeal. He doubted whether he would be able to acquit himself unremittingly in the manner that would be expected of him. He would have to wear a face of gloom, when he was already itching to be rid of these cheerless trail- ing postscripts to the message of death, and commit himself once more to the warm current of life. He would have to say so many things that he did not feel, and do so much that he hated doing. The shadow, not of grief but of the adjuncts of grief, lay over the house, and darkened the bright June sunshine, or such of it as was allowed to filter through the blinded windows. Not for fifty years or more had such an assemblage been made at Kencote. The suc- cessive funerals of the Squire's six aunts, who had lived since his marriage at the Dower House, and the last of whom had died at another house in the village only two years ago, had been untroublous, not to say brisk, ceremonies, occasions of meeting between seldom- seen relations, and of hospitality almost festive, but tempered by affectionate reminiscence of the departed, and the feeling that one might talk naturally and freely, so long as one did not actually laugh. Ripe 252 The Honour of the Clintons ago had fallen on the rest laid up for it ; there had been no occasion to feign deep sorrow. But — " the Lady Susan Clinton, aged 28 " ! — there was material for sharp sorrow there ; and the Squire was disturbed by the fear that he might not be able to show it; might even, if he were off his guard, show that he did not feel it. " Did you hear from mother this morning? " asked Dick, when they had disposed of the details he had come to discuss. " Yes. Humphrey is bearing up ; but, of course, poor fellow, he can't get used to the idea yet. We must keep him here for a bit, after we rid the house of all these people; and he'll soon come round to him- self." " Was there any trouble between them latterly ? " Dick asked, in a matter-of-fact voice, but gave the Squire time to collect his thoughts by going on imme- diately, " I don't want to pry into your affairs or his, but I had an idea that that business of Gotch's wasn't all he came to see you about the other day." "Why do you think that.^ " asked the Squire with undiplomatic directness. " Well — your going up to town with him the next day, for one thing. I only wanted to say that if it's a question of money again, which hasn't been put right by poor Susan's death, you can count on me for help if there's any difficulty in raising it." What a good son this was — safe, level-headed, coolly and responsibly generous ! The Squire would have Tfiis Our Sister 253 given a good deal to have been released from his promise, and able to take him into full confidence then and there. " Well," he said, " there was trouble about money, and I was prepared to find it, without interfering with estate affairs. That's why I didn't come to you. But the necessity is over now." He mentally patted himself on the back for this masterpiece of statement, transgressing the strict truth by no more than perfectly allowable omission. " Her settlement falls in, I suppose," said Dick. "I'm glad you were spared the worry, although the way out of it is sad enough. I've been sorry for Humphrey for some time. He had come to see that he had always played the fool about money, and was beginning to get his ideas straight; but poor Susan — well, one doesn't want to think about her in that way now — but there's no doubt she was a terrible drag on him. I'd seen it coming for some time, and when he talked to me at Christmas about settling down, I was pretty sure that he didn't know everything, and would be coming with another story soon." " Why did you think that? " asked the Squire, with the sensation of treading on very thin ice. " Oh, it was common talk of how she was going on — had been, I should sa^^, for she did seem to have calmed down within the last year. Otherwise, I think I should have made up my mind to give Humphrey a hint, disagreeable as it would have been. Things were being hinted at about a year ago that made me think we 254 Tlie Honour of the Clintons might find ourselves involved in some bad scandal before we were much older." " Oh, Dick," the Squire broke out, " we mustn't talk like this about a dead woman. Humphrey told me everything. It's all wiped out and done with now, for her, poor girl." " Yes," said Dick. " But I'm not going to pretend that I think her death is a calamity. I don't ; although any feeling one may have had against her is wiped out, as you say. In fact, if she had begun to pull herself up, as I think she had, and had got it all off her mind before she died, as I suppose she did, it's possible to feel kindly towards her. Still, I think she had made too big a mess of things. It would have come between them. As it is, he'll be able to think of her without bitterness. He'll get over the shock in time." This was all so much what the Squire felt himself, summed up as it might have been in the comfortable phrase, " all for the best," that its effect upon him was much the same as if he had had the relief of telling Dick everything. He cheered up palpably, until he remembered what lay immediately in front of him ; but faced even that with more equanimity, upheld by Dick's sympathetic support, and relieved of some doubt as to whether his thoughts about poor Susan were quite of the right colour. The afternoon train, which in the course of these histories we have so often met at Kencote Station, brought the coffin and the mourners. Humphrey looked This Our Sister 255 pale and worn, but collected. He stood with his mother's arm in his while the coffin, covered with flowers, was taken out of the purple-lined van, and lifted on to a hand bier. The church was much nearer to the station than the house, and the little procession walked there, past the cottages with blinds all drawn, and the villagers standing b}^ them, mostly in black, which only served to heighten the bright colours of the flowers with which the gardens were full. The sky was of the purest blue, and larks trilled unseen in its trans- lucent vapours, as if to draw the thoughts of the mourners away from the earth in which they were presently to see these mortal remains laid. The elms and chestnuts whispered of life going on and renewing itself year by year until the end. The rich springing growth of early summer in this quiet country village spoke of life and of hope ; and the black line of mourners moving slowly along was not incongruous with it, if the poor clay they were escorting was really only the husk from which new life had already- sprung. The Squire, sobered to becoming gravity by the sight of the coffin, yet felt his thoughts tuned to the beauty of the sky and the familiar surroundings. It was he who had planned this walking escort. There would be carriages, and a state suitable to the occasion on the morrow. This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed 256 The Honour of the Clintons also to that sense of common human Hfe, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her nobility. The cottagers were his friends on an occa- sion like this, had a right to share mourning as well as festival with the family in whose interests they were hereditarily bound up. He took comfort from seeing them there. They were his people ; without them this quiet home-coming would have been incomplete. The coffin was taken into the chancel of the ancient church, and set down over the brass of a knightly Clinton who had died and been buried there five cen- turies before. Almost without exception those who followed it were his direct descendants, and the same stones surrounded them as had sheltered the mourners at his funeral. So many years, so little change ! Christening, marriage, burial — the renewal of life in the same stock had gone on through the centuries. This new burial was only a ripple in the steady, pauseless flow, and would have been no more if the head of the house himself had lain where this poor, foolish, erring girl, now hardly regretted, and soon to be forgotten, was laid. A few prayers were said, and a hymn sung, and then she was left to lie there alone. Shafts of sunlight would slant across the stones, and fading, give place to twilight, then to dusk, then to darkness. The church This Our Sister 257 would be very still. Dawn would come, with the sweet twittering of birds, and the sun would once more strike through the armorial glass of the East window, and paint stone and timber with bright colour ; and still she would be lying there, dead to the glory of a new day as she had been dead to the darkness of the night. Nothing would matter to her any more. In a little while her dust would mingle with that of long generations of Clintons forgotten, and her memory would pass away as theirs had passed. Her life had been everything to her, her wants and hopes and regrets the centre of her being. Now it was as if it had never been — for her, lying in the still church. But her acts lived. The ripples she had caused in the pond of life would spread, intersecting other ripples caused by other acts, until they reached the border. When they had returned to the house Nancy w^ent up with Joan into her room — the room in which they had slept side by side for all but a few nights in their lives until Nancy's marriage. There was only one bed in the room now. " How odd it looks ! " said Nancy. " Do you miss me, my precious old Joan? " " Of course I do," said Joan. " I had to make them take your bed out. It made me feel so horribly lonely." " If John is ever unkind to me," said Nancy, " I shall come here and have it put back." She checked herself. No vestige of a joke was to be allowed until after to-morrow. She thought herself unfeeling for even inclining to light speech. To her 258 The Honour of the Clintons and Joan the death of someone not much older than themselves was a startling thing; and the death of any- one so close to them, in their inexperience of death, would have subdued them for a time. " Let's go and talk in the schoolroom," Nancy said. " Nobody will come there." They sat together on the old comfortable sofa, arms entwined. The absence of sentiment with which they had been accustomed to treat one another had given place to frequent signs of affection. They had hardly been more together during their childhood than since Nancy had come to Kencote after her honeymoon the day before. Their stream of talk flowed unceasingly. Oceans of separate experience had to be bridged. Now the}^ put aside for a time their own affairs of the past and future, and talked about the immediate present. " Did you speak to Humphrey ? " Joan asked. " I didn't ; but I thought he looked awful." " He kissed me when we came in," said Nancy, " and said he was glad I had come back in time. He spoke much the same as usual, but went away directly. Joan, how awful he must be feeling ! Just think what John would feel if he were to lose me ! " " You haven't been married so long," said Joan ; but immediately added, " I suppose that wouldn't make any difference, though. I do feel frightfully sorry for Humphrey. I almost think it would have been better if the funeral had been at once, instead of making it like two. It must be awful for him to think of her This Our Sister 259 lying there all alone in the church. You know, Uncle Tom wanted to have tapers and somebody to watch ; but father wouldn't." "No; I didn't know that. Why? " " He said candles were Roman Catholic ; and that there would be nobody who wanted to watch. I think he was right there. You know, Nancy, I think the saddest thing about it is that there is nobody who is very sorry for poor Susan's death — except Humphrey. I don't think her own people are. None of them looked it." " Lady Aldeburgh cried." " She pretended to. Her eyes were quite dry." " I liked Susan. So did you." " Yes, in a way. Perhaps not very much, I wish I had liked her more, now. I am sorry, of course. But I feel much more glad at having you again, than sorry because she is dead." Nancy gave her a squeeze. " I can't realise that she is dead," she said, " that she was in that coffin. I felt just a little bit like choking when Uncle Tom read that part about a place of rest and peace. It was so dreadful to think of her being dead; but that seemed to alter it all. If she is somewhere alive still — and happy ! " " Yes," said Joan seriously. " I hope Humphrey is thinking about that." On the morrow there was a difficult time to get through before the funeral, at twelve o'clock. The Squire took the " Times " into his room when it came, 260 The Honour of the Clintons but only glanced over it, standing up. He made occa- sion to go to the Rectory, and to the Dower House, and spent some little time at each ; and the hour came round. It was over quickly. The large company walked and drove back to the house, which stood once more normally unshuttered, and ate and drank. There was a buzz of conversation in the crowded dining-room, which at times swelled beyond the limits of strict propriety, and suddenly subsided, only to rise and sink again. Departures began to be taken. This was the hardest time for the Squire to go through, for he had to say something in answer to the words of each. The end came with a rush, when most of those who had been staying in the house, with those who had come down that morning, left to take the special train back to London. When the last carriage had departed the Squire turned back into the hall with a great sigh of relief. He went into his room and stood by the open window, breathing deeply of the soft summer air, as if his lungs had been cleared of some obstacle. " Well, that's over," he said aloud as he turned away. The sound of his words checked him. He went to the window again, and looked across the garden and the park to where the church tower showed between the trees. " Poor girl ! " he said slow^ly. And then, after a pause, " Poor dear girl ! " This satisfied him, and he went briskly to the table where the newspapers were laid in order. BOOK IV CHAPTER I A RETURN The Squire shut to the gate in the garden wall of the Dower House and stepped out across the park. His face was lit up with gratification, his step was as light as that of an elderly man of seventeen stone very well could be. He had been to see Virginia, and she had given him the news that had caused this elation. She had just come down from Scotland, where John Spence had taken a moor, leaving Dick amongst the grouse. Mrs. Clinton was there too, and Joan, and a large house-party besides. The Squire had been asked, but it was many ^^ears since the twelfth had caused a stir in his movements, and he had refused. Didn't care much about it ; might come to them later, when they moved down, for the pheasants. It was a not unpleasant change for him to have the house entirely to himself. But he had got a little tired of his solitary condition after a fortnight, and had been extremely glad to see Virginia, who had come South to meet a friend on her way from America to Switzerland. It seemed that young Inverell — the Earl of Inverell, twenty-seven years of age, master of mines as well as acres, handsome and amiable as well as high-principled — in fact the very type and picture of young Earls — 263 264 The Honour of the Clintons whose Highland property marched with that which John Spence had rented, had been constantly of their party, even to the extent of putting off one of his own. The attraction? Joan. There could be no doubt about it, Virginia had said. He was head over ears. And Joan was as gay as a lark. It was the sweetest thing to see them together — a picture of adorable youth, and love, unspoken as yet, but shining out of their eyes and ringing in their laughter for everyone to see and hear. She had enlarged on the enchanting spectacle, and the Squire had listened to her tale, not so much because he " cared about that sort of thing," but so as to assure himself that it was undoubtedly a true one, on both sides, and that Joan, especially, would not be likely to rebel a second time. How providentially things worked out ! Young Inverell was a 'parti beside whom the eligibility of Bobby Trench paled perceptibly. Bobby Trench, socially and financially, would have been a good match. This would be a great one. If it would not " lift " the Clintons of Kencote, which the Squire was persuaded no marriage whatever could do, it would at least point their retiring worth. It would bring them into that prominence in which, to speak truth, they had always been somewhat lacking. And he was a nice young fellow too, so the Squire had always heard ; already beginning modestly to play the part in public affairs which was expected of the head of his house ; untouched as yet by the staleness of A Return 265 the world, which had touched Bobby Trench so much to the Squire's disgust, until he had closed his senses to it; and a fitting mate in point of youth and good looks for a beautiful young girl like Joan, which Bobby Trench could hardly have been said to be, in spite of his ever youthful behaviour. Really, it was highly gratifying. It just showed that there was no need to hurry these things. If Joan had taken the first person that came along — a young fellow he had never thought much of himself, but had allowed to take his chances out of old friendship to his father — she would have missed this. The child was a good child. She would do credit to any station. Countess of Inverell! Nothing in that, of course, but — well, really the whole thing was highly gratifying. Why hadn't his wife written about it.? There was nothing in that. She always left out of her letters the things she might have known he would like to hear. Virginia was quite certain ; and she could be trusted on such a subject, or indeed on any. Well, one got through one's troubles. It was extraordinary how sunshine came after rain, or would be if one didn't believe in a wise Providence overrulins: everything for our good. A few months ago there had been that terrible affair, now buried and forgotten The brightness left his face as his thoughts touched on that subject. It was buried, sadly, though perhaps mercifully, enough; but it was not forgotten. It was thought of as little as possible, but the debt still rankled — the debt that could not be paid. It came up 266 The Honour of the Clintons at nights, when sleep tarried, which fortunately hap- pened seldom. But time was adjusting the burden. It would not be felt much longer. The thought of it now came only as a passing shadow to heighten the sunshine of the present. In fact this gleam of sunshine seemed to remove the shadow finally. He had done all that he could do, had kept back noth- ing, had satisfied his honour. An obligation to so old a friend as Sedbergh need not weigh on any man. It would be ungrateful not to recognise how plainly things had been *' ordered." Apart from the curious accidents of the problem — the fact that " the woman " had not been condemned for that crime; that she had already paid her penalty ; that the other woman had been connected in such a way that it had been possible to silence her by a perfectly innocent transaction, car- ried out by perfectly innocent people — facts surely beyond coincidence, and of themselves demanding belief in an oven^uling Providence — apart from all this there had been poor Susan's death, no longer demanding the least pretence of lamentation, but to be regarded as a clear sign that the account had been squared and no further penalty would be exacted. And now there was this new satisfaction, as a further most bountiful token of favour. How was it possible that there could be those who did not believe in a God above, when signs were so plain to those who could read them-f^ It would be churlish now not to throw oflP all disagreeable thoughts of the past, and not to take full pleasure in the brightness of present and future. A Return 267 As the Squire came round a group of shrubs that masked the lawn from the carriage drive he saw a woman approaching the house. As he caught sight of her she caught sight of him, changed her course, and came towards him. He stopped short with a gasp of dismay. It was Mrs. Amberlej. " Mr. Clinton," she said, " J have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I expect you know who I am. I have come down from London on purpose to have a little talk with you." She had altered in no way that he could have described. She was fashionably dressed, in a manner suitable for the country, her wonderful hair had not lost its lustre, her face was still the beautiful mask of whatever lurked in secret behind it. Yet she seemed to him a thing of horror, degraded and stained for all the world to see. And even the world might have been aware of some subtle change. Whether it was that her neat boots were slightly filmed with dust, or that her clothes, smart as they were, were not of the very latest ; or that it was no outward sign, but the con- sciousness of disgrace affecting her bearing, however she might try to conceal it — whatever it was, it was there. This was a woman who had come down very low, knew that the world was against her, and would fight the world with no shame for what it could still with- hold from her. He stared at her open-mouthed, unable for the mo- ment either to speak or think. 268 The Honour of the Clintons She laughed at him elaborately. " You don't seem very pleased to see me," she said. " May we go into the house and sit down ? I have walked from the station, and am rather tired." " No," he said quickly, reacting to his immediate impulse. " You will not enter my house." She looked at him with careful insolence. " Shall we go into the churchyard.'^ " she said, " and talk over Susan Clinton's grave ? " The infamous taunt brought him to himself. " Come this way," he said, and turned his back on her to stride off along a path between the shrubs. She followed him for a few steps, and then, feeling probably that this rapid progress in his wake did not accord with her dignity, stopped and said, " Where are you taking me to, please.^ I haven't come here to look at your garden." He turned sharply and faced her. " I am taking you to where we can be neither seen nor heard," he said, and waited for her to speak. " Very well," she said. " That will suit me very well — for a first conversation — as long as it is not too far, and I am not expected to race there." He turned his back on her and went on again, but at a slower pace. They went through a thick shrub- bery and out on to a little sloping lawn at the edge of the lake, which was entirely surrounded by great rhodo- ' dendrons. There was a boat-house here, and a garden seat, to which he motioned her. She sat down, and looked up at him. " I am not A Return 269 going to talk to you standing over mc like that," she said. " It will be giving you an unfair advantage." He sat down on the same seat, as far away from her as possible. "Well, what have you got to say for yourself?" she asked him, in much the same tone as a school- master might have asked the question of an errant schoolboy. He said nothing. He had nothing to say. His thoughts were still in a turmoil. Perhaps silence was the best retort to her air of insolence. She had to find another opening. "You call yourself a man of honour!" she said in a slow contemptuous voice. " You pay hush-money, so that the innocent may suffer, and the guilty go free." " It's a lie," he said. " I paid no money. I refused to pay money." " Ah, then you did know everything. It was what I could not be quite certain about. The story was confused. Thank you for clearing it up." He felt himself trapped at the first opening of his mouth. He would need all his wits to cope with this shameless, cunning woman. He tried to break through her deliberate artifices. "What do you want.?" he asked. " What have you come here for? " " You didn't pay the money yourself?" she went on. " That would hardly have done, would it ? You let somebody else pay it, and washed your hands of it, I suppose." It had been his own phrase. Her chance lighting 270 The Honour of the Clintons on it seemed to make her uncannil}^ aware of everything that had passed. How had she got hold of her informa- tion? He had not had time to think about that yet. " I refused to pay anything," he repeated. " Noth- ing was paid to anybody who had anything to do with you. I refuse to discuss these affairs with you." " Oh, do you ? " she taunted him. " Will you refuse to discuss them when you are brought up on a charge of conspiracy .P You will be allowed to do it through Counsel, of course. They allowed me Counsel, when I was brought up on a charge of stealing something that a member of your family stole. I wish I could have done without him. I should have liked to defend my- self. But it will suit you. You can shelter behind him. You seem rather good at that." " What do you want ? " he asked her again. " What have you come here for.^^ " " To talk it over quietly," she said, with the same mocking intonation. " Do you want to know how I found out about it all.^ You seem to have forgotten entirely that I knew that somebody staying in the house at the same time that I was must have stolen the things. It wasn't very difficult, afterwards, to decide on the thief. I have a few friends still, Mr. Clinton, and I heard that your precious Susan, whom every one knew to have been head over ears in debt, had suddenly and miraculously become out of debt, and had money to throw about. I had enquiries made, and heard that the woman whom you bought — I beg your pardon, whom you made somebody else a cat's- A Return 271 paw to buy, so as to save your own skin, had been sent over to the other side of the water, to get her out of the way. It was the finger of Providence, I tliink, that led me to follow her up. I expect you have been thinking that Providence had been specially engaged in your interests ; and it certainly did look like it — for a time." Again the uncanny cognisance of his very thoughts ! But this was only a very clever woman, who knew her man, and his type. " I went over myself, and found her," she went on. " She was going West to make a start on the money that her poor fool of a husband thought had been given him for his own sweet sake. She didn't intend to un- deceive him. At one time I had had an idea of going * West ' myself. You see I had been hounded out of London for the crime that one of you Clintons had committed, and as you had so chivalrously left me to bear the burden of it, and hushed up the truth, instead of clearing my name, I didn't know then that I should be able to come back again. I wanted to get away as far as possible." He was unendurably taunted. " Your name couldn't have been cleared," he said. " You were not condemned for that ; it was for stealing the other thing ; and that will stick to you still." She affected bewilderment, and then enlightenment seemed to come to her, and she laughed. " Oh, that's •it, is it?" she said. "Your mind seems to run so much in twists and curves that anyone who expects 272 The Honour of the Clintons a straight sense of right and wrong in honourable men must be pardoned for being a little slow in follow- ing them. But I didn't steal that either, you know. The sainted Susan stole it as well as the necklace — she was an expert in such things — and this woman Clark told my woman about it — the one who committed perjury at my trial, and is now going to suffer for it, if I can find her." The sneer at the dead girl pierced something in him which set his brain clear. This was a wicked woman, and she was lying to him. " That's a likely story ! " he said with rough contempt, and she winced for the first time, although, with his eyes on the ground, he did not mark it. " It is one that will keep for the present," she said, instantly recovering her coolness. " Well, fortunately I was able to make friends with Susan's maid. It is a way I have with that sort of person, although it is true that my own brute of a woman gave me away." " Yes, she gave you away," said the Squire, more quick-witted than ordinarily. " Lied about me, I ought to have said," she cor- rected herself, with a blink of the eyelids. " I see I must be careful to choose my words. Words mean so much with you, don't they.^ Acts so little. If you can say you haven't paid a bribe, it doesn't in the least matter that you have let it be done and taken advantage of it. Well, I made friends with her to begin with. She had ju«t heard of Susan's death and wanted to A Return 273 talk about it. She couldn't keep her foolish mind off the connection between me and Susan, and spoke in such a way that I soon knew I had been right to follow her up. I drew her on — I have always been considered rather clever, you know — and before she knew she had done it she had let out her story. You may be sure I frightened her, when I could safely do so, into telling me the whole of it. I heard what a fright dear Hum- phrey was in — a nice young man that — came to my trial, I believe, jingling the stolen money in his pocket." " That's not true," said the Squire. " He knew nothing of it whatever." " He may have told you so. But six or seven thou- sand pounds ! To repeat your own words : ' That's a likely story, isn't it.?'" " He didn't know. You can go on." ** Thank you. I heard how he came posting down here, to get the hush-money ; and how it came by return of post — telegraph, I believe ; I think he tele- graphed to the woman, ' Blackmail will be paid,' I suppose, ' on condition do not say from father.' " She laughed at her jest. The Squire kept miserable silence. " Well, there it is," she said. " To use my words more carefully this time — she gave you away. You never thought you could be given away, did you? You thought you were safe. Your conscience hasn't troubled you much, I should think, to judge by your healthy appearance. Conscience never does trouble 274 The Honour of the Clintons cowards much, when they can once assure themselves they won't be found out." In the turbulent confusion of his mind, the Squire still cluner to certain fixities. He had acted for the best ; he had acted so that the innocent should not suffer ; and if he himself had been amongst the innocent who were to escape suffering, his own safety had not been his chief thought. And if his actions, or his refraining from action, had added to the burden justly borne by the guilty, that had been inevitable if the innocent were to be saved; in any case it had added so little that he could not be blamed for ignoring it. Cowardice at least, he had thought, was no crime that could ever be laid to his charge, and he had not shown it when he had braved all consequences in refusing to lift a finger to avert the disaster that was now, in spite of all, threatening him. But she was dragging from him all his armour, piece by piece. He let it go, and clung to his naked man- hood. " You may say what j^ou like," he said, squaring himself arid looking out over the water in front of him. " I simply stood aside. What could you — no, not you, what could anyone — have expected me to do.'' Publish the truth — overwhelm the innocent with the guilty; and all for what.'' For nothing. You were free. You " " Free ! Yes. They had let me out of prison, that's quite true. Would you consider yourself free with that taint hanging over you.'' Was I free to come back A Return 275 to my friends? Was I free even to settle down any- where where my story was known? Susan, the thief, was to be sheltered, because she bore the honoured name of Clinton. She was to go free. Yes. But /, who had taken her punishment, was to be left to bear the bitter results of it all my life. What meanness ! What base cowardice ! " He hardened himself, but said nothing. " Susan had stolen this necklace, worth thousands of pounds," she went on. " She had " " But not the jewel that you were imprisoned for stealing," he put in again. " I have already told you that she did ; and I can prove it by that woman's evidence." He wavered, but stuck to his point. " I don't be- lieve it," he said, " and you can leave it out." " I will, because it doesn't reall}^ matter whether you believe it or not. You will believe it when you see her in the witness-box." " You won't get her into the witness-box, to swear to that." " Well, we shall see. There's no sense in haggling with you over that. We will leave it out, as you advised. I was talking about Susan. She and your precious Humphrey had spent the money that they had got from the sale, or pawning, or whatever it was, of the pearls she had stolen." " I have already said," he interposed quietly, " that Humphrey knew nothing of it." " And I have already said, ' That's a likely story ! ' 276 The Honour of the Clintons However, we need not press the point now. Say she had had all the money if you like, and that he — dear innocent — never noticed that she was spending some thousands of pounds more than he allowed her. If you like to believe that it's your affair; we shall have plenty of opportunities of judging what view other people will take of it, by and by. At any rate, the money was spent — the stolen money — and you, a rich man, can sit down quietly and let somebody else bear the loss of it." He knew he was giving himself into her hands, but he could not help himself. " That's not true," he said. She looked at him, her lip curling. " Oh ! you sent it back — anonymously perhaps. You did have that much honesty." " You can make what use of the admission you like," he said. " I told Lord Sedbergh the story, and offered him the money." This set her a little aback. " He knows the truth, then," she exclaimed. " Another man of honour ! He lets me lie under the stigma of having stolen something that he's got the price of in his pocket all the time. Upon my word ! You're a pretty pair ! I'm not cer- tain that he's not worse than you are." He struggled with himself, but only for a moment, and then said, " He refused to take the money." She was quick to take that up. " Oh ! I see. Dear me, how I should have enjoyed being present at that A Return 277 interview. You go to him with the delightful proposal that he shall make himself party to your meanness, and he refuses. Yes. I suppose he would. I've no reason to suppose there are txvo men of supposed honour who could act quite as vilely as you have done. Come now, Mr. Clinton, I've given you a piece of gratuitous information. Supposing you return it by telling me what he said to yo\i. Did he tell you what he really thought of you, or only hint it? " " Oh, let's have an end of this," he said, with agonised impatience. "What have you come here for.^ What do you want.^ " Her manner changed. " Yes, we will have an end of it," she said, with quick scorn. " It's useless to tell you what I think of your meanness, and how I despise your cowardice. I should have respected you much more if you had paid your blackmail down like a man, and then kept quiet about it, instead of running snivel- ling about trying to salve your own conscience. But a man who can believe as you have has no shame. You can't touch him by showing him up to himself. You can, though, by making him pay for it. And I'm going to make you pay — to the last rag of reputa- tion you've got left." She clenched her fist, and bent towards him fiercely. On his fathomless trouble her change of attitude made no new impression. What mattered it whether she sneered or stormed.'^ The truth would be known; the pit of disgrace was already yawning for him. " I can't touch Susan," she went on. " If I could, 278 The Honour of the Clintons I'd drag lier out of her grave and set her up for all the world to mock at." The intensity with which she said this affected him not merely to liorror. He began to see dimly what an adversary he had to cope with, and the burning rage against circumstance that must consume her. Even if all he had comforted himself with was true — if she was guilty of stealing the diamonds, and had suffered for that alone — still, she had suffered for Susan's crime. For if Susan had been found out, she would, or might, have gone undetected. How that knowledge must smoulder or blaze in her mind, night and day — all the worse if she was partly guilty ! He might expect no mercy from her. " I will make her name a mockery," she cried, " and I'll make yours stink in the nostrils of every decent honest man and woman in the country. I've only to tell my story. You can't deny it ; you won't be allowed to. But I'll do more than that. I'll make you stand where I stood ; first in the police court, then in the dock — you and Humphrey together, and your other son too and his wife, who paid the money. Tell your story then, and see what's thought of you ! Some of them may get off — but you won't. You'll go w^here I went — to a vile and horrible prison, where you'll be with the scum of the earth; where you'll have plenty of time to think it all over, and whether it wouldn't have been better for you, after all, to tell the truth and shame the devil, — you dastardly coward ! " Her voice had risen almost to a shriek. He looked A Return 279 round him, in fear that it would bring someone to the scene. But the lake was retired, and seldom visited. They were quite alone. " Yes, I suppose you would like to move away," she siiid in a voice more controlled, but still quivering with rage. " You can't run away. You'll have to face it now ; you and your whole family, guilty and innocent. I'll make you suffer through them, as well as in your- self. You'll never wipe off the blot, never in all your life, not even when you come out of prison and come back here — a man that nobody will speak to again, for all your wealth and position. You can think of that when you're in your cell. They give you plenty of time to think. It's not more than / suffered ; it's not so much, because I was innocent. But I'd no children and grandchildren to make it worse. You have. It's your name you've blackened. Clinton will mean thief, and conspirator, and everything that's vile long after you are dead." He had heard enough. He got up, tunied his back on her, and began to walk very slowly across the little lawn, his head bent. She watched him with a look of hate, which gradually faded to scorn, then to cunning, then to expectation. But it became dismay when, having crossed the grass, he did not turn, but kept on between the shrubs, as if he had forgotten her, and were going to leave her there alone. She had to call to him. " Where are you going .^ " He turned at once, and the look on his face might have made her pity him, if she had had any pity in her. 28-0 The Honour of the Clintons " You must, do what jou will," he said. " There is nothing more to be said." Then he turned from her again, and pursued his slow, contemplative walk along the path, his shoulders bent, his steps dragging a little, like those of an old man. CHAPTER II PAYMENT She forced a laugh. " Oh, there's a lot more to be said," she called after him, in a voice almost gay. " Please come back." He took no notice of her, but went on. She sprang up, a look of alarm on her face, and took a few quick steps across the grass. " Mr. Clinton ! " she said. " Mr. Clinton ! I have a proposal to make to you." He stopped and turned then. She expected him to come back on to the lawn ; but he stood still, and she had to go up the path to him. She lifted her face, that some men, but not he, would have called beautiful, to his, and smiled. " It needn't happen, you know," she said. He did not understand in the least, and looked his puzzlement — and his disgust of her. She dropped her eyes, and her seductive manner at the same time. " Come and sit down again," she said, " and let us talk sensibly. I have worked off my anger. Now kt us see what can be done." A slight gleam of hope came to him. Perhaps — now Susan was dead — she would see . . . she could gain nothing. . . 381 282 The Honour of the Clintons He followed her to the seat obediently, and sat down. " I have told you what I think of you," she said, speaking now coolly and evenly. " I had to do that to clear my mind. You have treated me with the meanest cruelty, and I mean every word I have said to you. I have suffered bitterly, and perhaps I have succeeded in showing you that I have it in my power to make you suffer in the same way. Revenge is very sweet, and I have tasted a little of it. But, after all, it can't do away with the past ; and its savour soon goes. I shan't gain much by punishing you, though you ouglit to be punished." " No," he said eagerly. " You can gain nothing. And look at the terrible — awful suffering you would bring upon those who are innocent of any offence against you." " Quite so," she said coolly. " I am glad you realise that. I meant you to." " It would be inhuman," he went on. " You would never be forgiven for it — in this world or the next." She laughed, this time without affectation. " You are really rather funny," she said. " Well now, what do you suggest.'' That I shall hold my tongue and go away? Back to America, for instance, and settle down there for good, perhaps under another name.^ " He could hardly believe his ears. " You would do that? " he cried. " I think perhaps I might be persuaded to. I am not unreasonable." Payment 283 " If you did that," he broke out, his face aflame, " the blessing of the innocent would be yours to the end of your life. You would be their saviour; you " " I suppose I should," she interrupted dryly. " I should like that. But the trouble is, you see, that one can't live on the blessing of the innocent. It isn't sustaining enough. And I have very little to live on." The light died slowly out of his face as he listened to her. " You must help me," she said. " You are a rich man, and you can do it. You allowed money to be paid before, to hush up this scandal ; you offered a very large sum of money to free yourself of a mere dis- agreer.ble feeling of indebtedness, and took some risk in doing it too — I give you that much justice. I am glad Lord Sedbergh refused that money. Nov/ you can lend it to me — I will pay you back some day — and a few thousands more. Let me have ten tliousand pounds, Mr. Clinton. You can ease your conscience of the wrong you have done me, and save your inno- cents at the same time — yourself, who are not innocent, into the bargain." Perhaps she had mistaken the motives which had led him to refuse to pay money to Gotch, and really thought that he had done it only to save his ov/n skin, knowing that it would be paid elsewhere; in which case nothing in this proposal would shock him. Or per- haps she relied overmuch on having frightened him 284 The Honour of the Clintons into acquiescence with any proposal. Otherwise, with all her powers of finesse, she would hardly have plumped out her demand in this careless fashion. She had restored him in some degree to himself. " What ! " he cried, his brows terrifically together. " After all you have said, you now want me to pay blackmail to you. It's an impudent proposal ; and I refuse it." She was quick to see her error. If he wanted his susceptibilities soothed, she was quite ready to do that. " Oh, don't be absurd," she said. " I never really thought that you had looked on that transaction as blackmail; I only said so because I wanted to make you smart. Is it likely that I should be fool enough to suggest such a thing to you.? Besides, whatever you may think of me, I am not a blackmailer; it wouldn't suit my book. You are not very clever, you know, Mr. Clinton. I will tell you what I want, and why I think you ought to help me to get it, as carefully as I can; and you must listen to me and try and under- stand it." Poor man ! How could he help listening to her, with so much at stake ! " The mischief is done," she said. " I am innocent, but I am smirched — poor me ! — and although I could make you suffer, and would, I tell you frankly, if I could do it without hurting myself, I don't believe I could ever get bacjv — not all the way. I don't know that I want to try; I am not young now, whatever I look, and I have no heart for the struggle. I am Payment 285 young enough, at any rate, to enjoy my life, if I can begin it again, in quite new surroundings, and not dogged by poverty. It isn't much I want. What is ten thousand pounds for hfe to a woman hke me, who has spent that in a year.^^ I have something of my own, but not much. Tliis would make me secure against that horrible wolf at the door, which frightens me more than anything." He was about to speak, but she silenced him with a lift of the hand, and said, "Let me go on, please. Why should you give it to me? you were going to ask — I drop the pretence of a loan, though you can call it that if you like. Because you are the only person I can ask it of. It is compensation ; and nobody but you — except Humphrey, of course — has offended cigainst me. Sedbergh thinks I stole the star, and so does Mary Sedbergh, and it is true that that is all I was actually found guilty of. Under the circumstances they are not to be blamed. The coincidences — and the perjury — were too strong for me. They owe me noth- ing — except out of kindness to an old friend whom they had done injustice to." " If you want me to listen to you in patience," said the Squire angrily, " you'll drop that impudent pre- tence of not having stolen the star. My daughter saw you at the cupboard ; and you would have stolen the necklace if you could. You hardly take the trouble to hide that you're lying. You must take me for a fool." " Shall I drop it } " she asked. " I think perhaps I 286 The Honour of the Clintons will, with you. It is quite safe. I can take it up again if you drive me to action ; and nobody will believe that I could have been such a fool as to admit to you that I had stolen it." " You infamous creature ! " he cried. " That was the plea you used before. It didn't save you, and it won't save you this time." She saw that she had made a mistake, but answered, " Well, no ; perhaps it wouldn't save me. But you see the question wouldn't arise. If I did take it, I couldn't be punished for taking it twice. I could confess it to all the world now, and nothing further would happen. Besides, you see, it will be you who will be standing in the dock, for an offence into which the question of the star wouldn't come." His eyes dropped. Her specious reasoning — before she had made the mistake of interrupting it with her insolent cynicism — had made some way with him, and allowed his mind to detach itself ever so Ifttle from that frightful picture. " Oh, you can't be prepared to face that," she said, pursuing her recovered advantage ; " and it would be too absurd — quixotic. The same reasons hold good here as they did before, when 3^ou allowed silence to be kept, and were prepared to pay not much less than I ask for. You save your children as well as yourself. Think what it would mean for that young girl of yours, when the time came for her to be married." Ah ! That was a sharper pang than she knew. Oh, for the sunny satisfaction of that walk across the park Payment 287 back again! And the sun shining now en his black misery had only shifted a point or two. " And the other one," went on the cool voice, " who was married the other day. Their father in the dock ! in prison ! " He rallied again. " You can drop that nonsense too," he said. " It's a bogy that doesn't frighten me." " Not the dock? I admit that you might escape the prison — though Humphrey couldn't very well." " Whatever mistake I may have made — and I'm not yet prepared to admit that I made any — I did nothing that I could be even asked to justify in a court of law." " Well, I think you're wrong there. But in any case you would fear the court of your friends and neighbours and the whole public opinion of England hardly less than a court of law, wouldn't you ? " This was so true that he showed his sense of it in his face. " Oh, my dear good man, how can you be so foolish as to run the risk of it? Look here, Mr. Clinton, sup- posing I admit the theft of the star, and say that I have deserved what I got for that, do I really suffer nothing whatever by bearing the burden of Susan's far bigger theft all my life? Be honest now. Take it as a woman's weakness. Wouldn't it mean a good deal to me to be cleared of that?" She waited for his answer, which was slow in com- ing. He fought hard against his inclination to give an evasive one. " Yes — it might — it would," he said. 288 The Honour of the Clintons " Then I bear it, and save her name, noAV she is dead ; and your name. I save the honour of you CHntons, who think so much of yourselves. If I do that, and allow the shame you have fastened on to me to rest where it is, don't I deserve some little kindness from you — some help in the life I shall have to live, right away from all that has ever made my life worth living to me before, right away from all my friends.? I should get some of them back, you know, if it were known that that, at least, wasn't true of me." Her voice was pleading. It affected him no more than by the sense of the words it carried. Perhaps if this I' ad been her tone from the first it might have done so. But the words themselves did affect him. They were true. If it could be regarded as only help that she wanted ! " This time," she said, " you wouldn't be doing injury to a living soul. You would only be doing some- thing towards setting right a wrong. You wouldn't even be doing anything that the law would blame you for. Susan is dead. There is nobody who could be prosecuted." " I could pay Sedbergh his money," he said slowly. " Yes, you could do that," she took him up eagerl3^ " Honourably, now. He could take it without any scruple. The Sedberghs would be sorry for me, I think. They would be glad that I had been helped. They couldn't blame you. And who else could .^^ " The Squire knitted his brows hard, and tried to think, Payment 289 but couldn't. He could only feci. Release might be in view from the chains that already seemed to have besun to rust on him. I can't see my way," he said. " I must tJiink it -B' over." With her eyes fixed sharply and anxiously on him, she had seemed to be reading his very thoughts. She had influenced him ; she could do nothing more by repetition of her plea ; he must have time to think it over — and ivoiild have time, whatever she might say ; he was that sort of man. She rose from the seat. " I know you must have time," she said. " I know that the sum I ask for is a large one, especially if you are going to add another seven thousand on to it ; but I can't take less. I won't take less. But remember what it buys you, Mr. Clin- ton, when you think it over. If you refuse me this money which you owe me for what you have done to me, if ever man owed woman anything, I shall speak out and bring it home to you. I would rather have peace for the rest of my days, and ease, than perpetual fighting. But I shall be ready to fight, if you refuse me, for I shall get something out of that." He rose too. " You needn't go over all that again," he said. " If I consider it right to do this I will do it. If not, no threats will weigh with me." " Ver}^ well," she said. " If you accept, as of course you will, for it is right to do it, you will want to see me again to settle details. Probably you won't want to pay the money all at once, and we can arrange 290 The Honour of the Clintons that. You will want to be assured that I shan't come down on you again, that my silence will be absolutely unbroken. I can satisfy you as to that too ; I have thought out a way. There will be other details to settle. You won't want to see me down here again. You must come to see me in London. I will help you in every way I can." She gave him an address. " Now I will go," she said. " Show me a way out without my passing the house." They walked round the lower end of the lake together, neither of them speaking a word. He took her to a gate leading into a lane. " If you follow that to the left," he said, " you will come to the village." She went through the gate which he held open for her. Then she turned and looked at him out of level eyes, and said before she walked away : " If you do what I ask, you will hear nothing more of me after we have settled matters. If you don't, I will punish you somehow — in addition — for not receiving me into your house." CHAPTER III THE STRAIGHT PATH " Mr. Clinton has had to go to Bathgate, ma'am. He told me to say he would dine at the club and might be late home. He partic'ly asked that you and Miss Joan — ^fiss Clinton — shouldn't sit up for him." The old butler gave his message as if there was more behind it than appeared from his words. Mrs. Clinton, standing in the hall, in her travelhng cloak, looked puzzled and a little anxious. It was unlike her hus- band not to be at home to meet her, especially when she and Joan were returning from so comparatively long a visit — and there was something so very interesting to talk about. And, although he frequently lunched at the County Club in Bathgate, he had not dined there half a dozen times since their marriage. " Is Mr. Clinton quite well.? " she asked, preparing to move away. " Well, ma'am, I don't think he is quite well. We've all noticed it. Or it seems more as if he was worried about something. But he's not eating well, ma'am, and not sleeping well." " Poor father ! " said Joan, standing by her mother. " We've been too long away from him. We'll cheer him up, and soon put him right, mother." Mrs. Clinton went to bed at half-past ten, as usual. 291 292 The Honour of the Clintons The Squire came home at eleven o'clock. It was the hour when he expected her to have her light out, if he should come up then. He went straight to her room. It was in darkness. " Well, Nina," he said from the door, " you're back safely. Sorry I had to be out when you arrived. I'll come to you in a few minutes." He went along to his dressing-room. Just outside it, in the broad carpeted corridor was Joan. She was in a white dressing-gown, her hair in a thick plait down her back. She looked hardly older than the child she had been five years before. " Father dear ! " she said. " How naughty of you to be away when we came home ! Have you heard about it.?" Her beautiful eyes, swimming with tender happiness, looked up into his. She had come close for his embrace. "My dear child!" he said, kissing her. "My httle Joan ! " " I thought you'd be glad," she said, nestling to him. " I'm so frightfully happy, father." " Well, run along to bed now," he said. " We'll talk about it to-morrow. You ought to have been in bed long ago." " I know. But I had to stop up and tell you. Good-night, father." He strained her to him. " Good-night, my dar- ling!" He was not a man of endearments ; he had not called her that since she was a tiny child. She flitted along The Straight Path 203 the passage, and he went into his room and abut the door. The old butler came up to put out the lamps in the corridor. He had performed this duty nightly since he had been a very young butler, and had often thought, as he passed the closed doors, of those who were behind them. For many years there had been somebody be- hind most of the doors, except in the rooms reserved for visitors. Now there were only three left out of all the big family in whose service he had grown old. He had seen all the children, who had crowded the nursery wing, with their nurses and governess, grow up and leave the nest one by one. It had been such a warm, protected nest for them. He had always liked to £^o up to the floor on which the nurseries were, and think of all the little white-robed sleepers behind those doors as he passed them. They were so safe, tucked up for the night, and so well-off in that great guarded house, where nothing that might affright other less fortunate children could touch them. The nursery w^ing was empty now. Joan had come down to another room on the first floor; he only had one broad passage to see to upstairs. And soon she would have flown. He thought of her with the affec- tion of an old servant as he put out the light outside her room. Little Miss Joan ! She was in there with her happiness. He smiled as he turned from that door. Outside his master's dressing-room his face became solicitous. Mr. Clinton was not well — worried-like. 294 The Honour of the Clintons Well, he was apt to worry over-much about trifles. The old butler knew him by this time. He had seen him weather many storms, and they had never, after all, been more than mere breezes. Whatever was going on behind the door of that room couldn't be very serious. Its occupant was shielded from all real wor- ries, except those he made for himself. He was one of the lucky ones. Outside the big room of state, in which so many generations of Clintons had been born to the easy lot awaiting them, and so many heads of that fortunate house had died after enjoying their appointed years of honour and invulnerable well-being, his face cleared. Mrs. Clinton had come home ; she would put right what- ever little thing was wrong. His master couldn't reall}^ do without her, though he thought he could. Behind that door she was lying, waiting for him. He put out the lamp. The house was now dark and silent, though behind two of the three doors there were lights. The Squire went along the passage in his dressing- gown, carrying his bedroom candlestick. He blew out the light directly he got inside the room. When he had given his wife greeting, he said, " I'm tired to-night. We must talk over this affair of Joan's to-morrow." "You are pleased, Edward, are you not.? " she asked. " He is such a dear boy ; and they are very much in love with one another." " I must hear all about it to-morrow," he said, com- The Straight Path 295 posing himself for sleep. His usual habit was to go to sleep the moment he got into bed ; but he was always ready to talk, if there was anything he wanted to talk about. He would freely express irritation if he was upset about anything, and it sometimes seemed as if he were ready to talk all night. But he would suddenly leave off and say, " Well, good night, Nina. God bless you ! " and be fast asleep five minutes later. He never omitted this nightly benediction. Until he said " God bless you, Nina," it was permitted to her to speak to him. When he had said it, he was officially asleep, and not to be disturbed. He did not say it to-night after his postponement of discussion, but his movement showed that " good- night " was considered to have been said. The omis- sion was ominous. For a very long time there w^as complete silen