r: -v.!-- Ml ,...'■', ^ ^ Si;, -^^^ XMA. THE SECRET ORCHARD ©©00OO0000000000O000O0OOOO0G000O00 I By EGERTON CASTLE | I YOUNG APRIL. | I THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY. | I MARSHFIELD THE OBSERVER. | I CONSEQUENCES. § I THE JERNINGHAM LETTERS. | O \_fyith Portraits.'] © O ENGLISH BOOK-PLATES, Ancient and | O Modern. [Illustrated.] © SCHOOLS AND MASTERS OF FENCE, © O »* A XT ® FROM THE Middle Ages to the Nine- o teenth Century. [^Illustrated.] q % LE ROMAN DU PRINCE OTHON. % ® A rendering in French of R. L. Stevenson s ® Prince Otto. © © |00OO00©0©0000O©©0000©0000©©000©Oo I With AGNES castle! ^ ( Mrs. Egerton Castle ) q 1 THE PRIDE OF JENNICO. % O THE BATH COMEDY. © © THE HOUSE OF ROMANCE. © O THE SECRET ORCHARD. © O ©00000O000O0O0000OOO00O00000000000 w 'you seem to be misled by some curious resemblance, SAID THE DUKE, IN HIS ICE-COLD VOICE, "—^/'^'i^^ U^J- The SECRET ORCHARD By Agnes &f Egerton Castle Authors of " THE PRIDE OF JENNICO," "THE BATH COMEDY," "THE HOUSE OF ROMANCE," etc. Illustrated by Charles D.Williams Iherefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way. — Proverbs NEW YORK ' FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY • MCMI Copyright, igoo, igoi, by Cosmopolitan Magazine Company Copyright, jgoi, by Egerton Castle Copyright, igoT, by Frederick A. Stokes Company UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON A»0 SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. CONTENTS BOOK I. — AFTERNOON " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depth of hell^ — Proverbs. Page Chapter I 3 Chapter II 13 Chapter III 19 Chapter IV 27 Chapter V 34 Chapter VI 49 Chapter VII 58 Chapter VIII 67 Chapter IX 80 BOOK IL — THE EVENING OF THE DAY " And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.'''' — Deuteronomy. Chapter X 93 Chapt£R XI 102 vi CONTENTS Pagz Chapter XII 109 Chapter XIII 120 Chapter XIV 124 Chapter XV 135 Chapter XVI 143 Chapter XVII 150 Chapter XVIII 168 Chapter XIX 178 BOOK III. — A WEEK LATER " And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night. . . . In the morning thou shalt say, would God it were even! And at even thou shalt say, would God it were morning!'''' — Deuteronomy. Chapter XX 185 Chapter XXI 201 Chapter XXII 212 Chapter XXIII 219 Chapter XXIV 230 Chapter XXV 236 Chapter XXVI 239 Chapter XXVII 247 Chapter XXVIII 251 Chapter XXIX 260 Chapter XXX 264 CONTENTS v'n Pagz Chapter XXXI 270 Chapter XXXII 277 Chapter XXXIII 280 Chapter XXXIV 289 Chapter XXXV 295 BOOK IV. — THE LAST EVENING; AND THE DAWN " Hatred stirreth up strife, but love cover eth all sins.*' — Proverbs. Chapter XXXVI 301 Chapter XXXVII 308 Chapter XXXVIII 315 Chapter XXXIX 320 Chapter XL 326 Chapter XLI 332 THAT DAY MONTH Chapter XLII 341 BOOK I— AFTERNOON "Stolen waters ai-e sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the dead are there, atid that her guests are in the depth of hell." — Proverbs. THE SECRET ORCHARD CHAPTER I SILVER and gold lay the landscape beneath the terrace of the Chateau de Fitzroy, this golden month of September, this golden hour of the afternoon. The fields of La Celle bathed in sunlight, the wooded slopes of St. Michel and Marly already autumn yellow, melted into the delicate hazes of the valley where the Seine shimmered distantly, stream of burnished silver be- tween the dim silver of its banks. In the far back- ground, just substantial against the unsubstantial sky line, poised like the last fantastic touch of a romantic painter, rose the ruined arches of Marly aqueduct — that crowning extravagance of the Roy-Soleil. It completed a picture which in its exquisite unreality, its warmth and glow, its richness, its stillness, seemed like the dream of a Claude Lorraine, expressed by that past-mistress of all art, — living Nature herself. With a hasty yet a heavy tread, the tread of busy- minded, vigorous middle-age. Dr. Lebel came running up the stone steps from the garden-paths below, and emerged upon the terrace, — truly a most unromantic figure in the foreground of this glowing panorama. Through large-rimmed spectacles he flung one swift 4 THE SECRET ORCHARD look around him, and noting with impatient disap- pointment the empty wicker chairs, the deserted work-table, paused, snapped his fingers, and clacked his tongue. Then he glanced up at the fagade of the house, all mellow in the sunshine that, year in, year out, had gilded it since the days of Louis XIV,; Luciennes, the most genial, the gayest-looking surely of those too few " stately homes " of old France left untouched by the furious, indiscriminate zeal of the Revolution. Gone is the pleasaunce of Marly: nothing left to recall its splendid elegance but the marble-lined basin now used as a horse-pond. Gone is the palatial man- sion of Sceaux : its very site lost amid ploughed fields and pastures, a few scattered statues, once the pride of its wondrous gardens, now serving as boundary-marks to peasant estates. Gone is Choisy- le-Roy, the miniature Versailles. Gone and forgotten every ancient seat of the great noblesse within strik- ing distance of turbulent Paris, except by what seems almost a freak of fate, this Chateau de Fitzroy, or " Luciennes," as it is more generally known from the name of the nearest village. On the crest of the western hills, midway between the heights of Versailles and the forest of St. Ger- main, within three leagues of the bastioned walls of the capital, Luciennes sits proudly, rare specimen of the country mansion such as old France loved to build ; not only unmolested, but unrenovated and (yet more admirable fortune!) still in the hands of the family for which it was erected. THE SECRET ORCHARD 5 A simple and noble building rising to two lofty- floors under a slate Mansard roof; lying between its court of honour and its terraced garden, in the middle of a park laid out two centuries ago by Le N6tre, Louis the Great's own great gardener. Most of the long windows, under their heavy stone pediments, stood open; and muslin curtains, lightly swaying to hardly perceptible airs, spoke of lofty and cool-breathing rooms within ; upon stone coppices, in and out of curving wrought-iron balconies, up to the very dormers clinging to the bevelled roof, flowers gemmed the grey walls. The Doctor ran his keen eye over the building and rested it upon a certain balcony of the right wing, " Not a soul stirring," he muttered to himself. But hereupon his further advance was arrested by an explosive apparition of colour upon the balcony in question. In flaming reds and yellows, it seemed as if some huge tropical bird had alighted on the sill. Two copper claws were suddenly extended and snowy filmy garments flew out in clouds. *' No soul indeed, but the wholesomest body in the world," said Lebel to himself, " probably for that reason," he added cynically. " Hullo ! Blanchctte, hullo, my fairest of snowdrops," cried he, in a rough good-humoured shout, " Where is your mistress?" A grinning copper face, shining beneath a yellow and red turban, was instantly protruded over the balcony flowers. " Hullo, Doctor, honey ! " The white teeth gleamed. " Missie very busy. Busy dressing! " 6 THE SECRET ORCHARD " Busy dressing? " repeated the shabby gentleman below ; he stood with his legs apart and his mouth rounded to a whistle in expressive astonishment. " That is a strange hearing ! " The face in mid-air grinned till the vast lips could stretch no further. "Telegram from Massa — Massa coming home, 'mediate. I 'low she be glad ! " Blanchette nodded triumphantly, again shook the delicate draperies, waved them like a flag of rejoicing and disappeared, followed by the Doctor's last call which rose crescendo to a bellow. " I am very glad too. But, for God's sake, tell her I want her. It 's urgent, my dove — urgent ! " M. Lebel pushed back his shapeless panama hat, scratched his grey stubble, and reflected. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he flung himself upon a high garden chair near the balustrade, and propping his cheek upon his stumpy fingers gazed out across the valley. So deeply did he give himself up to contemplation that the fall of a sedate footstep behind him seemed to strike deaf ears; and it was only when a quiet voice sounded upon the breath of a sigh above his head that he vouchsafed any consciousness of its owner's large, gentle presence. " Oh, beautiful France ! " said the voice. " Hein ! " said the Doctor, just shifting his position so as to cast a good-humouredly impatient glance upwards. "You, Canon? I thought I knew the slink of a clerical shoe." THE SECRET ORCHARD 7 The Canon of Marly — Armand de Hauteroche would have been his name in the world, but no one in the district ever thought of him but as " our Canon" — the Canon of Marly, his silver head bared, stood a moment without answering, one hand — the " hand of a prelate," as the saying goes, chiselled as it were out of old ivory — lightly resting on the stone of the terrace balcony, the other upon the back of the Doctor's chair. His face, large yet etherealised, serene yet deeply worn, was turned full towards the luminous west, and his eyes gazed forth as if follow- ing some elusive vision. His cassock fell in fine lines around a portly figure to which the folds of the purple sash lent an added dignity. So exquisitely had these garments been brushed and mended that it would have required a very close inspection to dis- cover that they were quite as ancient as the Doctor's rusty and shapeless frock-coat. " In truth," said the priest, as if continuing his thoughts aloud, "the very fairest spot in the fairest land of Christendom ! Of just such a beautiful corner of the world might Horace have sung — " ' Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes Angulus ridet, ubi non Hymetto Mella decedunt. . . . ' They knew what they were doing, these Fitzroys of old, when they planted a home here." Then, bring- ing his glance back, and lightly tapping the Doctor's shoulder. ** Even you, the boasted practical man, were quite lost in poetical admiration of yonder golden mists." 8 THE SECRET ORCHARD " Oh, yes ! " grunted the other, sarcastically. " I could write a charming ode on the subjects of golden mists and agues ; also on the loveliness of chattering teeth and livid skins, I have a few patients among those haunts of poetry. As to the famous Fitzroys of old, their terrace," he went on, warming to his grumble, and bearing down an incipient attempt at interruption, " their terrace — I will say this for it — is high up, and that is good for our bodies at least. And it looks away from Paris — and that may be good for what you are pleased to call our souls." " What ! " cried the Canon, " do I live to hear reviled the Temple of Science, the home of advanced thought, the City of Light itself? I thought it was reserved for narrow-minded individuals of my con- viction to find fault with Babylon. . . . Ah, the terrible Babylon! . . . And yet, when I gaze forth upon her far away in the distance from my window, I see the spires and towers of her churches pierce heavenwards through the mist of her smoke, and I take heart of grace again." " Well, Canon," said the Doctor, pushing back his chair noisily, rising and driving his hands into his waistcoat pockets, " whenever I look out in the direction of Paris, I see the elegant contour of the Eiffel Tower. It dominates your little spires, my poor friend, it thrusts its skeleton into the very clouds. Try and get a glimpse of the city, east, west, north, or south, without that monument of modern science jumping into your eye — I defy you." " My friend," said the Canon, mildly, " the towers THE SECRET ORCHARD 9 ofNotre-Dame these eight centuries have seen the rise and fall of many false gods — the Church will save France yet." " Pooh ! If there were a few more like you, I '11 not say but what a score of honest, wholesome men might at least improve matters. But your comrades over yonder." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and made a contemptuous grimace. Then, throwing himself into his favourite attitude, with legs well apart, he turned truculently upon his companion — "Now, what brings you here, I should like to know? This is not the begging hour." " Indeed," returned the other, " you do well to remind me of the hour. I must see the Duchess at once." He turned with some appearance of haste towards the house, but the Doctor irreverently arrested him by a fold of his cassock. " Hey, hey," cried he, " not so fast ! Where are you off to? The Duchess is coming. Lord, what youthful paces all of a sudden, my good fellow ! Is not patience one of the canonical virtues? And besides," dropping his jeering note to one of semi- serious warning, " remember, if you please, that I am first at the box-office. Fall in in rear, my friend." Thus adjured, the Canon turned with his unalter- able placidity, and letting himself subside into a wicker chair, rested his elbows on the arms, joined the tips of his fingers and smiled upon his friend. "So she is coming? " said he. " Then I will wait lo THE SECRET ORCHARD • — and take my place in rear. Well, that is nothing new. That is where you would always place us, is it not? But the last shall be first, it hath been said. ..." The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, and took a turn or two along the blazing geranium border, kick- ing up the gravel as he paced with the toes of his vast wrinkled shoes. At the third turn he halted before the Canon, and bent down to look at him quizzically. " Oh, my good Canon," cried he, in tones of rough affection, "your precious mother, the Church, can flatter herself to have spoilt in you the making of a very fine — man ! " The Canon raised long drooping lids. "Oh, my dear Doctor," he cooed back, " the World, the Flesh, and the Devil can flatter themselves to have spoilt in you the making of a very fine — Christian. But," said the priest, comfortably, dropping his eyes again and crossing his feet, " there will be the greater rejoicing among the angels upon your conversion." The Doctor started and snorted. The cleric chuckled to himself in the renewed enjoyment of a most familiar joke. " Pooh," said the Doctor, blowing out his cheeks with ineffable scorn. " Sorry for those pet fowls of yours if that is their only prospect for a treat ! " There was a pause, and the gravel flew again un- der an irritable foot. Then both men furtively con- sulted their watches. The Doctor, wheeling round, caught the Canon in the act. THE SECRET ORCHARD ii " Come, come," said he. " What brings you here? I know ! You want that good woman there " — jerking his thumb at the balcony with his homely gesture — " to give more of her good money to cram some wretched infant's head full of spiders' webs about the next world, instead of bringing him up to be a useful member of this. Or some of those little mewed-up old maids of yours have sent you to beg for a new doll for their chapel. ..." Here the speaker interrupted himself by tripping against the overflowing work-basket in his restless bear-walk. He stooped, picked up between his finger and thumb a piece of satin vestment gorgeously worked with purple crosses, and surveyed it with great disgust. " Look at that now — just look at that! A pretty thing for a woman to be wasting her time upon whilst she might be making garments for the naked." Dr. Lebel here shook the offending object in front of the Canon's placid nose. " Look at it," he repeated. " It is the very symbol of your estate. Oh, it 's beautifully decorated, I grant you. It has taken time and trouble, and some intellect, to bring it to such perfection! But what is it for? That's what I say, what is the end of it? — God Almighty! " The little man furiously dashed the piece of work into the basket and all but snapped his fingers in derision. " You have said it," said the Canon. " The end is — God Almighty." His voice rose sonorously. He extended his right hand with one slow movement 12 THE SECRET ORCHARD in marked contrast to his interlocutor's ceaseless ges- ticulation, " We have an end," continued the Canon, "an immortal one. And this is where we differ from you. What is your end ! You will say with magni- ficence : Humanity. Humanity? In other words, Corruption, Death, and — according to your scientific creed — Annihilation." The Doctor stared with goggling, angry eyes through his spectacles and turned several scathing but chaotic retorts upon an eager tongue. The other smiled, and reaching out his arms, drew the work- basket to him. " Besides," pursued he, gently, " may not our friend embroider a pretty thing now and again, were it only as a relaxation, after such work as this? " As he spoke he produced from the recesses of the basket a knitted mass of coarse crimson wool and shook it out: a petticoat complete, of vast and hideous proportions, but a most comfortable promise of warmth. The Doctor still glared. Then he suddenly snatched the garment from the Canon and began to roll it up with almost infantile glee. " Aha ! " cried he. " Did you there, at least, my friend ! This is for my old lady with the sciatica." The deeper note of the cleric's indulgent laughter mingled with the layman's cachinnations. •' Doctor, Doctor," cried the Canon, shaking a prophetic finger, "we shall see you on your knees yet." CHAPTER II AT the top of the steps leading into the house, framed in the darkness of the open doorway, stood the Duchess of Cluny, clad in white. Shading her eyes from the level sun-rays, she looked smilingly down upon the friendly belligerents. A large tan-coloured hound bounded past her, careered out upon the terrace, circled in a large sweeping canter round the gossips and returned to thrust his head under his mistress's hand. Both men started, with a look of pleasure on their faces. " There she comes," said the Canon, rising. " At last ! " said the Doctor, as he swept his panama from his bristling grey head. The Duchess came down towards them, walking rather quickly, and stretching out both her hands. The sunshine lit with gold the waves of her brown hair as she advanced bareheaded into the still, soft, scented air. She was a tall woman, with a classic breadth of shoulder and length of limb, with proud set of head contradicted by a gentleness of gaze that was almost timid. The Duchess of Cluny (born Helen Church) was one of those rare flowers which, blossoming upon 14 THE SECRET ORCHARD the fine old Anglo-Saxon stock, seem, in the soil and air of the New World, to have drawn unto themselves a special perfection and vigour of beauty; one of these beings, rich in health, in strength, fortune, and looks, which America from time to time sends over to old Europe to revive some grand decaying race and fitly wear the coronet of some majestic title. There was nothing that betokened delicacy in the creamy pallor of her cheek. There was nothing of insipidity in the loveliness of her face, which was saved from the dulness of perfection by one or two charming irregularities : a deep dimple on one side of curving lips that were ever inclined to part in a sweet eager way over the most faultless teeth in all the world ; eyebrows perhaps a little too straight and thick, over child's eyes, deep grey, with pupils dilating darkly under the smallest emotion. Every year of the well-filled thirty-five of this woman's life had added its touch in dignity and in a motherly richness of figure and expression ; and yet, perhaps, the most noticeable thing about her counte- nance was an expression of almost girlish innocence. The two men who now advanced towards her both looked on her, after their different kind, as one looks upon the dearest on earth. " My good friends," she said, yielding her right hand to the Canon and the left to the Doctor. Then to the latter : " Ah," said she, " I see you have already been at my basket ! Now what do you want of me?" She released their fingers with a little friendly THE SECRET ORCHARD 15 shake, subsided into one of the wioker chairs, and folded her draperies round her. " Oh, you come at the right moment, you two," she went on, with a new note in her voice, Hke a joy-bell. "What could I refuse to any one now? Cluny is coming home — coming home to-day!" She looked from one to the other triumphantly. They were both very glad ; she saw that, and she was satisfied. She did not realise that their gladness was all because of hers. " I must not be selfish," she went on with a happy sigh. " What do you want? " Eagerly the Doctor drew a chair beside her. " Madam," said he, extending his stumpy fingers oratorically. " Indeed," began the Canon on the other side, with quite an unusual emphasis. " No, Doctor, no," said she, smiling, as they abruptly halted and contemplated each other with discontent; "the Church first." Hereupon the little man grew desperately sombre ; he pushed his spectacles back on his forehead, screwed up his eyes and wrung his nether lip be- tween an angry finger and thumb. A shade fell upon the Duchess's face. Looking earnestly at him: "Oh, is it as bad as that?" she cried. "Then, Canon, we must let him have his say first, for you know, when our Doctor plants his spectacles that way, it's a matter of life and death." " But I, too," urged the priest, with gentle authority, i6 THE SECRET ORCHARD " am here upon a matter of the most immediate importance." The Doctor exploded. " Oh, yes, of course — some hysterical washing-girl has worked herself into a vocation mania and requires an outfit, or something. Now, listen to me " The Canon of Marly lived under a chastened ordinance, but he too was human: it was not meet the Church should give way to the laity. The Duchess sat between the two estates with a placidity that showed her to be well accustomed to such scenes. Indeed, the smile with which she regarded them had something quaintly maternal in its indulgent patience. " It is a most pitiable case," entoned the priest in her ear, while, now fairly roused, the layman bellowed on the other side : "Bernard's girl " Then both mingled their accents of wrath and sorrow in the same words : " Poor little Rose — dying! — in an outhouse!" They stopped dead short, and glared. After a second their faces relaxed as if by magic ; with the same movement they clasped hands across the Duchess's knees. " Oh ! what an apostle lost to us ! " murmured the Canon, audibly, as he half turned away to hunt for his snuff-box in the folds of his cassock. " What a splendid fellow that might have been ! " growled Dr. Lebel. Helen had risen abruptly. " Stop ! " she cried, "let me understand. Why, you are both talking THE SECRET ORCHARD 17 about Rose, then. Did you say that Bernard's child, our little innocent Rose, has come back — ill?" " Alas ! " said the priest, " no longer innocent Rose. Ah, that Paris ! " sighed he. " Ah, yes, Paris ! " echoed the Doctor, and shook his fist in the direction of the east. Then, with un- abashed inconsequence, he went on, glowering upon the priest : " She has come back fearfully ill, that is what it is. And her pious, confession-going, fasting father has turned her out to die. Betrayed by one man, condemned by another. . , . for that 's the justice of well-organised society ! " "My God!" exclaimed Helen. "Betrayed, that child ! Doctor, you must believe in a God, if only for the punishment of such crimes. If Cluny were here, how his generous soul would flame ! And Bernard has cast her off ... oh ! that is cruel." Her lip quivered ; tears leaped to her eyes. But she was a woman whose pity was prompt to action. " She must be brought here. Here we can take care of her." She laid her hand on the Doctor's coat sleeve, and turned an imploring face over her shoulder towards the priest. " Oh, my good friends, hurry ! I would go with you, but she might be ashamed to see me — poor thing ! Stay ! I will send Blanchette: she has known her from a child." She moved swiftly towards the house as she spoke, followed by her satellites. " Yes," remarked the Doctor, looking with a fresh vindictiveness at his beloved enemy, " a negress, i8 THE SECRET ORCHARD there 's one comfort, will remain heathen at heart till her last breath." He broke into what was almost a trot in order to have the first voice in the preparations. But from the steps he turned again to jeer at the more digni- fied advance of the older man : " I thought you would have run to the prodigal, Canon. Now mark, I won't have her preached at; she is not in a state to bear it." The Church had the last word. "I only ask to come in," it said sedately, "where your science fails." CHAPTER III SEVERAL guests were expected that afternoon at Luciennes. On three several occasions the sun- lit, hitherto drowsy, courtyard had been filled with movement and clangour. The barouche, the stout prancing bays and the fat first coachman in person, in fact, the equipage of great occasions, to start early for Paris and bring back Madame la Marquise de Lormes, her son, Mon- sieur le Marquis and party from the family mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain ; the victoria to meet M. Favereau at four-ten, with the second coachman and the roans; English John to be at Rueil before five, with the Duke's own American trotter and the dog-cart, — such had been the orders of the Duchess. It was not often that such an influx was expected at the chateau, and the stately placid routine of the establishment was pleasantly fluttered. The hostess herself, immediately upon the speeding of her new charitable undertaking, had been moved into the unwonted fussiness of inspecting the guests' apartments for the second time. She had added certain pleasing volumes to the collection already awaiting M. Favereau near his consecrated corner 20 THE SECRET ORCHARD window; had placed a specially selected picture (of austere religious character) on the cabinet facing Madame la Marquise's canopied bed. In the apart- ment of the Marquis she had ordered the lighting of a small wood fire with a sudden recollection of that young nobleman's chilly propensities. Upon the other hand, in the room destined to the Marquise's eldest son, by a former marriage — the American sailor cousin, fresh from the great wave spaces and the salt breezes — she superintended the flinging open of both windows, the removal of super- fluous furniture as well as the laying bare of the cool parquet floor. In her husband's room she lingered, but found little to alter. Here the most divining care had already been expended. She moved a vase of his favourite monthly roses, only to replace them in their first position. A little while she gazed dreamily at the full length portrait of herself, Carolus Duran's most delicate masterpiece, the only picture on the simple and lofty panelled walls ; then gravely and anxiously she turned to contemplate the riper beauty imaged in the dressing-table mirror, caught the gleam of a white hair in the full wave upon her brow, and pulled it out. In yet another chamber did her steps linger. This was a little room opposite her own apartment, all white and rosy (colours of innocence and happi- ness), all muslin and lace, overlooking the rosiest, most smiling and most flowered corner of the gardens — a very bower, one would say, for some young THE SECRET ORCHARD 21 princess ! It was already known in Luciennes as ** Mademoiselle's room." For more than a fortnight its preparation had been the subject of the Duchess's constant preoccupation. The household, indeed, were considerably exercised in their minds concerning the identity of its future occupant, more especially as Madame Blanchette, who seemed to be her mistress's only confidant on the subject, had gratified her fellow- servants' curiosity no further than by the remark: " Missie want somethin' young about de house." Here Helen seemed to find a thousand little touches to add ; and only the grating sweep of the gilt iron gateway, followed by the crunching of wheels, aroused her from this work of supererogation to more immediate concerns. But the dreamy smile which it had called forth was still upon her lips as she descended the stairs in that inimitable swift ad- vance of hers which never betrayed hurry, to greet her first visitor, M. Jaques Favereau, a minister of France, her oldest friend in that land of her adoption. This was a tall, elderly, witty-looking man, with a grey beard clipped to a point, and a slight stoop from the neck emphasising the keen look of the short- sighted eyes behind a pince-nez. A distinguished- looking man with the red rosette of the Legion of Honour (in his case, it seemed, honour in the right place) peeping from the button-hole of his summer suit. A man of the world, who walked with easy tread between the assembled footmen into the great hall and swept his hat from his head upon sight of 22 THE SECRET ORCHARD his hostess with the affectionate gesture of one more than sure of his welcome. " So, there you are, Favereau," she said, halting upon the last two steps of the stairs and extending her hand, which he raised to his lips and retained for a moment; whereupon, descending to his level and laying her left hand over his own, she offered her forehead to his salute. Then, hanging on his arm, "Come outside," said she. "Oh, I have so many things to tell you ! " In the outer world the flight of another hour had deepened the gold of the lengthening sunrays, shot the distant mists with soft mauves and purples, and evoked from the dim leafy bowers of the gardens the evening voice of thrush and blackbird. "There is nothing in all the universe," said Favereau, sinking into a wicker lounge, " so comfort- able as my chair upon your terrace, Helen." " How good of you," she responded, as, settled among her cushions, she mechanically extended her hand for her work-basket, " to leave your great Paris, and your post at the helm, for our sleepy, quiet corner." " Good of me ! " he echoed, and laughed a little to himself. Then, dropping his glasses from his nose, and turning his short-sighted gaze upon her with a kind of tender relaxation that spread to all the muscles of his strung-up nervous face : " Why, my dear," he said, " you have re-established here a bit of our lost Eden. I turn my face towards it, from the turmoil yonder — turmoil indeed since the opening of this THE SECRET ORCHARD 23 exhibition — as an exile towards home. This place is my paradise." "It is odd that you should use the word," said the Duchess. And, dropping the glowing strip of satin upon her lap, she Hfted her hands to the laces upon her bosom. " That is just what Cluny said ! " She drew from its hiding-place a thin blue sheet of paper and smoothed it with loving touch. ** Listen : • I return home to-day. Home to my paradise.' Fancy, in a telegram ! Is he not a foolish boy? " She glanced up at her old friend as she spoke, with a pride of joy that was well-nigh virginal in its open simplicity. "And is not it good news for me? And are not you glad? " she pursued. " For, as I wrote to you, he did not think he could get back before another five days. It is a pity our estates are so much scattered," she went on with a little sigh. " Their administration calls him away so often. But I cannot wish him not to be a good landlord, can I ? " folding the telegram once more and replacing it absently. " Of course not," responded M. Favereau, gravely. And there fell a little silence. This the man presently broke, briskly calling Helen back from some far-off dream in which, upon the mysterious passionate hymning of the thrush, her thoughts had wandered. " You look very well, Helen," said he, " very well," " How could it be otherwise," she cried, " when Cluny is coming home? Home-coming makes up for all. Oh, I am well: you see, I am so happy! 24 THE SECRET ORCHARD Dear old Favereau," she went on, stretching out her hand to him, " I hardly like to talk about it ! One should have, I think, the modesty of one's happiness. But with you, you to whom, after all, we owe it, you who made us known to each other, I cannot have this reserve. You have seen for yourself! You know ! " Favereau gently laid her hand back upon her knee. " Yes," said he in an unemotional voice, " I know, I have seen." She did not seem to feel any lack in his manner ; her face, under the glow of her thoughts, had grown radiant. "Oh, Cluny is a man! " she cried. "You always laughed at me from my very childhood for my romantic dreams. You know how high I always placed my ideal of the man I could love. Ah I you can guess then what Cluny has been to me when I tell you, after all these years, that he has never once failed me, never once fallen from it. . . . Why do you look like that?" Favereau started slightly, determinedly swept from his face by a kind wrinkling smile the unconscious gravity, amounting almost to trouble, which had settled upon it. "I?" said he. "Oh, only for the old reason! You build too high, Helen, I have often warned you — too high for safety." "Ah!" cried she, with shining eyes, "if Cluny for all these years had not surrounded me with the most delicate, the most untiring love, I should have THE SECRET ORCHARD 25 to worship him now for his last act of goodness to me." Favereau clipped the fine bridge of his nose with his pince-nez once more and turned a quizzical inquisitive look upon her. " Indeed? And what," said he, " is this wonderful new proof of our Edward's goodness?" " That was one of the things I had to tell you." Here a shade of embarrassment overspread the eagerness of her countenance. She took up her neglected work and began to stitch with great vigour. After a few seconds she pursued hesitatingly: " It is rather a long story, and a sad one. And you do not like long stories. And you know you hate sad ones." " How now ! " cried he. " You have that sort of guilty look upon you that generally proclaims some more than usually outrageous St. Elizabeth of Hun- gary business." He laughed, but she put up her hands quickly, as if to ward off a blow. " Oh, don't say that," she exclaimed with a cry. " My dear child " " God took her husband from her," said Helen, in a sort of whisper, her lips trembling. "Oh, no, Favereau, indeed I am not a saint ! And indeed I don't want to be a saint ! Saints have such sad lives, and I am so happy ! " There was a short silence. M. Favereau, Minister of Public Worship and Education, took off his glasses, rubbed them between his finger and thumb and i6 THE SECRET ORCHARD cleared his throat. For a moment, it seemed, suitable words with which to continue the conversation failed him. Then he once more mentally shook himself. " Come, Helen," said he, " confession is good for the soul ! " She glanced at him quickly from her work : timid eyes were hers from under the queenly brow. " My old mentor," said she, " yes ! " CHAPTER IV "TTAVE you ever heard," said the Duchess, after J_ _f_ a pause, and once more placid, smoothing out the vestment upon her knee, " of a Madame Cora May?" M. Favereau jumped in his chair. " Cora May, hey . . . ? You don't mean the Cora May, la belle Cora, as they called her?" " I think there was only one," said Helen, gently, as she threaded a new strand of rose silk. Favereau sank back in his chair and began to gaze at the deepening blue sky with the air of one deter- mined to be surprised at nothing. "I have heard of the lady," he remarked at length. *' She is dead," said Helen, iij her grave voice of pity. Favereau still found interest in atmospheric con- templation, " I believe," said he, " that I did read some edify- ing obituary notices." Helen's needle halted in mid-air ; she gazed dream- ily out towards the gorgeous west. " Very few people," she observed into space, " knew that woman as I did." 28 THE SECRET ORCHARD Favereau gathered his long limbs together with a jerk. "Hein ! " he ejaculated. " I knew her heroic goodness," said the Duchess, looking steadily at him, with just a shade of severity. " Aha ! " said the man, clasping his hands over his knees and staring at her with a blank countenance. " Ah ! you may laugh if you like," she cried quickly. *'I?" interrupted he. "Laugh? Where do you see that?" Helen's cheek flushed. She had the sweetest blood in all the world, but it was prompt to rise. " I don't want to understand what you mean," she exclaimed indignantly. " I don't want to know into what folly, what misery the poor creature fell. She was impulsive, passionate. She was a desolate woman ; she became desperate." Favereau's eyes softened once again with a wonder- ful tenderness, as he gazed upon this most cherished child of happiness kindling in generous defence of an unfortunate sister. " But, Helen," said he, after a little pause, in his cool voice, "where co\x\d you have met Cora May ?" "Ah, not where you would have met her, sir! In poverty-stricken hovels, in sad hospital wards. . . . What that woman did, unknown to the world, in the ways of charity, passes all I can tell you." " So that was how you met," said Favereau, mus- ingly. He sank back into his seat; and closing his eyes, seemed to fall into a deep reverie. THE SECRET ORCHARD 29 Helen threw a glance at him as if of apology for her heat of speech, and took up her work again. The pause that fell, filled up by the dreamy song of the thrush and the rising scent of the geranium leaves, was a lengthy one. Twice or three times the Duchess attempted to break it, but hesitated upon the choice of the right word. At last, stitching very fast, and without glancing up, she remarked in an elaborately matter-of-fact manner : " The poor thing had a child." Favereau half opened one eye and closed it again. " Ah ! " commented he. " Listen, Favereau," said she, with a sudden plead- ing earnestness. "That mother had the courage to give up her little daughter before the babe could know her, lest any contamination should fall upon its innocence. The child has been brought up as an orphan, at some school in the provinces. The mother never allowed herself to see it, even as a stranger. Oh, am I not right in thinking that if there is atone- ment before Heaven, its gates were not shut to Cora May?" "Who knows?" said the man, dreamily, without opening his eyes. " You at least will, some day." " Her one thought then," pursued Helen, unheed- ing, "was her child. She had put by quite a little fortune for her." " I thought," he broke in again, still in the same manner, " she died penniless." " So she did, poor thing! She was too eager. It was through want that she herself had fallen: she <^ 30 THE SECRET ORCHARD wanted her child, since she could do no more for her, to be rich, to be safe ! She lost all at one stroke in I know not what speculation. And it killed her ! Now we had not met very often. We could not have had much in common, of course ; but we were attracted to each other, I think. She looked so unhappy ! " " That, of course, was sufficient to attract you ! " " I longed to help her, but she never spoke about herself. Only once, as we parted, she whispered into my ear, * Pray for me ! ' A few weeks ago I was amazed to receive a letter from her. She wrote that she was dying, and would I, of my charity, go and see her?" " And of course, of your charity, you went." "Of course," cried she; and, throwing to the winds all diplomatic preparation for her difficult avowal, proceeded eagerly : " Oh, Favereau, it was the saddest thing I have ever seen ! She was struck down in the very plenitude of life. In painfully drawn words, for she had hardly breath left to speak with, she told me of the child, of her own life. I held the poor creature's ice-cold hands, the chill of death was on her, but yet she blushed — blushed in her shame to the roots of her hair, wet already with the death-sweat. * In my desolation,' she said, 'the thought of you came to me like the vision of an angel. You are rich, you are powerful, and you are all goodness,* that is what she said, you know. She said to me : ' Of your charity, will you save my child?'" Favereau slowly opened both his eyes. " And of THE SECRET ORCHARD 31 your charity," said he, in the same lazy, cooing way, " you promised." " Of course," she echoed impatiently. Then, turning brightly upon her friend, " I got all the documents, then and there. I left her, I think, in peace." She paused, then flushing, " The little one," she pursued, "was born in spring, so she told me, and the young father and mother called her ' Gioja,' because of their happiness then." Divinely deep grew the scarlet on the Duchess's cheek, but she looked steadily at her friend. *' It was all very, very sad ; he, the young husband, died in May, and she in time fell into pro- found poverty, and then — and then it was she became known as Cora May . . . and had to give up her Gioja." Favereau was gazing straight before him. " Gio- ja ! " he repeated musingly, " Joy, the most evanes- cent, the most capricious of all human emotions — the folly of trying to perpetuate it in a poor little human monument!" After a moment Helen resumed simply: "The child comes home to-day." " The child comes home to-day ! " Favereau sprang to his feet with an inarticulate sound suggestive of sudden choking. "The child comes — home. My God, what mad- ness are you planning ! " As he rose, so did she, and turned and faced him in beautiful defiance, their eyes nearly on a level. " Ah, you men of the world," she cried, " that is always your cant phrase when any one has been 32 THE SECRET ORCHARD inspired to do some little deed of goodness out of the beaten track ! Thank heaven my Cluny is made of nobler stuff! " She caught both his hands, and shook them backwards and forwards to emphasise her words. " Favereau, before even I had time to explain my wish to Cluny, to tell him what I knew of the mother of the child herself, he forestalled me. ' You want to have the little one here,' he said ; ' very well, adopt her if you want to. We will give her a home, and when the time comes, we '11 find her a husband.' " " Pray, my dear Helen," said the Minister of Public Worship and Education, recovering his self-control, " release my hands and allow me to wipe the drops of consternation, which the very thought of your rashness has started on my brow. Oh, I am not in the least surprised at your husband's behaviour: that is Cluny all over — inconceivably light-minded ! However, it will not do either of you much harm, I dare say, to learn for yourselves that all your inspira- tions are not necessarily happy ones. After a few weeks* experimentalising with governesses, you will probably realise the inexpediency of turning Lu- ciennes into an orphan asylum. No doubt you will find some excellent school for the embarrassing child." The Duchess had dropped her mentor's hands as requested, and was now looking down at her own taper fingers. A cloud of embarrassment had dimmed her radiant confidence. "The child?" she said, with a laugh that strove THE SECRET ORCHARD 23 to be airy. " Unfortunately, my old Favereau, the child is — is eighteen." Upon hearing this culminating and crushing detail the gentleman's feelings became too deep for words. Casting on her one look of despair that was almost comic in its intensity, he turned away and began to pace the gravel with irritable steps. Helen looked after him, half laughing, half apolo- getic. Presently she ran up to his side. " And the little one is coming to-day ! " she cried, with a sort of child-like glee at having at last exposed the full extent of her mischief. " And Aunt Harriet is actually chaperoning her, and I have prepared such a little nest for her, poor bird ! And in fine, Faver- eau, my heart is so full that there is not room for a drop more. Oh, don't be hard on me, old friend ! " she cried, changing her note. " Folly is divine some- times. Can I not at least //^^ at being a mother? " The man stopped in his walk, laid his hands upon her shoulders, and looked down into her face with eyes at once fatherly, lover-like, and reverential. " Play at being a mother," he repeated. " Why, my dear, you are always playing the mother. Is there any one of us, even your husband, to whom you are not most unwearyingly, most divinely maternal ! " Then abruptly turning away : " But for all that," he said drily, " your plan is the most insane that even you ever plotted and even Cluny gaily abetted ! " CHAPTER V "TTULLO!" cried a high-pitched, slightly J[_ J_ nasal voice from the topmost of the house- steps. The Duchess glanced round, and her face lit up with merriment. "It is Nessie," said she. Favereau bowed profoundly in the direction of the new-comer, and waved a courteous hand. "I am indeed fortunate," said he, in easy English, "Hullo, I declare if there is not the Minister," cried the unmodulated tones. " How do you do ? " The little figure at the top of the steps waved in return a minute hand, fluttered a vaporous assort- ment of flounces, opened a large pink parasol and came forward towards them, tripping now and again in over-long skirts which were ruthlessly permitted to trail. From the crown of her little dark head, elabor- ately tired, to the tip of her high-heeled, pointed shoe, miraculously small ; in every line of the dusky face, wittily irregular, delicately pretty; in every line of the slim lithe figure, Nessie Rodriguez pro- claimed herself American — American of the class of bewitching New-World women who, looking upon Paris as their paradise, are determined to take their THE SECRET ORCHARD ^^ share of bliss here below and make sure that their garb shall never be unworthy of the beatific state. With a final trip that threatened to destroy whole yards of wonderful fal-lals the little lady halted, ex- tended the minute hand blazing with rings to Favereau's mock, rapturous salutation, while she herself bestowed a bird-like dart and chirrup in the direction of the Duchess's left temple. "Now, Helen, what do you think of my new gown As she spoke Madame Rodriguez shook out her skirts; and there seemed to be a ruffling and flutter- ing of feathers, followed by shapely subsidence. " Paquin says," she twittered, "they must be an inch on the ground all round. How is one to walk, I should like to know.-* You are a man of taste, Mister Minister. (It 's really delightful to see you!) What's your candid opinion on the new fashion .-^ It is kind of silly, don't you think, to make people forget you have a foot ? " She chose her chair, taking possession with an- other inimitable whisk of draperies and an arrange- ment of limbs which brought into proper notice the swing of the miraculous shoe. Favereau, his humourous face wrinkled with amusement, bent slightly to examine through his eyeglass the arch of embroidered kid. "Could any man," he sighed, "forget that you had a foot, Madame } " Nessie lifted her toes within the range of her vision with a slight kick. S6 THE SECRET ORCHARD "I wonder," said she, "if that 's a compliment?" Bubbling with amusement, she shot a confidential glance at Helen, upon which her countenance sud- denly changed. With lowered feet and raised head she turned sharply upon her friend. "What's happened to you, Helen? You've got another face since this morning." The light that only one thought had the power to evoke shone in the Duchess's eyes and smile. Her hand sought with unconscious caress the hidden telegram. "I have had news," she said. Nessie gave a little snort. "You don't mean to say the Duke has sent you another letter? " "No; a telegram. He is coming back — this afternoon." The sunshine of her joy so flooded this happy wife that even her familiar companion's ready tongue had to wait a moment on staring eyes. "Well, I do declare!" she burst forth at last with the shrillest note of her high gamut. " Look at her, Monsieur Favereau ! I always said Helen had a lovely character. What other woman now would wear a face like that, just because her husband 's coming home? And such a gown ! My! for a hus- band! Now I have dressed smartly too; but that 's because of the American sailor cousin — one of the heroes of Santiago, you know — the new beau." "An encouraging remark," said Favereau, in his gentle bass, "to make before — " " The old beau ? " interrupted Nessie, with a de- THE SECRET ORCHARD 37 lighted cackle. She tapped his shirt-cuff with her little jewelled finger, took a necessary breath, and started afresh. "Well, Helen 's a real saint, isn't she? Now, what do you say? " "I say," answered Favereau, drily, "that if Cluny is not a real saint, he ought to be." The Duchess looked up from her work, and shot an amazed look at the man's countenance, — a coun- tenance that was as superficially expressive as it was fundamentally secretive. She drew her brows together; her eager lips trembled over a rush of words, but the arrival in procession of what the majordomo presently announced as "le five o'clock" checked further intimate speech. Nessie fell upon the cakes with an appreciation which for the moment necessitated her undivided attention. Favereau remained standing in the atti- tude in which he had risen to receive his cup from Helen's hand. Absently stirring the three lumps of sugar in the uncreamed mixture (his hostess knew to a nicety, and never forgot, the individual tastes of her friends), he watched the Duchess's face with an ever-gathering gravity. Round and round went the little Russian enam- elled spoon in the yellow Russian tea, though the sugar was long since dissolved ; round and round went his anxious thought, and to as useless a purpose. " So serene, so tmtroitbled, so tmtouched, so steadfast in all else, yet here so vulnerable, that even to question 38 THE SECRET ORCHARD in jest the perfection of her idol suffices to bring this shade tipon her face ! Ah me! Angel, saint to all the world — woman, more tenderly woman than most to the man her husband ! God gnard ns I — and I wJio made the marriage to give her Jiappiitess, out of my own poor heart !'^ "Yes, my dear," resumed Nessie, brandishing a slice of walnut cake in the direction of the Duchess's bent head and resuming the original thread of her discourse, "you 're just too good for this world, that 's a fact ! " Helen looked up. "Do you want to make out," said she, with a little laugh, "that there is any merit in my loving Cluny? Oh, I am afraid the path of sanctity is steeper ! " Madame Rodriguez, who out of her slice had bitten a semicircle that bore unimpeachable witness to the perfection of her small teeth, here cried indis- tinctly, but with the greatest earnestness — "Don't you try to climb any higher, my dear. No, don't you try! Men do not like to be made to live always on the heights, do they, Monsieur Favereau ? " Favereau swallowed his tea-syrup, and deposited the cup before answering. Then, drily — "In great altitudes," he answered, "the atmos- phere is perhaps rather too rarefied for ordinary lungs to breathe with comfort." "That's so. As for me," proceeded Nessie, "I always feel a kind of mountain-sickness coming THE SECRET ORCHARD 39 over me when I have been a week in the house alone with Helen." The Duchess looked from one to the other of her friends. "I don't think I quite know what you mean," she said, flushing. "We mean well to you, my dear," cried the shrill mentor, and fell to emphatic speech, pointed by the most warning gesticulation of absurd hands. "We all know that you are an angel, and a saint, and have a halo growing somewhere round your head, and we know that the nearer the sky you are, the more at home you feel. But husbands — husbands, my dear, are mere human beings. If one wants to live with them happily, one must come down from one's heights." "In fact," interrupted Helen, with a still deepen- ing colour, "every woman must bring herself down to a lower level if she would please her husband. Is that your advice, Nessie, and is it — based on experience } " Hardly had the words escaped her lips than she repented her, and stretched out a tender hand of apology to Madame Rodriguez. But that lady was of no such susceptible fibre. "Mercy!" she cried. "Experience.'' No! I'd have been mud up to my chin by this time if I 'd tried to live down to Rodriguez. One need not go after them into the swamps." "Madame Rodriguez is a philosopher," said Favereau, beginning to choose a cigarette after a 40 THE SECRET ORCHARD dumb show of demand for permission. " Yes, there are middle distances. Those are the safest. Com- promises for us all." The Duchess flamed again with that quick, sweet passion of hers that was kindled only by a too sensi- tive generosity. " Compromise ! " cried she. " I hate the word. I hate the idea. What does it mean ? Being false to one's best possibility. Slipping in between the wall and one's honour. A cloak to disguise treason, a kiss to cover a betrayal ! " Favereau looked at her kindling face with his sad, wise eyes. "Compromise," he said, "my dear lady, is the cardinal condition of life's tenure. It is the safety- valve of social existence; the first lesson to be taught the child, the last consolation of the old man." "I will have none of it," said the Duchess. "I would never be content with half an honour, half a love, half a happiness — I think I would as soon do nothing as only half my best. And so would Cluny," she added, after a short pause. " He is one who would as soon lose honesty itself as the delicacy of truth." M. Favereau brushed an imperceptible ash from his immaculate grey knee. Madame Rodriguez's bright eyes, after vainly endeavouring to catch his dreamy glance, became suddenly suffused. She sprang to her feet, and, fluttering to the back of her friend's chair, caught her impulsively round the neck. THE SECRET ORCHARD 41 " She 's too good for this world ! " she repeated then, shooting the words at Favereau over the pretty bronze hair and squeezing the white throat with her hands. "How in this universe you ever came to take up with an earthy little worm like me, well, it just beats me! But, after all, it's just because you are ^foit ! Just to think, Monsieur Favereau : I was a poor, unhappy little girl at school, — yes, I was, Helen, you know I was, — always in disgrace, snubbed by the grand French girls (because my pappa had made his own pile instead of finding it ready made), sent to Coventry by my own compa- triots because of the crimp in my hair! Why, the poor dears, pappa and mamma, would insist on sending me to that convent, the Lord only knows ! They 'd set their hearts on seeing me in the beau monde, you see. And then Helen here, Helen, this blessed duck — yes, you are, Helen, and you always were" — with fresh pressure from the girdle of vehement hands, "Helen, the pride of the place, brought up by the greatest lady of the whole Fau- bourg St. Germain — my ! how that terrible old aunt of yours, my dear, used to wither me through her eye-glass! (she was just American enough, you see, to scorn me twice over) Helen, the biggest heiress in Paris, sprig of the real old Virginia stock, she just took me up and floated me right off. That 's Helen's way!" "Dear Nessie," said the Duchess, pulling down the embracing hands and tilting her head back in the endeavour to stop the chattering mouth with a 42 THE SECRET ORCHARD kiss, "don't forget that, when our good Favereau brought us boxes of chocolate in those dear old days, if he had one for me, he always had one for you ; and that you were as fond of holding forth to him upon my virtues then as you are now." " Oh, bless you, it does not bore him now any more than it did then. They were dear old days, Helen. I can smell the convent smell this minute: incense and beeswax and whitewash, and the smoke of the little lamps. Oh dear!" She sniffed the flower-laden atmosphere and closed her eyes upon blue sky and sunshine. ** Oh dear ! " echoed the Duchess, laughing with the tender regret which the most prosperous must fain bestow upon the pathetically innocent memories of youth. And, in company with her friend, she flew back in spirit to the past. " I can see the long convent room still — can't you .-' And the great long windows, and the one green tree." "Oh, and do you remem.ber," cried Nessie, with her delighted cackle, opening her eyes once more, "do you remember the day Sister Angelique caught you giving Favereau a kiss for his chocolates .-' Oh my ! how shocked she was. And you said, in excuse, you had always done it. Ha, ha, ha! You never knew, did you, Monsieur Favereau .-^ You never thought of noticing whether a little girl kissed you or not.? But she cried three whole nights after your next visit because she was afraid you would think she had ceased to love you. " "I remember, I remember," said Helen, smiling, THE SECRET ORCHARD 43 as with half-closed eyes she dreamily swung in the rocking-chair. "Lord, it's not likely you 'd remember," said Nessie to Favereau. Favereau glanced at her, and she stopped short. For in those sad eyes the whole tragic secret of the man's life lay suddenly revealed to her woman's wit. Her brain seized upon fact, and eliminated precon- ceived ideas with the rapidity of which only a woman is capable. "What!" went her whirling thought, "he had loved Helen.? Always, even as a child.? This old Favereau! Pshaw! he was not old — but a little over fifty now. And he had not forgotten the last time that Helen kissed him. No, he had not for- gotten it. Ah, my God, what a look ! " The tears again rapidly rushed to Nessie's eye- lashes. To cover her emotion, her embarrassment, to keep Helen from a hint of her kind friend's pain — with the same feminine instinct that would have led her to bind up a wound — she plunged wildly into discourse again, vainly endeavouring the while to find her pocket-handkerchief among the folds of her ingenious robes. "Well, that's Helen's way, anyhow, as I said. And she's stuck to me ever since, you bet. And when I go and make a fool of myself and marry that Rodriguez, and he treats me like a brute, and deserts me, and keeps popping up, pestering me for my money, I declare, if it wasn't for Helen, I'd go crazy. " 44 THE SECRET ORCHARD She sniffed, wheeled violently round upon her- self, and stamped her foot. "Oh! where do they put one's pockets in these new skirts? " Having, after diverse contortions, extracted a square of cambric, the minute proportions of which were chiefly occupied by a monogram, a coronet and an arabesque of embroidery, the ill-used wife rubbed her eyes perfunctorily, shook out her skirts, returned to her seat, requested another cup of tea, and dis- posed of it reflectively. Then, interrupting the con- versation which had begun between Helen and Favereau — pleasant, desultory talk of two old friends, interesting only to those engaged, where a word conveys a whole train of meaning, and a look can finish a phrase — Madame Rodriguez delivered herself of the following important pronouncement. "It is quite a pretty gown, Helen; the stuff is lovely, and the lace is lovely, and you look lovely in it. But, my dear, where did you get it? " Helen looked down complacently at her creamy draperies. "There's a young widow in St. Michel," she began, when, with a shriek, the little lady broke in: "I knew it, I knew it! Now, look here, isn't it too bad ? My ! what 's the good of being a Duchess? Now, Helen, I am not joking. Listen, Monsieur Favereau, it 's very serious. This sort of thing can- not go on. This shutting herself up; this turning her house into a convent, all prayers and good works; this constant talking of horrid poor people, THE SECRET ORCHARD 45 this adopting of mysterious orphans — you 've heard of the orphan, I suppose? — and, and" — her little pipe nearly breaking in its shrill rise of pitch — " and this getting of her clothes in the village ! " There was a dramatic pause. Helen laughed, and lay back in her rocking-chair, reaching for her work. Favereau, the picture of judicial gravity, blew en- trancing smoke-rings. "Now, Helen," proceeded her friend, with ever- increasing earnestness, "that Duke of yours is always going off by himself." She paused again, impres- sively. "My dear," said the Duchess, with her smile of absolute content, " if he leaves home it is because his duties require him elsewhere." Favereau carefully knocked the ash of his cigar- ette with his little finger, and indifferently surveyed, one after the other, his long thin feet in their per- fect tan clothing. Thus he naturally failed to answer the comfortable look of amusement Helen darted at him; her mute, good-natured: " Is n't she absurd .'' " "Well," cried Nessie, waxing ever more earnest under the stress of excitement, " I guess if that man were mine, I 'd never let him out of my sight." She rapped the tea-table as she spoke and started a hundred clinks and jingles. But the Lady of Luciennes, unmoved, planted a stitch, and the Min- ister of Public Worship and Education apparently became absorbed in mentally debating the propriety of another cigarette. It is always trying to feel how 46 THE SECRET ORCHARD good proffered advice is, and how utterly it is wasted; quavers of irritability betrayed themselves in Madame Nessie's next chirp. " You would buy all Doucet, my dear (Doucet 's your style, Paquin 's mine), if you had two sous' worth of sense. And you would go with your hus- band to all the shooting-parties and all the races, the yachting and " "But, you see," interrupted Helen, " Cluny does not happen to care for races, you ridiculous child." Nessie clapped her hands. " Oh, my ! " she cried, with an indescribable blend of pity, experience, su- periority, and exasperation. Favereau closed his cigarette-case with a click, and leaning forward and looking intently at the last speaker with his contracted, short-sighted eyes, cried warningly — " Madame Rodriguez, I would not frighten you for the world, but there is a wasp just behind your left ear." Nessie sprang to her feet. Forgotten was every- thing but the hideous immediate danger. She beat the air with her useless scraps of hands, rent it with her very effective voice. The Duchess had to rise and help and soothe. Favereau was fain to seek for the invisible insect with the help of his eyeglass. "It is gone, Nessie," said the Duchess. "You forgot," said she, rebukingly, to Favereau, "how terrified she has always been of wasps." "I did not forget," he answered quietly. "For- give me, Madame Rodriguez, it was the only thing THE SECRET ORCHARD 47 to do : the sting once given — " He paused signifi- cantly. Fluttering Nessie became still all of a sudden. Her small face grew solemn. She shot a glance at Favereau, flushed, then saying, "Thank you," in a subdued voice, sat down with quite unwonted meekness. During the short pause which naturally succeeded the agitation, there rose in the distance a whirring sound of wheels. " Hark ! " cried Helen. The pleasant murmur grew louder, with the unmistakable accent of approach. "Cluny! itisCluny!" She turned from them with the lightness of a girl, ran the length of the terrace, and was up the steps before even her volatile friend had time to exclaim. "My!" said that lady, after a while. "Now, Monsieur Favereau ? " Thus challenged, he met her questioning eyes. " Well.^ " said she again, and tapped her foot. "Well, Madame.?" " What 's your opinion — your real opinion ? " Favereau clasped his long fingers behind his back, and took a musing pace or two. "You cannot," said he, smiling then upon her in his charming way, "get the Ethiopian to change his swarthy skin, nor a woman like Helen to change her white singleness of soul. Moreover, Madame 48 THE SECRET ORCHARD Rodriguez, I am not sure that any change would be for the better." "Oh, come!" cried she, indignantly. "Sir, I know, you know. " "Madame," he said, halting before her, and raised one hand with a certain rare gesture of com- mand that was distinctly impressive, "pray under- stand I know nothing." CHAPTER VI THE worthlessness of the Stuart has been dem- onstrated to us by every impartial historian. Recent discoveries, we are told, will shortly place before the world the true Mary Stuart in all her falseness and depravity, while ruthless pens have long ago scratched away the last shred of per- sonal worth, consistency and manly honour from the pathetic figure of the Martyr-King; the best that honest English Thackeray can say for the second Charles is that he was not a royal "snob" like his grandfather; the very name of the second James is still tantamount to execration. But fact and judgment work in vain. There will ever hang about the dethroned race a scent of romance more exquisite, memories of devotion more delicate, than any other house has yet called forth. It is not that the breed was worthier; this has been but too amply proved. It is not, either, that it has been more unfortunate : we have invested the story of that Bourbon who laid a more deserving, a more innocent head upon the block than did our con- stitutionally decapitated king, with no such glamour. Other royal rulers have been deposed, disinherited, 4 50 THE SECRET ORCHARD exiled; but yet their name is connected with no poetic love such as that which the single word, Stuart, has still the power to evoke. Their per- sonal charm must have been something irresistible. Perhaps it was from his direct ancestor, James Stuart, that Charles-Edward Fitz-Roy, Duke of Cluny, inherited the peculiar fascination that made him an object of universal popularity, amounting in his own immediate circle to a kind of adoration. "The king can do no wrong." Was it for a Stuart that this convenient aphorism was first coined.? The Duke of Cluny was once described as one to whom it was possible to forgive everything. Per- haps if an attempt might be made to analyse any- thing so essentially elusive as "charm," a clearer idea of his personality might be given by the state- ment that, in connection with him, right and wrong seemed to lose their everyday meaning: whatever he did became him. I doubt whether, as a saint, he would have proved half as lovable as a sinner. Withal, his sins were those the world most readily condones — those which seem to spring from an excess of generous natural qualities: open-handed- ness, good fellowship, reckless high spirits, delight- ful contempt of consequences, thorough appreciation of women, wit, and wine. Something there was of the melancholy of the doomed Stuart about this last of their sons (but nothing, his friends averred, of Stuart meanness and falseness) ; much, too, was there of their integral dignity. No one would have ever taken a liberty THE SECRET ORCHARD 51 with the Duke of Cluny, good companion as he was. At very first sight of him, it was impossible to mis- take the distinctive type of beauty belonging to his lineage. The fine line of eyebrow curiously raised over the long lid, and its pathetic droop at each temple; the long full eye; the high delicate nose with its indefinable suggestion of scorn and the extraordinary sensitiveness of its thin nostrils; the grave mouth, with the delusive smile given by the light upturned moustache; the slender, beautiful hands — all this is familiar to our admiration from Vandyck's magic portraits and helps us to under- stand something of the personal power of the race. But what no brush could convey, what no pen at- tempt to describe, was the exquisite lighting up of the living face; above all, the extraordinary sweet- ness of the smile. Jaques Favereau, nursing a dull fire of wrath in his heart against this profligate child of fortune, and Nessie Rodriguez, full of that wholesale condemna- tion (which, in a small and inconsequent mind, is so often the only alternative to correspondingly whole- sale admiration), felt, each in their different man- ner, all adverse feelings dispelled by the first sound of the Duke of Cluny's voice. Perhaps not the least of this Cluny's attraction dwelt in his voice: the most persuasive, the most sweet-sounding organ that ever man was gifted with ; never raised inharmoniously above its pitch, it 52 THE SECRET ORCHARD seemed impossible to comiect its accents with a vulgar or sordid emotion. The master of the house smilingly advanced to meet his guests. To his arm clung Helen. It was characteristic of her that she made no attempt to disguise the absorbing joy that the mere presence of her husband brought to her. "Madame," said Cluny, bowing over Nessie's eagerly extended fingers, " it is always a fresh pleas- ure to see you." He stepped back and cast a single comprehensive glance over the little figure. "Never the same," added he, "and ever more charming ! " Delighted, she knew that Paquin's ''dernier cri" had not been wasted here. Then the Duke turned to shake Favereau's hand. "I am glad," he said. And he was glad. There could be no mistaking the warmth in voice and eye and grasp. And Favereau felt the last of his resent- ment die away. "To the devil with this scamp that will not even let one be angry with him ! " he cried impatiently in his heart. "We never expected you," Nessie was piping. "A delightful surprise — oh, King of Jack-in-the- boxes!" All the while she was settling a frill here and a bow there with entire" self-satisfaction. The Duke of Cluny turned his eyes, brightly happy under their melancholy lids, upon his wife. "Ah! you see how it is, I could not keep away THE SECRET ORCHARD S3 any longer. The further we are separated, the longer we are apart," said he, laying his hand for a second upon the gentle one that clasped his sleeve, "the tighter grow the cords that bind me; till there comes the time when, faith ! the tension grows so painful that I must fain come home." Nessie stared at the speaker, enthralled by the magic of his voice and manner. A little dry cough from Favereau made her start perceptibly. She seemed to give herself a sort of mental shake, ruffling at the same time her fine feathers after her peculiar fashion. "Well, yes," she responded, with a sudden acces- sion of tartness, " when a man has got a wife like that at home, home is about the best place for him." She flounced back into her chair as she spoke, an action which became a signal for the others to take seats likewise. "How right you are," answered Cluny. So say- ing, he turned his wife's rocking-chair to the proper angle, and, in answer to the unconscious appeal of her eyes, installed himself upon the balustrade by her side. " Yet she has a fault, perfect as she is — a great fault in a wife : she makes absence so hard to bear." Helen blushed rosily, like a girl. The Duke tilted his straw hat to the back of his head and gazed across the garden slopes towards the ever-deepening west. Between him and the sky, in the absolute stillness, the opal smoke of the hamlets 54 THE SECRET ORCHARD below rose straight and slow ; about the garden swards the swallows flew with mad darts and inter- secting swoops. A bell, sweetened by cool distance, rang the Angelus with innocent village note. Some nearer sentinel took up the call, and the next moment the old deep tone of the chapel bell rang out the hour and warning within Luciennes itself. In the hush Cluny heaved a long, sighing breath, — the sigh of a man who gratefully draws into himself freshness and wholesomeness and peace. He glanced down at his wife's bent head: as simply as the simplest child in the village below, Helen, at the call of the bell, was praying to herself. And as he looked at her he bared his head. Then he went on with his train of thought, speaking softly to the last echo of the dying chimes — " When a man leaves a wife like Helen, he carries off with him a holy image, before which his little light is always burning, after the fashion of those good friends of ours, the pious Russians, you know. And it seems to him, as each hour passes away, that the colours of his Sainte Image grow more glowing, more beautiful, more adorable. Yet when he returns home the image is nothing — nothing to the reality ! " He paused, took his wife's hand, impulsively ex- tended towards him, and kissed it, adding dreamily, as if into space, "That is how it will be, I suppose, when the believer gains his heaven." The Duke's poetic sentiments, as well as the accents in which they were delivered, were in as perfect harmony with the hour and the scene as the THE SECRET ORCHARD 55 tender serenade of the blackbird to the receding sun from the orchard below. But it must be confessed that Nessie's sudden explosion of admiration was notably the reverse. " There ! " she exclaimed. " I call that just lovely ! I do believe if Rodriguez had ever made me one sin- gle speech like that, I should have forgiven him everything — everything ! " Favereau looked at the absurdly piquante face, the absurdly fashionable figure of the diminutive lady who yearned to pose as a Sainte Image, and broke into the first hearty laugh he had given that day. She, always charmed to promote mirth, joined in with her cackle, and the sunset spell was irre- trievably broken. Here a new sound of wheels without, accompanied by the comfortable solid trot of a pair of well-trained "family-carriage" horses, brought both hostess and guests to their feet. Tripping as usual over her gown, Madame Rodri- guez was the first to reach the angle of the terrace from whence the sweep of the entrance avenue could be overlooked. "It's the hero," she cried, all eagerness, after vainly peering into the green below. " You know all about him, I dare say," she called over her shoul- der to Favereau. " We are just bursting with pride over his exploits, we Americans. (I suppose he 's heard of Santiago, Helen.'' One never knows with French people — they don't seem to kind of realise there 's much of a world outside France). Oh, S6 THE SECRET ORCHARD here they are ! There 's a puce parasol : that 's your cat-of-an-aunt — I beg pardon, Helen, Madame la Marquise de Lormes. And there's another hat — a white straw mushroom. Oh, of course, that 's the little innocent, the mysterious orphan. But where 's my hero? " "That 's my child," said Helen, and shot a glance of gay defiance at Favereau. The Duke straightened himself from bending over the balustrade, ran his fingers through his crisp hair, and whistled softly to himself with a look of comical, good-humoured consternation. "Faith," he said in an undertone to Favereau, "I had forgotten all about the orphan — what 's her name? Faith, I doubt if I ever knew the name! Well, it amuses Helen. Wiiat is it, my dear?" for his wife stood beside him, her hand on his coat- sleeve. " Are you not coming to welcome our guests, Cluny?" He glanced over the parapet. " Ces vtessieurs are evidently walking," he observed, "and, that being the case, Favereau and I will leave you to your first feminine expansion, — those embraces which our masculine awkwardness would inevitably hamper! A tajitot." She moved from him regretfully. "I 'm coming, Helen," cried Madame Rodriguez, frankly bunching her inconvenient skirts and running after her tall friend as fast as her high heels would let her. THE SECRET ORCHARD 57 When he had watched her out of sight, Cluny fell into his wife's rocking-chair and lit a cigarette. "Let us enjoy things for a few minutes more," said he. " How perfect it would have been if it were not for what Madame Nessie calls ' that old cat-of-an-aunt ' and the rest of them ! " He gave a little sigh. " What a pity that this carriage-load should break in upon us ! I must be growing old, I think, for I don't feel any enthusiasm even to make the acquaintance of the American. It seems he 's a fine fellow though, and has been entrusted by his Government with weighty business in this Exhi- bition. As for Cousin Totol, I confess the youth's hoary wickedness has ceased to make me smile. And the orphan. Oh, one knows the orphan by heart already ! ' Oui, Monsieur. . . . Non, Mon- sieur.' Well, poor little soul, she can't be much in the way, and, as I say, it amuses Helen." CHAPTER VII FAVEREAU, absorbed in thought, his hands loosely clasped behind his back, his head bent forward on his breast, was pacing slowly up and down in the red sunset glow, A look of fatigue had fallen upon his face. It was as if some inner light had become quenched upon Helen's withdrawal. He seemed to pay no heed to Cluny's discourse. But, with the placid egoism of easy friendship, the latter proceeded, raising his voice and speaking a little more emphatically, the while he luxuriously rocked himself and stretched long legs before him and long arms above his head : " There 's not another woman like her on the face of this earth! Oh, this coming home to her, the restfulness of it, the sweetness ! And never banale, mon cJier, no more than good white bread, or a clear water spring, or the large blue sky itself can become banal!" M. Favereau halted in front of the swinging-chair, and turned for a moment his abstracted gaze upon its self-complacent occupant, then he resumed his slow, reflective tramp. THE SECRET ORCHARD 59 "You made our marriage, dear old friend," con- tinued the Duke, tenderly, " but it is no use trying to thank you." The other walked to the end of the terrace, re- turned, drew a chair close, and sat down. "Yes," he said; "I made this marriage, and I don't want you to thank me." Both his tone and movements were so heavy, so unlike the man, that, with a shade of surprise, Cluny stopped his rocking, threw away his cigarette and half sat up to examine his friend's countenance. Favereau returned the look with a long, searching gaze. "Edward," said he, then, "those were very pretty phrases you made to, and about, your wife just now." " Phrases } I made no phrases. I spoke from my heart," answered Cluny, after a slight pause. Again Favereau 's eyes scanned the face before him with a long look. Then he gave a deep sigh. "I believe you are speaking the truth. I have no doubt," he said, "that you are very glad to come back to Helen. But, does it not strike you that, for a man so conscious of his wedded felicity, your absences are strangely frequent and prolonged } Are you not afraid that it may one day dawn upon Helen that these are not always occasioned by your high sense of territorial responsibility and social duties.-* For that is, I understand, the official explanation." There was a complete cessation of all movement from the rocking-chair. The Duke seemed struck 6o THE SECRET ORCHARD into as profound a meditation as the speaker had been a little while before. Even in the rosy light his countenance seemed to grow pale under its tan. But there was not a shade of hesitation in the frank- ness of his glance; not a shade of embarrassment in his manner when, at length, looking fully at Favereau, he answered him. The words, however, came slowly, with deep earnestness and emphasis. "I can conceive," he said, "no greater misfortune than that Helen's peace of mind should ever be dis- turbed through me. I would do anything in the world to avert that." Silence fell again. With an abrupt change of manner, the Duke lay back in his chair, resumed his oscillation and began to roll another cigarette. Having thrown away his match and blown a cloud of delicate smoke, the world was once more illu- mined by his charming smile. "Bless her," he said, "she would not believe an angel from heaven were he to try to shake her faith in me!" Favereau rose stiffly from his seat, his face sud- denly drawn with anger. The sturdy iron chair trembled under the weight and tension of his hand. "And this," he said, almost in a whisper, "this is the confidence you deliberately abuse ! Edward, you are a baser man even than I thought you." He turned away as he spoke and walked to the end of the terrace with a dragging step, shrinking into himself as he went. His back now looked like that of an old man. THE SECRET ORCHARD 6i Cluny sat, staring after him with a blank look that was almost comical; then he sprang up and, hurriedly overtaking the retreating figure, flung both arms boyishly over its shoulders. "I say," he cried caressingly, "what fly has bitten you this evening? You know I am not base. I don't say I am worthy of Helen — that would be absurd ! I have my faults, of course — " " Faults ! " echoed the other, turning round upon him; and the ring of his voice, the look in his eyes, was so full of sad contempt that the Duke hung his head and dropped his glance, like a convicted urchin. "Ah," said he, then, in a low voice, still looking to the ground, " Helen knows me better than any of you, in spite of everything. She alone knows the best of me. You, why, I think you know the worst. Now I stand between: a man, a mere man. Yet," he continued, stretching out a persuasive hand, " is not a man's best self the true one? " "Edward, Edward, Edward," cried the elder, with a sort of groan, "these are but words. And that better self of yours — which God forbid I should deny ! — knows they are but words. " He scanned the beautiful face, so extraordinarily youthful still, in spite of the. silver streaks in the thick brown hair. " Alas ! " he went on, " I fear that the naughty boy whom I loved so much more than I could have loved a better one, will never die in you. I have been waiting, Edward, for the inait — I have waited so long that I have lost hope at last. And one day " 62 THE SECRET ORCHARD — Favereau's lip quivered — " one day you will break her heart ! " He leant his elbow on the rough stonework and gazed across shadowy garden-spaces towards the misty glory. Again Cluny's arm crept round the irresponsive shoulder, and Cluny's voice began to rise and fall in the obstinately averted ear in tones of pleading that were alternately boyishly sweet and passionately earnest. "Don't say that! Look here, mon vieux, it's never too late to mend. Favereau ! come, are you not a little hard on me.^ God knows I would not change my noble wife. No, not by a shade would I have her less exquisite. I will say this for myself, Favereau, she might have married a better man, easily. But there is not another man in the whole world that could understand her, feel with her, as I do. Come, you must acknowledge I have made her happy." As the speaker became persuaded of the soundness of his own argument his voice grew gradually more assured. It now rang out almost in triumph, and the arm was withdrawn from its embrace to assist with fine gesture the weight of words. "Come," he repeated, "you must acknowledge I have made her happy! Do you think, if I had ever hurt the most secret of her thoughts, the least fibre of her feelings, either as wife or as saint, she would wear round her woman's face that aureole of happi- ness } " THE SECRET ORCHARD 6^ Favereau turned with slow unwilling eye, with stiff resisting figure, to meet the flushed triumph of his friend. " On the surface, your arguments are unanswer- able, my prince of easy sophists," said he, with a curl upon his lip, which was, however, not all un- kindly in its sarcasm. " But let us just probe a very little below this fair surface. Have you ever asked yourself how long Helen's happiness would last if — " "Stay!" interrupted Cluny, with a quick gesture. Then, staring thoughtfully at Favereau, " Let me finish," he said. "I suppose you imagine that I have been what is called unfaithful to my wife.? " Favereau clutched the young man's arm. "Do you mean to tell me," he cried, "that you have not?" The husband hesitated a second, then he answered firmly: "Never! — Never!" he went on, with an air of entire conviction, "with that better self of mine, that better self which is consecrated to her." " Faugh ! " exclaimed Favereau, pushing Cluny from him with an angry movement. Then running his eyes over his friend's figure and clasping his own hands behind his head, with a gesture of utter dis- couragement. " Incorrigible ! " cried he. Cluny, with his imperturbable sweet temper, betrayed no resentment. "My dear Favereau," he said, pleading once again, "be reasonable. Here, let us sit on this 64 THE SECRET ORCHARD bench. The smell of the honeysuckle is entranc- ing — and look at that sunset ! What a good hour this is — the very hour for friends. Light up again and don't look so gloomy. I am not such a bad fellow, after all. (Well, if you will not smoke, I will.) ... I ask you again, have I not made her happy.? And is that not the chief thing after all.? You must admit — you are a man of the world — that there is not a man existing that is, through and through, worthy of her. There is not a man, as man is made, man with human weaknesses, human pas- sions, who could keep himself, year in year out, upon her level, without once betraying the clay, without bringing disillusion upon her. You know that. I could not." Favereau gave his dry commenting cough. "As well," pursued Cluny, waving his unlit cigar- ette (he was not in earnest about his smoking, after all), " as well expect a human being, however wedded to holiness, to spend his whole existence in a church ! A man must out into the world, even if it be a dusty, sinful world. I have felt that I must out into the world, devout worshipper as I am. I have to leave the sanctuary now and again to keep the shadow of my mere humanity from falling upon our perfect union — the union of my better self and her." This time the listener gave a short laugh, flung himself back on the bench and crossed his legs. Leaning his head against the back, he gazed upwards into the deepening blue and breathed, sighing — "Words, words, words!" THE SECRET ORCHARD 6$ "Well, after all," then cried the other, with the first heat he had shown. " What is it you reproach me with? What is it? Where is it I have failed? What crimes do you think I commit when I leave her? Mon Dieu! of what importance are the relax- ations of the man of the world, the man of honour, be it understood, that you should think them, to- day, worth all this frowning? These things have no existence, my friend. Or rather, they cease to exist the moment they are passed. Words written in water, pictures on the sands. Come, Favereau, are we not Parisians? If I have taken a cup of tea in the boudoir of celle-ci, or cracked a bottle of cham- pagne at the supper of celiii-la ; if I have gone to Longchamps on the drag of my good friend Tel-et-tel, who likes Athenian company, or if I have lost a few nights' sleep and a few rouleaux of gold round the Mirliton's green tables, what does it all amount to, in fine? . . . Pleasures without a morrow, without a memory. The glass of wine a man drinks in good company, the jest forgotten in the laughter, the merest nibble at the forbidden fruit, the fruit that grows in that secret orchard which every man (I mean every man of the world, of our world) has at the back of the open garden of his life. Why, Favereau, the very savour of that wild apple, tart and inferior as it is, is sometimes needed to bring a man to a right understanding of the value of better things." "Knowledge of good and evil, in fact," said Favereau, gravely jeering. "But your idea, my 5 66 THE SECRET ORCHARD dear Edward, is hardly novel. The experiment, we are told, was made long ago." " And am I not a son of Adam ? " said Cluny, petu- lantly. "My God! and you too! Ah, come, don't tell me you have never slipped into the secret orchard and that you have never known the taste, sweet and acrid, of the forbidden fruit! Oh, you have not been immaculate yourself!" Favereau straightened himself and fixed a glance of the saddest severity upon Cluny: the ghosts of the errors of his youth rose up before him. "I have not," he said. But the next moment, under the pulse of a surging thought, his eye flashed, his face became suffused, the veins on his temples swelled. "I have not," he repeated, throwing the words at his companion like an overwhelming indict- ment; "but I have not been married to Helen!" There was a moment's silence. Surprise, suc- ceeded swiftly by an ingenuous shame, showed itself on the Duke's face. Favereau, leaning his elbows on his knees, dropped his crimsoning forehead into his hands. For fifty-six years this man's blood had coursed and fretted and toiled at the service of a mind and heart that had no pity on self; but it was young enough still — that is, strong enough and weak enough — to work its own torture. " Secret orchard ! " he repeated, " Great God ! " "And was it for this I gave thee up, ok my beloved!'* CHAPTER VIII WHEN the Duke next spoke it was in an altered manner. "You are right," said he, "a thousand times right; and I am wrong. I will give this folly up, as there is nothing in the world I would not give up to save Helen one tear. Oh, believe me, these are not words this time! Or rather it is one word, my word of honour. You do believe me?" He stretched out his hand for his friend's clasp. " Have you ever known me break my word of honour, Favereau } I '11 never leave her again. I '11 try, I '11 try to be really what she thinks me." His whole soul thrilled in his voice. Then, as Favereau made no answering motion, the outstretched hand trembled a second and dropped. After a delib- erate pause the other spoke. "It must have required something more than — what was your pretty phrase .-* — the glass of wine in merry company, the jest forgotten in the laughter, to bring you to this." There fell a curious silence upon the Duke. Leaning forward, both eye and tone as keen, as 68 THE SECRET ORCHARD searching, and as merciless as the surgeon's lancet, Favereau went on : '* In what category in his scheme of those harm- less — what am I saying? ... of those rather meri- torious, * pleasures without a morrow, ' does the Duke of Cluny place the young lady with the flaxen hair? " " My God ! " said Cluny. The bench shook under his violent start. Favereau stopped short : the first cut of his knife had laid bare the hidden sore. " My God ! " said the Duke again, and every drop of blood ebbed from his face. "How did you know?" " Everything is always known," returned Favereau, with his sad, cold glance. "My God!" repeated Cluny once more, this time almost in a whisper. "Who told you? Do others know?" " It was spoken of, my dear fellow, at the club. It may yet be talked about in the drawing-room. Sit down, Edward. Why this agitation? You have so successfully (I will again borrow your pic- turesque form of expression) cracked a bottle of champagne with this one, drunk an intimate cup of tea with that other one, that I do not think yotir reputation is likely to suffer so very much." Then, changing his tone of icy bantering to one of fierce resentment, "But, Helen, Edward, Helen? Listen: I had to stop Madame Rodriguez's mouth just now. Oh! all out of her love for Helen, she wanted to advise her how to keep a husband at home. Great THE SECRET ORCHARD 69 heavens ! You are not an absolute fool. To have such happiness — such happiness, my God ! " — his voice failed him for an instant — "and to jeopardise it, for what? for the sweet acrid savour of your secret orchard fruit! Faugh!" Cluny opened his pale lips to speak, but could find no word. "The devil, man!" broke out the Minister, with a fresh gust of anger. "Do you think that you, Duke of Cluny, can walk the sands of Narbonne with a discreet conquest and pass for an unknown bourgeois by the simple expedient of anonymity? I have warned you before. It was bad enough, in society. But this business ! Come, who is that yellow-haired girl? Where is she now? " "I don't know," exclaimed Cluny, with a goaded cry. "I don't know. I don't want to know. I '11 never see her again. I only wish I never had. Oh, it was the most devilish pitfall ! " He sprang to his feet, took a few restless paces, returned and flung himself down again beside the still figure of his friend. "Pshaw!" said he, with a laugh that rang rather tremulously, "I declare you terrified me! My good Favereau, I might have remembered your talent for taking everything connected with matrimonial obli- gations in the tragic mood. Oh!" — stopping with a quick gesture the anticipated crushing retort — "I don't want to defend myself any more. You are right, more right, perhaps, than you have any idea of. Favereau, a fortnight ago, had you preached 70 THE SECRET ORCHARD me your sermon, I could have laughed, and would have laughed, in your face, because, believe me or not, for all my folly my conscience was then clear. Now. . . . Well, now I have had a lesson. Great heavens, and what a lesson! Oh! I can never tell you, for I can never explain to myself, how this thing came to pass with me." " Facilis descensus,'' muttered Favereau between his teeth. "Alas, my poor friend, the explanation is so easy ! " "But it is done with, thank God, it is done with ! " cried Cluny, moving restlessly. "I have not one moment's uneasiness on that score. Helen can never know. She '11 not credit idle gossip . . . and with me always by her side . . . I '11 never risk myself away from her again. Reassure yourself: I 've had a lesson ! " "My dear Edward," said Favereau, and there was not the least accession of warmth in his accents, "when I began this conversation to-day, it was in no very comfortable frame of mind. But my fore- bodings were nothing to the anxiety with which your present attitude fills me. It must have been a serious tripping to have produced this fervour of penitence. I have heard it said," he went on cyni- cally, "that penitence is merely a higher sounding name for fear of consequences." Cluny laughed nervously. "Not with me," said he. "There is not a chance, not the smallest prob- ability of any consequences ; I mean of its ever reach- ing Helen's ears. And after all, that is all I care THE SECRET ORCHARD 71 for. It is, and will remain a matter without a morrow . . . except as regards the warning to my- self. You shall judge. Let me tell you." The elder man raised a deprecating hand. "I should like to tell you," insisted Cluny in his boyish way. " The confession will set a seal upon the compact I have just made." And then he added, with naive egoism, " It would be a great relief to me that you should know." Favereau made a reluctant gesture of assent. Propping his elbow on his knee again and his chin on his hand, shading his face but turning an atten- tive ear, he prepared to listen. Something in the weary resignation of the attitude struck his companion with humourous recollection; he gave a quick youthful laugh. Within the house, passing an open window upstairs, Helen caught the sound and paused a second, with smiling lips and warmth at her heart. To hear Cluny laugh was, for her, the sweetest music on earth. "Evidently you have missed your vocation," the Duke cried. " What a famous father confessor you would have made! Oh, that attitude, even to the sigh of preparing patience ! Our good Canon him- self could not have done it better." But M. Favereau did not deign an answer; the melancholy eye looked the despairing summing up of a few minutes before : " Incorrigible ! " 72 THE SECRET ORCHARD With recovered earnestness the Duke started on his story. "On my way to d'Entragues' yacht ten days ago — Helen knew I was going — at a cross station, just as the train was moving off, there was thrust, panting, upon my solitude, almost thrown in by a fussy guard, another traveller, a girl. She looked so fresh, so simple, so young, that I assure you my first impulse was absolutely paternal. I helped her to settle her humble belongings, that were scattered all over the place; I closed the window for her, threw away my cigar, thinking, as I scanned the modest face with its downcast eyes, that I had never seen a prettier type of innocent girlhood. She had light curls, tied back with a riband. She had that wonderfully milk-white skin that goes with such pale hair, and lips like a folded flower." He paused for comment ; there was none. Where- upon, with a shade of effort, he proceeded — "She prattled me, between bashful thanks, a little tale: how she was going on a holiday visit, how she had missed her train, her chaperon — what do I know ! She was too shy, it seemed, to venture a glance at me the while. What could I do, but, at our common station, help her with her luggage, see her into a fly .■* Just as we were about to part (there was not, I swear it, there could not have been a shade of ulterior thought in my mind) as I stood lifting my hat: . . . 'Adieu, Made^noiselle,' . . . the most fatherly, the most innocent of men! Just as she was driving off, I say, she suddenly leant for- THE SECRET ORCHARD 73 ward, and for the first time raising those modest drooping lids, looked at me full in the face. And in her eyes I saw — I saw the devil ! " Here came a moment's ominous silence. The father confessor made an uneasy movement. But he merely said, his face still shaded : " Edward, I had rather you kept your story to yourself." "Well," pursued the other, unheeding, "I should have been less than human if the extraordinary con- trast between the childlike innocence of the girl's whole appearance and the diabolical meaning and knowledge in her eyes — those windows, we are told, of the soul — had not piqued my interest curiously. Which lied.-' The child-like modesty, or the brazen challenge? " I swear I did not seek her out. The devil was in it all! D'Entragues had to hang about the har- bour : day after day not a breath of wind — we were frequently in the town. Favereau, I met that wanton child again and again ! Now she would be with friends, quiet, respectable, dowdy people they seemed. Now she would be alone, innocently gaz- ing into the waters from the pier; or I might come across her stitching, oh so industriously, some little bit of embroidery in a retired corner of the public gardens. But always she contrived to throw me one of those devil's looks. At last one evening " "Edward," interrupted his friend, straightening himself, and speaking this time with marked deci- 74 THE SECRET ORCHARD sion, " I had rather you kept your story to your- self." " Ah ! " cried the other, wounded, " when I was a boy, you never refused to listen to my troubles." Favereau looked round at him with a troubled glance and a heavy sigh, and muttered : "You have got your innocent boy's eyes still." Composing himself once more to resignation, " Well, go on," he said. "We spoke," said the Duke, in the disjointed phraseology of a difficult confession. "The enigma had haunted me too long. I — I felt I must solve it. I was devoured with curiosity, unholy if you will, to know which lied — the mouth, or the eyes. We spoke, then. Oh, that hateful pier, in the dusk, with the lapping of the water and the sickly smell of the green sea-slime! And the face of the little temptress, as pure as a white flower against the yellow sky, and oh, those eyes, those eyes ! I tell you, man, they had something hellish in their power. And I believed the eyes . . . not the mouth ! It amounts to this, before heaven: I was not the seducer. . . . And yet, when too late . . . Oh, old friend," he went on, "do not be too hard on me!" Too hard on him ! The same words that, but an hour before, Helen had used when sweetly pleading forgiveness for an over-good deed. Favereau could have groaned aloud. "As you blame me," urged Cluny, "consider the ethics of our world. You yourself have laughed, in your day, at the virtuous young man. Have we not THE SECRET ORCHARD 75 all been taught, with our first cigarette, that a man may be anything, in his relations with women, rather than a Joseph? Why, you yourself, I'll stake my life, would secretly prefer to be dubbed Don Juan!" "Surely," said Favereau, with a withering smile, *' never was there one more ingenious in finding good reasons for evil deeds ! I will not remind you of the obvious proverb, Edward. All this, however, is very unprofitable discussion and I cannot see what satis- faction your confession, as you call it, can bring either to yourself or to me. You proceeded, on those shores of Narbonne, to solve the enigma, I presume.? It is to be hoped that at least the haunting of the . . . problem, is laid, and well laid." Cluny arrested his friend as he was about to rise. "On the contrary," said he, "I am more haunted than ever. Ah, no," in a sharp tone of pain, read- ing the expression of his friend's face, "not in that sense! But — how shall I tell you.? It comes upon me as it did then, like a nightmare, too horrible to be real. Perhaps her story was true; perhaps she was the innocent school-girl after all ! " " The devil ! " cried Favereau, springing to his feet. "The devil incarnate in a girl's soft frame! We were but a day at that cursed place. Oh, she arranged it all ! How could a man have thought, have dreamt? Yet all at once she said something and the awful doubt entered my soul. I was fright- 76 THE SECRET ORCHARD ened. I had but one thought : to extricate myself. Yet, believe me or not, man of the world as I am, I was the entrapped one." "The woman tempted me," said Favereau, with a curling lip. "Oh, true son of Adam! Bad enough to blame the woman, but what of blaming the girl .? " "You are severe," cried Cluny, who flushed and grew pale. " Severe ! " echoed Favereau. " I have not your gift of language, Edward. Throughout your tale there is but one word that rises to my lips/' "Helen! yes." The cry came from Cluny's very heart. " I assure you, Favereau, I nearly went mad." "Very likely," said Favereau, icily. "Mean- while, what did you doV "Do?" said the other, with a sound between a laugh and a sob. "Do.-* I fled! I invented an ex- cuse for d'Entragues and I fled that very day. Where that strange creature had been brought up, what companions she had had, what books she had been fed on, what evil strain ran in her blood, I can only surmise. At times, a word, a look, and she opened a vista of unconscious depravity, before which I stood appalled, appalled! The next moment — " He looked with a set face at Favereau and in a lower voice added: "Why, she thought I was go- ing to marry her, Favereau ! She did indeed. Don't look at me like that ! 'T is I you should pity. I tell you, with such as she, her fate was inevitable. THE SECRET ORCHARD 77 ... I explained to her that there were insuperable obstacles to our union. I have not seen her since. I sent her a necklace of pearls. Oh," he pursued, as if wildly endeavouring to convince a loudly re- belling conscience, " there was not one gem on that string but would suffice to dry all her tears!" Favereau crossed his legs ; folded his arms. " And do you flatter yourself," he asked very quietly, after a pause, " that she cannot run you down ? " "Impossible," cried the Duke, eagerly. "She has not the remotest idea who I am. She knows me only as Monsieur Le Chevalier. It is " Under Favereau's steady look, Cluny became troubled, hesitated, stammered. " It is a name I, a name, oh, hang it all ! a name the inferior self sometimes assumes." The Minister got up with great deliberation, but- toned his coat, shook down the folds of his trousers below the knee, brushed his sleeve, and taking up his hat from the bench-corner upon which he had hung it, placed it at a very exact angle on his close- cropped head. Then he began to walk towards the house. "Where are you going.?" asked his friend, in a humble voice. "Anywhere," replied Favereau, without turning his head, "away from you." " Have you nothing more to say to me ? " "Nothing." Like a chidden chilcl, Cluny stood and stared with dejected expression after the retreating figure. At 78 THE SECRET ORCHARD the foot of the steps, however, the elder man hesi- tated; then, after a second's reflection, wheeled quickly and came back. Placing both hands on Cluny's shoulders, he gazed at him, a whole world of angry affection in his eyes. "It is no use," said he. "However my judgment condemns you, Edward, my heart cannot cast you off. Alas! it was right," he went on passionately, " that the world should have shaken the yoke of you Stuarts from their neck. It is good that you, almost the last of them, are childless. It is right that you should die away, as you are doing, all of you, root and branch. Your race is a scourge upon humanity; people will love you with the love that passes the ordinary love of mankind; and so long as there is a sprig of you left, you will go on betraying that love. Faithless to your wives, to your mistresses, to your friends, to your own better selves, and yet, forgiven, beloved, beloved in spite of all and through all!" He paused again and contemplated with conflict- ing emotions the downcast face before him; then, with an abrupt change of tone : " This is your last escapade ? " he demanded. "You give me your word?" The Duke raised his eyes, full of sad pride. " I don't give it twice," he answered. "Well, amen, then!" cried Favereau. "Amen to the good resolve. And let the past be buried ! " He clasped the other by the hand. The sun, through an arch of the distant aqueduct, dipped be- THE SECRET ORCHARD 79 hind the sky line. The sudden, mysterious twilight breeze awoke and shook the trees. A storm-cloud had gathered upon the radiant west. A chill, a trouble, a dimness seemed to fall upon the gilded world and upon Favereau's boding heart. CHAPTER IX ""TTTELL," said Nessie, "you are a nice pair! W Are n't you downright ashamed of yourself, Duke, to leave poor Helen to bear the first charge of the invasion all alone? Oh, my! that grand old aunt of yours is in a rich temper to-day. I can tell you. And it all fell on Helen, of course. And you, with that devoted friendship of yours. Mister Minister, why weren't you at least around to attract a little of the electricity in another direction? " Nessie, with the most becoming lace scarf twisted about her little dark head, flashed a smile and a mis- chievous dancing look from one man to the other. The savage and the man of breeding, the highest and the lowest in the scale of humanity, have this at least in common: the art of disguising their emo- tions. Not even Nessie's sharp eyes, not all her keen perception could discover a trace of the storm that had just shaken these courteous, easy-mannered gentlemen. " Poor dear Madame de Lormes," she proceeded, delighted to monopolise the conversation. " I feel sorry for her this evening, for it must be admitted that fate is pretty hard on her. Why, that woman THE SECRET ORCHARD 8i has been labouring these thirty years to turn herself into a perfect French Marquise of the old genuine stock, and didn't she just succeed in making her- self more Faubourg-Saint-Germainy than the Fau- bourg itself! And didn't she produce as perfect a specimen of your modern Parisian monkey-on-a-stick as any other old cat of the region could do ! " " I admire," said the Duke, lightly, " the correct- ness of your natural history illustrations." " Well, I guess you take my meaning all the same. It 's true to life, anyhow. Say now, is n't it hard on her, poor soul, after all these years that the past should rise up against her in the shape of a sturdy American son, a kind of living testimony of the two errors of her youth: I mean of having been born under the Stars and Stripes and of having wedded in her salad days the late forgotten Septimus P. Dodd of Philadelphia. And to hear yourself called ' mother ' and ' old lady ' in good fresh Yank ! He is a very fine man," said Nessie, after a slight pause, with her head on one side. She gave a trifling sigh. " What, have they arrived? " cried the remiss host. " Oh, they '11 be out here in a minute," said the lady, arresting him with her vivacious little hand. •'I dare say they '11 forgive you for not being there to embrace them: I received them," she explained coquettishly. " Helen was towing the old lady to her room, and doing something to trim up that ridiculous orphan. Oh, my dear Duke, what an absurdity ! What are you going to do with that funny child? Why, she could neither open her 6 82 THE SECRET ORCHARD . mouth nor her eyes. And as for her hat! Well, I was just taking a turn towards the rose-garden (I always say the birds and the sunset here go way ahead of the garden of Eden) when I saw in the path below a Trilby hat and as fine a pair of shoulders as ever walked out of Harvard playground. ' That 's my hero,' thought I to myself. And beside him there were a pair of cuffs and an eyeglass and a jockey club tie, and something just holding them together, ' That can only be the. noble Marquis de Lormes,' I knew. So I waited for them of course, and we had quite a nice little conversation. Our Marquis did the introduction, Mirliton style. ' TienSy Ma'ame Rodriguez! How do? Via rAmericain. My little brother ! A famous type, eh? Oh yes, we preferred to walker. When the train stoppa, my faith, I said I 'd rather foot it than to sit opposite Maman in the family berlingot ! Al raight ! ' . . . And * the little brother,' looking at him the while as a big Newfound- land looks at a yapping terrier, not certain if he '11 wag his tail at him or crush him with his great paw. Well, I tell you that American cousin is a man ! He 's got the breath of the sea about him. And it did me real good to feel the grip of a hearty Ameri- can hand again. Ah, here they come ! " There was the murmur of voices : a deep complain- ing contralto, an indeterminate falsetto, and a few notes from a fine unmodulated bass. Large, heated, injured, supported on either side by her sons, the Marquise de Lormes made her appearance at the top of the terrace steps. THE SECRET ORCHARD 83 Under the formally waved bandeaux of sleek iron- grey hair, her face retained, in spite of age, the traces of a high-nosed, severe, majestic beauty. Her figure, arrayed in vestment-like garb, was less well preserved ; but its proportions were so magnificent and carried with such dignity that, in the average mind, criticism was sunk in awe. She rarely spoke but on the breath of a sigh. Her French was peculiarly deliberate, ultra-classical, and richly Parisian in its rippling of r's and breadth of a's. On the right the Marquis duteously supported her massive hand upon his little twig of an arm. On the left, in almost ludicrous contrast, rose the broad shoulders and bronzed head of the American. " I shall feel better in the open air," complained the contralto. " Famous oven-weather to-night," proclaimed the falsetto. " Tropical quite," commented the bass, with a good-humoured note of mockery. "My dear Aunt!" cried Cluny, advancing with his perfect grace of courtesy, and stooping to kiss the fat dimpled hand extended to him. " Ah I my poor Charles-Edward, how do you do? " she sighed, and, swaying forward, deposed a regal salute upon his brow. Thus might two crowned heads meet and greet. " Tip us your flapper, old horse," said the Marquis, cheerfully (in an elegant French equivalent). Now the Marquise closed her eyes, indicated with a faint gesture the figure behind her, and after com- 84 THE SECRET ORCHARD pression of the lips and slight convulsion of the throat, observed — "Your cousin from America — my son, Mr. . . . Dodd." " Sir," said the sailor, in answer to his host's cordial words of welcome, " I am glad to make your acquaint- ance." And the Duke forthwith had an experience of the genuine American grip, and was not uncon- scious of what Nessie had aptly described as the fresh sea atmosphere. " Take me to a chair," moaned the Dowager. " My knees are trembling." She tottered a few steps on Cluny's arm, shud- dering as, behind her, breezy accents that recalled deliberately forgotten associations, remarked that " the old lady was sort of bowled over by the thun- der in the air." As the group advanced towards the modestly re- tiring Favereau and the smiling Madame Rodriguez, the fainting Marquise recovered sufficient life to make a play of eyeglass which as witheringly ignored Nessie as it marked her companion. " Do I see Monsieur a — Favereau?" she inquired. The Minister of Public Worship and Education bowed profoundly. " Sir ! " said the lady. The strictly measured inclination of her head, the reproving rustle of the silk skirt, might have petrified a less stout heart. " My dear Charles-Edward," she then breathed gustily into her nephew's attentive ear, "I do not blame you for fidelity in friendship, but I cannot but THE SECRET ORCHARD 85 continue to regard these minions of the Republic as sadly out of place in the house of a Fitzroy." She closed her eyes upon the abhorrent spectacle, and, relapsing into weakness, again requested the charity of a chair. The sailor thrust forward a seat ; the Duke gently directed the weight of the Marquise into the same; Favereau provided a footstool; and the Marquis stuck two lean fingers between his mother's elbow and the arm of the chair to prevent the shock of contact. " Another day of such emotions will kill me. Oh, Charles-Edward," went on Madame de Lormes with rising pathos, " you do not know what it means to be a mother ! " " True indeed, my dear Aunt," admitted Cluny, respectfully. " Seeing me again after so long has been too much for her," said the sailor to Nessie. " Never mind la Maman" whispered the Marquis, good-humouredly digging a sharp reassuring elbow into his step-brother's ribs. *' You're rather big, you see, to come on one all of a sudden, but she '11 resign herself; Maman is very pious. She knows how to resign herself" He edged round to Nessie as he spoke. " Terribly pious, la Maman^' he reasseverated, " eh, Ma'ame Rodriguez?" Then, lowering his voice still more, with a killing ogle, happily secure behind his mother's back, ** Famous chance to find you here ! " he chuckled. 86 THE SECRET ORCHARD " Anatole ! " cried the Marquise, with sharp intui- tion. " Yes, my Mother." " Stand behind my chair." The French son trotted obediently to heel. The American son opened large, amazed blue eyes, and misgiving crept into his independent soul. Nessie noted the expression of his face, and mis- chievously whispered in his ear: " My ! yes, you '11 find them a queer lot over here ! But there — these French they may be shaky on the Seventh Commandment now and again, but you bet they 're solid on the Fifth ! " Meanwhile, Madame de Lormes had started upon a new grievance with fresh gusto. " Explain to me," she demanded of the Duke, ** how you came to allow Helen to start this foolish business about the orphan? When she asked me to chaperon the young person from Paris — of course I could refuse nothing to your house — I must confess that I was surprised at the communication, more especially as, considering the circumstances in which I find myself at present, it seemed strange that Helen should have thought of adding to my burdens." " I am sure," said Cluny, duly apologetic, " Helen had no idea that you were in any trouble. Indeed, I hear of it for the first time myself. I am concerned." Madame de Lormes raised her prominent eyes to stare with unaffected astonishment at her nephew. "Surely," she exclaimed, hoisting herself from her reclining position, " she was aware of George's un- THE SECRET ORCHARD 87 expected arrival. Helen, as a woman, might have understood. But," collapsing again, morally and physically, into resignation, " it is only a mother that can understand the feelings of a mother." Seeing that Madame de Lormes seemed to look upon the arrival of her trans-oceanic son as an un- mixed calamity, the mere male might well have been excused for failing to comprehend the mysteries of the maternal heart. Cluny, straightening himself, exchanged a glance of amusement with Favereau. " It is not possible," the contralto resumed with its deepest note of protest, " that my niece can be in earnest in her insane project of adopting that objec- tionable school-girl." " Hush ! " here cried George Dodd with some peremptoriness ; for, through the open doorway, his quick eye had caught in the gloom of the hall a gleam of white approaching skirts. " Ah, Helen at last ! " cried Cluny, joyously, the oppression which the talk with Favereau had left upon his mind being lifted at the approach of his wife. All eyes were now turned upon the new-comers. No one noticed, as the pair advanced into distinctness out of shades of dusk, intangible still yet all-envelop- ing, that the Duke, with suddenly livid countenance and limbs struck into rigidity, stood staring at the slight girlish figure that demurely moved by his wife's side. So might a man in delirium stare upon some horrible creation of his own brain. 88 THE SECRET ORCHARD Helen's sweet face beamed as she looked down at the small bare head at her shoulder: a head modestly bent, on which a wealth of pale flaxen curls was tied back with a black riband. It seemed as if the girl faltered shyly now and again, and Helen's voice of encouragement reached the silent, expectant group. Favereau, peering through his glasses, with anticipa- tory disapproval at the school-girl, was startled out of his placid mood of criticism by a frenzied clutch on his wrist and a whispering voice in his ear. The clutch was that of a man's hand, ice-cold and wet; the voice was hoarse and unrecognisable. " Stand before me, stand before me ! " it urged. "Don't let Helen see me. I — I feel as if I were going mad ! " Favereau turned round, and started as he saw Cluny's face. " Edward ! " he ejaculated under his breath. " Hush ! " cried the other in his awful whisper. " Not a word, for God's sake ! Stand before me, I say . . . there, like that . . . screen me as I go down the steps ! " Without further question Favereau allowed himself to be dragged a few paces back towards the edge of the terrace, shielding Cluny's escape into the garden. Helen had now come close. Still keeping a motherly hand upon her companion's shoulder, she looked round. "But where is Cluny?" she asked, surprised. " I want to introduce this child to him." There was a general movement of inquiry. THE SECRET ORCHARD 89 ** Why, he was here a second ago," said Nessie. " Farceur de Cltmy," squeaked the little Marquis. " Hates school-girls as much as I do." (This under his breath.) " I am afraid," said Favereau, hiding an uneasy bewilderment under an assumption of his usual geniality, " that Edward's affection for his cigarette, and" — with an inclination towards the Dowager — " Madame's well-known dislike to smoke, are respon- sible for this defection." Helen looked puzzled and disappointed. But in a second she brightened again. " Ah, well," she said gaily, " we must wait. Meanwhile, you are a sort of grandpapa, my old friend ; " — she pushed the girl forward as she spoke — "this is Gioja," she cried triumphantly, " my Gioja ! " Madame de Lormes groaned. " Gioja, this is Grand- papa Favereau." The girl made a slight curtsey. Favereau bowed, and peered benevolently enough at the pretty face that looked wonderfully small and pale in the twilight. " Helen might have done worse," was his first thought, " quite lady-like, quite nice, quite inoffensive. Well, it is not so bad." His kind face was wrinkled into a smile. He bent again to speak. As he did so the girl looked up suddenly. Her eyes met his, full and close. Favereau raised himself with a jerk. "The devil!" A cold sweat broke out upon him ; he thought he must have called the words aloud, have shrieked 90 THE SECRET ORCHARD them. He felt as if the soHd earth had given way beneath his feet, as if with a crash the world had become disintegrated and all was chaos and falling ruin. He reeled and came to himself. The world was where it stood. The old chateau reared itself against the sky ; there was an indifferent murmur of voices around him, and Helen was laughing. Laughing! BOOK IL — THE EVENING OF THE DAT "And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron^ — Deuteronomy. CHAPTER X SEVEN o'clock in the Chateau de Luciennes. — Velvet-carpeted silence in the library ; with- out, all about, the machinery of the great house working noiselessly to the acme of comfort; the massive Louis XIV, clock ticking the flight of time to stately measure; a log or two flickering on the hearth (one of the Duke's fancies, who disliked an empty fireplace) ; the sound of the rain, fast falling on the terrace stones, all but shut out by casements and curtains; the cheerful licking of the flames adding what might seem the last note of home perfection to the scene. On nearly the whole of three sides of the room were spread the books, forming what the Marquis de Lormes called the most ficJiiie library in France, for there was hardly a book in it younger in date than the second Restoration. The late Duke had taken a good deal of pride in making complete its unique character; and Cluny himself, though neither a student nor an antiquarian like his father, was con- noisseur enough to appreciate to the full the charm of the elegant, the stately, the quaint, or the naively outspoken old-world company assembled in his favourite room. He would have considered it as 94 THE SECRET ORCHARD much a sin against art and taste to have introduced among them a George Sand, a Maupassant, or a Prevost, as to have hung even the best canvas from the last salon beside his Hobbemas, his Lorraines, and his Vandycks. Surrounded by this peace, this harmony of a beau- tiful past and an appreciative present, the master of the house, who loved his home, who had not untruly said of himself that he was bound by his very heart- strings to its presiding genius, his wife; who had returned with such infinite content but an hour ago to his paradise, sat now alone, wrapt in terror, afraid to face the hell in his soul. The light from a silver reading lamp just caught within its radius the bent head ; and threw every bone of the clasped hands, locked in a convulsive misery, into white relief. Favereau, already in evening dress, noiselessly opened the door and stood on the threshold, looking in. He found it hard to recognise his friend in the huddled figure by the fire. After a moment's con- templation, he closed the door and advanced. Cluny raised his head, recognised him with a faint relaxation upon his haggard face ; then, extending his hand, but without rising, said tonelessly — " You got my message? Thank you for coming." Even as a little while ago on the terrace, Favereau took no notice of the gesture ; the Duke let his hand fall upon his knee again with a sigh of misery far beyond the touch of minor grievance. THE SECRET ORCHARD gs Once or twice he endeavoured to speak, but fruit- lessly. After a long pause, looking away dully into the happy leaping flames : " I don't know how to tell you," he muttered. The other folded his arms on the back of the tall chair and stood another second or two in silence, still surveying the Duke with his most expressionless gaze. " You need not," he answered at last, in his most expressionless voice. *' I know." The unhappy man sprang to his feet with a cry of horror. *• What ! Is it known already? My God ! " "Hush," said Favereau, commandingly ; "control yourself." And with a change of voice he pursued arily, " You have quite a power of description. I recognised . . . the devil's eyes." The Duke drew a breath of momentary relief. " Is that all ? Thank Heaven ! " *' Is not that enough?" Again followed silence. Cluny began to pace the room. Twice he wiped impatiently the beading per- spiration from his forehead. Finally, he burst forth with that vain railing against trouble which none but the most philosophic seem able to forbear. " It is like a nightmare. Could any one have imagined so impossible, so diabolical a coincidence? There were a million, ten hundred million chances against it ! " Favereau's low voice answered, coldly inexorable, like the utterance of an oracle : 96 THE SECRET ORCHARD " But there was ofte for it. When a man puts his happiness to the chance, he stakes to lose, sooner or later." The Duke stared at him. It is doubtful whether, in the agonising strain of grappling with an insoluble problem, these words of useless wisdom conveyed any meaning. " What is to be done ? What is to be done ? " he re- peated feverishly. " I feel as if my head were going." "Keep it on your shoulders," said Favereau, this time not unkindly. " You will want it just now." The Duke flung himself back into his chair and made a painful effort at self-command. " Advise me," he said. " I will do anything you tell me. . . . Shall I invent an excuse and leave the house now, before I meet her? " Favereau came round to his friend's chair, sat down and turned towards him eyes in which severity had almost merged into pity — eyes wise and sad, not unlike those of a physician by the bedside of a hopeless case. "What would be the use of that?" he asked gently. "A mere putting off of the evil moment, with added complications." " Shall I see her secretly, then? Give her money, send her away, secure her departure, her silence, at any price?" " Edward," cried Favereau, and threw hands and eyes upwards, " you may well say your head is going. What, man, give Helen's happiness into such keeping ? " THE SECRET ORCHARD 97 The Duke seemed to collapse, physically and mentally, " Then tell me for pity's sake," he exclaimed in an almost extinguished voice, " what is to be done." It has been said that the test of courage is respon- sibility. M. Favereau was one of those men who are bound to succeed as leaders in whatever walk of life they may choose, partly owing to this very quality of being willing and able to bear responsibility, partly because of his extraordinary promptitude in weigh- ing chances and making up his mind to a definite course of action in an emergency. He did not now hesitate in his advice upon a complication so hideous to a chivalrous mind that the wisest might well have faltered. " There are two courses open to you," he answered in his clear, didactic voice. " One is God's way. The other the devil's way. The first is to make a clean breast of it to Helen, and then to try and start afresh, and build a new life together out of the ruins of the old." Cluny had started to his feet. " It would kill her ! " he cried, and the look he cast upon his coun- sellor was unconsciously one of fierce reproach. Favereau's lips were twisted under his moustache with a smile of indescribable bitterness. By so much as his power of love was greater than that of the wretched man before him ; by the breadth of the gulf that divided his stainless constancy to a woman he had given up from the easy sophistry of her husband's infidelity; by the difference between a 7 98 THE SECRET ORCHARD light nature and an earnest one ; by all such measure seemed his own agony for Helen incomparably greater than that of his friend. Since the fatal situation had become revealed to him his soul had never ceased to lament within him with the cry of helpless tenderness : " Helen ! What will become of Helen f Why did I give her up ? She would have loved me. I would have understood her. I was worthy of her!' To the passion of the secret lover was added the pathetic yearning of a father's protec- tive tenderness towards the little girl whose innocent lips had kissed him so often, whose arms had clung round his neck, who in her ripe womanhood still turned to him for help with the old child-like con- fidence. He folded his arms, clutching his hands upon them with iron tension, "Kill her?" he echoed, after a moment's pause. " Very likely. But there are other things to consider than mere life. That is the right course." "I cannot, I cannot!" cried Cluny, piteously. For a second he had tried to face the prospect, and even in thought had quailed hopelessly before it. " She trusts me, Favereau : think of her trusting eyes! She believes in me, how could I tell her? She could not understand. Oh, she 's not one of those women who could understand ! She never knew evil in her life, Favereau, I cannot." Favereau's lean face remained impassive, but there was a slight relaxation of the tense muscles, " I never thought you could," he answered, with cold contempt. In his heart he had dreaded with a THE SECRET ORCHARD 99 veritable terror lest his own Spartan advice should be accepted ; lest his beloved should be struck with such a death blow. He breathed a quick sigh of relief. "Well," — he changed his attitude, uncrossed his legs, and laid his hands upon his knees — "there's the other way — the devil's way." "It is the devil's work," cried Cluny, savagely; " 't is fit he should show the way." " So be it ! " said the other. " Sit down, Edward, and listen quietly. There is nothing for you, then, but to brazen the matter out. If Helen .does not know to-night, from your own lips, she must never know. Everything — everything, mind you — must be sacri- ficed to that end." The Duke, who had been eagerly listening, hoping against hope for some solution, relapsed into full despair. "But, my God !" said he, "the girl? She cannot but recognise me." " She shall not recognise you," said Favereau, looking at him with icy determination. " But, ah ! do not mock me ; for heaven's sake, explain." " You were not wont to be so dull of wit," said Favereau, impatiently. "This creature, this girl, this child, has met a certain Monsieur Le Chevalier. She has never laid eyes on the Duke of Cluny. Do you understand now?" Cluny gave a sharp cry of joyful apprehension, followed, however, by what was almost a shudder of repugnance. loo THE SECRET ORCHARD *' What an infamous part to play ! " he murmured, and covered his face with his hands. Favereau, with the first show of anger he had allowed to escape him during the interview, struck him on the shoulder. " Come, Edward," he exclaimed, "this will not do. You dare not play the weakling now, after playing the — well, the fool. God, man, you must act ! You must deceive, you must lie. Ah, you had not so many scruples of conscience about lying when it was merely a question of your pleasure, Monsieur Le Chevalier ! Lie now, Duke of Cluny, for your wife's sake. Lie your hardest. Lie like a man ! " Cluny groaned aloud. " Oh," pursued Favereau, stamping his foot, "you have the curse of your race upon you. Foolhardy to madness in the courting of useless danger, weaker than water when the time has come for decision. Forget — forget you are a Stuart. Be a scoundrel, since now you must, but be a man ! " The other raised his face, and looked up in an agony. " I would rather die, and have done with it." " Of course you would," cried Favereau, with pas- sionate scorn. " I expected no less than that. A ball through the head : infallible remedy for the coward, for the base. But you must live, Edward, live and take your punishment — for Helen's sake." Cluny rose stiffly. " You have said enough," he replied, livid, but suddenly composed. " I am quite ready. — But what if the girl begins by making a scene before Helen? Have you thought of that?" THE SECRET ORCHARD loi " Have I thought of that ! " The Minister nearly laughed. " You must meet her first alone, of course. Leave it to me, I will contrive it." " And then," said Cluny, " the danger will be but beginning. Oh, you do not know what a being you have to deal with ! " "I do not know her," said Favereau, relentlessly; " but she shall be made to see that here she must hold her tongue upon her past. And then we must get her out of the house at the first opportunity. Soon. To-morrow, if possible. Oh, that ought to be easy enough : your wish is law here. And Helen — God bless her ! — is not hard to deceive. At any rate you know how to do it." Again Cluny let the sneer pass, with the callousness of his overwhelming despair. "You can feign jealousy," pursued Favereau, " boredom, antipathy." " Antipathy ! " echoed the Duke, with what was almost a sob. " I had rather be in hell than under the same roof with her and Helen." CHAPTER XI FAVEREAU went to the heavy door that gave upon the hall and set it ajar. With a faint astonishment in his weary eyes the Duke looked after him. " Helen is coming," said the older man simply. And, indeed, as he spoke, the note of Helen's voice was heard outside. But an hour ago on the terrace this sensation of his wife's approach had brought the husband a sense of inexpressible comfort. Now his heart almost stopped with the apprehension of it. The room was too dully lit for Favereau to see his friend's face, but he seemed to divine the terror which hesitated on the point of flight. " Tranquillise yourself," he said, closing the door for a second to speak into the room. " Helen is alone ; 't is early yet." He now threw the door open. Helen was stand- ing in the hall talking to Blanchette. Brilliant light glinted on her soft brown hair, on the fair neck, on the priceless pearls, which Cluny vowed were the only jewels worthy to lie on that satin skin. Blanchette's deep-toned visage shone with a glow which seemed THE SECRET ORCHARD 103 to emanate as much from the content within as from the illumination without. Helen interrupted her conversation for a moment to smile at the two men, then she proceeded, enforc- ing her words with gentle gesture of her finger. "And then, Blanchette, when you have made her take the cup of broth, you must hurry back — back to Mademoiselle, I mean — and finish dressing her, just as you used to dress me, you know, when I was a girl. And then, Blanchette, you must bring her down yourself, for she is shy, poor little thing. Bring her to me here, in the library." She patted the mulatto's arm ; then swept into the room, passed Favereau swiftly, with just a smiling glance as he closed the door behind her, went straight to the motionless figure of her husband and laid both her hands upon his shoulders. ** Ah, truant," said she, " how I have missed you ! " All the harmony of her love and happiness filled her voice with music. Cluny, with an effort, opened his lips to answer, but she placed her finger upon them. " Hush," she cried ; " no excuses, sir." Then, laying her head against his neck, she went on, with a deeper note of tenderness, " Cluny, my beloved, I wanted to thank you." Favereau made an unobtrusive movement as if intent on a discreet exit, but she arrested him. " Stay, Favereau," said she, merely turning her head to look at him, " stay and hear what a happy woman you made of me." I04 THE SECRET ORCHARD Favereau stood, as ordered, with his hand still on the door handle. Even with his absolute self-control he could not conjure up a smile, much less a gay- word in answer; and he was thankful for the shadows that made this unresponsiveness pass unnoticed. With his free hand he made a sign at which Helen laughed, interpreting good-humoured remonstrance. " Oh, you lovers ! " she read in his gesture. Cluny, to whom it was addressed, read more truly, " I am at my post. Have courage." And he drew a deep breath. " Cluny," Helen went on, " you never will allow me to thank you for all your goodness to me. But I must, I must to-day, for my heart is overflowing. Since that child has crossed our threshold I feel as if the one thing wanting to my happiness had come to complete it. Oh, my dear husband, you have never once let me guess how you must feel the emptiness of our home, lest I should take it as a reproach to myself — I who have given you no children! And now, because my heart yearned to this mother- less girl, you bid me take her to it, and never think of grudging me the only joy of motherhood I can hope to taste. God will reward you. God will reward you, not only for the good deed to the poor orphan, but for your goodness to your happy wife ! " There was a pause. Her head sank lower on his breast. Neither man spoke or moved. " Oh, how hard your heart is beating, Cluny ! " The Duchess raised herself to peer into his face. THE SECRET ORCHARD 105 He was well outside the circle of the lamplight, and it was evident she could see nothing unusual in his expression. " Well," she went on, full of the gentle egoism of her new charity, " I have told Gioja that this is now her home till she finds a better one ; that she is never to feel desolate again, never to know what it is to miss a mother's care." She emphasised each "never" by a soft beat of her hands against her husband's breast. It was to him as if those tender hands were irrevo- cably riveting the chains of his undoing. " I have told her that I am her godmother. I cannot think I have done wrong in this, for I feel that she is indeed sent by God to be my child. Ah, it was touching ! I wish you could both have seen her face when I brought her into her pretty pink room, and showed her all the things I had prepared for her." She dis- engaged herself from her husband's encircling arms and stood smiling at her own recollections, gazing at the blazing logs. The firelight played on her face, a sight more heartrending in its placidity just then to the two who watched her than if it had been con- vulsed with tears. " I have been inspired, I think, for Blanchette vows that, with the help of a few stitches, Gioja will be able to wear to-night one of the gowns I have had made for her. It is just suited to her — fresh, girlish, spotless. Favereau, don't you think she has a dear pretty face?" Cluny suddenly caught his wife to his breast. Had it been her dead body that he was clasping to him instead of this happy, loving, living, responsive io6 THE SECRET ORCHARD frame, there could not have been a purer agony in his passion. ** Cluny ! " she cried, rebukingly, " Cluny ! " But it was impossible to keep from her voice a note of exultant pride. Blushing and smiling, she disengaged herself, and flung a shy glance over her shoulder towards Favereau. " You must forgive a foolish couple," she said. Favereau swallowed a lump in his throat. In his effort to speak naturally his voice was perhaps a trifle harder than usual. " I don't want to throw cold water on your enthu- siasm, my dear," said he, " but I do think a couple that adopts a grown-up infant very foolish indeed. I hope that the young lady with the curious name may turn out as desirable an inmate of your house as you fondly hope. But if Cluny should find her rather in the way, after all, in spite of his good nature " He paused upon the doubt. Helen's face fell, as openly as a child's. *• Oh, Favereau ! " "Don't be afraid, Helen," said Cluny, hoarsely. "I shall never do anything — wilfully — to bring that shadow into your eyes." Favereau suddenly bent his ear, then he opened the door. Blanchette's voice, in its high sing-song, floated in : " Mind the steps, Mamzell, dey uncommon slippy ! " Cluny started, and flung a desperate look at his friend. The latter, however, apparently quite im- THE SECRET ORCHARD 107 perturbable, stepped out of the library into the hall and closed the door behind him. " Ah, there comes the little one ! " cried Helen, and moved swiftly across the room to receive the new object of her delight. She found the handle held without; and as in amazement she exclaimed and turned again to her husband, Favereau quietly re-entered, closed the door behind him and put his back against it. "What is it?" said Helen. " Oh, nothing," said Favereau, smiling quite airily. " I won't have you disturbed just before dinner, that 's all." Cluny turned sharply away from his petrified attitude of watching, and, leaning his elbow on the mantle-shelf, supported his averted head upon his hand. "But what is it?" repeated Helen. " Only, my dear St. Elizabeth, some silly servants' talk about the young woman whom you took into your house to-day being — well, rather bad." " Bad ! " echoed Helen, in her eager way. She stretched her hand to push his aside from the door handle. •' Nonsense," said Favereau, holding on with determined grip. " I will not have you go to her now. She is well looked after; I know you have seen to that. What further good could you do? " "What good?" cried the Duchess, indignantly. " Help her to live, or help her to die ! " Again she laid her hand ypon his, found herself io8 THE SECRET ORCHARD impotent against his strength. With a flash of her eyes she turned swiftly and left the room by the opposite door, all thought for the moment obliterated but the single one that her charity was needed. Favereau released the door handle, drew a deep breath and wiped the perspiration from his brow. CHAPTER XII DERE, Mamzell ! " said Blanchette and patted" the girl's sash. Upon the threshold she had delayed the triumphant entry to retie the silken folds. And very proud she was of the effect of all this dainty lace and muslin. Blanchette, with the inherited subserviency of generations, would no more have dreamed of forming an individual opinion where a decision of her beloved mistress was in question than she would have thought of interfering with a law of nature. She had therefore adopted the new-comer with a heartiness all the more enthusiastic perhaps that her fellow servants (" dat rubbish ! ") unanimously condemned the innovation. With the familiarity of the old retainer she nowplaced her broad dark hand in the centre of the girl's slender waist, and propelled her into the room; then looked, round, one triumphant grin, for her mistress. The subsequent expression of disappointment upon her dusky visage was almost burlesque. " Missie said I should find her here, Massa Fave- reau." " Unfortunately," answered Favereau — the man had seemingly nerves of iron, and to Cluny, who no THE SECRET ORCHARD would have waited for the hour of his execution with a lighter heart, the sound of the kind, bantering, every-day tone was almost divine in its encourage- ment — "unfortunately, my good Blanchette, I was imprudent enough to repeat to the Duchess just now some little phrase I heard you let fall as you came down about the woman, — Rose, I think you called her. And the Duchess has flown to her." The negress clucked her tongue noisily. " If dat ain't Missie all over ! And Mamzell such a pictur' ! " " Well," said Favereau, " the Duke is here, you know. He and I meanwhile can admire the picture, can't we? Go and help your mistress." He clapped her on her fat shoulder as, grinning again, she dropped her dip. " Come in, Mademoiselle," said he ; and once more resuming his functions at the door, he closed it upon the outer world. " Dear me, how dark it is 1 I do not think you have yet been introduced to the Duke." He walked over to the writing-table and quietly lifted the green shade from the lamp. The little figure near the door paused, hesitating. Slender arms falling loosely, bare to the elbow ; small hands just clasped by the finger-tips ; small head bent on a young slight neck; curls, of the texture and colour as a rule only seen on very young children, glimmering in the light — for the rest, all snowy, diaphanous white, falling around the shapely slender outline. As Favereau turned to look at her the whole affair THE SECRET ORCHARD iii seemed to him a monstrous nightmare. For a second the impulse to call to his friend : " Wake up, man, and look; we have been dreaming!" was so strong upon him that it drove him to a silence of hesitation — silence during which the ancient clock ticked out a quarter of a minute of suspense such as it surely had never measured for human being before during the long years of its mechanical existence. It has already been said, however, that Favereau was not of those that hesitate. " Cluny!" he called. The Duke heard the warning in his voice. Good blood — and, after all, his was good blood — cannot fail, says the French proverb. The royal blood within him mustered now in Cluny's veins with a new desperate courage to help him — for Helen's sake — " to lie like a man ! " He was ducal, urbane, courte- ous, dignified, absolutely master of the situation, as he advanced to take his guest's hand and bid her welcome to his house. " Mademoiselle," said he, " I am charmed to make your acquaintance." At his first accent the sombre eyes flashed wide in her small face. For a second she stared as if unable to credit the evidence of her senses. The next mo- ment an extraordinary colour, an extraordinary light overspread her countenance. It was as if flower of snow had suddenly turned to flower of summer flame. She bounded forward, and seized the outstretched hand in both of hers, with ringing cry: " Monsieur Le Chevalier ! . . . " 112 THE SECRET ORCHARD Favereau, watching (to recur to the old simile) much as the physician by the bedside watches the approach of the crisis, now perceived with gathering dismay a new and possibly fatal complication : She loved him ! This creature, the wanton child, the living problem that had startled the seasoned man of the world with vistas of unknown depravity — she loved him ! A fresh sweat of horror broke upon the Minister's forehead. With mere perversity he had felt ready, brutally ready, to deal. But all his manhood recoiled at the thought of throwing the first stone at the little sinner who had sinned through love. He withdrew into the shadow. The Duke, on the other hand, seemed to have become hardened by sheer stress of circumstances, both morally and physically, to a white, marble callousness. His acting was almost too perfect. More surprise, not to say some show of discom- posure, might better have met the extraordinary situation. The coolness, however, with which he disengaged his hand, the mocking bow, and the faint elevation of eyebrows which accentuated his reply, were convincing enough for the moment. "The Duke of Cluny, at your service," said he, urbanely correcting an absurd error. She fell back a step ; her colour faded. A sort of mask seemed to fall upon the eager face ; the light in the eyes went out. " The Duke of Cluny ! " she repeated, in a bewil- dered tone; and on the instant she was again the THE SECRET ORCHARD 113 artless maiden. A short silence ensued ; the some- thing abnormal in the very air, the tension between the two men so painfully obvious to themselves, could not but become perceptible to her. Once more the scorching flame of her gaze leaped up to the Duke's face; and then, with a scream: "No!" she cried, " Monsieur Le Chevalier ! " " You seem to be misled by some curious resem- blance," said the Duke, in his ice-cold voice ; " but pray allow me to assure you that I am the Duke of Cluny." The girl stood as if arrested on a spring, her hands clenched together, her gaze searing his face and figure. Again there seemed to come for a second a doubt within her, a transient conflict; but only for a second. Her countenance grew distorted. " You may be the Duke of Cluny," she said, in a hoarse whisper, " but you are " She broke off, and the look, the very pause, were a more terrible indictment than speech. Cluny was smiling. "There is evidently some mystery here," said he. "You are agitated. Made- moiselle." His composure was ghastly. " Come, sit down, and tell me all about it. 'T is a case of mis- taken identity, evidently. Most curious ! I have heard of such complete resemblances : they lead sometimes to droll misunderstandings, it is said. So I am very like a friend of yours?" He pushed a chair towards her, and, leaning over the back of it, looked at her, still smiling. She remained standing, rigid. 114 THE SECRET ORCHARD " Very like," she answered slowly, in her strangled whisper. "Ah ! " commented he — there was nothing but his pallor to betray that he was fighting a duel to the death — "some old friend of yours, I suppose? Some dear friend?" " Dear ! " she echoed. Her young voice broke. "Yes, my God!" The pause came again. She stood clenching and unclenching her hands, her frame torn with a passion such as happily the majority of women never know- A kind of sob broke from her, and the Duke felt that if he were to emerge victorious he must allow him- self no more such breathing spaces or his courage to strike would fail him. "Will you not sit down?" he urged benevolently. "Will you not tell me v/hat is the matter? Is it, perhaps, some little affair of the heart? " She gave a stifled scream ; it would have been hard to say whether of anguish or rage. With chin craned forward, lips parted, blazing eyes, the veritable image of a young fury, a torrent of abuse was rising in her throat. But the steady inflexible look of the Duke, the heavy silence, the very luxury of the room, seemed to overawe her suddenly. She swayed, fell into the chair offered to her and rocked herself to and fro, holding her hands to her lips with a school- girl gesture of self-repression. All at once she looked up at the tall figure beside her. "Oh, you — you!" she began below her breath; then stopped. THE SECRET ORCHARD 115 The Duke laid his finger gently on her shoulder. "Do not forget," said he, "that you are speaking to the Duke of Cluny." With a swift, fehne movement she caught his hand as he was about to withdraw it. For a second she held it, looked at it; then, kissing it fiercely on the palm, flung it from her with a laugh that was struggling with sobs. "And do you dare say," she cried, rising, " that I have not kissed that hand before? " Her hysterical laughter fell hideously upon the men's ears. Slipping her little fingers under the folds of muslin at her neck, she pulled forward a string of magnificent pearls. A moment's hesitation now, the Duke felt, would be fatal. " Mademoiselle," said he, for the first time drop- ping his cloak of light courtesy and allowing a tone of grave warning to sound in voice and words, " Mademoiselle, had you not better control yourself . . . and try to realise the situation ? " He spoke the last words with slow, emphatic meaning. A hush fell on the girl. She hstened and was silent, as if revolving the hidden purport of the phrase. It seemed to Favereau from his corner that upon her face, by turns mask-like and quivering with expression, he could now read every phase of her undisciplined, passionate soul. Before even she spoke again, by the tide of colour on her cheek, by the light of those eyes which Cluny had called devil- ii6 THE SECRET ORCHARD haunted, by the quiver of the lips, by the whole yield- ing of her being to an impulse of overpowering delight, he knew what hideous significance she had thought to find in his friend's caution. *' Stay ! " she cried, " stay ! " She put out her hand, and it trembled, while her voice quivered with a lark-like note of joy. " Don't speak — let me think ! This sudden change in my Hfe, this adoption falling upon me from the skies without explanation — oh, I see it all ! I see now ! How blind, how stupid I have been ! Ah, you did love me — you do love me, after all ! What does the rest, what does anything else matter ! " She ran to him and seized his inertly pendent hand with both hers. In the horror of the comprehension of her thought, in the horror of the touch that conveyed such a meaning, the Duke recoiled almost with violence. His self-possession failed him at last. He groaned : " Great God ! " Favereau saw that the time had come for his inter- ference. He advanced. " Forgive my interrupting," said he, placing him- self between the two. His calm authoritative voice fell like a stream of cool water upon the bubbling heat of their passion. Cluny flung him a quick look of grateful relief. The girl started with a sinuous angry movement, and turned upon the intruder like a little viper disturbed. She had forgotten his pres- ence in her all-absorbing emotion. Meeting his eye, however, she recoiled with something like fear. THE SECRET ORCHARD 117 "Mademoiselle," said he, "will you not sit down again?" The courteous invitation was a command. She sat down, and this Minister of France, who for the first time in his life had set his hand to do ignoble work, felt that he might yet be master of the evil situation. " Edward," he went on, turning quietly to his friend, " perhaps you will allow me to under- take the task of making this young lady understand under what a fantastic delusion she is labouring." Cluny withdrew to his old post, the chimney-piece. Favereau took a chair beside the girl. At any moment, he knew, Helen might break in upon them. As at the critical point of a battle, he felt that the decisive blow must be struck without sparing, yet with all deliberation. Indicating the Duke by a slight gesture: "Look well, Mademoiselle," said he, gravely yet not unkindly — " look well. Think, and recognise your mistake. There is the Duke of Cluny, a gentle- man whom not only you have never met before, but one whom you could never have met before — you quite understand me, don't you? — whom you could not, by any possibility, have met before. That he recalls to you some person of your acquaintance can have nothing to do with him. Now, the Duchess of Cluny, I am told, has chosen you as the particular object of her benevolence. She has received you into her house, she has promised to provide for you. The Duchess believes you, of course, to be an inno- cent, a well-brought-up girl, deserving this extra- ordinary favour." ii8 THE SECRET ORCHARD Gioja's great eyes, dark with dilating pupils, fixed upon the speaker's face, became filled with a dawn- ing terror. The man proceeded incisively, waxing strong on his advantage : "The Duke of Cluny has made it his pride never to thwart his wife in her vocation of charity. He therefore consented to your introduction into the privacy of his house with characteristic generosity. But," said Favereau, with a deliberation which per- haps the cold indulgence of his tone rendered all the more cruel, " the Duchess of Cluny's peace of mind is the first object of the Duke's life. He makes it his duty to protect her at any cost from trouble or dis- appointment. No person would be allowed to re- main under his roof a single day who showed herself likely to bring sorrow or annoyance to his wife." The girl gasped. "What do you mean me to understand?" she asked, with dry lips, her gaze still riveted, as if fascinated, upon the bearded impassive face. "That the young lady," answered Favereau, " whom the Duchess honours with her protection must show herself, both as regards the past and the present, worthy of that honour." He paused to allow the words to sink in. Then he suddenly became genial, almost paternal. " It is evident," he went on, " that your mind, my child, as is not unusual with young people of your age, is filled with much romantic rubbish ; and that, excited no doubt by the strange circumstances attending your unex- pected good fortune, you have been tempted, on THE SECRET ORCHARD 119 entering this new life, to create sensation by turning the accident of a chance resemblance into a page of some favourite novel. Forget all this pernicious stuff." He dropped his playful tone for one of renewed gravity. " Remember only that your future is in your own hands — to make or to mar." She rose stiffly to her feet, and stretched out her arms towards the Duke with the single word : " Speak ! " It was a helpless, frightened, childish appeal. " Mademoiselle," said Cluny, hoarsely, " Monsieur Favereau has spoken for me." A little while she stood, looking swiftly from one to the other ; in her eyes was the impotent rage, the agonising terror of a trapped animal. Then she wrung her hands, and once again the unnatural look, the woman's look, of bitterness and suffering and passion convulsed her face. "You are brave, gentlemen ..." she said at last, almost inaudibly. "Two men against a girl!" " Faugh ! " said Favereau, in a savage whisper, to Cluny, as he brushed by him to replace the shade upon the lamp, " with what pitch are we here defiled ! " Had they won? They could not know. Those little clenched hands still held the fate of all that made life beautiful to both of them. But if they had won, in truth the victory was bitter. CHAPTER XIII THERE came a prolonged silence over the three : a heavy silence, in awful contrast with the inner clamour of their thoughts, and accen- tuated by the minor sounds within the room. A small flame voice sang sweetly and cheerily among the logs on the hearth. The solemn clock ticked on, every stroke of the pendulum falling upon the Duke's heart like the stroke of a hammer upon the coffin of his manly honour. The quavering chime struck the half-hour, a distant bell clanged. The dressing bell ! Helen would soon be with them again ; the routine of life go on as usual. His very soul turned sick. Neither of the men looked at each other. There are moments when each knows too well the other's thoughts to dare to let eyes commune. The girl stood with bent head, a sullen lip out-thrust, plucking at the folds of her sash. Thus Helen found them. A moment she stood, looking in upon them ; and Favereau alone had presence of mind enough to advance and smile. Her eyes swiftly sought the little white figure* ^ M "'now, cluny, what do you think of my DAUGHTER?'" P^g^ 121. THE SECRET ORCHARD 121 " What ! — Joy ! " she cried : thus, after the eternal mother-fashion had Helen already shortened her new daughter's name. Then she broke into a merry laugh. " What a baby ! Look at the poor child, not daring to open her lips between these two great men ! " She came forward, draperies flowing, motherly arms outstretched. Gathering the girl to her she looked, gently mocking, from her husband to Favereau. " I believe — really one would say — she has fright- ened them as much as they have frightened her. Have you spoken to my husband, little Joy? " "Yes, Madame." Words barely breathed, long black lashes sweeping the wan cheeks. "It was very terrible, was it not?" said the Duchess, with the tenderest banter. " Yes, Madame." Helen kissed her. " There, she ought not to have been deserted. Why, she is trembling all over, poor child ! " The Duchess turned upon Favereau in mock indignation : ** It is all your fault, sir. You picked up the wrong end of the story, you old busy- body. My patient is very weak, yet better, I think. But " — she interrupted herself with a gay change of voice, toying the while with the girl's fair curls — " but this is, too sad a story for these ears. Time enough for them to learn the cruelty of the world. Now, Cluny, what do you think of my daughter? " The man was forced to turn and look at them. The wife, standing close behind the girl, both hands upon her shoulders and overtopping the fair head 122 THE SECRET ORCHARD nearly by the height of her own, had placed her sweet, bright, confident face above the small white mask. His wife's eyes, the truest and the most loving, were looking at him beside the unholy flame of those other eyes — the devil's eyes ! His glance sought Helen's first; then met that of Gioja. And there it rested. The girl's deep, inscrutable, defiant gaze never wavered for a second. Cluny, with narrowing lids, with contracting pupils and eyes growing steel-grey like a sword blade, threw all the power of his being into the endeavour to gain the mastery, to force her lids to drop. In this voice- less struggle the colour rose to his cheeks. At last, with a bitter smile, he recognised that he was more than matched. But at least the very feeling of battle well engaged now braced his nerve. " It is a little difficult," he said steadily, " to be called upon to pronounce so soon upon a stranger." As he spoke he felt the sudden comfort of Fave- reau's presence at his side. " It is to be hoped," said the Minister's gently sarcastic voice, " that the new daughter may never bring a cloud to the mother's face." The girl shifted her glance quickly to him; but then it quailed and fell. The entrance of the servants with lights and the sound of the oddly matched brothers' voices on the stair broke up the fitful colloquy and distracted Helen's mind from a sense of vague disappointment and intangible strain. THE SECRET ORCHARD 123 " My dear Cluny," she cried suddenly, running her eyes over his grey figure ; " not dressed yet ! " Cluny, with his expressive French gesture, glanced down at his clothes, and moved towards the door. Here Favereau followed him and caught him by the shoulders. " So far we are safe," whispered he, as he sped him with what seemed to the onlookers a good-natured push. " I told you how it would be," said Cluny. " It is hell." " No," answered the other, with the most melan- choly cynicism ; " only the road to it." CHAPTER XIV ANATOLE, Marquis de Lormes, Comte de Paimpol et de Sermonec, chef du noni et des amies, better known among his peers and inti- mates as " Totol " (and it must be admitted that the more familiar appellation suited him best) — the Marquis "Totol" — preceded his tall half-brother into the room, shooting his cuffs as he came. His goggling eyes rolled, and as they caught sight of Gioja, his meagre countenance proclaimed disgust. The blue eyes of the sailor, on the other hand, kindled as they rested on the girl's fair head. Helen was at that moment engaged in a motherly scrutiny of her new daughter's toilet. They made a pretty picture with the flicker of the fire upon them — the gracious woman at the zenith of her beauty, and the girl — " Standing with reluctant feet Where the brook and river meet. Womanhood and childhood fleet." So thought the sailor, who liked old-fashioned poetry and cherished those old-fashioned ideals which are still kept alive more faithfully, perhaps, in the New World than in the Old. THE SECRET ORCHARD 125 "Too bad of Helen," said the present representa- tive of the Lormes, aside to Favereau, "to spring this school-girl upon us. For me," said the little man, and shook his hoary young head, "the young girl, the French young person, especially when fresh from the convent, is absolutely nauseating. Ce que qa in 'embite ! Positivemcnt ga me la coupe : The English miss, d la bonne heure / And as for the American " He rapturously kissed his hand in the air. " But, oh, the young demoiselle — la, la!" "I can understand," said Favereau, with grim secret humour, "that you may have found that young lady preposterously unsophisticated. We were alone with her, the Duke and I, just now, and she made us pass a severe quarter of an hour." The Marquis pulled his india-rubber face into a knowing grimace. The next moment it became illumined, though scarcely beautified, by an ecstatic smile. For, with a rattle of bangles, a jingle of chains, a tap and a shuffle of little slippers, and a tremendous general frou-frou, Madame Rodriguez made her appearance on the scene. He fixed his single glass in his eye with some difficulty and much gnawing motion of the jaw. "There — ah, there's famous chic, real chlcn, if you like! The very last howling pscJiutt, in short," he exclaimed rapturously under his breath, apprais- ing every item of toilet, figure, and impertinently pretty face. " Crdne, au inoins, celle-ld — eh "> " Meanwhile Helen had been conversing in a soft undertone to her new-found cousin from over seas. 126 THE SECRET ORCHARD "Yes," she said, after scrutinising his frank coun- tenance with kindly pleasure, " I remember you. He once came to Paris, Joy, to visit us from America, that great country of hiS' — and of mine, though I have never seen it; — you know, even on the map, how far away it looks! He was a little boy then, and I was quite a little girl. But he made a vast impression upon me. You called me a "cute little thing, ' George, and said that was a ' cunning ' sort of dress we wore at the Blue Nuns. And though I wondered, I felt this was high praise. And he told me such wonderful stories of Indians and prairies and scalp-hunters and I know not what, and he pre- sented me with what he called ' chew-gum.' Don't you remember, George.''" Her laugh rang out — the most heart-whole, most musical laugh in all the world. "Why, certainly," said the American, in his deep voice, that gave one somehow the impression of a great reserve of strength and manliness, "I remem- ber you very well. But the picture of the little girl with her hair in two pigtails don't fit in somehow with that of my lady Duchess in her beautiful home. I have seen a deal of your modern France these last few weeks in the World's Show yonder, and, if you '11 excuse me, it struck me as just a bit electro- plated. Therefore I feel it all the greater privilege to have an opportunity of making acquaintance with the real sterling thing. That 's what your home is: hall-marked, Helen, and no mistake." His blue eyes wandered from the carved stone THE SECRET ORCHARD 127 chimney-piece, with its faded yet warmly tinted armorials, to the groups of tattered colours on the walls between the great book-cases — glorious rags that had seen such days and weathered such storms that barely a gleam of blue or red here and there betrayed which had been Highland fanion, which blue cross of French Stuart regiment. What is there in the sight of old colours that moves the heart so strangely ? Why are they more eloquent of pathos, of patriotism, of the stress and grandeur of conflict than even the dead hero's sword or the ruined stronghold? The republican's eyes kindled as they fell on these relics. From thence they travelled to the celebrated royal portrait, en- throned between the yellowing silk folds and broid- ered fieurs-de-lys of a French standard (this had evidently faced no crueller weapon than a lady's needle) and a tartan plaid so indescribably faded that it seemed to have borrowed the tints of the wild moorland and dying heather over which it had once brawly fluttered. There the face of the second James, in his beautiful princely boyhood, looked forth from under haughty drooping lids. "By Jingo," said the sailor, "you bet that little fellow knew he was a Duke anyhow! Ancestor, Helen.'' But I need not ask. I don't set up for being art-wise, but your husband's very eyes seem fixed on one from that canvas. My, but it must be a great work!" "That is our celebrated Vandyck," said Helen, 128 THE SECRET ORCHARD well pleased; "it is indeed an ancestor of Cluny's: James the Second, when he was Duke of York." "The sort of fellow that makes one seem kind of small, somehow," said Lieutenant Dodd, with his good-humoured laugh. Then, with a start, he dis- covered the white figure of Gioja at his elbow. She too was gazing up at the picture with lips a little parted. His face softened as he looked down at her. " A lovely boy, is he not ? " he said. And in address- ing her his voice took an extraordinarily gentle note. She flashed her dark eyes at him with a flutter of the eyelids which covered their secret fire and gave a sort of virginal timidity to the glance quite in keeping with her present attitude. " Yes, sir," said she, in her pretty foreign English. Favereau, with his back to the fire and his hands behind him, seemingly indifferent, closely watched the moving group. "This American, now ..." he was thinking. "A new complication. Stay — a solution, per- chance, to the problem ! " The gladness of the thought struck him promptly with a sting of shame. With what fearful ease does poor humanity glide upon the downward slope! Pure honour had always been such an integral part of this man's soul that hitherto he had no more con- templated the possibility of losing it than of losing his identity. And now he was planning an honest fellow's undoing! How could Edward have hoped to keep up his THE SECRET ORCHARD 129 systematic deviation into secret orchards, and there- after resume unscathed his honoured way on the straight path of life, when his own one step from the high table-land of righteousness had already sent him — him, Favereau — spinning towards God knows what depths ! Ah, that shame should dog a thought of his ! He looked sombrely at the sailor's face — a face in which the story of an elementally virile soul was written as upon an open book. Mr. Dodd's creed was simple enough to read: love of his country, truth to himself, respect for women, and glory in his profession. He would live, and love, and work, and fight, and die without a questioning thought. But Favereau was not of those who disguise to themselves the responsibility of their own deeds. Darkly he knew, as he watched, that come what might, he would coldly let the unsuspecting sailor drift to his doom ; that he would not lift a finger to save him, could he thereby secure one chance of saving Helen from the awakening that menaced her. Absorbed in these moods, he was startled by a fierce feminine whisper in his ear; by the clutch of a small hand upon his sleeve. In the desire to share her immediate emotion with a mind more capable of intelligent response than that dwelling in the dwindled skull of the Marquis "Totol," Nessie had figuratively and literally seized upon her old friend. "Well, and what is your impression, Minister, of 9 ijo THE SECRET ORCHARD the new importation?" she murmured, vindictively jerking her head in the direction of Gioja. "Our fine sailor-hero seems to approve of it, anyhow. I don't believe he has eyes to see anything else." She shook out her rosy draperies with a deep sense of waste, of unappreciated merit. " As for Helen, she's floating in a kind of holy cloud of joy — Joy!" She sniffed derisively. "Isn't it a dear little inno- cent? Does n't she look as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, eh? Isn't it a sweet little babe-in- the-wood, that has never seen anything but robins and leaves, eh? My!" There was stiletto sharp- ness in each "eh," culminating in the shrillness of the last ejaculation. It was like finally turning the blade in the wound. " I do agree with Aunt Harriet — old cat ! — for once in my life (though I would n't give her the satisfaction of telling her so for worlds), but I do agree that this is quite the worst of Helen's follies. Of course, you men are always taken with a pretty face; but I reckon you will side with me. Minister, that, for mere simpleness, the idea of getting the Duke to adopt an infant of that size and description, well — it's beyond words! If that girl," she pursued, after a sufficiently eloquent pause, "does not make us all sit up before the week is out, my name ain't Nessie Rodriguez." "Well, of course," answered Favereau, smoothly, with an inner dreary appreciation of his own irony, "you can only expect us men, as you say, to be in favour of the pretty face." "Oh! I know," said the lady, with cheerful con- THE SECRET ORCHARD 131 tempt, "you are just as great a goose at heart as all the rest, or you wouldn't be a man, dear sir. My! I do wonder sometimes how the same Creator came to make us both. I expect when the Almighty took Adam's rib. He extracted the better half of his brains at the same time. There 's that Rodriguez, now. I 've just had a letter from him ; he says he 's very sick. He's got influenza. I know what that means. Now, a woman would be cute enough to have measles, or diphtheria, or cholera, or something, for a variety. There's never been a man that 's had influenza so frequent." She paused, to continue reflectively, "It's a very expensive sickness, but he 's had it once too often this time." Favereau laughed, but made no comment. Under the light of the reading lamp the Marquis de Lormes was engaged in pruning his favourite finger-nail with a gold-mounted penknife. His whole face was puck- ered into lines of deep earnestness. Helen's clear voice rose in the silence. "That is the flag," she was saying, "which the great Mar6chal de Cluny, the grandson of James the Second (the last Stuart King of England, Joy), took at Fontenoy. He was only a cornet then. But under the lead of his cousin, the gallant Berwick, he charged the Hanoverians at the head of the King's Household. You may not know, my little girl, that you are actually under the roof of the last male descendant of the royal race of Stuart." Gioja looked down, and toyed with the fringe of her sash ; then she said, in a small, hesitating voice 132 THE SECRET ORCHARD "The Duke of Cluny, then, ought to be King of England?" Nessie caught the words, and burst into a loud derisive cackle; while the Marquis de Lormes, now- polishing the amended nail on the seam of his trou- sers, looked up from his final and satisfied contem- plation of the result with a snigger. "A real daisy, isn't she? "said Madame Rodri- guez, in her acute contempt forgetting to modulate her accents. The sailor looked round at her with stern eyes. "We cannot expect Miss Joy," said he, "to under- stand the intricacies of a Stuart pedigree, Madame Rodriguez." In that bilingual household, where almost as much English was spoken as French, Helen's pet name for "her child" was already adopted; and it seemed to cleave to the girl. Helen had flushed under the implied rebuke. In France thQ jetme fille is hemmed in much like a state criminal; but the care with which all knowledge of the outer world is kept from her ears is nothing to the respect with which the emancipated daughter of America, free to roam the world alone if she choose, is treated in her own country by those who accept the trust of her freedom. The fluttering query of Joy's surprised eyes, how- ever, demanded an answer. This Helen gave with an embarrassment that sat somewhat pathetically on her. "No, dear child, it is as Mr. Dodd says. And — well, at any rate, the English would not acknowledge the claim." THE SECRET ORCHARD 133 "Well," said Nessie, coming briskly forward, and taking the girl by the elbow with a vivacity which just fell short of a shake, "now you 're in the house of a real Stuart, anyhow, and if you know your his- tory, you must feel that it's a right-down romantic situation. My ! Helen, you remember, at the con- vent, how we used to dream about the Young Pre- tender; the wondrous romances we made up about helping him to escape from his enemies, hiding with him, giving our lives to save him in his wan- derings as Monsieur le Chevalier Douglas.'^ While she was speaking Cluny had returned quietly to the room in unimpeachable evening attire. He was advancing towards the group, when Joy slowly raised her eyes and looked at him. He stopped, as if brought up by an invisible barrier. "Indeed, Madame," said the girl then, "I, too, have had dreams about the pretender, Monsieur le Chevalier. " As she spoke her fingers suddenly closed upon the fringe she was playing with, and with incredible strength tore the silk cord in two. None marked her attitude except the Duke himself and Nessie. The former turned abruptly away, the latter flew like a butterfly across the room back again to Favereau, and caught him by the sleeve. " I say. Monsieur Favereau, did you see the look the innocent orphan threw at the Duke just now? What is Helen about? What is she doing? Oh, I do want to know ! " Favereau put up his eye-glass : " At this moment. 134 THE SECRET ORCHARD Madame, the Duchess seems to be explaining the nature of the contents of a case of decorations to the interesting young lady she has adopted." Madame Rodriguez stamped her foot with fury. "Oh, you men!" she cried, "I do despise you! You never see what's under your nose." Favereau brought the eye-glass to focus on her little foot. "I see, Madame," said he, without any change of tone, "the foot of Cinderella in the slipper of tlie princess." Nessie's wrath fell from her on the instant. A slow smile spread over her dusky face. "You like it.-*" she asked, coquetting. She pointed her toe from side to side, twitching her flounces daintily as she did so. "But what's the use of it with these stupid skirts anyhow.?" " Madame," said Favereau, solemnly, " the inspired being who creates feminine fashions is fully aware that women's ingenuity amounts to genius. I think these skirts delightful. If a woman has a pretty foot, like truth — nay, like murder — the more you try to hide it, the more it will out." "Here is Maman" said Totol's pipy voice suddenly. CHAPTER XV THERE was a general sensation. Totol upon one side, the Duke upon the other, advanced together, according to rule, to lead in the lady who, in a voluminous garrhent of purple silk and floating veils of black lace that exhaled faint odours of lavender and pepper, looked more imposing than ever. Her first glance was, as usual, a masterpiece of comprehensive disfavour upon the company at large. It took in the solid figure of her first son, who made no attempt to advance to her aid. Indeed, unless he had contented himself with propelling her from behind, there was nothing left for him to do in that respect. It next withered Favereau, first for the indecency of his existing at all, secondly for his exalted position in the Government of an odious Republic. Neither Joy nor Nessie were forgotten; old scores were looked, with interest, at the latter; while in the dart of displeasure vouchsafed towards the former there was a vivacity called forth by the freshness of a new grievance. "I trust you are more rested, dear Aunt," said Helen, gently. 136 THE SECRET ORCHARD Under her guidance, the process of establishing the majestic relative in the armchair was accom- plished without a hitch. "There is no rest for me in this world," responded the high dame, sepulchrally. " I thank you, Charles- Edward," placing a still handsome foot, clad in a flat slipper, upon the proffered footstool. "Anatole, my shawl. " When the dutiful son had carefully enveloped his mother, he was peremptorily shown a high chair at her side. Having thus strategically divided him from the dangerous proximity of Madame Rodriguez, the Marquise, with a sigh, folded her hands and pre- pared herself with an air of deep resignation for whatever conversation might be inflicted upon her. Feeling that the little figure seemed somewhat abandoned, Helen turned and boldly drew the girl into the fire-light circle. "We have yet to thank you, Aunt," said she, "for your kind care of this young traveller. I fear she is still too timid to speak for herself." "It did not strike me," responded the Marquise, without deigning to lift her heavy lids, "it did not strike me, Helen, during our weary journey to-day, that Mademoiselle's decided lack of conversation arose from timidity." "Ah!" cried Helen, gaily, "if you had seen her as I did just now. Fancy, Aunt; listen, Nessie; a cruel godmother actually left this unhappy child alone for five minutes with two great ogres of men!" THE SECRET ORCHARD 137 The Duchess sat down on the sofa as she spoke, and drew Joy by her side. Madame de Lormes closed her eyes and leaned rigidly back upon her chair, everything in her attitude conveying that, benevolent as she was, she could not be expected to listen to this sort of thing. But Helen pursued, smiling: " If I could, I would show you the faces of the trio as I came in. She, this creature, was just like some poor little rabbit caught in a trap. And they, Favereau and Cluny, oh" — merriment overflowed her sweet lips — "I told them they looked more alarmed even than she." "My!" commented Nessie, sarcastically, "you don't say!" Leaning on the back of the sofa, she had propped her chin upon her hands, and from this coign of vantage could not only exchange audacious grimaces with the Marquis across his mother's deliberately unseeing countenance, but was also enabled to keep an alert eye upon the movements of the three men who in undertones were conversing in the distance. The more, however, her intimate circle seemed disposed covertly to snub her proUg^e, the more was Helen determined to carry off the situation in her own way. Feigning not to hear Nessie's jeer, she now continued to address the silent girl beside her in the former strain of tender gaiety. "Though men are such great big creatures, dear," she said, "and wear hair upon their faces, and have such strange ugly clothes, when you come to know 138 THE SECRET ORCHARD them you will really find that they are good, kind, simple beings." "And they are always particularly kind to little girls," interposed Madame Rodriguez, mimicking Helen's tone, " bless their simple hearts ! And they never, never want to eat them up, if they are good." Looking like a pretty Puck, she had thrust her face between her friend and Joy. This time Helen was forced to take notice of her. "Hush, Nessie! Remember, if you please, that Joy has probably never seen a gentleman to speak to, except perhaps the chaplain or the school doctor." "Quite Eve before the fall, in fact," said Mrs. Nessie, drawing back to exchange a glance of mean- ing with the Marquis Totol. The latter could find no better way of expressing his delighted appreciation of her wit than by crack- ing all his finger joints in turn — a token of admira- tion which, for want of a better, was sufficient to stimulate Nessie to further sparkles. " Quite Eve before the fall," she reiterated, "ain't it ? Beg pardon though. Eve had been introduced to Adam, I believe. But Mademoiselle didn't seem to be so kind of skeary just now with your cousin, Mr. George P. Dodd." "Nessie," cried Helen, flushing, "you really must not." Here Madame de Lormes opened her eyes as sud- denly as a mechanical doll that is patted on the back. "Pray, Madame Rodriguez," she interpolated, "be THE SECRET ORCHARD 139 good enough not to drag the name of any son of mine into this foolish discussion." Upon this she immediately relapsed into her feint of slumber. Joy, immovable, save for the plucking fingers, suddenly shot a glance from the elder lady's large repressive profile to Nessie's small face, quiv- ering with mischief. Madame de Lormes sustained it, of course, with serene unconsciousness; but Nessie started with a little cry that was more than half genuine. "My!" she exclaimed. "Don't!" and put up her fan as if for a screen. " I say, Helen, the new pet seems like the celebrated old parrot: if it doesn't say much, it thinks a deal more. Her eyes are elo- quent enough, anyhow." Helen glanced down at the girl, saw nothing but long lashes trembling on small, pale cheeks. She flung her arm protectingly round her. In her gentle heart she was now as angry with Nessie as she could be angry with any one; but she was still resolved not to betray it, her one desire being to keep the poor little stranger from any suspicion of unwelcome. After noting the action, Madame Rodriguez pro- ceeded in her high nasal tone of irony : " But we must not tell her that, must we.^ Or she would never dare to raise them again. She 's so shy, you know." Glancing round, she caught Cluny's intent look upon the group; and, inspired by a fresh imp, she hailed him. " Say, Duke, you come right along here a minute. Seems you 've been and gone and frightened a bashful lamb. I40 THE SECRET ORCHARD Come right here, you bad wolf, and tell her that you never harmed youth and innocence in your life; and that you just love to watch the dear little white- woolly darlings gambol on the green." Cluny stood a moment and felt as if turned to lead. He heard his wife's rebuking voice, " Nessie, Nessie, you're too bad!" and then the exquisite caress of her tone to Joy : " You must not mind her, she 's only a wicked tease." Then she spoke to him. There was a special accent in her voice reserved for him only. It pierced him now to the marrow. "Yes, come to us, Cluny," she was saying, "and make amends. You did frighten her, you know." He came forward, his limbs moving, it seemed, independently of his will. "How can I make amends?" he asked, his eyes, dark with trouble, fixed on his wife's face. The hoarseness of his own accents frightened him, but he pulled himself together by a strenuous effort. With a semblance of gaiety, that factitious merriment which to this naturally light-hearted man seemed perhaps more hideous than it would to any other, he repeated : " How can I make amends .-* " It surprised him that no one seemed to notice any- thing peculiar in his manner. Helen smiled back at him. "Look up, Joy," said she. "Speak, darling, answer the Duke." The girl's restless hands became suddenly still. " What do you wish me to say, Madame.-' " she asked, after a marked pause, in her small, measured voice. THE SECRET ORCHARD 141 "Why, tell him that you are sorry to have been a little goose, that you and he are going to be the best of friends." Cluny's smiling lips twitched. There was a moment's expectant pause. Then Nessie broke it with a laugh. "I reckon," said the little lady, while her mock- ing eyes scanned her host's countenance, "that you were in the right of it just now, Helen. It 's the Duke that 's the frightened one." Joy looked up swiftly. The Duke burst into a jarring laugh. " What is this ? " exclaimed Favereau, breaking off his conversation with Mr. Dodd in an unwontedly abrupt manner and advancing towards the fire-place. " You seem all very merry here. Let me join in the joke." "They have put me on the stool of repentance," said Cluny, still with laughter absurdly in excess of the humour of the situation. " 'T is a trying ordeal for a retiring, and — aha, innocent man." Here Joy startled them all by suddenly breaking into shrill merriment, which she as suddenly stifled with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Madame de Lormes aroused herself sufficiently from her inner meditation to throw her a look of scathing reprobation. But Helen was delighted. So, too, was Mr. Dodd, who promptly turned round from his renewed contemplation of the famous Vandyck, with a broad sympathetic smile on his countenance. 142 THE SECRET ORCHARD "So she can laugh, the monkey," said the Duch- ess, and patted the frail shoulder beside her. " Ah, how sweet it is to hear the laugh of a young thing ! Don't be ashamed of it, ma petite. That is a sound I shall often want to greet my ears. There, peace is signed, is it not.-* " Cluny had recovered his self-control. He now advanced a step, and addressed Joy with formal courtesy. " Let me assure you most solemnly. Mademoiselle," said he, "that while I have the privilege of receiv- ing you in my house, I, as your host, have no desire but for your welfare." The girl seemed to revolve these words in her mind before answering. Then she murmured, her head bent, her eyes cast down in her favourite attitude: "Thank you." "Oh dear, oh dear!" cried Helen, half amused, half vexed, "how formal we are!" CHAPTER XVI IN bustled Dr. Lebel, with his frock-coat neatly buttoned up and a brand new tie — his notion of dinner dress never went further — rubbing his hands and diffusing a strong odour of scented soap. " Eh, eh ! I thought I was the last, but our friend the Canon," cried he, "is late, as usual, I perceive. Ah, Monsieur le Due ! Is that the face you bring us back from Paris.-' Better have stopped at home! Madame la Marquise, your servitor. " The lady made him a regal bow — a bow the gra- ciousness of which was tempered by the consideration that, though he understood her digestion to a nicety, she could not blind herself to the fact that his polit- ical opinions were generally reprehensible. " Ah, and do I see my young friend, the Marquis ? " Lebel went on. "Positively, my dear Madam, he has not changed since I was called in to save his life the day of his first cigar. Do you remember. Mon- sieur Totol.? Eh, eh, eh!" Dr. Lebel rubbed his hands again. " Rose is doing capitally — capitally, " said he, in a professional undertone, to Helen. Then he wheeled his sharp eye upon Dodd. "Aha, the famous cousin!" The voluble little man 144 THE SECRET ORCHARD clasped the American warmly by the hand and shook it up and down, the while, from his inferior level, he gazed at him with critical, scientific scrutiny. " What a type of the Anglo-Saxon ! Ah, the fine race! Madame," said he, wheeling his tubby figure once again to the dowager, "I congratulate you." There was a tone of real respect in his voice. He had not in truth believed the lady capable of pro- ducing anything so sensible. Helen was burning to show off her new acquisition. " But my child, Doctor, my child," she began. " I have to be felicitated too." Even as she spoke, the folding doors into the hall were ceremoniously thrown open. "The Canon, Monsieur le Due," announced the majordomo, scarcely less majestic himself than the personage he was ushering in. " Monsieur le Due, dinner is served." Bland, dignified, sure of himself and of his hosts, the Canon entered. "Am I late, my dear child.'' What a happy gath- ering ! Madatne la Marquise ! " " Monsieur le CJianoine ! " George Dodd, looking on, smiled to himself as he watched the ceremony of greeting between the two dignitaries. It was as good as a play, he told him- self. And what tickled him most was the earnest- ness of both the actors. The Canon bowed. The lady, who had risen to meet him, swept him one of those curtseys that are a revelation to the younger generation. Here she could conscientiously bestow THE SECRET ORCHARD 145 unreserved approval, not only upon the churchman, but upon the man of family. She next extended her hand. As he took it with a second inclination : " I trust I see Madame la Marquise in good health," said he. "Alas, Monsieur le Chanoine But I do not complain." The hands parted, and upon the parting a grace- fully retiring curtsey and congee were duly enacted. Cordially then the good Canon shook hands with the master of the house. Indulgently he received the introduction of the heretic American. Patron- isingly he nodded to Totol. "Madame," said he to Nessie, "we have met before. " Then Helen was able to draw his attention to Joy. " But here is one you have not met before. Canon. This is Gioja. " Instantly the Canon dropped his man-of-the-world air, and became the priest. Benevolently, yet searchingly, he examined the little figure thrust, shrinking, forward to his notice. And as he looked, approval began to beam from his eyes. On the other side the Doctor, both thumbs hooked into his trousers pockets (an attitude which entailed a somewhat curious arrangement of frock- coat), his scrubby, bearded chin sunk in his breast and his eyes very keen under their bushy brows, was engaged in the same scrutiny. But apparently with less satisfaction, for the lines of perplexity on his face grew deeper every moment. 10 146 THE SECRET ORCHARD " So this is the child ? " said the Canon. " I have heard of you, my dear. Come, let us make acquaint- ance. " He took her by both hands and drew her towards him. She hung her head, a shy maiden. After his pause of investigation the priest looked at Helen, and both these worthy, innocent-minded people ex- changed a silent smiling look. The work of charity seemed indeed to have been pleasantly rewarded. Then he laid his hand for a moment upon the girl's head. "The good God," said he, "who loves the young, has dealt very tenderly with you, my child. Have you thought of thanking Him for His extraordinary protection.?" The little head, with its wealth of curls, was bowed still deeper. " That is well, " went on the priest. " Your name, the Duchess tells me, is Gioja. Gioja — Joy, a pretty name ! May it be an omen of what you will bring to this house, and what you will find here for yourself. God bless you ! " The Doctor turned upon his heel with a hideous grimace, and, rubbing his chin, produced a quite audible crackle. He looked round the room, irre- sponsively passing Nessie's eager, interrogative gaze, his glance resting finally upon Favereau's tired face. Then the two elderly men, who knew the world, had a swift interchange of thought. Said the Doctor's eye: " What have zve got here ?" Said Favereau's, in a sort of agony: "Don't ask me." THE SECRET ORCHARD 147 Then exclaimed the eyes of both: "Ah, diable !" "Helen," inquired Madame de Lormes, blandly, " is it intended that we should dine to-night ? " Helen started, blushed, and laughed, "My dear Aunt, my dear guests, indeed I must beg pardon. " Cluny, with alacrity, offered his arm to his for- midable relative. Nessie, avowing that she was "that hollow, she couldn't have held up another moment," fluttered to Favereau's side. "Now, Canon," cried the Duchess, gaily, "I claim your arm." Then she hesitated, looking at Joy and the three remaining men. Totol glanced askance over his shoulder, and endeavoured to hide his minuteness behind the Doctor's breadth. "So long as they don't glue me to the school- girl," he whispered. '^ Ah, ^a. Doctor, my friend, how I do hate a bread-and-butter miss!" Helen noted her younger cousin's retreat, and the simultaneous involuntary step forward of the elder. She smiled. "George," said she to the sailor, "you will escort Joy." Then, under pretence of settling the girl's lace, she bent over and whispered in her ear: "This gentleman, dear, will give you his arm to take you in to dinner. Why " Her fingers had fallen on the string of pearls. She drew it out, amused. " Ah, little Miss Vanity, what is this } " Her amuse- ment changed to deep surprise. This, in sooth, was no school-girl's jewel. "Pearls, if you please! 148 THE SECRET ORCHARD And such pearls ! Who could have given you such pearls, child? " Cluny at the door of the room stopped involun- tarily; Favereau, second in the procession, turned round with desperate deliberation, ready for emer- gencies. Joy looked full from one man to the other, then turned to her godmother. " One who loved me, as I was told, sent them to me, Madame," she answered, at last, slowly and distinctly. " Ah ! " cried Helen, and the tears sprang to her eyes. " I am doing nothing but stupid things this evening," she went on, in an undertone to the Canon. "The poor mother! I might have known. Come, Canon, let us dine." "Pray," said Nessie, in a vicious undertone, to the Doctor, as she settled into her seat at the further end of the rose-decked table — " pray, what is your opinion of the Duchess's new daughter.? " "Madame," said Dr. Lebel, good-humouredly, while he tucked his napkin under his chin, "the young lady would seem to me to belong to a type sufficiently rare to be interesting as a curiosity to a medical mind, but not otherwise, since vivisection is not allowed on the human subject. There is one if you like who will never be ill unless she were to take pqison. Red blood she has, that one! And nerves — oh, M'ame, nerves of steel ! " "Red blood!" ejaculated Nessie, contemptuously. "With that whey face?" THE SECRET ORCHARD 149 "A thick skin, yes. Creamy white," said the Doctor with conviction. "That is of the type." He sucked in his first spoonful of soup with every symptom of appreciation. Nessie pondered for a moment, marking across the table how the sailor's sea-blue eyes kindled and how soft his voice grew as he turned to address his impassive partner. "Then you don't think it is such a timid, fragile soul .'' " she said spitefully. The Doctor finished his last mouthful of soup, laid down his spoon with a sigh, and polished his mouth with his napkin. "Eh, Ma'am," said he, "you must not come to me with questions about souls. Inquire for this article over the way. Ask our friend the Canon yonder. The body of my neighbour gives me quite enough to think about." CHAPTER XVII THE dinner table was a large one for the com- paratively small party. But Helen, who since she had entered this noble house had had but one thought, that of keeping up its dignity; who spent her time like some vestal virgin, continually feeding the sacred fires of her temple, — would have thought it desecration to replace the great carved oak by any modern, if more convenient board. On the rare occasions when she and Cluny were quite alone in the castle, they had their meals in a gay little Chinese room looking on the conservatory. There, unless detained by their spiritual or temporal duties, the Canon and the Doctor invariably found their places laid as a matter of course at a table, just large enough to hold them all four round a silver bowl of flowers. But when there were other visitors the dining-hall was roused from its slumberous antique solemnity. And though to-night the guests were rather too far from each other for the stimula- tion of conviviality, the huge board was made as harmoniously gay as flowers and fruit and the accu- mulated silver treasure of the house could make it. This night, to any one not gifted with the powers of Asmodeus, in the rare old-world room, between THE SECRET ORCHARD 151 the dark walls hung with historic tapestry, under a ceiling where, round the central quasi-royal arms of the first Duke, were blazoned all the subsequent honours the race had gathered to itself, the company assembled would have seemed, if somewhat incon- gruously matched, in the highest possible humour. Most of the diners, after the genial French way, talked at the top of their voices, at the same time, and with much gesticulation. A flush had risen to Cluny's cheek, his eyes were bright. The almost hysterical reaction after the moment of mortal peril successfully escaped was upon him, together with the recklessness, the joy of his despair, if one may use so paradoxical a phrase. The conflict with conscience was over, that was one thing. He was going to the devil, and the devil was mak- ing it easy for him at last; he would not fail to con- tinue to show the way. The girl had accepted the situation, it seemed. The moment when, by a word, she could have blasted him was over for ever. Who zaould believe her now? He had but to go on as he had begun, ' to lie like a man, ' and Helen, his Helen, would never know. His laugh rang out. Never had his wit been more pointed, his illustration more apt. Even Madame de Lormes, who, as was said, regarded Cluny with the peculiar favour her lofty mind could have accorded to no lesser star of the Almanach de 152 THE SECRET ORCHARD Gotha, even Madame de Lormes' spirits began to react against the depression caused by the strange action of a ruling providence in permitting the reap- pearance of her American son. As for this latter, he found, as the minutes passed by, that the per- sonality of his quiet little neighbour was affecting him in a more and more troubling manner. He had first been drawn to her out of a natural instinct of manly championship evoked by his mother's ungenerous attitude on the one side, and his brother's undisguised impertinent aversion on the other. She had seemed so small, so white, so childish a thing, that he would have liked to call her "my dear," and throw his strong arm round her in protective brotherly fashion. But now, by some magnetic influence that seemed to emanate even from her very reserve, by the curious fluttering glances she flung at him from time to time, by the dimple that a little secret smile, caused by some chance remark of his printed in the half-averted cheek, by the stirring of his own blood, he felt that this child was very woman after all. As the meal progressed, who shall say what con- flicting thoughts, what emotions were revolving in the girl's own busy mind? She would not have been, as she was, human of elemental humanity, had she not felt the intoxication of the luxury and the beauty around her; luxury such as .n her most ambi- tious dreams she could not have conceived; beauty which awoke every dormant artistic passion in an extraordinarily passionate nature. THE SECRET ORCHARD 153 He is master here. He is a Duke. A King's son. How I hate him! He laughs. What beautiful teeth he has! How I love him! We shall live in the same house, and it is I who will hold him. My God, how her eyes devour him ! She is beautiful — but she is stupid. He looks at me. He did love me. I made him love me once. And this great Americajt, he loves me too, ajtd I never thought of it, or of him. How good these flowers, this champag7ie. He gave me champagne that day — a/i, that day ! If I think of it, perhaps I can make him think of it too. "Look at the dear little one," said Helen, whis- pering to the Canon; "it is like a blossom opening out to the warmth and the light." But here the Doctor's voice rose with sudden rasping insistence. He had heard the Marquis drop the fatal word " Dreyfus. " He thumped the table with the handle of his knife. "But you can't condemn a man if you can't prove him guilty : no honest man can get out of that. " "For me," Madame de Lormes was saying, as she spread out her white hands, "the man is a criminal. I bow to the decision of ,the tribunals of my country." "What, Aunt," cried Cluny, mockingly, "bow to Republican Tribunals? " "My dear Charles-Edward," said the lady, "why, the man is a Jew! " " A'ie, ate, ate!" interrupted Totol, in an acute voice. He thrust his fingers into his ears and 154 THE SECRET ORCHARD waggled his wizened face from side to side in comic despair. " How can any one still talk of this weary business? Who cares, who did ever care, whether the wretched creature did or didn't? I am sure if anybody in France had a penn'orth of wit and go, he would have put a ball through his head long ago — sent him to some Devil's Island from whence he could not have come back in such a hurry to bother us all to death. Lord, Lord, the beastly saw ! " The Doctor, who had been craning his neck for- ward with angry intentness and rolling his ensan- guined eye from one speaker to the other, here opened his mouth as if for the passage of a roar. He changed his mind, however, and closed it again with a snap. The American, who, although well acquainted with French, had not yet an ear attuned to the rapid apprehension of table-talk, was just a minute behind in the following of the conversation. Then, a fine flush of indignation mounting to his brow, he in his turn looked round the table to see if the Doctor was to be the only representative of common fairness of judgment. Favereau was wrapt in garments of official reserve. The Duke, as he met the inquiring eye, said, over the edge of his glass: "A dirty business altogether;" but left his guest to elucidate for himself on which side cleaved the dirt. From the contemptuous indifference of his manner it was probable he referred impartially to both. " Poor France ! " cried the Doctor at last, his pent- THE SECRET ORCHARD 155 up feelings bursting out irrepressibly. " If she were a person, one would have to say that she was very ill — very ill." As the Doctor spoke, Dodd saw that he instinc- tively addressed himself to the Minister. The latter jerked his head with an affirmative melancholy that seemed beyond words. "Ah, tenes,'' said Dr. Lebel, gesticulating with a silver fork on which was stuck a large piece of pine- apple, " I am a doctor, I, and I ought to know some- thing of diagnosis. France has had some very ugly symptoms — enough to warn those who love her. Oh, I '11 pass over the surrenders of Sedan and Metz and the horrors of the Commune, over the decoration business, over the Panama business, all that belongs to the now mature generations. Take the last couple of years only. You want to know what 's the condi- tion of the youth of France — the gilded youth — the educated, the wealthy youth, that ought to be re- garded as the hope of the nation, the class that ought to lead the others? Well, then, see it put to the test ; take the Bazar de la ChariU. " A low murmur of horror ran round the table. Cluny drew his brows together sensitively. " But I think," said Madame de Lormes, addressing space with an air of grandiose rebuke, "that we great ladies of France were not behindhand in giving an example of heroism to the populace." " Because, Madame," said the Canon, "you had the courage of religion which, alas " "Wait, wait, my friend," interrupted the Doctor, 156 THE SECRET ORCHARD who, having triumphantly masticated his piece of pine-apple, was ready to speak again; "I am coming to you and to the priesthood in France presently. The women stuck to their post upon that day of shame, for the simple reason that the one section not totally corrupt in our country to-day is woman. Woman — God bless her ! — as we doctors know, is ever the last to fail in great emergencies. Self- sacrifice is ingrained in her very nature. It will be a bad day for France when that last rope of salvation breaks. Yet even that " He made an expres- sive grimace. "There was a day, when I was young, when Madame George Sand was supposed (by well-thinking people) to be a baneful writer." He laughed angrily. " Now, your favourite woman writer, Mesdames of the Faubourg St. Germain, is — Gyp!" He thrust out his underlip with huge contempt. Totol burst into a delighted cackle. " Famously droll, all the same, Ma'ame ' Gyp,' " he cried. Nessie gave a guilty little giggle, conscious of having found some amusement in such books. Madame de Lormes rinsed her fat taper finger in the Venetian bowl with a detached air. "But, Doctor," said Helen, trying to follow the arguments with her earnest, sweet, but somehow slow mind — "but. Doctor, you are diverging from the question. I do not know Gyp's books, but I know how good, how charitable, my French friends are, and surely, surely it is not fair to blast all our aris- tocracy because of the cowardice of a few worthless THE SECRET ORCHARD 157 young men" — here, all unconsciously, her tender lip curved into scorn. "If Cluny had been there on that horrible day " — her eye seemed to say proudly, " my Cluny " — " (and it is but a chance we were not, I had actually promised the poor Duchesse d'Alengon) you would have had another story to tell." "Ah, if Cluny had been there," interrupted Favereau, with the first warm look he had given his host that night, "if he had been there, with you, he would have done the impossible to save you. But as you would not have been saved alone — I know you — you would both have remained to perish." "Well, as for me," yelped Totol, his face crink- ling, with the most good-natured, cynical frankness, " I don't go in for pose, not I. I go in for raw truth. If people don't like it, so much the worse. I was not at the bazaar. They bore me, bazaars do. Wasn't it lucky now.?" He looked round amiably for congratulation. " But, faith, if I 'd been there, I 'd have looked after number one, you know. Come, come," he went on, shrilly crying down the chorus of exclamations, derisive and otherwise, "I'm only saying what every reasonable man thinks. Come Doctor, aren't you the apostle of materialism.? Aren't we all animals, and isn't it animal instinct to save one's skin, to shun pain.? Oh, eh.? If one goes in for free-thinking, you know, one should be consistent. Let us be consistent." "Hear, hear!" said the Canon, softly and flung a triumphant look at the Doctor. 158 THE SECRET ORCHARD "PoorTotol," sighed Helen, indulgently. "Who would believe to hear him that it is the kindest little heart in all the world ? " Nessie, who had laughed openly and delightedly at the little decadent's pronouncement, now voiced the general opinion of her world to the Doctor. '■^My word," said she, "what a face, Doctor! D|a,'t you know by this time that nobody ever minds the Marquis.^ " "A lucky thing, Madame," responded the other, with his prompt, incisive humour. "But for that one would have had to kill him long ago." "It's all right," the young man was pursuing, charmed to find himself for once the centre of atten- tion. "It's all very well for Abbes and women to stand still and be frizzled for the sake of a lot of people they don't care a cent about; I 'd have used my legs and arms to save my own skin — et v Id ! " Dr. Lebel spread out his square hand with an inimitable gesture. "My friends," said he, "the noble Marquis Ana- tole de Lormes has so well illustrated the first part of my thesis that I have not a word to add." George Dodd had completely turned round in his chair to survey his brother, with the air of one who examines a totally unknown species of beast, wonder for the moment superseding all other emotion in his mind. "Why, the little cuss is n't even ashamed of him- self!" thought he. "The whole business," said the Marquise, some- what acidly, " has been grossly exaggerated. " THE SECRET ORCHARD 159 "Well, now," said the undaunted Doctor, remov- ing his napkin from under his chin and holding it stretched out in both hands, preliminary to a final scrub of beard and moustache, " so much for the upper class at the hour of test. What about the lower? If the aristocracy is, or ought to be, the head, the people are, or ought to be, the heart. That 's what we are told. What about the people — again at the hour of test } Take the foundering of the Bourgogne ? " Having thrown his second bomb he paused, and proceeded vigorously with the napkin operation. "That was another bad business," said the sailor, gravely. "The Doctor is determined not to spare us his diagnosis," said Favereau, with a rather weary smile. How this man's heart had bled for his France; how ceaselessly had he striven to work at the task of reparation, of uplifting. How hopelessly, none would ever know but himself. The Doctor was a sanguine man. That he could still see a use in such indictments was because he yet could still hope. Deep in a sacred silence, Favereau, the de- voted servant of his country, had hidden the fact that he had no illusions left. "A bad business!" cried Lebel, jovial even in his indignation. " Les deicx font la paire! The two match each other. " He balanced his hands expres- sively. "The little aristocrat stamps the delicate fine ladies of his acquaintance back into the flames with heel and cane; and your rough, honest viatclot i6o THE SECRET ORCHARD hits the drowning women and children on the head with oars as they would cling to his boat. Yes, they match quite nicely. It is on record," he added, dropping his satiric emphasis for a perfectly even voice, " that neither a single young swell was shriv- elled in the flames, nor a single horny-handed son- of-toil perished in the ocean wave, whatever may have happened to the rest." "Ah, you forget," said Helen, earnestly, "M. de Rothschild's groom " "English, Madame — Anglo-Saxon!" said the Doctor, laconically. The Canon folded his beautiful hands over his finger-bowl. He had bided his time, but now he was going to speak. "I would point out to my friend the Doctor," he began, in his gentle deliberate voice, "that the Mar- quis made just now a remark pregnant with truth. In a word, he gave the reason for the whole deplor- able state of affairs. Why, said he, should the mate- rialist think of others? Why, indeed? If a man does not believe that * he who loses his life shall gain it,' why should he depart from the common animal instinct of self-preservation, no matter at what cost to others? Alas, if our France is ill, is it not because she has thrust health from her, the health of the soul — religion? Religion, which made the heroines and martyrs in that catastrophe we have just spoken of." There was a moment of impressive silence. Every eye was turned upon the Doctor. Even the most THE SECRET ORCHARD i6i sceptical felt that the Canon's arguments seemed at least supported by facts. The Doctor, however, was too true a fighter to be otherwise than stimulated by a direct attack. "Aha, I expected you there, my friend," he cried; "but I 'm ready for you, I 'm not denying that reli- gion, as a human institution, is a remarkably useful thing for the morals of the people. But, like all other human institutions, Canon, I '11 make you observe that it is as much subject to the nation's corruption as any other. Let us look at your reli- gion in France. What has it done for you.-* Has it upheld justice? How have you good priests come out of the Dreyfus case.'*" Totol again gave his dismal howl, and again put his fingers in his ears. Nessie supported him with a series of little shrieks. Even the Duke and Favereau raised their voices. But the Doctor had a powerful organ, and he outbellowed them all. "What about your holy brothers of La Croix? What about your Christian attitude towards the Jew.!" What doctrines of peace, of justice, of the charity that thinketh no evil, have been preached to the most ignorant hamlets in the country.? Where would the priest have led France to-day } " Every question was emphasised by the darting of a stubby forefinger, as if the speaker were thrusting a rapier under the well-covered ribs of his friend. Helen threw towards Cluny a look of comical despair. The inevitable battle began in earnest. i62 THE SECRET ORCHARD Without any further loss of placidity, without heeding her aunt's shocked gestures of utter repro- bation, she awaited the Canon's defence to this vio- lent counter attack. "My good Doctor," he began, as soon as he could make himself heard, and his placid, well-bred ac- cents were in marked contrast to the other's broad vehemence, "far be it from me to deny that injudi- cious things have been said and pernicious advice given from quarters from which no teaching but that of the Gospel should have been heard. But that, my friend, is because, if the teaching is Divine, the ministry of the church is yet human, and errare humanum est. The errors of humanity, of the be- liever, of the priest, do not affect the divinity of the principle, any more than the corruptness of the judge can alter the inherent quality of justice. It is not for me to pronounce upon my colleagues — thank God ! I do not either impugn or defend them. All I maintain is that if you take away from man the belief in his soul, that is, in his ideal, that is, in his God, you take away from him all motives for righteousness. Nay, the only logical conclusion, then, is that of Monsieur le Marquis — every man for himself." "There you are," cried the Doctor, who, finding himself beaten upon the frontal attack, with the fighter's instinct nimbly leaped upon another breach. " Listen to him : ' it is not for me to pronounce — thank God ! ' Even you — even he " — appealing to the table — " is suffering from the universal disease. THE SECRET ORCHARD 163 There is not one of you who can face the truth. The Duke has already shown that he cannot." Cluny started. The Doctor proceeded inexorably. "Yes, even you, Duke, from the height of your chivalrous honour, all you can find for your unhappy country is contempt : ' I wash my hands of it. These things are too dirty for me to touch. ' " Cluny smiled, smiled to hide a horrible return of invading misery : Alas, his chivalrous honour ! And that girl' s eyes npon him, and Helen s worshipping glance ever seeking him across the table. " So much for you, " pursued the Doctor. " You 're one type. There 's Monsieur Favereau, that 's an- other. He folds himself up in his leaves; you'll never get at the thought of him. ' Respect my silence, respect my sorrow.' Useful, is it not.? " Favereau laughed with some bitterness. ** Wrong in your diagnosis for once," said he, drily. " I take things philosophically, my good Esculapius. " "But surely. Doctor," said Dodd, in his sound, if rather laboured French, " if a man cannot help his country by speaking, the best he can do is to keep silence." " But cannot every man help his country by speak- ing?" inquired the Doctor, explosively. "What help is there for a nation if all its honest men pre- serve the policy of dignified silence, and so leave the rogues, the cranks, and the decadents to speak for her, to rule her.? What is to become of a country that has no moral courage ? " "For me," declared Madame de Lormes, in the i64 THE SECRET ORCHARD tone of one putting an end to a discussion, "I am amazed at the patience with which you all listen to Monsieur le Docteur. I should call that man a bad patriot who takes part with the enemies of his fatherland." Dr. Lebel looked at her with his jaw on one side and much humour in his eye. "Third type," said he, quietly; "Madame la Marquise represents the class of the wilfully blind. 'It is impossible that our army should go wrong; it is impossible that so holy a paper as La Croix should mislead us.' But your generals have ad- mitted forgery, fear of the enemy, false witness." Then, drawing himself together and answering himself with an air of great dignity, unconsciously mimicking the Marquise's manner: "'Monsieur, if our generals committed forgery, it was from the noblest of motives. ' — ' And La Croix, Madame } That rag that you, an intelligent woman, know to be propagating lies under the cloak of the monk, lies that would plunge this country into a war for which we were never worse prepared, pro- vided that such a war secured the overthrow of the government. ' " "Sir," interrupted the Marquise, tartly, opening her eyes to throw a severe glance at the speaker, " it is not from you, free-thinker, that I should expect justice towards ministers of my holy religion." "I am answered," said the Doctor, irrepressibly. "It is strange to me," said the sailor, who had been following this unexpected indictment of his THE SECRET ORCHARD 165 host's own country with great interest, "that such a state of things as you describe can co-exist with such marvellous prosperity, such scientific advance, as I have seen manifested since my return to Paris, which struck even me, a member of the richest, of the most scientific country in the world." "My young friend," said the Doctor, and planted his forefinger on the table, " you have hit it. France is prosperous, extraordinarily prosperous, but it is only material prosperity, and every Spartan virtue is dying out. Is it because of her very riches.'' I know not. Will our wealth yet help us out of our ditch .^ I know not. Riches, when used for patriot- ism, as, by the way, England is using hers just now " " I felt," said Madame de Lormes, audibly enough to the Duke, " that Monsieur Lebel would come to taking the part of our enemies." But the Doctor proceeded without heeding. " But our science. Ah, young man, there is the salvation of our country, there alone do I see hope ahead ! Science is great in France. Literature is debased, art is debased, the army is corrupt, politics are a sink, religion is not a guide but a tool. Science we have yet." "What," said the Canon, in a loud voice, "is that all we have to hope in ? Then it is indeed unhappy France ! " "Oh, Doctor," exclaimed Helen, "you know as well as I do how much good there is about us, even in this little corner of the world. How simple and i66 THE SECRET ORCHARD brave and pious and charitable is our poor peasantry, how devoted their doctor, what an apostle their priest!" The Doctor turned his eyes upon her and the light of battle went out of them, to be replaced by an extraordinary tenderness. "Ah, Madame," he cried, "have I not already said that there are still good women? " "And good men!" cried the Duchess, gaily. "Cluny, we have heard enough pessimism this even- ing : speak for your beautiful France. Speak ! " The Duke's blood rose at the call. Speak for France! Who could do it better than he.? Who could love his France better than he.? Not indeed the France of a corrupt self-seeking oligarchy, nor yet the France of advanced thought and far-seeing science, but the France of the old traditions, the nation of all wit, of all elegance, of chivalry, of refinement 1 France of the gentilhomme, who did brave deeds with a jest; who bragged not, but did. In the return of this royal France it was part of his creed to believe, to believe that when her hour struck from all over the fair country, his compeers would arise to uphold her and take their rightful place again by throne and fleur-de-lys. Words crowded to his tongue, fire sprang into his eyes. . . . Then, even as he opened his mouth, he felt upon him the gaze of Joy. A cold sweat broke upon him; he paused as if paralysed. After a moment's painful silence, with a second revulsion the blood rushed to his face again. THE SECRET ORCHARD 167 " Speak for France ! " he cried, with sudden anger, flinging his napkin on the floor; "I, speak for France ! " The bitterest laughter rose to his lips from the bottom of his sore heart. "What have I to say? Lebel is right. We are a worthless race." CHAPTER XVIII SAPERLIPOPETTE ! " said the Doctor, genu- inely disconcerted by this unexpected con- version to his views. The colour had faded from Helen's face as she rose and broke up the circle. Anxiously her eyes sought to meet her husband's, but in vain. Many times had Cluny listened to the diatribes of the country doctor, without manifesting any other emotion than gentle laughter. Many times indeed had he, boyishly mischievous, deliberately started the friendly antago- nists upon one of their heated discussions. But the Doctor had been unpardonable to-night. Evidently Cluny's endurance had its limits; even she, she told herself rebukingly, had not sounded all the depth, all the refinement of that rare nature. " Lebel was really beyond everything just now," said she to the Canon, as they ceremoniously returned to the drawing-room. " Alas, Madame," said the Canon, wistfully, "one must pardon all the same. Poor fellow, he knows not what he says." A chill had fallen over them all — a chill which became accentuated on their return to the library. Helen, yearning to have her arm round her husband THE SECRET ORCHARD 169 and lay tender fingers upon that hidden sore place she felt within him, had lost for the moment her usual power of drawing her guests into comfort and sympathy. Thus, after half an hour's ungenial, disjointed conversation, every one was glad to hear Madame de Lormes announce her intention of con- veying her exhausted body and her sorely tried soul to retirement for the night. Upon this relief Totol skipped off with Nessie to the billiard-room. Then the Canon faded out of the company : it was his hour for the night visit to the chapel. And the Doctor, after several noisy yawns, declared his intention of trotting home as soon as he had had a last glance at his patient. Rose. Helen was suddenly struck by the v/anness of Joy's face. " Say good-night, my dear," said she, after kissing her on the forehead. " I shall take a peep in at you by-and-bye." " Good-night," said the girl, passively. Then she paused a second; the sailor was next to her. " Good-night, Miss Joy," said he heartily, and extended his hand. After a second's pause she slid her fingers into it, and felt them engulfed in a warm, close, protecting clasp. His eyes were vainly seeking hers. " What an ugly great hand," she thought. " Good-night, Sir," said she to the Duke. And within herself: " And you, I love you, and now I shall again touch your hand.^* I/O THE SECRET ORCHARD Cluny was struggling with an absolutely physical repulsion. In this moment of hardly perceptible hesitation, Favereau, the ever-watchful, stepped quite naturally between him and the girl. " Mademoiselle, I wish you a very good night," he said in a tone that was admirably balanced between the paternal and the ceremonious. She shrank in her turn, but could not avoid sub- mitting to his handshake, which was at the same time so manoeuvred as to dismiss her from the room. " That horrid old man. That bad old man I Hotv I hate him ! " she said to herself all the way up the stairs. When in the smoking-room the Duke sank into his chair behind his cigar the strain of pretence was at length relaxed, and — for life is full of these ironical compensations — he welcomed the moment when he could give way and listen to his own pain. Neither Favereau nor Dodd, likewise extended on their lounges, seemed disposed to make any tax on his powers of entertainment. Silence therefore reigned in the room, a silence grateful to each in his own mood, broken only on occasions by the distant click of balls in the billiard-room beyond or a faint squeal from either or both of the light-hearted players. At first Cluny smoked mechanically. Fragments of the evening conversation, echoes of the Doctor's rough voice, mingled with the turmoil of his thoughts — thoughts by turns self-accusing and self-exculpating. THE SECRET ORCHARD 171 By-and-bye the red glow died away on _the brown leaf, his hands dropped inertly on the long cushioned arms. A worthless race ! * Even yoji, even you, Duke, from the height of your delicate hotiour — unhappy France I ' Utihappy France, indeed I Was Lebel right 1 Was decay in their very blood ! His delicate honour ! ' Oh, these things are too dirty for 7ne to touch!' God help us! What! This affair where men, his countrymen, had lied for a good end — for a good end no doubt, as they thought — his ' honour' had been too delicate even to speak of it. And yet how was he better to-day than the false witness, than the men who forged ^ for a good purpose,' as they said? A7id Favereau, the uprigJit, the benevolent, he had lied too — nay, had suggested the lie, for a good purpose — oh, for a good prirpose ! ' The aristocrat thrusts the delicate fine lady with heel and cane back into the flames. The ho?iest sailor clubs the drowjiitig woman, the child, back into the water with his oar! Why ? Totol gave the reason. ' To save themselves , pardieu ! ' Helen had cried, * If my Cluny had been there ! ' Oh, God! oh, God! oh, God! — oh, devil! Her Cluny! ' You are brave geittlemeti ! Two men against a girl! Brave f Aye, ' take them at the test, neither moral nor physical courage! What had he, the man of delicate hojiour, done with the woman — the child? Into what flames had he not thrust her, back into what waters of perdition and of despair ? And why, why, why ? Totol 172 THE SECRET ORCHARD had screeched the infamous reason for him : ' To save himself ^ par dieu !^ Himself? All, no, not that! To save her, to save Helen ! The man's whole soul surged on the tide of passionate tenderness towards his wife. The vision of Helen, pure, simple, loving, rose before his mind, the most beautiful image of peace, of healing, sur- rounded with the perfume of all womanliness, all loveableness. For a moment he saw himself on his knees, his head upon her lap, and he pictured to himself his own rapture of relief in confiding his trouble to her. Had she not always soothed away his difficulties? Had she not always understood him as nobody else ever did? Then his own cry to Favereau came back to him like the howl of the lost soul. No, Helen could not understand ! She is not one of those women that could understand. Oh, less than ever now ! If at one moment he had a chance of redemption, now it was gone. Yes, Favereau had shown him the right road. Both had quailed from its steepness, but now they had wilfully entered on the descent, and the mire of it could never be brushed from their garments. Luxuriously outstretched in his great leather arm- chair, George Dodd, delightfully at ease both morally and physically, his square head thrown back, his THE SECRET ORCHARD 173 sea-blue eyes watching vaguely the opalescent spirals of a choice Havana's vanishing life, George Dodd was seeing strange visions in the smoke. Why, the little creature lias bewitched me! Who would have thought it? It was a revelation. There was humour also in the situation. He felt a vast astonishment at himself, but withal an extraordinary warm expansion. / could crush her with one hand, and yet the little thing — one of those glances of hers, where the shy woman peeps from inside the heart of the child — makes me feel downright silly. George P. Dodd, what's come to you ? You always said the sea would be your only mistress, your only bride. What, anyJiow, has a sailor to do with a wife ? . . . Unless she had eyes like that, and baby-hair At this point there suddenly rose before his eyes a picture of a small face, half child's, half woman's, under a bridal veil, and his strong heart began to thump. Dm bewitched, and — well, what in the wide world is to hinder me, if I choose ? Mighty Neptune! I believe Vd rather to-night kiss that little creature on the lips than sink the ^ Merrimac' In a bad way, George, my boy! A smile, however, hovered on the sailor's face. While he tried mentally to shake his head at himself, the deep delight evoked by the mere lover's dream invaded his whole being. As Favereau mechanically smoked one cigarette 174 THE SECRET ORCHARD after another and reviewed the events of the night in his clean orderly mind, he was conscious, with that precision which accompanied all its operations, that this evening's work had brought him to a critical epoch in his life. For years he had thought himself finally shorn of all illusions, for years he had looked upon life as an observer: emotions, whether pleasurable or the reverse, being to him merely objective. Life, he had believed, had ceased to have a personal meaning to him from the day when he had definitely given up all hope of those things that go to make a man's life — love, marriage, paternity. His work he gave to his country, not with any personal ambition, not even with any hope of lasting influence, but from the same sense of duty which ruled the rest of his actions — the duty of acting the part of an honest man while he still cumbered the earth. Yet to-night he found himself separated by a gulf from the moral standpoint of this morning. And, by the pain he felt in the sense of loss, he realised now many illusions he had still unconsciously held, recognised how impossible it is for man to avoid his personal share in others' existence, in others' respon- sibilities, A profound conviction of the sorrow of the world had ever been with him, yet he had flattered himself to be able to pass through this wretched masquerade they call life, not " gravely," as a certain thinker advises us, but as that highest type of philoso- pher, the true humourist. To-night, however, his whole system was crumbling around him. He had THE SECRET ORCHARD 175 laid his foundations upon the certitude of his own moral strength, of his own personal worth. To him also the Doctor's words recurred as an echo : " Take them at the test, they fail! '^ In a larger spirit than that of his unhappy accomplice, and from a different standpoint, he viewed his own fall as part of the miserable inheritance of humanity, accepted it with- out a moment's weakening, even without remorse. But he was sad, sad to the soul. The chance of keeping that horror of disillusion from Helen ? It was worth it. I would do it again for that. Poor Helen — my beautiful Helen I And /, who thongJit that I could direct her fate, thought that the greatness of my sacrifice must secure her happijiess ! ' What man could keep himself, year in year out, on Helen's level ? ' Thus her husband — the husband I gave her ! Whatman? I could have do7ie it — I! and he could not. I knew how to love her. She loved me always as a child does. I could have taught her to love me as a woman. What devil inspired me ? I thought it was the twice of God, the voice of right, just because it was so hard. Monstrous selfishness, a crime, to unite my staid manhood to her bright youth I Oh, miserable world; oh, unhappy, groping humanity! Our greatest sacrifices are almost ever our greatest mistakes. Where is God in all this f Where is right ? And yet — and yet ! What luas it Cluny said ? Could I, could any other man but this Cluny himself, have given to that womaji' s face her aureole of joy ? Youth 176 THE SECRET ORCHARD calls to youth, bea?{ty to beauty, brilliancy to brilliancy. Had she been mine the poignaiicy of anguish which 7iow threatens her soul could never have reached her — it never would: but neither could have reached her that poignancy of bliss! He stroked his grey beard with a steady hand. To-nigJit hoiv beautiful she looked! Oh, it shall not all be lost ! Helen, if there be a ministering God, and I must lose my soul for it, you at least shall keep your earthly paradise ! He flung his final cigarette into the dish, and looked at Cluny, whose face was now compressed into lines of pain, whose eyes were closed. He rose from his chair, went over to his friend, laid a kind hand upon his shoulder, and said in his ear: " Cluny, it is getting late. Helen will be waiting for you." Cluny looked up. And astonishment first, then a wistful incredulous questioning, came hungrily into his eyes. " Go to her," repeated Favereau, and paused. " My God, man," he went on in a passionate whis- per, "have you not got the present still? He who knows how to hold the present must not fear the future. Go ! " Cluny sprang to his feet like one recalled to life. His was a nature that must utterly despond or buoyantly hope; but too eagerly will such natures seize upon hope again. He wrung Favereau's hands. " God bless you," said he. " What should I have THE SECRET ORCHARD 177 done without you? Ah, Favereau, if we get out of this, I shall be a very dififerent man." Favereau looked after him as he hurried from the room, forgetting even to bestow a good-night word upon the dreaming Dodd still sunk in his armchair; there was no lightening of the melancholy eyes. CHAPTER XIX HELEN gently turned the handle of the door and peeped in. The small lamp was still glowing under its pink shade over the girl's bed, but Joy was asleep. The Duchess crept softly to her side and looked down. So strong was the mother instinct in this childless woman's heart that she, who had never tasted the delight of the " good-night " nursery visit, who had never known the stealthy gloating over one's treasure — one's very own! — who had never known the rush of protecting tenderness over the helpless being that owes one the very breath of life, felt something of the sweet pain of all these emotions stir her heart over the child of her adoption. Here at last was a child : and she, who had been cheated of motherhood's first joys, was now pleased to cheat herself with the fancy that she could still trace some baby graces in her foundling. Childish enough looked the sleeping face in its soft relaxation ; childish the aureole of curling hair, as pale as morning sunshine and as fine as gossamer threads; childishly pouted the lips and childishly lay the small, curved hands, one flung outside the pink coverlet, the other curling up to the mouth. Just so Helen had seen many a peasant child lie in its wooden cot. THE SECRET ORCHARD 179 Ah ! — she bent closer — what a sobbing sigh ! The little one had been weeping : the long lashes were still matted and wet with tears ! Yet it was only as a child may cry, for now in her sleep she smiled and — what was this ? Shining between her fingers was the string of pearls : Joy had fallen asleep holding them to her lips. Helen's heart melted altogether within her. In her loneliness, her strangeness, her fatigue and excite- ment, this poor child had turned for consolation to the only thing that had come to her from her mother — " from one who loved her ! " "What do you know of my mother, Madame?" That had been that first question she had asked when they had found themselves alone together, Alas ! what could Helen tell that innocence about her mother? " She is dead. She loved you. She wished me to have you," had been the hesitating answer. The girl had given her a quick, strange look, and had fallen back into her shy silence. The thought of the poor mother and of her sacri- fice, the pity of it, brought the tears to Helen's eyes. Then, after her fashion of carrying everything beyond the world, she prayed God to help her to be a faith- ful mother to His forlorn creature ; she prayed for a blessing upon her new duties, and most earnestly for one upon the young creature. " Oh, my God," she said, " let these be the last tears of sorrow that she may shed in this house ! " i8o THE SECRET ORCHARD As Helen re-entered her own sitting-room, she found her husband seated by the wood fire. He looked up and his face became softened with that look of love and admiration so long known, yet as ever dearly prized by her — that look which, after fourteen years, had still the power of making her heart flutter like that of a happy girl. " I have just been looking at the child ; she is asleep." And, as she spoke the words, the thought of the ineffable joy it would have been to look at a child of his and hers struck her to the heart like a dagger stab. But in the very grip of her own pain she noticed how his face changed. In an instant she was on her knees beside him, her arms round his neck. " But we are very happy, Cluny, are we not?" He caught her to him with the same extraordinary passion he had already shown that evening. She disengaged herself to look into his face, her hands pressed against his shoulders. The loose sleeves of her dressing-gown fell back from her white arms. Beautiful ! Oh, she was that indeed ! thought the man, as he contemplated her. But it was not for her beauty alone he now loved her as he did — his Helen ! He clasped his feverish hands round her wrists, and madly kissed the lovely arm up to the soft curve of the elbow. " My saint, my love, my wife ! " cried he, almost beside himself. Through his ardour, the sense of the trouble THE SECRET ORCHARD i8i seething within him betrayed itself to her quick feminine perception. She began to tremble. " Cluny, what is it? Tell me. You are not your- self, you have not been yourself this evening." "Have I not?" said he, and devoured her lovely face with his piteous eyes. " Forgive me, my beloved." Again she put her arms about him, and drew his head with her maternal gesture to beautiful rest on her bosom. " Do not speak," said she, " I think I know." The echo of many tears had come into her voice. She paused for a moment. " You have never let me guess it," she said at last, " till to-night. But you, too, have mourned for our silent house, for our love that has been so perfect, so great, yet has had to remain so sterile." He interrupted her with broken words, not daring to lift his head from her confiding breast. " His happiness," he murmured, " required nothing more. He had never felt the want of children, so long as he had her. She was his all so long as he kept her. . . ." She smiled as she answered, but he felt only how her bosom heaved. "You are too good to me, love. Indeed, I have been too happy. No, no, do not call me a saint ! 'Tis so easy to help others a little. And you know, Cluny, you know, I try to be good ; I am afraid of the judgments of God. You all talk of my charity, my piety. It's not true, it's all cowardice. I want, i82 THE SECRET ORCHARD so to speak, to bribe the Almighty into leaving me my happiness. Oh, I feel such terror sometimes ! " Her voice came more faintly. The man tight- ened his grasp of her and lifted his head. Their eyes sought each other's almost like two frightened children's. " Oh, Cluny," she cried, " do you ever feel afraid, too?" •' My God, yes ! " " Ah, darling ! " It was a great cry : all the joy, the pride of the woman loved, rang in it. After a pause, during which the warm comfort of her presence, the magic of her beauty, the intoxica- tion of his love, began to invade the man's whole being, she suddenly rose to her feet Unconsciously triumphant in her loveliness she stood, looking down at him, half shyly, half victoriously. The long ropes of her hair, unpinned but not yet untwisted, fell on either side of her shoulders to her knees. The pillar of her throat rose proudly. The firm sweep of her bosom showed superb under the folds of lace. Through drooping lids her sweet eyes caressed him, her teeth gleamed between lips parted for a little happy laugh. " Since inon seigneur^' she said, " still loves his old wife, after all, why should either he or I fear?" And Favereau's words once more echoed in Cluny's ear: " You have the present still, man. He who knows how to hold tJie present must not fear tJie futurey BOOK III. — A WEEK LATER " And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shall fear day afid flight. . . . In the morning thou shall say, would God it were even! A?id at even thou shall say, would God it were jnornin^f" — Deuteronomy. CHAPTER XX THE lower terrace walk beneath the sun- warmed crumbling wall, against which the apricots merged from green immatur- ity to red and yellow pulpiness ; where well-nigh all the year round the bees hummed over the old-fashioned thyme and balm- mint beds ; where it was a black day indeed if there was not at least a few rays of sunshine to be trapped — this was the Canon's favourite walk. And here at certain hours, changing according to the seasons, he was wont to read his breviary; wont also, on rare occasions, to grant himself a delightful snatch of leisure over some well-worn little ivory- yellow volume — " Virgil's Georgics," from the founts of Aldus Manutius, it might be. Balmy-scented, sun-kissed were these moments of self-indulgence, sung to by the humming of those bees that Virgil loved, shot through with a pipe of birds, woven in with colour and shadow. These sheltered twenty yards of homely garden beauty (so different from the almost royal pleasure- grounds originally laid out by the pompous Le i86 THE SECRET ORCHARD N6tre) were therefore known as " the Canon's walk." And " the Canon's hour," understood to be piously- devoted to the breviary, was respected by all the inhabitants of Luciennes down to the smallest blouse in the garden. So much so, indeed, that the good priest was not without some twinges of conscience on the occasions above mentioned, when (the spirit of Maro irresistibly alluring him to commune through flower and sunshine and wing-murmurs) he had yielded, and lingered in his retreat beyond the appointed limit. Nay, there had been days when the crime of having hurried ever so little over the breviary in order to dally with the fascinating pagan had actually lain heavy on his soul ! On this morning, though the autumn had advanced by yet another week since the radiant afternoon when the guests had arrived at Luciennes; though red and yellow leaves played the part of ruddy ghosts of long-eaten apricots against the wall ; though in the wild balsam beds, under the shelter of the wall's shadow, heavy beads of dew still marked the passage of last night's frost, so much summer lingered in this happy spot that the Canon, with half his prayers still unread, had lapsed by almost imperceptible degrees into his favourite corner on the ancient stone bench. It was quite warm in the sun ; the bees were very melodious, the smell of the herbs heavy sweet. The very amiable little devil that had charge of the Canon's weaknesses found his task unwontedly easy. Somehow the breviary slipped from the Canon's knees. THE SECRET ORCHARD 187 The Canon knew the words by heart ; he went on murmuring, in tune with the rusthng leaves — " Spiritus enim meus super mel dulcis ; et hereditas mea super mel et favum. Alleluia, alleluia." And away floated the soul of the Canon on the wings of bees and breeze. " Sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. How beautiful ! " he thought ; and while his delicate scholarly mind moved in harmony with his thankful heart, his eyes were lost in the blue of a happy sky. But — " Hinc ubi jam emissum caveis ad sidera coeli Nare per asstatem liquidam suspexeris agmen . . . Contemplator," whispered the imp in his ear. Back came the Canon's soul from the realms of spiritual sweetness to a charming pagan earth, astir with the humming of Virgil's honey seekers. In some most extraordinary manner the little vel- lum Aldine (heathen from titlepage to colophon) now lay upon his knee ! It opened slowly, quite of its own accord, like a flower unfolded to the sun, at the vfery passage — that favourite page of the Canon's, upon which the set of the print on the yellowing paper, the harmonious proportions of word and line, the shapely Petrarcan lettering, were dear to him as the sight of a well-known and well-loved face. " Aha, my friend, I catch you at it ! " said a loud jeering voice. i88 THE SECRET ORCHARD Thus rudely recalled from floating circles of Ely- sian peace, the Canon opened his eyes with a start. " I was meditating," he began, with great dignity. " It is a frequent habit of mine to take a text of my breviary for morning contemplation." He spoke, serenely persuaded of his own blame- less innocence, when his glance fell upon the volume open on his knee. His jaw dropped. " So I see," cried the Doctor, with his great laugh. " Aha ! " and nipped the book from his friend's lap. The Canon blushed, then winced to see his delicate treasure caught by two leaves like a butterfly by its wings. He stretched out a protecting hand, which the Doctor, glorying in his advantage, met with an elbow. " ' Surely,' says the Duchess, 'you would not think of disturbing the Canon at his meditations ! ' ' Oh, yes,' says the gardener, ' Mr. the Canon is down there, but Mr. the Doctor is not dreaming of disturb- ing him at this hour?' And Jacques, sweeping the valley over there, with his yelp : ' Not that way, m'sieic! Not that way! M'sieii le Chanoine is praying.' Aha ! I could get myself a reputation for sanctity too on those terms. Eh, the fine medita- tion ! " And the Doctor read out — " ' Ilium adeo placuisse apibus mirabere morem Quod nee concubitu indulgent, nee eorpora segnes In Venerem solvunt, aut fetus nixibus edunt.' TienSy tiens, I could meditate on that myself, mere curer of bodies as I am." The poor Canon writhed, as much perhaps on THE SECRET ORCHARD 189 account of the Doctor's butchery of lilt and quantity as from the human irritation of one caught napping, in every sense of the word. The colour deepened on his cheek. The hand which conveyed the comfort- ing pinch of snuff to his nostrils shook perceptibly. But the few seconds of time necessitated for the absorption of the Spanish mixture was sufficient for the spiritual to reconquer his ordinary dominion over the human Canon. Those whose rule of perfection it is to engage in set consultation with conscience at least three times a day are apt to find the still small voice extremely penetrating on other occasions as well. The irate gleam in the old man's eye was quenched. He flung quite a shamefaced glance at the Doctor, and, closing his snuff-box, said with humility: " I hope I have never posed as a saint, Doctor. But if I have unwittingly led any one to think that of me, I am justly punished by being found out at the very moment when I was giving full vent to self-indulgence and sloth. Occasions of too frequent occurrence indeed ! " The Doctor looked quickly at the stately white head bent, and the expression of his good-natured mocking face changed. He cleared his throat, closed the Aldine carefully and laid it back on the other's knee. Next he stooped and picked up the breviary, dusted it and deposited it on the bench. "Oh," he said then, in a detached voice, "if there were more of them like you, I 'd begin to believe in the use of saints ! A pinch from your box. Canon." ipo THE SECRET ORCHARD Their eyes met. It was with comfortable sym- pathy and understanding. " Ah, aha, hum ! " said the Doctor and snuffed noisily. " Well, now, my gossip, that I have run you down, I suppose we can have a few moments' quiet talk. Not to beat about the bush: how do you think things are going on with our friends up yonder? " He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The Canon turned towards him with some surprise and concern. "What makes you say that?" ''Ah,mon Dieu!" — Lebel shrugged his shoulders — "to have your opinion on the subject, I suppose. Look here, my good sir, you are the keeper of con- sciences up there, I am keeper of mere bodies, even as I said just now. But we are always coming across each other for all that." He saw a flicker of contro- versial triumph in the Canon's eye, and hastily pro- ceeded with his good-natured, brutal frankness : " I have not looked you up to waste my time upon argu- ments of theodicy, you may be sure : I have too much to do with this life and this life's mechanisms just now. Briefly, then, you have influence that I, rightly or wrongly, cannot pretend to. I '11 not discuss it. Well, then, you had better use it." Again the stubby finger came into play. " Get the Duchess," said the Doctor, slowly, " to rid her house of that girl." The most profound astonishment, gradually merg- ing into consternation, became depicted, in waves so to speak, on the Canon's face. "The child?" he stammered. THE SECRET ORCHARD 191 " Child ! " snorted the Doctor. " Now, look here. Canon, do not speak in a hurry. If you pretend to be able to guide souls, you ought to base your judg- ments upon something more than mere externals. Oh, you call that little minx a child on the strength of her baby curls and her little face? Now just give yourself the trouble to reflect for a moment upon the effect that child produces upon the men of the com- munity. There's Mr. Dodd, the fine Yankee fellow. Eh ? What does he think of the child ? " More and more disturbed became the priest's face. " Now that you say so," he remarked hesitatingly, "of course — Mr. Dodd — indeed, I believe, at least, I have noticed, he is certainly not indifferent to Made- moiselle Joy's presence." " Indifferent ! " snapped the Doctor. " The man does not know what he 's doing when she 's near him. He 's mad for her — mad ! Well, now, let us take the Marquis next, Totol — little idiot ! He hates and fears young girls, that one. With a girl he has to mind his p's and qs. Innocence and ignorance and timidity — all that sort of thing bore him. He 's afraid of it. He has no use for it. You know his jargon; oh, he's a pretty type ! He avoided the little one like the plague, that first evening. And now ! Have you seen them together? seen the way he looks at her? Have you watched him manceuvre to get out of range of Mamma's eyes and inveigle Mademoiselle into some deserted room or other? Come, you have seen them together ! He does not seem to see a school-girl in her, now — does he?" 192 THE SECRET ORCHARD The Canon's lips moved voicelessly. The anxiety in his eye grew more intense. "Well, since you mention it," he at length mur- mured, " once or twice I have, in truth, seen the Mar- quis de Lormes with the young girl. This morning in the garden — " He passed his yellow silk hand- kerchief over his brow. " But I assure you," he went on eagerly, " I assure you, she did not appear in the least inclined to encourage his attentions. It was quite the reverse." The Doctor looked at the Canon with indulgent contempt. " Quite the reverse," he repeated ironically. " Quite so, my dear Canon. That is the type, to the life. Oh, don't I know her, that one ! Women of that type never do seem to encourage any one, and yet the mere fact of their presence in the room will set every man's blood astir. Look you, my friend, I speak from experience. I — I, old fellow that I am, I my- self can feel the little demon." He stopped to laugh out loud at the horror-struck expression of the priest. " But don't be afraid," he went on jeeringly, " it is a matter of no consequence with me. I just note the symptoms as a scientific fact, and that is all. As for you, you have worked so long at, and succeeded so well in, transforming yourself into an old woman — Oh, well, you can hardly even understand ! Now let me tell you in one word what your child is : she 's a dangerous woman ! Do you want to have another definition — the scientific one? C'est une tvoublante. Would you like an historical one? She is what your THE SECRET ORCHARD 193 Churchmen in the middle ages used to call a Siiccii- bus. And were we still in those good old days ('pon my soul I almost wish we were!), she would be put on her trial, you would sit on the bench, and she would be burned as a witch. Listen ! Only a few years ago, Madame la Duchesse yonder insisted on taking me to a charity fancy fair at Versailles. A monster fair it was ; every kind and condition of men and women. The good matrons of the Faubourg who organised it (our Marquise in the thick of it of course) had entrusted the flower stalls to the ' ladies of the profession,' because they would be the most attractive to the gentlemen. Eh, eh, charity covers a multitude of sins ! Well, there was one there of that lot, a tall one, a sort of lily to look at, still and white and slender. And all round her, I tell you, my poor friend, it was like a swarm of bees ! It hummed with men, young and old, soldiers, actors, dukes, artists, Jews and Christians, what do I know — all our golden youth, and all the silver age. Bah ! I saw a minister, a surgeon, a diplomat, and the last poet. Not a flower left on her stall, nor a leaf; heap of gold pieces before her. She would not take the trouble to sweep them into her till. Once or twice she opened her mouth, showing the tip of her white teeth, only wide enough for the passage of a dis- dainful word. Occasionally she looked up, and shot a glance always in the same direction at one par- ticular man. Brooding eye of fire ! By the way (you may not have noticed it), our Mademoiselle Joy has, on occasions, when she looks at a par- 13 194 THE SECRET ORCHARD ticular person, something of that sort of glance. Oh, it is the type ! That lily. Canon, was the famous Cora May." The Canon started, and then instantly endeavoured to cover his movement. The ejaculation on his lips he repressed. His face became grey white. The Doctor, engrossed in his own theme, proceeded with gusto : "And the young man she looked at was the rich Hungarian, Count Wallsee." Again the priest started; the sensational ruin of Count Wallsee and his no less sensational suicide had reached even his hermit ears. "Oh, it is the type! " M. Lebel went on. "And this precious orphan of the Duchess has got the type, my friend. She reminds me of no one so much as of la Belle Cora herself." The Canon's happy morning, his mood of charming, if reprehensible placidity, was rudely disturbed indeed. He knew the Doctor well; and, while lamenting his irreligious convictions, he respected him as an earnest worker and a shrewd intelligence, and he loved him for his unfailing all-human goodness. From such a man a warning was not a thing to be lightly put aside. The two again looked at each other, and it was the same apprehension that clutched at both their hearts. These were lonely men. The one from vocation and deliberate sacrifice, the other from the accident of life. Both, in their different ways, filled their hours by ceaseless work for others. All they knew of home, of the grace of existence, of the joys round the hearth, THE SECRET ORCHARD 195 was given to them by Helen. And all the rooted tenderness a man has in him to give wife and child, all its overshadowing solicitude, its care and thought, its ceaseless preoccupation, these two solitary men had almost unconsciously, most purely, given to Helen. The Canon, of course, was fully convinced that the motives which for fourteen years had induced him so persistently to refuse all the preferments periodically offered to a man of his name, attainments and saintly reputation, were an unmixed devotion to his little flock and a humble desire of working out his salvation in comparative obscurity. That Dr. Lebel, again, had grown grey by the bedside of the country poor, when the same amount of work might have placed one of his capacity in the first rank of his profession in Paris, was solely due (if you believed him) to his intoler- ance of fashionable humbug, to his determined pref- erence for the necessarily less degenerate humanity of the fields. " I like," he would say, " to work upon unadulterated stuff. I like my human nature in the ore." The real fact, however, blissfully ignored by both, was that their whole existence had, for fourteen years, circled round Helen as inevitably as that of a man round his natural home. Helen ! In words even to each other it was, of course, Madame la DiicJicsse. In their hearts she was " Helen," their child, the light of their eyes ! The Canon took a fresh pinch and spilt the half of it in most unwonted slovenliness. 196 THE SECRET ORCHARD " But, surely, surely," he urged, with an attempt to re-establish himself upon his former height of happy, charitable security, and to argue down the clamorous voices of a thousand misgivings, " surely, my dear Doctor, you are frightening yourself — you are frightening me — rather unnecessarily. Granted that Joy is perhaps too attractive to young men, granted that it is not a very prudent thing for the Duchess to have burdened herself with an adopted child of that age (having so little knowledge of her previous life) more than this cannot be said. Her manner is perfectly modest. She seems an innocent, well-brought-up young person. Do you not think so? Have you observed anything forward, anything displeasing in her manner? As for me, she has struck me, I must say, as possessing quite remarkable reserve." The Doctor, with his mouth open, his jaw thrust on one side, sat scratching his chin and rolling a deeply reflective eye upon the priest. There was a pause. Then the man of medicine let his hands fall with a clap upon his stout knees, shook his head and, stooping down, earnestly surveyed the patch of gravel between his feet. " Too much reserve ! That is the very thing. 'T is n't natural." But the priest had already found consolation in his own arguments. *' It is the maidenly instinct, my good Doctor. Come, come ! you see everything black this morning. Why, the Duchess is delighted. And has she not THE SECRET ORCHARD 197 had every opportunity of judging? She has the girl with her, morning, noon and night." The Doctor threw back his head. " The Duchess? " he said. " Oh, don't use that as an argument. Canon ! Why, she's as easy to take in as yourself: result of the long practice of charity, I suppose. Suspect no evil, eh? (Bless her! Bless her!) But she's not a clever woman." The Canon was amazed. He was shocked. In his ears it sounded almost like blasphemy. Not clever? Not perfection? — their Helen! " Monsieur Lebel ! " he exclaimed. " No, Monsieur de Hauteroche, I am not mad. I know what I am saying. Who wants her clever? Not I. Who wants her different? Not I. She's forty times better than the cleverest woman that ever breathed. She has got the intelligence of the heart, the tact of the heart. Ah, no one will ever beat her there ! Look you, man : it is because she is what she is . . . well, we need not talk about that, you and I. But things would hit her hard, you know ; and, in short, I don't like the look of it all up there." " Why, then," said the priest, infectious fear again invading all his reasoning faculties, " the best thing that can happen is that this Mr. Dodd should marry Joy. From certain little indications," said the Canon, with an air of great worldly acumen, " obtuse as I may be, my old friend, I am convinced that this young American has the most serious intentions." " Oh, yes," said the Doctor. " Yes, yes ! " He lay back upon the bench, gazing upwards at the blue 198 THE SECRET ORCHARD sky with vacant eyes, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. " Why, then," pursued the priest, delighted, *' Providence has already provided. They must be married. What more simple? The young girl's future is happily assured. And a possibly — ah — disturbing element is removed from the house. Mr. Dodd will have to return to America very soon. And there we are. And I myself — Hein ! what did you say?" " I said : ' Marry them,' " remarked the Doctor, still staring at the blue. " Marry them? " repeated the other. " Of course." " Marry them," said the Doctor, " if you can." "Hein?" said the priest again, M. Lebel gathered himself together. Fertile in methods of expressing the state of his mind by the contortions of his body, he now drew himself up into a sort of hard knot, his arms clasped round his knees. " Oh, you might marry him, fast enough. But she won't have him." He suddenly unclasped him- self and fell apart, both hands, fingers outstretched, flung out with the utmost emphasis. " She 's shown that pretty plainly. She has her eye on some one else, Canon — the Duke ! " The Canon felt as if he were being whirled round in some sudden and amazing whirlwind: all his thoughts danced giddily, aimlessly, like dry leaves in an autumn blast. " But," he exclaimed, feebly catching at the dry THE SECRET ORCHARD 199 leaf that bobbed up oftenest, " she cannot marry the Duke ! " There was a pause, an awful pause, while the Doctor looked at the priest. The Canon felt his skin grow cold and stiffen. " No, she cannot marry the Duke," said the other at last, very slowly. Then he added quickly, with his expressive gesture: "Don't misunderstand me. Thus far all is right, of course. A week ! But have not you noticed? The Duke avoids her, he is un- comfortable near her. He is afraid of her. Why? I told you why, just now: he is a man, parhleu. Afraid of her did I say? He is afraid of himself! And, what is more, the Duchess has noticed some- thing unusual about him. She 's asked me to catch him and prescribe for him to-day. She thinks him looking ill. She ought to have asked you — but we shall see." " Oh ! " cried the priest, and clasped his hands, "for God's sake. Doctor! Oh, my God!" He raised and shook his clasped hands. " This dreadful world ! The Duke is a man of honour, Lebel — besides, he loves his wife. There is loyalty to keep him, the sanctity of hospitality. You see, I speak of no higher rule." " The Duke is a man," said the Doctor, doggedly. " I don't know much about the higher rule, but I know men. So did the old chronicler, by-the-bye, whom you call inspired. Did Adam refuse the apple when Eve offered? Does any Adam ever refuse the apple from a pretty Eve? Ah, if he refuses once. 200 THE SECRET ORCHARD I warrant he does not refuse twice ! Not if I know human nature." " Alas, alas ! " wailed the other. " Poor human nature ! Poor indeed when it will depend on its own strength." " Come," said the Doctor, with affected roughness, " this is no moment for jeremiads. I interrupted your meditations (ahem !) to-day because I felt the matter was urgent enough. By a stroke of good luck it appears that Monsieur Favereau is expected back. Our three good heads together should find a respectable way out of this business." " Unfortunately," said the Canon, still heavily troubled, " there is a diocesan meeting at Versailles, this afternoon. Even now," said he after consulting his watch, " I ought to be thinking of making my way to the station. Impossible to say if I can return to-night or only in time for my mass to-morrow morning. It is most unfortunate ! " " Oh, to-morrow will be time enough, let us hope ! " said the Doctor, with a laugh. " Time will be wanted — time and tact." " To vary the simile, in short," said M. Lebel, briskly, as he accompanied the Canon part of the way down the shady avenue of chestnuts towards the white high-road leading to the village, " to vary the simile, my old friend, there is a serpent in our paradise, and we must — and shall — get rid of the creature before it has time to do the mischief which is in its serpent nature to do ! " CHAPTER XXI IT was very cool in the long drawing-room of the chateau, where groups of antique, gilt-legged, brocade-covered furniture made islands in a shin- ing sea of parquet flooring. The walls, with the old pastels led into their white panels, stretched to an incredibly high ceiling, where dim chubby cupids wreathed in azure ribbons and pale roses chased one another across clouded blue skies. Upon one of the little islands, protected from the outer world by a curveting gilt and glass screen, the Duchess and her friend, Madame Rodriguez, sat un- der the spreading fans of a palm. They were pleas- antly installed between the reseda-scented breeze that blew in from one of the open windows and the incense rising from a fantastically large bowl of roses enthroned on a low marble and gilt-chained, altar- like tripod. Helen, in her lilac-tinted morning gown, lying back against the pale green cushion of the catiseuse, looked an image of rest and placidity — rest, although her long white fingers moved ceaselessly with flash of knitting-needle in the mass of wool in her lap ; placidity, although one who knew her well might 202 THE SECRET ORCHARD have traced on her brow and in her eyes a secret weight of trouble. Nessie, a very antithesis, sat on a spindle-legged chair at a spindle-legged writing-table — if indeed the verb " to sit" can apply to a kaleidoscopic change of position that never permitted a minute's quies- cence in the same attitude. The little lady's apricot cheek was flushed ; her crisp hair, twisted this way and that by the frequent clutch of impatient fingers, suggested an impression of mutiny unwonted in those well-drilled tresses. Five or six sheets of paper, crumpled or torn across, lying around her, as well as ink-stains on the small fingers and even one or two upon the lace ruffles of that elaborate primrose-ribboned negligee — in which she had cut such a charming figure only an hour ago — bore witness that her agitation was con- nected with the inditing of a letter. She now bent her head over the blotter. The much nibbled and ruffled goose-quill was plunged vindictively into the ink. Scratch, scratch went the nib in great black lines across the new sheet, with an energy that set every separate vaporous frill quivering. Suddenly the pen was dashed aside and the writer wheeled round in her chair, waving the result of her labour. " Listen, Helen — " ' Mrs. Nessie P. Rodriguez begs to inform ]\Ir. Ruy An- tonio Rodriguez that she declines to have any further com- munication with him of any kind or description whatever. THE SECRET ORCHARD 203 " ' If Mr. Ruy Antonio Rodriguez goes on pestering Mrs. Nessie P. Rodriguez in the same manner as before, she will certainly place the matter in the hands of her lawyers.' " What do you think of that? That 's pretty clear, is it not?" The Duchess turned the corner of her row without looking up. Then she said gently : " I would not send that, Nessie," Mrs. Nessie P. Rodriguez hereupon fell into a violent state of indignation, in which she fluttered and pecked about as effectively as a robin in a rage. " Oh, would you not, though ! " This was sar- castic. " No, of course you would not." This was sheer temper. "If your Duke played the same games on you as Rodriguez does on me, you would just turn up your eyes to heaven and pray for his soul." This was scathingly contemptuous. Then she be- came pathetic. " Oh, it 's very easy for you to talk ! I 'd forgive the Duke anything myself; but when you have to deal with a real" (sob) " low-down sort of" (sob) "creature like Rodriguez " Here her feelings became too deep for words. Helen had raised her eyes. Her voice, after Nessie's vibrating nasal anger, fell like balm. " He is your husband." At this the human robin literally fluttered into the air. Down went the pen on one side, the sheet of paper on the other. The small feet stamped, the small fists gesticulated. " And that 's the very worst thing about the whole 204 THE SECRET ORCHARD sickening business. My husband ! My husband ! Lord, I could forgive him anything but that ! " She gave an angry laugh. And then — for the saving grace of real humour extends in many direc- tions — futile rage fell away, and the comical side of her situation began to assert itself. "Well, I am not built like you, Helen, and that's about it. I am just sick of being treated like an automatic machine for the delivery of banknotes. Ton my soul, that Rodriguez thinks he has only to drop a penny stamp in the slot, and out will come a cheque ! It is n't even always a penny. I have known him do it on a halfpenny postcard. Faugh! No, now there is n't a mite of good in your going on like that, Helen. I have not got one spark of Chris- tian feeling left for that man. No, nor I am not go- ing to pray for his conversion. Why, we might meet again in the next world ! And I don't think my halo would sit at all comfortably if I did not know he was having a real good frizzle somewhere else." Her familiar cackle sounded quite heart-whole and refreshing. Helen smiled with indulgent, amused rebuke, as upon a kitten or a child or some other irresponsible but delightful little animal. Madame Nessie picked up her pen, and nibbled it with her head on one side, restored to good humour by a just appreciation of her own wit. A footman, in his pink-and-white striped morning- jacket, came round the screen and presented a tele- gram on a tray. •' For Madame," he said, holding it under Nessie's hand. THE SECRET ORCHARD 205 ** Mercy ! " said she, and eyed it with sidelong, shy glance. Then she snapped up the folded blue paper and watched the servant's retreating figure critically. " He 's a well-trained young man, Helen. I wonder how long he stood at the door waiting for a pause in our conversation. I expect my voice car- ries some way." " Jean is a good lad," said Helen, who took deep personal interest in every member of her household ; " I do not think he would listen at the door. Your telegram, Nessie?" Madame Rodriguez turned the bit of paper over and over. " I don't like the look of it," she said childishly. Then she stuck her little finger under the wafer and pulled it open. The next minute, "Mercy!" she cried again, this time in shrill distress, and rose, hands rigidly stuck out, in a doll-like attitude of dismay. " My dear ! " exclaimed Helen, and anxiously ap- proached her. But the other impatiently shook off the kindly touch. " I don't believe it," she muttered to herself. " It 's a horrid he." She crumpled the dispatch convul- sively, the next moment smoothed it out again, re-read it with starting eyes and mouthing lips. Then with a scream of dismay, " Helen, Helen, what shall I do?" she cried, allowed the blue slip of paper to flutter from her hand, and sinking into her chair, rocked herself backwards and forwards. 2o6 THE SECRET ORCHARD Now really alarmed, her friend took up the tele- gram, and read for herself — " Don Ruy Rodriguez dangerously ill — typhus. Begs you will not come — fear of infection. Send immediately four thousand francs for necessary expenses. Matter most urgent. I transmit his dying love. — Manuel Cortez y Mendoza, Grand Hotel Biarritz.'" " Oh, oh, oh ! " moaned Nessie. " Read it out, Helen ! " Listening, she punctuated each sentence with a short sharp groan. " What does he say it is now? Typhus!" She sat up. A flicker of doubt appeared in her distraught eye. She suddenly grew calmer. " Typhus. That 's new. That 's a new disease. He 's never had typhus yet. What does typhus run to? " The Duchess, who had assimilated the contents of the dispatch to her great relief (having sufBcient knowledge of M. Rodriguez's previous history to feel very little anxiety on the score of his health news), and who was moved with no little indignation against one who could play so successfully upon a woman's tenderness, answered drily enough: " Four thousand francs." An agony of doubt distorted Nessie's countenance. "That's cheap," she exclaimed, jumping to her feet once more. " Lord's sakes, perhaps it's true ! " She clutched her friend's wrist and shook it violently. " Don't say it's true ! " And, bursting into tears, she once again dropped on her chair. THE SECRET ORCHARD 207 The crunch of the Doctor's heavy foot on the gravel resounded from outside. His sturdy bulk presently filled up the open window-space. " Heyday," said the cheery voice, as its owner paused to look in, "what have we here?" He untidily stuffed the bandana handkerchief with which he was mopping his brown shining face into the side pocket of his alpaca jacket, and advanced, sud- denly professional. The soles of his country-made boots squeaked on the polished boards. " Hysterics, eh?" Madame Rodriguez had indeed become quite con- vulsive in her distress. The Doctor surveyed her with a somewhat callous eye. Then he turned to the Duchess, who was vainly endeavouring to administer consolation. " Leave her alone, Madame," he said. " It is the very worst thing in the world to fuss about an hysterical patient. Now, my treatment is to pour cold water gently down the neck, and then to leave the afflicted person quite alone, in a thorough draught if possible. I have never known it fail. Allow me to ring for some cold water." Not regarding the situation as serious, and amused by the sudden listening tension that had come over Nessie's figure as well as by M. Lebel's quizzical expression, even tender-hearted Helen was unable to refrain from laughter. " Hush, Doctor," she murmured, trying in vain to keep the note of mirth from her voice, " she has had bad news." 2o8 THE SECRET ORCHARD Madame Rodriguez sprang to her feet, indignation for the nonce over-riding all other emotions. " Doctor," she exclaimed, " you are a perfect brute ! Helen! how dare you laugh?" She settled her ruffled feathers and assumed an air of great dignity. " I am going to pack my trunks, anyhow, and take the first rail to nurse m}' dying husband ! " " Wait, Nessie, wait ! " urged the Duchess, and stretched out a detaining hand. " Oh, truly, darling, I am not heartless, but — the fact is, I don't quite believe in that telegram." Nessie folded her arms. " How dare you, Helen?" "May one see, Madame?" interposed the Doctor. And, without waiting for further permission, he took up the dispatch. " You know, Nessie," went on Helen, eye and tone pleading pardon for the merriment that still shook her — " you know last week it was influenza, and that was fifteen thousand francs." " Oh, you have made us all aware of the gentleman's ways," said the Doctor. Then, with his great laugh, tapping the bit of paper, he added : " And I am afraid — for your sake, I am afraid — there is not a shred of truth in this." But Nessie, for no reason that can be assigned, was determined to view matters on the tragic side. " Oh ! " she cried, with a sharp ejaculation that was like the pop of a champagne cork. She shook herself free of the Duchess. " I 'm going to pack, anyhow." The Doctor was as resourceful by long habit as he was good-natured by disposition. THE SECRET ORCHARD 209 "Ah, well — hold! It is easy to ascertain the truth without putting one's self out so much. Look here, now, there 's an old colleague of mine at Biarritz ; I '11 telegraph to him this v^ery moment. With precedence we '11 have the answer in an hour." "There, Nessie, what a good idea ! " cried Helen. But Nessie had stalked majestically to the door. Even as the Doctor sat down to write she halted and looked back at them, a being destined so completely by nature for the light side of existence that all her efforts at tragic indignation and wifely concern only succeeded in making her somehow more comical than in her gayest moments. Shrilly, solemnly and warn- ingly she called out to her friend across the long room — Titania playing at Cassandra: " May you never feel what it is not to know whether you 're going to be a widow or not ! " The Doctor laughed out loud, as his stylographic pen fled along the telegram form. But Helen's face changed. "What a horrible thing to say! " she murmured slowly, as if to herself. "Just ring the bell, will you, Madame?" said the Doctor. Helen was neither nervous nor morbid. The very sound of the Doctor's m.atter-of-fact voice was suffi- cient to dispel her momentary inexplicable feeling of impending calamity. Brushing away the mental cloud, she did as the Doctor bade her and stood smiling whilst, in his characteristic way, he gave directions to the footman. 14 2IO THE SECRET ORCHARD " Here, Joseph — no, by the way, you 're John, you are, well, it does not matter anyway — take this to the chemist — I mean to the post-office — to be made up. Tut, tut ! I mean, forwarded at once, with pre- cedence, understand?" As the door closed on the servant, Lebel wheeled round his chair, clapped his hands on his knees and drew the long breath which generally preceded his entry into professional matters. " Well," said he, " here I am. Where is my patient? Where is the Duke?" " He will be here in a minute. He said he would ride to Versailles and be back for luncheon." She clasped her fingers over her knitting and glanced up at the friendly face. " I am anxious," she went on. " Oh, pooh ! " said the Doctor. ** No, indeed, Doctor, he is not well ; I have never seen him like this before. Of course he does not complain; he won't even admit that he is ill. But he does not eat, he does not sleep. He is restless. He walks and walks, and rides and rides, as if to shake off something — I don't know what — some- thing that seems to be coming over him." " Eh, eh," said the man of medicine, reflectively, with his chin on one side and his fingers burrowing in beard stubble. " Temper short ? Irritable? " " Oh, no, no, no ! " she cried. " He has never been tenderer to me, never sweeter in his courtesy to every one around him. He laughs, he talks ; but there is a sad look on his face, Doctor, when he does not know that I am watching:." THE SECRET ORCHARD 211 "Ah! " commented M. Lebel, and the wandering fingers reached his ear where they halted, pensively- pulling. " I am afraid," Helen pursued, " sometimes, that he maybe feeling some illness coming upon him; that he is trying to fight against it, to keep it from me. His first thought is always for me." Some- thing in the Doctor's attitude struck her as alarming. Instantly every fibre of her being thrilled to terror. "Doctor, you don't think Oh, my God, is he really going to be ill .-' " "111? Not he," said the Doctor. "There now, there you go ! Nothing, I '11 warrant, that you and I cannot cure. Eh, a splendid constitution, famous type, Madame, famous type ! Does n't give us doctors much work, nor ever will either." He patted her white fingers with his kind, ugly hand. " I 'II have a look at him, since you wish it. But he must n't know. Leave it to me." He stood up, legs wide apart, in his favourite attitude. " Liver," said he. "The liver, Madame — it is a prosaic subject, but even our Duke has a liver, I am glad to say — the liver can play the devil with a man sometimes ; excuse the word." The wife's ear was now strained to other sounds than the Doctor's laugh, reassuring as it was. She had caught the footfall of a tired horse under the avenue trees. " There is Cluny ! " she cried. CHAPTER XXII " yi LL said and done, there is no denying it," X\^ the Doctor had to admit to himself, as Cluny came in, "that is a charming fellow." A moment before, drawing up a rapid diagnosis based on his own observations and the Duchess's confidences, he had come to rather uncomplimentary and alarming conclusions : A poor weak man ! The little white witch has brought liim to the point of mental conflict already. Sapristi, it was time indeed to interfere I Eh ! and he married to that zvoman I Ah, God, the pitiful race ! But the entrance of the Duke, the mere fact of his handsome and courteous presence, the smile and the genuinely cordial greeting produced their wonted effect. That the man could smile so kindly when he was so unmistakably weary, both in mind and body, at once placed him in the rank of those whose errors elicit pity and not condemnation. It did not, however, take the discriminating Doc- tor's eye many seconds to discover that things were more wrong with the Duke than even he had antici- pated. And while, with an assumption of more than usual boisterousness, M. Lebel returned his THE SECRET ORCHARD 213 patron's salutation, his glance running over the unconscious patient's face and figure, took note of small significant details: the dilated pupil, the beaded brow, the notable emaciation of the hands, the restless foot, the quick look from side to side, as if in apprehension of something or some one. "Decidedly," thought M. Lebel again, "it was high time! " "Ah," said Cluny, sinking into a chair, with a deep sigh, "how cool and restful it is here!" He looked at his wife wistfully, and then sharply away again, as if the sight of her face stung him. "Well, you are pretty hot, I should say," said the Doctor, balancing his round bulk on the edge of the causeiise. " It looks as if you were going in for bant- ing all of a sudden. Such athleticism ! Always on the move! Aha! I begin to suspect it's all on account of the American cousin. Want to show what a sportsman a Frenchman can be, eh .-' " He slid his squat fingers upon the Duke's wrist. Cluny made an impatient movement to shake off the touch. But Dr. Lebel gripped, looking hard at him. And with a faint smile and shrug the Duke sub- mitted. There was half a minute's pause. Helen, with parted lips and anxious face, watched the Doctor's countenance, now set into gravity. He looked up suddenly and with determination smiled at her. "Bravo!" he cried, dropping the patient's hand. "I always said you had the best constitution in the province." 214 THE SECRET ORCHARD But " diable, diable ! " was what he was crying to himself; " /lard as wire, and as Jerky as a telegraph needle ! " " What, I ? " said the Duke, rising. " Oh, I 'm as strong as a horse ! " He strolled over to the window and stood a moment looking out. Dr. Lebel rolled off his seat and fol- lowed him. "Don't overdo the exercise though," he insisted. "You 've grown thinner." Beneath them the garden sloped down to the chestnut alley. The last bloom of roses starred hedge and standard. The scent of the reseda and of the late honey-suckle was very sweet in the sunshine. From a hidden sward came the whirr of a mowing- machine; somewhere out of sight rose the song of a fountain : it was all very peaceful and homelike. The sky was very blue; the green and the flowers were very beautiful ; the air very still. This garden Cluny had loved to call his paradise, but deep to-day was the melancholy sweeping in upon his soul as he gazed down upon it. All at once, after a rigid second that marked the checking of a shudder, he turned abruptly away: a white straw hat and the flutter of a white dress had appeared among the rose bushes. "Ah," said the Doctor, quietly, "there goes Mademoiselle!" Helen came up, linked her arm into her husband's, and drew him again to the window. The figure THE SECRET ORCHARD 215 of Joy, busily engaged among the flowers with gar- den scissors and basket, now moved distinctly into view. "The dear child," said Helen; "look at her! Is n't she pretty? " The Doctor's words and smile had almost reas- sured her on Cluny's account. She had recovered something of her radiance. "I wonder," she went on, "how I ever managed to live without a daughter. See how she settled those roses for me," pointing to the great silver bowl, " A fairy could not have done it better. I find her, you must know, taking things off my hands in the most natural, unobtrusive way in all the world. I call her * my delicate Ariel. ' (I know you have read Shakespere, Doctor). And then her tact, her good taste ! Always the same pretty modesty. She is shy, of course, but only as a baby princess might be. Don't you think so, Cluny? Ah, you must agree with me there, at least ! There is a little want of enthusiasm towards my daughter," she explained, turning again to the Doctor, "in this good, spoiling husband of mine. But even he could not say that she has ever uttered a word, given a look that one would wish ungiven, unsaid." The Duke, after an imperceptible hesitation, patted his wife's hand. In his soul just now an infinite weariness had superseded all sense of the bitterness and irony of facts. "No, dear," he answered with extreme gentleness. 2i6 THE SECRET ORCHARD " I foresaw such weeks, such months even, of drill- ing for my little recruit," continued Helen, gaily, her eye still resting on the rose gatherer; "such endless litanies of hints, such moments of ludicrous agony for both of us. Vain fears ! She has adapted herself like — like a flower. " With swinging step a tall figure now crossed the brilliant sward and plunged down the narrow precip- itous path between the clipped fantastic box-hedges. Helen drew back, and in the action separated herself from Cluny. "Ah," said she, with a smile and a sigh, "there goes George ! I half expected that. There are others who want my sprite, it seems." Cluny stood a moment looking fixedly out, with eyes not seeing the radiant vision but intent upon some inward spectacle of conflict. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and moved towards the door without a word. Half-way down the room, however, he halted and spoke. "I must go and change these dusty things, dear. A tantot. " He was looking horribly tired, the Doctor thought, (under their bushy brows Lebel's sharp eye had not lost a shade of his patient's face) and the look and tone with which he now addressed his wife struck him painfully. "One might almost think it was remorse," he pondered. "Oh," came the Duchess's voice, as the door closed and they were again alone, "how happy you THE SECRET ORCHARD 217 have made me! " She laid her white hand upon his arm. "You don't think, then, he is really ill?" "Decidedly," thought the Doctor, "the woman's unobservant, not to say dense. . . . God forgive me! Come, come, Sebastian, my friend, it's time for you to step in." " 111 ? " he said aloud. " No, he has got no disease that I know of. But he is nervous. He is very nervous, Madame. " * "What do you mean.?" cried she, and her finger tightened on his shiny sleeve. The Doctor looked full into her face with his true, benevolent gaze. "Now, look here," said he, "this is not a case for me: it's a case for you. The Duke is worried. How can I tell what has worried him.? Something has got on his nerves. Saperlipopette! A very little thing will sometimes get on a man's nerves. The great Englishman, Carlyle, he could not stand cocks; and T, as you see me, I can't stand the smell of incense. Hey, hey, a little voyage would do him a world of good — a voyage with you, I mean. Take him off with you as soon as possible — just you two alone together, you understand — a little honey- moon trip, en par tie fine. And at the end of the first week (if you are the woman I think you are) you '11 have found out what is the little something that has got so desperately on his nerves. And you will see to its being removed from his existence, once for all." Helen let her hand drop. She had grown pale; 2i8 THE SECRET ORCHARD her eyes had become dilated; the corners of her mouth had fallen like that of a puzzled, troubled child. " But, Doctor, " she said — " but Doctor ! " Some- thing intangible, disturbing, alarming, seemed to have come into her sheltered and serene existence. It had no shape as yet, it was utterly and horribly unknown; she could give it no name, but she dimly felt its presence. " Well," insisted the Doctor, " is it not a nice pre- scription .-' Ask your husband and see what he says. A new honeymoon, aha! " His laugh echoed in the still, lofty room. He reached for his battered hat, waved it at the Duchess, and plunged out of the open window-door. In a second he was back again, looking in upon her. '' Partie fine, remember!" he cried with warning finger emphasising. " No aunts, no cousins, no adopted daughters — no adopted daughters I " His trot was heard crunching away on the gravel. Helen stood motionless; she felt as if she were in a dream. '^ No adopted daughters,'''' she repeated, half uncon- sciously. And the menacing, formless terror seemed suddenly to grow darker and more distinct. Why? She did not know! CHAPTER XXIII THERE was perhaps not a happier man in the world that gorgeous October forenoon than George Dodd, as he cut across the sunlit green and dived down the little dark cool path on his way to the rose-garden below. From his window he had spied the white straw hat and the white fluttering skirt, and the oppor- tunity he had vainly sought during the last two days he now believed was given into his hands under the most favourable conditions. The unsophisticated nature of this man was full of inarticulate poetry: the perfect day, the blue sky and the sunshine, the perfume and the colour of the world seemed to ex- press for him something of the new beauty which, with his manhood's new dream of love, had lately come into his life. Love (we have so often been told that it has be- come a platitude) is blind. But is this true.-* Is it not rather that, seeing through love's eyes we see all transfigured, all coloured with love's own light; that we see life as a place of happiness, youth as unendingly beautiful, hardships as matters of no moment, humanity as kind, faith as enduring .'' A 220 THE SECRET ORCHARD state of affairs, the cynic might say, far more dan- gerous than blindness. Yet, perhaps, if ever we reach another world where (as we are told also) love only rules, we may find that it was a true vision, after all, of what might have been below, of what can be hereafter. But, alas, that the bliss of paradise in this still incomplete world should be so shy a thing ! Adam's bliss was put to flight for the plucking of an apple: Mr. Dodd's was quite shaken by the mere sight of a second straw hat in the rose-garden. This was a hard structure of English pattern, encircled by the flaring colours of the last automobile club. It was reposing at the very back of the Marquis Totol's nut-like head, whereon, in consideration of the recent wave of heat, the hair had been cut so close that it presented a pale mouse-like surface. And Totol's originality of countenance was vastly height- ened thereby. Squatting upon the grass, with his toes in the sunshine, well screened from any observation (de- filaded, as the military engineer would have it) from the highest windows, the eternal cigarette between his lips, his knuckly hands clasped round his knees, the Marquis de Lormes was to all appearances enjoy- ing himself to his utmost capacity. Even as his brother rounded the corner and stood glaring at the hat, a shrill cachinnation rent the air. Totol, with a wriggle of exceeding amusement, was waggling his long patent leather shoes; and, rub- bing his hands up and down his shins, displayed THE SECRET ORCHARD 221 lengths of pink and white circularly striped sock, well tightened upon legs at which any decently built skeleton might have jeered. And to the utter rout of all the American's paradisiacal sensations for the moment, a silver tinkle of laughter came to join the inane and offensive cackle. Joy was laughing! A basket of roses upon one arm, as she paused in the act of clipping a great La France bloom from a standard tree, blushing and dimpling under a broad-brimmed hat, she made as pretty a picture as a man's eyes could wish to rest upon. And Dodd's heart contracted with that un- reasonable jealousy of the uncertain lover which in- cludes in its distrust greybeards as well as school- boys, the most innocent as well as the most ineligible of possible rivals. But if Joy did not regard Totol's presence with disfavour, neither did she show aver- sion towards the new arrival. On the contrary, although she checked her laughter with one of her quaint movements of secretiveness, the smile of greeting and the dimple beside it were not to be suppressed. Totol, however, with the peculiar candour of his class, openly gave vent to displeasure. "Go away do, George, there's a good fellow! Mademoiselle and I had just found a nice little corner by ourselves. Scat! Isn't that American for fiches moi le camp ? Or is it : * get ' ^ Then : Get, my dear ! " "My dear is not American," said the girl, softly. She flung as she spoke a glance at the sailor which 222 THE SECRET ORCHARD so distinctly invited him not to "get " that half his irritation vanished on the spot. Never before had he seen her so deliciously emancipated from her conventional French reserve. He came close up to her. She seemed the centre of an atmosphere of rose scent, of rose bloom. "Allow me," said he, placing his large hand over the little fingers and the heavy garden-scissors. " Only tell me which you want to have cut." She slipped her hand daintily from his touch. " That 's American all over," growled Totol. " We were just as happy as Philippines before you must thrust your interfering hulk into our little nook. Isn't that so, Miss Joy.-* She was amusing me so nicely. I was amusing her so nicely. And if you think you are a pretty object to watch snapping roses — well, that 's where you are deceived, my dear." Joy tittered faintly, and George Dodd perceived for the first time a pink rose-bud hanging from the button-hole of the Marquis's tennis coat. He had always, and justly, known himself as a level-headed, even-tempered fellow : thus the sudden gust of fury that came over him was even more surprising to him- self than to his companions. He stuck the garden- scissors into the earth with a vicious chuck and turned upon his relative. "Look here," said he, in a vibrating voice, "if it comes to getting, I know who's to get!" He ad- vanced two steps and flung a look of furious con- tempt upon the squatting figure. " You — you little frogf! " said he. THE SECRET ORCHARD 223 Totol instantly took two or three leaps over the greensward in imitation of the batrachian just men- tioned, until he had reached a position of safety behind Joy's skirts, where, peeping round, he un- reservedly gave vent to an ecstasy of mirth over the big brother's baffled countenance. "Oh, Mademoiselle, I am so frightened!" he gibbered, "And that," cried Dodd, with an unconsciously dramatic gesture of scorn — "that is my brother! Well, they talk of a man and a brother — a monkey and a brother ... ! " Joy laughed aloud. The Marquis had withdrawn his head into shelter. Presently he lifted his voice in plaintive tone. " A monkey now ! Why, then, I reckon, brother, you mean to say a kind of tree-frog." He shot out his head to see the effect of this observation. Once more feigning to be overcome with terror, he shot it in again, chattering his teeth, rolling his eyes and shivering violently. George Dodd, whose patience was at lowest ebb, lost the last of it as the little man now clutched at Joy's skirt with his long thin hands. In two strides the sailor was upon the Marquis. In as many seconds the latter was lifted from the ground in a vicelike double clutch and deposited on the other side of the box hedge — not brutally, but with all the firmness required to carry conviction. Totol landed on his knees and hands, promptly turned over to a sitting posture and stared up with- 224 THE SECRET ORCHARD out the least resentment at his brother's inflexible bronze face. "Oh, I say," he drawled, in his most pronounced English ; then, grimacing, began to rub his hands and knees. "You had better get up, young man," said George, gravely. Then, overcome by sudden remorse at his own violence before a woman, he hastily returned to Joy. "I 'm afraid I must have frightened you," he said with the extraordinary gentleness of the strong man. " I humbly beg your pardon." He glanced under the shadow of the hat to look at the girl's averted face : it was pink with suppressed laughter, dimpling all over. She shot one of her quick looks at him; their faces were very close, the sparkle of her eyes seemed to dazzle him. In the sailor's scheme of existence true women were timid, shrinking creatures, to be sheltered by true men from all ugly contacts. He was as much puzzled now by her enjoyment of the situation as he had been a moment before by her toleration of his brother's familiarity. But he had reached that state of love where the most contradictory things are as fuel to the flame. A week ago her attitude might have made him hesitate, reflect; now the very mys- tery of her personality served to increase the fasci- nation. And that look in her eyes verily intoxicated him. "Will you not give me a rose too.-" " he whispered in her ear. Belonging, as it has been said, to the simple old school, this was obviously the natural preliminary to the good old-fashioned proposal. THE SECRET ORCHARD 225 His heart was beating like a sledge-hammer. The girl drew back from this close presence and picked up her basket and her scissors, replacing the fallen blooms with cool hands that were perfectly steady and precise in their movements. When she turned towards the waiting lover, she was once again the demure, self-controlled maiden of the first hour of their acquaintance. "If you please," said she, with downcast eyes, " what were you saying .-• " Her manoeuvres at once baffled, irritated, and drew him on. Whereas, in theory, he was giving this girl the ideal chivalrous devotion of the high-souled man for the woman of his choice, in practice, he was merely loving her with the elemental instinc- tive passion of the uncivilised man for the mate he would if necessary capture with bow and spear. "Joy," he began, almost fiercely. A cackle rang out behind him. He turned as savagely as his Saxon ancestor might have turned on the hunter that dared cross his chase. But the absurdity of the mere sight of Totol's grin promptly disposed of any earnestness in the situation. What is there in this life of beautiful, of solemn, of tragic, that ridicule will not kill .-' George Dodd felt that to allow that irresponsible being a glimpse of his own strong heart's working would be not only desecration, but positive indecency. All heat and anger died out of his handsome face. A good-huraouredly contemp- tuous smile came back to bis lips. "Are we not, then, ever to be rid of you.-' " cried 15 226 THE SECRET ORCHARD he ; turned back, to include the girl in his words, and found that she had vanished. "He-he-he!" commented the Marquis, who scrambled back with a good deal of difficulty over the hedge, and then, squatting on the sward again in his favourite attitude, began to address his elder in the tone of the man of the world explaining the nature of things to the backwoodsman. "Believe me, little brother," he said judicially, "you 're quite off the spot. Oh, I thought I should have died of laughter when I heard you asking the little girl for a rose! Your tone and your attitude, 1830 style all over! (Great God," continued M. de Lormes, in a paradoxical aside, " how it does bore me, how it has always bored me, the 1830 style! The poor papa was of that period. The mamma less. Rigid, if you will, but not romantic, thank Heaven ! ") The sailor folded his arms. He had quite made up his mind that he would now have to compass an- other opportunity for himself, Totol's intervention having successfully spoilt the situation. "Better let the little idiot," he thought, "have his fooling out, and then, perhaps, he'll give us a day off." " Go on, "he went on aloud, encouragingly. " It 's very enlightening to hear you discourse." "You see, my lieutenant," pursued Totol, "you may come from the New World and all that sort of thing, but you are old-fashioned : vieux jeu, my friend, vieux Jeu en diable! Your game is played out. THE SECRET ORCHARD iiy Now, the modern woman does not know what to do with your kind. She has no use for the likes of you (as I think they say over the water). The puzzle to me is," said the Marquis, drawing up his face into a thousand wrinkles with his wise, pathetic monkey- look, " how, at this time of day, you come to be what you are; for, judging by one or two little specimens I have seen, you can raise women over there that ought to teach you a thing or two ! " He paused with a grimace, as if endeavouring to crack the problem between his back teeth. "Well," said the American, " I don't exactly know what our women have taught me, but I just do know that it is a sort of custom with us men out there to give a good lesson to the idiot that does not know how to treat a lady with respect." "Respect," echoed Totol, with supreme contempt. "My good George, that's exactly where you make such a mistake. We have not time, we moderns, men or women, to bother our heads about respect. These are motor-car days, my poor innocent ! A pretty object," he chuckled, "I should look if I were to go in for respect ! My faith, they 'd laugh in my face! No, no, believe me, if you want to flirt in your manner, to play the comedy over the gift of a rose and all that, look out for one of your own style. Don't fix upon that little red-mouthed witch yonder: for she's modern, I tell you, modern down to the edge of her little pink nails. As up-to-date as I am." Feeling that the force of asseveration could go no further, Totol paused and smiled. 228 THE SECRET ORCHARD Mr. Dodd grew a little rigid about the lips, a little pale about the nostrils. "Indeed?" he said sarcastically. Had he been told he was in a boiling rage he would sternly have denied the fact. " I speak of Mademoiselle as a woman, you may have observed," Totol resumed, more and more charmed with his dialectic. " I abhor young girls, I loathe young girls. They revolt me. That little one may seem to you a young girl: that 's all you know about it. It 's a mere accident of circum- stances. In reality she's a woman, modern woman, and that 's why we understand each other. He, he! Did n't I get my rose .'' Boned one out of her basket ! Eh ! Took a red one first. And says she : ' This one is prettier. Monsieur,' and holds me out the pink one. Ah, the little motor-car! No time to stop for phrases. Do you think she 'd ever take on with a good old slow-coach like you.-* The little spick-and-span machine! On with you! On with you! Whizz! B-r-r-r! so long as it's amusing! That 's the way with her. As for the great passion.? ' Oh cut ! Apply elsewhere. Ta-ta ! ' Allans. y\xi dlt. Digest all this, and may it profit you, young man ! " Here the Marquis made a dive for his straw hat, which in the previous scuffle had rolled close to the hedge. Beating it against his elbow he nodded two or three times good-naturedly at his brother and began to take his jerky way towards the house. " Well, of all the confounded little grasshoppers ! " THE SECRET ORCHARD 229 ejaculated George Dodd, as, with a kick, the last flash of patent leather shoe disappeared round the clipped bushes. " What can have kept me from just nipping him in two to put a stop to his infernal chirp, I wonder? Funny thing now, she should have given him that rose!" When it came to analysis that seemed to be the one seriously annoying inci- dent of the morning. " I suppose," further reflected the lover, with the natural effort to restore the equi- librium of hope, "I suppose she's like me. She does n't think such a goggle-eyed shrimp of much account. Well, I '11 have it out with her this afternoon, anyway." CHAPTER XXIV HELEN'S naturally healthy mind had not yet had time to shake off the unwonted morbid foreboding left by the Doctor's words when M. Favereau walked into the room. Accustomed as he was to Helen's welcome, never had he seen joy flash more unmistakably into her face at sight of him. Yet it was the joy of hope, of relief: and Favereau's anxious heart contracted. He had noted her pensive attitude as he came in; nor did his quick eye fail to read something upon her face, all smilingly as it was now turned to him, that had never been there before : a look of trouble. So, the shadow of the unnameable horror had fallen upon her already! Her greeting confirmed his surmises. They clasped hands. "My dear Favereau," she cried, "I have never wanted you more ! " "Oh," said he, "that odious Exhibition! I have been chained like a dog to it! But is anything wrong — Cluny } " Conscious that he spoke in tones which betrayed his previous anxiety, he endeavoured to cover his flurry by a laugh. She, in her unobservant way, perceived nothing unusual. THE SECRET ORCHARD 231 "Ah, you always make fun of me for my anxiety about Cluny ! " she said earnestly. " I am afraid I shall always be as bad as a mother over her first baby." She smiled with the wistful look that any reference to her disappointed motherhood always brought into her eyes. " You will laugh at me now, of course." "Oh, no doubt," said Favereau, entering with some success into the role she assigned to him. " Go on, my dear. What has happened } " "Nothing has happened," said Helen. She hesitated, tried to smile still, though her lips quiv- ered. To formulate her trouble seemed somehow to lend it reality. " I don't think Cluny is like himself since you left us. He looks ill, though Lebel says he is not ill really." Then she added with an effort, the pain of which was written in her face : " Favereau, Lebel thinks that something has got on Cluny's nerves." She had laid her hand, in her earnestness, upon her old friend's breast. He knew by the way she gently beat it that there were tears rising which she would not allow to flow. The corners of her mouth drooped. He remembered that action and that piteous look from the days of her childhood. "My God," he thought, his mind reverting ever to the central emotion of his life, "would it not have been better if she had never known such love as this! Humanity is too frail for it. Alas!" he groaned in his heart, "what would it be if she knew ! " 232 THE SECRET ORCHARD He laid his hand protectingly over hers: "Nerves, my dear, are not a speciality of your sex. A poor man may have his nerves too; and it 's astonishing how much disturbance a seemingly very small thing will cause if it happens to get ' on them. * " The voice and touch seemed instantly to reduce Helen's troubles to mere shadows. " Why, that 's very much what the Doctor says ! " she exclaimed with renewed brightness. " What a wise old thing you are ! But what can it be, I wonder, that Cluny would not tell me ? " Favereau drew all his beard into one hand and twisted it. "I wonder," said he. "Oh, Favereau, think, think, help me! It is most important. You know we must remove it, whatever it be, at once." Favereau sat down, clasped his hands loosely be- tween his knees and reflected — reflected as deeply as ever he had done in his life. Then he made up his mind. "Well," said he — "this is the merest supposi- tion, of course — but don't you think that you make life a little hard for Cluny? " " Favereau ! " "A man who loves his wife," pursued he, un- moved, "occasionally appreciates being quite alone with her. For some reason or another — very excel- lent reasons no doubt — you never seem to give Edward that treat." She was struck to the heart, struck with a keen THE SECRET ORCHARD 233 remorse, at the same time with a keener joy. " Take him away, by himself, you tivo alone. " The Doctor had guessed it too! And did Cluny love her still so foolishly, so sweetly? She could not speak. She shot an eager look at Favereaii and then cast her eyes down ; and the lovely crimson of her woman's blush dyed her face, while the old radiant aureole seemed to leap back to crown her. The man cast down his eyes too, for very shame of his own diplomacy in presence of this single- mindedness. After a short pause he resumed doggedly: "What I mean, Helen, is this : between convalescent artists, delicate priests, aunts and cousins, American and otherwise, unhappily married school-companions, not to speak of certain prosy old individuals like myself, Edward has very seldom been allowed to have you to himself at any time. And now " — he raised his eyes and looked at her steadily while he spoke with deliberate emphasis — "there seems to be very little prospect of his ever being able to do so in the future ... at least, so long as you have this adopted daughter about you." " What was it the Doctor had said: ^ Above all, no adopted daughters .' ' " " Stop ! " cried Helen, aloud, putting out her hand. " Yes, yes, you are right ; you are both right. How was it I could have been so blind.? Yes, I felt there was something, something between us, and it was — the child ! My poor love ! He never said one word to me against the project. But from the 234 THE SECRET ORCHARD moment of her arrival he avoided her. Oh, I under- stand now! I thought it strange that he should never address her voluntarily, never change his cold ceremonious manner towards her." She paused, and it was evident that she could spare no thought to the complication yet. Her mind was luxuriating in the exquisiteness of her discov- ery. Her lips parted into a smile, half motherly, half bride-like. "My Cluny!" she murmured, half to herself. "And so he is jealous!" After a while Favereau spoke again. "Cluny," he said, " is not above all the weaknesses of man- kind, Helen." His voice rang with a sort of warning sadness which, far as it was from being directed against her, brought Helen very swiftly back to a sense of her own shortcoming. "I have done wrong," she exclaimed. "How could I have let anything come between me and Cluny! " A second after, however, she cried again, unconsciously drawn back to the sweetness of the thought. "Jealous! My poor darling, jealous! I must go to him." Favereau caught her gently by the arm as she turned impulsively to leave the room. "My dear child," said he, anxiously, "what do you mean to do.-* " She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated. "Edward is a man," Favereau went on, "as you know better than I, of curious fastidiousness of THE SECRET ORCHARD a^S mind. If you let him think we have all been dis- cussing his low spirits " Helen flushed, this time painfully. " I do nothing but stupid things," she said. "Help me, Favereau. Lebel wants me to go right away with Cluny, just we two. What say you .■' " Favereau's whole countenance became illumined. "Capital!" he cried. "Nothing could be better." "So the Doctor knows," he thought. "Well, I am glad, I think. I would like to have his advice." CHAPTER XXV MADAME DE LORMES opened the door and stood for a moment looking sternly down the length of the room, dim to her eyes after the brightness of the terrace. Catching sight of the two figures by the window, she bore down upon them like a ship in full sail, blown upon the wind of her indignation, her silk skirts ballooning as she came. "Helen," she exclaimed, with the barest acknowl- edgment of Favereau's salute, "where is Anatole? I insist upon knowing where Anatole is?" "My dear Aunt," said Helen, with an hesitation not unmixed with some amusement, " I really cannot say. I thought he went to the garden." " To the garden ! " echoed the Marquise, in her gravest bassoon note. " Alone, Helen } " "I don't know. Aunt." " I have looked for him from my windows, from the corridor windows, from the balcony and from the terrace," recited the anxious mother, her voice rising a little into plaintiveness, only to fall again into tragedy. "It was in vain. His bicycle is in the hall. And the motor, I ascertained, is in the coach-house. Anatole never walks, and never THE SECRET ORCHARD 237 rides. Ah " — she looked out of the window — "what do I see?" Her fat fingers trembled as she raised her eye- glass. Had the good lady stood on that point of vantage but a few moments before she would have beheld the edifying spectacle of the present representative of the house of Lormes, chef dti iiom et des amies as aforesaid, performing unusual and obligatory gym- nastic exercise over box-wood hedges. " That girl ! " said Madame de Lormes in her voice of doom, as she caught sight of Joy's white hat. "But not," said Favereau in mockingly soothing tones, "not with the Marquis. Be tranquillised, Madame. That is only Captain Dodd." Madame de Lormes drew a quick breath of relief and dropped her eye-glass. But almost immediately she raised it again and scrutinised the unconscious pair below with renewed severity. Then she turned upon her niece. "I hope you realise what you are doing, Helen," she said, " in throwing my sons, one after the other, into the company of that sly, intriguing schoolgirl." She turned and swept out of the room, unheeding Helen's indignant protest. Favereau looked philo- sophically after the floating violet silks. "There goes another," he remarked, "who does not share your enthusiasm for Mademoiselle." Helen laughed a little angrily. "Poor Aunt!" she said. "Who would think what a good heart she 238 THE SECRET ORCHARD hides under all these absurd prejudices ? " Her eyes wandered back to the rose garden. Presently her face lit up once more. "And yet," she said, "yon- der is the probable solution of the whole problem. Look down upon them, old friend. It is a pretty sight." At that moment, in his disturbed paradise below, George Dodd was pleading for a rose. Favereau, as he was bid, gazed earnestly upon the two for a second; then instinctively both he and Helen with- drew. Eagerly smiling, she sought his sympathy and approval. But the man was too deeply engaged in examining the idea to be able to pronounce upon it. " Do you really mean " he began at last, blankly. Helen nodded. "I have seen it coming," she said, "from the very first day; and I did not like it at all, as you may guess. But now, oh, I don't know! I suppose I ought to be glad, after what you all tell me. I am afraid," she added after a pause, "that my aunt will be furious. But all things considered, my adopted daughter need be no bad match for any one. " Favereau was still lost in conflict with the thought. "What a solution!" he was saying to himself. "And to think I too saw it coming that first day! Yet, so long as it saves Helen — so long as it saves her!" CHAPTER XXVI IT was not till after luncheon that Favereau was able to see Cluny by himself. But during the meal he had sufficient opportunity to study the alteration in his friend's appearance — to mark unmistakable symptoms of severe nervous tension in his alternations of feverish, voluble gaiety and fits of abstraction. No sooner were they alone than the Duke, with his back to the door and a single despairing gesture of both hands, burst forth in a sort of fury : "You might have come sooner. How could you leave me alone in this hell — in this hell ! So long. A whole week ! " The gesture and the tone were so unlike all he had ever seen of the man that Favereau, with a new terror at his heart, caught the poor out-flung, ice- cold wrists in his warm grasp and scrutinised the pallid face, aged it seemed at that moment by as many years as there were days since they had last met. But the eyes that returned his look were sane enough — too sane, perhaps, indeed, in their depth of misery. Whatever he still nourished of resent- ment against, of contempt for Helen's husband van- 240 THE SECRET ORCHARD ished then for ever from the elder man's mind to be replaced by pity, by something almost akin to re- spect. He had never given Cluny credit for such depth of feeling. This remorse was almost great enough to balance the sin. Still maintaining his hold he led the Duke to his usual chair and impelled him into it. Then he took a seat himself behind him and said, with deep sym- pathy : "Are things then so bad? " The quiet of his companion's manner, the knowl- edge of his strength, the relief of being able here at last to throw off the strain of his horrible role, went a long way towards restoring Cluny's self-control. It was calmly enough, therefore, if hopelessly, that he answered : "Bad.-* It is unendurable!" Then, his voice swelling like a tragic organ note: "My fair home," he went on, "has been turned into a hell, horrible beyond the power of description. And I made it myself ! " "Alas!" said Favereau, with sad philosophy, "that is the very essence of hell. In the most appalling catastrophe that can be conceived there would always be one touch wanting to its complete hideousness if we had not brought it about ourselves. That is the touch that makes — hell." Cluny gave a sigh that only utter weariness pre- vented from being a groan. And Favereau, with a rapid change of manner, laid his hand again on his arm, and said in a tone of benevolent practicality : THE SECRET ORCHARD 241 "Well, well, my poor boy, now tell me all about it; and let us see what can be done." A piteous light of hope gleamed again in Cluny's eyes. He was glad, too, to ease his heart of its accumulated burden to the one being on earth who knew him as he was. "Believe me," he began, "others have never yet seen me like this. I never failed for a second upon the road I elected to take. Ah, Favereau ! " — he interrupted himself with a ghost of his old boyish way — "you were right, as usual; I chose the bad road." " I right .? " cried Favereau, stung with sudden re- morse. " Man, it was I pushed you into it by both shoulders. And I am not sure," said he, after a moment's self-examination, "that I would not do it again. It does not tally with any theory of ethics, but so long as Helen is safeguarded, upon my soul, Edward, I would be ready to commit a crime." The fellow-sinner, from his much deeper slough of culpability, could not but feel the immoral human comfort of this. He pressed his friend's hand with fingers to which some natural warmth was returning. "Helen," he cried, "God bless her! Her confi- dence is the most lovely thing and the most heart- rending. Thank God, she is as far from suspecting the truth to-day as she was a week ago. But " — here the heavy mantle of depression began to fold itself afresh around him — "she knows me too well not to feel, not to have felt from the first, that there is something upon me — something between us. 16 242 THE SECRET ORCHARD Oh, that is the worst of all : there is something be- tween my wife and me ! Her sweet eyes are always asking: 'What is it? What is it?' I could bear the rest, Favereau, " cried he, rising from his chair under the goad of his trouble. " Yet the torture that girl inflicts upon me, the way she holds the sword above my head as if by a thread of her flaxen hair from the edge of her little finger . . . it's enough to make a madman — a madman or a murderer ! " He stopped his restless moving to look at his friend; and the back of the high chair upon which he had clenched his hands trembled and creaked. Favereau saw that indeed he had reached the very limit of endurance. "Come, Edward," he exclaimed in his old mentor manner, "this is morbid! At any rate, be brave for but a little longer, and I promise you that deliver- ance will come." He would have given a great deal to have been able to make some more definite assurance. But, while he hoped much from the result of his recent hints to Helen, the whole matter was so complicated and so critical that, like the physicist dealing with saturated solutions or unstable compounds, he felt that now the only chance of warding off the irre- vocable crystallisation or the fatal explosion lay in avoiding the slightest shock, the most delicate intrusion. Meanwhile, Cluny's voice went on in hoarse com- plaint : "There is not a corner in my house where I feel THE SECRET ORCHARD 243 safe from her; not a moment of the day, unless I place miles between myself and my home, but I feel the shadow of her presence upon me. In company I cannot raise my eyes but I find that look with its terrible meaning, its claim of complicity, fixed upon my face. When she holds out her hand to me, night and morning, her very touch carries an illicit mes- sage. Ah, my God! Here, in my wife's house, in our house, our home ! " With a sudden flash Favereau understood. It was the wound to his honour, it was the frightful, vulgar treachery of the situation, the violation, unwilling though it was, of his wife's hearth, that was killing this man who had hitherto played with love and life so heedlessly. He remembered a story he had once read of a woman who was slowly tortured to death by the consciousness of a secret stain on her purity. And as he looked at his friend's face he questioned within himself whether, even if after all their plans were to succeed, Helen's happiness (bound up as it was in her husband's existence) were not in any case already marked by doom. After an oppressive pause Cluny arose and, pass- ing his hand across his forehead to brush away the gathered drops of anguish, began that restless pacing with which his associates of the last few days had already become but too familiar. "That 's when I am in company," he pursued, as if there had been no pause in his speech. "Alone" — he halted beside Favereau's chair and struck the back of it with his hand — "I tell you, Favereau, I 244 '^HE SECRET ORCHARD am afraid to be alone; I never know when I shall find her at my elbow." "But," said the elder man, "she has not spoken, has she? She has not dared to return to the subject? " "No," answered Cluny, "no." His pale lips smiled in the despair which had passed beyond sorrow. " It is worse than if she spoke. Her silence claims me." Again came a pause, heavy with the weight of the issueless dilemma. Once or twice Favereau opened his lips to speak; but then the knowledge of all words' futility withered them upon his mouth. At last he too sprang to his feet, and resolutely he endeavoured to shake off the paralysis of the encompassing misery. "Come," he cried, "courage, courage! It is only for a little while longer. You will be rid of her." Cluny turned upon his friend a countenance start- ling in its pallor, and laid his cold hand upon his wrist. "Aye," he said, "but how? Look here," he went on, almost in a whisper, "I told you just now that the worst had come upon me. It was wrong : there is worse still to come. My happiness is gone, Helen's is going. God help us ! My peace of mind is gone, my self-respect, my rest, all that makes life worth having, gone ! And now, oh, Favereau, now, honour is going ! " " You mean " " I mean that Helen's cousin has set his heart upon THE SECRET ORCHARD 245 Joy. That simple-minded, honest, honourable fel- low; and I — I, his kinsman, his host in a foreign land — what am I to do ? " Favereau drew a long breath. He had thought to have looked the ugly situation so closely in the face already as to be unappalled by any of its aspects. But now he too hesitated and shrank. Yet it was only for a second. Stronger for good as he had been all his life than his friend, it now seemed as if he were the stronger for evil. He thought of Helen. "Let honour go," he said harshly. With a fierce satisfaction, this fiat once pronounced, he felt that indeed the matter had passed beyond the possibility of recall. They were as men caught in the cog-wheels of a relentless machinery; they had themselves set it in motion, they were powerless to arrest it now. To be honourable towards George Dodd, to try and save him, would be to commit the unforgivable baseness of again betraying the first victim. There was nothing for it but to set their teeth and bear the tearing of the wheels in silence. As he stood, his eyes on the ground, lost in his dark thoughts, he was roused by the nervous start of the Duke, whose hand was still on his arm. Follow- ing the direction of his friend's eyes, he looked out through the high-mullioned window and perceived, outlined in white against the green of yew hedges, the silhouette of a fair head, a delicate profile, a little throat — so pretty a picture, so piteously horrible to them both ! After a second's breathless waiting Cluny drew back into the shadow of the room, just 246 THE SECRET ORCHARD as the head outside turned upon the slender neck and looked deliberately in. Meeting Favereau's stern eyes, with a movement half anger, half fear, like a beautiful little snake disturbed in her basking in the sun, Joy glided away. And stirred to an unwonted heat of passion Favereau shot out a long arm and pulled down the blinds. Then he turned to Cluny. In the sudden dimness of the room the two looked at each other : there was no need of words. "Before heaven," cried Favereau, "I believe the expiation must be nearly complete ! " CHAPTER XXVII THE girl Joy sat upon the old weather-worn marble bench in the deep green recess cut out of the living hedge of laurel. Supporting her chin upon her clasped hands, her elbows resting on her knees, immobile, she brooded like a small white sphinx, gazing from within the shadow across the broad strip of sunlit walk, across the slope of green and the flaming geranium beds, to that deeply- embrasured window where a blind had been drawn down. Behind her, in a niche cut for itself also out of the green wall, rose a slender pedestal whereon sat in marble a faun, cross-legged. Between his hairy goat's knees hung one careless hand, just holding the pipes. The long dead creator of that smiling carven face had contrived to throw into its young man's features, under the budding horns, an extraor- dinary expression of all-time mockery. This crea- ture, with the wisdom of the gods and the passions of the animal, grinned out upon the world in eternal cynicism. Who knew as well as he that man walks with the beasts, and that even from the very seat of an intellect that aspired to commune with the gods there grow the horns of earthliness? 248 THE SECRET ORCHARD As the light breeze threw dancing shadows across his face, his smiling marble lips seemed to be twisted into laughter, the opaque eyes to flicker in " scorn and pity and awful eternal knowledge " of the folly of all things in this fleeting show of life. . . . Pipe while ye may, poor human children ! Take what you can, the roses pass and youth is but a day : dance while ye can to my piping ! He had expounded his pagan allegory for more than two hundred years to the lives that fretted their little span away be- neath his shadow. And some had taken his advice and some had not; but all alike, through sunshine or through snow, had been in the end carried past him downhill on the self-same path to the church- yard below. And he smiled on ! To-day, beneath him under the trembling shadows of the leaves, sat one who, had she breathed in the good old days when gods still walked the earth, when man's passion was his only law, woman's beauty her acknowledged power, a moment's joy the gift of the immortals, might well have danced with this faun in forest glades, and found sufficient wis- dom in his piping call. Here sat she, unhappy ! Why sJiould she be un- happy, she that was young, and strong, and beautiful ? "Perfectly absurd," said the faun. "Had she not as much right to love as any other? And if she loved one man, had she not a right to his love as well as any other who loved him too ? That ivas only com^non- sense," assured the stone lips. And that other, she had had her day. She was THE SECRET ORCHARD 249 grotving old. Joy had counted three silver hairs on her temples that very morning. The old must make room for the young I The wing of the breeze beat a branch of the cypress tree; a quick shade swept across the faun's face, and his mouth writhed in a silent convulsion of laughter. ''^ Nature' s law, my dear!'' he chuckled. " World's law — the only law. " This morning Joy had been so hopeful. The spring-like beauty of the autumn day had got into her young veins. The sunshine had been bright, the grass green, the scent of the roses endlessly sweet. It seemed part of the very design of the world that she should be happy again as she once had been. Down in the rose garden she had tested her powers on two men : a strong one and a weak one. And she knew that she could fool them both if she chose. And he, he had loved her, he loved her still ! Why, then, should they not be happy ? '^ My very tune,'' said the faun; "/ have set my pipe to the tvorld' s desire." His hafid trembled when it touched hers. He grew pale when he looked at her. Why should he avoid her, but that he too was Jiajinted as she was ? Why did he not go away ? Aye, why not send her away if he did not love her ? Love her ! The little pagan flushed from paleness into deep rose-red and shook from head to foot as she thought of the love that was in her. 250 THE SECRET ORCHARD The faun nodded at her: " Evoe !" That was the sort of love he could tell of. The loves of men and maids, of mortals and gods, love that recked of nothing but its own glory, that made such joys, such hates, such deaths, that they were still sung of, and would still be sung of when even the last atom of his stone should have crumbled to the shapeless dust. But he had pulled down the blind. It had been pulled down angrily, as if to shut her out. It had been pulled doivn relentlessly. It had seemed to shut out all the simsJmie that had been flooding into her heart : to silence all the hope. What bird can sing in a darkened room ! She had once seen them thus pull down the blind of a room where lay a corpse, and everything had grown so dark, so black! Her heart shuddered with a great fear. Oh 710, their love was not dead ! It was young, strong ; she had only Just begun to love. She had so much to give ! Joy sprang to her feet, and turned in the fury and agony of her passion upon the faun. "God cannot be so cruel," she cried; "we must be happy again ! " She flung out her hands. But the faun was cold and hard. His smile was meaningless. He was a mere lump of stone. The faun knew nothing about God. CHAPTER XXVIII HE sought her with dogged patience, set in his purpose. "I '11 be hanged if I stand another day of it," he said. As to most of those who have not frittered away their energies for love in myriad different channels of indifferent depths, the master-passion had come to George Dodd as an overwhelming tide. There was every reason why the hard, practical man in him should hesitate before the idea of such a union. He had often said: "What had a sailor to do with a wife.!* His bride is the sea!" With that longing for a home of his own implanted in every wholesome nature, he had hitherto deliberately sacrificed such joys to his ambition; none knew better from obser- vation than he what a clog a wife and little ones are to the feet of one who would advance rapidly in his profession. Moreover, he had, in an intensified degree, the national love of freedom. Early cast upon his own resources, he had been all his life accustomed to judge and act from the personal point of view. " I must have elbow-room " had been a favourite expression of his. And, striking for fame and fortune, he had done so hitherto with a feeling 252 THE SECRET ORCHARD of absolute independence. To his mind the thought in danger: "If I fall, no one is the worse for it," amply compensated for the fact that in victory no one would be the more joyful for it. The manner, moreover, in which he had been thrown among strangers from his childhood by his mother's foreign marriage had given him a violent prejudice against mixed alliances. "Americans should marry Americans; the country is big enough for choice, and as a race we are good enough for each other. That is so." This had been another of his hard and fast rules for the guidance of self and others. But now — well, he had already experienced the "accidents of war" before which no previous theory can stand, when an elemental spirit of fight or an inborn flash of genius alone can retrieve the situ- ation. To-day he was confronted by the " accident of love," and he realised that before this elemental human passion no built-up wall of cool resolve, no well-laid-out scheme of life can stand. Under the pulse of his enkindled blood he saw but one course before him: to carry his heart's desire at whatever cost. And he as little thought of pause, of possible failure, of future disability, as does the soldier in his rush to triumph or annihilation. Well might the stone faun grin, year in, year out, from over his crossed goat-legs, upon this old, old world: so self-complacently enlightened, so theoret- ically advanced, so aesthetically civilised — so ele- mentally the same ! THE SECRET ORCHARD 0.^3 Among the many tools of which the ambitious sailor had made use for the fashioning of his career was the study of languages, for which reason indeed he had now been specially selected for his present mission. And characteristically enough, having kept himself sternly aloof from all personal acquaint- ance with the sordid passions of life, he had a secret romantic love of poetry. As, in reward of his peregrinations, he at length caught a glimpse of a white figure in the green recess at the end of the terrace, a line of Heine which he remembered to have haunted him — oddly enough with its sheer music of words — one full, purple, solitary night on tropical seas, as he tramped his deck till dawn, now sprang again to his mind with a sudden intimate meaning: " Die Kleine, die Reine, die Feine, die Eine, die Eine ! " If ever a poet out of his own heart sang the love of another man, surely the Jew had sung the sailor's wonderful sweetheart: Little — just as high as his heart — child to him at once and woman ! Dainty? Why, there was no word in his own tongue to express this perfection of daintiness, save, indeed, now the one word: Joy. Pure! His heart contracted with a feeling that was almost pain at the thought of his beloved's exquisite purity, an attribute so divine in woman, so personal it seemed to herself, so immeas- urably above his rough man's nature, that even to dare ponder upon it became a sort of desecration. The Pure, and last of all — oh, wonderful sickly 254 THE SECRET ORCHARD poet to have thus cried the cry of the strong lover's soul ! — the One, the only One ! Had she seen him coming? She showed no sur- prise; showed neither pleasure nor the reverse; merely shifted her attitude a little, as he took a seat beside her, and turned a face supported on the palm of her hand sufficiently in his direction to bring him under the glance of her eyes. These curious eyes of hers were so nearly hidden under the droop- ing lids that all he could see of them between the thick lashes was a long liquid gleam. It was only afterwards that these details came back to his mind. Then he merely knew, by the thick beating of his heart and the stress of his emotion that he, the man, was at the mercy of this little crouching wisp of a creature that he could have caught up in his arms and run away with, laughing. "Miss Joy," he began, after a pause as long as a century to him, " I have been looking for you this hour." The dark stars of her pupils slid away from their cool contemplation of his face to seek once more the window where the blind was pulled down. George Dodd drew a long breath. He did not waver in his determination; but the preliminaries seemed to him diabolically difficult. Clutching the ledge of the bench with both hands he began afresh : "You weren't hiding from me, were you? " The girl's eyes went back to him. The long lashes were lifted a little. The childish mouth parted. AH, YOU DON T KNOW -^TIAT A MAN FEELS BEFORE SUCH A BEING AS YOU ! ' " Pf^ge 2 J J. THE SECRET ORCHARD i^S "Hiding?" she repeated, composed to the verge of impertinence. "You are not afraid of me?" asked the sailor, incoherently tender. Joy's short white teeth flashed for a second. Then, reflectively and slowly, as if weighing the truth of her own words, she said : " I don't think I know what it is to be afraid. Have I ever been afraid of any one? I do not think so." No sooner were the words spoken than the memory of one — a horrid, wise-eyed, grey-bearded man — whose look she could not meet, whose very pres- ence seemed to paralyse her, struck chill upon her heart. She shivered. The man beside her saw the sudden alteration of her features, felt her tremble; his passion leaped out, goaded by tenderness. " Yes, you are frightened ! Good God, afraid of me ! Look at me : I am a rough strong fellow, yet it is I who am frightened. Ah, you don't know what a man feels before such a being as you ! My dear, I can't make pretty speeches. I — I — Joy, I love you ! " He held out his great brown hand, and indeed it shook. Joy's eyes now rested upon it. His words echoed idly enough in her ears. The tempestuous circling of her thoughts round a single central, towering idea, caught them, tossed them, as the waters of the whirlpool catch and toss straws and broken twigs, only to cast them finally away. 256 THE SECRET ORCHARD Love. Love ? Love ! What could this one know of the love I know ? Oh, zvhat ngly, coarse hands 1 The nails have been broken, the veins stand out like cords. My lover s hands are the hands of a king. When he laid his hand upon my cheek, his touch was like music. I kissed his hand, then he let it lie in mine. He has such long fiiigers, and they taper. The nails are like almonds. I remember how I looked at his palm and then I kissed it. My prince I And did he think I should not know it again ? Ah, but I kissed it again ! "I love you," repeated Dodd, drawing nearer to her. He saw that her whiteness had become col- oured as from an inner crimson flame; and he took heart of grace, stretched out his arm to enfold her, but then paused tremulously on the brink of bliss for chivalrous awe of her delicate maidenliness. "Do you love me? Do you love me?" he cried, varying his note unconsciously. It was as if the crimson flame flickered and died out. The dark eyes in the pale face looked at him full; but they were now as if veiled, and told him nothing of the soul within. Nevertheless he could not but feel her detachment, and for the first time an icy doubt of success gripped him. "Speak, answer me," he pleaded. "At least tell me if I may hope." After a wait, as though the cry had taken some time to reach her in the midst of her own thoughts, Joy said, with a sort of deliberate impatience: " What is it you want of me ? What can I say? " THE SECRET ORCHARD i^l "I want you for my wife," said the other, with his square simplicity. " I want you to say you love me." All at once there shot a light into her veiled eyes, a new flame so eager that, quick, the long lids must droop to hide it. Her slight frame swayed under the pulse of a new hope. He (there was only one being beside herself in her world : the rest were shadows. ) — Jie should be made to pidl up that blind! Ah, there were tilings no love could bear ! Did she not know it? She had learned many tilings this last month; she had learned the strengtJi of love' s endurance ; she had learned its limit. He might be silent so long as he knew her there, safe, his oiun if hd chose. But now she would make him speak y if it was only a word that he and she alone could understand. "I may hope, then," cried the sailor, joyfully, as he marked how she thrilled and flushed and wavered. She replied dreamily: "I don't know." He caught her hand. "That means " he ex- claimed joyfully. There seemed now but the breadth of a second, but a span of space between him and those pure, fresh lips, yet the next instant found him alone upon the bench. She had disengaged herself as quickly as a bird. He dared not close his great grasp upon her, and she was free. A pace away from him she stood, smiling and dimpling. "Ask the Duke," she said. It was very sweet. She was adorable. But he wanted his kiss — that kiss he had dreamed of day 17 258 THE SECRET ORCHARD and night since that first evening; he wanted it more madly than he had ever wanted anything. But as he sprang to claim it, once again, in some indefin- able way, she held him back. "Ask the Duke," said she again, slowly. He gazed after her; did not attempt to follow her as she moved about with deliberate steps, passing in and out of shadows and sunshine, and finally standing for a second to look back at him once again, an airy white silhouette against a patch of blue sky. Then she was gone. The sailor stood and stared. He felt baffled, puzzled. But man, born out of mystery, surrounded by mystery, going to mystery, is ever most allured and drawn by mystery. Moreover, from all time, the desire is greater than any possible realisation. This attraction for the unknown, for the elusive ideal, seems a law of our human life leading the seeker to revelation or perdition. All creative arts, all music, all poetry or science, all glory of love, all in fine that is beautiful and high, comes to us in and through this striving, and that is revelation. The perditioji comes when the ideal has flown : when the mystery is solved or believed to be solved. George Dodd now was ten times more enamoured, ten times more set on his purpose than he had been an hour ago ; and indeed he was far enough from the solution of his mystery. "I take it," he said to himself at last, after re- viewing as well as his troubled thoughts would allow THE SECRET ORCHARD isg him the few words he had been vouchsafed, " I take it it 's the French custom. Silly sort of custom I call it — silly as all the rest. . . . The little fay ! * Ask the Duke,' she said. But she stopped. Aye, she stopped twice and looked back ! George Dodd, I believe you 've been a fool. You could have had that kiss." He fell back upon the bench again and into a pas- sionate reverie. Over his head the faun smiled on, with young lips and old eyes. "Great heaven!" cried the sailor suddenly, and sprang to his feet. " What am I doing here .? Love does make a pretty kind of fool of a man. Well, I '11 go and ask that Duke — and then " His strong, clean-cut lips broke into a smile. What a rare tune the faun could have piped ! CHAPTER XXIX IN the library sat a tweed-clad Nessie with her feet on the fender, pointing, ludicrously minute, towards the faint wood fire (for misery had made her cold, despite the glorious sunshine); in one hand was a pocket-handkerchief, large enough to receive five or six moderate-sized tears, in the other a cup of tea. These she alternately brandished at a patiently sympathetic Helen. "But, really, Nessie," the latter was repeating for the tenth time, " is it not foolish of you not to wait for the answer to Lebel's telegram? " "I guess there being no answer is a bad sign," cried the anxious wife and rattled her tea-cup vindictively. "I hope you'll feel sorry, Helen, when you find out how you misjudged a poor dying man. He mayn't have been a pattern; but, after all, you should n't forget that he is my husband." She drew up her little figure and finished her cup of tea with a dignified gulp. Then she deposited it on the table, and taking the pocket-handkerchief by two corners held it up ready for emergencies. " If you come to think of it," she whimpered, "he must be pretty bad to have asked for so little. He m — m — must have been quite delirious ! " THE SECRET ORCHARD 261 The scrap of a pocket-handkerchief was here flung over the scrap of a face, and Madame Rodriguez sur- rendered herself to woe just as Jean the footman made his entrance with the expected dispatch upon his salver. "A telegram for Madame. Monsieur le Docteur sent it," he explained, rolling his eyes with all the French servant's open sympathy for his supe- rior's distress. The Duchess took the folded slip and dismissed the man with her friendly gesture. Then she laid the missive on Nessie's knee. The small olive fingers clutching the handkerchief were shifted sufficiently to allow a corner of a black eye to peer down suspiciously at the blue document. "Don't be afraid," said the Duchess, unfailingly amused by her friend's odd gestures, which always reminded her of some small, innocent animal: bird, kitten, or squirrel. Many a time had Helen seen her beloved squirrels peer down at her from the trees in the park with just such an expression of uncon- sciously comical doubt. "Don't be afraid," said she; "it must be good news, or Lebel would not have sent it to us like this." Here both the black eyes came into view. They looked at Helen, blinking once or twice. An ex- pression of relief, succeeded by a dawning fury, first relaxed then tightened the pretty, impish face. Madame Rodriguez shook the telegram open and sprang to her feet. Her features became suffused with a dark flush. She opened her mouth and choked silently. 262 THE SECRET ORCHARD " Nessie ! " The Duchess was frightened. Could the Doctor, after all, have sent her evil tidings so brutally ? Nessie gave a gasp, then broke into harsh, loud laughter. "Famous! Oh, famous ! " she cried. "Listen." Her hands shook as she lifted the sheet and read aloud, her voice rising almost to a shriek. " Listen : " * No case typhus in any hotel here. Gentleman called Rodriguez perfectly well. At present in Casino pigeon- shooting match. Evidently some mistake. — Schreiber.' " "Dear Nessie," cried Helen, and encircled her friend with her arms, " I am so glad ! " "Glad?" echoed Nessie. "Glad!" Her gather- ing fury overflowed ; she flung off the embrace. "Helen, you make me tired. Glad, indeed! Glad to see me bamboozled and insulted and betrayed by that — that nigger ! Oh, oh ! " She beat the air with her hands. "I'll never believe another word he says — no, not if he were a corpse before me. Oh, oh, oh ! " "Hush!" cried the Duchess. "Take care, my dear. If the child were to come in." If one thing is repugnant to an habitually self- controlled nature it is the loss of personal dignity in another. Helen's tone was rebuking, and Nessie was quick to feel it so. She turned off the rattling artillery of her anger with the most surprising sharp- ness and glared a full five seconds in silence. Then, with a subdued intensity of indignation every whit THE SECRET ORCHARD 263 as effective: "Oh," she remarked vvitheringly, "I won't pervert your precious innocent. I '11 go to my room. Yes, yes, I will, I '11 go and write to my lawyer." She rose. "As for that child, as you call her," she continued, "believe me, it isn't I that could teach her anything, good or bad. . . . She 's the only creature I ever saw that would about match Rodriguez for slyness." The door was banged. Every recognised feminine petulance was Nessie's, but she invested them with a fresh briskness quite her own. Helen flushed angrily in her turn. " Oh, poor Nessie ! How unjust, how wicked ! How sorry she will be in a minute or two ! " CHAPTER XXX ** 1% /T-A-Y I ask," said the Marquise de Lormes XVJL with elaborate pohteness, " if that was the young person whom they call Mademoiselle Gioja who was sitting with you just now?" Sailing down the terrace at the end of her after- noon constitutional, she had come upon her elder son at the very moment when, fired with new resolu- tion, he was about to seek the Duke. The purple silk was kilted up at intervals by the simple expedient of loops of elastic and buttons (an elegant reminiscence of the days of crinoline) and displayed the famous Church feet which neither age, corpulence, nor even (oh, horror!) elastic-side boots could altogether rob of shapeliness; a Swiss garden- hat was tied with great precision under the second chin ; grey silk mittens encased the plump, bejewelled hands. " How Mother has got herself up ! " thought the sailor, unfihally, as his first glance fell upon her. But the second swiftly corrected the hasty impres- sion. The Marian Church, who in her girlhood had ruled over hundreds of slaves in her beauti- ful southern home, had found ample scope for her THE SECRET ORCHARD 16^ imperious nature in the social position given by her second marriage, a position which cut her off, as one among the elect, from the common herd of mortals. The rest of the world outside the Almanach de Gotha was to the Marquise de Lormes («/