Harding followed obediently, and made various attempts to find the right position, but the picture was not placed so as to receive the full firelight, and being above the lamp it remained in shadow.
"Stay," said the old gentleman, "I'll light this candle."
He struck a match as he spoke, and the sudden illumination revealed a scornful face, and almost seemed to give it a momentary expression, as if Anthony, of Mitchelhurst Place, recognised Reynold of nowhere.
The younger man eyed the portrait coldly and deliberately.
"Well," he said, "Mr. Anthony Rothwell, my grandfather, I suppose?"
"Great-grandfather," Mr. Hayes corrected.
"Oh, you are well acquainted with the family history. Well, then, I should say that my great-grandfather was remarkably handsome, but——"
"If it comes to that you are uncommonly like him," said his host, with a little chuckle, as he looked from the painted face to the living one, and back again.
Reynold started and drew back.
"Oh, thank you!" he said, with a short laugh. If he had been permitted to continue his first remark, he would have said, "but as unpleasant-tempered a gentleman as you could find in a day's journey."
The words had been so literally on his lips that he could hardly realise that they had not been uttered when Mr. Hayes spoke.
For the moment the likeness had been complete. Then he saw how it was, laughed, and said—
"Oh, thank you."
But he flashed an uneasy glance at Barbara, who was lingering near. Was he really like that pale, bitter-lipped portrait? He fancied that her face would tell him, but she was looking fixedly at Anthony Rothwell.
"Mind you are not late for dinner, Barbara," said her uncle quickly.
She woke to radiant animation.
"I won't be," she said. "But if you are going to introduce Mr. Harding to all the pictures first——"
"I'm not going to do anything of the kind."
"That's right. Mr. Harding's ancestors won't spoil if they are kept waiting a little, but I can't answer for the fish."
"Pray don't let any dead and gone Rothwells interfere with your dinner," said Reynold. "If one's ancestors can't wait one's convenience, I don't know who can."
Barbara was the first to reappear in the yellow drawing-room. She had gone away, laughing carelessly; she came back shyly, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes. She had put on a dress which was reserved for important occasions, and she was conscious of her splendour. She felt the strings of amber beads that were wound loosely round her throat, and that rose and fell with her quickened breathing. Nay, she was conscious to the utmost end of the folds of black drapery, that followed her with a soft sound, as of a summer sea, when she crossed the pavement of the hall. For Barbara's dress was black, and its special adornment was some handsome black lace that her grandmother had given her. Something of lighter hue and texture might have better suited her age, but there was no questioning the fact that the dignified richness of her gown was admirably becoming to the girl. One hardly knew whether to call her childish or stately, and the perplexity was delightful.
Her heart was beating fast, half in apprehension and half in defiance. Over and over again while she waited she said to herself that she had not put on her best dress for Mr. Harding's sake, she had not. She did not care what he thought of her. He might come and go, just as other people might come and go. It did not matter to her. But his coming seemed somehow to have brought all the Rothwells back to life, and to have revealed the desolate pride of the old house. When she looked from Reynold's face to Anthony's, she suddenly felt that she must put on her best dress for their company. It was no matter of personal feeling, it was an instinctive and imperative sense of what the circumstances demanded. She had never been to such a dinner party in all her life.
The feeling did her credit, but it was difficult to express. Feelings are often difficult to express, and a woman has an especial difficulty in conveying the finer shades of meaning. There is an easy masculine way of accounting for her every action by supposing it aimed at men in general, or some man in particular; and thus all manner of delicate fancies and distinctions, shaped clearly in a woman's mind, may pass through the distorting medium to reach a man's apprehension as sheer coquetry. The knowledge of this possibility is apt to give even innocence an air of hesitating consciousness. Barbara was by no means certain that her uncle would understand this honour paid, not to any living young man, but to the traditions of Mitchelhurst Place, and her blushes betrayed her shame at his probable misreading of her meaning. And what would Mr. Harding himself think?
He came in with his languid, hesitating walk, looking very tall and slender in his evening dress. He had telegraphed home for that dress suit the day before. The fact that he was travelling for a week or two, with no expectation of dining anywhere but in country inns, might naturally have excused its absence, but the explanation would have been an apology, and Harding could not apologise. He would have found it easier to spend his last shilling. Perhaps, too, he had shared Barbara's feeling as to the fitness of a touch of ceremony at Mitchelhurst.
At any rate he shared her shyness. He crossed the room with evident constraint, and halted near the fire without a word. Barbara's shyness was palpitating and aflame; his was leaden and chill. She did not know what to make of his silence; she waited, and still he did not speak; she looked up and felt sure that his downcast eyes had been obliquely fixed on her.
"Uncle is last, you see," she said. "I knew he would be."
"I was afraid I might be," he replied. "A clock struck before I expected it. I suppose my watch loses, but I hadn't found it out."
"Oh, I ought to have told you," she exclaimed penitently. "That is the great clock in the hall, and it is always kept ten minutes fast. Uncle likes it for a warning. So when it strikes, he says, 'That's the hall clock; then there's plenty of time, plenty of time, I'll just finish this.' And he goes on quite happily."
"I fancied somehow that Mr. Hayes was a very punctual man."
"Because he talks so much about it. I think he reminds other people for fear they should remind him. When I first came he was always saying, 'Don't be late,' till I was quite frightened lest I should be. I couldn't believe it when he said, 'Don't be late,' and then wasn't ready."
"You are not so particular now?"
"Oh yes, I am," she answered very seriously. "It doesn't do to be late if you are the housekeeper, you know."
A faint gleam lighted Harding's face.
"Of course not; but I never was," he replied, in a respectful tone. "How long is it since you came here?"
"I came with my mother to see uncle a great many years ago, but I only came to live here last October. Uncle wanted somebody. He said it was dull."
"I should think it was. Isn't it dull for you?"
"Sometimes," said Barbara. "It isn't at all like home. That's a little house with a great many people in it—father and mother, and all my brothers and sisters, and father's pupils. And this is a big house with nobody in it."
"Till you came," said Reynold, hesitating over the little bow or glance which should have pointed his words.
"Well, there's uncle," said Barbara with a smile, "he must count for somebody. But I feel exactly like nobody when I am going in and out of all those empty rooms. You must see them to-morrow."
The clock on the chimney-piece struck, and she turned her head to look at it. "That's five minutes slow," she said.
"And the other was more than ten minutes fast."
"Yes, it gains. Do you know," said Barbara, "I always feel as if the great clock were the time, so when it fairly runs away into the future and I have to stop it, to let the world come up with it again, it seems to me almost as if I stopped my own life too."
"Some people would be uncommonly glad to do that," said Harding; "or even to make time go backward for a while."
"Well, I don't mind for a quarter of an hour. But I don't want it to go back, really. Not back to pinafores and the schoolroom," said Barbara with a laugh, which in some curious fashion turned to a deepening flush. The swift, impulsive blood was always coming and going at a thought, a fancy, a mere nothing.
Harding smiled in his grim way. "I suppose it's just as well not to want time to run back," he said at last.
"Uncle might find himself punctual for once if it did. Oh, here he comes!" The door opened as she spoke, and Mr. Hayes appeared on the threshold with an inquiring face.
"Ah! you are down, Barbara! That's right. Dinner's ready, they tell me."
Reynold looked at Barbara, hesitated, and then offered his arm. Mr. Hayes stood back and eyed them as they passed—the tall young man, pale, dark-browed, scowling a little, and the girl at his side radiantly conscious of her dignity. Even when they had gone by he was obliged to wait a moment. The sweeping folds of Barbara's dress demanded space and respect. His glance ran up them to her shoulders, to the amber beads about her neck, to the loose coils of her dusky hair, and he followed meekly with a whimsical smile.
They dined in the great dining-room, where a score of guests would have seemed few. But they had a little table, with four candles on it, set near a clear fire, and shut in by an overshadowing screen. "We are driven out of this in the depth of winter," said Mr. Hayes. "It is too cold—nothing seems to warm it, and it is such a terrible journey from the drawing-room fire. But till the bitter weather comes I like it, and I always come back as soon as the spring begins. We were here by March, weren't we, Barbara?"
The girl smiled assent, and Harding had a passing fancy of the windy skies of March glancing through the tall windows, the upper part of which he saw from his place. But his eyes came back to Barbara, who was watching the progress of their meal with an evident sense of responsibility. The crowning grace of an accomplished housekeeper is to hide all need of management, but this was the pretty anxiety of a beginner. "Mary, the currant jelly," said Miss Strange in an intense undertone, and glanced eloquently at Reynold's plate. She was so absorbed that she started when her uncle spoke.
"Why do you wear those white things—asters, are they not? They don't go well with your dress."
Barbara looked down at the two colourless blossoms which she had fastened among the folds of her black lace. "No, I know they don't, but I couldn't find anything better in the garden to-day."
"It wouldn't have mattered what it was," Mr. Hayes persisted, with his head critically on one side. "Anything red or yellow—just a bit of colour, you know."
"But that was exactly what I couldn't find. All the red and yellow things in the garden are dead."
"Why not some of those scarlet hips you were gathering yesterday?" said Reynold.
"Oh! Those!" exclaimed Barbara, looking hurriedly away from the scratch on the cheek nearest her, and then discovering that she had fixed her eyes on his wounded hand. "Do you think they would have done? Well, yes, I dare say they might."
"I should think they would have done beautifully, but you know best. Perhaps you did not care for them? You threw them away?" He was smiling with a touch of malice, as if he had actually seen Barbara in her room, gazing regretfully at a little brown pitcher which was full of autumn leaves and clusters of red rose-fruit.
"Of course they would have done," said Mr. Hayes.
"Yes, perhaps they might. I must bear them in mind another time. Uncle, Mr. Harding's plate is empty." And Barbara went on with her dinner, feeling angry and aggrieved. "He might have let me think I had spared his feelings by giving them up," she said to herself. "It would have been kinder. And I should like to know what I was to do. If I had worn them he would have looked at me to remind me. I can't think what made uncle talk about the stupid things."
During the rest of the meal conversation was somewhat fitful. The three, in their sheltered, firelit nook, sat through pauses, in which it almost seemed as if it would be only necessary to rise softly and glance round the end of the screen to surprise some ghostly company gathered silently at the long table. The wind made a cheerless noise outside, seeking admission to the great hollow house, and died away in the hopelessness of vain endeavour. At last Miss Strange prepared to leave the gentlemen to their wine, but she lingered for a moment, darkly glowing against the background of sombre brown and tarnished gold, to bid her uncle remember that coffee would be ready in the drawing-room when they liked to come for it.
Mr. Hayes pushed the decanter to his guest. "Where is John Rothwell now?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Harding, listlessly. He was peeling a rough-coated pear, and he watched the long, unbroken strip gliding downward in lengthening curves. "Somewhere on the Continent—in one of those places where people go to live shabbily."
Mr. Hayes filled the pause with an inquiring "Yes?" and his bright eyes dilated.
"Yes," the other repeated. "Didn't you say he took some pictures away with him? They must be all gone long ago—pawned or sold. How would you raise money on family portraits? It would look rather queer going to the pawnbroker's with an ancestor under your arm."
"But there was his mother's portrait. He would not——"
"Hm!" said Harding, cutting up his pear. "Well, perhaps not. Perhaps he had to leave in a hurry some time or other. A miniature would have been more convenient."
"But this is very sad," said Mr. Hayes. He spoke in an abstract and impersonal manner.
Harding assented, also in a general way.
"Very sad," the other repeated. Then, quickening to special recollection—"And your uncle was always such a proud man. I never knew a prouder man than John Rothwell five-and-twenty years ago. And to think that he should come to this!"
He leaned back in his chair and slowly sipped his wine, while he tried to reconcile old memories with this new description. The wine was very good, and Mr. Hayes seemed to enjoy it. Reynold Harding rested his elbow on the table, and looked at the fire with a moody frown.
"Some pride can't be carried about, I suppose," he said at last. "It's as bad as a whole gallery of family portraits—worse, for you cannot raise money on it."
Mr. Hayes nodded. "I see. Rooted in the Mitchelhurst soil, you think? Very possibly." He looked round, as far as the screens permitted. "And so, when this went, all went. But how very sad!"
The young man did not take the trouble to express his agreement a second time.
"And your other uncle," said Mr. Hayes briskly, after a pause. "How is he?"
"My other uncle?"
"Yes, your uncle on your father's side—Mr. Harding."
"Oh, he is very well—getting to be an old man now."
"But as prosperous as ever?"
"More so," said Harding in his rough voice. "His money gathers and grows like a snowball. But he is beginning to think about enjoying it—he is evidently growing old. He says it is time for him to have a holiday. He never took one for some wonderful time—eighteen years I think it was; but he has not worked quite so hard of late."
"Well, he deserves a little pleasure now."
"I don't know about that. If a man makes himself a slave to money-getting I don't see that he deserves any pleasure. He deserves his money."
The old gentleman laughed. "Let the poor fellow amuse himself a little—if he can. The question is whether he can, after a life of hard work. What is his idea of pleasure?"
"Yachting. He discovered quite lately that he wasn't sea-sick; he hadn't leisure to find it out before. So he took to yachting. He can enjoy his dinner as well on board a boat as anywhere else, he can talk about his yacht, and he can spend any amount of money."
"You haven't any sympathy with his hobby?"
"I? I've no money to spend, and I am sea-sick."
"You are? I remember now," said Mr. Hayes, thoughtfully, "that your grandfather and John Rothwell had a great dislike to the water."
"Ah? It's a family peculiarity? A proud distinction?" Harding laughed quietly, looking away. He was accustomed to laugh at himself and by himself. "It's something to be able to invoke the Rothwell ancestry to give dignity to one's qualms," he said.
Mr. Hayes smiled a little unwillingly. He did not really require respect for the Rothwell sea-sickness, but it hardly pleased him that the young fellow should scoff at his ancestry, just when it had gained him admission to Mitchelhurst Place. "Bad taste," he said to himself, and he returned abruptly to the money-making uncle. "I suppose Mr. Harding has a son to come after him?"
"Yes, there's one son," Reynold replied, with a contemptuous intonation.
"And does he take to the business?"
"I don't know much about that. I fancy he wants to begin at the yachting end, anyhow."
"Only one son." Mr. Hayes glanced at young Harding as if a question were on his lips; but the other's face did not invite it, and the subject dropped. There was a pause, and then the elder man began to talk of some Roman remains which had been discovered five miles from Mitchelhurst. Reynold crossed his long legs, balanced himself idly, and listened with dreary acquiescence.
It was some time before the Roman remains were disposed of and they rejoined Barbara. They startled her out of her uncle's big easy-chair, where she was half-lying, half-sitting, with all her black draperies about her, too much absorbed in a novel to hear their approach. Harding, on the threshold, caught a glimpse of the nestling attitude, the parted lips, the hand that propped her head, before Miss Strange was on her feet and ready for her company.
Mr. Hayes, stirring his coffee, demanded music. He liked it a little for its own sake, but more just then because it would take his companion off his hands. He was tired of entertaining this silent young man, who stood, cup in hand, on the rug, frowning at the portraits of his forefathers, and he sent Barbara to the piano with the certainty that Harding would follow her. As soon as he saw them safely at the other end of the room he dropped with a sigh of relief into the chair which she had quitted, and took up his book.
The girl, meanwhile, turned over her music and questioned Reynold. He did not sing?—did not play? No; and he understood very little, but he liked to listen. He turned the pages for her, once or twice too fast, generally much too slowly, never at the right moment. Then Barbara began to play something which she knew by heart, and he stood a little aside, with his moody face softening, and his downward-glancing eyes following her fingers over the keys, as if she were weaving the strands of some delicate tissue. When she stopped, rested one hand on the music-stool on which she sat, and turned from the piano to hear what her uncle wished for next, he saw, as she leaned backward, the pure curve of her averted cheek, and the black lace and amber beads about her softly-rounded throat.
"Oh, I know that by heart, too!" she exclaimed.
He took up a sheet of music from the piano, and gazed vaguely at it while she struck the first notes. He read the title without heeding it, and then saw pencilled above it in a bold, but somewhat studied, hand,
"Adrian Scarlett."
For a moment the name held his glance; and when he laid the paper down he looked furtively over his shoulder. He knew that it was an absurd fancy, but he felt as if some one had come into the room and was standing behind Barbara.
The next morning saw the three at breakfast in a little room adjoining the drawing-room. The sky was overcast, and before the meal was over Barbara turned her head quickly as the rain lashed the window in sudden fury. She arched her brows, and looked at Mr. Harding with anxious commiseration.
"It's going to be a wet day," she said.
He raised his eyes to the blurred prospect.
"It looks like it, certainly."
Her expression was comically aghast.
"I never thought of its being wet!"
"Yet such a thing does happen occasionally."
"Yes, but it needn't have happened to-day. I thought you would want to go out. What will you do?"
"Stay indoors, if you have no objection."
"But there is nothing to amuse you. You will be so dull."
"Less so than usual, I imagine," said Reynold. "Do you find it so difficult to amuse yourself on a wet day?"
"No, but I have a great deal to do. Besides, it is different. Don't men always want to be amused more than women?"
"Poor men!" said he.
Mr. Hayes read his letters and seemed to take no heed of his niece's trouble. But it appeared, when breakfast was finished, that he had arranged how the morning should be spent. He announced his intention of taking young Harding over the Place, and he carried it out with a thoroughness which would have done honour to a professional guide, showing all the pictures, mentioning the size of the rooms, and relating the few family traditions—none of which, by the way, reflected any especial credit on the Rothwells. He stopped with bright-eyed appreciation before a cracked and discoloured map, where the Mitchelhurst estate was shown in its widest extent. Reynold looked silently at it, and then stalked after his host through all the chilly faded splendour of the house, shivering sometimes, sneering sometimes, but taking it all in with eager eyes, and glancing over the little man's white head at the sombre shelves of the library or the portraits on the walls. Mr. Hayes was fluent, precise, and cold. Only once did he hesitate. They had come to a small sitting-room on the ground floor, which, in spite of long disuse, still somehow conveyed the impression that it had belonged to a young man.
"This was John Rothwell's favourite room," he said. He looked round. "I remember, yes, I remember, as if it were yesterday, how he used——"
Harding waited, but he stood staring at the rusty grate, and left the sentence unfinished.
"And to think that now he should be living from hand to mouth on the Continent!" he said at last, and compressed his lips significantly.
He took the young man to the servants' hall, across which the giggling voices of two or three maids echoed shrilly, till they were suddenly silenced by the master's approach. Reynold followed him down long stone passages, and thought, as he went, how icy and desolate they must be on a black winter night. He was oppressed by the size and dreariness of the place, and bewildered by the multiplicity of turnings.
"I think," said Mr. Hayes suddenly, "that I have shown you all there is to see indoors."
And, as Reynold replied that he was much obliged, he pushed a door, and motioned to his guest to precede him. Reynold stepped forward, and discovered that he was in the entrance hall, facing Barbara, who had just come down the broad white stairs, and still had her hand upon the balustrade. It seemed to him as if he had come through the windings of that stony labyrinth, the hollow rooms and pale corridors, to find a richly-coloured blossom at the heart of all.
"Oh, Barbara, I'll leave Mr. Harding to you now," said the old gentleman. "I'm going to my study—I must write some letters."
He crossed the black and white pavement with brisk, short steps, and vanished through a doorway.
"Has uncle shown you everything?" she asked.
"I should think so."
"It's a fine place, isn't it?"
"Very fine, and very big," said Harding slowly. "Very empty, and ghostly, and dead."
"Oh, you don't like it! I thought it would be different to you. I thought it would seem like home, since it belonged to your own people."
"Home, sweet home!" he answered with a queer smile. "Well, it is a fine place, as you say. And what have you been doing all the morning?"
"Housekeeping," said Barbara. "And now"—she set down a small basket of keys on the hall table, as if she were preparing for action—"now I am going to set the clock right."
"I'll stay for that if you'll allow me," said Reynold. "I remember what you told me last night. It is the time, and the world stands still when it stops."
"For me, not for you," the girl replied. "You have your watch—you don't believe in the big clock."
"Yes, I do. Here, in Mitchelhurst, what does one want with any but Mitchelhurst time? What have I to do with Greenwich? But as for Mitchelhurst, your uncle has talked to me till I feel as if I were all the Rothwells who ever lived here. Why, what's this? Sunshine!"
"Yes," said Barbara. "It's going to clear up."
It could hardly be called actual sunlight, but there certainly was a touch of pale autumn gold growing brighter about them as they stood.
Harding was listening to the monotonous tick—tick—tick—tick.
"I remember a man in some book," he said, "who didn't like to hear a clock going—always counting out time in small change."
"Oh, but that's a worrying idea! I should hate to think of my life doled out to me like that!"
"I'm afraid you must," he answered, with his little rough-edged laugh. "It would be very delightful to take one's life in a lump, but how are you going to have more than a moment in a moment? There are plenty of us always trying to do it. If you could find out the way——"
"How, trying?" said Barbara.
"Trying to keep the past and grasp the future," Harding replied. "Working and waiting for some moment which is to hold at least half a lifetime—when it comes! Oh, I quite agree with you; I should like a feast, and I am fed by spoonfuls!"
She looked up at him a little doubtfully, and the clock went on ticking. "I always thought it was like a heart beating," she said, swerving from the idea he had presented as if it were distasteful. "Now!"
There was silence in the empty hall, as if, in very truth, she had laid her brown young hand upon Time's flying pulse, and stilled it.
"Talk of killing time!" said Harding.
"No," Barbara answered, without turning her head. "Time's asleep—that's all—asleep and dreaming. He'll soon wake up again."
She had so played with the idle fancy that, quite unconsciously, she spoke in a hushed voice, which deepened the impression of stillness. Harding said no more, he simply watched her. His imagination had been quickened by the sight of the Place; its traditional memories, its pride, and its decay had touched him more deeply than he knew. Life, with its hardness and its haste, its obscure and ugly miseries and needs, had relaxed its grasp, and left him to himself for a little space in the midst of that curious loneliness. He felt as if the wide, living, wind-swept world beyond its walls were something altogether alien and apart. Everything about him was pale and dim; the very sunlight was faded, as if it were the faint reflection of a glory that was gone; everything rested as if in the peace of something that was neither life nor death. Everything was faded and dim, except the girl who stood, softly breathing, a couple of steps away, and even she seemed to be held by the enchantment of the place, and to wait in passive acquiescence. Reynold's grey eyes dilated and deepened.
But as she stood there, unconscious of his gaze, Barbara smiled. It was just the slightest possible smile, as if she answered some smiling memory; a curve of the lip, hardly more than hinted, which might betoken nothing deeper than the recollection of some melodious scrap of rhyme or music. Yet Reynold drew back as if it stung him. "That's not for me!" he said to himself.
The movement startled Barbara from her reverie. "Oh, how like you are to that picture in the drawing-room!" she exclaimed, impulsively.
He knew what she meant, and the innocent utterance was a second sting. But he laughed. "What, the good-looking one?"
It seemed to her that she could have found a light answer but for his eyes upon her. As it was, he had the gratification of seeing her colour and hesitate. "I—I wasn't thinking—I didn't mean—" she stammered, shyly. "Oh, of course!" And then, angry with herself for her unreadiness, she stepped forward, and, with a gesture of impatience, set the pendulum swinging.
"Time is to go on again?" said he.
"Yes," Barbara replied, decidedly. "It would be tiresome if it stood still long. It had better go on. Besides, I'm cold," and she turned away with a pretty little shiver. "I want to go to the fire; I can't stay to attend to it any longer."
Harding lingered, and after an instant of irresolution she left him to a world which had resumed its ordinary course.
At luncheon there was the inevitable mention of the weather, and Mr. Hayes, with his eyes fixed upon his plate, said, "Yes, it has cleared up nicely. I suppose you are going into the village?"
The young people hesitated, not knowing to whom the question was addressed. Miss Strange waited for Mr. Harding, and Mr. Harding for Miss Strange. Then they said "Yes" at the same moment, and felt themselves pledged to go together.
"I thought so," said Mr. Hayes, and began to remind his niece of this thing and that which she was to be sure and show their visitor. "And the sooner you go the better," he added when the meal was over. "The days grow short."
Barbara looked questioningly at Mr. Harding. "If you like to go——"
"I shall be delighted, if you will allow me," said the young man, and a few minutes later they went together down the avenue.
"The days grow short," Mr. Hayes had said, and everything about them seemed set to that sad autumnal burden. The boughs above their heads, the ground under foot, were heavy with moisture, the bracken was withered and brown, there were no more butterflies, but at every breath the yellowing leaves took their uncertain flight to the wet earth. The young people, each with a neatly furled umbrella, walked with something of ceremonious self-consciousness, making little remarks about the scenery, and Mr. Hayes, from his window, followed them with his eyes.
"Rothwell, every inch of him," he said to himself, as Reynold turned and looked backward at the Place. "I never knew one of the lot yet who didn't think that particular family had a right to despise all the rest of the world. The only difference I can see is that this fellow despises the family too. Well, let him! Why not? But, good Lord! what an end of all his mother's hopes!" And Mr. Hayes went back to his fireside—his, while John Rothwell was dodging his creditors on the Continent! There was unutterable dreariness in the thought of such a destiny, but the little old man regretted it with a complacent rubbing of his hands and a remembrance of Rothwell's arrogance. There is a belief, engendered by the moral stories of our childhood, that it is good for a man that his unreasonable pride should be broken—a belief which takes no heed of the chance that its downfall may hurl the whole fabric of life and conduct into the foulness of the gutter. Mr. Hayes naturally took the moral story view of a pride by which he had once been personally wounded; yet he wore a deprecating air, as if Fate, in too amply avenging him, had paid a compliment to his importance which was almost overpowering.
It was more than a quarter of a century since Rothwell and he had been antagonists, though they had not avowed the fact in so many words, and Rothwell, with no honour or profit to himself, had baffled him. Herbert Hayes was then over forty and unmarried. The Mitchelhurst gossips had made up their minds that he would live and die a bachelor. But one November Sunday he came, dapper, bright-eyed, and self-satisfied, to Mitchelhurst church, gazed with the utmost propriety into his glossy hat, stood up when the parson's dreary voice broke the silence with "When the wicked man——" and, looking across at the Rothwells' great pew, met his fate in a moment.
The pew held its usual occupants—the old squire, grey, angular, and scornful; young Rothwell, darker, taller, paler, less politely contemptuous, and more lowering; Kate, erect and proud, sulkily conscious of a beauty which the rustic congregation could not understand. These three Hayes had often seen. But there was a fourth, a frail, colourless girl, burdened rather than clothed with sombre draperies of crape, pale to the very lips, and swaying languidly as she stood, who unconsciously caught his glance and held it. She suffered her head, with the little black bonnet set on the abundance of her pale hair, to droop over her Prayer-book, and she slid downward when the exhortation was ended as if she could stand no longer. The time seemed interminable to him until she rose again.
His instantaneous certainty that there was no drop of Rothwell blood in her veins was confirmed by later inquiry. He learnt that she was distantly related to the squire's wife, and had recently lost her parents. Though she had not been left absolutely penniless, her little pittance was not enough to keep her in idleness, and she was staying at Mitchelhurst while the question of her future was debated. It was difficult to see what Minnie Newton was to do in a hardworking world. She could sink into helplessly graceful attitudes, she could watch you with a softly troubled gaze, anxious to learn what she ought to think or say; she was delicate, gentle, and very slightly educated. She had not a thought of her own, and she was pure with the kind of purity which cannot grasp the idea of evil, and fails to recognise it, unless indeed vice is going in rags and dirt to the police-station, and using shocking language by the way. Her simplicity was touching. She thought nothing of herself; she would cling to the first hand that happened to be held out to her. She might be saved by good luck, but nature had obviously designed her for a victim.
Miss Newton was polite to Mr. Hayes as to everybody else, but she was the last person at Mitchelhurst Place to suspect the little gentleman's passion. The very servants found it out, and wondered at her innocence. John Rothwell laughed.
"What a fool she is!" he said to his sister, as he stood by the window one day, and saw Hayes coming up the avenue.
"That's an undoubted fact," said the magnificent Kate.
"And what a fool he is!" John continued.
"Well, we won't quarrel about that either," she replied liberally. "They will be all the better matched."
"Matched?" said Rothwell. "No."
She looked up hastily.
"Eh?" she said. "Not matched? And why not?"
Instead of answering, he deliberately lighted a cigarette and smoked, gazing darkly at her.
Kate shrugged her shoulders.
"What difference can it possibly make to you?"
He took his cigarette from his lips and looked at it.
"It will make a difference to him," he said at last.
The bell rang, and the knocker added its emphatic summons. One of Rothwell's dogs began to bark. Kate had risen, and stood with her eyes fixed on her brother's face.
"It would be a very good thing for the girl," she remarked meditatively. "I don't see what is to become of her, poor thing, unless she marries."
"Damn him!" said Rothwell.
The answer was not so irrelevant as it appeared. His gaze was as steady as Kate's own, and seemed to prolong his words as a singer prolongs a note. She drew her brows together, as if perplexed.
"Well," she said, turning away, "I must go and look after our lovers!"
"And I," he said.
The dapper, contented little man had done Rothwell no harm, but the young fellow cherished a black hatred, born of the dulness of his vacant life. Hayes, without being rich, was very comfortably off, and he was apt to betray the fact with innocent ostentation. A sovereign was less to him than a shilling to John Rothwell, and it seemed to the latter that he could always hear the gold chinking when Hayes talked. One could do so much with a sovereign, and so little with a shilling. Rothwell was hungry, with a hunger which only just fell short of being a literal fact, and he had to stand by, with his hands in his empty pockets, while Hayes could have good dinners, good wine, good clothes, good horses, whatever he liked in the way of pleasure—and was "such a contemptible little cad with it all," the young man snarled. His own poverty would have been more bearable had it not been for his neighbour's ease and security. And now, heaven be praised!—heaven?—the prosperous man had set his heart on this whitefaced, fair-haired, foolish girl who was under the roof of Mitchelhurst Place, and for once he should be baffled.
Rothwell set to work with evil ingenuity—it seemed almost fiendish, but, really, he had nothing else to do—to ruin Hayes's chance of success. But for him it must have been almost a certainty. Kate was inclined to favour the suitor. The old squire disliked him, perhaps with a little of his son's feeling, but would have been very well satisfied to see the girl provided for. And Minnie Newton was there for any man, who had a will of his own, and was not absolutely repulsive, to take if he pleased. The course of true love seemed about to run with perfect smoothness till young Rothwell stepped in and troubled it.
Mockery, not slander, was his weapon. As Miss Newton idled over her embroidery he would lounge near her and make little jests about Hayes's age, size, and manners. She listened with a troubled face. Of course Mr. Rothwell was talking very cleverly, and she tried not to remember that she had found Mr. Hayes very kind and pleasant when he called the day before. Of course it was absurd that a man of that age should want to be taken for five-and-twenty—yes, and he had a very ridiculous way of putting his head on one side like a bird—when Mr. Rothwell had insisted on having her opinion, she had said, "Yes, it was very ridiculous"—and a gentleman, a real gentleman, would not talk so much about his money, and what he could do with it—Mr. Rothwell said so, and he certainly knew. And as she had agreed to it she supposed it was quite right that he should repeat this at dinner-time, as if it were her own remark, though she wished he wouldn't, because his father turned sharply and looked at her. But, no doubt, Mr. Hayes did look absurdly small by the side of John Rothwell, and there was something common in his manners. Many people might think they were all very well, but a lady would feel that there was something wanting. And so on, and so on, till she began to ask herself what John Rothwell would say of her if, after all this, she showed more than the coldest civility to Mr. Hayes.
Kate perfectly understood the position of affairs, but did not choose openly to oppose her brother. If Hayes would have come and carried Minnie off, young Lochinvar fashion, she would have been secretly pleased. As it was, she was contemptuously kind to the girl, and if the little suitor met the two young women in the village, Miss Rothwell shook hands and looked away. Once she found herself some business to do at the Mitchelhurst shop, and sent Minnie home, lest she should be out too long in the December cold. She had spied Herbert Hayes coming along the street, and had rightly guessed that he would see and pursue the slim, black-clothed figure. And, indeed, he used his walk with Miss Newton to such good purpose that he might have won her promise then and there if a tall young man had not suddenly sprung over a stile and confronted them. Minnie fairly cowered in embarrassment as she met Rothwell's meaning glance, which assumed that she would be delighted to be rid of a bore, and she suffered him to give her his arm and to take her home, leaving poor Hayes to feel very small indeed as he stood in the middle of the road. He tried a letter, but it only called forth a little feebly-penned word of refusal as faint as an echo.
Hayes never suspected the young man's deliberate malice. He fancied the old squire, if anybody, was his enemy; but he was more inclined to set the difficulty down to the Rothwells' notorious pride than to any special ill-will to himself.
"No one is good enough for them, curse them!" he said over the little note. "They won't give me a chance of winning her. I'm not beaten yet though!"
But he was. Early in January Minnie Newton took cold, drooped in the chilly dreariness of the old house, and died before the spring came in.
One day Kate Rothwell came upon Hayes as he lingered, a melancholy little figure, by the girl's grave.
"Ah, Miss Rothwell," he said, looking up at her, "I wanted to have had the right to care for her and mourn her, but it was not to be!"
"No," said Kate. "I'm sorry," she added, after a moment. It was just at the time when she herself was about to defy all the barren traditions of the Rothwells to marry Sidney Harding with his brilliant prospects of wealth. Harding's half-brother, who had made the great business, was pleased with the match, and promised Sidney a partnership in a couple of years. Everything was bright for Kate, and she could afford a regretful thought to poor Hayes. "I'm sorry," she said.
Her voice was hard, but the slightest proffer of sympathy was enough. "Ah! I knew you wished me well—God bless you!" said the little man, "and help you as you would have helped me!"
Perhaps Kate Rothwell felt that at that rate Providence would not take any very active interest in her affairs. She turned aside impatiently. "Pray keep your thanks for some one who deserves them, Mr. Hayes. I don't."
"You could not do anything, but I know you were good to her. She told me, that afternoon——" He spoke in just the proper tone of emotion.
"Nonsense!" Kate answered, sharply. "How could she? there was nothing to tell." Mr. Hayes might well say, even a quarter of a century later, that Miss Rothwell had an unpleasant manner.
Nevertheless she held a place in that idealised picture of his love which in his old age served him for a memory. In Sidney Harding's death, within a year of the marriage, he saw a kindred stroke to that which had robbed him of his own hope, and he never thought of Kate without a touch of sentimental loyalty. When he met Kate's son that October afternoon, with the familiar face and voice, on his way to Mitchelhurst, he had felt that, Rothwell though he was, he must be welcomed for his mother's sake. And yet it had almost seemed as if it were John Rothwell himself come back to sneer in a new fashion.
How came he to be so evidently poor while old Harding was rolling in wealth? Mr. Hayes, sitting over the fire, wondered at this failure of Kate's hopes. People had called it a fair exchange, her old name for the Hardings' abundance of newly-coined gold. But where was the gold? Plainly not in this young Harding's pockets. What did he do for a living? Why was he not in his uncle's office, a man of business with the world before him? There was no stamp of success about this listless, long-legged fellow, who had come, as hopeless as any Rothwell, to linger about that scene of slow decay. "He'll do no good," said Mr. Hayes to himself, stirring up a cheerful blaze.
Meanwhile the young people had passed through the great gate and turned to the right. "Do you mind which way you go?" Barbara asked, and Reynold replied that he left it entirely to her. "Then," she said, "we will go this way, and come back by the village; you will get a better view so."
At first, however, it seemed that a view was the one thing which was certainly not to be had in the road they had chosen. On their left was a tangled hedge, on their right a dank and dripping plantation of firs. The slim, straight stems, seen one beyond another, conveyed to Reynold the impression of a melancholy crowd, pressing silently to the boundary of the road on which he walked. It was one of those fantastic pictures which reveal themselves in unfamiliar landscapes, and Barbara, who had seen the wood under a score of varying aspects, took no especial heed of this one, as she picked her way daintily by the young man's side. Indeed she did not even note the moment when the trees were succeeded by a turnip-field, lying wide and wet under the pale sky. But when in its turn the field gave place to an open gateway and a drive full of deep ruts, in which the water stood, she paused. "You see that house?" she said.
It was evident from its surroundings of soaked yard, miscellaneous buildings, dirty tumbrils, and clustered stacks, that it was a farmhouse. Harding looked at it and turned inquiringly to her. "It was much larger once," said Barbara. "Part of it was pulled down a long while ago. Your people lived here before they built Mitchelhurst Place."
He pushed out his lower lip. "Well," he said, "I think they showed their good taste in getting out of this."
"But it was better then," said the girl. "And even now, sometimes in the spring when I come here for cowslips——"
She stopped short, for he was smiling. "Oh, no doubt! Everything looks better then. But I have come too late." He had to step aside as he spoke to let a manure cart go by, labouring along the miry way. "And what do you call this house?" he asked.
"Mitchelhurst Hall. I don't think there is anything much to see, but if you would like to look over it or to walk round it——"
"No, thank you; I am content." He took off his hat in mocking homage to the home of the Rothwells, and turned to go. "And have you any more decayed residences to show me, Miss Strange?"
"Only some graves," she answered, simply.
"Oh, they are all graves!" said Harding with his short laugh, swinging his umbrella as they resumed their walk. Already Barbara had become accustomed to that little jarring laugh, which had no merriment in it. She did not like it, but she was curiously impressed by it. When the young man was grave and stiff and shy she was sorry for him; she remembered that he was only Mr. Reynold Harding, their guest for a week. But when he was sufficiently at his ease to laugh she felt as if all the Rothwells were mocking, and she were the interloper and inferior.
"I suppose it does seem like that to you—as if they were all graves," she said timidly, as she led the way across the road to a gate in the tangled hedge; the field into which it led sloped steeply down. "That is what people call the best view of Mitchelhurst," she explained.
To the left was Mitchelhurst Place, gaunt and white among its warped and weather-beaten trees. Before them lay the dotted line of Mitchelhurst Street, and they looked down into the square cabbage-plots. The sails of the windmill swung heavily round, and the smoke went up from the blacksmith's forge. To the right was the church, with its thickset tower, and the sun shining feebly on the wet surface of its leaden roof. Barbara pointed out a small oblong patch of grass and evergreens as the vicarage garden, while a bare building, of the rawest red brick, was the Mitchelhurst workhouse. The view was remarkably comprehensive. Mitchelhurst lay spread below them in small and melancholy completeness.
"Yes, it's all there, right enough," said Reynold, leaning on the gate. "An excellent view. All there, from the Place where my people spent their money, to the workhouse, where——By Jove!" his voice dropped suddenly, "I'm not Rothwell enough to have a right to be taken into the Mitchelhurst workhouse! They'd send me on somewhere, I suppose. I wonder which they would call my parish!"
"Are you sorry?" Barbara asked, after a pause.
"Sorry not to be in the workhouse?" indicating it with a slight movement of his finger. "No, not particularly."
"I didn't mean that," said the girl, a little shortly. "I meant, of course, are you sorry you are not a Rothwell?"
"I don't know."
He spoke slowly, half reluctantly, and still leaned on the gate, with his eyes wandering from point to point of the little landscape, which was softened and saddened by the pale light and paler haze of October. It was Barbara who finally broke the silence. "You didn't like the house this morning, and you didn't like the old hall just now, so I thought most likely you wouldn't care for this."
"Well, it isn't beautiful," he replied, without turning his head. "Do you care much about it, Miss Strange? Why should anybody care about it? There are wonderful places in the world—beautiful places full of sunshine. Why should we trouble ourselves about this little grey and green island where we happened to be born? And what are these few acres in it more than any other bit of ploughed land and meadow?"
"I thought you didn't care for it," said Barbara, sagely. "I thought you scorned it."
"Scorn it—I can't scorn it! It isn't mine!" He turned away from it, as if in a sudden movement of impatience, and lounged with his back to the gate. "It's like my luck!" he said, kicking a stone in the road.
Barbara was interested. Harding's tone revealed the strength and bitterness of his feelings. He had never seemed to her so much of a Rothwell as he did at that moment. "What is like your luck?" she ventured to ask.
He jerked his head in the direction of Mitchelhurst. "I may as well be honest," he said. "Honest with myself—if I can! Look there—I have mocked at that place all my life; for very shame's sake I have kept away from it because I had vowed I didn't care whether one stone of it was left upon another. What was it to me? I am not a Rothwell. I'm Reynold Harding, son of Sidney Harding, son of Reynold Harding—there my pedigree grows vague. My grandfather is an important man—we can't get beyond him. He died while my father was in petticoats. He was a pork-butcher in a small way. I believe he could write his name—my name—and that he always declared that his father was a Reynold too. But we don't know anything about my great-grandfather—perhaps he was a pork-butcher in a smaller way. My uncle Robert went to London as a boy and made all the money, pensioned his father, and afterwards educated his half-brother Sidney, who was twenty years younger than himself. He would have made my father his partner if he had lived. If my father had lived I might have been rich. As it is, I'm not rich, and I'm not a Rothwell."
"Well, you look like one!" said Barbara. She was not very wise. It seemed to her a cruel thing that this earlier Reynold should have been a pork-butcher—a misfortune on which she would not comment. She looked up at the younger Reynold with the sincerest sympathy shining in her eyes, and in an unreasoning fashion of her own took part with him and with the old family, as if his grandfather were an unwarranted intruder who had thrust himself into their superior society. "You look like one!" she exclaimed, and Reynold smiled.
"And after all," she said, pursuing her train of thought, "you are half Rothwell, you know. As much Rothwell as Harding, are you not?"
He was still smiling. "True. But that is a kind of thing which doesn't do by halves."
She assented with a sigh. She had never before talked to a man whose grandfather was a pork-butcher, and she did not know what consolation to offer. She could only look shyly and wistfully at Mr. Harding, as he leaned against the gate with his back to the prospect, while she resolved that she would never tell her uncle. She did not think her companion less interesting after the revelation. This discord, this irony of fate, this mixing of the blood of the Rothwells and the small tradesman, seemed to her to explain much of young Harding's sullen discontent. He was the last descendant of the old family of which she had dreamed so often, and he was the victim of an unmerited wrong. She wanted him to say more. "And you wouldn't come to Mitchelhurst before?" she said, suggestively.
"No; but the thought of the place was pulling at me all the time. I couldn't get rid of it. And so—here I am! And I have seen the dream of my life face to face—it's behind my back just at this minute, but I can see it as well as if I were looking at it. I'm very grateful to you for showing me this view, Miss Strange, but you'll excuse me if I don't turn round while I speak of it?"
"Oh, yes," said Barbara, wonderingly.
He had his elbows on the top rail of the gate, and looked downward at the muddy way, rough with the hoof marks of cattle. "You see," he explained, "I want to say the kind of thing one says behind a—a landscape's back."
"I'm sorry to hear it," she answered. She had drawn a little to one side, and had laid a small gloved hand on one of the gate posts. Somebody, many years before, had deeply cut a clumsy M on the cracked and roughened surface of the wood. The letter was as grey and as weather-worn as the rest. Barbara touched it delicately with a finger-tip, and followed its ungainly outline. Probably it was his own initial that the rustic had hacked, standing where he stood, but she recognised the possibility that the rough carving might be the utterance of the great secret of joy and pain, and the touch was almost a caress.
"Some people follow their dreams through life, and never get more than a glimpse of them, even as dreams," said Harding, slowly. "Well, I have seen mine. I have had a good look at it. I know what it is like. It is dreary—it is narrow—cold—hideous."
"Oh!" cried Barbara, as if his words hurt her. Then, recovering herself, "I'm sorry you dislike it so much. Well, you must give it up, mustn't you?"
He laughed. "Life without a fancy, without a desire?" he said.
"Find something else to wish for."
"What? If there were anything else, should I care twopence for Mitchelhurst? No, it is my dream still—a dream I'm never likely to realise, but the only possible dream for me. Only now I know how poor and dull my highest success would be."
"You had better have stayed away," said the girl.
He took his elbows off the gate, and bowed in acknowledgment of the polite speech. "Oh, you know what I mean," she said hurriedly.
"Yes, I know. And, except for the kindness of your fairy godmother, I believe you are perfectly right. That, of course, is a different question."
Barbara would not answer what she fancied might be a sneer. "You see the place at its worst," she said, "and there is nobody to care for it; everything is neglected and going to ruin. Don't you think it would be different if it belonged to some one who loved it? Why don't you make your fortune," she exclaimed, with sanguine, bright-eyed directness, as if the fortune were an easy certainty, "and come back and set everything right? Don't you think you could care for Mitchelhurst if——"
She would have finished her sentence readily enough, but Reynold caught it up.
"If!" he said, with a sudden startled significance in his tone. Then, with an air of prompt deference, "Shall I go and make the fortune at once, Miss Strange? Shall I? Yes, I think I could care for Mitchelhurst, as you say, if—" He smiled. "One might do much with a fortune, no doubt."
"Make it then," said Barbara, conscious of a faint and undefined embarrassment.
"Must it be a very big one?"
"Oh, I think it may as well be a tolerable size, while you are about it. Hadn't we better be moving on?"
Mr. Harding assented. "Where are we going now?"
"To the church. That is, if you care to go there."
"Oh, I like to go very much. I wonder what you would call a tolerable fortune," he said in a meditative tone.
"My opinion doesn't matter."
"But you are going to wish me success while I am away making it?"
"Oh, certainly."
"That will be a help," he said gravely. "I shan't look for an omen in the sky just now—do you see how threatening it is out yonder?"
The clouds rolled heavily upwards, and massed themselves above their heads as they hastened down a steep lane which brought them out by the church. Barbara stopped at the clerk's cottage for a ponderous key, and then led the way through a little creaking gate. The path along which they went was like a narrow ditch, the mould, heaped high on either side, seemed as if it were burdened with his imprisoned secrets. The undulating graves, overgrown with coarse grasses, rose up, wave-like, against the buttressed walls of the churchyard, high above the level of the outer road. The church itself looked as if it had been dug out of the sepulchral earth, so closely was it surrounded by these shapeless mounds. Barbara, to whom the scene was nothing new, and who was eager to escape the impending shower, flitted, alive, warm, and young, through all this cold decay, and never heeded it. Harding followed her, looking right and left. They passed under two dusky yew trees, and then she thrust her big key into the lock of the south door.
"Are my people buried in the churchyard?" he asked.
"Oh, no!" she exclaimed reverentially. "Your people are all inside."
He stepped in, but when he was about to close the door he stood for a moment, gazing out through the low-browed arch. It framed a picture of old-fashioned headstones fallen all aslant, nettles flourishing upon forgotten graves, the trunks of the great yews, the weed-grown crest of the churchyard wall, defined with singular clearness upon a wide band of yellow sky. The gathered tempest hung above, and its deepening menace intensified the pale tranquillity of the horizon. "I say," said Harding as he turned away, "it's going to pour, you know!"
"Well, we are under shelter," Barbara answered cheerfully, as she laid her key on the edge of one of the pews. "If it clears up again so that we get back in good time it won't matter a bit. And anyhow we've got umbrellas. The font is very old, they say."
Harding obediently inspected the font.
"And there are two curious inscriptions on tablets on the north wall. Mr. Pryor—he's the vicar—is always trying to read them. Do you know much about such things?"
"Nothing at all."
"Oh!" in a tone of disappointment. "I'm afraid you wouldn't get on with Mr. Pryor then."
"I'm afraid not."
"Perhaps you wouldn't care to look at them."
"Oh, let us look, by all means."
They walked together up the aisle. "I don't care about them," said Barbara, "but I suppose Mr. Pryor would die happy if he could make them out."
"Then I suspect he is happy meanwhile, though perhaps he doesn't know it," Reynold replied, looking upward at the half effaced lettering.
"He can read some of it," said the girl, "but nobody can make out the interesting part."
Harding laughed, under his breath. Their remarks had been softly uttered ever since the closing of the door had shut them in to the imprisoned silence. He moved noiselessly a few steps further, and looked round.
Mitchelhurst Church, like Mitchelhurst Place, betrayed a long neglect. The pavement was sunken and uneven, cobwebs hung from the sombre arches, the walls, which had once been white, were stained and streaked, by damp and time, to a blending of melancholy hues. The half light, which struggled through small panes of greenish glass, fell on things blighted, tarnished, faded, dim. The pews with their rush-matted seats were worm-eaten, the crimson velvet of the pulpit was a dingy rag. There was but one bit of vivid modern colouring in the whole building—a slim lancet window at the west end, a discord sharply struck in the shadowy harmony. "To the memory of the vicar before last," said Barbara, when the young man's glance fell on it. Such gleams of sunlight as lingered yet in the stormy sky without irradiated Michael, the church's patron saint, in the act of triumphing over a small dragon. The contest revealed itself as a mere struggle for existence; a Quaker, within such narrow limits, must have fought for the upper hand as surely as an archangel. Harding as he looked at it could not repress a sigh. He fully appreciated the calmness of the saint, and the neatness with which the little dragon was coiled, but it seemed to him a pity that the vicar before last had happened to die; and he was glad to turn his back on the battle, and follow Miss Strange to the north chancel aisle. "These are all the Rothwell monuments," she said. "Their vault is just below. This is their pew, where we sit on Sunday."
Having said this she moved from his side, and left him gazing at the simple tablets which recorded the later generations of the old house, and the elaborate memorials of more prosperous days. More than one recumbent figure slept there, each with upturned face supported on a carven pillow; the bust of a Rothwell was set up in a dusty niche, with lean features peering out of a forest of curling marble hair; carefully graduated families of Rothwells, boys and girls, knelt behind their kneeling parents; the little window, half blocked by the florid grandeur of a grimy monument, had the Rothwell arms emblazoned on it in a dim richness of colour. In this one spot the dreariness of the rest of the building became a stately melancholy. Harding looked down. His foot was resting on the inscribed stone which marked the entrance to that silent, airless place of skeletons and shadows, compared to which even this dim corner, with its mute assemblage, was yet the upper world of light and life. If he worked, if fortune favoured him, if he succeeded beyond all reasonable hope, if he were indeed predestined to triumph, that little stone might one day be lifted for him.