Chapter XXVII: Two to One

None of them ever forgot the last holiday they all spent together before the great dispersal. Some of them looked back upon it in the after-days with most poignant feelings--of longing and regret. For nothing was ever to be again as it had been--and not with them only, but throughout the land.

It was as though all the circumstances and forces of life had been quietly working up to a point through all these years--as though all that had gone before had been but preparation for what was to come--as though the time had come for the Higher Powers to say, as sensible parents sooner or later say to their children, "We have done our best for you--we have fitted you for the fight; now you are become men and women, work out your own destinies!"

It was amazing to Charles Eager--feeling himself as young as ever--to find all his youngsters suddenly grown up, suddenly become, if not capable of managing their own affairs, at all events filled with that conviction, and fully intent on doing so.

And, so far, the strange story of their actual relationship had not been made known to the boys. Eager had discussed the matter with Sir Denzil many times, but the old man, not unreasonably, maintained the position that, unless and until events forced the disclosure, there was no need to trouble their minds with it. And Eager, knowing them so well, could not but agree that it would be a mighty upsetting for them.

While they were working hard, in their various degrees, for their examinations, It was, of course, out of the question. And when the matter was mooted again, Sir Denzil said quietly:

"Let it lie, Eager. If it has to come out, it will come out; but if anything should deprive us of one of them before it does come out, there is no need for the other to carry a millstone round his neck all his life."

The old man had mellowed somewhat with the years. The problem as to which was his legitimate heir, and the possibility of unconsciously perpetuating the line through the bar sinister, still troubled him at times; but the boys themselves, in their ripening and development, had done more than anything else to alter his feelings towards them.

Well-born or ill-born, they were fine bits of humanity. He had come to tolerate them with a degree of appreciation, to regard them with something almost akin to a form of affection, atrophied, indeed, by long disuse, and disguised still behind a certain cynicism of speech and manner and the very elegant handling of his jewelled snuff-box, whenever they met.

When they were at Carne for holidays, they had their own apartments, and, for a sitting-room, the long, oak-panelled parlour, looking north and west over the flats and the sea; and here they were at last enabled to entertain their friends, and repay some of the hospitalities of the earlier years.

At times Sir Denzil would send for them to his own rooms, and they came almost to enjoy his acid questionings and pungent comments on life as they saw it. Behind his cynical aloofness they were not slow to perceive a keen interest in the newer order of things, and they talked freely of all and sundry--their friends, and their friends' friends, and all the doings of the day. It was very many years since the old man had been in London. He felt himself completely out of things, and had no desire to return; but still he liked to hear about them.

And at times, by way of return, when the boys had their friends in, he would, with the punctilious courtesy of his day, send Mr. Kennet to request their permission to join them, and then march in, almost on Kennet's heels, looking, in his wig and long-skirted coat and ruffles and snuff-box, a veritable relic of past days.

Jack, in the plenitude of his present-day knowledge, and the power it gave him of affording interesting information to the recluse, discoursed with him almost on terms of equality.

Jim, on the other hand, though he could rattle along in the jolliest and most amusing way imaginable with his chosen ones, still found the old gentleman's rapier-like little speeches and veiled allusions somewhat beyond him, and so, as a rule, left most of the talking to him and Jack.

But the first time the boys both came down in their uniforms, modestly veiling their pride under a large assumption of nonchalance, but in reality swelling internally like a pair of young peacocks, they carried all before them. They looked so big, so grand, so masterful, that it took some time even for the Little Lady to fit them into their proper places in their own estimation and in hers.

And as for their grandfather, it took an immense amount both of time and snuff and sapient head-nodding before he could get accustomed to them, and then he was quite as proud of them as they were of themselves.

"By gad, sir!" he said to Eager, in an unusual outburst of suppressed vehemence, "you were right and I was wrong. We can't afford to lose either of them, though what you're going to do about it all, when the time comes, is beyond me. Jack, there, talks like a book, like all the books that ever were, and knows everything there is to know in the world"--Jack had been delivering himself of some of his newest ideas on fortification--"but what can you make of that? It may only be the higher product of a coarser strain. I'm not sure that the other isn't more in the line. I'm inclined to think he'll make his mark if he gets the chance that suits him."

"They both will, sir. Take my word for it. We shall all, I hope, live to be proud of them both. And as to the other matter, maybe they'll cut so deep, and go so far, that after all it will become of secondary importance."

"That," said Sir Denzil, with a steady look at him over an elegantly delayed pinch of snuff, "is quite impossible. They can attain to no position comparable with the succession to Carne."

And Gracie? With what feelings did she regard these brilliantly-arrayed young warriors?

She had for them a most wholesome, whole-hearted, and comprehensive affection, and she bestowed it in absolutely equal measure upon them both.

She had grown up in closest companionship with them. She could not imagine life without them or either of them: it would have been life without its core and colour. And, so far, they stood together in her heart, and no occasion had arisen for discrimination between them.

When, indeed, Jim had disappeared for a time, and seemed lost to them, life had seemed black and blank for lack of him, and Jack could not by any means make up for him. But when Jack in turn disappeared life was equally shadowed for her, and Jim was no comfort whatever.

She, rejoicing in them equally, had no thought or wish but that things should go on just as they were. But in the boys other feelings began unconsciously to push up through the crumbling crust of youth.

They were nearing manhood. The Little Lady was no longer a child. She had grown--tall and wonderfully beautiful in face and figure. They had met other girls, but never had either of them met any one to compare with Grace Eager. And they met her afresh, each time they came home, with new wonder and vague new hopes and wishes.

It was the party which Sir George Herapath gave in the autumn that brought matters to a head.

Neither of the boys had seen Grace in evening dress before. Indeed, it was her first, and the result of much deep consideration and planning on the part of herself and Margaret Herapath.

When it was finished and tried on in full for the first time, old Mrs. Jex, admitted to a private view, clasped her hands and the tears ran down her face as she murmured, "An angel from heaven! Never in all my born days have I set eyes on anything half so pretty!"--though really it was only white muslin with pale-blue ribbons here and there. But it showed a good deal of her soft white arms and neck, and they dazzled even Mrs. Jex. As for the boys--it was as though the most marvellous bud the world had ever seen had suddenly burst its sheath and blossomed into a splendid white flower.

When she came into the big drawing-room at Knoyle that night, with Eager close behind, his intent face all alight with pride in her, and perhaps with anticipation for himself, she created quite a sensation, and found it delightful.

She came in like a lily and a rose and Eve's fairest daughter all in one; and our boys gazed at her spell-bound, startled, electrified as though by a galvanic shock. And deep down in the consciousness of each was a strange, wonderful, peaceful joy, a sudden endowment, and an almost overpowering yearning. In the self-same moment each knew that in all the world there was no other woman for him than Grace Eager. And, vaguely, behind that, was the fear that the other was feeling the same.

And she? She enjoyed to the full the novel sensation of the effect she produced upon them, and was just the same Gracie as of old--almost.

She sailed up to them and dropped a most becoming curtsey, and rose from it all agleam and aglow with merry laughter at their visible undoing.

"Well, boys, what's the matter with you?" she rippled merrily.

"You!" gasped Jim.

"Me? What's the matter with me? I'm all right. Don't you like me like this? Meg and I made it between us."

Didn't they like her like that? Why----!

"You see," said Jack, "we've never seen you like this before, and you've taken us by surprise."

"Oh, well, get over it as quickly as you can, and then you may ask me to dance with you."

"I don't think I'll ever get over it, but I'll ask you now," said Jim. Which was not bad for him.

And Jack felt the first little stab of jealousy he had ever experienced towards Jim, at his having got in first.

"I'd like every dance," laughed Jim happily, "but----"

"Quite right, old Jim Crow! Mustn't be greedy! You first, because you spoke first, then Jack----"

"Then me again," persisted Jim.

"We'll see. Is that Ralph Harben? How he's grown! His whiskers and moustache make him look quite a man." And Jim decided instantly on the speedy cultivation of facial adornments. "Oh, he's coming! And there's Meg." And she flitted away to Margaret, who was talking to Charles Eager, and so for the moment upset Master Harben's plans for her capture.

With no little distaste the boys had suffered instruction in the art of dancing, as a necessary part of the education of a gentleman. Now they fervently thanked God for it. To have to stand with their backs to the wall while every Tom, Dick, or Ralph whirled past in the dance with Gracie, would have been quite past the bearing. They felt new sensations under their waistcoats even when George Herapath had her in charge, though there was not a fellow on earth they liked better, or had more confidence in, than old George, now a dashing lieutenant in the Royal Dragoons, and quite a man of the world. As for Ralph Harben--well, if either of them could have picked a reasonable quarrel with him, and had it out in the garden, unbeknown to any but themselves, Master Ralph would have undergone much tribulation.

They danced with Gracie many times that night, and grew more and more intoxicated with happiness such as neither had ever tasted before or even dreamed of. And yet, below and behind it all, pushed down and hustled into dark corners of the heart and mind, was that other new feeling which, though it was foreign to them, they instinctively strove to keep out of sight.

Over the incidents of that party we need not linger. There were many fair girls and fine boys there, but they do not come into our story. They all enjoyed themselves immensely, and Sir George, beaming genially, enjoyed them all as much as they enjoyed, themselves.

Margaret moved among them like a queen lily, and the boys were somewhat overpowered by her stately beauty. But Charles Eager seemed to find his satisfaction in it, and his eyes followed her with vast enjoyment whenever he was not dancing with her, for he danced as well as he jumped or boxed.

When Mr. Harben--Sir George's active partner in the business, and Ralph's father--chaffed him jovially on the matter, he replied cheerfully that David danced before the ark, and he didn't see why he shouldn't do likewise. And when Harben would have tackled him further as to the ark, he averred that arks were as various as the men who danced before them, and had no limitations whatever in the matter of size, shape, or material--that some men were arks of God and more women--that when he came across such he bowed before them, or, as the case might be, danced with them, and he sped off to claim Margaret for the next round, leaving his adversary submerged under the avalanche of his eloquence.

That night was, for the younger folk, all enjoyment, tinged indeed with those other vague feelings I have named, but quickened and intensified, before they separated, by news from the outer world which strung all their nerves as tight as fiddlestrings and swept them with many emotions.

For, coming upon Sir George and his partner conversing earnestly in a quiet corner one time, Eager, with his eyes on Margaret and Ralph Harben circling round the room, asked--casually, and by way of exhibiting detachment from any special interest in that other particular matter--"Well, Mr. Harben, what's the news from the East?"

And the two older men stopped talking and looked at him. It was Sir George who answered him, soberly:

"Grave news, Mr. Eager. Harben was just telling me that the fleet is to enter the Black Sea, and that at headquarters they entertain no doubt as to the result."

"You mean war?" asked Eager, with a start.

"War without a doubt, Mr. Eager," said Harben, involuntarily rubbing his hands together. For he was a contractor, you must remember; and whatever of misery and loss war entails upon others, for contractors it means business and profit.

"We are to fight Russia on behalf of Turkey?"

"Russian aggression must be checked," said Harben. "Her ambition knows no bounds. We go hand-in-hand with France, of course."

"H'm! My own feeling would be that it is more for the aggrandisement of Louis Napoleon than for the checking of Russia that we are going to fight."

"Who's going to fight?" asked Lieutenant George, catching the word.

And then of course it was out. For, once more, whatever of misery and loss war entails upon others, to the fighting man in embryo it means only glory and the chances of promotion.

It was the following day that the disturbances nearer home began.

Jack lay awake most of the morning after he got to bed, thinking soberly, with rapturous intervals when Gracie's laughing face floated in the smaller darkness of his tired eyes, and envying Jim, who slept at intervals like a sheep-dog after a day on the hills. But at times even Jim's heavy breathing stopped and he lay quite still, and then he too was thinking--which was an unusual thing for him to do in the night--though not perhaps so deeply as Jack.

They both felt like boiled owls in the morning, and lay late. It was close on midday when Jack, after several pipes and a splitting yawn, said, "Let's go up along,"--which always meant north along the flats--"my blood's thickening." And they went off together along the hard-ribbed sand, with the sea and the sky like bars of lead on one side and the stark corpses of the sand-hills, with the wire-grass sticking up out of them like the quills of porcupines, on the other.

They walked a good two miles without a word, both thinking the same things and both fearing to start the ball rolling.

"We've got to talk it out, Jim," said Jack at last.

Jim grunted gloomily.

"What are you thinking of it?"

"Same as you, I s'pose."

"It mustn't part us, old Jim."

Jim snorted. Under extreme urgency he was at times slow of expression in words.

"Gracie has become a woman, the most beautiful woman in all the world"--with rapture, as though the mere proclamation of the fact afforded him mighty joy, which it did.

"And we are men . . . and--and we've got to face it like men."

And Jim grunted again. He was surging with emotions, but he couldn't put them into words like Jack.

"I would give my life for her," said Jack.

"I'd give ten lives if I had 'em."

"She can only have one of us, and only one of us can have her." Which was obvious enough.

"And it all lies with her. We only want what she wants."

"I only want her," groaned Jim.

"Of course. So do I. But we neither of us want her unless she wants us," reasoned Jack.

"I do. She's made me feel sillier than ever I felt in all my life before. All I know is that I want her."

Jack nodded. "I know. I've been thinking of it all night."

"So've I," growled Jim. And Jack refrained from telling him how he had envied him his powers of sleep.

"It seems to me the best thing we can do is to write and tell her what we're feeling."

Jim snorted dissentingly. Letter-writing was not his strong point, and Jack understood.

"Well, you see, we can't very well go together and tell her. But if we write she can have both our letters at the same time, and then she can decide. I'm sure it's the only way to settle it. Can you think of anything better?"

But Jim had no suggestions to offer. All he knew was that his whole nature craved Gracie, and he could not imagine life without her.

In the earlier times, when, as generally happened, they both wanted a thing which only one of them could have, they always fought for it, and to the victor remained the spoils.

But in those days the spoils were of no great account, and the pleasure of the fight was all in all.

This was a very different matter. The prize was life's highest crown and happiness for one of them, and no personal strife could win it. It was a matter beyond the power of either to influence now. It was outside them. They could ask, but they could not take. Forcefulness could do much in the bending and shaping of life, but here force was powerless.

And it was then, as he brooded over the whole matter, that one of life's great lessons was borne in upon Jim Carron--that the dead hand of the past still works in the moulding of the present and the future, that what has gone is still a mighty factor in what is and what is to come.

He groaned in the spirit over his own deficiencies, the lost opportunities, the times wasted, which, turned to fuller account, might now have served him so well. If only he could have known that all the past was making towards this mighty issue, how differently he would have utilised it.

For, submitting himself to most unusual self-examination, and searching into things with eyes sharpened by unusual stress, he could not but acknowledge that, compared with Jack, he made but a poor show.

Jack was clever. He had a head and knew how to use it. He would go far and make a great name for himself. Whereas he himself had nothing to offer but a true heart and a lusty arm, and Jack had these also in addition to his greater qualifications.

How could any girl hesitate for a moment between them? His chances, he feared, were small, and he felt very downcast and broken as he sat, that same afternoon, chewing the end of his pen and thoughtfully spitting out the bits, in an agonising effort after unusual expression such as should be worthy of the occasion.

His window gave on to the northern flats, and, as he savoured the penholder, in his mind's eye he saw again the wonderful little figure of Gracie in her scarlet bathing-gown, with her hair astream, and her face agleam, and her little white feet going like drumsticks, as they had seen her that very first morning long ago. And, since then, how she had become a part of their very lives!

And then his thoughts leaped on to the previous night, and his pulses quickened at the marvel of her beauty: her face--little Gracie's face, and yet so different; her lovely white neck and arms. He had seen them so often before in little Gracie. But this was different, all quite different. She was no longer a child, and he was no longer a boy. She was a woman, a beautiful woman, _the_ woman, and he was a man, and every good thing in him craved her as its very highest good. God! How could he let any other man take her from him? Even Jack----

He spat out his penholder, and kicked over his chair, as he got up and began to pace the room, with clenched hands and pinched face.