Chapter VIII: Part 8

Lady Winifred looked after Sir Gordon with toleration. She was a woman of unusual intelligence and it was hardly fair to ask her to maintain any real illusions as to her husband.

"Well," she continued, "this dear boy is a half-breed; his wife is of our best and purest blood. Yet, with all his peculiarities, Hal is adorable, and Edith--well, if she's a type of superiority, God help the British Empire."

"Edith isn't representative; oh, no; oh, _my_, no!" Sir Gordon's enthusiasm in rejecting Edith on behalf of the British Empire almost upset the coffee urn.

"Oh, _my_, no!" he kept repeating with comic insistence.

"Isn't she?" objected Lady Winifred coming forward to take the cup offered by her husband. "Isn't she? Is the smoking, drinking, gambling woman with a moral code of her own an exception, or is she getting to be the London type?"

"By the way, where is Edith?"

"Dining with Lord Yester at the Carlton."

"Dining at the Carlton the first night her husband is at home?"

"My dear Gordon, you are hopelessly old-fashioned. Husbands are like the vermiform appendix. They must have served some useful purpose once, but no one knows now what it was. A busy woman has no time for such trifles. Edith is just back from a house party at Groton Court, she had to devote some time in the forenoon to her modiste; she went to the races in the afternoon, had tea at the Austrian Embassy, played a little bridge, and naturally she had to dress for dinner. If Hal is patient they may eventually meet here or at some mutual friend's."

Gordon never tried to follow the intricacies of his wife's raillery.

"Well, I must be hopelessly old-fashioned," he said in the most matter-of-fact way. "Modern matrimony is quite beyond me." Sir Gordon was old-fashioned. He belonged to an epoch when men, by an unwritten law, left the gossip to the women.

"Winifred," he began with much hesitation, and speaking with grave deliberation, "are you aware that Lord Yester's attentions to Edith are beginning to create talk?"

"Beginning?" laughed his wife. "Why, Gordon, that is so old that people have ceased to talk about it."

"Is it really?" he ejaculated in hopeless confusion. "Well, Hal must put his foot down at once, at once," he repeated with feeble over-emphasis.

"My dear, the foot and the hand go together. They are both archaic. Since it is no longer good form to beat one's wife, the putting of the foot down or up is of no importance. Women only respected their husbands when they had to."

One of Gordon's qualifications as a fighter and a husband was that he could take punishment. It is a useful accomplishment, and as rare as it is beautiful. It would have been impossible for Lady Winnifred to live with a man who was over-sensitive. As she explained the situation herself: "Some amiability is essential to contiguity. The bearings must have oil. Well, you mustn't expect it of me or of the cook. One doesn't look for it in one's friends. Well, there you are!"

"I have no doubt something of this has come to Hal's ears," said her husband, "and he has returned to put his house in order, and quite time indeed."

"Well," she answered, "from the woman's point of view the civilized man is a glaring failure. Perhaps the half-savage may succeed."

"Fancy, Rundall, fancy my wife suspecting the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race!"

This remark was addressed to a polished, imposing person who was descending the stairs, and in the act of returning a thermometer to the pocket of his evening coat. Sir George Rundall had the right but not the time to add a long string of letters to his name. He was a self-made man and was a credit to himself. He had the figure of one who has been an athlete, the head of a scholar who was also a man of the world, a clean-shaven, florid face and perfectly white hair, what there was of it. The doctor was a man of learning, was an authority on all sorts of unpleasant things, and had a prodigious memory. Here was a man who could put Winifred in her proper place, if any one could.

Sir Gordon had ripped out "the Anglo-Saxon race" with something of its sonorous after-dinner effect.

"Haven't you discovered, Stuckley, that our wives are always right?"

"Oh, I say!" groaned Sir Gordon, dismayed at this cowardly going over to the enemy.

"There is no such thing as an Anglo-Saxon race."

"What?"

"And there's no such thing as a pure type of man. He simply doesn't exist. Finot says: 'All human beings are cross-breeds,'" and the doctor sat down at a small desk set into a bookcase, and began to write a prescription.

"Race" was one of Gordon's strong points. He had all the conviction of the profound amateur. He was an example of a little learning and its consequences.

"You mean to say," he asked with pompous incredulity, "that there is nothing in dolichocephalic superiority?" Having delivered this without a sign of distress he looked about, greatly pleased with himself.

"Dolly who?" asked Winifred. "Sir George, is that a real word, or just aggravated assault and battery?"

"Don't be alarmed, Lady Stuckley, it only means fair-haired people with narrow skulls."

"And so blonds are the elect, are they?" she said. "Now I know the scientific explanation for the popularity of peroxide of hydrogen."

"Joking aside," said the military man. It was a stock phrase in his domestic experiences. "Joking aside, I am sure our man of science will admit the importance of the--ah, the cephalic index?"

"Sir George, I look to you for protection."

"Head measurements, Lady Stuckley, that's all," explained Sir George with a smile. "Well, as to that," he went on, rising and coming to the library table, "a fellow by the name of Parchappe, who went in for that sort of thing, found 'the head of an intelligent woman to be perceptibly inferior to the dimensions of the head of an idiot.' Now, Stuckley, justify that to your wife if you can."

Lady Winifred laughed heartily.

"For Lord Kerhill," added the doctor to Winifred as he put a prescription on the corner of the table before her.

"It pleases Sir George to treat facts as jests," said the discomfited Gordon.

"Facts?" queried Winifred. "Facts? Why that is ground for divorce."

"Facts?" echoed the man of science gravely. "I wonder what are facts? The conviction of to-day is the derision of to-morrow. We have long used the skull and the brain to assign hopeless inferiority to various peoples, now comes along Finot and says: 'The skull and the brain furnish no argument in favor of organic inequality.' Lamarck--I think it's Lamarck--puts it better. He affirms that 'Nature has created neither classes nor orders, nor families, nor kinds, nor permanent species, but only individuals!'"

"That's the answer to the problem, Gordon," cried Lady Winifred triumphantly--"the Individual!"

Down the stairs came the Individual and lounged into the room. Hal knew at once from the suggestion of an embarrassed pause that he had been the subject of the conversation.

It is rather trying to one with a problem to have inept hands dipping in, messing it about.

The doctor was the first to regain his poise. He was used to difficult cases, and when he had to announce to the patient that he had only six weeks or six months to live, his manner was perfect. "Ah, Harold," he said with a kindly smile, putting his hand on the boy's arm with a reassuring touch, "splendid for your dear father, this home coming. You mustn't go away again." Then he dropped his voice for Hal's ear alone. "I'll be back. I want to speak with you before you retire," and the busy man passed out. Hal had on the conventional dinner coat. He looked at his relatives with an amused smile and came down to the table and started to help himself to a cigarette, then thought better of it, took some rice-paper from his pocket and made his own, manipulating it with one hand after the miraculous manner of the Mexican. When it was finished, amid the awed and fascinated wonder of the spectators, he lit a match on the leg of his trousers and lit the cigarette with the same hand to the dismay of Gordon and the joy of Winifred.

To Gordon's mind no well-bred person could really care for miracles.

"Well, Cousin Hal, you have been three years an exile! What a joy, eh? What a joy to be back in dear old London!"

The boy smiled as he took up his coffee.

"Do you remember Grafton? Used to be a pal of mine. Met him on the train coming up from Liverpool." The boy bent forward with an air of startled boredom. One could see Grafton. "Well, old chap, missed you awfully! Where have you been keeping yourself for the last _fortnight_?" He dropped the assumption.

"Cordial place--London! Out our way men and their characters go in their shirt sleeves." And he stretched his arms and the dinner coat popped ominously. For the moment he seemed to fill the library and it dwarfed most people.

"But you don't escape the rotter even out there, do you?" asked Winifred.

"No, but the rotter shouts himself out to all the world, and if you don't like the noise he makes you shoot it full of holes. Here they carry concealed weapons. I'm more at home with the shirt-sleeve crowd," and he sat down in the Charles II chair and threw his leg over one arm of it as he sipped his coffee.

Sir Gordon rose from the upholstered rail in front of the fireplace where he had been sitting, put down his empty coffee-cup, then stood up with the air of taking charge personally of Hal's tangled affairs.

"Well, Hal, my boy, you have come back prepared I presume to settle down, settle down to some career befitting an English gentleman." Sir Gordon paused to draw Hal's fire. As the young man did not dispute this assumption, he continued with patronizing pomposity.

"We must place you. We must place you, my boy. It won't be an easy matter, will it? Of course you can't go into trade. The Army is the only gentleman's game, but--we must not speak of that. We must not speak of that," and he hastened to get away from a subject so painful. "Now, how about the church?"

"The church?" asked Hal with a laugh.

"Oh, your father could get you a living." Then he added hastily: "It's respectable at least."

"For me? The church?"

"Oh, you don't have to go in for religion; oh, no; oh, my, no! None of that bally rot."

Seeing that her amiable husband was in very deep water, Winifred reached out her hand and encouraged him to go deeper.

"Hal, how stupid of you," she said. "You have assistants, curates, and that sort of thing who do the religion for you. You ride to hounds, play cricket for your county, and enjoy similar spiritual diversions."

"Well, you must do _something_," said Sir Gordon petulantly, annoyed with the young man's levity. "Of course whatever you decide to try, it is going to be a long hard struggle to live down the Army record; still with time and pluck it may be done. You are an earl's son and you have influential relatives. Well, then, how about politics?"

"Sit in the House and listen to the gabble on the Old Age Pensions and The Licensing Bill? I'd rather be a suffragette and go to jail."

Sir Gordon had exhausted the careers. It wasn't a career exactly, but people went in for it and it was a devilish nice thing to go in for.

"Well," he suggested, "there's the life of a country gentleman."

"The country would be all right," said Hal, "if the people would only stay away. They spoil everything. Even the gardens are as formal as the odious people, and the flowers, even the flowers, are made to look stiff and stuck-up and well-behaved, as if they felt they, too, were on exhibition and might be talked about. The country is only another setting for teas, tennis, and top hats, bridge, scandal, and flirting with each other's wives."

"Well, there's shooting," said Sir Gordon in desperation. "You used to like shooting."

"Yes, before people shot in mobs, and made it a function. Now they go into the solitudes, the cosey solitudes, with footmen, a French cook, vintage wines, and a Hungarian band."

Sir Gordon did not realize that his wife and Hal were having fun with his prejudices. He was on the edge of losing his patience.

"Well, if you stay _here_--" He was annoyed to observe that he had raised his voice almost to a vulgar scream. He repeated the phrase in a more temperate key. "If you stay here----"

"But I'm not going to stay here, Gordon. It's the West for me. It's in my blood. When I've visited with father and arranged one or two important matters, I'm goin' back to God's country."

"Bravo, Hal," exclaimed Lady Winifred. "If you stay here you'll end by becoming a conventional little snob, and I should hate you. No; go back to your shirt-sleeve crowd."

"Well, my dear boy," exclaimed Gordon completely nonplussed; "I can't make you out," and he made up his mind to beat a hasty retreat to the United Service Club, where anarchy was not petted and spoiled and fed on chocolate bonbons. Then he thought of something and came back.

"Winifred, speak to Hal about that."

"About what?" inquired Hal.

Again he lost some of his habitual poise in the fervor of his convictions.

"You must put your foot down, Hal; you really must--'er--for our sakes as well as for your own. You ought--er--Winifred will tell you," and the old soldier scrambled out of the trench and effected a most disorderly retreat.

His cousin Winifred was about six years older than Hal, and in all the memories of his childhood and boyhood she was the one bright spot. His step-mother had died when he was but a lad. His father was much occupied with public affairs. No one else seemed to care to understand the queer little chap except this tall, queer girl. She stood by and encouraged him to whip the first little brat that called him an insulting name, a name suggested by his color. Then she washed and wiped his resulting wounds, and encouraged him to believe that he was in the path of duty and on the road to glory. Thus encouraged, the shy, timid lad had quickly developed into a fierce little warrior, and it was Winifred who somehow realized and foresaw that if he were ever to enjoy the blessings of peace he would have to fight for them, and she got the head gardener's son who had a distinguished reputation as an amateur pugilist, to teach him how to box, an accomplishment in which he soon distanced his teacher, and one which was destined to be of the greatest service to him in his subsequent career. His readiness to meet all comers and his demonstrated ability to do so was his passport through life.

He had fought every step of the way from childhood to manhood. A battle or series of battles marked every change in environment, in school, in college, in his preparations for a military career. Soon it came as a routine. He knew he would have to "lick somebody" in order to be let alone. It didn't worry him, and he didn't seek these encounters, but he didn't mind them. In fact, it was one of the things he did exceptionally well. When he joined a swell regiment he had a terrific struggle to stay. He was "ragged" unmercifully, but he took his medicine, and before he was forced out, the regiment was ordered into the field, went through a campaign in which he had opportunities, which he eagerly accepted and with brilliant results, results which he took modestly. Eventually he compelled respect from his brother officers, but it was earned. Oh, it was earned! In all this bitter struggle with environment Cousin Winifred, this woman "with the serpent's tongue," was the only soul who knew and understood. He came over to her and put his hands affectionately on her shoulders.

"What is it you're to tell me?" he asked her.

"Dear, simple soul, he expects you to change Edith."

"Change Edith, eh?" Hal walked away with a queer look on his face. She continued: "One can dam a river and change its course. You can't do that with a woman. Edith will go on being Edith, I fancy, to the end of the chapter."

"She seems to be still rather careless of appearances," he said.

"She never was discreet, but there are many safely on the inside who are quite as careless. At all events, she's kept out of the papers. That's something. See here."

She showed him a London society journal whose leaves she had been turning and glancing at in a desultory fashion, one of those hybrid products of modern life which make a specialty of social garbage and elevate blackmail to the point of high art; a journal which every one calls "a rag" and which all smart people read religiously. Hal took it and glanced through the article hastily.

It was an account of a "well-known society woman," "name withheld out of consideration for her distinguished relatives and friends," who was found by a police officer wandering aimlessly in Hyde Park and utterly unable to give a lucid account of herself. Sir George _Blank_, a well-known specialist in nervous diseases, happens to be driving by, recognizes the unhappy lady, who is apparently under the influence of a powerful drug, and takes her to her home, etc., etc., etc.

"How awful!" he said. "Do you suppose it's true?"

"My dear boy, these things are becoming so common we're no longer shocked by them. Society has its favorites, and it has a broad mantle of charity for its favorites, but obviously one mustn't parade one's sins in Hyde Park. Edith hasn't been a huge social success, but she has kept out of the papers; she is still possible and she never gives up. She is still at it--climbing, climbing."

"And Lord Yester is the latest ladder, eh?"

"Why, you haven't been in England more than a few minutes. How did you find that out?"

"Why, my friend Grafton laid one of these illustrated papers down on the seat beside me as we came up in the train. I saw a picture of Edith and Lord Yester, and I had the pleasure of reading 'an open letter' to my wife. It was very instructive. I thought you said she had kept out of the papers."

"Oh, that's a small matter. That isn't publicity. That 'open letter' attention is merely an acknowledgment of her social prominence. That is a trifle. Lady Lucretia Burk-Owsley is dancing in one of our music halls. Now, you might object to that, though her husband, I understand, rather enjoys its democracy. It sort of takes the whole of London into the bosom of the family. She can't dance, of course, but she's a revelation. You must see it. Oh, we're not standing still."

"And Lord Yester?" suggested Hal. "What is his _raison d'etre_?"

"Lord Yester's vocation is Edith, his avocation is being next in succession to the old Duke of Uxminster, and the Duke is feeble enough to satisfy even the most impatient heir."

"A duchess, eh?"

"Nothing short of that."

"But Yester," objected Hal in dreamy retrospection; "Yester's a boy. His father, though he was old enough to be my father, was a pal of mine. We served together in South Africa. Why you remember, Winifred? He was forced into retirement because he justified my disobedience and refused to be silenced--God bless him! One of the few friends I've had in the world! His son, eh? Why, the youngster must be just out of his perambulator."

"Some women as they grow older suddenly display a fondness for children. When a woman has escaped being a mother, she sometimes meets her fate in the grandmother class."

"He's rather a nice child, if I remember correctly," said Hal.

"Well, not a 'double-first,' not an intellectual giant, but a nicely brought-up child; a credit to his nurse, and, incidentally, just at the age to be madly in love with a married woman, married, of course, to a clod who cannot possibly understand her."

Hal laughed.

"Yes, the _clod_ understands that. They have already made their plans, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes; and you're just in time to give the bride away. Now there's a novelty, and they're rare these days--a wedding in which the ex-husband is the new husband's best man. No? Well, Edith pays you the compliment of believing that you will behave very well under the circumstances. I was expected to prepare you for the inevitable and, if possible, soften the blow."

"And Lord Yester--is he willing?"

"Willing? Strenuously, madly willing. Personally, I think you are in tremendous luck. I congratulate you upon your prospective deliverance with all my heart."

Lady Winifred continued to play with the situation, turning it inside and outside, holding it up to fantastic derision, until she saw that he was not listening. The strain was off. He had resigned himself to pleasant dreams. He had been pulling against wind and tide, every muscle, every nerve stretched to cracking, his head bursting, his heart breaking, and making no progress, barely holding his own. Now the tide had turned. The storm had passed. He could take in his oars, sit in the stern, and just keep her in the current, the current that was bearing him on to his desires. He could rest in delicious lethargy and see the flowers and gardens on the bank, and see at the end of the beautiful journey Wah-na-gi standing on the rock, holding out her arms to him.

"How do you do, Harold? Welcome home."

Edith stood holding out her hand to him.

*CHAPTER XIX*

Instead of the little bronze figure in the buckskin dress with its straight, simple lines, as straight and simple as the soul within it, he saw a white woman, preternaturally white, the complex product of nature and art, where the dressmaker, the hair-dresser, and the jeweller had done their latest and best, with the soft, warm, dark colors of the library as a noble background, a chromatic frame. Her Paquin gown of canary yellow, cut very low, was bordered and outlined with dark-brown marabou feathers. On her dazzling neck rested a string of emeralds, the gift of Lord Yester. Her red hair was dressed, buttressed and supplemented by braids, coils and puffs, and surmounted by a diamond tiara. Her white hands were covered with rings, many of them with a history. This ornate combination was concealing and exposing an individuality more complex still, its barbaric impulses crossed and seamed and twisted by generations of acquired stress and strain. She was a radiant creature, conscious of her charms, but about her agate eyes were gathering little signals of distress, grave, insistent warnings, destined not to be heeded, saying that she had lived too fast, that she was at the zenith, the climax, that the descent would be quick and rapid. The wonderful mechanism wasn't working smoothly. "How do you do, Harold? Welcome home." And an extended hand. And this was her husband, returned from a long journey.

"Thank you, Edith," and he took her hand. She did not offer to kiss him and she gave him only one hand. He might have been a stranger to whom she had just been introduced. Indeed, she would have had more interest in a stranger. They had gone past even the forms of domestic procedure.

"Winifred," said her cousin, "Lord Yester is in the drawing-room. You get on so well together. Would you mind?"

"Not at all."

"I just want a moment's chat with Harold."

Winifred glanced at them with a cynical smile as she went out of the room. The situation appealed to her supreme love of contrast.

"You'll pardon my running off to-night, Harold; won't you? You see I didn't know in time, and I couldn't very well break a previous engagement. I asked Winifred to take my place and make you feel at home." And she undulated over to the railing before the fireplace and sat down in the genial glow in an indolent cat-like way. The fog had penetrated into the house and there was a chill in the dampness. She knew, too, that the fire shot strange lights into her hair and over her jewels and neck, and the desire to excite admiration was instinctive and ever present.

"Winifred is good company and she did her best," said Hal simply.

"And I knew that after a little chat with Winifred--well--that you would know all there was to know, and that there wouldn't be anything left for me to tell."

It was evident that neither woman had any illusions about the other. The attitude of rest and repose was only momentary. She got up restlessly and came forward, her eyes bent with fierce concentration upon his.

"Of course you haven't come back with the idea of changing anything?"

"Your attitude would seem to make that hopeless, Edith."

She was relieved. It was not to be open war, then. She turned half away, let her eyelids droop, and surveyed and measured him from underneath them. It gave her an oriental look.

"My dear Harold, it is too late for pretence between us. You will welcome a release quite as eagerly as I shall; and so we ought to be able to arrange matters. We have investigated your movements since you have been away and the name of the Indian woman will serve our purposes."

This produced a most disagreeable impression upon Hal.

"No," he said with a slow drawl that had menace in it. "No, I think not."

Edith turned and looked at him in amazement. It was a formality, one of those unpleasant formalities the silly law made necessary. The woman in view would never know of it, wouldn't care if she did. It seemed much the easier way. To her look of genteel astonishment he said in explanation:

"You see she is nothing but a savage. She wouldn't understand our refinements."

She laughed at his irony. Then he was in love, romantically in love. She laughed joyously. It seemed to make his acquiescence very certain.

"I won't oppose your application," she heard him say.

Of course he would not. Why should he? He loved this Indian woman. Her fears of a moment ago seemed childish, silly. She felt the situation pliant in her soft, cruel hand. Her heart leaped up within her. Her barque, too, was floating with the stream. It was a pleasure barge smothered in flowers but crowned with a coronet, and as it spread its silken sails to the perfumed breeze, everywhere in the crowded roadway shipping gave way and place, salutes were fired, and everywhere the air was thick with adulation and acclaim. And no small part of the anticipated triumph were the scowls of the envious and the evening of old scores.

"I make two stipulations," she heard him say.

She held her breath. Had he led her on only to tell her at last that he would fight her application--refuse her freedom? She knew she was at his mercy. He could exact bitter terms. He could in fact prevent the consummation of her crowning ambitions; could wreck the whole elaborate structure of her life. Her assured happiness seemed suddenly threatened. In a hysterical moment she saw it in ruins. Instantly her plans and prospects assumed an importance and insistence they had never had before. At the thought that he might stand in her way she was filled with an insane fury. Still she waited. What would he demand?

"You must not bring the Indian woman's name into the affair."

Heavens! Was that all? Willing victims and accomplices were to be found. What else?

"And you must take no steps while my father lives."

She passed in a second from death unto life. The Earl was clinging to existence by a thread. Hal hadn't even bargained for the return of the jewels he had given her. She felt that she must make some show of resistance or the terms would be changed. It was too ridiculously simple.

"Of course Lord Yester's wishes must not be ignored."

"I cannot allow you or Lord Yester to decide that for me."

He turned away as he spoke and so was not aware that Lord Yester had entered the room in time to hear this reference to himself. It is universally conceded that it requires courage to interfere between husband and wife; but then Lord Yester was a brave little man. He could wait no longer. His fate, too, was being decided in the library. He felt he must have a voice in deciding it. More than that, she needed him, this soft, plaintive soul that had come through time and space, through sin and suffering, to meet him, her complement, her supplement. Small, slender, with a delicate, sensitive face, distinguished by regular but small features, he had a fine, fresh, unspoiled capacity for suffering, which she teased and worried and played with for her infinite amusement. Quite apart from his coming coronet, she was in love with him; that is, she was a pyromaniac, and she got sensations from seeing his emotions burn, the fresh, beautiful emotions of a poet and a child.

"Harold, I don't think you have met Lord Norman Yester?"

She was the only one of the three who was without embarrassment.

"Yes, I think I met Lord Yester when he was at Eton."

Hal had no intention of making the other uncomfortable.

The clod! thought Yester; the clumsy clod! Eton, indeed! Everything about the boy was small except his spirit. He was like a child who says: "I'm six, going on seven."

"Yes?" he said with a supercilious elevation of the brows. "That was such a long time ago, I had quite forgotten it."

Having put the unpleasant husband in his place, he turned to her with the utmost deference, to the wronged and neglected wife.

"Edith," he said gently--"Lady Effington," he corrected himself and bowed formally to her husband. It was a delightfully ingenuous thing to do. Hal smiled, but not in derision. In fact, he liked the boy. What a funny little mediaeval gentleman!

"Lady Effington," continued Sir Launcelot (pocket edition), "if you can feel that I am worthy of your confidence, perhaps you will leave your interests in my hands--er--in our hands!"

Again he forgot the unpleasant husband and again he bowed an apology for his breach of etiquette.

"Thank you, Lord Yester," she said with a gravity and dignity equal to his own. To Hal it was like a play--this elaborate formality, this adroit indirectness, this dexterity in handling high explosives in a perfectly safe and genteel way, this modern capacity to bring everything down to a common denominator. He could play the game too, but what a long way it seemed from Red Butte Ranch, Big Bill, John McCloud, McShay, and Wah-na-gi, 'the soul without a body'!

"Lord Effington and I are both men of the world," Hal heard the youngster say. "It ought not to be difficult for us to--to--arrive at an understanding."

Lord Yester had his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his chest was thrown out, and he was balancing himself on the ball of his foot. It was an acquired mannerism that seemed to add to his height. Like all small men, he was fond of referring to the fact that Napoleon was not a giant.

Edith inclined her beautiful head forward at an angle of supreme deference.

"I leave my happiness in your hands, with the utmost confidence in you both," she said gracefully as she swept out of the room. Lord Yester met her as she moved and gave her the homage of his protection to the door! The movement left the husband in the position of a rank outsider.

What fun Edith must have had, Hal thought, in playing up to these ideals! Edith, who had no ideals of her own.

When Yester returned the two men looked at each other; there was an awkward pause, each man cleared his throat, and each waited for the other to begin.

"Will you smoke?" asked Hal with a motion to the cigars. The youngster made a nervous start toward the table, then it occurred to him that he could not meet on such a friendly basis the man who had treated with inhuman cruelty the woman who had thrown herself upon his protection; so he stopped short and very awkwardly said:

"No! thank you; no, no!"

Again an awkward pause.

"Will you sit down?"

That seemed consistent with dignity and he started to do so, but again recoiled.

"I--eh--I feel more comfortable standing, if you don't mind."

Hal bowed. Yester's awkwardness was catching. He lounged across the room, sat down on the rail before the fire, and lit a cigarette. He could wait. Yester fiddled with his collar, stroked his cheek, and fidgeted.

"This is--this is rather a delicate situation, isn't it?" he said at last with a little deprecatory, nervous smile.

"Nothing seems unusual or impossible these days," said Hal easily.

"Well, you see," said the other, "I was intended for the diplomatic service, but I'm afraid I'm rather direct."

What a kid it was, thought Hal.

"An engaging frankness is sometimes the highest form of diplomacy," he said encouragingly.

"Well, you see," said the other gathering courage, "she has come to rely on me so completely, on my judgment as it were----"

"She? Oh, yes, my wife."

"Yes, yes," eagerly assented the lover, so absorbed in his own romance as to be beautifully oblivious to any other point of view. Hal smoked and kept an inscrutable face, while his heart sang within him, going with the wind and tide, going out of these eddies, these twists and turns, out into the broad ocean and on to a new world.

Yester walked over to the writing-table and began to play nervously with its furnishings.

"I wanted to say certain things to you, and I--I--I find I hardly know how." Then he pulled himself together as his mind went back over their acquaintance. "You see, as she had no other friends, as she was in trouble and in bad health, my sympathies were naturally enlisted, and almost before either of us realized it--well, you see, while I think you have behaved very badly, I--eh--now that we have met, I--will you let me say, I feel very sorry for you?"

The ingenuousness of this was completely disarming. Hal loved the child. But he continued to treat the situation with becoming gravity, bowed formally, and said:

"That's very generous of you."

"At the same time," exclaimed the little man returning to his purpose, "it is her happiness that must concern us both, isn't it? And I can only say that if you can accept the inevitable--well and good! If not," and again he balanced himself on his toes and expanded his chest; "if not, I stand ready to face the alternative."

Alternative sounded ominous. What did it mean?

"Alternative?" said Hal puzzled.

"I'll meet you under any terms and conditions you may name."

"'Meet me?' Oh, yes," and he smiled in spite of himself. "Why, duelling is illegal, isn't it? It's worse than illegal; it's unfashionable." He rose and went over to the boy and looked down at him with a protecting air. "I shouldn't want to take the life of such a gallant little gentleman, and I should care even less to have you take mine. I'm afraid I'm hopelessly commonplace."

Hal's attitude in spite of himself was too obvious.

"I'm afraid that is too evident, Lord Effington," said Yester sharply, resenting the overlordship of the other. "And may I suggest," he added with growing irritation, "that I am not so much younger and smaller than yourself that you need persist in patronizing me?"

"I beg your pardon. I had no intention of doing that." Then he looked at him very seriously and added: "I hope for the sake of my middle-class conscience you know what you are doing."

"I feel quite capable of deciding that," replied the boy easily. "I know something of the world--something, I fancy, of women!"

"And you are almost of age," added Hal.

"I am about to attain my majority," said Yester stiffly. "And when I do----"

"You hope to celebrate it by your marriage to my wife?"

The other bowed with an engaging smile.

"Quite so. Well, I shall not stand in the way of your happiness, Lord Yester."

"That is very noble of you."

"I'm afraid it's rather selfish of me. Your happiness happens to correspond with mine. And I hope in the future you will never have cause to think bitterly of me."

In Hal's eyes lurked an embryo twinkle. What a ripping farce civilization was!

"On the contrary," said Yester, happy beyond words, "I think you have behaved exceedingly well. You conceal your sufferings like a soldier and you join me in protecting the good name of the woman we have both loved. I can only say that you have acted like a gentleman, Lord Effington."

Both men bowed formally.

"Lord Yester," said Hal; "your father once did me a great service. I hope we shall always be friends?"

And they shook hands.

"Oh, Sir George, you know Lord Yester, I think?"

Hal spoke to the physician who had entered from the hall.

Both men bowed slightly. Hal turned to the heir of the Duke of Uxminster.

"Lady Effington will explain to you the only conditions I make. They are very slight and I am sure will meet with your approval."

"Thank you," and the little fellow bowed elaborately to each man and left the room with his arms folded behind him, an attitude very much affected by Napoleon, if we may trust the pictures.

It was with difficulty that Hal refrained from laughter. What a farce, but what a joyous farce! Already he was mentally speculating on the time when he could turn his back on these attitudinizing people with their picture-poster lives, on all this hollow, artificial make-believe, and return to the shirtsleeve crowd. What joy he would bring to one soul! He saw her face as he said to her:

"I'm coming back, Wah-na-gi; I'm coming back." He had forgotten Sir George.

"I beg your pardon, Sir George. Delightful little chap, Yester! Eh? I wonder if I was ever as young as that."

It was evident that Yester's attentions to the wife of another man had not been a recommendation to the sedate scientist. He said dryly: "I don't know whether he's a fool or a knave."

"Well, he isn't either," said Hal. "He's been reading 'Ivanhoe'! You wanted to speak to me of father, Sir George."

"No, my boy; it's in regard to your wife."

Sir George had not only been the Earl's medical adviser as far back as Hal could remember but he had also been his intimate friend as well. Hal was thinking of other things, planning his escape, picturing the welcome the West was keeping for her child, or he would have noticed an extra consideration in the doctor's tone, an added solicitude in his manner.

"Edith?" he queried indifferently and with polite surprise.

"Yes; sit down." The doctor motioned to the little sofa which had its back against the writing-table. Hal sat down carelessly and picked up from the seat the society journal Lady Winifred had put into his hands a few moments before and began to turn its leaves and glance at its pictures, but in a cursory way and with an inclination of the head toward the physician to indicate that he was listening. Of course Sir George did not know--how could he?--that he and Edith had passed into different worlds.

Sir George himself was a study as he stood for a second regarding the other. How was it this custodian of other people's secrets and sorrows, forever intimate with sickness and pain, could look so sufficient, so impeccable, so serene? Well groomed, smooth, and polished to his finger tips, there seemed no surface where trouble or anxiety might stick.

Was it an armor or was it his integument?

"It's quite time you came home," the doctor said, glancing absent-mindedly at his polished finger nails. "You must give some thought to Edith. The life she is leading is exhausting, abnormal. She requires a change. You ought to take her away from London and this fast set."

"She has always lived this life, Sir George. It isn't any different, is it?"

"You have a ranch in America. It's just the thing. Why don't you take her there?"

"She wouldn't go. She is joined to her idols and I'm not one of them, Sir George."

The doctor was standing at the corner of the table. He satisfied himself that they were alone before speaking, then he bent toward the young man and said quietly:

"Of course no one knows it as yet but me; but you ought to know it; in fact, you will know it eventually, when perhaps it is too late, so----"

Hal looked up from his periodical.

"You alarm me, Sir George. What is it?"

The physician's eye fell upon the paper in Hal's hands.

"Allow me," he said and held out his hand for it.

Hal watched him deliberately turn the pages. He seemed to take a painfully long time to do it. Meantime the fog seemed to have penetrated the walls and to have taken possession of the place; the lights grew dim and the fire loomed ghostly in the dim distance. The air was thick and Hal seemed to breathe with difficulty. Ah, at last the doctor found what he was looking for. He handed it back and pointed to the article. There must be some mistake. He had already glanced through that article. It concerned an unfortunate woman who was found in Hyde Park under the influence of----

He glanced up. Sir George was still standing there. He must have been waiting a long time. Hal spoke at last, very slowly.

"And that was--Edith?"

The physician nodded his head gravely.

Hal glanced back at the paper but he did not see it. He sat still as if everything was just as it had been before, but he knew that the earth was rocking in a convulsion, that the house of his building was tumbling about him, that he was choking with the circumambient dust, and that he could not move or escape, only sit still until it was all over.

*CHAPTER XX*

The doctor waited patiently while the other readjusted his disordered faculties and groped his way toward the light.

"Good Lord, how terrible!" said Hal, distrait. "Why, Edith is the last woman in the world--strong willed, self-willed, ambitious! Why, I can't grasp it. It doesn't seem possible. I--I can't realize it."

"Oh, it's common enough these days," said the doctor, sitting down beside the boy and putting his hand on his knee in suggested sympathy. "The pace that kills! No rest, no respite! Teas, dinners, receptions, theatres, balls, races, motors, yachts; bridge, morning, noon and night; excitement, fatigue, reaction, depression; then stimulants, small at first, then more stimulants for greater depression, then over-stimulants; then sleeplessness and all the horrors of neurasthenia; then narcotics for rest and quiet, to keep from going mad; then, all of a sudden as it seems, but really by the most logical process, a _habit_ is formed--a fixed, implacable, relentless habit."

"Poor old girl," said Hal, trying to follow the professional exegesis. "How awful. How awful! But of course people are cured of such things, Sir George. You haven't let this go on?"

"Unfortunately it had been going on for some time before I discovered it, and of course I have done all I can, all I know. I'm afraid it's now beyond me. She has one chance in a thousand, and that chance is in your hands: the fresh air, out-door life, simple living, rest, peace, quiet! Then, if she will help you, if she will help herself, why, who knows?"

Again he put his hand on the boy's knee as much as to say: Don't take it too much to heart. We all have some affliction. If it isn't one thing, it's another, and fortunately we have work to do, and that saves us--work. All he said was:

"Well, I must be going."

"I want to see you a moment before you go, Sir George."

It was Edith speaking. She had entered the room as usual--noiselessly.

The doctor gave her a quick look. She was radiant. She had heard nothing, suspected nothing. He gave a sigh of relief.

"At your service, Lady Effington; I'll be in the billiard-room."

She made sure he had left the room, then she came toward Hal, her head up, her face beaming, her eyes dancing, glorious, transcendent! Magnificent to look upon was this wayward woman in the first glow of triumph, but Hal did not see her. He was gazing dumbly into space.

"It's very splendid of you, Harold," she said as she came over and sat down beside him, just where the doctor had sat a moment ago.

"I have come to thank you. You and I were never meant for each other, but it has been no fault of yours, and though I shall be compelled legally to complain of your cruelty, I shall, as a matter of fact, always remember gratefully your generous and considerate treatment. Fortunately it is not too late to remedy our mistakes. Lord Yester tells me you have definitely agreed not to interfere with our plans."

At the conclusion of her rhapsody she leaned forward and put her hand on his. It was almost a caress, the nearest approach to it she had bestowed on him in years. He withdrew his hand and took hers, giving it a little sympathetic pat, then he rose and walked away, the lines of his face drawn. She looked at him in wonder. Was it possible he cared for her a little bit after all?

"One moment, Edith," he said. "You see I didn't know. I couldn't know. And now--well, for the moment I'm bowled over. We'll have to think this thing over, won't we? Hang it all, it isn't fair, is it? It doesn't seem quite fair."

"Fair?" she echoed with a dubious smile. She saw that he was laboring under great excitement. "Fair?"

"To him--to the boy--to Yester."

"What are you talking about?" she said with patient incredulity. He paid no attention to her. He only half heard her questions and answers. He was reasoning it out, laboring with himself.

"He's a mere boy, and not a bad sort either; in fact, he's really quite all right. I don't see how we can go on with it; you and I."

She was like one who is suddenly and violently awakened from a halcyon dream to gaze into the glare of a dark lantern in the hands of a thief who may at any moment become an assassin. At the first glimmer of what he meant terror gripped her. She rose and came toward him.

"You gave _me_ your word. You gave _Lord Yester_ your word."

"I didn't know the--the situation, did I? You see I thought I could just put my hands in my pockets and stand off and let it go on, but if I see a blind man walking over a precipice and I don't stop him, why, I might just as well push him over. It's murder either way. I can't do it. I don't see how I can do it. I've changed my mind."

He tried to walk away as if it were settled. She followed him softly, like a cat, then confronted him.

"I won't let you change your mind." She spoke slowly and quietly, but it was a brave or a stupid man who could ignore the threat.

"It's no use, Edith. Sir George has told me, told me for your own sake." Again he turned away, as if he were looking for a way of escape from himself, from her, from the situation. She felt a wild impulse to scream, to leap upon him and tear him to pieces, and then it came to her that that would lend color to his veiled accusations. She must go softly, cunningly, and--wait.

He walked away, over to the fireplace. Was there no way out of it? Oh, if Sir George had not spoken! If he had not known! Was there no other way? Was no compromise possible? Why should the burden of all these lives fall upon him? Why should he be handed the cross to bear? The flames, like little red demons, little fire sprites, danced here and there, threw up their hands, squirmed, writhed, trying to get away, trying to leap into the air, trying to seize an unattainable something, falling back like whipped dogs to lick and bite the smoking log! Gazing into the fantastic fire depths--he saw Wah-na-gi, and beside her John McCloud, just as they stood that fateful day he left the Red Butte Ranch. "If you do come back, you must bring this Indian woman clean hands and a pure heart, promise me that." And he _had promised_. And Wah-na-gi, the soul without a body, heard him promise. He had come thousands of miles that he might keep the spirit of that promise. And now all he had to do would be to let things alone, let them go on as they were going. Why should he interfere? Why should he meddle? Would any one thank him? Every one, even Yester himself, would hate him. What possible good would it do? It was too late to interfere. His own happiness was at stake too. What of that? Why should he ruin his own happiness with theirs? He would go home a free man and who would know the difference? There would be no one to blame him except his own conscience. Oh, subterfuge, subterfuge! The lying little devil flames laughed. John McCloud would know. In fact, by some clairvoyant mystery, he already knew! Even now he was saying: "And this boy is the son of your benefactor, the son of your friend."

At last he said, as if to the fire:

"I couldn't do this and then go back and face Wah-na-gi and John McCloud. I promised if I came back to come with clean hands."

"You are talking like a wild man," Edith said. "But you see I am not excited. You're not going to betray me into a scene and then accuse me of being as crazy as you are. I sit down and I am calm."

She sat down deliberately in the high-backed chair and clutched its arms, and clung to it desperately like a drowning sailor. "I have perfect self-possession, complete control of myself, and I listen, listen to a madman. Go on."

She was sincere. He was irresponsible. Nothing else would explain it.

Indeed, to most of us, those who act from altruistic motives are quite as incomprehensible as those whose acts suggest diabolical and abnormal instigation. The boy was mad. He had always been "queer." He was the son of his father.