Chapter VIII: Part III: XXVI (2)

As he drove in by the gate the gardener’s children ran out from the lodge and stood staring at him with credulous blue eyes. He tossed them some coppers as he drove by, smiling to himself half bitterly. All about him were sun-kissed trees, flowers brilliant in the sun. The scent of new-mown hay came from the meadows. There were pigeons cooing on the great, white wooden columbary behind the house.

In the hall the butler met him, salver in hand. The man had a loose and inquisitive smirk upon his lips which he attempted to stiffen. His small gray eyes stared into space and yet seemed to observe everything.

“Mrs. Strong and Miss Saker have left for Gabingly Castle, sir,” he said, snapping out his words with a clean-shaven gravity.

“When are they expected back, James?”

“Taken luggage with them, sir.”

“Luggage!”

“Madame desired me to hand you this letter.”

The man watched his master cross the hall and disappear in the direction of the library “The fur ’ill fly,” he remarked, depositing the salver on the hall table. With a significant clucking of his tongue he retired to the kitchen quarters and described how “the gov’ner had looked sick as a turnip.”

In the library, with its gilded tiers of books, its panelling, and its archaic gentleness of atmosphere, a torn envelope lay at Gabriel’s feet. He was standing by the window holding the sheet of scented paper close to his eyes, like one whose sight is feeble.

The epistle ran as follows:

“After your gross disloyalty and your cruel insolence I can
remain under your roof no longer. I have returned to my father.

YOUR WIFE.”

When Gabriel had read the letter twice, he folded it up slowly and placed it in the breast-pocket of his coat. Walking to a rosewood cabinet, he chose a cigar with peculiar deliberation, lit it, and, seating himself in the window-seat, smoked with a vicious pensiveness, puffing out smoke volubly and watching it die into the gloom of the room.

XXXI

THE gloomy gate of life is not ever the least auspicious; from beneath its arch the warrior beholds a braver dawn gleam on the pinnacles of a sublimer city. Fate is no basilisk when stared betwixt the brows. Courage kindles at the clarion cry of death.

For the first season of his life Gabriel grew single and strong of purpose. Affectations, dreams fell away like the last rotting leaves from a tree in spring. He was the man at last, courageous, uncringing, standing alone for simple truth and honor. Primitive tones inspired him, the deep, rich instincts of the heart. He had lived an indolent and facile visionary. Now there was need of manhood and the sword.

He sallied early for Gabingly that morning, riding his favorite black mare, briskly breasting the hills. The sky was clear and vigorous; the green slopes stood out against the azure and the sunny bosoms of the clouds. Honeysuckle clambered in the hedgerows. A light breeze laughed through the rising corn, but could not stir the weightier passion of the woods.

Avoiding Saltire by the cross-roads, and casting a long, meditative stare at the hall, ruddy amid its trees, Gabriel took a grass-grown track that wound westward over the hills. Dense thickets of pines and larches hedged this antique roadway with primeval gloom. The sunlight filtered through in showers, staining the vivid grass with gold. At Beacon Point the man drew rein, turned the mare that he might gaze over towards the sea. A cataract of foliage thundered at his feet. Far to the east Cambron Head towered purple over a shimmering sea. Beneath him the great valley with its woods and pastures stretched solemn and silent in the sun. Yonder the red roofs of Saltire lay like rusty shields amid the green. Farther still the Mallan streaked the lowlands. Even in the distance he could mark the blue hills above Rilchester, with their mist of tufted trees.

Gabriel held on again with brow furrowed and eyes at gaze. The quest was no idle venture, the issue no gay joust of sentiments. He rode to recover his own conscience and the peace of the woman whom he loved. Even as he brooded the Georgian shadows of Gabingly rose up amid the pines, looming to his tragic idealism like the sullen walls of some perilous hold. Therein sat this Brunhilde, this Icelandic woman of the cold, proud face, strong beyond the strength of men, beautiful, yet iron of soul. He wondered what would chance between them that morning, whether he would have speech with her or no.

The park gates stood open prosaicly enough, barriers of iron swinging upon pillars of brick, under the patronage of half a score of gigantic elms. The gravel drive wound primly through the home park with its austere trees standing in solemn isolation, like proud Pharisees drawing the blue borders of their robes from chance defilement. There were a few deer couched or grazing amid the green lagoons of bracken. As for the castle, its leaden eyes seemed to stare obtusely at creation; it was a purely plutocratic edifice, a bovine building, dull and blank of face.

Gabriel dismounted on the gravel semilune before the castle, and buckled his mare’s bridle to a horse-post set beside an old stone mounting-block. His hand was on the iron bell-pull when Blanche Gusset, in sporting attire, appeared in the porch. The meeting was mutually unexpected. The girl in the check skirt colored even more healthily than usual, and her fat fingers tightened on the riding-switch she carried in her hand. The terrier that followed her sniffed tentatively at the man’s leggings.

“You—here!”

Gabriel went to the core of the problem with the composure of a man utterly in earnest.

“I have ridden to see Ophelia.”

“So I observe.”

The pair eyed each other for a moment with the concentrated alertness of wrestlers watching for a “catch.” Blanche had speedily recovered from her temporary embarrassment. Nervousness did not bulk largely amid her virtues; nor was she a person who boasted a delicate tact in her methods of dealing with friends. It was she who went in boldly and opened the tussle.

“Gabriel Strong,” she said, squaring her shoulders and looking him fairly in the face, “I never thought you would turn out a blackguard.”

The man winced but kept his temper.

“You have made up your mind somewhat hastily,” he said to her.

“By Jove! yes, we have that,” she retorted. “The whole tale has come out. Upon my soul, Gabriel, I never thought you would turn out such a cur.”

There was a species of hearty frankness even in her recriminations, a bluff and ruddy brevity that smacked of stall and stubble.

“May I ask you to tell my wife that I am here,” was the man’s reply.

“Drop that polite bluff, then,” said the girl.

“You will not gainsay me the justice of being suffered to proclaim the truth.”

Blanche Gusset twisted her broad red mouth into a puckered expression of incredulity.

“Some one has poisoned the porridge,” she remarked, “or half the county’s a liar. Pity the governor’s out; he would have had something to say on the matter,” and she smote her leg with her switch.

The man’s courage flashed out pathetically and appealed her pity.

“For God’s sake listen to reason,” he said; “what Ophelia has been told I cannot imagine. I can swear the whole is a wicked myth. You were a good friend to me once; let me see Ophelia now. I swear I have nothing to say that can hurt her heart.”

The girl in the check skirt scrutinized him with an air of pity and partial scorn. Her creed was more a man’s, florid and unimaginative. Life did not revolve for her, but hung, a mere sphere of prejudice, displaying one face alone to her uncompromising vision. After a moment’s thought she turned on her heel and offered to serve as herald in the parley.

“I will turn in and see,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Keep to the doorstep. You do not cross our threshold unless Phyl gives the word. Stand tight for ten minutes.”

Gabriel paced the gravel, morose and irritable. Possibly he had not prophesied so prosaic a prologue. Blanche Gusset was not a woman capable of moving to the rhythm of blank verse. The man realized from this one incident that the Cerberus of popular prejudice bayed to him from its kennel. There was to be no splendid gloom in this descent into hades, but vulgar glare and debasing discords.

Blanche Gusset came back to him very speedily. Her steel-tipped shoes clattered on the parquetry of the hall; she still carried her little switch. There was a compressed yet juvenile severity upon her florid face. It was evident that she felt strongly for her sister, and that her sympathies had ranged themselves against Gabriel in the moil.

“Listen,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Phyl will see you in the drawing-room; you know your way; but mind this—”

The man thrust back his pride and listened to her hectoring with a submissive calm.

“Well?”

“I shall wait in the gallery; if you try any blackguardism, my buck, I’ll have our men up pretty briskly. I shall give them the tip to kick you out of the front door. See?”

Gabriel, white to the lips, bowed to her like an antique aristocrat and desired her to lead on.

“Even a lord’s daughter is not infallible,” he said.

“March,” was her retort.

“I wait for you.”

Man and wife were left alone together in the great salon of the castle, with its gilt panelling and many mirrors. Gabriel, standing by the door, saw Ophelia stretched at half length on a sofa by the open French window. She had a book in her hands, and a table beside her bearing flowers and a confectionery-box. Red cushions pillowed her opulent shoulders. She was dressed in black, with a red rose over her heart and a collar of Venetian lace about her throat.

She glanced up as the man entered, and closed the book in her lap with an affectation of languor. If the sister’s virago-like methods had kindled the man’s temper, Ophelia’s mood chilled him into a pillar of intellect. It was easily discernible that Ophelia had petrified her mind for the ordeal. There was to be no passionate rhetoric, no pleading, no elevation of sentimentalism. The man read her temper as he gazed at her brilliant eyes and firm white face.

“Well?” she said, with a certain flippant hauteur that was admirably assumed.

“I have ridden over to see you.”

“Evidently.”

“I am your husband.”

“A platitude.”

“I have a right to claim some explanation from you for this.”

She smiled very slightly, stretched out a white hand, and chose a chocolate from the box with purposeful deliberation.

“Do not pretend to be ingenuous,” she said; “there is no need for an exchange of confidences. The matter is simple enough; let us keep to crude facts. You have preferred a farm wench to your wife. I cannot see that any explanations are needed.”

Gabriel flushed for the moment, bit his lip, and relapsed into composure.

“I should be glad to know to whom you refer.”

“Please do not ape the simpleton.”

“Answer me this.”

“I believe her name is Gildersedge, or something of the sort.”

“An infamous lie.”

“Is it? My solicitors have advised me differently.”

There was silence a moment between them. The woman lay back on her cushions and watched the man with imperturbable curiosity, infinite satisfaction.

“Do you know what you are doing?” he asked, speaking with peculiar quietness.

“Probably.”

“Ruining the life of an innocent girl.”

“And you?”

“I am telling you the truth.”

“My dear coz, saintliness hardly suits the occasion.”

In the gallery they could hear Blanche pacing to and fro. There was a finer element of tragedy in this silence than any passionate bluster could have boasted. Through the open window the man could see Oriental poppies like a scarlet cloud in bloom at sunset. Their opulent color seemed in contrast to the woman’s pale, firm face.

“For the last time let me tell you,” he said, “that you are wronging the innocent and acting upon the evidence of liars. We are as we ever were. Before God and man, I am your husband.”

For answer she jerked her hand suddenly, and three glittering circlets leaped and shimmered athwart the floor. One, a band of gold, curled and settled at his feet. They were the rings he had given her. He looked at them a moment as they glittered like basilisk eyes in the sun, and then turned to her with a half gesture of despair.

“This, then, is your answer?” he said.

“My answer.”

“For all time?”

“For all time.”

He picked up the marriage-ring, held it in his palm a moment, tossed it aside again with a twinge of scorn.

“Yours be the blame,” he said.

“You are generous, as ever.”

It was in Gabriel’s heart to cast the whole truth in her face even as she had flung the rings at his feet. Yet even in his angry irony he remembered Joan and the peril that was drawing about her name. The strongest faith to her lay in silence.

“Some day you may repent of this,” he said, “for they who believe liars tempt shame in turn. Be assured that I have told you the truth this morning.”

“Thanks,” she retorted as he left her, “let me give you a fragment of advice.”

He looked at her over his shoulder a moment and listened.

“Engage a smart K.C. You will need him. Do not forget it.”

XXXII

THE sky was suffused with opalescent vapors rising from the golden bowl of the sea. Joan Gildersedge, with a page of Spenser unread upon her lap, was sitting under the pine-tree on the half-moon of grass in Burnt House garden, looking out towards the south. It was her especial curtilage, her garden of gems, arabesques of brilliant color burning amid the green. Towards the west a screen of purple clematis ran like a frieze above a bank of fuchsias, red, amethyst, and white. Over the warm bosom of the low brick wall a passion-flower clambered to hear the rhapsodies of a rose. To the east Canterbury-bells, a gracious company, wove wondrous textures of purple and snow. Amid the enamelled faces of a myriad pansies, night-stock dowered the evening with a subtle fragrance.

Joan’s heart had opened to the thousand voices of her flowers. She was in a golden mood, sad, yet happy—the mood of one who lives in dreams and forgets the present. The greater burden of the day had been passed with her father; she had found him more human for the nonce, less gray and barbarous. Bodily he was much like a withered leaf that had mouldered to a lacelike skeleton, a traceried image of itself. During the early summer he had weakened, maintaining none the less his mercenary acumen of mind, that like a red spark fed still upon the rotten tinder of the flesh. He was much abed now; his cottages at Rilchester had not tumbled their rents into his leather bag these many months. An agent fingered the blue-leaved ledger and harvested pence in that provincial slum.

Joan had been reading of Britomart, that woman queening it in the pages of romance. This British heroine had ever had a strong hold on the child Joan’s heart, an idyllic foster-mother, pure and fearless. Even now, in the deeper wisdom of her wounded days, the girl had found in this fair woman of legendary lore a sister quickened with a kindred sympathy.

Perhaps there was a suggestive moral in the legend that had startled Joan like the sudden voice of one singing in the woods. She remembered that Artegal the Just had proved vincible, a god of clay with a heart of gold. Despite his manhood, he had fallen into unheroic jeopardy, even to the quaint ignominy of wearing women’s gear. And it had needed Britomart to end his shame.

Whatever mysterious philosophies were moving in her heart, the girl was doomed to discover scope for heroism that evening. Up the narrow lane circling the hill-side a man was urging a jaded horse, slouching low in the saddle. The western light smote upon his face, making it white and ethereal, like the face of one who had risen from a sick-bed.

Drawing rein before the iron gate and rolling out of the saddle, he tethered his horse and passed up the darkening drive. The gravel complained beneath his feet. Reaching the porch, he set the bell clanging through the solitary house, mocking, metallic laughter that died in a rattling chuckle. Anon, as he stamped restlessly to and fro, the door opened, and Mrs. Primmer’s stony face stared at him out of the dusk of the hall. Gabriel saw her lips tighten as she looked him over. There was a new significance for him in the steel of her observant eyes. She snapped the words out of her narrow mouth, forestalling his question with an intelligence that was almost insolent.

“Miss Joan’s in the garden.”

The man turned away with a clinched jaw and a hot color. There was something sinister even in the tone of the woman’s voice, a hint at knowledge that brimmed his cup of bitterness the more. The children of Mammon had proved wiser than he in their generation. Like an idealist in hades, he was mocked by the scoffing shades of the grossly wise dead.

Gabriel passed the rank lawns, the arbor of yews, and the tall acacia, glanced at the dial-plate, ineffectual at that hour of the decline. Plunging through Joan’s arch of roses, he came by a bank of cypresses to the full mountainous glory of the west. Clouds, red of bosom, sailed solemn over the sea. The valley beneath was veiled in splendor.

On the half-circle of grass he saw Joan sitting with the book in her lap, her face turned from him towards the west. The boughs of the pine-tree overshadowed her. Her dress ran a faint blue streak in the grass. He stood and watched her a moment, shading his eyes with his hand, with an expression half of despair upon his face. He was a coward no longer in the meaner sense, yet his heart sickened when he remembered the words that were poised upon his tongue.

Crossing the lawn he called the girl by name. She turned with a strange swiftness, rose up from under the tree like one wakened out of a dream. Her face was afire, her eyes full of a sudden recognition. It was easy to define the feeling that was uppermost in her heart.

They stood some paces apart and looked at each other in silence. The girl’s attitude was that of wistful appeal, generous ignorance thirsting for the truth. Gabriel saw her standing before him, enshrined by the gold of the west, pure and infinitely gracious. The very beauty of her innocence smote his courage as with fire. All the glib and tragic pathos he had conjured into his heart was shrivelled, parched into inarticulate fear. The horror of sacrilege possessed him. He stood as one palsied, stricken mute like Zacharias by his vision in the temple.

“Gabriel.”

Of a sudden she ran to him, stooping and looking in his face. From the warmth of her thoughtless joy she had gone white, strangely earnest and eager. Gazing in Gabriel’s eyes, she read the fear therein, the haggard, strained look upon his face that declared deep dread within.

“Gabriel,” she said again, almost in a whisper.

“Ah, do not look at me like this.”

“What is it—tell me?”

“The worst.”

“Ah no, not that!”

He threw up his arm with a gesture of anguish and covered his face.

“My God, how can I tell you the truth!”

Joan caught him by the wrists, drew down his hand, stared in his face, one deep, tragic look. The man’s eyes shirked hers. His lips were quivering like the lips of one in peril of tears.

Joan drew a sudden, deep breath, loosed her hold, and stood back from him with her hands pressed over her heart.

“Gabriel.”

He could not answer her. Her words came to him with a passionate breathlessness born of despair.

“I understand—yes, yes, do not speak—I can bear it—let it come slowly. I understand now.”

She stood with her head thrown back, her throat showing, her eyes closed as in prayer. Her face was as pale as the petals of the passion-flower upon the wall. Gabriel, with lips twitching, paced to and fro like one in physical anguish. A hand of ice seemed contracting about his heart. Suddenly, as by some superhuman instinct, he fell down with a half-muffled cry at the girl’s feet, caught her by the knees, and buried his face in her dress.

“Joan, Joan.”

She still stood with eyes closed, her body quivering, her hands over her heart.

“Joan, curse me, for God’s sake curse me!”

“No, no.”

“That I should have brought this upon you!”

“No, no.”

“Curse me.”

She slipped suddenly to her knees as though her soul failed her, wound her arms about the man’s neck, and hid her face upon his shoulder. They kneeled thus for some moments, wrapped in each other’s arms like two children. Neither spoke. It was a merging of their common woe into one deep flux of silent sympathy.

The fall of tears on her cheek roused Joan, like the touch of a child’s hand bestirs a mother. She lifted her head, held the man at arm’s-length, looked in his face with a great flash of womanly tenderness.

“Gabriel.”

“Girl—”

“Weep not for me.”

“You shame me too utterly.”

“Ah no, do not think that of me. God knows, I shall help you by being strong.”

She passed her hand over his forehead, smiled with an infinite wistfulness, lifted up her mouth to his, and kissed him.

“Courage,” she said.

For the first time he looked in her eyes, steadily, yet with an incredulous awe that was not of earth. Had Christ spoken He could not have breathed a diviner love.

“You shame me,” was all he said.

“No, no.”

“What am I, that you should treat me thus?”

“Ah, is it so strange?”

“It is marvellous, beyond belief.”

She put his hands from her very gently, rose up, and stood at her full height, looking out towards the sea. The blood had risen again from her heart; her lips were no longer tremulous; her eyes shone more bright with hope. Gabriel watched her, holding close under the pine-tree so that he stood in shadow, while Joan breathed in the sun. The scene was figurative to him of her finer beauty of soul.

“Gabriel,” she said at last, turning her head so that he saw her pure, strong profile and then the sunlight in her eyes.

“I am listening.”

“Can you believe me? but I had half prayed for this.”

“Joan!”

“It is the truth.”

He left the shadows of the tree and stood again at the girl’s side. His fingers touched Joan’s. Standing hand in hand, they looked out over the sea at the sun sinking in a whorl of lambent fire.

“I am no longer afraid.”

“Nor I, save for your sake.”

“Ah, Gabriel, what is sacrifice but love transfigured?”

The clouds were paling in the west; a glamour of light still poured upward into the heavens.

“Had I been less a fool,” he said, “I could have saved all this. Thank God, I am no longer clay, to be thumbed by circumstance!”

“And yet,” she said, with a deep inrush of heroism.

“Well?”

“I would not have had it otherwise. It is the fire that refines and tempers. It is by battle that we overcome the world.”

“Yes, men still need the sword.”

“Well spoken.”

“I draw mine for our liberty, your honor.”

XXXIII

THE master of Saltire Hall was a hard man, a man of steady nerve and unbending obstinacy. His brain was as a granite-plinthed banking-house, his soul a delicately designed machine for testing the current gold of the realm. Provided an argument bulked short by five grains in his estimation, he would toss it aside with an abrupt and hard-mouthed confidence that abhorred sentiment.

Walled within his materialism, he yet believed himself to be religious, his creed being a species of Mosaic law, practical and eminently rigid. Had fate destined him for an Annas, he would have crucified a Christ with quiet conscience—ay, even with zest. There was nothing spiritual about him in the higher sense; yet he passed as a good man, orthodox and respectable to the last button.

Hence it may be imagined that when Lord Gerald Gusset rode over to Saltire one morning, and proceeded to harangue the ex-tea-merchant on the iniquities of his son, John Strong gaped like a ravaged sepulchre, and discovered no relief in monosyllabic wrath.

Above and before all things the master of Saltire had been ambitious for his son. It was the ambition of a tyrant, a task-master who had conceived the erection of a social pyramid. He had thought to pinnacle his son on the summit of this ambition, to make of him a fashionable anachronism, a member of a New Nobility coroneted by commerce. It was the dream of a materialist, of a man who trusted in his gold.

John Strong’s wrath may be pictured when he beheld this excellent edifice crumbling before his eyes. Grim man that he was, he was overwhelmed for the instant, beaten to his knees, threatened as with social bankruptcy. His fibre, however, was not of the willow. With twisted branches he stood to the storm, and shook out anathemas at the cloud that had given it birth. He turned iconoclast against his own ambition, and prepared to tear down with his own hands the idol that had disgraced his pride. Lacking any elasticity of sentiment, he was the more incensed against Gabriel, his son.

The morning after his reunion with Joan Gildersedge, Gabriel took horse and rode for Saltire to see his father. He was ignorant as to Lord Gerald’s previous visit and the insurrection of John Strong’s ambitious prejudices. Gabriel was in a sanguine mood. Joan’s spirit had borne him above himself; her love like a golden banner beaconed him from the hills. Chivalry stirred in his blood. His poetic pessimism had fallen from him like the bonds of a witch damsel broken by the hand of a saint.

He rode through Saltire village with his chin high and his horse well in hand. The few sleepy folk idling about the street gaped at him with an apathetic curiosity. He passed James Marjoy rolling along in his gig, a red carnation in his button-hole and his stethoscope hanging from his pocket. The doctor gave him a curt nod and stared blankly into space. By the church the Rev. Jacob Mince eyed the horseman under the brim of his black hat, and turned from him with a pharisaical dignity. Gabriel tilted his chin more loftily towards the stars, put his shoulders back, touched his horse with the spurs.

Threading the park, a slumbering Arcady, he came, by the three sun-burnished fish-ponds, to the dusky edge of the Saltire garden. A wicket-gate closed a grass-path that delved into the green. Gabriel saw a streak of white amid the bushes and a hand that waved to him with quick appeal.

“Gabriel!”

The man dismounted, threw the reins over the fence, and turned to the gate. Judith stood there with her hand upon the latch, her bronze hair brilliant in the sun. She was in white, fair as a magnolia in bloom, her eyes preternaturally dark in her pale and wistful face.

“Gabriel, I must speak to you.”

He met her very calmly, with the strength gotten of his rehallowed love. There was no distrust upon her face, only a sorrowful foreboding, a fear for that which was to follow. The man saw that the cup of malice had been emptied at her feet.

“Are you also against me?” he asked her, sadly.

Their hands met. Gabriel went in and stood beside her under the laurels. He seemed taller than of yore, more deep of chest, keener about the eyes. Judith looked at him, a slight color suffusing her face.

“Gabriel, this is terrible.”

“Mere venom,” he said.

“I do not believe these lies,” she answered, with the calm of one whose convictions were carven out of white marble.

“For these words, dear, I thank you.”

“It is these women who have worked this web of slander.”

Brother and sister stood silent a moment, looking at each other like two trustful children.

“What of father?” he asked her, suddenly.

A shadow swept across her face, and her eyes darkened.

“He is reasonless,” she said—“mad, mad.”

“I must renew his sanity.”

“I doubt it—I doubt it.”

“Is he so ungenerous to his own son?”

“Ah, Gabriel, did I not warn you against prejudiced affections and ambitious love. Slander and shame have turned father into a Shylock. He will believe nothing, accept nothing.”

“I must face him,” he said to her, moving on amid the laurels.

“Be wise, weigh well your words.”

Judith followed at his heels. There was great sadness upon her face. Before the path upon the Saltire lawns, she touched Gabriel’s arm and beckoned him back within the shadows of the thicket.

“Gabriel,” she said.

“Sister.”

“Tell me one thing before you go: do you love this Joan Gildersedge?”

He started to hear the hallowed name upon her lips, for he had never heard it save in his own heart.

“I love her as Dante loved Beatrice.”

“And she is worthy?”

“Worthy indeed.”

Judith looked at the sky; her lips moved as in prayer; the sunlight played upon her face.

“Would to God, Gabriel, she had come into your life before.”

“Amen to that.”

“This will prove a fiery trial to you both.”

“Judith, I must stand betwixt her and the world.”

“Well said, brother mine; remember, I am with you ever.”

He kissed her, and passed on alone towards the house.

A path betwixt yews led him to the garden below the terrace, a garden redolent of jasmine, lavender, and rose. A thousand flowers upturned their innocent faces at his feet.

Beyond the balustrading of the terrace, with its rampart of red roses, Gabriel saw his father standing in the sun. The old man turned to meet him as he climbed the steps. There was a ruthlessness upon his stubborn face, an arrogance in his stout, stolid manner. John Strong stood out like a patriarch of old, save that there was but little ardor in his keen, gray eyes.

Without one word to his son, and with no outstretching of the hand, he turned towards the library and entered by the open window, Gabriel following him. John Strong locked the door with the composure of a man sure of his own cause.

Father and son faced each other in the silent room. The antique clock measured the moments with unhurried hand. John Strong was the first to open the debate.

“A nice muddle you have made of life,” was his magnanimous decree.

Gabriel, leaning against the carved pillar of the mantel-shelf, regarded his father with a melancholy smile.

“So you believe these lies,” he said, with a twinge of scorn.

John Strong retreated to the library chair before his escritoire and fingered a quill.

“Let me tell you,” he began, “that you have acted like a scoundrel and a blackguard. Son of mine that you are, the evidence of your guilt is overwhelming. What can you plead to lessen you dishonor?”

“That there is no truth in these allusions.”

“Pah! Am I a fool?”

“Has God made you a judge to read truth or evil in the hearts of others?”

Gabriel walked the room behind his father’s chair. The summer sunshine smote into the room, and the incense of flowers perfumed the atmosphere.

“Will you tell me,” said the son, “upon what evidence you base your condemnation?”

“I am not here, sir, to argue.”

“Nor to damn me—like a tyrant.”

John Strong flashed round and stared in his son’s face.

“Come,” he said; “have you had to do with this bawdy rustic, or have you not? There lies the pith of the problem.”

Gabriel faced him, his shoulders squared.

“I remember that you are my father,” he said.

“A rare privilege, it seems.”

“The instincts of a gentleman—”

“Answer my question.”

“—should keep you from dishonorable abuse.”

John Strong’s temper burst its bonds. He sprang up, overturning his chair in the effort, and stood with his gray eyes gleaming under his bushy brows.

“You young fool!” he said—“insolent even in your folly. For this farm wench you have damned your life, shamed your sister, soiled our name. Think of it, you puppy, to wreck your career for—”

Gabriel’s voice, clear yet passionate, rang out, drowning the elder man’s violent refrain. He stood at his full height, defiant and eager.

“Silence! I have heard enough!”

“By Heaven—”

“Silence! You have bullied me over long; I will turn tyrant at the last.”

John Strong’s broad face grew a shade grayer. He mastered the wrath that streamed to his lips, grew calm and deliberate like the hard man that he was. The spirit of the commercial autocrat rose to chasten him. He spoke slowly and distinctly, fixing his hands on the back of a chair.

“Very well,” he said, “I give you one month to leave Saltire. Your house, your furniture, your very servants are mine. You defy me? Very good; go out and starve.”

Gabriel stood with head thrown back, breathing deeply, staring in his father’s face.

“Let it be so,” he said, calmly.

“The remnant of your quarter’s allowance, two hundred pounds, I leave with you. Not another farthing shall you ever draw out of my pocket. Defy me if you will, but, by God, I’ll drive you out of Saltire!”

Gabriel stood a moment as in thought. Then he turned to the window, unlatched it, and stepped out onto the terrace.

“Let it be so,” he said; “I will be pampered no more that I may act a lie.”

When Gabriel had gone, John Strong walked to his escretoire, took down his son’s photograph that stood thereon. Pursing up his lips, he stared at it calmly, tore it into fragments, and threw them into the empty grate.

XXXIV

IT was evening at The Friary, and in the garden under the cypresses and oaks Gabriel watched the sun sink towards the sea. There was great bitterness in the man’s heart, the bitterness of one whom the world had wronged.

By all reasonable law moral bankruptcy should have overwhelmed Gabriel that day. Public obloquy had been loosed upon his head; Saltire would point the finger of scorn at him; the mob would jeer and squeak over his shame. He was to be an outcast, an Adam driven by the Saltire seraphs from their fair Eden of charity and truth.

Yet the outcast was discovering his manhood amid the anathemas of his neighbors. He was one of those souls who are never stirred to the higher courage save by the heavier scourgings of misfortune. Luxury had enervated him, and as a Sybarite he had forfeited his own manhood. Battle had set the strong blood spinning in his heart, and he had sufficient of the Norse spirit left in him to set sail and dare the storm.

His thoughts that evening were for Joan and the dishonor that had descended upon her name. Though her heroism had pardoned him, he had no pardon for his own heart. His father’s iconoclasm had been no great doom to him. He had foreshadowed the worst after his last parley with his wife. It was the future that troubled him that evening, the future streaked with foam like a stormy sea. Joan’s heart was his. It was Gabriel’s thought that night how best he could casket this treasure against the world.

As the west darkened he entered the library by the garden window, and lit the lamp with his own hands. The immediate purpose to abandon Saltire was as iron in his mind. His needs should not be beholden for a day to his father’s exchequer. The two hundred pounds he would reserve for a season, but he would refund the sum when the chance served him.

He unlocked his desk, sorted his letters, bound Joan’s in a bundle and laid them against his heart. As for the minor records of Mammon, he set them in order, a sinister legacy dedicated to his father’s care. He constructed a list of his small possessions, his books, his personal belongings, the presents of his friends. He had determined to claim but little as his own. Lastly, he took Ophelia’s letters from their drawer, tore them in fragments, burned them as a sacrifice to the future good of his soul.

The night was calm and placid, the sky ablaze with stars. A great silence pervaded the house, a silence figurative of Gabriel’s fortune. He was utterly alone, nor did the solitude grieve him, for he had his thoughts. Joan, in the spirit, stood ever at his elbow. On the morrow he would ride towards Rilchester and speak with her. Together they would take counsel of the Great Father and their own hearts, that Love might show to them the dawn-star of the future.

It was verging on midnight, and Gabriel was still writing at his desk when he heard a sound as of footsteps on the gravel-path. He straightened in his chair and listened. The French window stood open, showing a faint, silvery sky and the deep gloom of the summer garden. A shadow stole suddenly into the stream of light. The man started up and moved towards the window. A figure dawned to him out of the dusk, the tall, slim figure of Joan Gildersedge.

Gabriel gave a sudden cry.

“Joan!”

She came in to him, a cloak over her shoulders, her hat carried in her hand. The light glimmered on her hair. Her dress was damp with dew, her face white and strained, her eyes full of a strange despair.

“Joan!”

She tottered in as though weary even to death. Gabriel sprang to her, thrust forward a chair. She sank into it, her hands hanging limply over her knees, her head thrown back so that her white throat showed to the collar of her dress.

“What has happened?”

He bent over her with a great gesture of tenderness and gazed into her face.

“Gabriel!”

“Speak!”

She caught her breath, pressed a hand over her heart, spoke hurriedly and huskily, like one faint with suffering.

“To-night my father had a letter,” she said, “a letter with a great red seal. What was in it, Heaven only can declare. Ah! he was furious, mad—he raved at me—”

She faltered and drooped. Gabriel bent to her; his arm went about her shoulders, his face overhung hers.

“Yes, yes!”

“He raved at me, such words I cannot speak them nor understand—”

“Joan!”

“He turned me from the house.”

“Joan!”

“I have come to you.”

The man stood back from her, white to the lips, his eyes strangely bright as he stared out into the gloom of the garden. A thousand clarions seemed sounding in his brain, a thousand roses burning in the night. The silence between them was as the calm before some passionate burst of song.

Joan was the first to speak again.

“Gabriel!” she said.

“Ah!”

“You will not fail me?”

The blood flooded to Gabriel’s face; he strode forward, held out both his hands. The girl rose and came to him with a great light shining in her eyes. Her cloak fell from her shoulders as she hung in the man’s arms.

“Gabriel, what could I do?”

“This is God’s desire.”

“You will not turn me away?”

“My life, are you not mine? We will face the world together.”

She lay heavy in his arms, as though her whole soul hung upon his strength. Presently she turned her face to his and he kissed her upon the lips. For a while there was silence between them. Then Gabriel lifted up his hand like one who makes a vow to Heaven.

“God judge me,” he said—“I had not worked for this. The world has outraged us; so be it; I defy the world! Henceforth I fling away my rotten reputation and my friends. Let all the fantasies of fools be dust! Lover and beloved, we will go out together into the night!”