Chapter III: Part 3

"Permit me to say that I don't believe you are really frightened of anybody in the world," observed Tristram smiling.

"Tristram, how can you say so! I am dust and ashes before Papa when he is really cross--and terrified of you, when you are in your conscience mood.--Is there anyone else?"

"We are short of ladies, and I thought it would interest M. de la Roche-Guyon to meet the Trenchards, who are staying just now with their aunt, so I shall ask her to come and bring them."

"Very nice," murmured the Rector. "Beautiful girls, if they are like their elder sisters--though, of course, none of them could ever compare with their step-sister, the French one."

Horatia turned to Armand, who had been sitting unusually silent. "Doesn't it flatter you, Monsieur, that Papa's ideal woman should be French?"

"Mademoiselle," returned the Comte instantly, with an inclination, "our ideal women are always of another nationality than our own!"

Tristram got up. "Well, we must be getting on, if that is settled, and you can both come on Saturday." M. de la Roche-Guyon also rose, very slowly.

"No, Tristram," interjected the Rector, laying hold of his arm, "you positively must stay ten minutes, because I've had this letter from Liverpool about James Stack and his wife emigrating to Canada. I had thought I should be able to get them off almost at once, but the shipping company say--there, you'd better see it." He fumbled in his pockets. "Horatia, suppose you take M. de la Roche-Guyon into the garden for five minutes."

Horatia was preceding the guest down the path when he said softly behind her: "There are advantages, after all, in Canada's having passed into English hands. As a Frenchman, I never expected to admit them."

"Why, what"--began Miss Grenville, stopping, and then suddenly finding his meaning quite clear. She coloured, was angry with herself, and tried to retrieve her slip by saying, "Papa has helped two or three of the parish to emigrate out there."

Armand was now walking beside her, along the line of flowers where autumn had begun to lay a hand in the week that had passed since he had sat there. But he showed no disposition to follow up his sally. On the contrary he looked rather moody, almost cross. It was a new phase. And after a moment or two he said, kicking a stone along the path:

"I am not looking forward to this dinner-party, Mademoiselle. Mr. Hungerford is too kind. What have you and I to do with these grave persons? _I_ don't know Hebrew!"

It was new to Horatia to be classed among the more frivolous portion of an assembly, and classed there by, and in conjunction with, a young man. "Ah, but you forget the Trenchard girls," she said lightly. "They do not know Hebrew either, and they are very pretty. Their mother is French; have you not heard about them?"

"Mr. Hungerford told me something, but I am afraid I did not listen; I was not interested."

"But you ought to be interested. It is rather romantic. Their mother, when she was quite young, was a lady-in-waiting to Madame Elisabeth. She fled to England, and her lover--who was a Frenchman, of course--fought through the Vendean war and came to England and married her. But next year he went back with the expedition to Quiberon, and was killed there. I can't remember his name. Then she married Mr. Trenchard, a Suffolk squire, and had several children, I think about eight--anyhow Trenchards have been staying here with Mrs. Willoughby, who is Mr. Trenchard's sister, ever since I can remember. And once I saw Mrs. Trenchard herself; somehow she did not look as if she had been through all those things as a girl."

Her hearer lent her sufficient interest, at any rate he was looking at her, a tiny frown between his dark eyebrows. "But you spoke of another daughter?"

"The child of the Vendean--born after his death, I believe. I never saw her. But Papa remembers her; more beautiful and gracious than one can possibly imagine, he says. She went into a convent in Rome."

M. de la Roche-Guyon said nothing, and having come to the end of the path Horatia stooped to a late rose in the border. She was finding his evident ill-humour oddly disturbing.

"Let us speak of the ball on Monday--my last day," he said watching her. "How many dances will you vouchsafe me--in the cause of charity?"

And Miss Grenville, plucking the wet rose, found herself replying, to her no small amazement:

"That depends on Mr. Hungerford."

"Comment!" exclaimed the young Frenchman, stepping backwards. "Mais, juste ciel, il n'est pas votre fiance!" His eyes blazed at her, and he had quite perceptibly paled; it was obvious that he was unaware of his lapse into his own tongue.

"Certainly not," replied Horatia with dignity. (She had been right about his eyes; they could look fury.) "But he is a very old friend and kinsman, and we always arrange to dance so many together."

Armand de la Roche-Guyon made a gesture, and smiled, quite sweetly. "I understand--mais parfaitement! Comme vous etes femme ... adorablement femme!" He touched her hand a second, and Tristram and the Rector came down the path.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*(1)*

Mr. Hungerford's little dinner-party had gone the way of all dinner-parties. The Rector had pronounced it, from his point of view, a decided success. "A most enjoyable evening, my dear," he said to Horatia, as they were driving home. "Whatever else that man Dormer of Oriel is or is not, he is a brilliant talker when he pleases. And I had a good talk with Edward Pusey afterwards in the drawing-room. The Arabic catalogue at the Bodleian is a colossal piece of work, but from what he told me I think his plans are too ambitious--not beyond his scholarship, mark you, but beyond his physical strength. He confessed to me that he sometimes almost envied the bricklayers whom he saw at work in the streets, the drudgery was so great."

"But Mr. Pusey is a young man, and he needn't make Arabic catalogues unless he wants to," Horatia had responded rather unsympathetically. For she had not found the party so delightful. She had been taken in by Mr. Pusey, and though Armand de la Roche-Guyon sat on her other hand, his partner, Miss Arabella Trenchard, had talked to him a great deal, and he had seemed to like it. It was quite natural, of course; he probably liked everybody, and Miss Trenchard was very pretty, much prettier than she herself; so that it was no wonder if M. de la Roche-Guyon had been by no means as bored as he had predicted. But, at all events, he had found his way straight to her in the drawing-room afterwards, and chatted to her ... till Mr. Dormer, showing a most unusual taste for her society, had come and made a third ... and, to be quite just, had talked so delightfully that she almost forgave him the intrusion, at the time. Afterwards, it rankled increasingly.

But now it was Monday morning, the morning of the dance, and Horatia, in the drawing-room putting some asters into a bowl, was aware of being in a state of causeless and febrile excitement. She could not but ask herself what there was in a dance so to excite her; she was not a young girl any more; she had been to many such. Yet she was conscious that this ball was clothed in her imagination with the glamour of an untasted pleasure, and that the thought of it was like some splendid palace built on the edge of a precipice, beyond which there was nothing.

She had just carried the bowl to the mantel-shelf when, without warning, M. de la Roche-Guyon was announced to her. Horatia was startled, almost discomposed, and the vessel, which was "Wheatsheaf" Bow, narrowly escaped destruction.

"Mr. Hungerford sent me with a note," said the young Frenchman apologetically. "That is my excuse for deranging you so early, Mademoiselle; you must forgive me. It is about to-night."

She took the letter and read:

"My dear Horatia,--

"I am obliged to go into Oxford this evening to meet Mr. Rose, a man from Cambridge, at Dormer's rooms, and cannot possibly return in time for the Charity Ball; in fact I shall have to spend the night in Oxford. Would you and the Rector be so kind as to consider M. de la Roche-Guyon as of your party? There is of course no need for him actually to accompany you. It is most unfortunate that this summons should have come just now, and that I must reluctantly forgo an evening to which I had looked forward with so much pleasure. I shall come to dinner, if I may, when I am at liberty, and make my apologies to you in person.--T.H."

Miss Grenville, on reading these lines, stamped her foot.

"How tiresome, O how tiresome! Why could not Tristram have gone to Oxford any other night!"

"You are sorry that Mr. Hungerford cannot come to the dance?" inquired the Comte, who seemed already acquainted with the purport of the note.

"Why, of course!" flashed Horatia, out of her burst of indignation. "Are you, then, glad of it, Monsieur?"

"In one sense, yes," replied M. de la Roche-Guyon coolly. "Because now I can ask for the dances of your kinsman as well as for my own."

Miss Grenville saw fit to take no notice of this sentiment, continuing along her own line of thought.

"How like Mr. Dormer! Everything must give way to what Mr. Dormer arranges and wishes. I have no patience with it--I am sure you do not like him either!"

"Mon Dieu, I should think I did not," replied the young man warmly, "considering that he spoilt my evening on Saturday! He might have left us that quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. I could almost believe that he did it on purpose.... No, Mr. Dormer does not amuse me."

"You have seen a good deal of him," said Horatia, restored to good humour, for she discerned a common feeling.

Armand made something of a grimace. "Mr. Hungerford has been kind enough to take me to see him twice. I do not like priests. They know too much."

"But Mr. Dormer is not a priest," returned Horatia, half amused.

"Well, perhaps not, mais il en a l'air, and he needs only the ... what is it, la soutane?--the cassock, yes, and the sash that the delusion should be complete. Besides, he has the book."

"What book?" asked Horatia, mystified.

"The priest's book, the breviary. It was lying open on his table when we went in to see him at the college of Oriel. Almost I fancied myself chez Monsignor de la Roche-Guyon, my cousin."

"Oh, I understand!" said Horatia. "He is translating some of the hymns from the Paris Breviary--why, I don't know. I think I remember Tristram telling me about it in the spring. Mr. Dormer and several of the other Fellows at Oriel are what is known as High Church, and they are always doing queer things."

"High Church?" queried the young Frenchman, "what is that? And what queer things is it that they do?"

"Oh, it's so boring," said Miss Grenville wearily. "They think the Church of England is in danger; I don't know why, for it has gone on comfortably enough all these years without them. So they meet and talk a great deal about it--in fact, that is no doubt why Tristram has so tiresomely to go into Oxford this evening--fresh alarums and excursions, I expect... Papa was very much shocked when he heard Mr. Froude say that the Reformation was a mistake, but when I told him afterwards that I thought they had better all turn Papists, and have done with it, he didn't like that either ... O forgive me! What have I said!" The colour rushed over her face. "I had forgotten for the moment; of course you are a Catholic yourself."

"But I had rather that you forgot it," exclaimed the young Frenchman, with an expressive gesture. "I am a Catholic, it is true, because--well, because one has to be. Royalism and the Church stand together; but I am not devout--pray do not think so!"

Horatia hastened to assure him that she had never suspected him of this, and they both laughed.

When he had gone she went upstairs and looked at the gown that she was to wear that night to dance in the palace which would crumble to ruins at daybreak.

*(2)*

The aching elbows of the fiddlers had several times been eased by surreptitious potations; the candles were beginning to gutter, chaperons' heads to nod sleepily. A light dust hung in the air from the action of so many pairs of twinkling feet upon the beeswax, and the Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville was distinctly conscious of a desire for his bed. Nor did the converse in which he was entangled with an elderly entomologist staying in the neighbourhood really reconcile him to sitting through so many quadrilles and country dances--to hearing selections from _La Gazza Ladra_ give place to _Basque Roads_, _Der Freischuetz_ to _Drops of Brandy_. The Rector had no enthusiasm for lepidoptera, and he could by no means get the collector of beetles to listen to his own views on monoliths. Not inappropriately did the entomologist discourse of the butterflies of Berkshire, its obscurer moths, in this big room cleared for the Charity Ball and full of a throng as bright and moving, but the scientific mind does not unbend to these analogies, and it might have been conjectured that he did not even see the fair guests had he not, during a waltz, suddenly inquired:

"Who is that extremely attractive young lady dancing with the French count--there, in yellow--a prodigious fine dancer?"

Probably one of the Trenchard girls, thought the Rector, and looked. But no! He pursed his lips. "That is my daughter," quoth he.

"Dear, dear," observed the entomologist, human after all, and he put on his glasses the better to observe the phenomenon. "My dear Mr. Grenville, I congratulate you, I do indeed. A most charming girl."

Flushed and smiling, Horatia whirled slowly past. No need to ask if she found her partner congenial. The Rector's eyes followed the couple, and it began to dawn upon him that he had been thus following them, unconsciously, a good many times that evening. Was this really so? Even as the question occurred to him, the Squire, beaming in his blue, gilt-buttoned evening coat, appeared on his other side.

"Hallo, Rector," he said cheerfully. "Going well, ain't it? That young French spark seems to be enjoying himself. They make a fine couple, eh?"

"Who do?" asked Mr. Grenville rather unwisely, as the golden dress came past again.

"Why, your girl and he, of course," said the Squire, with all the effect of a wink. "There they go. How would you like her as Madame de--what's the fellow's name?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Mainwaring," said the Rector rather tartly. "We have had to be civil to the young man because he is Hungerford's friend, and no doubt he finds my girl, who speaks French well, is easy to get on with----"

"Yes, especially as his own English is so bad," retorted the Squire grinning. "Well, well, we're only young once. I remember when I first met my wife.... You're not thinking of going before it's over, Rector?"

Mr. Grenville put back his watch. "It is a good deal later than I thought. I told Dawes to be here at twelve o'clock."

No consciousness of eyes paternal, entomological or matronly was on Horatia during that last intoxicating waltz. She loved dancing, and she had danced a good deal, but never with a partner like this.

The music stopped (a little out of tune).

"Are you giddy?" asked Armand tenderly.

"A little," said Horatia, with truth. "It is so hot..."

He drew her hand a little further through his arm. "Here is a doorway. Where does it lead to? Voyons ... ah, the library, and empty. Quelle chance! On est bien ici, n'est-ce pas? See, here is a chair; give me your fan."

But she would not sit down.

"I must go back to Papa."

"Not yet. He will have you all the days, and I have only these so few moments more of you."

"You are really leaving to-morrow?" asked Horatia in a conventional tone.

"Si fait. I return to Lulworth, and thence to Paris. And you will never think of me again."

Horatia did not answer this time, for she found she could not.

Armand stopped fanning. "I shall have only this to remember you by, for I mean to keep it," he said, looking down at the painted ivory in his hand. "Mais il suffira. Yes, I hear them, the violins; il faut s'en aller: il faut se dire adieu.... Nous ne danserons plus ensemble ... Adieu, adieu, toute belle, adieu pour jamais!"

He crushed her hands fiercely to his lips. Her head whirled a second; then she tore them away.

"Please go ... ask Papa to come and fetch me here ... I will not go back into the room...."

He looked at her strangely, almost wildly, but she would not meet his eyes. "Please go," she reiterated faintly, and Armand, suddenly dropping on one knee, put his lips to the hem of her dress--and was gone.

And loud through the strains of _The New-Rigged Ship_, now pouring under the archway, she heard the heartless marching beat of _Joli Tambour_.

"Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
Dans mon pays, y'en a de plus jolies,
Et ran, tan, plan!"

Mr. Grenville hurried in almost immediately, his daughter's cloak on his arm. Horatia was lying back in a big leather chair. She looked curiously white, but roused at once.

"Is that my cloak? Thank you, Papa, very much. It is time to go, is it not, though it is not quite over."

"That is what I was thinking, my dear," said the Rector, putting the swansdown over her. "I believe we have been keeping Dawes waiting. Have you got everything--your gloves, your fan?"

"Everything I want, thank you, Papa."

The old fat horses and the careful Dawes did not devour the five miles that lay between them and home. After a few desultory remarks, both father and daughter relapsed into silence, each in a corner of the barouche. But Horatia had drawn off her gloves, and in the darkness was pulling and twisting them into a rope, endeavouring to keep down the sobs which rose chokingly in her throat. Had anything in the world ever hurt like this? All the while the horses' hoofs beat out the refrain, relentless, and so horribly gay. "Et ran, tan, plan. Et ran, tan, plan!" With all her desperate fight for composure she only succeeded in keeping back the main violence of the storm; the smaller rain-clouds broke despite herself, and, quietly as she wept, the Rector was aware of it.

"My darling, what is it?" he said, putting out a hand to her.

"Nothing," replied Horatia, swallowing the tears. "I am tired ... and stupid ... I danced too much..."

("Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies,
Dans mon pays y'en a de plus jolies!")

"I thought you looked tired, my love," replied Mr. Grenville, exceedingly alarmed but (he hoped) tactful. "I heard one or two people saying that the floor was not good. Come, child, put your head here; perhaps you will be more comfortable; and we shall soon be home."

Whether or no he knew why she wept, Horatia could not resist the kind voice, and all the rest of the way her elaborately dressed head lay against her father's shoulder.

She kissed him silently when they got in. No, she did not want her maid. Again she repeated that she was only tired; she would be all right in the morning, and so went to her room.

Fool, fool, that he had been! But what had happened? At any rate they had not come to an understanding; that was obvious. And, thank God, the young man was going away to-morrow. But he could not bear to see her suffer. Twice he went and listened shame-facedly at her door; she was sobbing, sobbing as if her heart would break--she who never cried! At dawn, when the birds were twittering, he went again; she was quiet. He prayed God she slept. It was more than he could do.

*CHAPTER IX*

*(1)*

The Rector breakfasted alone next morning. Miss Horatia was very tired; she might not be down till the afternoon; she would sleep if she could. Recognising this as an indication that she did not wish for a visit from him, Mr. Grenville with a heavy heart tried, in succession, to tackle his next Sunday's sermon, to furbish up an old one, to read the violent article on Clerical Farmers in the last number of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, to compose an answer to it, and to rearrange some of his coins. In the afternoon he had to attend a meeting of magistrates at a distance. He wondered if he should see Horatia before he started. Never before had a dance kept her in bed next morning.

Just as the gig came round for him she appeared, wearing a hat and carrying a basket. All traces of last night's emotion had vanished.

"Good morning, or rather, good afternoon, dear Papa," she said very cheerfully, kissing him. "Am I not late? But I was so tired last night. Where are you going to? Oh, I had forgotten. _I_ am going to old Mrs. Dawes; and if there are any blackberries ripe I shall take her some. She says they are good for the rheumatics. I don't believe her. Good-bye, darling...."

The wheels of the gig grated on the drive, and Mr. Grenville turned round to wave a farewell, but without his usual smile. He looked worried, poor dear. How could she best efface the memory of last night's self-betrayal from his mind? Obviously best by a cheerful, a very cheerful demeanour, such as she had already attempted. She had forgotten in truth that her father was going to this meeting; there was then no need for her to leave the house this afternoon--her motive in so doing being to gain a little respite before he should question her, as he very well might. But since she had told him that she was going, go she would. As well begin the usual life at once. Mrs. Dawes would detail her symptoms at length, and that would serve as a temporary distraction.

This indeed the old dame did with much thoroughness and repetition, after which she seemed disposed for general conversation.

"That there French count, Miss; a likely young gentleman, I hears; he be gone from these parts now, bain't he?"

"I believe so," said Horatia. "But you were telling me about your grandson?"

"John, he seed him riding droo the village on Mr. 'Ungerford's 'orse," pursued Mrs. Dawes, not to be turned aside. "He ride proper, John says; and he wur surprised fit to bust hisself, John wur."

"Why?"

"The Count being a foreigner, Miss, and a Papist. I don't hold with no foreigners; a bloody-minded set, I calls 'em. Look at that Bonyparty as cut off the 'eads of the King and Queen of France. I mind how the year that you was born, Miss 'Oratia..."

It was nearly six o'clock when Horatia emerged from Mrs. Dawes' cottage. She was surprised to find the invasion of twilight already begun, and an enormous yellow moon looking at her through the tree-trunks. Yet she was in no haste to return home, but loitered along the road, picking a few blackberries as she went. One or two villagers passed her, and their evening salutations rang heartily on the still air. "Rector, he'll be having a rare treat to-morrow," was the comment of one, but Horatia overheard Whitehead, the smith, a melancholy personage, who passed at the same time, opine that, "them berries was mortal bad for the innards, and did get in atween a man's teeth like so much grit."

After him there was silence; only a few far-away sounds from the village reached her. The grass at the edge of the road was already damp. It was time to return.

In the Rectory the lamps would be lighted; her father would be back, and he, who always heard her step, would come out of his study and say, "Well, my dear, and how is Mrs. Dawes?" It would be chilly enough to have a fire after supper, and she would sit with him, and talk to him; or, if he had not finished his letters, she would go on with the last series of _The Tales of a Grandfather_. And Dash, on the hearthrug, would whimper in his sleep because he had dreams of rabbits which he never caught....

And it would be the same to-morrow, and the next day. Once she had loved it--that other Horatia only a few days dead, who seemed so strange to her now, had chosen it. Now ... how should she bear it! how should she bear it!

She moved on very slowly. Strange, dim scents came out of the hedgerows; a bird fluttered in an elder-bush. How early the moon was rising! The sky just overhead seemed still the sky of day. It was pain, this peace and beauty ... and it was not peace. The quiet country lane, the pure, still sky, were all athrill with expectation.

Or was it she herself? But what had she to expect? Nothing--nothing again, for ever.

... So they had noticed how well he rode--foolish, oddly comforting reflection. She thought how he had passed her on Tristram's horse that afternoon--only a fortnight ago--how he had ridden into her life, and out of it again. That was a romantic phrase and delightful to read in a book, but in real life it had no glamour; the fact enshrined in it was too bitingly real. Unwanted, unsummoned, there came into her head--

"It was a' for our rightfu' King
We left fair Scotland's strand;
It was a' for our rightfu' King
We e'er saw Irish land,
My dear--
We e'er saw Irish land.

"He turn'd him right and round about
Upon the Irish shore;
And gae his bridle-reins a shake,
With, Adieu for evermore,
My dear--
With, Adieu for evermore!"

And on the heels of the lines, a mocking commentary, came floating Sir Walter's version--

"A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green--
No more of me ye knew,
My Love!
No more of me ye knew!"

Yes, that was all she had known ... O, how foolish, foolish she was--a silly sentimental girl of the kind that she most despised! Yet, if only she had never seen him!

And at that moment Armand de la Roche-Guyon came round the corner of the road.

Horatia stood still, petrified. It was as if her thoughts had taken body, for he was gone--how could he be here ... walking rapidly towards her like this, bareheaded--flesh and blood. Before her heart had recovered its broken pulsations he was up to her.

"What, are you not gone?" she faltered.

"They told me you had walked this way," he said rapidly in his own tongue. "I have been to the Rectory; you were not there. I could not go--mon Dieu, I could not go.... Give me your basket; let us go back by the field path; it is close here."

She gave him the basket without a word, suffocated by the tumult in her heart, and dominated by the change in him, by the ardour and purpose which radiated from him, making him seem taller and even more desirable. He had the air of a young conqueror; but he was unsmiling, which was rare. Now she knew what the night had been trying to tell her....

They came in a moment to the gap in the hedge, by the oak-tree, an unauthorised way of attaining the field-path. It seemed right that he should know of it, though little less than a miracle. He held aside the twigs and brambles so that she could pass. And when she had stepped through everything was clear to her, and she knew that in entering the shorn September field, lit with its low yellow moon, she had come into another country, dazzlingly strange, but her inheritance, her home. She half turned, and was caught in Armand's arms, her lips to his; and thus, beneath a tree, in the gloaming, like any village girl, did Horatia Grenville, who cared not for love, give and receive her first kiss.

Behind her, for a wonder and a benediction, hung the great luminous shield of the harvest moon, and the scattered blackberries lay among the leaves and stubble, like a sacrifice to joys unfathomed.

*CHAPTER X*

*(1)*

The parting guest, unless he be a dear friend, is generally a persona grata to his host. Tristram Hungerford was rather ashamed of the sensation of relief with which he had faced his visitor at the breakfast table this morning, for the Comte de la Roche-Guyon had proved himself throughout his stay uniformly agreeable, lively, and anxious to please. But the elder man was only too conscious of their slender basis of common interests, and, though himself anything but taciturn, he was, like most people who live alone, physically incapable of talking all day without pause, and found the society of those persons so gifted (among whom Armand de la Roche-Guyon appeared to be numbered) rather fatiguing.

Moreover, he had not expected to find himself facing him at all this morning across the coffee-cups. When he had returned from Oxford yesterday morning, the morning after the dance, expecting to speed his guest on his way, he had been met by the young man's apologetic request to be allowed to stay another night if convenient to his host. He had heard from his father and there were reasons ... Tristram made the only answer open to him, premising however that, thinking he should be alone that night, he had unfortunately engaged himself to dine at Faringdon, and would not be home till late. Armand would consequently, he feared, have a solitary dinner unless indeed he were to go over to Compton Rectory. The Comte replied that he might conceivably walk over in the afternoon to pay his respects, but that he did not expect to be asked to dinner. And indeed he had set off in that direction a little before Tristram started for Faringdon.

But when Tristram returned from his dinner party, rather late in the evening, he found that the Frenchman had already gone to bed, and being himself tired, did not altogether regret this. And this morning, whether from a sleepless night, or any other cause, Armand was much less talkative than usual; he looked thoughtful and rather pale, and now, when the after-breakfast ease of two males devoid of the cares of housekeeping was about to descend upon them, he seemed unusually preoccupied.

"I am afraid, La Roche-Guyon, that you had a bad night," said Tristram, as he rose from the table. "It was remiss of me not to have asked you earlier. You were not indisposed yesterday evening, I trust?"

"On the contrary," replied his guest somewhat cryptically. A gleam passed over his face, but Tristram, who was hunting on the mantelpiece for the key of the clock, did not see it. "I had the best night of my life."

"I am glad to hear it," replied his host. "But I am extremely sorry that I cannot drive or send you into Oxford to catch the coach. I pretty well knocked up both my horses yesterday."

"Pray not to think of it," said Armand politely. "I have made arrangements to post from the _Fox_. Already you have been too kind in taking me so many times to Oxford.... And now I have to beg of you another kindness."

"I am at your service," said Tristram, finding and inserting the key.

"Vous etes bien bon," said the Comte, his English suddenly deserting him. "C'est que----" He broke off, walked over to the window, and there, taking hold of the tassel of the curtain-cord, said, with more composure:

"The fact is, that Miss Grenville has promised to marry me. And as M. le Recteur, when I saw him yesterday evening, did not appear very much to like the idea, I was obliged to refer him to you. I told him that you could speak for me if you would--that you knew my family, and that I am not a--what do you call it--impostor, as he seemed to think.... It was that which I said to him."

He ceased, and in Tristram's head the ticks of the half-resuscitated clock rang like gongs.

"I do not wonder that you are surprised," went on Armand, in his pleasant voice, and in more and more shaky English. "But I am mad with love of her since the day we meet--tiens, I have thought sometimes that you remarked it--and she ... well, she has consented to be my wife. You may guess if I think myself to be the most fortunate man on earth..." He said more; Tristram did not hear it. But he at last forced himself to turn round, and saw the speaker standing there against the window.

"When did this happen?" he asked--or someone asked.

"Yesterday evening. It was why I stayed--I must avow it to you, my friend. First I go to the Rectory--no one is there; they tell me Miss Grenville visits a cottage. I too go to the cottage, and meet her in the lane----."

"What do you want me to do?"

Armand made a gesture. "To use your good offices for me with M. le Recteur. He was not very polite. He thinks that I am not sufficient of a parti. Mais, figurez-vous bien that on the contrary I shall have work enough to persuade my father to a foreign marriage, even with so divine a creature, and as well-born----"

Tristram was never to know whether he would have succeeded in keeping indefinitely his self-command, for at that moment his housekeeper fortunately entered to tell them that the _Fox_ had just sent to say that they had no post-horses this morning, there having been some mistake about the order yesterday.

Out of the maze of shock and anguish one thing was plain to Tristram, that to have Armand's presence further inflicted upon him was intolerable. "After all, my horses----" he began, but the Frenchman cut him short.

"No, not for worlds! I will go round to the _Fox_ at once myself. In these cases of 'no post-horses' it is always only a question of money. More than ever must I now go quickly to Lulworth--to get my father's consent," he added in French for the sole benefit of his host, and vanished.

So _this_ was Horatia's choice! Tristram stumbled to a chair and covered his face. Coffee-pot and empty cups witnessed the wreck of hopes that might well have had a more tragic setting.

*(2)*

The door opening noisily brought Tristram almost immediately after to his feet. The intruder was the Hon. and Rev. Stephen Grenville, unannounced, short of breath, and angry as Tristram had never seen him.

He shut the door and looked round with positive ferocity.

"Is that young scamp here?"

Tristram regarded him dizzily. "No ... I don't think so," he answered, as if he were not quite sure.

"Do you know what has happened?" demanded Mr. Grenville. "Yes, I can see that you do! That foreigner of yours had the impudence to walk into my study last night and ask for my consent to his marriage with Horatia--Horatia!" The Rector became momentarily speechless. "This young adventurer, who has been here a fortnight, has the audacity to say he is going to marry my daughter!" He flung himself down in a chair.

"It was only last night, then, as he says?"

"Yes, it happened last night, but it goes further back than that. My eyes were opened after the dance the night before last, when she gave him I don't know how many dances, and they disappeared together at the end. Why on earth did you choose that evening to go to Oxford? I took her home, and then in the carriage she began to cry--said she was tired. I didn't sleep a wink that night, but I congratulated myself that the spark was off yesterday. Imagine my surprise when they walked in together yesterday evening, and he tells me as cool as you please that it is natural I should be surprised, but that you would vouch for him!--Why can't you say something, man?"

"What does Horatia say?" asked Tristram, very white.

"Don't speak to me about Horatia!" cried the irate parent. "I ought to have shut her up with bread and water. I have spoilt her, and this is the outcome of it. And as for you--I can't think why you ever brought a Frenchman about the place!"

Before Tristram could reply to this thrust the Frenchman in question came hastily in, equipped, as was evident, for an immediate start, a cloak over his arm, his hat in his hand.

"I regret that I have to go at once--but at once!" he said to Tristram. "Ah! pardon, M. le Recteur, I did not observe you"--though the bound with which Mr. Grenville had quitted his chair must have rendered him hard to overlook.--"Excuse me that I take leave of my kind host. It seems," he went on, turning to that individual, "that the horses I have procured are old and slow, and that to catch the coach from Oxford I must start immediately. So, with a thousand apologies----"

"Understand, Sir," interrupted the Rector in high wrath, "that I will not entertain your proposal for an instant, and that I forbid you to come near my house!"

The Comte de la Roche-Guyon transferred his attention to the angry cleric. "Mais parfaitement, Monsieur," he responded with a bland little bow. "I should not dream of entering your house again until I have the consent of my father to the alliance. I go at once to Lulworth in the hope of obtaining that consent. It was not, indeed, what I should have wished, to speak to your daughter before approaching you, but, as I had the honour of telling you last night, Monsieur, I did seek to ask your permission first, but you were out, and time was short. Enfin, when I come again I trust it will be more en regle. Meanwhile, I am your humble servant." He made the Rector another, more formal, valedictory bow, and advanced upon Tristram.

"I know that I leave my cause in good hands," he said gracefully. "Cher ami, for that, as for your hospitality, I shall be your debtor for life. But you English do not like speeches, I know, and time presses..."

As much to prevent a second ebullition of Mr. Grenville's wrath as because time pressed the cher ami hastened with his guest from the room. A few last directions from himself, a smile or two from Armand, a shake of the hand, and the man who had so lightly taken his happiness from him was gone, confident, easy, and attractive to the last.

When Tristram came back into the dining-room the Rector was still standing thunderstruck on the hearth-rug.

"Well!" he ejaculated pregnantly, "for sheer impudence commend me to one of that nation!"

Tristram sat wearily down without replying to this cry of the heart, and there was silence, broken only by a sort of soliloquy on the Rector's part, on the blindness which had been his--and Tristram's.

"Couldn't you see it coming, Tristram?" he repeated. "Although I was such a fool, couldn't _you_ see it. But there, they say Love is blind. It must be, or you would never have ... have..."

"Have thrown them together," finished Tristram bitterly. "Is there any need to tell you that in my wildest moments I could never have conceived of such a thing? I saw that he admired her and paid her compliments, as he might any--perhaps every--woman, but to me he was ... just negligible. He was welcome to pay court to her, if she liked it, because ... because I could not dream that she..."

"There's nothing in that!" said the Rector briefly. "With women you never can tell. But, of course, it is impossible that it should be allowed to go on. You must come back with me, Tristram. You at least have influence with her. I have never yet forbidden her anything--it has never been my way--and I would rather she came to it of herself."

Colour shot into the younger man's face. "I would do anything to help you, Sir, and much more to help Horatia; but I can't do that--not yet."

Mr. Grenville looked away from him. "God bless my soul, what a selfish brute I am ... But come now, my dear boy, once he's gone it will be all right. Horatia will settle down. It's only a passing fancy; of that I feel certain. I have never known her other than sensible. She will see that it's out of the question.--You don't agree with me, eh?"

"From what I know of Horatia, I am afraid that I don't."

"But you are going to propose to her yourself!" said the Rector in accents of amazement, slewing round in his chair.

Out of his pain Tristram showed his own surprise. "No, not now; it's impossible."

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mr. Grenville with great directness. "Then I shall tell her myself."

"Mr. Grenville, I beg of you, I implore you not to do such a thing!" exclaimed the young man in agitation. "It is useless; worse than useless. It would only grieve her kind heart. How little chance could I have ever had! She has--she must have given her love with both hands; I do not think so meanly of her as to imagine that she could ever transfer it ... a gift so priceless," he added to himself.

The Rector pressed his lips together and rose. "Well, I can't understand the present generation. If I had been in your shoes I should have been married to her any time these five years. These reticences and delicacies are beyond me. If a man wants a girl, let him ask for her!"

Tristram smiled a rather dreary smile, thinking that even the successful suitor was not finding this course altogether satisfactory.

"You know I never held your views on persistent courtship, Sir. It would have been better for me, perhaps, if I had ... But this I will do, for Horatia's own sake: I will come over directly I can, and I will try my best to show her that there are ... difficulties ... to take into consideration. But I warn you that if I think it is for her happiness I shall oppose you, Mr. Grenville. I would get her the moon if she wanted it!"

And the sudden passion of this last utterance left Horatia's father dumb.

*CHAPTER XI*

*(1)*

Not only the slumber proper to the Long Vacation, but the particular drowsy calm of the afternoon hung that day in sunlight over Oriel. In his lodge at the gate the porter dozed peaceably over _Jackson's Oxford Journal_; and, owing to this charmed sleep, a stray black spaniel, of an architectural turn of mind, who had now for half an hour or so been exploring both quadrangles, was at this moment seated quietly in the outer, in front of that porch which distinguishes Oriel from all other colleges, appearing to meditate, in the intervals of scratching himself, on the characteristics of Oxford Gothic, or to admire the few plants in pots, relics of the summer term, ranked down the steps against the wall. Across this porch the September sun cut diagonally, so that half the statue of the Virgin above it was in shade, and one of the two Kings beneath her, and the shadow of the gables from the gateway front lay in sloping battlements on the gravel. Merton tower, looking down over the long roof with its air of being part of the same building, was still in full sunlight, like the Provost's lodgings on the north side of the quadrangle, but, save the slowly creeping shadows, the spaniel was the only living thing visible in the sleepy peace which no undergraduate clamour had disturbed for three months past. Such Fellows as were in residence were out walking or riding--all but two. The porter, if roused, could have told an inquirer--as he was shortly to tell Tristram--that Mr. Dormer was in his rooms; that he was working very hard, he believed, and had not been out of college, let alone on a horse, for three days. Up the staircase on the right--not that he gave this unnecessary indication to Mr. Hungerford.

But at the present moment, though Tristram's friend was sitting at his manuscript-strewn writing-table, he was not working; he was leaning back in his tall chair, seeming not a little exhausted. Those who looked at Charles Dormer's face only once were apt, on that first impression, to think it refined to the point of femininity. But they never said so a second time. Somewhat unnaturally thin for a young man of thirty, it spoke of an early-learnt self-control, of ardour in leash and a very sensitive endurance, the whole touched with a kind of angelic severity and force. The eyes were kinder than the mouth, and if the expression suggested possibilities of relentlessness, it indicated still more clearly against whom that relentlessness would chiefly be directed--probably for some years had already been directed--Charles Dormer. But since to these less popular attributes the young Fellow joined a general physical exterior of unusual distinction, he did not meet with any marked success in his constant endeavour to make himself out quite an ordinary person. People were only too ready to see in him the ancestor who fell for the King at Newbury, and Tristram, when he wished genuinely to annoy him, had merely to repeat the effusive remarks on his appearance which he had the fortune to overhear from some fair lips one Commemoration. Mr. Dormer of Oriel had no use for the externals of romance.

*(2)*

Axe, going leisurely through her pastures to the sea, had known continually, as the old century died and the new was born, the laughter and noise of a tribe of beautiful and healthy children, who raced in her meadows, fished in her waters, and dwelt upon the banks of her daughter Coly. All the Axe valley, indeed, knew Mr. Dormer of Colyton, and his handsome sons. His beautiful and delicate wife they knew less. Mr. Dormer, genial hard-riding gentleman that he was, came of Non-juring stock, long since conformed to the Establishment; his wife, of like origin, had all the piety and devotion proper to a spiritual descendant of Andrewes and Ken, coupled with a strong tendency to mysticism.

Mary Dormer, indeed, might in any other country or age have been a nun. As it was, she had borne five children to the husband who reverenced her as a saint, and only one quarter understood her. But as at last her extreme and increasing delicacy shut her off from the more ordinary family cares, she was able to lead in her seclusion a life not unlike the cloistered. All her sons resembled their father in temperament and shared his interests--all but one. Nature had bestowed on Mary Dormer's youngest child a measure of her delicacy but even more of her spirit. So when Henry, who intended to be a great soldier, like him of Blenheim and Malplaquet, who had spent his boyhood here at Ashe House, when Christopher, who would be a sailor, if he did not meanwhile drown himself either in Axe or on Seaton shore, when Robert, the most turbulent of all, who was destined for the Bar--when all these elder brothers, brimming with spirits, set forth on some neck-breaking expedition, little Charles was left contentedly with his mother. Mr. Dormer would sometimes grumblingly predict that his youngest boy would grow up a milksop, the others occasionally tease him for a mother's darling, but since the child, when he was big enough, could sit a horse rather better, if anything, than his elders, and was extraordinarily lucky with a fishing-rod, his brothers were forced to render him the tribute of a slightly grudging admiration for a prowess that cost him so little pains.

Yet, to the mind of the child who did these things with such ease and gaiety, the world he knew was little different from the Garden of Eden, or from that celestial city of which the particulars were familiar to him from the old hymn, in the faded seventeenth century writing, which his mother read to him till he knew it by heart. But there were disparities. "Quite through the streets, with silver sound," said the hymn with precision, yet the Coly put a circling arm around, not through his home. Other resemblances were more exact, their own garden, for instance, where grew, indubitably, the pleasantest flowers that could be seen, and where at least the long straight path between the laurels--"the gallant walk" as he called it,--was, as in Paradise, always green. Still it was pleasant to think that in the heavenly city no "dampish mists" would come up from the sea to prevent his going out whenever he had a mind to, and that David, standing harp in hand as master of the choir, would probably sing more sweetly than his present prototype in Colyton Church. On the other hand it was plain that since "no spider's web, no dirt, no dust, no filth may there be seen," the garden tool-shed and similar attractive places could have no counterpart above.

Accompanied as the child was by his simple and joyous thoughts, it would never have surprised him had he seen the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening, or met an angel as he himself ran singing through the grass and flowers on Coly's banks. Perhaps he did. And he supposed that everybody else had the same expectations, but that Christopher and Robert, for instance, did not speak of them because he himself never spoke of them, save to his mother. Nor was he remarkable for obedience. All his after-life he was to struggle with his own masterful will. He fell into the stream by the weir, where he had been straitly charged not to go, and was with difficulty rescued by a brother; he would ride prohibited horses, consort occasionally with forbidden companions; he was at once dreamy and wilful, sweet-tempered and naughty. With all this he seemed to her who knew him best--and who was to him, it must be confessed, more like an elder sister and companion than a mother--such a child as Adam and Eve might have had before the Fall, and it was almost with awe that, as he grew older, she set about teaching him what she knew of Church doctrine, and in particular that belief in the Real Presence which had been miraculously preserved by the few in a materialistic age. Pathetically certain that one day the Church would unearth her neglected treasure, she gave him the Prayer-Book in which that treasure was enshrined, saying so solemnly, "Never let anyone take that away from you, Charles," that for years the boy kept it wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, and lived in expectation of having to do battle for its retention.

Mrs. Dormer died just when Charles was ready to go to school, and at eleven, motherless, he was plunged into the rough and tumble of Eton life. The Garden of Eden was gone for ever, and there was scarcely a sign-post on the way to the Heavenly City. But the child of Mary Dormer had his own pillar of fire to lead him through the wilderness.... Towards the end of his schooldays he met his life-long friend, and together, in 1818, they went up to Oriel.