Front matter

BY

I. A. R. WYLIE

AUTHOR OF "THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE," "MY GERMAN YEAR"

SECOND EDITION

MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 RUPERT STREET LONDON, W.

Published 1911

Copyright 1911 in the United States of America by I. A. R. Wylie

CONTENTS

BOOK I

CHAP.

The Mistakes of Providence

"Wanderlust"

An Experiment

Outward Bound

Among the Heathen

A Letter Home

A Duet

The Awakening

Renunciation

Youth and the Barrier

Wolff makes his Debut in Delford

Nora Forsakes Her Country

BOOK II

The New Home

—And the New Life

A Meeting

A Visitor Arrives in Karlsburg

The Cub as Lion

In Which the Rev. John Receives a Shock

Wolff Sells a Horse and Nora Loses a Friend

Rising Shadows

Arnold Receives His Explanation

Nemesis

The Fetish

War-Clouds

Ultimatum

The Code of Honour

The Sea Between

BOOK III

THE BRIDGE

Home

Exiled

Revelation

The Bridge Across

DIVIDING WATERS

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

THE MISTAKES OF PROVIDENCE

The family Ingestre sat in conclave. That they sat together at all at any time other than a meal-time was in itself sufficient proof that the subject of their debate was unusually serious: their faces and attitudes added conclusive evidence.

The Reverend John Ingestre occupied his chair of state at the head of the long table. He was a middle-sized man, with narrow, sloping shoulders, which were at that particular moment drawn up into an uncomfortable hunch. When he spoke he pulled at his thin beard and glanced at his wife surreptitiously over his spectacles, as though seeking her advice or support—actions which gave his whole person an air of harassed nervousness.

Mrs. Ingestre did not return her husband's signals. She lay quietly on the sofa by the window, her hand half shading her face, and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. Only once during the Rev. John's long and detailed statement did she give any sign of having heard. Then she shifted her position so that her grave scrutiny rested on the two younger members of the family. Perhaps she hoped to learn from their expressions what they were innerly experiencing, and therein no doubt she must have been successful, for their positions alone were expressive of much.

The boy—or young man, for he was at that uncertain age when boyhood and manhood meet—had his hands plunged in his pockets; his long legs were stretched out in front of him, his chin rested on his chest. Supreme and energiless despondency seemed to be imprinted in the very creases of his Norfolk coat.

The girl had her place at the table. Though she sat perfectly still, never turning her eyes from her father's face, there was something in her rigid attitude which suggested irritation and impatience. Her hands lay in her lap; only a close observer would have seen that they were not folded, but clenched, so that the knuckles stood out white.

"So you see, my dear children," the Rev. John said at last, coming to his peroration, "I felt it my duty to lay the case before you exactly as it stands. For a long time I hoped that it would not be necessary for me to do so—that a merciful Providence would spare me the pain of inflicting upon you so sharp a wound. Well, it has been ruled otherwise, and I only pray that you share with me my one consolation—the knowledge that it is the will of a Higher Power, and therefore all for the best."

He stopped and waited. In spite of the catastrophe which he had just announced, there was a trace of meek satisfaction in his manner, of which he seemed gradually to become conscious, for he turned to his wife with a note of apology in his thin voice:

"My dear, I have explained the matter correctly, I hope?"

"Quite correctly, I should think."

Mrs. Ingestre's hand sank from her face. It was a finely shaped hand, and whiter, if possible, than the dress she wore. Everything about her was beautiful and fragile—painfully fragile. The very atmosphere around her seemed laden with the perfume of a refined and nobly borne suffering.

"It seems to me there is no possible mistake," said the young man, getting up roughly. "We are ruined—that is the long and the short of the matter."

For a moment no one made any attempt to deny his angry statement. Then the Rev. John shook his head.

"You speak too strongly, my dear Miles," he corrected. "We are not what one would call ruined. I have still my stipend. There is no idea of—eh—starving, or anything of that sort; but the superfluous luxuries must be done away with, and—eh—one or two sacrifices must be brought."

He coughed, and looked at his daughter. Mrs. Ingestre looked at her also, and the pale, pain-worn face became illumined with tenderness and pity.

"Sacrifices," the Rev. John repeated regretfully. "Such, I fear, must be the payment for our misfortunes."

Nora Ingestre relaxed from her stiff attitude of self-restraint. The expression of her face said clearly enough: "The sermon is at an end, and the plate being handed round. How much am I expected to put in?"

"It was of your career I was thinking, my dear Miles," the Rev. John answered. "I am quite aware that your whole future depends on your remaining in the Army, therefore we have decided that—that sacrifices must be brought for you."

He hesitated again, and threw another glance at his wife's pale face.

"Nora, I am sure you see the necessity of what I say?"

His daughter started, as though he had awakened her from a reverie.

"Yes, I do," she said, with an abrupt energy. "We must all help each other as much as we can. I shall just work like a nigger."

"Eh—yes," said her father doubtfully. "I am sure you will. Of course, we shall have to dismiss some of the servants, and your mother will need—eh—more assistance than hitherto—and I know, dear Nora——" He coughed, and left the sentence unfinished.

Whether it was his manner or her mother's face which aroused her to closer attention, Nora Ingestre herself could not have said. She became suddenly aware that all three were looking at her, and that she was expected to say something.

"I don't quite understand," she said. "It is only natural that I should help all I can, only——"

It was her turn to stop short. She too had risen to her feet, and quite unconsciously she drew herself upright like a person preparing for attack from some as yet unknown quarter. Like her father, she was not above the middle height, but she had her mother's graceful, well-proportioned build, which made her seem taller than she really was, and added to that a peculiar resolute dignity that was all her own. It was, perhaps, to this latter attribute that she owed the unacknowledged respect in which she was held both by her father and brother. For it is a set rule that we must admire most what is in direct contrast to ourselves; and it had never been in the Rev. John's power either to carry himself erect, or to give himself anything but the appearance of a meek and rather nervous man. It was owing to this inherent respect that he hesitated at the present moment. Perhaps he realised at the bottom of his heart that it was not an altogether fair proceeding to load his mistaken monetary speculations on the shoulders of a disinterested Providence, and that his family might have other, if secret, views as to the real responsibility. At any rate, he was not sufficiently convinced of his own absolute innocence to meet his daughter's grave, questioning eyes with either firmness or equanimity.

"My dear," he said, "we want you at home." And therewith he considered he had put the case both concisely and gently. But Nora continued to look at him, and he grew irritated because she did not seem able to understand.

"Surely you can see that—that there are certain things for which we have neither the time nor the money?" he said, drumming on the table with his thin fingers.

A deep wave of colour mounted Nora Ingestre's cheeks. She did not speak, however, until it had died away again, leaving her unusually pale.

"You mean—I must give up—everything?" she asked in a low voice.

"If by 'everything' you mean your musical studies—yes," her father returned impatiently. The next minute he relented, and, leaning forward, took her passive hand in his. "But surely it is not 'everything,'" he said. "Surely your home and your people are more to you than even this favourite pursuit? I know it is hard for you—it is indeed hard for us all; but if we kept our promise and sent you to London other things would have to pay for it—the dear old house, the garden, Miles's career. You see how it is? You know there is nothing for your real good that I would withhold from you if I could help it, dear child."

He waited, expecting her to throw herself into his arms in generous self-reproach at her own hesitation; but she said nothing, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"And then time will not hang heavy on your hands," he went on, with forced cheerfulness. "Your mother will need you and I shall need you—good little amanuensis that you are! Is it not something to you that we all need you so much?"

"Yes," she said.

The monosyllable encouraged him, though it would have encouraged no one else.

"And, of course, in between whiles you will be able to keep up your music," he added, patting her hand.

This time there was not even a monosyllable to reassure him. Nora Ingestre stood motionless at her father's side, her eyes fixed straight ahead, her fine, resolute features set, and almost expressionless.

Miles swung impatiently on his heel.

"I can't think what you are making all this fuss about," he said. "You ought to be jolly glad that we can keep on the old place, and that you have such a decent home. I know lots of girls who would give their eyes to be in your shoes."

"Have I been making a fuss?"

She spoke perfectly quietly, without changing her position, but her question seemed to cause Miles fresh annoyance.

"I call it a fuss to stand there and say nothing," he said, with sound masculine logic. "And anyhow—what does it matter whether you can tinkle a few tunes on the old tin-kettle or not?"

"That is something you do not understand," she blazed out. It was as though he had unwittingly set fire to some hidden powder-mine in her character. She was breathing quickly and brokenly, and every line in her face betrayed a painfully repressed feeling which threatened to break out into passionate expression.

Mrs. Ingestre rose from her couch. When she stood upright she seemed to dominate them all, to command silence and respect, by the very dignity of her bearing.

"I think this has all lasted long enough," she said. "What is done cannot be undone. We must face matters as best we can. As your father says, it is the will of Providence, and as such we must accept it. Only"—she turned to Miles, and from the faintest possible inflection of irony her tone deepened to reproof—"there are some things you do not understand, dear boy, and which you had better leave to wiser heads. Perhaps I understand better. At any rate, I should like to speak to Nora alone."

Thus she virtually dismissed the masculine members of the family. Miles shrugged his shoulders, and went out into the garden whistling. The Rev. John rose, and gathered up the business papers which he had brought in with him.

"I am sure that your mother will show it is all for the best," he said weakly.

At the door he turned and looked back over his spectacles.

"Remember always what we have both tried to impress upon you—it is the will of Providence," he said. "We must not kick against the pricks."

He then went out, leaving the two women alone.

CHAPTER II

"WANDERLUST"

For some minutes mother and daughter did not speak. Nora had turned her back, and was gazing out on to the pleasant country garden with eyes that saw neither the flowers nor the evening shadows which lengthened out over the lawn. She was still too profoundly occupied in the effort to appear indifferent, to cover over that one slip of feeling, to notice what was going on about her. She hated herself for having shown what she felt, she hated herself for feeling as she did; but no amount of hatred or self-condemnation would retrieve the one or change the other, and when she at last turned, aroused by the prolonged silence, the signals of anger and resentment still burned in her cheeks and eyes.

"Oh, I am a wretch," she cried impetuously. "Dearest, don't look so grave and distressed. It isn't your fault that you have such a disagreeable daughter. There, I ought to be a help and comfort, and instead——"

"An old woman does not need so much help and comfort as a young one," Mrs. Ingestre interrupted gently. "Just at present I am not suffering one-tenth of what you are suffering. And, dear Nora, don't treat me like some frail old wreck that must be shielded at all costs from the rough winds. Don't stand there and swallow up everything you are feeling because you are afraid of hurting me. It will only rankle all the worse. I would rather have your full confidence, however painful it may be. Come here and sit down beside me. Tell me everything you are thinking and feeling, honest Injun!"

The "honest Injun" brought a smile to Nora's eyes. Like everything else that she said or did, Mrs. Ingestre stamped the schoolboy phrase with an exotic, indefinable charm that was all her own. Yet beneath the half-gay appeal there lay a note of command, and Nora drew nearer awkwardly and hesitatingly, bereft for the moment of her youthful assurance and thrust back to the school days which at the age of nineteen are not so far away. She took the white outstretched hand and stood with bent head, frowning at the carpet. Suddenly she knelt down and buried her face in her mother's lap.

"I feel like a trapped rabbit," she murmured indistinctly.

A very faint smile touched Mrs. Ingestre's lips.

"A trapped rabbit, Nora? And who has trapped you, pray?"

"You have, and you know it. You always do!"

"Really, dear, it would have to be a very old and shortsighted rabbit to allow me to trap it, and you are neither. You must explain."

Nora lifted her face. She was laughing, but she was also very near crying.

"I mean—that is how you make me feel," she said. "I can defy other people when they want to do any soul-exploring on my territory. I just shut my mouth and my heart, and leave them out in the cold. But you are different. You mesmerise me till I not only have to tell you what I am feeling, but I positively want to—even though it is the most disgraceful, most disreputable feeling possible."

"And just now——?"

"It was a thought."

"What sort of a thought?"

"A dreadful one."

"Couldn't you tell me?"

"Of course I can—I must—but——"

"Well?"

"Do you want to know exactly?"

"Word for word."

"I was thinking what a duffer father is—was, I mean."

A complete silence. Mrs. Ingestre stroked her daughter's hand and stared sightlessly into the deepening shadows. The smile had died from her lips.

"Go on," she said at last.

"I don't think there is anything else. I always think that when father talks about Providence and—and that sort of thing. I feel sometimes that if Providence took human shape and was in the room at the time I should wink—I am not sure I don't wink inside me, anyhow."

She waited, and then, as Mrs. Ingestre said nothing, she went on disconsolately:

"I know I am awful, darling. I wonder if other people have shocking ideas too, or whether I am the wicked exception?"

"I don't think so," Mrs. Ingestre said. "One can't help one's thoughts, you know."

"No, one can't; can one? The more one sits on them, the more uproarious they get. Are you cross?"

"No."

"Do you—ever have thoughts like that?"

"Nora, I am not feeling in the least like a trapped rabbit, if that's what you mean."

Nora laughed outright. Her youth and buoyant spirits won the upper hand for the moment, but for no longer. The actual subject of their conversation interposed itself between her humour and herself.

"Why did father try and make money in Mexico?" she demanded suddenly and sharply. "We were rich enough before, and now we are so poor that we have to give up everything that makes life worth living, in order to live."

"My dear child, do you really think that?"

"No, I don't think that. If I thought, I daresay I should see that, as the world goes, I am a very lucky girl. But I feel—awful! And the feelings always count most with me."

Mrs. Ingestre nodded to herself.

"They count most with all normal people," she said; "and those who govern their lives by their heads are not, as a rule, either the happiest or the cleverest. Still, Nora, is it such a sacrifice?"

"Yes."

"Is the music so dear to you that it is the only thing which makes life worth living?"

Nora did not answer, and with a firm, gentle hand Mrs. Ingestre tilted her daughter's head backwards, so that she could look straight into the overcast grey eyes. A very faint smile played about the corners of her own mouth.

"Nora, you know, a few months ago, when we promised to send you up to London to begin your studies, we were comparatively rich people. Rich people can afford luxuries, and our pet luxury was to imagine that our little girl was a genius who was going to show the world great things. We meant to give you every chance—we would have seen that our ship lacked nothing to make its first passage in public waters a success. Well, we are poor now, and the first luxury which we must part with is that fond hope. You and I must face the fact—you are a sweet musician, not a genius."

"Mother, you knew that all the time—as well as I did."

A pale rose sprang to Mrs. Ingestre's cheeks. Quite unconsciously she avoided her daughter's challenging eyes.

"Mother, why did you pretend to think otherwise?" Nora went on. "Did you believe me so silly as to imagine myself anything more than an amateur? Why, of course I knew. I had only to compare myself with others."

"And yet you let us think and talk about you as a genius!" Mrs. Ingestre interposed.

Nora nodded defiantly.

"I was a humbug," she declared. "I wanted to go to London. It seemed the only way."

"Wasn't that a rather disreputable way?"

"Not more disreputable than yours. I remember, when father complained about the useless expense you told him it was a sin against Providence not to encourage Genius. It was then I first made the discovery that when you are most serious you are really laughing—at father and me and every one."

"Nora! Nora!" The tone of mild reproof died away Mother and daughter looked each other in the eyes and laughed. When she had done laughing, Mrs. Ingestre bent down and kissed the girl lightly on the forehead.

"You pry too deep to be an altogether very respectful person," she said; "but since you have pryed, I must make the best of it and confess. I knew your father would not understand my ideas, so I too humbugged a little—just a very little. I wanted you to go to London, and afterwards into the world. It was the only way."

"And now this is the end of it all!"

Nora Ingestre rose and stood by her mother's side. Her voice rang with all the protest and despair of which youth is so capable—very real protest and very real despair, whole-hearted and intense, as is the way with youth.

"It wasn't the music," she went on. "I loved it, of course, but I wanted to see the world and people more than anything else. I wanted the world so badly, mother. I felt like a caged animal that sees the forests and the plains through its prison bars. I wanted to get out and be free. Oh, you can't understand—you can't!"

Mrs. Ingestre stirred suddenly, as though a wound had been touched with rough fingers.

"I do understand," she said. But Nora was too young, above all, too absorbed in her own griefs, to hear all that was hidden in her mother's words.

"At any rate, no one else would understand," she went on. "Father wouldn't, Miles wouldn't, and the whole village wouldn't. They would all say I was a New Woman, or unwomanly, or something—why, I don't know. I don't care whether I have a vote or not. I can cook and I can sew; I love children. All that sort of thing is womanly, isn't it? Isn't it womanly to want to live, and to know what life means? Nobody thinks it strange that Miles, though he has no talent for anything except loafing, should travel, should live away from home and get to know other people. It is all for his development! But I am not to develop, it seems. Perhaps development isn't womanly. Perhaps the only right thing for me to do is to look after the flowers and worry the cook and bore myself through my days with tea-parties and tennis-parties and occasional match-making dances, until somebody asks me to be his wife, and I marry him to save myself from turning into a vegetable!"

She stopped, breathless with her fierce torrent of sarcasm and bitterness. Her cheeks were flushed, her hands clenched; there were tears in her bright eyes. Mrs. Ingestre rose and followed her daughter to the window, whither she had wandered in her restless energy.

"How long have you been thinking all this, Nora?" she asked.

"Ever since I left school and Miles went to Sandhurst. Until then it all seemed fair enough. He had been to school and I had been to school. But after that, just when I was beginning to learn because I loved it, just when I was beginning to see things and understand them—then I was brought home—here—and there was an end to it."

Mrs. Ingestre put her arm about her daughter's shoulders.

"And then you remembered that you were musical?" she said.

"And you discovered that I was a genius!" came the retort.

Mrs. Ingestre laughed quietly.

"I see that we must not throw stones at each other, or our glass houses will suffer," she said. "And, after all, it does not matter why either of us wanted it, or how we managed. You were to go to London and see a little of the world——"

"Don't talk about it, mother!"

"Only a little, perhaps, but more than your whole future promises you now, poor child. Now you will have to stop here and vegetate."

Nora turned and clasped her mother in a tumultuous embrace.

"What a brute I must seem!" she exclaimed. "And yet I do love you, dearest. I believe I love you more than most daughters do their mothers, and I don't believe that I am really more selfish—only, I can't hide what I feel, and I feel such a lot. Are you hurt?"

Mrs. Ingestre shook her head.

"It is an old woman's privilege to pretend that she has a reason to feel bitter," she said, "but I am not in the least bitter, because, you see, I understand. I understood even before you said anything, and so I made up my mind that you should be given an alternative——"

"An alternative, mother?"

"——To staying here; and Captain Arnold."

A sudden silence fell on both. Mrs. Ingestre, under cover of the twilight, observed her daughter sharply. She saw that though Nora's face had grown grave it showed no sign of any profound feeling, and she took the quiet, undisturbed colour as an answer to a question which even she had never ventured to ask.

"And so," she went on after a moment, "I wrote to my old friend, Fräulein Müller, about you, and she answered two or three days ago, and said she knew of an excellent position as companion to a lady in Karlsburg. She thought it would suit you admirably. You would be treated as one of the family, and have plenty of time to go on with your own studies. Would you like it?"

The proposal came so suddenly, and yet in such a matter-of-fact tone, that Nora caught her breath and looked up at her mother in blank surprise.

"You mean," she began slowly, "that I should go and live in a German family?"

"Yes."

"With a lot of fat, greasy, gobbling Germans?"

"Do you know any Germans?"

"No—at least there was our German music-master at school, and he was fat and greasy, and I am sure he must have gobbled. He must have done. They all do."

"You used to say he played like an angel," Mrs. Ingestre interposed.

"So he did. But I hated him all the same. I hate all Germans."

Her tone rang with a sort of school-girl obstinacy. Her attitude, with lifted chin and straight shoulders, was eloquent with national arrogance and scorn.

Mrs. Ingestre turned away.

"I shall write to Fräulein Müller and tell her to make all arrangements," she said. "I think, if everything proves suitable, that you had better go to Karlsburg."

"Mother! You haven't even given me the choice!"

"I do not think it wise to do so," Mrs. Ingestre answered gravely. "You are right, Nora; you must see the world. You must go away from here, not just for the sake of the music, the change, and excitement, but in order that your heart may grow wider, in order to learn to love the good that lies outside your own little sphere. There are great things, great people outside Delford, Nora—yes, and outside England. You must learn to know them."

The girl's face flushed crimson.

"At the bottom we all despise foreigners and foreign ways," she said in self-defence. "Father does, Miles does, the Squire does. And they have all travelled; they have seen for themselves."

"They have travelled with their eyes open and their hearts closed," Mrs. Ingestre answered.

"How do you know, mother? You have never been out of England."

Mrs. Ingestre shook her head. A rather melancholy smile passed over her wan features.

"No," she said; "I have never been out of England, but I have been often, very often, ill, and during the long hours I have travelled great distances, and I have begun to think that God cannot surely have reserved all the virtues for us English. I fancy even the poor benighted Germans must have their share of heaven."

Nora laughed outright.

"I expect they have, now I come to think of it," she admitted gaily. "Mother, you are a much better Christian than father, though you won't call every one 'dearly beloved,' and you are yards better than I am. I can't help it—I despise all foreigners, especially——"

She stopped abruptly, and Mrs. Ingestre smiled.

"Still, you will try Karlsburg. It will be an experience for you, and you will hear good music. The family is a very old one, and perhaps the members, being of noble birth, may gobble less than the others."

"All Germans are of noble birth," Nora observed scornfully.

"So much the better for them," Mrs. Ingestre returned. "Are you willing to try? You know the alternative."

"May I think it over, mother?"

"Yes, you may think over it, if you like. It is, after all, only a question of your willingness."

"That means you have made up your mind?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Ingestre saw the strong young face set into lines of defiance. She went back to the sofa and lay down with a sigh.

"Little Nora," she said, almost under her breath, "you know it is not my custom to preach. You won't think, therefore, that I am just 'talking' when I tell you: years ago I would have given anything—anything—to have had this chance."

For the first time in their long interview the girl stopped listening to the self-pitying confusion of her thoughts. The elder woman's voice had penetrated her youthful egoism, and she turned with that curious tugging at the heart which we experience when we have unexpectedly heard a smothered cry of pain break from lips usually composed in lines of peace and apparent content.

"Mother!" Nora exclaimed. The room was now in almost complete shadow. She came closer and bent over the quiet face. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of roses, and it flashed through Nora's mind as she stood there that her mother was like a rose—pale and faded, but still beautiful, still breathing a wonderful perfume of purity and sweetness.

"Mother!" she repeated, strangely awe-struck.

Mrs. Ingestre opened her eyes and smiled.

"I am very tired," she said. "I think I could sleep a little. Go and think it over. I want you to be willing."

Nora bent and kissed her.

"If you wish it, I am willing," she said with impulsive, whole-hearted surrender. She crept out on tiptoe, and for a few minutes all was quiet in the great shadowy room. Then the door opened again, and the Rev. John entered and peered round short-sightedly. He saw that his wife's eyes were closed, and, since it is not kind to waken a weary invalid, he merely knocked some books off the table and coughed. Truth to tell, it annoyed him that his wife should have chosen that identical moment to rest. He wanted to talk to her, but since in spite of all his indirect efforts she remained quiet, he went out again, a disconsolate victim of his own gentle consideration.

But Mrs. Ingestre had not been asleep. Her eyes were shut, but the eyes of her mental vision were open. They were watching sunlit panoramas of long rivers with mountain banks and frowning ruins, glorious, heaven-inspiring cathedral spires and great cities. The ears of her imagination had not heard the Rev. John's clumsy movements. They were listening to the song of the ocean, the confusion of a strange tongue, the rich crescendo of a wonderful music.

Mrs. Ingestre had left the room and the vicarage and the village far behind, and was travelling swiftly through a world which she had never seen and—since for her life was near its close—would never see. And as she travelled, the same thought repeated itself to her with stern persistency:

"Whatever it costs you, she must go. You must not, dare not keep her."

CHAPTER III

AN EXPERIMENT

Breakfast with the Ingestres was a movable and unsociable feast. The various members of the family came down when it suited them, the only punishment being the inevitable one of cold eggs and bitter tea, and conversation was restricted to the barest necessities. The Rev. John was usually engrossed in parochial letters, Mrs. Ingestre was never present at all, and Miles only at such a time when it pleased him. Thus Nora, choosing on the morning following the momentous interview to be an early riser, found little difficulty in making her escape. The Rev. John was more absorbed than usual in his post, since it contained not only letters dealing with his cure of souls, but also some disagreeable business facts which he swallowed with his tea in melancholy gulps.

Nora kissed him lightly on the high forehead as she ran toward the open French window. Rather to her surprise, the customary caress seemed to arouse her father from his reflections. He looked up and blinked, like a man who is trying to remember some important matter.

"My dear," he said, before Nora had reached the lawn, "is it really true that you want to go abroad? Your mother was talking to me about it last night."

"We were thinking about it," Nora admitted, fidgeting nervously with the blind-cord. "Mother said she thought it would be good for me."

"But, my dear child, what shall we do without you?" her father complained.

Nora made an almost imperceptible movement of impatience. She knew of what her father was thinking, and it did not move her to any great degree of sympathy.

"You will manage all right," she said. "Mr. Clerk will help you with your letters." And then, to cut the conversation short, she went out into the garden and along the gravel pathway towards the road.

The sun shone gloriously. All the charm of an English summer morning lay in the air, and Nora drew in great breaths with a joyous, unconscious triumph in her own fresh youth and health. The garden was the one place in the village which she really loved. The ugly, modern red-brick church, the straggling "square," with its peppermint bull's-eye monument to some past "glorious victory," in which the inhabitants of Delford were dimly supposed to have had their honourable share, the stuffy cottages, interspersed here and there by an ivy-overgrown residence of some big-wig of the neighbourhood—these features were unaccountably connected in Nora's mind with her father's sermons, the drone of the organ, and the dull piety of Sundays. But the garden was all her mother's. Nora believed that within its peaceful limits the forgotten and despised fairies of ancient lore took refuge from the matter-of-fact bigots who formed Delford's most respectable community. She had even christened a certain rose-corner the "Fairy Castle," and it amused her riotous young fancy to imagine an indignant and horrified Queen Mab scampering across the lawn in disorganised flight, before the approach of the enemy in the form of Mrs. Clerk, the curate's wife, or Mrs. Chester of the Manor. The garden was, as it were, Mrs. Ingestre's self-created Eden in the drab-coloured land of the Philistines, and even the Rev. John was an intruder and disturber of its poetic peace. Nora felt all this, and in a dim, unformed way understood why her mother's roses were different to the roses in other and richer gardens, why the very atmosphere had its own peculiar perfume, the silence its own peculiar mystery. She felt that her mother had translated herself into the flowers, and that the depths of her quiet, unfathomable heart were revealed in their beauty and sweetness. She felt that if she could have read their language, the very daisies on the lawn would have lifted the veil which hung between her and the woman who seemed to her the most perfect on earth. For, in spite of their close and tender relationship, Mrs. Ingestre's inner life was for her daughter a sort of Holy of Holies, into which no human being had ever ventured.

Thus, once beyond the reach of her father's voice, Nora lingered willingly between the rose beds, making mental comments on the progress of the various favourites and for the moment forgetting the matter which was weighing heavily on her mind. At the gate opening out on to the road, however, she pulled herself sharply together, with a sudden gravity on her young face. Either the church steeple visible above the trees, or the sight of an inquisitive face peering through the blinds of the house opposite, reminded her that the frontier of Eden was reached, and that the dull atmosphere of respectability was about to encompass her. She went quickly through the village. Most of the villagers touched their caps as she passed, and Mrs. Clerk, early bird of charity that she was, attempted to waylay her, to discuss the desirability of procuring parish relief for bedridden old Jones, and, incidentally, of course, to discover how far the pleasantly lugubrious reports respecting the Ingestres' disabled fortunes were founded on fact. Nora, however, avoided her enemy with the assistance of an absent-minded smile and increased speed, and managed to reach her destination without further interruption.

Her destination was a stile which led out on to a narrow pathway over the fields. She was fond of the spot, partly because if you turned your back to the east it was quite possible to forget that such things as Delford or the church or the peppermint bull's-eye monument existed, partly because westwards the limitless stretch of undulating fields seemed to suggest freedom and the great world beyond, of which Nora thought so much. On this particular morning it was not the view which attracted her, as her rather unusual conduct testified. She arranged her ruffled brown hair, stooped, and tightened a shoelace, undid the second shoelace and retied it with methodical precision. Then some one said "Good morning, Nora," and she sprang upright with her cheeks red with surprise or exertion, or anything else the beholder chose to suppose.

"Good morning, Robert," she said.

The new-comer took the friendly, outstretched hand.

"I was coming to pay a disgracefully early morning call," he said. "I am awfully glad we have met."

"I knew you would come over the fields this way," she said. "I came because I wanted to see you."

He flushed crimson with pleasure.

"That was decent of you, Nora. You are not always so kind."

"This is an exceptional occasion," she answered gravely.

She perched herself on the stile and sat there gazing thoughtfully in front of her. In that moment she made a sweet and pleasing picture of English girlhood. The sunlight played through the trees on to her hair, picking out the shining red-gold threads, and touching with warmer glow the softly tinted skin. The clean-cut, patrician features, dark-arched eyebrows, and proud, rather full lips seemed to contrast strangely with the extreme simplicity of her flowered muslin frock. And indeed she came of another race of women than that of which Delford and its inhabitants were accustomed—something finer, more delicate, more keenly tempered. It was almost impossible to think of her as the Rev. John's daughter—quite impossible as Miles Ingestre's sister. One could only understand the small, aristocratic features when one remembered that Mrs. Ingestre was her mother. Captain Arnold remembered the fact keenly that moment.

"I declare you are Mrs. Ingestre's miniature!" he exclaimed. "This morning, one would positively think she had been made twenty years younger, and perched up there as a surprise-packet."

Nora turned on him with a pleased smile.

"This is a nice compliment," she said; "but I have no time for such things just now. Any moment Mrs. Clerk might scurry round the corner, and then my reputation would be gone for ever. She would probably tell every one that I had come out to meet you on purpose."

"Which is true, by the way, isn't it?" he inquired, smiling.

"Yes, quite true; only my reason is respectable—not the sort of reason that Mrs. Clerk would put down to my credit."

He came closer and, leaning his elbows on the cross-bars of the stile, looked up into her face.

"I hope it is a nice reason," he said.

"No," she answered, "it is a serious reason, and not in the least nice. I expect you have already heard something about it, haven't you?"

He hesitated.

"Of course—I have heard rumours," he said. "As a rule I ignore such things, but I could not altogether ignore this; it concerned you and yours too closely."

"Besides, it is true," she added.

"True, Nora?"

"Yes, quite true. We are ruined."

"My dear girl!"

"At least, comparatively ruined," she corrected.

For a moment he was silent, apparently intent on the study of his own strong square hands linked together in front of him.

"How did it happen?" he asked at last.

"I don't know," she answered impatiently. "Father bought some shares that aren't any good. I suppose he wanted to make money." Her tone was unconsciously scornful.

"We all want to do that," Arnold observed in defence.

The strongly arched eyebrows went up a degree.

"At any rate," she said, "it is frightfully rough on mother. Her life was hard enough before—what with ill-health and that sort of thing. Now it will be ten times worse." She clenched her hands in a sudden passionate protest. "I can't help it," she went on, "it seems to me all wrong. She is the best, the cleverest woman I have ever met. She ought to be the wife of a genius or a great, good man—not father's wife. Father ought to have married Mrs. Clerk. Why did she marry him? It is wicked, but it is the thought which comes into my mind every time I see them together. And now, when I think that she will have to scrape and save as well I——" She stopped short and looked at her companion defiantly. "I suppose you are very shocked," she said. "That comes of always feeling as though you were one of the family. I have to say just what is passing in my mind."

"I am glad you have so much confidence in me," Arnold answered seriously. "All the same, I do not think that you are just to your father. He is a thoroughly good man. Many people would think Mrs. Ingestre very lucky."

"Perhaps they do think so," Nora said, with indifference. "That is because no one about here is capable of understanding her. In any case, it's no good talking about it. This latest trouble is quite enough."

"I suppose Miles will be able to stay in the Army?" Arnold asked.

"Oh, yes, that's settled."

"What about your studies? They will have to be given up, of course?"

"Why 'of course'?" she flashed out.

"Because there won't be enough money for them," he explained in a matter-of-fact tone. "For my part," he went on, "I shall be glad. I dreaded the thought of coming home on leave and finding you gone. It would have been sickening."

"It will be still more 'sickening' now," she said, rather revengefully. "I am going away for a long time, and to a place a long way off."

"Nora! In Heaven's name where and why?"

She laughed at his astonished, troubled face.

"To Karlsburg, in Germany—as a companion."

"To Germany! Why do you want to go there?"

"Because I do not want to vegetate here."

"Nora, you will hate it. You will be ill with home-sickness. You don't know what it will be like. It is not as though you will be among your own country-people. You will hate their manners, their customs, their ways, and they will treat you like a servant. Little Nora, I can't bear the thought of it."

He spoke earnestly, almost incoherently.

Nora shook her head.

"There is no other alternative," she said.

"There is one other alternative, Nora. Will you be my wife?"

He had taken her hand, and she did not attempt to draw it back. Nor had she changed colour. Her clear eyes studied his thin, rather gaunt face, and passed on with frank criticism to his tall figure, loosely built and rather stooping, in the grey Norfolk suit.

"Nora," he said sternly, "I have asked you a question. You do not need to look at me like that. I am not different to what I usually am."

"But I am looking at you in a different light," she said.

He seemed to think that she was laughing at him, or that she had not taken him seriously. A deep flush mounted his sun-burnt cheeks.

"Nora, I am very much in earnest," he said, his grasp on her hand tightening. "Though you are a child you must have felt long ago that I cared for you as something more than my little comrade. I love you, and I have loved you a long time. Will you be my wife?"

She shook her head gravely and regretfully.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I do not love you."

"Are you sure? How can you tell? You know nothing of love."

"No," she agreed. "That is the very reason I will not marry you."

He let her hand go and stood looking at her with his lips tightly compressed, as though on a storm of protest.

"Would you mind if I was quite honest?" she went on. "I would rather tell you everything, even if it makes you think me bad and heartless."

"I shall never think that of you," he said painfully.

"Well, then, I did know you cared for me," she continued. "I was always ashamed of myself for knowing. It seemed conceited of me to imagine that a grown-up man should want such a child as I am—still, I couldn't help it. I felt it. It seems one does feel that sort of thing. It is like electricity in the air. Anyhow, it did not worry me very much. I made up my mind that one of these days I would marry you. It seemed so probable and natural that I should. We had known each other since I was a baby and you a school-boy; our families were connected; we lived in the same neighbourhood; we saw each other at regular intervals; we never quarrelled—or hardly ever; we knew each other's faults better than most people do who marry. Everything seemed to point in the same direction. But I was such a school-girl. I felt that there was heaps of time for me to grow to love you—or perhaps find out that I loved you already. You see, I wasn't sure. I liked to be with you; but then, I like to be with any one who is jolly and amusing, so that wasn't a sure test. Yesterday I knew that there was no time left me. I guessed that I should have to decide between you and Karlsburg. It sounds horrid, but it is the truth. And I could not decide—I simply could not. Then I thought—perhaps if you asked me, perhaps if you told me about your love, it would awaken some sort of an answer in me—I should feel some sort of signal such as I should imagine a woman would feel if the being with whom she is destined to spend her life, and perhaps more, stood at her side and held her hand. So I came out here, so that you would ask me to be your wife. Are you angry?"

He shook his head, frowning straight before him.

"No."

"It may sound heartless," she went on; "I did not mean it to be. I thought it would be better if everything was spoken out clearly between us. I knew you loved me, and I cared for you—I cared for you enough to be glad if I found I loved you. For my own sake I should have been glad. I know my life would be safe in your hands—that you are all an English gentleman need be, but——"

"Now comes the 'but,' he said, with bitterness.

"It is no good," she said. "I can't pretend, can I? When you took my hand, when you spoke, I felt nothing—absolutely nothing, or, perhaps, only a little more critical than usual. I noticed, for instance, that you stoop. It had never struck me before. I tell you that because it shows you just how I feel."

"Thank you," he said.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

"Don't be angry," she pleaded. "I do care for you."

"Then, if you care for me, couldn't you give me a chance—won't you trust yourself to me, Nora? Love will come little by little."

He had taken her hand again, and she felt that he trembled with restrained feeling.

"I have an idea that love never comes little by little," she said.

They were a long time silent. Arnold had buried his face on his arms on the cross-bars. Presently he looked up, and met her sorrowful gaze with pale composure.

"So it is to be Karlsburg?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"Nora, I shan't give up hope."

"It wouldn't be fair of me to say 'don't.'"

"Still, when you come back?" ...

"I can't promise anything," she said, but her eyes were full of pity and kindness. "I am so sorry, Robert."

"That's all right, dear. You can't help it." He pressed her hand a last time. "I won't come on now. You understand—I would rather be alone. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

She watched him till he was out of sight. A tear rolled down her cheek. She rubbed it quickly and impatiently away. Then she sprang down and went home. She felt shaken and vaguely regretful, and was filled with the one desire to be with her mother.

Mrs. Ingestre was in the garden when Nora reached the vicarage. She was looking paler than usual, but she greeted her daughter with the customary grave, affectionate smile.

"You are out early to-day," she said.

Nora came and slipped her arm through her mother's.

"I have something serious to tell you," she said. "Robert has asked me to be his wife."

She spoke quickly, breathlessly, as though disburdening her heart of an uncomfortable load. Mrs. Ingestre said nothing, but waited quietly for what was to come. She held a bunch of roses, and if Nora had been less self-absorbed, she would have seen that the white hand trembled.

"I wanted him to propose to me," Nora went on with her confession. "I wanted to find out if I cared—I wanted to care, but—I don't—not enough. So I said 'No.' I am glad it is over."

Mrs. Ingestre pressed the arm resting on her own.

"And I am glad that you have said 'no,'" she said. "I should always have been afraid if it had been 'yes' that Karlsburg and vegetation had given the casting vote. It is dangerous to treat marriage as an escape loop-hole. Sometimes it means the tragedy of a lifetime."

They talked of other things, as people do who have touched on a subject too near the heart's innermost and untrodden places, but Mrs. Ingestre had unconsciously lifted a corner of the veil. The words "a tragedy of a lifetime" remained ineffaceable, and, though they had been untouched with self-pity or bitterness, Nora believed she understood.

From that moment she saw in her mother's face, words, and acts a new meaning—the revelation of a harsh punishment nobly and patiently accepted.

CHAPTER IV

OUTWARD BOUND

After the final decision, events moved swiftly in Nora Ingestre's life. It was almost as though Mrs. Ingestre was afraid delay might develop imperceptibly into a gradual surrender to the protests of her husband and the scoffing criticisms of her son. The former treated Nora's journey as a sort of soul-contaminating emigration into the land of the Moabites—a matter full of spiritual danger for her, and, incidentally, of annoyance for him. During the six weeks that passed in correspondence between Delford and Karlsburg and in busy preparations, he varied the table conversation with anxious appeals to a watchful, if occasionally inexplicable Providence on behalf of his dearest child and a fretful review of his own crippled condition without her assistance.

"God forbid that I should criticise my fellow-creatures," was his usual introductory sentence, "but foreigners are not as we. They have ways and customs which I cannot believe are well-pleasing in His sight. Do not, my child, be led astray by the creeping influence of example; do not surrender the proud and glorious tenets of your country because you see many, less fortunate, following other paths than those you have been taught to tread. They may seem fair, but remember the end is not here. Be careful that a light and frivolous conception of a terrible God does not taint your blood. I shall think of you always, dear child, but most of all on Sundays, in our beloved church, when I shall pray that you too are joining in the universal praise in some suitable place of worship."

After which he was wont to remark that his sermon was not yet copied out, and on Nora having offered to perform the task, only too thankful that her soul's condition should cease to be made the subject for an after-dinner's conversation, he would draw her to him and kiss her.

"What shall I do without my right hand?" he usually added, with a grave and melancholy shake of the head.

It was then Miles's turn to take up the ball and keep it rolling after his own methods and ideas. References to fat Germans and to people who chose to associate with that sort of foreign bounder rather than stay at home with decent English people were plentiful, and became tiresome even in their variations. But alike to her brother's pungent sarcasm and her father's periods Nora bore the same determined front. She was on her mother's side, blindly and devotedly, and in spite of the fact that at the bottom of her heart she shared the prejudices of the masculine element in her family. She had the firm conviction that her mother was right, and felt, moreover, that anything—even Karlsburg—was better than the dreary Puritan monotony of her present life.

As for Mrs. Ingestre, she said little, but went on quietly with the necessary arrangements and ignored the constant, if indirect, attacks of her husband and son. Neither ventured to criticise her plans to her face. Miles lived in a wholesome shamefaced awe of his mother's dignity and keener insight into his own weaknesses; the Rev. John had his private reasons for caution. He had, in fact, waged one battle royal with his wife, and had been momentarily forced to realise that for twenty-five years he had been living with a master who had acted willingly as his slave. Not that the awakening was more than momentary. When he first recovered from the shock of finding himself confronted by an iron wall of opposition, he had dozed back into the old delusion that he was sent with a divine mission to be the guide and support to a frail and helpless woman. But there were a few words uttered in the course of a short and painful interview which the Rev. John could not forget. They rankled in his mind as the proof of the injustice, ingratitude, and perversity of the best of women.

"We look at things from a different standpoint," Mrs. Ingestre had said wearily. "You regard the world and all that it has to offer in beauty and happiness as something to be hated and avoided. You do hate the world. You boast of the fact. I am different. I believe that I was put into the world to enjoy it to the uttermost power of my capability, that every day in which I had not seen or done something new or experienced some fresh wonder was a day wasted. I believed all this in spite of my home and upbringing. I simply waited for the time when I should be allowed to live as I understood living. I married you—and then too late I saw that your ideas and mine clashed. It was a mistake, John, but in all justice you must admit it was a mistake which you have never had to feel. I have done my best to smother my wishes and instincts because I realised that it was not your fault that I had seen more in you than was really there. I have stood by you loyally—I felt it was my duty to do so even at the cost of my own individuality. I had made a mistake. But it was a mistake none the less, John, and it is one for which Nora shall not suffer. My responsibility to her is greater than it is to you. She is my daughter. She shall live as her character requires—as my character required. She shall not be stunted and dwarfed in her growth. This is the first time I have ever opposed you. I do so because I must."

And, strangely enough, the Rev. John had found nothing to say. He prayed very earnestly for his wife against the hydra-headed monster of worldliness and vanity which he firmly believed had taken hold upon her soul, but from that moment his protest confined itself to an increased gravity in her presence and the indirect reproach of his after-dinner orations.

Thus time slipped past, and almost before she knew it the day of departure dawned for Nora. In the fresh autumnal air and bright sunshine she forgot the pangs of the previous night, when she had wept a few tears of regret and vague remorse. In the darkness she had reproached herself to the point of believing that to desert her father and the copying of his sermons was a piece of unfilial selfishness. Even Robert Arnold appeared to her in a new light—that light which our "good-night" thoughts, first cousins to "last" thoughts, cast about those dear to us. He seemed very dear to her at midnight. A dozen episodes, grave and gay, in their common life recurred to her, also illuminated by the same tender regret. A year's parting from him caused her almost intolerable heartache, the more so because she had repulsed him and the love after which she began to hunger. "If he will only wait, I am sure I shall grow to love him," she confided to her damp pillow, more than half convinced that the love had come already, startled to life by the fear of loss and separation.

But the morning sunshine is a spritely, cold-hearted magician. As the shaky old four-wheeled cab, glorified in the village by the name of "the brougham," rolled over the uneven cobbles, she found herself nodding a cheerful, almost triumphant, farewell to the church and the monument. They were in her eyes the symbols of a life she was leaving behind her, like the gates of a not intolerable prison. She was quite sorry that Mrs. Clerk failed to be on her usual watchful guard at the window. Certainly, if the village was a sort of prison, Mrs. Clerk was its spiritual gaoler, and Nora would have dearly loved to flourish her dawning freedom in the disapproving face of her natural enemy. But Mrs. Clerk was nowhere to be seen, and Nora's flashing glance encountered only her mother's grave, thoughtful eyes.

Against all advice, Mrs. Ingestre had determined to accompany her daughter up to London. Perhaps she feared her husband's last exhortations, perhaps she was urged by a secret heart-hunger. Yet her whole face brightened with warm sympathy as she read in Nora's smile and heightened colour the proud, bold joy of youth plunging for the first time into the full tide of life.

"You are glad to go?" she asked in a low voice that was without the faintest tone of reproach.

Nora nodded.

"I am excited," she said. "I feel like a pioneer setting out on the discovery of new worlds. And so I am. What does it matter that millions of people have been where I am going? I have never been before. It is all new to me."

Her father sighed in pained disapproval.

"Let us hope that your adventures in foreign lands will not cost you too dear, Nora," he said. "May they bring you back to your home contented and grateful for its blessed peace."

Mrs. Ingestre leant forward and laid her hand on Nora's. The movement might have been made in confirmation of her husband's words—it might also have had another meaning. It might have meant, taken in conjunction with the almost youthful flash in the dark eyes: "Be of good cheer! The world and life are before you. Grasp both in spite of every one. They are worth fighting for!"

And Nora's clasp responded. Her spirits were at their highest pitch. She was afraid of nothing; the long journey, the foreign country, and its despised inhabitants had no terrors for her. Youth and morning sunshine swept her forward on a wave of impetuous joy. She even found it in her heart to be thankful for the "blows of Providence," though for other reasons than those of her piously resigned parent. "After all, now I shall be able to fight my own battles," was her proud thought.

The day in London cast the first shadow over her courage. They arrived in the metropolis at midday, and as the boat-train left at eight o'clock in the evening there was a whole afternoon to be spent wandering about the busy streets—a pleasant occupation if you understand how to go about it. But this was one thing that the Rev. John did not understand. He belonged to the class of people for whom London is a great black, smutty monster, replete with all the vices and crimes of Babylon, and his passage through its heart was a veritable penance. His sincerely Puritan temperament—for, to do him justice, he was but half a hypocrite and only that much unconsciously, like the rest of us—found "sermons in stones," and in everything else from the wicked luxury of the lady lounging in her victoria to the ragged profligacy of the beggar. Sermons he delivered, therefore, and Nora, trudging wearily at his side, with all her eyes on the ignored shop windows, listened in sullen defiance. She loved London with the almost passionate love which is given to no other city in the world. She loved the fogs, its dirt, its stern, relentless bustle; she felt a sort of vague kinship with its vagabonds, its grandees, its very policemen, and her father's criticisms goaded her to distraction. Yet once, as they dragged themselves into an A.B.C. for tea, she saw her mother's face, and her anger died down, yielding to the first cold touch of home-sickness. There was something written on the pale, worn face which she could not read but which filled her with vague pain. Visited by what unshed years of regret, longing, and unavailing remorse had those quiet eyes watched the tide of life flow past them? Nora did not know. In an instinctive, almost childish, sympathy she slipped her hand into Mrs. Ingestre's.

"Dear, dear mother!" she said, "I wish I could make you happy—really happy."

The Rev. John had gone to order the buns and tea which were to form the pièces de résistance of their evening meal. Mrs. Ingestre looked down into the young, earnest face. Her own face relaxed an instant from its own usual serenity. It was as though a sudden gust of wind had passed over a lake, ruffling its smooth, peaceful surface.

"Be happy," she said almost imperatively. "Whatever else happens, remember that you have the right to happiness. And to be happy you must open your heart wide—you must welcome all that is good, even if it is not the good you have been taught to know. Don't let Delford or—or even us make your standard. Keep the past and those that love you, but don't let them hem you—don't let them stand between you and the future. Show your new world a big, generous, open heart, and it will open a heart as big and generous to you. Be arrogant and petty, and everything about you will reflect yourself. Oh, Nora, I am not preaching; a narrow heart is a curse to others and to itself."

There was a peculiar emphasis in her words, a note in her voice so like despair that it rang long afterwards in Nora's memory. It cast a deeper shadow over her sinking spirits, and as she walked by her mother's side towards the station which was to mark their first long parting, the hot, burning tears welled up in her eyes and only by a strong effort were kept back from overflow. Since that morning, with its brilliant sunshine, its youth and hope, all had changed within her and without. The sunshine had yielded to cold, dark shadows, youth and hope lagged wearily, overcome by the growing tide of home-love. "Dear old England!" Nora whispered to herself. "Dear old England!" And the very shop windows, casting bright golden patches on the thickening fog, seemed to have a special light of their own. The faces of the passers-by were dear to her because they were English faces and because she was going to a strange country, where she would see them no more. Even the red-brick church and "the monument" became hallowed in her memory. In that moment of youthful grief she would have given worlds to know that she was going home, that there were to be no partings, that she was to live her life in the dull peace to which she had waved a joyous farewell that very morning.

They entered the great station. The bustle and confusion brought her no relief—rather, it increased the sense of helplessness which was growing stronger and stronger. For a moment she lost sight of her father and mother, and it was then she felt for the first time all the poignancy of the loneliness which was, in less than a quarter of an hour, to become an irreparable reality. She turned, dazedly seeking a familiar face, and in the same instant a firm, warm hand clasped hers.

"Nora—little girl!"

It was Arnold who stood beside her. She recognised his strong, gaunt face with a sudden, joyous start which brought the colour to her cheeks. Had she unconsciously been longing for him? Had the heartache been a little because she had not seen him, because ever since that decisive morning he had kept away from her, taking her dismissal as final? Was it final? These were things he at least might have asked as he felt the quick response of her touch and saw the light flash back into her tear-filled eyes. But Nora thought of nothing—asked no questions. She clung to his arm like a tired, lost child.

"Oh, I am so glad," she said, almost incoherent with relief, "so glad!"

"I couldn't keep away," he said, himself shaken by her sudden self-abandonment. "I did my best, but in the end I had to come. I could not let you go so far from me without a God-speed. And something seemed to tell me that you would be glad to see me."

"I am!" she cried. "Of course I am!"

They reached Mrs. Ingestre and her husband, who were busy with the luggage registration. A shadow seemed to pass over the latter's face as she saw the two together, but she greeted Arnold with her usual serene courtesy.

"Miles has come too," she said.

Miles was, indeed, very much en évidence. He had made himself what he called "smart" for the occasion, and an extraordinary high collar and a flagrantly red tie certainly put him beyond all danger of being overlooked. His face was a trifle flushed—perhaps with the hurry of his arrival—and his manner jocose.

"You look as though you might flood the station any minute," he told Nora. "I bet anything you'd give your bottom dollar to be out of it."

"Don't, Miles!" she answered gently. "Of course I am sorry to leave you all. It is only natural."

Her eyes met Arnold's, and perhaps they said more than she knew. He came back to her side.

"Let us go and find a comfortable corner for you," he suggested.

She followed him passively, and they walked along the platform to the end of the train, where the crowd of passengers was less dense.

"Dear little Nora!" he said, looking down at her with infinite pity and tenderness. The tears rushed again to her eyes. She fought them down courageously, but her voice shook as she answered:

"It is so hard to go," she said, "much harder than I thought this morning. I have only just realised how dear everything—everybody is to me."

"Nora, that is what I hoped. You are so young—you do not know your own heart. Now perhaps you can tell better—if there is any chance for me."

She saw the pleading in his face, and she made no answer. Her throat hurt her and she was no longer so sure. She did care for him, and if she had felt no thrill of passion at his touch, his presence seemed to envelop her in a warm, comforting glow of protecting tenderness infinitely precious.

"Nora," he went on, "even now it is not too late. My dearest, what are you waiting for? What are you expecting to find? I believe I could make you happy—my love is so great."

She threw up her head with the determined gesture he knew so well.

"I must go," she said. "It would be weak and cowardly to turn back at the last minute. Only——"

"You will come back soon?"

She nodded, her lips trembling.

"I feel I must," she said.

"And you will write to me?"

The Rev. John bustled up to them. He was flustered and nervous, as people are to whom a journey of any sort is an event full of dangerous possibilities.

"You must get in at once," he said fussily. "The train is just off. There, God bless you, my dear child! Remember all I have said. And if you are not happy, or the people not nice, let us know at once."

Mrs. Ingestre clasped her daughter in a short, almost passionate embrace.

"Be happy!" she said again; and the words were a blessing.

The carriage door slammed to; somewhere from the rear they heard the guard's shrill whistle, and gradually the train began to glide forward, leaving behind the little group of dearly loved faces.

Arnold walked at the carriage side.

"You will write to me often?" he pleaded.

"Yes, yes, I will write."

"Tell me everything—everything you think and feel. Oh, Nora, it is so hard to let you go! But I have taken fresh hope. I believe you will come back soon—I believe it will all come right for us both."

The train was gathering speed. He had to run to keep pace with her carriage.

"Nora, after all—you do care a little, don't you?"

She nodded. She was so tired, so heart-sick, that had it been possible she would have sprung out and put her hand in his in weary, thankful surrender. But it was too late. She could only look at him, and again her eyes told more than she perhaps would have said. He stood still, hat in hand, and waved to her, and the last she saw of him was a face full of hope and gratitude.

"When you send for me, I shall come," he said.

The train glided into the suffocating darkness of a tunnel, and when they once more emerged the station was far behind, and they were travelling faster and faster into the night. The lights of London, of home, of England swept past in blurred lines of fire.

Nora Ingestre watched them, fighting bravely; but when they had disappeared she covered her eyes with her hand and wept the silent, bitter tears of a first exile.

CHAPTER V

AMONG THE HEATHEN

"Karlsburg! Alles aussteigen—Karlsburg!"

Nora sprang up, roughly aroused from a half-doze by the stentorian tones and a general move in her compartment. The fat German who had occupied the corner seat opposite her, and who had spent the journey in doing his best to justify her scorn and contempt for all foreigners, was heaving great masses of untidy luggage out of the window and shouting furiously for a Gepäckträger. In this performance he trod more than once on Nora's toes, thus arousing her so effectually that she made haste to convey herself and her belongings out into the narrow corridor congested with passengers and baggage. After a brief energetic scramble down the appalling staircase which separates the continental traveller from the platform, she landed safely and drew a sigh of relief. "Here I am at last!" she thought, comforted by the knowledge that the worst was over. The "worst" in connection with separations is the first twenty-four hours, the first night-fall, and the first awaking to changed surroundings and circumstances. After that, the human capacity for adjustment mercifully begins to display itself, and the first poignancy of grief is over—at any rate for those who have courage and youth to help them. And Nora had both. As she stood that morning on the deck of the Flushing boat, watching the pale, low outline of land, she had already felt the first glow of returning vigour. The keen sea-air had blown colour into her cheeks; the tears which had threatened to assert themselves so often the night before had dried at their source, and she had flung herself into the confusion of exchange from the boat to the waiting train with a pleased realisation of her own independence. Then had come the long and glorious panorama along the Rhine, the frowning castles, the majestic spires of the great Dom, the new types of men and women hurrying backwards and forwards about the busy platforms.

During the long hours Nora's watchful, eager eyes never closed. This, then, was the new world to which she was to open her heart; these, then, the people whose qualities of goodness she was to learn to honour. The first task was easy enough—it was, indeed, a beautiful world. But the people? They were of another type than that to which she was accustomed, and Nora, imbued with the pleasant insular conviction that all English people are tall and handsome, found them so far little to her taste. In truth, a firmly rooted prejudice is not to be overcome in a moment, or even by the wisest precept, and not all Mrs. Ingestre's eloquence could crush back the half-conscious superiority which her daughter experienced in that stuffy second-class coupé. Her fellow-passengers, be it confessed, were stout and inelegant, and they obviously preferred the window closed—points which were alone quite sufficient to stamp them as belonging to an inferior class. But the chief point was Nora's own nationality. The mere fact that she was English would have kept her in countenance even when confronted with the whole Imperial family, and, indeed, throughout the journey, with its difficulties, its various encounters with idiotic foreign porters who refuse to understand the English language, no matter how loud it is shouted, she was sustained by a calm and inborn knowledge of her racial superiority. Thus she felt no sense of loneliness or helplessness until the voice shouting "Karlsburg" had hurried her out on to the crowded, bustling platform. There for the first time she felt her own insignificance, her own strangeness. She was really in a foreign country at last, and with all her superiority she stood there a forlorn handful of pretty, despairing girlhood, waiting for the first jabbering, gesticulating savage to rescue her from her perplexity.

"Ach, liebes Kind, da bist du! Willkommen!"

The eager, kindly voice and the cordial embrace were equally sudden and somewhat overwhelming. Steadying her hat from the effects of the shock, Nora turned to find herself held by a short, stout little woman, very out of breath, very excited, who was smiling and nodding at her as though at an old and very dear acquaintance.

"Ach! you do not know me?" she interrogated, adding in the same gasp, "But how should you? I am ze old Fräulein Müller—you haf heard of her? Long ago she did teach ze muzzer, and now here is ze daughter—her muzzer every bit of her. Ach, du lieber Gott im Himmel! But I must not so much talk. Give ze man your Gepäckschein, liebes Kind."

Half overcome by the torrent of words, Nora produced the document which she supposed answered to the name of Gepäckschein. In the interval, whilst Fräulein Müller was apparently pouring volumes of mingled explanation and abuse over the head of an equally flustered porter, Nora had opportunity to study her rescuer. Fräulein Müller, she imagined, was well over the fifties and, on account of her stoutness, looked her age, but her face was as lively as it was plain, and the rotund figure in its dowdy brown dress cut after the manner of a long-forgotten fashion seemed to be bubbling over with seething sprightliness. Nora had a quick eye, and her critical faculties, at home usually dormant, were on the alert. "How badly the Germans dress!" she thought. "What dreadful boots—and that dress! I suppose it is her best, and it was probably quite expensive. Whatever could have made any one choose a colour like that?"

Her observations were cut short by her unconscious victim grasping her by the arm and hurrying her up and down dark flights of steps, the whole way continuing her explanations, peppered with gasps and exclamatory German outbreaks.

"Ze portermans are ze stupidest race on ze earth," she panted, "but I haf told him—I haf his number—it is zirty-one—please try and remember, liebes Kind—zat he must your Koffers bring at once. Ze Frau Baronin's carriage is not big enoff to take more zan us two and your rugs. Ach, je! Ze many steps are not for one so short in ze breaths as I!"

They were out of the station at last—Nora had delivered up her ticket with the feeling that the last link between her and home was gone—and were greeted by a simply dressed footman, who conducted them to a brougham promptly summed up by Nora as shabby.

Fräulein Müller dropped back into the cushions with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Now all is well," she said. "I shall drive wiz you to the Frau Baronin's house and see you safe in. She ask me to fetch you, as I knew I could easy find you. Ach, sie ist die Liebenswürdigkeit selber, die, Frau Baronin!"

"You are her great friend?" Nora suggested, seeking something to say.

Fräulein Müller threw up her plump hands in the straining brown kid gloves and laughed.

"Nee, nee, liebes Kind, how should zat be? I am Fräulein Müller—old Fräulein Müller—and she is the Baronin von Arnim."

Perhaps Nora's look showed that the all-apparent distinction was not clear, for her companion went on with a soft chuckle:

"Zat is somezing you vill understand wiz ze time, my dear. Ze Baronin is von great person and I am von nobody. Zat is all. I am proud zat I haf brought a so nice English girl—and glad to haf been able to give ze daughter of my dear pupil so nice a place. I am sure you will be very happy."

Nora's arched brows contracted for a minute. Something in Fräulein Müller's tone or words ruffled her—she was not quite sure why. The little woman was so obviously and naïvely impressed with the glories of Nora's new position and with the greatness and splendour of the "Baronin," of whom she spoke with almost bated breath, that Nora's self-importance was somewhat wounded. Besides which, she regarded both matters as decidedly "unproven." The "Baronin," she felt sure, was a snobbish person, probably very stout and ponderous, and as for her splendour and greatness, it remained yet to be seen. Armorial bearings with a seven-pearled crown—after all, Nora knew very well that everybody was a count or a baron in Germany—and a bone-shaking brougham with a shabby footman proved nothing at all. Thus Nora expressed neither gratitude nor gratification, and her manner was perhaps more chilly than she intended, for her companion subsided into an abrupt silence, which lasted until the carriage drew up and the door was opened by the despised attendant.

"Now you are here!" she cried, springing out with surprising agility. "I vill come no further—my leetle étage is just round the corner. In a day or two I vill venture to pay respects on the Baronin and see how all goes wiz you. Until then—lebewohl!"

Much to Nora's relief, she was not embraced a second time. A warm squeeze of the hand, which seemed, somehow, to express a slight "hurtness," and the stumpy little figure disappeared into the darkness, leaving Nora to face her destiny alone.

It was now dusk, and she had only time to take in the dim outline of a small, square house before the footman led her up the steps to the already opened door. A flood of light greeted her as she entered the hall, and seemed to intensify its unfurnished coldness. Little as she had expected, the barren white walls and carpetless stone floor cast a chill over her courage which not even the beaming smile of a pleasant-faced but far from stylish parlourmaid could wholly dispel.

"Die gnädige Frau wartet im Salon," she said, and proceeded to conduct the way farther down the passage, switching off the electric light carefully as she went.

In spite of everything, Nora's heart beat faster with anticipation and an inevitable nervousness. The great moment had arrived which was to decide the future. "As long as she is fat and comfortable like Fräulein Müller, I daresay it won't be so bad," she told herself, but prepared for the worst. A minute later and she was ushered into a room so utterly at variance with what had gone before and her own expectations that she stood still on the threshold with a little inward gasp of surprise.

The softly shaded light revealed to her quick young eyes an elegance, if not luxury, whose details she had no time to gather. She received only an impression of warm, delicate colours, soft stuffs, rich, sound-deadening carpets and the touch of an indefinable personality, whose charm seemed to linger on every drapery. From the ugly stone wall to this had been no more than a step, but that step divided one world from another, and Nora stood hesitating seeking in the shadows the personality whose influence she felt already like a living force. She had no more than an instant to wait. Then a tall, slight figure rose out of one of the chairs drawn out of the circle of light and came to meet her.

"You are very welcome, Miss Ingestre," a voice said, and her hand was taken and she was led farther into the room. "I would have met you myself, but I had no method of recognising you, and the gute Fräulein Müller seemed so sure that she would be able to find her old pupil's daughter."

The voice was low, the English almost perfect, though a little slow, as though from want of practice, the touch of the hand firm and cool. Somehow, in that moment poor Nora felt painfully aware that she was dirty and untidy from the journey and, above all, that she was terribly young and awkward. Yet her natural frankness stood her in good stead. She looked up, smiling.

"Fräulein Müller picked me out at once," she said. "I must be very like my mother, otherwise I cannot think how she found me."

"In any case, the great thing is that you are found," Frau von Arnim said. "Come and sit down here. You see, we have a real English tea waiting for you."

Nora obeyed willingly, and whilst the white, delicate hands were busy with the cups standing on the low tray, she had opportunity to study the woman upon whom the weal or woe of perhaps a whole long year depended. "She is not as beautiful as my mother," Nora thought, but the criticism was no disparagement. If Frau von Arnim was not actually beautiful, she at least bore on every feature marked refinement, and the expression of the whole face, pale and slightly haughty though it was, had a certain indefinable fascination which held Nora's attention riveted. She was dressed elegantly, moreover, in some dark colour which suited the brown hair and the slow hazel eyes which, Nora felt positive, had in one quiet glance taken in every detail of her appearance.

"We are so very glad that you have come," Frau von Arnim went on. "My daughter and I love everything that is English, but, alas, nice English people are raræ aves in Karlsburg. We have only the scum of all nations, and I cannot tell you how pleased we were when your mother decided to entrust you to our care."

The tone of the words was delicate and kind, suggesting a conferred favour on Nora's side which somehow had the reverse effect. In her youthful and insular arrogance Nora had felt that the "German family" which boasted of her services was to be congratulated, and that the real and only question of importance was whether she liked them. Now she found herself wondering what this serene and graceful woman was thinking of her.

"I'm afraid I'm not a bit a glory to my nation," she said, with sincere schoolgirlish humility. "I wish I was."

Frau von Arnim laughed.

"We like you very much already," she said. "Besides, you could not help being nice with such a charming mother."

Nora started with pleased surprise, and whatever had been unconsciously antagonistic in her melted into an impulsive gratitude which spoke out of the heightened colour and bright, frank eyes.

"Do you know my mother, then?" she asked.

"No, only by her letters. But letters betray far more than the writers think. I often feel when I meet some reserved, unfathomable person who interests me, that if he would only write me the shortest note I should know more of him than after hours of conversation. And Mrs. Ingestre and I have exchanged many long letters. We feel almost as though she were an old friend; don't we, Hildegarde?"

This sudden appeal to a third person revealed to Nora the fact that they were not alone. Frau von Arnim rose, smiling at her bewilderment, and took her by the hand.

"You must think us very rude, strange people," she said, "but my daughter has been listening and watching all this time. You see, it is for her sake that we wanted you to come and live with us, and she had a whim that she would like to see you without being seen. Invalids may have whims and be pardoned, may they not?"

Whilst she had been speaking she had led Nora to the far end of the room. There, lying on a sofa drawn well into the shadow, Nora now perceived a girl of about her own age, whose thin, white face was turned to greet her with a mingling of apology and that pathetic humility which goes with physical weakness.

"Do not be angry," she said, holding out a feeble hand. "I am so afraid of strangers. I felt I should like to see you first—before you saw me. I do not know why—it was just a whim, and, as mother says, when one is ill one may perhaps be forgiven."

"Of course," Nora said gently. To herself she was thinking how beautiful suffering can be. The face lifted to hers—the alabaster complexion, the great dark eyes and fine aristocratic features framed in a bright halo of disordered hair—seemed to her almost unearthly in its spiritualised loveliness. And then there was the expression, so void of all vanity, so eloquent with the appeal: "You are so strong, so beautiful in your youth and strength. Be pitiful to me!"

Governed by some secret impulse, Nora looked up and found that Frau von Arnim was watching her intently. A veil had been lifted from the proud patrician eyes, revealing depths of pain and grief which spoke to Nora much as the younger eyes had spoken, save with the greater poignancy of experience: "You are strong, and life offers you what it will always withhold from my child. Be pitiful!"

And then prejudice, reserve, her own griefs, were swept out of Nora's hot young heart on a wave of sympathy. She still held the thin hand clasped in her own. She clasped it tighter, and her answer to the unspoken appeal came swift and unpremeditated.

"I hope you will like me," she said. "I am so glad I have come."

Hildegarde Arnim's pale face flushed with pleasure.

"I do like you," she said. "I do hope you will be happy with us."

And then, to their mutual surprise, the two girls kissed each other.

CHAPTER VI

A LETTER HOME

"I never realised before now how true it is that all men are brothers," Nora Ingestre wrote home to her mother at the end of her first week in Karlsburg. "I used to believe that we English were really the only people who counted, the really only nice people, and the rest were sort of outsiders on quite another level. And now all my ideas are turned topsy-turvy. I keep on saying to myself, 'Why, she is just like an Englishwoman,' or 'How English he looks!' and then I have to admit that the simple reason why I think they look English is because they look nice, and it seems there are nice people all the world over. Of course there are differences—one notices them especially among the poorer classes—and so far, I can only judge the men from a distance; but if I met the Gnädige Frau, as she is called, in any drawing-room, I should think, 'Well, with one exception, she is the most charming woman I have ever met,' and never have so much as guessed that she could belong to any country but my own. Hildegarde is a dear, too. Although she has known me such a short time, she treats me almost as though I were her sister—in fact, I am a sort of enfant gâté in the house, everybody, from Freda, the sturdy little housemaid, upwards, doing their best to show their goodwill to the 'kleine englische Dame.' (You see, I am picking up German fast!) Both the Gnädige Frau and Hildegarde know English well and seem to enjoy talking, though one half of the day is dedicated to my first German efforts, which, I am sure, have the most comical results. But no one ever laughs at you. Even Johann, the coachman, keeps quite a straight face when I call him 'du'—a disgraceful piece of endearment which seems to haunt me every time I open my mouth. That reminds me to tell you that yesterday we went for a lovely drive in the Wild Park, the private property of the Grand Duke. Driving is the only outdoor enjoyment which is left for poor Hildegarde, and it is terribly hard on her, because she loves riding and driving and tennis, and all that sort of thing. It seems she had a bad accident whilst out riding two years ago with her cousin, who is a captain in the Artillery here, and since then she has always been ill. She never complains, and is always so sweet and patient that it makes one despise oneself for not being an angel outright, but I know that she has her struggles. Yesterday, for instance, Johann was giving the horse a breathing space in a lovely allée—oh, you would have enjoyed it, darling! It was just like a glorious bit of England, with great oak trees on either side and lots of deer and—there, now! I have lost myself! Where was I?—Oh, yes, in the allée, when an officer galloped past and saluted. I hardly saw his face, but he certainly looked very smart in his dark-blue uniform, and he sat his horse as though he were part of it. He turned out to be Herr von Arnim, the cousin in question, and I would not have thought any more about him had it not been for a glimpse I caught of Hildegarde's face. She is always pale, but just at that moment she looked almost ghastly, and her lips were tight-pressed together, as though she were in pain. Somehow, I knew it was not physical, so I did not dare say anything, but I have wondered since whether it was the memory of all the splendid gallops she used to have and will never have again, or whether—but there! I must not let my fancy run away with me. Anyhow, I am quite anxious to see the 'Herr Baron' again. Perhaps I shall to-morrow at the Gnädige Frau's 'At Home'—at least, I suppose it is an 'At Home' or a German equivalent—a function which fills me with the profoundest awe and alarm. Imagine me, dearest, with my knowledge of the German language, in a crowd of natives! What will happen to me, I wonder? If I am lucky, the earth will open and swallow me up before I say something dreadful by mistake.

"September 15.—You see, I am writing my letter in diary form, so that you get all the details—which is what you want; is it not, dearest? And, indeed, there are so many details that I do not know where to begin. At any rate, the 'At Home' is over, which is a comfort, for it was even more exciting than I had expected. The crowd was awful—there were so many people that one could hardly breathe, and I was so frightened of some one speaking to me that I had to keep on repeating to myself, 'Remember you are English! Remember you are English!' in order to prevent a disorderly and undignified flight. Fortunately there was too much confusion for anybody to notice my insignificant person, and at last I managed to hide myself in an obscure alcove, where I could see and not be seen. On the whole it was the most mixed 'At Home' I have ever seen, and I am sure it would have shocked Mrs. Chester beyond words, You know how much she thinks of clothes and all that sort of thing. Well, here, apparently, no one thinks anything of them at all. Some of the biggest 'aristocrats'—they were nearly all 'aristocrats,' as I found out afterwards—were dressed in fashions which must have been in vogue when I was born, and nobody seemed to think it in the least funny. Of course, there were well-dressed people and a few young officers in uniform, who brightened matters up with a little colour, but I had no time to take in more than a general impression, for just as I was settling down to enjoy myself, some one spoke to me. Fortunately it was in English, or I have no doubt I should have fainted; as it was, I looked up and found a man in a pale-blue uniform standing beside me with his heels clapped together, evidently waiting for me to say something. I supposed he had introduced himself, for I had heard him say 'Bauer' in a rather grating voice, but I felt very far from friendly. You know how I am, mother. I take violent likes and dislikes, and I cannot hide either the one or the other. And almost in the same instant that I saw this man's face I disliked him. I cannot tell you why. He was good-looking enough and his manners were polished, but there was something in his face, in the way he looked at me, which made me angry—and afraid. It sounds absurd to talk of being afraid at a harmless German 'At Home,' but if I believed in omens I should say that the man is destined to bring me misfortune and that the instant I saw him I knew it. Please don't laugh—I am only trying to explain to you how intense the feeling was, and to make my subsequent behaviour seem less foolish. I fancy I was not friendly in my answers or in my looks, but he sat down beside me and went on talking. It does not matter what he said. He spoke English well, and seemed to 'listen to himself' with a good deal of satisfaction, all the time never taking his eyes off my face. Somehow, though everything he said was polite enough, I felt that he looked upon me as a kind of 'dependent' with whom he could amuse himself as he pleased; and that made my blood boil. I prayed for some one to come and fetch me away, and just then Frau von Arnim passed close to where I was sitting. I heard her ask after me and say something about music (I had promised to play), and suddenly I felt ashamed. I wondered what she would think of me if she found me sitting in a secluded corner with a man whom I had never seen before and to whom I had never been properly introduced. After all, she does not know me well enough to understand—well, that I am not that sort, and the idea that she might think badly of me with an appearance of reason was more than could bear. There is a small door in the alcove leading out into the hall, and just when my uninvited companion was in the middle of a sentence I got up and went out without a word of explanation. I am afraid it was neither a very dignified nor sensible proceeding, and it certainly landed me into worse difficulties, since the next thing I knew after my stormy exit was that I had collided violently with a man standing in the hall. Of course, my fragment of German forsook me, and I gasped, 'I beg your pardon!' in English, to which my victim answered, 'I beg your pardon!' also in English, but with the faintest possible accent. After that I recovered enough from the shock to draw back and assume as much dignity as I could under the circumstances. My victim was a tall, broad-shouldered man—of course in uniform-and though it was already twilight in the hall I could see that he had a pleasant, sun-burnt face and bright eyes, which at that moment looked very much amused. I suppose my attempt at dignity was rather a failure. 'I hope I did not hurt you?' he asked, and when I had reassured him on that point he suggested that he should introduce himself, as there was no one there to do it for him. Whereupon he clicked his spurs together and said, 'Von Arnim. Miss Ingestre, I think?' I asked him how he knew my name, and he said, as a Prussian officer it was his duty to know everything, and that he had heard so much about Miss Ingestre that it was impossible not to recognise her. And then we stood looking at each other, I feeling horribly awkward, he evidently still very much amused. Then he proposed to take me back into the drawing-room, but that was the last thing I wanted, and I said so in my usual rude way, which seemed to amuse him still more.