SIR HARRY (continued 5)

She showed him into a room on the first floor, after knocking at the door and receiving no answer. "I expect Miss Viola is upstairs," she said, opening the door. "I don't think she's gone out again. If you'll kindly step in, sir, I'll go and tell her you're here."

Wilbraham entered the room with some curiosity. It was larger than he had anticipated, extending to the whole width of the house and lit by the two windows. Its main furniture was good and solid, of about the date of the house, when furniture had lost its simplicity of line and ornament, but still showed some pride of craftsmanship. Except for an upright piano with a front of faded fluted red silk, which might or might not have belonged to the tenants, it was all probably the property of the landlady, and the nondescript wall paper and dark green curtains were also probably her taste and not theirs. But the books in shelves on either side of the fireplace, the pictures on the walls and the clutter of photographs and little objects for use or ornament on the mantelpiece and elsewhere about the room struck a different note. No attempt had been made to make it other than it was by nature, but it had the air of a permanent home, occupied by people of some refinement.

Viola's work-basket was on a small table by the wall, and there were other signs of feminine occupancy in the room. It looked cozy enough, with a bright fire burning, the curtains drawn and the gas lit; for it was getting dark outside. Bastian evidently made use of the large shabby easy chair by the fire, for there was a tobacco jar and an array of pipes on the table by its side, and a book or two. With his daughter sitting opposite to him, on a winter evening, it was possible to imagine him taking pleasure in his home life. It would be quieter and less marked by poverty than Wilbraham had pictured it. A faint odour of the tobacco that Bastian used hung about, but there were flowers in a vase on Viola's table, and fruit in a plaited basket on the sideboard. The sideboard, apt to be so much in evidence in furnished lodgings, had none of the paraphernalia of meals on it in the way of cruets or bottles. In fact, there were no bottles to be seen anywhere. Wilbraham noticed that at once, for his own trouble had made him acutely sensitive; he had no fears now of succumbing to a temptation to drink, but the signs of drinking by Bastian would have affected him unhappily. He was inclined to believe that he had to some extent misread Bastian, on his first acquaintance with him. It could not be his habitual custom to drink as much as he had done on that afternoon, or Viola would be more affected by it than she was. She had none of the air of a girl whose life had been saddened by a father's gross intemperance; and if Bastian had been kept down in the world by this failing of his, as he had said he had, his poverty was shown by this room to be more relative than actual.

Wilbraham dismissed the unpleasant question of intemperance, in relief at the signs of comfort and refinement that he saw about him. The table in the middle of the room was laid for tea, as if that was the chief evening meal here. Wilbraham hoped that Bastian would not come in for it until he had talked to Viola.

He made his way to the mantelpiece, upon which were a good many photographs. The photographs in a room tell you more than anything about its occupants.

Something was told in this instance by the fact that they were all a good many years old. It meant, for one thing, that Viola and her father must have lived here for some time, and for another that they could have made few friends of late years.

Wilbraham's eye was caught by one of Bastian as a very young man in a group with three others, taken by a Cambridge photographer. His first thought as he looked at it, was to wonder whether he himself had changed so much in twenty years. Bastian appeared as a young man fashionably dressed and judging by his smile pleased with the world in general and with his own lot in it in particular. He had been more than usually good-looking in those days. There was another one of him on a horse, taken at about the same time, but not at Cambridge. Wilbraham wished afterwards that he had noticed the name and habitation of the photographer. Bastian had never told him from what part of the country he came, or anything about his early home and upbringing. But it was evident that he came from what it is customary to call "good people." It was hardly fair to keep Viola in ignorance of her parentage, which might possibly prove to be of some importance to her.

There was a photograph of Viola herself at the age of about ten—a pretty child, but without the exceptional beauty into which she had grown. In a large frame was one of her mother, and there were others of her at different stages. Wilbraham examined them with some attention. She was certainly beautiful, with the same sort of beauty as Viola's, though Wilbraham thought that if he had not known the facts about her he would yet have detected an absence of race, which seemed to him to be apparent in Viola, and perhaps also in her father. He tried to find in her support for Bastian's praise of her character and temperament, but all he could have said was that there was nothing to show that she had not deserved it. She smiled sweetly in these photographs, some of which were in theatrical costume; she was young and beautiful and happy, and her early death added pathos to these presentments of her.

There were other photographs of girls and young women carelessly propped up on the mantelpiece, some of them hidden. They were probably mostly theatrical friends of Mrs. Bastian's, and it seemed likely that she had lived in these rooms, or they would not have been left there. Wilbraham's eyes roamed over them without interest, but just as he was about to turn away were caught by the signature of one of them. "With love from Lottie" in a sprawling hand. It was of Mrs. Brent, taken in that youth of which she was still proud but which she had left behind her.

Wilbraham looked at it fascinated. For some reason or other Mrs. Brent had never shown him a photograph of herself taken during her stage career. For the moment he was more interested in seeing her as she had been than in the fact of finding her photograph here—Harry's mother, in Viola's room.

The photograph made her almost as pretty as Mrs. Bastian. She was a gay light-hearted girl too. Harry's father might be excused for having fallen in love with her. And there was a look of Harry in her young face, which Wilbraham had never noticed in the flesh. He wondered whether Viola had noticed the likeness, which seemed to him quite plain. But probably she did not look at these old photographs to notice anything about them at all once in six months, though she saw them every day.

Viola came in as he was standing looking at them. He thought she looked more beautiful than ever, as she greeted him with a smile and a blush. Her entrance into the room seemed to bring light with it, and softness and charm. Its commonplace features sank into the background; the flowers became of more importance than anything, and the books and the music.

Wilbraham had seen Viola in a pretty simple frock suitable for the country, but although her clothes now had the same air of simplicity to his unsophisticated eyes, they were even to him something exceptional. One would not have expected a girl who lived in that room to enter it dressed as she was. The calling in which she earned her living stood her in good stead. Wilbraham had not been told what it was, and had the idea of her doing something or other with a typewriter. He thought that the figure she presented was owing to her taste, and did not know that it would also have meant a good deal of money if there had been nothing more than her taste to account for it. What he did feel was that she might have entered any rich room in London as she was and been taken for granted as belonging to it. She was worthy of Harry even in this respect, which would probably weigh more with the world even than it weighed with him.

"Father will be in in about half an hour," she said. "You will stay and have some tea with us, won't you? I'm sure he will be glad to see you."

He had been looking at her searchingly. She gave him the impression of being older than when he had seen her at Royd, a woman full grown and no longer half a child, though the delicacy and freshness of youth still marked her. She had, in fact, ceased to arrange her hair as still growing girls wear it, and there was some to him indefinable difference in her clothes.

He said he would stay until her father came in, and she motioned him to her father's chair, and sat down in her own on the other side of the fire, facing him.

She seemed to wait for him to speak first. He could tell nothing by her manner, which was smiling and self-possessed, though her self-possession was not more than is becoming to a young girl, secure in her youth and charm.

"I suppose you know that Harry has left home to enlist in the army," he said.

Her colour deepened a little upon the mention of her lover's name, but she did not shrink from his gaze, and the faint smile was still on her lips as she said: "I thought that he might, although he didn't say he would." So of course she knew, and had been prepared for the question.

"Probably he had not quite made up his mind by the time you left Royd," he said.

She did not reply to this, and he thought he could see that she had decided not to admit anything, probably under Harry's directions. Again there came to him the sense of dislike at interfering with what Harry had decided. He could not fence with her to make her say what Harry didn't want her to say, or force her to say that she could not answer his questions. She was frank and innocent. It would seem an impertinence to put her into the position of defending a reticence.

"We have been very anxious about him at home," he said. "We are anxious still—not to get him to come back, but that he should not cut himself off from us. I've come up to London on purpose to get a message to him if I can. I didn't tell Lady Brent I should come here, or say anything about you. She thinks I have only come to see Mr. Gulliver, the family solicitor, and ask him to find out, if he can, where Harry is. His mother can hardly bear the thought of not hearing from him for months, and not knowing where he is. Lady Brent was not altogether unprepared for his enlisting. She couldn't have been a party to it, as he's not even of an age to enlist yet, and I suppose he's had to represent himself as older than he is in order to get taken. But she told me herself that she was proud of him for doing it, and she certainly wouldn't do anything to interfere with him, now he's taken the matter into his own hands. If he knew that——"

He did not finish his sentence, which was on the note of appeal to her. Nor did he look at her.

There was a pause. Then she said, "I haven't seen Harry, you know, Mr. Wilbraham."

He looked at her then, and saw that there were tears in her eyes. So his appeal had not been without its effect.

"I think his mother ought to know," she said, "and that he ought to write to her."

In a flash of understanding, he saw that he had got all that he had come for, and that he would get no more. Or at least that he must not exercise pressure to get more, or put her in the position of refusing to give it. She would tell Harry what he had told her, and she would tell him that she thought he ought to write to his mother. Of Lady Brent she had said nothing. It was probable that Lady Brent appeared in her eyes in a different light from that in which Wilbraham saw her.

As for everything else—it was their secret, to be treated by him with respect. He would probe into it no further; and indeed it was better that he should not know more than he knew already of how it was between them. There was quite enough on his mind that he had kept from Lady Brent.

"Yes, I think he should write," he said. "I shall see Mr. Gulliver to-morrow."

The two statements had no apparent bearing upon one another, but Viola seemed to accept them with relief, and was beginning to talk to him pleasantly, but with no reference to Harry, when Bastian came in.

He was nearly half an hour earlier than his usual time, it appeared, and Wilbraham was inclined to be disappointed at having his talk with Viola cut short. Whenever he was with her he felt himself almost violently in sympathy with Harry in his love for her. He was observing her all the time, and there was nothing that she said or did that did not deepen his first impression of her. He wanted to feel like that about her, for Harry's sake; championship of her as one who was in all essentials fit to mate with him, might stand Harry in good stead later on.

But she would show herself, perhaps with less need for carefulness in what she said, with her father there as without him. Bastian gave him a cordial welcome. He was again, in appearance, a gentleman, merely indifferent to the shabbiness of his attire, but the younger healthier look he had had during the latter part of his stay at Royd no longer marked him. Wilbraham thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk, or anything near it, and it seemed probable that he kept his habits in check in the home that he must have valued. He drank tea, rather copiously, at the meal which soon followed his entrance, and there was no preparation apparent for anything stronger to be drunk later on.

It was not long before Wilbraham became as anxious to be alone with Bastian as he had before wished to be alone with Viola. Bastian knew, and Viola was distressed at the signs he showed of wishing to talk about what he knew.

It became plain to Wilbraham now that the poor child was not unaffected by her father's intemperance. If the worst of it was kept from her, and he had the self-command not to soil the home in which she lived with it, still there were times when she saw him not quite himself.

This was one of them. Wilbraham saw the suspicion and then the certainty dawn upon her, with a droop, and a shadow on her brightness, and a stiffening of manner that was not quite displeasure, but yet something near it. She had enough influence over him, apparently, to be able to prevent his saying what she did not want said, but his hints and smiles made Wilbraham as uncomfortable as they evidently made her. Immediately the meal was over she said good-bye to Wilbraham and went out of the room. Perhaps this was her usual way of dealing with these lapses. Her father expostulated, but she took no notice, except by saying as she went out: "I'll tell Mrs. Clark not to clear away just yet."

"She's a dear child, Viola—but she's difficult sometimes," said Bastian. "I hope she hasn't taken a dislike to you."

"I don't think so," said Wilbraham, shortly. "What she obviously does dislike is having her secrets talked about before a comparative stranger. I should have thought you might have seen that."

Bastian threw a look at him as he went to the side table to take up a pipe. Wilbraham's tone seemed to surprise him, but it did not subdue the agreeable humour in which he found himself. "We don't look on you as a stranger," he said, "and if there's a secret, you're in it. I think you want mellowing, my dear Wilbraham. I don't keep anything to drink here, but if you'd like something I can send out for it."

"You seem to forget what I told you about myself," said Wilbraham. "I can't drink without losing control of myself. You seem to be in much the same case. I think it's a damned shame to show it before that child."

This brought Bastian up short. He frowned in offence, but apparently he was one of those people whom a rebuke moves more to sorrow than to anger, for he said: "That's a hard thing to say to a man, Wilbraham. I do drink more than's good for me sometimes, I know; but if there's one thing I've always been careful about all my life it is not to let it affect Viola."

"Well, it does affect her," said Wilbraham. "You'd have seen how it affected her just now, if you hadn't been drinking. It's not for me to preach, God knows. But if you're able to control it at all, you've got something to be very thankful for, and you ought to control it absolutely as far as she's concerned."

"I've had very little to drink to-day, as a matter of fact," said Bastian, rather sulkily, "and I don't want to be lectured about it, Wilbraham. Sit down and have a talk. You won't find my powers of expression affected by the little I have had."

He ended on a smile. He was an attractive creature, Wilbraham thought, in spite of his culpable weakness. Most men would have quarrelled with him for what he had said, if they had been in Bastian's state. But the extent to which he was affected by drink was a puzzle. As he talked Wilbraham could mark no signs of it, though they had seemed so evident up to this time. There was an absence of cautiousness in what he said, but that was native to him. It may have been slightly enhanced now, but Wilbraham would not have put it down to the loosening of tongue brought about by liquor if they had started with this conversation. His own irritation subsided. He had said his say. He sat down in Viola's chair, opposite to Bastian, and lit his cigarette, taking rather a long time to do so, in order to leave the opening with Bastian, who was not slow to take it.

"It wouldn't do for my little failing to become known, would it?" he said with a smile. "If I can't do without alcohol altogether—and I don't see why I should—I shall have to keep in the background."

Wilbraham was conscious of a return of irritation. He disliked this half-jocular allusion to a subject of such serious importance. "Oh, don't talk of it like that," he said, impatiently. "I suppose you know that Harry Brent and Viola have met and have fallen in love with one another. Nobody else knows it but me, and perhaps it's important that nobody else should. At any rate you can talk quite straight about it to me."

Bastian received this with a change of manner. "All right," he said, "I will talk straight. Viola's a girl in a thousand—in a million. I'd trust her anywhere. But for a young man to be meeting her again and again, and keeping it secret—! Well, you see my point, I suppose."

It was quite a new point to Wilbraham, as far as he did see it. But his brain, edged by his long struggle with himself, and now again working with its normal quickness, seized upon its essential insincerity at once. There was a barely perceptible pause before he said: "If you mean that Harry has done anything that you can take exception to why have you been smiling and hinting about it up till now?"

Perhaps Bastian did not quite take this in. "Oh, I don't mean to say that there has been anything wrong," he said. "As I say, I trust Viola—absolutely. If she's satisfied with herself, as she is, that's enough for me."

"Very well," said Wilbraham, keeping command. "Then that applies to Harry too. You don't know him. I do. I found it out by chance, and he made no attempt to persuade me to keep it secret. He left it to me, and I decided to do so. If he wanted it kept secret, so did she; and they both wanted it for the same reasons, whatever they were. If she was right, he was right, and——"

"Yes, that's all very well——," said Bastian, but Wilbraham over-rode his interruption. "I suppose you didn't know of it till after you'd come to London. How did you know of it?"

Bastian allowed himself to be diverted. "I found it out on the last night," he said. "I went out to look for her, and she came in crying, poor child! Something suddenly struck me. She had been out such a lot alone, and she hadn't done that before when we'd been away together—at least not so much. And she'd been different somehow. I hadn't thought about it before, but it came to me suddenly all together. And she wouldn't have been crying like that just because we were going home. There was something—somebody. I dare say I should have got at it by thinking it over; but she told me. I love her, and she loves me, and knows that she can tell me anything. That's how it was, Wilbraham. You're not a father, but you can imagine, perhaps, what a father feels about these things, when his daughter is the chief thing in the world to him."

"I suppose I can," said Wilbraham. "But all the same you're not treating her in the way you boast of if you're not prepared to look upon Harry in the same light. You'll agree that on the outside of things they're not equal—those two."

"I don't agree to that," said Bastian, dogmatically.

"I said on the outside of things," Wilbraham persisted. "You've been where he belongs, and you know what sort of position he's in. You may have belonged to the same sort of thing once. I don't know. You've never told me who your people were. But you say yourself that you've come down in the world, and it's pretty obvious that you're not in anything like the position the Brents are now. So you can see how it would have been likely to strike me when I first found it out. But Harry is what he is. I trusted him, just as you trusted Viola. And afterwards I saw Viola. If I can think of her as I do, you ought to be able to think of Harry in the same way, though you haven't seen him."

"Very well, then," said Bastian. "Let's take it that, leaving out things that don't matter, they're to be looked at in the same way. Of course I know, really, that he's something quite out of the common. I've heard the people there talk about him. If I hadn't thought there was no harm in it—for Viola—I shouldn't have treated it as I have. But you see, Wilbraham, as a father I've got to look a little farther ahead than you do. I suppose to you it's just a boy and girl falling in love with one another in all their innocence, and if nothing comes of it no harm will be done. Well, it wouldn't to him. But it's rather different with her, isn't it?"

Wilbraham was silent. That was exactly as he had looked at it, on Harry's behalf. And it would be different for Viola.

"If he's what you say he is," said Bastian, pursuing his advantage, "he won't want to throw her off when he gets older. But his people will want him to, and when they know they'll try to bring it about. Harry and Viola! Yes. But it's me and Lady Brent, you see, as well—as she seems to be the one that counts most. I don't know anything about the boy's mother; they don't talk about her much down there. It's his grandmother who seems to count for everything. Who was his mother, by the by?"

Wilbraham had forgotten until that moment the photograph on the mantelpiece. He awoke to its realization with a mental start. If Bastian had not shown himself ignorant of Mrs. Brent's origin he might have succumbed to the instinct for the dramatic and surprised him by pointing her out in reply to his question. But when the question came he had just received the impression of loyalty on the part of Mrs. Ivimey, or anybody else to whom Bastian may have talked about "the family." They had not given Mrs. Brent away. He wouldn't either, at least at this stage.

"Nobody in particular," he said with a half truth. "They were only married for a few weeks. Lady Brent is Harry's guardian, and of course she's had most to do with bringing him up more or less in seclusion at Royd. I suppose you know that he has gone off to enlist."

"Yes, and I suppose you've come here to find out from Viola where he is, and haul him back again."

Wilbraham told him why he had come up. "I shall go and see Gulliver to-morrow," he said, "and get him to make inquiries. Then I hope in a few days Harry will write. She'll be satisfied with that, and whether Gulliver finds him or not she won't make any attempt to get him back."

"Well, you're a funny crew altogether," said Bastian, after they had talked a little longer. "As far as I'm concerned, Wilbraham, I'm going to keep my eyes open. You needn't look to me to back up your ideas, if it doesn't suit me to do so. Better have all your cards on the table. They're both much too young yet to think about anything further, and I suppose he'll be too young for another few years. You can hug your secret for the present."

CHAPTER XX

WAITING

Autumn gave place to winter and winter to spring. Another summer came, and people began to resign themselves to the hitherto almost incredible idea of the war lasting over another winter. That winter passed away and the interminable struggle went on.

But even after two years the texture of life had not very greatly altered in England. Conscription had not yet come in; there was no food control; motor cars could be used for purposes of pleasure or convenience; the chief opportunities for the work of women in connection with the war were in nursing, and for girls in government clerkships. It was not for another full year that country life in England seemed quite a different thing from what it had been before the war. The change had come by degrees and its last stages were passed through much more quickly than the first. In the summer of 1916 it was still possible to live in a country house without being much affected by the war.

Lady Brent lived on at Royd Castle to all outward appearances in much the same way as she had lived there since her widowhood. There came to be fewer servants, and her work in connection with the estate increased, for her bailiff had joined up, and she had not tried to replace him. She did much of his work herself, with the help of the estate staff, and perhaps welcomed the increased responsibility, for her life during those two first years was sad enough, with all that she had lived for taken from her just at the time when the hopes of years were to have been put to the test.

Harry had written to his mother within a few days of Wilbraham's return from London, and again from time to time to her and to his grandmother and to Wilbraham; also to the children. But his letters contained very little news about himself. They were posted in London and gave no address to which answers could be sent. After some months there was a long silence, and then he wrote from Egypt, where his regiment had been sent. After that he wrote mostly to his mother. He told her more about his life, but never anything that would identify him.

The letters sent from Egypt were subject to censorship, but they arrived at Royd in envelopes bearing a London postmark and with no label or stamp on them. Yet they were addressed in Harry's writing. He must have left a supply of them behind him.

The clue to all this was no doubt a strong and considered determination to carry out his plan without risk of interference. The message carried to him by Viola had brought letters from him, but that was as far as he would go; and perhaps he would have written in any case. After the first one had been received Lady Brent wrote to Mr. Gulliver and told him not to pursue his inquiries. Harry must have his own way. As he had written, after it had seemed that he had made up his mind not even to do that, so perhaps he would some day relent and let them write to him. But nearly two years went by and he had not done so.

In the long sad conversations they had about him at Royd during the early months, they arrived at some sort of conclusions, helped by an occasional expression in his letters. He had gone out of his own world, and as long as his time of probation lasted he would keep out of it. He was not likely to think himself degraded by serving in the ranks, but they came to understand that he was keeping his actual condition hidden. There was nothing in his letters, which would be read by his superior officers, to indicate it, and before he left England they were more about Royd than about himself. There was never very much about himself. Every time he wrote he said he was well and happy; but it peeped through that the change in his life was not without its effect upon him. How could it be otherwise, brought up as he had been? He was learning in a hard school; but he was learning, and flashes of his old boyish brightness broke through the reticence which he seemed to have imposed upon himself. They came to look upon it as a time of probation for him, and to believe that so he looked upon it himself. Sometimes they thought they saw signs of expectation. He was working for and looking forward to something. Viola, said Wilbraham to himself. His commission to be won in the field, said Lady Brent. He wanted no help towards it, as might have been given by finding him out, which should not have been difficult after he had left England, and pulling strings. When he had gained his commission, by his own unaided effort, and by no reliance upon his place in the world outside the army, then he would come back to them. It was hard on Lady Brent to wait, and to lift no finger, and harder still on his mother. But he must be trusted. They had directed him through his childhood, and youth, and now he would brook no direction. The only consolation they had was that his upbringing had not taken from him a man's initiative and determination. The experiment seemed to have been justified; but with a greater knowledge of the world beforehand he might not have thought it necessary so to cut his life in two. They were paying a heavy price.

Wilbraham, who had more of a clue to Harry's actions than the others, was not without irritation against what at times he set down as mere hard undutifulness. He had great sympathy with Lady Brent, who had so wonderfully sunk her own feelings in acquiescing in the boy's unreasonable determination. She could almost certainly have traced him had she wished to do so. And Wilbraham, at least, knew that he must have been told at the very beginning that he would not be interfered with. Why could he not then have softened the hardship to those who loved him? Granted that the new love that had come into his life was so much more to him than the old; but it was not like him to throw over the old altogether, and indeed his letters showed that he had not done so.

After a time his irritation died away. It could not be so distressing to Harry to be cut off from Royd as it was to them to be cut off from him, but his letters showed that he felt it, and especially the few letters that he wrote to little Jane, in which he seemed to be reaching out after the untroubled innocent happiness of his youth, and the beauty and freedom that had lain all about it. It was the old Harry that appeared in those letters, and here and there in others; the new Harry became more and more evident otherwise—a man doing a man's hard work in hard and uncongenial surroundings, much older than his years, where in some ways he had been so much younger.

He was hard on himself as well as hard upon them. They had given him happiness in his sheltered youth, but the plunge he had taken into a life different from any that could have been anticipated for him can have been none the easier on that account. The ugliness and crudity that other boys might in some measure have been prepared for would bear very hardly upon him, and he would have to fight through it alone. Wilbraham came to see that he might shrink from mixing it up with his home life. Perhaps he was afraid that he might weaken in it if he was subject to any pressure. It would surely have been open to him to have had at least a few days at home before he went abroad; but he had not taken the opportunity.

Had he blamed them for bringing him up in that seclusion? There was nothing in his letters to show it. But it must have been very soon revealed to him how exceptional his life had been, and how much he had missed of what other boys had had. He would not always be capable of gauging the value of what he had missed, when face to face with some situation with which his inexperience had unfitted him to cope lightly. It might take him a long time to acknowledge that what he had gained had been more than what he had missed, and partly arose from it. He would know, too, before long that the immovable seclusion in which his grandmother and mother and Wilbraham himself lived was anything but the normal state of affairs that it had been implicitly represented to him. He would ask himself why they had never left Royd from one year's end to another, and why so few people had ever come there; and he would see that it had all been with reference to him. He would hardly be able to understand it. If he acknowledged the freedom he had enjoyed, the limits of it would still strike him, with his new knowledge of the world's ways. If he had not, since his childhood, been dominated by women, he had certainly been managed, without knowing it. Whether, in the strangeness and disagreeableness and difficulty of much of his new life he was inclined to resent this unduly, or whether he saw behind it enough to admit that there had been wisdom as well as apparent eccentricity, and certainly love, in the steps his youth had been made to tread, it would not be surprising if he made up his mind at an early date that the managing should come to an end. It was for him to direct his own life now. He would run no further risk of influence brought to bear upon it, the clue to which was not in his hands.

In the first spring Wilbraham left Royd to take up work in a Government office in London, for which Lady Brent had asked for him. A few months later Mrs. Brent broke loose from the now insupportable stagnation of Royd, and went to London with the avowed object of nursing. She had had no training and was quite ignorant of the steps to be taken, but Lady Brent arranged an income for her, and made no attempt to direct her movements in any way. She was left alone in the Castle, and stayed there alone for another year. To all outward appearance she was exactly what she had always been, always occupied, always unemotional, though sometimes more unapproachable than at others. The months dragged on.

CHAPTER XXI

SIDNEY

One morning in May Lady Brent unlocked the letter bag, which she never did without anticipations of some news of Harry. It was at least a month since there had been a letter from him, but there at last it was, searched for among all the rest and making them of no value at all.

It was directed to Mrs. Brent, and the envelope bore the stamps and marks of the field from which it had been written. All Harry's previous letters had been redirected from London.

She sat looking at it and turning it over. Once or twice she seemed to be on the point of opening it, and she must have been under the strongest temptation to do so. What could it mean but that he had reached his goal, and the long time of half estrangement was over? Perhaps it was to say that he was coming home.

She laid it down, and took up her other letters with a sigh, but before she opened any of them, she went to her writing-table and enclosed it in a note to Mrs. Brent. Then she rang the bell and gave orders that some one was to ride over to Burport with it, and arrange for its immediate transmission to London by train. By that means she might get the telegram she had asked for from her daughter-in-law that evening. Then she went calmly about her duties.

These included one that was quite unusual at Royd Castle. It was to see that preparations were made for visitors. Her old friend Lady Avalon had written to ask if she might come for a few days. After twelve or thirteen years Poldaven Castle was to be occupied again for the summer. Lady Avalon wanted to see what was necessary to be done there, but it had been empty so long that she didn't want to trust herself in it for a night if Lady Brent could do with her at Royd and let her go over from there..

Later on that morning she went again to her writing-table and wrote to Lady Avalon, who was expected in a couple of days' time. Would she care to bring her daughter Sidney with her? It was no doubt very dull at Royd, but there was just a chance of Harry coming home from Egypt. She sat considering for a moment when she had written this, but closed her letter without adding any more. Harry was extremely unlikely to be at Royd in a few days' time, but if Sidney had already been there when he did come home it would be easier to ask her there again.

After this she went down to the village, taking Ben, Harry's retriever, with her.

She called at the Vicarage. The Grants were to be asked to dine when Lady Avalon came. The maid who opened the door looked at her rather curiously, but she did not notice it. Mrs. Grant was in the drawing-room and sprang up to meet her. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said, and came forward, her hand held out and her face all alight with pleasure.

Lady Brent was taken aback by the warmth of the greeting. She liked Mrs. Grant and supposed that Mrs. Grant liked her, but she was not accustomed to this kind of welcome.

"Thank you," she said, a shade drily. "I came to ask if you and your husband would dine with me on Thursday. Lady Avalon will be staying with me, and possibly her daughter, Lady Sidney Pawle."

"Oh, thank you, yes, we shall be very pleased," said Mrs. Grant. "Will Harry be home by then? He might, mightn't he? Oh, I am so glad he's coming at last."

Lady Brent understood now, but it took her a little time to recover herself. "He has written to Jane, I suppose," she said, speaking in as natural a tone as possible. "There was a letter from him this morning, but it was to his mother, and I was not expecting to get the news in it until this evening."

"Oh, I'll go and get the letter at once," said Mrs. Grant, and ran out of the room, leaving Lady Brent alone. She sat quite still, and the colour that had left her face returned to it again. When Mrs. Grant came back, accompanied by Jane, with the precious letter in her hand, she had quite recovered herself.

Jane was rather a favourite of Lady Brent's. She was not in the least afraid of her, as her elders were apt to be, and talked to her about Harry in a way that nobody else did. She was often invited to the Castle by herself, and was always ready to go, though it might have been thought that her inclinations towards bodily activity would have made it a doubtful pleasure to have to sit and talk to an elderly woman. Probably she was the only person in the world of whom Lady Brent would not feel jealous because she had received this news first.

"I thought I'd like to bring you the letter myself," said Jane, and stood by her side as she read it.

Jane was fourteen now. Probably no two years in her life could bring as great a change as the last two had brought to her. She had grown tall for her age, but was still slim and very upright. There was a good deal of the child in her still, and even a little of the boy, for her figure was not so rounded as with most girls of her age, and her taste for boyish activities was still strong. But there was more of the budding woman. She was gentler in speech and manner than of old, and her face, if not yet her figure, was wholly feminine. Her early promise of beauty was in course of being fulfilled. She was very pretty, with her fair hair and wide grey eyes, and it was no longer an effort to make her tidy in her dress. Her skirts were well below her knees, and in her more active moments she took some pains to keep them there.

"My dear Jane,

"I shall be home almost as soon as you get this. I suppose you know I've been serving as a trooper all this time, but now I've got a commission. I shall be in London for a day or two to get my kit, and then I shall come down to Royd with a month's leave in front of me. Hurrah! You and I and Pobbles will have lots of fun together. I hope you've kept the cabin in good repair.

"Love from

"HARRY."

Lady Brent took a long time to read it, while Jane stood and looked at her. When she looked up at last, Jane said: "I wish I'd known that his other letter hadn't been written to you. I would have brought this up at once.

"Thank you, dear," said Lady Brent. "Of course he doesn't know that his mother is not at Royd. He would have thought that we should all get the news at the same time. Perhaps he will have told her more exact dates, if he knows them. At any rate it cannot be long now before we see him again."

She was completely herself now, and no one who had not known her would have guessed that the news she had received meant very much to her. She rose almost immediately and took her leave. She kissed Jane as she said good-bye, which was an unusual attention, and perhaps meant that she bore her no grudge for having received the news first.

"I think it's rather horrid of Mrs. Brent to be away," said Jane, when she had gone. "Of course he would expect to find her waiting here for him."

Mrs. Grant was sometimes puzzled in her dealings with this growing daughter of hers. She was becoming more of a companion to her, and now Pobbles had gone to school could be treated less as a child. But it was not always easy to decide how far she should be let into the confidences of her elders. She seemed to have acquired a prejudice against Mrs. Brent, which had hitherto been treated as something not to be encouraged.

"It has made it difficult not to be able to tell Harry anything of what has happened here," Mrs. Grant said. "She went away to try to get some nursing, and——"

"A fat lot of nursing she's done!" interrupted Jane. "I don't believe she's tried at all. She's just enjoying herself in London. I don't suppose Lady Brent cares for her much, but it's rather hard lines to leave her all by herself."

Mrs. Grant was much of the same opinion, since Mrs. Brent had taken no steps, as far as was known, to embark upon the nursing career which she had announced as her intention; but she was not quite ready to agree with Jane's criticism of her. "It isn't only she that has left Lady Brent," she said.

"Mr. Wilbraham is doing some work," said Jane, "and Harry had to go. If he hadn't gone when he did, he would have gone by this time."

"I don't want to criticize him," said her mother. "It will be all over now, but I think it has been hard lines, as you say, on Lady Brent that she hasn't been able to write to him."

"She understands that," said Jane. "We've talked about it."

Mrs. Grant knew that Lady Brent had, surprisingly, made something of a confidante of Jane. She was pleased that it was so, but did not like to ask questions about her confidences.

Jane, however, seemed ready to give them. "We think," she said, "that until he was made an officer he wouldn't want anybody to know that he was Sir Harry Brent, or different from any other soldier. It would make it difficult if he had letters from home. She's proud of him for it. So am I."

Mrs. Grant was touched by the "we." Evidently Jane was of some comfort to the lonely self-contained lady, if they discussed matters in that way. She kissed her. "I expect it's something like that, darling," she said. "Anyhow, it's all over now, and he'll be just like any other young man. You must go back to lessons now."

"I don't think he's like other young men," said Jane, as she reluctantly prepared to leave. "I think it's much finer to go through all the hardships. It's like pioneering. I expect what we used to talk about in the log cabin had something to do with it."

"Did you tell Lady Brent about that, darling?"

"Oh, yes. And she quite agreed with me. Lady Brent understands things. I think Mrs. Brent is a rotter. Good-bye, mother dear."

Mrs. Brent's telegram came that evening, and she herself the next day. According to his letter, Harry might be in England almost as soon as it reached her. He would come down to Royd as soon as possible, but he must be in London for a few days to get his kit. He would wire from there. But he did not tell her where she could communicate with him.

She was all on edge, and Lady Brent must have exercised the strongest control over herself to act with her accustomed calmness and suavity. Suavity had not always been the note of her intercourse with her daughter-in-law, but it was clear that this was not the time when friction between them could be allowed to appear. If she did not exercise restraint it was quite certain that Mrs. Brent wouldn't. She seemed to be anxious to show that she had thrown off anything like submission. She was noticeably less well-mannered than she had been, though she bore herself as if she had acquired more importance. She brought with her a great many expensive clothes, and talked about them a good deal. She dressed elaborately, and in a style to which no objection could be made if elaborate clothes were accepted as suitable for wear in the country and at this time; but they did not improve her. Lady Brent ventured upon a hint that Harry might like better to see her as she had been before, but she flared up in offence, and let it be known that she had learnt a lot since she had been in London. Harry also would have learnt something; the old days at Royd were over.

Underneath all her new independence, and almost aggressive spirit, her longing for Harry was plain. She seemed to have resigned herself to his absence, and to have gained some satisfaction out of her life in London, of which she had remarkably little to tell. But now that he was coming home again her maternal instinct arose to swamp everything else. At the end of the twenty-four hours Lady Brent spent alone with her she was far nearer to being what she had been before she had left Royd. She had to have some sympathetic ear into which to pour her doubts and complaints and disappointments. If only Harry had told her where he was to be in London, she could have met him there. Oh, it was hard to think that he might be there now and she could not go to him. When did Lady Brent think they might expect him? She asked her this again and again, and made innumerable confused calculations, based upon this or that idea that came into her head. She was very trying, but she had to be put up with. She was Harry's mother, whatever she might have made of herself.

On the day after her arrival Lady Avalon came, with her daughter, but still there was no word from Harry.

They came in time for tea, and the two older ladies retired to talk together afterwards. Mrs. Brent was left to entertain the girl. In the few minutes' conversation Sidney had with her mother before dinner she told her that unless she gained some relief from that companionship she really couldn't stay at Royd. "She's a perfectly appalling woman, mother," she said. "How on earth she can have had a son like Harry, if he's anything like he used to be as a child, I can't understand."

"I don't think she's so bad as all that, dear," said Lady Avalon. "From what Lady Brent tells me, she's been running with the people she comes from, and of course they can't be much. That's admitted, though I don't know anything about them. She seemed a quiet enough little thing when I was here last. She'll settle down again."

"I hope she will. But it's a poor lookout for me if I've got to make a bosom friend of her, while you and Lady Brent are putting your heads together. Really, darling, I don't think I can stand it."

"Harry may be home any day, and until he does come we can spend most of our time at Poldaven, though of course we mustn't just make a convenience of being here. The Vicarage people are dining to-night, so you won't have her on your hands entirely. The Vicar is David Grant, the novelist. I haven't read any of his novels, but I believe a lot of people do. I expect he's a clever man, and will cheer us up a bit."

"I should think we shall have quite an hilarious evening—you and Lady Brent talking together, and me and Mrs. Brent and the Vicarage people."

"I thought you rather liked Vicarage people. Don't make yourself superior to your company, there's a good girl. It's the worst sort of form—especially in the country."

Whatever the allusion to Vicarage people may have meant, it sent Sidney out of the room with a blush on her cheeks, and Lady Avalon rang for her maid with a look on her face as of one who had been rather clever.

Sidney had grown into a pretty girl, though she was considered the ugly duckling of the handsome family to which she belonged. She was tall, and had not yet quite grown out of the youthful awkwardness of her stature. But there was more character in her well-shaped features than her sisters could boast of, though their widely known beauty had descended upon them in early childhood and suffered no relapse through the years of their growth. They inherited their good looks from both sides of the family, but Sidney was the only one of the girls who derived more from her father. Perhaps on that account she was his favourite, and he was accustomed to prophesy that she would beat them all in looks when she really grew up. She had kind eyes and a smiling mouth, to which her decisively jutting chin gave character. Her skin was very fair and clear, and her abundant brown hair had just a touch of auburn in it. There were some to whom the hint of gaucherie in her carriage gave her an added charm. It spoke of health and youth and vigour, and went well with her free unafraid speech and her frequent smile.

Grant, always on the lookout for new types of female beauty, but a little inclined to make all his heroines alike, studied her closely that evening at dinner and was enchanted with her. If he had known that she had been looked upon as an ugly duckling in her family it would almost have given him a novel ready made. Mrs. Grant liked her too, and as they walked home across the park, cheered by the unaccustomed pleasures of society, they made a match between her and Harry there and then, as the Pawle and Brent nurses had done in their early childhood.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Grant, "if Lady Brent had asked her here with that idea in her mind. It's the first time in the three years we've been here that any young person has stayed at the Castle. I dare say Lady Avalon is in it too. They're old friends, and they seem to have their heads together a good deal."

"Lady Brent didn't know Harry was coming home when she told us they were coming," said Mrs. Grant. "It's a coincidence, but perhaps a fortunate one. They played together as children—Harry and Lady Sidney. It would be rather a pretty match—except that Harry is so young—not twenty yet."

"You think he ought to wait a few years and marry somebody much younger, eh? Somebody about the age of Jane."

Mrs. Grant sighed. "I shouldn't be a mother if I hadn't thought of that," she said. "And Jane will be quite as pretty as Lady Sidney when she grows up. But Harry is so sweet and natural with the children that it would be a pity to spoil it by thinking of something that would make it all quite different. He wouldn't be what he is if he were to think of Jane as anything but a child, for some years yet."

"I think you're right," said her husband. "Of course I've built a few castles in the air. I shouldn't be a father if I hadn't. But I expect he'll marry young; he seems to me that sort of boy, somehow. I don't think he could do better than marry Lady Sidney. She's very interested in the idea of him. She talked to me a lot about the time they used to play together as children."

"She said she'd come down to-morrow morning. I think she wants to get away from Mrs. Brent, though I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Brent came with her. I think she wants to show me as many of her new clothes as possible. She hasn't improved up in London. I don't like her nearly as much as I did."

"I never cared for her much," said Grant. "She's a common little thing, however she may dress herself up to disguise it. I've sometimes wondered what Harry will think about her when he does come home."

Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next morning, and Mrs. Brent came with her, as Mrs. Grant had anticipated. But apparently they each wanted to get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted Mrs. Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone with you. I wonder if you'd spare Jane from her lessons to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that Harry built with the children. I've been telling her about it and she said she'd like to see it."

Sidney laughed. "I don't want to be in the way," she said, "and I'd like to have a walk with Jane, if she can be spared."

Jane was fetched. She received Mrs. Brent's effusive greeting with unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over very critically when she was introduced to her. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she went off with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may have been because she was relieved at getting off the rest of the morning's lessons.

The two girls set out across the garden, where the Vicarage baby, now getting on for three, was asleep under a tree, as before. They stopped to look at it, and Sidney behaved in such a way as to give Jane a good opinion of her. "She's a darling," she said, as they went on. "I do hope she'll be awake when we come back. I love to hear them talk at that age, don't you?"

Jane said she did, and recounted specimens of the Vicarage baby's wit, over which they both laughed freely. They were good friends by the time they reached the log cabin.

Jane unlocked the door and waited for admiration, which was given. "I've kept it very tidy and clean ever since Harry went away," she said, looking solemnly at Sidney. "I hope he won't have got too old to like it. He wrote to me, you know, to say he was coming back, and he mentioned the log cabin. I expect he'll be pleased to see it again."

There was half an appeal in her voice. Sidney looked at her quickly. "I'm quite sure he will," she said. "He's not so very old, after all—just as old as I am, in fact, and I'm not a bit too old to appreciate it."

"Ah, but the war may have made a great difference in him."

"It doesn't make as much as you'd think." She hesitated for a moment, and said: "I know a man who has been through it all from the beginning. He enlisted as Harry did, and had a rough time of it at first. He's been wounded too—rather badly. But he's much the same as he was before."

Jane looked at her. "You knew Harry when he was little, didn't you?" she asked. "We only knew him first three years ago. He seemed old then to me and my brother, but he was only sixteen."

"Let's sit down somewhere and I'll tell you all about it," said Sidney. "I don't think I want to walk any more, unless you do."

They sat down on the bench under the eaves, and Sidney told her about that summer when she and Harry had played together as children. Jane kept her large eyes fixed upon her all the time, and they seemed to be searching her and adding her up. By and by her solemnity relaxed and she smiled when Sidney did, and asked her questions here and there. When the story came to an end it was plain that she had made up her mind about her, and that her opinion was favourable.

This was made more evident still when she said calmly: "I expect Harry will fall in love with you, if you're here when he comes home."

Sidney looked at her in surprise, and then laughed. "What an extraordinary girl you are!" she said. "You think of everything."

Jane laughed too. She was feeling more and more at home with Sidney, who did not treat her as a child. "Would you like him to?" she asked.

Sidney was unexpectedly silent and serious, and when she did speak, she did not answer Jane's question. "Would you like to be friends?" she asked. "Real friends, I mean, so that we could tell each other things."

"Of course I should," said Jane. "But I expect you've got lots of friends older than me, that you know much better. I've got hardly anybody, because there aren't many people about here, and we don't go away very often."

"I always know at once if I'm going to like a person," said Sidney, "and I knew I should like you when I first saw you. We might see a good deal of one another when we come down to Poldaven; and I shall want a friend. I think it's going to be rather difficult."

Jane was enchanted at the offer of friendship. She admired Sidney tremendously, and to be on equal terms with her gave her a most gratifying sense of having left her childhood behind her. "Why do you think it is going to be difficult?" she asked, concealing her gratification.

"Oh, because, because! Well, because of what you said just now. If you haven't seen it already you will very soon. It's what I've been brought down here for. They don't say so, of course, but it's plain enough to see. Of course I shall like Harry awfully, if he's anything like he used to be. But you see I'm in love with somebody else. That's the trouble."

This was a confession worth having as an introduction to the proffered friendship. Jane didn't know whether to be glad or sorry to hear it. She had accepted Sidney as a suitable person for Harry to fall in love with, but perhaps it would be of some advantage if she didn't fall in love with him. There remained, however, the question of his falling in love with her.

"Perhaps Harry ought to know that," she said after a pause.

Sidney looked at her and laughed again. "You know Harry better than I do now," she said. "Do you think he's likely to fall in love with me?"

Jane considered this carefully. "I don't know; I think I should if I was him," she said.

"It's very sweet of you to say that," said Sidney, becoming serious again. "Perhaps I will tell him; or perhaps you shall. Then we shall all be happy and comfortable together. I should like to have Harry as a friend, and I don't in the least see why one shouldn't have a man as a friend when you're in love with another man. Do you?"

Jane had not considered the subject, but was pleased to have her opinion asked. It drew her to Sidney more than anything—this treatment of her as if her opinion on a grown-up subject was worth having. "Not if it's quite understood," she said, decisively. "I'm really rather glad that you are in love with somebody else, because Harry is already my friend, and if you are going to be, then I shall be very well off—much better than I should be if you and Harry wanted to be together and to leave me out of it. I don't mind telling Harry, if you like. It might be rather awkward for you to do it, as it would look as if you were giving him a warning. Who shall I say you're in love with?"

Sidney laughed merrily and gave her a sudden embrace. "I can't help it," she said, "you're such a darling. Well, he's a Captain in the Grenadier Guards, and his name is Noel Chancellor."

"That's the regiment that Harry was to have gone into," said Jane. "His father and grandfather belonged to it."

"Did they?" said Sidney. "Some of Noel's people were in it too. It sounds all right, but as a matter of fact Noel was a schoolmaster when the war broke out. He's the son of our vicar at home. When the war is over he is going to be a schoolmaster again. So you see how it is."

In her general ignorance of the world outside the immediate parish of Royd, Jane didn't quite see how it was. She asked kindly after Noel Chancellor and was given a pleasing impression of a handsome athletic young man, who had played cricket for Marlborough and Oxford and Notts, and had been happily engaged at a health resort on the East Coast of Kent, when the war broke out, in teaching thirty or so delightful boys under the age of fourteen to play cricket as it ought to be played, and to wrestle with the elements of Greek and Latin in their spare time.

"Considering that all the people who think themselves somebody send their children to be educated in schools like Noel was in," said Sidney. "I should have thought a person like me would have been just the touch that was wanted to make it still more of a success. But of course mother doesn't see it in that light. It's all very trying."

Jane's affectionate heart went out to this tale of crossed love, the first that had ever come within her ken outside the pages of her father's novels, which she read dutifully but without much interest. She thought it quite natural that Lady Avalon should want Sidney to marry Harry, as both of them had titles, but did not say this for fear of being laughed at. She wanted to be a real help and comfort to her new friend.

"I am sure it will come all right in the end," she said. "Perhaps when we tell Harry he will be able to do something."

CHAPTER XXII

THE RETURN

Harry came home a few days after Lady Avalon and Sidney had come to Royd, and two days before they had been going away. But they were persuaded, without much difficulty, to stay a little longer. At least, Lady Avalon accepted Lady Brent's invitation to prolong their visit, and informed Sidney that she had done so. "You see how it is," said Sidney to Jane, with whom she was now fast friends, much to the maturing of Jane's behaviour, but not to the spoiling of her, as her parents gratefully remarked.

"She's a thoroughly nice unaffected girl," said Grant, "and she'll be a nice friend for Jane, especially if what we think is going to happen does happen."

"I'm not sure she's not putting ideas into Jane's head," said Miss Minster. "I know they have secrets together, and I've a sort of notion that they're on the eternal subject of love."

"Well," said Grant, "girls will talk about love, I suppose, and if they talk nicely I don't know that there's much harm done."

"Jane ought to have learnt how to talk nicely about love by this time," said Miss Minster, with obvious reference. "I think Lady Sidney is all right really, or I should perhaps advise you both differently. Whether she's going to set her cap at Harry or not I don't know, and I don't suppose Jane would tell me if I asked her. But I'm pretty sure that they have discussed it."

Mrs. Grant listened to this without remark, but was a little disturbed at the idea of Jane having secrets which she would not impart to Miss Minster. Would she impart them to her? It would mark a stage if Jane were not ready to tell her everything.

She was considering the advisability of approaching Jane on the matter when Jane approached her. "I've got a secret with Sidney, mother," she said, in her abrupt but open way. "It's something she's told me about herself. She says she'd rather I didn't tell you just yet, if you don't mind, but she doesn't mind my telling you that there is a secret. You don't mind, do you?"

"What a lot of 'minds'!" said Mrs. Grant. "No, darling, I don't mind at all, unless it's something that you think you ought to tell me."

"Oh, no, it's nothing of that sort," said Jane. "It's something about herself which she doesn't want people to know yet. I'm going to tell it to Harry when he comes home, so that we can all three enjoy ourselves together."

Mrs. Grant, with the idea in her head that Sidney had confided to Jane that she retained a tender memory of Harry which might become more tender still, was a little surprised at this way of putting it; but it did not take her long to understand the truth when Jane had left her. She smiled and kept her own counsel, and liked Sidney all the better; for she must have known that if Jane told her that there was a secret she would guess what the secret was, little as Jane might suspect it.

Harry sent a wire in the morning to say that he was coming by a train that would arrive in the late afternoon. Only Mrs. Brent drove to the station to meet him, but they were all waiting for him in front of the Castle, the Grants inclusive, and there was scarcely a villager who was not somewhere on the road, or in the more public parts of the park to see him drive by.

His smiling excitement at this greeting from old friends—the only friends he had had up till two years before—made him seem at first exactly what he had been. But there was none of the little group at the Castle, except Lady Avalon and Sidney, who had not the impression, after the first greeting, of his having become much older. His fair boy's beauty had developed into the sunburnt hardness of a man. He was extraordinarily handsome in his smart khaki kit, but he looked years older than his age, which was not much over nineteen; and his speech and manner had altered. It would be another eighteen months before he would be legally his own master and the master of his ancient Castle, and all that went with it; but he seemed to have come into the house as its master, and to give it a meaning that it had never had while it had been ruled by a woman.

It was not too late for tea, which provided an opportunity for everybody of getting used to the new Harry, as they sat on the terrace and made play with their cups and conversation. There were adjustments to be made, and the necessity for them to be covered up. Harry talked freely to everybody. His manner was perfect with his grandmother, to whom he showed deference, while she, of course, behaved with her usual calm and let nothing appear of all that she was thinking. Mrs. Brent kept her eyes on him all the time, and had an air almost of bewilderment. She did not try to assert herself, but accepted gratefully the notice he gave her from time to time. Lady Avalon was the only person present who asked him questions about his experiences, but it soon became evident that he had nothing to tell that was personal to himself. He answered the questions, but with a slight change in the frank manner of his speech when they touched upon his own experiences apart from the operations in which he had taken part. His mother told Mrs. Grant afterwards that he had said to her during the drive that he wanted to forget everything that had happened since he had left home—at least he didn't want to talk about it. They had yet to learn how far his experiences had changed him, and to gather whether or no they were such as to have left a painful mark upon his life; but he would give them no help in coming to their conclusions. His life in the ranks was to remain as it had been, a sealed book to them.

With Sidney Harry was friendly, but no more. They talked a little of their childhood, and laughed over some of their memories, but it was not, apparently, to be the basis of any special degree of intimacy between them. Sidney retired a little into her shell after a time, and watched.

Harry was more like his old self with Jane than with anybody. Beyond a single remark about her growth he had not shown himself aware of any change in her. He seemed to want to take up their friendship at exactly the place where it had stopped. He asked her many questions about Pobbles, and said he would write to him. His manner towards her was that of a grown man to a child whom he loves. Even Lady Avalon did not mistake it for anything else, for she told Lady Brent afterwards that it was rather extraordinary that he should not see that Jane was already growing into a very pretty girl, with the implication that the fact might dawn upon him as time went on.

Jane herself showed a high but modest pride in the value he put upon her. "Now you see what he's like," she told Sidney. "When we three can be together and enjoy ourselves—well, we shall enjoy ourselves. I consider that Harry is about the nicest friend that anybody can have. He doesn't forget you when he's away."

"He hasn't forgotten you," said Sidney. "I'm beginning to wonder whether I shan't be a little in the way."

Jane showed surprise at this, and Sidney laughed and said: "Darling old thing you are! You don't know what you're worth; but you will in a year or two. Anyhow, I'm not jealous of you, and I like Harry for remembering his old friends and not wanting to drop them for new ones. Of course I knew him before you did, but not as he is now. He's older than I should have thought, and I think he looks rather sad. You've got to cheer him up, and if I'm wanted to help I shall be quite ready."

"Of course you'll be wanted to help," said Jane. "You'll be seeing more of him, for one thing, as you will be staying in the house. I suppose you won't mind my being his chief friend though, if you like somebody else better."

"I should be a horrid sort of creature if I did," said Sidney. "You won't suffer from me when you're not here."

Harry and Sidney strolled together in the garden after dinner, with the full concurrence of their elders, except possibly of Mrs. Brent, who had not yet recovered from her air of slight bewilderment, and was quieter than she had been for the last few days.

They talked about Jane, and for the first time Harry seemed to regard Sidney with interest. Hitherto he had been merely friendly with her on the surface, as with one who was there but didn't matter much. "Oh, yes, we're real friends," she said, with her free and pleasant smile. "I suppose you can only see that she's a child, but I've never treated her like one. I began like that because girls of that age love being talked to as if they were grown up, but I very soon found out what a lot there was in her. If she's a child in some ways still, as of course she is, it makes her all the more fascinating. She's one in a thousand. She'll make all the difference to me down here, if I can get hold of her sometimes."

"She's a real person," Harry said. "If you and she have made friends it will be jolly for all three of us. We can all be friends together."

"That's what Jane wants," said Sidney. "She's devoted to you, and I believe she's also devoted to me, though not so much so. We can go and get hold of her to-morrow morning, can't we? She has a holiday on Saturday."

"Oh yes. I'm very glad you want to. I was half afraid you might think she was too young for you."

"I suppose you mean that you were half afraid you'd have to dance attendance on me, when you'd rather have been with Jane; but you see you need fear nothing of that sort."

They looked at one another. There was just light enough to catch an expression of face. Then they both laughed, and became friends from that moment.

"We'd settled that Jane was to tell you," said Sidney, "but I think I might as well do it myself. I'm engaged to somebody, but the engagement is not smiled upon. In fact it isn't recognized at all, and can't be spoken of. But Jane and I thought that if you knew of it it would make things more comfortable all round for us three."

Harry asked her questions and showed a friendly sympathy towards her love affair. But the idea of it seemed to make him rather sad too, and Sidney did not make the mistake of thinking that his sadness was due to any disappointment created by what she had told him. Indeed her information had cleared the air, which held more of friendliness and companionship in it than before, as if he were relieved at having it quite understood that he would not be expected to make love to her, but short of that would give her all the friendship that she wanted, and be glad to take in return all that she had to give to him.

She had a good deal to give him. That baby's friendship which seemed to have meant nothing to him had kept him alive in her heart. He was not quite like other men to her. Something of his childhood lingered about him, though he had advanced so far on the hard road of manhood, and but for her memories of him would have seemed to her much older than his years. She felt the desire to encourage in him those gleams of boyish laughter and irresponsibility which had once or twice shone out through the half-weary indifference of his attitude. She thought that he must have been through a harsh disillusioning experience, and was too tired in spirit to accept all at once the freedom of his release. Her own lover, who was some years older than Harry, had told her that it needed a good deal of resolution and self-hardening to go through the ranks, and that sometimes only the remembrance of her had kept him up to it. She thought she knew more than other girls were likely to know what it must have meant to Harry, who did not seem even to want to speak of it. The maternal instinct which is in all women drew her to sympathy with him. She and Jane between them would get rid of that sadness and tiredness that lay over him. If Jane was too young, and she too occupied with somebody else to give him the consolation that would quickly heal such wounds as he was suffering from, he would still, surely, respond to their affection, and forget his troubles. She must not talk too much about her own happiness. That seemed to depress him, kind as he was about it. Of course it was love he wanted, though he might not know it. It was a pity that Jane was not a few years older, or that she herself was the only unmarried one of all her sisters. She did not suppose that there was anybody else in these parts, from what she remembered of them, who would be good enough for Harry. But perhaps it was just as well. She and he and Jane would enjoy themselves together, and show the world, if the world happened to take notice and be interested, that a man and two girls could be the best of friends with no question of love affecting their intercourse.

Perhaps that evening they might have got further into intimacy, but Harry had still something to do before he could feel himself free to take his enjoyment in the youthful companionship that had been so fortunately provided for him.

"I'm very glad you're to be here for a bit," he said. "There aren't many young people about and it would have been a bit dull for me, though I should have tried my best to keep it from my mother and grandmother. I think I must go in and have a talk with Granny now, if you don't mind. I haven't seen her alone since I came back."

But apparently Mrs. Brent had decided that there was to be no talk between those two alone, as long as she could prevent it. Lady Avalon and Sidney said good night soon after ten o'clock, and when they had gone Mrs. Brent said: "Come out for a little with me, Harry dear. It's quite warm, and I don't even want a wrap. If you're tired, as I expect you are, you can go straight to bed when we've just had a little stroll."

Lady Brent sat like a sphinx. Harry said: "All right, mother. But I'm not tired. We'll go out for ten minutes and then I'll have a little talk with Granny."

Directly they were in the garden, Mrs. Brent said in a querulous tone: "Why should you want to have a talk with her? She took you away from me a lot when you were a child, but now it's different. She ought not to have any more authority over you than I have."

Harry laughed at her. "Authority!" he echoed. "I don't feel like anybody having much authority over me now, little mother." He spoke tenderly, but there was a hint of impatience in his tone, which she detected.

"I'm sure I don't want to direct you in any way," she said. "I only want to feel that you're mine now that you've grown up, and not hers. Nobody in the world loves you as much as I do. I suppose you'll marry some day, and I shan't grumble at that when the time comes. But until then I want to feel that you and I are all in all to one another."

He answered only her reference to his grandmother. "You're my mother," he said. "In one way you've always been more to me than Granny. But I owe her a good deal, and I mustn't forget it. I haven't done much for her since I went away. Now that I've got what I wanted, and have come back again, I want to make up for that—to both of you."

"It was very cruel of you to cut yourself off from us as you did, Harry," she said. "You needn't have done it. Even she wouldn't have prevented you doing what you wanted to do, when once you'd done it."

"We needn't talk about that," he said, decisively. "It's all over now. It's what I want to tell her. You must let me have a little talk with her when we go in, please, mother."

"You mean you want me to go to bed while you sit and talk to her alone. Why should you want that? Why shouldn't I be there too?"

"Well, because you're not friendly to her, and I want to be—poor old Granny! I suppose you've never got on well together. I used to feel it, though I didn't think about it much. I think you both tried to keep it from me. I'd much rather you tried to get rid of that feeling, mother dear. It makes me unhappy, and you can't hide it from me any longer. After all, Royd is her home. I'm rather sorry you left it. I liked to think of it with you and her here, just as it used to be."

"Oh, I couldn't stay here when you had gone. It was too much to ask of anybody. I suppose she'll always be here—at least till you come of age and are master instead of her. Couldn't we go away together—I don't mean now, but after you've been here a little, to London or somewhere—just you and I together? I've had so little of you, Harry, all to myself. All the dull years here, while she has been everything and I have been nothing, I've looked forward to it—to having you to myself for a little, when you were grown up."

She peered into his face, and saw a frown on it; but when he spoke it had cleared, and he spoke very kindly. "I may have to go to London before my leave is up," he said. "But I should want to go alone. And I don't want to be away from Royd more than I can help. You've always belonged to Royd, mother, ever since I can remember. When I'm with you I'd rather be here than anywhere. Please don't spoil it for me by making things difficult with Granny. I think I'll go in to her now. I mustn't keep her up late."

She expostulated, plaintively, as they went towards the house together. She felt that he was slipping from her, and that nothing would be as she had pictured it, but she had not the self-control to spare him her complaints and appeals. He was always kind, but he was firm too, with a man's firmness towards a weak and foolish woman. He had grown immeasurably in mental stature, and his determination impressed itself upon her increasingly. That mention of authority over him with which she had begun now seemed foolish even to her. As they went into the house she said: "Of course I don't want to treat you like a boy any more. I only want to be sure that you don't love anybody better than me. You do love me best, don't you, Harry?"

He bent down and kissed her. "You know I love you, mother," he said. "Now I'll go and talk to Granny. Come and see me when I go to bed—say in half an hour—as you used to."

That comforted her a little, and she went upstairs, while he went into the drawing-room where Lady Brent was still sitting where they had left her.

"Well, Granny dear," he said. "I thought we'd have a little talk. I've got things to tell you."

She laid down her work, and looked at him fondly, sitting in a low chair opposite to her, so young in appearance, as he sat there with his long legs stretched out, but, as she felt, so old in experience, and so different from the boy he had been.

"Please don't think, dear Harry," she said, "that you owe me any explanation of anything. I've had a long time to think it all out, you know. I think I understand most things. Don't you want it treated as if it was all over now, and begin again, much as it was before? If so, I want that too. We've got you at home now, and we want to be all happy together."

His face cleared as he spoke. "It's very good of you to put it like that," he said. "Yes, of course I want it to be as much as possible what it used to be as long as I can be here with you. There's a good deal I want to forget."

"I'm afraid you've been through a very hard time, Harry."

"Not harder than others, Granny. It's not a bad thing to learn what you have to learn in a hard school. Perhaps you learn it all the quicker."

There was a pause before she said: "It has troubled me a good deal—the thought of your going straight from the life you lived here into the ranks. It wasn't that that we'd tried to prepare you for."

"Oh, the ranks!" he said. "You needn't let that worry you, Granny. I'm glad I went into the ranks. I'd rather do it that way than any."

She showed some surprise at this. "I've thought it over and over," she said. "But I've never thought of it in that way. It was the roughness and coarseness I hated for you. Isn't that what you want to forget?"

He was silent for a time, looking down. Then he burst out: "It's learning what the beastliness of life is that I want to forget. That's what I'd never known. I never minded hard work—doing what others do. And I doubt whether I should have been let down so easily with people like myself—on the outside, I mean. No, I was nearer to the men who had lived simpler lives. I understood them better than I should have done the others. And they were good to me too. I don't think I should have wanted to get a commission if I hadn't felt I ought to. I should have been content to go on till the end of it. But now it's all got to begin again. Oh, don't let's talk of it. I've got a month here, where it's quiet and clean and beautiful. Let's forget what's past and what's coming. I never meant to talk of it. I only wanted to tell you what I was going to do, and to thank you for letting me go my own way."

Poor Lady Brent went to bed that night with something new to think about. She could not sleep, and wrote a long letter to Wilbraham in London. "We might have thought of that," she wrote in the course of it. "It wouldn't have been the little hardships that would trouble him. He had prepared himself for all that, with the life out of doors that he had led here. And he would understand the men he was with, because he was friends with everybody about here. I'm sure they must have loved him too, and all the more because he wasn't like them. The others would have expected him to be like them. I am full of trouble about him. It looks to me now as if we had prepared him for nothing, so as to save him pain. Life has come as a shock to him, and he has not got over it yet. But one thing I'm sure of—he must work it out for himself. I shall meddle with him no more. I am not sure that I have not made a great mistake."

CHAPTER XXIII

CONFIDENCES

Whatever it was that Lady Brent and Lady Avalon had plotted between them, it needed no adjustment of Lady Brent's statement to Wilbraham—that henceforth she should meddle no more in Harry's life—to help or hinder it. They had only to stand aside and perhaps to congratulate one another upon the way their desires were being fulfilled. Only Mrs. Brent went about with a downcast face and air, and but for the kindness Harry showed her might as well have been back in London. She also wrote to Wilbraham, and told him that Harry and Sidney seemed to be falling more and more in love with one another every day.

"Of course it's hard on me," she wrote. "But it's what mothers are made for, I suppose. You do everything for your children and sink yourself entirely, and then some girl steps in and takes it all from you. However, I'm not going to show her that I feel it. She's got the better of me once more. The girl doesn't take the slightest trouble about me—doesn't think I'm worth it, I suppose—and for myself I don't care about her. But she is the right sort of girl for Harry to marry, or at any rate to fall in love with. Whatever I am, I'm fair, and I can see that. I should hate anybody who would take him away from me, so it might just as well be her as anybody. They're happy together, and Harry is more like his old self. I'm sure they've not said anything to one another yet. They take Jane Grant with them whenever they can get hold of her, and they wouldn't want to do that if it had gone very far with them. The moment they want to go off by themselves I shall know what to expect, and I'll let you know, but I hope you'll be down here before then. We are very glad you are coming. Harry often talks about you. How I wish it was all like it used to be! But it never will be again."

Harry and Sidney rode together, and Harry found a horse for Jane and taught her to ride. Lady Avalon had a car at Royd and sometimes they motored over to Poldaven, where everything was now ready for the reception of a family of distinction. But Lady Avalon had gone back to London, and Sidney stayed on at Royd. There was no talk of her going away.

Jane could not be always with them. She had been let off afternoon lessons, by special request, but had to occupy herself with them in the mornings.

One hot morning Harry and Sidney motored over to Poldaven Castle. It was an old stone house, not very big, which stood on a boldly jutting cliff with the sea on three sides of it. There was generally some wind hereabouts, and there was a strong fresh wind this morning, though among the woods of Royd it was close and still.