Volume 2 — CHAPTER X.

TWO WHO WOULD EXCHANGE PLACES.

The winds were baffling, and Edmonson and Lord Bulchester had a longer voyage than they had counted upon. They found it tedious, and it was with satisfaction that they at last set foot on land and drove through the streets of Boston to the Royal Exchange. Edmonson's projects inspired him rather than made him anxious. It was, of course, possible that Elizabeth Royal might refuse him, but in his heart he had the attitude of a Londoner toward provincials and was not burdened with doubts as to the result of his wooing, and so the one necessary grain of uncertainty only gave flavor to the whole affair.

A few hours after his arrival he left the house to try his fortune.

"I may not be home until late," he said to Bulchester. "I shall tackle pater-familias first, then the young lady herself. It is possible they will invite me to tea, you know. Don't wait for me if you find anything to do or anywhere to go in this puritanical hole." And the young man, in all the tasteful splendor of attire that the times allowed, closed the door behind him and left Lord Bulchester looking at the oaken panels which had suddenly taken the place in which his friend had been standing, and seeing, not these, but Edmonson's fine figure and his bold smile.

"No woman can resist his wooing," the nobleman said to himself with a sigh at the thought of his own indifferent appearance. Therefore it was with amazement that two hours later coming home from a stroll he learned that the other had returned, and going to his room found him prone on the sofa.

"Why! What is the—," he began, then checked himself, considering that since only failure could be the matter, this was hardly a generous question.

"Headache," growled Edmonson. "No," he cried with an oath, "that is a lie," and springing up, turned blood-shot eyes upon his companion. "I am mad, Bulchester," he cried, "raving mad. It is all over with me in that quarter."

"She has refused you? Or the father has?"

"Hang it! they couldn't do anything else, either of them. I did not see Mistress Royal, Mistress Archdale, rather. Yes, married!" as Bulchester echoed the name. "There's been an interesting drama with one knave and two fools. If I could only catch the knave! Perhaps it is as well to let the fools go, since I can't help it." He was silent a moment. Then after a moment he added. "Well! what is the use of cursing one's luck?" "There are several others I know of doing the same thing at this moment, and I like to be original. I declare, if he didn't stand in my way, I should be tempted to pity young Archdale. He wishes himself in my shoes as much, and I suspect a good deal more, than I do myself in his. I don't wonder that the young lady keeps herself retired for a time. I did not see her, as I told you. Mr. Royal made as light of the matter as possible, merely saying that something which might prove to have been a real marriage ceremony, though he thought not, had taken place in a joke between his daughter and Stephen Archdale, that the matter was to be thoroughly investigated at once, and if it turned out that Elizabeth was not Mistress Archdale, I had his permission to receive her answer from her own lips. He was guarded enough; but on the way home I met Clinton who had been one of the guests at Mistress Katie's attempted wedding last week. He gave me details. Here they are." And these details lost nothing through Edmonson's racy recital of them. "No, Bulchester," he finished, "out of six people that I could name mixed up in this affair, on the whole, I am the best off."

"Six?"

"Yes; counting in the love-lorn Waldo; that knave Harwin, who ought to swing for it; the poor little bride that lost her bridegroom; and the bridegroom; the young lady that got him when she didn't want him, and missed me, whom, perhaps (without too much vanity) she did want a little; and last on the list of wounded spirits, your humble servant. How wise that man was who said that one sinner destroyed much good. By the way, Bulchester, who was he? It is an excellent thing to quote in regard to this affair, and I should like to know where it comes from."

An anxious expression crossed the other's face as he cried:

"Good heavens! Edmonson, if you go to quoting the Bible and asking where the quotation comes from, you will get into awful disgrace with this strictest-sect-of-our-religion people, and then what will become of the other scheme that is bound to pull through?"

"True, most sapient counsellor, and I will be on my guard. To show how I profit by your sageness, let us drop all thought of this royal maiden who is probably out of my reach, and attend to the other business. It is good to have a sympathetic friend, Bul."

They talked for nearly an hour after this, but not about Edmonson's wooing. When Bulchester left, the other sat looking after him a moment.

"Yes," he said to himself, "it is well to have a sympathetic creature like that sometimes, but not if one tell him all his heart. I hid my rage well, I passed it off for mere spleen. But we are not a race to get over things in that way. It is hate, hate, I say," And he ground his teeth, and again threw himself upon the sofa his face downward and buried in his hands as if he were meditating deeply.

Edmonson told his friend of having met one of the guests at Katie Archdale's wedding, but he did not say to him that coming out of Mr. Royal's house and walking quickly down the street, he had met the bridegroom himself, and had returned Archdale's bow with a politeness equally cold, while anger had leaped up within him. Was Archdale going to call upon his wife?

Stephen Archdale had come to Boston to collect whatever facts he could about Harwin, and about the places and the people that the confession referred to. Nothing was farther from his thoughts than any such visit. It was his wish that Elizabeth and himself need never meet again, and he knew that it was hers. Indeed, so far from thinking of the woman who was perhaps his wife, he was living over again the glimpse he had had of the one from whom he had been separated. Three days ago he had taken his gun early in the morning and had gone out hunting, made more miserable than before by something he had perceived in his father's mind. The Colonel was not in sympathy with him; he was consoling himself that, after all, Elizabeth Royal was a richer woman than Katie Archdale. At his light insinuation of this to his son, the young man had flamed out into a heat of passion and declared that one golden hair of Katie's head was worth both Elizabeth and her fortune. He had rushed out of the house with the wish for destroying something in his mind. As he stopped in the hall to snatch his gun, the flintlock caught, and tore a hole in the tapestry hanging. He saw it, pushed the great stag's antlers that the gun had been swung on a little aside, and covered the torn place. Then he forgot the accident almost as soon as this was done, left the house and went striding over the fields, not so much to chase the foxes, as to be alone. And when that point was gained he would have gone a step further if he could and escaped from himself also. But he was only all the more with his own thoughts as he wandered aimlessly through great stretches of pine trees with the light snow of the night before still white on their lower boughs, except when in some opening it had melted into dewdrops in the December sun, and still clung to the trees, ready when the sun had passed by them towards its setting to turn into filmy icicles. The sky was brilliant; the long winter already upon the earth smiled gently, as if to say that its reign would be mild. Stephen went along so much preoccupied that only the baying of his hound made him notice the light fox-prints by the roadside. Then the instinct of the hunter stirred within him, and he followed on, listening now and then to the distant bark while pursued and the pursuer were going farther away. He waited, knowing fox nature well and that there were a hundred chances to one that the creature would come back near the spot from which it was started. As he waited close by the road which here led through the woods, two men passed along it without seeing him. They were talking as they went. Stephen knew them; one was an old man who used to be a servant in the family when Colonel Archdale was a boy. He had married long ago and was now living in a little house not far from his old home. The young man with him was his son. Stephen was in no mood even for a passing word, and he stood still, perceiving that a clump of bushes hid him. A few sentences of the conversation reached him through the stillness, but it meant nothing to him; he was not conscious even of listening until Katie's name caught his ear. They were talking of this marriage then, as every body was; he was the gossip of the very servants. But his attention once caught was held until the speakers passed out of hearing. Surely they knew nothing about the matter that he did not.

"She is such a pretty young lady," said the elder man, "and any girl would feel it to miss the handsome young master for a husband."

"Um!" assented the son. "Well, I suppose she will miss the sight of him if her heart is set upon him, but there is many a young man nicer to my thinking, and not so proud in his ways."

"Has he ever been unjust or overbearing to you, Nathan?" inquired the old man severely.

"Oh, no, he has been uncommonly civil, he would think it beneath him to be anything else. I know the cut of him; if he had any spite he would take it out on a gentleman. He thinks we are made of different clay from him." And the embryo republican threw back his shoulders impatiently.

"So we are," returned the other, with the Englishman's ingrained belief in caste; "but, to be sure, you feel it with some more than with others, with the young man more than with his father. But I like it better than the softly way the Colonel has. Stephen is more like his grandfather."

"His grandfather!" echoed the son. "Why, he was a—."

"Hush!" cried the other so suddenly and sharply that if the word had been, uttered at all Stephen lost it, though, now he was listening eagerly enough. "Do you remember you swore that you would never speak that word?"

"Well," returned the young man in a sullen tone, "if I did, what harm in saying it here with not a soul but you around? And my feeling is," he went on, "that this broken-off wedding is a judgment for his grandfather's—." He hesitated.

"When you learned it by accident, Nathan," returned his father, "you swore to satisfy me, that you would never speak the word in connection with him. Who knows what person may be round?" And he glanced cautiously about him. Stephen half resolved to confront him and force him to tell this secret. But the very quality in himself which the men had been discussing held him back until the opportunity had passed. "No, I don't want you to name it at all, Nathan. That is what you swore," continued the old man.

"You have said enough about it," retorted the younger. "I will keep my word, of course; you know that." His tone was loud with anger.

"Yes, yes, I know," said his companion, "But, you see, I was fond of the young master if he was a bit wild; he was a fine, free gentleman, though he changed very much after this—this accident and his coming over to the Colonies, which wasn't no ways suited to him like London, only he found it a good place to get rich in. You see, Nathan, it all happened this way; he told me about it his own self with tears in his eyes, as I might say, for his family,—he—."

But it was in vain that Stephen strained his ears, the voices that had not been drowned in the noise of footsteps had been growing fainter with distance, and now were lost altogether.

So there had been something in the family, thought Stephen, that he knew nothing about, something that his grandfather had done which this man, the son of his grandfather's butler, considered had brought down vengeance on Katie and himself as the grandchildren. The very suggestion oppressed him in this land of the Puritans, although he told himself that he believed neither in the vengeance nor even in the crime itself. But he had not dreamed of anything, anything at all, which had even shadowed the fair fame of the Archdales. Did his father know of it? Nothing that Stephen had ever seen in him looked like such knowledge, but that did not make the son quite sure, for the old butler's remark about the Colonel's suavity was just; his elaborate manners made Stephen almost brusque at times, and aroused a secret antagonism in both, so that they sometimes met one another with armor on, and Stephen's keen thrust would occasionally penetrate the shield which his father skilfully interposed between that and some fact.

That morning Stephen sank down upon a rock near by while his mind ranged over his recollections to find some clue to this mystery. But he found none. He was sure that his grandfather had never been referred to as being connected with anything secret, still less, disgraceful, or perhaps criminal. It was impossible to imagine where the old butler's idea came from, but it could not be founded upon truth. Yet, this snatch of talk which Stephen had heard made him curious and uncomfortable. And he knew that he must resign himself to feeling so; he could ask his father, to be sure, but he would get no satisfaction out of that; either the Colonel did not know, or, evidently he had resolved that there should seem to be nothing to tell. After all, it did not matter very much. His thoughts came back to his own position with almost wonder that anything could have drawn them away from it. While he sat there the baying of the hound drew nearer, and suddenly a rabbit started up from a bush on his right. He raised his gun, but instantly lowered it again. He had not moved, so it had not been he that had startled the rabbit, but the larger game that was following it. The little creature scampered away, and in another moment the fox which his dog had started ran past him. Again he raised his gun and took aim with a hand accustomed to bring down what he sighted. But to-day the gun dropped once more at his side, for here was a creature that wanted its life, that was straining for it. "Let him have the worthless gift if he values it," thought Archdale, feeling that the gun had better have been turned the other way in his hands. The fox disappeared after the rabbit, and in another moment Stephen rose with a sneer at himself, and turned toward home. Evidently, he could accomplish nothing that day, matters must have gone hard with him to make him lose even the nerve of a hunter. He whistled to his dog, but the hound had no intention of giving up the chase as his master had done, and rushed past in full cry. The young man left him to follow home at his pleasure, and walked along the road with a sombre face. Soon the sound of distant bells reached him. A minute after a sleigh appeared coming toward him from the vanishing point of the road that here ran straight through the woods for some distance. It made no difference to Stephen who was in the sleigh. As it came nearer and nearer he never even glanced at it, until as it was passing, some instinct, or perhaps eyes fixed upon him, made him look up. He started, stopped, bowed low, took off his fur cap with deference, holding it in his hand until the sleigh had gone slowly by. Then he turned and stood looking after it, the flush that had come suddenly to his face fading away as his eyes followed Katie Archdale's figure until it was lost to sight. He could see her clinging to her father's arm; he seemed to see her face before him for days, her face pale and sad, and so lovely. Neither had spoken. Mr. Archdale had not waited; what had they to say? Stephen had not really wished it; every thought was deeper than speech, and probably Katie, too, had preferred to go on. And yet to pass in this way—it was like their lives.

That afternoon he started for Boston. It was doing something. Edmonson who met him just arrived, need not have feared that he was going to Elizabeth. He was in the city only to prove that the frolic of that summer evening had been frolic merely, and that he was still free to follow that charming face that had passed him by, so reluctantly, he knew, in the woods.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]