THE PEACOCK FEATHER

A ROMANCE

BY

LESLIE MOORE

AUTHOR OF “AUNT OLIVE IN BOHEMIA” AND “THE NOTCH IN THE STICK”

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON The Knickerbocker Press 1914

Copyright, 1914 BY ALSTON RIVERS, Ltd.

Second Printing

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To MRS. G. HERBERT THRING

WITH THE AUTHOR’S LOVE AND GRATITUDE

September 30, 1913

CONTENTS

PAGE

PROLOGUE 1

CHAPTER

I. THE PIPER 8

II. THE FIRST-BORN 21

III. THE DESERTED COTTAGE 26

IV. PETER TAKES A RESIDENCE 35

V. THE SOUL OF A WOMAN 44

VI. AN OLD GENERAL 52

VII. A WONDERFUL OFFER 69

VIII. CHÂTEAUX EN ESPAGNE 79

IX. A REQUEST 88

X. THE LADY ANNE 94

XI. A CONCERT—AND AFTER 103

XII. A DISCLOSURE 114

XIII. A MOONLIGHT PIPING 127

XIV. LE BEAU MONDE 131

XV. CONFIDENCES 143

XVI. LETTERS 154

XVII. A THUNDERSTORM 171

XVIII. THE EVERLASTING WHY 183

XIX. PIPER AND AUTHOR 193

XX. FAREWELL 205

XXI. A WOUNDED SKYLARK 208

XXII. CANDLES AND MASSES 216

XXIII. DUM SPIRO, SPERO 229

XXIV. DEMOCRITUS 235

XXV. AT A FAIR 245

XXVI. ON THE CLOUD 262

XXVII. A MIRACLE 271

XXVIII. THE FINE WAY 278

XXIX. FOUND 289

XXX. THE RETURN 296

XXXI. DEMOCRITUS ARRIVES TO STAY 302

XXXII. PER ASPERA AD ASTRA 306

The Peacock Feather

PROLOGUE

It was sunset.

The sea, which all day long had lain blue and sparkling, was changing slowly to a warm grey shot with moving purple and gold. The sky flamed with crimson and amber. But gradually the vivid warmth sank and faded; day slowly withdrew into the soft embrace of night, and a blue-grey mantle covered sea and sky and land. One by one the stars shone forth till overhead the mantle was thickly powdered with their twinkling eyes.

Away across the water the gleam from the lantern of a lightship appeared at intervals, while every now and then a stronger flash from a distant lighthouse lit up the darkness. It flung its rays broadcast, across the water, across the land, bringing momentarily into startling prominence a great mass of building standing on the top of the cliffs.

In the building a man was clinging with both hands to a couple of iron bars that guarded the narrow opening of his cell window. He could see across the water and up to the star-embroidered mantle of the sky.

Night after night for three years he had looked at that moving water. He had seen it lying calm and peaceful as it lay to-night; he had seen it rearing angry foam-crested waves from inky blackness. He had heard its soft, sighing music; he had heard its sullen roar.

Three years! More than a thousand nights he had looked from that narrow slit of a window, his hands fast clutching the bars, his feet finding slight and precarious foothold in the uneven surface of the wall!

And to-night he looked for the last time. To-morrow he would be free, free as the sea-gulls which circled and dipped in the water along the rocky coast or rose screaming and battling against the tearing wind.

He slipped down from the window and crossed to his pallet bed.

Free! Until to-night he had never dared even to whisper that word to his inmost soul. Throughout the long three years he had refused to let himself think for more than the day, the moment. He had held his mind in close confinement, a confinement even more stringent than that to which his body was subjected.

Now in that little cell he opened the windows of his soul and let his mind go forth. Radiant, exuberant, it escaped from its cage. It came forth singing a Te Deum. Only a few more hours and dawn would break. His body would know the liberty he had already given to his mind. He was too happy to sleep. He lay wakeful and very still on his bed, the silence only occasionally broken by the footfall of a warder in the passage outside.

The night wore on. Gradually the stars dropped back one by one into the sky, and away in the east a streak of saffron light appeared. It was day at last.

Six hours later a man was walking along a country road. His step was light and his face held up to meet the fresh March wind that was blowing across the fields and hedges.

Daffodils nodded their golden heads at him from the banks as he passed, and tiny green buds on the brown branches were pushing forward to the light. The whole world was vital, radiant, teeming with growth.

The man held one hand in the pocket of his grey flannel coat, his fingers pressing on two envelopes which lay there. They had been handed to him just before he left the great grey prison. He had not yet opened them. For one thing, he wanted to put a certain distance between his present self and the past three years before he broke the seals. For another thing, he was denying himself, prolonging the pleasure of anticipation.

Now he saw a stile before him, set in the hedge a little way back from the road, and with a patch of grass before it. In the grass gleamed a few pink-tipped daisies.

The man went across the grass and sat down on the stile. He pulled the two letters from his pocket and looked at them. One was addressed in a masculine handwriting, small, square, and very firm. The other writing was delicate but larger. It was evidently that of a woman.

He opened the firmly addressed envelope first, and pulled out its contents. A strip of pink paper fluttered to the ground, falling among the daisies. He picked it up without looking at it while he read the contents of the letter.

“I have no desire that you should starve, and therefore send you the enclosed. Kindly understand, however, that I do not wish to see you for the present. When you have partially blotted out the past by obtaining decent work and proving your repentance, I will reconsider this decision.

“Richard Carden.”

The cheque was for two hundred pounds.

The man laughed, but the sound of his laugh was not very pleasant.

He broke the seal of the second letter.

“I did not write before,” the letter ran, “because I did not want you to brood over what I have to say, though you must have known that my saying it was inevitable. Of course you have known from the first that you have by your own conduct put an end to our engagement. I did not write at once and tell you so myself, for fear of adding to your pain. But you must have understood. You will not attempt to see me, or write to me. It would be quite useless. I am going to be married in three weeks’ time. I am very sorry for you and I would have helped you if I could, but you must see for yourself it is impossible. There is nothing now to say but good-bye.

“M.”

When the man had finished reading he sat very still, so still that a robin hopped down near him and began investigating the toe of his boot. Finding nothing in a piece of black leather of interest, it flew up to the hedge, and regarded the motionless figure with round beady eyes. At last the figure moved. The robin flew a couple of yards farther away, then perched again to watch.

It saw the man tearing white and pink paper into very small pieces. Then it saw him bend down and dig a hole in the earth with a clasp-knife. It saw him place the pieces of torn paper in the hole and replace the earth, which he pressed firmly down. Then it heard the man speak.

“At least I will give the past decent burial.”

The robin did not understand the words. What has a gay little redbreast to do with either the past or the future? The moment is quite enough.

Then the man stood up, and the robin saw his face. It had grown much older in the last twenty minutes.

“And now,” said the man jauntily, though his eyes belied the carelessness of the words, “for the open road.”

Perhaps the robin understood that speech. At any rate it sang a sweet sturdy song of Amen.

CHAPTER I

THE PIPER

Peter was sitting under a hedge, playing on a penny whistle. Behind him was a bush, snowy with the white flowers of the hawthorn. In front of him was a field, warm with the gold of buttercups. Away in a distant valley were the roofs of cottages and a farmhouse. The smoke from one of its chimneys rose thin and blue in the still air. It was all very peaceful, ideally English.

Peter was an artist. It seemed almost incredible that a tin instrument which could be purchased for a penny could be made to produce such sounds.

He was playing a joyous lilt. You could hear the song of birds and feel the soft west wind blowing from distant places; and through it was a measured beat as of feet walking along the open road. Yet under all the gaiety and light-heartedness lay a strange minor note, a note that somehow found reflection in Peter’s blue eyes.

Peter finished his tune and put the whistle-pipe in his pocket. From a wallet beside him he pulled out a hunch of bread and cheese and a very red and shiny apple. He opened a large clasp-knife, cut the hunch of bread in two, and fell to eating slowly. His hands were long-fingered, flexible, and very brown. There was a lean, muscular look about Peter altogether. His clothes were distinctly shabby. They consisted of a pair of grey trousers, very frayed at the edges, and with a patch of some darker material on one knee; a soft white shirt, spotlessly clean; and a loose jacket, grey flannel like the trousers. A felt hat lay on the ground near him. In it was fantastically stuck a peacock feather. Beside the hat was a small bundle rolled up in a bit of sacking.

Peter finished the bread and cheese and the apple, and put the clasp-knife back into his pocket. From another pocket he pulled out a small book, the cover rather limp and worn. He tucked the bundle behind his back and opened the book. Its contents did not long engross him. The warm May sun and the fact that he had tramped a considerable number of miles since sunrise had a soporific effect on Peter. His fingers gradually relaxed their hold, the book fell to the ground, and Peter slept.

His slumber was so deep that he did not hear the footfall of a man on the soft grass, nor did he stir when the man came near and stood looking down upon him. He was a man of medium height and build, with brown hair, small moustache, and rather light eyes. There was about him an air of finish, yet he quite escaped the epithet of dapper.

For a moment or so he stood looking down upon the recumbent figure. He took in every detail, from the frayed trousers and the spotless shirt to the fantastic feather in the hat. He saw that the sleeper’s face was clean-shaven, bronzed, and with rather high cheek-bones. The hair was dark. There was in the sleeping face a look of quiet weariness. To the man watching him it was the face of one who was lonely.

Then his eye fell upon the book. He stooped down and gently picked it up. The book was open at the following lines:

Ten minutes later Peter stirred and yawned. He sat up and began to stretch himself. But in the very act thereof he stopped, and a gleam of humorous amazement shot into his blue eyes, for on the grass beside him a man was sitting, calmly reading from his own rather shabby book.

The man looked up.

“Don’t let me interrupt you,” said Peter, with a brilliant smile.

The man laughed. “I ought to apologize,” he said. “The fact is, when I first saw you lying there asleep I took you for a tramp. Then I came nearer and saw my mistake. I also saw the book. The temptation to talk to a man who obviously loved the open air and read Chaucer was too much for me. I sat down to wait till you should awake.”

“Very good of you,” replied Peter. “But you didn’t make a mistake, I am a tramp.”

“So am I,” responded the other, “on a walking tour.”

Peter sat up very deliberately now. He broke off a piece of grass, which he began to nibble. Through the nibbling he spoke:

“But I presume that your walking tour is of fairly brief duration; mine has lasted rather more than two years.”

The other man looked at him curiously. “You love the open as much as that?”

“Oh, I love the open well enough,” replied Peter airily; “but that’s not the whole reason. I can’t afford a roof.”

Now, the very obvious reply to this would have been that Peter, a young man and, moreover, clearly one of education, might very well work for a roof. But it being so extremely obvious that this was what Peter might do, it was also obvious that there was some excellent reason why he did not do it.

The man was silent. Peter appreciated his silence.

“The fact is,” said Peter deliberately, “that prior to my starting this ‘walking tour,’ as you so kindly term it, I had spent three years in prison for forgery and embezzling a considerable sum of money.”

“Ah!” said the man quietly, watching him.

“There are always the colonies,” went on Peter carelessly. “But somehow I’ve a predilection for England. Of course, in England there is the disadvantage that you’re bound to produce references if you want work—I mean the kind of work that would appeal to me. I dare say I might get taken on as a day labourer on a farm, but even there my speech is against me; it makes people suspicious.”

“But how do you manage?” asked the other curiously.

Peter laughed. He pulled his whistle-pipe from his pocket.

“I pipe for my bread,” he said. “They call me Peter the Piper.”

The other man nodded. “Good,” he said; “I like that. There’s a flavour of romance about it that appeals to me. My name’s Neil Macdonald.”

Peter looked at him. “Then you don’t mind introducing yourself to a jail-bird?” he asked jauntily; but there was an underhint of wistfulness in the words.

“My dear fellow,” responded Neil, “I have some intuition. It’s so absolutely apparent that you must have been shielding some one else, that——”

Peter interrupted him. The pupils of his blue eyes had contracted till they looked like two pinpricks.

“I beg your pardon,” he said slowly; “I said that I spent three years in prison for forgery and embezzlement.” He looked Neil full in the face.

Neil held out his hand. “I apologize,” he said; “it was extremely clumsy of me.”

Peter took his hand with a light laugh. “It was rather decent of you, all the same,” he said, “though, of course, utterly absurd. You’re the first man, though, that’s committed the absurdity. You happen, too, to be the first man with whom I’ve shaken hands since I freed myself from the clasp of a Salvation Army brother who met me outside the prison gates and talked about my soul. I hadn’t the smallest interest in my soul at the moment. I wanted a cigarette and a drink more than anything in heaven or earth. He was a good-meaning fellow, of course, but—well, just a little wanting in tact. Of course, there were others ready to hold out the hand of pity if I’d asked for it. But there’d have been something slippery about the touch. The oil of charity doesn’t appeal to me.”

There was a pause. Somewhere in the blueness a lark was singing, an exuberant feathered morsel, pouring forth his very soul in song.

Neil broke the silence. “Pipe to me,” he said.

Peter laughed. He pulled the whistle from his pocket, and his fingers held it very lovingly. He put it to his lips.

First there came a couple of clear notes, like a bird-call; they repeated themselves in the distance and were answered. Then the air became alive with the joyous warbling of feathered choristers, and through the warbling came the sound of little rills chasing each other over brown stones, where fish darted in the sunlight and dragonflies skimmed. Next, across a meadow—one knew it was a meadow—came the sound of little feet and children’s laughter. And the sound of the laughter and the babbling of the water and the song of the birds were all mingled in one delicious bubbling melody drawn from the very heart of Nature. It came to a pause. You felt the children, the birds, and the brooks hold their breath to listen. And then from the branches of some tree a hidden nightingale sang alone.

Peter stopped, wiped the pipe on his sleeve, and put it back in his pocket.

“Marvellous!” breathed Neil softly.

Again there was a pause, and again it was broken by Neil.

“I say, will you come back and have lunch with me?” There was a frank spontaneity about the question.

Again the wistful look crept into Peter’s blue eyes. The suggestion coming suddenly was evidently somewhat of a temptation.

“I believe I’d like to,” he said lightly, “but——”

“Well?” asked Neil.

Peter shook his head. “I think not,” he said. “There are quite nine hundred and ninety-nine reasons against it, and only one for it.”

“And isn’t the one reason good enough to counteract the others?”

Peter laughed. “I fancy not. The high-road has claimed me, the hedge-side is my dining-place, the sky my roof. When it is too unkind to me, I seek shelter in a barn. I’ve struck up a kind of silent intimacy with cows, sheep, and horses. I’ve found them, indeed, quite pleased to welcome me.”

“It must be horribly lonely,” said Neil impulsively.

Peter looked away across the valley. “I wonder,” he said. “Perhaps it only appears so. Formerly I walked the earth in company, and when I got near enough to a fellow-creature to believe that I had the right to call him comrade, I suddenly realized that I was looking into the face of a complete stranger. Somehow the loneliness struck deeper home at those moments. Now—well, one just expects nothing.”

Neil glanced down at the book he was still holding in his hand.

Peter smiled.

he quoted. “There’s a freedom about that, a kind of clean-washedness which is very wholesome; the fresh rain upon one’s face in high places after a room full of hot-house flowers.” He stopped. “Heaven knows why I am talking to you like this,” he said whimsically.

“I don’t fancy,” said Neil calmly, “that you’ve ever been really in love.”

“No?” smiled Peter.

“Of course, you think you have,” went on Neil.

“Indeed?” smiled Peter again.

“Oh, I’m not going to argue with you,” said the other good-humouredly, “only when the time comes that you do love, just do me the favour to remember what I’ve said.”

quoted Peter again, looking at Neil lazily.

“There is,” said Neil, “such a thing as invisible ink. There are certain words written with it on the pages of our lives. The pages look uncommonly blank, but should they chance to catch certain heat-rays, the words written upon them will stand out very black and clear.”

“Humph!” said Peter.

“Wait and see,” said Neil.

“All right,” said Peter. And then he got to his feet. He picked up his wallet, bundle, and the hat with the peacock feather. He put it jauntily on his head.

“I must be moving on,” he said.

Neil, too, had risen. He held out the limp book. Peter took it and put it in his pocket.

“Chaucer or you,” he said, “which am I to believe?”

“Believe which you like,” retorted Neil. “Time will bring the proof. I’m glad I met you.” He held out his hand.

Peter took it. “Common politeness,” he said, “should make me echo that sentiment. Truth obliges me to hesitate. Yet frankly I like you. Perhaps you have sufficient acumen to guess at the reason for my hesitation. Well, good-bye.”

Peter vaulted over a stile that led into the high-road. He turned and waved his hat in the direction of the man looking after him, then started off at a swinging pace. Ten minutes took him into the valley, then he began to ascend. Part way up the hill he turned and looked at the now distant field.

“Oh, damn!” he said half ruefully. “Why the devil did I meet him!”

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST-BORN

It was about five o’clock in the afternoon that Peter entered a small market-town.

There were a good many people in the streets, for it was market-day, and there was an air of leisurely business about the place; completed business chiefly, for already stalls were being dismantled, and unsold butter, eggs, and chickens were being repacked in big baskets. Small groups of men stood about together discussing the weather and the prospect of the various crops. Carts drove slowly down the steep High Street, returning to outlying farms.

Peter walked up the hill. One or two people turned to look at him. Something about him—probably the peacock feather in his hat—attracted attention.

Half-way up the street stood a big red-brick post-office. It was an imposing edifice, and seemed to dominate the other buildings with an air of Government importance.

As Peter approached it he felt his heart beating quickly. On the steps he paused for a moment. A girl with a small Yorkshire terrier tucked under her arm was just coming out. She saw Peter on the steps, and kept her hand on the swinging door in order that he might enter. There was nothing for it but to go forward quickly and catch the door from her with a murmured word of thanks. Peter was inside the post-office. He approached the counter.

“Are there any letters for the name of Carden?” he asked. And he could hear his heart going klip-klop.

The young woman behind the counter glanced at him. Her look was rather disdainful, and she turned in a nonchalant fashion to the pigeon-holes behind her. She did not think it likely there would be letters. The young man was—A, B, C. She took a parcel and several letters from the pigeon-hole marked C and ran carelessly through them.

Peter saw her stop. She put back several documents and came towards him. There was a letter and a parcel in her hand.

The girl looked at him. She was a little puzzled. Perhaps her first instinct had been at fault. In spite of the shabby coat and hat and the extremely fantastic feather, he did not look altogether a tramp. She handed the things across the counter.

“Thanks,” said Peter. He tried hard to keep a note of excited pleasure out of his voice.

He put the letter into his pocket, but kept the parcel in his hand. He came out of the post-office and turned up the hill, walking rather quickly. He passed shops and some old-fashioned houses in a row. At the top of the street was a big house wall-enclosed. He left it on his right, and passed more houses of the villa order, evidently recently built. Presently they gave place to cottages. Peter quickened his pace, and all the time he was fingering that brown-paper parcel. At last the cottages, too, were left behind, and there was nothing but hedges and fields before him.

Peter turned into one of the fields and sat down on the grass. He took out his clasp-knife and cut the string that held the parcel, pulling forth the contents. A book, green-covered, with the title in gold lettering, was in his hand.

“Under the Span of the Rainbow, by Robin Adair,” so the lettering ran. The last was, of course, a pseudonym.

Peter looked at it; then slowly, shyly, he opened the cover.

With almost just such reverence might a mother look on her new-born babe, marvelling at her own creation, and quite regardless of the fact that the same great miracle has been performed times out of number in the world, and will be performed again as frequently.

This was Peter’s child, his first-born. Through months of slow travail it had been created and brought forth. Under hedges in the open air, in barns by the light of a single candle, he had worked while dumb beasts had looked at him with mild, wondering eyes. In sunshine and in cloud it had been with him; soft winds had rustled its pages, cold blasts had crept under doors and chilled his fingers while he wrote. And now at last, fair and in dainty garb, it came forth to the world, breathing the clean freshness of open spaces, of sun and wind and rain; tender with the magic of nights, buoyant with the vitality of sunrise. And yet through it all, as through his piping, lay the strange minor note, the underhint of longing.

Peter looked up. His blue eyes were dancing with happiness.

“Ouf!” he said with a sigh of supreme content, stretching his long lean limbs; “it’s good to have done it.”

Then he opened the letter. It was merely a typewritten communication from the publishers, informing him that they were sending him one copy only of his book, according to his wish, and were addressing both it and the letter to the post-office he had mentioned. It ended by hoping that the book would be successful, to their mutual advantage.

The businesslike tone of the letter brought Peter down to earth again. He had been temporarily in heaven. The descent, however, was not a jarring one.

He replaced the book in the brown paper, put it carefully in his wallet, and started off across the fields.

CHAPTER III

THE DESERTED COTTAGE

For some time there was nothing but open country around him, though in the far distance he saw an occasional farmhouse.

At last, however, he saw the roofs of cottages, and realized that he was approaching a village. The square tower of a church, and a big house half-hidden by trees on higher ground beyond the cottages, made it probable that it was more than merely a hamlet.

Just before he reached it a sharp turn in the lane brought him upon a very minute copse set a pace or so back from the road, and in the copse was a small cottage or hut. There was a forlorn look about it, and the windows were broken.

Peter peered through the trees. There was no sign of life whatever. The place was apparently deserted. A couple of yards farther on a small and broken gate led into the copse. The gate was hanging on one hinge in a dejected and melancholy fashion.

Peter propped it up with a little pat of encouragement before he passed through it and up among the trees to the cottage door. It was unfastened, and Peter went in. He found himself in a small square room. To his amazement it was not empty, as he had imagined to find it. On the contrary, it was quite moderately furnished.

A low bed stood at one side of the room; it was covered with a faded blue quilt. A cupboard with a few tea-things on it stood against one wall. A table, old and worm-eaten, was in the centre of the room. There were two wooden chairs, and a wooden armchair with a dilapidated rush seat. There was a big open fireplace with an iron staple in the wall; from this staple was suspended an iron hook. Both were thickly covered with rust. On the shelf above the fireplace was a clock; it was flanked by a couple of copper candlesticks covered with verdigris. Ragged yellow curtains hung before the broken window.

And everywhere there was dust. It lay thickly on the table and the chairs; the tea-things on the cupboard were covered with it. It lay upon the floor in a soft grey carpet, thicker at the far side of the room, where the wind through the broken window had swept it in a little drift against the wall.

Peter looked around in bewilderment. During how many years had this dust accumulated? What memories, what secrets, lay buried beneath it?

He looked towards the fireplace. Charred embers were within it. By the hearth lay an old newspaper. Peter picked it up. It tore as he touched it. It bore the date May the nineteenth, eighteen hundred and sixty-six. Forty-five years ago! Had this cottage lain uninhabited for forty-five years?—thirteen years before he was even born! He glanced up at the clock. It had stopped at twelve o’clock—midnight or noon, who was to say?

Peter turned and again looked round the place. At the foot of the bed was another door. He opened it, and found himself in a minute room or scullery. It contained a copper, a row of shelves, a pump, and an iron bucket. The window here, too, was broken, the place as thickly shrouded in dust.

Peter returned to the dwelling-room.

“Apparently I have it all to myself,” he said; “and for to-night at least I intend to quarter here, for if I’m not much mistaken there’s a storm coming up from the west.”

Peter put his wallet and bundle down on the table and went out into the copse. He began collecting bits of dead wood from under the trees, and there was abundance strewn on the ground, also fir-cones, for the trees were Scotch firs. It was already drawing on to dusk, and clouds were being blown across the sky by a soft wet wind from the west.

As Peter had just collected his second armful of sticks, he heard steps coming along the road. He paused before entering the cottage to see who it might be. They were light steps, probably those of children.

In a moment they came in sight—two little girls, chattering eagerly, and walking quickly, for the sky looked threatening. As they neared the copse one of the children looked up. She clutched her companion’s arm.

“Look there!” she said. There was terror in her voice.

The other child looked, screamed, and they both set off running frantically down the road.

“Great Scot!” ejaculated Peter; “did they take me for a ghost, or do they think I’m a poacher, and have gone to inform the neighbourhood? Trust they won’t disturb me; I’ve no mind to turn out into the deluge that’s coming.”

A couple of large drops of rain splashed down on his hand as he spoke, and he re-entered the cottage. He placed his second armful of sticks beside the fireplace. First he cleared away the charred embers in the hearth, then began arranging the newly collected sticks with the skill born of long practice in the art of fire-making. This done, he went into the inner room and took up the bucket. The pump was stiff with rust and disuse, but Peter’s vigorous arm soon triumphed over the stiffness, and, filling the bucket with water, he returned to the living-room. Here, with the aid of a couple of ragged cloths, he made a partial onslaught against the dust. The room became at least habitable to one not over-fastidious. Moth, by some miracle, seemed to have left the place untouched, though the bedclothes were damp with mildew.

The cleansing process at least partially achieved, Peter undid his wallet and bundles. From them he took a pot, a tin cup, a couple of eggs, a hunch of bread, and small piece of butter wrapped in a cloth.

He filled the pot with water, put the two eggs in it, and hung it on the hook in the fireplace. Then he struck a match and held it under the pile of sticks. The little orange flame twined itself gently round one twig. It twisted upward to another and yet another. There was the sound of soft crackling gradually increasing to a perfect fairy fusillade. The flames multiplied, leapt from stick to stick, while among their orange and blue light poured a pearly-grey smoke.

“Achieved,” said Peter with a sigh, and he seated himself in the armchair watching the dancing flames, and every now and then flinging on an extra stick.

Outside the rain was beating on the roof and splashing through the broken window, while the wind, which had begun to rise, moaned gently through the fir-trees, creaking their branches.

“Thanks be to the patron saint of all wayfarers,” said Peter, “that I found this shelter. And if I knew his name I’d indite a poem to his memory.”

And then he fell to thinking of the young man who, earlier in the day, had intruded on his slumbers and read poems from his Chaucer. That he was a pleasant young man Peter had already conceded. That he had combined an extraordinary mixture of intuition with a certain lack of reticence almost amounting to want of tact, Peter also conceded. That there was nothing about him of very deep psychological interest, Peter knew. But—well, he was a man of gentle birth, and he had treated Peter—the wayfaring Peter with frayed trousers and a patch on one knee—as an equal. It had left a very decided sensation of pleasure. Peter acknowledged to himself that he would have liked to accept the young man’s invitation; and yet if he had—well, he would probably have drivelled more than he had done, and he had drivelled quite enough. That was the worst of unaccustomed and genuine interest from one of your fellow-men. It was like wine to one not used to it—it mounted to your brain, you became garrulous. To those who are used to wine, one glass, two glasses, nay, even three glasses, means nothing. To those who have not tasted the liquor for years, half a glass may prove unsteadying. It was not even as if it would be offered to him with sufficient frequency for him to become accustomed to it. No; most assuredly the wine of sympathy was not for him.

And then he stopped suddenly in his meditations, for the water in the pot was boiling.

When Peter had finished his meal he pulled a brier-wood pipe from his pocket, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. He also lit a candle, which he set in one of the copper candlesticks and placed upon the table. Then once more he drew his book from the brown-paper covering.

For a time he sat very still, only moving a hand to turn the pages. The candle-light threw his shadow large and grotesque on the dingy wall behind him. Occasionally the shadow wavered as the candle flickered in the draught from the broken window. The fire had died down to a few glowing spots set in a bed of grey ashes. Outside the rain fell steadily, and the wind still creaked the branches of the fir-trees.

At last Peter closed the book. He rolled his piece of sacking into a bundle to form a pillow, and stretched himself on the stone floor before the hearth. It was preferable, he considered, to the mildewy bed.

“I wonder,” he mused, “who were the former owners of this place. No doubt they are long since dead. Well, if so, on their souls, and on all Christian souls, sweet Jesu, have mercy!” He made the sign of the Cross.

In ten minutes Peter was asleep. He slept well, but he dreamt, and once or twice through his dreams he heard the sound of sobbing. It was a pitiful little sobbing, as of a woman in grief, and mingled with it seemed to be faint half-articulate words.

Once Peter half-awakened, and for a moment he fancied the sobbing was real, but reason, which was working fitfully, told him it was only the wind in the trees without. He shifted his position and fell asleep again.

CHAPTER IV

PETER TAKES A RESIDENCE

Peter came out from the cottage door in the early morning. The rain of the previous night had ceased, only the trees, bushes, and grass were hung with myriads of drops sparkling silver and diamond in the morning sunshine. He smelt the good smell of the wet earth, and filled his lungs with the cool fresh air.

By rights Peter should by now have been well on his way, for, though his way led generally to no particular goal, he was always a-foot by sunrise. But something—Peter did not know what—held him to that cottage. It was almost as if the desolate place cried to him: “Stay with me; I, too, am lonely.” Certainly something indefinable but insistent was drawing him to remain.

“And why not?” said Peter half aloud.

And then he heard the creaking of a cart, and the gruff voice of a carter encouraging his horse. In a moment it came in sight. The cart was empty, and the man was sitting on the side as he drove.

“Good morning,” said Peter pleasantly, as the cart and man came abreast of him.

The carter started, pulled up suddenly, and the horse came to a standstill.

“Well now,” he said in amazement, “whatever do-ee be doin’ there?”

“I sheltered here last night,” said Peter. “Can you tell me to whom this cottage belongs?”

The man shook his head. “It don’t belong to no one, and that’s certain sure.”

“But,” argued Peter, “a cottage which is obviously built by human agency must have an owner.”

Again the man shook his head. “It don’t belong to no one,” he reiterated.

Peter raised his eyebrows incredulously. “But why not?” he demanded.

“’Tis evil,” said the man in a solemn whisper.

“Evil!” echoed Peter. And the word seemed as out of place in the morning sunshine as a cynic would seem in fairyland.

The man nodded. “’Tis evil, for sure. ’Tis haunted.”

“And by what is it haunted?” demanded Peter, curious.

“A bad woman,” said the man. “Her comes there o’nights, and her moans for that her soul’s to hell.”

Again the word fell like a discord in the harmony of sunshine and singing birds. Peter frowned.

“Then,” he asked, “as the cottage possesses no owner I suppose I can live here if I choose?”

The man scratched his head. “No one can’t live there what bain’t in league with t’devil,” he announced.

Peter smiled brilliantly. “Oh,” he said with fine assurance, “but I am.” And he made the carter a low bow, sweeping upward his hat, which he had hitherto held in his hand. The fantastic peacock feather came into view, also Peter concluded the bow with a very diabolical grin.

The man whipped up his horse, casting a terrified glance over his shoulder as he drove off. Peter waved his hat with a mocking laugh.

“And now,” he said, as the sound of the wheels receded in the distance, “it is possible that my averred friendship with his Satanic Majesty may gain me uninterrupted possession of this place. And—nonsense or not—it is asking me to stay.”

Suddenly, however, it struck Peter that it might be as well for him to lay in a small store of provisions—if such were obtainable in the village—before the statement of his friendship with the powers of evil had been spread by the too credulous carter. Peter was well aware of the superstitions of village folk. Therefore he set off at once down the road.

The village stood for the most part around an open green, to the left of which was the grey church whose square tower he had noticed the previous day. In front of him and on higher ground, half-hidden among the trees, was a white house. It looked of some importance. On the right of the green was the post-office, and next to it a general provision shop.

Peter went into the post-office, where he asked for a penny stamp.

The woman who kept the place was a buxom dame, rosy-cheeked and brown-eyed. Peter thought she might be possessed of conversational powers. He was right. A small remark of his received a voluble response. He ventured another. It also was received in good part and the dame’s tongue proved nimble.

For full half an hour Peter leant upon the counter, speaking but a word or two at intervals, but finding that they quite sufficed to direct the voluble flow of speech into the channels he desired. The sound of the bell above the shop door alone brought the discourse to a conclusion, as a woman, with a baby in her arms and two children dragging at her skirts, entered. She looked at Peter curiously, then, pulling a shabby purse from her pocket, requested the postmistress to provide her with a penny stamp. She was, so she stated, about to write to her son in South Africa.

Peter came out into the sunlight with vastly more information than he had possessed half an hour previously.

He turned into the provision shop, where he achieved a few purchases, and then made his way again in the direction of the desolate cottage. In his mind he was running through and sorting the information he had received.

First and foremost it was perfectly obvious that, provided he had the temerity to remain in the cottage in which he had passed the previous night, no one would say him nay. It was held in ill-repute. No one would dream of entering the copse at any time, and after nightfall even the road past it was to be avoided. The reason for this, as far as Peter could gather, was as follows.

Some fifty or sixty years ago a woman had lived in that cottage with her daughter, the reputed beauty of the village. The cottage had been built on a bit of unclaimed land by the woman’s husband, who had died soon after building it. It appeared that the girl was a coquette, trifling with the solid affection of the village swains. That at least was the version of the postmistress. One day some young gentleman had come to stay at the inn. What brought him if it was not Satan himself no one knew. At all events, before long he and the village Helen were seen walking together on summer evenings. Then came a day when the young man left the inn, and it was discovered that the girl was missing. Good authority stated that she had gone with him. It also stated that after three months he deserted her. From then began her downfall. The mother, left in the cottage, faded slowly from grief, and after five years died. On the evening of her death a thin wan woman great with child was seen to enter the village. None, it appeared, had spoken to her. She had passed through the village and towards the cottage where the dead woman lay. The friend who was keeping watch saw the door open and a pale woman with frightened eyes approach the bed. There had been a terrifying shriek and the intruder had dropped to the ground. During the hours of the night a little life had come forth, which looked momentarily and wearily on the world. With a sigh it had gone out again into the silence, where at dawn the weary mother had followed it. But remorse, so it was said, had chained her to the spot where her own mother had died, and throughout the following nights her spirit could be heard sobbing and moaning. For more than forty years the place had been considered cursed, and had been steadfastly avoided. Even the contents of the cottage had remained untouched.

Peter had ventured a word of pity for the desolate creature whose story he had just heard. But pity was, apparently, the last emotion roused towards her. Horror of her sin and degradation, a horror enhanced by the superstition vivid around her memory, was all the buxom postmistress felt. And should any one be wickedly daring enough to enter the cottage and live there—well, the curse of evil would undoubtedly fall upon him, though assuredly no one would interfere should any one prove himself a sufficient friend of evil for such a venture.

So much had Peter gathered regarding the cottage and its story. He had then put another question regarding the white house on the hill.

It belonged, so he was told, to a Lady Anne Garland, who lived there with a companion. At the moment she was away from home, though she was expected to return in June. And then the other customer had entered the shop, and the flood of the good woman’s discourse had been stemmed.

Peter had reached the copse by now and turned in at the broken gate. As he entered the cottage it seemed to him that there was an air of expectancy about the place, as if it was waiting for the answer to a question.

Involuntarily Peter spoke aloud.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I am going to stay till some one comes to kick me out.”

And then—of course it was mere fancy, but a little breeze seemed to pass through the room, like a sigh of relief or content.

CHAPTER V

THE SOUL OF A WOMAN

Thus Peter entered upon his estate, since there was evidently no man would say him nay. He, the wayfarer, who for two years had slept by the hedge-side or in barns, found himself possessed of a castle.

It might be conjectured whether he would find the change cramping, stifling. He did not. The windows, which he mended, he set wide open to the sun and wind. Big fires of sticks and fir-cones aired and freed the place from the odour of damp and decay that hung about it. He took the precaution of buying a couple of blankets and a mattress. Also, as he was once more to become a civilized being, at all events in his own eyes, he bought three suits of the garments called pyjamas.

They pleased Peter enormously. Blue, pink, and green, he placed them on the table and looked at them. They told him as plainly as their flannel tongues could speak that he had returned to his birthright. He had purchased them in the market town already mentioned, which lay some eight miles distant from the cottage, and the purchase had been made with an air of swagger. Piping had proved a not unremunerative occupation. There was now, however, another source of income. Certainly the income would not be large at present, but it well sufficed. Peter would therefore pipe no longer for pay, but merely for pleasure.

He had also laid in a store of fair foolscap paper and a large bottle of ink. The joy of creation had taken possession of him. His brain was again fertile. It was partly on this account that he had been ready to take up a fixed abode, since fate had flung one in his path. He owed it to the children of his brain to give them every chance, though his first child had been brought forth amidst difficulties and hardships.

The news that a stranger, wearing a peacock feather in his hat, had taken up his abode in the cottage of ill-omen spread like wild-fire through the village. Women glanced at him with frightened eyes, men regarded him with suspicion. The owner of the provision shop, indeed, held a kind of neutral ground. Until it should be proved that Peter’s shillings were accursed, he might as well have the advantage of them.

The children looked at Peter with awe, mingled with curiosity. There was a kind of fearful joy in watching one who was a friend of that terrible personage the Devil. At night, truly, he was to be avoided, but in daylight, with his bronzed face and brilliant peacock feather, he looked not unprepossessing.

Moreover, he could pipe. Wee Rob, the miller’s lame son, had first heard him, and had called to the other children. There had been a reconnoitring party down the lane. On tiptoe feet, breath suspended, eyes round with awe, they had gone. Through the bushes they had seen him at the cottage door, the pipe at his lips. And the music had been full of they knew not what of magic, joy and gladness. With parted lips and eyes full of childish wonder they had listened. Fear had vanished to the four winds of heaven, blown far far away by the sweet notes of the pipe.

And then Peter had stopped and moved. There had been the scuttling of little feet and the tapping of a crutch. But the tapping of the crutch had been reluctant in its retreat, for the magic of the piping lingered with Wee Rob.

By day, then, Peter wrote in his cottage, piped his tunes, or walked the moorland above the village. By night he slept and dreamt of the book he was writing, though often through his dreams he fancied he heard the sound of that pitiful sobbing.

In his waking moments he told himself it was fancy pure and simple, yet it troubled him. What if there were indeed an imprisoned soul somewhere seeking aid, one for whom no man had said an individual prayer? Peter had no very definite creed. There lingered with him certain faint memories of lessons taught him by his mother, of which the little prayer he had prayed the first night in the cottage was one. Beyond that all was indefinite, vague. Somewhere external to this world were unseen Powers, some great Force, a Strength to whom men appealed under the name of God. The supernatural, however, had, or appeared to have, no very distinct individual relation towards himself. He had certainly prayed when he was in the prison. Human aid being powerless to “put things right” (he formulated his ideas no more than that), he had appealed to this External Power. He had found a certain comfort in it. He acknowledged its might, its capacity to do so. Having prayed, he felt sure of the answer. His attitude towards the Powers was friendly. There is no other word which will as well describe his attitude of mind. Surely, then, he had a right to expect a friendly reply. And then the reply had come. For a time Peter had been stunned. It had been so entirely unexpected. He felt almost as a man would feel who had received a blow from one from whom he had a right to expect a handshake. A curious bitterness was his first predominant sensation. This did not last, however. Peter was too innately sweet-natured to harbour bitterness long, even against those vague external Powers of which he knew so little. A nonchalant philosophy took its place. They had failed him, therefore he must turn elsewhere for aid; he must turn to the visible means around him, the things of nature, the sunshine, the trees, the flowers, the birds. In short, the recuperative power of his own healthy nature sustained him, since the Powers to whom he had turned seemed to have failed. And yet he did not deny their existence. Only it would appear that their attitude towards him individually was not what he had imagined it to be. Now, however, vaguely, indefinitely, he began to wonder whether their aid could not be invoked again, not for himself, but for another, the soul of the woman whose fancied sobbing troubled his dreams. He told himself, as already stated, that the sobbing was pure fancy, the outcome of the pitiful story he had heard, his own imagination, and certain faint memories of his mother’s teaching regarding souls in purgatory. Solitude no doubt coloured these memories, rendered him possibly slightly morbid regarding them. Yet the fancy was strong upon him that he, in that place where the soul of the woman had left her body, might in some way aid. Yet how? There was the crux of the question.

And then Peter bethought him of a friend of his, one whose creed, though he himself had inquired little regarding it, he knew to be clear-cut, defined. Perhaps, Peter told himself, his own prayers were too vague, too nebulous. For himself he was content, or at least sufficiently passive now, to let things remain as they were. For himself, his prayer had failed; he would not be cowardly enough to whine, or recriminate. It was just possible that even the failure belonged to some Great Plan of which he did not see the outcome. He perceived in the same nebulous way that if this were the case rebellion would be not only cowardly, but futile. Yet while remaining passive for himself, something within him stirred him to action for another. He had heard his friend speak of masses for souls in purgatory. It conveyed nothing very definite to Peter’s mind, yet he felt that if there were some method of aiding this soul his friend would know of it.

Accordingly Peter wrote a letter. He gave no address; he merely wrote stating the facts of the case, and asking aid. After that he waited.

Now again he was perfectly aware that the whole thing might have been pure fancy, but one day Peter became conscious of a change of atmosphere in the cottage. A repose, a peace, hitherto foreign seemed to have descended upon it. When precisely the change occurred Peter did not know, he merely suddenly became conscious that the change was there.

Of course it might have been pure fancy, but Peter did not think it was.

CHAPTER VI

AN OLD GENERAL

I

General Carden, V.C., C.B., D.S.O., was sitting at breakfast in his house in Sloane Street. He was not a young man—in fact, he had just passed his seventy-seventh birthday—but there was about him an air of trim spruceness, an uprightness that many a younger man might have envied. His height in his stockinged feet was exactly six feet one. He was handsome, too, with his fine aquiline features, his snow-white hair, and his drooping moustache. His blue eyes, under shaggy eyebrows, were perhaps a trifle faded from the colour of their youth, yet they struck a very decided note in contrast to his face, which was like old ivory, and to the pallor of his hair.

A little pile of letters lay on the table beside him, also a small silver paper-knife. Ten minutes previously he had cut the envelopes with careful precision and glanced through the contents. Apparently he had found in them little of interest, and now his attention was entirely absorbed by a couple of frizzled rolls of bacon on the plate before him.

The door opened noiselessly and the butler entered. He carried a tray on which was a plate, and on the plate was a small brown egg in a silver egg-cup. General Carden was somewhat particular as to the size and colour of the eggs of which he partook. The butler placed the plate on the table, then stood in an attitude suggestive of military attention.

“Any orders for the car, sir? Alcott is here, sir.”

“The car at eleven,” said General Carden, still busy with the bacon. “And, Goring, see that those library books are put in.”

“Very good, sir. Is that all, sir?”

“Yes; nothing else.”

The butler withdrew, and General Carden continued his breakfast. Marmalade and a second cup of coffee followed the egg. General Carden made a good deal of the fact that he enjoyed his breakfast. It was to him a sign that old age was not yet encroaching.

Breakfast over, he crossed the hall to a small study, where he took a cigarette from a silver box and lighted it. Then he sat down in a chair near the window with the morning paper. It seldom afforded him much satisfaction, however. England, in his opinion, was going to the dogs, and it only annoyed him to see the printed record of its progress towards that deplorable end.

After a few moments he threw the paper from him with a faintly muttered “Damn it, sir!” He had seen that in a by-election a seat had been won by one of the Labour party.

“Going to the dogs, sir; entirely to the dogs!” he muttered. And then he looked out of the window at the people in the street, which street was bathed in May sunshine.

The gardens opposite looked extraordinarily green and spring-like, and nurses with perambulators and children of various sizes were passing along the pavement by the iron railings. They and the sunshine struck a very definite note of buoyancy and youth, and for a moment General Carden felt not entirely as young as he could wish. The room seemed a little lonely, and the house rather large for one occupant—servants, naturally, did not count. General Carden did not exactly express this thought to his mind in words. He was not a man given to sentimentality either in thought or speech. It was merely represented by a little indefinite and not very pleasant impression. He wheeled his chair round to his writing-desk, which he unlocked, and began looking through various letters with a show of businesslike energy.

Some half-hour or so later he appeared in the hall. The butler was there already with an overcoat, a silk hat, and an air of reserved dignity. He put General Carden into the overcoat and handed him the hat.

“Have you put the books in the car?” asked General Carden.

“Yes, sir,” replied Goring. There was the faintest suspicion of reproof in the reply.

“Ah! yes, of course, of course; I mentioned it at breakfast.” General Carden took up his gloves and passed into the sunshine down the steps, an upright figure in grey overcoat, white spats, and hat shining glossily in the light.

“Good morning, Alcott; the car running well?”

“First rate, sir.”

“That’s right; that’s right. You can take a turn in the Park and afterwards go to Mudie’s.”

“Very good, sir.”

General Carden got in, and the car purred gently up the street.

He settled himself comfortably into a corner, and glanced at the books on the seat opposite to him. He had a subscription at Mudie’s, and kept himself thoroughly up in the present-day novel. He did not care to hear a new book mentioned and have to allow that he had not read it. Of course, the present-day literature could not compare with that of the older novelists—that was hardly to be expected. Scott, Dickens, Thackeray—he ran through them in his mind—where was the writer of the moment who could compare with them? Who could touch the romance of Scott, the humour of Dickens, the courtliness of Thackeray? Where was there a man in present fiction able to stand beside the fine old figure of General Newcome? No; romance, humour, courtliness, had vanished, and in their place were divorce accounts, ragging—an appalling word,—and suffragettes. The world was not what it had been in his young days. He did not, however, express this opinion blatantly; to do so would have savoured of old-fogyism. Oh, no; he flattered himself he kept abreast of the times, and only deplored certain modern innovations, as they were deplored by all those who still held to the fragments of refinement and courtliness that remained in the world.

As the car turned into the Park, General Carden sat rather more upright. He watched the carriages and their occupants with attention, his old eyes keen to observe and note any of them he knew. And when he did, off came that glossy silk hat with a bow and a gesture worthy of a courtier. However much abreast of the times he might choose to consider himself, in his heart he knew he was of the old school, and one even older than that of his own youth. He belonged, this courtly old man, to the delightful old school where men treated women with chivalry and protection, and where women in their turn accepted these things with delicate grace and charm; where conversation had meant a pretty display of wit, a keen fencing of words, where brusquerie was a thing unknown; and where a fine and subtle irony had stood in the place of a certain curt rudeness noticeable in the present day. Yet all that was of the past. It would be as out of place now as would be one of those dainty ladies of old years, in powder and brocade, among the tight-skirted women in Bond Street. But very deep down in his heart General Carden knew it was the school which he loved, and of which he allowed himself occasionally to dream. Those dreams were dreamt mainly on winter evenings in a chair before the study fire. And then, very surreptitiously, General Carden would bring a tiny gold box from his pocket—a dainty octagon box with an exquisite bit of old enamel, blue as a sapphire, let into the lid—and, opening it, he would take an infinitesimal pinch of brown powder between his first finger and thumb. He was always most extremely careful that no single grain of it should fall on his white shirt-front. Goring’s eyes were at times unaccountably sharp. He was not going to be caught snuff-taking by a man who might look upon it as a sign of old age advancing. The little gold box, when not on his own person, was kept locked in a small antique cabinet in his dressing-room.

Apparently there were many people in the Park that morning whom General Carden knew. A big car hummed past with a small woman in it, a woman who looked almost tiny in the car’s capacious depths. She had a pointed little face and masses of fair hair. Off came General Carden’s hat. This was Muriel Lancing. He had known her as Muriel Grey, when she was a small girl in short skirts. She had married a certain Tommy Lancing a refreshing young man with red hair and freckles and a comfortable private income. General Carden’s eyes smiled at the girl. In spite of a certain airy up-to-dateness, he liked her. She was so dainty, so piquante, and such an inscrutable mixture of child, woman of the world, and elfin. One never knew which of the three might not appear on the surface. Also he liked Tommy, who always contrived to put a certain air of deference into his manner towards the General, which secretly pleased that critical white-haired, old veteran immensely.

After a few moments he saw another of his friends, and again the hat came off, this time with perhaps even something more of courtliness. The woman in the victoria was very nearly a contemporary his. Quite a contemporary, General Carden reflected—ignoring the fifteen years which lay between them, and which were, it must be stated, to the advantage of Mrs. Cresswell. She was a woman with white hair rolled high, somewhat after the style of a Gainsborough portrait, and a clear-cut aristocratic face. She belonged unquestionably to his school, and their conversations were an invariable delicate sword-play of words. Even if she were generally the victor—and in the art of conversation he was willing to concede her the palm—yet he flattered himself he was no mean opponent, and he had a pleasurable memory of some very pretty turns of repartee on his own part. She was a friend of long standing, and one he valued.

Next came a much younger woman in a car, with a small boy beside her. This was Millicent Sheldon; the boy was her nephew. General Carden’s blue eyes were a little hard as he observed her, and there was just a suspicion of stiffness in his arm as he raised his hat. She responded with a slightly frigid bow, her face entirely immovable. There were reasons—most excellently good reasons—why there was a certain chilliness between these two. They need not, however, be recorded at the moment.

Many other carriages and cars passed whose occupants General Carden knew, also a few foot-passengers, grey-haired veterans like himself, who walked upright and rather stiff, or younger men slightly insouciant of manner.

As his car was turning out of the Park another carriage turned in. In it was a young woman and an older one—much older; in fact, rather dried up and weather-beaten. This time General Carden did not raise his hat, though he observed the two women with interest. He had frequently noticed the carriage and its occupants during his morning drives in the Park. The younger woman attracted him. It was not merely the fact that she was beautiful, but there was an air of distinction about her, a well-bred distinguished air, that appealed to this old critic of women and manners. The men on the box wore cockades in their hats and plum-coloured livery. There was also a tiny coronet on the panel of the carriage door. In spite of the fact that General Carden’s sight was not entirely what it once had been, he noticed the coronet. He noticed, too, that the woman’s hair was black with blue lights in it, that her skin was a pale cream, and her mouth a delicious and quite natural scarlet; also that her small well-bred head was exquisitely set on a slender but young and rounded throat, and that it, in its turn, was set quite delightfully between her shoulders. There is no gainsaying the fact that General Carden was a very distinct connoisseur in matters feminine. He wondered who she was, and even after the carriage had passed he thought of her very finished appearance with pleasure. And it was by no means the first time that he had wondered, nor the first that he had experienced the feeling of pleasure at the sight of her.

In two or three minutes, so swift are the ways of cars, he was stopping opposite Mudie’s in Kensington High Street. A carriage with a pair of bay horses was waiting beyond the broad pavement outside the shop. General Carden recognized it as belonging to Mrs. Cresswell. Evidently she had left the Park before him.

He got out of the car and crossed the pavement to the shop. Mrs. Cresswell was also changing library books. She saw him approaching and gave him a smile—a smile at once brilliant, gay, and charmingly intimate, as was the privilege of an old friend.

“So we meet again,” she said in her crisp, pleasantly decided voice, and she held out her hand. “And how are you this fine May morning?”

“In most excellent health, thank you,” replied General Carden, taking the hand held out to him. “There is no need for me to ask how you are. You look, as you always do, radiant.” He accompanied the words with a gesture almost suggestive of a bow.

“How charming of you!” sighed Mrs. Cresswell, a little laugh in her eyes. “I always feel at least ten years younger when I meet you. And you are on the same errand bent as I. Well, here is one book I can certainly recommend. I am just returning it myself. It is by a new author, and is quite delightful—finished, light, and with a style all its own.” She held up a green-covered book as she spoke, and General Carden read the gold-lettered title, Under the Span of the Rainbow.

Now, to be perfectly candid, the title did not appeal to him who read it. In General Carden’s mind it suggested fairy-tales—light, airy, soap-bubbly things, iridescent and pretty enough for the moment, but quite unable to withstand the finger of criticism he would inevitably lay upon them. Yet the book was recommended by a woman, and that woman Mrs. Cresswell.

“Any recommendation of yours!” said General Carden gallantly. And he put the book aside while he looked for a second one.

A young shopman made various deferential suggestions, and presently Mrs. Cresswell and General Carden were out again in the sunshine, General Carden bearing four library books.

“I shall expect to hear what you think of my recommendation,” said Mrs. Cresswell, as he handed her to her carriage and placed two of the books on the seat beside her. Her voice held perhaps the faintest intonation of significance. “Come and see me next Tuesday; I am at home, you know.”

“With all the pleasure in the world,” replied General Carden.

And then she gave him another of her gracious smiles as the bays moved off down the sunny street.

II

It was not till after dinner that night that General Carden opened the book. He was then sitting in a large and comfortable armchair in his study. A shaded electric lamp stood on a table at his elbow, and he was experiencing the sense of well-being of a man who has just partaken of a most excellently cooked dinner.

He fixed his gold-rimmed glasses on his finely chiselled nose and opened the book, though with but faint anticipation of interest. After a page or two, however, he became absorbed, almost fascinated. The writing appealed to him; it was pleasant, cultured. There were here and there some very neatly turned phrases. And then, quite suddenly, one paragraph arrested his attention. It was in itself a quite insignificant little paragraph and merely descriptive. Here it is, however:

“Near one corner of the house, grey-walled, weather-beaten, stood a great pear-tree, its branches almost touching the diamond-shaped panes of the narrow window—the window of the octagon room which held for him so many memories. In spring-time the tree was a mass of snowy blossoms, and among their delicate fragrance a blackbird sang his daily matins. Later in the year the tree would be full of fruit, many of which fell to the ground, and, bruising in the fall, would fill the air with a sweet and almost sickly scent. In the trunk of the tree was a small shield-shaped patch, where the bark had been torn away, and the initials R. and J. cut in the smooth underwood. They belonged, so the boy had been told, to the twin brothers, whose gallant history had fascinated him from childhood.”

General Carden paused. There was a look of dim pain in his blue eyes. After a moment he re-read the passage carefully, and with infinitely more attention than the few sentences would appear to merit. Then he turned to the title-page and read the name of the author. Apparently it told him nothing he desired to know, and he continued his reading. Much farther on he came to another paragraph at which he again paused abruptly.

“‘Cricket,’ said the young man airily, ‘is a universal game, and means, speaking in general terms, the avoidance of anything which—well, hints of meanness or unfair play to our neighbours.’ They were his father’s exact words, and he knew it. At the moment, however, he chose to make them his own.”

General Carden put down the book. His hands were shaking slightly. He told himself he was an old fool. Hundreds of fathers had used those words to their sons. They represented the first principle learnt by an Englishman. But then, there was the pear-tree, the shield-shaped wound in its bark, the initials, the old weather-beaten house. Memory began to exert her sway. He was sitting in a study window watching a tall, slim woman as she laughed at a thin slip of a boy climbing, monkey-like, among the branches of the old tree. He could hear the very sound of her laugh and the exultant ring of the boy’s voice.

He pulled himself together. That house—the old place down in the country—was in the hands of caretakers. It did not do to think about the past at his time of life. He was certainly perturbed to use that phrase. He turned to the address of the publishers, then glanced at the telephone on his writing-desk and from it to the clock. The hands pointed to ten minutes to ten. Of course, it was too late to ring up a business house, much too late. Besides, pseudonyms were sacred to publishers, or should be. Quite possibly, too, it was not a pseudonym. It was absurd that he should suppose that it was. It was a good book, however, a very good book. He should like to see what the reviews had to say about it. It was always interesting to hear public opinion on a good book; and, to a certain extent, reviewers constituted the public. There were places—he had heard of them—where reviews were collected. He must find out the name of one of them. Yes; he would like to see whether the reviewers did not endorse his own opinion. He would tell Mrs. Cresswell he had appreciated her recommendation. Possibly he would write a note to-morrow and tell her. It would please her to hear that he had liked the book she had advised him to read.

And then another thought struck him, and he sat suddenly upright. Had not she once seen that pear-tree—once, long ago? Surely she, too, did not think—did not guess——

He would not write to her after all. Tuesday would be time enough to tell her that he thought the book—yes, quite fairly promising for a new author. Fairly promising, that was the expression.

CHAPTER VII

A WONDERFUL OFFER

Late one afternoon Peter set off to walk to the market-town. He was expecting a letter from his publishers. He had given them the market-town post-office as his permanent address. It was a glorious day, and the sunlight lay warmly on the fields.

During the day he had been writing, but his work had not gone well. That which in brain-imagery had seemed original and lifelike, in articulation appeared to him commonplace and dull. Who would care to read the drivel he was committing to paper? His thoughts, his fancies, of what interest would they be to the multitude? Of what value even to two or three?

Peter was in a mood dangerous for his own creation. His first book had come directly from his inner being, written for the pure love of inscribing in lucid words the thoughts which filled his brain. The same reason had urged him to write again. Then suddenly before him like a menace rose up an image—the Public. His work would go out to it, had already gone out to it. How would it be received? And if with smiles the first moment, who could tell whether the smiles might not the next be changed to frowns?

He felt like a man whose chance witticism has won him the post of Jester. What anxiety must precede each lightly spoken word that follows; the knowledge that the wings of spontaneity had been clipped, though the knowledge perchance was his alone; the inward wince at a rebuff, the joy at applause! Jester to the many-faced public! Was this to be his rôle? Truly, if a little knowledge be a dangerous thing, a little success appeared quite as dangerous. Had he the strength to forget his audience; to speak only as and when Inspiration bade him; to keep silence when her voice was still? If indeed he had to play the part of Jester, could he be a daring one, heedless alike of frowns and smiles? Could he risk the cap and bells being taken from him? Could he bear hooting and derision?

“I will,” cried Peter to his soul. “I will jest how and as I please. Servant will I be to Inspiration alone, and slave to none. Away with cowardice, Peter, my son, and dismiss the many-headed public from your mind.”

It was therefore in an extremely healthy frame of mind that Peter approached the market-town.

The letter he had expected was awaiting him. He put it in his pocket unopened, for he knew it to be merely a business communication of no particular importance, and set off once more for home.

It was not till after his supper that he again thought of it, and he pulled it carelessly from his pocket. Within the envelope was the typewritten communication he had expected, and also a letter. It was addressed to Robin Adair, Esq., care of the publishers.

Peter turned the letter over curiously. The post-mark was London, the writing educated, delicately firm. He broke the seal and drew the letter from the envelope. Here is what he read:

“London.

“May 16th.

“This letter can have no formal beginning, inasmuch as it is not written to a man, but to a personality—the personality that breathes through the book signed by Robin Adair. Nor, in spite of appearances, is it a letter from a woman, but from a personality as impersonal—if the contradiction may pass—as that to which it is addressed.

“And in the first place I am trusting that you—for impersonal as one may wish to be, one cannot dispense with pronouns—that you are possessed of sufficient intuition to discover that I am neither an autograph-hunter nor one desirous of snatching a sensation by stolen intercourse with a celebrity. I am not greatly flattering your intuitive powers therein; for nowhere is true personality so intimately revealed as in an intimate letter. Art can almost invariably be detected, and there is no fleshly mask to dazzle the perceptions and obscure the soul. An intelligent abstraction from a letter would probably give the truest image of the subjective side of any nature, which after all is the side with which as an individual one is concerned. If, therefore, after reading thus far, you are disposed to regard this letter as an impertinence, then it is one which is entirely without excuse, and I should desire you to tear it up forthwith.

“If, on the other hand, you have preserved an open mind so far, then I shall not attempt excuse, but furnish you with reasons. In fancy or in reality I have detected in your book, running through its sweetness and underlying all its strength, a great heart-cry for sympathy, the cry of a lonely soul. What it is that has wounded you I cannot tell, but I feel in every fibre that the wound is there.

“Now, I make you an offer—one of intimate comradeship with one of another sex, under conditions of such stringency as Plato’s self might have approved. I am a woman whom you have never seen, whom you will never see, of gentle birth, with a share at least of education and refinement, and, moreover, one who has been so profoundly moved and influenced by your writing that she feels with an extraordinary degree of confidence the existence of a mind-rapport between herself and you.

“For the moment that is enough. Should you wish to accept my offer, write to me at an address I shall subjoin, whence the letter will be forwarded to me. On your side the compact must be marked by one condition: you must pledge me your word never to make any attempt to discover my identity.

“As I dislike pseudonyms, I leave this letter unsigned.”

Peter laid the letter upon the table and stared at it.

“Amazing!” he ejaculated. Then he took it up again. It was written on bluish paper, and held the faintest—just the very faintest—hint of perfume, lavender delicately fragrant.

“And a woman,” said Peter, “has written this letter to me—to me!” His brain whirled slightly. There is no other description for its state at that moment. Gradually it steadied itself. He began to realize the reality of what had happened. He was not dreaming: the letter was actually in his hand, the words traced in a clear and fine writing.

Impersonal, indeed! She—this unknown woman—might call it so if she pleased. To Peter it breathed personality, a personality vivid and rare. Its intimate aloofness—again a contradiction—was full of charm.

An autograph-hunter! Bah! had the merest suspicion of such a thought crossed his mind he would indeed have been unworthy so much as to lay a finger upon the epistle.

To say that Peter was touched would be a poor way of expressing the emotions that filled him. For years, remember, he had lived in mind-isolation from his fellow-men, and here out of the Invisible came the offer of a soul-intimacy, delicately, graciously made, and made by a woman.

That she was grande dame and beautiful his every instinct told him. There was an undernote of assurance about the letter that made the fact convincing. It needed not her statement that she was of gentle birth. Very assuredly she was one accustomed to deference and homage. And she had written thus to him. Wonderful!

Peter got up from his chair, his eyes alight with pleasure. He went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of port and a wine glass. These—like the pyjamas—constituted part of the hall-mark of civilization.

He had bought the wine with the intention of drinking to the health of his published book, but the inclination had passed. There is something unsatisfactory about toasts drunk in solitude.

But now Peter knocked the red seal from the cork and drew it from the bottle. He reseated himself at the table and poured the wine into the glass. He lifted it in his right hand, holding the letter in his left. He approached the glass to the letter, then raised it to his lips.

“To my Unknown Lady!” he said.

Ten minutes later Peter pulled pen, ink, and paper towards him. Oh, the joy of answering this letter, the luxury of it!

And then he began to write, very simply and directly, attempting no well-turned thought or phrase, but writing as he would have spoken, from his heart.

“May 18th.

“Can you, I wonder, have the smallest conception of what your letter means to me? If you have, then perhaps you will realize that my ‘thank you’ holds in the fullest sense all that those two words can express. Yet please believe that the cry you have detected in my writing escaped from me unawares. Consciously to have made such a plaint would to my mind have savoured of cowardice. May the gods guard me from it!

“Does not Emerson say, ‘It is vain to attempt to keep a secret from one who has a right to know it; it will tell itself’? Dare I believe that you possess that right, that the same spiritual law which has made you conscious of a mind-rapport between us has given you the key to it? I accept your offer from my heart. The condition shall be strictly observed.

“Truly you do not greatly flatter my power of intuition when you imagine me possessed of sufficient intelligence to discover that you are neither an autograph-hunter nor anything akin to it. I should be a base dullard had such a thought crossed my mind.

“That my book pleases you affords me intense pleasure. Fresh life will be instilled into my future work by the hope that one day you will read it.

“My pen is halting. I write as I should speak, and my tongue is unaccustomed to speech with a woman of gentle birth. Fate has made of me a recluse—a hermit. I do not revile her. She gives me compensations of which your letter and offer are not the least. Will you write again?

“Robin Adair.

“P.S.—I am sorry you dislike pseudonyms. This is one.”

Peter re-read the letter carefully. He put it in an envelope which he addressed “To my Unknown Critic.” He enclosed this in a second envelope, on which he wrote the address he had been given. This again he enclosed with a brief letter to his publishers, asking them to post the enclosure in London. The next day he would take it in to the market-town.

Peter leant back in his chair. Then he poured himself out a second glass of wine, which he drank slowly.

This was a gala night.

Finally he set down his glass and spoke aloud.

“Though the expense is entirely unjustifiable, I shall buy a dress suit.”

CHAPTER VIII

CHÂTEAUX EN ESPAGNE

Henceforth Peter walked daily to the post-office in the market-town. And never perhaps has author so eagerly awaited the sight of a letter from his publishers.

For ten days, however, the journeys made by him were fruitless, and he began to cast about despairingly in his mind for the memory of anything in his own letter that could have offended. But he found nothing. His writing, during these days, did not progress. He was too restless, too anxious, to work quietly. Sometimes he sat at his cottage door and piped. Occasionally a small crowd of children would gather outside the hedge, drawn by the magic of the music. The ceasing of the pipe, or any movement on his part, however, was the signal for them to scatter like a flock of frightened sparrows, and he would find the lane deserted.

At last, one evening, his journey to the market-town proved fruitful. A letter awaited him there, also a box bearing the name of a London tailor.

Peter returned across the fields at a fine pace, the letter in his breast pocket, the box under his arm. Arriving at his cottage, he unknotted the string that tied it.

Some twenty minutes later, Peter, in well-cut evening clothes and with a gleaming expanse of white shirt-front, broke the seal of the letter.

You perceive he was a host, receiving in spirit the woman who had deigned to consider him worthy of notice. And now he held the letter in his hand and saw once more the delicate, firm writing.

“London,

“May 27th.

“First I must thank you that you have not misunderstood me. And now that the understanding between us is complete, I can write more freely, more fully.

“So you are a recluse. Perhaps you are to be envied. I have been, and am, in the midst of that mumming-show society, where we all wear gaily-coloured masks and jest with those around us. We speak little as we feel, but largely as we are expected to speak. Is it part of your compensation that you need not speak at all? For me, I am somewhat weary of the show. It is very gaudy, and the music, I think, too loud. You may ask why I attend it, and to that I have no answer, except that custom demands it of me as a right. How many people, I wonder, act not according to their own individuality, but rather as usage and those around them expect them to act?

“Is it possible, I wonder, to free oneself from tradition, that closely fitting garment placed upon us by our ancestors at birth, which becomes, to the majority, as much part and parcel of ourselves as our skin? Clothed in it, I attend dances, dinners, bridge parties, and theatres, from which I am at the moment recoiling with a kind of mental nausea. Should I strip myself of the garment, shall I not feel cold and shivery—in short, to use a common phrase, feel ‘out of things’? And once the garment is definitely discarded it may not be so easily donned again; at all events, it might not fit so well. You, a writer, who in your solitude think many thoughts, give me your opinion.

“Mercifully, custom has at least decreed that I should spend some months in the country. In a few days’ time I go down to it. There my individuality resumes what I believe to be its rightful sway. I have a garden. It is, as the poet sings, a thing of beauty, and is to me a joy for ever.

“A summer evening in a flower-scented garden! Can you—you writer of poetic prose—conceive anything more full of charm and delight? I have a bed of night-stocks—poor, dilapidated, withered things in the daytime, and the despair of my gardener. But in the evening on the terrace the odour is entrancing—divine. My thoughts are ‘carried on the wings of perfume into high places.’ You see, I can quote from your book and from memory.

“No; the cry beneath its strength and sunshine was faint, barely discernible. I confess that at the first reading, which I took at a draught, I did not observe it. It was when I returned, as I did, to sip the wine of its poetic fancy that I detected the slightly bitter taste. Yet bitter is not a fair word to use. Bittersweet would be better, though that barely fits the flavour. The exact word—if one exists—has escaped me.

“You quote from Emerson, and also speak of compensation. Of course, you know this:

“‘We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they go out only that archangels may come in.... The compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time.... It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences, that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men.’

“Your quotation made me look up my Emerson. I found your sentence, and went on to read ‘Compensation,’ whence I have copied the above.

“Would your writing have been as human were it not for the hidden wound you bear? Is it some compensation to know that to one soul at least your words have brought refreshment? What are you writing now?

“I like your pseudonym.”

Peter read the letter through twice then put it on the table while he prepared his supper. He laid two places to-night, laughing at himself for the fancy. His Unknown Lady was very present with him, you perceive.

He pretended—and loved the pretence—that she was dining with him. He let himself imagine that a woman, clad in chiffon and lace, and fragrant with that delicate scent of lavender, sat in the chair opposite to him; that the candle-light was playing on her warm hair, finding reflection in her luminous eyes. No palace contained a more courteous host that night than did that little cottage; no royal guest received a greater welcome than did Peter’s Dream Lady.

It was a strange, fantastic little scene. Had any one peered through the cottage window, they would have seen a barely furnished room, a meagre supper-table lit by a couple of candles, and, seated at the table, a man in well-cut evening clothes—a man groomed with the fresh cleanness of a well-bred Englishman. They would have seen a second place laid at the table, and in the second place, between the knife and fork, a bluish letter lying. They would have seen both glasses filled with red wine.

Mad? Not a bit of it! Peter was entirely sane, and very refreshingly healthy. But—and herein lay the difference between him and many of his countrymen—he was possessed of a fine imagination.

And when Peter had drunk the health of his Dream Lady, he began to talk to her; and for this purpose pen, ink, and paper came once more into requisition.

“May 29th.

“Your first letter was welcome; your second is ten thousand times more so. The first was the mere fluttering of a signal, waved at a distance. This evening you are near, and I can speak more easily.

“As for the garment of tradition, I fancy it may at times be discarded by ourselves and gently, and again donned without fear of it fitting less well. In fact, may it not gain greater value in our own eyes and in the eyes of others by its temporary disuse? It is when fate strips it from us, tearing it to ribbons in the process, that it cannot again be worn, or worn merely as a sorry, ragged semblance of what it once has been. It is then, to use your own parlance, that one feels ‘out of things.’ I, who write to you, speak from experience. Fate tore my garment from me, and in so doing made the wound you have detected. But enough of that. The touch of your hand upon it has eased its smart, though possibly—nay probably—the scar will remain throughout my life.

“Thank you for your quotation. Yes; I know it. I am glad the shade of my banian-tree—a very small one—has reached you, and its fruit brought you refreshment. The ‘ever-onward’ note of Emerson is exhilarating. There is no repining, no sitting down with folded hands under grief, but an ever pushing forward to the light, as a green shoot pushes aside earth and stones in its journey upward through the soil to the sun.

“Yes, I am writing again; but the last few days I have done little. I could not tear myself away from the thought of the next letter I should receive from you. Sometimes I feared that none would come, that you might have regretted your offer. It was an unworthy thought; forgive me. Now, I shall write again quietly.

“You ask what it is that I am writing. It is the story of a man, a wayfarer. I do not think there is much plot in the story. Probably all the plot lies in the past which he has thrown behind him. Fate has made of him a wanderer, as she has made a recluse of me. During his wanderings he thinks much. I am endeavouring to record those thoughts as he traverses the fields and lanes. If the gods are good to me, perhaps one day the thoughts may reach you in book form. Then you will give me your opinion on them.

“Soon you will be among your night-stocks in your garden. Their perfume will be more fragrant than the scent of ballrooms and theatres.

“Good-night.

“Robin Adair.

“Have I thanked you for your letter? I do thank you from my heart.”

CHAPTER IX

A REQUEST

Some evenings later Peter was again a host holding sweet converse with his Lady. Here, first, are her words to him.