The Hillman E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

John Strangeways lives the life of a country Gentleman farmer with his puritan brother in the hills of Cumberland. Far from the world of cities and noise he lived the clean, healthy, out-of-door life. When actress Louise Maurel’s car breaks down near their farm, she is forced to seek refuge with the misogynist brothers. Love ensues. Life no longer was quite the same to him, and in a short time he followed her to London. The coming of an unsophisticated though well educated, handsome young man into the semi-Bohemian circle brings about dramatic situations which the author knows well how to handle. Some wonderful minor characters aid the story also.

Leseprobe

Contents

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

CHAPTER I

Louise, self-engrossed, and with a pleasant sense of detachment from the prospective inconveniences of the moment, was leaning back among the cushions of the motionless car. Her eyes, lifted upward, traveled past the dimly lit hillside, with its patchwork of wall-enclosed fields, up to where the leaning clouds and the unseen heights met in a misty sea of obscurity.

The moon had not yet risen, but a faint and luminous glow, spreading like a halo about the topmost peak of that ragged line of hills, heralded its approach. Louise sat with clasped hands, rapt and engrossed in the esthetic appreciation of a beauty which found its way but seldom into her town-enslaved life. She listened to the sound of a distant sheepbell. Her eyes swept the hillsides, vainly yet without curiosity, for any sign of a human dwelling. The voices of her chauffeur and her maid, who stood talking heatedly together by the bonnet of the car, seemed to belong to another world. She had the air of one completely yet pleasantly detached from all material surroundings.

The maid, leaving her discomfited companion with a final burst of reproaches, came to the side of the car. Her voice, when she addressed her mistress, sank to a lower key, but her eyes still flashed with anger.

“But would madame believe it?” she exclaimed. “It is incredible! The man Charles there, who calls himself a chauffeur of experience, declares that we are what he calls ‘hung up’! Something unexpected has happened to the magneto. There is no spark. Whose fault can that be, I ask, but the chauffeur’s? And such a desert we have reached! We have searched the map together. We are thirty miles from any town, many miles from even a village. What a misfortune!”

Louise turned her head regretfully away from the mysterious spaces. She listened patiently, but without any sort of emotion, to her maid’s flow of distressed words. She even smiled very faintly when the girl had finished.

“Something will happen,” she remarked indifferently. “There is no need for you to distress yourself. There must be a farmhouse or shelter of some sort near. If the worst comes to the worst, we can spend the night in the car. We have plenty of furs and rugs. You are not a good traveler, Aline. You lose heart too soon.”

The girl’s face was a study.

“Madame speaks of spending the night in the car!” she exclaimed. “Why, one has not eaten since luncheon, and of all the country through which we have passed, this is the loneliest and dreariest spot.”

Louise leaned forward and called to the chauffeur.

“Charles,” she asked, “what has happened? Are we really stranded here?”

The man’s head emerged from the bonnet. He came round to the side of the car.

“I am very sorry, madam,” he reported, “but something has gone wrong with the magneto. I shall have to take it to pieces before I can tell exactly what is wrong. At present I can’t get a spark of any sort.”

“There is no hope of any immediate repair, then?”

The chauffeur shook his head dolefully.

“I shall have to take the magneto down, madam,” he said. “It will take several hours, and it ought to be done by daylight.”

“And in the meantime, what do you suggest that we do?” she asked.

The man looked a little helpless. His battle of words with Aline had depressed him.

“I heard a dog bark a little while ago,” he remarked. “Perhaps I had better go and see whether there isn’t a farm somewhere near.”

“And leave us here alone?” Aline exclaimed indignantly. “It is a good suggestion. It comes well from the man who has got us into such trouble!”

Her mistress smiled at her reassuringly.

“What have we to fear, you foolish girl? For myself, I would like better than anything to remain here until the moon comes over the top of that round hill. But listen! It is just as I told you. There is no necessity for Charles to leave us.”

They all turned their heads. From some distance behind on the hard, narrow road, curling like a piece of white tape around the hillside, there came, faintly at first, but more distinctly every moment, the sound of horse’s hoofs.

“It is as I told you,” Louise said composedly. “Some one approaches–on horseback, too. He will be able to fetch assistance.”

The chauffeur walked back a few yards, prepared to give early warning to the approaching horseman. The two women, standing up in the car, watched the spot where the road, hidden for some time in the valley, came into sight.

Louder and louder came the sound of the beating of hoofs. Louise gave a little cry as a man on horseback appeared in sight at the crest of the hill. The narrow strip of road seemed suddenly dwarfed, an unreasonable portion of the horizon blotted out. In the half light there was something almost awesome in the unusual size of the horse and of the man who rode it.

“It is a world of goblins, this, Aline!” her mistress exclaimed softly. “What is it that comes?”

“It is a human being, Dieu merci!” the maid replied, with a matter-of-fact little sigh of content.

Conscious of the obstruction in the road, the rider slackened his speed. His horse, a great, dark-colored animal, pricked up his ears when scarcely a dozen yards away from the car, stopped short, and suddenly bolted out on the open moor. There was the sound of a heavy whip, a loud, masterful voice, and a very brief struggle, during which the horse once plunged and reared so high that Louise, watching, cried out in fear. A few moments later, however, horse and rider, the former quivering and subdued, were beside the car.

“Has anything happened?” the newcomer asked, raising his whip to his hat.

He addressed Louise, instinctively conscious, even in that dim light, that she was the person in authority.

She did not at once reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the face of her questioner. There was little enough of him to be seen, yet she was aware of an exceptional interest in his dimly revealed personality. He was young, unusually tall, and his voice was cultivated. Beyond that, she could see or divine nothing.

He, for his part, with his attention still largely engaged in keeping his horse under control, yet knew, in those first few moments, that he was looking into the face of a woman who had no kinship with the world in which he had been born and had lived his days. Those were fugitive thoughts which passed between them, only half conceived, yet strong enough to remain as first and unforgettable impressions. Then the commonplace interests of the situation became insistent.

“I have broken down,” Louise said. “My chauffeur tells me that it will take hours to effect some necessary repair to the car. And meanwhile–here we are!”

“You couldn’t have chosen a worse place for a breakdown,” the young man observed. “You are miles away from anywhere.”

“You are indeed a comforter!” Louise murmured. “Do you think that you could possibly get down and advise us what to do? You look so far away up there.”

There was another brief struggle between the man and his still frightened horse. Then the former swung himself down, and, with the bridle through his arm, came and stood by the car.

“If there is any way in which I can help,” he ventured, “I am quite at your service.”

Louise smiled at him. She remained unoppressed by any fear of inconvenience or hardship. She had the air of one rather enjoying her plight.

“Well, you have begun very nicely by doing what I asked you,” she said. “Really, you know, to an impressionable person there was something rather terrifying about you when you appeared suddenly from out of the shadows in such a lonely place. I was beginning to wonder whether you were altogether real, whether one of those black hills there had not opened to let you out. You see, I know something of the legends of your country, although I have never been here before.”

The young man was less at his ease. He stood tapping his boot nervously with his long riding-whip.

“I am sorry if I frightened you,” he said. “My horse is a little restive, and the acetylene light which your chauffeur turned on him was sufficiently alarming.”

“You did not exactly frighten me,” she assured him, “but you looked so abnormally large. Please tell us what you would advise us to do. Is there a village near, or an inn, or even a barn? Or shall we have to spend the night in the car?”

“The nearest village,” he replied, “is twelve miles away. Fortunately, my own home is close by. I shall be very pleased–I and my brother–if you will honor us. I am afraid I cannot offer you very much in the way of entertainment–”

She rose briskly to her feet and beamed upon him.

“You are indeed a good Samaritan!” she exclaimed. “A roof is more than we had dared to hope for, although when one looks up at this wonderful sky and breathes this air, one wonders, perhaps, whether a roof, after all, is such a blessing.”

“It gets very cold toward morning,” the young man said practically.

“Of course,” she assented. “Aline, you will bring my dressing-bag and follow us. This gentleman is kind enough to offer us shelter for the night. Dear me, you really are almost as tall as you appeared!” she added, as she stood by his side. “For the first time in my life you make me feel undersized.”

He looked down at her, a little more at his ease now by reason of the friendliness of her manner, although he had still the air of one embarked upon an adventure, the outcome of which was to be regarded with some qualms. She was of little more than medium height, and his first impressions of her were that she was thin, and too pale to be good-looking; that her eyes were large and soft, with eyebrows more clearly defined than is usual among Englishwomen; and that she moved without seeming to walk.

“I suppose I am tall,” he admitted, as they started off along the road. “One doesn’t notice it around here. My name is John Strangewey, and our house is just behind that clump of trees there, on the top of the hill. We will do our best to make you comfortable,” he added a little doubtfully; “but there are only my brother and myself, and we have no women servants in the house.”

“A roof of any sort will be a luxury,” she assured him. “I only hope that we shall not be a trouble to you in any way.”

“And your name, please?” he asked.

She was a little amazed at his directness, but she answered him without hesitation.

“My name,” she told him, “is Louise.”

He leaned down toward her, a little puzzled.

“Louise? But your surname?”

She laughed softly. It occurred to him that nothing like her laugh had ever been heard on that gray-walled stretch of mountain road.

“Never mind! I am traveling incognito. Who I am, or where I am going–well, what does that matter to anybody? Perhaps I do not know myself. You can imagine, if you like, that we came from the heart of your hills, and that to-morrow they will open again and welcome us back.”

“I don’t think there are any motor-cars in fairyland,” he objected.

“We represent a new edition of fairy lore,” she told him. “Modern romance, you know, includes motor-cars and even French maids.”

“All the same,” he protested, with masculine bluntness, “I really don’t see how I can introduce you to my brother as ‘Louise from fairyland.’”

She evaded the point.

“Tell me about your brother. Is he as tall as you, and is he younger or older?”

“He is nearly twenty years older,” her companion replied. “He is about my height, but he stoops more than I do, and his hair is gray. I am afraid that you may find him a little peculiar.”

Her escort paused and swung open a white gate on their left-hand side. Before them was an ascent which seemed to her, in the dim light, to be absolutely precipitous.

“Do we have to climb up that?” she asked ruefully.

“It isn’t so bad as it looks,” he assured her, “and I am afraid it’s the only way up. The house is at the bend there, barely fifty yards away. You can see a light through the trees.”

“You must help me, then, please,” she begged.

He stooped down toward her. She linked her fingers together through his left arm, and, leaning a little heavily upon him, began the ascent. He was conscious of some subtle fragrance from her clothes, a perfume strangely different from the odor of the ghostlike flowers that bordered the steep path up which they were climbing. Her arms, slight, warm things though they were, and great though his own strength, felt suddenly like a yoke. At every step he seemed to feel their weight more insistent–a weight not physical, solely due to this rush of unexpected emotions.

It was he now whose thoughts rushed away to that medley of hill legends of which she had spoken. Was she indeed a creature of flesh and blood, of the same world as the dull people among whom he lived? Then he remembered the motor-car, the chauffeur, and the French maid, and he gave a little sigh of relief.

“Are we nearly there?” she asked. “Do tell me if I lean too heavily upon you.”

“It is only a few steps further,” he replied encouragingly. “Please lean upon me as heavily as you like.”

She looked around her almost in wonder as her companion paused with his hand upon a little iron gate. From behind that jagged stretch of hills in the distance a corner of the moon had now appeared. By its light, looking backward, she could see the road which they had left below, the moorland stretching away into misty space, an uneasy panorama with its masses of gray boulders, its clumps of gorse, its hillocks and hollows.

Before her, through the little iron gate which her escort had pushed open, was a garden, a little austere looking with its prim flower-beds, filled with hyacinths and crocuses, bordering the flinty walks. The trees were all bent in the same direction, fashioned after one pattern by the winds. Before them was the house–a long, low building, part of it covered with some kind of creeper.

As they stepped across the last few yards of lawn, the black, oak door which they were approaching suddenly opened. A tall, elderly man stood looking inquiringly out. He shaded his eyes with his hands.

“Is that you, brother?” he asked doubtfully.

John Strangewey ushered his companion into the square, oak-paneled hall, hung with many trophies of the chase, a few oil-paintings, here and there some sporting prints. It was lighted only with a single lamp which stood upon a round, polished table in the center of the white-flagged floor.

“This lady’s motor-car has broken down, Stephen,” John explained, turning a little nervously toward his brother. “I found them in the road, just at the bottom of the hill. She and her servants will spend the night here. I have explained that there is no village or inn for a good many miles.”

Louise turned graciously toward the elder man, who was standing grimly apart. Even in those few seconds, her quick sensibilities warned her of the hostility which lurked behind his tightly closed lips and steel-gray eyes. His bow was stiff and uncordial, and he made no movement to offer his hand.

“We are not used to welcoming ladies at Peak Hall, madam,” he said. “I am afraid that you will find us somewhat unprepared for guests.”

“I ask for nothing more than a roof,” Louise assured him.

John threw his hat and whip upon the round table and stood in the center of the stone floor. She caught a glance which flashed between the two men–of appeal from the one, of icy resentment from the other.

“We can at least add to the roof a bed and some supper–and a welcome,” John declared. “Is that not so, Stephen?”

The older man turned deliberately away. It was as if he had not heard his brother’s words.

“I will go and find Jennings,” he said. “He must be told about the servants.”

Louise watched the disappearing figure until it was out of sight. Then she looked up into the face of the younger man, who was standing by her side.

“I am sorry,” she murmured apologetically. “I am afraid that your brother is not pleased at this sudden intrusion. Really, we shall give you very little trouble.”

He answered her with a sudden eager enthusiasm. He seemed far more natural then than at any time since he had ridden up from out of the shadows to take his place in her life.

“I won’t apologize for Stephen,” he said. “He is a little crotchety. You must please be kind and not notice. You must let me, if I can, offer you welcome enough for us both.”

CHAPTER II

Louise, with a heavy, silver-plated candlestick in her hand, stood upon the uneven floor of the bedroom to which she had been conducted, looking up at the oak-framed family tree which hung above the broad chimney-piece. She examined the coat of arms emblazoned in the corner, and peered curiously at the last neatly printed addition, which indicated Stephen and John Strangewey as the sole survivors of a diminishing line. When at last she turned away, she found the name upon her lips.

“Strangewey!” she murmured. “John Strangewey! The name seems to bring something into my memory. Have I ever known any one with such a name, Aline?”

The maid shook her head.

“Never, madame, to the best of my belief,” she declared. “Yet I, too, seem to have heard it, and lately. It is perplexing. One has seen it somewhere. One finds it familiar.”

Louise shrugged her shoulders. She stood for a moment looking around her before she laid down the candlestick.

The room was of unusual size, with two worm-eaten beams across the ceiling; the windows were casemented, with broad seats in each recess. The dressing table, upon which her belongings were set out, was of solid, black oak, as was also the framework of the huge sofa, the mirror, and the chairs. The ancient four-poster, hung with chintz and supported by carved pillars, was spread with fine linen and covered with a quilt made of small pieces of silk, lavender-perfumed. The great wardrobe, with its solid mahogany doors, seemed ancient enough to have stood in its place since the building of the house itself. A log of sweet-smelling wood burned cheerfully in the open fireplace.

“Really,” Louise decided, “we have been most fortunate. This is an adventure! Aline, give me some black silk stockings and some black slippers. I will change nothing else.”

The maid obeyed in somewhat ominous silence. Her mistress, however, was living in a little world of her own.

“John Strangewey!” she murmured to herself, glancing across the room at the family tree. “It is really curious how that name brings with it a sense of familiarity. It is so unusual, too. And what an unusual-looking person! Do you think, Aline, that you ever saw any one so superbly handsome?”

The maid’s little grimace was expressive.

“Never, madame,” she replied. “And yet to think of it–a gentleman, a person of intelligence, who lives here always, outside the world, with just a terrible old man servant, the only domestic in the house! Nearly all the cooking is done at the bailiff’s, a quarter of a mile away.”

Louise nodded thoughtfully.

“It is very strange,” she admitted. “I should like to understand it. Perhaps,” she added, half to herself, “some day I shall.”

She passed across the room, and on her way paused before an old cheval-glass, before which were suspended two silver candlesticks containing lighted wax candles. She looked steadfastly at her own reflection. A little smile parted her lips. In the bedroom of this quaint farmhouse she was looking upon a face and a figure which the illustrated papers and the enterprise of the modern photographer had combined to make familiar to the world.

A curious feeling came to her that she was looking at the face of a stranger. She gazed earnestly into the mirror, with new eyes and a new curiosity. She contemplated critically the lines of her slender figure in its neat, perfectly tailored skirt–the figure of a girl, it seemed, notwithstanding her twenty-seven years. Her soft, white blouse was open at the neck, displaying a beautifully rounded throat. Her eyes traveled upward, and dwelt with an almost passionate interest upon the oval face, a little paler at that moment than usual; with its earnest, brown eyes, its faint, silky eyebrows, its strong, yet mobile features; its lips a little full, perhaps, but soft and sensitive; at the masses of brown hair drawn low over her ears.

This was herself, then. Did she really justify her reputation for beauty, or was she just a cult, the passing craze of a world a little weary of the ordinary standards? Or, again, was it only her art that had focused the admiration of the world upon her?

How would she seem to these two men down-stairs, she asked herself–the dour, grim master of the house, and her more youthful rescuer, whose coming had somehow touched her fancy? They saw so little of her sex. They seemed, in a sense, to be in league against it. Would they find out that they were entertaining an angel unawares?

She thought with a gratified smile of her incognito. It was a real trial of her strength, this! When she turned away from the mirror the smile still lingered upon her lips, a soft light of anticipation was shining in her eyes.

John met her at the foot of the stairs. She noticed with some surprise that he was wearing the dinner-jacket and black tie of civilization.

“Will you come this way, please?” he begged. “Supper is quite ready.”

He held open the door of one of the rooms on the other side of the hall, and she passed into a low dining room, dimly lit with shaded lamps. The elder brother rose from his chair as they entered, although his salutation was even grimmer than his first welcome. He was wearing a dress-coat of old-fashioned cut, and a black stock, and he remained standing, without any smile or word of greeting, until she had taken her seat. Behind his chair stood a very ancient man servant in a gray pepper-and-salt suit, with a white tie, whose expression, at the entrance of this unexpected guest, seemed curiously to reflect the inhospitable instincts of his master.

Although conscious of this atmosphere of antagonism, Louise looked around her with frank admiration as she took her place in the high-backed chair which John was holding for her. The correctness of the setting appealed strongly to her artistic perceptions. The figures and features of the two men–Stephen, tall, severe, stately; John, amazingly handsome, but of the same type; the black-raftered ceiling; the Jacobean sideboard; the huge easy chairs; the fine prints upon the walls; the pine log which burned upon the open hearth–nowhere did there seem to be a single alien or modern note.

The table was laid with all manner of cold dishes, supplemented by others upon the sideboard. There were pots of jam and honey, a silver teapot and silver spoons and forks of quaint design, strangely cut glass, and a great Dresden bowl filled with flowers.

“I am afraid,” John remarked, “that you are not used to dining at this hour. My brother and I are very old-fashioned in our customs. If we had had a little longer notice–”

“I never in my life saw anything that looked so delicious as your cold chicken,” Louise declared. “May I have some–and some ham? I believe that you must farm some land yourselves. Everything looks as if it were home-made or home-grown.”

“We are certainly farmers,” John admitted, with a smile, “and I don’t think there is much here that isn’t of our own production.”

“Of course, one must have some occupation, living so far out of the world,” Louise murmured. “I really am the most fortunate person,” she continued. “My car comes to grief in what seems to be a wilderness, and I find myself in a very palace of plenty!”

“I am not sure that your maid agrees,” John laughed. “She seemed rather horrified when she found that there was no woman servant about the place.”

“Aline is spoiled, without a doubt,” her mistress declared. “But is that really the truth?”

“Absolutely.”

“But how do you manage?” Louise went on. “Don’t you need dairymaids, for instance?”

“The farm buildings are some distance away from the house,” John explained. “There is quite a little colony at the back, and the woman who superintends the dairy lives there. It is only in the house that we are entirely independent of your sex. We manage, somehow or other, with Jennings here and two boys.”

“You are not both woman-haters, I hope?”

Her younger host flashed a warning glance at Louise, but it was too late. Stephen had laid down his knife and fork and was leaning in her direction.

“Madam,” he intervened, “since you have asked the question, I will confess that I have never known any good come to a man of our family from the friendship or service of women. Our family history, if ever you should come to know it, would amply justify my brother and myself for our attitude toward your sex.”

“Stephen!” John remonstrated, a slight frown upon his face. “Need you weary our guest with your peculiar views? It is scarcely polite, to say the least of it.”

The older man sat, for a moment, grim and silent.

“Perhaps you are right, brother,” he admitted. “This lady did not seek our company, but it may interest her to know that she is the first woman who has crossed the threshold of Peak Hall for a matter of six years.”

Louise looked from one to the other, half incredulously.

“Do you really mean it? Is that literally true?” she asked John.

“Absolutely,” the young man assured her; “but please remember that you are none the less heartily welcome here. We have few women neighbors, and intercourse with them seems to have slipped out of our lives. Tell me, how far have you come to-day, and where did you hope to sleep to-night?”

Louise hesitated for a moment. For some reason or other, the question seemed to bring with it some unexpected and disturbing thought.

“I was motoring from Edinburgh. As regards to-night, I had not made up my mind. I rather hoped to reach Kendal. My journey is not at all an interesting matter to talk about,” she went on. “Tell me about your life here. It sounds most delightfully pastoral. Do you really mean that you produce nearly everything yourselves? Your honey and preserves and bread and butter, for instance–are they all home-made?”

“And our hams,” the young man laughed, “and everything else upon the table. You underestimate the potentiality of male labor. Jennings is certainly a better cook than the average woman. Everything you see was cooked by him. We have a sort of secondary kitchen, though, down at the bailiff’s, where the preserves are made and some of the other things.”

“And you live here all the year round?” she asked.

“My brother,” John told her, “has not been further away than the nearest market-town for nearly twenty years.”

Her eyes grew round with astonishment.

“But you go to London sometimes?”

“I was there eight years ago. Since then I have not been further away than Carlisle or Kendal. I go into the camp near Kendal for three weeks every year–Territorial training, you know.”

“But how do you pass your time? What do you do with yourself?” she asked.

“Farm,” he answered. “Farming is our daily occupation. Then for amusement we hunt, shoot, and fish. The seasons pass before we know it.”

She looked appraisingly at John Strangewey. Notwithstanding his sun-tanned cheeks and the splendid vigor of his form, there was nothing in the least agricultural about his manner or his appearance. There was humor as well as intelligence in his clear, gray eyes. She opined that the books which lined one side of the room were at once his property and his hobby.

“It is a very healthy life, no doubt,” she said; “but somehow it seems incomprehensible to think of a man like yourself living always in such an out-of-the-way corner, with no desire to see what is going on in the world, or to be able to form any estimate of the changes in men’s thoughts and habits. Human life seems to me so much more interesting than anything else. Does this all sound a little impertinent?” she wound up naïvely. “I am so sorry! My friends spoil me, I believe, and I get into the habit of saying things just as they come into my head.”

John’s lips were open to reply, but Stephen once more intervened.

“Life means a different thing to each of us, madam,” he said sternly. “There are many born with the lust for cities and the crowded places in their hearts, born with the desire to mingle with their fellows, to absorb the conventional vices and virtues, to become one of the multitude. It has been different with us Strangeweys.”

Jennings, at a sign from his master, removed the tea equipage, evidently produced in honor of their visitor. Three tall-stemmed glasses were placed upon the table, and a decanter of port reverently produced.

Louise had fallen for a moment or two into a fit of abstraction. Her eyes were fixed upon the opposite wall, from which, out of their faded frames, a row of grim-looking men and women, startlingly like her two hosts, seemed to frown down upon her.

“Is that your father?” she asked, moving her head toward one of the portraits.

“My grandfather, John Strangewey,” Stephen told her.

“Was he one of the wanderers?”

“He left Cumberland only twice during his life. He was master of hounds, magistrate, colonel in the yeomanry of that period, and three times he refused to stand for Parliament.”

“John Strangewey!” Louise repeated softly to herself. “I was looking at your family tree up-stairs,” she went on. “It is curious how both my maid and myself were struck with a sense of familiarity about the name, as if we had heard or read something about it quite lately.”

Her words were almost carelessly spoken, but she was conscious of the somewhat ominous silence which ensued. She glanced up wonderingly and intercepted a rapid look passing between the two men. More puzzled than ever, she turned toward John as if for an explanation. He had risen somewhat abruptly to his feet, and his hand was upon the back of her chair.

“Will it be disagreeable to you if my brother smokes a pipe?” he asked. “I tried to have our little drawing-room prepared for you, but the fire has not been lit for so long that the room, I am afraid, is quite impossible.”

“Do let me stay here with you,” she begged; “and I hope that both of you will smoke. I am quite used to it.”

John wheeled up an easy chair for her. Stephen, stiff and upright, sat on the other side of the hearth. He took the tobacco-jar and pipe that his brother had brought him, and slowly filled the bowl.

“With your permission, then, madam,” he said, as he struck a match.

Louise smiled graciously. Some instinct prompted her to stifle her own craving for a cigarette and keep her little gold case hidden in her pocket. All the time her eyes were wandering around the room. Suddenly she rose and, moving round the table, stood once more facing the row of gloomy-looking portraits.

“So that is your grandfather,” she remarked to John, who had followed her. “Is your father not here?”

He shook his head.

“My father’s portrait was never painted.”

“Tell the truth, John,” Stephen enjoined, rising in his place and setting down his pipe. “Our father’s portrait is not here, madam, because he was one of those of whom I have spoken–one of those who were drawn into the vortex of the city, and who knew only the shallow ways of life. Listen!”

With a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, Stephen crossed the room. He raised them high above his head and pointed to the pictures one by one.

“John Robert Strangewey, our great-grandfather,” he began. “That picture was a presentation from the farmers of Cumberland. He, too, was a magistrate, and held many public offices in the county.

“By his side is his brother, Stephen George Strangewey. For thirty-five years he took the chair at the farmers’ ordinary at Market Ketton on every Saturday at one o’clock, and there was never a deserving man in this part of the county, engaged in agricultural pursuits, who at any time sought his aid in vain. They always knew where he was to be found, and every Saturday, before dinner was served, there would be some one there to seek his aid or advice. He lived his life to his own benefit and to the benefit of his neighbors–the life which we are all sent here to lead.

“Two generations before him you see my namesake, Stephen Strangewey. It was he who invented the first threshing-machine used in this county. He farmed the land that my brother and I own to-day. He was churchwarden at our little church, and he, too, was a magistrate. He did his duty in a smaller way, but zealously and honestly, among the hillmen of this district.”

“There are gaps in your family history,” Louise observed.

“The gaps, madam,” Stephen explained, “are left by those who have abandoned their natural heritage. We Strangeweys were hillfolk and farmers, by descent and destiny, for more than four hundred years. Our place is here upon the land, almost among the clouds, and those of us who have realized it have led the lives God meant us to lead. There have been some of our race who have been tempted into the lowlands and the cities. Not one of them brought honor upon our name. Their pictures are not here. They are not worthy to be here.”

Stephen set down the candlesticks and returned to his place. Louise, with her hands clasped behind her back, glanced toward John, who still stood by her side.

“Tell me,” she asked him, “have none of your people who went out into the world done well for themselves?”

“Scarcely one,” he admitted. “My brother’s words seem a little sweeping, but they are very near the truth. The air of the great cities seems to have poisoned every Strangewey–”

“Not one,” Stephen interrupted. “Colonel John Strangewey died leading his regiment at Waterloo, an end well enough, but reached through many years of evil conduct and loose living.”

“He was a brave soldier,” John put in quietly.

“That is true,” Stephen admitted. “His best friends have claimed no other quality for him. Madam,” he went on, turning toward Louise, “lest my welcome to you this evening should have seemed inhospitable, let me tell you this. Every Strangewey who has left our county, and trodden the downward path of failure, has done so at the instance of one of your sex. That is why those of us who inherit the family spirit look askance upon all strange women. That is why no woman is ever welcome within this house.”

Louise resumed her seat in the easy chair.

“I am so sorry,” she murmured, looking down at her slipper. “I could not help breaking down here, could I?”

“Nor could my brother fail to offer you the hospitality of this roof,” Stephen admitted. “The incident was unfortunate but inevitable. It is a matter for regret that we have so little to offer you in the way of entertainment.” He rose to his feet. The door had been opened. Jennings was standing there with a candlestick upon a massive silver salver. Behind him was Aline. “You are doubtless fatigued by your journey, madam,” Stephen concluded.

Louise made a little grimace, but she rose at once to her feet. She understood quite well that she was being sent to bed, and she shivered a little when she looked at the hour–barely ten o’clock. Yet it was all in keeping. From the doorway she looked back into the room, in which nothing seemed to have been touched for centuries. She stood upon the threshold to bid her final good-night, fully conscious of the complete anachronism of her presence there.

Her smile for Stephen was respectful and full of dignity. As she glanced toward John, however, something flashed in her eyes and quivered at the corners of her lips, something which escaped her control, something which made him grip for a moment the back of the chair against which he stood. Then, between the old man servant, who insisted upon carrying her candle to her room, and her maid, who walked behind, she crossed the white stone hall and stepped slowly up the broad flight of stairs.

CHAPTER III

Louise awoke the next morning filled with a curious sense of buoyant expectancy. The sunshine was pouring into the room, brightening up its most somber corners. It lay across the quilt of her bed, and seemed to bring out the perfume of lavender from the pillow on which her head reposed.

Aline, hearing her mistress stir, hastened at once to the bedside.

“Good morning, madame!”

Louise sat up and looked around her, with her hands clasped about her knees.

“Tell me everything, Aline,” she said. “Have you my breakfast there? And what time is it?”

“It is half-past nine, madame,” Aline replied, “and your breakfast is here. The old imbecile from the kitchen has just brought it up.”

Louise looked approvingly at the breakfast tray, with the home-made bread and deep-yellow butter, the brown eggs and clear honey. The smell of the coffee was aromatic. She breathed a little sigh of content.

“How delicious everything looks!” she exclaimed.

“The home-made things are well enough in their way, madame,” Aline agreed, “but I have never known a household so strange and disagreeable. That M. Jennings, who calls himself the butler–he is a person unspeakable, a savage!”

Louise’s eyes twinkled.

“I don’t think they are fond of women in this household, Aline,” she remarked. “Tell me, have you seen Charles?”

“Charles has gone to the nearest blacksmith’s forge to get something made for the car, madame,” Aline replied. “He asked me to say that he was afraid he would not be ready to start before midday.”

“That does not matter,” Louise declared, as she settled down to her breakfast. “I do not care how long it is before he is ready. I should love to spend a month here!”

Aline held up her hands. She was speechless. Her mistress laughed at her consternation.

“Well,” she continued, “there is no fear of their asking us for a month, or for an hour longer than they can help. The elder Mr. Strangewey, it seems, has the strongest objection to our sex. There is not a woman servant in the house, is there?”

“Not one, madame,” Aline replied. “I have never been in a household conducted in such a manner. It is like the kitchen of a monastery. The terrible Jennings is speechless. If one addresses him, he only mumbles. The sound of my skirts, or my footstep on the stone floor, makes him shiver. He is worse, one would imagine, than his master.”

Louise ate and drank reflectively.

“It is the queerest household one could possibly stumble upon,” she remarked. “The young Mr. Strangewey–he seems different, but he falls in with his brother’s ways.”

Aline glanced at herself in the mirror. She was just out of her mistress’s range of vision, and she made a little grimace at her reflection.

“I met him twice this morning in the hall,” she remarked. “He wished me good morning the first time. The second time he did not speak. He did not seem to see me.”

Louise finished her breakfast and strolled presently to the window. She gave a little sigh of pleasure as she looked out.

“But, Aline,” she exclaimed, “how exquisite!”

The maid glanced over her shoulder and went on preparing her mistress’s clothes.

“It is as madame finds it,” she replied. “For myself, I like the country for fête days and holidays only, and even then I like to find plenty of people there.”

Louise heard nothing. She was gazing eagerly out of the casement-window. Immediately below was a grass-grown orchard which stretched upward, at a precipitous angle, toward a belt of freshly plowed field; beyond, a little chain of rocky hills, sheer overhead. The trees were pink and white with blossom; the petals lay about upon the ground like drifted snowflakes. Here and there yellow jonquils were growing among the long grass. A waft of perfume stole into the room through the window which she had opened.

“Fill my bath quickly, Aline,” Louise ordered. “I must go out. I want to see whether it is really as beautiful as it looks.”

Aline dressed her mistress in silence. It was not until she had finished lacing her shoes that she spoke another word. Then, suddenly, she stopped short in the act of crossing the room. Her eyes had happened to fall upon the emblazoned genealogical record. A little exclamation escaped her. She swung round toward her mistress, and for once there was animation in her face.

“But, madame,” she exclaimed, “I have remembered! The name Strangewey–you see it there–it was in our minds all the time that we had seen or heard of it quite lately. Don’t you remember–”

“Yes, yes!” Louise interrupted. “I know it reminds me of something, but of what?”

“Yesterday morning,” Aline continued, “it was you madame, who read it out while you took your coffee. You spoke of the good fortune of some farmer in the north of England to whom a relative in Australia had left a great fortune–hundreds and thousands of pounds. The name was Strangewey, the same as that. I remember it now.”

She pointed once more to the family tree. Louise sat for a moment with parted lips.

“You are quite right, Aline. I remember it all perfectly now. I wonder whether it could possibly be either of these two men!”

Aline shook her head doubtfully.

“It would be unbelievable, madame,” she decided. “Could any sane human creatures live here, with no company but the sheep and the cows, if they had money–money to live in the cities, to buy pleasures, to be happy? Unbelievable, madame!”

Louise remained standing before the window. She was watching the blossom-laden boughs of one of the apple trees bending and swaying in the fresh morning breeze–watching the restless shadows which came and went upon the grass beneath.

“That is just your point of view, Aline,” she murmured; “but happiness–well, you would not understand. They are strange men, these two. The young one is different now, but as he grows older he will be like his brother. He will live a very simple and honorable life. He will be–what is it they call it?–a county magistrate, chairman of many things, a judge at agricultural shows. When he dies, he will be buried up in that windy little churchyard, and people will come from a long way off to say how good he was. My hat, quickly, Aline! If I am not in that orchard in five minutes I shall be miserable!”

Louise found her way without difficulty across a cobbled yard, through a postern gate set in a red-brick wall, into the orchard. Very slowly, and with her head turned upward toward the trees, she made her way toward the boundary wall. Once, with a little exclamation of pleasure, she drew down a bough of the soft, cool blossom and pressed it against her cheek. She stopped for a moment or two to examine the contents of a row of chicken-coops, and at every few steps she turned around to face the breeze which came sweeping across the moorland from the other side of the house.

Arrived at the farther end of the orchard, she came to a gate, against which she rested for a moment, leaning her arms upon the topmost bar. Before her was the little belt of plowed earth, the fresh, pungent odor of which was a new thing to her; a little way to the right, the rolling moorland, starred with clumps of gorse; in front, across the field on the other side of the gray stone wall, the rock-strewn hills. The sky–unusually blue it seemed to her, and dotted all over with little masses of fleecy, white clouds–seemed somehow lower and nearer; or was she, perhaps higher up?

She lingered there, absolutely bewildered by the rapid growth in her brain and senses of what surely must be some newly kindled faculty of appreciation. There was a beauty in the world which she had not felt before.

She turned her head almost lazily at the sound of a man’s voice. A team of horses, straining at a plow, were coming round the bend of the field, and by their side, talking to the laborer who guided them, was John Strangewey. She watched him as he came into sight up the steep rise. Against the empty background, he seemed to lose nothing of the size and strength that had impressed her on the previous night. He was bareheaded, and she noticed for the first time that his closely cropped fair hair was inclined to curl a little near the ears.

He walked in step with the plowman by his side, but without any of the laborer’s mechanical plod–with a spring in his footsteps, indeed, as if his life and thoughts were full of joyous things. He was wearing black-and-white tweed clothes, a little shabby but well-fitting; breeches and gaiters; thick boots, plentifully caked now with mud. He was pointing with his stick along the furrow, so absorbed in the instructions he was giving that he was almost opposite the gate before he was aware of her presence. He promptly abandoned his task and approached her.

“Good morning!” he called out.

She waved her hand.

“Good morning!”

“You have slept well?” he asked.

“Better, I think, than ever before in my life,” she answered. “Differently, at any rate. And such an awakening!”

He looked at her, a little puzzled. The glow upon her face and the sunlight upon her brown hair kept him silent. He was content to look at her and wonder.

“Tell me,” she demanded impetuously, “is this a little corner of fairy-land that you have found? Does the sun always shine like this? Does the earth always smell as sweetly, and are your trees always in blossom? Does your wind always taste as if God had breathed the elixir of life into it?”

He turned around to follow the sweep of her eyes. Something of the same glow seemed to rest for a moment upon his face.

“It is good,” he said, “to find what you love so much appreciated by some one else.”

They stood together in a silence almost curiously protracted. Then the plowman passed again with his team of horses, and John called out some instructions to him. She followed him down to earth.

“Tell me, Mr. Strangewey,” she inquired, “where are your farm-buildings?”

“Come and I will show you,” he answered, opening the gate to let her through. “Keep close to the hedge until we come to the end of the plow; and then–but no, I won’t anticipate. This way!”

She walked by his side, conscious every now and then of his frankly admiring eyes as he looked down at her. She herself felt all the joy of a woman of the world imbibing a new experience. She did not even glance toward the dismantled motor in the barn which they passed.

“I am glad,” he remarked presently, “that you look upon us more charitably than your maid.”

“Aline is a good girl,” Louise said, smiling, “but hot-water taps and electric lights are more to her than sunshine and hills. Do you know,” she went on, “I feel like a child being led through an undiscovered country, a land of real adventures. Which way are we going, and what are we going to see? Tell me, please!”

“Wait,” he begged. “It is just a queer little corner among the hills, that is all.”

They reached the end of the plowed field, and, passing through a gate, turned abruptly to the left and began to climb a narrow path which bordered the boundary wall, and which became steeper every moment. As they ascended, the orchard and the long, low house on the other side seemed to lie almost at their feet. The road and the open moorland beyond, stretching to the encircling hills, came more clearly into sight with every backward glance. Louise paused at last, breathless.