Part 4

When the Pawle children went away after their secluded summer, Harry and Sidney kissed gravely, under command of the head-nurse, who called them "little sweet'earts." But the kiss meant nothing to Harry, since he had been told to proffer it. He would rather have kissed Lady Ursula, a large-eyed pink and flaxen damsel of twelve, for whom he had an admiration, though she never had much to say to him, and there was no interest in her companionship as there was in Sidney's. He missed Sidney when they went away, but not for long, and by this time he had almost forgotten her. For Poldaven Castle had remained empty ever since that summer, and if Lady Brent had formed any premature matrimonial plans for her grandson she seemed to have forgotten them, for she scarcely ever mentioned the names of her one-time neighbours, and never that of Sidney Pawle, except once when the news of Lady Ursula's marriage was in all the papers. Then she said that Ursula was a beautiful girl, but Sidney had always been her favourite. Harry looked at the picture of bride and bridesmaids. He remembered how he had admired Ursula's beauty, and she was beautiful now, but he hardly recognized her; grown-up, she seemed a generation older. Sidney was recognizable in the photograph; she was not yet grown up. But she looked different too, in her silken finery. Lady Avalon must have been economizing in her children's clothes during that summer at Poldaven, for the girls had never been dressed in anything more elaborate than linen and rough straw. Somehow this bridesmaid Sidney was different from his old playmate. He could not imagine her playing the Princess to his rescuing knight, as she had done once or twice when they had got quite away by themselves; or indeed his letting her into any of that kind of secret, now. He put the paper away and forgot her afresh.

Harry played no outdoor games in his boyhood, except the games he made up for himself. But he was a horseman from his earliest years. Lady Brent encouraged it, when he was once old enough to go to the stables without fear of danger. He had first a tiny little Shetland, then a forest-bred pony, and a horse when he was big enough to ride one. He roamed all over the country, happy to be by himself and indulge his daydreams. His handsome young face and slim supple boy's figure were known far and wide. He had friends among farmers and cottage people, but the few of his own class who lived in that sparsely populated country he was inclined to avoid. They thought it was by his grandmother's direction, but though it suited her that he should do so, it was in truth from a kind of shyness that he kept away from them. His isolation was beginning to bear fruit. The boys of his own age whom he occasionally came across seemed to have nothing in common with him, nor he with them. The girls eyed him curiously, if admiringly, and he had nothing to talk to them about. He was happier by himself, or with his horse and his dogs. But he was never really by himself. He could always conjure up brave knights and gentle ladies to ride with him through the woods or by the sea, if he wanted company. There was a whole world of varied characters about him, from the highest to the lowest, and his imagination did not stop at mortal companionship; he walked with gods and heroes as often as with men and women.

No one about him suspected this inner life of his, as real to him as his outer life, and still more important. To his mother and grandmother he was a bright active boy, with the outdoor tastes of a boy, who slept soundly, ate enormously, and behaved himself just as a well brought-up boy should. To his tutor he was a pleasant companion during the hours they spent together, and one who did credit to his teaching. Wilbraham had his scholarly tastes and perceptions. He would have hated the drudgery of teaching an ordinary boy who made heavy work of his lessons, but this boy took an interest in them. It is true that there were surprising gaps in the course of study that they followed. Greek and Latin, and English and French literature took up very nearly all their time and attention. Wilbraham looked forward with some apprehension to the time when he should have to tell Lady Brent that in order to prepare Harry for any examination extra cramming would be necessary by somebody else in the subjects that he had neglected. But at sixteen the boy was a fair classical scholar, and his range of reading was wider than that of many University honours men.

Harry was fortunate in having the Vicar to help and encourage him in his Natural History studies, for this was a subject in which Wilbraham took no interest. Mr. Thomson was an old bachelor, who had been Vicar of Royd for over forty years. His house was a museum, and Harry revelled in it. No doubt he would have developed his tastes in that direction without any guidance, but Mr. Thomson put him on the right lines, and was overjoyed, at the end of his life, to have so apt a pupil. He took him out birds' nesting, geologizing, botanizing, and encouraged him to form his own collections though the boy showed no great keenness in this form of acquisition. He wanted to know about everything around him but to collect specimens did not greatly interest him. However, he was proud enough when the old man died and bequeathed to him all his treasures. At this time he was arranging them in a couple of rooms that had been given up to them in the Castle. But the excitement was already beginning to wear a little thin. When he was not working with Wilbraham he always wanted to be out of doors, even in bad weather. And he missed his old friend; it made him rather sad to be poring over the cases and shelves and cabinets that had been so much a part of him.

Part of the old Vicar's preoccupation had been with the antiquities of the country in which he had lived. He had collected legends and folk-lore, perhaps in rather a dry-as-dust way; but it was all material for the boy's glowing imagination to work upon. All the books were there, now in Harry's possession, and many manuscript notes, too. And scattered over the country were the remnants of old beliefs and old rites, which took one right back to the dim ages of the past. There was a cromlech within the park walls of Royd itself, and from it could be seen a shining stretch of sea under which lay, according to ancient tradition, a deep-forested land that had once been alive with romance. All this was very real to Harry, too. The figures of Celtic heroes mixed themselves up with those of the classical gods and heroes. The fairies and pixies of his own romantic land were still more real to him than the fauns and dryads of ancient Greece; as he grew older his expectation of meeting with a stray woodland nymph during his forest rambles died away, but he was more firmly convinced than ever that the native fairies were all about him, if he could only see them.

He lay for a very long time under the beech, quite motionless, but with his senses acutely alert. He heard every tiny sound made by the creatures of the night, and of nature which sleeps but lightly under the moon, and took in all their meaning, but without thinking about them. The shadow cast by the tree under which he was lying had shifted an appreciable space over the brightly illumined grass since he had stirred a muscle. And all the time his expectation grew.

He was in a strangely exalted state, but penetrated through and through with a deep sense of calm, and of being in absolute tune with the time and place. If no revelation of the hidden meaning of nature came to him to-night, before the set of the moon, he would arise and go home, not disappointed and vaguely unhappy, as he had done before, but with his belief in that hidden meaning destroyed. Only he knew now that that could not happen. When he had stolen out into the night, he had hoped that he might see something that he had never seen before. Now he knew that he would. He had only to wait until the revelation should come. And he was quite content to wait, in patience that grew if anything as the shadows lengthened towards the east.

He made not the slightest movement, nor was conscious of any quickening of emotion, when the sight he had expected did break upon his eyes. It came suddenly, but with no sense of suddenness. At one moment there was the empty moon-white glade, at the next there were tiny fairies dancing in a ring, so sweet, so light, so gay. And in the middle of them, rhythmically waving her wand, was the queen--Titania perhaps, but he did not think about that until afterwards. Their wings were iridescent, from their gauzy garments was diffused faint light, hardly brighter than the light of the moon, hardly warmer, and yet different, with more glow in it, more colour.

He heard the silvery chime of their laughter--just once. Then where they had been there was nothing.

He arose at once. He had no expectation of seeing them again. He did not go down to the place where they had been, but made his way home by a path under the trees. His mind was full of a deep content. The fairies were, and he had seen them.

*CHAPTER V*

*MRS. BRENT*

Mrs. Grant was sitting in her drawing-room at Royd Vicarage. It was a lovely hot June morning, and she was at her needlework by the French windows, which were pleasantly open to the garden. The rich sweet peace of early summer brooded over shaven lawn and bright flower beds, and was consummated by the drone of the bees, which were as busy as if they were aware of their reputation and were anxious to live up to it. Under the shade of a lime at the corner of the lawn slumbered the Vicarage baby in her perambulator, so placidly that the very spirit of peace seemed to have descended on her infant head. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and there was nothing to disturb the calm contentment with which Mrs. Grant plied her needle, singing a little song to herself, and occasionally casting an eye in the direction of the perambulator and its precious contents. Jane and Pobbles were at their lessons with Miss Minster, or the scene would not have been so peaceful. The Vicar was in his study, happily at work on a moving chapter of his latest work; for it was Monday, when clerical duties were in abeyance.

He had been at Royd for over a year, and found the place delightfully suited to his taste. He felt his inventive powers blossoming as never before. The first novel he had written at Royd had not long since been published, and its modest popularity was now being reflected in the literary and advertisement columns of the newspapers. It had already brought him an offer for the serial rights of his next novel, from a magazine of good standing, which did not pay high prices, but did demand a high moral tone in the fiction it published, and made quite a good thing out of it. It was all grist to the mill. Royd Vicarage was a good-sized house and cost more to live in comfortably than he or his wife had anticipated, and his income as an incumbent, with all the deductions that had to be made from it, was hardly higher than his stipend as a curate had been. But he had a little money of his own, and his wife had a little money, and with the income that came from the novels there was enough; and it was beginning to look as if there might be a good deal more, perhaps a great deal more. Novelists with less in them than he felt himself to possess were making their two or three thousand a year. Anything in the way of large popularity might happen within the next year. In the meantime life was exceedingly pleasant, and even exciting, with all those possibilities to build upon. He would leave his work sometimes and come into the room where his wife was, rubbing his hands, to tell her how exceedingly jolly it all was. She would look up at him with a smile, pleased to see him so happy, and happy herself, with her nice house, and no anxiety about being able to run it properly.

She was rather expecting a visit from him this morning, for he had told her that he was going to set to work on a new chapter, and when he had settled what it was going to be he would usually come and tell her about it before he began to write. She thought it was he when the door opened; but it was Mrs. Brent, who sometimes looked in and sat with her for a time in the morning.

Mrs. Brent was well dressed, in the summer attire of a country-woman, but with her fluffy hair, and face that had been pretty in her youth but was pretty no longer, she looked somehow as if she had dressed for the part; and the air of "commonness," not always apparent in her, was there this morning. The corners of her mouth drooped, and there was an appearance of discontent, and even sullenness about her.

She brightened up a little as she greeted Mrs. Grant, and sat down opposite to her on a low chair by the window. "Oh, I do like coming here," she said. "It's so peaceful. And it's such a quiet pretty room."

The room was rather barely furnished, but what there was in it was good, and there were a great many flowers. To buy old things for this and other rooms of the house was to be one of the first results of the expected increase of income, but it was doubtful whether the charm of this room would be much enhanced. For it was quiet, as Mrs. Brent said, and quietness is a valuable quality in a room.

Mrs. Grant looked round her with satisfaction. "It _is_ nice," she said. "We are very happy here. I don't think I'd change Royd for any place in the world."

"I would," said Mrs. Brent. "I'm fed up with it."

Mrs. Grant threw a glance at her. She was looking down, and the sullenness had returned to her face.

"Fed up to the teeth," she said.

She looked up in her turn. Behind the discontent was an appeal. Mrs. Grant felt suddenly very sorry for her. If she was a little common, she was also rather pathetic--a middle-aged child, out of place and out of tune.

"I think it would do you good to have a change sometimes," Mrs. Grant said. "However beautiful a place is, one wants a change occasionally."

"_She_ doesn't," said Mrs. Brent vindictively. "So she thinks nobody else ought to either."

It was coming at last, then. Mrs. Grant had formed her own opinion of Lady Brent long since, and it did not entirely coincide with the opinion that her husband had formed, though she had not told him so. Lady Brent had been all that could have been expected towards themselves--kind and hospitable, and within limits friendly. She had offered no real intimacy, and after a year's intercourse it was plain that she had none to offer; but it was also plain that the intercourse need never be otherwise than smooth and even pleasant, if the limitations were observed. Mrs. Brent, on the other hand, had shown that she wanted intimacy. Mrs. Grant could not give any deep measure of friendship to one in whom there seemed to be no depths, but she could talk to Mrs. Brent about many things, about Harry and about her own children in particular, and find a response that made for friendship. She could talk, too, about the events of her own life, but was chary of doing so, because it would seem to be asking for confidences in return, and she was not sure that she wanted them. There was always in the background the feeling that Mrs. Brent and her mother-in-law were antagonistic, in spite of the apparent harmony between them; and of late that feeling had increased. Mrs. Brent was such that the gates of her lips once unlocked she would express her antagonism, and it would no longer be possible to treat it as if it did not exist. That time seemed to have come now.

"I hate that woman," said Mrs. Brent, "and I won't put up with it any longer."

There was the slightest little pause before Mrs. Grant replied. "Why do you hate her? I can understand your wanting to get away sometimes; but she always seems to me to treat you nicely; and of course she is extremely nice to us. I should be sorry to quarrel with her in any way."

"No doubt you would," said Mrs. Brent drily. "You'd get the rough side of her tongue pretty quick, and you wouldn't forget it in a hurry."

Mrs. Grant was a little shocked. This new plain-spoken Mrs. Brent was more of a personage than the carefully behaved lady always anxious to be making a good impression that she had hitherto appeared; but she seemed out of the Royd picture--and all the more so if Harry and not Lady Brent were regarded as its central figure. The suggestion of Lady Brent as a virago was also rather startling.

"Oh, I don't mean to say that she'd use bad language," said Mrs. Brent, in reply to some demur. "That's not her little way. I won't tell you what her little way is, but she's always the _lady_. I'm not, you see. That's what's the matter with me. I'm Lottie Lansdowne, who danced on the stage, and never allowed to forget it, though you can tell of yourself, since you've been here, that I've _tried_ hard enough to play the game--for Harry's sake, I have--and been at it for the last seventeen years; and now I'm getting a bit sick of it."

She was in tears, and Mrs. Grant felt a strong emotion of pity towards her. She leant forward. "My dear," she said, "I think it's splendid the way you sink yourself for Harry's sake. You mustn't give up doing it, you know. It has paid--hasn't it?--to have him brought up here, out of the world, in the way that you and Lady Brent have done. He's the dearest boy. _I_ consider that you have had more to do with the success of it than she has. He loves you more, for one thing; and if he sees you living here as if you belonged to it all----"

"Oh, I know," said Mrs. Brent, drying her eyes. "I made up my mind about that years ago, and I'm not going back on it. I suppose when he gets older and begins to see things for himself, he'll see that I _don't_ really belong. I've got that before me, you know. _She_ knows it too, and of course doesn't care. It'll suit her. _She'll_ come out all right, but I shan't. The only thing is that he does love me, and he can't really love her. I don't see how anybody could. I'm glad you said that. I love you for saying it. I can talk to you, and I'm sure it's a relief to talk to somebody. There's Wilbraham, but he's as much up against her now as I am; we only make each other worse. You do think it's all right so far, don't you? With Harry, I mean. He couldn't be nicer than he is, if his mother had been born a lady. Of course I wasn't, whatever I may pretend. I haven't got in the way, have I? She can't bring that up against me."

"Oh, no! Oh, no! You mustn't think that. You're part of it all to him. I said that and I meant it."

She settled herself back more easily in her chair. "Well, I believe I am," she said. "I've tried to make myself. I love him dearly, and I'd do anything for his sake. It's been right to bring him up quietly here. She's been right there. I'll say that for her, though I hate her."

"You don't really hate her," said Mrs. Grant; "and I don't think you've any reason to. What she has done has been for Harry's sake too."

"It has been for the sake of the Brent family. Her son married beneath him--so she says--though I'd have made him a good wife, and though I loved him I knew he wasn't all he might have been. She's going to see that Harry doesn't run any risk of doing the same. Well, I'm with her there. I don't want Harry to be mixed up with what I come from. But there's nothing nasty about it. It's only that we weren't up in the world. Do you know I haven't so much as set eyes on my own people since Harry was born? Why shouldn't I? I'm flesh and blood. My father died since I came here, and mother's getting on. She was nearly fifty when I was married."

"Do you mean that Lady Brent----?"

"Oh, it was me too. I said that I'd give them up when I came here. The fact is that I wasn't best pleased with them at that time. I'd promised Harry--my husband, I mean; they're all called Harry--not to say I was married till he came home. Poor boy, he never did come home, but before that--well, they said things--at least, mother did--that made me furious. I kept my promise to him till I heard he'd been killed, poor boy. Then I let them have it. Perhaps I hadn't learnt quite so many manners then as I have since, though I was always considered refined by the other girls in the company. Anyhow, it ended in my saying I never wanted to see them again, and we never even wrote till poor father died. Still, I've forgiven them now, it's so long ago, and I cried when father died, and wrote to mother. I was very fond of father. He used to take me on his knee when I was little and read stories out of the Bible to me. He was a religious man, and didn't like my going on the stage. Sometimes I wish I'd never gone. Emily, my next oldest sister, went into millinery and did well. She married long ago and has a boy nearly as old as Harry, though of course he'd be very different. Mother said she had a nice house out Hendon way, when she wrote, and three little girls, as well as a boy. I dare say I should have been much happier like that, though I shouldn't have had Harry. But it couldn't do Harry any harm now if I just went up and saw them sometimes. I needn't even say I was going to see them or anything about them. Why shouldn't I go to London for a week, as other ladies do, to see their dressmaker or something? I think it's more London I want than mother, if you ask me. Oh, just to see the lights and the pavements, and the people jostling one another! I'm like famished for it."

She threw out her hands with a curious stagy gesture that was yet a natural one, and her nostrils seemed to dilate, as if she were actually sniffing the atmosphere she so much desired. "I'm going," she said. "I don't care what she says."

"I don't see why you shouldn't go," said Mrs. Grant. "But why should Lady Brent object? What can she say?"

Mrs. Brent leant forward. "Couldn't you ask her for me?" she said coaxingly. "Tell her you think I ought to have a change. I'm young, you know. At least I'm not old yet. It can't be right for me to be buried down here year after year. I shan't get into mischief. Just a week!"

Mrs. Grant felt intensely uncomfortable. Get into mischief! What _did_ it all mean? Lady Brent must have some reason for keeping the frivolous pathetic little thing shut up like this? And yet she had seemed to disclose everything; she had dropped every trace of pretence, and had made her appeal for sympathy on the grounds of her very unsuitability to be where she was. If she no longer cared, before this friend, to keep up the fiction of having sprung from a superior station in life, which from such as she was a great concession to candour, how could she wish to keep anything back?

"You know I'm your friend," Mrs. Grant said. "I'd do anything I could to help you, but you see how it is with us here. We shall never be close friends with Lady Brent; I don't think she wants it. But she's kind and well-disposed towards us. I couldn't run the risk of setting her against us, unless I were _quite_ certain that--I mean quite certain of my ground. It wouldn't be fair to my husband. It would make all the difference to us here if we were not on good terms with her. Have you told me everything? _Why_ should she think you might get into mischief?"