Part 2

As for the girls in Andrew's school, it was impossible to think of them except as so many varieties of human tyranny. They were more perplexing, as a rule, certainly more unmanageable, than the boys. This was due to the languishing friendships which they tried to contract with him, and which they mirthfully abandoned just so soon as he began to take them seriously. In fact, there was nothing in Andrew's fancied or actual experience so terrible--not even Aunt Hepzibah or the Amazons of Herodotus--as the schoolgirl just old enough to plan and carry out this kind of campaign against him. Instances are on record, indeed, in which, convinced that some overgrown girl was in rebellion, he had dismissed his school on the plea of a hastily imagined holiday, and fled to the woods.

Una, however, in the full bloom of her eighteen years had not been one of Andrew's pupils, and thus had not tormented him in this particular manner. Hence, when she stood at the schoolhouse door, one fine morning, asking if she might attend one of his classes, he suspected nothing. Overcome by her murmured assurance of interest, he made room on his little platform for her and for her two friends from the city, never dreaming that these demure young ladies were not really so absorbed in the joys of learning as they appeared to be.

Memorable for him was the next half hour, during which he plunged his pupils through an incoherent lesson in history, vividly conscious all the while of the three pairs of eyes that were fastened upon him. When the ordeal was over, and he succeeded in bowing his visitors out of the schoolhouse, he had the blissful consciousness that he, Andrew Parmelee, schoolmaster of Rysdale, had been bidden to Stoneleigh whenever he chose to visit that historic mansion.

Aunt Hepzibah, as was to be expected from her perverse disposition, opposed the acceptance of this invitation. But Andrew for once went his own way. Within a month after Una's visit to the school he called at Stoneleigh, where he was received with a cordiality that quite dumbfounded him. There was a brief but miserable period of diffidence and terror, extending over several subsequent visits; after which Andrew found that it was really possible to talk to this wonderful, gray-eyed creature as he had never dared talk to any one before. In fact, Una listened to him--to his little ambitions, his beliefs, his petty trials--with a kindly sympathy that was quite the most perfect thing he had ever imagined.

Then came the end to his romance. It was inevitable, of course. He wanted her to do more than simply listen to him--and that was just the one thing more that she could not do. It was all very tragic to both of them. Andrew was broken-hearted, full of heroics about fidelity, eternity, death. And Una--it was her first experience in human sorrow, and she was genuinely shocked and repentant.

II

IN UNA'S GARDEN

Until David told her that evening in the garden at Stoneleigh, Una had not known that her uncle opposed her marriage. No reason was given for his opposition--and David's attitude was quite as much of a puzzle. He talked of some shadow in his past, and was on the point of telling Una what it was. But she stopped him. Their love, she said, had to do with the present, the future; it had nothing to do with the past. Nevertheless, she wished David had set himself right with Leighton.

"Why didn't you answer Uncle Harold?" she asked.

At first he avoided her glance, snapping his riding-whip nervously among the withered sunflower stalks. Then he turned to her.

"I don't know," he said.

"You knew he was wrong."

"In a way--yes. And then, I wondered if, after all, he was right. As I said, I can't explain it to myself. You stopped my speaking to you about it. And yet, do you know, after talking with your uncle, I convinced myself--I thought I convinced myself--that I was unworthy of you, that our marriage would be wrong."

"Don't say that!" she exclaimed angrily. "Unless your love for me has changed, it is the one right thing in the world--as mine is for you."

"Beloved! Let it be so," he said, his dark mood vanishing. "Let the first day of our new life be the first day of our past. Do you remember that first day? Coming down the river we spoke hardly a word. You laughed at me, called me lazy, the boat slipped along so slowly. And you were right! Watching you I forgot the stupid business of rowing. Never before were you so beautiful--but now you are a million times more beautiful! How I wanted to kiss you! If I had dared kiss just a bit of your dress, anything blessed by touching you! But I didn't--not then! How it all happened afterward, when we landed at our island, is the mystery--or, rather, the most natural thing in the world. I was tongue-tied as ever. Not a word in the language was in reach of me--at least, I couldn't think of one. Naturally, the dictionary men left out our words; they didn't know you. And yet, we understood! Did the birds tell us, I wonder, or was it written on the trees, or whispered in the golden air? Love talks without words. But now--" he broke off abruptly--"now I must answer Uncle Harold."

"Why?"

"I wish I could talk it over with Raoul," he went on, not heeding the question.

"Why with Raoul?"

"You don't know Raoul."

"Tell me about him."

"He understands me, that's all. We have been together a lot. But what's the use of thinking of him! He's in India, probably--or, maybe, Bogota--yes, it must be Bogota--and will stay there for years."

"You are fond of him?"

"No! I can't imagine any one being fond of him. He fascinates you. He's queer. He is my age, yet his hair is white--even his eyebrows and his eyelashes are white. Fancy a young man with white eyelashes! There's not a hint of color in his face. And his eyes--you can't tell what they are; neither can you avoid them when they stop twitching and fix themselves on you. Did you ever see a human being jump out at you from a pair of eyes? It sounds foolish; but then, you've never seen Raoul! Love leaps out of your eyes, and all the beauty of trees and rivers. God made your eyes and put you in them just to help people. It was the devil who made Raoul's eyes."

They lingered at the far corner of the terraced garden where a low hedge of box overlooked a deep, silent grove of balsams. Beyond, at one side, the gray walls of Stoneleigh, the square tower bearing aloft a single ray of light, rose indistinctly against a background of firs. The familiar scene, softened by the twilight, dispelled their first feeling of uneasiness. Everything had changed. Once more the world was brightened by their love. The touch of Una's hand, the fragrance of her hair, the joy of her quivering lips, were, for David, the only things that mattered.

Since their first meeting, a year ago on the Derwentwater, in England, love had grown with these two. On the night before that meeting, David had reached Keswick, where Una was staying. Skiddaw and Helvellyn, when first he saw those famous peaks, were dimly outlined behind the evening mists. Next morning the sky was cloudless, and although David was familiar with the scenery of Alps, Andes and Himalaya, the charm of this English landscape touched him deeply. The peaceful lake, surrounded by steep hills of living green, and holding on its breast thickly wooded islands, stirred a new longing within him. These hills, it is true, were not comparable in height or sweeping contour to the majestic altitudes of Southern Asia or Western South America. Neither was the Derwentwater equal, in certain scenic effects, to similar bodies of water that had won his admiration in distant countries. Here, nevertheless, Nature was revealed in her loveliest mood, and David yielded himself delightedly to her gracious influence.

As he floated dreamily in his skiff on the Derwentwater, the dip of his oars made the only visible ripple on the glassy surface of the lake, while the rugged outlines of the hills, drenched in sunlight, seemed to weave a fairy circle into which the world of ordinary experience might not enter. The scene reacted inevitably on his own emotions. For the first time in many months a feeling of complete restfulness possessed him, a mood ripe for dreams and all that hazy kind of speculation lying on the borderland of dreams. In this mental state he sought one of the islands whose sylvan shadows lengthened over the water's sunny surface. The hollow echo from oar and rowlock, the grating of prow on pebbled beach, broke the silence that had surrounded him ever since he left the little wharf at Keswick. The lightest of summer breezes stirred the topmost branches above him. Invitation was in the air, rest beneath the trees. This was surely the morning of the world, and he was the discoverer of this nameless island. Strange that it should be here, unmarred, untouched, unknown, in populous England!

There was welcome in the crackle of twigs beneath his feet; a responsive thrill from the green moss upon which he threw himself. As he tried to catch the blue of the sky beyond the moving canopy of green, he idly wondered whether he was the first to pierce the island's solitude, whether its secret had been kept for him.

Perhaps it was in answer to his unuttered query that the stillness was suddenly broken by the faintest echo of silvery laughter. He listened in surprise, for the island was far too small, he imagined, to screen either house or camp from the view of any one approaching it, and before he left his boat he had satisfied himself that no other summer idler was here before him. Nevertheless, there was that tantalizing laughter, coming from a portion of the island opposite the beach on which he had landed--and there was the shattering of his daydreams.

He parted the low-lying branches of some bushes growing between him and the shore, but could see nothing save the clear expanse of lake upon which there was neither sail nor rowboat. He perceived, however, judging by the distance of the water below him, that the shore of the island must here become a diminutive cliff, in the shelter of which, doubtless, was the being whose laughter he scarcely knew whether to welcome or shun. The fairy-like spot obviously had some prosaic owner who was there to enjoy what was his--or hers. The laughter was unmistakably a woman's.

David rose hastily from his retreat beneath the trees, uncertain whether to apologize for his intrusion or to slip away unperceived. After all, the laughter chimed in pleasantly enough with his roving fancies. There had been wood-nymphs before, if one can believe the old romancers, who sang the carefree joys of the glens they inhabited--and perhaps this was a wood-nymph. His curiosity aroused, David peered again through the branches. This time he saw her.

She was not a wood-nymph of old mythology, but an incarnation of the spirit of youth that all morning had pursued him. She was clad in the simplest of sailor suits, the blouse of gray silk opening loosely about her delicately moulded throat and neck, her hair straying in tawny ringlets over her shoulders and reaching down to the book which she held in her lap. At her side sat an old man, of stalwart frame, white-haired, with the strongly lined face and sharpened features typical of the student. A wide-brimmed quaker hat lying at his feet emphasized his freedom from the conventionalities of dress and was in strict keeping with his long black coat and voluminous trousers.

They were reading a book together, a book that had evidently provoked the disturbing laughter and brought a grim look of amusement to the old man's face. The noise made by David, however, broke up their pleasant occupation. The girl turned her head, gazing curiously at the spot whence came the sound of rustling leaves. What she saw stirred her as nothing ever had before. Her glance met David's; and to both of them it seemed as if all their lives they had been waiting for the revelation of that moment. Her pulse quickened; her cheek paled, then grew rosy red; her gray eyes dilated with mingled alarm and pleasure.

The sudden, deep impression was dashed by a singular interruption. The girl's companion, his back half turned to David, his face still expressive of amusement, and looking straight before him at the ripple of water kissing the pebbles at his feet, spoke in a loud, harsh voice:

"Una," he said, "remember the schoolmaster! This man's world is not ours. What does he know of Rysdale?"

She looked down confusedly, aware that her uncle--for it was Harold Leighton--without seeing this stranger who had so quickly aroused her interest, spoke as if he knew who he was and all about him. When she looked again, David was gone.

Between that first meeting and this evening, a year after, when they stood together in Una's garden at Stoneleigh, they had lived through much of Love's first golden record. Their experiences had not always been cloudless. Harold Leighton, it is true, did not actively oppose their marriage; but he had borne himself in a manner that showed, at times, either a singular indifference, or a covert mistrust of the man who was so soon to take from him his brother's only daughter. It might be from jealousy, it might be from a perfectly natural feeling of caution; at any rate, he never discussed their plans with them, he never explained his attitude towards them. Never again did he allude to the schoolmaster, nor account for the strange words he had used on the little island in Derwentwater.

For the most part he watched their courtship with a sort of whimsical curiosity, but always withholding his assent from the marriage to which they looked forward. Una was indignant at his final attempt to separate them. His suspicions and David's quixotic manner of meeting them increased her faith in her lover. Never before had she been so perfectly happy as she was this evening with him in the garden's autumnal silence.

"It will soon be forever," she whispered.

"You are not afraid?"

"If it were possible for our love to die, if it were as shortlived as the sunflowers, if some one had the power to take it from us, I would be afraid. Tell me that no one has the power, David."

He held her from him for a space, his eyes searching hers.

"You alone have the power, Una," he said.

From a slowly moving figure amid the bushes behind them came an uncompromising question:

"David, you have told her?"

The dusky outline, the large quaker hat, the wide-skirted coat catching occasionally among the dry twigs and branches, revealed Harold Leighton. He stood in the center of the pathway, his gray eyes fixed upon them, awaiting an answer.

"David has told me," said Una firmly.

"You have told her?" he repeated.

"I have told her that I love her," he answered.

"Is that all?"

"I told her that I am unworthy of her."

"Why are you unworthy of her?"

"You speak as if you knew something against me," said David. Then added fiercely, "Tell it!"

With an odd smile on his face the old man looked at Una.

"He says he is unworthy of you--you are free," he said. "Una, how do you choose?"

She bowed her head before her lover.

"David, I love you," she said.

The old man turned towards the house.

"David, I see your horse is lame; you have ridden him to death," he said drily. "You had better spend the night at Stoneleigh."

III

A CHAPTER ON GHOSTS

A strange thing happened that night at Stoneleigh.

For the first time in the annals of the younger Rysdale generation, the great bare room at the top of the house, adjoining Harold Leighton's laboratory, had a guest. In the days of the St. Maur Brotherhood the monks used this room as an oratory. The shadowy outline of a crucifix, which had once risen above an unpretentious altar, could still be traced in the rough plaster on the narrow east wall. At either side of this crucifix the blackened marks of bygone sconces were visible, while in the north and south walls of the apartment there still remained a number of huge spikes, rusty with age and swathed in cobwebs, from which had hung the Fourteen Stations of the Cross.

Since the departure of the monks this oratory had been practically abandoned by their successors at Stoneleigh. The earlier members of the Leighton family had shared the dislike of their fellow townsmen for anything approaching "papistry." To this prejudice, as it affected the use of the oratory, was afterwards added the belief that the gloomy chamber was still frequented by certain ghostly members of the ancient Brotherhood into whose spectral doings it was just as well not to pry too closely. A live monk was bad enough, according to some of Harold Leighton's ancestors; but a dead monk who "haunted" was too disreputable altogether to have anything to do with. Hence, as there was more room at Stoneleigh than could profitably be used, it was thought best to close up this ancient oratory, leaving it to such grim visitants from the past as might choose it for a meeting place.

There had been seasons, however, when dust and cobwebs were sufficiently disturbed to bring some semblance of cheer into the desolate apartment. Thus, the festivities accompanying the marriage of Una's grandparents had reached their climax here in a ball at which the local worthies mingled with a number of excellent persons from that outside world of fashion vaguely known as "the city." No spectral guest, tonsured or otherwise, appeared on this occasion, and when the revels were ended the legend that Stoneleigh's oratory was haunted no longer commanded the respect, or even the interest, of the credulous.

That was more than half a century ago; and now David Meudon was the guest of this neglected chamber. He was in a joyous mood. A man more tenacious of impressions could not have thrown off so easily the irritation caused by the meeting with Harold Leighton in the garden. The elder man's suspicions would have poisoned whatever possibility there might be of immediate enjoyment. The presence of Una, however, her unqualified acceptance of him, her uncle's suddenly changed attitude, effectually dulled David's resentment. Leighton had agreed, apparently, to the plan for an early wedding, and had even proposed that the married couple should live at Stoneleigh. In spite of David's great wealth, neither he nor his immediate ancestors had been identified with a locality peculiarly their own; they had never had a family home. With Una, on the contrary, the last of the Leightons, the ancestral tie that roots itself under some particular hearthstone was especially strong. She was pleased, therefore, with the offer that promised to make Stoneleigh hers--and so, in the main, was David.

He liked the old house; its history appealed to his imagination. He stood somewhat in awe, it is true, of its present owner, and the prospect of living with him did not promise unalloyed happiness. But there was something about Harold Leighton, a suggestion of mystery, that went well with this ancient place, and completely satisfied David. He laughed at the Stoneleigh traditions; but when Leighton proposed spending the evening in the oratory he gladly assented. David had never been in this part of the house, although he had often wanted to explore its possible mysteries. The opportunity to do this had not come until now.

"Yes, there are ghosts here," Harold Leighton replied to the young man's jesting query as he, David and Una entered the great bare room together.

"Then you believe in ghosts?"

"Of course Uncle Harold believes in them," exclaimed Una. "I believe in them, and so do you."

"That depends. Show me one and I might."

"Well," commented Leighton; "this is the ghost room, and here we are. Perhaps your skepticism will find something to try its teeth on. In honor of St. Maur we ought to have a demonstration."

"Splendid!" laughed David. "But you don't mean it. People never mean what they say when they talk approvingly of ghosts. You are known for a skeptic yourself, Mr. Leighton. You accept nothing that has not passed muster with science."

"There may be a science of ghosts," retorted the savant. "Science is not limited to any department of human knowledge. A scientific theory is based on a collection of facts. How do you know I have not made a collection of ghost-facts?"

"And so have a new theory of ghosts to offer!"

"You don't really think those old monks come back, uncle?" objected Una.

"Oh, I'm not going to tell the secrets of my laboratory so easily--and to such a pair of tyros," was the evasive answer.

They stood before the great fireplace which a thrifty ancestor had built into the east wall, and enjoyed to the full the warmth that had not as yet reached the remote spaces of the gloomy chamber. It needed a fire to bring some show of comfort to this wilderness of dust and cobwebs. A few pieces of colonial furniture stood out in the melancholy wastes--a faded lounge, a gargantuan dresser, several stiff-backed chairs still nursing their puritanism. At the far end of the room various objects of a decidedly modern appearance, suggesting the workshop of a physicist, aroused David's curiosity. For an explanation of these he turned to Leighton.

"Is this your laboratory?" he asked.

"What do you think of it?" was the reply. "Plenty of space, isn't there? A man could have a score of ghosts here--ghosts of monks, you know--nosing about for their comfortable old quarters."

"Not so very comfortable in their day, Uncle," suggested Una; "nor in ours, for that matter."

Leighton chuckled grimly. "Are you interested in ghosts, David?" he asked, looking keenly at him.

"What do you mean by ghosts?"

"Ah, that's it! This old room--are there ghosts in it, I wonder? The nail marks in the walls, the stains where the lights were hung, the shadowy remains of the altar--can you shake off the feeling that the Brotherhood is still at prayers here, that it still has Stoneleigh for its home?"

"The Brotherhood no longer exists."

"There's a family tradition, anyway, that assures us of its ability to produce some excellent examples of the old-fashioned, conventional ghost. A very great aunt of mine, for instance, once ventured alone into this room and was met by a stalwart being who scowled at her from under his brown hood and waved her majestically out of his presence."

"That's the kind of ghost one likes to hear about and see," commented David.

"It didn't please my aunt particularly. The fright prostrated her for months. Other imaginative ancestors have heard the monks chanting together, and seen spectral lights moving about here at midnight."

"You speak as if you believed it all."

"I can't be defrauded of my family traditions."

"How queer it is!" exclaimed Una, who had been wandering about the room and now rejoined Harold and David before the fireplace. "I like it, even if it is dirty. Why have you broken your rule and brought us here, Uncle? And why do you talk as if you believed in the Stoneleigh ghosts? You know you don't."

"Ghosts!" he ejaculated. "I have been making some experiments recently. I thought you might be interested in them."

"Experiments in ghosts," ruminated David, who believed Leighton capable of anything.

"Yes," said the old man, enjoying his bewilderment. "My ghosts may be different from those you have in mind. If you have followed the recent developments in psychology you probably know that there are ghosts attached to the living, whatever the case may be in regard to the dead."

"No, I never heard that."

"Not in those words. 'Ghosts' is not a term used by the scientist. It involves a medieval superstition. But I am interested in things more than in words, and I am not afraid to say that we have been rediscovering ghosts."

"Uncle, don't talk enigmas--or nonsense," remonstrated Una.

"I confess, sir, I don't follow you," added David.

"Did you ever feel that you had lost yourself?" asked Leighton abruptly.

"I don't understand."