: TH6 TWO LHNCROFTS "W: ''■-., LI B RARY OF THE UN IVERSITY Of ILLINOIS e/2& Nil THE TWO LANCROFTS THE TWO LANCROFTS BY C. F. KEARY AUTHOR OF "A MARIAGE DE CONVENANCE ! IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON JAMES R. OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO. 45, Albemarle Street, W. i893 [All rights reserved] 1A THE TWO LANCROFTS. CHAPTER L Lr> ^ " How old is your son ? " " Willie, oh, Willie ? Let me see. l7cm THE TWO LANCEOFTS. 97 « bella Napoli ! O bella Napoli ! " the man drawled out through his nose. A woman half walked, half danced up to Willie, and held out her tambourine in her left hand towards him. He gave a penny, and having thus paid his footing stood still for a moment to listen ; there were some half a dozen other shadowy figures listening too ; the street was so dark that he positively had not seen them at first. All seemed strangely fantastic yet strangely familiar. And gradually the music, so to call it, working upon him, and playing upon his sudden onslaught of despondency or despair, his thoughts began to run towards versification. An uncaught rhyme went before him keeping tune to his footsteps as he walked on again. It was set to a sad measure. " Cease to complain," it began. And all up Arundel Street, across the Strand, which was ablaze, and westward up Wellington Street (for now he shrank from the sight of squalor, and took only the lighted streets) he got no further VOL. I. H 98 THE TWO LANCROFTS. than this, " Cease to complain." " Not much poetry in that ; " and yet it was somewhere. When he got to New Oxford Street, his ideas began to flow somewhat. The despair itself had left him ; the echo of it only remained. He went on now with quite a glow of excite- ment, so that by the time he reached JS~ew Ormond Street he was almost in a perspiration, and his hand trembled as he fitted his latch-key into the lock. He could hardly wait till he had got out his manuscript-book, and written down the verses which he had composed on the way ; and he read them to himself over and over again before he went to bed, with always fresh delight. He felt he had made a new advance in poetry-writing. For all the time the varied sensations of his walk, the solemn echoing streets, the flaring lamps, the silent dark flowing river, the shrouded figures in the courts seemed to combine and form a chorus to his verse. But the next morning all these sensa- tions had faded away. He took out his THE TWO LANCROFTS. 99 MS. book, and read what he had written. " Cease to complain," it ran, — Cease to complain. Eternity Is not filled up : for you and me Are mansions in that silent House Still left apart, remote, untrod. No myriad-throated roar shall rouse The ear once luDed in that abode. And this our hour of fume and fret Is running on the sands of Time. A million such did this beget, And there shall be a million yet ; But we must bear this one alone. Cease then, brother, from your moan. But most because complaint is vain, Cease to complain. Alas ! They were sadly commonplace, he thought. And there was the dull round before him again. Still— yes. He had, he decided in the event, been in a measure inspired. And though the chief effect of this inspiration was to make him see what rubbish were, " Nature, all thy ways are beautiful,'' and the like, that surely was something. He would persevere in trembling hope. Had not Mr. Sloane-Jarvis promised to come and look him up in London. Ho would help him and advise. h 2 CHAPTER VII. Beverley had been heard to assert, " that Lancroft is an awfully clever fellow, you know ; he's read a lot." But Clay thought him rather a lout. He had nearly upset them in Sunbury lock, and broken one of the rowlocks of the boat which Clay and Beverley owned between them. Mr. Ebsthwaite did not consider him the most promising of the new clerks he had had to deal with, and was sur- prised to learn from Mr. Knowles that he had been reckoned clever at school. The truth is, however, that Mr. Ebs- thwaite, Clay, Hanbury, and many more of the clerks of the ILL. P., if they were in a manner hostile to Willie Lancroft, were so only because they had been so ready to make friends with him. Now, because he had not understood their advances, THE TWO LANCROFTS. 101 fchey thought him stuck-up, eccentric, a queer card. He had a vague feeling that they did not like him, that they were not worth the trouble or the loss of dignity involved in gaining their good opinion. And yet there was much music, excellent voice in each of the beings by whom he was surrounded, if Willie had had the art to make it speak. In Hanbury, for example, son of a poor Devonshire clergy- man of family, poor and proud, and of an excellent wit withal : in Pine, who was romantically in love with the daughter of an inn-keeper on the Thames, and who, ashamed of the sincerity of his passion, tried to conceal the true history of the affair (which was simple enough) under mvsterious hints of Lotharian adventure ; in Beverley, in Clay even. Each had his claim of the interest which belongs to all human nature. Beverley alone remained Lancroft's friend ; more at first through his inherent good nature than from any special attraction towards the new clerk. Against all unfavourable judgments, 102 THE TWO LANCROFTS. however, was to be set the undoubted fact of Willie's strength. In rowing it could not be denied that he made a boat go, though his style, which had been acquired in sea rowing, did not adapt itself readily to the Thames. And when the days of rowing passed, Willie became conspicuous among the bank football-team on the rare occasions when, during the short months, it found time to play. Now the months were beginning to lengthen again, and Willie had nearly completed his first half-year at the bank. . . . . • But where in the meantime was Mr. Sloane-Jarvis ? It was on him more than on any other mortal or thing that Willie's secret hopes rested. But months had passed on and he had not come to " look up" his old friend. Willie had heard from him once, and replied. He had said in his letter that he was going back to Oxford after Christmas (he was a Fellow of All Souls now). He should most likely be in town in the Christmas vac. THE TWO LANCROFTS. 103 "Would Lancroft be there during any of the time ? (Alas ! too certainly he would be there. For the Union-London-and-Provincial gave but one fortnight's holiday a year to its younger employes. If Willie could get home for Christmas day, returning to town the evening of the following Sunday, that was the utmost holiday he could ex- pect.) But the Christmas vacation came and went, and no Sloane-Jarvis appeared upon the scene. The spring following "Willie had a visitor of a different, but a very welcome, kind in the person of his younger sister. The affairs of the Lan- croft family were found to be in a worse condition than was expected — than was expected at any rate by the widow and children of the deceased. The landlord allowed them to surrender their lease of the Abbey, and they were now settled in a cottage in Speilby St. Peter's, the adjoin- ing parish. One of the girls, it was decided, would have to think of earning 104 THE TWO LANCROFTS. her livelihood ; and after consultations with Milicent Forbes in person and by letter, it was settled that Charlie should come to London to cram up for a " Cam- bridge intermediate." Accordingly, she took up her quarters with her brother in New Ormond Street. . . • • • Charlie could hardly believe it was real her first evening in Ormond Street, this rapture of an installation with Willie. To be ensconced in that room — his, their room — to be pouring out his tea herself, to have no one set in authority over her, to know that hours would pass — two hours at any rate — before they would either of them think of going to bed ; that another evening would follow this evening and another that ; that they might talk to their hearts' content : it was more bliss than one human being could bear. Her bright blue eyes shone — they were small but very bright and blue : Willie's were larger, more grey and more solemn — her face flushed and THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 105 glowed beneath the rich brown of its sea- air tint. Over their tea they began to exchange the news. " Oh, Willie," Charlie cried, " I forgot to tell you Uncle Godfred's been made a canon." "No! has he?" answered the other. " I suppose he's awfully pleased ; isn't he ? Those Battersbys are quite the swells of the family now. In old days when they were at All-Syston we used to swagger over them like anything. I remember our taking them out for a sail once, and Hope got in such a funk. At least, he turned most awfully white. It may have been sea-sickness really, but Bob and I chose to say it was funk. He wanted to fight me afterwards, but Bob said that I was two years younger, and he would fight him if he liked." And Willie's face grew grave at this remembrance of his elder brother, who had died eight years ago. " Didn't he cut you once very badly ? " 106 THE TWO LANCROFTS. " That was at All-Syston the next year, just before — It wasn't a fight, though," Willie went on more briskly, to drive away sad thoughts ; " he got into a rage when we were making a house in the sandstone rock and hit me over the head with a spade." " How horrid of him ! I wasn't there then. Didn't Hope live in these rooms once?" " Rather ! Mrs. Bennett tells awfully queer things about him." " Well, he is very queer, isn't he ? You know he never writes to Battersby — not even to Edith — and they don't know in the least what he's doing." " I fancy he is a rum sort of chap." " But what sort of things does your old lady tell you about him ? " " Oh, well, I don't know anything very particular. He was an awfully lazy chap for one thing — used to lie in bed some- times till the afternoon." " He was rather dirty as a boy, wasn't he ? I know Carry and you used always to say so." THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 107 " Well, I should think he was rather. Well, in fact sometimes he stayed in bed the whole day and smoked nearly all the time, so this old lady, Mrs. Bennett says. He's most awfully fond of smoking, she says." " That's w r hat he got into such a row about at school — at Marlborough — wasn't it?" " Y — yes — I believe it was. Sometimes he was tremendously hard up, Mrs. Ben- nett says, and hadn't got enough money to go out and get his dinner." " Poor fellow ! How dreadful ! Did he spend it all, or didn't Uncle Godfred give him enough, or what ? " " I fancy Uncle Godfred kept him pretty tight, but that he spent all he had or could get. He used to paint little pic- tures for shops, she thinks ; and she says he wrote letters or something, but I don't quite know what she means." " Only fancy ! It must have been rather fun though," mused Charlie, settling her elbows on the table and 108 THE TWO LANCROFTS. looking with rapturous eyes into the fire. " Yes, I daresay it was rather. Then he knew he had the hundred or two hun- dred pounds or whatever it was coming to him when he was of age," her brother said, with a sigh. " Do you often go over to Battersby ? " he went on, to change the subject. But Charlie had gone off on a train of thought of her own. " Uncle Grodfred always seemed so very nice," she said. " We used to admire him so much — don't you remember? — when we were children, and mamma and Carry do still tremendously . . . No, I don't go there very often. Carry goes oftener than I do ; she's more Edith's friend, of course, and it costs money to be always going." " Everything costs money, unluckily," said Willie, growing discontented. " It's much jollier being here," said Charlie, still in her enraptured tones. " I say, Willie," she added, after a THE TWO LANCROFTS. 109 moment's pause, " do you — do you write any poetry now ? " " Oh, well — sometimes." " I ivish you'd read me some." " Oh, I don't think I can." M Oh, do, will you ? Do you remember that — that sonnet you read to me last spring sitting on the rock at Hardy's Point. It was just two months before father died," and her voice dropped into gravity for a moment. " Nature, all thy works are beautiful, it began ; and then there was something about — I know the verse ended — " " It wasn't ' works,' as it happens," said Willie, testily. " That was a beastly one." " But it must be so difficult to write a sonnet," said Charlie, soothingly. " No, not a bad sonnet." " But that wasn't bad, I'm sure, Willie. I thought it extremely pretty." " Pretty I " ejaculated Willie, with scorn. "Well, it wasn't even pretty." 110 THE TWO LANCEOFTS, " Do read me some more," said Charlie, fearing she was getting on the wrong tack. "No, I don't think I can. ... Oh, well, perhaps I might." " Oh, do ; will you ? That's a dear," and Charlie jumped at his neck. " But we'll get rid of these things first." " Oh, Willie ! How splendid it is being here in London," said Charlie. And for Charlie this splendour never wore off. Every morning to get up — no matter though she got up very early — and to remember that there were no household regulations to be obeyed. Charlie did not say to herself " no family prayers ; " but it was family prayers that she chiefly had in mind. Then to come down into Willie's room, that paradisaical room of a quaint shape, to pour out his coffee, to walk a little way with him towards the city before she went to her coach in Gower Street. . . . She had, by the influence THE TWO LANCEOFTS. Ill of her uncle with the learned Bishop of Lincoln, obtained leave to read in the Reading Room of the British Museum, that solemn temple of learning over which is spread a hush and a solem- nity like those of a church service, and under whose roof all sounds have a hollow echo as under the roof of a cathedral. There many of her mornings were passed. She walked out to meet her brother somewhere about Holborn Viaduct — for the days were light till six and after — and together they would go sometimes to dinner at home, not seldom to some dining-room in Holborn or the Strand. Willie had an instinctive dislike to taking her where there might be a chance of encountering any of his brother clerks, so that their dinners abroad involved the search for fresh dining-places. Then there were the pits of the theatres to be visited. Of these Willie was begin- ning to be au fait, but they were an un- imaginable delight to his sister. 112 THE TWO LANCftOFTS. One Saturday afternoon when the brother had got away earlier than usual, and they were standing in a queue in the Strand waiting for the doors to be opened, Uncle Grodfred, without seeing them, passed close by in company of another cleric in gaiters, and with a rosette on the front of his hat. Uncle Grodfred himself wore a rosette, but not the gaiters. Later on in the evening, as the two sat at dinner, they referred to this in- cident. " I say, what would Uncle Godfred say if he could look in on us now ? " said Charlie, with delight — " Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor." and she was so delighted with herself that she went on quoting though her mouth was full — " Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory on their tomb no trophies raise, Where in the " " What is it, Willie ? In the vault some- thing I know ; oh, yes, — THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 113 " Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The anthem — something — swells the notes of praise." And she laughed, and then spluttered. Willie in his turn began to quote in parody — " Nor you, great guns, impute to us the fault, he began, " If not for us proud cooks their pastries raise, No gilded menials wait to hand the salt, And knives, bone-handled, cut the homely braize. ' braize ' is poetical for braized beef, you know. That's what we're eating." " Oh, I say, Willie, you are clever. But it should be ' pampered menials,' I am certain." VOL. I. CHAPTER VIII. " You wouldn't read me some poetry to- night, would you ? " Charlie said, in a coaxing voice, when they were established again by their own fireside. " My own ? No, certainly not," said her brother. " Then any sort." "Any sort's just the same to you, Longfellow, or Tennyson, or Spenser, or any of the beggars." " No, of course it isn't. You know I don't care for Longfellow, Willie. Oh, hang it" (there came a knock at the door), " is that tea ? " " Please, sir, please, miss," said the slavey, " there's a gentleman wants to see you." "May I come in?" said a kind and THE TWO LANCROFTS. 115 sonorous voice, with possibly an excessive heartiness in it. The brother and sister had time to exchange one ,look. Then their tall uncle strode into the room. " How cosy you look here,'* he said, when he had kissed Charlie and shaken hands with her brother, looking round the room. Nobody could say that Mr. G-odfred Lancroft ever ceased to be him- self ; but there were shades of change in his manner. With young people, when he was in a good humour, he sometimes had an aggressive heartiness which the older ladies of his congregation would hardly have recognized as his. " How are you, Willie ? Well, Charlie ! You two are having a fine time, I'll be bound. I'll take off my coat, if you'll just lend a hand. Thanks," and he pulled up his stock with his left hand. "A fine time, I expect. I saw your mother, Charlie. She sent her love to you both. Carry is coming to stay with us at the end of the week. Edith's got i 2 116 THE TWO LANCROFTS. a lawn-tennis party or something. Rather too cold, I should say, for that sort of thing yet. . . . Tea ? Yes, I should like some tea. But don't put yourself out if you weren't going to have it. Nice cosy little room, upon my word. I wish we had had you at Battersby last week, Willie," he said, presently. " It was the last match of the season, Battersby fifteen against Rearsby. Do you still keep — " But here tea came in. " These rooms were Hope's, you know," said Charlie, as she gave her uncle his cup ; and she looked at him rather hard as she did so. " Yes ; so they were," he said. There was a perceptible change in his voice. Then he was silent. " Have you heard from him lately ? " Charlie continued. " 'No, I've not. He's very bad about writing, I must say — too bad, much too bad. It worries Edith a good deal. It's really very selfish, very — No ; I'm sorry about it," he said again, in a manner which THE TWO LANCROFTS. 117 the older ladies of his congregation would have recognized. " You've been made a canon, haven't you, Uncle Godfred ?" Willie asked, try- ing in vain to shake off the boyish feeling which he always had when in his uncle's presence. " Yes, yes, only an honorary canon ; no grist to the mill, unfortunately," and Uncle Godfred returned to his old hearty manner. " Thanks ; no more, no more ; though it's capital cake. Do you do Willie's housekeeping now, Charlie? Well, well," he said after they had talked a little while longer. " I ought to be getting on my way," and he rose from his chair. " Getting on satisfactorily at the bank, I hope, Willie. Bousfield tells me that there's a first-rate chance for anyone who really shows — er — capacity. And you did so well at Rugby, I've no doubt you'll get — er — get to the top of the tree in no time," and he turned to take up his great-coat, perhaps with the object of precluding any reply to this last 118 THE TWO LANCROFTS. remark. As he made his final adieux he added — ■ " You'll be home in a month or two for your holiday, I suppose ; won't you, Willie ? You must be sure to pay us a visit. Perhaps — it's possible — Hope will be over." " I only get a fortnight," said Willie, with a touch of sullenness. " Only a fortnight ? Dear me ; that's rather short commons, isn't it ? I suppose that's just at first. Well, good-night. Good-night, Charlie dear. You look most flourishing ; I shall be glad to tell your mother. Of course I shall go and see her directly I get back, almost. I can find my way out, I daresay. Oh, well, thanks. It is a little dark in the passage." (The lamp smelt abominably of para ffm ; but he did not make any remark on that.) " That's right. Now let me see, Holborn lies over there, doesn't it ? Oh, there, yes, of course. Oh, I shall find my way all right ; thank you very much. Good- night." THE TWO LANCROFTS. 119 Neither the brother nor the sister could have told precisely what impression this visit had left in their minds ; and what is perhaps strange, they never com- pared notes — The only thing Charlie said was — " I wonder if there is really any chance of Hope turning up at Battersby this summer. It would be rather fun to see what he's like now." 11 Yes, wouldn't it? " said her brother. • • ■ < • Charlie stayed and stayed. No poetry was written during these days. But together the brother and sister explored many stately avenues and shady pleasant by-paths of literature. Willie bought Elia's Essays, which were new to him ; and the brother and sister as they read them thought of themselves as another Charles and Mary Lamb. Then Charlie had her books of history to get up ; and many were the discussions, biographi- cal, philosophical, which arose out of these. Willie knew little of modern 120 THE TWO LANCROFTS. history ; but for the classical part he would read and translate passages of Livy, and so rub up his Latin a little, which was already beginning to get a trifle rusty. And they explored, too, all the outs and ins of the London streets, marking out fresh routes and tracing their ways upon the map ; up through the squalid regions to the north, till they reached the bustle of Islington ; or wandering round the dark Regent's Park to acres and acres of solid respectability — or what has all the look of it — in the regions beyond ; or fronting the glare and rowdiness of the Strand ; or the magic beauties of the Thames Embankment ; the mysterious silence of the city ; the unearthly activity of the East-end. But on Sundays they would — sometimes (but not always) intermitting their religious observances for that purpose — change the character of their walks by making long rambles into the country. At first there had been nothing but the faint beginnings of spring to greet their THE TWO LANCROFTS. 121 eyes ; tlie grass that had put on a livelier green, the colt's-foot under the hedges, the curled spikes of the lords and ladies in the woods here and there. Then the primroses began to. show, and the woods became white with windflowers ; and there were patches of cuckoo-flowers over the meadows. Until at last, in the Kent and Surrey woods, they found all the shadowy places turning blue with the purple-blue of the hyacinths, and they would come home of an evening laden with spoils, of hyacinths, of red-robbin, of daisies, of multitudinous grasses and tendrils ; young hops, bryony just begin- ning to grow ; the beautiful young leaves of the oak all red, and the sycamore purple brown. Under Charlie's skil- ful arrangement their little room looked like a bower for three days afterwards ; and Susan anathematized them under her breath. After three months' coaching, Charlie went up for her examination and passed, and then went home. But when she had 122 THE TWO LANOROFTS. gone Willie continued the country walks which they had instituted together. He took longer stretches still, now that he was alone, straight out of London for twenty miles, for thirty sometimes, till even his strength was exhausted, and he had to find his way to the nearest rail- way and to come back to London with a third-class company of half-drunken cadgers, bird-catchers, fern-diggers, fishermen, noisy boys, who crowded into the carriage when they got nearer town, with their still noisier sweethearts. Then, when he had got back to his dim lodgings, and had placed in water the accumulated spoils of branches and flowers, all the mingled sensations of the day would rush back upon him, till he was seized by a kind of vertigo. The very commonplaceness of the streets and the street lamps seemed fraught with meaning for him, and vague reminis- cences of all he had read, scraps of knowledge long forgotten, and other scraps picked up yesterday, came together THE TWO LANCEOFTS. 123 to produce a silent turmoil in his brain. With, these reminiscences mingled the scent of the honeysuckle and the meadow- t/ sweet, which recalled again the vast sum of country life as he had known it in all his past years till this year, its thousand different sounds — of cocks crowing, of groaning wains, of roaring smithies with the clink, clink of the hammer on iron, of winds and brooks, of the distant hum of a threshing-machine sounding like the wind through a forest of fir trees, and then again, as the ground tone to all this many- voiced harmony, the eternal sonorous voice of the sea. As he sat — as he had learnt to do — sipping his w r hisky and water in the evening after such a day's walk, the turmoil of these thousand voices grew only the greater and yet more clearly marked, with more of meaning in it. A conviction would grow with it that he, Willie L an croft, did not belong to this present time nor to his actual surroundings ; that he was a part of some antique spirit, some perennial 124 THE TWO LANCROFTS. essence of things. The vast World Spirit, the antique Pan-Theos had, he fancied, breathed him into life for a moment, to float there a brief second clothed in flesh, and then to disappear again into the essence whence he came. " The earth hath bubbles as the water hath, And we are of them " as he quoted with alteration to suit his present mood, and in an exquisite melan- choly, " The earth hath bubbles as the water hath. Soon, soon, shall I sink back into this primal essence of things which manifests itself in all these sights and sounds — in winds and floods, in the chants of birds, in all the voices of human toil." " But what of the voices of toil and of pleasure here in London ? " came the sudden thought; " ' of fifteen-fourteen- nine ? ' of ' London and Westminster I differ from you ? ' " and a reminiscence came to him of Gill, one of the clerks, as he had heard him on Saturday morning THE TWO LANCROFTS. 125 as lie went into the bank, "Ai was awfully cut larst naight." He drove this obstinate question away. This was a mere discordant note in the harmony of the world. And vaguely, but with more meaning than heretofore, he began to roll in his mind the concep- tion of the great epic of Nature which had always haunted him. It was to take the form of the Spirit of Nature, of the Pan-Theos (he ignored his genders in order to give a double meaning to the word), manifesting itself in the lives of mankind through generation after gener- ation. He was deep in Keats at the time. The majestic blank verse of Hyperion, he determined, was the fittest to express this grand, this universal epic. And for some time after this Willie hammered on under a new inspiration and in a new style. Then one day he read over all he had written — he had bought a new note-book for that special purpose — and put it all aside. He did not burn it, but he locked it up at the bottom of his lowest drawer. 126 THE TWO LANCROPTS. For a time all his poetical effusions followed suit. They were locked up and abandoned. . . • • • But meanwhile "Willie grew more accustomed to his life. His fellow-clerks were less uncongenial to him. He threw himself once more vigorously into the sports in which he had been distinguished at school and at home — football, boxing, rowing, in all which his weight and great personal strength told in his favour. And the succeeding years rolled by more placidly, if more monotonously, than this first one had done. CHAPTER IX. It was six years after the events recorded in the first chapter of this book, the funeral of Mr. Robert Lancroft, the interment of the fine prospects of his son. Edith Harwood sat alone in her little drawing-room, with a certain palpitation of the heart which she did not attempt to conceal from herself. She was momentarily expecting the arrival of her brother, Hope. It was such an age since she had seen him ; and, though it was Hope who had deserted her, not she her brother, still the sense of his old supre- macy was strong in her, and she could not help dreading just a little the judg- ment which his keen eyes would pass on her and her surroundings. JSTot that it really mattered ; for now Edith's thoughts, 128 THE TWO LANCROFTS. as they always did after each short flight, came back with a delicious sense of security to the certain fact of her hus- band, the fact that she was married happily — this last was, perhaps, the essence of her sense of happiness and peace. (There are some brides to whom marriage means the husband ; others to whom the husband means the marriage.) Whoever else might have failed in the great enterprise of a woman's life, she had conspiciously succeeded. Hope might pretend to think as he chose, but he would be as glad as anybody that his sister had married a gentleman. Edith looked round the room ; it did not matter that it was only .a smallish room and that they lived on Craven Hill ; for was not her husband the brother of the squire of Battersby? Nobody could get behind that fact. And wasn't he, moreover, a splendid specimen of the English gentle- man ? Hope, in fact, must admire Berrie ; but what would Berrie think of Hope ? In spite of herself, Edith could THE TWO LANCROFTS. 129 not help being a little glad that her brother had been out of the way almost entirely since Frank Harwood had come to live at the Park. And at this hint her memory began nnbidden to draw a picture of the many ways in which she and Hope had drifted apart in thought, in plans, in ideas, in habits since the old days when whatever their stepmother thought right stood by that mere fact condemned in their eyes. "Ah ! there it is ! " Edith said to her- self. She heard the hansom stop before the door ; she could almost distinguish Hope's step upon the pavement, and his very ring had something in it which she knew again. " Dear Hope ! What fun it will be meeting again ! " She had cried once bitterly over that desertion of his, as she remembered now with a sort of wonder. And then, once more, as she went out upon the landing, she drove away all her trepidation by the thought of her tall, goodlooking husband. The next moment Hope had taken his VOL. I. K 130 THE TWO LANCROFTS. sister by both shoulders, and she had put her hands on his, and they had kissed each other two or three times, and he was just the same ; she even recognized the old smell of tobacco. Dear little Hope ! How short he seemed now ! And Edith was half inclined to laugh, and half to cry. She gave some direc- tions to the maid, not minding that Hope had got his arm round her waist — she would have minded immensely if it had been her husband — and the brother and sister went into the drawing-room to- gether in this fashion. Of a sudden she had ceased to be a wife, and became a girl again. " "Well, Edie, how are you ? " Hope repeated, with satisfaction, looking at her once more. " How are you, dear ? " she smiled back radiantly. " And why have you made yourself so scarce all this time ? ' Edith at once fell into a different tone of speech from that she had used of late. Hope was sending one of his keen THE TWO LANCEOFTS. 131 glances round the room. "I" — then, " G-ot any brats yet ? " he said, suddenly, turning back to his sister. " Hope, how can you say such things ? " Edith coloured scarlet. " Oh ! I beg pardon, I'm sure. Didn't know there w^as any harm in talking of children under that name. I ought to have done, of course. But, somehow, things slip out of your head ! " He had his queer smile that Edith remembered so well. But his face beamed once more as he said, " Come, I say, you are looking well. How's hubbie ? I ought to have asked after him — " " Hubbie ! As if—" Edith began in- dignantly. " Oh ! I didn't mean to say that you called him ' hubbie.' But to tell you the truth, at that moment I'd forgotten his name — Ber — Bert." " Bernard." " Bernard. Yes, I'd got it. Do you call him Bernard now, or Bernie, or what?" K 2 132 THE TWO LANCROFTS. " Berrie sometimes," Edith said, smil- ing, and a soft look coming into her eyes, which Hope, who saw everything, did not miss. " Berrie. Oh ! that's it— is it ? Berry pretty, I'm sure. He's all right; that's clear. You're looking first-rate. How's my reverend father and the mother person ? " " Oh, Hope ! " Edith said, in a voice half -anxious, -half-expostulatory. " You must go down to Battersby this time." " Oh, I'm going. Don't frighten your- self ! " . He was standing one pace away from her now, with his hands in his pockets. " I'm the prodigal son, if you like. I should certainly have spent my portion, if I'd ever had one to spend. But I tell you," he went on, screwing up his eyes, "I've been doing rather well lately. I've got my pockets full of chinks." (He rattled his money as he said this.) " And last year I had almost to pawn my shirt." THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 133 " No ? How dreadful ! Why, we heard that you had been so praised last year in — " " Fact — oh, well — I'd things to pay off," he answered, rather evasively. " That was why I couldn't come to your wed- ding. . . I was worse the year before though," he went on. "Poor dear! Were you really? Why didn't you ask father for some money ? He would have sent you some, I'm sure. Why didn't you tell me, Hope dear ? " " Oh, don't mind me," and again he put his hand on his sister's shoulder, " I like it. I'm going to have some fun now I'm over here. I've not been in London with any money in my pocket for I don't know how .long. I shall faire la noce, as we say, if you know what that means. Only you don't," he added, half to him- self. " Not exactly. Go to a wedding, does it mean ? Who is going to be married ?" "I am — some of these days." 134 THE TWO LANCROFTS. " No, not really, Hope. You never — I do hope — " Edith could not look any- thing but uneasy. The more satisfactory a sister's marriage, the less, very often, does she anticipate a like satisfaction from the marriage of her brother. Hope laughed a little grimly. " No, you idiot ! I only said some of these days. You do not hope, you know that well enough ; you fear. However, Hope does you." " Hope, I wish you'd be sensible. Seriously, are you thinking of getting married ? " " I've put you in a blue funk," Hope chuckled. " No, seriously I'm not." " You will tell me first, if you ever do think of that, won't you, Hope ? " " Oh, damn it ! " he shook himself free from the hand Edith had placed on his coat-lappet. " Now you've got that idee fixe that I'm going to be married, nothing on earth will ever drive it out of your head again. I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT. What shall I swear by ? I say," THE TWO LANCEOFTS. 135 he said, suddenly quieting down, " I'll take you and Bertram, Bernard, Berrie, to a theatre to-morrow night." " Oh, Hope ! I hope you won't mind very much. We've got a few people coming to dine here to-morrow night." " What ! you've got biled gents with plastered shirt-fronts, nude female busts, and all that show, as we say over there." " Hope, you really are very coarse," said Edith, changing her tone. " So will your dinner be course, and many of 'em. Well, if you insist on ex- pecting me to sit down with biled Chris- tians of that sort, I should like to know how you're going to rig me out ? " " But haven't you got any dress clothes ? " Edith said, in a tone almost of horror. " I believe I have, rotting somewhere in a cupboard in my studio. But I can't get them over by to-morrow night. Well, Berrie must lend me a suit of clothes ; that's all about it." " Oh, Hope ! my husband's twice as 136 THE TWO LANCKOFTS. big as you are. What are we to do ? "We heard that you were getting to be quite a distinguished man in Paris." " And of course you thought the mea- sure of distinction is the number of times one puts on one's dress clothes. How rich ! That's English all over." He threw back his head, and gave a short laugh. There was a slam of the front door. " Oh ! there's Berrie," she cried, her whole face changing, and she went to the door. " Hope's come," she called out ; and anon her tall husband entered. He was dark and close-shaven, after the manner of barristers, and had a flexible mouth, which looked good-humoured but not too energetic. He was over six feet in height, but not proportionately strong, and was not given to much physical exercise — " soft," as his brother Frank called him, using the word in the stable — not the schoolboy — sense. When the tw T o men had shaken hands, Edith, a little nervously, returned to the difficulty about the next day's dinner. THE TWO LANCROFTS. 137 " Berrie, it's a great pity, Hope hasn't brought his dress clothes with him. What shall we do ? " " Don't you bother about me ; I shall manage somehow," Hope said, standing very square with his hands in his jacket pockets. " Change clothes with a waiter, if you have any waiters, and send him home to get another suit. But what in- duced you," he went on, looking at both his interlocutors, " to turn a lot of whited sepulchres on to me ? What will the beggars talk about ? Who are they ? Of course I shan't know any of them." Bernard smiled, and began to think to himself that he should like this brother- in-law of his. " Oh, yes," said Edith ; " I forgot to tell you ; Carry and Willie are coming." " Carry ! You mean the Speilbys ? Carry — she's a dear. I saw her four years ago when I was at Battersby the last time. And Willie, let me see — " " You must remember Willie Speilby. 138 THE TWO LA.NCROFTS. Why it was him you hurt with a spade at All-Syston," said Edith. " Of course, I remember him well enough. I've seen him long since then — at Uncle Robert's funeral, par exemple. .... By Jove, what a row I got into for that ! " he went on reflecting, " and, golly, how it did bleed ! I was awfully delighted with myself at first, I re- member ; and then I got in a funk when it went on bleeding. I stuck him under the pump, and pumped till it stopped. Rather sharp for a little beggar of twelve or thirteen. I don't suppose he was more than ten. He got nearly suffocated while I was pumping. However, he took it all right — didn't make any row or anything, as far as I know. It was Nelson who told." " You wouldn't find it so easy to cut his head open now," said Bernard. " He's a head taller than you are." " No, of course," Hope nodded back. " I've seen him since then. . . . How we used to hate those Speilbys when we THE TWO LANCROFTS. 139 were kids, didn't we, Polly ?" lie went on, pretty well ignoring his brother-in- law, who heard this sobriquet of his wife for the first time. " They were always bragging about the sea, and their rowing and fishing ; don't you remember ? Bob was such a strong beggar, you hadn't a chance with him. Do you re- member how we thrashed him with nettles once, when he had slipped down into a ditch outside Parker's ten-acre, and then cut off ? By Jove, I was in a funk till we got indoors." These last remarks were almost of the nature of a soliloquy, for Bernard Harwood had gone out of the room, and Edith had followed him rather anxiously with her eyes, not being sure of the impression which her brother was producing. " At any rate," she reflected, " Hope isn't a nobody." Her brother had made last year a sudden leap into something like fame as an illustrator in black and white. For years he had struggled on as only art 140 THE TWO LANCROFTS. students in Paris know how to struggle on, always with a big canvas on hand, and always ready to pick up little jobs of work to put bread into his mouth. The big canvases scarcely ever found their way into an exhibition. But suddenly some drawings which he had sent to the Black and White had attracted notice. A large Parisian publisher, who was undertaking a new enterprise in illus- trated novels, was struck by them. The result was more than a succes d'estime for Hope in the French artistic world. His name was already known in America, and would, in the normal course of things, not require more than six years to become familiar to Englishmen. Even now his relations were beginning to ap- preciate the fact that he might bring them credit, after all. CHAPTER X. It was no dinner-party. Perhaps at the bottom of her heart Edith was not very- anxious to introduce her two cousins to any large circle of her acquaintance. She and the good-natured Carry were on the best of terms ; but they were terms which carried on the cousinship a little sub rosd, Carry's frocks not being so attractive as her character. Fortunately, she was very seldom in town. She had paid Edith one visit since the latter's marriage, and now she had been staying for three weeks or a month with her brother. This visit had forced Willie more under Edith's notice than hitherto. It cannot be said that either had exactly avoided the other. But still a bank clerk — nobody could be expected to rush 142 THE TWO LANCROFTS. forward to receive a bank clerk. Willie on his part had no leanings towards society in those days. Many women had touched his heart or his imagination ; but they were not girls whom " one met" in society, or indeed in any part of this world of sense, for their names were Portia, and Rosalind, and Britomart, and Ethel Newcome, and Constance (Norbert's Constance), and I know not who else beside. The two " Speilbys" were the first to arrive. Edith kissed Carry with so much enthusiasm that she had not time to pay much attention to her brother ; but she did observe with satisfaction that Willie looked quite gentlemanly in dress clothes, though there was rather an unpleasant crease below the collar of his coat. While Willie was looking at some books in a book-slide beside him — a Tennyson, Longfellow, I Promessi Sjoosi, all in ornamental bindings — the door opened, and a short, dark, bright-eyed young man came into the room, whom, for a THE TWO LANCEOFTS. 143 moment, his cousin did not recognize on account of his moustache brushed out in the French fashion. " Now, Edie," said the new-comer, " what do you think of my togs ? Hallo, Carry, is that you ? You've grown, I declare — " " Fatter," Hope was very near adding, but restrained himself. After four years, he reflected, you can hardly resume such familiar terms, even with a female cousin. " And that's "Willie. How are you ? It's longer since I met you, I fancy." " I remember you well enough," said Willie, as they shook hands, " only you looked different, somehow. It's some- thing in the way you w r ear your mous — " But Hope had turned round to his sister by this time. " I say, Polly," he said, " what a howling swell you are ! I encountered a man in brown livery and plated but- tons. They don't supply his semblables at the greengrocer's, do they?" (He used the word semblables as if it were a 144 THE TWO LANCBOFTS. recognized integer of the English vocabu- lary.) " Why, you must have seen him be- fore," Edith said. " He opened the door for you yesterday. Don't you know — " " Never set eyes on him before, that I'll swear." " Then he must have gone out. Oh, yes ! I said he might go to see the Tower. But you certainly have seen him before. It's James, from the Rectory." "No! Is it ?" said Hope. "Didn't recognize him in the least. I thought it was odd his calling me ' Mr. Hope.' But James was a new invention at Battersby when I was there last." " He's going back to-morrow " — and as she said this, Edith turned to take Carry into the conversation — "to be ready for my father and mother when they get back from Strathfeffer. He's only here for a sort of holiday." " Oh, Isee, doing the sights," Hope said. " Those flights upon the banks of Thames, That did so take Eliza and our James. THE TWO LANCROFTS. 145 Who says that?" he went on, turning to Willie. " I — I — forget," Willie stammered, while he smiled. " Ben Jonson, I believe," Hope said, a touch of pedagogy in his manner, which had a quaint far-off flavour of the Rector of Battersby. " You used to be the poet of the family. I thought you would remember all those Johnnies." Willie felt slightly snubbed, but not disagreeably so. He had come prepared to look upon his cousin as a person of coming distinction ; for the Rector of Battersby had made much of his son's success, now that it was an undoubted fact. Willie, therefore, was a good deal impressed by this ready-witted, bright- eyed young man, whose self-confidence contrasted with the nervousness of which he himself was conscious at that moment. He could not fit this Hope on to the one he remembered best, the Hope whom Bob and he had made sea-sick and generally bullied in the old days. vol. I. l 146 THE TWO LANCROFTS. Willie, who had scarcely gone into any sort of London society, and even as a boy at home had always been shy at " parties," was at that moment too nervous to recollect anything very clearly. Edith herself was visibly rather nervous ; only Carry remained placid. Somehow, Willie had a sort of divination of what Edith was thinking about him and about Hope too, in rela- tionship to her husband ; and, though he would not have owned it to himself, he had a sort of mental clinging to Hope, like that which an indifferent swimmer feels in having a stronger and more self- confident one at his side. Bernard Harwood came into the room and shook hands with every one. At the same moment Willie heard a knock and a ring, and his heart-strings tightened, as yours tighten when the dentist's servant singles you out from a roomful of people with a slight beckoning of his or her head, and a low " You, sir." " You haven't told me how my clothes THE TWO LANCROFTS, 147 look," he heard Hope saying to Edith, so as to take in her husband also. " Five shillings for the night, and two pounds deposit," Hope added, turning towards Willie. Edith gave a nervous little laugh, and twisted her pocket-handkerchief. She felt a thousand miles away from herself of yesterday afternoon in that same room, and she glanced up half timidly at her husband. " Turn round," said the latter. Hope spread out his arms like a wax figure, and slowly revolved upon his axis. Harwood looked delighted. " Take care ! " Edith cried, in a terri- fied voice, for at that moment steps were heard on the stairs, and the next James came to the door and announced Colonel and Miss Kirkwhite. Before these had done shaking hands with the host and hostess two other guests were announced, and Willie found himself relegated to a corner, whence he watched as a novice the doings of the different people who l 2 148 THE TWO LAN CROFTS. were grouping themselves in the draw- ing-room. He noticed how, contrary to his preconceived ideas, the different orders of people distributed themselves as their sympathies and interests would naturally teach them to do. Three of the black coats were engaged in a discussion on the hearth-rug ; Edith was talking to a fat and imposing lady who had been announced as Mrs. Tremaine ; and the only two unmarried girls beside Carry had retired together into a corner under a moderator lamp, where Willie could watch the hands of one of them that appeared to be picking her fan to pieces. The only voice that came to him dis- tinctly was that of Hope saying to Carry — " No ! You don't mean to say so ! How rum ! And is the old lady still alive, old Mrs. — " Then there was a movement, a sort of general dispersal of the groups, and a minute after Edith had taken Willie across the room to introduce him to one THE TWO LANCHOFTS. 149 of the young ladies beside the moderator lamp. Willie's shyness allowed him to see no more than that his partner was clad in some soft green material, and that her hair was bright, shading towards golden. She stood up — he offered her his arm. People, he vaguely saw, were moving out of the room. " What shall I say ? " said Willie Lan- coft to himself. " Shall I ask her if she lives in London ? No ; that sounds ab- surd. If she likes London best, or the country ? No ; that will never do. If I'd only been to a theatre or something of that sort lately ! But it's ridiculous to ask her if she's been to something which I've not been to myself. It's the same if I ask her whether she's been abroad this year, or is going, as I've never been abroad myself. How stupid I am ! Carry and I did go to something only the other night, and I cannot for the life of me recollect what it was. And here we are at the top of the stairs and I've not said a word ! " 150 THE TWO LANCROFTS. At that moment lie heard Hope's voice behind him, — " Stop ; you'll get on better if I come to the other side," Hope said ; he had in fact given his left arm to his partner instead of his right. " These stairs are rather narrow. I once saw an old lady- roll down two flights of stone stairs from the top to the bottom, and she wasn't hurt in the least. The first thing she said when they picked her up was — " But what it was Willie never heard, nor what Hope's partner replied. " She was an old lady and very fat," his cousin's voice went on, " and she rolled down like a ball. Imagine ! two flights ! " " How did she get from one flight to the other ? " Willie could not help asking over his shoulder. " Rolled, I suppose," Hope answered, without any gene, speaking away from his partner. " Let me see ; how it was ? When I say two flights, I mean there was a landing in the middle—" THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 151 "What was that?" asked Willie's partner. Willie explained. " I suppose that was in Paris," he added, " as my cousin lives there." At any rate I've said some- thing, he thought. "Is that Mrs. Harwood's brother?" said the girl beside him. " He wasn't at the wedding, was he ? " " No." (How stupid only to say "No;" but there again Hope's voice came upon his ear.) " There was a man I knew, an Irish chap, when — when he was a little fresh you know — would seat himself in a chair, catch hold of it, and roll downstairs backwards from top to bottom, sticking to the chair all the time, and never hurt himself in the least." " Do you mean that he was tipsy ? " said the lady in a shocked voice. " Oh, well, we won't say that ..." and Hope's voice was lost again. Willie was conscious that his partner had said something, but that he had 152 THE TWO LANCEOFTS. quite lost what it was. " Y — yes," he stammered, hoping that the answer might fit the question. " Oh, live there ; " again he caught Hope's voice. " Xow, let me see. Where have we got to go ? Edith told me oppo- site the fire. There, I think that will about see us." " Edith did tell me where I was to sit," Willie reflected, " but I'm sure I forget where it was." And suddenly he found that he and the girl he had taken down were the only people standing up in the room. " I think it must be that side," she said. And he saw that Edith was making signs to him, and that her face was rather flushed, and that James was holding back two chairs. He found himself opposite his cousin. He was glad of that ; for somehow he knew that, if he were near, he should inevitably go on listening all through dinner to what Hope was saying. " It was such a pretty wedding," his THE TWO LANCROFTS. 153 partner went on, continuing a remark which to Willie's confused mind seemed to have been made half an hour ago. And then she nodded across the table. " Ah ! there is one of the bridesmaids," she said. " That ? Oh ! that's my sister." " Do you know, I thought very likely she might be. I see a likeness between you," and she looked at Willie with wide, innocent, pale blue eyes. " But you weren't at the wedding either. Fancy neither Edith's brother nor her cousin being there. How horrid of you ! " " I couldn't get away, or else I would have come," said Willie. " It was one of the prettiest weddings I was ever at," said Miss Kirkwhite. " I suppose I ought not to say so, though, because I was one of the bridesmaids. Your sister and I were so glad that the dresses were blue and white and not straw-colour and white which was what was settled at first, because you see blue 154 THE TWO LANCROFTS. and white suits us very well. I like a country wedding, don't you ? " " I don't think I ever went to a wedding in my life." " No ! Really ! I expect you're very farouche, aren't you ? Your sister said you were very, very clever." (As a matter of fact she was confusing Willie and Hope when she said this.) " I expect you write books or something, don't you ? " " No, indeed, I don't." But Willie blushed with pleasure at the idea of being supposed capable of writing " books." " Almost everybody does write books nowadays though, don't they ? I've got an uncle who writes books. He's tremendously fond of travelling, and he always seems to have such funny adven- tures, and meets such droll waiters and people at the hotels he goes to. Some people seem to be so much luckier than others : I'm sure those funny things never happen to me. I'm sure you'd like to know my uncle. One of his books was THE TWO LANCROFTS. 155 called Diligentia docet. That was tlie name of the first story. That was about a priest and an Englishman. Diligentia means a ' diligence,' doesn't it ? I don't quite remember the story, but I know it was very funny. Are you fond of read- ing ? " " Yes, very," said Willie, with convic- tion. " So am I ; I'm devoted to it. But I ex- pect you'd despise the sort of books I read. I read a great deal of poetry and novels." " Oh, no, not poetry. It's the highest kind of literature there is." " Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that. But lots of people say quite different, don't they — that one ought to read science or history or — " "Nobody says that who understands what poetry really is. Nobody can pre- tend that people's bodies are more inte- resting than their minds. And science gives you one and poetry the other." Willie spoke rather from recollection than conviction. He had heard Mr. 156 THE TWO LANCROFTS. Sloane-Jarvis speak in this way once when he was in discussion with the science master at Rugby. But for his own part he could never have put into words what his feelings were on the sub- ject. " I'm so glad to hear you say that," said Alice Kirkwhite again, rather won- dering what there was to speak so ener- getically about in a matter of taste, but seizing hold upon the adumbration of a moral idea. " Of course no one would say that the body really was more impor- tant than the soul. But I suppose materialists do say that, too, don't they ? It's very dreadful how much we do think of our bodies nowadays," she added. " In some ways, but not in every way," Willie said. " Look how many more people read than used to do, and good writers, like Ruskin for instance — quite poor people, I mean." " But I'm afraid they read a great deal of harm, too," said Miss Kirkwhite, in a grave voice. " I think it's dreadful some THE TWO LANCROFTS. 157 of the atheistical books which are written now, and how they are sold everywhere." " Y — yes," said Willie hesitatingly, for his own beliefs had, like most people's, been, as the phrase is, " disturbed " during the last five years. " Still, all the same," his partner went on, " what is true must always remain true. That's what papa says, and it's a great comfort to think of that, isn't it ? " And this time there was a note of sin- cerity in her voice which was really attractive. JSTot that to Willie Lancroft her voice had ever been unattractive. He had forgotten about the other people in the room. He helped himself to dishes and ate what was in his plate, drank what was in his glasses, mechanically. Now that he had gained courage to look at his partner, he thought how beautifully her neck rose out of its cloud-like setting of soft sea green, how shell-like and deli- cate was her ear : and then the golden- brown hair above that ! It can hardly be 158 THE TWO LANCIiOFTS. said that he took the face in as a whole. A subtle scent pervaded his whole being, and a hubbub of voices was round him. All that was happening was semi-miracu- lous, half-divine. He felt suddenly en- dowed with a perfect faith in goodness and its ultimate triumph, and was trying to translate the feeling into words. But Miss Kirkwhite's neighbour on the other side, a young barrister, Mr. Pro- thero, had asked her a question and she was replying to that. " No. It's a great disappointment to us. But it's such a good appointment that Harry felt he couldn't refuse ; papa thought the same. He'll be in command of a native regiment, with the rank of colonel out there . . . Yes, I have another brother, Havelock. He's at ►Shorncliif. That's very nice for us, isn't it? . . ." Presently Miss Kirkwhite turned back to her partner. " Are you very fond of travelling abroad? " she said to Willie. THE TWO LANCROFTS. 159 " I've never been abroad in my life." " Really ! I and my father have tra- velled a great deal since — since my mother died " (and this last sentence had like one of her previous ones a refreshing touch of natural humanity about it). " I think what I like best is just the setting out. Are you a good sailor ? But of course you can't tell if you've never tra- velled." "I think I should be," said Willie. "I've lived near the sea all my life, and never been sea-sick in boating or any- thing." " Oh, if you've always lived near the sea, I dare say you would not want to travel. I was just going to say that I think the nicest part of going abroad is the beginning, when you first come down to the sea." " Oh, of course, I know that. It's the most delightful thing in the world, the first time you smell the sea, especially when you've been shut up in London for months. It's indescribable." He stopped, 160 THE TWO LANCROFTS. filled with the multitudinous sensations which the subject called up. "We used to live near the sea some years ago, when papa was stationed at Aberdeen." " It's a thing you never forget, really living by the sea with the sound always in your ears. Nothing else makes up for it, I think. . . And the flight of the sea- gulls. . . Sometimes being by the sea makes you wish to travel, and see what's on the other side. But I think more often it doesn't. It's pleasanter to think that it stretches out to the borders of the world. . . ." " But then most people have studied geography, I'm afraid, and know that it doesn't." " Yes, that's the worst of it. It's like what you were saying just now ; that people may know too much. It's like — it's like what Wordsworth says, you know, about — about the Triton." " No I am afraid I don't know. Tell me." THE TWO LANCROFTS. 161 " Don't you know ? It's in that sonnet, which begins" — Willie knew the sonnet by heart in ordinary circumstances, but his mind was a little confused. " Well the part I mean is where he says he'd rather be ignorant — than — than — materialistic you know — that sort of thing — Great God, I'd rather rather be A pagan suckled in a creed out-worn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have — have — glimpses that would make me less forlorn. And then comes in the bit, about Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." These last lines he gave with feeling. But Miss Kirkwhite did not in the least know who were Proteus and Old Triton. " I can see you're very fond of poetry," she said. And, as she could think of no further observation to make at the moment, the conversation came to a pause. VOL. I. m 162 THE TWO LAN CROFTS. Then suddenly Hope's voice broke upon Willie's ear. "Well, you never told me whether Lavinia was married or not ? " Hope was deep in conversation with Edith, who sat upon his left hand, and had turned without much ceremony away from his partner. How curiously different, how commonplace all this must be to Hope. And Willie looked at the girl his cousin had taken down to dinner, Miss Tremaine, a " girl," rather by courtesy. And then two lines of Keats came into his head. Was it a vision, or a waking dream 1 Fled is that music — Do I wake or sleep 1 A feeling of exaltation and of unreality remained with Willie after the ladies had gone, and his cousin came and sat by him. It was as if there were something uncanny about Hope ; and if Willie had analyzed his sensations he would have felt that Hope was some mesmerist who had called up the unreal scene on which his THE TWO LANCftOFTS. 163 eyes now rested. Yet there it was before him ; and it did not change : the candles were burning on the table, Harwood was peeling a pear, and talking to two gentlemen, one of whom sat sideways on his chair and rested his elbow on the table-cloth as he chose a cigarette. . . . "It's the northern counties I'm afraid of," Harwood was saying. " Yes that's it," said the cigarette- smoker, and he leaned back in his chair with that sense of satisfaction, which men always feel in discussing grave political questions, which they secretly know will not leave them a penny richer or poorer whichever way they are decided. ..... Alice Kirkwhite, in a less degree, felt this had been an evening out of the common ; and she took the opportunity after dinner of getting into a friendly talk with Carry Lancroft. On the occasion of the wedding, when she had met Carry for the first and last time, the two brides- m 2 164 THE TWO LANCROFTS. maids had shared a bedroom between them. Edith was talking to Mrs. and Miss Tremaine. " Oh, yes," Carry heard the mother say in her full patronizing voice, " Colonel Kirkwhite and I are quite old friends. He and my brother Charlie knew each other in Africa, when the Inniskillings were out there in '81." She spoke as if everybody must know who her brother Charlie was. And later on at the end of the even- ing, when Mrs. and Miss Tremaine had shaken hands with the host and hostess, and Colonel Kirkwhite had just said, " Well I think we must be going too," she turned to him with a shade more cordiality and said, — " How are you going home ? Because if you and your daughter don't mind squeezing into our little carriage, we could drop you on your way." " Thank you, thank you very much," said Colonel Kirkwhite. " But Earl's Court Road, you know — " THE TWO LANCROFTS. 165 " Well we're in Collingwood Road. It's not a hundred yards out of the way, at any rate. If you're not afraid of the squeeze." Mr. Prothero, the barrister, had already gone off ; and on the other side of the hearthrug, stood Hope and Carry and Willie. " All right ; I'll walk to Queen's Road Station with you," Hope was saying. What a contrast ! Edith was keenly sensible of it ; and she could not help divining too that Hope had offended Miss Tremaine. What a thousand miles she felt from herself in the same room only the day before, when she had delighted in picking up her old slang words and sharing her reminiscences with her brother. • » • • « " Quite a family party apparently," Miss Tremaine said with a touch of disdain, when the four had squeezed themselves into Mrs. Tremaine's brougham. " Could you make out who 166 THE TWO LANCROFTS. they all were ? They were all relations of Mrs. Harwood's, I gather." She wound her skirts more carefully about her knees as she spoke. " Yes, Edith Harwood told me," her mother said ; " they were her brother and two of her cousins." "A fine-looking fellow one of those young men," said Colonel Kirkwhite. " Well I should say the one who took me down — was that the brother or the cousin ? — was decidedly second-rate," said Miss Tremaine. " I don't know how you got on with the other one, he seemed rather heavy in hand." " Yes, he was very," answered Alice Kirkwhite, who was apt to take her opinions from other people. " I like his sister, though," she added. " "Well," said Bernard Harwood, coming back into the drawing-room. " That's over, at any rate. Hope's walking on with your cousins." He went up to his wife, and put both his arms round her. THE TWO LANOROFTS. 167 Edith leant her flushed cheek against his white shirt-front. After all, what did it matter ? she thought. What did anything matter to her who was married and had got Berrie for a husband ? Pro- bably, too, he had never noticed any- thing. Men were so marvellously un- observant. She could feel the beats of his heart as her head nestled against him. How delicious to think that that heart was hers ! The tears of vexation which had been at the back of her eyes turned into tears of a more human kind, and a sense of something like remorse and shame came into her breast. She put her arms round her husband's neck, and drew his lips down to hers. " You darling," he said, when he had kissed her, for he was still very much in love with his wife. And then, seeing the tears on her eyelashes, " But you're tired. Get off to bed with you. I dare- say Hope will want to have a smoke when he comes in. But I shan't be long." 168 THE TWO LANCEOFTS. " How impossible it is for a man to understand the thoughts of a woman," Edith said to herself. • • • • • Hope on his side made his reflections as he walked home from the station. " Decidedly," he said to himself, " I have done right to settle not to stay here. I'm not wanted. "Well ; of course I can take care of myself well enough. I always meant to do that ; everybody has a right to go their own way." (This was the nearest point he got to the admission that it was he who had deserted Edith, and not Edith him.) " Still, I'm a pretty lonely chap now, that's clear." Hope had, in fact, always looked for- ward to the time of his coming back, in triumph, and carrying Edith off with him. That is to say, he had always kept that possibility at the back of his thoughts. Now he imagined that he had fully intended to set up housekeeping with her in Paris. THE TWO LANCROFTS. 1G9 His thoughts turned for a moment to a certain Thyrza Winnstay, an art student, whose acquaintance he had lately made in the French capital. And he thought, too, of the conversation with Edith the day before, and smiled a little sourly to himself. For under Hope's air of bonhomie and Bohemianism there was an observation sometimes preter- naturally keen, and the possibility, at any rate, of feelings preternaturally strong. CHAPTER XI. The next morning Carry, coming down to breakfast, fonnd her brother striding backwards and forwards in the little room, with his finger in a book out of the bookshelf, repeating something or other, she could not catch the words. He stopped short and blushed as soon as he saw her. " Were you making some poetry ? " said Carry, in her friendly way, as she kissed her brother. "~N — no, I was only repeating some Greek verses," her brother answered with the stammer which often came on him. He laid the book open on the table. And, as Carry did not understand Greek, there was no danger of her find- ing out that these verses were in praise THE TWO LANCKOFTS. 171 of Love ; were, in fact, those of a certain very famous chorus from the Antigone, which — who knows how many thousands, of young men ? — have at one time of their lives repeated to themselves when they were, or thought themselves, in love. " I did tell you, didn't I ? " said Carry, in the midst of other talk, " that Miss Kirkwhite asked me to go and see her ? Wasn't it nice of her? I dare say, though, it was your beaux yeux that had most to do with it." Willie changed the subject, and they discussed other details of the dinner and of the Harwood's household which they had not exhausted the night before. . . . For once in his life Willie was glad to hurry off to the bank. He rushed along the street, not seeing where he went ; and all the time he was muttering that chorus over to himself, rolling the heavenly-soft lines over his tongue, — os iv fiaXa-Kcns irapeiats VCaVlSoS €VVV)(€V€.L