"Eh, what? Socialism, did you say? Of course it is Socialism in its n.o.blest form, when--when we get a notice in the 'Daily Liberal,' and without paying for it too! It was none of your cooked-up jobs, carried through with bribery and corruption, let me tell you, it was all fair and above board; Editor's a personal friend of mine, don't you see, and _he_ wouldn't have quoted from my letter if he hadn't thoroughly appreciated it. You can't get over facts with any amount of Socialism; give me facts, that's what I always say," concluded Sir Marcus, happily innocent that all his life his one aim had been to avoid facts and the unpleasant truths they had forced upon him.

"I can hear wheels," said Lady Raleigh, suddenly. As she had made the same remark at intervals during the day, no one paid her any particular attention except Helen, who put out a protecting hand to the tea-table, as if she antic.i.p.ated a rush. This time, however, there was undoubtedly a carriage coming up the drive; and Lady Raleigh rose to her feet unsteadily, and became melodramatic.

"I can feel it is my boy," she said, winding her shawl tightly round her; "come to him, Marcus, come to our long-lost child."

"Don't make a fool of yourself," growled Sir Marcus, bluntly; he had suddenly resigned his position in the middle of the room, and was sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the sofa instead; "he's only been away two years, and there's no more chance of his being lost than there is of your going on a five-mile walk."

He felt he had fired a double shot by his remark; but there came a yell from the children on the doorstep, and his wife swept out of the room with theatrical movements, and Sir Marcus felt more uncomfortable than before.

"Leave him to me, children; let me have my boy's first kiss," cried Lady Raleigh, in the hall.

"Just look," said the practical Helen, from the window: "he has hired Bunce's best trap, and we haven't paid his bill for two quarters."

Lady Joan sat, and turned over the leaves of a magazine with her eyes discreetly lowered, and wished that the means of escape were not so completely cut off, and that she could get into the garden. Family jars were intensely amusing to her critical nature; but after a whole day of them she felt that she could reasonably dispense with any more just now, and, from the Squire's att.i.tude, another storm was evidently brewing.

"Hadn't you better come out, sir?" suggested Digby.

"No, sir, I will not come out," answered Sir Marcus, with a show of determination. "Have I not already told you that I have done with the rascal forever? I meant what I said, sir, and I will not see him nor speak to him; he--he can go to some one else to pay his debts!"

And, unconscious that he had put more feeling into the end of his speech than into anything else he had said, the Squire looked at his son and his daughter as if vaguely imploring them to support him in the step he had taken. In his most impetuous actions Sir Marcus always looked for a supporter. Yet, much as Digby admitted the justice of his father's anger, and much as Helen might censure the prodigal herself, there was too much of the _esprit de corps_ in them that ran through the blood of all the Raleighs and made them a formidable enemy to the outsider, to allow them to acquiesce in the Squire's resentment; and he shifted his ground a little and tried another stratagem.

"Don't you see the trouble and the misery that is coming upon me through the extravagance of this young scamp? How is it you are so short-sighted, so dense about it? I tell you he is _ruining_ me, this Jack you are all so fond of; and in ruining me he is taking the bread out of your own mouths, and out of the mouths of your brothers and sisters. Hey? Do you see now?"

And finding that mercenary argument did not produce the effect he wanted, Sir Marcus fled from the sound of voices coming dangerously near, and beat a sheepish retreat into his library on the opposite side of the hall.

"It is curious," said Digby, in his oratorical way, "how the father can forgive anything but want of solid success. He doesn't care a hang that Jack has been the most popular fellow in the colony, but if he had made his pile and had something to show for his popularity, then he would proclaim it on the housetops. What a curious age it is, and how we love to judge by results! By the way, Jack will have a warm time if the father keeps it up, won't he?"

Even the prophet has to drop into the colloquial sometimes.

"Good thing too, it's what he wants," said the inconsistent Helen; and they both glanced at the expressionless face of Lady Joan as she scanned the article on "Chinese architecture," and they left her to go and join the throng in the porch.

In the library on the other side of the hall stood Sir Marcus, his back to the door and his feet set very square on the hearthrug, trying to drown the noise of welcome in the porch by rustling the newspaper in his hands loudly, while he kept his eyes obstinately fixed on the Premier's speech on fruit-growing for the million.

"Capital speech, capital speech," he said out loud, beginning it vaguely for the third time; "what I have always said myself in fact, but I never could get anybody to listen to me. Why--why the devil are they making such a row in the garden?"--as the window became darkened by the pa.s.sing of many figures--"coming into the hall, are they? Let them come into the hall by all means, _I_ can't stop them, it's no longer my own house, I suppose; but they sha'n't come in here anyhow; I hope I have a remnant of authority left--and--eh, what? is that the beggar laughing?

bless him!--that is, confound his impudence! what right has he to laugh when I don't mean to forgive him? I--I've been a weak fool all my life, but I'm not going to give in this time; it--it's a duty I owe to the younger ones to make an example of him, whatever it costs me to do it; not that it costs me anything, of course, not anything at all, of course; he--he has forfeited my love, the--the rascal, and I _won't_ give in this time. Why--why the devil don't they stop his laughing when I mean to cast him off? Pack of women and children, with no sense of the responsibilities of life!--" the columns began to vanish into mist, and the hall seemed filled with one shout of laughter; the Squire gasped and recovered himself--"It's my duty as a father to withhold my forgiveness; what else is a poor man to do when he has such an enormous family? A mountain of debts at his back, I'll be bound, and he thinks he is going to get round me to pay them all--as if I wouldn't help him if I could, bless his--hang his improvidence! but when there are eleven of them--such absurdity on the part of Lettice, always told her it was an unnecessary thing to have such a tribe of them; but there! no one ever has listened to me, and now they must bear the consequences among them.

Wh--what? who's that at the door? There's no one in here, I tell you, the--the room's empty, and I don't mean to see you--I'm not going to be made a fool of when I've kept it up all day--why doesn't he go away, eh?"

The Squire's voice had sunk into a whisper, and the "Daily Liberal"

shook like a leaf in the breeze.

"And the dear old guv, where is he? Why doesn't he come out as he always does? Hasn't any one told him I am here?"

"I tell you this is my room; it isn't much that belongs to me, except five sons doing nothing, and six unmarried daughters, but--but this room is my property, and I won't have any one in, I tell you--what a fool I was not to lock the door--eh, what? who's that, eh? d.a.m.n the looking-gla.s.s!"

There was a mirror over the fireplace, and the fireplace was opposite the door. It was too much for Sir Marcus; if the boy had shown the least sign of shame, of nervousness at meeting him, it would have been easier to keep up a semblance of anger; but, as usual, Jack's bluntness of vision saved him where finer instincts would have been his ruin.

"Hullo, father, here I am! All right, father? I say, isn't it awfully jolly to be together again, eh, father?"

The premier's speech on fruit-growing for the million fluttered down into the coal scuttle; and the Squire wiped his spectacles violently, and gave in to the fascination of the single man who never worked. And when Digby strolled in ten minutes later, he found the prodigal filling his father's pipe with Canadian tobacco, and telling him American anecdotes, while the little room resounded with their laughter.

"Come in, Digby, and listen to this fellow," said Sir Marcus, jovially; "did you ever know such a fellow as Jack? It's a pity _you_ don't try America, Digby, it would do you a world of good, man!"

Digby accepted the situation and his eviction with a laugh, not only because, as he had said to Lady Joan, he knew he would be received back into favor again on the morrow when the fascination of the prodigal would have exhausted itself for the time, but also from a lurking hope that he would at last have some chance of talking to their fair guest, whom the Squire had as yet entirely monopolized, in the way he usually monopolized any stranger who would lend a willing and fresh ear to his hobbies. But the musician did not get his chance that evening, though he tried very hard for it. Jack's return proved but a doubtful a.s.sistance to him: to begin with, it caused an alteration in the dinner-table, by which he found himself out of the range of her conversation; it also made the conversation in the drawing-room afterwards more hopelessly general than ever, for they all sat round in a circle and listened to the American anecdotes, and when the American anecdotes flagged for a moment Digby had to go to the piano and play the returned wanderer's favorite airs, while the hero himself took the opportunity of opening a desperate flirtation with Lady Joan under cover of the crashing chords of his eldest brother.

The musician was full thirty years old, and had been in love almost as many times as he had photos in his West End studio; like his father, it was only the trifling circ.u.mstances of life, or its visions, that seemed to him to be worthy of serious consideration, and like his father he had retained his boyish temperament past the age when such a temperament is sufficient for the demands of circ.u.mstance. From the first his connection with Lady Joan had been unusual. She had not begun by fascinating him, and he had not begun by giving her singing-lessons.

She was one of the few people of his acquaintance who knew of that secret marriage of his which had left him a widower three years ago, with a baby son whom Sir Marcus would not acknowledge, and who did not regard it either as a boyish entanglement from which his wife's death had luckily released him, or as a reason for abstaining from future marriage altogether. Not that she had any definite views on the subject of boyish entanglements or second marriages, for Lady Joan never had definite views on anything, they were too much trouble to defend, and she would not have taken up any position which would not lend itself to modification on occasion; but she was unconventional, and she knew it, and in spite of her boast that she was a woman of the world, there was enough of the school-girl in her to give her an exquisite delight in shocking other people who were not unconventional. So hers was the only hand that was held out to Digby when he came to Relton after his wife's death, in search of a home for his child; and it was she who braved the many-tongued slander of an idle country town, and helped him to find what he wanted in the motherly landlady of the "Relton Arms," with whom he could leave the boy in safety. The arrangement necessarily brought him constantly to Relton, when he was naturally prompted by grat.i.tude and courtesy to leave his card at the Hall; but it was some time before she began to have any real interest for him. It was true that she was a beautiful woman, but her beauty and her wit were of a subtle kind, unlike the obvious and doll-like charms that usually attracted him in women; she showed him that she found him interesting, but she did not adore him like his other lady friends, and she disputed his dicta, and she did not understand his music. After a time these very differences drew them together, and they pa.s.sed into the desperately dangerous stage of friendship, in which the man had to confess to himself that he was again in love, and the woman had to ask herself if he meant anything, and whether she was to continue to be natural and pleasant to him, or whether the time had come for her in the eyes of society to avoid him and pretend she did not care for him. Lady Joan, hating the laws of society, and dreading still more the chain of another man's will, broke the connection at this point and went abroad for a year, and was away long enough for Digby to fall in and out of another hot love affair, and returned on the day of his reception in the studio to find him rather more interesting than before, and herself made weaker in her resolution by a year's sojourn with a lady companion. Digby on his part was persuading himself that her return to England had caused the revival of his old love, and that this attachment which had begun so coldly and forced itself into his heart by the most estimable instincts of grat.i.tude and friendship, was superior to all the other attachments of his life, which had begun with infatuation and ended with indifference, and was therefore to be cherished as the only real feeling he had ever had for any woman.

"I'm not the sort of man to be a bachelor," he said to himself earnestly, somewhere about midnight that evening, as he leaned out of his bedroom window and smoked a cigarette meditatively. "Some fellows ought never to marry; I told d.i.c.k Stephens so when he got engaged, and he was separated from his wife within a year of their marriage. But I am not like d.i.c.k Stephens. I am really a most domesticated sort of man, and it is time I settled down. I am tired of being a Bohemian; every wretched little pygmy who writes ballads and lets his hair grow and doesn't wash, is a Bohemian. And there is the boy, too; he ought to have a mother of course, poor little chap: we both want a woman about us, don't we, Sonny? Yes, there is no doubt that it is my duty to Sonny to marry very soon."

In the room above, among the cushions on the sofa, lay Lady Joan with her hair down and a fan in her hand, opposite a full-length mirror; in her most secret moments Lady Joan liked to a.s.sure herself that she played the part picturesquely.

"I like him. He is fresh, and original, and amusing. He doesn't bore me, and I can flirt with him--safely. He has no theories about things, and he does not want to upset creation, and he doesn't take life so desperately seriously. It is such a blessing to meet some one who is content with the age as it is--bah! what a smell of tobacco smoke!"

And she rose, shut the window with a bang, and went to bed, where she slept soundly till the morning.

"It is curious," murmured the musician, lighting another cigarette, "how Fate seems to have propelled her towards me at every crisis of my life; just after Mary died, for instance, and again before I met Norah!--poor little Norah! and then again the other day, when I really had made up my mind to go to Africa, and she came back from the Continent in time to prevent me. And now--ah, I believe I could write that song now."

And he went to the writing-table and tried to set some impa.s.sioned words of Swinburne to music; but although the situation demanded that he should have been specially inspired, he found himself incapable of writing a note, and had to give up the task in despair.

"My brain is overwrought; I am not going to sleep to-night," he said, and put the bromide by his bedside.

After that he also shut the window and went to bed, where he likewise slept soundly till the morning.

CHAPTER IV.

The "Relton Arms" had the reputation of being the most respectable inn in the little country town of Relton. It had no particular right to this t.i.tle, being smaller and more shabby than the "Red Lion" down the street, which was a modern innovation run by a speculator from the neighboring market-town, and promised particular advantages to cyclists which they never quite seemed to reap; but it had outlived generations of Reltons up at the old Court, and it bore their family escutcheon on its sign-board, and all the club dinners were held in its oak-panelled parlor; and the frequent presence of the rector on occasions when alcohol was banished from the table had naturally helped it to keep up its reputation. The fallacy was maintained equally strangely by the silence of its landlord, who only grew more taciturn as he grew more intoxicated, while the people who were fond of talking, notably his wife, made capital out of his silence and applauded him for it, so that he too became respectable in the eyes of Relton. And never having been known to contradict any one in his life, respectable he accordingly consented to remain.

It was on a sultry, still afternoon towards the end of the summer that Roger Brill, the comely rat-catcher of the town, raised the latch of the "Relton Arms" about tea-time.

"Mornin', missus," said he.

"And I'm sure it's mornin' to you, Muster Brill, notwithstandin' it's being arternoon by time o'sun, which be a foolish difference to make among old acquaintance; but there, there's a deal too much talkin' about trifles in my thinkin'. And be you ready for a cup of tea, lad, or be it the usual you'll be wantin'?"

Without waiting for the reply, which had been the same, like the question, for the last fifteen years, the bustling landlady hastened forward with a chair and sent her obedient husband for the beer. One of the most remarkable phases of a monotonous incident is the way in which some people contrive to give it the appearance of novelty. Mrs. Haxtell belonged to such a cla.s.s, and it did not in the least disturb her method that her husband had usually filled the pewter pot before she had finished inviting her customer to have it. But old Peter was a man of deeds, not words, and he chose for his part to make the transaction a purely business one, though he allowed his wife to hide it with a veneer of hospitality if she would. And this she generally did in the most feminine and transparent manner possible, until the time for payment came, when she would meekly retire under cover of her s.e.x, and leave her husband to battle with the creditor.

"Good sport to-day, lad?" asked Peter presently.

"Aye, for sure," answered Roger; and then, glancing professionally at the row of dead rats that hung from his waist, he added slowly, "more ways nor one."

"Eh," said Peter, with a slight access of emphasis.

They all knew something more was coming, and Mrs. Haxtell's knowledge of the rat-catcher's temperament sufficed to keep her breathlessly silent in view of coaxing him to tell his news; though, with the jealousy of the reformed thief who hates to see his brother continuing to thieve, she glanced imploringly at her husband and daughter, who had no intention of speaking, as if to silence them likewise.

"Lady Relton's d.i.c.k came down my way last night," began Roger, deliberately filling his pipe.