"Perhaps he has not," said Dorothy, musingly.

It was not a pleasant task for me to praise Sir John, but my sense of justice impelled me to do so. I tried to make myself feel injured and chagrined because of Dorothy's manner toward him; for you must remember I had arranged with myself to marry this girl, but I could not work my feelings into a state of indignation against the heir to Rutland. The truth is, my hope of winning Dorothy had evaporated upon the first sight of her, like the volatile essence it really was. I cannot tell you why, but I at once seemed to realize that all the thought and labor which I had devoted to the arduous task of arranging with myself this marriage was labor lost. So I frankly told her my kindly feelings for Sir John, and gave her my high estimate of his character.

I continued: "You see, Dorothy, I could not so easily explain to your father my a.s.sociation with Sir John, and I hope you will not speak of it to any one, lest the news should reach Sir George's ears."

"I will not speak of it," she returned, sighing faintly. "After all, it is not his fault that his father is such a villain. He doesn't look like his father, does he?"

"I cannot say. I never saw Lord Rutland," I replied.

"He is the most villanous-looking--" but she broke off the sentence and stood for a moment in revery. We were in the darkened pa.s.sage, and Dorothy had taken my hand. That little act in another woman of course would have led to a demonstration on my part, but in this girl it seemed so entirely natural and candid that it was a complete bar to undue familiarity. In truth, I had no such tendency, for the childish act spoke of an innocence and faith that were very sweet to me who all my life had lived among men and women who laughed at those simple virtues. The simple conditions of life are all that are worth striving for. They come to us fresh from Nature and from Nature's G.o.d. The complex are but concoctions of man after recipes in the devil's alchemy. So much gold, so much ambition, so much l.u.s.t. Mix well. Product: so much vexation.

"He must resemble his mother," said Dorothy, after a long pause. "Poor fellow! His mother is dead. He is like me in that respect. I wonder if his father's villanies trouble him?"

"I think they must trouble him. He seems to be sad," said I, intending to be ironical.

My reply was taken seriously.

"I am sorry for him," she said, "it is not right to hate even our enemies.

The Book tells us that."

"Yet you hate Lord Rutland," said I, amused and provoked.

Unexpected and dangerous symptoms were rapidly developing in the perverse girl, and trouble was brewing "in Derbyshire."

The adjective perverse, by the way, usually is superfluous when used to modify the noun girl.

"Yet you hate Lord Rutland," I repeated.

"Why, y-e-s," she responded. "I cannot help that, but you know it would be very wrong to--to hate all his family. To hate him is bad enough."

I soon began to fear that I had praised Sir John overmuch.

"I think Sir John is all there is of Lord Rutland's family," I said, alarmed yet amused at Dorothy's search for an excuse not to hate my new-found friend.

"Well," she continued after a pause, throwing her head to one side, "I am sorry there are no more of that family not to hate."

"Dorothy! Dorothy!" I exclaimed. "What has come over you? You surprise me."

"Yes," she answered, with a little sigh, "I certainly have surprised myself by--by my willingness to forgive those who have injured my house. I did not know there was so much--so much good in me."

"Mistress Pharisee," thought I, "you are a hypocrite."

Again intending to be ironical, I said, "Shall I fetch him from the tap-room and present him to you?"

Once more my irony was lost upon the girl. Evidently that sort of humor was not my strong point.

"No, no," she responded indignantly, "I would not speak to him for--"

Again she broke her sentence abruptly, and after a little pause, short in itself but amply long for a girl like Dorothy to change her mind two score times, she continued: "It would not be for the best. What think you, Cousin Malcolm?"

"Surely the girl has gone mad," thought I. Her voice was soft and conciliating as if to say, "I trust entirely to your mature, superior judgment."

My judgment coincided emphatically with her words, and I said: "I spoke only in jest. It certainly would not be right. It would be all wrong if you were to meet him."

"That is true," the girl responded with firmness, "but--but no real harm could come of it," she continued, laughing nervously. "He could not strike me nor bite me. Of course it would be unpleasant for me to meet him, and as there is no need--I am curious to know what one of his race is like.

It's the only reason that would induce me to consent. Of course you know there could be no other reason for me to wish--that is, you know--to be willing to meet him. Of course you know."

"Certainly," I replied, still clinging to my unsuccessful irony. "I will tell you all I know about him, so that you may understand what he is like. As for his personal appearance, you saw him, did you not?"

I thought surely that piece of irony would not fail, but it did, and I have seldom since attempted to use that form of humor.

"Yes--oh, yes, I saw him for a moment."

"But I will not present him to you, Dorothy, however much you may wish to meet him," I said positively.

"It is almost an insult, Cousin Malcolm, for you to say that I wish to meet him," she answered in well-feigned indignation.

The French blood in my veins moved me to shrug my shoulders. I could do nothing else. With all my knowledge of womankind this girl had sent me to sea.

But what shall we say of Dorothy's conduct? I fancy I can hear you mutter, "This Dorothy Vernon must have been a bold, immodest, brazen girl."

Nothing of the sort. Dare you of the cold blood--if perchance there be any with that curse in their veins who read these lines--dare you, I say, lift your voice against the blessed heat in others which is but a greater, stronger, warmer spark of G.o.d's own soul than you possess or than you can comprehend? "Evil often comes of it," I hear you say. That I freely admit; and evil comes from eating too much bread, and from hearing too much preaching. But the universe, from the humblest blade of gra.s.s to the infinite essence of G.o.d, exists because of that warmth which the mawkish world contemns. Is the iron immodest when it creeps to the lodestone and clings to its side? Is the hen bird brazen when she flutters to her mate responsive to his compelling woo-song? Is the seed immodest when it sinks into the ground and swells with budding life? Is the cloud bold when it softens into rain and falls to earth because it has no other choice? or is it brazen when it nestles for a time on the bosom of heaven's arched dome and sinking into the fathomless depths of a blue black infinity ceases to be itself? Is the human soul immodest when, drawn by a force it cannot resist, it seeks a stronger soul which absorbs its ego as the blue sky absorbs the floating cloud, as the warm earth swells the seed, as the magnet draws the iron? All these are of one quality. The iron, the seed, the cloud, and the soul of man are _what_ they are, do _what_ they do, love as they love, live as they live, and die as they die because they must--because they have no other choice. We think we are free because at times we act as we please, forgetting that G.o.d gives us the "please," and that every act of our being is but the result of a dictated motive.

Dorothy was not immodest. This was her case. She was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. You, too, are the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain. It is only human vanity which prompts you to believe that you are yourself and that you are free. Do you find any freedom in this world save that which you fondly believe to exist within yourself? Self! There is but one self, G.o.d. I have been told that the people of the East call Him Brahma. The word, it is said, means "Breath," "Inspiration," "All." I have felt that the beautiful pagan thought has truth in it; but my conscience and my priest tell me rather to cling to truths I have than to fly to others that I know not of. As a result, I shall probably die orthodox and mistaken.

CHAPTER III

THE PITCHER GOES TO THE WELL.

Dorothy and I went to the inn parlors, where I received a cordial welcome from my cousin, Lady Crawford. After our greeting, Dorothy came toward me leading the fair, pale girl whom I had seen in the courtyard.

"Madge, this is my cousin, Malcolm Vernon," said Dorothy. "He was a dear friend of my childhood and is much beloved by my father. Lady Magdalene Stanley, cousin," and she placed the girl's soft white hand in mine. There was a peculiar hesitancy in the girl's manner which puzzled me. She did not look at me when Dorothy placed her hand in mine, but kept her eyes cast down, the long, black lashes resting upon the fair curves of her cheek like a shadow on the snow. She murmured a salutation, and when I made a remark that called for a response, she lifted her eyes but seemed not to look at me. Unconsciously I turned my face toward Dorothy, who closed her eyes and formed with her lips the word "blind."

I retained the girl's hand, and she did not withdraw it. When I caught Dorothy's unspoken word I led Lady Madge to a chair and asked if I might sit beside her.

"Certainly," she answered smilingly; "you know I am blind, but I can hear and speak, and I enjoy having persons I like sit near me that I may touch them now and then while we talk. If I could only see!" she exclaimed.

Still, there was no tone of complaint in her voice and very little even of regret. The girl's eyes were of a deep blue and were entirely without scar or other evidence of blindness, except that they did not seem to see. I afterward learned that her affliction had come upon her as the result of illness when she was a child. She was niece to the Earl of Derby, and Dorothy's mother had been her aunt. She owned a small estate and had lived at Haddon Hall five or six years because of the love that existed between her and Dorothy. A strong man instinctively longs to cherish that which needs his strength, and perhaps it was the girl's helplessness that first appealed to me. Perhaps it was her rare, peculiar beauty, speaking eloquently of virtue such as I had never known, that touched me. I cannot say what the impelling cause was, but this I know: my heart went out in pity to her, and all that was good within me--good, which I had never before suspected--stirred in my soul, and my past life seemed black and barren beyond endurance. Even Dorothy's marvellous beauty lacked the subtle quality which this simple blind girl possessed. The first step in regeneration is to see one's faults; the second is to regret them; the third is to quit them. The first and second steps const.i.tute repentance; the second and third regeneration. One hour within the radius of Madge Stanley's influence brought me to repentance. But repentance is an everyday virtue. Should I ever achieve regeneration? That is one of the questions this history will answer. To me, Madge Stanley's pa.s.sive force was the strongest influence for good that had ever impinged on my life.

With respect to her, morally, I was the iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain, for she, acting unconsciously, moved me with neither knowledge nor volition on my part.

Soon after my arrival at the ladies' parlor dinner was served, and after dinner a Persian merchant was ushered in, closely followed by his servants bearing bales of rare Eastern fabrics. A visit and a dinner at the inn were little events that made a break in the monotony of life at the Hall, and the ladies preferred to visit the merchant, who was stopping at The Peac.o.c.k for a time, rather than to have him take his wares to Haddon.

While Lady Crawford and Dorothy were revelling in Persian silks, satins, and gold cloths, I sat by Lady Madge and was more than content that we were left to ourselves. My mind, however, was as far from thoughts of gallantry as if she had been a black-veiled nun. I believe I have not told you that I was of the Holy Catholic Faith. My religion, I may say, has always been more nominal and political than spiritual, although there ran through it a strong vein of inherited tendencies and superst.i.tions which were highly colored by contempt for heresy and heretics. I was Catholic by habit. But if I a.n.a.lyzed my supposed religious belief, I found that I had none save a hatred for heresy. Heretics, as a rule, were low-born persons, vulgarly moral, and as I had always thought, despisedly hypocritical.

Madge Stanley, however, was a Protestant, and that fact shook the structure of my old mistakes to its foundation, and left me religionless.

After the Persian merchant had packed his bales and departed, Dorothy and Lady Crawford joined Madge and me near the fireplace. Soon Dorothy went over to the window and stood there gazing into the courtyard. After a few minutes Lady Crawford said, "Dorothy, had we not better order Dawson to bring out the horses and coach?" Will Dawson was Sir George's forester.

Lady Crawford repeated her question, but Dorothy was too intently watching the scene in the courtyard to hear. I went over to her, and looking out at the window discovered the object of Dorothy's rapt attention. There is no need for me to tell you who it was. Irony, as you know, and as I had learned, was harmless against this thick-skinned nymph. Of course I had no authority to scold her, so I laughed. The object of Dorothy's attention was about to mount his horse. He was drawing on his gauntleted gloves and held between his teeth a cigarro. He certainly presented a handsome figure for the eyes of an ardent girl to rest upon while he stood beneath the window, clothed in a fashionable Paris-made suit of brown, doublet, trunks, and hose. His high-topped boots were polished till they shone, and his broad-rimmed hat, of soft beaver, was surmounted by a flowing plume.

Even I, who had no especial taste nor love for masculine beauty, felt my sense of the beautiful strongly moved by the attractive picture my new-found friend presented. His dress, manner, and bearing, polished by the friction of life at a luxurious court, must have appeared G.o.d-like to Dorothy. She had never travelled farther from home than Buxton and Derby-town, and had met only the half-rustic men belonging to the surrounding gentry and n.o.bility of Derbyshire, Nottingham, and Stafford.