One glowing summer morning saw Delia Calmour spinning her bicycle along at a great rate up the Hilversea drive. It was Sunday, and she had come to attend the chapel, a thing she had done more than once of late, since the time she had given efficient musical aid on a certain informal occasion we wot of. Some weeks had gone by since then, and now it was golden August. The beautiful landscape lay in a shimmer of heat, but the glad shout of the cuckoo echoed no more, and the chorus of bird voices had undergone considerable abatement, but the stillness and the glowing richness of the summer haze shed a peace around as of the peace of heaven.

She was late; yes, as she alighted and chained her bicycle to the railings she heard the roll of the organ within. She was late, but not very. Mass had hardly begun, she decided, as her ears caught the opening bars of the Kyrie in Mozart Number 1. She hesitated a moment whether to do so or not, then went up to the choir-loft. Two things struck her as Yvonne handed her the score: one, that the choir was in less strength than usual; the other, that Wagram was at the organ. He half turned, astonished, as the full, rich soprano sounded forth among, if not slightly above, the rest, then settled down to his work with renewed satisfaction. She was doubly glad that she had come, for she knew that her musical talent was of genuine practical assistance, and as such was thoroughly appreciated.

“Take the organ for this,” whispered Wagram just before the offertory. “You can sing and play at the same time; I can’t. We are going to have Arcadelt – your favourite.”

She complied, and was astonished at herself and the tone and expression she managed to get out of the instrument, while not in the least drowning the voices, among which her own led, clear and rich. So were others, for more than one head turned round inquiringly towards the choir-loft, among them that of the old Squire.

“No – no; keep it all through,” whispered Wagram, as she would have got up. “I shall be free to make one more to sing then.”

Again she obeyed, and threw her best into it, and her best was very good indeed. The music at Hilversea was above the average, but to-day it had surpassed itself.

“Well done, Miss Calmour,” said Haldane enthusiastically as they met outside after the service. “What degree in music have you taken, may I ask?”

“None, Mr Haldane. But I know you’re only chaffing me.”

“’Pon my honour, I’m not. If you haven’t, you ought, to have. They ought to make you a Mus. Doc. at least. Oughtn’t they, Wagram?”

“Of course,” said the latter, joining them. “Thanks so much for your help, Miss Calmour. If you had come a bit earlier I would have asked you to play from the very first. Our regular organist’s away, and someone had to take his place, so I threw myself – rather heroically, I think – into the breach. He’d have been jealous, though, if he’d heard you.”

“I’m afraid you’ll make me very conceited, Mr Wagram,” laughed the girl rather deprecatingly. “But I am so glad if I have really been of any use.”

“By Jove!” Haldane was saying to himself. “By Jove! but she is a pretty girl.”

Nor was he overstating matters. Delia was dressed, plainly as usual, in cool white, which suited well her clear, mantling complexion and light hazel eyes, the latter bright with animation. She looked her best here now in the hot August sun, and what has been said of her musical accomplishment applies equally to her physical aspect – her best was very good indeed.

“You’ll come up and lunch with us, Miss Calmour?” said Wagram. “It’s much too hot to ride back all the way to Bassingham in the middle of the day, especially after all your exertions on our behalf.”

Delia accepted, hoping she was not betraying too much delight by her tone. Sunday at Siege House was the least tolerable day in the week, and now she wondered if she were going to have a day of heaven.

“Here, Gerard,” called out Wagram, as two boys came up, accompanied by Yvonne, with whom one of them at any rate seemed to be engaged in altercation. “Miss Calmour, this is my rascal,” he explained genially. “The other has a parent of his own to give him a character, so I won’t.”

Both were straightly-built, handsome boys of fourteen, a complete contrast to each other, though both of the same height – one dark, the other golden-haired and blue-eyed. The first, however, moved Delia’s interest the most as they came up and shook hands. So this was Wagram’s son! The other was Haldane’s. The two were sworn pals, and were at the same school.

“Why didn’t you go and serve Mass, you scamps?” went on Wagram.

“Oh, we do that enough at Hillside, pater,” answered Gerard, hanging on to his father’s arm in a sort of insinuating and conciliatory way; “besides, we got in – er – a little late.”

Delia, listening, remembered Wagram’s remark when they had come upon the speaker’s acolyte dress in the sacristy the day that she had first tried her hand at the organ. He was an exact replica of his father, she decided – just what Wagram might have been at his age.

“Reggie’s just as bad, Mr Wagram,” struck in Yvonne, who deemed it her mission to “round up” her brother in matters of the kind. “He slipped away from me when we were talking to old Mrs Clancy, and I believe he was at the bottom of it.”

“Oh, well, as it’s the beginning of the holidays, I suppose they must be allowed some law,” rejoined Wagram.

“Give me your key, Miss Calmour, and I’ll unlock your bike and wheel it up to the house,” said Gerard.

“That will be good of you,” answered Delia, with a smile that won the boy’s heart there and then. She was mentally contrasting him with the raw, uncleanly, unlicked cub, which mainly constituted her experience of the animal hight ‘boy’ of the same age. Yet about this one on the other hand there was nothing priggish, nothing self-conscious. He was purely and entirely natural.

During lunch the old Squire congratulated her on her playing, and also on the excellence of her illustrated article in The Old Country Side, which had appeared that week.

“We were wondering how in the world you managed to say so much in so limited a space,” he observed, “and to say just the right thing, too. What a memory you must have, child!”

Delia was thinking that, whatever else might slip her memory, no single detail about Hilversea Court was likely to do so.

“And the illustrations were excellent,” went on the Squire – “excellent.”

“Rather,” assented Haldane. “I wish my box were not too insignificant for The Old Country Side, Miss Calmour, then you could scare up an illustrated interview with it.”

“And bring in Poogie,” said Yvonne. “Oh, and – incidentally – father.”

“Where do I come in?” hazarded her brother.

“To spoil the picture, of course.”

“Thanks,” answered the boy, with a good-humoured laugh. Yvonne looked at him and shook her golden head.

“Do you know, Miss Calmour, Reggie is the most provoking child. It’s simply impossible to tease him. I’m always trying, and you’ve just got a sample of how I succeed. Is he the same at Hillside, Gerard?”

“Can’t tell tales out of school.”

Then Yvonne retorted, and the banter went on fast and furious, but always good-tempered, and sometimes really humorous, until it finally merged into plans for fishing on the morrow.

“They are threatening to take us all down to the west park presently, Miss Calmour,” said Wagram soon after lunch. “Do you feel up to that amount of exertion?”

Delia replied that she would have been delighted, only it was time to think of getting back.

“Of getting back?” repeated Wagram. “Are you obliged to? Because if not, won’t you stay and play for us again this evening? It would be a great help.”

“Yes; do stay, Miss Calmour,” urged Yvonne, cordially impulsive.

“There will be a bright moon to ride back by, and I can offer you my escort.”

“Can I go too, pater?” said Gerard, eagerly scenting the fun of a moonlight bicycle ride.

“Certainly. You wouldn’t leave your venerated dad to return over three miles of lonely road unprotected, would you?”

“Then I shall be very pleased to stay,” answered the girl, her whole face lighting up. Days such as this constituted to her everything that was worth living for, and now there was more of it before her than behind.

The old Squire had withdrawn, laughingly explaining that he could not do without his forty winks on a hot Sunday afternoon. The workings of Fate, or Providence, are indeed strange. Some such working it must have been that moved Haldane to declare that he too felt drowsy, and it was much too hot for exercise. In a word, he resisted all persuasion to join in the walk; had he yielded the subsequent events of this our history might have turned out very differently.

They reached the paddock, and the great sable antelope, which was inclined to be tame, condescended to stalk up in a lordly manner and be fed with some crusts they had brought for the purpose. The gnus, however, kept their distance away in the middle, whisking their tails, and prancing, and shaking their fierce-looking heads. Suddenly Wagram, chancing to look round, became aware of the propinquity of a stranger. He was a little distance off along the fence, and with the aid of a bough had managed to climb up, and was holding on, watching the animals.

“That’s a cool customer,” he said after watching him for a few minutes. “I must go and talk to him.”

“Going to turn him away, pater?” asked Gerard.

“No, I won’t do that; but I’ll drop him a friendly hint that he mustn’t make this the scene of his daily walks. You remain here.”

The stranger was not in the least confused or apologetic as Wagram accosted him. The latter recognised with some interest the weather-beaten, white-bearded face of the man who had been pointed out to him as Develin Hunt.

“Good specimens these,” he said approvingly. “I’ve shot many of them, so I ought to know.”

“Yes. They’d be dangerous if they weren’t shut in,” said Wagram.

“Very likely. Wild animals enclosed generally do get that way.”

“Now you’re here you’re welcome to look at them,” said Wagram pleasantly, “but I thought I’d just mention that this is private ground.”

The man dropped from his perch with a cat-like nimbleness, rather noticeable in one of his apparent years.

“Meaning I’m trespassing?” he said shortly.

“That’s the word,” laughed Wagram. “But, as I said before, as you are here pray see all you came to see; I have no wish that you should hurry away. Good-afternoon.”

The stranger stood gazing after him.

“So that’s Wagram Wagram!” he said to himself. “Why, chalk from cheese isn’t in it in the difference between him and that bright boy Everard. Lord, Lord! it’s a rum world. To think that now he should be turning me off, and soon I shall be turning him off – bag and baggage. But I hope it won’t come to that. No; somehow or other I don’t think it will. He has every inducement to be reasonable – oh, and I hope he will. He’s a fine fellow, but – necessity knows no law.”

“I say, pater, that chap’s got some cheek,” said Gerard as his father rejoined them. “Look, he hasn’t moved. Didn’t you tell him to clear?”

“No; I told him he needn’t hurry as he was here.”

And, indeed, the stranger seemed to have taken Wagram literally at his word, for he had climbed up again to his former position, and was placidly puffing at a pipe.

“Look at those three, Miss Calmour,” said Wagram presently, referring to the children, who had started some romping game; “they can no more keep quiet for half-an-hour when they get together than a lot of kittens. Yvonne is generally the one who sets it going. Look at her now – issuing her commands as usual.”

The tall, beautiful child was standing erect, her blue eyes sparkling, and cheeks flushed with the glow of health and exercise, tossing back the golden flash of her flowing hair. There was grace in each unstudied gesticulation, music in the high, sweet key in which she was expostulating rapidly with her playfellows.

“She is too sweet,” murmured Delia.

“Isn’t she? By the way, you haven’t told me yet what you think of my son and heir – ”

Breaking off, the speaker turned. It was only the trespassing stranger, who raised his hat and passed on his way.

” – Though, really, it’s hardly a fair question, as coming from me.”

“I think he’s one of the best-looking and best-mannered boys I’ve ever seen; Mr Haldane’s son is the other.”

“You do us proud,” laughed Wagram. “But Hilversea is a dullish place for one boy to get through his holidays in, shut up with two old fogeys, so he’s generally over at Haldane’s, or Haldane’s boy is over here. They divide it up between them, and get all the fun they want.”

Delia was about to reply that she could not imagine the word “dull” in connection with Hilversea under any circumstances whatever; but it struck her that the remark would sound banal, and she refrained.

“We shall be going North on Thursday for the grouse,” he went on. “Haldane and I always ‘split’ a moor. Then these young scamps will be in clover. We’re going to let them take out a gun this time, and they’re about half mad with anticipation.”

“I expect so,” said Delia, to whom, however, the whole of this announcement brought a heart-sinking. She knew enough by this time of the manners and customs of Hilversea to be aware that such a move was probable; but somehow, now that it was on the eve of becoming an accomplished fact – well, she felt depressed. “Does old Mr Wagram shoot?”

“Doesn’t he! If he isn’t quite so good at right and left now as a few years back, even yet he can hold his own with the great majority. We must round up those riotous children now and begin strolling homeward.”

Of late something had occurred to Wagram and set him wondering, and to-day it struck him more than ever. This was a certain unaccountable change which had come over this girl. She seemed of late to have acquired a subtle and unconscious refinement, not only in speech and manner but also in look, which certainly was not there when he had first made her acquaintance under dramatic circumstances; indeed, were that acquaintance to be made over again, and now, assuredly one dictum in which he had summed her up would be omitted. The fact was there, but there was no explaining it. It puzzled him. To one other this change had become manifest, and her it did not puzzle at all. That one was Clytie; and, going over things in her mind, that extremely attractive schemer nodded her plotting head complacently and smiled to herself.

The westering sunlight flooded down upon the vernal sheen of tossing oak foliage and smoothly undulating grass with a richness of glow that was well-nigh unearthly in the sensuous stillness of the August evening. One of this group sauntering there it thrilled through and through. The children, excited with their game, were laughing and chattering – frequently all at once. But Delia, while bearing her part as brightly and intelligibly as ever in conversation with her host, was conscious of an absorbing arrière-pensée– that, if there were such a thing as a day of paradise, she was going through just that. The while a yet further back and subtle thread of thought kept crying aloud that the paradise was a fool’s paradise.

Chapter Twenty.
A Forced Hand

“Now then, old josser, where are you coming to? have you bought the whole room or only half, eh?”

The time was the middle of the morning, the place the saloon bar of the Golden Crown in Bassingham, and the speaker Bob Calmour, who had been indulging in more John Walker than was good for him, incidentally at the expense of an opportune friend. The man thus unceremoniously expostulated with was a tallish man with a weather-beaten face and a white beard, who had committed the grave indiscretion of being there what time the unsteady Bob had lurched backward, thus cannoning against him. We have seen him twice before for a short space – once at Hilversea Court and once in Hilversea park.

“See here, young man,” was the answer, drily given, “I think it’s time you went home.”

“See here, old cock, when I want to know what you think I’ll ask; till then I’ll trouble you to keep it to yourself.”

And the tone was particularly aggressive and insulting.

“If you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head I shall be under the necessity of starting you on the first homeward stage by firing you into the street,” said the stranger with the most provoking tranquillity.

That white beard proved Bob’s undoing. He associated it with age, and age with decrepitude.

“Will you?” he yelped. “You couldn’t do it – no, nor three of you.”

“Not, eh?” said the stranger; and then Bob Calmour hardly knew what had happened, except that some irresistible force had got him by the scruff of the neck and was propelling him rapidly towards the swing doors. The latter swung, and Bob shot down the steps outside, and would have fallen bang on his nose but that he cannoned into a passing stranger just in time.

“Here! Hi! Hold up! Why the devil don’t you look where you’re going, you silly young ass!” cried the latter angrily as he collared him. All the swagger and bounce had evaporated from the luckless Bob. The whimpered apology died away into a sort of yelp of terror, and his pasty face went ashy white as he realised that he had run bang into no less formidable a person than Haldane. And in the hand of the latter was a riding-crop. Visions of the ghastly thrashing he had deserved at that individual’s hands, and would certainly receive, finished him off, and he dropped limply on to the pavement in a sitting posture, half fainting.

“Awfully sorry, sir,” he was just able to whine; “but I’ve been violently assaulted by a ruffian in there, and – er – couldn’t see where I – I – was going.”

Haldane looked at him with a sort of good-natured contempt, seeing before him just an ordinary raffish young pup who had probably got quarrelsome in his cups and come off worst.

“Well, you’d better go away home,” he said shortly, and passed on, leaving the unspeakable Bob to pick himself up with feelings akin to those of a criminal reprieved on the very drop itself, then as one condemned afresh as he saw Wagram cross the road and join Haldane. The two stood talking together, then, turning, they looked at him. Of course, Wagram was giving him away, decided the terror-stricken Bob, whose every instinct now was flight – headlong flight; wherefore, having shuffled rapidly round a friendly corner, he sprinted for cover all he knew, nor stopped till he found himself, panting, within the – for once welcome because protective – offices of Pownall and Skreet. Nor did he more than half hear the acrid jobation to which Pownall, who had seen him arrive, treated him by reason of having taken so long about the business upon which he had been sent out.

Here again came in the strange, mysterious workings of Fate – or Providence. Had the African adventurer been a little more roused to ire it is conceivable that, not content with throwing the offensive Bob into the street, he might even have kicked him along a section of the same, which, of course, would have befallen exactly what time Haldane was passing. In which event the whole course of this history might have been changed; in fact, we will go as far as to say that it certainly would have been. And it has been recorded that Haldane seldom came to Bassingham.

“Hope I haven’t been the means of spoiling custom,” said Develin Hunt pleasantly as he returned to where he had been standing, “because, if so, I hope that all here will put a name to theirs and join me by doing something to make up for it.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Mr Hunt,” said the landlord, who, attracted by the scuffle, short as it was, had come in. “Not much ‘custom’ about that young waster.”

“Who is he?”

“Young Calmour, a clerk at Pownall and Skreet’s. I only wonder they haven’t given him the sack long ago.”

“I must say he brought it upon himself,” said the man who had been “standing” him. “Bob can be pretty abusive when he’s got anything on board. Mine? Oh, thanks; another Scotch, I think. Here’s luck.”

The landlord’s answer had given Develin Hunt food for thought, not for astonishment; he had seen too many queer phases of life to be astonished at anything. So this egregious young pup stood in the relationship of brother to the exceedingly pretty and even refined-looking girl he had seen with Wagram and his party in Hilversea park some Sundays ago! It seemed hardly credible, but then, as we have said, he was astonished at nothing.

He had not spent all the intervening time in Bassingham, where at the Golden Crown he was very popular, and instrumental in an increase of custom; for he was open-handed in setting up “rounds,” and could tell strange, wild stories of strange, wild lands and stranger, wilder people, and this led to an increasing roll up of the good citizens of Bassingham of an evening. But he had not as yet made acquaintance with old Calmour, for the very good reason that that worthy had transferred his custom elsewhere, from motives that may be readily divined.

Now, although Haldane had not seen Develin Hunt the latter had seen Haldane. It was a mere glimpse snatched between the swing doors as they let out the obnoxious Bob; but in the school which had afforded the African adventurer his life training a mere glimpse to him was as good as half-an-hour’s scrutiny to most men, and to this one and his plans it now made all the difference in the world.

“Who was the man I shot that young pup against?” he said. “Tallish man, sunburnt face, and riding-gaiters?”

“Squire Haldane, worse luck!” answered the landlord.

“Why ‘worse luck’?”

“He’s a magistrate. He don’t often show up in Bassingham, and now, when he does, get’s nearly knocked down by a chump fired out of my bar in the middle of the morning. Maybe he’ll have a word to say, when licensing day comes round, that I keep my house rowdy.”

“Shouldn’t think he’d do that, Smith, he looks too much of a sportsman. I’ll bet drinks all round that man has been in countries where firing anyone out doesn’t constitute the liveliest side of a bar worry.”

“I won’t take you, then, because he has,” replied Smith. “But what made you think so?”

“Quite simple. He never got painted that colour by any sun that only shone over the British Isles.”

“Here, I say, sir, excuse me,” struck in the young man who had brought in Bob, “you’re not Sherlock Holmes, are you?”

“No. Who’s he?”

“Who’s he? Never heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Now you’re trying to get at me, young man. I suppose you’re going to answer he was a chap who’d forgotten that everybody’s glass had been empty too long. All right. Set ’em up again, Smith, for all hands.”

There was a big laugh at this, and three persons started in to explain at once.

“Come to think of it, I had heard of the party, but I’d forgotten,” said Hunt with his usual easy good humour. “But about this one, the one we were talking about – where did you say he’d been, Smith?”

“Squire Haldane? Oh, everywhere. Mostly in South Africa, I believe. He lives out Fulkston way – a goodish step from here.”

Assimilating this piece of information, which, from the point of view of his purposes, was satisfactory, the adventurer easily and imperceptibly switched the conversation on to other matters, and shortly retired to his own quarters.

He sat down to think. He had made an important discovery that day – important to the last degree. Haldane in the neighbourhood, and a resident at that! Heavens! what a near thing it had been that they had not run right into each other! The adventurer’s hard face grew quite moist at the thought of it, and of what a volcano he had been sitting over during his sojournings in Bassingham the last few weeks. This discovery had clean altered his plans, and now in their altered stage he must proceed to put them into operation without a moment of unnecessary delay.

And yet throughout that day, until after dark, Develin Hunt never ventured outside the doors of the Golden Crown.