In conjecturing that Delia Calmour’s honourable renunciation was probably made at the cost of her peace at home the Squire proved himself a true prophet, for the poor girl’s life became anything but a bed of roses. When he heard that she had irrevocably carried out her intention old Calmour grew savage, first abusing her in the most scandalous manner, and, being half drunk, fell to whining about the ingratitude of children, deliberately allowing their parents to starve in their old age for the sake of gratifying a selfish whim. Then he got wholly drunk, so violently, indeed, that even Clytie, the resolute, the level-headed, found it all that she could do to keep her nerve, while the intrepid Bob promptly skulked off out of harm’s way.

The said Bob, too, contributed his share of mean and petty annoyance. He would insinuate that he did not believe she had really returned the cheque. She wanted to keep it all for herself, and leave them out. He went further, like the mean and despicable cad he was, insinuating that there was plenty more where that came from, that Wagram knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and so forth; in short, behaving in such wise as would formerly, according to the ways of Siege House, have drawn upon himself some sudden and violent form of retaliation. But a change had come over the sister he was persecuting, and the ways of Siege House were no longer her ways, hence the abominable Bob took heart of grace, and his behaviour and insinuations became more and more scandalous. Even Clytie could no longer restrain him. But his turn was to come.

Throughout all this Delia never regretted the decision she had arrived at, never for a single moment. She would act in exactly the same way were the occasion to come over again – were it to come over again a hundred times, she declared, goaded beyond endurance by her father’s alternate maudlin reproaches or vehement abuse. And he had retorted that the sooner she got outside his door and never set foot inside it again the better he would be pleased. This she would have done but for Clytie and – one other consideration.

Clytie at first had been a little cool with her, but had come round, declaring that, on thinking it over, perhaps, on the principle of a sprat to catch a herring, what had happened was the best thing that could have happened, if only they played their cards well now. Then Delia had rounded on her.

“Don’t talk in that beastly way, Clytie; I’m not going to play any cards at all, as you put it. Even if I were inclined to, look at us —us, mind,” she added, with a bitter sneer, and a nod of the head in the direction of the other room, where their father and brother were audibly wrangling and swearing – the former, as usual, half drunk.

“Pooh! that wouldn’t count,” was the equable reply. “You don’t suppose you’d have that hamper lumbering around once you’d won the game, do you? I’d take care of that.”

“Well, I shall go; he’s always telling me to.”

“No, you won’t. Let him tell – and go on telling. I can do some telling too, if it comes to that – telling him that if you go I go too, and we know well enough how he’d take that. No; you stop and face it out. You’ll be jolly glad you did one of these days.”

Poor Delia within her heart of hearts was glad already. A month ago less than a tenth of what she had had to undergo would have started her off independent, to do for herself. Now all the strength seemed to have gone out of her, and the idea of leaving Bassingham and its neighbourhood struck her with a blank dismay that she preferred not to let her mind dwell upon. Now she broke down.

“I wish it had been me, instead of the bicycle, that had been knocked to pieces,” she sobbed. “I wish to Heaven the brute had killed me that day.”

“But you should not wish that, my dear child,” mocked Bob, who, passing the door, had overheard. “You should not wish that. It’s very wicked, as your Papist friends would say.” Then he took himself off with a yahooing laugh.

Now, it befell that on the following morning, while moving her post-card albums, Delia dropped several loose cards. Upon these pounced Bob, with no intention of picking them up for her, we may be sure, possibly in the hope of causing her some passing annoyance by scattering them still more; but hardly had he bent down with that amiable object than he started back, as though he had been about to pick up a snake unawares. “What – why? Who the deuce is that?” he cried. One of the cards was lying with the picture face upwards. This he now picked up. “Who is it?” he stammered, staring wildly at it. “Don’t you recognise it, or does it bring back painful recollections?” retorted Delia as she watched him blankly gaping at the portrait card which Yvonne had given her. For upon her a new light had dawned. “Don’t you? You should have good reason to,” she went on mercilessly, her eyes full upon his face. “Isn’t it Miss Haldane? You know – and I know – who it was that insulted her on the Swanton road one day, but Mr Haldane doesn’t know —as yet.” Bob’s face had gone white.

“Hang it all, Delia,” he gasped, “you wouldn’t give your own brother away, surely?”

“My own brother has just given himself away,” was the sneering reply. “Brother! Yes. You have been very brotherly to me of late, haven’t you – trying to drive me from the house, and making all sorts of perfectly scandalous insinuations! Very brotherly? Eh?”

“Oh, well, perhaps I said a good deal more than I meant,” grumbled Bob shamefacedly.

“And you’d have gone on doing the same if it hadn’t been for finding that card,” she pursued, not in the least deceived by an apology extorted through sheer scare. “Well, please yourself as to whether you do so or not, now.”

Thus the abominable Bob’s turn had come, and so far as he was concerned Delia was henceforward left in peace. Bob, then, being reduced Clytie judged the time ripe for reducing her father also.

“See here, dad,” she began one day when the old man was grumbling at his eldest daughter, and suggesting for the twentieth time that she had better clear out and do something for herself, “don’t you think we have had about enough nagging over that cheque business? – because if you don’t, I do.”

“Oh, you do, do you, Miss Hoity Toity?”

“Rather. And I move that we have no more of it – that the matter be allowed to drop, as they say in the House.”

“What the devil d’you mean, you impudent baggage?” snarled her father.

“What the devil I say – no more – no less,” was the imperturbable reply. “Two or three times a day you tell Delia to clear, and we’re tired of it.”

“Are you?” he returned, coldly sarcastic. “Well, I wonder she requires so much telling.”

“Well, you needn’t tell her any more – it’s waste of trouble. She isn’t going to clear, not until she wants to, anyway; except on these terms – if she clears I clear too. How’s that?”

Thereupon old Calmour went into a petulant kind of rage, and choked and spluttered, and swore that he’d be master in his own house, that they were a pair of impudent, ungrateful baggages, that they might both go to the devil for all he cared, and the sooner they got there the better. Unfortunately, however, he rather neutralised the effect of his peroration by tailing off into the maudlin, and allusions to the wickedness and ingratitude of children who thought nothing of deserting their only parent in his old age, and so forth – to all of which Clytie listened with unruffled composure.

“All right, dad,” she rejoined cheerfully. “Now you’ve blown off steam and are more comfortable again let’s say no more about it. What has been done can’t be undone, that’s certain; in fact, I’ve an instinct that it may have been all for the best after all, so let’s all be jolly together again as before. I’ve got a lot more orders for typing – in fact, almost more than I can do – and if they go on at this rate I shall have to get another machine, and take Delia into partnership – she has an idea of working it already.”

“Well, well, there’s something in that,” said the old man, mollified by this brightening of prospects. “I must have a glass of grog on the strength of it.”

Clytie looked at him for a moment, shook her pretty head, and then got out a bottle. He was quite sober, and it was the first that day.

“Only one,” she said. “No more, mind.”

She did not think it necessary to tell him that this increase of material prosperity was due to the good offices of Wagram. The latter was not the one to do things by halves, and had never forgotten the promise he had made on the occasion of his call at Siege House.

“There you are, Delia!” she triumphantly declared as the orders came pouring in. “You never know what you lose through want of asking. If I hadn’t put it point-blank to him I shouldn’t have got all these – and it makes a difference, I can tell you. What a devil of a good chap he must be!”

A few days later a surprise came for Delia in the shape of a letter from the editor of a particularly smart and up-to-date pictorial, requesting her to contribute to its illustrated series of articles on old country seats, so many words of letterpress and so many photographs of Hilversea Court, and quoting a very liberal rate of remuneration if the contribution proved to be to the editor’s satisfaction. The girl was radiant.

“It’s too good to be true, Clytie. How can they have heard of me?” she exclaimed. “Surely no one has been playing a practical joke on me. I can hardly believe it.”

Clytie scanned the letter “It’s genuine right enough,” she pronounced. “Wagram again.”

“What? But – no – it can’t be this time. Why, don’t you see what it says: ‘Provided you can obtain the permission of Mr Grantley Wagram’? So, you see, it’s apart from them entirely.”

“That’s only a red herring. I’ll bet you five bob he’s at the back of it. Are you on?”

“N-no,” answered Delia, upon whom a recollection was dawning of things she had let fall on that memorable occasion of her last visit to Hilversea. She had prattled on about herself, and her experiences, among which had been a little journalism of a very poorly-paid order.

“I believe you are right, Clytie,” she went on slowly. “I remember letting go that I had done that sort of thing in a small way, and even that I would be glad to do it again in a large one if only I got the chance, but I never dreamt of anything coming of it – never for a moment.”

“No? Well, you’re in luck’s way this time, dear. Probably this editor is a friend of his; and then, apart from that, a man in the position of Wagram of Hilversea can exercise almost unlimited influence in pretty near any direction he chooses – by Jove, he can.”

Delia did not at once reply, and, noting a certain look upon her meditative face, Clytie smiled to herself, and forebore to make any allusion to her cherished scheme, which, in her own mind, she decided was growing more promising than ever.

Chapter Sixteen.
“A Calmour at Hilversea.”

Wagram’s private study, or “den,” where he was wont to do all his business thinking and writing, and which was absolutely sacred to himself and his papers and general litter, was a snug room overlooking the drive; and thence, as he sat with his after-breakfast pipe in his mouth and some business papers relating to the estate before him on the morning following the incidents just recorded, he was – well, not altogether surprised at seeing a girl on a bicycle skimming up to the front door.

“Poor child!” he said to himself. “She looks positively radiant. I used to think, in those awful days, if I were in the position I am in now – by the grace of God – what a great deal I could do for others, and yet, and yet, it’s little enough one seems to be able to do.”

He need not have disparaged himself. There were not a few, among them some who had shown him kindness in “those awful days,” who now had reason to bless his name as long as they lived, and their children’s children after them.

“Come in. Yes; I’ll be down in a minute or two,” he said in response to the announcement that Miss Calmour had called on a matter of business, and very much wished to see him. He smiled to himself as he remembered the occasion of her last call – also “on a matter of business.” Then he made a note as to where to resume the work in which he had been interrupted, laid down his pipe, and went downstairs.

“And now,” he said merrily when they had shaken hands, “what is this ‘matter of business’?”

Delia was looking radiant, and, consequently, very pretty. She had that dark warmth of complexion which suffuses, and her hazel eyes were soft and velvety.

“This will explain,” she said, holding out the editor’s letter; “and, Mr Wagram, it would be affectation for me to pretend that I did not know whom I had to thank for it.”

“Of course. As far as I can see it is the editor of The Old Country Side. But editors don’t want thanking; they are hard, cold-blooded men of business, as I have had ample reason to discover in my old struggling days.”

She made no comment on this last remark. She had heard that this man’s life had not been always a bed of roses.

“Yet, how could this one have heard of me?” she said. “No; I don’t know how to thank you enough for this – and Clytie too. She has almost more work than she can do, all thanks to your introductions. You are too good to us.”

“My dear child, haven’t you learnt yet that we must all help each other in this world as far as lies in our power? The difficulty sometimes lies in how to do it in the right way. By-the-by, this letter, I observe, makes it a condition that you should obtain my father’s permission. How, then, could we possibly have had anything to do with instigating the offer?”

Delia smiled, remembering her sister’s dictum: “That’s only a red herring.” However, she had sufficient tact not to press the point.

“I see they want six photographic views,” he went on. “Now, if I might suggest, do two of the house, from different points of view – outside; one of the hall and staircase; two of the chapel, outside and in; and one of the lake. That makes it.”

“But, Mr Wagram, you are forgetting the African animals. I must have those; they are such a feature.”

“Why, of course. Well, then, now I think of it, we will delete the interior of the chapel. To the crowd it would only look like any other interior. What is your camera, by the way?”

“Only a Kodak. Bull’s-eye Number 2. But I understand time exposures, and it takes very sharp and clear.”

“And shorthand writing too. You are a clever girl, and should be able to turn your accomplishments to useful account.”

Again Delia smiled, for she remembered having let out that she was a ready shorthand writer during that former conversation.

“Well, now, what I suggest is this: I have rather a pressing matter of business to finish off this morning, so, if you will excuse me, I propose to turn you over to Rundle. He will show you every hole and corner of the house; he knows it like a book. We only looked at it cursorily last time you were here. That will take you all the morning. After lunch – we lunch at one – I can take you over the outside part of the job myself. The Old Country Side is a first-rate pictorial, and we must do justice to Hilversea in it, mustn’t we?”

Delia professed herself delighted, as indeed she was. Then Rundle, having appeared in response to a ring, Wagram proceeded to direct him accordingly.

“Show Miss Calmour all there is to see, Rundle,” he said, “and work the light for her so as to get everything from the best point of view for photography. I showed her the priest’s hiding-place the other day, so you needn’t; besides, you don’t know the secret of it.”

“No, sir; and it’d have been a good job if some others hadn’t known there was such a thing,” said the old butler in historic allusion. “This way, miss.”

Delia appeared at lunch radiant and sparkling. Rundle had proved a most efficient cicerone, she declared; indeed, so much had there been to see and hear that she wondered how on earth she was going to compress her notes into the required limit. Wagram was in a state of covert amusement, for he knew that his father was not forgetting his former dictum.

“A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho! it’d be about as much in place as a cow in a church!”

And yet, here was this bright, pretty girl, who talked so intelligently and well – why, she might have been anybody else as far as keeping the old Squire interested and amused was concerned.

“Now, Miss Calmour, which shall we take first – the animals or the chapel?” said Wagram as they rose from table.

“The animals, I think, because it may take some time, and the sun is not as reliable as it might be. The chapel I can get much easier with a time exposure, if necessary.”

“Right. I’ll tell them to get my tyres pumped up, and we can bike down there.”

Their way took them over the very road where the adventure had befallen, then a turn to the left, where the riding was rough. Here, under the trees, a shed of tarred planks came into view.

“We’ll leave our machines here,” said Wagram, dismounting. “They’ll be quite safe; still, I’ll chain them together, as a matter of precaution.”

“What a perfectly lovely place this is,” said the girl as they walked on beneath great over-arching oaks, which let in the sunlight in a network on the cool sward. “Tell me, Mr Wagram, don’t you sometimes find life too good to be real?”

He looked at her a trifle gravely. There was something very taking in her genuineness and spontaneity. In the present instance she had voiced what was often in his mind.

“Yes, indeed I do,” he said; “so much so that at times it is almost startling.”

It did not occur to him how he was giving vent to some of the most solemn side of his meditations for the benefit of this girl – this daughter of the drunken, disreputable, old ex-army vet, any other member of whose family he would not willingly have had there at all. But had he known her better – that is, had he known her before that eventful day – he would have reason to marvel at the great and wondrous change that had come over her within that short space of time. Her former slanginess, and other amenities and ideas begotten of Siege House, were to her now quite of the past, so effective had been recent influences to refine and soften her.

“Look there, we are in luck’s way so far,” he said. “Have you got an exposure ready?”

They had reached a high paling with the upper part bent over inward. In front was a step-ladder giving access to a small wooden platform at the top of this.

“Don’t show too suddenly,” he whispered as he helped her up this; “you’ve a fine chance.”

Delia could hardly restrain a cry of delight. About twenty yards away a couple of white-tailed gnus were feeding, and just beyond three more of the larger and brindled kind, and a little apart from these a fine specimen of the sable antelope. It was as if some fortunate freak of Nature had grouped and focussed the lot for her own especial benefit.

“Got ’em,” she whispered, clicking the trigger.

Up went every head. The white-tailed gnus, their wild eyes staring out of fierce-looking, whiskered countenances surmounted by sharp meat-hook-like horns, began to snort and prance round and round. Those of the other kind drew nearer, uttering a raucous bellow.

“Now, snap them again,” whispered Wagram; “you’ll never get a better chance.”

“There; that’ll be perfect. Are there any more, Mr Wagram?”

“None worth taking. Some of the smaller kinds of antelope; but we hope to get some more specimens. Haldane got these for us. He’s been an up-country sportsman in his time, and shot lots of them.”

“How picturesque they look; but they are very ugly.”

“Not the sable antelope?”

“Oh no; the others. They look as if Nature had started to make a goat, then changed her mind, and manufactured a bad attempt at a buffalo, with a dash of the camel thrown in.”

“Good description,” laughed Wagram. The creatures, excited by the sound, snorted and bellowed, pawing the ground or capering in absurd antics, while two had got up a sham fight on their own account.

“Supposing we were to go down into the enclosure?” she said.

“Hadn’t you a specimen of what that would mean the other day? We have notices posted everywhere warning people against venturing in; but this part of the park is right away from any public road, and we don’t encourage trippers. Hallo!” – looking up – “it’s lucky you got your snapshots. It has started to rain.”

Big drops were pattering down. The sky had become quickly overcast, and an ominous boom from a black, inky background of cloud told that a summer shower was upon them with characteristic suddenness. They regained the shed where they had left their bicycles only in the nick of time, as, with a roar and a rush, the rain whirled upon them in a tremendous downpour. Then the vivid sheeting of blue electricity, almost simultaneously with the sharp thunder-crack. The girl gave a little start.

“Are you afraid of thunder?” asked Wagram, with a smile.

“Not now. Sometimes when I am alone I get rather nervous, but now I don’t mind it a bit.”

She spoke no more than the truth. She would have welcomed another hour of the most appalling thunderstorm that ever raged to sit here as she was doing now, and spend it in this man’s society. Yet a wooden shed, open in front, and overhung by tall, spreading oaks, is not perhaps, the safest refuge in the world under all the circumstances. But the thunder and lightning soon passed over, although it continued to rain smartly.

“Mr Wagram, there is something I would like to talk to you about,” began the girl, rather constrainedly, after a quite unwonted interval of silence – for her. “I have been thinking of late that I would like to be a Catholic.”

Wagram looked up keenly.

“Have you given the question careful study?” he said.

“I have thought it over a great deal. I am fairly at home in the Catholic services. You see, I was travelling on the Continent as companion for a time, and then we always attended them, so I do know something about it.”

“To know ‘something’ isn’t sufficient; you must know everything.”

“Tell me, then. What should I do?”

“First, be sure that you are thoroughly in earnest; then you must undergo instruction.”

Delia’s face brightened.

“I will,” she said. “But – tell me how.”

“There is a mission in Bassingham. Go and consult the priest there.”

Delia tried all she knew to keep her face from falling. She had hoped, in her ignorance, that Wagram would have accepted the post of instructor.

“Father Sonnenbloem!” she said. “But, he’s a German.”

“Well, what then? My dear child, the Catholic Church is the Church of the World, and is above nationality in that it embraces all nations – hence its name. As it happens, Father Sonnenbloem is one of the most kind-hearted and saintly men who ever lived. He is learned, too. If you are in earnest you could go to no one better.”

Delia declared that she would; and, the rain having ceased, they went forth just as a bright shaft of sunlight, darting through the cloud, which it was fast dispelling, converted the rain drippings from the leaves into a shower of glittering diamonds, and the moist, ferny, woodland scents after the shower were delicious.

“We shall have a splashy ride back, I’m afraid,” said Wagram as they regained the road. “No; it has run off rather than soaked in. It won’t hurt us; and you’ll have the sun for your remaining shots.”

After she had taken the chapel and the Priest’s Walk – she must take that, she said – Delia asked, somewhat diffidently, if she could see the ornaments.

“Certainly,” answered Wagram; “only we must get hold of Father Gayle for that, because he has got the keys of all the best things.”

The chaplain was at home, and soon found.

“Been taking our private Zoo, I hear, Miss Calmour,” he said genially as he joined them. “Your second sight of it is not quite so startling as your first, eh?”

In the sacristy – for they did not do things by halves at Hilversea – Delia was lost in wonder and delight at the beauty of the vestments and ornaments, rich and exquisite in texture and design, and she almost had to shade her eyes to look at the great sun-shaped monstrance, blazing with precious stones; but what interested her no less, perhaps, was a splendid old chasuble of Flemish make, rich and full, and displaying a perfect chronicle of symbolism in every detail of its embroidery, which Wagram pronounced to have been almost certainly worn by their martyred relative.

“From that to my boy’s things is something of a skip,” he went on, half opening a drawer, in which lay an acolyte’s dress of scarlet and lace; “only the rascal isn’t over-keen on getting inside them when he’s here – eh, Father? Says he has enough of that sort of thing to do at school.”

“Oh, well, we mustn’t expect a boy to be too pious,” laughed the priest. “I know I was anything but that at his age.”

Delia was interested. It was the first time she had heard Wagram refer to his son, and she was about to question him on the subject when the sound of a door opening, and of voices inside the chapel, caught their attention.

“It’s Haldane and Yvonne,” pronounced Wagram. “Perhaps they’ve come to have a practice.”

His conjecture proved correct, as in a minute or two the new arrivals joined them in the sacristy. They wanted to try over a few things, they said, and now the organist was nowhere to be found. Wagram couldn’t play and sing at the same time, and the same held good of Yvonne, while Haldane couldn’t play at all. What on earth was to be done?

“Could I be of any use, Mr Haldane?” said Delia with some diffidence. “I have some knowledge of accompaniment, and am used to the organ; in fact, I can sing and play at the same time without difficulty.”

“The very thing!” cried Haldane. “What a friend in need you are, Miss Calmour.”

They adjourned to the choir-loft over the west door, and Delia took her seat at the organ. It was small, but a perfect little instrument for the size of the building – here again Hilversea did not do things by halves – and had an automatic blower.

“This is a treat,” said the girl as she ran her fingers over the keyboard. “Why, the instrument is perfect. What shall we start upon?”

“Arcadelt,” said Yvonne. “Can you take soprano, Miss Calmour?”

“Yes.”

“All safe. Then we are set up. Mr Wagram, you take tenor, and father will take bass, though he’s not as good as he might be at it. Now, are you ready?”

And then Arcadelt’s Ave Maria, than which, probably, no more beautiful composition of its kind was ever wrought, in its solemn and plaintive melody and exquisite interpretation of light and shade, went forth from the four voices, cultured voices too, swelling up to the high-pitched roof in all its richness of sound, and softening into tender petition.

“Lovely, lovely!” whispered Delia, half to herself, as it ended.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Yvonne. “Do let’s have it on Sunday, Mr Wagram.”

“Shall we?”

“Oh, do, Mr Wagram,” echoed Delia enthusiastically. “I’ll ride over, wet or fine, if only to hear it.”

“Very well, then, we will; but won’t you not only hear it but help us in it?”

“May I? Oh, I shall be delighted.”

They tried over a few more things, including a gem or two of Gounod, then adjourned to the house for tea.

“What a universal genius that little girl is, Wagram,” said Haldane as they walked thither, the two girls being in front.

“Yes; she’s a clever child – seems able to turn her hand to anything.” And then he told of the day’s doings.

“Good, and good again,” said Haldane. “We must tell everyone to get that number of The Old Country Side. Then they may give her another job.”

“I think they very likely will,” said Wagram, with a twinkle in his eyes that escaped his friend.