Читать книгу: «Cardboard Castle»

Percival Christopher Wren

Cardboard Castle

Published by Good Press, 2022

goodpress@okpublishing.info

EAN 4064066358556

Table of Contents

I

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

II

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

III

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

IV

§ 2

V

§ 2

§ 3

VI

VII

§ 2

VIII

§ 2

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

§ 2

XVI

§ 2

§ 3

XVII

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

§ 5

§ 6

XVIII

XIX

§ 2

§ 3

§ 4

I

Table of Contents

I am going to tell this story in my own way, because I hold very firmly the belief that one’s own way is the best way. And if further reason were needed, there is surely an excellent one in the fact that I know of no other. From which you will gather the undeniable fact that I am not a practised writer; not a trained and experienced novelist, equipped with a classical or even a recognized technique.

But I have a story to tell, and am competent to tell it. Moreover, there is no one else in a position to tell the story as completely and accurately as I can.

§ 2

Table of Contents

No one, not even his parents, knew and understood young Anthony Calderton better than I did, and I very much doubt if anyone understood him nearly as well.

And yet, as will be seen, this may not be saying a very great deal. I knew him because, as his tutor, I spent practically the whole of every day with him for several years. For Anthony being what he was, and I taking the view of my duties and responsibilities that I did, I was not content merely to spend lesson-time with him. In point of fact, I regarded lesson-time as perhaps the least valuable part of the day. Certainly far less important than the leisure time we spent together—talking, walking, riding, reading, pursuing our hobbies and, more particularly, young Anthony’s amazing hobby of dramatization.

Doubtless you will at once think—a thing that was often actually said to me—that the boy would be only too glad to get away from his tutor as soon as lessons were over, and that if he worked with me from ten till one and again from five till six, he would see and hear as much of me as he wanted, or more, and be only too thankful to get away from me for the rest of the time.

This, however, was not the case, as it would have been with the normal boy.

But Anthony was not a normal boy.

He loathed my leaving him, as sometimes I was compelled to do, even for an hour, much less for a day or a week-end. He hated saying good night and going to bed; and he knocked at my bedroom door—a quaint little figure with tousled hair and big haunted eyes—in his pyjamas, dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, in the early morning, when the footman brought my tea.

Doubtless you will also think—a thing which, on more than one occasion, was also said to me—that I should have got sick, sorry and tired of the sight and sound of the boy, and been only too glad to leave him to his devices for the afternoon, and again as soon as his evening lesson was completed.

But neither was that the case; for on the rare occasions when Anthony was not with me, I missed him, found myself at a loose end, and much as a dog-lover feels who has to take his usual country walk without his dog.

Not that there was that sort of relationship between the boy and myself; no throwing of metaphorical sticks or stones for him to run after; no benevolent or condescending pats upon the head; no talking down; no sitting upon stiles while the less intelligent animal gambolled about my feet. Nothing of that sort. I merely mean that when he wasn’t with me, I missed him so much that the walk was a lonely grind taken conscientiously for fresh air and exercise.

Not only did I miss his company but his conversation; his unusual, remarkable and most interesting thoughts, ideas and fancies—especially fancies—expressed in that somewhat old-fashioned but charming and delightful way that was the result of years of unguided browsing in his father’s library, and the reading of books that rarely come the way of boys of his age.

He had had an admirable governess, of whom more anon, whose excellent influence upon his then baby mind had given it a noticeable twist and, in one minor direction, a strange little kink. I think that is the best word, for it would give a wrong impression if I said that she had warped his mind.

And what an amazing and hugely disproportionate effect, not only upon his own life, but upon those of others, was that strange little kink to have.

What she had done, in point of fact, was to give his perfectly sound mind a “King Charles’s head”—more than figuratively. To the extent that she had done this, young Anthony departed from the normal, though when he came into my hands, at the age of fourteen years or so, it was some time before I discovered this curious idiosyncrasy which was to have such dramatic and far-reaching consequences.

Now I have already, and before mentioning this peculiarity, admitted that Anthony was not normal.

How difficult it is to say exactly what one means. If there be a true word in the jest that speech is given us for the concealment of our thoughts, there is a far truer one in the statement that speech is a most inadequate vehicle for the exact conveyance of our meaning.

How shall I express the state and condition of Anthony’s mentality? Sane but abnormal? Normal enough, but most unusual? A mind so unusual as to be remarkable; and therefore not a normal mind?

Anyhow, what I can say without danger of being misunderstood, is that Anthony had a beautiful, a lovely mind; that he was brilliantly clever, though I hate the word, for any fool can be “clever”; that he had an acute perceptive brain; that he had a most charming, delightful and engaging nature; that he was infinitely attractive, amusing and intriguing; that he was, with one exception, altogether the nicest, the most lovable personality I have ever known.

Though I am slow in the matter of liking and disliking, cautious in summing up and deciding about a person, I liked him the first time I saw him; liked him very much within a month; soon became exceedingly fond of him; and within the first year of our association, freely and fully admitted that I loved him.

And that was the first time in my life I had admitted such a thing, save for one or two members of my own family.

It is a thing for which I thank God, that Anthony Calderton had wise parents; that his father, albeit a fine flower of the Public School, Sandhurst and Army system, was sufficiently intelligent, broad-minded and perceptive to realize that there are certain rare spirits for whom that system is not suitable; also that his mother had sufficient love, understanding and unselfishness to realize and accept the fact that, greatly as she desired it, Anthony could not and would not go to school.

It must have been a real grief to her, as well as to her husband, that the boy should not follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, sit literally in the seats they had occupied, and emulate their successes or failures in class-room and playing-field.

It was breaking a tradition very dear to them both.

What would have happened to Anthony had his father taken the line that so many soldiers would have taken, and shouted,

“What the Devil! Of course the boy’ll go to Eton. Never heard such damn’ rubbish in my life. They’ll soon knock the nonsense out of him,” I shudder to think, especially had such an attitude been encouraged by a high-spirited, never-heard-such-bosh type of mother, with a yelp of,

“My son? Of course he’ll go; and I shall tell his House Master to stand no nonsense. Put him through it. Make a man of him.”

Had such a line been taken with Anthony, it is much more likely that they’d have made a corpse or an idiot of him.

Anthony was fortunate; indeed, he was singularly blessed, in his parents.

Nor, I am glad to say, did he himself, ever, in later life, inveigh against the Public School system simply because it was not the right system for him. He did not proclaim to the world that his was a rotten Public School because it didn’t amend and adapt its system to his peculiar requirements; he didn’t proclaim, for example, that because he was taught French by an Englishman whose accent was not pure Parisian, the Public School system is an abominable one and stands thereby self-condemned; he did not declare that it is a soul-destroying, character-crushing machine that casts all those unfortunates committed to its care into one uniform mould and, while they are malleable, stamps them with one uniform pattern.

Incidentally I might mention that I heard this view expressed by a visitor on learning that Anthony had been educated by a governess and then by a tutor; and that Anthony thereupon promptly observed that, so long as the mould and the pattern were excellent, admirable and serviceable to their purpose, it did not seem to matter how many people were stamped by it. In fact, the more the merrier.

Such was Anthony’s considered opinion; and upon every conceivable subject mentioned by me and other ordinary people in ordinary conversation, he seemed to have a considered opinion, so widely had he read and so incorrigibly was he given to the habit of forming opinions.

At the risk of displaying myself as completely obsessed by the subject of Anthony, I wish to give you a very clear and accurate picture of him, before telling the story in which he played a part so strange, so decisive, so final.

I am describing him at such length because it is important that you should realize not only the fact but the degree, the extent, and the nature of his abnormality.

What is a lunatic, a person who is permanently so “queer” as to be described as insane?

Speaking succinctly and accurately, it is a person who is incapable of distinguishing between fact and fancy.

Personally, I think we sane people are all a little mad; or, to express it otherwise and better, there is some subject on which everyone is more or less mad, generally very much less; and the extent to which we are mad is the extent to which we are unable to differentiate between the facts and our fancies on that particular subject.

Now, how far was Anthony unable to distinguish between reality and make-believe? That was one of the first questions that I asked myself about him; for quite early, indeed by the day after my coming to Calderton, I was struck by his ability to lose himself in the part that he was playing. And Anthony, in spite of all I have said about him, was almost always playing a part and dramatizing himself or the situation.

Doubtless this tendency had been strengthened and increased by the methods followed by his excellent governess who was, very rightly, a great believer in the encouragement of self-expression, and in the use of a child’s natural bent and tastes for the furtherance and encouragement of its activities and the development of its abilities. He loved charades, plays, and make-believe, and she encouraged him to act. He had more than the average child’s love of dressing-up, impersonation, dramatization—acting, in short—and this had been, as I say, definitely encouraged.

One had to know Anthony well before one knew what he was up to, in what rôle he was behaving; whom he was impersonating, in fact. And one always had a sense of having failed him, of having fallen short of his high expectation and, indeed, trust, if one were stupid, missed one’s cue, and responded wrongly, or not at all.

Nor am I in the slightest degree praising myself—indeed I am probably laying myself open to the accusation of being queer and abnormal myself—when I say that Anthony’s luck held, at any rate to a small degree, when his parents selected me as his tutor. He would have been nearly as badly off with a bluff, blunt, bulldog-pipe-and-no-nonsense fellow who completely failed to understand him, as he would have been at a Public School with young barbarians at play, and harassed pre-occupied form-masters at work.

The ministrations of the cold-bath-every-morning, sweat-run-every-afternoon, come-off-that-imagination-tripe young man, whether Muscular Christian curate or Rugger Blue and recent graduate, would have reduced Anthony to sullenness—no, never that—but to a withdrawn aloofness and a polite, easy, yet incredibly stubborn refusal to conform.

For, though I never found him so myself, I do not deny that Anthony could be very difficult, nor that, quite frequently, he actually was extremely difficult with people who did not understand him, and whom he did not like.

This naturally led to there being two opinions about him, the opinions of those who really knew him, and of those who thought they did; and from this fact arises the implicit commendation that those who knew him best loved him most. Inevitably, the better one knew young Anthony Calderton, the more one loved him—loved his very faults.

For he was no angel-child, no adolescent saint. He had a temper; and, personally, I have no use for anybody who hasn’t one somewhere concealed about him or her.

He was impish, and could be exceedingly annoying to people who were fools enough to be annoyed by his little jokes at their expense. These amusingly mischievous tricks were often very carefully thought out and most ingenious; and, in conversation, he would often lead one on to commit oneself to some untenable and indefensible statement or theory. I always found these verbal fencing-matches very diverting, and encouraged them, both for Anthony’s amusement and my own. At first I was a little puzzled, but soon came to understand that a series of Socratic questions was leading up to some absurd, whimsical, or fantastic conclusion.

And undeniably Anthony was sly; sly in the way that an elf, a gnome, a fairy, is sly, partly self-protectively and partly for secret and inward amusement, the gratification of a love of subtlety and trickery, a baffling but innocent and harmless deviousness.

And now, perhaps, I have given you a pretty fair idea of the complex character of Anthony Calderton, and equally perhaps, I have completely failed to do so; failed to give you an adequate and faithful portrait of a most delightful and charming boy, attractive, original and engaging beyond the ordinary.

I hope I have not quite failed, for I should like you to be in a position to form your own opinion as to the answer to the question concerning him that even now obsesses, intrigues and troubles me.

§ 3

Table of Contents

I find it less easy to tell you about Lady Calderton; not because she was, like her son, a complex personality—in fact, she was a woman of great simplicity of mind and lucidity of soul—but because I cannot profess to be an unbiased chronicler where she is concerned. Difficult as I find it to speak with impartial just accuracy concerning Anthony, it seems impossible for me to do so with regard to his mother.

I loved Anthony long before I really knew his mother, for Anthony had become the absorbing interest of my life before I saw her daily and came to understand her and know her well.

As with the boy, I liked her from the first, and liked her very much before she again went abroad with her husband, leaving Anthony, and virtually Calderton as well, in my charge.

To obtrude here my purely personal and private affairs for a moment, I was, at the time of my going to Calderton, a somewhat idle, somewhat philosophical young man, blessed or cursed with a modest competence; a dilettante dabbler in the Arts, painting a little, composing a little, writing a little; and an ardent admirer of other arts, in the practice of which I had no ability and in the pursuit of which I had no desire to engage—the dramatic; the poetic; that of sculpture; and so forth.

I had done well on the scholastic side at School and College, leaving the former with a useful scholarship and the latter with a good degree. But at games I was hopeless, and could do nothing at all with a ball, large or small, save despise it heartily. I hated cricket, disliked both forms of football, intensely detested golf and tennis, and refused to learn to play hockey.

In a vain endeavour to mitigate the contempt which this confession will rightly bring upon me, I claim that a long and successful fight at Prep School, Public School, and College, against the tyranny of the Ball, connotes a certain tenacity and stubbornness of character. In point of fact, a humorous or facetious schoolmaster, in writing one of his annual reports, stated concerning me,

“He is a boy of much character, chiefly bad; a boy of great promise—and small performance; a trying boy who never tries.”

But he was one of those excellent fellows who, doubtless rightly, judge a boy by his prowess and performance on the playing-fields, and the value of his contribution to the winning of those cups and pots that so justly are the honour and glory of his House.

Lest you get an even lower estimate of me than I deserve, I would fain add that, in spite of my congenital inability with the Ball, I take a great deal of walking exercise, and think nothing of doing my hundred and fifty miles a week when on one of my frequent walking tours. Also that I am a pretty fair performer with the foil and épée, a star pupil of Bertrand’s, and more than once a finalist in those interesting early morning encounters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Also, I am blessed with an uncle who, on the tacit assumption that I am his heir, sees to it that I do not go to utter moral rack and ruin through my penchant for the idle and contemplative life, my preference for the library rather than the dusty arena, and my inclination to be what he sometimes calls a loafer, sometimes a wretched book-worm, and again, a worthless young man-about-town, according to the severity of his rheumatism.

I visit Uncle in the swiftly dissolving privacies and fastnesses of the Albany for the good of my soul and my pocket; and because, in spite of his insulting tirades, I am very fond of him.

To him I owe it—and for this I am more deeply in his debt than for anything else—that I came to Calderton as Anthony’s tutor. In spite of the trite banality of its truism, how endlessly intrusive and attractive is speculation on the immensity of the results that ensue from the smallest acts, events and deeds, the tremendous effects of what are apparently the tiniest causes; as though the dropping of a pin caused thunderous reverberations that echo round the world.

Had not my uncle’s man Judd mentioned that the stock of private writing-paper was running low, and had it not been a fine morning, he would not have gone shopping and done what he rarely did—lunched at his Club, the Marlborough, and there encountered General Sir Arthur Calderton, an Eton contemporary and old friend of his; and had not the General mentioned the business that brought him to town, that of visiting a scholastic agency, who might be able to recommend a suitable tutor for his son, I should never have known Anthony Calderton, nor had the privilege and joy of knowing and perhaps helping his mother at a time of direst distress, fear and horror. So slight, so tiny, we may reflect, are the events, the accidents in fact, that change our whole lives and shape our ends.

Wiser, doubtless, is the conclusion that whatever happens was ordained, and was written in the Book of Fate since Time began. (Item, and further reflection for the weak-minded, or such as desire to become so: When did Time begin?)

Anyhow, it was ‘written on my forehead.’

Uncle rang me up at my tiny though extremely comfortable flat, and bade me dine in Albany with him on the morrow. At dinner he informed me that I was to proceed at my, or his, earliest convenience, by train, to a place called Calderton, where I should be met and driven to Calderton House, the residence of General Sir Arthur Calderton; and should there take up my residence as tutor to his son Anthony.

“High time you had another job, young man,” growled my uncle, “and a job in the country, too. Do you all the good in the world. Lucky to get the chance. Lovely place. Incidentally, I told Calderton that he’d be lucky too, so don’t let me down.”

I agreed at once, for I love swift unexpected ventures and adventures such as this ‘leaping-up,’ as my beloved sister and I used to call it at home, and doing something unpremeditated and, preferably, silly.

And so, some two or three days later, at four o’clock on a beautiful afternoon, I got out of the train at a little wayside station that bore the name that was to become to me the most important in the world, Calderton, and saw, standing on the tiny platform, an elegant and most attractive female figure.

A primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow primrose was to me at that moment. But soon it was something more, for as I languidly superintended the extraction of minor baggage from my compartment and major impedimenta from the luggage-van, I saw from the tail of my eye that she was taking note of me and my mild activities. Evidently she was not proceeding by this train; apparently she was waiting for someone and ... yes ... obviously and positively, she was waiting for me. I was almost as surprised as delighted when, approaching and extending a tiny gloved hand, she gave me a smile that immediately won my heart as the writers of books have it.

“Do say you are Mr. Waring,” she begged beseechingly, gazing at my face with eyes as clear, confiding and beautiful as human eyes have any need to be.

“I would, in any case,” I replied, raising my hat. “I will. I do.”

“You am, in fact,” she laughed.

“I are,” I agreed.

“I’m so glad,” said Lady Calderton, and somehow I was then and there, in that moment of our first meeting, more than glad.

How amazing, and how charmingly delightful, that she should have taken the trouble herself to come to the station to meet so insignificant a person as a prospective tutor of her small boy. A mere male governess—though, on the other hand, surely a person of considerable importance, if the physical, mental and moral welfare of the son and heir of an ancient house were to be placed unreservedly in his sole charge.

“I thought I would like to come down and meet you,” she said, as we made our way to the big limousine, followed by a chauffeur and a porter, the one not overburdened with my despatch-case and rug, the other bearing kit-bag and suit-case, “so that we can have a talk on the way back. Time is so short and there’s so much to tell you about Anthony. He’s the dearest boy, but he’s ... different.”

Not having met him, I mentally admitted that I was quite certain he was the dearest boy, and that, like every other mother’s son, he was different.

And then, glancing at the charming and piquant face beside me, gentle, kindly, beautiful, I softened my heart, and realized that her son might indeed be different. He might well be very different from the average young savage who had so often been my cruel critic and harsh oppressor in my own diffident and difficult school-days.

“Not very strong?” I ventured.

“Oh, healthy enough, but what his father calls ‘over-engined for his beam.’ He’s a queer boy. Simply won’t go to school.”

“Refuses?” I asked, between admiration of such stoutness and dismay at such defiance. This must either be a young gentleman of remarkable character or else a spoilt brat with whom no one could do anything.

It began to look as though my new job might be no sinecure.

“No, he doesn’t refuse. He comes back. Gives it a fair trial and then comes home again.”

Runs away from school, in short, thought I. Character again? Or incorrigible disobedience? Or was this one of those examples of the freak education by cranky parents, which is not education at all? No repressions; no coercion; no interference; no—anything. So that, instead of the child growing as some sort of flower, plant, shrub or tree in the Garden of Life, the result is a poor and worthless weed. But obviously there was nothing of the freak, the crank, the doctrinaire fanatic about this particular parent.

“Just comes back,” she continued, “and says that it won’t do; that he simply can’t bear it, and relies on me to have sufficient understanding to refrain from trying to make him return. I know it sounds like a weak indulgent parent, feeble and foolish, on the one hand, and the spoilt head-strong and uncontrolled child on the other; but Anthony’s not that, and whatever I may be, I can assure you that his father is not weak and indulgent; neither feeble nor foolish ... Anyhow, you’ll see.”

Yes, thought I, in my wisdom, I shall see. The spoilt brat who’ll give endless trouble and completely ruin my enjoyment of what should be a delightful job.

And for the rest of the drive from Calderton Station to Calderton House, Anthony’s mother did her best to place me au courant with the unusual state of affairs, and the ways and nature of what was evidently going to prove a very unusual pupil.

I smile as I look back upon my preconceived ideas.

My first view of Calderton House, in its glorious and almost unique setting, was breath-taking.

Well, thought I, if I couldn’t be happy here, were there half a dozen spoilt children to contend with, it would be a pity.

A lovely and historic house; gardens that had been tended with skilful care for centuries; the loveliest part of the most beautiful county in England; a house noted for its library and art treasures, its historical features and—to consider the more mundane things of life, which I am far from despising—its cellar, its chef, its stables, its shooting, its fishing, all highly praised by my uncle, himself a recognized connoiseur.

And as we drove through the park, with its famous chestnut avenue leading from the great gates to the house, I was distinctly conscious, even while admiring the lovely effects of the sunlight slanting through the trees upon the short fine grass and deliberately posing deer, that I was sorry that the woman sitting beside me, her face and voice so filled with a lovely animation, was going away.

Before I had set foot in Calderton House, I realized how different the place would be when she was not in it. Moreover, before I had set eyes on Anthony Calderton, I registered a determination that if my tutorship were not a success, it would be through no fault of mine—and I was not at that time a person given to enthusiasms.

So little so, in point of fact, that I mentally shook myself, took myself to task, and wondered what was happening to me.

It must be my artistic spirit demonstrating, I decided, on sight of the truly lovely scene on which I gazed—Lady Calderton being part thereof.

Arrived at the foot of the great stone steps that swept in a double flight to left and right of the entrance, Lady Calderton remarked that, at the risk of boring me, she hoped to have a really long talk about Anthony after dinner, and meanwhile, if I would join them at tea on the terrace, I could make Anthony’s acquaintance.

I was delighted with my quarters, to which the footman conducted me, a delightful sunny chintz-furnished sitting-room, looking out across the park over the lake to distant hills; and a smaller room, furnished as a bedroom, opening out of it.

Yes, this would do; would decidedly do. Most comfortable, both in summer and in winter, in fine weather and in foul; sun-bathed on fine days, with glass doors opening on to a sunny balcony; wonderfully cosy in bad weather, with curtains drawn and a blazing log-fire in the big fireplace.

Having washed, and given my keys to the rubicund young footman, I retraced my steps to the hall, the centre of the activities of the house, where Jenkins, who looked the Perfect Butler, took me through a big drawing-room to a sunny and sheltered corner of a terrace. Here, in the midst of a circle of deep and comfortable cane-chairs, an inviting tea-table was set.

A tall man, handsome and grey-haired, arose, a pleasant smile lighting up his clean-cut bronzed face. Coming towards me with extended hand, he said,

“Mr. Waring? Delighted you’ve come. Extraordinarily good luck that I met your uncle at the Club the other day. Known him all my life. Hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

I murmured my acknowledgments and, almost before I had accepted the cigarette and seated myself in the chair he indicated, I decided that I liked General Sir Arthur Calderton, and that here again my uncle was justified of his eulogy.

Inwardly I smiled to myself, and mentally I rubbed my hands, for all seemed well, and very well. This man and I talked the same language.

He fitted his setting, and went with Lady Calderton, æsthetically, as well as along the Vale of Life. Not that he had gone far down it, for he didn’t look a day more than fifty, though he may have been several days more. Some fifteen years older than his wife, I thought.

If only Anthony were as amenable and attractive as his mother thought him, my lines were indeed now cast in pleasant places.

Pleasant! Could one but have foreseen....

“His mother will tell you all about Anthony,” continued the General. “I can sum up all I’ve got to say, by asking you to do the impossible. Anyway, you’ll try, I’m sure. What I want is for him to get, here at home, all that he is missing by not going to School, if you see what I mean.”

I murmured that I did understand, and would do my best.

“I don’t for one moment suppose he will go into the Army, and I certainly shan’t put any pressure on him, but I’d like him to go to the Varsity; and I am hoping that, by that time, he’ll be sufficiently normal and ordinary to pass in a crowd. Being what he is, he’d have a bad time at a Public School. He has, in point of fact, though a brief one. But at Oxford—at Magdalen or Christ Church, say—I don’t see why he should be very different from the average undergraduate, having been in the right kind of tutor’s hands for four or five years.”

“Nor do I,” I agreed. “Nor, moreover, do I see why he shouldn’t have an excellent good time, if he is a bit different. The Varsity isn’t like school, of course, and the chief difference between the two is that, whereas individuality is discouraged at school, individuality and idiosyncrasy are permitted—indeed encouraged—at College.”

“Yes, quite so. Quite so. And there again differing from Sandhurst or Woolwich.”

“Yes, a man can go his own way, do what he likes, and, indeed, be what he likes, without interference from anybody. Athlete or æsthete, party-thrower or hermit.”

“Yes,” agreed the General. “Well, I want him to go up, and I want him to lead the ordinary Varsity life among his fellows.”

“I understand,” I assured the General. “And if he comes back home in the middle of his first term, I shall decide that I have failed.”

“Failed?” said the voice of Lady Calderton behind. “Already?”

“No, Lady Calderton,” I said, rising and turning to meet her delightful smile. “I was just saying that unless Anthony stays at the Varsity for three years and asks for a fourth, I shall feel that I have failed.

“Failed in life completely,” I added, as she laughed.

The smile died from her face and a faintly anxious, deeply solicitous look took its place as, turning, she said quietly,

“Here he is.”

A tall slender boy, looking more than his fourteen years, came out on to the terrace, staring hard at me as he approached.

Yes, thought I, definitely different; very highly strung. A fine forehead and not so fine a chin; too small and pointed. Aristocrat; inbred; balanced on a very fine edge. Fine nervous hands. Very good mouth indeed; nothing petulant, greedy, weak or peevish there. Beautiful eyes; too big. Ought to have been a girl. Dressed in a girl’s clothes, nobody would use the word ‘boyish’ about her, him, it.

“This is Anthony,” said Lady Calderton, “and I do so hope he will be a credit to you ... This is Mr. Waring, Anthony, who has so kindly come to look after you and help you while we are away.”

The boy shook hands gravely.

“How d’you do,” said he. “Do you fence?”

“Yes,” said I. “I do.”

“Oh, good,” he observed. And leaving it at that, turned to the tea-table, and with complete self-possession, became one of the circle, an equal.

As we talked, I eyed him from time to time, always finding, when I did so, that he was watching me with a long considering look, thoughtful, judgmatic. He was not staring rudely, or in the childish manner that is rightly prohibited, but studying me; and, although his eyes left my face directly I looked towards him, I knew that they returned instantly.

I was conscious of a foolish and most unwarranted desire to be approved by this queer boy, and I pondered the problem of what was to happen if I failed to give satisfaction. He might leave school and return home when he decided so to do, but he couldn’t very well leave home and the tutor installed there. Or would he, perchance, announce one day that he proposed to join his parents in Montiga, as a tutor-infested home was no longer acceptable?

But behind these idle speculations was a growing belief and assurance that nothing of the sort would happen; that he and I would get on excellently.

Nor should it be for want of the utmost endeavour on my part if I failed to interest, to inspire, and somewhat to mould the young Anthony Calderton.

After tea I returned to my quarters, found that my things had been unpacked, the trunk and suit-cases removed, a large bowl of roses installed, and the rooms looking as though I had inhabited them for years.

What should I do? Seek out Anthony, suggest a walk, and make his better acquaintance; or, treading warily, leave him alone for the present?

There was a knock at my door, and in answer to my call, Anthony entered.

“Hullo,” said I, refraining from adding ‘old chap’ or adopting any sort of avuncular or heavy-father line.

“Hullo,” was the reply. “You didn’t bring any foils with you, I suppose?”

“No. But I’ll soon get them.”

This was excellent.

“Had any fencing lessons?” I asked.

“Only from a gym-instructor at school,” replied Anthony.

And in cool and quiet comment, added,

“A clumsy lout.”

“H’m!” thought I.

“You’ll give me lessons, won’t you?” he asked.

“Rather!” said I. “More than you’ll like, perhaps.”

“No, I don’t think you’ll do that.

“What I really want,” he continued, “is to learn to fence very well indeed, and then to have a duel, with real rapiers and sharp points. Father has one, you know. My ancestors’. Charles the First’s time. I want to use it in a fight.”

This was interesting. Blood-thirsty? Homicidal destruction-complex? No, not with that face.

“Whom do you want to kill?” I asked, and at once saw that I had said the wrong thing.

“Kill? What a horrible idea. I don’t want to kill anybody, nor hurt anybody either. I just want to have a real fencing-match; a proper fight; a duel. I shall dress up as a cavalier and we’d fence by moonlight. Full moon, you know, on a lawn, and I’d throw off my plumed hat and velvet cloak and take off my doublet. Fight in a silk shirt and slashed velvet breeches of the Stuart period. Silk hose and buckled shoes. Take the shoes off, perhaps.

“And you’d do the same, wouldn’t you? Only would you mind being a Roundhead?” he asked.

I forbore to simulate tremendous enthusiasm. Only a fool, or rather, a bigger fool than I, perhaps, would ‘act’ under the steady gaze of those large and level eyes.

I considered the matter.

“Yes, rather fun,” I admitted. “Bit dangerous, though, with sharp points.”

“Dangerous!” observed Anthony, and the fine lip curled slightly.

After staring out of the window for a few moments, he observed,

“Oh, by the way, Mother sent me to ask if you’d care to go for a stroll with her. She always walks after tea.

“If it’s not raining,” he added.

Most definitely I would care to do so. I had an idea that it would take me a very long time to see and hear more of Lady Calderton than I wanted to do.

I have never forgotten that walk across the park; the evening; the scene, and the company approaching perfection. And by the time we returned to the house, more than an hour later, I had pretty well made up my mind about her.

I summed her up then as being competent without being clever, well-read without being learned, charming without being insincere, and, as a mother, loving without being foolish.

I gathered the impression that without being weak, vacillating, and over-suggestible, she was anything but strong-minded, firm and determined; not the type of woman of which the best martyrs are made; not the sort that would shine as a militant suffragette or in a crisis; nor one who would suffer in silence, take a strong line and ensue it to the bitter end; or die for an idea.

How far I was right in my assumption as to her probable conduct at a time of crisis, under great suffering, in imminent danger to herself and those she loved, I was to learn.

It is not for one moment to be supposed that I admired her or liked her the less for these reservations. I like a woman to be feminine, and she was, I judged, of the essence of femininity. That Anthony should, to some extent, dominate her, and to any extent get his own way against her better judgment, seemed to me, then, creditable to them both; an attribute to Anthony’s clear knowledge of what he wanted, and to her wisdom in compromise.

Wisdom! Had she been a plain, unpleasant, and objectionable woman, I should probably, in the same circumstances, have preferred the phrase “weakness in compromise.”

It is axiomatic that whether we realize it or not, we like, and indeed love, people far more for their little human imperfections and weaknesses than we do for their high moral virtues, strength, wisdom and persistence in well-doing.

Anyhow, even on that first evening, I liked this woman exceedingly; and where, perhaps, in the matter of her attitude to her son I might have judged, I forbore—and sympathized instead.

Well, I hope I have now given you some idea of the character and personality of Lady Calderton.

And again, perhaps, I have failed to do so; failed to do her justice; to give you anything approaching a true picture of her wonderful charm, sweetness and true kindliness of nature; of her easy friendliness and the fascination of her simplicity and sincerity.

I never met anyone, whether aristocrat, nouveau riche, bourgeois, or of the working-class, less afflicted with conceit, self-importance, aloofness, or air and manner of that stultifying exclusiveness that spoils so many otherwise likeable people.

In short, Lady Calderton was a gentlewoman who was truly gentle, and possessed a face and form that were truly beautiful.

§ 4

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Of General Sir Arthur Calderton, I need not say very much, as, although a most important figure in the drama, he played a small part on the stage.

He was—I fear I must say the words—a great gentleman; a genuine aristocrat; and an ornament of county, military and political society; one of a vanishing race, who served his country without need, or desire, of profit; and though possessed of a magnificent home, more than ample wealth, and all the instincts of a country gentleman and sportsman, he laboured hard and successfully in alien lands and tropic climes ad majorem patriæ gloriam, and to the benefit of those he governed.

Able without being clever, forceful without being overbearing, proud without being conceited, strong without being harsh, he was that somewhat rare being, a man at once admirable and lovable. For he was essentially and fundamentally kindly.

It was my good fortune to see a good deal, and to know something, of that truly great man, the late Lord Curzon; and Sir Arthur Calderton reminded me of him, both by similarity and by contrast.

With all Lord Curzon’s pride, high sense of duty and inborn aptitude for affairs, he had none of his arrogance of manner, his somewhat pompous aloofness, and but little of his industrious gluttony for work. An easier, more friendly, more human person, with a far greater gift of putting others at their ease, of winning their love, and evoking the best that was in them.

Not only was he lovable, as Curzon was not, but he was endowed with a great gift of loving. This side of idolatry, he undoubtedly adored his wife and son. He had a host of friends, as distinct from acquaintances; and amongst them could be included his subordinates, servants and retainers.

That he could leave behind him the son whom he almost worshipped, was, to me, final proof of his great sense of duty and of service; for as I have said, there was no other reason why he should lead any life but that of a country squire of broad acres.

That he should have left the boy in my charge after so brief an acquaintanceship—for he knew me for less than three months—is the highest compliment I have ever received.

I can only feebly return it by saying that I grew to like him more than I have ever liked any man in so short a period.

§ 5

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And now to tell you about the man calling himself Captain Montague Bertie-Norton.

Wishing not only to be fair to him, as well as to the others, and to draw an accurate picture of him, I will begin by saying that I don’t think it is right to call him a villain—by which I mean a downright, unmitigated, blackguardly scoundrel.

No one is all black—nor pure white. We are of all shades of grey, from the palest pearl to the dingiest lead. And some of us again are dappled; and others are like the zebra, streaky. The man who called himself Bertie-Norton can perhaps be judged better by his actions than from my description, but inasmuch as I knew him pretty intimately, I may as well tell you something about him and give you the opinion that I, personally, formed concerning him.

His besetting sin was selfishness, and from this the other sins sprang. I should think one would probably be safe in assuming that never in the whole of his life did he take any step that was not to his own advantage; lift a finger to help anyone but himself; or make any investment of time or trouble that would not show a profit—to himself.

Although he was a “schamer,” as our Irish groom said of him, I don’t, in justice, think that he spent a very great deal of his valuable time in thinking out schemes for his own advantage and advancement. He hadn’t that kind of astute and active mind. Rather was it lazy, somewhat unintelligent, and with a marked preference for the policy of laisser-faire. He was not of the stuff of which great defaulting financiers are made, but was an opportunist, and where he saw his opportunity, he took it—at any cost to anybody. He was untruthful, dishonest and unreliable; with a low standard of honour and self-respect. He had done extremely disgraceful things, and was unashamed.

All this I know on the best authority—his own; for if it be, in such circumstances, a virtue, he had the virtue of candour concerning his own misconduct.

So, though not all black, his colour was a very dirty grey. Nevertheless, he had his own standards; and as he was wont to tell you with a serious air of reassurance, he drew the line. I wonder how many times he assured me that “there he drew the line.” A curious “there,” but static, standing like a rock in a smooth and oily sea, a very grey sea again.

For example, he said that he had never cheated, and that he never would cheat, at cards; and I believe he spoke the truth—that was in him. He wouldn’t descend to the baseness of marking cards. You would never find him with an extra ace. But if I were playing cards with him, I should take note of the position of any mirror that might be in the room. I should watch his dealing with the utmost attention; and I should like his partner to be a man whom I knew.

I am sure that he had never forged, and never would forge, a cheque, under any temptation; but I happen to know that he drew his own cheque upon a non-existent account, for I possess one such document, drawn in my favour—‘favour’ being a good word in the circumstances.

I am quite sure that he would have neither part nor lot in such turf villainy as “hocussing the favourite.” But on his own confession, he had, on more than one occasion, won what he described as a ‘pot’ of money by participating in the bribery of an amenable jockey, a good puller; he had also done well, he said, in partnership with an inevitably wealthy gentleman whose custom it was to run a hot favourite, odds-on, which was almost invariably beaten at the post by his second string, a very dark horse, odds a hundred to eight.

Finally, he had come before the Stewards, and they had said the sort of thing that such a good sportsman resents.

Staying in the house of a friend, he would undoubtedly keep his fingers from stealing—save such things as any affections that might be lying about. He had only made one marriage, but had unmade quite a few.

He had never murdered man or woman; only killed their happiness, their faith, their trust, their joy in life.

Nor do I think he had ever borne false witness, out of malice, just for the sake of doing such a thing. He was too much of a gentleman to do such a deed wantonly; but when it was necessary to his own convenience, advantage and profit—why, that was another matter.

Of course, if people got in his way, well ... He himself told me a curious and interesting story of a fellow, even then “doing time,” who need not have been, except for ... But no, Captain Bertie-Norton may have been boasting.

Another thing in his favour. I’m quite sure that when he was a soldier, and presumably in possession of various military secrets of greater or less interest and importance, he would never have sold his knowledge to a foreign power. I don’t think there was in the world money enough, or any other acceptable form of bribery and corruption, to have induced him to do such a thing.

No. Captain Bertie-Norton, though pretty much of a bad man, was not the complete villain, for as I have said, he had his own standards of right and wrong, and as he himself proclaimed, he drew the line.

In appearance he was strikingly handsome; in manner, charming; in bearing, urbane; in style, neat, incisive and polished—at times. I make this reservation because he had a defect of style and bearing, a mannerism: and that was a laugh which can only be described as an extremely silly one. It was a flaw in an otherwise almost perfect exterior make-up; and it was as depreciatory, nay ruinous, as a bad flaw in a big jewel. All was well until Captain Bertie-Norton laughed. One could not but admire his face and figure, form and limb, his fine military bearing, his clipped but musical and pleasing speech, until he laughed. And that fatuous, foolish sound, so suggestive not only of silly self-satisfaction but of weakness and stupidity, spoilt everything.

How I came to loathe it. At first I hated it for his sake. Later, I loathed it for my own. Until I knew him for what, on his own showing, he was, it seemed such a dreadful pity, such a cruel shame, that so fine a tout-ensemble should be so disfigured.

It was almost as bad as a squint or a hare-lip.

Nevertheless, it was not very long before I recognized it for what it was—Nature’s warning. For surely no one could hear that crétin laugh without pausing to consider whether Captain Bertie-Norton could be all that he claimed to be and appeared to be. If I obtrude this mannerism, or, rather, trait, upon your notice, it is because, more than anything else, it indicated the real man, and betrayed him.

Whenever it burst forth, incongruous and jarring, silly and fatuous, one knew that he was complacently regarding some past rascality or contemplating some future one; but, once again, not a piece of cunning and clever villainy that he had thought out for himself. Rather an opportunity that had occurred, arisen gratuitously in his path.

I wish I could make that aspect of his nature quite clear, otherwise what he did would seem too monstrous, too incredible—for a man of his birth and breeding, education and upbringing.

Perhaps I can sum up his character briefly like this.

He would not, and probably could not, hatch some artful plot whereby he could swindle you of a ten-pound note: but if he saw one fall from your pocket as you walked down the road in front of him, undoubtedly he’d ‘find’ it, and a good home (and a bad use) for it.

And now, is it possible for me to confess that I liked Captain Bertie-Norton fairly well at first, if very ill at last; but even to the last there was something likeable about this charming, easy-going man; this irresponsible, unreliable failure; this utterly selfish and completely callous parasite.

§ 6

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Well, I have, to the best of my ability, given you some idea of the characters of the dramatis personæ of this play, which was enacted by real people upon this little corner of the stage of Life. I will tell the story—but in my own way, as I have said—of the terrible drama itself.

Where I was an eye-witness of events and knew of things at first hand, I shall speak in the first person, this seeming to be the more natural and satisfactory method.

Where I only know the facts from hear-say, albeit the indisputable evidence of people concerned, who were actual eye-witnesses, I shall adopt the more usual rôle, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, of the practised story-teller or novelist speaking in the third person. I shall begin thus; and at a date some ten years previous to my arrival at Calderton House.

II

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“I didn’t know there was such a word as ‘unimpeccable,’” murmured Lady Calderton, as she put down the letter and took up her cup.

“Didn’t you, my dear?” answered the General, lowering the newspaper which at the moment obscured his handsome clear-cut face.

“No. Did you, Arthur?”

“No,” replied the General. “I didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t think we shall do better,” observed Lady Calderton, consulting Lady Jane’s letter again before looking across the breakfast-table and thoughtfully regarding the newspaper, which once more concealed her husband and hid the loving mocking smile that, as she well knew, played about the corners of his firm mouth.

“Better than ‘unimpeccable’?” came from behind the paper.

Always mocking; always smiling at her. Might the day never come when even her most innocent and earnest remark failed to amuse him. Not that her remarks were amusing, of course; nor that she was clever, thank God; but he could always make them amusing—to himself, at any rate.

“No, this Miss Stuart.”

“Which Miss Stuart?”

The General dropped the paper and left it unheeded on the glowing scarlet, blue and green of the thick Turkey carpet.

“This one, dear,” explained Lady Calderton, raising the letter. “Apparently she is absolutely everything that we want for Anthony. Everything. And is of ‘unimpeccable’ character.”

“Get her at once, my dear,” urged the General. “The sort of governess one so seldom has the pleasure of meeting. I distinctly remember that all the governesses I encountered in my mis-spent youth, were definitely impeccable ... Never an ‘un’ ... We must snap her up.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” mused Lady Calderton. “Good governesses are plentiful nowadays.”

“Yes, good ones,” sighed the General. “Le bon Dieu knows that. But how often does a prospective employer get a firm offer of a guaranteed unimpeccable one? Does Lady Jane mention whether she is also impeachable and maculate?”

“Well, I didn’t ask about her Religion,” was the reply.

The General’s smile again came out from hiding beneath his grizzled clipped moustache.

“She simply said we should be very lucky if we got this Miss Mary Stuart. She was ten years with the Alymer de Warennes, so her religion must be all right. You know how particular Yvonne is. And she is a lady.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that of Yvonne.”

“I’m talking of Miss Mary Stuart. Lady Jane says she’s a lady.”

“She has always behaved like one to me,” admitted the General.

“What, Mary Stuart?”

“No, Lady Jane.”

Yes, this was proceeding nicely. A conversation according to plan, or at any rate, according to custom. Obviously the General was interested and amused, and all was for the best in the best of all possible ménages.

“Yes, dear. Well, she says that this Miss Mary Stuart is a gentlewoman, one of the nouveaux pauvres, you know. She says here, ‘Her family never thought that ...’”

“She would sink so low. I know,” interrupted the General.

“Sink? ...”

“Well, if as you say, she is young, beautiful, pure—or was it poor?—guaranteed unimpeccable, she may as well sink in here.”

“When things sink they settle down,” added the General, helping himself to marmalade, “and what we particularly want is someone to settle down with Anthony before we go away.”

“Yes, I’ll write and ask her to come and see me,” said Lady Calderton.

“Would you care to interview her too, Arthur?” she added.

“Rather,” replied the General. “In view of Lady Jane’s unusual recommendation, yes. I wonder if she’s beautiful as well as impeachable.”

“Lady Jane didn’t say that, dear. Her writing is good and it is perfectly distinct. ‘Unimpeccable.’”

“Good enough,” smiled the General, passing his coffee cup. “Especially if she’s at all good-looking too.”

§ 2

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Miss Mary Stuart, so far as her new employers could see, was the Compleat Governess. Apparently perfect. So much so, that General Sir Arthur Calderton said she was too good to last, too good to be true. Such things and such governesses didn’t happen to people who, about to go abroad, had to leave their adored only child in the care of a stranger. Most undoubtedly a gentlewoman of definitely pleasing exterior and address, of admirable manner and manners, and obviously of quite sufficient erudition, she proved moreover to be a genuine enthusiast, almost a fanatic, in the pursuit and exercise of her profession.

Her small charge, Anthony, aged four years, slowly and carefully summed her up, weighed her in the balance and soon found himself wanting, wanting to show her everything he possessed and to give her her choice of it; to tell her all his secrets; to show her all those hidden, and by others undiscovered, places in the park and in the remoter recesses of the house, which were inhabited by friends or by enemies of his; the lovely charming fairies; the intriguing and, on the whole, agreeable, if somewhat uncertain, gnomes; objectionable wolves who pretended to be grandmothers and proved to be neither grand nor mothers; giants whom one could, in the rôle of Jack the Giant Killer, defeat and slay with comparative ease, in broad daylight, bien entendu, but which were not so good when the shades of night were falling fast; homes, resorts and meeting-places, of creatures of myth and legend and lore, some completely of his own invention and imagination. Creatures so much more real than uninterested and uninteresting people like nurses, nursery-maids, butlers, footmen, gardeners, game-keepers and other such humans, dull and adult.

Yes, the new governess was a friend, an ally, a really understanding companion, ready to aid and to abet sound schemes, or to show some excellent and comprehensible reason for abandoning them.

Lady Calderton was equally enthusiastic, and thanked Heaven and Lady Jane Hammerley. Within a month of Miss Stuart’s coming she told her that she trusted her fully, and that so far as Anthony was concerned, she would not only leave everything to her, but do so without the slightest anxiety.

This she proceeded to do, and with clear conscience and easy mind, accompanied her husband to the distant tropic isle of which he had been appointed Governor, the lovely spot where every prospect pleases and only the climate is vile.

It speaks well for Miss Mary Stuart that Anthony, albeit a most affectionate child, devoted to his mother and adoring his father, missed them but little, nor that little long.

Re-doubling her efforts to make life of thrilling interest, to enter into every game, scheme, plan and idea of the child, she successfully tided him over the first few days of his bereavement; and even sooner than she had expected or hoped, had him talking of his parents without the quivering lip and moistening eye which had accompanied any reference to them, for the first few days after their departure.

The question ‘Why did they leave me behind?’ was heard no more, nor the other more poignant, more difficult to answer, ‘Why did Mother go too?’

Incidentally, Lady Calderton herself would have found that question hard to answer; for when it had come to leaving her only child, she had found herself in a situation even more difficult than those which so frequently beset her innocent and simple mind.

Obviously she could not let Arthur go alone. For one reason she was quite sure she simply could not live without him; and for another, much more important, it was partly because he was married and had a suitable wife to be hostess at Government House, that he had been appointed to the Governorship.

Life without Arthur was entirely unthinkable, and it was a dreadful idea that life could be possible to Arthur without her. That this was so, and naturally so, she quite realized. Nevertheless, it was a thought to put away.

But then, on the other hand, obviously she could not let Anthony remain behind alone. For one reason, she was quite certain that she couldn’t live without him. That is to say, she could not live the life which would be expected of her. How could she give her mind to her duties as a Governor’s wife when it was at home in England with her only child? She’d be simply distraught. She would be more woolly-witted and foolish than ever, and Arthur would cease to smile at her, at what she said, or rather at what he made of what she said. It was one thing to make fun of her foolishness at Calderton House and quite another to try to do so at Government House, Montiga. What he might find very funny when they were alone together in the delightful comfort of the dining-room at Calderton, would not be at all funny at the dinner-table at Government House, with forty watchful and critical guests weighing her up. He wouldn’t be amused. Which would be dreadful, for that was precisely what he had been, from the first day they met on the ship that brought him and her home from India, five years ago.

No, she couldn’t go on amusing him if she were eating her heart out; longing for the sight of Anthony’s face, the sound of his voice, the feel of his arms about her neck, a longing which would become a yearning, a grief, an obsession.

How could she leave Anthony, in spite of the obvious excellence of this wonderful new governess? Surely a child needed its mother more than a husband needed ...

No, that was another train of thought she would not pursue. Where would she be if she realized, even suspected, that Arthur did not need her?

And in the end, of course, she had gone; as, all along, she had known that she must go. And some, at any rate, of the bitterness of grief and pain at leaving the child, who had scarcely been out of her sight for four years, was assuaged and ameliorated by the few quiet words her husband had said on the subject, words which showed once again what an understanding and sympathetic nature was his.

“It will be an awful wrench for you, my dear, I know. But the time will soon pass, and—it sounds selfish, I admit, but I need you more than Anthony does. See?”

Whereupon her tears had come, and she had felt better.

“Ever so much more. Couldn’t carry on at all, whereas he’ll get on fine with the impeachable one,” said Sir Arthur, and proved to be right, as usual.

§ 3

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For several years, Anthony Calderton lived almost happily in the shadow and society, the nurture and admonition, of Miss Mary Stuart, kindest and most understanding of governesses, and everything that Sir Arthur and Lady Calderton believed her to be.

All and a little more.

For Miss Mary Stuart, like so many other sane people, had a delightful and savingly mad corner to her well-ordered, disciplined and regulated mind. Her madness to some degree resembled that of a certain Mr. Dick, for upon the horizon of her blameless maiden life there hovered, in rare visions by day and occasional dreams by night, the head of the Martyr King.

When, for some usually inexplicable reason, Miss Stuart was visited by nightmare, she invariably beheld, with an inexpressible cold horror, King Charles’s head, held aloft, alive, dripping, while the coarse voice of the brutal executioner boomed forth from beneath his mask,

“This is the head of a traitor.”

Whereupon Miss Stuart awoke, bathed in cold sweat, trembling, and when the nightmare was particularly vivid, screaming.

It is an interesting thought that a picture studied and pondered in her childhood by a Highland girl, and a story oft-repeated with dramatic power and force by an aged Highland nurse, should have changed the fortunes of the ancient English house of Calderton; should so have affected little Mary Stuart that, in turn and in time, she should have so affected a child, a small English boy, that his whole life should have been coloured thereby, and the destiny of his family changed.

As a twig is bent the tree will grow. This, presumably, in spite of the fact that there is nevertheless a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.

As an impressionable, highly strung, somewhat neurotic little girl, Miss Mary Stuart had been mere wax in the hands of the aged and dour Scots nurse who had also been her mother’s nurse, and who had, in her old age, ruled that Stuart family with a rod of iron.

Herself a Stuart, the old woman was inordinately proud of the established fact that her ancestors, near and remote, had been King’s men from generation to generation, and had, in their time and turn, died under Lawrence, Havelock, and Outram in India; under Moore and Wellington in the Peninsula; at Waterloo; and back even to Flodden and Falkirk; that one of them had come South with King James V of Scotland, one of whose sons and grandsons had fought for that King’s son and grandson, Charles I and Charles II.

And most sweetly grim, best enjoyed tribute of all, had not her very own great-grandfather died bloodily at Culloden? Had not old Nurse Stuart, when herself a girl, made the then difficult journey from Inverness to Culloden battlefield, and sat her down upon the stone marked with the name, Stuart, and wept—reserving a tear to drop upon those other pregnant stones marked respectively Mackenzie, Macdonald, Maclean, MacPherson....

And how frequently had she had young Mary Stuart weeping, by the time she had finished that dark tale, picturing the clansmen dying for their rightful King as their fathers had done before them, broken squares and groups of claymore-wielding Highland men dying where they stood, and being buried, by Clans, where they lay.

And the old woman would recite, in her deep musical and indeed beautiful voice,

‘The Scottish spearmen still made good

their dark impenetrable wood,

Each man stepping where his comrade stood

the instant that he fell.’

But of all the tales so grimly told to Mary Stuart by the history-and-legend-steeped crone, the piteous death of King Charles I made the deepest impression, an impression strengthened, rendered even deeper and more indelible by a picture that hung in the hall of her father’s house, of the brave King standing on a snow-covered scaffold, calmly and courageously facing death at the hands of his ... murderers—foul, base, black-hearted, treacherous murderers, according to old Elspeth Stuart.

Thus it is not remarkable that Miss Mary Stuart grew up not only a fanatic loyalist and devoted upholder of the monarchical principle, but a Legitimist, a White Rose Leaguer, and an almost worshipping devotee of the Martyr King.

Her favourite holidays were the pilgrimages she made to places historically interesting in connection with King Charles; visits to Carisbrooke, to Whitehall, to Windsor, to Oxford, to the battlefields of the Civil War.

She joined every Royal Stuart Society of which she heard, and annually assisted in the laying of a wreath at the base of the memorial statue of her Hero. Almost her only recreational reading—as distinct from dutiful reading for the improvement of her mind and the widening of her horizon—was historical, and concerned with the history of her hero, martyr and saint.

Not only had Miss Mary Stuart never married a man, she had never even been in love with one; but devoutly and unswervingly, from childhood, she had not only loved, but been in love with, an idealized, an apotheosized Lover, a Stuart figment of her imagination.

In this almost she resembled those nuns who, in their subconscious minds, are spiritual brides of their Lord.

Had all the facts and details of Miss Stuart’s curious idiosyncrasy, her little madness, been fully known to her employers, it is doubtful whether they would have been greatly interested. Undoubtedly Sir Arthur Calderton would have experienced no more poignant emotion than a mild amusement, nor Lady Calderton have seen how her loyalty to a lost cause, her Stuart royalism, could have affected Anthony in any way. Certainly in no detrimental manner.

Recommended to them so highly, and appearing to be so obviously the type of person they wanted, Anthony’s parents then quickly accepted Miss Stuart, and, as has been said, eventually left the child in her hands with every confidence.

How should they know that there was any special and particular significance in her earnest statement that it would give her particular and peculiar pleasure and gratification to have the training of young Anthony, the moulding of his infant mind and the formation of his character—and creed? The light that momentarily sparkled in her eye, as she made this profoundly truthful asseveration, was taken as a sign and token of her general professional enthusiasm. How should her employers, for one moment, imagine that Miss Stuart saw in the boy, not only a child to be taught, trained and educated as it should be, in all directions, but particularly in one special direction—History; true unbiased History, the history of the House of Stuart, the history of her Phantom Lover?

Nor, had the facts been miraculously revealed to them, was it probable that they would have been greatly concerned by the possibility of the youthful Anthony being briefly biased in favour of any such Legitimist hope as the eventual Restoration—of some descendant of the good King Rupprecht of Bavaria.

It is an interesting reflection, in the mellow light of the wisdom which follows the event, that, had they known, had they objected and acted upon their objection, denying themselves the benefit of Miss Stuart’s services, they would have opened the door of the House of Calderton for the entrance of starkest Tragedy.

§ 4

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Now if King Charles’s Head lent horror to Miss Stuart’s nightmares, and haunted her day-dreams, affecting a mind otherwise sane and sober, sturdy and stable, it was the Wicked Man of the Calderton portrait who haunted that of her charge; a mind, especially at that age, extremely impressionable, sensitive and over-imaginative, the mind of a somewhat melancholy introvert.

Most imaginative children have a bogey, a pet terror of their own devising; a ghost, a goblin, a clutching hand, a terrible and feral beast, a witch; a wicked robber, with gleaming or blood-stained knife; or—still less fortunate—a silent shadow, almost palpable, moving, pursuing, yet unthrown by living object, ineffable, terrible, and, to the stricken childish mind, ghastly beyond description or belief.

To Anthony Calderton, hitherto reasonably unafraid, though definitely inclined to dislike the creakings, crackings and groanings of old furniture and ancient boards, and markedly averse from ‘ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties and things that go wump in the night,’ now came a private and personal horror to invade his sleeping-chamber.

With a small boy aged four not very much can be done in the way of biased historical teaching, any more than a great deal can be done in the matter of theology. Incidentally, this latter fact was brought home the more strongly to Miss Stuart, when she discovered that the first of the two prayers taught to Anthony by the nurse or the nursery-maid recently in charge of him, began, quite definitely and distinctly,

“Gentle Jesus, weak and wild”; and beyond per-adventure of a doubt, contained the line,

“Pity mice implicitly.”

This sort of thing would want proper handling. There was a great deal of misunderstanding, misconception and rubbish to be removed, and then proper teaching must take its place. All very difficult, with so young a child.

And as far as historical teaching went, the gradual introduction of King Charles’s head to the prominent place which it should permanently occupy in the child’s mind, would be a real and splendid starting-point. And again, for that introduction, there already existed a real and splendid starting-point.

For, actually, over the vast marble fireplace in the big drawing-room, hung the original and famous oil-painting of the man known to history as the Great Protector, and to Miss Mary Stuart as the Great Traitor.

Excellent. Here should history begin from a concrete object, the contemporary reproduction in oils of the face and form of one of the protagonists in the greatest drama of English History.

Admittedly the concentric method of teaching history was one of the best, if not the best of all, and Anthony’s history should start with this, widen to embrace the Stuart period, spread down to present times, and then begin again with Pictish and Scottish history, leading again, by way of Macbeth, William Wallace and Robert Bruce, to the Stuart Kings of Scotland who added England to their domain.

Now the great drawing-room of Calderton House was somewhat of a terra incognita to Anthony. His presence was not requested when it was in use by night, and tea was for him a nursery and schoolroom occasion.

Nor had he yet formed the habit of studying pictures hung upon the walls high above his head. Picture-books were the proper place for pictures, and in books he looked for them.

But no sooner had the exploring Miss Stuart beheld, with something approaching a shock, and with definite hatred, if not horror, the magnificent portrait of Oliver Cromwell, than she introduced it to Anthony’s notice; impressed it upon his mind, brought it into his daily life, and made it a part thereof.

Proceeding to the nursery and receiving him washed, arrayed and anointed, fresh and vernal from the hands of the adoring nursery-maid who prepared him for his morning session with his governess, Miss Stuart led him to the room, haunted and polluted by that evil painted presence.

Seating herself in a deep armchair, straight in front of the picture, she took the child on her lap, and pointing an accusing finger, said,

“That is a Bad Man. A very, very Wicked Man. The worst man, but one, that ever lived.”

For the sole concession that Miss Stuart was wont to make in Oliver Cromwell’s favour was that he ranked second to Judas Iscariot (“second but bracketed with”).

“What did he do?” enquired Anthony, eyeing the unattractive wart-infested face of the Great Protector.

“He ... killed ... his ... King,” whispered Miss Stuart with bated breath; and then sat silent, considering the portrait with a fierce glare of concentrated hate.

“How?” enquired Anthony, himself a killer of noisy giants, blow-lamp mouthed dragons, deceitful wolves, ever-hungry bears and such undesirable what-nots.

“He ... cut ... his ... head ... off,” whispered Miss Stuart.

“Fighting?”

“No. Oh, no. The poor King was his prisoner. He killed the poor defenceless King, although he was so kind, so good and gentle.

“And brave,” added Miss Stuart, divining that the attributes that she had mentioned were not perhaps those that appealed first and most highly to Anthony Calderton.

“Couldn’t the King draw his sword and...”

“No.”

And Miss Stuart did then and there give young Anthony his first history lesson, by telling him her version of the story of the doings of the Wicked Man in the picture.

And on that subject she was eloquent, inspired. At the end of that first long lesson, the first of an endless series spread over several years, the Wicked Man in the picture was firmly established with the Giant Blunderbore, the hypocritical Wolf and the ever-hungry Bear, as a living evil; one of the Powers of Darkness that, in the darkness, grow so powerful; one of the Things to be fought with a sword in the garden by day, and to be hidden from, beneath the bed-clothes, by night. By day, indignation, hatred and vengeance; by night, quaking terror.

So impressive was Miss Stuart’s discourse on this almost daily recurrent subject, that ere long Oliver Cromwell was the child’s Private Enemy Number One, as it were; ranking before, and far ahead of, Giant Blunderbore in wickedness, malice and power; a terror that stalked by night, making night itself a terror; so that in course of time, young Anthony Calderton was as richly and completely endowed with a Cromwell-complex as was Miss Mary Stuart herself.

And Fate was thorough.

For it was Anthony’s kismet that he should be taught to ride by a favourite old groom, one Michael Houlihan, a warped and wizened little Irishman who, cleanly spoken and not given to blasphemy, had but one oath, an objurgation picked up from the admired master in whose stables he had first learned his trade as stable-boy, groom and jockey.

As everyone is aware who knows, and what hunting man and race-horse owner does not know, the great Patrick Murphy—whose horses were famous in every Irish hunt and in not a few English, as well as in every Irish Horse Show and on every Irish race-course, as well as in the Grand National—had but one oath, and, by its frequency, made up for its singularity:

“The carrse of Cromwell on it” or “on ye,” as the case might be.

How many times had not the stable-boy, groom and jockey, Michael Houlihan, been cursed by the great Patrick Murphy in those terms?

“Phwat? Ye worthless little spalpeen! The carrse of Cromwell on ye.”

And in humble imitation of the greatest man he had ever known, Michael Houlihan passed it on to his horses.

“Come over, ye baste. The carrse o’ Cromwell on ye.”

And in Michael Houlihan, Anthony had a teacher who, if he cared less than nothing for the fate of any King of England, had an inherited, a cherished, an unbelievably bitter hatred of the cruel and savage brute who had been responsible for the appalling slaughters in which Houlihan’s ancestors had perished.

Well might people speak of the Curse of Cromwell. When, in all the days of all the world, had a bigger curse been put upon an innocent people? Had not the bloody-minded villain proscribed the Roman Catholic religion? Had he not sold three million acres of Irish land to English adventurers, so that he might use the money for the raising of more troops for the further conquest and massacre of the unoffending Irish?

Had he not herded the priests of God into their own churches and there burned them alive with the weeping women and innocent children who had fled to the sanctuary of their altars?

What need of further oath or curse while human tongue could blister with the words,

“The Curse of Cromwell ... !”

So that, on the subject of the wrongs of Ireland and on Oliver Cromwell, the little old man was as eloquent as was Miss Stuart on those of the Stuart Kings, and on the noble Loyalist lords and ladies persecuted and slain by the Monstrous Regicide.

Illiterate and otherwise ignorant as Houlihan was, he had a remarkably detailed knowledge of the true story of the brutish slaughter of the inhabitants of his native town of Drogheda, after Cromwell had taken it by storm; the tale of the wanton slaying of innocent defenceless men, women, and children; and of the savage martyrdom of the priests. About similar dreadful deeds in Wexford and other scenes of massacre he knew, and to him there was no more bloodstained monster in all history than Oliver Cromwell, the creature whose accursed name ranked even before that of a Pharaoh, a Herod or a Nero.

About Attila and Genghis Khan, Houlihan had never heard, but had he read of their lives and doings, the sinister light that illuminates their names would have paled to the dullest glow beside that which kept the name of Cromwell for ever burning. Burning in Hell.

Between the teachings of the highly educated and very accomplished lady, and those of the ignorant untutored groom, young Anthony Calderton received an ineradicable impression that if the Devil and Oliver Cromwell were not one and the same person, they must be sufficiently similar in evil nature and evil-doing to be indistinguishable; and if they were indeed separate and distinct, Oliver Cromwell was the worse character of the two.

“Was Oliver Cromwell the Devil in human form, do you suppose, Houlihan?” he asked one day, when the groom called down the curse of Cromwell upon his horse which had pecked and stumbled.

“He was that,” was the reply. “Indade an’ he was. An’ whoilst Oliver Cromwell was trampling the green grass of Oireland and turnin’ it black beneath his cloven hooves, Hell had no master.”

And so in fear and in hatred of the coarse and cruel face that disfigured the drawing-room, the boy grew; hatred increasing, if that were possible, as fear decreased, if decrease it did. And even up to the time when the slightly unbalanced Miss Stuart took her departure, her duty done; and the savagely vindictive old groom finished his long course, galloped into the straight, and passed the winning-post where even Cromwells cease from troubling and the weary are at rest, Anthony Calderton exhibited, from time to time, signs of the kink, the complex, with which these two people so different, so mutually antagonistic, had independently and unintentionally united to afflict him.

Of this curious obsession his parents continued to know nothing, though of other results of his ten years of training and teaching by Miss Mary Stuart they could not be quite unaware. Admirable as her work in almost all directions had been, it was clear to his mother, and yet more to his father, that what the boy now wanted was masculine society and guidance.

School having proved, for a second and a third time, to be not only a failure but out of the question, Sir Arthur and Lady Calderton determined that, for the next period of their absence abroad, their boy should have a tutor; and strove to assure themselves and one another that the right sort of tutor, working on the right lines, would be, if not as good as School, at least the next best thing.

Hence the advent of Mr. Henry Waring.

III

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Yes, as I have admitted, I must confess that I liked Captain Bertie-Norton fairly well at first, though I can honestly say in defence of my powers of intuition, my social instincts and my judgment, that I did not like him very much, did not quite take to him, as they say.

Nor, curiously enough, did Anthony. He wasn’t, as a rule, particularly critical or censorious, and I never encouraged him when he was.

Usually, when any new visitor had departed and left us together, if neither of us could commend, we refrained from more than an exchange of a glance and a smile. Eyebrows rather than lips.

But with Captain Bertie-Norton, for some reason, we put our thoughts into words.

“Do you like that chap, Mr. Waring?”

“Do you?”

“Not very much.”

“No, nor I.”

It must have been the silly laugh that put us both off, I think, for there was nothing whatever wrong with his appearance, manner or speech.

As Anthony and I were sitting on the terrace at tea on a lovely June afternoon, Jenkins brought me a card on which was inscribed, Captain M. Bertie-Norton, the name of a Service Club and an address, presumably that of a West End flat.

“I told the gentleman that Her Ladyship was not at home, Sir,” began the butler, and I remember that this struck me as an interesting example of understatement, seeing that Her Ladyship was at the other side of the world. “But he particularly wanted to see somebody.”

“Do you know him by sight or name?” I asked.

“No, Sir. Never seen nor heard of the gentleman before.”

“Where is he?”

“In the drawing-room, Sir. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, as you might say, although I told him that neither Her Ladyship nor Sir Arthur was at home nor likely to be. Said he’d very much like to see Master Anthony.”

“And you, Sir,” added Jenkins.

“Me? I don’t know him.”

“No, Sir. But he having enquired as to whether Master Anthony was at school or at home, and when I said at home, he having enquired whether he had a governess, I enounced No, that he was in charge of a gentleman.”

“Well, I had better see him, then. He may have some business or other.”

And pushing back my chair, I rose, asked Anthony to excuse me for a moment, and made my way along the terrace and through a french-window into the drawing-room.

On the hearth-rug stood a tall well-dressed man contemplating with interest the portrait of Oliver Cromwell, painted from life by Sir Peter Lely; a valuable and somewhat famous picture which had been in Lady Calderton’s family for generations, her grandmother having been a Miss Fairfax, descendant of one of Cromwell’s Generals and stout brother-in-arms.

It was of this portrait that poor little Anthony, as he confessed to me, had lived in abject terror, a terror that returned to him even yet, in nightmares.

As Captain Bertie-Norton turned and eyed me, I suppose I should, if this were fiction, at once have noticed that his eyes were too closely set, his lips too thin, his expression either shifty or cruel. There should have been signs of dissipation about his face, or of seediness about his apparel.

But actually, there was nothing of the sort. If I took exception to anything at all, it was to a stare which was perhaps frank rather than hard, and to a slightly supercilious manner and tone of voice, as he said,

“Good afternoon. May I ask who you are?”

I can also stare and adopt a supercilious manner.

“Good afternoon. You may. I am Henry Waring, tutor to Anthony Calderton. And you?”

“Well, that doesn’t matter much” (to you, my worthy fellow, the intonation implied). “’Point of fact, I am a very old friend, indeed, of Lady Calderton.”

“Then doubtless you know that she is at Montiga with Sir Arthur.”

“’Point of fact, I didn’t know. Only just got back to England myself. Don’t correspond much. Not with anybody.”

“No,” said I unhelpfully, for it seemed foolish to say, “Can I send her any message?” as presumably the gentleman was quite competent to send his own messages; and equally foolish to observe that I was sorry he had missed her, as he had done so by some thousands of miles and a few months.

There was a perceptible pause during which we eyed each other. Almost warily, I was going to say, and yet there was no need for anything of the sort. I had no earthly reason to suppose he wasn’t exactly what he professed to be, a very old friend of the family, and particularly of Lady Calderton.

And yet I had a perfectly groundless and unreasonable feeling that there was something wrong. I should like here to give credit to my fine and perceptive intuition. “’Point of fact,” as Captain Bertie-Norton would say, it was probably nothing more nor less than pique at his attitude and manner of de haut en bas. After all, I wasn’t a servant, and he knew it.

“Dashed awkward,” observed Captain Bertie-Norton to himself.

Again I was unhelpful.

“’Point of fact, I was going to propose myself for a visit here.”

“Yes?” I said, still unhelpful.

“Yes. Ought to have written, but I had somehow got the idea that they were still at home. They were when I last wrote. Let’s see. How long ago would that be?”

“Afraid I don’t know,” I replied.

“Don’t know? Don’t know when they went away?”

“Don’t know when you last wrote,” I corrected.

A slight muscular movement was perceptible in Captain Bertie-Norton’s cheek, as though a pulse beat briefly.

Good. I had annoyed him as much as he had annoyed me. A childish triumph.

Of course, it was as he said, very awkward, if he had come expecting to receive a warm welcome and an invitation to stay for as long as he liked.

Nevertheless, I was not in a position to invite him to come and stay, even had I the slightest inclination to do so.

“How’s young Anthony?” he asked.

“Anthony is very well,” I replied.

“Then I would like to see him,” announced the visitor, and there was, of course, no reason why he should not do so.

“We are just at tea. Would you care to join us?” I said, without any particular warmth of hospitality.

“Yes,” replied Bertie-Norton, without any particular warmth of gratitude.

And turning, I led the way to where Anthony awaited me.

“Hul-lo, old chap. I suppose you don’t remember me, do you?” Bertie-Norton greeted the boy as he rose from his chair.

And I can honestly say that I did feel there was a definite note of the faux bonhomme in his voice.

Evidently it struck thus upon Anthony’s sensitive ear for, although his manners were usually super-excellent, he replied with a cold uncompromising,

“No, I don’t,” his manner being even less cordial than his words.

“No. No. Of course you wouldn’t,” agreed Bertie-Norton as he shook hands with Anthony. “Silly of me. Of course you were quite a nipper when I was here before.”

“A nipper,” murmured Anthony softly, savouring the word.

“’Point of fact, I don’t think you saw me.”

And in a manner that would have done credit, or discredit, to a man of experience, Anthony, looking our visitor in the eye, observed,

“I’m quite sure I should have remembered you, if I had ever seen you.”

And again the tone and manner added point to the words.

“No. Years ago. Years ago. Well, this is a disappointment. Quite a blow,” continued Bertie-Norton a little gustily, as he seated himself in my chair.

“I’m sorry,” murmured Anthony, and seemed to imply that our visitor was disappointed because Anthony did not remember him.

“I mean, missing your mother.”

“And my father,” said Anthony.

“Yes, I was going to propose myself for a nice long stay here. Sort of holiday I used to have here before I went abroad. Silly of me not to write.”

“Yes,” said Anthony. “But they’ll be home next year. You must write then. I think we had better have some fresh tea.”

“No, no. Not for me. Not for me. ’Point of fact, I seldom take tea,” Captain Bertie-Norton assured us.

“A whisky-and-soda?” suggested Anthony with adult courtesy.

“Ah! Now you’re talking. Just my idea of a good tea. Whisky-and-soda and an anchovy biscuit, followed by—what?” enquired the Captain, heavily avuncular.

“A headache?” enquired Anthony.

“No, a cigar. A whisky-and-soda, an anchovy biscuit and a good cigar, and then it’s ‘Thank God for my good tea, Amen.’”

And for the first time, we heard Captain Bertie-Norton’s irritating silly laugh.

It may be supposed that I was prejudiced against the man for whom I had entertained so sudden a dislike, but had I heard that guffaw without seeing its owner—or perhaps I should say producer—I should have been struck by its blatant inanity, its fatuous silliness.

In justice, I am bound to admit that it accorded but ill with the man’s appearance and general style.

I caught Anthony’s eye, and our faces remained expressionless.

Robert, our fresh-faced young footman, was hovering near in anticipation of orders for the replenishment of the tea-table. To him I signalled, and as he approached, informed him without comment that a decanter of whisky, a syphon of soda, anchovy biscuits and a box of cigars were required.

Captain Bertie-Norton amplified the order.

“Six biscuits. Butter them with salt butter, and lay three anchovies, royans à la Bordelaise, between each pair,” he directed.

“Yes, dashed awkward,” he observed once again as the footman departed. “’Point of fact, I had made all my arrangements accordingly. My flat’s let, so without unpacking my stuff, I came straight on down here, expecting to stay.”

“Most unfortunate,” agreed Anthony. “I am sure my mother will be sorry.”

“One thing, there’s plenty of room here,” continued Bertie-Norton, running his eye along the southern façade of the house which he faced as he sat.

And again I had a, probably foolish and groundless, suspicion that he was seeing it for the first time. Why I should have thought such a thing I don’t know, unless his glance had been one rather of inspection than recognition, as it were, and that I had connected it with the look he had cast over the gardens below the terrace, before he sat down with his back to them. That look, I reflected, had surely been one of observation rather than of remembrance.

“Room!” I said. “The house is empty, of course, and Anthony and I lurk in our own corner of it.”

“Wouldn’t mind lurking with you,” said Norton promptly. And, for the second time, we heard the laugh that to me was to become one of the most unpleasant of sounds.

§ 2

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For quite a considerable period Captain Bertie-Norton haunted the neighbourhood, paid us numerous visits and, from time to time, angled for an invitation to come and stay with us. In this he was somewhat shameless, and created situations with which it was a little difficult to deal. After the first visit, he refrained from calling formally, coming to the front door and sending in his name, but established himself as something of a friend of the family, who was, naturally, unknown to the tutorial underling and to the small boy. He would walk jauntily up the drive and, avoiding the steps and terrace of the façade of the house, would cross the lawns and come up through the Italian garden to the south terrace where we had tea, and spent much of our outdoor time.

Towards Anthony he was somewhat heavily avuncular; to me, at first, slightly resentful and inclined to be domineering; later, pleasanter and more friendly, not to say ingratiating.

He had established himself at the Calderton Arms, staying there for weeks at a time, during which periods we saw him almost daily. Then he would disappear for a few days when, according to his own account, business took him to London.

From the first, Anthony was inclined to dislike him, and the more he saw of him, the less disposed did he seem to change his opinion. Nor can it be said that Bertie-Norton went out of his way to cultivate him and make a good impression. That he interested Anthony was undeniable, and I was faintly amused, and faintly shocked at myself, to find that, at times, I entertained a feeling that almost approximated to jealousy. For he could a tale unfold. There was no doubt about it: and as I sat listening to him and watching Anthony’s face of rapt attention, I was reminded of Othello and the maiden Desdemona. Nor was the simile far-fetched, Anthony’s face being at once the window and the index of a soul as simple, innocent and virginal as that of the hapless girl—or so I thought—as, with widely opened eyes and parted lips, he listened enthralled, with rapt attention to the man’s tales of “moving accidents, by flood and field; of hair-breadth ’scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach; of being taken by the insolent foe, and sold to slavery.”

And then, one day, suddenly realizing that we hadn’t had the pleasure of a visit from Captain Bertie-Norton for quite a while, I came to the conclusion that he must have gone away altogether. He had been staying at the Calderton Arms as usual, and I wondered whether my obtuseness in taking hints that he should give up his rooms there and move into Calderton House had been the cause of his departure. I rather hoped it had. But still more I hoped that we had seen the last of him, for, any question of my foolish jealousy apart, I had a sort of feeling that the less Anthony saw of him the better.

I also felt quite sure that if Sir Arthur and Lady Calderton knew him as well as he pretended they did, they would not have been enthusiastically in favour of Anthony seeing a great deal of him. And although Anthony took a dislike to him at first, as I did myself, the boy undoubtedly found him more and more interesting, just as I did. One couldn’t deny that he had a curious charm, that a halo of adventure and unusual experience dwelt about him, and that he was definitely and dangerously attractive.

I could foresee the time, if he continued to hang about Calderton House and favour us with so much of his company, when Anthony, from tolerating him would come to like him, to welcome him for his romantic adventurous tales and stories, and so to seek his society.

And that, all question of jealousy apart again, I didn’t wish to happen; nor, indeed, did I intend to allow it to happen; for although, as I later learned, the gallant Captain “knew where to draw the line,” he failed to draw it where I preferred to see it drawn. He was apt to forget, or to ignore, the fact that Anthony, though tall and older-looking than his years, was only a child, and one of peculiarly and particularly innocent mind. So innocent and ignorant of evil was he, indeed, that, where Bertie-Norton’s conversation, remarks and stories were most offensive, they gave least offence and did least harm, for they simply passed over his head. Nevertheless—if evil communications corrupt good manners, they corrupt good morals even more—and I felt that Bertie-Norton was corrupt, through and through. However, he was gone, and I was very glad that he was gone, and had no desire ever to see him again.

§ 3

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The better I knew Anthony, the more I loved him.

Also the better I knew Anthony, the less I understood him.

Nor did that fact make him the less lovable. Actually it made him the more intriguing, the more attractive, the more worth while, by which I mean the more worthy of study and investigation. Life with him was one long series of little surprises, little discoveries, and an infinity of little amusing, pleasing, or puzzling incidents. And there were times, times without number, when I felt inclined to smack his young head, for subtle impudence, artful little traps, tricks intended to hoodwink me in some way, cunning little plots to bring me to a brief confusion.

How a pompous, insincere or dogmatically omniscient type of tutor would have suffered at his hands!

We had just finished work one morning when he said,

“Mr. Waring, will you tell me the meaning of some words?”

“Yes.”

“Hagiology. Is it the study of hags?”

“Not unless they were holy hags. Hagiology is the study of the history of saints.”

“Oh, thank you. And what’s eschatology? Nothing to do with cats, of course?”

“No, nor with chatting ... It’s the study of final things; death; the Hereafter.”

“Oh, thank you. And what’s etiology?”

“Might call that the opposite. The study of beginnings; origins and causes.”

“Oh, thank you. Must be awfully nice to know everything, like you do.”

“Very nice,” I agreed. “Any more?”

“Yes, bonnance. What does that mean?”

“‘Bonnance?’” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Sure you’ve got the word right?”

“Quite sure.”

“Well, you’ve defeated me. I don’t know the word, and therefore I don’t know its meaning. Are you certain there is such a word?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Waring. Quite certain. I made it up.”

“Good. Now make up a meaning for it, and write the word and the meaning a hundred times.”

“Would it do if I apologized?”

“It would not.”

“But you win, Mr. Waring. And it was only—fun.”

“Oh, quite so. Quite so. You aren’t objecting to paying for your fun, are you?”

“What meaning shall I give bonnance, Mr. Waring?”

“Its proper meaning. You’re the only person who knows it.”

And with a sigh Anthony settled to his task.

When he showed up the imposition, it appeared that the meaning of bonnance was but brief and easily written, a word of four letters—‘Hell.’

It became one of our pass-words, and certainly none but Anthony and I knew its meaning ...

Another thing I loved about the boy was the fact that, much as he enjoyed scoring, he equally enjoyed being scored off.

Furthermore, when I had occasion, at a much later date, to take him somewhat sharply to task for adopting an ugly and blasphemous ejaculation much favoured by Captain Bertie-Norton, he apologized, smiled impishly, and appointed the word ‘Bonnance!’ as his own private and particular exclamatory oath. As he pointed out to me, I, on the one hand, could find no fault with the word itself, whilst he, on the other hand, could give it any meaning that he liked. A typically Antonian arrangement.

Looking back, it is amazing to realize how swiftly the time passed, how extraordinarily happy we were together, and what pleasure it gave me to know that Anthony was obviously very fond of me indeed. He would not have sought my company so consistently had it been otherwise, nor derived such satisfaction from pleasing me. The fact that I wanted him to do a certain thing was good and sufficient reason for doing it. And it was a fine trait in his character, one which I admired and appreciated, that he liked me not a whit the less for being a pretty strict disciplinarian. He recognized the fact that I did my utmost to be absolutely just and entirely reasonable, understanding and sympathetic. He would have despised me had I failed in discipline as much as he would have disliked me had I been unjust, unreasonable and uncomprehending.

We worked every week-day, and we fenced and walked as regularly as we worked. Most days we rode, and except for the Sabbath, there was never a day when we failed to dress up to greater or lesser degree—sometimes en grande tenue and sometimes only to the extent of Cavalier hat and boots, baldrick, sash and sword—and stage a scene, either on the greensward beneath the trees or in an old oak-panelled gallery which made an admirable setting.

Anthony wrote the scenes, charades and playlets, brought them to me for opinion, and joyfully accepted suggestions for their improvement. We then learned our respective parts, forgot them or improved upon them, improvised and gagged. And when words failed us, drew our swords—a pair of buttoned foils of fine Italian make—and fell to. And always the period was Stuart, the theme Cavalier and Roundhead, and the dénouement the downfall and defeat of the foul Cromwellian.

Personally, so far from life being boring and monotonous, and time dragging heavily, I never found the days long enough, nor ever once regretted my acceptance of this post, or wished myself elsewhere.

§ 4

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And, quite suddenly, after what seemed like several years of this happy busy life, enthralling and mildly strenuous, came a most unexpected kind of letter from Montiga, bringing mingled bad news and good. Lady Calderton, who had succumbed to the fever prevalent in those somewhat balefully beautiful islands, a rather virulent form of malaria, was coming home. Repeated attacks of the malarial fever had weakened her, and the Government House doctor had told Sir Arthur that he had no hope of her shaking it off and making a satisfactory convalescence unless she went right away from the tropics, recuperated thoroughly, and was, for at least a year, free from any further attacks. It had accordingly been decided that she should come back to England, and remain there until Sir Arthur completed his term of office in Montiga and returned.

Though we could have wished that the cause of her home-coming had been any other than what it was, the news filled us with delight. I had not realized that Anthony loved his mother so much, especially in these circumstances of long separation. And although he had talked but little about her, it was evidently not a case of ‘out of sight out of mind.’ When he read the letter announcing her return, he was transfigured with joy and could scarcely speak for excitement.

My own reaction to the news also surprised me. Far from having any sense of chagrin or disappointment, however faint, at the thought of the inevitable lessening of my authority; far from feeling any sensation, however slight, of jealousy that I should now be taking second place with Anthony, I was delighted. It was the best news that I had had for a long time, and I looked forward with nothing but eager gladness to her arrival. As I say, the nature and strength of my feelings in the matter greatly surprised me. I had liked and admired her exceedingly in the days between my arrival at Calderton House and her departure for Montiga, but I had not realized how tremendously I liked her, how deep an impression she had made upon my mind.

Bright and cheerful as life was, it now took on even brighter hues, and I awoke each morning with the feeling of some happiness impending, some good thing about to come to pass, and throughout the day this little spring of joy bubbled up from my inmost being, and I was not only happy but consciously so. And I was conscious of the reason; of the reason why I found that so often now I lifted up my voice in reasonably tuneful song, whistled merrily, by no means a habit of mine hitherto, and found life one harmonious melody.

When she came, I was relieved and delighted to find that the long sea voyage had worked wonders. She looked perfectly healthy as well as perfectly lovely, and there were no signs of languor, lassitude and weakness. It seemed to me that, unless there were any recurrence of the malaria, brought on by a chill, for example, she ought to make a very quick and complete recovery, if she had not already done so; and I was heartily ashamed of a twinge of fear that she might go back to Montiga instead of remaining at home until Sir Arthur’s return.

However, I was able to explain to myself that what I really feared was that she should go back and risk a return of the fever before she had made complete convalescence.

Now began for me a life of almost ideal happiness, even more satisfying and delightful than it had been before her return.

In the first place, she was so appreciative of the way in which I was handling Anthony, and of the improvement that she professed to be able to see in him already.

“He’s a different boy,” she declared, as we sat alone at dinner a few days after her return.

“In what way?” I asked.

“In every way; both mentally and physically. He holds himself better, he’s more upright and alert and active. He looks so much more—normal. Almost the typical Public School boy. He was getting such a weedy little book-worm.”

“And mentally?”

“He strikes me as so much happier, brighter; more alert mentally, just as he is physically, and more—there’s no other word for it but normal again. I used to be so worried about him, but now he really does seem more like the Happy Christian Child, if you know what I mean, instead of the moody little maggot, fanciful and neurotic and queer. It is as though he had been transferred from a hot-house out into the sunshine. I am so grateful to you.”

“Well, I’m very glad indeed that you form that opinion of him. I had hoped, and indeed thought, that he had improved, but not to that extent.”

“Well, you’ve been with him the whole time, and the change and improvement must have been gradual. I see him suddenly, after all this long time, and, well, he’s not the Anthony I expected to see. A different boy altogether. Vastly improved.”

“We shall have him wanting to go to school yet,” I smiled.

Lady Calderton laughed.

“That I very much doubt, unless you could go with him and be his house-master and form-master too. If you heard how he speaks of you, you wouldn’t think there was much hope or fear of his wanting to leave you and go to school.”

“Evidently I’ve overdone it.”

“No. As a matter of fact, I’m far more reconciled to his not going to school—now that I’ve seen him. School couldn’t possibly have done him the good that you’ve done, and it might have caused him infinite harm.

“No, we shall be quite content, in fact only too thankful, for him to go on as he is, until he’s ready for Oxford. By the time he’s eighteen, if only you’ll stay with him, I believe he’ll go up to Oxford absolutely fit to take his full share of the corporate life of his College. Not only fit but ready, willing and able. And that’s a thing I hardly dared to hope. You don’t know how pleased and happy and utterly grateful I am.”

And this to me was a very great reward, the greatest reward I have ever had for anything I have ever done.

And what had I done but live a delightful life with a charming boy to whom I was deeply attached?

Life was good. And though I am not superstitious or given to unreasoning foolish beliefs, I felt it was too good; too good to last—even until the time when Anthony could go up to Oxford.

Our day began at seven when invariably he came to my room, made cautious and dramatic entry with much giving of secret knocks, mysterious pass-words and cabalistic counter-signs. He would then have tea with me; propound some new theory; expound some new and brilliant idea for charade or play; talk whimsically of this and that; and endeavour to catch me out with his careful Socratic questioning ...

“Do you think the earth is round, Mr. Waring?”

“Oblate spheroid, according to the learned. Like an orange that has been sat upon gently, by a lightweight; slightly flattened top and bottom. But still, roughly speaking, round; a ball. So they say.”

“Well, then, if you could drive a lift-shaft straight through from London to Sydney, and went down by the lift, do you mean to say that when the lift-gates opened, your feet would be just where the Australian peoples’ heads are?”

“It would appear so, Socrates.”

“But it’s sheer nonsense. Tell me, would you be standing on your head or would they?”

“Neither. We’d both be standing on our feet.”

“But you couldn’t both be. When you arrived in the lift, your feet would be presented upward.”

“Pointing at the Australian sun,” I agreed.

“And the lift man in Sydney would be standing on his feet with his head pointing at the Australian sun. Both he and you are standing on your feet yet with your heads pointing in opposite directions. One of you must be upside down, surely.”

“So it would appear, Socrates.”

“Well then, it’s just silly. Reductio ad absurdum.”

“And yet the learned men do firmly asseverate that the world is round, a ball, a sphere; and other learned men accept their statement.”

“Well, we don’t, do we? I mean to say, you don’t think that if you arrived at Australia by lift, you’d have to turn yourself upside down, stand on your hands and walk out that way, so that you wouldn’t have your head where the Australians’ feet are.”

“But you would, if you did that, Socrates.”

“Well, that proves the earth is flat, doesn’t it? Can I have a lump of sugar?”

After eight-thirty breakfast in the schoolroom, we would walk or ride for half an hour, work until eleven, and then fence, either outdoors or in; work again for an hour, and then stroll talking in the park before lunch.

Lunch was a joyous occasion, as we joined Lady Calderton in the big dining-room and ate in state, waited on by Jenkins and Robert.

After lunch we three sat on the terrace, the weather being propitious, for a while, with coffee and cigarette, the remainder of the afternoon being Anthony’s until tea-time. Usually, as I have said, it was devoted to play-acting, whether indoors or out.

Indeed, if we did nothing more than go for what the ignorant might suppose was an ordinary ride, we were always busily scouting for hostile cavalry, Roundhead pickets and patrols. Sometimes, on sighting them, we would wheel about and gallop hell-for-leather to take the news back to the main body or the about-to-be-beleaguered castle or town. Sometimes we would charge desperately and put them to flight.

This game undoubtedly gave Anthony a good eye for country and was in some sort a training for the hunting-field. A policeman of any kind on foot, bicycle, or horseback, counted as a large Roundhead force, and many a rural constable must have been sorely puzzled by the behaviour of two horsemen who undoubtedly “acted in a suspicious manner.”

After tea in the schoolroom we put in another hour’s work, had fencing practice and exercise with the punching bag, whereafter Anthony’s time was again his own until supper and bed.

And though repeatedly in the early days I offered to leave him to his own devices and set him free to do exactly as he liked and go wherever he would, he never once availed himself of this freedom, nor seemed anything but hurt by the suggestion that I should leave him to himself.

When he had gone to bed, I changed for dinner, went down to the drawing-room, and awaited Lady Calderton’s arrival. Together we dined, and together returned to the drawing-room for coffee; and during the greater part of the time that we thus spent together we talked of Anthony, I telling her of his quaint and amusing sayings and doings of the day, she telling me of his childhood and of her anxieties and fears concerning him—from all of which, by the way, she now professed to be entirely free.

In fact, to my infinite satisfaction, it seemed that the boy had turned from a disappointment to a great hope; from an anxiety to a real joy. That she loved him with a great mother-love, deep and wide, was obvious, and having him with her was a great consolation for her separation from Sir Arthur.

Being the woman she was, it was with some slight surprise, and very great pleasure, that I saw how little selfishness and blind possessiveness there was in this deep maternal love, and how wisely and carefully she refrained from indulging and spoiling the boy.

I don’t think that Anthony ever went to her behind my back, or appealed to her over my head, so to speak; but had he done so, he would have received short shrift. Whenever he suggested something that I vetoed, there was never the slightest suggestion of disapproval, much less of intervention or interference, on the part of Lady Calderton. On the contrary, she invariably consulted me before granting any request made to her, and always referred him to me if he made any suggestion when I was not present. It was her custom to visit him alone for half an hour or so when he went to bed, and it was only natural that if, when talking to her, one of his bright ideas should suddenly occur to him, he should forthwith propound it to her and ask her advice and permission.

It struck me as a most extraordinarily nice trait in her character that, far from being in the slightest degree jealous of my power and great influence over Anthony, she in every way supported it, giving the boy to understand that, so far as his doings were concerned, I was the authority.

And Anthony completely accepting, in fact welcoming, the situation, we three people were about as happy, I think, as three people could be, always excepting the fact that Lady Calderton’s cup of happiness would not be completely filled until her husband’s return.

It was with a sense of the deepest satisfaction, with a glowing feeling of abiding joy, that I saw her steadily improving in health and spirits, shaking off the remaining effects of the malaria, and taking daily delight in Anthony’s quick growth towards normality.

IV

Table of Contents

Lady Calderton turned her head as the butler entered with the small silver tray on which lay a card.

People calling already. Well, she wasn’t going to see anyone just yet. Too tired. Going to have a thorough rest for ever so long. And she was convalescing from the fever which had pulled her down a good deal.

Without glancing at the card, mechanically she murmured,

“Not at home, Jenkins. You might have known.”

“Yes, my lady. Very good, my lady. But the gentleman was very insistent, if I may say so, my lady. Said he was quite certain that you would wish to see him. Name of Barty Norton. Called several times previous, m’lady.”

Languidly, Lady Calderton took the card from Jenkins’s tray and glanced at it.

Her languor left her as she read the name printed on it and the nickname scribbled beneath.

“Captain M. Bertie-Norton,” and in pencil, the word “Wiz” scribbled in writing that she knew.

The colour drained from her face, and the attentive astonished Jenkins thought his mistress was going to faint. He was about to suggest brandy, sal volatile, smelling-salts, when, her hands clenched on the arms of her chair, she suddenly sat erect, her mouth and eyes hardening.

Poor lady. That must have been a nasty turn, and she was looking as he had never seen her look before.

A nasty turn. More of a blow, really. A sort of knock-down blow that had prostrated her. No, she was getting her colour back. Better not to notice, perhaps.

“All right, Jenkins. Show Captain Bertie-Norton in. What’s the time? Yes, bring tea at four.”

That would give her something to do.

“Very good, my lady,” and silently Jenkins faded away, his face impassive, his mind quite unusually active.

Good God in Heaven ... So he was this Captain Bertie-Norton who had been visiting the place!

But it couldn’t be. Not Wiz. Wiz was dead. Seventeen years ago. She must be dreaming. But that was exactly as he used to sign letters to her. That was his handwriting. The curious W. Never shaped like a capital, whereas the z never had a looped tail, but was shaped like a capital Z. Somebody impersonating him? One of the very few people who knew that his private nickname had been Wiz? Somebody who knew his signature? But how many people but herself had seen that signature? He had never used it in writing to anyone else, and no one else called him by the name. He couldn’t be an impostor.

But the other thought was too terrible to accept for a moment. He had been dead for seventeen years.

Lady Calderton stood up from her low chair as if endeavouring to rise above a flood that threatened to engulf her.

She’d know in a moment.

Feeling giddy, and as though her knees would give way, she sat down again, quickly. It could not possibly be he. Why had he come? What could he want? Here, of all places on earth. Wasn’t the world big enough for ... ?

But of course it could not be. He had been dead for seventeen years and this was ...

The door opened.

“Captain Barty Norton,” announced the butler, closed the drawing-room door, and left Lady Calderton face to face with ... No! That was absurd ...

In situations of this nature, women are apt to display a courage, self-control and endurance as high as that shown by the bravest of men in situations of gravest physical danger.

Steadfastly she eyed the man who approached her across the big room, the expression of her face a combination of horror and fear as she gazed at him, incredulous.

It was he; he, undoubtedly. Not greatly changed in all those years that she had believed him to be dead. Heavier, thicker-set, and the face older, harder, still displaying its mixture of strength and weakness, intelligence in the upper part, sensuality in the lower; the change showing most in the eyes and mouth, predatory, cunning, ruthless. The face of the type of man who will gain his ends and be not over-particular as to the methods whereby they are gained.

“Well, Katty,” he said, extending his hand, and while the mouth smiled, showing gleaming teeth beneath a well-clipped moustache, the eyes remained hard, wary and watchful.

He dropped the powerful and well-kept hand as Lady Calderton made no movement to take it, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then placed the other upon her shoulder and, bending down, kissed her upon the mouth. A quite successful kiss, in spite of the fact that she swiftly drew back as far as her chair permitted, and made a swift futile endeavour to thrust him away.

“Ah,” smiled Captain Bertie-Norton, as he straightened himself up.

“You ... you ... you ...” whispered Lady Calderton, wiping her lips, and seeming to gasp for air.

“Well,” he smiled, “you—what, eh?”

But words failed Lady Calderton.

“Better left unsaid, eh? I quite agree. Well, well, well! Do you know, I see scarcely any change in you whatever, Katty, after all these years. Wonderful.

“Don’t seem to hear much change, either,” he added, in a different voice. “Well, well, the Return of the Native. Not that I am exactly a native of these parts. ’Point of fact, just as well, eh? Quite incognito. The Stranger’s Return. Yes, that’s better. Well, well, well! It’s nice to find ...”

“What have you come for? What do you want?” interrupted Lady Calderton, breathing quickly, her hands clenched, her body tense and her face white. “You are dead ...”

“Come for? Want? To see you, my dear Katty—and for anything I can get. Everything I can get. What do I want? What d’you suppose? A little money to burn, a horse to ride, friends, good company, peace and comfort. I’ve had enough of wandering, Katty, and more than enough of living from hand to mouth. I want—security. Sounds like my old friend MacInstein of MacInstein, Maccabee, and M’Cash. ‘No advanth without thecurity.’”

And with an almost physical shock and shudder, a blow that made her nerves cringe, Lady Calderton heard the foolish and fatuous laugh which she had not heard for seventeen years.

“But not that sort of security. I want to settle down; to retire. Retire from the business—of having no business. You know—like the poet says:

‘Home is the hunter, home from the hill,

And the sailor home from the sea.’

Had enough hunting—especially hunting in the gutter. Enough of the sea, too, since those swine threw me into it. I’ll tell you about that.”

Yes, this was Wiz. With her eyes shut she’d have known his voice. Without hearing his voice, had his words been in print, she’d have known they were his. That’s how he had always talked when he was nervous.

Nervous? That should be her strength ... At least to make a pretence of strength. To feign assurance and confidence.

“And how do you propose to get those things—here—from me?”

“Well, surely, that’s your business, Katty.”

In silence she stared, still almost incredulous, and almost as though stunned by this bolt that had come so suddenly out of the blue; this thunder-bolt from so fair a sky; this lightning-flash that, in a fraction of a second, seemed to have blackened her landscape, to have laid her happy life in ruins about her.

That man standing there, grinning at her, talking, talking, talking. That could not be he. He had died seventeen years ago. She must awake from this nightmare.

The man seated himself in the nearest chair, turning it to face her.

What could she do?

Something she must do. For it was the man whom, as a girl, a fool, of seventeen, she had loved madly—for a little while.

But Arthur, the kindest and dearest of men, who believed in her as he believed in God and the King and the British Constitution?

And Anthony? Why, poor Anthony would be a ...

Again with a great effort she rose to her feet.

“Where have you come from?” she asked, to gain time, to say something, to learn anything that might be helpful.

Anthony would be a ...

She sank back into her chair.

“W-e-l-l-l,” smiled the man, “that’s a vague question, my dear Katty. I’ve come from the Calderton Arms; I’ve come from the Calderton Railway Station; I’ve come from London, and I’ve come from South America. And to pursue history still further back, I’ve come from the place that is sometimes described as the safe spot where the birds won’t bite you.”

“Prison?”

For if he had been in prison once, might he not be put in prison again? But if it were through her that it were done, what wreckage of at least three lives would he leave behind him, in punishment, in revenge.

“Alas!” was the reply. And the fatuous snigger followed. “Yes, I haven’t always been as lucky as you, Katty.”

“What did you do?”

If he had committed murder, there might yet be a hope that ...

But what a terrible thought.

“What did I do? What didn’t I do?”

And again the laugh.

“Tell you one thing I didn’t do, though, Katty. I didn’t commit bigamy. But don’t let’s talk of old unhappy far-off things now, not just in the moment of my return. Let’s speak of the bright and shining future. I have sown my wild oats and reaped a few damn wild whirlwinds, I assure you. But that’s all behind me, Katty, and I have weathered the storms. I’ll tell you some day. When we’ve got more time. Make your hair curl. Give you a permanent wave, Katty. But for the present, well, I’ve come into port at last. And a damn good cellar of it, too.

‘Home at last, the harbour past,

Safe in my—darling’s—arms.’”

And again the laugh.

“I say, don’t stare at me like that. I’m not a ghost. No, I’m alive all right. Don’t be alarmed.”

If he laughed again she’d go mad. She’d go mad in any case. Arthur ...

Arthur was not her husband.

Anthony would be a ...

She would scream in a minute. She would go mad. She would die.

No, she would not. She would fight like a tigress for Anthony, for Arthur. She would ...

But what could she do? Find out how far he was safe from the prison he spoke of? ... Could she kill him? ... She must be going mad to think such thoughts.

Money? That would be it. That would be what he had come for. But for how long could such a situation last?

Oh, if she could only kill him. One read of such things. One saw such things in plays and films. But this was life, real life. Nevertheless, if she could kill him without being found out, she’d do it as willingly as she would kill a snake.

If only God would strike him dead, as such creatures should be stricken dead—as she had supposed him to be, these seventeen years and more.

What was he saying?

“Yes, safe in port. And meantime, you’ve been a long while in a pretty snug harbour of your own, eh, Katty?”

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered, half to herself.

“I’m sure you did, my dear. So, fortunately, did a good many other people. I was at some pains to give that impression. How long did you mourn me?”

And answering his own question with,

“Not as long as some people did,” he laughed loudly.

If he did that again, she’d ... she’d ... she’d ... do something.

What could she do?

She could fight this man with his own weapons. Fight him somehow, for Arthur’s happiness and Anthony’s happiness. For Anthony was now a ...

“Yes, there must be quite a few people who’d be interested to know that Montague Ferring-Chevigny was alive,” smiled the soi-disant Captain Bertie-Norton.

Yes, indeed, there must be. Could she get into touch with anyone who ... But that was absurd. She was thinking like a ridiculous fool. How could she, Katherine Calderton, wife of General Sir Arthur Calderton, enter into conspiracy with some person or persons unknown, against this ... this ... against this man because she feared him, because his continued existence was dangerous to her, threatening the even tenor of her comfortable way, because in fact he was her husband.

It was lunacy, but the whole thing was madness, nightmare.

“Are the police after you?” she asked.

“Not the English police, Katty, thank you very much. I’ve purged my offence as far as they are concerned. Though I freely admit that there are one or two, indeed three or four, countries in which I am not free to travel, so to speak.”

Three or four countries. Now, which were those? If she could find out, would it be possible to inform the Chief of Police of those countries, with the view to extradition proceedings?

But then, of course, he would not be known to them as Captain Montague Ferring-Chevigny. No, nor as Montague Bertie-Norton.

No. That was no good. She’d have to know the alias under which he figured in their criminal records, and he was probably known by a different name in every country in which he was wanted.

Was that her husband sitting there; alive and well and grinning; and, even in this appalling moment, capable of bellowing with stupid laughter?

It couldn’t be. And it was. It was the man she had loved desperately; whose kisses had set her on fire; the man whom, when he was her husband, she had despised and hated as much as she had loved him when he was her lover.

She must do something. She must escape. She must free Arthur and Anthony from this terrible threat, this incredible menace. Anthony would be a ...

“But aren’t you free to travel and to live openly under your own name in this country?”

“Er—no. No. Not quite, perhaps. But don’t you worry your little head. You need have no anxiety on my behalf, Kattykins. Why, it must be seventeen years since poor Monty Ferring-Chevigny fell overboard from Alastair Cluny’s yacht and his body was washed up on the Perenecque Island beach, days later. Face unrecognizable. Nasty rocky coast. Nasty crabs and cuttlefish too. But clothes and contents of pockets established identity beyond a doubt.”

Yes, absolutely beyond any doubt in her mind, as God was her witness.

An idea. A fleeting hope. Of course there would be nothing in it again, when she was able to bring her intelligence to bear upon it and think it out. Yes, she must think. Identity established beyond a doubt. Well now, if this ... creature ... had been at such pains to prove his own death, the death of the somewhat notorious Captain Montague Ferring-Chevigny, might he not have done his work too well? Too well for his present purposes? Clever as he was, or cunning as he was, might he not now find that it may have been easier to convince the world and the Law that he was dead than it would be to convince them that he was alive again? Especially if he called her in witness, and said she was his wife—and she declared on the contrary that he was a fraud and a swindler; that though he bore a certain likeness to the late Captain Montague Ferring-Chevigny, he was an impostor, an impudent rogue who should be prosecuted for false pretences and ...

And what would that do but postpone the catastrophe, the terrible tragedy of ...

Besides, it would be infinitely easier for him to prove a positive than for her to prove a negative. He’d have no difficulty. Handwriting, photographs, letters, witnesses.

Again, how could she perjure herself, knowing the whole time that he was her husband? Commit perjury? She’d commit murder if ... But she must put such idiotic and horrible thoughts from her mind. She must be wise and sensible and courageous and ...

“What do you call yourself now?” she asked.

“My name is Bertie-Norton,” he replied gravely, but with what, in a kindlier eye, would have been a twinkle of humour, and what in his was an impish leer.

Thank God he hadn’t laughed again.

“And you are known to nobody at all? To nobody in England, except in the name of Bertie-Norton?”

“To nobody in England. To nobody anywhere.”

“But someone is bound to recognize you—to accost you in your own name. What then?”

“Depends, my dear, depends. I might just smile and say,

“‘Ferring-Chevigny? Ferring-Chevigny? Who the devil is this Ferring-Chevigny? I’m always being mistaken for him. Must try and meet him some time, and see if I can see the likeness. No, no. Don’t apologize, my dear chap. It’s always happening.’

“Or, on the other hand, if circumstances pointed that way, I might go on the other tack.

“‘Well, well, well. Fancy your remembering me. Heard I was dead, did you? Yes, I heard it myself. Report grossly exaggerated, as they say.’”

Yes, that’s what he’d do. And perhaps he’d do both. Establish himself in some part of England as Montague Ferring-Chevigny, returned from the dead. Prove that he was Montague Ferring-Chevigny, that he might have witnesses, should he want them.

No, of course she had been foolish, as usual, in thinking that he had been too clever, and had so completely proved his death that he could never disprove it.