



Produced by Ted Garvin and PG Distributed Proofreaders




AT LOVE'S COST

By CHARLES GARVICE



AT LOVE'S COST



CHAPTER 1

"Until this moment I have never fully realised how great an ass a man
can be. When I think that this morning I scurried through what might
have been a decent breakfast, left my comfortable diggings, and was
cooped up in a train for seven hours, that I am now driving in a
pelting rain through, so far as I can see for the mist, what appears to
be a howling wilderness, I ask myself if I am still in possession of my
senses. I ask myself why I should commit such lurid folly. Last night I
was sitting over the fire with a book--for it was cold, though not so
cold as this," the speaker shivered and dragged the collar of his
overcoat still higher--"at peace with all the world, with Omar purring
placidly by my side, and my soul wrapped in that serenity which belongs
to a man who has long since rid himself of that inconvenient
appendage--a conscience, and has hit upon the right brand of
cigarettes, and now--"

He paused to sigh, to groan indeed, and shifted himself uneasily in the
well-padded seat of the luxurious mail-phaeton.

"When Williams brought me your note, vilely written--were you sober,
Stafford?--blandly asking me to join you in this mad business, I smiled
to myself as I pitched the note on the fire. Omar smiled too, the very
cigarette smiled. I said to myself I would see you blowed first; that
nothing would induce me to join you, that I'd read about the lakes too
much and too often to venture upon them in the early part of June; in
fact, had no desire to see the lakes at any time or under any
conditions. I told Omar that I would see you in the lowest pit of
Tophet before I would go with you to--whatever the name of this place
is. And yet, here I am."

The speaker paused in his complaint to empty a pool water from his
mackintosh, and succeeded--in turning it over his own leg.

He groaned again, and continued.

"And yet, here I am. My dear Stafford, I do not wish to upbraid you; I
am simply making to myself a confession of weakness which would be
pitiable in a stray dog, but which in a man of my years, with my
experience of the world and reputation for common sense, is simply
criminal. I do not wish to reproach you; I am quite aware that no
reproach, not even the spectacle of my present misery would touch your
callous and, permit me to frankly add, your abominably selfish nature;
but I do want to ask quite calmly and without any display of temper:
what the blazes you wanted to come this way round, and why you wanted
me with you?"

The speaker, a slightly built man, just beyond the vague line of
"young," glanced up with his dark, somewhat sombre and yet softly
cynical eyes at the face of his companion who was driving. This
companion was unmistakably young, and there was not a trace of cynicism
in his grey-blue eyes which looked out upon the rain and mist with
pleasant cheerfulness. He was neither particularly fair nor dark; but
there was a touch of brighter colour than usual in his short, crisp
hair; and no woman had yet found fault with the moustache or the lips
beneath. And yet, though Stafford Orme's face was rather too handsome
than otherwise, the signs of weakness which one sees in so many
good-looking faces did not mar it; indeed, there was a hint of
strength, not to say sternness, in the well-cut lips, a glint of power
and masterfulness in the grey eyes and the brows above them which
impressed one at first sight; though when one came to know him the
impression was soon lost, effaced by the charm for which Stafford was
famous, and which was perpetually recruiting his army of friends.

No doubt it is easy to be charming when the gods have made you good to
look upon, and have filled your pockets with gold into the bargain.
Life was a pageant of pleasure to Stafford Orme: no wonder he sang and
smiled upon the way and had no lack of companions.

Even this man beside him, Edmund Howard, whose name was a by-word for
cynicism, who had never, until he had met Stafford Orme, gone an inch
out of his self-contained way to please or benefit a fellow-man, was
the slave of the young fellow's imperious will, and though he made
burlesque complaint of his bondage, did not in his heart rebel against
it.

Stafford laughed shortly as he looked at the rain-swept hills round
which the two good horses were taking the well-appointed phaeton.

"Oh, I knew you would come," he said. "It was just this way. You know
the governor wrote and asked me to come down to this new place of his
at Bryndermere--"

"Pardon me, Stafford; you forget that I have been down South--where I
wish to Heaven I had remained!--and that I only returned yesterday
