



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
afternoon, and that I know nothing of these sudden alarums and
excursions of your esteemed parent."

"Ah, no; so you don't!" assented Stafford; "thought I'd told you: shall
have to tell you now; I'll cut it as short as possible." He paused for
a moment and gently drew the lash of the whip over the wet backs of the
two horses who were listening intently to the voice of their beloved
master. "Well, three days ago I got a letter from my father; it was a
long one; I think it's the first long letter I ever received from him.
He informed me that for some time past he has been building a little
place on the east side of Bryndermere Lake, that he thought it would be
ready by the ninth of this month; and would I go down--or is it
up?--there and meet him, as he was coming to England and would go
straight there from Liverpool. Of course there was not time for me to
reply, and equally, of course, I prepared to obey. I meant going
straight down to Bryndermere; and I should have done so, but two days
ago I received a telegram telling me that the place would not be ready,
and that he would not be there until the eleventh, and asking me to
fill up the interval by sending down some horses and carriages. It
occurred to me, with one of those brilliant flashes of genius which you
have so often remarked in me, my dear Howard, that I would drive down,
at any rate, part of the way; so I sent some of the traps direct and
got this turn-out as far as Preston with me. With another of those
remarkable flashes of genius, it also occurred to me that I should be
devilish lonely with only Pottinger here," he jerked his head towards
the groom, who sat in damp and stolid silence behind. "And so I wrote
and asked you to come. Kind of me, wasn't it?"

"Most infernally kind," said Howard, with a sigh of a ton weight. "Had
you any idea that your father was building this little place? By the
way, I can't imagine Sir Stephen building anything that could be
described as 'little'.

"You are right," assented Stafford, with a nod. "I heard coming down
that it was a perfect palace of a place, a kind of palace of art
and--and that sort of thing. You know the governor's style?" His brows
were slightly knit for just a second, then he threw, as it were, the
frown off, with a smile. "No, I knew nothing about it; I knew as little
about it as I do of the governor himself and his affairs."

Howard nodded.

"When you come to think of it, Howard, isn't it strange that father and
son should know so little of each other? I have not seen the governor
for I forget how many years. He has been out of England for the last
fourteen or fifteen, with the exception of a few flying visits; and on
the occasion of those visits I was either at school on the Continent or
tramping about with a gun or a rod, and so we never met. I've a kind of
uneasy suspicion that my revered parent had no particular desire to
renew his acquaintance with his dutiful offspring; anyway, if he had,
he would have arranged a meeting. Seems rather peculiar; for in every
other respect his conduct as a parent has been above reproach."

"Those are scarcely the terms by which I should designate a liberality
which can only be described as criminally lavish, and an indifference
to your moral progress which might more properly belong to an
unregenerate Turk than to an English baronet. Considering the
opportunities of evil afforded you by the possession of a practically
unlimited allowance, and a brazen cheek which can only be described as
colossal, the fact that you have not long since gone headlong to the
devil fills me with perpetual and ever-freshening wonder."

Stafford yawned and shrugged his shoulders with cheerful acquiescence.

"Should have gone a mucker ever so many times, old man, if it hadn't
been for you," he said; "but you've always been at hand just at the
critical moment to point out to me that I was playing the giddy goat
and going to smash. That's why I like to have you with me as a kind of
guide, monitor, and friend, you know."

Howard groaned and attempted to get rid of another miniature pool of
water, and succeeded--as before.

"I know," he assented. "My virtue has been its own reward--and
punishment. If I had allowed you to go your way to the proverbial dogs,
after whose society gilded youths like yourself appear to be always
hankering, I should not be sitting here with cold water running down my
back and surrounded by Nature in her gloomiest and dampest aspects.
Only once have I deviated from the life of consistent selfishness at
which every sensible man should aim, and see how I am punished! I do
not wish to be unduly inquisitive, but I should like to know where the
blazes we are going, and why we do not make for a decent hotel--if
there is such a thing in these desolate wilds."

Stafford handed him the reins so that he himself might get out his
cigar-case, and with some little difficulty, and assisted by
Pottinger's soaked hat, the two gentlemen got their cigars alight.

"There isn't a decent hotel for miles," explained Stafford. "There is
only a small inn at a little place called Carysford. I looked it out on
the map. I thought we'd drive there today, put up for the night to give
the horses a rest, and go on to this place of my governor's the next
day. It's on the opposite side of the lake."

He jerked his whip to the right.

"Which side, what lake?" asked Howard, hopelessly. "I see nothing of
the lake, nothing but mist and sodden hills. No wonder the word 'poet'
instinctively arouses one's animosity. When I think of the number of
well-meaning and inspired idiots who have written reams of poetry about
this place, I feel at this present moment as if I could cheerfully rend
even a Wordsworth, a Southey, or a Coleridge; and I look back with
remorse upon the hours, the throbs of admiration, I have expended upon
what I once deemed their inspired pages. If I remember rightly, most of
the lake poets went off their heads; when I gaze around me I must admit
that I am not surprised."

Stafford laughed absently; he was quite accustomed to Howard's cynical
vein.

"They're all right enough," he said. "That is, I suppose they are, for
I never read any of 'em since I left school. Oh, yes, they're right
enough about the beauty of the place; you should see it on a fine day."

"Has anyone seen it on a fine day?" inquired Howard, with the innocent
air of one simply seeking information. "I asked a countryman in the
train if it always rained here, and he replied, 'No; it sometimes
snows.'"

"That's a chestnut," remarked Stafford, with a laugh. "But it's all
nonsense about its always being wet here; they tell me it's fine for
weeks together; that you can never tell any instant whether it's going
to clear up or not; that the weather will change like a woman--Good
heavens, look at that!"

He nodded to the east as he spoke.

Unnoticed by them, the sky had been clearing gradually, the mists
sweeping, dissolving, away; a breath of wind now wafted them, like a
veil thrown aside, from hill and valley and lake, and a scene of
unparalleled beauty lay revealed beneath them. The great lake shone
like a sapphire; meadows of emerald, woods of darker green, hills of
purple and grey, silver and gold, rose from the bosom and the edge of
the great liquid jewel; the hills towering tier on tier into the
heavens of azure blue swept by clouds like drifting snow.

The two men gazed in silence; even Pottinger, to whom his 'osses
generally represented all that was beautiful in nature, gaped with
wide-open mouth.

"How's that for lofty, you unbeliever?" demanded Stafford. "Ever seen
anything like that before?"

Howard had been considerably startled, but, of course, he concealed his
amazed admiration behind a mask of cynicism.

"Rather a crib from Val Prinsep, isn't it, with a suggestion of a Drury
Lane pantomime about it? Good heavens! And there's the Fairy Palace all
complete," he added, as, the mists still rising, was discovered on the
<DW72> of the other side a long and extremely ornate building, the pure
whiteness of which was reflected in the marvellous blue and opal of the
lake. "Can that be Sir Stephen's 'little place'?"

"I'm afraid it is," said Stafford. "It looks like the governor," he
added, with a touch of gravity.

"Well, it's very big, or, rather, long; and it's very white, but one's
bound to admit that it doesn't spoil the landscape," said Howard; "in
fact, standing there amidst the dark-green trees, with its pinnacles
and terraces, it's rather an ornament than otherwise. I suppose there
are flowers on those velvety lawns; and the interior, I'll wager my
life, matches the exterior. Fortunate youth to possess a Croesus for a
father:"

"Yes; I suppose the governor must be tremendously oafish," said
Stafford.

"The man who can build such a palace as that, and have the cool cheek
to call it 'a little place,' must in common decency be a
multi-millionaire."

Stafford nodded and smoked thoughtfully for a minute as Pottinger left
the horses' heads and climbed into his seat behind, and the
mail-phaeton moved along the road, which began to dip down at this
point.

"I know so little about my father," he said again.

"And yet the world knows so much," remarked Howard, throwing open his
waterproof and basking in the sun which shone as warmly and
unreservedly as if it had never heard of such a thing as rain. "One
can't take up the paper without seeing