



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: "YOU HAVE MADE ME ONCE MORE IN LOVE WITH THE GOODNESS OF
GOD, IN LOVE WITH LIFE" See page 325]




  Adrian
  Savage

  A Novel


  BY LUCAS MALET

  AUTHOR OF
  "SIR RICHARD CALMADY"



  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  MCMXI



[Illustration: Title page]




  COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1911




  TO

  GABRIELLE FRANCESCA LILIAN MARY

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. UPON
  HER BIRTHDAY. AS A LOVE-TOKEN

  BY
  LUCAS MALET

  THE ORCHARD, EVERSLEY   AUGUST 28, 1911




CONTENTS


I

CONCERNING THE DEAD AND THE LIVING

CHAP.

I. In which the Reader is Invited to Make the Acquaintance of the Hero
of this Book

II. Wherein a Very Modern Young Man Tells a Time-Honored Tale with but
Small Encouragement

III. Telling How René Dax Cooked a Savory Omelette, and Why Gabrielle
St. Leger Looked Out of an Open Window at Past Midnight

IV. Climbing the Ladder

V. Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

VI. Some Consequences of Putting New Wine into Old Bottles

VII. In which Adrian Helps to Throw Earth into an Open Grave

VIII. A Modern Antigone


II

THE DRAWINGS UPON THE WALL

I. A Waster

II. The Return of the Native

III. A Straining of Friendship

IV. In which Adrian Sets Forth in Pursuit of the Further Reason

V. With Deborah, under an Oak in the Parc Monceau

VI. Recording the Vigil of a Scarlet Homunculus and Aristides the Just


III

THE OTHER SIDE

I. Recording a Brave Man's Effort to Cultivate His Private Garden

II. A Strategic Movement which Secures Victory while Simulating Retreat

III. In which Euterpe is Called Upon to Play the Part of Interpreter

IV. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

V. In which Adrian's Knowledge of Some Inhabitants of the Tower House
is Sensibly Increased

VI. Which Plays Seesaw between a Game of Lawn Tennis and a Prodigal Son

VII. Pistols or Politeness--For Two

VIII. "Nuit de Mai"


IV

THE FOLLY OF THE WISE

I. Re-enter a Wayfaring Gossip

II. In the Track of the Brain-storm

III. In which the Storm Breaks

IV. On the Heights

V. De Profundis


V

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

I. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

II. Recording a Sisterly Effort to Let in Light

III. In which Joanna Embraces a Phantom Bliss

IV. "Come Unto These Yellow Sands"

V. In which Adrian Makes Disquieting Acquaintance with the Long Arm of
Coincidence

VI. Concerning a Curse, and the Manner of Its Going Home to Roost

VII. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

VIII. In which a Strong Man Adopts a Very Simple Method of Clearing His
Own Path of Thorns

IX. Wherein Adrian Savage Succeeds in Awakening La Belle au Bois Dormant




PREFATORY NOTE

I will ask my readers kindly to understand that this book is altogether
a work of fiction.  The characters it portrays, their circumstances and
the episodes in which they play a part, are my own invention.

Every sincere and scientific student of human nature and the social
scene must, of necessity, depend upon direct observation of life for
his general types--the said types being the composite photographs with
which study and observation have supplied him.  But, for the shaping of
individual characters out of the said types, he should, in my opinion,
rely exclusively upon his imagination and his sense of dramatic
coherence.  Exactly in proportion as he does this can he claim to be a
true artist.  Since the novel, to be a work of art, must be impersonal,
neither autobiographical nor biographical.--I am not, of course,
speaking of the historical novel, whether the history involved be
ancient or contemporary, nor am I speaking of an admitted satire.

I wish further to assure my readers that the names of my characters
have been selected at random; and belong, certainly in sequence of
Christian and surname, to no persons with whom I am, or ever have been,
acquainted.  I may also add that although I have often visited
_Stourmouth_ and its neighborhood--of which I am very fond--my
knowledge of the social life of the district is of the smallest, while
my knowledge of its municipal and commercial life is _nil_.

Finally, the lamented disappearance of _La Gioconda_, from the _Salon
Carré_ of the Louvre, took place when the whole of my manuscript was
already in the hands of the printers.  May I express a pious hope that
this most seductive of women will be safely restored to her former
dwelling-place before any copies of my novel are in the hands of the
public?

LUCAS MALET.

_August_ 28, 1911




I

CONCERNING THE DEAD AND THE LIVING



ADRIAN SAVAGE



CHAPTER I

  IN WHICH THE READER IS INVITED TO MAKE THE
  ACQUAINTANCE OF THE HERO OF THIS BOOK

Adrian Savage--a noticeably distinct, well-groomed, and well-set-up
figure, showing dark in the harsh light of the winter afternoon against
the pallor of the asphalt--walked rapidly across the Pont des Arts,
and, about half-way along the _Quai Malaquais_, turned in under the
archway of a cavernous _porte-cochère_.  The bare, spindly planes and
poplars, in the center of the courtyard to which this gave access,
shivered visibly.  Doubtless the lightly clad, lichen-stained nymph to
whom they acted as body-guard would have shivered likewise had her
stony substance permitted, for icicles fringed the lip of her tilted
pitcher and caked the edge of the shell-shaped basin into which, under
normal conditions, its waters dripped with a not unmusical tinkle.  Yet
the atmosphere of the courtyard struck the young man as almost mild
compared with that of the quay outside, along which the northeasterly
wind scourged bitingly.  Upon the farther bank of the turgid,
gray-green river the buildings of the Louvre stood out pale and stark
against a sullen backing of snow-cloud.  For the past week Paris had
cowered, sunless, in the grip of a black frost.  If those leaden
heavens would only elect to unload themselves of their burden the
weather might take up!  To Adrian Savage, in excellent health and
prosperous circumstances, the cold in itself mattered nothing--would,
indeed, rather have acted as a stimulus to his chronic appreciation of
the joy of living but for the fact that he had to-day been suddenly and
unexpectedly called upon to leave Paris and bid farewell to one of its
inhabitants eminently and even perplexingly dear to him.  Having, for
all his young masculine optimism, the artist's exaggerated sensibility
to the aspects of outward things, and equally exaggerated capacity for
conceiving--highly improbable--disaster, it troubled him to make his
adieux under such forbidding meteorologic conditions.  His regrets and
alarms would, he felt, have been decidedly lessened had kindly sunshine
set a golden frame about his parting impressions.

Nevertheless, as--raising his hat gallantly to the concierge, seated in
her glass-fronted lodge, swathed mummy-like in shawls and mufflers--he
turned shortly to the left along the backs of the tall, gray houses, a
high expectation, at once delightful and disturbing, took possession of
him to the exclusion of all other sensations.  For the past eighteen
months--ever since, indeed, the distressingly sudden death of his old
friend, the popular painter Horace St. Leger--he had made this selfsame
little pilgrimage as frequently as respectful discretion permitted.
And invariably, at the selfsame spot--it was where, as he noted
amusedly, between the third and fourth of the heavily barred
ground-floor windows a square leaden water-pipe, running the height of
the house wall from the parapet of the steep slated roof, reached the
grating in the pavement--this quickening of his whole being came upon
him, however occupied his thoughts might previously have been with his
literary work, or with the conduct of the bi-monthly review of which he
was at once assistant editor and part proprietor.  This quickening
remained with him, moreover, as he entered a doorway set in the near
corner of the courtyard and ran up the flights of waxed wooden stairs
to the third story.  In no country of the civilized world, it may be
confidently asserted, do affairs of the heart, even when virtuous,
command more indulgent sympathy than in France.  It followed that
Adrian entertained his own emotions with the same eager and friendly
amenity which he would have extended to those of another man in like
case.  He was not in the least contemptuous or suspicious of them.  He
permitted cynicism no smallest word in the matter.  On the contrary, he
hailed the present ebullience of his affections as among those
captivating surprises of earthly existence upon which one should warmly
congratulate oneself, having liveliest cause for rejoicing.

To-day, as usual, there was a brief pause before the door of the
vestibule opened.  A space of delicious anxiety---carrying him back to
the poignant hopes and despairs of childhood, when the fate of some
anticipated treat hangs in the balance--while he inquired of the trim
waiting-maid whether her mistress was or was not receiving.  Followed
by that other moment, childlike, too, in its deliciously troubled
emotion and vision, when, passing from the corridor into the warm,
vaguely fragrant atmosphere of the long, pale, rose-red and
canvas- drawing-room, he once again beheld the lady of his
desires and of his heart.

From the foregoing it may be deduced, and rightly, that Adrian Savage
was of a romantic temperament, and that he was very much in love.  Let
it be immediately added, however, that he was a young gentleman whose
head, to employ a vulgarism, was most emphatically screwed on the right
way.  Only child of an eminent English physician of good family, long
resident in Paris, and of a French mother--a woman of great personal
charm and some distinction as a poetess--he had inherited, along with a
comfortable little income of about eighteen hundred pounds a year, a
certain sagacity and decision in dealing with men and with affairs, as
well as quick sensibility in relation to beauty and to drama.  Artist
and practical man of the world went, for the most part, very happily
hand and hand in him.  At moments, however, they quarreled, to the
production of complications.

The death of both his parents occurred during his tenth year, leaving
him to the guardianship of a devoted French grandmother.  Under the
terms of Doctor Savage's will one-third of his income was to be applied
to the boy's maintenance and education until his majority, the
remaining two-thirds being set aside to accumulate until his
twenty-third birthday.  "At that age," so the document in question
stated, "I apprehend that my son will have discovered in what direction
his talents and aptitudes lie.  I do not wish to fetter his choice of a
profession; still I do most earnestly request him not to squander the
considerable sum of money into possession of which he will then come,
but to spend it judiciously, in the service of those talents and
aptitudes, with the purpose of securing for himself an honorable and
distinguished career."  This idea that something definite, something
notable even in the matter of achievement was demanded from him, clung
to the boy through school and college, acting--since he was healthy,
high-spirited, and confident--as a wholesome incentive to effort.  Even
before fulfilling his term of military service, Adrian had decided what
his career should be.  Letters called him with no uncertain voice.  He
would be a writer--dramatist, novelist, an artist in psychology, in
touch at all points with the inexhaustible riches of the human scene.
His father's science, his mother's poetic gift, should combine, so he
believed, to produce in him a very special vocation.  His ambitions at
this period were colossal.  The raw material of his selected art
appeared to him nothing less than the fee-simple of creation.  He
planned literary undertakings beside which the numerically formidable
volumes of Balzac or Zola shriveled to positive next-to-nothingness.
Fortunately fuller knowledge begot a juster sense of proportion, while
his native shrewdness lent a hand to knocking extravagant conceptions
on the head.  By the time he came into possession of the comfortable
sum of money that had accumulated during his minority and he was free
to follow his bent, Adrian found himself contented with quite modest
first steps in authorship.  For a couple of years he traveled, resolved
to broaden his acquaintance with men and things, to get some clear
first-hand impressions both of the ancient, deep-rooted civilizations
of the East and the amazing mushroom growths of America.  On his return
to Paris, it so happened that a leading bi-monthly review, which had
shown hospitality to his maiden literary productions, stood badly in
need of financial support.  Adrian bought a preponderating interest in
it; and by the time in question--namely, the winter of 190- and the
dawn of his thirtieth year--had contrived to make it not only a
powerful factor in contemporary criticism and literary output, but a
solid commercial success.

To be nine-and-twenty, the owner of a well-favored person, of admitted
talent and business capacity, and to be honestly in love, is surely to
be as happily circumstanced as mortal man can reasonably ask to be.
That the course of true love should not run quite smooth, that the
beloved one should prove elusive, difficult of access, that obstacles
should encumber the path of achievement, that mists of doubt and
uncertainty should drift across the face of the situation, obscuring
its issues, only served in Adrian's case to heighten interest and whet
appetite.  The last thing he asked was that the affair should move on
fashionable, conventional lines, a matter for newspaper paragraphs and
social gossip.  The justifying charm of it, to his thinking, resided in
precisely those elements of uncertainty and difficulty.  If, in the
twentieth century, a man is to subscribe to the constraints of marriage
at all, let it at least be in some sort marriage by capture!  And, as
he told himself, what man worth the name, let alone what artist, what
poet--vowed by his calling to confession of the transcendental, the
eternally mystic and sacred in this apparently most primitive, even
savage, of human relations--would choose to capture his exquisite prey
amid the blatant materialism, the vulgar noise and chaffer of the
modern social highway; rather than pursue it through the shifting
lights and shadows of mysterious woodland places, the dread of its
final escape always upon him, till his feet were weary with running,
and his hands with dividing the thick, leafy branches, his ears, all
the while, tormented by the baffling, piercing sweetness of the
half-heard Pipes of Pan?

Not infrequently Adrian would draw himself up short in the midst of
such rhapsodizings, humorously conscious that the artistic side of his
nature had got the bit, so to speak, very much between its teeth and
was running away altogether too violently with its soberer, more
practical, stable companion.  For, as he frankly admitted, to the
ordinary observer it must seem a rather ludicrously far cry from Madame
St. Leger's pleasant, well-found flat, in the center of cosmopolitan
twentieth-century Paris, to the arcana of pagan myth and legend!  Yet,
speaking quite soberly and truthfully, it was of such ancient, secret,
and symbolic things he instinctively thought when looking into
Gabrielle St. Leger's golden-brown eyes and noting the ironic
loveliness of her smiling lips.  That was just the delight, just the
provocation, just what differentiated her from all other women of his
acquaintance, from any other woman who, so far, had touched his heart
or stirred his senses.  Her recondite beauty--to quote the phrase of
this analytical lover--challenged his imagination with the excitement
of something hidden; though whether hidden by intentional and delicate
malice, or merely by lack of opportunity for self-declaration, he was
at a loss to determine.  Daughter, wife, mother, widow--young though
she still was, she had sounded the gamut of woman's most vital
experiences.  Yet, it seemed to him, although she had fulfilled, and
was fulfilling, the obligations incident to each of these several
conditions in so gracious and irreproachable a manner, her soul had
never been effectively snared in the meshes of any net.  Good Catholic,
good housewife, sympathetic hostess, intelligent and discriminating
critic, still--he might be a fool for his pains, but what artist
doesn't know better than to under-rate the fine uses of folly?--he
believed her to be, either by fate or by choice, essentially a _Belle
au Bois Dormant_; and further believed himself, thanks to the workings
of constitutional masculine vanity, to be the princely adventurer
designed by providence for the far from disagreeable duty of waking her
up.  Only just now providence, to put it roughly, appeared to have
quite other fish for him to fry.  And it was under compulsion of such
prospective fish-frying that he sought her apartment overlooking the
_Quai Malaquais_, this afternoon, reluctantly to bid her farewell.




CHAPTER II

  WHEREIN A VERY MODERN YOUNG MAN TELLS A
  TIME-HONORED TALE WITH BUT SMALL ENCOURAGEMENT

Disappointment awaited him.  Madame St. Leger was receiving; but, to
his chagrin, another visitor had forestalled his advent--witness a
woman's fur-lined wrap lying across the lid of the painted Venetian
chest in the corridor.  Adrian bestowed a glance of veritable hatred
upon the garment.  Then, recognizing it, felt a little better.  For it
belonged to Anastasia Beauchamp, an old friend, not unsympathetic, as
he believed, to his suit.

Sympathy, however, was hardly the note struck on his entrance.  Miss
Beauchamp and Madame St. Leger stood in the vacant rose-red carpeted
space at the far end of the long room, in front of the open fire.  Both
were silent; yet Adrian was aware somehow they had only that moment
ceased speaking, and that their conversation had been momentous in
character.  The high tension of it held them to the point of their
permitting him to walk the whole length of the room before turning to
acknowledge his presence.  This was damping for Adrian, who, like most
agreeable young men, thought himself entitled to and well worth a
welcome.  But not a bit of it!  The elder woman--high-shouldered,
short-waisted, an admittedly liberal sixty, her arms disproportionate
in their length and thinness to her low stature--continued to hold her
hostess's right hand in both hers and look at her intently, as though
enforcing some request or admonition.

Miss Beauchamp, it may be noted in passing, affected a certain
juvenility of apparel.  To-day she wore a short purple serge
walking-suit.  A velvet toque of the same color, trimmed with sable and
blush-roses, perched itself on her elaborately dressed hair, which, in
obedience to the then prevailing fashion, showed not gray but a full
coppery red.  Her eyebrows and eyelids were darkly penciled, and powder
essayed to mask wrinkles and sallowness of complexion.  Yet the very
frankness of these artifices tended to rob them of offense; or, in any
serious degree--the first surprise of them over--to mar the genial
promise of her quick blue-gray eyes and her thin, witty, strongly
marked, rather masculine countenance.  Adrian usually accepted her
superficial bedizenments without criticism, as just part of her
excellent, if somewhat bizarre, personality.  But to-day--his temper
being slightly ruffled--under the cold, diffused light of the range of
tall windows, they started, to his seeing, into quite unpardonable
prominence--a prominence punctuated by the grace and the proudly
youthful aspect of the woman beside her.

Madame St. Leger was clothed in unrelieved black, from the frill, high
about her long throat, to the hem of her trailing cling skirts.  Over
her head she had thrown a black gauze scarf, soberly framing her
heart-shaped face in fine semi-transparent folds, and obscuring the
burnished lights in her brown hair, which stood away in soft, dense
ridges on either side the parting and was gathered into a loose knot at
the back of her head.  Her white skin was very clear, a faint scarlet
tinge showing through it in the round of either cheek.  But just now
she was pale.  And this, along with the framing black gauze scarf,
developed the subtle likeness which--as Adrian held--she bore, in the
proportions of her face and molding of it, to Leonardo's world-famous
"Mona Lisa" in Salon Carré of the Louvre.  The strange recondite
quality of her beauty, and the challenge it offered, were peculiarly in
evidence; thereby making, as he reflected, cruel, though unconscious,
havoc of the juvenile pretensions of poor Anastasia.  And this was
painful to him.  So that in wishing--as he incontestably did--the said
Anastasia absent, his wish may have been dictated almost as much by
chivalry as by selfishness.

All of which conflicting perceptions and emotions tended to rob him of
his habitual and happy self-assurance.  His voice took on quite
plaintive tones, and his gay brown eyes a quite pathetic and orphaned
expression, as he exclaimed:

"Ah!  I see that I disturb you.  I am in the way.  My visit is
inconvenient to you!"

The faint tinge of scarlet leaped into Madame St. Leger's cheeks, and
an engaging dimple indicated itself at the left corner of her closed
and smiling mouth.  Meanwhile Anastasia Beauchamp broke forth
impetuously:

"No, no!  On the contrary, it is I who am in the way, though our dear,
exquisite friend is too amiable to tell me so.  I have victimized her
far too long already.  I have bored her distractingly."

"Indeed, it is impossible you should ever bore me," the younger woman
put in quietly.

"Then I have done worse.  I have just a little bit angered you," Miss
Beauchamp declared.  "Oh!  I know I have been richly irritating,
preaching antiquated doctrines of moderation in thought and conduct.
But '_les vérités bêtes_' remain '_les vérités vraies_,' now as ever.
With that I go.  _Ma toute chère et belle_, I leave you.  And," she
added, turning to Adrian, "I leave you, you lucky young man, in
possession.  Retrieve my failures!  Be as amusing as I have been
intolerable.--But see, one moment, since the opportunity offers.  Tell
me, you are going to accept those articles on the Stage in the
Eighteenth Century, by my poor little protégé, Lewis Byewater, for
publication in the Review?"

"Am I not always ready to attempt the impossible for your sake, dear
Mademoiselle?" Adrian inquired gallantly.

"Hum--hum--is it as bad as that, then?  Are his articles so impossible?
Byewater has soaked himself in his subject.  He has been tremendously
conscientious.  He has taken immense trouble over them."

"He has taken immensely too much; that is just the worry.  His
conscience protrudes at every sentence.  It <DW8>s, it positively
impales you!"  The speaker raised his neat black eyebrows and broad
shoulders in delicate apology.  "Alas!  he is pompous, pedantic, I
grieve to report; he is heavy, very heavy, your little Byewater.  The
eighteenth-century stage was many things which it had, no doubt, much
better not have been, but was it heavy?  Assuredly not."

"Ah! poor child, he is young.  He is nervous.  He has not command of
his style yet.  You should be lenient.  Give him opportunity and
encouragement, and he will find himself, will rise to the possibilities
of his own talent.  After all," she added, "every writer must begin
some time and somewhere!"

"But not necessarily in the pages of my Review," Adrian protested.
"With every desire to be philanthropic, I dare not convert it into a
_crèche_, a foundling hospital, for the maintenance of ponderous
literary infants.  My subscribers might, not unreasonably, object."

"You floated René Dax."

"But he is a genius," Madame St. Leger remarked quietly.

"Yes," Adrian asserted, "there could be no doubt about his value from
the first.  He is extraordinary."

"He is extraordinarily perverted," cried Miss Beauchamp.

"I am much attached to M. René Dax."  Madame St. Leger spoke
deliberately; and a little silence followed, as when people listen,
almost anxiously, to the sound of a pebble dropped into a well, trying
to hear it touch bottom.  Miss Beauchamp was the first to break it.
She did so laughing.

"In that case, _ma toute belle_, you also are perverse, though I trust
not yet perverted.  It amounts to this, then," she continued, pulling
her long gloves up her thin arms: "I am to dispose of poor Byewater,
shatter his hopes, crush his ambitions, tell him, in short, that he
won't do.  Just Heaven, you who have arrived, how soon you become
cruel!"  She looked from the handsome black-bearded young man to the
beautiful enigmatic young woman, and her witty, accentuated face bore a
singular expression.  "Good-by, charming Gabrielle," she said.
"Forgive me if I have been tedious, for truly I am devotedly fond of
you.  And good-by to you, Mr. Savage.  Yes!  I go to dispose of the
ill-fated Byewater.  But ah! ah! if you only knew all I have done this
afternoon, or tried to do, to serve you!"

Whereupon Adrian, smitten by sudden apprehension of deep and possibly
dangerous issues, followed her to the door, crying eagerly:

"Wait, I implore you, dear Mademoiselle.  Do not be too precipitate in
disposing of Byewater.  I may have underrated the worth of his
articles.  I will re-read, I will reconsider.  Nothing presses.  I have
to leave Paris for a week or two.  Let the matter rest till my return.
I may find it possible, after all, to accept them."

Then, the door closed, he came back and stood on the vacant space of
rose-red carpet in the pleasant glow of the fire.

"She is a clever woman," he said, reflectively.  "She has cornered me,
and that is not quite fair--on the Review.  For they constitute a
veritable atrocity of dullness, those articles by her miserable little
Byewater."

"It is part of her code of friendship--it holds true all round.  If she
helps others--"

Madame St. Leger left her sentence unfinished and, glancing with a hint
of veiled mockery at her guest, sat down in a carven, high-backed,
rose-cushioned chair at right angles to the fireplace, and picked up a
bundle of white needlework from the little table beside it.

"You mean that Miss Beauchamp does her best for me, too?" Adrian
inquired, tentatively.

But the lady was too busy unfolding her work, finding needle and
thimble to make answer.

"I foresee that I shall be compelled to print the wretched little
Byewater in the end," he murmured, still tentatively.

"Did you not tell Miss Beauchamp you were going away?" Gabrielle asked.
She had no desire to continue the conversation on this particular note.

"Yes, I leave Paris to-night.  That is my excuse for asking to see you
this afternoon.  But I feel that my visit is ill-timed.  I observed
directly I came in that you looked a little fatigued.  I fear you are
suffering.  Ought you to undertake the exertion of receiving visitors?
I doubt it.  Yet I should have been desolated had you refused me.  For
I leave, as I say, to-night in response to a sudden call to England
upon business--that of certain members of my father's family.  I am
barely acquainted with them.  But they claim my assistance, and I
cannot refuse it.  I could not do otherwise than tell you of this
unexpected journey, could I?  It distresses me to find you suffering."

Gabrielle had looked at him smiling, her lips closed, the little dimple
again showing in her left cheek.  His eagerness and volubility were
diverting to her.  They enabled her to think of him as still very
young; and she quite earnestly wished thus to think of him.  To do so
made for security.  At this period Madame St. Leger put a very high
value upon security.

"But, indeed," she said, "I am quite well.  The corridor is chilly, and
I have been going to and fro preparing a little _fête_ for Bette.  She
has her friends, our neighbor Madame Bernard's two little girls, from
the floor below, to spend the afternoon with her.  My mother is now
kindly guarding the small flock.  But I could not burden her with
preliminaries.--I am quite well, and, for the moment, I am quite at
leisure.  Bring a chair.  Sit down.  It is for me to condole with you
rather than for you to condole with me," she went on, in her quiet
voice, "for this is far from the moment one would select for a
cross-Channel journey!  But then you are more English than French in
all that.  Hereditary instincts assert themselves in you.  You have the
islander's inborn sense of being cramped by the modest proportions of
his island, and craving to step off the edge of it into space."

The young man placed his hat on the floor, opened the fronts of his
overcoat, and drew a chair up to the near side of the low work-table
whence he commanded an uninterrupted view of his hostess's charming
person.

"That is right," she said.  "Now tell me about this sudden journey.  Is
it for long?  When may we expect you back?"

"What do I know?" he replied, spreading out his hands quickly.  "It may
be a matter of days.  It may be a matter of weeks.  I am ignorant of
the amount of business entailed.  The whole thing has come upon me as
so complete a surprise.  What induced my venerable cousin to select me
as his executor remains inexplicable.  I remember seeing him when, as a
child, I visited England with my parents.  I remember, also, that he
filled me with alarm and melancholy.  He lived in a big, solemn house
on the outskirts of a great, noisy, dirty, manufacturing town in
Yorkshire.  It was impressed upon me that I must behave in his presence
with eminent circumspection, since he was very religious, very
intellectual.  I fear I was an impertinent little boy.  He appeared to
me to worship a most odious deity, who permitted no amusements, no
holidays, no laughter; while his conversation--my cousin's, I mean, not
that of the Almighty--struck me as quite the dullest I had ever
listened to.  I cried, very loud and very often, to the consternation
of the whole establishment, and demanded