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Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

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CONTENTS

An Habitation Enforced
The Recall
Garm--a Hostage
The Power of the Dog
The Mother Hive
The Bees and the Flies
With the Night Mail
The Four Angels
A Deal in Cotton
The New Knighthood
The Puzzler
The Puzzler Little Foxes
Gallio's Song
The House Surgeon
The Rabbi's Song


ACTIONS AND REACTIONS
AN HABITATION ENFORCED

My friend,
if cause doth wrest thee,
Ere folly hath much oppressed thee,
Far from acquaintance kest thee Where country may digest thee .

Thank God that so hath blessed thee,
And sit down,
Robin,
and rest thee.

THOMAS TUSSER.

It came without warning,
at the very hour his hand was outstretched
to crumple the Holz and Gunsberg Combine.

The New York doctors called it overwork,
and he lay in a darkened room,
one ankle crossed above the other,
tongue pressed into palate,
wondering whether the next brain-surge of prickly fires would drive his soul from all anchorages.

At last they gave judgment.

With care he might in two years return
to the arena,
but
for the present he must go across the water and do no work whatever.

He accepted the terMs. It was capitulation;
but the Combine that had shivered beneath his knife gave him all the honours of war:

Gunsberg himself,
full of condolences,
came
to the steamer and filled the Chapins'
suite of cabins
with overwhelming flower-works.

"Smilax,"
said George Chapin when he saw them.

"Fitz is right.

I'm dead;
only I don't see why he left out the
'In Memoriam'
on the ribbons!"
"Nonsense!"
his wife answered,
and poured him his tincture.

"You'll be back before you can think."

He looked at himself in the mirror,
surprised that his face had not been branded by the hells of the past three months.

The noise of the decks worried him,
and he lay down,
his tongue only a little pressed against his palate.

An hour later he said:

"Sophie,
I feel sorry about taking you away from everything like this.

I--I suppose we're the two loneliest people on God's earth to-night."

Said Sophie his wife,
and kissed him:

"Isn't it something
to you that we're going together?"
They drifted about Europe
for months--sometimes alone,
sometimes
with chance met gipsies of their own land.

From the North Cape
to the Blue Grotto at Capri they wandered,
because the next steamer headed that way,
or because some one had set them on the road.

The doctors had warned Sophie that Chapin was not
to take interest even in other men's interests;
but a familiar sensation at the back of the neck after one hour's keen talk
with a Nauheimed railway magnate saved her any trouble.

He nearly wept.

"And I'm over thirty,"
he cried.

"With all I meant
to do!"
"Let's call it a honeymoon,"
said Sophie.

"D'
you know,
in all the six years we've been married,
you've never told me what you meant
to do
with your life?"
"With my life?

What's the use?

It's finished now."

Sophie looked up quickly from the Bay of Naples.

"As far as my business goes,
I shall have
to live on my rents like that architect at San Moritz."

"You'll get better if you don't worry;
and even if it rakes time,
there are worse things than--How much have you?"
"Between four and five million.

But it isn't the money.

You know it isn't.

It's the principle.

How could you respect me?

You never did,
the first year after we married,
till I went
to work like the others.

Our tradition and upbringing are against it.

We can't accept those ideals."

"Well,
I suppose I married you
for some sort of ideal,"
she answered,
and they returned
to their forty-third hotel.

In England they missed the alien tongues of Continental streets that reminded them of their own polyglot cities.

In England all men spoke one tongue,
speciously like American
to the ear,
but on cross-examination unintelligible.,
"Ah,
but you have not seen England,"
said a lady
with iron-grey hair.

They had met her in Vienna,
Bayreuth,
and Florence,
and were grateful
to find her again at Claridge's,
for she commanded situations,
and knew where prescriptions are most carefully made up.

"You ought
to take an interest in the home of our ancestors as I do."

"I've tried
for a week,
Mrs. Shonts,"
said Sophie,
"but I never get any further than tipping German waiters."

"These men are not the true type,"
Mrs. Shouts went on.

"I know where you should go."

Chapin pricked up his ears,
anxious
to run anywhere from the streets on which quick men,
something of his kidney,
did the business denied
to him.

"We hear and we obey,
Mrs. Shonts,"
said Sophie,
feeling his unrest as he drank the loathed British tea.

Mrs. Shonts smiled,
and took them in hand.

She wrote widely and telegraphed far on their behalf till,
armed
with her letter of introduction,
she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from an ash-barrel of a station called Charing Cross.

They were
to go
to Rockett's--the farm of one Cloke,
in the southern counties--where,
she assured them,
they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song.

Rocketts they found after some hours,
four miles from a station,
and,
so far as they could,
judge in the bumpy darkness,
twice as many from a road.

Trees,
kine,
and the outlines of barns showed shadowy about them when they alighted,
and Mr. and Mrs. Cloke,
at the open door of a deep stone-floored kitchen,
made them shyly welcome.

They lay in an attic beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling,
and,
because it rained,
a wood fire was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth,
and they fell asleep
to the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames.

When they woke it was a fair day,
full of the noises,
of birds,
the smell of box lavender,
and fried bacon,
mixed
with an elemental smell they had never met before.

"This,"
said Sophie,
nearly pushing out the thin casement in an attempt
to see round the,
corner,
"
is--what did the hack-cabman say
to the railway porter about my trunk--'quite on the top?'
"
"No;
'a little bit of all right.'

I feel farther away from anywhere than I've ever felt in my life.

We must find out where the telegraph office is."

"Who cares?"
said Sophie,
wandering about,
hairbrush in hand,
to admire the illustrated weekly pictures pasted on door and cupboard.

But there was no rest
for the alien soul till he had made sure of the telegraph office.

He asked the Clokes'
daughter,
laying breakfast,
while Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window.

"Go
to the stile a-top o'
the Barn field,"
said Mary,
"and look across Pardons
to the next spire.

It's directly under.

You can't miss it--not if you keep
to the footpath.

My sister's the telegraphist there.

But you're in the three-mile radius,
sir.

The boy delivers telegrams directly
to this door from Pardons village."

"One has
to take a good deal on trust in this country,"
he murmured.

Sophie looked at the close turf,
scarred only
with last night's wheels,
at two ruts which wound round a rickyard,
and at the circle of still orchard about the half-timbered house.

"What's the matter
with it?"
she said.

"Telegrams delivered
to the Vale of Avalon,
of course,"
and she beckoned in an earnest-eyed hound of engaging manners and no engagements,
who answered,
at times,
to the name of Rambler.

He led them,
after breakfast,
to the rise behind the house where the stile stood against the skyline,
and,
"I wonder what we shall find now,"
said Sophie,
frankly prancing
with joy on the grass.

It was a slope of gap-hedged fields possessed
to their centres by clumps of brambles.

Gates were not,
and the rabbit-mined,
cattle-rubbed posts leaned out and in.

A narrow path doubled among the bushes,
scores of white tails twinkled before the racing hound,
and a hawk rose,
whistling shrilly.

"No roads,
no nothing!"
said Sophie,
her short skirt hooked by briers.

"I thought all England was a garden.

There's your spire,
George,
across the valley.

How curious!"
They walked toward it through an all abandoned land.

Here they found the ghost of a patch of lucerne that had refused
to die:

there a harsh fallow surrendered
to yard-high thistles;
and here a breadth of rampant kelk feigning
to be lawful crop.

In the ungrazed pastures swaths of dead stuff caught their feet,
and the ground beneath glistened
with sweat.

At the bottom of the valley a little brook had undermined its footbridge,
and frothed in the wreckage.

But there stood great woods on the slopes beyond--old,
tall,
and brilliant,
like unfaded tapestries against the walls of a ruined house.

"All this within a hundred miles of London,"
he said.

"Looks as if it had had nervous prostration,
too."

The,
footpath turned the shoulder of a slope,
through a thicket of rank rhododendrons,
and crossed what had once been a carriage drive,
which ended in the shadow of two gigantic holm-oaks.

"A house!"
said Sophie,
in a whisper.

"A Colonial house!"
Behind the blue-green of the twin trees rose a dark-bluish brick Georgian pile,
with a shell-shaped fan-light over its pillared door.

The hound had gone off on his own foolish quests.

Except
for some stir it the branches and the flight of four startled magpies;
there was neither life nor sound about the square house,
but it looked out of its long windows most friendlily.

"Cha-armed
to meet you,
I'm sure,"
said Sophie,
and curtsied
to the ground.

"George,
this is history I can understand.

We began here."

She curtsied again.

The June sunshine twinkled on all the lights.

It was as though an old lady,
wise in three generations'
experience,
but
for the present sitting out,
bent
to listen
to her flushed and eager grandchild.

"I must look!"
Sophie tiptoed
to a window,
and shaded her eyes
with her hand.

"Oh,
this room's half-full of cotton-bales--wool,
I suppose! But I can see a bit of the mantelpiece.

George,
do come! Isn't that some one?"
She fell back behind her husband.

The front door opened slowly,
to show the hound,
his nose white
with milk,
in charge of an ancient of days clad in a blue linen ephod curiously gathered on breast and shoulders.

"Certainly,"
said George,
half aloud.

"Father Time himself.

This is where he lives,
Sophie."

"We came,"
said Sophie weakly.

"Can we see the house?

I'm afraid that's our dog."

"No,
'tis Rambler,"
said the old man.

"He's been,
at my swill-pail again.

Staying at Rocketts,
be ye?

Come in.

Ah! you runagate!"
The hound broke from him,
and he tottered after him down the drive.

They entered the hall--just such a high light hall as such a house should own.

A slim-balustered staircase,
wide and shallow and once creamy-white,
climbed out of it under a long oval window.

On either side delicately moulded doors gave on
to wool-lumbered rooms,
whose sea-green mantelpieces were adorned
with nymphs,
scrolls,
and Cupids in low relief.

"What's the firm that makes these things?"
cried Sophie,
enraptured.

"Oh,
I forgot! These must be the originals.

Adams,
is it?

I never dreamed of anything like that steel-cut fender.

Does he mean us
to go everywhere?"
"He's catching the dog,"
said George,
looking out.

"We don't count."

They explored the first or ground floor,
delighted as children playing burglars.

"This is like all England,"
she said at last.

"Wonderful,
but no explanation.

You're expected
to know it beforehand.

Now,
let's try upstairs."

The stairs never creaked beneath their feet.

From the broad landing they entered a long,
green-panelled room lighted by three full-length windows,
which overlooked the forlorn wreck of a terraced garden,
and wooded slopes beyond.

"The drawing-room,
of course."

Sophie swam up and down it.

"That mantelpiece--Orpheus and Eurydice--is the best of them all.

Isn't it marvellous?

Why,
the room seems furnished
with nothing in it! How's that,
George?"
"It's the proportions.

I've noticed it."

"I saw a Heppelwhite couch once"--Sophie laid her finger
to her flushed cheek and considered.

"With,
two of them--one on each side--you wouldn't need anything else.

Except--there must be one perfect mirror over that mantelpiece."

"Look at that view.

It's a framed Constable,"
her husband cried.

"No;
it's a Morland--a parody of a Morland.

But about that couch,
George.

Don't you think Empire might be better than Heppelwhite?

Dull gold against that pale green?

It's a pity they don't make spinets nowadays."

"I believe you can get them.

Look at that oak wood behind the pines."

"'While you sat and played toccatas stately,
at the clavichord,"'
Sophie hummed,
and,
head on one;
side,
nodded
to where the perfect mirror should hang:

Then they found bedrooms
with dressing-rooms and powdering-closets,
and steps leading up and down--boxes of rooms,
round,
square,
and octagonal,
with enriched ceilings and chased door-locks.

"Now about servants.

Oh!"
She had darted up the last stairs
to the chequered darkness of the top floor,
where loose tiles lay among broken laths,
and the walls were scrawled
with names,
sentiments,
and hop records.

"They've been keeping pigeons here,"
she cried.

"And you could drive a buggy through the roof anywhere,"
said George.

"That's what I say,"
the old man cried below them on the stairs.

"Not a dry place
for my pigeons at all."

"But why was it allowed
to get like this?"
said Sophie.

"Tis
with housen as teeth,"
he replied.

"Let
'em go too far,
and there's nothing
to be done.

Time was they was minded
to sell her,
but none would buy.

She was too far away along from any place.

Time was they'd ha'
lived here theyselves,
but they took and died."

"Here?"
Sophie moved beneath the light of a hole in the roof.

"Nah--none dies here excep'
falling off ricks and such.

In London they died."

He plucked a lock of wool from his blue smock.

"They was no staple--neither the Elphicks nor the Moones.

Shart and brittle all of
'em.

Dead they be seventeen year,
for I've been here caretakin'
twenty-five."

"Who does all the wool belong
to downstairs?"
George asked.

"To the estate.

I'll show you the back parts if ye like.

You're from America,
ain't ye?

I've had a son there once myself."

They followed him down the main stairway.

He paused at the turn and swept one hand toward the wall.

"Plenty room,
here
for your coffin
to come down.

Seven foot and three men at each end wouldn't brish the paint.

If I die in my bed they'll
'ave
to up-end me like a milk-can.

'Tis all luck,
dye see?"
He led them on and on,
through a maze of back kitchens,
dairies,
larders,
and sculleries,
that melted along covered ways into a farm-house,
visibly older than the main building,
which again rambled out among barns,
byres,
pig-pens,
stalls and stables
to the dead fields behind.

"Somehow,"
said Sophie,
sitting exhausted on an ancient well-curb--"somehow one wouldn't insult these lovely old things by filling them
with hay."

George looked at long stone walls upholding reaches of silvery-oak weather-boarding;
buttresses of mixed flint and bricks;
outside stairs,
stone upon arched stone;
curves of thatch where grass sprouted;
roundels of house-leeked tiles,
and a huge paved yard populated by two cows and the repentant Rambler.

He had not thought of himself or of the telegraph office
for two and a half hours.

"But why,"
said Sophie,
as they went back through the crater of stricken fields,--"
why is one expected
to know everything in England?

Why do they never tell?"
"You mean about the Elphicks and the Moones?"
he answered.

"Yes--and the lawyers and the estate.

Who are they?

I wonder whether those painted floors in the green room were real oak.

Don't you like us exploring things together--better than Pompeii?"
George turned once more
to look at the view.

"Eight hundred acres go
with the house--the old man told me.

Five farms altogether.

Rocketts is one of
'em."

"I like Mrs. Cloke.

But what is the old house called?"
George laughed.

"That's one of the things you're expected
to know.

He never told me."

The Clokes were more communicative.

That evening and thereafter
for a week they gave the Chapins the official history,
as one gives it
to lodgers,
of Friars Pardon the house and its five farMs. But Sophie asked so many questions,
and George was so humanly interested,
that,
as confidence in the strangers grew,
they launched,
with observed and acquired detail,
into the lives and deaths and doings of the Elphicks and the Moones and their collaterals,
the Haylings and the Torrells.

It was a tale told serially by Cloke in the barn,
or his wife in the dairy,
the last chapters reserved
for the kitchen o'
nights by the big fire,
when the two had been half the day exploring about the house,
where old Iggulden,
of the blue smock,
cackled and chuckled
to see them.

The motives that swayed the characters were beyond their comprehension;
the fates that shifted them were gods they had never met;
the sidelights Mrs. Cloke threw on act and incident were more amazing than anything in the record.

Therefore the Chapins listened delightedly,
and blessed Mrs. Shonts.

"But why--why--why--did So-and-so do so-and-so?"
Sophie would demand from her seat by the pothook;
and Mrs. Cloke would answer,
smoothing her knees,
"For the sake of the place."

"I give it up,"
said George one night in their own room.

"People don't seem
to matter in this country compared
to the places they live in.

The way she tells it,
Friars Pardon was a sort of Moloch."

"Poor old thing!"
They had been walking round the farms as usual before tea.

"No wonder they loved it.

Think of the sacrifices they made
for it.

Jane Elphick married the younger Torrell
to keep it in the family.

The octagonal room
with the moulded ceiling next
to the big bedroom was hers.

Now what did he tell you while he was feeding the pigs?"
said Sophie.

"About the Torrell cousins and the uncle who died in Java.

They lived at Burnt House--behind High Pardons,
where that brook is all blocked up."

"No;
Burnt House is under High Pardons Wood,
before you come
to Gale Anstey,"
Sophie corrected.

"Well,
old man Cloke said--"
Sophie threw open the door and called down into the kitchen,
where the Clokes were covering the fire
"Mrs. Cloke,
isn't Burnt House under High Pardons?"
"Yes,
my dear,
of course,"
the soft voice.

answered absently.

A cough.

"I beg your pardon,
Madam.

What was it you said?"
"Never mind.

I prefer it the other way,"
Sophie laughed,
and George re-told the missing chapter as she sat on the bed.

"Here to-day an'
gone to-morrow,"
said Cloke warningly.

"They've paid their first month,
but we've only that Mrs. Shonts's letter
for guarantee."

"None she sent never cheated us yet.

It slipped out before I thought.

She's a most humane young lady.

They'll be going away in a little.

An'
you've talked a lot too,
Alfred."

"Yes,
but the Elphicks are all dead.

No one can bring my loose talking home
to me.

But why do they stay on and stay on so?"
In due time George and Sophie asked each other that question,
and put it aside.

They argued that the climate--a pearly blend,
unlike the hot and cold ferocities of their native land--suited them,
as the thick stillness of the nights certainly suited George.

He was saved even the sight of a metalled road,
which,
as presumably leading
to business,
wakes desire in a man;
and the telegraph office at the village of Friars Pardon,
where they sold picture post-cards and pegtops,
was two walking miles across the fields and woods.

For all that touched his past among his fellows,
or their remembrance of him,
he might have been in another planet;
and Sophie,
whose life had been very largely spent among husbandless wives of lofty ideals,
had no wish
to leave this present of God.

The unhurried meals,
the foreknowledge of deliciously empty hours
to follow,
the breadths of soft sky under which they walked together and reckoned time only by their hunger or thirst;
the good grass beneath their feet that cheated the miles;
their discoveries,
always together,
amid the farms--Griffons,
Rocketts,
Burnt House,
Gale Anstey,
and the Home Farm,
where Iggulden of the blue smock-frock would waylay them,
and they would ransack the old house once more;
the long wet afternoons when,
they tucked up their feet on the bedroom's deep window-sill over against the apple-trees,
and talked together as never till then had they found time
to talk--these things contented her soul,
and her body throve.

"Have you realized,"
she asked one morning,
"that we've been here absolutely alone
for the last thirty-four days?"
"Have you counted them?"
he asked.

"Did you like them?"
she replied.

"I must have.

I didn't think about them.

Yes,
I have.

Six months ago I should have fretted myself sick.

Remember at Cairo?

I've only had two or three bad times.

Am I getting better,
or is it senile decay?"
"Climate,
all climate."

Sophie swung her new-bought English boots,
as she sat on the stile overlooking Friars Pardon,
behind the Clokes's barn.

"One must take hold of things though,"
he said,
"if it's only
to keep one's hand in."

His eyes did not flicker now as they swept the empty fields.

"Mustn't one?"
"Lay out a Morristown links over Gale Anstey.

I dare say you could hire it."

"No,
I'm not as English as that--nor as Morristown.

Cloke says all the farms here could be made
to pay."

"Well,
I'm Anastasia in the
'Treasure of Franchard.'

I'm content
to be alive and purr.

There's no hurry."

"No."

He smiled.

"All the same,
I'm going
to see after my mail."

"You promised you wouldn't have any."

"There's some business coming through that's amusing me.

Honest.

It doesn't get on my nerves at all."

"Want a secretary?"
"No,
thanks,
old thing! Isn't that quite English?"
"Too English! Go away."

But none the less in broad daylight she returned the kiss.

"I'm off
to Pardons.

I haven't been
to the house
for nearly a week."

"How've you decided
to furnish Jane Elphick's bedroom?"
he laughed,
for it had come
to be a permanent Castle in Spain between them.

"Black Chinese furniture and yellow silk brocade,"
she answered,
and ran downhill.

She scattered a few cows at a gap
with a flourish of a ground-ash that Iggulden had cut
for her a week ago,
and singing as she passed under the holmoaks,
sought the farm-house at the back of Friars Pardon.

The old man was not
to be found,
and she knocked at his half-opened door,
for she needed him
to fill her idle forenoon.

A blue-eyed sheep-dog,
a new friend,
and Rambler's old enemy,
crawled out and besought her
to enter.

Iggulden sat in his chair by the fire,
a thistle-spud between his knees,
his head drooped.

Though she had never seen death before,
her heart,
that missed a beat,
told her that he was dead.

She did not speak or cry,
but stood outside the door,
and the dog licked her hand.

When he threw up his nose,
she heard herself saying:

"Don't howl! Please don't begin
to howl,
Scottie,
or I shall run away!"
She held her ground while the shadows in the rickyard moved toward noon;
sat after a while on the steps by the door,
her arms round the dog's neck,
waiting till some one should come.

She watched the smokeless chimneys of Friars Pardon slash its roofs
with shadow,
and the smoke of Iggulden's last lighted fire gradually thin and cease.

Against her will she fell
to wondering how many Moones,
Elphicks,
and Torrells had been swung round the turn of the broad Mall stairs.

Then she remembered the old man's talk of being
"up-ended like a milk-can,"
and buried her face on Scottie's neck.

At last a horse's feet clinked upon flags,
rustled in the old grey straw of the rickyard,
and she found herself facing the vicar--a figure she had seen at church declaiming impossibilities
(Sophie was a Unitarian)
in an unnatural voice.

"He's dead,"
she said,
without preface.

"Old Iggulden?

I was coming
for a talk
with him."

The vicar passed in uncovered.

"Ah!"
she heard him say.

"Heart-failure! How long have you been here?"
"Since a quarter
to eleven."

She looked at her watch earnestly and saw that her hand did not shake.

"I'll sit
with him now till the doctor comes.

D'you think you could tell him,
and--yes,
Mrs. Betts in the cottage
with the wistaria next the blacksmith's?

I'm afraid this has been rather a shock
to you."

Sophie nodded,
and fled toward the village.

Her body failed her
for a moment;
she dropped beneath a hedge,
and looked back at the great house.

In some fashion its silence and stolidity steadied her
for her errand.

Mrs. Betts,
small,
black-eyed,
and dark,
was almost as unconcerned as Friars Pardon.

"Yiss,
yiss,
of course.

Dear me! Well,
Iggulden he had had his day in my father's time.

Muriel,
get me my little blue bag,
please.

Yiss,
ma'am.

They come down like ellum-branches in still weather.

No warnin'
at all.

Muriel,
my bicycle's be'ind the fowlhouse.

I'll tell Dr. Dallas,
ma'am."

She trundled off on her wheel like a brown bee,
while Sophie--heaven above and earth beneath changed--walked stiffly home,
to fall over George at his letters,
in a muddle of laughter and tears.

"It's all quite natural
for them,"
she gasped.

"They come down like ellum-branches in still weather.

Yiss,
ma'am.'

No,
there wasn't anything in the least horrible,
only--only--Oh,
George,
that poor shiny stick of his between his poor,
thin knees! I couldn't have borne it if Scottie had howled.

I didn't know the vicar was so--so sensitive.

He said he was afraid it was ra--rather a shock.

Mrs. Betts told me
to go home,
and I wanted
to collapse on her floor.

But I didn't disgrace myself.

I--I couldn't have left him--could I?"
"You're sure you've took no
'arm?"
cried Mrs. Cloke,
who had heard the news by farm-telegraphy,
which is older but swifter than Marconi's.

"No.

I'm perfectly well,"
Sophie protested.

"You lay down till tea-time."

Mrs. Cloke patted her shoulder.

"THEY'll be very pleased,
though she
'as
'ad no proper understandin'
for twenty years."

"They"
came before twilight--a black-bearded man in moleskins,
and a little palsied old woman,
who chirruped like a wren.

"I'm his son,"
said the man
to Sophie,
among the lavender bushes.

"We
'ad a difference--twenty year back,
and didn't speak since.

But I'm his son all the
'same,
and we thank you
for the watching."

"I'm only glad I happened
to be there,"
she answered,
and from the bottom of her heart she meant it.

"We heard he spoke a lot o'
you--one time an'
another since you came.

We thank you kindly,"
the man added.

"Are you the son that was in America?"
she asked.

"Yes,
ma'am.

On my uncle's farm,
in Connecticut.

He was what they call rood-master there."

"Whereabouts in Connecticut?"
asked George over her shoulder.

"Veering Holler was the name.

I was there six year
with my uncle."

"How small the world is!"
Sophie cried.

"Why,
all my mother's people come from Veering Hollow.

There must be some there still--the Lashmars.

Did you ever hear of them?"
"I remember hearing that name,
seems
to me,"
he answered,
but his face was blank as the back of a spade.

A little before dusk a woman in grey,
striding like a foot-soldier,
and bearing on her arm a long pole,
crashed through the orchard calling
for food.

George,
upon whom the unannounced English worked mysteriously,
fled
to the parlour;
but Mrs. Cloke came forward beaming.

Sophie could not escape.

"We've only just heard of it;"
said the stranger,
turning on her.

"I've been out
with the otter-hounds all day.

It was a splendidly sportin'
thing
"
"Did you--er--kill?"
said Sophie.

She knew from books she could not go far wrong here.

"Yes,
a dry bitch--seventeen pounds,"
was the answer.

"A splendidly sportin'
thing of you
to do.

Poor old Iggulden--"
"Oh--that!"
said Sophie,
enlightened.

"If there had been any people at Pardons it would never have happened.

He'd have been looked after.

But what can you expect from a parcel of London solicitors?"
Mrs. Cloke murmured something.

"No.

I'm soaked from the knees down.

If I hang about I shall get chilled.

A cup of tea,
Mrs. Cloke,
and I can eat one of your sandwiches as I go."

She wiped her weather-worn face
with a green and yellow silk handkerchief.

"Yes,
my lady!"
Mrs. Cloke ran and returned swiftly.

"Our land marches
with Pardons
for a mile on the south,"
she explained,
waving the full cup,
"but one has quite enough
to do
with one's own people without poachin'.

Still,
if I'd known,
I'd have sent Dora,
of course.

Have you seen her this afternoon,
Mrs. Cloke?

No?

I wonder whether that girl did sprain her ankle.

Thank you."

It was a formidable hunk of bread and bacon that Mrs. Cloke presented.

"As I was sayin',
Pardons is a scandal! Lettin'
people die like dogs.

There ought
to be people there who do their duty.

You've done yours,
though there wasn't the faintest call upon you.

Good night.

Tell Dora,
if she comes,
I've gone on."

She strode away,
munching her crust,
and Sophie reeled breathless into the parlour,
to shake the shaking George.

"Why did you keep catching my eye behind the blind?

Why didn't you come out and do your duty?"
"Because I should have burst.

Did you see the mud on its cheek?"
he said.

"Once.

I daren't look again.

Who is she?"
"God--a local deity then.

Anyway,
she's another of the things you're expected
to know by instinct."

Mrs. Cloke,
shocked at their levity,
told them that it was Lady Conant,
wife of Sir Walter Conant,
Baronet,
a large landholder in the neighbourhood;
and if not God;
at least His visible Providence.

George made her talk of that family
for an hour.

"Laughter,"
said Sophie afterward in their own room,
"is the mark of the savage.

Why couldn't you control your emotions?

It's all real
to her."

"It's all real
to me.

That's my trouble,"
he answered in an altered tone.

"Anyway,
it's real enough
to mark time with.

Don't you think so?"
"What d'you mean?"
she asked quickly,
though she knew his voice.

"That I'm better.

I'm well enough
to kick."

"What at?"
"This!"
He waved his hand round the one room.

"I must have something
to play
with till I'm fit
for work again."

"Ah!"
She sat on the bed and leaned forward,
her hands clasped.

"I wonder if it's good
for you."

"We've been better here than anywhere,"
he went on slowly.

"One could always sell it again."

She nodded gravely,
but her eyes sparkled.

"The only thing that worries me is what happened this morning.

I want
to know how you feel about it.

If it's on your nerves in the least we can have the old farm at the back of the house pulled down,
or perhaps it has spoiled the notion
for you?"
"Pull it down?"
she cried.

"You've no business faculty.

Why,
that's where we could live while we're putting the big house in order.

It's almost under the same roof.

No! What happened this morning seemed
to be more of a--of a leading than anything else.

There ought
to be people at Pardons.

Lady Conant's quite right."

"I was thinking more of the woods and the roads.

I could double the value of the place in six months."

"What do they want
for it?"
She shook her head,
and her loosened hair fell glowingly about her cheeks.

"Seventy-five thousand dollars.

They'll take sixty-eight."

"Less than half what we paid
for our old yacht when we married.

And we didn't have a good time in her.

You were--"
"Well,
I discovered I was too much of an American
to be content
to be a rich man's son.

You aren't blaming me
for that?"
"Oh,
no.

Only it was a very businesslike honeymoon.

How far are you along
with the deal,
George?"
"I can mail the deposit on the purchase money to-morrow morning,
and we can have the thing completed in a fortnight or three weeks--if you say so."

"Friars Pardon--Friars Pardon!"
Sophie chanted rapturously,
her dark gray eyes big
with delight.

"All the farms?

Gale Anstey,
Burnt House,
Rocketts,
the Home Farm,
and Griffons?

Sure you've got
'em all?"
"Sure."

He smiled.

"And the woods?

High Pardons Wood,
Lower Pardons,
Suttons,
Dutton's Shaw,
Reuben's Ghyll,
Maxey's Ghyll,
and both the Oak Hangers?

Sure you've got
'em all?"
"Every last stick.

Why,
you know them as well as I do."

He laughed.

"They say there's five thousand--a thousand pounds'
worth of lumber--timber they call it--in the Hangers alone."

"Mrs. Cloke's oven must be mended first thing,
and the kitchen roof.

I think I'll have all this whitewashed,"
Sophie broke in,
pointing
to the ceiling.

"The whole place is a scandal.

Lady Conant is quite right.

George,
when did you begin
to fall in love
with the house?

In the greenroom that first day?

I did."

"I'm not in love
with it.

One must do something
to mark time till one's fit
for work."

"Or when we stood under the oaks,
and the door opened?

Oh! Ought I
to go
to poor Iggulden's funeral?"
She sighed
with utter happiness.

"Wouldn't they call it a liberty now?"
said he.

"But I liked him."

"But you didn't own him at the date of his death."

"That wouldn't keep me away.

Only,
they made such a fuss about the watching"--she caught her breath--"it might be ostentatious from that point of view,
too.

Oh,
George"--she reached
for his hand--"we're two little orphans moving in worlds not realized,
and we shall make some bad breaks.

But we're going
to have the time of our lives."

"We'll run up
to London to-morrow,
and see if we can hurry those English law solicitors.

I want
to get
to work."

They went.

They suffered many things ere they returned across the fields in a fly one Saturday night,
nursing a two by two-and-a-half box of deeds and maps--lawful owners of Friars Pardon and the five decayed farms therewith.

"I do most sincerely
'ope and trust you'll be
'appy,
Madam,"
Mrs. Cloke gasped,
when she was told the news by the kitchen fire.

"Goodness! It isn't a marriage!"
Sophie exclaimed,
a little awed;
for
to them the joke,
which
to an American means work,
was only just beginning.

"If it's took in a proper spirit"--Mrs. Cloke's eye turned toward her oven.

"Send and have that mended to-morrow,"
Sophie whispered.

"We couldn't
'elp noticing,"
said Cloke slowly,
"from the times you walked there,
that you an'
your lady was drawn
to it,
but--but I don't know as we ever precisely thought--"
His wife's glance checked him.

"That we were that sort of people,"
said George.

"We aren't sure of it ourselves yet."

"Perhaps,"
said Cloke,
rubbing his knees,
"just
for the sake of saying something,
perhaps you'll park it?"
"What's that?"
said George.

"Turn it all into a fine park like Violet Hill"--he jerked a thumb
to westward--"that Mr. Sangres bought.

It was four farms,
and Mr. Sangres made a fine park of them,
with a herd of faller deer."

"Then it wouldn't be Friars Pardon,"
said Sophie.

"Would it?"
"I don't know as I've ever heard Pardons was ever anything but wheat an'
wool.

Only some gentlemen say that parks are less trouble than tenants."

He laughed nervously.

"But the gentry,
o'
course,
they keep on pretty much as they was used to."

"I see,"
said Sophie.

"How did Mr. Sangres make his money?"
"I never rightly heard.

It was pepper an'
spices,
or it may ha'
been gloves.

No.

Gloves was Sir Reginald Liss at Marley End.

Spices was Mr. Sangres.

He's a Brazilian gentleman--very sunburnt like."

"Be sure o'
one thing.

You won't
'ave any trouble,"
said Mrs. Cloke,
just before they went
to bed.

Now the news of the purchase was told
to Mr. and Mrs. Cloke alone at 8 P.M.

of a Saturday.

None left the farm till they set out
for church next morning.

Yet when they reached the church and were about
to slip aside into their usual seats,
a little beyond the font,
where they could see the red-furred tails of the bellropes waggle and twist at ringing time,
they were swept forward irresistibly,
a Cloke on either flank
(and yet they had not walked
with the Clokes),
upon the ever-retiring bosom of a black-gowned verger,
who ushered them into a room of a pew at the head of the left aisle,
under the pulpit.

"This,"
he sighed reproachfully,
"is the Pardons'
Pew,"
and shut them in.

They could see little more than the choir boys in the chancel,
but
to the roots of the hair of their necks they felt the congregation behind mercilessly devouring them by look.

"When the wicked man turneth away."

The strong,
alien voice of the priest vibrated under the hammer-beam roof,
and a loneliness unfelt before swamped their hearts,
as they searched
for places in the unfamiliar Church of England service.

The Lord's Prayer
"Our Father,
which art"--set the seal on that desolation.

Sophie found herself thinking how in other lands their purchase would long ere this have been discussed from every point of view in a dozen prints,
forgetting that George
for months had not been allowed
to glance at those black and bellowing head-lines.

Here was nothing but silence--not even hostility! The game was up
to them;
the other players hid their cards and waited.

Suspense,
she felt,
was in the air,
and when her sight cleared,
saw,
indeed,
a mural tablet of a footless bird brooding upon the carven motto,
"
Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."

At the Litany George had trouble
with an unstable hassock,
and drew the slip of carpet under the pewseat.

Sophie pushed her end back also,
and shut her eyes against a burning that felt like tears.

When she opened them she was looking at her mother's maiden name,
fairly carved on a blue flagstone on the pew floor:

Ellen Lashmar.

ob.

1796.

aetat 27.

She nudged George and pointed.

Sheltered,
as they kneeled,
they looked
for more knowledge,
but the rest of the slab was blank.

"Ever hear of her?"
he whispered.

"Never knew any of us came from here."

"Coincidence?"
"Perhaps.

But it makes me feel better,"
and she smiled and winked away a tear on her lashes,
and took his hand while they prayed for
"all women labouring of child"--not
"in the perils of childbirth";
and the sparrows who had found their way through the guards behind the glass windows chirped above the faded gilt and alabaster family tree of the Conants.

The baronet's pew was on the right of the aisle.

After service its inhabitants moved forth without haste,
but so as
to block effectively a dusky person
with a large family who champed in their rear.

"Spices,
I think,"
said Sophie,
deeply delighted as the Sangres closed up after the Conants.

"Let
'em get away,
George."

But when they came out many folk whose eyes were one still lingered by the lychgate.

"I want
to see if any more Lashmars are buried here,"
said Sophie.

"Not now.

This seems
to be show day.

Come home quickly,"
he replied.

A group of families,
the Clokes a little apart,
opened
to let them through.

The men saluted
with jerky nods,
the women
with remnants of a curtsey.

Only Iggulden's son,
his mother on his arm,
lifted his hat as Sophie passed.

"Your people,"
said the clear voice of Lady Conant in her ear.

"I suppose so,"
said Sophie,
blushing,
for they were within two yards of her;
but it was not a question.

"Then that child looks as if it were coming down
with mumps.

You ought
to tell the mother she shouldn't have brought it
to church."

"I can't leave
'er behind,
my lady,"
the woman said.

"She'd set the
'ouse afire in a minute,
she's that forward
with the matches.

Ain't you,
Maudie dear?"
"Has Dr. Dallas seen her?"
"Not yet,
my lady."

"He must.

You can't get away,
of course.

M-m! My idiotic maid is coming in
for her teeth to-morrow at twelve.

She shall pick her up--at Gale Anstey,
isn't it?--at eleven."

"Yes.

Thank you very much,
my lady."

"I oughtn't
to have done it,"
said Lady Conant apologetically,
"but there has been no one at Pardons
for so long that you'll forgive my poaching.

Now,
can't you lunch
with us?

The vicar usually comes too.

I don't use the horses on a Sunday"--she glanced at the Brazilian's silver-plated chariot.

"It's only a mile across the fields."

"You--you're very kind,"
said Sophie,
hating herself because her lip trembled.

"My dear,"
the compelling tone dropped
to a soothing gurgle,
"d'you suppose I don't know how it feels
to come
to a strange county--country I should say--away from one's own people?

When I first left the Shires--I'm Shropshire,
you know--I cried
for a day and a night.

But fretting doesn't make loneliness any better.

Oh,
here's Dora.

She did sprain her leg that day."

"I'm as lame as a tree still,"
said the tall maiden frankly.

"You ought
to go out
with the otter-hounds,
Mrs. Chapin.

I believe they're drawing your water next week."

Sir Walter had already led off George,
and the vicar came up on the other side of Sophie.

There was no escaping the swift procession or the leisurely lunch,
where talk came and went in low-voiced eddies that had the village
for their centre.

Sophie heard the vicar and Sir Walter address her husband lightly as Chapin!
(She also remembered many women known in a previous life who habitually addressed their husbands as Mr. Such-an-one.)
After lunch Lady Conant talked
to her explicitly of maternity as that is achieved in cottages and farm-houses remote from aid,
and of the duty thereto of the mistress of Pardons.

A gate in a beech hedge,
reached across triple lawns,
let them out before tea-time into the unkempt south side of their land.

"I want your hand,
please,"
said Sophie as soon as they were safe among the beech boles and the lawless hollies.

"D'you remember the old maid in
'Providence and the Guitar'
who heard the Commissary swear,
and hardly reckoned herself a maiden lady afterward?

Because I'm a relative of hers.

Lady Conant is--"
"Did you find out anything about the Lashmars?"
he interrupted.

"I didn't ask.

I'm going
to write
to Aunt Sydney about it first.

Oh,
Lady Conant said something at lunch about their having bought some land from some Lashmars a few years ago.

I found it was at the beginning of last century."

"What did you say?"
"I said,
'Really,
how interesting!'
Like that.

I'm not going
to push myself forward.

I've been hearing about Mr. Sangres's efforts in that direction.

And you?

I couldn't see you behind the flowers.

Was it very deep water,
dear?"
George mopped a brow already browned by outdoor exposures.

"Oh no--dead easy,"
he answered.

"I've bought Friars Pardon
to prevent Sir Walter's birds straying."

A cock pheasant scuttered through the dry leaves and exploded almost under their feet.

Sophie jumped.

"That's one of
'em,"
said George calmly.

"Well,
your nerves are better,
at any rate,"
said she.

"Did you tell
'em you'd bought the thing
to play with?"
"No.

That was where my nerve broke down.

I only made one bad break--I think.

I said I couldn't see why hiring land
to men
to farm wasn't as much a business proposition as anything else."

"And what did they say?"
"They smiled.

I shall know what that smile means some day.

They don't waste their smiles.

D'you see that track by Gale Anstey?"
They looked down from the edge of the hanger over a cup-like hollow.

People by twos and threes in their Sunday best filed slowly along the paths that connected farm
to farm.

"I've never seen so many on our land before,"
said Sophie.

"Why is it?"
"To show us we mustn't shut up their rights of way."

"Those cow-tracks we've been using cross lots?"
said Sophie forcibly.

"Yes.

Any one of
'em would cost us two thousand pounds each in legal expenses
to close."

"But we don't want to,"
she said.

"The whole community would fight if we did."

"But it's our land.

We can do what we like."

"It's not our land.

We've only paid
for it.

We belong
to it,
and it belongs
to the people--our people they call
'em.

I've been
to lunch
with the English too."

They passed slowly from one bracken-dotted field
to the next--flushed
with pride of ownership,
plotting alterations and restorations at each turn;
halting in their tracks
to argue,
spreading apart
to embrace two views at once,
or closing in
to consider one.

Couples moved out of their way,
but smiling covertly.

"We shall make some bad breaks,"
he said at last.

"Together,
though.

You won't let anyone else in,
will you?"
"Except the contractors.

This syndicate handles,
this proposition by its little lone."

"But you might feel the want of some one,"
she insisted.

"I shall--but it will be you.

It's business,
Sophie,
but it's going
to be good fun."

"Please God,"
she answered flushing,
and cried
to herself as they went back
to tea.

"It's worth it.

Oh,
it's worth it."

The repairing and moving into Friars Pardon was business of the most varied and searching,
but all done English fashion,
without friction.

Time and money alone were asked.

The rest lay in the hands of beneficent advisers from London,
or spirits,
male and female,
called up by Mr. and Mrs. Cloke from the wastes of the farMs. In the centre stood George and Sophie,
a little aghast,
their interests reaching out on every side.

"I ain't sayin'
anything against Londoners,"
said Cloke,
self-appointed clerk of the outer works,
consulting engineer,
head of the immigration bureau,
and superintendent of woods and forests;
"but your own people won't go about
to make more than a fair profit out of you."

"How is one
to know?"
said George.

"Five years from now,
or so on,
maybe,
you'll be lookin'
over your first year's accounts,
and,
knowin'
what you'll know then,
you'll say:

'Well,
Billy Beartup'--or Old Cloke as it might be--'did me proper when I was new.'

No man likes
to have that sort of thing laid up against him."

"I think I see,"
said George.

"But five years is a long time
to look ahead."

"I doubt if that oak Billy Beartup throwed in Reuben's Ghyll will be fit
for her drawin-room floor in less than seven,"
Cloke drawled.

"Yes,
that's my work,"
said Sophie.

(Billy Beartup of Griffons,
a woodman by training and birth,
a tenant farmer by misfortune of marriage,
had laid his broad axe at her feet a month before.)
"Sorry if I've committed you
to another eternity."

"And we shan't even know where we've gone wrong
with your new carriage drive before that time either,"
said Cloke,
ever anxious
to keep the balance true
with an ounce or two in Sophie's favour.

The past four months had taught George better than
to reply.

The carriage road winding up the hill was his present keen interest.

They set off
to look at it,
and the imported American scraper which had blighted the none too sunny soul of
"Skim"
Winsh,
the carter.

But young Iggulden was in charge now,
and under his guidance,
Buller and Roberts,
the great horses,
moved mountains.

"You lif'
her like that,
an'
you tip her like that,"
he explained
to the gang.

"My uncle he was roadmaster in Connecticut."

"Are they roads yonder?"
said Skim,
sitting under the laurels.

"No better than accommodation roads.

Dirt,
they call
'em.

They'd suit you,
Skim."

"Why?"
said the incautious Skim.

"Cause you'd take no hurt when you fall out of your cart drunk on a Saturday,"
was the answer.

"I didn't last time neither,"
Skim roared.

After the loud laugh,
old Whybarne of Gale Anstey piped feebly,
"Well,
dirt or no dirt,
there's no denyin'
Chapin knows a good job when he sees it.

'E don't build one day and dee-stroy the next,
like that nigger Sangres."

"SHE's the one that knows her own mind,"
said Pinky,
brother
to Skim Winsh,
and a Napoleon among carters who had helped
to bring the grand piano across the fields in the autumn rains.

"She had ought to,"
said Iggulden.

"Whoa,
Buller! She's a Lashmar.

They never was double-thinking."

"Oh,
you found that?

Has the answer come from your uncle?"
said Skim,
doubtful whether so remote a land as America had posts.

The others looked at him scornfully.

Skim was always a day behind the fair.

Iggulden rested from his labours.

"She's a Lashmar right enough.

I started up
to write
to my uncle--at once--the month after she said her folks came from Veering Holler."

"Where there ain't any roads?"
Skim interrupted,
but none laughed.

"My uncle he married an American woman
for his second,
and she took it up like a like the coroner.

She's a Lashmar out of the old Lashmar place,
'fore they sold
to Conants.

She ain't no Toot Hill Lashmar,
nor any o'
the Crayford lot.

Her folk come out of the ground here,
neither chalk nor forest,
but wildishers.

They sailed over
to America--I've got it all writ down by my uncle's woman--in eighteen hundred an'
nothing.

My uncle says they're all slow begetters like."

"Would they be gentry yonder now?"
Skim asked.

"Nah--there's no gentry in America,
no matter how long you're there.

It's against their law.

There's only rich and poor allowed.

They've been lawyers and such like over yonder
for a hundred years but she's a Lashmar
for all that."

"Lord! What's a hundred years?"
said Whybarne,
who had seen seventy-eight of them.

"An'
they write too,
from yonder--my uncle's woman writes--that you can still tell
'em by headmark.

Their hair's foxy-red still--an'
they throw out when they walk.

He's in-toed-treads like a gipsy;
but you watch,
an'
you'll see
'er throw,
out--like a colt."

"Your trace wants taking up."

Pinky's large ears had caught the sound of voices,
and as the two broke through the laurels the men were hard at work,
their eyes on Sophie's feet.

She had been less fortunate in her inquiries than Iggulden,
for her Aunt Sydney of Meriden
(a badged and certificated Daughter of the Revolution
to boot)
answered her inquiries
with a two-paged discourse on patriotism,
the leaflets of a Village Improvement Society,
of which she was president,
and a demand
for an overdue subscription
to a Factory Girls'
Reading Circle.

Sophie burned it all in the Orpheus and Eurydice grate,
and kept her own counsel.

"What I want
to know,"
said George,
when Spring was coming,
and the gardens needed thought.

"is who will ever pay me
for my labour?

I've put in at least half a million dollars'
worth already."

"Sure you're not taking too much out of yourself?"
his wife asked.

"Oh,
no;
I haven't been conscious of myself all winter."

He looked at his brown English gaiters and smiled.

"It's all behind me now.

I believe I could sit down and think of all that--those months before we sailed."

"Don't--ah,
don't!"
she cried.

"But I must go back one day.

You don't want
to keep me out of business always--or do you?"
He ended
with a nervous laugh.

Sophie sighed as she drew her own ground-ash
(of old Iggulden's cutting)
from the hall rack.

"Aren't you overdoing it too?

You look a little tired,"
he said.

"You make me tired.

I'm going
to Rocketts
to see Mrs. Cloke about Mary."

(This was the sister of the telegraphist,
promoted
to be sewing-maid at Pardons.)
"Coming?"
"I'm due at Burnt House
to see about the new well.

By the way,
there's a sore throat at Gale Anstey--"
"That's my province.

Don't interfere.

The Whybarne children always have sore throats.

They do it
for jujubes."

"Keep away from Gale Anstey till I make sure,
honey.

Cloke ought
to have told me."

"These people don't tell.

Haven't you learnt that yet?

But I'll obey,
me lord.

See you later!"
She set off afoot,
for within the three main roads that bounded the blunt triangle of the estate
(even by night one could scarcely hear the carts on them),
wheels were not used except
for farm work.

The footpaths served all other purposes.

And though at first they had planned improvements,
they had soon fallen in
with the customs of their hidden kingdom,
and moved about the soft-footed ways by woodland,
hedgerow,
and shaw as freely as the rabbits.

Indeed,
for the most part Sophie walked bareheaded beneath her helmet of chestnut hair;
but she had been plagued of late by vague toothaches,
which she explained
to Mrs. Cloke,
who asked some questions.

How it came about Sophie never knew,
but after a while behold Mrs. Cloke's arm was about her waist,
and her head was on that deep bosom behind the shut kitchen door.

"My dear! My dear!"
the elder woman almost sobbed.

"An'
d'you mean
to tell me you never suspicioned?

Why--why--where was you ever taught anything at all?

Of course it is.

It's what we've been only waitin'
for,
all of us.

Time and again I've said
to Lady--"
she checked herself.

"An'
now we shall be as we should be."

"But--but--but--"
Sophie whimpered.

"An'
to see you buildin'
your nest so busy--pianos and books--an'
never thinkin'
of a nursery!"
"No more I did."

Sophie sat bolt upright,
and began
to laugh.

"Time enough yet."

The fingers tapped thoughtfully on the broad knee.

"But--they must be strange-minded folk over yonder
with you! Have you thought
to send
for your mother?

She dead?

My dear,
my dear! Never mind! She'll be happy where she knows.

'Tis God's work.

An'
we was only waitin'
for it,
for you've never failed in your duty yet.

It ain't your way.

What did you say about my Mary's doings?"
Mrs. Cloke's face hardened as she pressed her chin on Sophie's forehead.

"If any of your girls thinks
to be'ave arbitrary now,
I'll--But they won't,
my dear.

I'll see they do their duty too.

Be sure you'll
'ave no trouble."

When Sophie walked back across the fields heaven and earth changed about her as on the day of old Iggulden's death.

For an instant she thought of the wide turn of the staircase,
and the new ivory-white paint that no coffin corner could scar,
but presently,
the shadow passed in a pure wonder and bewilderment that made her reel.

She leaned against one of their new gates and looked over their lands
for some other stay.

"Well,"
she said resignedly,
half aloud,
"we must try
to make him feel that he isn't a third in our party,"
and turned the corner that looked over Friars Pardon,
giddy,
sick,
and faint.

Of a sudden the house they had bought
for a whim stood up as she had never seen it before,
low-fronted,
broad-winged,
ample,
prepared by course of generations
for all such things.

As it had steadied her when it lay desolate,
so now that it had meaning from their few months of life within,
it soothed and promised good.

She went alone and quickly into the hall,
and kissed either door-post,
whispering:

"Be good
to me.

You know! You've never failed in your duty yet."

When the matter was explained
to George,
he would have sailed at once
to their own land,
but this Sophie forbade.

"I don't want science,"
she said.

"I just want
to be loved,
and there isn't time
for that at home.

Besides,"
she added,
looking out of the window,
"it would be desertion."

George was forced
to soothe himself
with linking Friars Pardon
to the telegraph system of Great Britain by telephone--three-quarters of a mile of poles,
put in by Whybarne and a few friends.

One of these was a foreigner from the next parish.

Said he when the line was being run:

"There's an old ellum right in our road.

Shall us throw her?"
"Toot Hill parish folk,
neither grace nor good luck,
God help
'em."

Old Whybarne shouted the local proverb from three poles down the line.

"We ain't goin'
to lay any axe-iron
to coffin-wood here not till we know where we are yet awhile.

Swing round
'er,
swing round!"
To this day,
then,
that sudden kink in the straight line across the upper pasture remains a mystery
to Sophie and George.

Nor can they tell why Skim Winsh,
who came
to his cottage under Dutton Shaw most musically drunk at 10.45 P.M of every Saturday night,
as his father had done before him,
sang no more at the bottom of the garden steps,
where Sophie always feared he would break his neck.

The path was undoubtedly an ancient right of way,
and at 10.45 P.M.

on Saturdays Skim remembered it was his duty
to posterity
to keep it open--till Mrs. Cloke spoke
to him once.

She spoke likewise
to her daughter Mary,
sewing maid at Pardons,
and
to Mary's best new friend,
the five-foot-seven imported London house-maid,
who taught Mary
to trim hats,
and found the country dullish.

But there was no noise--at no time was there any noise--and when Sophie walked abroad she met no one in her path unless she had signified a wish that way.

Then they appeared
to protest that all was well
with them and their children,
their chickens,
their roofs,
their water-supply,
and their sons in the police or the railway service.

"But don't you find it dull,
dear?"
said George,
loyally doing his best not
to worry as the months went by.

"I've been so busy putting my house in order I haven't had time
to think,"
said she.

"Do you?"
"No--no.

If I could only be sure of you."

She turned on the green drawing-room's couch
(it was Empire,
not Heppelwhite after all),
and laid aside a list of linen and blankets.

"It has changed everything,
hasn't it?"
she whispered.

"Oh,
Lord,
yes.

But I still think if we went back
to Baltimore
"
"And missed our first real summer together.

No thank you,
me lord."

"But we're absolutely alone."

"Isn't that what I'm doing my best
to remedy?

Don't you worry.

I like it--like it
to the marrow of my little bones.

You don't realize what her house means
to a woman.

We thought we were living in it last year,
but we hadn't begun to.

Don't you rejoice in your study,
George?"
"I prefer being here
with you."

He sat down on the floor by the couch and took her hand.

"Seven,"
she said,
as the French clock struck.

"Year before last you'd just be coming back from business."

He winced at the recollection,
then laughed.

"Business! I've been at work ten solid hours to-day."

"Where did you lunch?

With the Conants?"
"No;
at Dutton Shaw,
sitting on a log,
with my feet in a swamp.

But we've found out where the old spring is,
and we're going
to pipe it down
to Gale Anstey next year."

"I'll come and see to-morrow.

Oh,
please open the door,
dear.

I want
to look down the passage.

Isn't that corner by the stair-head lovely where the sun strikes in?"
She looked through half-closed eyes at the vista of ivory-white and pale green all steeped in liquid gold.

"There's a step out of Jane Elphick's bedroom,"
she went on--"and his first step in the world ought
to be up.

I shouldn't wonder if those people hadn't put it there on purpose.

George,
will it make any odds
to you if he's a girl?"
He answered,
as he had many times before,
that his interest was his wife,
not the child.

"Then you're the only person who thinks so."

She laughed.

"Don't be silly,
dear.

It's expected.

I know.

It's my duty.

I shan't be able
to look our people in the face if I fail."

"What concern is it of theirs,
confound
'em!"
"You'll see.

Luckily the tradition of the house is boys,
Mrs. Cloke says,
so I'm provided for.

Shall you ever begin
to understand these people?

I shan't."

"And we bought it
for fun--for fun!"
he groaned.

"And here we are held up
for goodness knows bow long!"
"Why?

Were you thinking of selling it?"
He did not answer.

"Do you remember the second Mrs. Chapin?"
she demanded.

This was a bold,
brazen little black-browed woman--a widow
for choice--who on Sophie's death was guilefully
to marry George
for his wealth and ruin him in a year.

George being busy,
Sophie had invented her some two years after her marriage,
and conceived she was alone among wives in so doing.

"You aren't going
to bring her up again?"
he asked anxiously.

"I only want
to say that I should hate any one who bought Pardons ten times worse than I used
to hate the second Mrs. Chapin.

Think what we've put into it of our two selves."

"At least a couple of million dollars.

I know I could have made--"
He broke off.

"The beasts!"
she went on.

"They'd be sure
to build a red-brick lodge at the gates,
and cut the lawn up
for bedding out.

You must leave instructions in your will that he's never
to do that,
George,
won't you?"
He laughed and took her hand again but said nothing till it was time
to dress.

Then he muttered
"What the devil use is a man's country
to him when he can't do business in it?"
Friars Pardon stood faithful
to its tradition.

At the appointed time was born,
not that third in their party
to whom Sophie meant
to be so kind,
but a godling;
in beauty,
it was manifest,
excelling Eros,
as in wisdom Confucius;
an enhancer of delights,
a renewer of companionships and an interpreter of Destiny.

This last George did not realise till he met Lady Conant striding through Dutton Shaw a few days after the event.

"My dear fellow,"
she cried,
and slapped him heartily on the back,
"I can't tell you how glad we all are.

Oh,
she'll be all right.

(There's never been any trouble over the birth of an heir at Pardons.)
Now where the dooce is it?"
She felt largely in her leather-boundskirt and drew out a small silver mug.

"I sent a note
to your wife about it,
but my silly ass of a groom forgot
to take this.

You can save me a tramp.

Give her my love."

She marched off amid her guard of grave Airedales.

The mug was worn and dented:

above the twined initials,
G.L.,
was the crest of a footless bird and the motto:

"
Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle."

"That's the other end of the riddle,"
Sophie whispered,
when he saw her that evening.

"Read her note.

The English write beautiful notes."

The warmest of welcomes
to your little man.

I hope he will appreciate his native land now he has come
to it.

Though you have said nothing we cannot,
of course,
look on him as a little stranger,
and so I am sending him the old Lashmar christening mug.

It has been
with us since Gregory Lashmar,
your great-grandmother's brother-- George stared at his wife.

"Go on,"
she twinkled,
from the pillows.

--mother's brother,
sold his place
to Walter's family.

We seem
to have acquired some of your household gods at that time,
but nothing survives except the mug and the old cradle,
which I found in the potting-shed and am having put in order
for you.

I hope little George--Lashmar,
he will be too,
won't he?--will live
to see his grandchildren cut their teeth on his mug.

Affectionately yours,
ALICE CONANT.

P.S.--How quiet you've kept about it all!
"Well,
I'm--"
"Don't swear,"
said Sophie.

"Bad
for the infant mind."

"But how in the world did she get at it?

Have you ever said a word about the Lashmars?"
"You know the only time--to young Iggulden at Rocketts--when Iggulden died."

"Your great-grandmother's brother! She's traced the whole connection--more than your Aunt Sydney could do.

What does she mean about our keeping quiet?"
Sophie's eyes sparkled.

"I've thought that out too.

We've got back at the English at last.

Can't you see that she thought that we thought my mother's being a Lashmar was one of those things we'd expect the English
to find out
for themselves,
and that's impressed her?"
She turned the mug in her white hands,
and sighed happily.

"'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.'

That's not a bad motto,
George.

It's been worth it."

"But still I don't quite see--"
"I shouldn't wonder if they don't think our coming here was part of a deep-laid scheme
to be near our ancestors.

They'd understand that.

And look how they've accepted us,
all of them."

"Are we so undesirable in ourselves?"
George grunted.

"Be just,
me lord.

That wretched Sangres man has twice our money.

Can you see Marm Conant slapping him between the shoulders?

Not by a jugful! The poor beast doesn't exist!"
"Do you think it's that then?"
He looked toward the cot by the fire where the godling snorted.

"The minute I get well I shall find out from Mrs. Cloke what every Lashmar gives in doles
(that's nicer than tips)
every time a Lashmite is born.

I've done my duty thus far,
but there's much expected of me."

Entered here Mrs. Cloke,
and hung worshipping over the cot.

They showed her the mug and her face shone.

"Oh,
now Lady Conant's sent it,
it'll be all proper,
ma'am,
won't it?

'George'
of course he'd have
to be,
but seein'
what he is we was hopin'--all your people was hopin'--it
'ud be
'Lashmar'
too,
and that'ud just round it out.

A very
'andsome mug quite unique,
I should imagine.

'Wayte awhyle--wayte awhyle.'

That's true
with the Lashmars,
I've heard.

Very slow
to fill their houses,
they are.

Most like Master George won't open
'is nursery till he's thirty."

"Poor lamb!"
cried Sophie.

"But how did you know my folk were Lashmars?"
Mrs. Cloke thought deeply.

"I'm sure I can't quite say,
ma'am,
but I've a belief likely that it was something you may have let drop
to young Iggulden when you was at Rocketts.

That may have been what give us an inkling.

An'
so it came out,
one thing in the way o'
talk leading
to another,
and those American people at Veering Holler was very obligin'
with news,
I'm told,
ma'am."

"Great Scott!"
said George,
under his breath.

"And this is the simple peasant!"
"Yiss,"
Mrs. Cloke went on.

"An'
Cloke was only wonderin'
this afternoon--your pillow's slipped my dear,
you mustn't lie that a-way--just
for the sake o'
sayin'
something,
whether you wouldn't think well now of getting the Lashmar farms back,
sir.

They don't rightly round off Sir Walter's estate.

They come caterin'
across us more.

Cloke,
'e
'ud be glad
to show you over any day."

"But Sir Walter doesn't want
to sell,
does he?"
"We can find out from his bailiff,
sir,
but"--with cold contempt--"I think that trained nurse is just comin'
up from her dinner,
so
'm afraid we'll
'ave
to ask you,
sir ...

Now,
Master George--Ai-ie! Wake a litty minute,
lammie!"
A few months later the three of them were down at the brook in the Gale Anstey woods
to consider the rebuilding of a footbridge carried away by spring floods.

George Lashmar Chapin wanted all the bluebells on God's earth that day
to eat,
and--Sophie adored him in a voice like
to the cooing of a dove;
so business was delayed.

"Here's the place,"
said his father at last among the water forget-me-nots.

"But where the deuce are the larch-poles,
Cloke?

I told you
to have them down here ready."

"We'll get
'em down if f you say so,"
Cloke answered,
with a thrust of the underlip they both knew.

"But I did say so.

What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for?

We aren't building a railway bridge.

Why,
in America,
half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample."

"I don't know nothin'
about that,"
said Cloke.

"An'
I've nothin'
to say against larch--IF you want
to make a temp'ry job of it.

I ain't
'ere
to tell you what isn't so,
sir;
an'
you can't say I ever come creepin'
up on you,
or tryin'
to lead you further in than you set out--"
A year ago George would have danced
with impatience.

Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters
with his spud,
and waited.

"All I say is that you can put up larch and make a temp'ry job of it;
and by the time the young master's married it'll have
to be done again.

Now,
I've brought down a couple of as sweet six-by-eight oak timbers as we've ever drawed.

You put
'em in an'
it's off your mind or good an'
all.

T'other way--I don't say it ain't right,
I'm only just sayin'
what I think--but t'other way,
he'll no sooner be married than we'll lave it all
to do again.

You've no call
to regard my words,
but you can't get out of that."

"No,"
said George after a pause;
"I've been realising that
for some time.

Make it oak then;
we can't get out of it."

THE RECALL I am the land of their fathers,
In me the virtue stays;
I will bring back my children,
After certain days.

Under their feet in the grasses My clinging magic runs.

They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.

Over their heads in the branches Of their new-bought,
ancient trees,
I weave an incantation,
And draw them
to my knees.

Scent of smoke in the evening,
Smell of rain in the night,
The hours,
the days and the seasons Order their souls aright;
Till I make plain the meaning Of all my thousand years Till I fill their hearts
with knowledge,
While I fill their eyes
with tears.

GARM--A HOSTAGE 0ne night,
a very long time ago,
I drove
to an Indian military cantonment called Mian Mir
to see amateur theatricals.

At the back of the Infantry barracks a soldier,
his cap over one eye,
rushed in front of the horses and shouted that he was a dangerous highway robber.

As a matter of fact,
he was a friend of mine,
so I told him
to go home before any one caught him;
but he fell under the pole,
and I heard voices of a military guard in search of some one.

The driver and I coaxed him into the carriage,
drove home swiftly,
undressed him and put him
to bed,
where he waked next morning
with a sore headache,
very much ashamed.

When his uniform was cleaned and dried,
and he had been shaved and washed and made neat,
I drove him back
to barracks
with his arm in a fine white sling,
and reported that I had accidentally run over him.

I did not tell this story
to my friend's sergeant,
who was a hostile and unbelieving person,
but
to his lieutenant,
who did not know us quite so well.

Three days later my friend came
to call,
and at his heels slobbered and fawned one of the finest bull-terriers--of the old-fashioned breed,
two parts bull and one terrier--that I had ever set eyes on.

He was pure white,
with a fawn-coloured saddle just behind his neck,
and a fawn diamond at the root of his thin whippy tail.

I had admired him distantly
for more than a year;
and Vixen,
my own fox-terrier,
knew him too,
but did not approve.

"'E's
for you,"
said my friend;
but he did not look as though he liked parting
with him.

"Nonsense! That dog's worth more than most men,
Stanley,"
I said.

"'E's that and more.

'Tention!"
The dog rose on his hind legs,
and stood upright
for a full minute.

"Eyes right!"
He sat on his haunches and turned his head sharp
to the right.

At a sign he rose and barked thrice.

Then he shook hands
with his right paw and bounded lightly
to my shoulder.

Here he made himself into a necktie,
limp and lifeless,
hanging down on either side of my neck.

I was told
to pick him up and throw him in the air.

He fell
with a howl,
and held up one leg.

"Part o'
the trick,"
said his owner.

"You're going
to die now.

Dig yourself your little grave an'
shut your little eye."

Still limping,
the dog hobbled
to the garden-edge,
dug a hole and lay down in it.

When told that he was cured,
he jumped out,
wagging his tail,
and whining
for applause.

He was put through half-a-dozen other tricks,
such as showing how he would hold a man safe
(I was that man,
and he sat down before me,
his teeth bared,
ready
to spring),
and how he would stop eating at the word of command.

I had no more than finished praising him when my friend made a gesture that stopped the dog as though he had been shot,
took a piece of blue-ruled canteen-paper from his helmet,
handed it
to me and ran away,
while the dog looked after him and howled.

I read:

SIR--I give you the dog because of what you got me out of.

He is the best I know,
for I made him myself,
and he is as good as a man.

Please do not give him too much
to eat,
and please do not give him back
to me,
for I'm not going
to take him,
if you will keep him.

So please do not try
to give him back any more.

I have kept his name back,
so you can call him anything and he will answer.

but please do not give him back.

He can kill a man as easy as anything,
but please do not give him too much meat.

He knows more than a man.

Vixen sympathetically joined her shrill little yap
to the bull-terrier's despairing cry,
and I was annoyed,
for I knew that a man who cares
for dogs is one thing,
but a man who loves one dog is quite another.

Dogs are at the best no more than verminous vagrants,
self-scratchers,
foul feeders,
and unclean by the law of Moses and Mohammed;
but a dog
with whom one lives alone
for at least six months in the year;
a free thing,
tied
to you so strictly by love that without you he will not stir or exercise;
a patient,
temperate,
humorous,
wise soul,
who knows your moods before you know them yourself,
is not a dog under any ruling.

I had Vixen,
who was all my dog
to me;
and I felt what my friend must have felt,
at tearing out his heart in this style and leaving it in my garden.

However,
the dog understood clearly enough that I was his master,
and did not follow the soldier.

As soon as he drew breath I made much of him,
and Vixen,
yelling
with jealousy,
flew at him.

Had she been of his own sex,
he might have cheered himself
with a fight,
but he only looked worriedly when she nipped his deep iron sides,
laid his heavy head on my knee,
and howled anew.

I meant
to dine at the Club that night;
but as darkness drew in,
and the dog snuffed through the empty house like a child trying
to recover from a fit of sobbing,
I felt that I could not leave him
to suffer his first evening alone.

So we fed at home,
Vixen on one side,
and the stranger-dog on the other;
she watching his every mouthful,
and saying explicitly what she thought of his table manners,
which were much better than hers.

It was Vixen's custom,
till the weather grew hot,
to sleep in my bed,
her head on the pillow like a Christian;
and when morning came I would always find that the little thing had braced her feet against the wall and pushed me
to the very edge of the cot.

This night she hurried
to bed purposefully,
every hair up,
one eye on the stranger,
who had dropped on a mat in a helpless,
hopeless sort of way,
all four feet spread out,
sighing heavily.

She settled her head on the pillow several times,
to show her little airs and graces,
and struck up her usual whiney sing-song before slumber.

The stranger-dog softly edged toward me.

I put out my hand and he licked it.

Instantly my wrist was between Vixen's teeth,
and her warning aaarh! said as plainly as speech,
that if I took any further notice of the stranger she would bite.

I caught her behind her fat neck
with my left hand,
shook her severely,
and said:

"Vixen,
if you do that again you'll be put into the verandah.

Now,
remember!"
She understood perfectly,
but the minute I released her she mouthed my right wrist once more,
and waited
with her ears back and all her body flattened,
ready
to bite.

The big dog's tail thumped the floor in a humble and peace-making way.

I grabbed Vixen a second time,
lifted her out of bed like a rabbit
(she hated that and yelled),
and,
as I had promised,
set her out in the verandah
with the bats and the moonlight.

At this she howled.

Then she used coarse language--not
to me,
but
to the bullterrier--till she coughed
with exhaustion.

Then she ran round the house trying every door.

Then she went off
to the stables and barked as though some one were stealing the horses,
which was an old trick of hers.

Last she returned,
and her snuffing yelp said,
"I'll be good! Let me in and I'll'
be good!"
She was admitted and flew
to her pillow.

When she was quieted I whispered
to the other dog,
"You can lie on the foot of the bed."

The bull jumped up at once,
and though I felt Vixen quiver
with rage,
she knew better than
to protest.

So we slept till the morning,
and they had early breakfast
with me,
bite
for bite,
till the horse came round and we went
for a ride.

I don't think the bull had ever followed a horse before.

He was wild
with excitement,
and Vixen,
as usual,
squealed and scuttered and scooted,
and took charge of the procession.

There was one corner of a village near by,
which we generally passed
with caution,
because all the yellow pariah-dogs of the place gathered about it.

They were half-wild,
starving beasts,
and though utter cowards,
yet where nine or ten of them get together they will mob and kill and eat an English dog.

I kept a whip
with a long lash
for them.

That morning they attacked Vixen,
who,
perhaps of design,
had moved from beyond my horse's shadow.

The bull was ploughing along in the dust,
fifty yards behind,
rolling in his run,
and smiling as bull-terriers will.

I heard Vixen squeal;
half a dozen of the curs closed in on her;
a white streak came up behind me;
a cloud of dust rose near Vixen,
and,
when it cleared,
I saw one tall pariah
with his back broken,
and the bull wrenching another
to earth.

Vixen retreated
to the protection of my whip,
and the bull paddled back smiling more than ever,
covered
with the blood of his enemies.

That decided me
to call him
"Garin of the Bloody Breast,"
who was a great person in his time,
or
"Garm"
for short;
so,
leaning forward,
I told him what his temporary name would be.

He looked up while I repeated it,
and then raced away.

I shouted
"Garin!"
He stopped,
raced back,
and came up
to ask my will.

Then I saw that my soldier friend was right,
and that that dog knew and was worth more than a man.

At the end of the ride I gave an order which Vixen knew and hated:

"Go away and get washed!"
I said.

Garin understood some part of it,
and Vixen interpreted the rest,
and the two trotted off together soberly.

When I went
to the back verandah Vixen had been washed snowy-white,
and was very proud of herself,
but the dog-boy would not touch Garm on any account unless I stood by.

So I waited while he was being scrubbed,
and Garm,
with the soap creaming on the top of his broad head,
looked at me
to make sure that this was what I expected him
to endure.

He knew perfectly that the dog-boy was only obeying orders.

"Another time,"
I said
to the dog-boy,
"you will wash the great dog
with Vixen when I send them home."

"Does he know?"
said the dog-boy,
who understood the ways of dogs.

"Garm,"
I said,
"another time you will be washed
with Vixen."

I knew that Garm understood.

Indeed,
next washing-day,
when Vixen as usual fled under my bed,
Garm stared at the doubtful dog-boy in the verandah,
stalked
to the place where he had been washed last time,
and stood rigid in the tub.

But the long days in my office tried him sorely.

We three would drive off in the morning at half-past eight and come home at six or later.

Vixen knowing the routine of it,
went
to sleep under my table;
but the confinement ate into Garm's soul.

He generally sat on the verandah looking out on the Mall;
and well I knew what he expected.

Sometimes a company of soldiers would move along on their way
to the Fort,
and Garm rolled forth
to inspect them;
or an officer in uniform entered into the office,
and it was pitiful
to see poor Garm's welcome
to the cloth--not the man.

He would leap at him,
and sniff and bark joyously,
then run
to the door and back again.

One afternoon I heard him bay
with a full throat--a thing I had never heard before--and he disappeared.

When I drove into my garden at the end of the day a soldier in white uniform scrambled over the wall at the far end,
and the Garm that met me was a joyous dog.

This happened twice or thrice a week
for a month.

I pretended not
to notice,
but Garm knew and Vixen knew.

He would glide homewards from the office about four o'clock,
as though he were only going
to look at the scenery,
and this he did so quietly that but
for Vixen I should not have noticed him.

The jealous little dog under the table would give a sniff and a snort,
just loud enough
to call my attention
to the flight.

Garm might go out forty times in the day and Vixen would never stir,
but when he slunk off
to see his true master in my garden she told me in her own tongue.

That was the one sign she made
to prove that Garm did not altogether belong
to the family.

They were the best of friends at all times,
but,
Vixen explained that I was never
to forget Garm did not love me as she loved me.

I never expected it.

The dog was not my dog could never be my dog--and I knew he was as miserable as his master who tramped eight miles a day
to see him.

So it seemed
to me that the sooner the two were reunited the better
for all.

One afternoon I sent Vixen home alone in the dog-cart
(Garm had gone before),
and rode over
to cantonments
to find another friend of mine,
who was an Irish soldier and a great friend of the dog's master.

I explained the whole case,
and wound up with:

"And now Stanley's in my garden crying over his dog.

Why doesn't he take him back?

They're both unhappy."

"Unhappy! There's no sense in the little man any more.

But
'tis his fit."

"What is his fit?

He travels fifty miles a week
to see the brute,
and he pretends not
to notice me when he sees me on the road;
and I'm as unhappy as he is.

Make him take the dog back."

"It's his penance he's set himself.

I told him by way of a joke,
afther you'd run over him so convenient that night,
whin he was drunk--I said if he was a Catholic he'd do penance.

Off he went wid that fit in his little head an'
a dose of fever,
an nothin'
would suit but givin'
you the dog as a hostage."

"Hostage
for what?

I don't want hostages from Stanley."

"For his good behaviour.

He's keepin'
straight now,
the way it's no pleasure
to associate wid him."

"Has he taken the pledge?"
"If
'twas only that I need not care.

Ye can take the pledge
for three months on an'
off.

He sez he'll never see the dog again,
an'
so mark you,
he'll keep straight
for evermore.

Ye know his fits?

Well,
this is wan of them.

How's the dog takin'
it ?"
"Like a man.

He's the best dog in India.

Can't you make Stanley take him back?"
"I can do no more than I have done.

But ye know his fits.

He's just doin'
his penance.

What will he do when he goes
to the Hills?

The doctor's put him on the list."

It is the custom in India
to send a certain number of invalids from each regiment up
to stations in the Himalayas
for the hot weather;
and though the men ought
to enjoy the cool and the comfort,
they miss the society of the barracks down below,
and do their best
to come back or
to avoid going.

I felt that this move would bring matters
to a head,
so I left Terrence hopefully,
though he called after me
"He won't take the dog,
sorr.

You can lay your month's pay on that.

Ye know his fits."

I never pretended
to understand Private Ortheris;
and so I did the next best thing I left him alone.

That summer the invalids of the regiment
to which my friend belonged were ordered off
to the Hills early,
because the doctors thought marching in the cool of the day would do them good.

Their route lay south
to a place called Umballa,
a hundred and twenty miles or more.

Then they would turn east and march up into the hills
to Kasauli or Dugshai or Subathoo.

I dined
with the officers the night before they left--they were marching at five in the morning.

It was midnight when I drove into my garden,
and surprised a white figure flying over the wall.

"That man,"
said my butler,
"has been here since nine,
making talk
to that dog.

He is quite mad."

I did not tell him
to go away because he has been here many times before,
and because the dog-boy told me that if I told him
to go away,
that great dog would immediately slay me.

He did not wish
to speak
to the Protector of the Poor,
and he did not ask
for anything
to eat or drink."

"Kadir Buksh,"
said I,
"that was well done,
for the dog would surely have killed thee.

But I do not think the white soldier will come any more."

Garm slept ill that night and whimpered in his dreaMs. Once he sprang up
with a clear,
ringing bark,
and I heard him wag his tail till it waked him and the bark died out in a howl.

He had dreamed he was
with his master again,
and I nearly cried.

It was all Stanley's silly fault.

The first halt which the detachment of invalids made was some miles from their barracks,
on the Amritsar road,
and ten miles distant from my house.

By a mere chance one of the officers drove back
for another good dinner at the Club
(cooking on the line of march is always bad),
and there I met him.

He was a particular friend of mine,
and I knew that he knew how
to love a dog properly.

His pet was a big fat retriever who was going up
to the Hills
for his health,
and,
though it was still April,
the round,
brown brute puffed and panted in the Club verandah as though he would burst.

"It's amazing,"
said the officer,
"what excuses these invalids of mine make
to get back
to barracks.

There's a man in my company now asked me
for leave
to go back
to cantonments
to pay a debt he'd forgotten.

I was so taken by the idea I let him go,
and he jingled off in an ekka as pleased as Punch.

Ten miles
to pay a debt! Wonder what it was really?"
"If you'll drive me home I think I can show you,"
I said.

So he went over
to my house in his dog-cart
with the retriever;
and on the way I told him the story of Garm.

"I was wondering where that brute had gone to.

He's the best dog in the regiment,"
said my friend.

"I offered the little fellow twenty rupees
for him a month ago.

But he's a hostage,
you say,
for Stanley's good conduct.

Stanley's one of the best men I have when he chooses."

"That's the reason why,"
I said.

"A second-rate man wouldn't have taken things
to heart as he has done."

We drove in quietly at the far end of the garden,
and crept round the house.

There was a place close
to the wall all grown about
with tamarisk trees,
where I knew Garm kept his bones.

Even Vixen was not allowed
to sit near it.

In the full Indian moonlight I could see a white uniform bending over the dog.

"Good-bye,
old man,"
we could not help hearing Stanley's voice.

"For
'Eving's sake don't get bit and go mad by any measly pi-dog.

But you can look after yourself,
old man.

You don't get drunk an'
run about
'ittin'
your friends.

You takes your bones an'
you eats your biscuit,
an'
you kills your enemy like a gentleman.

I'm goin'
away--don't
'owl--I'm goin'
off
to Kasauli,
where I won't see you no more."

I could hear him holding Garm's nose as the dog threw it up
to the stars.

"You'll stay here an'
be'ave,
an'--an'
I'll go away an'
try
to be'ave,
an'
I don't know
'ow
to leave you.

I don't know--"
"I think this is damn silly,"
said the officer,
patting his foolish fubsy old retriever.

He called
to the private,
who leaped
to his feet,
marched forward,
and saluted.

"You here?"
said the officer,
turning away his head.

"Yes,
sir,
but I'm just goin'
back."

"I shall be leaving here at eleven in my cart.

You come
with me.

I can't have sick men running about fall over the place.

Report yourself at eleven,
here."

We did not say much when we went indoors,
but the officer muttered and pulled his retriever's ears.

He was a disgraceful,
overfed doormat of a dog;
and when he waddled off
to my cookhouse
to be fed,
I had a brilliant idea.

At eleven o'clock that officer's dog was nowhere
to be found,
and you never heard such a fuss as his owner made.

He called and shouted and grew angry,
and hunted through my garden
for half an hour.

Then I said:

"He's sure
to turn up in the morning.

Send a man in by rail,
and I'll find the beast and return him."

"Beast?"
said the officer.

"I value that dog considerably more than I value any man I know.

It's all very fine
for you
to talk--your dog's here."

So she was--under my feet--and,
had she been missing,
food and wages would have stopped in my house till her return.

But some people grow fond of dogs not worth a cut of the whip.

My friend had
to drive away at last
with Stanley in the back seat;
and then the dog-boy said
to me:

"What kind of animal is Bullen Sahib's dog?

Look at him!"
I went
to the boy's hut,
and the fat old reprobate was lying on a mat carefully chained up.

He must have heard his master calling
for twenty minutes,
but had not even attempted
to join him.

"He has no face,"
said the dog-boy scornfully.

"He is a punniar-kooter
(a spaniel).

He never tried
to get that cloth off his jaws when his master called.

Now Vixen-baba would have jumped through the window,
and that Great Dog would have slain me
with his muzzled mouth.

It is true that there are many kinds of dogs."

Next evening who should turn up but Stanley.

The officer had sent him back fourteen miles by rail
with a note begging me
to return the retriever if I had found him,
and,
if I had not,
to offer huge rewards.

The last train
to camp left at half-past ten,
and Stanley,
stayed till ten talking
to Garm.

I argued and entreated,
and even threatened
to shoot the bull-terrier,
bat the little man was as firm as a rock,
though I gave him a good dinner and talked
to him most severely.

Garm knew as well as I that this was the last time he could hope
to see his man,
and followed Stanley like a shadow.

The retriever said nothing,
but licked his lips after his meal and waddled off without so much as saying
"Thank you"
to the disgusted dog-boy.

So that last meeting was over,
and I felt as wretched as Garm,
who moaned in his sleep all night.

When we went
to the office he found a place under the table close
to Vixen,
and dropped flat till it was time
to go home.

There was no more running out into the verandahs,
no slinking away
for stolen talks
with Stanley.

As the weather grew warmer the dogs were forbidden
to run beside the cart,
but sat at my side on the seat,
Vixen
with her head under the crook of my left elbow,
and Garm hugging the left handrail.

Here Vixen was ever in great form.

She had
to attend
to all the moving traffic,
such as bullock-carts that blocked the way,
and camels,
and led ponies;
as well as
to keep up her dignity when she passed low friends running in the dust.

She never yapped
for yapping's sake,
but her shrill,
high bark was known all along the Mall,
and other men's terriers ki-yied in reply,
and bullock-drivers looked over their shoulders and gave us the road
with a grin.

But Garm cared
for none of these things.

His big eyes were on the horizon and his terrible mouth was shut.

There was another dog in the office who belonged
to my chief.

We called him
"Bob the Librarian,"
because he always imagined vain rats behind the bookshelves,
and in hunting
for them would drag out half the old newspaper-files.

Bob was a well-meaning idiot,
but Garm did not encourage him.

He would slide his head round the door panting,
"Rats! Come along Garm!"
and Garm would shift one forepaw over the other,
and curl himself round,
leaving Bob
to whine at a most uninterested back.

The office was nearly as cheerful as a tomb in those days.

Once,
and only once,
did I see Garm at all contented
with his surroundings.

He had gone
for an unauthorised walk
with Vixen early one Sunday morning,
and a very young and foolish artilleryman
(his battery had just moved
to that part of the world)
tried
to steal them both.

Vixen,
of course,
knew better than
to take food from soldiers,
and,
besides,
she had just finished her breakfast.

So she trotted back
with a large piece of the mutton that they issue
to our troops,
laid it down on my verandah,
and looked up
to see what I thought.

I asked her where Garin was,
and she ran in front of the horse
to show me the way.

About a mile up the road we came across our artilleryman sitting very stiffly on the edge of a culvert
with a greasy handkerchief on his knees.

Garin was in front of him,
looking rather pleased.

When the man moved leg or hand,
Garin bared his teeth in silence.

A broken string hung from his collar,
and the other half of,
it lay,
all warm,
in the artilleryman's still hand.

He explained
to me,
keeping his eyes straight in front of him,
that he had met this dog
(he called him awful names)
walking alone,
and was going
to take him
to the Fort
to be killed
for a masterless pariah.

I said that Garin did not seem
to me much of a pariah,
but that he had better take him
to the Fort if he thought best.

He said he did not care
to do so.

I told him
to go
to the Fort alone.

He said he did not want
to go at that hour,
but would follow my advice as soon as I had called off the dog.

I instructed Garin
to take him
to the Fort,
and Garm marched him solemnly up
to the gate,
one mile and a half under a hot sun,
and I told the quarter-guard what had happened;
but the young artilleryman was more angry than was at all necessary when they began
to laugh.

Several regiments,
he was told,
had tried
to steal Garm in their time.

That month the hot weather shut down in earnest,
and the dogs slept in the bathroom on the cool wet bricks where the bath is placed.

Every morning,
as soon as the man filled my bath the two jumped in,
and every morning the man filled the bath a second time.

I said
to him that he might as well fill a small tub specially
for the dogs.

"Nay,"
said he smiling,
"it is not their custom.

They would not understand.

Besides,
the big bath gives them more space."

The punkah-coolies who pull the punkahs day and night came
to know Garin intimately.

He noticed that when the swaying fan stopped I would call out
to the coolie and bid him pull
with a long stroke.

If the man still slept I would wake him up.

He discovered,
too,
that it was a good thing
to lie in the wave of air under the punkah.

Maybe Stanley had taught him all about this in barracks.

At any rate,
when the punkah stopped,
Garin would first growl and cock his eye at the rope,
and if that did not wake the man it nearly always did--he would tiptoe forth and talk in the sleeper's ear.

Vixen was a clever little dog,
but she could never connect the punkah and the coolie;
so Garin gave me grateful hours of cool sleep.

But--he was utterly wretched--as miserable as a human being;
and in his misery he clung so closely
to me that other men noticed it,
and were envious.

If I moved from one room
to another Garin followed;
if my pen stopped scratching,
Garm's head was thrust into my hand;
if I turned,
half awake,
on the pillow,
Garm was up and at my side,
for he knew that I was his only link
with his master,
and day and night,
and night and day,
his eyes asked one question--"When is this going
to end?"
Living
with the dog as I did,
I never noticed that he was more than ordinarily upset by the hot weather,
till one day at the Club a man said:

"That dog of yours will die in a week or two.

He's a shadow."

Then I dosed Garin
with iron and quinine,
which he hated;
and I felt very anxious.

He lost his appetite,
and Vixen was allowed
to eat his dinner under his eyes.

Even that did not make him swallow,
and we held a consultation on him,
of the best man-doctor in the place;
a lady-doctor,
who cured the sick wives of kings;
and the Deputy Inspector-General of the veterinary service of all India.

They pronounced upon his symptoms,
and I told them his story,
and Garm lay on a sofa licking my hand.

"He's dying of a broken heart,"
said the lady-doctor suddenly.

"'Pon my word,"
said the Deputy Inspector General,
"I believe Mrs. Macrae is perfectly right as usual."

The best man-doctor in the place wrote a prescription,
and the veterinary Deputy Inspector-General went over it afterwards
to be sure that the drugs were in the proper dog-proportions;
and that was the first time in his life that our doctor ever allowed his prescriptions
to be edited.

It was a strong tonic,
and it put the dear boy on his feet
for a week or two;
then he lost flesh again.

I asked a man I knew
to take him up
to the Hills
with him when he went,
and the man came
to the door
with his kit packed on the top of the carriage.

Garin took in the situation at one red glance.

The hair rose along his back;
he sat down in front of me and delivered the most awful growl I have ever heard in the jaws of a dog.

I shouted
to my friend
to get away at once,
and as soon as the carriage was out of the garden Garin laid his head on my knee and whined.

So I knew his answer,
and devoted myself
to getting Stanley's address in the Hills.

My turn
to go
to the cool came late in August.

We were allowed thirty days'
holiday in a year,
if no one fell sick,
and we took it as we could be spared.

My chief and Bob the Librarian had their holiday first,
and when they were gone I made a calendar,
as I always did,
and hung it up at the head of my cot,
tearing off one day at a time till they returned.

Vixen had gone up
to the Hills
with me five times before;
and she appreciated the cold and the damp and the beautiful wood fires there as much as I did.

"Garm,"
I said,
"we are going back
to Stanley at Kasauli.

Kasauli--Stanley;
Stanley Kasauli."

And I repeated it twenty times.

It was not Kasauli really,
but another place.

Still I remembered what Stanley had said in my garden on the last night,
and I dared not change the name.

Then Garm began
to tremble;
then he barked;
and then he leaped up at me,
frisking and wagging his tail.

"Not now,"
I said,
holding up my hand.

"When I say
'Go,'
we'll go,
Garm."

I pulled out the little blanket coat and spiked collar that Vixen always wore up in the Hills
to protect her against sudden chills and thieving leopards,
and I let