Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/midsummerroseOOtyna A MIDSUMMER ROSE BY THE SAME AUTHOR LOUISE DE LA VALLI&RE SHAMROCKS BALLADS AND LYRICS A NUN : HER FRIENDS AND HER ORDER CUCKOO SONGS A CLUSTER OF NUTS THE LAND OF MIST AND MOUNTAIN AN ISLE IN THE WATER THE WAY OF A MAID MIRACLE PLAYS OH ! WHAT A PLAGUE IS LOVE A LOVER’S BREAST KNOT THE HANDSOME BRANDONS THE WIND IN THE TREES (POEMS) THE DEAR IRISH GIRL SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY THREE FAIR MAIDS A DAUGHTER OF THE FIELDS A UNION OF HEARTS A GIRL OF GALWAY COLLECTED POEMS THAT SWEET ENEMY THE HANDSOME QUAKER A KING’S WOMAN LOVE OF SISTERS A RED RED ROSE THE HONOURABLE MOLLY THE FRENCH WIFE judy’s lovers JULIA THE LUCK OF THE FAIR- FAXES A DAUGHTER OF KINGS A FAVOURITE OF FORTUNE DICK PENTREATH INNOCENCIES A YELLOW DOMINO THE ADVENTURES OF ALICIA THE STORY OF BAWN A BOOK OF MEMORIES FOR MAISIE HER LADYSHIP MARY GRAY THE LOST ANGEL THE HOUSE OF THE CRICKETS EXPERIENCES PEGGY THE DAUGHTER COUSINS AND OTHERS LAUDS KITTY AUBREY HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER BETTY CAREW FREDA THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET THE STORY OF CECILIA NEW POEMS THE STORY OF CLARICE HONEY, MY HONEY MRS. PRATT OF PARADISE FARM ( With Frances Maitland ) THE BOOK OF FLOWERS {Edited) CABINET OF IRISH LITERA- TURE IRISH LOVE SONGS A MIDSUMMER ROSE BY KATHARINE TYNAN LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE * 9*3 Ail rights reserved PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BECCLES A MIDSUMMER ROSE CHAPTER I Ralph Bretherton stood on the hearthrug before a blazing morning fire in his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn and stared discontentedly at his own reflection in the Adams’ glass upon the chimney-piece. The glass reflected a head which had a certain impressiveness. A head no longer of a man in his first or even middle youth — he was thirty-six — it was singularly well-shaped ; and the grizzling of the dark hair about the temples detracted nothing from its dignity. He had a not uncommon English face, somewhat lean and lantern-jawed ; clean- shaven ; the nose long, yet just escaping the length which stands for stupidity and with a fineness of nostril suggestive of passion ; fine eyes with a certain something of unworldliness, of idealism, the eyes of Don Quixote, so that the face, which had set out to be dry and acute a legal face, had failed of its first intention ; a B 2 A MIDSUMMER ROSE mouth that might have been thin but had fallen short of it, else the face would have been less attractive ; the something of humour which lurked about the corners of the mouth doubt- less made Mr. Bretherton less intolerant of his fellows than he might have been otherwise. It was the little season between Christmas and Easter, when a certain number of people may be found in town ready to receive their friends and to give them an individual attention not to be looked for later on. Ralph Brether- ton had a quantity of cards on his chimney- piece — for the opening of the International and various winter picture-shows, for soirees and meetings of this and that learned society, for dinners and At Homes. But the social engage- ments which interested him most just at present were offered to him through little scented notes, of which a good many lay on his writing-table. Some of them were gaily re- proachful. Why had not Mr. Bretherton found out that this lady or that lady was in town ? Would he come for lunch on such a day and as much of the afternoon as he could spare ? Or it might be a little dinner-party of four or six or eight, all congenial souls. Ralph Bretherton liked these demands very well. It was not in him to resist the charm of a charming woman, even if something stood A MIDSUMMER ROSE 3 apart and smiled a little while three-fourths of the man gave himself up to be well-pleased. He liked to sit in a pretty room after a good lunch, to be petted and made much of by a charming woman. He had a great many women-friends. For the last five years he had been a detrimental, ever since Edward Hard- ing, his old cousin, had committed the incredible folly of his marriage ; a safe detrimental. Mothers with pretty daughters had known that they could trust him. Perhaps it was not altogether to his credit. He had no great love for the immature though he felt the appeal of youth ; and he was a sort of bachelor uncle to a great many golden lads and lasses from one year old up to twenty. He used to say that he liked the mothers best. Opinion was divided as to whether he was selfish and cold- hearted, or only wise in avoiding what was obviously not for him. He was a dilettante at thirty-five ; his interests, his occupations of the unprofitable order. The golden girls, once they had come to marriageable age, were not for him. He had been calling himself a fogy any time these last half-dozen years. Occasionally there had been threatenings of trouble with one or other of the golden girls who had been accustomed to run about, to ride and walk and see things in Mr. Brethertons 4 A MIDSUMMER ROSE company. He had an appeal for younger as well as elder women. He had always behaved beautifully, according to the mothers, had known just the point at which to begin to detach the girlish affections from him, doing it so gently that there was as little hurt as might be consistent with success. Presently, when Nora or Violet or Evelyn was married, Ralph Bretherton would come back to be the family friend. He behaved beautifully. Whether his beautiful behaviour had cost him much or little no one could tell. One or two of the cleverest of the charming women had dis- covered, but only the cleverest, that while Ralph knew a good deal about them they knew very little about Ralph, frank as he seemed to be. He seemed very well contented with his life, although he might well have been discontented, for, during the years when he ought to have been making for himself a place in the world he had been at the beck and call of Edward Harding, whose heir he was supposed to be. The heir of Littlecombe need be at no loss for an occupation. He had been called to the Bar, but he had never practised. At the time he had been called it had been something to give him a name and a place beyond his heir- ship of the old cousins property. He seldom A MIDSUMMER ROSE 5 allowed himself to be bitter. He had become something of a philosopher and he was aware that bitterness poisoned life, that it was at the root of indigestion, premature wrinkles, and all manner of unpleasant things. But there was a little drop of gall somewhere in his life, though he refused to stir it up, because he had lost the chance of being a practising barrister. At thirty he had found it so difficult to re-adjust the point of view of life that the difficulty had proved insuperable. He ought to have begun at twenty ; thirty was altogether too late. And when his cousin's marriage had turned him out- of-doors — or rather his own bitter resentment of it, for Edward Harding had been minded to do the handsome thing by his young cousin — he was a pauper, according to the standards he had grown up with. When a seasonable legacy a year later had lifted him into a position of ease for a bachelor, it was too late to begin the arduous road which climbs up to success at the Bar. He had a certain contempt for himself because he had not chucked the life he was leading and gone out into the wilderness of hard work as some of his best friends in the profession had urged. During the rare moments when the bitterness came in sight and was handled and surveyed before being laid away again, Ralph Bretherton 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE was angrily contemptuous of himself — that he, with a sound body hard with exercise, should have come to this, to shooting other men's game and sitting at other men's tables, to hanging after pretty women, to taking up this and that pursuit, not one seriously enough to make him of any account. At such times he would sigh after the hard up-hill climb which other men had described for him, with the passion of the climber for the sheer peak and the death that awaited one false step. He would look at his hands hard with rowing and cricketing, with all manner of sports, and anathematize them. He could have borne with himself better if the eye had been less bright that looked back at him from the glass, his nerve less excellent, his pulses less cool and steady. He was only fit physically, he said to himself this morning of December, while he waited for the excellent breakfast which Dixon, his man-of-all-work, would presently place on the white cloth ; mentally he was not fit — he was a shirker, a slacker, a no-account man. When he dropped out it would not matter seriously to one creature under Heaven. However, this morning the discontent was not due to introspection. It was due to some- thing which had stirred up the old grief and disgrace of his cousin’s marriage ; for Ralph A MIDSUMMER ROSE 7 Bretherton, when he resented the marriage so furiously that he flung back in his cousins face the handsome offer he had made of a provision for him, was inflamed by more than a common anger because he was cheated out of his inheritance of Littlecombe and its broad acres. Family pride was at the root of his anger. He had not been able to forgive. Now that the mornings post had brought him the news of his cousin’s death, something of the old tenderness there had been between them had wakened again. It added a poignant element to the dissatisfaction he felt because the old anger and pain, which he had put behind him as he thought for ever, must be raked up again. Dixon was rather late with breakfast. It would not be long delayed now. He could hear the sizzling of rashers over the kitchen fire, and the appetizing odour of the fried bacon came to his nostrils through the door, which was slightly ajar. He looked towards the window, the twelve small panes of which were filled in with grey sky. A few icy snow-flakes drifted against the panes and congealed there. Not a very good day for the three hours’ journey into Worcestershire. But he supposed he must go. He could catch the eleven o’clock express for Birmingham at Paddington and would get to 8 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Nunsholme, the station for Littlecombe House, about a quarter to two. He could lunch at the inn. He had an angry feeling that he would not be beholden to his cousin’s widow for so much hospitality. He could secure a bed at the “Good King Henry” too. If it was anything like what he remembered it, if the inn was still in the old hands, it would be a clean and comfortable bed. He sighed irritably as he took up Mrs. Harding’s letter and read it again, holding it at arm’s length as though it were something he did not care to touch too closely. He drew the letter from its envelope. The paper was of a silky-white texture, faintly lined — not scented; he thanked Heaven for that. He would have expected to find it redolent of musk. “ Littlecombe-by-Nunsholme, “ Worcestershire.” The address was not even printed. It was written in a large, straggling writing, which had an air as though the writer found penman- ship somewhat difficult ; but the up-and-down strokes were firm. “ Mr. Ralph Bretherton, “ Dear Sir, “ I have to inform you that my dear husband is no more. He breathed his last at A MIDSUMMER ROSE 9 4 o’clock of yesterday afternoon, December 9th. It was his wish that you should be asked to attend his funeral and to stay for the reading of the will. I desire to say that there will be a bedroom here ready for you, and that I hope you will accept the hospetality of Little- combe for so long as you will stay. “ Your obedient “ Lizzie Harding.” He snorted over the “ is no more” and “ breathed his last,” holding the simple letter away from him. “ Hospetality ” too. He was quite well aware that correct spelling is but an arbitrary thing after all. Yet at the moment the little lapse, coinciding as it did with his preconceived notions of his cousin s widow, was fuel to his fires. He put the letter away as Dixon came into the room, bearing a tray with silver-covered dishes upon it, and began setting each in its place upon the white table-cloth. “ I shall want a portmanteau packed directly after breakfast,” his master said. “ My black clothes, please : Mr. Harding is dead. I am going into Worcestershire to attend his funeral. I shall not be back till to-morrow night.” “Yes, sir. Very sorry, sir, for the Squire.” Dixon had been with Ralph Bretherton 10 A MIDSUMMER ROSE these ten years back. He had been under notice to leave during that interval between Edward Hardings marriage and the opportune legacy. He came from Worcestershire — from the neighbourhood of Littlecombe. “ Yes, sir.” For a moment the trained servant strove hard with the natural man ; then the natural man was uppermost. “ I beg your pardon, sir. The Squire was always good to the people.” Ralph Bretherton answered not a word. For the matter of that he was confoundedly sorry himself, though he would not acknow- ledge it. The memory of Edward Harding, incredibly youthful at seventy years old, his eyes bright, his cheeks rosy, with what only those in his inner confidence knew to be the brightness and the colour of pain. An irre- sistibly charming old man, with courage, with dignity, intellectual, human, a past-master in the neglected art of manners. So generous, so sympathetic. Ralph Bretherton had been devoted to him. When he married the daughter of one of his tenants, who had become a sort of nurse to him, an element in Bretherton’s rage had been because it was Edward Harding who had done this thing. If a lesser man had done it it would have been no such matter. A MIDSUMMER ROSE n And here was Dixon talking about his sorrow. In the jarring and fretting of Ralph Bretherton’s usually tolerant mind it annoyed him that Dixon should have expressed his sorrow. He ate his breakfast in the same mood of irritation. By the time breakfast was over his portmanteau was packed. He had smoked his after-breakfast pipe before the hansom was at the door. He was seated in the hansom, on his way to Paddington, when he remembered suddenly that he had promised to go to tea with Rose Bourne that afternoon. There would be time to send a telegram to her from Padding- ton. He was not sure that he regretted not going to tea with Rose. People had no right to return like ghosts from the dead, springing up to remind a man how far behind him was his seventeenth year — like Rose yesterday. Rose — it seemed ridiculous to call her Rose, to associate her with that radiant Rose of lone ago, about whom he had been mad in his boy- hood, who had played with him and teased him and petted him, finally had married Cuthbert Bourne, a Senior Wrangler of his year, and gone out to India with him. She had sprung up suddenly at a London crossing, middle-aged, tints that ought to have been 12 A MIDSUMMER ROSE ruddy and wholesome, yellowed by Indian suns and heats, a fine network of lines at the corners of eyes which refused to be any- thing but blue, the wind in her hair. By her side was a girl who was most impertinently like what her mother must have been at her age, only shy as he had never known Rose to be, for when she had played with him she was twenty-five and had not been shy for the love- sick boy of seventeen. On the whole, he thought he was relieved at missing Rose — Mrs. Bourne. She had no business to come back like that. She was, he conjectured from her rather shabby widow’s weeds, left badly off ; and the address she had given him — somewhere Holloway way — suggested dreary things. He hoped Rose would let it be off altogether. When things were done with they had better be done with. It was absurd of her to have recognized him. He would never have recognized her, broadened out, yellowed over her natural roses, middle-aged. The wind that had lifted her dusty hair had had a ghostly reminder of the way the wind used to play with her curls long ago. Hers had been the naturally curling hair with which the wind plays as though it loved it. There was another vexation in the thought A MIDSUMMER ROSE !3 of Rose Bourne. He did not like her to come back like that, making him suddenly dreary and middle-aged. However else he had thought of himself, he had never thought of his being middle-aged. And there was that shy, radiant figure of youth lurking in Rose's ample shadow to remind him of what Rose had been. The same rose-and-white complexion ; a touch of carmine in the cheeks and lips ; the same cloudy, chestnut hair, masses of it, knotted negligently at the back of a small head. The girl’s eyes were strikingly blue, bluer even than Rose’s had been. And they had looked at him shyly before they hid themselves under the sweeping golden lashes. Poor child ! He wondered what Rose was doing with the child. What had happened to bring them down in the world ? Cuthbert Bourne had been a steady, careful fellow, without apparently a vice in the world — given over to his books. He had seemed a blood- less lover for pretty Rose to the jealous boy of long ago. And the girl’s name — Avis. It suited her. A queer name, but there was a certain bird- like suggestion in the way she carried her head, the small head rising upon the slender neck. 14 A MIDSUMMER ROSE A verse came into his mind, and he hummed it to a tune of his own — “ Oh, sweet it was in Avis To catch the landward breeze.” Ridiculous ! It had nothing to do with the girl's name, that excellent imitation of a chanty made by a comfortable parson at home in England. At Paddington he gave his luggage to a porter. There was plenty of time. He strolled leisurely to the telegraph-office, took a form and filled it. “ To Mrs. Bourne, “ 27, Salamanca Road, “ Holloway, N. 4 ‘ Unavoidably prevented keeping engage- ment. Must go out of town for a few days. May I come when I get back ? “ Bretherton.” When it had gone he wondered why he had suggested another meeting. Rose might have been content to let the thing drop. Perhaps not. She had seemed uncommonly glad to see him. Poor Rose! After all, one ought not to desert an old friend who, plainly, has fallen on evil days. He was glad after all that he had said that about coming to see them when he should return to town. CHAPTER II Arrived at Nunsholme, he found the carrriage and pair from Littlecombe awaiting him. A face he remembered was on the box — old Jeffcott’s; there was a young groom whom he did not remember to have seen before. The station-master was the same ; and Bill Gales the porter touched his cap to him with a properly subdued grin of welcome as though he had gone away only yesterday. To be sure, in these quiet country places things did not alter as they did in busier centres. He had a sense of amazement because the thing which had pulled down his life had seemed to make so little difference here. He spoke to the station-master. “How are you, Raymond ? I hope Mrs. Raymond and the children are quite well ? ” He felt a fear of saying it, as though Mrs. Raymond might be dead and the children grown up and gone away. Yet Raymond did not look a day older ; neither did Bill Gales, nor the shaggy terrier that trotted at his heels. After all, it was only five years. 1 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE He was reminded of it by the station-master s placid answer. “ All quite well, thank you, sir. We're seven now, and the elder ones going to school. Mrs. Raymond will be glad to see you, sir. We’re all glad to see you back, though sorry for the occasion. The poor Squire! It was quite sudden at the last.” Bretherton returned the friendly greetings kindly and strode out to the carriage which was in waiting. He was annoyed that it had been sent. Mrs. Harding need not have taken it for granted that he would come. She had sent to meet the one possible train of the day at Nunsholme. He had not wanted nor desired to accept the widow’s hospitality. The “ Good King Henry ” would have pleased him better. He dreaded Littlecombe under its changed conditions. Yet so far there was no evidence of change. He stood a moment speaking to old Jeffcott while the groom saw to the luggage. “ Well, Jeffcott,” he said, “ I’m glad to see you looking so well. These are sad changes.” “ Indeed they be,” said the old fellow, beam- ing down at him from the box. “Yet the master lived to a ripe age. Seventy-five he were, sir, yet often he’s told me that he were A MIDSUMMER ROSE l 7 prophesied churchyard clay from the hour he were born. I hope you’ve come to stay a bit, Mr. Ralph.” “For the funeral, Jeffcott.” The old fellow’s face clouded over. “We thought as you might be cornin’ back for good, me an’ the missus,” he said. “ Meanin’ no offence, sir, I’m sure.” Again Ralph Bretherton had the sense of irritation. How simple they were, these people ! Did they think he was coming back to take up his residence at Littlecombe under the same roof as his cousin’s widow? His eyes roamed over the sleek sides of the bays. They were shining as he remembered them ; the silver on the harness winked in the cold white light of the December day. The carriage and pair had that inexpressible sense of leisure, of luxury, of rank, which the motor- car lacks so singularly. Everything was as he remembered it, except for the absence of the eager, flushed face of the young-old man, bent forward to welcome him tenderly and graciously when he came in the old days. The absence caused a pang. Plainly there had been no cataclysm at Littlecombe because the Squire had married a peasant and the rightful heir had been cast out. As they drove along over the clean, frosty c i8 A MIDSUMMER ROSE roads — by oaken coppices which had not yet shaken down all their leaves, by woods in their winter sleep, by village greens with old houses standing around them, from which came ancient bodies at the sound of the carriage- wheels to catch a glimpse of the Littlecombe carriage as it went by — Ralph Bretherton’s old love for the place awakened, and with it a new, poignant sense of loss. The country was very still. No sign of life in the fields except for the ploughman and his horses cutting straight furrows in the purple earth. The sun had come from behind the clouds and made a silver haze between the road they were travers- ing and the distant Malvern hills, which rose up mirage-like from a plain of mimic sea. Now and again they passed a long black-and- white house steeply roofed, or a group of cottages clustered about a church. The colouring was yet autumn’s, the roads yet carpeted with the drift of leaves. The old feeling for the place stirred in Bretherton’s heart, making him desolate/with a sense of loss. Littlecombe had been his paradise during childhood and boyhood. He had been used to think of it as his, the grey, beautiful house set in the lovely, fruitful country. Some day he had looked to bring his bride there, and in time their children should gather about them, A MIDSUMMER ROSE *9 finding Littlecombe more dear and homelike than it had been to their father. It was as though the walls of Gaza had toppled upon him when he had heard of his cousin’s marriage. Edward Harding had announced it himself, in the elegant hand- writing, wonderfully clear and firm for a man of his age. The tone had been apologetic, yet not ashamed. It would seem to the unthink- ing world a folly in a man of his age, he wrote ; he trusted to his dear boy to understand some- thing at least of the reasons for the marriage. Meanwhile Ralph might rest assured that it would not make any difference to him. Lizzie was the soul of unselfish generosity and high- mindedness. If Ralph knew everything he would applaud the marriage. . . . There was more of the same kind. He remembered how he had tossed the letter aside with a bitter laugh. In such terms had fools excused their folly since the world began. He knew what to think of the woman who had married a septuagenarian in the bloom of her youth, who had betrayed her position of trust and befooled an old patient, soft as wax in her hands. As for its being the same, he knew how much to believe of that too. The peasant woman would fill Littlecombe with her children. It was so likely that Edward would put her and them aside for a mere cousin. 20 A MIDSUMMER ROSE He had not waited to see. He had simply washed his hands of Littlecombe and Edward Harding, so proving himself Don Quixote. After all, Lizzie Harding had not given her old husband children. The way was as open as it had ever been, so far as a direct heirship was concerned ; but, doubtless, Mrs. Harding would have secured all the spoils for which she had sold herself. She would marry again, a man of her own class. For five years now Edward Harding had been entirely under her influence. Of course, he had done all she wanted him to do. Another impatient sigh broke from the lips of the man who was being carried along the woodland road in the Littlecombe carriage. He remembered his boyish devotion to Edward Harding long ago. That and Littlecombe had helped him through his tight places — through his affair with Rose, for example. He had deserved a better fate, the kind, fine, bright old spirit which, in his knowledge, had never known the slackening of age — Edward Hard- ings sickliness and frailty had seemed in his case the golden philtre to keep the heart young — he had deserved a better fate than to marry a designing hussy, to bring disgrace upon Littlecombe in his old age. Again he fumed that she had sent the carriage A MIDSUMMER ROSE 21 on the chance of his coming by this train. He had not felt equal to refusing the Little- combe carriage in the sight of the old friends who had known him when he was a boy at Eton, and earlier. He wished now that he had said he would walk. It was only five miles, and a beautiful frosty day — ideal for walking. He wished he was his own man, on his own feet, and not in the Littlecombe carriage, pre- senting an appearance of enviable luxury to the one or two tramping fellows who stood to gape at the carriage as it went by. He began to look out for the “ Good King Henry.” Ah ! there was the old place at last, a black-and-white front of three gables, one standing back from the others. It faced him, standing where three roads met, overhung by the trees of Littlecombe park, the park behind it, with a vista of fallow deer feeding in the glade. Putting his head out of the carriage he called to Jeffcott to stop at the “Good King Henry.” It was a sudden impulse. He did not know exactly what he was going to say when Mrs. Varley, if she was still alive, should present herself. He could hardly ask for a lodging, with his baggage gone on to Little- combe. Perhaps, if he could stand it, he would put up a night — to-morrow night, when the 22 A MIDSUMMER ROSE funeral was over — at the “ Good King Henry,” for old times sake. He had writing materials in his bag. He could go on with that article of his on the ancient drinking-vessels of the Egyptians for the Dryasdust Review — unless he was jarred beyond the ability to abstract himself in work of the kind. As the carriage drew up in front of the inn he got out with a certain eagerness and told Jeffcott to drive on. He was tired sitting, and would walk the rest of the way. He did not glance at the old coachman's dissatisfied face, but went quickly into the low brown passage which led to the interior of the inn. Some one came to meet him from one of the brown parlours, of which there was a network behind the passage — not Mrs. Varley — a younger woman, who greeted him as Mr. Ralph with a sly, flattering air. He had no memory of her, and asked for Mrs. Varley. “ Please sit down, Mr. Ralph,” the woman said, inviting him within the parlour and set- ting him a chair. “ There, I knew you’d come. 'Twas only last night they was talking about it in the bar — old John Hodges — you remember John, Mr. Ralph, he used to be postman — and William Spratt, the carpenter, and a few more. Some said as you'd come, and some as you wouldn’t. I said as you’d come.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE 23 This frank revelation of his interest for the old neighbours annoyed Ralph Bretherton. Surely he was in a fretful mood, different from his usual equability of temper. “ Where is Mrs. Varley ? ” he asked shortly. “ Oh, poor Aunt Esther. I forgot you’d been away these five years, Mr. Ralph. Sad changes there are indeed, sir. And the poor Squire gone as well as Aunt Esther. She died in the cold winter three years ago. I don’t think you remember me, sir. I’m her niece, Ellen Hackett. I was under-housemaid at the hall before the Squire married again.” He had a hazy recollection of her, a girl with pink rims round her eyes, a soft voice, a deprecating manner, a sly look. As a boy, he had disliked her. “ Oh, and you are now owner of the inn ? I’m sorry for my old friend Mrs. Varley. I hadn’t heard.” “ Of course you hadn’t, sir.” Curiosity looked at him from between the lids, a little pinker than of old. The woman was not uncomely — a certain faded prettiness she had, apart from the weak eyes with their dis- coloured lids. Thin wisps of fair hair fell about her ears. “ Of course things are very different from what they used to be at Little- combe. We’ve felt for you — we have indeed, 24 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Mr. Ralph. And the poor old Squire. ’Twas hard on him in his old age, so it was, to be left to them there Mortons. Over-running the Hall they were, sir. A common lot of gipsies. Why, the head-gamekeeper’s her own first cousin. Tisn’t what I call decent, sir. And of course the gentry wouldn’t have nothink to do with Vr.” She forgot her aspirates, pro- bably acquired with pains, in the stress she laid on the last word. That “ 9 er” seemed to contain the concentrated bitterness of a million asps. “ You’ll have a glass of wine, Mr. Ralph ? My word ! it’s good to see you again at the ‘Good King Henry.’ Why, if things had been as they ought to, you’d be my landlord, sir, wouldn’t you ? Now, like as not, it’ll be Harry Sprague, the head-gamekeeper, sir. Of course you wouldn’t know anything about it. There was a deal of talk when she brought him to the ’All.” Again a dropped aspirate. It was as though she saw the gathering cloud on Ralph Bretherton’s face and hurried on with despe- rate haste to spill as much poison as was possible before the cloud should break upon her head. “ You see, sir, we all feel for the old family,” she panted on, “having lived under it so long ; and we can’t abide common upstarts being A MIDSUMMER ROSE 25 brought in to take the places of them as did ought to be there.” “Ah, I didn’t come in to discuss my family affairs, Miss . . . Miss — ah, thank you, — Hackett.” Histone was freezing. “I hoped my old friend, Mrs. Varley, was still hale and well. I am very sorry not to find her. Good morning.” He stalked out of the inn in a furious rage, loathing the woman, but bitter also against those who had so dragged the family honour in the dust that it was possible for her to have said and suggested the things she did. He did not ask himself if he believed them. There had been something oddly foul in her manner which conveyed more than she said. He knew her type — one of the neurotic, evil-minded sort. He tried to put her and her sayings out of his mind as he stalked along between the winter hedges, the keen frosty air in his face which he could have enjoyed if he could only have got away from the disturbance of the woman and her poison. It was not so easy a thing to do. Near the park gates he found the carriage waiting for him. Old Jeffcott, his face rising rosy as a frosty sunset out of his fur cape, looked at him with something of reproof in his gaze as though he were ten years old. 26 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ I thought I’d wait for you, Mr. Ralph,” he said, “ though you didn’t give me time to say so when you jumped out at the ‘ King Henry.’ Likely as not you didn’t know wot changes had took place. ’Tain’t wot it was in Mrs. Varley’s time. That woman’s tongue ’ud put any man off his beer.” “Ah, thank you, Jeffcott,” Ralph said, his hand on the carriage door. “You’ll excuse the liberty I took in waiting without orders,” Jeffcott apologized. “It didn’t seem right, to me, sir, as you should come on foot, not now, sir. I hope that woman didn’t bother you, sir. Mrs. Harding dismissed her the year after she were married ; and well- deserved too. When women are good they’re very good, sir, as I often say to my old woman ; but when they’re bad they’re pison.” Bretherton smiled — for the first time since he had found the Littlecombe carriage waiting for him at Nunsholme station. “ I am very glad you waited, Jeffcott,” he said. He wondered if the old coachman’s mind had got at the subtlety of feeling that the arrival of the empty carriage which had been sent for him at Littlecombe might suggest a slight to his uncle’s widow. It might have been thought that he had refused the carriage, preferring to walk. Well, it was not the A MIDSUMMER ROSE 27 moment to slight her, whatever she might be. He was glad Jeffcott had been more thoughtful than he and prevented it. They entered the park, not by the principal gates which were a mile further on, but by a road that led through the woods, twisting and turning and affording all manner of delightful glimpses of woodland scenery. At a turn of the road they came upon a delightful picturesque cottage, which in the old days had belonged to the head-gamekeeper. He glanced that way half-unwillingly. So old Brett was dead or superannuated. Time too. He had been too old for his work ; and there had been too few pheasants in the time Bretherton remembered. He had noticed many pheasants as he drove by the woodland road, strutting about in the glades of the wood or flying with a scream before the approach of the carriage. There had been no shooting this year, he supposed. In other years Edward Harding had been punctilious over the house- parties at Littlecombe for the pheasant-shooting, even though he had to accompany them on his good days in a kind of bath-chair drawn by a very trustworthy pony. As the carriage passed swiftly by the cottage, covered now with the last splendours of the autumn foliage that would fall thickly after 28 A MIDSUMMER ROSE this frost, he caught a glimpse of a young, dark-faced man who was bending over his dogs, feeding them or fondling. He straightened himself as the carriage passed, and stared hard in its direction. From the passing glimpse Bretherton thought him to be more than usually well-endowed with good looks. Standing up straight in his shirt-sleeves the man showed picturesque and well-built. Ill-tempered too, or was it imagination that made Bretherton think he scowled ? CHAPTER III He had been wondering uneasily how he should meet Mrs. Harding ; what she would look like ; what they should say to each other. His uneasiness was unnecessary, for she did not appear at all. Instead there was the unwelcome face of Freddy Vernon, who had been in the same form with him at Eton, and was the son of the senior partner in Vernon and Hayes, the old-established firm of solicitors who had always done Mr. Hardings legal business. It was a bit of a set-back when he had been nerving herself to meet the widow, to be brought up against Freddy Vernon, changed very little from the fat, dark boy in the Etons and white collar, solemnly dressed in blacks which had an undertakerish effect. He had always detested Vernon at school, and had not liked him better at their occasional meetings in later life. “ How do you do, Bretherton, ” Mr. Vernon said, holding out a soft and damp hand. “ I am sorry we meet on so sad an occasion. ” Confound Vernon ! What an undertaker he 30 A MIDSUMMER ROSE would have made, to be sure ! Detestation of Vernon’s overdone professional manner made him brutal. “ After all — considering my cousin was a sick man, he has had a long run. Seventy- five is a good age. ” “Too good, to the mind of the heir occa- sionally,” Vernon responded, with a quick change to facetiousness which Bretherton found more annoying than his former manner. “ Mrs. Harding is quite well, I hope ? ” Ralph said, with a glance towards the door as though he expected some one to enter by it. “No use, my dear fellow,” smiled Mr. Vernon. “ The widow will not see you at present. She has, in fact, asked me to do the honours. After the funeral to-morrow we may be better able to face our world. Naturally — in my position I am aware of such things — the relations were not friendly. I dare say we find it a bit of a trial to meet you.” Was there ever so detestable a manner as Vernon’s ? Bretherton sighed for the old Eton days when he might have kicked him. He turned away coldly from Vernon’s chuckle and smile. Old Bastable, the butler, who might have been a family solicitor so dignified was his aspect, came into the room with a tray. His face, despite the impassivity of the trained A MIDSUMMER ROSE 3i servant, bore evidences of grief. A watery smile broke over it as he met Bretherton’s eyes. “Mrs. Harding asked me to say, sir, that lunch will be on the table at 1.30. She hopes you gentlemen will excuse her not appearing.” “ Certainly, Bastable, certainly, ” said Freddy Vernon. “ I have already made Mrs. Hard- ing’s excuses. We quite understand. ” A trivial, passing wonder came into Brether- ton’s mind that Bastable should have stayed on at Littlecombe under the new mistress ; but he supposed, at his age, the old fellow found up- rooting too difficult a matter. He left Mr. Vernon sniffing at the cigars which were on the table with whisky and a syphon of soda, and followed Bastable out of the room. “ Where is he, Bastable ? ” he asked in a half-whisper ; and somewhat to his surprise his voice broke. He had said a good many harsh things about Edward Harding during these last five years — in his own mind ; he was not one to wash the family linen in public. But now waves of tenderness were breaking over his heart for the dead man who had been so good to him in his youth and young manhood — for whom his boyhood had had an idealizing affection. 32 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “The old room ?” he asked. Bastable nodded, and blinked. He seemed as though he might have said something but Bretherton did not wait. He went up the wide carpeted flight of stairs from the hall ; past the alcove at the stair-head with its few excellent pieces of statuary against a background of tapestry ; up a shorter flight of stairs ; along a corridor lined with low, glass-fronted cases which contained the dead man's renowned collection of Bow and Chelsea china. The house had a more clean and ordered look than he remembered. He had a fanciful theory that a house gives you warning at its threshold of the character of its owners. Well, Littlecombe had lifted itself clear of the dis- grace. The atmosphere of the house was that of a country winter morning ; it had an austere and clear freshness. Somewhere down in the depths of it a canary sang shrilly ; through an open window of the corridor the songs of the robins came sweetly. An old collie lifted himself heavily from the mat at the door which led to the suite of rooms that had been Edward Harding’s own. He came quietly and rubbed himself against Bretherton’s legs. He had not forgotten him, old Bruce. Bretherton stooped down and patted the dog’s head, and looked into the A MIDSUMMER ROSE 33 depths of his mournful eyes. Then he passed on into the room, closing the door behind him. He had looked to find the dead left alone after the sad manner of Protestant countries. But there was some one there, some one kneel- ing on a prie-dieu near the dead mans head. The widow. He had hardly time to realize that she was there before she was gone. The room was dim ; there was candle-light in it. At the head of the bed on which the dead man lay was suspended a great crucifix. Edward Harding had been an advanced High Churchman. It explained to some extent the departure from the frozen English ways. Poor woman ! he was sorry he had dis- turbed her. She had, glided past him so quickly that he had hardly any impression of her. A glimpse by the candle-light of a cheek pale and yet warm, a head carried well on a long neck, heavy dark hair curtaining an ample forehead. It was not the Blowsabella he had expected. He stood by the bed looking down at the face of the dead man. Edward Harding had always looked incredibly young in Bretherton s memory of him. The high colour, the bright eyes, the perpetual, quicksilver animation had sufficed to disguise, or almost to disguise, the weariness behind them. Now they were gone; D 34 A MIDSUMMER ROSE and the face looked very old and very tired. Looking down at it Bretherton’s eyes were dim. He remembered with a heart-pang how he had refused his cousin's overtures. “ I would we were boys as of old, In the field, by the fold, His outrage, God’s patience, man’s scorn, Were so easily borne.” His heart made excuses for the old man in this softened mood. Here was a sick man denied all his life the love of woman, the joy of children. Or was it that he had denied him- self by some strange, lofty ordinance ? Bretherton remembered the charm of the man, irresistible charm, the positive beauty of his looks which that deadly thing — middle-age — had never withered. What he must have been as a young man, with his gentle poetic nature added to his personal charm ! There must have been women to love him for himself, without Littlecombe and its broad acres added. Only in his old age his self-repression had broken down ; and how harshly he, Bretherton, had judged him ! How he had turned from his overtures and cut the ties of old affection between them ! He wished now he had listened to what the dead man had had to say in his own extenua- tion. There had been something unsaid, A MIDSUMMER ROSE 35 between the lines, of the letter in which he announced his marriage — something that now would never be said. He looked into the quiet face and had a fancy that something lurked unspoken, a secret about the lips. He stooped and whispered in the unhearing ear — then stood upright, shy, though he was alone, of the fanciful- ness of the thing he had done. He was as impatient of emotion as most Englishmen. Accustomed now to the dim room, he looked about him. Everything was neat and ordered. All traces of a sick-room had been put out of sight. There were flowers everywhere. He looked up at the crucifix with its high uplifting of pain and death to the very heights of Heaven. Religion was not much more than a formality in his own life, although in his secret heart he believed. Now he said to himself that it was better, a thousand times better, this death- chamber than the cold loneliness and isolation which English custom gives to the dead. He supposed the poor fellow had wished it so. It was not likely that Mrs. Harding would have done anything so foreign to insular habits. He had to sit through lunch and dinner with Freddy Vernon. During the hours of the afternoon he avoided him, going out with old 36 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Bruce, whom he could hardly detach from his place by his masters door, for a long ramble through country lanes, coming home by moon- light. He had turned back sooner than he wished, discovering by the dog’s lagging behind that he was footsore ; apparently he had not walked much of late, and the flints had cut the soft pads. Coming in, he asked for some warm water and himself bathed the dog’s paws. Freddy Vernon came out into the hall and watched him with an amused expression. “Why not let a stable-boy do it, Brether- ton ? ” he asked. “ Ah, well, you see, it happened in my company,” Bretherton answered without look- ing up. The walk had made him less intolerant of Freddy Vernon, or perhaps it was the strange peace of the house. They got through the evening better than he had anticipated, with a little desultory talk and reading. Freddy Vernon suggested a quiet game of billiards behind closed doors ; but he negatived it, lest in the circumstances the household should suspect a slight to the dead man’s memory or to his widow. After all, they found unexpected things in common. Old Bruce came and scratched at the door and A MIDSUMMER ROSE 37 was let in. He settled himself with a sigh on the hearthrug, resting his head on Bretherton’s feet. It reminded Freddy Vernon of a curious experience in a country-house where he had been staying. A dog, invisible, had come into the room, dropped on the hearthrug with a sigh ; had got up and followed the host as he went out of the room ; had stirred under the table in the dining-room. “ Only old Boxer, who died last year,” said the host, easily. Of such impersonal things they talked. Bretherton thought better of Freddy Vernon that he abstained from topics which were in both their minds. The quiet restfulness of the old house seemed to fold in about them with lamplight and firelight. There was not a sound to be heard. Outside the night was very still. Movements sounded hardly at all, with the thick carpets to deaden sound. Old Bastable, waiting on the two gentlemen at dinner, coming in and out of the library after- wards to replenish the fire, to attend to their wants, passed with noiseless feet. Bretherton lay back in his chair, his eyes half closed, smoking a cigar while he listened to Vernon’s prattle. There was a sense of home- coming about his being here, even though it was a house of death. He said to himself that his London life was 38 A MIDSUMMER ROSE a poor sort of thing ; all very fine while a man was young. It was a dreary thing to be an elderly butterfly with no shelter against the winter of life. He stayed about in country- houses a good deal and was accustomed to luxury of living. Dixon did him very well as a rule, as well as any bachelor needed. Yet — he had missed for a long time the sensation of being at home which had come upon him since his return to Littlecombe. In the mood of dreamy quiet he went to bed, up through the silent house where the lights lingered, but there was no other sign of life. Passing his cousin's door he had a rude shock. A couple of men came out, undertakers men, with Bastable in attendance. They stood aside to let him pass. He understood. They had brought the coffin. It jarred him rudely after his impression of the death-chamber as a place peaceful and holy — a spiritual ante-chamber to a Presence. A storm sprang up in the night ; and it was wet and windy when the funeral started. A good many of the neighbouring gentry had sent carriages ; but there was no funeral cortege, no hearse. The coffin was carried on the shoulders of some of the tenantry. A crowd of people walked with bent heads behind it. The sun came out in a watery gleam as they tramped A MIDSUMMER ROSE 39 steadily along the wet roads in which the nights rain had torn watercourses. Bretherton and Vernon walked behind the coffin. The old dog walked with them, shambling along with a depressed air. There was no sign of the widow, and Bretherton supposed she had remained at home. But she was by the grave-side, her face hidden by a veil. It struck him oddly that she did not wear the conventional widow’s dress. A simple dress of dull, soft black ; no crape ; a small, tight- fitting bonnet. He looked curiously at her, but he could not penetrate the disguise of the veil. He saw that her figure was young, with a certain gipsy grace, something of the Orient, and he remembered to have heard that she had gipsy blood. He noticed that her neck was smooth and long between the dusky hair and the black gown. Her head was bent. No one spoke to her or offered her consolation. Watching her closely when the first clay rattled on the coffin-lid, Bretherton thought he detected a tremor of her body. But she was very still. When the grave was filled in she turned about with the same quietness of movement and went away down the churchyard-path to the stile by which one reached a field-path that came out near the front gates of Littlecombe. After stopping to say a word to the officiating 40 A MIDSUMMER ROSE clergyman, Bretherton took the field-path just in time to see the black-clad figure enter a copse a field’s length away. Freddy Vernon was with him. “ I wonder she did not go with the old people,” he said, waving his hand the way Mrs. Harding had disappeared. u The old people ? ” “ Well, her father and mother. Didn’t you see them ? The old man is rather striking to look at. Not that he is exactly old. Not more than sixty, I should think, but those people age so. The father might be her grand- father. He was standing by you at the grave — a tall old chap, his hands crossed on a stick ; they were mottled with blackberry juice or something like it. She’s very good to them — or her husband was. They’ve got that little house, Widdicombe, that stands back in the trees over there — you remember. Between you and me, Bretherton, the good people about here must have been disappointed that they found so little amiss in Mrs. Harding’s conduct. She has behaved excellently to her people, without forcing them into a position they were not meant for. You haven’t met her ? — ah, well, our poor friend’s folly might have been worse.” Bretherton winced, but Freddy Vernon went on without noticing him. A MIDSUMMER ROSE 4i “ You know what county-people are, moss- grown with prejudices. I believe they might in time forget Mrs. Harding’s unjustifiable entry into their citadels if she’d give them a chance. She doesn’t. She keeps herself to herself. You know, our friend did his best to educate her. It isn’t so easy — after twenty-five. He had her taught to ride. She took to that kindly. Rides with the best of them. Few men of our friend’s age would have done it. Too many opportunities in the hunting-field and jogging home leisurely in the early dusk — hey ? ” “ Please don’t let us discuss Mrs. Harding any more, Vernon,” said Bretherton sharply. “ Of course I know you mean it all right, but . . .” “ Oh, very well, old chap,” said Freddy, im- perturbably. Freddy had reverted easily to the familiarity of old Eton days. “ I didn’t think you minded. Didn’t do you a very good turn, or — you were a hot-headed chap. Always were under that stiff reserve of yours. Poor old chap ! After all, why shouldn’t he have his consolations ? Other men would have taken them in another way. He didn’t. She made an excellent wife to him, I believe.” There was no use minding Vernon. At that moment a tall figure clad in the velveteen and gaiters of a gamekeeper jumped lightly over the 42 A MIDSUMMER ROSE stile in front of them and passed them without any sign of greeting. “ That’s a cousin of Mrs. Harding’s,” Vernon said, turning his head back to look after the straight, well-braced figure. “ Owes your family no great love, Bretherton. They say Mrs. Harding and he were boy and girl sweethearts. Just talk, I should say. These places buzz with talk. Didn’t look friendly, did he ? And didn’t trouble to touch his cap.” Bretherton’s face darkened. He remem- bered the poisonous woman at the “ Good King Henry ” yesterday. Again his old resentment against his cousin’s marriage returned to fill his heart with bitterness. CHAPTER IV “ Mr. Harding’s will is very simple,” said Freddy Vernon, opening a despatch-box which lay before him on the table. “ With the exception of some legacies to the servants and to charities, and a hundred pounds a-piece to Colonel Strode and Sir Arthur Dashwood, who are his executors, the will concerns only one or two persons.” They were in the library at Littlecombe Hall. They had come back after the funeral to a house with all the blinds drawn up, windows open to let in the mild air which had followed after the storm, fires burning brightly every- where. The two old friends who were named executors of the will sat in the background of the room. Bretherton had had a word with them. He had not seen them for some years. Colonel Strode was a little more frosty in hair and complexion ; the poker down his back kept him less rigid than of old. Sir Arthur was more port-winey than of old. He spent his 44 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Augusts in Kissingen now instead of after the grouse. His hands, knotted and twisted with rheumatism, were almost out of the semblance of hands. The library had a formal appearance. Chairs seemed to have gone back against the wall, a position they were not used to occupy. It was a dim room usually. Now the light from a window, pulled down at the top, was on the widows face where she sat by the table, her veil thrown back. Bretherton, his back to the window, had an excellent view of the face. It was something of a shock to him. He had been prepared for the milkmaid prettiness, for rose-and-white rusticity. Mrs. Harding, as she leant forward, her chin propped on her hand, was not pretty at all. He ought to have known old Edward better than to suppose that he would be caught by the lure of mere prettiness. Some people might not have looked twice at her face. It was a shock to the man who had been expecting something very different. If any- thing the lines of it inclined to a certain massiveness. The colour was pale — a whole- some, olive paleness, as though the red were just a little behind. Perhaps she had spent too much time indoors or her colour would have been ruddier. The nose was straight, a A MIDSUMMER ROSE 45 little thick ; the lips seriously and tenderly moulded. As she sat, her head turned a little sideways, the line of the face from the ear to the chin was perfect. The expression was almost solemn. With the dark hair curtaining the brows and the large quiet eyes she might have sat for an allegorical figure of Night. If she had smiled the whole expression of her face might have been altered. She did not smile ; and Bretherton had an impression of a brooding motherliness. She was a peasant, the child of peasants, the inheritor of gipsy blood. Something of the solemnity of woods and pastures, of the wide-spreading trees, of the ruminating cattle, was in her serious, tender gaze. She looked as though she would have a free walk, the walk of one for whom houses are a superfluity. All this seemed to come to him later. At the moment he was only aware of the curious dignity of the woman. Again he remembered how he had torn in two his cousin's letter which pleaded for sympathy and understanding, and flung it into the fire. After all, as even Freddy Vernon had discovered, Edward Harding had his excuses. He ought to have waited to hear and to see. The reading of the will had begun. The first sentences passed by him unnoticed, 4 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE so engrossed was he by the revelation of what manner of woman his cousin had married. “ I leave to my dear wife, Elizabeth Harding, the use, for her lifetime, of Littlecombe Hall, with all its furniture, pictures, china, wine, carriages and horses and all appurtenances. I leave to her also the sum of three thousand pounds a year for life, to be hers even in case of re-marriage. I wish her to have Little- combe Hall, because I desire her to live in such dignity as shall prove to all the world the high honour and love in which I hold her. I desire also that she shall have the use of such of the family jewels as are heirlooms for life. I may say here that in the matter of domicile I have over-ruled her will. Her wishes are for a simpler style of living and a much smaller provision. To my cousin, Ralph Bretherton, I leave all of which I die possessed beyond my explicit legacies to other people. To him or his heirs the reversion of Littlecombe Hall, its furniture, pictures, china, wine, horses and carriages, and all jewellery which is of the nature of heirlooms after the decease of my wife, together with the reversion of her annuity of three thousand pounds yearly. I desire that he will. . . .” Here followed a string of instructions as to A MIDSUMMER ROSE 47 certain things the testator wished to be done or preserved. Bretherton listened in bewilderment. For a moment he was dazed. He had hardly expected his name to be mentioned in the will at all. His inmost hope had been that there might be something in it which would relieve him of that painful sense that the cousin who had been so good to him long ago had died with a wound between them unhealed. As Freddy Vernon droned through the latter part of the will, Bretherton covered his face with his hands. It was too much. At the moment he was so overwhelmed that he could not remember to be glad that he was once again a rich man ; that Littlecombe, if not his yet, would come to his children ; that he had two other houses to live in as he chose, quite as important, if less dear to him, than Littlecombe Hall. Again the sound of his own name drew him out of his abstraction. He came to himself with a start. Freddy Vernon was closing and locking up his despatch-box, but a large white envelope lay on the table before him. He groped back for the beginning of the sentence in which his name had occurred, and found that he had heard it without knowing. 48 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ Our client also left in our charge a letter which was to be given to his cousin, Mr. Ralph Bretherton, after his death. That letter I now have the privilege of delivering to him.” Bretherton took the letter, glancing at the name and address written in Edward Harding's fine up-and-down hand, with the beautiful clear strokes, so unlike the handwriting of an old man, and put it in an inner pocket. He felt he wanted to be alone to read the letter. The widow stood up, making a quaint little curtsey to the room in general, and went out by the door behind Vernon s back. Bastable came into the room. “ Luncheon is on the table, gentlemen,” he said. The four men went into the dining-room together. Bretherton ate and drank without knowing what the dishes or the wines were. The other men were seriously congratulatory. “Well have you back again, Bretherton,” Sir Arthur Dashwood said. “We'll all of us be very glad, very glad. Can’t you come and stay with us for a few days ? Lady Dashwood will be delighted. I’m glad my old friend did the right thing at the last. I wouldn’t have acted if he hadn’t. Neither would Strode.” “ Mrs. Harding behaved very well, very well,” Colonel Strode said, peering eagerly A MIDSUMMER ROSE 49 into his curry. “No one could say she was selfish. It has all turned out wonderfully well, much better than we could have expected. Mrs. Harding keeps a very good cook. I don’t know why, I never can get curry like this at Lahore Lodge. To be sure, India spoils you for the ordinary English curry. But this could hardly be bettered. I’ll send my wife over to see how it’s made.” t Wit h a sense of strangeness Bretherton found himself pushed into the position of host. Bas- table had set him the chair at the head of the table, had placed the decanters in front of him, and the cigars alongside, when the dishes were removed. The other men deferred to him as the host. There was humour in Freddy Vernon s gaze under the conventional solemnity necessary to the house of mourning. To Vernon’s mind he had never seen a man so completely bowled over by good luck as old Bretherton. To be sure, it had been uncom- monly hard on him to be pushed out by Mrs. Harding as he had been; but at least she had spared him the presentation of a son and heir to Edward Harding and Littlecombe. That had been very decent of her, to Freddy’s mind. I erhaps the old fellow s generosity and sense of justice would have gone under if he had had a son. Freddy had known the possession E 50 A MIDSUMMER ROSE of such a thing to develop a secondary selfish- ness in a man out of all proportion to his interest in his own Ego. He had no idea — he would have scoffed at such a thing, knowing or thinking he knew human nature with a lawyer's peculiar opportunities for such know- ledge — that Bretherton’s mind at the moment was concerned with the amazement of finding Mrs. Harding so different a creature from what he had been imagining her, with a painful and grievous sense of his harshness to Edward Harding, not with the sudden wealth which would have made most men fling their caps in the air, when the eyes of the world were off them. “ Shall we travel up to town together ? ” Freddy Vernon was asking. Bretherton’s first impulse was to say “ Yes.” There was nothing to keep him here. Great as the widow’s magnanimity might be, she had evinced no desire for an interview with him. He felt an intruder in the absence of such a wish on her part. Even in old Bastable’s eyes he seemed to read a knowledge that he had been over-generously treated, but that there were limits he might not pass. On a second impulse he answered “ No.” If Vernon would be so good as to take his traps to the station in the brougham which was A MIDSUMMER ROSE Si now standing at the door, he would come up by a later train. He must call at the Vicarage to see Trant, who had coached him for Mods., had, indeed, taught him his first Latin and Greek long ago. It would be too ungrateful to miss seeing Trant, who had been too ill with bronchitis to officiate at the funeral. Trant would feel it, so would Mrs. Trant, if they knew that he had come and gone without seeing them. He returned on the field-path by which he had walked back from the funeral, taking the way to Littlecombe Vicarage, where he sup- posed he should find the Rev. Septimus nursing his bronchitis, and as happy as it would let him be, in a chintz-hung upper room with a roaring fire, and books and papers about him. The parish was a large and scattered one, and only when the bronchitis laid hold of him did the vicar feel at liberty to enjoy himself after his own heart. He stopped short, however, of the gabled Vicarage, pausing at the lych-gate which led to the churchyard. It was a mild, sunny after- noon, and the pale light lay over the graves and the squat Norman church. He turned in by the lych-gate, made his way to the church porch, and sat down on one of the ancient seats. There was not a soul about. Littlecombe church, in which Erasmus had 5 2 A MIDSUMMER ROSE once preached on the Folly of Woman, might be seen any week-day by asking for the keys at the Vicarage. This time of year few people asked for the keys. He put his hand in his breast-pocket and found his cousin's letter. For the first time in the emotions of the last hour or so he remem- bered the word spoken in the dead man’s ear, and was glad it had been spoken before the reading of the will. Dear old fellow ! he had dealt too generously with him, been too forgiv- ing. He was abashed, amazed, overwhelmed. He could not yet believe in the change in his circumstances which put him back once more where he had been before Edward Harding’s marriage. To be sure, Littlecombe was not his nor likely to be, seeing that the widow must be some half-dozen years his junior and looked to have the perfect health of her peasant blood. In his abasement he was glad he was not given Littlecombe, though it should come to his children. His spirit cried out against the too much generosity with which he had been treated. He opened the letter, and, unfolding it, in- clined the page to catch upon it the last rays of the dying sun. “ My dear Ralph ” — it ran — “ I should like you to know something of the reasons which A MIDSUMMER ROSE 53 have induced me to make you my heir after all, although, as you know, I am free to leave my property where I will. I will confess that your reception of my advances five years ago hurt me badly. You would not come and see for yourself, although I asked you, the thing which justified my marriage ; you never answered at all the prayer for sympathy and forgiveness which I tried to put into the letter, and which I have no doubt you found there. You disappointed me, Ralph, for I was very good to you in the old days. That my will restores you to the old place is due to that admirable woman, my wife. If you had known my wife, as I hoped you would, you would have known that no excuse was necessary for my marriage — unless I asked to be understood and excused because I, a sick man, should have chained so much beauty and kindness and excellence to my sick-bed. I should like you to be friends with Lizzie even now, if it be possible. She will be lonely, I am afraid, when I am gone ; she is not the woman to make many intimacies. I should be glad if you could win your way to her friendship, although I warn you that it will not be easily won. You owe it to her that you are in the old place in my will. She would have given you Littlecombe too if I had allowed it. She asked only to retire to the Orchard House, which she 54 A MIDSUMMER ROSE said would have been big enough for all her needs. But I felt that her being dispossessed of Littlecombe might be misunderstood by others. I wanted the whole world to see in what honour and estimation I held her. My intention was to leave her all I possessed, having entire con- fidence and trust in her disposal of my property as in all else. She would not have it so. She insisted that I should give and not she. “ I feel I yet owe you an explanation of what seemed to you the amazing selfishness of my marriage. It has an explanation ; and it is not any of those which will most easily occur to you, creditable or discreditable to me. It is one which is so amazing to myself that I think you would never guess it. If you have the privilege of Lizzies friendship, in time she may perhaps tell it to you herself. It will exonerate me more than anything I could advance. I have tried to rise to the heights of the sacrifice she has made for me, and to some extent I hope I have succeeded. “ Believe me, my dear Ralph, “ Your affectionate cousin, “ Edward Harding.’' Having read the letter through slowly, Bretherton turned it about and glanced at the date. The ninth of September — three months A MIDSUMMER ROSE 55 ago. And the will had been dated the eighth of September. Apparently the will had cancelled an earlier one. He could only conjecture that it had taken Mrs. Harding some considerable time to bring her husband to allot the property as she wished. Something Freddy Vernon had said to him with unctuous gaiety, of his having had a narrow squeak, was explicable by the date of the will. He sat looking for several minutes at the signature to the letter before he folded it and put it into his pocket. The clang of the church clock striking half-past three, the sudden falling of the pale sun behind a ragged mass of cloud, reminded him that the time was short. He had time for a cup of tea with the Trants and a talk before he need set out for the railway- station. He was not going back to Littlecombe, but would walk across the fields to the station. He listened to the simple, friendly talk of the Vicar and his wife, who were very glad to see him again after his long absence. He had not very much to say, but the kind couple excused him, thinking in their own minds that it must be very painful for Ralph to come back to Littlecombe, which had once been his own home, to the funeral of the cousin to whom he had been so devoted from his boyhood. Why, he had adored Edward Harding in those old days. A MIDSUMMER ROSE 56 Ralph was abstracted, his eyes looking inward from the kindly people and the pleasant room at his own thoughts. Mrs. Trant, who had been fond of him from a boy, could notice, unobserved, the light sprinkling of grey in the brown of his hair; she shook her head over it in pity and regret. They talked of the old times as though the new times had no significance for any of them. But at last, when the time was growing short, the Vicar anticipated his wife, saying a word for Mrs. Harding. “ It was very hard on you, my dear boy,” he said, ‘‘very hard. But it has turned out so much better than any of us could hope — she is really a good woman, my dear Ralph, a noble woman, a fine creature — that I hope she will see the justice of . . Bretherton recovered himself with a start. Of course they knew nothing about the will. He smiled faintly, recalling that Mrs. T rant’s eyes had been asking him questions across the tea-tray any time these forty minutes back. “ My cousin’s will leaves me residuary legatee,” he said. “ I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Harding has Littlecombe and three thousand a year for life. “ And you nearly went without telling us ! ” said Mrs. Trant, with uplifted hands. CHAPTER V Back in London, Bretherton was overcome with a sense of disillusionment. He had his moments when such a mood was upon him, when he had the sadness of the Psalmist for the passing away of the world and the unprofitableness of all things. He was in London soon after seven ; and he had the somewhat unusual experience of dining alone in a restaurant. He might have had a choice of houses to dine at. There were a few more friendly notes on his table — a few more cards on his mantelpiece. One had an item of news for him. His little friend, Violet Maynard, was engaged to be married. Lady Maynard called on him to rejoice with her. It was an intimate little note. Algy Braithwaite, with a place in Yorkshire and five thousand a year, was quite satisfactory. Vi was extremely happy. Bretherton smiled to himself. Violet was one of the girls to whom he had had to be markedly friendly. She had jibbed a bit at 58 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Algy Braithwaite, a young ass who wore coloured socks and parted his hair in the middle over a brainless forehead. He — Ralph — had jibbed when Lady Maynard had suggested that he who had such influence with dear Vi should persuade her to be civil to Algy. He had refused somewhat curtly. He could disregard Vi’s pleading eyes across a ballroom, but he drew the line at advising the child to marry Braithwaite. So Lady Maynard had brought it off. Those worldly- wise mothers ! A cynical little smile played about the corners of his lips as he imagined Lady Maynard’s feelings when the news reached her ears that he was once again a parti . She had always been very good to him, but she had hinted a little too plainly about Vi. She might have left something to his good sense and good feeling. Sitting in the tawdry little French restaurant, with crimson-shaded lights and mirrors every- where reflecting the opulent charms of the ladies who came in to dine — it had hardly seemed worth while to go West to his Club — it struck him oddly that here he sat with a fortune new-fallen in his lap, utterly disinclined to call in anyone to rejoice with him. He realized for the first time that his fall of five years ago had hurt him, although it had been A MIDSUMMER ROSE 59 broken by his sense of humour. He did not relish the idea of the volte face so many of his friends would make when they heard of his change of fortune. He said to himself that he would let them discover his changed circum- stances in time ; from the list of wills in the daily newspapers ; from one source or another ; not from him. The situation would have its humorous aspects. He did not particularly want to play a malicious jest on his fair friends. Only none of them, not even the daughterless ones, had been that to him which would make him run to them with his news. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! The cooking was really very good at the French restaurant, but he might have been eating lentils and pulse for all the satisfaction he was conscious of. When he had finished and paid his bill his watch told him it was only ten minutes past eight. There was a score of houses where he might have dropped in after dinner and been sure of his welcome. It was too early for anything of the kind. They would barely have sat down to dinner. Out again in the street he walked along under the stars, hardly troubling as to what direction he took, although from habit he went West. A long string of omnibuses passed him going down the Strand. He glanced at 6o A MIDSUMMER ROSE them without seeing them. The flaring lights about the box-office of a theatre fell full on one of the omnibuses, a green one. A place-name reached his consciousness — Holloway. He had a sudden thought — why not go see Rose Bourne ? He remembered that she had said to him that he would find her at home of an evening if it suited him better. She was not always free in the afternoon ; but no one claimed her evenings now . The emphasis on the now had had an envious and unhappy sound. He had not thought of wondering what Rose was doing. He supposed Cuthbert Bourne had left her very badly off, else it would not have been — Holloway. He signalled to a cab, sprang into it and gave the address — 27, Salamanca Road, Holloway. The hansom turned about, crossed the Strand and made for Kingsway. For a little while Bretherton, leaning across the doors of the hansom, was in a world he knew ; but presently he was out of it, in a horrible network of streets north of Holborn, ill-lit, except where a fried- fish stall or a public-house flared, saturated with the fried-fish smell which is the overpowering odour of London’s mean streets. He was smoking an excellent cigar, but through its fragrance that dreadful, dulling, depressing A MIDSUMMER ROSE 6 1 smell reached him ; seemed to cling to his lips, to his hands, his clothing. He looked up at the windows of the houses he passed, mean and squalid houses for the greater part. Behind the lit blinds figures moved to and fro. He wondered what common joys and sorrows, what comedies and tragedies of human life were going on behind those blinds. The streets, in their uniform ugliness, were worse than positive slums. The slum is not without its picturesque- ness. He breathed more freely when he reached the flare of the Holloway Road where a street market was in full swing ; and the light of the naphtha lamps seemed to make a lurid reflec- tion on the sky. He had caught the name of a railway-station, and knew he was in the Holloway Road. Else all these were unfamiliar regions to him. Poor Rose ! He remembered her a muslin-clad girl in a vicarage garden ; he remembered the scent of the roses that had been in her breast on the one occasion when she had let him kiss her and take her in his arms, because she was going to accept Cuthbert Bourne and the play was at an end. The roses had been broken between his breast and hers in that one passionate, ardent embrace. He remembered the sharp, bruised scent of them, and how his own heart had seemed to be 6 2 A MIDSUMMER ROSE broken like the roses. What a place for Rose to decline on in her widowhood ! And the child too — the child who had Roses colour, with a shy grace he had not known in Rose. Salamanca Road. The name, in white, flashed at him from a street corner. The cab turned into a road of houses with bow-windowed fronts and a flight of steps up to their hall-doors. Most of the houses had a gas-jet over the hall door dimly illuminating a number and a name. Ah — there it was, No. 27, and a foolish name, Rosetta. He wondered what the house wanted with a name and a number too. He told the cabman to wait while he knocked at the hall-door. He would have to walk some distance to find a cab and Rose might be out or not prepared to receive him. After all, it struck him as an odd thing that he should have called at this hour. It must be nearly nine o’clock — very late for Holloway, he imagined. While he stood groping for a bell the sound of a piano being played in the house reached his ears, and some one began to sing. The voice had been a good one once, but was now somewhat cracked. Rose! He remembered how Rose had sung the old ballads with a bewildering coquetry long ago. “Should He A MIDSUMMER ROSE 6 3 Upbraid ” and “ My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair” — Rose used to turn his head with her songs. Before he rang the bell he turned about and dismissed the cabman. Rose was at home. She would see him. At the worst it would only mean walking down the Holloway Road to the railway-station to find a cab. Mrs. Bourne was at home. The capless woman who admitted him, who had the look of a superior upper servant, did not seem to doubt that Mrs. Bourne would receive him. When he gave his name he had a curious idea that something of interest came into her ex- pressionless face. He wondered if she had heard of him before. He was shown into the room where Mrs. Bourne, seated at the piano, turned about with a little cry of pleasure as she heard his name. He shook hands with her, then looked towards the girl who was slowly getting to her feet from the hearthrug. When he had come in unexpectedly she had been lying all along the dirty white rug, a book open in front of her, reading. Only extreme youth and slender- ness could have carried off the position. It had been grace itself in his one glimpse of it. She had been lying partly sideways, her cheek propped on her elbow. She had lain as 6 4 A MIDSUMMER ROSE unconsciously as a young animal, with an animal-like, supple grace. “ How good of you ! ” cried Rose, with an almost exaggerated warmth of greeting. “ Imagine coming into these wilds to find us ! Have you dined ? We keep such unfashionable hours in these regions that one forgets. And here is Avis. Burning her face, the foolish child, as though complexions didn’t count. Here is a comfortable chair, Ralph — not beauti- ful. Let us have coffee, Avis dear.” The girl, having shaken hands, shyly dis- appeared from the room. He sat down in the chair Rose had pushed towards him — a chair of saddle-bags, with a delusive air of being com- fortable. He glanced round the room. Taste- less, every bit of it, except for a few Eastern curios here and there. Heavy, dark-red curtains to the windows ; a heavy, ugly carpet on the floor ; furniture heavy without giving an im- pression of strength and durability. “ Horrid, isn’t it ? ” Rose said sympathetically, as his eyes came back to her face. “ We’re in furnished lodgings.” “Oh!” He flushed; he had not meant to betray his secret thoughts. She clasped her hands together, leaning on the mantelshelf. Her face was in shadow. Something of grace in the attitude recalled the A MIDSUMMER ROSE 6 5 Rose of old, the Avis of to-day. The line from the supple waist to the swelling bust had been beautiful in Avis as she lay on the hearthrug. “ I don’t mind so much,” Mrs. Bourne sighed. “Not at all for myself — only for Avis. What do you think of her, Ralph ? ” “ She is very like you, as I recall you.” “ Only prettier. Confess that she is prettier ! Ah, but she is ! Those old days, Ralph. How good they were ! Do you remember the garden at Hurstcot and the summer-house ? The little gate that opened among the Portugal laurels ? The apple trees in the garden-beds ; the dial ; the smell of the box-borders in heat ? How the birds used to sing there, Ralph ! Do you remember the nightingales ? ” He remembered the nightingales. They had been singing in his one passionate hour of gain and loss. Rose did not seem to remember it. She sat down in the chair facing him and looked into the heart of the fire as though she saw her youth there. All unconscious, he observed her. It gave him a little shock, seeing her for the first time in full light, to notice how flaccid the muscles of her face and neck were, how the colour he remembered so fresh and radiant had F 66 A MIDSUMMER ROSE run in streaks, dulled and faded. Her hair even had a dusty look. As she sat there in the chair, not braced and uplifted, in her rusty blacks, she had a dreadful suggestion of the women he sometimes saw in the streets, bonneted and bugled, the middle-aged women of the London ’bus. He cried out silently against the change in Rose. She could not be much over forty — perhaps forty-two or forty- three. The women of his acquaintance knew how to be charming much later than that. Poor Rose ! She turned her eyes suddenly upon him, and he flushed up as though she might have detected his thoughts. “You look wonderfully well, Ralph, wonder- fully young and handsome and prosperous. Yet you’ve had your ups and downs like my- self. I heard how you’d lost your inheritance. Cuthbert’s sister Lucy married a parson in the next parish to Littlecombe. It hasn’t told on you. Why, it makes me feel immortally old to see you sitting there looking so well, and I only an old ghost — an old ghost.” There had been a moment when caution had whispered in Ralph Bretherton’s ear. Was it altogether wise to pick up again the acquaint- ance with his old love, poor and widowed ? He was glad now that he had repulsed caution A MIDSUMMER ROSE 6 7 with something of scorn. The veriest fop could not have supposed that this Rose had matrimonial designs upon him ; and there was nothing of the fop in Bretherton. He tried to say something polite, but she silenced him with a wave of her hand. “ Never mind, Ralph,” she said. “Don’t perjure yourself, old friend. I’ve had my day and it’s over. Cuthbert was very good to me, Ralph. It wasn’t his fault that he made wrong investments, was it ? I’m glad he died, poor fellow, before he knew how rotten they were. There was nothing left except Cuthbert’s little house in Surrey. We tried living there, Avis and I. We could have been perfectly happy. Adams, who opened the door to you— Cuthbert’s mother sent her to us the year after we were married — she is our one bright spot. Adams would have done all the work of the house herself, with what help we could have given her. But we couldn’t afford to stay there. We had to let it. Avis is still heart-broken for it. She has no friends, poor child ! I am training her for a professional singer. I can’t even afford her the proper tuition. I give music- lessons here. It is miserably paid. But with those and the rent of Honeywells — fortunately we were able to let — we can keep going.” He made an inarticulate sound of pity. As 68 A MIDSUMMER ROSE she talked he became aware, at first dimly, later with a certainty, that here was a sick woman. Ill-health was at the root of Rose’s dismal ageing, which had frightened him some- what as though he felt old age and loneliness knocking at his own door. And he unprovided. Rose, at least, had a child. He remembered old Trant, whose sons and daughters were scattered up and down the world — Mrs, Trant always had eight letters to write on Indian mail days, to say nothing of China and Canada. Old Trant had been used to say that the immortality every man could lay hold on — whether he believed in another world or not — was the immortality of children. If age should come to him as it had come to Rose it would find him unprepared. “ I feel I can tell you, knowing of your own misfortunes,” she said, with what he felt vaguely to be a heroic smile, “ because you also are a poor devil, though I beg a thousand pardons for saying it. You look so little like it. I haven’t troubled my rich friends. After all, the child will not be quite unprovided for. She will have Honey wells. It brings us two hundred a year. And Adams will watch over her like a faithful, honest watch-dog. Only — she will be lonely.” A great rush of pity came over the man’s A MIDSUMMER ROSE 6 9 heart. He looked at his life as it might have been. If he had married Rose, and if Rose were ill as she was now 1 Something of the personal anguish and fear that might have been his were revealed to him. “ What is the matter, Rose ? ” he asked, leaning forward and taking her hand. “ Tell me. If there is anything money can do. . . . Oh, I can afford it. You needn’t be afraid. For the sake of old times, my dear.” “ Hush 1 ” she said. “ I thought I heard Avis. She is taking a long time over that coffee. Perhaps she knew old friends wanted to talk together. I’ll tell you, Ralph. Only — don’t make any sign when she comes back. I am a woman with a mortal illness. I ought to have an operation, but I’ve postponed it as long as I could — for the child’s sake. She doesn’t suspect. I rather imagine I’ve post- poned it too long. There won’t be any long sick nursing for my poor little girl.” Her smile had something triumphant in it. Sitting there, holding her hands, he saw Rose, dear and precious, as she might have been if she had married him and not Cuthbert Bourne. “ This must not go on, Rose,” he said, and his voice trembled. “ As your old friend I forbid it. You are to have the best expert advice in London at once, no matter what it 70 A MIDSUMMER ROSE costs. Does it matter, Rose, dear — to you and me — that my money procures you what is a matter of life and death? If you had taken me and not Cuthbert Bourne — how I suffered, poor little devil ! — you could have dipped in my pocket as deep as you would. Do it now, Rose, though I have not the conventional right. For the child’s sake. Rose, Rose, what are conventions to you and me at a moment like this ? ” She suddenly began to weep. “ How good you are, Ralph ! ” she said, gratefully, dabbing her eyes with her handker- chief. “ There, don’t be alarmed. I shan’t make a scene. At my age people don’t cry easily nor profusely. That belongs to the young. Poor Cuthbert ! I’m glad the poor fellow didn’t live to know about me.” There was the sound of approaching footsteps and Avis came in, followed by the woman- servant with a little tray containing coffee cups and a pot. The coffee smelt fragrant. The tray, with its embroidered cloth and its tiny porcelain cups, was pleasantly dainty in the ugly room. Avis poured out the coffee and he drank two or three cups of it. Afterwards Avis sang for him, in a pure, rich mezzo-soprano which flooded the dingy room with its har- monies. He sat watching her from his dim A MIDSUMMER ROSE 71 corner ; the slight figure in its simple black frock had the suggestion of an unblown bud ; the white neck, from which the notes seemed to be shaken in a golden rain, showed above the low collar of the dress. The sleeping passion in the shy eyes revealed itself as she sang. Her eyes were starry, uplifted, hidden no longer. 1 CHAPTER VI It was as though the cares of a family had suddenly been thrust upon the man who had grown accustomed to think of himself as a con- firmed bachelor. It fell to him to go and see Sir Bryce Hawkins, the leading specialist in the malady from which Rose suffered. They had met occasionally in society, and he felt that an ex- planation was due to the great surgeon as well as to himself. “ The lady is,” he said, “ a very old friend of mine.” He hurried on in some confusion at the expression in the surgeon’s face, hastening to disabuse him of the thing he might be thinking. “A very old friend. In fact, she might have been my wife if she would. She has been left a widow within the last couple of years, and is ill-provided for. She has lived out of England. I had not seen her for about twenty years till we had an accidental meeting at a street-crossing the other day. She is afraid the operation may be a critical one. She A MIDSUMMER ROSE 73 has a little daughter. I want the best possible done for her ; so I come to you. You under- stand I make all the arrangements — I am responsible. 0 “ Quite, my dear fellow.” Sir Bryces face wore its most impassive expression. “ I can give your friend an appointment to-morrow at three o’clock. If I find an operation is necessary — we can’t always trust a patient’s judgment in these matters — she had better come into my nursing home. It is close at hand — just at the back of this house in fact. If we must operate, be sure I shall do my best for you and for the lady.” “ She has a young daughter about eighteen. She would be alone in the world. ...” “ Bring the lady to me to-morrow at three,” Sir Bryce repeated, ringing the bell ; and the interview was at an end. He had had to be very firm with Rose, who had tried to back out of seeing the specialist. “ I am almost sorry you turned up after all,” she said, with a spark in her eye that recalled the old Rose. “ I could only have died. I don’t want to be hacked and hewed ; I want to die as the Lord made me.” He felt the most tender pity for her. Always, always, behind this mature, sickly Rose, there was the radiant girl of long ago. And she 74 A MIDSUMMER ROSE might have been his wife. She might have been his one ship going down before his eyes on the lonely ocean. He had an odd reflected anguish from what might have been. Truth to tell, he had forgotten Rose till she sprang into his sight by lamplight at the London crossing. His passion for her was as dead as Julius Caesar, little likely to be revived by this Rose which had been overblown before it was withered. And yet — he felt himself looking at her as though through the eyes of a man to whom she was everything. He did not accompany Rose to Sir Bryce Hawkins’s consulting-room. That would be to put himself just a little too much in the husband’s place. She had Adams to go with her. Adams was perfectly trustworthy and careful. He, meanwhile — there was something for him to do. Rose smiled a speechless gratitude at him when he remarked that it would be his business to see after and distract Avis. “ I’ll take her somewhere for the day, Rose,” he said ; they had slipped back to the use of Christian names as though twenty years did not lie between the old days and these. “ You’ll trust me with Avis ? ” “Oh, I’ll trust you,” she said, and looked at him with a certain passionate intensity in her A MIDSUMMER ROSE 75 gaze. “ If the Lord hadn’t meant me to trust you He’d never have sent you my way just at this moment. Read that, Ralph. It came this afternoon.” She tossed him a letter across the tea-table, and watched him while he read it. “ I told you so,” she said, not waiting for him to speak. “ Honey wells was not the place for her Ladyship at all. There is absolutely nothing to do — unless one adores the country — at Honey wells.” The letter was from the lady who was Rose’s tenant. She found the place im- possible. It did not agree with her health. She did not think the sanitation was very good. Her doctor advised Aix, and she was leaving at once. Some one would remain in charge till Mrs. Bourne could take over the house. She enclosed a cheque for the next quarter’s rent in lieu of notice, and she trusted Mrs. Bourne would not be much inconveni- enced by this sudden termination of her tenancy. “You see,” Rose said. “We shall never let again. Every drop of hot water has to be carried and every drop of cold water pumped. And we have only oil-lamps. We are horribly behind the times at Honeywells. I should not be surprised, indeed, if the sanitation were defective.” 7 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “You would be better there than here,” he said, “ to make your convalescence.” “ Till I can begin work again,” she assented. “ That is, if I ever do begin. And the fifty guineas will pay for the operation, I suppose — or will it ? ” “ Oh, yes,” said Ralph, committing himself to what he knew to be a lie. “ Supposing I change that cheque for you. You may want ready money to clear out of this. As for the doctor, I shall arrange that.” She did not protest — only looked at him with eyes of a strained brightness. “ I will come in the morning for Avis,” he said. “If it is fine and frosty, as it promises to be, I shall take her a little way out of town. A country walk would do her good. If it is not fine, there are many things to do in London. It is good of you to trust me with the child, Rose.” He lifted her hand and kissed it; and would have gone away only she implored him to stay. “We can’t give you much of a meal, Ralph,” she said. “ Nothing at all to take the place of your dinner. But we shall get you something. You will be a Good Samaritan if you stay to- night. I confess that I don’t like to spend the evening alone with Avis.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE 77 He consented readily enough. For some reason or other he was out of conceit with the scented boudoirs, the quiet little dinners, the low talk and laughter beneath the shaded lights. He was engrossed for the moment in one of the world’s real tragedies. Something he could not fix floated through his memory. Was it Keats who said it ? “ Bring me no laurel crowns in a world where roses die and women have cancer.” He was not sure of the quotation or its author. But it suited his mood. He was disillusioned for the pleasant things of the world. He stayed till ten o’clock, having had a scratch meal which took the place of dinner. Avis had been told as much as was necessary. She wore something of the look of a little martyr, but she was very quiet, very brave. Now and again Rose nodded at her behind her back, lifting her hands to convey to Ralph how wonderful it was, and what a brave girl she had. The intimacy seemed to grow in those hours when Avis sang, her mother play- ing her accompaniments ; when the two elders sat and talked in the glow of the fire, and the girl played softly to herself at the piano. He could hardly believe that three days ago he had not known that Rose Bourne and her girl were in the world. Perhaps he was framed for 78 A MIDSUMMER ROSE the domesticities, he thought. If Rose had been his wife, how good the change in his fortunes would have been ! He rejoiced now that the money made it possible to alleviate Rose’s sad lot to the fullest extent. It might not be able to save her life, but, her life being saved — or, at least, her death postponed — he would be able to do everything possible to win her back to comparative health, to smooth and make easy her path to the grave. He was at Salamanca Road by eleven o’clock the next morning. Dixon was amazed at his master’s early rising and being abroad, although he knew his place too well to show his surprise. He was knocking at the door, and realizing for the first time how dreary a place Salamanca Road was by daylight, when Adams opened the door to him. Miss Avis was nearly ready. Adams got as near a friendly smile as her natural stiffness would permit. Would Mr. Bretherton come into the drawing-room ? Rose was sitting at the table, her writing- desk open before her. “ I am so glad it is such a fine morning,” she said. “ It will be the country to-day, won’t it ? Take Avis away quickly, Ralph. I am settling my affairs. I don’t want the child to see me do it. That fifty pounds will come A MIDSUMMER ROSE 79 in uncommonly well. I need not owe a penny in the world — except to you.” He answered her a trifle gruffly that there was plenty of time to settle her affairs. Even if she had to go to the nursing-home it would not be just yet. There would be an interval. “ I’m not sure,” she said, smiling. “See here.” She lifted a newspaper by her elbow and indicated a little pile of tradesmen’s books. “ I am going to go round and pay them all as soon as you’ve taken Avis away. I feel as strong as a horse this morning. Poor Cuthbert ! It reminds me how before Avis was born I would settle all my affairs, nearly breaking the poor boy’s heart. I wonder why women are so cruel ? I believe I liked to feel that I was breaking his heart.” Avis came into the room, dressed for out-of- doors in a neat frock of navy serge, with a touch of scarlet in her wide hat. She had a distracted, bewildered air which she tried to keep out of sight ; and there were dark rings about her eyes. Her mother drew her to her and kissed her, putting up a hand to caress the soft, chestnut braids into which the girl’s hair had been put away. “ Go and enjoy yourself, little daughter,” she 8o A MIDSUMMER ROSE said. “ Be sure there will be good news when you come back.” “ I would rather stay,” said Avis; pitifully. “ Couldn’t I come with you to the doctor’s ? Not that I am ungrateful to Mr. Bretherton. It is so kind of him to take me.” The mother laughed and kissed her again, bidding her be off. There was a cab at the door. Bretherton put Avis in carefully, followed her and told the driver to take them to Marylebone. He took tickets for a high place in the Chil terns. It was a shining winter day. The London streets were sunny, with a suggestion of the haze that should come later in the day. The cab took them through Regent’s Park, where the nursemaids were already out with their charges and a few coun- try-lovers were solacing their hearts as much as might be walking over the drift of leaves. “ I have heard people say,” Bretherton said, looking at the girl’s averted profile, “that Regent’s Park made a very satisfactory sub- stitute for the country. They were Londoners, of course.” “It always has a suggestion of sickliness to me,” she answered, with sudden fire. “ London looks to me always as though I saw it through yellow glasses — at least, in autumn and winter. They were lovely at Honeywells.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE He drew her on to talk of the country home she had lost. Something was taking shape in his mind. If Honeywells were to be left on Rose’s hands, would it not be better that they should be there ? He said to himself that Rose would never teach again. No matter how the operation went the grey streets of London would be no place for her. She would be out of the battle of life. She would be a non-combatant henceforth. The girl talked of her woods. At Woodhay every one was friendly. She could go where she would. She knew all the great, quiet woods by heart. Plainly she had found them friendly and ready to give up their secrets. She knew every one. The gamekeepers only touched their caps to her when they met her in the forbidden places. Last summer they had gone into Sussex for a week — to an old black-and-white inn sunk in the cup of a valley, with steep hills rising on every side. She had flown to the woods and had been turned out roughly by the first game- keeper she met. She had had to keep to the field-paths and the roads. Plainly she sickened at London. She had no friends, had not been in the way of making them. There was some- thing oddly solitary about her. She had got over her first shyness and she G 82 A MIDSUMMER ROSE found it easy, even pleasant, to talk. She talked of the old life at Honeywells. Any attempt he made to get her to talk of the London life failed. She turned away from it with a little gesture of aversion. She had not even a dog. Her dog — a bull- terrier — had died at Honeywells. She had had none since. She adored dogs. They were such sympathetic company. They always understood. Monk had been so wise. She might take him where the pheasants were thickest. He hardly blinked an eye when one scurried screaming across his path. She was a strange mixture of woman and child — more child than woman. She said original things which delighted him, thoughtful things like the sayings of a very wise child. Sex was not yet awake in her at all. She told him how she longed for brothers, and her speech had a touch of slang now and again, delightfully incongruous with her looks, which reminded him of a picture he had seen some- where of the young Beatrice “low-bosomed and with hidden feet/' They got out at a station which had a beautiful name and walked along by a delight- fully clear river, running amber-brown over its little rocks and pebbles, presently climbed into high land with a wide sky running down to A MIDSUMMER ROSE 83 woods at the horizon. They had lunch at an inn he knew which kept the good old customs. Every Sunday, he told her, the landlord pre- sided over a long table, carving the joints for which the house was famous for the long rows of his patrons. It was a delightful inn, with so much to see belonging to the old times and the new. They lunched in a diamond-paned oriel window, basking in a sun which might have been May’s. There was a drowsy hum of bees from the hives in a hidden corner and a sugges- tion of summer sweetness was in the room. The landlady came in and told them the history of the inn’s famous room, beaming on them while she talked. Plainly she suspected a love- affair. Many a honeymooning couple came, she said, to the “ Duke’s Head,” and she displayed her Visitors’ Book, in which, amid the banalities of the chance visitor, there peeped out here and there a shy little tribute to the charm of the place and the excellence of the management, the note of enthusiasm heightened by the moon that had not yet began to wane. Bretherton smiled a little grimly at the good woman’s assumption. He was interested in Avis as a charming child with the promise of being a beautiful and clever woman. The sex folded up in her left his own as unmoved as 8 4 A MIDSUMMER ROSE though she were a boy, with just one tender touch of sentiment added because she was a girl and not a boy. A wild-flower, he said to himself, heartsick and stunted in growth by the London streets. She discovered so much to him of her mind and heart, he conjectured so much more to be discovered, that his curiosity, his interest, was excited. He said to himself that she would be his ally in that scheme of his for getting her mother back to Honeywells. Would Rose, worsted and useless in the battle of life, consent to take from his hand now something of what would have been her own if she had not preferred Cuthbert Bourne, a man full-grown, before his callow youth? He thought she might have to consent — for the child’s sake. No ; he was not at all likely to fall in love with Avis. He said to himself that he was not young enough or old enough for that. In a sense he was nearer to loving her mother, behind whose sorrowful maturity he had elusive glimpses of the woman whom he might have loved as his wife. CHAPTER VII A telegram awaited them at Salamanca Road, to which they returned about four o’clock. It was from Rose and it was addressed to Bretherton. “ Come,” it said, “ and bring Avis. Adams will know what to send. I am not coming back.” The address was Waverley Street, the narrow street behind the street of stately Georgian houses in which Sir Bryce Hawkins’ house was situated. The nursing-home was connected with the great specialist’s house by a covered-in passage. He had to comfort Avis, who had lost all her vivid bloom in the shock of the telegram. He understood the summons. Rose wanted to comfort her little daughter herself, to avert the mystery, the suspense that often make the acutest part of a suffering which one could bear if there were frankness and certainty. They made the journey as fast as a hansom could take them, bringing Rose what things 86 A MIDSUMMER ROSE Adams considered necessary ; the rest could follow to-morrow. The nursing-home looked bright and cheer- ful enough from the outside, with lighted rooms behind all the white blinds. In the hall was a bright fire and a mass of flowers. Only through the perfume of the flowers there came, heavy and sinister, the smell of antiseptics, of anaesthetics. They were shown into a cheerful sitting-room where Rose awaited them. Pictures on the walls, books and papers lying about ; here and there a bibelot of silver or china. The owners of the home had done their best to banish from it the associations of sickness and suffer- ing ; but the suggestion was there all the same, creeping in by chinks and crevices, as insidious, as urgent as the light fog which hung in the room for all the fire and lamplight. Rose came to meet them and took Avis in her arms. For a few seconds they clung together, while Bretherton, a lump in his throat, stood by the fireplace lifting a bibelot, inspecting it with apparent interest,’ putting it back without seeing it. There was a mirror over the chimney-piece. In spite of himself he could not help seeing what was happening behind his back. Rose had taken off her girl’s hat and laid it aside. Her hand was caressing A MIDSUMMER ROSE 87 softly the beautiful, abundant hair which lifted up from the nape of the neck yet fell upon its whiteness in softly-curling rings. There was something of desperation in the way the girl clung to her mother. His eyes were humid. He wanted to comfort them, but did not know how to break in on that sacred suffering. At last Rose put a stop to it. She pushed Avis gently into a chair. “ Dear friend/' she said, coming to him, “ this is hard on you. How good you have been to bring the child to me ! After all — I did not mean to frighten her. It is better than long waiting. They do it to-morrow. Sir Bryce is quite cheerful. Do you hear, foolish little child ? ” — she turned to Avis with such an expression of maternal passion as made her more than beautiful — “ Sir Bryce is not afraid. There is to be no long waiting, little heart. I could not have borne a long wait — nor you.” A cheerful nurse came in and asked if Mrs. Bourne would like some tea ; and Ralph re- membered that they had forgotten to have tea at Salamanca Road. “Iam trying to comfort this little daughter of mine, Nurse Bertha,” Mrs. Bourne said. “We have never been separated before since she was born.” 88 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ And this will not be for long,” Nurse Bertha said, in a brisk little voice. “ We make people well, not keep them ill, here. To-morrow by this time you will be doing finely, Mrs. Bourne.” She had glanced sharply at Bretherton standing with an averted face by the chimney- piece. She thought she understood the situation. He and Mrs. Bourne would like a little time alone. She swooped down on Avis with her air of cheerful kindness. “ Come and help me to cut bread and butter,” she said. “ Do you know that this is tea-hour for all the patients ? They are all clamouring for bread and butter. Come along and help” She tucked Avis under her arm, figuratively, not literally, for she was a little Robin Red- breast of a woman, and carried her off, sending back a re-assuring nod and smile in Rose’s direction. The door closed behind them. The man turned round and faced the room and the light. He had been afraid before of the emotions he felt must be visible in his face. This special kind of experience had not befallen him before. His father and mother had died when he was a child. The spectacle of the two piteous creatures clinging together had shaken him. His world would have been amazed if A MIDSUMMER ROSE it knew how unsophisticated he was behind his man-of-the-world impassivity. “ That was a good little woman to leave us together,” Rose said. “ I want to talk to you, Ralph. It is about Avis. My God ! what am I to do about Avis ? The operation is going to be a bad one. I’ve let it go too long Even if I pull through I shall be maimed and helpless. How can I be that ? I could almost pray not to live, only the child loves me. Ralph, she has never slept out of the reach of my arms since she was first put into them.” He made a step or two towards her. “ Hush, Rose,” he said. “ Leave it to me. I will take care of Avis — and of you. You are not to trouble about anything.” She looked at him in amazement. “ Why, Ralph?” she said. “ Why ? You were in love with me once, my poor Ralph, but that is not enough. I do not even think that you loved me so well as to carry any of it to this day. I think you had forgotten me till we met at the crossing. It is pure mercy and goodness, Ralph — pure mercy and goodness — the goodness of God in you to me and my lamb. My God ! I did not think such things were possible.” She spoke with a reverent wonder and profound gratitude. “ It is a 9 ° A MIDSUMMER ROSE strange legacy I am leaving you, Ralph,” she went on. “Not many men would accept such a legacy, or would be fit to be trusted with it, perhaps. What will you do with Avis ? She is as innocent as a baby, full of tender and loving impulses, generous, passionate. How will you keep her ? ” “ Trust me to do my best for her,” he said. “ I have been thinking of it — not of Avis without you, but of you and Avis. Honey- wells will be empty. You and Avis are to return there — with Adams. I shall see to the rest. I am really a rich man, Rose. I have been keeping it from you. My cousin has made me his heir after all. His wife only takes a life-interest in Littlecombe and three thousand a year. All the rest comes to me. I should not have known what to do with it. You see, for the last five years I have con- sidered myself a poor man — a comparatively poor man. A woman has been very generous to me. Let me pay my debt to another woman.” Rose leant by the chimney-piece, her two hands clasped upon each other. The shadows were heavy on her face. “A woman ?” she repeated. “ Your cousin married an impossible person, didn’t he ? A cook or something of the sort.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE 9i “If you had asked me that last week I should have said ‘Yes.’ To-night — well, it is not the first time that Nature has made a lady of her own. I might have trusted Edward Harding’s fastidious taste. It is she who has given me back my inheritance.” He surprised in her face, turning swiftly towards him, an expression he did not under- stand. He thought he was enlightened when she spoke. “ Would she be good to Avis ? ” she asked. “I think she would be good. But I have no right to ask her to be good to any one. I resented my cousin’s marriage, though he pleaded with me to forgive and understand. I took it for the ordinary kind of misalliance . It was not so simple as that.” “ She is a young woman, isn’t she ? and he was an old man ? ” Something trembled in her voice. It might have been anger or fear. “ There must have been forty-five years of age between them,” he answered. “ Ah, then, I do not acquit her.” There was a curious sound in Rose’s voice. Wonder- ing vaguely, Bretherton remembered that Rose had always been an amiable person. “ I do not acquit her. Would she have married him if he had been a man of her own class ? ” 9 2 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ I do not know. Edward Harding could only have belonged to his class.” “The price he could offer was too high. It was a mercenary marriage. No young woman honestly gives herself to an old man. It is impossible.” “ You did not know my cousin.” He wondered why he was defending the marriage. He had said so often to himself the thing Rose had just said; and yet there was nothing of the woman bought and sold about the calm dignity of his cousin’s widow. It was not only gratitude that made him defend her. Since he had seen her — well, it was impossible to push her to one side as a woman who had sold herself for money and position. He had an idea that money and position could not do very much for her. “ There was a lover in the background, Eve heard, of her own class. There are always lovers in that class. It is only in our class, the middle-class, there are not enough men to go round.” A red spot throbbed in the ashes of Rose’s cheek. In the glass which they were both facing he saw it as a dark shadow. He wondered at the asperity of her tone. Yet her speech had recalled to him the dark, hand- some face of the gamekeeper and it was not a A MIDSUMMER ROSE 93 pleasant memory. For the moment it left him with nothing to say. “ On the whole, Ralph, I would rather leave Avis to you.” Rose's voice had returned to its usual gentleness. “ I would rather leave Avis to you. I'm afraid she is a little too old to go to school. I have not been able to give her much education. She knows little of the things other girls know. But, on the other hand, she knows many things that do not come in the ordinary school curriculum. Of course, Adams will make it easier. Adams is as faithful as a dog to me and.to Avis. The child will not need very much. She is full of imagination. She would make herself quite happy at Honey wells, as happy as she could be without me. She has depended very little on human companionship — so far. Her dogs, her books, her music, the woods ; she wants no more for happiness.” “You are anticipating too much, Rose. And you ought to sit down. We can talk as well sitting as standing.” With a gentle, strong force he put her into a chair. “ I hope and trust you will be here to take care of Avis for many years. You are not to fret. I assume all the responsibilities. But . . . if . . . you were not to stay — do not fear for Avis. I shall do as much as a man may to fulfil your trust in me. She is an appealing child, and a very interesting one. ,; 94 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “Of strong affections, Ralph; don’t forget that. Poor child ! she has not had many friends in her short life. She is ready to be devoted to you. You won’t hurt her, Ralph? — you won’t fail her ? ” The woman’s appeal rang like a cry. There was a bitter pathos in it. Ralph Bretherton lifted Rose’s hands out of her lap, where they were clasped nervously. He noticed for the first time that they were toil-worn ; Rose’s poor hands that he remem- bered so plump and pretty and carrying a weight of sparkling rings. Cuthbert Bourne’s offerings to his betrothed had had an Asiatic magnificence. He kissed them and said solemnly, still holding the hands between his own : “ I promise you, Rose. And the Lord judge between thee and me.” A light broke over the sickly face. “ It is not altogether fair of me, Ralph,” she sighed. “ And there ought to be some one else. Cuthbert has some old aunts somewhere in Cornwall. How do I know how they would treat Avis ? Perhaps a woman leaving her one precious treasure on the world need not be expected to have scruples. But oh, Ralph, God bless you ! You send me on my journey with a light heart.” CHAPTER VIII The days that followed were the strangest Bretherton had ever experienced or was likely to experience. Rose’s operation took place the following morning and was pronounced entirely successful from the surgeon’s point of view. But the cheerful little nurse whom Ralph interviewed had a shade over her cheerfulness. Sir Bryce Hawkins, eager to be gone to his consulting-room, about which the patients clustered thick as bees, stopped a second or two to speak to Ralph in the corridor between the two houses. “It was a beautiful operation, my dear fellow,” he said. “ But — you are interested in the lady. It would not be fair to conceal from you that the shock to the system is to be feared. We must hope for the best, but — the patient was not in a very good condition to bear such a strain. If we could only tone up the human system to second our efforts surgery would be a very much simpler matter.” The day turned round slowly, in an agony of 9 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE suspense for Avis which communicated itself to Bretherton. There were moments when he felt as though Rose were really his one ship on the sea going down before his eyes. He was at the nursing-home half-a-dozen times during the day for news. The last report was that the patient was sleeping quietly. It eased the tension for them, and he went back to Lincoln’s Inn to sleep like a boy with a sensation of dead-tiredness. The morning bulletin also was favourable. He had driven up to Salamanca Road im- mediately after breakfast and had carried off Avis with him. She, too, had had some sleep. The evidences of it were visible in the relaxation from the tense little face of yesterday. Poor child ! Poor little Avis ! He noticed — ■ with some wonder at himself, for he was not one to notice such things — that she was poorly clad, her coat too thin for the season of the year and worn at the seams. Having received their bulletin at the nursing- home — a quite good and hopeful one which sent their spirits up amazingly — on an impulse he told the hansom-driver to take them to Regent Street. “ I am going to buy you a new coat, Avis,” he said. “ I am your big brother now, you know. You must help me to choose, for I A MIDSUMMER ROSE 97 should be an awful duffer about ladies’ clothes. Supposing we go to Jays ?” “It is monstrously expensive,” said Avis, beginning to colour. He did not like her the less for this evidence that at heart she was a true daughter of Eve. “ And I don’t think you ought to do it, really. This coat is quite serviceable. I know it’s horribly ugly. But if I was to have anything it ought not to be Jay’s. It ought to be — there is a place called the Stores, isn’t there ? ” “If there is you and I have never heard of it,” he answered, with a boyish gaiety. “I have heard the ladies of my acquaintance say very nice things about Jay’s. Why, you are cold, you poor little thing ! ” So Jay’s it was ; and at Jay’s, assisted by the superb -looking young woman who acted as saleswoman, Avis was clad in a most dis- tinguished garment of grey-blue cloth, softly and richly lined. The saleswoman shook her head over Madam’s hat seen in conjunction with the coat, and on her recommendation Avis was further made the possessor of a wide black velvet hat with bewitching strings to tie under the chin. She protested in a soft, low voice, but with a colour in her cheeks which showed the pleasure the beautiful things gave her. What else Ralph might have done, — for H 9 8 A MIDSUMMER ROSE his boyish heart had run away with his head and he could not but be aware that Avis’ boots and gloves and skirts swore at the elegant coat and hat — he was suddenly pulled up by a glimpse in the distance of Lady Barton, one of his special friends, who was just rustling their way, an obsequious shop-walker preceding her. Only the intervention of the shop-walker had given them their chance of escape from Lady Barton’s particularly observant eyes. A con- venient cheval glass afforded Bretherton shelter without his having to make a retreat obvious to Avis and the elegant shop assistant. Lady Barton passed on her way and Brether- ton hurried to escape from the shop. What other purchases must be made he should leave to Avis herself, with the excellent Adams for escort if Rose’s convalescence was too pro- longed. He was suddenly aware that Ralph Bretherton, a fashionable man of thirty-six, fitting out a lovely child like Avis might present a curious aspect to a world whose very wisdom it is to think evil. Mentally he anathematized his own selfish folly in having exposed himself and Avis to a possible mis- construction. But Avis was not aware at all of the peril she had escaped. As they walked out of the shop, he wondering what would happen if Lady Barton should encounter them, A MIDSUMMER ROSE 99 he smiled to himself observing that Avis glanced at her image in a glass as they passed with shy pleasure. After all, though he did not know it, he brushed skirts with Lady Barton just at that moment. The lady was standing by a counter and turned about to gaze curiously after him and his companion. “ Ah ! ” she said to herself — “ that explains it ! ” She had remembered that for quite a long time — a full fortnight at least — Bretherton had not presented himself at her tea-hour when he was assured of his welcome. A fast train took them to Brighton, where they had lunch and a drive across the Downs, finishing with a stroll along the sands as the afternoon darkness was setting in and the shops in the King’s Road, with the great arc lamps in front, were lit up brilliantly. They talked in a desultory fashion ; he trying to keep her thoughts from the sick-room and what might be happening there ; she thanking him mutely with a world of eloquence in her beautiful, innocent eyes. It was quite dark down at the sea-front in the shadow of the sea-wall. A fresh wind had sprung up, sending the waves tumbling in to break in lines of foam along the sands. Once or twice the spray almost caught them and she 100 A MIDSUMMER ROSE cried out, remembering her fine new garments that must not be spoilt. Once there was a bigger wave than the others and they ran for it, holding hands like a pair of children. Her little cold hand in his smote him with a pang of protecting tenderness as though she had been indeed a child. No element of sex entered into that tender feeling. Only some- thing chivalrous and simple sprang to life in his heart. Poor little thing ! Poor child ! He would love to guard her from all hurt and harm. He had had an unattached life. It was good to have something to care for, to help. There had been a little sister who had died far back in the days of his boyhood, for whom he had mourned passionately. She had been his constant companion, his little satellite, following him wherever he went, ready to do all he wished her to do, however much she might detest it herself, to essay tasks beyond her strength ; anything, everything, to win his good word, to keep up with him. Clasping Avis's chilly little hand in his it was as though Nell, dead these twenty years back, was beside him in the chilly sea-mist that was creeping up with the dying away of the wind at sunset. His hand tightened on hers with a tender proprietorship. Her foot knocked A MIDSUMMER ROSE roi against a projecting groyne, and she uttered a little cry of pain. “What is it, dear?” he asked, as tenderly as though it were the little ghost of long ago. She had struck herself rather sharply on the ankle-bone. Fortunately it was no worse than that. He found a seat and made her sit down. He had an impulse to take the poor little foot in his hand and chafe it, but he resisted it and stood by looking at her, the tenderness in his eyes hidden by the darkness while she recovered herself. Later she wanted some sea- weed to take back to London with her. He found her a piece clinging to the sea-wall, beautiful bulbous sea-weed which she could not help bursting between her fingers. She pressed her face into it, inhaling deep, sweet breaths of the sea- fragrance as they went home in the Pullman, he pretending to read his paper in a solemn aloofness as though he were a bachelor uncle of the girl whose beauty, enhanced by the elegant setting Messrs. Jay had given it, drew most male eyes and not a few women’s to follow it. She had been all of a sudden desperately anxious to get back to London. He had meditated a more leisurely return. They should have had tea at one of the big hotels. 102 A MIDSUMMER ROSE He enjoyed feeding her. She had a pretty, dainty way of eating ; and the gaiety of the big hotels and restaurants was something entirely new to her. She was such a babe in the wood. The shaded lights, the gilding, the flowers, the music, made Fairyland to her. But she would not wait. The chiming of four strokes on a town clock as they stood watching the foam break at their feet, had filled her with a sudden, piteous need of hurry. “ It is six hours since we heard how she was,” she said. “ Let us go back at once.” He satisfied her, hurrying back to the rail- way station as fast as they could go. “ You are not to think,” she said, as they got into the Pullman ; plenty of time after all, but he had hurried because he felt that she was unhappy till they were on their way — “ you are not to think that it has not been lovely. If the thought of her were not always there I should have been content to go on for ever. Only — I wonder if we ought to have left, seeing how ill she really is! Supposing a message were sent for us and we were not there ! ” He reminded her that there had been an excellent report that morning, so good that he had not felt justified in haunting the nursing- home as he had done yesterday. He went to A MIDSUMMER ROSE 103 the door of the car and calling a boy with his basket of newspapers and magazines selected a lavish bundle, which he took and laid beside her. He ordered a tea-basket. A flower- girl came along the platform with a basket of flowers. He selected a bunch of the ador- able little narcissi from the Riviera which prevent the spring in London in the days before Christmas. They met her eyes when she turned to the tea-basket ; and she dropped the seaweed to hold the delightful harbingers of spring to her lips and her eyes. She had certainly charming ways. She had grown as naturally as a flower and as beautifully. She made tea for both, and insisted on his enjoying his. Since he desired to please and distract her he made a feint of enjoying even the dry tea-basket cake, which forgetting to be sad she made him eat to the last crumb. She could be quietly merry with a kitten-like grace ; and she commanded him with the air of a dear, much-loved child. Grim and sleepy passengers by the Pullman looked their way and smiled in spite of the aloofness and drowsiness which fall upon the Englishman as soon as he embarks on a train journey. But in the midst of it she remembered. He had not wanted her to remember. “ Oh,” she said, half under her breath, with 104 A MIDSUMMER ROSE a soft piteousness. “ I ought not to laugh indeed. How can I be so hard-hearted as to laugh ? Where are we now ? ” He told her. They were no more than twenty minutes’ run from London. For the rest of the time her little face was rigidly controlled, as though tears might come at any moment* She turned the pages of a magazine. He knew she was not reading it ; only she had a serious politeness like an old-fashioned child’s which would not distress him more than she could help. He tried to read his Pall Mall ; but her trouble came between him and the world’s news. The twenty minutes seemed endless. He found himself thinking of those who made long journeys by land and sea to a dying bed. He imagined the thud of the screw, the pulse of the flying train, the leaden hours, as one wondered and wondered if one was going to be in time. At last — Victoria with all its lights. How glad he was 1 He was out of the train with all expedition and had selected with a sure eye the fastest horse on the rank, while the drivers he had passed over scowled at him. The night was coming on wet. The light from the arc-lamps and the shop-fronts turned the slanting sheets of rain to gold and silver. The wet pavements were pools of light. The A MIDSUMMER ROSE 105 steady London’crowd hurried along, umbrellaed, overcoated, with heads bent in the teeth of the wind. At last — the lit windows of the nursing-home. He lifted her out tenderly, taking her to the shelter of the porch before he paid the cabman. When he came back the door was just open- ing. The maid looked curiously at them as she showed them to the parlour. The little nurse came at once with an eclipsed face. “ You have come at last,” she said. “ She has been asking for you so often. She is very weak.” Something in their faces told that it was a sudden calamity. “ You haven’t had our telegram, then ?” she asked. “We sent one as soon as ever the change set in. She thought you might be away. Come, bear up, my dear, for her sake. You mustn’t fret or disturb her.” “I am all right,” Avis said, with a quiet heart-brokenness. “May I see her at once ? No ; we had no telegram. We were out of town.” Something in the fall of her voice told Bretherton with his quickened sympathies, that that day out of town which he had planned for her distraction would remain in her mind as an indelible grief. How heedlessly the hours had io 6 A MIDSUMMER ROSE passed during which the dying woman had held death at bay so that her failing eyes might see her child once more ! “You shall see her, my dear — you shall see her at once. And Mr. Bretherton too. She has asked particularly to see Mr. Bretherton.” They went up the stairs, under the heavy atmosphere of carbolic and chloroform, through which the flowers sent a thin appeal which was scarcely discernible. Going along the corridor Avis stumbled. Bretherton put a tender arm about her and supported her. The little nurse, who had long striven to acquire the mastery over her emotions which is supposed to be the requisite of a good nurse, coming behind them wiped away a surreptitious tear. The smile came after the tear as she saw Bretherton’s arm go round the girl. “After all,” she said to herself, “she won’t be alone in the world. And what a lovely gentle- man, to be sure ! ” The little nurse read a good many novels in her off-hours. For some time to come she would endow her favourite hero with Ralph Bretherton’s outward appearance. CHAPTER IX It was something Bretherton never forgot, the half hour or so during which he sat half con- cealed behind the curtain of Rose’s bed, while she lay with her face turned away from him and towards her little daughter, her eyes closed, her hand clinging feebly to the child’s, the darkness settling down minute by minute, the sands running out. She had spoken only a few words — a few words — for she was very weak. Avis knelt, her face hidden, her lips on the poor, wet, piteous hand with its feebly-fluttering fingers. Once or twice the little nurse came in and stood at the foot of the bed, watching Roses face for a second or two before going out of the room. She had whispered to Ralph that everything had been done, everything possible. Now there was only to let her die in peace. She was dying painlessly from the shock of the operation. The change had set in soon after they had called in the morning ; a telegram had been sent at once and all day Rose had been io8 A MIDSUMMER ROSE hoping for them while her strength failed. It seemed too cruel, though the little nurse rebuked him gently when he said so, the serenity of the spiritual woman shining behind her brown eyes. “Oh, sir, everything God sends is sent in love,” she said. “ Only we can’t understand it. God couldn’t be cruel.” He envied her her consolations. Looking across now at Avis’s bent head he wondered if she too had such consolations. Not a word had been said to indicate that she had any religion at all. Whatever people believed, he said to himself, they were wrong to send the young out defenceless against spiritual enemies and the common lot of suffering. Suddenly Rose turned her head his way and her fingers groped for something. He heard his name in a faint, exhausted whisper. “ What is it, dear ? ” he asked, inclining his ear to her lips. The piteousness of it ! This woman with the strange pallor upon her face, the difficult breathing, the closed eyes — Rose ! The Rose he remembered, brown-haired, blue- eyed and buxom, with something of the wildness of her Celtic blood to lend her an added charm and difference among the shy, demure English girls. This Rose ! “When it is over take her away.” She A MIDSUMMER ROSE 109 brought out the words feebly. “ Be good to her. I give her to you. I thank God who sent you to our help.” A week ago he had not known that Rose Bourne still lived. She had been an alluring memory of his boyhood ; and she had married a cut-and-dried person in Cuthbert Bourne and laughed at his boyish passion. And now — for the last few days he had been absorbed in her. At this moment his heart bled for her death and the child she must leave. He had the responsibility of her child. Rose's hand went towards the pillow, fumbled for something. Avis lifted her forlorn face and found what her mother wanted — a rosary-beads with a crucifix attached. The damp hand closed upon the crucifix. He saw the child stoop and kiss the hand and the crucifix together. He breathed a deep sigh of relief. That was much better. His poor attempts at consolation would not be needed. He went out of the room, leaving mother and daughter together. So Rose was a Roman Catholic. He remembered now that she had always had leanings that way. He remembered how long ago her High Church proclivities had scandalized the old-fashioned folk in the Lincolnshire parish. The little nurse met him in the corridor. no A MIDSUMMER ROSE She was accompanied by a tall man in the dress of a priest, with the face of an overgrown boy and eyes of startling blueness that looked at Bretherton from behind a pair of round glasses. The little nurse introduced them. Father Darley — Mr. Bretherton. As though she sus- pected that they wanted to talk she opened the door of a sitting-room for them. “This is one of our patients’ rooms,” she said. “ It is not occupied at present. No one will disturb you here.” “ Poor Mrs. Bourne has told me about your goodness, Mr. Bretherton,” the priest said, eyeing him narrowly. “ About little Avis. You have been very good, very generous. Not many men of your age would care to accept such a trust as Avis. Mrs. Bourne has absolute faith in you.” “ I had a little sister who died a good many years ago,” Bretherton said simply. ‘ c Avis recalls her to me. We shall stand in the relationship of ward and guardian. But I shall see in Avis the little sister I lost. Mrs. Bourne is justified in depending on me.” The priest’s face cleared ; it lost its inquisi- torial expression and became frank and kind. “ I saw Mrs. Bourne before the operation,” he said, “ while her mind was quite clear. She told me of your extraordinary generosity to her A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 1 1 and Avis, that you were willing to burden yourself with the child's future. You were old friends, I understand. Not many old friends would be so generous.” “ I confess I don’t feel the generosity,’’ Bretherton said, with a weary air. The death-bed he had just come from had left him with a lassitude of spirits that made him physi- cally tired. “ Perhaps you don’t know the circumstances. I am practically alone in the world. A considerable inheritance which I lost some years ago — it seemed for ever — has suddenly come back to me. I had planned my life on a modest scale, putting aside the ambitions of other men. I hardly know now how to begin again. Chance — or something greater — brought me face to face with Rose just at the hour of her greatest need. A help- less woman — who might have been my wife if she would — and her helpless child. Is there anything remarkable in my standing by them ? I have more money than at present I know what to do with.” “ I warned Mrs. Bourne that the arrange- ment was somewhat unusual — a man still young, and a beautiful young girl like Avis. People might talk. You will forgive my sug- gesting this. Rose Bourne and little Avis are my spiritual daughters.” I 12 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ 1 quite understand,” Ralph said, with the same weary air. “ Indeed, I am very glad that little Avis has a friend who can help her now as I cannot. I will tell you what I propose for Avis. For the present, at all events, I think she will be best at Honey wells in the charge of Mrs. Bourne’s old servant. I propose to make Avis a sufficient allowance for her to live upon. A little later, perhaps, she will take up her musical training again. She will always have Honeywells to fall back upon.” The priest held out his hand with a frank air of relief. “Thank you, Mr. Bretherton,” he said. “ You will do for Avis what I cannot do, being a poor member of an order. And you will permit me to be associated with you unofficially in your guardianship of Avis ? ” Bretherton took the hand and returned its warm pressure. “ I assure you that I shall feel very happy to be associated with you, Father Darley,” he said. “ What am I to have charge of a girl like Avis ? I should have felt my unaided responsibilities deeply. Together we shall do our best for her.” He was very glad of Father Darley’s help in the days that followed when but for the spiritual comfort Avis would have been uncom- forted. A MIDSUMMER ROSE ”3 There were a good many things Bretherton had to see to. The painful and dreary business of the funeral he was helped through by the priest, who officiated at the graveside in a little country cemetery within easy reach of London a few mornings later. Avis, and the elderly servant and Bretherton, were the only mourners. Immediately after the funeral was over, Avis was going down to Honeywells. Everything had been arranged for her. It was Bretherton s idea that in the country home which she loved so much there would be healing and rest for her bruised spirit. After the funeral was over they walked across the fields to the railway station, Bretherton and the priest. Avis, with Adams, and the little new dog, which he had sent her before he knew what was coming, in her arms, had driven round the road in one of the carriages. In the winter stillness of the fields where the robins and larks were singing, it was hard to believe that London was so near ; only the sides of the tree-trunks turned eastward were black with London smoke ; and the grass and the hedges had a soil if one touched them from the nearness of London. “ I always think the priest’s lot is the easiest after all,” Father Darley said, with a sidelong look at Bretherton. “ We make the great i A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 14 renunciation ; but we do not form these ties the snapping of which is so bitter. ,, It was not the first time his words had conveyed that he believed Bretherton to have been in love with Rose Bourne. A priest is surprised at nothing — he has so many strange experiences of human life — else Father Darley would have marvelled at a man like Bretherton retaining his boyish passion for poor, pre- maturely middle-aged Rose. It explained to the priest’s mind the Quixotism of Bretherton’s intentions towards Avis. Perhaps he saw a solution beyond that would be a happy one, recompensing the man for his long faithfulness, putting the girl’s future beyond question. They seemed as if they had known each other for long years instead of being new acquaintances. Of course a friendship grows in those hours of sorrow as it does not in happy days. “You have helped Avis through wonder- fully,” Bretherton said. “Poor child! It was an ordeal for her. But she would come.” “ She has faith and hope. It is a grateful heart. It will send out tendrils to lay hold on comfort. I always think the innocent have direct comfort from God Himself. There is nothing bitter where there is not sin.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE ” 5 - Ralph smiled, a smile of tenderness which lit up his face. “ Even her dog was a comfort,” he said. “ You noticed — how she gathered the little creature up in her arms.” “Yes, I noticed. We leave them — at Victoria? ” “ Yes ; Mrs. Adams will look after her on the journey. I have business to attend to.” “To be sure. You have been neglecting your own business during these sad days. You will be rewarded, Mr. Bretherton. Such kindness and helpfulness as yours does not go unrewarded.” “ My business this morning is to make Avis’s future safe. I might die. There are many chances I have to provide against. I am settling three hundred a year upon her. She won’t be able to alienate it. It is a small sum ; but with Honeywells it will put her beyond the chances. Her musical education will be another matter. It may be expensive — if she goes on with it as her mother thought. She may have to go abroad. I think we might trust her to that faithful watch-dog, Mrs. Adams.” They were in sight of the railway station now. Avis sat in a corner of the waiting- room, her veil down, the little dog still in her arms. They were yet in the country. The A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 1 6 station was what is called a halte because it lacks the appanages of a railway station — a station-master, porters, and all the rest of it. There was a smoky fire in the waiting-room ; on the table were a few tracts with pages torn out of them and a Bible which had evidently been handled by unclean fingers. The grate was full of the ashes and cinders of old fires. Evidently it was no one’s business to sweep or dust the halte waiting-room. But outside in the wide fields the larks were rising on every hand. The west wind blew, and there was a promise of spring in the air. Only one or two working-men waited at the halte with themselves for one of the infrequent trains. The priest had retired to read his Office. Bretherton went up to Avis. “ Come out in the sun, you poor little soul,” he said. “ Lift up that heavy veil. Do you think she could be happy knowing you were in the darkness ? ” He did not know how the words came. He had no experience in comforting such a sorrow, and would have anticipated nothing but a dumb helplessness if he were called upon to do so. Everything less than the strong spiritual com- fort which the priest could offer seemed to him so inadequate, so dreadfully banal. A MIDSUMMER ROSE n 7 She came with him obediently as a child, putting back the clinging veil from her tense and grief-worn face. He led her to the edge of the platform from which one looked over woods and pastures as yet safe from London. “ Oh ! ” she said ; and her face worked a little. “ She loved the larks.” Then she regained a pitiful composure. The little train was in sight. Man-like, he was grateful to her that she did not cry. CHAPTER X At his rooms he found a letter awaiting him, with the Nunsholme postmark, in the difficult handwriting of his cousins widow. “Dear Sir” — it began; he smiled at the form of address — “ I’m afraid I shall have to trouble you in the matter of the leese of Night- ingale Farm. It has run out. Mr. Pratt, the tenant, is a very good, poor man. I think we ought to deal generously with him. I believe I would be within my strict right in giving him the leese myself ; but I should like to consult you about it before writing to Mr. Vernon. I should not like to do these people a wrong. “ I am, your obedient, “ Lizzie Harding.” He smiled over the little illiteracies as he would not have done before he had seen his cousin’s widow, and remembered how he had judged them that other day. After all, he said to himself, all the fine ladies did it a hundred years A MIDSUMMER ROSE 119 ago. Indeed, there were a good many fine ladies of his acquaintance who could not be trusted to spell certain words correctly. The plain cream-laid note-paper had a not too-deep line of black, and the address plainly printed. “ Edward, perhaps, kept her from using a crest — that common blunder of women who ought to know better,” he commented in his own mind. Turning over the sheet he saw there was a postscript. “ If you could make it conveenient to come on Thursday I should send a carriage for you to the station. You could stay the night, if conveenient.” He thought he would not stay the night. It was her simplicity that asked him ; but, going down by the 1.30, he found at the luncheon table Mrs. Harding’s old father and mother. They came in and sat in high-backed chairs facing each other across the table — he a tall old peasant with silvery hair, soft as a child’s, above the dark eyes and the animated yet digni- fied face, a beard in which the black yet showed ; he was the wreck of what had obviously been a man of more than usual height and strength. It was plain to see from whence his daughter had derived her height and length of limb. He 120 A MIDSUMMER ROSE talked with a slow deliberation that did not prevent his having a good deal to say and saying it with a certain picturesqueness. He had the remains of rich colouring. Altogether a much more impressive personality than the little round-faced peasant woman his wife, who had cheeks like a winter russet and mild, faded blue eyes with which the lilac of her cap-ribbons went uncommonly well. He was glad they were not vulfar folk. “ Father and mother came to keep me company for a while,” Mrs. Harding explained in a slow, pleasant voice with rich musical notes in it. “They thought Ed be lonesome. It was very kind of them to leave their own little house where it’s so comfortable.” “ It’s very comfortable here, Lizzie,” said the old man, including Bastable in the conver- sation with a friendly smile. “Aren't we all friends ? ” Bastable bore it with a stoical air. It would have been rather a silent luncheon- table if Bretherton had not struck up a conver- sation with the old man, who was very willing to talk and had a good many interesting things to tell once he was started, upon his memories of fifty years ago. He sat with his great height leaning forward, his knotted hands on the table- cloth, his knife and fork tightly clasped in them pointing upwards, while he talked of the Corn A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 2 I Law days and the Chartist riots, and even burst into singing a verse of a song which chorused : “ They never can snatch The lucifer match From the hands of the starving poor ! ” “ I’ve seen forty stack-yards blazing in a night,” he said, “ and my word, but it were fine, it were ! ” “How you do run on, father!” his wife remarked, gazing at him with an air of admir- ing tolerance. After all, Bretherton discovered that he could stay the night. There were a good many things concerning the management of the estate which needed discussion between him and the widow, since she was good enough to consult him, and not pass him by for Freddy Vernon as she would be within her rights in doing. They talked in the library after lunch. The December day darkened early ; and Bastable came in and lit the lamps, threw another log on the fire, and drew down all the blinds. It was such a day of clinging mists and unbroken grey sky as one is glad to shut out. There was a writing-table near the fire with various papers upon it, pens and ink, sealing wax, and a couple of candles in silver candle- sticks. Bretherton sat down in a chair one side 122 A MIDSUMMER ROSE of the hearth while the widow, seated before the table, drew the papers towards her and turned them over looking for the one she wanted. He gazed round him at the beautiful room with its rich subdued glow of colour. The books were behind brass lattices, and the gilt and tooled backs, lit by the leaping flames of the fire, sent out rays of gold into the dimness of the room. The gilt and fretted ceiling, the deep Turkey carpet underfoot, the various precious bibelots scattered here and there, the Watts portrait of Edward Harding, painted thirty-five years ago, with its elusive grace of figure, its soft brilliant I colouring : the whole pleased his senses com- ing from the smallness and dimness of his rooms in town. “ If you will look at this, sir.” The voice of Mrs. Harding brought his thoughts back. A smile broke over his face once again. There was something quaint in her way of addressing him. “ This is Pratt’s lease, sir. You see, they have been on the estate for two hundred and fifty years. They ought to have a lease that would make them safe, no matter who comes in. I’m not saying anything against you, Mr. Ralph. I’m sure you’d deal with them fairly. Only they ought to be secured before that.” Bretherton turned and looked at her with the / A MIDSUMMER ROSE 123 lazy smile which a good many women had found irresistible. “ Don’t think of me in it,” he said. “ You’ll outlive me. Possibly my son may be the one whom Pratt will need to be protected against.” She blushed hotly over the dark richness of her face and the long smooth neck which had a golden whiteness. How good she looked ! What a woman, deep-chested, long-limbed, a woman to have heroic sons and clear-eyed daughters ! He wondered why she blushed, whether because the speech sounded indelicate to her or for some other reason. Her next words enlightened him. He was glad it was the other reason. There was something large and simple about her that forbade the idea of prudery. “Oh, sir,” she said quietly, “as though Pratt could need protection from any of the family ! ” He was grateful to her that she did not wear widow’s weeds. He wondered how she had had the courage to disregard the conventions. He would have thought that with her history her veil would have been the longest and thickest, her crape the deepest, obtainable. She wore black indeed, a dense, soft black, of some cling- ing stuff which he did not recognize. It was crepe-de-chine. ]24 A MIDSUMMER ROSE As though she had discovered his thoughts she said gently : “You won’t be thinking ill of me, sir, that I don’t wear widow’s weeds? It is by Edward’s wishes I go, sir. One of the last things he said to me was — ‘ Lizzie, don’t put on weeds for me. Don’t add another bit of shadow to this beautiful world where already there’s too much of shadow.’ I’d rather have put on the weeds for him, sir, but those were his exact words and I couldn’t disregard them, indeed I couldn’t.” The tears rushed to her eyes — they were eyes of grey-hazel, full of deep and quiet lights and the lashes were dark like her hair. He took up the lease and read it through, giving her time to recover herself. When he looked again her eyes were bright and her face yet quivered, but she had regained her self-control. “ So far as I can see,” he said, laying down the lease, “ there is no reason why Pratt shouldn’t have this lease renewed for all time. You know, you can give him a lease yourself for ninety-nine years.” “In ninety-nine years there would be it all to do again,” she said, with a quaint seriousness. “ My dear cousin ” — the words escaped his lips and it amused him to see how her eyes fell and the colour came to her cheeks — “ my dear cousin, in ninety-nine years it will not be our A MIDSUMMER ROSE I2 5 affair. Forgive the brutality of my reminding you.” “ Ah, but — supposing, sir, some one came in that was tempted to deal unfairly by the Pratts ? It would be better to guard against that, wouldn’t it ? ” There was something curiously gentle in the expression of her eyes, something slow and soothing in the movements of her voice. He said to himself that to be in the room with her was to breathe the air of the fields, to feel the gentle, wide silences, to hear the breathing of great, deep-chested animals in the dewy quiet- ness. Now in her way of looking at time it seemed to him that it was her kinship with the fields and the skies and the trees that made her account a century so little to her that she must consider what might happen when the century was over. “ I am quite willing to aid and abet you in giving Pratt a lease for ever. They ought all to be fixed in their farms, so long as they are honest and industrious and pay the rent.” “ Oh,” she said, “ I am so glad. I was afraid you wouldn’t think of it in that way.” “ There are the cottages at Loosestrife Corner,” she went on. “ Edward meant to have them pulled down and better ones put up in their stead. IPs a very unhealthy place. 126 A MIDSUMMER ROSE It’s so swampy — all those water- weeds about. They always have the sore throat because of the water from the pond. They strain it through muslin before they drink it, but a deal of stuff escapes into the glass. Dr. Diver, he did say it was poison the people were drinking. Then the school-house at Somerleigh. There ought to be a new roof to it. It has been very bad this winter with the snow coming in on the floor. Why, it was bad, sir, when I was at school there. Mr. Harding, you see, was too ill to look into things. Perhaps I understand more about them because I’ve suffered like the rest.” “We had better go and see the places to- morrow. Of course the estate must bear the expense. Your income will do no more than keep the house going as it ought to be kept. By the way ” — he had meant to write it ; now for some reason it felt easy to speak. She looked magnanimous, not as though she would make his apology difficult. “ By the way, Mrs. Harding, you were very generous to me. I confess I did not deserve so much generosity at your hands. You have made me ashamed.” She looked at him steadily, though her deep colour came and went. “If you misjudged me, sir,” she said, “you did no more than other people. They wronged A MIDSUMMER ROSE 127 me and him — they thought I married him for his money. I used to be angry with you, sir, because you hurt him. But, after all, it was no more than natural to think as you did. It was very hard on you. And any harsh thoughts you had of me weren’t enough to make me willing to do you an injustice. After all, what would I do with the money ? I’d be as happy — aye, and happier — nursing the poor. You don’t know how much nursing they need. I asked him to leave me nothing — I did, indeed — beyond providing for the old people. But he wouldn’t have it. God bless him ! he thought too much of me for that. He’d have the world see how he loved and respected me. But I’m sorry I must keep you out of Little- combe Hall.” “ My dear cousin,” said Bretherton softly, “ I don’t know how to answer you. You heap coals of fire on my head. You do, indeed.” “ Oh, I’m sorry, sir ! ” she said hastily. “ Never mind. I only meant that you were too good to me. One thing, my dear cousin — I may call you that, mayn’t I ? — you mustn’t call me ‘ sir,’ nor ‘ Mr. Ralph.’ It is not becoming from you to me.” “I’m very sorry.” She arrested the “sir” as it was slipping from her lips. “ What am I to call you, please ?” 128 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ You must call me ‘ Mr. Bretherton.’ Perhaps some day you might call me * Ralph ’ without the ‘ Mr.' ” “Thank you for telling me, Mr. Bretherton,” she said simply. “ I’m always learning. Mr. Harding was educating me. And perhaps I’ll — Ell learn in time.” Old Bastable, coming into the library where Ralph sat alone at night, Mrs. Harding having retired to rest at an early hour, stood by the fire when he had replenished it and spoke with the respectful familiarity of one who had known Mr. Ralph in short frocks. “ I’m very glad to see you back again, sir,” he said. “ Thank you, Bastable. I am very glad to be back again. I only wish that it was like old days, that the Squire was still with us.” Bastable shook his head slowly and sorrow- fully. “ You wouldn’t wish it, sir, not if you was to know how he suffered.” He made a step or two towards the door, then returned. “ You’ll excuse me, sir,” he said, “ but — I’m very glad you’re going to stand by Mrs. Harding. She was a good wife to the Squire, if ever woman was. He was happy with her for his wife, though he suffered. I knew no better than other people at first, sir. I never thought to A MIDSUMMER ROSE 129 stay on after the Squire’s marriage ; but, sir, he thought no more of her than she deserved. You’ll excuse my saying so, sir, being so attached to the family.” “ It’s quite right you should say it, Bastable, and it’s entirely to your credit.” “ And you’ll be coming and going at Little- combe Hall, sir ? The hunting’s better than it used to be. P’raps after Christmas, sir. Mrs. Harding — I don’t suppose she’ll hunt any more this season. But I’d like to see a bit of stir about the place. Giltraps is to let, sir, if you was to be thinking of a hunting- box.” Ah, Giltraps, with its maze of little rooms, part old, part new. Just old enough for picturesqueness and new enough for con- venience. He might do worse than take Giltraps. The county would be very friendly to him. His heart lifted at the thought of the winter mornings, with the red coats showing through the leafless hedgerows, the sleek backs of the horses, the riders jogging along, the horn sounding, the hounds straining at the leash. He might do much worse than take Giltraps. He said to himself that he was a natural countryman, although for so long he had lived in London. “ I might see Mr. Drummond about Giltraps K A MIDSUMMER ROSE 130 while I am here,” he said. “ I wasn’t thinking of hunting this year ; but — thank you for reminding me of Giltraps. There is really nothing at all to keep me in London after Christmas.” CHAPTER XI February found Bretherton in possession of Giltraps, a delightfully cheery little house, with its wide lawns and woodland path, its orchard, its pond, where an old half-rotting boat lay swaying in the bonds of the water-lily roots. It had given him a new interest, his having a house of his own. He had furnished it, was furnishing it by degrees with all manner of old things picked up at the neighbouring cottages and farmhouses. With cheerful paper on the walls, with old chintz curtains at the windows and covers on the chairs and sofas, with a good deal of cheerful white paint, Giltraps was a delightful abode. He had a couple of hunters in the stables, a trapper and an American sulky ; he confessed that motors did not attract him ; with his familiar books and pictures and bibelots from Lincoln’s Inn he was delightfully at home. He had given up his rooms in town. There was always a hotel when he wanted to stay in town. The excellent Dixon had accompanied 132 A MIDSUMMER ROSE him to Giltraps without a murmur, producing to Bretherton's surprise a Mrs. Dixon, a tall, dark woman of the upper-servant class who had been cook in a Lincolnshire house of seventeen servants. Dixon thought that he and Mrs. Dixon could run Giltraps so far as the house was concerned. There was also a child of six, whose existence Bretherton discovered by accident. When he had got over the discovery of Dixon as a man with a wife he had said half-jocosely : “No encumbrances, Dixon, I suppose ? ” To his amazement Dixons impassive servant's face had flushed. “ I’m very sorry, sir — there's a little 'un. She won’t intrude on you, of course, sir. Mrs. Dixon thought she might put her out with a cottager in the neighbourhood where we might see her sometimes, sir. There's a village handy, I daresay. She isn’t over-strong, sir. London don’t seem to have agreed with her. We've always wanted country for her, me and Mrs. Dixon." “ You needn’t send the child to the village, Dixon. There's plenty of room at Giltraps, though it looks a little place. There'd be plenty of room for all of us." “ Oh, sir ! " Dixon began to stammer. “ I never thought of the like — neither did Mrs, A MIDSUMMER ROSE i33 Dixon. You don’t know the places we was turned from before I came to you, because of the kid. The very mention of her — not that we asked to have her in the house — was enough. One place where Mrs. Dixon took a job, when she asked for an evening a week to go see the kid the old lady was downright horrified, said my missus had deceived her scandalous ! People do take on so about children. You don’t mean it really, sir, not that we’re to have her in the house with us?” “ Of course I mean it, Dixon.” “ Then my missus’ll be beside herself with joy. It’s not so nice, if you think about it, sir, sending the kid out to places crowded up with other children and very little room for any of them. We’ll try to repay you, sir, by faithful service.” Life ran very smoothly and easily at Giltraps. Mr. Trant had discovered for Ralph an ex- cellent groom, thrown out of place by the motor craze, who knew his work and seemed to fit into the peaceful life of Giltraps. It happened to be a fine open winter, with very little frost. There was hunting three days a week, and it was seldom interfered with by the weather. Bretherton returned to the country pursuits with zest. He was really a 134 A MIDSUMMER ROSE born countryman, and he had not been alto- gether content with the townsman’s pursuits. He enjoyed his own comfortable, pretty, well- ordered house, his own stables, his own horses, after the many years in which he had had only a pied-a-terre at Lincoln’s Inn and had shot other men’s preserves, hunted other men’s coverts, ridden other mens horses when it was not a question of a hired hack from a London livery-stable. “ It is all quite delightful,” said Mrs. Trant, who had assisted the gardener’s boy in pushing the Rev. Septimus in his bath-chair all the way to Giltraps to have tea with its new master. “ Quite charming ; but — where is the mistress ? There is everything here except the one thing which would make it perfect and complete.” “ Ah, my dear Mrs. Trant; the spectacle of the felicity which you give your husband set up for me long ago so high a standard of happiness in the married state that I confess it fills me with despair. I am becoming an old bachelor in sheer despair of ever attaining that ideal.” Mrs. Trant slapped him playfully on the cheek with the glove she held in her hand. “ You are no better than you were as a small boy in knickerbockers at the Vicarage when we called you ‘ Impudence ’ instead of A MIDSUMMER ROSE 135 1 Bretherton,’ ” she said. “Not but what I am glad to see it come back. You had grown too solemn for my taste. ” Freddy Vernon, who had driven over with Mrs. Harding from Littlecombe Hall, put in a word, his eyes sparkling in his fat, dark face. “You’ll have to explain the young person I came upon trotting after you so devotedly, Bretherton,” he said, “ or the county will insist that you already have the possession without which Mrs. Trant thinks Giltraps incomplete.” “Don’t be an ass, Vernon,” Bretherton said, in a sudden rage. He did not know why he minded. It was only Vernon’s way. “ Ah, Mr. Vernon means the little child belonging to your servants,” said Mrs. Trant. “ We are rather annoyed with you for spoiling them to the extent of letting them have the child in the house. It may give our people notions. Mrs. Lisle refused an excellent coachman the other day because, after she had engaged him, she discovered he had children. She said it was wicked of him to deceive her. He didn’t grumble, poor wretch — only said in a despairing voice : 4 This ain’t the first place, not by many, that I’ve lost along of having children.’ ” “ A literary man of my acquaintance,” put in Freddy Vernon, grinning, “has got into very A MIDSUMMER ROSE 136 ill odour with his neighbours because his cook’s little boy, with a very dirty face, follows him all over the place calling ‘ George ! George ! ’ as he has heard my friend’s wife do. These arrangements may lead to complications.” Mr. Trant put in a word about the motor- trailer he was going to buy ; and while the conversation took a new turn Bretherton glanced towards Mrs. Harding who was sitting, somewhat of an austere and lonely figure in her soft trailing blacks, a little way outside the circle. Her wide, black hat shaded the sweet- ness of her face. She had looked a little puzzled and vaguely distressed over Freddy Vernon’s remarks. She would never learn the commonplaces of such talk ; and as she sat there with something of the air of a big, beautiful child, looking from one to the other, Bretherton felt more annoyed than before with Freddy Vernon’s ways. The insinuation, the chuckle, the leer in Freddy’s eye; he anathe- matized Freddy as a little black beast who had never learnt proper respect for women. Mrs. Harding poured out the tea, Mrs. Trant excusing herself on the ground that the rheumatism in her joints made her too clumsy to handle Ralph’s old Worcester china. There was a shaded lamp on the table, for the rooms at Giltraps were low and not well-lit ; and the A MIDSUMMER ROSE i37 drawing-room was obscured by a shrubbery outside, from one of the trees of which the thrush was pouring his first spring song. Bretherton, handing the tea-cups for her, noticed her hands on which early hard work had left their mark. Sleeves of the beautiful lace which had been one of Edward Harding's hobbies hung over her hands. They were the hands of a woman who had worked hard in her time, not the soft, white hands he was used to ; and yet there was something beneficent about them — in their shape, in the way they moved among the tea-cups, ringless, the hands of a working-woman. He had discovered by this time that she talked very little in general company. Once or twice he had encountered her as he rode home late in the afternoon after a day’s hunting. He would come upon her riding by herself and would slacken his horse’s pace to ride with her. He had discovered that when he could win her to talk she had things to say. Her husband had been educating her during the five years they had been together ; and he had found the soil a fruitful one, although there were arts and accomplishments she would never catch up with. But she had a fresh, intelligent mind, and she had been observing all her days. He found that there was not A MIDSUMMER ROSE 138 much she did not know about the fields and trees, the birds and flowers ; about the lives of the class she had sprung from. All sorts of old stories and old traditions were laid away in her mind. She brought them out shyly as though they were not worth producing ; but when she found him interested she talked readily enough. Plainly she had forgiven him. They had talked of a great lady of the neighbourhood, Mrs. Forde of Little Ashby. Mrs. Forde, meeting him one morning in the hunting-field, had made a reference to Mrs. Harding. She and Ralph were very old friends. iC I’ve done my best to be civil to your cousin's widow," she said. “ But she simply won't respond. She don’t want us, my dear Ralph ; she has no use for us. To be sure, we all treated her as a creature when she married Mr. Harding. By the time we’d discovered she wasn’t a creature — imagine it, with her looks ! — she had discovered that she had no use for us.” “ Ah, I am sorry. I think you would have liked each other." He spoke as though he were not talking to Mrs. Forde of Little Ashby of the gipsy’s daughter who had gone into a sort of domestic service and married her employer. “We were all mistaken about Mrs. A MIDSUMMER ROSE 139 Harding. I am not sure if she forgives me, or if — she simply overlooks my former behaviour to her.” “Ah, that is it, my dear boy. She over- looks. She was quite civil to me when I called, but so unconscious that I could not make my apologies. She does a deal of good among the people about here.” He was interested. It had occurred to him to wonder how Mrs. Harding spent her time. “ She gives them what we don’t — personal service. You know, we’ve had no nurse. Simply couldn’t afford it ; and if one of our poor people fell ill, if the Gaddesdon nurse couldn’t be had, as she usually couldn’t — Gaddesdon wants all of her it can get — he or she either died or got well. Mrs. Harding has nursed them with her own hands. You know old Weaver, who has been bedridden these many years ; he was a soldier once. He has a hussy of a granddaughter who lives on his pension and neglects him. I called one day to see how the old man was. Your cousin- in-law was there. I don’t know what she had not been doing for him. When I saw her she had made his bed and got him settled comfort- ably. The cleverness with which she moved and turned him ! We couldn’t do it. He was grumbling because she’d made him cold, he 1 4 o A MIDSUMMER ROSE said. The inhumanity of those poor ! Tell her to come to see me. She’s got a nurse for the district now. I’ll help. We ought to have done it, we others. It is a disgrace to us that it should have been left to Mrs. Harding.” After tea Mrs. Trant would see the estate. The pale February sunshine yet lingered on the western side of the house. Freddy Vernon carried off Mrs. Trant to visit the pig. The animal, which had been introduced mainly to please Dixon, who was a born countryman and was eager for a farmery, afforded prodigious amusement to Freddy Vernon. He had a talent for humorous caricatures ; and he delighted in making sketches of Bretherton and the pig. Bretherton found himself alone with Mrs. Harding in the little walk between the holly- hedges, where the snowdrops were already gathering in thick clusters under the trees. He remembered Mrs. Forde’s message and delivered it. “ It is very kind of Mrs. Forde,” she said, in her soft, deliberate way. “They should have thought of it before. The babies used to die and the mothers. My own mother died when her second baby was born because there was no nurse and no doctor nearer than Gaddesdon. The neighbour women were A MIDSUMMER ROSE 141 kind, but they did not know much — so the mothers and babies died.” She turned her clear, somewhat mournful eyes upon him ; and the simplicity of the statement made it more poignant. ‘‘It was not right to leave them to unskilled nursing,” she said. “ There is an old woman with cancer at the ‘ Crooked Chimney.’ There was no one to do anything for her but her old husband till the nurse came.” He turned and looked at her with a sharp fear in his eyes and voice. “You wouldn’t . . . think ... of doing things for ... a case like that ? ” he said ; and in the light from the sinking sun he looked pale and disturbed. “ There were things I had to do for her before the nurse came,” she said. “ But — she is very self-reliant, old Sally Lane. I made the poultices by her directions but she would not let me apply them.” “ Ah ! one has to be grateful for small mercies. I wish I had the power to forbid your doing such things.” She looked at him in some wonder and he said to himself that she was positively beautiful. What if the nose were too thick to some peoples minds, the mouth too large, for strict canons of beauty. 142 A MIDSUMMER ROSE “ Her brow had not the right line : leant too much, Painters would say : they like the straight-up Greek. This seemed bent somewhat with an invisible crown Of martyr and saint : not such as art approves. And how the dark, deep orbs dwelt underneath, Looked out of such a sad, sweet heaven on me ! The lips, compressed a little, came forward too Careful for a whole world of sin and pain.” The lines of a poem he loved drifted into his mind. Looking at her sideways, with the light on her face, he realized not for the first time that his cousin had married a beautiful woman. CHAPTER XII Apart from the accidental meetings, they met often by design. She was very simple, very inexperienced, apart from her natural capacity ; and there were many things she wanted advice and help about, a man's advice and help. There was the whole settlement at Loosestrife Corner to be turned out-of-doors and the cottages rebuilc. There was to be a new water-supply and a new drainage. It was going to cost the estate a good deal, but the estate could bear it. There were architect’s plans, builder’s estimates to consider. Loosestrife Corner was the delight of artists. They were going to bring the wrath of the artists upon them. The delightful water- lilied pond, into which the graveyard up the hill out of sight drained ; the picturesque gabled cottages, pressed almost to the earth under the weight of years ; the old meeting-house in which Wesley had preached, with the school- house opening from it — all must go. They had to be replaced by something in which human beings could stand upright, in which the win- dows could open and the smoke go up the 144 A MIDSUMMER ROSE chimney instead of about the house, in which the floors should be water-tight and have a better foundation than the naked earth. As far as possible they must replace the old lichened and ancient beauty by something which would be beautiful in time. There was a to-do about the meeting-house, under the floors of which many dead lay in the vaults. Mrs. Harding showed a quite unex- pected firmness about it. The hot, long services with all the windows shut were poisonous in such a place. The anaemic children, the sallow, unhealthy women, the beer-soaking men, the twisted and racked old people — Mrs. Harding laid them, in part, at the doors of the poisonous chapel and the poisonous school. She tackled the Rev. Peter Jones, the pastor, who was very much opposed to the changes. “ If we cannot have the new meeting-house/' she said, finally, “ we shall move the whole village half a mile away. It would be much better further up the hill. It would take them away from the ‘Spotted Dog’ too. By and by we shall get the * Spotted Dog ’ into our own hands and run it decently. If we move the village we leave only you, Mr. Jones, and the ‘ Spotted Dog.' ” The pastor, devoted to his people but obsti- nate and old-fashioned, finally yielded with a A MIDSUMMER ROSE H5 groan. Lest he should change his mind and give more trouble the workmen began on the meeting-house. The architect, the son of a distinguished Nonconformist divine in London whose name was a shining one to the Rev. Peter Jones, had tried to convert him to the idea of something less barn-like than the ordinary chapel, but had not succeeded. The old man smelt popery in the first designs, which had to be considerably modified before he would accept them. At last he accepted a design of severe plainness which admitted plenty of light and air, as little ecclesiastical, as near a barn, as possible. “ After all,” said Mr. Holt, the architect, with a cheerful philosophy, “ a barn need not be an unbeautiful object once it has mellowed.” The houses were goingupas fast as possible. Meanwhile March set in wet and cold and the epidemics which had been hanging about Loosestrife Corner all the winter — it was never altogether free of them — became acute. There was an outbreak of diphtheria at Loosestrife Corner. The school was closed. It was usually closed about half the year which, said Mrs. Harding unsmilingly, was really the saving of the place. The diphtheria was of a somewhat virulent order. The new nurses time was fully L 146 A MIDSUMMER ROSE occupied with the many and constantly increas- ing cases. Dr. Davies, the hard-working young doctor of the district, had telegraphed all over the place for another nurse, without success so far. Meanwhile the business of birth and death went on much as usual. Mrs. Harding had consented to be banished from the infected houses because there were other places to which she must not run the risk of carrying infection. Bretherton walking through the woods one March morning, when at last it was sunny and there was a breath of spring, saw some distance ahead of him on the grassy track a figure which even at the distance he knew to be Mrs. Harding's. He hastened to get up with her. She had come out of a cottage which, buried in the very heart of the woods, was a long way from every place. It belonged to a carpenter on the estate, a delicate man with a young wife, pretty and fragile, whom Bretherton had occasionally seen as he walked through the wood. He had seen her about a week before washing clothes outside her door, whistling to her canary whose cage was hung in the cottage porch when- ever there was a glimpse of the sun. As he came nearer he saw that Mrs. Harding was standing resting her hand on the gate ; he imagined she had an air of being overwhelmed A MIDSUMMER ROSE i47 with some misfortune. He came quickly to her side. “ What is it ?” he asked. “ I thought at first, when you were far away, that you were Mercer, ” she said. “ Of course, when you came nearer I saw I had made a mistake. I have to tell him — what has happened in there. I must wait till he comes. The doctor has just gone. There is nothing more to be done.” “ What is it ? ” he asked again. A pro- found compassion for the drawn whiteness of her face had almost made him add “ dear.” But he pulled himself up in time. “ Mercers wife . . . ? That poor, pretty thing ? ” “ She died an hour ago. The doctor had sent him over to Gaddesdon for some things. He ought to be back soon. Ah — I must go back and comfort the baby.” He was aware of the thin, fretful crying of a young baby which had burst out while they spoke. She turned away to pass through the gate ; but he followed her. “ Don’t come in,” she said. “ It is too sad. Her life might have been saved if the doctor could have got here in time. He is run off his feet. There was no nurse — her hands are full — only a stupid, ignorant old woman.” Her eyes seemed to him to hold a mournful 148 A MIDSUMMER ROSE accusation, as though the class she was born in stood up and testified against his class. The poor, pretty young wife ! And poor Mercer ! The poor — God help them ! — had to bear such things. The wives of such men as he had all that skill and science could do to help them in their hour of need. For want of such help a poor man's wife must be sacrificed. “ I am coming with you,” he said, almost brusquely. “ I am not going to let you bear it alone.” She said nothing, only preceded him into the cottage with a hanging head. It was one of the picturesque cottages, not so bad as the old ones but admitting very little air and light. Though life depended on it you could get no more air than came through one little square of the diamond-paned windows which opened inwards. The lower room was very dark, must have been darker when the leaves were on the trees. Bretherton could see nothing on his first entry into the cottage, dazzled from the sunshine outside. Presently he saw. On a bed in the corner of the room lay a quiet form. A white sheet had been drawn over it and up to the chin. The face lay on the pillow with closed eyes, the pretty outline of cheek and chin, the little nose sharp against the window-light. He looked A MIDSUMMER ROSE 149 closer. The young lips smiled, as though they held a secret. There was no trace at all of anguish. Some one had smoothed the pillows and drawn back the fair hair, laying it in two long strands by the side of the cheeks. He could hardly believe her to be dead. The colour had not yet quite fled from the cheeks. There was no rigidity in the lines beneath the bed-clothes. He could have thought she slept. Turning about he was aware that the canary was singing gleefully against the crying of the new-born babe. Mrs. Harding had taken the child from the arms of the old woman who was the other occupant of the room. “ There ! there ! ” she said, holding it to a maternal breast. He watched her feed it, just a drop or two of something which was in a cup on the table. The old woman took the canary’s cage down from its hook and went away with it into another room, closing the door behind her. The thin, scrawny wails of the baby subsided. Mrs. Harding stood up, rocking it gently to and fro in her arms. He looked at her, the soft flowing lines of her figure, her tender gaze, the evident skill with which she soothed the baby. There was the beauty of motherhood in the little group of woman and child. As he stood watching her with a reverent gaze, as though he looked on something holy, the 1 5 o A MIDSUMMER ROSE garden-gate clicked. His Madonna turned and looked at him, a sudden terror blotting her air of benignant calm. “ He doesn't know,” she said piteously. “ He mustn't come in here without knowing.” She moved a step or two towards the door ; but Bretherton was there before her. “ I will do it,” he said. “ Why should you have all the painful things ? ” He moved out into the sunlight, closing the door behind him and her. Mercer was coming down the path, a drooped, weedy figure, its shoulders bent as under a perpetual burden. He was not alone. There was a little old woman with him, a decent body, with rosy apple cheeks and bright eyes, now somewhat tearful. She had hold of the man's arm. As he came he walked so heavily that he seemed to stumble. The man lifted his head and a dull recogni- tion came into his eyes. “ I’m to be pitied, sir, aren’t I ? What am I going to do without her ? A young baby too ! ” The little old woman helped him on towards the door. “You have me, George,” she said, “as long as you want me. I’m not a-past my work yet. And I always had a way with babies. It was given in to me that I had.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE iSi No two people, one would have said, could have been more unlike Mercer and his mother ; yet there was a likeness between them as she stood holding her son’s arm. “ The doctor told us, sir,” she went on. “ Poor George had come for me. ‘ Mother/ he says, 4 Lucy’s took mortal bad, and none with her but Mrs. Harding and old Granny Sykes.’ I just put on my bonnet and I came.” They went into the cottage. Standing in the porch beyond the open door Bretherton saw Mrs. Harding put the sleeping baby into the father’s arms. He stood looking down at it, dazed. The old woman was taking off her bonnet and cloak. He walked away towards the garden-gate and waited outside in the lane. He had not long to wait. Presently he heard again the click of the garden-gate, and, looking up, he saw her coming towards him. She looked chill and forlorn in her black attire. Usually she had such a warm, healthy colour that she could bear the blacks ; but now she looked frozen, inconsolable. They walked along for a while in silence. He noticed that she was trembling. They were in a glade of the wood where the trees had been thinned. A number of the felled trees lay on either side of the grassy path. He made her sit down and suddenly she covered her face I 5 2 A MIDSUMMER ROSE with her hands ; her shoulders began to heave quietly. She wept very quietly but it seemed very deeply. He saw the tears ran through her fingers and drop on to her lap. He waited, looking down at her. Her posi- tion showed him the smooth coils of her beautiful midnight hair where it lay on her neck. He wanted to comfort her, but he did not know how to set about it. Once or twice he put his hand gently on her shoulder. “ Dear ! ” he said, and again, “dear ! ” Something, glim- mering pale-yellow, caught his gaze between the felled tree-trunks — the first primrose of the year. He stooped and picked it and laid it in her lap. Presently she recovered herself and after a little while ventured to look at him. She had taken the primrose between her fingers and was looking at it with something of pleasure in her wet eyes. “ I had to cry,” she said simply. “ Eve been through a lot.” “ I know. Why shouldn't you cry ? It has done you good.” “ You are very kind,” she said, turning away her head. “ Men don’t like women to cry. They think it's foolish nonsense. I don't see why you should be so kind and look so sorry.” “ I’m not adamant, though I am a man.” A MIDSUMMER ROSE 153 “ Oh,” she said ; “you mean a heart of iron. My husband explained that to me. I used to read for him ; and when we came to a word I didn't understand he always explained it. He took a deal of trouble over me in those five years." She looked up at him from under the shadow of her big hat. Against its dark background the line of her cheek and throat were tender and spiritual. “ You are very kind to me," she said. “ I am glad you are kind. So would Edward have been. He always wanted us to be friends. I didn't mind about the others," she went on drearily. “ The ladies weren’t kind at first, though the gentle- men were. Afterwards, when they would have been kind, I didn't seem to care about it. I remembered how they did not see me, even ladies I'd been introduced to in the hunting- field. Once there was a sale of work at the Duchess of Frensham’s" — she broke off ab- ruptly. “ Never mind," she said ; “ it was only that they didn’t understand about my marriage. Of course it seemed bad to them. They couldn't know, could they ?” “ No ; I suppose they couldn’t." She looked up at him with a sudden shrewdness. “You are wondering what it was they did *54 A MIDSUMMER ROSE not know, Cousin Ralph,” she said. “ Well, I will tell you. It was why I married Edward, and he me. You see, I used to do everything for him, Cousin Ralph.” Her cheeks were suddenly suffused with colour. “ Well, I grew fond of him. I could not help it ? The men I’d been born and brought up among were very well in their way ; they weren’t like him ; I needn’t tell you.” “ No.” He remembered Edward Harding, a beautiful old man, whose heart was so young. He remembered to have heard it said of his cousin that his great fault lay in his desire to please every one. The speaker had said it with an insular hatred of fine manners, making the charge acrimonious. “ He married me because I was fond of him,” she said, her colour coming and going, while her eyes kept their brave, direct glance. “ I never meant to let him know. As for marry- ing him, I never thought of such a thing. I was content to wait on him and do his bidding and be always with him. Perhaps he’d never have known if he hadn’t spoken to me for . . . some one else. He’d promised . . . some one else . . . he’d speak for him. When he did that I couldn’t bear it and I began to cry. * What is it, Lizzie ? ’ he asked ; and he coaxed it out of me that I was heart-broken to think of A MIDSUMMER ROSE 155 him doing it and that I could never think of leaving him. That’s how it came about, Cousin Ralph. He never meant to do you any wrong, nor I either. It was more than ever I expected that he should make me his wife. I was happy doing everything for him to the end.” For a few seconds there was silence between them. Then she spoke again. “ You’ll be marrying one of these days,” she said. “ When you marry — I’d like, if it wasn’t going against him, to give up Littlecombe to you. Do you think it would be going against him ? ” Bretherton put a hand, lightly caressing, on her arm. “My dear cousin,” he said, “I know it is something I could not take from you ; and I think it would be going against him. I have no thought of marrying. If I had, there are other houses besides Littlecombe. And — please let me thank you for telling me so much. I must tell you how much I respect, how much I value such a confidence.” He stooped and took the hands lying in her lap into his, held them a second against his breast and then raised them to his lips. “ Believe me,” he said, “ that I am very glad Edward Harding had such happiness at last.” Her eyes, uplifted to his, were like wells of 156 A MIDSUMMER ROSE clear water. A good woman and Nature’s lady. No woman could be more than that. A second he held her hands in his, then laid them gently back again in her lap. A rustling of the undergrowth near them passed for no more than the movement of a rabbit or a squirrel in the woods. “ Edward always wanted you and me to be friends, Cousin Ralph,” she said. “ I can’t help thinking he’d be happier if he knew and hoping that he does know.” CHAPTER XIII He carried the remembrance of Lizzie Harding’s sweet and serious personality with him next day when he went on one of his occasional visits into Surrey to see how things fared with his ward. How he had misjudged her ! Her gentleness, her dignity, her transparent truth and honesty were in his mind as the train ran along by the back gardens of suburban London before getting out into green country. More than that. Some of her physical attributes were in his mind. She had a beautiful rounded figure, and her movements were very graceful. Her hair, parted in the centre, waved lightly on either side its division ; behind the ears the wave was as beautiful as the convolutions of a shell. To think that Edward Harding had picked her up out of the rough and hard life which she would have had to endure if she remained in her own class ! He remembered the figure beneath the sheet in the carpenter’s cottage yesterday. He thought of the women at i 5 8 A MIDSUMMER ROSE the cottage-doors and in the fields, old before their time with hard work and the bearing and rearing of children. Some of the peasant women he remembered, were not without nobility of look, without the remains of beauty under their roughened and coarsened exteriors. But not a woman of the class he had ever known had not looked her age, had not looked years older than a woman who had been tenderly cared for. He pondered upon Lizzie’s curious revelation about her feeling for Edward Harding. He remembered her face when she had told him. Well, he was very glad to have that rehabilita- tion of her. Any woman might have been dazzled by Edward, the finest of fine gentle- men ; and she had had the wit and the imagina- tion to be overwhelmed by the difference between him and the men of the class to which she belonged. But — love. That was not love in her calm and tender gaze ; at least, not the love she thought it was ; not the love between men and women, the one love. All else she might have had for Edward Harding, but not that. There was yet something of the sleeping goddess about her calm beauty. He said to himself, with a half-guilty feeling, that love had yet to be awakened in Lizzie Harding’s heart. He had been very faithful in his visits to A MIDSUMMER ROSE i59 Avis Bourne. Once or twice he and Father Darley had been to see her together. More often he had gone alone. She had always seemed very glad to see him, showing her pleasure in his coming as frankly as a child. He had usually come for lunch and left some time in the afternoon, spending two or three hours with Avis ; and the time had never lagged. Avis had quaintness and originality unspoilt by the education which often levels up or levels down the nature else original. She had an evident affection for and belief in himself which he would have been more or less of a man than he was not to respond to. When they went for their country walks together, climbing the hill over the beautiful valley through the woods which in this winter season they had pretty well to them- selves, she would chatter to him, full of a happy and cheerful confidence, her two hands clasped about his arm as though she had known and trusted him for years. They were very pleasant visits. In his thoughts of them Honeywells was always suffused with full sunshine. Often it had not been so, he knew, but then the roaring fires in the bright, simply furnished rooms had taken the place of sunshine. Avis’s openly expressed delight at seeing him had doubtless made for him a mental sunshine. There are some natures with which to give 1 60 A MIDSUMMER ROSE is to expand the heart, to cause it to overflow on the recipient of its bounties. Such a nature was Bretherton’s. It warmed him through and through to think how he had been enabled to save little Avis from the wretched life that would else have been hers. There was no talk yet of the musical education for her ; but it was to come. Avis, after all, was not yet nineteen. After the London life she hated she seemed to rest in the quiet country life as on a bed. By and by, when she had well rested, it would be time enough to talk about her musical educa- tion. Her guardian, as he called himself, was in no hurry to bid her be stirring. She sang for him as much as he would when he paid those visits, filling the house with the honeyed sweet- ness of her rich young voice. Father Darley was the one who had urged that Avis had had enough of lotus-eating, watching Ralph the while shrewdly out of the eyes which had so intimate a knowledge of the hidden heart of man. f( You don’t mean to keep her a Sleeping Beauty all her days, my dear fellow,” he had said to Bretherton the last time they had met. “ I ! Oh — it rests with herself. When she is ready for the career I shall do my best for her. She doesn’t seem to want to talk about it much. She seems very happy with her dog A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 6 1 and her flowers and books. Why should we trouble her — yet ? ” “ Because she is too solitary. The solitary life breeds discontent and an unwholesome inertia. She ought to have friends. How is it she has none ? ” “ Because she will have none. Her first visitors alarmed her, Mrs. Adams tells me. They asked her so many questions. The good woman was so indignant about it that she was quite ready with her 1 not at home ’ to future callers. By degrees the callers have given her up. I believe Mrs. Daubeny, the Vicar’s wife, made her way in and rated Avis half-humorously for not appearing at the parish church. I have seen Mrs. Daubeny, though I have not spoken to her. She is no bigot, I think, and of course she did not know that Avis was a Catholic. You might take her for a drab person if you were insensible to the glint in her eye and the jest that hides at the corners of her demure mouth. I’m sorry Avis wouldn’t make a friend of Mrs. Daubeny. But, as a matter of fact, she has had a bad time. I think she has not quite recovered yet. She leads a most healthy life, always out-of-doors. Let her be, most excellent spiritual father.” Father Darley had laughed. “As you will,” he said. “After all, you M i 62 A MIDSUMMER ROSE have a right to be heard. Only — Avis will listen to you. Has it not struck you that she will not listen to many people ? Don’t let her go on leading an aimless life till she wakes up some day and discovers that she is not fit for any other.” “ At nineteen ! Are you not looking a long way ahead ? ” “ They are the seeding years. I stick to it that she is too solitary. With another kind of life she might marry and marry well. She is a charming child. Marriage is better for a woman than a career.” Again the shrewd kindly eyes had narrowed themselves, dwelling on Bretherton’s face. “ Oh, marriage! We needn’t think of that yet, either. What an odd thing it is that you celibates are so fond of prescribing matrimony for other people ! ” With that they had been on the edge of parting, but the priest had turned back to say : “ Let me know when you are running down to Honey wells next and I will see if I can accompany you.” It happened to be Lent now and Bretherton had gathered from the newspapers that Father Darley was preaching a course of sermons at Forest Street; he had said to himself that it was of no use to ask the priest’s company, A MIDSUMMER ROSE 163 pleasant as it would have been. So he had not troubled the busy man with an intimation which would have entailed an answering letter. It was a mild, sweet February day ; and now that the train had left London behind and was running through one of the sweetest of Surrey valleys Bretherton’s mind became attuned to a placid content. The pastures, flooded with the early sun, were full of bleating sheep and Iambs. The thrushes were singing sweetly in the bare coppices ; and overhead there was the dappled sky of February, full of broken lights, little hints of gold amid the grey. It was going to be a pleasant day. Mrs. Adams was an excellent cook and knew how to serve a dainty meal with anybody ; perhaps if she had not been Bretherton might have overlooked it, sitting with Avis in the pleasant room to a dainty luncheon-table which he felt sure the girl’s own hands had decked and made charming. He cast his eye lazily to the hill which had just come into view. He wondered if he would have the energy to climb it with Avis after lunch, to survey from its summit the many counties it overlooked before coming back to tea and the walk to the railway station in the dusk when the blackbirds sang their sweetest. Now they were running into the little railway station. He had forbidden Avis to meet 164 A MIDSUMMER ROSE him there. She had come once and it had been borne in upon him that it made people smile at each other to see her eager greeting. A carriage-full of women had passed them by as they walked, Avis with a hand through his arm, her hair blown about her face by the wind as she laughed and chattered in his ear. She was so unconscious that the world might have only held her and himself. But he had been aware of the interested glances of the occupants of the carriage. Although he missed some- thing in not finding Avis looking eagerly from one window of the train to the other for his face and in the pleasant walk to Honey wells which went straight through the heart of a wood, he had not allowed her to meet him since ; and she had obeyed him without hesitation, like a dear, tractable child. Mrs. Adams would wait on them at lunch and beam soberly at them as though they were both her children. The woman had con- ceived an inordinate admiration for Bretherton. Some of her sayings concerning him were gaily retailed to him by Avis from time to time. He had said that any mere mortal must be embarrassed by having such attributes given to him ; the pedestal on which the good woman had placed him was a giddy one indeed. Repeating Adams’s praises Avis had A MIDSUMMER ROSE 165 a merry malice which made her prettier than ever. The last time Bretherton had been with her she had laughed and mocked at him delicately till he and she were in the highest good spirits. Springing out of the slow train with a joyous anticipation in his face and mind of the walk through the wood and the few hours with Avis, he was unpleasantly pulled up by a familiar voice shouting his name. He was slapped on the back. He hated to be slapped on the back. Freddy Vernon ! Confound Vernon ! why must he turn up just now ? He faced round about, his expression suddenly morose. “ Ah, Vernon ! ” he said. “You don't seem a bit glad to see me, old chap. We came down by the same train. Caught sight of you at Victoria, just as you left the bookstall with half the stall ; under your arm. I say — you do go in for light literature. By the way, allow me to introduce my friend, Mr. James Douglas. Can we give you a lift ? We’re on our way to the Vicarage. Daubeny used to coach me. He’s coaching Jim now. I know every inch of the place about here.” Bretherton nodded to the freckled, plain- looking, yet attractive boy in shabby homespuns, A MIDSUMMER ROSE 1 66 who was looking at him out of honest grey eyes with perhaps more interest than the object of it could well account for. He was most uneasily conscious of the nature of the bundle he had taken from the bookstall — The Queen , the Lady's Realm y the Ladies' Field . No one could suppose he was interested in these, nor for the matter of that in the half-dozen story- magazines which went with them. Also there was a very big box bearing the magic name of Fuller companioning the magazines. Brether- ton wished he had got them to pack it up ; but there it was, the name full in view ; and Vernon’s beady black eyes — confound them !— had taken in the full significance of the name. “No, thank you,” Bretherton said somewhat ungraciously. “ I prefer to walk. After that confoundedly slow train. . . .” “ Yes, didn’t it crawl ? There are better ones in the afternoon.” “ Too late for me. I’ve got to go back this evening — the 6.15. I’ve to see a ward of mine.” To his annoyance he felt that he looked embarrassed and that Vernon was eyeing him with a steadily growing amusement. The angry colour mounted to his forehead. What the deuce did Vernon mean by looking at him like that ? A MIDSUMMER ROSE 167