 Chapter 1 of Sons of Fire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braden. Chapter 1, A Striking Likeness. The meat was at the pig-in whistle at Melbury, nine miles off, rather near meat compared with the usual appointments of the South Serum hounds. The Osler remarked as Alan Kauru mounted a hired hunter in the yard of the Duke's head, chief and indeed only possible in for a gentleman to put up at in the little village of Matjim, a small but prosperous hamlet lying in a hollow of the hills between Zollsbury and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon and he was saluting forth in the crisp March morning on an unknown horse in an unfamiliar country to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had heard for the first time that day. Can he jump as Alan as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding bay, not a bad kind of horse by any means but with that shabby, under groomed and overworked appearance common to hirelings. Canty, sir, there ain't a better leper in Wiltshire and as clever as a cat we had a lady staying here in the winter, Mrs. Colonel Parkin, brought two acts of her own besides the Colonel's two hunters and like this ear horse better than any of them. She was right down mashed on him as the young gents say. I wonder if she didn't buy him, said Alan. She couldn't, sir. Money wouldn't buy such a hunter as this off my master. He's a fortune to us. I hope I may be of Mrs. Parkin's opinion when I come home, said Alan. Now then, Oslo, just tell me which way I am to ride to get to the pagan whistle by eleven o'clock. The Oslo gave elaborate instructions, a public house here, an accommodation lane there, a common to cross, a cops to skirt, three villages, one church, a post office, and several crossroads. You're safe to fall in with company before you get there, concluded the Oslo, whisking a bit of straw out of the bays, off hind hoof, and I him critically previous to departure. If I don't, I doubt if I ever shall get there, said Alan as he rode out of the yard. He was a stranger, a match him, a foreigner, as the villagers called such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before, knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs, ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves, subserviencies, gods, or devils. And yet, henceforth, he was to be closely allied with match him for a certain bachelor uncle had lately died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village, a relative with whom Alan Kauru had held slightest commune, lunching or dining with him perhaps once in a summer at an odd family hotel in Albemarle Street, never honored by so much as a hint at an invitation to his rural retreat and not cherishing any expectation of a legacy, much less the bequest of all the gentlemen's worldly possessions, comprising a snug, well-built house in pretty and spacious grounds with good and ample stabbling, and with farms and homesteads covering something like 1500 acres and producing an income of a little over 2,000 a year. It need hardly be stated that Alan Kauru was not a poor man when this unexpected property fell into his lap, that children of this world are rarely false to the gospel precept to every one which hath shall be given. Alan's father had changed his name ten years before, from Bearsport to Kauru, upon his succession to a respectable estate in Suffolk, and inheritance from his maternal grandfather, old squire Kauru, of Van Dyke Hall Millfield. Alan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his maternal uncle, Admiral the Honorable George Darnley, took it into his head to leave him his wheelchair property. But this bequest raised him at once to independence and altogether dispense with any further care about that gentleman-like profession, the bar, which had so far repaid Mr. Kauru's collegiate studies, labors, outlays, and solicitude by fees, amounting in all to seven pounds, seven shillings, which some represented the gross earnings of three years. So riding along the rustic high road in the clear morning air under a sky of brightest sapphire, just gently flecked with ragged cloudlets of fleecy white, Alan Kauru told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers and reading law and waiting for briefs, and that it was a good thing to be a country gentleman, to have his own house and his own stable, not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other man were his very father, not to be told after every stiffish day across country that he had done for the gray or that the chestnuts legs had filled as never horses legs fill before, nor to hear any other approachable utterances of an old and privileged steadgroom who knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his stable would be his own kingdom and he would reign there, absolute and unquestioned. He could choose his own horses and they should be good ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons and looked upon all animals of his fathers buying as screws and duffers. His own stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old stables at home, where horses were kept in chairs because they were familiar friends rather than with a view to locomotion. His stead and his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms have been bred upon another planet. He loved field sports, he felt that it was in him to make a model squire, albeit 2000 a year was not a large revenue in these days of elegant living and continental holidays and eclectic tastes. He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnley had made a wise selection in choosing him, Alan Carew, to inherit his wheelchair estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst. He had gone over house and stables and had found all things so well planned and in such perfect order that he was assailed by none of those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve, which often inaugurate the ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious stable yard. There were two packs with an easy reach of match them to say nothing of packs accessible by rail and he would naturally want more hunters than had suffice for the old sailor who had jogged out on his clever cob two or three times a week and had gone home early after artful riding and waiting about the lanes or to lure of the great bare hills and in snug corners. Where a profound knowledge of the country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Alan's hunting stable would be on a very different footing and although Beechhurst provided ample accommodations for a stud of eight, Alan told himself that one of his first duties would be to build loose boxes. I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend, he thought. The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage and meaning honestly to do it. Alan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst. Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty White House, low and long with the veranda running all along the southern front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation. Against the swelling shoulder of a broad down facing southwest and looking over garden and shrubbery and across the stretch of common, that lay sloping between Beechhurst and the high road and gave a dignified aloofness to the situation, seclusion without dullness, a house and grounds remote but not buried or hidden. Nothing menorial about it, mused Alan, but it certainly looks a gentleman's place. He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He would have liked two dirt chimneys, paneled walls, and a family ghost. He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the soil, had been lords of the manner centuries and centuries ago when Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods and when the gestures bells mixed with the merry music of hawken hound. Admiral Darnley, so far as Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in China speculating in tea gardens and other property while pursuing his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from active service soon after the Chinese war. A seabee and a rich man had bought Beechhurst to bargain during a period of depression and had settled down in Yandere Pretty White House with a small but admirable establishment. Each member thereof a pearl of price among servants and had there spent the tranquil, even tide of an honorable and consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he had always felt himself rich. As a married man, he might often have felt himself poor. He had heard Alan at five and twenty declare that he had done with the romance of life, and that he too meant to be a bachelor, and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the admiral's choice of an heir. Alan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind. You are in a better position than your father was at your age, said Lady Emily Carew on her son's accession to fortune. I hope you will marry well and soon. There was no thought of woman's love or of married bliss in Alan Carew's mind as he rode through the lanes and over a common and across a broad stretch of open down to the pig and whistle. He was full not of his inner self but of the outer world around and about him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast, wondering what his new neighbors were like and how they would receive him. I wonder whether the South Serum is a hospitable hunt or whether the members are a surly lot and look upon every stranger as a sponge and an interloper he mused. He had ridden alone for about half the way when a man in grey fustion and leather gators who looked like a small tenant farmer, trotted past him, turned and stared at him with obvious astonishment, touched his hat and rode on after a few words of greeting which were lost in the clatter of hoofs. He had ridden right so far by the aid of memory, he now followed the man in grey and taking care to keep this pioneer in view, duly arrived at a small rustic inn standing upon high ground and overlooking an undulating sweep of woodland and common marsh and plain, one of those picturesque oases which diversified the breadth of winds swept down. The inn was an isolated building of the few laborers' cottages within reach being hidden by a turn of the road. Hounds and hunt servants were clustered on a leather green on the other side of the road but there was no one else upon the ground. Allen looked at his watch and found that it was ten minutes to eleven. The man in grey had dismounted from his service of O'Cobb and was standing on the green sword talking to the huntsman. Huntsman and whip had taken off their caps to Allen as he rode up and it seemed to him that there was at once more respect and more friendliness in the salutation than a stranger usually receives, above all a stranger in heathercloth and butcher boots and not in the orthodox pink and tops. The man in grey and the hunts servants were evidently talking of him as he sat solitary in front of the inn, their furtive glances in his direction fully indicated that he was the subject of their discourse. They take a curious interest in strangers in these parts, thought Allen, two minutes afterwards a stout man with a weather-beaten red face showing above a weather-beaten red coat rode up with two other men evidently the master and his satellites. Hello, cried the jovial man. What the deuce brings you back so much sooner than Mrs. Warnock expected you. She told me there was no chance of her seeing you for the next year. When did you arrive? I never heard a word about it. The master's broad, doe-skin palm was extended to Allen in the most cordial way and the master's broad red face irradiated kindliest feelings. You were under a misapprehension, sir, said Allen, smiling at the frank, friendly face, amused at the eager, repetitive speech which had made it impossible for him to interrupt the speaker. I've never yet enjoyed the privilege of a day with the South Serum, and this is my first appearance in your neighborhood. And you ain't Jeffrey Warnock, exclaimed the master, utterly discomfited. My name is Kuru. Ah, your voice is different. I should have known you were not Jeff if I had heard you speak. And now, of course, when one looks deliberately, there is a difference, a difference which would be more marked, I dare say, if Warnock were here. Are you a relation of Warnock's? I never heard the name of Warnock in my life until I heard it from you. Well, I'm dashed, cried the master, suppressing a stronger word as premature so early in the day. Did you see the likeness, champion? Asked the master, appealing to one of his salolites. Of course I did, replied Captain Champion. I was just as much under a delusion as you were, and yet Mr. Kuru's features are not the same as Warnock's, and his eyes are a different color. It's the outlook, the expression, the character in the face that is so like our friends, and I think that kind of likeness impresses one more than mere form and outline. Hang me if I know anything about it, except that I took one man for the other, said the master bluntly. Well, Mr. Kuru, I hope you will excuse my blunder and that we may be able to show you some sport on your first date in our country. We'll draw, well outs, wood, hamper, and if we don't find there, we'll go on to Holiday Hill. Hounds and servants went off merrily across the down and dipped into a winding lane. A good many horsemen had been up by this time, with half a dozen ladies among them. Some skirmished across the fields, others crowded the lane, and in this ladder, contingent rode the master with his hounds in front of him and Kuru at his side. Are you staying in the neighborhood, he asked, or did you come by rail this morning? Along, right from Machum Road Station, if you did. I am staying at the Duke's Head at Machum, but I only arrived yesterday. I'm going to settle in your neighborhood. Indeed, have you bought a place? No. Ah, going to rent one? Wiser perhaps, till you see how you like this part of the country. I've had a place left me by an uncle, Admiral Darnley. What, are you Darnley's heir? Yes, by the by, I heard that Beechhurst was left to Mr. Kuru, but I have a bad memory for names, so you have got Beechhurst, have you? I congratulate you, a charming place, compact, snug, warm, and in perfect order, stables a trifle small perhaps for a hunting man. I'm going to extend them, said Allen, with surprise pride. Then you're going to do the right thing, so the only part in which Beechhurst falls short of perfection is in the stables. Capital stables as far as they go, but it isn't far enough for a man who wants to hunt five days a week and accommodate his hunting friends. Besides, the owner of Beechhurst ought to be in a position to take the hounds at a push. I hope it may be long before that push comes, said Allen. Ah, you're very kind, but I'm not so young as I was once, nor so rich as I was once. And the preacher says there's a time for all things. My time has very nearly passed, and your time is coming, Mr. Kuru. When do you establish yourself at Beechhurst? I'm going back to London tomorrow to settle a few matters and perhaps have a look round at Titer Sauce, and I hope to be at Beechhurst in less than a fortnight. I shall do myself the pleasure of calling upon you, any wife. I'm still in the endable position. My uncle enjoyed till his death. A bachelor? Ah, that won't last long. It's all very well for a sun-dried old sailor to keep the fair sex at arm's length. But you won't be able to do it, Mr. Kuru. I give you till our next hunt ball for a free man. You've no notion what complexions our Wiltshire women have. Devon can't beat him, or what a lot of pretty girls there are within a 15-mile drive of match him. I look forward with a thrill of mingled rapture and apprehension to your next hunt ball. It'll be here before you know where you are. We have postponed it till the 1st of May. We shall kill Art May Fox on the 30th of April, and dance on his grave on the 1st. I shall be there, my lord, said Alan, as Lord Hanbury galloped off after his huntsman, who had just put the hounds into the covert. A whimper proclaimed that there was something on foot five minutes afterwards, and the business of the day began, a good each day, and a long one, two foxes run to earth, and one killed on the edge of twilight. It was seven o'clock when Alan Kuru arrived at the duke's head, hungry and thirsty, and not a little bored by having been obliged to explain to various people that he was no relation to Geoffrey Warnock. He had been too much bored at this enforced reiteration to make any inquiries about this double of his in the course of the day, or during the long homeward ride, but when he had taken the edge off his appetite in his cozy sitting room at the duke's head, he began to question the waiter, as he trifled with the customary hotel tart, a hollow cavern of short crust enclosing a scanty modicum of bottled gooseberries. Do you know Mr. Warnock? Yes, sir, know him uncommonly well. Wonderful likeness between him and you, sir, thought you was him till I heard you speak. Our voices are different, I am told. Yes, sir, there's a difference. It ain't much, but it's just enough to make one doubtful like. Your voice is deeper and stronger than his. And then, after the first glance, one can see it ain't the same face. Pursue the waiter thoughtfully. You've got such a look of him. You see, sir, that's what it is. One don't stop to think of the shape of a nose or a chin. It's the look that catches the eye. I suppose that's what people means by a speaking countenance, sir. Added the waiter, garrulous, but not disrespectful. As Mr. Warnock can eat land in the county, asked Allen. Land, sir? Yes, sir, replied the waiter with a touch of wonder at being asked such a question. Mr. Warnock is Lord of the Manor of Discombe, sir, a very large estate, and a final house added to by Mr. Warnock's grandfather. The old part is very old, sir, and the new part is very fine and picturesque, and the gardens are celebrated in these parts, sir, quite a show place, but Mrs. Warnock never allows it to be shown. She lives very secluded, don't give no entertainment to herself, nor visit scarce anywheres. They do say that she was not right in her mind for some years after Mr. Warnock's birth, but that's six and 20 years ago, and there may not be any truth in the report. Ganga, Zorla, sir, or Cheddar? Neither thanks are the Warnock's an old family, very old family, sir. Oh, Saxon name came over with Edward the Confessor, and it was Mrs. Warnock. Ah, there's a little itch there, sir. Nobody knows who Mrs. Warnock was or where she came from, and they do say she wasn't county, which is a pity, seeing that the Warnock's had always married county, prior to that marriage added the raider proud of his concluding phrase. Mr. Warnock is abroad to understand where. In just, sir, cavalry regiment, the 18th South Serum Lancers, strained for a man owning so fine a property to go into the army. Well, sir, don't you see the life at the manner must have been a very dull one for a young gentleman. No entertainments, no staying company. Mrs. Warnock, she don't care for nothing but music. And after all, sir, music ain't everything to a young man. He hunted and he hunted and he hunted. From the time he had legs to cross a pony, wherever there was hounds to be followed, he went with them. But hunting ain't everything in life, and it don't last long added the raider philosophically. Mrs. Warnock, as Dourer should have withdrawn to her Dour house and left the young man free to be as jovial as he liked of the manner. Ah, that may come to pass when he marries, sir, but not before. Mr. Warnock is a devoted son. He'd be the last to turn his mother out of doors, and he's almost as keen on music as his mother, I've heard say. Plays the fiddle just like a professional and the organ. Well, side Karoo, having heard all he wanted to hear, I bear no grudge against Mr. Jeffrey Warnock, because he happens to resemble me, but I wish with all my heart that he could have made it convenient to live in any other neighborhood than that in which my lot is cast. That will do, waiter, I don't want any more wine. You may clear the table and bring me some tea at nine o'clock. The waiter cleared the table in a leisurely way, made up the fire also in a leisurely way, and contrived to spend a quarter of an hour upon work that might have been done in five minutes. But Allen questioned him no further. He flung himself back in an easy chair with his slipper feet upon the fender and meditated with closed eyes. Yes, it was a board, a decided board, to have a double in the neighborhood, a double richer, more important, and altogether better place than himself, a double in a Lancer regiment. There is at once chic and attractiveness in a cavalry soldier, a double who owned just the kind to find old, menorial estate, fine old, menorial mansion which he, Allen, would have liked to possess. Beechhurst might be a snug little property, the house might be perfection, as Lord Hammond Barrie had a bird, but when a house with that caliber is said to be perfect, the adjective relic means anything more than a good kitchen and a convenient butters pantry, roomy cellars and a well-planned staircase. Whereas to praise a tutor at Manor House, implies that it contains a paneled hall and a spacious ballroom, a library with a groin roof and a music gallery in the dining room. After hearing of Warnock's old house built when the fight at Bosworth was fresh in the memories of men and amplified by successive generations, Allen felt that Beechhurst was distinctly middle-class and that his sailor uncle must have been a poor creature to have found pride and pleasure in such a cockney paradise. He jumped up out of his easy chair, shook himself and laughed, allowed at his own pettiness, what an envious brute I am, he said to himself, I dare say when Warnock comes home I shall find him a decent fellow and we shall get to be good friends. I do, I'll tell him how I was gnawed with envy of his better fortune before ever I saw his face. In the chapter one, chapter two of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Braden, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Allen Carew's People Allen Carew spent the best part of the following day at Beechhurst that are pleased with his inheritance than he would confess even to himself. The Admiral's Chinese experiences had not been without tangible result. The hall was decorated with curios whose value their present possessor could only guess and if the greater part of the house was prim and commonplace there was one room which was both Hanson and original. This was the Admiral's smoking room and library, a spacious apartment which looked as if it had been added to the original structure and which was built on the model of a Mandarin's reception room. Yes, on the whole, Allen was inclined to think his lot had fallen on a pleasant heritage. He went up to town in good spirits, spent ten days in looking at hunting studs at Tattersalls and made his modest selection with care and prudence, content to start his stable with a stud of four good hunters, a cart horse, a pony to fetch and carry, two grooms and a stable help. The all-important business of the stable concluded he went back to Suffolk to spend Easter in the bosom of his family and to tell his father what he had done. There was perfect harmony of feeling and frankest confidence between father and son and the son's regard for the father was all the stronger because under that quiet and somewhat languid bearing Allen suspected hidden depths. Of the history of his father's youth or the history of his father's heart the son knew nothing. Yet fondly as he loved his mother the excellent and popular Lady Emily he had a shrewd suspicion that she was not the kind of woman to have won his father's heart in the days when love means romance rather than reason. That she possessed her husband's warm affection now he the son was fully assured but he was equally assured that the alliance had been passionless a union of two honorable minds rather than of two loving hearts. There was that in his father's manner of life which to Allen's mind told of a youth overshadowed by some unhappy experience and a word dropped down then in the father's talk of his son's prospects and hopes a hint of sigh had suggested an unfortunate love affair. His mother was more communicative and had told her son frankly that she was not his father's first love. You remember your grandmother Allen she said yes Allen remembered her distinctly an elderly woman dressed in some rich silken fabric always black with a silver chattelain at her side on which their hung as old enameled watch that he loved to look at a tall slender figure a thin aquiline countenance with silvery hair arrayed in feathery curls under a hoonatun cap she had been always kind to him but no kindness could dispel the awe which she inspired. I used to dream of her he said had she a frightening voice do you think she was mixed up in most of my childish nightmares poor Allen laughed his mother she was an excellent woman but she loved to command and one can't command affection not even the affection of a child it was she who made your father marry me he liked me and I liked him and we had been play fellas but we should never have thought of marrying if your grandmother had not in a manner insisted upon it she told George that I was deeply in love with him and she told me that George was devoted to me and after all she went on with a comfortable sigh it has answered very well I don't think we could possibly be fonder of our home or of each other than we are and your father has his books and his shooting and fishing and I have my farm and my schools and with a sudden gush of tenderness we both have you you ought to be fond of us Allen you are the link that makes us one in heart and mind Allen was fond of them and he loved them in their indulgence and he had given them love without stint but it may be that he loved the somewhat silent and reserved father with a profounder affection then he gave to the open hearted and loquacious mother that vague consciousness of a secret in his father's life of sorrows unforgotten but never told had evoked the son's warmest sympathy all that Allen had ever felt he had felt for his father it is not to be supposed that he had reached five and twenty without some commerce with Cupid but his loves had been only passing fancy sunbeams glancing on the surface of life's current not those deep forces which changed the course of the river the characters of father and mother were distinctly marked in their acceptance of Allen's good fortune only the sunny side of the inheritance she was delighted that her son should have ample means and perfect independence in the morning of life she was full of matrimonial schemes on his behalf decidedly he ought to marry well and quickly an only son with an estate in possession and another is matrimonial estate in perspective it was his duty to found a family with a good view there must be good family a pure race untarnished by the taint of commerce unshattered by hushed up disgrace divorces bankruptcies turf scandals there should be money because even the two estates would not make Allen a rich man as the world reckons wealth nowadays but they would give him a respectable platform from which to demand the hand of an heiress it is sad to think you will like your own place better than this said lady Emily in her cheerful voice and that we shall hardly see you except at Christmas and Easter but it is so nice to know that you are in a position to marry as early as you like without being under any obligation to your father for indeed dear what with his library my farm there would have been very little margin for a proper establishment for you I harp upon matrimony I have made up my mind to follow your brother's excellent example poor Ted said lady Emily he was in love with the bell of the season a poor foolish thing with one long curl screaming over her left shoulder and a frock that you would laugh at if you could see her today of course Ted's chances were hopeless a younger son with a commander's pay eked out by a pittance from his father in the row with a plume in her hat half a Spanish file quite the right thing I assure you at that time Ted was 12 years older than I you know Alan and I was still in short petticoats when he went off to China broken hearted of course she wouldn't have him though she said he was the best waltzer in London her people wouldn't let her look at him even from a matrimonial point of view Alan went to church with his mother on two surfaces in the fine old church which seemed much too grand and too big for the tiny town her loving heart swelling with pride at having such an admirable son her friends had always been fond of him but now it seemed to her there was a touch of deference in their kindness they had liked him as her son and the inheritor of Fendak Hall but perhaps they liked him even a little better now that he was his own master he accompanied Lady Emily in a weekly visit to the schools he assisted in dealing out Easter gifts to the school children and distributed half a dozen pounds of the very strongest obtainable tobacco among his male acquaintance in the village of Fendak a village consisting of a rectory three picturesque farmhouses are still more picturesque water mill and miller's house a roomy old barn like in said to have once given shelter to good queen best villages grouped in threes and fours along the broad level road or scattered inside lanes the morning of Easter Monday was given to an inspection of Lady Emily's white farm that farm which next to her son was the greatest pride and delight of her innocent and strictly rural life here all buildings and all creatures were of an almost dazzling purity white horses at the plow a white boxed terrier running beside it white birds in the poultry yard white cows in the meadow cows from Lord Carter's old white Pembroke breed cows from Blickling Park and Wood Bastwick white cottages for bailiff and farm laborers white palings, white pigs and white donkeys a white peacock selling himself on the top of the clipped ewe hedge in the bailiff's garden white tulips, white hives trouble and money but there are few home farms which give as much delight to their possessors as this white farm gave to Lady Emily Carew she had as much pride in its perfection as the connoisseur who collects only Wedgwood or only Florentine Majolica has in his collection it is not so much the actual value of the thing as the fact that the thing is unique and has cost the possessor years of patience and labor a long journey to look at a white cow or to secure Brahma or Cochin China fowls of unsullied whiteness it was a harmless simple womanly hobby and although Lady Emily's farm was a somewhat costly toy it served to give her status in the neighborhood and it provided labor for a good many people who were well housed and well looked after and whose children astonished the school inspectors in the school where Lady Emily was a power she cultivated a friendly familiarity with the man and woman who taught her cottage children she asked them to quiet confidential lunches three or four times in a quarter she sounded their opinions plucked out the heart of their mystery lent them books stuck them with her own ideas and in a manner made them her mouthpiece intensely conservative as to her opinions as to the revolutionary principles she was yet by the beneficence of her nature more liberal than many a professing demagogue and would feign have admitted all her fellow creatures to an equal share in the good things of this life her warm heart was full of compassion for the hard lives she saw around her hard even where the condition of the agricultural laborer was at its best a happier world a world of pleasure and gaiety laughter and frolic Lady Emily's Christmas and Whits and Balls for the villagers and servants Lady Emily's May Day Feasts for the children Lady Emily's Midsummer Picnic and Harvest Home and Lady Emily's Fairy Fertree which reached to the ceiling of the boys' schoolroom every branch laden with benefits these were events that were held together in many adult week of toil second only to these festive gatherings in helpfulness were Lady Emily's Coal and Blanket Society Savings Bank and Mother's Meeting the last a friendly familiar gathering held in a spacious old building which had been a brewery in the days when every country gentleman's household brewed its own beer once a week through the winter season Lady Emily sat in the old brewery with a circle of cottagers' wives and talked and read to them tea and bread and butter a roaring wood fire and a bright lamp were the only material comforts provided but these and Lady Emily's friendly welcome and pleasant talk with a short story chosen out of a magazine and the familiar chapter of the New Testament read far better than vicar or curate read it in church suffice to make the mother's meeting a cheerful break in the cottage matron's busy week she went back to her homely hearth Lady Emily had told her the latest news of the great busy world outside Vendike had given her a recipe for a new savory pie of ox cheek and tapini rice or a new way of making barley broth or had given her a cutting for a tiny flower gardener had cut out her new Garabaldi Lady Emily had been to her as a friend and counselor the village remembered with a shutter that long dreary winter when the great house was empty while Mr. Karoo and his wife were in Egypt ordered there by the doctors after a serious illness of the squires much had been done for the sick and the poor even in that desolate winter for the housekeeper had been given a free hand but no one could replace Lady Emily and the gaiety of Vendike had been extinguished end of chapter 2 chapter 3 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Bratton this LibriVox recording is in the public domain a home of ancient peace the hunting was nearly over by the time Alan Karoo had established himself at Beechhurst and completed his stud the selection of half a dozen hunters had given him an excuse for running up to London once or twice a week he had found the convenience of express trains between Salisbury and Waterloo as compared with the slow and scanty train service between Vendike and Cambridge which made a journey from his native village a trial of youthful patience London was full of pleasant people at this after Easter season so Alan took his time at Tatter Salis saw his friends dined them with them at those clubs which young men most effect went to his favourite theatres wrote in the park and saw a racer too at Sandown all in the process of buying his horses but at last the stud was complete and his stud groom a man he had brought from Suffolk the man who taught him to ride had shaken a wise head and told his young master as you can use Mr Alan he said and if you buy another one it would mean another buy and we shall have buys enough for me to keep in order as it is so Alan held his hand and now I am a country gentleman he said and I must go and live on my acres everybody in the neighbourhood wanted to know him he was under none of the disadvantages of the new man whom people have to ask each other who is he he came to match him with the best possible credentials his father was a man of old family against whose name no evil thing had ever been written his mother was an Earl's daughter and the estate which was his had been left him by a man whose memory was respected in the neighbourhood a man of easy temper an open hand Alan found his hall table covered with cards when he returned from his London holiday and he was occupied for the next fortnight in returning the calls that had been made for the post part in his absence to a shy young man this business of returning calls in an unknown land would have been terrible invading unfamiliar drawing rooms and seeing strange faces wondering which of two matrons or a sister-in-law an ordeal as awful as any medieval torture but Alan was not shy and he accepted the situation without winning ease which pleased everybody when he blundered and his blunders were rare he laughed at his mistake and turned it into a jest that served to help him through the first five minutes of small talk he had a quick eye and in a room full of people he smiled and extended hand which marked his hostess quite an acquisition to the neighborhood said everybody and the mothers of a marriageable daughters were as eager to improve the acquaintance as Jane Austen's inimitable Mrs. Bennet was to cultivate the irreproachable Bingley in the course of that round of visits Alan contrived to find out which neighborhood which was hence forward to be his home he discovered that it was above all a hunting neighborhood but that it was also a shooting neighborhood and that there was bad blood between the men who wanted to preserve pheasants and the men who wanted to hunt foxes from the point of view of the rights of property those shooters would appear to be in their right since they only wanted to feed while the hunting man where he but the seasoned ticket holding solicitor from Bloomsbury wanted to hunt his fox over land which belonged to another man and to spoil that other man's costly sport in the pursuit of a pleasure which cost him the seasoned ticket holder at most a stingy subscription to the hunt he affected but on the other hand hunting is a strictly national sport and shooting is a selfish hole and corner kind of pleasure so the hunting men claimed a memorial rights and privileges as against the owners of woods and copses and the hatchers of pheasants Alan found another and more universal sport also in the ascendant at Machem the neighborhood had taken lately to golf and that game had found favor with the old and young of both sexes everybody could not hunt but everybody could play golf or fancy that he or she was playing golf or at least look on from a respectful distance while golf was being played the golf links on Machem Common had therefore become the most popular institution in the neighborhood and people came from afar to see the young ladies of Machem which the golf club offered as the reward of the strong arm and the accurate eye Alan who could turn his hand to most things in the way of physical exercise was able to hold his own with the members of the golf club and speedily became a familiar figure on the links here as elsewhere he met people who told him he was like Jeffrey Warnock at golf just as other people had praised his writing or his shooting he seems to be something of a quite this Warnock of yours Alan said sometimes with a suspicion of annoyance he was sick of being told of his likeness to this man whom he had never seen weary of hearing the likeness discussed in his presence weary of being told that the resemblance was an expression of a sexual feature that there was an indefinable something in his face which recalled Warnock in an absolutely startling manner while the details of that face taken separately were in many respects unlike Warnock's face yet it is more than what is generally called a family likeness said Mrs. Mornington of the Grove a personage in the neighborhood and the cleverest woman it is the individuality the life and movement of the face that are the same the likeness is a likeness of light and shade rather than of line and color there was a curious feeling in Alan's mind by the time this kind of thing had been said to him in different forms of speech by nearly everybody he knew in matching a feeling which was partly irritation partly interest partly implied with some identity of mind and inclinations I wonder whether I shall like him very much or hate him very much he said to Mrs. Mornington I feel sure I must do one or the other you cannot help liking him he is not the kind of man for anybody to hate answered the lady quickly and then growing suddenly thoughtful she added in his character perhaps but you cannot dislike him he is thoroughly likable what is the something wanting which you have found I did not say I had found oh but you would not have suggested that I might discover the weak spot if you had not found it yourself you are as searching as a cross-examining counsel of Mrs. Mornington laughing at him well I will be perfectly frank my Jeffery's character suffers from the fault which doctors speaking of a patient's physical condition called want of tone there is a want of mental tone in Jeffery I have known him from a boy I like him I admire his talents he and my sons were at eating together I have seen more of him perhaps than anyone else in this neighborhood I like him I am sorry for him not all the good things of his world not all he lost his father before he was five years old and his mother is I fear a poor creature eccentric I understand lamentably so a woman who isolates herself from all the people whose society would do her good and who opens her door to any spirit-wrapping charlatan whose tricks become public talk poor thing one ought not to be angry with her but it is provoking to see such a place as this comb in the possession of a woman who is utterly unable to fill the position to which she has been elevated who was Mrs. Warnock before she became Mrs. Warnock I have heard hints yes and you are never likely to hear more than hints retorted Mrs. Mornington impatiently nobody in this neighborhood knows who Mrs. Warnock was no creature of her kith or kin has ever been seen at this comb I don't suppose her son knows anything more of her antecedents than you or I old squire Warnock left this comb about seven and twenty years ago to drink the waters of some obscure spring in Bohemia a place nobody hereabouts had ever heard of when he was sixty when he set out on that journey a confirmed bachelor one would as soon have expected him to bring back the moon as to bring a wife but to the utter stupefaction of all his friends and acquaintance he returned with a pretty looking delicate young creature he had married in Germany at Dresden I believe and who looked much more like dying within the next five years than he did did he introduce her to his neighbors was she well received oh she was received well enough Mr. Warnock was not the kind of man to marry a disreputable person people took her on trust she seemed painfully shy and her only merit in society was that she sang very prettily everybody called upon her but she did not respond warmly to our advances and about six months after her marriage there were rumors of an alarming kind about her health her mental health her own good little doctor dear old Mr. Podmore who had attended three generations of Warnock struck his head when he was questioned about her was it serious people ask or I suppose you know that in a neighborhood as rustic as ours if the doctor's carriage is seen at a particular house very often that doctor yes it was very serious we never got beyond that Mr. Podmore was loyal to his patient fondly as he loves a gossip by and by we heard that Mr. Warnock had taken his young wife off to Switzerland he who in his earlier life had seemed rooted to the soil was off again to the continent and this home was shut up once more I'm afraid we all hated poor Mrs. Warnock in a neighborhood like ours when detests anybody who disturbs the pleasant order of daily life dinners and hunting breakfasts at disco were an element in our daily lives and we resented their cessation when I say we I mean of course our men folk were your men folk long deprived of Mr. Warnock's hospitalities we never answered Mrs. Mournington solemnly the Warnock's had only been gone half a year or so when we read the announcement of a son and heir born at Grindelwald in the depth of winter a nice place for the future owner of discord to be born in Grindelwald at the sign of the bear we were all indignant at the absurdity of the thing this comes of an old man well Mr. Karoo it was ages before we saw anything more of the Warnock's Jeffrey must have been three or four years old when his father and mother brought him to the house in which he ought to have been born a poor little fragile Frenchified object hanging on to a French bun and speaking nothing but French not one sentence of his native tongue did the little retch utter for a year or two after he appeared among us Alan laughed heartily at Mrs. Mournington's indignant recital of this ancient history her disgust was as fresh and as vigorous as if she were describing the events of yesterday was he a nice child he asked when they had both had their laugh nice well yes he was nice just as a French poodle is nice he was very active and intelligent he frightened me but the Warnock's in the Mournington's had been close friends from generation to generation so I could not help taking an interest in the brat and I would have been a cordial friend of the brat's mother for poor old Warnock's sake if she would have let me but she wouldn't or she couldn't respond to a sensible matter of fact woman's friendly advances the poor thing was in the clouds she has never come down to earth music, spirit rapping thought reading, slate writing what can one expect of a woman who gives all her mind to such things as those a woman who lets her housekeeper manage everything from cellar to garret and who has no will of her own inner garden and hot houses I've known Mrs. Warnock seven and twenty years and I know no more of her now than when she came a stranger to Discomb I call upon her three or four times a year and she returns my calls and sits in my drawing room for twenty minutes or so looking miserable and longing to go what can one do with such a woman is it sheer stupidity do you think stupidity no I think not she is anything but a stupid expression of countenance she has an air of spirituality and a common world which cannot come down to common things I am told that in music she is really a genius that her powers of criticism and appreciation are of the highest order she plays exquisitely both organ and piano she has or had a heavenly soprano voice but I've not heard her sing since Jeffrey's birth she must be interesting because as I said Alan with conviction she is interesting only she won't let one be interested in her can one get a look at her does she go to matchum church never that is another of her eccentricities she either goes to that funny little old church you may have noticed right among the fields Filbury Parish church nearly six miles from Discomb I believe she sometimes plays the organ at Filbury that organ was her gift by the way they had only a wretched harmonium when she came to Discomb I shall go to Filbury church next Sunday said Alan shall you I hope you are not forgetting the lapse of time this interesting widow is only interesting from a psychological standpoint remember she must be five and forty years of age not even Cleopatra she is interesting at forty-five I am under no hallucination as to the ladies age I want to see the mother of Jeffrey Warnock it is Jeffrey Warnock in whom I am interested egotistical person only because Jeffrey is like you is there any man living who would not be interested in his double but he is not your double the village mind is given to exaggeration he is not your firm chin his face is a reminiscence of yours it is weaker in every characteristic in every line you are the substance he the reflection now you are laughing at my egotism and developing my vanity no believe me no protested Mrs. Mornington Gailey I see you both with all your defects and qualities you have the stronger character but you have not Jeffrey's fascinating personality his very faults are attractive he is by no means effeminate yet there is something womanish in his nature which makes women fond of him he has inherited his mother's sensitive dreamy temperament I feel sure he would see a ghost if there was one in his neighborhood the ghost would go to him instinctively as dogs go imbidden to certain people sometimes to people who don't care about them while the genuine dog lover may be doing his best to attract Bow Wow's attention and failing ignominiously every word you say increases my interest in Mr. Warnock in a neighborhood like this where everybody is sensible and commonplace and conventional accepting always your brilliant self Mrs. Mornington nodded and put her feet on the fender it is so delightful to meet who does not move just on the common lines and is not worked by the common machinery you will find nothing common about Jeffrey said the lady I've known him since he was a little white boy in a black velvet suit and he was just as enigmatic to meet the day he left for Bombay as he was on his seventh birthday I know that he has winning manners and that I am very fond of him and that is all I know about him Alan drove to Fairberry on the following Sunday and was in his place in that little old parish church ten minutes before the service began the high oak pews were not favorable to his getting a good view of the congregation since when seated the top of his head was only on a level with the top of his pew but by leaving the door of the pew ajar he contrived to see Mrs. Warnock as she went up the narrow aisle knave there was none the pews forming a solid square in the center of the church yes he was assured that slim graceful figure in a plain grey cashmere gown and grey straw bonnet must be Mrs. Warnock and no other indeed the inference was easily arrived at for the rest of the congregation belonged obviously to the small tenant farmer and agricultural laborer class the women folk homely and ruddy cheat the men ponderous and ill at ease in their Sunday clothes the lady in the grey gown made her way quietly to a pew that occupied the angle of the church nearest the pulpit and reading desk the old three-decker arrangement for clerk, parson and preacher Mr. Warnock was patron of the living of Philbury and Discomb and this large pew belonged to the Warnock's ever since the rebuilding of the church in Charles the Second's Reign a year or two after the manor house was built when the estate which had hitherto been an outlying possession of the Warnock's became their place of residence and most important property Alan could see only the lady's profile from his place in the body of the church a delicate profile worn as if with long years of thoughtfulness a sweet sad face that had lost all freshness of colouring but had gained the spiritual beauty which grows in thought and solitude where there are no vulgar cares to harass and vex the mind a pensive peacefulness was the chief characteristic of the face Alan thought when the lady turned towards the organ during the day listening to the village voices which sang truer than village do Alan submitted to the slow torture of a very long sermon about nothing particular on a text in Nehemiah which suggested not the faintest bearing on the Christian life a sermon preached by an elderly gentleman in a black silk gown whose eloquence would have been more impressive had his false teeth been a better fit after the sermon there was a hymn and the old fashioned plate was carried round by a man recognized as a man who had fastened his hunters shoe one day at a little forge on the outskirts of Filbury in the midst of a run and then the little congregation quietly dispersed after an exchange of friendly greetings between the church door and the lich gate Alan's gig was waiting for him near the gate and a victoria on which he recognized the war not crest a dolphin crown of the vicarage garden Alan waited a little expecting to see Mrs. Warnock come out and then as she did not appear he re-entered the church yard and strayed among moss mantel tombstones reading the village names the village histories of birth and death musing as he read upon the long eventless years which make the sum of rustic lives the blue pure sky the perfume of a bean the flower the Hawthorns in undulating masses of snowy blossom and even there in the angles of a meadows the heaped up gold of furs bushes that were more bloom than bush all these made life today a sensuous delight which exacted no questionings of the intellect suggested no doubt as to the bliss of living if it were always thus across their bread and cheese under such a sky and clover which suffice for a man's content Alan thought as he stood on a knoll in God's acre and looked down upon the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and holler with gentle undulations between Filbury and Discomb what had become of Mrs. Warnock he had made the recircuit of the burial ground pausing often to read an epitaph but never relaxing his watchfulness of the carriage yonder and there was no sign of Mrs. Warnock was there a celebration no he had seen all the congregation leave the church except the mistress of that curtain pew in the corner near the polepet presently the broad strong cords of a prelude were poured out upon the still air a prelude by Sebastian Bach masterful imposing followed by a fugue whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by the player standing in the sunshine listening to that grand music Alan remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him the player was Mrs. Warnock he had seen the professional organist and school master leave the church with his flock of village boys Mrs. Warnock had lingered in the church to gratify herself with the music she loved he sauntered and loitered near the open window listening to the music Alan stood within a few yards of the pathway to see her go by hoping to be himself unobserved screened by the angle of an old monument where rust had eaten away the railing and the door was locked and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the litch gate followed by a clumsy boy who looked like a smaller addition of the blacksmith Alan stood within a few yards of the pathway to see her go by and moss and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epithet while the dense growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn here in the shadow of ostentation's feudal monument he waited for that slender and still youthful form to pass in figure the widow of 20 years looked a girl and the face which turned quickly towards Alan her keen ear having caught the rustle of the long grass and outline and transparent fairness of youth the cheek had lost its girlish roundness and the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow involuntarily Alan recalled a long familiar line thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care that expression of tranquil thoughtfulness changed in an instant as she looked at him changed to astonishment gradually softened to a grave curiosity and anxious scrutiny then as if becoming suddenly aware of her breach of good manners the heavy eyelid sank in a faint blush colored the thin cheeks and she hurried onward to the gate where her carriage had drawn up in readiness for her her footman in a sober brown livery was holding the gate open for her her horses were shaking their bridles to the schoolboy who had blown through organ bellows and vanished into the leafy distance of the lane so that is my double's mother an interesting face a graceful figure and a lady to the tips of her fingers whether she is county or not county Jeffrey Warnock has no cause to be ashamed of his mother nothing would induce me to think ill of that woman so I put it on that startled expression which had flashed across Mrs. Warnock's face as she looked at him clearly she too had seen the likeness which he bore to her son I wonder whether it pains her to be reminded of him when he is so far away speculated Alan or whether she feels kindly towards me for the sake of that absent son this question of his was answered three days later by the lady's own hand on Alan's breakfast table on Wednesday morning there was one in a strange penmanship which took his breath away for on the envelope in bold brown letters appeared the address disco manor he thrust all his other letters aside those uninteresting letters which preceded the man who was supposed to have money to spend from tradesmen who want to work for him charities who want to do good for him stock jobbers who want to speculate for him the whole race of spiders in quest of the word fly he tore open the letter from disco manor and eagerly devoured the following lines dear sir people tell me that you are kind and amiable and I am emboldened by this assurance to ask you a favor etiquette forbids me to call upon you and as I rarely visit anybody I have no opportunity of meeting you casually but you can if you like gratify a solitary woman by letting her make your acquaintance in her own house and perhaps when my son comes home and leave the acquaintance so begun may ripen into friendship I dare say people have told you that you are like him and you will hardly wonder at my wishing to see more of a face that reminds me of my nearest and dearest very truly yours E. Warnock E. Warnock he repeated studying the signature why no Christian name and what is the name which that initial represents Eliza perhaps and she syncs it thinking it common and house made each forgetting how Ben Johnson by that house made each name does designate the most glorious name a milk and waterish name with less of dignity than Eliza or Emily my mother's name graceful but somewhat colorless I've never thought it good enough for so fine a character as my mother she should have been Catherine or Margaret Gertrude or Barbara names that have a fullness of sound which implies fullness of meaning I will call it disco manner this afternoon the afternoon was warm and sunny and Alan made a leisurely circuit of the chase and park of disco on his way to Mrs. Warnock's house the beauty of the manner consisted as much in the perfection of detail as in the grandeur of the mansion or the extent of gardens and park the mansion was not strikingly architectural nor even strikingly picturesque it was a sober old brick house with a high tiled roof with several rows of windows those of the upper story were the original lattices of 1664 the date of the house but on the lower floors mullions and lattices had given place to long French windows of a uniform unpicturesque flatness opening on a broad gravel walk beyond which the smooth shaven grass sloped gently to the edge of a moat for Mrs. Warnock's house was one of those moated manner houses of which there are so few left in the south of England the gardens surrounding that grave-looking Tyrolian house had attained the ideal of horticultural beauty under many generations of garden lovers the ideal of old fashion beauty be it understood the beauty of clipped hedges and sunk lawns walls of alex and a few solemn avenues of obelisk shaped conifers labyrinths, arches, temples and arcades of roses, tennis lawns and bowling greens broad borders of old fashion perennials clumps and masses of vivid color placed with art that seemed accidental wherever a spot of bright color was wanted to relieve the virgin monotony if the gardens were perfect the house farm and cottages were even more attractive in their arcadian grace quaint roofs and massive chimney stacks lattices, porches, sundaes of a day that is dead gardens brimming over with flowers and pathways shining panes everywhere a spotless cleanliness a wealth of foliage an air of prosperous fatness beehives, poultry, cattle all the signs and tokens of dependence for whom much is done and whose dwellings flourish at somebody else's expense Allen noted the cottages which bore the Warnock W above the date of the building he noted them at lost count of their number keeper's lodges in the woodland at every part gate farmhouse and bailiff's house cottages for coachmen and helpers at every available angle where gable, roof and quaint old chimney stack could make a picturesque feature in the landscape of cottage have been placed and the number of these ideal dwellings suggested territorial importance in a manner more obvious than any effect made by the mere extent of acreage a thing that is talked about but not seen in the home lodges and the village and school houses of disco were obvious facts which impressed the stranger that sweetly pensive face of Mrs. Warnock's had slain the viper envy in Allen's breast and first he rode through those woods and over those undulating pastures and by those gables and bowed in roses and wisteria or starred with the pale blue clematis he had felt a certain sour discontent with his own good fortune and the acquaintance of yesterday prattled and prose so officiously he was sick of hearing himself called the lucky fellow luck for suit what was his luck compared with Jeffrey Warnock's that a bachelor uncle of his having scraped together a modest little fortune and not being able to carry with him to the nether world should have passed it on to him Allen was not such a strange event as to warrant the running commentary of congratulation no one congratulated Jeffrey Warnock nobody talked of his good luck he had been born in the purple and people spoke of him as of one having a divine right to the best things that this earth can give to Corolean mansion and chase and park and widespreading farms there seemed to Allen Carew's self-consciousness and implied disparagement of himself in the turn which matching people took about Jeffrey Warnock they in a manner congratulated him in a disco manner and insinuated that he ought to be proud of himself because of this resemblance to the local magnet today however Allen forgot all those infinitesimal vexations in which the beginning of his residence that matching had made the name of Warnock odious to him his thoughts were full of that pale sad face the wasted cheeks the heavy eyelids the somewhat sickly transparency of complexion the large violet eyes with a light that is not of this world it was the most spiritual countenance he had ever seen the first face which had ever suggested to him to epithet ethereal he remembered what society had told him about Mrs. Warnock her encouragement of spirit wrapping people and thought reading people in every phase of modern super naturalism her passion for music her passion so absorbing as almost to pass the borderline of sanity at least in the opinion of the commonplace saying he wondered no longer that such a woman had held herself aloof from the hunting and shooting and dinner giving and tea drinking population scattered within a radius of 8 or 10 miles of disco the people with whom had she lived the conventional life of the conventional rural lady she should have been on intimate terms she was among them but not of them Allen told himself surely I am not in love with a woman as he thought between Jess and Ernest as he drove up to the house I have not thought so persistently of any woman since the deans pretty daughter Ferris and last of my calf loves he was not holy in Jess for during the last 3 days the ladies image had haunted him with an insistency that bordered on possession it was as if those dark grey eyes had cast a spell upon him and as if he must needs wait until the enchantress would remain unweave her mystery and set his thoughts at liberty the hall doors stood open to the summer air and the afternoon sun a large black poodle with an air of ineffable wisdom which stretched near the threshold a liver and white st. Bernard sunned his hairy bulk unpunned the grass in front of the steps and on the broad terrace to the right of the house a peacock spread the rainbow splendor of his tail and strutted in stately long to fairyland thought Alan the enchantress has but to wait for a wand and fix the picture for a century we may have extended the limit of human life a hundred years hence and Mrs. Warnock's age may count as girl head when some gay young prince of 55 shall ride through the tangle woodland to awaken the sleeper who can tell we know what we are but we know not what we may be in chapter 3 Chapter 4 of Sons of Fire by Mary Elizabeth Bratton this Libervox recording is in the public domain Chapter 4 in the All-Golden Afternoon the hall door stood wide open to the sunlight sufficiently guarded by that splendid brute the st. Bernard a middle-aged footman Mrs. Warnock livery came at the sound of the bell the st. Bernard watching the visitor with grave but friendly eyes and evidently perfectly aware of his respectability Mrs. Warnock was at home the servant led the way to a corridor which opened out of the hall and at the end of this corridor like Van Dyke's famous portrait of Charles I at Warwick Castle a young portrait of a young man in a hunting coat looked Alan Carew in the face in spite of all he had been told about his likeness to the owner of Discombe the sight of that frank young face looking at him under the bright white light fairly startled him for the moment it seemed to him as if he had seen his own reflection in a shovel glass but as he drew nearer the canvas the visitors came out and he saw that the resemblance was less a likeness than a reminiscence distance was needed to make the illusion and he could understand now why his new friends of the hunting field should have taken him for Warnock on that first morning when he rode up to them as a stranger the portrait was by Malay painted with as much brio and bigger as the better known picture of the young Martianess of Huntley Mr. Warnock was standing in an old stone doorway leaning in an easy attitude against the deep arch of the door hunting crop, cigar case and hat on a table in the background standing where he had stood on many a winter morning waiting for his horse there was a skylight over this end of the corridor and the portrait of the master was shown out brilliantly under the clear top light the footman stopped within a few paces of the portrait opened a low old fashioned door and ushered Mr. Karoo into a spacious room at the further end of which a lady was sitting by an open window beyond which he saw the long vista of an Italian garden a cypress avenue where statues were gleaming as the sun shined there was a grand piano on one side of the room an organ on the other books filled every recess this spacious apartment was evidently music room and library rather than drawing room and he remits books and music lived the lonely lady of the house she came to meet him with a friendly smile as he advanced into the room holding out her hand in her low musical voice I wanted so much to see you know you yes you are very like him one of those accidental likenesses which are so common and yet seem so strange my husband had a friend who was murdered because he was like Sir Robert Peel but my son is not a public man and he has no enemies you will run no risks on account of your likeness to him I am grateful to the likeness which has given me the honor of knowing Mrs. Warnock said Alan taking the seat to which she motioned him as she resumed her low chair by the window indeed you have no reason I am a very stupid person I go nowhere I see very few people and the people I do see are people whom you would think unworthy of your interest not if you are interested in them easily interested I like strange people I like to believe strange things your friend Mrs. Mornington will tell you that I am a foolish person you have seen Mrs. Mornington lately questioned Alan yes she was here yesterday afternoon she is always bright and amusing and I always feel particularly stupid in her society she talked of you but I did not tell her I wanted to make your acquaintance make a luncheon party for me to meet you or something dreadful of that kind you have a great dislike to society Mrs. Warnock he asked keenly interested her manner was so fresh and simple almost childlike in its confiding candor and her appearance was no less interesting than her manner it is the fashion of our day for women of 5 and 40 to look young even to girlishness she was terribly indebted to modern art for that advantage here there was no art the pale clear fairness of the complexion owed nothing to the perfumers palette no pudra de fe blanched the delicate brow no rose d'amour flushed the cheek no eau de mayday brightened the large violet eyes the lines which thought and saw had drawn upon the fair brow were undisguised the pale gold of the hair there were threads of silver the youthfulness of the face was in its colouring and expression the complexion so delicately fair the countenance so trustful and pleading it was the countenance of a woman to whom the conventionalities and jargon of modern life were utterly unknown you saw my son's portrait in the corridor said Mrs. Warnock it struck my untutored eye as a very fine picture almost as powerful as the Gladstone and the Salisbury which I remember in the Malay collection at the Groves Gner but as for the likeness to yourself now did that strike you as forcibly as it has struck other people I confess that as I stood in the hall I was inclined to exclaim that is I or my brother but as I came nearer the picture I saw there was considerable diversity to begin with your son is much handsomer than I the drawing of his features may be more correct but you are quite handsome enough she answered with her pretty friendly air as if she had been his aunt and your face is more strongly marked than his just as your voice is stronger and deeper she added with a sigh your son is not an invalid I hope an invalid no but he is not very strong he could not play football he hated even cricket he is passionately fond of horses and an ardent sportsman but he can be sadly idle he likes to lie about in the sunshine reading or dreaming I fear he is a dreamer like his mother he is not like you in person no he is like his father no doubt you will see his father's picture and you can judge for yourself well we are to be friends and you will come to see me sometimes and if you ever have any little troubles which can be lightened by a woman's sympathy you will come and confide them to me I hope it will be very sweet to be allowed to confide in so kind a friend said Alan my son will be home for his long leave before the end of the year and I want you to make him your friend he is very amiable again with a suppressed sigh come now it is your turn to tell me something about yourself this room tells you all there is to be told about me it tells me you are very fond of music I live for it music has been my companion and consoler all my life and I hope you will let me hear you play again some day again ah I forgot you were in the church yard last Sunday while I was playing did you listen as long as you played I was under the open window most of the time you were fond of organ music as an ignorant man may be I know nothing of the subtleties of music I've never been educated up to Wagner or Dvorak I love the familiar voices Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Bruno Ober even and I adore our English master of melody Sullivan does that shock you not at all I will play his cantata for you some day if you have nothing better to do with your time this afternoon I should like to show you my garden I will be enchanted I am enchanted already with that long straight walk those walls of cypress in you that peacock sunning his emerald and sapphire yonder by the dial in such a garden did Beatrice hide when he wrote and her ladies talked of Benedict's passion in such a garden did Jessica and Lorenzo loiter under the moonlight I see you love your Shakespeare as interpreted by Irving and Ellen Terry the lyceum was the school in which I went to love the bard and eaten examination and Richard the second only prejudiced me against him Mr. Warnock was a great Shakespearean they were in the garden by this time sauntering with slow footsteps along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk at the end of the cypress avenue there was a semi circular recess shut in by a raised bank and a wall of clipped you in which at regular intervals there were statues in dark green niches Mr. Warnock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man the gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago explained Mrs. Warnock Ellen noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as Mr. Warnock that amphitheater reminds me a little of the bubbly gardens said Ellen but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no state garden can have three peacocks were spreading their rainbow plumage on the long lawns between the house and the amphitheater and one less gorgeous but more ethereal a bird of dazzling whiteness was perched on an angle of the cypress wall the lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn and crossed the amphitheater to a stone temple open on the side fronting the southwestern sun and spacious enough to accommodate people if you had a garden play how delightfully this temple would serve for a central point in your stage said Ellen admiringly people have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play 12th night or much to do about nothing but I've always said no I should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden yet there are people who would think such a place is this created on purpose I'm honored at the mention of smart people a party of that kind would be misery for me she said and now tell me about yourself and your relations Mrs. Mornington told me that your father and mother are both living and that you inherited beachhurst from your uncle I remember seeing Admiral Darnley years and years ago when everything at Discombe and at Machin was new to me it must be said for your mother to sadness Ellen answered smiling she is the best and kindest of mothers and I know she loves me as dearly as any son need desire but she is quite resigned to my having my own home and my own interests she would argue perhaps that were I to marry I must have a house of my own and that my establishment at beachhurst is only a little premature you were very much attached to your mother very much your mother your tone as you say those words tell me that your father is the dear of the two you have a quick ear for shades of meaning Mrs. Warnock pray do not think me impertinent I'm not questioning you out of idle curiosity if we are to be friends in the future I must know and understand something of your life and your mind but perhaps I bore you perhaps you think me both eccentric and impertinent I should offer to be my friend be assured I have no reserve and am willing possibly too willing to talk of myself and my own people I have no dark corners in my life my history is all open country an uninteresting landscape enough but there is no difficult going there are no bogs or risky bits over which the inquiring spirit need skin lightly your ear did not deceive you just now fondly as I love my mother I will freely confess that the longer bond in the parrot jargon of the day is is the more interesting personality is a man of powerful intellect whose mind has done nothing for the good of the world who will die unhonored and unremembered saving the narrow circle of his personal friends there is one question I've asked myself about him ever since I was old enough to think a question which I first asked myself when I began to read and not finished asking myself when his untiring help had enabled me to take a first class in the honor school to me it has always been a mystery that a man of wide attainments and financial independence should have been utterly destitute of ambition my father was a young man when he married he is still in the prime of life and for six and twenty years he has been content to vegetate of an affliction down at relief it is as if the hands of life's clock had stopped in the golden noon of youth I have told myself again and again that my father's life must have been shattered by some great sorrow before his marriage young as he was when he married Mrs. Warnock listened intently her head slightly bent her clasp hands resting on her knee her sensitive lips slightly parted you say that your father married young she said after a brief silence before his words what do you call young in such a case my father was not three and twenty when he married two years younger that I am at this present hour and yet the idea of matrimony has never shaped itself in my mind but you must not infer from anything I have said that my father's has been an unhappy marriage on the contrary he is devoted to my mother and she to him I cannot imagine a better assorted couple each supplies the qualities wanting in the other she is all movement in pulse and spontaneousness he is calm and meditative with depths of thought and feeling which no one has sounded they are perfectly happy as husband and wife but there is a shade of melancholy that steals over my father in quiet unoccupied hours which indicates a sorrow or a disappointment in the past I have taken it to mean by a disappointed ambition it is not unlikely that a man of powerful intellect and lymphatic temperament should feel that he had wasted opportunities and failed in life it is quite easy to imagine the ambition without the energy to achieve she made no comment upon this but Alan could see in her eager countenance that she was intensely interested is your mother beautiful she asked timidly it seemed a foolish and futile question and it jarred upon that serious thought of her parents which had been inspired by her previous questioning but after all it was a natural question for a woman to ask and he smiled as he answered no my mother is not beautiful I am not guilty of treason as a son if I confess that she is plain since she herself would be the first to take offense at any sophistication of the truth she is never set up for being other than she is she has a fine countenance and a fine figure straight as a dart with a waist which a girl she dresses with admiral taste and always looks well after her own fashion exclusive of beautiful features or brilliant coloring she is what women call stylish and men distinguished I am as proud as I am fond of her will she come to see you in your new home most assuredly my mother will pay me a visit before the summer is over and I shall be charmed to bring you and her together and your father will not he come he is very difficult to move he is like the lichen on the old stone walls at home he takes no particular interest in chairs and tables he would care not a fig for my new surroundings besides he saw Beachhurst years ago as a visitor to his wife's brother he has no curiosity to bring him here and as for his son he knows he has only to want me for me to be at his side after this there came a silence certainly Mrs. Warnock was not gifted as a conversationalist she was working straight before her at the long perspective of lawn and cypress broad gravel walk and narrow grass plots all verging to a point at which the old house rose square and gray crowned with cupola and bell the peacock strutted slowly along the narrow lawn the waters of a fountain flashed in the warm sunlight it was a garden that were called a garden which the holy father takes his restricted area in the Vatican pleasure grounds there are peacocks and clipped hedges and smooth green sword and formal cypress avenues and quaint arbors but the hum of Rome the echoes of the papal barrack the rush of the tiber are near and not even in that antique garden can there be this summer silence silence as profound as in the enchanted isle where it seemeth always afternoon as Warnock asks suddenly and with an air of agitated impatience which took Alan by surprise Mrs. Mornington had prepared him for a certain eccentricity in the lonely lady of Discomb but the strangeness of her manner was even more than he had expected there is very little to tell about my own life he said I lived at home for the most part except when I was at Eaton and Cambridge my father helped me in all my studies at the university my home life was of the quietest van dyke is 20 miles from Cambridge but it seems at the end of the world the single line of rail that leads to it comes to a full stop the terminus stands in the midst of a Dutch landscape level fields divided by shallow dykes a river so straight that it might as well be a canal water mills, pollarded willows straight clean roads and fine old Norman churches large enough for a city filled with awful days a neat little town with decent shops and comfortable ends in a market which only awakens from a Pompeian slumber for an hour or two on Fridays a land of rest and plenty picturesque cottages and trim cottage gardens and air prosperity which I believe is real so much for our town and surroundings for the family mansion pictured to yourself a long low house built partly of the most acceptable houses in which have defied the gales sweeping down from the Ural mountains there is nothing marquee between Fendike and the Ural's ever since Queen Elizabeth was young enough to pace up a van you must be fond of an old house like that yes I am very fond of Fendike I even love the surrounding country though I can but wish nature had not ironed the landscape with her mammoth iron she might have left us a few creases that I was not born in Norfolk and Suffolk heaven innate antipathy to hills that may be indeed I have noticed in the East Anglians kind of stubborn pride in the flatness of their soil but I have not that perverted pride in ugliness since I was not born in Suffolk indeed no my father lived in Sussex at Hayward's Heath at the time of his marriage and for half a dozen years he stayed to his daughter in Eris and to her son after her who was to assume the name and arms of Karoo when he succeeded to the property my father's name was Bearsford there was no reply no further questioning on Mrs. Warnock's part and for some minutes Alan abandoned himself to the dreamy silence of the scene content to watch the peacocks on the lawn surprised him and he turned to look at his companion her head had fallen back against the wall of the summer house her eyes were closed and her face was white as dead she was in a dead faint and they were at least a quarter of a mile from the house the situation was awkward for Alan though there was nothing in so simple a matter as a fainting fit to surprise him he knew that there are women who faint at the smallest in a crowded room in the sunshine at church anywhere here the sunshine was perhaps to blame that delicious pure sunlight in which he had been basking he gave a long Australian long enough and loud enough to have brought help in the wilderness and assuredly calculated to attract some gardener at work within call then he thought himself of the fountains and ran to get some water in his hat and the door knock opened her eyes with a little sobbing sigh and looked at him as if wondering who and what he was I knew he would have answered my prayer she murmured brokenly spirit to spirit ghost to ghost it seemed a worse kind of faint than Alan had supposed for now her mind was wandering I fear the sun was too warm for you he said standing before her in painful embarrassment half expecting some indication of absolute lunacy yes yes it was the sun she answered nervously the glare is so strong this afternoon and this summer house is shadeless I must go back to the house it was very foolish of me to faint I'm so sorry I hope you won't consider me a very silly person my dear Mrs. Warnock I've never heard that a fainting fit is a sign of silliness no it is a thing one cannot help can one but it must have been so unpleasant for you ah he was one of the gardeners as a man came hurrying towards her with a scared countenance there is nothing the matter Henry I'm quite well now Mr. Carew and I can walk back to the house and so your father's original name was Bearsford does he call himself Bearsford Carew but he is a man too careless of forms to trouble himself much about the first name and it has fallen into disuse for the most part Carew being the name of honor in our county he is known at Fendike and in the neighborhood simply a squire Carew I sign myself Bearsford Carew sometimes when I want to distinguish myself from the numerous clan of Carew's in Devonshire and elsewhere will you take my arm to go back yes timidly and faintly I shall be very glad of your support she put her small white hand through his arm and walked slowly and silently by his side returning consciousness had brought back very little color to her face it had still an almost unearthly pallor she walked the whole distance without uttering a word a faint sigh fluttered her lips two or three times during that slow promenade for some reason or other she was deeply moved or it might be that her fainting fits always took this emotional form he saw her safely seated on her own sofa with footmen and made an attendance upon her before he took a brief adieu you'll come and see me again I hope she said with a faint smile as she gave him her hand at parting I shall be most happy he murmured doubtful within himself whether he would ever hazard a repetition of this agitating finale in an afternoon call to be interrogated about himself in his surroundings with an eager curiosity which was certainly startling and then to find himself tete-a-tete with an unconscious fellow creature was an ordeal that few young men would care to repeat when he described his visit next day to Mrs. Mornington she only shrugged her shoulders and said decisively hysteria too much money, too much leisure a woman I pity more than another that woman is Mrs. Warnock if ever I call on her again it must be with you or with my mother said Alan I won't face her alone although he came to this decision about the lady he found himself not the less disposed to dwell upon her image during the days and weeks that followed his afternoon at Discom and more than once he asked himself whether that might not be some more cogent reason whether that deep interest which she had evinced and all he could tell her of home and parents might not be founded on something more serious than an idle woman's idle curiosity could it be that he had lighted upon some trace of that mystery in his father's past life that mystery which without tangible evidence he'd always imagined as the keynote to his father's character in later years she had fainted immediately upon his telling her his father's former name as a painting fit Lady Emily arrived on a visit to her son while he was pondering this unanswerable question about Mrs. Warnock and he caught up the opportunity he hardly allowed his mother time to inspect his house and gardens and the small farm which supplied his larder and to give her opinion upon the furnishing of the rooms and the arrangement of the flower beds and lawns before he suggested taking her to call upon why should I call upon this Mrs. Warnock when I am a stranger in the land argued his mother if there's any question of calling it is Mrs. Warnock who must call upon me but this lady is an exception to all rules mother she calls upon hardly anybody and she has begged me to go and see her and I feel a kind of hesitation in going alone a second time he stopped in sudden embarrassment he did not wish to tell his mother about the fainting fit though he had described the scene he had thought more seriously of the circumstance since that conversation with Mrs. Mournington and he was inclined to attach more importance to it now than at that time I think you would be interested in Mrs. Warnock mother he urged after a pause during which Lady Emily had been pacing the room from window to wall with the idea of suggesting a bay to be thrown out where there was now only a small room to be thrown out and if I wanted a wife old enough to be my mother do you know that the lady has a son as old as I am he read at the thought of that son whose likeness to Bairsford Karoo was starving enough to surprise Lady Emily and might possibly occasion unpleasant suspicions and yet accidental likenesses are so common in this world that it would be weak to be a mother to discount perhaps not he had made up his mind to take her there wisely or foolishly he wanted to bring her plain common sense to bear upon Mrs. Warnock's fantastic disposition my mother is the shrewdest woman I know he told himself she would read Mrs. Warnock's character much better than I can Lady Emily was the soul of good nature and was particularly free from the trammels of conventionality so when she found her son and allowed Allen to drive her to Discomb on the afternoon after her arrival at Beachhurst and the drive and the approach to the manner were very agreeable to her you are really pretty hear about then we are in suffolk she said condescendingly but you have not our wide expanses of pasture our open horizon those high downs have a cramping effect on your landscape they narrow your outlook and shut you in too much your sunsets must be very poor the weather was more sultry than on Allen's previous visit summer had ripened the roses were in bloom and the last purple petal had fallen in the Rotodendron jungle through which they drove to the manor house Mrs. Warnock was at home vain for the footmen to deny even had he been so minded for the deep tone music of the organ was peeling along the corridor the mighty chords which begin Beethoven's funeral march of the burial of a hero crashed out and approached the music room and when at the opening of the door the player stopped suddenly the silence was more startling than the music had been startling too to see the fragile form of the player and the semi-transparent hands which had produced that volume of sound I had no idea you were so fine a musician Mrs. Warnock Lady Emily said graciously after the introduction had been got over the lady of disco so youthful looking so unlike the mistress of a great house and the chief personage and a rustic parish my son was eloquent in your praise but he forgot to tell me of your musical talent I don't think I have much talent answered Mrs. Warnock hesitatingly I'm very fond of music that is all there is a great deal in that all I wish my love of music and Alan knows I prefer a good concert to any other form of entertainment would enable me to play as you do in England at our parish church Lady Emily was making conversation seeing that Mrs. Warnock's lips were mute and dry as if she were absolutely speechless from fright a most extraordinary woman thought Lady Emily shy to a degree that bordered on lunacy the talk had all to be done by Alan and his mother since Mrs. Warnock's share in it was hardly more than monosyllabic she assented to everything over and over again about the weather and about the distinguishing features of the surrounding country she agreed with Lady Emily that the hills spoiled the landscape she assented to Alan's protestation that the hills were the chief charm of the neighborhood she rang for tea and when the servants had brought tables and tray and tea kettle she sat as in a dream forever so long before she became conscious that the things were there and that she had a duty to perform as simple as details her obvious distress strengthened Alan's suspicions there must be some mystery behind all this embarrassment Mrs. Warnock could hardly behave in this way to every stranger who called upon her of all women living no one was less calculated to inspire awe than Lady Emily Karoo good humor was writ large upon her open countenance the milk of humankind gave softness to her speech by the music of the organ Lady Emily had not even glanced at the Malay portrait which faced her as she walked along the corridor it was therefore with unmixed astonishment that she observed a photograph on an easel conspicuous on a distant table a photograph which she took to be the likeness of her son I see you have given Mrs. Warnock your photo Alan she said that is more than you have done for me since you were at the university go and look at the photo mother and you will see I have not been at the university Lady Emily rose and went over to the table in the furthest window no I see it is another face but there is a wonderful look of you pray who is this nice looking young man Mrs. Warnock I may call him nice looking with a good grace since he is not my son his features are more refined than Alan's the modeling of the face is more delicate that is my son's portrait answered Mrs. Warnock and it is thought a good likeness he is likeness to Karoo and he is definitely alike but the resemblance is less striking in the picture than in the living face it is an expression that the two faces are alike I begin to understand why you are interested in my son said Lady Emily smiling down at the face on the easel the two young men might be brothers pray how old is this young gentleman he will be 6 and 20 in August and Alan was 25 last May and has Mr. Warnock and only son like my Alan I have only him when he is away I am quite alone except for my organ and piano I try sometimes to think they are both alive what a pity you have no daughter a place like this looks as if it wanted a daughter but you and I are in the same desolate condition Alan is all I have and my white farm mother why not my white farm and Alan said her son laughingly if you knew more of my mother Mrs. Warnock the farm first and not second in her dear love perhaps you too are interested in farming Mrs. Warnock smiled a gentle negative and gave a glance at the triple keyboard yonder which was eloquent of meaning a glance which seemed to ask who could waste time upon cowhouse and poultry yard when all the master spirits of harmony are offering their mysteries to the faithful student well mother how do you like the mistress of disco I find rather graceful dreadfully shy answered his mother musingly and I hope you won't be angry with me Alan if I add that she seems to me half an idiot you saw her today at a disadvantage said Alan and then lapsed into meditative silence had he not also seen the strange woman at a disadvantage when she fainted at the mention of his father's name the name his father had born in youth not the name by which he was known now her fainting fit might have had taken against in his eyes if it had not followed upon her eager questioning about his father and whatever suspicions had been excited by that first visit were intensified by Mrs. Warnock's manner in the presence of Lady Emily such obvious embarrassment a shyness so much more marked than that with which she had received him on his first visit could hardly exist without a deeper cause than solitary habits or nervous temperament which itself might have meant no more than the likeness between Mr. Drummond and Sir Robert Peel but that likeness taken in conjunction with Mrs. Warnock's extraordinary interest in his father and most noticeable embarrassment in receiving his mother might mean a great deal might mean indeed that the cloud upon his father's life was the shadow of a lifelong remorse the dark memory of sin and sorrow it might be that within the years preceding his marriage Mr. Warnock's young wife to believe this was to think very badly of this gentle creature who used the advantages of wealth and position with such modest restraint whose only delight in life was in one of the most exalted of life's pleasures to believe this was to think Mrs. Warnock a false and ungrateful wife to a generous husband and it was to believe George Bearsford a vulgar seducer if there is one fallacy to which the non legal mind in its power to estimate the value of circumstantial evidence Fallon Carew tried his father and Mrs. Warnock by the evidence of circumstances and he found them guilty my mother shall never cross that woman's threshold again he decided angry with himself for having taken Lady Emily to discone end of chapter four