L'amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque À la fois la tÊte, le coeur et le corps.

I

All over the East, and even nearer home, on the Continent, old women take a great place, and are even permitted to play a great rÔle, in the human affairs of those about them. Here in England it is otherwise. Here they are allowed but grudgingly the privilege of standing on the bank whence they see helpless boats, laden with freights to them so precious, drifting down a current of whose dangerous places, of whose shoals and shallows, their knowledge and experience are counted of no moment.

In a French country-house three such women as Lady Wantley, Theresa Wake, and the old nurse, Mrs. Mote, would have been the pivots round which the younger people would have naturally revolved. At Monk's Eype their presence—and this although each was singularly individual in character and disposition—did not affect or modify one jot the actions of the men and women about them.

Mrs. Robinson, now weaving with unfaltering hand her own destiny, absorbed in her own complicated emotions of fear, love, and pain, would have listened incredulously indeed, had a seer, greatly daring, warned her that each of these three old women might well, were she not careful to respect their several prejudices, bring her to shipwreck.

Downing, whose business it had long been to study those about him with reference to their attitude to himself, instinctively avoided the solitary company of Lady Wantley, for in her he recognized a possible and formidable opponent. But of old Miss Wake's presence in the villa he was scarcely conscious. Penelope's maid he knew to be a point of danger, the living spark which might set all ablaze.

The day after his coming to Monk's Eype, Sir George Downing and Mrs. Mote had met face to face, and he had turned on his heel without a word of greeting. Yet when he had last seen her they had parted pleasantly, the servant believing, foolishly enough, that she and her mistress were then seeing the last of one who had been their inseparable companion for many, to her increasingly anxious, days.

Mrs. Mote's crabbed face and short, ungainly figure were burnt into Downing's memory as having cast the only shadow on the sunny stretch of time which had so marvellously renewed his youth, brought warmth about his chilled heart, and made the future bright exceedingly. And so the meeting with the old nurse had been to him a sharp reminder that one person at least at Monk's Eype already wished him ill, and would fain see him go away for ever.

The maid also avoided him, though she sat long hours at her window, taking note of his comings and goings, jealously counting the moments that her mistress chose to spend in his company, either down in the Beach Room, or, more often, pacing up and down on the broad terrace, and under the ilex-trees which protected from relentless sea-winds the delicate flowering shrubs that were counted among the greatest glories of Monk's Eype.

It was there, under those trees, completely screened from the windows which swept the terrace, that Mrs. Robinson preferred to spend what leisure Sir George Downing allowed himself from his work. More than once Motey had come down from her watching-place, and had crept into the little pine-wood to watch, to overhear, what was being done and what was being said in the ilex grove. But the old woman's unhappy, suspicious eyes only saw what they had seen so often before: her mistress and Downing walking slowly side by side, she listening, absorbed, to his utterances. Sometimes Penelope would lay her hand a moment on his arm, with a curious, familiar, tender gesture—curious as coming from one who avoided alike familiarity and tenderness when dealing with her friends.

Only once, however, had Mrs. Mote surprised a gesture which might not have been witnessed by all the world. One afternoon when a strand of Mrs. Robinson's beautiful hair had become loosened, and so uncoiled its length upon her shoulder, Downing, turning towards her, had suddenly taken it up between his fingers and raised it to his lips. Then the old nurse had seen the bright gleam of what was so intimately a part of her mistress mingling for a moment with the dark moustache heavily streaked with white, and she had clenched her hands in impotent anger and disgust.

II

Her aunt's presence at Monk's Eype scarcely affected Cecily Wake. The two had never become intimate; the girl's young eagernesses and enthusiasms disturbed Miss Wake, and even her sunny good temper and buoyancy were a source of irritation to one who had led so grey and toneless a life.

On the other hand, Miss Theresa Wake was really attached to the beautiful woman whom she called cousin.

She watched Penelope far more closely than the latter knew during those still, hot August days, when the thin, shrunken figure of the spinster lady, wrapped, in spite of the heat, in an old-fashioned cashmere shawl, sat back in one of the hooded chairs set on the eastern side of the terrace. When out in the open air Miss Wake always armed herself with one of the novels which had been thoughtfully provided by her kind hostess for her entertainment; but often she would lay the volume down on her knee, and gaze, her dim eyes full of speculation, at Mrs. Robinson's brilliant figure coming and going across the terrace, to and from the studio, sometimes—nay, generally—accompanied, shadow-wise, by the tall, lean form of Sir George Downing.

After watching these two for a while, Miss Wake would find her interrupted novel oddly uninteresting and dreary.

To Cecily these holiday days were not passing by as happily as she had thought they would. She felt for the first time in her short life disturbed, she knew not why; distressed, she knew not by what.

The hours spent with Mrs. Robinson, doing work she had looked forward to doing, seemed strangely dull compared with those briefer moments when Wantley strolled or sat by her side, looking down smiling into her eyes, asking whimsical questions concerning the Settlement, with a view—or so he said—of settling there himself, if Mr. Hammond and Mrs. Pomfret would accept him as a disciple!

Twice in those ten days he had gone with her to early Mass at Beacon Abbas; and oh, how pleasant had been the walks along the cliff path, how soothing the half-hours spent in the beautiful chapel, with Wantley standing and kneeling by her side. But on the second occasion of their return from Beacon Abbas Penelope had greeted the two walkers, or rather had greeted Cecily, with a questioning piercing look. Was it one of dissatisfaction, of slight jealousy, or simply of surprise? That one glance—and Wantley was well aware that it was so—put an end to any further joint expeditions to the monastery chapel.

During these same unquiet days, when Cecily's heart would beat without reason, when she seemed to be always waiting, she knew not for what, the girl became fond, in a shy, childish way, of Penelope's mother.

Perhaps because she was utterly unlike any other woman Cecily Wake had ever seen, or even imagined, Lady Wantley exercised a curious fascination over her heart and mind. The tall, stately figure, wrapped in sweeping black and white garments, was seen but seldom in the sunshine, out of doors. Since her widowhood she had lived a life withdrawn from the world about her, and she had occupied what had been a sudden and unwelcome leisure by writing two mystical volumes, which had enjoyed great popularity among those ever ready to welcome a new interpretation of the more esoteric passages of the Scriptures.

When staying at Monk's Eype, Lady Wantley would spend long hours of solitude in the Picture Room; and there Cecily would sometimes find her, absorbed in a strangely-worded French or English book of devotion, from which, looking up, she would make the girl read her short passages. At other moments Cecily would discover her engaged in writing long letters of spiritual advice to correspondents, almost always unknown to her, who had read her books, and who wished to consult her concerning their own spiritual difficulties and perplexities.

When not thus employed Lady Wantley sat idle, her long, delicately-modelled hands clasped loosely together, enjoying, as she believed, actual communion with her own dead—with the fine, true-hearted father, whose earthly memory was so dear to her; with the beloved mother, to whom as she grew older she felt herself to be growing more alike and nearer; with the husband who, however stern and awe-inspiring to others, had ever been fond and tender to herself. The little group of strangely assorted souls seemed ever gathered about her, and in no distant, inaccessible heaven.

Once, when Cecily Wake had come upon her in one of these strange companied trances, Lady Wantley had said very simply: 'I have been telling Penelope's father of her many perfections: of her goodness to those who, if they are the disinherited of the earth, are yet the heirs of the kingdom—those whom he himself ever made his special care. I think, dear child, that, if you would not mind my doing so, I will also some day tell him—my husband, I mean—of you, and of Penelope's love and care for you.' And she had added, as if to herself: 'But how could she be otherwise? Was she not, even before her birth, dedicated to the Lord in His temple?'

Lady Wantley was sometimes in a sterner mood, when hell seemed as near as—ay, nearer than—heaven. Evil spirits then appeared to encompass her, and she would feel herself to be wrestling with their dread master himself. When this was so, her delicate, bloodless face would become transfigured, and the large, heavy-lidded grey eyes would seem to flash out fire, while Cecily listened, awed, to strange majestic utterances, of which she knew not that their source was the Apocalypse.

That this convent-bred girl had a genuine belief in the Evil One, and a due fear of his cunning ways, was undoubtedly a link between Lady Wantley and herself; as was also the softer fact of her great affection for the one creature whom Lady Wantley loved with simple human devotion. After hearing the older woman talk, as she so often did talk, of her loved and admired daughter, Cecily would feel grieved, even a little perplexed, when next she perceived how lightly Penelope esteemed this boundless mother-love.

In no material thing did Mrs. Robinson neglect Lady Wantley. Every morning she would make her way into the Picture Room, ready with some practical suggestion designed to further her mother's comfort during the coming day; but to Penelope, much as she loved her, Lady Wantley never alluded to the matters which lay nearest to her heart. She found it easier to do so to the Catholic girl than to the creature she had herself borne, over whose upbringing she had watched so zealously, and, as she sometimes admitted to herself in moments of rare self-sincerity, with so little success.

III

Wantley only so far remembered the presence at Monk's Eype of Penelope's mother as to thank Heaven that she had nothing in common with the match-making dowagers, of whom he had met certain types in his way through life, and who at this moment would have brushed some of the bloom from his fragrant romance.

Absorbed as he had already become in the novel feeling of considering another more than himself, he yet found the time now and again to wonder why it was that he saw so little of the remarkable man to whom he stood in at least the nominal relation of host. That first evening they had sat up together long into the night, and there had been, not only no apparent barrier between them, but the younger man had been both fascinated and interested by the other's account of the land where he had already spent the best half of his life. Such had been the magic of Downing's manner, such the infectious quality of his sustained enthusiasm, that for a moment Wantley had wondered whether he also might not create a career for himself in that country of which the boundless resources and equally boundless necessities had now been made real to him for the first time.

Then, as it had seemed, gradually, but looking back he saw that the change had come very quickly, Wantley had perceived that Downing avoided instead of seeking or welcoming his company. True, the other man was engaged in heavy work, spending much of his time in the Beach Room, and often returning there late in the evening; but even so Wantley could not understand why Downing now seemed desirous of seeing as little of him as possible. The knowledge made him a little sore, the more so that he attributed the change in the other's manner to some careless word uttered by Penelope.

Another grievance, and one which pushed the other into the background of his mind, was the fact that Mrs. Robinson, more capricious, more restless than her wont, absorbed each day much of the time and attention of Cecily Wake. That the latter apparently regarded this constant call on her leisure as a privilege, in no sense softened the young man's irritation: it seemed to him that his cousin took an impish delight in frustrating his attempts—somewhat shamefaced at first, openly eager as time went on—to be with the girl.

Wantley consoled himself by bestowing on the aunt the time and the attention he would fain have bestowed on the niece. The elder Miss Wake soon came to regard him as an exceptionally agreeable and well-bred man, with a strong leaning to Catholicism—even, she sometimes ventured to hope, to the priesthood; for many were Lord Wantley's questions concerning monasteries and convents, and had he not on two week-day mornings escorted her niece to Mass at Beacon Abbas? According to Miss Wake's limited knowledge of the ways of men, and especially of the ways of noblemen, such zeal, if it involved early rising, was quite exceptional, and must surely be done with an object.

Poor Wantley, unconscious of these hopes, his sense of humour for the moment more or less suspended, found the mornings especially hang heavy on his hands, for Cecily, after an hour spent with Penelope in the studio, generally disappeared upstairs into her own room till lunch; and this absorption, as he supposed, in business connected with the Melancthon Settlement did not increase his liking for the place which filled so much of Cecily's heart, and took up so much of the time he might have spent with her.

At last the day came when the young man solved the innocent mystery of how Cecily Wake spent her mornings. Passing along the terrace, he overheard a fragmentary conversation which showed him that his cousin was using her young friend as secretary, handing over to her the large correspondence which dogs the hours of every man and woman known to have the disposal of great wealth. When there had been no one at hand more compliant, Wantley had himself undertaken the task of dealing with the hundred and one absurd, futile, often pathetic, requests for help, which filled by far the greater part of Mrs. Robinson's letter-bag. Too well he knew the tenor of the various remarks which now fell upon his ear; one sentence, however, at once compelled closer attention: 'I have had a letter—to which I should like you also to send an answer. It's from David Winfrith. Please say I'm glad he's back, and that we will drive over there to-morrow. Write to him and say I have asked you to do so, as I am too busy to answer his letter to-day.'

Wantley, with keen irritation, heard the low, hesitating answer: 'If you don't mind, I would so much prefer not to write to Mr. Winfrith. You know he has never liked me, and I am sure he would feel very much annoyed if he thought'—the soft voice paused, but went bravely on—'if he thought I had seen any letter of his to you——'

'But you have not seen his letter! Still, I dare say you're right. We will drive over there to-day—the more so that I have something else to do in that neighbourhood.'

A moment later Wantley heard the door of the studio opening and shutting, and knew that his cousin was alone. He walked in through the window prepared to tell Mrs. Robinson, and that very plainly, his opinion of what he considered her gross selfishness. But quickly she carried the war into the enemy's country.

'I saw you,' she said, with heightened colour, 'and I didn't think it very pretty of you to stand listening out there!'

Then, struck by the look of suppressed anger which was his only answer, she added: 'Perhaps I've been rather selfish the last few days, but you and she see quite as much of each other as is good for you, just at present. And, Ludovic, I've been longing to show you something which, I think even you will agree, exactly fits your present condition.'

She took from the table a prettily bound volume, in which had been thrust an envelope as marker. 'Listen!' she cried, and then declaimed with emphasis, and partly in the faultless French which he had always envied her:

'First Old Bachelor: "Et les jeunes filles? Aime-tu Ça? Toi?"

'Second Old Bachelor: "HÉlas! mon ami, je commence!"'

Wantley bit his lip. He could not help smiling. 'You have not shown her that?' he asked suspiciously.

'No, indeed! How could you think such a thing, even of me?' Mrs. Robinson rose; she came and stood by him, and as their eyes met he saw that she was strangely moved. 'Ah, Ludovic,' she said softly, 'you are a lucky man!'

He looked away. 'Do you really think that she likes being with me?' he asked awkwardly.

'Yes, even better than with me—now!' The young man knew, rather than saw, that her eyes were full of tears, and in spite of his absorption in himself and his own affairs, he found time to wonder why Penelope was so unlike herself—so gentle, so moved. Her next words confirmed his feeling of uneasy astonishment, for, 'You won't ever set her against me,' she asked, 'whatever happens, will you?'

Wantley felt amused and a little touched. 'My dear Penelope!' he cried, 'I think it's my turn now to ask you how you could think such a thing, even of me? Also I must say you do her a great injustice. Why, she loves you with all her heart! Not even'—he used the first simile that came into his mind—'not even an angel with a flaming sword would keep her from you.'

'No; but some Roman Catholic notion of obedience to one's lawful owner might prove more tangible than a flaming sword!'

The harsh words grated on Wantley's ear; he wondered why women sometimes put things so much more coarsely than a man, in a similar case, would do.

But before he could answer Penelope had moved away, and, with a complete change of voice, and a return of her usual rather disdainful serenity of manner, was saying: 'I see Sir George Downing coming up from the Beach Room. By the way, I want to tell you that he finds he can't work properly with so many people about, and I have suggested that he should put in a few days at Kingpole Farm. I believe the lodgings there are very comfortable, and the place has the further advantage of being near Shagisham. You know he wishes to meet David Winfrith, and I thought, perhaps, that the introduction'—Penelope now spoke with nervous hesitation—'would come better from you.'

Wantley assented cordially, pleased that his cousin should for once propose a common-sense plan in which he, Wantley, would play a proper part.

Wantley, as Penelope shrewdly suspected—for to her he had never worn his heart upon his sleeve—had spent from boyhood onwards much more time than was good for his soul's health in self-pity and self-examination.

This was especially true during that portion of the year when he was in England, and especially the case when he was staying, as he did each summer, at Monk's Eype. In his heart he grudged his beautiful cousin the possession of a place created by a man to whom they stood in equal relationship, but which, as he never failed to remind himself when in Dorset, had always belonged to the Lord Wantley of the day. At Monk's Eype he felt himself a stranger where he ought to have felt at home; and this was the more painful to him because the villa had been the creation of the one man with whom he believed himself to be in closer affinity than with any other former bearer of his name.

During his long idle youth, Wantley's happiest moments had been those spent in wandering along the byways of France, Spain, and Germany. He had been denied the ordinary upbringing of his rank and race, but, during the long Continental journeys in which he had been the companion of Lord and Lady Wantley and their daughter, he had learnt and seen much which in later life was to cause him abiding pleasure and comfort, the more so as he was a fair artist, and came of scholar stock.

Brought up by a mother to whom her son's future had been the only consoling thought in a middle age of singular trials and perplexities, Ludovic Wantley had from childhood realized, to an almost pathetic extent, the pleasant possibilities of life as a British peer. But very soon after he had succeeded his cousin he discovered that much of the glories, and all the pleasures attached to the position would be denied him, partly from want of means, more perhaps from lack of that robustness of outlook induced, not wholly to his spiritual advantage, in the average public school boy.

When abroad Wantley never became, as it were, forgetful of his identity—never affected the incognito so dear, and sometimes so useful, to the travelling English peer. Indeed, young Lord Wantley had soon become the Continental innkeeper's ideal 'milord,' content to pay well for indifferent accommodation, delighted rather than otherwise to meet with those trifling mishaps which annoy so acutely the ordinary tourist, and content to come back, winter after winter, to the same auberge, osteria, or gasthaus.

In yet another matter he differed greatly from the conventional travelled and travelling Englishman: he came and went alone, apparently feeling no need, as did most of his countrymen, of congenial companionship. One day the kindly landlady of one of those stately posting inns, yclept 'Le Tournebride,' which may still be found scattered through provincial France, had ventured to suggest that the next time she had the pleasure of seeing him she hoped he would come accompanied by 'une belle milady.' He had smiled as he had answered: 'Jamais! jamais! jamais!' But that particular 'Tournebride' had known him no more.

Wantley had thought much of marriage. What man so situated does not do so? He knew, or thought he knew, that to him money and marriage must be synonymous terms, and the knowledge had angered him. In one of his rare moments of confidence he had said to his cousin: 'Like your eccentric friend who always knew when there was a baronet in the room, I always know when there's an heiress there. And, what is more serious, her presence always induces a feeling of repulsion!'

Penelope had laughed suddenly, and then changed the subject. Any allusion to Wantley's monetary affairs held for her a sharp if small pin-prick of conscience. For a while she had tried, it must be admitted in but a fitful and desultory way, to bring him in contact with the type of English girl, often, let it be said in parenthesis, a not unpleasing type of modern girlhood, who is willing to consider very seriously, and in all good faith, the preliminaries to a bargain in which she and her fortune, a peer and his peerage, are to be the human goods weighed opposite one another in the balance of life.

There had also been periods in Wantley's life when he had found himself in love with love, and ready to weave an ardent romance round every pretty sentimentalist in search of an adventure. But these feelings had never deepened into one so strong as to compel the thought of an enduring tie. His fastidious critical temperament shrank from concrete realities, and as time went on he had felt, over-sensitively, how little he had to offer to a woman of the kind to whom he sometimes felt a strong if temporary attraction.

As he grew older, passed the border-line of thirty, the longing for the stability afforded by a happy marriage appealed to him, for awhile, far more than it had done when he was a younger man. And so for some two years, being then much abroad, he had toyed with the idea of making, in France or in Italy, a mariage de convenance with some well-born, well-dowered girl who should leave her convent-school to become his wife, and with whom he would promise himself, when in the mood, an after-marriage romance not lacking in piquancy.

Unfortunately, Wantley was an Englishman, and by no means as unconventional as he liked to think himself. Accordingly, when he came to consider, and even more when he came to discuss, with some good-natured French or Italian acquaintance, the preliminaries of such a marriage as had appealed to his fancy, his gorge rose at certain sides of the question then closely presented to his notice, and finally he put the idea from him.

This spring Wantley had returned to England, ready, as usual, to spend the summer in half-unwilling attendance on his lovely cousin, and further than he had been for many years from all thought of marriage.

Then, with what seemed at times incredible and disconcerting swiftness, had come over him, in these few days of sunny quietude, a limitless unreasoning tenderness for a young creature utterly unlike his former ideals of womanhood. Even when aghast at the thought of how easily he might have missed her on the way of his life—even when he felt her already so much a part of himself that he could no longer have described her, as he had first seen her, to a stranger—Wantley admitted, nay, forced on himself the knowledge, that she was not beautiful, not even particularly gifted or clever. One reason why he had always displayed so sincere a lack of liking for the heiresses, willing to be peeresses, whom Penelope had thrust upon his notice, had been that to him they had all looked so unaccountably plain; and yet, compared with Cecily Wake, he knew that more than one of these young women might well have been considered a beauty.

Wantley had always been fond of analyzing his own emotions, and now the simplicity, as well as the strength, of his feeling amazed him. When with Cecily Wake he felt that he was journeying through some delicious unknown country, the old Paradise rediscovered by them two, she still a sweet mysterious stranger, whose better acquaintance he was making day by day. But when she was no longer by his side, and there were many hours he could only spend in thinking of her, then Wantley felt as a mother feels about her own little child, as if he had always known her, always loved her with this placid and yet uneasy care, this trusting and yet watchful tenderness.

He had ever deprecated enthusiasm, and had actively disliked philanthropists, as only those who in early youth are constrained to endure the company of enthusiasts and the atmosphere of philanthropy can deprecate the one and dislike the other. Well, now, so the young man whimsically told himself, had come what his old enemies—those who had gathered about his uncle and aunt in days he hated to remember—would doubtless have recognised as a distinct 'call.' It seemed to him that he had made a good beginning that first Sunday afternoon, when he had kept the aunt in play while the niece had accomplished her prosaic errand of mercy.

The same evening, late at night, he had gone into the room which had been the great Lord Wantley's study, and, under the grim eyes of the man who had never judged him fairly, he had pulled out faded Blue-Books, reports, and pamphlets which had been the tools of a mighty worker for his kind. Then, lamp in hand, he had wandered on into the studio, and there, oddly out of keeping with their fellows on the pretty quaintly placed white shelves framing the door, he had found newer, more digestible, contributions to the problems to which he was now, half unwillingly, turning his mind.

He took down a slim, ill-printed volume, bearing on the title-page the name of Philip Hammond, and composed of essays which had first appeared in the more serious reviews. Setting down his lamp on Penelope's deal painting-table, he opened the little book with prejudice, read on with increasing attention, and finally placed it back on the shelf with respect.

Even so, his lips curled as he remembered the only time he had seen the writer. The two men had met by accident in Mrs. Robinson's London house, and Wantley had been amused by Hammond's obvious—too obvious—devotion to the beautiful widow of the man whose aims and whose ideals he had known how to describe so well in this very book. For the hundredth time Wantley asked himself in what consisted Penelope's power of attracting such men as had been apparently Melancthon Robinson, as was undoubtedly Philip Hammond, as had become—to give the clinching instance—David Winfrith.

The day before, when driving back to Monk's Eype from the place where he had been spending a few pleasant days, he had passed the two riders, and had seen them so deeply absorbed in one another's conversation that they had ridden by without seeing him.

For a moment, as he had driven by quickly in a dogcart belonging to his late host, and therefore unfamiliar to Penelope and her companion, he had caught a look—an unguarded, unmasked, passionate look—on Winfrith's strong, plain face.

What glance, what word on his companion's part, had brought it there? That Winfrith should allow himself to be thus moved angered Wantley. He set himself to recall very deliberately certain things that his mother, acting with strange lack of good feeling, had told him, when he was still a boy, concerning Lady Wantley's mother, Penelope's grandmother. He wondered if Penelope knew. On the whole he thought not. But in any case, who could doubt from whom she had had transmitted to her that uncanny power of bewitching men, of keeping them faithful to herself, while she remained, or at least so he felt persuaded, quite unaffected by the passions she delighted in unloosing?

In his own mind, and not for the first time, he judged his cousin very hardly. And yet, after that evening, Wantley never thought so really ill of her again, for, when he felt tempted to do so, he seemed to hear the words which he had heard said that day for the first, though by no means for the last, time: 'Why are you—what makes you—so unfair to Penelope?'

And even as he walked through the sleeping, silent house he reminded himself, repentantly, that his cousin's love-compelling power extended to what was already to him the best and purest, as it was so soon to be the dearest, thing on earth.