He nodded.
"You read about it in the newspapers, I suppose," he said. "Part of the story isn"t true. It was stated that I had never seen my Australian uncle, but as a matter of fact he has been over here three or four times. It was he who paid for my education at Harrow and Oxford."
"What did your brother say to that?"
"He opposed it," John confessed, "and he hated my uncle. He detests the thought of any one of us going out of sight of our own hills. My uncle had the wander-fever."
"And you?" she asked suddenly.
"I have none of it," he a.s.serted.
A very faint smile played about her lips.
"Perhaps not before," she murmured; "but now?"
"Do you mean because I have inherited the money?"
She leaned a little toward him. Her smile now was more evident, and there was something in her eyes which was almost like a challenge.
"Naturally!"
"What difference does my money make?" he demanded.
"Don"t you realize the increase of your power as a human being?" she replied. "Don"t you realize the larger possibilities of the life that is open to you? You can move, if you will, in the big world. You can take your place in any society you choose, meet interesting people who have done things, learn everything that is new, do everything that is worth doing in life. You can travel to the remote countries of the globe. You can become a politician, a philanthropist, or a sportsman. You can follow your tastes wherever they lead you, and--perhaps this is the most important thing of all--you can do everything upon a splendid scale."
He smiled down at her.
"That all sounds very nice," he admitted, "but supposing that I have no taste in any of the directions you have mentioned? Supposing my life here satisfies me? Supposing I find all that I expect to find in life here on my own land, among my own hills? What then?"
She looked at him with a curiosity which was almost pa.s.sionate. Her lips were parted, her senses strained.
"It is not possible," she exclaimed, "that you can mean it!"
"But why not?" he protested. "I have not the tortuous brain of the modern politician. I hate cities--the smell of them, the atmosphere of them, the life in them. The desire for travel is only half born in me.
That may come--I cannot tell. I love the daily work here; I am fond of horses and dogs. I know every yard of land we own, and I know what it will produce. It interests me to try experiments--new crops, a new distribution of crops, new machinery sometimes, new methods of fertilizing. I love to watch the seasons come and reign and pa.s.s. I love to feel the wind and the sun, and even the rain. All these things have become a sort of appet.i.te to me. I am afraid," he wound up a little lamely, "that this is all very badly expressed, but the whole truth of it is, you see, that I am a man of simple and inherited tastes. I feel that my life is here, and I live it here and I love it. Why should I go out like a _Don Quixote_ and search for vague adventures?"
"Because you are a man!" she answered swiftly. "You have a brain and a soul too big for your life here. You eat and drink, and physically you flourish, but part of you sleeps because it is shut away from the world of real things. Don"t you sometimes feel it in your very heart that life, as we were meant to live it, can only be lived among your fellow men?"
He looked upward, over his shoulder, at the little cl.u.s.ter of farm-buildings and cottages, and the gray stone church.
"It seems to me," he declared simply, "that the man who tries to live more than one life fails in both. There is a little cycle of life here, among our thirty or forty souls, which revolves around my brother and myself. You would think it stupid and humdrum, because the people are peasants; but I am not sure that you are right. The elementary things, you know, are the greatest, and those we have. Our young people fall in love and marry. The joy of birth comes to our mothers, and the tragedy of death looms over us all. Some go out into the world, some choose to remain here. A pa.s.ser-by may glance upward from the road at our little hamlet, and wonder what can ever happen in such an out-of-the-way corner. I think the answer is just what I have told you. Love and marriage, birth and death happen. These things make life."
Her curiosity now had become merged in an immense interest. She laid her fingers lightly upon his arm.
"You speak for your people," she said. "That is well. I can understand their simple lives being as absorbing to them as ours are to us. I can imagine how, here among your hills, you can watch as a spectator a cycle of life which contains, as you have pointed out, every element of tragedy and happiness. But you yourself?"
"I am one of them," he answered, "a necessary part of them."
"How you deceive yourself! I am sure you are honest, I am sure you believe what you say, but will you remember what I am going to tell you?
The time will come, before very long, when you will feel doubts."
"Doubts about what?"
She smiled enigmatically.
"Oh, they will a.s.sert themselves," she a.s.sured him, "and you will recognize them when they come. Something will whisper to you in your heart that after all you are not of the same clay as these simple folk--that there is a different mission in the world for a man like you than to play the part of feudal lord over a few peasants. Sooner or later you will come out into the world; and the sooner the better, I think, Mr. John Strangewey, or you will grow like your brother here among your granite hills."
He moved a little uneasily. All the time she was watching him. It seemed to her that she could read the thoughts which were stirring in his brain.
"You would like to say, wouldn"t you," she went on, "that your brother"s is a useful and an upright life? So it may be, but it is not wide enough or great enough. No one should be content with the things which he can reach. He should climb a little higher, and pluck the riper fruit. Some day you will feel the desire to climb. Something will come to you--in the night, perhaps, or on the bosom of that wind you love so much. It may be a call of music, or it may be a more martial note. Promise me, will you, that when you feel the impulse you won"t use all that obstinate will-power of yours to crush it? You will destroy the best part of yourself, if you do. You will give it a chance? Promise!"
She held out her hand with a little impulsive gesture. He took it in his own, and held it steadfastly.
"I will remember," he promised.
Along the narrow streak of road, from the southward, they both watched the rapid approach of a large motor-car. There were two servants upon the front seat and one pa.s.senger--a man--inside. It swung into the level stretch beneath them, a fantasy of gray and silver in the reflected sunshine.
Louise had been leaning forward, her head supported upon her hands. As the car slackened speed, she rose very slowly to her feet.
"The chariot of deliverance!" she murmured.
"It is the Prince of Seyre," John remarked, gazing down with a slight frown upon his forehead.
She nodded. They had started the descent, and she was walking in very leisurely fashion.
"The prince is a great friend of mine," she said. "I had promised to spend last night, or, at any rate, some portion of the evening, at Raynham Castle on my way to London."
He summoned up courage to ask her the question which had been on his lips more than once.
"As your stay with us is so nearly over, won"t you abandon your incognito?"
"In the absence of your brother," she answered, "I will risk it. My name is Louise Maurel."
"Louise Maurel, the actress?" he repeated wonderingly.
"I am she," Louise confessed. "Would your brother," she added, with a little grimace, "feel that he had given me a night"s lodging under false pretense?"
John made no immediate reply. The world had turned topsyturvy with him.
Louise Maurel, and a great friend of the Prince of Seyre! He walked on mechanically until she turned and looked at him.
"Well?"
"I am sorry," he declared bluntly.
"Why?" she asked, a little startled at his candor.
"I am sorry, first of all, that you are a friend of the Prince of Seyre."