CHAPTER IX

David Thain, arrived at the end of his journey, seated himself on the second stile from the road, threw away his cigar and looked facts in the face. He who had run the gamut of the Wall Street fever, who in his earlier days had relied almost upon chance for a meal, who had stood the tests of huge successes as well as the anxieties of possible failures without visible emotion—in such a fashion, even, that his closest friends could scarcely tell whether he were winning or losing—found himself now, without any crisis before him, and engaged in the most ordinary undertaking of a stroll from the station across a few fields, suddenly the victim of sensations and weaknesses which defied analysis and mocked at restraint. It was the England of his boyhood, this, the sudden almost overpowering realisation of those dreams which had grown fainter and fainter during his many years of struggle in a very different atmosphere. Birds were singing in the long grove which, behind the high, grey-stone wall, fringed the road for miles. Rooks—real English rooks—were cawing above his head. A light evening breeze was bending the meadow grass of the field which his footpath had cloven, and from the hedge by his side came the faint perfume of hawthorn blossom. Before him was the park with its splendours of giant oaks, with deer resting beneath the trees, and in the distance the grey, irregular outline of Mandeleys Abbey. He had played cricket, when he was a boy, in the very field through which he was passing. Some time in that dim past, he had stood with his uncle, whilst he had issued with the beaters from that long strip of plantation, watching with all a boy's fervid admiration the careless ease with which the Lord of Mandeleys was bringing the pheasants down from the sky. He had skated on the lake there, had watched at a respectful distance the antics of the ladies Letitia and Margaret, anxious to escape from their retinue of servants and attendants. A queer little vision came before him at that moment of Lady Letitia hobbling towards him upon the ice, with one skate unbuckled, and a firm but gracious entreaty that the little boy—he was at least a head taller than she—would fasten it for her. Strange little flashes of memory had come to him now and then in that new world where he had carved his way to success, memories so indistinct that they brought with them no thrills, scarcely even any longing. And now all his strength and hardness, qualities so necessary to him throughout his strenuous life, seemed to have passed away. He was a child again, breathing in all these simple sights and perfumes, his memory taking him even further back to the days when he sat in the meadow, in the hot sun, picking daisies and buttercups, and watching for the fish that sometimes jumped from the stream. It was an entirely unexpected emotion, this. When once more he strode along the footpath, he felt a different man. He had lost his slight touch of assurance. He looked about him eagerly, almost appealingly. He was ashamed to confess even to himself that he had the feeling of a wanderer who has come home.

He crossed the last stile and was now in the park proper. Several villagers were strolling about under the trees, and they looked at this newcomer, with his dark-coloured clothes and strangely-shaped hat, with some surprise. Nevertheless, he held uninterruptedly on his way until he reached the broad drive which led to the Abbey. He walked on the turf by the side of it, over the bridge which crossed the stream, through the inner iron gates, beyond which the village people were not allowed to pass, and so to the well-remembered spot. On his right was the house—a strange, uneven building, at times ecclesiastical, here and there domestic, always ancient, with its wings of cloisters running almost down to the moat which surrounded it. And just over the moat, crossed by that light iron handbridge, with its back against what he remembered as a plantation, but which had now become a wood, the little red brick cottage, smothered all over with creepers, its tiny garden ablaze with flowers, its empty rows of dog kennels, its deserted line of coops. David glanced for a moment at the drawn blinds of the Abbey. Then he crossed the footbridge and the few yards of meadow, lifted the latch of the gate and, walking up the gravel path, came to a sudden standstill. A man who was seated almost hidden by a great cluster of fox-gloves rose to his feet.

"It's you, then, lad!" he exclaimed, holding out both his hands. "You're welcome! There's no one to the house—there won't be for a quarter of an hour—so I'll wring your hands once more. It's a queer world, this, David. You're back with me here, where I brought you up as a stripling, and yon's the Abbey. Sit you down, boy. I am not the man I was since I came here."

David Thain dragged an old-fashioned kitchen chair from the porch, and sat by his uncle's side. Richard Vont, although he was still younger than his sixty-four years, seemed to his nephew curiously changed during the last week. The hard, resolute face was disturbed. The mouth, kept so tight through the years, had weakened a little. There was a vague, almost pathetic agitation, in the man's face.

"You'll take no notice of me, David," his uncle went on. "I'm honest with you. These few days have been like a great, holy dream, like something one reads of in the Scriptures but never expects to see. There's old Mary Wells—she's doing for me up there. Just a word or two of surprise, and a grip of the hand, and no more. And there's the Abbey—curse it!—not a stone gone, only the windows are blank. You see the weeds on the lawn, David? Do you mark the garden behind? They tell me there's but two gardeners there to do the work of twenty. And the drive—look at it as far as you can see—moss and weed! They're coming down in the world, these Mandeleys, David. Even this last little lawsuit, the lawyers told me, has cost the Marquis nineteen thousand pounds. God bless you for your wealth, David! It's money that counts in these days."

David produced a pouch of tobacco from his pocket and handed it over to his uncle, who filled a pipe eagerly.

"That's thoughtful of you, David," he declared. "I'd forgotten to buy any, and that's a fact, for I can't stand the village yet. You're looking strange-like, David."

"And I feel it," was the quiet answer. "Uncle, hasn't it made any difference to you, this coming back?"

"In what way?" the old man asked.

"Well, I don't know. I walked across those fields to the park, and I seemed suddenly to feel more like a boy again, and I felt that somehow I was letting go of things. Do you know what I mean?"

"Letting go of things," Richard Vont repeated suspiciously. "No!"

"Well, somehow or other," David continued, as he filled his own pipe and lit it, "I found myself looking back through the years, and I wondered whether we hadn't both let one thing grow too big in our minds. Life doesn't vary much here. Things are very much as we left them, and it's all rather wonderful. I felt a little ashamed, as I came up through the park, of some of the things we've planned and sworn. Didn't you feel a little like that, uncle? Can you sit here and think of the past, and remember all that burden we carried, and not feel inclined to let it slip, or just a little of it slip, from our shoulders?"

Vont laid down his pipe. He rose to his feet. His fingers suddenly gripped his nephew's shoulder. He turned him towards the house.

"Listen, David," he said; "there's twilight an hour away yet, but it will soon be here. The blackbirds are calling for it, and the wind's dropping. Now you see. That was her room," he added, touching the window, "and there's the door out, just the same. You see that tree there? I was crouching behind that with my gun ready loaded, and there was murder in my heart—I tell you that, boy. I watched the Abbey. I was supposed to be safe in Fakenham Town, safe for a good two hours, and I lay there and watched because I knew, and no one came. And then I heard a whisper. I turned my head, although I was most afeared, and out of that door—that door from Marcia's room, David—I saw him come. I saw her arms come out and draw him back, and then I began to breathe hard, but the trees were thick that way—I'd been looking for him coming from the Abbey—-and they stole out together, arm in arm. I was so near them that they must have heard me groan, for Marcia started. And then, before I knew what was happening, he—the Marquis, mind—had struck up my gun, caught it by the barrel and sent it flying. My hand was on his throat, but he was as strong as I was, in those days, and a mighty wrestler. It's my shame, boy, after all these years to have to confess it, but he got the better of me. I was crazy with anger, and he had me down. And then he stood aside and bade me get up, and my strength seemed all gone. He stood there looking at me contemptuously. 'Don't make a fool of yourself, Vont,' he said. 'Your daughter and I understand one another, and our concerns have nothing to do with you. If you have anything to say to me, come up to the Abbey to-morrow. You'll find your gun in the thicket.' He turned round and he kissed Marcia's fingers, just like I'd seen them do in the distance at their fine parties up there, and he strolled away. There was the gun in the thicket, and he knew it, and I knew it, and I couldn't move, and he went. And all I could hear was Marcia crying, and those birds singing behind, and I just slipped away into the wood."

"Uncle, is it worth while bringing this all up again?" David interrupted.

"Aye, it's worth while!" the old man insisted fiercely. "It's worth while for fear I should forget, for the old place has its cling on me. That next day I went to the Abbey, and I saw the Marquis. He was quite cool, sent the servants out—he'd no weapon near—and he talked a lot that I don't understand and never shall understand, but it was about Marcia, and that she was his, and was leaving with him for London that evening. I just asked him one question. 'It's for shame, then?' I asked. And he looked at me just as though I were some person whom he was trying to make understand, who didn't quite speak the language. And he said—'Your daughter made her choice months ago, Vont. She will live the life she desires to live. I am sorry to take her away from you. Think it over, and try and feel sensible about it.' It was then I felt a strange joy, that I've never been able rightly to understand. I'd just remembered that the cottage was mine, and I had a sudden feeling that I wanted to sit at the end of the garden and watch the Abbey and curse it, curse it with a Bible on my knee, till its stones fell apart and the grass grew up from the walks and the damp grew out in blotches on the walls. And that's why I've come back after all these years."

"And you're just the same?" David asked curiously. "You feel just the same about him?"

"Don't you, my lad?" his uncle demanded. "You're not telling me that you're climbing down?"

David took the old man's arm.

"On the contrary, uncle," he said, "my promised share of the work is done. I hold his promissory notes for forty thousand pounds, due in three months. I have sold him some shares that aren't worth forty thousand pence, and won't be for many a year. I've cheated him, if you like, but when the three months comes you can make him a bankrupt, if you will. I'll give you the notes."

Richard Vont drew himself up. He turned his face towards the Abbey, growing a little indistinct now in the falling twilight.

"It's grand hearing," was all he said. "There's Mary, coming round with the supper, boy. I'll take the liberty of asking you to have a bite with me and a glass of ale, but I'll not forget that you're the great David Thain, the millionaire from America, who took kindly notice of me on the steamer. Come this way, sir," he went on, throwing open the cottage door. "It's a queer little place, but it's a novelty for you American gentlemen. Step right in, sir. Mrs. Wells," he announced, "this is a gentleman who was kind to me upon the steamer, and he promised that if ever he was this way he'd drop in. He'll take some supper with me. You'll do your best for us?"

The old lady looked very hard at David Thain, and she dropped a curtsey.

"From America, too," she murmured. "'Tis a wonderful country! Aye, I'll do my best, Richard Vont."