III.

"So far as I understand your story, sir, it leaves me with but one course. You will go at once to your room for the night, where a meal shall be sent to you. At eight o'clock to-morrow morning you will be ready to drive with me to Plymouth, where doubtless I shall discover, from the Officer Commanding, the promptest way of returning you to Dinan."

The Squire spoke slowly, resting his elbow on the library table and shading his eyes with his palm, under which, however, they looked out with fiery directness at Walter, standing upright before him.

The boy's face went white before his brain grasped the sentence. His first sense was of utter helplessness, almost of betrayal. From the day of his escape he had been conscious of a weak spot in his story. To himself he could justify his conduct throughout; and by dint of rehearsing over and over again the pros and contras, always as an advocate for the defence, he had persuaded himself at times that every sensible person must agree with him. What consideration, to begin with, could any of the English detenus owe to Bonaparte, who by seizing them had broken the good faith between nations? Promises, again, are not unconditional; they hold so long as he to whom they are given abides by his counter-obligations, stated or implied.… Walter had a score of good arguments to satisfy himself. Nevertheless he had felt that to satisfy his father they would need to be well presented. He had counted on his mother's help and Father Halloran's. Why, for the first time in his life, had these two deserted him? Never in the same degree had he wanted their protection. His mind groped in a void. He felt horribly alone.

And yet, while he sought for reasons against this sentence, he knew the real reason to be that he could not face it. He hated suffering: a world which demanded suffering of him was wholly detestable, irrational, monstrous: he desired no more to do with it. What had he done to be used so? He knew himself for a harmless fellow, wishing hurt to no man. Then why on earth could he not be let alone? He had never asked to be born: he had no wish to live at all, if living involved all this misery. It had been bad enough in Dinan before his escape; but to tread back that weary road in proclaimed dishonour, exposed to contemptuous eyes at every halting-place, and to take up the burden again plus the shame—it was unthinkable, and he came near to a hysterical laugh at the command. He felt as a horse might feel when spurred up to a fence which it cannot face and foresees it must refuse at the last moment.

"Return—return to Dinan?" he echoed, his white lips shaking on each word.

"Certainly you will return to Dinan. For God's sake—" The Squire checked himself, and his tenderness swelled suddenly above his scorn. He rose from the table, stepped to the boy, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Walter," he said, "we have somehow managed to make a mess of it. You have behaved disreputably; and if the blame of it, starting from somewhere in the past, lies at your mother's door or mine, we must sorrowfully beg your pardon. The thing is done: it is reparable, but only through your suffering. You are the last à Cleeve, and with our faults we à Cleeves have lived cleanly and honourably. Be a man: take up this burden which I impose, and redeem your honour. For your mother's sake and mine I could ask it: but how can we separate ourselves from you? Look in my face. Are there no traces in it of these last two years? Boy, boy, you have not been the only one to suffer! If further suffering of ours could help you, would it not be given? But a man's honour lies ultimately in his own hands. Go, lad—endure what you must—and God support you with the thought that we are learning pride in you!"

"It will kill me!"

The lad blurted it out with a sob. His father's hand dropped from his shoulder.

"Are you incapable of understanding that it might do worse?" he asked coldly, and turned his back in despair.

Walter went out unsteadily, fumbling his way.

The Squire dined alone that night, and after dinner sat long alone before his library fire—how long he scarcely knew; but Narracott, the butler, had put up the bolts and retired, leaving only the staircase-lantern burning, when Father Halloran knocked at the library door and was bidden to enter.

"I wished to speak with you about Walter—to learn your decision," he explained. "You have not seen him?"

"Not since he came to explain himself."

"He is in his room, I believe. He is to be ready at eight to-morrow to start with me for Plymouth."

"I looked for that decision," said the priest, after a moment's silence.

"Would you have suggested another?" The question came sharp and stern; but a moment later the Squire mollified it, turning to the priest and looking him straight in the eyes. "Excuse me; I am sure you would not."

"I thank you," was the answer. "No: since I have leave to say so, I think you have taken the only right course."

The two men still faced one another. Fate had made them antagonists in this house, and the antagonism had lasted over many years. But no petulant word had ever broken down the barrier of courtesy between them: each knew the other to be a gentleman.

"Father Halloran," said the Squire gravely, "I will confess to you that I have been tempted. If I could honestly have spared the lad—"

"I know," said the priest, and nodded while Mr. à Cleeve seemed to search for a word. "If any sacrifice of your own could stand for payment, you could have offered it, sir."

"What I fear most is that it may kill his mother." The Squire said it musingly, but his voice held a question.

"She will suffer." The priest pondered his opinion as he gave it, and his words came irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it makes them seem quite unscrupulous."

"We have built much upon Walter. If our hopes have come down with a crash, we must rebuild, and build them better. I think that, for the future, you and I must consult one another and make allowances. The fact is, I am asking you—as it were—to make terms with me over the lad. 'A house divided,' you know. . . Let us have an end of divisions. I am feeling terribly old to-night."

The priest met his gaze frankly, and had half extended his hand, when a sudden sound arrested him—a sound at which the eyes of both men widened with surprise and their lips were parted—the sharp report of a gun. Not until it shattered the silence of the woods around Cleeve Court could you have been aware how deep the silence had lain. Its echoes banged from side to side of the valley, and in the midst of their reverberation a second gun rang out.

"The mischief!" exclaimed the Squire. "That means poachers, or I'm a Dutchman. Macklin's in trouble. Will you come?" He stepped quickly to the door. "Where did you fix the sound? Somewhere up the valley, near the White Rock, eh?"

Father Halloran's face was white as a ghost's. "It—it was outside the house," he stammered.

"Outside? What the deuce—Of course it was outside!" He paused, and seemed to read the priest's thought. "Oh, for God's sake, man—" Hurrying into the passage, and along it to the hall, he called up, "Walter! Walter!" from the foot of the staircase. "There, you see!" he muttered, as Walter's voice answered from above.

But almost on the instant a woman's voice took up the cry. "Walter! What has happened to Walter?" and as her son stepped out upon the landing Mrs. à Cleeve came tottering through the corridor leading to her rooms—came in disarray, a dressing-gown hastily caught about her, and a wisp of grey hair straggling across her shoulder. Catching sight of Walter, she almost fell into his arms.

"Thank God! Thank God you are safe!"

"But what on earth is the matter?" demanded Walter, scarcely yet aroused from the torpor of his private misery.

"Poachers, no doubt." his father answered. "Macklin has been warning me of this for some time. Take your mother back to her room. There is no cause for alarm, Lucetta—if the affair were serious, we should have heard more guns before this. You had best return to bed at once. When I learn what has happened I will bring you word."

He strode away down the lower corridor, calling as he went to Narracott, the butler, to fetch a lantern and unbolt the hall-door, and entered the gunroom with Father Halloran at his heels.

"I cannot ask you to take a hand in this," he said, finding his favourite gun and noiselessly disengaging it from the rack, pitch dark though the room was.

"I may carry a spare weapon for you, I hope?"

"Ah, you will go with me? Thank you: I shall be glad of someone to carry the lantern. We may have to do some scrambling: Narracott is infirm, and Roger,"—this was the footman—"is a chicken-hearted fellow, I suspect."

The two men armed themselves and went back to the hall, where Father Halloran in silence took the lantern from the butler. Then they stepped out into the night.

Masses of cloud obscured the stars, and the two walked forward into a wall of darkness which the rays of the priest's lantern pierced for a few yards ahead. Here in the valley the night air lay stagnant: scarcely a leaf rustled: their ears caught no sound but that of the brook alongside of which they mounted the coombe.

"Better set down the lantern and stand wide of it," said the Squire, as they reached the foot of the White Rock gully. "If they are armed, and mean business, we are only offering them a shot." He paused at the sound of a quick, light footstep behind him, not many paces away, and wheeled about. "Who's there?" he challenged in a low, firm voice.

"It's I, father." Walter, also with a gun under his arm, came forward and halted in the outer ring of light.

"H'm," the Squire muttered testily. "Better you were in bed, I should say. This may be a whole night's business, and you have a long journey before you tomorrow."

The boy's face was white: he seemed to shiver at his father's words, and Father Halloran, accustomed to read his face, saw, or thought he saw— years afterwards told himself that he saw—a hunted, desperate look in it, as of one who forces himself into the company he most dreads rather than remain alone with his own thoughts. And yet, whenever he remembered this look, always he remembered too that the lad's jaw had closed obstinately, as though upon a resolve long in making but made at last.

But as the three stood there a soft whistle sounded from the bushes across the gully, and Jim Burdon pushed a ghostly face into the penumbra.

"Is that you, sir? Then we'll have them for sure."

"Who is it, Jim?"

"Hannaford and that long-legged boy of his. Macklin's up a-top keeping watch, sir. I've winged one of 'em; can't be sure which. If you and his Reverence—"

Jim paused suddenly, with his eyes on the half-lit figure of Walter a Cleeve, recognising him not only as his young master, supposed to be in France, but as the stranger he had seen that afternoon talking with Hannaford. For Walter had changed only his sabots.

The Squire saw and interpreted his dismay. "Go on, man," he said hoarsely; "it's no ghost."

Jim's face cleared. "Your servant, Mr. Walter! A rum mistake I made then, this afternoon; but it's all right as things turn out. They're both hereabout, sir, somewheres on the face of the rock, and the one of 'em hurt, I reckon. Macklin'll keep the top: there's no way off the west side; and if you and his Reverence'll work up along the gully here while I try up the face, we'll have the pair for a certainty. Better douse the light though; I've a bull's-eye here that'll search every foot of the way, and they haven't a gun."

"That's right enough," the Squire answered; "but it's foolishness to douse the light. We'll set it up on the stones here at the mouth of the gully while Walter and I work up to the left of the gully and you up the rock. It will light up their only bolt-hole; and if you, Father Halloran, will keep an eye on it from the bushes here you will have light enough to see their faces to swear by before they reach it. No need to shoot: only keep your eyes open before they come abreast of it; for they'll make for it at once, to kick it over—if they risk a bolt this way, which I doubt."

"Why not let me try up the gully between you and Jim?" Walter suggested.

His father considered a moment. "Very well, I'll flank you on the left up the hedge, and Jim will take the rock. You're pretty sure they're there, Jim?"

"I'd put a year's wages on it," answered Jim.

So the three began their climb. At his post below Father Halloran judged from the pace at which Walter started that he would soon lead the others; for Jim had a climb to negotiate which was none too easy, even by daylight, and the Squire must fetch a considerable detour before he struck the hedge, along which, moreover, he would be impeded by brambles and undergrowth. He saw this, but it was too late to call a warning.

Walter, beyond reach of the lantern's rays, ascended silently enough, but at a gathering pace. He forgot the necessity of keeping in line. It did not occur to him that his father must be dropping far behind: rather, his presence seemed beside him, inexorable, dogging him with the morrow's unthinkable compulsion. What mad adventure was this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off tomorrow. To-morrow—

A couple of lithe arms went about him in the darkness. A voice spoke hoarse and quick in his ear—spoke, though for the moment he was chiefly aware of its hot breath.

"Broke your word, did ye? Set them on to us, you blasted young sprig! Look 'ee here—I've a knife to your ribs, and you can't use your gun. Stand still while my boy slips across, or I'll cut your white heart out. . ."

Walter à Cleeve stood still. He felt, rather than heard, a figure limp by and steal across the gully. A slight sound of a little loose earth dribbling reached him a moment later from the opposite bank of the gully. Then, after a long pause, the arms about him relaxed. Charles Hannaford was gone.

Still Walter à Cleeve did not move. He stared up into the wall of darkness on his left, wondering stupidly why his father did not shoot.

Then he put out his hand: it encountered a bramble bush.

He drew a long spray of the bramble towards him, fingering it very carefully, following the spines of its curved prickles, and, having found its leafy end, drew it meditatively through the trigger-guard of his gun.

The countryside scoffed at the finding of the coroner's jury that the last heir of the à Cleeves had met his death by misadventure. Shortly after the inquest Charley Hannaford disappeared with his family, and this lent colour to their gossip. But Jim Burdon, who had been the first to arrive on the scene, told his plain tale, and, for the rest, kept his counsel. And so did Father Halloran and the Squire.