Sowing the Sand

Chapter I

A little sadness and a good deal of excitement pervaded Mr. Crespin's respectable red brick house, which had stood for some seventy years among soot laden elms in one of the great manu facturing towns of the north. It was there that his son Charley was born, and had spent a considerable portion of his twenty years of life within its grimy walls. Up and down the gravel walks, hedged in with stunted evergreens that left a black mark on the fingers which touched them, he had played in his early youth at horses and soldiers with his twin sister. At the a top of the bank on which the house stood, Mildred had been accustomed to represent a besieged garrison, and Charley, waving a red handkerchief that did duty as the British flag, had trium phantly charged up the slippery slope and planted the ensign over her prostrate body.

In the drawing-room, carpeted with vivid red velvet pile, with a huge round table standing in the middle, Charley had often sat listening, a little absently, to the platitudes of prosperous ladies who surrounded his mother, an array of rich cakes, and a "tea-cosy." Sometimes after a very long dinner party in this same room he had humbly taken part in long winded conversations about stocks and shares with old gentle men wearing expansive waistcoats and watch chains like cables. As he was the heir to the large fortune of one of the partners of Crespin, Bate & Sons, the famous firm of woollen manufacturers, these friends looked with kindly interest upon the handsome boy, and not so very many years ago had been in the habit of slipping sovereigns into his sturdy hand. Some of these guests of his father's had shaken their bald heads more than doubt fully when Mr. Crespin, senior, informed them one day that he was convinced at last that nothing would satisfy Charley but a commission in a cavalry regiment, and that he had therefore determined on the th Hussars as one that would be suit able.

They argued that no good would .come of it. Officers were notoriously ex travagant and immoral, and Charley would take to gambling and to leading a fast life that would unfit him for his future tranquil and respectable existence as a man of business. Mrs. Cres pin's sweet face, framed, though she was still not more than middle-aged, by a lace cap, looked more than a little anxious when the wives of these bald-headed magnates of commerce en dorsed the views of their respective husbands. But there was something very persuasive about Charley, and he was so enthusiastic and sanguine when he talked of his future career, and so tender to his mother and sister when they spoke of their grief at parting with him, that in spite of her fears, Mrs. Crespin would not for the world have wished the boy to be thwarted.

So a day came when the servants, who were mostly family friends of long standing, were summoned to look at Charley's resplendent figure in his new uniform. His old nurse shed an abundance of tears, and was but partly consoled when the gorgeous young officer kissed her warmly, and promised to give her a large framed photograph of himself, dressed in the panoply of war. " He certainly do look uncommon himposing and 'ansome!" was the cook's comment as she cast a parting admiring glance at Charley. " There's none of them lords what you spoke of in 'is regiment. Mrs. Johnson, as could 'old a candle to 'im," mur mured the nurse, with her handkerchief held up to her tired old eyes once again. Mildred Crespin, a very beautiful girl, stood on tip-toe to kiss her brother Charley. " You'll write to-morrow evening with out fail ?

" said she in a husky voice. It was the first time since that deplorable day when Charley had gone oft' ten years ago to a private school that Mildred felt on the point of making a complete fool oi herself. Any careful observer of physiognomy would have noticed how much stronger her face was than Charley's, in spite of its extraordinary likeness in colouring and feature to his. Both brother and sister had the same clear skin, downward-sloping eyes dark blue in their depths, and brown hair with an attractive crisp wave. But it was in expression, not in contour or colour, that the difference lay. There was a kind of sweet austerity in the girl's face that was wholly foreign to the laughter-loving Charley, and in her deeper eyes a dreamy pensiveness that his never wore. It was easy to see that he had higher animal spirits, and that she would have a greater power of patient endurance, that he would be the easiest to under stand and the best loved at first, that her affections would be more slowly bestowed, and less quickly withdrawn.

The two, with arms interlaced, walked towards the drawing-room window which was thrown open to the garden, talking of Charley's future life. In the moonlight the smoky garden appeared almost picturesque. The lilac and labur num clusters gained a fairy-like grace, although their stems were thickly coated with the all-pervading black. The tall chimneys in the distance, with here and there among them the wild glow of a furnace aflame in the glass works, had a curious impressiveness of their own. A blackbird's liquid voice was distinctly heard above the grumble of traffic in the great money-making town, until it was drowned by a shrill whistle from a gloomy and ponderous railway station half a mile away. Within the drawing-room old Mr. Crespin sat under an aggressive gas burner, his broad face flushed after his dinner and wearing a more serious ex pression than usual, as he gazed silently at the onyx photograph book of family portraits which lay on the table near at hand.

His feelings to-night were an odd compound of pride, regret, self satisfaction and anxiety. The idea that his Charley would become a fashionable, sought-after person in the best kind of society, half pleased, half alarmed him. He dimly wondered whether, when the boy came home on leave, he would like the simple old place, and the plain old friends quite as well as he used to do. Then he consoled himself by remember ing that if he had forbidden the boy to go into the army, he would always have been discontented, whereas, after a few years experience of the gay life on which he had set his heart, Charley would possibly be more content to settle down for the remainder of it, and work and make money, like his father and grand father before him. " He'll find that there's nothing much better than Elm House and us slow going old folks after all," said Mr. Cres pin, entirely unconscious that he was speaking aloud out of the fulness of his heart.

Mrs. Crespin's lace cap quivered. Perhaps she had been crying quietly in her large saddle-bag covered armchair. Her husband rose and walked across the room, his heavy weight making the chandelier and the china on the hideous but expensive mahogany bureau rattle. He patted his sad wife on the head silently. Then he blew his nose very loudly. " Charley ! " he called out. The two young people standing in the window turned their heads towards him. " Charley ! come up to my dressing room," said old Mr. Crespin. And the young man followed his father up the broad stairs with their flaring carpet into the room that had always looked just the same since he remembered it when a child of three years old. Though Mr. Crespin, senior, owned a balance at his banker's that would have caused many a landowner to sigh in dreary envy, he exercised a supreme simplicity as re garded his own personal habits.

There was nothing ornamental or superfluous in his room, except perhaps a large slipper-box of royal-blue plush, bought many years ago at a Wesleyan bazaar, and entirely useless from that day to this. On the wall hung a few engravings from well-known modern pictures, the originals of which decorated the dining-room walls of Elm House. For Mr. Crespin was a collector in his way, choosing his works of art always more for the quality in them that ap pealed to his moral sentiments than for their technical merit. Charley looked half absently at the well-known print with its trite, too obvious moral of the foolish youth wast ing his substance on a racecourse, hanging incongruously on the wall beside a subject from the Old Testament. " I wanted just one word alone with you, my boy, before you start off.

Listen here. Well, I don't call to mind that you have ever been denied anything what I should say was in reason, have you ? And you owe it to your mother and me to do us credit now in this new sort of life, right away from the old place and the old faces." Mr. Crespin's north-country accent was always more noticeable when he spoke, as he now did, with emotion. He cleared his throat. " But I'm not a bit afraid for you. You'll be an officer and a gentleman, and do honour to your family, Charley. I'm going, as you know, to allow you eight hundred a year, and if you don't gamble, or play the fool with women, that's ample for your horses and amusements and other things, so I believe." Old Mr. Crespin opened a box, fumbled with the contents, and took out an envelope. " But here's a little cheque, just as a kind of extra," said he hoarsely, a smile hovering over his broad red face, while his hand shook for a moment.

" But don't you count on it every year, my boy. And remember there's not to be any high card playing ! I don't provide you with money to waste in dissipation, only to give you what's wanted, in reason, and, once more, I wish you luck, Charley, my dear." Charley's hand trembled too, and his handsome young face flushed. " Thank you, father, ever so much. You are too awfully good to me. You won't ever have to be really an noyed with me. I'm perfectly sure of that." " You keep your mother and sister in your mind," said the old man, half gruffly. " Don't you do what you'd be ashamed for them to think about. Mil dred and your mother are just wrapped up in you." Then he turned sharply away, while Charley saw a confused outline of the three blackened elms that gave their name to his home. Below, in the garden, where a streak of moonlight lay across the grass whence a feathery mist arose, Mildred, with a white scarf thrown round her head, was standing.

He knew that she was thinking of him. Then suddenly through the moist spring breaths of air came a sound like a scream of pain, the shriek of a hurrying engine, but it startled and jarred his nerves like a discord in a song that should have been all sweet.

Chapter II

Charley had been gone three days. And the terrible flat atmosphere, the sense of a lack of interest, of hopeless depression at the monotony of her life, was oppressing Mildred Crespin. Her brother's letter, showing that he for his part was in exuberant spirits, was in her pocket, to be read and re-read at intervals, for she had lost all energy to draw, all wish to read ; and to sing cheerful songs that he had liked seemed almost a profanation under the circumstances. There had been a heavy shower of rain, and the black drops dripped from the window ledge, from soaked lilac blooms and soddened laburnums. Smutty pud dles quivered at the edges of the terrace path, while a plaintive gust set the young pale leaves a whispering. Within doors, the stiffly arranged drawing-room looked colder and primmer than ever, with no trace of a man's muddy boot to profane the red velvet of the carpet.

The sim pering portrait of Mrs. Crespin, taken shortly after her marriage, gazed un moved at another picture on the op posite side of the wall, representing a curly headed boy whose dimpled hand caressed his spaniel's head. Mildred sighed as she glanced from the present ment of the round-cheeked child to take a longer look at a photograph in a very new frame of magenta plush — that of a stalwart young man, with a beauti fully fitting, richly braided uniform, and a sabre at his side. This magnificent person really was the same Charley, but he had gone away from her into a new world into which she would not enter and which she would never understand, an ache at her heart told her that all too plainly. Yet she did not for one moment doubt that his fidelity and tenderness would outlast all the fluctuations, all the transientness of time and fate.

She only sighed over the passing of those merry, laughter-filled days when she and Charley played at their counterfeit warfare on the garden slopes, at the thought that all those little interests, those childish enthusiasms, had melted away as com pletely as the winter hoar frost or the fleecy clouds of lost summers. That rosy-faced boy with his hand on the spaniel was to all intent as dead as another little brother who had slept for many a year under the grey spire point ing heavenwards in the midst of the chimneys and furnaces that represented the toil and disquiet of earth. Mildred wondered for a moment whether the present Charley, in all his new splendour, quite made up for the loss of the little mimic soldier of ten years and more ago. Then she wandered aimlessly about the smartly furnished, unattractive room.

The damp atmosphere brought out an odd musty smell from the grey wall-paper with its golden scrolls. Ranged in mathematical precision on the large shining round tables were bound books and flower glasses, to every glass its mat, so that the polished wood should remain uninjured. The great onyxbacked album, containing photographs of the Crespin family in flounces and spoon-shaped bonnets, with chignons and beads and streamers, in over-tight frock coats and solid watch chains, occupied a place of honour. Mildred remembered the awe and admiration with which she and Charlie used to contemplate that book, and their keen joy on being first allowed to explore its contents. She listlessly unfastened the clasp. Here were more photographs — Charley remarkably fat in a white frock, Charley ruffled in temper and wearing a velvet suit, and, once more, looking stolidly decorous in a b new jacket and stiff collar.

There was the portrait of Uncle John Crespin, with his broad smile and yet more expansive white waistcoat. He had given Charley his first sovereign as a tip, and had died the year following in obscure respecta bility, but regretfully remembered by a grateful nephew and niece. Here was Mildred's own portrait, smooth haired and prim in her best pique frock. Charley had been punished for upsetting his bowl of gold fishes over her when she wore that dress. Mildred shut the book with a snap and there were tears in her eyes. Then she walked to the window and pulled up the drab coloured Venetian blinds as high as they would go. The rain had ceased, and under a reddening sky the black puddles fluttered in the wind. A chaffinch shook the drops off his wings, and plumed himself on a wet bough of lilac.

Standing out against the sunset was the great group of chim neys that was so familiar to her The huge fat one broadening more and more towards the base, the three high, narrow ones, more groups of shafts and flues, dumpy and squat, thin and tapering, most of them emitting puffs and clouds of black smoke, which gradually grew grey and melted away against the crimsoning vault. The chaffinch burst intoamerry stave, and flew from the lilac spray, his rosy feathers catching the evening glow as he went. The drawing-room door opened behind Mildred, and the parlourmaid announced : " Mr. Albert Mellor." A man of about thirty came across the room with a friendly ease of manner that betokened him a frequent visitor. He was short, and a little lame. One lock of his straight, dark hair fell rather obtrusively over his forehead, and gave him at first sight an appearance of untidi ness that was belied by the good cut of his clothes.

The expression of his eyes was keen and kindly, better than that of his mouth, which feature showed signs of a temper possibly controlled with diffi culty, and which might if aroused break into almost vindictive anger. His complexion was pale, as of a man not much accustomed to outdoor exercise, his chin long and prominent. Altogether a vigorous face, and, perhaps, an attrac tive one, when he smiled. " Well, what news of Charley ? " said Mr. Mellor, drawing up a chair close to the window and looking out at the rain washed garden and the group of elms with sunset fires burning crimson above and behind them. " He writes ver)' happily. Quite a nice long letter — describing the barracks, and the Colonel, and a delightful Major Savile, who is second in command, and the stables and his own room, and I don't know what else.

He says the mere sound of the trumpet-calls makes him feel in wild spirits, and when he woke up the first day he was actually laughing for pleasure, and could hardly believe that the wish of his heart was realised." " Lucky fellow ! " said her companion, stretching his strong arms over his head, and sighing very audibly. Mildred had no need to ask him why. She, who had known Albert Mellor since her childhood, was aware that, like Charley, a passion for a soldier's life had absorbed him, but in his case hopelessly, on account of an accident which had left him permanently lame at fifteen years old. He was not a man to groan over this bitter disappointment in public, but once or twice when alone with her his reserve had broken down and with tears shining in his dark eyes he had spoken bitterly of the cruel fate which had debarred him from entering on a career in which, owing to his enthusiasm and his excellent scientific education, he felt that he might possibly have won distinction.

As he sat in the arm-chair, with the evening light showing up lines traced by pain on his forehead and round his mouth, Mildred felt that her sympathy with him was ousting her own grief from her mind. She realised something of the irony of fate that had given this man of austere and simple tastes, a princely fortune in prospect, and which had denied him the one boon that would have made life desirable to him. In Albert's little sitting-room she had often looked at the broad shelves, tightly packed with red bound books treating of technical military subjects, with histories of campaigns, great and trifling, with biographies of soldiers of all times and lands. Above the shelves hung fine engravings of the men whose memory formed part of Mellor's religion — Marlborough and Frederick, Napoleon and Wellington, Washington and Lee.

And then as she glanced at Albert's figure limping wearily across the room the pathos of it all seemed so poignant. How willingly would not this heir to some fifty thousand pounds a year have changed places with any laughing sub altern, strong of limb, and empty of pocket ! " Do you think he will find us all very flat and dull when he comes back on leave? " said Mildred. " No. But I do think we must not expect him to be quite his own old self. I daresay he will improve in some ways, and deteriorate in others." " How can you speak so calmly at the idea ! " " I mean that he will, of course, be thrown with people whose standard and outlook on life differ a good deal from yours, and possibly mine. Charley knows very little, next to nothing, you see, of the world. He has never been at one of the great public schools, mores the pity, or associated with the kind of reckless, charming people who make society, I am told, so attractive.

All our ideas here run in a groove. We are, some of us, very condemnatory about certain failings, and much too lenient regarding others — our own." Mildred guessed that he was thinking of his own narrow up-bringing, of the dull Sundays in the grim house in the outskirts of the town — of his father's objection to the most harmless card playing, and notorious love of hoarding money. For old Mr. Mellor was even richer than his neighbour, Mr. Crespin, and estimated as hard and unbending towards the hundreds of workpeople in his employ. " I am sure that father has always let Charley have plenty of amusement," said the girl. " He has allowed him to keep two hunters, and given him a good allowance. And mother and I have tried not to make home dull." She looked half wistfully at Mellor's powerful, grave face.

"Yes. I grant you all that. But still I feel very strongly that you must not be too down on him if he breaks loose, just a little, and kicks over the traces. You must take his part with your father, for instance. Of course if you were to go through a London season, and have the world at your feet, you might not be spoiled. But there are many more Charleys in the world than Mildreds ! " She smiled. "Too flattering as usual. Now tell me about yourself. We haven't met since last Sunday." " What is there to tell? There never is anything in my life that could be of the smallest interest to another human being. Well, I have bought two new books on Napoleon, and read a long German book on tactics. My father has got the gout — and O dear, I nearly for got his message, by the way. He wants you to have luncheon with us, on Friday, to meet some guests who are coming for this idiotic bazaar, General and Lady Jane Spurwayand Miss Spurway."

He flushed a little, and Mildred remembered that she had heard that old Mr. Mellor was anxious that his only son should marry this young lady, and become grandson-in-law of the Duke of Boxmoor. She accepted the invitation, and before long Mellor rose to take leave. She watched his limping figure crossing the garden in the dim light as he went slowly homeward. At the foot of the steps leading to the iron gate out of the garden, he turned and waved to her. Even at that distance she noticed how sad his face looked in the growing dusk.

Chapter III

Mildred Crespin and her mother duly attended the luncheon party at Mr. Mellor's. It was a very long, ceremonious banquet, with a huge decorated salmon to adorn one end of the table, and three well fatted guinea fowls to grace the other. There was plenty of champagne in pink glasses, and four different sorts of parti-coloured creams and jellies for those who could enjoy them. Mr. Mellor, who was suffering from twinges of gout, forced himself to address the parlourmaids in waiting with outward courtesy, though in reality he was longing to swear fiercely at them. His wife, who was stout, and a distinguished, perhaps the most distinguished, leader of society in her town, confided, after a time, to her neighbour, General Spur way, how much she would like to worship in the new parish church, instead of in the Rev. David Baxter's temple, but that Mr. Mellor was brought up a Nonconformist, and clung persistently to the faith of his fathers.

She also observed how hard it was upon her that he would never take lodgings for her in London, or deviate from his dull routine of a short season at Scar borough in the early autumn. The General coughed, and grunted, and yawned behind his hand, and began to find the luncheon heavy in more senses than one. His daughter, a pale girl, who had red hair, and an intelligent face, was making herself as interesting as was possible to Albert Mellor, being fully aware that with one object, and one alone, Lady Jane had consented to come and open the bazaar. Mildred, who was placed between two elderly and hungry gentlemen, found, to her great relief, that she might be silent without appearing rude. She watched, with some amusement, Miss Spurway's laud able efforts to engross young Mr. Mellor. That lady had not been out in London for some seven seasons without acquiring a knack of quickly discovering what sub jects of conversation amused desirable young men.

Albert's engrossing mania for military subjects had not escaped her, and she was relating at much length, and with some embellishments, what the Commander-in-Chief had said to her when she had met him at a dinner-party. Pre sently it appeared that there were three young Spurways serving their country in different regiments, and that there was actually one in Charley's, the distin guished Hussars ! Mildred at once grew interested, for Miss Spurway pro ceeded to describe to Albert in detail the Colonel, and the Colonel's wife and daughter, and the riding master, and Major Jack Savile, who was, according to her account, "quite too fascinating for words." Towards four o'clock the party ad journed to the large drawing-room, which was more gorgeous than the one at the Crespin's house, and even more lavishly adorned with modern masterpieces.

Mildred Crespin, determined to hear all that she could about Charley's regiment, drew Miss Spurway into a recess in one of the bow-windows. But some of the facts related by the talkative young lady were hardly reassuring. " Of course they have a lot of side. But then, no wonder. All crack regi ments have, you see. And they are quite too awfully extravagant. Dear old Jack Savile calls himself more or less reformed, but he ran through a fearful lot of money at one time ! Papa has had to remon strate with Tommy, too, more than once, for he, poor dear papa, you know, don't get his rents, and it's a bore when your eldest son drops three thousand at Ascot." And so on. Mildred was almost glad when Albert came towards them, and asked if she would come into his sitting-room and see a very fine proof engraving of Sir Charles Napier.

But all the time that young Mellor was pointing out his new treasures, she was haunted by discomfort ing thoughts of Charley, of the reckless Major Savile, and the idiotic behaviour of young Spurway. There was no letter from Charley that evening by the second post, although she had expected one, and he had promised faithfully to write. Mildred cried a little when she went up to bed. And neither did the morning's mail bring her any news of the young Hussar. Charley, it seemed, was for the first time in his life too much occupied to con sider his sister before anything else. The Spurways came and went, and Albert Mellor, so far from having pro posed to Miss Spurway, had shown her very little attention, beyond what was due as conventional civility from the son of the host. The young lady, however, bore him no malice and only told her friends : " He is quite a curious product, dear, to be the son of that comic old pair of business people.

So fond of Matthew Arnold, and Shakespeare, don't you know, and all that kind of thing ? I really must cultivate him, and get him to come and stay with us for some big military show. Because we are within a drive of the camp — and he has got soldiers and tactics on the brain." And Mildred pursued her usual routine of teaching in the Sunday-school, and paying calls with her mother, and went on her lonely walks down the black roads out into the country, where she could gaze at a blue hilly distance and purpling undulations of ground, at clumps of woodland and steely glimpses of river which told of an entirely fair and pleasant land before the days when men dug into the earth and grew rich, and lost, perhaps, more than they gained.

Chapter IV

The hot sun of May might scorch, and the biting breeze from the east blow clouds of dust across the barrack square into her hair and eyes, but Mildred Crespin was supremely happy. Charley was walking beside her. Charley, looking much older and more self-possessed than he had done when he joined nearly a year ago, with thinner cheeks, and a complexion burnt a good deal by sun and dry wind. But Mildred knew that there was no handsomer face among the whole of the magnificent body of men to which he was so proud to belong. His resemblance to his sister was less striking than in former days. His countenance had never possessed the calm restfulness of Mildred's, but now, c when he was not talking and laughing, there was a shadow that might possibly mean anxiety of some kind, a little fleet ing cloud overhanging the dark blue of his eyes.

Old Mr. Crespin and the Colonel preceded them, and Charley and his sister laughed as they noted the sergeant of the guard, with fiery voice and eye, shouting words of advice to a man who was attempting to drive across the foot parade. On the girl's other side walked Jack Savile, probably the most popular man who had ever been second in com mand to the gallant th. He had the kindest of hearts, a most genial and courteous bearing, and a delightful smile. Nothing, not even the annoyance caused by severe pecuniary losses, or physical pain arising from bones broken in the hunting field, had ever been known to ruffle Jack's imperturbable temper. By the men he was adored, and no officer, from the Colonel himself down to the lowest subaltern, had ever dreamt of saying a severe or carping word concerning him.