To pay the price

Contents

On the Edge of the Storm.

Two Men and a Maid.

A Woman Intervenes.

Chapter I. On The Edge Of The Storm

T was morning and summer time. The air was cool, and fragrant of the woods and fields. In the blue dome of heaven a few white clouds floated slowly past, and on the earth the dew drops were sparkling everywhere like points of fire. Robert Morton came bareheaded into his garden and walking up to a large pear tree, leaned his shoulders against it and looked away across the valley to the distant range of hills.

It was a morning to touch the heart with hope and gladness, to cheer the disconsolate and give courage to the despairing. Yet it brought neither courage nor cheer to Robert Morton. He stood in the sunshine without feeling it; looked off upon the landscape without seeing it; drank in the sweet breath of the morning, and knew not that it was fragrant with the breath of uncounted and ungathered flowers.

He was a sad-faced man, with a high forehead and diminutive chin. A silent man on the whole, for his thoughts kept him so busy that he had little time to talk and less inclination. He had never been an optimist and with increase of years life's outlook seemed to get greyer and more depressing.

But the outlook never seemed so dark as at present. The morning’s post had brought him an urgent and peremptory demand for money. Such demands had become common of late. He was in debt to a dozen people and they had become pressing and clamorous. In the village his credit was still good, and none of his acquaintances had any suspicion that he was in pecuniary straits. But the secret was bound to come out soon, and then what would become of

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him and his family? One mitigating circumstance there certainly was. He had not spent the money on himself, it was not in consequence of any personal extravagance that he had got into debt; he had been careful even to penuriousness. He had denied himself to give his nephew Harry the benefits of a good education, and this was the result.

Perhaps he had not been absolutely disinterested in the matter. As a matter of fact he would not have compromised himself in such a manner and got into such financial straits, had it not been for the urgency of Lord Menheriot. The Earl, who was childless himself, had taken a fancy to Harry. Hot only his handsome presence, but his mental aptitude had won him favor in the nobleman’s eyes.

“I say Morton,” he had said more than once, “you must let that young man read for the Bar, you really must. He’ll become a Q. C. (Queen’s Counsel) in time, if you give him a chance, and what is more, I’ll see to it that you are not out of pocket iif the end.”

So partly to please the Earl, and partly in the hope that his own fortune would be advanced thereby, he had allowed Harry to read for the Bar, and made himself responsible for all the costs.

He was regretting it now. Lord Menheriot had said nothing lately about meeting Harry’s expenses, and he had not got to the end of them yet. When Harry had passed his final, which he hoped to do in October, what then? Barristers did not get briefs in a moment. They could not go out and tout for them as a shopkeeper did for orders; and indeed unless a man had influential friends he might wait until the moss grew on his eyebrows and all the blood dried up in his veins.

“I ought to have foreseen all this,” Robert Morton said to himself bitterly, asi he looked with unseeing eyes across the smiling landscape. “Lord Menheriot is like the rest of the world: he makes promises one minute, and forgets them the next.”

A step on the gravel behind him caused him to look round, and he saw Harry advancing towards him.

“So you are getting your morning’s sunbath, eh, father?” the young man said with a genial smile.

“Hay, I’m getting a breath of fresh air, that’s all.”

ON THE EDGE OF THE STORM.

“It’s what I’ve come out for myself. I’ve been working since four,” and he stretched himself and yawned.

“I hope you'll get some good out of all your toil!” the older man said gloomily, “though I very much doubt it. The toilers get all the kicks in this world; the idlers grab the pence.”

“Not all of it, Dad. In the professions it is generally the hardest workers that get the plums.”

“Not generally, my boy. You are young yet, and look hopefully at the world. I have toiled hard enough all my life, God knows, and here am 1 not only in poverty, but in debt.”

“That’s partly my fault,” and the young man’s face clouded; “but I hope some day, Dad, I shall be able to repay you, and with compound interest.”

“While waiting for the grass to grow, the horse starves,” Robert Merton answered moodily, “and in the meantime Lord Menberiot appears inclined to do nothing.”

“He told me once that when I had pulled off all the exams he would pay the piper, but I would rather he didn’t.”

“Bather he didn’t!”

“Yes, I don’t like to feel that I am dependent on a stranger.”

“That’s all nonsense, Harry. I should have never incurred all the expense on your account, but for what the Earl said; and now he seems inclined to back out of his promise and leave me in the mud.”

“We’ve always found him a man of his word,” Harry said, “and then, you see, he is not particularly rich. His father was made *a peer for political services, but I don’t think he left much money.”

“He’s all Graystone, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, and if he owned the entire county I should still wish not to be dependent on him. If he does anything, I shall look upon it merely as a loan.”

“You are much too squeamish my boy,” said the older man. “I’ve done the work of steward for him for the last ten years, and he’s paid me but a beggarly salary for it, as you know.”

“And yet, when he offered you the post, I’ve heard you say you felt as though your fortune was made.”

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“That is true, hut a drowning man will grasp at any straw, and a schoolmaster’s salary in Graystone is starvation when there’s a family to be brought up.”

“Oh well,” said Harry with a smile, “let’s not always look at the dark side of things; circumstances will mend after -awhile if we are only patient.”

“I don’t want to discourage you,” said the older man; “but unless Lord Menheriot keeps his promise soon, both you and I will find ourselves in queer street.” And he turned on his heel and walked back into the house.

Harry watched him with a feeling almost of remorse in his heart. He felt as though he had been the weight that had caused the stoop in his shoulders, and crushed the sunshine out of his life.

“Poor old father!” he said to himself; “the fa'tes have always been against him. He has tried hard enough, heaven knows; but I think his persistent pessimism has hindered him all the way. Perhaps the clouds will lift later on,” and he smiled and raised his face to the sunshine.

It was impossible for a young man of abounding health and vigor to be pessimistic on such a morning. The air itself was almost as intoxicating as champagne. The sky was all asparkle with light, as were the neighboring plantations that encircled Graystone Park; the birds were singing fit to split their throats.

Looking away between the trees in the direction of the Hall, he fancied he caught the gleam of a white dress, and for a moment the color mounted to his cheeks, and his heart throbbed perceptibly faster.

“I wonder if I shall have a chance of seeing her to-day,” he muttered to himself. “Oh! I hope I shall. I know I’m a fool, and that the reckoning day is sure to come. But what’s the odds? The dream is sweet while it lasts.”

He was still looking away through the trees and smiling when a sweet musical voice called from the doorway:

“Breakfast is ready, Harry.”

“And I’m ready for it, Madge,” he answered, as he strode towards her.

“I went to look for you in your room,” she said smiling at him, “but found that the bird had flown.”

“Didn’t father tell you I was in the garden?”

ON TEE EDGE OF THE STORM.

“I did not ask him.”

“And have you cooked the breakfast, as usual?”

“Dora and I between us. Mother has one of her bad headaches again this morning.”

“You are a good girl, Madge,” and he stopped and kissed her sweet lips, and then they passed together into the house.

He did not know that Madge was not his sister; neither was she aware of the fact. For some reason, best kno\^n to themselves, Robert Morton and his wife had kept from Harry the secret o>f his parentage, and there 'was no one else to enlighten him. He had lived with them since he was a year old; had always called them Father and Mother, and no one could say that they had not done their duty by him.

It is true Robert Morton received a hundred pounds when he adopted the child, as well as all the furniture belonging to his dead sister. The furniture he kept, for he had not been long married himself; but the money lie invested, and it went the way that so many investments go. A few months later he got an appointment as master of a village school in Yorkshire. Two years later he. removed to a village in Norfolk. A year later he moved again and this time to London; but he quickly tired of the great city and sought the country once more. When Harry was ten years of age the parochial school of Graystone in Hertfordshire fell vacant, and Robert Morton applied for the post and got it.

The salary was only small, but it was the best he had yet received, and he tried to be grateful arid content. Two years later Lord Menheriot offered him the post of steward in addition, and then he felt as though his fortune was made. Fifty pounds a year, in addition to what he had been receiving, seemed positive wealth, and since the duties attached to the office were exceedingly light — for the Graystone estate was only a small one: — he felt grateful, and for a year or two looked at the world through rose-colored spectacles, and fancied that life was not such a bad thing, after all. But expenses have an unpleasant way of increasing without your knowing how. Robert Morton spent no more upon himself than formerly, while his wife was always of an economical turn. But the girls as they grew older, wanted more clothes and better. Then Bob was born (they christened him Robert after his Father, but called him Bob by way of dis-

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tinetion) and Bob proved to be a most unlucky baby. He took everything in the shape of disease that came along. He had such a liking for measles that he took them three times. He began to wrestle with whooping-cough when he was only three months old. How he conquered was a puzzle to everybody. Bronchitis became quite a familiar friend of his. Mumps and nettlei rash he took very little notice of. He smiled cheerfully through a severe attack of scarlatina; but diphtheria nearly killed him. Indeed the doctor gave no hope at all, but Bob was not to* be beaten. He came out of the ordeal but a wreck of his former self, but cheerful and good tempered with all.

When he had exhausted all the diseases common to childhood he began sundry experiments with his constitution on his own account. - He got blood-poisoning through driving a rusty nail into his foot, suffered from congestion of the brain through falling downstairs; got his arm broken in getting under a cart wheel, and came near drowning so often that he got quite used to it.

If there was a ring-worm within a mile of Graystone he got it. Warts flourished so abundantly on his hands that he could have supplied the county and then had) a few to spare. And for a short space he suffered from St. Vitus’s Dance, much to his own amusement. Yet he grew and flourished in spite of everything. Whatever might be the condition of his body, he always carried a cheerful spirit. But he wore out his mother with anxiety, and broke down her health with constant nursing. So that when he was out of the doctor’s hands she almost invariably took his place, and in this way expenses grew and multiplied, and the extra fifty pounds a year were quickly swallowed up and lost.

Robert Morton soon fell back into his old condition of pessimism and doubt. The people who deserved the least seemed to get the best time of it. The hardest worker generally got the worst pay, and those who rolled in wealth did nothing for it. The honest man was shunted or trampled to death by the crowd; the rogue received honor and distinction and applause. Tie really saw no good in being honest and industrious and squeamish on little points of so-called honor. Honor and integrity and industry were pretty words and sounded well; but in the rough turmoil of the world

ON THE EDGE OF THE STOttM, they were in the way. Those who discarded sueli incuim brances appeared to get on the best; he had been as par^ ticular as any man could be, and what was he the better for it?

So, year by year, his faith and hope had dwindled, and religion in his eyes seemed but a superstition that the clergy kept alive for their own gain and advantage. He went to church, as in duty bound, for it was a tradition in Graystone that the schoolmaster should lead the singing in church on Sundays, and, if need be, preside at the organ.

But as time went on, he began to dislike Sunday more than any other day in the week. He believed nothing that he heard; felt the truth of nothing that he sang. It was all' to him a vain show, a silly, meaningless performance. The dear old vicar, who was nearly ninety, droned out, Sunday by Sunday, a series of juiceless platitudes, and stumbled through the lessons and prayers in the most perfunctory way. He had done the same thing in the same church for sixty years, until he had lost even the semblance of enthusiasm or conviction.

That he was a good man, simple-hearted and sincere, all admitted, and everybody loved him; but he had outlived his day and generation; outlived his own enthusiasm; outlived the thrill of ecstasy of his earliest ministry.

But, two years before our story opens, he fell asleep, and was gathered to his fathers, and Melville Grant, first cousin of Lord Menheriot and heir presumptive to Graystone was inducted into the vacant living.

The new vicar was an energetic man, and soon wrought a revolution in the place. Some of the old villagers looked on with wonder, and even alarm, at the novelties that were introduced. But the new order of things was more helpful to Eobert Morton than the old. If anything, it intensified the cynicism that had already rooted itself deeply v in his heart, and quenched the last spark of revenge that he possesed.

He had no idea whither he was drifting. Indeed he was not conscious that he was adrift at all. He had loosened his moorings so gradually and imperceptibly, that when the tide began to bear him away from the old place of anchorage, he was sublimely unconscious of it. He did not see the rocks in the near distance, nor hear the roar of the breakers.

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Oil the morning in question, he ate his breakfast: in silence, and then went out into the sunshine again, and sauntered slowly along the quiet lane in the direction of the village. He had plenty of time at his disposal for school did not open till nine. Once or twice he paused, and rested his elbows on a gate, and looked wearily across the green pasturage; and wondered, as he had often wondered lately, how, or in what way, he would be able to meet the financial crisis that was so swiftly overtaking him.

Had he been endowed with cleared vision, he might have seen that the crisis that was overtaking him was not merely financial — that that indeed was the least fateful feature in it — that a great moral crisis was approaching, the issues of which no one could foresee or measure.

There is a common belief that coming events cast their shadows before. They may do so sometimes, but they do not do so always nor even often. It is generally the unexpected that happens. Fate is tricky and loves to tease us and cheat us and lure us on with hopes that end in nothing.

Robert Morton saw the forces gathering in one direction; but the real forces were gathering in quite another; gathering without si£n or sound or the faintest stirring of the air. He expected battle; but the battle was to be of a kind that he had not dreamed of, and he was but ill prepared for the encouner.

Chapter II. Two Men And A Ma[d

IRECTLY breakfast was over Harry went back to his books and worked steadily at them till lunch time, after which he took a stroll for the benefit of his health. His ‘step was a little less buoyant than usual. The pinch of poverty was affecting his spirits unconsciously, he had begun to question whether in his position in life it was not a foolish thing to aspire to one of the learned professions.

Yet to give up the prospect now, and go back again to the drudgery and monotony of the day-school teacher, was too terrible to contemplate. For the last five years he had been working almost night and day; teaching in the day time, cramming at night. A month ago he gave up going to the school so that he might give six months of undivided attention to preparation for his final, but there had been fees and dinners and numberless incidentals which had been heart-breaking both to his father and to himself, and now the creditors had begun to clamor and threaten for their money.

Harry walked slowly for some little distance down the road, past the Lodge gates of Graystone, then turning suddenly to the left he vaulted lightly over a stile and struck a footpath leading across the fields in the direction of Minver, three miles away. At one point this ancient footpath cut across a corner of Graystone Park and brought the stately and turreted old Hall well into sight.

It was a favorite walk of Harry’s. He liked the open field path; the air was so much fresher than in the lanes. He liked the shadow of the trees in the summer time. He liked to listen to the dreary murmur of the wind through their branches; he liked the smell of the wild flowers. Above all he liked to catch a glimpse of Monica Stuart as she sauntered across the lawn among the banks of roses and fuchsias, the sweetest flower of them all.

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Monica was a bright, winsome girl of eighteen. She had not made her debut in society yet. She was to be presented at the next Drawing Room. Harry was sixteen and she was twelve when they first met, both too young to consider the question of social distinctions. They liked each other from their first meeting, and in Harry’s case the liking had ripened into something very near akin to love. He knew from the first that his passion was hopeless and now and then had struggled bravely to overcome it, and but for the fieldpath cutting across the Parkland the chances that it gave of seeing and even speaking with Monica, he might have conquered his love. But every time he met her added fresh fuel to the fire. She was always so free and sweet and gracious with him. Had he been heir to an Earldom instead of only a school-master’s son, she could not have treated him with more respect.

Of late a pang of jealousy had been added to his love. Rupert Grant, the Vicar’s son, had begun to pay Monica very marked attention, and whispers had been current in the village that they were to be formally engaged when Monica was nineteen.

From a social point of view, the alliance seemed a very proper and desirable one. The vicar was heir to Graystone, but since he was as old as the Earl within a year, the chances were that Lord Menheriot might outlive him, in which case Rupert would be heir at law. In any case, providing he lived long enough, he would sooner or later succeed to the title and the estates. Monica was an orphan and the only child of the late Sir Lawrence Stuart of Bryn wild, Buckinghamshire, and consequently heiress to a considerable portion of the vast estate he left behind him.

From every point of view, therefore, Monica would be a very desirable match. At the present time Rupert was as impecunious as Harry, but since his credit was good, he did not feel to the same extent the pinch of poverty. He had been called to the bar two years previously, and at that point his acquaintance with the law stopped suddenly short. As yet he had never been entrusted with a brief; as a matter of fact he had made no real attempt to practice as a Barrister. Like many another scion of the privileged classes he had been hanging around Westminster in the hope that his

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good looks, his poverty and his prospective title would win him a sinecure, with a decent salary attached.

Meanwhile, however, Rupert’s thoughts had turned (not for the first time) towards matrimony. Monica had suddenly sprung from a girl into a woman, and an exceedingly pretty woman, too. He had thought little of her as a girl; as a matter of fact he was seven years her senior, and all girls were more or less alike in his eyes, lank, gawky and, generally speaking, disagreeable.

But the passing from girlhood into young-womanhood had in Monica’s case registered a wonderful change. At least so it had appeared to him. He was quite charmed when he first saw her, after her hair had been done up in a shining coil at the back of her head.

“By Jove,” he said to himself, “Monica is a woman and marriageable,” and he began to make more particular inquiries as to the amount of her wealth and the conditions attached to the same. These conditions he found to be quite satisfactory from his point of view. Monica had pin-money enough now to keep him in comfort, and when she was twenty-one she would be mistress of her own estates.

“Courting Monica,” he chuckled, “will be more interesting than hanging about Westminster. By Jove, she is pretty, and all the prettier for being so well gilded. The only difficulty in the way is — ” but he did not finish the sentence.

Monica, however, was not particularly flattered; but she was only a girl at heart, and had not learned to dissemble and play the hypocrite. In fact, only a week or two before our story opens she had deliberately left Rupert’s side in the middle of a sentence and hurried across the Park to speak to Harry Morton who had suddenly come in sight.

Rupert’s brow clouded as he watched her talking to the ex-schoolteacher.

“Well, I wonder what next,” he said to himself; “she will have to understand what her true position is. Evidently by the way she smiles and chatters this is not the first tete-a-tete they have had. Of course the fellow will be only too delighted to be noticed by her. I wonder if Menheriot knows, for if not, 'it is about time he was told, as her guardian he will have to look after her.”

He did not attempt to follow Monica, but sauntered to

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and fro on the edge of the lawn, and watched the young people from under his eyebrows.

When at length Monica returned to him, radiant and smiling, he gently took her to task for her indiscretion.

“Do you know that young man to whom you have been speaking?” he said quite gravely and seriously.

“Why of course I know him, Rupert. Do you think I would run across the Park to speak to someone I did not know?” and she laughed brightly as though the suggestion were altogether too absurd.

“But have you ever considered the difference in your social positions?” he said in grave tones.

“I am afraid I have not,” she answered with a smile. “What are they?”

“0 fie, fie!” he said patronizingly; “you surely know that he is only the son of a schoolmaster.”

“And you are only the son of a Vicar, so what’s the difference?”

“I should hope there is a great deal of difference.”

“Well, yes, one preaches to big folks in a church, and the other teaches small folks in a schoolroom, and is not it as honorable to teach little folks as big ones?”

“Pm afraid you do not understand, Monica,” he said in aggrieved tones; “you must remember that my father is a Grant.”

“And his father is a Morton.”

“But who are the Mortons? Surely they are not the kind of people for the daughter of Sir Lawrence Stuart to associate with.”

“And why not? Sir Lawrence Stuart was only a working man when he was young. I’ve heard him say so again and again. He made all- his money promoting railways in Brazil, and then he came home and got married when he was fifty and went into Parliament and gave heaps of money and got knighted. Oh you think I’m only a girl and don’t know -anything, but I do,” and her delicate nostrils expanded and her eyes shone with a seriousness that he had never seen in them before.

“I am afraid this is scarcely to the point,” he said stiffly. “You must remember, Monica, that you are a woman now, and there are certain proprieties to be observed and — ”

TWO MEN AND A MAID.

“Oh, indeed!” she interrupted; “then I think you might address me as Miss Stuart.”

“Ah, now you are cross, and I would not vex you for the world. 1 assure you that I have only your good and happiness at heart, and I really do not think it is for your good that you should go bounding across the grounds to speak to every Dick, Tom and Harry that may cross the Park.”

“Oh thank you, Mr. Rupert Grant,” she said half petulantly, half mischievously, “I do not speak to every Harry that crosses the Park, only to one of them, and he* is going to be a Barrister and so will be quite equal to you soon, if he is not so already.”

Rupert bit his lip and was silent. He felt that he was getting along very badly. If he was to win Monica Stuart, and share her fortune he must try -another method. Evidently she was not to be driven, and yet there was danger in a romantic girl of eighteen, with outrageously radical tendencies, meeting a handsome young fellow like Harry Morton without let or hindrance. What was to be done? That he was not the person to advise her was evident. He would speak to his father. His father would counsel the Earl and so the matter would be settled.

Monica had not seen Harry since that day and wondered why. She knew that he was working hard; but she knew also that when the weather was fine he invariably took a long walk in the afternoon and of late the weather had been glorious. It was strange therefore that she had never seen him crossing the Park.

Harry had equally wondered why Monica had so persistently kept out of his sight. Had she done so of deliberate purpose; or had her guardian been using his influence?

He knew that their casual meetings and pleasant conversations would have to end sooner or later. Monica was no longer a girl. Her life was far apart from his. Between the rich and poor a great gulf was fixed. She would soon be moving in the inner circle of what the world was pleased to call “Society,” the laws of which were as rigid and inflexible as those of the Medes and Persians.

Harry shared the common feeling of his class. He was born in a cottage, hence the mansions of the rich were as much out of his reach as the North Pole, and he pined for

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neither. He belonged to the common people, and between him and the privileged and aristocratic classes there could be no intercourse. It was of no use beating the air or hinging dust in the teeth of the storm. He accepted the position. He would feel the pain directly when his bright-hued bird unfolded her wings and hew away from him; but it could not be helped. He would endure silently; that was the privilege of the poor. They were always enduring, and he could suffer as silently as the rest.