CHAPTER I.

KNIGHTS ERRANT.

Eighteen years had passed since the flight of Clare Lady Cranstoun and the birth of her daughter Stella.

The touch of spring was upon the Surrey meads and Surrey hills, and a tender gray-green veil adorned the boughs laid bare by winter winds.

Before an ideal country-house, low and rambling, with plentiful green lattice-work for the creepers beginning now to bud, and broad terraces sheltered by verandas overlooking a trim tennis-lawn and a flower-garden gay with hyacinths and daffodils, in joyous flower, a comely group was gathered. Two young men, who had been for three days guests, were taking leave of Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite, the three pretty Misses Braithwaite, their still prettier cousin, and the two young brothers of the family.

A more attractive and typically English group could hardly be imagined. Father and mother, plump, handsome, and well-fed, surveying, with excusable pride, their three fair-haired girls, all of whom possessed wide shoulders, slender waists, fresh complexions, and clear gray eyes. The Misses Braithwaite and their cousin could all ride, drive, play lawn tennis and the newest dance music, and they one and all looked forward to the time when they should marry “well,” and spend every season in London. Between these four young ladies there existed a marked and charming likeness; but the two young men, from one of whom at least they were so regretfully parting, were extremely dissimilar in appearance, voice, and manner.

The elder was a man of seven-and-twenty, fully six feet four inches in height, and of massive build and proud, erect carriage, which made him appear even taller than he really was. His hair, of a golden-brown color, curled closely over his handsome head, which was set upon his broad shoulders like that of a young Hercules. His features were well cut, his brown eyes as clear and beautiful in color as those of a collie-dog, and a drooping yellow mustache shaded the outlines of a mouth which at times, when closely shut, gave a look of hardness to his expression. In a word, he was a superb specimen of young English manhood, and as if nature had never wearied in her gifts, she united to a superb frame and handsome face a particularly rich and mellow voice.

And yet there was but little doubt that if the eyes of the four young ladies occasionally rested upon him with admiration, their serious attentions were all reserved for his companion, who could not, by the grossest flattery, have been termed even ordinarily good-looking.

A short, slight man of five-and-twenty, pale and sallow of skin, with close-cropped black hair, penetrating light gray eyes, set too near together in his head, a long, clean-shaved upper lip, short nose and wide mouth, of which the lower jaw slightly protruded; he was not as directly ugly as this description would suggest, but was fatally plain, insignificant, and uninteresting. His manners, too, in contrast with the easy geniality of his friend, were abrupt and sarcastic, and his voice was far from pleasant. To some men he was attractive by reason of his unusual intelligence and originality; but to the ordinary lawn-tennis-playing young lady there was nothing to recommend his appearance or his manners.

The attention shown to him by the entire Braithwaite family was the more remarkable in that he took very little notice of the girls, scarcely even troubling himself to look at them, and showing clearly his wish to escape from their friendly blandishments. Mrs. Braithwaite was his mother’s second cousin, which accounted somewhat for the favor shown him over and above what was displayed toward his companion; but to his own cynical mind the true reason of the family attentions was that here were four marriageable girls, all in want of a wealthy husband, and that he, Viscount Carthew, only son of the Earl of Northborough, and heir to a splendid rent-roll as well as to the fortune of his mother, who had been an American heiress, was an admirable _parti_, whereas the handsome young giant beside him possessed little in the world but his muscles and sinews and the big black mare, who stood now pawing the ground, impatient to set off again upon their travels.

When at last the two friends had ridden down the gravel drive, passed out of the gates, and waved a last good-by to Mr. Braithwaite’s pretty niece and daughters, Lord Carthew was not slow in expressing his opinion concerning them.

“Isn’t it truly disgusting, Hilary,” he began, “to see four healthy young women with good looks, for such as admire well-groomed animals without expression, each and every one of them trained to set her cap at an ugly and ill-tempered young man, solely because he will have money and a title? If I were passably good-looking or attractive in manner, I could find it in my heart to make excuses for them. But as it is, they make me long to ‘take some savage woman,’ as the fellow in ‘Locksley Hall’ suggested, and go and live with her in some island where the currency is cowrie shells, and the title of lord means no more than that of chimney sweep.”

Hilary Pritchard laughed with the easy-going good nature characteristic of big young men.

“You talk as if savages were all radicals,” he said. “I’d bet you anything you like that rank and money are quite as much esteemed among them as here with us, and a lady whose husband can hang up fourteen scalps over her front door would think twice before she called on another woman with only six or seven of such trophies. Look at the way in which Africans kow-tow to their chiefs. Rank and titles are visible signs of power, and power will always be reverenced.”

“Yes; but not fallen in love with. Conceive the notion that those nasty girls played at me, sang at me, rode and drove at me for two mortal days, and all in the hope of what? Securing my affection? Not a bit of it. Just with the idea of persuading me that they were in love with me, so that one of them might run a chance of becoming some day Countess of Northborough.”

“How bitter you are against women!” exclaimed his friend, lighting a cigar. “Now _I_ thought them very nice and very pretty girls.”

“_You_ can appreciate them, because you stand on your own merits,” grumbled Lord Carthew. “When you fall in love with a girl, you will know her affection is disinterested. I don’t see how girls can help falling in love with a fellow like you,” he added, glancing with envious admiration at Pritchard’s fine figure.

“My dear Claud, that speech shows how little you understand women’s tastes. Last season I went about a good bit with an aunt who is fond of society, and I never had the ghost of a chance of talking to any specially agreeable women. The little men, writer-chaps, or long-haired, foreign musicians, or else your dapper little, well-oiled and varnished tea-and-scandal-loving exquisites--those are the men who win women’s hearts. I assure you that after remarking with surprise how large I am, they take no more interest in me than if I were so much beef.”

“That’s all your confounded modesty. A man of six feet four can afford to be modest. All this discontent of mine arises from intense self-appreciation. The fact is, I have something of the ridiculous sentimental schoolgirl notion of being ‘loved for myself alone,’ isn’t that the expression? And it chafes me to think, now that my people are forever worrying me to get married, that there is nothing about me but my money and my position to make a girl care for me. Absurd, isn’t it?--and rather _bourgeois_ to cherish these conventional notions about marriage. But I have no doubt I shall live them down, and within the next year or so shall lead to the altar, at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, or St. Margaret’s, Westminster, quite the conventional young English lady, fair-haired, gray-eyed, pink-skinned, with a waist squeezed into the smallest possible breathing compass, and a train of brocade carried by two dressed-up little boys, and from six to ten bridesmaids, all equally well-born and well-looking, who would all have been equally ready to marry my name and position if I had asked them, unless any other man with more to offer had made a higher bid for their valuable affections.”

He spoke in hard, level tones, but Hilary, who had been Lord Carthew’s chum at Oxford, and both knew and understood him, realized by the slight nervous twitching of the speaker’s eyes and eyebrows how much of truth and of genuine feeling lay under this pretence of cynical indifference.

Very few people thoroughly understood Claud Viscount Carthew. Great things had been expected of him during his University career, where he had distinguished himself by his brilliant acquirements as much as by his notable eccentricities. In politics he was theoretically a radical of radicals, but Hilary, one of the very few men of his time with whom he was really intimate, understood quite well the intensity of the pride which was masked under an affectation of socialistic doctrines. The Earl of Northborough, a powerful and prominent Conservative peer, trusted to time to cure his only son of his levelling tendencies, and was strongly desirous of seeing him married to some lady in his own rank of life, who might be trusted to tone down Lord Carthew’s idiosyncracies.

Whether owing or not to the sturdy and independent spirit brought into the family on the side of his mother, a Pennsylvania heiress of old Puritan stock, certain it was that Claud Bromley Viscount Carthew was utterly unlike any other heir to an earldom in England. He was singularly free from vices, and unfashionable enough to be strictly honorable in paying his debts. He held the unusual opinion that it was as necessary and important to pay a tailor for a coat as a friend for a gambling debt. He also worked as hard for his exams as though he intended to be a parson or a schoolmaster, or as though a couple of letters after his name could be of any material value to a man who would some day be worth fifty thousand a year. His theories on marriage were also archaic in the extreme, in the opinion of his equals. He was anxious not only to marry a woman he loved, but a woman who loved him, and until she appeared on the scene he had not the slightest desire to amuse himself in the society of less estimable sirens. Music-halls bored him, and he had too much respect for his own intelligence to cloud it by drink. In field sports and out-door exercises he did not shine, but he liked them, and he heartily admired physical courage, strength, and endurance. Hilary Pritchard, the son of a Yorkshire “gentleman farmer” of very moderate means, had first attracted Lord Carthew’s attention by the ease with which he excelled in running, jumping, leaping, and “putting the stone.” Young Pritchard was as bad at study as he was admirable in athletics, and Lord Carthew was filled with enthusiasm by the evidences in him of just those qualities which he himself lacked. The farmer’s son’s disposition was also a happy foil to that of the Earl of Northborough’s heir. Hilary’s was in no sense an introspective, analytical, or self-torturing mind. He enjoyed life thoroughly in a simple and manly fashion, took people in general as he found them, was cautious in his friendships, shrewd in his judgments, strong and rooted in his rare loves and hates, and for the rest, a most cheery and optimistic companion, of untiring physical strength and unfailing good humor.

For five years the two young men had been great friends; but a break was soon to come between them. It had been arranged in the Pritchard family that in the autumn of the year Hilary was to proceed to Canada, there to start farming on his own account on some land left to him by a relative. Almost at the same time the question of Lord Carthew’s marriage had been prominently discussed in the Earl of Northborough’s family circle, and Claud was well aware that his parents hoped to see it take place within the year, if only a suitable bride could be found.

In view of these coming changes, the two college chums had resolved in this springtime of the year to carry out an oft-proposed plan for a journey in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, of about three weeks’ duration, on horseback, and unattended, carrying what luggage they required in their knapsacks on their saddles.

Hilary Pritchard on “Black Bess,” and Lord Carthew on a chestnut cob, had therefore started some ten days previously from a country seat in the Isle of Wight, belonging to the latter’s father. They had had lovely weather, and a very enjoyable tour, but so far no adventures worth mentioning, and the only point which had particularly struck Lord Carthew was what he considered as the unnecessary deference and snobbish attentions paid to him by hotel servants and chance strangers, solely because he was a son to Lord Northborough.

After riding on without speaking a short time, Claud suddenly turned in his saddle, and addressed his friend with twinkling eyes, and a look of great satisfaction.

“Look here, Hilary!” he exclaimed, “you won’t believe me on this subject of the disgusting sycophancy shown toward a title? You won’t admit that everybody treats me much better than they do you? Very well. I have a proposal to make. We have planned out about a fortnight longer of wandering. For the remainder of the time we will change _rôles_. You shall be Lord Carthew, and I will be Hilary Pritchard.”

“Nonsense!”

“No; but I mean it seriously. In the first place, to convince you that I am right; then again for the humor of the thing. My third reason will sound so ridiculous that I can hardly put it into words. One of my favorite theories is that events happen to us, and opportunities come in our way, just when we are ripe for them. Sometimes a premonition warns us beforehand. Often enough we disregard it, and miss the opportunity. There’s more than you think in the old Jewish notion of being ‘warned in a dream.’ My grandmother was a Scotchwoman, you know, Lady Kate Douglas, and great at second sight. Before I could speak plainly, she had communicated some of her beliefs to me.”

“You’re just like the rest of these very clever fellows,” said his friend, indulgently. “When you’ve left off believing in everything else, you’re bound to have faith in some superstitious fad. Well, and what have you been dreaming about now?”

No one had ever yet succeeded in laughing Lord Carthew out of any idea, however erratic.

“I started this tour,” he said, quietly, “in search of adventures, you know, and so far we haven’t had any. But you must remember I am also in search of a wife, and I have a rooted conviction that if I find one to my liking it won’t be in the beaten track, but that I shall have to go out of my way to seek her out.”

“My dear Claud,” Hilary began, in a tone of some alarm, “does this mean that your radicalism is going to land you in the arms of a milkmaid? A rustic countess, with red elbows and a strong dialect?”

“I should never dream of marrying any woman without good breeding and refinement,” the other returned in quiet, decided tones. “But if she be a lady, it will be immaterial to me whether her parents are received at Court or not. Only she must be something unlike the girls I am used to meeting. My sisters, and my sisters’ friends, and girls like the Braithwaites, I cannot tell you how they bore me. I don’t quite know what I do want, but most certainly I don’t want them.”

“Granted. But what has all this to do with your mad proposal to exchange names with me? Of course, I shouldn’t consent. But what possible connection is there between your ideal ladylove, and your last crazy notion?”

“More than you think. If we should meet her--don’t laugh, anything is possible--if we should, as I say, during the next fortnight, happen to light upon just the woman I am waiting for, I am eccentric enough to wish to stand before her on my own poor merits, with my plain face, and insignificant appearance, my bad temper, and all the rest of it--just Mr. Pritchard, going out to Canada to make his fortune in the autumn. Then I should endeavor to gain her interest, and in time her affection.”

“What an extraordinary chap you are for talking nonsense seriously! One would think you expected your ideal young woman to drop from the clouds at the present moment.”

“Perhaps I do. Did I ever tell you of my visit to Kyro, the fashionable fate-reader, in Bond Street, last Christmas?”

“You don’t mean to say, Carthew, that you are going to take on palmistry?”

“I had an hour to fill in before meeting my father,” Lord Carthew continued, quite unmoved by his companion’s raillery, “and as it was too cold to study the shops, and there were no picture-galleries worth seeing open, I dropped into Mlle. Kyro’s. You know what a success she made of it until the police, tired of running in old women for getting sixpences out of servant girls, shut up her entertainment. Well, she was a very charming woman, and didn’t go in for any ‘fee, faw, fum,’ at all. She studied my face and my hands, and after some very happy guessing at what had already happened to me, she proceeded to foretell that in the spring of this year I should meet unexpectedly, while on a journey, a lady with whom I should fall madly in love. Meeting her would, so she declared, alter the whole course of my life. Furthermore, I should marry, and go through a whole sea of trouble, and as far as she would tell me, even worse misfortunes were in store. Kyro, however, with tears in her eyes--very pretty eyes, by the way--begged me to be the arbiter of my own fate. All these troubles could be avoided, so she assured me, if I would be guided by reason and not by passion. I thanked her for her good advice; she gave me a cup of tea and I left the fee on the table, and there is the end of it--or perhaps, the beginning.”

“You are not going to tell me,” exclaimed Hilary, “that a man of your intellectual attainments attaches the slightest importance to such utter nonsense as professional fortune-telling? I shall begin to believe study has turned your brain.”

“Just as you like,” said Lord Carthew, shrugging his shoulders with sudden indifference. “But to return to our former subject, grant me this favor, Hilary. It will certainly be our last outing together for a long time, possibly forever. You are going to settle out there, you will marry----”

“Not exactly,” broke in Hilary, with hearty emphasis. “Marriage isn’t part of my programme, by any means. I’ve got to make my way and to make money, and I don’t want a burden around my neck to start with.”

“Anyhow, our ways will widen apart. It will do you no harm to lend me your name for a few days. I will solemnly vow not to bring it into discredit, and if the trick be found out, it will only be considered as another freak of ‘mad Carthew,’ as they call me at Oxford.”

“I don’t care to go masquerading about the country in borrowed plumes----”

“Still, you must, just for a day or two, until I have made you own I was in the right, about the snobbishness and all that. How can it affect you? We shall probably only meet innkeepers, chance visitors, waiters, and hostlers, and you are just leaving England and not in the least likely to see any of them again.”

He was so persistent in his arguments that Hilary at length agreed, for peace and quiet, to fall in with his views, at least tacitly.

“But you must do all the lying,” he stipulated. “I lie with the most confounded clumsiness. Besides, I don’t like it. I’ll humor your whim so far as to call you Claud only and not Carthew, and to answer to my own name. And on your head be all the complications which may arise from your silly freak.”

The time had passed swiftly by in talk, and the shadows had grown longer in the lanes, where the air was sweet with budding hawthorn, and birds twittered in the hedges. For the past hour their way had led them alongside of a very spacious and thickly-wooded park, and at this point Lord Carthew, curious as to its ownership, questioned a passing field laborer, who looked at him in surprise.

“That’s the Chase, sir, Sir Philip Cranstoun’s place,” he said, with evident compassion for the inquirer’s ignorance as he passed on.

“Cranstoun?” Lord Carthew repeated the name meditatively. “He’s a Baronet, to be sure, and has a capital place, Cranstoun Hall, near Balmoral. Splendid shooting. He’s a distant connection of ours through his wife, who was Lady Gwendolen Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Lanark. She was my grandmother’s niece; consequently, she is some relation to me, but what I can scarcely define.”

“Are you going to look her up, too, on the strength of it?”

“Not exactly. I know other members of the family. The type is unmistakable. Long, lean, fair, with watery blue eyes, sandy hair, high noses, and the most extraordinary amount of pride and narrowness. I wish Sir Philip Cranstoun joy of his bargain.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. But I’ve heard about him from men who have shot at his Scotch place. Hard as nails and proud as Lucifer, that is the character his guests give him. He has some children, I believe, but I don’t know how many. They must be a most unpleasant lot, if there’s anything in heredity. For myself, I can’t imagine a more disagreeable blend than a Cranstoun and a Douglas.”

They had ridden many miles since lunch, and by six o’clock, when they arrived at a little wayside inn, the Cranstoun Arms, they were both hungry enough to be glad of the simple fare provided. The landlord had not been settled there for more than three years. He was a cheerful and garrulous person, and quite ready to chat about Sir Philip, whom, however, he had only seen on two occasions. As to Lady Cranstoun and the young lady, the former was an invalid, and never drove about except in a closed carriage accompanied by her daughter, and the landlord could not personally express an opinion concerning them.

Concerning Sir Philip’s hard, stern character he had much to impart. The Baronet was especially renowned for his rancor against gypsies. If any one of that nomadic tribe was found trespassing upon his land, he would invariably contrive to have them accused of poaching or thieving.

“Sir Philip, he’d go five miles to hang a gypsy, they say about here. It’s wonderful how he do hate them. There’s a story that some twenty odd years ago one of ’em cursed him in the market-place, nigh the court-house. Folks say a gypsy’s curse sticks. But lor’! what won’t people say?”