Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

would much rather see Macneillie,” said Evereld, “for it was Macneillie, you know, who helped Ralph out when he tumbled into the water.”

      “Very well,” said Sir Matthew, “then do that instead. Fraulein Ellerbeck, will you take tickets for them?—and the sooner the better, for I hear there has been a great run on the seats there since the announcement of Miss Greville’s marriage. She’s to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch at the end of the season.”

      Ralph and Evereld having poured forth delighted thanks, discreetly kept silence when the conversation turned on Miss Greville’s betrothal.

      “They say, you know,” said Janet, “that it is a great surprise to every one, and that it was always supposed she would marry Macneillie.”

      And in response to this every one had something to say about the probability or the improbability of such a story, save the two children who, with a proud pleasure in feeling that Macneillie’s secret was safe in their keeping, went on eating bacon with the most absolute control of countenance.

      When the eagerly awaited day at length arrived and the two hero-worshippers were sitting in bliss at the theatre, they found some difficulty at first in recognising Macneillie. He was just the Danish prince and no one else. It was only when both hero and heroine were called before the curtain, that they could at all think of him as the same man they had seen a few weeks before in St. James’ Park.

      As he led forward Miss Greville the contrast between them was curiously marked. She, with her smiling face, her air of perfect ease and content, seemed thoroughly to enjoy the warm reception. He, on the other hand, merely bowed mechanically, and looked as if this interlude were highly distasteful to him; the children could have fancied that he was positively nervous, though they doubted whether an experienced actor could really know what nervousness meant.

      After that call before the curtain they lost the sense that Hamlet himself was actually present; always through the passionate scenes and the tragic death which followed, it was not entirely Hamlet, but Macneillie with his own personal troubles that they saw; they wondered much how he could get through his part, and more and more after that day his name continually recurred in their talk, in their games, and even in their prayers.

      Just at the close of the season they saw him once again. Fraulein Ellerbeck had promised that on the first fine Saturday they should go to Richmond Park, taking their lunch with them. They had learnt from the conversation of their elders at the breakfast table that it was the very day on which Miss Christine Greville was to marry Sir Roderick Fenchurch. The marriage was to take place at a small country church, and was to be of a strictly private character. They had talked of it more than once as they sat at lunch under the trees in the park, and early in the afternoon as they wandered along the quiet paths and watched the deer grazing peacefully, their minds were full of their hero and his trouble. Suddenly Evereld gripped hold of her companion’s arm.

      “Look!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Is it not Mr. Macneillie?”

      Ralph’s heart beat fast as he glanced at the approaching figure. Had their incessant thought of him conjured up a sort of vision of the actor? Or was it indeed himself? Nearer approach answered the question plainly enough. It was undoubtedly Macneillie, but there was something in his ghastly face which struck terror into the boy’s heart, it reminded him of that awful shadow of death which he had seen stealing over his father on that last never-to-be-forgotten day. Apparently quite unconscious of their presence, Macneillie passed by, but in a minute Ralph, to the amazement of Fraulein Ellerbeck and Evereld, had rushed back and overtaken him.

      “I beg your pardon,” he said, panting a little; “but I am the boy you saved the other day in St. James’ Park. And—and please will you take this knife as a remembrance.”

      He thrust into Macneillie’s hand a little old-fashioned silver fruit knife which had belonged to his father.

      The actor evidently dragged himself back with an effort to the world of realities. He looked in a puzzled way at the boy and at the embossed handle of the knife.

      “You are very good,” he said in a perplexed tone. “Yes, yes, I remember you now—you and your boat. But I don’t like to take your knife away from you.”

      “But, indeed, I never use it; I always eat peel and all,” said Ralph with an earnestness which brought a smile to Macneillie’s face. “We went to see you as Hamlet, and you were splendid! Please take it. You don’t know how awfully I like you.”

      Macneillie’s eyes gave him a kindly glance and his cold fingers closed over the boy’s small hot hand in a hearty grip.

      “Then I will certainly use it,” he said. “It shall travel in my pocket for the rest of my life. But only on condition that you take this. Don’t get into mischief with it.”

      And with a smile he put into his hand a clasp-knife, and while Ralph was still lost in admiration of the longest and sharpest blade he had ever seen, Macneillie passed rapidly on and disappeared among the trees.

      “Oh, Ralph, how delightful!” cried Evereld, as the boy rejoined them.

      “How could you be so brave as to go up and speak to him?”

      “I’m awfully glad he took the fruit knife,” said Ralph. “But I wish he hadn’t given me this. It’s such a beauty and I had done nothing for him.”

      “Perhaps you had,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck, thoughtfully. “The unseen and unrealised help is often the most real help of all.”

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      “The recognition of his rights therefore, the justice he requires of our hands or our thoughts, is the recognition of that which the person, in his inmost nature, really is; and as sympathy alone can discover that which really is in matters of feeling and thought, true justice is in its essence a finer knowledge through love.”

      “Appreciations,” Walter Pater.

      Six years after that memorable August day, Ralph and Evereld might have been seen on the tennis ground attached to the pretty house near Redvale, which Sir Matthew was pleased to call his “little country cottage.”

      It was decidedly one of those cottages of gentility which once caused the devil to grin. But in spite of that it was a very charming place. Its windows commanded an exquisite view over the hills and woods of one of the southern counties, and its gardens were the admiration of the whole neighbourhood. The tennis-lawn lay to the left of the house in a cosy nook of its own, and there was no one to see the vigorous game which the two were playing. This was a pity, for the play was skilful and dainty to watch, and the players themselves were worth looking at.

      Ralph, who had been a remarkably small boy, was never likely, as Geraghty expressed it, to be “six foot long and broad,” but he had developed into a well-proportioned, healthy-looking fellow, and still retained his open, boyish face, expressive brown eyes, and thick, wavy brown hair. Evereld was even less changed, she was still very small and young for her age; and although she was fast approaching her eighteenth birthday she wore the sort of nondescript dress which girls often wear during their last year in the schoolroom, her skirt revealing a pair of pretty ankles, and her hair still hanging down her back.

      The contest was an exciting one, but it ended in a victory for Ralph, whose greater strength usually conquered.

      “I am heavily handicapped,” said Evereld, throwing up her racket with a laugh. “We’ll borrow the vicar’s cassock and the Lord Chancellor’s wig and you shall play a set in them and see if I don’t beat you then!”

      “Come and rest,” said Ralph, strolling towards the little shady arbour at the side of the lawn. “The sun is grilling.”

      “You