Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

his father’s funeral? Evereld saw the change in his face, and helped by what she had lately lived through, was able to read his thoughts. “Dick will be so glad that I’ve got you,” she said, smiling, though Ralph fancied there were tears in her eyes. “I somehow think that your father and mine will be talking together to-night.”

      And those few comfortable words were more to the boy than any number of sermons on the resurrection; all his vague beliefs were freshened into living parts of his everyday existence, and for the first time he knew for himself what had been to him hitherto merely things that others told him.

      A sudden lull in the roar of voices from the dining-room now took place, after which the Babel of many tongues rose once more. “They are just beginning dessert,” said Evereld. “That was grace, and in a few minutes the ladies will be coming upstairs. I think we had better go to bed now.”

      So they parted, after having arranged that in the walking hour on the next morning, they would go together and sail Ralph’s little schooner in St. James’ Park.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

      “Of my grief (guess the length of the sword by the sheath’s);

      By the silence of life, more pathetic than death’s!

      Go—be clear of that day.”

      E. Barrett Browning.

      The Park seemed dull and well-nigh deserted when, at about ten o’clock on the following day, Fraulein Ellerbeck and the two children made their way to the water’s edge. Fraulein said she would establish herself on a seat in a sheltered nook not far off, and the children carried her book and her knitting-bag for her, chatting as they walked. Pacing slowly towards them was a figure which somehow arrested their attention.

      “Why,” said Evereld, lowering her voice, “it is surely the man we saw as Benedick, last March, Fraulein. It’s Hugh Macneillie, the actor.”

      Ralph looked curiously and with great interest at a member of the profession which had such charms for him.

      Macneillie was a man of about seven and thirty, with chestnut-brown hair, strongly marked features, and a muscular, well-knit figure. About his clean-shaven face there was an air of profound gravity which surprised Ralph, who could not conceive how a man capable of acting Benedick, and noted for his subtle sense of humour, could wear such an anxious and melancholy expression. He glanced at them with dreamy, absent eyes and paced slowly by.

      Yet the little group had not been altogether lost on Hugh Macneillie in spite of the unseeing look in his eyes. He had carried away a curiously vivid impression of the two children, their black garments and their fresh young faces. He gave an impatient sigh, and paced on with quicker steps, yet turned again to walk by the side of the water, every now and then glancing at his watch with an air of vexation. He had been waiting there for a good hour, and he was in a mood which made waiting specially irksome.

      “I will give her till half past ten,” he thought to himself, and walked doggedly on, his face growing more and more haggard as the time passed by. At last the Westminster chimes rang out the half hour; he mechanically took out his watch again to verify the time, and setting his teeth hard turned to go.

      At that moment there suddenly appeared, walking towards him, a very beautiful woman. It was difficult to say precisely in what her great charm lay. Her every movement was full of grace, and although she was dressed with scrupulous quietness—indeed with a simplicity that was almost severe,—no one could have passed her by without a lingering glance. Her complexion was pale but very fair, her hair was like spun gold, contrasting curiously with the brown, deep-set eyes; and though the mouth was a little too wide and betrayed a not ever strong character, both face and manner were full of that indescribable fascination which carries all before it.

      Macneillie, though he met her in the company of other people every day of his life, though he had known her for at least ten years, went to meet her now with his heart throbbing painfully. She gave him a charming little greeting, and apologised prettily for being so unpunctual.

      “It is Elizabeth’s fault,” she said, glancing at the maid who accompanied her. “She allowed me to oversleep myself. You can wait for me on that bench Elizabeth, I shall not be long.”

      The maid walked back to the seat where Fraulein Ellerbeck sat with her knitting, and Macneillie, who had scarcely spoken a word as yet, broke the silence as they paced on together. “I had almost given you up,” he said, a world of repressed impatience in his tone.

      “That’s the wisest thing I ever heard you say, Hugh,” she replied lightly, though with a secret effort. “But you must go further. It must be not only almost, but altogether.”

      “Don’t let us talk in parables,” said Macneillie, passionately. “You can’t compare an hour’s waiting in a park with ten years waiting through the best part of a man’s life.”

      A look of pain flashed across her face: there was remorse and tenderness in her voice as she replied. But there was not the love he had once heard there, and he knew it well enough.

      “Poor Hugh!” she said, “I have treated you very badly. But how am I to help myself. We have waited for each other, as you say, these ten years, but you know well enough that my father and mother will never consent. They have made up their minds that I shall make a very different marriage.”

      “In other words,” said Macneillie between his teeth, “they have made up their minds to sell you to the highest bidder.”

      “No, no, you are so exaggerated, Hugh. Every one can’t look at the matter as you with your religious education in the Highlands look at it. Marriage is, after all, an arrangement affecting many people and interests. We are not living in a romance but in the prosaic nineteenth century. And I must not just please myself. I must think of what will best help on my career; my first duty is undoubtedly to help and to please my parents who have done so much for me.”

      “You didn’t think so ten years ago,” said Macneillie.

      “Ten years ago I was a foolish girl of seventeen. You had been very good to me when the year before I had been taken straight from school and set down alone and friendless in a travelling company. It was natural enough that I should love you then, Hugh—you who shielded me and helped me.”

      “But later on,” said Macneillie, clenching his hands, “when you no longer were lonely and friendless, when fame had come to you and all the world was at your feet, you very naturally needed me no longer, and your love died. Mine was never that sort of love—it will always live.”

      Christine Greville looked down with troubled face. Ambition and the importunities of her parents had for the time stifled her love. She felt cold and hard. His passionate constancy annoyed her. “I wish,” she said plaintively, “you would not speak like that, Hugh. I hate to think that I have pained you, or spoiled your life; but what am I to do? What am I to do?”

      He turned to her eagerly.

      “Be true to your best self, Christine. Trust the man who loved you long before this Sir Roderick Fenchurch had ever seen you. I’m not blind! I can see the advantages you might gain by marrying him! You would be very rich. You could have your own theatre, you would leap at once to a much higher position. But do you dream that such a marriage would be happy? Why, you have hardly a taste in common, and he is old enough to be your father.”

      “Oh, as to happiness,” she said, impatiently, “I have long ceased to expect that. Don’t think me brutal if I speak plainly. I have had your love all these years, and it has not made me really happy. And if I married you, Hugh, I should not be happy at all. You are much too good for me, your standard of life is far too high. You would not be able to draw me up, and I should be always longing to drag you