“Be quiet,” said Lady Caroline.

Lord Marshmoreton subsided.

“I wanted to avoid you,” said Maud, “so I jumped into the first cab I saw.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Percy.

“It’s the truth.”

“You are simply trying to put us off the scent.”

Lady Caroline turned to Maud. Her manner was plaintive. She looked like a martyr at the stake who deprecatingly lodges a timid complaint, fearful the while lest she may be hurting the feelings of her persecutors by appearing even for a moment out of sympathy with their activities.

“My dear child, why will you not be reasonable in this matter? Why will you not let yourself be guided by those who are older and wiser than you?”

“Exactly,” said Lord Belpher.

“The whole thing is too absurd.”

“Precisely,” said Lord Belpher.

Lady Caroline turned on him irritably.

“Please do not interrupt, Percy. Now, you’ve made me forget what I was going to say.”

“To my mind,” said Lord Marshmoreton, coming to the surface once more, “the proper attitude to adopt on occasions like the present—”

“Please,” said Lady Caroline.

Lord Marshmoreton stopped, and resumed his silent communion with the stuffed bird.

“You can’t stop yourself being in love, Aunt Caroline,” said Maud.

“You can be stopped if you’ve somebody with a level head looking after you.”

Lord Marshmoreton tore himself away from the bird.

“Why, when I was at Oxford in the year ‘87,” he said chattily, “I fancied myself in love with the female assistant at a tobacconist shop. Desperately in love, dammit. Wanted to marry her. I recollect my poor father took me away from Oxford and kept me here at Belpher under lock and key. Lock and key, dammit. I was deucedly upset at the time, I remember.” His mind wandered off into the glorious past. “I wonder what that girl’s name was. Odd one can’t remember names. She had chestnut hair and a mole on the side of her chin. I used to kiss it, I recollect—”

Lady Caroline, usually such an advocate of her brother’s researches into the family history, cut the reminiscences short.

“Never mind that now.”

“I don’t. I got over it. That’s the moral.”

“Well,” said Lady Caroline, “at any rate poor father acted with great good sense on that occasion. There seems nothing to do but to treat Maud in just the same way. You shall not stir a step from the castle till you have got over this dreadful infatuation. You will be watched.”

“I shall watch you,” said Lord Belpher solemnly, “I shall watch your every movement.”

A dreamy look came into Maud’s brown eyes.

“Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage,” she said softly.

“That wasn’t your experience, Percy, my boy,” said Lord Marshmoreton.

“They make a very good imitation,” said Lady Caroline coldly, ignoring the interruption.

Maud faced her defiantly. She looked like a princess in captivity facing her gaolers.

“I don’t care. I love him, and I always shall love him, and nothing is ever going to stop me loving him—because I love him,” she concluded a little lamely.

“Nonsense,” said Lady Caroline. “In a year from now you will have forgotten his name. Don’t you agree with me, Percy?”

“Quite,” said Lord Belpher.

“I shan’t.”

“Deuced hard things to remember, names,” said Lord Marshmoreton. “If I’ve tried once to remember that tobacconist girl’s name, I’ve tried a hundred times. I have an idea it began with an ‘L.’ Muriel or Hilda or something.”

“Within a year,” said Lady Caroline, “you will be wondering how you ever came to be so foolish. Don’t you think so, Percy?”

“Quite,” said Lord Belpher.

Lord Marshmoreton turned on him irritably.

“Good God, boy, can’t you answer a simple question with a plain affirmative? What do you mean—quite? If somebody came to me and pointed you out and said, ‘Is that your son?’ do you suppose I should say ‘Quite?’ I wish the devil you didn’t collect prayer rugs. It’s sapped your brain.”

“They say prison life often weakens the intellect, father,” said Maud. She moved towards the door and turned the handle. Albert, the page boy, who had been courting earache by listening at the keyhole, straightened his small body and scuttled away. “Well, is that all, Aunt Caroline? May I go now?”

“Certainly. I have said all I wished to say.”

“Very well. I’m sorry to disobey you, but I can’t help it.”

“You’ll find you can help it after you’ve been cooped up here for a few more months,” said Percy.

A gentle smile played over Maud’s face.

“Love laughs at locksmiths,” she murmured softly, and passed from the room.

“What did she say?” asked Lord Marshmoreton, interested. “Something about somebody laughing at a locksmith? I don’t understand. Why should anyone laugh at locksmiths? Most respectable men. Had one up here only the day before yesterday, forcing open the drawer of my desk. Watched him do it. Most interesting. He smelt rather strongly of a damned bad brand of tobacco. Fellow must have a throat of leather to be able to smoke the stuff. But he didn’t strike me as an object of derision. From first to last, I was never tempted to laugh once.”

Lord Belpher wandered moodily to the window and looked out into the gathering darkness.

“And this has to happen,” he said bitterly, “on the eve of my twenty-first birthday.”

Chapter 7

The first requisite of an invading army is a base. George, having entered Belpher village and thus accomplished the first stage in his foreward movement on the castle, selected as his base the Marshmoreton Arms. Selected is perhaps hardly the right word, as it implies choice, and in George’s case there was no choice. There are two inns at Belpher, but the Marshmoreton Arms is the only one that offers accommodation for man and beast, assuming—that is to say—that the man and beast desire to spend the night. The other house, the Blue Boar, is a mere beerhouse, where the lower strata of Belpher society gather of a night to quench their thirst and to tell one another interminable stories without any point whatsoever. But the Marshmoreton Arms is a comfortable, respectable hostelry, catering for the village plutocrats. There of an evening you will find the local veterinary surgeon smoking a pipe with the grocer, the baker, and the butcher, with perhaps a sprinkling of neighbouring farmers to help the conversation along. There is a “shilling ordinary”—which is rural English for a cut off the joint and a boiled potato, followed by hunks of the sort of cheese which believes that it pays to advertise, and this is usually well attended. On the other days of the week, until late in the evening, however, the visitor to the Marshmoreton Arms has the place almost entirely to himself.

It is to be questioned whether in the whole length and breadth of the world there is a more admirable spot for a man in love to pass a day or two than the typical English village. The Rocky Mountains, that traditional stamping-ground for the heartbroken, may be well enough in their way; but a lover has to be cast in a pretty stem mould to be able to be introspective when at any moment he may meet an annoyed cinnamon bear. In the English village there are no such obstacles to meditation. It combines the comforts of civilization with the restfulness of solitude in a manner equalled by no other spot except the New York Public Library. Here your lover may wander to and fro unmolested, speaking to nobody, by nobody addressed, and have the satisfaction at the end of the day of sitting down to a capitally cooked chop and chips, lubricated by golden English ale.

Belpher, in addition to all the advantages of the usual village, has a quiet charm all its own, due to the fact that it has seen better days. In a sense, it is a ruin, and ruins are always soothing to the bruised soul. Ten years before, Belpher had been a flourishing centre of the South of England oyster trade. It is situated by the shore, where Hayling Island, lying athwart the mouth of the bay, forms the waters into a sort of brackish lagoon, in much the same way as Fire Island shuts off the Great South Bay of Long Island from the waves of the Atlantic. The water of Belpher Creek is shallow even at high tide, and when the tide runs out it leaves glistening mud flats, which it is the peculiar taste of the oyster to prefer to any other habitation. For years Belpher oysters had been the mainstay of gay supper parties at the Savoy, the Carlton and Romano’s. Dukes doted on them; chorus girls wept if they were not on the bill of fare. And then, in an evil hour, somebody discovered that what made the Belpher Oyster so particularly plump and succulent was the fact that it breakfasted, lunched and dined almost entirely on the local sewage. There is but a thin line ever between popular homage and execration. We see it in the case of politicians, generals and prize-fighters; and oysters are no exception to the rule. There was a typhoid scare—quite a passing and unjustified scare, but strong enough to do its deadly work; and almost overnight Belpher passed from a place of flourishing industry to the sleepy, by-the-world-forgotten spot which it was when George Bevan discovered it. The shallow water is still there; the mud is still there; even the oyster-beds are still there; but not the oysters nor the little world of activity which had sprung up around them. The glory of Belpher is dead; and over its gates Ichabod is written. But, if it has lost in importance, it has gained in charm; and George, for one, had no regrets. To him, in his present state of mental upheaval, Belpher was the ideal spot.