CHAPTER IX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHAPTER IX.

Saul Dene and his niece were due to meet Gwynn at the Court at three o clock. At breakfast-time on Thursday Saul suggested a roundabout drive, with iuncn somewhere on the road, as a pleasant way of reaching .their destination. Phyllis, suspecting no guile, consented. The morning was fresh and sunny, and any excuse was welcome for sitting behind good horses. Saul was just himself during the first part of their round. He had a story here, a light jest there, 1 in and between his lengthy praises of the cattle he was driving. As they neared Ryehope, however— a village, little more than a hamlet, clustered round a, sleepy stream— grew more silent. Phyllis, glancing at him unexpectedly, surprised a look of sadness in the bluff, good-humoured face. He pulled up at the corner where the village pump stood, and pointed from the roadway by a trim-cut hedge and a stretch of gardenan orderly garden, and an orderly house-front, as if the place had been there since the world was created. " Uncle, I would not mind living there," said Phyllis, after a quiet scrutiny of the garden and house, and the grindstone hiding away at the comer of the wood-stock. Well, your father did live there—and so did i.< ■•;■;•- "' She' glanced at him again, to see if he , were jesting, and found the same half -sadness in his face, the same look of the man who seas back into the years and is sorry 1 for the sundering of old ties. | " Tell me all about it," she said, quietI ly. '■:"'. The horses were fidgeting, but Saul held them on reins that were both-strong and gentle, like his own character. "We were born in that upper room, Tom and I. There used to be jasmine hiding half the window, but someone has pulled it down— or it died, maybe— twenty years between then and now."

"Who was Tom?" asked the girl, picking out the thread of romance, by instinct. "Who was Tom Dene? A prettier man to look at than me, Phyllis, though we were half-brothers. Tom Dene? You'd have had no need to ask twenty years since. W were yeomen both. I followed the farm— and it was a biggish one—while he went playing his cantrips up and down the country." ~' ■ "What cantrips, uncle?" said Phyllis, holding tight to the thread that seemed to grow stronger in her hand. Saul Dene checked his impatient pair again. Then he laughed. "You wouldn't care to hear o' them, baby—most of his fooleries. But he fell in love at last. ' I can tell you of that, because he lived clean and straight to it." " Yes asked Phyllis, * daintily. Saul Dene took a last look at the homestead, drove his pair quietly down the street, and pulled up at the Falcon Inn. "We're lunching here," he said. " I'll tell you Tom's tale while we're eating." • Half through the meal Phyllis glanced acroes the table. " What was Uncle Tom's story?" she asked. Saul Dene pulled out his watch. " There's no time to tell it," he said, with evident relief. " We're due at Gwynn in an hour's time, and there's lunch to get through and, five miles, to travel."

Truth to tell, though Saul had planned this visit to the old homestead, with the deliberate wish that the girl should see it, its associations hail proved too strong for him. He recalled Tom's handsome, boyish, dash-away look recalled the close affection they had had for each other, though their habits and their ways of life had been so much at variance. There was a lump in Saul's throat, in fact, and he was glad to make any excuse for concealing his softheartedness.

Phyllis understood this uncle of hers, and guessed what was passing through his mind. She smiled a little, for she realised more than ever how like a rough-haired, faithful dog he wae—quick to show his teeth when needed to defend the house, but at heart emotional, and warm, and kindly. "There's not so much of a story to tell, after all," said Saul, as they bowled along the 1 high road and saw the gable-end of Gwynn peeping through the trees in front of them. "What there is will keep till we get home."

" I can wait, uncle, if you promise that there's romance in it."

"Romance? Well, yes. Enough and to spare, though it's eoon told." He fell into silence again, and did not break it till they reached the Court. Gwynn himself was waiting for them at the door, and his groom was ready to take the horses.

* The three of them paced up and down the terrace, and Gwynn, stealing a glance at Phyllis, saw a strange disturbance in her face. *

"What is it?'' he asked, impulsively. " You —the drive has tired you" Phyllis lifted her grey eyes. "No, the drive has brought me—here," she answered, with a sigh of great content. " It is like coming home." Saul Dene looked at the house, at the lawns sloping down to the sleepy river, at the yews' and the box-trees cut into formal shapes. Then he, too, gjanced at Phyllis, and he laughed. "Your mother used to wear that look, Phyllis, time and time. She called it '' seeing far.' I called it moonshine." She came to earth again. "It was foolish of me. I seemed to know every line of the house, and the clipped yews, and the stream that, lower down, babbles into a pool where big trout sulk." " How do you know about the pool, Miss Dene?" put in Gwynn, sharply. "I don't know. It was part of the dream-house, and the dream-gcrden, and the dream-fields that haunted me all through the dreary years in Kensington." "It was no dream about the pool below," said Gwynn. "I was watching the

biggest and sulkiest trout there, Miss Dene, before you came. 'There's not a bait that will tempt him."

An odd silence fell between them. The men were troubled, somehow, and Phyllis found it hard to come out of dreamland and to regain her self-possession. "I want to see your mother's portrait," said Saul Dene.

His niece's look of " eeeing far," his own memories of the lawns, and the river, and the clipped yews, had awakened all the hidden sentiment in Saul.

They went indoors. Gwynn stood aside until Phyllis had entered," and was surprised that she did not turn to him for guidance. She went through the hall, found the stairway without hesitation, asd reached the second floor. She turned to the left, as if she had known the way from childhood, encountered a wooden step without stumbling, and moved forward quietly till she stood before the portrait which, for Gwynn and for Saul Dene, was the keynote of the house.

Again the two men glanced at each other. The girl's assurance, the way in which she stood before the portrait as if it were familiar to her, had taken them completely by surprise. Neither could find an explanation, and it was Phyllis herself who supplied it when at last she turned to them.

" I have been so often here," she said to Gwynn, with an odd little smile. "I was trespassing, I suppose — Why, uncle, you look—afraid, almost," she broke off, catching sight of the ludicrous perplexity in Saul Dene's face. -

"Well, there's a good deal needs explaining," said Saul, gruffly. " I hate a mystery, Phyllis, as you know."

" But, dear, there is no mystery. All my life I have dreamt of- the house, and the lawns, and the coppice-pool. That was my compensation for the dreary waking days. Whenever West Kensington was too much for me, and it seemed I could not live an hour longer without the smell of the country, this dream would come to me at night; and I found myself walking through the hall, and up two flights of stairs, and along the corridor, until I found —my lady o* dreams, as I used to call her," she finished, with a delicate, tender nod towards the portrait.

Saul Dene set his legs apart, and smoothed his clean-shaven jaw with one big hand, while with the other he jingled the keys in his pockets. It was his aggressive attitude, and he adopted it when making a bargain, or when meeting with a phenomenon that was opposed to " plain common sense."

"I thought you were going to explain how you know your way up the stairs, and round about, not missing even the little step at the dark corner." "I have explained, uncle'. I learnt my way years ago-—in Kensington. The first time I came here in drum, I stumbled at that little step, I remember."

- " Oh, child, that's no explanation, that's a nursery tale. I can understand your dreaming of a house, and going r»a dreaming of it by habit, but not finding a bit of real stone and timber that fitted _ your dream like a glove." '

" —what else can I say? I have not seen the real Gwynn Court until to-day."

• " That's true," muttered Saul, ruefully. " But it's odd, all the same. Ghosts and dream-houses, and all that, went out with turnip-lanterns. I'm not going to begin believing in them at my time of life. It's absurd, I tell you, when we light our rooms by electricity." • «•• £.

(To be continued next Wednesday.)

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