Chapter 1

* *
*

Ours is a great wild country;
If you climb to our castle's top,
I don't see where your eye can stop;
For when you've passed the cornfield country,
Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,
And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,
And cattle-tract to open-chase,
And open-chase to the very base
Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,
Round about, solemn and slow,
One by one, row after row,
Up and up the pine trees go,
Go, like black priests up, and so
Down the other side again
To another greater, wilder country. . . .
'To another greater, wilder country . . .
'To another greater . . .'

The soul of Charles Percy Harkness slipped, like a neat white
pocket-handkerchief, out through the carriage window into the
silver-blue air, hung there changing into a tiny white fleck against the
immensity, struggling for escape above the purple-pointed trees of the
dark wood, then, realising that escape was not yet, fluttered back into
the carriage again, was caught by Charles Percy, neatly folded up, and
put away.

The Browning lines--old-fashioned surely?--had yielded it a moment's
hope. Those and some other lines from another outmoded book:

"But the place reasserted its spell, marshalling once again its army,
its silver-belted knights, its castles of perilous frowning darkness,
its meadows of gold and silver streams.

"The old spell working the same purpose. For how many times and for what
intent? That we may be reminded yet once again that there is the step
behind the door, the light beyond the window, the rustle on the stair,
and that it is for these things only that we must watch and wait?"

For Harkness had committed the folly of having two books open on his
knee--a peek at one, a peek at another, a long, eager glance through the
window at the summer scene, but above all a sensuous state of slumber
hovering in the hot scented afternoon air just above him, waiting to
pounce . . . to pounce . . .

First Browning, then this other, the old book in a faded red-brown
cover, "_To Paradise!_ Frederick Lester." At the bottom of the
title-page, 1892--how long ago! How faded and pathetic the old book was!
He alone in all the British Isles at that moment reading it--certainly
no other living soul--and he had crossed to Browning after Lester's
third page.

He swung in mid-air. The open fields came swimming up to him like vast
green waves, gently to splash upon his face, hanging over him, laced
about the telegraph poles, rising and falling with them. . . .

The voice of the old man with the long white beard, the only occupant of
the carriage with him, broke sharply in like a steel knife cutting
through blotting-paper.

"Pardon me, but there is a spider on your neck!"

Harkness started up. The two books slipped to the floor. He passed his
hand, damp with the afternoon warmth, over his cool neck. He hated
spiders. He shivered. His fingers were on the thing. With a shudder he
flung it out of the window.

"Thank you," he said, blushing very slightly.

"Not at all," the old man said severely; "you were almost asleep, and in
another moment it would have been down your back."

He was not the old man you would have expected to see in an English
first-class carriage, save that now in these democratic days you may see
any one anywhere. But first-class fares are so expensive. Perhaps that
is why it is only the really poor who can afford them. The old man, who
was thin and wiry, had large shabby boots, loose and ancient trousers, a
flopping garden straw hat. His hands were gnarled like the knots of
trees. He was terribly clean. He had blue eyes. On his knees was a large
basket and from this he ate his massive luncheon--here an immense
sandwich with pieces of ham like fragments of banners, there a colossal
apple, a monstrous pear--

"Going far?" munched the old man.

"No," said Harkness, blushing again. "To Treliss. I change at Trewth, I
believe. We should be there at 4.30."

"_Should be_" said the old man, dribbling through his pear. "The train's
late. . . . Another tourist," he added suddenly.

"I beg your pardon?" said Harkness.

"Another of these damned tourists. You are, I mean. _I_ lived at
Treliss. Such as you drove me away."

"I am sorry," said Harkness, smiling faintly. "I suppose I _am_ that if
by tourist you mean somebody who is travelling to a place to see what it
is like and enjoy its beauty. A friend has told me of it. He says it is
the most beautiful place in England."

"Beauty," said the old man, licking his fingers--"a lot you tourists
think about beauty--with your char-à-bancs and oranges and babies and
Americans. If I had my way I'd make the Americans pay a tax, spoiling
our country as they do."

"_I_ am an American," said Harkness faintly.

The old man licked his thumb, looked at it, and licked it again. "I
wouldn't have thought it," he said. "Where's your accent?"

"I have lived in this country a great many years off and on," he
explained, "and we don't all say 'I guess' every moment as novelists
make us do," he added, smiling.

Smiling, yes. But how deeply he detested this unfortunate conversation!
How happy he had been, and now this old man with his rudeness and
violence had smashed the peace into a thousand fragments. But the old
man spoke little more. He only stared at Harkness out of his blue eyes,
and said:

"Treliss is too beautiful a place for you. It will do you harm," and
fell instantly asleep.