The Following of the Star Part 11

"'FALCON RIVERS.'

"Well--I went.

"I arrived in uniform, not sure what my standing was to be in the house, but thankful to be back there, on any terms, and irresistibly attracted by the spell of Uncle Falcon.

"Our own old butler opened the door to me. I nearly fell upon his neck.

The housekeeper, who had known me from infancy, took me up to my room.

They wept and laughed, and seemed to look upon my uniform as one of Miss Diana's pranks--half funny, half naughty. Truth to tell, I did feel dressed up, when I found myself inside the old hall again.

"In twenty-four hours, Cousin David, I was installed as the daughter of the house.

"Of Uncle Falcon's remarkable personality, there is not time to tell you now. We took to each other at once, and, before long, he felt it right to put away, at my request, the one possible cause of misunderstanding there might have been between us, by telling me the true reason of his alienation from home, and his breach with my grandfather and my parents.

"Uncle Falcon was ten years younger than my grandfather. My mother, then a very lovely woman, in the perfection of her beauty, was ten years older than my father, a young subaltern just entering the army. My mother was engaged to Uncle Falcon, who loved her with an intensity of devotion, such as only a nature strong, fiery, rugged as his, could bestow.

"During a visit to Riverscourt, shortly before the time appointed for her marriage to Uncle Falcon, then a comparatively poor man with no prospects--my mother met my father. My father fell in love with her, and my mother jilted Uncle Falcon in order to marry the young heir to the house and lands of Riverscourt. Poor mamma! How well I could understand it, remembering her love of luxury, and of all those things which go with an old country place and large estates. Uncle Falcon never spoke to her again, after receiving the letter in which she put an end to their engagement; but he had a furious scene with my grandfather, who had connived at the treachery toward his younger brother; and then horsewhipped the young subaltern, in his father's presence.

"Shortly afterwards, he sailed for America, and never returned.

"Then--oh, irony of fate! After three years of married life, the young heir died, without a son, and Uncle Falcon stood to inherit Riverscourt, as the last in the entail.

"Meanwhile everything he touched had turned to gold, and he only waited my grandfather's decease to return as master to the old home, with the large fortune which would soon restore it to its pristine beauty and grandeur.

"How well I could now understand my grandfather's silent fury, and my mother's remorseful bitterness! By her own infidelity, she had made herself the _niece_ of the man whose wife she might have been, and whose wealth, position, and power would all have been laid at her feet. Also, I am inclined to think she had not been long in realising and regretting the treasure she had lost, in the love of the older man. I always knew mamma had few ideals, and no illusions. Many of my own p.r.o.nounced views on the vital things in life are the product of her disillusionising philosophy. Poor mamma! Oh, Cousin David, I see it hurts you each time I say '_poor_ mamma'! Yet you cannot know what it means, when one's kindest thoughts of one's mother must needs be prefixed by the adjective 'poor.' Yes, I know it is a sad state of things when pity must be called in to soften filial judgment. But then life is full of these sad things, isn't it? Anyway I have found it so. Had my mother left me one single illusion regarding men and marriage, I might not now find myself in the difficult position in which I am placed to-day.

"However, for one thing I have always been thankful--one hour when I can remember my mother with admiration and respect: that morning at breakfast, in our humble suburban villa, when she tore up and flung to the flames Uncle Falcon's cheque for a thousand pounds.

"A close intimacy, and a deep, though undemonstrative, affection, soon arose between Uncle Falcon and myself. His life-long fidelity to his love for my mother seemed to transfer itself to me, and to be at last content in having found an object. My every wish was met and gratified.

He insisted upon allowing me a thousand a year, merely as pocket-money, while still defraying all large expenses for me, himself. Hunters, dogs, everything I could wish, were secured and put at my disposal. His last gift to me was the motor-car which brought you here to-day.

"His sense of humour was delightful; his shrewd keen judgment of men and things, instructive and entertaining. But--he had one peculiarity. So sure was he of his own discernment, and so accustomed to bend others to his iron will, that if one held a different view from his and ventured to say so, he could never rest until he had won in the argument and brought one round to his way of thinking. He was never irritable over the point; he kept his temper, and controlled his tongue. But he never rested until he had convinced and defeated a mental opponent.

"He and I agreed upon most subjects, but there was one on which we differed; and Uncle Falcon could never bring himself to let it be. In spite of his own hard experience and consequent bachelorhood,--perhaps because of it,--he was an ardent believer in marriage. He held that a woman was not meant to stand alone; that she missed her proper vocation in life if she refused matrimony; and that she attained her full perfection only when the marriage tie had brought her to depend, for her completion and for her happiness, upon her rightful master--man.

"On the other hand, I, as you may have discovered, Cousin David, regard the whole idea of marriage with abhorrence. I hold that, as things now stand in this civilization of ours, a woman's one absolute right is her right to herself. She is her own inalienable possession. Why should she give herself up to a man; becoming his chattel, to do with as he pleases? Why should she lose all right over her own person, her own property, her own liberty of action and regulation of circ.u.mstance? Why should she change her very name for his? If the two could stand on a platform of absolute independence and equality, the thing might be bearable--for some. It would still be intolerable to me! But, as the law and social usage now stand, marriage is--to the woman--practically slavery; and, therefore, an unspeakable degradation!"

Diana's eyes flashed; her colour rose; her firm chin seemed more than ever to be moulded in marble.

David, sole representative of the tyrant man, quailed beneath the lash of her indictment. He knew Diana was wrong. He felt he ought to say that marriage was scriptural; and that woman was intended, from the first, to be in subjection to man. But he had not the courage of his convictions; nor could he brook the thought of any man attempting to subjugate this glorious specimen of womanhood, invading her privacy, or in any way presuming to dispute her absolute right over herself. So he shrank into his large armchair, and took refuge in silence.

"When I proclaimed my views to Uncle Falcon," continued Diana, "he would hear me to the end, and then say: 'My dear girl, after the manner of most women orators, you mount the platform of your own ignorance, and lay down the law from the depths--or, perhaps I should say, shallows--of your own absolute inexperience. Get married, child, and you will tell a different story.'

"Then Uncle Falcon set himself to compa.s.s this result, but without success. However profound might be my inexperience, I knew how to keep men at arm's length, thank goodness! But, as the happy years went by, we periodically reverted to our one point of difference. At the close of each discussion, Uncle Falcon used to say: 'I shall win, Diana! Some day you will have to admit that I have won.' His eyes used to gleam beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows, and I would turn the subject; because I could not give in, yet I felt it was becoming almost a mania with Uncle Falcon.

"It was the only thing in which I failed to please him. His pride in my riding, and in anything else I could do, was touching beyond words. He remodelled the kennels, and financed the hunt in our neighbourhood, on condition that I was Master.

"One day his speech suddenly became thick and difficult. He sent for Mr.

Inglestry, our old family friend and adviser, and was closeted with him for over an hour.

"When Mr. Inglestry came out of the library, his face was grave; his manner, worried.

"'Go to your uncle, Miss Rivers,' he said. 'He has been exciting himself a good deal, over a matter about which I felt bound to expostulate, and I think he needs attention.'

"I went into the library.

"Uncle Falcon's eyes were brighter than ever, though his lips twitched.

'I shall win, Diana,' he said. 'Some day you will have to admit that I have won. You will have to say: "Uncle Falcon, you have won."'

"I knelt down in front of him. 'No other man will ever win me, dear. So I can say it at once. Uncle Falcon, you have won.'

"'Foolish girl!' he said; then looked at me with inexpressible affection. 'I w-want you to be happy,' he said. 'I w-want you to be as h-happy as I would have made Geraldine.'

"Geraldine was my mother.

"On the following day, Uncle Falcon sent for another lawyer, a young man just opening a practice in Riversmead. He arrived with his clerk, but only spent a very few minutes in the library, and as we have never heard from him since, no transaction of importance can have taken place. Mr.

Inglestry had the will and the codicil.

"A few nights later, I was summoned to my uncle's room. He neither spoke nor moved again; but his eyes were still bright beneath the bushy eyebrows. He knew me to the end. Those living eyes, in the already dead body, seemed to say: 'Diana, I shall win.'

"At dawn, the brave, dauntless soul left the body, which had long clogged it, and launched out into the Unknown. My first conscious prayer was: that he might not there meet either my father or my mother, but some n.o.ble kindred spirit, worthy of him. Cousin David, you would have liked Uncle Falcon."

"I am sure I should have," said David Rivers.

"Go into the library," commanded Diana, "the door opposite the dining-room, and study the portrait of him hanging over the mantel-piece, painted by a famous artist, two years ago."

David went.

Diana rang, and sent for a gla.s.s of water; went to the window, and looked out; crossed to a mirror, and nervously smoothed her abundant hair. Hitherto she had been cantering smoothly over open country. Now she was approaching the leap. She must keep her nerve--or she would find herself riding for a fall.

"Did you notice his eyes?" she asked, as David sat down again.

"Yes," he answered; "wonderful eyes; bright, as golden amber. You must not be offended--you would not be, if you could know how beautiful they were--but the only eyes I ever saw at all like them, belonged to a _Macacus Cynomolgus_, a little African monkey--who was a great pet of mine."

"I quite understand," said Diana. "I know the eyes of that species of monkey. Now, tell me? Did Uncle Falcon's amber eyes say anything to you?"

"Yes," said David. "It must have been simply owing to all you have told me. But, the longer I looked at them--the more clearly they said: 'I shall win.'"

"Well, now listen," said Diana, "if my history does not weary you. When Mr. Inglestry produced Uncle Falcon's will, he had left everything to me: Riverscourt, the whole estate, the four livings of which he held the patronage, and--his immense fortune. Cousin David, I am so rich that I have not yet learned how to spend my money. I want you to help me. I have indeed the gift of gold to offer to the King. I wish you to have, at once, all you require for the church, the schools, the printing-press, and the boat, of which you spoke. And then, I wish you to have a thousand a year--two, if you need them--for the current expenses of your work, and to enable you to have a colleague. Will you accept this, Cousin David, from a grateful heart, guided by you, led by the Star, and able to-day to offer it to the King?"

At first David made no reply. He sat quite silent, his head thrown back, his hands clasping his knee; and Diana knew, as she watched the working of the thin white face, that he was striving to master an emotion such as a man hates to show before a woman.

Then he sat up, loosing his knee, and answered very simply:

"I accept--for the King and for His work, Miss Rivers; and I accept on behalf of my poor eager waiting people out there. Ah, if you could know how much it means----!" His voice broke.

Diana felt the happy tears welling up into her own eyes.

"And we will call the church," said David, presently, "the Church of the Holy Star."