Chapter I

SHE opened her eyes again, at the faint sound he made, and turned them towards him without moving her head. He nodded ever so slightly, smiling, and put out a hand to help her to turn in her heather couch. Her vision swam a little at first, for she had been lying with her eyes closed for over half an hour.

" There's a good view now," he whispered, shifting the telescope a little on the baked limestone. As she, with infinite craft, twisted herself on to her knees, there really seemed nothing whatever to look at. Clear away to the higher horizon stretched the heather, purple and grey, like the heave of a mountainous wave, on whose slope the two men and herself, and Glen, wisest of dogs, lay couched beneath an outcropping rock; and beyond the heather the burning September sky; and, if it had not been that she had stared before at the far-away edge and listened to whispered explanations, she would never have looked twice at the tiny roughnesses on it that represented the heads they were after.

" There! I'll hold it," whispered Max, as she writhed herself down again. " Shift it as you like."

For a few moments she could see nothing. Heather and sky whirled up and down; she could even perceive how the glass vibrated with the pulse in his fingers. Also, she was in a constrained position, and had to move her knees before she was steady. Then, on a sudden she found the sky-line, and gripped the leather tube tightly, moving it slowly on the axis of Max's fingers, along, and along, till she stopped.

" I've got them," she whispered.

It was an extraordinary sight. Across the mile of hot, dancing air and broken ground, a circle of vision had leapt at her from the sky, and the little vignette of stags' heads appeared no more than a hundred yards away. There they were, at least four, besides another she was not sure of — two stags and two hinds — clear against the blue.

"The one furthest to the left," whispered Max's voice. " That's the one."

Yes: there he was — a superbly tilted head, crowned with feathery antlers, staring out like a king over his domain, planted there, lying deep in heather, at the highest point of the range, whence he could survey the valleys, while he took his afternoon rest. So clear and near he seemed that she could see not only how now and again he tossed his head from the tormenting flies, but even how his jaw rolled as he chewed. There he lay, watching and watching, obedient to, and lord also of the instinct that bade him watch, yet wholly unknowing that here, scarcely a mile away, lay his deadliest enemy of all, waiting on his sovereign pleasure until he should rise again to feed. There he lay, looking his last, may be, on those glorious glens, those turquoise lochs lying like little hard pavements in the ravines, on those deep blue shadows that crept eastwards as the sun moved across the burning vault overhead; spending the last day of life and liberty that had been his for four years. Even as Marion watched him he turned his great head and seemed to stare at her. Then once again he tossed his antlers and resumed his survey.

" Oh, dear! " she whispered, as she relaxed the telescope into the man's hands, and stared again at the sky-line, twitched, it seemed, back into the distance.

"You saw him?"

" Yes: but what a shame it seems! "

He smiled pleasantly, wrinkling up his sunburnt nose and eyes; as again she turned over on her back and found her old position, whence she could lie at peace, safe hidden from the keen eyes that looked out from the crest of the hill, and herself watch the long slopes up which they had climbed that morning, and resume her reminiscences. It might be half an hour yet before the stags would move; and meanwhile this was a very pleasant place in which to dream.

During the last hour that they had lain here, after their desperate creeping up with the sun on their backs, through the powdery heather, she had been very reminiscent indeed. All the circumstances had conspired to make it easy. First, there was nothing else to do. They had lunched a mile further down the hill; but now even cigarettes were forbidden here, as well as conversation, except in the very faintest of whispers, and this was too much of an effort altogether: secondly, it was impossible to do anything else but be reminiscent, here, on the roof of the world; and thirdly, she had a great deal to be reminiscent about. Her life had developed in a very surprising and interesting manner during those last six months. In fact it had suddenly struck her that her very physical situation in this adventure was a good parable of her own experiences. She had come up from the valleys; the world had grown more and more sensational with an astonishing swiftness; and now there was a pause, with the prize in sight but not yet attained. The fancy had pleased her; and she had worked it out with some elaboration.

First there had been her life in the valleys, and flat valleys, at that — those twenty-one long years in which really nothing had happened at all. She had had no brothers or sisters; her mother had died when she herself had been born; and so soon as she had emerged from a childhood protected by a rather unsympathetic aunt, since dead, her principal business had lain in attending a cheap convent school in Bedford Park, and trying to be cheerful with her father, an anxious, good little man, subject to depression. She had left school at eighteen; she had had a year and a half at home, still keeping up her music when her father was in the City, and being cheerful, as has been said, when he was at home. Then the first great event had happened. She was singing at a bazaar in Kensington Town Hall, on behalf of some Catholic mission in the East End of London: and, on coming down from the platform, was closely followed by her accompanist, a man she had never seen until that afternoon, but who certainly had accompanied her wonderfully. He had begged leave to speak to her for five minutes, and in that five minutes had, provisionally so to speak, upset the whole of her world. He had handed her his card, with a very well-known name inscribed upon it; and then had proceeded to tell her that if he was a judge — and he certainly was — she had a voice of a very extraordinary merit, but abominably trained. Would Miss Tenterden do him the honour of coming to his house one day — (he broke off his invitation to go and fetch, his wife) — and letting him, try her capacities?

Thence the drama had proceeded in scene after scene of excitement, and had gone on for six weeks. Several new actors appeared upon the stage: a Madame Janin, foreign and voluble, had supported Herr von Giinther's opinion: a Jesuit father was called into consultation, and had nodded dryly when he heard her sing and the expert's views of her performance. Then her father, peevish directly he heard the praises of his daughter proclaimed by Herr von Giinther (who presented himself, in a large flat clerical-looking hat, which he forgot to remove, one evening in the little house in Bedford Park after supper), had put his foot down, as he called it, the very first time that he heard Munich mentioned, and had said that a daughter's place was with her father at home. A deadlock had followed. Herr von Giinther stamped and raved and quoted, in German, the Parable of the Talents and the Napkin, mixing it up with an entirely new Parable of his own concerning a Prodigal Father; the Jesuit had allowed that there certainly were great dangers connected with the vocation of a dramatic soprano, but still urged that a Vocation was a Vocation; and then, instigated and introduced by that same priest, an entirely new figure had appeared, in the person of Maggie Brent, who offered to pay all Miss Tenterden's expenses in Munich for one year, if Mr. Tenterden would try the experiment, and would herself arrange for Marion's lodgings in that city.

So the controversy stormed along. Gun after gun was trained on Mr. Tenterden, who grew more sulky with each discharge. And then, quite unexpectedly, he died after a three days' illness: and the way was clear; for he left behind him, greatly to his daughter's astonishment, an income of about two hundred and fifty a year, and all at her disposal.

Such had been her valley life; and she had mused over it this afternoon with mingled tenderness and humour. How funny her father had been, and how pathetic! And how thankful she was that she had behaved well! For indeed the loneliness had not been easy to bear.

Then the ascent had begun in Munich, when the little house in Bedford Park had been disposed of, and she had moved her funiture into Miss Brent's flat on Campden Hill. And every word of the predictions had been verified. She had gone from strength to strength, after the first agonising struggles of unlearning had been encountered and passed. It was a real ascent; for it was uphill work; she could not have believed that the human voice was capable of such exertions as those that had been dictated to herself, nor that an artist's life could be one of such discipline. In her vacations she came back to Maggie Brent — that stout middle-aged devout lady that kept not only the heart but the mind also of a child — and grew more and more attached to her. Last year she had furnished a little cottage in Hertfordshire; and the two shared the two houses in common, though Maggie was nominally the mistress of the Campden Hill flat and Marion of the country cottage, and each entertained the other with humorous punctiliousness.

Finally, last spring, in a torrent of congratulations and appreciations and predictions, she had returned for the last time from Munich, and had been engaged to sing in grand opera in London for the first time, in the winter season following.

Such was the main outline of her adventures, and they were as surprising as a fairy story; for, not only had she come up with a rush from what is, perhaps, the very dreariest life in all the world, into what is certainly the most exciting, but her adventures had carried with them new social experiences as well. In Bedford Park her life had been of the narrowest, as her father, who was a moderately successful clerk, had not enough energy to go out with her in the evening, and had had the strongest possible objection to her going out by herself; and it may be said, with practically no exaggeration, that she had not a friend in the world. There were of course three or four girls with whom she exchanged mild confidences; and there had been a young man or two who had come to lunch on Sunday, and had gone away again. Now and then also she went out with her father on Saturday afternoons to various forms of entertainments both public and private. And that had been absolutely all. If it had not been for her religion, of which more must be said presently, and for her music, she would have had no interest anywhere. But now matters were very different. She was under strict orders never to sing in public; but she was allowed by Herr von Giinther, who still kept a paternal eye on her, occasionally to appear at private concerts: and at one of these Norah Merival had sought and obtained an introduction to her; and this had been a beginning. For Norah Merival was one of those persons who are permanently in love with success, and had accordingly taken Marion captive, as a future prima donna, and introduced her to a number of people, beginning with her own. This had brought Max upon the scene, Norah's elder brother, and the parents, recently ennobled and extremely wealthy. Now a very wealthy banker-peer does not sound exciting: but to Marion it was all entirely new, and very exciting indeed. It had meant dinners in the " Cecil," and stalls in theatres, and polo at Ranelagh, and finally deer-stalking in Scotland — all alight with Norah's enthusiasm and Max's brotherly admiration — and these things, after Bedford Park — even after Munich — were as wine in her brain. The whole of life, it appeared to her, hitherto aloof and aloft, had suddenly stooped and kissed her. She talked now with the kind of people about whom she had only talked hitherto: she wore the kind of dresses — through the help of Maggie Brent's advances — which she had only looked at in fashion-plates before; and she took to it all, and appreciated it wonderfully. There had even been a picture or two of her in the illustrated papers, as the young singer who is to make her debut in the winter, in grand opera.

Here then she lay under the shadow of a limestone rock, in the extraordinary silence of a still September day on high moors, and considered these things — not at all pretty, but rather charming; her little triangular pale face flushed and sunburnt, her big violet eyes — her single beauty — pensive and drowsy; her little figure trim and boyish in her homespun j acket and skirt, with her feet crossed.

Ill

When again she had settled down to wait, fitting the back of her neck, as before, into a convenient clump of heather, and bracing her feet against a ridge of rock, she began to think about Max.

Young men of about her own age, with the exception of Germans who did not count, were new to her. Convent schools do not encourage exploration in that direction, and her father had encouraged it even less; and the result was that she had only fiction by which to judge. Now judged by fiction, Max was difficult to place, since there was nothing of the lover about him at all, so far as she could see. He was exceedingly companionable; that was the one thing which she had quite clear. Had he not only yesterday, when the first stalk of the season had been discussed, instantly consented to take her with him, if she would do precisely as she was told? And had he not been a charming companion all day? They had started early for the ten mile drive, in a dog-cart, with MacTavish and Glen on the back seat; and had arrived at the shooting lodge about ten; and during all this intimacy — for she felt that she knew him now a hundred times better in his tweed suit that smelt so delicious, than in his more solemn London aspect — there had not been even a hint of that sentimentality which her novels had led her to expect. He had told her stories about deerstalking; he had questioned her about singing, and the opera generally; he had repeated his orders about obedience — and had been, ir fact, exactly what Marion had fancied a very kind elder brother to be. He looked so nice and strong, too, she thought: she liked his sunburnt face, puckered against the blazing light; she liked the way his clothes fitted, and his manner with MacTavish: she even liked, what not all girls would have liked, his entire disregard of her at certain exciting moments, as when he had told her rather sharply " not to bother " when the stag had first been viewed, and MacTavish was counting his twelve points through the telescope. She liked his narrow blue eyes, and his clean-shaven rather lean face, and his white teeth: he seemed altogether a most satisfactory young Englishman. Their little meal too, by the side of a noisy burn, had been pleasant and fresh; with something of a sacramental air about it. In fact, she was being treated, she thought, as every wholesome girl would like to be treated by a man, with a real comradeship, not discourteous, but again, not polite, as by one of the same humanity as her own, yet with certain physical advantages of strength and liberty.

As regarded the rest of the Merivals she was not so sure. First there was Norah. Now with Norah the process of acquaintance had developed in exactly the opposite direction to that which it had taken with Max. She had found Max in the beginning a little stiff and difficult, and it was only since she had come to Scotland a fortnight ago that she had found him easy and accessible; while Norah, at first swept away with enthusiasm, had, in Scotland, seemed very slightly to have frozen. There were circumstances, however, that sufficiently explained this — and chiefly the fact that in July Norah's engagement to Lord Gerald Arbuthnot had been concluded. It was hardly possible to expect the same undivided attention from her under these circumstances, especially when Lord Gerald was actually in the house.

As for the parents, she could make nothing out of them at all, except that they had very civilly asked her to come up here, obviously on Norah's prompting.

She had sufficiently classified Lord Merival himself to know that he must be treated with careful attention and deference, and his wife to know that there was nothing particular to classify. But she did not hope that either of them would ever be a bosom friend, even had she wished it.

For it must be remembered that Marion knew nothing whatever of the world, but, also, that fortunately she knew she did not. Her life had been lonely in the extreme; and even now, with the exception of Norah and Maggie Brent, there was not a single friend whom she called by the Christian name. It was inevitable that it should be so, for it was only four months since she had emerged from complete obscurity. But she was determined it should be so no longer: she was eager for sensation, and found it delightful to the taste; and she needed it the more since a profound change had passed over her interior life. A year ago she was a devote; she had found, that is to say, in religion — even in Munich — the dominant romance of her life; now, while the practice of her religion remained, the romance had completely died, and she wondered how it had ever existed. The entire centre had shifted, as was very nearly inevitable. Music, and not only music in itself but all the incredibly exciting circumstances which in her case accompanied it, had flung open the doors of her soul, and driven without that which had been within; and now the doors still stood wide, and she clamoured for all the world to come in. Such was Marion as she lay in the heather and dozed.

She had almost fallen asleep in the baking glare of the afternoon sun, when she was roused to alertness in an instant by the movement of Max's foot near her shoulder. She glanced quickly round; and saw him leaning towards her, with his face alight and keen.

" They've moved," he whispered.

She nodded, and scrambled round on to her knees. The tiny black specks had vanished from the skyline; and MacTavish was buttoning on the strap of the telescope.

"Now, look here," whispered Max, still sharp and business-like, " we've got to follow them. They've gone down the other side. We shall have to go like the — well, very fast. It'll be too fast for you."

There was the note of a question in his voice. She shook her head vigorously.

'* No," she said. " I want to see it all, except the... the gralloching."

" You're sure? There must be no turning back, you know. If you start you've got to keep up."

She nodded again.

"Well, then— — " whispered Max; and, after one more look, stood up.

" Now! " he said. " Keep just behind me."

It was, indeed, a breathless race: and before they had covered half of the mile that had stretched from rock to skyline her heart was hammering like an engine, and her eyes were half blind with dust. Every now and again, for a hundred yards or so, Max's figure would suddenly bend double, and she had to imitate him, and yet swing on and up, till her knees ached and shook. But there was to be no turning back: she felt she had earned comradeship, and would die sooner than forfeit it again. It was some help to her imagination that she had learned enough of those movements and strategies to understand them: the bending double, for instance, was necessary when an exposed bit of ground had to be crossed on which, conceivably, they might be viewed by a sharp-eyed hind who might yet be lying unseen in the heather; the speed was necessary, probably, in order that they might reach the ridge before the deer were gone too far down on the other side. The contours of the country had been explained to her in whispers as they had all three lain beneath the shelter of the rock; there was a long slope, it seemed, beyond that skyline ridge, down which the deer would be moving: and if they themselves could only reach it in time it was probable that a good shot could be obtained. So she comforted herself in her distress.

Suddenly MacTavish, who was leading, turned his grim face backwards, and then dropped flat; and the shock passed down the little line. Glen, the shabby wise dog, was already flat under the pressure of his master's hand, panting, but motionless, with water dripping rapidly from the end of his tongue. Max slid forward on to his face: Marion imitated him, and lay perfectly prone, her hot face pressed into the wiry stems, and her whole body shaking. It was a blessed relief; she hoped it would be i~ very long check indeed.

Then a boot creaked close to her, and she lifted her face to see Max writhing himself forward, and the stalker, with pursed lips and glaring eyes fixed on some point ahead of him, drawing the deadly little rifle which she had admired this morning, out of its leather case. She could see nothing of what they saw, but she knew now what it must be, and she dared not move a muscle, for fear that she should make some sound. Max was still writhing himself upwards, as flat as a snake, till she saw him settle himself, bracing his great boots into the heather, and twisting his body about into an easy position. Beyond him the near line of heather-tops stood out sharp against the blue, and, to the left, just the top of the stalker's cap, with a rusted trout-fly nodding from it like a small dishevelled plume, showed above the tiny blossoms.

As Max slid out his hand and drew the rifle towards him, he caught a sight of her, and, his face all transfigured with ecstasy, raised his eyebrows at her and smiled, beckoning her with cautious finger to slide up nearer to him and have a look. She telegraphed back for a ratification of the message, and he nodded again, shifting himself a little to make room. She saw stern dissatisfaction in MacTavish's face; but she could not resist, and twisted herself upwards.

" Keep your head very low," came the tiny breathed whisper in her ear.

Ah! there they were — unbelievably large and near, it seemed — those great and beautiful beasts, feeding like cows on a patch of green, with the obvious king of the herd apart, away to the left. It appeared to her a miracle that they should so have come upon them, up here on the desolate, empty moors.

" Ah! "

In a moment she was down again, just conscious that the stag had raised his head, and that a shock as of electricity had struck and stiffened the body of the man beside her. For an interminable instant she lay there.... There was a crack close beside her, far louder than she had expected: a breathless pause, and then Max sat up.

" He's down! he's down! " he cried; and the sense of silence and tension was gone.

" You're... you're a ripper, Miss Tenterden," he said.