1

windmill house, a modest broad-eaved, slant-gabled tudor building, stone below, brick and black oak above, the whole roofed with colleyweston slate-slabs which time had lichened to dark-green velvet, surveys the rutland hamlet of little overdine from the brow of little overdine hill. beyond its walled gates the white road switches down between two files of red cottages, past the norman tower of little overdine church, toward screever castle and the distant screever vale. behind it and about it the shires sweep sheer fields of ridge-and-furrow to the far and the clear horizons whither--all winter--high-mettled riders and high-mettled horses pour at a gallop after the pouring hounds.

but now, all about windmill house, the ridge-and-furrows stood knee-deep in hay; and hounds pattered mute at early morning exercise along the white road; and the high-mettled horses grazed leisurely in the shade of the hawthorn hedges; and, in every covert from lomondham ruffs to highborough gorse the red vixens suckled unmolested. for now, it was spring in rutland--spring in the little county of the big-bosoming pastures and the big-bosomed women--spring, too, in the heart of ronald cavendish!

yet, for him, spring held its fear. "your wife will be all right," dr. hartley had assured. "everything's going splendidly. some time this evening, i expect. about six o'clock if we're lucky. why don't you go out for a ride?"

and aliette, smiling up at him through the increasing pangs, had said almost the same thing: "go away, man. please go away."

as he went from her, out of the high cretonne-bright room down the blue-carpeted stairs into a hall fragrant with white lilac, apprehension tightened its grip on ronnie. suppose hartley had lied to him--suppose hartley had made a mistake--suppose aliette, his aliette, were--were not to "get over things"?

"but that's ridiculous," he said to himself, "quite ridiculous. alie's so strong. and besides, after all we've been through together, that just couldn't happen."

he wandered into the low-ceiled library, picked a book at random, and sat down to read. but the words of the book conveyed no meaning to his brain. his brain was upstairs--with alie. kate came in to remind him of lunch. he said to her, speaking softly as though he were in a sick-room: "oh, bring me something in here, will you?"

kate brought some sandwiches, and a whisky-decanter. he ate a sandwich, and drank a stiff peg. then he crept quietly up the wide staircase and listened outside alie's door. but the closed mahogany let through no sound; and after a little while he tiptoed downstairs again.

"if only," he thought, "it were all over. safely over!" his heart ached for the woman he loved, for the pangs which she must bear alone. almost, he hated the unborn cause of her sufferings. what need had he and alie of children? was not their love for one another all-sufficing? had they not won enough from life already? why tempt providence with yet another hazard?

suppose--suppose alie were to die?

fretfully ronnie wandered back to the library; fretfully he flung his long length into a big saddle-bag chair. but he could not rest in the chair. the wixton imagination tore and tore at his brain. windmill house, last of julia cavendish's little overdine properties; windmill house, where his mother had honeymooned with his father; windmill house, whither he had brought aliette for sanctuary while the law was separating her from hector--seemed sanctuary no longer. death and life hovered about the place, each contentious for mastery.

he looked at the chippendale clock on the dark oak mantelpiece. the clock-hands pointed two. "another four hours," he thought. "another four eternities!"

how the minutes dragged as one watched them! how cruel, how desperately cruel was time!

he looked out of the window, through the shining lattices to a shining garden. yesterday's gale no longer blew. it had pelted all morning; and the tennis-lawn still glinted with raindrops. thrushes hopped on it, and blackbirds. through the open pane in the lattices, from under the eaves of the house, came faint eager twitterings. out of doors, perhaps, one would feel more hopeful, less--less infernally jumpy.

ronnie, closing the library door behind him, stole quietly across the square hall, and picked an old tweed cap from its peg in the cloakroom, an ashplant from its corner in the porch. the front door of windmill house stood open. through it he could see the flagstone path, bright either side with vari-colored primulas; and at the end of the flags, high-hung between brown stone walls, the wrought-iron gates that gave on to the highroad.

for a long time, hands in his pockets, the ashplant dangling by its crook from his forearm, aliette cavendish's husband stood ruminant under the sloped porch. for a long time his memory, apprehension-prompted, conjured up the past months.

he recollected how, by the sheerest luck, windmill house had fallen tenantless just when they most needed a refuge from london; how, at first sight of the place, alie, a white-cheeked pathetic alie, nerve-wracked and listless, had brightened to interest; and how, as autumn deepened to winter, she had made the tudor house a veritable home. he recollected himself, friday after friday, driving his new car down from london; finding her, week after week, braver, healthier, better and better equipped for the ordeal to be faced. he recollected their joyous christmas together--and the black days which had followed christmas--the days when "the case" loomed near and nearer, frightening her anew with the dread of "those awful newspapers."

luckily, he had been able to keep most of "those awful newspapers" from her; so that she had seen only three reports of "the hanging prosecutor's divorce-suit."

ronnie remembered, standing there motionless in the gabled doorway, how--each helping each through the difficult days--they had made light of that trouble, telling one another that it was "like having a tooth out; soon over!" nevertheless, the memory still ached at times--as a broken bone aches to the cold long after the cure of the actual fracture.

and, "i wonder," thought ronald cavendish, lover, "whether the people who make their livings by it, the writing-folk, know how much the written word can hurt? i wonder if julia knew, when she wrote 'man's law.'"

he began to think of julia, tenderly, as the imaginative think of the dead. julia would be glad to know that the purpose of her book had been accomplished before its publication; that, published, it would contain no hurt. julia, chivalrous, would not wish to injure a man who--at the pinch of things--had behaved chivalrously.

for that in the end hector brunton had behaved well, even his enemy admitted. had it not been for brunton, brunton with his tremendous influence, the six months between the granting of the divorce-decree and the making of that decree absolute would never have been shortened to three. had it not been for brunton, not even sir peter wilberforce could have succeeded in setting aliette free to marry her lover before her lover's child was born to her.

and on that, vividly, ronnie's memory conjured up the scene of three days ago: he and she, roberts the chauffeur for witness, being legally married in the dingy registrar's office of the near-by townlet. driving back to windmill house, they had laughed together--a little cynically--at the formality. yet underneath their laughter had been tears, tears of gratitude to the kindly fates.

"man," aliette had smiled, "it feels so--so funny not to be an outcast any more."

2

ponto's sleek head nuzzling his knees disturbed ronnie's musing. he took his hands out of his pockets and began fondling the dog's ears. but ponto wanted his mistress; restlessly he tried to push his way into the house. his slitty eyes were a dumb miserable question; his great stern stood out, rigid as a pointer's, from his huge body.

"down, will you?" whispered ronnie. "down--you panicky old devil."

the black-and-white hound, still protesting, squatted on his haunches; rose up again; and began to pad restlessly up and down the flagstones. every now and then he came sniffing toward the porch.

"she's all right, ponto," ronnie kept on saying. "she's quite all right, old man." and somehow, soothing the animal, he succeeded in soothing himself. what a fool he was to worry! children were born every day, every hour, every minute. and alie was so strong. besides, alie wanted a child; she wanted a child more than anything else in the world.

after a while ponto ceased his padding, and subsided--still dubious--at his master's feet. after a while ronnie, consulting his watch, saw that it was nearly three o'clock.

"three more hours," he thought; "three more hours of suspense." he wanted to go back into the house, to wait outside alie's door. but instinct, and her last words, restrained him. one could do no good by one's presence; one could only hinder, flurry the nurse and the doctor at their work.

slowly, the great dog at his heels, ronnie wandered down the flagstones to the gate. looking back, the house showed restful, a home of safety under blue spring skies. the laburnums made curtains of yellow for its latticed windows; the lilacs were cones of white and mauve to its sloping eaves. surely not death but life hovered over that lichened roof, over those high stone chimney-stacks!

and life was good--good. life had given to him, ronald cavendish, every fine thing of a man's wishing; love, victory over his one-time enemy, money, success in his profession. for him, life had been like some old story-book; a story-book that ended happily.

but with that thought apprehension gripped him again. life, perhaps, had given him too much. fate, perhaps--even now--meant to snatch the cup of happiness from his lips.

he looked up at aliette's window. the silk curtains were drawn; and imagination shuddered at the task of visioning her behind them. she was in pain, his aliette, the one being in the world who made life glorious to him. she was in pain. in danger. and he, her husband, could not help.

slowly, unable longer to bear the sight of those drawn curtains, ronnie--the unhappy dog in his wake--turned away; slowly, the pair began to wander about the gardens, round the house and round again, through the shrubberies, past the garage and the stables, across the tennis-lawn, up and down the rose-pergola. and, "i can't stand this," thought ronald cavendish; "i can't stand this another minute."

it seemed to him, in his agony, as though life must be planning revenge on him; as though the ultimate penalty were now to be exacted. alie would die in child-birth; and all they had won together be lost eternally.

vainly, he strove to curb his imagination. vainly he said to himself: "it can't happen. it simply can't happen." vainly he wished that alie had accepted her mother's offer to join them for their wedding-day. one was so lonely, so infernally lonely. if only mollie and james hadn't been on their honeymoon! if only julia were alive! but julia was dead, and james--selfish beast!--enjoying himself, and aliette's parents waiting for a telegram.

he looked at his watch again. barely half-past three yet! and hartley had said, "six o'clock." his hand, as he put the watch back in his pocket, shook like an apple-tree-spur in a spring gale. he could feel his brow damp with sweat under the cap-peak. restlessly he resumed his tramp; restlessly the dog followed him; round the house and round again--till at last, to ponto's delight, his master made his way out of the gardens, through the stables, to the gate of the paddock.

3

the paddock, a square two-acre of trampled grasses fenced with the high white of blossoming hawthorn, shimmered in the afternoon sunshine; and at far end of it, as he opened the gate, ronnie saw miracle. at the click of the gate-latch, the big thoroughbred, golden as a guinea to the rich light, lifted his head from the fragrant pasture; scrutinized his visitors; and with a whinny of delight came cantering toward them. ten yards away, he stopped--his neck arched, his eyes wide in speculation. then, pace by balancing pace, muzzle outstretched, he came on; snuffled down at the dog; snuffled up at the man.

tactfully as aliette's self ronnie gentled the horse, caressing the smooth muzzle, the sleek skin under the branches of the jaws. somehow, it seemed as though miracle were aware of the fret in him, of the fret in ponto; as though miracle, following the pair of them up and down the paddock, were trying to say: "it's all right. it's quite all right."

and ronnie thought, looking at miracle's great shoulders, at the slope of his pasterns and the sinuous strength of his hocks: "you carried her over parson's brook, old boy. you'll carry her again, next winter, as you carried me this, across a stiller country than mid-oxfordshire, across the ridge-and-furrow and the cut-and-laids and the timber of the shires."

miracle followed the pair of them back to the gate, and stood looking over it while they made their way to the stables. the big blue clock under the old-fashioned hunting wind-vane (a metal man on a metal horse capping on a metal hound) showed ten minutes to four. in the center of the deserted courtyard--ominous--stood hartley's car. toward it, through the archway, came the doctor himself.

ronnie's heart sank at sight of the man. "anything gone wrong?" he asked curtly.

"on the contrary." hartley, a big-shouldered fellow who rode like a thruster and looked more like a vet. than a county practitioner, laughed under his large mustache. "on the contrary. everything's going splendidly. if only we could get you husbands out of the way at these times----"

"how much longer?" interrupted ronnie.

"two hours at the least." the doctor abstracted a small package from the dickey of his car. "we can't rush our fences at this game, you know."

"is my wife in pain?"

"of course she's in pain."

"bad pain?"

"good lord, no. nothing out of the ordinary. she's a trojan, is your missus, cavendish." and hartley, stuffing the package into a capacious pocket, added. "as a matter of fact, it seems to me that you're looking a jolly sight worse than she is. why don't you take my advice, and get on a gee-gee for an hour or so? we don't want you kicking about the house, i can tell you."

the doctor hurried off through the archway toward the house, leaving ronnie a little ashamed of himself. hartley, for all his coarseness, knew his job. he began to wonder whether it wouldn't be a sound scheme to follow hartley's advice, and go out for a ride. driver, the groom, had asked for the saturday afternoon off; but he could easily saddle up one of the hacks in the loose-boxes, either the old brown mare, daisy, or the little bay horse which he had bought--a week since--as a surprise for aliette on her convalescence.

ronnie, ponto still at his heels, made his way into the unlocked harness-room; picked a saddle from its rack, a snaffle bridle from its peg; and emerged again into the courtyard.

"which shall it be?" he thought, "daisy or the bay?" and hesitating in his choice, it came to him, quite suddenly, that if he really were going to ride--if, despite the apprehensions which had once more started nagging at his mind, he really meant to disregard the pull of that invisible halter which bound him to the house where aliette lay in pain--then the only horse possible for him to ride was miracle.

why not? the thoroughbred had only been "lying out" a week. an hour's exercise wouldn't do him any harm. he'd enjoy, perhaps, a little canter across the grass to spaxton's covert.

wonderingly, ponto followed his master back to the paddock. miracle still had his head across the gate; nor, when he saw the saddle over ronnie's right arm, the bridle in his left hand, did he sulk away. the big golden-gleaming horse seemed rather pleased than sulky to feel the brow-band slipped up his forehead, the snaffle-bar slipped into his mouth, the throat-lash of the bridle buckled loose, and the saddle-girths gripping him. he tossed at his bit and hogged his back in the old playful way as ronnie--the ashplant in his left hand--put an unhorsemanly-shod foot into the iron and swung an unhorsemanly-trousered leg over the cantle.

as the three of them, horse and dog and man, set off across the paddock, ronnie knew the impulse to turn back, to off-saddle. it seemed heartless that he should ride out across green fields while alie--had not hartley himself admitted?--was in pain. but half-way across the two-acre the impulse weakened; and by the time they made the far gate it had altogether died away.

he unlatched the gate with his ashplant, and miracle nipped through. before them, up-and-down emerald between rolling grasses, lay the bridle-path to spaxton's covert. the horse, at a touch of the rein, broke from walk to trot, from trot to a springy canter that traversed the ridge-and-furrow without an effort. southerly breezes blew across the sixty-acre pasture. two hares, mating, scurried from their approach. the great horned beasts, white-faced herefords and black welsh steers, watched them incuriously till--catching sight of ponto--they, too, moved lumbering away.

at the crest, ronnie drew rein. here, they were on the very spine of the county. looking back, he could still see the high chimney-stacks and the stable-clock of windmill house: but already little overdine had tucked itself away into a cup of the vale; so that only its church-tower and the motionless sails of the windmill betrayed it from the humpy fields through which little overdine brook serpentined like a gigantic green caterpillar.

mapwise, from that high eminence, the shires outspread their panorama, pasture on rolling pasture, with here a bright square of young green cornland, here a dark blob of covert, here a blue hill and there a vale, here a great house nestling among trees, there a red farm, there a church, and there a white railway-gate, but scarce a factory chimney from horizon to horizon.

not for nothing do men hark back to the place of their father's birth! to ronnie, ever since he had first set eyes on this panorama, it had been home. already he knew its every landmark; already it had power over him, power to soothe, power to set him a-dream.

and to-day, more than ever before, the shires set their spell upon him, so that he imagined--sitting there motionless on the motionless horse--a son soon to be born, a son who would esteem the tudor house on the brow of little overdine hill, and all this wide champaign, these counties which were neither pretty-pretty as the garden south, nor rocked and sea-girt as the west, nor grandly cragged and forested as the north, but just--so ronnie put it to himself that afternoon--just england, the old england of bold horses and bold hounds and bolder men.

4

the three, horse and dog and man, set off again. down from the crest they came at a canter, through fields ridged yellow with buttercups, where the young lambs frisked bleating from their path, by blazing hawthorn-hedges a-chatter with startled finches, through the pasture-gates, to the little wooden bridge over the brook. now, on a slope above them, they saw the bright new green of spaxton's covert; five acres of blessed woodland whither, on some dark november afternoon, a dog-fox hard-pressed from lomondham ruffs or highborough gorse might, if only scent failed, perchance make safety from the beaten pack.

but to-day the dog-fox feared neither pack nor horseman. they saw him, a red shape at covert's edge; saw him grin at them from fifty yards' range, and lope disdainfully back through the wooden palings to his mate!

ronnie, laughing at the incident, halted miracle, dismounted, and called the rabbit-eager ponto to heel. the half-hour or so of open air had steadied his nerves. lighting a cigarette, looking at his watch, he saw that his hands no longer trembled. "alie's all right," he said to himself. "everything's all right."

he mounted again, and headed away from the covert toward lomondham. from lomondham to little overdine by the highroad is four good miles. "that'll get me home comfortably by five," thought ronnie. but just before he made the lomondham road, fear gripped him again. suddenly some instinct, an instinct so strong that he dared not even fight against it, warned him that alie was in danger.

and with fear came self-reproach. he had been away a whole hour, a whole hour of life or death for the woman he loved. he had been enjoying himself, enjoying himself, dreaming of a son when perhaps--perhaps----

miracle, trotting at ease, felt himself abruptly gathered together, felt the ring of the snaffle hard against his off cheek, felt the grass at roadside under his hoofs, broke to a canter and from a canter to a gallop. ponto, caught unawares fifty yards in rear, heard man and horse disappear round a bend in the hawthorn hedges; ponto, quickening his lollop round the bend, saw the pair streak hell-for-leather up the hill; ponto, laboring desperately not to be left behind, saw them halt for a moment at the gate of lomondham lane and knew that his master had taken the short cut home. "he can't have forgotten me," thought ponto angrily.

but ronnie, in that moment of fear, had forgotten everything except aliette. the lane saved a mile and a half, and the lane was all soft turf--good going--the first five furlongs of it straight as a race-course.

down those first five furlongs miracle went like a steed possessed. the turf thudded under his hoofs. the hawthorn-hedges streaked past him like snowbanks alongside a train. "hope to god we don't meet any one at the bend," thought ronnie, his silk-socked ankles thrust home in the irons, his trousered knees gripping the saddle-flaps, his hands low and his body a little forward.

for now there was no controlling miracle. the fear of the thoroughbred man on his back had communicated itself in some mysterious way to the thoroughbred horse. he, too, wanted to get home. grandly he swept the ground from under him. scarcely, with voice and rein, ronnie succeeded in checking speed as they tore madly round the bend; scarcely, leaning hard over, he succeeded in keeping his seat.

and then, abruptly, he remembered the tree!

the tree, a great elm, overturned by the gale, was a bare four hundred yards on, just around the next bend, beyond the bridge that arched up like the back of a big red hog from the green of the lane.

"steady, miracle," called ronnie, "steady, you old fool. this isn't the national." he was still terribly frightened about alie; but for himself he had no fear. even when his horse, head down, neck-muscles arched against the reins, took the red bridge as though it had been a water-jump, it never struck ronnie that he wouldn't be able to stop him.

two hundred yards from the tree, he still intended to pull up. miracle, with no corn in him, couldn't hold that pace another furlong. miracle, when he caught sight of those jagged branches blocking the path, would ease up of his own accord. miracle had never bolted in his life. . . .

but miracle came round that last bend as though it had been tattenham corner; and miracle's rider, peering between his ears at the forbidding obstacle fifty yards ahead, knew that it would be fatal to try and stop him. as a matter of cold fact, he didn't want to stop the horse. the overturned tree, unlopped, five feet high and eight across, lay between him and aliette: once over it, five minutes would see them home!

ronnie took one pull at the reins, sat down in his saddle, grasped miracle between his knees, sent up one voiceless prayer for safety, flicked once with his ashplant, felt the great horse steady himself hocks-under-body, felt his forehand lift, gave him his head--went up, down and over, his shoulders almost touching the croup--and landed like a steeple-chase jock to a crackle of twigs on the turf beyond.

then, at long last, the tree fifty yards behind and the highroad half a mile ahead, miracle answered to the rein. gradually his pace checked from gallop to hand-canter; from hand-canter to a quick nervous trot that sent the loose stones scudding from his hoofs.

"good lad," said ronnie, easing as they emerged from lane to highroad. "good lad," he repeated, as miracle--scarcely sweating--clattered swiftly through the stable-gateway and stood for dismounting.

for somehow, even as he swung-from saddle, ronnie knew that alie's danger was over, so that it hardly needed the returned driver's cheery grin and cheery words, "it's a boy, sir. kate's just come out and told us," to reassure him.

5

"sorry i spoofed you about the time," said hartley, some hour and a half after. "but you were making such an ass of yourself that we all thought you'd be better out of the way. you can go up now, if you like. only don't stay long."

ronnie, one hand on the newel-post of the staircase, laughed as he answered, "i'm afraid i was a wee bit rattled"; and went up the blue-carpeted treads three at a time.

the door of alie's room, as though expectant, stood a mite open. through the chink of it shone a primrose gleam of light. alie's husband knocked faintly; and nurse rustled to the doorway. "they're asleep," whispered nurse. "you may look at them if you like."

the uniformed woman let him in, closing the door of the room. the cretonne curtains were still drawn across the latticed windows. candles glowed on the mantelpiece and the dressing-table. but the big bed, toward which ronnie tiptoed, was in shadow; so that aliette's hair, braided down either shoulder, showed dark against white pillows and whiter skin.

she slept--the child, his man-child, tiny in the crook of her arm--the ghost of a smile on her breathing lips. ronnie stood for a long while, gazing down on the pair of them. his blue eyes were bright with thankfulness. his heart thudded, pleasurably, against his ribs.

"she wouldn't let me take the baby from her," whispered nurse. "you'll go away now, won't you? they mustn't be woken."

but at that, aliette's eyes opened. drowsily, she looked up at him; drowsily, smiling still, she murmured:

"kiss me before you go, man. i'm so happy, so wonderfully and gloriously happy."

bending, ronald cavendish kissed his wife's warm fluttering eyelids and the soft downy head in the crook of her arm.

the end