The Bell in the Fog | Page 2

the best houses in England, slept in state chambers,
and meditated in historic parks; but the country was his one passion,
and he longed for his own acres.
He was turning fifty when his great-aunt died and made him her heir:
"as a poor reward for his immortal services to literature," read the will
of this phenomenally appreciative relative. The estate was a large one.
There was a rush for his books; new editions were announced. He
smiled with cynicism, not unmixed with sadness; but he was very
grateful for the money, and as soon as his fastidious taste would permit
he bought him a country-seat.
The place gratified all his ideals and dreams--for he had romanced
about his sometime English possession as he had never dreamed of
woman. It had once been the property of the Church, and the ruin of
cloister and chapel above the ancient wood was sharp against the low
pale sky. Even the house itself was Tudor, but wealth from generation
to generation had kept it in repair; and the lawns were as velvety, the
hedges as rigid, the trees as aged as any in his own works. It was not a

castle nor a great property, but it was quite perfect; and for a long while
he felt like a bridegroom on a succession of honeymoons. He often laid
his hand against the rough ivied walls in a lingering caress.
After a time, he returned the hospitalities of his friends, and his
invitations, given with the exclusiveness of his great distinction, were
never refused. Americans visiting England eagerly sought for letters to
him; and if they were sometimes benumbed by that cold and formal
presence, and awed by the silences of Chillingsworth--the few who
entered there--they thrilled in anticipation of verbal triumphs, and
forthwith bought an entire set of his books. It was characteristic that
they dared not ask him for his autograph.
Although women invariably described him as "brilliant," a few men
affirmed that he was gentle and lovable, and any one of them was well
content to spend weeks at Chillingsworth with no other companion. But,
on the whole, he was rather a lonely man.
It occurred to him how lonely he was one gay June morning when the
sunlight was streaming through his narrow windows, illuminating
tapestries and armor, the family portraits of the young profligate from
whom he had made this splendid purchase, dusting its gold on the black
wood of wainscot and floor. He was in the gallery at the moment,
studying one of his two favorite portraits, a gallant little lad in the green
costume of Robin Hood. The boy's expression was imperious and
radiant, and he had that perfect beauty which in any disposition
appealed so powerfully to the author. But as Orth stared to-day at the
brilliant youth, of whose life he knew nothing, he suddenly became
aware of a human stirring at the foundations of his aesthetic pleasure.
"I wish he were alive and here," he thought, with a sigh. "What a jolly
little companion he would be! And this fine old mansion would make a
far more complementary setting for him than for me."
He turned away abruptly, only to find himself face to face with the
portrait of a little girl who was quite unlike the boy, yet so perfect in
her own way, and so unmistakably painted by the same hand, that he
had long since concluded they had been brother and sister. She was

angelically fair, and, young as she was--she could not have been more
than six years old--her dark-blue eyes had a beauty of mind which must
have been remarkable twenty years later. Her pouting mouth was like a
little scarlet serpent, her skin almost transparent, her pale hair fell
waving--not curled with the orthodoxy of childhood--about her tender
bare shoulders. She wore a long white frock, and clasped tightly against
her breast a doll far more gorgeously arrayed than herself. Behind her
were the ruins and the woods of Chillingsworth.
Orth had studied this portrait many times, for the sake of an art which
he understood almost as well as his own; but to-day he saw only the
lovely child. He forgot even the boy in the intensity of this new and
personal absorption.
"Did she live to grow up, I wonder?" he thought. "She should have
made a remarkable, even a famous woman, with those eyes and that
brow, but--could the spirit within that ethereal frame stand the
enlightenments of maturity? Would not that mind--purged, perhaps, in
a long probation from the dross of other existences--flee in disgust
from the commonplace problems of a woman's life? Such perfect
beings should die while they are still perfect. Still, it is possible that
this little girl, whoever she was, was idealized