The Kings Men | Page 7

sympathetic ocean; the winds cut to the marrow, and

the yellow grass and bare trees make the land as sad-colored as the sea.
But even at this season a walk along the cliff upon which Ripon House
stands is invigorating, if the walker's blood is young. The outlook
toward the water is bluff and bold and the descent sheer.
A neat, gravelled path conforming to the line of the coast divides the
precipice from the smooth, closely-cropped lawn which sweeps down
from the terrace of the ancient mansion. Ripon House is an imposing,
spacious pile. It bears marks of the tampering of the last century when
the resuscitated architecture of Queen Anne threatened to become
ubiquitous.
A vast plantation of stately trees originally shut out the buildings on
three sides from the common gaze, but the exigencies of the
lawn-tennis court and the subsequent destitution of the late earl, who
renounced his wood fire the last of all the luxuries then appurtenant to a
noble lineage, have sadly thinned the splendid grove. Nor is the domain
void of historic interest. Here was the scene of the crowning festivity of
the pleasure-loving Victorian era when the nobility of the United
Kingdom gathered to listen to a masque by Sir William Gilbert and Sir
Arthur Sullivan in aid of a fund to erect a statue to the memory of one
John Brown, a henchman of the sovereign.
But what boots in this age of earnest activity more than a trivial
reference to the selfish splendor of a superstitious past? To-day is
to-day, and the nails on the coffin-lid of the last Hanoverian would
scarcely be of silver, so many hungry mouths are to be fed.
Geoffrey Ripon on the morning following his reflections was
sauntering along the gravel path which bordered the cliff. He was
reading the half-penny morning paper, in which he had just come upon
a paragraph describing the discovery by the police of a batch of infernal
machines supposed to have been sent over from America by friends of
the Royalists. Among the emissaries captured he read the name of
Cedric Ruskin, an old schoolfellow and great-grandson to an art critic
of that surname who flourished in former days by force of his own
specific gravity. Pained at the intelligence, he sighed heavily, and was
on the point of sitting down upon a rustic bench close at hand when a

melodious, gladsome voice hallooing his name broke in upon his
meditation. He looked up and perceived Miss Maggie Windsor
skipping down the lawn with charming unconventionality.
"Lord Brompton, Lord Brompton."
He raised his hat and stood waiting for the girl, whose motions were
marvellously graceful, especially if her large and vigorous physique be
considered. No sylph could have glided with less awkwardness, and yet
a spindle more closely resembles the bole of a giant oak than Maggie
Windsor the frail damsels who bent beneath the keen blasts of New
England a hundred years ago. Her countenance disclosed all the
sprightly intelligence which her great-grandmother may have possessed,
but her glowing cheeks and bright blue eyes told of a constitution
against which nervous prostration fulminated in vain. Nor were the
bang or bangle of a former generation visible in her composition. But
here a deceptive phrase deserves an explanation. "Composition" is an
epithet which, least of all, is applicable. Miss Windsor's perfections of
whatever kind were wholly natural.
A St. Bernard dog of superb proportions gambolled at her side.
"I thought it was you," she said. "I am very glad to see you again."
"And I, Miss Windsor, to see you." They shook hands with cordiality.
"And how do you like your new lodgings?" he inquired.
"Ah, Lord Brompton, I was afraid you would feel nettled that we
capitalists should possess your grand old homestead. My purpose in
swooping down upon you in this unceremonious style was to ask you to
make yourself quite at home in the place. Consider it your own if you
will."
"What would your father say to such an arrangement, I wonder?" he
asked, glancing at her.
"Oh," she laughed, "papa monopolizes everybody and everything else,
but I monopolize him. But you look serious, Lord Brompton, and less

complacent, if I may use the expression, than when we met last. Dear
old Paris. That was two years ago."
"Ought I to look complacent after reading in the newspaper that my old
schoolmate, Cedric Ruskin, has been arrested on a charge of high
treason?"
"Alas! poor Cedric!--no, that was Yorick. Down, Bayard, down," she
cried to her dog.
"A great many things may happen in two years, Miss Windsor. When
chance first brought us together, I was a landed proprietor, and the heir
of a noble lineage. To-day I am a beggar at the feet of fatherless
wealth."
"Excuse