Across the Stream

BOOK I CHAPTER I Certain scenes, certain pictures of his very early years of childhood, stood out for Archie like clear sunlit peaks above the dim clouds that shrouded the time when the power of memory was only beginning to germinate. He had no doubt (and was probably right about it) as to which the

CHAPTER II Archie's birthday was in November, and for a day or two before that tremendous annual event there was always a certain atmosphere of mystery abroad, which he was conscious of at odd minutes. He met Marjorie on the morning of the day before he would be six, walking down the nursery passage

CHAPTER III Archie did not often come into contact with Miss Schwarz, his sisters' governess; she was not a person to be lightly encountered. Sometimes, if Blessington was busy, he and Jeannie went out for their walk with his eldest sister and Miss Schwarz, and on these occasions Miss Schwarz and Ma

CHAPTER IV Lady Davidstow and Miss Bampton were sitting together that night in Lady Davidstow's bedroom. She had sent her maid away, saying that she would not want her again that night, and now she held in her hand the sheet of paper covered with lines of meaningless scribbles, with the one intellig

BOOK II CHAPTER V Archie was precariously perched on the side of his little Una-rigged, red-sailed boat, looking with dancing blue eyes at the rocky coast all smothered in billows and sunlit spray some quarter of a mile ahead, and wondering if he would be able to make the harbour of Silorno on this

CHAPTER VI Archie thought no more either of his tickled ribs or his outraged hair when his friends had definitely removed themselves, and with a sigh of delight he took up a sharpened pencil and a block of scribbling-paper. He had grasped something, he thought, this morning, that must instantly be c

CHAPTER VII Helena was having breakfast by the open window of her bedroom in her cousin's house. It was not yet nine in the morning, and, though she had been dancing till three o'clock, she had already had her bath, and was feeling as fresh as if she had had eight instead of hardly more than four ho

CHAPTER VIII It was four o'clock on an afternoon of mid-July, and the westering sun had begun to blaze into the drawing-room windows of Colonel Vautier's house in Oakland Crescent. It was pleasant enough there in the winter, for the room, being small, was easily heated; but in the summer, with even

BOOK III CHAPTER IX Late one afternoon about a week after, Archie was sitting with his old nurse, Blessington, in the room that had once been his day-nursery. He had left London the day after Helena had so honourably paid him the five half-crowns he had won from her, and since then he had been livin

CHAPTER X Archie went straight up to his room: his brimming glass was difficult to carry quite steadily, and he reduced its contents half-way upstairs. William had orders always to put whisky and soda in his room in case he wanted to sit up and write; but sometimes William forgot, or, at any rate, d

CHAPTER XI Archie was lying on the turf in front of the enclosed bathing-place where the stream debouched into the lake. There was a good stretch of deep water free from weeds, and for the last half-hour he had been swimming and diving in it. Now, with hair drying back into its crisp curls under the

CHAPTER XII Archie was walking back to the house in Grosvenor Square from Oakland Crescent, on the afternoon of Helena's wedding. Owing to the acute suspense of the European situation, the plans of the newly married couple had been changed, and, instead of setting off at once in the yacht for a mont

CHAPTER XIII On a September morning, some fortnight later, Archie was waiting in the drawing-room at Oakland Crescent for Helena's entry. He had seen her twice since her husband's death, and it struck him now that she always kept him waiting when she asked him to come and see her, and ascribed to th