He himself had to stop short, for he was passing through a wide gateway into the grounds surrounding the Bungalow, and the carriage-drive was almost invisible under the overshadowing trees. Presently they had drawn up in front of the long, low, rambling house; and here were lit windows, and an open door, and servants. The two young men descended, and entered, and went into the billiard-room, where cigars and soda-water and similar things had been set out in readiness for them; and here Lord Musselburgh, lying back in a cane-bottomed chair, proceeded to talk in a less random fashion about this project of his, until he had almost persuaded his companion that there was something reasonable and practicable in it, if only it could be properly initiated.
"Anyhow," said he to his guest, as they were both retiring for the night, "it is some big movement like that, Vin, my lad, that you want to get identified with, if your aim is to make a position in English public life. You have advantages. You can speak well. You will have plenty of money. You are beginning with the proletariat--that is laying a foundation of popularity. You have youth and heaps of strength on your side. Then ---- is known to be your friend. What more?"
What more, indeed? The future seemed to smile on this young man; and if his dreams, waking or sleeping, had been of great achievements and public triumphs, who could have wondered? But curiously enough, just at this time, the forecasts that came to him in moments of quiet were apt to be sombre. He dreaded he hardly knew what. And these vague forebodings of the day took a more definite shape in the far-reaching visions of the night; for again and again there recurred to him that phantasmal picture that had suddenly startled him when old George Bethune was talking of the possibilities that might be lying in store for his granddaughter. Vin Harris had never seen Balloray--did not know where it was, in fact; but night after night he beheld with a strange distinctness the big baronial building, and the black firs, and the gate with the otter's head in stone. Had that been all! But as regularly there came forth the tall young girl with the long-flowing hair; and he was a poor wanderer, cowering away from recognition; and again she would ride by, along the white road, until she was lost in the dappled sun and shadow under the beeches. Then there was a song somewhere--perhaps it was the trembling leaves that whispered the refrain--but it was all about separation, and loneliness, and the sadness of remembrance and of loss. _Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui as le coeur gai_--this was what he heard, or seemed to hear, away in that distant land, where he had been left alone ... _J'ai perdu ma maîtresse, sans l'avoir mérité_ ... It was strange that no birds sang in these woods, that no lark hung quivering in those skies: all was silence--save for that continuous murmur of farewell.... _Lui ya longtemps que je t'aime, jamais je ne t'oublierai_. And sometimes the murmur rose into a larger monotone; the big grey building, and the black firs, and the highway, and the beeches, disappeared; and behold in their stead was a great breadth of sea, desolate, and rain-swept, and void of all sign of life. And was this the barrier now between him and her? Not merely that she was the heiress of Balloray, under the guardianship of her implacably proud old grandfather, but that she was away in some far land, beyond those never-ending myriad voices of the deep? ... _Pour un bouquet de roses, que je lui refusai_ ... What wrong had he done her? What had he denied her, in the time when they were as boy and girl together--when there was no thought of her being the heiress of Balloray--when she used to walk down through Hyde Park, in her simple dress, and sit on the bench, while her grandfather read his newspaper? Then the grey dawn would come; and he would awake to the knowledge that he had been tortured by mere phantasies; and yet these left something in his mind, even during the actual and practical daylight hours. He begun to wish that there was some bond--of what nature he had not determined--for it was all a vague longing and wistful desire--a bond that could so bind Maisrie and him together that that great width of sea should not intervene. For it was a sorrowful kind of thing--even when the white hours of the daylight told him he had only seen it in a dream.