The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories

American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellown

old interiors of Europe into the glistening shells of the United States not only roused him almost to passionate protest, but offended his patriotism-which he classified among his unworked ideals. The average American

d Europe furnished stages for his puppets, and, if never picturesque nor impassioned, his originality was as overwhelming as his style. His subtleties might not always be understood-indeed, as a rule,

ced to consider the tastes of the middle-class at a desk in Hampstead. But, as it mercifully was, the fashionable and exclusive sets of London knew and sought him. He was too wary to become a fad, and too sophisticated to grate or bore; consequently, his popularity continued evenly from year to year, and long since he had come to be regarded as one of them. He was not keenly addicted to sport, but he could handle a gun, and all men respected his dignity and breeding. They cared less for his books than women did, pe

n he did not go to Homburg and the Riviera-he visited the best houses in England, slept in state chamber

is phenomenally appreciative relative. The estate was a large one. There was a rush for his books; new editions were announced. He smiled with cynic

ncient 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 o

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 enter

was gentle and lovable, and any one of them was well content to spend weeks at Ch

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 tha

a jolly little companion he would be! And this fine old mansion

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

nderstood almost as well as his own; but to-day he saw only the lovely child

lightenments 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 b

" he admitted. "I catch myself watching them on the street when they are p

ked not unlike an ordinary pen-and making no attempt to disobey the desire that possessed him, went back to the gallery. The dark splendid boy, the angelic little girl were all he saw-even of

f the dead," he thought. "But I

ecame impatient and angry. "I am mooning like a barren woman," he exclaime

the Viscount Tancred and the Lady Blanche Mortlake, son and daughter of the second Earl of Teignmouth. Little wiser than before, he sat down at once and wrote to the present earl, askin

ertainly are beautiful enough, and the last time I looked at them in that waning l

s intensely grateful to

family traditions-she isn't married-that the little chap was drowned in the river, and that the little girl died too-I mean when she was a little girl-wasted away, or something-I'm such a beastly

ely adventurous career of the third Earl of Teignmouth. He had pondered upon the deep delights of directing such a mind and character, and had caught himself envying the dust that was older still. When he read of the lad's e

I believe I not only wish those childre

interval of separation, seemed more spiritedly alive than ever, the little girl to su

, desperately, after that long commu

a masterpiece-and more: he was experiencing a pleasure so keen that once and again his hand trembled, and he saw the page through a mist. Although his characters had always been objective to himself and his more patient readers, none knew better than he-a man of no delusions-that they were so remote and exclusive as barely to escape being mere mentali

knee as they both followed the adventurous course of their common idol, the boy. When Orth realized how alive they were, he opened each room of his home to them in turn, that evermore he might have sacred and poignant memories with all parts of the stately mansion where he must dwell alone to the end. He selected their bedrooms, and hovered over them-not through infantile disorders, which were b

ent to the gallery, for he no longer had any desire to write the children out of his mind, and his eyes hungered for them. They were his now. It was with an effort that he sometimes humorously reminded himself that another man had fathered them, and that their little skeletons were under the choir of the chape

etreat unhaunted by the child's presence. He took long tramps, avoiding the river with a sensation next to panic. It was two days before he got back to his table, and then he had made up his mind to let the boy live. To kill him off, too, was more than his augmented stock of human nature could endure. After all, the lad's

anded him the reviews; and for once in a way he read the finalities of the nameless. He found himself hailed as a genius, and compared in astonished phrases to the prodigiously clever talent which the world for twenty years had isolated under the name of Ralph Orth. This pleased him, for every writer is human enough to wish to be hailed as a genius, and immediately. Many are, and many wait; it depends upon the fashion of the moment, and the needs and bias of those who write of writers.

upon him for something over a month, then cancelled

umerable-a Wordsworthian shire, steeped in the deepest peace of England. As Orth drove towards his own gates he had the typical English sunset to gaze upon, a red streak with

t, but the next day str