"I am at a loss to know why you say this to me," retorted the girl.

"I do not complain," said Paul, "at least at this juncture, that your father was my enemy years ago. Although he had no foundation for it, he pleaded that I was a dangerous man, an agitator and a leader of a gang of knaves. Through him I spent six months in gaol among felons; I wore prison clothes; I was treated like a dog; I lay there one long, cold winter, night after night, in a damp cellar. This was through your father--not because he believed I was guilty, but because he wanted to make a case against me. I say I have never complained of this, never mentioned it once in this contest. I have tried to fight fairly, on broad general principles, but, Miss Bolitho, my mother's good name is sacred to me. Can you, as a woman, understand this?"

"I do not know why I should answer you," she said, and there was hauteur in her voice. "I cannot help understanding your accusation, and although I am utterly ignorant concerning it, I will say this: never, since I have taken any interest in this contest, have I mentioned your mother's name. Perhaps you do not believe me, and perhaps the reason is that you cannot understand?"

She spoke quietly and naturally, and yet her words stung Paul like whip-cord. Although she did not say so in so many words, he felt that she despised him, and again his anger was aroused.

"You deny, then, that you have----"

"There are certain things, Mr. Stepaside, that one cannot deny, not that they are true, but because it is impossible for one to take notice of them!"

"Forgive me," he said, almost humbly, "if I have believed what I have so often been told, but if there is one person about whom I am sensitive, it is my mother. I will not detain you any longer, Miss Bolitho. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not spoken to you at all. Do not think that I complain because you are fighting against me. You can do no other--besides, I am sure"--and here he spoke bitterly--"that your father and the Wilsons will have poisoned your mind against me!"

He saw an angry flash from her eyes.

"I am afraid you are wrong there, Mr. Stepaside, as far as I know there have been no reasons why I should think of you at all; as for enmity, such a thing would be impossible!"

His heart seemed like a great hot fire as he left her. He knew he had broken all conventions, and acted like a madman; he knew that whatever she had felt towards him before, her feelings towards him now must be of utter scorn and derision, and yet he would not recall one word he had spoken, even if he could. He was glad that he had said these wild, incoherent things to her. He had spoken to her, she had spoken to him.

In the future she would think of him, not as a nonent.i.ty, not as someone who could be easily pa.s.sed by, but as one whose life meant something. She would never be able to forget him. He knew it and rejoiced in it! She would be reminded of him by a thousand things in the days to come. She would never be indifferent about him again, and throughout the whole of the contest that was coming on she would regard him differently from the way in which she had thought of him before.

Somehow, too, he felt less jealous of Ned Wilson. He had not spoken of this man, who was said to be his rival, but he was in the background of his thoughts all the time. For weeks the stories which the gossips had bandied had wounded him, but now he felt different. After their talk this girl would never think of Ned Wilson; she could not. He did not belong to her order of beings. He breathed a different atmosphere, he spoke a different language, lived in a different world.

The next day Paul started for Scotland, to try and discover the truth concerning which his mother had told him.

CHAPTER VI

PAUL GOES TO SCOTLAND

When Mary Bolitho returned to Howden Clough that evening she went straight to her own room. She wanted to be alone. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances she would have, girl-like, sought out her friend, Emily Wilson, and given her a full report of what had taken place, but her desire was for silence rather than for speech. In spite of her anger she felt that there was something sacred in what this young man had said to her. There could be no doubt that he felt strongly, and she knew, by the tones of his voice and the look in his eyes, that he was greatly moved.

Of course, she felt indignant that he should dare to speak to her at all, and she wondered why she had resolved to say nothing to her father about their meeting. When all allowances had been made, he had been rude in the extreme. He had stopped her in a lonely part of the countryside, and had roughly commanded her to listen to him! And Mary Bolitho was a proud girl, and was not accustomed to being dictated to. All the same, she felt much interested in what he had said, and she found herself thinking of him again and again. There was something romantic, too, in his story which, in spite of its improbability, she could not help believing, and although she felt very angry with him, she sympathised with the feelings he had expressed. Months before she had been annoyed at the thought that her father should have been opposed by one who was little removed from the working cla.s.ses. She remembered him as she had first seen him, at the shop in Market Street, pale, angry, and, as it seemed to her, coa.r.s.e.

He spoke as one of his own cla.s.s, too, and he was rough and rude. But that view had become somewhat corrected, and she had to admit to herself that Paul Stepaside was no awkward, ignorant, ill-dressed clown. Indeed, for that matter, he had the advantage of most young men of her acquaintance. His coal-black eyes and hair, his pale face and stalwart figure, would be noticed anywhere. Besides, he was well-dressed, and although he knew but little of the ways of her world, she knew that he would never be pa.s.sed without notice. Besides all this, there was a suggestion of strength in nearly every word he said, in every tone of his voice, and Mary Bolitho had a great admiration for strong men. Young Edward Wilson, whose pointed attentions she could not mistake, seemed but as a pigmy compared with him. Still, she felt angry, and she rejoiced in the thought that, on his own admission, she was helping towards his defeat.

Later in the evening, Paul Stepaside became the subject of a conversation at Howden Clough, but Mary said no word as to their meeting. Indeed, she was silent whenever his name was mentioned. On the following day, young Ned Wilson was much chagrined when she declared her intention of returning home. "Why, Miss Bolitho," he said, "you told me you had arranged to canva.s.s Long Street this week, and that will take you at least three days. Yesterday I heard that you had converted at least a dozen people, and we cannot afford to lose you now. It is all over the town, too, that Stepaside is awfully mad at your success. I think he hates you nearly as much as he hates your father."

"I don't feel like canva.s.sing now," she replied. "And I'm anxious to get back home."

"But you will come again soon?" he urged. "The house seems like a tomb without you, and I don't know what I shall do if you go away!"

She was angered by his tones of proprietorship, and almost instinctively she compared him with the young fellow who had spoken so rudely to her the night before. Wilson was commonplace, unlettered; he had only the tastes of the ordinary common, money-making manufacturer, and for the first time a feeling amounting to revulsion came into her heart as she thought of the hopes which she knew he entertained.

That afternoon she left Brunford, in spite of the protests that were made, and found her way to London.

"Returned so soon, Mary?" said her father when she arrived. "I quite expected you to stay another week. I have heard about the success of your work in Brunford, and I imagined that you were going to win me a great many more votes before you returned. I had no idea that you would be such a valuable a.s.set when I started this fight, and although I am awfully glad to have you back, we shall have to strain every nerve if we are to beat that fellow."

"Do you think you will beat him, father?" she asked.

"If we go on as we are doing, we shall," he replied. "I know he has a tremendous hold upon the town, and I know that a great deal of prejudice has been roused against me, but we must beat him, Mary; we must."

"Why, is there any special reason for this?" she asked, noting the tone of her father's voice.

"Of course, I want to win," was his reply. "I never like to engage in a fight without winning. I think that my success at the Bar has been mainly owing to the fact that I've always set out to win. Besides all that, I don't know how it is, but I've taken a personal dislike to that fellow. By the way, have you ever met him?"

"Yes," replied the girl.

"Of course, you've never spoken to him?"

To this she made no reply. She did not know why it was, but she felt she could not tell her father of their meeting in the fields behind Howden Clough.

"Well, I shall have to go up to Brunford myself in two or three weeks,"

continued Mr. Bolitho, "and, if you can, I hope you will go with me."

"Can we not stay at an hotel when we go again, father?" she asked.

"Why?" asked Mr. Bolitho, turning upon her quickly. "Have not the Wilsons always been kind to you? And do you not feel comfortable there?

Besides, there is no hotel in Brunford that I care to stay at, and there's a sort of general understanding between Wilson and myself that we shall be his guests."

The girl was silent, and looked steadily on the floor.

"What is it, Mary? There's something wrong."

"Of course, I cannot be blind to young Wilson's attentions," she said, and her voice was hard as she spoke.

"Well, he's a decent fellow, and, on the whole, I like these Lancashire people. They may be a trifle rough, and, of course, the Wilsons belong to _nouveaux riches_ cla.s.s, but young Ned cannot help that; besides, say what we will, any girl might do worse than take Ned Wilson. I know, as a fact, that his father is making an enormous income, and Ned, being the only son, will be one of the richest men in Lancashire."

"He has the mind of a navvy and the tastes of a bookmaker." And her voice was almost bitter as she spoke.

Her father laughed uneasily. "That's all nonsense, Mary!" he said.

"But, tell me really, what do you think my chances are? You know the town now better than I do. Do you think I shall beat Stepaside?"

"He's not a man to be easily beaten," was her reply. "I believe that, unless----"

"Yes, unless what?"

"Unless extreme means are used, he will win."

"I will not be beaten!" said Mr. Bolitho, and his eyes flashed as he spoke. "That fellow insulted me in the Manchester Law Courts, and I was glad when he got six months. Fellows of his order need to be taught a lesson, and he shall be taught, too."

"I don't think you understand him, father," she said. "He's one of those men who will never be beaten. He'll rise above every difficulty, and move every obstacle out of his way. I don't know why it is, but I don't feel comfortable about this contest, and I feel afraid of him."

"Afraid, Mary!"

"Yes," replied the girl. "I am afraid. I know I've no reason to be, but whenever I think of him I become angry, and yet I don't know why I should be angry. In a sense, he makes me admire him. He came to Brunford a few years ago utterly poor and unknown, and now he's become quite a personality. He's just one of those strong men that always wins his way.

And he hates you, too, father."

And then, without any apparent reason, the girl left the room.

Meanwhile, Paul Stepaside was in a train that carried him northward. He was doing now what he had meant to have done long months before. He had constantly been making endeavours to discover the truth about the Douglas Graham of whom his mother had spoken, but he had done so without a plan, and in a kind of haphazard way, and this was not like Paul. He felt, too, as though he had a new motive in his life. Mary Bolitho had said nothing that seemingly accounted for this, and yet he knew that her words had determined his action. A feeling of pride which he had never known before possessed him. He wanted to go to this girl with a name as good as her own. Money, he knew he could get, yes, and position, too. During the last few months he had listened to several fairly prominent Members of Parliament. He had a.n.a.lysed their speeches and estimated their powers, and he was not afraid of them. He was as big a man as any of them; yes, bigger, stronger, and with more will power. No, he was not afraid that he could not win position, but with this black cloud hanging over him he felt as though he were paralysed. And so, when a local train left Carlisle towards the station nearest to his mother's old home, it was with a fixed determination that he would not leave Scotland until he had discovered all that could be known. Perhaps it might end in nothing, but he must find out.